Brushfire Issue #65 V.1 by UNR Brushfire

Copywright 2012 Brushfire and the individual contributors. All rights reserved by the respective authors and artists. Original work is used with expressed permission of the artists. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. The opinions expressed in this publication and its associated website and social medias are not necessarily those of the University of Nevada, Reno or the student body. Front and Back Cover Art by Stephanie De Barros, “Between” & “Mi Girasol” respectively Book Layout by Hannah Behmaram & Lauren Hober Printed by A. Carlisle

Published by the Associated Students of the University of Nevada, Reno

d Richter Lacow, Gerhar Brandon

Dear Reader, It’s difficult to write this edition’s editor’s note because I know that nothing I have to say will speak to you as loudly and beautifully as the pieces represented within these pages. Some of these artists have been world-travelers, some have only newly gained their adult independence, but all have in common a defined and unique talent completely their own. It is my hope for Brushfire that by bringing together such inspiration and honesty from the artists of our community, that we even minutely accomplish what the best literature and art does: making the readers and viewers feel, for the briefest of moments, they’re not truly alone. Enjoy. -Hannah Behmaram

Table of Contents Artwork:

4.....................Brandon Lacow, Gerhard Richter 8.....................Haleigh Hoff, School Daze 16...................Garrett Rottner, Yosemite 18...................Thomas Steuer, Huntington Beach, CA 23...................Russell Eck, Ebb & Flow 27...................Nicholas-Martin Kearney, Marsh Bird Tahoe City 28...................Jillian Stenzel, Moroccan Jillian Stenzel, Market Place 30...................Marty Harris, San Francisco 34...................Brandon Lacow, Solar Eclipse May 20, 2012 35...................Stephanie De Barros, Lion Around 36...................Lindsey Lawson, Exposed 37...................Jillian Stenzel, Spider 38...................Brandon Lacow, Figure Painting 40...................Jillian Stenzel, Te Amo 44...................Cody Cruea, Cenceptual Contractions 45...................Roberto Avila, Omerta 47...................Haleigh Hoff, PallMall 48...................Rose Chascsa, Overgrown 51...................Katlynn Gibbs, Structure 53...................Fatima Gonzales, Jellyfish Priscilla Varner, Carrousel de Tour Eiffle Estefania Cervantes, Masked Jon Criss, Visual Interference 54...................Makayla Valtierra, Squaw 56...................Brianne Isa, Soul Searching: Sculpture 61...................Krystal Baker, Walking Away 62...................Quincy Shanks, FireDrums 64...................Carly Andrus, New Dehli 67...................Katlynn Gibbs, Amsterdam 68...................Jillian Stenzel, American Dream 70...................Summer Graham, Poppies 74...................Austin Rudd, Southern Sunrise 80...................Reena Spansail, Wild Swans 81...................Carley Andrus, Monkeys 82...................Priscilla Varner, The Edge Quincy Shanks, Emerald Pools Waterfall Haleigh Hoff, Guy Sillhouette 84...................Summer Graham, Entropy in Boley, Oklahoma 85...................Russell Eck, Water Under The Bridge 86...................Nathaniel Benjamin, Boars Tusk 87...................Quincy Shanks, Art Car Drive By 89...................Cody Cruea, The Art of War 90...................Nikolai Kolupaev, Iron Man Returns Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Shattered 91...................Nicholas-Martin Kearney, Sputniks 97...................Estefania Cervantes, Stripped

Prose: 9.......................Lauren Hober, Facts Fictions & Runaways 24.....................Nikki Raffail, Daydreaming 32.....................Kelsey Mamman, Blindsight 38.....................Talley Kayser, Pine Beetles 41.....................Mike Flanagan, Miles Ahead 50.....................Beverly Ma, A Vain but Satisfying Explanation 55.....................Mimi Premo, The Train 58.....................Stephanie Kasheta, Pilgrim 69.....................Jeff Opfer , Tuesday 74.....................Paul George, The Visitor 76.....................Shelby Sojot-Tanoue, Anna Louis Poetry: 17.....................Alex King, Absorbing Oregon 19.....................David Tilley, The Dry Places 20.....................Iris Saltus, Like They Always Do 26.....................Melanie Perish, Celebration 29.....................Sunny Mok, Yellow Ribbon 31.....................Michael Williams, Love Makes One Beautiful 36.....................Lisa Kasum, Homeward Bound 37.....................Renelle Pinero, Let it Rain 46.....................Brandon Fishcmann, Sages in the Brush 48.....................Joaquin Roces, The Reluctant Martyr 49.....................S.M. McLean, Only Blank Paper 52.....................Melanie Perish, Talking 62.....................Lauren Hober, Wanderers 63.....................Beverly Ma, Loneliness 65.....................Sean Bassney, Ultimately itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Serious; 70.....................Brandon Fischmann, After the Fact 71.....................Ryan DeLaureal, I Am Tethered to Ticking Clocks! 71.....................Elizabeth Hatheway, Stilling Time 83.....................Emilee Guido, When I Was 19 88.....................Nathaniel Benjamin, The Young American 92.....................Marvin Gonzalez, The Apartment

Facts Fictions & Runaways Lauren Hober

I guess I knew right away. Well, seeing my Aunt Stacy sobbing over me was pretty much a give away. I’m not really sure what she was saying, but I jumped out of bed and she went on to waking up my cousin who had been sleeping beside me. Other family members were strewn across the apartment, sleeping wherever they landed the night before. The light was turned on, which meant that it was still dark out and the sun hadn’t had the chance to heat up my old black dresser. Somehow, though I don’t really remember, I managed to get dressed and ready to go, because the next thing I know I was standing outside my apartment waiting for my family. I was right, about the time anyway. It was five in the morning and the April sun was sleeping in as long as it could for Vegas spring time. My family came out slower than expected and we all rushed into the vehicle on an unfortunate adventure to the hospital. Waiting for us there was a body that had been there unconscious for the past six days, waiting in return for our personal goodbyes. It was then I waited for the world to stop, but it never did. I know it never will. Haleigh Hoff, School Daze

Fact: My mom died at 4:17 a.m. Thursday April 13, 2006. My family is running around the hospital room. Crying. Talking. Handling the business of death. My grandma is unfortunately rocking my mom’s lifeless body back and forth and that’s when I reach my limit. I slip out of the room and head for the cafeteria. I’ve been awake for too long without food. I try to read all the signs I can along the way. Anything that can distract me from what is actually happening in that room.

Do not block. Do not enter. Women’s showers. First aid station. Warming Center.

Warming center for what? What does that even mean? I’m definitely Googling that later. Finally I see the food sign and enter the cafeteria. Even though I’ve been up for what feels like months, it’s only seven in the morning. I look at the tasteless breakfast options, plain toast, bland waffles or cold cereal. I’m getting ready to give up, when I smell the grits. Home cooked grits. “Wake up my sweet little Mariah Piah. I have your favorite breakfast almost finished,” my mom said one morning. I jumped out of bed as quick as my eight-year-old legs would permit me to and ran to the kitchen. “Mom! You made grits?!” “You bet. Would I wake you up early for any other reason? I even made the jam you like to put on your toast.” “Mom, I’m going to finish my whole plate this morning. Promise.”

“Well if you finish your plate, then we’ll just have to go to Aunt Stacy’s today.” “Yes! We get to go? Really mom? Really? I’ll finish everything right now. I get to see Emmy?” “Okay, yes, calm down. Don’t eat too fast, we don’t want you sick before going over there.” “Mom, you know I would sneak into the car somehow. Nobody goes to auntie’s without me. What does she always say? I am the life with the party?” “Yes sweetie, you are the life with the party,” my mom said. Though this time she began to laugh. I started laughing even though I didn’t know what was funny. If mommy was laughing, then I should be too. After all, what eight-year-old girl doesn’t want to be like her mom? “Excuse me, are you in line?” And I was thrown back into reality. “Yes, sorry.” I ordered my bowl of grits and sat down. I took one bite and tried to pretend it was as good as my mother made it. It wasn’t. I looked up and saw my little cousin coming in. Shit. How could I be so selfish? I should have brought her with me originally. She shouldn’t have been in there alone. “Hey little girl!” I yelled over to her. I hope she wouldn’t be mad at me for running off. I watched her scan the room for me; looking to see which direction my voice came from. She found me, but instead of me looking into her normal 11-year-old face, I was looking into a face of pain and loneliness. She ran at me and jumped into my arms. I could feel the tears on my arm, but I didn’t say anything. I just held her there with me and ran my fingers through her long brown hair. My whole life it had been my single mother, my Aunt Stacy and cousin Emily close by, and me. As far as I could remember, it had always been us four. Us four against the world. I was almost four years older than Emmy, but that never prevented us from being so close. I could have been sitting in that cafeteria holding her and a bowl of half eaten grits for days. I could have held her there until every last tear was dried up and I would have protected her so that it never happened again, but at last the rest of the family entered. Every single one of their faces told the story of their morning, dealing with a death and then searching for the two children that ran away from it. My whole life, I’ve been running away from things. Fiction: When you place a seashell to your ear, you hear the ocean. The truth to this common “told to all children” lie is that you just hear the sound of blood surging through the veins in your ear. This is the sound I have heard ever since we set foot in my apartment. This is the sound I hear when I go to sleep and when I wake up and the only thing that stops that sound is when Emmy talks to me, but lately, that’s rare. It’s only been 30 hours since my mom passed away, yet I feel like I’ve been walking

around this small two-bedroom apartment aimlessly for years. Everyone is bustling about, packing the main things and going through my mom’s stuff. Who wants this, who wants that. I have no interest in discarding or giving away anything. In my opinion I should be able to stay here, in my apartment, with all my original things, with all my mom’s stuff…with my mom. But I know that’s not a possibility. So instead of helping, instead of speaking, I just walk around looking for the most peaceful and quiet place I can find and a blanket to snuggle up with. I find myself in my mom’s room, staring at the pictures lining the walls. I try to memorize her face. I try to remember everything I can about the way she looks. I picture her naturally highlighted hair and hazel eyes. I imagine her round, yet structured face. I can still see her. And I can still see the struggle we had in our own relationship, the struggle of a teenage girl and a sick single mother with depression. Fact: Mary Stuart became the queen of Scotland when she was six days old. When I was 12 years old, I didn’t begin taking care of an entire country, but of my mother. I come home from school at about 3p.m. everyday. We get out at 1:15 but I always make my way over to the pizza place across from the school and hang out with my friends. My mom can’t afford for us to have cell phones, so it’s liberating to be there. Today, Tuesday, I come home and the apartment is dark, as usual. The curtains closed so tight only the smallest hint of daylight is entering, and the cable-less television is still on. My mom’s lying across our old sunken blue couch, unmoved since I left for school this morning. Her legs, swollen from the sudden change in weather, are resting on a pillow to keep them above heart level. Her hair plastered to her head shows signs of a hot flash she had earlier in the day. She’s breathing heavily; like anyone would that has an enlarged heart. I know she’s sick, but I couldn’t help but find myself upset. I walk to the kitchen and pull out chicken to defrost for our dinner. Of course, I’m cooking again tonight. I realize we’re running low on groceries, so I pick up the phone and call Stacy. “Hey, how are you?” “Oh, that’s good. Well I can’t really talk right now, but we’re running low on groceries, so when’s the next time you’re going to be on this side of town?” “Yeah. I can come straight home from school tomorrow if that would be easier.” “No, we just need some basic stuff and some meat for our dinners.” “Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow. I love you too.” I hang up the phone and realize it’s almost time for my mom’s medication. I wake her up with a glass of water and her seven different pills. “Oh hey, thanks Pie,” she says through a coarse throat. One that sounds as if it hasn’t had any water for days. “Did you just get home?” “Yeah, and I pulled out some chicken for dinner. You should really try and be

awake when I come home from school. You’re missing good sunlight.” “I know that’s what you think, but it’s a lot easier said than done.” “Okay.” I grab my backpack and I start to head to my room with no intentions of coming out until dinner. “Mariah, come here.” I didn’t want to. I knew where this would lead. “You think because I’m sick and at home that you are the adult here. I’m still the parent, still the adult and I still make the rules.” Her face, once a soft pink color but now red from the sickness and medications, was facing the dark curtains. I wasn’t affected by this conversation at all. It was the same one we always had. She was the parent, I was the child, yet I still had to take care of her. “You can go to your room now. I’ll stay out here alone, like I have all day. I was just waiting for you to come home.” In my room I cry for my mom. For the freedom that is being withheld from her. I cry for the years of life that she was once full of and the confidence she used to carry. I made a list of all the things I could to do to ensure that I would never become depressed. This was the beginning of my running. I take one of the pictures off the wall in my mom’s room and look around for anything else I might want. I feel the sudden urge to take everything in her room and hide it away from my family. I want everything to stay the way it is. These are her things. These are our belongings. We can’t just give them away or get rid of them. I’m lost in my own home. I’m lost in this entire world. Familiar objects are now foreign and for the first time since that Tuesday night three years ago, I let myself cry. “I miss her too.” Emmy’s voice was far away and she was unseen, but I knew where she was. I should have known she would be in here. I move the middle plank of my mom’s California King bed frame and climb under. There were supposed to be drawers under here, but my mom moved them out a long time ago. Now it was just a large dark space under her bed. When we were younger we would pretend we ran away from home and were living in a cave by the sea. Now I couldn’t help but think we were really trying to run away from reality and we were already in a place where pretending was common. Fiction: Children grow at the same rate through all the seasons. I wondered if this spring, my growing would be affected. “I didn’t know you were in here,” I said to her. She looked so relaxed. Sitting in the corner of the under-bed area. I knew that this spring Emmy would be growing up a lot more than usual. There were still pictures we had colored and fake treasure maps taped to the bed frame. I noticed Emmy’s fingers tracing an old photograph of us from Christmas. A time that neither of us could remember if we wanted to, but a photo that showed only our purest smiles. My mom was watching us in the background

of the photo and it reminded me of the time she truly enjoyed life. She was truly beautiful then. “Why did she do it, Pie?” “She didn’t mean to, you know that. She was sick.” “Yeah, but why weren’t we good enough? Why weren’t we worth it?” “Stop it. You know that she loved us both. She loved all of us. We are worth it Emily.” She brought her knees up to her chest and rested her head on them. I hated seeing her pain. I wanted to take it away from her and carry it myself. “Who told you anyway?” I asked her. “You didn’t think I would find out?” “No, I just thought we were going to wait until the right time to tell you.” “I heard mom talking about it. She doesn’t know I know.” “You shouldn’t have been listening, but you would have found out one day anyway. She just couldn’t handle the pain anymore.” I couldn’t leave her with this excuse, yet I didn’t have the answer she was looking for, or better yet, the answer we were all looking for. “She loved you,” I manage to get out. “She loved you too, you know.” “I know little girl.” “I’m going to miss her.” “We all are.” My Aunt Stacy’s voice started calling our names. We could only hide for so long. “After you,” I said to Emmy. She crawled out and wiped away the tears from her face. We went out into the living room and I watched her walk over to her mom and curl up next to her on the couch. Immediately, I was jealous. Fact: Revolvers cannot be silenced because of all the noisy gasses that escape the cylinder gap at the rear of the barrel. The first two days after my mom’s death even the birds were silent, the next two days after that, everything found a voice again. Because of the funeral, every single person who knew April Ann Tylerson was in my apartment made for two. I was forced to be presentable, to carry on the impact my mother had made on each of these attendees’ lives. I took everyone’s condolences and sympathies well and thanked everyone who came. But once everyone was gone, I kissed my little cousin’s head and went to look for somewhere silent. My Aunt Stacy had different plans for me however. “Piah, want to play some board games with the family before we pack them up?” “Nope.”

“You know we’re all having a hard time. We can work this out together.” “I’m not having a hard time. I just don’t want to play some stupid board games with my family while we all try not to talk about the fact that my mom just died.” That was the first time I had said those words out loud. And it was the indicator that I needed to start running again. I needed to get out of this situation. “Mariah, it’s going to be hard. That’s why we’re all here trying to work it out together.” “Stacy, I’m fine.” This resulted in us staring at one another for what I would only deem too long. “I’m going to bed now.” As I walk away I hear her turn to my family in the other room. “I tried guys.” I go to my room, if you can even call it that anymore. All that’s left of it is my bed and dresser. Everything else is packed and ready for departure. I want to run out there and tell them all I love them. To let them know that one day death won’t be lingering in our everyday words and movements and we’ll be able to live like we used to. But how can I tell them something that might not be true? Fiction: Chameleons chang color to match their surroundings. Chameleons actually change their colors depending on their mood, depending on the physical and physiological condition of the animal. Always wearing their emotions, while everyone can see them. The next morning I find the living room, mostly gone. I find the kitchen only left with the essentials. I go to my mom’s room and find what I feared most: emptiness. The bed, the dresser, the vanity table, the pictures, everything that was hers is gone. I begin hyperventilating. I search for air to breathe and a place to sit. My home is lacking its main elements, yet has an abundance of people and boxes that shouldn’t be here. There are people in all rooms, cleaning and packing. I need air. For some odd reason, no one’s in the linen closet and it’s still the perfect size for me to hide in. It’s crowded in there, but it’s the kind of crowd I’m looking for right now. Oversized pillows that I no longer wanted on my bed and all my old comforters from when I was little are all that surround me. I pick up my old Lion King comforter and try to remember what age I was when I decided I had to remove that from my room. When did I become too old for Lion King? Before I can find that answer, I’m taken back to a different time. “You have to sleep alone tonight Pie.” “But mom…okay.” “I’m sorry sweetie, but you’ll be okay. I promise.”

“What if I’m not?” “You will be fine. Everyone has to learn to do things on their own and it’s time that you sleep in your own bed tonight.” I crawled in to my oversized bed and hurried to pull the blankets over my face before the lights went out. My mom kissed my forehead through the blankets and I could see her shadow reaching for the lamp. The lights were out, but I pretended not to notice. “Mom, I’m still afraid,” I said before she had a chance to leave. She quickly retreated, pulled down my Lion King comforter and put her arms around me. Sometimes, there’s no other feeling in the world like the feeling of a mother beside you, never failing to absorb your fear and pain and make it her own. I’m leaning on the door of the small linen closet still. Looking at the small crack of light shining through the bottom. Letting me know that there is light out there when there’s only darkness here. Letting me know that there is hope. I may have been running for too long. All of a sudden the door is opening quickly. Too quick for me to support all the weight I had on the door. I fall over on to the floor of the hallway and look up to Emmy standing above me. “I knew you would be in here.” Instead of responding, I see the smile forming on Emmy’s face. The one I haven’t seen in so long. We begin laughing at the same time, but for different reasons. She’s on the ground laughing beside me now and rolling around. It’s the kind of laughter one could only deem as true and we couldn’t stop if we wanted to. My family comes running down the hall frantically, looks of worry across their faces until they see it’s just us. What a sight that must be; two girls who have always been running away from their fears, lying in the middle of the hallway, outside of a linen closet, laughing. The blankets and pillows that were carelessly shoved in there are on top of us now and we only begin to laugh harder. Two girls who haven’t smiled or spoke in the last three days laughing to tears. Us two against the world. “Thank you,” Emmy whispers as I begin to breathe again. “No, thank you.”

We’re going to be all right.

Absorbing Oregon Alex King

I traversed a track to the top of a coastal cliff along Cooâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bay and eased to its edge The weaving wind whistled, spruces swayed as the water swelled, waves rolled and roared and crashed into crags on the coast. Serene, I stood still. For a flash I forgot the future, became impartial to the past, perfectly part of the present. As gulls gathered high overhead I pondered, pensive: was it the wind, or the water, that swept my weary soul away? This moment was so clear. Everything else: as murky as the mist that muddled morning into mystery.

Garrett Rottner, Yosemite

The Dry Places David Tilley

Thomas Steuer, Huntington Beach, CA

Every one of these thoughts is the last in the dry places that lie between walls to the east and the west and these thoughts keep on dripping, and falling incessantly none of them made manifest and I stumble over a trickle of moisture that follows the rim of the dry valley floor into mud, then to dirt, then to dustâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; as if it had never known water at all and the white bones bleached in the sun had never known water at all; as the walls riseâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; further and further the dust that I wade through grows heavier, heavier. The trickle slows, stops.

Like They Always Do Iris Saltus

He holds my hand-the way they all do-caressing his fingers into the spaces between mine, squeezing tightly, cutting off the blood flow. I can hear my heartbeat; I just hope he can’t. It’s not a heartbeat of excitement or a heartbeat of lust, but a heartbeat of habit; a physiological response to a potential mate. He looks at me-the way they all do-head tilted down, eyes focused on mine as if looking over a pair of spectacles blinking every few seconds, moving focus from one eye to the other. I can see his intentions through his eyes, but he doesn’t know I know he’s waiting for the right time to make his move. He brushes my hair behind my ear-the way they all do-slowly sweeping the tips of his fingers along my cheekbone, catching the strands of hair that fall in front of my face and placing them behind my ear. He bumps my earring as he pulls his hand back, feigning sincerity. Trying to create romance.

Love is stupid. No one loves. It’s just doing the same thing over and over with different people attempting to convince them that they should belong to you, that they should be your possession. Nevertheless, I’ve been here before, and I know it will happen again. I know what’s next: He lifts his hand up, and I feel it wrap around the back of my neck. He tries to hold me gently, but all I feel is his hunger. He moves in for a kiss, and I feel myself kiss him back-like I always do. I feel myself lean into him, pressing my chest against his, trying to create desire; trying to satisfy his unspoken cravings-like I always do. With eye contact and a teethy-smile kiss, I try to make light of the heavy emotions as I just giggle when he tries to go further with his hands-like I always do. I push his hands away, when he starts to undo my belt hoping he gets the hint but he keeps going anyway--

Why?

My mind races, my heart races I try to stop, but I give in and convince myself to enjoy it-like I always do. I close my eyes and try not to feel. I wait to hear him say “thanks”-like some of them do. I get dressed, find my keys, and say “you’re welcome”-like I always do. We walk away from each other-like we always do. I’ll make sure he never sees me again-like I always do. He won’t care-they never do.

Russell Eck, Ebb & Flow

like they always do.

Daydreaming

Nikki Raffail There’s a coffee cup on my desk, and a lighter, and an erraticallydesigned glass piece enveloping muggy water and residue. This desk is clean. Crumbs and little balls of dirt under paper I’m trying to write on distracts me. In front of me lies a natural setup, all scattered perfectly randomly. Not placed in any specific order to make it photographable. Nothing’s made to look particularly special. But it is. Most things in this life are. When I have the right mindset and time to think, I try to write about it. And in this place and time, I thought about how peculiar it is the way an imagination slows down when we finally get everything we’ve been dreaming of. I guess that’s what feeds into some belief that wealthy people are arrogant and those who seem the happiest lack the ability to paint a picture or write a song. I suppose it’s an either-or sort of thing. Pick one or the other: you can have happiness in reality or endless possibilities in your mind. It’s hard to manage both at the same time. And maybe that’s why the people who are the most fucked-up in the head make the most beautiful things. Because everything outside of them looks so dreadful, it’s all just more the reason to create something lovely in their little crazy heads. And maybe that’s why my frequency of writing has decreased as time goes on. Because when you’re five and writing your first story about a cat made out of ice, you have the world in front of you and you have absolutely no idea where things are going to go from there. Your mind has no limits. No one’s told you “that’s impossible” yet, or “science goes against that,” “that physically won’t work,” “those aren’t real,” “you can’t have that,” “it’ll take years of graduate school to get there.” But time goes on and you find out things don’t exist that you thought did, and those you thought didn’t actually do. The world transforms from being Mommy and Daddy and the school kids and your messy room into something bigger than you ever could’ve wrapped your little, crazy head around. And now villains are real and money is a universal master and you start to realize you’re a slave to some kind of extent. And now you’re an adolescent surrounded by horrible teenagers who want to make your newfound world a hell, and it works for a little bit, and you go into hiding in your writing again. And you dream of love-at-first-sight and proving everyone wrong and being someone totally opposite than the person they’ve seen for years and finally being able to stand in front of all of them—poised, proud, chin up—and being above them now. And you write of so much love and so much want. You’re endlessly dreaming. You soothe yourself by daydreaming before nightdreaming, daydreaming set to the music

blasting in your ear-buds as you gaze out of the window of the shuttle bus you’re suddenly on that’s taking a right turn inside your college campus. You’re endlessly dreaming. After these few years and transformation from one environment to the next, still, you dream. Not because you want to be better than the ones who looked down on you anymore—that’s accomplished. They’re still in the same place you were in for 18 years and the same spot they were in their life when you left them a year ago. And you’re going places—driven by the confidence you’ve attained whilst attaining a new life, and a new outlook on one. But still you dream. You dream of the love you always write about. And you’re still writing about it. Writing letters to lovers that don’t exist, stories you thought up in your daydreams, longing prose of capturing a tangible being that’s only been dreamed up endlessly, bit by bit, one trait at a time. So when a curve comes on the path you’re travelling on, and suddenly your mind is forcing you to write love poems about the love standing in front of you—that you can touch, that you can see with your own two eyes, that exists outside of your head—instead of the love poems derived from fictional stories in your head, the wheels don’t turn like they used to. Your imagination isn’t acting like it used to. It’s easier to write about things that don’t exist than things that actually do. There are no limits then. Life slowly narrows down the things it allows a person to imagine, wonder, and write about. Childhood goes by quickly, constantly stepping on ideas you thought could exist outside of your head—stepping them out so fast that you have no time to get too upset about this constant disappearance. And then when you start dreaming of the same thing for years and years, never quite reaching it during that time, observing others who have what you want—observing and feeding the moving pictures in the daydreams playing inside your head—well then, you get stuck in a pattern. You get used to the pattern. You find comfort in the pattern. But you lose that pattern when all that’s been fictional turns into nonfiction. And now Life has taken away the main things that would constantly leave you to imagine and wonder. But now it’s not so bad. With this brings the happiness that you could only have dreamed of years before this. This happiness exists now. The pattern is broken. It’s easier to write about things that don’t exist than things that actually do. There are no limits then.

Celebration Melanie Perish

We celebrate with purpose, without candy and flowers, without champagne and strawberries; we drive. This year it’s the Brazos River bottom some farm fields ploughed, some fallow. Often an oil pump seesaws dips into the ground, two chrome-bright tanks – or three – stand nearby; half as tall as a barn, they separate oil and water or hold oil, water, gas. The pumps make some farms possible, ranches, too, you tell me. Fences ripple by while longhorns watch and chew; and a red calf nurses from a dappled cow as the road unspools like old film dark with interesting edges. Your eyes drift to your right hand, my left hand, fingers interlaced between us. They plant cotton here, you say; it’s a good summer crop. Today, it’s a Brazos winter with no snow and a wind sharp as a fishing knife. Post oaks (leafless) cluster next to live oaks (green) with branches thick as barrel-chested men. Twisting like the hills we drive on; leave everything but this moment behind us. We stop at Royer’s Café, eat Texas sized portions, buttermilk dressing on fries and greens. You find a different farm-to-market road to take us back past fences cross-hatched with cane breaks. The fences are made of pipe you tell me, pipe from oil rigs re-used and painted white. I smile remember a part of your story: a boy in a different state in a different valley, similar landscape, alone and wanting wanting someone to listen. You’re very far away, you say at the stoplight. I’m here, I tell you breaking the round quiet. I’m here.

Nicholas-Martin Kearney, Marsh Bird Tahoe City

Jillian Stenzel, Moroccan

Yellow Ribbon Sunny Mok

It’s early morning, and we’re chased by dawn, running into a warming horizon. We hoist our box sets, and bagels, and breezy springtime mornings on our shoulders where time fades into the afternoon, where we tumble and fall in a field of grass, locked in arms, much like the tree is rooted into the ground and I have never been this close to you: your embrace so tight around my back and pulling me into your chest; I feel the steady beat of your heart and the calmness of your breath. Your voice tickles my ear, whispering words of love and encouragement; I’ve never been this blessed to hear the voice of someone so beautiful, Your breath warms my soul and gives me faith that angels do exist. Our fingers trace the outlines of ghosts that live in the present Intimacy has never been this intimate as I run my fingers through your hair long, jet-black, and smooth, touching the yellow ribbon that ties it, that ties you and me through miles of loneliness. Then, I get up, and you’re not there. I’m alone in a line, on a dark September morning. My shoulders slump from a 70 pound rucksack While I march on into the foreboding sands of hell and all that hugs me is my armored vest and the heat that is the spawn of the devil I hear the emptiness of a desert that surrounds me and my squad mates As we trudge through a sea of yellow dirt, our boots growing heavy with grains of wishes Wishes that are emptied at the end of the day, Blown away by the winds of hell, where dead voices echo throughout my body And intimacy does exist in the desert; My fingers have never been this intimate with anything else My M-16, long, lethal, and cold black in my hands, with its itchy sling borrowing into my neck, where your yellow ribbon used to only tickle.

Market Place, Morocco

So I keep moving, hoping that it does not untie as easily. This time, it’s the only thing that ties me to my life.

Marty Harris, San Francisco

Love Makes One Beautiful Michael Williams

Blindsight

Kelsey Mamman I hold the leather leash as Jeff, the trainer I am shadowing, opens the back of the white training van. Jeff reaches for the leash as he opens the metal door to the kennel of a small, female black lab. I hand him the leash and then stand with my hands by my side, waiting for him to unload her. It is intimidating, going out on a route with a seasoned trainer. I am a mere intern, a puppy raiser, someone who could only hope to work as a mobility instructor like Jeff. “This is Effie,” Jeff says to me as he shuts the back of the air conditioned van. He swings the guide dog harness off of his shoulder. “She’s almost finished with her training.” He doesn’t wait for a reply. My sparse responses to his small talk on the ride from San Rafael to San Francisco exemplified that I am an observer, not much of a talker. “I’d like you to go under blindfold and work her today.” Jeff says. This is not what I was expecting. What I was expecting was to follow Jeff, or more accurately, run to keep up with Jeff as he worked his dogs around Fisherman’s Warf in San Francisco. I expected to go back to the kennels, clean up dog poop, and feed fifty jumping dogs before making the trek from San Rafael to Oakland in rush hour traffic, munching on a bag of stale Cheetos to keep from starving to death. This is how the previous seven days at my unpaid internship at Guide Dogs for the Blind had gone. I did not expect to be blindfolded and then guided by an almost-trained dog around one of the busiest places in the city. “Don’t worry, I’ll spot you the whole way. She’s very good at her job and she’ll match your walking pace.” He throws in a smile. “Okay, yeah.” I say. “Great,” Jeff says. He slides the harness over Effie’s head and fastens it around her belly. She was quiet in the van, but now her tail wags back and forth as Jeff pets her head. He grabs a blindfold from behind the front seat and hands it to me. I take a deep breath and slip it over my eyes. The world goes dark and all I remember is that the street is to my right, and a building is to my left. I hear Jeff move behind me and press Effie’s leash into my left hand. “Okay,” he says, “You know the commands. I’ll tell you when we need to turn.” That’s it? That’s all the prep I get? I hope that I won’t mess this up, because I want to be good at this. I nod, take a deep breath, and grasp the handle of the harness in the same hand as the leash. I move my right hand forward as I say “Effie, forward.” She’s off like a rocket and I

feel her steady pull into the harness. I am caught off guard by how quickly she walks. I am trying to take small, bird-like steps because I know I’m going to run into something any second— a table, a kid, a trashcan, a sleeping bum. Take your pick. I hear Jeff behind me: “Let her guide you, walk out a little more.” I lengthen my stride, anything to help ease this anxious feeling that I’m going to get hurt. I realize that I have no choice but to trust Effie, because I can’t see. She can. Effie responds by pulling more confidently into her harness. She is ready to work. “Good girl Effie,” I say. “You’re coming up to a curb.” Jeff says just as Effie slows to a halt. I probe out with my foot until I feel the depth of the curb. I praise Effie again and then command her forward, stepping off the curb like I do it blindly everyday. I walk out with Effie, matching her pace and it frees me. I no longer feel like I am going to trip over a sleeping bum. I am flying down the sidewalk and Effie is taking me. “Okay, Kelsey, there’s going to be another curb and then we need to turn left.” Effie stops again and I swing my right hand in front of me and to the left. “Effie, left.” Her body swings to the left and she waits for my forward command. We are walking towards the water. I can smell the fishy scent of the ocean. It gradually gets louder as we descend into tourist territory. For a moment I fear the crowd will swallow Jeff, but He sticks right behind me as Effie weaves me in and out of the babbling tourists. I can hear their conversations as we thread in and out. I graze someone’s shoulder and they babble after me in Japanese. I smile. I am really doing this. We make our way out of the shopping area and into a quieter spot with stairs. “She’ll stop at the first stair and you probe out before telling her forward, just like the curbs.” Jeff tells me. Sure enough, Effie stops at the first stair and works her way steadily up them after I probe out and give her the command. I stumble over one of the last stairs and Effie slows, waiting for me to balance. “What a good girl,” I say. After the stairs, we are in the last segment of our route. The sidewalk is clear and Effie really moves out. I can hear seagulls to my right and I move my head in that direction, forgetting that I won’t see anything. “You’re missing the view, there’s no fog on the bay today,” Jeff says. I laugh. I wonder if he says this stuff to his blind clients. Even though I can’t see the water, I can feel it. The moisture settles on my skin, I hear birds and the waves on rocks, and the presence of open space to my right is undeniable. I am redefining sight. A few minutes later I feel Effie slow and pull to the left.

“We’re back at the van” Jeff says. Relief floods over me along with something else. Disappointment. I am relieved that I made it back alive, but I don’t want it to be over. The partnership I shared with Effie is rare. No matter how many animals I work with, how many puppies I raise, how many horses I train and compete, I will rarely experience a moment of interdependence such as this. It is a gift. “How was it?” Jeff says as I pull the blindfold off. The sunlight burns my eyes and I close them, waiting for the darkness to vanish. “Incredible,” I say and rub Effie’s ears. She rubs against my leg, eager for her praise. “She’s awesome.” Jeff takes the leash from me and loads Effie into the van, leaning his long frame against the door. “I think she’s ready to be matched with a blind client,” Jeff says. “She did better than I expected today.” I nod, wondering who Effie’s partner will be. “By the way,” Jeff says “You’re a natural under blindfold, I can’t get half of my blind clients to trust their dogs as fast as you trusted Effie today.” He pauses, “You should think about this as a career if you haven’t already.” My smile tells him all he needs to know. “That’s what I thought,” he says.

Brandon Lacow, Solar Eclipse May 20, 2012

Stephanie De Barros, Lion Around

Lindsey Lawson, Exposed

Let it Rain Renelle Pinero

The steam of potential rises from you when you speak. Not to say your energy evaporates quickly, but that your motivation has heated to boiling point. Eager to make its way to the clouds where it will cool, but never fade.  Creating formations in the sky, playing tricks and stimulating those who dare gaze up, they dream… and as the clouds thicken they will experience precipitation, an outpour of your actions that will lead them to believe that they too can make it rain.  Bringing to life and awakening the sleepers of this Earth.

Jillian Stenzel, Spider

Homeward Bound Lisa Kasum

I stand amazed at how when one door is closed many others stand opened. It’s like that maze at Burning Man. Through some of these doors I walked, leading me out to woods --lovely, dark, and deep. The air is crisp and the trees sparkle in a beautiful frost. But I hope that door was left unlocked --perhaps even slightly ajar. I left my key inside and I hope to come back home.

Pine Beetles Talley Kayser

Early autumn, and the evergreens are dying. A brilliant forest floor woven in rust and emerald…but that’s not how we noticed. It was the sound – a slow, persistent, muffled squeak. You listen, and you hear another, then another, until the stand of longleaf pines becomes a clock-shop. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. His hand against the bark, he explains the cambium layer, the flesh of the tree. Underneath the skin jaws chew relentlessly. It is still and cloudy. There are a few drops of rain. Thick slick white sap, engorged trails of resin, cloudy blood clots stream over the rough-cut exterior. Munch munch, crunch crunch.

The carpet under my feet is rust, emerald. I want to lie and listen, perceive. In stillness, the death-knell could only thicken, perhaps enough to let loose the sound of my own bones decaying. Enough to let loose time, death, dying, patience, persistence, triumph, tragedy… what couldn’t you learn from this? Trees battling lack of fire, beset by pestilence. A winged thing that cannot come. Blood and guts and flames and crunching jaws. I wanted to sit, surrounded by that death-song, and wait for the poem that would explain everything.

What is it? Menacing, relentless. Meticulous, mechanical. Persistent. Clever. Subtle. Sad. The death-song of giants.

n Brando

Lacow, Fi gure Painting

Miles Ahead Mike Flanagan

A Te el,

Jill

n Ste ian

Miles reached back and broke the silence by scratching to life a match off the side post of her headboard and Sonja watched the smoke evaporate in the slow moving ceiling fan. The orange glow from Miles’ joint was the only light in the untidy bedroom, save for the full moon fighting through the rippling curtains of the 39th floor penthouse window. She rolled over to face Miles and propped her head up on her palm. Her long brown hair snaked down her over her collar bone, shielding her left breast. “Immer noch? Miles?” she nagged him under her breath. “It helps my knee,” he responded. Miles knew a fight was looming when she spoke Swiss German. Sonja knew it pissed him off. She slid her hand under the sheet and traced a manicured fingernail across the scar on Miles’ left knee. She remembered feeling unaccustomed to the deafening silence a year earlier in Madison Square Garden. Scoring champ and league MVP Miles Crawford had just thrown down a perfectly lobbed alley-oop in Game 7 of the NBA Finals to push the lead to an insurmountable 20 points over the Lakers, but the air was completely sucked out of the Mecca on the corner of 7th Avenue and 33rd Street. He came down like a duffle bag on a JFK conveyor belt instead of the Brooklyn-born, St. John’s schooled, basketball hosanna of New York City that brought the Knicks their first championship since Frazier, Reed, Monroe, and Phil Jackson hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy in 1973. She joined 19,763 sets of eyes fixed on Miles biting his #21 jersey and clutching his shattered knee. “So geht’s nicht weiter,” she said, more to herself than Miles. “English please, baby,” he exhaled. “And yes we can keep doing this…I’m working on fixing it. I’m gonna fix us…” Sonja sighed, and stole a glance at the picture of Carmen on the nightstand. A sliver of moonlight caught their daughter’s smiling face. She was missing one tooth on the bottom row, but was too happy to care. How they could still afford to send her to the Buckley School, she did not know. Miles always held out hope that he could finish his rehab and come back to the league, but he was in the last year of his deal and endorsements were paying the bills right now. Although she would never tell him, Miles’ dedication to their daughter’s education turned her on. They had agreed early on not to let the money and attention get to her.

Miles dunked his joint into one of the scotch glasses and let the melted ice suffocate the cherry. He turned on the flat screen and then quickly flipped the channel from ESPN. He put his arm under Sonja’s head and said: “You know, I just got done working out when you text me. The trainers think I’m at 80%...I’m going back to see Dr. Fine on Wednesday.” He leaned over to kiss the top of her head just as she got up to go into the bathroom. Miles stared at her with duck lips as she walked away. She had the sexiest shoulder blades in the world; in fact, it was the first thing he noticed when they first met. He recalled being exhausted from a first round playoff defeat by the Bulls and needing the vacation. It was the first photo shoot he had ever been to, a friend of a friend of the photographer got him on the set and told him he would have a blast. Barbados had the whitest sand he had ever seen, and he tried to picture what Coney Island would look with it. It didn’t work. When Sonja’s assistant brushed by him monotonously listing the problems that not having cell phone service presented, Miles looked up just in time to catch Sonja Thuli confidently glide into position for her next shot. She was the most incredible creature he had ever seen, and she had not even turned around yet. He would never forget the wisps of her hair hiding and then revealing her elegantly contoured shoulders in the wind. Miles vowed that he would not come back to New York without her. “Hon—Miles! I said are these clean?” Sonja was standing at the doorway holding up a red-wine colored towel. “Uh, yeah, yes,” he responded. Sonja finished wiping her face, switched off the light and carefully curled back into the king size bed. Miles flinched when her cold feet slipped under his calf. “Do you remember when Carmen got her little toy keys stuck in the bath tub?” he mused. “She used to love playing with toys in the tub. It was the only way to get her in there! I pulled her out and started draining the tub and forgot to get the toys out of there first. I remember you walked in about an hour later looking forward to your after-work bath, and you were not happy.” Sonja suppressed a smile and poked his ribcage with her finger. He continued: “It was during the blackouts, so we couldn’t call the plumber, remember? And I said I could fix it. You rolled your eyes the way you always do whenever I get serious about something. I ended up tearing that tub that we spent $12,000 just to get to the pipes. God, you were so mad! You loved that tub. But I found the keys! Didn’t I? Carmen was so happy; she stood in the doorway clapping her hands; like I just hit a buzzer beater or something.”

Miles was now sitting up, leaning up against the headboard; his knee felt fine. But Sonja was up too, fixing her black tights underneath her grey wool skirt. She pulled on her black top and started walking toward the door, past the dusty trophy case. Miles’ eyes darted from the memory to his wife’s back. “Ciao, Miles,” she said without turning around. Miles looked back at the TV and hit the ‘back’ button on the remote. He stared at the screen as Sonja waited for the elevator to come up. Enough, he thought to himself. He pivoted his legs out of bed and started after her. He was barely limping now. “Wait,” he said. Sonja whirled her hips around and faced him with her arms crossed. He left eye brow was raised. Miles knew he had to be quick. “I’m a ballplayer sweetheart, you knew that when you married me,” he said. He dug his big toe into the hardwood floor and spoke with his face toward the ground. “But the greatest thing I’ve ever done wasn’t on no fuckin’ basketball court—“he stammered. Miles brought his hand to his mouth began breathing heavily. He closed his eyes but the ducts were stronger tonight. He felt the liquid roll over his knuckles. “What are you saying?” Sonja asked. She took a few steps toward him, and opened her arms. Her head gently rested just his chest and vibrated with his soft cries. He was 6 foot 8 and she was 5 foot 5; her upper body virtually disappeared in his warm embrace. “Miles I—“she began. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll do it, just come back. We’ll get Carmen from your mother’s and my girls will be back…home. “Breen said there’s a spot for me at the announcer’s table at the Garden and…“ “Shh…stop…shut up, you idiot,” she said through a smile. Her eyes were glassy as well. “Of course I will…” She grabbed his hand walked him to the living room. It was her favorite part of the apartment because of the floor-to-ceiling windows. They had views of the southern Manhattan skyline plus, the Williamsburg and Brooklyn Bridges because Miles wanted to keep an eye on home. Miles maneuvered behind her and slinked his long arms around her shoulders; he glanced at his championship ring on the mantle before kissing the top of her head.

Cody Cruea, Cenceptual Contractions

Roberto Avila, Omerta

44 45

Sages in the Brush Brandon Fischmann

They woke shaking under sober skies, the sun a desk lamp over rooftops with its rays making ovens of empty stomachs. Senseis of self-defeating, their thoughts remained caught in whirlpools burning holes in their secondhand shirts and sanity. those days, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d only breathe free when they could still conjure fantasies about being heroes -imagining all the selfless ways to sleepthose days, Rumi would still sing love songs to a sadhot desert wind, blowing over revolting middle-class kids like a lone, wilted poppy glowing in the black rock heat.

Haleigh Hoff, PallMall

They drank their whiskey like trucks drank gasoline, they stumbled amongst the meadow groves and amidst the white oak trees they stared at one another solemnly. It was agreed that a true artist strives for authenticity. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Loveâ&#x20AC;?, however, remained a heavy shade of gray in the grayer matter of their brains. Cross-legged, hammered and less afraid they conjured every metaphor for beauty possible and stapled empathy onto the shoddy corpses of their half-assed similes, until the stars sang along in perfect harmony and they were electrocuted by the chills that licked their spines.

The Reluctant Martyr

Only blank paper

What I regret is not What is said between us; But the volumes of words Left unsaid, Like Alexander’s library Lost to the sea.

stark trees, just branches,

Joaquin Roces

What haunts me is not What is done between us But what is left undone; A universe undiscovered. The stifled still-born fruit Of what could be Sacrificed on the bloody altar Of social contrivance; The reluctant martyr of our polite indifference.

Rose Chascsa, Overgrown

S.M. McLean

bare witness—unbleached, uncut —my truth’s words silent.

A Vain but Satisfying Explanation. Beverly Ma

I once heard a cellist say it’s hard to explain what it is that musicians have come to enjoy about playing their instruments, and being the prideful and competitive person I am, I’ll take this moment to attempt that. I don’t believe what we, as musicians (though I hardly can consider myself one just yet), love about our music is the music itself. At least, that cannot be absolute and it can’t be the only reason. It’s not what we feel on the surface, that drive for self-improvement or the sense of accomplishment we feel, whether witnessed or otherwise, when we play it just the way we want it for the first time. That can’t be all there is. If that was the case, call me a soulless and conceited ill-representation of a living being. There must be something more that wakes us in the morning, comforts and resolves us in the day, and sends us reluctantly to sleep at night, for we yearn so longingly to play again. I’ve come to believe, if only in part, that this drive, the fulfillment to which we have become addicted and attached is credited to something greater than the music itself. How else have we developed such wide ranges and styles of music? It can’t just be our own feelings towards those random and irrelevant tones, vibrations, silences. It can’t just be our own need to fuel our egos in mastering a difficult piece. It most certainly can’t just be the want for improvement because what we feel with our instruments cannot be achieved elsewhere. There’s a common ground musicians can share with painters and dancers and whomever else I’ve misplaced or forgotten; we feel this love and devotion to our instruments, or our brushes, or our bodies because they allow us to do something that no one else here can: escape this confined existence and express and release ourselves into a solitary world, into this world where you can “never truly understand another person,” this world we’ve entered unknown and alone and will most surely leave lonely and, for most, forgotten. It’s not the notes that make the musician love their instrument (and I owe my fair share of apologies to those attentive to intonation). It’s not the audience that feeds the musician’s soul and body (and we all have forgotten our fair shares of food and sleep). It’s that amazing and unexplainable phenomenon of being able to pull from inside ourselves the words that don’t exist, the emotions we can’t explain, and the pieces of ourselves we didn’t know (and probably still don’t know) we had and then making them all come to life. Suddenly, through our instruments, we’re not alone anymore.

There, right there, is our audience, the only thing that can truly interpret what we’ve done because we put it there ourselves. Musicians play for others, themselves, and unawares, for their instruments (their soul and their unsung and unconscious desires). And when we open our senses to the core that we have yet to glimpse and ascertain in ourselves, we let those that are looking see us as something more than another reflection of a lone(ly) person. That in itself is music. Just a small part of something that lies within, only ever awakened in those we call artists. Try as I have, I still failed to explain a musician’s enjoyment in playing his/her instrument. To do that, I would need an instrument.

Katlynn Gibbs, Structure

Talking

Melanie Perish I did not want to walk today, to make the predictable loop through neighborhoods with the fringe of one traverse across the lip of a suburban-small canyon. The pockets of my shorts were flush with chap-stick and change, a phone more intelligent than I am, an invention which may not exist by the time a stranger reads this; or it may exist only as a mile marker on the communication exit just off the information superhighway.

Estefania Cervantes, Masked

When you answered, I said, Remember I’m in radio-free Reno and may lose you; and you said, No, you’ll never lose me – all lines in a poem I didn’t think I’d write from a walk I didn’t want to take, my pulse treading at only a hundred twenty beats a minute hovering over the memories of two kids talking – each holding a can at the end of waxed string – your voice, and an old promise opening from the green stem of the day.

Priscilla Varner, Carrousel de Tour Eiffle

Was it the hummingbird in a neighbor’s yard – its wings treading ten thousand beats a minute hovering over blue salvia? Or was it the two young doves learning to fly over and back over and back between cedar tree and sage brush? Was it the cloud-tufted rectangle like a small tied quilt suspended? Was it any of these that made me call you, put invisible frequency and cell towers to use all in the timed expanse of sky ?

Fatima Gonzales, Jellyfish

Jon Criss, Visual Interference

Makayla Valtierra, Squaw

The Train Mimi Premo

Lili hated the train. If someone could even call it a train. It was a cell, a rough box, reeking of feces. The scuffed metal bucket that everyone had used for a urinal had tipped over, splattered over Mrs. Meitner and she’d uttered expletives under her breath in the time since. One of her daughters attempted to calm her, but received only a slap. Its sound silenced the groans, prayers and murmurings. No one except Mrs. Meitner dared to say a word. Three sunsets had passed, and in that time, they’d eaten the jam, bread and boiled potatoes that Mama had packed. Lili was thirsty, but even more than this, she missed being able to read. Only shadows filtered through the cracks in between the car doors. Manci yanked the book she’d weaseled out of her knapsack and sat on it. There was plenty of time to read once they got to wherever they were going, the light wasn’t enough to see one another by, let alone read a book. Mama tried to retrieve it, but Manci stood her ground. Even though she could have stood up, with two and a half meters to spare, there was no room on either side. Bundles and knapsacks were cudgeled between the eighty five occupants, Manci’s cigarettes spilled out of the pocket of her boiled wool coat. If she’d been able to reach over, she’d have shoved them back inside. Mama didn’t approve of Manci’s smoking. “Mama, it feels like we’re in Holland by now.” Lili ventured. “Poland.” She put her arms around Lili and squeezed. The gesture quieted Lili’s heart, chased away the doubt and caused her to hope. Maybe, the Nazis would keep their promises of work, food and shelter. She knew that Mama believed not a word and thought that they would die. A jerk, followed by the screech of metal meshed against metal woke Lili out of her reverie. They had arrived. Where they had arrived was an unanswered mystery.

Brianne Isa, Soul Searching: Sculpture

Pilgrim

Stephanie Kasheta There’s a tree in a yard on the outskirts of my husband’s home town; an elm sapling nestled between Marstons Mills and New Seabury, the towns where his parents live separately. Within that distance is this tree with scant limbs growing unsteadily out of a thin trunk tethered to two posts entrenched in a frozen tug of war on perfect grass. This tree reminds me of myself. I am a step-mother at twenty-two. While driving past it, in the midst of contentious visitation arrangements, I was able to inhale for the first time during my honeymoon. I imagined the new tree as a sentinel outside the house of a nuclear family, adjacent to a kitchen window of a wife (any wife, any era) feeding children who belong entirely to her and her husband. It is a singular pain, riding in the backseat, trying and failing to contain it all over the course of a short jaunt into town. In one breath I sense the fledgling limbs bending toward me, but they retract just as fast, as if they had mistaken me for someone else; surely not a wife, or anyone beholden to the pitiable obduracy of a delusional seventeen year old girl. We gave my step-daughter a bath in my mother-in-law’s tub. I’m bathing in it now, peering over the ledge as though I’m two and a half feet shorter, knowing nothing beyond the geysers which are sprouting miraculously out of the floating islands that my dad’s hands form in the water. On a day between visitations, I forced my husband to drive me to his town--Marstons Mills, derived from the Marston family who set up grist mills in the area in the mid-17th century-- cemetery. After driving through the narrowing paths and calling out names, to be met with my husband saying “I knew a...” and “That last name sounds...,” we lurched behind a row of tombstones, facing their backs. We drove ahead in order to look out of the car behind us at their inscriptions Marston, Marston, Marston, an entire family laid out. Forgive me, but I longed for the century in which these bodies were interred. I longed for the time when a scandal was a scandal, and not something which could be shaken off with a momentarily sympathetic smile. We stopped in front of the grave of one of my husband’s exclassmates. My husband told me that the boy was murdered during his senior year. He explained, all a foot away from the victim’s cool obsidian headstone, that the boy had been a deplorable person. I thought “good,” and,“Let him come, let him come to haunt us.” For I was willing to risk the terror of a murdered teenager if it meant that in passing, his ghost could

rub off; in the exchange of overnight bags, the galling, amazed glances at my husband, the indefensible air of nonchalance, the ghost could rub off and begin an overdue reaping. While walking behind my husband and his best friend up the steep incline to the Wampanoag section of Plymouth Plantation, I noticed herbs of antiquity in web-laced boxes lining our path. The smell of food cooking in an unseen fire below drew us deeper into the recreated village. I stood in front of two girls making this traditional dish of berries and cornmeal wrapped in corn husks and thrown on the fire. The longer I stood in front, the more their anachronistic tattoos of angels and paw-prints dissolved into the smoke. I started coughing but continued standing there, letting the entire scene, my husband, the other tourists and the departing cloud shelter be re-imagined, forged anew in black- like a burnt offering to gods of emotions I did not yet know how to typify. An invisible rope yanked me along as the men walked further up the slope to the English settlement. I made the mistake of dressing in two layers in the morning, after seeing a thicket of clouds. The promise of rain had excited me. But the sun began to intrude on our day as we walked closer to the English side. The slivers of light seeping from the tops of trees spread into an all-encompassing whiteness as we were thrust into the Pilgrim village. The three of us weaved in and out of the village’s houses, partly out of interest and partly to seek shelter from the oppressively damp heat. Strange permutations of garlic with branches attached leapt out at me from the modest tables. How could I, a child of post-agrarian America, be expected to know that this was what actual garlic looked like? I opened the cabinets of each house, pushing past the familiar wooden spoons and strainers to the little ball of tallow. I glanced at my husband, the strained innocence of his face lost to the negative space of this background--of our country’s background--and I thought, as I listened to the actor/man of the house prattle on about the madness of the Mayflower’s commander, that I would love my spouse in any era. In this instant I wanted to melt the tallow in my hands, to fashion a sack dress out of the course bedroom curtains behind us and burn anything to mix with it, to make black war paint; I wanted to run screaming through this entire continent, to exert myself completely- to cleanse myself of all my enmity, or if not, at least of all the strength to bear it. As we walked further toward the back, we were frightened by the sight of horns, appearing from nowhere through a wooden fence-- thrusting at us. We walked around the side and saw that they belonged to a brickred Devon cow. In spite of the fences she was jailed in, it was clear that she

wanted us to fear her. She walked right up to the fence and I could almost touch her black tipped horn, but she slunk away after a moment. I let the guys walk ahead, hoping that she would walk up to me again. She did not return. We left with our stomachs rumbling, reaching the parking lot after walking down the path lined with stale Sage, Penny Royal Tea, Wolfsbane and Bay Laurel. I had a dream, I won’t lie to you and say that it happened that night, but I did have a dream. Six months after we flew back to Vegas, I dreamt that somehow ‘she’ and I had made plans for me to sleep over at her mother’s house, where she was living, while my husband had my stepdaughter for the night. There was a bit of an initial hesitation but I had no hatred for her in this dream. I remember feeling this profound need to see her room, so she led me up these lattice stairs and down this odd, colorless, sloping carpet to her doors. When she opened them, I could see a plain twin bed with a metal frame in the center. We sat down beside each other, and stared at the walls. Each wall was coated in black scientific star charts with glowing white dots and numbers and the dream ended with us turning to face each other, about to speak. Before waking up, I felt like that room was somehow mine. On the day before we left Cape Cod, my husband and sister-inlaw took me to see the Hoxie House in Sandwich. The docent explicated virtually every facet of the house which has been standing for over three centuries. She surveyed my husband’s broad shoulders and arms, and asked him if he lived in town, because they were in need of strong men to run the grist mill. There were only two or three other people, so after the tour we were left alone to roam about the house. I saw the proverbial spinning wheel gathering dust in the corner, the rush lamp, latched door and a portion of a wall with original plaster made of quahog shells. My husband and I walked up steps (which were built quite steep to stave off the British step-tax) and stared at the bed; the bed with its straw mattress and ropes which newlyweds would tie tighter in order for the frame to be able to support the new weight of two bodies. We walked toward it together, feeling the course blanket scratching at our skin in equal measure; as if my arm and his leg were parts of one body, wrapped and sleeping warmly inside it. We stared at the blanket chest at the foot of the bed. I let my husband go down the stairs and lingered on the top floor for a while. The straw poked at me as I sat down to nudge the chest open. I peered deeply into its dark hollow before whispering my secrets into it. As I walked down to join my husband, a family began to tiptoe up the stairs.

Krystal Baker, Walking Away

Quincy Shanks, FireDrums

Wanderers

Loneliness

If I am indeed investing in my life, well, I must stop investing in you. You’re a wanderer I can tell by the world in your eyes. You’re wandering left and right, up and down. But me, I’m wandering up and down left and right. I’m always at the right place, but the wrong time. I’ve invested too much love into your life, and not enough into my own. Wander the world that I see in your eyes, but please, stop wandering into my dreams.

The white rooms are filled with the stench of death Masked by the scent of posies and formaldehyde We all become immobilized Letting the atrophy set in The air has grown frigid and distant Ignorant and lacking sympathy But it’s colder on the inside, this gown Growing scarlet with each mechanical beat My eyes find hollow spaces Right where their eyes should be And they’re sick, too—but I’m alone in this ivory suite The nurse brings in Morphine and He makes the pain subside For the moment, death feels not imminent Maybe I can make it out alive Isn’t it pretty to think so?

Lauren Hober

Beverly Ma

Carly Andrus, New Dehli

Ultimately it’s Serious; Sean Bassney

“As a rock never forgets, It is serious to remember.” It’s serious like the river; that always takes the path of least resistance, like the smooth round stone sent spinning, skipping by the Jester standing barefoot by the banks. Serious like the sense of urgency in the throw and how his good humored eyes followed the bouncing stone, like and elongated mmmm… “It’s the same physics in you and I, it’s always been, always will be. You’re lucky to be a stone.” he thinks Serious like our collective fear of death trying to escape how serious it is by creating the infinitely less important; like coffee, and its impossible transit from the French press to the cup, regardless of the ground, bean, or lack thereof. Ultimately there will be something akin to coffee in a mug. A candle is serious until the Jester strikes a match touches the flame to the wick and laughs heartily at the sick humor of it all. The refrain is: a flame is energy and so are we. “The tick tock of the second hand is unimportant until someone looks at it.” thinks the Jester as he watches the flame melt the candle further and further into oblivion. We have no lords now only a President with a good haircut and a nice suit.

Obama can only promise so much and everlasting life is not in his repertoire. “Change is serious, quantified change is comedy” chuckles the Jester as the flame spreads slow and searing onto the pine wood table. Serious is the distance between the lips of two lovers like the gravitational pull that we have on each other. Its serious to remember the distance and forget what could be but isn’t. Isn’t is a fact. Facts are serious.

Serious is the culmination of all that we have done out of fear. The Jester is on fire now. The couch is on fire now. The drapes are long gone now. The Jester sees himself as the stone spinning skipping in the late afternoon sun. The exponential nature of the skipspin- spin- spin- skip-

skip-

spin-

skip-

Eventually we all fall under the current. “Ultimately, facts are useless.” thinks the Jester as the fire spreads to the floor igniting the drapes that hang from the window while he sits complacent on the couch. One day, someday, someone decided that the mountain was not being serious enough. So they pointed to it and with all of humanity listening said: Mountain. Everyone took a step back. After that, nothing was the same. “Matter is matter is matter” thinks the Jester, “Ergo existence precedes essence, ergo why matter about matter?” He chuckles as the room grows hot enough to sear the hair on his skin.

Katlynn Gibbs, Amsterdam

Tuesday Jeff Opfer

I woke up this morning and forced myself to shower, brush my teeth. I could still taste the gun oil from yesterday. I promised myself I wouldn’t watch TV today or put the pistol in my mouth. My studio apartment is quiet now. I’d like to hear a voice, but then again I wouldn’t. That’s how life is now—a collection of vague desires arising moment to moment before drifting back into apathy. So I wait. I glance at the closet where I keep my 40mm SIG Sauer. It’s the most expensive thing I own. The most useful too. I pick up some empty soda cans, but I don’t scrub anything; I don’t vacuum. I hear my neighbors—tweekers—skittering around above me like fantastic howler monkey-cockroach hybrids. I can tell when they’re high by the deep base slumping from their stereo and the people running in and out and up and down. When they crash they’re as quiet as I am. I heard them, the couple, argue once about the running faucet making too much noise. Paranoid. The cops finally came after twenty minutes of screaming and a right-hook from the boyfriend to “finally shut that dumb cunt up.” I’m guessing the faucet wasn’t the real issue. I look back to the closet. I sigh and turn on the TV, adjusting the volume to an electric mumble. I look at the screen; I don’t watch the shows. But it keeps my eyes off the closet.

Jillian Stenzel, American Dream

I Am Tethered to Ticking Clocks! Ryan DeLaureal

I am tethered to ticking clocks Tick-tocking hound dogs of the rising dead Combination locker space for the ravenous dead, who would kill me with radiation poisoning The dead who circle me playing past time gypsy rags, with a chorus of alarmed ticking Paupers in the street try to pawn me their watches! Shopkeepers in the cobblestone alleyway try to drown me in hour hands!

After the Fact Brandon Fischmann

It all shed so easily, your clothes, eased but gracing drifting downward in repeating patterns like fire-colored leaves. last fall, I skipped several classes to walk idly and watch them, to for once witness something having no difficulty in abandoning. It is likely that I correlate late lovers to different seasons to justify my numerous romantic variables. It is quite like me to attempt to tell the story as if the emotions had their own sets of eyes: invariably too numerous generated within the loops we iterated in the gaps between our acknowledged thoughts, every pleasant smell grafted deeply into your long-term memory and recalled writing proclamations of apology. I hold the hopes of a maybe or the sound of my spacebar hits becoming a metronome as I type a story to encrypt in its chapters our half-hours of silent pleading. ears, so small we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t rest heads deep enough into chests to isolate our own heartbeats.

Summer Graham, Poppies

the fluctuations of her pose spat data written in outdated programming languages I could not read, could not code the matrices of her skinned breastbone part-concealed by wilting laces, but revealed in a smile always retreating like waves from wet feet.

Today I may be tethered to weather-vane clockfaces But I am not a watchmaker.

Stilling Time Elizabeth Hatheway

A Linear Complex Network of Cogs, gears, pendulums This is time. Not an abstract idea but As real as two feet keeping pace with Its laws Tick-tock Tick-tock Time Was Dropped Tick-tock Tick-tock Time Will Not Stop Unforgiving, All are subject: The flowers, the birds, the last rays of sunshine But God holds time On a golden watch Dangling in the palm Of his hand Why does the sun rise only to set? Why do the stars shine in the sky, only to fall with age? Merciful Father: I only ask for more time. Will you shed some of those golden flakes? Grant me summer again.

A moment when you still time, Powerless in the embrace of love— A time, a place Of friendship Of trust Of never ending dreams Of slow walks in the park Of soft serenades of crickets Of life! A pounding heart and A throbbing mind of ideas Time is grievous, cruel… Modernity: a proper working clock in every room. It’s ghastly, pale face bulges at every corner and crossroad. It’s on the walls, the wrists, the computer screens, the phones! Time never rests. Either behind or in front, it pushes and pulls Into a guilty past and an unknown future People rushing after it People pushed down from it Always in the middle of it Not enough time to Write all the words Recite all the poems Sing all the songs I have for you. Time is stubborn. Time is serious. This is why Only God holds it. I wish to be a God, To have power to hug the world and bring back time that had been lost— The time that could have been held if it had not been wasted.

The Visitor

Austin Rudd, Southern Sunrise

Paul George I hate visitors, at least the ones I foolishly let in. Alone in my studio apartment, a jail cell with blue carpet, I choke down a partially frozen microwave burrito while the television whispers nonsense. There is a knock at my door and I answer it. She stands in my doorway. She is still beautiful, thin and lovely. Though her hair has streaks of silver, I only see the young girl who dotted ice cream on my nose when we visited Cape Cod decades ago. She asks to use my bathroom. She crosses my doorway and enters my prison. I feel like something else enters with her, but can only detect the scent of her perfume. We sit down. She talks: I listen. She tells me of her new job and her latest break-up with some guy. She was my first love, my only lover. I speak: she hears. She is the mother of my children. Hours pass: time halts. We talk about the summers we spent together at Horseneck

Beach and the New England foliage in the fall. I only remember the good times. I tell myself there were no bad times, but the divorce papers say I’m a liar. Tonight is like we never parted. We talk about the first time we met, when she punched me in the arm. I smile: she laughs. She leaves, taking her smile with her. Hope, like the lavender scent of her perfume, lingers in the air and I savor it while leaning against the hardwood door. I understand that I’m not alone. “Leave,” I say. “No” it responds in a voice that is comforting and inviting. I want to cherish it, to embrace it, but I know better. I plead: it stays. I go to bed, and it stays with me all night. Tonight I sleep with hope. It believes: I grieve.

Anna Louis

Shelby Sojot-Tanoue

Richard Louis went into the kitchen to find his wife cooking breakfast. She flipped the pancakes grimly; it had been a week since she had discovered the truth about her husband. Upon hearing Richard come into her kitchen she paused, gripping the spatula tightly. She longed to throw the hot frying pan at his head, wiping that false smile off his face. Patience, she reminded herself. “Anna, sweetheart, have you seen my suitcase?” he stood behind her and kissed her cheek. Patience, patience, she reminded herself again. She forced a smile and turned to face Richard, “Sorry, darling. I was just making sure you had everything.” Anna set the spatula down and turned down the stove’s heat so her children’s breakfast wouldn’t burn. “I’ll go get it for you.” Anna walked down the hall, as if she were going upstairs, instead she slipped into the garage. Richard’s suitcase sat near the table where he used to play Poker with his friends on the weekends. He had not set foot in her garage in months, having better things to do than play poker with drunken men. On top of the table there was a brand new box of cigarettes accompanied by several tiny vials. Inside she could hear her children coming downstairs, shouting when they realized that their father would once again be going out of town. Anna hastily swept the bottles into her robe pocket and returned the cigarettes to her husband’s suitcase, hidden and out of sight under his clothes, the way she had found them. Richard had quit smoking years ago, she was sure that the surprise she had left within each cigarette would be found by someone else. When Anna re-entered the kitchen pulling Richard’s suitcase behind her, she found her children standing around their father. They were saying good-bye and giving him messages for their grandparent’s. He was going to visit them after all. To avoid interrupting Anna propped the suitcase near the door, ready for Richard. She stared at the suitcase for a moment, satisfied with her work; Anna joined her family in their good-byes. “Daddy, you’ll tell grandma and grandpa ‘hi’ for me, right? Promise?” Her youngest daughter hung from Richard’s arms, swinging back and forth with energy. Meanwhile her sons stood a little farther back, exchanging knowing glances. They at least were well aware that any messages given to their father would never reach their grandparents. Her oldest son kept his mouth shut, anger far under the surface so that his father wouldn’t notice. Her younger son seethed with anger, not bothering to hide it. He wanted his father to see the rage on his face. That’s my boy, she thought.

“Sure sweetheart, of course I will,” Richard lied so very convincingly. He kissed his daughter’s forehead and hugged her tightly. “Daddy has to go now, or he’ll miss his flight, okay?” His daughter nodded naively. He nodded at his sons as he made his way to the door, grabbing his suitcase and keys on the way out, then he was gone. Her boys stood silently in the middle of the kitchen, overflowing with silent hatred. Anna smiled darkly as she watched Richard back out of the driveway and drive away. Hours later Richard drove past the airport, heading to the other side of town. He turned the music up in his sports car. Richard Louis didn’t have a care in the world. As long as he continued to provide for his family and keep them in the dark, he could live his two lives. He pulled into an expensive apartment complex. He had gone through so much trouble to find the perfect place for her. She had expensive taste, but she was worth it. Before going in Richard pulled several bags out of the trunk. They were full of clothes and gifts he had bought the other day. He struggled up the stairs with the bags. When she opened the door he stood up straight and tried to look as if the bags were no problem at all. “Richie! You’re late!” she scolded playfully. She let him in the door then closed it behind him. He plopped the bags on the velvet sofa. “Sorry, babe. My wife held me up,” He said cheerfully as he pulled her into his arms, kissing her deeply. She pulled away quickly and asked about the bags. “Just a few things I picked up for you on my way here. She nodded and took the bags into the bedroom. Richard took his suitcase and followed quickly. “So where did you tell her you were going this time?” she said from the closet. She stood in front of the silver floor length mirror, holding clothes against her and turning this way and that to see every angle of her perfect body. Catherine had only recently graduated college. She had met Richard when she was a senior. He watched her intently. He watched her long blonde hair swing as she turned. He watched the creases in her clothes on her back. When she pulled her shirt over her head to try on one of the new blouses he bought her his breathe hitched. She was so beautiful. Richard cleared his throat, “Ahem, my parent’s place. Since last time it was a business trip and that was only a couple weeks ago-” He trailed off when Catherine pulled her jeans down to try on a jean skirt. He sat on the bed and continued to watch her. Catherine turned around wearing a stunning blouse and skirt that he knew would look amazing on her. “How do I look?” she asked as she struck a provocative pose. Richard sighed happily, “You look amazing, babe.”

She smiled, having gotten the answer she wanted. “Oh, did you get the cigarettes? Don’t you know I’m completely out?” Catherine shook her finger at him, scolding him like a child. He rummaged in his suitcase then found the cigarettes under some shirts. Richard held the box out to her. She took them eagerly and rewarded him with a kiss. “You’re too good to me, Richie,” Catherine said as she pulled a cigarette out and went to light it. Richard stood up and took the cigarette out of her hand. She looked up at him, knowing the hungry look in his eyes. She smiled and let him take the cigarette out of her hand and set it on the dresser. Anna sat in her car patiently. She had followed Richard all the way from their house to several malls and boutiques to this apartment complex. The apartment was even more lavish and looked far more expensive than their family’s home. Richard’s car was parked next to a cute pink sport’s car. Anna scoffed at the thing. Stupid, fruity 20 year-old, she thought. The bedroom light came on and Anna sat up straight and watched. She couldn’t see much, except when occasionally Richard or the girl would pass by the window. It would be easier to see if they were on the first floor. For a long time nothing happened. Richard came to the window to close the curtains. Anna did not attempt to hide; instead she stared right at him, wondering if he could feel her hatred from where he stood. Having felt nothing, the curtains fell closed, leaving Anna in darkness. She dug her nails into the steering wheel, wishing she could walk in there herself. Patience, she told herself again. For the next few hours she waited there, watching the closed curtains, silent tears running down her face. She thought about before the girl showed up, how happy her life had been. She thought about her wedding day, the birth of her children, when her husband still thought she was beautiful. “Well, did he expect me to stay beautiful forever?” she said aloud. “If I’d known that beauty was all he cared about I would never have married him,” she sobbed. Anna pulled down her rear view mirror to look at her reflection. “You’re not the pretty thing you used to be, Anna.” She touched the emerging wrinkles around her eyes and the flat blonde hair that was once bright and lush. She was still pretty though. Yes, still pretty, she thought, but not beautiful. Beauty is only borrowed.

back in the bed, inhaling deeply. She smiled, knowing she didn’t have a care in the world. She had gotten the job she’d always dreamed of, was given everything she wanted, and she didn’t even have to pay for the apartment. After the third hit she stopped. Something was wrong. She studied the cigarette, it was what she always asked for, and nothing appeared to be wrong with it. Yet she felt strange. She tried to shake Richard awake, but when she tried to speak she couldn’t get her voice to cooperate. She gagged and felt her breathe leave her, collapsing in Richard’s lap. Smoke, Catherine must be smoking inside again, Richard thought. He opened his eyes sleepily to see Catherine sprawled across his legs. “How many did you smoke? I can barely see through all this smoke,” he said. Then he noticed the end of the bed, “Fire!” He shook Catherine to wake her. “We have to get out of here!” he screamed. Richard pulled Catherine up and shook her by her shoulders. Her eyes were open, but they were empty. Richard swore and dropped her beside him. He got out of the bed and went to pick Catherine up to get her out and to a hospital, but fire was already creeping up her legs, he had to leave her. Fire already covered half the room; it enveloped the door and inched toward the window. Desperately, Richard ran over to the window only to find it glued shut. “I didn’t do this!” he said frantically. Behind him his cell phone rang on the bedside table that the fire had not yet reached. He snatched the phone up, it was a text from Anna. How are mom and dad, it said. Before he could respond another text said, Sorry about the window. Did you not want to be with her anymore? Richard threw open the curtains to find Anna standing in the parking lot below. She stared back at him blankly then looked down at her phone. Richard’s phone beeped again: Burn in hell. Richard looked out the window one more time then back at Catherine who was being swallowed up by the flames. Anna blew him a kiss then turned her back on her husband to return home to her children and tell them that daddy was just in a horrible accident and would not be coming home this time.

When Richard was asleep Catherine detangled herself from his arms and turned on the lamp beside her bed. She took a moment to admire the beautiful design; she loved all of her beautiful things. She found her cigarette waiting for her on the bedside table. When she had it lit she leaned

Reena Spansail, Wild Swans

Carley Andrus, Monkeys

When I Was 19 Priscilla Varner, The Edge

Emilee Guido

When I was 19, I stole my dad’s shampoo. I was out, needed some, because I was spending another weekend at home instead of my dorm room with my heinous roommate.

Quincy Shanks, Emerald Pools Waterfall

I immediately recognized the smell as his smell. I rubbed shampoo on my hands, lifted my fingers to my nose, and kept them there.

Haleigh Hoff, Guy Sillhouette

It reminded me of how he held my mom’s hand when they put the port in her chest. That voice he’d use when I’d call, and tell me mom was sleeping because she had been up late the night before – 2am, 3am – either being terrified in the dark, alone or being terrified in the dark, with him. That smile he had – that tight-lipped smile that you can’t really see unless you know him – whenever mom did something ridiculous, like wear her Kermit hat or temporarily get a Mohawk. The insistent way he’d bring my mother’s hourly Gatorade ration, since that night that she passed out from dehydration. The stern and absolute way he told me that I was not going to take a semester off, that I was going back to school,

and I’d just come home every weekend. That gruff way he’d remind me to get a coffee on my late drives back to Reno. Whenever I was home, I would use his shampoo. Whenever I was scared, I’d chew on a strand of hair or bunch it up under my nose and remember to be strong. When I was 19, I stole my dad’s shampoo. Every night, I’d fall asleep with my fingers tucked under my nose.

Russell Eck, Water Under The Bridge Summer Graham, Entropy in Boley, Oklahoma

Quincy Shanks, Art Car Drive By

Nathaniel Benjamin, Boars Tusk

The Young American

Nathaniel Benjamin “A speech given by a young American to an apathetic crowd.” “When bulwarks & barriers ring you in, And duty to rule befalls empty men, Who see only subjects & bloodless machines, And means to tyrannical ends; “When your sallow, sour, sorrowful tongue Has long licked the saccharine boots of the throng, And you’ve plodded to the valley of poison, And you bathe & brim your trembling lips in the syrupy wastes of its ocean;

And tumble your cell to the ground. “Yet rest there, be calm, They’ll ask nothing of you in your destitute prisoner’s solemn; But onward they’ll rage & raze down the throne, And your king they will bind to his column. “Atonement they’ll claim for the sins in his name, And his castle they’ll topple to rubble: For they saw the blood & black tar he had spilled, And they broke from the breast where you suckle.”

“When faith & passion’s enthralled in a snare, And you pray to an artifice spire, The cracking idol of a patriot color, And you settle to rest on your bier; “When a flag sewn of bands is suffered still to stand, Unkindled & unburned by your questions, And you grovel, you beg, you bow down where you’ve laid, And your scalp is tread into the dust; “In that tired time of your human kind, You’ll see them who lavish nothing; They will not bend unto your empty men, Nor pale at the veins of corruption. “Then you will see them shout in their hubris, With gazes turned unto the heights, As by you they rush & crash on the gates,

Cody Cruea, The Art of War

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The Apartment Marvin Gonzalez

In the course of our lives there come moments that, Though seemingly innocuous in real-time, Forever alter the fabric of our being, One such moment occurred to me by chance some months ago Outside Wing Lei’s Chinese Bistro of all places On account of a mixed-up order of Spicy Kung Pao Chicken, As I stepped out onto West Street, Greeted by the insufferable screeching of motor-carriages, A gust of wind nearly took off my hat, Causing me to prop it down with one hand, A clumsy reaction, which caused me to almost drop my take-out, The gust subsided, but the half-open plastic bag Bearing a dragon emblem whipped at the sky Like a half-mast flag engaged in a solemn, moribund dance, And, I caught a whiff of what was without doubt A beef with broccoli stir fry, I promptly turned around to return the mixed up take out When I ran square into a smartly attired gentleman whom I quickly Identified as Nathaniel Nyelander, a High School chum, Now fully grown, a perfectly parted head in a tailored suit, We greeted each other, gave each other an uncomfortable embrace, And then proceeded to engage in the obligatory Inquiry that people who know each other from Past lives are often subject: How have you been? What do you do for work? Really? Married? No? Any kids? Oh, that’s too bad, I’ve got two small ones myself. But, then he asked me a question that only later shocked me As I stood in the dead center of my living room And surveyed the broken furnishings And scant wall-mounted framed pictures That comprised my apartment, Perhaps, it was shock induced by Crisis of Existence, Or, perhaps it was the potent, repugnant odor Of my roommate’s cat’s piling, Tower of Babel, litter box That filled my apartment like a gas leak,

But I felt an ab-piercing nausea, which caused me to double-over And vomit in the artisan clay pot that housed A pathetic and withering Aloe Vera plant on our coffee table, While that simple and innocent question reverberated in my mind: So, how’s your living situation? God, how could such a simple question so ruffle the feathers Of what had been up until then a cozy existence? I suppose it had never occurred to me that these objects, If one can call them so, Were extensions of my being; Were direct analogs to the quality of my life, Goddamnit! What did the crusted pile of dirty dishes Permanently taking residence in my kitchen sink Say about my spiritual well-being? Wasn’t it true that if I were in fact a dignified human being I would choose to treat myself with dignity, And, therefore, not allow piles of fallen whiskers And soap scum to marry and forge Over many months only to petrify as miniature stalagmite Around the sink in my bathroom Like a pathetically Lilliputian Stone Hedge? And, what of this Godforsaken bathroom? Which was so small it was more like a compartment than an actual room, Shouldn’t a grown ass man afford himself the relief to stretch out When he relieves himself ? Instead my toilet was so close to my bathtub that I was constantly forced to turn my knees toward the door, Invariably causing my left quadriceps to cramp, At which point I have to clumsily lift and thrust My slumbering, torpid leg uncomfortably over the porcelain tub, Draining the blood from my leg strait Into my left buttock, Which swells and pulsates so violently I have to pull my cold, rigor mortis leg out of the tub, But because it is stiff and hyper-extended It sends me flying off of the toilet Only to end up face down in the tub With my pants embarrassingly pulled around my knees Leaving my bare ass exposed to the harsh elements Of this cruel, sick world, This was no way for a grown ass man to live!

Wasn’t this horrible shifting of position in an enclosed area Merely a twisted metaphor for the sorry emotional state of my life? Was I not wading in the emotional dregs of misery? Was not this apartment the cauldron From which a menacing witch Mixed apathy, despair and existential agony Only to rule the actions of my life with her cruel alchemy? It was then I clearly, lucidly, candidly saw the road before me, How could I have been so blind? I quickly emptied the Apartment, Leaving my roommate’s belongings, As well as his fat, asthmatic cat sitting upon her own droppings In the liter box as if though she expected little furry brown Chicks to spring forth from them, In the hallway outside, I took my own things and threw them out the window, Leaving socks and ties and pages of Deepak Chopra To decorate the trees outside, Bums lined my building holding out their arms Like a fireman catching a kitty thrown from The burning second floor of a mid-century home, And, once all was gone, I knew what must be done, I must find The Apartment, Listen to these words, parse them please, “The” Apartment; Not just “A” Apartment, mind you, For my use of the definite article here should not be overlooked, I needed to find “The” Apartment that accurately represented me. “The” Apartment whose granite top counters Reflected the fortitude and resolve of my character, Whose radiant stainless steel sinks Shone as brilliantly as the fire in my heart, An Apartment with ample fenestration Allowing sunlight to enter to through its crystalline pathways, I wanted to be as that Apartment, Open and inviting, Structurally sound and well-furnished, I wanted this Apartment’s Feng Shui to reflect my Chi, Perhaps, the austere, modern Ikea furnishing Would reflect the simplicity and utility of my life, No more emotional clutter, I needed open space, light, and symmetry, And, so I hit the pavement in search, I journeyed the width and breadth of my fair city, But, nothing felt right,

The one bedroom on Morris St., Though charmingly tucked into a grove of Aspen, Nevertheless, bore the intolerable odor of the past tenants, Not to mention the patch of linoleum, Uh linoleum! That was bubbling up in the kitchen, The studio on Klammath Lane was lovely, I must say, But, situated right next to the river I’d have to bear the Insufferable squawking of geese, morning after morning, Not to mention that their greenish-white turds would litter the front lawn Like the weathered, rustic tombstones of an old cemetery, I found a delightful remodeled home first built in the 1920s On Taylor and Peking Lane, Which still had the charming archways leading into the kitchen, The fenestration in the living room had been extended down to the ground Allowing natural light to flourish and Wash the room with a soft focus glow that, Because it simultaneously muddled the walls And acutely defined the edges, Made everything seem both more real and imagined, The bathroom still had the original white and turquoise tile Though had been augmented to include a beday and cement counter and sink, Walking through it, I felt I had finally found A location that could rectify my abominable living situation, That is, until I stumble upon the bedroom, It wasn’t so much the bedroom itself As the residual energy that inhabited it, I could still feel the screams of winless arguments, I could hear a young woman with chestnut hair Whimpering, eyes welling with pain, Mascara leaking down cheeks The way a diseased tree lactates A fluid of indiscernible nature, A felt a rush of their joy, their sex, their hatred, Malice, cruelty, laughter, envy, and solitude, And, I realized that this home belonged to someone beside, That it would never belong to me, I was crushed by a squall of emotions, And went back to my own miserable apartment With a bottle of wine and a joint the size of my middle finger To wallow in the decrepitude and spiritual agony That was my living situation, I fell myself in the middle of my now empty living room Popped the wine and examined the ceiling,

Estefania Cervantes, Stripped

A world opened before me, A portal into a hypothetical future where I saw myself Quite happy and at peace, My surroundings changed, What I understood as home altered with the seasons, But, yet I remained, I myself withered and crumbled, My face fissured and cracked, But, yet I remained, I smiled for the first time in months And as soon as I sparked the joint I heard a piercing explosion above me, Suddenly, I was in a vacuum, It was like I was floating in space though I remained in place, The weed smoke swirled and vanished, Swirled and vanished, Swirled and vanished, And, then I was alone, though never less lonely, Flames burst through the ceiling, And singed the beard from my face, Smoke swirled and vanished, The flames madly danced about, The walls darkened and tarred, And, I had never seen them look so lovely, The sprinklers on my ceiling created A domestic rainstorm, A summery rainstorm of the kind I liked to run shirtless through in my youth, The misery of my apartment manifestly demonstrated Was beautiful, And I felt my own misery must be equally beautiful, The rain, the fire, the smoke, the charcoal lathered walls, A perfectly brewed misery, My living situation: A glorious work of art, A pastiche of emotion, Both flourishing and crumbling, Where I was both burning and baptized, Living and dying and reborn, A singed orphan with half a beard And less a mind Left at the doorstep of an indignant God Atop a doormat that read: Welcome Home.

Clarisa Depari, Intern

Lauren Hober, P.R. Manager

Hannah Behmaram, Editor

Rebecca Fox, Webmaster

First copy free, additional copies $5 ISSN: 0407-5048