20 13 - Greyrock Review - Colorado State University

20
13
Greyrock Review is Colorado State University’s journal of undergraduate art and literature. Published annually in the spring semester by the Department of English, Greyrock Review is entirely
student-produced.
GREYROCK REVIEW
Editor
Fiction Editors
SUBMISSIONS: The journal accepts submissions for art, poetry,
nonfiction, and fiction each year in the fall from undergraduate
students of all majors at Colorado State University. Guidelines for
submission can be found at:
greyrockreview.colostate.edu/submit
PURCHASE: Greyrock Review is availabe for sale through the Colorado State University Department of English.
cici sharstrom
Creative Writing `13
kevin bartz
English + Spanish `13
josh schlanger
English `13
astrid hanson
Literature + Creative Writing `14
Nonfiction Editors
paul binkley
Creative Writing `13
katherine wetterer
Creative Writing `13
Greyrock Review
Department of English
Colorado State University
359 Eddy Hall
Fort Collins, CO 80523
Email: [email protected]
Web: greyrockreview.colostate.edu
Logo designs by Mikhail Twarogowski
Cover art by Mikhail Twarogowski
Cover design by Sarah Aranci
© 2013 Greyrock Review
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
in any form or by any means, without prior written consent from
Greyrock Review. The views expressed in the stories, poems, and
artwork in this journal are solely those of the authors.
Printed by BookMobile.
Poetry Editors
mandy l. rose
Creative Writing `13
lorenzo pangelinan
English `13
Art Editor
Graphic Design + Layout
Typesetter
kim graves
Visual Arts + Philosophy`13
sarah aranci
English + Writing `13
katie hancock
Creative Writing `14
Marketing + Sales
kendra jablonski
Graduate Advisor
mary ballard
Staff Advisor
English + Philosophy`13
Poetry MFA `15
judy doenges
Table of Contents
Editor’s
Note
40
dedication
Fiction
9
cici sharstrom
10
editorial staff
25
45
66
93
124
Smooth Talk
107
elizabeth shelley
A Golden Day
Poetry
elizabeth strait
Café con Piernas
tyanna slope
Learning to Laugh Like a Man
micah caputo
13
The Dead Eyes
Leave Me Lost
14
I Am from a Family of Birds
Hard-Boiled
22
State of the Union
The Badger Warrior
24
Milk
drew mccaffrey
shelby williamson
zach trabona
quinn scahill
140
Your Last Drive Home
146
Shift
nicholas levack
jason brim
The Night We All Played Dead
christopher vanjonack
nonfiction
15
56
A Proposition That You, Sir,
Shall Refrain from Texting Me
Beautiful
jessica allaire
42
43
55
60
abigail mcdonald
abigail mcdonald
emily pancoast
emily pancoast
Shakespeare in Love
caitlyn metzer
Slayton, MN
c. john beckius
A gust caught him
lane mosley
a temple/my body
zach trabona
61
62
63
65
73
74
76
79
82
105
106
seeing you off
121
zach trabona
Internal Sturcture
135
molly davidson
Agassiz
136
molly davidson
To Richard Earl Murdoch
138
molly davidson
Tea Ceremony
143
summers baker
Architecturalism -A Manifesto
144
summers baker
An Architecturalism of
Childhood
flannery lier
Five Years After
art
joshua keen
This is a Love Poem
joshua keen
Rhapsode: An Elegy
christian yepello
Meanderings
michael morrow
Vagabond
michael morrow
Untitled 8
bailey weickum
Untitled 31
bailey weickum
Childhood
167
Noah and the Ark
lyla maloney
lyla maloney
11
Greyrock
83
Supreyes
84
Fishing for Thoughts
elizabeth patterson
To the One Who Walks Unabashedly in Daylight
gabriel johnson
165
summers baker
Archeology Poems
Music Box
ben wudtke
isis lanigan
duncan parks
85
86
87
Lady Bug
jessica crowder
Honey Teapot
mikhail twarogowski
Camping under Stars at the
Buffalo
jacob adler
88
89
90
91
92
Moby Flies
alexandra lake
Vertebrae
elizabeth shelley
Collage
kylie vanderheiden
Light Study on a Nude
richard muller
Paper Construction
| Editor’s Note |
What is fire? Writing starts with a spark of inspiration,
evolves into a steadily-burning idea, and feeds on the fuel
of imagination. The process can be destructive, and yet provides a catalyst for rejuvenation. Ideas are constantly being
born, changed, destroyed and reborn, and in this eternal process we are fortunate to witness the emergence of artists with
stories to tell and pictures to paint. Returning to renowned
past origins, Greyrock Review is proud to exhibit the finest
work of Colorado State University undergraduate students
from a variety of majors and backgrounds. The love of words,
stories, beauty and timelessness, brings us together in this
creative process, and also digs the ground for the generations
to come. It is with great thanks to the editorial staff, English
Department, contributors and fellow CSU students that we
present the 2013 edition of Greyrock Review.
Sincerely,
cici sharstrom
shawn gavlick
Contributor
Notes
169
Appreciation
175
9
| Dedication |
The Greyrock trail is one of the most famous hikes in
Northern Colorado, located some 30 minutes outside CSU’s
hometown of Fort Collins. From 1979 to 2001, CSU’s undergraduate literary journal, Greyrock Review, took its name
from this landmark. It then became known as the A journal,
and as the Garden Level journal for its 2012 edition. Our
choice to renew the Greyrock name takes us back into the
wilderness, but not so far as to lose sight of home.
This past summer, several major fires swept across
Colorado’s mountain ranges, including the area around Greyrock, which was burned by the Hewlett Gulch fire in May
2012. It may seem odd to talk of renewals of Greyrock when
it appears to be surrounded by destruction. However, despite
how the scorched land may appear, such a fire as much an act
of destruction as it is an act of creation for forest ecosystems.
Younger trees are much more resistant to fires than elder
counterparts and fires can act as a means of recycling the nutrients held within older trees, as well as allowing more light
to reach the forest floor. Fires open up possibilities for new
and more varied life to grow and flourish without losing the
nutrients that are the building blocks of that ecosystem. Fires
are part of a natural cycle that may mark the end of one generation, but they are the invaluable foundation upon which
future generations can thrive.
CSU’s undergraduate literary journal is built on a
proud tradition that has been known by many names. Our
choice to move away from both Garden Level and A does not
mark a destruction or disregard for tradition. Instead, it marks
a revival. As one issue gives way to the next, future journals
are given a strong foundation upon which to build. We chose
to honor that tradition by returning the journal to its longestrunning name. We dedicate this issue to all those who were
affected by the Hewlett Gulch, High Park, and Waldo Canyon
fires.
Editorial Staff
10
ben wudtke
| Greyrock | digital photograph
11
abigail mcdonald
| The Dead Eyes |
Lids open in me.
Two moons—flat
black on pearls. Two palms
pressing hard stains,
orange first then obsidian,
open in me
the image I keep
of grandmother marking
lids she’s turned
in pages sounding.
This page bows under
two shadows of her hands
lowering—
between us a silence
never absolved.
13
abigail mcdonald
| I Am From a Family of Birds |
Wind rustling thin hairs
in twirl, trees with arched backs
dipping swallow mother
in breeze, in sidestep, in embrace.
I, baby bird in eves,
born from the Byzantine halo
of my father’s bald spot,
laugh young and toothless,
weighing my twirl in
trees timbering
amongst nests small
and flattened, swallows
darting to
build nests over men—
crowns
of old elms.
14
jessica allaire
| Beautiful |
I’ve developed a personality specific to grocery stores.
I grab my reusable bags from the back seat of my car and
start walking toward the entrance. It’s warm outside, but
spring hasn’t fully set in yet. The trees are still dripping off
worries from the last storm. As I approach the building, the
sliding glass doors force themselves apart, robotically letting
anyone inside. I take the first cart I see and head for the far
left wall, whether what I need is in that area or not. My gaze is
to the floor. I focus only on the path as I calculate the amount
of room in between the strangers’ moving shoes and the
items sitting on the shelves. Then, I snake my way through
each aisle, only lifting my head for the products I’m about to
grab. Grocery stores are the worst for making awkward eye
contact. I start to feel the jiggling and spinning of the front
wheel of my cart. Once again, I had to pick the faulty one.
Someone stops in front of me in aisle four, blocking my
path. I wait as they reach to grab a box of Cap’n Crunch. Feeling their eyes on me, I give them a smile without showing my
teeth, pretending not to be annoyed at their intrusion. I turn
my cart around and go the opposite direction. In a span of
fifteen aisles, I manage to obtain milk, bread, oatmeal, a box
of tampons, and a twelve pack of Mountain Dew. Now, in order to get to the register without talking to anyone, I pretend
to focus on something inside my purse. People won’t talk to
you as much if you don’t make eye contact.
The cashier says something to me when I approach the
counter, but it gets lost in the sounds of slamming cash registers and customers arguing about expired coupons. Once
I see her, however, I can’t stop staring. My eyes won’t detach
from this girl I know nothing about. Her hair is almost black,
15
and it shines against the light, like in those Pantene Pro-V
commercials. It’s thin and slightly curled, falling just below
her shoulder blades. I ignore her name tag and focus on her
beautifully mundane features. She reminds me of someone I
used to know, someone who became lost in a distant memory, years ago. Her name was Kate.
I can’t help but wonder what this Kate is thinking about.
Why she moves so softly. How carefully she sets each item
into the bag as if they are new born babies. I think about who
she is away from the line of customers. What jokes make her
laugh, what movies make her cry. What she wears on Saturday nights when no one’s around to see. I can see her in
her matching black underwear and bra, the set she bought
just in case she meets someone special enough to see them.
I can hear her blasting her music and dancing around her
apartment. How she doesn’t care when she bruises her leg
against the coffee table from losing her balance. I can imagine that she takes a shower with the bathroom door open,
just because she’s the only one there. I wonder if she sits alone
watching “Wicker Park” for the third time that week and
feels her chest fold during the same lonesome parts. How she
wishes to be Lisa, the mesmerizing dancer, but feels more
like Alex, the actress who tries to be someone she’s not. I can
feel her loneliness.
Kate forces air out in a sigh and it jolts me back to the register with the line full of people behind me. I look away when
I realize what she might think of me if she could hear my
thoughts. After a few seconds, I peek up at her again while I
hand her the money. She looks sad. Maybe she wants someone to know these things about her. Maybe she’s waiting for
someone to come into her life and turn her inside out before
she can even realize. I take my receipt and hurry out the store,
embarrassed by my intimate thoughts of some stranger.
*
*
*
The next morning I wake up and immediately get in the
16
shower. When I’m in the shower, I’m not really in the shower.
Usually I’ll be in a conversation I had in the recent past, or
possibly a conversation I wish to have in the near future. It’s
the perfect place to be lost. No one is around, and I can be
entirely naked.
I circle around myself, letting the water wet every part of
my body. I put my head back and let it soak through my hair
as I start to drift off. With my eyes closed, it almost feels like
I’m watching myself. The shampoo swirls onto my palm and
collects into a reddish gob. The bubbles race down my legs
and into the drain. I can direct my movements like the choreography in a dance. I turn my head from side to side while
I rinse off. Standing on my toes to grab the conditioner and
bending over to pick up the bar of soap, all the movements
feel controlled by something else. Then, right before I shut off
the water, I’m back inside my own thoughts. It’s the one place
without any distractions. It’s the one place where I don’t have
to catch someone staring at me.
I turn off the faucet and step out. My towel, warm from
the heater’s blow from the floor vent, soaks up the water
droplets from my skin. I use my hand to wipe off the condensation from the mirror, and I catch a glimpse of my reflection. Through the smudges, I can see a girl who isn’t me.
I drop away everything I know about myself and begin to see
someone else. I remember my good friend telling me I was
beautiful once. We were driving back from the movie theater
and talking about how overplayed songs can get on the radio.
I pulled the car to a stop at the red light, and the conversation
stopped along with it. Then he said it to me in such a matterof-fact tone of voice, You’re beautiful. It caught me off guard.
He had never said anything like that to me before, no one really has, and mothers don’t count. I turned my head toward
him and raised one eyebrow. I asked him what he meant, but
he only turned his head toward the passenger side window.
When the light turned green again, we drove off.
17
I blink back to the mirror, clearing up the moisture. I see
myself again.
I move forward, squeezing my eyes together as if to pick
apart my features one by one. I wonder what exactly he was
calling beautiful. I raise my eyes to my hair. It is all smoothed
together in one circular, wet strand. There is nothing special
about it. It has a generic color with a generic length and a
generic style. I switch back to my face. I have a lazy right eye
that doesn’t quite match the other. The pupil is smaller, and
the color is a lighter solid-blue, giving it a slightly lifeless appearance. A scar rests at the end of one eyebrow from falling
down the stairs onto the side of a vacuum cleaner. The dark
blotches sitting above my cheeks, formed from sleep deprivation, further my lifeless, zombie look. My hairline is too
high, ruling out countless ways to wear it. From the side, my
nose prefers to point downward like the beak of a bird, and it
makes me appear angry all the time. How could he say I am
beautiful? All I see is the little girl with the giant pink, inchesthick glasses falling off her face, the person who climbed up
a tree during recess because her only friend didn’t come to
school that day. I can’t see past the girl who always wears an
oversized sweatshirt, even on the hottest day of the year. This
creature is unbeautiful in her pathetic ways. Then, through
the mirror, I see a drop of something hit the side of the sink.
I step back in frustration and kick the bathroom door as hard
as I can. I hate how easily I can cry.
Once I’m in my room, I throw down my towel and open
my closet doors. I stand exposed. My arms curl onto my hips
while I pick out what clothes to wear for classes. To disguise
my thin white legs, I wear blue jeans with tennis shoes. I don’t
like showing my feet because my toes naturally jumble up in
disjointed directions. Then I make sure to put on a bra with
the least amount of padding to keep my breasts from looking too big for my body. I wear a solid blue t-shirt that’s long
enough to cover the button on my jeans. Tank tops make my
18
arms look too long, and short shirts make me look stocky.
Then, I make sure to put on my oversized, zip-up sweatshirt
to cover everything up. It’s the perfect way to blend in.
After I’m dressed, I start my day the way I always have.
I make my breakfast: two eggs, two pieces of turkey bacon,
and eight ounces of milk, no more, no less. I sit down to eat
and stare at my food. Hunching my shoulders over, I start to
feel like my eggs, a mashed up pile that only has one purpose.
I’ve done nothing in my life. I only know what I’m supposed
to do. Like my eggs, I have to turn out just right or I will be
detested and thrown away. What if I’m not perfect? What if
I overcook my eggs? I scoop a small piece onto my fork and
take a bite. My eyes wander around as I analyze the quality.
It’s not perfect, but it’s not so bad that I have to immediately
spit it into the trash.
I grab my backpack from the side of my computer desk
and head to school, a solid layer of fog circling me. It rained
all through the night and gave a beautiful concealing blanket
in the morning to walk through. Walking in the mist allows
me to imagine that nobody’s watching. I can be in a movie
scene where it’s just me, walking around, unable to see what
I’m stepping toward. Soon after, I stumble into the arms of
some stranger. It is a man, of course. He lifts me back to my
feet, and for a moment I am frozen into him. He’s holding me
tight like he already knows my every reason to cry. I imagine
I wouldn’t look into his eyes right away. When I do, however, they are just how I pictured they would be. He has about
three tiny lines branching out the corner of either eye when
he smiles. They look squinty, as if he is trying to see deeper into my thoughts. When I try to turn away, I feel a pull
to keep looking, like something in his eyes is magnetic. He
looks gentle, like he wouldn’t ever lay a violent hand on anyone. Then, when he looks at me, he would want more than
just my body. I shake my head, trying to toss the fantasy into
the now dissolving fog.
19
Each class passes in a daze. I couldn’t help but think about
the cashier. She distracts me in my World Literature class for
the entire reading of Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.”
Then she occupies my mind again in Spanish. On the way to
my last class, I notice the sun is showing a sliver of light. Other students are wearing flip-flops and lying out in the grass.
Even though it’s almost seventy degrees out, I still keep my
oversized sweatshirt on. A slight breeze ruffles the trees and
touches my face. I long to unzip it and feel the breeze on my
chest. I want to lift my arms above my head and let the wind
envelop my body. I can picture myself completely alone on
the walkway surrounded by grass, trees, and buildings. This
small stretch of land allows me to let out a sigh as I imagine
myself revealing my body one piece of clothing at a time. I
wouldn’t care about anything but the light wind. I would let
it blow away all my insecurities, everything I let bother me. I
can imagine being entirely free. Instead, I ignore it and keep
walking.
I return to my apartment building as soon as classes are
over. Before I go in, I throw my backpack into my car and
head to the grocery store for spaghetti noodles I overlooked
the other day. Once I’m inside, I grab a cart and set my reusable bag into the baby seat. This time, instead of turning
left, I look for the sixth aisle and start moving. It takes only a
second to pick out the package and twist around the jiggling
cart. I get in the shortest line I can see before the rush of
people follow from behind.
The short man with his pants pulled uncomfortably high
leaves and I step up to the register. I recognize the cashier’s
shiny black hair right away. It’s Kate. She greets me in her
usual way, Hello, how are you, did you find everything okay,
and I respond accordingly. Then I notice what she’s wearing.
She has her blue King Soopers work shirt on, covered by an
oversized sweatshirt. I feel my face lift up. Kate turns back
to my smile, handing me my receipt, and moves her lips just
20
enough to be polite without fully copying me. I wonder if
she remembers me from a couple days before. It feels as if
I’ve known her my whole life after seeing her this way. Kate
starts helping the next woman in line while I back away. I lift
my bag and start walking out, throwing my receipt in with
the noodles, unsure of what exactly happened. Walking out
without my head down, I open my car door and sit in the
driver’s seat. I pause for a while, replaying the event over in
my head.
A few minutes pass by and my eyes switch to the rearview mirror. I study my features again, squinting my eyelids
to zoom in closer. I still see my imperfections glaring back at
me from the foggy mirror in my apartment, but they’re not
as noticeable as I remember. Then I unzip my sweatshirt. I
hear the zipper click its way down, opening up the teeth behind it. Looking around at anyone that might see, I carefully
slip out my arms and thrust it in the backseat. I look back at
my sweatshirt, flopped on the fabric. My hands shake just
barely until I feel the warmth of the sun glowing off my skin.
I lift my head up and I catch a college-aged boy staring at me
through the back window. He winks at me with his squinty
eyes and looks away.
21
emily pancoast
| State of the Union |
In North Carolina I put on my mother’s wedding dress
passed down for four generations
my great-grandmother wore these pearls
now I walk down a petal-littered aisle
to wed the boy whose mother I call ‘Aunt’
Mother sheds only a joyful tear because he is a man and I am a woman
My university demolished a solid stadium
built a new concrete giant in its place
in the middle of a field where we used to lay and watch stars,
where we used to chase each other when it got warm outside
Meanwhile the arts buildings sink further into the ground, forgotten ruins
Old men picket outside free clinics,
demanding that wombs be held sacred
while the children they would save will starve in the streets
and then be sent to battlefields so we can call
ourselves peacekeepers
Teachers and students alike label each other with
permanent marker
all the while teaching tolerance
and having multi-cultural food day in elementary classrooms
The young run so fast toward the future
filled with shiny new iGadgets
equipped to tear apart the beliefs we thought we held dear
My grandmother wages war against ink on skin
and offensive words in books
we can’t burn them anymore
but we will lock them out of our libraries
so that the children cannot be corrupted
22
23
emily pancoast
| Milk |
You’re downing a glass
as I sip my wine
Separated by years
and words you don’t know
Our preference in beverage
is the space between us
24
elizabeth shelley
| Smooth Talk |
First, think back to childhood. Think of how you used to
mimic everything you heard and saw. Remember the first
time you copied your brother Kyle and told your mom to “go
to hell.” Remember the spanking, and how frightened you
were to mimic someone, so afraid that you promised to never
do it again. Recall how that promise was broken within the
hour of making it when Kyle kissed the neighbor girl, and
how you wanted to do it, too. You studied his movements as
he placed his hand into the girl’s long brown curls and saw
his lips moving across hers. You felt your own lips and imagined kissing her just as he had. After kissing her, Kyle came in
the back door and ruffled your hair. He knew you had been
spying.
“Just don’t tell mom, ok little brother?” he whispered.
You nodded. You’d do anything for him.
Growing up, you study every make-out session Hollywood has to offer. You begin to peek at the movie scenes that
your parents told you to ‘close your eyes’ for. The images on
the screen confuse you, the way the couples’ bodies crinkle
around each other’s is startling.
You ask Kyle about the scenes, and at first he chuckles,
“C’mon little bro, you know you’re not supposed to watch
those parts!”
Staring blankly at him, he finally tells you about sex.
However, he gets grounded three days later, when your parents find out. They blame him for ‘ruining your innocence
and childhood’. You want to jump in and shout ‘it’s ok, I don’t
understand it anyway!’ You leave it however, and let Kyle take
the verbal blows.
*
*
*
25
It’s the first day of middle school, and the cute girl with
blonde hair is smiling at you from across the cafeteria. You
think her name is Mindy, but it doesn’t matter. What matters are her eyes as they meet yours, and then you both look
down and blush. You start to get restless, playing with your
fingers, and catching her gaze every thirty-three seconds.
When the lunch bell rings, she and her friends are leaving.
Getting up to follow her, you notice the untouched turkey
sandwich your mom had made earlier that morning. Embarrassed, you toss it in the trash and head to the halls.
The next few classes fly by in a blur. Your friends blab all
day about the girls they kissed over the summer, even though
just last year, girls were nasty creatures with cooties that must
be avoided. You listen to all the names they list out, realizing
you’ve fallen behind.
“This summer I kissed Jennifer Banks, Beverly Hills, some
girl in California, and Jennifer Snow,” Blake announces.
It doesn’t matter that the names sound incredibly fake
and unfamiliar because now kissing girls is cool. After school,
you notice the familiar blonde haired girl standing at the
lockers; her back is turned to you. Her head moves slightly
to the right as she scans the students in the halls. Beginning
to sweat, you approach her. You stand behind her awkwardly,
breathing hard, thinking of what you could possibly say that
would be witty. You decide to play it safe with a good old
fashioned “Hey”.
She turns around; a slight blush of embarrassment paints
her cheeks as she realizes she was looking the wrong way. She
looks down.
“Hey,” she mumbles as she shuffles her feet.
An odd silence ensues; she keeps her eyes to the floor.
“Can I walk you home?” you ask, playing the gentleman
role you’ve studied so closely.
She looks back up, a grin on her face betraying her metal
encompassed teeth. When you walk out of the school together,
26
she is leading the way. Be smooth, you think over and over as
she leads you away from the school. You make sure to compliment her hair and eyes. With each compliment, a fresh shade
of red flourishes onto her beautiful cheeks. She mentions a
few movies she’s seen recently, and gossips about her friends.
To your relief, she does most of the talking.
Arriving at her house, she turns around in a little hop and
smiles. She grabs your hands in a friendly gesture.
“Thanks so much for walking me home!” she exclaims.
You stand awkwardly for a moment just looking at each
other. Here’s your chance! Kiss her! Don’t wimp out! you think
as her green eyes shift around nervously.
Thinking about the movies, you lean in and pray to God.
The kiss is simple as your puckered mouth meets her lips for
a single moment. You look at each other for a second, and
then she turns quickly away and runs into her house without
a goodbye.
You run home to tell Kyle, a huge grin encompassing your
face as you knock on his door. Kyle smiles and ruffles your
hair, a habit he’s had forever. Kyle is nearly three years older
than you, a freshman in high school, and trying to grow a
beard. Beards are manly. Once in the room, you burst out
the news. He drops his mouth open, chuckles, and gives you
a high five.
“Congratulations, little brother! Is she hot?” he asks as he
shuts his door.
You nod and look at the familiar poster hanging on the
back of Kyle’s door. The golden haired beach babe stares
back, her skimpy red bikini exposing the round shape of her
breasts as she lies on a beautiful tropical beach. Bits of sand
are stuck to her tanned body, but she doesn’t seem to mind.
Her right hand lies elegantly atop her right leg, while her left
hand holds a seashell necklace up to her red lips where she
is lightly biting onto it seductively. Still staring at the poster,
Kyle asks you about all the ‘juicy’ details, especially about
27
Mindy’s looks. His smile grows when you mention that Mindy is blonde. After telling the story, he ruffles your hair again.
“You know what I always say little brother, if they ain’t a
looker, then they ain’t worth your time.”
You believe his statement as you peer at the girl on the
poster. She is definitely worth everyone’s time, you think, tracing down the smooth lines of her tanned legs. You can’t remember the first time Kyle ever said that. He would always
check out girls at the mall or the pool, look at you, comment
on her body, and say it. Mindy is certainly worth your time,
as she is the prettiest girl in school, yet you still secretly hope
Kyle would agree.
The next day you are excited to see Mindy. Perhaps she’ll
kiss me again you think. In the cafeteria however, she never
meets your gaze. Trying to speak with her, she just walks
away or pretends she doesn’t hear you. She won’t talk the next
day either, or the next, or the week after. You feel the sharp
pains of rejection.
*
*
*
Growing up is a difficult experience, especially for you. Every
day it seems like a new spectrum of red falls across your chin
and forehead. You feel awkward in your body after the most
recent growth spurt. Suddenly your clothes are too small,
and you can’t stop eating. Yet you never gain any weight.
The girls at school have started calling you names like ‘string
bean’ and ‘lanky’. You hunch your body in shame when you
walk by Mindy and her clique as they giggle to each other.
She’s changed, too, since the kiss you shared. Her body is
skinnier, her legs longer, and her breasts are growing as they
are slightly highlighted under her blue tank top. She glares
when she notices your stare, and you wander away in dismay.
Preparing for your first year of high school, all of your
friends blabber with the excitement of meeting new ‘hot
chicks’. Hoping to fit in, you try to contribute to this conversation, but in truth you are nervous as shit for the first day of
28
school. However, the first day is a pleasant surprise. There is
no locker shoving, no evil teachers, and most of the faces in
class are familiar and friendly. After fourth period, you think
that it’s funny how one can be so intimidated by a change in
setting. Entering the cafeteria for lunch, Mindy is with her
friends at a large circular table. They’re all laughing together,
over some joke or bit of gossip probably. Mindy is beautiful;
her breasts have gotten bigger over the summer. You watch
her as she stops laughing and begins to talk again. She always
was popular. Suddenly you feel like you’ve been whipped
back into middle school crushes again, only instead of thinking of kissing her, you are thinking about her body and how
it would feel. Her body is warm as her heart beats slowly. The
long blonde hair sprawled across your chest smells of vanilla.
The scent is delicate and sexy. Feeling yourself hardening,
you try to change your thoughts to something else, anything
else. You decide to focus on your cheese sandwich and its two
pieces of white bread with mayo. I’d much rather pepper jack
cheese, you think. I wonder what kind of cheese Mindy likes.
And the cycle repeats itself.
*
*
*
The homecoming dance is coming up, and all of your buddies are going with dates in their arms.
“Who you gonna bring?” they ask.
They all plan to lose their virginity after the dance because in high school kissing isn’t enough. Now it’s cool to
have sex, and lots of it. Truth of the matter is, you haven’t really thought about a date. Not many girls talk to you, and the
ones that do are certainly not worth your time. Attempting
to shrug off their question, they instantly make fun of you for
not wanting a date.
“Faggot!” they shout.
“He’s afraid of getting laid!” Blake announces.
You can’t help but turn red at their accusations, and this
only provokes them further. Once recovered, you tell them
29
all to shut the fuck up and that you are thinking of asking
Mindy. “Well she’s right over there,” Blake notes. “Go ask her!
It’ll prove you’re not a homo!”
All the boys laugh and agree with Blake. Feeling obligated, you stand up and walk over to her clique. They are
all laughing about some girl with frizzy hair and glasses.
Clearing your throat, the girls all look up. Their eyes burn
into your face like a hot spotlight. Standing there awkwardly,
Mindy looks at you and rolls her eyes to her friends. They
giggle.
“Hey Mindy,” you start. “I was just wondering if you’d be
my homecoming date”.
These words come out in a wet jumble. The girls laugh,
and Mindy turns red.
“Um…No!” she blurts out and a stream of laughter follows.
Embarrassed, you wander away from the laughing girls
and stare at the ground, tracing the simple triangular patterns in the blue carpet. Your friends are trying to hold in
their laughter, their faces turning red. Jeremy stands up and
puts his hand on your shoulder.
“She’s just a bitch,” he explains. “Don’t take it personally
man, you’ll find a way better girl”.
You end up taking Pam, the girl with frizzy hair and
glasses, to the homecoming. Before the dance, you meet at
Pam’s house to take pictures with the entire group. You smile
for every photo, hugging Pam from behind, knowing that
Kyle would never approve. The other girls in the group are
all wearing skin tight dresses that end way above their knees.
Most of them are covered in colorful sequins, all glimmering
in the fading sunlight. Pam, however, is wearing a repulsive
dark yellow floor-length dress with sleeves.
When you comment on it, she smiles and announces “It
was my mom’s homecoming dress!”
Displeased by her appearance, the other girls seclude
30
Pam, forcing her to cling to your side. Once at the dance, you
notice how most of the other girls are dancing, their asses
rubbing up and down against your buddies’ crotches. Pam
doesn’t do this. Dumb fucking friends you think as Pam does
the Egyptian Pharaoh dance in front of you like a freak. You
spot Kyle on the other side of the room as his date shimmies
down his body. Annoyed, you ask Pam to get a cup of water
and as she happily skips away, you ditch her and move to the
middle of the crowd. Almost instantly, a girl wearing a tight
silvery dress grinds up against you, her ass moving quickly.
You rub her body as she lifts her arms in the air for three
songs. After the third, she turns and kisses you. This kiss is
wet. She traces her tongue around your mouth as the beats
run through your ears. This kiss is exhilarating yet sloppy as
her saliva sits cool around your lips. Her hips are still moving. Feeling yourself becoming erect you pull her closer, tasting some sort of booze on her breath. Cupping her breast,
you can’t believe that this girl is letting you touch her. Suddenly, massive hands grip onto your shoulders as they tear
your mouth away from the girl.
“What the fuck?” a bulky guy shouts in your face.
Shocked, you don’t respond, only quiver in your slacks.
He spits in your face and slugs a good one right across your
left cheek. Collapsing to the floor, you don’t remember anything else.
*
*
*
Waking up, you are sprawled out on a brown leather couch.
Confused, you realize it’s Pam’s house. Pam is sitting in the
recliner next to you, her eyes are closed, and she’s still wearing her mother’s yellow dress. You shuffle a little to the left,
head throbbing. Pam wakes from the noise and instantly
comes to your side. Shaking, she explodes with apologies. As
it turns out, the guy who hit you was Pam’s older, bulkier
brother who saw Pam crying at the dance. She grabs an ice
pack and places it on your eye. The cold is shocking, and you
31
push it away. Refusing to stay any longer, you leave despite
her pleading words. You don’t apologize for ditching her.
Kyle is astonished when you drag yourself into the house.
“What the hell happened to you?” he asks.
“I ditched my date and made out with some girl on the
dance floor.”
Kyle chuckles. “Yeah your date was pretty hopeless.”
You grin slightly, looking to the floor. Kyle ruffles your
hair.
Monday rolls around, and all of your buddies admire
the battle wounds, especially the dark purple circle winding
itself around your swollen eye. You see the girl who kissed
you and start to wave, but she doesn’t respond as she walks
by, flirting with some guy with spiked black hair. You watch
her ass moving back and forth in her tight black leggings as
she walks away. Pam avoids you as well. Catching her eyes in
the hall, she quickly looks down and walks away. You silently
swear to never go to another school dance.
The rest of freshman year is dry: no kisses, no girls, and no
breasts. Kyle flunks his senior literature and math classes, forcing
him to stay in school another semester. Sophomore year, Blake
starts dating Mindy to your dismay. Now you’re stuck watching
her sucking on Blake’s face, wishing to take his place. However,
because Mindy is popular she invites Blake to parties nearly every weekend. The night your school’s football team wins their
semifinal game, Mindy is feeling extra nice and invites you and
your buddies to join her and Blake at some jock’s party. Being
your first party invite, you graciously accept. You find yourself
jammed into the basement of a house along with what seems like
your entire high school. Two guys are sitting at a card table arm
wrestling. The way their arms are bulging makes you think they
are football players. Several guys and girls are standing around
them, rooting and taking bets on who will win. Two others are
playing beer pong, yelling profanities to each other as one of
them slaps some girl’s ass as she passes by. She giggles at him and
32
whispers something in his ear. He grins at her, and makes her
kiss his ping pong ball before he throws it.
Someone passes you a red frat cup with what appears to
be beer inside. You shrug, and take a swig, then another, and
another. Astonished, you spot Kyle laughing with a bunch of
other guys next to the beer pong table, his right arm hanging loose around some girl you’ve never seen before. She reminds you of his beach babe poster as her long blonde hair
cascades down her back. She is wearing a short red tank, revealing the black thong hugging her hips above the waist of
her shorts. Kyle kisses her cheek and leaves the group to grab
a drink. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out a small silver
vile and dumps something white into the drink. Smiling, he
walks back over to his group and gives the drink to the girl.
She accepts it graciously as he kisses her cheek again. She
drinks the beer and Kyle grins as she does it. Shocked, you
can’t believe that Kyle would ever hurt someone, much less
drug them.
Somebody turns on a stereo causing a bunch of girls to
cheer. One, a brunette, grabs your hand and leads you to the
music. You follow her and think, Kyle knows what he’s doing,
he’s a good guy. The brunette shakes her hips against yours
and it’s just like homecoming all over again, except this time
you are dizzy as more and more frat cups find their way into
your hand.
You can tell she is drunk, too. Her movements become
uneven, and she keeps laughing at everything. After a few
more songs, she turns around, smiling and swaying.
“You know what would really make this fun?” she asks.
She doesn’t give you time to answer as she grabs your
hand and goes away from the party, towards the stairs. Some
couple is making out on the stairs, their hands ruffling each
other’s hair. Moving awkwardly around them, she leads you
to what looks like a child’s room. The bed is heavily decorated in plush soccer balls, footballs, and baseballs. The door
33
clicks closed and you turn around. Suddenly, her mouth is
on yours. It’s uneven and sloppy, your heart rate accelerates
as she gently bites on your neck, sucking and nibbling. She
pushes you onto the child’s bed and before she gets on top,
she removes her shirt, revealing a red bra with black lace. Focusing on her chest as it comes closer and closer, her mouth
is finally on yours again. You know that she is drunk, but you
don’t care, removing your own shirt and pants. Without even
thinking, you take her among the soccer balls.
It doesn’t take long for you to finish, being a virgin and all.
Afterwards your body soars with pleasure. After a few moments of ecstasy, the room suddenly begins to spin and twirl.
Your head begins to pound, the vomit escalating through
your system. Leaning over the side of the bed, you puke onto
the floor. The brunette shrieks and clumsily lurches off the
bed. Covering her own mouth, she gathers her clothes and
puts them all back on while another wave hits you. As she
leaves the room you swear you’ll never drink again. Grabbing your boxers off of the floor, you attempt to wiggle into
them. After nearly fifteen minutes of struggling, they are finally around your waist. Lying back down, the world begins
to spin around again. You grab your head to keep it from
moving, but the twirling persists.
“Holy shit!” someone shouts nearby.
You look over slowly and recognize Kyle in the doorway.
“Fuck! What happened?”
You want to tell him you got laid, but all that comes out is
a muffled gurgle of saliva and vomit.
“Whoa there, take it easy little brother,” he says and comes
to your side with your shirt and pants.
Kyle helps you into the clothes, and together you walk
out of the room, leaving the vomit. Kyle drives home and the
same blonde from the beer pong match is in the passenger’s
seat. She seems like she’s doing alright, you think. You wish the
world would stop spinning. Once home, you can’t even make
34
it to the bed and settle for the floor in front of it.
Hangovers are under exaggerated, you think the next day
as you try to get up off the floor, failing miserably. Your head
is pounding so hard. You want to cry, or tear it off altogether.
The light coming in from the open window scorches your
eyes. Rolling over, you cover your eyes with a blanket, and
pass out.
Waking up, Kyle is crouched beside you, a glass of water
in his hands. You moan at the wretched sound of his voice.
He chuckles and ruffles your hair. He puts the glass of water
up to your lips and orders you to drink.
“You didn’t drug it did you?”
This question shocks him, and he glares. Kyle instantly
dumps the water on your face. Stunned, you sputter and sit
up, purposefully spitting some of the liquid back into his
face. Kyle taps your head with the bottom of the glass causing you to crinkle in pain
“Look, Claire didn’t mind. She wanted to sleep with me,
she told me herself. I was just sealing the deal.”
You don’t respond. He ruffles your hair.
“You weren’t the most innocent of men last night either, I
saw how drunk the brunette was.”
You keep quiet again, knowing he’s right. “Don’t sweat it
little brother, it’s ok to do it every once in a while, especially
if they’re a looker.”
You meet his warm eyes, see his smile, and believe him.
*
*
*
The next few months, you avoid Mindy’s parties, the very
thought of alcohol resurrects a feeling of nausea in your abdomen. However, the memories of the child’s bed remerge as
well. You remember how good it had felt, and you instantly
want to do it again. Meeting up with Blake at school, you run
it by him to let you know whenever Mindy is taking him to
another party.
Over the next semester, you’re at every party Mindy has
35
to offer and have come to the conclusion that drunk girls
are easy. Very easy. Use a few sweet words, maybe compliment their hair and they’re all yours. At nearly every party,
you snag a girl to make out with and touch. Every kiss is the
same--sloppy and disorganized. Your tongues flick and flop,
leaving a circle of cold saliva around each other’s mouths.
You know these girls are drunk, but you don’t care. It’s okay
to do it every once in a while.
Junior year rolls around, and things are just the same,
except that Kyle has left for college. Also, you’ve discovered
your alcohol limit and have become a master at not puking
after a good party. Your parents have become extremely anal,
however. They see your grades slipping and have told you
they can smell the booze on your breath after the late weekend nights. Constantly, they accuse you of being too much
like Kyle who barely made it to college. You smile whenever
they bring this up, knowing it was their decision for him to
go to college, not his. Sitting down, they tell you they don’t
appreciate the man you are becoming. You get grounded for a
month after your mother finds the condom stash. She throws
them all away and tells you to get your act together, swearing
she’ll kick you out. You shrug off their discussions and warnings because all of your friends find the experiences remarkable as they constantly question your strategies on how to get
a woman in bed.
“It’s easy,” you say. “All you have to do is wait for the moment when their eyes glaze over.”
*
*
*
At the end of the semester, Kyle comes home for the holiday
and Blake invites you to Mindy’s Christmas party.
“Her parents are out of town, it’s going to be wild,” he
says.
Mindy’s house is fully decorated in brightly colored
lights, and a huge banner reading HAPPY HOLIDAYS hangs
above her garage door. Inside, you spot Mindy instantly. Her
36
blonde hair has been delicately curled around her face. A
black head band, with pieces of bright green and red holly
on it, lies carefully amongst the curls. She looks beautiful in
her low cut dark red sweater and jeans. You wait until she is
alone and decide to go have a real conversation with her for
the first time in years. At first glance she doesn’t notice you,
but when you greet her she smiles politely. You ask her how
she’s doing, how she and Blake are, and if she’s had a good
semester. She responds that her relationship with Blake is
good, although he couldn’t make it to the party due to a fever.
She doesn’t answer the other two questions and an awkward
silence emerges as you think of what to say that might interest her.
“You look really good tonight,” you say, unable to meet
her eyes.
She thanks you and starts to giggle. You ask her what’s so
funny, and she shakes her head. After inquiring her further,
she smiles.
“I was just thinking about when we kissed in middle
school,” she says.
You laugh too, and agree that it was ridiculous. After
laughing about that day, about her braces, and how she didn’t
talk to you for the rest of the year, her laughter comes to a
stop and she looks you in the eye.
“We should hang out more often. I feel like I barely know
you,” she says sincerely.
You agree and suddenly one of her friends runs up to her,
laughing about how Mindy needed to come see the hilarious thing that Jared Miller was doing in the backyard. Mindy
laughs, tells you she’ll see you around, and walks away with
her friend. You can’t help but watch her as she walks away.
I can’t believe I’m still crushing on her, you think. Once she’s
out of sight, you get a drink and find a dark haired girl to take
your mind off of Mindy. Sitting on a brown leather couch,
the dark haired girl straddles your body and sucks on your
37
neck. You hear the sliding glass door that leads to the backyard open followed by a familiar chuckle.
“Good work little brother!” Kyle announces and ruffles
your hair, causing the girl to stop her fondling and look up.
“What the fuck you doing here?” you ask.
“I never miss a good party.”
He winks, and you watch him go to the kitchen where he
fills up a cup with beer, followed by the white powder from
the vial in his pocket. The dark haired girl goes back to nibbling, but your eyes don’t leave Kyle as he walks back outside
and hands the cup to a girl with delicate blonde curls and a
dark red sweater. Your eyes widen as Mindy takes a few sips,
and Kyle’s smile grows as she does it. Shaking, you shove the
dark haired girl off and head for the door. She shouts a profanity and chucks something at you, but misses as it clunks
against the wall and falls to the ground. Fists balling up, you
walk up to Mindy. Right as she takes a sip, you tear the cup
from her mouth and chuck it to the concrete, drenching her
sweater in the liquid. Mindy’s eyes widen in surprise. Her
hand is still extended in front of her, her fingers are bent as if
they were still holding the cup. Your eyes move to Kyle. His
face is contorted into a glare, his jaw tight, and his eyebrows
are scrunched towards his eyes. You want to punch him, but
before you can Mindy slaps you across the cheek.
“What the hell was that for?” she screeches.
You don’t answer and meet Kyle’s eyes instead.
“Little brother,” he says, enunciating every syllable
through his clenched teeth. “Can’t you see I’m a little busy
here?”
Looking back to Mindy, her face is also wrinkled into a
glare. Turning back, you slug Kyle in the stomach, right below
the rib cage. You hear something clink to the ground as Kyle
bends over himself. Mindy shrieks. Attempting to restrain
you, she grabs your body in her arms. Anger pulsing, you
shove her away and punch Kyle again, this time in the face.
38
Your knuckles crack into his nose and blood begins to drip.
Kyle moans and looks up, his eyes meet yours. You can’t help
but think about how much you’ve looked up to him. If they
ain’t a looker, then they ain’t worth your time. The old saying
runs through your mind as Kyle leans over and clutches his
dripping nose under his hands. Blood oozes from between
his clutched fingers, staining the concrete with small red dots
as they fall. Suddenly, Mindy grabs your shoulder, her eyes
are full of rage as they pierce yours.
“Get out of here,” she orders. “I don’t want you here.”
Giving you no time to respond, Mindy runs into the
house and brings Kyle a box of tissues. She hands them to
him and tells you again to leave, or she’ll call the police. Even
though you highly doubt she’d ever call the cops to an underage party, you listen and head to the car. The last things you
see are your brother’s wide eyes and then his legs running
away from the party. A tiny silver vial remains on the concrete. Mindy picks it up, and stares at its contents incredulously, her eyes darting back and forth from you and your
brother’s disappearing shapes.
Calmly, you drive home. Once there, you climb the familiar stairs, carefully holding on to the smooth wooden
banister, and enter Kyle’s empty room. After closing the door,
you look into the beach babe’s eyes.
“You’re not worth my time!” you shout and tear her off
the door.
39
elizabeth strait
| A Proposition that You, Sir, Shall
Refrain from Texting Me |
Dear Mr. Bootycall,
I admit that when I received your text at 12:20 A.M. (earlier than usual), I decided—despite my better judgment in
light of our past misadventures—to entertain your questions.
As we bantered back and forth with “’sup” and “not much,”
I pictured you in your dorm just “chillin’” as you described.
You were probably awake at this late hour merely by force
of habit (as all university students are liable to be). I could
see you lounging across your couch in your red flannel pajama pants, flipping through television channels that offered
nothing to your liking. I imagined that you had just finished
with your studies. So, although the evening was drawing to
a close, you hoped that you might have time for some leisure activities before it was entirely spent. Alas, your diligent
roommate probably made a request for quiet (as he was inclined to retire rather shortly) so you (not yet ready to retire
yourself) turned to your iPhone in search of a pal who was
apt to keep those same late hours as you who might agree to
partake in a bit of “hanging” to wind down the evening.
As we had, in recent days, begun to strike up conversations with one another in ways that indicated a desire to grow
our slight familiarity into something a bit more like a friendship, I was not entirely put off by the lateness of your summons. You made small talk by asking about my day and posing other courteous questions, such that you slowly moved
the conversation along to ask how I was making use of my
free time that evening. I responded to your inquiries regarding my current employment with the same “just chillin’” line
40
and then suggested a round of billiards or perhaps a film to
occupy our mutual restlessness—but you again emphasized
your desire to merely “chill” together.
I thought of you there, in your bedtime attire with your
mind fully awake and yet weary from the daily grind, and I
could understand why you might have been seeking some
more thoughtful discussion and intellectual company than
the television could offer. I also imagined that your hairstyle
had survived that long day of classes in which a number of
essays were assigned and numerous tests were handed forth.
I became convinced that it was probably still neatly gelled
forward in that oh-so-sexy way you wear it. So I gave my
consent for the “hanging” to ensue on that wintery night.
It had taken quite a while to proceed as far as this in our
negotiations (even though your initial text gave me an inkling
that you desired to engage me in person), and yet you then
stalled for a moment longer. You graciously mentioned your
concerns of offending me lest your intentions seemed offputting, but I assured you that in the past it was only when
you had been affected by certain substances of an inebriating
nature that you turned into a flaming asshole.
Ironically, it was at that point in our correspondence that
you felt inclined to inform me that you were terribly fatigued
and asked that we might put off our rendezvous until a more
favorable time. That was also the point at which I imagined
you drunk, blazed, or otherwise intoxicated, sitting on your
couch wide awake and all alone. And it is because of this incident that we finally arrive at the culmination of my relations
with you, sir.
Fuck off.
Sincerely,
I-Don’t-Play-Those-Games
41
caitlyn metzer
| Shakespeare in Love |
| Slayton, MN |
I would say of a past relationship, Viola’s words: I am afeard, being in night so much, that this is all but a dream.
There’s a tree out back.
Where, for three days each August, crows
Stripped its fruit and woke me.
If I ever had a lover, I would tell him to take me out
in the sunshine. To bask in its celestial rays
and have our skin warmed as our hearts would be. To soak in a blue summer sky and play in winter snows and spring rains. I
would say, as much as I adore the intimacy
of darkness and the hushed whispers betwixt moon and stars, take me in the light with
your hand about my waist or
fingers entwined in mine.
A cloud of green leaves
And the ground covered with sticky red
Scraps of cherries, pits, twigs
I would say take me in the light to know you are not ashamed.
42
c. john beckius
Bordered by crops of corn, rapeseed, or soy
On a rotating schedule,
The farm sat on a plateau
Looking out at what passed for a town.
The smells changed each summer
The mosquitoes didn’t.
Rhubarb grew behind Poppa’s shed Poisonous, but delicious in pie.
I drank my first beer there,
Played darts with my brothers,
Lifted the cardboard used to cover
Dozens of pictures of naked women
In the space between boards
Where insulation should have sprouted.
Once we packed mason jars half-full of grass
43
And the other half with toads,
Knowing mom wouldn’t think twice
About jars full of yard clippings
Tucked inside our luggage.
drew mccaffrey
I haven’t been to Slayton since Poppa died,
Since my friend Alec died,
Since Hunter S. Thompson died.
Days like that were hard to come by. The September air was
warm, but held just a hint of autumn’s crispness as it breezed
through the multi-hued leaves on trees lining the street.
Clouds dominated the sky, but enough sun broke through
to illuminate the burnished reds and golds fluttering above.
Mark Yoren could not hold back a smile as he walked
down the main road through campus. The weather was perfect, he thought, and did little except remind him of good
times, both past and present. The future was all that troubled
him, that day.
His senior year was upon him, the first test of the semester was looming, monstrous, scheduled for the next Monday.
He and Andrew walked, side by side, and were silent despite
the beneficent glow seeping through the husky greys and
blooming whites of the cloud cover.
They were thinking about the same thing, Mark knew.
Some of the best times they’d had since becoming friends
happened on fall days like that. Days back in high school,
five and six years ago, sneaking beers into their parents’ basements and drinking, or coming up with the most immature
games they could think of. He missed the superficiality of it
all.
Even here on campus, that shallowness was present. He
glanced regretfully at a group of six freshmen chatting about
finding a party that night. Mark remembered those first
weeks of college, prowling up and down the streets of neighborhoods nearby with friends, searching for a house party
they could get into. Those were the days, he thought. The only
thing that mattered every weekend was finding a place to get
drunk.
I hate riding in silent cars.
Ever since she turned off the Johnny Cash CD
On the way to the farm from K-Mart.
44
| A Golden Day |
45
Now, of course, he had bigger matters to attend to. He
was already in the throes of stress, concerned with papers
and tests and finances and personal issues, and most of all
finding a job.
It was Friday, though, as he reminded himself. He didn’t
have to worry about all that, today. He and Andrew were
done with classes for the day, and neither of them had any
other demands for the rest of the afternoon. They were content with walking through campus, enjoying the weather,
and privately reflecting on the beauty of it.
Unbidden, a song rose into Mark’s thoughts. Lyrics played
through his head, and he remembered sitting in the front
seat of his car one spring day in high school. He and Andrew
had been listening to music, talking about the finer points
of life (alcohol, romantic interests, and music), and packing
pouches of chew.
Mark shook his head and laughed at himself. “Hey, Andrew. Remember when we used to chew?”
Andrew looked away from the nearby athletic fields and
the games of soccer going on there, instead diverting his attention to Mark. “Back in high school? Man, what was that,
junior year?” He laughed and rolled his eyes. “We were stupid back then, weren’t we?”
Mark nodded in agreement even though Andrew’s tone
made it clear that that last wasn’t a question. “It did feel good
though, just sitting there and talking with a solid buzz going.
Not a care in the world.”
Andrew was silent for a time before turning and meeting
Mark’s eyes. “You know what? It’s Friday. Let’s do that again.
Let’s grab coffee and a can and a bottle, and just hang out. It’s
been too damn long since I’ve done that, and I want nothing
less than to ignore the paper due next week.”
He looked back into Andrew’s brown eyes, sparkling with
newfound excitement and the reflection of sunrays from
above. “Let’s do it.”
46
They turned around and walked back to Andrew’s car at a
much faster pace. The group of freshmen glanced up at them
as they passed, hopeful looks on their faces as if they thought
a couple seniors were about to invite them to some Friday
night frat kegger. Mark laughed to himself at the thought.
The weight of his backpack seemed less, now that they
had decided to be carefree for the night. Mark busied himself with casting his worries into the back of his mind and
concentrated on old memories from high school and early in
college. They were good, each and every one.
It took them only a few minutes to make it back to Andrew’s car, and while they tossed their backpacks into the
back seat, Andrew flashed a grin over at Mark and said,
“You’ll like the music selection I’ve got in mind for the drive
over to the coffee shop.”
Mark did like the selection, as he discovered when Andrew started his little blue compact. It was the very song he’d
had stuck in his head earlier: a catchy tune called “The Willing.” He thought it was appropriate, since he and Andrew
were so willing this evening to be irresponsible.
They sang along, enjoying themselves to a ridiculous extent, while Andrew drove to the nearest gas station.
“What are you thinking? Mint?” Andrew asked as they
climbed out of the car.
“Nah,” Mark replied. “Let’s go with citrus. That was the
stuff we always got back in the day.”
“True. A little girly, though, Alice.”
Mark forced a chuckle, but felt a little uncomfortable with
how easily Andrew made a comparison between him and a
theoretical woman. Nevertheless, they got citrus. Andrew
tossed down a five and Mark handed him a couple ones to
cover his portion. Walking back out to the car, Mark practiced snapping his hand in the now-unfamiliar motion to
pack the can of tobacco. It felt odd, but strangely exciting
at the same time. He felt a sense of freedom and—though
47
he didn’t consciously admit it to himself—immaturity as he
delved into his old high school persona.
It was only a short drive to the nearest coffee shop, and
they settled into the front seats of Andrew’s car with blended
drinks in hand, old music blasting from his speakers, and the
prospect of a good buzz sitting between them in the form of
pouches of chewing tobacco.
With punk rock washing over them, Mark reclined his
seat, leaned his head back, and said, “This is just what we
needed, huh?”
Andrew nodded, reaching for the can of pouches. His
coffee cup sat between his legs, empty, waiting for use as a
spitter. “Hell yeah, man. I’d rather not be thinking about papers or job hunting or any of that crap tonight—or this weekend at all, if I can get away with it.”
Mark laughed. “Cheers to that.” He downed the rest of his
coffee and packed two pouches of tobacco under his bottom
lip. The tingling bit into his gums and lip, and he felt a shiver
run down his back as juice from the pouch mingled with
the spit in his mouth. Fresh citrus poured onto his tongue,
and after a moment he spit into the waiting plastic cup in his
hand.
“This is the stuff,” Andrew murmured, closing his eyes.
“You know, I’ve always thought that these things tasted like
Sprite Remix. Remember that old soda?”
“Yeah, absolutely! I loved that stuff,” Mark replied, thinking back and trying to compare the flavor in his mouth to
the memory of the soda. It was hard to do, especially with
the relaxation spreading through his shoulders and arms. He
felt a slight tightening around his head, and luxuriated in the
oncoming buzz.
“So you got anything going with any girls lately?”
Mark was unsurprised that the conversation was turning
in this direction; their talks back in high school invariably
revolved around interests and prospects after a time. However, he didn’t have much to add to the conversation that
48
particular evening. It raised issues that—like the upcoming
paper and job search—he didn’t really want to think about
that night. “Nah, not really.”
“Bummer, dude.” Andrew looked over at him and
shrugged. “Though in a way I think you’re lucky. It’s been
killer with Liz recently. Things have gotten kinda rocky.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I mean I totally still like her and everything, but
I think it’s starting to bug her that I won’t commit to being
exclusive.”
Mark laughed, feeling a little sarcastic under the influence
of the now fully-fledged buzz. He spit again before speaking.
“Yeah, you’ve got the problem of having too many girls interested in you. Boo hoo.”
“Yeah, yeah, I shouldn’t complain. I know. I just feel bad
about Liz, since we’ve been seeing each other for a while.”
Mark felt a little pang at those words, as he’d not had any
sort of long-term relationship since high school. “Hey, we
shouldn’t be talking about stuff that worries us, remember?
It’s all about kicking back tonight. How about…” he paused.
“Okay, remember junior year Homecoming, when both of
our dates disappeared on us?”
Andrew smiled at the memory, easily dropping his previous train of thought. “Yup. That was so funny, the two of
us just chilling all night in our suits while Nikki and Ashton
flounced off to wherever.” He stopped to spit, as his words
were getting thick toward the end of his sentence.
In the brief silence, Mark interjected. “I think they left for
that big football party. I’m pretty sure everyone but us ended
up there that night.”
Andrew snorted in amusement. “The one that got busted,
and like two hundred people got MIC’s? I’m so glad we rarely
partied in high school. Those kids were all idiots.”
“Seriously.” Mark spit again, and they just relaxed for a
time, listening to the music. “This hits the spot.”
“Wanna get a bottle soon?” Andrew nodded toward the
49
windshield and the sun setting to the west. “We could head
back to my place and get an early start.”
“Seems like the thing to do, yeah.”
Andrew removed the pouches of chew from his mouth,
and Mark did the same. His buzz was starting to fade, and
he’d been considering taking them out anyway.
“What kind of booze do you want to get?” he asked.
Andrew glanced over at him while turning the keys in
the ignition. The music cut out for a second while the engine
started and then blared back in. “Well, we always drank vodka whenever we got stuff in high school. I think we should
stick with the tradition.”
“Good call. Let’s get some 100 proof stuff. I think my alcohol tolerance is up a little bit from high school.” Mark considered for a moment, then laughed. “Like, a lot up.”
“Since high school? I think you mean since you turned
twenty-one over the summer.”
Mark laughed again. “Good point.”
They bantered about experiences at the bars in recent
months while Andrew drove to the liquor store near his
apartment. Mark regaled him with the latest tale of going to
the bars with their friend Josh, and his unsuccessful attempt
to get a phone number—appropriately modified, as some of
the information essential to the story didn’t need to be discussed. But again, Mark reminded himself, he didn’t want to
think about that.
After a brief but frustrating foray through the crowded
parking lot, they made their way into the store and perused
the selection, finally settling on a bottle. Andrew was still
grumbling about how packed the place was.
“Come on, it is a Friday in a college town,” Mark said, trying to be reasonable. “Just ‘cuz that clown out there hijacked
that spot doesn’t mean they’re all a bunch of assholes.”
Andrew muttered a few profanities about the other driver
and the citizens of the town in general. Mark couldn’t help
50
but chuckle a little bit, but still patted him on the back and
suggested he calm down a little. After all, they never got
stressed like that in high school.
Still muttering, but doing it in an undertone and no longer
spiced with obscenities, Andrew got in line at the register and
fished out his ID and money for the vodka. He finally trailed
off and was silent, but did not remain so for long. “Should we
invite Josh? I bet he’d tell that bar story great.”
“No,” Mark said without hesitation. “I mean, I think he
said that he’s got a date this evening, so I don’t want to bug
him.”
Andrew gave him a sharp look at his immediate negative,
but seemed to accept his subsequent lie and was mollified.
“Oh, yeah, you’re probably right. It’ll just be the two of us and
some screwdrivers tonight, I guess.” He hefted the bottle of
vodka before moving forward in line and paying for it.
“You’ve got orange juice at your place, right?” Mark asked.
“Otherwise, we’ll need to swing by the market and get some.
I’m not doing shots of straight 100 proof.”
Andrew laughed. “We’re good, don’t worry. I won’t make
you take off that dress you’re wearing, Alice.”
Mark just shook his head, still self-conscious about the
joke name for the day. He was mostly quiet while they drove
back to Andrew’s apartment, trying to just enjoy the music
and put all of his worries in the back of his mind. Sinking into
nostalgia was proving to be a bit harder than he’d anticipated.
“Drive faster,” he said. “I want to start drinking.”
Andrew looked at him out of the corner of his eye and
sped up. “No complaints here, buddy. Why the sudden urge
to start early?”
Mark was silent for a moment before answering, mulling
the thoughts in his mind. He couldn’t say outright what he
wanted to say, though. “Stuff on my mind that I don’t want to
think about,” he said instead.
Andrew grunted as he turned onto his street.
51
“I hear ya. I’m in the same boat.”
Mark didn’t respond out loud. No, you’re not, he thought.
He remained silent until Andrew parked on the curb in front
of the little two bedroom house that he currently had to himself.
“Come on, let’s get drinking,” Mark said, and grabbed the
handle of vodka from the floor between his legs. He led the
way up to Andrew’s door, but had to wait while his friend
found the right key and unlocked the deadbolt.
It was not long before he found himself with a plastic cup
in hand and a potent mixture of vodka and orange juice settling therein. He took a long swig, and it tasted like memories
and goodness and barely disguised alcohol.
“That’s more fucking like it,” he said almost thirty minutes after Andrew opened the door to his house. “Rings the
best kind of bell.”
“Damn right it does,” Andrew responded, tossing back
the last bit of his third cup. “I haven’t tanked up like this in
way too long.”
“Since high school.”
“Yeah.”
They were silent for a bit, letting the alcohol generate
a pleasant buzzing in their heads, and Mark felt his own
thoughts mirroring the effects of his drink. Memories of
hang outs and girls and crazy stunts they pulled six years earlier were piling up, blissfully burying the problems he’d been
consumed with only an hour before.
They amused themselves by talking about their senior keg
party—the only party they went to, back then—the weekend
after graduating high school; Mark was having a great time
until he remembered that that party was when he changed
his mind about everything.
Suddenly frustrated, Mark knocked over his empty glass
and stormed to the bathroom. He was much more drunk
than he’d thought.
52
“Whoa. Dude, you all right?” Andrew called from behind
him, just as he slammed to door shut and locked himself in
the bathroom. “Mark? Hey, I’m just gonna get us refills.”
Mark leaned over the counter with his face in his hands
and didn’t respond. He thought vaguely that another drink
would be a bad idea, but it didn’t penetrate the shell of bitterness suddenly around him. He turned the faucet on and
splashed water on his face, reveling in the cold, sharp spray
of reality. He filled up a Dixie cup with the crisp water and
drank. After the bite of vodka-infused drinks, the water was
refreshingly straightforward, sliding down his throat with no
hesitation. If only he knew what it was really like, having no
hesitation in his life.
He settled himself down with a few more cups of water,
and emerged from the bathroom ready for another attempt
at nostalgia—or, barring that, at least another drink. A grinning and obviously hammered Andrew was waiting for him
with two cups of alcohol in his hands.
“Here, this will be better,” Andrew said. “I spiked them a
little more this round.”
Judging by the powerful smell, Mark thought that he certainly wasn’t kidding. “The stuff I fill my car up with doesn’t
smell this strong,” he responded, deadpan.
Andrew laughed and took a hearty swig of his drink.
“Dude, I’m gonna be a wreck tomorrow morning.” He
laughed even harder, as if being blindingly hung over was
going to be a good thing. It was just like the old times, years
ago, when they had no idea how bad a hangover could get.
Mark just shook his head and took a more moderated
sip of his own drink. He coughed and spluttered a bit at the
strength of it.
“Be careful there, Alice,” Andrew said, teasing. “Don’t
want to drink something that’s too strong for you, right?”
This third time that he called Mark “Alice” was the final
straw. Mark stormed out of the room, chugging down the
53
entire glass of alcohol; he wanted to forget it all, he wanted
to forget about job searching and papers, he wanted to forget
Mark calling him “Alice,” he wanted to forget having the stupid idea of trying to bury himself in the past, and he wanted
to forget his own inescapable reality. Most of all, he wanted
to forget how he really felt about Andrew.
And he knew that sooner or later, he would need to finally confront that.
lane moseley
| A gust caught him |
A gust caught him at just the right anglehis skin flaked off like so many petals of ash,
leaving nothing but a singed lump of clothing
on the daisy speckled hillside.
“He’d lived like a feather,” they said,
“and died like one too,”
tasting nothing but the wind.
54
55
tyanna slobe
| Café con Piernas |
She was standing in the doorway of the café and waved us in
excitedly as soon as we entered the alley. We were shocked
and hurried in before she could change her mind—we had
thought that my being a girl would make it harder for us to
enter any of the cafés. When we arrived, we were the only
people there, other than the three women working. It was a
fairly large room covered with mirrors on almost all of the
walls. The remaining space on the walls was painted black
with silver blobs sponged sporadically, which were complimented by the by reflection of the disco ball twirling above. If
it were not for the reflections bouncing off all of the mirrors,
the room would have been pitch black. She led us to two barstools and we sat down. The three of us stared at each other
awkwardly for about a second. It was glaringly obvious to everyone involved that we were not the average customers, so I
just came out and said it, “¿Qué es esto?” She giggled. “Es un
café con piernas.” She started explaining to us that we could
order coffee, juice, soda, or beer. We asked how much a beer
was ($4) and ordered two.
She came back with the drinks, placed her body right
between Fito and me, and started rubbing our shoulders
and chatting with us. She was very perky. “¿Están pololeando?”—are you dating?—she asked. “No, somos amigos”—no
we’re friends. “¿Pinchando?”—hooking up?—we all laughed
a little, “No, amigos no más”—no, just friends. Though we
already knew more or less how the café con piernas worked,
we began asking her questions—both because we were interested and so that we could make it clear right off the bat
that we were not going to take advantage of the complimentary lap dance that comes with the drinks. For some reason
56
it seemed like a good idea to make ourselves out to be innocent students who were simply wandering around El Centro
and happened to stumble into the café, as though we had no
idea what was going on. It was hard to ignore, though, that
she was our age, especially given how easily the conversation
was flowing. She wasn’t wearing any makeup and looked like
any other 20 year old, but her innocent face contrasted the
brightly colored bra she was wearing to push up her breasts
and the miniskirt that would ride up as soon as a group of
men walked in.
She was certainly better than us at keeping the conversation going and began explaining the room, pointing out the
different places where the workers dance with the customers,
and at some point, she alluded to the back, which was mostly
blocked off by a wall. I asked her what happens back there
and she said that sometimes they take the men there for a
little extra. I asked her if she could give me a tour and she
hesitated a little, “¿Me invitas a un juguito?”—will you buy
me a juice?—she asked tilting her head toward the female
bartender who seemed to be in charge. Understanding that
buying her a juice also meant buying her time, I agreed.
She headed toward the back, again waving me in excitedly. She lead me to a corner on the other side of the shielding wall, put her hands up on it, and starting dancing. “Aquí
podemos bailar con los hombres donde nadie nos puede
ver”—here we can dance with the men where nobody can
see us—she explained as she moved her body to the music as
though she were pressed up against an imaginary man. Later
she pointed out the same spot to Fito and me in one of the
mirrors and showed us that you could actually see what was
going on from the main room. She giggled and turned toward the bar to pour her a glass of water. From that point on,
she constantly had the glass of water in her hand, a symbol
of the juguito that we had bought for her, though she never
actually drank any juice. She opened the door and flipped on
57
a light switch, showing me the inside of a closet where she
said they keep the beverages. The bottles were all pushed into
one corner and the majority of the floor space was open. I
asked her if they brought the men into the closet too, and she
nodded her head giggling and also pointed to the bathroom.
Then she pointed to a spiraling staircase that lead to a
loft above the room and told me that was where the women
keep their things. I asked if we could go up and she turned
to her supervisor who agreed. As I climbed the staircase with
her amused, bubbling, giggles following me I could not help
but feel like we were little girls excitedly exploring some dark
abandoned house. I glanced over the balcony when we got to
the top and all of the other women seemed equally as amused
by my presence. Then, she pushed back a curtain and switched
on a light, illuminating a wall of lockers. She showed me hers,
which was covered with pictures of her three-year-old son.
She also showed me a tiny table with three chairs, explaining
that the women gather to eat lunch there every day. Though
it was above the main room, the space was in no way blocked
off from the reality of the café con piernas— juxtaposing the
women’s social and home lives with their work.
We went back downstairs and back to the bar where Fito
was waiting. We began asking her questions, which she was
unembarrassed and seemingly happy to answer—though after a few minutes she again asked us if we would buy her
another jugito. Her family had immigrated to Santiago
from Peru, but she had been in the country for long enough
that she had picked up the distinct Chilean accent. She had
dropped out of school at 17, when her son was born, and had
been working in different cafés for about 8 months to provide for him. “Todo por mi hijo”—it’s all for my son.
I asked her if she lived with her family, and she said not
anymore because they had begun to suspect that she had
been working in the industry and not as an actress as she had
been telling them. That was the only topic that she seemed
unwilling to talk about. She explained that she worked in the
58
café between 10 A.M. and 9 P.M. every day; though the hours
are more flexible given that all of the women are mothers
and sometimes have to stay home with their children. We
asked how much she makes during an average shift and she
estimated between $16 and $20. For 11 hours of work. She
also mentioned that she has to pay the woman who watches
her son $10 a day.
Then, two men walked through the door. She ran to the
front to meet them and lead them to a table, just as bubbly
as when we had come in. One of the other women took their
order and she took the opportunity to come back over and
tell us to pay attention to what was about to happen. We were
awkward about watching, thinking that our stares would
turn the men off to the experience, but the girls’ excellent
social skills came into play again and the men were notably
unfazed by our presence.
She and one of the other women each began dancing
with the men who were seated in the barstools, rubbing their
hands all over their hips, breasts, inner thighs, and up their
skirts. At one point, she bent over and touched the ground
with her butt in the air moving to the beat of the music. On
the way back up, she looked over at Fito and me and laughed.
When the song was over the men handed the girls some
money and thanked them on their way out. All in all, they
probably spent no more than 10 minutes inside of the café.
She turned the music down a little and came back over to
where we were sitting. “¿Viste?”—see?—she said smiling. We
were surprised, to say the least, at what $4 had just bought the
men. We chatted for a few more minutes before realizing that it
was 9 P.M., which was when the café closed. We started packing
up our things and thanking her for everything. “Es ocho mil por
todo”—it’s eight thousand pesos for everything—she said a little
uncomfortably, understandably so given that we were about to
walk right out the door. We had almost forgotten that we were
not just sitting in an average café catching up with an old friend.
59
zach trabona
| a temple/my body |
It’s not sturdy,
no it’s not
like the temples
they’ve constructed.
By god, people,
my body is not.
zach trabona
| seeing you off |
my view of you grows blurred by time all that remains
is brushing black straps from your freckled shoulders
in early June wide green eyes rolling under a floppy
straw hat deep smile lines traced and retraced skinny
wrists pinned behind chestnut curls tangled up on
bare sheets I pecked the fingertips she brought to
her pursed chapped lips before she blew me a kiss–
coughed me onto a lonely red eye flight the scent of
that hair thick on my fingertips as I pinched the ridge
of my nose and quick blinks finally freed the tears a
blue wet moon loomed bleary in the offing.
There’s no ghost
stowed
between these bones.
60
61
molly davidson
| Internal Structure |
There is something broken
in the song of her figure.
She pours pepper over her wounds and holds
onto the Earth through a disposition of melancholy.
Imprints of her rest along the cavities of my stomach.
She is the building that needs restructuring, the smell
of a dissonant existence.
Drunk, one New Years Eve, she whispered of her
brother touching her
but in the morning there was no discussion.
We ate bagels and were thankful
for the numbers in the year being odd again.
She writes verse across my weightless back and
tells me I fit perfectly inside her singing box.
You have a gift she listens out loud to me when I speak.
The smell of abuse absorbs my finger-tips.
I am not an architect.
I cannot keep this structure soft.
62
molly davidson
| Agassiz |
You left your backpack in the woods, trusting the world to be beautiful and the same as it
had been before. I cried when it was stolen. I was to bend the truth for you. My brother.
The stars burned what I could remember of who you were and I cursed boarding school
for taking you away from me. You were angry and threw my belongings when I couldn’t
tell you where yours had gone. The laptop landed on Earth’s molten wooden floor of dirt,
it cracked and pieces of our childhood turned to chemical waste. I don’t remember who
ordered it first, but before long we were both
running. From memories of the street we
grew up on. From the thirteen states that lay between
us. From the bent truth that curved
over us as haunted oak trees. Branches extended
into our lungs, asking for our separation,
bringing you away from me. In the shadows,
homeless wanderers tapped at our ankles, and
I was sure one of them had your backpack. One of them took something that mattered to
63
you, and I was lost in the shadows looking for the meaning of it. The blonde fox that led
you out into a clearing must have made you forget I was still in the fog, looking for the
pack of your belongings. It protected you though. It might have done the same for me if I
could understand it. The cascading woods came
closer to me each time you stepped
away. Until, in the darkness the trees swallowed me completely. In the screaming
solitude, I found your backpack resting at my feet.
molly davidson
| To Richard Earl Murdoch |
On the corner of Colfax and St. Paul,
walking my dog on a hot Denver night,
a cactus found me alone in a loose summer shawl.
Its sharp, green, pines shocked my sight.
Unwelcomed, it protruded into my groin.
It cut through my skin, popping blood vessels
and virtue, deserting me like a coin.
You thank God for this steaming red gift from the devil?
Tell me, should I wear cream to my wedding?
Did God leave humility out of your hand?
Other gifts end in wrapping paper shredding,
but cactus gave me half monster half man.
The vivid white needles of the cactus
burnt my eyes, but it is you left with blindness.
64
65
shelby williamson
| Leave Me Lost |
Tommy picked at the frays of Nick’s sectional couch. It
couldn’t possibly make it more hideous with it having a high
stain to pattern ratio. It no longer smelled like a couch, anyway. It didn’t have the light dusty scent with a hint of musk
that most couches have. It smelled like too many things to
smell like really much of anything anymore, like an artist
who mixes too many colors together and ends up with black;
not a color, but a shade.
But with the aged hideousness of the couch, it hardly
mattered in the soft lighting in Nick’s studio. Bulbs were always burning close to their ends or perhaps missing from
the fixtures altogether (and there were only two fixtures altogether, plus a lamp).
It was a cellar, a bomb shelter, a cave so damp and cold
and dark no one would live there by choice, except maybe a
squatter. Squatters would flock to this place for the protection from the elements, for that’s all it really was. Four walls
blocking out rain and snow and the blazing, hot sun beating
down on the town. With little insulation and no windows,
the apartment didn’t scream comfort, but no one was going
to die in their sleep from hypothermia; drugs maybe, but not
the weather.
But like a cave, a bomb shelter, a cellar, no one on the outside could acknowledge Tommy and Nick’s existence. They
were utterly alone, blocking the outside world from their
view and their minds. It was like being trapped in a thick fog,
standing as the sole inhabitant of a world erased.
So there she was, picking at the couch with her calloused
hands that still had oil from the garage infused in the creases
and cuticles, staring blankly and without purpose at the loft’s
66
ceiling. She was definitely still feeling a bit stoned from when
she first arrived at Nick’s after her eleven-hour stint at work.
Without damaging anything, she cleared out the entire engine cavity of a 1970 Mustang to prep it for cosmetic work.
She wouldn’t leave until it was done, and she didn’t leave until it was done. Her hands, her back, her shoulder, her neck,
they all ached when she got off work, but not now. Now they
nothinged, just like she nothinged everything outside the
four walls of the studio, which she found to be a tempting
state to continually immerse herself in.
“You’re light’s got a halo, Nicky,” she said after staring at
the light fixture above the bed up in the loft. The light was
covered by a glass bowl, protecting the apartment from being
overrun with clarity, the kind people can actually live by. She
saw a clean circle of lighter looking paint around the fixture,
like the ring around a fully eclipsed sun. At first she thought
maybe the light was on, and the bulb, like every other bulb in
the loft, was burning its last light. But the light wasn’t on. The
controlling switch was down and the bowl of the fixture was
ashy grey with lack of luminance.
Nick rolled over lazily, he was even more lit than she was,
and looked up with Tommy. He didn’t see it, of course he
didn’t. He didn’t care to really look for it. The ring was so
faint and fleeting now; it looked as though it was an illusion.
The cheap kind you find in the Sunday paper and on the back
of cereal boxes. You had to almost look just to the side of it to
see it, but it was there alright.
“Look at the light,” she said instructively. It was hard to
miss that Nick didn’t care if he saw it or not; his eyes were
bored like a child’s during the Big Church service: glazed and
lifeless. “Now to the left just a tiny bit—there! Can you see it,
just a little halo?” he thought about it a moment, maybe even
tried to see it, but he just shook his head.
“Nope,” he said. “I see nothing, nothing at all, Tom Tom.
Maybe you should actually wear your glasses from time to
67
time. I hear those suckers are good for seein’ and such. I
swear, it’s like Mr. Magoo when you wear those things, the
lenses bein’ so thick.” he curled his hands around his eyes like
binoculars, laughing at himself without reservation.
“And you wonder why I don’t wear them. ‘Mr. Magoo,’”
she repeated shaking her head, looking at him with seething
eyes, “Yeah, fuck you.”
Nick teased Tommy relentlessly about everything, and
Tommy was equally as defensive from his attacks, but the system worked, and Tommy loved the hassle. It was like when
you have a scab, well on its way to healing, and pressing into
it with your finger unleashes an odd pleasure-pain sensation
that allows you to endure poke after poke.
She shoved his head with added aggression as redemption
for the Magoo comment and wandered over to the man-made
step ladder, creaky, unstable, and rotten. The steps groaned in
protest of her weight, but she kept climbing.
The loft’s ceiling started at the floor and angled up to a
maximum of four feet tall, making it difficult to maneuver. It
severely dwarfed Tommy, her neck crammed against the ceiling.
“This,” she said. Using her forearms Tommy framed the
faded ring. “This, right here.”
Nick squinted his eyes, probably trying to improve the
light quality of the studio by will alone. Tommy plodded
across the loft to the switch and flicked it up. The ring disappeared all together, but the take out containers from Chu’s and
the half-eaten bowls of cereal were suddenly exposed from
their hiding places amongst the soft shadows of the loft. No
telling how long they had been lying on the floor, forgotten
and rotting more every day. Her forehead and nose crinkled
severely and she could feel the skin in her face fold up against
itself. Tommy slapped the light switch off again and allowed
the food to be swallowed up in the dimness yet again, probably not to be cleared up until the smell became unbearable.
68
“Ah-ha!” she spouted. She pointed to the fixture again.
Her halo was more pronounced now. With the center hallowed out by the fixture, the circle was a glowing green donut
suspended on the slanted ceiling. “Nick, look. I told you, it’s
there. Just have a look, see? You see it now?”
“Holy shit, no, I see it now, Tom Tom.” They both stared
at the ring, entranced by the vivacity of it until it faded back
to barely being visible again, back to its original glow.
“Oh, oh man, oh man. No way,” said Nick. He launched
himself off the couch and started rummaging through one of
his many bins of organized chaos. There was no “sock drawer,” or even a basket for knickknacks that deserve a slot all
to themselves due to their randomness. No, an average Nick
basket contained his brown long-socks, photographs from
when he was a boy, his snowboarding helmet, and a single
glove whose twin has been devoured by the mess of the loft.
Yet he seemed to know where everything always was.
“Sock drawers,” he’d always say after she ridiculed the
constant mess, “are for people who are mentally inadequate
of simply keeping track of things on their own. They must
rely on systems that do it for them. I rely on nothing and no
one.”
“What are you getting?” said Tommy. She could hear his
rummaging, but he was under the loft and out of her sight.
Finally the clattering stopped, and Tommy saw his outline at
the step ladder, quickly ascending.
“Well, what have you got then? Lemme see.” She reached
for his hand, which held something small and smooth enclosed by his fingers. Nick swatted her eager hand away and
smirked at her with a dimpled corner of his mouth. His free
hand cradled the bottom of her chin, and he pecked his lips
to hers.
“Simmer, you impatient freak, simmer. Always with the
grabbing. You’d think your mother’d have taught you better
manners.”
69
“My mother hasn’t taught me anything. You know that.”
Tommy didn’t joke much about her mother. Not even about
how much she disliked her and her pushy demeanor. They’d
never gotten along much, and after high school Tommy
moved out of the house and met up with her rarely to catch
her up on the details of her life. These meetings always ended
in either sour words or anger boiled silence (“…a garage is
no place for a lady…look at those hands, they’re awful, just
awful… is that boy still around? A loser that one is. He reeks
every time I see the kid. Ugh, and his apartment... Don’t you
brush your hair, my god what a mess it is… how long since
you been home? I suppose you just sleep there all the time,
huh? Not proper behavior for a lady… not for a lady… not a
lady… NOT a lady!”).
His hands were soft, still against her face, unlike her own.
Her mother had been right about that. Constantly calloused
and encrusted with oil, her hands were working man’s hands,
nothing womanly about them. Sometimes she did paint
them, though. But even then it felt like her hands were in
drag, and the paint never lasted more than a day or two before she took the shop’s paint thinner to it.
There was a sharp click followed by a concentrated light
escaping from Nick’s fingers. His hand curled around the
mystery object: a cheap, blue key-ring flashlight. Probably
something he got at the bank or a political booth for free.
Nick held the beam less than an inch from the ceiling, only
for a few seconds and then clicked it off.
But there it was.
A bright glowing dot the size of a nickel on the ceiling. It
resonated for a minute or two before its edges became softer,
and it eventually it disappeared into the background altogether.
“Magic, Tom Tom. Fuckin’ magic.” He laced his hand in
hers and pulled her down to the ground with him; the ceiling at an arm’s length, and he began to draw. Artistry was
70
in neither of their blood. Even Tommy, who refinished cars
for a living, wrote and drew as if she were having a constant
epileptic seizure. Nick always said she wrote like a mental patient. No, they relied on stencils to create a world above them
on Nicks ceiling. The best one being a prehistoric island with
palm trees, volcanoes, and a poorly scaled stegosaurus (made
from hands and pillows). The beast walked on the beach as a
glowing and slightly grotesque sunset fell behind it. Tommy’s
feet were stenciled to the ceiling, looking like footsteps in the
sand, being bathed in the repetitive tide. Strong for a moment, but quickly they lost shape and distinction.
They were building sandcastles to close to the tide, but it
never got tiring to rebuild.
Nick rolled his head to the side to face Tommy. She could
see him clear enough through the corner of her eye that she
didn’t have to turn to look at him. She liked the feeling that
she wasn’t always hungry to look at his face, that he might
look at her more than she looked at him. It was power, it was
food for her confidence. He smiled at her slightly as he always did when she refused to look back at him, and she could
feel a physical sensation of warmth spreading over her face;
the sun peeking out from the clouds on a particularly chilling
day to warm her face. Pleasureful, enjoyable, relieving.
“I don’t love you, you know,” said Nick, still smiling.
“I know,” Tommy said, giggling, still not looking at him.
Her mind had other places to be and he would merely distract her. “I don’t want you to love me. I really don’t.”
“Every woman wants to be loved. Even if she doesn’t love
the man who loves her. It a sickness all women have. A craving to be needed. It’s why you have all the babies and have to
breastfeed. You’re needed that way. Us men, we’re out of the
woods almost immediately. Give us five minutes and we’ve
done our part.” Tommy pondered this looking at the stillfading footprints above her.
“One day, sure. One day I’d like kids, a husband who
71
doesn’t screw his secretary in the janitor’s closet, a house with
big windows and benches in them to sit on. A dog that destroys everything I own. Yeah, why not? I could go for that…
one day.”
“And what do you want right now, Tom Tom?”
“Right now? Hell, right now I want to work my hands until they’re raw. I want to come over here and get stoned until I
can’t remember what my name is… what your name is, even.
I want you to shred my clothes off and take me to bed every
once in awhile without whispering crap you think I want to
hear. To lie next to you, avoiding the loneliness together. I
just want to shut that door, and for a few hours a day, just a
few, I want to stop existing. Just erase myself from the world
for a bit.”
“So, you don’t love me,” he said. His smile was audible in
his tone: light and mocking. Tommy didn’t need to look over
to see it.
“No, I don’t. Not in that way, at least. I’m lost, Nicky. And
I don’t think you can love someone when you’re like that. You
need to know who you are, where you’re going, or else you’re
just children playing house, make-pretend, and you’re a fool
to believe that it could be real like that. One day all of that
will come, and I’ll welcome it then, but if it’s okay with you,
Nicky,” she said, “I think I’d like to stay lost for a little while
longer.”
72
summers baker
| Tea Ceremony |
In the tea ceremony a shotgun
skitches through the canon to
the bowl
he
slides
back yes
think now of what
we require of light
to enter through a thatched
window
73
summers baker
| Architecturalism – A Manifesto |
That conqueror we most naturally recognize
has been here for some time –
movements of top left
to bottom set right
our America presents a night sky
so that we might think of repetition as
normal.
I design words to
like
shift
I wish to taste
the morning dew
high and frozen
atop a schooner mast –
no I will not happen again
conqueror I am becoming
and let it be 2:46 ayem
when I realize this
night is too
long to wake
knowing what
langue is meant to do
This morning
I woke
to a coffee mug
of whiskey
thrown at
my neighbors door
They are in surrender
I did long ago
This battle with
things that change
is being conquered too
I call in your night mast schooner fleets
drink your whiskey coffee
follow me langue
I am designing this –
my pen arcing
which becomes you
reading
which becomes us
becoming
read this – the
conqueror has
already set into you
74
75
summers baker
| An Architecturalism of
Childhood |
To write it
(this)
is a valid reason
all I need
for sanityis
a constant pull
I think of
I used to sink
thinking
in to a leather chair
and my moon
moist with
pressure building
the heat of my house
is plastered to my under skull
my blood raze
razing
razed
(Dawn)
my sun forcing –
a means by which
I can’t remember
becomeschildhood
these morning skies
like losing
I feel lighter–
a color spectrum
becomes night lifting
76
my blood
is growing through me
by the pull of the sea
in a basin
welter water rises
a golden retriever
a lone twilight
the misting of air
garlic
noodles
on the stove
I am moving
away from home
these simple things
fade
I wish not to
be stagnant
I wish that
for an ebbing tide
This is where
my cat stretches
long like the
earth creaking
to the pull
I hear the cars wish
of the moon
through the valley
in lower elevation
77
flannery lier
In houses
people rise
for work
| Archaeology Poems |
I am in all of it
I entered
into the bathtub
at a young age
to learn what
we call
growth and
decay and –
I am leaving
I used to stay up
through the dry night
to go through the day
In a haze
i.
paleo-indian trails in the dust,
our treasure maps, our transformation
to archaeologists who seek out
their bits of burned bone, a kind
of pale silver blue against
the paleo-soil dark from deposits,
collectors of their discarded tools
their severed slivers of stone from
miscalculated blows of cobbles
on hunks of obsidian or chert; these
pieces glimmer and gleam under the
sky at high noon. this is, in a way,
a western, i think. we end each day
like i imagine settlers did brushing
red dust from our skin as we
pile into caravans and drain
our canteens of all the water that
remained. we drive along trails
that they once walked in the
heat of afternoon many years ago;
through groves with trios of trees,
and i see their structures growing
in the empty spaces in between
ii.
there’s a fort in a yard by the side
of the road; two children, older boy
& younger girl, scout out watching
cars go by like children who used
to scout & watch for buffalo
78
79
iii.
we seek the tool-kits
of long dead men in
deep sediment; they
peer out from soil
exposed from erosion
& the dull blades
of our trowels & we
exclaim at their
presence in the dust
iv.
to track infinity in the snow we
hung our breath in the cold like
a compass to net a direction, if
a direction still remained; you
framed yours in smoke & followed
the angles of those particles & i
jumped ahead & traced it in the snow
80
v.
groves in woods are
how do they become
do the trees plan it
are they just bald spots
to form a comfortable distance
we use the spaces between trees
it’s too far a walk alone at night
the bridge has no sides and
it’s too dark to see the river
water is invisible at night
space defined in cold
warmth identified when
cold takes all perceived warmth
it disperses in the frost so
we see water with our flash-lights
streams of dark with shimmer
only the outline not the thing
we have to imagine the shape of it
was water ever visible to us
we tell what it is when it isn’t; we
see groves by not seeing trees
81
elizabeth patterson
| Five Years After |
The photo
of you
grows dim.
Benjamin
Button
Polaroid
In it, you
hold me. I hold
it to the wall to
stick a tack
in my baby chest.
isis lanigan
| Supreyes | digital photograph
82
83
jessica crowder
| Lady Bug | photograph
duncan parks
| Fishing for Thoughts | ink, graphite, acrylic 84
mediums on paper
85
mikhail twarogowski
| Honey Teapot | cone 6 stoneware
86
jacob adler
| Camping Under Stars at the
Buffalo | digital photograph
87
elizabeth shelley
| Vertebrae | photograph
alexandra lake
| Moby Flies | acrylic on board
88
89
richard muller
| Light Study on a Nude | acrylic
kylie vanderheiden
| Collage | ink transfer, charcoal, tissue paper
90
91
zach trabona
| Hard-Boiled |
shawn gavlick
| Paper Construction | digital photograph
92
I was living in a seedy apartment in the Lower East Side and
felt like I was in the midst of a pre-midlife crisis, or a nervous
breakdown. When I wasn’t slicing meat at my menial deli job,
I was slapping the meat at home and drafting cartoon strips
that I was never fully satisfied with. Brianne had been gone
for roughly six months and the only person I despised more
than her was myself. I had quit smoking during the course
of our relationship but now that she was gone I had slipped
back into the nasty habit. I was too cowardly to actually commit suicide, so I figured I might as well attempt classy, slowmotion suicide by reverting to my old chain smoking ways,
blowing through four packs a day.
I didn’t venture out to many public venues, but when I
did I usually ambled over to the old school cinema that was
adjacent to my slummy abode. I had been to this theater few
times with Brianne and we had coined it “the ancient theater” because it had been around for ages, and they always
played old black and white movies—some of them renowned
classics and others obscure features that had been forgotten
but were nonetheless engrossing. The majority of the patrons—fittingly enough—were old timers with one foot in
their Velcro shoe and the other in their grave. Sitting in that
dark theater, my eyes glued to a crackling black and white
feature, was when I felt most at home, immersed in a world
that was often teeming with timeless romance and soothing
oboe notes. The theater had recently begun showing old noir
films, some of the earliest ones that featured femme fatales
and cynical detectives who sported fedoras and smoked cigarettes in dimly lit offices. They couldn’t have shown these
pictures at a worse time in my life, these hard-boiled oldies,
93
these dank and dreary flicks that made me sick with longing
and filled me with rage.
Brianne was finally taking Broadway by storm – she had
landed the main role in a glitzy musical production entitled
“Hard-Boiled”, which was a clever take on these classic noir
conventions and was slated to be the next big Broadway hit.
She was the tall, alluring dame of the play, belting beautiful notes and burning bright in a thin red dress and stacked
heels.
I was almost certain that by now she was fucking her
co-star, a tall, bearded bastard who looked slightly like Jim
Sturgess. I felt like I was losing my mind most nights while I
imagined him fucking her from behind in a dressing room
while emitting a steady flow of machismo grunts all the way
to the finish, or I imagined her deep throating him in the
bathroom of a posh restaurant in Upper Manhattan. These
unsettling thoughts led me to insomnia so I stayed up late
most nights and drank alone. I would start talking to myself
too, once the liquor began coursing through my veins, and
then I’d say things to an absent Brianne – things that I longed
to say to her in person – about how she shouldn’t have left
me in the dust to immerse herself in the production and how
she was a prima donna. I spewed expletives and wreaked
havoc on inanimate objects. I even bludgeoned my refrigerator door with my kitchen chair in a fit of rage (which I later
came to regret).
These angry bouts ultimately gave way to sadness, and
sometimes even horniness. I’d pitched all of the pictures of
Brianne and had reached a point where I was truly beginning
to forget her face and figure, beginning to forget all of her
idiosyncrasies that I once knew by heart. I still tried to come
to her, to imagine every sweet inch of her body that I had
once memorized, but these attempts were ultimately feckless.
I was forgetting the sound of her laugh, her voice inflections
as a whole, and the scent of her dirty blonde hair. I couldn’t
94
sleep and didn’t want to because when I actually did sleep I
usually dreamt of her. I could barely pin down what exactly I
had been dreaming of when I awoke; I could only recall fragments of these choppy dreams.
*
*
*
I happened to meet Kara at the ancient theater, as fate would
have it. She and I had been the only ones attending some
obscure oldie and she had initiated conversation with me,
talking my ear off like we had known each other for ages. I
hadn’t talked to a human soul in months, so our exchange of
dialogue had me reeling. Even in the near darkness of theater
I could make out her genuinely pretty, pale complexion. After the film we continued to talk and eventually my 23-yearold testicles decided to drop and I went for broke, awkwardly
asking her if she’d let me take her out sometime, even though
we had just met. We settled on a date the following weekend
when I planned to wine her, dine her, and take her to some
other movie at another theater that wasn’t fraught with mold.
She informed me on this first date that she was interested
in screenwriting, and I told her about my dreams to be a cartoonist. After we caught a painfully bad mainstream comedy
we dallied uptown arm-in-arm. She had taken me by surprise when she pressed her lips to mine during the movie,
and I was even more pleasantly surprised when she invited
me up to her place for tea.
Kara’s place happened to be a gnome mecca. Pictures of
gnomes adorned the walls. She had a gnome lamp, as well
as a comfy bedspread replete with numerous gnomes. I had
entered the land of gnomes and there was no escape in sight.
“I see you have a liking for gnomes.”
“Just a tad bit,” she said and we both laughed. “Most guys
find it odd.”
“I think oddity’s a blessing, not a curse,” I told her. We
drank tea at her coffee table and I marveled at the fact that
this beautiful woman was interested in me. “You know, this
95
sounds painfully cliché, but you could seriously be a model.
You’re truly a natural beauty – that’s a rare thing to find.” A
slight simper gave way to a full-fledged smile, and she tittered at the hardwood floor before looking me in the eyes.
“Well, this sounds painfully cliché, but I’m actually trying to make it as a model – along with all of the screenwriting stuff. I’m waitressing on the side but I’m trying to
build up a portfolio in hopes that I can eventually model
full-time. With these dreams I have you can probably tell
that I basically want to be poor the rest of my life,” she said
and laughed.
I couldn’t believe it. She certainly had the looks for modeling but didn’t appear to possess an iota of vanity. “Well,
you certainly don’t live up to the stereotype, that’s for sure.
What I’m trying to say is that you don’t seem uppity at all. I
really like that about you,” I told her.
She gave me a modest smile and then said: “I want to
fuck you, Vince.”
Her candor paralyzed me. Rarely does a man come across
a woman who so candidly states her sexual desires. My lips
parted but no sound came out. She mistook my silence for
judgment and then immediately started saying how sorry
she was; how she wasn’t a whore and didn’t want to come
across as one.
“No,” I pleaded, taking her chin between my thumb and
forefinger, “I don’t think that at all. Honestly. I’m really attracted to you.”
Before I knew it my tongue was in her mouth, then in
her ear, and then we were stumbling towards her waterbed,
where I struggled to slip her skin-tight leggings off. “Wait,”
she said right after I freed her legs from the clingy things
and started kissing along her thighs. “Let’s go back to the
floor.” Over the course of the next half hour we went at it like
rabbits on both the floor and in the kitchen —our glasses
clashing in an awkwardly passionate fashion whenever we
96
kissed. We finally managed to make it back to her waterbed
where both of us eventually came.
“I hope you don’t think I’m a whore or anything, for sleeping with you on our first date,” she said to me during our postcoital pillow talk.
“Not at all,” I said, still breathless from our romp on land
and water. “You need to stop beating yourself up. I’m glad you
took me to your waterbed.”
A smile broke across her face, and I kissed her throat and
then her chin and lips. I was tempted to ask her about the tattoo she had etched right near her heart—which was two cursive initials enclosed within a broad circle—but I refrained
for the time being.
“Plus I kissed you first,” she said, shaking her head. “On
the first date, no less. God, I’m such a man sometimes.”
“I think you’re a beautiful man. If you are a man. Which
you clearly aren’t. I can fully attest to that.”
*
*
*
I felt like I had walked out of my miserable life and into some
charming indie flick. Something told me from day one that
Kara wasn’t in it for the long haul, but I was trying to move on
and she made for great company. We went out on more dates
and I found that she was bookish, slightly sarcastic and edgy,
but generally sweet. There were times when I felt like I was
living the life with her that I should have been living when I
was with Brianne. Ms. Spontaneity, my own Kara Hutchinson, was a breath of fresh air, beautifully quirked out in jetblack specs and auburn pigtails. Kara was nearly a modified
version of Brianne, minus the Type A tirades and freak-outs.
Both of them were fairly pale, snorted sporadically during
laugh attacks, and were considerably clumsy, often slipping
on patches of ice or unwittingly knocking over cups of coffee
or other items. These similarities both spooked me and made
me want her all the more.
We went shopping together at trendy joints, wandered
97
around museums, and went to shows. For the most part she
seemed emotionally impenetrable. Her bursts of perkiness
were accompanied by equal bouts of reticence. Granted, I
wasn’t spilling my guts to her by any means, or pelting her
with personal questions about her past or who she really was
as an individual. I didn’t tell her much about Brianne, and I
didn’t admit that she was still haunting me in dreamland. I
didn’t tell her why I truly despised musical theatre productions or couldn’t summon myself to attend the highly lauded
“Hard-Boiled”, which had now started its much anticipated
run.
When Kara and I weren’t gallivanting around the city, we
stayed holed up in her apartment, mainly communicating via
ferocious fornication. We often popped pills and shared lines
in order to get the most mileage out of our physical encounters. Kara boosted my sexual confidence by instructing me on
how to successfully perform cunnilingus. She was a bona fide
horn dog at heart—her petite figure and awkward mannerisms belied her sexual voracity—and yet she also knew when
and how to be sensual, when to take things slow. The more
time we spent together, the more I realized that we were in
a strange limbo—we weren’t solely fuck buddies, but we also
weren’t invested in a standard, adult relationship either.
After my next payday rolled around, I decided to buy
a pair of casual oxfords with a stacked heel that made me
appear a few inches taller. Kara and I were about the same
height, but my new trusty shoes made me rise a wee bit higher than her. Brianne had never directly given me shit for being a few inches shorter than her but I had always felt inferior to her, especially when we dined with her fellow theatre
peeps, most of whom were foppish homosexuals with daddy
issues who spoke to me from their faux golden pedestals.
I eventually invited Kara over to my pig sty of an apartment one Friday night. I put on a scratchy forty-five (Dylan’s
“Blood on the Tracks”) and we smoked copious amounts of
98
marijuana and then made love for what seemed like hours
on end. Later in the night we continued to smoke and watch
movies, and I watched her blow perfect O’s at the ceiling.
“Do you ever feel like you’ve walked out of real life and
into a movie?” I asked her and she laughed. Her laughter was
beautiful, slow-motion-like, nearly sensual. “I don’t know.
Meeting you has made me feel that way. I just don’t want the
credits to roll.”
She smiled and said she agreed but I detected a sadness
in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. We both knew the
credits were going to roll sooner than later, but we were still
trying to enjoy the motion picture.
Later that night, I held her tight to me, my lips pressed to
the damp nape of her neck, and slowly dozed off. Sometimes
when we slept together, I’d have dreams of Brianne and awake
in a cold sweat. Kara would sometimes emit slight sighs or
minor mumbles, but she never came to, even later that same
night when I hopped out of bed in a panic and raided my refrigerator for milk and booze. After that I smoked cigarettes
on my balcony and stared out across the sprawling city that
never winds down, physically drained but emotionally wired.
I wondered what Brianne was doing, what she was thinking,
and if I was on her mind – if I was even perched on the edge
of her mind, and I wondered if she missed me in the least bit
in between getting stoinked silly by her towering co-star.
*
*
*
And then the day came when Kara tried to drag me to “HardBoiled”. My heart skipped a beat when she mentioned the
play, and I dismissed the notion by telling her I wasn’t a fan
of musical theatre and didn’t want to squander the money.
“Come on,” she said, stepping onto my new shoes and
grabbing the front of my shirt. “It’ll be fun. I thought you
enjoyed going to those types of shows. We had fun at the last
one.”
“I know,” I told her, “but that wasn’t a musical theatre
99
production. Those long-winded singin’ and dancin’ productions just don’t sit well with me.”
I eventually convinced her to go to the museum with me,
where we wandered around for a few hours and marveled at
all of the post-modern work they had on display.
I was staring at a Jackson Pollack photo when Kara whispered into my ear: “Will you draw me?”
“Right here and now?”
“Yes. I’ll just strip down and lie down on one of those
benches. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“I’m kidding, darling. No caricatures, please. Paint me in
a positive light, now, Mr. Van Gogh.”
“I’m not known for my portraits, you know.”
“Well practice makes perfect. Now’s your golden opportunity.”
I laughed and told her I’d give it my best shot.
On the way home we swung by the liquor store and
I picked up a bottle of Rodney Strong red wine. Later that
night we hung around my place in our birthday suits and tore
through the whole bottle. At one point I grabbed my sketchpad and stood at the foot of the bed, telling her to give me her
best pose. I attempted to sketch her while she lay sprawled
out naked on the bed. I was fairly sloshed at this point, so
I only got a rough sketch done, my pencil slipping on the
curve of her breast, and I lost it and eventually collapsed back
into bed with her, where we cracked up until our stomachs
and cheeks ached.
When our laughter petered out I kissed her just above her
tattoo. “So I’ve been meaning to ask – about the tat.”
I knew broaching the subject could lead us both into a
confessional mode that could potentially throw us back into
real life and force us to dredge up personal demons, but I
went for it anyway.
“I’m surprised you didn’t ask sooner,” she said and tittered.
“Well, it’s commemorative, as you can probably guess.” She
100
peered down at the tattoo and then fell silent for a few seconds. “It’s for someone who meant a lot to me. One of my old
boyfriends. His name was Kevin.”
I sensed the direction of the talk and tensed up as she
shifted into serious territory.
“He was killed by a drunk driver.”
I was at a loss for words yet again and tried to hold back
my nervous grin.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her. “Jesus. That’s terrible.”
She let out a slight whimper that resembled a painful
laugh, tears starting to gather in her hazel eyes.
“I didn’t want to be one of those girls who laughed at a
funeral but I ended up doing just that. Now that’s truly fucked
up.”
“Not really. I tend to smile or laugh in the face of death, or
the subject of death—not because I’m insensitive, or want to
come off that way, but because I get nervous hearing somebody discuss something that’s so painful and dear to them.
No one close to me has died yet.” I tapped the nightstand
next to the bed. “I mean, I know what it’s like to lose someone
you love but not what it’s like for them to die. I’m really sorry,
Kara. God. I don’t what to say.”
As if to offer my own self-pitying input and divert from
her depressing confession, I finally told her I was still hung
up on my first love—and that I still had dreams about her almost every night. I told her how I felt weak and scared most
days, how I felt wasn’t cut out to assume the role of a strong
American male, and how I was fairly scared about my financial stability and future plans.
“I know how you feel,” she said. “I still have lots of vivid
dreams about him that rattle me. And I feel like I’ve reached
that point in my life where I’m wondering if all of these aspirations I have are going to pay off —if I should really keep
pursuing them or put them on the back burner and settle for
a decent, standard living.”
“I hear you there,” I said and took her hand in mine.
101
We spent the rest of the night lying together, not saying a
whole lot, waiting for the booze to nourish us into sleep.
*
*
*
A part of me thought that our confessions would bring us
closer together, but from that night onward we started to
grow apart. Kara told me she had picked up more hours at
work and on the nights when she was free she either blew me
off or told me I could come over but probably shouldn’t stay. I
spent most of my free time at home, smoking like a stove and
drafting more cartoon strips, trying to give Scott Adams and
that Dilbert a run for their goddamn money.
About a week passed, and Kara finally told me she’d like
to see me and have me over on Friday. When she opened
the door to her apartment, I noticed that she looked fairly
jaded but she threw on a smile and told me she was sorry
about how she’d been acting lately. She poured us each a glass
of wine, and when we each drained our glasses she pressed
herself to me, kissing my lips and then moving downward
until she was on her knees, unbuckling my belt and struggling with my button fly. Rather than rising to the occasion,
my johnson hung limp with discontent.
“Hey,” I told her, “why don’t we save this for later.” She
looked semi-dejected but I grabbed her hands and helped
her rise to her feet. “I was thinking we could grab a bite to eat
downtown, since we haven’t been out in a while.”
She seemed reluctant to go at first but after further insistence she finally complied.
We ended up eating at some hole-in-the-wall Taiwanese
place downtown, and I tried to pick her brain and see how
she was really doing on an emotional level, but she brushed
my questions aside and proceeded to shoot the shit about
the weather and recent movies we had seen. After this tense
dinner we headed back to her place, sat in her waterbed and
started drinking more –against our better judgment. I kissed
her on the lips and was working my way down to her stomach
102
when I heard a disconcerting gurgling, and she must have
heard it and felt it too because she immediately sat up and
put her hand to her abdomen.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Jesus,” she said, “I’m going to be sick –”and just like that
she hopped out of bed and bolted to the bathroom to pray to
that unforgiving porcelain god.
I rushed over to make sure she was okay but she had shut
and bolted the door. I asked if I could do anything to help and
I wondered if it was food poisoning, in which case I would
be the next one to suffer. I listened in some more and then I
heard her begin to cry. I knew it probably wasn’t just because
of the sudden upchucking. I imagined tears mixed with mascara dashing down her reddened cheeks. I wanted to help her
in some way, to take care of her like a real boyfriend should.
“Kara? Please open up. Are you okay? Let me help you.”
She didn’t respond, so I sat on the bed and anxiously
waited, rubbing my stubbly cheek and becoming aware that
I was fairly intoxicated. Déjà vu kicked in and suddenly
brought me back to a similar time when Brianne had come
down with the flu one weekend and ralphed her pretty little
heart out into the toilet before having subsequent explosive
diarrhea. This had been when we had first moved in together.
I remembered trying to comfort her in the midst of these
sickly bodily expulsions. At one point I entered the bathroom to see how she was doing and I found her glued to
the commode. I had brought her water and I had kissed her
sweaty forehead. Despite the embarrassing scene, I told her
that I loved her and that she was still the loveliest woman in
the world. Of course she initially thought I was just playing
the sweetheart card, being courteous by telling her she was
still beautiful during one of her most unflattering moments.
But we ended up laughing at the whole thing – and I had really meant what I said. Now I missed those rare and unlikely
moments between us –the calm before the storm, before our
103
tiffs gave way to full-fledged fights, and we really started to
crumble, before “Hard-Boiled” finally swept her away from
me.
Kara still wasn’t responding so I continued to wait. Several flushes later she emerged from the lieu, looking as pallid and haggard as ever. “I hope it isn’t food poisoning,” she
said and slowly moved towards me. She sat next to me, and I
slung my arm around her and kissed her on her cheek.
“Goddamn Taiwanese dish. It probably is. I hope I’m not
next. I’m not feeling a stirring right now, thankfully.”
“I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” she said and then pressed
her lips to mine amidst a surge of snot and tears. I kissed her
back, not caring about the slightly acrid tinge of vomit on her
breath. “I’m sorry about everything. With me. And us.” She
belched and emitted a painful laugh before looking me in the
eyes more seriously. “I really wish we could have met at a different time in our lives. You’re a good guy. I just can’t do this
right now. I’m sorry.”
A lump began to form in my throat but I managed to
swallow it down.
“I understand.”
She told me she was going to try and hit the waterbed and
when I asked if I could join her, she nodded her head, and I
sensed that this would probably be our final night together.
I tried to stow an image of her in my mind’s eye, and I
hoped that she would stow me in hers, at least for a little
while. I probably wouldn’t be remembered as someone truly
significant in her life, down the road. I was more like one of
the many gnomes scattered across her bedspread, indistinguishable in the end. I was more like the miniscule freckle—
the meager speck—on her left breast, which I cupped lightly
as I spooned her, and we both drifted into dreams where we
would kiss our old sweethearts hello and goodbye.
104
joshua keen
| To the One Who Walks
Unabashedly in Daylight |
To the one who walks unabashedly in daylight,
who seeks the company of trees
for more than their shade.
You may have noticed I pointedly avoid eye contact with you
but probably not.
Sorry for the thought I’ve put into these words.
They should have been left raw and sloppy
But unedited language is like your eyes;
Your eyes scare me.
I am afraid I’ll fall in love with them.
105
joshua keen
| This Is A Love Poem |
I do not believe in love poems.
They all talk about how fast the heart beats,
but I have seen hummingbirds and they did not love more deeply than I.
I do not believe in love poems because God does,
and He has known more unrequited love than any
one and
I do not believe in love poems because they are
direct communication
and silence does break hearts,
but slowly.
I have long legs, great strides, but I still like to walk slow.
I want you to walk slowly with me, but
I do not believe in love poems and
I prefer to be barefoot when you put on hiking boots so
how could we walk together when the sky throws down snow?
Let’s just drink hot chocolate and
float among the stars.
I will not compare them to your eyes.
I will make no metaphors because
I do not believe in love poems.
106
micah caputo
| Learning to Laugh Like a Man |
In October 2002, I had been 18 for one week, and all 115
pounds of me was standing in line in the dormitory hallway
at boot camp.
“Trainee Caputo and Trainee Fox, get in here!”
I stepped out of the hallway and walked through bay one.
In the dormitory there were two bays separated by a wall.
Two rows of bunk beds went up the middle of each bay with
a narrow walkway in between. Spartan lockers lined the
walls, one for each bed. I stepped into the sparsely furnished
office. There was just enough space for the two of us to stand
at attention in front of the desk.
“Sir, Trainee Caputo reports as ordered.” This is what I
had to say in basic anytime I spoke to an MTI, a Military
Training Instructor. If I slipped up and said “reporting as ordered” instead of “reports,” the MTI would have said, “Are
you reporting the weather, trainee? Are you trying to be on
TV? You know you have to wear makeup to be on TV right?
If you’re reporting, you better have makeup on, trainee. Do
you have your makeup on?” While I was snarky enough to
think, “Yeah, I am going to tech school to be an Air Force
weather forecaster,” I was never brave enough to say it. I was
just grateful I remembered to say “reports” this time.
My MTI was a tall, skinny man with pale skin that turned
pink when he yelled. His skin was rarely pale. His most distinguishing feature was his hair. It was blonde, cut high and
tight in the military style, but he gelled the front part so that
it stuck straight up like a little wall. The wall never moved. I
don’t remember his real name, so I’ll call him Sgt. Blonde.
“Trainees, both your handwriting is terrible. I can’t read
these 341’s. Fill out fifty 341’s and have them on my desk by
107
tomorrow morning. They had better be readable. Dismissed.”
An AETC form 341 was a small slip of paper that every
trainee had to carry three of at all times. They had the trainee’s name, supervisor’s name, and squadron number written on them. If an MTI asked you for one, it meant you just
screwed up, or, very rarely, you just did something exceptional. The MTI wrote his name on it, why he took it from
you, and routed it back to your squadron for your supervisor
to file in your record. I had just learned how to fill out a 341
and my poor handwriting had bitten me in the ass again. At
least I wasn’t the only one. Fox was 5’7”, with olive skin and
glasses, just like me. I was sure Trainee Fox had my back.
That night I stayed up late after lights out trying to neatly
fill out fifty 341’s. I was sitting on the floor between my bare
bed and my wall locker, desperately hoping (by the dim light
from the hallway) that I could get this done right, without
getting caught.
“At least I won’t have to do this again.” I thought. “Fifty
should last me through basic and hopefully into tech school.
At least I hope so or I’m screwed.” I wanted to do a good job.
I wanted to win all the big awards. I wanted to get this right.
What new trainee doesn’t want to do well? After I was done, I
put them on Sgt. Blonde’s desk and went to bed. Three hours
later reveille sounded. I was just finishing getting dressed
when I heard.
“Trainee Caputo, get in here!” I groggily pulled myself
into the office and heaved to attention.
“Sir, Trainee Caputo reports as ordered.”
“Trainee, are you stealing from the United States government?”
“Sir, no sir.”
“Then why did you waste fifty official 341 forms?”
“Sir, I thought...”
“Shut up!” He threw my 341s in the trash. “What you
will do is use your notebook paper to make one hundred 341
108
forms and then you will fill them out by hand and have them
on my desk tomorrow morning. No more wasted forms. Dismissed, trainee.”
I had a healthy distrust of authority figures, and this wasn’t
helping. I joined the Air Force because there was nothing for
me in Montana, where I grew up. I had no opportunities. In
Montana, people are independent, but they also help each
other out. In my mind, Montana’s unofficial motto is “Never
accept help, but always offer it.”
That night, I again stayed up late making 341’s. This time
the dorm guards caught me.
The dorm guards’ duties are to make sure nobody is up
past lights out and that only properly approved personnel are
allowed into the dorm according to a very rigid entry procedure. For example, one MTI in particular really liked to mess
with guards. One day instead of his ID card, he put a banana
up to the window. The guard had to shout: “One yellow banana!” Then he had to look at the list of approved visitors
and check to see if the banana was on the list. Obviously, he
couldn’t open the door. The MTI knocked again. The guard
opened the window flap and said, “One black middle finger!”
Again, he couldn’t let him in. The MTI knocked a third time,
this time he put his ID card up to the glass.
“One green military ID card! Staff Sergeant Smith!” The
guard double-checked with the wall. “One green military ID
card! Staff Sergeant Smith! Sir, please stand back from the
door. Opening door.”
The procedure is different now, since the War on Terrorism had not gone into full swing yet. Later, basic training would be changed to reflect the needs of the long and
constant deployments required in the Middle East. Now they
call dorm guards “entry controllers” and they carry unloaded
M16’s.
Trainees in their final week, having earned the title of
Airman, were assigned to guard the dorms of “rainbow”
109
squadrons. They were called rainbows because they were so
new that they had not even been issued uniforms yet and
were still wearing their colorful, unmatched, civilian clothes.
This being our first week, the dorm guard that caught me up
late was one of those lucky few ready to graduate.
“What are you doing up?” He snarled. After he let me
explain the situation, he said, “Wow, that sucks, I have never
seen that happen before. You can stay up late, but if you hear
the door open jump in bed as fast as you can. Don’t get me
in trouble.”
A few hours later I had everything finished, I put my
homemade and filled out 341s on the desk and, with cramped
hands and despite being more stressed out than I had ever
been in my life, I went right to sleep.
Once again, reveille woke me up and as I dressed, I heard
my name being shouted from the office.
“Traineeeeee Caputooooo!”
“Sir, Trainee Caputo reports as ordered!”
“What is this shit, trainee? Get it done right this time or
in the morning you’re going to have to explain to the commander how the hell someone with handwriting as piss poor
as yours managed to fill out enough paperwork to get accepted into my Air Force. Dismissed!”
As I left the office, Trainee Fox grabbed me. “What did he
want? He didn’t ask about me did he?”
“No,” I answered. “Why?”
“I never did it.”
“You mean you didn’t fill out the 341’s?” I asked.
“Nope. I figured they would be too busy and there are
too many of us for him to know who I am yet. I guess I just
slipped through the cracks. You should try it too. It is better
than being up all night stressing about it.”
“I’ll have to try that,” I said.
That night, I was in bed at lights out and got a full five
hours sleep. Reveille sounded. As I dressed, I worried whether
110
the MTI would notice I hadn’t filled out my one hundred
341s. We did our dust drills. This involved getting down on
hands and knees and using our hands and towels to clean
every speck of dust from every inch of the floor. I didn’t hear
my name called. Then, we lined up for PT. Still nothing.
“He must not have looked at his desk yet,” I thought to
myself.
After PT, we showered and lined up for breakfast. Still, I
didn’t hear my name being shouted from the office. I made
it through the whole day. In fact, the MTI never mentioned
it again. This is the first lesson that Trainee Fox taught me
about the Air Force: don’t do what you’re told. It is just easier
that way.
At this point, I thought Trainee Fox was what the MTIs
called a “dirtbag.” This means that he didn’t strive to be the
best at everything. Somehow, to the MTIs, this is the most
despicable thing a person could possibly be. Now, I was a
dirtbag too. I was the most worthless of all the lumps of green
pond scum that made up our squadron, and I had no idea
how to change that. I decided that until I figured that out, I
would just try to get along, keep my head down, and attempt
to keep the MTI from knowing my name. Unfortunately, it
didn’t quite work out that way.
“Traineeeeee Caputoooo! What is your malfunction?!”
It was our last week of basic training and Sgt. Blonde was
shouting at me from across the parade field. The squadron
was practicing their marching in preparation for graduation,
and I was lucky enough to be the DJ. This meant that while
they mind-numbingly marched around and around an empty
field the size of several football fields, I stood at ease next to
a little red wagon loaded with boom box equipment and hit
play and pause on the marching music whenever he yelled at
me. This sounded different, though, he wasn’t just yelling like
he usually did. He sounded pissed. I sprinted over.
“Sir, Trainee Caputo reports as ordered.”
111
“What the hell are you doing here?” His face was turning
red. “Shit, I was yelling at that guy,” I looked in the direction
he was pointing. It was a short guy with dark skin and dark
hair wearing BCGs. (“BCGs” is military slang for Birth Control Glasses; these were the general issue glasses all trainees
with poor vision received. They were nicknamed for the effect they had on the opposite sex.) It was Trainee Fox. In uniform and wearing BCGs, he was practically my twin.
“Go back to the boom box and hit play,” Sgt. Blonde said.
“Crap, he knows my name,” I thought. I had no idea what
that meant for me though. After marching practice, we were
ordered to the day room where Sgt. Blonde spoke to us.
“You finished warrior week and have earned your airmen
coins,” he said. “That means that you get to wear your blue
dress uniforms this week as we practice for graduation. Don’t
get cocky; you might have your coins, but to me you aren’t
airmen yet. You were green pond scum, now you’re blue
pond scum.” We laughed, but he quickly silenced us.
“You have one final inspection this week. This is going
to be the toughest one yet. Since your shit is all messed up
from warrior week, we are giving you some extra time this
afternoon to work on it. We have been lenient before, but
this time we won’t be. You better have your shit straight. Dismissed!”
As we left the dayroom, I remembered our first inspection. The newly minted dorm chief had failed that one. He
hadn’t given his uniform to the clothes washing crew. Instead
he had put it back in his locker. It must have stunk, because
this was the first thing Sgt. Blonde noticed.
“Why does your clean uniform smell like ass, trainee! Is
it because it isn’t clean? You are the dorm chief and you aren’t
even competent enough to give your uniform to the laundry
crew.” This wasn’t stated as a question; the MTI stated it like
a fact. Trainee Fox giggled.
“You think that’s funny?” Sgt. Blonde yelled. “You know,
112
your laugh sounds just like Woody the Woodpecker’s laugh.
I really like Woody the Woodpecker. Laugh for me.”
“Ha, Ha, Ha!”
“No, like Woody the Woodpecker,” Sgt. Blonde demanded.
Trainee Fox laughed, “Auhahaha, Auhahaha, Auhahaha,
hehehehe!”
“That was fantastic,” the MTI said. “Why don’t you show
all your squad mates how well you can laugh? Walk around
the bay laughing like Woody, don’t stop until the inspections
are over.”
While this was going on, the other MTI, Sgt. Smith, emptied the garbage barrel and threw it and the clothes into the
shower room. He turned all the showers on and tossed a bottle of detergent in.
“As dorm chief, you will set an example for your squad by
showing them how to get their uniforms clean.” Sgt. Smith
forced the dorm chief into the shower room and had him get
started washing his clothes in the garbage barrel. Sgt. Smith
stayed in the shower and screamed encouragement at the
dorm chief while Sgt. Blonde finished the inspection. None
of us did well. It was okay though, since this had been our
first one, it was just a test, a freebie. None of us who failed the
inspection had 341’s pulled, we just got yelled at.
Finally, it was over and we no longer had to listen to
Trainee Fox laugh like Woody. Sgt. Blonde went back in the
shower room.
“You’re still not done yet? What the hell, trainee?” Nervous, the dorm chief fumbled and knocked over the barrel.
“You just got my beautifully polished boots wet, trainee.” The dorm chief must have nervously cracked a smile or
something because what happened next was completely unprecedented.
“You think that’s funny? You call that a laugh? That
pussy-sounding little squeak?” Sgt. Blonde’s face turned a
113
new shade of pink. “Everybody, listen up. Your dorm chief
has a very poor sense of humor. Why don’t you guys show
him how a real man laughs? Everybody form a line. I want
you to walk into the shower room, point at your dorm chief,
and laugh like a man.”
I was nervous standing in line. This wasn’t supposed to
be how things were. We were supposed to be a team, to work
together. When it was my turn to point and laugh, part of me
felt terrible, but part of me felt that he deserved it. After all,
we had bunkmates whose chore it was to wash clothes. All he
had to do was put his clothes in the laundry bag. I think that
was how the MTIs wanted me to feel. I was becoming what
they wanted. I had thought I was serving and defending, but
they said our job was to “blow shit up and kill people.” It took
me four years to realize that wasn’t me.
The dorm chief didn’t last very long after that. A few days
later, he was replaced by a new one. At some point later, he
washed back into another flight. This was pretty common in
our squad. We started with over forty trainees. Only eighteen
of us graduated and two of those had been washed back from
other flights into ours.
For this final inspection, we decided to help each other
out. We had all gone through the team building exercises
during warrior week, and we decided that if we banded together we could finish preparing for our inspection early
and have some downtime before the inspection. We formed
groups: one for boot polishing, one for ironing, one for each
task on the inspection checklist. I was part of the t-shirt folding group. Folding t-shirts was one of the most difficult tasks
of preparing for an inspection. They don’t do this anymore.
Now, they roll their t-shirts up. After the changes in 2005,
they decided folding clothes was time better spent taking
apart and cleaning the M-16’s they issued to everybody. In
2002, we only touched a firearm once, at the shooting range.
While we were there, we had caught a glimpse of the MTIs-
114
in-training. They were yelling at trees while their instructor
walked up and down grading them. I assumed they were being graded on their commanding tone and creativity.
What made folding a t-shirt difficult was that it had to be
a perfect square. They would measure it to make sure it was
exactly the right dimensions. The neck had to fall perfectly,
centered in the front. T-shirts with stretched out necks were
thrown out; they never passed inspection. The most difficult
part was lining up the edges. This was where I excelled and
why only I and one other trainee made up the t-shirt folding
group. The trick was to take our binders and after folding
each t-shirt, put it in the binder and sit on the binder. Then
we would use tweezers to pick at the edges and make sure
that all the edges lined up exactly. Anything less would lead
to a failed inspection and a pulled 341. I folded dozens of
t-shirts this way while other teams polished my boots and
ironed my uniforms. Now, years later, I simply throw my tshirts into my dresser. If they don’t fit in the drawer, I might
consider rolling them up.
One trainee, named Jon, was all over the place. He
bounced from group to group helping everybody and keeping things organized. He was a short, stocky guy with a
friendly smile, curly hair, and big brown BCGs. He never discriminated against the weaker trainees of the squad. He was
always helping people out or offering encouragement to anyone feeling overwhelmed. He would sit with a group for five
minutes and, before moving on, do the work of ten people.
He had been like this this throughout all of basic training. I
wondered why he hadn’t been made dorm chief. The MTIs
probably thought he wasn’t mean enough.
Spirits were high and we were on a roll. We had all our
uniforms out and split into nice piles on the beds. Piles of
unfinished uniform items were quickly growing into stacks
of inspection-ready uniforms that just needed to be carefully positioned in lockers. We were almost finished. We were
115
going to get this done. Nobody else was going to wash out.
Then, the MTIs came in. Our time was up.
“Everybody in the dayroom!”
We piled into the dayroom and sat cross-legged on the
floor.
“What the fuck is going on? Why aren’t you ready for inspection?”
Our new dorm chief stood up. Not so new now; he was
the third or fourth. He had been chief since the second week.
“Sir, we formed teams to work together to get ready for
the inspection.”
“Then your teams failed. Everybody go stand at attention
next to your lockers. The inspection starts now.”
The MTIs moved from locker to locker. They skipped
nothing, carefully writing up each separate infraction. They
pulled 341’s from each person with an infraction. With all
our gear still in piles in the middle of the room, that was everybody.
Afterwards, we sat around, commiserating about the ass
chewing we had just received.
“At least we all went down together,” someone said.
“They can’t wash anybody back if we all failed,” someone
else chimed in.
Trainee Fox’s bunkmate spoke up. “Fox didn’t get a 341
pulled. He passed.”
“How did he pass?” I blurt out. “There’s no way his gear
was straight, while everyone else was still messed up.”
“He didn’t team up with us,” Fox’s bunkmate spit his
words like venom. “He was the only person that didn’t join
a group. He didn’t help anybody else.” At the time, I didn’t
know this, but I later realized that this was the moment my
military career began to sour. I got out with an honorable
discharge, but it wasn’t the best time of my life. I didn’t fit in.
Somehow trying hard wasn’t enough. I just did my time.
116
*
*
*
That night Sgt. Blonde called us into the dayroom.
“I have two announcements to make. First, you guys are
going to have to vote on an award. We have an MVP certificate that we hand out to the person that most exemplifies
teamwork. This only goes to one person. We are going to take
nominations.”
A hand shot up.
“Yes.”
“I nominate Jon,” the trainee said.
“OK, any others?” There was a long pause. “Seriously, nobody else has a nomination? We can’t vote on just one nomination. So, if nobody else has one I will just pick someone I
think deserves to be nominated. Anybody? OK, I nominate
Trainee Fox. Vote by raising your hand. Votes for Jon.”
A forest of hands went up.
“Votes for Trainee Fox.”
Zero hands.
“Wait a minute, let’s try that again. Votes for Jon.”
This time everyone voted, it was unanimous.
“Ok, you guys made your pick. Next announcement. We
need to talk about ribbons. For graduation you guys are going to get to wear your ribbons on your blue uniforms, and
we are going to show you guys how to put them on. Everyone
is going to get their BMT Graduation Ribbon and the National Defense Ribbon. Looking around the room shows that
the graduation ribbon is obviously pretty rare. We started
with forty something trainees. How many do we have now
Dorm Chief?”
“Eighteen, sir.”
“Eighteen, but the National Defense Ribbon is even rarer. There are guys who serve for twenty years and are never
awarded this one. It is for serving during a time of war. This
is a real honor for you guys because you are getting it right
117
out of Basic Training. This means that you chose to sign up
knowing that we were in a war. Most of you guys saw what
happened last year and are here anyway. Congratulations.
“OK, we have one more ribbon to hand out. Trainee Fox,
get up here. Trainee Fox is being awarded the BMT Honor
Graduate Ribbon. Sometimes, we hand out a couple of these,
but in this flight we only have one person who didn’t get a
341 pulled the entire time he was here. Congratulations. Obviously, if you mess up before graduation you could lose this,
but I don’t foresee that happening. Congratulations. Now we
are going to show you guys how to properly wear these...”
That was the second lesson Trainee Fox taught me: Don’t
be a team player. Look out for number one.
This makes no sense to me, even now. They wanted us to
be part of a team, right? I hated Fox. Why did he keep winning?
That weekend, the last eighteen of us finally graduated.
We were glad it was over.
Obviously, everyone was proud they had finished. That
night we were hanging out in the dorms, after getting back
from our afternoon-long off-base pass. I felt all the stress of
the last few weeks washing away. Airman Miner’s bunk was
next to mine.
Miner was a nerdy black guy. His favorite show was Dragonball Z. He was a little chunky, started to bald in his early
twenties, and had a tendency to stress out a lot.
“Shit, Shit, Shit!”
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“I left my locker key in my wife’s hotel room after graduation.” This was a problem because the MTIs had drilled into
us our first week to never, ever lose our locker keys. Nobody
had ever lost their key. We didn’t know how bad the punishment would be.
“That sucks,” I said. “You’re going to have to go down and
ask the on-duty MTI to cut your lock off.”
118
“I am going to be in so much trouble.” I could tell he was
freaking out, so I tried to calm him down.
“Don’t worry about it. This is our last night here; you don’t
need your lock for anything else. Just go ask him to cut it off
and it won’t matter. He’ll probably just laugh at you when you
tell him where you left it.”
After about twenty minutes, we finally convinced Miner
to get the MTI. It was Sgt. Smith and he brought bolt cutters
and chopped the lock off.
“Dumbass,” he said as he walked away.
“There, that wasn’t so bad,” I told Miner. “We’re Airman
now.”
A few minutes later Sgt. Blonde came in and called us
into the dayroom. “Alright guys, we have one more thing to
do. Here is the MVP certificate for the best team player. Airman Fox, get up here.” We all stared at each other in stunned
silence. Finally, someone raised their hand.
“Sir, Airman Miner reports as ordered. Sir, we voted for
Jon.”
“What?!” said Sgt. Blonde, turning slightly pink. “I could
have sworn everyone voted for Airman Fox.” Everyone else
chimed in with cries of, “No we voted for Jon,” and “Jon was
MVP.” The noise in the tiny dayroom was getting deafening.
“Quiet down!” the MTI silenced everybody. The little
blonde wall twitched. “Okay, here is what we are going to do.
I don’t want to be a dick to Airman Fox and take away his
award, so we are going to hand out two MVP awards. I’ll be
back with Jon’s later. Dismissed.”
As we walked out Miner looked pissed off. “That’s bullshit!
Fox is the last person who should be MVP. He’s an asshole.”
I didn’t know how to respond. Nobody had voted for Fox.
I knew him just well enough to understand why everyone
else would be upset. He wasn’t a dirtbag, though. Later in my
Air Force career, we called people like Fox the “golden boys.”
Even their shit was gold. An old Air Force veteran I met said
119
that back in his day they called golden boys “maggots.” I like
that term. I think it is fitting. Maggots feed off of others. If
we were pond scum, Fox was a maggot, feeding off of us. I
worked my ass off for those types of awards, but I never got
one. Somehow, I didn’t have what it takes to be a golden boy.
“Sure,” I thought to myself, “Maybe I just wasn’t good
enough, but surely a guy like Jon was better than Fox.” I no
longer wanted to be the best. I didn’t want the kind of tainted
awards that Fox won. I had changed. I weighed 125 pounds
now.
That night I had dorm guard duty for a rainbow flight. A
couple of guys stayed up late asking me questions about how
things were going to be.
“Do they yell at you much?”
“Yeah, but you get used to it. As long as you don’t do
anything stupid, it isn’t that bad. Don’t let them know your
name. If they never learn your name you can keep your head
down and get through without much trouble.”
Their new dorm chief came out.
“Hey can you guys be quiet? Some of us are trying to
sleep here.”
“Trust me,” I said. “In a week, you guys will be so tired,
you’ll sleep through anything.”
“It’s just that we’re all in this together. You know, we’re all
trainees here.”
I laugh about this now; it was so ridiculous, but at the
time, I was deadly serious.
“I’m no trainee!” My words came out like a snarl. I wasn’t
one of them. “You don’t talk to me that way. I’m a fucking
Airman.”
120
gabriel johnson
| Music Box |
When I rain, I pour.
But this year broke me.
Sank its fingertips
into my shoulder blades
and tore me asunder.
It nailed me to the
floors of this apartment
that weeps like a willow.
While you wrapped yourself in goodnights
I screamed into the floorboards.
I licked at your fingers
like a dog.
And I cried.
Sweet Jesus, did I cry.
But men aren’t supposed to
so I begged instead.
At the age of twenty
I discovered shame.
I felt like calling for help
but my voice cracked
like a frozen lake.
You’d tell me you were going out
with a few friends, and I’d beg you to stay home,
but my guilt tied my tongue down
with fish hooks.
When I rained, only ashes fell.
And no phoenix clawed its way out.
Only my naked back, flayed by the chains of the prison
I forged for myself,
bleeding out poems that I’ll never see
121
again.
Sucking out air from music notes
in order to survive.
This year I discovered guilt.
I could never count how many times I said I’m sorry,
but I tattooed it to my chest
so when I made love to you
I wouldn’t have to say it out loud.
I used to burn.
Burn so loud that
when I spoke
smoke climbed from my lips.
I lived my life like a car crash
but sang like a music box.
I plucked smiles from strangers
and drank up the voices
of girls
like wine.
I played loud.
And at the age of nineteen I found myself unworthy.
I inhaled smoke instead of speaking it,
and never let the car
leave the driveway.
I cried ink from my fingertips,
and used you as a telescope to search for God.
With you, I discovered far too much.
I still feel that only shackles embrace me,
but I want to shred open my rib cage
and the let the songbird
out of my chest.
Pull the hooks from my tongue
so I can say
I love you.
When I rain, I want to fucking pour.
So the world knows my heart’s beating.
122
These wounds are canyons,
that I’ll stitch up with poems.
I want you to know me.
I want you to hold your breath
when you press your hand to my chest.
I want to scream so loud these
walls split open
to let the ocean pour forth from their mouths,
so I can swim to the surface and write my name on its face.
Sing the moon into my hands.
And free that fire from my music box,
so I can find my way
home.
123
quinn scahill
| The Badger Warrior |
Sean watched Jerry, his stepfather, hold a shot of whiskey in
one hand and his miniature dachshund, Oscar, in the other.
He was trying to pour the liquor into the dog’s mouth, but
it swayed its head back and forth, spilling the sour mash on
the floor. Sean’s mother, standing across the kitchen by the
neighbors, was looking at her husband with half amazement
and half disgust.
“Jerry, come on, put the dog down, let him live his last
night in peace,” she said.
“A little whiskey won’t kill him. He’s been through a lot,
the least we can do is celebrate, right?” He said this and
turned towards the neighbors for approval, which he got in
the form of laughter. He patted Oscar on the head and set
him down on the wood floor of the kitchen, where his claws
pitter-pattered around, trying to gain traction.
Sean watched his parents and neighbors but couldn’t stop
thinking about how dumb they looked, having a celebration
for their old, graying wiener dog. He tilted the shot glass he
was holding and let the woody liquor slide into his stomach.
Before this, he had been having a Roman candle fight at an
old friend’s house down the street. His mother had texted
him, asking him to come back home for a bit because they
were having an impromptu going-away party for Oscar. Sean
did not want to go, but remembered he had left his weed upstairs in his room, so he decided to walk back and grab it real
quick. He could not have cared less about his dog’s party; he’d
rather be smoking spliffs and sipping beers with his friends.
Sean noticed that everyone in the room but Jerry still had
their shots in hand. Oscar had begun to sniff at the spilt whiskey, but waddled away after two curious, dissatisfying licks.
124
The little dachshund turned around and began prancing towards Sean, away from the sloppy adults, and stopped right
in front of him. Sean looked at the pitiful dog, 17 years old,
blind in one eye and deaf in the opposite ear. He was nearly
as old as Sean. Oscar and he were like brothers that had never
learned how to get along, but it was too late to start now.
“Sean, we were sharing memories we’ve all had of Oscar. Do you want to share one?” Sean’s mother leaned back
against the island in the kitchen with her shot still in hand.
She had trapped him, and now he would have to say something, maybe even sit and chat for a few minutes.
“Uhh…yeah. I remember all the times he pooped and
peed in my room,” Sean said sarcastically. Jerry started laughing along with the neighbors. He always laughed at Oscar’s
poor potty training, and most of the time it came at Sean’s
expense.
Even Sean’s mother let out a half-giggle before replying,
“Oh, come on, think of something positive. Besides, you
weren’t the one washing all those sheets.”
Sean struggled to find any good memories of Oscar. He
said off the top of his head, “Well, I guess that was pretty
cool when he tried to fight the Rottweiler. Pretty stupid, but
pretty cool.” Oscar was still standing beneath Sean, and as if
he had heard him say that, he raised his head and pranced
away with a swagger that only an old, graying wiener dog
can possess.
Now that he had served his part, Sean needed an excuse
to run upstairs and grab his pot, but all the adults were congregated around the staircase, so he’d have to think of some
way to get by them without suspicion.
At first he tried to quietly excuse himself, but of course,
his mother had to ask, “Where are you going, Sean? You just
got here.”
Thinking quickly, Sean replied, “I’m…gonna go to the
bars in a little bit…I forgot my wallet upstairs.”
125
His mother’s face hardened a little, “Well, don’t be out
too late. We have to get up early to take Oscar…”
“Ugh...” Sean moaned, looking back at his mother, “Do I
really have to go with you guys tomorrow?”
“Yes, Sean. Don’t you want to say goodbye to your dog?”
“I mean, not really. He’s not my dog…” Sean saw that his
mother was starting to get impatient. She set her drink down
and put her hands on her hips.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re coming with us. I don’t know
why you have to act this way.” She looked towards Jerry, hoping he could confirm her demands.
Jerry saw the look on her face and chirped in, “Don’t worry, he’ll be there tomorrow.” He turned his glance towards
Sean and said, “Won’t you, Sean?”
Sean saw Jerry wink at him, like they were best pals or
something. He muttered back “Fine,” before turning his back
on his parents and the neighbors. Sean still wasn’t convinced
that he would be going with his family tomorrow unless they
pried him out of bed.
*
*
*
Sean climbed the steps to the third-floor attic where his room
was. There were probably about 50 steep stairs on the way up
there, but that didn’t ever bother Oscar. He still managed to
get up to his room and piss all over the place, no matter how
old he got. Oscar wouldn’t play catch or go for walks anymore, but he could still climb the stairs, so Sean knew Oscar peed in his room on purpose. It had been happening so
regularly for so many years that Sean almost expected it, and
he was wary to check for dampness before he sat anywhere.
This whole mess with Oscar had actually started many
years ago, when Sean and his mother were celebrating their
first Christmas with Jerry. In an attempt to cement their newly formed bond as a family, Jerry bought Oscar at a pet store
that closed only weeks later. Ever since opening up the little
red gift-box that Oscar popped out of, Sean and he had been
126
at odds. Sean had never asked for a puppy nor wanted one.
Oscar merely appeared in Sean’s life one day, like Jerry. Sean
remembered that Christmas because Oscar chewed the head
off of one of his Batman toys. Jerry said he would get Sean
another one, but he forgot to.
So began the struggle with Sean and Oscar: countless
bites occurred, and Oscar continuously snarfed down food
that Sean left unattended on the coffee table. Whenever Sean
snuck back into his house late at night during high school,
Oscar was there at the back door to bark and make his reentry a public spectacle. The few times that Sean had snuck
girls back inside, Oscar was sure to find their underwear the
next day, dragging it around and tearing it apart so that his
mother would inevitably find a hot pink thong that didn’t
belong to her. Oscar was like a little brother that was always
trying to get Sean into trouble. To top it all off, Sean couldn’t
stand his name. A wiener dog named Oscar? How cliché was
that?
*
*
*
As soon as Sean entered his bedroom he could smell the
sweet, skunky odor of the pot that he had misplaced. Shit, it
reeks in here, he thought. He began to unearth piles of dirty
laundry that pockmarked his room, which made it look more
like a Martian landscape than a bedroom. Sean was pretty
sure he had left the weed in a pair of pants he had worn the
other day. That is when he saw his old backpack sticking out
underneath a heap of socks and old high-school papers. All
he could see was the hole where Oscar had ripped through it.
*
*
*
It had happened last year, when Sean was a sophomore in college and home on Thanksgiving break. Jerry had asked him
over the phone if he could bring back some ‘special brownies’.
Sean had known that Jerry smoked pot for a while, because
he had found a wooden hash pipe in his parent’s bathroom in
high school, and he knew it was not his mother’s. Although
127
they had never talked about it with each other, both Sean and
Jerry knew what the other was up to. These days, Sean and
Jerry acted more like pranksters in-cahoots than stepfather
and stepson. Sean thought Jerry was just trying to play the
‘cool dad’ card, but he complied with his odd request and
bought the brownies, which he then threw deep inside his
backpack.
After driving for six hours, Sean arrived home and unpacked his things, forgetting all about the psychoactive
brownies in his backpack. Tired from the drive through the
endless plains of Kansas, Sean took a nap on his living room
couch. He had plans to go out with some friends later that
night, however, his mom woke him midway through his
snooze and told him that Oscar was acting funny. She looked
frantic.
Sean’s heart stopped. He feigned concern, saying, “That’s
not good. I wonder what happened?” He ran up the three
flights of stairs into his bedroom and saw that there was an
enormous hole in his backpack, like a wild animal had clawed
through it. He looked inside and his fears were confirmed.
Oscar had eaten the brownies, both of them; even their plastic
wrappers had been devoured. There was enough pot in those
to keep both Sean and Jerry soaring for days, and Oscar, their
15 lb miniature dachshund, had eaten both of them. Fuuuck,
Sean screamed inside his head.
He went back downstairs to find Jerry and tell him what
had happened, if he hadn’t already guessed. Sean’s mother
and Jerry had Oscar cornered in the dining room. The dog
kept trying to run but couldn’t. His whole body was shaking and his back legs didn’t seem to work. They just dragged
around on the ground as he flopped about like a newborn
animal. Sean’s mother tried to huddle him into a corner,
while Jerry looked on in confusion. Sean could see his mother was on the verge of tears. He tapped Jerry on the shoulder
and motioned for him to follow into the family room around
the corner.
128
“Oscar ate those brownies that you asked for…” Sean said
in whispers.
Jerry looked back with a mixture of anger and relief, asking, “What!…How did he get them?”
“I put my backpack in my room and he got into them. He
ripped through like three different pockets to get those…”
“Goddamnit, Sean. What the hell…” Jerry rubbed the
back of his neck with his hand, “You’re going to have to tell
your mother. She’s about to call the vet…she’s freaking out.
She thinks we might have to put him down.”
“Are you serious? You’re the one who wanted them. You
tell her.”
“Sean, just do me a solid and tell your mother. Please. You
know how mad she would be if she knew I was the one who…”
Jerry was cut short by Sean’s mother, who came around the
corner with tears spouting from her eyes.
“I’m going to call the vet…I don’t know what’s wrong with
him. He was fine earlier.” She said this facing Jerry, and Jerry
in turn looked to Sean, waiting for him to spill the beans and
take the blame.
Sean gave Jerry a dirty look for throwing him under the
bus, but nonetheless admitted to what had happened just before his mother called the emergency animal hospital. She
was absolutely furious and Sean could see Jerry holding back
his laughter through a sharp grin that showed his crooked
teeth. Sean wanted to punch him right in the mouth, but instead he took the blame, like a good son would do for his
father.
*
*
*
Sean eventually found his jar of pot sitting right on top of
his dresser, in plain view. He slipped the jar into his pants,
but had to cover the bulge it made by putting his hand in his
right pocket. Returning downstairs, he found his neighbors
and parents still reminiscing over Oscar, who was begging at
their feet. What a little shit, Sean said to himself as he slipped
through the kitchen door. That was a nice backpack too.
129
“Remember, don’t be out too late, we have to…” his mother said, but the back door had already slammed shut, killing
her words.
*
*
*
Sean awoke in his bed, massively hung over, only to hear
his mother yelling at him from the foot of the stairs, “Sean!
Get up! We’re leaving in twenty minutes to take Oscar. Don’t
make me come and get you.”
Opening his eyes felt like a monumental achievement,
and when Sean sat up in his bed he thought that half of the
Red Sea might come rushing out of his mouth. He fought the
urge to puke, even swallowing back a little vomit that surged
into his mouth. It felt like he had been punched in the head
by a polar bear the night before, but Sean couldn’t remember,
so maybe he had been. He painfully peeled himself out of
bed, pushed his thin brown hair back, and pulled a random
black t-shirt out of a pile. His pants were near his bed with
his phone, wallet, and keys still inside them. He slipped them
on and headed downstairs after brushing his teeth.
The car ride to the veterinarian’s office was silent, Jerry had
not even turned the radio on, but Sean didn’t mind because
his head was still pounding and his stomach churning. Oscar sat in his mother’s lap in the front seat, but was facing
towards Sean. Sean’s mother had cooked Oscar bacon and
eggs for his final meal, and the dog looked back at Sean as if
he was trying to stick his tongue out.
Sean kept wondering why he had been dragged along on
this morbid adventure, but Sean took solace in the fact that
seventeen years of strife with Oscar would finally come to a
close.
After waiting for a few minutes with his parents in a cold
room that smelled like disinfectant, a doctor called them into
a smaller room with a large, shiny metal table on it. The doctor was tall and skinny, with barely any hair left on his head,
130
and a large gap between his teeth. He had probably killed
hundreds of dogs, Sean thought.
“It’s too bad we have to meet under these circumstances,
but it seems Oscar has lived a pretty long and happy life. I
have his first visit here being back in 1993. My daughters
were still in middle school then…boy, he’s an old one.” There
was an awkward silence for a few seconds, and then the doctor asked Sean’s mother to put Oscar on the table.
Sean’s mom was beginning to tear up, whispering to Oscar not to worry, that everything would be okay, that she was
sorry. Jerry leaned against Sean’s mother in an effort to comfort her. Sean sat and watched in an uncomfortable blue chair
opposite from the table, occasionally burying his hands in
his face, trying not to vomit.
The doctor began preparing the chemical cocktail of sodium thiopental, and tried to divert the family’s attention away
from his syringe, saying casually, “You know, “dachshund” is
a German word meaning badger warrior. The Germans bred
dogs like yours so they could hunt badgers in their tunnels.
Ferocious little dogs…”
Jerry answered, “Yeah, he fought a Rottweiler once and
nearly got his throat ripped out, and he also survived a hit
and run…he’s been pretty tough his whole life. It’s sad to see
this sucker go, we’ve had him ever since we became a family.” As Jerry said this he looked to Sean, but his face was still
buried underneath his hands. Jerry patted Oscar’s gray spot
on his head for the last time, and Oscar closed his eyes and
started wagging his tail, unaware of his impending doom.
Sean, who had been silent since getting in the car, blurted out, “Yeah, he probably should’ve died a long time ago,
now that I think about it.” Everyone in the room looked at
him, including Oscar, who actually looked offended.
Breaking the momentary silence, the doctor gestured
to the needle in his hand and said, “Well, are we all ready,
folks?”
131
Sean’s mother looked up from Oscar, eyes red and teary,
and nodded.
“Okay, now when I administer the shot you’re going to
have to hold Oscar down. He may gasp heavily for a few minutes, but I promise he will not be in any pain,” the doctor
warned.
Oscar wriggled around as Sean’s mother put her soft
hands down on his old, wiry coat. He looked confused, surrounded by four people, not knowing what was happening or
what he had done to deserve it. The vet leaned in and poked
the needle into Oscar’s back left leg, and Oscar looked up at
the doctor with black, murky eyes. Sean watched the doctor’s
fingers push down slowly and steadily on the syringe.
As soon as the vet pulled the syringe out of his leg, Oscar
collapsed onto the table with a hollow thud. The only gasps
in the room were now coming from Sean’s mother. Sean had
expected a fight from Oscar, but all he saw was a small twinge
of pain in his eyes and then a look of utter relief, as if he had
just shat on Sean’s bed one last time. For some reason, Sean
let out a laugh; he couldn’t help it. He didn’t know how else
to react.
Sean’s parents looked up from their dead dachshund
with damp eyes and glared at him. The vet excused himself
and said he would give them a minute before taking Oscar
in the back for cremation.
“Thank you,” Jerry said. He then turned and looked at
Sean and calmly but sternly, he whispered, “I think it would
be best for you to wait outside. As you can see, your mother
is very upset right now, and you aren’t helping.”
Sean immediately wiped the smirk off his face and
walked outside to their white Suburban, but the doors were
locked. He leaned against the car, staring at the pavement,
and watching the tiny bits of pebbles and sand swirling
within it. His stomach churned. The next thing he knew,
Sean looked up and Jerry was walking towards the car with
132
his arm around Sean’s mother. She was carrying what looked
like a cardboard take-out box.
*
*
*
Sean didn’t say a word on the ride home. He knew he had
fucked up. Only his mother spoke, but it was in short sobs
that Sean couldn’t understand. She said something about
how she would miss the pitter-patter of Oscar’s nails on their
wood floors. After a few quiet minutes Jerry turned the radio
on.
When they got home, Sean went straight to his room. He
couldn’t bear being around his parents any longer, and his
hangover loomed like a thunderhead in the sky.
He climbed the stairs slowly up to his bedroom. Sean had
trouble believing that Oscar was finally gone. Oscar had come
so close to dying so many times, but just hadn’t for some reason. It defied nature. Sean wouldn’t have been surprised at all
if Oscar sprang from that box of ashes like a phoenix.
Looking at the mess in his room, and realizing for the
first time in his life how dirty it was, Sean decided that he’d
tidy up a bit before taking a nap and attempting to apologize
to his mother. He knew it would probably be futile, but he
would try anyway.
Sean began dismantling heaps of dirty clothes and organized them into new piles along the wall. As he grabbed the
last few shirts in the corner near his closet, he saw something. Near the pile of laundry sat a turd left by Oscar, perfect in every way. It wasn’t even brown anymore, but an odd
hue of rusty-gray. There was no telling how long it had been
there. It didn’t even smell. It looked fossilized, almost like it
belonged there.
Sean started laughing a little bit when he saw it. He closed
his eyes and stroked his hands through his unwashed hair.
After debating for a few minutes, he decided to leave the turd
in the corner, exactly where he had found it.
Sean got back up and cleaned the rest of his room. When
133
he was done he stood in his doorway and marveled out how
tidy it looked. Golden sunlight poured in through the windows, illuminating particles of dust that floated freely in the
air. Sean traced a ray of light that came at an angle from a window. When it hit the floor it illuminated the gray, fossilized
turd, which stood its ground in the corner. Sean shook his
head at it and then wandered downstairs to find his mother.
christian yepello
| Rhapsode: An Elegy |
Wood, metal, string and drum,
you sang and played all—
no work too hard, too complex—
concerto, sonata, symphony.
Disease ate you.
You never told.
Did you know how pearl white crystals
form upon vital organs?
Your fevered body in my arms
humid as the air,
your sweat, skin’s tears,
nearly blistering me.
I held you close
wearing the scars,
wishing they could help.
Hued roots entwined
on your altar of linen and cotton,
the wisest of the healers
hangs his head, closes his eyes,
our last hope, gone.
Those healing fingers
grip the roots, pull the lifeline.
Your eyes grow brighter
Gratitude?
You sing no more.
134
135
michael morrow
| Meanderings |
136
I
once
diverged
and
I
found
once
solitary
trails
none
had
discovered
diverged
trails
valley-veiled
amongst
unearthed
roots
and
none
amongst
the
forest
lost
I
had
unearthed
forest
peak-hidden
yet
found
discovered
roots
lost
yet
enlightened
137
michael morrow
| Vagabond |
Ran from the steel armed turnstalls where
they spin right back out onto dumbsaint streets.
Avoided the boatsteel platforms,
mendacities and just the same,
empty of body, folks and distance.
Jumped fence
to keep from running
out of the girder steel yard,
away from thoughts of backdoor giftshops
and promises of cardboard living.
Instead to moving ground,
lightless stops for hazing
under empty lamposts.
Fleeing a man who’s never sought
to steps in the North
or hills to the South,
where the stories are in the dust of jeans
rolled up above the ankle
with feet numb in clear creeks.
Finding the latent prophetic who sleeps in orchards,
calls madly in the forests
with moonshine sunsets,
but never misses
fogdrawn mornings.
Hear the steel wheels hiss
driving for the nameless distance.
The cold air hugging around the neck as
the coupe was settling in the West.
Quick steps and lunge toward
cold handles,
coal dust.
Blazing trails of timber and steel
in the wake of steel jointed city-hopper,
brazen with names and images,
in wretched color and finery.
Forsaking cities, country,
cross continental pursuits simply to
rumble along with songs sung silently
to hang in the air
holding place for haunted and graced.
138
139
nicholas levack
| Your Last Drive Home |
You remember when she first let you see her smile, I mean
a real smile – not the fleeting guise of happiness one gives a
stranger, but the sort of smile you know you helped put there,
the sort of smile where you can see your face reflected off
those pearly whites.
You remember when she first let you park in her driveway.
Not along the curb, not in the back, but in the driveway where
if she needed to move her own car, you’d go out together, she
smiling at you, your face on those pearly whites. You’d back
out and let her through, waving through the windshield as
she leaves you with her home. One hour? Two hours? Three?
However long until she returns with two arms full of plastic
shopping bags, her blue eyes gazing upon yours as she finds
you waiting in the kitchen, still too shy to wander alone in her
home.
You remember when she first let you reach into one of
those plastic shopping bags to withdraw your favorite drink.
You could see her smiling then, your own smile on those
pearly whites, her smile brightening as you lifted that bottle to
your lips and took your first sip. There’s something about her
hair, the tresses golden like rows of wheat growing in the sun,
the same wheat you pass by every weekend on your way to see
her. You imagine yourself stepping out of your car beneath a
blue sky, the sunlight baking the asphalt. You’re given a new
breath as you wander into the wheat by which you’d only driven, parting the fuzzy tufts with a gentle touch of your fingertips. In her kitchen, you take a deep breath after sipping your
soda, relishing your smile reflected off those pearly whites.
But most of all, you remember the last time you drove
home.
140
*
*
*
You guide the steering wheel with a knowing touch. You
wear your sunglasses out of habit, but the overcast renders
them useless. The blue sky you had expected upon waking
is stifled, the golden wheat tinted brown, a sight you turn
your eyes away from, focusing instead on the cold asphalt beyond your windshield. You worry about the contents of your
backpack, worry you’d forgotten some textbook you’d need
for the weekend, but you try to shrug it off, try to remember
that these weekends are to escape from school, the very thing
that had separated you from home.
As you pass the fields of wheat, you see the enormous
plains where the ranchers graze their cattle. A row of cows
is herded along a thin line in the dirt. You imagine their feet
must have ached from walking along the same trail, the only
one they’d ever know, and were glad your feet would never
tread such a worn path.
“I’ll be there in three hours,” you say over the phone.
“Okay.”
The sign reads “Welcome to Colorado Springs.” When
you pull into her driveway, she smiles at you, a fleeting smile
you forget when she comes to your open window. “I need
you to park on the street.” You don’t question her, just put the
car in reverse and turn the steering wheel.
Inside, she moves cautiously around you. When you ask
for a drink, she comes back with a bottle of water. “Sorry,
that’s all that’s left in the house.” You don’t question her, just
unscrew the cap and take another sip.
She’s quiet throughout the evening. After you’ve gone to
bed, you trace the familiar patterns on her skin, beginning
with the freckles below her cheek and moving toward the
curvature of her shoulder, a path you know by heart. Though
as you near the birthmark on her breast, she looks at you
with an unfamiliar face. You don’t question her, just withdraw your hand and sink deeper into the mattress.
141
“I’ll see you next week,” you say in the morning. The sun’s
not up.
“Okay,” she says.
“I’ll call you when I get back to school.”
“That’s fine.”
“I love you.”
She hesitates. “Okay.”
You stand at your car door, feeling like you’ve already entered the vehicle of your departure. You look from the driveway to her home, but neither is recognizable in the dark. You
pull the handle and sink into the seat. You wave at the windshield as she stands behind her window. She turns away before you pull onto the street.
*
*
*
On the way back to school, you remember those drives
home. You remember the slight upheaval in your stomach
when you rose over the dip at the bottom of her driveway,
remember the acne on your face reflected off those pearly
whites, remember the spot you left on her carpet after spilling a drop of your favorite drink. You remember her face at
your open car window, her lips taut as she spoke, concealing
those pearly whites. Along the side of the road, you see the
field of wheat.
No other traffic, you pull over. The wheat’s dull in the early
morning shade, but still you approach, remembering. You feel
the tufts, but they’re scratchy beneath your fingertips. The
sun’s starting to rise. You stay a moment, remembering the
golden wheat and the blue skies. You take a breath, but it’s
scratchy in your throat. You stay a moment longer, remembering those golden tresses and those blue eyes. You remember your face reflected off those pearly whites. The sun climbs
higher into a blue sky, illuminating the golden wheat. You
stay, only remembering.
bailey weickum
| Untitled 8 |
I lost you to trees that summer,
you swung from birches,
as I dissected the residual bark,
in the life line of your palms.
I watched you twirl in the falling sun,
chasing your spontaneity.
Trailing behind to collect,
your dropped curiosities in mason jars.
To over-examine like suffocating
lightning bugs.
Your calloused feet stained with grass
smiled at daisies.
As you skipped the light fantastic,
over affliction.
You whispered the colours
you felt the wind
paint your skin,
as I silently scripted
to quiet fear of imperfect reception.
Your cat eyes composed,
Chimerical Prisms.
As I sat grinding lost translation,
your rose coloured glasses advised,
“Réve en rose bébé”
“Ma Chouchou”
142
143
bailey weickum
| Untitled 31 |
You stole
the dryer lint
from my pocket
and placed it under your tongue.
You said you wanted to taste
the amalgamation of
bottles hips pages
I touched without you.
I called you a scoundrel
Kissed you hard
tasted the dust
of the months of months
I lived without
the gustation of your saliva.
As I recalled a room
of stark secrecy only filled by the raw static that
played between
our throbbing hearts
and
muted mouths
you held
my hand
as we slept.
I emerged to
your eyes glowing gold
at the corners
and a familiar hum
between our bodies,
as the dust lifted from our
shapes like keys.
Struck with the bitterness
of the flavor of the flavor of freckles
mouths fingerprints that
were not mine.
The burning in my jaw nurtured nostalgia in my cilia
as I pulled the scent from your cheek.
144
145
jason brim
| Shift |
After high school, it was goodbye between my father and me,
or more accurately—get out. Most of the kids my age were
off to college, or had a job and were ready to settle down. All
I had was Parker and all he had was me—it was an unbreakable friendship. We took a road trip up Interstate 95 to New
York soon after. The moment we decided to go was when we
both figured out we had no place to call home. It was only a
few weeks after our graduation and we had been bumming at
our friends’ houses.
“How you feelin’ man?” I said as Parker and me were sitting at the table just looking at the cereal in our bowls.
“Dazed dude, just dazed, what the hell happened last
night?” He rolled his spoon around the bowl looking for the
right bite.
“Got me.”
“Good way to start the day. Do you know where everyone
is?” He made a sort of gesture with his droopy eyes as if he
were looking around the house for people while he was sitting
there in his chair.
“There’s a couple people passed out downstairs, that’s
about all I know.” I woke up in our older friend’s house that
stuck around Brentwood, a suburb of Jacksonville, for the
last year after he graduated. He hosted parties for the high
school kids all the time.
“Shit man, this is all it’s been for the last few weeks, it’s
just dull now.” I was getting tired of waking up confused and
dizzy also.
“If we don’t get out soon this place is going to be the death
of us” he said as he packed the last little bit of herb he had
grinded up on his hand into the pipe. He named it sunshine
146
not only because it had a yellow flower on the back of it, but
also because he bought it about a week after a nasty break up.
It was always there to make him feel better.
“Ah you always know what I need!”
“Oh yes, this will give you some motivation for the cereal,
and maybe clear your mind up a little.”
“Always does.” I French-inhaled the smoke and then blew
a couple rings out afterwards and gave a little cough even
though I didn’t need to. Parker always blew smoke rings. He’s
the reason I did too. His ring twirled in front of my face before
dispersing. “We should just skip town man, escape this place
before it traps us.”
“I hear ya, I’ve always wanted to see the Big Apple. I know
Jacksonville is a big city, but I want to see the real city.” It was
like lighting a lighter—once the flame catches it holds.
“I think the Night Rider is outside. Let’s just go.” We
grabbed our bags from downstairs and left after breakfast.
The Night Rider didn’t have power steering and created a
bumpy ride because of its failing struts.
“Oh man! I can’t wait to see the New York City women!”
Parker yelled excitedly.
“Like it matters for you man, I think you had three different girls on you last night.”
“Not at the same time unfortunately,” he laughed.
“Ha! If you could pull that off I’d make out with your dad”
I said jokingly.
“Again?”
“Fuck you.”
Before we knew it, there were buildings all around us,
and it was difficult to get around on the streets. We drove
around sightseeing until we were able to find a place to park
and we began walking around. New York City was massive; it
couldn’t be escaped, not even by looking up. It was a jungle.
Parker talked to just about anyone he saw that he thought
might be interesting; he ended up finding a couple of girls
147
who took us along on a night out on the city. We ended up
at a venue somewhere in Brooklyn where some trashy rock
band was playing. With the music, the lights, and the drugs
we ended up dancing all night long, it felt surreal, like we
were part of a movie or some shit. I think the girls felt it too
because we ended up staying at their place that night, and the
next few also.
I wish things still happened like that. I missed those
times, when everything seemed so simple. The beginnings
of things always seem like they are perfect though. Tension
had been building with us recently with the fact that my girlfriend Amber was pregnant and expecting me to spend more
time with just her. Amber and I could no longer bond by joking around on road trips with Parker—we had real problems
to deal with.
“You can’t expect to live like this forever, Travis.” Her
words came quickly out of her mouth in a matter-of-fact
tone that irked me. “I can’t have you dealing drugs out on the
streets once our child is born. Do you really want me to have
to explain to your daughter why you ended up in jail while
she was growing up?”
“C’mon, Amber. I’m just not getting enough hours at
work, and Parker does most of the business now —I’m lucky
he still cuts me half.” I was expecting this argument; and
again I didn’t know how to defend my side of it. Sweat began
to accumulate around my forehead. I was frustrated. “Do
you think I do this out of pure enjoyment? Soon, I will have
a family I need to provide for.” I hadn’t been on a trip with
Parker in over a month now, but she knew he was nagging
me about going again.
“Exactly my point. You can’t end up in jail or worse, dead,
and leave me to take care of our child by myself.” She had
said these words to me over and over, but I never really felt
the ramifications. We had been slinging for years, how was
anything going to change now? But I knew I couldn’t justify
my actions, so instead I walked out of the room, slammed the
148
door, and made sure she could hear me and Parker talking
about going over to Hobo John’s.
In my car, the lingering smell of tomato paste and cheese
smoldered into my nostrils, reminding me of my job as a
driver at the local pizza joint. Any job I had these days was
temporary though. I didn’t have many references from the
past because in my twenty-eight years, I never held one job
for more than a year at a time. Well, besides supplying all
the botanical hedonists up and down the coastline. Hell, we
even sat down and joined in with them from time-to-time.
We—or I should say he—mostly, had been taking shipments
down to Fort Lauderdale. He would try out his charm on the
hip-rich girls of the beachfront while Amber and I would
sneak off into one of the unoccupied bedrooms of the mansions that hosted hundreds of people on any given weekend.
These visits were probably responsible for the lump forming in her belly. When Parker and I started getting bills for
the house we were renting after high school, we realized we
needed a solution, and at the time, we came up with a quick
fix. Sling a sack here, paying a few bills there - it got us by.
Although we don’t live together anymore, we became known
in the streets; it was hard to back down. Things had become
too easy for us to give up. We had come a long way from
slinging sacks to the high school kids of Brentwood.
“How have you been handling this father situation?”
Parker asked in his raspy voice. He came off as if he knew
exactly what he was doing in every situation, even if he was
clueless. Maybe it was in the witty responses that he never
seemed to run out of when talking to women. I don’t know
what it was about him, but my tall friend Parker definitely
had it easy.
“I haven’t given much thought to it yet, but Amber’s been
nagging me about keeping my job and trying to pick up
more hours.” This wasn’t completely true though. I thought
about it all the time and I was terrified.
“Yeah man I’ve noticed. Why don’t you two come down
149
to Savanna with me tonight? My cousin is throwing a party
at his new place.”
“Alright, I bet I can talk Amber into it. I know she still
wants to party.” A night out would always distract me. I liked
being distracted and I think Amber did too. It was nice to
be able to let go and not think about the future, about what
kind of father I was going to be. When I was a single man, I
never thought much of the fact that I was a drug dealer, but
the baby in Amber’s belly made me doubtful of my parenting
abilities.
“Let’s make it a night my brotha-man!” He was always
excited when things were happening, but quite different when
nothing was going on. He was angry sometimes, and it showed
in beat up knuckles, with cuts and calluses. But nothing was
better than being on the road with Parker, we were always
joking around, bouncing up and down in our seats over old
run down highways like US-1 that ran down the east coast of
Florida. Our Honda squealed down the road, going twenty
over the limit, stretching our excited yells all over the city.
We were headed to our hook-up’s house—Hobo John. His
real name was Micah but we called him Hobo John because,
for one, he always smelled like the inside of a dumpster, two,
he always wore these ratty brown gloves that the fingers had
been cut off, and three, an annoyance of an orange hat that
covered his greasy hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed
in months. The lovely Hobo John constantly had his bickering ex-girlfriend over yelling at him about his child that she
insisted he didn’t care about. When she was over I thought of
my child and how I could be different than Hobo John—he
was pathetic. We only ever visited him for one reason. It was
in and out—I couldn’t stand the smell anyways.
As we pulled up to the identical-looking houses that scattered the neighborhood, we came across one with a dim red
porch light. It was the signal that we had reached our destination, like the North Star of all pot smokers. We parked the
150
Honda across the street and prepared to be hit bluntly with
the muggy Jacksonville humidity that kept everyone inside
with their prized air conditioners during the summer.
I was never nervous entering his house, well, except the
first time really, when I didn’t know him. There was always
music bumping inside, but in reality the only people that
ever inhabited it were a few customers, his ex-girlfriend, and
the type of people that even I wouldn’t want to meet. Tonight
I saw a sketchy-looking dude through the haze of smoke –
a common sight as of recently at Hobo John’s according to
Parker. Hobo John recently lost his job at the sawmill, or the
slavemill as he called it. This forced him to resort to different
methods of income, like this creepy junkie sitting next to me.
He was wearing a beanie in the middle of the summer, his
teeth looked like they were ready to fall out of his head, and
his pupils were dilated. This guy was high on - definitely high
on - something. Parker sat down next to him and I sat next
to Parker.
“Sup brotha,” I said trying to play everything off cool. He
stared over at me and looked at me like he had no idea that
we just walked in the door. He gave us a blank stare. I don’t
know what this guy was thinking, but he was freaking me
out.
I heard Hobo John’s muffled voice from below the counter in the kitchen ask, “Did you want those blue comics, or
the green playboys?” I knew what this guy was here for—
those new pills. Ecstasy, I’m sure this guy shot up on heroin;
I could see his track marks and the look in his eyes. Just
because he did heroin doesn’t mean a little X wouldn’t be a
good time though. His beanie became fuzzy in the smoke as
he walked over to John while he was crouched behind the
counter. I saw him reach for something that must have been
tucked in between his pants and back. “Yo, Dude?! Which
do you wa-”
“I want both.”
151
Hobo John turned around to see a gun in his face. I
looked at Parker. He looked back with his eyes wide, and he
gestured toward the guy with the gun. I nodded. He looked
at the door and then I shook my head. I didn’t want to get
us shot, and this guy was sketchy. Hobo John stumbled back
into the cabinet under his sink and grabbed the two Tic Tac
containers that he kept his other product in. The guy stuck
them down into his pocket, turned towards the door, then
looked back at us again, as if he just figured out why we were
here too. He pointed the gun at Parker and asked him for all
his money, and Parker told him I had the money. When the
barrel of the gun was lowered to my head, my subconscious
took over. It felt like my entire being folded back into my
body and I could only think, as if I were paralyzed. All I saw
were images, vivid images, almost like I was dreaming while
the gun was pointed at my head, waiting for it to go off so I
could wake up.
*
*
*
The reflection of the sun off the sand made me squint, and I
remember not wanting to look aggravated as me and Amber
walked down the beach.
“You’re sure?” she asked.
“Yes.” That word lingered at the tip of my tongue, releasing the regret as is spilled out.
“I love you.”
“You too.” Our fingers intertwined as we walked down the
beach. It was one of those times when we were both squeezing each other’s hand trying to ease the pain—to make sure
we were both okay. We had a way about us where we knew
when one needed the other. It was even in the way we held
hands after making a big decision, like the one to keep an
accidental baby. I wasn’t thinking about being a father right
then, I could only think about Amber. Her long brown hair
was waving in the breeze fluttering around her shoulders—
beautiful. The saddest part was that I knew I would never see
152
her like that again. I loved seeing her so happy, but I wanted
to cry the whole time that we walked in silence. I tried to
hold back the tear from my cheek. I don’t know what it was,
it wasn’t a tear of sadness or happiness. It was more like a tear
that came about because of the change we had just accepted.
A beach ball came flying and hit me in the head and I
could hear an over-concerned mother apologizing immediately. I smiled, the moment was over, but I would always feel
it in my heart.
“It’s okay,” she said as she smiled and waved at the mother.
She looked back at me and her eyes glimmered in the sun.
*
*
*
I felt a hand inside my pocket, and I felt the wad of cash slip
out with it. Parker handed the money to the man with the
gun pointed at my head, and the gun went back into his pants
as he ran out the door.
“What the hell man!?” Parker was standing up now, looking down at me. “You and me both know that you should
have handed that shit over right away. Didn’t you see how
hard that guy was rollin’. Fuck! Sometimes I don’t know why
you come with me.”
It felt like my body was encased in ice and I needed to
break free to start moving again. “I’m sorry” were the only
two words I could muster up. I was still focused on the sensations of my body. I knew some obscure hormones probably
went wild in my brain and that’s what froze me. It made me
feel better that this was seemingly out of my control because
in the moment I didn’t need to think about the life decisions
surrounding me. For a moment I felt rather than thought.
Parker changed his concerns to Hobo John. “And who the
hell was that? Did you even know that guy, or have you started
dealing to randoms? You need to get your shit together man.”
“I was told he was cool, I swear” Hobo John responded.
Parker started walking towards the door. “Come on
Travis. We need to get out of here before another wack-job
153
shows up.” Parker had no clue what had just happened to me.
He didn’t know that our lives were going to separate after this
moment. My motor skills had improved, the hormones that
had paralyzed me must have flushed out because I stood up
to follow Parker down the steps.
“You drive.” I handed him the keys and sat down in
the passenger seat. I was in no condition to be driving. My
thoughts were still going wild. How was I going to explain
this to Amber? She won, and I was so proud that I didn’t even
want to tell her what happened at Hobo John’s place, but I
knew I had to.
I didn’t want my child to grow up like I did. My mother
walked out on me when I was little because she hated my father. I never understood why she didn’t take me with her. My
father wasn’t the worst, he was just absent most of the time
and forced me to figure out life myself. I could get myself arrested or killed any day, and I hadn’t realized it yet. I wasn’t
ready to be aware of my mortality, but this was the key difference between me and Parker; he knew it the whole time.
That’s why he lived the life he did. He wanted to experience
anything and everything that he could. That’s why he didn’t
have a kid on the way because I think it would limit him. I
knew it was going to limit me.
Parker looked over his shoulder at me for a moment before
he asked, “So really, what the hell was that back there?”
“I don’t know man. I got scared—I couldn’t react,” I
mumbled.
“Well next time you need to react. I can’t have my partner
acting up every damn day.”
I felt like a fool. I let my best friend and girlfriend down,
and now I had to decide who I was going to try and reconcile
with first.
“I think you should go to Savannah tonight and I’ll stay
in with Amber.”
Parker just continued to look at the road. I hoped that he
154
didn’t know what was going on, but he didn’t answer me so I
began to worry.
“You can take my car man. It’s no problem.”
“I know,” he said flatly. He wasn’t looking at the road like
it was an endless adventure, but like he was trying to avoid
my eye contact. He didn’t withdraw his eyes from their death
grip on the road, not even when we reached my place. I got
out of the car and didn’t say a word. This was the moment we
both knew that our time was ending, but we didn’t want to
say anything to each other about it. We just wanted to keep
looking out at the road wondering if we were making the
right decisions, but never asking each other.
155
christopher vanjonack
| The Night We All Played Dead |
Your whole body aching, you sit on the kitchen counter, back
pressed up against the wall and your legs dangling a little
above the ground. You’re tired, you’re hungry, you are holding an ice pack up against your swollen knuckles. The whole
apartment smells of something, but you aren’t sure what it
is. You’re never sure what it is, but it’s always there, always
omnipresent. “Keep a window open,” your house guests keep
telling you. “Air it out a little.” They add that tossing the pizza
boxes that have been piling up next to the waste bin might
help as well. They are stacked like Jenga tiles, the pizza boxes.
It is two in the morning.
Slouching like she always does in one of the kitchen
chairs, Jenny McCreary watches you, her eyes holding steady
on the splotch of red on your white t-shirt. She’s judging you
but she tries to keep it to herself. She is not surprised to be
sitting in your kitchen so late at night. It is not the first time
this has happened. She knew she would be driving to your
place the moment the ringer on her phone woke her up an
hour or so prior. She was expecting to hear your voice on
the other side of the line when she picked up the phone, had
her shoes on by the time you hung up. Jenny McCreary has
always been good like that, has always been reliable. “So,” she
says, finally, “Long night?” Her eyes never leave that splotch
on your shirt.
You glance down at it, then back up to her. “That’s not
blood,” you say, “It’s a Kool-Aid stain.”
“Your fists are bleeding.”
You look down at your hands, lifting up the ice pack and
stretching out all ten fingers. Your knuckles are red and they
sting to the touch. You try to think fast enough to come up
156
with some serviceable, preferably witty rebuttal but all that
comes to mind are some crass references to sexual fisting that
aren’t even clever to begin with. “Fisticuffs” you say only. “We
got into fisticuffs.”
“The bunch of you?”
“The bunch of us.”
“Shit, Henry.”
You shrug. She looks incredulous, shaking her head at
you like this is a surprise to her. You really did get into fisticuffs earlier that night but likewise that really is Kool-Aid on
your shirt. Kool-Aid stains are the most difficult to get out.
Even actual blood comes out easier. “If it makes you feel any
better, nobody got hurt.” you tell her. She tightens her suspicious gaze and so you retract but only a little by telling her,
“Well nobody went to the hospital, anyways.”
“What happened?” she asks.
“They jumped us.”
“They jumped you?”
“They jumped us” you repeat. It was not the first time you
have been jumped and it will by no means be the last. You
were a freshman the first time it happened. That first time it
really had just been coincidental, really wasn’t retaliation for
any previous misdeeds. You were hanging around a park one
night, with some buddies. Smoking shitty weed and standing
up against the chain-link fence to the local pool. In the middle of some innocuous conversation, a voice from behind the
fence and inside the pool grounds said something to you. The
voice made you jump, made you think of old ghost movies.
“Hey,” the female voice had said, “Hey some guys are coming
to get you.”
The few of you turned to see four shirtless, pants-less older boys running towards you. They wore polka dotted boxer
shorts. As they ran at you, you felt genuine fear for maybe the
first time in your life. Your heartbeat exploded. Your body
shook. You thought about how unreal it felt, but only for a
157
second, only briefly. There was no time to really think. One
by one they tackled each of you. You went down last, you
didn’t even fight it. You went limp, you went down like a sack
of potatoes. They held you all against the ground, by your
necks, made you all swear to God you wouldn’t tell anyone
that they had been trespassing on pool property, that they
had been skinny dipping in the chloride addled water.
You all swore to God you wouldn’t. You hadn’t even realized anyone had been skinny dipping to begin with.
That night you went home and laid down on the bed your
mother had set for you and you stared up at the ceiling and
you didn’t sleep at all. That had been real. That had been scary.
You are not jumped on accident anymore. It does not
scare you any longer. You always know who’s out to get you
now, who’s jumping your buddies, and you always know why
it’s happening and you are always ready for it. You always
have something witty to say locked away in the chamber,
saved special for each individual person who might want to
cause you bodily harm. You sort of enjoy it, when it happens.
You sort of look forward to it. A few months back you were
jumped on your way out of a Dunkin Donuts, on your way
back to your car late one night. You called the guy “Slim Jim”
because he was a thin looking guy and his name was Jimmy.
Wit is subjective. You told him you ate Slim Jims for breakfast.
“For breakfast?” he had said, and as he spoke you noticed
he was holding a knife at his side. “You’re crazy.” He eyed you
eyeing his knife and so he punched you in the face and then
you punched him in the stomach. He stumbled around for
a few seconds, gasping for breath and so you booked it. You
hopped into your car and sped off without so much as attaching your seatbelt. You blasted life affirming rock music as you
sped past a hundred stop signs.
Still frowning at you Jenny says, “It feels like you’re always
getting jumped.”
158
“Well I don’t tell you about the times I do the jumping.”
“You jump?”
“Like a God dammed leap frog.”
“Ha” she says, mocking laughter. You want to flirt with
her, you want to throw one liners back and forth, you want
to banter with her so hard the neighbors call in a noise complaint. She’s not having any of it though. She’s stressed out.
She’s worried about you. She’s wondering how many more
nights she can come to you in the middle of the night like
this before she starts seriously reconsidering her life choices.
She nods at you. “So what was it this time?” she asks.
“Do you really want me to get into it?” you ask her.
“No,” she says, pushing her dark black bangs away from
her eyes. She’s a grungy-looking girl. She’s got track marks
on her arms, she’s got tattoos crawling all over her body and
she’s got a jagged metal ring pierced through her left nostril.
She’s looked this way since high school. “I put pants on so
that you and I could play Hungry Hungry Hippos.”
“Please.” you say. “You know my board got messed up.”
It’s true. Your Hungry Hungry Hippos game was torn to shit
and torn to shreds by some hungry, hungry mutt a buddy of
yours brought over for a game night a while back. You were
pissed off when it happened. You loved the game. You always
played as the pink hippo. You told your friends that pink was
punk, but really you just liked the look of it.
“Battleship then” she says.
You nod at her. “B2” you say.
She ignores it. “So what happened?”
“Well first of all,” you tell her. “We didn’t start anything.
We weren’t even anywhere we shouldn’t have been.”
“Where were you?”
“We were going to wander around the trail by the gulch.
You know, the creek that runs by that old treehouse.”
“High?” she asks.
“Blazed” you say. “But we never even got to the trail. We
159
were walking down to it, just starting down that hill at the
end of Harrison Street. You know the one.” She listens carefully as you regale her. You tell her all about it. How there
were five of them to your three of you. You knew them from
way back, they’d gone to high school with you. You tell her
how they came up from behind, how they yelled something
first, how when you turned to face them you felt a little thrill
in the pit of your stomach. You wanted to dance, you were
so excited. They jumped on Jerry first and threw him to the
ground. You curled your fist into a ball and you punched one
of them in the face. Immediately you felt it in your knuckles. You might have cried out in pain if you weren’t so damn
excited about it. You told her how one of the guys tackled
you, threw you against the ground and shook you by the collar.
“And then,” you tell her, “We heard the police sirens.”
What you don’t tell her is how afraid you were.
Immediately, you tell her, you all dropped to the ground.
All of you. You and your friends and the guys who attacked
you. The guy who had been on top of you let go and rolled
off onto the dirt. He made himself flat, all of you did. And
then you all made yourselves as still as was humanly possible.
From just above the hill, really no more than a few dozen
feet away, you saw the flashing lights approaching, heard
the screams of the sirens. Finally the police car stopped. The
doors opened. The doors slammed. You all waited for them
to approach you, shine a flashlight on you all as you lay there
in the grass.
You don’t tell her how your heart stopped as you imagined the charges. Possession. Handling of the illegal firearm
you had concealed upon your person. Probably a myriad of
other charges. You don’t tell her how even though looking
back on it your fear didn’t make all that much sense, that
it had clicked perfectly at that moment. It was a sting, you
thought, it was a bust. They’d followed you or followed your
160
friends or followed the guys that tackled you. A cavalcade of
theories rushed through your head. You thought for sure that
was it. You thought for sure they would arrest you.
The fear that you felt, the sensation running through your
body reminded you mostly of that first night you got jumped,
reminded you of the half naked boys that ran at you and that
tackled you to the ground. Laying in the grass, your heart
pounded like the drum part to an AC/DC song as you waited
for the cops to come get you, come cart you off one by one.
They didn’t though. Instead, you told her, they walked up
to a baby blue colored house across the street. It was this oldlooking place with a quaint-looking porch. They knocked
on the door and an elderly-looking woman let them in. An
ambulance pulled up and parked behind the cop car. The
paramedics pulled a gurney out of the back and led it up a
driveway.
“And that whole time,” you tell her, “We all played dead.
We didn’t move.”
Some minutes later, the cops and the paramedics came
out of the house. “There was somebody on the gurney with
a blanket over his head,” you tell Jenny, “Dead, I guess. Some
older fellow, I guess. We all laid there in the grass a while longer, none of us so much as moving an inch until the cop car
and the ambulance were out of the neighborhood. And even
then it took us a while to stop playing possum.”
“And then?” Jenny asks.
You shrug. “And then nothing. And then now.”
Jenny nods a couple of times. She looks thoughtful. She
is always thoughtful. She is always thinking, always writing,
always reading, always observing all the characters in her
life. She writes poetry in her spare time and she recites it at
this place called Holly’s a little ways into town on the first
Friday of every month. And when she reads it she recites it
with a kind of rhythmic cadence and with a sort of quiet anger. She writes about herself, she writes about her friends,
161
she writes about all the supreme injustices in the world. She
writes about abstractions. She writes about oranges. “So everything’s fine?”
“Dandy.”
She shakes her head at you. You know what she’s thinking.
She’s thinking that you’re an idiot. She’s thinking that you’re
a damn fool. She cannot believe how unfazed you are. She
cannot believe how funny about it you are trying to be. She
cannot believe the state you are in. She cannot believe you
live like this. She cannot believe how you sit around all day,
and get by with as little work as possible and then almost get
yourself killed most nights. She does not know how shaken
you are. She does not know how hard you are trying to keep
your whole body from shaking, your hands, your legs, your
arms, your everything. “So why call me over?” she asks.
Because I’m scared, you want to tell her. Because tonight
was a close one. Because in that moment I really thought that
was it, that I’d be taken away, that I’d be tried, that my already
somewhat ruined life would be ruined even further. You want
to tell her that it’s because you love her. You want to tell her
that it’s because you’re starting to reexamine some of your life
choices too. You want to tell her that you just want to be with
someone, that you just want to hold someone you care about.
You don’t tell her any of that though. You shield it all through
a lens of irony and of wit and of banter, like you do, like you
always do. And so straight-faced but obviously sarcastic but
secretly sincere you say, “Lonely.” And you say it with a smile
so that she thinks that you’re joking. She smiles back. She’s
pretty sure you’re joking. But she’s not sure. She’s never sure.
She can never be sure, with you. “I am desperately, achingly
lonely.”
She looks at you knowingly. Already she knows where
you are going with this. She knows. She must know. She
must know this is another meaningless hookup. She must
know that you have booty called her. She must know that
162
this will be a one-and-done thing. She must know that this is
not serious. Still though, she delays it, delays what you both
know is inevitable. “It’s the 21st century, Henry. Jerk off to
something, if you’re lonely.”
“I’m not lonely,” you say back. “I’m desperately, achingly
lonely. There’s a difference.”
“And I’m the only cure?”
“Doctor’s orders.”
“Bullshit. You’re afraid of doctors.” She’s right. You trust
doctors the way you contribute to society, the way you have a
healthy relationship with your father. Hospitals give you the
creeps, doctors’ offices give you the willies. You don’t like the
creeps and you don’t like the willies. There’s something about
the feeling of the places that turns you off. They’re too subdued, they’re too sterile. Russian fiction is more vibrant than
the paint on the walls.
“Not the ones with needles.” You smile and hop off
the counter, leaving the ice pack behind, next to the sink.
You walk over to Jenny and take her hand, motion for her
to stand up next to you. She does so, but she doesn’t look
thrilled about it.
“Henry” she says.
“Jenny” you say. You put your hand against the skin of
her face and lean forward a little. She goes along with it, she
seems into it. You sort of wish she had debated it with you a
little longer, you had a great, “don’t sink my battleship” line
all locked and loaded. You kiss her on the lips and the sensation makes your mouth tingle. You keep your eyes open
because you want to see whether or not she closes hers. She
does, only opening them again once you’ve pulled away.
She says, “You taste like blood.”
You say, “I bite my lips when I’m nervous.” There is sarcasm in your voice. She knows it. She feels it. She kisses you
again anyways. It is not the first time this has happened. It
is a part of a cycle that she thinks she understands and that
163
you think that you have control over. Both of you are wrong.
You know you are both wrong. You have consensual sexual
intercourse with her that night. She does not know how good
it feels. She does not know how much you needed this. She
does not know that you love everything about her. She does
not know how hopeless you are but how scared you are by
what a change like that might mean.
She stays over that night. Normally you hate sharing a
bed with others. You like to roll around when you sleep.
Like a dog, like a five year old. This is impossible with another body next to you. You don’t mind so much with Jenny
though. Briefly, as you are both falling asleep you consider
holding her, wrapping your arms around her body. You don’t
though. It would be too different. Too much of a change. Instead you stare up at the ceiling like you did that first night
you were jumped. You hardly sleep. You keep thinking about
the sirens, you keep thinking about all the little ways it could
have gone wrong. You keep thinking about Jenny, you keep
thinking about fixing things, about putting it all in order.
In the morning she wakes up before you, just as the rising
sun is creeping through the cracked window blinds. You hear
her get up but you do not say anything. You do not move.
You keep your eyes fastened shut as she shuffles around your
bedroom. You hear her pull her pants up over her hips. You
hear her pull up the zipper.
“Henry” she says.
You don’t say anything. You just lay there, pretending to
be asleep. She comes over towards you and leans forward and
kisses you on the forehead. She leaves after that and closes
the door behind her. And even with her gone, you don’t get
up, you don’t move, you don’t open your eyes.
All the time it feels like, you are playing dead.
lyla maloney
| Childhood |
I was young and we were poorWhen my teeth were flies and my eyes both mud
there was that evil in my blood, that hate in my skin
itching and pressing with hot palms and sharp knees
against, against every movement and I was sick.
I was sick with the sick in my bones and my mother
loved me more than the desert and my
father loved the desert more than me
and everyone tried to tell me this mattered
more than it ever did, more than
the wickedness of growing up with a tight belly
and bare feet by the sea rather than up against
trailers and red sand and skinny mad dogs;
they said it was wickedness with the wrong type of poverty
the mango trees and fleas and swearwords in a and when I was older and the flies fell out white and small
and the mud dripped, stains marking each year
164
foreign tongue
further down
165
we came to the desert and my feet bled and that hate in my skin
glowed dark at night and I steamed in the sun and
there was beauty found in the stars spilled on the night sky
like salt on a tablecloth, in the breads and cans we’d gather from the
church drives, in the stiff white shoes and blisters
resulting, there was beauty
and eventually you learn to no longer be young and tight bellied and greasy haired
eventually you learn that love in a place can mean more
than children and the way they breathe after crying
eventually you learn your blood and your bones and skin
house more than insects and dirt and all that hate
and all that sick
leave yourself out in the sun to cure
the dead’s voices will come with the wind and say:
“I had it worse”
“I had it worse”
“I had it worse”
166
lyla maloney
| Noah and the Ark |
“When I died it was morning
the infant sun created discs
of bright between the trees leaves where
I stood
in the new light
and yawned
and smashed together tiny jewel colored lizards
under my feet along with half gone
cigarettes
Afterwardsburying bodies, kissing rocks, worshipping idols made of mudI collected the star shaped fruits, tubular pink roots, soft docile birds that littered
the path to the city gate
it was all springing from the earth newborn
afterthoughts from the creator placed in
the body of some sweet fleshed food. The
rains began
before I ever reached the gates
and I tried to outrun it but
the stink of my skin was too strong for it to lose.
So I ran towards the old man and his old family
instead and
the ship
that was so big it was like a bruise on my eyes
whenever I looked at it from my trees.
167
The hull was closed when I got there
beasts hissed and purred and whumped-thumped against
the insides of the construction
and how were they- in all their filth and flesh and hate and death- any more evil than I
ever was?
And yet and yet
hurling the fruit, I knew, hurling the roots and the birds at it, I knew
divining it from the blood, juice, pulp, feathers
that seeped in with the mud pockets beneath my feet,
and I sank with it still knowing
The sun shining through dark swollen clouds.
The world rubbed raw and wet.”
| Contributor Notes |
jacob adler: Jacob is a junior Political Science major with
minors in Business and Environmental Affairs. He brings his
camera with him as he journeys through life with the ultimate goal of sticking it to The Man.
jessica allaire: Jessica Allaire was born in Phoneix, Arizona and lives in Fort Collins, Colorado. She is currently a
senior at Colorado State University studying creative writing.
Her interests include dancing to the Wii, painting like Vincent van Gogh, sugar, getting swept up in a television series
and having the occasional margarita.
summers baker: Summers Baker is studying creative writing at CSU as a sophomore. He is well aware of the implications.
c. john eeckius: C. John Beckius is a Literature major and
tattoo parlor janitor.
jason brim: Jason is a sophomore at Colorado State University pursuing a degree in creative writing and psychology. He
enjoys hiking, climbing, and disc golf -generally just being
with nature.
micah caputo: Micah finished his four years in the Air Force
and came to CSU to study Creative Writing on the GI Bill. He
thanks you for reading.
jessica crowder: Jessica Crowder is a 4th year Geology Major with a minor in Environmental Affairs and a minor in
Global Environmental Sustainability. She enjoys the outdoors, and hopes to visit all of the National Parks in the
United States.
168
169
molly davidson: Molly Davidson, a Colorado grown writer, studies English and Philosophy at CSU. On relaxed days,
she enjoys drinking chai and making dream-catchers.
shawn gavlick: Shawn is a bachelor of fine arts student with
a concentration in photography, and will be graduating in
the spring of 2013. Influenced by abstract photographers but
mainly Barbra Kasten, most of his art emulates Kasten’s style
of abstract constructions in a studio environment using similar techniques and materials.
gabriel johnson: Gabriel Johnson is a sophomore Creative
Writing major at CSU. In his free time he maintains a blog at
marblespine.com.
josh keen: Josh Keen is a Senior English Major who doesn’t
like staying in one place.
alexandra lake: Alexandra is that dandelion in society’s
garden-variety greenhouse.
isis lanigan: Isis is a senior Art major graduating in Spring
2013. She loves to take pictures of people, places and other
things depending on what the situation brings.
nicholas levack: Nicholas Alexander LeVack is a sophomore English creative writing major. Though primarily a fiction writer, Nicholas enjoys dabbling in poetry, nonfiction
and sports journalism – specifically professional wrestling. He
draws inspiration from observing peculiar social dynamics,
nature and, though not yet reflected in his work, the digitalphysical duality by which modern people experience life.
170
flannery lier: Flannery Lier is a fifth-year English major
studying Literature and Creative Writing. When she isn’t
writing poems about Paleo-Indians and Neolithic artifacts,
you can find her knitting socks and watching unhealthy
amounts of bad TV.
lyla maloney: Lyla Maloney is a senior Fine Art major with
an English minor. Her interests include outer space, indexing
her favorite YouTube comments, and writing screeds on tunnel walls about archipelagos and other things.
drew mccaffrey: Drew is a Creative Writing Major.
abigail mcdonald: Abigail is a senior English and Spanish
double major with a minor in Latin American Studies. She
is intrigued by family folklore and myth, which show up as
themes in her writing. When not in class or writing poetry,
she makes your lattes.
caitlyn metzer: Caitlyn Metzer is a senior Honors student
double majoring in English and Communication Studies.
She is an avid student, scholar, and storyteller. In the future
she hopes to continue writing all types of literature, particularly creative nonfiction and screenwriting.
michael morrow: Michael Morrow is a native Colorado
poet. His influences are firmly grounded in French poetry,
including Cendrars and Apollinaire.
lane moseley: Lane Moseley is a poetry writer living in Fort
Collins, Colorado. He will be graduating this May with a degree in English and a concentration in Creative Writing.
171
richard muller: Richard Muller is a senior graduating
in graphic design and theatre. He has had art work in the
Museum of Art store at CSU and the Experimental Cinema
Exhibition at the Art Center of Fort Collins. Richard had designed many posters for the University Center for the Arts
performances in music theater and dance. He has used his
education in art and theatre to design for theatre shows, including directing for the CSU production of “Giants Have Us
in Their Books” and projections design for the CSU senior
fall dance concert.
emily pancoast: Emily Pancoast is a third-year English
major concentrating in creative writing. She enjoys watching 90s television and reading the classics.
duncan parks: Duncan is a junior study drawing and
graphic design. He makes work by studying systems, structures, materials and technology.
elizabeth patterson: Elizabeth is currently working towards a degree in English. She enjoys horror films and thrift
stores.
quinn scahill: Quinn Scahill is a senior Creative Writing
Major from Omaha, Nebraska. He plans on never growing
up or succumbing to old age.
elizabeth shelley: This is Elizabeth’s second year at CSU
and she is an English major with a Creative Writing concentration. She enjoys being outdoors and is therefore doing
some Natural Resources work at CSU as well. Her favorite
travel destination is Yellowstone National Park where she
loves to hike, sight-see, and watch wildlife. She also loves
tapirs.
172
tyanna slobe: Tyanna Slobe is a senior at Colorado State.
She is double majoring in English Linguistics and Spanish
and triple minoring in Anthropology, Linguistics and Culture, and Latin American and Caribbean studies. Tyanna is
all about girl power.
elizabeth strait: Elizabeth is a senior at CSU majoring in
English with concentrations in Writing and Creative Writing
and is also minoring in General Philosophy. She loves reading Palahnuik, Vonnegut, and Orwell and suspects they are
the cause of the cynicism that tends to permeate her writing.
She also giggles uncontrollably at puppies.
zach trabona: Zach Trabona is a junior English major
with a concentration in creative writing. He enjoys morning strolls through the park and reading the dictionary while
listening to classical music.
mikhail twarogowski: Mikhail Twarogowski was raised
by artists and television and grew up making things with his
hands. He is currently a freelance web designer, cartoonist,
designer and illustrator, and when he gets the chance, potter.
kylie vanderheiden: Kylie is a senior Art major with a
concentration in Graphic Design. She is also minoring in
Information Science & Technology. She grew up in Fort Collins and attended Tavelli Elementary, CLP Junior High, and
Poudre High School. After graduating, she hopes to move to
the city and pursue a career in graphic design.
chris vanjonack: Chris Vanjonack is studying English
Education at Colorado State University. He is interested in
creative writing and slam poetry.
173
bailey weickum: Bailey Weickum is a senior graduating
from the college of liberal arts with a degree in English Literature. Her poetry is a life of sentiments collected in dusty
mason jars.
shelby williamson: Shelby Williamson is a junior at CSU
majoring in Creative Writing and English Education. She
hopes to travel abroad to various countries after graduation
in order to teach English as a second language as well as provide experience for her writing. Her favorite book is between
Wuthering Heights and Jurassic Park.
christian yepello: Christian has recently returned from
studying clarity of moments at the College Of Misinterpreted
Beliefs and Cosmic Beauty School. He is in rapid pursuit of
becoming the first philosopher to ever distinguish the similarity between plotinian monism and solar power.
| Appreciation |
Greyrock Review would like to express appreciation to all
of the people, businesses, and organizations that ensured the
success of this journal.
Thanks to the businesses that provided us with venues
for fundraising and readings, including Bean Cycle, Equinox
Brewing, and Cafe Mexicali. Greyrock Review appreciates all
of the local businesses, sponsors, and donors that contributed raffle prizes and monetary donations towards our publishing costs, as well as Go West T-Shirts.
Greyrock Review would like to recognize Mikhail
Twarogowski for designing both logos for the journal. We
couldn’t be happier with them.
Special thanks to Stephanie G’Schwind, editor at the Colorado Review, for her sage design advice and for acting as a
final pair of eyes before printing.
174
175