American River Review 33

AMERICAN RIVER REVIEW

2020 / issue 33

American river review 33

All words, images, and designs appearing in this magazine; the production arrangements; and the editing of stories and poems are the products of American River College students.

All ideas and opinions expressed in the magazine are those of student authors and artists and do not reflect the ideas or opinions of our staff, American River College, the Los Rios Community College District, its employees, or its trustees. All brands, corporations, product names, and other references contained herein are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. All literature and image copyrights are held by their respective owners.

American River College 4700 College Oak Drive Sacramento, CA, 95841 americanriverreview.com americanriverreview@gmail.com

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American river review 33

dedication This issue is dedicated to Professor Michael Spurgeon, the faculty adviser for American River Review from 2009 through 2019. Professor Spurgeon has touched the lives of many of his students during his tenure, providing education, advice, and guidance in navigating the significant challenges of publishing an award-winning literary magazine.

Over the last ten years, he has taught his students to always rise to these challenges, and in doing so has inspired his students to grow, feel, and seek greater understanding of the world around them.

patrons

Nobel $1000 + Associated Student Body of American River College Student Senate Best Sellers $250 + Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Greene The Friends and Family of Betsy Harper First Edition $100 + American River Review Staff Anonymous Donor John and Chris Hess John Bell Kirsten DuBray ARC Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Robert Frew Tammy L. Montgomery First Chapter $50 + Leigh and Marissa Snow - in memory of Betsy Harper Robert Piper

endowments

If you or your company would like to contribute to the continuing national success of American River College’s student artists and writers, please consider donating to our endowment.

Contact: Kirsten DuBray, Director of College Advancement The American River College Foundation 4700 College Oak Avenue Sacramento, CA 95841 DuBrayK@arc.losrios.edu (916) 484-8175

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awards Associated Collegiate Press National Pacemaker Award 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2010 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 American Scholastic Press Association First Place with Special Merit 2007 First Place 2011 | 2015 College Media Advisers Best of Show (1st Place) National College Media Convention 2008 | 2009 Columbia Scholastic Press Association First Place Overall Design, Literary for Magazines 2010 Gold Crown Award 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 Community College Humanities Association Literary Magazine Competition Best in Nation 1990 | 1993 | 1995 | 1997 | 1999 | 2008 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 Second Place 2017 Third Place 2018 | 2019

2013 19 Claire Davis – [wind-chilled clothes line thong] 19 Claire Davis – Beatitudes of the Promiscuous 20 Jennifer Doolittle – Water Therapy 21 Chakira Parsons – Gross Physical Movements 22 Rachel Gardner – Biker’s Journal

2014 Distinguished Author, Michael Spurgeon

82 An Interview with

Michael Spurgeon

86 Michael Spurgeon – Dinosaur DNA 87 Michael Spurgeon –

28 Claire Davis – JFK 30 Beth Suter – After the Tornado 30 Nikkole Bui – Department Store

2015 31 Danny Dyer – Guidelines for 32 Caitlin Pegar – Passion at the

Rape

Wedding

Doctor Johnston’s Skeleton Girl

88 Michael Spurgeon – New Car Smell 89 Michael Spurgeon – Wedding Report of the UFOlogist 91 Michael Spurgeon – Rubber Chicken 92 Michael Spurgeon – Siesta 93 Michael Spurgeon – The Province of Men (chapter 3 excerpt)

2016

2012

2017

16 Viola Allo – Bodies, Flowerbeds: A Villanelle 17 Shawn Lynch – Oh, Bukowski 18 Shawn Lynch – Unladybuglike Behavior

33 Matthew Bowie – A Sailor’s Recollection of the Second Gulf War

Conveyed Over Whiskey

36 Isabel Geerer – Hot Plates 37 Brandon Thao – Paj Ntaub

38 Sean Stevens – An Ode to the Chameleon of the Sea 39 Liam Bass – Hyde 40 Joshua David Lacy – Withdrawals on a Jailhouse Floor 51 Ivy McDonald – Clay Pot

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Author Index cont.

2018 49 Anna Donskova – Polterabend 52 Matthew Bowie – On Certain Nightmares 54 Rachel Gardner – Fout’s Olde-Tyme Menagerie and Faire 64 Isabel Geerer – Sestina for Two Isabels 65 Patti Santucci – A Vituperative Villanelle 66 Patti Santucci – Looking for Signs 72 Colby Debach-Riley – Space

2019 12 Elizabeth “Betsy” Harper – Silly Putty Vagina?

13 Elizabeth “Betsy” Harper – Observations 78 Hannah Orlando – La Petite Mort 79 Marcie Mallory -Old Wives’ Tales 80 Andrey Shamshurin – Grasp

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102 Anthony Barbaria-Morning Routine, Octogray 103 Allison Wheaton-Tangled up in Consumerism 104 Bia Allen-The Heart’s Growth, Old Smokey 105 Francesca Bonomo-Nasty Women 105 Alex Bugarin-Me as Corpse Bride 106 Paul Padilla-Rocket Boy, The Valley 107 BAPZ-Oliver-Misplaced 108 Brad Carps-Computer User 108 David Nichols-Glass Box 109 Crystal Moore -Atypical Monday 109 David Nichols-Jade Builds 110 Sarah Allen-3,225 Miles, Winston the Great 111 Kelsi Martin-Bridge 111 Patrick Hyun Wilson, Global Winter Wonderland 2018 112 Jerome Brown-Jerome Brown-Elf Princess, Reaper of Souls 113 David Nichols-Gold (The Crown), Silver (The Eye) 114 Brian Ford-Witching Hour 114 Antonia Tapia-Lost

115 Allison Wheaton-Surveillance 115 Andrew Koscheski-Lake Tamsen, CA 116 Veronica Brito-Sailor Jerry 116 Gary Vang-Pawn Chess Pieces 117 Heather Lee Merrifield-Lucha Samurai 117 Kelsi Martin-Pond 118 Liya Protopopova-Calm Waters 119 Anthony Barbaria-Octo Skate 119 BAPZ-Exile 120 Reneé Marie-Shelter Me 120 Jessica Williams-Confidant 121 Ren Allathkani-Bad Mentality 121 David Nichols-Droplet 122 Anastasiya Golosna-Honey Bee 122 Heather Lee Merrifield-Sunset 123 Anastasiya Golosna-Lost at Sea 123 Clare Korten-Sleeping Flamingos 124 Allison Wheaton-Decadent Decades Dance Party, Matthew Anable: The Artist, The Skateboarder, The Legend

125 BAPZ-Impish-Not Quite Functional 126 Diana Ormanzhi-Anchors, Rainbow Cardinal 127 Diana Ormanzhi-Intertwined 127 Max Marchol-Tyrant II 128 Emily Moore-A Little Space, Her Garden 129 Tiffany LeBeau-Banshee Chronicles 129 Courtney Amedei-While You Were Sleeping 130 Brian Ford-It’s Alive 130 Jade Jacobs-Oracle 131 Ashley Hayes-Stone-Day of the Dead, Life on the Street 132 Catarina Bragg-Framing Heritage

133 Anastasiya Golosna-Down the Rabbit Hole 133 Max Marchol-Nebula Inhalent 134 Danielle Steers-Finding Your Way 134 Sabrina Flores-Untitled 135 Sabrina Flores-Home of the Tree Nymphs, Golden Gate 136 Crystal Moore-Moon in Gemini 136 Jose Hernandez-Wild Smile 137 Brian Ford-Ducky 137 Brian Ford-The Mush Room 138 Diana Ormanzhi-Wisp 138 Jason Everett – Rising Spirit 139 Terrence Watson-Teapot in Red 140 Courtney Amedei-Misty Woods 140 Manuel Marmolejos-The Trans Human 141 Manuel Marmolejos-Small Wood Fired Ash Bowl 141 Sheila Parmar-Flower Bowl 142 Preeta Malelu-Untitled 142 Terrence Watson-Teastock Raku 143 Danielle Steers-Changing Shifts 143 Terrence Watson-Raku Platter 144 Treat Wooley-The Sermon 145 Carolan Korten-Musical Chairs 145 Meschelle White-What’s Going On? 146 Ren Allathkani-Dysphoria

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The staff of the 2020 issue of American River Review would like to thank the following people, as without their support, assistance, and inspiration, this publication would not be possible: American River College President Thomas Greene and Vice President of Instruction Lisa Lawrenson; Former faculty advisors of the magazine Professors Connie Johnstone, Harold Schneider, David Merson, Betty Nelson, & Michael Spurgeon;

acknowledgements

Dean of English Doug Herndon; Dean of Fine and Applied Arts Angela Milano and former Dean of Fine and Applied Arts Charles “Kale� Braden; Shane Lipscomb and Katia Skryagina of the English Area office; Chair of the Art New Media Department Matt Stoehr; English Department Chairs Janay Lovering and Jennifer Laflam, and former English Department Chairs Denise Engler and Tom Logan; Kirsten DuBray and the American River College Foundation; Bruce Clark and Gene Kennedy for the art photography; Professor Patricia Wood, Director of the James Kaneko Gallery; The American River College Beaver Bookstore for display and sales; Art New Media Lab Technician Kevin Woodard; Don Reid and everyone at Print Services; Katie Pechin Angelone, Reyna Spurgeon, Heather Orr Martinez, and Lisa Rochford for their love and support; And most importantly, great thanks to all the students of American River College (past, present, and future) who have submitted or will submit their work.

It is their perseverance that has made American River Review what it is today.

prologue We stand outside ice-frosted windows and look within, our minds eager to drink up the warmth that lay just beyond the dark-framed glass. We imagine ourselves moving inside and sitting in front of the open fire, or laying beneath the bundle of blankets on the couch, reading our new favorite short story or poem. We read on as hearth-borne shadowws retreat to the corners of the room. We embrace the interesting angles and viewpoints in a new photo or the interesting ways an artist crafted a piece. We meditate on the method or effect of the art and our minds wander to the edges of our consciousness. We sit in front of a campfire and stare skyward as we find ourselves wishing to see what exists through the glimmering windows above. The journey brings our words to the page and our artwork into reality, and in doing so feeds our imaginations.

With this issue, we repaint the canvas with new artwork and restoke the hearth with both old and new literature. Pull up a chair in front of the fireplace, or soften a pillow on the couch and pull up the blankets, and open these pages to find a new melding of fresh artwork and the best stories told over a decade of adventures.

We do hope you come along with us on this new journey.

To the students, faculty advisers, professors, and deans of American River College, and to the numerous patrons who have donated their time and money to American River Review, we thank you for your assistance in bringing light to the shadowed, bringing voice to the silenced, and creating life from ink and clay. Thank you for your continued support and dedication.

jennifer snow Editor in Chief

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A

perpetual fixture in American River Review-related classrooms and between the covers of the past six issues of the magazine, Betsy Harper was a part of the Literary Magazine

class (ENGCW 450), and the Art New Media classes for art selection, editing, design, and production (ARTNM 358 & ARTNM 359) since the 2014 issue, when she first enrolled in the Fall 2013 Literary Magazine class with Professor Spurgeon.

I remember when I first met the ineffable Betsy Harper. It was my own first semester of the Literary Magazine class, in Fall 2017. On my second day of class, there was a hush around the room. I swear I could hear a fly buzz. “Betsy is coming today,” our editor in chief, Rachel Heleva, had said. Playful banter, which I did not know was playful at the time, ensued.

Chaos threatened to break out of its cage when, like a fly that one has attempted to ignore for far to long, Betsy rapped on the door and said, “Hey everyone, miss me?”

In the time since meeting her, Betsy had shown that her status as the grandmother of LitMag was well deserved. She was everywhere, and

“Never swat a fly when I’m gone.

You know that’ll be me watching all of your beautiful progress.”

knew everything, even if you thought she wouldn’t. She knew how to contact authors and how to write. She told you things about the magazine she had no right knowing. I began to love this wom-

an as a child loves their parents - she was a literary mother to the staff of American River Review.

American River lost an amazing presence when Betsy had to step away from the college. She was able to accept the 2019 issue, which was dedicated to her for the contributions she has made over the past six years to ARC and the magazine. Since the release of that issue, Betsy passed away.

I saw her a few weeks before she passed. She told me then to tell everyone who knew her: “Never swat a fly when I’m gone. You know that’ll be me watching all of your beautiful progress.”

Betsy, may you ever be the ineffable watchful fly on every wall.

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American river review 33

2019 Issue

Elizabeth “Betsy” Harper

Silly Putty Vagina?

The woman’s voice carried beautifully Across the stone patio in front of the museum A moment of stunned silence sat in the crisp air Then we all laughed, our breath white and puffy Is that even a thing? your wife asked I’ll tell you later, you said And we all laughed again But as you wrapped your arm Around her shoulder Your eyes slid in my direction Only for a second—but I knew— That was what I was to you A cheap substitute for the real thing A toy, squatting on your full color Sunday morning comic strip Leaving nothing of myself Your imprint on me obvious Until you stretched me out Kneaded me pliable Used me again

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I have dementia

2019 Issue

Sorry if I repeat things I have dementia

Elizabeth “Betsy” Harper

Observations

In my neighborhood Restraining orders are bold And often fatal

Why do boys hit girls?

It’s obvious, he replies They just don’t listen

Diabetes sucks She says, as she picks up the Orange and syringe

I wanted a sign God took my smoking finger My eye, and my leg

I like getting old Arthritis and hot flashes Building character

I have dementia Sorry if I repeat things I have dementia

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literature

American river review 33

literature selection process In most issues, over an eighteen-month process, hundreds of pieces of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction are submitted to American River Review for consideration by the English class, College Literary Magazine. For this “best of � issue, this submission process is replaced by a selection of pieces from the past ten years of issues.

Then, every submission was read and discussed, with the discussion of each piece potentially lasting an entire class session. This culminated with a final vote to determine which works were selected, edited, and published.

Current students of American River College and students who were last enrolled within the previous three semesters are eligible to submit their work, and encouraged to do so.

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American river review 33

2012 issue

Viola Allo

bodies, flowerbeds: a villanelle The earth, carved up, engraved with bodies, this hollow vision of death: people resting together, bodies beneath a bed of flowers.

We soften death into poems and stories.

The art of writing is just a way of wailing for the earth, carved up, sculpted by bodies.

In Cameroon, hair from the dead is carried, mixed with camwood and kept; the living remember bodies beneath beds of flowers.

What we seek through our endless studies sits beyond death, but the path to it is sinking into a carved-up earth, paved with bodies.

The sharp shovel of silence briefly remedies the ear deaf to the voices of the dead, linking it to slender-petaled tongues in a flowerbed.

A poem or a story is an etching of memories, dignity in the fragile face of loss. Soothing the earth, carved up, engraved with bodies, we hum together beside a bed of flowers.

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2012 issue

You silver-tongued drunk serving your selfloathing like an aphrodisiac spreading women’s legs to expose weathered cunts

shawn lynch

oh, bukowski

Claiming Godhood and death laughing at your and our impotence until the fires burn out Your painted pictures of the Basin as paradise fuck with my ability to write as me I read your poetry and wonder which pieces you hated the most A beach A bitch A bus A bluebird You labeled us all dead but who is in the coffin?

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2012 issue

shawn lynch

unladybuglike behavior “Keep your garden pest-free,� read the words on the container.

What must have been thousands of little red and black bugs crawling on bits of sawdust and the corpses of their fallen comrades.

I scooped the beetles out of their plastic prison and placed the writhing spoonfuls at the base of each decimated rose bush, watched them scuttle around the dirt and make their way up the seemingly mile-high stalks.

They climbed ever higher until they reached the savage aphids, ladybugs following their ladybug nature.

As they ate them, I could imagine them pitching the dead husks of aphid bodies to the dirt far below.

Except for one, right wing solid black, drawing attention and inspiring fear.

This ladybug was thwarting my plan for aphid genocide, rallying the pests and showing the sanctuary on the tips of leaves where the big ladybugs could not walk, pushing its own kind off of the branches and flying in an effort to stop the mass murder, not resting until it had saved every last aphid it could, until I plucked it, mid-air, and held it in my hand, wondering why it would defy me and save what could only be an enemy.

This little ladybug could not remain.

The madness may have spread to the others in my squad of soldiers.

I took it far to the other side of the yard and stepped on it. Soundly, soundlessly ending its pleas for change.

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2013 issue

claire davis

[wind-chilled clothesline thong] wind-chilled clothesline thong pulled on inside out under dry clean only skirt

claire davis

beatitudes of the promiscuous Blessed is the woman who licks the salt off a man’s neck, inhales the odors of his armpits, digs her nails into his back like a rock climber, and does not remember his name.

Blessed is she who falls in love with the rising and fallings of bodies, the marathon movements, the swift switches, the tangling of limbs, who shouts sometimes for the Father or the Son and never mistakes the messenger for the massage.

Hers is the kingdom of heaven, oxygen-thin, synesthetic, remote.

Hers is the solitary bliss, the swimmer’s nirvana, the crest and the denouement.

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2013 issue With the water truck in front of me, Bubbling, leaking sparkling water, Coldness overflowing, gushing, Evaporating before hitting hot pavement, I remember the water truck At Black Rock City, The way citizens shrieked and whooped And chased the water truck, Shedding clothes on dry playa desert, trailing pants And underwear like colorful footprints.

Naked and crowding together, joyful Behind the water truck, dunking heads, cupping hands, Baptizing one another, toasting their good fortune, Diving to catch the drops before the water was spent On the barren landscape.

jennifer doolittle

water therapy It’s hot today.

The Arctic sun bakes the asphalt, Blurs the summer streets in hazy heat.

I drive to work and sit and sweat On leather and wish I didn’t have to wear Heavy denim jeans, Dark blue and boot cut.

Can’t wear shorts— “The boys may get a rise From seeing long (Alaskan summer) white legs!”

I sit and sweat at red light After burning, rush hour red light And think of another counselor, Who wears shorts all winter, His blonde hairs standing to attention On negative-twenty mornings Driving the boys to school On icy white roads And how his knees must knock And tremble and burn With a negative-twenty freeze.

I sit and sweat at a light so red It makes me sweat.

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I imagine my boss Chasing the truck, her low-slung breasts Swaying, her used-up nipples reaching, Begging for water, her belly as big as a washtub, Thirsting, her hazy blue eyes Drinking, seeking, I imagine her boss, His penis shrinking under the pouring water, His saggy shoulders hunched against the spray, Wrinkled knees seeking cool relief, his mouth open, Raised as though in holy offering. I wonder What the boys would think, If they would find this therapy enough To cure their ADHD, depression, rebellion And we could send them home Or better yet, out into the world As responsible young men.

Then we could tear off these dark blue jeans, Escape to the desert, And chase the water truck ourselves.

2013 issue

Chakira Parsons

Gross physical movements Every yoga instructor says something like “You must open yourself to yoga.” You are open to yoga. You press into the four corners of each foot. You square your hips and descend your femurs and lift your torso from the side trunk. You breathe deeply through your spine; you gaze out from your third eye; you let your brain expand slightly with every exhale and contrast slightly with every inhale. You are present in every part of your body. You’re no contortionist, but you enjoy yoga and don’t mind being the one your instructor singles out to demonstrate a pose when he says, “Come watch.”

Today you’re feeling off, so when he kneels behind your downward dog, you’re grateful.

He pincers the web of your ankle, guiding your heels to the floor. He stands with one foot between yours and pulls the tops of your femurs towards him, and you are open to the possibility that today may be the day your heels release completely to the floor.

You may even feel that shoulder massage he keeps talking about. Today, you could really use a shoulder massage. Concentrating on focusing, concentrating on relaxing, concentrating on opening and creating space and releasing, concentrating on breathing, concentrating on forgetting the rest of your day, you forget to inwardly rotate your thighs. So he does it for you. He puts flat hands over the stretchy cotton that covers the skin on your upper thighs and moves the muscles back and away from each other and you feel your fourth and fifth eyes open and hear them blink and gasp as the whole world rushes in and you practice in a new way what he means when he says in class that “some things are more of a movement of the mind rather than a gross physical movement” as your try not to queef in his face before he leaves you there and tells the class to come down and rest in child’s pose.

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American river review 33

rachel gardner

biker’s journal Entry #1 Someone ran into me from behind today. They rode off before I could even say, “HEY!” I hate that no matter how careful you are, no matter what precautions you take, there’s always some asshole who thinks they know better. Like the laws of physics will temporarily not apply to them. At least this asshole was smart enough to disappear before I had time to react.

Had the exact same bike as me. Funny, you don’t often see that.

Entry #2 Wound up in Nimbus today. I decided to just keep going until I saw a sign, and eventually there it was. There was a simple joy to going off-road. I could go where all those lycra-clad bastards and their smug rail-thin racing wheels wouldn’t dare. I bumped across the gravel and felt awkward and magnificent at the same time.

Sat and watched the fish for an hour. Smelled like hell. Had an orange.

Entry #3 Found a bunch of dead animals out by that old sewer drain. Whatever got them turned them inside out for some reason. Would’ve explored further but I was a mite peckish and broke for GORP. Entry #4 I was out by the footbridge when my cell rang. I automatically rooted it out from my pocket and, as it turns out, it was my brother, hysterical over something. Something about a car crash, a dog, my niece, maybe a telephone pole? While I rummaged around my pack for my map, I kept trying to calm him down, get some finer points of detail. I ran into something that felt familiar and pulled out.

It was my cell phone.

I tried asking my brother what the hell was going on, but the poor guy just got more and more incoherent with grief until the line went dead. I tried his house with the other cell.

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He answered.

2013 issue

Did he just call me? No. How was my niece? Fine and/or dandy.

I hung up and looked at my twin phones. Identical.

I only keep my cell in my pocket when I’m driving. When I’m out here on the trail, it’s in the pack.

I tossed the first one over the rail and watched it splash. The one that’s left seems to be behaving.

Entry #5 Why do the undersides of bridges always smell like piss? ALWAYS. Entry #6 Swallowed a butterfly today. Pedaling too fast with my mouth open. Felt bad for all of two seconds before I started choking and coughing. Things’re nasty.

Entry #7 Found a door in the middle of the river today. I was out wading when I ran into it, this big iron square in the water. Thinking it was scrap, I lifted an edge. Space inside. Dark.

As a joke, I called “Hellooooo?”

Another “Hellooooooo?” came ringing back.

“Echo?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“No, it’s Dave.” The other voice sounded impatient.

“Sorry,” I called back, “wrong door” and let it drop.

Entry #8 Ran out of trail mix on the eastern leg. Tried a handful of those crunchy things the grow by the side of the road. Same consistency. Less sodium.

Entry #9 Almost got run down by a car today. Not sure how I didn’t hear him coming, maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. I was pretty pissed, made a three-point landing with my face. Nearly threw a rock at the guy’s back windshield but stopped myself just in time.

He wasn’t on the bike path. I was in the road. Guess I wasn’t paying attention.

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American river review 33 Entry #10 This morning everything was shrouded in fog. It was amazing, I was cut off from either side of the trail by this wall of white. Serendipitously, I didn’t run into anyone. I left my emergency repair kit by the bathrooms though, and by the time I remembered I was a good three miles off. At that point it made more sense to just keep, even though I know I’ll probably regret it later.

Entry #11 I sat on a hill for two hours today doing nothing. Not thinking—my only complete thought was, “Wow, I should probably get up in a minute.” I also practiced flicking rocks with my elbow.

Two fucking hours.

Entry #12 Ran over a hedgehog today and popped my back tire. Had to push my bike for over a mile before someone would stop and help me. Hand to God, a hedgehod. Do they even live here?

Entry #13 It’s amazing how momentum changes your perspective. This morning I felt like I could have gone on forever, just pedaling along the divide between water and sky. Then I dismounted for the footbridge and turned into my grandfather. Riding wasn’t as fun after that. Think I pulled a muscle blinking.

Entry #14 Never realized how many horses there were around here. Wish leash laws applied to them, or at least that their owners curbed them. Ran through a pile of manure higher than my shoes. Spent a half-hour cleaning it from the gears.

Entry #15 Early morning. 85°, humidity about 70%. The air is lousy with birdsong. Feels like riding through soup.

Entry #16 Cell phone’s dead.

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Entry #17 The road’s split in two right in front of me. The way I see it, I have two choices. There’s that very plain-looking trail that I know leads back to the road and, after that, home.

Then there’s the one next to it that could be a trail, or it could just be a deer path. The trail home, I know, has been mapped out, traveled, photographed, trod on, and observed for all signs of life. For all I know, the other trail could just peter out after a couple hundred yards, or it could thread through a couple acres of trees until it’s got me good and lost, and once I’m scared it’ll dump me back on the main thoroughfare. I’ve been sitting here for the past fifteen minutes just looking.

The question is not which trail to take. The question is… am I done pedaling?

Entry #11 Tired. Rest.

Entry #11 Am I lost?

Entry #1 Ran into myself today. Always knew it would happen. You can only ride in a straight line for so long before you return back to your starting point. Didn’t even give myself a chance to shout. Lost control of my bike after that and veered off the path, towards some of those old maintenance tunnels. Then I just kept going down.

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American river review 33

There is a smell I Can’t quite

place.

I’m sure it’s nothing But it’s gone from something of a nuisance to something I might want to get looked at.

For now I stop by the front desk each day just to smell the flowers Katherine brings.

I don’t just smell them, I draw them deep.

I savor them.

dj stipe

cancer snot

I try to stuff big handfuls of the scent into the pockets of my turquoise scrubs.

It never lasts beyond the second floor where the elevator hitches slightly as it catches speed.

Today

Gunnar lost his fight.

His azalea plant at the 4th floor nurses’ station brought me up to speed.

Family never wants to tend to those things in the aftermath.

At first I thought it was my clothes.

Now I wash my scrubs twice each wear and the smell is unaffected.

I shaved my head in case it was my hair.

Still, the smell remains.

When I thought it might be the food I started brown-bagging it.

When that didn’t work I started taking lunch outside across the parking lot.

The smell persists.

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2013 issue

I think they somehow seeped into me: Eldie’s pancreas Bill’s lungs Marley’s skin Joe’s stomach Debbie’s left breast Both of Sally’s and Gunnar’s right testicle.

All these things saturate my existence from my lynph nodes to my red cells, and my white cells.

They shake … pulse … and reverberate then slowly exit as bile and snot.

Kayla told me I once blew my nose 37 times in a single shift turnover.

(I guess she counted.)

When I confided in her about the smell, she suggested I transfer to the chemo suites.

I’m praying that will help.

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American river review 33

jfk claire davis

My father’s a pilot; I’m a standby traveler, and this is my first time failing to get a seat on the connecting flight home to Sacramento. I exit the post-security area and retrieve my two 62-inch circumference roller boards from baggage claim, then wander around the lower concourse, dragging all my possessions behind me like heavy beetle wings. I wander into a labyrinth of vacant hallways, foyers, and white construction shields. It’s been maybe twenty-four hours since I slipped my house key through the Leeds letterbox, climbed into a taxi, and rode to the train station—through the empty morning streets past Vodka Revolution and Oceana and the Cockpit; past Halo; Trinity St. David’s Church with a neon nightclub inside; past the Merrion Centre, a Carphone Warehouse, the three-story SportsDirect.com shop, thinking of the ex-boyfriend here who’d like never to see me again, thinking that this time I don’t know if I’ll come back in the fall.

A man in his forties in an airport uniform calls out, “Hey. Whatcha looking for?”

“A place to sleep,” I say. It’s June, almost four weeks since my last academic exam and two days after my 20th birthday.

He smiles toothily and with a glimmer in his eye says, “I wouldn’t sleep down here if I was you. You can come home with me if you want.”

I spread a stilted smile and call across the empty lobby, “That;s all right. I’m sure I’ll find it,” then beeline back toward the carousels.

It might be 2 am by now, and my stomach growls at a closed coffee kiosk. Its small, sanitized counter has none of the usual pastry assortments or fruits. I am craving a medium-rare, half-pound bacon cheeseburger right now, with curly fries on the side. Around the bend, a woman, also in airport-employee attire, asks if she can help me find something. I give her the same response, and she tells me I want to be up in Departures. I’ve never slept in an airport before; I don’t know these things. “You want a juice box, Hun?” She reaches into the halfempty carboard carton and holds one out to me.

“Thanks,” I say with a hint of confusion in my voice. I pocket it and follow the line from her finger to the elevator.

When I reach the floor above, I know I’ve found the place. In this lobby, the length of a football field, against a wall opposite the check-in counters there is one row of seats, the kind sharing armrests and a metal frame maybe six segments long with black plastic behind and beneath you. On these seats, the travelers are splayed. A

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business-casual couple sleep on each other, her head on his shoulder, his head on hers. A man with headphones on, eyes closed, mouth ajar, lolls his head back like a beanied Pez dispenser. A family of four is on the end furthest from the corner, mother and father in seats, children beside them on the floor, awake, but sleepy and quiet. I walk past all these, each an insular unit despite close quarters, and put my bags down around the corner, maybe four feet from the rest, but out of sight.

2014 issue

I put the juice box away knowing it would only make me hungrier and unzip the top of my 49-pound suitcase.

I wiggle my hand blindly past the gallon shampoo jug, half-empty now, that my mom gave me when I packed for university for the first time, past the denim sheets I bought when I was 13 and trying to fade into the social scene, past the deflated blow-up couch I bought at Argos at the beginning of this year when my new room looked cavernously empty.

Finally, I find it and squeeze out of the bag the only stuffed animal I wn. He is a 15-inch realistic and dignifiedlooking Emperor penguin, bought by the ex who avoids me now. We were heading back to complete our first year, having spent the month-long spring break in the States meeting my friends and family and visiting the places I’d grown up. Looking up at a top shelf in the Sacramento Airport gift shop, I had poked my boyfrined and pointed at it.

“I’ll buy it for you if you want,” he said in his Yorkshire accent.

I smiled a tilted smile and then acepted. We named him Howard while we waited for the plane to arrive, after H.P. Lovecraft.

I set the roller boards flush with the wall, zip the opened one up, snap the brown luggage strap of one around the other’s handle, and set Howard on this newly-created tight wire. The air smells faintly of sawdust. I curl into the fetal position beside my things, head on Howard’s plush stomach, a thin jacket covering my top half, and remember all my mother’s warnings and that TV episode I watched on airport theft. Clinging to my things, shivering atop the cold, slick floor, shielding my eyes against the hard flourescent lights, I will myself to sleep.

* * * I wake up a little after 4:30 am Travelers buzz back and forth with small roller boards and large luggage carts as lines form in front of the recently opened check-in counters. The ghost town of the night has become a bustling metropolis. As I sit up, I realize I’m no longer cold. A thin, dark blue airplane blanket is draped over my legs.

A packet of peanuts is at my side. I think of the kindly employee on lonely midnight airport rounds who must have given these to me, and I smile, a real smile for the first time since leaving Leeds.

I squeeze Howard back into his suitcase, stand each bag upright, and drape the folded blanket over my should.

I wind my way to a spot amid the stanchions in front of the Delta desks and hope that today I will be lucky enough to get a free seat in one of these tin-can feats of engineering. I will be asked to do nothing more than sit, perhaps nap or read a book, while my seat and I rise 30,000 feet above invisible birds, and, within the same day, set ourselves back down on the Western Seaboard. I daydream about the warm car that will bounce down I-5 with me in the passenger seat and the familiar lilt of my grandmother’s voice as she recites her church’s latest updates to my chorus of “uh-huh”s. Still smiling, I look around at the families, lovers, and vagabonds starting or concluding their adventures: I open my pack of peanuts and decide I do not mind the wait.

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American river review 33

2014 issue

beth suter

After the tornado The whirlpool sky drains breaths one last cave-mouth chill.

nikkole bui

department store hands cupped over sharpened hip bones, one breast small, one breast smaller dimpled ass sags like a Halloween mask waist circumference like a wrist, a body running off ketones— slumped over on a dressing room floor

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Sunlight dissolves smoky brackish light, conjures a bachelor button sky.

Prairie hail steams vanshes leaving behind a startling silence.

2015 issue The day a woman that you love says “rape,” you’ll hear the word, but it will make no sense.

“You what?” you’ll ask, and she’ll repeat it. You will blame yourself for carelessness, for want of tact, for having made her expose her self again. The breath, the word, the silence after. You will want to fill that silence.

You’ll want to help, but they don’t cover rape in school, so you may try distracting her with something bought. Tulips, maybe. Your sense will tell you better, that she only wants you there, but when she pulls away from you, you will see how she’s been pulled; and when you watch her ball up in her quilt, a silent flame will fill your guts. You will say, “I want to know who is responsible for this,” but she will only take your hand. Incensed, it’s then you will resent her frailty, her defective instincts, and convinced of her accountability for all this, you will tell yourself, she’s got no common sense, this was bound to happen, and your silent rage will turn on her, until the word comes back again. Then sickened, you will want

danny dyer

guidelines for rape

to walk away, to run from her. You’ll want to wash your hands of this, but seeing her inside that blanket, you’ll have to face it, and then, recalling girls in school that you in fantasies had taken, the silent hunger for them, it starts to make some sense.

No. You’ll tell yourself that’s only nonsense.

You’ve never hurt a soul, and yet, you’ll want to beat someone to death. In your silent, groping way, you’ll try again to ask her who it was, promising on God that you can set this right, that you will fix all this.

But there will just be silence. You’ll touch her; she’ll pull away. You’ll shiver, groan for want of strength, and still not understand it - Rape.

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American river review 33

2015 issue

caitlin pegar

passion at the wedding the hall was set on fire with the snap of a match and all the guests went wilting while we went searching searching for whatever imp it was that thought it fun to set the flowers aflame you ran to me you ran to me across town across the chapel across the hall to tell me the building was burning you set off the alarm and told me the building was burning you didn’t know that I had done it I didn’t tell you that I had done it though the evidence was there the evidence was there at my feet burning the bones because you ran a little too late a little too late wouldn’t stop the flames I couldn’t feel but I screamed because you thought I should I should but the nerves had been burned so I couldn’t feel except for the edge of the skin so when we ran searching searching for the imp that thought it fun to burn my feet I didn’t tell didn’t tell you I needn’t scream for it felt as though I was gliding a foot off the ground a trail of fire two feet off two feet far the fire tailed as we tailed the trail of the imp who must have been cold must have been as he had given his fire to feet and flowers and hall and the tailed trail had gone cold we went back to the hall to find it still aflame and the flowers wilting wilting under the heat of the Blaze so we went home leaving feet and flowers and hall to burn out to burn themselves out but as we tangled in our sheets tangled up the sheets our tango and my feet caught the sheets aflame you touched your fingers to the blaze because of course you did of course you did and I wouldn’t tell you I won’t tell you I met the devil in a coffee shop and she asked me for coffee and a light so I gave her coffee and a light because of course I did of course I did she was blowing smoke and I was blowing smoke when I told her she owed me one she did coffee’s not cheap so when I woke to coffee on my table I knew I knew that something you or I would be set ablaze I didn’t tell you so we grabbed cigarettes to light off my flaming feet but after we lit the flames of my feet fluttered out though the bed kept blazing we huddled for warmth blowing smoke at each other you wondered if the hall was still ablaze and the flowers still wilting they were nice flowers they’ll be nice ashes though not allowed though not aloud I wondered to me or to her do you now owe a light

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2016 Issue

matthew bowie

A Sailor’s Recollection of the Second Gulf War Conveyed Over Whiskey After a year at sea, moonlight has no consequence; Nothing follows but reflections in a wake, A wave, half-green and glowing; The stars start to be stars, And the salt sting stops speaking. Drinking The vision is all – all you’re left with.

He talked like this for hours, staring At his resin-oil filled glass, the crazed Twitching circuit twisting His mouth’s almost rusted screws Into a mechanical sneer at random moments, You can steal anything from the sea but silence.

Nights won’t bear inscription, the horizons Beggar text, and you couldn’t write on ripples, Couldn’t ask or answer the jewels, the burning The lying dawn off to port, like a torch.

sky,

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American river review 33

His cigarette flitted, glowing, silently Over, across, between gnarled fingers That had been soft when we were young.

Soon, moonlight turns away. The burning eyes Blink from the mirror air, staring, some falling toward some end, but watching even then.

He cracked his hands into fists, The levers creaking against some strain,

Unclenched them like he was strangling.

The ship, that misplaced murmur, turns into a lie, a peaceful promise stringing smoke from falling –

from falling stars.

Light – from every angle – tangles with unknowable music, Music so refined it sounds like – like water brushing steel, Or wrapping itself in itself forever, in silence.

He smoked through clicking teeth, Angry the way children can get.

I asked him, “Why did you leave?”

After a while, you learn to shut up,

not to ask Questions that don’t mean anything. The sea Doesn’t answer. A drunk shouldn’t either.

Drink, if you’re drinking, or leave.

He blinked like he was fighting tears, But his tongue ran like a blade Across his lips to slash the last drop Of liquid.

I bought the next round.

The cities – the derricks burn at night. They burn, Just on the horizon, standing there, burning, and you don’t think death, but dawn, or don’t think at all, but stand and stare, a baby at a breast knowing more than you know,

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fearing less.

We drank. And we drink, and I think, and he talks Until we are drunk. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t leave.

It doesn’t matter, after all, where the bombs fall, or the stars, Or whatever else you can see out there, He said, and ran a cracked hand Across the withered burn insulting His near-well-shaven face, and breathed A sigh wreathed with grey-blue smoke.

He declined, throughout, to see Us in our reflections, across the bar, His eyes too full of burning, Buried in a middle distance.

I try, sometimes, imagining the ship approaching Close to some edge – some limit – the shore, Who started the burning.

To see.

Some knowing work could have come, Some word or reason

to learn

some sense,

the sea couldn’t say.

He reminds me of his tides’ approach, marking progress onto land by a sign only seen in retreat, predictable from repetition, when he’s drunk like this, seeing things we will not say.

Maybe we could have earned our right to return to port, where the lights are cool in the rocks, and the coast carries dawn and dusk, in honest rain and fogs, where life abides, and the waves crack and roll with the city’s many voices on the land, echoed back, intact, as found.

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American river review 33

2016 issue

isabel geerer

hot plates

My next door neighbor, Rhoda, gets food stamps and cooks for the neighborhood. Guys park Caddies outside, for supper. Meat loaf, mashed potatoes like Mom’s. Kids from down the street come for frozen Kool-Aid in Styrofoam cups for a quarter. They sit at the curb, admiring the shiny cars and peeling strips of Styrofoam away from the purple ice, letting them float down the gutter running with sprinkler water. My three-year-old daughter sneaks over there all the time to charm her.

“Hoda, Auntie Rhoda, hoda,” she says, placing her order. And Rhoda gives her a soda. Everyone else pays fifty cents.

Every year, Rhoda releases a single yellow balloon from her front yard. One night, before I met her in the duplexes of Renick Ave., her son and his friends jumped the fence to the pool of the apartments where she used to live. While they were swimming, he had an asthma attack. His friends ran. That’s why Rhoda trades hot plates for crack.

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2016 issue

brandon thao

paj ntaub in exile: rough ruins of wakeless men’s needle work, red threads made from hairs of women’s corpses, make beds for children of our future’s past.

New darkness begins its grin as our last Paj Ntaub wisps with winds. We are cringing on the sides of dark hills we once called home.

Freedom comes in powders and shells.

Here we’ve become China’s living fossils, burnt leaves on last streams.

Slowly turning brown, we will one day be forgotten like our golden hair and Blue River eyes, pieces sewn together in fear, barbed wires binding the dreams of the living with the footsteps of the dead, new roots pushing through old stories embedded in blood rags made in rivers.

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American river review 33

2017 Issue

Sean Stevens

An Ode to the Chameleon in the Sea

Your kiss-scarred face looks onward into the realm where only you have insight. You reach inside yourself with swirls of bittersweet scarlet. The lore of your capacity for vileness is as seductive as your flesh, and the mysterious nature of your thitherance. Mayhaps, will your secrets be revealed when you are moved by terror or grim reprieve of ravenous urge? Didn’t you flush upon my eyes with darkness? For in said motions, you deny me what is rightfully mine, mine as master surveyor. Do not you grasp as I do with your arms outstretched? The tactile quality in your grip, so like my own. Or does the watery chill within you reside so deeply that you’ve lost your desire for anything else? You grip with such soft sickly strength, probing deeply with flesh so inclement that I am moved to bewildered admiration. But what is to be said of admiration of one so obstinate, so arrogant, in your aversion to the coalitions of affection, accords of the soul. For one such as you, the world truly must be, what to the faint-hearted would seem an illusory glimpse of damnation to the darkest depths of isolation. Your residence within the shattered pond of briny perplexity, and the reverence for which you seem to be so at home, has me smitten. Had I to meet with you, I feel that you would indeed intone my very soul, my noumenon to which you hail from, a feature of your grim secrecy. Bestow upon me your enlightenment, Mr. Octopus, for I feel that without it, I surely will be lost.

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2017 issue

anemic light bleeds through serrated shades that once held dark lids caked lips cracked crawl out from sheets locate skin need its warmth loathe its constriction squeeze into viscous rubber frigid bones compressing pressure forcing ink jet marrow oozing through joints pooling want to rip through scratch shred must zip all

the way up fingers tremble pull tab slides teeth clench shrinking space inside realize i will never tear free

sinks

hyde liam bass

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American river review 33

Joshua David Lacy

Withdrawals on a Jailhouse Floor He spent the whole month of August, the summer prior to getting arrested, calling every rehab in a 250 mile radius, but they all judged he wasn’t economically worth saving, being denied everywhere he applied. He figured he would live fast and die young in a blaze of glory, though being a romantic at heart, he couldn’t justify the violence of blowing his brains out. He was going to die with a head full of drugs and a liver full of whiskey and wine.

He hit rock bottom shortly afterward.

He had a friend that introduced him to heroin. He started snorting a yellowish-brown powder. Definitely not something that looked approved by the FDA. He actually hated the high, but being a cheap bastard, he liked how such a small quantity fucked him up for so long. He did the math and figured he was spending about $5 per 12 hours of intoxication, or $0.41 per hour. At that rate, he could be dead forever.

***

The cop that put me against the hood had a USMC tattoo on his forearm. He was more gentle than most cops I’ve ever dealt with, probably because right when I knew I was fucked, I gave him the drugs without fighting. I’m sure he appreciated that. The orange bottle full of dull yellow Norcos and white Xanax bars were in my front right pocket, the weed in my left front pocket, and the Morphine patches fit snug against my wallet in my back pocket.

It’s not like they were elaborately hidden in a secret compartment or anything.

2017 Issue

I was searched right in front of my house. My girlfriend watched as they piled the drugs up. All the neighbors came to watch, as that loud kid who’s always breaking shit or spray painting the word ‘fuck’ on everything he owned or sitting on his lawn wearing nothing but pool floaties screaming at the sky for the next great deluge, was put in handcuffs. They must have slept very soundly that night knowing such a menace was locked away.

The second cop grabbed me by the elbow and led me to the car. I spied a cross dangling below the globs of fat on his neck. “Do you think Jesus would approve of this? Jesus’ best friends were drunks and prostitutes, you think he’d approve of you arresting your fellow man just looking to get a little high?”

The USMC cop waved his hand over the score on the top of their patrol car, “A little high?”

I continued pleading with the Christian cop, trying to appeal to his religious principles, a trick I learned from Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, a book I’d read not a week before in effort to be a better poker player.

The USMC cop called his buddy over while I sat in the back of the cop car listening to the terrible buttrock of one of our local radio stations and the garbled language of the walkie-talkie. Christian cop grabbed me by my elbow again and yanked me from the car. USMC cop had my cell phone in his hand, scrolling through the thousands of incriminating text messages I never deleted because I’m a fucking idiot. Texts to and from my supplier, texts to and from my customers, dating months back, dealing with every drug known on the greater west side of California. I was fucked.

I turned my persuasion laser onto USMC cop. “Come on man, that goes against my constitutional rights,” I said, knowing nothing about constitutional rights. “I thought this was America, not Soviet Russia. It’s illegal for you to go through my phone.”

The cops then explained, in thorough detail, what the Patriot Act was and how, basically, it gave them permission to do whatever the fuck they want under the grounds of suspicion. Plus, USMC cop added, he barely touched my phone and it opened right up to my texts.

He was right. I turned the lockpad feature off because it got annoying when I was seeing doubles of everything.

Do I need to reinforce the fact that I’m an idiot?

“Look, just take the drugs and let me go, okay? I’m already home, you can just say you found it in an alleyway or something. That’s like five, six hundred bucks, easy.”

“Are you trying to bribe an officer of the law?” Christian cop asked.

I didn’t look at him. I was looking at USMC cop. He was a young guy with a bird-like face, sharp narrow nose and focused eyes. I knew those eyes. He was a gambler, and this was high-stakes poker. If I could needle him a little more, I could get him to walk over the ledge. I was going all in.

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American river review 33 “You don’t need me. That’s seven hundred bucks in your pocket if you just let me go. I live right here, you can just uncuff me and—” Christian cop tossed me into the backseat. I slid face first across the leathery plastic, tasting the ass of everyone who’s ever sat back there. Fucking squares.

The officers conversed outside the car while I repositioned myself; their voices drowned out by Nickelback.

Christian cop opened the door and yanked me out again.

“Look,” Christian cop said, “We’ll let you go—” My eyes shot up faster than a junkie on welfare check day. “Tight!” I yelled, turning around to let them take the cuffs off my wrists.

“—If,” USMC cop continued, “You tell us about the guns.”

The fuck? I thought.

“The fuck?” I said. “Guns?”

“Who in here has the guns?” Christian cop asked, speaking of the gated community/trailer park I was living in. I only knew a few others that lived here. I did know a guy with a gun that lived a couple streets down, but he was a seventy-five-year-old parolee weed grower just trying to make a living.

“I can tell you who speeds in here,” I said. “And, I’m pretty sure the guy across the street is a pedophile. I have no evidence for this, he’s just creepy as fuck.”

Not taking my testimony seriously, they tossed me back in the cab where I was delighted with the music of Creed while I waited for the paddy wagon to take me away.

*** While his friends just stopped using drugs and got an education or good jobs, he fell into a spiral of depression, exacerbated by drugs. Pills were always underlying every decision. The crack of the pill between his teeth, the acidic taste as the chemicals ate away at his mouth, the nausea, the cravings, the need, it all became too much.

He couldn’t quit.

Then he decided to just kill himself.

*** After the fingerprinting, the questions, the blood samples, and anal cavity inspection, I’m led to a concrete room. This is the holding room, the place inmates stay while the system determines what to do with us. Minor offenders—the publicly intoxicated, the trespassers, the potheads—are all let out after spending a couple hours here. The rest of us stewed in the cramped room while our fates were being determined by old men of privilege, most of whom had never known strife or misery on the level we did on a daily basis. We were the left-behinds, the hustlers, the sparrows, the freaks, the loons, the ones who fell through the cracks, the cancerous poor coming to rape your wife and steal your possessions, leaving you like us: penniless, empty, broke.

The room was full when I was thrown in. Bodies packed far past the limit for fire code. It was rectangle-shaped with one chest-high wall hiding a steel shitter so overflowed with human waste it looked like something from a

44

third world country. The smell of feces faded eventually, giving way to the smells of flesh. Body odor and the alcoholic stench of rotting fruit seeped through the pores of the ones sleeping off benders, in which they did terrible things that they would regret the next day.

There were three phones on the wall, but two of them were adorned with Out of Order signs. The one working phone was being used by a scrawny kid. Avoiding eye contact with the room, he screamed bail, despite the fact he was only in there on a trespassing charge. Another dude was squatting over the toilet, adding to the great pile of human disgust. Multiple people were sleeping, or feigning sleep, in overlapping piles, on the benches, on the floor, one guy while standing. It was all very picturesque, like something from a Dorothea Lange catalog. I found a small space to put my back against the wall.

My muscles were clenched tight. I was grinding my jaw involuntarily. My bones felt like they were on the verge of simultaneously snapping and stepping out of my skin. I wanted to get high so bad. Why didn’t I chew up a handful in the car before I got arrested? I asked myself.

My ears perked up at every mention of drugs, even though ninety percent of the users here were in for meth. It wasn’t my jam, but any port in a storm, eh? I would’ve shot up jet fuel mixed with pond scum if it would have stopped the headache coming on.

Every time the cops walked a female inmate past us to bring her to the ladies holding cell, the room erupted with whistles and catcalls; some of the women were ashamed, others relished in the attention. No doubt these would be the last women some of them would see for years.

In a letter from Folsom State Penitentiary, my brother, inmate 65-43223, the white supremacist with so much hate in him it seethes from his skin in the form of tattooed symbols—swastikas, lightning bolts, abstract words such as pride and heritage—told me that when I get locked up, the first thing I had to do was find my people. It struck me then at eleven-years-old that he was prophesying my criminal future. While my brother’s idea of “my people” was humans with the same skin pigmentation, but my people are anyone who can laugh in a time like this.

I made eye contact with the guy standing next to me. He was a fucking giant, like the dude from The Green Mile. He didn’t look as friendly as John Coffey, but he also didn’t look mean or anything. I smiled and he smiled back. If the bars were as wide as his gapped front teeth, we could have all been home by noon. There were no bars there, everything was state-of-the-art electronic doors controlled by computers, but the line doesn’t work with the truth.

I broke the ice with a bad joke, but it got us talking. I was working at Blockbuster at the time, so I had an extensive knowledge of movies, and John Coffey was a big time western fan. We talked about 3:10 to Yuma, Appaloosa, Tombstone, and every other western that popped into our minds. Once that conversation faded, we started talking about ourselves. I told him my situation, he told me his. John Coffey was a pimp, and his sister was his number one girl; he taught her everything she knew, he said. He was using “that Craigslist Internet thing” to advertise his business. A client contacted him and he drove his sister to the Motel 6 on Madison and I-80, where a dozen sheriffs were waiting for him.

I was starting to feel sick—from the pimp’s story or the lack of drugs, I know not—so I found a corner to lay in and tried getting some sleep.

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American river review 33 With my head and arms turtled inside my jacket, I dozed in and out, only waking at the sound of buzzers and alarms. One of the times I opened my eyes, I saw Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas standing over me, dressed not in clean robes, but dirty, torn rags, staring at me, licking his chops. I thought this was a dream and rolled over.

I stayed on the verge of consciousness and sleep, fighting back the urge to throw up, wanting nothing more than to be at home in my soft bed, or even on my knees in front of my own toilet. I poked my head out from my shell, and holy fuck, Clarence Thomas was no more than twelve inches from my face, laying down beside me, staring deep into my soul. His hands were down his pants, and I could smell his sour milk breath. I jerked back, slamming my head against the wall. Some of the inmates laughed, but John Coffey rushed over.

“What the fuck you doin’?” he asked Clarence, “I told you to let homeboy sleep.”

Clarence Thomas looked up at John Coffey with anger. I was scared that I was about to see my first jail fight.

Was the place going to erupt in a riot where the inmates take over the jail, handing over lists of demands to exchange for hostages? Fear was overwhelmed by my boiling blood, wanting to beat the shit out of Clarence Thomas myself, despite me being dopesick and Clarence being almost as big as John Coffey himself.

“Go back to your corner,” Coffey told him. I thought Clarence was going to attack, at which point I would jump in and probably just puke all over both of them. After the staredown, homeless Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas limped to the other corner, defeated like a dog whose master had just told it no.

I hobbled over to the toilet and added my own excrement in the form of bile to the ever growing mountain, not caring as it splashed onto my laceless moccasin. Luckily, the guards opened the door and called my name for processing, taking me away from rapist Clarence Thomas and John Coffey, the pimp with the heart of gold.

*** Eventually, he was kicked out of school for failing to attend. He went every day, just not to his classes. He would show up around break time, see his friends, collect money, then go to the library down the street to read comic books, waiting for one dealer or another to show up at the park next door. Ripping off naïve high schoolers turned into being the middle man for everything: drugs, stolen goods, etc. If you wanted it, he could get it at a discount. All the profit he made went toward getting high.

It got crazy. Parties every night, not sleeping for days at a time, then sleeping for twenty hours straight. A string of toxic relationships came and went, driving him further down the rabbit hole. Seeking fights with random strangers just to feel alive.

Then the party stopped.

***

“I asked for a King sized bed,” I half yelled at the guard as he directed me into my cell. I was only half cohesive, and somehow vomit had wound up on the front of my new orange onesie. I didn’t know where my clothes went, or how I got into this new garb. Again, I was surprised at how gentle the guard was, helping me to my bunk like a true gentleman. I instantly jumped toward the toilet and retched up nothing but a lifetime of regret. Staring into the metal hole that looked like a larynx, I could see my own reflection, as warped as my insides and head felt. I embraced the cold of the steel as sweat pushed itself out of every pore.

Above the toilet was a splatter of blood. And chunks of hair. My imagination began speculating how it happened, but it was pretty obvious: someone got their head smashed into the wall. I was no blood splatter analyst, but I was well versed in people’s heads slamming against things, so I was fairly confident in my conclusion. Then I began puking up blood, coating the shiny insides of the toilet with a red tinge, making my twisted face look like something from a 1950s horror movie.

I grabbed the blankets from the bunk bed and lay down beside my new friend.

I think the guards knew that I needed to detox, as they only put one other guy in my cell, and it was for a short period of time. He was in for possession of meth, and was in the process of being transferred somewhere else.

He gave me his orange, even peeling it for me, and not interrupting when I threw it back up a short time later.

Nice guy.

The rest of my stay at Chateau la Jail, however, was spent alone. Time seemed to speed up and stop at the same rate. I would lie on the top bunk and stare out the tiny two by ten inch window at downtown Sacramento, watching the sun rise, wondering what kind of trouble the world was going to cause today. It felt like sunrises lasted an eternity, but then I would lie down and close my eyes. When I opened them again it would be nighttime, and the world was asleep. The guards didn’t bother me, except for meal times, when they would ask for the untouched tray with an apple or orange and turkey or bologna sandwich back. They didn’t even force me to shower, although I probably desperately needed it.

As each minute passed, I began to feel more and more like myself.

*** He held his personal problems in, not knowing how to express them in constructive ways. He got into fights, physically with his classmates, verbally with his teachers. He was the first kid suspended from his elementary school for carving a swastika on another kid’s desk; a crime he didn’t even commit, but seeing as how he wore the troublemaker moniker with pride, it was stuck on him.

American river review 33 This pattern continued until high school.

By that time, he had already smoked enough weed to be considered an expert by his less-informed friends, been to college parties, and drank enough to warrant a serious heart-to-heart with his best friend about how they were both aware that they were tempting alcoholism and should slow down a bit. This began a long and winding road of experimentation with whatever he could obtain.

On top of the experiments, he was also in therapy, learning to love himself. Just kidding. He was being diagnosed with manic depression, but when he realized the drugs they were giving him for bipolar were making him shit his pants and not care about it, he quickly turned to manipulating his doctors into thinking he had ADHD so he could score Ritalin, a hot item at school. That gave him his first connection.w

*** You feel well enough to stare at the mural of graffiti on the cell walls and truly appreciate it; some of it covered in the blood of the previous occupant, some of it drawn over in bigger, bolder lettering. You marvel at the work: Bible quotes about redemption, inspirational rap lyrics, hate speech, neighborhood shout-outs, a pair of judgmental eyes staring down, swastikas, skulls, a nude brunette with double-D’s sitting on her knees, spread eagle, inviting you in, with her face scratched out with an angry X. You wonder why you weren’t supplied with a pen to add your signature to the wall, and then realize some of these must have been keistered in. The things artists do for their art…

Among the madness is a Gandhi quote. Before you can ponder over what romantic fuck brought Gandhi with him to jail, a mechanical voice screeches your name, telling you there is a visitor.

Is it my lawyer? You ask the empty room, remembering from courtroom television shows that you’re supposed to get one of those. Silence is the only response.

The steel door slides open, exposing the world outside the cell. The first you’ve seen of it in you don’t know how long. Six days? Seven? Eight? The halls are quiet, the recreation area empty, the rats still sleeping in their holes. The morning sun gives the room where people have been beaten, shanked, and killed an innocent glow.

It is almost beautiful.

Walk to the right, a voice says. You see megaphones in the corners of the walls, the source of the mysterious voice.

You follow the yellow line -yellow for the cons, green for the guards. You remember that much because the first guard told you that if you were in the green you would catch a beating. Same if you saw a guard and didn’t put your hands down your pants.

The yellow line leads to the elevator.

Step inside, the voice says.

Your paranoia tingles as you inch your way inside the enormous steel box. Despite your recent exposure to steel and boxes, you are still unsure.

Step inside, the voice says, this time with a hint of agitation in it.

You follow the directions, but questions swirl around you: Are they taking me downstairs to kill me?

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The doors close, leaving you with your thoughts.

*** Between the chaos of his parents’ divorce, he lived between two houses that couldn’t have been more different: a crackhouse—but a really clean, well kept one—and his grandparents’, a shrine to all things Christian that clashed hard with his messy and defiant personality. He dealt with death more times than a child his age should.

To this day, he says this had no effect on him, but in his deepest of dreams, and then in the truth of his writing, you can see otherwise. His father flees to another land; not that he was ever there to begin with.

His grades in everything but English are very poor. His teachers speak of his “potential,” but words like that are meaningless to a broken boy. How could he remember the names of Columbus’ boats when he was forgetting his father’s face? How could he figure out subtraction when he was busy figuring a way to steal lunch boxes from the cubby holes near the back door because his mom only left him two dollars in food stamps and the cafeteria only accepts cash?

*** When they open, you are met by a guard. The first human you’ve seen, and not just heard, since you were put in your cell; you almost crack a smile before remembering where you are. They are the enemy.

“Up the stairs,” he points.

In front of you are a dozen glass rooms, six on each level. They remind you of Hollywood Squares, even though the numbers are wrong. You walk up the steps, and sitting in one of the boxes, probably next to Bruce Vilanch, is your Family.

Family looks at you with a mixture of fear and sadness. There is no disappointment, only genuine concern, amplified through the simplification jail brought. It is enough to break your heart. Despite everything, Family is still there. Still supporting you. Still loving you.

You try to hold back the tears threatening to leave, but then you pick up the phone and hear the voice of Family. No anger, but love. Time meant nothing until you saw them and what your time here was doing to them. The only thing you can think about is getting out, grabbing Family and squeezing them forever, comforting them in the same way they desperately want to comfort you.

You don’t know how anyone could look at their own Family from behind glass windows and willingly put themselves in that situation again.

*** Look now, at the young boy, mud in his pockets, mud on his belly, mud deep in his blond hair, putting worms that wiggle for their lives into his mouth and chewing them. He doesn’t know any better, and will continue eating bugs until first grade, as no one sees him doing it until Ms. Nassel behind the portables. He is left alone most of the time, parents struggling with their own battles with drugs and alcohol. He doesn’t have many pleasant memories of his childhood. Fear and solitude were his caretakers.

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American river review 33

*** See him now, stepping through the doors of justice, head clear like a babbling brook in a meadow, cleaned of all chemicals for the first time in years.

There is a path by the babbling brook with a fork in it.

The path on the right has a blackened trail and gnarled branches that look like some witch’s fingers, beckoning him to come forth. The acidic bite of chemical is so heavy in the air, he can taste it, bringing back sour memories. The fingers are calling him right back to carpetless dens of hellacious fun wrapped in mental anguish and all of the caveats that come with it. That path was going to cost him. It would cost him his life, leading him right back here, with the length of stays getting longer and longer.

The pull of the right side was great.

The left held no flowers, butterflies, rainbows, or unicorns. It was just a path. Weeds overgrowing the dirt, sunbeaten Budweiser cans half-buried, broken branches forcing you off the path a bit. There was one thing enchanting about going to the left, and that was the chance of starting fresh.

He looked back at the building, at the person he was leaving behind, and turned left.

2018 issue

She stays out all night, falls in a broken heap of porcelain onto the bed when the sun starts getting nosy, peeping through the blinds.

He ran out of glue last night so he leaves for work without saying sorry.

When he comes back, she’s gone like always.

His foot steps on a stray shard of her buried in the carpet, finds crumbs of her sighs throughout the living room.

He sweeps them up, puts everything in order.

anna donskova

polterabend

The lights are off.

He’s fully clothed, sitting on the bed that’s meant for things that never break, things that hold together by sturdy rings of metal (even though gold was always soft).

She stumbles through the door as the moon begins to close her eyes, scatters chunks of herself all over the floor, the table, the pillows, the duvet.

He tries to scoop her up, takes out the glue he bought.

The jagged pieces never quite fit together and he gives up before he even starts.

She doesn’t seem to mind, smiles with her chipped teeth, space opened hollow where her eye should be, three of her fingers missing.

She turns his face toward the mirror that was cracked for seven years, and for the first time he could see the gaping hole revealing off-white skull bone, the jagged edge where his mouth used to be, one arm missing, and how he couldn’t even hold the glue in the last remnants of his pointer and thumb.

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American river review 33

Diana Ormanzhi

Encumbered Night Cermac and Oil Paint 14.5”×6”×6”

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2017 issue

ivy mcdonald

Clay pot

My heart is a clay pot formed by loving hands You can still see fingerprints there

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American river review 33

matthew bowie

on certain nightmares It was all some nightmare, and I’ve learned to say so, with patience and steadily. The shadow that the moon made billow like a flag for war in some poor bastards’ country, like moonlight ebbing the way you learn to think of luck, like oil on a sheet of dew that’s frozen. The shadow that the sunset stitched to both the hands you’ve raised because you think the mirror’s more than clean enough for twilight to notice this time, at least, and if not, to have patience, at least. But sunset needs your lips; your foreskin’s not enough, she says, as she clicks her tongue, and throws your eyes away.

Sunset pulls the pairs off, and cuts them crosswise, as her hands, like waxwings drunk on ilex, miss and slash the next might do.

You must not, even in nightmares, let your attention drift, or flag.

I’ve learned to pull my skin and dick off, to dry, to make a flag, and stand right crisp in salute, while nightmares and moonlight eat my patience (a runny scramble, well salted, with the curds turning custardy, just firm enough).

Moonlight’s sense is that broiling niggers’ is a better way than some sundowns, reasoning out some need or wish at hand, suggest. But daylight’s better than nighttime, if that’s what you want to do.

And if today (put on the meat and bone) your body’s way could start to make some sense, they’d cut the fingers off your hands, get predawn robins to stir the stewing; swallows’ll add a testicle too, and sheets of steam come off the pot, like a hot-dew, a snapping flag where water leaves the rendering fat you watch cook off your patience and ribs. Evening’s careful to singe the fascia just enough.

The moon himself, your nightmare says, nigger, nigger too, while daylight cooks its coonskins calmly, a finger held up to flag she’s listening. I wake up just then, and go back to sleep through patience.

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2018 issue

Nightmares ask me sometimes, with voices like cracking glass, enough to make me wonder if deafness or insomnia’s a better way, “Is what feeds, dismembered, your evening worth it?” And sometimes I say no. Why should every night break my hands and cut my face, and castrate, burn and and mock my screaming, too?

I remember midnights when I’d dreamed I was the flag: thirteen strips of leather left to tan, to reward patience and a judicious use of salt. Moonlight smirked and said, “Enough, let’s smoke the cricket in his bone broth; turn him out midday’s way by roasting slowly.” It took ten decades but I was cooked enough.

You’d save the link to learn to cook a nigger just that way, and peel his penis, lips, his nigger skin, the way my hands have learned, every nighttime, to cut, to peel, to cook, to do for the sake of the shadow opposite daylight means for flags: as if it weren’t just nigger skin. I have learned to remain patient.

It was all some nightmare, and I’ve learned to say so, with patience, and steadily, the shadow that the moon made billow like a flag, for war in some poor bastard’s country, where the full moon’s showing the way you learn to think of fate, like oil on a sheet of dew that’s frozen, the shadow that the sunset stitched to both the hands you’ve raised because you think that raising them could be enough.

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American river review 33

Rachel Gardner

Fout’s Olde-Tyme Menagerie and Faire Mariella was in the menagerie. People paid ten bucks for a few slender stalks of alfalfa to poke through the capricorn’s fence. The beast contentedly chewed its cud, blind in both eyes and docile as a loaf of bread. It might have been a good candidate for a petting zoo, but its neighbors weren’t. There was a middle-schooler making a general nuisance of himself, rattling the bars of the grass dispenser and bleating at the manticore pen. The man-faced creature stirred agitatedly, kneading the ground and showing clipped fangs. In the guise of tucking a strand of grass back in the dispenser, Mariella shut the door on the boy’s fingers, hard.

“Whoopsie-doodle,” she said mildly as the boy stuck his pinched fingers in his mouth. He gave her an evil glare.

The park’s head manager, Gerald, appeared like an imp summoned at the slightest hint of misfortune.

“Brandt,” he snapped. Mariella shot to attention. It was hard to tell from his tone if she was in trouble or not.

“You untouched?”

Mariella blinked.

“What, sir?” she pitched her tone low, as if trying to make up for his volume with her own. The middleschooler watched them, manticore forgotten.

“Are you a virgin?”

Mariella could feel Josh, the menagerie supervisor, smirk at her from across the floor. She lowered her eyes and nodded.

“And no hanky-panky. They can tell.”

“What can tell, sir?” A fly alighted on Mariella’s upper arm, only buzzing a short distance when she waved it away before returning to sit fat and black on her sunburned skin.

Instead of answering Gerald said, “Katie’s out. Her understudy isn’t answering her phone and we need someone for the 1:30 show.”

“Katie?” Hot recognition streaked through her nerves. “Oh no, sir. There has to be somebody else—” “Yeah,” Josh hooted, “what about Kevin?”

Mariella winced. Gerald leaned around her and gave Josh a peeved look. “There’s no one suitable. C’mon.”

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Without waiting for her, he strode off across the fairgrounds.

2018 Issue

Mariella looked around, as if one of the sad creatures in the menagerie could help her. The amphisbaena curled up in a patch of sunlight, its second head tucked petulantly in its mouth. The manticore whined like the wind over reeds and rubbed its sides against the wood of its pen. Its scorpion-sting tail flexed worriedly. The animals were restless. As one they paced their enclosures due to some holistic imbalance that could only be coming from one source: the center of the fairgrounds.

The protesters that ringed the parking lot were chanting like worshippers before a dark God baying for a blood sacrifice. Mariella caught their wails on the breeze that only served to stick a few more hairs to the sweat on her face and fan up the warm smell of dung that permeated the entire compound.

“If you die, can I have your parking spot?” Josh asked.

*** “I swear to God, next time I work at a park, no teenagers. You’re always wandering off behind bushes and bathrooms to screw your brains out. Know what happened last time? Guy left the Tilt-A-Whirl to go off and neck. He was the director’s nephew and barely got a slap on the wrist. No justice, I tell you. No justice in this world.” Gerald nursed his cigar like a tan udder.

Mariella donned a long, blonde wig and the back-up kirtle, which hung around her loose as a deflated balloon.

The kirtle had velcro fasteners like a stripper’s tear-away costume, but no amount of fiddling would cinch them tight enough. The primary kirtle was closer to her size, but lay scrunched up on the dressing-tent floor with a suspicious stain on the bosom.

“What happened to Katie?” she asked uneasily.

“Burst appendix.” Gerald took another draught of cigar smoke. “And to compound it all, it’s always the Faces.

I swear to god, if I could get away with a Face that isn’t pretty I would. They’re usually the first to lose it.”

Gerald shifted the cigar in his mouth. “You might be stuck with this gig for a while, then.”

Mariella stopped adjusting her wig.

“Um,” she said.

“Look, just get out there and stick some flowers in his mane, let him put his head in your lap, and we’re gold.”

Gerald snapped her bra strap. “Don’t screw up.”

The arena was a mesh fence over fourteen feet high, flanked by a white pasture picket to give a weak semblance of provinciality. A crowd had already amassed, jabbing elbows and shouting rude phrases. Mariella found park attendees had a kind of low-level psychic talent: they could smell disaster a mile away. For the first time ever, she regretted saying ‘no’ to her eighth grade boyfriend, lack of condom be damned.

Kevin, who ran the Drench-a-Wench booth, waved to her from the fairway. He stretched his hand high in the air like an overeager student. Mariella skated her eyes past him, as if he blended into the background. One well-placed word and she could be in his arms and off unicorn duty permanently, but she wasn’t that desperate.

No unicorn poster had adorned the back of Mariella’s bedroom door growing up. No single-horned simpering nag had graced the cover of her grade-school trapper keeper. Whatever romance in Mariella’s soul that had

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American river review 33 not yet bled out over the course of the summer had reserved soft spots for the animals in the menagerie. The part of her brain that was not calculating how she could quit three months before her original cutoff date and still afford a car was preoccupied not with hazy visions of magic and nobility, but ass-clenching terror. The arena was simultaneously too close and too damn far away. The panels of the seating boxes were papered with prints of The Hunt of the Unicorn, so faded by sun that all the colors had a green tinge. The panel on the staff entrance was the unicorn surrounded by hunter’s spears and oddly birdlike hounds, flanked lovingly by lesser mythological creatures as it rested before a fountain. The park had enough self-awareness to omit the panel of the unicorn captured, penned in by a circular fence barely larger than its own body.

The announcer was warming up his pitch. He’d been going off and on since one o’clock, oblivious to the razzing of the crowd.

“Yes, just four short years ago, we got Jack as a colt from the Greater Basin Zoo. Even though unicorns average six to eight hands, Jack was already nine and growing!”

An ominous rattling came from Jack’s stable. His full sobriquet was Crimson Sunset Overtaking the Jackson Hillside, but this was shortened to Red Jack shortly after he’d arrived. And it was generally agreed among the park employees that he was completely insane.

“The only unicorns in captivity tend to be males, in accordance with their tradition of laying their heads in the laps of fair maidens.” The announcer’s voice took on a hammy medieval twang for the sentence. “Their mating habits in the wild remain a mystery.”

Actually, according to the protesters outside the park, the attraction to virgins was a misplaced mating instinct, like a moth drawn to a porch light instead of the moon. Not that Mariella would betray that fact. Alice, the Face for the Wyvern show, had been summarily sacked for accepting a pamphlet.

The one-thirty horn blared, startling Mariella into the picket fence. She clutched a slat, wincing at the splinter it had given her. Ike, the four-fingered rodeo clown responsible for safety at the show, gave her a lopsided thumbsup. Mariella took a breath. Fear is the mind-killer, she told herself.

Mariella fixed a smile on her face and did a pageant walk out to the center of the arena.

“Hey, she wasn’t here this morning! Where’s the chick with the tits?”

Mariella deliberately did not look at the heckler. She pretended there were swords pinning her cheeks back to keep smiling as the announcer continued.

“Our fair maiden Katherine will be taming this mysterious beast for us today. Lady Katherine has a heart pure as the driven snow, and virtue that the old bards once sang about!”

Mariella’s shoulder ached, so she dropped to a polite wave from the wrist. A group of college-age guys laughed in a far corner. She didn’t dare look over.

A heavy clank came from behind her.

“And now, heeeeeere’s Jack!”

Mariella had to clench her stomach to keep from flinching. She put aside images of horns spearing her back and slowly turned.

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Jack took his sweet time coming out of his stable. Mariella immediately regretted her impatience as Jack emerged, horn-first.

She’d never been this close to him before. Her newfound respect for Katie was only tempered by resentment that she wasn’t here to do this.

Red Jack was stout for a unicorn. Instead of moving in little, tripping steps, Jack sauntered into the arena. His cloven hooves tore divots out of the packed dirt floor. He sheened with sweat. With a roll and flick of his head, he hoisted his horn. It looked like wrought iron and it crumbled at the tip.

“Why’s his horn broken?” a woman with a cat sweater shouted from the stands.

“In the wild, male unicorns often joust for sport, leading to the crumbling you see here. Don’t worry, folks. It’s no more painful than if you bit off a fingernail.”

Jack dragged his horn along the perimeter fence, throwing up a line of sparks. The audience oohed. Mariella wondered if they’d still be wowed if they knew it wasn’t scripted.

“Our fair maiden Ka—I’m sorry, our lovely maiden Mariella will be taming him for us, starting with a call to lay his head in her lap.”

Instead of moving in little, tripping steps, Jack sauntered into the arena. His cloven hooves tore divots out of the packed dirt floor.

Mariella found all the spit completely dried from her mouth. She tried a whistle, managing only a weak cricket sound. Jack twitched one of his ears, but did not turn. He was pacing the fence, staring out at the crowd with subdued bloodlust.

Mariella put both fingers in her mouth and whistled sport-style. Jack turned. It was as if he hadn’t realized he wasn’t alone in the arena. He scented the wind.

Mariella had to fix herself in place. She was already envisioning diving to the side like a matador when Jack broke into a sudden gallop. It was too fast to react. Mariella flung her arms up, but Jack braked just before he reached her. His hooves were far too sharp and in desperate need of a trim. He was just tall enough to look her in the eye, and his eyes were red and mad.

“Now the maiden will sit on her stool and call for him to lay his head in her lap,” the announcer prompted.

Mariella came back to herself.

There was a milking stool spray-painted gold. She lowered herself into it, keeping eye contact with Jack.

Or was it the other way, that she shouldn’t make direct contact with an angry animal? All useful knowledge scattered like a flock of pigeons.

Jack stood still. Mariella tried to think back. What did Katie do?

She clicked her tongue.

Jack twitched his ear.

She made a kissing noise.

He shifted his hooves a little.

Mariella sighed and made cat-calling noises. She meowed softly. Jack cocked one ear and approached slowly.

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American river review 33 She kept it up as he came to a halt barely a foot from her. She could see the veins beneath his hide, every twitch of his skin as the flies supped on his sweat. She could see herself in his eyes. Jack rocked his head like a shuttle boat— —and slowly lowered it into her lap.

The crowd hushed. Mariella found herself enjoying a breath she had unconsciously put off.

“See folks? They’re gentle as a baby when it comes to damsels. Now our maiden is going to braid flowers into his mane.”

Mariella panicked momentarily as she searched around for the box of silk flowers. It had been placed near the stool, but not so near that she could get one without shifting.

Jack snorted.

Mariella pivoted, trying to align her body with the box without jarring the unicorn’s head. She managed to snag the rim with her fingers and pulled, trying to scoot it just that much closer. The box moved one inch, and then the table it was on overbalanced. Mariella caught the box in one hand, torso suspended in the open air, heart hammering at the noise. Jack had closed his eyes, now they opened a crack and she could see the redthreaded whites of his sclera. She forced herself to come back slowly, hefting the wooden box. Her abdominal muscles were screaming.

Three lilies and a poppy were left. Their plastic stems had been jury-rigged with pipecleaners, so Mariella just wound one around a hank of mane rather than risk the extended activity of braiding.

“We can take this opportunity to answer a few questions.”

A young woman with pink glasses and a dolphin t-shirt found her way to the microphone. She spoke too close, her breath puffing so as to make her question nearly inaudible.

“Doesn’t a unicorn need over 60 square acres of virgin forest to survive in the wild? How much space does he have here?”

“Folks, Jack has plenty of room to roam around in,” the announcer said primly, “and you’ll find much of that roaming around they do is to hunt for food. Here, it’s just given to them, so there’s no need for such a wide area.”

The next up was a young man with a visor worn upside-down and backwards on his head.

“Um, yeah,” he said, gripping the mic suggestively, “would you say he’s your horniest animal?”

His buddies giggled and hi-fived.

The announcer answered with practiced banality: “No, the Euryale is possessed of far more antler than the unicorn. However, we do have alicorn and horn byproducts in the gift shop today!”

The next speaker was obviously a protester plant, so security hustled them past before they could grab the mic.

A tween girl stepped up to the podium.

“Is he supposed to be doing that?” she asked, pointing.

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Mariella had been concentrating on petting Jack’s head, attempting to soothe him. She realized the shifting in his body was not, in fact, him trying to get at more parts of her hand. Jack’s hind hooves were scratching the ground like a bull. His half-lidded eyes showed only whites, the second she took her hand away, his pupil rolled to the fore. She found herself reflected in the beast’s eye and had a sudden epiphany regarding her own mortality.

Mariella pushed off with her feet, dumping the stool to the ground behind her. Jack snorted, temporarily offbalance. He had gone to his front knees when Mariella scratched behind his ear; now he rose up to his full height.

Mariella tried to remember the unicorn’s top speed as she held her hand out and made shushing noises. How far could she get before being impaled? Could she knock the horn aside?

The gate creaked behind her.

All hopes that was Ike here to distract crowd and unicorn alike were dashed when a preadolescent squawk sounded behind her.

“I’ll save you, my fair lady!”

Mariella groaned as Kevin raced up beside her.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve been watching the knight bouts for a while, I think I’ve got the hang of it.”

“Kevin, get out of here before he kills you.”

Kevin shook his head. “No, I won’t leave you to die!”

“Go get someone,” Mariella snapped, “someone qualified.”

She couldn’t take her eyes from the unicorn, who was looking quizzically from her to Kevin.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

This time, both she and Kevin turned as one. Gerald had thrown the gate open, now he was stomping over.

“Only maidens in the ring,” he shouted, face reddening and spittle flying from his mouth, “only maidens in the ring!”

“Mr. Rueggar?” Kevin said.

“Shut up, Kevin! Shut up and wiggle those child-bearing hips back to the midway!”

“Sir,” Mariella cried.

“Get back on that stool! I’m not paying you to pal around.”

“Sir—” it seemed like she couldn’t get enough air to scream. Her limbs were weighted like lead in the summer air. And Jack lowered his head.

Mariella managed to get out a gasp as Jack ran forward. Gerald, in mid-berate, did not even see it coming.

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American river review 33 The tip of Jack’s horn found the soft flesh between the ribs of Gerald’s right side. The cigar tumbled from his mouth. Jack plunged forward, worrying the horn deeper. Gerald grabbed it, trying to push back. His sweat-slick hand slid uselessly off as the tip of the horn emerged from his back.

Red Jack strained, his neck muscles bulging like snakes. He began to raise his head.

The crowd gasped.

Red Jack slowly pivoted at the base of his neck, scooping his head under for better traction. The horn bent under the strain. Mariella waited for it to break. It didn’t. When the angle of Jack’s head cleared 45°, Gerald’s ascent rapidly sped up. Twitching spasmodically, a dark streak of urine staining one pant leg, he slid down.

Red Jack’s goat-tail waggled incessantly. When Gerald’s abdomen met his skull, Jack snorted. Either he hadn’t seen the flaw in his plan or had underestimated how much Gerald’s body would obscure his vision. He began whinnying, breaking into an unbalanced gallop.

Mariella found a training hook in her hands, uncertain of whether she’d grabbed it before or after the impalement started. Her boss flapped like a flag from the unicorn’s head. Mariella followed the display with her eyes and felt something new. Hate.

In that unicorn, she could see the jeering face of every ungrateful park attendee, every man on staff who had raked her body with unsympathetic eyes. Are you untouched? Are you untouched? Every grasping hand that found the seam of her shorts in the guise of brushing away a fly, every suggestive jab that magically transformed into a harmless compliment when rebuffed. Are you untouched? Are you untouched? This was the package she had been sold: be a good girl and someday you’ll get a violent murderbeast. The only thing this horse did better than regular horses was hate. Well, that was finally something she could relate to.

Rage stoking her furnace like a steam engine, Mariella chased after them. Hitting Jack’s neck was folly. The muscles there knit together like iron armor. She landed a few unlucky blows on her boss’s body in her attempts after the head and was not really sorry. One shot went wide and collided with Jack’s horn, which finally broke under the combined forces.

Gerald fell to the ground, still speared. Jack hefted his head triumphantly, horn bud gleaming like a milktooth in his forelock.

“Unicorns can shed their horns indefinitely and grow them back in a matter of weeks,” the announcer burbled, a hysteric edge to his voice. The crowd was no longer listening. Panic had scattered them from a unified swarm.

People screamed. One large woman sobbed uncontrollably. Those who had been holding phones or cameras or camcorders kept them aloft. A few men attempted to breach the ringside fence and were stymied by security.

Off in the wings, Mariella caught sight of Ike shrugging on a set of padded wrangling armor. Too little, too late.

Jack made a complete circuit of the ring to celebrate his freedom. He came galloping around the far curve of the arena and began to pick up speed.

Mariella realized she still held the hook in her hand. She dropped it and looked around.

The gate was firmly shut again; Kevin was nowhere in sight. Mariella took a deep breath and ran at the fence.

Her impact was clumsy, but she managed to get the toe of a silk slipper in the mesh of the fence. As Jack’s galloping grew louder, Mariella shimmied up the side, pulling muscles in her arms and legs. There was a

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metallic earthquake as she reached the top. Rather than carefully leg-over to the other side, Mariella flipped ass-over-tit across the top, losing her wig in the process. She screamed and slid, painfully managing to regain a finger-hold on the fence that arrested her fall for just a moment before her protesting muscles gave out. She dropped, and managed to remember to let her legs take the shock. She folded up at the knees and then the hips. Her feet felt broken. She hit her tailbone hard in the dust and then landed on the flat of her back. She lay like that, paralyzed and gasping and insensate with terror.

The quake had been Red Jack, who had used the split in his hooves to gain traction. He had jumped and then levered himself up, his head just clearing the top of the fence.

What little adrenaline was left in Mariella’s body was fired up and she scrabbled backwards. Jack hung suspended for another moment before gravity took hold again and he peeled away from the fence. He landed awkwardly, on three hooves and one knee. He whinnied, got up and began limping.

Mariella finally gained control of her higher mental functions and turned to get to her feet. She tore off the kirtle, velcro clasps parting easily. Her park shirt and cotton shorts beneath were drenched with sweat, her short hair falling out of the ponytail she’d tied this morning. She fell into an easy jog, forcing herself to exhale all her carbon dioxide to avoid a stitch. Her feet still hurt, but the bones felt intact. A bizarre calm descended over her, like everything that happened was occurring in a movie she was viewing from inside her head.

Kevin was back behind the Drench-a-Wench. Mariella called his name. Kevin turned, just in time to receive a knuckle-punch to the jaw. He fell backwards and Mariella kept jogging. She was back at the menagerie, deserted of all park attendees who had flocked to the site of the disaster like ants to a dropped ice cream bar.

Josh looked at her in bemusement. “What happened?”

Mariella sat down on the ground, sprawling bonelessly.

“I think you’re up for manager now,” she said.

Jack screamed. You could hear it clear as day across the park.

As Josh ran toward the arena, Mariella hoisted herself up. She limped to the manticore’s pen. The beast backed up, whimpering slightly. Mariella let herself in by the gate. She stripped off her shirt and dunked it in the water dish, sponging off her skin. She repeated it once, twice.

The manticore danced anxiously on its paws. The animals were restless again.

Mariella sat down by the trough. The manticore approached her. It had a face like Mickey Rooney writ small, its tongue hung, panting over three sets of teeth. Mariella sat, getting her breath back, spreading her legs out flat. The manticore shuffled up and gingerly mouthed her leg. She scritched behind his ears. As she heard shouts and screams start up from the arena, the manticore lay its head down in her lap and she pet it like a dog.

Josh came back.

“How is he?”

He didn’t reply, just shuffled through some papers he fished out of the ticket kiosk.

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American river review 33 “You’ll have to wear what you’ve got on, there isn’t time to clean Katie’s old duds,” he said, “can you find the wig?”

She said, “What?”

“There’s a 3 o’clock show. Get up.”

Mariella felt the weight of the manticore’s head in her lap. “Sure. How much?”

Josh’s face was stony. He wasn’t joking now. “Katie earned—” “No. How much to keep me from talking?”

“We have other girls here, you know...”

“How many Faces at the park are still virgins?”

Josh was silent.

“A lot of people saw that show. A lot of people with cameras. Who will you hire after that goes viral?”

“We’ll just say—look, that’s not up to me.” Josh gestured impatiently. “Get the fuck up.”

“150.”

“What?”

“150 an hour and I won’t go public. You won’t get a better deal.”

The cords in his neck bulged. “Whore,” he whispered.

Mariella shoved her hand down the front of her shorts, fished around a bit, and pulled out her middle finger for inspection.

“No,” she said, and laughed.

Josh threw papers at her feet and stormed away. “Those are training sheets,” he called over his shoulder, “have them burned into your brain by three.”

“And my money?”

Josh didn’t answer.

She watched him disappear into the fairground crowd. The manticore mouthed her hand and she gently wiggled it loose.

Her hair was swarming out of its ponytail, she shook it free and dragged nails over her scalp. She climbed out of the enclosure, remembering to put her shirt back on, and walked on rubbery legs.

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The protesters were chanting regularly at the crowd streaming in. They held signs with pink unicorns weeping glitter tears at being shackled by ball and chain. A young girl stood beside her, parents looking discomfited by the heat and crowd, the unicorn painted on her face rubbed into streaks from where she dabbed at sweat. Mariella’s gaze fell like a fly on the girl and would not be shooed away. The girl, shading her brow to peer at the never-ebbing stream of people going into the park, met Mariella’s eyes. They looked at each other in perfect stillness, caught by the heat like figures in a tapestry gesticulating in a skewed timeline. Here the girl stood on one fabric panel, head cocked to the future. Here Mariella crouched on a facing panel, knelt like a dog, tired and frothing after the hunt. The girl blinked, self-consciously rubbing at the greasy unicorn on her face. A bolt of understanding passed between them.

Mariella flashed a tiger grin at the girl, beckoning her forward. The girl, shooting a token look at her parents who were still preoccupied with the crowd, stepped forward. Mariella slipped the papers through the chainlink fence in a roll.

“Here,” she said, “story time.”

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American river review 33

2018 issue Chicken wire, a perfect perch for larks, encircles the garden like a birdcage. Beans planted all around the fence climb and sink.

Flowers bloom, borage and yellow sweet broom.

Leaves dappled with dew sparkle and shine.

Morning sun causes steam to rise and stir.

The neighborhood is just beginning to stir.

She’s been up for hours on a private lark, looking contrite, with a trace of monkey-shine.

She comes in the kitchen door. “Where have you been?”

I ask. Diminutive crocs track in mud. I grab the broom.

She carries an armful of snowpeas to the sink.

Standing on her stool, she washes peas in the sink.

I turn down the stove, give the pot a stir, hand my messy niece a broom.

She gets the job half done, sees her lark outside the window. Giving me a line about some beans, she races back outside into the sunshine.

In the garden, her imagination shines.

Dragonflies flit like fairies, sinking their teeth into sunflowers that have been turning with the sun. She waters just for mud to stir and pat into cakes, makes a mud nest for the lark, rides around like a tiny witch on my porch broom.

I watch through the window, broom in hand. I think I’ve taken a shine to the girl. Listening to the lark, I take the peas from the sink, pour them into the pot, give it a stir.

She uses her dress to collect string beans.

isabel geerer

sestina for two isabels

She comes in with a bounty of beans.

I say, “That’s enough!” Shoo her with my broom.

From the street, come-home traffic is stirring.

The dipping sun makes window crystals shine.

Taking her fresh harvest to the sink, I rinse them and hum along with the lark.

She’s growing like a beanpole, singing with her lark, riding her broom like a pony till the sun sinks.

I give the stew a stir and reflect her shine.

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2018 issue

patti santucci

a vituperative villanelle

Every relationship has its triggers, Satisfyin’ wounds, festerin’ dog bites.

Consequences are a bitch, I figure.

Me? Swerve? She grabbed the wheel, officer.

My old lady pulls this shit out of spite.

Relationships and their goddamn triggers.

She gets smug, mouthy with some liquor.

Slow learner, this broad. One day she might comprehend consequences, I figure.

You’d think a wired jaw would silence her.

Get out the car? No, this ain’t my third strike.

C’mon, relationships. They fulla triggers.

Handcuffs? This is bullshit. I never hurt her.

Tell him baby. Tell him you is alright.

I got consequences? How you figure?

She stands on bruised legs, winces and whispers, Still rape, ain’t it? Even if I’m his wife?

This relationship? Too many hair triggers.

Consequences are a bitch. Go figure.

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American river review 33

patti santucci

looking for signs

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I sit in our daughter’s abandoned bedroom, eyes closed, phantom-listening to her kindergarten voice singing songs about a beluga whale. I can almost feel Claire’s five-year-old body growing heavy under the crook of my arm, snuggled under the covers during a just-one-more-time-Mommy reading of Go Dog Go. From behind the backstage curtain, I’m watching fourth grade Claire, wand in hand, Christmas lights hand-stitched into her pink gown, as our little blonde Glinda reminds Dorothy there’s no place like home. There she is in the backseat of the car, beaming and crying, the day we brought our puppy home for the first time, joy so tangible I can still breathe it in. Without warning, that same little girl, outfitted in her almost adult body, is behind the wheel, driving solo for the first time and a vacuum of fear whistles through me as we watch her tail lights fade in the distance.

2018 issue

I know what I’m supposed to feel. I’ve read it on Facebook posts, Hallmark cards, parenting books: pride that our daughter got into a great college, excitement that my husband and I can rekindle that pre-parenthood romance, satisfaction for a parenting job well done. But the clothes left behind hanging lonely in the closet and the certificates ranging from cheerleading to cake decorating clinging to the wall, remind me that so much now does not fit into Claire’s new life. Rising from the bed, I resist the urge to smell her sheets and try to convince myself this will make a great writing room, pretending that the freedom granted to me now that my only child has left the nest will be liberating. But I have been here before and Grief, no matter how you dress her up, refuses to be ignored. After all, this is the natural progression of things.

This is not the kind of place to bring a four-year-old, I think to myself. Claire’s playful clicking of her red glitter flats, against the stained linoleum, echo down the hallway. I ask Claire open ended questions, forcing eye contact.

Door one, on our right, reveals a propped up, elderly woman whose mouth appears frozen in a lopsided “O.” Door two, on our left, lies a massive, grey-skinned African-American man. Even in that short instant of eye contact I share with him, I see his tears as he looks down at the bandaged stump that was once his left leg.

This is the place the sick come to die.

“Let’s count our steps,” I say with the false enthusiasm of oncology nurses and B actors. Our destination is the last open door on the left, more than four doorways and ten steps away, so I slide into knock-knock jokes and those fail-safe promises of Happy Meals and root beer floats. I draw her closer against my thigh until our strides match.

As we step into his shared room, mold permeates the air. Not the kind of mold that thrives in moist corners and can be bleached away, but the kind that grows inside people. The kind that quietly envelops internal organs one at a time until everything inside is rotten.

The whoosh of the inflatable wound mattress, whose purpose is to keep bedsores at bay, inhales and exhales rhythmically before my father is able to seize another pocket of air. These breaths, I would soon learn in the not too distant future, would become a macabre way for my family to pass the time, each of us holding court bedside, silently counting as high as 24 Mississippi before he skims another surface level of oxygen. What I didn’t know then, as my daughter pranced her rubbery Polly Pocket doll along the foot of his bed, was that most of us, to keep from going mad, would eventually ask for the breathing to stop.

By the time my daughter was born, we had all become accustomed to my father’s skeletal frame, the eyeglasses that had grown too large for his withering face, the bones that would poke through his plaid flannel shirts and threaten to splinter if we squeezed too hard. And while his laughter, that boisterous tickle your tummy kind of laughter, had shown her a snapshot of the man he once was, it saddened me to know she would grow up never getting the chance to know the man he was for me.

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American river review 33 When I was a young girl, my father and I shared a love of food. We’d pile our plates high with mashed potatoes and roast beef. After dinner, Dad and I would often remain at the table watching our small black and white Zenith, a mutual victory we had earned after great debate with my mother who thought an idiot box should be nowhere near a family meal. There sat my father and me, rooting for a contestant on Bowling for Dollars or humming off tune with the Lennon Sisters while we drowned slices of Wonder Bread with homemade gravy to cap the meal.

The year Mark Spitz won seven gold medals, I woke up and was unable to walk. The puzzled doctors bounced around words like rheumatic fever until eventually settling on the simple diagnosis of a flu virus that had settled into my leg muscles. My father carried my gravy-filled girth on his shoulders for the good part of a week while I healed. On his shoulders, the bank tellers would shower me with compliments. From up there, it didn’t matter that my T-shirt rode up, exposing the triple inner-tube that was my belly. From up there, no one teased me about the powder between my legs to prevent friction burn or the unfortunate way “fatty” rhymed so nicely with my name. His strength, his pride, was infectious, and with him I was safe.

I stare at the collar bones that lie between his shoulders like Pick-Up Sticks. All that remains underneath the care facility blanket are little more than jutted points, tiny tents comprised of hip bones, knee caps, a sternum with little left to protect. I long for a magical pair of glasses that I can place over Claire’s small face, a pair that back dates time and allows me to grab the vibrant father I knew and have him escort me into the future where his granddaughter, the one saddled with her own set of inevitable preteen insecurities and fears, can climb on his shoulders and feel safe too.

The nurse taps the small of my back and quietly explains that the man in the bed next to my father has passed away and that we should leave. This is no place for a little girl, she says. I stand there momentarily horrified, thinking death might be contagious, that I must rush from the room or an animated grim reaper will entice my girl with a piece of candy. I pretend I hear my father telling me to go, that he’ll be fine, that there’s lots of time left. But my father loves candy and I whisper goodbye just in case.

When my mother calls to tell me it’s Time, she recites what the nurse has told her: the moons on his fingernails are darker now, all his extremities have grown cold. I nod a response into the phone and agree to meet her there. A part of me, staring into Claire’s wide watery eyes, wants to crawl inside her four-year-old world of make believe. Hide and not come out from under the make-shift tent where I have always been certain that time stood still. But I know Grief is waiting in the passenger’s seat, tapping her wristwatch, reminding me her big number is about to start and, like it or not, I am part of her supporting cast.

The nurses at the desk all greet me with a glance that lasts seconds but lingers for years, that look that says how much they hate this part of their job. The October air chills the long hallway and I hunch, folding my arms across my chest, making myself small. Each time my boot heel hits the floor, it echoes down the hall like a lonely faucet drip.

Step. Plop. Step. Plop.

It’s 1984, and my dad and I are sitting across from each other in a Jamaican restaurant, his brightly colored Hawaiian shirt and jaunty straw hat not quite able to disguise the disappointment and fear swimming in his eyes as he reaches across the table, pierces through the fog of my sixth sequential hangover, touches my forearm, and over a recorded Bob Marley telling us all not to worry, says, “I had no idea you could put liquor away like this.”

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Step. Plop.

As I progress down the hall, there’s 21-year-old me, divorced and in pursuit of true love and sexual freedom, casting aside my father’s concerns over a newly discovered disease called AIDS, all the while pretending I don’t understand what he means as he wonders aloud if I am becoming a round heel.

Step. Plop.

But someone up there is taking care of me, has thrown me a life jacket of sorts as I reach the end of the hall.

Just as the memories are about to drown me in shame, I see the image of my fragile father, finally proud again, telling me what a good mother I have become. When I walk into the room and see my mother wringing her hands, the smell of her signature Youth Dew perfume valiantly competing against the rank of decay and when I catch a glimpse of my nephew and older sister, their drained, tired faces steeling themselves, I am comforted by that last memory, knowing I wasn’t a total disappointment to him and my internal, unworthy fat girl puts her arms around me and sighs.

I pick up clothes from the floor of Claire’s room, remove high school pictures from the walls, thinking I can skip over the painful parts if I erase and tidy some of the memories, hide others from view. All through her senior year, she could hardly wait to leave, applying to colleges as far away as England. And yes, this is the natural progression of things, but it all tasted too much like loss and regret. If we hadn’t disagreed so often, would she have stayed closer to home? Her closet whispers faded memories of I love you, Mom, while simultaneously spewing, with sledgehammer conviction, the more recent attacks of We are never going to be friends.

Handmade Mother’s Day cards, cool compresses on fevered foreheads, ugly arguments over privacy and money and curfew circle me like zealous predators.

I pull down a box, knowing it might be the kryptonite that kills me. I handle her first pair of Bugs Bunny eyeglasses, a candle she made in third grade, a proud photograph of jelly beans arranged in the shape of Mesopotamia that we created together when she was twelve. This is what cutters do, I realize—drag the blade deliberately, pull the bandaid slowly.

Leaning against the closet doorframe, I close my eyes and strain to hear my late father tell me what a good mother I am, but his voice now is so distant. That’s the thing about losing one of your parents—your fan base begins to disappear.

My father’s infrequent breaths cut through the thick silence as we shift our weight in hard plastic chairs, my dad on one side of us and the invisible dead man lying in the bed on the other. Nurses draped in gloves, gowns, and masks flit in and out of the room, protecting themselves against my father’s splitting skin, another one of life’s final No U-Turn signs. We travel through the night together, ignoring the involuntary moans that seep through the doorway from other patients. The temperature drops into the low 50s and blankets somehow find our shoulders. Every window in the facility seems to be open but no one rises to close them. Collectively, we shiver, vibrating like a swarm of bees. Maybe it is the cold.

No one can determine exactly when death will come, and I think, as the walls in the room begin to collectively march inward, as the oxygen is replaced with grey cotton balls that have stuck in our throats, someone should

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American river review 33 have warned me about this. About hour fourteen, sadness has been replaced with rage. Dad, I have a husband and a four-year-old at home who need me! Why in the hell are you taking so long? I storm out of the room, thrust the back door open and slump onto a blue milk crate surrounded by cigarette butts and cry angry, bitter, selfish tears. I don’t even notice the caregivers, taking their break clad in their cheery goddamn scrubs, until the one with orange pumpkins on hers bends down and grabs my hand. She tells me it’s okay to wish for him to die, that it doesn’t make me a bad person. She begins to whisper a prayer asking for strength and comfort on my behalf and I struggle not to shatter from the pure kindness of it all. I let go of the nurse’s hand, withdrawing mine into the sleeve of my jacket, trying to wipe the empathy off my fingertips. But some of it stays, crawls inside and squeezes my heart, making it difficult to see and breathe. I stand. A heavy weight cinches around my back, my neck, my shoulders, suffocating me. I can’t breathe, I say, and Grief squeezes harder.

The family dog wanders into Claire’s near-empty room, loudly sighs and curls up next to me on the carpet, the same spot where Lincoln Logs were once used to create princess castles. Sometimes acts of kindness, the kind that are so pure they hurt, come just when you need them, but I can’t bring myself to even pet the dog, so she inches closer, quietly placing her head on my leg and looks up at me, willing to wait it out.

Before my father’s transfer from the hospital to this place of purgatory, he sat up in bed with the sparkling eyes of a young child, and said, “Ma just bought me a billy goat,” which my grandmother did do when he was a boy. The doctor had explained a lack of oxygen to his brain was causing him to revert to childhood memories.

This was logical, scientific, something concrete we could hang on to during the tsunami of uncertainty that had been beating us all raw.

He had become angry, panicked, wanting everyone in the room to firmly understand what must come with him as the paramedics began the transfer. He repeated, “Those are mine,” as he pointed to the flowers and cards well-wishers had sent until he finally pointed at the wall and said, “And the boy is mine.” I felt myself move through stunned confusion to clinical recognition, finally choosing to land on wistful belief that his own private angel stood against that empty wall ready to be there for him in a way we could not.

As we approach hour nineteen, time is moving in tableaued still frames. The walls take one more step in, my dad’s breathing grows more liquid, my mom melts further into that damn plastic chair. This isn’t a good time for me to leave, but I do. To get a soda. As I exit the front doors of the facility, I see a large machine inhaling autumn leaves in the courtyard. I stop short, dumbstruck. In bright red letters, on the side of this giant outdoor vacuum, the company logo reads: The Billy Goat. A notion trudges to my forethoughts that maybe my dad, caught somewhere between this place of suffering and The Great Beyond, is planting these little signs that he’ll be fine, not to worry because he’s okay. The angel boy and the billy goat are right here and real.

Day turns into evening again, a film of germy fatigue coating our clothes, teeth, and hair as we come up on a full twenty-four hours. Time is moving underwater now. The clicking of the wheel Vanna White spins echoes through the hall from patient’s televisions. My family and I, subsisting on a diet of gallows humor, comment that surely dad will pass now that his favorite show is over. The doctor, who has been chronically absent during our stay, enters the room and we hold our breath as he examines his patient. My nephew has quietly pushed the invisible dead man aside and braved sitting on the bed, leaving one chair open. The doctor sits, his tie loosened, his eyes sad. He tells us what a fighter my father is, how strong he has been. He talks about upping

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the morphine. My sister, my nephew, and I agree, but my mother’s steel backbone buckles, saying she can’t make that choice for him, that she doesn’t want to let him go. Not yet, not yet. The doctor coos soft words that try to blanket her, but she does not feel them. Suddenly, the doctor rises and floats to my father’s bedside, gently laying his hands on my dad’s chest.

“He’s gone,” he says, barely above a whisper. My mother looks up, her eyes searching until they lock with his so firmly I think I hear a tightwire snap into place. He tells her that her husband made the decision for her.

For all of us.

The doctor goes on to say that patients nearing death can hear their family’s turmoil and choose their time to go, and despite Grief vying for center stage, I know he is right. Dad would protect us with his last breath. He’d let go so that we could too.

I rise from the floor, motioning the dog to follow and close Claire’s door, listening for the click of the doorknob.

The phrase this too shall pass competes for attention but Grief refuses to leave as she muscles her way to the spotlight. I try to ignore the clicking sound of tiny, red glitter flats, the cutting words of my angry teen, the stoic eyes of her college freshmen goodbye that insist on matching my stride as I walk down our hall lined with photos. As I round the corner, there’s a picture of my family dressed as royalty, taken long ago at some cheesy venue in Vegas. I look into my dad’s twinkling eyes, smile at the crown that tips off-center atop his bald head, the jaunty way he holds the scepter, and wonder at what point did remembering him stop hurting.

I know I’ll get there with Claire, with the memories of motherhood. I know the fresh cut of detachment will heal and be replaced with a mature bond. Loss will morph into nostalgia, dark shadows of regret will be eclipsed and there will come that day when I’ll casually philosophize about the yin and yang of relationships. I know this because Grief has a shelf life. I know this because I have been here before. But the best I can do for today is leave. Take a walk. Get a soda and look for the signs that remind me everything will be alright.

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American river review 33

Colby Debach-Riley

Space

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(2M)

2018 Issue

Mid-spring inside a tan home office space. A wooden desk is set against the bright shimmering window upstage. The opaque, sunsaturated glass comforts and insulates the room. Upstage right there is a small clinical sink and counter affixed to the wall, nestled in wait. An end table and discarded painter’s easel with a box beneath it orbits Mr. Macintosh downstage. He sits in a wheelchair staring up at the bulbless light fixture. Tom, a young man with paint-stained fingers, a rough beard, and curious green eyes, enters in lavender scrubs carrying a potted flower. He speaks in a professional and pleasant voice.

Tom: Good morning, Mr. Macintosh.

Mr. M: [Still staring up] It’s an eclipse.

Tom: It’s a little bright today for an eclipse, isn’t it?

Mr. M: When two astronomical bodies are positioned so that one is obscured by the other.

Tom: Mr. Macintosh, it seems like a bright day— Mr. M: Two astronomical bodies. Not just with the moon or sun. [Turns his head but does not lean forward] When two things, thousands of miles away from each other, look to you and me like they’re [claps his hands and looks back up] right on top of each other. [Looks back at Tom, smiling] That’s what an eclipse is.

Tom: [Kneeling down next to the chair] I didn’t know that.

Mr. M: An impossibly far stretch of space between the two but they look so close they could almost touch.

Tom: Which two do you see?

Mr. M: Oh Tom, just use your eyes and look, boy—use them while they work.

Tom: [Looks up, then back down, feeling silly] Ok Mr. Macintosh, that’s enough for the day.

Mr. M: So short a look? This kind of thing is once in a lifetime, it would be unforgivable to miss it.

Tom: Mr. Macintosh, if you sit there staring at the ceiling all afternoon, there won’t be any good light for you to see your gift. [Placing the flower on a table next to Mr. M] Mr. M: [Sitting up and looking to the side on “Gift”] Oh! What’s this?

Tom: It’s a— Mr. M: A daffodil! Lovely little flower, who from?

Tom: From your son.

Mr. M: Ah, good boy—or “man,” I suppose. Must have blinked while he was growing up.

Tom: Yes, he wanted to wish you a happy birthday.

Mr. M: Oh, has it been so long?

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American river review 33 Tom: Yes, it ha— Mr. M: A full rotation around the sun, ha! Marvelous thing our planet does.

Tom: Do you know how old you are today?

Mr. M: Well do you know how old I am?

Tom: Mr. Macintosh, I asked first.

Mr. M: Well I can’t be much older than you.

Tom: Why is that?

Mr. M: Because if I were your elder you’d respect me more and answer my questions.

Tom: I respect you too much to let you off without answering mine.

Mr. W: Answer what?

Tom: How old are you?

Mr. M: Ah, well, I’m . . . [He returns to looking at his stars] With a sigh, Tom glances around the room, his eyes landing on the blank easel and, with the grace of familiarity, proceeds to move the easel opposite the flower and ready the painting materials.

Tom: Mr. Macintosh, how old were you last year?

Mr. M: Couldn’t say.

Tom: Think now, how many years ago did I start caring for you?

Mr. M: Four. [Looking at Tom] Tom: And how old were you then?

Mr. M: Somewhere in my seventies I’m sure..

Tom: [Pausing his work with the easel] That’s good! It was the same year— Mr. M: [Noticing something in the sky, pointing] The eclipse. The anniversary of the eclipse! I was 78.

Tom: [Kneeling by him] Yes, Mr. Macintosh, you were!

Mr. M: I couldn’t forget something so important.

Tom: Of course, now how old are you? [There is a silence] Mr. Macintosh . . . Please listen, how old are you now?

Mr. M: Hm? 78.

Tom: No, that was four years ago, so if today is your birthday?

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Mr. M: My birthday? Ah, so it’s been one full rotation around the sun. Wonderful thing our planet does.

Tom: That’s right . . . [Stands up and proceeds to roll Mr. M to the easel opposite the flower] Mr. M: Ah, a daffodil! Beautiful little flower, who brought this here?

Tom: I already told you, your son. [Puts a brush in Mr. M’s hands, but he shows almost no recognition] Mr. M: Oh did you? You must think I’m losing my marbles. [Seemingly without noticing, begins to paint] Tom: [Leans against the wall, watching Mr. M paint] I think you lost them long before I started caring for you.

Mr. M: Never was much of a marbles man myself, much preferred cards.

Tom: Yes, I know that from all the money you lose to your friends.

Mr. M: Oh, that’s nothing to worry about. I’ve got it all planned out.

Tom: It’s a game of chance.

Mr. M: The only chance is how long it’ll take for Bob Creighton to finally get so crazy that he starts forgetting his hand when he goes to bet!

Tom: Mr. Macintosh, you already do that.

Mr. M: Exactly! It’ll finally be an even game.

Tom: Well, just make sure I’m there to bet against you.

Mr. M: I didn’t know you were so fond of losing bets.

Tom: Ha! alright, fine, I concede. But as my revenge, it’s medication time. [Slips the brush from his hand and rolls Mr. Macintosh back to the center of the room before crossing alone off stage. The painting, though unfinished, seems to be a daffodil beneath a dark star-filled night sky.]

Mr. M: Oh . . .

Tom: [Offstage] Don’t give me that, you need them to keep that razor wit.

Mr. M: I remember being wittier before the pills.

Tom: [Returning with a plate of meds and a glass of water] Before you needed them maybe, but then again, you’ve gotten to be more of an energetic handful for me as the years have gone on somehow.

Mr. M: No, I mean in my youth. The days when I was king of the concrete jungle.

Tom: Nothing wittier than a business man. [Offering the pills to him while he is distracted in his tale of past glories]

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American river review 33 Mr. M: I wasn’t just a businessman. I was an unstoppable force! Mornings, days, and nights in the office with all the money in the world for my family and no one, save the boys in the BIG high chairs, to tell me what to do. I was a shooting star, boy, one that screeched across the night sky of that company for forty years! I had to work hard and bleed for that company. It was like a child to me. Closer even. Sure, I eventually had to end my streak [Takes the medication given to him] But I’m not gone, I’m just flying in someone else’s sky, I’m sure of it . . .

Maybe I lost my marbles somewhere up there.

Tom: Or maybe in the office— Mr. M: No. No, they made sure I left nothing when they booted me out . . . Boy, you know I’d never wish someone harm, it’s not in my nature, but to anyone willing to kick a hard-working mule like me out of his home and away from his child—well, there’s a lot of things I wouldn’t be sorry about happening to them.

Tom: I’m sure you’ve been better off happily retired. [Opens his mouth wide alternating his tongue between the roof and bottom of his mouth, motioning for Mr. M to mimic and giving a slight smile when he shows the pills are gone] Mr. M: Oh, nothing better than tan walls and forgetfulness to cap off a life. [Again he looks up] Although it has been nice to watch the stars again. Never was home much when I worked, and my son and I couldn’t go out to watch them together like when he was younger. Lord knows how many eclipses I missed . . . But, I’m here now.

Just me . . . and the sky. [Looks to see the flower again] Oh, and of course this little daffodil. Apart from the sky, not much is more beautiful than flowers, eh Tommy? [Drifting his gaze, with the name still on his lips, he looks at the daffodil] They’re like stars on the ground.

Tom: [Interrupted as he lays the pill tray on the counter across the room] What?

Mr. M: Like tan walls and forgetfulness.

Tom: Wait, what did you say?

Mr. M: Hm? Something, I’m sure.

Tom: “They’re like stars on the ground,” you said that.

Mr. M: Oh yes, that’s what I said! I’d heard it somewhere, my son said it, I think.

Tom: [Again kneeling beside Mr. M] When?

Mr. M: I’m not su—or, no. [He stares down and through the audience] It was in the field near our cabin. We were watching the sky. It must have been at least three decades back now—ah, I was so stupid then. It was the year of Halley’s comet and I missed it. Not a lot of things I regret in my old age, boy, but let me tell you, that is one of them. [Straining to remember] It was his birthday, I think, and I had gotten him the wrong action figure. I took him to the cabin to make it up to him—lost money for the company that weekend, I remember thinking, but his mother was stubborn. And . . . I had gotten him the wrong action figure for his birthday. [His hands begin to shake slightly on the arms of his chair] We had gone to the cabin to make it up. Looking at the stars he said . . . I was looking at the stars. I had gotten him the wrong action figure and I took him— Tom: [Carefully steadying Mr. M’s hand with his own] “They’re like stars on the ground.”

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Mr. M: [Looks up to Tom for just a moment before becoming lost again in the scene his memory had begun to render for him as he begins anxiously petting the daffodil beside him] And my son. My son said to me “They’re like stars on the ground.” I didn’t listen to him. I kept watching the stars so he said it again and again until I looked at him. [Absently holding the plant now in his hands] He was spinning a daffodil in his hand. I asked him what he was talking about. He told me about how they looked as beautiful as the stars. [With an encroaching sad shame] About how he wanted to grow flowers around the world so that people on other planets could have something to look at and—and he went on and on and I wasn’t listening. I ignored him and looked at my damned stars, not seeing the one sitting next to me. I wasted him looking at the stars in the sky. Had I only looked down . . . He hates me. He hates his father for never looking where he was. [Looking down with tears] I’m sorry.

Tom: Mr. Macintosh . . .

Mr. M: I’m so sorry.

Tom: Mr. Macintosh, I—[The sobbing becomes too painful for him to watch] Dad, it’s ok. [He reaches out to touch Mr. M’s shoulder] Mr. M: [Shocked at the contact] Oh? Tom, my boy, I’m sorry you’re seeing me like this.

Tom: [Gently wresting the plant from him] It’s ok.

Mr. M: Oh, age seems to be getting the better of me, can’t remember for the life of me what I was crying about.

Tom: [With the slightest quiver of disappointment] It’s ok, dad.

Mr. M: Hm? What? Boy, I like you, but call me Mr. Macintosh. Oh! A daffodil, lovely little flower. Who from?

Tom: [In the same professional tone] Your son.

Mr. M: Funny how daffodils always remind me of the stars. [Looking back to his stars] Oh! And an eclipse! Do you know what an eclipse is?

Tom: Yes. Yes I do, Mr. Macintosh. [Sits down on the end table next to him with the daffodil in his lap] When two things have an impossibly far stretch of space between them but they look so close they could almost touch.

Mr. M: [Smiling] I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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American river review 33

2019 issue

hannah orlando

la petitE mort

Bare breasts and hearts align on ships, unmanned.

A hunger yearning for the tastes within bodies, encased amongst elation kin to death, remaining blinded by a brand.

While blood pools far away from its homeland, blank canvas tears from eager nails on skin, where the line of need and desire draws thin.

The outside world fades with each drop of sand, but carnal needs breed only malcontent, amid neglected echoes of past lives.

Marred soul singed by red iron burns like oil, under perceived vice laid out to dement.

Against words and brimstone, my strength survives, borne by each small death plated in gold foil.

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Marcie Mallory

Old Wives’ Tales

He’ll beckon you close, finger half-cocked like him, and you’ll come because there is no rush that beats the ass end of a gun.

Lips better suited to kiss a bottle of Jack than the mouth of Jill, and you, a woman with long soft lashes holding a child, no longer mean an explosion of heat from love, but hate, and he hears a voice moaning his name, not in passion, but pain.

But the world can’t see behind those hard eyes and Copenhagen smile to the child left behind.

They told him he must fight for his country, and when he is done they’ll throw him away like the old parachutes tangled in the trees, after flying too close to the sun.

And they used to sing to him “Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,” but there was no medal given for someone going alone in the middle of the night, ‘TIL VALHALLA’ carved into his chest, and his rifle at his side.

2019 Issue

American river review 33

2019 Issue Andrey Shamshurin

Grasp

“Syphilis.” Syphilis. It is the only real word that slips from behind the fence, and you find that you have lost its meaning. You sit at the edge of your pool, a glass of whiskey in your hand. The water is green and ripples pinch the surface. Syphilis. The man’s screams are loud, a rough pitch of bourbon in his voice. You can smell it in the sound.

Her voice seems soft, you think, but when you take a sip of whiskey, you cannot remember what soft is. Her voice sounds like syphilis, the water like syphilis, the shape of your foot drifting, a net of light wrapped loose around your leg, like syphilis. Drops of liquid fall into the pool, brown seeds dissolving in the green. He is screaming now.

“Get throat fucked.” You can feel each syllable. And something breaks behind the fence, crashes like shards that crack and split until there is no glass left.

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You pour yourself another drink. You can’t decide if “throat fucked” is good or bad. You have lost its meaning too. It sounds vulgar, like bucolic hut, crepuscular phlegm. Not smooth like syphilis, smooth like your houselights dying in the night, their flicker fading till the green-lime lights are all that’s left, hidden in the water. Beautiful, you think.

Beautiful is not a word for meaning anymore, the liquid swirling down your throat. That simple little sound, like syphilis.

The bottle seems empty now, a green sheen trapped inside the glass. But just behind the fence, out past the leaves that drift, half drowned, are sounds much more complex.

“Whore,” “slut,” and “cunt.” And somehow “love,” which sounds like nothing floating in your pool.

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American river review 33

michael spurgeon distinguished author

Photo by: Ashley Hayes-Stone, courtesy of American River Current

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The Staff of the 2020 issue of American River Review would like to honor and celebrate Professor Michael Spurgeon’s tenure as the magazine’s faculty adviser, and for cultivating a deep-rooted love and understanding of literature within his students.

What follows is a short interview with Professor Michael Spurtegeon, the man behind the scenes of ten years of ENGCW 450, the College Literary Magazine class for American River Review.

You recently stepped away from American River Review after being the Faculty Adviser for the past ten years. Can you tell us how you got started as the adviser for American River Review?

Professor Merson had been adviser for ten years and was ready for a change. He and the previous adviser, Professor Schneider, and the dean at that time, Rod Siegfried, thought I might be a good replacement. As I considered the job, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the dedication of the students. All the students were great, but Danni Gorden was the Editor-in-Chief back then, and she was an absolute rock star. I just didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to work with students who were that talented and passionate.

What were some of the first hurdles you encountered when first taking over the faculty role for the magazine?

The biggest challenge came in the second year. Craig Martinez and I both started advising at the same time, and the first year went off without a hitch, so we thought we knew what we were doing. The second year, the editorial team had to re-edit the magazine over and over again. Toshi Casey was EIC at the time. She would edit the magazine and the next day all of the same errors would be there again. Nobody could figure it out.

Toshi re-edited the entire magazine like four times in the week before we went to print, and lots of the errors were still in the printed magazine. It was soul crushing. I felt terrible for all the students who had put their hearts and souls into that issue. That was by far the biggest and most ambitious issue of my tenure, and the students had really risen to the occasion. To have all the errors in the final product, errors that had been fixed multiple times, was brutal. Even the dean, who was new at that time, was freaked out. She suggested that we’d have to reprint it, though where we would find the $15,000 to do so wasn’t clear. Ultimately, it was the president of the college who walked us all back from the ledge. David Viar. A cool man. He said something like, “It is an educational program, and this is a learning experience. We can’t expect top national prizes every year. BUT don’t let it happen again.” That’s when Craig and I received some release time from our teaching load to put together the operational manual. We went through the whole project to really understand how everything worked. It turned out the problem had been a file management protocol in the Art New Media class. How we had avoided the same problems in the first year is anyone’s guess. Anyway, we got the problems resolved, but that was the biggest hurdle. I should add that that issue of the magazine won more national awards than any other despite the errors. It is a beautiful magazine. The students that year, particularly Toshi, Zac, Karen, and Richard, were amazing. The whole team was amazing.

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American river review 33 The magazine is often referred to by prior students with fondness and praise. What are your thoughts on how the magazine has affected those who have come through the class?

It is the single finest educational program that I have ever been affiliated with as a professor or as a student.

I doubt that I would have participated in launching 916 Ink if I hadn’t had the experience of advising the magazine, so it had a profound impact on me and the projects I have pursued. As for the students, I witnessed a lot of people be transformed by that class. There is something about joining a team dedicated to excellence that makes everyone bring their best selves. I watched a lot of young people really find their footing in that class. I won’t embarrass anyone by naming names, but there are a lot of people who found a sense of purpose and belonging from the magazine who are on meaningful trajectories in life because of the magazine, and a lot of them would acknowledge that fact. And then there were the older students who sort of found a new calling from the class. There were many of them, but I’ll mention Betsy Harper, who passed away this year, as perhaps the greatest example. She loved the magazine, and she loved the people who loved it. It’s extraordinary, really, what the magazine does for those involved with it.

Now that you have handed the advising role for the magazine off to Professor Michael Angelone, where do you see the class in the next five years? Ten? What are your hopes for the magazine?

I’d like to see two things happen. First, I’d like to find a better way for the college to promote the magazine and the classes associated with it. It really is the best educational experience I have ever been a part of, and more students would benefit from knowing about the ways they can be involved. Second--and I’m likely to receive some angry emails from current and former staff for what I am going to say--I’d really like to see the magazine move from a physical edition to an online digital edition. There is no doubt that there is a lot of value in the printed magazine, but it costs roughly $15,000 a year to print 1000 copies, and the moment the next issue comes out, the previous issue feels somewhat obsolete. If there was a website--and I mean a really nice website-that was being updated every month or so, it would be an ever-evolving thing. It would have a pulse. Also, it would cost a lot less and would have the potential to reach a much larger audience, both on and off campus. So I’d like to see that happen.

As part of this issue, we asked you for a selection of your poetry. One of the poems you provided is “Dinosaur DNA.” What was your inspiration for this poem?

Many of the poems I write begin with a technical goal. In this case, I had noticed that I was writing poems with strongly linear narratives. This poem was my effort to break away from that. I wanted it to be a sort of collage of images that would create the experience. I don’t know how successful I was, but that is what I was going for. As for subject matter, I guess I was questioning the notion of human progress. The speciation of Homo Sapiens out of Homo erectus is estimated to have happened roughly 350,000 years ago. While we certainly know more about our world and interact with it differently than the first sapiens, biologically we are the same. It seems pretty clear to me that we are going to evolve ourselves out of existence if we don’t simply exterminate ourselves first. Whether it is through the atom bomb or climate change or artificial intelligence gene manipulation, H. sapiens are nearer our end than our beginning, and we might be quite near. That’s what the poem is “about.”

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We also asked you for a prose excerpt from your novel-in-progress, “The Province of Men.” Can you provide some context for this excerpt?

The book is set on the US and Mexico border in a fictional town that looks a lot like Calexico. The protagonist has just returned home after having done time in Leavenworth military prison, which he was in after striking a superior during combat in Iraq. This is a crime that can be punished with death, but he got prison time because unofficially the military recognized the person he struck pretty much deserved it. The protagonist, who is white Anglo-Saxon, was orphaned at a young age and subsequently adopted by and raised in a Hispanic family, the patriarch of which was his father’s Vietnam war buddy. In this family, the protagonist has two brothers and a sister. The sister was also adopted, and the protagonist and the sister have a “complicated” relationship that goes beyond brother and sister. When the book opens, the family is under a lot of financial pressure because the matriarch is in the hospital racking up big medical bills, it is a poor county, and it is the middle of the recession.

When the protagonist went into the military, he joined with his best friend. As young men, they were quite wild and prone to getting into trouble, but they managed to avoid getting recruited into the local gang run by his friend’s older brother. They went into the military as really their only escape from getting dragged into the gang, but the friend subsequently was killed in Iraq. While the protagonist was away, the brother’s gang grew into the local arm of a Mexican drug cartel. The heart of the story is the protagonist’s efforts to help his family while trying to avoid getting sucked into the world of the cartel.

Is there anything else you would like to say about your experiences with the magazine and staff that you have worked with?

Just that serving as Editorial Adviser to American River Review was the greatest privilege of my teaching career, and I sincerely thank all of the students who shared the experience with me. Please stay in touch.

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American river review 33

All at once the day darkens to shades of a Mesozoic Era: Flora, fauna, algae blooms in the swimming pool.

Winnebagos migrate in herds over the Great Plains.

We walk through the petrified forest of street lights & vast webs of power lines. Automobiles insect along In columns through concrete canyons with glass cliffs.

michael spurgeon

dinosaur dna

The volcano on the edge of the city stirs.

Dark stalks daylight. Sirens wail in the distance, The terrified cries of wounded animals in the night.

A helicopter, relentless predator, circles overhead.

Are we the hunters or the hunted?

What to do but move away from the mouth of the condominium, Deeper into the cold cave of our lives?

We entrance ourselves in television’s warmthless glow.

We rub two atoms together, huddle close, say a prayer.

Prey against the perpetual evolution of extinction.

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michael spurgeon

Doctor Johnston’s Skeleton Girl

Dr. Johnston, noted physician, balding, lonely, can’t help but love the female skeleton that hangs in the corner of his laboratory.

At night, after the technicians have left for home, he dims the lights and begins slowly to dance to the bubbling beakers and centrifuge’s drone.

Shuffling his sad shoes, overweight, awkwardly twirling, he unties the paper bundle hidden beneath his desk, removes a red wig and faded, skimpy, blue dress.

Then once he has her dressed and all made up, he whispers, poor man, in her earless-ear, ashamed, “Lucille, dear Lucille, only you in your silence understand my horrible solitude, that I am a man, and like any man, I too need love. Forgive me, Lucille!

Please, forgive me! I love you and can’t help what I do!”

So weeping, he lays her skeleton on the counter, undresses her tenderly, makes her his imaginary lover.

I know this because I’m Lucille. I’m his skeleton lover, the one he paints with rouge and so much lip-gloss.

Yes, I’m that skeleton, the only woman who holds him, holds him as every man must be held in certain vast hours, held like a frightened child by his loving mother.

But it wasn’t always so; many, many years ago I worshipped the cross and lived in sunny Ensenada.

There, to all beside Juan, mi amor, corazón de mi alma, I was the grocer’s only daughter, the lovely Esmeralda.

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American river review 33

michael spurgeon

New Car Smell The new car smell of Rochelle’s Cadillac déjà vus me back to another car, not new, not a Cadillac, and not so much the car as the yards of silence that unfolded between us. Not the silence, I don’t mean the silence, but the distance behind the silence, how far I felt from myself, from my own emotions and from you as we cruised out to the ocean. It’s in moments like this I know if you could look inside me you’d see a storm of television snow, and when I think of television snow I think I know what death will look like: the endless transmission and reception of nothingness…

But my mind can’t boomerang around the whole of death. It falters, and I think of how, even in television snow, I look for a familiar pattern, an order to the chaos, something others could identify, like a search light or signal flare, like a beacon, like a sensation like this: twilight, arriving home, when I’m alone in my own car, I’ll sit unmoving for a long time, and then, barely perceptible, as if frightened, the world starts to twitch and the lawns sigh and the sky backs up and the letters in the mailbox cry and I start to consider the art of architecture and what it means to call a place home, let alone arrive home, casting a creeping doubt about homes, or, more precisely, about arrivals and about the roads that bring me to them.

We’re on the wrong road. At least that’s what you said, boomeranging me back, as if the knowledge of being lost together might make us less lost, even map a way across the distance between us.

And it is true, I instantly felt closer to you. Perhaps that’s love: that instant we realize we’re lost but not alone. Perhaps not.

Call it what you will. I wish we’d stopped long enough to call it something, and after it went bad I wish I could’ve called you. I should have, if only to say, Today, driving, I thought I saw us in my rearview mirror, and we really were closer than it may have appeared. But I didn’t.

Isn’t it odd how what we do and don’t do become the same route to the present? Then Rochelle says, We’re here. And voilà, just like that I am here, back in her Cadillac, back inside myself, unsure I remember the literal landscape of the last minutes, or a single road of our arrival.

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michael spurgeon

Wedding Report of the UFOlogist For Eric & Chrissy Sohn, on their wedding,

held the week of the 50th anniversary of the

unresolved incident in Roswell, New Mexico.

34% of Americans believe alien visitors from other planets have landed on Earth.

22% of Americans believe alien visitors have made contact with earthlings.

17% of Americans believe these aliens abduct earthlings on whom they experiment.

77.5% of American women swear unequivocally a vast majority of men are Martian rejects.

68% of American men can’t help but wonder whether or not women descended from Venus.

99.9% of single Americans quietly suspect marriage is a form of alien abduction from which the victims never fully recover.

But these single people remain powerless; remain mere witnesses to the vanishings, incidents to which they can provide no proof.

So 72% of Americans over 18 years of age find themselves, at this very moment, married.

“What could be done?” Jennifer asks herself.

“What could I do?” Hank wonders, perplexed.

“One night we’re on the couch, drinking beer & watching the X-files re-runs like always, then the next, ‘Poof !’ my buddy Bill gets zapped: he’s married, house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids.”

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American river review 33 We hear one story after another: first June, then Alice, then Tony, then Felicia.

Rachel goes to Cozumel for the weekend, comes back with a guy named Carlos, tan, wed.

The single people gather together, scared, like herd animals at watering holes, watering holes called “Finnegan’s Wake” or “The Gold Cane” or “The Rat & Raven.”

They linger in supermarket produce sections, give one another comfort in the Laundromat, share Clorox, believe in the safety of numbers.

It’s no use. A smile here. A wild look there.

Zap! Zap! It’s a mid-summer wedding & 2 week honeymoon in luscious Hawaii.

But no one’s fooled, certainly not the UFOlogist.

“Honeymoon” means “Martian Indoctrination.”

“Hawaii” is the code name for “Alien Mothership.” & yet, single people can’t help but be envious.

They’re tired of waiting; being scared, lonely.

They too want to walk on the moon, circle Pluto.

They go to their married friends, beg them: “God! Please Fred! You’ve got to tell me, Jill!

What’s it like? Does time move more quickly?

More slowly? Do you ever miss being single?

Are they coming for me? When? I’ve gotta know!”

But Fred & Jill only hold each other’s hand & smile sympathetically at their friend (their tranquil looks surely meaning, “lobotomy”).

Then they say in the deepest tones of sincerity, “Relax. It just happens when you least expect it.

You can’t force it. It just happens. You’ll see.

You’ll turn a corner & suddenly ‘Shazam!’

Warp speed & you’re in a garden saying, ‘I do.

Teleport me away, baby, I’m married to you!’”

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michael spurgeon

Rubber Chicken After her virtual pet, Virgil, fizzled out and died, Suki purchased the first in a long line of rubber chickens.

How she doted on that rubber chicken, fed it, bathed it, clucked at it like a conscientious mother hen so it too might learn to cluck like any normal chick.

I first met Suki when her chicken was about four.

It was in the vet’s office. I’d taken my turtle, Soup, a red-eared slider who lacked ears and an interest in sliding and who was possibly lactose intolerant as he avoided all dairy products except for a rare wedge of Brie, to the vet, and there Suki sat, crying, cradling Al. “Oh Al! Unfortunate Al! Pal o’ mine!” Sobbed Suki.

Al, it turned out, had lost a leg to an unleashed Chihuahua.

The vet, naturally, was powerless. Even more troublesome was that he lacked a certain bedside manner one might expect, but I guess ultimately vets get accustomed to pet loss.

I felt bad. Not that I am a great lover of chickens, rubber or other, but there was something in Suki’s sadness that said the loss of a leg, even a rubber chicken leg, articulates the inevitable absence that haunts and clings to all worldly things, awakening us, obliquely, to each life’s profound solitude, and that this solitude quivers as our single, tenuous connection to one another.

Out of gratitude for the lesson that no one is alone in loneliness, I offered Suki my Soup, a simple act of animal kindness.

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American river review 33

In the fragrant shade of a papaya tree, two pairs of Siamese twins, four lovers, siesta in their hammock & chit chat about the future. Frank & Teresa imagine selling seashells in Bora Bora or Borneo. Bill, Frank’s brother, the sensible one, hates the whole idea & wants to go to architecture school.

Isabel, Bill’s wife & Teresa’s sister, doesn’t say much but thinks Borneo would be nice this time of year.

Of course, she’ll do whatever Bill wants.

They all fall asleep in the gentle swaying of the hammock. 45 minutes later Bill wakes with a fever from bad clams.

In the clarity of his feverish hallucinations he realizes Isabel has been sleeping with Frank all these years. Ill and enraged, Bill draws his pistol from Frank’s waistband & kills Frank & Isabel before turning the gun on his sweaty self.

Ever since, Teresa, poor, sweet Teresa, has felt the tragic weight of her loss each time she stoops for an abalone shell along the white sand beaches of Borneo.

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michael spurgeon

siesta

michael spurgeon

The Province of Men Chapter 3 Excerpt The day was in full blaze, the sun a relentless hammer, and the heat buzzed and visibly radiated off every sunlit surface such that the world itself might have been a mirage. Diego’s truck sidled up to the curb. The car lot was empty but for the rows of used cars, some seemingly so long neglected and unmoved as to call into question whether they would ever move again, permanent fixtures of rust in the landscape. Plastic, triangular pennants strung over the lot hung motionless in the stagnant air like bright colored flags of defeat. Heath got out. He adjusted the Stetson against the sun and then ducked his head back through the open door. Diego sat in his uniform.

“I still can’t believe you’re the fucking migra,” Heath said.

Diego grinned. “You better watch it or I’ll have you deported.” And then: “You sure you don’t want me to pick you up? It’s a long, long caminada home.”

“I’m not hanging out with Ernesto until you get off. He’ll give me a vehicle.”

Diego smiled more broadly. “Órale güey,” he said. “Hey, shut the door. I’m gonna be late.” And so Heath did and Diego turned up the music on the car stereo and pulled out.

Heath walked onto the lot and down a row towards the portable building that served as the office. A J40 Toyota Land Cruiser, painted a flat tan and in better condition than the Buick or Nissan on either side of it, caught his attention. The tires were in good shape. Not new, not even almost, but fine. He put his hands on the asphalt and ducked down to look at the axles. The asphalt was hot. The axles looked straight and true and, like the rest of the undercarriage, free from rust. There was no stain of oil or other fluid beneath the engine. He popped off the ground, swiped his palms on his jeans, and unlatched the hood in quick, deliberate motions, the metal toggles hot as branding irons. The engine seemed all right. The hoses and belts needed to be changed and he guessed the battery would have to be switched out, but otherwise it looked okay. He was checking the carburetor when he saw the salesman in striped tie and sunglasses making his way toward him.

“She’s a beauty, ain’t she?” the salesman said.

“Not bad.”

“That’s an eighty-four, the last year they made that model.”

“You don’t have the doors and hard top for it, do you?”

“Just the bikini. What you see is what you get. It’s a good vehicle.”

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American river review 33 Heath nodded.

“Fire her up?” the salesman asked, holding out the keys.

“All right.” Heath took the keys and started the engine. It strained, as if to confirm his thoughts about the battery, before roaring to life. He let it run and went back to the engine to look and listen. It idled more smoothly than hope might have allowed. He was sure the carburetor had been recently rebuilt. The gaskets and seals looked tight, new even.

“Want to take it for a spin?”

“Sure.”

“I just need to make a copy of your driver’s license.”

Heath nodded and lowered the hood. “I didn’t bring it.”

The salesman seemed to consider this.

Heath glanced around the vehicle lot. There was not another customer to be seen. “Maybe I’ll just come back another day,” he said.

The salesman understood that he would not be back. “But you have a license, right?”

“Of course,” Heath said, smiling to himself and toggling the hood closed.

“Well then,” the salesman said, glancing across the lot himself as though checking for witnesses, “let’s go.”

Heath pulled out and went up the street. The salesman talked about how the car would be great for off-roading in the desert and about how señoritas like Land Cruisers. He actually used the word ‘señoritas.’ Heath wasn’t listening to the man. He listened to the engine as he shifted gears up and down. The clutch was stiff. The brakes were slightly soft, but adequate. He drove around for five more minutes, putting the machine through its paces.

The vehicle was solid, and when he turned back onto the lot he pulled up to the portable building and parked.

“I told you, she’s a beauty. So are we ready to write up the papers?”

“Will it clear smog?”

“We’re required to smog it before we can sell it.”

Heath smiled, for their father had taught Ernesto the very same tricks he had taught Heath and Diego to get a vehicle to pass the state’s emissions test, but Heath also knew that if it was a law, Ernesto would obey it. “Is that right? Ernesto inside?”

The man shifted in his seat at the mention of his employer’s name. “He is.”

Heath nodded and climbed out, taking the keys with him.

“I can negotiate,” the salesman said, the potential loss of his commission evident in his voice.

“I need to talk to Ernesto,” Heath said, already climbing the stairs to the portable, the salesman looking dejected.

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“But . . . Sir—” The conditioned air rushed over him, cold, a testament to the day’s inferno. The sound of the laboring window unit filled the room. The compressor whirred and the fan blew. Yarn streamers danced horizontally from the vent face, the only movement in the room other than the papers gently fluttering on the desk. Heath crossed the room toward the open office door. The nameplate on the door read Manager.

The salesman shut the trailer door just as Heath stood framed in the entrance to the office, and the two things combined caused the man at the desk to look up from the forms spread out before him. Ernesto recognized his brother as much for the way he stood—long and lean and hip-cocked—as for the features of his face, and Ernesto realized he had known the sound of Heath’s ambling gait, so familiar and distinct, even before he had lifted his gaze. He leaned back in his padded chair and folded his hands in his lap.

“I’d have thought the Marines would’ve changed that strut,” Ernesto said.

“I can heel-toe it when I need to.”

Ernesto snorted.

The salesman came up behind Heath and said, “He insisted on talking to you.”

“That’s okay, Ritchie,” Ernesto said to the salesman.

“He’s interested in the J40.”

Ernesto looked at Heath. “Okay, Ritchie,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You going to ask me to sit?” Heath asked.

“No, but you will anyway,” Ernesto said.

“Nice to see you too.” Heath came into the room. Then to the salesman he said, “Thanks for the help, Ritchie,” and closed the door on him. He sat in the chair across the desk from Ernesto and hung his hat on his knee.

“So they let you out,” Ernesto said.

“Five days ago.”

“That’s six months early by my count.”

“Seven. Good behavior.”

Ernesto snorted again. “Have you called your parole officer yet?”

Heath studied him. It was hard to believe how much Ernesto had come to look like their father. It seemed impossible there could be such physical resemblance and so little resemblance of any other kind. “I’m not on parole. I did my time.”

Ernesto said nothing to this.

“You really didn’t know I was out?” Heath asked.

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American river review 33 “I haven’t seen Diego or Lena in a few weeks.”

“How about Mom?” Ernesto sat without moving, but something flashed in his eyes. “You’ve been gone eight years and you’ve got the huevones to ask me that? Who do you think has been paying her hospital bills? Not Diego. Not Lena. And sure as hell not you.” There was no anger in Ernesto’s voice. Just mild disgust. wHeath nodded, almost imperceptibly, and fingered his hat. “They haven’t given you nothing?”

“Diego gave me some, more than some actually, given how he’s always been with saving money, but he hasn’t had that job all that long. Lena has spent a lot of time at the hospital, but she’s got college loans to pay and a social worker’s salary isn’t going to be confused with an investment banker’s. So no, they’re not paying the bills, and you don’t get to ask me if I’ve seen my mother. I’ve seen her a hell of a lot more than you have.”

The two men sat there, the gulf between them far greater than the space separating their bodies. The hum of the air conditioner in the next office could be heard through the trailer walls.

“How are Rosa and the girls?” Heath asked.

“They’re fine.”

“The girls must be big.”

“You wouldn’t recognize them.”

“I’d like to see them.”

“They wouldn’t recognize you either. What do you want, Rayo?”

“What the fuck, man? I’m your brother and this is the way you’re gonna welcome me home? En serio?”

“I asked what you want.”

Heath said nothing. And then finally: “A job.”

Ernesto let this hang there.

“Come on.”

“I don’t hire felons.”

Heath turned the hat in his hand. “Let me work as a mechanic. You’ve got some junkers out there that I could fix,” he said, but Ernesto remained silent, immovable. “I sent three quarters of every paycheck home to mom,” Heath said after a moment.

“That was almost five years ago. All you’ve sent her since then is sorrow. I knew you weren’t cut out for the Marines. I said so. You can’t take orders. You’ve never listened to no one but yourself.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Ernesto snorted once again.

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“You don’t,” Heath repeated.

“Yet the facts remain.”

“What the fuck, Ernesto?”

“What… you didn’t assault an officer and get court-martialed? From what I understand, they could’ve shot you for that.”

Heath’s jaw clenched and unclenched. He could feel his anger, like a mechanism of cogs and wheels, turning inside him. He pushed it down as he had learned to do once confined, the futility of rage laid bare by the reality of years within four cinder block walls with a three-inch window that could not be opened and a steel door that seldom was. “They didn’t shoot me because everyone knew that prick deserved it.”

Ernesto remained unmoved.

“I need the job,” Heath said finally. “To help Mamá.”

His brother leaned forward and studied him. Then he leaned back again and put his hands on the padded arms of the chair. “I couldn’t hire you even if I wanted to. Business is way down. Maybe you haven’t heard, but the whole country is in a recession.”

“I need a job.”

“No lo tengo, so stop asking.”

The two men sat looking at each other.

“Then I’ll take that J40,” Heath said. He expected Ernesto to snort yet again, but his brother did not.

“And why would I give you that?”

“I need wheels if I’m gonna get a job.”

“Nobody’s going to hire you.”

“I’ll find something.”

“Nothing legal, you won’t. There aren’t any jobs and employers don’t hire felons with dishonorable discharges.”

“Okay,” Heath said after a moment. “I’ll take the J40 because you owe me for the Camaro.”

Ernesto sat in his chair and seemed to consider this.

“Lo sabes,” Heath said.

Ernesto pursed his lips. Then he nodded and leaned forward and pressed button on the intercom. “Ritchie,” Ernesto said. “Get the papers together so I can sign over the pink slip on the Toyota.”

Typical Ernesto, Heath thought. Two guys in a trailer and he uses an intercom. “Hey,” Heath said. “Make sure it’s gassed up.”

Ernesto looked at him. “Same old pinche Rayo,” he said. “They should have kept your ass locked up.” Then he

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American river review 33 pressed the intercom again: “And Ritchie, make sure it has a full tank of gas.”

* * * When he pulled up to the house, Heath realized he did not have an electric opener for the gate, so he parked the Toyota against the front wall next to the spot where Ernesto, in a decidedly uncharacteristic act of adolescent rebellion, had found he could traverse the wall without being lacerated by the shards of glass bottles embedded along the top. It had been a point of demarcation to wild teenage nights, like a right of passage that they had all used at one time or another, Heath most of all. He stood in the back of the Land Cruiser, and in one fluid motion he stepped onto the frame of the truck bed, put one boot up on the roll bar, stepped up into the air, quickly put the other boot up on the naked spot on top of the wall, stepped up again, and dropped into the front yard.

He searched for a wall mounted button for the gate, but could find none and resolved to leave the vehicle on the street. The house key was under the potted cactus where Diego had agreed to hide it when they had gone out, and Heath went into the house. He drank a glass of water in the kitchen, and turned the swamp cooler fan to high. Back in his room, he pulled off his boots and stretched out on his bed. Yet again it seemed both impossible and a miracle that he found himself truly home. All at once, the reality of his release and the five days on the bus and the homecoming and Mamá’s illness and the sight of her and the sight of Diego and Ernesto washed over him in a wave of exhaustion and it was only a matter of minutes before he felt a great heaviness and his eyelids closed.

It was the sound of the front door closing that woke him. He had not been dreaming exactly, for he had not been fully asleep but rather drifting in that vague borderland between the mind and the world, but nonetheless a part of him had been in Fallujah, on a variation of the same streets and with a variation of the same faces as always, and for a moment he was disoriented neither to find himself there nor in his cell at Leavenworth. He heard keys dropped on a table and movement in the front room.

“Diego?” Heath called, his voice husky with sleep. He cleared his throat and swung his feet to the floor. There was no answer. He rose from the bed, and then Magdalena was standing in his doorway, an expression of pure joy beaming from her such that it seemed her body could not contain itself. And then they were embracing. He took in the feel of her and the smell of her and he felt a wave of relief, an unraveling of fear he had not even comprehended that he had held within him, and he recognized in the simple fact of her physical being the obvious but frequently obscured truth that we survive the endless abominations of our world so we might live moments such as this. Yet in that same moment, as he held her, held all she had represented to him against the years of terror and violence and regret and isolation, he felt there was something inside him that had not been freed or lifted, something atrophied and encased within that even she would never touch. Once upon a time he had been a young man, sure of himself in body and mind, someone with almost endless confidence and few doubts. He had known himself and known his capabilities, and he had proven those capabilities were greater than most. He had simply been smarter and stronger and faster than others. Not than Santiago, and perhaps not Napoleon, but everyone else he had ever encountered until Iraq. But now that surety was gone, as if burned away. It had been replaced by some other thing, and he knew that thing was like a small piece of death. He also knew this sudden awareness was not sudden at all, but a truth he had long known and had endeavored to deny in a way that now home, he no longer would be able to do. But she was in his arms. That was real. He told himself: There is goodness in the world. Bear witness to it. And he willed himself to do so. Then he realized she was silently crying and he found himself gently hushing her. They stood like that for a long time, clasped as one, and even after that she would not let him go.

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American river review 33

Art Selection Process The Art Selection class meets every spring. Over the course of three days in February, hundreds of students submit work representing a variety of different media and styles. The art is photographed by professional photographers at American River College’s James Kaneko Gallery. The Art Selection class then discusses every piece extensively and debates its merit before putting it to a final vote. The selected pieces make up the gallery on these pages and featured pages throughout the magazine.

The Art New Media College Magazine Design and Production class meets every fall. The class is organized into three teams: production, gallery, and design. The teams work together to prepare the art selections for print, lay out the art gallery, and design the overall magazine.

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American river review 33 Anthony Barbaria Morning Routine Ink & Photoshop 10”×12”

Anthony Barbaria

Octogray Ink & Photoshop 14”×14”

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Allison Wheaton

Tangled up in Consumerism Ink 18”×24”

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American river review 33 Bia Allen

The Heart’s Growth Micron Pen 20”×16”

Bia Allen

Old Smokey Charcoal & White Conté 24”×18”

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Francesca Bonomo

Nasty Women Pen & Ink 22”×15”

Alex Bugarin

Me as Corpse Bride Pen & Ink 18”×24”

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Paul Padilla Rocket Boy Ink Resist 10”×6.5”

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Paul Padilla

The Valley Ink Resist 11”×8.5”

BAPZ

Oliver Digital: Pro Create 28.444”×28.444”

BAPZ

Misplaced Digital: Pro Create 15”×26.667”

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Brad Carps

Computer User Digital 30.267”×15.81”

David Nichols

Glass Box Digital Photography 12”×8”

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Crystal Moore

Atypical Monday Charcoal 24”×18”

David Nichols

Jade Builds Digital Photography 8”×12”

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Sarah Allen

3,225 Miles Pastel Pencils on Wood 17”×24”×.6”

Sarah Allen

Winston the Great Pastel Pencils on Wood 24”×24”×1”

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Kelsi Martin

Bridge Photography 8”×11”

Patrick Hyun Wilson

Global Winter Wonderland 2018 Photography 12”×18”

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Jerome Brown

Elf Princess Photography 11.2”×20”

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Jerome Brown Reaper of Souls Photography 11.2”×20”

David Nichols

Gold (The Crown) Digital Photography 8”×12”

David Nichols

Silver (The Eye) Digital Photography 8”×12”

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American river review 33 Brian Ford

Witching Hour Digital Collage 18.227”×16.51”

Antonia Tapia

Lost Photography 8”×10”

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Allison Wheaton

Surveillance Digital Photography 20”×14”

Andrew Koscheski Lake Tamsen, CA Photography 8”×10”

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American river review 33 Veronica Brito Sailor Jerry Photography 8”×10”

Gary Vang

Pawn Chess Pieces 3D Modeling 6.4”×3.6”

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Heather Lee Merrifield Lucha Samurai Digital Photography 8”×12”

Kelsi Martin

Pond Photography 8”×10”

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Liya Protopopova Calm Waters Photography 9.407”×6.8”

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Anthony Barbaria Octo Skate Photoshop Collage 10”×8”

BAPZ

Exiled Digital: Pro Create 11”×8.5”

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Reneé Marie

Shelter Me Pencil on Paper 24”×18”

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Jessica Williams Confidant Watercolor 18”×24”

Ren Allathkani

Bad Mentality Water Color 18”×24”

David Nichols

Droplet Digital Photography 8”×10”

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Anastasiya Golosna

Honey Bee Photography, Photoshop Composite 13.3”×16.6”

Heather Lee Merrifield Sunset Digital Photography 8”×12”

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Anastasiya Golosna

Lost at Sea Photography, Photoshop Composite 13.3”×20”

Clare Korten

Sleeping Flamingos Digital: TV Paint 5.333”×5.333”

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Allison Wheaton

Decadent Decades Dance Party Digital 7.797”×5.383”

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Allison Wheaton

Matthew Anable: The Artist, The Skateboarder, The Legend Digital 8.64”×12.907”

BAPZ

Impish Digital: Pro Create 28.444”×28.444”

BAPZ

Not Quite Functional Digital: Pro Create 28.444”×28.444”

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American river review 33 Diana Ormanzhi

Anchors Oil on Canvas 18”×36”

Diana Ormanzhi Rainbow Cardinal Drypoint Etching 7”×10”

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Diana Ormanzhi Intertwined Oil on Canvas 12”×24”

Max Marchol

Tyrant II Oil on Canvas 16”×12”

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Emily Moore

A Little Space Digital: Pro Create 3.867”×3.48”

Emily Moore

Her Garden Digital: Pro Create 4.333”×4.333”

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Tiffany LeBeau

Banshee Chronicles Digital, Plants, Crystals, Acrylic 12”×36”

Courtney Amedei While You Were Sleeping Oil on Canvas 12”×16”

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Brian Ford

It’s Alive Digital Collage 41.843”×22.99”

Jade Jacobs

Oracle Acrylic on Canvas 24”×18”

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Ashley Hayes-Stone Day of the Dead Photography 10”×15”

Ashley Hayes-Stone Life on the Street Photography 10”×15”

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Catarina Bragg

Framing Heritage Photoshop 12”×18”

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Anastasiya Golosna

Down the Rabbit Hole Photography, Photoshop Composite 27.8”×13.3”

Max Marchol Nebula Inhalent Water Color 12”×12”

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Danielle Steers

Finding Your Way Photography 8”×10”

Sabrina Flores

Untitled Photography 20”×13.333”

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Sabrina Flores

Home of the Tree Nymphs Photography 20”×13.333”

Sabrina Flores Golden Gate Photography 20”×13.333”

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Crystal Moore

Moon in Gemini Water Color 24”×18”

Jose Hernandez Wild Smile Silkscreen 17.5”×23.5”

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Brian Ford

Ducky Digital Collage 20.639”×27.611”

Brian Ford

The Mush Room Digital Collage 46.444”×34.833”

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Jason Everett

Rising Spirit Acrylic & Oil on Canvas 24”×36”×1.5”

Diana Ormanzhi

Wisp Oil on Canvas 24”×24”

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Terrence Watson Teapot in Red Ceramic 11.5”×6.5”×5”

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Courtney Amedei Misty Woods Jewelry 1.5”×2”

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Manuel Marmolejos The Trans Human Ceramic 10”×9”×6”

Manuel Marmolejos Small Wood Fired Ash Bowl Ceramic 1”×3”×3”

Sheila Parmar Flower Bowl Metal 5”×11.5”×12.5”

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Preeta Malelu Untitled Ceramic 1”×1”×3”

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Terrence Watson Teastack Raku Ceramic 24”×9”×9”

Danielle Steers Changing Shifts Paper 30”×9.5”×24”

Terrence Watson Raku Platter Ceramic 5”×16”×16”

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Treat Wooley The Sermon Ceramic 11”×6”×20”

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Meschelle White

What’s Going On? Ceramic 13”×10.5”×9”

Carolan Korten

Musical Chairs Ceramic, Acrylic, Shoe Polish 9.5”×6”×6”

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Ren Allathkani

Dysphoria Water Color / Acrylic Thirteen 18”×24” panels

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American river review 33

editorial editors Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Snow

faculty advisers Michael Angelone, English Craig Martinez, Art New Media Jeff Rochford, Art New Media

Associate Editor-in-Chief Myrenzo Whittaker Managing CNF Editor Josh Ghiorso CNF Editor Terri Leo Managing Fiction Editor Billy Mitchell Fiction Editors Trace Lee Robert Piper Damon Plant Managing Poetry Editor Kelsey Huffaker Poetry Editors Isaac Kelly Leslie Zarraga

front/back matter Acknowlegements Page Editors Billy Mitchell Isaac Kelly Leslie Zarraga Awards Page Editors Billy Mitchell Isaac Kelly Leslie Zarraga Communications Coordinator Trace Lee

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Contributors Page Editors Billy Mitchell Isaac Kelly Leslie Zarraga Patrons Page Editors Billy Mitchell Isaac Kelly Leslie Zarraga Staff Page Editors Billy Mitchell Isaac Kelly Leslie Zarraga Reading and Publicy Directors Jennifer Snow Myrenzo Whittaker

Design and Production Art Director Jenna Cook Assistant Art Director Sadie Young Design Team Ian Hidalgo Bikrum Singh Jolly Carina McLaughlin Eori Tokunaga Art Selection Anthony Barbaria Alex Bugarin Sabrina Flores Aaron Huff Joseph Jacobs Liya Protopopova

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American river review 33

Contributing Artists Ren Allathkani (he/him) is a student at American River College (ARC) studying Studio Art. He wants to make work that was meaningful to him, having felt emotions were something he couldn’t express, and has since come to realize that, for those which words cannot express, he can gain joy expressing these feelings through art.

Bia Allen is a recent graduate of ARC, currently working as a free-lance artist.

They love to make memorial art and portraits.

Sarah Allen is a student of ARC and a winner of the Congressional Art Competition. Their passions are drawing, baking, and their faith in Christ. They are currently undecided on their major, but are interested in something that will help others. A large amount of their art is inspired by their time serving in Haiti, and their piece Lurensky, a potrait of a Haitian boy, was held in Washington D.C. for a year.

Courtney Amedei is a student of ARC. She transferred from Woodland Community College in 2017, where she studied Psychology and American Sign Language. She continues to focus on sign language while also studying art and German.

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Anthony Barbaria is an artist, graphic designer, and illustrator originally from San Jose. He has presented his work in shows throughout the country and has been a member of the Scary-Art collective, San Jose Art Salon, and Art Director of H. Art Lounge in Placerville.

He worked on the 2018 edition of American River Review in both production and design, and was the Art Director for the 2019 edition.

Francesca Bornomo was born in California. They are an artist who practices drawing and painting in the Sacramento area. They love to paint the world the way they see it. Their goal is to challenge ideas of texture and create a sense of emotion in the viewer.

Jerome Brown is an emerging photographer in Sacramento. He has been featured in American River Review multiple times. He strives to start his own clothing line and integrate his photography into the brand, and is surrounded by people who care and push him to become a better person and photographer.

Alex Bugarin is a student at ARC. She was the Production Manager for the 2019 edition of American River Review and recently received her AA in art new media. She plans on completing an AS in psychology at ARC. Brad Carps is a local mixed media, charcoal, and concept artist. He specializes in novel techniques, media, and concepts.

Catarina Bragg is an illustration student at ARC looking to pursue a career in Illustration, Concept Art, and Visual Development. Her current artistic focus is interpreting her mixed Filipino-American heritage through art.

Jason Everett is a 45 year old US Air Force veteran, and a dual major in Psychology and Art. They have been creating art for three years, having started late in life, and their goal is to work as an Art Therapist for fellow veterans.

Veronica Elena is an artist, primarily a photographer, located in Sacramento.

While attending ARC, her artwork has been featured in the display cases in the art department, along with a publication in the 2018 edition of American River Review.

Sabrina Flores is a landscape and portrait photographer based in in Citrus Heights. Her field of study is photography, and she plans to transfer to Sac State to further her studies.

Brian D. Ford is a digital artsit whose extensive exploration of photography and photo maipulation has led to his success as a fine art Photoshop artist. Brian was the art director of the 2017 edition of American River Review and has been a member of the staff as an illustrator and designer. He is currently working as a graphic designer.

Anastasia Gologna is a local Sacramento artist expanding her photography into fine art as well as practicing other mediums, such as clay and paints, and experimenting with photo transfers and object crystalizations.

Anastasia has had her photography shown in multiple galleries in the area including the Crocker Art Museum. She hopes to continue showcasing her work and creating new art despite the frequent health challenges she must overcome.

Ashley Hayes-Stone has been a journalism student for two years. During this time, they have discovered a love for photography. They enjoy documenting people and finding beauitful things in public spaces.

Jose Hernandez wishes for the whole world to be able to smile and enjoy life.

They hope to be the best artist they can, while remaining free from societal perceptions of good or bad.

Jade Jacobs is a Mojave Desert native who started her art education in Los Angeles. She is now attending ARC while working as a gallery sales consultant and art assistant in many galleries across the Sacramento area. Her focus in all forms of her art, including studio and performance art, reflects elements of dark eroticism, anatomical fascination, and expressing the challenges of being a woman in a divisive political climate.

Bapz (Joseph Jacobs) is a freelance digital artist with sights set on an undetermined goal. His beginnings started with him shunning digital art, preferring pen-andink on real paper. However, he now finds himself rarely touching an actual pen. His style is often rough and purposely messy, using dramatic strokes paired with dirt-like textures. The style can also lean more towards that of a graphic novel, focusing heavily on subject and character design similar to that of Ashley Wood and Wayne Reynolds.

Carolan Korten is an artist who loves to work in many mediums including digital and traditional. Recently, she has focused on sculpture and anatomy. Her work has been shown in the Kaneko Gallery, the E Street Gallery, and the Crocker Art Museum, and was recently published in the 2019 edition of American River Review.

Clare Korten has been studying art at ARC for 2 years. She enjoys exploring different mediums that can communicate with the viewer. Her traditional work has been featured in ARC’s Student Spring Show at the Crocker Art Museum. She is excited to share her work in the 2019 edition of American River Review.

Andrew Koscheski is a photography student born and raised in Sacramento, CA. He uses his unique vision to create images. It took him years to develop his skills and has been in several publications and local galleries.

Tiffany LeBeau is pursuing an art new media major at ARC. She is a collage artist and works primarily with organic found materials and painting with acrylic.

She hopes to be featured in upcoming art shows, and looks forward to a career as a professional graphic designer.

Preeta Malelu is a local ceramicist and artist from Sacramento who specializes in a wide variety of techniques.

Max Marchol is a geologist and art student that enjoys painting and drawing the natural world. They look for human attributes reflected in our fellow occupants of this world. They especially like to find these attributes in mundane or otherwise overlooked creatures.

Reneé Marie is a US Army retiree currently pursuing art studies at ARC with plans to transfer to a four-year program.

She gathers found objects to creating social and political messages in an effort to sort through the shock of our painfully divisive time. She now identifies as an Artivist, creating Activism Through Art. Her piece, “In Free Will We Trust,” took first place in the 2018 ARC student show, and her piece, “The Painted Lady,” was purchased by the judges, an experience that she felt validated by.

Manuel Mamolejos came to ARC to major in art and art new media. After working with clay in figure sculpture and ceramics classes, he grew to love the medium. Manuel’s goal is to teach and to eventually have a center where art and creativity can be explored.

Kelsi Martin is an ARC student majoring in photography, and plans to transfer to Sac State to finish their education. They photograph pieces with the intention of leaving the viewer with a melancholy feeling.

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American river review 33 Heather Lee grew up in the UK and now lives Sacramento. She has always created art, but eventually found her niche in photography and graphic design, with a desire to capture moments that might otherwise not be captured— be it action shots, everyday moments, or the strange and unusual. Her work has been shown at Through the Lens at the SMUD Gallery, the ARC Student Show at the Crocker Art Museum, Elk Grove Multicultural Show, Pink Week at Art Space 1616, and her photos and story were recently featured in Mainline Magazine.

Crystal Dal Porto Moore is a painter, charcoal, and ink artist from Sacramento California.

Emmy Luna is a Sacramento based artist who loves soft colors and illustrative art that tells a story, and strives to push that aspect in her own work. She has been finding her footing in digital art, and hopes to hone this ability enough to draw her own story.

David Nichols is an artist and photographer working in the Sacramento area. His work has been shown at Crocker Art Museum and Viewpoint Gallery, and incorporates a mix of portraiture, still life, and urban landscape in both digital and physical mediums.

Diana Ormanzhi is an oil painter from Sacramento who recently began exploring printmaking and ceramic sculpture. Her surrealistic artwork pushes realistic imagery beyond daily perceptions. Diana received an AA in art from ARC in 2018, and is currently working towards a Gallery Business Certificate.

Paul Padilla is finishing their AA degree with plans to become an illustrator. Paul is inspired by a love of comics and story telling.

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Sheila Parmar is going in a different direction as it relates to developing hidden artistic talents late in life.

Liya Protopopova is working on her BA in art new media, and hopes to be a professor. She loves to paint and do photography, and hopes to have her art featured in galleries.

Daniel Steers has been taking classes at ARC for the past ten years. She recently changed her major from digital media to studio arts. Her artwork contains elements of nature and connection to emphasize peace and enlightenment, and hopes that others will find courage to use their creativity to carry them to a happier, mindful state of living.

Antonia Tapia is a street and portrait photographer based in the Sacramento region. Her passion in creative photography has sparked her uniqueness in the decisive moments of every day life.

Her artistic interest in photography allows her to share her color, light & perspective self-expression with the world.

Gary Vang is an art student with an interest in 3-D computer modeling.

Prior to ARC, he taught himself the 3-D software modeling program, Blender. He believes there are no limits to what you can create and design within the software.

Terrance Watson dedicates his time and energy creating works of art that bring joy to the viewer and user. He aspires to make his mark by introducing the artists hand into the everyday life of users of handmade pottery and the aesthetic of artists everywhere.

Allison Wheaton has a passion for photography that is especially evident in her portrait work. Many of her art pieces are influenced by American and Japanese pop culture.

Meschelle White believes amateurs are artists and that creating is a process.

Through this process, Meschelle has learned increased patience and how to control the racing mind.

Jessica A. Williams has an AS in studio art from ARC and a BA in studio art: drawing and painting from Sac State.

She is currently pursuing an Illustrator’s Certificate at ARC. See more of her artwork at JessicaAWilliams.com or the Jessica Art Williams Facebook page.

Patrick Hyun Wilson has been taking photos for several years with a focus on documenting people candidly—making observations of how people live, thus exposing the artistry of the every day.

Treat Duane Woolley is transferring to UC Davis in Spring 2020. They enjoy specializing in the bizarre and working in multiple mediums such as ceramic, oil, and printmaking.

Contributing Authors Viola Allo is a poet and certified yoga instructor. She grew up in Cameroon and moved to the US in 1998. She has a BA in Psychology and an MA in Anthropology.

She loves to travel and learn new things.

Liam Bass is a graduate of American River College, and is currently working toward’s a bachelor’s degree at UCSD. Matthew Bowie is a poet from Sacramento, California. He is pursuing his PhD in fine arts at UC Berkeley, where he was once a student reader.

Nikkole Bui lives in Sacramento.

She was a creative nonfiction editor for American River Review’s 2014 issue. She hopes to get a Master’s degree in English so she can teach English, and write and publish more of her work.

Claire Davis served as the Editor-inChief of American River Review’s 2013 issue, and completed a literary publishing certificate at American River College. She has a BA in English from the University of Leeds and works as a coordinator at Harvard University. She enjoys blues, kizomba, and fusion dancing.

Colby Debach-Riley is a former theater arts major. He is pleased that his one-act play is being republished in this issue of American River Review and hopes the magazine’s readers enjoy it. He would like to see other student playwrights and screenwriters submit their work to the magazine.

Anna Donskova lives in Sacramento and hopes to move to a place where it’s not hot as hell. She sometimes likes to write, but she gave up on her dreams to become a vital cog of the unforgiving capitalistic machine. She’s very excited and honored to have her pieces featured in this issue of American River Review.

Jennifer Doolittle spends her time trying to enter her cat into toddler beauty pageants. When not on the pageant circuit, she and her cat live a gluten-free and atheist lifestyle that includes too many Cheetos and TV episodes of Hoarders. She has tricked the editors into publishing her poetry in multiple past issues of American River Review, and wishes she were a little bit taller.

Danny Dyer graduated from American River College in 2010 and now works as a Professor of English in Zhejiang, China.

Since his time spent with the American River Review, his creative work and criticism

have appeared in numerous journals and received several awards. He would like to thank Professor Michael Spurgeon and the other faculty and staff of American River College for their extraordinary efforts and exceptional humanity.

Rachel Gardner has been published multiple times in American River Review since the 2009 issue. In addition to writing, she works in ceramics and graphic design.

Her fiction has won numerous scholastic awards, which has not helped her decide whether she is a writer who does art, or an artist who writes.

Isabel Geerer resides in North Highlands, where she is a 2nd/3rd grade teacher serving low-income students in a federally funded before and after school program. She is dedicated to spreading a love of learning, especially through literacy. She has had the pleasure of teaching writing classes for the amazing Sacramento-based children’s nonprofit, 916 Ink, to children from 4th to 12th grade. She served American River Review for four semesters as Associate Editorin-Chief, Managing Poetry Editor, and CNF Editor. She has poetry published in American River Review, the Gap-toothed Madness, Tule, and WTF.

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American river review 33 Betsy Harper was a writer and artist from Sacramento. In life she was always honored to be published in American River Review.

Joshua David Lacy currently lives in Sacramento. While attending American River College, he had both stories and artwork published in American River Review as well as other venues. He hopes that his writing will touch people and be accessible to many readers.

Shawn Lynch resides in Tempe, AZ, and is working toward becoming a hich shool Engish teacher. He is a prior Editor-inChief and Associate Editor-in-Chief of American River Review. His two years on the staff profoundly affected the direction of his life.

Marcie Mallory currently resides in Sacramento, California after a 2 year period of living in Vicenza, Italy. She is attending American River College and is one of the Editors-in-Chief of the 2019 American River Review. She hopes to pursue a career in photography and filmmaking, and with her strong background in creative writing, hopes to create content that empowers people through art.

Ivy McDonald is a resident of Sacramento and is working toward her degree in English, having received her AA and creative writing certificate from American River College. She is a former poetry and creative nonfiction editor of American River Review.

Hannah Orlando splits her time between creative writing and working as an educator in Sacramento. She came to poetry after graduating from Sac State with a BA in earth science. She is now working on an MFA in creative writing at Ashland University, after spending two years on the staff of American River Review.

She is the Lead Poetry Editor for Black Fork Review, and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of her own literary magazine, Transcend.

Chakira Parsons is a transplant from the Sonoran desert, and former Associate Editor-in-Chief of American River Review.

Her poems and essays have appeared in the 2012 issue of the magazine, in certain ENGWR 300 and 302 classes at American River College, and at open mic nights in Sacramento, where she currently resides.

Her creative goal is to redefine mundane.

Caitlin Pegar hails from Sacramento and is currently studying for her degree in veterinary science. A former staff member and contributing author for American River Review, she writes to share and explore experiences. She aims to publish her stories, poetry, and artwork while continuing to help animals.

Patti Santucci is a writer and painter from Fair Oaks, California. Her articles, poetry and short stories have been published in RePlay Magazine, American River Review, Piker Press and Literally Stories. Patti holds both an AA degree and a Literary Publishing Certificate from American River College.

Andrey Shamshurin is a resident of Antelope, California. He enjoys writing in all genres. Andrey is a former Editorin-Chief of American River Review and is currently in the Peace Corps overseas.

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Sean Stevens is a California native, and moved to Sacramento after his service in the US Army. He is an American River College graduate currently living in Citrus Heights. He enjoys the lighter side of words and has fun writing whimsical oddities.

DJ Stipe is a creative philosopher who likes to get under the hood of the creative process in an effort to understand the universe a little more. He is a playwright, actor, songwriter and published poet who sits on the board of Rio Linda Elverta Community Theater, a 501(c) organization that raises money for local charitable causes through theatrical and music productions, and provides free education for children and adults. DJ also founded the Camp Fire Guitar Project to collect musical instruments for musicians impacted by the Camp Fire. Currently, DJ is working on releasing his first album of self-help rock, Stranded Among Friends, to be released as Isle of Stipe in January, 2020. In his spare time, he is proud to support his daughters in their ongoing discovery of intersectional feminism and pursuit of compassion for all.

Brandon Thao is from Sacramento and graduated from American River College with an AA in English. He continues to hone his self-expression through words. In his current project, a book of poetry, he endeavors to immerse readers in the life of a Hmong child growing up in a new country.

The 2020 American River Review cover was designed around “2020,� and then twisted, overlapped, and repeated until the numbers became nearly unrecognizable. This edition showcases the very best of the old and the new throughout the last decade of its existence.

Headers, subheaders, folios and other standout text fields are set in Bebas Neue, a condensed sans-serif with a variety of weights for a modern feel. Body font is Baskerville, a centuries-old and classic font with easy readability. Poetry is set to 11 point font with 12.5 point leading, and prose is set to 10 point with 14 point leading to provide easier readability with large paragraphs of text.

jenna cook art director

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