Canyon Voices Issue 21

CANYON VOICES L I T E R A R Y & A R T M A G A Z I N E ISSUE 21

SPRING 2020

CANYONVOICES.ASU.EDU

From the Editor The 21st Issue of Canyon Voices is the product of a number of different innovations. From start to finish, our editors have had to improvise, analyze, and collaborate during a worldwide pandemic.

A team of editors was assembled to oversee the Fiction and Creative Nonfiction sections of the magazine, and I could not be more proud of them. To be sure, there was an enormous amount of reading, but the team handled it promptly and with grace. Every meeting was met with bright ideas, interesting interpretations, and insightful conversations.

The Scripts section also was handled differently from previous semesters. Now called Scripts n’ Clips, it has been given its own team of editors, with some members being particularly conversant in the art form. They used all their resources, connections, and hard work to produce a fruitful selection of both scripts and short films that will no doubt leave you satisfied.

Art was adapted so that every editor could contribute to its success, and because of that, we welcome a variety of diverse and fresh artists and pieces to Canyon Voices. Our cover is from a spray-paint artist.

PUBLISHER Julie Amparano Garcia Co-Editor-in-Chief Devyn Carmen Design Director Sophia Steuber Managing Editor Kristina Rasmussen Senior Fiction Editors Devyn Carmen Kristina Rasmussen Fiction Editors Michelle Chao Ross Holding Skylar Nielsen Jonathan Valenzuela Senior Poetry Editor Poetry Editors

Senior Creative Nonfiction Editors Creative Nonfiction Editors

Alex Nieb Beth Dillard William Hightower Tim O’Neal

Senior Art Editor

Kristina Rasmussen

Design Team

Before I leave you to explore the work within these pages, I’d like to give my appreciation to Julie Amparano Garcia, the publisher and ASU professor behind Canyon Voices. No doubt, the struggles of COVID-19, which required moving all classes over to an online format, was a unique adaptation for our team of editors. However, Julie triumphed over this obstacle, organizing editor meetings over email and Zoom sessions with efficiency and dexterity. Without her, this magazine could not have been published.

Senior Alcove Editor

Now, without further ado, please enjoy the work that has come to grace our magazine!

- Devyn Carmen CANYON VOICES

Kristina Rasmussen Devyn Carmen Michelle Chao Ross Holding Skylar Nielsen Jonathan Valenzuela

Senior Scripts Editor Scripts Editors

Poetry has been a breath of familiarity, both for the readers and the editors who put together the section. As always, they have put together a collection of voices across the nation that will be heard between these pages.

It is my sincere hope that this team of editors will find comfort in their eccentric collaboration and, that perhaps, they will work with each other again under normal circumstances.

Sophia Steuber Brody Kimberlin Meredith Price Josue Rios-Velazquez Hunter Thraen

Copy Chiefs Copy Editors

Sophia Steuber Kristina Rasmussen William Hightower Josue Rios-Velazquez Jonathan Valenzuela Michelle Chao Beth Dillard Ross Holding Brody Kimberlin Alex Nieb Skylar Nielsen Tim O’Neal Meredith Price Hunter Thraen

CANYON VOICES is a student-driven online literary magazine, featuring the work of emerging and established writers and artists. The magazine is supported by the students and faculty of the School of Humanities, Arts, & Cultural Studies at Arizona State University’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences. To subscribe, please click here. Click here for submission guidelines.

Cover image: Buck in the Morning Mist by Annmarie Perry See the Artwork section for full image

SPRING 2020

"Remnants"

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FICTION | SHEA LIANNE MCCOLLUM

A Good Guy

By Shea Lianne McCollum

Spencer knew he was going to say something to Kristen the moment he saw what she was wearing: one of those low-cut tops, worn loose so that it hung from one side, showing off her bronzed shoulder. He spotted her from across the room, dancing with both hands above her head, swaying to the music. There was something about the calculated carelessness of her movements that made her seem like the kind of girl who did this often, someone who over the years had developed an intense awareness of the way other people saw her and knew how to pretend she didn’t notice.

Fortified with the last of his beer, Spencer began to make his way across the room to her.

He didn’t move directly, though. Instead, he worked his way through the crowd, slipping in and out of conversations, patting the backs of his frat buddies who were already too drunk to feel his touch, so that it seemed almost by chance when he backed up into her.

“Sorry about that,” he said, turning to face her.

From up close, she was even better looking, her face glowing under the dim lights, the beer that had spilled out of her cup clinging to her eyelashes.

She wiped her face with one sleeve. “It happens.”

“I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” He was fairly certain he had never seen this girl before, CANYON VOICES

but he knew that just the suggestion would make her look him over, really take him in.

“Nice try, but she just transferred,” Sydney cut in, sliding an arm around the girl’s shoulder.

Spencer resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Of course Sydney knew her. A year ago, he’d made the mistake of hooking up with Sydney and one of her friends at the same party, and ever since, she’d taken great joy in cock-blocking him whenever she got the chance.

“I heard you were looking for Tanner earlier,” Spencer said to her. “Last I saw, he was talking to some girls on the soccer team out back.”

Sydney narrowed her eyes, clearly not wanting to believe him, but also knowing from experience how her boyfriend couldn’t be trusted within fifty feet of another woman unsupervised. He raised his eyebrows at her, a challenge, and after a moment, she turned away.

“Don’t believe any of the bullshit he feeds you, Kristen,” she whispered into the girl’s ear before peeling off in the direction of the yard.

With Sydney out of sight, Spencer smiled. “So, Kristen, let me get you a new beer.”

As he led her over to the cooler, he could sense that she was studying him, probably trying to determine for herself how seriously she should SPRING 2020

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take Sydney’s warning. He knew that his looks probably played to his advantage. He had one of those boyish faces that he could turn on relatives or teachers to convince them that whatever mistake they thought he’d made could not have possibly come from any sense of malice, and they’d let him off with a grin and a shake of their heads. Stealing glances at Kristen over his shoulder, he thought he could see a shadow of that same grin forming.

He dug around in the ice water at the bottom of the cooler and fished out the last cold can of Corona. “It’s a bit dented up, if that’s okay with you.”

She took the can from him with a smile. “I like the rescues.”

He studied her for a moment before smiling back. “Well, cheers to that.”

They stood by the cooler for a while, talking.

She told him about her previous college in Texas, all the people there that caused her to want to leave, and her thoughts about life on the East Coast. As she spoke, Spencer realized that she wasn’t quite the person that he first took her for, the careless and free-spirited girl he thought he had identified from across the room.

Kristen’s apparent lack of awareness for how other people were looking at her was not, as he first imagined, put on in order to seem coy, but came from a genuine lack of awareness that people, like Spencer, were watching her. She seemed so oblivious of his interest that he actually started to worry he was losing his window of opportunity. He kept waiting for his chance to cut in and make his intentions clear, but she wouldn’t stop talking long enough for him to say anything.

Losing patience, he finally cut her off to ask, CANYON VOICES

“Hey, why don’t we move over to the couch?”

Her mouth hung open for a moment, as if holding on to her last severed word. “Oh.” “I was just thinking we’d be more comfortable that way,” he explained, and when she still didn’t move, he put a hand on the small of her back to guide her in the right direction. She pulled away at his touch.

“Actually, I think I should go check on Sydney.”

Spencer could see Kristen was starting to scan the crowd over his shoulder and knew that he was losing her. He took a step to the left, blocking her view.

“Oh, come on. She’s fine.” He smiled at Kristen, but she wouldn’t look at him. He placed a hand on her arm. “We’re having fun, right?”

This time she was not so gentle in shrugging him off.

“I have a boyfriend,” she said.

Spencer pulled his hands back, palms up, a show of his innocence.

“Hey, we were just talking. Or does your boyfriend have a problem with you talking to other people?” He said it with a grin to show her that he was only joking, but Kristen didn’t say anything.

“Look, I’m sorry for suggesting we move to the couch. I just thought you might like to sit. I’m good with standing if you want, though,” he said, and when Kristen didn’t show any signs of protest, he took a half-step closer.

She looked up at him again, eyes wide, her face now just a few inches away from his own, and he wondered if maybe he hadn’t messed things SPRING 2020

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up after all. He leaned in a bit closer, and then she pushed him in the stomach, hard.

brothers, Damien and Ben, gathered around a beer pong table and joined them.

“Fuck off,” she said, stalking away.

Damien passed him the ball, and Spencer threw it with one eye closed, somehow managing to send it flying above all of the cups straight into Ben’s face across the table.

Spencer stayed doubled over for a moment, half in pain and half in shock. From across the room, he could hear some of his frat buddies laughing, and he recovered his pride long enough to shout back, “Fucking tease!”

In his drunkenness, he’d said it louder than he’d intended to, and he could see the blush that crept across her face as people turned to stare.

He took some small satisfaction at her embarrassment before going on the hunt for more beer.

This was only the latest in a long line of rejections Spencer had received lately. After his freshman year girlfriend Caroline broke up with him, he’d taken his friends’ advice and made the most of his college experience. He’d partied and hooked up with girls whom he never called back or learned the names of, but he realized fairly quickly that there’s only so long you can live like that at a small college. Pretty soon, he had been blacklisted by all of the major sororities, and word of his reputation was passed on to the non-affiliated girls. Even the freshmen, it seemed, were being briefed on who he was as a part of their orientation. He had hoped that since Kristen was new, things might have worked out in his favor for once. The way she was dancing had actually reminded him a bit of his ex, but then, it really shouldn’t have been a surprise when she, too, disappointed him in the end.

Spencer wandered around the house for a bit, drinking until all of the rooms started to grow fuzzy and the people in them less aggravating.

Eventually, he found two of his fraternity CANYON VOICES

“Spencer strikes out again,” Ben said, and Damien let out a barking laugh. Spencer punched him in the shoulder in return.

“Aww, it happens to the best of us, man,” Damien said, slinging an arm around Spencer’s neck. “Well, maybe not the best of us. But to you, at least.”

“Shut up, man,” Spencer said, too drunk to think of a better comeback.

“That’s the girl over there, isn’t it?” Ben asked, and Spencer and Damien both followed his gaze over to the corner of the room, where a girl in an off-the-shoulder shirt had her arms wrapped around a guy in white.

“Dude, you should’ve just waited a bit,” Damien said. “No girl has a boyfriend after enough beer.”

Spencer didn’t even have the energy to get angry at him this time. He was too busy staring at the pair across the room, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. He studied the guy in white, trying to place him. He didn’t look familiar, likely one of the new pledges. He watched as Kristen leaned in closer to the guy and wondered what it was he had said that Spencer hadn’t, if he even had to try to convince her or if she had just thrown herself at him. If the whole boyfriend excuse was even real.

Spencer was on the verge of walking over there to call her a hypocrite and a liar, amongst other

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names, when he noticed the dented beer can in her hand.

“She’s not drunk,” Spencer said after a moment.

“She’s had that same beer for the past hour.”

The boys stopped smiling at this and turned back to look at her once more. Upon second glance, they could all now see that the arms Kristen had slung around the guy in white’s neck weren’t flirtatious, as they had first thought, but served an anchor to keep herself upright as she swayed on unsteady feet.

“So, she probably just did some shots in between. Who cares?” Damien asked, taking aim at a cup across the table.

Neither guy spoke up to tell him what Spencer suspected they all already knew. They’d been out of liquor since at least eleven.

Spencer watched as the guy in white halfcarried Kristen with him across the living room.

He leaned over to whisper something in her ear, to which she tilted her head back and smiled sleepily. Spencer took a step in their direction but was held back by Ben’s arm.

“Don’t, man.”

Spencer turned to look at him. “Don’t what?”

Ben scanned the room, as if it were possible anyone else could hear them over the music.

“Just don’t start shit, okay? We don’t need this right now.”

Spencer looked incredulously at Ben and then at Damien in turn, neither of whom would meet his gaze.

“I’m gonna get another drink,” he finally said, shaking off Ben’s hand and pushing off into the

CANYON VOICES

crowd. Though he kept his distance from Kristen and the guy in white, Spencer continued to watch them as they made their way from the dance floor to the couch. He could guess at the guy’s trajectory: the bedroom at the end of the hall, currently being occupied by another couple. It was the same path he had tried to take earlier that evening.

Kristen, for her part, seemed oblivious of this.

Just an hour before, she’d been sharp and talkative, waving her hands excitedly as she explained the difference between Texan and Southern Barbecue. Now, she seemed a shell of that same person, head lolled back on the couch, eyes barely held open. Spencer wondered in frustration where Sydney was when someone actually needed her.

After a few minutes, during which the bedroom door remained firmly shut despite the guy in white’s drunken appeals, he stalked out of the room, no doubt in search of some unoccupied space, leaving Kristen sitting alone on the couch. As soon as Spencer saw the back of the guy’s head, he took advantage of the opportunity to intervene.

“Kristen,” he said, kneeling beside the couch.

Her eyes were closed, and she made no sign that she’d heard him. He shook her gently. “Kristen, come on.”

She opened her eyes then, just barely, and looked up at him without recognition. He stopped for a moment, disarmed, before persisting. “Let’s go find Sydney.”

He tugged at her arm, trying to get her to stand up, but it fell limp in his hands.

He stole a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure the guy in white hadn’t returned SPRING 2020

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before pulling Kristen up off the couch, holding one of her arms over his shoulder to keep her upright. He tried to move quickly but walking with her was like dragging deadweight. It reminded him of an exercise he did in high school football, where he had to carry a sandbag over his shoulders and try to run as fast as he could, only this sandbag had feet that kept catching on all the furniture.

Still, Spencer moved as swiftly as he could, ignoring the dirty looks that some of the girls at the party shot him as he went room-by-room, scanning for Sydney. He turned a corner into the front entryway, only to stop just short of running into the guy in white. Luckily, he was faced the other way, so Spencer had just enough time to shift direction and drag Kristen along with him out the back door, undetected.

Standing in the sobering cold of the night, Spencer finally accepted that there was little chance of him finding Sydney and that it was more than likely she had left the party long before. Seeing few other options, he settled to bring Kristen back to his dorm for the time being, at least until he could figure out a way of contacting Sydney. He scooped Kristen’s ineffectual legs out from under her and carried her in his arms. As he began to trudge home through the light snow, Spencer thought, for the first time in a long while, of his ex Caroline.

They’d met his first week of college and started dating almost immediately. He had never encountered someone who was so full of life. On the first night they met, she’d convinced him to help her break into the school’s athletic facility, and they drunkenly raced golf carts throughout campus until security finally caught them. He felt the most alive he had ever been when he was with her. But, as the school year went on, Spencer started to notice there were things that CANYON VOICES

Caroline wouldn’t talk about, the failed tests she had shoved in the bottom of her backpack, the unanswered phone calls from her parents. He wasn’t initially concerned, though, because these things didn’t seem to affect her. She just threw herself into having a good time, staying out later, partying harder. But night after night of carrying Caroline home dead drunk had gotten old after a while. When Spencer eventually confronted her about all of the things he had, for so long, let her go without saying, she broke up with him on the spot and spent the next few weeks ignoring his calls. He couldn’t understand it, how she could go from being in love with him one day to cutting him out of her life without a word the next. He found out a month later that she’d dropped out without telling anyone.

Still, even when she wasn’t around, Caroline continued to shape his life. It was because he had spent so much time with her freshman year that he joined a fraternity to meet new people his sophomore year, and it was because of that, that he was at the party that ended with him carrying Kristen home through the snow.

Fifteen endless minutes of walking later, Spencer arrived at his dorm and was able to put Kristen down with shaking arms. At this point, she was long asleep, so he laid her down on the bed, taking off her shoes and adjusting her sleeve back onto her shoulder.

In the fog the beer had left over his brain, he couldn’t quite make sense of who this person lying in his bed was. The girl he’d seen partying from across the room, the one who had spoken with giddy excitement, the one who had pushed him and cursed at him, or the one lying in his bed now, looking so small—they all seemed like such entirely different people that Spencer couldn’t figure out a way of combining them in SPRING 2020

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his head into one Kristen, the real one. Just like with Caroline, it didn’t seem possible that a person could contain such multitudes, could be so many different things at once.

He could feel his eyelids growing heavy, so he grabbed one of the extra pillows from his bed and made a place for himself on the ground beneath her. He closed his eyes and as he fell asleep, he dreamt that a woman with a thousand faces swam above his head. *

* *

*

The next morning, Spencer awoke to a pounding in his skull. He sat up on the carpet, massaging his temples, before realizing the sensation wasn’t coming from inside his head, but from his front door. He fumbled his way over and opened it to see two men, one of whom he faintly recognized from one of his lecture halls. Spencer looked down and saw they were wearing the blue campus security uniforms.

He blinked, suddenly awake. “How can I help you guys?”

“We’re here in regard to the events of last night,” the older guard said.

The party came back to Spencer in a dizzying flash, and he turned behind him to look at the bed where Kristen had been lying the night before, but she was no longer there. In a sudden panic, Spencer could no longer remember if he had checked to make sure she was breathing before he fell asleep.

“Is Kristen okay?”

“She’s fine,” the one Spencer recognized assured him, and he breathed a sigh in relief.

CANYON VOICES

“Well, it was dark in the house, but I think I remember what the guy looked like,” Spencer said.

The security guards didn’t say anything but exchanged an uneasy glance.

“That’s why you’re here, right?” He asked. “To question me about him?”

Spencer looked to the younger guard, who wouldn’t meet his eyes.

The older guard cleared his throat. “We’re here to inform you that Kristen is pursuing a Title IX case against you.” *

* *

*

The first thing Spencer’s father did when he found out about the accusations being made against his son was forward him the number for their family lawyer. After giving his statement to the campus security officers, Spencer called the lawyer up to discuss his options. Even over the phone, Horace Boarman was an imposing force with a voice so loud that Spencer had to keep his face a few inches from the speaker so he wouldn’t go deaf. He found it hard to believe that this was a man whose profession was to keep people’s secrets.

Boarman walked Spencer through the Title IX process. Typically, everything was handled by the Dean, who would gather statements from both parties, as well as several witnesses, and come to a decision about how the situation should be handled. However, the Dean of Lehigh had apparently had a past career as a sexual assault attorney and was known to favor women in these sorts of cases, so there was another option. They could request a university court hearing, in which both parties would present their evidence before a board that SPRING 2020

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would vote whether or not the student should be allowed to stay. This was Boarman’s recommended course of action.

The lawyer also informed Spencer that he had received news that Kristen’s rape kit hadn’t produced any results, and she was only pursuing a charge on account of nonconsensual drugging. This was good news, Boarman assured him, as it was very difficult to prove that kind of thing without any eyewitnesses.

At this, Spencer finally cut in, “I didn’t do it, you know.”

There was a pause on the other line before Boarman replied, “Of course you didn’t. Girls get confused about these kinds of things sometimes. Especially ones with boyfriends.”

Spencer didn’t know what to say to that, so he let Boarman fill the silence with more talk, until eventually the line went dead in his hands.

The next few days leading up to the university trial passed like a dream. Spencer hardly spoke to anyone. He still had to go to classes as if everything were normal, and while walking across campus one day, spotted Ben and Damien gathered with some of the other frat guys by their usual table. When the campus police had questioned Spencer, he’d told them all about the guy in white that he and his friends had seen around Kristen shortly after she’d been drugged. When questioned, though, neither Damien nor Ben had admitted to seeing this man.

As if somehow sensing him, Damien and Ben looked up from their table at Spencer. He turned and walked in another direction.

Spencer had been warned by school officials that he was in no way to try to contact Kristen before the hearing, but he found himself on the lookout around campus anyway, hoping that he might run into her or Sydney. He carried this CANYON VOICES

belief with him that, maybe if they could just see him, they would realize he could never do something like this, that this was all some big misunderstanding and the whole investigation could be called off. But he never did.

On the morning of the hearing, Boarman met Spencer at his dorm, so they could walk together to the classroom where the event was to be held. The man was shorter than Spencer remembered, and balder, too. Boarman took the lead as they walked, charging through campus like a bullet, not pausing to see who he bumped into in his rush. Spencer just followed in his wake.

Upon entering the classroom, Spencer noticed the tables had been arranged into a rectangle.

On one side sat the board members, comprised mostly of tenured professors who gathered in groups discussing the same tired things they’d talked about for the past forty years of working together. To the left of them was the table that was to serve as the defense’s corner, though since this was not a court trial, Boarman technically had no right to do anything but act as moral support for Spencer. Next to them was the table reserved for Dean Felten and the students assisting her in keeping records of the hearing. She was a new addition to the university, a no-nonsense woman whose patience Spencer felt he’d already tested by going over her head to request this hearing. And finally, there was Kristen’s table, where she sat, flanked by Sydney and an older, suited man whom Spencer took to be some kind of lawyer.

Looking at Kristen from across the room, Spencer felt like he was seeing yet another side of the girl. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, her stiff blouse buttoned up uncomfortably high, her shoulders hunched inward, as if by doing so, they could help her fold up and disappear. He noticed that she had kept her eyes fixed on the same spot of the table ever since he’d walked into the room.

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The Dean started the hearing by asking Kristen to give her account of the night. She talked about the house party she and Sydney had both been invited to in a dilapidated, old mansion at the end of Greek row that no doubt had been passed from generation to generation of frat boys. She described the crowded rooms, the overwhelming lights and the noise, the people she’d seen in growing numbers running outside to throw up in the bushes.

And then she started to talk about this guy, whose name she wouldn’t learn until later, who bumped into her and caused her to spill her beer all over herself. She learned that Sydney knew him. Apparently, he was someone she had dated in the past and things hadn’t ended well, so Kristen was already wary of him. But he knew where the cold drinks were, so she let him grab her a beer. Since this guy was the only other person at the party that she knew, she stayed and talked with him for a while. She thought he was a rather quiet, shy guy, as he let her ramble on, maybe a bit too long, about the anxieties of transferring schools. She said it felt nice to be listened to, even if just for a little while.

At some point after he’d finished his second beer, he had started to become a little more forward. When she caught on to the fact that he wanted to do more than just talk, she had tried to make her way out of the conversation, but he wouldn’t have it. She had made it clear that she wasn’t interested, not once, but twice, before he had decided to use his size against her, physically blocking her way out. Looking up at him then, she’d realized how much bigger he was than her and started to worry about what he could do. So, she had pushed him as hard as she could and cursed him out, though she rarely used that kind of language, to show him she was serious.

As Spencer listened to Kristen tell this story, he could hardly believe what he was hearing.

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Though everything she’d said loosely lined up with his own recollections of the night, he couldn’t recognize himself in the guy that she was describing. The way she talked about him made him sound like some sort of aggressive asshole when all he had really been trying to do was get to know her. So, maybe he wanted to do a little more than just talk, but he didn’t see why that made him some sort of villain. He wanted to interject to explain what exactly she had gotten wrong, how she had misinterpreted him, but her testimony continued to move forward, uninterrupted.

Kristen had reached the part in her account where she said her memory became hazy. She could remember flashes of the party, but nothing distinctive. The next thing she recalled with any clarity was waking up the next morning in someone else’s dorm. Her first thought was that she’d gotten a little too drunk at the party and that Sydney had taken her back to her room. But then, she looked beside her and recognized the guy that she had last seen cursing her out at the party, and her thoughts began to run wild. She left the dorm room, petrified, too scared to even stop and look for her shoes.

Here, Kristen got a little bleary eyed and struggled to get her words out. “I’ll never be able to get over the fact that I can’t really know what happened to me that night. That’s what so scary about being drugged. You lose your sense of autonomy. For the rest of my life, I have to live with the fact that all I’ll ever know about what happened to me that night is from other people’s perspectives.”

At this point, the university court took a muchneeded break. Boarman used this time to advise Spencer on how he should move forward with his testimony. He told Spencer to try to talk as little as possible, to stick to the facts of the night, that though Kristen’s testimony had the advantage of being emotional, it contained very SPRING 2020

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little actual evidence against him. And that above all else, it was important for Spencer to underscore his merits as a person, all of the people who would vouch for his good character, all of the things he had done for the school, his spotless disciplinary record. In other words, he should make it clear to the board that he was a good guy.

So, when the hearing started up again, Spencer did just that. He recounted the events of the night, skimming past Kristen’s rejection of him and highlighting the guy in white, whom Spencer, out of a sense of moral principle, had prevented from taking advantage of Kristen. He talked about how he’d carried her all the way home through the snow, how he’d given her the bed while he had taken the floor, which no man with any sort of bad intentions would have reason to do.

He directed most of this speech to the board members, men who reminded him of his father, whom he hoped could recognize in Spencer a good kid, one like their own, who was taught the old-fashioned values of chivalry, who was here only as a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On the other side of the room, Dean Felten listened to Spencer’s testimony with a steady, unwavering face and, after he finished speaking, announced that she would take some time to ask them questions before the board voted.

Since Spencer’s place in the university was the one at stake, most of those questions were to be directed at him.

“How drunk would you say you were on the night of the incident, Mr. Richmond?”

Spencer considered this. He had certainly been more drunk before in his life, on many occasions, but he couldn’t say that his memories of the night weren’t hazy at times. “I’d had a bit to drink.”

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“Enough that you felt confident to approach Ms. Brown?”

He nodded.

“And how did you feel after she rejected you?”

Spencer shrugged. “I was pissed off,” and then after a look from Boarman added, “But not enough to do anything about it, of course.”

Dean Felten paused for a moment, looking like she was deliberating how to phrase her next question. “Mr. Richmond, how often would you say it is that you are rejected by women?”

Spencer heard one of the student assistants stifle a laugh. He forced nonchalance.

“Everyone strikes out sometimes.”

“I’ve heard from other students at this university that you have been aggressive in your attempts to flirt in the past.”

Spencer shot a glare in Sydney’s direction, and she matched his gaze. No doubt this was her taking one more shot at him while she could. He shook his head before turning his attention back to Dean Felten. “Was there a question you wanted me to answer there?”

She smiled at him without any humor. “Are you aware that four women have been drugged by parties thrown by members of your fraternity?”

“Objection,” Boarman said, leaping out of his seat.

Dean Felten glared in his direction. “Mr. Boarman, do I need to remind you that this is not a criminal trial? You have no right to object in this room.”

“Well, the questions you’re asking my client are unethical,” he spat.

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“If you cannot find it in you to remain quiet, you can kindly excuse yourself,” Dean Felten replied.

“So, let me get this straight. You’re drunk, you’re pissed off, and you have easy access to drugs.”

Boarman stood there for a moment, opening and closing his mouth like a bloated fish gasping for air before slumping back down into his seat.

Spencer looked at Dean Felten without making any sign that he agreed or disagreed.

Dean Felten proceeded. “Have you ever seen someone given drugs without their knowledge, Mr. Richmond?”

Spencer thought back to the frat parties he’d attended over the years, to the stumbling girls he’d seen being led into backrooms, to the exchange of pills under a table, the overheard rumors. But had he actually seen someone be drugged? “No, ma’am.”

The Dean studied him for a moment, perhaps trying to parse out all of the things he hadn’t said.

“Let me put it this way,” she said. “If you wanted to obtain drugs for any reason, do you think you could get them?”

Spencer remembered midterms his sophomore year. He’d put off studying and was holed up late in the library, struggling to cram a semester’s worth of learning into one night, when one of his fraternity brothers appeared at the table beside him, unzipped a backpack full of orange bottles, and slipped him a little white pill before disappearing without a word. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but the incident had stuck in his mind, however subconsciously, ever since. The awareness that all he had to do was ask.

“So, tell me,” she said. “What stopped you then?”

Spencer opened his mouth, ready to give the good guy speech that Boarman had prepared him for, but then he caught Kristen’s gaze for the first time since that night. Under the intensity of her stare, he could suddenly see himself as she did. He saw all six feet of him towering over her at the party, saw his face turned crimson as he yelled at her from across the room, saw himself pounding drink after drink, rambling drunkenly at his friends, one of whom passes him a pill just to shut him up, saw himself grab the unattended beer can from off the table and slip a pill into it, as he looked into the face of a woman that, in his anger, had begun to morph with his ex’s and every other girl who had ever wronged him…

“Spencer?” The Dean asked, and he snapped back to reality. He opened his mouth again, but found that he could no longer deny that, on any other night, he could’ve been the guy in white.

n n n For more information on author Shea Lianne McCollum, please visit our Contributors Page.

“It’s possible,” Spencer conceded, and he could see Boarman clutch at the table out of the corner of his eye.

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SPRING 2020

FICTION | ALENKA KOŽELJ

Latin

By Alenka Koželj

This year, spring went past me carelessly. I am like the top of a stone jutting out of the river that the water, flowing all around it, never reaches. I like comparisons like that. They give you the feeling that the scenes of life correspond with each other and that, taken together, they make every event mean something after all.

That everything isn't meaningless. Meaning gives me great joy. Meaning is something we sorely need. When the days are monotonous, they lose their names and flow past me like clouds.

remnants of an ancient city. But they don't care for it. All day long they stare at their epileptic screens. Man has built entire civilizations on the attempt to express our complicated spirals of emotions, which can nowadays be shrunk into something called an “emoticon” and something called a “like.” I get nauseous at the sole mention of these words. My mouth spits them out like pieces of inedible food. I wish I’d never learned of them, but they have infected me like measles. I feel like scratching all this rubbish off.

Because I love meaning, I also like art that offers it. That's why I paint religious scenes. I started as a child. In Sunday school I was always showing off pictures of Jesus surrounded by his disciples, or the image of his mother looking at him lovingly in a dilapidated manger. I don't sell my paintings and, except for the exhibitions in our high school’s hallways, never show them. Nowadays, people laugh at this kind of art (I've seen how my students smirk at the look of them), just as they laugh at my other love, which is Latin. I could say that Latin is my greatest passion. My students don't understand this passion either, and I find that particularly sad: so young but already so hardened. They have no regard for anything beautiful, solid, and noble. Latin is like a wonderful glaze that surrounds the world and under which everything is more sophisticated, smooth and undented. Latin never changes: it isn't like a river that flows, it's more like a deep lake, in the depths of which one can see the

This summer is really hellish. The sun nails me to the ground, it doesn't allow my thoughts to spread their wings. In the streets and on the buses, I'm surrounded by naked teenage bellies and strange caps, under which all the boys look like idiots. Why this infantile indecency, why this lust for attention? Luckily, our school doesn't allow such things. Nothing is sadder than a school hallway that looks like the redlight district. I don't know where all the young people get their lust for nakedness. Nowadays, decency is not fashionable: it's been replaced by plunging cleavages, torn-up jeans, and fishnet stockings.

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I’m also realizing that I am very much alone in my life. That is not necessarily bad. When alone, one's thoughts become clearer, one ponders oneself. In such moments, I prefer to paint. Right now I am working on a scene where Christ says that the one who is without sin should cast the first stone. Lately it's been

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haunting me. The adulteress resembles the young girls I meet on the street, except she's not enthralled by her phone and she doesn't have ear-buds jammed in her ears. Why doesn’t anybody want to listen to the modest but grave sounds of the world? Why does every life have to have a special (customarily idiotic) musical background?

All of a sudden, the phone rings. It's her, after two months of total silence. I answer, but before I even manage to say “Hello” she bursts hysterically into tears: “Aleeeš! I neeeeed you!

He duuumped me!”

offence was too great. Now she can't bear it any longer, and starts crying again. When she finally catches her breath, she continues: “He said it wouldn't work out… That I was too clingy…

That I was… That I was too old for him…” When someone is that desperate, there is always a button you can push to trigger an avalanche of sadness, hurt, and bitterness. With her, the button is the fact that she is too old for him. I know her. I know how her vanity must have suffered. When she calms down again, she continues in a more composed manner: “Do you think… Do you think there's a chance of us getting back together?”

Ah, of course. Sooner or later, it always comes to that. She always leaps too far, falls on her nose, and drags herself to me.

“I don't know, I really don't know… It's hard to say. I don't know him at all. But don't call him, OK? Wait for him to call you.”

“Aleš, tell me why this always happens?!”

“And if he doesn't call?”

“I don't know, I truly don't know… Tell me, what happened…”

“If he doesn't call, he doesn't call. And you'll have to accept it.”

She composes herself for a moment as if reassured by the mere fact that she can now speak about the two of them (though “they” are no more).

“Aleš, why is it always like this? What am I doing wrong?”

“I don't know… You know, the usual. He was becoming more and more distant, he showed less and less interest in me… Then he stopped coming home from work… Last night, I baked a salmon, I told him that I was doing it but he still didn't come. I went to bed alone… Do you know how awful it is to sleep alone after spending the whole afternoon preparing a romantic dinner?”

I murmur: “I can imagine.” She really is somewhat inconsiderate.

“Well, the other day he came home in the middle of the night. I waited for him and we had a big fight… He said… He said…” The

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“You're not doing anything wrong, these things happen…”

“But they happen to me all the time!”

“Well, not ALL the time… Not every relationship is meant to succeed, you must know that after all this time…” I feel sorry for her. Deep under the surface satisfaction of knowing I’m right (it couldn’t have worked out, he is far too young for her), paired with the tiniest of grudges, I feel deeply sorry for her.

She knows no restraint. And she is always so sure of herself when she is in love: she thinks she is as unique as the birth of a planet. Now the right time has come. In a whisper: “You can come to me.”

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The sniffing suddenly stops.

“Are you sure?” she says, her sobbing stilled but her voice still trembling.

“You can always come.”

“OK… I'll just get my stuff together and I’ll be there…”

She hangs up without a goodbye.

People might say that I'm naive. That I should teach her discipline, the kind you need to learn how to conjugate verbs. Maybe I should teach her Latin, maybe then she would be more moderate, more peaceful and content. Maybe the cases and gerunds would bend her chaotic nature, put her world in order… Then she would appreciate me more. I shouldn’t always let her come back into my world. Every time she brings storms and destruction. But I do what I do.

What else can I do? After all, she is my wife.

n n n For more information on author Alenka Koželj, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SPRING 2020

FICTION | RANDIE FINELL

Falling Debris

By Randie Finell

The rock crushed them both. It wasn’t how he wanted to go down. It wasn’t how she wanted to go down.

And that was meant in every way. He remembered ranting and wailing to her that falling debris killing his favorite characters was something that pissed him off more than anything else in shows or books. It was a cop out. A way to kill someone when the tone was getting too peppy.

Nothing’s wrong with a little pep.

He liked to see some meaning to death. Some meaning to his death.

He lolled his head to the side. The earthquake had caused a piece of the cemented bridge above them to break off. He didn’t even see it coming, the shaking was distracting. Trying to catch her hand while his world swayed even more so.

But she saw it.

She tackled him. In the middle of the chaos she tackled him from behind, sprawling both of them into the sand below, trying to get away. The piece landed. . . . It covered the bottom half of both of them.

She was just a little shorter than he, so just a bit more of her organs were beneath the rubble. She died almost instantly.

When the cement hit there was a moment of him seeing her body snap up, the back of her head hit the cement as the rock forced her body to bend itself over and back. Her spine snapped.

She lay dead facing him. He lay dying facing her. He reached out a hand to caress her cheek in a pretty gesture of love. His arm ended up flopping across his body, his palm smacking her square in the face.

By now the ground lay still and his pain was a faded thing.

He snaked his way up to her cheek, using his fingers like mountain climber arms to reach it. He imagined those snowy mountains and giggled at the thought of a giant hand climbing to the top of one.

He imagined her in a fuzzy blue Cookie Monster winter cap, smiling as they skied.

He rested his hand on her warm cheek, feeling accomplished. He pretended he was pushing his love into her.

He always had a crazy imagination.

He shook his hand from side to side lazily as he tried to tell the world that if anyone deserved a meaningful death, it was her.

Then death took him, like an instant dark mood killer.

n n n For more information on author Randie Finell, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SPRING 2020

FICTION | TRUDE MEISTER

Coffee and Crullers

By Trude Meister

As he did every morning, Wilbur rose at 5 a.m.

He showered, shaved, then stood in a crisp, white dress shirt and his undershorts to peer at the contents of his clothes closet. That particular day, he scowled at the row of garment-laden hangers, then reached into the closet and pulled out a blue suit.

do something that wasn't legal, along with the promise of a hefty bonus. When Wilbur declined, he was met with stony silence before being tersely ushered out of the boss’s office. He knew there were other men, younger, hungrier men in the company who would do such a thing. But, it just wasn't within his principles.

Once dressed, he donned his overcoat and proceeded, briefcase in hand, to trudge his way through the snow to the donut shop. By six a.m., surrounded by the rich scent of sugar and coffee, he enjoyed a steaming mug and a cruller, which he consumed by breaking off small chunks and dunking them a bit into the coffee before eating them. His overcoat hung neatly over the back of an adjacent chair. His computer was open to an employment website, one of several Wilbur had perused for the past six months to no avail.

The following week during a round of layoffs, when some rather minor employees were dismissed, Wilbur was sacked at the same time.

He could almost feel the vibration tremble through the junior staff when this fact was discovered, at the same time he grabbed an empty copy paper box to collect his possessions, while the anxious security guard hovered rather apologetically nearby.

The problem with not having a job, he thought, was that when you needed a job, it was impossible to get one, thanks to being jobless.

Potential employers would nod politely, smile appropriately, and yet Wilbur was sure he was invisible to them as the result of his lack of current employment. If he had a job, he mused, he would become visible to them and garner their interest.

He would rather like being unemployed, thought Wilbur, except for the circumstances under which he had been removed from his position.

There was a beckoning email, then a meeting with his employer. Then a whispered proposal to

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Wilbur was certain that his handsome office was now occupied by one of those younger, less principled men, one who wouldn't mind conducting a bit of impropriety for a substantial check. The thought infuriated him.

When Wilbur finished his coffee, he brushed a few crumbs from his trousers. As he did so, a shadow passed over them. He looked up to see another man, about twenty years older, regarding him with unsmiling seriousness.

Wilbur waited, thinking the man would speak.

When the man remained silent, Wilbur looked more closely. The man bore a striking resemblance to Wilbur's late father.

“Have we met?” Wilbur finally asked.

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“May I sit?” the man asked in reply.

“Please do.” Wilbur indicated the empty seat across the table. “Coffee? I was just going to get a second cup. Perhaps you would care for a donut?”

“Black, please, and a cruller, if it isn't too much trouble,” the man replied.

Wilbur returned to the glass display counter and bought two crullers and coffees. As he returned to the table, he was struck again by how much the man resembled his father.

The man thanked him for the coffee and broke off a small chunk of the cruller and dunked the piece into the coffee. As he chewed, he regarded Wilbur. At last, he spoke.

“You look great,” he said, and finally smiled.

“Absolutely fantastic.”

Wilbur frowned, resting his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Thanks. But I'm straight.”

The man laughed. As he did so, Wilbur noticed he had a gold crown in the same spot where he himself had a gold crown. He stared at the man again and rubbed his forehead. He felt an odd sort of deja vu, if deja vu were reversed. It was almost as though he was looking at an older version of himself. A smile lingered on the man’s lips.

The smile chilled Wilbur, who realized it was the same smile he had seen in photographs of himself.

“You've figured me out, haven't you?” The man asked.

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“What do you mean?” Wilbur asked in return.

He could feel his blood pressure rising, the familiar thudding in his head. “Who are you?”

Although Wilbur inquired, he already knew. He shook his head, thinking it was impossible, but even as he did, he realized that this older man wasn't Pops. It's me. An older me, he thought, my older self.

“Let me cut to the chase, young Wilbur,” the man said. “You have been unfairly laid off. You and I both know why. You have access to information that could be very damaging to the very people who cut into your career. You should take advantage of that fact.” The man sat back in his chair and took a sip of his coffee before dipping another piece of cruller into it.

Wilbur sipped his coffee, painfully aware that he was watching his odd personal habits played out by the stranger before him. He sighed, sadly disappointed at the suggestion from his older self.

“Supposing for a moment that I agree to that, which is unlikely. How do you think I would pull it off?”

When the older Wilbur finished chewing, he said, “Remember that reporter you met last year at the company party?”

“He was an asshole!”

“I know! But, he's a widely circulated asshole.

You still have his card. Call him.”

“I signed a confidentiality clause when they hired me.”

“I know that, too! No one will ever know it was you.”

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“Why didn't you call him?”

Now it was the older Wilbur's turn to sigh. “I waited too long. I kept thinking if I looked long enough, I would find a job. But, I never did. I had to start drawing social security to keep me fiscally fluid. But, you're still young enough. This is the opportunity to take your revenge.”

He's so bitter, Wilber thought. Do I really become the angry old man before me?

The idea appalled him, almost as much as what his older self was suggesting. He felt sympathy for his older self, but he was still suspicious.

Could this be no more than an elaborate hoax?

“How do I know that you're really me?” he asked his companion.” Tell me a secret that only I would know.”

“You own a scarf. It's plaid. You hate plaid, but you love the plaid scarf because your mother made it.”

It was true. His mother had made him the scarf one year for his birthday. It had survived three states and a marriage. Wilbur finally nodded.

“Thank you for that. And thank you for the suggestion. I'll take it under advisement.”

The two men rose and shook hands. Wilbur felt a shudder run through him when he touched his own, older hand. “Any other wise counsel?” he asked. His older version shook his head before slipping out the door into the early morning.

In the ensuing weeks, Wilbur often thought about the visit from his older self. He wondered how it was possible and wished he'd had asked.

Wilbur felt oddly protective of the old man and, as a result, started thinking of ways he could improve his older self’s life. He did the repair jobs around the house that he'd neglected. He ate better, exercised more, and planted perennial CANYON VOICES

flowers in front of his house, hoping his older self would like them. He didn't tell anyone about the visit.

Weeks later, he was at a job interview to speak with another one of those recruiters who had a practiced smile and a firm handshake. The woman had almost finished the list of questions and was wrapping things up. While Wilbur knew he had done well, he also knew she wouldn't call him back.

“This is the last question,” she told him. “Why should we hire you instead of one of the other applicants?” Her brown eyes were looking at him, but he still felt invisible.

“I make my bed every morning,” he replied.

Her attention shifted. She was now looking at Wilbur instead of through him. “Excuse me?”

“I make my bed every morning. When I wake up, I know that when night falls and I go to bed, I am going to be an older, tireder version of myself than I am in the morning. As a kindness to my older self, I make the bed so that the older me has a nice bed to sleep in. The older version of me is always grateful to the younger me for doing it.” He smiled. Since the older Wilbur told him he wasn't going to get another job, he had nothing to lose by refusing to take the process too seriously.

The recruiter's eyes narrowed. “So, what you're telling me is that you anticipate future needs.

You're proactive instead of reactive. You plan for future contingencies by managing small but essential details.” She looked at him again, really looked at him.

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sound like a nutcase. Instead, he just nodded a bit solemnly.

The recruiter stood and smiled. It wasn't the practiced smile this time. She shook his hand.

“Thank you for coming in. Frankly, I think you're exactly the person we've been looking for to fill the position. I'll have a contract drawn up and emailed to you later today. Thanks for coming in.

Congratulations. I hope this is the beginning of a long and happy association.”

“Thank you,” Wilbur replied. He stood, and the recruiter walked him out to the waiting area and told the secretary to prepare a contract to send him.

As Wilbur walked out the glass door of the office, he stopped to wrap the plaid scarf around his neck. To celebrate his new job, he decided he was going to take a little break from healthy eating and stop at the donut shop on the way home for a coffee and a cruller.

n n n For more information on author Trude Meister, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SPRING 2020

FICTION | EVAN J. CERNIGLIA

White Rabbits

By Evan J. Cerniglia

All the chickens were gone. Now it was just a garage, and there in the dark corner, Dougie nodded off. It was an old spot in Brooklyn— supposedly a poultry farm once—but now there hung posters of black-haired singers on the walls. John Darnielle, a doomed songwriter out of North Carolina, was a local favorite. We hung a poster of his ninth album cover, a lonely tree before a fading sunset, on the bathroom door.

The bathroom was where you went when it was dark too long. Then you would lie on the ground with toilet paper around your neck and it would almost be dark forever.

Dougie and I considered ourselves songwriters.

We had spent the last year finishing our magnum opus—a three song epic about a cigarette butt named Ash. The album was called Ash’s Ass Adventure, and when my mother called in late August, I told her the name and she said: “Maybe it would be better if you came home.”

“You don’t like it then.”

“I never said that, Ethan. I said maybe it would be better if you came home.”

We released the album the night before Christmas. It was Dougie’s way of sorting out the real fans. The frauds would be half drunk on their aunts’ sofas by then, in a room that smelled like Christmas trees and beer, nodding off to half-dead football announcers, while the real fans—of which there were few—would be here in the dark, far from their families.

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Dougie was nervous because a local critic—my high school girlfriend—was to attend the release party, and she ran a small blog that became something of the Official Review in town. Her name was Anne Christy, and she was the only person in New York who knew me when I was younger. *** Dougie was hanging an Ash’s Ass Adventure banner on the back wall above the drum set. The garage door was shut, and the only light streaked blue and thin through the side-door window.

That’s where I was standing, watching my breath disappear. You had to do that sometimes; watch your breath or pinch your wrists. Anything to remind yourself that you were still alive.

Especially now, when the music hardly affirmed it. But it was nice by the window and there was a clean cut of snow outside.

Then the banner fell and Dougie leapt off his stool to get it. I could hardly see him in the dark.

“Need a hand?” I asked him.

“No, prick.” Then he pinned the banner’s edge to the wall and said, “Actually, toss me that hammer prick.”

I went looking for it, but it was very dark away from the door.

“Hey prick,” he said.

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FICTION | EVAN J. CERNIGLIA

“I’m looking.”

Outside, the cars passed in thin cold streaks. You heard them and knew they were going someplace, but it was hard to imagine where.

“Any luck,” he called—his voice echoing in the dark.

“No. Maybe if we opened the damn door.”

“It’s cold out there, prick. You wanna’ freeze?” I did. Then I found the hammer in the corner.

“Hey, Ethan,” he continued. “I was asking if you wanted to freeze.”

“Shut up. Here’s your hammer.”

He turned it in his hands like he was disappointment or something. For what reason, I did not know. Then he looked at me and said, “Oh, alright then.” And he hammered in the dark. *** In truth, Dougie was right. It was cold outside, damn near freezing. I was underdressed, wearing a leather jacket that used to make me feel tough.

But I didn’t feel tough anymore. Not like I did five years ago, when Anne and I were still in high school, kissing cold skin beneath the bleachers.

No. I didn’t feel tough in my leather jacket anymore, and I walked down the snow dusted avenue with my hands in my pockets, wishing I could see the cracks in the sidewalk.

I fell into a bodega on Central for cigarettes. The clerk was standing behind the counter, watching the news. Above the snack aisle, there was a small flat screen hanging. Over 50 dead, London Fire.

“Marlboro Reds,” I said. The clerk took his eyes CANYON VOICES

off the television and fetched a packed. Then, setting it on the counter, his gaze landed once more on the screen. He had messy, yellow eyes and I wondered when they got that way. Then I handed him my debit card and said: “50 dead?

Terrible.”

“10-dollar minimum,” he said, not taking his messy yellows off the TV. “Oh. Alright.” I checked my wallet, feeling the empty lining I’d expected, besides three crumbs that had been there for a year. “I’m sorry, man.

It’s all I have.”

Then, not saying a word, he swiped my card and turned the receiver around. I entered my pin. We waited. Long, uncomfortable waiting. Then the machine clicked. The receipt filed out—black ink printed on thin paper—judicial text—tough and true. I signed my name and left. It was cold outside, and I was underdressed.

The release party was all dead rabbits. It was one of those sunny winter evenings that makes a joke of your sentimentality. One day you’re making snow angels. The next, it’s all melted, and now you’ve gotta’ find something poetic about that too. Once when I was younger, I found a rabbit in the woods that was slower than any I’d seen before. Slower like, it didn’t run and hide as soon as I got close. Instead, I’d advance, and it would scamper off a few feet, then wait—turning its head to make sure I was following—like a little, white guide. Ralph Waldo Emerson I thought I’d found, following this rabbit—forgetting the awful things written beneath desks and urinal stalls.

No. It was all behind me. There was only that white rabbit, and I followed it deep into the woods until it ceased to move, and still as it remained, I advanced slowly to see why it had stopped. Then, getting closer, I saw the three white shapes, rotten between the brown and

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yellow leaves. Three dead rabbits. And things became strange.

So, the release party was all dead rabbits. We drew in a small crowd of kids who hadn’t gone home for Christmas yet. Then the amplifier blew a tube. It was cold and dark in the garage.

“Let do an acoustic,” I told Dougie, as he tried to fix the broken tube on his Marshall stack.

“No. Hang on.”

He didn’t call me a prick, so I knew he was upset. Not upset because the tube was broken and there was a skinny group of kids left waiting in the dark. Upset because Anne Christy hadn’t showed up yet, and I wanted to get a move on. It had been an hour and we hadn’t performed anything yet. The garage door was predictably closed. Anybody that wanted to enter had to come through the side door, and the window was shuttered, so that you couldn’t see the world behind it. And when a tall, thin boy entered, letting in a slap of cold air, Dougie turned like a rabid dog and said: “Close that fucking door!”

And the tall thin, boy nodded his head and joined the other seven, sitting cross-legged on the cement.

“It’s not going to work,” I said. “Let’s just play it acoustic and get this over with.” Then, Dougie turned and looked at me with a blankness that suggested a threat. The room felt colder, then.

“Alright,” I said. “Alright.” And standing there in the thin blue slant of light, I decided it was better that Anne Christy didn’t see this. ***

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Anne never showed up. She called and told me that her father was sick, that she had to be home for Christmas, and that she wished me lots of luck.

“That’s alright,” I told her. Dougie had sent the shortest one out to fetch a new amp. The others were sitting in the dark, taking turns to use the bathroom. A skinny kid with red hair was banging on the door. Someone had been in there too long. “It’s not going too well, anyways.”

“No?” she said. Her voice sounded far-off and warm.

“No. It isn’t.” The kid was banging on the door.

“Are you home already?”

“Yes,” Anne said, while I sat against the wall. The wall was hard and cold.

“How is it?” I asked her.

“How is what?”

“Home.”

“Oh. It’s nice, I think. My mother is acting a little crazy. I think she might be drinking again.”

“Oh.” “Yes,” she said, laughing. “Yes, but it’s nice.”

And somewhere far off, I heard the sound of a drunk uncle. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but I knew that he was drunk, that he sounded like an uncle, and that there were probably many other family members packed together on an old couch. I tried to imagine what Anne looked like in her pajamas.

“I found some of our old letters,” she said.

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FICTION | EVAN J. CERNIGLIA

“What?”

“Some of our old letters. In my shoe-box.”

“Oh, no.”

And she laughed quietly. “Yes! Yes,” she said.

“You were quite the romantic back then.” Then it was quiet. I scraped the ground, getting something chalky and dark. *** Then the amp came in and Ash had his little adventure. Dougie sang: Now he burns on the avenue, blacking up a crack.

Far from Saint Clarissa’s lips— carnival with Dylan.

Far from glass stained windows— far from orange shed and bike pumps.

Far from Saint Clarissa.

Ash is far from Saint Clarissa.

But the entire time we performed, I imagined the garage door opening, the white light pouring in on us all—the young, thin and lost—and my mother standing outside, looking at me with a chipped guitar in my hands, and beckoning.

Actually, the garage door did open late in the set, but only because two of kids in the back had gotten into a fight. There was blood coming out of the shorter one’s nose – his eye was busted and pink. The other had blood in his long, black hair. He was tall, and red beneath his lip. Dougie opened the garage and shooed them out.

“Go on. Get the fuck out of here!” he said. And the small crowd, thin dark bodies, ushered them out – breathing like a slow, dark wave. The bloody boys were banished into the cold white light. The tall, thin one looked at me on his way out. Then Dougie shut the garage doors again CANYON VOICES

and set the mic up by the drum set. What did it mean? Nothing. Who were we singing to? Noone, and what was Dougie thinking of? I don’t know. Saint Clarissa, I guess. Saint Clarissa and Ash, while my saints were all somewhere warm, and I was cold. I admit it. I was really very cold. *** I was eleven years old when I made my first song. It was a gentle song about love and marriage, delivered with that perfect naiveté that only fools or children possess, and I made it on a sunny day in my old bedroom.

My father was sleeping downstairs on the couch.

My mother was at the afternoon mass. Through my bedroom window, I saw a neighbor mowing his lawn. He was an old man with a thick neck and big hands, and as he mowed, his wife sat on the porch with a straw hat tilted back on her head, so that the sun was on her face. And something about the sight of these two people, whose names I never did know, sent me my first song.

It was a quiet song about love and marriage.

But when I woke my father to show him what I had made, he was very confused. What are you writing songs about marriage for? You’re not married, are you? And sitting there, I became very confused, because …. no, I was not married; But this song that I made: It was about marriage, and I did not feel very in control of the impulse that drove me to singing it. But my father shook his head and said: “Why don’t you try writing something honest?”

So, I went back to my room. The old man was still mowing the lawn. His wife was still on the porch. But there was something strange about seeing them there; strange as if I had set them up SPRING 2020

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that way. Strange as if I could swoop down at any moment and turn the lawnmower upside down, or slant the straw hat down over the woman’s eyes, so that the sun would only tan half of her face.

“Be honest,” I told myself. Be honest. And I tried to be honest until my mother came home from mass, and woke my father on the couch: “Why are you sleeping?” she yelled. “You’re supposed to be watching your son.”

She came up the stairs, carrying bread, and sat on my bedside. Then she hugged me, and I became the most honest boy in the world, because…. as she held me, I didn’t just close my eyes and smell her hair like I did before. No. I kept my eyes open and noticed where the sun shined a harsh white light on her dead ends— where the dust had gathered in the corners I ignored. Then, coming up the stairs, I saw my father. He was tired, dressed in black, rubbing sleep from his eyes. I looked at him for a long time over my mother’s shoulder. *** When the show was over, we kicked the stragglers out. I opened the bathroom door.

There was a kid on the ground with toilet paper around his neck. I picked him up and threw him in a packed van. Then I helped Dougie clean up as fast as I could.

“What’s your rush, prick,” he asked, coiling a long, black wire.

“Nothing. I just need some sleep.”

Then he looked at me—it was very quiet—and asked in his old voice: “Are you alright, Ethan?”

I didn’t feel so hot, so I walked down Central

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Avenue for a while. It was dark and cold as hell.

Most spots were closed for Christmas, but I found a little Spanish restaurant with frosted windows, and when I pressed my face against the pane, I saw what looked like a happy family.

There was a little girl with braids in her hair, and a grandmother carrying a big cake. Then a shorter fellow with a moustache—who I presumed to be the girl’s father—lent a hand to the older woman because she almost dropped the cake. Then their party guests—all seated on wooden stools—keeled over with laughter, and the old woman let the father hold the cake.

I must have been looking for a while, because the little girl pointed at me, and everybody spun around on their stools. I waved and left, feeling a little hollow.

And with melodramatic instinct, I tried looking for the moon. I couldn’t find it, of course. The clouds overhead were dense and gray. I spun around looking for it until I got dizzy. Then, I saw what looked like a white light pressing through. I waited for the cloud to pass for a pretty long time, freezing my ass off with my hands in my pockets, but when the cloud finally passed, there was no moon behind it, and I figured I better get some Pepto-Bismol.

So, I landed in a CVS. It was mostly empty and there was Christmas music playing in the background.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire Jack Frost nipping at your nose Yuletide carols being sung by a choir And folks dressed up like Eskimos I found the Pepto-Bismol and went to the register. The clerk was an older fellow with a thin lip.

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“How are ya?” I asked him.

“Yeah, sure.”

He didn’t answer. Just cocked his head a little and put my medicine in a plastic bag. Then I noticed these little Rudolph stuffed animals they were selling out of a basket.

“It would be nice—you know? Your brothers would be very happy, and I—”

“Cute,” I said, touching one. Then the old man picked it up, scanned it, and threw it in my bag.

“But I’m not going to force you, Ethan. When you’re ready to come home, you’re ready. You know?”

“Oh no, I…” He cocked his head and smiled at me. Then he made a strange, guttural sound and I realized he must have been deaf. “Oh, okay,” I said. Then I left, and turning around, saw him through the window. He reached into the basket and picked up one of the little Rudolphs. *** “Well, thank you for calling at least,” she said, far away on the other end.

“I know,” I said. I did, after all.

“I know.”

“I’m glad you called, anyway, Ethan. I am glad.”

When I got off the phone with my mother, I stood at the edge of the sidewalk and watched the cars pass. It was cold as hell, and in the window of a closed boutique across the street, they were selling white jackets.

n n n For more information on author Evan J. Cerniglia, please visit our Contributors Page.

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FICTION | MARK LEE

Lisa, Leo, and Leo

By Mark Lee

My dad was in his truck coming home from a funeral when McCarville and Father Talbor waved him down on the North Road near our house and told him his older brother Leo had died during the night.

Two of his other brothers, Tim and Dick, had already passed. Both lost to the bottle, dead long before their bodies gave out. This was different: Leo was more like my dad. He’d always been around, a fixture documented in the old purple-gray photos – Christmas in the Depression, playing piano in his bathrobe in 1952, dance hall days. He went to a school in Denver after the war and became a jeweler.

He’d smile at us through the round magnifying lens that swung down over one side of his glasses. He’d bare his teeth at the corner of his mouth and make that chucking sound. He always had a Pall Mall going, sending a thin stem of smoke up from a tray on his bench into the yellowed fluorescent light. In the end, he’d spent two weeks mainly staring at the ceiling tiles in the county hospital. In his last hours, he’d sipped at the air with increasing strain, then just stopped.

Two days later, on Friday, I stood in front of the high school at noon, killing time before I could leave for the funeral. I stared up from the sidewalk, lured up from the boiling hormone dark inside me by a faint and sweet alarm. The strange warm wind had come again to move against the raw winter air and make new sounds

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in the high reaches of the trees, to carry into town a sweet-sour fragrance of pastureland and cow dung softening under melting snow, to tease and confound with the thinnest promise of spring. I tuned my ear to the first green groanings of buds from bare branches, and grass shoots from cold ground.

But I was raised to distrust good news and disdain portents and signs; I raised my jacket collar and pulled my neck down into my shoulders in silent affirmation of my doubt. I put my headphones on. While bodies of students blurred around me, I heard again that slightly off-key English voice sing, “…[A] jumped up country boy, who never knew his place…” Every time I (mis)heard that Smiths line, some voice inside me said that is what I am. I was also skinny and clumsy and a proven coward on the football field. I saw inside me a storm of toxic combinations of inherited traits.

My mother and father both had good faces, but in me, I figured, the bloods got mixed together wrong, distributing the worst features of each – my mother’s sober almond eyes, my father’s bumped and bulbous nose – clumsily over my face. I had a wide imagination, easily set afire by sudden senseless fears. They gave me that too.

At the twelve-thirty bell, I took the jacket and tie from my locker and walked down the street to the church. I was early. I entered through the sacristy door and was greeted again

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by the smells of varnish, and candle black, and new carpet. The hallway lights were still off.

Through the glass panes, I could see the stained-glass light pouring down onto the altar.

I ducked into the bathroom and put on the jacket, then took my time with the tie, a sixties prep school job someone left behind. Soon, I heard the cracking open of heavy wood front doors; the ushers had arrived for their instructions. After some minutes, the doors opened again, and continued opening. They were all coming in now.

Uncle Leo and Aunt Christine’s adult children had come from Ohio, Florida, Illinois, and Indiana. Patty, the brood’s forewoman, had arrived first. She’d hurried out from South Bend with her two twin-ish daughters and her everpatient husband Jay. At the front window I watched their two-tone station wagon pull up under the bare elms across the street. Patty opened the driver side door, and I could see her already snapping out orders to the others in the car. Half interested, I waited to see what the girls looked like. The back doors began opening.

And there she was. Lisa.

I recognized the face, but everything else was different. I watched her body unfold itself from the back seat and prove noticeably taller. I saw her hands emerge from slits in a deep green cape coat and rest on the top of the car door while her sister got out behind her. I could see the bottom of her black skirt, the white tights, the shiny black shoes. She and her sister were dressed almost identically, no doubt their mother’s idea. I watched her tilt her head up just slightly, as if smelling the air. With the backs of her hands, she flipped her auburn hair out from beneath the cape collar. She looked around at the crummy houses, at the trees

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above, then up and down the street, and finally across at the church.

In the next instant they’d all crossed the street and were walking up to the church door.

She looked right at me through the window. She didn’t smile. She just looked. Not thinking, I stared directly into her eyes and was met there by something old and familiar, emerald green and calling: Wistful tenor voices carrying over fields, sunlight breaking from behind low clouds, birds singing riotously after hard rain. I was surprised by a sudden rushing-up in the chest, a hot pressure in the eyes. Afraid of what she might see, I fled back into the gloom of the church. I tried not to look at her during the funeral.

From my seat, I could see Uncle Leo’s bristly old eyebrows still flying out from his forehead just above the lip of the coffin. I could smell my mother’s face cream nearby. Dave McCarville’s regular monotone treatment of the liturgy once again gave its hypnotic effect. Then, the Dreaded Sign of Peace, with its clammy handshakes and averted eyes. (At Christmas mass my older brothers used to replace the normal “peace be with you” with a close whisper of “go to hell” or “hail Satan.”) Leo’s eldest children, Mary and Eddie, sang a queer rendition of “Red Sails in the Sunset,” which amused then irritated me. Father Talbor raised the chalice gravely. Forgetting myself, I looked to the far set of pews to see Lisa dabbing at her eyes. I corrected myself sharply.

After, I felt the cool holy water on my fingertips, and I bowed out through the choir door.

In the thick, heated air of the outer hall, the hugging and handshaking and back-patting was underway. Fragments of stories and condolences passed my ears. Every few minutes

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the church doors would open, and that strange new air would hit me again. Then back to varnish and snuffed candles and breath. I came very near her once and heard her quick laughter at some remark.

Moments later, I saw her mother ushering her and her sister out the front door and through the front windows, saw them hurry across the street.

My dad and I didn’t want much to do with each other back then, but there on the sidewalk after the funeral, I saw him in a new way. Leo was the third of Dad’s brothers to die within two years, a truth that until then hadn’t fully sunk in. He was stepping off the curb toward his truck, and I said with an unsteady voice, “Dad, you’re not going to be the next to go, are you?” It surprised him, and me. He stepped back up on the sidewalk and put his arm around my shoulder briefly, tentatively. He told me I didn’t have to worry about things like that. He said, “Your mother and I will be around for a long time.” Then he got in his truck and drove away. I walked back to the high school, my eyes smarting again.

The rest of the day my head was off somewhere, but my teachers didn’t hassle me. There were long hours after the funeral and before the wake. *** After basketball, I walked down to the end of the street, through tall weeds, and crossed over the railroad tracks to the north side of town. As I passed behind the baseball field, the back of my forearms and the top of my head tingled at the certainty of seeing her again, and soon.

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Some heavy, painful-sweet sludge was shifting around in my gut, sometimes pulling at my chest like the beginning of a great sob. Some remote voice in my brain was nervously rejoicing, foolishly proclaiming. My mind played clumsily over random images – the shiny black strap of her shoe, the dash of freckles across her nose, the liveliness of the skin of her face, her hair farooshing out in slow motion from her cape collar. I barely noticed the day shutting down around me as I walked along the North Road. Through the trees behind the grade school, I watched the red sun draining away in the west.

I never walked the slanted road at the north edge of town, the most direct route home. I always cut over to walk the alleyways that bisected our block and gave views to the wild, overgrown regions behind the shabby houses.

The air had cooled, but the tease of spring still moved faintly in it. I looked down the alley, out past the cemetery north of town, and into the sky far away above the old Sioux Nation, and my mind was asking a single simple question: Can I have what I want? I heard singing and a woman’s billowing laughter as I approached our house. Leo’s wake had begun. The streetlight buzzed and flickered on above me as I unlatched the back gate. I came in through the back door and went downstairs without looking up. She was already there, I knew that. I fiddled around in my room. I put on a button-up shirt and looked at myself closely in the mirror, at my crooked nose, at the green and black-edged shards encircling my pupils.

A familiar force pushed back on me as I climbed the stairs. Through the banister I saw a room full of people who’d known me from birth – relatives, family friends, local merchants and their wives – standing in clumps around the

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living room, chatting on the sectional couch, or cramming into the kitchen. Kids had segregated themselves in the dining room. That’s where she was, sitting primly by her sister at the table, her arms resting on my mom’s quilted place mat. She’d changed out of her funeral clothes into jeans and a sweater.

I got a can of Coke from the kitchen and came back to the dining room. I made no announcement of my arrival. I tried to give my attention equally to every face, tried not to look at her too much. She saw me but gave no special notice. They were all talking about some TV show. “I never saw it,” I said dully when someone asked. My younger sister, Kate, an eighth grader, had sensed something. She could home in on emotional frequencies, especially mine. She briefly studied my face, then looked at Lisa, then back at me, and gave me a sweet, superior smile. I gave her an ice-cold look.

Those were our cold war years.

the edge of the placemat. “Yeah, we’re freshmen at Kennedy,” she said, including her sister.

“What’s Kennedy?”

“Oh, it’s our high school; it’s Catholic,” she said.

“You a sophomore now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s alright.”

I saw the corner of her mouth curl, and she began to smile. She turned her face to me: “Remember at the creek?”

“The what?” I said, even though I’d heard her clearly. Images of dappled sun and red and yellow bathing suits and muddy white legs arrived in my mind.

“Last time we were here … c’mon,” she said in her soft voice.

I heard the singing getting louder in the living room. The party was out there. The dining room began to empty out. Kate gave me one last dose of that smile as she left with a cousin. Lisa didn’t move, just sat smiling pleasantly. She remained there even after her sister got up and went to sit next to her mother’s folding chair in the living room. I could already hear Patty’s gravelly voice out there, singing out above the rest.

“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said nervously. “God, that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

When all the chairs on my side of the table were empty, I could no longer avoid sitting down.

Lisa’s head was turned, and she seemed to be gazing out toward the lights of the hospital. I assumed the tone of the upperclassman. “You’re in high school now, right?”

“Can you show me where the ice is? I want another Coke,” she said.

She glanced over at me. Her finger moved along

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She retreated a little. A wave of clapping sounded from the living room. She shook the ice in her glass. I must have been just gawking at her, because she gave me a quick bemused look and began getting up. I watched her move past me toward the kitchen. She had a clean smell, with a touch of perfume.

I got up, knocking my knee against the table leg, and followed her. The kitchen was empty of people and the light was off and stayed off; we moved in the dull copper light of the streetlight from the alley. I went to the fridge

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and grabbed a Coke, pulled out the ice tray. I wanted to take her glass and pour it, but I thought again and put the tray and the can down on the counter near her.

awareness of my lips, then an alarming sensation in the groin. My suspicion that my body wasn’t entirely under my control surfaced again.

“I saw you in the church and I barely even knew who you were,” she said, dropping cubes into her glass delicately. “Never saw you in a tie before.”

I heard a grating voice, unmistakably Patty’s, call from a far distance, but then approach quickly from the direction of the living room.

“Lisa?” it said, getting closer. The sound of the party washed in again. “Lisa, are you in heeere?” Her voice whipped into the room like a wire cable. I turned to the source, saw that puffy, avid face. Her ambitious white belly was making an appearance below her blouse and above the outsized red belt buckle of her slacks.

She glanced at me, then suggested firmly that her daughter join everybody else in the living room.

I became keenly aware of our bodies, more like adult bodies now, mine skinnier but longer than hers. Last time I saw her, she might have been boy; she and her sister had identical short haircuts. Now I looked across at her auburn curls, spreading over her thick turtleneck and down. She had hips.

“Mark?” I heard her voice say.

The soft texture of my name in her mouth and the neat, eastern way she curled the “r” into a gentle halt at the “k” set me further in arrears. She was smiling again, leaning against the counter, sipping.

“You look pretty different too, you know,” I said. “You look really … you look … really nice,” I said.

She said, “C’mon,” looking up behind me somewhere, laughing it off.

I felt a rush of blood to my face and my eyes sought a moment’s refuge on the countertop beside her. When I looked back up, she had lowered her head slightly and was giving me a shy smile.

Then, all the noise of the party seemed pushed back, quieted. I felt a sudden strange

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Lisa gave me a covert look as she passed me and followed her half-pickled mother. For a moment I stared at the place where she’d stood.

I took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. *** I found them all gathered at one end of the living room. A casual light from the hanging lamp fell across the paneled wall and over my mom’s prized Monet print (Woman in the Garden), which hung above the big Wurlitzer organ. My big sister, Nancy, sat at the organ bench, her back to the room, her toes resting on the bass pedals. I saw Lisa sitting by her sister on the brown scratchy carpet nearby.

The evening had begun like many family gatherings at our house. The music started early and never really stopped. Nancy would start out playing old church goodies like “Day by Day” and “The King of Glory” for the older folks.

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Then she’d mix in some of the funny songs she’d played for us when we were little, like “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey, a kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?” She could read a crowd. She knew when to start dropping in the Irish hits, like “Black Velvet Band” and “Danny Boy” and all that.

When I showed up, things had begun to swing.

The organ volume had steadily crept up, and now the bass notes began to rumble.

Nancy’s long red hair swung side to side behind her as she played “Mick McGilligan’s Ball.” Kate now sat beside her diligently turning the pages of sheet music.

But Nancy was and always had been just the warm-up act, a billing with which she was perfectly happy. My older brothers, Mike and Bill, the long-hairs, were coming up later.

Everyone knew that. They’d bring the fast fingers, the blues and soul. They’d bring “Kansas City” and “What I Say” and “Oh When the Saints.” “McGilligan” romped to its end and brought down a roar of applause and a lifting of glasses all around the house. Nancy turned to the room, her green eyes vivid and beaming.

Though his body was resting in the ground two miles north of town, at that moment I knew Leo was in the room. I could almost hear him laughing. I felt the same grand, gentle force in the air that I felt when my grandpa died. The evening was now folding over from the bright, sad hours of the funeral day, to the remembrance of good times, the celebration of Leo’s life. There was nothing else to do.

As the applause died down and the room grew quiet, Kate placed and smoothed new sheet music on the stand. Nancy, as always, became serious, gave the music a quick, cursory

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review, then rested her fingers on the keys. You could tell she was counting off the song only by the sharp little nods of her head.

The doorbell rang.

Nancy’s fingers lifted from the keys. My dad began walking to the door, but it opened from without and a cold air thrust in. A tall, thin man, of no relation to the family, stood on the porch in a Stetson hat and a black western-cut suit, the pants riding high on the torso. He held a guitar case. From hollows beneath a barely interrupted span of black eyebrow, I could see his small, quick eyes peering into the room, searching for warmth. Lines of scar tissue climbing his upper lip suggested a past surgery, perhaps to repair a cleft. I knew who he was – a local man named Leo Richter – but I couldn’t think why he would be there. Nobody could. I watched to see if Eddie or Mary or Patty seemed to know him (their wing of the family ran in their own circles); but they gave no sign of it, just looked fascinated with Richter and his strange entrance. Richter was one of a small sect of fundamentalists in town, a self-styled cowboy preacher who worked at the feed yards during the day and held Bible study at night. He was always promoting some church fundraiser, or men’s group, or children’s camp, and his guitar was always with him.

I watched him give the front of his hat a quick tug, then hustle his guitar and a small amplifier into the room in front of him. He sat the stuff down by the organ and darted back toward the door. I saw Lisa and her sister scoot back on the carpet to get clear of his path. Patty was badly put upon, huffily pulling her chair back and steadying her drink, her belly still parading around. The party had stopped. I saw my dad and Richter exchange a few words by the door. Then the stranger was off again,

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returning a few seconds later with more equipment.

cotton-mouthed from their sorties to the back patio.

Another trip produced a microphone stand and a cassette deck. He worked furiously to string it all together. Everybody just watched.

Aunt Sue stood smoking her skinny cigarettes.

Leo’s third daughter, Shirley, the cool one from Florida, was growing increasingly angry. “Why don’t they just tell him to quit? I want to hear Mike and Bill play,” she said, an indignant look playing over her pretty face. But nobody moved from the room. I began to feel an ugly, angry feeling deep down. My face and scalp began to feel hot.

I saw my mother give my dad a cross, questioning look. My dad, a few Chivases in, seemed a little embarrassed, but mainly jolly, the leaden face I’d seen earlier in the day now gone. He glanced rapidly around the room, avoiding eyes, especially my mother’s. I knew she hated loving him sometimes. He finally stood by the organ and (in an overly-loud MC voice that made me scoff) introduced Richter, who he said wanted to play a couple of songs in tribute to Uncle Leo. A strange, canned music soon emitted from those speaker boxes, like Christian-country from a metal pipe, complete with whiny pedal steel and tinny drums and strings. He sang with a fake country affect, and overdid it with the vibrato. At the start of each song he crouched his lanky body around the microphone and listened for his cue in the backing track to sing.

He sang a song called “On the Wings of a Dove.”

Another song told the story of an old cowboy going to talk to St. Peter. Even after the third song he was afforded polite applause, but when the fourth song started, people began to defect. Most stepped down into the family room on the other side of the house, which my dad had converted from a two-car garage in the seventies. I did too. Tonight, it was a murky zone of mellow light and vague figures moving just below a long shelf of cigarette smoke. My older brothers, Bill and Mike, lounged on my mom’s wicker furniture, both red-eyed and

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As I walked back up into the living room, I was surprised to see that many of the relatives from Uncle Leo’s side of the family, including Lisa, were still gathered around listening to Richter. I noticed that the songs had grown slower, weepier, and gooier. He’d added a remorseful lilt to his voice. He’d begun inserting little monologues between songs, complete with borrowed sentiments clumsily fitted to tonight’s dearly departed.

I saw my dad in the dining room laughing with his golfing and drinking buddy, Bill Olson, the bank president.

“Dad can’t you just tell him to stop?” I said to him. “He’s played for like an hour.”

“Who?” he said.

“Him,” I said, pointing. “Him, Richter.”

“Oh, no, no, I don’t think … he’ll stop pretty soon,” he said, putting on a look of fake concern. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and turned back to his friend.

I walked farther into the living room and was surprised again. I saw lowered heads,

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handkerchiefs out, tears flowing! I looked over at cousin Patty: she was boo-hooing away, one of her eyes a big makeup smear. (We’d find out later that Patty liked funerals and wakes, and attended them at every opportunity.) Cousin Eddie wasn’t crying; he was standing by the wall looking toward the ceiling with this weird, beatific look on his face. I looked down to see cousin Mary sitting on the couch weeping into a large white kerchief with red crosses stitched in the corners.

As I watched Richter’s flushed and perspiring face at the front of the room, it occurred to me that he was using some sick formula against these people, against my family. He was holding Uncle Leo’s kind old face up in front of us, bringing it all back, reminding everybody of our loss, then pouring his sad songs all over us just to keep the wound festering. And he was getting off on it.

I looked down at Lisa, but I couldn’t see her face. She still sat cross-legged on the floor next to her sister, but now her head was bowed.

Then she looked up suddenly, looked directly at me, her face puffy and messy with tears. And somehow, she was even more beautiful than before. Again I felt the weight of that strange magma, the weight of love, moving within my gut and chest. And yet, somehow, the poisonous fog of anger was there too, and the two things did not feel the least bit compatible. My heart galloped and heaved. My stomach boiled. Down in the space just to the left of the organ, in the soft lamp light, I saw where all the cables from Richter’s equipment converged at one power strip, and where the power strip plugged into the wall. I walked around behind the mourners, past the curtains and the picture window, following the wall around to that place. Richter

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was just reaching the third chorus of “Jesus Lead Me Home” when I reached over and jerked the plug from the outlet. The music stopped utterly, save for the pitiful sound of his unamplified guitar and voice, which hung naked in the air for a few seconds before dying out. In the torturous silence, Richter’s head jerked from one of his black boxes to another, searching for the fault.

Then my words leapt out: “What the hell do you think you’re doing,” I said in an overloud voice that wavered somewhere between male and female. “Don’t you think these people have had enough for one day?”

I felt a small thrill of release, but knew at once that the angry fuel that had brought me to that precipice and pushed me clear, had been exhausted. I surveyed the upturned faces of the crying party just in front of me, and now found dumbstruck looks tinged with the strange angst of having been deprived of a cold comfort. The relieved and satisfied faces I’d expected were nowhere. Farther back, I found my mother’s mildly terrorized face as it sprang up from her bridge club confab on the couch. I saw the wide eyes of my long-haired brothers peering up from the shadowy lowlands of the family room.

Lisa stared up with the same unreadable look she’d worn in front of the church hours earlier.

And I was left standing at the front of the room with my old friend shame, the hot shame at knowing that the venom I always held down inside had again sprung out like the tongue of one of those fly-catching lizards, and found its target, but splattered every other face in the room, too.

My eyes dropped to the floor. Following a wellworn escape route, I moved stiffly through the

SPRING 2020

FICTION | MARK LEE

living room, past white and upturned faces and all their eyes on me, the room extending, faces smearing sideways, dreamlike, until ten miles later I saw my dad’s Sunday shoes beside my path at the edge of the dining room. I found his face, and what I knew was the ebbing of that secret smile he used to get when my mother wasn’t looking, when his stifled joy could find release only by glowing out from his eyes like green embers. It was a beautiful thing to see, so I stopped there to watch it just fading, just for a second, and it was enough, more than enough, to send a brief warm breath against the ice-cold moan blowing inside me at that moment. I saw

him catch himself and look sternly in the direction of my mother, and I knew she was on her way over. I naturally descended into the dark beyond the banister.

I stopped my hand’s normal move to the basement light switch. And down there in that limitless space it all seemed like one thing. The grand, benevolent air of my uncle Leo’s passing, his kind face going, going. Green eyes. My name in her mouth. From above I heard again the strange new wind in the trees outside and it sounded like hope.

n n n For more information on author Mark Lee, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

FICTION | DORA LEDESMA

The Good Wife

By Dora Ledesma

I dream of hopeless wonders and surreal delusions, of void fairs with carnival revelry and children crying in fields of white and purple lilacs. I dream of lullabies my mother would whisper into my ear, and in the late nights I’d wail about the monster appearing in my room – who oddly enough my mother was also afraid of but couldn’t help to love. And I surely dream of a man. A man who lays down his fists, eyes filled with a burning compassion. Flesh on flesh, only being able paint my sickly skin with colors of black and blue. Clasping his hulking grip over my throat, rendering me speechless and dismayed and drained and gasping for not air, but some sort of endless sleep. “Stop! Stop!” I’d say, only to engage his release. And in delivering the last blow I would simply lay there, breathing raggedly and hopeless, but inexplicably satisfied. He reminded me of the monster I wailed about, both frightening yet nostalgic.

For a second Grace stood paralyzed in the kitchen. She slowly took in the feel of the room, it was whiter than the palm of her hand. It had little to no decoration, which gave it a neat and spacious look, like that of a blank canvas. There was but a single window open and still she could smell the air of freshly cut grass, both damp and refreshing. There were two entrances--opposite sides of one another--both of which were low arches, similar to those of a catacomb. However, it had a more colonial look rather than that of an ancient crypt. She stood staring at one of the gaping holes, afraid her husband would come down before his breakfast was ready.

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In the ten years of her marriage, Grace faithfully did her best to convey that of a good wife.

Whether this meant having the natural aura of a motherly impression, the effortless beauty of a messy pin up while making breakfast, or the subtle sexual appeal reserved for her husband and his naivete jealous influences. She accepted it.

However, over the years, she had changed substantially. Her hair, once a black spool of silk, heavily fruitful with pulse and innocence, was now brittle and faint like dust on an ashtray. Her frugal clothing, tattered and stained, was further accessorized with skittish fingernails rooted in filth. Tasks that were formerly quite simple, had in truth, become harrowing for her. Still, she held onto her fantasies. Fantasies of her husband boastingly talk about her over a drink with his friends or a simple game of golf. Saying things like “I’m well taken care of” or “I’ve got a helluva wife.”

Perilously did she yearn for these things to happen, but it had not been so. Yet, she continues to live day in and day out with the sole purpose of making him happy. Therefore, like any other morning, she had prepared breakfast to the best of her abilities; hoping that upon entering the threshold of the kitchen, her husband would be besieged with the strong aroma of coffee grounds and clean linen. She was preparing coffee and humming to herself a tune she couldn’t quite make out the lyrics to yet. She had a hunch that it was something nostalgic but equally as frightening as it was comforting.

SPRING 2020

FICTION | DORA LEDESMA

She came to an abrupt stop when she heard the dull sound of footsteps. She knew that it was Richard coming down. When he had entered the kitchen, she watched him closely.

He wasn’t very tall but of an average height and a stout build. In the light, his dark black hair was glossy, as if it were a small dark wave unable to cover the majority of his skull. However, what had not covered his head gave him sideburns and busy knuckles. He wore a deadpan expression like that of a mask and yet she could always tell when he wasn’t in a good mood. He sat at the lone table reading his newspaper and for a while had not said a word.

There was very little movement. Everything seemed ear-splitting: the crispness of a page turning, the radiation of the wind chimes next door, resonant was the wind that intruded their home, and how vibrantly heavy coffee could be when cascaded into a mug.

When finally, he sat his newspaper on the table.

She was curious to see what he had seen.

The headline boldly read: Husband Charged for Wife’s Suicide Attempt. After an in-depth investigation police discover 38-year-old David Miller was responsible for wife’s suicide after finding signs of abuse on the body.

“Too bad. He only takes those who can patiently wait.”

“Could you imagine finding me like that, Richard?”

“Jeez Grace, don’t be crude.”

But she could never truly believe that would happen. Richard was always so gentle, so tolerant. He never laid a hand on her, even when she felt it was deserving. If anyone was being abused in their marriage, it would have been him. The things he put up with, being married to her. She was an awful cook, a careless housekeeper, incapable of bearing children, and still she had really let herself go.

He was right.

Hell, it was like she needed her hand held just going to the bathroom. Some might even assume that there was some kind of mental incapacity to her, but that wasn’t it. It was just the simple byproduct that came with stupidity. Stupidity that began to manifest the moment they met.

From the beginning, he was always thoughtful enough to call her out on her faults. Grace, who by nature was always so easily swayed, tried her best to fix them.

Deep in her thoughts, she contemplated the ifs, ands, or what-ifs of her life that in an attempt to refill his cup, the hot beverage began to overflow.

The story was pretty cut and dry. Grace’s brows furrowed. “Abuse?” she said.

“Dammit!” He immediately sprang up.

Her sudden response threw him off. “Yup,” he said.

Grace frantically searched for a rag and rushed towards him.

“How awful.”

“Don’t!” He said with his arms raised.

“Just about.”

Though she knew she didn’t have anything to worry about, she involuntarily flinched.

“Well, God bless her soul.”

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SPRING 2020

FICTION | DORA LEDESMA

“Could you just-” He let out a sigh, eyes scowling.

“I’ll just do it myself. Shit, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

All Grace could do was stand there and let it happen. She had messed up. How useless.

‘Useless!’ Incapable of doing the simplest things.

She thought about how she should’ve gotten herself a less patient husband. Surely, he would’ve made a better fit for someone as incompetent as her. A husband who could really set her straight.

However, when he finally did manage to get inside, he had walked right past her and settled on the couch with his face buried in his hands.

With no regard to anyone or anything.

While it was obvious that he was in no mood to talk, Grace still expressed her concern.

“Dear?” she asked.

No answer.

“Did something happen?”

God, she really was crude. She felt blessed that she wasn’t the woman in Kansas.

Humored again with a response of silence, she opted for a change of subject.

That afternoon, she dedicated herself to ironing a shirt Robert had asked her to have ready for him.

He had an important lunch he wanted to look presentable for and had warily asked Grace to take care of it for him.

“Um...well I ironed your clothes. I might have burned it a bit, but don’t worry it was only on the inside, so nobody will be able to tell.”

She was applying the same two motions, press and spray, each time lightly sweeping her hands across the shirt while smoothly straightening any small hills.

In an instant, he released his hands from his face and directed his attention to Grace.

“You burned it?” he said.

“Well…kind of.”

Press. Spray. Press. Spray. Press. Spray.

“Wha- How? How do you burn clothes?”

Over and over again, until suddenly there emerged faint scorch marks. Although barely visible and resided only on the inside of the shirt, she felt she could cry right there. She had felt the urge to burn the shirt altogether. What’s one scorch mark going to make a difference in a pile of ash?

“Well I-”

But before she could become stirred with agitated thoughts of raving solutions, there were faint sounds of crushing gravel coming from afar.

It was Richard. He was home early in expectance of finding a clean ironed shirt. Upon hearing the struggle of the doorknob, Grace immediately felt lightheaded. Nevertheless, she stood her ground and waited.

Grace was unable to produce any sound. She stood there speechless.

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“What? Did you just forget about the iron being down and leave it on like that?”

“No I-” “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

“I ask you for one thing. One thing! Can I not depend on you at all? Why? Why are you always messing up? Isn’t a wife supposed to be useful for her husband? Isn’t she supposed to keep the

SPRING 2020

FICTION | DORA LEDESMA

house clean? Have dinner ready? Or be able to iron one god damned shirt?”

There was that silence again. Except this time, there was nothing that would interrupt it.

They were alone with only each other to bear.

“I’m...sorry,” Grace said.

He closed his eyes and let out a small groan.

“Yeah, ‘sorry’. Just forget it, I’m gonna go lay down.”

She attempted to coax him with one last attempt of generosity.

“Do you want me to fix you some tea? It might help with the headache.”

“Don’t be stupid. I just need some rest.”

Ah, yes, I’m stupid.

She stood at the foot of the stairs watching him head straight for the room, followed up by a closing door. It was a small scuffle, one of many they had faced before, but it felt lethargic. So, it was in this small affair that she came to the conclusion: she would no longer let him suffer.

She made her way up the stairs and into their bedroom. Richard was already sound asleep and, looking over him, she couldn’t help but smile.

You could still see the kindness. Moments shared between them. Times of late-night meals, long conversations, and secrets shared after endless drinks on the balcony. His eyes, although closed, seemed to possess some peace within them.

Unable to comprehend the meaning of tragedy.

And perhaps they didn’t. I love him, she thought.

She felt fortunate to have had a husband like him.

She went straight to the bathroom, scrimmaging

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through the drawers as if she was searching for her missing earring. She came upon these long silver scissors. The same ones she had used countless times to cut her own hair, because she was much too embarrassed to ever go to a salon.

Taking it, she felt the urge to trace the end of it across her thin skin, but she restrained herself.

Instead she walked beside the bed where her husband laid and placed her hand against his face. His head and neck lay placated inside her hand with her thumb nuzzling his cheek.

Suddenly, it wasn’t so much as nuzzling, but wiping. Wet. She felt something wet on his face.

They were tears. Her tears. Because it was as if her body realized what her mind hadn’t and was for a moment stuck. However, that moment had quickly passed, and she was ready for what was about to happen.

She took her instrument and performed something of a velvet touch. How remarkably painful but freeing it had felt. How beautiful the walls were painted. Bright and dyed with compassion. It was as if they emitted a soft melody. Perhaps it was something of Liszt.

Liebstraum? Who knows? All that was known was that this was the color. The color well suited for this room she and her husband once shared.

Running through her fingers, it felt humid and warm. Instinctually her fists clenched and how odd it felt having it run down in a gradual trail towards her elbows. This feeling sent grooves of chills up her spine. Exhilaration. Congruent to the feeling one gets when holding the naked anatomy of an egg. The melody she had heard before was gone, but somehow something new had emerged. It was of a higher pitch and greater intensity, much like a howl. Her shoulders jittered and she began to rock uncontrollably.

She felt a loss of breath coming from her abdomen and a tightness in her chest. Only for a second could she recognize where it was coming from. What hilarity had ensued her. She held her

SPRING 2020

FICTION | DORA LEDESMA

hands across her mouth, muffling the sounds of her frenzy and was only able to stop after a few minutes. Finally, she was able to regain her composure and wipe the tears from her eyes to pick up the phone.

The police were already on their way and still there was that serenity. That was until her eyes scanned the room and she gasped in horror of what she had done.

“Oh no, this isn’t right. This just isn’t right.” She began to bang her fists against her head. “Stupid!

Stupid! Stupid!” And continued to do so for a matter of minutes.

After a while, she felt exhausted. Taking a deep breath, it all became clear to her now. She walked downstairs and headed straight for the sink. She had returned with a number of cleaning supplies: gloves, bleach, ammonia, scrub brushes and trash bags. She began to clean every nook and cranny until she was sure that there was no evidence of a mess. She had left the room completely spotless.

She took a step back to admire her work and finally felt this sudden relief. She sighed.

“How completely idiotic of me. Robert would have been furious if he knew I let them see this mess. I really am utterly useless.”

For the first time in her marriage, Grace felt a sense of reprieve. She had finally fulfilled her duty as a wife. To make her husband happy. She thought if there was a heaven, he would definitely be happier there than down here with her.

Every time she closed her eyes, she could see it.

Heavy and dark, but definitely not obscure. In fact, it was all quite clear, what a bittersweet memory it was. Oh, how wide his eyes had become from the first key she struck and how

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unable he was to say anything with his mouth full of noise. She supposed he had cried out to her, but all she heard was the sweet melody of her name being played over and over again.

Laying there in the bed he was immersed deep within his being. Blotches that formed shapes of memories both of sorrow and devotion.

She wanted to share the happiness that elated her. But the deed had been done. Finally, it was in those moments that the words had come back to her. And so, she sat there, stroking his hair, whispering into his ear: Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these sunken eyes and learn to see All your life You were only waiting for this moment to be free She chuckled.

She made her way to the bed and decided to lay there until their guests would arrive. It was to her desire to lay beside her husband and stay by him, like she was always meant to do.

It had been a long day and all Grace wanted to do was sleep. She went to the linen closet, picked out a white wool comforter, draped it around her husband and crawled in next to him. She thought, perhaps, that this way she’d surely see him again: the man of her dreams.

n n n For more information on author Dora Ledesma, please visit our Contributors Page.

SPRING 2020

FICTION | ETOSHA MAGEE

The Dance of the Night

By Etosha Magee

There she stood, marvelous and sacred, in the center of the town. Her branches extended to the heavens as if she had been beckoned to share her fruits with the gods themselves. She is gold to the poor and a full belly to the hungry. Without her, I would be nothing.

When the sun is low, I tread through the switchgrass, dressed in black to blend into the night. I creep barefoot so my feet are gentle and silent when they meet the earth. And when the guards shine their flashlights into the fields, I melt into the ground and move as sly as a snake.

By the time I reach her, I am muddy and tired, but she always has a warm spot waiting for me hidden underneath her bountiful branches. She lets me rest for a few moments and awakens me with the gentle sting of the moonlight on my blue skin. Her branches always sway in the nighttime as the katydids hum in perfect harmony. Together, we dance for hours; she lowers her branches to spin me around. With her, I become Gene Kelly.

And when our bodies begin to tire, we stop to feast. She drops her succulent fruits into the palm of my hand and smiles down at me as I tear into crimson flesh. Some nights she provides seconds, and others, thirds. And when the sun begins to break through the night sky, we bid our farewells.

Her branches hang low as I sneak back into the fields and find myself straying further and further away from her grace.

As I wait for the night to return, I admire her beauty from afar. I watch the children climb her branches and the tourists posing in front of her with their hands reaching out to mimic the picking of an apple. It is a wonderful sight that I do not get the privilege of seeing for quite long. For it only takes a few minutes before my shoulder is tapped with a baton and I am told, “Sir, you cannot be here.�

n n n For more information on author Etosha Magee, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SPRING 2020

Shea McCollum is currently an undergraduate student studying Creative Writing at Pepperdine University. Her work has previously been published in West ind and the International English Honors Societ Jo rnal.

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Alenka Koželj was born in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. After high school, she attended the Faculty of Arts, where she studied French and Comparative Literature. She graduated in 2005, obtained her MA in 2011 and her PhD in 2019. She is currently self-employed as a freelance writer and translator. She has published her short stories in all the major Slovenian literary magazines. In 2019, one of the biggest publishers in Slovenia published her book of short stories, Lo ilci sanj (Dreamcatchers). She lives and works in Ljubljana.

Randie Finell is a medical studies graduate with a minor in English and an unhealthy obsession for stories. If she isn t reading (she s probably reading), then she is likely participating in one of her many other nerdy hobbies, in which writing is only one. She likes to remember that a good hobby is like a big ol dragon, easy to witness but hard to conquer. Though how can she not try, I mean, it s a dragon?

Trude Meister was raised in Paradise Valley and obtained a degree in Ornamental Horticulture before living in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

She settled on a small farm on the outskirts of Phoenix, where she raised corn, chickens, goats, and four children. Trude has been writing since she snagged her mother s old Royal Deluxe portable typewriter at age 15. Since then, her articles and short stories have appeared in a variety of local publications. Her award-winning sci-fi novel, Rings in Time, was published in 2012. She is a member of the Polished Writer and she frequently travels, often landing in Cuba, where her heart is tethered to helping the special needs children of the Los Quintas de Molinas program in Havana.

Evan Cerniglia is an MFA candidate at New York University, where he plans to complete his first novel, Saint Joe, an autofictional account of his father s life and suicide. As an undergraduate, he was awarded the firstplace prize in the Rowan Creative Writing Arts Contest and workshopped his stories with award-winning authors such as Helen Schulman, Hari Kunzru, and Darin Strauss. Evan s fiction is partly informed by his education in film production at NYU Tisch. As a filmmaker, he was forced to learn a visual language, which challenged his longstanding efforts in prose. His fiction has previously been published in The October Hill Maga ine and Str ct res of Feeling.

Mark Lee is an award-winning San Francisco-based journalist whose work has appeared in Wired, Al Jazeera, CNN, ABC News, The New York Times, and many others. He s currently a Senior Writer at Fast Company magazine where he writes about emerging technology, politics, artificial intelligence, social networks, and misinformation. He began writing short fiction in 2015 while studying with the poet and author Alexandra Kostoulas at the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. Lee grew up in Nebraska. Much of his fiction explores the social and political tension between the coastal innovation centers that are literally inventing the future, and the vast digital deserts in the country s middle that are rapidly being left behind. He earned his masters degree in journalism at Northwestern University in 2004.

Dorailiana Ledesma is an English major at Arizona State University. She was born and raised in the hot precipice of Phoenix, Az. Although she hasn t published before, she has an amateur background in journalism by shadowing a former journalist. She has written a number of unpublished short stories, most of which are still in the works. She enjoys reading Hemingway and uses his style as inspiration. She is working on a novel and is hoping she will be finished soon.

Magee has been writing novels, scripts, and poetry since she was in the second grade. After taking a hiatus from writing in high school, she decided this was her true passion. Once Magee started college two years ago, she began writing again and is working on an English degree at Arizona State University with a concentration in creative writing. This is the first time she has published one of her works, and she hopes to continue with this process throughout her life. In the future, she hopes to share many more of her stories through film, television. and, of course, books.

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POETRY | NATASHA DEONARAIN

White Heron at Veteran’s Oasis Park, Chandler, Az

By Natasha Deonarain

Of the water but not in it— mist-colored body barely visible in the tip-toeing light; steam like fingers tickling sky, stretched from breathless water to the endless points of your mouth, legs; a mesmerizing duality at play until I can no longer see where you begin or end— around you, offering bowls of emptiness filled to overflow; fruits, sweetmeats, the constant bloom of lotus, a purified aroma of incense placed at your feet, emptied and then filled again with ever-changing fractals of our misunderstandings until you expand silent, shift to air and disappear into the whitening light you— of this world but not in it, I could be you— object of my desire.

Poet’s Recital

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SPRING 2020

POETRY | NATASHA DEONARAIN

When

By Natasha Deonarain

In those days we bit the sky— berry-lipped, blue-toothed, leaned into wind, ran naked through storms.

The moon was a gumdrop plucked, placed on our tongues so we could gob-stop our words, stare in wonder at the orange, red and green of it all.

We committed to stars, inhaled darkness, felt soft, smooth fingers of wind catch our bare arms, lift us to light— argued with bears and frogs as we stepped on cracks, laughing those dreams into grass.

And when blood seeped into our opened wounds, pulled our ragged bits together like mothers hugs, we became the whispers we longed to see— sweet and succulent fruit.

We became the forest and the tree.

Poet’s Recital

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SPRING 2020

POETRY | NATASHA DEONARAIN

desert oasis at summit place

By Natasha Deonarain

peacock sunrise fanning for attention one-eyed coquette— darkness subdued then disquieted slinks away as arms lift & fall above this rolling surface & inside this blanket of steam body rolls & twists & turns body recoils then springs from a wall slicing water like air a lifetime of practice to ripple as water ripples when lips touch as light ripples over obsidian tiles on the painted robin egg bottom of this bowl as song ripples from beaked throats cheering length after length flex & stretch into the place where skin dissipates & bodywater slipstreams into a grand new day Poet’s Recital

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SPRING 2020

POETRY | ANDREW BERLES

Roses

By Andrew Berles

Roses sit agog And the mice dote in the fields Drawn to the allure Of fallow flower frescoes And pink gossamer petals

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SPRING 2020

POETRY | AGENT KNOW

Sonnet 1 (Nostalgia)

By Agent Know

Nostalgia is a dull and rusty sword Whose reason lively mourned the shining blade Abut the repetition you have shored What show you from the distance you have made Sun-kissed the tops and bottoms on the grass Lay we gripped hands so firmly mine in yours Frustration gives itself a swallowed pass The butcher’s clap sensation still outpours Verbose the story’s premise overblown The promise of an epic journey’s tale A retcon leaves the story yet unknown Antagonists with destinies to fail Perchance a restoration of the dawn Will leave me some new thoughts to dwell upon

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SPRING 2020

POETRY | PATRICK MAY

On: Tenderness

By Patrick May

we named a beach after my brother. you can only reach it by climbing across the cliff that lines the largest beach on the coast, and once you are on it, it is enclosed on all sides by steep black rock, only open to the shore. it is– intimate. it is called Rory Tenderfoot because of my brother, like me, once refused to wear his boots on the beach. he climbed across the cliffs, cut the soles of his feet on the stone, and had to be carried home. this was before my time, of course. just part of the family canon, a cautionary tale that I never quite took to. we picked mussels for dinner, scavengers hunting scavengers and all of us clinging to a carcass.

I did not see the poetry in my pinched fingertips; I just wanted to climb. barefoot with barefaced determination that always flagged just before I reached the point of no return, before I reached the heights that would leave my ribs jutting amongst the bones, when the sea took me back. cliffs are snarling little beasts with teeth that slice through calluses, and even on beaches of silk-smooth stones with none to be found, sand always, always crawls into the cuts, slides between toes and under skin, is pervasive and stinging and loud.

I sat with feet ankle-deep in the shallows. little hurts, but enough to bleed, enough to seep into this beast that holds names, and hearts and blood, that still crashes against the ribcage that once held it. take blood; take sand; take the hurt. all it takes is a little giving.

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SRPING 2020

POETRY | LORRAINE CAPUTO

Islands in the Stream

By Lorraine Caputo

I drift through emerald countryside bathed by summer sun Thinking of my future

I drift through fragments of dreams shreds of poems

I drift hearing a woman’s gentle voice reminding me of my vision Was this a dream … … or a poem?

I drift through this greened countryside bathed by summer sun Thinking …

creating …

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SPRING 2020

POETRY | CYMELLE EDWARDS

Sinclair Wash Trail

By Cymelle Edwards

first it is rocky; scrambling; I imagine I will fall here but I don’t; the trail begins on a busy street then ebbs into another wood; paths are carved in vicinal directions; two of them are centimeters wide for those of us who run with wheels; I keep straight; no motor vehicles allowed, reads a sign along a neighboring fence; I think of a joke about my feet; how I should probably turn around; there are red flowers that mock the coalescence of baby’s breath and yellow daffodil, but bright red against a forest-desert tapestry; more rocks; more dirt; more fears of scrambling; on either side are ponderosa pine and backyards with high chain-link to fence out wildlife; have you ever seen a redwood? ; paths in this city become algorithmic— a sort of slow math; symbiotically connecting the vectored traces his bicycle tires leave in the rime alongside my tread; one house has brown wood panels against its back patio and a red chicken coop; I never see chickens when I pass; one backyard is littered with toys and a swing set and a pink miniature SUV—the kind with batteries and that can only fit a child; I never see children playing when I pass; one house has wooden corbels painted sapphire and inside one of its distressed rosette curls are speckled geckos doing pushups; one house has large artificial hedges separating its yard from the neighbors’ and there is always a person watering it when I pass; they are short and always wearing a hat and looking the other way; farther down is the wash, or where it used to be; there are lizards on white stones that jut from the side of the trail and traumatic triggers flash like instruments unfolding blows into their next set; for me the trail ends where the beardtongue’s splendor sheathes itself in a lap of winter fog; where I imagine he once posed for a picture; fallen trees are fallen like bending are fallen like cockroaches stuck on their backs with legs kicked up into the air; the trees look like they have arms and legs reaching out toward me.

Poet’s Recital

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SPRING 2020

POETRY | CYMELLE EDWARDS

Witness

By Cymelle Edwards

how do I show up for you like an apparition, or like mangled teeth tearing at your sightline do you have to squint when I appear like having never seen a sequoia and stretching your neck to gaze could it be that I am invisible so that fingers feel their way through space collecting transients occupying your vision and the chance of our meeting vanishes so that seeing you is a partition of earth and vengeance like your testimony travels in congress with lies as Ravens’ beaks break against their brood and I bear the only memory the only echo of our breaths terrorizing the empty room, afraid of their own wind, or is that too your burden

Poet’s Recital

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

POETRY | NNADI SAMUEL

My Girlfriend Says She Would Die in a Street Lamp

By Nnadi Samuel

When we found her robbing death of it's lumens beside a highway.. her eyes were jejune tangerines.. peeled into the barks of our anemic street lamp.. because it held her red blood in a lit cell.. there is a disturbing need for more lamps in all streets across my country.. everyday, a girl is plucked into the ripe night.. & nobody cares to know from which branch she fell off.. they only rear her in slices of their curse words, when they refer to her mother.. i lost my girlfriend to a blind date with her guilt.. she was tensely dressed, except for a little flaw in her mascara.. & how it didn't thicken the cloud she carried beneath her eyelashes.. he proposed, & she fell head over into a bulb that mates an army of dragonflies.. i admired her beautiful looks in the lamp.. she seemed more handsome in death, than she had been in life.. more pleased that a whole city couldn't do without her now.. a car stopped by & asked why the other roundabout was not litted.. i smiled.. & told him, each time a street lamp comes erect, a maidenhead goes limp.. he shook his head & zoomed off.. this time with my regrets boldly seasoned on his plate number..

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

POETRY | NNADI SAMUEL

My Body as a Backpack for Loved Ones & Things That Sit on a Wheelchair

By Nnadi Samuel

Twilight renovates my ribcage to stain a loved one on the stems of my spine. in my windpipe, this nursery of doubt is a nurtured phlegm conceived as a shapeless cloud. & it pees into my heart & into my brooched navel. & into my last draft in the clone of a rejection mail. sorry, this body of commitment isn't quite right for our friendship. best of luck placing your affection elsewhere. in the wee hours of a blind moon, i am a boy camping a friend's unmentionables in between my collarbones. his stench does not applaud the wrinkles on my shoulder blade, or how i untuck the inferno on my wrist. he fakes his own decamp within my body & makes a vein stammer at my orphaned silhouette. i do not document the biometrics of a friend wearing chameleons as tattoo. i never fancied rainbows or it's rag of changing colours. i reached out to my DNA yesterday, turns out i have a girl's problem. i celebrate every anniversary with a new guy in my life, that alone is betrayal enough. i bake the things i hold dear in my backpack, with no life jacket for toppings. my body is cesspool crowded with loved ones hassling over the loose flesh that harbors them. the universe in a bid to mock me, misplaces the moon in a girl's swimming trunk. the rest auditions their limbs on a wheelchair, & urges the Lazarus in me to sponsor her deformities.

CANYON VOICES

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POETRY | ERIC WIENING

Thin

By Eric Wiening

So I am growing thin My tired eyes My pale white skin A thinning of the veil A weak sigh A lost trail A roaring calm A deep wish As I sail into eternal bliss

Poet’s Recital

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

POETRY | CAROLINE “CARRIE” RUDEL

Creatures Bright and Dark

By Caroline “Carrie” Rudel

Let me heal you By the ache of my sullen flesh Let me be the solace you find When lightning shatters the fragile air Betwixt heavy hours of the night Feed me, gorge me on your warmth Your clouds of breath in the still dawn Plaintive echoes of a moonlit song Tip your tears down my shuddering throat I’ll lick the sulfur from your skin Eager and horrible Name me as you do the stars Would that I could join them In your beloved sky Should She protest our love I would know that my very creation was a lie For never have I been more certain of God Then in that sweet moment when I met your eyes That crash of surety Coalescing around bone-deep terror Nothing purer than My ravenous trust in you Faith A reckless conviction

Poem Recital Read by William J. Parker

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

POETRY | MISAKO YAMAZAKI

I Have Not Always Been Crazy

By Misako Yamazaki

When I could no longer handle the silence, / I was a lungful of water, each gasp of air a mouthful closer to drowning; / I was a sad heart that woke up crumbling, always losing pieces; / I picked blooming carnations from the garden of my soiled body, and the roots have left scars in the shape of thorns; / I was a hoarded pile of torn open Venus razors and more first aid supplies than your average 16 year old girl should ever need; / I was a stream of bleeding consciousness until I wasn’t thinking; / I was a hungry, frightful coward, begging, / and that is how I saved myself from sinking.

In 2013 I took the pills that were supposed to keep me sane / and went insane, / hoping not to wake up the next morning,/ but I still woke up the next morning. / I confessed to my mother I OD’d and that’s all I remember / until I woke again on a hospital bed halfasleep. / I was a wilted garden, girl-ghost, selfish teenage heart of pure gold and I felt nothing. / I wondered if I was actually alive or if this was the hell for which I had been waiting. / I was a scrapbook of love letters and suicide notes, of sweat-soaked hair, hazy eyes and heavy tongue. / My last inhale would be a dragging gulp of dry mouth.

I have not always been crazy, / but I swallowed dead flowers when I knew they were bad for me; / my teeth became the thorns I scarred myself with. / I have not always been crazy, / but that was not the first time I was on suicide watch, / not the first time the hospital door remained open all night with the lights on. / My body was not heavy enough to let me sink even though I wanted to. / I asked Death to take me past the River Styx / but he wouldn’t; / he knows I can’t swim. / So here I am, / a new flower bed of fresh chrysanthemums, / no more thorns, only healthy roots, / ready to live and breathe / again.

Poet’s Recital

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

POETRY | MISAKO YAMAZAKI

new york seeds

By Misako Yamazaki

i thought that she and i were like green ash seeds falling down from the same north american tree but it turns out we are not moved by the same wind or rain we are destined differently than seeds from the same green ash tree determined to split apart completely eventually though i hope her golden brown leaves fall elegantly as daintily as the way her hands carved hearts on my bark i am a london plane meant to live in another place

far, far away from her green ash seed life meant for city lights and open mics new york city is where i think i might just find the love of my life— a honeylocust or maybe a littleleaf linden we’d search across boroughs up and through manhattan ’til we found each other in the middle of autumn or winter and i would forget about the green ash trees who were miles away i’d fall in love on a city sidewalk in front of a coffee shop and i would finally be content without her.

Poet’s Recital

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS Natasha Deonarain Natasha Deonarain's first chapbook, 50 etudes for piano, will be published by Assure Press. She has been selected for the 2020 Three Sisters Award by NELLE magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Inflectionist Review, Rogue Agent Journal, The RavensPerch and Door is Ajar among others. She lives between Colorado and Arizona, depending on weather patterns and sometimes practices medicine.

Andrew Berles Andrew Berles is a 15 year old student who has been studying at the Herberger Young Scholars Academy at ASU West since 2016. He was born near Grand Rapids, Michigan, before moving to Arizona in 2008. He has two sisters, along with a pet cat. He plans to go into Software Development as a career. Currently he lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Agent Know Agent Know has spent some time on stage, honing his craft. The years have taught him one thing – Our humanity is an exercise in abject arbitrary trivialities. Though an eternal optimist, he mourns the wasted potential of any moment unfulfilled. He has recently gained enough notoriety to satisfy his curiosity towards the endeavor.

Patrick May Patrick May wrote the poem "On: Tenderness," published in this issue of Canyon Voices.

Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 150 journals on six continents, such as P ai ie Sch e (US), ENc ARTE (Vene uela), be ga g (Germany), O e R ad Re ie (India), C di e P e Re ie (Australia) and Bak a (Cameroon); and 12 chapbooks of poetry her latest is O Gal ag Sh e (dancing girl press, 2019). She also pens travel pieces. In March 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honored her verse. Ms. Caputo journeys through Latin America, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. You may follow her travels at Latin America Wanderer: www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer.

Cymelle Leah Edwards is an MFA Candidate at Northern Ari ona University. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from El Lea e J al, WKTLO, C a Vie , and Nigh i gale a d S a . She currently works as a freelance research assistant in the Special Collections department at Cline Library.

I am Nnadi Samuel. A 20-year-old graduate of English & literature from the University of Benin. Have works previously published in libretto maga ine, Ace world Publishers, Artifact maga ine & forthcoming in Jams & Sand maga ine and a few others. If I am not writing, you find me reading out memes on Facebook @ Samuel Samba

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Eric Richard Wiening, is an English major at Ari ona State University s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. As a life-long honors student and an avid reader and writer, he enjoys all forms of literature. His primary focus and passion is poetry, but enjoys writing all types of texts, especially ones with a touch of science fiction, fantasy, suspense or horror. His favorite writers are Stephen King and J. R. R. Tolkien as both have literary legacies that are incredibly unique and have stood the test of time.

Carrie is a student at ASU studying Queer Sexuality and Social Work. They identify primarily as queer in all senses of the word. In their space time they are a poet and a singer/songwriter as well as a budget hedonist. Carrie started writing poetry at a young age and eventually began setting some of it to music. Much of their poetry is inspired by mental illness, trauma, religion, and their own relationship with gender and sexuality.

Misako Yama aki is the self-published author of a (a d he e ) and a connoisseur of all things literary. She is currently majoring in Philosophy, Religion & Society with a minor in English at Ari ona State University. She also works part-time as a Student Success Specialist for philosophy courses at Phoenix College. Her poetry has been featured in Honey & Lime Lit's online literary blog, Ocea & Ti e, as well as in the anthology Sa a S eak ! from FortyTwo Books. Misako is a slam poet who has performed at and hosted various poetry events around the valley. She spends her free time reading, writing, and journaling.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | YUMNA SAMIE

Home, in Two Parts

By Yumna Samie

You can hear the hunger walking down the edge of Dower Street. The sounds of it echo off the faces of the houses and the men who stand smoking on its corners. Everywhere you look, the road is filled to the brim with wanting, with waiting and yearning and needing, so much so that no one mentions that it is about to overflow. The wanting doesn’t need to be mentioned; not when the whole street lives in it.

It is blended in with the air, a part of the ecosystem. I wonder if Dower would even exist without it. The wanting is an inevitable piece of it now. Wanting for a new car. Or a clean yard.

Or a safe place for children to play along Dower’s paved body. I imagine it’s not unlike other areas of the world or even other parts in South Africa outside of Port Elizabeth, but the arms of Dower Street hold both of my parents’ mothers, and, standing at the head of it, looking at its blemished, scarred pavement, the hunger tastes like the bitter bite of a stray cardamom pod in my grandmother’s daal.

My parents warned me about the darker sides of the street before I even knew how to look for them. Even now, they remind me of the corners to avoid, the places where broken glass bottles and the men who come to the door begging “'n stukkie brood, kanala” litter Dower’s surface.

The street itself grabs people, they say, sucks them dry of any ambition, and holds them under its weight. I suppose in that way, Dower itself is hungry. It, too, is filled with the wanting of its residents. But its wanting is danger-ous.

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It’s not for a car, or a yard, or safety. It’s a wanting that results in prisoners who can’t recognize their cells, held tight to its chest. In a people who stay, and have stayed, and will stay.

After all, it’s not like they have any other option.

I’ve been trained to see the harsher side of the street so long; it is nearly impossible to ignore.

The glasses that have been handed down to me aren’t rose-colored, but paint everything in shades of black and gray and blood red. I don’t even need to be reminded of it anymore; I’ve seen it for myself now. In the dirty-faced children wrapped in a threadbare blanket, running down the road, barefoot and wide-eyed with fear. In the eyes of the teen girls who wait on the sidewalk, a baby on their hips and child by their side. In my uncles, who live in the government-funded houses, the ones that smell like smoke, and cardboard, and metal sat baking in the sun. I would be lying if I said that Dower Street was perfect, or beautiful, or even nice.

But I don’t know a Dower that is just wanting.

When I hear its name, I see mornings early enough to look like nights, where we’d walk up to the edge of Dower, my dad and my siblings and me. I see the dripping reds and pinks of wild berries and pomegranates that my father would pick for us. The way the juice would drip down our chins, through our grinning teeth. We would watch the barely-lit sky blending into the patchwork body of rainbow houses,

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mismatched but beautiful.

When I hear Dower, I smell fresh-baked pastries and biscuits, baked to share with neighbors, still warm as they rest in the basket in the crook of my sister’s arm. It’s not tradition in South Africa, or even just in Port Elizabeth, but it’s tradition here, and the one tradition that we bring the street together for the month of Ramadan. It’s the smell of my grandmother’s kitchen when sunset is coming and we’re sitting waiting for the moment to break our day-long fast. The smell of the tradition on our doorstep, after the soup, has been served and the water savored. The smell of wide sticky grins and the celebration of a community united.

When I hear Dower, it’s the sound of chattering birds. In the early morning hours, when no one but my grandmothers are awake, they knock their begging beaks against the door, stomp their feet against the tin roof of my grandmother’s shed. Maybe, in some other world, this sound would be bothersome. But here, it sounds like my grandmother, rustling out of bed to feed them before she even feeds herself. The sound of the birdseed dropping at their feet quiets their squawks and tantrums.

And the sound of birds is replaced with the sound of teakettles.

When I hear Dower, I think of the distant sounds of the athan coming from a nearby mosque. The way the call to prayer rings out of the building, soaring high over the street and raining through the windows of the residents. It sounds like hope. Like a wish. And when the men and women raise their ears to the call and lower their heads in their singular yet still communal prayers, the silence sounds like hands held, and family created.

Dower isn’t beautiful, not always, but if you tilt

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your head just right, if you look through the hazy smoke screen of want and hunger and wishing, open your ears, and smell the beauty, it is not empty either. There is still a lot left.

Dower Street is half a world away now. Through some sort of miracle, my family managed to break the hold that it had on them. We’ve escaped the wanting. We’ve found a new street, in a new city, in a new country. The wanting has turned into having, in some way, and the hunger has become more memory than sensation.

Hillery Drive doesn’t seem to hunger for much of anything. I don’t know if it would even be capable of doing so at all. It is the same dull flavor of a thousand other streets in the Arizonan desert. Its arms hold houses that are all painted the same colors, familiar shades of beige painted across all twelve of the same facades with little behind them. Blemishes are erased, eliminated, made to fit the trim standards set by no one and everyone.

Hillery Drive is a prim and proper place. The only people coming to our doors ask us to buy their security plans or to sign for a package.

They give big straight-teeth smiles. The women push children in strollers and carry dogs in their arms. I haven’t seen any children running barefoot, or fear-filled eyes looking at me from sidewalks. My parents don’t warn me before I go on a run, or my siblings before they walk to school. They trust its embrace as just that, not anything like the vice-like grip of their South African former home. They hear this American street as an answer to promises of their past.

The promise of commuting an hour away from Dower to work for a company that regularly underpaid them. The promise of moving to America without a penny in their pocket or an English word on their tongues. The promise SPRING 2020

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that all of this work, all of this wanting, was worth something. Their lives have been stitched of promises, and Hillery Drive, this place where personality is sparse, but safety is abundant, this is why they have been making them. It’s in their bones, the way they’ve wanted for this.

And, here, on this American street, their wanting is more fulfilled than the empty echoes of the prisoners of Dower could ever be.

But, from where I stand, I can’t help but see Hillery as a prison too. When I stand on its square shoulders at sunrise, all I can see are the mountains holding me into the valley, walls of a cage. Even the sunrise is blunted behind it. All I can smell is the all-encompassing scent of freshly clipped front lawns, exactly to the homeowners association’s standards. There are no birds that clamor at my doorstep. Here, mornings are spent bent over a cup of coffee and the paper. The only times I hear the athan

now, it is through the speaker on my phone, a paper-thin imitation of the beauty of the original. You can’t hear any of the hope from this far away. You cannot hear the promise.

Hillery Drive is home, in some ways. My family has landed here, and it is safe, and it holds me.

It’s a worthy answer to the prayers of my parents. They’ve always deserved a place like this, a place without hunger and emptiness. But Dower’s wanting is infectious. Even from halfway around the world, I can’t help but hear it call to me. I can’t help but want to answer it.

Maybe the stories my parents told me, about the holding, the death grip that Dower has on the necks of its residents, were right. Maybe it has a wider reach than everyone thought. But maybe it’s not a death grip at all. Maybe, like Hillery, it’s the embrace of a street, a place, hungering, starving, trying to become a home.

n n n For more information on author Yumna Samie, please visit our Contributors Page.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | YUMNA SAMIE

Hi, I’m Back: Finding Words Again After Burnout

By Yumna Samie

I’m sitting at my desk now, working through this essay, and I feel compelled to say hi again after so many months of being absent on Obvi, my online writing community of female writers.

I’ve tried to write essays I’ve felt good about, and every time they’ve fallen flat. Long story short, it has been hard.

Short story long… well, I’ve had to start from the beginning.

When I describe the last, oh, six months or so of my life, there are two stories I could tell. The first is one I give to people, all wrapped in bright colorful wrapping paper and filled with anecdotes. I could tell you about the spring semester and how it was the best semester of my life, how I achieved and did and reached. I could tell you about the smiles and the laughs and how lovely the feeling of dreams coming true is.

And you would believe me. You would see the TEDx Talk I gave, and my grades and my Instagram posts and you would walk away saying “Wow, 2019 is really your year, Yumna.”

And you would be right. At least, that’s what the evidence would say.

The second is the one where I take my rosecolored glasses off.

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Since January, I’ve been experiencing what would commonly be referred to as burnout. I’ve tried defining it, both in this essay and a thousand drafts that came before it, and I’ve never come outright. I’ve always been a writer, always been dedicated to finding, just the right words for just the right situation, but this time, my words had dried up. It feels like I’m flipping through a thesaurus finding synonyms that almost mean the same thing, but not exactly.

Try fatigue. Try exhaustion. Try other. Try dissociated, or blindfolded, or dead-on-my-feet tired. All there, but not there.

Throughout my life, I’ve always been a do-er. A go-getter. A try-and-try-again-er. But when I entered this haze, it felt like a wall had gone up.

I couldn’t do, or go, or try. All I wanted to do was take a break. See again, fatigue, exhaustion, and dead-on-my-feet tired.

Everything, even the things I loved, felt like a chore. Stuck in this blurred haze of emotions I can’t even explain, I found myself feeling completely separate from the person that I thought I was. I felt like no one at all.

This is where it gets complicated. Because according to everyone else’s vantage point, I was fine. I was busy, yes, but I was good. I was doing the things I loved and more of them, and doing well at them. Everything felt like a chore, yes, but they were chores I did.

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Burnout, I learned, made reaching out an impossible chore too. I knew what people would think of me if I told them how tired I was, they would see through me. The compliments I had been given, about how amazing or inspiring or accomplished, I was would melt into the truth.

Try not good enough. Try lazy. Try fake or broken or ungrateful. The words that I had been saying about myself for months.

There’s only one word that I know is in the definition of burnout. Scared.

When I started telling the truth about how I felt, out of a mix between pure desperation and adjunct loneliness, the words that I heard weren’t the ones that peppered my brainscape.

Instead, there was vulnerable. There was honest. There was a lot of thank you for telling me. And, most importantly, it confirmed that what I was feeling was important enough to tell people. Which meant it was important enough to fight against.

Coming back was a tooth-and-nail climb. Let me try that again, actually: coming back is a tooth-and-nail climb. It’s using the energy I

have when I have it and being grateful for it, even when it feels like I haven’t done enough.

It’s catching the negative words I threw my own way. It’s taking a break when I can and recognizing when I’m overworking myself (which is more often than I’d probably like to admit). Most importantly, it’s opening up to the people around me.

I’ve been stuck for a long time. All of the last year, if I’m honest. I’ve been hiding in plain sight, hoping that no one could see how tired and overwhelmed I was. But talking to people, allowing myself to be honest and vulnerable with them, has at least greased the wheels.

Now, I would say I’m feeling at least 99% normal. Again, this is hard to define. Try comfortable. Try home. Try awake, alert, alive.

Try myself.

So, hello again. It’s been a long time. But I am, very, very happy to say that I am back, or at least mostly so. It might be a while before I’m completely back, might be even longer before I’m functioning at my fullest. But I’m here. And that’s enough.

n n n For more information on author Yumna Samie, please visit our Contributors Page.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | ANDY BOYD

Pedro the Lion’s Phoenix and Mine

By Andy Boyd

Never has an album been as perfectly calculated to make me cry as Pedro the Lion's Phoenix.

The experiences chronicled in this album mirror my own to a spooky degree: biking alone around the Valley of the Sun wishing more than anything you had someone to ride with, a relationship to the body as always at the same time a burden and a comfort, and finally, because it's David Bazan we're talking about, a mind-splittingly ambivalent relationship to American Christianity.

I tell people I'm from Phoenix, and my sister makes fun of me. And it's true, I did only move to Phoenix when I was sixteen. But Phoenix was where I had the year that changed my life.

During my junior year, I was the new kid at a small school. I had very few friends, my parents' marriage was splintering in front of my eyes, and I was shouldering the immense weight of undiagnosed depression. Every day, I would drive my car 45 minutes to school, and every day I would fantasize about driving off one of the highways that circle the air above Phoenix and sailing sixty feet to some dry arroyo, where I'd crash, dying instantly, my wheels still spinning long after I was gone. But on weekends and nights after school I'd go to the Scottsdale Public Library and rent movies. I rented anything with the Criterion logo: Breathless, Fishing with John, Branded to Kill, Down By Law. I started making movies that

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year, which led me to writing plays, which is what I still do. Christianity thinks this is always true and it's certainly true of my life: suffering can make you better, make you more the person you're supposed to be.

It seems to me the question Bazan's asking on this album is: is that true? Does suffering make you better, or does it just suck? And what about the suffering Christianity itself causes? Can that bring you closer to God? Or is it always only a barrier, and thus, in the theology of Evangelicalism, a sin?

I didn't grow up Evangelical, though pretty much everyone who grew up in the Church when I did basically grew up Evangelical.

Evangelicals spent much of the 20th century building a fortress culture: Christian bookstores, record labels, radio stations, youth groups. A big part of the reason liberal Christianity doesn't seem as loud as conservative Christianity is that we never did that. Conservatives are pre-millennial. This means their eschatology pictures Jesus returning to usher in a thousand-year reign of earthly peace only when the world itself has gone totally rotten.

Liberals are post-millennials, which means they (we) believe Christ will come after a thousand years of earthly peace. This belief has traditionally led liberals to work to eradicate war and the things that cause it: nationalism, militarism,

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capitalism. These beliefs are no longer surfacelevel explicit, but they cast a long shadow over the Church. Conservatives believe the world is bad and getting worse and it's good that it's getting worse because that means Jesus is coming soon. Liberals believe the world is good (after all, God said it was) and steadily getting better. Conservatives are likely to look at America and see a nation falling away from Christ. Liberals are likely to look at the same country and see the opposite: as racism and sexism slowly recede, America comes closer to being a truly Christian nation, a nation by and for and of a People that looks something like God's kingdom.

How this cashes out in popular culture is that conservatives feel the need to wall off their culture from the rest of the nation, while liberals actually think this country is basically pretty good, and that the culture it produces has a range of quality, but that the best of it is wholesome and interesting. This is why liberal Christian artists have a much easier time crossing over into the broader culture. Sufjan Stevens, Marilynne Robinson, and David Bazan see themselves as participating in a wider national and international culture, whereas Tim LaHaye and his ilk are basically hostile to the culture at large. Which doesn't mean they're above aping the style of mainstream rock music, even down to the five thousand dollar sneakers, but it does mean their ultimate goal is to create a parallel culture, not to contribute to the dominant one.

Which is all to say that when the liberal churches wanted to find music and radio and youth groups to give to their children, they didn't have anything of their own, so they borrowed from the Right. This was a bad, bad idea, because the Right and the Left have

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distinctive, opposed theologies, but it was also understandable because Young Life and Focus on the Family seemed to have figured out how to get the kids to care about Jesus.

A big part of this has to do with sex. While conservatives were building a baroque and forbidding theology of sex (I remember a youth group leader telling me why kissing with tongue was dangerous), liberals responded with prudish silence. This means David Bazan growing up in the Evangelical church and me growing up in the nominally liberal Presbyterian Church (USA) got basically the same message about our bodies and everyone else's too: they're corrupt flesh cages and if you listen to them they'll lead you to hell.

On “Powerful Taboo,” Bazan sings: “If you can find good vibrations They'll try to tell you that you're in danger of falling into temptation It's the Devil's bargain that to save your soul from Hell Deny your senses, be a stranger to yourself.”

And yeah, that was basically the message. The weird but inevitable consequence is that, because the Right sees sex as basically bad (I have a theory that the reason they're so anti-gay and anti-abortion is that both these “issues” acknowledge sex as a reality of adult life), and therefore something to be opposed, they talk about it all the time in ways that seem to an outsider just incredibly horny and weird.

They’re maybe the only group more obsessed with sex than teenagers. Even though their questions are radically different (teenagers asking “how do I have it” and conservatives SPRING 2020

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asking “how do I stop the teens from having it”), the topic is the same. What conservatives figured out is that they could peddle anti-sex theology that was as lurid as the wet dreams of Christian teens, and that the teens would listen.

Witness the following, from Every Young Man's Battle, a book I read when I was like 11 years old: “We took the molasses-soaked bread up to a tree house in his backyard. We ate as we lay on the floor of his small and dark home away from home. After we finished, he told me he'd learned how to do something that felt very good. He said all I had to do was reach inside my pants and rub my penis up and down. If I kept doing that, it would feel even better and better, and then some stuff would come out, and when that happened, it would feel really good. But first I had to get my penis hard to get things started.”

There is, as the kids say, a lot to unpack here.

First, why mention the “molasses-soaked” bread? Why is the tree house described as “his small and dark home away from home”? Why does a book written for young boys include a very graphic description of an early life, clearly queer, sexual encounter? If you're familiar with the genre you'll know this is all de rigeur: “I was shooting up heroin in the bathroom of an S&M club in Berlin when suddenly I saw CHRIST!” The Christian Right's only narrative strategy is the Augustinian conversion narrative, which requires graphic descriptions of sex, drugs, and “worldly attachments” ostensibly as a warning, but actually to gratify the very desires it purports to be fighting.

As ferocious as “Powerful Taboo” is, it only tells half of the story. The other half is in a short, hymn-like song, where Bazan describes an evening in Church: “At Sunday evening service CANYON VOICES

The faithful knelt in worship Mother singing, swaying Dad piano playing His gentle nature soothed me The ache in her voice moved me Sitting side by side on the piano bench.”

And that's it. That's the whole song. It's a beautifully simple evocation of the real pleasures of worship: music, community, creative expression, family. There's even a hint of sublimated sexuality: Mother "swaying,” “the ache in her voice,” the intimacy of Mom and Dad sitting next to each other on the piano bench.

Bazan doesn't try to reconcile this memory with the tortured sexual longing expressed in “Powerful Taboo,” and I can't reconcile it either.

The truth is, I do think those early shame-filled messages did some good. I didn't watch a lot of porn as a kid, and when I discovered feminism I found an ideology broadly in line with what I learned in Every Young Man's Battle: women were people to be respected, not objects to be ogled.

And yet, that title! Every Young Man's Battle: against whom? Against himself. This is past Augustinian, this is Calvinist. The soul and body, not united as Aquinas would have it, but locked in perpetual struggle.

One thing that's great about this album is that Bazan's taste is imperfect. He interpolates the clean-up song from his childhood on “Clean Up,” and indulges in the dumbest of dumb Phoenix metaphors on “My Phoenix,” wondering “if my Phoenix will rise.” But that

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | ANDY BOYD

song also comes closest to reconciling Bazan's conflicted thoughts about his religious upbringing. He sings: “If the vision of the Christ My family sees Is my blurry vision's greatest enemy Then I still try to tune it in When I get lonely You know I chase around this desert because I think that’s where you’ll be.”

This is another big theme of this album: the impossible desire to return to a place that doesn't exist anymore. Nostalgia literally means homesickness, and Bazan is homesick for Phoenix, but he's also homesick for “the vision of the Christ” that he can't tune in. He chases around the Valley of the Sun because that's where he last saw Jesus, but Thomas Merton tells us God isn't in the desert anymore: “Yet, look at the deserts today. What are they?

The birthplace of a new and terrible creation, the testing-ground of the power by which man seeks to un-create what God has blessed. Today, in the century of man's greatest technological achievement, the wilderness at last comes into its own. Man no longer needs God, and he can live in the desert on his own resources. He can build there his fantastic, protected cities of withdrawal and experimentation and vice. The glittering towns that spring up overnight in the desert are no longer images of the City of God, coming down from heaven to enlighten the world with the vision of peace. They are not even replicas of the great tower of Babel that once rose up in the desert of Senaar, that man ‘might make his name famous and reach even unto heaven’

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(Genesis 11:4). They are brilliant and sordid smiles of the devil upon the face of the wilderness, cities of secrecy where each man spies on his brother, cities through whose veins money runs like artificial blood, and from whose womb will come the last and greatest instrument of destruction.”

Too long to put on a billboard, but that should be on the sign welcoming visitors to Phoenix, America's least sustainable city. We go to the desert to find God, not realizing that in a world where Phoenix is possible, “Everywhere is desert” because nowhere is.

Maybe that's why the end of Phoenix makes me cry the most. It's such a non-transferrable feeling, based entirely on the coincidence that the same places that made and wounded David Bazan made and wounded me.

“Oh Dunlap Oh Peoria Oh Cactus Oh Thunderbird Oh Greenway Oh Bell Road Oh Union Hills & 35th Avenue Oh Union Hills & 35th Avenue.”

Ah, that's poetry.

n n n For more information on author Andy Boyd, please visit our Contributors Page.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | TAYLOR COUTY

When to See Your Therapist

By Taylor Couty

I saw a therapist.

I waited patiently in the lobby. Here it starts — the nervous tick of the leg pulse. I could maybe estimate fifty pulses every fifteen seconds, but that sounds far too aggressive.

There was no music in this lobby — signs read, “Quiet Please - Sessions in Progress.”

There was also no service in this lobby. Without the usual posted Wi-Fi password in nearly every sit-down establishment, what was I left with?

What were we left with? There is another person, a man sitting across from me. Eye contact was made, and he offered up a slight grin.

I was wondering what brought him in, was he thinking that too? Probably. Maybe. What else was there for us to do during this short timeframe without any devices available for distraction?

Observation served as the device for distraction, and also helped, for me anyway, to prevent the silence from commencing the rumination of our own thoughts.

I looked around to see if there were magazines — none.

My perspective on a therapist: an unbiased

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person to listen to me talk about myself for an hour without reservation.

My perspective on a therapist: making at the minimum, $100 dollars per hour, they are absolutely equipped with the knowledge on how to fix us. Right? No, no, that’s much too high of an expectation. Patience and progression from within ourselves. Right?

Would I pay someone who wasn’t a therapist to listen to me talk for an hour that same rate? It seems as though I just want to speak without interruption about myself for an hour. If you looked quantitatively at the amount of words exchanged between the two of us, it might come out to one word spoken from him for every five hundred spoken from me.

Finally — it is now my time slot. He opens the frost glass door and gestures for me to come in.

I sit down on the leather couch and he offers a coffee. The best coffee in San Francisco, or so he says.

He asks how I am doing. Immediately, I burst into a full-on sob. I am offered a tissue. I begin to speak about my current struggles.

He has a look of confusion, perhaps because he can only hear every other word I am saying because of the flood of the high-salt-content water coming from my tear glands and the SPRING 2020

CREATIVE NONFICTION | TAYLOR COUTY

mucus mixed with dust, germ, and pollution particles that have accumulated throughout the day in the hairs of my nose that is now, uncontrollably, coming out of my nostrils.

“Okay.”

“Yeah.”

“Sure.”

His listening skills were superb, as to be expected. Eye contact. Nodding. One-word acknowledgments that I was, in fact, speaking.

That was nice, I guess.

I finally take a breath, and he informs me that we’ve run out of time for today, and that we will pick up in the same spot next week.

He hands me a pack of to-go Kleenex. I offer up a slight grin.

The following day I decided to meet up with friends for dinner. To consume food and liquids. It’s Friday, the day where everybody exists outside of their home and workplace.

The first thirty minutes of our night begins with the intense search for an open parking spot. To save money, one of the friends kindly offered to be the designated driver.

The atmosphere at the restaurant/bar is active and highly populated. Dense. Congested. I think they might have reached their “Max Capacity”.

There doesn’t seem to be much stretching room.

“Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me. Oh, I’m sorry.”

nightlife outside thing.

Only twenty hours ago, he was the person with the most insight into my immediate and intimate state.

There are no words spoken. There are no smiles or nods exchanged.

There are wide eyes. Quick turnarounds to the other direction. The actions are over, but the discomfort is not. Maybe only for me. Maybe for him too. There exists a lot of different aspects to the therapist-patient run-in: confidentiality, politeness, acknowledgement. Maybe there isn’t a best way to go about it. Maybe it would depend on the length of time spent with said therapist. Maybe it would depend on the progress made with said patient. I don’t know.

What do I do? I don’t wish it could have happened differently. Well I do, but I ultimately wished it didn’t happen at all.

Do I bring this up at our next appointment? Do I call him? Do I cancel my appointment? Do I google a strategy for navigation moving forward? “therapists near me” Enter

n n n For more information on author Taylor Couty, please visit our Contributors Page.

I look up to see his face. The therapist — my therapist.

We’re both doing the thing: the weekend/

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | TIMOTHY CAMPBELL

Above the Clouds

By Timothy Campbell

We’d hit the end of the trail officially recognized and maintained by the state of Hawaii in about an hour and a half, at around eleven in the morning. A wooden bench played host to an older couple, and small families milled around with phones raised for pictures, children and parents smiling against the wide view of the ocean and the town of Hanalei nestled twelve hundred feet below in the sweeping lap of the valley. They’d all come equipped for the trail; shorts and tennis shoes abounded; backs unencumbered by packs that only would have served to free the hands which clutched twelveounce water bottles. Eyes followed Charlie and I with curiosity.

We likely cut quite the ostentatious duo. Each of our backpacks was stuffed with energy bars for the hike up, sandwiches for the summit (with chips to help replace the salt we’d inevitably sweat out during the ascent), and a liter plastic bottle of water – backup for if we went through the other liter bottle, and our Hydro Flasks tucked into either side pocket of our bags. Our pants were tucked into our boots to help keep the bugs off and our feet dry, and our button-up shirts promised moisture-wicking technology.

Sleeves rolled up to our elbows because it felt like the right thing to do, we admired the view from under wide-brimmed felt hats.

We’d endured a few subtle sniggers, to say the least. However, our plan to go beyond the official trail and ascend another twelve hundred feet up to the first summit of Hihimanu necessitated the

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clothes and supplies otherwise uncalled for by the casual hike to the end of the Okolehao trail.

I’d be lying if I said we didn’t want to emulate a budget version of Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park’s rugged Muldoon as well. Function came first – but form was a bonus. I checked my phone, to refresh our memories of what lay ahead.

“So, there’s about thirty-eight ropes we’re gonna have to ascend or descend on our way up to the peak. It says the trail is only maintained by the hikers who go on it, same with the ropes. It also says that if it’s rained in the past few days to be extra careful because the trail will be super muddy and slippery.”

“Oh, if it’s rained?” Charlie shook his head and laughed. It had rained almost every day since we’d arrived on North Shore.

“It’s another elevation gain of twelve hundred feet. Apparently, the trail isn’t very wide. Most of these hiking bloggers say it’s really dangerous.

One guy has been hiking for years and said he refused to do it – that he was ‘crazy, but not stupid.’”

Every blog post I’d seen about the trail mentioned that it shouldn’t be attempted by anyone without several years of rope-assisted climbs under their belt.

Charlie took a quick draught from his Hydro Flask, swallowed, and shrugged. “I came here to

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | TIMOTHY CAMPBELL

Percy Fawcett jungle trek up a goddamn mountain. We’ll be fine dude.”

getting hungry already, and debating eating one of my energy bars before the climb.

I grinned. Charlie had always bolstered my own bravado and belief in my own abilities, and I was convinced there wasn’t anything we couldn’t do as long as we did it together. Almost twenty years of friendship left little in the way of doubt between us. We’d been chased by drunks, stalked by coyotes in the stygian darkness of the Oregon woods, and lived together for three years. Most people assumed it was a joke when we claimed to be “platonic soulmates”, but the truth of the matter is that it never was. Neither of us were in the habit of saying things we didn’t mean about one another.

“A couple hours. Maybe two, three. You will use a lot of ropes.”

The tall grass to our left tussled and sighed.

A slight man, barefoot and drenched, emerged and as the grass behind him began to lace back together, I caught a brief glimpse of the trail that was to lead to the summit. The man’s scruffy face was scratched and red, betraying no signs of distress, but instead an almost indifferent gaze.

Charlie waved, and his long legs ensured only a few strides were necessary to approach the other hiker.

“Did you go up Hihimanu?”

“I did. Started this morning.” A susurrous French accent flitted through the air as he spoke. “I made it to the first peak. Tried to keep going to the second but ... that trail is no good. Too many plants. You are going?”

We both nodded.

“Be careful. It’s very muddy. Long way to fall.

Probably most dangerous hike I have done here.”

“How long did it take you to get up there?” I was

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At the mention of the ropes, Charlie looked at me and grinned again. “Awesome. Thanks, dude.”

“Good luck. Be careful.” The Frenchman set off down the mountain.

I waited until he was out of earshot. “Dude, he was fucking barefoot. That’s insane.” I paused.

“This is going to be so rad.”

“That just means we’ve got one up on him. I’m so fucking jazzed dude.”

With that, we set off. As we came through the grass, the jungle unfolded, verdant and thick to our left, broad-leaved foliage and bright flowers tangled in a level mass, the valley sweeping downwards at an alarming angle to our right.

Pools of tea-colored water dotted the trail, steppingstones leading to a tunnel of high grasses and tree limbs. The ever-present moisture had soaked into the ground here, and mud seeped up to our ankles, and sucked at our boots insistently. The bites and stings of insects at the foot of the mountain were replaced by the equal efforts of snapping twigs and saw-edged grasses. As we came clear of the tunnel a wedgeshaped slope rose above us. A single rope hung limp, tied to a tree at the top. I gave the rope a tentative pull – it couldn’t have been much bigger ‘round than a number two pencil. Knots dotted the rope every foot or so, a charm bracelet discarded by gods or giants. I sighed, amazed and excited I was doing this at all. The only climbing equipment we had was bare hands and good boots.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | TIMOTHY CAMPBELL

“One at a time?” That seemed to be the safer move to me.

Charlie didn’t even pause to consider it. “Yeah.

That way if one of us slips, we don’t make it worse for both of us.”

I took the line in hand. Rough fibers poked into my palms, made no softer by the damp that permeated the rope. I remarked to myself that it was probably good the fibers maintained their stiffness despite the conditions. I hoisted myself up and planted my boots firmly into the slope. It was a short climb – maybe fifteen feet or so. The incline climbed at about a fifty-degree angle from my feet. I could handle this. Hand over hand, I ascended. The earth under my feet was treacherous, the mud doing its best to stick and slip me at once. Small stones worked their way free, tumbling down the slope.

“Watch the rocks!”

Charlie had already backed up. “Yup!” The weight of my pack on my back and the weight of my own body in my arms twisted me slightly left and right, the axis of my weight doing its best to flip me over on the line. After a handful of seconds, I reached the top. Climbing over the edge of the slope, I shouted down.

“You’re good, I’m up!” Charlie began his own climb, encountering the same axis shift that puzzled my own body. I turned to look ahead.

It was as if we had clambered over the crosspiece of a knife. The trail wasn’t more than two feet across, and to either side, the ridge dropped off to the floor of the valley thirteen hundred feet

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below. Clinging to the near-vertical slopes were stubborn trees and bushes, promising nothing more than an ante mortem gift of gashes, and broken bones to those doomed folk who fell. The Hanalei river snaked its way through the valley, impossibly small at this elevation. Nausea wormed its way into my gut, brought on by the certainly fatal drop. All it would take was a single clumsy step, and I’d be just another dumb and dead tourist. I took a few deep breaths, attempting to smother my fear. I suppose that’s why I was here – to do something that scared me.

And scared I was.

Through the clouds, emerald mountain peaks promised glory. The reddish earth wound its way on and on, trumpet-shaped flowers blooming here and there; yellow, surrounded by nests of delicate pink tendrils. The whooping calls of jungle birds carried like notes on a staff of wind, originating from feathered forms we had yet to see. A grey frog hopped indignantly into a bush, unperturbed by the sheer drop below. Charlie emerged on the ridge behind me.

“Je-sus.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

A surge of joy and excitement set me alight. After years of consuming endless pieces of adventure media, childhood fantasies where the suburban backyard became a hostile jungle, and countless declarations that we would take the trips for real when we were older – we were here. Charlie’s face glowed next to mine.

“We’re doing it dude!” He threw out his arms and whooped into the sky, one arm coming to rest across my shoulders. “We’re finally doing it.”

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | TIMOTHY CAMPBELL

I draped my own arm across Charlie’s shoulders.

“About time. Little Charlie and Tj would be so stoked.”

We paused for water, and to tighten the straps on our bags. The last thing we needed was our packs swinging loose on our backs when climbing. The first peak of Hihimanu stood tall and proud in the distance.

“Alright, let’s go.” I was too enthralled to say much more. Both of us were.

The trail never widened, never dried out.

Eventually, we were pushing our way through patches of ti plants, their leaves saturated with ambient moisture that clung to our clothes. By the time we had ascended a few more ropes, the two of us found ourselves enveloped in the clouds that constantly drifted around the mountain. We were as thoroughly drenched as we would have been had we jumped into a pool.

Thankfully, the impeccable weather of a Hawaiian summer meant that we were neither hot nor cold. Just wet.

We made our way leisurely, in turn admiring the view of the valley and ocean beyond and keeping an eye on our footing. A short, winding little jaunt up a small hill spit us out at a circle of mud and undergrowth where a lone tree stood silent guard. A single rope tied to the tree dangled down the edge of a steep, bare slope. The climbs before this had all been ascents – I was thankful for a break. Twenty feet below the trail sat as narrow and treacherous as ever. I didn’t bother testing the rope — whoever maintained them clearly knew what they were doing. I took it in hand.

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“Finally, a break. I thought they’d all be going up.

I’ll shout up when I’m down.” I slowly backed over the edge, body folding to keep my chest and belly clean. This slope didn’t have the patches of weeds and shrubs the other one did – this was all mud.

I quickly decided, while descending was less taxing physically, it took a toll on the mind. At least when you’re going up you can see where you’re going. Going down means having to stop and look, trying to ignore the sheer drop closing in on you from both sides. I imagined falling into the empty air, plummeting down as my body careened against branches and the side of the ridge, tumbling and falling in equal measure before being dashed upon the ground over one thousand feet below. My head swam. Maybe looking down wasn’t the best idea. I decided to plant my feet one by one and hope for the best.

They tell you not to look down when you’re up high. At least make sure to look where you put your feet.

My right boot slipped. On mud, a rock, nothing – I don’t remember. My leg flew out to one side and as I lurched sideways my left boot slid free, the weight of my bag pirouetting me on the rope.

My hip and shoulder found no purchase on the muddy wall, and before I knew it, I had left the trail.

People say everything slows down when things like this happen. I don’t think that’s necessarily true – the brain goes into panic mode and starts operating a lot faster than normal, slowing everything else down by comparison.

I swung through the air. The yawning drop opened up beneath me as blurs of green and brown sped by. My feet dangled uselessly below me, and the rope slid through my hands,

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | TIMOTHY CAMPBELL

scorching my digits before a knot sank into the fleshy part of the palm below the little finger. The canopy of trees, impossibly far away, seemed to be rushing up to meet me, leafy limbs thick with age reaching up to offer a shattering embrace. A flock of thoughts flitted about in my head.

loveseat, the stubborn roots having clung tight to the near-vertical surface with surprising tenacity.

I’m going to die.

“Yeah, I’m – hang on. I’m fine.”

I can’t believe this is it.

I squirmed up the rope, paying careful attention to my feet. As I reached the top, I wrapped one arm around the trunk of the tree, making a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a sigh at feeling something so solid and unmoving. I crumpled, prone, to the ground for a moment, shaking body allowing me some degree of relaxation. The loamy mud brushed my lips, a welcome back kiss from a lover. I tried to slow my breathing down, and didn’t stand until I succeeded. Bit by bit my breaths became more relaxed as my heaving chest settled. My eyes cut to Charlie, momentarily forgotten in the relief of solid ground.

I guess there are worse ways to go.

All in the span of a few seconds. Fear. Disbelief.

Resignation. Three warm-up kick drums of thought.

I felt the side of my body break into something that tore at my clothes and eyes, flipping me onto my back where I came to an uncomfortable halt.

A faint whooshing sound hung in my ears. I waited to keep falling, but remained still. There was another noise – insistent, drawn out.

Though I could feel the beckoning severity of it tugging at my mind, it did little for me. It sounded as if I were back at the beach, underwater, the sounds of waves muffling shouts above. As my body finally began to relax, I was extricated from my stupor. Charlie had been screaming my name.

“I’m ok,” I breathed, more to myself than anyone.

I lay there a moment more. I was ok. I just had to get up. The rope was still clenched in my hands, and I relaxed my knuckles before they burst through my skin. My nails left painful crescents in my palms, though I was shaking too much to care. I managed to sit up, to some extent. I was cradled in a patch of bushes no bigger than a

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“Hey! I’m ok.”

“Tj?”

“Oh my god dude. I almost died.” Charlie’s head was thrust forward, mouth agape and eyes misty under upturned eyebrows. He pulled me into a hug.

“Yeah! Tj I thought ... oh my god I thought I just watched you die. I didn’t know what to do. All I could think was, what am I gonna tell his parents, and what am I gonna do…”

“No, no, I’m ok. I’m here, we’re good.”

Both of us managed to smile, laughing in equal parts relief and disbelief. My heart had slowed from a thrash metal to an electronic beat, and I became suddenly aware of how full my bladder felt. I glanced at Charlie.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | TIMOTHY CAMPBELL

“I told you this was a bad idea. I almost played out there.” I tried to make it sound playful.

Shame crossed Charlie’s face. “Do you wanna head back?”

I turned to face the first peak of Hihimanu.

Twenty-four hundred feet above one of the most enchanting and ethereal landscapes on the planet, the first of a set of twins birthed by an ancient native goddess, rose up misty, jagged, and impossibly magnetic.

“Hell no. The worst thing that can happen now is that I actually fucking die. Let’s go.”

Since that day, my threshold for excitement has been a lot higher. In a sense, part of me dropped like a stone to explode on the ground hundreds of feet below. My fear of heights is gone.

Everything said we shouldn’t have been able to make it to that peak – but we did. Far, far above the tour helicopters, trekking quite literally through the clouds constantly hovering around the mountains, we made it to the summit of the peak. Two Fuji pines stood solemn sentry, a length of Tibetan prayer flags strung between them. My apartment living room took up about twice as much space, but it was enough to have lunch on. An opaque view of the island reached out on all sides, the glory not stymied by the thick curtains of cloud. The last stretch – an eighty-foot vertical climb through tree roots, thorny vines, and slick mud – lay momentarily forgotten, conquered.

for months. Avoiding Charlie when he was at the apartment, though neither of us realized it was happening. Charlie leaned casually against one of the little pines. In between bites, he expressed a degree of childlike glee and wonder that found their way into my own demeanor. He was here with me, despite everything. The moodiness, the isolation. Together, no matter what, just as promised. Home was two cats in a shitty apartment on the mainland, home was the gas station down the street where we’d stop to buy cigarettes before work, home was the plane on the way to the furthest we could get without passports – home was here, posted up against a Fuji pine with a can of yerba mate in one hand and a bag of chips in the other, making me laugh and bask in the triumph over what was said to be near impossible.

n n n For more information on author Timothy Campbell, please visit our Contributors Page.

Charlie and I shared lunch. I sat quietly, thinking as I chewed a peanut butter sandwich. I was cognizant of the effects my medication was having on me, of the strain it had put on our friendship – I’d found myself irritable, antisocial

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SPRING 2020

CREATIVE NONFICTION | M. NICOLE

Withdrawal

By M. Nicole

My Wallet is suffering from depression. He says that I won't invest enough in our relationship or him, even though I told him I'm doing the best I can. Money thinks she's too good for us now, and my Wallet misses his bestie. Not so long ago, I would hear them in my purse laughing and making jokes while I was driving. They were having such a great time together. Those were such happy times for us!

The day Money left us is when my Wallet’s depression started. The first night he threw himself violently around in my purse, screaming, “I want my Money!” Once he began kicking out my lipstick and eyeliner onto the ground, I knew things were getting out of control. (My lipstick had an anxiety attack, and proceeded to smear himself all over my carpet. Eyeliner just banged her tip against the wall, moaning and groaning like an animal, and leaving black stretch marks all over my furniture.) Everything in my bag that night was afraid of him, and he ranted until he pissed Pepper Spray off. Once she got sick of him, she sprayed him so hard that he folded, and he shut up for the rest of the night.

I've tried to comfort Wallet since Money left, but he won't even let me touch him … when I reach for him, he zips his lips and shuts me out, backing into the darkest corner of my purse and giving me a glassy, glazed look (like he’s hungover). He says he will open up to me once I bring him Money back.

I've tried to offer him ID cards, family photos, and even bus passes, but he just cries and throws lint at me. He keeps screaming, “I want my Money back!”

I feel awful.

Wallet doesn't understand why Money would just up and leave us like that. When I first introduced them, Money was kind of rude because she liked being free to move around in my purse. However, she would make me angry because she would get lost in my purse folds or walk off with anyone who stuck their hand in my bag … and since it’s my job to protect her, I decided to put her in Wallet … and after a while they became inseparable. And because Money was happy, I was happy. Ms. Money made us smile, and she would take us on the most exciting adventures!

My family misses her too. She liked the finer things in life and would only take us to the most expensive places. I would tell Money that she didn't have to do that, because I knew she was using herself up.

Everyone knows that once Money becomes used up, she's gone. She has no loyalty and only stays with people who respect her. In hindsight, we mishandled her, with our thinking that Money stays around forever.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION | M. NICOLE

Well, long story short, she didn’t stay around, so now I've resulted to desperate measures. I've gone to a place where she hangs out most and began stalking her. Eight hours a day, nine to five, Monday through Friday, I have been showing up, trying to earn her back. I've been told she shows up every other Friday, but only if I keep this routine up for two weeks . . . and I’m only on day three! So here I sit, bored out of my mind, trying to earn my Wallet’s Money back by putting in work. I've just got to get her to come home with me — or I'm in trouble!

Because my Wallet is suffering from depression.

n n n For more information on author M. Nicole, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SPRING 2020

CREATIVE NONFICTION | M. NICOLE

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

By M. Nicole

“It's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood . . .”

– Fred Rogers How friendly are the people in your neighborhood?

Growing up in a drug-infested, poverty-stricken neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, you quickly learn that true friends are few and far between—and resources are even less. Violence is the TV network that controls the ghetto’s regularly scheduled programming, while Poverty works as a bootleg DJ playing background music for daily drive-bys and drug overdoses. As to be expected, residents adjust their daily agendas to survive. Having hopes and dreams increases your chances of committing suicide, and success is only conceived in a weed-induced imagination.

Smiling to hard at the girl next door can get you set up to be shot. Making eye contact is equivalent to being disrespectful. You keep your head down, your ears open, and move as fast as your feet will carry you.

We live in the belly of the beast. . .and agendas become more sinister when there are more mouths to feed than there is food at life’s table.

The most vulnerable among us must grow up the fastest. Little ones living in the ghetto must adapt quickly to survive in a concrete jungle, where the piercing sounds of police sirens impersonate bedtime lullabies. The biggest predators are the illegal guns, and our toddlers are always the tastiest prey of a famished stray

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bullet from an AK-47. They’re legs are too short to outrun the older children, and their ears can’t distinguish firecrackers from live rounds. If they do survive, our children make use of what they have and create what they don’t. Extra-long extension cords become jump ropes, bunk beds for 2 must sleep 6, and second graders learn to hide when inhaling the extra lunch, they stashed at school (for dinner)—because hunger laughs at them if they share.

Despite these conditions (and America’s rejection), society’s politically correct culture still heavily influences our communities. Chicago ghettos have their own neighborhood recycle program, and its efficiency is unprecedented.

Teens quickly step up to salvage the jewelry, shoes and coins from the corpses of drug dealers when they've been shot in their driveways. The impact of mass incarceration ensures our nondetained men are reused constantly, as they are secretly recycled throughout the bedrooms of our fatherless daughters. Semen is never wasted since these local mobile sperm donors ensure that no woman’s womb remains empty in the community. We swap low-priced outfits and high-priced gym shoes with our peers to expand our nonexistent wardrobes. Recycling dangerous thoughts, patterns and behaviors guarantees that America will always consider us as damaged goods while poverty continues to feast on our remains.

My Chicago neighborhood weeps continuously over the discarded lives that poverty continually

SPRING 2020

CREATIVE NONFICTION | M. NICOLE

devours. Poverty is always hungry, and with a filthy straw, he greedily sucks the life out of crackheads for breakfast and smacks his lips on the limbs of bullet-ridden babies for lunch.

Poverty keeps Chicago’s county jails and state prisons pregnant with our sons, fathers and husbands. Poverty’s parents —Uncle Sam and Auntie Profit—happily watch on, giving Poverty hearty back slaps of approval as he eagerly gobbles down generations of families like Chicago style hot dogs, while using our blood, sweat and tears as his ketchup, mustard and onions.

Formal education is optional in concrete Chicago wastelands, as children must first master the curriculum of the streets. Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest” theory is the most commonly taught concept on Chicago’s blocks, as children strive to graduate alive from the ghetto’s elite homeschooling program. Our teachers, Hustle and Flow, hand out flyers for rehab and welfare applications on our first day of classes. They teach religion from a ghetto bible, imprinted with lessons of anger, fear and police brutality.

Ghetto fashion class for our pre-teens encourages them to create their best “Project Runway” designs— as they will probably be “resting in peace” before they get to prom. Our ghetto English class allocates time to create “shout-out” sections to include in a gansta’s obituary, so his friends’ nicknames won’t be mispronounced. This is the reality of having nothing to look forward to, while living in a culture that views you as disposable because of the neighborhood you were born in. A neighborhood that we didn’t choose, but that life chose for us . . . please won’t you be my neighbor?

“I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you. I have always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you, so. . .”

– Fred Rogers

n n n For more information on author M. Nicole, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

FICTION | ISABELLA MALINTZIN

Part 1 & Part 2

By Isabella Malintzin

Part 1: You and I 9:52 p.m.

I take one last look at my reflection at the entrance window of your wedding venue. I feel my stomach flutter and my organs pulse with adrenaline. My shoulders go back, my chin high, and I strut in with my eyes centered to the party - forgetting the faded face outlined with a crooked smile the glass revealed moments ago. I'm late, ignored by the crowd as I walk in, but they don't concern me - I'm nervous to see you. I breathe in and sigh, pushing away those girly feelings I've felt for years since that one morning; I let go.

9: 54 p.m.

The dancing crowd seals off the way towards the dining tables, so I, fearing an invite to dance, lift the soft silk between my fingers as I stare at the floor - watching shined shoes dancing next to staggering high heels - and slide my way towards the back of the room avoiding the touch of others. I look up and see an empty table, near the back, and pick it as my safe spot for the night. Shadowed. Empty. Far from any one. I step towards it, my confidence regained with the sight of my haven only to be intercepted by your bride. She comes towards me and pulls me aside, away from my chosen sanctuary. It's all white noise as her mouth speaks but produces silence. I try to read her mouth as excitement beams from her face, though my attention is elsewhere - far from her, and you. I try to excuse myself but before I am free, we both see a familiar hand wave at us. There, in the path she innocently led me on, you sit. A blue beer in your left hand, your right landing on your brother’s shoulder after waving us towards you.

9: 57 p.m.

I begin to sweat. I begin to breathe heavily through my nose. I begin to shiver. I must keep control, I thought to myself - but I failed. As if you could smell the fear radiating my pores, the salty taste of the sweat my chest holds as it rises higher with each breath, the adrenaline pushing away the memories of your body's scent on mine - as if my presence required you to turn and face me. Not your wife. Not us.

Me. I regain awareness of our conversation, now realizing she asked a question. I nod and smile, unaware of what she said, seeing her hand reaching towards mine - leading me to you. I see her ecstatic and energized, oh, how in love she is with you. If she knew what we knew, what went on that morning, that love and happiness would burn her existence into anger and disgust - suicide even.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

FICTION | ISABELLA MALINTZIN

10:01 p.m.

Feeling my dress slide behind me, I grab an end to better make my way towards you. Dragged through courtesies of best wishes and luck, of wholesome appreciation of unity in your holy matrimony, friends and family surround her as I, avoiding interaction, look down and follow the woman you now call yours.

She let go of my hand and went to your side. I struggle to look up, but notice how well your black tux fits perfectly around your strong arms. Remembering how strong your musky scent mixed with mint radiates from your chest, the way your eyes locked on me... those hands moving towards me. I felt my body shiver as I stop, momentarily anchoring my existence for social distraction. But alas, there is no one else to congratulate you besides myself. Of course, you already know how I feel about you. Too much.

10:06 p.m.

What did you notice first when you saw me? My brown, layered hair in curls? The black lace that flows from my shoulders down to the ground? I know it's your wedding day, only the bride should wear white.

It's why the dress I'm wearing - the one I feel your eyes grabbing me in - is far from being anything like hers. I see you adjust your tie and your tall figure tower over me, smiling as you put out your hand, waiting for me to take it. To take your hands... your fingers... the way you took me. I avoid your eyes and take your hand - gulping down my shame and the need to run - feeling my small hand tremble as you squeeze. Just like that morning; when I was seven.

Part 2: Us 5:08 a.m.

The orange radiance of the sun drowning the blue shadows of the morning didn't wake me. The yellow and white beams rays reflecting off the gold framed mirror facing me didn't wake me. The warmth my body felt - the color red - didn't wake me. Your hands did. Your hands on me did. The feeling of your fingers circling my chest made your adrenaline glow with heat my body could not process as natural.

The rhythmic circling. The pinching. Your fingers spun invisible vintage vinyl on my prepubescent being that created silent melodies only you could taste. I heard you refrain from creating sound, but not from continuing your special lullaby.

5:13 a.m.

I focus my eyes away from the walls to the gold-framed mirror where I see myself - our reflection. I shift to my side thinking it will have you stop your inquisition of my purity. Though, I only made things harder for myself. I see my rainbow shirt on the blanket above me. Five colors - red, pink, yellow, blue, purple - all glittering together in unison. My grandmother bought me this pink shimmering pajama set a few months ago. I used to wear it to bed with her when we had sleepovers lovingly as my mother slept in the other room. My grandmother was my guardian when my mother went to work. Though, she passed two weeks ago and is now replaced by shallow nights at my aunt's house while my mother works

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

FICTION | ISABELLA MALINTZIN

two jobs to pay the medical and funeral costs. Her final gift before passing, a gift of life, love, and affection, now removed from my chest. Her protection was gone. She was gone. I'm alone. The sun rose midway, casting away the purple and blue barcodes the blinds created next to the mirror. I saw the hot colors burn into nothing, just as the cold colors froze into dull grays and blacks. Your hands turn safety into fear, colors into gray.

5:15 a.m.

5:17 a.m.

5:23 a.m.

You don't stop. Your hands pull me towards you, my head unmoved and my eyes secure on our reflection. I see you patient and reaching further below my chest. Your breathing quickens. I feel your mouth parted, slightly, and you slither softly between silky sheets and my shy waist.

5:25 a.m.

My vision distorts. Everything I see as beautiful is gone. The reds. The blues. The glistening reflections of the mirror. I saw colors dull and wind down to nothing - overcome by the tears in my eyes I blind myself. The last thing I see before I too am buried in nothingness is my rainbow shirt fall to the ground.

Last night, it hugged me asleep. Now, away from the illuminating rays that made the room dazzle with specks of fairies moments ago, it now lies on the cold floor untouched by light or color.

5:28 am I am a child no more.

n n n For more information on author Isabella Malintzin, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

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SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

Make Way

By Dave Osmundsen

Characters: Allen: Male, late teens/early twenties.

Beryl: Female, late thirties/early forties.

Carl: Male, late fifties/early sixties.

(ALLEN, BERYL, and CARL are sitting on chairs surrounding a fire pit. There are large piles of books next to the chairs, which they casually throw into the fire throughout the play. As soon as the lights come up, a buzzer sounds.)

BERYL: Ten minutes, gentlemen. We're a little behind, so let's pick up the pace a little.

(CARL puts his hand to his lower back and grimaces.)

ALLEN: Your back OK, Carl?

CARL: Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.

ALLEN: Are you taking anything for it, or...?

CARL: You name a pill, I’m on it. My wife just started calling me a pill popper!

(CARL laughs sadly.)

ALLEN: How is your wife doing?

CARL: She's good. Yeah. Having a bit of a hard time finding a job since-BERYL: Right, right.

(CARL picks up a book.)

CARL: Heh. This was her favorite book to teach. “Great Gatsby.”

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

ALLEN: Oh yeah. We were supposed to read that in English, but I spark-noted it because... laziness.

(CARL throws “The Great Gatsby” into the fire.)

CARL: I told her multiple times she could always get a job here, but she refuses. She thinks this “Make Way” mandate is bullsh(BERYL shushes CARL violently. The three stop throwing books into the fire for this next segment.)

BERYL: What did I say aboutCARL: It’s my wife. Not me.

BERYL: If Bill walked by and heard youCARL: OK, OK. I won't mention it again. Sorry.

BERYL: I understand a lot of people have thoughts about the mandate. But we're not getting paid to talk about them. We're being paid to burn these books.

ALLEN: Ten bucks an hour...

BERYL: (Ignoring ALLEN) And I’m being paid to make sure you burn these books. Got it?

(ALLEN and CARL nod their heads. The tension settles down. They continue throwing books into the fire. They do this for a minute or so. Maybe they glance at a few titles. Or maybe not.)

(ALLEN picks up a book and examines it. A few moments. He recognizes it.)

ALLEN: No way.

CARL: What?

ALLEN: Look!

(ALLEN shows BERYL and CARL the book.)

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

BERYL: “King Monstrous.” Haven’t heard of it.

CARL: Me neither.

ALLEN: It was like my favorite childhood book. It was about this King, King Monstrous, who wanted his son, Sid Monstrous, to marry this girl named Glenda so he, the King, could get with her mother, WindalynBERYL: You read this when you were a kid!?

ALLEN: I was an odd child. (ALLEN flips through the book.) But yeah, I used to read it like, every day. When we got rid of my copy for the Mandate, I never thought I'd see it again. I looked in every single library for a copy. They never had it. They would have books “King Monstrous”- like one librarian tried to get me to read “King Lear” and “Richard III”, back when you could still get copies of them. But I could never find “King Monstrous”. I wonder how this got here...

BERYL: This reunion is really sweet, but we don't have time to get all mushy over weird-ass books from our childhood. Into the fire, please.

ALLEN: Can't I just...?

BERYL: We’re really behind on these, Allen.

CARL: Let him keep the book a few more minutes. It clearly means a lot to him. If I ever came across a copy of “The Grapes of Wrath” again, I'd want to hold onto it a little.

ALLEN: Yeah. Please?

BERYL: Alright, alright! You can hold onto it for now. But if Bill comes by to check on us, you'd better hope he doesn't see it.

(ALLEN sets the book down by his chair.)

ALLEN: We have less than ten minutes. What's the likelihood of Bill checking on us?

BERYL: Remember Terry?

ALLEN: No. I think she left before I started...?

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

BERYL: She didn't leave. She had three minutes left in her shift, and Bill just so happened to check in on her group. Saw she was hiding copies of “The Cat in the Hat” under her chair and she was gone. Not just gone from here. gone. And Gone her supervisor? Also gone. So. I'm doing you a favor here, Allen. Be grateful.

ALLEN: Why “The Cat in the Hat”? That's like, the most harmless book.

CARL: I always thought "The Cat in the Hat" was just weird. This giant talking cat walks into your house and causes mayhem? That book made me terrified of cats.

(CARL shutters.)

ALLEN: But does that mean it should be-BERYL: We don't have time to discuss that. Now please. Go a little faster. If I tell Bill you put us behind, he's gonna tear me a new one.

(ALLEN takes an armful of books and drops them all into the fire with just the slightest hint of attitude.)

ALLEN: There. All caught up.

(Silently, ALLEN, BERYL, and CARL continue throwing books into the fire for a few moments. CARL touches his back again, in pain.)

ALLEN: You sure you're OK, Carl?

CARL: Yeah. I've stuck it out to the end in worse situations.

ALLEN: (To BERYL) You should let him go home early.

BERYL: OK first, don't tell me what to do when the supervisor I'm here. Second, I would let Carl go home early, but Bill doesn't like people being sent home early. He wants all or nothing from us. Besides, we only have a few minutes left. And Carl said he could stick it out. Right?

CARL: Right.

ALLEN: (To CARL) I can take the rest of your books if you-BERYL: Were you not listening? Carl said he could stick it out. End of argument.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

ALLEN: Doesn't mean he should...

BERYL: You have an awful lot of attitude, considering I'm letting you hold onto that "King Monstrous" book.

ALLEN: I'm just looking out for my co-worker. He's been in pain all day!

BERYL: If Carl was really in pain, and it was clearly impeding his ability to work, then yes, I would let him go early. But so far, your mouth has been slowing us down more than his back. So if you can get back to work, that would be extremely helpful right now.

(CARL comes across a copy of “Charlottes’s Web”) CARL: Hey look. “Charlotte's Web.” Didn't you say this was your favorite book, Beryl?

(Taken aback, BERYL looks at CARL and the book.)

BERYL: Yes. CARL: Do you wanna take a look at it, or...?

BERYL: No. Into the fire.

CARL: I used to read this book to my daughter all the time...

BERYL: Carl.

(CARL throws the book into the fire. BERYL continues throwing books into the fire.

After a few moments, ALLEN reluctantly starts doing so as well.)

(Buzzer sounds.)

BERYL: Five-minute warning. Alright, we gotta hurry up now. Less talk, more burn.

Might wanna say your last words to “King Monstrous”, Allen.

(ALLEN picks up the book he had set aside. He looks at it tenderly, somberly, almost like a mother holding a dying baby. BERYL and CARL continue throwing books into the fire. A long moment.)

ALLEN: I just didn't think it would be so short. You know? Like, I figured I might find this book again one day, but I didn't think I would have to...

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

BERYL: What did I just say? Less talk, more burn.

ALLEN: This could be the last copy of this book. Like, the last copy of this book. The last opportunity the person who ever wrote this will get their words read by another human being. I might be the only one who has ever read this book now. At this second, I might be the only one who can read it.

CARL: There could always be another copy out there.

ALLEN: After the “Make Way” mandate, I doubt it. Make Way for what, you gotta think...

BERYL: “Make Way For The New.” It's right there in the slogan.

ALLEN: What was wrong with the old, though?

BERYL: The old got us where we are today, Allen. These books, the ideas they implemented into society's heads... They led us to think we could do whatever we wanted, consequences be damned. Which led to the Great Pandemic. Which led to the Second Great Depression. Which led to the Great War. People lost their because these books existed.

ALLEN: But not book. What about “Charlotte's Web”? Didn't every that book bring joy to the world? To world?

BERYL: “Charlotte's Web” was a book I enjoyed when I was a child. Doesn't mean I don't do what I'm being paid to do now.

ALLEN: But... “Charlotte's Web” was like, your favorite book. And now you're killing your soul because of some-BERYL: Don't give me some crap about how I'm killing my soul or whatever. I'm just trying to get by and do my job. And part of my job is making sure that you two are doing your jobs. And if Bill finds out you haven't been doing your job, he'll find out I haven't been doing my job. And if Bill finds out I haven't been doing my job, I'm gone. What's it gonna matter if someone can't read a book with talking animals, or Monstrous Kings, in twenty years? We're starting over. We're making way for new things. New innovations.

New ideas. And hoping they don't land us where the old ones did...

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

ALLEN: Are they, whoever are, going to decide which new ideas they get to exist? That's how dictatorship ever started. every How can you not see that we're headed in the same exact direction as-BERYL: I'll tell you how dictatorships get started.

(BERYL pulls a few books from her pile. She shows each one to ALLEN, then throws them into the fire after saying their name.)

BERYL: "Mein Kampf". "The Little Red Book". "The Ruhnama". Those books were written by sick, sick people in order to self-validate their twisted world views, and to convince others that their ways are the right ways. And they just so happened to be the most persuasive, charismatic people who knew how to get their way. And people went along with it because they read these books and think their ideas sound great. Who's to say someone else won't pick up these sooooo books and think, "Gee, everything this book is saying is a great idea!" The risk is too high, Allen.

ALLEN: But if those books don't exist, how will we know if another dictator comes to power? How will we not know if there's a out there who could cause harm?

BERYL: Any book can cause harm if read by the wrong person at the wrong time. Some future dictator might read that "King Monstrous" book and decide that all women need to be imprisoned, or something.

ALLEN: But that's not what this book is about. It's about caring for people and being compassionate and... It made me think I could do anything.

BERYL: Which is the most dangerous idea. You got books telling young people they can do everything if they just put their minds to it. Telling people they have powers they don't. Setting up false expectations. That all you had to do was believe in yourselves. I saw how you young people fought the mandate. You thought you could overturn it because you believed you could do anything. But here we are. These are the circumstances you're in now. There's no staying behind. You can either fall in line, survive, and start over with the rest of us. Or you could get taken away. Is "King Monstrous" worth being taken away for?

(Long pause. Standoff. CARL continues throwing books into the fire.)

(Buzzer sounds. Different from the ones we've heard before.)

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | DAVE OSMUNDSEN

BERYL: Two minutes.

(BERYL and CARL continue throwing books into the fire. ALLEN doesn't. He continues holding onto "King Monstrous.� Standstill. ALLEN hugs the book to himself. He then walks slowly to the fire pit, kisses the book, then drops it into the fire. A moment as he watches the book burn. BERYL and CARL continue throwing in books until a prolonged buzzer sounds. They stop.)

BERYL: Alright. Let's put this fire out.

(BERYL and CARL get water buckets.)

BERYL: Allen. Bucket.

(ALLEN gets a bucket. The three of them pour water on the fire, extinguishing it. We hear the hiss of these words, these thoughts, evaporating into the air. ALLEN, BERYL, and CARL look at the ashes of the flames, the ashes of the books they've burned. The charred pages, bindings, etc. It is almost mournful. Almost.)

(Then, BERYL claps her hands together.)

BERYL: Good work today, gentlemen.

(ALLEN turns around and rushes out. CARL looks at BERYL.) CARL: Whatever these new ideas are, Beryl. I hope they better.

(CARL hobbles offstage, leaving BERYL alone. BERYL looks down at the pile of burnt books. She reaches into the charred remains and picks up a copy of "Charlotte's Web" that is still salvageable. She opens it and reads a small passage. She smiles. Maybe gives a little laugh. When she's finished, she drops the book back into the pile. She looks to the audience.)

(Her smile disappears.)

BLACKOUT.

n n n For more information on author Dave Osmundsen, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | AMAR CAMISI

How Small We Are

By Amar Camisi

How Small We Are is a tiny piece with big mystery. Amar Camisi wanted to explore what it was like to shoot a scene in a dystopic-like environment while also allowing the visuals and audio to propel the narrative in a much more free-flowing way. “My goal for this small project is to allow viewers to piece their own stories together utilizing the little information that is currently provided. Who are these characters? Where are they working and why? Is that a rocket-ship being launched into space or a missile attack? I think the fun lies in the imagination. The purpose is to overthink.�

(To read more about Amar Camisi please visit our Contributors Page)

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

Rosalie’s Reprise

By Pam Munter

Characters: Jessica: A fashionable, educated woman in her ‘50s.

Essie: A blowsy woman in her 70s, a bit frumpy.

Hubert: A pompous, self-important man in his 60s, always in a suit and tie.

Andre: A hip musician, about 45-50 for whom a beret is standard.

Tad: An agent, tense, controlling and sure of himself, about 50-60.

Setting: 2001, The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel In New York City, Afternoon.

There’s a draped, closed casket sitting on a bier in the middle of the room on the stage, surrounded by empty chairs; flowers on tables around the room. It’s a visitation, not a funeral.

(JESSICA enters the empty room, tentatively looks around, sees the casket, reacts; she walks over, puts her hand on it.)

JESSICA: Hi, Rosalie. It’s Jessica. Somehow, I feel you can hear me, even though I know…I had to come. You knew I’d be here, didn’t you? When we got together last week, I had no idea it would be the last time we….Other than today, I mean.

(HUBERT enters) HUBERT: You’re early. I had the room reserved for 11.

JESSICA: I’m sorry. Am I too early?

HUBERT: No, it’s fine. Nothing going on until a rehearsal later this afternoon. (looks at casket) Did you know her?

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

JESSICA: We were friends. Best friends. I thought. We just met last week. Had drinks at Orzo on West 46th. She seemed fine. Well, as fine as she ever was. I had no idea. Are you Hubert, by any chance?

HUBERT: Sorry. (they shake hands) Yes, Hubert Morosco at your service. I’m the manager of the Oak Room.

JESSICA: I thought so. Nicer place to hold this event than a mortuary. Room looks different with the little tables out of the way. Rosalie loved playing this room. Warm and intimate with the audience right there in front of you. Looks like a ghost now. You must know how devastated she was when you canceled her contract.

HUBERT: You’re misinformed. I offered her a few weeks in the summer. She declined my offer. I did not cancel her, as you put it.

JESSICA: A few weeks in the summer. When nobody goes out to clubs. She was booked into a prime spot in October for years. No sense of loyalty?

HUBERT: My dear woman, my job is to fill the room. She was no longer the draw she once was. It was time to bring in new talent. I’m sure she understood. She was a pro.

JESSICA: It just about killed her. Maybe it did kill her.

HUBERT: It was business. It had nothing to do with me.

JESSICA: Nothing personal, huh?

HUBERT: I don’t remember seeing you here. What’s your name?

JESSICA: Jessica Bascom. I came when I could. It was expensive, you know. There were always so many celebrities in the audience. She loved that. I did, too. (noticing the few chairs) I thought there’d be a better turnout. Maybe even some cabaret stars.

HUBERT: This is the private visitation, for close friends and family only. It’s a short event today.

JESSICA: Event? That’s not…

HUBERT: (interrupting) You must have been good friends if she wanted you here.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

JESSICA: Well, yes, we were. She was sort of my hero. I wanted to be like her, but… (as she speaks, ESSIE enters, a little drunk) ESSIE: (looks at coffin) There she is. Or was, I guess. Well, at least, I’m in the right place.

HUBERT: I’m so sorry for your loss, Madam. You are -?

ESSIE: I’m her mother. Was her mother. Essie McCoy. Who are you people?

JESSICA: Hello, Mrs. McCoy. I’m Jessica. We haven’t met. Rosalie and I were good friends. Best friends.

ESSIE: So why weren’t you there when it happened? Some friend.

HUBERT: Mrs. McCoy, I’m Hubert Morosco. The manager here. Your daughter was a phenomenal talent. Everyone adored her.

ESSIE: Yeah, she told me how you screwed her over. A real prince. So what’s gonna happen here?

HUBERT: Rosalie left instructions that close friends and family would meet here in the Oak Room to celebrate her life. Very suitable, I think. Don’t you? Nothing formal. There’s a public celebration next week a few blocks down the street. Are you coming to that?

ESSIE: Nope. Can’t. Can a person get a drink around here? This is a hotel, right?

HUBERT: Certainly. What would you like?

ESSIE: Scotch on the rocks. Make it a double. I can see I’m gonna need it. No, wait a sec. Forget the rocks.

(HUBERT leaves; throughout, he comes and goes and is seldom acknowledged) (ESSIE turns to JESSICA) ESSIE: A friend, huh? So what did she tell you about me? She thought everything was always all my fault. (points at coffin) She probably would blame me for this, too.

JESSICA: Oh, no, no. I know she felt bad about having to ask you for money once in a while.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

ESSIE: Once in a while? Hah. She was 50-friggin’ years old. An adult. A big singing star.

At least, that’s what she kept telling me. Do you ask for money from your mommy?

JESSICA: She wanted you to think the best of her. To be proud of her. Sometimes, she didn’t feel…

ESSIE: Like I was? Oh, come on. She was difficult. A real pain. All her life. Never did what I told her to do. Her father and I wanted her to major in something practical in college. Know what she chose? Renaissance literature. Renaissance literature! What the hell good is that? Then she ran off to Italy without even graduating. Always impulsive.

Never thinking ahead. Never.

JESSICA: Isn’t that where she started singing? In Italy? I wasn’t clear when it…

(ANDRE enters.)

ANDRE: Hey, guys. How ya doin’? (sees casket) Oh. Is that…her in there?

ESSIE: It better be, or somebody’s missing we don’t know about. Who the hell are you?

ANDRE: I’m not sure I should be here. Rosalie and I were married a long time ago.

Haven’t seen her in years. But I had to come.

(HUBERT returns with ESSIE’s drink) JESSICA: Oh, you’re Andre. She told me about you. You met on a gig in Tuscany, right?

She sang with your trio.

ANDRE: Yeah. She was just starting out. Working out the kinks, ya know. I just wanted to help her, man.

JESSICA: I’m Jessica. And this (points to ESSIE) is her mother.

ESSIE: (to ANDRE) Your damned marriage breaking up probably caused this. None of this is my fault.

JESSICA: Mrs. McCoy, nobody is blaming you.

ESSIE: All those men, all those husbands, all that…what? All the waste. She wasted her life.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

JESSICA: No, no. I disagree. She had passion in spades. She was so vibrant. I envied her so. It’s too late to blame her now. Haven’t you ever wanted something so bad you’d do almost anything to get it?

ESSIE: (thinks for a sec) No. (Enter TAD, in a hurry) ESSIE: Oh, jeez. Here’s another one. You’re the last husband, aren’t you? We met once.

TAD: Yeah, and I certainly remember you. I thought you might be here. But I came anyway. It’s my job. Let’s rearrange these chairs so she has more room. Give me some help here.

ANDRE: Oh, man.

TAD: I don’t know who set this up but it’s all wrong. (starts to move the chairs around; ANDRE helps him) Hello, Jessica. I didn’t think you’d have the guts to be here.

JESSICA: (stunned) Me? TAD: Where were you when she needed you? (to ESSIE) And where the hell were you? (to ANDRE) I don’t know who you are or why you’re here but you’re probably responsible for this, too.

(HUBERT enters) HUBERT: Hello, Tad. (shake hands) Good to see you. I know Rosalie appreciated all the work you did for her. You were with her a long time.

TAD: Yeah, I was. It’s hard to let go of that. Even after…

ESSIE: What? You did more to her than just marry her? I need a refill, Hubert. Such small glasses.

HUBERT: Certainly, Mrs. McCoy. Would you all like to be seated?

ESSIE: This isn’t gonna take long, is it? You know, I thought I’d get a few minutes alone with my daughter. But noooo. All these strangers.

JESSICA: I’d prefer to stand, thank you.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

(No one moves to the chairs) TAD: I was responsible for her success not her failure. I got her gigs all over – here, for instance. This is the best room in New York. She would never have gotten it without me.

I made her.

JESSICA: That’s not true. She was already doing pretty well when you met. You meet her right here, didn’t you, after one of her shows? Easy to bask in her glow, isn’t it?

Especially now. If she were here, she would tell you off big time.

ANDRE: What is it exactly you did for her, man? I tried. She kept telling me she wanted to be a jazz singer, but she wouldn’t improvise. What’s with that? I encouraged her, you know? To do what she did best. Interpret songs. She had a mind of her own. Wouldn’t listen.

ESSIE: See? That’s what I’ve been telling ya. Somebody’s listening to me.

JESSICA: None of you is giving her much credit. It’s as if none of you knew her. Yes, you’re right. She was pretty raw when you met her, Andre. I knew her then, too. I went with her to Italy. She was wildly in love with singing. Wanted to sound like Billie Holiday. Her voice always had that raspy quality…like a croak to it. She wanted to be respected as a jazz singer, but…

TAD: (turns to casket) Sorry, Rosalie. Gotta say this. (then to group) If we’re being honest, she had problems with hitting the notes. I told her she should study with somebody, learn more about music. I got her the name of a really good teacher in Greenwich Village. A famous guy who worked with Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney.

She wasn’t interested. Always in a hurry. The critics talked about her intonation all the time. But, you know, the audience didn’t care.

JESSICA: You seriously thought she needed lessons? Come on. You probably made her feel terrible. Maybe even hopeless. She just wanted to sing.

TAD: I got her gigs so she could do that. It made her happy. For a while.

JESSICA: But you couldn’t get her another record contract after Monogram dropped her. Or get Hubert to give her back the good dates here. You let her down. Maybe we all did.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

TAD: Now we’re into the blame game. Do you think I’m the one who pushed her out of that 16th floor window? She did that all on her own, baby.

(Silence. Nobody wants to talk about this, the elephant in the room) ESSIE: How could she do that to me?

ANDRE: Maybe that’s why we’re all here. To find out why. It doesn’t make any sense, man. The chick I knew was in charge of her world. And mine, too, man. She wouldn’t do this. Strong woman. She was the one who left me ‘cause I never would have left her. No matter what. I still think about that night…

TAD: OK, so there were disappointments. That comes with this business. I did what I could. Did I know she’d do something dumb like this? Absolutely not. (to JESSICA) You were her friend. How come you couldn’t see it coming?

JESSICA: I knew she had been on antidepressants. She’d stopped taking them. Said it dried out her throat. You know Rosalie. It was always about her career. You can’t force somebody to take pills. To help themselves. I tried to tell her…

ESSIE: She never had problems like that when she was living at home with us. The last time on the phone, I told her, “Come home.” The little bookstore on the corner was for sale. Her father and I would help her buy it, if she wanted. She’d have a steady job, a place to live. A family.

ANDRE: You thought she would go back home to live with you guys? At 50? Man, that’s far out. Wow. That must have really cheered her up.

TAD: Some nights after rehearsing, we’d hang out and she’d talk about growing up. How she was always the smart one, never the pretty one. (to ESSIE) She said you had called her fat. I don’t know that she ever got over that one. Did you know she had an eating disorder? I wouldn’t call you abusive, lady. Exactly. But some of the stories…

ESSIE: It’s a lie. Not true. None of it. We are a loving family. She was big and gawky, clumsy, not like her sister. Not fat. Well, a little porky when she was a teenager. Big nose…

JESSICA: Where is her father, anyway?

ESSIE: Couldn’t make it. He’s been sick.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

ANDRE: Man, that’s harsh. Not coming to your own daughter’s visitation. Wow. TAD: (to ANDRE) Were you this creepy and judgmental when you were married to her?

ESSIE: He’s on a lot of medication. Just hasn’t been himself lately. I haven’t told him about Rosalie. Hubert! Again, please (holds up her empty glass).

(HUBERT takes it and exits) JESSICA: If anyone is to blame, it’s him (pointing to HUBERT’s exit). I knew she was struggling but when he, well, demoted her. It stripped her of all her dignity. She stopped believing in herself.

TAD: Nah, you’re wrong about that. That would never happen. It wasn’t the canceled record contract, either. You didn’t know her as well as you think.

ANDRE: Yeah, right.

TAD: You want the truth? The fact is, I loved her, but she didn’t get along with anybody.

(They all rise to disagree – “That’s not true,” “No,” “That’s not it,” etc.)

ESSIE: She sure didn’t get along with you. Dumped you like she dumped him (to ANDRE).

ANDRE: Hey, man, I hadn’t seen her in a long time. Like years. Who was around?

Anybody see this coming? Nobody leaps out of a window without thinking about it for a long time.

ESSIE: Oh, she would. Her life was one big whim. I’m surprised she hadn’t done it before. I could tell you…

JESSICA: She left a note…written three days before she…

TAD: Three days? She lived with that decision for three days? Why didn’t she call me? (beat) Why didn’t I call her? Why didn’t any of you call her?

ANDRE: What do you do while you’re waiting to jump? Do laundry, pay your bills, brush your teeth?

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

JESSICA: The police said there was a note in her pocket about the cats upstairs in her apartment. Even at the end, all she was worried about was her cats.

ESSIE: But not herself. Of course. Or me. She was so scattered. Always. (realizing she could have said the wrong thing). Oh, I didn’t mean in the street. Sorry. I meant…

JESSICA: We know what you meant. I still have no idea why she would do this. I’m just so…

ANDRE: Pissed?

JESSICA: No! Yes! No! I don’t know.

ANDRE: From what I’m hearing from you guys, I think the last straw was losing the record contract. She loved the process of recording. Could fix any glitches that would come up, hang with the guys, take her time. She was in love with the sound of her own voice, ya know? And that’s on you, Tad. ESSIE: You people are all out to lunch. It was the men. She always liked hanging around the men. Even as a little girl. At family dinners, the rest of the women were in the kitchen. She wouldn’t come in to help. She’d be out in the garage with the guys. She used them, got them to do things for her.

TAD: Nah, it was losing the Algonquin gig. There were lots of setbacks but that one meant a lot to her. She loved her fans. They were the real love of her life. She was mad at Hubert, insulted he would treat her like that, after she had worked here for so long. The other stuff that happened just pushed her closer to the edge. (realizing the double meaning). Uh, you know, I mean caused her depression.

ESSIE: You’ve all missed the point, as usual. She did it to get back at me. I tried to straighten her out. Help her grow up. She called and asked for money - again. I think it was a month ago. She called it a loan but we both knew better. I couldn’t do it. My husband’s last hospitalization took almost all the money we had. I knew there would be more down the road. I had to look out for us. She was a grown woman, dammit. Maybe she just needed to get a real job. She came apart when I told her that. She said it was beneath her. Hung up on me. So there. It’s clear that she did this just to spite me.

ANDRE: Man, you didn’t help her out at all? Wow. You really think it’s about you, huh?

A piece of work you are.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

TAD: That would only have worked if you cared, lady. If you felt guilty. Obviously, you don’t. You’re mad at her for doing it. You want guilt? I got it in spades. I tried to make her happy but happy wasn’t what Rosalie was all about. Even her song repertoire. Take a look. Sad songs, songs of regret. She sabotaged herself all the time. She was argumentative, unreasonable. There was something wrong with everything I did. If I booked her someplace, even here, there would be a problem. Hey, Hubert!

(HUBERT enters) HUBERT: Is everything all right? Do you need anything?

ANDRE: Tad is saying Rosalie was her own worst enemy. Me? Man, I think this is all your fault.

TAD: Didn’t you find her a bit of a diva? You guys didn’t always see eye to eye.

HUBERT: I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead.

ESSIE: It’s OK, Hubie. She can’t hear you.

HUBERT: Well…. are you referring to the times she stopped her own show in the middle because the lights weren’t right? Or the time she walked off the stage because the sound was not to her liking? Or the hours we spent debating the terms of the contract again and again?

TAD: Yeah, and that was after she had signed it. That’s what I’m talking about.

HUBERT: It was always worth it. She gave a fine performance each night. The annoyances, the personal issues were of no importance. She was a unique performer.

One of a kind. Her shows were…intelligent. She spoke about the songs, told wonderful stories. Her selections were memorable. She sang “There’s No Business Like Show Business” as a sad lament. There were people in the audience who cried. I cried.

JESSICA: I remember that show. She was magnificent. God, I miss her.

ANDRE: She had a vocal quality like nobody else. I tried to get her to change it, I’m not proud of that. But she was a natural. Not fake like some people here I could mention.

JESSICA: Yes. That’s a perfect description. When she was on stage, she was all there.

ESSIE: I never saw her perform here.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

TAD: Why not? I know you live on the other coast, but still…

ESSIE: I was never invited. The big star was just too busy with her fans to ask her own mother to come.

ANDRE: Oh, man.

ESSIE: (to ANDRE) Why are you even here? You guys were married all of 20 minutes, weren’t you?

ANDRE: I play piano. I really dug her. When I read about her success, I wondered if I had dropped the ball. Why didn’t I fight for her to stay? She left a hole in my life. I know there were other guys. I’ve had other women. But there was no one with her zest, her ambition. I guess I’m here because I wanted to thank her for the cool times we had together. Sounds dumb.

JESSICA: No. It doesn’t. I think we call came together today to say goodbye. No doubt about that. But we all want to know what we might have done to keep her alive. We’re all responsible in a way.

ESSIE: Nah. I have a clear conscience. I did everything for her. Everything. Maybe too much.

TAD: I don’t know what to think. We butted heads a lot. Strong-willed people, ya know?

I helped her in her career, and she helped with mine. Once in a while, she’d hole up in her apartment for a couple of days. Wouldn’t answer the phone. I figured she was working things out for herself. I didn’t know she was this…fragile? Desperate? I mean, who jumps out of a window in the middle of the night? Why not some nice, quiet sleeping pills? Jesus, even her exit was overly dramatic. Like she was.

JESSICA: I guess that leaves me. I’ve gone over and over our last conversation. She told me she was upset about her career problems, the lack of money. But, you know, we all get down. The one thing that made me worry was when she stopped those antidepressants. That was something that would have made her feel better. She decided she didn’t want to. Maybe she didn’t think she was worth the trouble. Maybe the struggle became too much. I don’t think any of us is to blame. I don’t know if it was a long-time coming. Maybe it was. She sure believed in her own talent. I just wished she had believed in herself a little more.

HUBERT: What was that she liked to sing? “The Waters of March”?

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

TAD: Did it as an encore at every performance.

ANDRE: I remember that. It was an ode to life, wasn’t it? Sort of like a prayer.

ESSIE: Now, that’s crazy.

JESSICA: I love that song. The last part… (she recites, syncopating it as if in song) “It’s the wind blowing free, it’s the end of the slope.”

TAD: (recites) “It’s a beam, it’s a void, it’s a hunch, it’s a hope.”

JESSICA: (recites) “And the riverbank talks of The Waters of March It’s the end of the strain (she pauses here for the obvious meaning, as if hearing it for the first time) The joy in your heart.”

ESSIE: Joy? Right. Look, I gotta go. I got a plane to catch. But I want to remind you people, this is not my fault. And I don’t want to see any of you ever again.

JESSICA: I wouldn’t worry about that., Mrs. McCoy. It’s not likely, anyway. All we have in common is Rosalie.

HUBERT: Thank you all for coming.

TAD: Listen, before you go, let’s take a photo. If I can get this to the Post by 4, it’ll be in the morning paper. Just line up around her over here. It’ll the one of the last things I can do for her.

JESSICA: Really? OK. ANDRE: Oh, man.

ESSIE: Make it quick. Let’s get it over with.

HUBERT: (moves away) I’ll just stand over here.

TAD: No, no. You’re a part of this. A big part. Move over there next to Mrs. McCoy. (They reluctantly line up around the casket while TAD takes the photo)

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | PAM MUNTER

TAD: OK. We’re done. No better place to say goodbye than in this room. (leans over, touches casket) Bye, kiddo.

(ANDRE, ESSIE, TAD exit after acknowledging the casket; JESSICA and HUBERT remain) JESSICA: I wonder why she wanted us all here. Why she picked us.

HUBERT: I don’t know.

JESSICA: If it’s OK, I’d like to stay for a while longer.

HUBERT: Of course. I thought it went very well, didn’t you?

JESSICA: Yes. It went very well.

BLACKOUT.

n n n For more information on author Pam Munter, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

The Golem of La Jolla

By Allan Havis Characters: Rabbi Joan: A young female rabbi Congregant: A young man Prague Rabbi: An older male rabbi The Golem: A monster conjured by PRAGUE RABBI The Congregation: a group attending the synagogue Setting: Primarily a synagogue in San Diego, California - Temple Beth Judah, in the near future (Temple Beth Judah’s Rabbi Joan at the bimmah is addressing her congregation during morning Shabbat) RABBI JOAN: Shabbat Shalom Some of you are arriving late We’ve increased the security At the parking lot and the gate For cars, cabs and pedestrians, all but the equestrians.

Over five years ago I’m sure you recall The rabid gang brawl From Westboro Baptist Church Our police left us in a lurch Casting a pall On us all Stirring darkness But now something a hundred times worse Has stained our moral America, Neo-Nazis, Nationalists White Supremacists plenty Our police without sentry Showing violence and gore Marching naked to our door Be it Jerusalem Or in La Jolla As we approach

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

The Days of Awe The rituals for Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement are described in detail in Leviticus 16 Speak to the families In Charlottesville In Pittsburgh Speak to the families In neighboring Poway CONGREGATION: When they took in strange fire Strange and violent fire Before the Almighty (A CONGREGANT leaves the synagogue and approaches an older gentleman, drinking a cup of coffee at a high cocktail table with two stools.)

PRAGUE RABBI: This is very good coffee.

Yes. Strong and bitter.

Cream changes Everything dark.

I asked for cream.

What did you get?

CONGREGANT: Decaf. You’re a rabbi?

PRAGUE RABBI: Yes. From Prague.

CONGREGANT: The city of Franz Kafka?

PRAGUE RABBI: Yes, the city of Kafka.

CONGREGANT: You have family here?

PRAGUE RABBI: No family.

CONGREGANT: No family?

PRAGUE RABBI: I want to tell you That you cannot Think like a fool.

A spoon, my friend, watch it bend. (holds up the spoon, suddenly it bends. CONGREGANT exclaims excitement) Do you know the Kabbalah?

Jewish mystics apply creative forces

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

of twenty-two Hebrew letters, Coercive incantations Summoning demons Sane men in their elation Old Kabbalists saw creation Of a giant from deep red clay The purest alchemy of the day The Hebrew language, Yiddish and Ladino too Yes, yes. All relied on common words But the forbidden words Ignite the skies like evil birds Tales of mystic rabbis Sparking life from dust Fill the Early Modern era Like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein Making Golem, Our Golem CONGREGANT: Our Golem PRAGUE RABBI: Yes, my friend Making Golem a folk hero Saving Jews from pogroms But know too the lifeforce Like dirty sex, can go astray Fear the Golem. Love the Golem CONGREGANT: Nothing is safe when Jew haters attack.

PRAGUE RABBI: Yes, when Jew haters attack Not one hundred cops, Not one thousand marines Not a million machines, The Tiki Torchers Embrace Vatican I, Popes in the past Said Jews killed Christ And with that lie A millennium or two Of persecution I wish your modern rabbi would see this truth.

CONGREGANT: She’s new, she’s young.

She has too much faith.

Her sky is blue PRAGUE RABBI: The white nationalists’ caravan Coming from Idaho. Coming from Utah

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

Coming from Arizona. Coming from Nevada Coming from Montana. In just a few days.

A bloodbath.

CONGREGANT: How do you know?

PRAGUE RABBI: It’s on my iPhone.

Don’t you look at your phone?

CONGREGANT: And this Golem?

PRAGUE RABBI: I don’t own him. He doesn’t own me.

We have – shall I say?

A casual, open relationship CONGREGANT: You control the Golem?

PRAGUE RABBI: No. No. No. The Golem can have life Because he is given life He is the dust of bones – But you need More than a minyan Of ten Jewish men To give this Golem Supernatural strength The decision of your congregation CONGREGANT: Tell me honestly, are you the Golem’s keeper?

PRAGUE RABBI: Yes. To be the broker of prayer.

Between you and the Golem.

Between your rabbi and Kabbalah Between your congregation And the white nationalists.

This Golem is a thunderbolt CONGREGANT: What happened to you?

PRAGUE RABBI: My eye patch - - (Lifting his eye patch to the CONGREGANT) I tried to embrace this Golem.

He took my eye.

And fed it to the wolves.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

We live in supernatural times.

Tell the good members Of Temple Beth Judah To love the Torah – To assemble this Shabbat Prepared for a great reckoning (The CONGREGANT and PRAGUE RABBI walk to the synagogue.

The CONGREGANT speaks with RABBI JOAN, the PRAGUE RABBI waits nearby patiently.)

CONGREGANT: You are very brave Rabbi.

RABBI JOAN: Thank you but I am just like you.

That is to say, you are very brave too.

CONGREGANT: Far from brave.

I'm afraid – before it's too late We need more security guards at the gate RABBI JOAN: Max, you look troubled CONGREGANT: I cannot sleep. (pause) A strange rabbi’s outside A Rabbi from Prague Got a black eye patch Has a bad limp He swings a cane With a hideous hat Accent thicker than Lugosi or Putin Says he can conjure A ten-foot Golem Wide like an army tank Capable of scaring off 10,000 Tiki torch cadets RABBI JOAN: A Golem from Prague?

This rabbi is outside Our shul, waiting?

CONGREGANT: Yes, he’s pacing outside

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

A back slapper He acts like a prophet Predicting violence Worse than before RABBI JOAN: Pacing outside?

A back slapper?

Do you think really This is a prophet?

Or a lost heretic?

CONGREGANT: He carries photos of this monster This ten-foot Golem RABBI JOAN: I have to say This brings me A bucket of dismay CONGREGANT: The monster. The thing.

Paralyzes Jew haters Scares race baiters Yes, yes, honest to God The Golem from Prague. (pause) We can train him.

He can train us.

RABBI JOAN: The city police patrols.

We have defenses.

Cameras at every pole.

Practiced at lockdowns.

CONGREGANT: It’s the not the single shooter We have to fear, Rabbi.

There is a marching mob Worse than any crazed looter.

They chant like a church choir “Jews - will not - replace us.”

It is worse than Charlottesville It could look like Pittsburgh We could be Poway.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

(pause) Please wake up, Rabbi Joan Talk to the learned man With the black eye patch He’s in the parking lot.

RABBI JOAN: I’ll talk to the Rabbi from Prague But you must believe in your heart There is no such thing as Golems CONGREGANT: Thank you, Rabbi Joan.

(The congregant steps aside, motioning for the Prague Rabbi to enter. Lights shift.)

PRAGUE RABBI: Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi.

RABBI JOAN: Shabbat Shalom.

PRAGUE RABBI: Your shul is beautiful.

Inside and out.

Up and down.

RABBI JOAN: Thank you.

PRAGUE RABBI: I had a shul in Prague.

Twenty-three years.

Best shul in Europe One rabbi’s opinion Worth ten hundred million We lost the young ones.

The congregations failed.

And then there was arson.

Can you imagine such a thing?

We had priceless Torahs.

We had handcraft stain glass Insurance doesn’t care, Rabbi.

RABBI JOAN: I’m so sorry for your loss, Rabbi.

PRAGUE RABBI: I was in the building.

During the fire.

Thank God, no one died.

RABBI JOAN: Why are you here?

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

PRAGUE RABBI: Why are you here?

RABBI JOAN: This is my synagogue.

PRAGUE RABBI: So it is.

This is your shul Yet you eye me Like a circus fool And I fear for you.

RABBI JOAN: God is watching.

PRAGUE RABBI: And so are the police.

RABBI JOAN: Yes PRAGUE RABBI: The police can come The army and the marines The National Guard But nothing stops hatred.

Look at me, Rabbi Joan I study Kabbala, Rabbi.

We see time differently.

Future is always present.

Past sears a living memory.

Your synagogue is next.

In the global Satanic war Against the lonely Jew. RABBI JOAN: There is no lonely Jew. PRAGUE RABBI: Israel is a lonely Jew. I am a lonely Jew. RABBI JOAN: What do you want, Rabbi?

PRAGUE RABBI: To save your congregation.

I don’t have a twin

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

I am without a doppelganger But just beyond my shadow You can see the Golem.

You don’t believe?

RABBI JOAN: I believe our miracles Are embedded in the bible.

PRAGUE RABBI: Miracles are not literature.

RABBI JOAN: Literature is a miracle.

PRAGUE RABBI: Literature turns to ash You’ll see this insane thing As if born from a magic ring This orange Golem of clay.

And Rabbi, you must calm Your modern congregation.

Or they will perish an ancient death.

RABBI JOAN: How do I know that you’re not Just one of the terrorists at our door?

PRAGUE RABBI: In Kabbala philosophy The empty space Is a grand treasure Our God – ever so large Contracts – ever so small So we can find Earth like a ball.

(PRAGUE RABBI steps toward RABBI JOAN, and she takes one towards him.

He lifts his eye patch and leans into her gaze. A glass eye rolls into his open palm.

Transitioning as we see a manifestation of the glass eye become something large and rising like a helium balloon casting a powerful shadow along the ground – we see images of a Golem. All transforms, as the chorus sing an intense chant, while RABBI JOAN enters the synagogue and the choral sound transforms into RABI JOAN leading THE CONGREGATION in THE SHEMA) RABBI JOAN & CONGREGATION: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad ‫ש ָׂראֵל י ְהוָה אֱ�הֵינוּ י ְהוָה א ֶָחֽד‬ ְ ִ ‫שׁמַע י‬ ְ

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

(PRAGUE RABBI, in prayer shawl, enters CONGREGATION and all is silent until he sings the Shema) PRAGUE RABBI: Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad ‫ש ָׂראֵל י ְהוָה אֱ�הֵינוּ י ְהוָה א ֶָחֽד‬ ְ ִ ‫שׁמַע י‬ ְ (The Shema prayer is underscored by anti-Semitic chanting e.g. Charlottesville’s marchers’ “Jews will not replace us”) RABBI JOAN: Your voice is distinct.

A sharp artic chill I respect the fact That in old Prague You’re an honored rabbi But you’ve stirred the pot of anxiety PRAGUE RABBI: Listen . . . Can you not hear the chanting?

(Underscoring chants intensifies) They are a mile away Not Nazis, you say?

Just white nationalists?

A song they sing For children of sin Blood and soil Blut und Boden (PRAGUE RABBI spills the soil onto the synagogue floor - we begin to hear from far off the penetrating chant of the approaching mob) PRAGUE RABBI: Can you not hear the chanting?

Can you not see the sacred soil I bring?

(His fingers luxuriating over the soil) Let us prayer my people With this earth, with my fingers Om Hadma Hazen, Om Hazvan (Phonetics for ‫םע המדאה וזה‬ and for ‫)םע תועבצאה‬ With your prayers, cold truth lingers.

Say the word - Almighty Sing the seven words for God Doing less will mean A universe of cavity. (this could be repeated in Hebrew song)

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

RABBI JOAN: (recites the Aleinu prayer in praise of God) It is our duty to praise the Master of All, to ascribe greatness to the Author of Creation, who has not made us like the nations in our world nor placed us like the families of the earth; who has not made our portion like theirs, nor our destiny like all their multitudes.

(Sustained eye contact between the two rabbis) You shall know and take to heart this day that Adonai is God in the heavens above and on earth below. There is no other.

(The loose soil magically falls from the ceiling area around the bimmah where Rabbi Joan is positioned. This startles Rabbi Joan. She senses the congregation is no longer in the realm of routine ritual and prayer. As she prays, we hear the prayer of the congregation, led by the Prague Rabbi, simultaneously.)

RABBI JOAN: This is our shul This is our town This is our land God is one. (repeat as necessary) CONGREGATION (with PRAGUE RABBI): (chanting simultaneously) God will protect us We need our Golem We need our Golem In La Jolla California America has fallen sick Please God protect us Please Golem stop this evil PRAGUE RABBI: If we can compel the powers of darkness to reveal the magic word

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

We bring the Golem to life!

(The PRAGUE RABBI hands RABBI JOAN a Star of David - encouraging her to hold it up The CONGREGANT creates a circle with a torch, the CONGREGATION sings led by the PRAGUE RABBI) PRAGUE RABBI: Astaroth, Astaroth!

Appear, appear – speak the word! Truth, truth, truth!

PRAGUE RABBI & CHORUS: Emet, Emet, Emet!

Truth, truth, truth!

(At the PRAGUE RABBI’s urging, as he prompts her - reluctantly – RABBI JOAN sings with them) PRAGUE RABBI, CHORUS & RABBI JOAN: Emet, Emet, Emet!

Truth, truth, truth!

(They bring the branding torch down, emblazing the word EMET into the ground.

In the open air, we hear the singing of RABBI JOAN’s CONGREGATION, building to a climax of prayer, Jewish unity and fortitude. We hear the unifying pounding chants of angry marching - White Supremacists and American Nazis seemingly a few minutes away from the synagogue.

Out of the mass of combined voices and prayer comes an enormous explosion from the soil.

Through loose dirt, mixing with a shadow of the GOLEM’s outstretched arms pulling his body out of raw earth, the GOLEM of La Jolla awakes, with percussive sounds of jack hammers and heavy machinery from the soil and the clay of a neighboring construction site.

Perhaps through a combination of projections and puppets, or the silhouette of a large actor, we see the GOLEM approaching. His footsteps wreak havoc to the ground and he is met by the police officers. The GOLEM overturns their cars and pivots in front of the synagogue. The neoNazis coming under a fine veil of light rain are seen by the GOLEM. The cacophony fades like a dream. Finally, the GOLEM enters the synagogue. He approaches RABBI JOAN who, in her fear, has backed away from the front door, cautiously, staring at him. The GOLEM lowers himself on bended knee, looking like Colin Kaepernick. His face sours and shakes his head. He reaches out to touch the rabbi, she steps further back.)

VOICES: Emet, Emet, Emet GOLEM: My solemn greeting –

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

Shabbat Shalom (pause) I am the dust of bones To be a grave of stones I see two hundred Scared gray Jewish souls Rust, blood, water, clay!

Filth, ancient decay – It would have been enough...

It would have been enough To be the ghost of bones It would have been enough (pause) You have summoned me Yes, I attend It would have been enough!

VOICES: (prerecorded for the reading) Emet, Emet, Emet You branded Truth upon my forehead (pause) Emet, emet – Truth! (pause) Truth, so foretold dead And branded on my forehead Emblazoned truth like led Torn scroll unread As forewarned and Lame upon my foreskin A mad thing – rising up The demonic spark I bear your mark More Jew than not It would have been enough - It is enough!

VOICES: (prerecorded for the reading) Emet, Emet, Emet GOLEM: From wretched soil A hole so deep Surpassing death The hole you have before you is your own I am but the dust of bones America’s blight

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

This wicked fortnight Cameras and guns Bullets and tongues It would have been enough Dayenu! Dayenu!

Est ist genug It is enough I cannot make a hole I cannot see a hole I do not know the hole From whence I came You cannot flee or climb Cannot sing, talk or mime Cannot favor crime The expansive Pacific The vast sea stops you in your tracks And tells you, you can’t resist The Golem, this Golem I should exist, I don’t exist I don't exist – CONGREGATION: Has God abandoned us?

GOLEM: Is Heaven flat?

Is Hell round?

Love a cat?

Hate a hound?

CONGREGATION: God help us.

GOLEM: - ani lo qiem (Hebrew phonetics ‫) ינא אל םייק‬ - ani lo qiem - ani lo qiem I DON’T EXIST! PRAGUE RABBI: This is blasphemy A Golem stands his ground GOLEM: And who are you, Rabbi blackcoat?

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

PRAGUE RABBI: I command you, Golem Stand your ground.

GOLEM: I see no ground.

I see no Golem.

I don’t exist.

CONGREGANT: What madness You exist.

We all see you.

We hear you.

And the odor Is most foul.

GOLEM: There is no Golem.

Just shadow play.

CONGREGANT: You exist.

GOLEM: I don’t breathe, I don’t exist Tomorrow will prove No Golem can desist PRAGUE RABBI/CONGREGANT: You exist GOLEM: Be quiet! Listen to the real It would have been enough Dayenu (coaxing the congregation) CONGREGATION: Dayenu!

GOLEM: It is enough!

I don’t exist I shouldn’t persist A failed tryst Genug . . . Est ist

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | ALLAN HAVIS

I did not make your Great nation sick.

I CAN'T HELP YOU! The fire you cannot douse Is the curse on your house (The Golem starts to leave, as he gets near the door, he turns back) Dayenu. Est ist genug It is enough, it is enough Shalom, Shalom - (The GOLEM of La Jolla climbs over the wall in a blink of an eye, disappears Finally, RABBI JOAN sings with help from her congregation.)

RABBI JOAN: Hear O Israel May the Almighty who blessed our ancestors Daughters of Abraham Sons of Sarah Fierce days ahead The shofar will sound If not quite dead Our courage is bound May the love of humanity overflow with compassion upon us to restore us, heal us And grant us wisdom of our society.

(Louder chanting crowd. RABBI JOAN looks towards synagogue’s main doors.

At the doors stands the PRAGUE RABBI, pained and hunched over, staring back at RABBI JOAN. RABBI JOAN casts her gaze at the entire CONGREGATION. The chanting is near thunderous. Long pause as synagogue lights intensify. Sudden silence. RABBI JOAN and PRAGUE RABBI look at each other in a locked stare.)

- and let us all say Amen!

For more information on author Allan Havis, please visit our Contributors Page.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | MARIANNE KIM

Martiality, Not Fighting

By Marianne Kim

Martiality Not Fighting follows a young Chinese dancer performing the role of conscientious objector. He moves through the pedestrian and the abstract to deliberate the question “to fight or not to fight.” The choreography utilizes iconic images and gestures of martiality as well as combining postmodern dance and the martial arts culture of “Ba Gua Zhang.” With spiraling energy, everchanging spatial interplays and physical exchanges, the choreography deconstructs the external martial art expressions of fighting. At its cinematic core, Martiality Not Fighting implies forsaking violence in recognition of vital exchange and kinetic empathy.

(To read more about Kim, please see our interview with her in the Authors Alcove section.)

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | STEPHEN BITTRICH

THE PROPOSAL

By Stephen Bittrich Characters: William Ainsworth: late 30ish, proud, and rakishly handsome Julia Hightower: 20s, handsome, and proud, but clearly distraught.

Setting: The sprawling grounds of Willowbrook Estate near Bishops Waltham in Hampshire, England, 1815.

MR. AINSWORTH: There you are Miss Hightower. I was beginning to think I'd be called upon to fish you from the trout stream.

JULIA: Beg your pardon, I required a bit of air.

MR. AINSWORTH: Ah, yes. Lovely evening for it. (pause) And are you sufficiently pleased with the grounds of Willowbrook?

JULIA: Of course.

MR. AINSWORTH: Splendid--then you approve?

JULIA: Who could find fault with...the grounds, Mr. Ainsworth?

MR. AINSWORTH: No indeed. No indeed. (beat) But then I derive from your careful inflection that there is that at Willowbrook which you could find fault with, Miss Hightower.

JULIA: I--I cannot-MR. AINSWORTH: Ah, tush, tush, not another word of it. (beat) Beautiful, clear night. Did you take in the full moon rising above the peat bogs?

JULIA: I marked it.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | STEPHEN BITTRICH

MR. AINSWORTH: Dramatic indeed. (pause) You know, Ms. Hightower, I rather blush to say, but the highlight of my trip to Sussex last summer was not the tedious family business which beckoned me thither, no, no, but rather my brief sojourn in Heathfield and the various social gatherings during which I was privileged to make the acquaintance of you and your family.

JULIA: (with a taste of irony) It was a thrilling season.

MR. AINSWORTH: And during the picnic at Heathfield Park I must confess I was most smitten with your wonderful charcoal sketches of the countryside. It is thrilling indeed to discover a woman of such varied and studied accomplishment. Upon leaving there, I admit, I could think of not much else for some time...but you...and your beautiful sketches.

JULIA: You flatter, Mr. Ainsworth.

MR. AINSWORTH: No, indeed, I do not. I very greatly wished to be... connected to you and your great talent--to have some ownership in it.

JULIA: Ownership?

MR. AINSWORTH: And when your family took lodgings in Hampshire this Spring it seemed a fortuitous event indeed.

JULIA: Quite fortuitous. I must return to the house, Mr. Ainsworth it grows cold.

MR. AINSWORTH: Then let me warm you, Ms. Hightower...Julia.

JULIA: No— MR. AINSWORTH: Please, take my coat.

JULIA: I fear the chill has deeply set in. There is no remedy you can provide.

MR. AINSWORTH: (relinquishing all false civility) I grow weary of these intrigues and double entendres. I am not a stupid man, Miss Hightower. I know the particulars for your family's visit. Plainly, your parents mean to parade you about polite society as a farmer at the county fair flaunts his choicest pig--

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | STEPHEN BITTRICH

JULIA: Mr. Ainsworth!

MR. AINSWORTH: --but, and please excuse my audacious candor, you won't be winning any ribbons, I'm sorry to say, nor any husbands for that matter. As sordid as it may be, there are scurrilous and unseemly tongues that wag this way and that 'round this tiny little hamlet. And they wag, Miss Hightower, about you. (JULIA appears almost dizzy from MR. AINSWORTH's utter lack of decorum) JULIA: I'm sure...I'm sure I haven't the faintest notion-MR. AINSWORTH: You are a marked woman. There it is. Sorry to be the bearer of ill tidings. But there 'tis. You may as well sew your old maid's weeds forthwith because no suitors of any repute will be knocking at your door.

JULIA: How dare you, sir!

MR. AINSWORTH: I dare, Miss Hightower. As the first-born son of the wealthiest man in Christendom, I dare. Mere social convention is a paltry constraint for my sizeable wealth and stature. The fates, however, have been less kind to you. Being without a male sibling, your birthright, such that it is, has been entailed away, and your future, but for the unsecured and certainly meager offerings of an obscure male relative, can promise nothing more than abject poverty.

JULIA: (after a beat, regaining her composure) And yet...I do not tremble, Mr. Ainsworth.

MR. AINSWORTH: (after a beat, taking her in) And yet you do not. There is much to be admired in you, Julia.

JULIA: And much to be abhorred in you.

MR. AINSWORTH: And still...such an abhorred man as I might yet be your salvation. (beat) I like you, Julia.

JULIA: Mr. Ainsworth, you've said quite enough.

MR. AINSWORTH: Yes, I like you. You are as handsome a specimen as ever I've seen, lively and energetic, talented in music and art, intelligent almost to a fault. These attributes, I daresay, when matched with my own myriad graces, could well produce exceptionally pleasing off-spring.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | STEPHEN BITTRICH

JULIA: Thank you for you astute observations, Mr. Ainsworth, but despite your previous reference to prized livestock, you'll be surprised to learn, I am no farm animal.

Producing "exceptionally pleasing off-spring" is not my life's chief objective.

MR. AINSWORTH: (ignoring and pressing on) Be assured, I am not looking for love, Julia, and I am quite certain that you do not love me. However, I do require a wife, a partner, in the business of expanding my honorable lineage. It is a grand, unbroken line spanning centuries before me, and I am called upon to bid adieu to the temptations and distractions of my youth and perform my familial duty. I see you as a worthy candidate.

JULIA: Mr. Ainsworth, though your described partnership of convenience is no doubt brimming with fruitful promise, you will be shocked to discover your eloquent declaration of affection met with rejection. I hope the disappointment will not linger with you for long. Good evening, sir (SHE starts to leave, and HE cuts her off).

MR. AINSWORTH: Julia, certainly you are not ignorant of what I can offer a woman such as yourself. Not that I care a jot for social mores, but you cannot be completely unaware that your very reputation has recently been called into question. Your association with a local artist, a certain Monsieur Legard, whose name alone inspires suspicion, is fatty meat for the maw of outrage, namely, the elder matrons of Bishops Waltham.

JULIA: My association with the gifted Mr. Legard is of my concern alone-MR. AINSWORTH: Unjust, I know. Your guilt in this, real or imagined, has set you alone and adrift at sea. And I alone am your last hope for security, Ms. Hightower.

JULIA: Really, Mr. Ainsworth, I think you missed your calling. Prize pigs, gristle filled maws, adrift at sea. It seems you have a bent toward the poetic. But perhaps you should have said, "I alone might offer a sturdy mast and sail"...or "I alone am a fruitful uncharted isle in your course" or better still "I alone am the God Poseidon deigning to grant fair seas for your passage home."

MR. AINSWORTH: Perhaps I might have.

JULIA: Mr. Legard, whom, as you have intimated, is of French heritage is in fact as true an Englishman as you or I. He is my friend, and his skill with either brush or chisel is equal to anything I have seen displayed in the National Gallery. I admire his talent.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

SCRIPTS | STEPHEN BITTRICH

MR. AINSWORTH: Yes, I agree he is talented. I've seen his nudes. He's an eye for detail. (SHE starts again to leave. HE grabs her arm) JULIA: Mr. Ainsworth, you will let go my arm!

MR. AINSWORTH: (pulling her close) The deal is sealed, Ms. Hightower. Your parents have already accepted my offer of matrimony and despite social proprieties dictating the contrary, have accepted a generous gift of real estate in this accord. You have been sold-JULIA: --I will not bow-MR. AINSWORTH: Nay, but you will! As I said, Miss Hightower. You have been sold.

I possess the painting!

JULIA: Wh-what did you say?

MR. AINSWORTH: I possess the painting. I've bought it. And I think you must know the one I mean.

JULIA: Impossible...

MR. AINSWORTH: (quiet and vicious, in her ear) It did not come cheaply. (beat) You now sit precariously on the edge of ruin. If you do not accept my magnanimous offer, you will suffer the pangs of social ignominy only an itinerant leper might endure. Moreover, I am quite certain that Mr. Legard will never in his short career see profit from a single painting in all of Hampshire. You will give me satisfaction.

(SHE crumbles to her knees and begins to cry. The Willowbrook Rectory bell tolls 6 times during the course of the following exchange) JULIA: Have you no heart? Have you no soul? I--I love him.

MR. AINSWORTH: I know. (beat) The rectory bell begs the question...will we be married?

JULIA: (after a pause) Y-Yes. (The lights fade to black) (END OF PLAY) For more information on author Stephen Bittrich, visit our Contributors Page.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

Dave Osmundsen's ork has been seen and developed at the William Inge Theatre Festival, the Mid est Dramatists Conference, Phoeni Theatre, Manhattan Repertor Theatre, In the Water Theatre Compan , and the Ne American Theatre in LA. His one-act, A Fire ork Une ploded, as published in the inaugural issue of The Dion sian and as a semi-finalist for the NYC Audio Theatre Writing Contest. His pla S pid, Fa , Ugl as a semi-finalist for the 2017 National Pla rights Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center. He is currentl pursuing his MFA in Dramatic Writing from Ari ona State Universit .

Amar Camisi and is currentl a senior at the Ari ona State Universit s West Campus stud ing Interdisciplinar Arts and Performance. He likes to ride his pink light-up scooter (that is clearl built for children and not gro n men) around campus and involve himself ith the West Campus communit . Throughout his 21 ears of life, he has never attended a large school. "I reall like small schools because I feel a tighter sense of communit amongst m peers and also the facult /staff. I m reall going to miss pulling all-nighters ith m fello artistic classmates. He is no pursuing a master's degree from ASU in Interdisciplinar Studies.

Pam Munter has authored several books. Her memoir, A Alone A I Wan To Be, as recentl published b Adelaide Books. She s a retired clinical ps chologist, former performer and film historian. She is a Pushcart Pri e nominee and has an MFA in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, her si th college degree. Her ork has appeared in over 150 publications. Her first pla , Life Wi ho , a dark comed , as nominated for Outstanding Original Writing and Outstanding Pla b the Desert Theatre League in the staged reading categor . Tha Sc e , Ball hooe Holl ood, also a dark comed , opened the season for Script2Stage2Screen in Rancho Mirage, Ca., last October. It as a finalist in the Ruckus Rock ell competition in Holl ood and an alternate for William Inge Pla Festival.

Allan Havis has taught theatre and film over three decades at Universit of California, San Diego. As a pla right, his ork has been produced idel in the U.S. and in Europe. T ent pla s have been published including anthologies in Penguin/Mentor, TCG, Smith & Krauss, and Broad a Pla Publishing. His oung adult novel Albert the Astronomer as published b Harper & Ro and Albert Do n a Wormhole b Goodreads Press. As a librettist he completed t o chamber operas ith 2020 Pulit er composer Anthon Davis and the Golem project ill be an opera ith composer Michael Roth. Havis rote a popular cinema studies book Cult Films: Taboo & Transgression and he edited in 2019 for Blooms-bur American Political Pla s in the Age of Terrorism.

He is the Chair of Theatre & Dance at UC San Diego.

Marianne M. Kim is a Korean American interdisciplinar artist orking in screendance, multimedia installation, choreograph , and performance art.

She is a professor of interdisciplinar arts and performance in the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies at Ari ona State Universit . Her areas of research include the disorienting effects of technologi ed labor, cultural identit , consumerism, and most recentl the forces ithin industrial food production and promotion that mediate race, gender, and bodies. Kim s short film Ma iali , No Figh ing as a arded a Dioraphte Jur A ard at Cinedans 2016 in Amsterdam, Best Performance A ard at the Voarte InShado International Festival of Video, Performance and Technologies in 2014, and Best Short Film at Dance Camera West 2015 in Los Angeles.

Stephen Bittrich has orked e tensivel ith The Drilling Compan in Ne York Cit developing ne ork and has had 15 pla s produced b the compan . Man of those have gone on to be published and performed in ama ing places like South Africa (East London), Lebanon (Beirut), Japan (Tok o and Sasebo), India (Magalore), and Mala sia (Kuala Lumpur translated into Chinese)! A sampling of published pla s includes D Hono Co n (Pla s and Pla rights 2005), Hole (The Best Ten-Minute Pla s 2011). His full-length Te as farce, Home of he G ea Pecan (Broada Pla Publishing, 2016), started as a stand alone one-act entitled B ain S cking, hich as performed at Actor s Theater of Louisville and published in Dramatics Maga ine. Current project: an original ebseries called The Con pi ac Theo i , a humorous response to the Covid-19 age, hich ill be available in late Ma 2020 at BrainFireEntertainment.com.

His pla right ebsite is StephenBittrich.com.

ARTWORK | JACOB WAYNE BRYNER

Jacob Wayne Bryner

Remnant | acrylic painting

See You Later | acrylic painting CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | JACOB WAYNE BRYNER

Looking for Love | acrylic painting

Save the Drama for Your Llama | acrylic painting

Jacob was raised in Logan, Utah. He attended Utah State University. After college, he moved to Hangzhou, China, to teach English and Art. He has been an artist his whole life and has embraced painting as his chosen medium since 2004. He has been influenced by many styles. He likes to call his “Social Pop Surrealism." He came to this description after studying one of his favorite artists, Irving Norman. His art, which is described as “Social Surrealism”, is a style that was born out of American Expressionism and meant as a commentary on social and political issues of the day.

Another art form that Jacob is very fond of is Stand-Up Comedy and satire. “If you take my love of Irving Norman, and great comedians such as Richard Pryor and George Carlin, mix that all up with my love of color and Color theory, and I believe you end up at “Social Pop Surrealism.”

That being said, there are times he simply wants to paint a colorful dog or imaginary creature.

See more of his work at: https://www.deviantart.com/rayjmaraca CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | SCOT PARKS

Scott Parks

Three-Dee Glasses | acrylic pour painting

Emerald Hillside | acrylic pour painting

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | SCOTT PARKS

Poseidon's Wake | acrylic pour painting

Cimmerian Sunset | acrylic pour painting

Scott grew up in Kentucky, He attended Fairdale High School where he took CAD Drafting Classes. Then attended Louisville Technical Institute where he earned an Associate in Computer Aided Mechanical Drafting. He has supported himself for the last 23 years in commercial construction designing cabinets for all sorts of projects. He has a wide variety of interests in architecture, art, and design. The last 4 years he has focused on Woodworking, Acrylic Pour Painting and Spray paint art in a small storage unit he has converted into a studio.

You can see more of his work at: https://www.deviantart.com/lokie999

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | MELINA MITCHELL

Melina Mitchell

Medusa | artist pens and ink CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | MELINA MITCHELL

Spring Lady | watercolour pencils and artist pens

Save Australia| watercolour pencils and artist pens

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | MELINA MITCHELL

Little Red Riding Hood | artist pens As far back as Melina Mitchell can remember, she has been passionately scribbling, doodling, sketching and drawing. Born and living in Greece for most of her life, having dual citizenship (Greek and Australian) saw Melina take up the opportunity to study in Australia from where in 2019 she received a Bachelor of Design (Illustration and Animation) from UniSA (University of South Australia).

Melina’s concepts revolve predominantly around fantasy and the mediums she typically works with are watercolors, pens and ink. Her source of inspiration is varied but mainly drawn from Greek mythology, Japanese and Celtic art and culture.

Melina Mitchell currently resides in Athens, Greece where she continues to work on her portfolio and illustrations for commissioned projects.

More of her work can be viewed on her Facebook, Instagram and DeviantArt accounts: https://www.facebook.com/melanippeart/ https://www.instagram.com/melanippe_art/ https://www.deviantart.com/melanippeart CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | ANNEMARIE PERRY

Annemarie Perry

Buck in the Morning Mist | spray paint

Snowy Path | spray paint

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | ANNEMARIE PERRY

4 Peaks| spray paint

Storm Rolling In | spray paint

Annmarie Perry also know as Spray Can Ann or Rattle can began producing spray can art ten years ago. As a selftaught artist , Ann continues to expand her talents to new adventures including chalk art, airbrushing, oil and acrylic painting. Her work had been featured on Glendale 8, Channel 3, VFW, and won an awarded-on YouTube in 2017 coming in tenth out of all the spray paint artist. While beginning her career as a hobby, hey passion for art quickly grew to inspire company "Out of My Mind". Traveling the southwest her company sells and exhibits her spray paint art at county fairs, festivals and local charity events.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | JULI ADAMS

Juli Adams

Abstract 1 | oil painting

Intention | oil painting CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | JULI ADAMS

Totem of Shadows | oil painting

Shades of Life | oil painting

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | JULI ADAMS

We are but pieces and parts | hanging sculpture

Refiguring the Past | hanging sculpture

Juli Adams’ paintings are a conversation between her internal life and the experience of living in the everyday world. They are stories condensed into an image that becomes a window into another world, where her characters are having a kind of parallel life. Her earliest artistic influences were children’s books, which are very alive in her today. She also loved cartoons – The Addams Family, Bloom County, and Peanuts. This beautiful medium is ingenious at portraying the character of life in simple lines.

Adams was drawn to the subtle and the macabre. Her work touches on darkness because she believes our darkness, or shadow self, is a valuable resource worth exploration.

To see more artwork from Juli Adams, visit her website: juliadams.com.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | YIRUI JIA

Yirui Jia

Biophilia series: A Body of Seashell 2018| Crepe paper, fabric, plastic, wire, watercolor, acrylic, LED light

Yirui Jia was born in 1997 in China and moved to the United States in 2015. Yirui is a current MFA Fine Arts candidate at the School of Visual Arts in New York where she currently works and lives.

Yirui received her BFA dual degrees in Studio Arts and Management Studies from Gettysburg College, PA. In 2018, she exchanged to an art pro gram at Marchutz School of Arts in Aix-en-Provence, France for half of year.

Yirui Jia works in a multitude of mediums between organic materials, found objects and consumer products to redefine a biomorphic body within social context.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | KAREN GAMEZ

Karen Gamez

Gray Glow | photography

Bright Retro | photography CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | KAREN GAMEZ

Fantastic | photography

Karen Gamez is a student at Arizona State University studying Political Science, though she enjoys learning of art, music, and photography in her spare time. She ventures to capture the essence of beauty underneath the most basic of structures during her work and school travels. While not a self-described photographer, this student is passionate to share the most subtle richness human presence creates through scenic photographs.

She hopes to experience proper training fit enough to work in the field of photo-journalism, as well as to do professional work in low-income communities for free.

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SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | POLINA CHELIADINOVA

Polina Cheliadinova

Cold Pink | digital media

Dive to Live | digital media

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | POLINA CHELIADINOVA

The Wave | digital media

It calls | digital media

Hello, my name is Polina Cheliadinova and I am a digital artist from Ukraine, Slavutich.

I've been drawing since the beginning of my life but my creative journey in CG started in January 2015.

Art is my true passion! I absolutely enjoy drawing anything from landscapes to animals and human bodies. I practice almost every day and can find inspiration in everything that surrounds me, especially in nature and music. I love going outside with a tiny sketchbook and a black pen, sketching the ideas and then I come home to transfer them into digital form.

I am only seventeen and I'm doing everything I can to become a professional artist and keep inspiring other people. I really want to link my future life with art.

See my work at: https://www.deviantart.com/1nfin1ty CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | SARA LATENDRESSE

Sarah Latendresse

Quiet Dawn | watercolor

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SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | SARA LATENDRESSE

Rain | watercolor

I am a self-taught watercolorist focusing on nature scenes that evoke a sense of serenity and peace. I love working with prussian blue, aureolin yellow and indigo to create rich forest scenes. My passion for nature artwork comes from being an avid outdoorswoman and I often use my own reference photos for my work.

You can find more of my work at: https://www.deviantart.com/saltwatercolors

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SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | KAT WISTER

Kat Wister

The Tower | Watercolor, Ink, Marker, and Colored Pencil

Kat Wister is an illustrator and writer of the fantasy genre.

She is currently working on her BFA in Drawing along with her certificate in Creative Writing to aid her in her goals to publish her works. Her art enhances the visual experience of her stories so others can see what she imagines. One day, Kat hopes to combine her visual and written art in a published work, whether that be a novel or maybe even a comic.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | PAUL F. GERO

Portraits in the Time of Corona

By Paul F. Gero

As a former newspaper photojournalist – and now a photographer of social events (weddings) and portraits and sports – I had been thinking about what I could do with my talents and also how I could capture this incredibly historic time in our country’s history. I’ve been shooting professionally for over 35 years and have never seen anything quite like what our country – and our world – is experiencing right now.

I believe I found a way to put my talents to use in a safe and responsible way, following all CDC social distancing recommendations, while capturing work that is important, beautiful and my gift to society and the families photographed.

It all started when I went to collect an item from my niece and nephew one afternoon. I saw my niece and their two girls in their front window. The image of the girls at the window stayed in the front of my mind. It was a beautiful scene, poignant and also truly revealing of the time we are in. I didn’t have a camera with me to photograph it, but I called them back and asked to take their picture.

Another drive around our beautiful and quiet little town (especially quiet now), I saw the gorgeous homes and thought: “You know I bet I could create some really beautiful portraits of people on their front porch or in their front window, while I capture the portraits with a telephoto zoom lens from a safe distance respecting the CDC social distancing guidelines.”

The great painting by Grant Woods of American Gothic came into mind because it showed a husband and wife from Iowa in front of their homestead. It has always been one of my favorite paintings and now I aimed to create my homage to that painting with this project.

The project: To photograph my neighbors on the front porch or through the front window of their homes while we both apply the current CDC approved guidelines for social distancing. It is important to note that the people photographed do not and have not tested positive for Coronavirus. These are portraits of regular, healthy Americans who are social distancing voluntarily to help stop the spread of this pandemic. They are a snapshot of America today.

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SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | PAUL F. GERO

Paul F. Gero

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

ARTWORK | PAUL F. GERO

CANYON VOICES

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ARTWORK | PAUL F. GERO

Paul began his photography career as a staff photographer for the Chicago Tribune in 1983. He moved to the Tribune’s Washington, D.C., bureau in 1985 and went on to work for the Arizona Republic in 1990. His photos have appeared in Time, People, Sports Illustrated, among other’s magazines. He is the author of “Digital Wedding Photography” and “Mastering Digital Wedding Photography.” He produced “The Kids of Orange County,” a photobook that raised $70 thousand for the Children’s Hospital Orange Country. These days his work focuses on documentary-style photography for portraits, sporting events, and social occasions – such as weddings. He is based in Wisconsin but is available worldwide. To view his work, visit PaulFGero.com.

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AUTHORS ALCOVE | TRUDE MEISTER

Write Something That Sucks: Talking Travel and Tips with Trude Meister

By Beth Dillard

What has kept you writing from the age of 15 to now?

People pretend writers have a choice. The desire to write is like an itch you might feel if you were sitting on an anthill full of poison ivy with a bad case of scabies.

You mentioned you frequently travel.

What brings you to places like Saudi Arabia and Cuba?

When I was a kid, our moms would kick us out of the house after school and tell us to come home before dark. Children didn't have car seats. They didn't even wear seat belts. Now, kids have playdates and are strapped in and helmeted, and the spontaneity of life has been a bit lost. But, we still only get this short bit of time to have adventures and discover the world. I just live my life a little more unbuckled than other people.

I went to Saudi Arabia because I met this guy who talked about living and working there all the time. He loved the adventure. He'd recently gotten divorced. I told him, "Pal, I don't see anything keeping you from getting on a plane and going back to Saudi Arabia."

Well...I liked him more than I thought I did. We started dating. We got an apartment. I had some surgery, and while I was still badly under the influence of the dope (it was better in those days!) he got a call from his old boss to go back to Riyadh. He said, "I won't go unless I can bring my wife." He told me that and I laughed. He said,

CANYON VOICES

Look for Trude Meister’s story, “Coffee and Crullers,” in the Fiction section.

“My boss said okay, so we have to get married.”

I met these amazing people who are affiliated with the children's special needs school in Havana. They bring supplies for the kids. One of them bought me a ticket, and that was how I got involved. The children are amazing. The first trip, I nearly landed in trouble with the Cuban authorities within my first ten minutes in Havana.

They tagged my suitcase for contraband. Now, the rule is, you're allowed to bring $50 worth of stuff with you for friends and so on. I had...well, a lot. The biggest suitcase they make, chock full of crayons and coloring books, journals, and other supplies. When they opened my suitcase, I realized it looked like I was going to set up a black market business. I could almost hear the clang of the customs jail slamming. But, I'd brought a copy of my novel, Rings in Time.

One of the officials was flipping through it while

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AUTHORS ALCOVE | TRUDE MEISTER

the others dug through the contents of my suitcase. When they discovered that I'd written the book, they went nuts! Called their friends over to see, talking excitedly among themselves, and meanwhile, someone slammed my suitcase shut and said, "Welcome to Cuba!" That was it...

In all fairness, I've also camped in many of the countries in Europe, spend vacations in Canada, the Caribbean, and Mexico, but none of those trips were quite as unbuckled.

Speaking of Rings in Time, how did you get published?

That was an accident! I entered a contest offered by a little independent publishing company.

They were going to publish the first and second place winners. I was sick, and staying on my sister's sofa because she lived close to a hospital.

She decided we should go to a psychic to see if I would win. "Ah, yes! You do win! You come in third." Well, I had a good laugh over that, because there were only going to be two winners-first and second place.

In the end, I tied with another brilliant, experienced writer for second place. So, it wasn't third place, but it was a very entertaining notion.

What advice do you have for writers who want to have their work published?

Write.

That sounds terribly trite, but the reality is that if you don't write and submit, nothing will happen.

The other thing is that a critique group will help enormously. I belong to The Polished Writer, a group of amazing writers who meet regularly and critique each other's work.

Coffee and Crullers is actually one of the only pieces I've submitted for publication since Rings.

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Wow! Thanks for your submission! What inspired you to write Coffee and Crullers?

It was an assignment for a flash piece from the Polished Writers group, something to break away from novel writing. A lot of my novels are fantasy-based. I've always wondered if people would take advice from their older selves, and what would happen.

Do you base your characters on people you know?

Many of my characters, while they aren't based on someone, are based on the person's values and habits. For example, imagine a person with your values in a situation where you discovered the neighbors were aliens or where you met a future version of yourself who gave you advice. I have had a number of amazing relationships-three husbands so far, friends, relatives--and their values and habits may all become part or much of one of my characters someday. At the same time, sometimes characters rise up with values of their own as they evolve, which is kind of scary.

Do you have tips for writer’s block, or creative blocks of any kind?

Write something that sucks. Because even something that is bad can be fixed. "Even C's get degrees." Writing is a job. An accountant doesn't just go to work when he feels like it, and the same is true for creating. If you talk to the greats, whether they are writers, painters, or other creative artists, they will tell you that a lot of their most amazing work came about because they were forced to deliver even when they weren't in a creative headspace. It was out of necessity. My friend Frank Roderus, who wrote dozens of books under his own name and pseudonyms, used to say that writing was more about doing than thinking.

SPRING 2020

AUTHORS ALCOVE | CAROLINE “CARRIE” RUDEL

An Attempt at Honest Understanding: In Conversation with Carrie Rudel

By Meredith Price

Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who is Carrie Rudel?

What a complicated question. I am a singersongwriter. I’m a student. I’m self-employed. I love music. I love poetry. Words and rhythm are important. I’ve always felt like I could express myself better through those mediums, not to sound cliché or anything. I’m a queer freak. If you asked me to describe myself, I would probably use those words in the description.

Look for Carrie Rudel’s poem, “Creatures Bright and Dark,” in the Poetry section.

What inspires you to be creative?

I would say, life sucks sometimes. I’ve been through a lot in my life. All of this baggage, these negative things that I’ve experienced, the church hurt, the various mental disorders – I definitely draw from whatever pain is existing in my life, or what I hope to reach. A lot of my art says this is who I am right now. These are my experiences.

This is how I see them. Once I’ve written a poem, it becomes a goal for me to figure out what I actually wrote. It’s an attempt to understand myself and be understood by others.

Are there any particular themes you enjoy working with the most in your writing?

try to be pretty real in my poems. I appreciate honesty as a trait and as a way of living, but I don’t find that I’m able to be honest very often.

So I would say that when I create that’s as honest as it gets.

How would you describe your writing style to somebody who is unfamiliar with your work?

Full of imagery and dramaticism. I would say that the most potent parts of my life are put down in my writing, so it is all very emotional and a little bit extravagant.

I mentioned a couple earlier…queer identity and

When it comes to poetry, who has been your greatest inspiration and why?

sexuality, religion, mental health, struggles with addiction, art. Maybe a little bit of mythology. I

That’s a good question. Favorite poets…I have many. Eavan Boland is an Irish poet, and I just

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AUTHORS ALCOVE | CAROLINE “CARRIE” RUDEL

have to shout her out because that girl can write.

She does a lot with Irish history, food, the body, and eating. Those are topics that I am really interested in.

What would you say is the ultimate goal of your creative pursuits?

To figure myself out. To be honest with myself and have somebody read my work and connect.

Say this hit a little different in the heart. I don’t expect my work to connect with anybody, but if it does…Fire.

Let’s talk a little about your piece in the magazine. What brought you to the moment that you decided to craft “Creatures Bright and Dark”?

A constant struggle for me internally is this balancing of religion, especially monothetic ones, with my identity as a queer, very sexual person.

of the way that I write and cross body boundaries. Blood is a powerful substance in that it connects the way it separates and the way that it hurts, and how pain manifests there. I see poetry as a concentration of emotion and existence. It’s everything that is bright, fast, and potent.

Other than poetry, are there any artistic mediums we can look forward to seeing you pursue?

If I ever make any of my music public you can see that, but to me music is a little bit more intimate. A lot of my music starts as poetry. I’ll write a poem and then say I really want to set this to music, but not every poem works musically unfortunately. A lot of my music doesn’t rhyme necessarily because I start with a poem and have to figure out how to fit it into a musical setting. We’ll see though. If I get a good response from this, maybe I’ll try to make some of my music available to the public.

“Creatures Bright and Dark” was about reaching in and trying to find a way to reconcile the way that I love people with the way that I think God expects you to love people.

Finally, what advice do you have for your fellow creatives looking to grow into themselves as writers, artists, etc.?

And so the line, “Should she protest our love / I would know that my very creation is a lie” – If God were to come to me and tell me that I’m not doing something right, I would know that everything was a lie because I feel it with such surety within myself that the way I love is true and honest. That was what inspired me to write it.

Nobody knows what they are doing creatively.

That’s my best advice. There’s also a really good quote from Antonin Artaud. He said, “No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.” I found that quote to be immensely accurate, at least in my experience. So, if you are struggling or feeling pain of some kind, perhaps that will inspire others in some way.

How do you see the “extravagant” and the “horrific” function as a storytelling method?

There is a lot of horror in my poetry. There’s a lot of imagery, a lot of blood. Abjection is a big part

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SPRING 2020

AUTHORS ALCOVE | ISABELLA MALINTZIN

You Can Control What You Do: Going Beyond with Isabella Malintzin

By Jonathan Valenzuela

What was going on in your life when you wrote Part 1 and 2?

I was in high school trying to cope with my past while enduring the pressures and toxicity of high school itself. Struggling to make it by, I caved into the weight of trying to fit in, while not confronting something so present in my personal life. I wrote these pieces in a moment of clarity, trying to express an experience I was hurt by physically and mentally by the perpetrator and by classmates who used this trauma to bully me.

That was my mindset: a teenager in high school struggling to become a person with an identity outside depression and suicide - to be someone, not a victim, that can operate like an average person with a normal childhood.

It's why I wrote the second piece with great detail: so that readers carry a life-altering memory of an event the way other people, like me, carry theirs in their day to day life. It's a bit much for a high school student, but its what kept me sane, knowing I wasn't alone, and that for me was enough to become a better person overall.

While writing those two pieces did it energize you, exhaust you?

It was exhausting because I operated in a negative, toxic mentality that I had created for myself. The concept of self-love wasn’t, in my eyes, applicable to me - I didn’t think I deserved it. I was my biggest weakness and forced myself

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Read Isabella Malintzin’s work, “Part 1 & 2,” in the Creative Nonfiction section.

to write down memories that kept me from sleeping, but it turned out to be therapeutic and altered my perspective of writing.

When you finished both parts, what did you feel after?

I felt better. I mean I hate everything I create but I think that’s the very typical artist response. But I was proud of myself for finishing something I didn’t know I was capable of doing at all. These memories were never suppressed, I never pushed anything aside, so the task was to write - to make memories real - in a way that helped me cope.

My mental health got better once they were completed, and hopefully, my pieces can help others acknowledge their trauma and past that isn’t forced.

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AUTHORS ALCOVE | ISABELLA MALINTZIN

Writing is an art, but in this case, it’s a way to understand yourself beyond what your consciousness may know. Your brain is a lot more interesting, take the time to write things out to see who you really are.

Did you try helping others?

Yeah, I didn’t have anyone to help me so I did my best to help others in my situation. I joined a lot of anonymous sites, like Omegle, and was like "Hi, let me help you”. I wanted to share my work more so to give an example of "Hey, you're not alone, I'm here with you and we can get through this together."

I wanted to be the person I wish I had. Today, I notice the hypocrisy, but at that time I wanted to give what I thought I didn’t deserve to strangers needing it too.

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What does writing do for you?

I love writing because I love to read. I love entering people’s worlds and understanding other people’s perspectives. So, I feel like if I get this much joy from reading and learning from others, I question how my experience can help others.

So writing was a utensil or a pathway for me to better myself to help others.

Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

You can’t control what people think but you can always control what you do. Never judge the past of someone to represent the person of today.

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AUTHORS ALCOVE | MARIANNE KIM

The Camera Dances with You: An Interview with Marianne Kim

By Tim O’Neal

Firstly, you’ve been building an impressive portfolio of installation, performance art, and filmography since the 1990s, but our readers still might be unfamiliar with who you are. Would you take a few moments to introduce yourself as a person, as an interdisciplinary artist, your background, and your driving premise(s)?

I started as a choreographer for concert dance in Chicago. While I was creating dances I also got involved in experimental theatre, film, and performance art projects. I received a fellowship from the U.S Department of Education in 2000 and left Chicago to pursue a graduate degree in dance and technology at UCLA. I felt I needed to cultivate new skills as an interdisciplinary artist as well as find new collaborators and mentors. I left Los Angeles in 2006 to join the faculty in the IAP Program and I have been here at ASU ever since. My work is diverse in form, but I feel that it is always grounded in the body. It is a body that is curious, nuanced, always striving to challenge monoliths, and unlearn convention.

Before we dive into specifics, would you briefly explain the distinction of an “interdisciplinary” artist and how important this concept is to your work?

Why is there a whole undergraduate program at ASU revolving around it?

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Watch “Martiality, Not Fighting” in the Scripts & Clips section.

An interdisciplinary approach to a creative process invites the intersecting of two or more disciplines. For example, I looked at the cinematic camera work of Andre Tarkosky and the visual patterns created by fractal geometry to create a Butoh inspired piece of choreography.

For Martiality, Not Fighting, I considered how a dancing camera would behave. How can the camera be a dancing partner? I like how the collision and tension between different techniques allow for something to manifest I would not have come up with by just staying in my lane.

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AUTHORS ALCOVE | MARIANNE KIM

to tell the story. ASU supports interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. This is how you become a top school for innovation.

The subject matters of your collective works range from automation and technology’s effects on labor, the role that cultural identity plays on an individual as well as societal level, comments on consumerist culture, and researching the appropriation/exploitation of race, gender, and body within the food industry (to pull reference from your website). As an artist, how do you know that these kinds of subjects require your professional attention, and what key perspective do you provide to the discussion of said subjects?

I rarely make premeditated choices for subject matters to my art-making. I usually stumble and trip on it. It's usually something in the world that stops me in my tracks that seems absurd or tragic or both.

Once I establish a point of departure I then go into a deep dive of research and very often new revelations and interesting problems arise.

Currently, as a citizen in the 21st century, I'm finding my contribution as an artist to be centering the conversations that are ignored or left in the margins. I'm honored as a 1st generation immigrant woman of color I have a platform to speak from a personal point of view.

Let’s dive into Martiality, Not Fighting. In your video description, you give the dancer of focus the title of “conscientious objector” deliberating whether “to fight or not to fight”. Could you elaborate on what conflict he is objecting to, and how does the choreography of this piece precisely represent that?

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The main character deliberates what it means to be a good soldier/worker/dancer. He is objecting to the gross stereotypes of Asian culture. He's objecting to his movement. He's objecting to his paralysis to fight. He is objecting to oppression imposed on Chinese cultural workers past and present. The motifs and agendas around the idea of conflict is a prism of convictions and contradictions. I can go on and on.

In your own words, how do you correlate the martial arts exhibited here and postmodern dance? How do you implement the interplay between them here that other artists with your premise may have overlooked in their work?

The choreographer Cheng-Chieh Yu intermingled her expertise in the martial art of Ba Gua Zhang and postmodern dance. She also played with a very familiar trope of en garde position in kung fu. She used dance as an alternative to potential violence by replacing it with cooperation and interdependence.

The dancers carry and spin each other. They create shared beauty inside this martial landscape. As the director, I wanted to reference some of the camera framing used in old kung fu movies. I also wanted the camera to dance with the dancers.

What is it like on location, working with these talented performers and collaborators? About how much time does it take to go from the start of conceptual development to the final moments of postproduction? What difficulties do you notably face during your process?

This project was created between Los Angeles, Arizona, New York, and Guangzhou. The choreographer lived in Los Angeles, the SPRING 2020

AUTHORS ALCOVE | MARIANNE KIM

composer was in New York, I was in Arizona, and the rest of the team was in Guangzhou China.

The production team in China would send me photos and videos. I would then storyboard on my own here in Arizona.

When I arrived in Guangzhou the dancers had already been working with the choreographer in the studio, but not on location. The process was fast-moving, and a lot of questions needed to be solved at a moment’s notice. The toughest part of production was for the dancers to be dancing full-out each take in unfriendly weather and surfaces. They were amazing. I will always be so grateful for the dancers' generous focus on excellence every moment of this production.

After a two-week shoot, I took all the video footage back with me to Arizona and worked with the composer Christian Frederickson for the following year. The entire process from start to finish was about two years.

Are there any lessons that you have learned after all your years establishing and continuing your different series as well as collaborating with others that you think aspiring artists of any discipline should know?

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I work differently based on the project and who is involved in the project. When I have to lead a project, I tend to be decisive and laser-focused on every element of a production. When I am an equal collaborator, I tend to be more spacious and patient. Many faces for many hats, for better or worse.

What do you hope that audiences take away from Martiality? What sort of ideas/discourse do you want to see occur as a result of this piece? What do you want this piece to say about you?

I want to champion screen dance that is cinematic, experimental, and narrative. Screen dances at times can fall into the trap of looking more like a voyeuristic often misogynistic music video. I think there are so many lessons we can learn from the world of real cinema, on ways to frame and capture the dancing body. The medium is the camera and choreography should function and thrive in that world. The dancing should not feel like it's trapped inside the frame from the lack of imagination.

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AUTHORS ALCOVE | ANNMARIE PERRY

Diving into the Mind of an Artist: Picking the Brain of Annmarie Perry

By William Hightower

For starters, why spray paint?

It is an unconventional way to paint. I think I am unconventional. Most fine artists create with a brush. I try to achieve the same with results with a can.

How long have you been doing art and has it always been spray paint?

I have been an artist my whole life. When I was young, I would get in trouble at school for drawing instead of doing school work. I have done many types of artwork. Oil, acrylic, ink, scratch ink, airbrush, henna, sand, sewing, cake, chalk, and clay. I try my hand at everything I can. I have also done special effects in makeup.

I think I see the world differently. It is a pallet and it’s at my disposal. Trash can be made into art if you just look a little harder. There really is beauty in everything.

I live and breathe for art. It's what makes me whole. Without it I just can't seem to cope. I have had a lot of trauma in my life. My best work is when I think I am going to fall apart. Then making artwork just brings me to a different place. A place where I can make life what I want it to be. Does that make sense?

Do you have a favorite piece you have worked on? If so, why is it your favorite?

Yes, I do have a favorite. It is hanging in my living room. I painted it after going to Yosemite CANYON VOICES

Look at Annmarie’s work, “Buck in the Morning Mist,” in the Art section.

with some of my close friends. One of them passed away 2 years ago. So it has special meaning.

I understand that you have booths at fairs, how often do you do events?

I do four large fairs. Del Mar, Pima county fair, Arizona state fair, and Glendale Glitters. I also do many small festivals and chalk art events, bar mitzvahs, and soccer tournaments airbrushing hats and headbands.

Is there an event that you like to do more than others, if so why?

I like each one for different reasons. Del Mar. It's right on the ocean. Pima is smaller and I know so many vendors there. Glendale Glitters SPRING 2020

AUTHORS ALCOVE | ANNMARIE PERRY

and Arizona state are the ones I used to go to when I was young. So, they all have something special about them. People!

Me and my wife bought a painting from you at First Friday in Downtown Phoenix years ago and got to see your process.

Could you explain how you make your way from blank canvas to finished work?

Are you asking me how I come up with them or how they are made?

Both.

Music, feelings, and people's suggestions are how I come up with many of them. Music inspires most of my work. My spray paint technique is layers. It's what is behind each layer that matters to me in most of my paintings. I remove

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layers to reveal what's underneath. It causes the paint to mix itself in a more natural way.

Although there are many ways to spray paint this is the one I prefer the most.

I noticed the respirator you wear. Is there any other sort of safety precautions you need to take while painting like you do?

I wear gloves and have a downdraft table my husband built to catch the overspray in a filter.

This also directs most of the propellant into the filter to a different location.

Any words of wisdom for future artists?

Anything is possible. Don't let other people discourage you. There is more than one way to create art. Art should reflect who you are.

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ABOUT US CANYON VOICES LITERARY & ART MAGAZINE is dedicated to shedding light on the works of emerging and established writers and artists. Founded in the spring of 2010 at Arizona State University’s West campus by one professor, Julie Amparano Garcia, and six students, this journal strives to bring the creativity of writers and artists to light within the community and beyond. Supported by the students and faculty of the School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, CANYON VOICES accepts writing and artwork from writers and artists from all corners of our planet and from all walks of life.

The work of maintaining and producing this magazine is entirely student driven. Since its formation, CANYON VOICES has expanded into a full credit, hands-on class. Students build a full literary journal each semester, heading every aspect of production, including soliciting submissions, editing, marketing, design and layout, and publication. We strive to bring you an eclectic range of voices each semester.

OUR MISSION At CANYON VOICES our mission is to provide an online environment to highlight emerging and established voices in the artistic community.

By publishing works that engender thought, Canyon Voices seeks to enrich the scope of language, style, culture, and gender.

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CONTACT US Questions, comments, feedback? We would love to hear from you.

Contact us via email at: CanyonVoicesLitMag@gmail.com You can also visit us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/asucanyonvoices

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

SUBMITTING WORK To submit your work, please send it to CanyonVoicesLitMag@gmail.com. Be sure to attach all the work you wish to submit to the email. You may include an author biography and a photo, which will be included in the magazine should your work be chosen for publication. We are affiliated with Arizona State University, and we uphold academic standards. If your work is accepted we reserve the right to make changes. You will be contacted should your work require more extensive edits. We accept simultaneous submissions.

All documents submitted should be double spaced with a 12 point font, in either Times New Roman or Arial. Poetry may be single spaced. All written documents must be submitted in (.doc) or (.rtf) format. Artwork may be in JPEG format.

All work submitted must have a title.

FICTION Up to two stories may be submitted per issue. Each story may be 20 pages or fewer.

POETRY

CNF

Up to six poems Up to four stories per may be submitted issue. Two pieces may (no longer than be 20 pages. two pages each) per issue.

SCRIPTS Up to two scripts may be submitted per issue. Script maximum 15 pages.

ART Up to ten pieces, with at least 300 dpi or JPEG format (<1 MB).

Include detail on medium.

EXPLICIT MATERIALS

READING PERIOD

Because this is a university magazine, submissions containing sexually explicit material and explicit language will be reviewed and determined eligible for publishing depending on the context of the material in the work. Material deemed inappropriate or gratuitous will be rejected.

Our editors read submissions in August, September, and through October 15th for the fall issue. The reading period re-opens in January, February, and through March 15th for the spring.

CANYON VOICES

SPRING 2020

Ă­ Julie Amparano Garc a is the founder, publisher, and ad isor of the Can on Voices literar team. Ser ing in the School of Humanit Arts and Cultural Studies at ASU s Ne College of Interdisciplinar Arts and Sciences, Amparano Garc a o ersees the school's Writing Certificate Program and teaches a ariet of riting courses that include script riting, cross-cultural riting, fiction, persuasi e riting, and others. She recei ed her M.F.A. in Creati e Writing from Antioch Uni ersit in Los Angeles in 2006 and is orking on a collection of short stories and a pla about children and ar.

De n Carmen is a senior English Literature undergraduate. His fa orite book is Wise Blood b Flanner O'Connor, and he lo es to read contro ersial fiction. His interests include pla ing one ideo game out of e er ten he bu s, consuming ast amounts of " eeb" culture, and speculating on the ne t comic book mo ie. When he's not orking, De n can be found ranting on some di isi e topic, and pra ing that the robots on't ine itabl take o er.

Kristina Rasmussen is a senior at ASU s Ne College of Interdisciplinar College of Arts and Sciences; BA in English and is orking on getting her riting certificate. Her plans are to graduate in Spring 2021 as ell as to do an internship and then she ill see here life takes her from there. This is her second time at Can on Voices and is the lead of Art and Co-Lead of Fiction and Creati e Non-Fiction. She is also orking ith other former Can on Voices editors on redesigning pre iousl published issues of Can on Voices including a Best of Issue. She has had a passion for creati e riting in all its forms since the 7 th grade. She hopes to be published in some capacit in her life. She enjo s reading, riting, comics, ideo games, YouTube/Internet Culture, and her t o dogs and cat.

Sophia Steuber is an English senior ho ill be graduating this spring. This is her second semester ith Ca V ce , and she has enjo ed taking on more responsibilit as the lead poetr editor. She recentl fell in lo e ith Patricia Smith's poetr collection "Shoulda Been Jimi Sa annah," but outside of her Literar Interests, she mostl sticks to rereading clich rom-coms. Most importantl though, she spends most of her time spoiling her t o cats and t o turtles.

Michelle Chao, cat lo er and Netfli connoisseur, completed her ser ice in the Arm and is no pursuing a bachelor s degree in English. Aside from binge atching sho s, she spends her free time reading, riting and attempting to rank up in League of Legends. She currentl li es in Peoria, Ari ona ith her bo friend and their small famil of t o mischie ous cats and a spoiled dog.

Beth Dillard is a senior at ASU graduating ith a degree in Ps cholog . She is a Barrett student and completed her thesis project, a children s book about a girl ith social an iet . She plans to mo e to Portland, Oregon after graduation to start a career in counseling. Beth enjo s pla ing guitar, ideo games, and hoarding clothes in Animal Crossing. When she gets to Portland, she plans on starting a band ith her brother, so ask for autographs no hile she s still accessible. She also collects Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Sonic comics, and pla ing card decks. She proudl boasts the platinum troph in Bloodborne, so 1 1 her in p p, mate. Beth has had a onderful time this semester as an editor for Can on Voices, and ishes to e press her gratitude to ou, the reader, for our support of the arts.

William Highto er is a father of three and a husband. After ser ing in the United States Arm and medicall retiring, he redisco ered his lo e of riting hile being a sta at home dad. This passion sa his return to school at ASU in pursuit of bettering himself as a person and a professional. He is currentl enrolled as an English major and plans on pursuing a certificate in creati e riting as ell as an MFA. He has completed t o no els to date and has aspirations of one da submitting his ork for publication.

Aspiring riter, Aspiring orld tra eler, Aspiring Lord of the Ring reader, sometimes a Blake mostl a Ross. Ross Holding is a fiction riter hoping to graduate ith a degree in creati e riting. As a fantas riter he still hasn t found the time to read through either the Hobbit or Lord of The Rings, hopefull he ill soon. He spends his da s pla ing ideo games, atching mo ies, or reading books, a onder he hasn t read Tolkien. He hopes to tra el the orld one da to see it and impro e his o n riting.