blue moon vol. 23

blue moon

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Editors’ Note blue moon is a shout in the street.

Jane Collins and Marcy Manker

Cover Art

Untitled A l l i e Ro o d digital photo

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Co-Editor-in-Chief JA NE C OLLINS Co-Editor-in-Chief M A RC Y M A NKE R Layout Editor A ND R E W W I T HE R SP OON Poetry Editor R AC HEL H A HN Poetry Staff A A RON B AU M A NN E R IN C A R N A H A N OLI V I A M I T C HELL J ENN A M U K U NO Prose Editor C H R IST INE T E X EI R A Prose Staff H AYLEY B E C KE T T G R A N T B R A DLEY R E B E C C A B R IGH T NI C HOL A S M I C H A L W ILLY ST EIN Art Editor L A R A M EHLING Art Staff S A R A H C A NE PA G R AC E E M E RY A M Y GI P S M A N E V ELIN A M I RO P OLSKY Digital Media Editor O B R E A NN A M c R EYNOLDS Digital Media Staff DEN A P O P OVA A LE X K U SHNE R Public Relations E V ELIN A M I RO P OLSKY Copy Editor R E B E C C A B R IGH T

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W hitma n College

volume 23

blue moon, Whitman College’s student-staffed art and literary magazine, is published annually in April in Walla Walla, Washington. Subscriptions to blue moon are available for $12 an issue. blue moon is a not-for-profit media group within the Associated Students of Whitman College. All donations and gifts to blue moon are tax-deductible. Please make checks for donations and subscriptions payable to the Associated Students of Whitman College. blue moon accepts unsolicited submissions of art, prose, and poetry. All submissions to blue moon are judged anonymously and selected by the editors and staff. Whitman College is not responsible for the contents of the magazine. The magazine accepts no liability for submitted artwork and writing. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors or staff members. The individual contributors hold copyrights to artwork, texts, and poems in this issue.

No material may be reprinted without the permission of the magazine or contributors.

Copyright 2010, blue moon For more information on how to submit, subscribe, and donate, please visit www.whitman.edu/bluemoon. blue moon Whitman College 280 Boyer Avenue Walla Walla, Washington 99362

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Contents POETRY 11

Home

18

Before Drowning

25

Terra Incognita

26

Chin Rest

38

queen/synesthete

46

Driven

59

the friendly skies

79

The Cockroach

83

A Room Alive

88

Recollection of a Fracture

91

Child Empress

95

Small Town in Northern California at Nightfall

RAChel hAhn ChRisTine TeXeiRA

oliViA MiTChell

doRiAn ZiMMeRMAn kATie PResley

sAMUel MARTineZ kATie PResley

denA PoPoVA

lisA CURTis ReBeCCA BRighT

lAURen BeeBe

101

David

112

Tadpole

115

Exploding Kernels in the Cave of Lascaux

122

A Survey of Abduction, Roper Analysis

4

MARTin sTolen

kATie hAAheiM dARiA ReAVen

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eleAnoR ellis

ChRisTine TeXeiRA

125

The Liberator’s Wife

128

The Drunk

ZoË BAlleRing

MARTin sTolen

ART 13

Joanna

17

No Man is an Island, not even on the World’s Biggest Island

20

Untitled

24

Beirut

28

Antique Sugar Spoon

29

Lunch

37

La Virgen, Cabo, Mexico

40

Hero

45

Peacock

57

Boy Playing with Pollen

58

First Avenue

60

Spiderdew

69

Umbrella Man

se A n B R A d l e y CARissA klARiCh

l A R A M e h l i ng

se A n B R A d l e y ol i V i A Joh nson

d e n A P o P oVA s y d n e y sT A s C h

J U l i A d A Ro s A l i n n e A BU l l ion yo n A T A n A d i n e VA n s

A M e l i A Vo n Wo l F F e R sd o R F F

C U RT i s R e i d s A R A h C A n e PA

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70

Washed up Carnie

72

Untitled

78

Window with Snow

81

Dog Show

82

Birthday Candles

85

Checker Jar

86

Tasty

90

Tuesday Night with the Smiths

93

Mr. Satre et ses crabes imaginaires

94

Girls from Good Families

97

Americana

n A TA l i e F oW l e R

98

Turbulence

s A R A h C A n e PA

C A R i ssA k l A R iC h

WA R R e n M c d e R M o T T M AT T Col e M A n

J oA n n A s WA n hong -n h i do

BA i l ey A R en d

A n d R e W W i T h e R sP o o n

10 0

Forlonged

10 3

Dr. Dre

sA M C h A sA n

10 4

Portrait

M AT T Col e M A n

111

Andrew

se A n B R A d l e y

114

Untitled

J U l i A d a Ro s A

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k R i sT i n i V i e J oA n n A s WA n

d e n A P o P oVA

A e lW y n T U M A s

117

And I Don’t Have the Blues Anymore

118

Broadview, Montana

120

American Buffalo

127

Shadow Puppet

ol i V i A Joh nson

C A R i ssA k l A R iC h

C R i sT i n e T e n n A n T

e l e A noR g ol d

PROSE 14

Varieties of Distance

22

Baby Brain

JennA MUkUno

30

Living Will

AnAsTAsiA ZAMkinos

41

The Firebombing of Prague, 1945

48

The First Day of Rain

62

Exploits

73

Hands

76

Waiting

ZoË BA l l e R i ng

sonyA FABRiCAnT

PATRiCiA VAndeRBilT

ChRisTine TeXeiRA

ZoË BAlleRing niCholAs MiChAl

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A Brief Account of Robert

121

Foreigner

ChRisTine TeXeiRA

kATie deCRAMeR

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Thanks to AssoCiATed sTUdenTs oF WhiTMAn College WhiTMAn College oFFiCe oF AdMission eARThlighT Books ColVille sTReeT PATisseRie ellen’s CUTTing edge for their financial support

Special thanks to PRoFessoR sCoTT ellioT AMBeR WoodWoRTh ChRis BishoP TRAVis CongleTon PAT BendeR BoB AUsTin PenRose liBRARy seAn BRAdley JAMes FRAnZ Molly sMiTh, deRek ThURBeR And THE WHITMAN COLLEGE PIONEER sUsA RoBeRTs And The FoUTs CenTeR FoR VisUAl ARTs BARBARA MAXWell And The Reid CAMPUs CenTeR WhiTMAn College MUlTiMediA deVeloPMenT lAB

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Home Rachel Hahn

Sometimes it begins with your feet.

You enter timidly, time each step so that the creaks might seem purposeful, then plant yourself somewhere just past the door close your eyes for a moment and listen.

You make offerings to the place, resist urges to press flat palms against the walls and find a pulse and instead you hang portraits, Find things you can cup in your hands, Claim these first.

Slowly your breath fills the corners, And air that was once in your baby toe is clinging To the paint above the mantle Or sometimes you cry and this happens faster, Heavy gasps hit the floor and Space is born

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Ha h n

And just when you have forgotten your feet maybe It is yours­— But mostly you find that it begins with sleep, with sinking into the space beneath the floorboard, then waking and not moving but knowing that you could disappear and it wouldn’t make a difference, that someone could come and see your eyebrows in the curtains or smell your skin in the kitchen table.

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Joanna SE A N B R A DLEY silver gelatin print

Varieties of Distance ZoË Ballering

1,600

One of my friends went to China. She met a ninety-twoyear-old man who had never been more than twenty miles from his home. His family had lived there for six generations. It is a place in Northern China that is farther from the ocean than any other place on Earth—1600 miles in every direction.

3.9

For a long time, I thought as the crow flies referred to how fast a crow could fly, a speed I estimated was between twenty-five and thirty miles per hour. This seemed imprecise to me; I learned last year that it isn’t speed that matters, but the act of flying. I know that the New House is 3.9 miles from the Old House because I bike there sometimes. The route I take is half a square: two straight lines, one right angle. I would like to know how far it is as the crow flies. I sure miss that Old House a lot.

212

When I was six years old, my dutiful psychologist mother tried to explain cremation. She said, They put your body in an oven and you turn to ash. I said, Mommy, I want to be burned up with you. Eventually, I forgot about dying be-

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side her. I wanted to live in the same house, then the same neighborhood, then the same city. Now we live 212 miles apart. On the phone I say, Don’t complain—it’s the same geographical region.

1,981

You live nineteen miles short of living 2,000 miles away from me. If I drove eight hours a day at an average speed of fifty miles per hour, it would take me five days to reach you. Many things can happen in five days. Mayfly naiads mature underwater for up to three years, emerging, winged, for as few as thirty minutes. Their Latin name, Ephemeridae, translates to “lives but a day”—they have no mouthparts and cannot eat. In the Walla Walla cemetery there is a tombstone for Blanche Hoffman: March 12th, 1945–March 17th, 1945—five days. The longest one-man filibuster in history lasted twenty-four hours and eighteen minutes. Michael Finnissy’s “The History of Photography in Sound,” one of the most complex non-repetitive piano pieces ever written, takes five and a half hours to play.

6,557/5,630

In spring and fall, thousands of mayflies hatch together.

Bečej, Serbia is famous for this rash of life; on the Tisza River, dozens of males attach themselves to a single female in frenzied sex, forming a flower of wings that the Serbs call “vodeni cvet.” This happens for two hours in the evening.

You are 6557 miles away from Bečej. I am 927 miles closer.

If we agreed to meet outside the Dundjerski Castle—even if we flew—we would still not catch the Tisza River blooming.

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Ba l l e r i ng

1,288

When I was fifteen we road tripped to the Grand Canyon, the three of us. Although, as the crow flies, it is 791 miles, according to the odometer we drove 1,288 miles. I had gotten a permit and wanted to learn. You let me try in Nevada, but I couldn’t stay between the lines. Then, that fall, you left the Old House and went far away. First: Detroit, Michigan, 1,970 miles; second: Guanajuato, Mexico, 1,981 miles. She refused to teach me because it made her too nervous, so I still haven’t learned. When I talk about how long of a drive it would be, I’m really describing a dream. God, it would take so long to walk across this country and into yours. I am farther from you than it is possible to be from an ocean. If I walked three miles per hour, eight hours per day, it would take me 66 days. I would be an anomaly: shambling across the Sonora desert, swimming the Rio Grande. Instead of seeking a new life, I would be searching for an old one.

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No Man is an Island, not even on the World’s Biggest Island C ar i s s a K l ar i c h digital photograph

Before Drowning Christine Texeira

Be that as it may, I am still here.

I am waiting, shearing fleece from Sheep that are far above, up above On land, loving land, eating land.

My hands swipe through water Slower. Slower than normal, but Nonetheless if a sheep were beneath My wet, anchored hands it would be Bare. All skin, dry skin, not like mine.

My skin is wet, wet with water pouring Between my layers because it has nowhere Else to go. It surrounds me like the wool Used to. It shapes me with its pressure Like I used to shape the grass beneath My dry, grounded feet. Even though I Know the shearing has begun because My little aquatic watch tells me that Even though I am here, time keeps Ticking and moving and forgetting— Even though I know the sheep are Stripping, slowly forced into a naked Brand new life, born again beneath

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The hands of some replacement, some Dry nobody who thinks he knows What he is doing. Even though I can’t, But want, really want, to be there and be Supportive, to tell them they are not stripping They are not losing or breaking but only That they are undressing, they are giving And someone else, because, is receiving.

Even though I can almost see such Things above me because the water is Almost not there, but there just enough to Keep my foot between its anchored rock and Make me gurgle at not being dry and not Up above and shearing. The water tastes like I knew it would, like sweat and skin, green Like a field with salty round sheep that enter. I Wonder how likely for someone to find me or To lower me a sheep and scissor to give that First cut and see the dent in the tufts and then Quickly lift her back up in case she should drown.

I know people are wondering, probably not Waiting. Be that as it may, I am still here and The sheep, my air, are way, way up there.

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Untitled L A R A M EHLING watercolor and ink on paper

Baby Brain Jenna Mukuno

It is the time of night when even the down comforter seems to take one big exhale. I’m sleeping on my right side.

On my left, the thud of my heart beating is just too great.

Dum dum dum dum dum. It keeps my eyes open to the darkness.

I see a day when I will cup my hands along the eggshell skin of a pregnant tummy and sense the thrum of your heart beating. For now, I glide to my left side—pressing deep into the mattress, listening to the echoes of you in my own chambers.

I see a day when every last crumb of what I consume will then nourish you. For now, I gulp one prenatal vitamin in the morning though only my hair grows with creeping velocity. At mealtimes, I eat for two though I am blissfully just one. If I am quiet, I can nearly feel your marble-sized stomach gurgling in appreciation.

I see a day when dark, wine-colored tracings emerge from flesh swelled beyond its reach. For now, I gather my shirt around my neck and pouch out my abdomen so you have room to stretch your utmost tippy toes. The mirror captures at least one trimester of expansion until careening forward. The bulge deflates. I can perceive you growing if I am still.

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I see a day when my innie will no longer preserve its youthful shape, and begin budding outward as you descend into my lower body. For now, I’ll stick a cooked pea into my belly button and tuck my blouse snugly in at the edges.

I see a day when I’ll hobble away to the bathroom in haste. For now, I’ll linger awhile…and let the pressure collect into a drift of intuition.

I can hear you breathing if I am still. The rising steadiness of inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale delights me to think of how serene you are amid the din of noises swirling, rushing in suspense. The pulses get louder and louder until I jerk to my right side to the voiceless half of the bed. I brush the sweat from my brow, and gleam that I am still, only, just one.

It is the time of night when even the down comforter seems to take one big exhale. I’m sleeping on my right side.

On my left, the thud of my heart beating is just too great.

Dum dum dum dum dum. It keeps my eyes open to the darkness.

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Beirut SE A N B R A DLEY silver gelatin print

Terra Incognita Olivia Mitchell

He told me once that even New York was more beautiful under the gaslight-glow of being unknown.

Those streets, like makeshift dynasties swarmed out in every direction, soothing his fear of having nowhere to run away to.

He spoke of running away, of being loved instead of being held: I wish I had known, before this, how to tell you who I was.

He spoke of beginning with nothing, breaking patterns of desire instead of turning infinite fictions around me

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Chin Rest Dorian Zimmerman

On the lanai, careless of the couple that must be making love one room over, outside, on their room’s private porch, you pulled out a joint to share with the Hispanic cleaning boy who had just entered your room because you hadn’t put up the Do Not Disturb doorknocker because you never did so that the cleaning staff would enter, inevitably waking you

and bob their heads, saying lo siento, excuse me señor and you’d call them back in right quick to share a drink from the mini-fridge, which they had stocked yesterday, or a cigarette or, if they were lucky, a pinner you’d rolled just for this purpose the night before so you could chat casually

in your tinny Spanish and inevitably think of that honeymoon you had in Mexico.

You ask the boy too many questions and he gets nervous, head bobbing, excusing his impropriety like a head-banging guitarist expresses his,

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and leaves.

You think: once bowed, the human head stays kinked and crane your neck above the latticework separation to see the corded limbs, the undulating language of skin-slap, moan-movement, sigh-rustle from your lovemaking neighbors until a familiar, unfriendly pain rises like Judas from the dinner table and with a kiss betrays your neck, so your head crashes down onto your chest.

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Antique Sugar Spoon OLI V I A J OHNSON charcoal, gouache, and ink on paper

Lunch DEN A P O P OVA digital photograph

Living Will Anastasia Zamkinos

I. The earth was warm enough to singe my feet so I dug two small holes and stood with one foot in each hole. I pinched off the pale flowers of the basil like I was taught to do.

Squatting, I carefully picked out each offending pebble that might keep light from future seedlings. I edged my cupped hands around the outermost edges of the basil’s shadow and plunged; no spades, no trowels; I wouldn’t risk those harsher, colder touches. Transplants require delicacy—rebirth is only for the lucky.

I quietly lamented the tomatoes I had lost early that summer. I had thought that flowers were to be pinched on all plants; this strategic neutering was how, I presumed, all plants grew. I had pinched back each flower on my tomato plant, carefully, lovingly, willing the plant to make fruit through two long tomato-less months before I realized that one should only pinch back the flowers on herbs. Once I knew, things changed dramatically. I stopped grooming the tomato bushes. They grew wilder and overwhelmed the fence around our vegetable patch; flowers grew into hard green beads that burst into rich tomatoes that popped under the slightest pressure of my teeth. By that time the whole garden was impossibly fertile. The salad greens shot up into bizarre pillars taller than me. The roots, I reasoned, must have run very deep to support the lettuce plant’s absurd reaching. Beans grew over six inches long. I grew confident,

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but I was still cautious with this basil.

I felt my way around the delicate maze of roots and etched a path out between the veiny fibers through the cool dirt; I spent 20 minutes carefully working the system before I reburied the roots into a large cool terra cotta pot.

The plant dried and withered overnight.

It was the worst failure of summer.

II. My mother’s Volvo was rear-ended by a commercial vehicle on our way to meet my new baby cousin. I was convinced that I would never meet her, convinced that I had whiplash, convinced that I would have to spend a lifetime in a neck brace or a wheelchair or in those ugly wire things I had seen in movies that fix your teeth and I would never kiss a boy and I would never have my own daughter to hold and I would never even get to hold my own cousin, anyway, so first things first: I was going to die and no one would know what to do with my stuff.

I listed everything I owned; every toy, every article of clothing, every comic book; I even listed the pad of paper on which I was listing everything I owned. I then wrote who would get each of my things in the event of my inevitable death, including notes explaining my reasoning. Natalie is my very best friend, so she got my big stuffed panda and all of my dolls. Bridgette was only my second best friend and she was kind of mean anyway and we fought a little bit every time I went to her house, so she would only get my backpack. Tommy Peterson from up the street would get my comic book collection and my drum and my rollerblades.

They told me three hours later that I could go home.

I invited Tommy Peterson to go rollerblading with me and my mother made me wear knee pads, shoulder pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, shin guards, and a bright blue helmet.

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Z am k i n o s

I never kissed Tommy Peterson, but he did give me a jewelry box before I moved across the country from where I imagined I almost died. I still have the box; it holds my Tarot cards. My favorite of the cards is a dancing skeleton of Death/Rebirth.

III. The first death I ever witnessed was that of the goldfish Little Buddha.

The seniors at Catalina High had decided to prank the school that year by taking all of the fish from the science building and peppering them throughout campus in every watery place: toilets, sinks, vases of flowers at reception areas, water fountains. Hundreds died. I saved this one and brought him home and was very proud to have saved his life.

My mother warned me that I shouldn’t expect him to live very long, so we kept him in a palatial crystal punch bowl on my bookshelf. I fed him more than his asceticism probably allowed, but he was enlightened and certain allowances can be made for the divine.

A few weeks later I came home from school and looked in his bowl and he wasn’t there and I wondered if maybe he had grown wings and flown away or if it was some strange shadow effect or play of light through the carvings in the crystal, but then— I looked down and saw Little Buddha’s shinystillbody mummified in rich emerald strands of decorative peacock feather. It was obvious that he had struggled to live. He had not surrendered with the beauty and poise I expected of one of his enlightened status. He had thrust and gulped and thrashed and rolled himself bug-eyed into too many strands of royal shades of purple and blue. The theatrical shades

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L i v i ng W i l l

of the feathers paled against the grey-gold of the florescent light on Little Buddha’s breathless belly.

I insisted that he shouldn’t be buried. I wanted to put him in a river, but all of the rivers in Tucson only had currents of air. I left him on the dirt in a riverbed between cracks. He looked like a jewel on a plate and I left him for the birds to feast on the shell Little Buddha had left behind on his way to something mysterious.

IV. The second death I witnessed was that of my best friend’s mother. She had been in and out of the hospital for months before landing in hospice before, days later, leaving.

We brought her a yellow rose from a bush we had in our garden. No matter how many hours my mother, her partner, and I spent singing to these roses the bush only pushed forth a bloom or two per season. The petals almost matched her skin but for the flower’s vibrance. She tried to reach out to her daughters but if they touched her then their mother’s skin withered. A few days later it would start to slough off. But she kept reaching to them and I thought that it would only be a matter of time before she reached for them so desperately that her skin would slip off of her slim frame and soak through her hospital sheets and leave only bones to burn or bury.

She did not want to go.

The rose made her smile and it outlasted her and now the bush pushes forth fierce yellow buds every winter.

My mother thinks that this is Chris coming back to us. Katie thinks it is a strange comfort and writes notes to her mother that she buries in our garden. For some time I watered them so that the paper would dissolve into the dirt faster and her mother could hear her.

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Z am k i n o s

I stopped when I read that God is Dead.

It was poetic, I thought, while it lasted, but I was an aspiring realist.

V. The basil seedling’s name is Clyde. The friends I entrusted with his care fed the plant nothing but their surplus dregs of cheap beer, Mountain Dew, and lemonade.

He withered and I blamed myself.

But somehow, impossibly, it finally rained in the desert and some water luckily drizzled down onto Clyde’s dirt and he was somehow reborn and now he is growing.

It was the greatest success of summer.

VI. There was another death between the goldfish and my best friend’s mother.

My grandfather died when I was nine, but he’d been deadened far longer; he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s when I was four years old.

Since then my mother has been unreasonably afraid of losing her memories. She writes them all in journals, piles and piles of journals that have their own shelf in her studio; occasionally she goes back and reads through them.

She takes notes in her current journals about what she observes in her old journals. There are over a dozen different pills, oils, and precautions that she takes to ensure that her memory will outlast her.

She has given me detailed instructions for when she someday dies in case there is some kind of accident or rapid-onset Alzheimer’s. She says that it is only responsible to practice ars moriendi , to prepare herself and those who will survive her for her inevitable death. These are her instructions:

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L i v i ng W i l l

1. Come home immediately.

2. Go to the Wells Fargo branch on Luther and 34th and unlock safety deposit box 206, the extra key to which is taped on the underside of the keyboard. (When I was 18 my mother had me sign on to the box so that I have the rights to open the safety deposit box if she dies. She gives me yearly tours of divorce papers, property and land titles, insurance records, investment profiles, and antique jewelry.)

3. Call our investor. The number is in our accounting file. (She has introduced me to our investor multiple times over dinner so that we are on a comfortable first-name basis so that if, no, when she someday dies I will not be uncomfortable speaking with him. I think his name begins with G, but I am not sure.)

4. Call the Wells Fargo headquarters. Ask for Barry. He can tell me everything else I need to know.

When she dies I will come home. I will sit down with tea that I brew from the herbs in her garden and I will read her journals starting from the first page of the first journal and I will read her and learn my legacy and will her on and on. I will plant yellow roses, start taking my vitamins. I will have to learn to live a little without her, but mostly still with her.

Epilogue.

There is a death I do not talk about.

My life before my stepmother killed herself: fresh mozzarella, learning how to set a volleyball, weeding in our garden, feeding hummingbirds. She walked in orchid gardens and prayed to a God she thought was cruel. She blamed her Catholic upbringing for most things. I do not know if I agree.

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Z am k i n o s

My life after my stepmother: willful forgetfulness, pebbles dropped in a dried up river with currents of air, shame at feeling somehow culpable. I do not know if this life has begun or if it exists.

I have, since her death, avoided her name. I have learned that you do not pinch back the flowers on all plants— only the herbs. I have learned that ashes can be compressed into diamonds or they can be scattered over a vast expanse of mountain air and I habitually spread out her letters: D N E E

I S

DEAD.

As I pack my belongings and prepare to drive across the country in what I hope will constitute a rebirth I find a card from her on my 16th birthday. “The greatest thing you have to give,” she had written, “is love.”

Legacy.

I leave everything I ever write to my mother and to my daughter. I leave my body to the birds and the hope that air currents take some joy in weaving desert sand through my sun-bleached rib cage.

Everything else can be burned and either compressed or scattered.

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La Virgen, Cabo, Mexico SYDNEY ST A S C H digital photograph

queen/synesthete Katie Presley

the queen is disrobing. the jewels on her fingers are sparkling in the following colors: turquoise yellow ruby red. layer by layer she is becoming human again, returning to death and birth and dirt and shit. the change passes somewhere over her head but it floats down and rests there, on the royal head as the royal hair catches the setting sun. soon she will be a woman. a synesthetic, an exercise in humanity. the queen, my queen tucks her quirk into the last pocket of

the last robe that slips to the floor. the tastes of colors pool at her feet in approximately the

shape of the letter a (she would catch them)(if she weren’t naked.)

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now a woman is running her hands through silk a woman is looking for things her hands will not make dirty. the furs are in the other room her toes are cold on the wood floor. my queen grows cold. without clothes the disorder is more pronounced. the very air quivers with it. this woman. is seeing colors. a packet of orange is near her bare foot, and she steps on it aloud and says: “seven.” if it were another day she might say: “warm.” on another still the packet would be another shape entirely, would be crimson, and the only letters present would be the ones in her own name.

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Hero J u l i a D a ro s a oil on canvas

The Firebombing of Prague, 1945 Sonya Fabricant

On the fourteenth of February an air raid siren cried in the dark of Prague’s Northern morning. In a kitchen atop a fourth floor sat a boy at a breakfast table. The sound twined benignly between his fork-fulls of eggs, and it wasn’t until the first bomb dropped that he leapt up and wrapped himself about his father’s legs.

Tatínek? the boy queried.

Prague was silent. The pan in the father’s hand continued to quiver, the sizzling bacon still spat and the weak winter sunlight frittered fecklessly in between the silver spires of Saint Wenceslaus Square, and in the stagnancy of the moment, the lifeblood that pulsed through the winged arches and the indigo-cool alcoves and the arterial alleyways of Prague was felt, as though the heart of every one of its people throbbed in soundless unison. Somewhere somebody shrieked and elsewhere the sound echoed, and did not stop but grew until the siren became but one of many voices begging for its city. The father gathered his boy in his arms then, and went to the balcony where the two turned their faces eastward. Two by two they came, sixteen Flying Fortresses, racing the coming sunrise towards Prague.

To his knees the father dropped.

Do you remember, Františkán? What it is that we are to do?

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Fabr i ca n t

He grasped his boy’s shoulders and though the child’s cherry cherub lips twisted, he nodded. The father rose to get their wings from the coat closet.

Eight feet from base to tip and stretched from white canvas over a Bakelite frame, the purpose of the things he carried out was unmistakable. The man slipped them both into feathered sleeves and snapped a leather harness round the child’s ribs and then the expanse of his own, and he leaned then, back against the balcony balustrade to take stock of the distorted metamorphosis of the Lord’s creation that stood before him. They stood on the balcony as the pink veins of morning hemorrhaged over the horizon, casting in shades of blood the lucid bodies of the Saint Wenceslaus Square sculpture garden that unfolded far below their feet: bodies whole and pale and ageless, stretched some in eternal embrace and others in the thrashings of divine damnation but inattentive, all, to the terrible chimeras that were upon them. As a second bomb dropped and the Royal Vineyards went up in a column of smoke, they chose today to be geese, not Jews, and there was nothing left for birds of their breed in Prague as long as the Nazis occupied.

Under the spread of their feathers came a gust. On its back they surged, above the lissome roofs that danced aflame with the brilliant morning sunrise and incendiary bombs.

Below them people spilled from the bellies of their houses.

The Flying Fortresses let loose the green cluster bombs of their bowels.

The splendor of Prague was reduced to pebbles.

Prague’s people clogged her capillaries, beating with batlike thrashings at the flames both illusionary and real that licked their skins, pawing feverishly at their petroleum-drenched bodies, cowering crab-like under the

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T h e F i r e b o mb i n g o f P rag u e , 1 9 4 5

magnesium that gyrated in the shafted sunlight and made burrows under their eyelids and set their eyesockets afire.

Of all the statues of Wenceslaus Square, only the Saint himself still stood, petrified astride his horse. The bronze-bodied duke seemed to stir at the rape of his nation and in his stirrups he attempted to rise, to summon his knights that slumbered beneath the Mountain, to carry out the impendent evening of the evil of the world: for this Saint Wenceslaus was destined. But perhaps it was only the earth’s reverberation.

Up above the dampness of dawn a man and a boy found themselves face-to-face with a lone fighter jet. The man cocked his head sideways for this was not right. Stars and stripes painted the tail; absent were the swastika’s crooked limbs. Before him the distance between boy and plane closed, but the man saw none of this. He did not see the junker’s MG-15s cock, nor the guns synchronize with the propellers. Come down, he cried to his boy but the propellers’ cacophony sucked the words from his lungs.

Something is not right, come down.

What the father did see was this: a volley of bullets sprouting from the boy’s chest, the contortions of a whitewinged body, a fine spray of blood dissipating in the wind as the Fortress roared past and the boy tumbled from the sky.

Františkán the man said and earthward he dove.

Mama, a girl murmured and tugged at her mother’s sleeve. Mama look at the angel. Look at it fall.

Those hunkered down in the square looked up to see an angel come unpinned. It landed hard among the leveled slag and stumbled towards the monument of Saint Wenceslaus. In one unearthly leap, the angel scaled the horse’s rump, up to a twist of limbs splayed across Wenceslaus’ lap. Into its wings the Angel enfolded the mess and to its feet it rose.

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Saint Wenceslaus sat astride his saddle with eyes blind to the unusual gift of a baby Angel, whilst his men slept like tender translucent halfwits under a mountain of dirt and did not stir again. With faces turned heavenwards as witnesses, the people of Prague felt the death of a legend like the termination of a heartbeat.

So much smoke hung suspended overhead that the horizon bled purple and with it, blotted out the planes as two by two they dropped their bombs. Two by two they turned tail, and two by two they fled west to Dresden.

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Peacock LINNE A B U LLION digital photograph

Driven SAMUEL MARTINEZ

The scars of the poet are hidden beneath his hair and clothes, beneath the skin and within the bone, unseen.

Perhaps forgotten, perhaps hoarded like treasure, or worried at unconsciously, a tongue prodding at the emptiness of a lost tooth, they drive him ever in strange directions—

the laughing face of a woman over the body of a lion long dark hair cascading

to things recalled in sleep and lost upon awaking, like dark red twisted limbs of a tree a manzanita holding morning light &

the feel of dough or the taste of honey, the sounds of gravel under bare feet, or just the little million ways one heart can hurt another— they drive him to build or whittle answers from scratch and from scrap; sometimes questions, too.

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He finds only insubstantial materials, pieces all from different puzzles: enough to work with. But his best result is always bricolage— the

dizzy of reaching

suspension after reason,

like an improbable bridge over still, deep water—saying everything but what is meant, like a love letter written in fabric care symbols:

hand wash drip dry iron on low heat

(fold gently in the dark)

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The First Day of Rain patricia vanderbilt

For three endless months the earth has screamed for moisture. The rich green luster of the leaves and trees has long since turned to pallid shades of gray. The grass, once full and lifted with the life-giving rainfalls of spring, is now brown and withered, twisted into coarse and unforgiving twine. The town begs for rain. The people walk the streets with shoulders hunched, their spines rounded forwards under the aching weight of thick and endless heat.

There is nothing in this world quite like the first heavy rainfall after a scorching hot summer. All morning long dark clouds are blown in from the South, clustering densely over the center of the city. A cool breeze gusts through the open windows of houses and flutters the leaves of trees whose limbs hang dry and heavy with dust. A scruffy brown dog lying lazily on a shady porch jumps suddenly to attention, his every muscle quivering as he smells the moisture in the air. And then, precisely at the stroke of noon: Rain.

The first drop falls directly onto the shiny glass pane of Mr. Arthur T. Demmings’ watch as he is waiting in line to get on the number six bus downtown. Mr. Demmings stands puzzled, staring perplexed at the distorted numbers of his watch as the fat round water droplet slides downwards past the 6 o’clock mark and then off the watch entirely to

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splash onto the pavement below. Mr. Demmings then lifts his face upwards and is struck on the nose by another droplet, which by this time is the one hundred and eighteenth.

As Mr. Demmings boards his bus the drops are too numerous to count, and by the time the second hand of Mr. Demmings’ watch has gone around one full revolution, the spattering has become a downpour. A cold and heavy rain pounds downwards onto cars and rooftops. Rain strikes against the windows of the bus and coats the pavement with a shiny darkness. In one quick instant the ever-present dust of summer is turned to mud and flows in many converging streams down streets and into gutters.

There is a particular energy to be found on the day of the first rain, a specific feeling which creeps into the hearts and minds of a population. It is a day when people feel as if the most unconscious yearnings of their souls can be fulfilled. On a day when lakes and streams become once more alive with water, when every leaf and stem and petal seems to radiate its vibrance, on such a day of miracles a person becomes filled with the sense that anything the mind dreams up might happen. It is this feeling of enchantment that sends a child out to dance among the raindrops, this same feeling which infects a jogger as she jumps from puddle to puddle, and this very same feeling which causes Mr. Arthur T. Demmings to wonder, as the number six bus is making a stop at 8th Street, if this rain might bring with it a new chapter in his lonely life.

Arthur Demmings is not a happy man. He is not in need of anything, he is not affected with any debilitating ailments, he is not even a particularly unhappy man, but he is not a happy man. He is a quiet man with a love for onions and throat lozenges. He has never married; in fact he has lived alone ever since he moved out of his parents’ house at the age of eighteen. Over the subsequent thirty years there

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have been no major changes in his life. Once, some fifteen years ago, he decided to adopt a cat from the local humane society. He had gone to the pet store and picked out a blue bowl and a red pillow, which he had placed on the wooden front porch of his home and arranged in a way that he thought might be pleasing to a cat. He then went to the shelter and selected a fluffy gray tabby with a perpetual cowlick at the base of her neck. The cat would spend long hours exploring in the yard before curling into a tufted gray ball on her red pillow, and when Arthur Demmings rubbed her stomach she would purr delightedly in a way that made Mr. Demmings feel both happy and lonely all at the same time.

But one day the cat didn’t return from her adventures in the yard, and eventually Mr. Demmings removed the blue bowl and the red pillow from his porch and tucked them away in a corner of his closet.

But Mr. Demmings was not thinking about the cat as he watched the windshield wipers of the bus herd water droplets left, right, left, right. At this very moment Mr. Demmings was thinking about Ms. Blaine. Ms. Delilah Blaine was the woman who lived across the street. She had curly red hair which Mr. Demmings liked, and the summer sun had covered her arms with a smattering of freckles which Mr. Demmings also liked. Mr. Demmings had never talked to Ms. Blaine, but on occasion they would wave to one another from across the street as he sat on his wooden porch and she worked at the herb garden in her front yard. Mr. Demmings could count (and did count) on one hand the few things he knew about Ms. Blaine: that she sunburned easily (“Sunburn easily!” She had called cheerfully from her yard one morning before donning a wide-brimmed straw hat), that rosemary was her favorite herb (“My favorite!” She had exclaimed one afternoon while holding a sprig of rosemary triumphantly), and that she lived alone. Mr. Demmings con-

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sidered these things as the number six made a left on Elm and drove onwards past the public library. Although he had never stood on the same side of the street as Ms. Blaine, he wondered what the inside of her living room might look like, what wallpaper she might have chosen for her kitchen, and what type of flowers might be her favorite.

As Mr. Demmings daydreams of love on the number six bus, as rainfall quenches the desperate thirst of a driedout town, somewhere on 13th Street a rusty orange couch climbs slowly up a hill. At first glance the couch wouldn’t appear to be moving at all. An observer would likely assume that it is simply abandoned on the sidewalk just outside of Sacred Heart Catholic Church. If, however, one were to note the position of the couch in respect to the cracks in the sidewalk or the green Sedan parked against the curb, they would surely note a just-perceptible movement of the furniture.

It is an ugly couch, though not an altogether unappealing one, and there is a certain inviting quality in the squishiness of its padding. It has had a long life, that much can be known from the assortment of stains and scars upon its surface. It inches its way up the 13th Street hill with a determination admirable for one of its weight and shape, with never a moment’s pause as it continues onwards to its destination.

Rain falls upon the couch with a quiet pitter-patter, collecting in the folds of its cushioning and disappearing into its orangey depths. The couch soaks in the moisture with acquiescence. It is not affected by the droplets falling from above or by the water flowing underneath it down the sidewalk. For the couch is a seasoned and hardy traveller, undaunted by conditions that would confine less daring voyagers to remain in the safety of their living rooms.

Mr. Demmings happens to catch a glimpse of this

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couch as the number six bus crosses Harris at the bottom of the hill.

“How odd,” he remarks out loud, “There’s a couch on the corner of 13th and Knox.”

“A couch?” asks the passenger on his left, “I don’t see anything.”

“See, there, it’s just past the Catholic Church,” points Mr. Demmings, but by then they are long past the 13th Street hill and Mr. Demmings is nearing his stop.

Mr. Demmings climbs down the stairs of the number six bus with the peculiar image of an orange couch progressing across a cross-walk imprinted on his mind. Such thoughts are soon replaced with the everyday tasks that Mr. Demmings confronts in his work as a civil engineer, and by the time that Mr. Demmings is once again waiting for the number six bus, he has long forgotten that brief and puzzling sighting of a dilapidated orange couch waiting at the crosswalk at the intersection of 13th and Knox.

A lot has happened in the six hours which Mr. Arthur T. Demmings has spent inside of the squat brick building where he works. Rain has fallen continuously, gradually soaking deep into the earth, creating lakes where flat brown lawns stood only hours previously. The rain has been responsible for three skinned knees, eight cancelled picnics, and one marriage proposal. The local radio has played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “Singin’ in the Rain” a total of three times each, and on 13th Street, a lumpy and rain-soaked couch has finally climbed to the top of the hill. For a moment it rests, motionless, at the hill’s crest. And then, perhaps after taking a pause to enjoy the view of the entire town spread out below it, our traveling couch embarks upon the final leg of its journey.

When the number six bus drops Mr. Demmings at his stop and he walks the final block to his home, he is

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confronted by the sight of an unattractive orangish couch sitting in wait on his wooden front porch. Mr. Demmings stops walking. He observes his home at a standstill from the safety of the sidewalk. Mr. Demmings’ head tilts slightly to the right and he squints at the soiled exterior of the couch, scanning for some note of explanation. His eyebrows knit together as he searches his brain for some reason why a couch might find its way to his doorstep, but he can come up with nothing. He can’t remember ever discussing the subject of couches at any time in the recent past, and certainly he has never mentioned a need for a couch to anyone. As Mr. Demmings considers the couch, he reluctantly admits to himself that this ugly piece of furniture seems to match his plain white house more than anything that he himself has intentionally placed in the yard. Certainly it is more fitting than the bird bath, now filled with rainwater for the first time in months but still perpetually absent of birds. Mr. Demmings purses his lips together and remains rooted to the sidewalk.

It’s true that the couch appears to be perfectly suited to the wooden front porch, though perhaps it is the house itself that is suited to the couch. The presence of the couch seems to modify Mr. Demmings’ home in a way that is just barely perceptible, giving it a certain character which previously it had been lacking. The deep rust orange color of the couch somehow decreases the blandness of the white exterior and makes the green curtains seem intentional rather than haphazard. The wooden porch, now besmirched with a lumpy piece of furniture, is inviting in a way that it has never seemed before. The effect is enough to make the home seem somewhat alien to its owner, and Mr. Demmings’ eyes dart briefly towards the mailbox as he confirms that he is indeed at number 306. His eyebrows remain knit together suspiciously and he is suddenly very aware of his limbs as he

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walks through his yard to the porch, feeling self-conscious as if someone might emerge from the bushes and yell “gotcha.” The bottom step of the wooden porch creaks under his weight.

Mr. Arthur T. Demmings stands on his wooden front porch in front of a misshapen orange sofa and contemplates life. How odd it is that one can exist for years in a silent reverie, moving from motion to motion within the comfortable and confining spheres of life, and then suddenly be confronted with a couch at one’s doorstep. What a strange truth it is that after decades of asking for something, of patiently breathing and blinking whilst subconsciously screaming out for some small taste of life, one is answered with an ugly piece of furniture. Mr. Demmings turns his face upwards to the sky.

“This isn’t what I wanted!”

Mr. Arthur T. Demmings returns his gaze earthward and is met by the image of Ms. Delilah Blaine, who has ventured across the street and is walking directly towards him with a cluster of purple flowers in one fist.

“Hello,” she says, and walks through his yard towards his porch. “I see you’ve had a new couch delivered.”

Mr. Demmings finds himself completely paralyzed.

His forearms remain awkwardly extended in front of him, his palms thrust upward towards the sky as if he was juggling invisible oranges. He gazes helplessly at Ms. Blaine, unable to think of anything but the pounding of his heartbeat and the sudden droplets of sweat which have formed behind his ears.

“Did they send you the wrong one?” She is at the porch now, literally three feet away. Her hair is frizzy from the rain. “I like the color. It’s nice.”

As Ms. Blaine gives the disheveled sofa an affectionate pat, Mr. Demmings feels as if all the bones of his

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legs have completely dissolved. He sits down heavily on the couch.

“I’ll keep it,” is all that he can think to say, but Ms. Blaine laughs, and perches herself gracefully on the crinkled arm of the couch.

“I’m glad,” she says. “I brought you these. I thought you might like them. To match the couch.” She is holding out the purple flowers towards him. Mr. Demmings realizes that they are—

“Hyacinths,” she says. “My favorite.”

Mr. Arthur T. Demmings extends a hand to take the cluster of hyacinths and for a single glowing moment his left ring finger brushes the wrist of Ms. Delilah Blaine. And in that moment Mr. Demmings becomes filled with energy, a spinning, lifting energy which races down his arm from his left ring finger and ricochets about his internal organs. He feels a tingling in his toes. Mr. Demmings allows his eyes to meet Ms. Blaine’s for the very first time, and he notices that her eyelashes are unusually curly.

“Thank you,” he says.

Mr. Demmings is not quite sure why he says what he says next. Maybe it is the sense of security he gets from the deep enveloping folds of the cushiony couch, or the way that the sharp pings of raindrops fill his head with longforgotten hopes. Or perhaps it is the way in which the large brown eyes of Ms. Delilah Blaine are staring directly into his own. For whatever reason, Mr. Arthur T. Demmings looks directly into the eyes of Ms. Delilah Blaine and lies.

“I don’t have a vase.”

It isn’t true. Mr. Demmings knows that there are exactly three vases stored on the upper left hand shelf of his pantry. Yet as he sits in the comfort of the couch, its deep folds soothing to his pounding heart, there is a confidence within each vibrating muscle of his body and he hears Ms.

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Blaine’s next words before they emerge from her mouth.

“I’ll get one from my kitchen,” she smiles, and is already walking down the steps.

Mr. Demmings feels the air still in his lungs and his heartbeat pound to a stop. His life, his very existence, decelerates to a standstill as he waits for her next three words.

“Come with me,” she says, and a surge of air flows into the depths of his core. As if controlled by hundreds of puppeteer’s strings reaching from his joints to the sky, Mr. Demmings’ body lifts involuntarily upwards off the couch.

“I’ve just put in new wallpaper in the kitchen—it really is quite lovely.” She is beckoning to him from the sidewalk, squinting as she looks into the setting sun, her form shining in the lowering light.

Rain drips from the eaves of houses and shines in puddles along the edges of the street. Fat droplets fall from window ledges and tree branches to join their compatriots on the ground below. Upwards in the sky the downpour is nearly finished. The clouds have exhausted their heavy load of moisture and release only the occasional wayward drop. All across the town there is a feeling of catharsis, of relief and release, a silent, thankful ahhh that echoes in the streets and homes. On the wooden porch of a white single-story house with green curtains, a rusty orange couch settles comfortably into its new home. In the pink two-story across the street, two figures sit at a kitchen table and talk next to a vase of hyacinths.

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Boy Playing with Pollen YON A T A N A d i n E VA NS silver gelatin print

First Avenue A M ELI A VON WOL F F E R SDO R F F 35 mm negative print

the friendly skies KATIE PRESLEY

The flight attendant leaned around her cart of sandwiches and peanuts, saw the woman’s head lolling into the aisle space. With the flat of her hand, she gripped the woman’s head and rolled it sideways, away from the path of the rolling box. It was surprising to see an act of such intimacy, touching a head, which is rarely touched, executed with such confidence. The attendant did not hesitate in her action, did not tap a shoulder or speak softly. The passenger rolled away and awoke somewhere in the movement, surely thinking she herself had dipped awake of her own accord, or else turbulence. She will go through this day not knowing the crown of her head had been touched by another person—the crown, where mothers breathe deeply on their children of all ages, certain they can still smell the soap and milk and down of infancy. The quietest of all human places.

Fully awake, she asks a neighbor for the time. Reintegrates.

The secret of the rough, strange kindness is past.

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Spiderdew C urt i s R e i d digital photograph

Exploits Christine Texeira

I found her; I found her three feet down in the sand.

She looked like a normal person. Her skin showed slight signs of decay, but no more than could easily be ignored or forgotten. Everything was stiff and compact—her arms were behind her knees and all the joints were locked in a way that made her as small as possible. Every limb was folded into its proper place like a Swiss Army Knife. Her head rested against the caps of her knees and as I lifted and moved her nothing swayed or fell like a body would do. Everything stayed and she was awkward to carry. * My roommate asked questions. They were rhetorical and exclamatory, but he emphasized the last word enough to make them seem, to me, to need answering.

“Did you kill a woman?”

“No.” “Is that a woman?”

“Yes.” “Wait.” He peered over the curve of her neck and poked at her shoulder. “Is this a mummy?” The horror in his voice was appalling. Even if it was, which it must be, it was just post-human and not that far removed from him.

“Possibly. It was in the sand.”

“In the sand? Jesus, it’s a—it was a—person! How was it

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in the sand? Sand moves, Helm! Did you know? Sand moves a lot. No one would—” “I found her there. I don’t know why.”

“Why is she here? Just because you found her doesn’t mean you have to bring IT in this house!” * I saw the knuckles of her hand that were pressed to her thigh. I didn’t know they were knuckles connected to a hand pressed to a thigh. These were details. From a distance they were tiny stones in a line, but they became wrinkled and soft where a stone would be neither. I touched them; three showed above the sand and I placed one finger on each. I was still wearing my suit from work, but I didn’t hesitate to sit down and let the sand trickle up my pant leg and burrow into my socks. I did not mind the scratched flesh between my toes. I brushed away the sand around her as quickly and softly as I could. I was surprised that this was not a disembodied hand. I felt hurt when I uncovered the side of her lying curled away from me as if embarrassed at what I could or could not see. She was a she to me only for the sake of respect; she was important to me only for the sake of circumstance. I had to bring her home. * “What are you going to do with her?” Sterne was calmer.

It was clear that even mummies could become mundane– Sterne was not at such an extreme acceptance just yet, but I know that they do. I had been clutching her awkwardly oval shape to my own square chest; I did not know that she was still fragile. Sterne tilted his head with curiosity and I walked past him into the guest room. It was a guest room because Mrs. Dalloman had a guest room when she lived here and we did not have the heart or money to make it anything but. For the moment it was appropriate.

“Lord, Helm! Every time you take a step three hundred

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million grains of sand fall off that thing.”

“Is that all?”

“Well, probably more.” * With every palm full of sand that I cast behind me a hundred rivers of it shifted back around her. I thought it would never end. I liked that it would never end. Every moment that I watched her appear, I felt as though the entire landscape was moving to accommodate her presence. My feet were submerged beneath the pile I had removed from around her head. I was shrinking to make room for her. * “Did she move?”

“She can’t.”

“I know. Why do you keep checking on her?”

“In case she does.” * By the time I had undressed her of sand I could not free myself. My knees were buried. I did some shifting that she, in her state of death, would be unable to maneuver and freed myself before lifting her. A lot of sand rushed in behind her like some sort of displacement. She was much heavier than the amount of sand that replaced her, but nothing about what I was doing was exact or scientific or right. When she was in my arms I worried that she would wake; that she would be frightened of me. I set her down again and waited.

Maybe the air would rush into her lungs and she would live only moments before dying again of fear and embarrassment over my eyes staring. We sat like that for a while—her, curled up and facing the water and I, on a log with my back to the river. * “I’m not sure you can just do that.”

“I’m not sure why I can’t.”

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Exp l o i t s

“I thought you had a thing…you know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“You gave her a room. You carried her home. I thought there was some sort of respect.”

“What’s disrespectful about this?”

“The sign. The whole thing.” * Once I had decided that she was not going to revive herself, despite how alive she seemed, I picked her up again and pulled my coat around us as far as it would allow. I wrapped my arm around her waist and the rest of her stayed compact and I got used to the idea that I was just carrying a boulder.

People stared from their cars as I walked along the wooded road. Her knees and forehead protruded from between my zipper, but there was really nothing I could do about that. I brought her into my house and I swear that I felt her muscles relax. She was home. I was home. I got past my roommate and laid her in the guest room. The weight of her on the old quilt seemed just right. The room already looked lived in. * She was lonely. I felt that her closed eyes were sadder and her skin was becoming more and more deteriorated.

She did not have the will to preserve anymore. I knew her eyes were drooping because she was no longer surrounded by sand, but I still worried about her feeling so alone. I made a sign. I put it in front of our house and I liked the way cars slowed to read it, but I hated watching them speed up again.

On a Tuesday, a car stopped and pulled up our gravel drive.

I wasn’t watching out the window like I usually did, but I also wasn’t at work like I should have been.

“Helm, someone’s here to see your ‘Local Mummy, Perfectly Preserved.’”

“Really?”

Sterne looked back at the young man with his eyebrows

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raised and furrowed at the same time: “Yeah, I think really.”

I led him back to the room where my mummy was.

He cried out; he shook his head; he thought it was just a dead person I had laid out. He couldn’t believe I hadn’t called someone; that I was charging to show something so grotesque.

“I’m not charging, sir. I hope Sterne didn’t take money from you because I am not charging. The form is so well preserved because of the sand that surrounded it when it was buried on the beach of our very own river. I think you can see the way that it has now begun to decompose. Its date of death is not currently known.”

He stopped shaking his head and left silently. I realized how stupid I had been—I was allowing people into my home to share her with the world, but the world was just going to take advantage of me. She did not care that she was alone or in the guest room. She had done nothing to me, but in one moment I had buried her all over again.

“Sterne! There’s a problem,” I yelled from the room.

“That man? He looked really sick. I figured it was the smell. You really have to—”

“No, no. SHE is in danger.”

“Really, Helm. How can anything that is dead ever be in danger?”

Sirens. I could hear them outside the window. They were from an ambulance so not headed here, but something would come. Soon something would come. * “Someone is here to see her.”

They walked past Sterne and he looked scared and guilty. What had they done to him? What had they told him?

Maybe nothing. I watched the two men pass me too and go

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straight to the bedroom. I had turned her and laid her on the other side in hopes that the discoloration would be hidden, but there was more on this other side. I hadn’t known what to do. The two men violently pushed open the door, but then moved in slow motion, as if in mourning, once they were inside the room. They blinked softer and made no sound. I followed them and watched them not notice me at all. Their eyes did not leave her body. They stopped at the same time, one at her head and the other at her feet. They faced each other and slowly turned themselves at their hips until they were looming over the body. I was scared they would speed up all of a sudden and her fragile limbs would fly to every corner of the room. The way they lifted her—I could not even tell their hands were touching her. I was waiting for her to break. I grabbed my coat off the chair to catch her when she fell from their strange hands. I would cradle her in it and protect her, again. They started to walk and I was so worried that I forgot that they were going to take her away; they were taking her somewhere else. I would have no mummy; I would be left with the rocks and twigs that lined the beach and nothing else; rocks and not knuckles.

It was the first sound they made. The gasp—the surprise at my lunging body. I dived for her. I grabbed hold of her knuckles again, but her fetal shape did not hold. I did grab for them, her knuckles; but I found myself sprawled across the bed where she was no longer. I watched as they walked quicker from the room, and I saw where my reckless grip had torn the skin. From a distance her skin still looked perfect, but now there was a naked finger, the inside of which was clear for everyone to see. How fragile she really was that I, her protector, had done it. I saw the skin that I had detached from her finger laying beside the bed.

It looked like an old piece of paper and when I touched my own fingers to it I felt nothing and hoped it would fall be-

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tween the floorboards.

Sterne watched my body quake on the quilt. He looked sorry when I passed him and tried to say something, but I did not want a dialogue. I could only think of what I had done; of her knuckles in the sand. * I started digging. I was not looking for anything. I did not want to find anything. I brushed up against rocks as I scooped sand from my hole, and each time I prayed it would only be a rock. I dug for a long time. My hole was big because I didn’t think about anything except the digging.

When I stared straight ahead I could see the very horizon of sand and it split my view exactly in half. I had dug it wide enough to lie in, so I did. I pulled my knees to my chest, but relaxed them. I started running my fingers along the walls.

I let the sand from higher up rain on top of my face and as I worked my legs against the sand I let it fall and cover my entire body.

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Umbrella Man S A R A H C A NE Pa linoleum print

Washed up Carnie C A R ISS A KL A R Ic h digital photograph

Untitled Warr e n M c D e rm o tt wood

Hands ZoË Ballering

1 Federico García Lorca 2 My mother 3 The shadow puppeteer 4

My lover Mare Blocker’s art student 6 Mine 5

1

While Federico García Lorca was digging his grave, he was surprised to discover that he liked the feel of the shovel in his hands. He had poet hands—dainty, soft, thin, but with fingers not overly long. He was in a spot between Alfacar and Viznar, the sun just rising, the colors soft as chamois leather. He looked up at the sky and down at the dirt and felt the deepest kind of sadness. It was bone-breaking, soul-breaking, and heart-breaking, tinged with a taste of bliss—the shovel. He wished, for a moment, that he had been a day laborer and not a poet. He wished that he had laid bricks and excavated basements and never written about gypsy ballads and Salvador Dalí.

Of all the others, he was the only one who the guards did not torment. Maybe they had read his poetry and they respected him in a small and secret way, enough not to hit him with the butts of their rifles and call him an Andalusian dog. But, it is also possible, they had never read poetry in their lives, they were just scared, pimply boys with guns,

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and they respected instead the strength of the shovel in his hands, his determination to dig the best possible grave so that when they shot him in the back of the head, his falling over and falling into the pit would be—dare we say—poetic.

2

“This was the most traumatic moment of my childhood. I went to a palm reader in Kenosha with a girlfriend.

I stepped past a shiny blue curtain and into a room with a claw-footed table and a turbaned woman. She held up my palm and stroked the lines. She said, ‘I’m sorry, there is nothing interesting here’ and refused to charge. When my girlfriend asked what the fortune teller had seen, I invented scandalous and extravagant lies. That I would travel to Africa and ride elephants and have an affair with the pope and one day become so limber that I could suck on each of my toes.

3

Sometimes, people sitting in balconies can watch shadow puppets cast on the walls below. Usually, they are barking dogs and geese and camels, but, on one particular occasion, I distinctly remember watching an arsenal of erotic silhouettes. I was so aroused that I could not focus on the lecture and instead drew elaborate doodles in my notebook.

I have never learned how to replicate what I saw.

4

I would like to fall in love with someone who has beautiful hands and the albino gene. My grandmother is an albino—it is very likely that I carry the gene and that, in combination with another person fitting my criteria, we might produce an albino child with fingers long as rib.

5

“Hold the knife carefully and don’t cut towards your hands. I once had a girl who sliced open the tendon between her forefinger and thumb. She was an art major before the

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Ha n d s

accident; afterwards, she switched to applied mathematics.”

6

When I was fifteen, the top knuckle on my mother’s right pinky swelled up. She went to the doctor and the doctor told her that she was experiencing the first stages of arthritis. Over the next decade, the doctor said, she should expect to see the same swelling in all of the knuckles of her hand. They were still beautiful then, her fingers perfect except for the pinky—kinked to one side, growing from a hummock of hard and bony flesh. She has already lost the ability to open jars.

She is taking a typing class at the community college near our house. While her fingers still function, she would like to learn to type like a secretary. It is matter of never looking down. Her hands are a reminder of her future, and because we have many things in common—a certain propensity for purses and hats, prominent noses, thin wrists, impossible fingers, wind instruments, ripping the pages of a book when we read, rogue hairs growing near our bellybuttons, the albino gene, the arthritis gene—they are also a reminder of mine.

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Waiting Nicholas Michal

outside

The cat was at the base of the tree. It didn’t move.

The squirrel was also in the tree, hanging. It didn’t move. inside

A comic strip with two panels. Both with the same image, about: a downtown Chicago corner, people crossing the street, taxis looking for clients, a kid with a skateboard, a monochromatic grey palette, and a Superman.

The only difference between the two panels was the placement of the Superman, and the attentions of a few people.

Suddenly people are looking at the Superman, where they weren’t before. He is still motionless, with the same dignity to him. It is the space between the panels, the small one-millimeter space, that implies terrifying action. outside

The cat was still there.

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Waiting

The squirrel was still there.

Waiting. inside

In the first panel the Superman is in a crouched position, atop a building. In the second he is flat against the street many stories below. There is no point hiding this.

There is no attempt to. Among those unfazed by the leap are an old couple, an attractive young lady in short skirt, and the kid on his skateboard, mentioned before.

He brings the only color to the panel’s otherwise muted tones.

He brought the only action besides the snow, which was falling gently.

But he is always both before and after, both waiting to fall and waiting to rise.

Forever dead and forever alive, always connected to an action that has already been committed.

The only thing that he does, that is constant, is wait.

outside

The cat is motionless.

The squirrel is heightened.

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Window with Snow M A T T C OLE M A N copper plate etching

The Cockroach DENA POPOVA

The cockroach Can’t walk anymore, Laid up between four tiles Is looking at me with eyes Filled with light tears— Sad that flour is the pollen of her flowers.

Her one drop of blood Flows out at once Like the warm soul of French loaf.

The cockroach Is counting all the kisses Turned into dry crumbs In the corners of the cupboard— Pantheon of her short life.

She thinks of her grandmother, The fly That drowned in a cup with thick Turkish coffee And before she hurried to take her last breath She found out the future of all her daughters.

The cockroach Just closed her eyes With a delirious smile.

She remembers The first day of her life,

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P O P OVA

When she slowly took a breath In the womb of her mother, Buried in the soft of bread, Warm and light, She asked to be a cockroach.

Dog Show J oa n n a Swa n acrylic and oil on canvas

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Birthday Candles HONG - NHI DO digital photograph

A Room Alive Lisa Curtis

Brown petals tell the tale of girl who wilted, striving to be too perfect Blue shards of a vase covered the room, remnants of smashed sunflowers Blood drops stained carpet from feet without care of hurting, beyond pain I brought you yellow flowers To stream beams of light into the dark maze of your mind To march towards you six sunflowers, each stalk to keep you from dropping To remind you of the nights of food and laughter, spices mingling as we cooked together Of days when your clothes fit and your pale hip bones lay

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C urt i s

comfortably under your skin Of a time when life was delicious and you ate it up, relishing academics and opportunities I made a present for you a painfully bright mosaic pottery, blood, petals To bring to that colorless hospital room To tell you your tale of a girl with a lot worth living for

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Checker Jar B A ILEY A R END clay

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Tasty

A n d r e w W i t h e r sp o o n digital blue moon

Recollection of a Fracture Rebecca Bright

He was young and I lived in no part of him; my dad was used to being hit, and diving low, even inviting the lines of bruises that said, I am young and I am brave. He played football—left tackle. He was careless with his limbs, full of the faith of one who had survived the shattering loss of his own father. My dad sprinted forward with Ohio River eyes nearly smooth at the corners, to hurl wits and the fragile bones of his nose into the tangle of bodies and striving elbows. After a bone-deep collision of body parts, bravado, and cleated toes in one ordinary game, he staggered and fell.

Teammates laughed as they led him—sharp, whole nose and fractured memory—off the mangled brown grass and toward the locker room. Splintered by a concussion, his brain stroked the sky, lit against the bleachers, his skin loose and eyes wide. His mind was all soft breeze, all sunlight and fingertips across a river’s surface, with the smell of grass and the sweat of combat faded far away. And his world was an inhaling moment of flight, and the discovery of a space where anything and everything was possible.

Searching that place of rounded corners and gentle ceilings, he asked for his father again and again, yet found only the tired skin of his mother’s cheeks, the firmness of her piano-tuned fingers on his chin. He found the grounding of memory in her words. “He’s gone, honey,” she said, “Dad’s gone.”

And then everything was the moment of burial, his

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mother’s baby powder musk and old sweat and mown grass while the memories rushed in. My father threw up, burning bile over the cold tile and his own ragged black cleats.

Across the breakfast table my dad remembers this day, when he regained a father and lost him, all in the space of one exhaled breath and the recollection of a fractured mind.

Hearing his story, I am torn; I want to wipe the glint from the lines at the corners of his eyes (mine, too, have his Ohio River undercurrent), and I want to run, anywhere, and I am incurably angry.

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Tuesday Night with the Smiths K R IST IN I V IE oil on canvas

Child Empress Lauren Beebe

I am mouse in the cupboard with white dusty whiskers scurrying in circles around the dishes and pans. I leave a trail of fetid mouse feet like pressed crocus flowers in my sister’s books, succulent secrets drying out in the closet where doll hair blankets popsicle-stick tree-houses.

I once saw Jessica combing her sparrow wings on the back porch, the sunlight pale yellow x-ray, just perfect.

I could see them.

Why hadn’t she told me they’d always been there?

My revenge is a secret cat tale I won’t let her see, snake-stripe black and auburn. I have to curl it up like a hose to fit it in my skirt when I go outside to counsel the willow sapling in its occupation uprooting the side yard fence.

Jessica draws cat-mouse-bird people in her sketchbook; she draws my face a question mark brow, and colors black the spaces where my human teeth used to be, where snake-mouth curls in a tender smile.

The wood block-Lego-bread crumb empire knows that kind face so well.

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Beebe

We are benevolent rulers she and I on our giraffe-leg stools wearing our pinwheel-jewel crows. These days the wind is strong in the empire. It shouts peppery curses from the kitchen and makes turning swiftly whirring our crowns, buzz saws that will open our child empress skulls like pomegranates, spilling and bursting the ruby thoughts nesting there.

I turn to my sister for guidance in this matter, but she has drawn her mouth completely gone.

Her whole face is a fleshy smudge on the canvas, the erasure of a rueful frown and her hands now are still.

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Mr. Satre et ses crabes imaginaires J OA NN A S WA N water color and linoleum print

Girls from Good Families DEN A P O P OVA digital photograph

Small Town in Northern California at Nightfall Martin Stolen

a man, with slipping eyes, stands on the streetcorner, down a little hill from the store he pools there, like streamwater poised above a drop, burning mountains in his face and mountains at his back his skin a liquor tan, the cawing sun laughing from his arms out into the evening gloom, his hand in fast love with a paper bag wife, his wife, her voice, her tin voice gunning laughter at the passing cars, her tin voice cutting like a file, tripping, spewing change into the right-of-way

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St o l e n

great strange love skids and tugs between them, each gaze grazing and catching at the other two mossy stones, rolling, partnered, in a tearing flood that endless ending day, that long, thin drudgery of light fading, as the evening fades

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Americana N A T A LIE F OW LE R digital photograph

Turbulence S A R A H C A NE PA mixed media

Forlonged A ELW YN T U M A S clay

David Katie Haaheim

When we see him, he is softening— shoulders settling back sling at rest hands unclenched.

The blood of the decapitation burns on his hands.

He has just defeated Goliath, but we do not see him rejoice.

He is famous, now.

In a matter of days the word will spread across the land like wisps of dandelion fluff— a new king.

In this moment, he braces himself against the world to come— the death of Absalom, a son he has not yet heard of, already begins to pound behind his eyes.

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Haa h e i m

He is a boy.

He is king.

The tendons shift in his enormous hands, like a panther’s shifting shoulder blades, his lips soft.

Set. In the face of what will be, his eyes turn to stone.

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Dr. Dre SA M C H A SA N acrylic on wood

Portrait M att C o l e ma n reduction linoleum print

A Brief Account of Robert Christine Texeira

An Incident, which Involves Robert as a Baby She was screaming. No one noticed because it was a party and there were children and it is common knowledge that children often scream when they are having fun or wanting attention. It was not until the scream grew louder, and the guests at this particular party could hear the heavy footsteps of a grown person; that they realized something was wrong. This woman was running and carrying a baby; something was wrong with her. It was common sense to the guests that you should not run while carrying sharp things, delicate things and baby things. As she entered the room, baby tucked under her arm, another woman began to panic.

The first woman’s screams were closer and easier to understand and everyone was slowly realizing what she had to say: Balloon. Balloon. She was screaming and pointing at a young girl trying to sneak frosting off the cake with her pinky finger. The girl shoved her hand into her mouth, hiding any frosting evidence, but the woman kept pointing and then she handed the baby to her. The small girl was overwhelmed and confused. She looked around for an adult to remind her of her age and explain that she didn’t have to do anything. She was irresponsible and uneducated—this screaming woman was certainly not her problem; but there was only encouragement around her and she leaned over the kneeling, screaming woman now cradling the baby. The

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woman, between sobs, opened the tiny mouth and looked pleadingly at the little girl. Frosting-free, the girl lowered her fingers into the baby’s mouth until she felt something smooth and waxy. She pulled it out, but it was large and never seemed to end. Finally, her hand was near her head and the entire green, latex balloon was swaying in front of her face. The baby started crying.

An Invitation in Robert’s Cubby After Second Recess It’s a Party!

What: Help us Celebrate Julia’s 8th Birthday!

Who: Julia Pleasant Where: Gary’s Good Ol’ Farm When: August 25, 3:00pm Please RSVP to Lydia Pleasant at 525-0945!

Julia’s Party Early. Robert could not blow up a single balloon.

Dance Preparations Robert helps decorate for the dance because Celine helps decorate for the dance.

Robert is aware of many things. He is aware of his likes and dislikes and which ones he can talk about and which ones are just for him to know. He is aware of his shape and the distance to which he can see and function without his glasses. Robert knows the basic statistics about all large birds and most water-dwelling mammals.

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A B r i e f Acc o u n t o f Ro b e rt

Robert is not aware of the boy walking toward him from the back entrance.

Robert is aware that the balloons used at the dance have a capacity of six Robert-breaths. The fifth breath puts the horizon of the balloon just in his line of sight and the sixth obscures his vision completely.

Breath One – Most difficult, always.

Breath Two – Probably should have chosen the purple balloon because there are already far more silver than purple.

Breath Three – Hungry.

Breath Four – Winded.

Breath Five – Unaware.

Breath Six – There is no breath six because William B. Mulderfit pops Robert’s balloon with Celine’s hair pin that fell out of her hair and then again out of Robert’s pocket.

The silver latex clings to Robert’s cheeks and forehead. If someone had merely passed the scene with a glance of no more that 1.6 seconds they would have thought William was the victim and Robert an unfortunate recipient of the brain matter from William’s bent, heaving body.

Celine gives Robert a purple balloon; they need more purple anyway.

A Painful Realization Robert is afraid of heights.

Robert’s Cousin Asks for Money “I saved your life.”

“Yes, I know. I thank you every time I see you.”

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“Jokingly.”

“Because I am obviously grateful. It has been twentyeight years.”

“Just remember it. Remember it seriously.”

“Ok.” “You owe me.”

Robert Monologues in a Hilarious Accent “I have felt myself in the middle of a puddle for years and ears. The puddle is more like an ocean in motion with ships sailing and whips of winds sometimes pulling me up or pushing me down. I guess that is vague, but my dear friends, it is not what you lack, but what you possess in excess that weights you down to the very lowest part of the sea, puddle or ship. It is not so distant that I walked through an alley and met a clown. I only tipped my hat but in that time he crafted a balloon animal of such similarity to a dog that there was no fear of sinking because die or float this dog was what I lacked.” He also gestured during this monologue.

Everyone laughed, even though they did not understand the context, because his accent was so hilarious.

There was a second monologue in the same accent, but later in time.

“It is your burden and not mine—this willy-nilly new wallpaper that has brought to light the darkest of our secrets. So dark we did not even know that they could exist in space or time or tense. I will say aloud that my own ambling ambitions do me no more good in the swaying towers of the back streets than the prolonged partialities that separate and reconfigure to make something not so bad, not so old, not so wet. Now I am the whips of winds and I pull and I push and force the farthest ships into the brutal sound

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A B r i e f Acc o u n t o f Ro b e rt

of the firing and I think we should have chosen the border only; but again, I was preoccupied and convinced otherwise.

This burden is not, nor was ever, mine.”

Still, no one understood the context, but his accent was increasingly hilarious.

Robert Leaves His Wife Robert sits in a chair and she says she will only be gone for one minute. She does not come back so no one will really know the difference about who left whom. The police officers will know about his worry and they will keep a record of her letter from Tucson for ten years, but he never sees them anyway. Robert envisions a solitary life and is afraid.

Robert becomes a volunteer at St. Clare’s and brings everyone GET WELL SOON balloons and cards after surgery.

He does this anonymously and everyone appreciates it.

Robert’s wife returns on their fifth anniversary. The fifth anniversary is traditionally wood and this is something Robert would know. She brings a lovely wooden clock, which Robert quickly points out is plywood. He would have explained the difference but he had to run because seven people had surgery that day.

A Poem He is still working on it. It must be just right.

Things That Robert Has Trouble Remembering Broken Arm

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Speeding on Highway 18 Eating 25 Kiwis in One Day Birthday Party Second Job Broken Pens Reading a Thick Book Balancing the Checkbook

At the Beach Robert finds a rock intertwined with dried, hardened seaweed. The combination looks exactly like an anatomical heart. Not a heart like people draw, but a heart like people use to live and work their bodies. Robert takes it home and it dries more and more. The seaweed attaches and branches out from the rock like veins. There is even a red tint from the algae or from some sort of mildew. It is too fragile to carry around so Robert keeps it on his desk, but has a photograph of it in his wallet.

Sometimes you cannot believe the things the ocean spits out. This is what Robert says when people ask. There is so much more to it than that.

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Andrew Se a n B ra d l e y silver gelatin print

Tadpole DARIA REAVEN

and it happened the way it always does with rain and ice and something solid and soft, that squishy part under the skin that lets me know you

are animal and I, something else, also with skin, but without a tick (a tiny parasite) inside and in the water you are drowning again in muck thicker

than blood from here I count your ripples, like the rings of trees to learn your age or your smell

my love affair with water has been changing the lines in my feet and the taste of me,

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even in bed, I am in ocean arms, I wake in tide pools to find coral growing, winding down

to my ankles, like some kind of torture or growing pain

you and I are both new and all the days developing stretching like pregnancy or death

but no soul, no body is here, only new limbs and the land, a running race (no body wins).

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Untitled J U LI A D a ROS A oil on glass

Exploding Kernels in the Cave of Lascaux ELeANOR ELLIS

“The uncertain light of their lamp barely pierced the darkness, and it wasn’t till they reached the first narrowing of the passage, that the four teenagers made out the first paintings on the walls.”

–Norbert Aujoulat

the bull charges me with impermanence, throws me back into my own era, I who tarnish the silence with my carbon-rich breath. because a tree fell I can hear all five syllables of Paleolithic like dusty popcorn in my warm mouth, so used to the way the smooth yellow grains felt in my hands – this is how I come to art: I hold a seed and wonder if it is supposed to grow, someone guides my palms over miracles, and we all bless them.

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Ellis

in these cavernous halls there is no room for faith, the art walks through me: exploding kernels, beautiful and jarring – six thousand sketches – I hold myself out like a bowl waiting for time to fall in.

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And I Don’t Have the Blues Anymore OLI V I A J OHNSON marker and colored pencil on paper

Broadview, Montana C A R ISS A KL A R I C H digital photograph

American Buffalo C r i st i n e T e n n a n t linoleum print

Foreigner Katie Decramer

My head smacks the ceiling of the yellow van as it jerks through a pothole.

The little boys sitting on the narrow seat beside me soar a couple inches into the air, still playing with toy robots, tossing Cheerios to each other, fluidly continuing to chatter in Spanish. Tío Hernán nimbly swerves the makeshift school bus away from a stray dog peeing in the road. Pink and lime and orange bungalows flow into a smooth spectrum of paint. Madonna courts us from the tinny radio while the rosary beads hanging from the rearview mirror dance. They tease me with their elegance.

The van shudders and stops.

I lurch forward, then back, my knees crashing into the door. I try to free myself from my seat, jostling the little boys. My legs are too long, my accent too strong, my words inadequate.

I am far too cumbersome for this country filled with grace.

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A Survey of Abduction: Roper Analysis Christine Texeira

Do you remember ever seeing a ghost?

I sat in a pew behind the old Polish couple that bought the coffee machine at our garage sale. I had put the green sticker on it that meant it was ten dollars. They didn’t even try to talk the price down so my mother spoke with them about coffee. They had gotten rid of everything and were starting over together. My grandmother started sitting next to them in church and they talked about going to Italy. I stared at the man’s white hair, breaching his head in individual thick-white strands. They shuddered with each of his breaths. He turned to say that his wife had died when things were bad. He shook his head but his wife held his hand, nodding, smelling like coffee so early in the morning.

Do you remember feeling as if you left your body?

Everyone stood and I fell asleep. The ache in my neck sent color images to the back of my eyelids and I knew exactly how I had slept.

Do you remember seeing a UFO? Water shot from him, walking up the aisle. I covered my

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face and neck praying this was not some sort of baptism. I looked pleadingly around. I would be in the vestibule no matter what. I didn’t want to risk anything else. He passed but sent another shake behind him. I saw it. I saw it go straight into my eye.

Do you remember waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something else in the room?

My grandmother says he is always looking directly at me.

Through me? If need be. My heart beats. He will know I’m scared.

Do you remember feeling that you were actually flying through the air although you didn’t know how or why?

It is my assumption. Even though I am the one kneeling on the green pads I don’t keep my head all the way down. I can see above everyone’s head.

Do you remember having seen unusual lights or balls of light in a room without knowing what was causing them?

When I close my eyes I press my fists very hard against them. At the end of many tunnels is a honeycomb with actual bees.

Do you remember having seen, either as a child or adult, a terrifying figure—which might have been a monster, a witch, a devil, or some other evil figure—in your bedroom or closet or somewhere else?

Absolutely. Yes.

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Do you remember experiencing a period of time, an hour or more, in which you were lost, but could not remember why or where?

I decide I will crawl beneath the pew and scream for the entire hour. Suddenly I am outside and it is over and I am no longer allowed to watch television. I barely remember closing my eyes.

Do you remember finding puzzling scars on your body and neither you nor anyone else remembering how you received them or where you got them?

I dig my nails into my palm as hard as I can. In order to ignore the pain I have to pay attention. Sometimes the crescents on my palms have faded completely and my fingers cannot just slide back into place.

Do you remember hearing or seeing the word “TRONDANT� and knowing it has a special significance to you?

The windows were trondant. They depicted a trondant day. Absolutely no.

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The Liberator’s Wife ZOË BALLERING

It was not chastity that caused the trend in single beds, it was my husband— he banished women lest their lazy spread of legs become like rigor.

He simply held the flowers, frenzied, anything to hide the twisted stems like one stiff limb across another; consequently, I would find the tulips in a short vase, protruding grossly, their heads bent low, the rich sex of their stamen kissing countertops, snapped roses in a mason jar, baby’s breath floating in the laundry bucket.

I find him standing on the pit, feet in slippers, blue wind brushing grass. His face is like a map turned upside down.

Here are the continents transfigured into cloud shapes— finally he is tall enough, the lip has shrunk.

His hands reach deep, withdraw; he is combing synthetic hair that disobeys the faint, uncertain stroking of his fingertips.

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B A LLE R ING

(These legs are straight.

They cannot bend or overlap each other. He sets them on the bookshelf like he sets our children on the swings, God, he is so gentle with the resurrected dead.)

They say the killers lived like millions were not dying, pinched the cheeks of blond-haired children, brought their thin wives flowers in the mud. My husband is the hero who cannot stand bouquets.

They spoke of good posture, polished boots, waving children, unshaven, swooning women with unibrows and sanguine lips—not single beds, ruined flowers, and overlapping legs.

Not the love of grown and broken men for daughter’s dolls, sweet caresses saved for plastic flesh— the atonement of the liberator’s wife.

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Shadow Puppet EL e a n o r GOLD digital photograph

The Drunk MARTIN STOLEN

we keep all that is ours, our regiments of givings-in, in the slouch and shuffle of a smiling drunk leaking urine in a doorway we learn from his good spirits that that which is given freely (thus with grace) is given over and again we receive it (with eyes on edge) from the dirty folds of a winter coat in Minneapolis and every other place where god has changed and changed again

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Contributors

with pen names

sAM Alden year, Major Pen Name

MATT ColeMAn Junior, Art history and Visual Culture studies Scipio

BAily ARend senior, Chemistry Clayton Bowls

lisA CURTis senior, environmental studies/Politics Chip Monk

Zoe BAlleRing sophomore, english FloĂŤ Baller

JUliA daRosA year, Major Pen Name

seAn BRAdley year, Major Pen Name

kATie deCRAMeR year, Major Pen Name

ReBeCCA BRighT senior, english Puffinus Puffinus

hong-nhi do senior, Rhetoric and Film studies Tasha Fierce

lAURen BeeBe senior, english Luna Sylvila

eleAnoR ellis First-year, Undecided Zea Mays

linneA BUllion First-year, Undecided Jimmea

yonATAn Adin eVAns year, Major Pen Name

sARAh CAnePA year, Major Pen Name

sonyA FABRiCAnT year, Major Pen Name

sAM ChAsAn senior, Art Samuel

nATAlie FoWleR year, Major Pen Name

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e l e A n o R gold Junior, english Angela Aurum

sAMUel MARTineZ year, Major Pen Name

lARA goodRiCh senior, sociology/Rhetoric and Film studies Buela Funk

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kATie hAAheiM year, Major Pen Name

WARRen McdeRMoTT senior, studio Art Jebadiah Dinklehoppersamualswing

RAChel hAhn senior, sociology V. Mars

niCk MiChAl sophomore, english Twiggles

kRisTin iVie year, Major Pen Name

oliViA MiTChell year, Major Pen Name

oliViA Johnson Junior, French Isaac Johnson

lARA Mehling year, Major Pen Name

CARissA klARiCh ’05, english/Rhetoric and Film studies Ava Alexander

JennA MUkUno Junior, english Yvonne

leAh koeRPeR senior, Classics Silvanus Smith

kATie PResely year, Major Pen Name

RiChARd lAMB year, Major Jethro Q. Hoppiloppigus-Flappajaque

denA PoPoVA senior, Rhetoric and Film studies Ladybug blue moon

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Daria Reaven Sophomore, Sociology Sophie Riverre

Christine Texeira Senior, English Algernon ‘Algie’ Wayside Crane

Curtis Reid Year, Major Pen Name

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Amelia Von Wolffersdorf Sophomore, Religion Little Wolff

Martin Stolen Year, Major Pen Name

Andrew Witherspoon Senior, Studio Art Scott Westport

Sydney Stasch Senior, Rhetoric and Film Studies/Spanish Melanie Pinprinzo

Anastasia Zamkinos Senior, English Doesn’t Believe in Pen Names

Joanna Swan Senior, Studio Art Pen Name Cristine Tennant Year, Major Pen Name

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DVD Insert VIDEO A Passion Piece for Joel and Ethan Cohen seAn BRAdley, Theo MARTinUCCi, Ben sPenCeR

Inside Your Head AndReW sPiCkeRT A Film About a Car denA PoPoVA, lARA goodRiCh Motherhood denA PoPoVA, lARA goodRiCh Bet On It sAM Alden The Life in Mary Jo Guy’s Life seAn BRAdley

MUSIC Drop it Like it’s Fervidum leAh koeRPeR Day Break liZ ToWnsend Gold and Fire liZ ToWnsend Harmony in five (til then) RiChARd lAMB

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Staff

Back

Willy Stein, Alex Kushner, Jenna Mukuno, Olivia Mitchell, Marcy Manker, Erin Carnahan,

Christine Texeira, Grace Emery, Jane Collins, Aaron Baumann, Andrew Witherspoon

Front Nicholas Michal, Becca Bright, Lara Mehling, Rachel Hahn, Evelina Miropolsky, Sarah Canepa, Hayley Beckett

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Not Pictured Grant Bradley, Amy Gipsman, Obreanna McReynolds, Dena Popova,

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25%

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