Canyon Voices Issue 15

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ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2017

SCRIPTS

NONFICTION

CREATIVE

POETRY

Gary Lawrence

Zak Block

Kylee Hoelscher

Austin Fendler

Sara Dobie Bauer

Nicole Floda

Showtime

To a Landlord

Underlanders

Van Leugen

Horrible, Unimaginable Sounds A Choice to Remember

ARTWORK

FICTION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Tony Valencia Jr.

Henry Carrillo III

Derrick Bergeron

Imprison

undisturbed

For Finn

Fabrice Poussin

David Redkey Rupture

John Moessner Whitewood ■ In the Weeds

Tingle

Kendall Hoeft

Randel McCraw Helms

Tasseography ■ Southern Lady ■ Music of Mexico ■ Silence Like a Cemetery

Song of Li Po, In His Cups

Pam Munter

Gabby Catalano

Dixieland Dreams

Creaking Mattress

Amy Whitehouse

Ilyssa Goldsmith

Safe

On Wearing the Cloche

Rome Johnson Don’t Date the Preacher’s Daughter

Benjamin Graber

Alexis Watkins

Bound for Justice

Under a Starless Sky

Lucid Dream by Jasna Boudard

CANYONVOICES

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Jasna Boudard Vanya Allison

Joshua Newth

Amy Whitehouse

Christian Parfitt

Dunielle Vujasin

Juli Adams

Duane Locke

Rachel Rose Hinch

Chris Walker

Emma Harney Roberto Antonietti Lukus Edmison A.J. Huffman Mid-Afternoon Shadows ■ Broken Footprints ■ Albino Moths

National Poetry Month Winners

■ 1st Place. Kyle Stidham ■ Three Homosexual Fragments ■ 2nd Place. Kamala Platt ■ Maternal Inheritance in Times of Great, Great Hate ■ 3rd Place. Carmen Cutler ■ Saturn’s Rings ■ Honorable Mention. Kate Rogers ■ Acrid

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My Town Music Video My Town Lyrics

Digital Audio Recordings

Jacquelin De La Torre Dream Big!

A E V O C

Digital Audio Recordings

An Interview with Pam Munter

Ileen Younan A Future Editor

Nobel Prize

Ruth Arriaga ‘Raw. Therapeutic, Blessing’ Tony Valencia Jr. Speaks Poetry

Chatting with Alexis Watkins

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Timothy OBrien

Bob Dylan Tribute

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Lloyd Hofmeyr In the Loop short film

Lloyd Hofmeyr Behind the Scenes of In the Loop

ABOUT US

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Ian Kelby

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DIGITAL

Myrlin Hepworth

AUTHOR’S

Desert Oasis by Rachel Rose Hinch

Our Mission

What we’re all about

Contact Us

Where to find us online

Submissions

Guidelines for submitting

Staff Pages

Spring 2017 crew

Publisher’s Note Someone recently asked me a very simple question, comprised of just four words. Do the arts matter, he asked? As the publisher of this literary magazine, a playwright and creative writer, I resolutely believe, yes, the arts matter. Particularly in trying times such as these, with fake news abounding, missiles going off in the Pacific and a tumultuous political climate.

The arts help us also move through more personal challenges. It was the arts that helped me move through my father’s death. Art exhibits. Plays. Poetry readings.

Of course, I am not alone in this belief. Consider a few voices from the present and past regarding the importance of the arts.

“The arts matter because they help us see the world from different perspectives . . . The arts ignite something in our brains that I can’t explain, but I know it’s essential for life.” – Jennie Terman, National Endowment for the Arts.

CANYONVOICES Publisher Co-Editors

Lead Art Editor Art Editors Copy Chief

JULIE AMPARANO

Patricia Colomy Manny Felix Kate Rogers Iza Ramos Ruth Arriaga

Production Assistant

Danny Walker Ileen Younan

Senior Fiction Editor

Patricia Colomy

Fiction Editors

Senior Poetry Editor Poetry Editors

Samantha Diaz Sean Hampton Danny Walker Eric Johnson Kate Rogers Iza Ramos Ruth Arriaga

Senior Creative Nonfiction Editor Creative Nonfiction Editors

Manny Felix Jacquelin De La Torre Ileen Younan

“Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” – Steve Jobs.

Senior Scripts Editor Scripts Editors

Manny Felix Jacquelin De La Torre Ileen Younan

“We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” – John F. Kennedy.

Alcove Editor

Jacquelin De La Torre

In this issue, the student editors sought to bring truth to the pages of CANYON VOICES, whether it was in the form of a poem about fatherhood, a creative nonfiction essay about an alcoholic parent or a short story about the apocalypse. These students understood the importance of truth and the importance of the arts. They were a small but mighty staff. I applaud them for creating this wonderful issue.

We hope you, too, will find some truths in Issue 15.

My deep thanks go to my Division Director Louis Mendoza and Dean Marlene Tromp for their encouragement and their recognition of the importance of the arts. The arts matter. Let’s not forget this truth.

Event Coordinator

Iza Ramos

Social Media Editor

Samantha Diaz

Staff Photographer

Samantha Diaz

Marketing Department

Ruth Dempsey

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 Psychedelic Sunflower by Amy Whitehouse See the Artwork section for full image Uncredited artwork from Pixabay.com

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Artwork by Dunielle Vujasin (See Artwork for full image)

FICTION

Lord Cag by Chris Walker (See Art section for full image)

Gary Lawrence Showtime

Austin Fendler Van Leugen

Zak Block To a Landlord

Sara Dobie Bauer Underlanders

Kylee Hoelscher Horrible Unimaginable Sounds

Nicole Floda A Choice to Remember

FICTION : GARY LAWRENCE

Showtime

By Gary Lawrence

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he courtroom studio audience was restless. The previous trial had not lived up to its billing. Ratings were down for the third quarter in a row. Asses were on the line. Someone’s head was going to roll if ratings didn’t improve quickly, the people upstairs said. Mr. Monney, the show’s producer, scurried back and forth between cameras, wringing his hands and shaking his head. Every time someone in the audience complained or got up to leave, he took flight to another camera, back and forth, back and forth.

Out on the brightly-lit set Frank, the director in charge, leaned against the fake stucco wall behind the Judge’s seat. We’re in trouble here, he mused. We’re cooked.

Then: Where else can I get a job as good as this one? He rolled his shoulders. Arched his back a bit. Tried to look the part of the exec he was. No time to panic now, he thought, rather weakly. He spoke to the actor standing next to him, the man who played the bailiff.

“So, what’s up next, Charlie?” asked Frank.

He tried to talk without his voice cracking, in case the producer heard him.

“Not good. No, no. Not good.”

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“A murder case this time. Some guy raped and killed this little guy’s brand-new wife.”

Charlie’s eyes grew wider. “Did it at the train station – in broad daylight!”

Joey the janitor had just wiped the modified witness box down with a pine-scented disinfectant. “How ya doing, Joey? About got that cleaned up?”

Charlie could barely contain his excitement.

He couldn’t keep his hand off the pistol in his leather holster. He’d just found the Colt 45 prop last night in the Western studio three stages down. He imagined that this was the gun used by Clint Eastwood in High Plains Drifter —his favorite Eastwood western.

Joey looked up and smiled at Frank. He took a long leisurely swipe across the seat of the black leather chair with his wide wet rag.

“Can’t rush quality, you know.” Joey finished wiping down the chair and slapped the rag across the top a couple of times, popping the rag like a locker-room towel when he swung it. Finally, he folded his rag onto itself three times in a rectangle shape and threaded it lengthwise through his belt so that it hung there securely – all while Frank and the others waited.

“Well, that last one looked like it was going to be a winner, too,” Frank said. “What a yawner. You’da thought a kidnapping case would do better than that.”

He shook his head. Frowned.

Then Joey looked right at Frank, bugged his eyes out, opened his arms and yelled, “It’s show time!” He laughed loudly all the way off the witness stand and through the stagehand exit door in the back.

“With the little kid involved, and all.”

A commotion Stage Right got Frank’s attention. Two real bailiffs pulled a huge man in handcuffs, orange jail jumpsuit and leg irons into the room. The man in the jumpsuit stood a full foot taller and weighed a hundred pounds more than either of the bailiffs, and they weren’t small men. One of the bailiffs had a long red welt on his left cheek.

Fucking stage unions. Frank made a mental note to file a complaint.

He turned back to the bailiffs and their prisoner and rolled his wrist. “Okay, boys, bring him on in now. Bring him on in.” The bailiffs struggled to get the prisoner to move, until one of them finally cracked him across the back of the knees with his nightstick.

“Son of a bitch didn’t want to come up here,” the bailiff muttered when he saw Frank staring at his face.

“Just a minute, boys,” Frank called out, quickly assessing the situation and heading them off. He walked toward the trio quickly, his arm and hand up like a cop stopping traffic. “They’re not quite done cleaning up from the last show yet.”

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“Wake up, Judge,” Frank said softly as he moved past. Judge Wulover was hunched over her hands. A metal nail file at least ten inches long hung in mid-air in her grasp.

Frank could smell the liquor on her breath

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and seeping from her pores even from where he was, a good three feet away from her. The judge didn’t acknowledge Frank’s comment, but she did start filing her nails again.

excitement and expectation settled in. A little like when I was a kid and people all stayed home Friday evenings to watch Friday Night Fights, Frank thought fondly.

He remembered sitting up late with his dad to watch the fights, eating popcorn, drinking beer (root beer for him), and munching on chocolatemarshmallow-jellypinwheel cookies. Most of the time his dad fell asleep on the couch before that night’s feature fight was actually finished, so Frank would have to remember who won, and how, and tell him the next morning.

Frank moved closer to the witness box so he could watch the trial preparations better. The bailiffs locked the prisoner’s leg irons to the round polished-steel bar that ran low across the front of the box, and locked his hands in cuffs in front of him on the higher bar at his chest.

Charlie the actor-bailiff hung back on the other side of the stage. Once the prisoner was safely secured, Charlie hooked his thumbs over his holster’s belt and sauntered over to the witness box.

A little like when I was a kid and people all stayed home Friday evenings to watch Friday Night Fights, Frank thought fondly..

Back at the studio, Frank turned quickly and headed back toward the studio production booth when he saw the plaintiff standing just inside the lounge area door at Stage Left. He wouldn’t have even noticed the man if the large red “Plaintiff” badge hadn’t hung crookedly from the front pocket of his suit coat.

“I’ll take it from here, boys.”

One of the bailiffs, the one with the welt on his face, gave Charlie the finger and walked off. “He’s all yours now, asshole,” he said.

The man was barely five feet tall, balding with thin gray hair, wore wire-rimmed glasses, and sported a suit coat whose sleeves came well over his tiny wrists, almost to the middle of his knuckles, hiding his small hands when he stood straight. He wore a black-and-yellow polka-dot bow tie and white shirt with the gray jacket.

The remaining bailiff looked briefly at the prisoner and smiled. “Enjoy.”

The prisoner made a kissing sound with his lips. “Blow me.”

Oh my. This is going to be good, Frank thought. This is going to be real good.

He noticed that the studio audience had quieted down now, settled into something close to silence on the set. An air of CANYONVOICES

The man hung close to the participant lounge door, leaning backwards with his

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hands and rear end pressed against the door, looking like he was ready to bolt.

He nodded slightly at the audience.

That was enough for Monney. He glanced around, jumped to life from behind Camera Two and shuttled the plaintiff over to the table, one hand on the man’s forearm and the other on his elbow. Monney nearly carried the man the thirty or so feet to the prosecution’s table. “Glad you’re here, sir, glad you’re here,” Monney chattered as he steered the plaintiff around the cameras and cables and across the brightly polishedwood floor. “Terrible. Yes, just terrible. What happened. Terrible.”

“Over here!” Frank yelled loudly. “Over here, sir.”

The crowd in the bench sets in back settled in further. Most of them were regulars.

They’d seen the show before. They knew the routine. They were ready.

Frank gave his best traffic-cop wave to the man who was the plaintiff and walked toward the single wooden table in front of the judge’s bench. He tapped on the table.

“This is your seat here sir, in front.” We’ve got the crowd right where we want them, Frank thought as he smiled brightly at the small man. Hurry up, dammit. He fought to hold his smile. We don’t want to lose the mood.

Frank too jumped into action. “Get me another mike and a mini-cam down here.

I’m shooting this one from the floor. Myself.”

He looked up at the prisoner, who just stared at the plaintiff coldly. A slight snarl was frozen on the large man’s lips.

Frank grabbed his headset spoke into his mike. “We’re doing this live, people. Live.

And we’re doing it now. Right now. So, straighten up and look smart.”

“Get me a mike and a camera down here, goddammit, and get it here now.” One of the temp girls from Central Casting, a young blonde intern named Ginger, ran down the few steps from the production booth to the stage, pinned the mike on the plaintiff’s stiff gray lapel, and gave the hand-held digital camera to Frank.

The plaintiff still hung back by the door. “Mr. Monney,” Frank said over his headset. He waited. No response. “Monney!” Frank yelled to get the producer’s attention.

Monney was crouched in back like he was trying to blend into the struts of one of the cameras. Monney looked up at Frank, startled.

Once he had the camera ready Frank looked over at Doc, the physician’s assistant on duty today, to make sure he was ready and set. Doc sat at the small table in front of the bench, where the court recorder’d sat in the old days. The plungers on the syringes were up and ready, like valves on a trumpet, ready to go. Three colored tubes, red, blue, and yellow, ran from Doc’s table into the back of the witness stand, hidden there in

People didn’t tell him what to do. Ever.

Frank pointed across the room. “Go over there and get that guy, will ya?” Monney didn’t move. Frank pleaded. “Will ya?

Please?! I don’t want to lose them!”

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the prisoner’s orange jumpsuit but connected to the standard state-issued port that had already been inserted.

“All rise!” he said, waving his hands. “All rise for Judge Wulover!”

The judge kept filing her nails, not looking up from her seat at the bench.

“You ready, Doc?” Frank asked. Doc had on a brightly-colored hospital smock with little blue and pink bunny prints hopping across his chest and back. Doc cracked his knuckles, adjusted his head mike then nodded.

The studio audience scurried to their feet and stood in dumb reverence.

I love it when they do that, Frank laughed to himself. Seen it a hundred times and it still gets me, every single time. He saw one old lady in the front row clutching a knitting basket and a half-knitted baby blanket as she wobbled to her feet. He zoomed in on her, then backed off slightly as her wrinkled skin filled the lens harshly. She balanced a large ball of white yarn on her right elbow so

“Good to go here.”

“Roger that.” Frank spoke again into his headset. “Okay then. Here we go, people.

Three. Two. One.” He pointed to Charlie. On Frank’s cue Charlie stood up from the plaintiff’s table and strutted to center stage.

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she could stand; her knitting needles pointed high in the air at her left side, in a little salute, nearly poking out the eye of the man next to her when she struggled late to her feet.

As he yelled he swung his arms wildly and turned toward the crowd. “Rape. And murder!” he yelled again, louder. A splattering of applause swept across the studio audience. An “oooh” or two escaped from the crowd.

Frank controlled the studio now. He gave a cue to Judge Wulover. She didn’t respond.

“And who is it that bringeth these charges against this offender?”

“Sam, get Wulover’s attention,” he said to Camera Three. Sam covered his mouth with his hand and spoke sharply into his headset.

The judge started slightly, but continued filing her nails. Another moment went by, then Wulover cleared her throat.

Charlie walked over and touched the table where the little man in the bow tie sat quietly. The plaintiff had tucked his legs beneath himself in his chair; they weren’t long enough to reach the floor. His folded hands were in his lap.

“Be seated,” she said, and the crowd fell noisily back into their seats.

“Me, Your Honor.”

“Who comes here before me today?” Judge Wulover said flatly. Frank winced. Monney wrote that line and insisted that it be used to start every show.

Frank scowled. “Get his volume up. Get the volume up on Mike 8 or we’ll lose him, somebody!” Frank hissed into his mouthpiece.

“This here’s Bob Slack, Your Honor,” Charlie said, checking his program notes. He pointed at the prisoner in the witness box as he spoke. “Mad Dog Slack, they called him on the street.” The audience booed. The old lady in the front row started her knitting. The steady click-click-click of her knitting needles pulsed through the courtroom like a metronome.

Charlie walked over, leaned down, whispered to the man, adjusted the microphone on his lapel, then stepped back.

“It’s me, Your Honor. Axel Trembles.”

A man in the crowd snickered.

Wulover cleared her throat. “Your involvement in this case, Mr….” she looked down at her script. “Trembles?”

The Judge inspected her nails, turning each finger one by one slowly in front of her.

“What’s the charge?” she said, on the cameraman’s prompt. She touched up a spot on her left middle finger with the long steel file.

“I was the victim’s husband, Your Honor.”

Axel’s voice shook. He swallowed before answering again. “We’d just started our honeymoon.”

The crowd behind the cameras erupted. A few stood and pointed at Mad Dog Slack.

“Rape and murder, Your Honor!” Charlie yelled too loudly.

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“Bastard!” some yelled. “Murderer!” a little girl screamed from under her mother’s arm.

Mad Dog bent down to his cuffed hands and shoved a long finger up his nose, oblivious to the audience’s jeering.

“Quiet in the court. Quiet in the court,” said Judge Wulover in her soft monotone. “Or I’ll clear the studio.”

Over my dead body, thought Frank. But he knew she had to say that.

Something about state’s liability and the actors’ union. In the contract. And judicial tradition, whatever the hell that meant.

This little guy’s getting into this, Frank thought, nodding. Good for the ratings.

Axel Trembles cleared his throat and began.

“It was a Saturday, of course, and we’d just been married. At one o’clock, in that little stone church down on Broadway.”

People in the audience shook their heads. They knew Broadway. They knew the little stone church. “Judy and me, we were childhood sweethearts. She was my girl-next-door, my own little calendar girl.” He paused and dabbed a large white handkerchief at his eyes.

Frank didn’t know where the handkerchief had come from, didn’t care. He kept the mini-camera pointed at him.

Everyone was quiet. The methodical clickclick-click of the knitting needles continued to ring through the courtroom.

Monney again.

The crowd settled down after a few seconds. The knitting needles clicked on steadily, their staccato click-click-click tapping in the background.

“We both loved trains. Model trains. Don’t know why, we just did,” Axel said, turning away from the judge and facing the crowd

“Tell us what happened…Plaintiff.” Wulover

again. “It was at one of those model train shows that we got our whistle.”

was supposed to say his name but she must have forgotten it. Again, Frank thought. She tucked her hair over her left ear, then resumed her nail filing.

Here Axel hung his head.

“Stay with him, Two. Broad. I got him short.

One, you stay with Charlie, close,” whispered Frank.

“Well, Your Honor...” Axel began. He looked up and Charlie smiled at him. He hesitated long enough that Frank could hear the knitting needles again, clicking rhythmically, almost soothingly now in the quiet pause.

Axel took a breath and smiled back at Charlie. “And the court,” Axel said, turning slightly toward the studio audience in his chair.

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“What whistle is that, Axel?” asked Charlie, hands on his hips.

“The train whistle. The tin train whistle. An old man at a model train show made it for Judy and me one year. They’re usually made

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out of brass, you know,” said Axel, talking mainly to Charlie, “but ‘cause we were kids and didn’t have hardly any money back then, he made ours out of some scrap tin he had.

face. He got no response from Slack, and slowly regained his composure and put the prop back in his holster. Charlie stared at Slack for a moment longer, then turned back to the prosecution’s table.

Axel’s voice dropped low: “‘I’m just making one,’ he said to us as he made it, ‘just this one, ‘cause you two will never be too far apart from each other. I can tell.’” Axel did a good imitation of what an old conductor’s voice might sound like.

“Sorry for the outburst, sir.” He did a slight bow. “Please proceed, Mr. Trembles.”

Cameraman Two looked over at Cameraman Three. Two blew a restrained mouth raspberry. Three nodded knowingly and rolled his eyes.

Everyone was quiet. The methodical clickclick-click of the knitting needles continued to ring through the courtroom.

Trembles proceeded. “When we got to the

train station after the wedding, I left Judy with the luggage while I went to confirm our seats. I never would have thought she would be in any danger with all those people standing around...” Axel looked up at Judge Wulover, but she was now putting nail polish on and didn’t seem to notice.

Charlie cleared his throat loudly and strode to the bench. He held up a clear plastic bag with yellow tape across the top. “State’s Evidence – Trembles” was printed in bold black marker across the sealed top.

“Is this that whistle, Mr. Trembles?”

“Break for commercial, Frank? We’re past time,” The assistant director’s voice broke across the headset into Frank’s ear.

Axel took the bag from Charlie tenderly, slowly -- caressed it. “Judy wore our whistle around her neck from that day until…” His head drooped. “Well, you know. Until…the end.”

“Not if you like working here,” Frank snapped back. “We’re staying with Trembles.”

“Screw your little whistle.” Bob Slack’s harsh deep voice crackled across the still courtroom like so much heat lightning and thunder. Then Prisoner Slack lifted a hammy orange butt cheek, farted loudly in the silence and stared straight ahead without breaking his stare.

“Then what, Mr. Trembles?” Charlie was on the table now, sitting on the edge, hands in his lap, looking down into Axel’s eyes. “Then what happened, Axel?” he said softer.

“Then?” Axel squirmed in his chair. “Then I was halfway to the counter when I realized I didn’t have Judy’s passport with me. I headed back to where I’d left her two minutes before, two minutes tops. And she

“Shut up, asshole!” Charlie jumped in front of the witness stand between Slack and Trembles. He drew his pistol and waved it back and forth inches from the prisoner’s CANYONVOICES

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wasn’t there. The luggage was all there, but she wasn’t. Wasn’t there.”

glared up at Slack. “In the frigging dumpster -- like some piece of trash!”

Axel stopped suddenly, looked down at his hands.

Prisoner Slack smirked and grinned, then yawned widely and loudly. He looked bored with the proceedings.

“Then what, Axel?” Charlie coaxed, close.

The air between them crackled like heat lightning again. A moment passed. “And what else did they find, Axel?” Charlie asked quietly.

Axel took a deep breath. “Then I heard it.”

“Heard what?”

He hung his head lower. “Heard our whistle.”

Axel’s face paled. He pulled his legs further under himself and then stood up in his chair.

Axel pointed directly at Slack now, his tiny finger barely clearing his suit-coat sleeve.

“They found her, all right. Beaten to a pulp.

And… and raped.

The room fell dead silent. The old lady stopped knitting for a minute. Even Wulover stopped polishing her nails.

“I heard our whistle. Faint – but I heard it.”

Axel stopped, caught his breath. “I tried to follow the sound. But the terminal was so noisy. Too noisy. And then -- then it stopped.” He looked up helplessly at Charlie, his face screwed up tight. Tears filled his eyes. “I looked and looked, but I couldn’t find her. I couldn’t find Judy.”

“By that worthless bastard there.” Axel’s hand shook in the air. Then he spoke again slowly, softly. Regained some composure.

Lowered his arm. Stared at the waxed table top. “They said she might have had a chance to survive the rape, and even the beating. But he’d rolled up her passport and stuffed it down her throat so she gagged.”

Charlie leaned forward and put his hand on Axel’s shoulder.

Axel stared at Slack as he spoke next, oblivious to all else in the room.

“It’s okay, Axel. It’s okay now.” Charlie looked over at the crowd and glanced at Frank. Only Frank noticed his wink. “Then what, Mr. Trembles? Then what happened?”

“Stuffed it so far down her throat she choked and suffocated on her own vomit.”

Charlie sprang to his feet. “Rolled up her passport?” He strutted to within three feet of the prisoner. “Stuffed it down her throat?”

“Then they found her. Found my Judy.”

“What? F-o-o-o-o-und her?” Charlie gawked at the crowd wide-eyed. “Where did they find her, Axel?”

He turned to face Slack even more squarely.

“You monster!” he screamed, raising a fist.

The prisoner glanced at Charlie nonchalantly, like Charlie was a fly that needed swatting.

“Around the side of the terminal. Outside. In the dumpster.” Axel’s head snapped up. He

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Charlie turned to the plaintiff. He took a deep breath, dropped his fist, then quietly asked, “And the whistle?”

jumped on top of the table in one bound, his little legs much stronger than they looked.

“Our whistle!” he yelled, tearing the thin tin whistle from the plastic evidence baggy.

Axel moaned and clutched the plastic evidence bag to his chest. “That’s how they found him.” Axel’s face was red. His eyes bulged as he leaned in Slack’s direction, leaned so far forward he nearly fell off his chair. “Caught you in the metal detector, didn’t they? Huh Slack? Huh asshole?” He spat. “Because of the whistle, you stupid twit. The whistle!”

Then Axel leapt from the table to the floor so fast even Charlie didn’t flinch. He covered the ten feet of space between him and the prisoner in a second, climbed over the short wooden witness gate, and crawled up onto Slack’s back. Slack shook his head and shoulders furiously, struggled to get his hands and arms free from the cuffs and chains that held him secure and kept him from flipping this tiny nuisance now on him.

Then Axel started to laugh hysterically. “Stay on him, Three!” Frank said. The knitting needles rang in Frank’s ears again, clickclick-click, clicking faster and faster. Axel

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But Slack couldn’t shake him.

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Axel wrapped one arm tight around Slack’s head, whipping back and forth as the big man thrashed and shook and roared in his seat. He dug at Slack’s neck with the sharp corner edge of the whistle, dragged the whistle around Slack’s neck like he was cutting the lid off a cheap can of soup with one of those old-fashioned turnkeys. At first only a thin red line, pencil-thick, showed around the prisoner’s neck. But then the line grew fatter. And then slowly, in slow motion, it seemed, everyone realized the sharp thin edge of the whistle had ripped through Slack’s carotid artery.

As the red line widened and gaped, Axel’s tiny ivory hands completed the “U” and tore Slack’s windpipe open with a sickening hiss and a gurgle.

“Stay with him long! Stay with him for Christ’s sake, Three!” Frank yelled. “I’ll zoom in!”

Finally, the swinging motion of the chain slowed as Axel’s hands stopped moving and the last of the blood squirted out of Slack.

The knitting needles clicked quicker and quicker through Slack’s death throes until they were almost all one sound, like a drum roll -- then they slowed as he died, keeping rhythm with his pulsing blood.

Slack finally quit struggling and sat still.

Frank’s voice was calm. “I’ll stay tight on Trembles. Three, you stay tight on Slack. Two, get the crowd reaction.”

Axel wrapped one arm tight around Slack’s head, whipping back and forth as the big man thrashed …

People in the studio audience were on their feet. They cheered and bounced up and down where they stood and hugged each other in little groups of twos and threes.

A little girl of around eight leaned over the guard rail and puked on the floor, splashing her patent leather shoes and frilly white socks with her soft-pretzel-and-mustard lunch.

Slack’s mouth gaped stupidly, his lips opening and closing frantically, gasping for breath like a fish flopping on the dirty bottom of a boat – but no sound came out. Blood squirted out of his neck and throat all over Axel now, and dribbled down onto his orange DOC coverall chest between spurts.

Doc sat frozen in place in his bright hospitalissue bunny smock, his hand still set on the lethal plungers, unsure what to do now.

Judge Wulover spun in her chair but couldn’t find her gavel. She forgot to say her last line -- a minor contract infraction but forgivable given the circumstances. Slack’s head rolled back and hung limply to one

The small silver chain that had once hung so close to Judy’s pale flat chest swung back and forth in Axel’s slick red palm as he thrashed again and again.

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FICTION : GARY LAWRENCE

side by a thin blue-gray thread of muscle tissue Axel’d missed.

floor a couple of times, then wobbled once or twice and settled sloppily into the pool of blood now collecting at the drain in front of the witness chair. The yarn jumped back when the old lady yanked her needles for another stitch, still click-click-clicking in the front row, and quickly turned rust red as it settled in the muck.

Axel Trembles finally slid down Slack’s slumped back and collapsed and lay like a pile of crumpled laundry on the floor, sobbing. Frank turned and saw Monney sprawled out in a chair next to Camera Three with his eyes closed -- his feet were up and crossed, his lips were pursed in a large smile, and his hands were locked behind his head. Charlie sat on the corner edge of the plaintiff’s table smugly, face all aglow, stroking the top of his fake .45 with his fingertips over and over and over again.

“Cut! Cut!” Frank held the mini-cam high over his head. He danced a little Scottish jig on the hollow wood stage floor in a small, tight circle.

“That’s a take! That’s a wrap, everybody!”

A thick ball of yarn rolled out from the crowd, leaving a thin white tail wiggling behind it. It bounced on the polished wood

CANYONVOICES

For more information on author Gary Lawrence, please visit our Contributors Page.

SPRING2017

FICTION : AUSTIN FENDLER

Van Leugen

By Austin Fendler

T

he dark hung over the city like a shroud, a mist made of human filth, and the city drank long and deep of the dark till it simmered drunk in the night, as it had every night as long as the city had been.

This was the Babylon-city, the Sodom and Gomorrah, the city built from glass and sweat and greed, from ash and rain and all metals black and cold to touch. It was the city of snow and brimstone, of iron and concrete, with slim towerspiking swift and clean into the midnight clouds like daggers poised to stab God in the heart. It was a city built by millions, and it housed millions, birthed millions, killed millions, and a million more, and more yet, till all humanity expired, for this was their city and no others. This was Van Leugen, the City of Liars.

Tonight, the denizens of Van Leugen go home, lock their doors, blast the heater and turn in early.

But in the shadows of an old brick flat, a window is open. Thick smoke swims around the room, the wisping tendrils of heat fighting a losing battle against the chill seeping in from the ajar terrace. The thin end of a cigarette butt glows in the dark, giving the blacks and grays a vibrant flash of red. A long sigh follows.

---

“Into each liiiiiiiiiife some raaaaaaiiiinnn must faaaaaaallll…” the smoker sings softly to himself, his oiled-leather voice as rich and plumed as the smoke steaming out of his nostrils. “But too much is falliiiiiingg in miiiiiinee…” He lifts the embering paper to his thick, pouting lips and draws a deep drag. The ensuing red only briefly outlines the hard, meaty edges of his face, the wide apple core bridge of his nose, the thick scruff foresting his jaw.

The skies boil with storm clouds, black and blistering in the night. It’s early for a snowstorm, being October, but that doesn’t stop the weather. A calm lingers over the streets before the blizzard. Pedestrians and taxis hurry their way home, eager to finish their business and escape the pre-winter chill before the snow begins to fall.

Tomorrow, they know, there will be work to do. Streets to pave. Driveways to shovel and car doors to unthaw. But tonight? Tonight is dark and late and quiet. Tonight the stars are blank and dim and the moon is a thin sliver misting through the distant storm clouds.

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He reaches over and taps the cigarette ashes into a small glass bowl at his side. His eyes glance out the window, coursing up

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FICTION : AUSTIN FENDLER

and down the near-vacant streets below.

Nothing. He’s been waiting three hours now.

wobbles back up to his feet, swearing drunkenly before trouncing away.

The smoker grunts, shaking his head and thumbing the cigarette back into his lips. He hates this room. It was cold, much too cold to have windows open at this time of night.

Cold was not something that agreed with the smoker. It had a way of nipping at him no matter how well he protected himself.

Even with his layers of clothing, his thick furlined jacket, the fire festering in his belly from the cigarettes, he could still feel the cold clawing at his skin, forcing its way into his ears and nose and the tips of his fingers.

The fingers were the worst, he decided. A runny nose and numb lips he could deal with, but lazy fingers simply would not do.

The smoker smirks. They were two among many —drunks and wage slaves, populating this city like rats in a sewer. What was it about Van Leugen that attracted the lowest, most desperate kinds of human filth? He’d never set foot in this place if his work didn’t keep dragging him to it. Just once they might send him to Rome or San Francisco…

He grunts. There he goes, thinking about it again. Shut it out, old man. In a few hours none of it will mean anything, just words and thoughts lost in the smoke of the room. He steals one last glance out the window and catches the sight of a young man leaving a corner shop.

He puffs again, lifting his hands to the smoldering flame, phalanges curling and cracking in the cigarette’s glow. It wouldn’t do him any good to complain. He tries to think pleasantly. Soon, he imagines, he’ll be tucked snug and tight into the warm confines of his bed, a hot meal in his stomach. Soon, there’ll be money in his pockets, a book in his hand and a long number of miles separating him from this ice storm of a city. Yes, soon he would be able to close that window. Shut the cold out.

Soon . . .

He is sixteen, seventeen maybe, average height and an athletic build. His eyes, rimmed with dark, shadowed circles are tired far beyond his years and twice as wise.

There’s a heaviness to him, a silent burden weighing on his broad, proud shoulders, held up only by a noble, persevering strength. He looks strong; strong and young, his jaw cut, his brows low and resolved.

Quickly buttoning his jacket, he takes a few cautious steps out into the streetway, his diligent posture carrying him with all the grace of fresh, undaunted youth. It was his walk the smoker liked the best. He walked with the clarity of a man with some semblance of purpose in his life. Despite the load rearing into his back, despite the weariness blackening his eyes, his walk was what defined his mannerisms and ensconced the cumulative sum of his virtue: brave, ambitious, indomitable courage.

“Into each heaaaarrttt some teeaarrssss must faaaalllll…”

His eyes move to the window again. A little black car with a broken headlight stutters through a bent stop sign. A mendicant staggers aimlessly across the road and trips himself on the curb. He skins his knees and

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FICTION : AUSTIN FENDLER

The smoker smiles from where he watches the boy atop his window. Yes, he likes this kid. Whatever his name is, whatever his goals, this boy ought to have a bright future ahead of him.

his chest, painting the cracked gray streets with an unfamiliar color.

The smoker watches the boy until he knows he’s dead. He stares at the corpse, thinned eyes betraying nothing.

Wordless, the smoker lifts a long-barreled rifle from the darkness and shoots him through the heart.

And then he is moving, diligent fingers clacking off bits of the rifle, snapping up his ashtray, packing them into a case, straightening the collar of his fur-lined coat. He is smoking, rolling the nearly-spent cigarette along the edges of his lips with his tongue, blowing crimson embers and smoky steam into the lonely, ruined little room. He is singing, lifting his oiled-leather voice to the still, wintry air, filling the empty night with his quiet, crooning song.

The boy makes no noise as he falls. He lies still on the streets, chest heaving, hands searching for an organ that is simply not there anymore. He dips his fingers into the cavern of blood surfacing in his pulverized sternum and looks at the liquid with a curiosity. That is not his blood.

Human blood is red, because of hemoglobin, he knew, and this blood was black and cold like the ichor of the gods from the stories his mother would read him as a child.

“But one daaaayyy the suuuuunn will shiiiiinneee…”

He is gone a moment later, the smoke lingering in the room and the notes echoing off its walls, the only evidence that he had even been there at all.

The agony reaches his brain, and he no longer doubts it. He has been shot. He is dying in the streets for no reason. Rage takes him. His fingers clench, his jaw grits.

Powerful muscles dare to flex off the allconsuming chill of death, his body suddenly emblazoned with furious, long-remembered purpose. He cannot die. Not here, not now.

He is too important. He is too brave.

Outside, the snow has begun to fall. A lone flake rests on the dead boy’s cheek and melts.

The first of many.

And then, on the same breath, he is gone.

His arms fall limp at his side, his handsome face smacks into the asphalt. The red rises higher out of its geyser until it is pooling off

CANYONVOICES

For more information on author Austin Fendler, please visit our Contributors Page.

SPRING2017

FICTION : ZAK BLOCK

To A Landlord

By Zak Block

Dear Mr. _____,

In many ways I

call upon it. That it may be a willful vocational naivete.

You've received this respect this Because surely, to be hated letter before. Neither it imperviousness; for by as many people, for as nor its author have that it vaguely long, in as many unique and anything original to suggests…

A spiritual innovative ways, through as impart to you through intelligence in your many mediums, in as many this mode of possession… dialogues; telephone calls— communication. You've surely to be as hated as you are, read these words, I'm is to at the least acquiesce to the sure, thousands of times, many and tendentious arguments of and I'm sure you've received this your very many detractors. To finally know, call on as many occasions. ...Have entered and know without equivocation, and accept, into this dialogue in as many; have had as such, that you deserve to be hated as leveled at you this selfsame look...

you are. And that you hate yourself with as And surely, Mr. _____, you are by now much if not even more vehemence than impervious to such letters, such calls, they.

dialogues and looks.In many ways I respect But how could such a person live with this imperviousness; for that it vaguely himself for as long as you have—how suggests, on your part, some acquired persist in the career, in the lifestyle, in which strength of character. A spiritual intelligence he—he must know as well as they—incurs in your possession; the upshot of the career that debt of hatred—a debt which grows the of a landlord who has for thirty-five years more staggering with each passing day— borne the ravages of a seemingly each passing business day— letters, inexhaustible virulent hatred on the part of exchanges, telephone conversations, his tenants.

looks...

But this is, as I stated, only what it “vaguely ...How could such a person persist for as suggests.” ...And I suspect that it signifies long ...For half as long ...How, a normal something different—that your strength of person,—a person not brimful of bile, not character is more a misapprehension, or pulsing with black blood, not tumid of even a failure to apprehend what might grossest cysts and rotting guts—how an compromise that strength or impel you to CANYONVOICES

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FICTION : ZAK BLOCK

adult—how one capable of love—how a human being able to feel pain, able to engage in any meaningful way with another human being—able to regard as anything better than ugly, foul-smelling, disgusting, slobbering idiots, other human beings occupying any positions one might imagine able to be occupied in a master-slave relationship—how might any thing that could be fairly described as human, sentient, feeling, intellectual, empathizing, communicating; cuing...

management intelligence prerequisite and superior inheritance—and that these letters, these scripted conversations, these telephone calls, these looks and polite greetings are somehow misdirected—are really more about the abjection of a slave than the maliciousness to be found in some masters but not others.

...How might such an individual live as you live—for more than a year... More than a month... More than a few days, a few hours.... More than the amount of time it would take such an individual to apprehend his merest reflection, more than a minute— without ending his life in the most violent and grotesque manner worldly conceivable.

In very few masters, but not others.

In you—and more unabashedly grievous in no other.

I feel now charged with an office of my own, in whose execution I will, I assure you, show great malice—only I won't deny that I do so:

Perhaps it is too generous of me to commend you for this “strength of character”; to imagine that your imperviousness to the hatred felt for you, and felt legitimately, is anything but obliviousness.

That office: being, to convince you that there is no landlord. There is only a Mr. _____

And there is no general manager either.

There is only a Mr. _____.

No, not obliviousness to the gestures of hatred, be they professional correspondences, polite greetings around the office and the like. As you can't possibly be that oblivious, but to the nature of that hatred, and at whom, in truth, that hatred is truly directed. Which, I believe, is key:

...Nor is there President... nor a Chairman... nor Associate... Executive... nor Director... there is only a Mr. _____.

You are hated on your own terms.

You are hated for the malicious manner in which you execute your many and vital offices. For the many and vital disgusts you are known to feel for your slaves—known to exercise gingerly— not ungenerously in the motions of their abjection...

You may suspect that it's “the landlord” they hate (that we hate, I hate; everyone). ...That someone has to do your job, and who but you could approach its offices with more diplomacy, sensitivity, empathy and human feeling. The training for such things; the CANYONVOICES

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FICTION : ZAK BLOCK

...Hated for the joy you are known to extract from their abjection. For the joy that you can extract in no other way, in no other dynamic, in no other capacity, in no other office, in no other sphere of influence, in no other area of jurisdiction, in no other province, in no other building...

scrubbed, as spotless; as squeaking, shining and glistening; as odorless, as sterile, as clean-smelling, as gleaming, as neutral-smelling, as well-groomed, as manicured...

…As pampered, primped and preening; as slick, oiled, greased, lotioned, pomaded, moused, tousled, plucked, waxed; as perfumed...

It is Mr. ____ whom we hate. Whom I hate.

Who is hated.

I would like for you to know why, but unfortunately to articulate, in simple terms, that why, may be an impossibility. It would be easy enough to say it's your nature, or the manner in which you execute your offices; the manner in which you live...

...As finely dressed, as fine-toothed, as finely turned, as fine-tuned, as immaculate, Mr. _____.

And I will admit, Mr. _____, that I am not nearly as clean as you. I doubt that I even bathe as often as you do. But I should tell you, Mr. _____, that not once in my life have I smelled poorly. Or even had a smell.

But could I easily provide you with examples of that nature and manner? And what would those examples mean to you? Of course, no one is more attune to your nature and your manner, to the kinds of things you do, than you.

And albeit those that I've met, who’ve had the opportunity to smell me, might’ve suspected that my lack of a smell was attributable to the hygienic regimens you appear to follow, they also might have suspected that I naturally had no odor, and the key difference between us is that everyone you've ever met knows exactly how much time you spend cleaning yourself every day; everyone knows the importance you place upon your hygiene. And they know, as well as I do, that you engage in these practices for one very simple reason:

And, of course, is no one more sure of the unimpeachability of those things you do.

Even I can assent to their unimpeachability.

But, what you must understand is, that it's your unimpeachability that makes you so baleful, so monstrous, small, depressing and insignificant.

It is the unimpeachable upper middle-class credentials of the general manager of a housing project. It is the unimpeachable comfort and repose of the master of the filthy hemmed in poor, the living cheek-injowl poor, the low bred working class.

That you must.

Sincerely, Your Tenant

...The cleanliness of him. For this too is key:

In all my life, Mr. ____, I have never met anyone as clean as you, as impeccably

CANYONVOICES

For more information on author Zak Block, please visit our Contributors Page.

SPRING2017

FICTION : SARA DOBIE BAUER

Underlanders

By Sara Dobie Bauer

M

arie kept a tally on the wall of her room, once her favorite doctor’s office, so she knew when the stranger showed up. She knew the date was June sixth, once remembered as D-Day; it was also her birthday. She leaned against the wall. The sun snuck through the shutters and painted the linoleum floor in white stripes. She held a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and was reading up on tetanus when she heard her boys shout. She was on her feet, gun in hand, before they could reach her door, and they pawed at her, spoke nonsense.

account of his white, blond hair. “He’s hurt bad, and he needs help.”

“Where is he?”

Tiny grabbed her hand and tugged. “Come on.”

They rushed down the hallway, and their worn shoes squeaked on the tile. Marie kept a clean house. She taught her boys to be tidy, everything in its right place. Books were especially important, and one whole room was dedicated to salvaged paperbacks and hardcovers. Most of them were non-fiction, medical, but others were glorious adventures, left behind by patients who fled years before.

“She knew the date was June sixth, once remembered as DDay; it was also her birthday.”

“Slow down.” Marie tucked her handgun in the back of her pants. She grabbed a boy by the shoulder— an older one, eleven, tall as a cornstalk.

His name was Tim, but they called him Tiny.

“What’s happened?”

Tiny led her down a flight of steps to floor number two, the place where the boys spent most of their time playing when they weren’t outside in the fenced hospital courtyard. They shoved through the heavy, metal door and onto the second floor where she found the rest of her boys—she had eight then—crowded around an unmoving pair of long legs.

“Mother, there were Underlanders, and they went after Shippy, and we thought he was all done for, but this stranger showed up and took care of them Underlanders good.”

“But he’s hurt, Mother.” Another boy grabbed her. Yellow was his name on

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Sometimes there were thirteen, fourteen boys. Then, when they reached a certain

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FICTION : SARA DOBIE BAUER

age, boys left, and there were only five, six.

They learned how to survive with very little running water, less food. She taught her children how to stay alive in a dead world.

She taught them to keep the lights low at night so Underlanders would not come. She taught them about how things used to be, but more importantly, she taught them how to live in a world abandoned by God.

Underlander was gonna bite me right in the neck, but he jumped in the way—”

“And tore them Underlanders to shreds. Like he was a ninja.”

“James Bond, Mother. Just like James Bond.”

Long before the world ended, Marie loved James Bond films. In her tiny apartment, abandoned, were every single James Bond movie, along with posters of Daniel Craig and Sean Connery, her favorites. She knew the plotlines so well, she’d turned them into bedtime stories—even did the accents—and why not? James Bond was a man any boy could get behind, even after the world’s fall.

“Back up.” She waved at her boys and kneeled at the stranger’s side.

“You should have seen him, Mother.” It was Shippy, a short kid who needed glasses but didn’t have them. He squinted a lot and talked too fast. “He was like James Bond.”

“Is that so?” she said. She saw no markings on the stranger’s face, no blood or sign of injury. He breathed, but he didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t move. She reached for the zipper of his coat, but when she touched the fabric, his hand latched onto her wrist. His eyes opened, steel blue.

Tiny soon returned with her requests. She applied hydrogen peroxide to a torn piece of gauze and wiped the stranger’s skin in search of his wound. She found it, between two ribs—evidence of a knife entering flesh.

Under the watchful eyes of her boys, she addressed his injury. She explained her work as she went. Along with cleanliness, Marie also imparted medical training on her children. These were things they would need when they grew old enough to leave.

“I’m here to help you,” she said. “Where are you hurt?”

His grip loosened on her hand. “Ribs.”

She pulled out of his grasp and again reached for the zipper on his coat. The removal of this first layer revealed a light blue shirt soaked with blood from below his armpit to the top of his hip. “Tiny. Upstairs.

Get me disinfectant and gauze.”

Once finished, the boys carried the stranger to the third floor. She gave him the honor of a room, not because she wanted a man there but because this man had saved Shippy.

For a while, as day turned to night, she stood in the background of the library as Shippy rehashed his miraculous escape to the other boys. Surrounded by books and flashlights, she listened as he described the

“Yes, Mother.”

“He saved me,” Shippy said. He pointed dirty fingers at the stranger. “That

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FICTION : SARA DOBIE BAUER

stranger’s sudden arrival and vicious attack on the dreaded Underlander. She was reminded of campfire stories from her own childhood, except then, stories of terror were mere imaginings.

floor, along with her boys on their ways to becoming men. Her gang began with sick children from the days before darkness, but those first boys were long dead from leukemia, cancer, and other things that were once curable until electricity died and the doctors ran away to much safer cities. Marie remained, unable to abandon children, and she never had to. Despite the deaths of her sick kids, their abandonment of Marie, other kids found her. Children whose parents had been murdered or committed suicide became allies of the sick, and when the sick died, the healthy but broken remained and called her “Mother.”

They lived on the outskirts, close to the Underland but still far enough away to feel safe. She was the only woman nearby and was once called Jane Marie Price, before the power went out and the world went dark. She was once a nurse who cared for sick children, but after the crumbling of governments and the planet’s dwindling resources, they called her Mother Marie, not because she had any children of her own but because she took care of people.

Mother Marie and her boys were mostly safe, too. The occasional adult showed up, raving mad, but adults were never

She lived in a defunct hospital on the third

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FICTION : SARA DOBIE BAUER

welcomed into the hospital. Marie didn’t allow men, because she feared one might come along and make her trust him. She didn’t allow women because, well, there weren’t many, as far as she could tell. Marie feared most women were kept as slaves in the cities as baby makers and little girls kept captive like cows bred for veal. Only once did a woman wander into their sphere.

She’d cut off her own breasts and chased Marie’s boys with bloody hands.

She retained a clear crystal tumbler in the safe. She carried her lucky glass, discovered with a doctor’s Macallan, and a twelve-year scotch to the stranger’s room where she found him still asleep. Fitting for him to be in a hospital bed, although the only sign of illness was the bandage around his stomach. The stranger was surprisingly clean, well kept. He was surely a survivor, a Wanderer, as they were known—people who easily navigated the world as it was, even the Underland. This knowledge worried Marie since she knew Wanderers were often ex-criminals or other violent sorts. The boys had carried his bag inside earlier. Along with clothes, extra shoes, and canned goods, there was a gun and several knives, which Marie had removed and placed in her safe with her bottles.

Shippy finished his story, ran up, and grabbed her sweater. “Can he stay? The stranger?”

“You know the rules,” she said.

“But he could teach us to fight, Mother.”

“Let him stay, just for a little while.”

She sat down next to his bed, filled the tumbler, and took a sip of scotch.

“Mother, please.”

“Tiny.” She nodded to the eldest. “Why don’t you choose the book for tonight?” She stared at the young boy until he sighed and moved. His voice, breaking with the onset of puberty, began the first few lines of an Edgar Allan Poe collection.

Then, the stranger spoke: “Bring an extra glass for me?” His blue eyes were black in battery-operated lamplight, and he was British. The last time she heard that accent was before the fall, back when she spent Sunday mornings with the BBC. She hesitated before handing the stranger her crystal cup but kept the bottle.

Marie crept away. She returned to her room, where she hid possessions she prized.

When the others left the hospital, she’d done a cursory exam of the facilities. She’d found food, clothing, batteries, and abandoned security guards’ guns, but in several of the individual doctor’s offices, she also found expensive scotches, whiskeys, and aged rums. She kept the guns and bottles locked in a safe in her room so the boys wouldn’t find them.

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He finished the shot in one gulp and sighed.

“God, I missed scotch.”

“What were you doing so close to the Underland?” she asked.

“I could ask you the same.”

“I have medical supplies here, and children from the outside know where to find me.”

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FICTION : SARA DOBIE BAUER

“MI6.” He smiled.

She hid her own smile behind another sip of scotch.

“I’ll leave in the morning,” he said.

“You can’t leave the way you are. You won’t be able to fight back.” She paused. “Would you stay? For a month. Teach the boys to kill?”

“I’m a Wanderer. I don’t stay in one place.”

“Just for a month.”

“What’s in it for me?”

She leaned her head against the back of her chair. “A place to sleep. Water. Food.”

“Happy to know they’re not all yours.” He extended the cup to her, and she filled it again. “I was camping nearby in the parking garage. Have been for days when I heard one of your boys scream.”

“I can find those things wherever I go.”

“You’re a Wanderer,” she said.

She exited the room but was careful to take her glass and return the scotch to her safe before reaching the library. There, she found her boys. They were in all manner of recline.

Tiny sat in the large, leather desk chair, with a book in his hands. The other boys sat on couch cushions and cafeteria seats. Some were on the ground—others stood in corners—but they all listened as Tiny stuttered through the rhyme of “The Raven.”

“Fine.” She stood and pointed to his duffle bag. “The boys brought in your things. You can have your weapons back when you leave.”

He looked at her, paused, and nodded.

“Is there anything left out there?”

“Nothing worth talking about.”

Marie took a sip from the bottle and thought about all the boys she’d raised and sent into the dying world, to the cities where things were supposed to be safe.

Marie listened to the words, but she also listened to the sounds of the hospital at night. She knew what sounds were welcome —the settling of the building, rain against windows, boys shuffling to the restroom.

“They’re calling you James Bond,” she said.

“Where’d you learn to fight the Underlanders?”

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FICTION : SARA DOBIE BAUER

She knew sounds that were not: heavy, adult footsteps; the slamming of doors; inhuman growls. She heard none of these noises, nothing at all, and yet, the stranger suddenly arrived at her side.

The stranger ran his thumbs over the picture of Shakespeare’s face. He glanced at Marie before looking down at the boy who needed glasses. “Yes, I am.”

“I knew it!”

The stranger quoted: “And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted nevermore.”

The sad library erupted in sound, but Marie hushed them and the room was silent.

“Would you read to us?”

The boys turned and stared. Shippy was the first to stand up, squint, and point. “Did you hear him talk? He is James Bond!”

“Tiny, the man needs to rest,” she said.

“No, I …” The stranger rubbed his eyes. “I would love to.”

Voices surrounded the stranger as he walked to the stacks of books, arranged in messy piles on heavy, metal bookcases that covered the windows and walls. She noticed he walked with no sound.

“Can he, Mother? Please?”

Marie nodded.

“Do we call you Mr. Bond or double-ohseven or—”

Yellow stood behind Shippy and shouted, “Can he stay? Will he stay, Mother?” His blond head shined silver.

“James is fine.” He put his hand on Shippy’s head as he walked past the boy. Tiny vacated the desk chair and gestured with dusty hands. The other boys returned to their states of recline, but their eyes were bright. Unaccustomed to a new voice, they waited. They were the most patient group of children in the history of Earth, and they remained that way, frozen, until “For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

Marie was too busy watching the stranger to respond. She could see his eyes change.

From cold, dark blue, his eyes began to shine. He reached out long, pale fingers and took hold of a battered volume of William Shakespeare. She thought she saw his hand shake, and his eyes watered.

“Where did you get all these?” He put the book under his nose and sniffed.

“People left them behind.”

The boys were busy with James, learning to fight and use knives. Since his arrival, they hadn’t let him be, except to sleep. Even when they ate, they talked with mouths full and asked questions, so many questions.

They asked about the cities. They asked about children who’d left as young men.

Then, Shippy ran to the stranger’s side—out of character for a boy taught to trust no one.

“Are you really James Bond? You are, aren’t you?”

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James knew nothing of the boys they spoke of, and Marie suspected he lied about the state of things. A part of her wished he would tell the truth—tell the boys there was nothing left, everything burnt, gone. Instead, his words would inspire boys to leave and seek life where no life was to be found.

great pain, but instead, it stared at her— black eyes. It sniffed and smiled a yellow smile.

Her gun was on the table next to the pantry.

She looked at it, sadly out of reach, and wondered at her own lack of caution. She thought James had something to do with it, the damsel in distress from her past popping up due to the presence of handsome.

That evening, she stood in the pantry of the hospital kitchen and worried about food.

Every two weeks, she sent the boys to catch whatever animals were left. She feared these hunting ventures because she feared the boys would never come back and sometimes they didn’t.

Immaturely, she thought that if she just stood still, silent, the creature would go away. Yet, it only moved closer, until her back hit the pantry. Cans fell from shelves and rolled across the floor. The Underlander came close, and Marie closed her eyes.

She inspected a can of vegetables, a year past its expiration date, which meant nothing; they ate many things past their prime. She considered dinner—perhaps kidney beans and canned spaghetti. She heard a sound behind her and expected to find one of her boys, hungry for a snack.

Instead, she found herself face to face with an Underlander.

There was a sound like a dart through the air, followed by a strangled breath and gurgling. Then, a voice: “Marie?”

She opened her eyes. James stood a couple feet away, his face painted in speckles of black blood. There was a knife in his hand, and the Underlander was at his feet, its neck a gaping wound.

Marie didn’t know where they came from. As far as she knew, no one did. After the world went dark, a wildfire spread over half the planet. Smoke blocked the sun for weeks, but when daylight returned, with it came monsters. Marie supposed people in the cities said the creatures were a symptom of the apocalypse, but as she didn’t believe in divine judgment, she gave Underlanders little thought.

She heard running footsteps, boys’ feet.

They arrived in the doorway to the kitchen.

Tiny pushed the littlest ones back, but the children over age ten just stood by staring.

Marie stepped over the corpse. She swept past James and pushed at her boys’ shoulders.

She’d never seen one so close before, but a burn victim came to mind. The creature’s skin was red and black, wrinkled. Pieces of flesh hung in strings from its chin, neck, and arms. The creature should have been in

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“Out, but stay right outside this door.” She closed it, locked it. She heard the knife hit the floor behind her, and when she turned around, James began to speak.

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He said, “You can’t stay here. You need to —” but the arrival of her body stopped the sound.

She closed her eyes. “I should have let you die.”

“I’ll leave right now. They’ll follow my scent.”

She held him, squeezed him, rested her cheek against the rough material of his hospital scrubs: the only clean shirt that fit.

Marie didn’t care if he held her back, but he did, after a moment. His hands found her lower back, and he rested his chin on top of her head.

“They’re getting closer,” he said.

She pulled out of his grasp and stood in front of him with her hand on her forehead. “Why?”

“Your scent is all over the building,” she said.

The locked doorknob twisted.

“She pulled on his hair, tilted his head back, and for the first time since her life went dark, she saw light.”

Her eyes found the corpse on the floor and the black blood that coated James' hand. She took a deep breath and turned back to the door. When she opened it, she found her boys waiting, and she gave them directions for taking care of the body. They knew what to do; Marie taught them well. Then came the news of their imminent departure.

“What?”

“Why are they getting closer? Is it because of you? Did you bring them here?”

He didn’t speak.

“My God.” She poked her finger into his chest. “You’ve been hunting them, haven’t you? They tracked you here.”

Dinner was quiet and subdued, but there were no tears. Their exit strategy was well planned, rehearsed but never needed—until now. The boys spent the late evening packing their things, and James offered to take the night watch, all of it. He said he rarely slept anymore, and Marie believed him. He was clean, yes, healthy-looking and strong, but he wore dark circles under his eyes.

He shook his head.

“They’ve never come inside before, not even close,” she shouted. “They’re looking for you.”

“Mother?” The sound of Tiny’s voice revealed the child’s worry. Marie did not usually yell, as quiet was tantamount to safety.

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“I’m fine, Tiny.” She chewed on her fingertips then reached for the gun on the table by the pantry. She put the firearm in the back of her pants, like usual.

“We can’t leave now. It’ll be dark soon. We’ll leave in the morning.”

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She couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, the Underlander floated above her, and she worried about where they would go, how they would survive away from the place they called home. Yet the place no longer felt safe. Every time Marie stopped kicking her sheets, she heard sounds in the silence —the wrong sounds. Still, her fear was not the only thing keeping her awake, and it took hours for her to climb from bed and seek James.

and realized where she was: the hospital hallway, floor three, with James wrapped around her.

His arms were tight, and his body gave off the warmth of a summer fire. The skin around Marie’s mouth burned from their kissing, and her entire shoulder was numb, planted against the linoleum tile. They’d had the presence of mind to put their clothes back on, at least. If nothing else, they were survivalists, and both knew escape was more difficult in the nude.

She found him sitting in the hallway at the end of floor three, across from the door that led to the stairwell. As soon as her bare feet neared him, he started and pointed his gun.

She leaned her body against him, closer, and his arms held tight. So he was awake, too. She listened for the sound of her boys, but they must have still been asleep, which meant it was early on the edge of the Underland. She listened some more, to the sound of James' breath. She felt his heart beat against her. Both sensations were those of long-lost comfort, and she thought maybe he could play father to the boys.

Maybe they could—

“What are you doing awake?” he asked.

Marie didn’t speak. She wrapped her arms around herself until she stood above him.

She reached out and ran her fingers through his hair. Then, she knelt down and straddled his legs.

“Marie—”

“Don’t. Move,” he said.

“Hush.”

Her eyes snapped open. Ten feet from where they lay, an Underlander sniffed a book one of the boys must have left out.

She ran her hands down the sides of his face, over the sides of his throat, and dug her fingers into the shaggy, dark curls that hung on his neck. She pulled on his hair, tilted his head back, and for the first time since her life went dark, she saw light.

The arm over her body moved, and she felt James shift, slowly. The feel of his heartbeat was replaced by the pounding of her own.

Wrong feeling—she recognized it right away.

“Cover your ears,” he whispered, and she did just as James shot the Underlander twice in the head. The sound of highpitched screaming from downstairs proved there were other monsters in the building, and Marie jumped to her feet. She rushed to

She was not in her bed, and she was warm, too warm. She was crushed, strangled, but she would not die without a fight. She grit her teeth and prepared to kick and claw with all her strength, but then, she heard him sigh

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the stairwell door and shoved a long piece of metal through the handle and into a hinge designed and built by one of the boys who left.

She heard more of them below. The chains clinked and danced, and the boys struggled to close the heavy, metal doors. Marie relocked the elevator shaft. “They got in.

How did they get in?”

“It won’t hold for long.” She ran past James and started to bang on doors. The sound of the gunshot had woken most of her boys.

Already, they came springing from their rooms in boots and coats.

Tiny’s voice, almost that of a man, sounded small. “I …”

Her eyes found his face, streaked with tears.

Shippy ran past her and wrapped himself around James' legs. “What is it?”

“I went out the other day. I guess I forgot to lock it. I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Come on.” James pushed the little boy forward. “Do you have a back up plan?”

“It’s okay, Tiny.” She looked up at James.

“Laundry. Is there a laundry room?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes.” Marie nodded, and Tiny wiped his face with the back of his arm. “Go, Tiny,” she said.

Other boys joined them. None asked questions. They marched behind Marie and James like little soldiers. They wore their belongings, and there was not one quivering chin.

His whimpering stopped. He then turned around and marched down the hall, followed by his little brothers. Marie took hold of James' hand and pulled him behind, over the sound of little boy feet and screeching, howling Underlanders a floor below.

Marie led the way to the service elevator shaft. “Tiny, the key.”

The eldest boy pulled a chain from around his neck and handed it to her.

The laundry room had green walls and silver shelving. Piles of clothing and towels stood in varying degrees of filth, but the room smelled of laundry detergent and bleach.

She made sure all her boys were inside, and James closed the door and searched the walls. He handed Tiny his gun and kept searching. Marie pulled her own piece and watched him move. His hands shoved at piles of linen and pulled at the laundry bags that hung from walls.

“We keep this locked at all times so we can get out safely but no one else can get in,” she told James. She stuck the key in the lock and turned. The boys reached out and pulled the doors open.

None of them expected the Underlander that had climbed the elevator chains. It reached out and clawed at them but caught one of James' bullets in the head before it did harm.

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“James.”

“There won’t be.” He smiled at the little boy.

He didn’t look at her. “A laundry chute. It’s a hospital. There’s got to be a bloody chute in here.”

“I’m James Bond, remember? If anyone can save us, I can, right?”

“It’s behind the machine.” Tiny pointed. “We moved it so nothing could get in. Didn’t we, Mother?”

She nodded.

“Shippy,” James said.

“You’re strong enough.

Come help me.”

Shippy didn’t say anything.

James looked to Marie next.

She stared at him and wondered if he left them out of guilt or heroics. Blood soaked through the side of his light green scrubs by then. She wondered if they’d torn his stitches the night before or in the past five minutes of running. He stepped toward her but looked down at Tiny. “Guard the room, okay?”

“James looked to Marie next. She stared at him and wondered if he left them out of guilt or heroics.”

And the child did help.

Together, they moved the washer and revealed a small, white rectangle with a rubber flap in the center, big enough for a boy but not a man. Then, James looked at her, blue eyes blazing.

Tiny nodded.

“I’ll be back. Two minutes. Promise.” He touched her hand before she closed the door behind him.

“What if they’re in the basement?” she asked.

She saw he was out of breath. His eyes moved to the floor, then to Tiny and the gun in his hand. “Are these the only weapons we have?”

He was gone for more than two minutes, and the screaming got closer—so close, even, that one of the youngest, a five-yearold, cried in the corner. Shippy no longer waited at attention for the return of his favorite British spy. He sat on top of the dryer, arms crossed.

“No. There are more in my room.”

He nodded. “Okay.” He put his hand to his mouth, rubbed his chin. “Okay, I’ll get more guns. We can try to shoot our way out, down the stairs, but if we can’t …” He tilted his head toward the laundry chute.

Marie took a deep breath and turned to her eldest. “If I’m not back in five minutes, take the boys down the laundry chute. And don’t you go down that chute first with that gun.

You let another boy go first.”

“But James, you can’t go out there.” Shippy grabbed the man’s hand. “What if there’s too many of them?”

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Tiny nodded, as if he understood the first

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boy could very well be sacrificial. Eleven years old, and he knew the rules of war.

the center of her chest. “Yellow, you go first, okay?”

“Good. I’ll be …” She smiled. She touched the boy’s face.

“Yes, Mother.”

“And when you get down there, don’t you shout. Just knock on the bottom of the chute, okay, and we’ll hear you and know it’s safe.”

She waited until the laundry room door locked behind her. Then, in her bare feet, she wandered down the hospital hallway, their home on the third floor, but the sounds were all wrong. There were doors slamming, tables being knocked over, screams and the sound of snarling, spit-soaked breath.

The boy was not stupid, but he did not pout or plead to go second. He faced his fate. He slid his feet through the laundry chute and turned his body so he slid down but still hung to the brim of the wall opening. Marie kept watch on his little fingers until they disappeared, followed by the sound of sliding and then nothing. Ten seconds passed before the quiet, hollow sound of a small fist on metal.

Marie peered around one corner. She saw the fabric of his shirt first, the light green of hospital garb, and then, his dark hair, pooled around him like spilled paint on the off-white tile. Although there was no blood on the ground, his body was covered in it. His face was a puddle of red.

Marie let out the breath she held. “Okay, go boys.” She pushed at them, the seven who remained, and ignored the increasing noise behind her. She heard the sound of harried breaths and nails on the door. She shoved her children, one after the other, down the shoot. Finally, only she and Tiny remained.

Beyond James, the door to the library stood ajar. Underlanders were inside, and the sound of torn paper overcame the sound of their screams. She could see from where she stood, they ate her books. They ate the library: the pictures, the pages, the words.

Her palms felt hot, and her rage manifested as dots in her line of sight.

“You go first, Mother,” he said.

She kept her jaw clamped shut, scurried back to the laundry room, and knocked twice. Once inside, her children ran to her side, Shippy the first to ask about James.

She glanced at the chute entrance. “I need to stay behind and push the washer back in place. I don’t want them to know where you’ve gone.”

“He’s dead.” The sound of the tremble in her voice scared her and made Shippy back away. “It’s all right, though.” She recovered.

“We’re going down the laundry chute.” She took one full breath, or tried to. She found her lungs would not fill, and a pain burned in

“But Mother!”

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“You’ll take care of the boys?”

“Yes, Mother.”

She pulled the gun from her pants and

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handed it to him. “Take this one with you, too. Get to one of the cities.” She pushed him toward the chute, and he walked, willingly.

He dropped the guns down the chute before him, and as he put one foot through the flap, he turned to her. “You used to tell us James Bond never died.”

Once he was gone, she strained to shove the washer back in front of the chute. The door shook behind her, either from the creatures’ strength or their screams. Marie sat on the floor, back against the green wall.

She sat and waited and hoped her boys would be safe—but was anywhere safe anymore?

When the door opened, she thought back over her years as Mother, turning boys into men. Then, James came to mind, and she realized men were no safer.

Underlanders stood in the laundry room entrance. They were different colors: dark reds, blacks, purples, and one, nearly green.

They were different sizes, too, as though some were younger, the size of Shippy. One of them, a small one, still clutched a book in its hand: Poe. She recited: “We loved with a love that was more than love.”

Then, as they approached, Marie opened her arms to them and wondered if their screams were not those of hunger but those of hurt.

For more information on author Sara Dobie Bauer, please visit our Contributors Page.

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Horrible, Unimaginable Sounds

By Kylee Hoelscher

A

fter three days, Libby had determined that their trip to California had been a mistake.

Brent was angry here, antagonistic.

Everything she said was wrong. In the sixty hours they had been at his parents’ house, they had spoken roughly four times to each other, and each time it had ended horribly. Even things she felt were innocuous, like, “Let’s go take a walk at the beach,” had ended with him sneering at her.

door, every mad dash from the house to the car was pure agony for her. She was used to Southern California winters. Winters where a light sweater became too warm to wear in the afternoon. Winters where a cheap, polyester peacoat would suffice even on the coldest nights.

Her first winter in Vermont meant long-sleeved shirts under thick wool sweaters in addition to a beanie and long coat. She hadn’t even owned a proper scarf in her old life. Her scarves had been light and flowy; gauzy, printed material that she arranged just so as a fashion accessory.

He had been watching golf (a sport he detested) in his dad’s house with a drink in his hand.

“Everyone is perfectly fine right here. Why should we go outside?”

The scarf she bought for her new life was black and gray and heavy. She didn’t try to master any particular knot, but just wrapped it around her shoulders like a blanket, a barrier between her and the icy wind.

She turned back to the window and kept quiet. She wanted to say, “We can’t go outside at home. Let’s go get some fresh air.” But she knew it would be a mistake before the words made it to her lips. Brent had been transferred to his company’s northeastern branch in February, a move Libby had agreed to for the same reason she’d sold her old car and kept the door to Peter’s room closed.

Brent didn’t mind the misery the polar vortex was bringing to the entire northeast. Each night as they silently ate dinner while watching the news, Brent seemed to receive satisfaction as the weatherman delivered forecasts of wind chill factors and dangerous, icy roads. It was as if the torment of the weather was his punishment

It was cold in Vermont, a cold that she hadn’t been prepared for. Every opened

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for still being here. While Libby almost cried in relief at the blue sky when they’d landed at LAX, Brent glowered and closed his window shade.

gotten out of the shower, glanced in the mirror, and had seen Peter. The little face that had been a miniature carbon copy of hers had mesmerized friends and strangers alike, but Libby realized with a shock that looking at her now must be pure torture for Brent.

His mother had also noticed his dark mood, but when she commented on her son’s behavior, he took another drink of whatever cocktail he was holding at the moment and glared at her, muttering incomprehensible words as he skulked out of the room.

Libby had taken to hiding from him. She awoke early and slipped out of bed while he was still snoring. She tiptoed out of the room and went to the guest bedroom to shower and dress. She couldn’t adjust to the west coast time zone and had been waking up when the stars were still out and going to bed just after she helped doing the dinner dishes. Brent stayed up late and brushed his teeth in the guest bathroom, climbing into bed carefully and sleeping on a

“You’re just like her,” Libby thought she heard him say yesterday.

Libby had become her. As inconsolable as she was in her grief, Brent was unreachable.

Libby had realized that he didn’t even look at her anymore and one morning a few months back, she realized why. She had

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small sliver of the left-hand side of the mattress.

Me For Anything until I’ve had my coffee warning as blatant as a sign around her neck. She and Peter had spent many mornings at that coffee shop. Peter was often catching colds from the other kids at preschool and Libby would load him in the stroller so he would fall asleep and accomplish an hour of work while he napped peacefully in the shade of the umbrella of an outdoor table.

Once dressed, Libby debated what to do.

The previous two mornings, she’d put on running shoes and take the short walk down to the strand and walk along the concrete bike path next to the sand. There were always people at the beach, no matter how early she made it out. Usually it was elderly people, single or in couples, pumping their arms, breathing in the coastal air that kept them young.

There were always people at this coffee shop in The Village. Old men who met daily at the tables outside. Mom groups with their double Bob strollers, Lululemon leggings and long, blonde ponytails. Teenagers on their walks to and from school. Libby had never looked at the chalkboard menu behind the counter. She used to order the same two things — a caramel macchiato or a vanilla latte.

She’d been walking on this same strand for decades. She usually bumped into people she knew. On this trip, though, she kept her head down and put earbuds in, plugged into a silent iPod. She wanted to listen to the waves and the gulls, the conversations of people who passed who were unaware she could hear them. Yesterday something had propelled her to walk by the swings where she used to take Peter at least once a week.

Although they had been there probably hundreds of times, the only experience she could remember was the time he’d slipped off and skinned his knees in the sand, the blood refusing to ebb even after she’d been cradling Peter in her lap for several minutes, paper towels from the beach restroom held to his knees.

When she walked in today to the sound of milk frothing and coffee brewing, she glanced around furtively, hoping she wouldn’t spot anyone she knew. She hadn’t told any of her friends that she and Brent were coming home for Christmas. The thought of going to any of their houses and stepping over blocks or hearing the chatter of the little voices she considered surrogate nieces and nephews was too much to handle. Seeing brightly-wrapped Christmas gifts under the tree, which would be decorated with an assortment of preschoolmade ornaments would surely send her heart racing, and she would feel like there was nowhere safe to look.

You should have paid more attention to things like that, she often saw in Brent’s eyes as he looked at her.

This morning, after slipping quietly out of the house, she headed toward the coffee shop.

She hadn’t had coffee in over a year. Not like in her old life where she stumbled toward the kitchen, eyes slits, the Don’t Ask CANYONVOICES

Thankfully, this morning, she saw no one she knew. The chatter in the coffee shop

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was a bit subdued at this early hour, but there was that hum of excitement and tension that always lingered in the air in December. Obligatory Christmas carols played out of the speakers and a bell on a wreath tinkled every time the door opened and shut. Libby’s stomach was slightly upset, and she wondered if she should order coffee at all.

September had suggested to Libby that she

see herself as a baby.

“Your life, as you knew it, is gone,” she told Libby in their second session.

Libby wondered why she was paying someone eighty dollars an hour to tell her things she already knew.

Although therapy had been recommended by her doctor after her little incident three months ago, Libby’s insurance didn’t pay for therapeutic services, so Libby went to the ATM every Thursday morning and withdrew four twentydollar bills to give to Janet at the beginning of every session.

As she waited in line, she looked at the teas lined up behind the counter and decided maybe that was the best route to take. It seemed silly to her to spend two dollars on a tea bag and water, a drink she could make at home for about twenty cents. A college-aged girl two people in front of her ordered a peppermint flat white, a drink that sounded intriguing and horrible at the same time, but as Libby found herself in front of the cashier, she mumbled that exact order.

Libby had spent the last three months trying to figure out what kind of woman she would be in her New Life (capital N, capital L)…

Janet’s lips pursed with expectation after she had offered Libby those words of advice.

With no reply from Libby, Janet began to nod enthusiastically as she continued.

Libby didn’t know what a flat white was, but she decided that the college girl with her perfectly messy bun and just so worn-in sneakers looked like someone who Libby should have been if only she had taken Door Number Two instead of Door Number One. Libby had spent the last three months trying to figure out what kind of woman she would be in her New Life (capital N, capital L), and College Girl looked interesting enough to emulate for the morning.

“Grief has split your life into two parts: before and after. You are beginning a new life.” With this, Janet spread her arms wide over her head as if implying to Libby that Libby’s future was filled with limitless possibilities, as if this “shedding” of her old life, like the skin of a snake, was positive.

“You are an infant,” Janet announced. “You

will learn to navigate your new life, just as a baby learns to navigate her newborn life.”

Janet’s eyes were round and large behind her glasses. “Just as a baby cries in

The therapist she had been seeing since

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frustration, you too will cry. But, just as that baby learns to navigate her new world, so will you.”

Libby shook her head, all skill at small talk stalled with lack of use.

“Are you feeling any better?” Donna asked, as if Libby had had a cold instead of having the world drop out from under her feet. “It’s got to be hard. I can’t even imagine.”

Libby had wished that Brent were there with her at that moment. Brent from the old days.

They would have exchanged glances and secretly laughed with their eyes. They could have mocked the way Janet overused the word navigate, as if Libby were captaining a boat to her New World. Brent would never have returned to see Janet and convinced Libby not to either. But Libby had been in Janet’s office alone, so she had continued to go there for the past twelve weeks, and since she had nothing left to lose, had decided to try what Janet had suggested.

If she brings up Major and Coco right now, I may punch her, Libby thought as she pulled her hands out of Donna’s grasp. Donna had no kids and had always compared Libby’s relationship to Peter with the relationship she had with her two cocker spaniels.

Accustomed to holding one-sided conversations, Donna plunged ahead apparently not even noticing Libby had answered none of her questions. “We hired someone to take your place.” She shrugged and looked uncharacteristically embarrassed. “I had to. I didn’t know how long you would be gone.”

Libby heard her name called and turned from the window, thinking it was the barista with her coffee. Her heart raced as she saw the face of her former boss and for an instant, she thought about walking right out the door.

Donna waved at someone over Libby’s shoulder. “Here she is. She was finishing up a phone call when I left.”

Donna walked straight to Libby and enveloped her in her arms. Libby used to work at a tiny local magazine, writing articles about Holiday Homes Tours and beach cleanups—the kind of magazine that you find for free in stands next to The Los Angeles Times. Donna was the managing editor and wore flowing blouses and slacks but her hair was always tied severely up in a bun.

Their office was in a cozy building a few blocks away from the coffee shop, filled with bulky upholstered chairs and shabby tables used as desks they’d picked up at secondhand stores. The office had been what attracted Libby the most when she’d come in to interview. The cluttered dustiness of it all had fit in her mind with the romantic idea she’d carried about an authentic writer’s office.

“Are you back?” Donna asked Libby as she let her go, but continued to hold her hands.

“I didn’t think you would make it in that cold.”

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A woman Libby’s age walked up to them and Donna introduced them. “This is Libby,” Donna told her. “She used to have your job.

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She’s the one I told you about.” To Libby, she said, “This is Tiffany. She has a little girl who is about, you know, uh—”

heart beat hard, thudding in her chest, making her even more nauseated as she passed the Italian restaurant and the shoe store where all shoes were $15(+), the (+) surely added after their accountant saw the astronomical amount of rent they paid for the tiny storefront adjacent to the sand of Redondo Beach.

Libby had heard the barista calling her name for the past few minutes and used this as her excuse. Tiffany had started to extend her hand, but when Donna’s words faltered, she had pulled it back, looking as anxious to be done with the conversation as Libby was.

She felt the blood rush to her head, the numbness from her lips already spreading to her cheeks. She swallowed hard and looked around for a bench. She would need to sit or she would pass out. Like the time she stood motionless outside the BBQ restaurant watching a helicopter land on the roof of the children’s hospital down the street. She had thrown up brisket on the curb before blacking out and waking up with her head in Brent’s lap with a multitude of strangers peering at her with wide eyes from above.

Libby didn’t blame her. She and Brent carried contagion on them, as if bad luck or trauma were something that could be transmitted via shared air.

She knew she could not make it through tomorrow.

Not in California. Not pretending like last Christmas didn’t happen.

“My coffee,” she said by way of explanation and grabbed the paper cup quickly, walking out of the coffee shop, heading down way-too-familiar streets to the ocean. She passed Trader Joes, which was open early for the holidays, where there were already frazzled, young mothers walking in pushing red carts filled with whining children.

He had been crying, but not for her. He was cross-legged with her head in his lap and his elbow on his knee, his forehead resting against the heel of his hand. She hadn’t reached up and touched him or wiped his tears away, but just watched them roll down his cheeks as if watching a scene from a play. It was over, Libby realized as she lay there on the cold cement. This was the one thing that could break them. They had encountered the one thing they couldn’t get past.

Libby didn’t go to Trader Joes anymore either. As she passed the open doors, the familiar smell wafted out and she thought, I’m going to throw up. Her lips began to feel numb. She carried her paper cup of coffee to the next trash can and dropped it in where it landed with a dull, metallic thud.

She continued to walk, if only to find a quieter place to melt down. As she picked up her pace, she clenched and unclenched her fingers trying to dispel the tingling. Her

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Libby found a bench and sat down, breathing fast, her heart racing, trying to curl herself into a ball to stop the sobs from shaking her body. She knew she could not make it through tomorrow. Not in California.

Not pretending that last Christmas didn’t happen.

Trying to erase the memories of paper snowflakes hung around Peter’s hospital bed, watching Santa and the firemen stop outside the glass of Peter’s PICU room and seeing his nurse shake her head slightly. Peter wouldn’t need to see Santa. Peter couldn’t see Santa by that point. His vision had gone the day before, quickly, just like everything else.

mouth, sounds she wished she had never heard because now she couldn’t un-hear them.

She got up from the bench and started running. Her unzipped sweatshirt flapped behind her and she could feel the zipper hitting her back. She ran past shops that she didn’t see, blocks and blocks of apartments blurring past until she got to Brent’s parents’ house. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door to silence.

She ran down the stairs into Brent’s childhood bedroom where she and Brent had been sleeping.

Brent’s bedroom had sat almost untouched since he had moved out for college, but he had stripped it systematically over the past few days. Shelves sat empty, decades of soccer trophies and medals thrown into the trash bin outside.

I’m sorry, his nurse would say before the day was over. I’m sorry was what the entire staff would say and would continue to say as Libby pushed her face into Peter’s chest and sobbed without breathing. As she pushed unplugged machines out of the way and climbed into bed beside his tiny body and whispered over and over in his ear to Please wake up. As she begged and pleaded with him to WAKE UP! As she stared at Brent’s back, shoulders shaking, horrible, unimaginable sounds coming from Brent’s

CANYONVOICES

“Am I good at soccer too, Dada?” Peter had asked after his first game at the tiny park field.

“The best,” Brent had told him, his coach’s whistle still around his neck, proud that his

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young son possessed the unearthly talent that he also had.

and Brent asked if anything could have been done if they’d found out sooner.

Peter had loved going in to Brent’s old room and seeing evidence that his father had once been as small as he was. That this sixfoot serious man in a tie had once been whimsical enough to amass a kite collection that he let Peter choose from each time they visited his childhood home.

But Peter’s leukemia had been acute—fastgrowing and destructive. In the months that followed, there was nothing they could do but watch. Watch their son die. And now Brent wanted to leave her too. Because it was too hard.

“It’s hard for me too,” she said. She stared with hatred at the packed suitcase knowing that once he was gone, she had lost everything.

The kites, too, were gone. Libby had seen tangles of string, silk and bamboo sticking haphazardly out of the trash bins as well.

Now, Libby saw a packed suitcase by the door. Brent was pulling clothes from the dresser and placing them in an open suitcase lying on the bed.

“How dare you leave me!” she said, picking up the suitcase and hurling it pathetically at him, its bulk making it unwieldy. “You’re leaving me alone. And I’ll never make it alone!”

Libby’s heart skipped a beat. She knew it had been coming but she stopped breathing nonetheless. The sound she made caused Brent to look up from the dresser and into her eyes.

Brent seemed shocked at her anger, but recovered quickly. “You’re not alone. You have your ‘followers’.”

He made air-quotes as he said this and Libby stepped forward as if she might hit him. She had started a blog a few months back, a blog about grieving. Journal writing had been another one of Janet’s recommendations, and Libby’s best friend had read a few entries and recommended turning it into a blog. Libby had seen her followers steadily climb with each post.

“I can’t do this,” he said. “It’s too hard.”

You asshole, she thought and then suddenly wished she had said it aloud. She was unexpectedly relieved at her anger. She had held back every denunciation toward him for the past year, her guilt for her part in Peter’s death allowing him to blame her too.

Yes, I missed it all! I missed all the signs. But

“They’re strangers,” Libby said. She wanted to upend the suitcase over his head.

you did too! The headaches. The stomach aches.

“They know more about how you feel than I do,” he said. He continued to carefully fold clothes and meticulously place them in the open suitcase as if placing Tetris pieces.

It was flu season, she had wanted to scream at him as they sat in the oncologist’s office

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“They ask,” she said, exasperated at having to point out such an obvious fact.

That last part she hadn’t posted. She had typed it, then deleted it one letter at a time hoping that once the sentence was gone, that the desire would be too. She knew that if she had any chance at all, it would be from the person standing five feet away from her who had loved her since she was twenty years old, who knew that when she said these words, they were devastatingly true, because they implied weakness and he knew she never showed weakness.

He walked into the bathroom and came back out with his toiletry case and added it to the suitcase in a spot he had left perfectly for it. As she watched him, she suddenly wondered if this was a bluff. A cruel, badlythought out, yet desperate bluff.

“She seems fine,” Libby remembered overhearing him say to his mother anytime she’d called during the past year. She had heard him say it many times, almost like a reflex, but now she heard the significance behind his words.

“You know I’m not fine, right?” she asked now.

He shrugged.

They stood in silence, separated in space and when she finally looked back at him, he tipped forward a bit as if asking permission.

They stood in silence, separated in space and when she finally looked back at him, he tipped forward a bit as if asking permission. She nodded and he walked over to her.

As they hugged and cried, they sank down to the floor and she crawled into his lap.

Other than the funeral, it was the first time they had cried together. Normally Libby sobbed in the shower or in the car or that one time, three months ago, where she’d gone to Peter’s grave and clawed maniacally at the dirt because she couldn’t stand the thought of her son, her baby, lying underground alone. She couldn’t explain, but she was certain he was frightened. He was alone and she couldn’t touch him. She needed to just touch his baby-soft skin, his silky hair, kiss his pudgy cheeks.

“I can hardly breathe most days,” she said. She remembered what she had written last week in her blog and realized she should have been saying this to him all along.

“I have a lump in my throat all the time, which is why I can’t eat.” Her lower lip quivered and tears began rolling down her face. “My hair is falling out, and I feel like I must have arthritis because it hurts to walk or even stand up straight.”

She stopped looking at him and turned her

Once Libby was able to stop crying, she crawled out of Brent’s lap and walked into the bathroom for tissues. She came back and handed him some and looked into his

gaze to the window. “I feel like I want to die, but I just can’t do it.”

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blotchy, swollen face and said something she had been thinking for a while.

“Maybe we did it wrong,” she said. “We tried to just go on like everything was normal.” She sat down next to him and leaned against the wall. “I know we left, but maybe we didn’t go far enough.”

Brent was nodding so she continued. She had been thinking about this for months.

“Maybe we just go. Just away. No jobs.

Nothing we’ve ever done before. Just leave and try to start over.”

She had been afraid of saying these words out loud. Starting over. As if they were pretending that their three years with Peter had never happened. Like it was possible to forget someone who completely altered the way they lived and viewed life. Completely changed who they were as people.

“Maybe it’s the only way,” Libby said now, knowing that their entire future depended on Brent’s answer.

He paused, staring up at the ceiling. They were no longer connected enough for her to guess at what he was thinking, so she stayed quiet. There was nothing left for her to do but wait.

Brent took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He stood up and faced her, then reached out his hand to help her up.

“OK,” he said.

“OK,” she said, nodding.

She grabbed his hand and got to her feet and they walked slowly up the stairs and out of the house.

CANYONVOICES

For more information on author Kylee Hoelscher, please visit our Contributors Page.

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A Choice To Remember

By Nicole Floda

“

“All good. Lean back and place your head on the headrest.”

T

his is your first time?”

Emma complies.

Emma nods.

“Since this is your first time, I have to review the terms and conditions of the Online Elections Office aloud to you.”

“Congratulations,” the administrator says.

His face is expressionless.

“Should I sit down?” Emma’s gaze flickers to the wide leather seat in the middle of the room. It is the only object in the voting office.

“All right,” Emma sighs.

“You are placed into this computer simulation so we might supply you with confidential information. You then vote on governmental initiatives that would otherwise contain classified material, thereby allowing each citizen to participate fully in our democracy. After the simulation, the computer program is deleted, and you will retain no memory of what has transpired here. The only information that remains online is your vote- in favor, against, or abstinence. You can experience anywhere from 1 to 10 individual scenarios during your time with us, depending on the complexity of the proposed legislation. They will allow you to make an informed decision.”

“Yes, please.”

Emma removes her boots at the door as requested, padding over to the seat with bare feet. As she settles into the plush, she curdles her nose. It smells like antiseptic.

“Stay still,” orders the administrator. One of the walls is an interactive screen, and he runs the tip of his finger across its surface. It immediately glows to life, illuminating the dim room. The wires extending from the screen begin to glow as well, a mixture of blues and greens.

Emma resists the urge to groan. He is acting as if she wasn’t taught this in school.

“Lean forward, please.”

Emma shivers as she bends at the waist.

The administrator suctions wires across the back of her bare neck, on her temples, and her wrists.

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“This is your first simulation experience, so you will be guided by an automated assistant. It is a piece of code in the

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computer, partially AI. It will give you instructions to navigate the simulation.”

initiative. You will recall none of what you’re about to see. Do you consent to these terms?”

“What if I don’t need an assistant?” Emma asks impatiently. Her friend is waiting for her outside. She has places to be.

“Yes. I, uh, I do.”

“Close your eyes,” says the administrator.

“Then you will be directly inserted into the first scenario. Your choice. This will be the only year the AI is there to assist you.”

And then Emma isn’t in the office anymore.

“Hup!” You shout. Your voice echoes across the field, amplified by long stretches of desert. The aching dunes are always conducive to barked orders.

“Because I’m eighteen.” It isn’t a question.

“Because it is your first time.”

“Okay.”

Your cadets march alongside you, each step forged in awkward unison. They are still virgin warriors, untrained for long-range marches and civilian management. You hear the shuffle of debrief documents in your backpack as you march on.

“The simulation can span up to one hour. At the end of the hour, you have to make a choice. You may choose to abstain, or to vote either yes or no on the proposed

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The Afghan village, Chiras, was deserted weeks ago. The documents state it was once occupied by small farmers and poor families, but no more. This is a routine call to ensure the absence of rogue spies or stragglers. In the past four villages, you have encountered zero civilians.

and metal are nothing compared to the tiny powder bullets in your gun.

“Cadets!” You shout, your voice cracking over the roar of the crowd. “Kneel!”

You fall onto your knees, gun pointing straight down, and raise your free hand in the air. There is a sudden pause. The civilians circling you grow still, eyes narrowed. One by one, your cadets follow your lead, some willingly, some with bared teeth and tense shoulders.

The company expands as you stomp down the main dirt road through the village. The windows in the small, wooden houses are dark with the absence of life.

Your second approaches you, his split lip red and sunburned. “Lieutenant, should we separate into three groups? Cover more ground?”

The village falls silent.

You hear the harsh breathing of your second at your shoulder, and you do not move. One of your cadets hisses at the civilians, but with a sharp movement of your raised hand, they too lapse into silence.

“Yeah, Harrison, you take Gerald and Smith around the left flank-”

But you do not finish your sentence.

And you wait.

“Cover me!” screams a cadet.

The citizens stare down but seem to be gripped with uncertainty, their weapons lifted, gazes on the cadets’ guns- each aimed at the ground. The setting sun casts every civilian into shadow.

Flooding from the houses, previously forlorn caricatures of poverty, were dozens, hundreds of people. Your hand immediately flies to your gun, but something is off, and it stays your hand. Your second has raised his gun and you hear the gunshot plow into the nearest wooden house. There are too many people, you are surrounded, but-

Then one steps back. You catch movement out of the corner of your eye, and before you can pinpoint the source each civilian is stepping backward, retreating. You watch as one woman with bloodshot eyes grabs the hand of a man young enough to be her son.

They are desperate, and smart enough to know when they’ve been given a second chance.

They are civilians.

The bright colors that whipped your cadets into a frenzy are the yellows and reds of their ragged shirts, and they do not hold pistols or semi-automatics but knives, shovels, and rakes. The makeshift weapons are raised in their hands, but blades of steel

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You let your gun fall from your grasp and raise both hands, rising to your feet.

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Immediately, your people follow. With hands in the air and only the sound of labored breathing, your company retreats from the village up the path from which they came.

You look back a final time and watch sunlight shimmer over the white walls of their huts before the sun dips below the dunes, and the village disappears into darkness.

“But why was I in the desert? Who were those people?”

“You were placed into the recovered memories of a recently deceased Lieutenant Colonel from our 9th Division.”

“Who is dead now?”

“She saved a hundred and two civilian lives in Chiras. Two days after that memory took place, she was killed in a renegade attack.”

Goosebumps prickle Emma’s arms. She was just inside a dead woman’s mind.

Emma gasps, jerking up in her chair. Instead of being surrounded by desert, she is now in a narrow office behind a desk overloaded with loose papers.

Sitting on the other side is a woman with thick glasses resting on her bulbous nose.

“How are you?” the stranger asks as if she has been sitting like this for a while, shuffling the files in front of her. Emma looks around.

“Each scenario is a memory- a firsthand account of who the proposed legislation will affect if it does or does not gain approval from the American people.” The woman folds her hands across the desk, narrows her eyes. “We have another scenario for you, if you’re ready.”

“Goosebumps prickle Emma’s arms. She was just inside a dead woman’s mind.”

“What is this?”

Emma wants to mourn the Lieutenant’s death, wants to reconcile the vivid memory now burned in her mind of that day in Chiras with the fact that she was never actually there. But she has only an hour in the simulation.

“You’re in the OEO, the Online Elections Office. Don’t worry, you’re still in the simulation. Since this is your first time voting, we are an automated program here to help you navigate the simulation and answer any questions you might have. Your heart rate spiked so you were automatically rerouted here.”

“I’m ready.”

There is a quiet hum in the room. You adjust your headphones quickly before returning your hands to the controllers. Any wrong move could result in swift retribution.

“What the hell just happened to me?” Emma demands.

“Back in Chiras? That was your first scenario.”

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Your office chair is balanced on three wheels, and you think abstractly that was a careless decision. If you push back with your legs, you’ll lose your grip on the controller, and then everyone loses.

She smiles at you before retreating from the control room, and you can’t stop thinking about that smile, even as further instructions leak through your headphones. Your break is coming up soon. Once you eliminate the enemy combatants, you’ll be able to punch out. Perhaps your intern will ask for her break at the same time. Maybe you can go to lunch together.

“Incoming message for the Strike Commander.” A professional, brisk voice through your headphones. “The target is located at 51° 28′ 38″ N. There’s headwind at 12 kilometers per hour, due east. Please adjust accordingly.”

“Target is shifting locations. Accelerate UAV speed by ten kilometers per hour.”

“Roger,” you respond, and run your thumb over the acceleration short-stick. The drone inclines perilously to the left, and in the video broadcast over the big screen, your view shifts from a saturated orange desert to a Middle Eastern skyline.

You flick the appropriate lever on the switchboard and a red light beams on above the screen. The room is unusually silent, empty of the murmurs that often accompany the execution of an enemy combatant. The target is not high-profile, from what you could gather of the sparse information you were provided. No wonder no one stuck around before lunch to watch the show.

“Here’s your coffee,” comes a whisper, and your intern sets a mug next to the controller.

You look up at her- she has beautiful eyes.

“Thank you.”

CANYONVOICES

The screen shows the sprawl of a city

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blanketed in darkness. You press down on a pedal below the table that switches the lens into night vision, your foot jerking in pain.

You sprained it last month on a ski trip and it tends to act up when it is raining outside.

You wonder if you should get it checked and make a mental note to call your doctor.

There is no intermission between scenarios this time. Only the blink of an eye passes as Emma returns to herself.

But something is different.

The air tastes like rain, and a cool breeze nudges a tear across her cheek. Emma lifts her hand hesitantly and rubs it away. She is not in the memory of another anymore; the scene is too familiar…

“Building in sight. Please stand by for further instructions,” says the voice. You pause the drone in the air, tapping the fingers of your free hand on the cool metal switchboard.

Maybe you should ask the intern if she would like to accompany you to lunch, or maybe that is too forward.

She is standing in the middle of a cemetery, the grass contemptuously green and vivid against the worn gray tombstones. Mist coalesces around the giant oak trees that dot the field. Hammered into their trunks are memorials to the soldiers buried here.

“Descend to 49° 28′ 10″ N,” the polite voice intones. You punch in the new coordinates and take one last glance at the camera. It is pointing directly at a black wall. Just behind it, vague heat signatures glow red with life.

You avert your eyes.

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, and beloved! He is God’s child, as Leonard is, and they reside now, in Heaven together…” The liturgy rises and falls, but Emma hardly hears it. Her hands are trembling so violently that she stuffs them into her pockets to quell the tremors. Her father’s funeral. A memory dredged from so long ago that she thought it had disappeared completely.

“Initiate missile.”

You release your index finger from the trigger.

There is no sound, no further analytical input. Only visuals. You do not glance at the screen, beginning your count.

“Target eliminated. Prepare for departure.”

“This is all bullshit,” says her aunt, standing at her shoulder, teeth bared at the line of soldiers beside Leonard’s coffin. “If they dinna abandon Leo in that place before it crumbled to the goddamn ground, we would’n be even be here. They should’n be allowed to ev’n come.”

You decide you will wait and see if your intern is on their lunch break before you punch out.

Emma presses her lips together as she did years ago, to hold back the flood of words that nearly burst from her chest. Accusatory,

1… 2… 3… 4… 5.

Five seconds to assess the damage, to register any remaining heat signatures.

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aimless, irrelevant. They wouldn’t bring her father back.

Emma finally finds her voice. “What does that have to do with my father?”

“I ought’a go tell ’em, don’tcha think? Tell ’em to leave where they ain’t wanted.”

“Your father was a Navy SEAL. He worked as a counterinsurgent agent and often acted undercover executing enemies of the United States. With the approval of this legislation, drones would be used in place of Navy SEALS. We have reason to believe he would have survived his mission if such technology existed at the time.”

Emma can smell the alcohol on her breath.

She doesn’t watch as her aunt stomps over to the front of the funeral, as she dissolves into a screaming stranger. Emma can’t push back the tears, and then she is running through the fields of the cemetery, and maybe if she runs far enough she can forget this ever happened…

“Emma? Awaken. You are still in the simulation. You have successfully completed the final scenario.”

“He would still be alive?” Emma asks, the concept so foreign that she feels as though she will pass out.

“Yes. However, in opposition of the initiative, you entered the memory of a Strike Commander extrapolated a week ago.

There were two children present in the room when the enemy combatant was located, and the Strike Commander fired anyway, as you witnessed. Both died in the attack. Since he accomplished his mission, he will not be reprimanded for the mistake, and will continue on as Strike Commander.”

“What does that have to do with my father?”

Emma is slower to rise this time, and her whole body is shaking. She is back in the narrow office with the businesswoman, the AI assistant. “We would like to debrief you.”

Emma cannot bring herself to respond.

When she says nothing, the woman proceeds.

“What are you saying?” Emma manages.

Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth.

“The U.S. Federal Government is introducing an initiative to Congress next week, and that is what you are voting on today. It is a piece of legislation concerning the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in combat. The President is proposing that drones be harnessed in the U.S. effort to eradicate transnational terrorist organizations.”

CANYONVOICES

“We are showing you all sides of the potential implications of the bill, but it is, in the end, your choice to decide if you approve or disagree. That is the legislation you are voting on today.”

“What about the first memory?”

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“The first Lieutenant saved a hundred lives through her quick judgement. It is far more difficult, if not impossible, to evaluate a situation when you can only see it through a screen. It is likely the civilians would not have survived if, instead of being surveyed by a company of soldiers, they had been subject to a drone strike.”

chest. She thinks of the Lieutenant, the relief on the faces of the citizens when the Lieutenant dropped into the sand to kneel, and of those in the crowd, some no more than fifteen years old.

She thinks of the arrogant Strike Commander, entirely undisturbed by the murders of two children, and she thinks she should vote NO, but her father —

Emma clutches at her stomach. She feels as if she is going to vomit. “How am I supposed to vote on that? We lose either way.”

“Five seconds,” says the AI.

Emma sucks in a breath, feeling tears well in her eyes, and how could she condemn anyone to grow up without a father-

The AI does not empathize. It stares at her.

“The law is blatant in this matter: we must show both the arguments of those who proposed the bill, and its opposition. The choice lies with you.”

She slams her hand down.

“Welcome back.” The voice is disembodied.

It floats in the air for a moment before Emma opens her eyes.

Emma glances down, and for the first time she notices three buttons in the desk. The first is green, and scrawled across the top is the word YES. The second is bright red and reads NO. The third is gray, showing only the word ABSTAIN.

“Ow,” she murmurs. She feels as though she just ran a marathon, and her heart is pounding in her chest.

“What if I abstain?” Emma asks frantically.

She is sweating despite the coolness of the room.

“Must’ve been a rough decision,” the administrator says. He is standing above Emma, hands on his hips, eyes light. Bored.

“You were thrashing all over the place.”

“Then your vote will not be counted either way.”

“I was?”

“All of that would have been for nothing,” Emma translates, face paling.

The administrator nods. Emma moves to get up before she remembers the wires attaching her to the bed. The administrator begins to remove them with swift efficiency.

“You have thirty seconds to decide. Then the hour is up.”

“I’ve been here for an hour?”

Emma stares down at the buttons and all she can hear is her heart slamming in her

CANYONVOICES

“Yep, quite a long one it was too. Most people make their decision after twenty

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minutes or so.”

Emma frowns. That feels wrong to her. “And I never get to know what I voted for?”

“Sometimes they’ll release the scenarios to the public a few years after the vote because the information isn’t classified anymore, but for the most part, no. Just know your vote is in the system now.”

“That’s fine, I guess.” Emma rises from the chair, legs unsteady at first. She wonders at the stiffness in her hands, flexing them at

her sides as she crosses the room and pulls her shoes back on.

“Thanks for coming in. The U.S. Government appreciates your participation.”

Then, in an uncharacteristic display of goodwill, the administrator asks, “Got any plans for the rest of the day?”

“Nah,” Emma says, shrugging. “I’ll probably go over to my friend’s house and hang out for a while, then start packing. We’re heading down to Mexico tomorrow for Spring Break.”

“Okay, well, have fun on your trip.”

“Thanks,” Emma says, but she is already checking her phone for new messages, and she doesn’t look up again as she walks out the door.

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

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FICTIONCONTRIBUTORS Sara Dobie Bauer Sara Dobie Bauer is a writer, model, and mental health advocate with a creative writing degree from Ohio University. Her short story, “Don’t Ball the Boss,” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, inspired by her shameless crush on Benedict Cumberbatch. She lives with her hottie husband and two precious pups in Northeast Ohio, although she’d really like to live in a Tim Burton film. She is a member of RWA and author of the paranormal romcom “Bite Somebody,” among other ridiculously entertaining things. To learn more, visit http://SaraDobieBauer.com.

Zak Block Zak Block's short fictions have appeared in Paper Darts, Big Bridge, Quail Bell Magazine, Potluck, Gadfly ONLINE and Defenestration, among others. He is the founder and editorin-chief of (the) Squawk Back, an online literary journal of transgression and alienation, baptized by fire in May of 2011.

Austin Fendler Austin Fendler is a student at Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. He studies English and works part-time as a bookseller at Barnes and Noble. In addition to writing, Austin enjoys acting, playing piano and eating Chipotle. He hopes to create something meaningful as an author. Barring that, he at least hopes his work is entertaining.

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FICTIONCONTRIBUTORS Nicole Floda Nicole Floda is a sophomore at Arizona State University within Barrett, The Honors College and W.P. Carey, double majoring in Economics and Global Politics and minoring in English Literature. She enjoys writing in her free time and reflecting on current events in the world while aspiring to one day change it. She intends to pursue her J.D. and hopes to specialize in foreign policy law and international diplomacy - as well as one day fulfill her dream of finishing her own novel.

Kylee Hoelscher Kylee Hoelscher received an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Long Beach and a BA in English from UC Santa Barbara. She is currently writing a novel.

Gary Lawrence Gary Lawrence currently teaches composition and creative writing at Glendale Community College in Phoenix and Cochise College in Sierra Vista. He has a BA in English from Rockford College and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His short stories have been published in Short Story America (anthologies), Four Chambers, Mirage, and Canyon Voices. His collection “Baffled and Other Stories” was self-published in 2013.

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POETRY Larus Pacificus By Joshua Newth (See Art section for full image)

Imprison Tony Valencia Jr.

Rupture David Redkey

Whitewood John Moessner

undisturbed Henry Carrillo III

Tingle Fabrice Poussin

Song of Li Po, In His Cups Randel McCraw Helms

For Finn Derrick Bergeron

Tasseography Kendall Hoeft In the Weeds John Moessner

Southern Lady Kendall Hoeft

Mid-Afternoon Shadows A.J. Huffman

Music of Mexico Kendall Hoeft

Broken Footprints A.J. Huffman

Albino Moths A.J. Huffman

Silence like a Cemetery Kendall Hoeft

POETRY : TONY VALENCIA JR.

Imprison

By Tony Valencia Jr.

Truly trapped and defeated is the man that stays in the cage when the door is unlocked.

For more information on poet Tony Valencia Jr., please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

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POETRY : DAVID REDKEY

Rupture

By David Redkey

Stumbling reality comes upon in waves

And waves of uneasiness and fatigue.

An elixir store bought with penny dreams,

But failing to provide the respite promised.

Hazy way through a cliché of thunder,

A storm of rolling expanding in a beat,

Steady pulsating shards pushing outward.

Voices fall upon ears unwilling to hear,

Requiring an escape to the solemn bed.

Upon the angel’s cloud the head rests,

Viscosity collecting, gathering, forming

Upon the tender tissue light cannot reach.

Building, transforming, reforming, and

Collecting into the pinpoint of prosperity.

Pressure building, unable to escape.

Looking to be free, sharply

Focused writhing needle prick

Gushing out towards the light,

Collecting upon the pillow below.

For more information on poet David Redkey, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

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POETRY : JOHN MOESSNER

Whitewood

By John Moessner

Your whitewood bedframe came apart

with such ease it seemed it did not feel

your weight these last twenty-four years.

You left to fetch a mallet in the basement

maze of your parents’ life. It was not needed.

The metal wings slid out of their holdings

like the lifting of a young weed in soft soil.

Your parents’ roots run deep into the foundation

shifts of this suburban house, built not long

before you were put together. Piece by piece,

each ball joint sunk gentle into each socket,

as someday we each will pull apart with ease.

For more information on poet John Moessner, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

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POETRY : HENRY CARRILLO III

undisturbed

By Henry Carrillo III

Lay me down in a bed of your exhales leaving me to sleep quietly without disruptive dreams.

I am no longer fit to return to your arms length reach, so I’ll whisper your name across oceans and into canyons,

Hoping the dissonant echo reaches your ears and you hear my contaminated, exhausted voice once more.

I’ll drift far and wide across the earth groaning like a ghost lost in the night,

gliding towards the nearest beacon.

For more information on poet Henry Carrillo III, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

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POETRY : FABRICE POUSSIN

Tingle

By Fabrice Poussin

I wonder what it is with the red plump

strawberry, that so makes you smile;

in a cup, surrounded by many alike,

accomplices of chocolate and nuts.

It is as If I knew, as if I could share

the anticipation that runs through you

whole; a simple gift I realize fills you

with glee, for space changes thus.

For more information on poet Fabrice Poussin, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : RANDEL MCCRAW HELMS

Song of Li Po, in His Cups

By Randel McCraw Helms

The first cup loosens my heart

And washes away my thirst.

The second cup annuls my loneliness,

Making boon companions of all I meet.

The third cup raises soft thoughts of love,

Rendering desirable everyone I see.

The fourth cup makes me sing aloud for joy,

To the delight and instruction of my friends.

The fifth cup purges my innards in both directions,

Teaching me the virtues of moderation.

The sixth cup brings the sweet sleep of the gods,

Who gave us this blessing and proof of their care.

The seventh cup—ah, who can say what

It might bring?—pour, and let us see!

For more information on poet Randel McCraw Helms, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : DERRICK BERGERON

For Finn

By Derrick Bergeron

Oh there's my heart. It's in the back seat,

wearing a ninja turtles hat, staring out the window as we cruise along through another Summer

evening.

Later:

eating grammy's blueberry pie shirtless,

he offers, insists, I share a bite. Where did this beautiful, generous heart come from?

Me?

Later, still:

Light snores both break and enrich my heart.

How is such a thing possible?

I'm struck by desire,

to scoop him out of bed and pour my love & admiration into him

until nothing remains of me and he,

he has everything stretched out before him like a carpet made of the galaxy.

Stretch out, enjoy the stars, and ride the constellations into wonder, my boy.

Because everything for you that can be, will be,

if papa has a say in it.

For more information on poet Derrick Bergeron, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : KENDALL HOEFT

Tasseography

By Kendall Hoeft

When our brittle Victorian lips

sipped on flowered tea cups,

you became that show doll,

prancing about in a Chinese robe.

But silk can’t cover his ruffian soul, and those pearls don’t make him fine.

You were honest about one thing,

you do love sherry.

Now you drink it from the bottle.

No tea cozy to cover-up

lies that lie in the bottom of your glass;

leaves that tell your future.

For more information on poet Kendall Hoeft, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : JOHN MOESSNER

In the Weeds

By John Moessner

Stench like onions and spring

garlic, I sniff my palms stained with green

mucus squeezed from each stalk. I try to yank

them from their burrowed beds, stubborn,

a few nodes held their ground, cut my palms instead.

This work requires spades, a sharp edge,

a grip that knows where to lodge

probing claws. One needs to get down

in the soil and feel the veins leading away

from the heart. It won’t hurt, though I’ve heard

plants scream if you listen close enough. I am reminded

of a night filled with mist and drowse, some hidden

memory, excavated, an examination, a bubble implant

slipped between layers of skin, or behind the shin

bone, the nape of the neck, where searching claws

root through my weeds, my body, with eyes that,

for all their twitching, will not close.

For more information on poet John Moessner, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : KENDALL HOEFT

Southern Lady

By Kendall Hoeft

My mother is an edifice.

That fan, those jewels, these gloves

parasitized by that sweet potato whitefly

that is the South,

that is Alabama.

You could’ve grown like Grandma Lily’s yellow verbena,

fragrant and wild.

How you could’ve climbed,

holy to the sky.

Sometimes I think I see you blush.

I want to reach out

ready to catch your tears before you powder powder powder powder powder.

When you return from the ladies’ room, I wonder

what parts of you are really here.

Your little white forearms, bricks in some Antebellum dam.

For more information on poet Kendall Hoeft, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : A.J. HUFFMAN

Mid-Afternoon Shadows

By A.J. Huffman

fall like leaves across my path.

In this moment of almost

contentment, I forget to worry

whether my footsteps are echoing

like tiny landmines against the pavement.

I belong to the semi-darkness

of a failing sun. Our shines are

twin promises that something better follows

our inevitable descent.

For more information on poet A.J. Huffman, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : KENDALL HOEFT

Music of Mexico

By Kendall Hoeft

With the muted glow of sundown

the families at the end of our cul de sac

come outside. They sit

in frayed yellow beach chairs.

One of them tells a story, another laughs.

Is this living in community?

Is this living unafraid?

On Fridays, manic mariachi music fills our dead-end street.

Abuelos sip Coronas while children ride bright tricycles and scooters,

shouting and pretending they are superheroes or el presendente de Mexico City.

Their music marks

the end of the street

their fiesta property.

When we walk by we pretend

we do not hear them

we pretend

we do not see them.

As we close our eyes to sleep, we can still hear laughing

and trumpets solo and puff into the ozone of this common air.

For more information on poet Kendall Hoeft, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : A.J. HUFFMAN

Broken Footprints

By A.J. Huffman

lie.

Lined in glass,

they glisten like midnight’s stars,

enchanting charms for the moon’s eye.

I

follow their lead,

walking in shadows I’m afraid

to understand. I must listen to the aria

they

are playing

on my behalf. The distance laughs,

contracts around me. I cannot breathe as

my

world cracks

open, spilling every lie you have

spoken across this unmade bed that is no longer

ours.

Albino Moths

By A.J. Huffman

circle like scavengers, dive

into my mind, searching

for memories to feast on.

They exit on bloodied wings

that found, too quickly,

I am a starved darkness,

an abyss emptied of anything

meaningful. The hallways of thought

echo an absence so starved

for light, it swallows itself daily,

only to be purged again

when dawn fails to register

inside its cavernous depths.

For more information on poet A.J. Huffman, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY : KENDALL HOEFT

Silence like a Cemetery

By Kendall Hoeft

There is a hush on this burial ground.

I kneel on cold, grey stone

to lay my lilies.

Don’t let the dead rise,

the unspoken rule makes us hold our hearts,

keeps them buried too.

We walk with fearful steps,

afraid of what is under us,

all that was left misunderstood.

For more information on poet Kendall Hoeft, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

The School of Humanities, Arts & Cultural Studies

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH CONTEST WINNERS

Western Eyes by Jasna Boudard

(Please see Art section for full image)

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SPRING2017

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

First Place

Three Homosexual Fragments

By Kyle Stidham I

sadly in my time of dharma decline I do not run the numbers well; my day has no patience to

measure these things too fast to be named but my saturnheart overgrown dendrophilic awaits on

the garden floor the soft petal footsteps of adam the redeemer

II

he was nervous just now, salt tears crossing down his arching back before being taken back in

beneath the skin, the touch oiled but not damp and I am jetsam aloft but adrift

III

long embarrassed by boys’ lips long I ran but now’s as good a time as any to love a man finally

unweighted and finally alone with whispered kisses from a cheap electric fan’s wisping lusts

belated have their room and have grown; sissy lusts once hated consume, and gayly moan

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

Second Place

Maternal Inheritance in Times of Great, Great Hate

By Kamala Platt

I. 1987 (or so)

You lived more, with less than now,

Three decades back,

made do, without regret,

one night,

lived for awhile in a bank building…

you nightmared Wordsworth*

was in danger

In 2006, driving north

and you, trying to save it,

we stopped in Greenleaf

passed it on

found those brick bank walls

to me, your daughter--

standing, open air now,

gave me an inheritance

the bones of the building, foundation

of work and words to protect.

complete enough for you to recall

where your mother cooked

and where you ate, where you slept…

II. Winter, 2017

We drove up past Minneapolis, Kansas

In the six weeks

to a border town to pick up a pick-up, a 1995 Nissan

between Christmas

purchased with some meagre funds you’d saved

and my birthday

that allowed me to follow a teaching job

as goodwill waned in our world

just north of the border our country

and your mind, body and soul

drew with Mexico, over a century back,

finally drifted apart from us,

and is re-drawing every day, now, in blood.)

I desperately wanted milagros…

but as you had guided me to see,

there is history and hard work

behind miracles.

I wanted to tell your stories

You wrote the good of others’ lives

write down the family stories

and lived the work behind your words.

you’d passed down to us

so, in old age, you might remember,

You were not judgmental

how you laughed with your brothers--

but had old-fashioned words for obscenities that wound.

chattering children in Kansas,

Often in recent months when I've heard the latest news:

growing up in a world at war,

filthy, vulgar, obscene, livid—your voice comes to my mind...

migrating from town to town

Though you condemned wrongs,

for your parents’ teaching jobs.

it was actions not people you considered bad.

III. 2017 In the last few weeks of your life

so much happened that is an affront to how you lived.

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POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

There were no bad people in your world.

I am happy that at the end of your full life you could pass on

with many other elders…shifting the burdens,

transitioning without full cognizance

of the hate increasingly festering about our world.

You all made beauty, art, love, burgeoning milagros out of your lives.

We now need to scrub through the "filth" to find the foundations you left shining...

Postscript

Mom,

In a sense

our relationship is one long Mobius strip—

a twist upon a smooth path

with no boundaries—

an end that leads to a beginning.

That day the doom of decades,

upon decades was distilled into a single figure

I made a sign that read:

World Citizen

Planetary Patriot

Hija del Mundo.

The next day, I held that sign, high,

For us.

We talked maybe once

after that. Then you

only listened, when I called

and dad put the phone on speaker

for you both.

But I know you knew

Mother, that I carried that sign for you:

World Citizen

Planetary Patriot

Hija del Mundo

Daughter of prairie and village

Daughter of Madre Tierra.

* Wordsworth is the independent publishing co. my mother started 30 years ago to publish books

of worth that were not necessarily going to make a profit.

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

Third Place

Saturn’s Rings

By Carmen Cutler I remember hearing

that it was Galileo who discovered

Saturn’s rings.

Science so familiar to me,

so graphed and given–

but to his telescoped eye,

so far.

What did he expect to find, lining up the rings of glass?

Each lens at the ready, an eye more powerful than eye.

And now, the known universe

lies potato-peeled on our table,

the strange eyes gone

from the nacreous, naked root.

far, far, far

more better and away

I have seen through the telescopes of history,

gazing for myself at Jupiter’s moons,

carried on the shoulders of giants.

What part of me is composed of the

same substance as Saturn’s rings?

What quintessential matter

do we carry in common?

Standing on a roof, gazing through the eyepiece,

a modern mind seeing through a window that Galileo

cracked open with his own two hands.

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SPRING2017

POETRY CONTEST WINNERS

Honorable Mention

Arid

By Kate Rogers

My pores are teeth marks gouged

by the picks of javelina-mouths.

I let desert dirt get into the wounds,

So now ants burrow in my knuckles

And in between the cracks of chapped skin

The howl of a coyote echoes

CANYONVOICES

SPRING2017

POETRYCONTRIBUTORS Derrick Bergeron Most days you can find Derrick Bergeron dreaming about his screenplays in a taupe office cubicle. A recent graduate of Goddard College’s MFA Creative Writing Program, Bergeron is striving to expand his writer life as a screenwriter and poet. He is a husband and father of two adventurous, handsome boys. When he is not writing, he enjoys the bounty of living in Rhode Island by surfing, clamming, and peddling his hot sauce, Lucyfurs.

Henry Carrillo III Henry Carrillo III is a poet and author from Visalia, Ca. He has been published six times nationally and is influenced by many writers such as: Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Jordan Venema, Kendrick Lamar, William S. Burroughs, and many others. Henry is a sufferer of Bipolar 1 disorder and PTSD, but he uses his struggles and obstacles to fuel authenticity and passion into all of writing.

Randel McCraw Helms Randel McCraw Helms retired in 2007 from Arizona State University’s English Department, where he taught classes on the Romantic poets, the Bible as literature, and Shakespeare, as well as the standard survey of English lit. He is the author of five books of literary criticism, including “Tolkien’s World,” “Who Wrote the Gospels?” and “Gospel Fictions.” The latter two are readily available as e-books. His other lifelong vocation is making poems, and his recent work has appeared in such places as Coe Review, Young Ravens Literary Review, Mauvaise Graine, Sand Canyon Review, and Veil: A Journal of Darker Musings.

Kendall Hoeft Kendall Hoeft is a freelance poet and essayist. After earning her B.S. in 2009, she became a high school English teacher where she enjoyed inspiring students to open their minds to creativity. Her poetry was featured by Shade Tree Creations; as she was awarded a winner in their Art Affair Writing Contest, 2014. Her poem “How to Match the Sky” will be published in the Spring 2017 issue of Driftwood Press.

Kendall is currently in the University of Tampa’s Low-Residency M.F.A. in Creative Writing, focusing her studies on Poetry.

A.J. Huffman A.J. Huffman has published thirteen full-length poetry collections, thirteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses. Her most recent releases, “The Pyre On Which Tomorrow Burns” (Scars Publications), “Degeneration” (Pink Girl Ink), “A Bizarre Burning of Bees” (Transcendent Zero Press), and “Familiar Illusions” (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2600 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya.

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SPRING2017

POETRYCONTRIBUTORS John Moessner John Moessner is a poet writing and teaching in Kansas City. His poems have appeared in We Like, We Love, Kawsmouth, and Indicia. He is currently a poetry candidate in the MFA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Fabrice Poussin Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review and more than 170 other publications.

David Redkey David Redkey, a Communication Studies graduate student, is honored to grace the pages of the Spring 2017 issue of Canyon Voices. He wants to thank all the people in his life who help him improve every day.

“I love you all.”

(Frank, 2014)

Tony Valencia Jr. Antonio Valencia Jr., aka Tony, The Swordsman was born and raised in West Phoenix. A Chicano and Chiricahua Apache born of a strong and independent mother who has always been his hero to support him. He always had a knack for music and later wordplay, from listening to his mother’s records to the freestyle phrases and jokes in his family. It was not until eighth grade when praying to God for a calling that he was challenged to a rap battle. He knowingly was not a rapper of any kind. Today, he makes music, shoots videos and performs.

Image by Rachel Hinch (Please visit the Artwork section for more work by this artist.)

CANYONVOICES

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CREATIVE NONFICTION

Pam Munter Dixieland Dreams

Gabby Catalano Creaking Mattress

Amy Whitehouse Safe

Ilyssa Goldsmith On Wearing the Cloche

Rome Johnson Don’t Kiss the Preacher’s Daughter

Adventure at Sunset by Chris Parfitt (See Art for full image)

CREATIVE NONFICTION : PAM MUNTER

Dixieland Dreams

By Pam Munter

I

velvet syrup, even on the uptempo tunes. Later, I had discovered Bobby Hackett who seemed to glide easily from oozy ballads to crisp Dixieland solos. I appreciated their talents, their sounds, and I loved how they made me feel, indescribably one within myself. Music had always had a visceral impact on me, from my earliest memories. There was nothing else in my life that even came close, that united my deep emotional affinity for music with my quickening pulse. It’s no surprise that throughout my life, I would return to it again and again in its many incarnations. For me, it wasn’t enough to just listen to it. I wanted to be in the middle of it. I wanted to create the sound myself.

f I were to be come back as a musical instrument, it would be as a cornet in a hot Dixieland band. Its purity and aggressiveness, its tonal ability to lead a group of knowledgeable and supportive musicians, its deceptively simple musical mandate to carry the melodic line, innovative improvisational style – that is what I want to be. I seemed to have been born with a chromosomal predisposition to this kind of music and to this instrument. Was it too late to learn to play this while I still lived on this planet?

I was in my late 50s, had recently aborted a successful professional singing and acting career and was missing the undercurrent of music in my life. The choice was an obvious one and now it was time to fulfill still another dream.

At 12, I had sold greeting cards door-to-door so I could afford to rent an inexpensive bugle for three months from the local record store. The trumpet was two dollars more and I couldn’t afford that. Nearly every day for a month, I had stopped by the neighborhood store and lovingly communed with it, the gold brass reflecting up into my face as it sat in the glass-enclosed case.

Once in my cherished custody, I practiced every day. I was at first surprised how much effort it took to push a sound out of the horn. The clarinet required so little physicality for me. To my neighbors’ disdain I’m sure, I poked it outside the front door at dusk and attempted taps most evenings. But soon my rental time was up and I returned to the more socially acceptable licorice stick. It felt like a loss.

Back in the sexist, antediluvian 50s, girls were discouraged from playing brass instruments.

“Play the flute or the piano,” my elders would tell me. “Or, if you insist, the clarinet.” So I did as I was told. I had played the piano for a few years then moved to the clarinet for both junior high and high school, all the while longingly watching the fun they seemed to be having in the trumpet section. I could almost taste their passion as they reached for the high notes. At University High School in West Los Angeles, the first trumpet in the band was Warren Luening, who played with Lawrence Welk on television. Warren was the youngest in the venerable big band and I never missed watching the show on Saturday nights. He played with such ease and fluidity. I tried to make my clarinet sound like just him.

Now, slipping out of middle age, I had long ago transcended any interest in adhering to social conformity. On a trip to Los Angeles I ventured into a Hollywood pawn shop and asked the hunched-over, grizzled owner if he had any cornets.

I had listened to the records of Harry James and his smooth and rangy playing, admiring his lugubrious solos on “Cherry” and “You Made Me Love You.” How did he make that sound? It was so much like a voice, plaintive and pleading, like

CANYONVOICES

“Sure,” he growled. “Over here.” He handed me

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : PAM MUNTER

one off the top shelf. It was a little dented but still had some shine. “Try this.”

gave me some confidence in learning how to read music again.

“I don’t think I can,” I said. “I don’t really know how to play it yet.”

I was ready for the next step. Online, I located a jazz camp in Louisville, Kentucky run by Jamey Aebersold, famous for his play-along series of music books. I was unfamiliar with all that, but I booked a flight and a motel room near the University of Louisville campus and signed up.

The nearest motel was a long walk through a dimly-lit industrial section of town. It was July so the students were gone, leaving the area completely deserted at night when I had to walk home, my room key in hand in case I needed a weapon. I was frightened by the darkness, the desolation and the unfamiliarity. But that wasn’t the worst part.

“Aw, go ahead. Nobody cares if it sounds bad.”

“Well, I do. Does it work?” I asked, cautiously pushing down the three valves.

“Yep. Good as new. Forty dollars. I’ll even throw in a mouthpiece.”

At first, all I could do was play the scales from the basic introductory books I had purchased earlier. Then I started playing along with Dick Cathcart on the LP soundtrack to “Pete Kelly’s Blues.” Now that was what I wanted to play, how I wanted to sound. The movie had a Dixieland soundtrack, led by Cathcart’s aggressive lead cornet. I had no music for these tunes, so I played by ear. I wasn’t sure what notes I was hitting, but after a while I knew which valves I needed to press and the order in which they came. My progress was marked by my accuracy in reproducing the arrangements, over and over. Nearly every evening, I isolated myself in my home office, put on the record and practiced the riffs.

There were so many ways to screw up. In a band this size — maybe eight people — there was no place to hide.

Aebersold jazz, I discovered, is synonymous with the world of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, big time bebop. It’s the kind of jazz that prizes the maximum number of notes per square inch, where solos are often longer than lunch. After the musical diddling, the band may or may not return to the original melody but by then, it has long been forgotten. To me, it seemed like self-indulgent musical masturbation so unlike the unfettered joy of Dixieland. This was not my jazz. Nor were these my people. Most of the students were acne-dotted teenage boys who looked at me like a doddering grandmother. I had been dropped down in a world of aliens, headed by the evangelistic Aebersold who ranted at us daily in class about the evils of smoking. Each day, he would show us a different slide, evidence of the ravages of lung cancer.

I wanted to find a group that would welcome a beginner. Though I couldn’t find a local Dixieland group, I was able to locate a creaky community band in Mt. Angel that would have me. Heck, they’d take anybody. In fact, there were 13 trumpets and cornets therein, not the most pleasing ensemble sound. They played a lot of oompah music, corny Oktoberfest pieces and Sousa marches. I fumbled a lot but no one told me to go home. It was fun, if frustrating, but the season was soon over. My few months there

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“Do you want to end up like this? Don’t ever start smoking, kids.” He would challenge us all every morning with his anti-smoking sermon,

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : PAM MUNTER

consuming at least 15 minutes each time. After the third day, I called American Airlines and came home early, discouraged but not defeated.

It was just a rookie mistake, I told myself.

pupper,” he told me, tactfully omitting “at your age.”

“Long-delayed dreams are the most rewarding to fulfill, I think.”

My next two camp stops were specific to my genre of Dixie. The Sacramento camp was held for a week each August, sponsored by the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society and held in a bucolic CCC-looking forest-laden environment. There was a wider variety of people there, older players and more women. It was more welcoming. Even so, the accommodations were stark and uncomfortable.

“You’re right. You know, I play a few instruments myself but I’ve never been able to get a handle on this one. You’re a better man than I!”

I knew Bill could play anything he wanted; he was a musical genius. I appreciated his support, though, and his understanding of the frustrations inherent in learning such a demanding instrument. He and I shared the same dry sense of humor, an appreciation of the absurd. became good friends.

All the women slept in the same room in an unheated cabin. I was assigned the bottom bunk, trying to sleep while my bedmate upstairs played beeping video games. Meals were taken in an institutional mess hall and we all took turns helping in the kitchen. It was like Scout camp with better food and older campers. Was I really paying for this?

Though anything vaguely rustic gave me goose bumps, I did return to the Sacramento Jazz Camp for three more years, eventually making it into the top band, Band Ten. I didn’t feel as if I were deserving. I was pleased at my progress.

Also, I had found a cozy three-star motel a few miles away from the camp at Sly Park, no small factor in my perseverance.

The campers auditioned the first day, to determine the level of the band to which they would be assigned, from one to ten. To my relief, I was installed in Band One, the lowest group. I was startled to hear that I would be responsible for leading them, apparently the traditional job of the cornet player. Yikes. I worried about that almost as much as I pondered how I could sidestep complete public mortification. There were so many ways to screw up. In a band this size, - maybe eight people - there was no place to hide. Each band was provided a folder full of preselected lead sheets – music with only a melody line with the chords above it. Our job was to improvise off those chords. Could I do this, given my rudimentary skill set?

It wasn’t a linear trajectory, though. Each night there were performances and chances to sit in with the “professors,” as they were called. The concerts were held in a large outdoor amphitheater surrounded by tall, old growth trees. Though this was August, it was cold and dank at night in the mountains near Sacramento.

Our band had been rehearsing “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” a tune made famous by Louis Armstrong. It has a strong and demanding cornet line, one I could only sometimes approximate. While I always had an improvisational solo stream running around in my head, I couldn’t get it out the end of the horn. It’s like developing facility with a foreign language over time and I wasn’t there yet. I was still struggling with basic things - endurance and skill. After our band performed that number – using that verb loosely - and I failed miserably to reach the high notes, I stalked out of the

I met the camp director, Bill Dendle, over one of the communal meals. He was about my age, a professional educator and a talented musician – playing trombone and banjo with equal facility.

“I admire your courage in trying to master this

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : PAM MUNTER

amphitheater and retreated through the woods to my bunk in the darkened cabin, convinced I could never do this well and wondering why I was putting myself through this misery at all.

The tears wouldn’t come but the feeling was pure desolation. And yet I kept returning to this seductive instrument. It wasn’t done with me yet.

And I had grown into the leader role, choosing the tunes, deciding the order of solos and counting off the tempos. The best part, though, was that the San Diego camp was held in the Lafayette Hotel not a campsite – with a Hollywood pedigree yet. Ted Fio Rito’s big band had played for dances there in the ‘30s and ‘40s, attracting the Hollywood elite sneaking away for a weekend of secret sin. Long before he reached his fame as “Tarzan,” Johnny Weissmuller had trained for the 1928 Olympics in the huge outdoor pool, now surrounded by two stories of rooms. I loved going down into the basement – the performance space – to see the frayed and grayed framed 8X10s of the celebrities who visited during that era – Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Amelia Earhart, Robert Taylor. My kind of place, boy.

San Diego’s Dixieland camp was more intense.

Sacramento had been spread out over a week.

San Diego was condensed into four days and we switched bands every hour, all day long with few breaks. With the cornet, as with any brass instrument you jam into your face, endurance is always an issue. It takes many hours of practice to build up the muscles in the embouchure to sustain the pressure required to play. While I struggled with this for years, I loved the total immersion because I knew it would help. The ice machine, just down the hall from my room, helped make it possible as I returned several

times a day to ice down the lower part of my face to reduce the swelling.

We had been sent lead sheets for about ten tunes ahead of time, along with a CD demonstrating how the famous pros had played them – everyone from Bix Beiderbecke to Bob Crosby. As with Sacramento, the teachers were all excellent musicians. By now, I had been playing the cornet for a couple of years and had even invested in a new one, my little silver baby.

It was smaller than my other cornet and, as I nestled it close to my face, it felt almost cuddly.

The valves were fluid, the tone sublime.

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As we shifted to different rooms and band groupings, we eventually met all the teachers, each specializing in his or her own instrument.

One was the outstanding bass, guitar and banjo player, Katie Cavera. There had been no female instrumental teachers in Sacramento, which I found both surprising and disappointing. Katie was a dynamo, always encouraging and well prepared. She was incredibly, preternaturally cheerful. Whatever song or instrument she was playing, she was inevitably smiling, her short dark hair bouncing to the beat.

We were walking back to the lobby area after one of the rehearsals when she asked, “Have you considered starting your own band?”

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“Oh, no. My God. No. Why do you ask?”

ragtag group started meeting at my house for two hours on Monday mornings.

“You have good leadership skills. You’re a natural. They respect you. You’d be good at it.”

None of the other players knew anything about music theory. For the most part, they were guys who had learned by the seat of their pants and loved to play. By the second week together, I had recorded a CD containing music from some of the better Dixie groups and a short repertoire we were likely to learn. I handed each musician a copy and suggested they give it a listen. Or three.

“Not a chance. But thanks for the nice words.”

“Think about it.”

“OK, I will.”

And I did. Taking this on would solve some of the problems – like accessibility to the music and that wonderful word, control. I wouldn’t have to be dependent on finding a group, could choose the songs and even its members.

Having met most of these guys at the senior center, I knew they were all pretty old and very experienced playing their instrument. Only a few knew much about how Dixieland “worked.”

More than once I had to remind the constitutionally cranky trombone player that it was my job to play the melody the first time through, not his. He needed to improvise around me and develop some lines of his own. If he couldn’t read the chords, he could trust his good ear and just try it. We were all learning, of course, but this guy couldn’t catch on to any of it.

Back home in Palm Desert where I now lived, I had been sitting in on Wednesdays with a group of about 20-25 senior musicians. They’d sit in a circle and all play the same song, exchanging solos. I called it the “Geezer Jam” as I was one of the youngest there. It was seldom good but it gave me another chance to try out solos. I was the only woman in the circle so all these ancient vets practiced their chivalry on me, encouraging me to try solos on nearly every tune. After a while, though, the leader started calling me up to sing. Word had gotten around that I had been a pro. It became a deterrent to making the drive into Palm Springs.

“Luke, you can’t just read the notes.”

“I’m playing what’s on the page.”

“But you can’t do that. The ‘bone’ needs to outline the chords, not play the melody. You’ll get your solo time.”

I had met some nice people there, though, so I tapped a few and asked if they’d be interested in starting a Dixieland band. In short order, I found a trombone, clarinet, bass, banjo, piano, tuba and drummer – more than I needed for the bones of a band. Now I needed music.

Fortuitously, there was a workshop at the local college scheduled to teach the software program that would allow me to create my own lead sheets – Sibelius. I made it through the full four days, came home and cranked out a couple dozen lead sheets for the traditional songs associated with a band like ours – “Five Foot Two,” “When The Saints Go Marching In, “Bill Bailey,” and lots of Fats Waller tunes. The little

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Eventually, I found someone else more compatible with both the music and the rest of us. I kept adding tunes, searching for fun and interesting music to play. We started to come together musically and sometimes sounded pretty good even in those early months.

Acknowledging to myself I was into this up to my musical ears, I knew I needed to learn more about playing my horn and began the search for a teacher.

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My first call was to a local trumpet player. All I knew about him was that he played in gigs around town a lot and he lived close to me. I called, made the appointment for the lesson and headed to his house. When he opened the door, I tried not to gasp at his girth. He probably outweighed me by 250 pounds, at least. His body took up almost all of the space in the doorway, blocking out the room behind him. He stood for a minute wearing his cowboy hat and sunglasses before inviting me in. We walked into the living room and he gestured at me to sit on a couch. I saw no music stands, no indication he actually taught anything here. In fact, the darkened, musty room looked as if no one had even been in it for years. I wondered about the sunglasses, too, which stayed on his face.

because I couldn’t help looking at my watch. I knew this was not the guy. Was I not clear when we spoke on the phone? When he finally stopped, I reminded him.

“Siddown. You want lessons, huh?” It didn’t take long to see this was a man completely devoid of charm, much less social skills.

“I’m a Dixieland player.”

“I need improvisational work and help in developing my ability on the horn in general.”

No, I couldn’t. Dixie and bop have very little in common. We fooled around with melodies and what he considered options for maybe another 15 minutes. I wanted out of there.

“You can use this line with your band.”

“OK. What can you play?”

I hadn’t brought any music with me, thinking he must have some course materials ready for his students. He had only reminded me to bring my horn.

“Not much from memory. Let me try this.”

“Thanks for your time. What do I owe you?”

“Pay me whatever you think it was worth.”

Uh oh. Can I give him a bill for my lost time? I wrote a check and left quickly.

I fumbled with the melody line to “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby” and got through it.

My next teacher was for a guy who lived about an hour away near Temecula. His single-wide mobile home was set back off a muddy, pothole-covered rural street, on a large lot surrounded by a chain link fence. I had passed many foul-smelling dairy farms to reach this backwater and hoped this wasn’t an omen. I got out of the car and, as I approached the gate, three large and fierce-looking dogs came running at me, slobbery fangs at the ready. I stood outside the fencefor a minute talking to them, thinking they would back off but that didn’t happen. What now? I returned to my car

“OK, now improvise.”

“Well, Steve. That’s why I’m here. I need help with this.”

“OK,” he said, picking up his horn. “Try this.”

He proceeded to play an elaborate, Miles Davislike riff, vertically up and down the chords. It went on for about five minutes. I know this

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and called the guy several times but his line was busy. By this time, the dogs had settled down – I hoped – and I figured I should risk it.

They persisted in low, menacing growls as I approached the house, following me the whole way. I rang the doorbell and waited longer than I thought I should, given how small the house seemed to be. He answered it, still holding his phone to his ear. Looking like he had just gotten up without bothering to shower or shave, he gestured for me to enter. The micro house reeked of cats and stale piss but it was impossible to detect where the stench was coming from. I wasn’t sure if the rug was made of some kind of fuzzy woven material or if it hadn’t seen a vacuum in years. He got off the phone and pointed me to a very small “studio,” barely larger than a closet, closing the door behind me.

an email waiting for me – from him, asking when we could meet again. I sent back a polite “no, thank you” note, telling him it had been the long drive, etc. that made another “lesson” unwieldy.

For the next few days, he shot me several threatening and insulting messages about my lack of motivation, drive and talent.

“You’re not interested in learning to play,” was one of the accusations. Another one quickly followed, “You’ll never learn to play unless you develop good discipline.” I loved that one.

I wondered if he had successfully bullied his other students into taking lessons with him.

Another one down.

Still undaunted, I held out hope for the third teacher. We had met briefly during a jam session. He, too, lived some distance away but I had heard him play and we had talked a bit after our one meeting. He was a real teacher (what a novelty) and was taking new students. I didn’t

know how often I’d make the long drive but I hoped he could put me on a path I could continue on my own, perhaps meeting intermittently. He lived in a congested development in Hemet where all the houses looked alike. The community was clearly new as there was nothing around it but dirt, as if it had been set down on the soil having been constructed by Tinker Town in the back of someone’s garage.

There was a huge dark, peeling desk, sheet music and boxes stacked everywhere and a fetid stench of body odor so strong I started to breathe through my mouth. He moved around the obstacles to his cluttered desk and sat.

There was no chair for me, so I continued to stand. Was it the lack of space or lack of consideration?

“So you want to learn to play the horn, huh?”

I already knew this would be a one-shot deal, so I focused on a specific problem I was having to make good use of the time – endurance.

In his gewgaw congested living room, he brought out some exercises for me to try. There were two chairs next to two music stands. I was feeling a sense of relief that here was someone who had a plan, who knew how to teach. I had yet to see evidence of a disciplined curriculum anywhere else. Maybe this was it. As I put the horn up to my lips, I felt something brush against my right leg.

“Oh, don’t mind Seymour. He likes music.”

I looked down. Seymour looked to be some sort of very large multi-colored bird. As I looked at

“Yeah. My big problem now is my mouth gives out after about an hour.”

“Oh, shit. That’s an easy one.”

We talked for a while and not about why I had come. He played loud and extensive solos, not particularly well; I didn’t. Like the last lesson, this guy thought the key to learning was listening to him play. We were in that little room for about a half hour, about 25 minutes longer than I wanted to be. After I got home, there was

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His name was Jeff Purtle and on my computer screen, he looked to be in his early 30s, seated at a desk with his trumpet at the ready on its top. He resembled the music nerds from high school, the ones for whom music was the entire universe and, to my relief, I didn’t detect any discernible personality disorders, flying animals or barking dogs. He was classically trained under the famous Claude Gordon and set me up with the same traditional methods with which he had studied. I purchased all the books immediately and we began weekly sessions online. After each one, he emailed me the lesson plan for the following week. There were at least ten items each week, demanding my time and concentration. My skills and endurance improved exponentially and could be translated into the Dixieland group. We met weekly on Skype for about four years.

My goal with Jeff was to learn technique so he decided classical trumpet literature would be a good vehicle, coupled with the less melodic, tedious exercises. I enjoyed playing sonatas and symphonic music and found their melodies following me throughout the day. Because of this, I decided to attempt a classical music camp in Maine, Summer Keys, for a week in

August, pushing myself in new directions. It had just started a trumpet program and was eagerly seeking students.

him, another bird entered my range of sight to my left. Each came up to my knees, large enough for a sumptuous holiday feast for a family of four.

“They love it when I play. Sing right along with it.

Sometimes in tune. They won’t bother you.”

All I could do was laugh.

“They don’t bite, right – or peck?”

“Nah. They’re harmless. Just go ahead and try that first exercise, at the top of the page.”

With one eye on the distracting movement at my feet and the other on the page, I was able to get through most of the exercise with vocal help from the singing birds. We went on for almost an

hour. I couldn’t tell if they knew the exercises, but they did seem to keep up with the tempos, their little heads moving back and forth in syncopation. By the time we were done, the teacher was able to give me some helpful things to work on but even so it was another educational obstacle course. Where do these people come from? How did they become proficient without developing a sense of discipline?

After three strange and only marginally appropriate people, I was ready to hang it up and go it on my own again. Then on a trumpet blog, I saw an ad by a guy in South Carolina who was teaching online. I set up a time to meet him on Skype.

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Since it was a classical camp, I knew I should bring a trumpet, not my cornet. Trumpets and cornets come from the same metallic parentage but cornets are smaller with a different conical profile. They are mellower, as a rule. I preferred the cornet, not only due to its unique sound, but because it was associated with early Dixieland history. Louis Armstrong began his remarkable ascendance with a cornet. I had found its smaller size easier for my small hands to manage. Many have a snobbish attitude toward the instrument, preferring the sleeker and nobler ancestry of the trumpet.

Through email, the Summer Keys teacher

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assigned me Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto,

providing a challenging learning curve. I’d leave the cornet at home, bringing my newly acquired, shiny, gold Bobby Shew trumpet. I would perform the Concerto with a small chamber group composed of piano and cello in a large, resonant church on one of the last nights in camp. The traditional Colonial building looked like an illustration out of a history book and could accommodate way more than the population of the little town of Lubec. I wasn’t entirely convinced I could pull this off, much less in front of musical professionals.

Once in Lubec, however, failure was off the table. The little town was so scenic, so 19th century New England that I fell in love. The quaint bed and breakfast was a short walk from the school where I was taking daily lessons and, more to the point, had a restaurant where I enjoyed lobster nearly every night. It was a step back in time – friendly people, small-town access to everything, great food, incredible scenery. I often stopped to look at the blue-gray ocean and the lobster boats coming and going into port.

But I knew classical trumpet wasn’t what I wanted. I had set a goal for myself, an obstacle, really, and had achieved what I had wanted. But my gut was elsewhere.

All during this time, our band continued to rehearse weekly. Early on, I had named us The Bees’ Knees, after a commonly used phrase from the Roaring ‘20s. Though our now extensive repertoire consisted of tunes from many decades, most of the best stuff came out of that era. After a couple of months, I knew I had to include vocals, like it or not. My cornet chops weren’t well enough developed enough to sustain playing the two to three hour gigs we were starting to book. So, I’d sing a couple of songs during each set to rest the mouth. I have to admit I loved growling out “Hard Hearted Hannah” or “There’ll Be Some Changes Made” and trying out some of the catchy novelty tunes

I was finding after enthusiastic research.

My new trombone player also played the trumpet. He was competent but had never backed a singer, a unique skill. We spent quite a bit of time talking about how to do that and what I needed to hear from him, especially as I created more elaborate lead sheets, with modulations and tempo changes.

I only had two rehearsals with the cellist and pianist, which made me a little uneasy. I have always been an ardent rehearser, leaving nothing to chance. Even those went well, almost flawlessly. By the time it was performance night, I was in a perfect frame of mind.

“If you could just noodle behind me, maybe even down a third.”

“Like this?” And he’d play a riff.

I counted out the 32 bars before my first entrance, taking deep breaths. The church was so reverberant, I knew it could help cover any minor mistakes. As we approached the musical peak where my ability would be most tested, I told myself to relax and enjoy the moment. In truth, not much was on the line except my pride in mastery.

“Perfect. Fill it in when I finish a phrase. You know never to play the melody while I’m singing, right?”

“Got it.” And he always did. He loved doing it and so did I.

In addition to handling the musical end for the band and working on my own chops, each gig required setting up the physical bandstand and the sound system. We carried our own Bose equipment, which became more sophisticated as the years went by. On top of everything else, I

It went fine, which was a relief, of course. A large part of me was watching myself in this sacred setting, playing this music, appreciating the work that went into this accomplishment.

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was the booker and business manager. In short order, we were working senior centers, country clubs, community events and even an upscale shopping mall. It was fun but also stressful. If someone couldn’t make a rehearsal or a gig, it was my job to find a sub, not always easy on short notice.

The one person for whom I never had to find a replacement was Ted, our 92-year-old clarinet player. Ted was self-taught, learning by listening to records and playing along – just as I had done. He had been an advertising executive in his youth, funny and smart. He was addicted to bad puns, real groaners. On the lead sheet for “All of Me,” he penciled in “Olive Me,” the name of a favorite cousin.

Ted drove a sporty twoseat blue Thunderbird.

While he wasn’t the most consistent or in-tune player, he was always willing to take a solo and full of good will. I tried to select keys for our songs that had few sharps and flats, as I knew it would be easier for him to learn. As the years went on, Ted had more trouble with his hearing. When I counted off a tune, I’d turn my head toward him seated on my left, hoping he would hear it. If I assigned a solo, I’d tap him on his leg just before it started.

Sometimes he’d get lost in the middle so the rest of us would pick it up. It was unlikely our audiences knew what was going on. We all adored him.

We suffered many deaths during the band’s existence. In addition to the obvious personal loss, any turnover made life more difficult, having to educate new members, some of erratic ability. Ironically, it was the younger players who died first. I went to more funerals during those seven years than I had in my entire life. All of them had a good turnout, too, with musicians jamming afterwards. Seemed like a good way to go out to me.

Running a band turned out to be a weighty responsibility. I had signed on merely to have a place to play and learn but it became much more than that. When other circumstances of my life changed requiring more of my energies, I decided to pull the plug on the band. My trombone player said, “I’d come back any time you want to start up again.” The drummer thanked me for giving him a place to play. The bass player told me how much he enjoyed playing with the band. “You’ve been a wonderful leader. And singer. And player. What am I going to do on Mondays?”

The older members may have been relieved. Ted, though, wanted to keep his band book – the one that contained more than 250 lead sheets – so he could keep playing at home. A couple of the others went on to other bands.

I found out about Ted’s death when his neighbor called just three months later. He had left me his collection of tapes, records, music, recording equipment and all his clarinets. I knew The Bees’ Knees had meant a lot to him.

It turns out you can teach an old dog new musical tricks.

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It turns out you can teach an old dog

new musical tricks. Learning was just a minor, inconvenient problem in my quest; the major challenge was finding a reliable musical guide. It was all about learning, mastery and intense emotional engagement. I had waited almost half a century to fulfill my Dixieland dreams. I had played them out and was ready to move on.

For more information on author Pam Munter, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

SPRING2017

CREATIVE NONFICTION : GABBY CATALANO

Creaking Mattress

By Gabby Catalano

I

dinner meals. You bring his food, grab your own, and sit in front of the bedroom television. When watching men spend time in prison and move to different jail cells, you’re lucky that your father isn’t one of them. You hope.

t is evening, and he is pouring a glass in the kitchen. You are tired. You are slow.

You are going into your fourth year of college. Most people must think this of their fathers, but you promise he hides the ocean and waves behind his mouth.

Days turn into weeks. Weeks turns into months.

You make dinner every night to the sound of a creaking mattress. Dad is already drunk.

Sometimes you’re not sure if he understands.

The potatoes are boiling. You are tired, but you bring him his food. You try to smile, and you don’t want to make him upset, but for some reason, the words “I am sorry” never leave your tongue. Despite this, you turn on the television

Your dad is sick. He has alcohol addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and insomnia. It is June 2016 when it gets worse. You did not realize the consequences of one small drink, but you guess that’s what the word “accident” is for: the unforeseen, something that shouldn’t have encountered but did.

You go through the stages of anger without knowing it. No one ever warned you that having a sick family member can be like losing a person who is still standing beside you.

When you have finished college and started looking for work, you realize something has changed. You are pouring his drink. He likes enough orange slices to turn the liquid amber, and two heaping ice cubes. You knew this before, but now you are physically bringing it into his bedroom; he cannot stand up to pour it himself.

You make dinner every night to the sound of a creaking mattress. Dad is already moving around. Sometimes its mashed potatoes, broccoli, or beans for dinner. Other days it’s Spanish rice with just the right amount of turmeric. He likes it that way. At first, this is with excitement, a good feeling one gets when making something for someone they love. In fact, something you even dream about. It has to be done.

He likes watching crime shows, and soon, you do, too. Prison Break is the main event of your

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Image from Pixabay

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and watch Prison Break. Another inmate is complaining about his jail cell. Everything is silently forgotten, or forgiven. You pretend not to notice him coughing up his food while stumbling out of bed afterward.

and banging against the wall. It would be best to say nothing at all. You are crying, too. It is a new year: 2017.

You feel a little selfish to feel like this. You must be. Stop.

One day, you are out of turmeric somehow, so you steam potatoes. Purple potatoes in a large pan. Boiling water. You are 22 and still looking for work. You don’t want to watch TV. A raging anger has been feeding at you. You don’t like it, but it can’t go away.

Prison Break turns into watching TV all day. Dad is in pain. Evening dinners turn into leftover meals in the morning-and-then-in-the-afternoon.

You can’t take his pain away. How different he must feel about himself. How much happiness he tried to keep. How it must feel to cry while swallowing liquor in front of your child. How it must feel to not be anything you used to be.

You start going to bed at 8pm so that you don’t have to watch TV with dad. You don’t want to make his dinner. You say goodnight to dad who is moving around in his bed — the mattress is creaking again. You slam your door a little bit louder than necessary.

It doesn’t make you feel any less angrier. You find yourself crying into your pillow and yelling at your dad and his choices. He can probably hear you. It’s already the end of summer.

It’s almost a new year again now. You wake up to the sound of a creaking mattress, wash your face, pack your bag, and leave before dinner. Dad is walking into the kitchen when you leave. It’s evening. He’s making his own drink. He isn’t terrible, but it’s enough.

This will not be the constant. This life will not be the constant.

Dad is alive, but he isn’t the same. It’s in the way he moves — stumbles, scarily. He is still sick, and you don’t know what to do. Outings used to consist of going out to dinner and getting coffee together. Now it’s dad locked in his bedroom during the day, and you making sure he stays inside safely. You recycle his bottles and wash his glasses. No amount of time in this house can make you feel at home anymore.

You like to think that, you’ve become stronger. You’ve seen first-hand what addiction really is. It’s more like an obligation, or a necessary force.

Dad is still there. He still likes his drinks with orange slices and two heaping ice cubes. He still watches Prison Break and moves arounds in his bed. You’re the only thing not repeated. You will not be a repetition. You hope.

Everything you want and everything you anticipate is now without him in it. He is unbearable. Sometimes you get angry again, but while you wait outside of his bedroom to make sure he eats — you hear him tearing out his hair

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For more information on author Gabby Catalano, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

SPRING2017

CREATIVE NONFICTION : AMY WHITEHOUSE

Safe

By Amy Whitehouse

I

squinted my eyes against the strong Florida sun, glancing off the waves in front of us.

I was five years old and terrified to go into the surf, but Dad hoisted me up on his bare shoulders and strode toward the water. I loved it when I got to ride on his shoulders.

“Don’t worry, I gotcha’,” Dad said.

“But I don’t wanna go,” I said.

“I know, sweetheart. We’ll just go in a little way. I won’t let you fall.”

“Don’t go deep!” I pleaded.

He didn’t even pretend to drop me but held on strong to my legs draped over his chest.

Perched up high, it seemed like the water went on forever. I imagined the land called China at the far end of the water.

Mother had just been telling me about China. Before Dad showed me the water, Mother and I were making sand castles.

She had said if I dug in the sand deep enough I’d reach China with my hands.

I had imagined a child at the beach in China digging too, and our fingers touching.

Building a sand castle and digging in the cool wet sand is relaxing, but going into that immense body of water is frightening.

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And now, we were entering that water.

I looked down and saw the water rising higher on Daddy’s legs and then watched it whoosh away. Whoosh! And a few seconds later, Whoosh!

As we continued making our way out, I felt the spray reach my legs. I shivered at the coldness; but the farther we went, the more the water felt welcoming on my hot skin. Before I knew it, we were pretty deep and I was mesmerized by the inand-out motion of the undertow.

“Wanna get in the water now?” Dad asked me.

“May…be…” I ventured.

He lowered me off his shoulders so that he was hugging me and let my feet touch the tops of the waves. He must’ve sensed my body begin to relax and lowered me a little more so that the water was up to my bathing suit.

Before I knew it, I was ducking my head in and out of that dark green mystery of wetness.

My dad and I were happy. All was right with the world.

It was much later that it became complicated…

For more information on author Amy Whitehouse, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : ILYSSA GOLDSMITH

On Wearing the Cloche

By Ilyssa Goldsmith

P

icture yourself somewhere else, out of time, in a luxurious ballroom. The sound of the jazz band is sweet with a hint of salt, its loud brass notes spin their softer tunes. You’re watching the tender sway of lovers and admire them from the comfort of your stool. Wear the cloche and you’ll be someone new.

yourself, tilting up your wide-brimmed hat into the perfect position.

Here we are back again. The hat is weightless; it’s become your armor for the passing gestures you make. Linger in a seat, waiting for someone’s bluer eyes to meet yours. Find yourself lingering somewhere that rests above your short-lived life. Take another sip of what’s in front of you and live as an artist, a lover, a poet—the dreamer you’ve always longed to be —but understand this first.

Take the laced, baby pink hat out for tea. Feel the crumbles of the light pastry against the corners of your lips. You’re not alone here; you find yourself talking with other classy ladies like yourself. Here you share laughs and smile from the corner of your eyes, while the hat creates a subtle veil over your cheeks. Watch yourself as you pout and pucker your red lips in the powder room; lace gloves are on and you refresh

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The cloche can never be you, that elegant person of ease lingering at the bar. Behind her smile, another series of questions lie. When you must retire the cloche due to its faded, aged wear, who will you be then? And on that day when you find yourself hatless, lacking the

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glamour you so desperately seek, you will feel lonely, unknown in a world that can never bear the girl you yearn to be.

You’ve gone incognito. A hatless wearing sham. Lost touch with the dancing girl you used to be. At the tea room, the pastry has gone stale, flaking into a beige blob of nothingness. Sickly sweet. Look to the space above your head and the corners of your hidden face.

There lies your set of unsure, questioning eyes.

How did you mark yourself in this life so well? When did the cloche disguise your twin personality—a façade of a person you could never be? Just nestled beneath the surface, she lies, a ghost of a smile peering out from somewhere old.

Warning: if you wear the cloche, you might lose your face. Adorned in compliments, your vision encapsulates the surface of that black brim.

Oh, you cloche-wearers, you lonely, introverted people, the hat you wear is never just an accessory for temporary use.

Know that it is you, your culminating desire, your unyielding love all tied to another girl, a spectacle of a person you are waiting to be.

For, this image, this magical fantasy, is just an artifact known as the cloche. So, look to your face, chin curving down yet again, and your lady concerned eyes.

For more information on author Ilyssa Goldsmith, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this section.

Goodbye, Cloche.

I’ve found someone new.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : ROME JOHNSON

Don’t Kiss the Preacher’s Daughter

By Rome Johnson

I

driving across Canada and the American Northwest, seeing nothing but rocky mountainous terrain, sleeping in strange hotels or on the ground in our tent. No one for company but my parents and three-year-old brother, I thought for sure that I was the loneliest girl alive.

n church she looked like an angel. White and pink dresses and flowing blonde hair, sitting between her sisters as their dad led service.

She knew her verses verbatim, and all the hymns in Sunday school. On the cul-de-sac, she was wild. She always had a lie on her tongue and a plot up her sleeve, and a way of making you do what she wanted.

Her family was the third on the block to greet us, our next-door neighbors beating them to the punch. Her father invited us to the church he was Chaplain of, and talked work and such with my father. Her mother and my mother talked about whatever it is stay at home military wives

In two years of living by each other, as other kids moved in and out of the revolving door that was Scott Air Force Base, she talked me into things I never in my twelve years of life thought possible.

She convinced me of many improbabilities, including that she was psychic, her father was undercover, and her mother wrote the Hannah Montana theme song. But the biggest lie she ever told me was that I could trust her. Her greatest plot was breaking my heart.

We met in the summer of 2004, the week my family moved into our duplex on Scott Air Force Base. I had just said good bye to the best friend I had ever had, Kaitlin. At the time all I felt was loss. It was the middle of summer, school would not begin for another month and I expected not to make any new friends until then. I hated the sticky humid air of Illinois; it was unbearable after the three years of living in the chill of southern Alaska. I had spent a miserable two weeks

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Kaitlin and Rome in elementary school

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CREATIVE NONFICTION : ROME JOHNSON

talked about, I wasn’t sure because I had seen what I hoped would be my saving grace. A girl, a girl my age! She even looked like my old best friend, skinny and long faced, with a missing front tooth and shoulder-length blond hair. They even had the same name! I couldn’t believe my luck; somehow my very best friend must have followed me across the country and infiltrated a new family!

of my hot pink bedroom walls that she suggested we kiss.

“Like practice,” She said, “for when we want to kiss boys, so we know how to do it.”

I would later learn that she was wrong. When I would kiss my first boy at fifteen it would be an underwhelming experience, but kissing her was not like that at all. It was a quick kiss, a few seconds at most, but it was exciting. We both could sense, under that innocent kiss, something forbidden. We pulled apart giggling hands over our mouths, shocked at what we had just done. The rest of that night she would ask me to do it again and again, at random intervals between playing with Barbie dolls and Polly Pockets and running downstairs to grab snacks and take over the computer to watch “Shoes” and “Apocalypse Pony” online for the tenth time. I told her we would get caught, but she assured me that we wouldn’t. I would give in, saying “Okay, one more” and pecking her once more on the lips. When we went to sleep I kissed her good night and spooned her in my queen sized bed, feeling sneaky and giddy and something else I couldn’t quite define.

Of course, she was not my best friend reincarnate, but I quickly decided that she would do. She was a year younger than I but acted older, possibly a side effect of sharing a bedroom with her high school age sister. She liked all the same things I did, trampolines and Disney channel original shows and catching fireflies.

She also liked tricking people and being mean, but I was never her victim and so I never truly noticed. It was only after three years that I would finally catch on. Three years of her convincing me to give her hand-me-down clothes because they looked better on her, and I would convince my mother that I gained weight and they didn’t fit me anymore. Three years of telling her about crushes and pretending to believe her when she said she had no idea how everyone else knew about them. Three years of humoring her when she convinced me that she was the pretty one and the sporty one and the funny one between us, I could be the smart one she would say.

When we woke up my overtired, sugar rushed, pubescent excitement was replaced with guilt and fear. As a child my parents had always told me there would be no dating, no kissing, until I was at least 16. I had broken their rule. I was a bad daughter. She tried to kiss me again and I pushed her away. I told her we couldn’t do it again, that it was wrong. I didn’t know at the time what she must’ve thought I meant, that kissing a girl was wrong. I grew up with parents who made it clear from the second I learned what being gay meant that there was nothing wrong with homosexuality. I didn’t realize at the time that not everyone was so open minded, that her parents had drilled into her head that being gay was a mortal sin. With those few words, “this is wrong” I reminded her that she was a sinner now. I wouldn’t realize what I’d done until years later, I didn’t know that this

It would take a night of juvenile experimentation, a six month separation period, and the arrival of a new girl on the block for me to realize how blind I had been.

It all started at a sleepover, the summer between sixth and seventh grade. She snuck over a CD of songs we weren’t allowed to listen to, and taught me how to booty pop to Sir Mixalot. Our developing bodies must have looked ridiculous, all gangly and misshapen, but we didn’t know that. In our minds we were rock stars, sexy and beautiful and all grown up. It was there, shaking our hips to “Baby Got Back” in the confinement

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would ever be something that could be considered sinful and damnable.

We didn’t mention it again, but I knew that it was our little secret. Or at least I thought it was. She was odd for the next few days, making excuses not to talk to me when all the neighborhood kids would go out to play. I missed her, and wondered if I had hurt her feelings. I was thinking of just that while in bed one night when her mother and father showed up at our home, late in the evening. My parents came into my room just as I was about to turn out the light and go to sleep, a look of concern across their young still young faces. They wanted me to know, she had told her parents. She was terrified; she thought that she was going to hell.

Her parents had felt obligated to tell my own that this had happened, and that she wouldn’t be allowed to come to my house again for a while.

My parents wanted me to know that they were not upset, that this was a totally normal thing between girls our age. They wanted me to know that whatever this was, an experiment or an expression of who I really was, they still loved and accepted me.

Kaitlin and Rome in college

The two of them became a pair of pubescent monsters; the kind I thought only existed in bad teen movies. When I would speak, they would shout over me. When I walked by they would stumble and shout that I was causing an earthquake.

When I saw her again I asked if we were still friends, and she said that of course we were.

She said we just needed time apart, that she needed to sort herself out. I didn’t understand, I didn’t realize the gravity of what had been just a night of girlish fun to me. I didn’t understand that when she said we were still friends she was lying.

When our parents said we could be around each other again, I knew that it was too late. Hannah had her in her clutches. I realize now that Hannah did to her what she had done to me, making her think that she was not worthy of being Hannah’s friend, that having Hannah’s approval was the most important aspect of her life.

When school began again she had a new friend, an older girl who just moved in up the street.

This new girl, Hannah, was an alpha girl. Hannah could make anyone feel small, insignificant. My mother said it was because her parents were overly strict so she had to make up for that by being mean to kids, but I sometimes think that she was just mean in her bones.

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I recall the day I knew there was no hope left for

our friendship. We were at her father’s church, a potluck dinner we went to every Wednesday. I was sat at a long table, covered with a thin vinyl

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tablecloth, munching on a piece of fried chicken with a sugar cookie waiting beside me. I don’t remember the words Hannah said when she approached me, but I remember the meaning.

feeling like I may have actually gotten the last word this time.

I want to say that I don’t think of her anymore, that she is now just the topic of a fun story about how my first lesbian experience was with a preacher’s daughter. I want to say that losing my best friend in that way didn’t mess me up.

Put down the food, you’re too fat to eat. At the time I believed this, it was the go to insult for anyone trying to make fun of me. Looking back I wish I were fat now like I was fat then, a cute and chubby layer of baby fat over an otherwise fit body. Despite being far from huge, I was deemed fat and that’s what I was called.

But if any of that were true I wouldn’t think that this was worth so much of your time. The truth is, I still think of her. In many ways, she shaped who I am. She was the first person to ever teach me to never let others walk over me. She was the first person to show me that no, not everyone is nice, and you can’t make friends with somebody just by telling them to stop being mean. She was my first heart break, both in losing a friend and feeling the scorn of someone I now realize was one of my first crushes on a girl.

That day was the day I had had enough. I stood up and demanded to know why they were mean to me, why they tried so hard to make me feel bad. I may not remember all the specifics of that moment, but I remember every second of the response to my question.

My former best friend, my angel, smirked at me.

Her lip curled in a manner of distaste I knew she saved for only those whom she thought were the complete scum of the earth. She scoffed and said, her for cold and smooth as a sheet of black ice, “Because you make it so easy.”

I don’t know if she thinks of me, if she even remembers me. In writing this, I had actually hoped to find out. I turned to social media, hoping to find out where she is now, hoping to finish this story with a tale of how I gave her a piece of my mind or how I saw where she is now and let go of my grudges. I did find her, the internet is wonderful like that, but I could not bring myself to send her a message. I can tell you she has a boyfriend, and that she is a Facebook fan of such figures as Donald Trump and Tomi Lahren. I’m not sure if I will ever send her a message, I’m not sure if I need to.

I never spoke to her directly again, I avoided her and Hannah whenever I could. I always thought, I could tell everyone. I could have told her new friends all her secrets; how she kissed me and then cried to her dad, how she had a book about puberty in her room with the pages that had pictures of breasts bookmarked, how she stuffed her bra. I don’t know if I stayed silent out of fear of retaliation, or some oddly placed loyalty to her, but I never whispered a word about her to anyone.

I wish that I had more of a wrap up for you, reader, but unfortunately that isn’t how life goes.

If this were one of the teen movies I loved when I was eleven, when she and I were still friends, this would have ended with her and Hannah having something gross dumped on them in public and I would laugh and walk away with my new friends who were way hotter and nicer than them. They would stomp their feet and know they were defeated, a song by the Plain White Tees or Kelly Clarkson would play, and I would never think of them again.

In 2008, I moved away from Illinois to the mountains of Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2009, she appeared as a friend request on my Facebook. She and her family were in Germany now. Her profile was a combination of rap lyrics, bible verses, and updates to her relationship status. She still thought that heavy powder blue eye shadow was a good look for her and still had her same long thin face. I deleted her,

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But this was not a movie, and there was no messy revenge and no smooth conclusion. I did make better friends. I reunited with my real best friend, that she was only ever a shadow of, and when I kissed that best friend there was no fallout. I often think of how similar and yet so different these two girls were.

safe and at home simply being in her presence.

Katie taught me to have standards, Kaitlin meets them all.

I want to thank my middle school heart breaker, without her I don’t know if I would be where I am now. She was mean and spiteful and pushy, but I grew up because of her. I learned a new bit about who I was because of her. So, Katie, if you somehow manage to ever read this, thank you. I hope that you are doing well, I am.

How I fell so hard for them both, one when I was eleven and the other when I was fifteen. How the first, my first crush and first kiss, ended in such cruelty and sadness. The second, the best and original, I’ll be marrying in the winter of this year.

Where she was cruel, bitter, and disloyal, my bride-to-be is generous and kind, and would choose me over anyone or anything every time.

For more information on author Rome Johnson, please visit our Contributors Page at the end of this

While Katie wanted to use me to make herself feel better, Kaitlin knows how to make me feel

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section.

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CREATIVE NONFICTIONCONTRIBUTORS Pam Munter Pam Munter has authored several books and a couple dozen articles, mostly about dead movie stars. She’s a retired clinical psychologist and former performer enrolled in the low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at the University of California at Riverside/Palm Desert. Pam is working on a deconstructed memoir and short stories based on old Hollywood. Her essays have appeared in Manifest-Station, The Coachella Review, Lady Literary Review, NoiseMedium, The Creative Truth and Angels Flight—Literary West. Her play, “Life Without,” opened the staged reading season at Script2Stage2Screen in Rancho Mirage, CA., and was a semi-finalist in the Ebell of LA Playwriting Competition.

Gabby Catalano Gabby Catalano is a Mass Communication and Media Studies student at Arizona State University. She is an essayist, creative writer, and digital media artist from San Diego, CA. Her writing has been published in FOAM, LA CANVAS, In Parentheses, BUST, The Fbomb, and more.

Amy Whitehouse A visual artist, writer, and piano teacher, Amy Whitehouse has lived in the Valley for twenty-four years and considers Arizona home. Recently she attended the San Miguel de Allende Writers’ Conference where she met favorite authors such as Mary Karr and Billy Collins. Amy is currently working on a memoir of growing up in the South in the 60s. Art lovers around the globe have collected her paintings, many of which can be seen at AmyWhitehousePaintings.com.

Ilyssa Goldsmith Ilyssa Goldsmith is a junior pursuing a communication degree and a Creative Writing Certificate on ASU’s West campus. In 2016, two of her poems were published for the first time in Canyon Voices. Although she has yet to publish her longer works traditionally, she continues to write creative novels and short stories in her free time.

Also, she enjoys photography, both film and digital, and if she is not doing any of these pursuits, then she is most likely sipping tea, reading Leaves of Grass, and enjoying conversations with fellow college students.

Rome Johnson Rome Johnson is a senior at ASU, studying Philosophy, Religion, and Society. Rome is President of ASU West's LGBTQIA club, Spectrum, and a member of the Live Poets Society. Before ASU, she studied theatre in New York City, and now enjoys writing, acting, and directing for stage in her free time. At home, Rome is the ongoing Harry Potter Trivia champion, a toddler-talk translator, and holds the record for longest kitten playtime session. She is also an active follower of local, national, and world politics and hopes to one day have a seat in the United States Senate.

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SCRIPTS

Benjamin Graber Bound for Justice

Alexis Watkins Under a Starless Sky

Artwork by Vanya Allison (See Art section for full image)

SCRIPTS : BENJAMIN GRABER

Bound For Justice

By Benjamin Graber

Characters: BECKY: Elderly Eastern European Woman

SAMUEL: Elderly Eastern European Man

ANONYMOUS GERMAN SOLDIER: Twenty-something Nazi Soldier

Setting: Shortly after the fall of the Warsaw Ghetto; The interior of a fast moving rail cattle car transport bound for Auschwitz.

Performance Notes: The setting should be simple and realistic. The soldier is bound and gagged but not blindfolded. His expressions are part of the action. The original play script was written in my version of a Yiddish accent. This final version is written in plain English, however the actors’ use of a Yiddish dialect is crucial to the action of the play.

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SCRIPTS : BENJAMIN GRABER

AT RISE: Lights come up on interior of the cattle car on a freight train. Becky an elderly woman in ragged clothes with a yellow Jewish star is trying to awaken Sam an elderly Jewish man also wearing the yellow star sewn onto his clothing.

In the corner of the cattle car is a German soldier, in his twenties. He is bound and gagged.

BECKY: Sam, Sam, you son of mule wake up! (She begins to beat on him. He begins to awaken.)

SAMUEL: What? What is going on? I drink a little too much schnapps and am sleepy. For this you beat on me. (He comes around.) What? What is this? Where are the others?

BECKY: I don't know. You, the one who always has all the answers, now you’re asking me?

SAMUEL: I’m confused.

BECKY: I can't help you. I just woke up myself. You were still asleep, everyone else was gone. The door was half open like that. And he was there. Just like that. Tied up.

SAMUEL: The train is going very fast. Can you tell what time it is?

BECKY: I left my clock in Warsaw. Dummkopf. Of course I can't tell what time it is.

SAMUEL: Before we all tried to go to sleep, the rebbe was saying that by morning we would be at Auschwitz.

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BECKY: The rebbe was always saying things he didn't know anything about.

When you are a rebbe, you get to say such things.

SAMUEL: All the same, is it close to dawn?

BECKY: God of our fathers, what did I do to deserve such a sch-la-miel? It is dark. How can I tell if it is close to dawn? If I saw the sun, it would be dawn. It could be dawn in thirty minutes, it could be dawn in two hours. Who cares?

SAMUEL: But where are the others? We need to know.

BECKY: Well, maybe we do and maybe we don't. What we need to do, is get off this train.

SAMUEL: You mean jump?

BECKY: No. I mean fly. Dummkopf, of course I mean jump.

SAMUEL: What about him?

BECKY: Who cares about him? He’s a German soldier. What are you asking?

That we should take him with us? That is even more stupid than you usually are.

SAMUEL: This is no time to be insulting me.

BECKY: What is different about this time?

SAMUEL: Becky, the only good thing about going to die in the camps was no more to hear you screaming at me.

BECKY: The last four months. Before the ghetto fell, did I scream?

SAMUEL: No because if you did the soldiers would have found and killed us.

BECKY: Exactly. Now the only soldier is him. So, I can scream at you to my heart’s content. You think I forget about you schtupping the Katz’s maid? You haven’t begun to hear the end of my screaming at you.

SAMUEL: That was four years ago, before they moved us into the ghetto.

Besides, do we really have to talk about this now?

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BECKY: (Becky shrugs). Okay, let’s jump.

SAMUEL: First we must kill him.

BECKY: He is an unarmed man. He is no threat to us. It would be wrong to kill him.

SAMUEL: He kills Jews.

BECKY: You don’t know that.

SAMUEL: He transports them to death camps.

BECKY: Yes. But we do not know if he does anymore. Did you see him kill any Jews yet?

SAMUEL: I saw the big dumb one kill Moshe the baker because he didn’t get on the train fast enough.

BECKY: The big fat one was not this one. He has been on the train since we left.

He has not even hit anyone. That is a good German.

SAMUEL: Maybe he had the quota of killing or beating Jews this month. All Germans kill Jews.

BECKY: You don’t know that. In fact, you know differently. What about all the Germans that tossed food into the Ghetto.

SAMUEL: They were Polish.

BECKY: Polish, German. They all have been killing Jews. But some don’t.

Maybe he is one who does not.

SAMUEL: If we kill him he won’t be around for any one to worry to know if he would kill Jews.

BECKY: I say to you, Samuel, if we kill him we are no better than him.

SAMUEL: And I say again to you, my darling Becky, that if he lives he will at the very least transport more Jews.

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SCRIPTS : BENJAMIN GRABER

BECKY: So? If it is not him, it will be another German soldier.

SAMUEL: This one is not just another German soldier. He is on a transport.

Transporting Jews is his job.

BECKY: But we have no way of knowing if he has killed any Jews. And even so, it is against our religion. It is written in the Torah. Thou shalt not kill.

SAMUEL: You killed German soldiers. I have killed German soldiers. Before the ghetto fell, we were both happy to kill German soldiers. How is this any different?

BECKY: You know it is different. He is unarmed. He is bound and gagged.

SAMUEL: I do not understand why the others did not kill him. I think they did not kill him, because they were in a hurry to jump off the train.

BECKY: The rebbe was with them.

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SAMUEL: If the rebbe was so concerned with human lives, why did he not make sure that we were awoken, so we could escape with them?

BECKY: You don't know that they have escaped. All we know is that they are not here.

SAMUEL: What do you mean? They have jumped.

BECKY: Did you see them jump?

SAMUEL: Of course not! If I saw them jump I would have been awake. If you were still asleep, I would wakened you and we would have jumped with them.

BECKY: My point exactly. Why did they not wake us up?

SAMUEL: We are both sound sleepers. Maybe they couldn’t.

BECKY: Oy veh! Why did God give me the stupidest Jew around.

SAMUEL: Stop already with the insults.

BECKY: Who knows when I will get another chance. (Beat.)

BECKY (CONT): Maybe it’s a test. In the Mishna and the Kabbalah they were always talking about tests.

SAMUEL: How do you know? Women don’t study Torah or the Holy books.

BECKY: That will be the first thing we change after this war.

SAMUEL: Are you going to go on and on about that now? If we get to Palestine, you can organize all the women. Right now we need to kill this German soldier and get off this train!

BECKY: No. You know what I say is true. You and the other men have talked about it many times on Shabbas, around the table, when it was time to gather a minion at our house.

SAMUEL: Do you really want to have this discussion now?

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BECKY: Do you really want to jump off a train if you don’t know if it is a test or not? You have to admit, this is very strange. Before we go to sleep, a full box car of Jews and him. Now. You and I and him. Do you really think that all those people disarmed him, tied him up, organized to jump off the train, and we didn’t hear a thing?

SAMUEL: What else am I supposed to believe?

BECKY: That it’s a test.

SAMUEL: What would be the point of the test?

BECKY: This is good, yes? This is what it will be like after the war. In Palestine.

Men and women discussing the holy books and the tests together.

SAMUEL: BECKY!! This is not the time or place. We must kill him and jump.

BECKY: No. Maybe I will jump. But I will not kill him, or let you kill him.

SAMUEL: What are you afraid of? If you know so much about what us men talk about, you know we don’t believe in the goyisha Hell? No eternal damnation. No devil or Lucifer. Ashes to ashes, end of story.

BECKY: You see this is good. We should have been having this discussion a long time ago.

SAMUEL: Becky- us men never could agree about anything. We always argued.

Every one had a different point.

BECKY: Didn’t the rebbe make with a proclamation?

SAMUEL: The rebbe argued just like the rest of us. That’s what we did.

BECKY: So maybe that’s why they left him?

SAMUEL: What are you saying?

BECKY: We are a test. We have to decide, and if something happens to us then maybe the goyim are right.

SAMUEL: ENOUGH! I will kill him, and you can judge your experiment.

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BECKY: No. I cannot allow it. If you kill him and I do nothing it is the same as if I kill him.

SAMUEL: You have been listening too long to the Mishna arguments. Okay. I give up. I have no idea where the others are, what the rebbe would say. I only know one thing. If we stay we are dead. Come take my hand, we will jump together.

BECKY: Okay. (They walk towards the door hand in hand. At the door they crouch to jump and Sam pushes Becky out the door. He walks quickly over to the soldier and without a word snaps the German soldier’s neck, returns to the door, and jumps.)

For more information on author Benjamin Graber, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SCRIPTS : ALEXIS WATKINS

Under a Starless Sky

By Alexis Watkins

Characters: SAM- A 20 year old astronomy major

DAVE- A 20 year old waiter

AIDEN- Dave’s older brother

Setting: Late at night on the roof of an apartment building in New York.

Performance Notes: The setting is the roof of a New York apartment building at night. SAM and DAVE stand on opposite sides of the roof, DAVE leaning on the ledge, while SAM packs equipment into a box next to a telescope. DAVE crosses from one side of the roof to the access door, hands in his pockets, clearly agitated. SAM crosses from the other side with his box. The two meet at the door. DAVE tries, unsuccessfully, to open it.

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SCRIPTS : ALEXIS WATKINS

DAVE: (Dave pulls on the door with no results.) It’s stuck.

SAM: What do you mean it’s stuck?

DAVE: What do you mean, what do I mean? It’s stuck. I don’t know how much clearer I can get.

SAM: Let me try.

DAVE: (DAVE steps aside, gesturing to the door.) Go right ahead, but I’m telling you, it won’t open.

SAM: (SAM pulls on the door with no results. Upon seeing DAVE’s expression he tries again, only to fail. His arms fall to his sides in defeat.) It’s not opening.

DAVE: Well no shit, Sherlock.

SAM: Oh fuck you, Watson. If it weren’t for you we wouldn’t even be in this mess.

DAVE: You’re blaming me for the door being stuck?

SAM: Well, I’m not the one that slammed it when I came through, am I?

DAVE: Oh, so now it’s my fault that this building fucking sucks!

SAM: No. I’m just saying that since you live here, you should know better than to slam the door!

DAVE: (DAVE opens his mouth to speak, but realizing he has no defense closes it.)

SAM: That’s what I thought. Now if you’ll excuse me. (SAM picks up his box of equipment and returns to his telescope in a huff.)

DAVE: (DAVE returns to the spot where he was leaning, muttering angrily under his breath. After a moment he looks back at SAM, then back at the city. He sighs indignantly.) Ugh, dammit. (DAVE crosses to the other side of the roof where SAM is sitting and fiddling with his telescope; coughing to get his attention.)

SAM: What do you want?

DAVE: I, uh… ah… I wanted to apologize… I guess.

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SAM: For? DAVE: For slamming the door, you were right. If I hadn’t slammed it we wouldn’t be in this mess. So… uh… yeah… sorry, or whatever. I’ve lived here long enough to know that you shouldn’t slam that door.

SAM: Look, it’s alright, I kinda overreacted back there. You seemed pretty pissed when you came up here anyway.

DAVE: (Rubbing the back of his neck.) I guess just needed some air. I got into a fight with my brother. (to himself) Again.

SAM: (Apprehensively.) I know. I live next door to you, and the walls in this building are really thin. I can hear everything.

DAVE: (DAVE looks at SAM in shock.) You… what?

SAM: I can hear you guys arguing. (Pause.) All the time.

DAVE: Oh. (DAVE sits down next to SAM, not looking at him. An awkward silence falls over the two. SAM attempts to break the tension by speaking up.)

SAM: Why do you let him talk to you like that?

DAVE: (Without looking at SAM.) Like what?

SAM: You know what. He- he called you a… fag.

DAVE: He’s my brother. (Shrugging.) He’s family. And besides, it’s not like I’m gay, or anything.

SAM: If you say so. (Pause.) Y’know it’s one thing to be stupid enough to get us stuck up here, but now you’re gonna sit there, imply that I’m stupid or something, and tell me it’s OKAY for him to talk to you like that.

DAVE: (Defensively.) You’re not me. You don’t know anything about me. And you DEFINITELY don’t know my brother.

SAM: (SAM pauses, thinking for a moment.) I’ve been there, you know? When I came out to my parents my mom was as far from okay with it as you could imagine. (Laughing.) I used to tell people that she’d call me cruel names because that was her way of showing affection.

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SCRIPTS : ALEXIS WATKINS

DAVE: What did you do?

SAM: I was still in high school, so there wasn’t much I could do. I did get lucky though. As soon as my Nana found out what was going on she insisted that I move in with her.

DAVE: I don’t get how you could be so strong. I mean, how did you even…

SAM: How did I what?

DAVE: (DAVE finally looks at SAM.) Tell them.

SAM: I don’t really know. I guess I was just tired of hiding who I was from them. I needed to tell them, and I thought they would understand… (Pause.) Why do you stay?

DAVE: (DAVE shakes his head) I can’t afford to leave. That’s what we usually fight about anyway. He always wastes money on the most useless junk and then still insists that I help pay his half of the rent. (Pause.) Of course when he realizes that he’s got no defense he just resorts to attacking me.

SAM: (SAM places a gentle hand on DAVE’s shoulder and gives him a reassuring smile.) It might take some time, but I’m sure things will get better. They always do.

DAVE: Yeah… maybe… (DAVE stands and nods towards the box of SAM’s equipment trying to change the subject.) What’s all this shit anyway?

SAM: You’re changing the subject.

DAVE: Yeah, so?

SAM: (SAM sighs and shakes his head with a smirk.) It’s my astronomy equipment.

DAVE: (Curiously.) Why the fuck do you have astronomy equipment?

SAM: Because I am secretly a Russian spy and am collecting intelligence for the Soviet Union.

DAVE: What?

SAM: (Chuckling.) It’s a joke, I’m joking.

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SCRIPTS : ALEXIS WATKINS

DAVE: Oh, right. A joke. So about the telescope.

SAM: I’m an astronomy major, but I mostly just use this stuff for stargazing.

DAVE: What stars? You can’t see any stars in New York City.

SAM: Not without a telescope you can’t. Take a look. (DAVE steps around SAM and takes a look through the telescope.)

SAM: That’s Ursa Major, and this… (SAM reaches around DAVE’s side and makes an adjustment to the telescope.) …is Ursa Minor.

DAVE: Awesome. So what am I looking at?

SAM: Tch. The big dipper and the little dipper.

DAVE: That’s pretty cool. You’re really into stars and shit, huh?

SAM: I guess you could say that. I come up here all the time. This is nothing like my Nana’s house in the country though, without all the light pollution you can see everything.

DAVE: That sounds awesome.

SAM: It really is. The night sky is actually really beautiful when you can see all the stars.

DAVE: Hey, maybe we could call someone. Y’know, get them to open the door for us.

SAM: Unfortunately, my phone conveniently died about ten minutes ago. What about yours?

DAVE: (Grimacing.) I left it downstairs.

SAM: Ah. (SAM and DAVE look away from each other, trying to find something to say. The wind picks up and blows over the two, sending a shiver through DAVE.)

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SCRIPTS : ALEXIS WATKINS

DAVE: (To himself.) Why does it always have to be so damn cold up here?

SAM: Here, take my jacket. (SAM takes his jacket off and begins to put it around DAVE.) DAVE: That’s okay, you’ll get cold.

SAM: It’s fine, really. The cold doesn’t bother me that much anyway.

DAVE: Well then if you insist, Elsa. (DAVE pulls SAM’s jacket on as SAM laughs and nudges him playfully.)

DAVE: Y’know, dude, it’s been really great talking to you, but I don’t even know your name.

SAM: My name is Sam. DAVE: Sam. It’s nice to officially meet you Sam, I’m Dave.

SAM: I know.

DAVE: Right… (Pause, biting his lip.) So, uh, are you a banana? Because I find you a-peeling.

SAM: (Slightly confused.) Was that a… Are- are you hitting on me?

DAVE: Maybe…

SAM: (Laughing.) That was pathetic. (BOTH laugh, relieving any tension left between them. DAVE recovers enough to speak first.)

DAVE: Oh, like you could do any better.

SAM: It might not be great, but I can definitely do better than you.

DAVE: Then let’s hear it.

SAM: (SAM thinks for a moment.) Oh I got one! (He moves closer to DAVE, putting a finger on his chest and looking him in the eyes.)

SAM (cont.): If I had a star for every time you brightened my day, I'd have a galaxy in my hand.

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SCRIPTS : ALEXIS WATKINS

DAVE: (Blinks.) That’s pretty good.

SAM: (SAM gives DAVE a cheesy grin.) I know! (BOTH laugh once more. After their laughter dies DAVE decides to apologize to SAM again.)

DAVE: I really am sorry about getting us stuck up here, man. And for all the noise my brother and I cause.

SAM: Seriously, it’s okay. Besides, your arguments give me more of a reason to come up here anyway.

DAVE: I still feel really shitty for it though.

SAM: Well you can start making it up by helping me get that door open.

DAVE: Deal. (BOTH cross the roof to the access door. DAVE begins pulling on the handle, trying his best to get the door open.)

DAVE: So, I was thinking that maybe we could, uh … I don’t know, like get some coffee or something? (DAVE slips off the door handle, stumbling backward.)

SAM: (SAM catches DAVE from behind, his arms arounds DAVE’s waist.) I’d love to. (The roof access door suddenly opens, with DAVE’s brother standing on the other side. SAM and DAVE freeze in shock as AIDEN eyes the pair, gaping at them.)

For more information on author Alexis Watkins, please visit our Contributors Page.

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SCRIPTSCONTRIBUTORS Benjamin Graber Benjamin Graber M.D. (University of Michigan) M.A. in Theatre (University of Nebraska at Omaha) M.F.A.W. (Spalding University). Prior to following his muse and pursuing a career in playwriting, he was a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Nebraska Medical School and Chief of Psychiatry at the Omaha Veterans Medical Center. He was Core Apprentice at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, and a finalist at the WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory in 2011. He aided in the development and initiation of a Playwriting Track for the University at Nebraska at UNO's low residency MFAW program where he is currently a mentor and Playwright in Residence. Eighteen of his plays have been produced or had staged readings.

Alexis Watkins Alexis Watkins is a currently a senior at Arizona State University. She is working on her English degree and hopes to become an editor, or work in the publishing industry. One of her bigger dreams is to write a novel. "Under a Starless Sky" is her first script. She wants to work on expanding the story and characters, developing it into a more complete tale.

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LaRegalia By Juli Adams (See Art section for full image)

ARTWORK

Jasna Boudard Emma Harney Roberto Antonietti Lukus Edmison Vanya Allison Christian Parfitt Duane Locke Joshua Newth Dunielle Vujasin Rachel Rose Hinch Amy Whitehouse Juli Adams Chris Walker

ARTWORK : JASNA BOUDARD

Jasna Boudard Jasna Boudard is an internationally renowned multi-disciplinary visual artist. She is a citizen of the world (French, Bengali, Texan…) and her work reflects her experiences and life-journey. Her artistic practice explores movement, light, geometry, and a fascination with the cosmos. Whether her creations are orchestrated or witnessed, she works organically by collaborating with what life brings her.

Regardless of the method, the visual results are often extremely colorful, layered with textures, and often incorporate the female figure.

Jasna works in both commercial and fine art, with the camera being her primary medium. She also draws, paints, and performs. Jasna is based in New York and has had multiple solo exhibitions in the United States, France, Spain, Japan, and Bangladesh. She wants to continue her travels and raise positive awareness of the world through her creations. Visit her website at http://jasna-boudard.com. Follow her on Instagram at @jasnaboudard.

Lucid Dream: Photography CANYONVOICES

Jatra Bags: Photography SPRING2017

ARTWORK : JASNA BOUDARD

Blue Note: Photography

Western Eyes: Photography

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ARTWORK : JASNA BOUDARD

Buddies: Photography

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ARTWORK : EMMA HARNEY

Emma Harney Emma Harney is a senior at Boston College majoring in business. She also has a minor in studio art with a focus in painting. She is originally from Yarmouth, Massachusetts on Cape Cod. Her most common subject matter is ocean horizons. Growing up near the sea as a fisherman’s daughter has inspired much of her work. Her primary medium is oil on canvas but she also has experience in watercolor and mixed media installations. Her major influencers include Jane Wilson, Cynthia Knott, and Mary Armstrong. Similarly to these popular artists, she attempts to capture light and form, and works primarily from memory. She is currently focused on a body of work to be exhibited at Boston College in conclusion of her course work. The subject matter is visceral interpretations of seascapes inspired by Cape Cod. If you would like to see more of her paintings, feel free to contact her at emmaharney@msn.com

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ARTWORK : ROBERTO ANTONIETTI

Roberto Antonietti Roberto is a 23 year old from San Paulo, Brazil. His work is a questioning about the term "self-portrait", which contains self-portraiture techniques but not as final work. The subjectobject portrayed is not a portrait of the artist himself, but an "other-portrait". The inspiration for the characters comes mainly from song lyrics of his favorite singers, and with makeup and props he can create visual identities for the songs.

All Souls Night: Photography

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Here: Photography

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ARTWORK : ROBERTO ANTONIETTI

Edenstaff: Photography

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ARTWORK : LUKUS EDMISON

Lukus Edmison Lukus Edmison is a self-taught artist living in Chandler, Az. He works primarily in oil paint and prismacolor pencil. His work reflects his biblical worldview, which is at the core of who he is. He makes it a point to not simply paint the traditional white doves, crosses, or praying hands that is seen a lot in today’s religious art. He tries to make images with a much deeper meaning – a hypocritical individual with a plank lodged in his eye socket who is picking out a speck from someone’s else’s eye. The way he sees it, beauty of truth is echoed in everything we see in the natural world from the furthest reaches of the universe to the tiniest of structures at the molecular level. Other pieces of his works are more parabolic in nature while others are representational of the beauty he sees. Visit his website at www.lukusedmisonfineart.com.

Splinter/Plank Parable: Oil and Prismacolor Pencil

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Medical Hand: Oil and Prismacolor Pencil

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ARTWORK : LUKUS EDMISON

Pulhapanzak Waterfall, Honduras: Oil & Prismacolor Pencil

Hear No Evil See No Evil Speak No Evil: Prismacolor Pencil

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ARTWORK : VANYA ALLISON

Vanya Allison Vanya Allison is an award winning artist who has been painting and drawing for most of her life. Her favorite medium is oil, and she also likes working with water medium. Her paintings tell a story by creating a mood, using looser brush strokes, leaving certain areas unfinished and/or deconstructed. This allows the viewer to personalize and complete the story. She likes painting streetscapes, landscapes, still life and people. Vanya has studied at the School of Visual Arts, NYC., and Scottsdale Artists' School, AZ. She has participated in numerous shows and exhibitions, and her work is in many private collections. She can be contacted at vanyaallisonfineart@gmail.com and her paintings can be viewed on Instagram at @vanyaallisonfineart.

Head Study: Oil

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Little Girl: Oil

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ARTWORK : VANYA ALLISON

Street Scene: Oil

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ARTWORK : CHRIS PARFITT

Chris Parfitt Chris Parfitt has lived in Ohio for most of his life. After wandering around in California and Texas, he began to miss something. He can’t remember if he figured it out, or if he only discovered it in retrospect, but it was the depth of the sensation of season changes. He missed home. When he returned to the stark state of old Ohio, he was slapped with memory. The rich smells and familiar sights of his childhood left him awakened and inspired. The muddy canals, the sometimes bleak landscapes, the thick vegetation—these were all suddenly captors of my adoration. He was compelled to capture the magic in the world he had once overlooked. His tools have been photography and the written word. He is currently focusing on a collection of photographs, as well as a compilation of poetry for children. His prints are available at www.stonewoodphotos.com

A Light in the Forest: Photography

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ARTWORK : CHRIS PARFITT

Blowhole Rock: Photography

Sleeping Sea: Photography CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : CHRIS PARFITT

Adventure at Sunset: Photography

Moonlight in Heron Park: Photography

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ARTWORK : DUANE LOCKE

Duane Locke Duane Locke lives in a city that is alien and unknown to him, Tampa, FL. He fortunately dwells hermetically near friendly alligators, ibis, herons, egrets, etc.

Sur-Objects 1052 : Mixed Media

Sur-Objects 1054: Mixed Media CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : JOSHUA NEWTH

Joshua Newth It is the unrecognized sublime moments and objects of our seemingly mundane world which define and encapsulate us, however, all too often these fragments of our daily lives are ignored and crumble into the banal, as simply a part of a greater existence. Within these fragments of our lives are countless unheralded objects, from the beauty of a bird in flight to the sublimity of an untouched landscape or cloud formation consuming the sky. While aspects of life like these surround us, they also possess an inherent character that makes them simultaneously fascinating, and yet to many, ultimately forgettable. As the naturalist John Muir said “We acknowledge life…but pay so little attention to it, why? And as beauty abounds why does it stand so little chance?”

Through painting and drawing Joshua explores these ostensibly forgettable and yet grand fragments of our daily lives, revealing their unique and exquisite nature and beauty.

In this exploration he strives to separate everyday objects from their traditional environment, isolating them in space or framing them in a new context, subsequently forcing the viewer to confront the object without the typical contextual distractions. Through this separation he can focus on the attractive nature of the object, reinforcing the importance and grandeur of nature. Ultimately in this way the unacknowledged beauty of the overlooked and ordinary is revealed, fundamentally ennobling the everyday. Visit his website at www.joshuanewth.net.

Dawn: Graphite on Paper

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Over Great Slave Lake: Graphite on Paper

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ARTWORK : JOSHUA NEWTH

Larus Pacificus: Graphite on Paper

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ARTWORK : DUNIELLE VUJASIN

Dunielle Vujasin In a society where one’s physical beauty equates to their value, there’s no wonder why people are obsessed with it. Since she can remember, she has been infatuated with all things style. In her opinion, a person’s aesthetic cannot only affect their mood, but other’s as well. It can energize you, affect your outlook on life in that moment. Her work is the result of her love for makeup and art supplies and helps to work through her perfectionism and commitment issues. It is the feeling that making something inspires: the creative “je ne sais quoi”. Each portrait she creates tends to be inspired by a makeup look, a color, or a gaze. Her mood determines what medium/s she uses. Then, she works through her tendency to make sure every mark is intentional and perfect, although she prefers imperfections. With each line, brush stroke, smear, and smudge, She works on her commitment to becoming free from society’s beauty standards, self-imposed expectations of perfection, and insecurities about not being good enough. Her ultimate goal is to be able to paint a portrait to the beat of a song and be satisfied with the result. You can find her work on Instagram at @thecurrentmoment.

Brigitte: Multimedia

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Pouf: Multimedia

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ARTWORK : DUNIELLE VUJASIN

Non: Multimedia

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ARTWORK : RACHEL ROSE HINCH

Rachel Rose Hinch Rachel Rose Hinch is an amatuer photographer based out of Peoria, Az. She loves taking spontaneous trips, hiking and being around her friends and nature. If you would like to check out more of her photography, follow her on Instagram, @sir_roseh.

Cathedral Rock: Photography

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ARTWORK : RACHEL ROSE HINCH

Desert Oasis: Photography

Canyon Hideaway: Photography

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ARTWORK : AMY WHITEHOUSE

Amy Whitehouse A visual artist, writer, and piano teacher, Amy Whitehouse has lived in the Phoenix Valley for 24 years and considers Arizona home.

Recently, she attended the San Miguel de Allende Writers’ Conference where she met favorite authors such as Mary Karr and Billy Collins. Amy is currently working on a memoir of growing up in the South in the 1960s. Art lovers around the globe have collected her paintings, many of which can be seen at AmyWhitehousePaintings.com.

The Atlantic: Oil on canvas CANYONVOICES

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ARTWORK : AMY WHITEHOUSE

Psychedelic Sunflower: Acrylic on Canvas

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ARTWORK : JULI ADAMS

Juli Adams Juli Adams is a full-time Seattle based artist focusing on oil painting and sculpture. Adams began as a self taught artist then studied painting at the Gage Academy in Seattle. Adams is represented by the Volakis Gallery in Napa, CA and Pop Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Exhibitions also include Aqua Art Miami, and the Chicago Art Fair. Visit her website at http://www.juliadams.com

La Regalia: Oil Painting

Portrait of a Woman Who Has Just Turned and Seen a Beautiful Bird: Oil Painting

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ARTWORK : JULI ADAMS

Portrait of a Woman Warrior: Oil Painting

Portrait of a Woman Catching a Breath Outside: Oil Painting

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ARTWORK : JULI ADAMS

Disintegrating from Silence: Oil Painting

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ARTWORK : CHRIS WALKER

Chris Walker Chris Walker is a student at Mesa Community College majoring in Emergency Management and Homeland Security. He has a passion for planning and policy creation. He also believes in the missions of disaster relief, anti-terrorism, and crime prevention in the U.S. as well as abroad. At the moment, he mainly draws in his free time with a focus on black and white with a heavy focus on contrast and suggested atmospheric darkness.

Lord Cag: Digital Drawing

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DIGITAL ARTS

Myrlin Hepworth My Town Music Video

Timothy OBrien Digital Audio Recordings

Ian Kelby Digital Audio Recordings

Bob Dylan Tribute

Lloyd Hofmeyr

In the Loop Video

Lloyd Hofmeyr

Behind the Scenes of In the Loop Video

Here By Roberto Antonietti (See Artwork for full image)

DIGITAL ARTS : MYRLIN HEPWORTH

Myrlin Hepworth Myrlin’s work is grounded in both hip-hop and the literary arts. Myrlin was named the Arizona Humanity Council’s Rising Star Award recipient for his work as a youth advocate and teaching artist. Myrlin has performed for and worked with tens of thousands of youth across the nation. Myrlin has released two hip hop mixtapes and has performed his music internationally. Most notably, he was featured on NPR’s Alt Latino podcast and has shared stages with the likes of Saul Williams and Mexican hiphop mega-giant, Cartel De Santa. Myrlin’s origins emerge from the rural landscapes of New Mexico and Idaho and have firmly planted themselves in the metropolis Phoenix, where he first began his career as a professional artist and has lived since adolescence. His work as an educator and artist is reflective of his experience as a Chicano man and often aimed at critiquing, exposing, and commenting on identity and systemic injustices. To learn more about Myrlin and hear more of his music, visit https://www.myrlindo.com

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DIGITAL ARTS : MYRLIN HEPWORTH

In my Hometown – Verse One I was born little-bitty-back-woods city— cut pretty where the river drift.

What a pity: no rapids.

What the fuck happened?

Manifest Destiny captains went savage with captives river trappin’.

Imagine the first white man who crawled across this land.

Indian met him with an open hand, white man starvin’ like Marvin lookin’ like a Martian—dam.

Before he small pox bargain,’ Thanksgivin' party startin’ broken treaty jargon, back when he was Flintlock armin’, boat carvin’, I’m Lewis and Clarkin’.

Born LCV with Twisted Hair.

Don’t get me started now.

When kids from the res come through my town, man, they get stared down (wow) by hicks who play nemesis with entitlement.

They trade them fists.

We be cold like a dam fish—damaged idiots, like a pilgrim watchin’ Squanto freeze, holdin children bundled in blankets of statements stitched with apathy.

See, the town sittin’ like an old plantation next to a reservation, campin-on-concentration ain’t no conversation.

Dig what i’m sayin’?

I’m American.

(Chorus) Little girl at the lemonade stand handin’ free samples to the garbage man (IN MY HOMETOWN).

A man killed his neighbor with a shotgun, scattered little bones in the mud from the slug (IN MY HOMETOWN).

Boys run the courts uptown, downtown, cross over, lay up, rebound, back down, ball up. State champs raised up on the playground, hey, now.

Honey bees float in the breeze while a mother on her knees outside the unemployment office sayin’ please.

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DIGITAL ARTS: TIMOTHY OBRIEN

Timothy OBrien Timothy OBrien is a multi-instrumentalist, percussionist, and composer originally from Northwest Indiana. He holds a BA in Anthropology with focus in Ethnomusicology and Philosophy from Arizona State University. Now living in Phoenix, he looks to the landscape of the Sonoran Desert for inspiration in musical creativity and sound. His music is often described as ethereal, possessing timbres that ring of wonder, truth, and purity. Timothy is a disciple of Sri Prafulla Athalye at the Phoenix Gharana, where he studies tabla and Indian classical music in the Hindustani style. He is working to pioneer the art of tabla drumming on the western drum set, which he has played for more than half his life. Mantra is a collection of minimalistic ambient compositions that not only sound of life in Arizona, or of Eastern influence, but also echo with melodies and themes originating deep within his existence. The instrumentation consists mostly of guitar texture, but also showcases instruments from around the world, like the tabla, kalimba, and Egyptian tambourine. Aside from one track featuring the voice of a current renown scientist, the record is all instrumental, and to the mindful listener, seems to posses a kind of knowledge that has no use for language. Much as the cover art (a painting done by Timothy) suggests, Mantra can be thought of as his existential mentality while the album was being written from young adulthood to present: An extreme condition of indifference between two inexplicaties; a place very dark and uninviting, and something subtly optimistic—the grey between the black and green. To learn more about Timothy, visit https://timothyobrien.bandcamp.com/releases.

Alone

Locomotive

The Sky is Speaking

Mantra :Custom Album Art

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DIGITAL ARTS : IAN KELBY

Ian Kelby Ian Kelby is a singer/songwriter/gin-slinger and a huge Mets fan. As a young boy, his mother made him take piano lessons, which he absolutely hated. Eventually, he met a music teacher that helped him see the joy that music brings to the world. Later on in life, he realized that forcing him to take piano lessons was the greatest thing his mother could have done for him. After planning in bands with others and writing numerous songs on his own, he was inspired to produce his solo album by one of his bar patrons, who also helped produce the album.

After all this time, Ian is overjoyed to have a compilation of songs that are all his own. He continues to write and sing and will hopefully have another compilation in the near future. https://www.facebook.com/IanKelby/

The Price

Love is Waiting

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DIGITAL ARTS : BOB DYLAN

Bob Dylan Many thought that Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature was unconventional just like a rolling stone. But the Canyon Voices staff heralds the award. Canyon Voices’ mission is to publish emerging voices. When he arrived on the scene, Bob Dylan was an emerging voice and that voice, as has been noted, became a voice of a generation and changed the time with words. Today Bob Dylan continues to speak for the generations. Calling him a “fierce and uncompromising poet,” The New York Times writes: “Mr. Dylan’s work remains utterly lacking in conventionality, moral sleight of hand, pop pabulum or sops to his audience. His lyricism is exquisite; his concerns and subjects are demonstrably timeless; and few poets of any era have seen their work bear more influence. His songs chronicled the social time and political issues of different centuries.

Canyon Voices salutes Bob Dylan and all of the emerging poets, writers and artists who continue to strive to work outside of convention.

– Iza Ramos, Digital Arts Editor

Bio

Bob Dylan Nobel Prize - A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall live

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DIGITAL ARTS : BOB DYLAN

The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan In 1963, Bob Dylan released his second album, showcasing his ability for writing powerful, counterculture songs. This album includes "Blowin' In the Wind," "Masters of War," and "Girl from the North Country.” By contrast, Dylan's first album was mainly comprised of traditional arrangements and cover songs. Many of Dylan’s songs were covered by other artists. Here are two songs from the album.

One is performed by Dylan and the other by Ed Sheeran, showing the universality and timelessness of Dylan’s music.

Blowin’ in the Wind

Bob Dylan : YouTube

Masters of War

Ed Sheeran : YouTube

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DIGITAL ARTS: LLOYD HOFMEYR

Lloyd Hofmeyr Lloyd Hofmeyr is a curious designer collaborating with inspiring creatives. Lloyd is an animator by trade and has recently started hosting a podcast called, "The Creative Slice" where he chats with inspiring artists and successful creatives hoping to dig deeper into what it takes to live your passion full time. He’s always looking to collab with the creatives he meets and that's what sparked the videos he created with Jasna Boudard, a combo of her hooping and his motion graphics. To chat with him more and to see more of his creative pursuits, visit fullylloyded.com.

In the Loop

By Lloyd Hofmeyr with Jasna Boudard

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DIGITAL ARTS : LLOYD HOFMEYR

In the Loop Behind the Scenes Lloyd Hofmeyr interviews Jasna Boudard

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE

Jacquelin De La Torre Dream Big! An Interview with Pam Munter Ilene Younan A Future Editor A Chat with Alexis Watkins Ruth Arriaga ‘Raw. Therapeutic.

Blessing.’

Tony Valencia Jr. Speaks Poetry

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil By Lukus Edmison (See Art section for full image)

AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : PAM MUNTER

Dream Big! An Interview by Jacquelin De La Torre with Pam Munter

If you don’t mind, can you share your personal background, other than your career in writing?

Pam Munter’s work appears in the Creative Nonfiction section of this issue.

I was raised in a suburb of Los Angeles, the child of high school graduates, the oldest of two children and the first in my family to go to college. From an early age, I was enamored with all aspects of show business, most especially acting and singing; but I realized at an early age they would be unlikely to provide me with a predictable living, so I majored in academic subjects (in addition to journalism and theater arts), ending up with six college degrees. My family and my upbringing were conventional, typical of the 1950s, but I knew very early it wasn’t a good fit for me. I suspect I was always an iconoclast.

Dixieland Dreams is a well-detailed and adventurous story I’ve read. If it were to be a movie, who do you believe fits great in acting the leading role as yourself?

Hahahaha. A movie, huh? Well, as a certified Grade A ham, I’d love to play the role myself!

But I think Glenn Close would be an excellent alternative, as would Edie Falco. After all, much of the essay takes place when the narrator is middle-aged.

According to your bio, you are a retired Clinical Psychologist, a former performer, and now, you're working on a “deconstructed memoir and short stories based on Hollywood.” What made you decide to write about all the dreams you have pursued?

What did writing have that stood out the rest?

You've mentioned in your story that back in the "sexist, antediluvian 50s, girls were discouraged from playing instruments." How was it that time? What made you put your foot down and say, "no?"

I think it’s important to fulfill dreams, no matter how long it takes. Dreams tell us who we are.

Fulfilling them is a matter of planning, organization and a willingness to risk.

Perseverance counts for a lot, too, as you can tell from the essay. You have to recognize what’s important to you and know that accomplishing those things will bring you a sense of satisfaction and contribute to your self-esteem.

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In the 1950s, the limiting sex-role stereotypes were unrelenting. Men shouldn’t cry; women shouldn’t be too smart. Dress codes were extremely rigid. I used to have nightmares about wearing the wrong clothes to school, something that must seem odd today. If a girl was lucky enough to be musically talented, she was typically given a flute, a violin or the piano – all “feminine” instruments. I was what was called

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : PAM MUNTER

then a “tomboy,” but really I was skirting the limits of both male and female stereotypes, having personal qualities and interests that included both genders, the very essence of androgyny.

write. Once you get that bug, it seems to insert itself at every opportunity.In the last 20 years or so, I have written two dozen lengthy pieces about actors from the Golden Age of Film along with a few books. Two years ago, however, I decided it was my turn. I enrolled in an MFA program at the University of California at Were you judged by many people?

Riverside/Palm Desert and started to write memoir essays.

Was I judged? I was pushed, Joan Didion I’ve also written a play that was let’s say. “Smile, honey. You produced last year and had famously told us, look so much prettier that way.” several short stories published.

Or “That’s not a very feminine ‘We tell ourselves I’ve been published more than way to dress.” “Why do you stories in order to 20 times in the past eight want to play baseball?” Or, months alone. Still, it’s a little “Girls don’t play the trumpet.” live.’ While I know early to say I’m “known” for my My individuality was totally myself pretty well, writing. Ask me again in another negated, my intelligence few years!

memoir writing has dismissed. It wasn’t a good time for a bright female to flourish!

Have you created any other writings? If so, which of your writings were known to your audience?

enabled me to examine my life under a different kind of microscope.

I have always had a passion for writing, starting with a four-page carbon-copied newsletter I wrote when I was nine years old. I was the managing editor of my high school newspaper and a columnist for the college paper, too, writing film and television reviews. When I was a clinical psychologist, I wrote academic papers and published a quarterly newsletter for my clients. It seems I always found an opening to

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Lastly, what does writing mean to you?

Joan Didion famously told us, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

While I know myself pretty well, memoir writing has enabled me to examine my life under a different kind of microscope. Now I can see persistent patterns more clearly, including how I sometimes got in my own way. And yet, the more I write the more I can see that I am becoming more of who I have always been. I find that encouraging.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : ALEXIS WATKINS

A Future Editor Ileen Younan Chats with Alexis Watkins

What first inspired you to select English as a course of study and to write scripts?

I was originally a science major, but I found out pretty fast that it was a lot harder than I thought.

Alexis Watkins’ I started thinking about switching majors and work is featured English was something I had always enjoyed.

in the Scripts section.

I love reading and writing, and I love creating things. Scripts was just something I thought I love reading and The challenge when I was writing might be interesting and I writing and I love this was to have two characters ended up loving it!

trapped in a setting, like the creating things. elevator scenes you see most Aside from English, do you often.

Scripts was just have an interest in other something I I wanted to think outside the box subjects? Do the latter thought might be and finally settled on a rooftop. inspire your writings and if Having it in New York seemed like so, how? interesting and I a natural choice after I decided to ended up loving it. put an emphasis on the stars, since I'm actually really into history, you really can't see them a whole especially ancient to medieval lot with all the city lights.

stuff. I find the time periods fascinating. But no, my love of Do you have any quirks or habits when it history doesn't influence my work much.

comes to writing?

What are your career aspirations upon graduation?

You know, I'm not actually sure. I think if someone read multiple pieces of mine they'd be able to point out any I do, but I'm not aware of any myself.

I want to try and find work in the publishing industry. Working on Canyon Voices one semester showed me that it's a lot of work, but it can be really rewarding!

Describe the plots you write in one word.

Bitter.

“Under a Starless Sky” is a script with an interesting setting. What made you choose a New York City apartment rooftop?

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Do you have any writers who inspire you and if so, which ones?

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : ALEXIS WATKINS

I do! I'm a big fan of both Sherrilyn Kenyon and

Darren Shan. I love their writing styles and am a huge fan of the genres they work in.

I was really happy when I heard my piece was accepted for the magazine. I've never had anything published before and I'm glad it gives a wider audience a chance to see something I worked so hard on.

Do you have any literary pieces you’re currently working on?

Anything else you would like to tell our readers?

I am currently working on a I don’t want to give too much Well, for anyone that's an aspiring author or artist, just take short story for a away, but it’s quite a turn a leap and dive into your work.

character I've had from many of my other in development If you have an idea, put it on for many years. I works. paper, that way you'll get it out of don't want to give your head and be less likely to too much away, forget it.

but it's quite a turn from many of my other works.

And create the content that you want to see, don't let others over-influence you.

How do you feel having your work selected for Canyon Voices and what was your initial reaction?

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : TONY VALENCIA JR.

‘Raw. Therapeutic. Blessing.’

Ruth Carolina Arriaga Speaks Poetry with Tony Valencia Jr.

Hi Tony! Welcome to our "Author's Alcove.”

Let's start with some basics. Can you please introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and your background?

Tony Valencia Jr. vents through words. Read his poem in the poetry section.

Okay, hi readers, my name is Tony. I am Chiricahua Apache and Yaqui. I was born and raised by my mother in Phoenix, then moved out to the west valley. I am a Hip Hop MC by the name of Tony, The Swordsman. All of my writings started as therapeutic.

I honestly never thought I, this brown boy from West Phoenix, would ever be published for my poetry, so I am thankful for this blessing.

Was poetry always your niche? What attracted you to writing poetry, as opposed to other mediums?

When did you begin to write? What propelled you to start writing?

I started with writing rhymes, but I never really thought it was poetry to me till I stepped up my content and read a lot more, as advised by my influence, KRS-One. I vent through words and now it really is how I mainly express myself, from summers of writing, trying to out do myself, to then facing adversity and trying to deal with my emotions as a man.

Well, as I just mentioned above, it’s therapy for me. It all started in my middle school years. It seemed as if everyone at my middle school knew exactly what they wanted to be. But I was just stuck wondering and guessing, “What am I even good at?” I would pray and ask for the career that I was meant to pursue. Sure enough, one day, my friend was rapping and challenged me to a battle, though he knew I couldn’t rap.

After that, I applied myself to really try.

Describe your poetry in three words.

Raw. Therapeutic. Blessing.

The next day came and I battled him with rhymes I had pondered in my room. After I won, I became someone in the middle school eye.

Before I was the quiet, introverted, brown kid in the back, now I was Tony, a kid that can rap. My writing came from finally finding this art I was great at and I only wanted to be the best. It went from just battle rhymes to really using it to vent; I now had an art and I loved it.

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Which poets or artists would you say influence your work? Do you have a favorite poet?

In Hip Hop, I like people like KRS-One, Chino XL, Ice Cube and P.O.S. Then it would go to writers such as Jimmy Santiago Baca, Pablo

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : TONY VALENCIA JR.

Neruda, Paulo Coelho, John Trudell, Joy Harjo and Rodolfo Gonzales.

read for my soul, and seeing this flesh still want wrong, but striving for better.

How do your own personal experiences and observing the world around you influence your writing as well?

This poem first came in my mind as an image on a walk where I saw an imprisoned self and noticed how it felt at home, curled in a corner.

Then I noticed the keys were in the cell door and it was unlocked; then the words of the poem came.

If it is personal challenges and tribulations, I use my writing to vent and process it all. In seeing things like injustices towards my people and others as well as evils in the world, I see it all to write for hope and raising awareness. All in all, if it affects me and moves me it will end up in my writing for a positive result.

Your poem, "Imprison", was chosen by our team, not only to be a part of this issue, but also to open up the poetry section. How does it feel? Have you ever been published before?

Keep writing,

jot every

thought because, even if that line is wack, the idea is still there and you could build and mold it better.

Well I wanna start by thanking the team for this honor and my second poem to be published (ever), my first was a poem entitled “Trepidation.” I feel honored to open up the section and glad the poem was even picked to be published. So thanks again and I hope readers enjoy my poem as well as others.

What do you believe the purpose of "Imprison" is? What do you want your readers to gain from it?

This poem came to me as a message to myself in my personal growth. We are so accustomed, and even find shelter in our wrongs or unhealthy beginnings. We may tend to return to them because the process of bettering one’s self is all uncharted territory, and it can be daunting.

"Imprison" is so unique; its brevity combined with its message is jolting. Tell us about how you were inspired to write it, and about the process you underwent.

Thanks, I am blushing from the compliments (haha). Well this one is from a personal experience, at least the root of it. In the process of bettering myself, I would tend to backslide and even find comfort in the wrongs I’d been accustomed to. That was from spiritual places in my life, as well as emotional. One day I remembered all of my friends with similar mental illnesses as I, growing up in rough, unjust environments. I remembered the teachings I

CANYONVOICES

I want readers to know this experience is one we may all go through, but it has to be one we grow through as well. If you are saved from such a draining and unhealthy area in your life and you backpedal and return, remember that you made it out once and you have the power to get out again and stay out.

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : TONY VALENCIA JR.

Could you explain a little about your general writing process? How do you approach new ideas? Where do you like to write?

a book or some sort because I always write poems that either end up on a song or just on my blog.

A lot of rhymes, poems, song concepts and even beats come to mind when I’m just out doing something physical, leaving my mind open. I do things like working out, taking walks/ runs, riding my bike and even just yard work.

Nature is a big inspiration for my art. But I tend to sit and really think at my desk to sharpen what I am saying before putting it out. Yet still other poems come as I lie in bed awake with insomnia.

What’s the best advice you have received in regards to poetry that you would like to pass on to other aspiring poets?

Keep writing, jot every thought because even if that line is wack the idea is still there and you could build and mold it better. Also know the criticism from the hate, and just put both in the soil to grow from.

Random question: Have you traveled anywhere and what is your favorite place so far?

Do you have any habits or eccentricities when it comes to writing?

It is funny trying to think what I do that is different or a habit. I think I really remain quiet. I mean, any friend of mine would tell you I am a recluse, so I do enjoy my isolation. Also, I pray, eat and just pace my small room looking like I’m talking to myself.

Awesome, well the weekend before this semester I took a road trip to Echo Park in LA by myself. I enjoyed it, from the Mexicano food I love, to the little cities that house a different culture, as well as record digging where I spent almost all my money. I’d say the LA area is probably where I enjoy going the most. But the farthest I have ever been is Jamaica when I was younger, though my memories of it only go as far as how beautiful the people and the beach were. But I still wanna go to my homeland in Mexico, San Luis Potosi where my grandpa is from, the Apache reservation where my grandmother was, plus Okinawa, Japan.

What do you find most challenging or frustrating when writing?

One thing I truly hate is when I forget something.

I could come up with a great line/metaphor or whatever while driving and once I get home or get the chance to jot it down I forget; that is my weakness. Another frustrating thing in writing is when you reach a block or some obstacle where the next line or next piece to do is just not coming to your head.

Anything you would like to add? Anything else you would like our readers to know?

Other than my music, which I mentioned plenty to check out please, I’d like to give a shoutout to my friend Eric Johnson on the team for helping me out and being a good friend.

What are your goals as a poet/writer? Are you working on any new material at the moment?

Shoutout to the Hispanic Honor Society, which I am a part of, for always raising awareness and standing in solidarity in these dark times. Finally, thank you for this interview, taking time out your day and to the readers, God Bless.

As a poet, a MC I am always creating. For my music, I’m working on my Blacksmiths 2 project with outside production, and The Island of Self album with all my own production; all can be found on my soundcloud at Tony, The Swordsman. Other than that, I have been meaning to compile a collection of my poetry for CANYONVOICES

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AUTHOR’S ALCOVE : TONY VALENCIA JR.

CANYONVOICES

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ABOUT US CANYON VOICES LITERARY MAGAZINE is a burgeoning journal dedicated to displaying 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 and six students, this journal strives to bring the creativity of its writers and artists to light within the community and beyond. Supported by students and faculty of ASU’s New College (HArCS), CANYON VOICES accepts writing and art from undergraduates, graduates, faculty members, and the community.

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, offered through Arizona State University New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Students build a full literary journal each semester, heading every aspect of production, including soliciting submissions, editing, marketing, design and layout, and publication. We eagerly anticipate further involvement from students interested in magazine publication for our future issues.

OUR MISSION

CONTACT US

At CANYON VOICES our mission is to provide an online

Questions, comments, feedback? We would love to hear from you.

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.

CANYONVOICES

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, such as grammar and punctuation. 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

POETRY

Up to two stories may be submitted per issue. Each story may be 20 pages or fewer.

Up to six poems may be submitted (no longer than two pages each) per issue.

CREATIVE NONFICTION Up to four stories per issue.

Two pieces may be 20 pages.

SCRIPTS

ARTWORK

Up to two scripts may be submitted per issue. Script maximum 15 pages.

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 October for the fall issue. The reading period re-opens in January, February, and March for the spring issue.

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CANYON VOICES STAFF Julie Amparano is the founder, publisher, and advisor of the CANYON VOICES literary team. Serving in the School of Humanity Arts and Cultural Studies at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Amparano oversees the school's Writing Certificate and teaches a variety of writing courses that include scriptwriting, cross-cultural writing, fiction, persuasive writing, and others. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles in 2006 and is working on a collection of short stories.

Julie Amparano

Founder, Publisher, Advisor

Lover of Bicycles, Professional Wrestling, Handheld Gaming, Heavy Metal Music, Journal Writing. Then - Now - Forever.

Manny Felix

Creative Nonfiction Lead Editor & Scripts Lead Editor

Ileen Younan is a sophomore English major at Arizona State University’s West Campus. She has enjoyed her time working for CANYON VOICES over the past year, primarily with the Creative Nonfiction and Scripts departments. Ileen likes reading science fiction and is currently working on a novel in the same genre.

She hopes to publish her writing and eventually obtain a job in the editing and publishing industry upon completing grad school.

Ileen Younan

Creative Nonfiction & Scripts Editor, Production Assistant Jacquelin De La Torre is a current sophomore student at Arizona State University, pursuing her bachelor’s degree in English, and is part of the TRIO SSS STEM Program. As a mother of a one-year-old son, Giovanni, De La Torre was able to continue her life quite easily. By the love and support of her parents, Victor and Mireya, along with her sisters, Giselle and Joselin, De La Torre continued with her academics, employment, and personal activities, which consist of reading, writing, exercise, and watching all seven series of Harry Potter! Jacquelin De La Torre hoped to achieve and set an example for her family. She’s in the process of publishing her first children’s book, pursuing a writing certificate, and enlisting in the United States Army Reserve.

Jacquelin De La Torre CANYONVOICES

Creative Nonfiction, Scripts & Alcove Editor

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CANYON VOICES STAFF

This semester marks Eric Johnson’s second semester with CANYON VOICES. He is a private guy who, as a poet, values content rather than gimmicks.

In addition to poetry, he has recently added script writing to his repertoire.

Lead Poetry Editor

Eric Johnson

Kate Rogers is an English major at ASU. Her preferred visual medium of art is makeup, from which she creates avant garde and conceptual looks and shares them on Instagram. She also enjoys reading and writing poetry and and has a preference for the morbid or oceanic imagery she comes across. Editing for CANYON VOICES has inspired her in her own work and she loves being

able to connect with other creative minds.

Poetry Editor, Lead Art Editor

Kate Rogers

Iza Ramos is a senior at Arizona State University. This is her first year as a Poetry Editor in CANYON VOICES. She plans to graduate in December with

her BA in General Studies as well as obtain a Professional and Technical

writing certificate. In addition to the literary magazine she also

founded and started her own blog called Underground Arizona.

She hopes to one day open up her own literary

magazine and write her own book.

Poetry Editor, Art Editor

Iza Ramos

Ruth Carolina Arriaga is an English major at ASU West. She has been published twice before, once in print and once online. She appreciated and enjoyed working on the other side of publication this time around. Being an

editor for CANYON VOICES has given her unparalleled and invaluable

experience. She wants to thank God, her family, and her

friends for their abundant blessings and support.

Poetry Editor, Art Editor CANYONVOICES

Ruth Carolina Arriaga

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CANYON VOICES STAFF Patricia Colomy is in her final semester of ASU and more than excited to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. Patricia can’t remember a time in her life where she wasn’t writing creatively, so working with CANYON VOICES just felt right. This is her third semester with the literary magazine and she has held the titles of Creative Nonfiction Editor, Lead Poetry Editor, Lead Fiction Editor and Co-Senior Editor. The joy of reading and publishing the creative writing of others has been greater than she ever imagined. While her future will likely hold a career in editing and publishing, she will always put time into her own creative writing in the hopes that it will be published, as well.

Patricia Colomy

Lead Fiction Editor Samantha Diaz is a Southern California native and sophomore English major at Arizona State University. This is her first year as a CANYON VOICES Fiction Editor and has treasured her time working alongside the rest of the Fiction team. She enjoys writing contemporary fiction, binge-watching as many television shows as she can, having coffee injected into her veins, and eating breakfast foods.

She lives by the quote from the film, Dead Poets Society, “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” Samantha hopes to become a writer for young adults, an editor in any realm, or a lawyer. She still hasn’t figured it out.

Samantha Diaz

Fiction Editor

Sean Hampton is a senior at ASU West, born and raised in Arizona, and currently pursuing an undergraduate in English as well as a minor in Philosophy. This is his first year as an editor in CANYON VOICES. He enjoys reading good writing, ranging from early novels to contemporary short stories.

Sean Hampton

Fiction Editor Danny Walker is an aspiring fiction author. He grew up watching action movies and reading science fiction. After high school, he joined the Army and served as an infantryman in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He is now at ASU, majoring in creative writing. He has since written various stories for school, ranging from science fiction to romance to mystery. He’s also expanding his expertise as an editor for the fiction section of CANYON VOICES. In his free time, he enjoys reading, writing, playing video games, working on vintage engines, and staying physically fit at the gym. He’s currently working on a script for a sci-fi action cartoon, a script for a medieval fantasy, a 50’s era sci-fi mystery, an 80’s detective noir, and a memoir based on true events from his time before, during, and after the Iraq War.

Danny Walker CANYONVOICES

Fiction Editor & Copy Chief

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Pulhapanzak Waterfall by Lukus Edmison (See artwork for full image)

SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED MARCH — AUGUST

Ecliptic by Emma Harney

SUBMISSIONS ACCEPTED MARCH — AUGUST