Spring 2011 Issue

stylus

STYLUS Spring 2011

STYLUS Volume 125, Number 1, SPRING 2011. Founded in 1882.

Undergraduate members of the University are invited to submit original works of poetry, prose, and art. Direct correspondence to: Stylus, Room 129, McElroy Commons, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 or bcstylus@gmail.com. Works under review remain anonymous. Copyright 2011 Stylus Editorial Board, 2010-2011. All rights reserved.

Bostonese STYLUS TO ADOPT “QUIA CENTRO” ADMISSIONS PROCESS In order to ensure the highestquality magazine, Stylus will now offer an online submissions format similar to the Quia Centro website used by Boston College’s Romance Language Department. Submitters will be asked to re-do their submissions if their poems do not match the correct poems, which will be inputted by Stylus’ editors.

However, anyone caught copying the poems will be rejected and banned from Stylus for life.

just don’t know who in my life can replace that tone of barely-restrained fury,” Stephen explained. “What? That’s stupid. I’m not answering that,” said Jill, before click-clacking briskly down the hallway.

JILL AND STEPHEN BID FAREWELL TO VIOLENT DISAGREEMENT Graduating Seniors Stephen Lovely and Jill Forgash shed a few tears as they walked out of their final Stylus meeting. “I

SENIOR EDITOR’S CORNER

By Molly Shotwell, Senior Editor

TEQUILA CAKE AT STYLUS Stylites enjoyed tequila-infused cake at a recent meeting, with serious consequences. By the end of the meeting, editor Katrin Tschirgi was dancing around with a lampshade on her head, and accidentally voted for several pieces by Keith Noonan.

Sorry guys, I’ve got this other thing, I can’t really write the column this week.

4

STYLUS Volume CXXV Bostonese

Spring, 2011

4

Number 1 Staff

Verse Making Faces The Hero purplish court song Safety Lesson Empty Road Leaving It Behind Outside Your Funeral Return Address Up (we go!)

II Suicide South and North La Tempête Why I Admire the Flies at Panda Garden Piñata My Father-in-Law’s Kitchen I Ought to Give My Poems Legs Nanny I Was Once an Otter Girl Alternative Titles for an Anatomy Poem Reasonable Doubt Threadbare What I did today Storm Last June Ash and Berry

8 10 11 18 19 31 35 48 49 51 55 56 71 72

Joseph DeNatale Jordan Dorney James Parkington Ruth O’Herron Elizabeth Kulze Joseph Baron Jack Neary Madeline Rose McSherry Keith Noonan Ruth O’Herron Lauren Audi Elizabeth Kulze Katrin Tschirgi Myles Gerraty

74 88

Rich Hoyt Madeline Rose McSherry

90

Michael Wolf

93 97 107

Elizabeth Kulze Bernadette Gaffney Myles Gerraty

116 118 121 122 133

Jack Neary Sarah Beck Joseph DeNatale Madeline Rose McSherry Suzannah Lutz

Storm and Port The Neva Approaching Winter Two Pilgrims at Haridwar The Day I Ran Out of Paper Japan/Her Spirit G-Night brother and i

134 137

Myles Gerraty Ashley Schneider

140 141

Christina Reardon Rich Hoyt

143 144 146

Trotter LaRoe Alice Ma Ruth O’Herron

Prose Rapid Transit Sundowning Banana Chips and Wasabi Peas The Long Ride Home 1800-CALL-4LUV Quicksand Silver Creek Clean Slate In the Running Unclaimed Luggage Swampland

12 21 36

David Kunkel Caitlin Moran Zak Jason

52 59 78 99 108 124 138 149

James Parkington Tracy Rizk Terrance Brown Katrin Tschirgi Keith Noonan Michael Wolf Lena Park Stephen Thomas

Art float Despite Being Covered ...

Urban Music City Stroll Trapped in White Get Free Wilderness Ultimately He’ll Ruin You

Cover 9 14 17 20 23 27 30

Jill Forgash Robert Ventura Meghan Mazza Michael Wolf Meghan Borah Courtney Allessio Nina Stingo Sarah Beck

Riddle in the Sky Untitled Stork Just Relax Dying Swan Dancing Dylan Butterfly Untitled MARIANNE...

Untitled Untitled Untitled Bamboo Shades of Blue Cowboy Hoyt Untitled Girl Staring Contests Pescado Untitled Untitled Untitled Untitled Untitled Still Life with Apples Through the Looking Glass Untitled #3 Hamburger Man...

Moving On Playing Untitled Hilary Starfruit Untitled After Hable con Ella Pitti Pitti Palace Earth

33 34 38 41 44 47 50 54 58 63 66 70 73 77 80 84 87 89 92 96 98 101 103 105 106 110 112 117 120 123 125 128 131 132 136 142 147 148

Jill Forgash Ericka Schubert Ngoc Doan Michael Wolf Zamin Hussain Rebecca Nelson Ali Letendre Adrian Tatro Jill Forgash Bailey Budd Sade Garvey Charles Long Ngoc Doan Meghan Mazza Ericka Schubert Adrian Tatro Devon Zimmerman Courtney Allessio Meghan Borah Nina Stingo Charles Long Marissa Kaplan Devon Zimmerman Bailey Budd Sade Garvey Amelja Kukli Meghan Mazza Jasmine Rebadavia Robert Ventura Andrea Kisiel Meghan Borah Sade Garvey Ericka Schubert Ngoc Doan Bailey Budd Courtney Allessio Daniel Radin Nina Stingo

Making Faces I would find them on the shower curtain in the upstairs bathroom that screen we hide our nakedness behind ornamented with dull repeating patterns depicting an underwater scene full of little striped fish and other lonely aquatic creatures.

I searched its flank countless times while straining on the cold porcelain until each human face would pop into a bursting of form: two eyes, a hole for a mouth, perhaps a scaly nose or wisps of seaweed hair before sinking just as quickly back into the rippled depths.

Sometimes on long office days brimming with sighs and sideways glancing, I find myself staring at plastered ceilings or fake, wood-grained desk tops hoping that two eyes and a mouth will rise to the surface and magically float into place.

Joseph DeNatale

8

Despite Being Covered In Vines, The Boognish People Eagerly Await The Arrival Of Hamburger Man (Who Just So Happens To Be Their God And Presidential Czar)

9

Robert Ventura

The Hero The hero’s always dying, and what’s more, he’s always dead.

At once in tragic toil wept, at once in misty bed— The hero’s always gone before or going as we speak So always past his deft deeds are and always we are weak.

Two weeks before last Sunday was the greatest age of man.

The fittest man that ever fought will never come again, But oh how valiantly he fought and how he spoke aloud And how he stood above it all and how he slew the proud!

Oh wherefore was I born to such a dreary week as this, When none in God’s creation may with Honor’s arms enlist!

But who were Hero’s heroes and what deeds did they attain And how should our own hero fare with Them but rotten plain?

Or the hero’s heroes’ Heroes o’er the gods of heaven flew, Or there never were—there never were!—but men like me and you.

Jordan Dorney

10

purplish i have a red brick heart and a blue wall next to me— the other side of which i have not seen in ages. when he’s lonely god will stop by my cozy little room— he always says the same thing. “i have a blue wall below me and a red brick heart— the other side of which i have not seen in ages. when i’m really bored i create and destroy to prove i’m no guitar string.”

James Parkington

11

Rapid Transit David Kunkel

“So then Charlie said some sort of Charlie thing, you know.

“That can’t have helped.”

I shook my head enthusiastically. “No, no it didn’t. Before he even stopped talking, she’d already asked us to leave.”

“What?” Julie laughed. “What did he say?”

“I wish I could remember. It wasn’t even that funny, though, just really offensive.”

“So what’d you do?”

“Nothing, I mean, what can you say to that? We just got up and left.” I kept shaking my head and joined in laughing a little, doing my best to look sheepish.

“Okay, you were right. That is a good story,” she said.

“I told you, anything about getting kicked out of an Applebee’s is bound to be comedic gold. It’s like the number-one rule of entertainment.”

“You’re so funny.” She flashed her bright white teeth at me, and for a second I wondered about my chances that night, but I beat those thoughts away. I’m not that kind of guy, sometimes my mind just, well, has a mind of its own. It wouldn’t have been worth worrying about anyway – we still had a ways to go before my stop.

I adjusted my shirt as an excuse to move a little closer. The subway rattled, shaking back and forth on the rails, and I was so offbalance that I fell into her. I shot her an apologetic glance, as if to say it hadn’t been on purpose, but when I sat back up I let our legs stay slightly tangled. I felt like I had the first time we’d made love.

We’d been together a year, or a couple weeks. Off and on, night and day, fire and ice, that was us, never hating enough to end it or loving enough to begin it. So instead, we toyed with each other, together again, apart again, a constant cycle. It kept us fresh and exciting. Exotic.

“I can still taste that ravioli. You should’ve tried some, it was delicious,” she said.

“I was a little too absorbed in my own meal. It was a good choice all around.”

“We should come out here more often. I don’t mind the subway that much.”

“That’s because it’s almost empty tonight. I’m surprised it’s not more crowded around now. I bet we’d usually be standing,” I 12

said.

“Still. It’s so much fun out here.”

We yelled most of our conversation. The train shuddered and clanked loudly every few seconds, like it was on the verge of falling apart. I couldn’t tell where exactly we were. The tunnel outside was pitch black, the strips of otherworldly lights mere blurs. It made the light inside look especially artificial.

Other than us, the only passengers were a man in a suit clutching a newspaper tightly over his face and an old woman holding a bag about twice her size. She’d dozed off, her eyes closed and head bobbing up and down unnaturally.

Julie’s dress shifted with the subway car and drew me into it.

Her lips glistened with red, and her earrings twinkled. I slid my hand to her leg.

She giggled. “What’s gotten into you tonight?” she asked.

“I don’t know. You look fantastic.”

She leaned her head toward mine and thanked me. We smiled. Both of us could tell, it was just one of those nights.

Our hands clasped, a promise of what was to come, and we existed contentedly for a moment.

A minute later, the subway jolted harshly, making my teeth chatter, refusing to let us forget where we were. Lights and barely visible graffiti flew past, embedding themselves briefly in my mind.

I wanted to be outside, somewhere the fluorescence wouldn’t flatten our skin and illuminate our pores. We were excited, eager to step off the hulking machine, and only the grime of public transportation subdued us.

I tried to rest my cheek on her hair, but the car shook violently again, clacking our skulls together. I leaned away again and stared forward.

The bottom of my foot itched.

After a little while, Julie said, “Have you ever wondered what would happen if the subway broke down?”

“Not really. Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to worry about it. I’m sure we’d be fine.

They wouldn’t let anything happen to us.”

“No, I know. It’s not that. But – we’d be stuck here.”

“Mm.” We squeezed our hands a little tighter.

The train pulled to a stop, and the man with the newspaper 13

Meghan Mazza

Urban Music

14

got off.

When we were moving again, I kissed her on the cheek.

She turned and looked into my eyes, and I could see the gears in her head whirring. I changed my focus to her mouth, slightly parted and slightly not, and we breathed at each other for a couple minutes.

She leaned in so close that my eyes crossed, and we brushed lips lightly.

A quiet voice said, “You look just like my daughter.”

We started and jolted apart. A middle-aged man watched us. With our eyes fused shut and lips fused together, we hadn’t even noticed him get on. We almost felt bashful, but instead, we were confused.

“What?” asked Julie, her tone nearly angry.

“My daughter. You remind me of her.” The man’s eyes followed us blankly and he said everything in a slow, remorseful tone. I doubted he was more than fifteen years older than us. His clothes were in tatters, and his dirty, unkempt hair made me think he might’ve just come from a homeless shelter. He probably didn’t even have a daughter.

“Look, sir, I don’t–” I began, but he cut me off.

“My daughter,” he repeated, staring at Julie pleadingly. “My daughter.”

Neither of us could say anything. We just stared back, the soft echoing of “daughter” timed with the clanging of the tracks so his words were only barely audible. The subway and the man, talking, charging, refusing to let us go.

And then, the subway hit yet another kink in the tracks, forcing the man’s gaze to me for a moment. As if a spell had been lifted, Julie said, “I’m not your daughter.”

The man stood up and ran his hands through his hair, then moved down the aisle and sat across from the old, sleeping woman.

“You look just like my daughter,” he told her.

Seconds later, we arrived at our stop and stepped off. I hadn’t even asked Julie to come with me, but she clearly didn’t want to stay on the subway much longer. We shoved our way through the turnstiles and around the snaking, maze-like stairs, desperate to be out in the air again.

As we walked back to my place, I loudly said, “See? Now there’s a funny story for you.”

Julie didn’t laugh.

“Like Applebee’s,” I muttered.

15

Continuing down the sidewalk, we shuffled our feet, heads braced against the wind. We could see our breath.

“Poor guy,” I said.

She stayed silent.

Other than the rustling of our clothes, the rest of the walk passed quietly. From time to time, I made an effort to send her a knowing, pitying glance, but our hands didn’t touch anymore, and when we arrived at my apartment, we sat down on the wooden chairs in the kitchen, gazing at each other blankly.

A light bulb flicker later, she stood up. “I think I should leave,” she said, her first words since the subway. “I’m sorry, this just doesn’t feel right anymore.”

For some reason, I felt like I’d been expecting it. I followed suit and rose. “Julie, wait,” I said, grabbing her arm. She looked at me, whether sad or angry I couldn’t tell.

I guided her to the bedroom, desperate, but not for anything really, just to hold onto her, to keep her there. We stayed there for a long time, until I was sure she wouldn’t leave.

I rolled away from her and onto the mattress, and we both lay on the bed, watching the ceiling fan spin.

16

City Stroll

Michael Wolf

17

court song judge me like grammar. use my ways like the rolls and undulations of your tongue

to speak to me the things you love. fight with them and me like broken bones

to healing so our skin – so-printed – so elastic, soft – will do you good. appraise me like a thing as foreign as the languages we’ll never learn,

as beauty full and thick-skinned. like a relative of words and women,

kin, I swear I’ll meet you at the crossroads. down here where skin is hip

there are

for snow.

no words at all

Ruth O’Herron

18

Safety Lesson There had been a pool, we were told, until they filled it with cement, tried to forget what happened.

I imagined only the moments before— your spider legs kicking up sandstorms, head swirling at the playful newness like a barber shop beacon.

It was a moment awaited like spring’s glow, shifting clouds, sunscreen, here was a true playground.

Your dark singular face was the new play-set, shining like the steel flat of slides, each white child huddled atop unsure of your strange glitter.

I like to believe I would have been the girl who took your arm, the pigtailed peacemaker who showed you where the chalk was kept, which kids to stay away from.

The whole yard was an electric glare in lunchtime sun, and curiosity your only navigator through the rainbow storm of ribbons, jumpers, jump ropes.

Even a pool! Lapis lazuli laid into stone on the backside of the building, clear enough for crystal-gazing, and you, the peering visionary, digging into it with hopes of seeing something, an image like the liberated movement of a coy fish.

Only here is where they made you a safety lesson, your wonder dangerous, that childlike symptom of deprivation.

You had stared too deep, immersed yourself in the shining thing until it swallowed you, filled you up like a rubber ball kicked over the fence, floating.

Elizabeth Kulze 19

Trapped in White

Meghan Borah 20

Sundowning Caitlin Moran

After a State Trooper found Bill walking along the guardrail on Route 9, about two miles from Busy Mart, where he had last been seen, and with no memory of how he had gotten there, his only child Rachel moved back Upstate to care for him.

Rachel, twenty-eight, worked at a management consulting firm, specializing in retail and business banking. They liked her at the firm, valued her. She knew how to compartmentalize, how to plan and sort. She stayed cool and smiled, but didn’t give an inch when she didn’t want to. She always wore appropriate scarves. When she told her boss she had to take time off, that her father was sick, he just nodded gravely and told her she could do some work from home if she wanted. Rachel knew other consultants, especially women, who hadn’t gotten such an easy response from the boss. She suspected she fared better because Bill and her boss were almost the same age.

“But won’t you be so bored?” her mother asked, when Rachel called her from a rest stop in Oswego to explain what she was doing.

Her mother lived in Sacramento now and designed handbags. “There is nothing to do up there. You’re used to the city, you won’t know how to manage.”

Rachel wasn’t worried about boredom. This was just another task, another project. She had resources and goals. She had done research, and she was prepared, or at least as prepared as possible, she thought.

Bill’s house, on the outskirts of Red Creek, was set back from the road in a copse of pine trees, a two-story cabin with a wide back deck and a rotted-out shed covering the rusted shell of an ancient lawnmower. Around the shed hung Bill’s assortment of unnecessarily complicated bird feeders, and beyond that a hiking trail led down to a little green pond. It wasn’t the house Rachel had grown up in. Her parents divorced when she was nine, and Bill bought the old cabin and began fixing it up, as a side project, while he lived in an apartment behind the railroad trestle in town. In high school, when Rachel still lived with her mother, she spent summers at the cabin. She knew its odd creakings and whisperings, which doors stuck and why, how the cupboards smelled like stale ginger snaps and applesauce. She hadn’t been thrilled when Bill moved out there alone; the closest neighbors were a mile and a half away, and Rachel knew her father would need neighbors in the coming years, though she didn’t antici21

pate how soon.

Bill was 63. Rachel didn’t know people that young could get Alzheimer’s. Early-onset, the doctor had said. It’ll come and go. It did, as unpredictably as the late fall thunderstorms that flooded the pond and turned the driveway into a swamp regardless of what the weather forecast said. Some days he asked Rachel, quite seriously, if he had any children. Other days he made himself coffee, shaved, and dressed, then read the paper, bemoaning how many days remained until spring training began—during these lucid times he always knew the exact number of days, and repeated the number with such ferocious passion that Rachel wondered if anything was wrong with him at all.

She encouraged him, out of a doomed hope that baseball would keep him sane. Bill had an entire room packed with memorabilia: autographed balls, limited-edition bats, game-worn spikes and batting gloves, faded bobbleheads and cards and World Series programs, helmets and creased ticket stubs. Rachel knew that these collectibles were rare and important, though she couldn’t care about them with a fraction of her father’s fervor. She didn’t know much about baseball, but Bill was so obsessed that she had picked up some terminology from him, the way certain sweaters accumulate lint. She understood now, though it had never been articulated, that her father’s most consuming desire had been to have a child he could coach to play catcher, his position in high school and junior college. Rachel had been dogged throughout her childhood with a vague feeling of failure. When her father wanted baseball, she picked gymnastics, and later orchestra, basketball, swimming, Quiz Bowl, even Garden Club for a semester. Her father never said anything to her, not once; he came to every game when he wasn’t working nights, even swim meets in Munsons Corners, for all intents and purposes the end of the world, and never complained. Rachel was a cool competitor, and she succeeded, Made Her Parents Proud, as everyone said. But not quite, not enough. The drifts of silent disappointment threatened to bury her, but if she didn’t acknowledge them, if she stubbornly kept her chin above them, she thought she could fight through them.

*

After the first snowfall of the season, a rousing lake-effect storm that dumped a foot on anyone within twenty miles of Lake Ontario and swathed the cabin in thigh-high drifts, Rachel took her father’s 22

Get Free

Courtney Allessio

23

truck into town. She stopped at the Big M and bought a crate of oranges, eggs, milk, shredded wheat, bread, and five pounds of coffee.

She and Bill both drank it black—she had started in college as an affectation and gradually developed a taste for it. From the hardware store she picked up a bag of birdseed for the innumerable feeders and wood polish for the kitchen cabinets, which were growing dingy.

Running errands refreshed her, smoothed out the lines on her forehead. The grocery bags cradled in her arms were consolingly heavy.

An outward sign of order. The online forums told her that it was important she stay collected, for her own sake. Making grocery lists helped. So did cleaning. Bill appreciated it, or at least she thought so.

“Will you bring me home something if I’m good?” he had asked as she put on her coat and gloves. He had smiled cheekily; a lucid day. “Maybe there’s something from your to-do list I can help you with?”

She pulled through the drive-thru at Tim Horton’s and bought a Danish as a treat for him.

When she arrived home, she found Bill sitting at the kitchen table, holding a green-and-blue plaid scarf in his hands. She vaguely recognized it from her childhood, when her father woke up and left the house in the dead of night to drive a state snowplow. The scarf was his talisman, protection from all variety of harms: deer, slippery roads, wayward pedestrians.

She set the food and the birdseed and the wood polish down on the counter without speaking.

“I don’t remember how I used to tie it,” Bill said finally, frowning. “I used to have the perfect way of wrapping and tucking it, so it kept my throat warm but wasn’t bulky.”

He wanted to shovel a path to the back shed, he explained, and needed something around his neck. Rachel took the scarf in her hands. It was tatty around the edges and pilled, faded and in some places rubbed stiff. It gave off a faint sense of gasoline and cigarette smoke, though she didn’t remember her father ever smoking. She couldn’t decide whether she would be a better daughter if she bought him a new scarf or let him keep the old one, as a link to sinking and soon-inaccessible memories.

Bill decided to call Dev, one of his Department of Transportation buddies, to see if he remembered. Rachel found his name in the dog-eared address book, and handed the phone to her father. Dev was an affable, beer-bellied Italian living outside Syracuse with his wife, around the corner from their kids and grandkids. Rachel gathered this 24

from the opening few minutes of conversation—Bill had the phone’s volume turned up as high as it would go. She remembered Dev from her father’s work parties and the minor-league baseball games that Bill begged and pleaded and needled Rachel and her mother to attend, the games that left Rachel sunburnt in odd places and queasy from the hotdogs.

Dev knew the scarf well enough—“You’re still wearing that scummy old thing?” he asked Bill, half-jokingly—but couldn’t remember Bill’s intricate knot.

“Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll ask Sylvia if she has any pictures of it. She has whole albums of pictures from Christmas parties, Christ, I don’t even remember going to these things. No one ever looks at the albums anyway, it’ll be good to get some use out of them.”

Dev passed the phone to his wife Sylvia, who had rustled up the photos from the corner of their dank basement, she said, where it was lucky the mold hadn’t destroyed them. Sylvia was a talker, and Rachel watched her father grow uneasy, then overwhelmed, then panicked, at the velocity of her words. She took the phone without Sylvia realizing, and listened politely while Sylvia described what she called a clove hitch. Rachel wrapped the scarf around a chair leg and tried to twist and pull in the directions Sylvia told her to. In the meantime, Bill had disappeared. Rachel left the scarf and brought the phone to the window. Bill had trudged a path through the snow to the shed without a shovel, and now stood about twenty feet away from it, with a cracked soap bucket full of brown baseballs at his feet.

Rachel set down the phone while Sylvia chattered away and watched as he wound up and hurled a ball at the side of the shed. A few balls bounced back off the crumbling wood; others disappeared in the depths of the snow, and one clanged off the lawnmower and knocked a slab of rust onto the ground. She stood at the window and watched and watched. One of the balls splintered the door of the shed so hard wood went spraying in a five-foot circle. She watched until he ran out of balls and it had grown dark.

Baseballs. She could get more at the hardware store in town— there was no way he could find them in the snow now— though she wasn’t sure they would have baseballs in winter. He might have to wait until summer came. There was a league in Red Creek that began in May, and they might be willing to come up and play catch with him once the snow melted.

Rachel realized Bill and his empty bucket were gone, but 25

before she could begin to panic she heard the mudroom door slamming, the stamping of her father’s boots on the tile. She needed to go write down everything she had just planned before she forgot it, and put tea on, Bill would be cold. He would want dinner soon, too.

She took one last look at the listing old shed and ripped a piece of her pinkie nail off so hard the flesh underneath began to bleed.

*

On a gray afternoon in early March, when the charcoal trees made long shadows on the kitchen floor and Rachel felt especially grim, she called her mother to learn the other half of her medical history.

“We LeClare women, we’re healthy,” her mother said. “My grandmother lived to 95, never spent a night in the hospital, died in her sleep. And the men, it’s usually heart attacks. The beer gets them.

They die young, but they go out with a bang, you know? None of this mental crap like on your father’s side.”

“That’s not fair, Mom.” “You’re not going to be able to live up there and care for him forever. You have your own life, your own job. I know you don’t want to do it, honey, but eventually you’re going to have to put him in a home.”

“He has a home right now, and he’s in it.”

“Don’t get cute, Rachel. How long do you think they’re going to hold that cushy job of yours? And you’re not a nurse, for God’s sake. Just wait until he gets worse.”

Rachel knew that her mother was right, as her mother in her own way usually was. Once Bill’s motor function went, Rachel wouldn’t be able to help him to the bathroom, or carry him to his bed if he fell down. But if she moved him to New York with her and put him in a home—he wasn’t a city person, and he never had been, and taking him away from Red Creek, the only place that he loved, when he was so vulnerable, seemed gratuitous until it was vitally necessary. Rachel just wasn’t sure she would know when she couldn’t hold out any longer.

She tried to watch for patterns, which was exactly what all the books told her not to do. Bill grew depressed and silent, sunk into himself; then without warning, he would start cooking an elaborate meal with a delighted energy that Rachel had never seen in him before. Sometimes he was angry, other times as blank as the iced26

Wilderness

Nina Stingo

27

over pond. Rachel grasped at clues, at signs she thought could lead her to greater understanding. But the pit into which her father was being pulled was not a place that allowed probing visitors. It wasn’t a place she could understand, and the more she pushed and struggled to reach it, the further it drifted away.

The night after Rachel talked to her mother, Bill began breaking dinner dishes. The first was an accident, a plate of buttered beans that slipped from his hand as he turned from the stove. But after he stared at it for a few moments, as if wondering what careless person had dropped it and left it there for him to stumble over, he reached up and knocked an empty plate to the floor, and then another, and then a glass of water.

Rachel reached him before he did any more damage. He let her hold his hands, which were strangely cold, and followed her expressionlessly into the living room.

“Dad, why did you do that? Why did you smash all those plates?” She didn’t have to ask, really—she knew, or at least knew a little. She had read about sundowning, and knew this wasn’t the way to go about helping him, but her mind was cruelly empty and she felt herself collapsing.

He didn’t answer. The wind shifted the patches of snow on the roof and made the house groan.

“Are you angry? Do you want to talk?”

Distract him. Lie. Anything. She rubbed and rubbed and rubbed the rough skin on his palms.

“Do you want to talk about my baseball game?” she asked.

He didn’t speak, but his forehead creased slightly, as if trying to remember. A good sign.

“We were playing Lyndonville. Don’t you remember, Dad?” Bill’s face went blank again. Rachel wasn’t sure he could even hear her, but she pressed on, determined.

“There were only two girls on the Little League team, me and Jenny Thomas. Remember Jenny Thomas, Dad? She was a lot better than me, because she had two older brothers who played with her, but they always put her at the bottom of the batting order with me, because she was a girl. We were down by two runs, and Jenny got to second on a base hit. Remember? And then it was my turn to bat.”

Jenny Thomas was a high-school classmate of Rachel’s who had played lacrosse, not baseball. She did have two brothers, who had also both played lacrosse, not baseball. Nevertheless, Bill began to nod, slowly at first, but with increasing confidence and the begin28

nings of a crooked smile.

“You had worked on batting with me all week before the game, because I wasn’t hitting—curve balls.” Rachel was approaching the end of her baseball vocabulary, but at this point she didn’t think it mattered. Bill was somewhere else, not in the cabin but not in the world Rachel was painting with her words either.

“And when I stepped up to the plate, what does the pitcher from Lyndonville do but throw a curveball. And I hit it, Dad, I hit it so far. It wasn’t a home run, technically, but the outfielder lost it in the weeds because it had rained so much that summer, and the grass was long. And I made it all the way home. You were there, waiting for me, behind home plate. It was a—a quadruple.”

That didn’t sound right, but Bill smiled so widely that Rachel wished what she had said were real. Or did it even matter? She realized, with a small cracking inside her, a trembling so tight that she almost didn’t feel it, that it didn’t matter if the story was real. What mattered was that she was letting this happen to her father, and when he looked at her it wasn’t with the hurt of a betrayed parent, watching his daughter watch him suffer, but with detached confusion.

Stranger, his eyes said, will you help me?

She held his hands until they grew warm again, not wanting to admit that she, not he, was shaking. There was no point in making lists, in planning, anymore. The books she had read, the doctors she had spoken to, the advice she had gathered meticulously and stored—all of this crumbled like sand inside her. This was her disease, too, but her burden was grieving. The weight of it crushed her, while Bill grew lighter and lighter and threatened to escape forever.

29

Ultimately He’ll Ruin You

Sarah Beck

30

The Empty Road She saunters past and doesn’t even glance at me, though I wave to her and smile.

Her long, brown hair tumbles down her back and bounces as she walks along the road to work, I guess. She always seems to rush— striding down the street with long stockinged legs.

One day, I’ll use my own two legs to catch her on her way— I’ll no more glance.

She walks so fast, I’ll be forced to rush, but when we meet, she’ll turn and smile— a pair, we’ll walk along the road hand-in-hand all the way back home. She’ll rub my back, I’ll stroke those legs but no. I stare now at the empty road until she passes by again, no glance this time either, and certainly no smile.

I wait until the sun sets to rush home—I hear the sad song of a thrush.

My wife says, “It’s nice to see you back.”

Forcing my mouth to feeble smile I wince when I see her two fat legs.

I cannot give her form a glance before I want back on that dreary road.

If she speaks once more, I’ll leave Rhode Island in a blustery rush and won’t look even glance back.

I’ll walk so far as my legs will take me (probably one mile).

31

I’ll sit at my cafÊ and smile while watching the empty road for that pair of slender legs scurrying on their way to work, all a-rush.

Never again shall I look back not even a glance.

One day my eyes will rise from her legs to meet her smile as I glance at her as she walks down the road then in a rush comes back.

Joseph Baron

32

Riddle in the Sky

Jill Forgash

33

Ericka Schubert 34

Leaving It Behind The pavement ended, jarring the truck’s suspension.

I grabbed the handle above the passenger window.

I felt each rock as the rear view mirror filled up with dust as thick as fog and I looked at verdant hills ahead.

As the truck pulled around the final bend, ranch expanding before me, horses in the paddock, cattle roaming free.

Linens hung on the line as the children splashed pond water undaunted by their Sunday clothes’ saturation.

Stepping out of the truck, I left my bag as a hound barked my arrival and I waded into the middle of the children’s game far from the confines of my one bedroom studio, my takeout food box in a broken refrigerator.

Jack Neary

35

Banana Chips and Wasabi Peas Zak Jason

The grizzly bear fumbled into the bar. His claw thwacked the door against a brick, breaking it, and about fifteen people at the bar turned in horror. An elderly married couple ran into the women’s bathroom. The others froze. In a starched white shirt tucked into boot cut jeans, the bartender stuck a mixing cup onto the bar.

“Scram, bear! You have no business in this bar!” he yelped.

“I’ve been everywhere, sir” called the bear, still within the doorway. “The deli, the Bed, Bath, & Beyond, the jewelry store.

No one will listen. Will you hear me out?” Slobber dripped onto his thicket of a chest. He was panting. The Bed, Bath, & Beyond was the closest commercial building, over two miles away. He had obviously sprinted the length of it. Six hundred pounds of carnivore rumbling through the concrete, past Volkswagens and girls in training wheels.

“What can I offer that they can’t?” the bartender asked. “You’re taking away my noble customers, and my wife will be here any minute. Shoo bear!”

“Food, sir. I smelled the meat way back from the stoplight. My mother has just eaten my brother. It’s March but ice has still locked the river in place. We haven’t found any salmon. We’ve drained our provisions from the fall. We’ve looked into the forest. We’ve looted the campers and some of the homes by the golf course. We’re dying and starving. My mother ate my brother to stay alive.”

The bartender folded his arms. “Sit in that stool, bear,” he said, pointing to the leather-padded swivel stool directly in front of him.

Past the empty oaken tables the bear walked. The other shops he had been in that day all had screens mounted to the walls that made noise, screens that broadcasted the local news or flashed images of the actual shoes on display in front of them. But this bar didn’t have any screens, just oak and brick and sample potato chip platters and some faint jazz humming from the vaulted ceiling and framed photographs of the high school girls track team, state champions nineteen times, and the bartender in the starched white shirt tucked into boot cut jeans, steel toe boots on his feet. It smelled musty, in a way that made you want to bask in it for a three-hour lunch. You felt at peace with the world in this bar, because the world outside of the bar became unknown once you stepped in. The bear sat on the stool, 36

his butt sinking down on either side.

“Why’d she spare you?” the bartender asked.

The bear closed his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” said the bartender. “But that behavior doesn’t make sense to me.”

“I’ve got overdeveloped paws and claws for a cub my age,” began the bear, gesticulating to draw the bartender’s attention to his paws and claws. “They mutated, or what have you. I can grab about three beehives in one swoop, if I ever had that opportunity.

And my brother was pretty normal size, or what have you. So I guess my mom figures I can kill more salmon and protect better than he could.” The bartender had never examined bear paws and claws, but he could decipher that they were disproportionately gargantuan. Like a human born with boxing gloves.

“My name’s Jim Greengrass,” said the bartender, seizing the opportunity to shake his paw.

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” said the bear.

“I’m really sorry for your loss, bear. I can’t imagine that. But I’m afraid I can’t help you. My wife Lola wouldn’t take kindly to me feeding a bear in my bar. And as you can see, I only have a few loyal locals keeping this bar afloat. If I go and give away a freezer full of meat to a bear, well, I can’t afford that.” The bear glanced at the remaining customers on either side of him, one praying, the other turned away from him and clutching the legs of the bar stool below him.

“Sir, my family is dying and my mother ate my brother. And if that ice doesn’t thaw, they’re just going to keep looting those houses on the golf course or what have you, and more malicious bears might come by to this bar. No, I resent saying that. I’m not making ultimatums; that’s not doing right by you. But if I could steal a little food, I might not be eaten like my brother.”

The sax blurted out a primal wail from the ceiling. Jim Greengrass turned to the mirror lining the shelves of liquor. He had a formidable mustache too, and a receding hairline. He had served in the Navy eight years and another six as a commercial fisherman before he bought the bar five years ago. He squinted into the mirror.

You could associate every feature of his face with strength, except his pronounced puffy cheeks, which defined availability.

“Fitch,” he called to the kitchen, still looking at the mirror. “I got an order for fifteen raw T-Bones and a dozen burgers.”

“How they want those burgers?” the voice of Fitch called back.

37

38

Stork

Ngoc Doan

He turned back to the bear. “Medium.”

“Jim Greengrass, I am in your eternal debt,” said the bear.

Just then a woman in a long black skirt and light blue oxford walked into the bar, stopping in the entrance where the bear had stopped. Her face looked supple and startled.

“Lola!” yelled her husband. “Come meet this bear. Don’t worry, he’s had one hell of a day and he doesn’t wish us any harm.”

She remained in the doorway for a moment, eyeing the situation, gazing at the bear’s paws and claws. Now she looked incredulously at her husband. “It’s just like you to feed a bear in your bar,” she said, now approaching the two of them. The bear extended his arm to shake her hand, but she cowered and wove her hand weakly.

Her husband patted her on the back.

“Don’t be offended, bear. You’re just what they call an imposing presence,” he reassured.

“None taken,” said the bear.

Before he left, the bear wished to hug the bartender, but didn’t want to torture the patrons any further.

***

Three years later, the bear charged into the bar. The door shattered the brick replaced from his original entrance, and this time about seven or eight people turned to see him. A few ran into the men’s and women’s bathrooms, others fled through the saloon doors into the kitchen. The elderly married couple from before remained on the side of the bar, sharing a Tom Collins. Another man pried a handgun from a holster by his crotch. Jim Greengrass placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Hold it, Reb. I know this bear.” The man lowered his gun.

“Jim Greengrass, it’s me!” called the bear as he waltzed between the oak tables. “I’m going to have cubs! I found a good wife by the bayberry hills, and she took a liking to this bear. Ha!” Still panting, this time without the slobber, the bear plopped down into the same stool as before and looked at Jim Greengrass. He had the same starched white shirt and boot cut jeans, only this time a little strawberry daiquiri smeared by his rib cage. His mustache almost looked red with the dusk light peering in from the bay windows in front. The bartender looked back at the bear with an affable smirk, but his cheeks seemed to have lost some of their puff.

“In a few weeks, I’m going to have cubs. My wife and I are 39

going to have some rambunctious little cubs bumbling around, and we’re going to set up a home for them by the buttonbush marsh. Who cares if it’s a little gentrified? It’s a great place to raise my cubs! Jim Greengrass, what a day!”

“Would you like a few steaks for your kids?” said Jim Greengrass. “We cut some fresh ones this morning.”

“Oh no, a bear never seeks the same savior twice,” stated the bear.

The bartender set the dish towel down and looked the bear in the eyes. “But that’s what people do. You have kids, we shower you with gifts. Take some rib-eyes, bear. I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Oh no, my stomach would rot inside if I took from a man like you twice. I’ve just been going around telling everyone I know about my imminent cubs. And anyway I’ve got so much energy and conviction with these cubs coming. I’m going to snatch hundreds of salmon at the river so my cubs grow robust and never have to worry about sustenance. But I did love those burgers. Maybe I could stay for a burger, if you don’t mind.”

Jim Greengrass said he would love to host the bear for the bar’s signature burger, called the bar burger. As he attacked the meat, along with roasted potatoes and squash and mineral water, the locals around him asked some questions. They asked him what he thought about upcoming weather patterns and about various bear exploitations in American culture, like how they refer to burly homosexuals as bears, or the fact that the Memphis Grizzlies is one of the worst franchises in the National Basketball Association’s history.

“That don’t bother me too much,” said the bear. “A lot of my people have a little moniker for your people: pogo sticks. You’re always bouncing around all awkward like, with no real sense of purpose where you’re going, bouncing all alone. But I know Jim Greengrass isn’t a pogo stick. He stays firm in his bar, and people take to him well.” Jim Greengrass wiped off the rest of the daiquiri splatter around the blender. The bear finished his burger.

“How’s your Lola?” asked the bear.

“She fled, bear,” said Jim Greengrass. Now the bear could see that his cheeks really had lost a lot of their puff. “Fled to another man.”

The bear set his elephantine paws onto the oaken bar. “I could maul him if you’d like. Jim Greengrass, I’d do that for you.”

As Jim Greengrass laughed, his mustache glistened. “I don’t think that’s exactly necessary bear.”

40

Just Relax

Michael Wolf

41

“It wouldn’t be any trouble, Jim Greengrass. I could rip the entrails clean out of his stomach, splatter his spleen all over his face, or what have you. This man sounds like a menace.”

Dust had accrued on some of the photographs of the girl’s track teams. You could notice it in the dusk light.

“Thanks bear, but he’s not all that evil, exactly. He’s the quoteunquote messiah of this town, buys out floundering businesses. Buys a furniture store and turns it into a flagship Sunglass Hut. No one used to wear sunglasses. The sun barely even reaches this town. But now every woman and her curmudgeonly aunt wears those bugeyed Dolce and Gabana things. He buys a funeral home and turns it into an herbal-infused biodegradable hand lotion boutique. He’s the reason we have two Outback Steakhouses in this town, and people love him for it. Stan Burlap is his name. Five years ago he first met Lola at the grand opening of a craft candle shop, and from that day he slowly chipped into her, inviting her to store openings, buying her imported jazz albums from South America, attending my bar so she could wait on him, until she left me a few months ago.” Building another Tom Collins for the elderly couple, he continued, “But I want to say that Lola can be happy with this man. I want to be able to say that so much.”

“Why would she leave you?” the bear asked.

He plunked a couple lime wedges into the fizzy concoction. “I guess I liked standing where I was too much. She wanted some more motion. Entrepreneurs like Stan Burlap give you motion.”

“I should tend to my woman, Jim Greengrass. But if you ever need me to maul this guy, find me at the buttonbush marsh. I’ll be ready.”

***

Five years later, the bear walked into the bar. A few of the forty or so people in the dining room glanced at him, but probably none of them could see because it was so dark. The oaken musk had evaporated. The walls no longer championed the high school girls track teams, but laser beams, red and orange and magenta, jiggling to the beat of some synthesized fuzz from the reflective black tile floor to the mirrored ceiling. At the bar, where the elderly couple used to sit, now stood a sculpture of a chrome giraffe with an absinthe tap on each nostril. There were sample platters of banana chips and wasabi peas. In front of the bar stood not Jim Greengrass, but a man in a 42

buzz cut and a form-fitting mesh turtleneck that featured his over-developed pectoral muscles. The bear approached this man, and sat in a stool shaped like an elephants trunk for the leg and ejected frozen water from the trunk as the seat.

“I’m looking for Jim Greengrass,” said the bear.

Clean-shaven and with a sharp nose, the man sipped something from a can. For a moment he folded his arms, which drew even more attention to his pectoral muscles, and stared into the bears eyes, as if evaluating whether to address him through speech or with a shotgun stored within a bar shelf. “He’d rather not be bothered right now.

He’s working.”

Placing his claws on the bar, the bear said, “I just wanted to say hello to an old friend.”

Someone ordered an absinthe, and the man pressed the giraffe’s chrome tongue so absinthe trickled from both its nostrils. From deep within his tank of a stomach, the man heaved a chuckle. “Ha. What an instant classic. I found this thing at a cocktail ware showcase in Beijing, had it shipped right here.” He set the absinthe down on a napkin and addressed the bear. “If you need to see him, he’s in the kitchen.”

The bear lifted himself from his seat and entered the kitchen, not through the original saloon doors from before, but an automatic sliding door. Through a barricade of pots and salt buckets and salad dressing tubs he could see the starched white shirt. As he approached, the bear realized that Jim Greengrass was seated in a wheelchair, scrubbing a sautè pan with a SOS pad.

“Who did this to you Jim Greengrass?”

He craned his neck toward the bear. At this time, all the puff in his cheeks had sagged below his mouth. Two sagacious balloons now deflated down his face. His lips had faded to two pink streaks, as if someone had torn them off. And he now wore glasses, chipped and scratched and bent in curvaceous directions, as if he had accidentally sat on them multiple times. No longer a mustache, just a sodden whiteness above the lip, shining from the light above the industrial sink. His eyes looked as if they had cowered back into his head, too wilted to face the day.

“Myself, I guess. I got sick,” said Jim Greengrass. He began to rinse another pan.

“How you mean sick, Jim Greengrass? You’re the strongest man I know. No one with your moral fiber grows ill.”

“I hadn’t had a meningitis shot in years and I got meningitis.

43

Dying Swan

Zamin Husain 44

After a few days of treatment, the meningitis evaporated. But the swelling on my spinal cord has left me paralyzed from the waist down.”

A waiter walked in and dropped a stack of ketchup and Hollandaise smeared plates and coffee mugs into the sink for Jim Greengrass to wash. The bear couldn’t look at his friend.

“I’m incredibly sorry. That’s completely unfair,” is all he could say.

“It’s embarrassing, bear. It’s not sad or tragic or unfair or dumb luck or karma swelling back to me. It’s just embarrassing. I should have had that silly shot. But Lola always planned those things for me. Dentist appointments, colonoscopies, annual physicals, the chiropractor when I cracked my back building the patio. She took photographs of all those places—the doctor’s office, the mechanic’s shop, that Things Remembered store for the trophy inscriptions for the girls—and to remind me a few days before she would slip those photographs into this picture frame I used to have on my desk. I would sit there filling out order forms for pallets of Guinness or run a pay roll and look up to see a photo of the proctologist’s office next to a photo of the two of us at the creek. She was like an extended self that knew everything I didn’t, that could plug all my holes. But when she left, it just always remained, that photograph of the proctologist’s office, and I always forgot about making appointments. That’s the sad part, when a man can’t remember his appointments without his wife snapping photos of his ass doctor’s office. The embarrassing part is when he can’t remember for himself when she’s gone.”

For a long moment the bear remained there, trying to find the remnants of Jim Greengrass’ eyes. In all his life, the bear had never had to encounter grief. When a bear broke his back or shattered his pelvis falling from a birch tree, they would let him heal on his own, and he would either march on or die, fully one way, or fully the other.

But these receded eyes, these slackened cheeks, this didn’t happened to bears. It was death on a breathing body, and the bear saw that this was what grief looked like.

“That’s Stan Burlap out there in the turtleneck, isn’t it?” said the bear. “He stole your bar.”

“He bought it from me and remodeled its vision when I got sick.”

“I’m going to throw his pancreas onto the wall.”

“Please bear, that’s not necessary.”

“Do you like salmon?” asked the bear.

45

“I love it. One of the best fish to fish,” said the man, managing a faint smirk.

“I’m going to bring you salmon every week for the rest of your life, Jim Greengrass. Fresh from the springs.”

“That’s not necessary, bear. I eat for free here.”

“Every week, Jim Greengrass. I know no other way to help you.

Let me do this.”

The man had no response. He continued to wash cups and lobster tongs.

When the bear returned to the buttonbush marsh, a dozen miles from the bar, five miles from one of the Outback Steakhouses, three miles tucked into the woods of the golf course, he led his oldest son to the top of a grassless hill. From this vantage point they could see to the east the plastic bust of Roy Rogers, the neon sparkle of the automobile accessory store, the erotic flashing bathtub hologram above the Bed, Bath, & Beyond, the town’s lone billboard, which advertised a Casino a hundred miles north, and to the west the expanse of pine and birch and the lake, and beyond that the green and yellow glow of the Subway restaurants, the dull shimmer of the cathedral spires, the damp floodlights above the soccer field. He held his son close, engulfed him in his fur. They sat there maybe half an hour.

“You see how this dirt is almost charcoal?” he finally said. “It’s going to be one of the most brutal winters yet. I don’t know if I’ll make it through, son. You’re going to have to be strong for this family.”

His son nodded in obedience.

“We need to find a town run by a decent human. We might survive without one. But that is now our family’s great quest.” He held his son close, and they remained there until the bathtub hologram shut off for the night.

46

Dancing Dylan

Rebecca Nelson

47

Outside Your Funeral The marble walls sparkled under streetlights, while our shadows stood motionless on the ground.

We pressed our bodies to corners, watching our slanted, half-ghost reflections in the slate.

We laughed at our faces in the glass windows, carnival mirrors, forgetting you inside.

My red nail polish shone dark as blood beneath the light’s yellow glow.

You should have washed the color off, I heard my cousin say, sensed the sweat in my black blazer, cold and drying quick. I recalled pictures of my widowed grandmother in mourning: skin and fingernails colorless, dark scarves sweeping over shoulders, around neck, across chest-slings for broken parts.

Madeline Rose McSherry

48

Return Address Candle read letters in a lightning storm from occupants who slept here, nights just passing through.

The old inn scrapes and cries with the wind, bemoaning me, its keeper, for keeping other people’s mail as company on the nights when I am the only sheltered.

Woman in the tailored floral asked for stamps, sixty cents a book, three a single--the box is in my office and the postman comes at four-wanted to know where to buy Stacy Adams, men’s nine, in a place like Utah. Her handwriting snakes short histories of love and gift givings in language suited to a time since ticked distant. She misses biting midnights on cobbled streets and hopes her words find him well.

Dripping wax and sediments of ash discover these meanings as my eyes pour over glowing rims of crooked glasses, asking for something like proximity. All faces are the same, another letter once said to me, just happy to have an audience.

Keith Noonan 49

Butterfly

Ali Letendre

50

Up

(we go!)

He rose that day

like a hunk of meat hung in a terrible Flemish painting I can’t recall

like he had given birth to me had nothing left was dying

But was glad

by the cell phone-using driver the slick black-painted valley road his place and time

he’d aged

like he’d been shot down by capital guards by the hundreds right there in his bed

But had one last word:

Ruth O’Herron

51

The Long Ride Home James Parkington

And with another swift pluck, it’s left with only three legs. It rests—petrified—upon the whitewashed garden fence next to the river, splaying two remaining legs, straining for balance. Jack—the benefactor of three defunct legs—fixes upon it from a few feet away, entranced by paralysis. Both—motionless—for the last half hour.

Wails from a throng of neighborhood boys nearby—camouflaged with caked mud and grass stain splotches—steal his gaze, but instead of following them, he watches the displaced unknowingly splashed and shouted away—curious dragonflies, timid ladybugs, quiet beetles—again. Jack has been settled in his usual spot by the white fence since budding dawn, avoiding further inconveniencing his flying friends.

He had noticed the water bug—dark brown and rigid—a blemish upon the face of the bright painted boards—and ruthlessly tore its legs away. But now remorse incessantly circles his tousled hair.

Does a water bug need all its legs to live?

No. Does it hurt to lose your legs?

Yes. Will it be able to fly again?

Maybe.

As its friends flitskate across the surface of the river—he quells the strident wispy whispers of regret by pressing four trembling fingers against his right temple.

He shifts his weight in his seat, cringing as a frozen belt buckle digs into folds of flesh around his waist. The echoes of the muddy boys—running, jumping, laughing, shrieking—delicately waft into his ears. He chews his bottom lip with crooked teeth—frustration sets in and his head thumps behind his eyebrows. He would give anything to drown one of his legs in that mouthwatering river—to shovel up the surface with an angled foot and watch the water recollect in serrated blotches beneath—to feel the cold—to feel the wet.

But the sensation of guilt returns—the crippled water bug is still next to him.

Are cripples worthless?

Maybe.

Captivated by its captivity—he could kill it with his sharp, burning eyes—crush it with a clenched and shaking fist.

52

His body shudders as he leans closer. His tongue wets his lower lip in utmost concentration and one clammy hand mounts itself against the fence as he tilts himself forward until his quivering lips are level with the motionless bug and again, he is also rendered motionless, transfixed by the pearlescent lacquer of its angelic wings, its mottled caterpillar torso, and its two miniature gemstones for eyes and so he purses them, as if to kiss it—but no—instead he softly breathes out—bathing it in warm breath—exhaling more and more— forcing—until its wrinkled wings ripple back to life.

Bewilderment dries all the saliva in his mouth, and he smiles as it takes off fitfully into the air—its last three tenuous legs dangling from its body—loose black thread strands. A giggle bubbles up from deep inside his chest as it circles lazily above his head—and then it sets off toward the water’s edge, joining the others.

His knuckles—piqued—strangle the wheel of his chair as he turns it toward home.

53

Adrian Tatro 54

II I had buried it somewhere here just yesterday when I decided it needed to be gone.

Took all the clocks from my house and buried them on the beach filled them with sand.

When the whole process was done I stood brushing my hands as if ridding myself of the whole affair telling myself I would be free Now. But that night never ended and I turned scared and unsure trapped by my own freedom tripping in my own delusions too young to know of time and its depths.

My flesh was still soft and my eyes wide even if the soul felt old and washed out turned gray like the ocean in the misty drapes.

In my visions I ran back to shore hands scratching at the sand crying out to the inky night, “I’m too young for this, I’ll never Make it out alive.”

Lauren Audi

55

Suicide South and North I. Buzzards ring the marsh’s breast.

Mud and reeds pulsing, with the will to fill and drain, drown and dry, you drink. I pull up, the rare country passerby, find your boots at the rail, placed side by side like a man may before bed, toes tucked beneath the dust ruffle, waiting for the other side of day. Funny you bothered to slip them off, laces untied, running down like peyot, religious— worn with a farmer’s dedication. Like you dove out of them, left alone mid-stride to return yourself as your crops deliver seed—the sun alighting, falls into flames of its own making, the lone fisherman reels in his line with a limp droop of lip and no catch.

II. You wanted to swan dive into nothing, abandon your jeweled heels on Brooklyn Bridge in case somebody could use them.

As high as your blistered ankles I planted my face at your feet as if to drink the rain, the sky barreling blue around your face, haloed by the shine of hair you jelled that morning, then combed into a bun. Butterfly and flower, we tried to communicate. I the flittering youth who happened to land on you, bent and mourning like a forgotten geranium in the window of a textile factory.

I have nothing, you said. Not a thing, as I wrapped my fingers around the rootless stem of one leg, fluttering to find some seed of purpose I had stored.

Tourists forgetting what they’ve come to see, thronged like schoolchildren, passing us as cars slow to see an accident.

We became their spectacle, as if the steel spired skyline had crumbled, as if New York

56

was only a people left suspended together among gulls, as if in jumping, you would take the whole of us down with you.

Elizabeth Kulze

57

58

MARIANNE/ARIANE MER/AME/AMER/ARME

Jill Forgash

1800-CALL-4LUV

Tracy Rizk

“You know—it’s just that—I know he could be the perfect man for me if I could just change him. You know? I mean, he could be sweet, and caring, and attentive, and I would hate to give up on him because I really do believe that there is something special between us—do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Of course I understand. The love you two share is a rare and beautiful thing, and you should never let go of that, ever,” Martha said.

She nestled the phone under her chin and opened the company guidebook to the chapter entitled Type 5 Relationships and looked for the section called Male Does Not Cater to Emotional Needs.

“Now, from the information that you have given me, I gather that your partner used to fulfill you emotionally and has now ceased to do so—is that correct? All right. I’m gonna go ahead and break down this procedure into six nice and easy steps, and before you know it—” Martha was interrupted by the beep. “—Oh, I’m sorry.

Your trial time just ended. From now on your credit card will be charged with our hourly rates. Is that ok?”

“Yeah all right—you were saying? Six steps?”

“Yes. Just six. Now, the first one is going to be an exercise in self-restraint, and you may find it a little difficult at first, but remember: Love Takes Work, and we’re here to help you do it...”

Martha finished up the session, switched off her headset, and called her employees into her office for a quick meeting.

“Alright, guys,” she said “I’m gonna need to leave for a few hours to do some research. If everybody could just give me a quick update.”

Doug was the first one to speak.

“Well, I’ve spent the last two hours on the phone with Ms. Coulter from Baltimore and from what I can tell she’s been implementing the Independent Woman Act pretty successfully. She reported an increase in interest and possessiveness from her husband as well as a boost in her own self esteem. I really believe she’s getting things back on track between them.”

“Very good, Doug. What about you, Sophie?”

“Um, I’ve been having a little bit of trouble getting Mrs. Flaherty to follow all the guidebook advice, actually. She’s a little old fashioned and can’t seem to understand how wearing a garter belt 59

will help. Hopefully, I’m starting to make a case though.”

“That’s a shame,” Martha said, “have you told her about our success rates? Everybody, please remember: When in doubt, cite the statistics. They’re tough to argue with. Judy?”

“I’m afraid it’s time we send Miss Marshall a chocolate bar,” Judy said.

Upon Judy’s suggestion, the company had recently started mailing complimentary 1800-CALL-4LUV chocolate bars to the women who reported a break up with their significant other. It was a big hit.

“Oh, that’s terribly unfortunate,” Martha said, “but we all saw that one coming. I’m afraid their problems had reached a Point of No Return. Did you remember to recommend that she order the I Will Survive! Break-up Kit?” The Break-up Kit was the company’s newest product. It provided women with a little book of inspirational Chinese proverbs, and extensive list of Things to Do on Girls’ Nights Out, a Guide to Looking Your Best, and a compilation CD of songs by Alanis Morisette and Pink—all for the modest sum of 149 dollars and 99 cents. It had been a huge success, and women all over America reported surviving their breakups.

“Yeah, she ordered it. She also ordered the Learning to Love (Alone Time) interactive DVD.” Martha gazed at Judy warmly. She had been her employee ever since Martha had inherited the business from her aunt. Blessed with an inherent knack for marketing, Judy was the best one of the three at pushing her products. She also did well with the callers. Although Judy, a short, plump bachelorette of thirty-nine, came to work every day in sweat pants and the same maroon sweater, her sensual, husky voice gave off the impression that she was very experienced in matters of love, and that’s all their customers needed.

Unfortunately, Doug and Sophie did not share Judy’s salesmanship. They did, however, contribute in other valuable ways. Doug, an ex-frat boy, was twenty-seven and very good-looking. Years of playing the field had taught him how to handle distressed women. Martha had first observed that their callers did not take as well to his advice because he sounded too much like the men they were complaining about. Early on, she asked him to affect a high-pitched voice and play the role of Gay Best Friend—now, he was a customer favorite.

Sophie, a twenty- two-year-old aspiring actress, had taken on this job to pay the bills. She did not have Doug’s talent for acting, but she always managed to sound warm and concerned, and this appealed to 60

many.

“Alright, everyone,” Martha said, “good job. You guys just carry on while I’m gone. I’ll be back around 8 to do some work, so leave anything you need me to see on my desk.”

Martha knew she could rely on them in her absence. Although not an especially creative bunch, they were loyal and hardworking.

Martha took care of the creative aspect of the business, as well as the collection of the data the guidebook and all their other ventures depended on. Today, she was doing research for her newest project: If He Likes It He Should Put a Ring on It—A woman’s toolkit for getting him to propose.

She had scheduled a date with a man named Elliot Spencer, who she had been seeing weekly for the last three months. Their pseudo-relationship was a Type 3 Relationship. She was playing the part of the successful, independent woman of the 21st century, while Elliot was a struggling painter, who lived with four flat mates in a 2 bedroom apartment and worked part-time as a mail man. Martha was studying how a woman in this situation would work through the man’s damaged ego and insecurities and convince him to propose.

Martha was not one to judge why any woman would want to marry a man of this Personality Type—her job was to help. And so, that afternoon, she dressed herself in her most professional suit and met Elliot at a bar for some after-work drinks. Elliot had just rolled out of bed, and was looking very out of place in this swanky hotel lounge.

Martha had, for once, been honest about her profession. Usually, when she was conducting research, she would not reveal true facts about her identity. However, because the Personality Type she was testing was actually hers, she had decided to make it easier on herself by just being herself. She did not give him exact details or let him know that she did hands-on research when developing her products, but she did tell him that she ran a company that helped women find—and keep—love. This did not turn out to be such a good idea, because that day Elliot—in his own passive-aggressive way—insulted Martha’s company.

“So, Martha, how’s work going? Is the business doing well?”

Martha generally avoided speaking about her work to Elliot so as not to make him feel inferior but today, since he seemed interested, she gladly obliged.

“It’s going really well, actually. Our success rates have gone up 2 percent this month. I think it’s because of that new section we added in the guidebook—“ 61

Elliot interrupted.

“Martha, can I ask you something?”

Martha nodded. Here was the question she had been expecting for a while now. He was going to ask her if it bothered her that he made so little money. Elliot was opening up. This was good.

“Do you ever think of selling your business and following your true calling?”

Martha stared at him blankly.

“What?”

“Well, you see, I used to have a 9 to 5 job too. I worked in retail for two whole years until one day I realized something amazing: that was not what the universe needed from me. And, you know, look at me now. I’m following my dream. I might not make a lot of money, but at least—you know—I’m doing something meaningful.”

Martha did her best to appear composed.

“Elliot, are you suggesting that what I do is not meaningful?

Elliot looked surprised at the question.

“Well, you know, it’s great that you’re so successful and everything but—take me, for example— painting is my passion. There must be something that’s like that for you—eh?”

Martha did not know where all this was coming from. Elliot had been living on welfare until he got this job at the post office.

He made absolutely no money as a painter. Who was he to give her advice?

“Elliot. My company helps hundreds of women every year build healthy and stable relationships. Do you know how hard it is to find love, true love, in the 21st century? Women have to balance having successful careers with maintaining meaningful, lasting relationships in a world that increasingly revolves around instant gratification.

Many of them need help—and we provide that. Genuine, time-proven help.”

Elliot quickly changed the subject, and Martha figured he was not ready for them to have their first fight. The date did end on an icy note, though. Martha, disappointed in herself for getting angry with Elliot, decided to never mix business with pleasure again. Next time, she would just lie.

However, Martha told herself that if Elliot had known exactly how her business was run, he would not have dismissed it as lightly as he did today. Martha did great things. Ever since she had taken over for her aunt, she had revolutionized the love industry and made 1800-CALL-4LUV the primary help line for hundreds of women 62

Bailey Budd

63

with troubled love lives. All the advice she gave was based on hard, concrete facts. She relied strictly on her own research and observations and spent weeks compiling the guidebook that she and her employees consulted daily. She kept detailed records of every person she knew, and used them as models for the Personality Classifications. Armed with her keen sense of observation and unwavering practicality , she had classified all relationships into eight different Types, and defined solutions to relationship problems based on what Type the couple fit. Everything was in the guidebook, and so far, it had never been wrong.

But the advice didn’t just come straight from the guidebook.

Martha made sure to cater to her clients’ problems on a case-by-case basis. She presented them with two 20-part questionnaires, meant to be answered by both male and female and be uploaded online. If the male was unwilling or unavailable to respond to the questionnaire, she would ask the female to answer some questions about him. Recognizing that this was risky, Martha had learned to allow room for error due to Female Exaggeration of Male Qualities, and adjusted her personality classifications accordingly. The next step—quite controversial when first introduced—was to request that her clients upload photographs of themselves and their significant others. If there was a suspected Other Woman in the mix, Martha would request pictures of her, as well. The photographs would then be scored on a scale of 1 to 10, and these scores would be taken into account when evaluating the problem. It had taken a while for the world of loveless women to warm up to this idea, but Martha recognized how important a role appearances play in the dynamics of relationships, and the results paid off: customer satisfaction increased by almost 35%.

After these initial steps, Martha would schedule a phone call with her client, who would enjoy the privilege of a one-on-one, somewhat personalized conversation with her or one of her highlytrained employees. Her method was simple and straight-forward, and her clients appreciated that. She found that in today’s busy world, what people want most is a quick, reliable fix, and the statistics said it all: her method was as reliable as anybody’s.

And so, it is quite understandable that Martha was so insulted.

With such a sophisticated system in place and all the statistics to back her up, she scarcely deserved to be attacked by a good-fornothing like Elliot who, anyways, was too dim to realize he was just another subject in her experiments. With these thoughts in mind, she returned to the office that night.

64

Although it was late, Martha always made a point to type up all her notes on the day’s work before she went to bed. She was bent down under the harsh light of her desk lamp, working on the toolkit, when Judy walked in, looking a little flustered.

“Judy, honey, at least change out of that awful sweater when you’re done with work. What’s wrong? Did you forget something?”

“No. I wanted to catch you alone. Uh—I need to talk.”

“Can’t it wait till tomorrow? I was just packing up.”

“No, it can’t. This won’t take long, I promise.”

“Judy, is this about the commission you want for the How-to books? I told you, I’m thinking about it. You can’t expect me to come up with an answer—“ Martha had already decided not to give Judy a commission for the How-to books, but did not feel it was the right time to tell her.

“It’s not about that, Martha— I’m quitting.”

These were the last words Martha had ever expected to come out of Judy’s mouth.

“What?”

“I’m moving to Indiana. I, uh, found a job as an executive assistant, and I’m going there next month.”

“What? Why would you leave to Indiana? Judy, do you want a raise—is that it? You don’t have to get a new job, you could just ask and—“ Judy had, in fact, asked for a raise twice in the past two months to no avail.

“No, Martha, it’s not that. Do you remember Jack? I’ve mentioned him to you. He, uh—” “Jack? Yes, I remember him—terrible match. What about him?”

“Well, we got back together a while ago—I didn’t tell you—and he got a job placement in Indiana. I’m moving there with him.”

It was unbelievable. Judy and Jack had scored so low in Personality Compatibility that Martha had told her to not even bother. It was a No Win Relationship.

“Judy! Are you insane? I told you, it’s a terrible match, it’ll never work—you filled out the questionnaire. I scored you. You know. You can’t leave us for him—what are you thinking?”

“I just want to try something new, see if it works out. I really like him. I feel like we would be good together if I could just—“ “Judy, please. You know how reliable the guidebook is. Don’t be silly. I know you’ve never had a serious relationship— that you’re desperate and lonely—but sometimes you just need to ignore the way 65

Sade Garvey 66

you feel and listen to reason. It’s the only way to gain an advantage over—“ “I’m sorry, Martha. I quit” It was at that moment that Judy—timid, loyal Judy—walked out. This was the worst thing that could happen. Judy knew all the tricks of the trade and would be impossible to replace. Martha would probably have to clear up a whole afternoon to do interviews, and with all the work on her hands she would never be able to train a replacement. Also, Judy had calls scheduled for the next two weeks!

What would she tell all the disappointed clients? And what if Judy decided to start up a rival company in Indiana? She knew almost as much as Martha did about love! Judy had always been loyal but who knew? This could be dangerous.

Also—Jack? Judy was leaving the company for Jack? Martha had long computed that he was unambitious, non-commital louse. He would get bored of Judy eventually and cheat. Martha’s competitors would have a feast if they found out her long-time employee had left the business to have a dysfunctional relationship with a Commitophobe in Indiana.

Judy had left the company to have a dysfunctional relationship with a Commitophobe in Indiana. Martha always knew that Judy was not very bright. It was alright. Martha was a smart woman—her business would get along fine without her. She would split Judy’s pending work between Doug and Sophie, and start looking for a replacement bright and early tomorrow. Really, all she needed was someone with a sweet voice who could read from the guidebook. It’s not like Judy was a rocket scientist—Martha was the brains behind the company. She was the only indispensable one.

Somewhat unburdened by the idea that this was a problem that could be solved by rational thought, Martha left for the night and went home. The next morning, Martha planned to go straight into her office and start making calls. She was making her way between her employees’ desks and into her office when Doug, who had a caller on the line, stopped her with a wave of his hand.

“Yes, honey, that’s right. You should be able to go out with your girls every once in a while. Listen, darling, I’m gonna need to put you on hold for a minute” he said, “and don’t worry. We won’t charge you for the wait.”

He giggled, switched off the headset and looked up at Martha.

“Hey, where’s Judy? Is she sick or something? She has a call scheduled in 20 minutes.”

67

“Doug, Judy won’t be with us anymore. She found a job in Indiana.”

Doug looked shocked.

“What? When did this happen?”

“She informed me yesterday that she was leaving. I’ve already started to make arrangements to find a replacement. Don’t worry.

Everything will be back to normal by the end of the week. I have it under control.”

Doug didn’t seem to hear anything she was saying, and instead exclaimed: “Judy left? Just like that? I—I can’t believe she would do that.

She never even mentioned anything.”

Martha didn’t understand what Doug was so flustered about. He wasn’t the one whose business would suffer. She looked at him, but didn’t say anything.

“Listen, Martha. Just let me know what I need to do to help, ok?

I need to finish up this session now but— just let me know.”

Martha was surprised to see pity in Doug’s eyes. She had solved worse problems than this before. She went into her office and shut the door. She did not, however, start making calls as planned. Judy had worked for her for 12 years. She had seen the company grow into what it was today. The least she could do was give 2 weeks noticed. Even if she had done that—what? Would she just ignore Martha’s advice—Martha, who had advised hundreds of women successfully—and go off with a man who was, without a doubt, wrong for her?

No. Martha would not let that happen. She was a rational and level-headed person, and would not let the people in her life make rash mistakes. She knew Judy was blinded by the prospect of finding true love. Otherwise, she would never have acted this way. Martha decided that it was her duty, as friend and employer, to help Judy when she could not help herself. With Martha’s guidance, she would avoid years of disappointment and heartache.

It did not take too long to devise a plan of action, for Martha’s job was to solve problems. It was all very clear, Judy might choose to ignore Martha’s advice, but Martha knew for a fact that Jack and Judy’s Personality Types did not mesh and, from what she knew of their relationship, Jack was not the one blinded by love. If he was presented with what Judy truly was, he would realize that there was no sense in moving off to Indiana with someone when the relationship was bound to burst into flames and leave them both hollow and 68

disillusioned. Martha would not tell Jack—that kind of interference was uncalled for. She would let him decide for himself.

Martha unlocked a filing cabinet and took out the folder marked Judy Campbell. The folder contained everything about Judy: Interests, fears, desires, music taste. It had an account of Judy’s experiences in high school playing the trombone for the school marching band, and going to prom without a date. There were baby pictures and current pictures of Judy, in her maroon sweater. Most importantly, there was a five page Personality Analysis that Martha had written years ago about her, and most of it still applied.

Martha thumbed through the pages, relishing her fine work.

There really was nothing you couldn’t tell about a person through careful observation: Judy’s entire being had been summarized into five pages, and those five pages said everything. Martha took the folder and put it in a big yellow envelope. She also included the results of the questionnaires Judy filled out 2 years ago—the ones that established their relationship as a No Win one.

She called Elliot. She knew he would do as asked. He would do anything to appear useful in her eyes.

He came up with the address eventually, and when he called back to give it to her, she took it down and did what she had been meaning to the day before.

“Elliot. It’s over.”

Then, she carefully copied Jack’s address onto the envelope, sealed it, and left no return address.

As she dropped the envelope into the mail box, Martha’s conscience was clear. She was not being deceitful—Jack deserved to know everything about Judy before they moved to Indiana together.

Trusting in her judgment, Martha knew that she had just provided a quick and reliable fix to what could have been years of heartache. No charge.

She took comfort in the idea that Judy would soon be back.

Doug and Sophie—they were important members of the team—but they were only working for her until they found something better.

Judy, on the other hand, truly belonged at 1-800-CALL-4LUV. More than anyone else.

Surely enough, a week later, Judy was back at her desk. A bit paler, but still wearing the same maroon sweater, she went back to taking calls, and it was business as usual from then onwards.

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Charles Long

70

La TempĂŞte She was a Voodoo priestess from Marseilles, an iconoclast of La Patrie. She carried currants in her breast pocket and wore an indigo cowl. Veal bone was pierced through her right nostril when she went to market on Sundays. Her love--the silversmith, whose splintered broomstick fingers made her rings and roses out of copper. And then he left and she sunk herself in the bathtub with a bottle of gin and dead canary in hand. We visit her grave and stand stoic in our Southern teatime dresses and wide-brimmed raffia hats.

The humidity rolls down our necks in a string of Mardi Gras beads, and our shoulders hunch into one another as we awe at the white marble doors of her tomb, with its scrawls of Creole-flavored witchcraft in cayenne-red lipstick. But that woman is missing from her marble bed—she left in the arms of the Spanish wind. It came through these parts, sweeping through the cemetery gutters, carrying displaced corpses back to their homes.

Camille, Ester, Florence. These are women who turn crypts into shrimp boats and French maidens into candle wax, bound to the sea and headed for a lost land.

Katrin Tschirgi

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Why I Admire the Flies at Panda Garden They hear with their hair and taste with their feet, striding into bog days of lo mein backwards, despite being lumbered with the endlessness of a vapid life; each lives up to its simple name, having a penchant for what we consider waste; the way they won’t quit dancing until there is nothing left to swat, and see in mixtures of real time and slow motion, so dismantling bad sitcoms into millions of pixels; like Monday mornings, everybody would prefer to eliminate them altogether, but still they persist; in the take-out line, when you finally poise two plastic chopsticks between your middle, thumb, and index, they cower, metamorphic; how simple their aim: lay eggs, even after the trash bag gets tied in the tightest knot; they understand pain and part of them exists within each of us; in Golding, for example: how the fearful schoolboy hears the sow head speak, how the flies attentively swarm, before becoming an allegory for all mankind; because it was too long ago that someone decided birds are the ones connecting us to heaven.

Myles Gerraty

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Bamboo

Ngoc Doan

73

Piñata Once a year at least, Go down to the party supply store, Buy the ridiculous thing.

A cartoon character, maybe Or a donkey with a little pizzazz.

They’re all made from the same papier-mâché rainbow, the important thing is volume.

Take it home and set it up there on the table, Make it dance around if you like, but don’t get too attached.

That’s like naming lobsters, That’s a mistake.

Open up the tissue Paper body, and begin to pour in Taffies, caramels, licorice, Jellybeans, jawbreakers, sweet tarts.

Throw in the change in your pockets, The business cards you’ve mysteriously accumulated, Throw in your chap stick, your keys, your mints, your lighter, Throw your cell phone in, along with the People you’ve been meaning to call, and those you’re Tired of calling.

Throw in your parents, and the front steps of the house You grew up in, throw in teachers you hated and the math they tried to teach you, throw in the road signs that matter and the ones that remain strange, Main Street, Fourth Avenue, Maple Lane, Cedar Road, Toss them in, watch them go.

At this point the Piñata will bulge a bit, but keep going, There’s not much left.

Coax in your ex-lovers,

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If they fight you, remind them that you were once beautiful to each other And besides, they owe you for that ride to the airport.

Flirt if you must, but try hard not to fall in love.

Throw in your medical records, your hospital visits, your bicycle, The shoes that never fit right, and your favorite woolen socks.

Throw God in, and throw in the monster from under your bed, You’ll find he’s moved to the mailbox since you’ve taken out those loans.

Throw in the pets you’ve loved and those you’ve failed, George the dog, your friend for fourteen years, and Sparky the hamster Who, in some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, was stubbornly and fatally attracted to wall sockets.

Nap on, in some eternal pile of warm laundry, George.

Live fast and die immediately, Sparky, But, for now, in you go, with the candy and the God. For this to work, you really should get in there too, But then there’d be no one to raise it all up.

So just picture yourself in there in the padded dark, Among the fluorescent wrappers and everything else, Hoist up the rope, and tie off the line.

Let it all go for a second, and Breathe.

When you’re ready, Take one last look at the piñata, In sharp contrast to the blue, its donkey-outline so bizarre against that canvas sky.

Then take the heavy tree-branch you picked up weeks ago for this exact purpose, eager as Christmas morning,

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and whack like hell.

Eyes open or closed, screaming, crying or laughing, Just keep swinging.

And when everything breaks open and the world comes spilling out, dive down, and begin the hand-over-fist, manic scramble to take it all back, again.

Rich Hoyt

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Shades of Blue

Meghan Mazza

77

Quicksand

Terrance Brown “What’s good, Chuckie, kid?”

“Oh chillen, chillen, you know me.”

“Yo, toss me a bevvie!”

I remember how he caught it, took a look, then faked like he was going to throw it back.

“Coors Light? You know I hate this piss! Yo, who got us this run? Tell ‘im to gimme my money back!”

My name is Charles McDonald. I am from Jamestown, a Jamesie. It’s who I am. That little episode there, that’s a glimpse into my early teenage years. I think it was Owen talking to me. No, no, it had to be Keith, he was the one who hated Coors. Owen, on the other hand, well, he would drink anything you gave him. Either way, it doesn’t really matter. Jamesies are one and the same, just interchangeable parts. Most people want to leave, but by the time they realize it, they can’t.

Anyways, that’s how it all started, thirteen or fourteen years old, down the little league park chugging beer inside the dugouts until the cops came and ran us out. Nobody ever got caught, and if you did, you just got grounded for a few days. That was if your parents cared at all. Either way, within a week you were right back at it. Just building up that lifestyle, slowly washing your future down your throat.

My dad, Big Jimbo, never cared about stuff like that. He was a Jamesie too – like father, like son. It was a cycle. Grow up, see the teens lead that lifestyle, and then learn what was “cool.” Next, you were one of those teens. Just spending your nights drinking and smoking cigarettes instead of reading books and doing math problems. All of a sudden, you were stuck in Jamestown without a hope of ever escaping. You would have kids, but by that point you were so fed up with your own life that you didn’t have the energy to care about someone else’s. So your children are doomed to repeat the past and your mistakes.

By the time I was born, Jimbo had had enough, but, like I said, he was stuck. He put food on the table and cared about me enough to make me go to school, but that’s about it. The only gift he ever gave me was this widow’s peak. The thing nearly touches my eyebrows. I swear to Jesus it’s the deepest this side of the Mississippi.

As for mum, well she just wasn’t there. Usually the father leaves and all that typical bologna, but not in my family. It was Cathy 78

who did the running. I swear she hadn’t even lost the baby weight before she was in a taxi with a couple of cheap suitcases stuffed to the brim. I’ve seen pictures, but I’ve never met her, at least not so I can remember. I don’t think I even want to. What would change?

I started off just like all the Jamesies, going to elementary school down St. Pius over on Eldrick Ave, right in the heart of Jamestown. The work was simple and I could always do it just fine, but I never bothered to do homework. The teachers were content to have kids show up, so they never pushed me. St. Pius closed down a few years back after the economy went sour. Really was a shame.

I started playing puck when I was big enough to hold a stick.

It just always fascinated me. The ice, the dekes, the fights, I loved it all. It didn’t take me long to realize I was good, I mean real good. I used to walk all over kids in Peewees, always the leading goal-scorer.

I can remember this one day down Rawlings Park. Rawlings was where we used to play street hockey. It was a shabby place, a place where a lot of bums hung out, but it was ours. We used to sneak on in the mornings, when the older kids were still half in-thebag. We would run there as soon as we woke up, and play until they came down and kicked us off. That’s how things went. We accepted it. They were bigger and stronger. There was nothing we could do about it.

On this particular day, only five of the older guys showed up, so they made some of us stay on so they could beat up on us and feel good about themselves. This was twelve-year-olds playing twentyyear-olds, I’m talking no chance. We got shellacked, like seventeenfour. But who put up those four, you may ask? Yours truly. At twelve, I was dangling those knuckleheads. When we finished, I heard an older guy ask, “Who’s that kid? Is he from Jamestown?” He knew the answer to that question. Dumbass.

Jamestown is generational. Families don’t move in and out of houses, they just pass them right down the line. The house always goes to the children, ensuring that they stay put. When I said there’s no escape, I meant it. There is a whole system to it. Sure, people stay and live in their parents’ house everywhere, but they have a choice.

In Jamestown, nobody chooses their house; it’s predetermined.

That’s why I found, and still find, that to be a stupid question. Those guys knew the answer, long before it even formed in their minds.

They used to call me Dunkaroo Slingshot. Kind of silly, but you don’t get to pick nicknames. They’re bestowed. I was glad to have 79

Cowboy

Ericka Schubert 80

one. It meant you were respected. In addition to Jamesies’ interest, I actually ended up getting this yuppie private school’s attention.

Jimbo jumped at the offer, though I was hesitant. I didn’t want to leave. I loved Jamestown.

He finally got me to do it when he said, “How many pros you think went to Jamestown High? There’s no resources or anything over there.” Come to think of it, that may have been the first time he expressed actual interest in my life. Only took sixteen years.

So off I went to Montclaire Academy, a good forty-minute drive. These people wanted me bad. They just waived a $26,000 price tag, and then topped it off by sending a private car to pick me up and drop me off daily. A nice little Lincoln. It was the first time I stepped foot out of Jamestown. I never saw a need to before.

I swear to God I hated every single person at that place. I found a couple kids who were tolerable. I’m not saying I liked them, I’m saying they were tolerable. I usually just gave one-word answers so it was clear that I didn’t care what anyone had to say. I remember this one time; the kid’s name was Freddy. He said in his stupid suburban accent, making sure to pronounciate everything, “Charles, would you like to come to my house this Friday for supper? My family would simply love to pick your brain. We’ll be having a nice, old-fashioned surf-and-turf. Can you say ‘yum’?”

I wanted to make an example of him, to put little Freddy in his place. “You shittin’ me? I don’t care what you’re havin’. We ain’t friends! You understand? We ain’t amigos, compadres, none of that.

You’re lucky I don’t punch you in the mouth. You’re a joke.” That was my last dinner invitation.

I looked at Montclaire like it was a job. I was going to win them games, and they were going to get me attention at the next level.

Everybody wins.

Most nights when I got home I was still out running around with the boys. But I wasn’t around quite as much as I used to be.

Some days I was just too worn down from hockey. Soon people started to look at me a little differently. Everyone knew that I wasn’t at Jamestown High, and some people didn’t take kindly to that fact.

They didn’t want me rising up, associating myself with affluence.

Hockey wasn’t the issue. It was the suburbs. They wanted to see my face in thirty years. The wanted to see my kids’ faces too, right here in Jamestown. Some of them stopped talking to me, just cut me out.

I was being labeled as an “outsider.” I was being grouped with kids just like Freddy, and in Jamestown, that was a death sentence.

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Jamestown was built on brotherhood and community, long before cars were invented. There’s nowhere to park. Most people don’t even own an automobile, though I doubt half of them could afford it anyway. There is nowhere to put one, let alone an outsider. Nothing comes in. Nothing leaves. Not in this place. Then again, it’s kind of amusing to think about how a car took me out of Jamestown and over to Montclaire.

I slowly realized that in order to be accepted again, to prove that I wasn’t becoming an outsider, I had to drink, I had to fit that Jamesie mold. I tried to be sober for a night, only because I had a game the next morning. Somebody passed me a can, but I shook it off. I was greeted with an explosion. “What are ya, a pussy now? Those yuppies brainwashing ya? They got ya thinkin’ you’re better than us? If I offer ya a drink, ya sure as shit better take it! Don’t forget who ya are, Chuckie!”

The tirade gathered a few people’s attention, and they circled around me, already blocking off any exit. I didn’t bother trying to explain myself. It was no use. I reluctantly took the can from his hand and popped the top. The beer was my ticket. I was allowed back if, and only if, I kept a can in my hand and gulped its contents down my throat. It’s almost like once they saw that I was doing the same stuff they were, it meant I wasn’t any better than them. I was just another Jamesie, and I wasn’t going anywhere.

It didn’t stop with the drinking either. Although I was out in the suburbs, over at Montclaire, I wasn’t acting like it. The influences of Jamestown were in my bone structure. I knew I was a good enough player so that no teacher could stand in my way. Coach even told me outright that a kid like me didn’t need to bother. That it would be taken care of. It didn’t matter if I did the work. No teacher was keeping me off the ice, especially when the school was dropping all that money to put me on it.

I remember this one lady, Mrs. Seaver. At the time, I had read probably ten actual books in my entire life. I didn’t mind reading; it just wasn’t something people did in Jamestown. Jimbo never read, so I never got into the habit. Well, she was an English teacher, master, whatever they called them out there. She knew where I was from, and why I was there, but she wouldn’t accept it. This lady loved pop quizzes. She was teaching us about Gulliver’s Trip, maybe it was Trek. The book never left my locker. When she returned one of her pop quizzes, mine had two words on top: See Me. No grade, just those words. Judging from other people’s faces, nobody did too 82

well. After class, I went up and asked her what she wanted. She said, “Charles, do you care about my class?”

“Yep. That it?”

“Really? Did you even bother to read a single page of this book?”

“Yep. You bet.”

“You don’t have to lie to me, Charles. We don’t get many people like you here. I really want you to do well. It would make me feel like I’m doing something right. There’s only so much I can do for you, though.”

I told her I’d get my act together, and that she should come out and see us play. Then I smiled, turned around, and sauntered out.

I made it a couple years up at Montclaire, scoring goals and even getting some big-time college attention. Then it happened, January 16, game eight of my senior season. We were playing Belmont Prep. They knew all about me. I ripped them every time we played, and their coach didn’t like it. I wore a sticker of a big, cursive J right on the back of my helmet. He saw where I was from, and it made him hate me that much more. The man thought a kid from Jamestown had no place playing in his league.

They were doing all the dirty stuff. Tugging my jersey, slashing my knees when the ref wasn’t looking, checking me into the boards for no reason, punching me under the pads. I knew I was more talented than every single kid on that team, so I didn’t let it faze me.

Soon after I scored my second goal of the first period, which took about five minutes, one of their defensemen punched me in the back of the head while I skated back up the ice. Their coach knew that that kid was dispensable. That punch was ordered. His hand hit my helmet pretty forcefully, and I stuck out my hands to keep from toppling over onto my chin.

That kid crossed the line, and I snapped. In Jamestown you don’t hit someone if they aren’t looking. It’s a cowardly move. I’ve seen many sucker punches dealt with. I quickly skated over to him and ripped his helmet right off his head. I was bloodthirsty. An eye for an eye is what I was raised on. A right cross to the nose, and the blood poured over his mouth and off of his chin. I looked at him and saw what he represented. Here was a kid whose parents had safeguarded and bubble-wrapped his entire life, a kid whose suburb believed he was entitled to a better life than me. I had landed the equalizer, but my building frustration wouldn’t let me stop.

With another punch, his mouthpiece flew clear off his teeth.

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Hoyt

Adrian Tatro 84

Then some of his teeth fell to the ice. He fell to the ground, but I didn’t stop. I hit the suburbs, the affluence, the all-powerful high society, and the ridicule. Above all, I hit the goddamn condescension that oozed from every pore of their bodies. I knew what I was doing for my future, but that didn’t stop me. I dropped to my knees so that I could hit him a few more times before the refs pulled me off. The kid didn’t get up.

He ended up all right, but he needed some new teeth and a wired jaw. Turns out his parents were a pair of high-priced lawyers, and they threatened an assault-and-battery charge. As I sat in the president’s office at Montclaire, he said, “Charles, your academics have been consistently weak. We would let you play, but the league athletic commission would never hear of it. Your hockey career here is over. Without your scholarship, you cannot pay your tuition. We would like you to return to Jamestown High. What you have done reflects poorly upon this institution, and therefore we are requesting your voluntary withdrawal before we proceed with an expulsion hearing.”

I knew it was coming. To them, I was just a mercenary, there to play hockey. I was the financial aid kid whose parents wouldn’t and couldn’t make a fuss. Once hockey was out of the equation, so was I. It was made clear that if I left Montclaire, the legal charges wouldn’t be pursued past the initial threat. I guess those lawyers figured being stuck in Jamestown was the same thing as jail. Jimbo couldn’t pay any decent attorney. I actually don’t think he ever considered it, but then again, what difference would it have made? I had to leave. It made the most sense.

I came back to Jamestown. I didn’t finish high school because I didn’t care enough. For a while, I did nothing; I just sat in my house all day sleeping and moping. I thought about the regret in my life.

I thought that I had my ticket, and I saw that it wasn’t a beer can.

I supposed that if I had done my work, if I had given Montclaire a reason to keep me other than hockey, then they would have fought for me. I imagined that if I had read about Gulliver, Mrs. Seaver would have pled my case. I figured if I had just given Freddy the time of day, his parents could have used their money to help me out.

I blamed myself for not taking advantage of my situation. I despised myself for not getting out, into what I thought of, at the time, as a better place to be, a better life.

As usual, Jimbo didn’t seem to care what I did. The colleges stopped sending letters. After about nine months I decided I needed 85

to get a job. That was six years ago, and I’ve been walking mail around Jamestown ever since.

It took some time to move beyond this regret and self-pitying bullshit. On my routes, I walked the same path and saw the same sights every day. There was old Mrs. Miller inviting me to come inside for a glass of water. She actually wanted to talk to me. She was interested in me as a person. Sitting at her table, I thought of Freddy. The kid wanted me to come over because I was a novelty for his family to view, an exotic species. They were going to “pick my brain” and marvel at how someone could actually live in Jamestown.

It would serve as a great story of how they went slumming for dinner.

I saw Jamesies climbing the stairs of a different house just about every week with trays of food, clothes, and whatever else they could give. These were typically the houses where I delivered the ‘Past Due’ envelopes. Seeing these processions made me think of Mrs. Seaver. The woman only pushed me because it made her feel better about herself in some self-righteous way. She didn’t push the kids who paid tuition. I was the woman’s charity case.

I finally saw that our community is stronger than any of Belmont or Montclaire. Here, people help each other out, people care.

There may be alcoholics, but what’s the difference between cheap beer and Belvedere? There may be fights, but at least they’re fair, rather than abusive. People don’t think they’re better than their neighbors. Nobody feels like they’re entitled to things that others aren’t. Belmont, Montclaire, and the rest of them, put the idea into our minds that being from Jamestown is a curse, a blight. Those people, that area, had an inherent belief that they were better than us just because they weren’t from our neighborhood. Belmont and Montclaire view us as animals, and unless they have a use for us, they make sure that we remain caged and trapped so we don’t somehow manage to infest their prep schools and private colleges.

On my route, there were the two beagles on Birch Street who always lurched at me, but were snapped back by their chains, missing me by inches. The alley that connected Crest to Grayfield and saved about twenty minutes. I saw how I fit into this town. This was where I was welcomed, where I had a place. It struck me that nobody was holding me down. They just didn’t want to lose me.

When Mrs. Miller passed, she didn’t have any kids or anything so one of her distant relatives put the house on the market. I put in a bid and got it. I figured what the hell. Some things can change.

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Devon Zimmerman 87

My Father-in-law’s Kitchen I was silent that morning before lunch, when the oven’s steam rose like August heat and he began to cook, cracking gray almonds: hammer to wooden cutting board.

Eyeing the saffron, onions, garlic, he motioned for my help. You can’t rinse the scent of garlic from fingertips, I said, and reached for dry brown raisins instead.

He smiled, garnished sliced tomatoes with fresh parsley and began storytelling, slow and paternal, a way I had long forgotten: about his wife’s illness and slow recovery; where he once lived along the southern coast and why he left; how his father, like mine, had died young.

Your hand’s beside burning oil, he warned. I stepped away.

We watched and waited for tap water to bubble, then boiled bitter almonds till they turned sweet.

At midday, in air tinged with tarragon and basil, he raised his hands to the hollow above lips, sensed his fingers still glazed with garlic.

Madeline Rose McSherry

88

Girl

Courtney Allessio

89

I Ought to Give My Poems Legs for Colleen Send them round the house at night to kick up and swallow dust.

In the morning, when they lie engorged and exhausted at the bottom of the stairs, I’ll shake them out on the balcony, stretch their letters in the wind, clothespin the punctuations to my laundry line.

For other poems I’ll pen a pair of hands, shoo them out into the neighborhood.

A few will climb the corner fencepost and point at the burning red Japanese Maple leaves at the corner of Beacon Street and Warwick Road.

Some will tug at the pant legs of pedestrians until they turn to catch the last sigh of the sunset.

One will skip around convenience stores and construction sites tickling everything it can get its tiny, rotund fingers on.

For a few poems I’ll craft wings from stamps and glossy photo paper, send them down the Masspike to Mother.

They’ll flutter through her kitchen window, perch in the oak ceiling beams beside the dried azaleas and rusted washboard to whisper in her ear as she scrubs cereal bowls in the sink; He’s okay. Eating well, not too sad.

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He’ll get a job, toughen up. He’s okay or Your father is happy now, in heaven.

Drinking whiskey on the rocks (it’s allowed).

Your mother will be there soon.

She knows how much you love her.

You’ve done all you can Better yet, the poem will nest in her twisted brown hair while she sleeps, and murmur; It’s okay not to know, to be scared, to be sad.

It’s okay to be sad In the morning she’ll stretch and scratch her elbow, find the folded piece of paper on her pillow, tuck it into her top drawer and smile.

All these other poems just sit around my room without a purpose.

They ruminate on death and spurn the names of ex-lovers while drinking in the closet or yawning on the radiator.

Michael Wolf

91

Staring Contests

Meghan Borah

92

Nanny For Sarah Webb I. Her name was born of babytalk, Sarah

stammered on spit out— Say-Say Raised my mother and six siblings

on butterfat and comfort kept in the cushion of her fruitbowl breasts that swallowed up all sadness Even her own put to tune and sung

out of her heavy chest

when she cooked so the kids could come home to corned beef and cabbage and sweet

sadness refined

to molasses II. My mother found it funny

that her hands were white on one side Say claimed it was from spanking

their pale behinds Spanked them when they didn’t see straight because seeing

was the same as loving, like the swollen flush of summer tomatoes meant sweet,

but Say made even the sallow worth wanting, salt and peppered,

slipped between

bread and mayo III. The kids envied Roger,

Say’s only son.

Imagined endless bowls of banana pudding, lemon custards all for himself,

93

but Roger didn’t like milk,

all he knew of it was suckled from Say for his first five years

when the pantry was dry He’d sprawl his lanky frame across

her lap like the Pieta and whine IV. Say was like nature, rarely took a break

only sat to rock the babies, buttoned up in her white smock and cooing

like a big brooding dove Baby shush, shush shush baby,

Or on Sundays when she went to church,

angeled up in costume jewelry, bursting floral like a flower patch in a pew,

hands folded, resolute Looked the same at all seven weddings,

weeping at the plants she’d watered for years grown too big for her pot V. Mother took us to visit her each week,

all sharp angles slumped in a winged arm chair swallowed in a polyester nightgown her chest a deceptive empty bag Skin slipping off bones like crockpot chicken My mother brought her red rice, her own recipe,

and cried when she wouldn’t eat fearing she’d get so light she’d fly off But Say said God fed her fine,

kept his glory running on channel four

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Truth was her soles were worn, she was ready to take wing leave all heavy stones behind and sing

VI.

Today my mother is a birdwatcher, knows each by the color

of its breast, promises me that even the saddest sounds are song

Elizabeth Kulze

95

Pescado

Nina Stingo

96

I Was Once an Otter Girl My shoulders and nose were pink and speckled With freckles. Neon green straps met in a Y down bumpy spine. My toes were shriveled, But I shrieked and smiled as I jumped and swam.

Those girls lounged and languished, triangles tied Strategically to hide their bodies, slick With sweat and oil, they were brown and wet like Sea lions. Though I could not see their eyes, Behind black sunglasses, I knew that they Weren’t red, like mine, from chlorine. I put fists On my nonexistent hips and promised Myself that I’d never lounge on chaise-rocks, That I’d always be speckled with freckles, That I’d be an otter girl forever.

Bernadette Gaffney

97

Charles Long 98

Silver Creek Katrin Tschirgi

The old dog gummed the Mallard. He trotted through the cheat grass and stopped at Randall’s feet before setting it down. Jimmy just stood there and watched as his father worked the edge of Silver Creek with a 12-gauge propped against his shoulder blade. He watched as his father picked up the dead carcass, its head flopping like a bean doll, and dropped it into an empty canvas drawstring bag.

Randall gave Blue, his loyal and steadfast Labrador, a quick pat on the head and then signaled his son to keep moving, brushing his hand against the wind. Jimmy looked back toward their pickup. They must have walked for miles, as he could no longer differentiate between the smudgy cobalt of the truck and the Camas that veined out across the valley. Jimmy took the bag and swung it over his shoulder. With each step he took, the duck tapped rhythmically against his side. It was an uncomfortable closeness.

Jimmy hated duck. So did his mother. He hated the stringy, buttery texture. He also hated hunting—not that he had ever killed anything. Rather it was the cleaning of the birds—a job delegated to Jimmy early in his life—that he dreaded. Once they rolled into the garage, Randall would pull the body bag out of the truck’s bed and hand it off much in the same manner as his wife handed Jimmy the groceries. Jimmy was then left to his own devices. He’d close his eyes and rip at the blue-brown feathers of the duck’s breast. Sometimes the more delicate ones would slip between his fingers, or he would miss the stalks, and he would switch to using pliers. Jimmy removed the splintered feathers from the wounds in its solar plexus, wings, and tail, pulling the shotgun pellets out one by one. After making two gashes he would peel back the skin like a Florida citrus.

Bird cleaning was, as Randall had made clear, a right of passage. He had done it himself when he was eight, and he knew that it was this kind of labor that made men of good character. His wife argued vehemently against it. She even offered to do it herself, given how clearly it perturbed the boy. From the garage Jimmy could hear his parents fighting, and while he secretly cheered for his mother, he knew that Randall was not one to break with childhood ritual. And Jimmy knew that, as always, tradition would be victorious in the end.

To block the night’s looming chore, he did his best to behold the Idaho Fall-time. He looked at the tufts of blond grasses, the ostensible path of gray shale scattered in front of his two feet, the pine-log 99

fences encrusted with barbed wire that were refurbished annually by the Fish and Game. He admired his distance from the truck, and Blue’s tail swishing by his father’s side. But after walking for so long, Jimmy was growing tired, and when his father did finally stop, it was a welcomed gesture.

Randall looked back at his son. Jimmy instantly felt small, scrutinized under the charcoal gaze of his father, as though he were a young bull at the county fair whose potential as an adult was being measured against becoming chuck roast. He averted his gray eyes to the ground. He was conscious of the blond bowl-cut that his mother insisted upon, and how Randall scoffed at its length. His trousers were too big and hemmed in mud. Suddenly, the truck felt all too far away.

“Boy, today is the day you learn how to shoot,” Randall said, propping the butt of the gun against his boot. Jimmy looked up at him and was surprised to see how mellow his father’s face looked— softer, much more young. And Jimmy smiled.

Blue sat obediently on Randall’s left side, great big tongue lolling out.

Jimmy reached his hand out for the gun. The shotgun came up to his lowest rib, and he could see down the barrel. He was tempted to put his index finger inside it just to see if it would fit.

“Now you just rest it on your shoulder like this,” Randall said demonstrating. “There’s going to be some recoil, but the coat’s thick and it shouldn’t hurt ya too bad or too long.”

Jimmy had seen his father hunt more times than he could remember, and he had often dreamt of holding this very gun, but when Randall put it in his hands, it suddenly felt all too heavy. “Wait for Blue to flush ‘em and then just pull the trigger and shoot. Real simple like.” Randall patted his shoulder, stood back and reached in front of Jimmy’s finger, cocking the trigger. They waited for the silence.

Randall gave Blue the signal, but the trigger was harder to draw than Jimmy expected, and his finger lacked dexterity against the metal. It wouldn’t pull.

“Shoot the damn gun, Jimmy,” his father said curtly. He waited a minute and said, “It’s too late. Birds are gone. Come on.” He dragged his hand across Jimmy’s shoulder and picked up the leather shotgun case. But Jimmy did not move, and watched as the birds landed in the sage three hundred feet down. “Jim, I said let’s go. Just let ‘er go.”

Jimmy could see one moving through the reed. It looked like 100

Marissa Kaplan 101

a grouse, albeit a very large one. He focused his gaze to the far bank and pulled the trigger. The gun punched back into his shoulder and knocked him onto his back. It took him a moment lying in the season’s first frozen earth to feel the pulse of blood in his temples.

His father’s face came into view, eyes large and fearful. Jimmy held his hand out to be helped up, but it tingled all the way through his fingers and he set it down again. He half expected his father to fill his hand, not with leather glove, but the soggy neck of his first caught fowl. Randall did neither.

Jimmy propped himself onto his elbows. His ears were ringing and his shoulder felt split open, somehow impossibly, beneath the layers of felt jacket. He rubbed his eyes and saw his father splashing through the water. “Oh my God, oh my God,” he said as he sifted through the invasive Western grass and finally disappeared.

Jimmy finally managed to stand up. He wanted his prize. He called out, commanding Blue to come bounding to heel. But the dog did not come racing across the top of the water, steely wings flossed between his teeth.

Jimmy could see his father stand up out of the grass, shoulders bowed forward and hands pressed into his knees. Randall stood there for a long minute, before he dipped down again and rested his hand on Blue’s body. His hat had fallen off and lay like an open vessel in the mud. Randall picked it up, hit it against his thigh, and put it back on his head. He walked up to Jimmy and said, “com’on, son.”

Randall picked up the bag of dead birds, and started back toward the truck.

“Dad,” Jimmy said, confused, “what about Blue?”

“Dog is dead. Time to go home.” His voice was even, but he didn’t look at his son.

Jimmy looked out across Silver Creek. The dog would be left to the mercy of pitiless seasons—snow and rain that would pull him apart sinew from sinew. When he would be dismantled, it would be not by Jimmy’s hands.

“No, Dad, no. We can’t just leave him there. We have to take him home.”

Randall looked at him, astonished. “He’s dead,” he repeated.

“He don’t care if he don’t make it back to the truck. Now damn it all, we’ve got to go home. This was a mistake,” he said to himself now, “a mistake, a mistake. Christ.”

Jimmy was dumbfounded. A terrible weight descended upon him, but what he felt was not so much guilt, as responsibility. He 102

Devon Zimmerman 103

looked his father square in the eyes, turned and began walking back toward Blue. But Randall quickly stopped him, grabbed Jimmy by the arm with one hand and slapped him across the top of the head with the other. “For once, boy. Do as you’re told,” he said, voice shaky.

Randall looked uneasy. His knuckles had gone chalky. Jimmy glanced back at his father, eyes cold and hollow like empty stonefly nests in June. It was the same look he would give his father later that evening when Randall stood over all those dead birds, pulling out their feathers like they were the very hairs on his head.

104

Bailey Budd

105

Sade Garvey

106

Alternate Titles for an Anatomy Poem Baa Baa Black Lung/ Bed Bug Tooth Fairy/ Bob, Neil, Matt and Other Unfortunate Quadriplegics/ Braving the Gym in Boxers/ Dead and Breakfast/ Decease and the Cyst/ Faceless Tongue/ Gin & Tonic Epilepsy/ Hello, Agonist! So long, Hamstring!/ Hyphenating the Out-of-Body Experience/ In-Glass Mercury Essay/ Keister Kisser/ Love Sneezes With Her Eyes Open/ Madam’s Apple/ More Headbutt Than First Kiss/ Mutton Chop Shop/ Please, Pass the Cirrhosis/ Recording Waistlines and Watermarks/ Referred Pain, Preferred Pain/ Rudimentary, My Dear Appendix/ Shedding NinetyFour Bones/ Sheer Derma Nation/ Smells After Grandma Irons Your Hair/ Soma Olympics/ Ted Williams Rolling Over in His Cryogenic Ice Tray/ Ten-Day Taste Buds/ The Kidneys Are Alright/ Thermometer Where?/ Thus Spoke Serotonin/ Undershirts for Zombies

myles gerraty

107

Clean Slate Keith Noonan

I still can’t believe he’d say something like that to me, and Marcy is late again, probably taking her sweet old time. It’s two past ten outside the Swansons’, and I have the air-conditioning on full blast so I don’t sweat to death or make the wait for her any more rotten than necessary. We’ve been cleaning this residence, along with seven other houses in the neighborhood, once every week for about a year now, and strike me down if she’s been on time to this house even a single time. It’s not the kind of lateness that would get Mrs. Swanson in a tiff, two minutes here, five minutes there, but Marcy knows quite well that I’ll be sitting in the driveway, ready to begin the first of our rounds, just waiting for her to arrive. We always go in together. That’s just how it works.

We started the cleaning business two years ago, after my last child finished high school, and Jerry was without a job because the heating company laid him off. I had been in retail, re-folding sweaters that customers couldn’t be bothered to put back in proper fashion.

It shouldn’t have been too hard to grasp: left shoulder and sleeve to the center, then ditto with the right side, and tuck the bottom half of the shirt to the back, but that didn’t stop nearly every buffoon in the store from leaving crumpled piles of cotton, cashmere, and wool in their wake. I suppose that’s why I had a job, and that job is how I met Marcy. She hated it just the same as me. We used to make the day go by, poking fun at customers and doing impressions of Mr. Scripps, the upstart department manager with a glistening comb-over and a knack for working his Associate’s Degree into just about every conversation or bit of instruction he could dish out. After work, I’d tell my husband Jerry how boring it was, and he was always saying I should start a business, not that he’s the reason I did, though I’m sure he’d say he was. Well what do you know? Here comes Marcy up the driveway.

Her sputtering burgundy Volvo slows to a halt next to my Saab, and she flashes one of her bright-lipsticked smiles, as if to say she’s ready to get to work. I could never pull off that shade—too Golden Girls. She knows she kept me waiting again and she’s kind of apologizing for it or at least recognizing the fact. Marcy is sixty-two, ten years older than me, and looks like a grandmother, even though her two kids don’t have any of their own. I don’t look like a grandma.

Yet. Her hair is frizzy, and she’s wearing that dark-blue liner that 108

almost hides the sagging wrinkles under her eyes. I’ve been waiting to talk to her about what Jerry said to me last night. I like talking with Marcy. She gets it, even if she says something dumb from time to time. She waddles out of her car and I follow, out into the hot thickness that just isn’t right for so early in the day.

“Morning, Patty. How are you?” Marcy opens the trunk of her car and takes out her bucket and mop, then the blue nylon YMCA bag with the cleaning fluids.

“Grumpy. You wouldn’t believe what Jerry said to me last night.” I can see her wince a bit as she lifts the bag out and onto the ground, still having some trouble with her back. She’d never let me help with something so simple as light lifting. I’ve tried but I don’t anymore. I take the vacuum and my bag of supplies from my backseat.

I wait for her response. I suppose I could launch right into the whole thing, but I want her to ask because that’s what I would do.

“Oh? What is it this time?”

I look at her over the top of my car and already see shiny beads of sweat in her puffy sand-colored hair, one of several reasons why I’ve decided I like mine short, which my husband has complained about, but that’s got nothing to do with why I’m upset with him today. He likes to pick at little things lately. Always picking.

“Well, we were going over the finances for the month, balancing our checkbooks and the usual, and he sits there all quiet for a while just peering over his glasses, scanning lines of paper, and then he looks up at me like he’s the bank teller and says I need to be more careful with my spending.”

Marcy throws her head back and laughs as we walk the brick path to the door of the Swansons’ large fake-stone house.

“After all you’ve done? The nerve. Honestly, Patty.” Marcy rings the doorbell and the two of us stand around looking from the ground to each other to inside the house, waiting for Mrs. Swanson to come down and let us in.

Jerry put up some of the money to get my business with Marcy going, but there really wasn’t much in the way of startup cost, a gallon of bleach here, a steam cleaner there. That was our money anyways, he just sort of decided where it would go. And it’s true that he helped us get our first customers, but my hard work kept us afloat till he had another job, so for him to criticize how I spend is frankly absurd. It shouldn’t matter who’s making more. We’ve always just done what we can.

109

Still Life with Apples

Amelja Kukli

110

Mrs. Swanson opens the squeaky spring-loaded door wearing a gold necklace and warm expression.

“Hello, girls, come in out of the heat. It’s just ghastly. I couldn’t believe it when I popped out to get the paper.” She steps back so we can fit through the doorway. I hold the door for Marcy, who struggles a bit to lift her bag of supplies, shifting the weight to her left knee and swinging it over the small step into the home like some kind of geriatric track star. I love Marcy. I hate the Swansons’ spring door. It’s loaded too tight and will swing shut and put a vicious knick in your ankle if you’re not careful to keep it open till you’re out of harm’s way.

We chat with Mrs. Swanson for a little while. She’s always playing with her dark, immaculately trimmed bangs when we talk, brushing strands to one side or another with no concern for the way they return to a stationary mold after her hands have left. That or fiddling with her eyes like a lash is giving her trouble. She says her husband is in Mexico for the week on a fishing trip. I never tell Jerry how pointless it is to spend his time fishing, even though it is.

Perhaps I should.

Mrs. Swanson says she’ll be in her study, which is fancy talk for a room with books and papers and such, if we need her, and that the money is on the mantle in the living room. There are two living rooms, of course, but we know which she means because that’s where she always puts it. I wheel the vacuum into the other one, the one with the beige carpet and white leather couches. Marcy heads to the kitchen, bucket in hand, then returns to wipe down the windows and coffee table. The Swanson house has that sickening sweet smell that comes from too many air fresheners and not enough circulation.

The temperature is nice, though.

“You know, Marcy, I’ll bet if Jerry were to total up his spendings he’d see I haven’t overstepped any bounds, and that the things he likes are just as silly as the ones I like. There’s no reason we need to be paying extra for the unlimited sports channels and all that, and besides, most of the money he says I’m overspending is going to Tim, and he’s Jerry’s son, too.”

She nods at me, then removes the glass baubles and porcelain birds from the top of the bottom half of a window so she can clean without needing to be too delicate.

“Tell him that. It’s hard to argue against the facts.”

I turn the vacuum on and raise my voice over its roar.

“He’d probably say it’s different. Of course it’s different. It’s 111

Through the Looking Glass

Meghan Mazza

112

always different.” She gives me one of those half-acknowledgements, the kind you give to a person you normally agree with even when you didn’t actually hear what they said. I push the vacuum with an intensity that might be out of place in the Swanson house.

Sometimes I imagine I’m rolling the thing over Jerry’s leathery, disapproving face.

I’ve always liked the way a vacuum upturns carpet. It leaves streaks of disheveled clean that stand out at first, but slowly become the norm as you work your way around, till they’re completely unnoticeable and you forget what the strands looked like in the first place. I think that pretty much every house we clean has a vacuum, but I bought one for our business. Jerry couldn’t understand why, even after I explained it to him. Maybe he did, but just wouldn’t admit it. Our vacuum is better than the ones our clients have around the house. It’s an impressive tool, to be perfectly honest, the kind that shows that Marcy and I mean business and that we’re here to do the best job possible. He should have at least appreciated it as tax write-off.

Marcy is finishing up the windows, drying down spots of soapsuds. The flab on her underarm jostles as she makes circular motions. I’m starting to get that, too, the flab. Not as veiny or amorphous or pronounced, but it’s there and it scares me a bit. Jerry pinched it before bed last Sunday. I don’t care if he was being playful. That’s not the kind of thing a husband should do.

I’ve finished vacuuming the first living room, the “white room” as Mrs. Swanson calls it. Marcy is still working the windows. She’s moving slow today, though I suppose that’s all right because I can rest a bit, then help her finish up, and when that’s wrapped we’ll move to the bathroom down the hall. Sometimes I think she zones out too much, like she finds a rhythm and gets into the job, but not quite at the best pace. We might be able to fit in another house in a day’s schedule if she changed that.

I help her with the rest of the windows and it only takes a couple minutes, then we move to the first of four bathrooms. It’s got a marble bathtub, which is a bit out of place in a wonderful sort of way. The Swansons have a very nice home, of course, but it doesn’t stand out all that much from the other houses in the neighborhood, and none of the others have a marble bathtub. I’ve always wanted one, but Jerry thinks that sort of thing is pointless, showy, and a bad use of money. I once pointed to one in a catalog and said it was beautiful. He had the nerve to call it “a charlatan’s soaking bucket.”

113

Charlatan. I don’t even think he knows what that word means.

“Marcy, one day, I’m going to have a marble bathtub.” She laughs.

“What would you do with it?”

“The same things I’d do in any other bathtub, but it would be marble. And beautiful.” She knows I’m joking a bit, but only that much. “I feel like there’s a chance to expand our business, Marcy.

It’s only gotten bigger since we started it, and who knows what could happen?” I take out a fresh pair of yellow rubber gloves.

She shrugs, then pulls a glove over her hand and wiggles her fingers into place. I take the bottle of bleach from her blue YMCA bag, stop the drain in the tub, and splash some around its luxurious milky stone, then some on the rag I’ll use to scrub it. We take turns.

I’ll do the first tub, she’ll do the toilet and sink, then the other way around. Despite what you’d think, the toilet-sink combination is actually the easier job. I always start with the marble tub, though.

“I think if we put some more money into this we could really have something. Hire a couple younger girls, advertise, see what happens,” I say. The powerful air of disinfectant fills the room. My life smells like bleach. I’ve come to enjoy it.

“Don’t you think you’re getting ahead of yourself, Patty?”

“Maybe a little.” Getting ahead of myself, sounds like something Jerry would say. I turn my head back to the tub and scrub around the drain after removing the thick, wet clump of Mrs. Swanson’s jet-black hair and tossing it in the bin. I almost wish I’d thrown it in the toilet and given Marcy a splash, but that’s probably misplaced frustration.

“I think the reason that Jerry said I need to watch my spending is that he’s insecure. He feels threatened.” I hear scrubbing, hers and mine. What I’d like is a more personal response. “Did you hear me, Marcy?”

“Yes.” Scrubbing. “What do you think is making him insecure?”

“He doesn’t make as much money with his new company, and I think he sees me, sees our business doing well and feels like he’s not the same man anymore, so his natural tendency is to be more controlling. Compensating. Something like that.”

Scrubbing. I’m almost done with the tub, so Marcy must be even closer to being finished.

“Do you know what else bothers me about Jerry?”

No scrubbing. I glance over at Marcy, who’s looking sideways 114

to the floor. She sighs, a big heavy sigh that might not be healthy in a room filled with sanitary vapors.

“Patty, you know I love you, but sometimes you talk too much.

Sometimes you just gotta leave it at home.” She tells the last part like a joke, with a shrill chuckle and diverted eyes.

Scrubbing.

“Maybe you’re right.” She isn’t.

We don’t talk much the rest of the day.

Pulling in my driveway, I’m tense and exhausted. It feels good to be back. Jerry is on the couch watching baseball.

“Hello, honey. How was your day?”

“Awful.” I put my keys on the counter and turn to him, waiting.

“Oh no. Marcy slow again?”

“Yes, and you wouldn’t believe what she said to me.”

115

Reasonable Doubt It was all very convincing, what with the care put into each rose petal, the intermingling blues of the sky and the ocean mid-kiss at the horizon.

Have you ever stopped at a snowstorm, holding your arms out to receive each flake’s baptism?

Those who kept walking, head down concerned for their cell phone, missed the steady stream appearing under the streetlight as if from a showerhead.

It was all very convincing, but it still felt like I was looking at a painting without an artist.

Jack Neary

116

Jasmine Rebadavia

117

Threadbare His sleeves approached shoulder or elbow, suggestive of the ways he didn’t fit me.

His hat rarely came off and captiously, I wondered what else he kept covered.

Watching him zip up his new worn-out jeans, I knew—he and I had faded too.

Pondering why holes pretend to be exciting while portending weakness, I found you. We matched and the coincidence suited us for a while.

You’re the only man I ever met and liked the way he dressed, but I never could form words to impart the underlying sentiment.

“My closet is not me,” you let out “and love is not sartorial!”

I started to resolve or try, but you weren’t so unaware: “Well anyway, I hate that dress.”

The same one you had 118

loved so much at first‌ I often rue the subsequent moment— I threw it at your face and ran out naked, sewing my privation of it and you thereafter.

Drifting since in dishabille, seems holes are the only things that excite me now.

Sarah Beck

119

#3. Hamburger Man: A New Hope aka The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Hamburgerdust And The Purple People-Eaters From Planet Abstracto aka The Fresh Prince Of Bel Hamburger (Disclaimer: All Characters In This Work Are Fictitious. Any Resemblance To A Real Hamburger, Living Or Dead, Is Purely Coincidental)

120

Robert Ventura

What I did today Today was obsequious.

Yes, I admit it.

I do not know the meaning of the word.

Nor do I care to look it up in the dictionary.

Nor do I own a dictionary.

Ahh, but You. You destroyer of worlds.

You layabout, you lacy-covered conundrum.

You maneater: brick upon brick piler.

You finger-flattening, water tundra Under water with a wimpish grin Flattening.

You roly poly hoochie coochie man, man.

But You. Risk a risk to risk. Whisk.

You in rainbows.

You rigamarole it all up And smoke it.

You lying t’roo yer teeff.

You on the thirty seventh ceiling.

Yelling seven thirty seven on You. You have a dictionary.

You Know What I Mean.

Joseph DeNatale

121

Storm Last June My mother has always feared the sound of a thundering clack— a branch snapping from the Great Oak in our front yard— when water falls hard, thumping down like frantic fingers on a typewriter, rain writing a living will.

Dead and dying limbs hover over our rooftop, precarious and nearly silent except for that slow creaking, like the old antique chair in our dining room. Trees speak in husky voices, like first words uttered after hours of silence, mucus still stuck in the backs of throats.

The sky thunders tonight, and though miles away from any tree, thousands from my mother, I swear I can hear the oak shatter, crack, split from the center, branches plummet to the ground.

Back home, my mother drums her fingers on black

granite countertop, nervous and quiet, eyes the windows for the tree’s silhouette: dark veins against blue-white skin.

The cat weeps like a child outside begging for the warmth of our hearth as summer leaves drop, one season too early.

Madeline Rose McSherry

122

Moving On

Andrea Kisiel

123

In the Running Michael Wolf

Max sat on a swing and gripped the metal-link chain. He spun side to side, letting his feet drag in the woodchips as he twirled a watermelon lollipop in his mouth. He tried to pinpoint his first mistake.

It was time to clean things up.

Sarah walked across the playground and stopped in front of him. She tucked a stray strand of her long blonde hair behind her ear and fixed her wide hazel eyes on Max. “Recess is over. Mrs. Sommers won’t be happy if you come back late again.”

Max spit a wad of watermelon juice into the woodchip ditch caused by hundreds of scraping heels.

“That’s really not the most important thing on my mind right now.”

“I understand that,” Sarah said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, “but you can’t change much stuck in time-out.

You need to think a few steps ahead, Max. There’s been another bump in the road. Walk back with me, and I’ll fill you in on what I’ve heard.”

Max gave one big push off the ground. He pumped his legs and jumped from the swing at the highest point. Closed eyes. Cool air on his face. The distant sound of chalk on board. For a moment, Max ascended into stillness. He’d escaped the pressures of social standpoint, obligations to classmates, and a history of deceit.

These claw-footed beasts caught up to him as soon as he hit the ground. They dug back into their familiar spot on his shoulder. Max rose, brushed off his nylon pants and said to Sarah, “Let’s go.”

Sarah slung her book bag over her shoulder. It was filled with campaign posters, sheets of statistics, and the library’s only copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Sarah slouched slightly under its weight, and Max restrained himself from offering to help. He had to stay focused on the situation, keep things professional.

“It’s Stephen. He’s been telling the whole class that you’re a liar. He said you stole the election from him. He said you’ve never been to space camp.”

Max bit down, shattering the lollipop in his mouth. Max knew Stephen would play this card sooner or later. Only a few years ago the two had been inseparable, just to be torn apart by a young crush, unrequited for either. Now they waged disguised wars; Stephen at124

Playing

Meghan Borah

125

tacking Max’s reputation and Max gunning for Stephen’s coveted presidency. Both fueled by scorn and the satisfaction of revenge.

“He’s wrong, isn’t he, Max? You did go to space camp this summer?” Sarah asked, stopping to wait for an answer. There was so much hope in her face and even, Max thought, a trace of admiration.

One more thing he could dangle over Stephen’s head.

Max didn’t slow down. “Here’s what I need you to do, Sarah.

When we get back in there, tell Mrs. Sommers there’s a kid throwing up in the 6th-floor wing, by the science department. Walk there with her and then duck out to use the bathroom because the sight of vomit made you nauseous, or something. Then double back and go to Stephen’s locker. Did you get his combo?”

Sarah pulled a small square of paper from her notebook. “Jane gave it to me in exchange for finishing her long-division worksheet.

Stephen gave it to her last week. Before they split up.”

“Great. You have to go through his things and find anything that might have my name on it. Anything that he could use against me has got to go.”

“What if someone sees me? I could get in serious trouble.”

“Then I guess you’ll need to be extra careful,” Max said with conviction. “Okay, we’re almost outside the classroom. I’m going to wait around the corner until you get her out of the room.”

Sarah took a deep breath.

“Max, I – ” He cut her off before she complicated things. “Just go. There’s no time to worry or think about consequences. We need to act. This will all be fine. I promise.” It had to be fine. The last thing Max wanted was for Sarah to see him fail or even falter.

Sarah pulled her hair back into a ponytail, took a deep breath and marched around the corner and into the room. Max waited with his back against the tall, foam-green lockers until he heard Mrs. Sommers open the door and say, “Keep reading the section about Brutus. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

When the clink of high heels had drifted far down the hall, Max spit out the masticated lollipop stick and walked into the classroom.

Most of the students were up from their seats. Some sat on the radiator by the windows. Others were drawing on the chalkboard in the back of the room. Stephen sat on the edge of the activities table, surrounded by a group of kids. He saw Max and pointed.

“There he is. Back from orbit. What other lies are you going to tell to get control of the class?”

126

Max walked straight to Stephen’s desk, grabbed his backpack from the side of the chair and walked back towards the door.

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going with that?” Stephen got up and chased after Max, who threw the bag out the open door.

“What are you, crazy? My Gameboy’s in there!”

Stephen ran into the hall to retrieve his bag. Max shut the door behind him and locked it. Stephen’s face popped into the small window, and he beat on the door with the palm of his hand. The thick oak door muffled his yells.

Max walked to the front of the rapt classroom. He gazed over the room at all the expectant eyes. Maybe he ought to just come clean, call things off before it got too serious. But he’d grown so good at lying that the words emerged quicker than his conscience.

“Fellow Fourth-Graders. It has come to my attention that some of you have been questioning my background. People have said I never attended space camp. This would, of course, make my entire ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation’ essay nothing more than lies.

Quite the accusation.

“This would also invalidate one of the main platforms of my campaign for class president: getting an astronaut to come visit the classroom. These rumors have been spread by my opposition.

“Let me ask you this. If I never went to space camp, where did I get the astronaut ice cream I brought in for you last week? Where did I get those red Mars rocks I Show-and-Telled? Where did I get these zero-gravity moon sneakers?”

Max lifted his foot and placed his all-white sneaker on the desk.

There were hollowed-out tubes on the bottom that squished when he stepped, simulating moon bounce, and sparkly silver-and-blue-star stickers pressed onto the sides and tongue.

“I haven’t lied to you. I spent all summer running simulations.

“Ask yourself, is Stephen the kind of kid you want in charge of the class? Can you envision him leading the line to lunch every day?

Is he going to speak up to Mrs. Summers when she assigns us too much work?

“Stephen wants to be president for himself. He wants the power and the privilege. I want the opportunity to be president for you because I know that if I do a good job, then we all benefit. Heck, I’m trying to get Jell-O at every snack time, and you know I don’t even eat the stuff.

“I didn’t want to bring this up, but Stephen’s provoked me.

Remember last year when he said his dad couldn’t come in for the 127

Sade Garvey

128

career fair because he had been deployed on a secret mission to Russia?”

Max paused and looked around the room at all the eager faces.

“Stephen’s dad is a plumber. I know. I used to go over his house all the time when we were “friends” in Second Grade. If you don’t believe me, follow him after school. The reason he walks down the street is so no one sees his father pick him up in his company’s van.”

All eyes swung over to Stephen’s face in the rectangular window, trapped behind glass. His eyes widened when he saw everyone looking, and he commenced banging on the door.

“Hiding your parent’s profession out of shame seems to me like a bad way to start a campaign. If he doesn’t have the strength to accept his own father, how can we expect him to accept us? Especially those of us in remedial math.”

Max walked over and unlocked the door. Stephen stormed into the room.

“What did he tell you?” he demanded. “What did he say about me?”

No one volunteered an answer.

Max brushed by him and made his way to his desk. As soon as he sat down, Sarah entered the room. She looked at Max and raised her eyebrows. Mrs. Sommers came in behind her.

“Another teacher must have helped out the poor student before I got there, Sarah. I’m sure she’s all right.”

She looked around the room in dismay.

“Why are you all out of your seats? Sit down right now. This isn’t a playground.”

After class Max met Sarah by the water fountain.

“Thanks for your help today,” he said, wiping a bit of water from his cheek. “You really stepped up to the plate.”

Sarah pulled a photo out of her coat pocket.

“What is this?”

She handed the photo to him, but he didn’t need to see it to know it was Troup 117. Max and the other Scouts stood saluting a flag, in full uniform and rank, each holding part of a Fourth of July banner.

“You said you were in Florida for the Fourth? That they let you help organize the fireworks display over the Gulf?”

Max ripped the photo.

“I was, Sarah.”

129

Her bottom lip trembled, and she wiped at her eyes. It killed him to see this weakness.

“I don’t understand, Max. I thought we were doing the right thing. I thought we were the good guys. I don’t want to lie.”

“We are the good guys. Sometimes you have to do a few little bad things to create a big good thing. Do you understand? I’ll do whatever I have to, Sarah, because I know that it’s for the best in the long run. If you aren’t ready to do that, maybe you should quit now.”

Nervous, Max watched her think. If she abandoned him, he’d be losing more than a campaign manager. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked so much of her.

After a minute she gave a small nod.

“Good.” Max turned to walk away, and breathed a silent sigh of relief.

“Wait, Max! What did you tell the class about Stephen? He was crying by the foursquare just a minute ago.”

Max kept walking down the hallway.

“The truth, Sarah. I told them the truth.”

Max crossed the playground and the parking lot and climbed aboard Bus Seven. He took his regular seat in the back, right above the rear wheel well. Outside the window, Max could see Stephen still sitting on the foursquare next to the gym. Even from a distance, Max could see his shoulders shaking slightly. Back in Second Grade, they’d formed an alliance on the foursquare court. An unbeatable team.

Now Stephen looked so young. All the anger he’d harbored when locked out had drained from his face and fists, and now he just looked beaten. Mission accomplished.

Max leaned back against the tall, cheap leather bus seat. It looked like he was the victor. He sat alone, basking in the power of his pre-presidency.

130

Hillary

Ericka Schubert 131

Starfruit

Ngoc Doan

132

Ash and Berry

This morning the daffodils are a panoply of want, with cleaves of dew in patches.

In the lush bloom kneels an old woman, the sullen gardener who tells her daughter, Gather bulbs and cradle them in yellow bonnets.

One night when you have nothing more to gather, you will know the footfall of young flowers dying.

Now recall the touch of your soul.

Nothing is as sure as these fingerprints, the mortal constellations that dapple the sky.

Do you remember this feeling?

What blooms next season can never be as sure as that celestial touch.

That night I imagined my arms were the roots of the oak, and I dreamt it was her voice that said: This is the wanting of bones.

Suzannah Lutz

133

Storm and Port Rhythm grows in mausoleum lots where visible light is bootlegged by death march.

The refrain is a jazz engine. It goes, Vroom Whoosh, Oom-pah. Followed by uncertainty.

That’s why improv is called up in the air— one moment of turbulence as the descending jet fumbles through clouds that say, tough shit, but this plane was always going down. The sound of the city drowning, when the roofs become porches, when the oil rigs are cajoled from the horizon, taciturn and large, when the sun tucks away like a Creole hatbox. Maybe then loneliness becomes a language.

And a man must crouch at what he cannot understand.

Music is at once storm and port, a multistrain form, rivers are ensembles— walk and slap of the basin’s two second count, melodic waves, cymbals bombing against the shore, ebb and systole, tailgate trombone sliding along the dock. The fingers and breath of watercourse. Something about our bodies wants to run and cower inside some other body, and we crawl as brass mute does into cornet.

The backbeat is ragtime, is bayou opera that can’t afford to be lost or shut in; a hydrophilic stir of horns bleating, vacating the throng and fattening in their freedom.

Jazz is no miracle nor mistake.

Sometimes, if you think only about the Mighty Mississippi it runs in the oddest places— Belly to belly with dirt or stone, waving ashore to the oleander before flowing headlong off a cliff, sometimes scaling unscaleable walls like Coltrane’s sax or a Tulane hurdler.

134

During Katrina, the world turned over and rain fell toward the sky. A dark angel played her own game of Passover, spray-painting an X on every warped door to cite rescue team’s date of reentry, number of residents, bodies found.

The town’s still gold and black, and the leaves wrestle to fleur-ish again. And we don’t, like sound heralds on Bourbon and lower ninth ward bricklayers, know what’s going to happen next.

What we do know is how to play however we feel, ease the Easy back into a song flower, take a steadfast dive toward God. Organs into streets; into soul-guffaw; into razzmatazz.

Followed by that apprehensive sigh—

We’re speaking off the rolled-up cuff. It’s ono matopoeia: not er’body know: eeny-meenyminy-moe: the holler, the let my people go.

Myles Gerraty

135

Stop time.

Bailey Budd

136

The Neva Approaching Winter A sliver of blood glistens in the left corner, coronary clog beating six shades of red. Pulsating fibers split again. shed three worlds profound and shallow. knit together veinous stitches of blue blood before broken city streets collapse into singed soot petals with a single incision. expand and shrink expand and shrink with every spurting sliver.

Underneath the rivers run anemic. Chambers scraped clean and oxidized.

Every pulse skips the city’s beats. every vascular gash a mile.

What blood type binds crooked letters underneath broken skin?

The kind I find in my pores.

Increase. Decrease. expand and shrink. Run until arteries pull at our chest and aortas beat in our throats and the world spins alive. Capillaries run dry and shrink.

Expand and shrink. But underneath the river runs red again and knits together a vertical blue gash with lamp light and silver skin.

Next year come back here in May to watch white heat twist through a system of rivers.

And when the sun bleeds red in the early morning laugh as the light floods flushed faces and rain slices through skin.

Next year heard a rumor of oxidized candy cut and pure.

My heart shrunk at the thought.

Ashley Schneider

137

Unclaimed Luggage Lena Park

She stood alone in that windowless room as she watched the baggage claim’s conveyor belt sputter by. Without her bag.

“Only in Camas,” she sighed in exasperation, trying to stifle the grin that betrayed affection.

She was of course referring to the fact that only here, only in Camas would her bag be lost, despite the fact that she had personally handed her over-stuffed, gay-pride-parade-shade-of purple backpack to the big, black man with the official, navy blue, I-workat-the-airport jacket – think his name was Corey? – and watched Corey unfeelingly hurl it into the cargo load right before she boarded her 18-passenger flight. And yet, somehow, somehow Camas’ own Grove Field Airport had swallowed her bag, a bag the size of an eight-year old Augustus Gloop. They had no idea where it was.

And she thought this was the most fitting “welcome home” her hometown could have given her.

“Ma’m,” the woman working behind the “Customer Service” desk started, pausing to pop something into her mouth “we’ll poke around the ‘port and see what we come up with, but I’m sure someone just wasn’t payin’ attention took your bag by mistakes,” she drawled between the chomps she took of her…beef jerkey? It smelled like beef jerkey.

All that was left creaking along on the sheenless conveyor belt was a carry-on sized, red (as she liked to call it) “rolly bag.” She rolled her own eyes. Red, she thought. I bet some dumb girl was trying to make a statement: I’m different, but still fashionable.

“Do I need to fill something out so you know how to find me if someone returns my bag or something?” she asked hopefully.

The beef-snacker, who had already returned to scanning her OK! Magazine, looked up, surprised that this girl was still standing there. “Hunnay, listen,” she said, putting down the magazine, as though she were preparing to impart some secret airport wisdom.

The girl leaned in. “If it’s meant to be,” the woman whispered, “I’m sure someone’ll send it your way. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” She popped something into her mouth again and grinned.

Did they make cubes out of beef jerkey now? She nodded towards the baggage claim and chomped, “Take that one.”

The girl turned and stared at the unclaimed red bag. Could she just do that? Roll red out onto the dirt roads of Camas to her par138

ents’ podunk split-level? She looked around. No one was watching.

Beef-snacker had repositioned herself to face the back wall, cozying in to her wicker chair to watch The Nanny reruns. It was just the girl and that red bag. She watched as it eeeeeeeeeeeked along the conveyor belt.

It wasn’t hers, she knew that, but she suddenly wanted it. The idea of going home empty-handed, of ostensibly walking in alone struck her as strangely mortifying. A bag, a bag would fix that, she thought. Holding a bag would indicate that she wasn’t a possessionless vagabond; that something belonged to her; that she was worth belonging to.

And there was that bag, begging to be taken home.

Red, you big slut, she sighed. Listen, you need me just as much as I need you right now, she thought, trying to have a rational conversation with the bag. This is a temporary set-up, until I find my own bag, you know? Just temporary.

The bag said nothing, continuing its slow, sad loop.

She gingerly lifted Red. It was much lighter, much more comfortable in her grip than she had anticipated. She looked around again. Nanny Fine continued to captivate her beef jerky-eating, live audience.

And so, with a deep breath, she reached for the handle and started to head home.

139

Two Pilgrims at Haridwar Plumes of incense, smoke swirling and feathering into the heavy, hanging heat.

Crumbling tufts of Marigold are Swallowed by the Mother’s doting waves.

Crimson Waxing and Waning through hearts, eyes, prayers, as do bindi-stars swim in a sea of earth-brown flesh.

Peace with-out, Peace with-in.

Dusty-headed children, palms upright and deep-lined, releasing guttural utterance without meaning tangible by Reason‌ Then trash. stings nostrils as it dances with cinnamon, and a chimera Travels, Branding its path down my throat, Settling into the heavy, hanging heat of my soul like a snake Shifts across Time to Return to its Resting Place of Old. (As with-in, So with-out) Christina Reardon

140

The Day I Ran Out of Paper I wrote on the backs of old receipts Sprayed dangerous words on condemned buildings I hid my palms, stained red with poor technique.

I repeated phrases like rosaries, afraid they’d slip like water from the nets in Pablo’s fishing pools.

I hired a skywriter for my larger thoughts got a discount on account of overcast weather.

On fogged bathroom mirrors, my finger cut through condensation with ideas about permanence and soap.

And when all the world was covered, I crawled through darkness towards you, asleep in our bed with your lazy beauty, and I whispered the most powerful words I know: “I am afraid.”

Rich Hoyt

141

After Hable con Ella

Courtney Allessio

142

Japan (

) / Her Spirit

I woke up to spots of purple infiltrating like beetles that scuttle at corners and run away and I realized the purple never left my arms or my beaten jelly legs. yellow spilled like yolk on a broken egg shell, dripping as if its membrane were shredded, tremulous like striated layers of earth. that was my home, a little island knocked by a cruel, bellicose giant a rough sphere of rock for its head I don’t remember ever shaking of my own accord.

I don’t remember much.

I wake up now to concrete slabs plastering through my flesh. I blame them not but my braised insides spark at their mention.

“Why!” they scream with blood spilling out their teeth, and from other places it gingerly flakes, already dried but now made into an itchy, woolen coat.

I have no reason to tell my various regions but that they must mend.

Trotter LaRoe

143

G-Night I remember the first time you called me “G-Night.”

And how, the morning of, you looked at me all cross-eyed when I brought you vanilla chai and used The Economist to shield your eyes from the sun’s glare on passing cars outside.

And how I then sneezed from your dusty jeans —the only ones you don’t wash when you vacuum— and you said, nasally: “Girl, I’d say ‘God bless you,’ but clearly, He already has.”

And I liked that.

I like how —though you always apologize for it— you can’t stand standing in a mess, disinfect each crevice to impress yourself; I swear you’re obsessed with every detail of every object in my apartment looking the best.

And how you study for classes?

Is doing those impossible al-gore-rhythms while listening to rhythms from the Al Gore generation. Leave it to an MIT kid to find the sweetest coincidences amidst a stack of lined paper and easy-to-peel Sunkist.

I said that day: “I wish I could be as smart as you.”

And you said: “Oh, I wish you and I could take a hike on the rockier side of our blessèd lives, take a turn at Alewife, cut through Cambridge with a knife, and find in the center the nightlight we need every night.”

You are strange with a capital “ST.” ‘Cause U R a saint. You call me, 144

“funny,” “nice,” “pretty,” “smart,” —even though I do some pretty stupid shit— and you never say “I told you so” when I do (even though I know you want to).

You are so cute.

And you would take offense to abbreviation even for such a commonality like “G’night!”

You’re like that Macbook Pro screen always reflected by your glasses gleam: Smart. Clean. Sexy. Comes with Spell Check.

Marks “G’night” with a red underline.

“It’s ‘Good Night’,” you said.

And when I —your right-click IGNORE ALL button— told you that day to give into convention, you smiled big like a laugh in suspension, like you still had braces in there, and you said: “Girl, I’ll just say G-night.

There. Compromise.”

Alice Ma

145

brother and i shared nightmares of our sisters going off to the war against home & dreams of wetting the bed at a friend’s when we were TOO OLD FOR THIS too many tics came to stay I learned Tourette’s was spelled like pirouette and wrestled his screaming psychotic moods after school we learned Sign Language and Auto Mechanics differently he grew taller and faster and I stopped picking fights with my fists sometimes to consecrate our friendship we go riding in the black back woods on our bikes and on nights like tonight wanting each other always in the nearest room we talk late through

metaxu until we rise again Ruth O’Herron

146

Pitti Pitti Palace

Daniel Radin 147

Earth

Nina Stingo

148

Swampland

Stephen Thomas There are no basements in swampland, so all the houses start on the first floor. Carl moved us out there down from Georgia when I lost the baby. He said I needed a change of scenery. But when we got there he only stayed a couple of weeks and then left and moved in with that girl from the Home Depot. If I need something I have to go to Lowe’s instead in case she is working, or he is working, or they both are. I should go back to school but I always talked to Carl about going back to school, and I think somehow Carl and my going back got all wrapped up in each other, because somehow I can’t want it anymore. And if I went I would have to move back with mom and dad and ask them to help me. But I might have to do that anyway, because I haven’t told Rick yet that I’m pregnant, and I’m only part-time so I don’t know if he’ll let me take time off. And he’ll worry that it’s Carl’s. Sometimes I wonder if I’d move again if I lost another baby. I think I would. Sometimes I almost hope I lose it, so I can, but then I get feeling guilty and sick. Other times I think I’d move either way, because having a baby down here would feel like trying to put a hole in the swamp. It’d fill in as quick as you could dig.

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