The Central Review

The Central Review Staff Spring 2012 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Andrew Dooley

ASSISTANT EDITORS Leigh Jajuga John Priest

DESIGNERS Amelia Eramya David Lafata

COPY EDITOR Kylee Tolliver

ADVISERS Neil Hopp Kathy Simon 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.

One piece is awarded top honor upon each publication.

The winner of the Spring 2012 Student Writing Contest is Ben Harris for his poem “Celia.�

The Central Review editing staff made all final decisions.

Send correspondence to: The Central Review, Editor, Student Publications, Moore Hall 436, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48858 or cmucentralreview@gmail.com.

Copyright 2012 by Student Publications. First publication rights reserved.

Rights revert to author upon publication.

Central Michigan University Mount Pleasant, Michigan

Editor’s Note So, that’s it*.

It’s been a beautiful five years at CMU, the last (best) two spent at the helm of this delightful little literary magazine.

It’s mostly been a fun learning experience for almost 90% of the time and lots of exasperated yelling during the balance. Which is probably the best ratio I’ll ever experience in any line of work.

This issue is obviously a little different, moving to something resembling a magazine more than a passport. What hasn’t changed is the crazy, hard work a lot of already very busy people put in to showing off the talent of our student body in the best way possible.

Beyond our awesome staff and submitters, I can’t thank our endlessly patient and helpful advisers Neil Hopp and Kathy Simon enough. They have been willing to watch us struggle from a distance and only stepped in with help when we needed it. Which was a lot, yet they never complained.

I hope you like all of the submissions, especially Ben Harris’ “Celia,” which is the winner of the Spring 2012 Student Writing Contest for being a terrific blast of noise that startles in a new, smooth way. It’s just tight and accessible without even stooping down to pander. I think we can all agree it’s a pretty little poem.

Boom, that’s it. I’m so excited to see what next year’s staff does to keep this thing going. I will monitor their progress from the shade of my drink’s own umbrella on some tropical island (or, more likely, from a rotting cubicle in a hellish post-industrial office park). Can’t wait!

Share this with your friends. Thanks, Andrew Dooley Editor-in-chief *pending the attainment of all 12 credits I’m taking this semester, which may depend on the mercy of my Meteorology professor. You’re the best, Dr. Orf !

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Index

Contest winner in italics

Tanya Moutzalias

Two Windows

Josh Crummer

5340 Sherman Rd.

Bryan McAttee

Before Game 4 of the 1926 World Series

6-7 8

1950 Lauren A. Kellogg

June, Mt. Pleasant, MI

9 10

11

Three

12

Gryfino, Poland

13

Dead Man’s Hill

14

Courtney Kalmbach

Wishbone

15

Hannah Fillmore

Atlas 16

Lizz Geddes

On True Love

17

Hailee Sattavara

Soot (1243 Hall St. SE)

18

Ben Harris

Celia 19

Tanya Moutzalias

The Ruralurban Mountains

20-21

Ben Lambright

Round Two

22-23

Matthew J. Moffett

How to Write this Poem

Biographies

25

Heather Allen

24

Two Windows

6

by Tanya Moutzalias

5340 Sherman Rd. Every evening I watched the Sun sprint behind the Glas Tender building, pausing only for tower radio before forced bedtime. I noted geometry before any elementary lesson; where north edge farmland met backyards of Waukee Street, where corners of earth box a tree patch unmolested by anyone but deer. There’s a road called Venoy that, to the untrained eye, melds into the fields and remains so until cars roam lonely, headlights waving I am here. The stars rent moonglow space to the eastern bridge, a nightlight left on in Kochville Township; whites, blues, and yellows echo Sun slamming its doors to night wanderers and Wal-Mart scavengers. But that’s miles away from here. More importantly, I notice my old bedroom has pink curtains in place of blue. The pine trees in the front yard have disappeared, as did the thick bramble brush flanking the back. An abandoned baseball diamond became a duplex in my absence. Flower fields of real estate and weathered newspapers dot the front lawns surrounding my cradle: truth is, babies will boom and it’s a matter of time until my geometric fields across 5340 Sherman sprout brick and stone as well. Home is where the heart is; I haven’t been home in so long. Dark neighborhood, sleeping Sun, bright living rooms: we stay up very late, despite Monday morning slinking creepy in front of my old house.

I am here to claim my land. You can’t keep me away forever.

by Josh Crummer

88

Before Game 4 of the 1926 World Series Babe Ruth promises “Little Johnny” Sylvester, who is in the hospital with a rare blood disease, that he will hit a home run for him. The promise is written on a baseball that reads: “I’ll knock a homer for you in Wednesday’s game. Babe Ruth.”

My own handwriting rattles me. Are these words crafted from the same hands that launch balls into orbit like shooting stars? I wish I could change ink like scorekeepers change boards. In fat eraser strokes that leave only white streaks to remind us that endings aren’t guaranteed.

Promises are no different than baseballs, wound in complicated threads, tough covers stitched over it all, waiting to be hit foul or fair.

Today even gravity is weighed in bat swings.

How my wrists roll the pine will echo how they move a pen across a ball because my signature has never been to get up in the count and draw a walk. I’m ready to keep my word.

by Bryan McAttee

1950 The metallic movement opens, rolling through a maze made by valves.

A rhythm trail belted to a bassline.

Oil scent, from the friction slide, drifts to a baby grand. Keys bounce a path, swing the speed.

Under a glass that holds whisky.

Cheers, to the band who played so well that when lovers kiss and break their hold, smoky light dances between them.

by Bryan McAttee

10

June, Mt. Pleasant, MI We left the bar, slurring our speech ‘cause that’s how we’re honest.

“Heart Strings” white lettered cheap paint on the golf-course-green awning.

You tugged my arm, eyes swallowing moonlight, and took off running.

That night we slept in the backyard to smoke with the coyotes.

by Lauren A. Kellogg

Three

by Lauren A. Kellogg

blocks to the hock shop— blink with excitement mesmerized by gaudy sound What’s shakin’, baby? heated a new

until the dope dissolved— renaissance

Right on, baby.

12

Gryfino, Poland

by Heather Allen

The trees in Gryfino Forest don’t grow straight out of the ground. Instead, they curl out, then upward, like question marks left balancing on their necks.

Like God had meant them to be worms, slender, earthy bodies oozing from the ground, tracing grids with their stomachs through infertile dirt.

Instead, they wanted to be birds— wanted limbs to caress the clouds, wanted to catch the rain before it reached the ground.

They abandoned their predestination and their bodies became Babel— slender, ridged pillars, eager to see God, eager to see past God. Their upturned faces grazed the belly of the wind, certain they had escaped their soil cell.

They extended wide, vibrant wings— But it was too soon.

Their feathers meshed, tangling together, trapping them beneath the woven net of their own wings.

Now, Gryfino Forest is frozen like Babel.

Overhead, birds drip shadows onto green leaves. Worms heave their bodies over the roots of upside-down question marks, blind faces pressed into the ground.

Dead Man’s Hill

by Heather Allen As a girl she played apocalypse games with the neighborhood kids—a find-your-way-from-here-tothere-without-being-caught game. They would wait until dark, then follow trails through the woods to Dead Man’s Hill. The boys painted their faces with vegetable oil and Red Dye #40 until it peeled from their skin like rotting flesh on open sores. At the bottom of the hill, she buried herself in bushes by the marsh, holding her breath. Mosquitoes punctured holes between her freckles; her knees grew numb, pressed hard against the ground, dew soaking through the threads of her jeans. She counted down: 3…2…1… willing herself to move, to weave through shadows to the top of the hill where a white tarp lay naked beneath a floodlight, the giant corpse of a moth, curling tips of its wings reanimated by the night wind. The tarp was “safe;” the rest of the world was purgatory with no hope for heaven.

Just a checkpoint, a moment’s relief, a chance to survive until the next round. The boys guarded her sanctuary, pacing back and forth at the top of the hill, bandanas wrapped around their shaggy heads, flannel shirts dangling from their limbs like cobwebs. The floodlight flickered and one of them howled.

The others echoed, guttural noises ripping through the air, finding her where eyes failed. Their demon bodies crouched in front of the tarp, silhouettes, shifting forms haloed by blinding, artificial light.

14

Wishbone

by Courtney Kalmbach

No map

No compass

No direction

That would mean communication

and we were never a pair for orienteering.

We forgot about paperwork, architecture,

through other natural means.

streets

Like on the unmapped trails of the underbrush,

where we had lain covered in ferns and jasmine.

We were safe in hiding.

We hid because what we had to say

was not words at all.

Uprooted, fallen timber— we were birch unwrapping,

glowing beneath bark.

Every contraction of limbs,

sweep of taste,

press of palms—

affections I mistook for conversations.

Rising heat became sugar-dew balloons that starred, starred, starred your skin, new constellations.

Hands unbuttoning collar

transformed throat to undamming river where I’d catch, catch, catch the currents with kisses— thirsty mollusks.

We were wishbone.

Together we were Y,

the only letter we knew.

Joining as double-seed helicopter to swing, swing, swing in motion of falling.

When split you the lucky half

made your wish—

clean break

Atlas With bones unbuttoned to the half-way winds I unfurl, welcoming.

Your spreading hands curve my spine, melting into marrow-space, tidal and tremulous.

Your body, a map my fingers memorize, my ten thin cartographers trace it in your sleep, studying your geography keeps me awake.

The planes of your abdomen, the peaks of your knees and nose summon me.

Ear pressed to the swell of your chest I hear the sea.

*First line by Dylan Thomas.

by Hannah Fillmore

16

On True Love

I wanna make you a sandwich, someday.

Not when you ask; just for the hell of it.

by Lizz Geddes

Soot (1243 Hall St. SE) I used to know all of your clichÊs, but now I feel you bound to my muscles: fingers pressed against your staircase, minimal distance between the toilet tank and the sink basin and now when I close my eyes T.S. Eliot and I press our backs against your windowpanes: rolling onto the walls against the foundation I will spend a third of my life paying for, hollowed walls smitten with the scent of a campfire, attracting dirt to my wood floor and showing me what glass through vegan shoes feels like. It stings like my stomach when I listened to the voicemail reporting your death (10:14 a.m. Feb. 16, 2011) was packing mismatched socks and hardly worn sweatshirts, with anxiety of pulling comic books and dishes out of the ashes. Now warm oak flooring and single coats of paint cover you. The trim of your windowpanes white as my kitten Scrambles’ teeth (he has asthma now) and when I wake by natural light in my room I superimpose your soot covered past on my walls for a brief jarring moment.

by Hailee Sattavara

1818

Celia

is more than a name. It’s more than the bassoon and the bass, the buzz of the beads on the bottom of a snare, the stab of the baton.

It’s Mingus speaking the way he does: broad words and true words, thick like copper strings: I created the world, pimp and prostitute, it seems to say.

It’s a half-time feel to bring it home, the final wail before Put me to bed and blow out the candles: but Christ, make it last. It’s the orange dress, the silk blue slipper during the ball, a quick glance over before the nervous approach. The extension of a hand, the slow groove, and then: the running bass, the descent into the trenches of the grand staff, a light kiss, a sung promise, screaming until the sun comes up.

And Mingus that dog, staring down: it’s what he wanted all along.

by Ben Harris

The Ruralurban Mountains

20

by Tanya Moutzalias

Round Two

by Ben Lambright

They are just sitting there, my testicles, in opposite corners of the bathroom.

One of them, the left, Nick, I know because of that thing I should have had looked at, is smoking. Short, quick, puffs. Like a dad-to-be in the waiting room of a 1940s hospital. He got the Marlboro from the pack I hide behind the toilet.

The other, Richard III, is just sort of lying on thick slab of skin, staring right at me. Waiting to see who twitches first.

I would tell my wife, but I’ve been avoiding her lately, and this hardly seems like the best place to start a conversation and, besides, she’s at work anyway.

So now I’m on my cell with Dr. Wong. He’s a nice doctor— never laughs when I ask if my latest zit is cancer. Always runs a test to make feel better. He says that this “is actually a common problem.”

“Do I need to catch them? Bring them in?” I hear a snicker and hang up. I’m going to have to do this on my own.

I’m sure they heard me talking. Nick slides in behind the half-cracked pack of smokes and III moves behind the shower curtain. It’s in their nature not to be tied down.

“I don’t suppose I could convince you guys to ride in my pockets? Even my shirt pocket?”

Nothing.

I lock them in the bathroom and go looking for something to keep them in, once I manage to catch them.

There isn’t much in the house. We eat out a lot. Carrying them in a bag seems appropriate enough, but we don’t have any zippered baggies and everything else is too easy to escape from, considering.

I dig through the kitchen for at least fifteen minutes. Then start in on the fridge. Butter container, too slippery. Jalapenos, too risky. Mayonnaise, HA. But in the back of the fridge I find a plastic jar of pickled eggs someone gave me as a gag gift. It smells like vinegar and the rubber they make hockey pucks out of. Not they are used to the best accommodations. But, I wouldn’t want to explain the smell to the nurse, so I grab half a box of tissues and spritz them with enough of my wife’s perfume to get Willie Nelson past a border check and head back to the bathroom.

Nick has gotten upset with III and is pushing him towards the bathtub with the lit end of cigarette. He tries to act casual when he notices me standing in the doorway.

“Nick, put that out please.” He pauses for a contemplative second, takes one last drag, swells quite a bit, and lets it roll it across the bathroom floor in my direction. It comes to rest on the grout between two tiles. I pick it up, think about smoking it, and flush it down the toilet anyway.

Maybe they’ll listen to reason. I set the jar down on the floor and get on my knees. “I’m bigger and stronger than both of you put together and this room isn’t that big. I’m going to catch you if I have to. So why don’t we just do this the easy way.”

Nothing.

I’m about to make a dive at them when I notice the lighter. The business end is right behind III. Nick looks confident. “You wouldn’t.”

He would.

22 22

Bribery. “What do you want? A massage? Warm baths? Boxers? Briefs? Nothing?”

Nothing.

No. “Women’s?”

Nick squishes away from the bic a bit.

“Panties?”

Farther…

“Satin?”

A little farther.

“Silk?”

Far enough.

I dive at them and smack Nick away from the lighter, put myself between him and III. As soon as III climbs into my hand I curl into the fetal position, sick to my stomach.

I guess we’re more connected than I thought.

III seems happy to be sitting in jar, protected from Nick. I’m happy I didn’t vomit. Now Nick is sitting on the edge of the toilet seat. I think he’s threatening to sink down the drain.

“You wouldn’t do that to yourself.”

He would.

“I’m sorry I hit you. But I couldn’t trust you, not yet.”

Nothing.

“I really will switch to panties— whatever kind you want. Fuck, I’ll go crotchless if it will make you happy. Just, please don’t do this.”

Crotchless seems to have gotten his attention. But he still looks like no.

“Fine, silk then. Spider Silk. Inchworm. The best. Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Cline, goddamn Fredrick’s of fucking Hollywood. Whatever you want.”

He rolls to edge of toilet and waggles a wayward pube in my direction. I cup my hands together like a man begging for water in the desert. He squarbles onto them, resting softly between the creases of my palms.

“It’s going to be okay, Nick. We’re going to get this fixed.”

I put him back in the jar with III and screw the lid on tight.

How to Write this Poem 1.

Recognize the core of what you want to say.

2.

Smash that core into its component pieces.

3.

Struggle to reconstruct those pieces on paper.

4. Fail.

5.

Spend the next two or three days in bed,

not really sleeping, but not really awake,

just staring at that pile of broken dreams.

6.

Maybe cry a little, at the futility of it all.

7.

When the boredom grows too much to bear,

get out of bed and start to clean the mess.

8.

Grit your teeth and suffer; that’s your life’s

work you’re sweeping into the trash there.

9.

Maybe sweep some of the pieces into funny looking shapes and giggle a bit. Go ahead

and giggle. It’s okay to giggle. Giggle away!

10.

Repeat until dead or until there’s nothing left to giggle at.

by Matthew J. Moffett

24

Biographies

Benjamin T. Lambright would like to thank everyone at CMU‌ individually. Please form a line.

Bryan McAttee is a senior at Central

Heather Allen is a junior from Holt, Michigan.

Michigan University, majoring in English.

In his spare time, Bryan enjoys grabbing a beer with friends and then eventually drinking that beer.

Josh Crummer is living proof of psychic affirmative action. His work has recently appeared in See Spot Run, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Emerge Literary Magazine, and Eunoia Review.

Hannah Fillmore is double-majoring in Vocal Performance and Creative Writing at Central Michigan University. She sings opera, teaches yoga, lurks in coffee shops, and loves to go on adventures.

Lizz Geddes

loves sharks and David Bowie. She would like to teach middle schoolers Biology someday.

Ben Harris should have majored in Finance.

Courtney Kalmbach is a twin, and sometimes cannot tell who she is in childhood photos. She’s fine with being both.

Lauren A. Kellogg is not afraid to eat

a cheeseburger off of the floor.

Matthew J. Moffett gets

such a big head sometimes that he has to fold his legs up into a basket and float around the world a couple of times in order to deflate his massive ego.

Hailee Sattavara is a senior studying Creative Writing.

Her roommate lost a baby frog in her apartment recently. She hopes to find it soon.

Tanya Moutzalias specializes in dirty brown water trash scenic photography and dead bird portraiture.

Fin 26

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