Central Review Fall 2013

The CenTral review

Fall 2013

The CenTral review

CenTral MiChigan UniverSiTy MOUNT PlEaSaNT, MICH.

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The Central Review Fall 2013 The Central Review is a literary journal publishing prose, poetry and visual art by Central Michigan University undergraduate and graduate students. It is edited and produced once per academic semester under the auspices of the Student Publications Board of Directors.

All submissions are automatically considered in our student writing contest. Two pieces are awarded top honors upon each publication: one piece of prose and one work of poetry.

The winner of the student writing contest for prose is Kenneth Otani for his piece “Cubicle 305.”

The winner of the student writing contest for poetry is Riley Nisbet for his poem “At a Food Cart With Death After the Bars Close.”

The Central Review editing staff made all final decisions.

Send all correspondence to: Central Review, Editor Student Publications, Moore Hall 436 Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858.

Copyright © 2013 The Central Review

by Student Publications.

First publication rights reserved.

Rights revert to author upon publication.

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Central Review Staff Fall 2013 Editor-in-Chief Kylee Tolliver

Associate Editors Zachary Riddle Tony Wittkowski

Assistant Editor Natalie DeFour

Copy Editor Charlotte Dean

Designer

Mariah Prowoznik, Cover/inside photography by Taylor Ballek

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Editor’s Note It might be because I was born maternal, but in my mind, ideas begin squalling. They leap into our arms fleeting, slippery and desperate to be held, and we hold them. It might be that we could live off of the good graces of our own ideas forever, but that could never be the case. Inside every idea is the desire to be spread, and with every idea, the time comes when it can no longer be contained and it must be shared. In this edition of The Central Review, we’re sharing some of those ideas with you.

To each of you who submitted this semester, thank-you for entrusting your ideas to The Central Review staff. We continue to be humbled by your talent and bravery, and encourage you to continue to submit your work in the future.

A big thank-you also goes out to our fantastic advisors, David Clark and Kathy Simon, who never hesitated to lend helping hands or let me have as much candy from the bowl in the CM Life office as I wanted. Finally, thank you for your support of CMU’s writers, and the dedicated staff of The Central Review.

Our hope is that as you read, you feel a twinge to take the lid off the jar of inspiration inside of you. Give your ideas no other place to go but the world, and they just might punch a vending machine. You can never be certain of what might happen after the bars close.

I love you all, and I hope your next stint in a waiting room will be short.

Kylee Tolliver Editor-In-Chief

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Index Chad Storey In the Clouds

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Courtney Kalmbach Pigeons 14 Matthew Moffet Elegy: For [Not a Person]

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Heather Allen Time 16 Gino R. Fracassa The Bicycle 17-21 Stephanie Bohn Liz 22 Hannah Fillmore There’s Nothing Beautiful About Abandonment

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Genesis 3:16 25 Kenneth Otani Cubicle 305 26-28 Jake Montalvo Mall Shooting, San Juan, Puerto Rico 1996

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Evan Barber The Poet Misses an Instagrammable 31 Moment Gabriel Hall Our Brave Sons

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Riley Nisbet At a Food Cart With Death After the Bars Close

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Discussing with Someone Else’s Girlfriend our Future Relationship

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James Hollenbeck The Screen is Made of Silver

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Charlotte Bodak Elders of Nikolai 1 Elders of Nikolai 2

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Poetry & Prose

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Chad Storey Chad Storey decided to be a writer for the sake of all the puns people could play off his name. He’s a junior at CMU, enjoys spicy food, and is thoroughly confused as to why you’re still reading this.

There’s nothing left to be said.

In the Clouds We usually stared at it, the string on Tyler’s neck. It was thin and silver like fishing line, taut to his skin and strung upward to the ceiling. Most times it would be pulled out the window by Tyler’s head, which floated through the clouds like a lost balloon. When we played soccer outside during gym, some of the guys swore it went straight up to the sun. I wouldn’t doubt it.

Besides staring, we liked to play with it too. Tyler never seemed to mind when we plucked at it. It made a deep “strum” sound, and whenever we did it, Tyler just got this big smile on his face. We would look up at his stupid head floating gently in the spring breeze, and he would just float there, looking at whatever robin or colorful chickadee flitting past, or just staring at the clouds around him. Then he’d feel, or maybe hear, us playing his string like a banjo or cello, depending on who was conducting, and he’d look down for a moment and smile at us, teeth flashing, his fat face staring through thick glasses.

We aren’t sure how Tyler got to be how he is. We just remember one day, when we were really little, we were in math, trying to memorize our times tables, when *pop* off came Tyler’s little head.

Of course we all screamed and threw ourselves away from him. We had never seen anything like it in our lives, Tyler’s head floating four or five inches above his stump of a neck, anchored only by a thin silver string. But Mr. Carson, our math teacher back then, just sighed.

“There’s one in every class.” he muttered to himself, and he walked over to Tyler’s desk and tugged his head back down. Mr. Carson made a little push on Tyler’s crown, to reattach the head I guess. But it didn’t work, because the second Mr. Carson turned around, there went Tyler’s head again, going higher than before. The string gave more and more slack, and Tyler’s head went higher and higher until it bumped into the fluorescent light, making the plastic casing rattle. Mr. Carson didn’t even notice as Tyler’s head bounced from tile to plaster tile until 12

it found an open window and floated outside. We just stared in awe at this new and deranged sight. Mr. Carson turned around again, saw the mess Tyler was in, then turned back to the chalkboard and sighed.

Now it’s almost impossible to get his head down. You’d have to tug all day to reach his head, wet from dancing with misty clouds, and smiling and laughing because all that tugging tickled him senseless.

We wonder what he does up there.

Some of the guys swear he’s built a kingdom in the sky. There are castles and knights and monsters and they all go on wonderful adventures together. Personally, I wouldn’t doubt it.

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Courtney Kalmbach Courtney Kalmbach speculates that her Ouija practices are a bit loose.

Otherwise she would have graduated by now. She’s sorry if you’ve received any unwanted fires, figs, or kittens.

Pigeons Humid mornings in your studio apartment spoiled us sour as old sunflowers. I am no botanist, though I do know a thing or two about pulling things out by the root. Like waking with pieces of eggshell and pointed teeth on my tongue—a shore onto which you wash all that is broken.

Limp against bed’s headboard you brought my hand to your waist and I smiled like a child who had just been given a secret. Pigeons lined the window pane leading prisms of light through barred shadow. Harnessed in silence—that prison of asking and not asking.

You shared everything only I didn’t know it. As when you held my wrists tight as elastic corsage covered in aphids. Or the crawling burn of your fireplace mouth across my skin. You loved me as all things love me: subtly bolting.

I am no meteorologist, so your weather found us. Beaks stuttered against glass. Pigeons rained toward promises—crowns and chests softened by each break. Heavy as filled vase, I had helped you hang rattails to window frame. Pink tails twisted with direction—reaching toward things they’ll never get back.

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Matthew Moffett Matthew J. Moffett is an index finger pointing at the moon.

Elegy: For [Not a Person] When your child’s fish drifts in and out of consciousness and then

resurfaces inside a shroud

of filmlike water-mold, do you

flush your baby’s betta down that same aquatic grave they sent

his unborn would-be sibling to?

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Heather Allen Heather Allen is a poet.

Time At twelve, he realized it doesn’t “slip” away; it grates, like gravel against skin. He collected clock hands at gravesides, tallied them into his back, felt his flesh grow around them the way trees and moss consume untouched fences and abandoned homes, sinking them into earth. At twenty-four, he’d wake up on fraying couches and unfamiliar floors to the pulsing rhythm of a clock’s heartbeat, angry at its deceptively circular face. His time didn’t slip and it didn’t cycle; it stretched through cracked stone and a mesh of weeds like the uneven cement of a dead end street.

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Gino R. Fracassa Gino R. Fracassa is a retired schoolbus driver from San Dimas, California.

The Bicycle I remember it was sometime in September of that year when my bicycle began feeling heavier. The leaves hadn’t turned yet, I remember that. There was a lot on my mind at the time. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t notice at first. I was too preoccupied with work and school and the general parade of bullshit that was running through my life to perceive that every day my blue Schwinn was a little harder to lift than the day before. The difference was so slight at first, it was impossible to tell. Honestly, would you notice?

In the city where I live, you can bike everywhere. Sure, it’s not the best way to get across town, but everything I needed was right around my neighborhood. The farthest I had to go was just under two miles to the community college that I attended. I also worked there, in the admissions office, so I rode my bike pretty much every day. If I didn’t ride, it was because I didn’t go out. Simple as that.

Who can say exactly when it started? Maybe it was in summer, back when my mom told me my dad was sick. Maybe the damn thing was getting heavier from the day I bought it secondhand, over on Belmont. Imperceptibly, I mean—a milligram here, a molecule there.

But it wasn’t until that day in September, as I hauled the bike up the narrow stairway of my building, that I could actually feel it.

Now, there’s nowhere on my block to park your bike outside, not that I’d leave mine exposed to the elements anyway. My apartment is on the second floor, and I make the trip—bike in hand—let’s say, about twice a day. After more than a year of this routine, it struck me as particularly strange that I would suddenly get so tired when I reached the second-story landing. If anything, I should have been so used to the workout now that it would be completely effortless, as natural for my body to perform as the riding of the bicycle itself.

But it kept getting harder. Every day, I felt more and more exhausted as I climbed the final stair. The bike grew heavier by degrees, until I swore I could tell the difference from one day to the next. It began to obsess me. There was one time I even tried, stupidly, to weigh

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it on my dusty bathroom scale. I grappled with the frame, trying to balance a single wheel on the indented foot-pads, and entertained fantasies of riding out to the nearest weigh-station on the 205.

It even started to have an effect on my life. I was late for class or work on more than one occasion because of the time I’d spent panting in the stairwell. My shoulder was killing me by Christmas.

Unfortunately for me, you can ride your bike year-round out here. I would have taken the bus, except that it didn’t go anywhere I needed to be, and why endure the horror of public transit when you can get there for free? So I kept torturing myself for the convenience, laboring like an eco-friendly Sisyphus beneath the growing mass of the bike.

Meanwhile, I was doing things like asking my friends to pick it up when they came over. Maybe it was my face or something when I said it, but they would always look at me like I was trying to pull off some kind of elaborate practical joke. Paul told me I was being weird. I always dropped the subject, out of embarrassment more than anything else, and soon stopped asking altogether. I didn’t really need confirmation. The stabbing pain through my back and arm proved that the bike really was getting heavier.

Eventually, I had to see a doctor about it. I went to the clinic, and they told me I had tendonitis. There were all these blurry white streaks in the x-rays or whatever. The doctor fixed me up with a sling and some ibuprofen. When he asked what the hell I had been doing to practically rip my right arm out of the socket, I told him. He clicked his pen a few times. What else is going on, he asked. Wasn’t having a two-ton bike enough of a problem?

He wrote down the name and number of a good psychiatrist. Give her a call, he told me. Make sure she knows I referred you. I threw the card into the snow on my way out, and called a cab. What did he know?

This was a very real problem, not a weird dream about my third grade teacher. I didn’t need a therapist, I needed a damn physicist.

I spent the rest of the winter trying to get rid of the bike. I figured I’d sell it and use the money to get a new one. This turned out to be harder than I thought: I got a lot of calls in response to the fliers I posted everywhere, but when people actually came to look at the thing, they changed their minds. The price I was asking was simply too 18

low. They all figured I was up to something. Nobody would sell a bike for thirty bucks unless something was seriously wrong with it. I can’t say I blame them for being suspicious. Technically, they were right.

So when I gave up on that, I decided the only responsible thing to do was destroy it. I had already begun to park it outside in the alley, since I was in no condition to get it up the stairs with my sling and all.

I figured someone would eventually do me the courtesy of stealing it.

Somehow, no one ever did. It was probably for the best. I was the only one who understood the problem, and therefore the only one who could solve it. The thought of the bike still out there somewhere, still gathering weight, was strangely terrifying anyway. Meanwhile my mom was calling me every other day, stressing me out. I couldn’t take it anymore. The bike had to die.

I took it down to the river on my day off. The footbridge was crowded, but I was desperate. I struggled for about ten minutes, attempting to lift the wheels over the four-foot guardrail. After managing to completely incapacitate myself, I resorted to asking passerby for help. That didn’t go as planned, either. By the time three people had turned me down, I felt like a total lunatic, standing there on the bridge, arm in a sling, grinning like an idiot as I begged strangers to help me throw a perfectly good Schwinn into the river for no apparent reason. One guy even threatened to call the police. That seemed like as good a time as any to pack it in.

I rode around town for a few hours, just kind of thinking about stuff. It was weird—the bike didn’t seem so heavy when I was riding, but I knew nothing had changed. I watched pebbles and bits of glass explode beneath the tires. I held my breath every time I drove over a manhole. I imagined what would happen if I simply allowed the bike to keep growing, picturing a fiery crater where my street used to be.

It’s hard to say exactly how I wound up at the train tracks. I wasn’t really thinking about it. But there I was. It seemed an elegant solution. There was this deserted place nearby, right where they came out of a turn. All I had to do was leave the bike there for the next passing train, and that would be the end of it. After a valiant struggle, I managed to wheel myself up the incline of the elevated track, and parked between the rails.

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The sun sank, shining red through layers of pollution. I could have just gone home and let it happen. But for some reason, I felt like I had to be there to see it. So I waited. It was almost 6 by the time I heard the train. My heart pounded. In a few minutes, I would be free, unchained from that awful weight. At first, I smiled with anticipation.

But then...it was odd. My joy subsided. I stared at the bike numbly, unable to move.

As the blaring engine grew closer, I started to panic. I couldn’t really say why but each consecutive blast of the whistle filled me with this gnawing anxiety, like I was the one on the tracks, about to be smashed to a million pieces. I fidgeted as I stood watching. I kept looking around, over my shoulder, as if I was committing a murder.

I found myself inching back over to the bike, putting my hands across the cracked vinyl of the seat. The sound of the train was still distant, but I knew that in minutes it would round the bend and come bearing down, unstoppable, over the spot where I stood.

I was sweating. I was sweating and it was forty-three degrees out. Every time I tried to get a grip, the train would sound again and shatter my nerves. Soon I could feel the track shaking under my feet.

The point of no return was seconds away. I’d made a mistake. There was no rational thought behind it, but I knew that I had to save my bike from destruction.

Grasping the frame with my good arm, I tried frantically to lift the wheels over the rails. But the bike didn’t budge. It had grown heavier in the time I’d been waiting. The kickstand dug into the soft wood of the track. The train was coming. I pushed, hoping to roll the front tire over the rail, but it wouldn’t go. The locomotive came into view around the bend.

Adrenaline flooded through me, silencing all thought. I tore the sling off and grabbed my bike with both hands. With a strength that felt superhuman, I heaved it off the tracks. Pain exploded behind my eyes, making my vision swim as I ran my bike down the concrete embankment.

As I came down onto the pavement below, I found that I couldn’t stop. My bicycle, still growing exponentially in its terrifying weight, 20

could no longer resist the embrace of gravity. As it entered this rapture of momentum, I could do nothing but swing my leg over the seat, and ride. I was a long way from my apartment, and the way back was mostly uphill. My bike, heavier with every passing second, would never allow me to make it home.

The only option was to continue riding downhill. I turned down a nearby alley and headed in the opposite direction of my building. There was a large hill about six or seven blocks away that I was familiar with. Back before everything started, I had sometimes coasted down it for fun, on my recreational rides. The hill plunged past a row of empty lots and continued, unabated, down into a quiet and shabby neighborhood. Beyond that, there was nothing but old woods and lonely road. It was the only place I could think to go.

By the time I got there the sun had almost gone. The last rays were at my back, and had already gone from the landscape beneath the hill. As my bike sped along toward the sudden drop, I could feel the asphalt groaning under the wheels. There was no time left. Soon I would reach critical mass, and collapse, crumpling into melted rubber and spokes. I was going too fast to ever dismount. There was only one way to survive.

For an instant, at the very edge, I thought I felt myself slowing down. Then, I was past it. I tore down the hill at a speed I’d never imagined, faster and faster as my bike, unrestrained at last, reached the weight of suns.

The dark streets flew past in my infinite velocity. Soon I was out of the neighborhood, out of the streetlights, out of the world—and still picking up speed. The wind roared past my ears, an immense sound that consumed all else. As I sailed on through the blackness, I kept thinking about gravity. About its blind and desperate grasp. About the beautiful force that pulls everything there is, everyone you know, inevitably, down into the center of things.

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Stephanie Bohn Stefani is a senior at CMU with a psychology and English major. She excels at procrastination and Tetris, usually simultaneously, and this is her first time attempting to submit any of her work.

Liz You call her Beth, a name I particularly hate for anyone with the name Elizabeth.

Elizabeth means Promise; Beth means house.

Liz means the other woman, as in: Are you still with Liz? This is the name I award her, pressing the L to your teeth; buzzing the z against your tongue; savoring the vibrations.

I like Liz. The name tastes familiar, almost like we’ve shared something.

You say this name doesn’t fit her.

Then you come to bed with me.

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Hannah Fillmore There is nothing beautiful about abandonment All she ever wanted was tragic and lovely, the powdered debris at the bottom of a glass of pink lemonade, tart and used. Fetching and vulgar, she learned to smile, showing her teeth luminescent and primal in the way gums bleed, swelling with the lush rosiness of a lost tooth.

She was born knowing she could choose and not be chosen.

A raccoon is vermin, she said, except for when it’s not, when it’s dead, a red carpet on the side of a road, arresting and 23

abandoned.

Look, she said, look how far I’m hurt as if her pain were so vast it could only be measured in the language of acres, miles, and furlongs. She ran a nail down her arm whispered, tragedy is the necessary roughness to carve a trail of beauty after all, it is the slap of a hand that greets us.

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Hannah Fillmore Hannah sings opera and wears high heels. She has a lot to say.

Genesis 3:16 “And you are lost in the forest of what did not happen, searching for the way back to before, but the black birds have swallowed all of the crumbs.” — Sean Thomas Dougherty I’ve always been afraid of Aphrodite.

The woman in me grew, just below my waist, a secret seed ignited.

I did not ripen, I fermented, blooming sticky sweet.

I cut my hair, skinned my legs, clenched the fist of my womb and wondered.

My mother, the smell of pine needles and cinnamon nestled in her neck, brushing her hair, wearing her silk, I watched my sister become her.

My father and I, we watched, until I became her too and he turned his face away, closing his hand.

Each month the mother murmurs you are woman and the girl in me plucks petal from flower.

My brother, seed-small neverborn neverheld never to know the hum of our mother washing his hair smoothing his skin.

This treacherous hand clasped between my navel and spine an anvil determined to hammer out new life taking a life as payment, my mother almost died having me, my brother almost lived.

Eating brunch with my father discussing the politics of ending unborn life he told me your brother was still breathing I saw it.

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Kenneth Otani Kenneth Otani is a third-year college student enrolled in the Creative Writing program at Central Michigan University.

He was born in Mount Pleasant, MI and hopes to one day translate Japanese literary works for a living.

Cubicle 305 Employees shuffled their way through the conglomeration of the carpeted steel cubicles like rats through a maze. Second shift had started, and the parade of starched shirts glided past cubicle 305, where a heated dispute commenced through a blocky, black 1970s-style phone covered in huge sections of buttons. The one-sided conversation ended abruptly when the customer on the other end of the line got sick of the stock questions and answers she was being given, and the noise of her phone being loudly slammed against the receiver painfully filled the consultant’s ears.

Sighing what felt like the thousandth sigh that day, David Matherson resigned his head into his hands. He stared through the gaps of his fingers at the growing number of flashing lights appearing on his phone console, each one representing another customer who had a request or a problem that he would transfer only for it to be retransferred and connected back to him, a tennis match of people who didn’t want to fix the problems. Undoubtedly he would serve only to have the ball bounce off the post and slam straight between his eyes.

More lights kept appearing until the whole console was awash in blinking red lights. Each day David saw more of the resemblance between his office phone and a black hole, bending space and reality around it until it was the only thing he could see. Also like a black hole, the closer you came to it time seemed to move slower, until each second stretched into a minute, and each minute felt like an hour.

David glanced at the clock, 2:29, and reached across what felt like the Grand Canyon and pressed the ‘break’ button on his phone.

The lights fell away from his sight, and for the next 15 minutes would remain unblinking and silent. Breathing his umpteenth sigh, he 26

pushed his chair out with a squeak and headed for the vending machine down the hall. Getting up, he was greeted by a forest of cubes that spread out in all directions.

The walk through the rows of three-and-a-half walled cubicles always unnerved him. The false hallway made of carpet and steel was punctuated by the logo of the company, Matherson Computer Conglomerates. David had never felt more distant from his family name than when he started work here, and every time he looked up at that logo he became self-conscious of the fact he was related to the founder of the company, Job Matherson.

Walking down the hallway felt like being on a runway, scrutinized by everyone, unable to protest being looked at, and feeling horribly, utterly alone. The aggregated gloom of his coworkers was palpable, and he could feel their stares. He was always the one left out of the conversation in the break room, and was always the first one blamed when the printer ran out of toner.

David’s reflection greeted him as he stood in front of the vending machine. Working without sunlight for the last few weeks had made him awfully pale. His striped blue tie over his teal button-up felt like it was strangling him. Exhaling, he dialed E1 and pressed his ID over the sensor. The phone’s spatial distortion seems to extend all the way here, he thought, as the coil holding the collection of Peanut M&Ms’ moved painfully slow.

As if to quench all his hope for the day, the pack of candy caught on the edge of the row. It dangled and swayed precariously, looking like it would fall at any moment, but it didn’t. Tipping the machine from side to side did nothing, and he clenched his teeth together to suppress a scream of rage.

The company only allowed free vending once an hour and David had no change to get another pack. His empty wallet seemed to be laughing at him, and he stared at the dangling packet of candy in disgust. Once again, David placed his head into the empty comfort of his hands.

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“Did that thing get stuck again?” A voice asked, and David snapped his head back in time to see Katy, the receptionist, coming toward him with a concerned look.

“Yeah, it’s no big deal, my break’s almost over anyway,” he said, but she waved at him in dismissal. She kicked the bottom-left corner lightly, and a thud rang out from the dispensary.

“This piece of junk is always off kilter in that spot,” she bent down and handed the M&M’s to him. “Next time, just give it a tap right there. You’re David, right?” She asked, and he nodded. “I’ve seen you around a few times; new hires are always given the short end of the stick here. If you ever need a friend, I’m around.”

She got her own candy with a kick and gave him a small smile and a wave before turning back toward the front entrance. Bright light streamed through the glass double doors in front of her desk, and David could make out a bit of pure blue sky above the interstate.

David slowly worked his way back to his desk, trying to retain the image of the hopeful, sunny day lying beyond his four small walls.

Two more hours, he thought, like a mantra, walking through the maze of ringing phones and carpeted cubicles, just two more hours.

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Jake Montalvo Jake Montalvo enjoys sitting beside the fireplace in the nude, with a glass of scotch, and a book of poems. He is also the co-president of Poets’ Collective. And his favorite color is blue.

Mall Shooting, San Juan, Puerto Rico 1996 That sound, like the pulse of a fire spitting piston exploding through your skull, quaking down to the

palpitating pump shivering in your chest.

The Taino sun shotttt rays through the food court skylight igniting our aroz con pollo as if to make a point that tomorrow might not come. And its beams polished a man walking by wearing a jean jacket (I swear that’s all I remember) with don’t fuck with me today grinning across his face. The subtle rattle of voices stopped deadlocked like waves gasping back before the sudden crash ashore. Then that sound came splintering into my ear from his direction, and I swear, those brilliant bullets pierced those porcelain tiles plaiting that mall wall like time penetrating another precious instant saying, ah, yes, I’m here and it ends when I say it does.

This isn’t poetry this is real life, and it sounds like oh shit and run. Like grab your things and get under the goddamn table. Like my mother (8 months pregnant) gasping for air pulling me tight beneath that table, palms clasped in manic prayer, padre-nuestro-que-estás-en-el-cielo...

like our feet finally scattering to safety through the food court, where the sound of my mother’s sporadic panting led to the sound of her throbbing seizure,

and lastly the sound of the ambulance door sealing the world away. Yes, this isn’t poetry, this is real life, and it sounds like thissss.

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Evan Barber Evan Barber is a Mark IV Android whose primary function is the production of poetry thanks to the ingenious invention of its sentiment simulators, a program still in alpha; it is currently working on an English education degree and will become a teacher after appropriate legislation for Android Rights has been passed.

The Poet Misses an Instagrammable Moment A scrawny arctic fox flicked its tail and stood staring on its pockmarked rock as my shoes, tied taut, crunched the permafrosted moss rouged like abandoned bricks, but as I approached, my arm extended with a granola bar broken like bread, its tail quit flicking and the muscles of its hindquarters tensed.

Sniffing winter twice returned thin drips of snot to their home while I teethed off my glove. Chocolate fleece flooded my tongue as my tundraed digits dropped my phone and the critter tittered away, its body a shrinking splotch of espresso against the glacier’s clean tee.

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Gabriel Hall Hannah sings opera and wears high heels. Finding great pleasure in the written word, Gabriel Hall lays out the images in his mind on paper for all to read and enjoy as they please has a lot to say.

Our Brave Sons Amidst the gun fire and explosions of war, two men are separated from their units. One is a stranger to these lands and another calls these lands his home. The American walks through the trees of the forest, shaking as he wonders who or what could be beyond the sights of his gun. He is here, risking his life so that others may live free. One hand clutches a small cross that hangs about his neck. It had been his father’s cross and now it is his. It provides him with a small amount of comfort. In his jacket pocket a letter from his wife rests, the words telling him about how the baby kicked for the first time. His breath lingers in the cool air, like a spirit passing him by. The American wants to be back home with his wife, finish his degree, and become a dentist. Dying in this forest so far away from his land is a thought that torments him.

The German is a fine specimen of Hitler’s Aryan race. This land is his land and he will defend it for his family and his Führer. He leans against a tree and pulls out a canteen. The cool water washes down his throat, cleansing and rejuvenating him. He pulls out a picture from a pocket in his coat which lies over his heart. It is a photo of his daughter, who just celebrated her fifth birthday. She has blonde hair and blue eyes just like her father. He smiles as he thinks about her. A hand absentmindedly pats his back pocket. In it is a small, black leather book, his favorite book: Paradise Lost. The German is a teacher of literature and is eager to return to his nation’s young minds. Their learning must wait; there is a war to fight.

The American steps around an old tree and freezes. There in the distance stands a man with a red ribbon tied around his left arm. This man is the enemy. The American’s eyes harden from fear. Yes, he is the enemy. Quickly tucking his father’s cross into the neck of his coat, the American brings his gun up and takes aim.

The German hears the crunch of a leaf as it is stepped on by a foot. He jerks his head up in time to see an enemy zoning in on him.

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He ducks behind the tree as a few bullets rip past. The German’s moment of peace is over. The war has found him yet again. He slips the photo back into the pocket over his heart, his daughter’s eyes peeking out, a silent witness to the violence of the world. Readying his gun, the German points the barrel around the trunk of his protecting tree and fires blindly in his opponent’s direction.

The American sees the barrel of the gun. The muzzle flashes as it scatters bullets. He dives next to a log, the barrage of lead cutting across the air above and around him. He is alive, but not unscathed; there is blood coming out from his leg where a bullet must have grazed him. The wound isn’t fatal, but it burns. Fury wells up within the American’s breast. He won’t die here, not by this cruel man’s hand. He will go home and to his wife and his soon to be born child.

Grabbing his spare clip, the American reloads his gun.

Looking out from behind his tree, the German is unable to see where his target went. He does not like this turn of events. No body means that his enemy is still out there waiting for him. And then he sees the helmet of a soldier over a log and gun pointed at him.

There is gunfire and more bullets. He is hit in the arm, but a mortal wound is spared him. Whirling around to the backside of the tree again, the German caresses his arm. Sweat drips down the side of his face. Death and the devil linger nearby. If he is to live and see his family again, then he must be the one to survive. The look of a raptor overtakes his face, and his eyes become sharpened by fear. He forms a plan to make his opponent waste his ammo.

Anxious beads of perspiration build up on the brow of the American. His index finger hovers over the trigger, eagerly waiting to pull down upon it. Suddenly he sees his target running to the side, shots going off sporadically at the American. He ducks, bullets missing him.

Pulling up again, he roars as his itching finger jerks back, letting loose a deadly storm of metal. However, he fails to lead his enemy with his gun.

The bullets only trail in the soldier’s path. Now the enemy is behind a new tree. As for the American, his submachine gun ammunition is depleted. He throws the gun down in disgust, admonishing himself for having excited fingers. Pulling out a revolver, the American vows to treat these next shots like the procedures in a clinic.

Empty. The German’s gun is empty. He has no extra ammo clip; the bullets he just used were his extras. No matter. He allows the

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gun to fall. There is a luger resting in a holster on his hip, the gun practically brushing up against the binding of Paradise Lost. The German grips its handle and racks a bullet into the chamber. He prefers the feel of the luger in his hand as opposed to the weight of his automatic. Peering out from his cover, the German jerks his head back. Bark explodes off the tree’s side. He fires a few shots blindly once more, cursing his ill fortune for placing him on the defensive.

There are only two shots left in the American’s revolver. He thinks back on how he should have reloaded his pistol earlier.

These last two would have to count. At least he isn’t wasting his shots like his enemy is doing. His foe was pinned; all he had to do was wait to shoot. A helmet sticks out from the other side of the tree. Not missing a beat, the American fires his gun. One! Two! The bullets meet their mark, but his target doesn’t drop over dead. The American stares dumbfounded as his enemy jumps out from his hiding place, helmetless!

He fell for the distraction! Pleased with the success of his plan, the German takes aim and pulls down on the trigger. However, nothing happens. He looks at his gun and realizes that a bullet is jammed. It must have malfunctioned while he was shooting from behind the tree.

The American sees the enemy struggling with his gun. The opportunity is his. He frees his combat knife from its sheath. This is an implement that he can use.

The German notices the flash of light reflecting off the blade of a knife. So this is the way it is going to be. Tossing his gun, he releases his own dagger. There is no better way to get to know a man than at the point of a blade.

The two soldiers ready themselves for the dance. Their fierce eyes make contact for the first time, the German’s sharp, piercing gaze slamming against the American’s hard, frosted eyes. They circle one another, the opening movement of the dance, waiting for a prime chance to sting the other with their blades. Once the distance closes, the dance truly begins. The soldier’s knives flash in the air, reverberating off one another for brief moments. Their breath is short and their faces cold, yet they must continue. Their wounds betray them; the German’s arm is weak, paining his efforts, and the American’s leg falters.

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Seizing the moment, the German tackles his opponent. They fall down together on the uncaring forest floor. The American’s knife escapes his hand and Paradise Lost slips loose in the fray from its home. The German raises the knife into a position for a fatal strike.

Quickly, the American shoots an arm up, his hand grasping his enemy’s wrist like a vice. He will not die here; he will not leave his child fatherless.

They roll and now the German is the one who is pinned. His arm is weak from the wound he has sustained. He cries out as the American tears the knife free from his grasp. His only hope of seeing his wife and daughter are ripped from him.

The American plunges the lethal weapon down at the German’s heart. The German tries to hold the traitorous blade back, but his sore, shaking arms will not be able to keep him alive for much longer.

The American’s necklace slips out in the struggle, his cross glistening in the waning light. It distracts his eyes. And then he notices a pair of eyes, innocent young ones, looking up at him.

Just past the blade, over his foe’s heart, sticking partially out of a pocket, there is a picture of a young girl with navy blue eyes curiously peering back at him. His cross dangles slowly in the air. Sweat drips down from him.

“Is that your daughter?” the American asks in poor German. The German nods, his words escaping him. The American’s eyes soften.

He chokes as he pulls the blade back from the man’s heart.

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“Do you have children?” the German asks, his English heavy with his accent. His eyes, too, lose their edge.

“My wife is pregnant,” the American says.

“That is a special time.”

The American nods, finding it hard to speak. He gets up off the German and holds a hand out to him. Cautiously, the German takes it. The American looks into his eyes and asks, “Why are we fighting?”

The German doesn’t respond, for he too is wondering this same question. He picks up the American’s knife. They return their tools and sheath them. The American sees a small black book lying on the ground. He grabs it and reads the title. Paradise Lost.

“My favorite book,” the German explains. “You may keep it.”

“I couldn’t,” the American responds. But he sees the kind look in the German’s eyes, those eyes which only moments ago were so fierce, and he puts the book in his back pocket.

“Thank you,” he says. Wanting to give a gift of his own, the American takes his cross off from around his neck and hands it to the German. “It was my father’s. He gave it to me when I joined the Army.

Now, it’s yours.”

The German smiles as he takes the gift. “I will cherish it always.”

He puts the cross around his neck and then puts an arm around the American’s shoulder. “Come,” he says, “tell me about your wife and your home.”

“I’d love to,” the American responds. “But only if you tell me about your family first.”

Those who go to fight, they do so for us and they go understanding that they may not return. They are our brave sons.

They are our brave fathers.

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Riley Nisbet Riley Nisbet has too many existentialist-related identity problems to write a bio.

At a Food Cart with Death After the Bars Closed She wears a black dress and tells fragmented stories interjected between bites of a hotdog. She sits on a barstool like an abandoned church on wind-tugged foundation. Soulless sockets of delinquent-destroyed single-pane windows glare toward me and I tell myself if I just repaint Jesus, find a sun to make Him resplendent again, she’ll let me sing in her pews and plead our way out of purgatory.

She slithers closer, hisses temptations that climb inside my mind like termites tunneling through my bones decaying like wood. She looks for last bits of life.

She looks for a wish I don’t know I have.

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Riley Nisbet Riley Nisbet has too many existentialist-related identity problems to write a bio.

Discussing with someone’s girlfriend our future relationship Obstacles can be jumped over or knocked down, she said spilling her vodka & cranberry.

It’s our mess, I told her.

One-by-one we scooped ice cubes from the table like fishing minnows out of shallow water, and refilled her empty glass.

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Jimmy Hollenbeck Jimmy Hollenbeck is a sophomore at Central Michigan, but hopes to go to either NYU or Columbia for dramatic writing. He is an aspiring screen writer. Hollenbeck has written and directed his own short film and hopes to one day win an Academy Award for his writing.

The Screen is Made of Silver Many people don’t know that the screen is made of silver But to me, it’s always been gold. I belong to The church of Kubrick and Coen, “Barton Fink” Is my messiah. Praised be the Space Odyssey of 2001 Although it didn’t go over too well with the Academy.

My crucifix has The Dude with long hair and a beard, But it’s not Jesus, it’s just Jeff Bridges.

The world is Michael Bay’s mind, nothing but explosions And men drooling over “gorgeous” women to boot.

The big summer blockbusters are all people like, The Avengers, Gatsby, and those damn Twilight movies.

That was never my style. The screen as a woman Makes me lust. Mrs. Robinson is trying to seduce me, Isn’t she? Like Ben Braddock I float freely among empty Seats in a theatre. I always preferred it that way, it’s more Intimate with no jackasses on their cell phones.

Could this be a sin?

Hitchcock’s biggest hit has made me Psycho, Flying with The Bird’s moving North by Northwest, I developed Vertigo. Am I going crazy?

Dial M For Murder, Rebecca, do it with Rope.

I feel dizzy, Maybe this is Heaven?

I’m flying over 1950’s Los Angeles. Beaches, Hollywood, Bat shit producers, and wallpaper melting Off of the walls. I run into Mad Man Muntz, Telling me he’ll show me the life of the mind.

John Goodman deserved a goddamned Oscar for that role.

In confession, Father Orson Welles forgives me for my sins, For missing the premieres of Django Unchained and Argo. To make up for it, Father Welles tells me to Say three Hail Dirty Harry’s and read from the Good Book.

I never read the book, I always just waited for the movie.

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Photography

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Charlotte Bodak

Elders of Nikolai 1 43

Charlotte Bodak Elders of Nikolai 2 44

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