Cellar Door Spring 2014

cellardoor

SPRING MMXIV

FREE

SPRING MMXIV

ART

FICTION

Lerner Lieth Krasner Biggerstaff Champion Li Swartzel Orr Beauchamp Blair

Bendixen Templeton Ghysels Palmer

POETRY Harris Cantwell Brown Bryan Bastrakova Allf Pless Hall Clarke Bullock

COVER: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Sarah Lerner

CELLAR DOOR SPRING 2014

STAFF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Karina McCorkle FACULT Y ADVISOR

Professor Michael McFee POETRY EDITOR

FICTION EDITOR

ART EDITOR

Charles Perkins

Gr iffin Bur

Olivia Br anscum

POETRY

FICTION

ART

Mallory Hawkins

Brennan Doran

Frankie Barrett

Li Zhang

Aisha Anwar

Sallie Oliver

Cameron Bynum

Nathan Vail

Faima Ramirez

Isabel Hagood

Gray Taylor

Arianna Ray

Shelley Catherine-Leazer Anuradha Bhowmik Lindsey Kellog Suzanne Morris Katherine McAnarney

TREASURER

Griffin Bur

WEB EDITOR DESIGN & LAYOUT

Karina McCorkle Li Zhang Arianna Ray

Mallory Hawkins

CONTENTS VISUAL ART Tangled Seated Nude Rings Untitled Self-Portrait in Mother’s Bedroom Heat What Am I What Do You Think Efflorescence Babar

Linnea Lieth Zach Krasner Emma Biggerstaff Andrew David Champion Gray Swartzel Ariel Li Caroline Orr Ashley Beauchamp Grace Blair

7 11 16 19 23 24 27 32 35

FICTION Changing Times The Nose Oil Angel Eyes

Melissa Bendixen Ashley Templeton Jonathan Ghysels Emily Palmer

9-13 15 21-26 30-33

POETRY Plaiting my hair on the stoop And because I have a father For the Birds After Escaping Recovery Anton the Doll Baldwin Ritardando Southport, NC Hanging Tomatoes Chicken Killing Day Retelling

Jalynn Harris Jalynn Harris Anna Cantwell Blanche Brown Sarah-Kathryn Bryan Polina Bastrakova Bradley Allf Mackensie Pless Jackson Hall Lily Clarke Lauren Bullock

COVER : Sur vival of the Fittest, Sarah Lerner

5 6 8 14 17 18 20 28 29 34 36

JUDGES

POETRY

FICTION

Jeffrey McDaniel received an MFA from George Mason University in 1993 and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a BA in 1990. He has been a professor in the creative writing program at Sarah Lawrence since 2001. He is the author of five books of poetry, including his most recent, Chapel of Inadvertent Joy, from the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2013. He is known for being able to successfully unite performance and written poetry in his work. In 2010 he was one of five poetry judges for the National Book Award.

M.C. Taylor is a Durham, North Carolina-based songwriter who forms half of the acclaimed folk duo Hiss Golden Messenger with Scott Hirsch. Hiss Golden Messenger has rapidly become a fixture of the North Carolina music scene, garnering glowing reviews from The New York Times, Pitchfork and MOJO among others. Michael attended the graduate curriculum in folklore at UNC and has taught folklore classes there. In addition to a broad array of old-time, country, folk-rock and soul influences, he is influenced in his songwriting by the poetry and prose of Lew Welch and Wendell Berry.

VISUAL ART

Heather Gordon has taught painting, drawing, design, and art appreciation courses in numerous locations from 1992-1999, and has given lectures about her work at SAS, Cassilhaus, the Ackland Art Museum, and the Green Hill Center for NC Art. This year’s exhibition schedule includes the 26th Annual Works on Paper exhibition at McNeese State University and Something In Particular: A Review of Today’s Southern Artist at Clear Films Studio in Atlanta as well as participation in the NC Outreach Project at Green Hill Center for NC Art in Greensboro.

VISUAL ART

AWARDS 1 st

Heat

2 nd

What Am I What Do You Think

3 rd

Untitled

1 st

Southpor t, NC

2 nd

Retelling

3 rd

Plaiting my hair on the stoop

1 st

Changing Times

2 nd

The Nose

3 rd

Angel Eyes

POETRY

FICTION

Ariel Li Caroline Orr

Andrew David Champion

Mackensie Pless Lauren Bullock Jalynn Harris

Melissa Bendixen Ashley Templeton Emily Palmer

PLAITING MY HAIR ON THE STOOP Jalynn Harris toddler cradled in the lap-basin of my 1999 magenta-lipped mother.

515 south Augusta Avenue row house burgundy like Salvation Army corduroy your legs uncrossed, I cling to you like the turpentine in the creases of the lost & found ivory ring you stole for me. your crape myrtle hands comb my thick curly hair to the tune of Bubble Yum chewing that turns like the tables granddad gave you for your 18th. vine green barrettes—balloon carrying cats, single-horn tricycle, two doves on a wire—color my hair. half pointer-finger over the lens like a halo above your hand-tied wig. tears pat my cheeks like Japanese tea leaves with no way of foretelling the quick coming millennium—11 to 11 shifts, Great Value Band-Aids, food stamp TV dinners, water-marked Kodak photos boxed from one tooth-chipped stoop to the next.

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AND BECAUSE I HAVE A FATHER Jalynn Harris 3 days I let him call and when I do pick up I am twisting bantu knots or conjugating irregular Japanese verbs.

His meaning is murky but I hear the sounds: Kasparov, Fischer, Capablanca. Something of a rook and a pawn. He plays E4 and I counter with D5, a score sheet of childhood stalemates between us—WWE reenactments, post dinner snacks, sandbox laughter — outlawed in the name of because I’m your father & because I said so.

7 years old, floral print comforter pressed tightly to my ears trying to excuse the scuffle of his birch-banded hands wrestling my brothers (but never both at the same time) for the same voices his mother, 43, began to hear love-lost to a husband checkmated by Belaya & Rus. On the other side of the line a pause. Like a fish caught in the hook of some apology I’ll never hear and after 00:19:42:06 he asks how I’m doing and I withhold from him innerlibrary loans, foreclosure of my favorite restaurant, new garamond name badge, first day of birth control, in exchange for I’m fine and as I tip my king, I almost wish I’d learned to see 5 moves ahead like he taught me to.

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Linnea Lieth, Tangled

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Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?

Matthew 6:26

FOR THE BIRDS Anna Cantwell For my mom’s fortieth, we got her a bird clock, and every hour, a chickadee’s three-part plea, or maybe the thick coo of a turtle dove echoed off the bay window in the kitchen— a few weeks later, my dad took the batteries out.

The only expletive she ever used was turkey, and whenever we boiled brown rice on the ceramic stovetop, she told us to watch it like a hawk.

On the way to school, she’d spot one on the top of a telephone pole, stomp the brakes, gasp, and point her whole arm out the window like she was seeing some exotic safari animal.

When the hawk took off, she’d note its rounded wings, as opposed to greedy finger-tipped wings of vultures.

When snow fell, she would make suet for the birds in our backyard, and I tried to understand why it was our job to feed them.

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CHANGING TIMES Melissa Bendixen

No one spoke for a few moments after blessing, letting the clinking forks and shifting chairs fill the silence.

Normally such a silence would be Mrs. Archer’s cue to comment about how a quiet dinner table was a compliment to the cook, but nothing was normal about sitting down to eat with the stranger whom Cecilia claimed she was going to marry. Marla hoped the man would choke on his noodles.

Finally Mr. Archer spoke up.

“So, Charles, tell us a little bit about yourself,” he said.

Everyone turned to look at the young man dressed in grey slacks and a white dress shirt with rolled sleeves. Marla watched a muscle in his forearm twitch before he answered.

“Well, I come from a small town quite like this one, and my father was a working man just like you, Mr. Archer, but he wasn’t quite so satisfied with our place in the world,” he looked down at his plate and twirled spaghetti around his fork before continuing. “He saved money and sent me off to Georgia State, and then I went to law school at Emory. I moved to Jacksonville in ’23 and now I’m working at a firm that deals in property and real estate.”

Marla’s father nodded and continued eating.

Marla waited for the silence to draw out to an uncomfortable length, then she reached for her water-filled wineglass and said, “And so what brings you down here, Mr….”

“Stacy,” he supplied.

“Mr. Stacy?” she finished, taking a sip.

“Well, I had a friend who was a partner at the firm I’m working at now, and there was a job opening, so I figured— ”

“No,” said Marla, “I mean, what brings you all the way out to Bryceville if you work in the city?”

She felt Cecilia’s foot brush her from across the table, but Marla didn’t believe her sister’s mysterious lover should be spared any bit of discomfort. She kept her eyes on Mr. Stacy as he laughed and said, “Well, one can only take the city for so long before you start to feel like the walls are closing in on you. As I said, Bryceville reminds me of home, so I started coming here for the Saturday market about four months back,” he turned and brushed a strand of Cecilia’s long brown hair from her shoulder, “and that’s where we met,” he finished, gazing into Cecilia’s eyes.

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Cecilia blushed and looked down at her plate.

“Please do tell us, Mr. Stacy, however you managed to capture our Celia?” Mrs. Archer asked politely as she nibbled at her salad.

Cecilia eyed her mother reproachfully but Mr. Stacy didn’t seem at all fazed by the question.

“Well, one day I was at the market, just browsing, when I came across the most beautiful stand of peacock feathers,” he said. “I had never seen feathers of their kind before you see, so I just had to ask the girl at the booth about them. I asked her to tell me about the birds over breakfast. She told me all about the herd of peafowl you have here in your grove, Mr. Archer, and about how she’s been collecting their feathers ever since she was a girl,” He paused and smiled at Cecilia. “I was enchanted,” he said, “So the very next week, I came back and asked her to tell me about her whole life over breakfast.” He laughed and gestured at the two of them sitting together, then at the family sitting around the table. “And the rest is history,” he said.

“How sweet,” said Mrs. Archer. “Don’t you think that’s sweet, George?”

“Looks like true love to me,” said Mr. Archer, glancing up from his plate.

“And what did you do, Cecilia?” Marla asked. “What did you do when Mr. Stacy kept asking to see you?”

“I said yes, of course,” said Cecilia. She made a circular motion with the pointer finger holding her fork: the sisters’ old sign to tell the other to be quiet, as well as to say other things that shouldn’t be said at the dinner table.

Marla didn’t acknowledge the gesture and instead drank from her glass, then said: “Mr. Stacy.”

Mr. Stacy looked up from his plate.

“How old are you?”

“Marla,” her mother said in warning.

Mr. Stacy looked at Mrs. Archer, and then at Marla.

“Thirty-six,” he said.

“Celia, did you know how old Mr. Stacy was?” said Marla.

“Mr. Stacy, why don’t you tell us about your family?” said Mrs. Archer.

Marla huffed and stabbed her fork into a large meatball. Mr. Stacy began describing his family, again unbothered by the wrinkle Marla had tried to pinch into the conversation.

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Zach Krasner, Seated Nude

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She refrained from cutting the meatball into smaller pieces and instead gnawed at it like it was a chicken wing while the dinner continued. No one looked at her or suggested she use a knife, which pleased her.

When everyone had finished their meal, Marla and her mother got up to clear the plates and bring in the desert.

“She’s only eighteen, Mom,” Marla said as soon as the kitchen door shut behind them.

Mrs. Archer stacked the dishes next to the sink and sighed.

“I know, the situation doesn’t make me happy either.” she said. “But there’s not much we can do about it. He seems to be a respectable man with real feelings for Celia, and in the end, that’s all we can ask.”

“But why didn’t she say anything sooner? There must be something wrong,” Marla said. She was remembering a time not too long ago, before she moved to Westbrook, when she and her sister shared everything.

“Not necessarily,” said Marla’s mother. She went to the refrigerator and pulled out the Angel Food cake, along with the strawberries and a bowl of whipped cream. “I agree with you that she should have told us sooner, or at least she should have told us that she was seeing him before she decided to spring the news of their marriage upon us, but love does strange things.”

She began spooning the whipped cream on top of the cake. “We can’t really predict how any of us are going to act,” she said.

“That’s not an excuse for her not telling us anything,” Marla said as she pulled the dessert plates and spoons from the cabinet. “You or Dad should really have been going with her to the booth on Saturdays to prevent something like this.”

Marla backed out the door before her mother could respond and delivered the plates and spoons to the dining room in tense silence. Mr. Stacy was attempting to explain the nature of his work in the law firm to her father, who for his part was trying very hard to seem interested. Cecilia stared at her sister the whole time she was in the room, and Marla pointedly did not look at her.

When Marla reentered the kitchen, her mother was putting the finishing touches on the cake, swirling the cream pleasingly with a spoon and adjusting the strawberries.

“I just don’t see why we have to be so hospitable to him,” Marla said. “He’s practically stealing her life away.”

“Marla,” Mrs. Archer said, spinning the platter and evaluating her handiwork, “just because you chose to get a job instead of a husband doesn’t mean Cecilia is foolish for not doing the same.”

“This isn’t about me. The world is changing, Mom, and women can do more now than just wait at home and cook dinner for their husbands,” Marla said, waving her hand

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around the kitchen. “I’m worried that she’s going to regret this.”

“Have you tried talking to her yet?”

“Yes! She was the one that telephoned me to tell me the news, remember? It was all Charles this, Charles that.” Marla leaned against the counter, staining her dinner dress with dishwater. “She used to be so sensible.”

Mrs. Archer lifted the cake and faced Marla. “Honey. How many women your age do you know who are unwed?” she said.

Marla looked away, at the pale yellow wallpaper patterned with fleur-de-lis. “That is irrelevant.”

Cecilia’s and Mr. Stacy’s laughter could be heard from the dining room as the two women stood in the kitchen, mother evaluating daughter.

you.”

“Don’t begrudge your sister her happiness, darling,” said Mrs. Archer. “It doesn’t suit

“I’m not going back out there,” Marla said.

She walked to the door and turned around to back out with the cake in her hands.

Mrs. Archer paused before opening the door. “And no one expects you to,” she replied, and then swung out of the kitchen gracefully.

Marla ran her hand over her face, and then plopped down into a kitchen chair. She stared at the bowl of oranges on the table with her head in her hands, then she picked up an orange and pierced its skin with her fingernail.

The scent of citrus filled the air, and Marla brought the fruit to her nose, taking in the scent and allowing the memories of her childhood to flood through her: running through the grove with her little sister, climbing the trees and picking the fruit before harvest, chasing the peacocks and scaring their feathers from them.

More laughter came from the dining room. Marla stood up with the orange in her hand and touched the kitchen door, ready to push it aside. But then she dropped her hand and went out the back door to sit on the porch and watch the dusk settle over the grove. The night was pleasant, and the sound of the peacocks calling through the trees mixed with the crickets was a music that Marla missed more and more with every passing year.

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AFTER ESCAPING Blanche Brown She lies not sleeping underneath a window, the cool chemical breeze of California tempting her flesh. But this beach is not her beach.

And her meat is loyal to something abandoned: brine, and whatever she saw in the desolate shrimp boats named after her mother.

Home is the postcard she slipped into a west Texas motel pillowcase.

A question asked like drizzled honey.

The rhythm of knives on cutting boards.

More and more she misses what she can only call abundance.

The sound of neighbors fighting in the dark.

Her heart thought any ocean would do— did not see how staying can matter, not for geography or address, but for something more blue, like salt.

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THE NOSE Ashley Templeton A ballroom, decorated in festive red and gold, is the setting for a party full of finger food, chummy conversations, and fancy friends. A man, Jake, stands towards the edge of the crowd, stage right, talking to a beautiful woman both are dressed to the nines. Everyone freezes – spotlights shine on Jake and a man in the middle of a large circle of people, who is looking up and to the side, chin lifted, so that his profile is visible to the audience. Jake, once again animate, looks to the other man with curiosity, then out to the audience.

JAKE: The moment I saw that nose, I knew it was over. It was a sight to see. Looking ahead, it was a straight line of pride separating symmetrical sides of the head. From the profile, it was a large, smooth curve protruding from his face, with the nostrils perfectly perpendicular to the eyes.

It was a hooked nose, but not the wicked looking kind – it seemed to be the center of every room this man occupied, as if all else gravitated towards this distinguished beak. It overwhelmed the face but was not ugly, and seemed to say, “The person wearing this nose means something.” This man looked like he meant quite a lot; his great guffaw, tan skin and perfectly fitting tuxedo agreed with the nose I knew to fear so much.

Two years ago, in a café in New Orleans where I was waiting to meet a friend, a beautiful woman floated over to my table uninvited and said, “Why sir, what a magnificent nose you have – long and honest, straight and stubborn, and a pointed tip for intrigue and sophistication.”

I looked at her, puzzled but fascinated, and said, “Thank you, what a strange compliment.” She told me that so many other things can be changed or hidden about a man – but he lives with his nose at the end of his face his whole life and can do nothing but adapt to it. “It’s the only true test of character,” she said. I told her she was a strange girl and she told me I was a good nose.

I smiled and told her she had a cute little nose too, but she interrupted me and said, “You know nothing of noses.” We left the café together, without a moment of hesitation, abandoning my friend for this adventure of a person.

But I knew quite a lot about noses by now and here we were at this fancy holiday dance up north, an attempt at something exciting to break the routine we had fallen into. “We’ll get to dress up,” I said. “It’ll be fun,” I said. I’m always on the lookout for competing noses, but I never expected anything like this. Perfection.

I looked to her and she saw it too. I shrunk in my suit. She was mesmerized. What kind of a man could possibly accompany such a nose? “I’ll be back in a minute, dear,” she said. And she floated away.

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Rings - art

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Emma Biggerstaff, Rings

RECOVERY Sarah-Kathryn Bryan As I remember, my parents let you bathe me once or twice. They weren’t born the last time anybody bathed you. This morning, we do not know if your knee will regain its full range of motion. You are rested and tensed as a porch swing between the safety rail and my big bones.

Your strong freckled legs. May they pedal a bike again, someday, may my belly bear itself self-contentedly as yours. If only we had closed those shutters against clear uninviting skies, or if the windows looked west over the spanish mossed oaks, over the continent’s shoulder, toward your birth, I could turn my head, look away from the mauve light, come to warm the body you’ve begun to scrub.

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ANTON THE DOLL Polina Bastrakova He is in his wooden box, tucked in by his mother’s gentle hands.

Eyes glued, mouth stitched shut, yellow waxy skin, Anton the doll.

They dressed him up, packaged him up, and crossed his child hands on his chest.

On display, he looks well behaved. On display, for us to marvel at his eyelashes curling, at his smooth clay face.

I watch his chest with my eleven-year-old eyes, next to other eleven-year-old eyes, and choke on church incense, mixing with the odor of his body.

I saw him in class two weeks ago on Thursday.

He looked like a paper airplane made from a notebook page, thrown into the air, taking flight, and landing in the grass.

His mother unsteadily rises from her seat, wildly blinking, she strokes his face, presses her pale-blue lips against his forehead.

She forces all of her life into a kiss, and eagerly watches him.

She must be waiting for him to take it.

I wonder if she is thinking about the six feet of earth coming down on her son Packaged in his best clothes, thrown into the air, a paper airplane.

I hope he will land in the grass.

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Photo - Art

Andrew David Champion, Untitled

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BALDWIN RITARDANDO Bradley Allf These notes are all so flat in summer when the strings are hot and strained, and the hammers sweat like roofers on tarring day, mumbling curses to outstretched fingers.

Everything’s sustained, though I’m not touching the pedal, the sounds slopping together as my hands sink into these keys like they’re a row of ivory butter-sticks.

A mute mess drips from my fingertips, and all I hear are lawnmowers.

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OIL Jonathan Ghysels

I do not believe in oil anymore, well, not in the sense that I did yesterday. Yesterday I thought it symbolized quality; quality is a different conversation. Oil meant movement, capacity, potential, it meant finely worked details and the burning off one possession in order to reach a different view, to physically be somewhere different.

Oil, movement, burning, and the machines consuming made many men rich; their sons and daughters, their wives need not work.

Can there even be something so beautiful? Touch a vein in Texas and find comfort. You can even retire early and become a surf instructor in California, never working again.

At six o’clock one night, one week ago, I got into a car, took off my jacket, and threw it in the back. Simon always picked me up, as exchange for my company. We both felt obliged to tell each other about gatherings in the community.

“Are we going to 7-Eleven?” I said in a spit, as a greeting. What lights were outside, tall lamp posts with broken glass, I wished a bird would peck out the bulb and keep the post as a highrise for his nest.

“No, we’re not. We are not.” Simon and I spoke briefly, he said the car was a fully-loaded station wagon, a newer model of his usual vehicle. I hoped it had roof racks.

Traffic changed. I saw a seven car pile-up within five minutes of a ghost town drag race in-between lights.

“Is this Tokyo?” I reclined the beige cloth seats and we laughed. In a bit of discourse, I realized that I had been recruited to cook warm, watery stew for a dinner party. My head bobbed on a speed bump. After a slight left into a driveway Simon and I walked to an unassuming home, apparently we were close to a lake. We opened the door to enthusiasm, laughter and a good air around us. Someone spoke on their phone,

“We’re at home right now. I am sitting on a chair and the lights are all behind me. The taste of hazelnuts lingers in my mouth. Tell me, have you ever had those wafer-creme cookies?

Quadratini?”

At this point the receiving end was silent, he or she had to have been. Five or six people aimed their phones to take pictures of a lake with the reflection of the lights on the house. Simon and another young man with cropped black hair showed me to the kitchen. A set of white tableware was passed my way by the host, he also had a white tablecloth. I knew the man, his name is Arnold.

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t even know that I wasn’t serving them on earthenware plates, now what did you boys want?” Unhinged and elastic from all the sitting I had done, I proposed that Arnold takes us (Him, anyone who we could call, and I) to his own part of town.

“Nope,” he said with a grin. I immediately regretted asking him, what could have been ahead of me if I were to blindly follow Arnold?

This could have been Beal City; this could have been a nowhere land apartment. This could’ve been New Delhi traffic guided by a yellow jacket, I didn’t know who I was playing with.

That was a mistake.

Later in the evening Simon, Arnold and I walked into a small, presentable guest house of not Arnold, but his energized neighbor. After a long hello and a shouting from some partygoer, someone turned on the radio to NPR. I ran to the end of the kitchen and projected toward

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the full room. I spoke in an unnervingly curious inflection. I was determined to replace the radio.

“I asked Dhurjati about the home where he grew up. He said the walls in his Bihar were damp and reeked of dirty water.

I couldn’t contain myself. Impressed by my own sharp monologue, I cut to the end of the broadcast.

“Today, his family has brought up enterprises to the market. Through digital transactions, he is allowed to apply for microloans from small, independent NGOs in the US.” I cracked up a little, some others turned their heads.

“In the eyes of foreigners, Dhurjati’s business is unprecedented.” I tried on a muffled voice.

“We’ve seen fantastic gains in fostering investing in long-term, sustainable income for villagers, who, who originally struggled to bring water home to their wives and children.” I had to catch my breath and was almost done...

“I joined his family that evening for a traditional celebratory feast. A spiritual dance was performed in the background as I surveyed the dishes in front of me. The rhythms, riveting. The smiles, spine-tingling.”

I was done. I’m not necessarily cynical about news from overseas, good times in poor areas or the pockets of hope in our Earth’s grim future. I was fascinated by these stories, maybe no one could tell.

Up on the table, I drew back a golf-swing motion and paraded back to the stove. To clarify, I had cooked a stew for a dinner party. I am not in the house that I live in. Let’s see who just came to the door.

It was Bobby. He works at the store where I got the leak. We like to shoot the shit and talk about the status quo, sort of in a sideline way. The microwave timer sounded. I love talkers and chatting around a hot stove. Who would have thought my stomach would be so full and the light this soft. My body was warm. I could fall asleep right away. My, how warm this night is. How tired I am!

I stirred my stew in my bowl now and we all talked about the globe, things were getting on politics and news. The conversation blew up in an old and effective manner. I could recall the atmosphere like that of the French Enlightened huddled in a small windowless home where they had planned a visceral coup d’état. Fortunately, we had windows.

You know the feeling when you highly doubt your current frame of vision and mind could in no way be held together by tunnels of blood and pulsing tissue? Well, if so, welcome to the table.

“Well then, let me show you something.” Arnold peeled the curtains laterally, leaving no crack of the window uncovered by harshly weaved curtain. We saw violet snow on the ground colored mostly by the overcast sky but also by the trees. We walked in clumps outside the home, where a blue tarp lay over a snowy mound. One could barely see this tarp from a similar snow mound on top of it. Once the top had been launched off, we all saw a fine square of wood and stones, many of them were rounded at the edge, professionally. Arnold explained his plans for an open expanse of waxed wood, with tables and chairs. I remembered wanting to leave.

I drove back with whom I came with. Simon and I wanted to stop at another house but the plan didn’t run into itself the right way. When it is later in the day, I always anticipate the even later evening, past midnight I will yearn for 10 AM, does anyone else?

“Man do I want to go back.” Simon said.

“Then we should.” I responded, eager that he wanted to call it quits for the night. He pinched the steering wheel with fleece gloves. I sat back and made a noise rising in pitch. I must

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Gray Swartzel, Self-Portrait in Mother’s Bedroom

Ariel Li, Heat

have been blue because of all the nauseating shifts from the cold outdoors to the sweltering heat of the home and car, this had happened a few times.

“The window.” I mumbled and lowered the glass..

I managed to stay awake and keep a minimal contact with Simon; I thanked him early, often, and reluctantly only walked up my driveway knowing the rest of day still rattled and kicked in some other parts of town, I wonder how much later people stay out for and why. I thought about oil again and walked up to my bedroom and made some tea. A picture of the grille on a 599 GTO kept me planted in my seat. I turned the radio on and went to sleep.

Many of the fingers in my left hand have been cut off. I hope you’re not too bad at school, anyways, I am otherwise doing fine. When do you want to get started on the books I got?

I woke up next morning wanting to send the above text in a mass-email to everyone I’ve ever met. It rained all day and I could feel myself shiver on most hours of the day, I didn’t try to move too much though. For what it’s worth, the rest of the people in the grocery store I strolled for 45 minutes were looking miserable after the storm. I picked up a lot of the newer items in stock and made my way to the check-out. I noticed a girl from a peer-revision night. She had a ponytail. We talked for a little bit about her vacation to the Sahara. I thought this was incredible and we spent a couple more minutes going back-and-forth about the differences in views on war and the future of cooking. We said goodbye cordially and formally, right out of the handbook. I wondered what the feeling of answering “How did you all meet?” was, I thought it must be pretty great.

What else is great? I thought about that with a straw in my mouth. I sweated because I heard a door slam. I got up and wanted to drive the car around. I decided to. I drove by the old hockey rink and saw the school’s team play against Minnesota. A few friends showed up and I asked urgently on what else was going on that evening, there was something. I decided to bring my disposable camera with an extra cheap roll of film, which I had to buy myself. I brought two hands free. We went to the press box and I took ten photos; more later in the night. I stuck my head out of the stairway into the arena’s lobby. We had got out of there pretty late, the team won.

Apparently the game had been important. Four times that evening I heard the hockey players were going to try to uproot one of the statues near the dean’s office, I wanted to join them.

The next day I developed the photos and stuck them in a binder with “To My Preferred Employer” written on the side, I kept it close to the door. I remembered wanting to work in the oil industry at that point. My eyes felt heavy in the afternoon. The pads on the bottom of my feet no longer cushioned my walk, so I started biking around town while making sure to pedal with the balls of my feet.

Again I drove to the community center. Tennis players grunted outside, keeping track of their opponents’ points and faults. When I saw the bleached pool I wanted to jump right in.

I walked to the table and threw my hands around over my head removed my shirt and walked in from the toe up. The pool shrinked my skin. I started telling people to come down.

“How do you compare the whiteness in the eyes of say, J. Howard Marshall and FDR?” Someone yelled to catch a polyester-mesh pool ball from someone else.

“Well, FDR lived in a time of poorer color quality in photographs. Think of all of the photos you’ve seen of people in color, how they seem full of life and without the stone and marble look of black-and-white.” I laughed at Simon’s response. I agreed with the turnout of the pool party on a whim. Later that evening we returned for game three in the hockey series against MN. I wondered whether Simon and Arnold got along, I thought they probably would have.

The two teams worked fairly quickly to develop their positions, so the crowd stood and sat quite

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frequently that night. I spoke quietly and closely to a lady who was a friend of Simon’s, they hadn’t said much to each other. I told the girl whose name was Sophie about my dialogues mocking public radio, she laughed and said I should record it. We had planned to use her equipment.

Minnesota took the puck from one side of the rink and to another on a single man, he then scored. “Dammit.” Sophie said, I laughed and said “god.”

We headed back to her apartment close to school.

“Why so cynical towards public radio?” – I invited this curiosity and prepared an answer.

“I don’t know, it assumes no cultural inequivalence, it brings an uncompromised need to understand.” Her desk had decorations, Sprite bottles, pictures in frames of older women, probably family. We talked about liberal journalists and the highest freedoms-- our recording did not feel as much like as a parody of NPR, but a tribute. The small room allowed our voices to sweetly dampen, Sophie rattled off a story on Philanthropists: DUI’s Correlate to Donating? Delightful. We stared at each other for a minute, we said goodbye, again, cordial, warm, the first in the handbook. She lived in the historic district, I asked for a tour one day before driving quickly to my own room. Oil.

To my knowledge, humans are the only species who cook. I cracked an egg on the side of an Ikea glass, expecting the finished fried egg to be a gift I give myself. I stood by the window and saw a sparrow pull a worm from untilled soil. I didn’t think these things happened. In the morning, animals eat other animals. I remembered that male beetles fight each other in order to attract mates. No two men I know have done that.

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Caroline Orr, What Am I What Do You Think

SOUTHPORT, N.C. Mackensie Pless The aerial shot is all oak treetops and yachts white like magnolia petals fallen from heaven, with teacup lips for mouthfuls of rainwater.

That is someone’s Safe Haven—we live inland, where restaurants board up windows each winter and all the roads flood during hurricane season.

Down here, the bad guys don’t stagger around drinking water bottles of vodka during parades.

They’re part of the crowd, an extra we know.

Leading ladies don’t show up on Coach buses from Boston to marry our handsome strangers, but stumble in every summer, bored and pale.

This is what we offer: the undersides of piers, ribcages hollow from the heartbeats of waves always breaking open against the shoreline.

Our only romance is in moonshined tidewater, in wandering until dawn peeks between the legs of beach houses and, like a child, runs to greet us.

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HANGING TOMATOES Jackson Hall My father would raise his shoulders above the clouds, and the sun would rise.

His sharp chin had grown coarse and dark; his German hands had toughened and thickened from hard, sealed blisters.

He’d loom over a dank plot of soil, and his shadow would widen.

He’d bend his knees low, and then bow like a cleric.

Then plucking a packet from his pocket, tearing its top off, gently, pouring seven seeds into his palm, he’d thumb each one deep into the loam and then clasp his hands together.

Few weeks would pass, his beard would bristle, and stalks would sprout.

Again, he’d bow, bend his round back, then bore a blade around each sprout.

He’d lift the loam into a bucket, thread the sapling through a hole drilled into the tin bottom, hang every pot atop a pole he drove into the ground, then fill every dangling plot to the brim with soil that his hands had scooped from the earth.

By the time harvest arrived, once his small garden peaked with purple knock-outs, green weeds, and auburn leaves, red as the blood that ran through his palms, a fellowship of scarlet fruits swayed down the vine, before which I stood beside my father, feeling the blisters.

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ANGEL EYES Emily Palmer

My grandfather took me out shooting just once, shortly after Mama died. Pap said he didn’t know how to raise a girl, so I’d just have to be as boy as I could while I was under his roof.

It was just the two of us. Pap said he hadn’t lived with a woman in so long he’d forgotten how.

Pap parked on the side of a potholed dirt road and unpacked the pickup truck.

He started by saying, “While you’re here,” – a phrase that became habitual – as if Mama’s death was a long vacation and eventually she’d come back and I’d go home.

“While you’re here, I’ll teach you to spit, whistle and shoot,” he told me.

“But I’m vegetarian,” I said.

“Since when?” he asked and handed me a tall wooden rifle that stood to my waist.

“Since forever,” I said.

The road was flanked by wooden fences on either side, and kudzu had grown around the fence. Shots of grass as far as the eye could see.

“Ruby, you’ll start out with a .270 caliber,” he said. His voice sounded gruff, and he cleared his throat. “And I’ve got a Remington.”

Pap carried a large brown knapsack over his shoulder. We trudged through tall yellow weeds, which got thicker as we headed toward a thick clump of trees facing an open field.

I wrapped Mama’s blue scarf around my neck to keep warm. Running my fingers over wispy braids of wheat, still wet from morning dew, I watched as Pap frowned over the terrain.

He pointed to a small wooden house on stilts with a ladder against it.

“Tree house?” I asked.

“Tree stand,” he corrected and mounted the ladder. “For two people.”

Pap didn’t look at me as we spoke. In fact, he’d barely looked at me at all since I’d moved in a few weeks before. People had always told me I looked like my Mama, with her light blue eyes and shock of auburn hair. “You’ve got everything but my weak heart,” she’d told me once. I guessed maybe he didn’t want to look at me and see her.

I followed him up the ladder.

The tree stand was empty. I waited for directions, but he didn’t say anything. Pap set up his rifle, mounting the scope onto the gun and peering through it with one eye shut. He did the same for mine.

“Take a look,” he said.

The wheat fields looked blurry, and I said so. He made more adjustments.

“Better,” I said.

I could hear his rough breathing in my ear as we waited together. He lit a Churchill Cuban Cigar and popped open a Coke for me.

“Now what?” I asked.

He held his hand up as if to stop me. “Just wait,” he said, dragging on the cigar. “And watch.”

“How long are we gonna stay?”

He put his finger to his mouth. “As long as it takes,” he whispered.

Smoke curled from his mouth, and I breathed in the sweet, woody smell of his words.

“Your Mama always loved it when I took her out here,” he said, after a while.

I turned to stare at an endless field of wheat turning gold in the warm light. Kudzu grew thick along the pastures and up the trees close to the stand, choking everything it touched.

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I saw it first: a flash of brown dashing across the field. I’d never seen anything run so fast, never seen anything quite so free. Its legs spread out and came together in a blur.

Pap saw it soon after me and raised his gun. He motioned for me to do the same, but I didn’t budge.

Pap grunted loudly.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He waved me away and grunted again.

The deer stopped and turned.

“What was that?” I whispered.

“Mating call,” he said.

When the deer stopped, I could see him more clearly through the scope. White around the eyes, nose and underside.

“A white-tailed deer,” Pap said. And then “A real jewel. A ten-pointer.”

“What’s that mean?”

He pointed to the horns. “Quite special,” he said.

As I watched the deer, it turned to look right at me. As if it could see me way up in the tree stand.

“It’s a clear shot,” Pap said. “Broadside. Shoot for the heart. Even if you miss, you’ll hit lungs. You take the first shot.”

The deer’s fur shone ruddy and sleek. It’s ears twitched, but it never let go its gaze. I wondered if Mama had ever looked something in the eye and killed it. That didn’t sound like Mama.

“Come on, Ruby. It’s the perfect shot.” Pap took my hand in his, guided it over the safety and pressed down.

“Stop,” I cried. I was breathing hard, sucking air, pushing back against him. “Move,” I yelled again, this time to scare off the deer. But it did not budge.

I threw myself against the floor and crawled from under him.

“Don’t do it,” I told him.

Pap looked from me on the ground and back to the gun. He looked through the scope, fingered the trigger.

The shot cracked.

I screamed. I fled down the ladder, missing steps as I pulled myself down. Pap was behind me. I ran toward the deer. It was toppled in the wheat but not yet dead, its legs askew like a broken doll’s.

Specks of gold flecked its crystal eyes. Already the light was fading from them.

Pap approached the deer at a slower speed, as if he was afraid to get too near to me or to it.

I could feel him behind me, but I did not turn toward him.

Blood poured, turning its auburn fleece black. I snatched the scarf from my neck and held it to the wound.

“It won’t do any good,” Pap said.

Pap walked around the deer to stand across from me, at a distance. He bent over it, got on his hands and knees and peered into its clear blue eyes. The deer’s head flopped forward, and Pap turned away.

The blood felt slimy on my hands, and the scarf was soaked through. I tossed it on the ground and hugged myself close.

“You killed it,” I said.

A hot coal formed in my throat, but I was too angry to cry. I sat beside the deer and put

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Ashley Beauchamp, Efflorescence

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a hand on its still-warm flank. It was too still but otherwise didn’t feel any different.

Pap said I wasn’t anything like Mama. “She never minded a little blood,” he said. “She could hunt better than any girl I’ve ever seen.”

I said she hadn’t hunted in a long time. “She wasn’t like that anymore,” I said. “She changed.”

“Get up,” he said. “You can just go on back to the truck.”

“No, what are you going to do?” I asked.

I was crying now, which I hated. And because I hated it, I cried more. I didn’t want to leave the deer.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said.

“Your choice,” he said. “Get me some rope out of my knapsack.”

My fingers felt numb as I dug through the bag for the rope.

“Just look away or don’t say anything,” he said, as I handed it to him.

Pap picked up the deer by the forelegs. The deer bowed to him, it’s back legs loose and bending. Pap carried it over his shoulder to a tree.

“What are you going to do to him?” I asked.

Pap grunted, looped the white rope around the deer’s neck and hung it from an upper limb. The deer swung slightly, and Pap held out a hand to stop it.

I was close, too close to the deer. My hand rested against its flank. I hadn’t even realized I’d reached out when my grandfather had, both our hands on the deer.

The swinging slowed to a stop. Only then did I notice the peace that had stolen over the deer, like a slow release. I’d seen that stillness in my Mama’s face when the doctors had taken her away. Her eyes had become glass all at once. But the deer’s eyes hadn’t yet clouded.

Pap took a curved knife from his knapsack.

“What are you going to do?” I asked again, but I knew. Deep down I knew. My stomach turned over. I knew what was happening even though I’d never seen it happen.

Pap cut the fur around the neck in a rugged circle. Then he clipped at the back and around the front of each leg. He peeled back the fur, and the skin clung to the bone. He ripped, and the skin pulled away like cobwebs. Underneath, starch white bones and browned red muscle.

The blood would not go away. I had poured water over my hands and wiped them on the back of my pants but they seemed permanently stained.

It was still quite early to be leaving, but Pap told me I’d ruined it for him, and we were going home.

“What are you going to do with the deer?” I asked as we made our way back down the dusty road.

Pap didn’t answer.

“Are you going to mount him?”

I could imagine returning from school every day to the deer’s bust hanging over the fireplace. Only in my imagination, it was not the buck’s head but Mama’s. I wondered if the glass eyes would also be blue.

Pap didn’t look at me, kept his gaze firmly on the road ahead.

As we made it back into town, I looked out the window and watched the faded brick buildings of Walnut Street slide by – shifting, blurring frames passing impossibly fast.

The sharp fall air stung my face, and I shivered in the unheated truck. Pap rolled up the windows, but I was still shaking as dusk settled over downtown, and the warm lights of the Saenger Theater flickered.

I picked at my hands, peeling back the skin in rugged translucent layers. But I didn’t hit bone. My palms only became redder.

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CHICKEN KILLING DAY Lily Clarke Modest speckles of blood dried to his face.

He doesn’t try to hide the evidence.

Raising the axe in a 145-degree arch he guids the weapon down, while holding the frantic chicken, a mass of feathers, organs, and bone insists on a final exploration, flapping into the Forsythia den, resting in a tangled grave.

I crawl into the nest on my stomach, drag the body out by the foot, toss it into a stack, a fire of red, orange, white, blazing feathers and bloody heat.

Machines do not play hide and seek with a pinfeather, taste iron on their metal lips, keep their hands warm in winter, by pulling out intestines and liver.

Machines don’t smell death like my father.

Esoteric knowledge: murder is like peeling an orange, when the rind gets stuck under your fingernails and the scent of citrus stains your hands for hours.

My eyes are closed when I pin eight chickens to the ground, and in our touch feel grace.

I am an accomplice.

Warm blood splashes across my neck.

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Grace Blair, Babar

35

RETELLING Lauren Bullock The sparrow didn’t die so much as appear, dead, an eyeless white tuft on the brick walkway, her slack yellow legs and six toes pointed in delicate curls.

Nearby squats the apartment I pass daily with its bedroom where I could not say no because adult women do not say no, they say thank you and more and of course, yes!

He is a ghost story, little friend. Being dead you will understand what it means to feel your back concrete stiff, the unseeing fright, the sky suddenly nowhere.

There is nothing brave in retelling him.

You and I could have had it much worse: after all, here we are, skeletons and feathers in the pine trees’ shade, the wind still summer warmed, two ghosts entirely intact.

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CONTRIBUTORS Blanche Brown is a junior American Studies major with a double minor in Creative Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies from Tallahassee, FL. Lily Clarke is a sophomore Religious Studies and Biology double major with a minor in Creative Writing from Fairview, NC. Jackson Hall is a first-year Southern Studies major with a minor in Creative Writing from Montgomery, AL. Jalynn Harris is a first-year from Baltimore, MD. Lauren Bullock is a senior English and Communications double major with a minor in Creative Writing from Raleigh, NC. Mackensie Pless is a junior English major with a minor in Creative Writing from Southport, NC. Sarah-Kathryn Bryan is a junior Women’s and Gender studies and Comparative Literature double major with a minor in Creative Writing from Raleigh, NC. Bradley Allf is a junior Biology major with a double minor in Creative Writing and Environmental Science and Studies from Gastonia, NC. Polina Bastrakova is a junior English and Global Studies double major with a minor in Creative Writing from Kazan, Russia.

Anna Cantwell is a junior English major with a double minor in Creative Writing and Education from Nashville, TN. Grace Blair is a junior Biology major with a minor in Chemistry from Baltimore, MD. Emma Biggerstaff is a sophomore Studio Art and Linguistics double major from Weddington, NC. Andrew David Champion is a senior BFA Studio Art major from Mebane, NC. J. Gray Swartzel is a senior BFA Studio Art major with a minor in Women’s and Gender Studies from Raleigh, NC. Zach Krasner is a senior Studio Art and Business double major from Charlotte, NC.

Linnea Leith is a first-year Studio Art major with a minor in German from Chapel Hill, NC. Ashley Beauchamp is a sophomore from Cary, NC. Ariel Li is a senior Business Administration and Studio Art double major from Taipei, Taiwan.

Sarah Lerner is a sophomore Studio Art major with a double minor in Folklore and Creative Writing from Chapel Hill, NC. Emily Palmer is a senior Electronic Communications Journalism and Global Studies double major and Creative Writing minor from Durham, NC Ashley Templeton is a senior Creative Writing minor from Charlotte, NC. Melissa Bendixen is a senior English major and Creative Writing and Journalism double minor from Winter Park, FL. Jonathan Ghysels is a sophomore English major from Chapel Hill, NC.

INFORMATION Cellar Door, the official undergraduate literary magazine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is published twice annually and welcomes submissions from all currently enrolled undergraduate students at UNC. Guidelines for submission can be found online at http://studentorgs.unc.edu/thedoor. Please note that staff members are not permitted to submit to any section of the Cellar Door while they work for the magazine.

All undergraduate students may apply to join the staff of Cellar Door. Any openings for positions on the Poetry, Fiction, or Art selection staffs will be advertised online.You may contact us via e-mail at thecellardoor.unc@gmail.com.

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Contributors will receive copies of the magazine through the mail for at least one year.

Please make all checks payable to “Cellar Door” and be sure to include your preferred mailing address.

Cellar Door c/o Michael McFee Department of English UNC-CH Geenlaw Hall, CB 3520 Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520

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© CELLAR DOOR ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2014

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