Mirage 2021

MIRAGE Literary & Arts Magazine

2021 Cochise College Cochise County, Arizona Faculty Advisors Shelby Litwicki Ella Melito Alex O’Meara Virginia Pfau Thompson Jay Trieber JenMarie Zeleznak

Front and Back Cover Art

“Sign of the Times” by Joyce Genske (Front) “Candle Nails” by Yanira Lopez (Back)

Submission Guidelines

We now take submissions on an ongoing basis. For information on the new submission guidelines for your original writing or artwork, please visit www.cochise.edu/mirage.

Questions should be sent to mirage@cochise.edu.

When hard copies of the Mirage become available, announcements are posted on the website and on our Facebook page. Copies are available at the Sierra Vista and Douglas campus libraries. The Mirage is also available in a digital version on our website: www.cochise.edu/ mirage.

Acknowledgements

The Mirage committee would like to thank: everyone who submitted their work, all faculty who have encouraged students to participate, all community members who have helped to spread awareness, our proof readers and reviewers, and the Cochise College Liberal Arts Department.

Creative Writing Celebration Winners

The Mirage publishes first-place winners from the previous year’s Cochise Creative Writing Celebration contests in poetry, fiction, and memoir.

Mirage Mission Statement

The Mirage Literary & Arts Magazine has a three-part mission:

1. Mirage serves Cochise county by showcasing high-quality art and literature produced by community members and students.

2. Mirage serves Cochise College by establishing the college as the locus for a creative learning community.

3. Mirage serves Cochise College students by providing them an op portunity to earn college credit and to gain academic and professional experience through their participation in ENG 257, Literary Magazine Production and Design. This course is offered each spring.

Design

The Mirage committee chose Century Gothic as the font for this year’s edition.

Disclaimer

Mirage and its staff are not responsible for the veracity, authenticity, or integrity of any work of literature or art, or for any claim made by a contributor appearing in the publication.

Copyright Notice

All rights herein are retained by the individual author or artist. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author or artist. Copyright law dictates that if a portion of a work is used, it must include the full acknowledgement of the title, author, and magazine. Printed in the United States of America.

© Cochise College 2021

2021 Student Poetry, Prose, & Art Contest Winners

Poetry:

First Place: Kira Gee, “Suede Pair of Pants”

Second Place: Jessica Alba, “Social”

Third Place: Haley Bright, “Isolation”

Prose:

First Place: Jay Melzer, “The Southpaw Man”

Art: First Place: Melissa Adams, “Relaxing Day at the Beach”

Second Place: Lexis Shorter, “Army”

Third Place: Ruth O’Donogue, “Little Treasures”

The Mirage holds an annual contest in the categories of poetry, prose, and art. All entries are blind-reviewed, and winners are invited to work with a faculty member to revise their entries so they can be considered for publication.

If you would like to enter your work, visit: www.cochise.edu/mirage

All submissions from students are automatically entered in the contest. Winners are announced each spring.

Consider taking English 257, Literary Magazine Production and Design

This course offers students the opportunity to participate in the design of the Mirage magazine and website.

Students will participate in learning activities that focus on visual and literary analysis and magazine design in both digital and print mediums. The production process, from concept to publication, will be discussed in detail and practiced using InDesign and Photoshop. Students do not need to have any knowledge of these programs, but they do need to be comfortable using Microsoft Office programs in order to take the class.

Please visit www.cochise.edu/mirage. We take original poetry and prose (short stories and memoirs). We also seek submissions of photos of original art.

Are you a student who wants to participate in producing this magazine?

Are you a community member who would like to submit your work for possible publication?

Table of Contents

The World is in Your Hands Kimberly Fragoso 1 December Desert Melissa Adams 2

The Heart of My Roots Nelida Amaro 3 Suede Pair of Pants Kira Gee 4

Relaxing Day at the Beach Melissa Adams 5 Alison Adriana Aguilar 6

Desert Verse David Altamirano 7 Sign of the Times Joyce Genske 8 Dissection of a Veteran Eric Bos 9

Amor Fati Kameron Goulding 10

Leading the Way Andrea Savage 11 3 Sisters Series #2 Patricia Wick 12 Raindrops Joyce Genske 13

Army Lexis Shorter 14

Praying Mantis Lindsay Roberts 15

The Heart of a Child Miguel Vasquez 16 Lotus Lily Angela Chandler 17

Abstract Bike Rack Kennedy Otto 18

The Southpaw Man Jay Melzer 19

Self-Portrait Jennifer Ovalle-Zelaya 29 700 Hundred Thousand Million David Altamirano 30

Social Jessica Alba 31

The Space Between the Notes Fred Chitwood 32 Alone Time Joyce Genske 33

Project Truck Ashley Ratkovich 34

Fairytale Childhood Adriana Aguilar 35

Little Treasures Ruth O’Donogue 36

Isolation Haley Bright 37

Candle Nails Yanira Lopez 38

Cafeteria el Arriero Adriana Aguilar 39

Soul Search Nicholas Heinz 40

Dragon and Butterfly Tea Set Virginia Worthington 41 Together Tino Montano 42

Biographies 43

The World is in Your Hands Kimberly Fragoso

December Desert Melissa Adams

The Heart of My Roots Nelida Amaro

Suede Pair of Pants Kira Gee

1st Place in Poetry, Student Contest

For the girl Who found success For the girl Living in excess The Lord gave her love The devil gave her money She asked them both a question That lost her milk and honey

There was only one thing The girl truly wanted One forbidden ghost Who left her feeling haunted So she bet all her nobility On a death denying dance Waltzing away her wealth For a Suede pair of pants

She won that day Completely satisfied The pants walked away To win another prize

So she picked up all her pieces Soaked from rainy weather And used all of her heartbreak To glue them back together As soon as she was whole again Her fingers missed the fabric Her thoughts became obsessive Potential erratic

For the girl who lost all her dignity And gained it back through tattered rants Then threw it all away again For a Suede pair of pants

Relaxing Day at the Beach Melissa Adams

1st Place in Art, Student Contest

Alison Adriana Aguilar

Sign of the Times Joyce Genske

Desert Verse David Altamirano

Dissection of a Veteran Eric Bos Amor Fati Kameron Goulding

While I walk my well-worn way, I mend my many fears, and I nurse my new anxieties, staggering through this vale of tears.

My trials and my heartache quite kindly I caress, and were despair to join me it should cause me no duress.

I tend to my tenacious thoughts of self-deprecation, and for every break and bruise of soul I proclaim appreciation

I flatter all my failures and I shelter all my shame. I flirt with every fear I have, and my nightmares take my name.

Life’s moments that are pure and kind, are few and far between. The world may prove a vale of tears, but our tears wash us clean.

Leading the Way Andrea Savage 3 Sisters Series #2 Patricia Wick

Army Lexis Shorter

2nd Place in Art, Student Contest

Raindrops Joyce Genske

Praying Mantis Lindsay Roberts The Heart of a Child Miguel Vasquez

Lotus Lily Angela Chandler

Abstract Bike Rack Kennedy Otto

The Southpaw Man Jay Melzer

1st Place in Prose, Student Contest

She had begun seeing the graffiti about four months ago, ap pearing in hazard orange spray paint first on the alley wall of the deli six blocks from her office building, then on a park bench near her usual bus stop in Flamingo Rock. The coded blacklist in the lonely hearts ad she was used to; she checked them regularly out of habit, the way someone might read the classifieds with only a vague sense of what they’re looking for, but rarely made an effort to look for the people they described, largely uninterested in her civic duty toward her fellow freaks. But when the Uncanny Union stooped to such ob vious warnings, you took notice, because it meant that more subtle methods hadn’t worked to eliminate the problem — it meant that the person they were after wasn’t just an inconvenience, but a danger.

She knew about the Southpaw Man, of course — what cryptid in the Badlands didn’t? He was the latest fashionable urban legend, something thrilling and frightening to gossip about at Paradisco on Saturday evenings: a figure taken straight out of Dracula, an Abra ham Van Helsing for the modern age, and he allegedy did his hunt ing with horrifying efficiency. They said he could smell the glam on you, would know you for what you were at a glance — that he was a glammer himself, and it hid him until it was too late. She knew there had been too many disappearances lately, too many to blame them all on Weird Flight from the metastasizing suburbs, but she had never credited the rumors. It was too fanciful, too storybook; the Southpaw Man was no more real than the Jersey Devil, which had after all been nothing but a stray thrall of the Roadkill God, an atavistic goat that had wandered into the Pine Barrens out of the Vagary. It had mauled no more than a handful of hikers before expiring in its own tumorous juices, and she’d assumed this one-hand jack was a low-grade Ago nist at most, someone Angelo’s boys would have under control in a month.

But she was standing a block from her new bus stop now, looking at the back wall of the video rental store across the street, reading the warning there — no whimsical murals with an inconspicuous sig nature, just tangerine text that shouted at the eyes. They were dead serious. The Union Committee not only believed the Southpaw Man was real, that he was a threat — they believed that he had been in no fewer than three of the places she went regularly. It wasn’t just

unsettling — she had bypassed unsettled days ago. It was actually frightening.

It had been a long time since she’d genuinely been afraid of something. The hunger stole compassion first, because a predator wouldn’t survive if it could empathize with the animals it was sup posed to hunt, but over time all of the other emotions seemed to go too — it was like progressively going colorblind, and after awhile you almost forgot what things like yellow and orange had looked like, until they returned without warning and scorched your eyes. She was afraid, but she also needed to work if she didn’t want to depend entirely on the good graces of Angelo de los Angeles and his cronies — and the mistake that would undo her, on this gorgeous summer afternoon, was the simple, universal assumption that nothing truly bad can happen in the middle of the day.

She sat at the bus stop, back stiff, smoothing her dark brown hair with a slender, olive hand. Her nerves were rattled, yes, but she felt fine — the overblown incompetent she did secretarial work for was so prodigiously fat that she could afford to parasitize him twice a week, and she had left him in his office in a daze, totally unaware that it wasn’t his cock she had sucked. She’d started to notice small sores at the corners of his mouth, and wondered how much longer it would be before she needed a new job. She wondered if he’d given what he’d caught to his wife — if the woman could even bear to be touched by him at all. She wouldn’t have blamed her if she couldn’t.

Fifty years ago, she might have felt some stirring of horror at her own train of thought, at how casual and flippant it was — she could even remember a time when she had felt horror over it, long ago — but she had, as they said, lived since then. Why should she care if her fat, lecherous boss caught rabies or hepatitis? Why should she care if his wife, or even his wife’s mistress caught it? What should she care if the whole of the Electric Coast caught it? If she had learned anything about people since they had invaded the Flipside, it was that there were always more of them, much the same as they last had been, and that only the calamity of all calamities would ever succeed in wiping them out entirely. It was none of her business.

She wrinkled her nose at a sudden waft of unpleasant odor — the tang of whiskey, overlaying a smell that reminded her vaguely of a rotten onion. Her back stiffened a little further when a tall, lanky man dropped down on the far end of the bench from her: he was obviously homeless, bundled in a ratty coat and jeans faded to the color of dishwater, leather shoes whose expensive brand she could only excuse by their battered condition — he had pulled them from a

dumpster, probably, and worn the tread threadbare since. There was no debating the source of that stench, and she felt a ping of irritation and contempt, avoiding the man’s haggard face with the reflexive ease most Haves experience when confronted with a Have Not. Don’t make eye contact, the maxim went, and she wouldn’t, because he might ask for change, or take her attention as an invitation to begin some delusional panegyric. Cripes, but he stank.

The homeless man sat blessedly silent and unobtrusive beside her, hands jammed into his pockets and face buried in the collar of his coat, but she still felt a flood of relief when she saw the bus approach ing, and shot to her feet with a haste that bordered on rudeness. She didn’t care — homeless people were, in her own opinion and that of many of her friends, useful only as a very last resort. If one had to stoop to eating the indigent, one was either incompetent or desperately ill — or possessing unaccountable poor taste.

She boarded, paid her fare, and chose a seat halfway down the length of the bus, preparing to settle in with the half-finished book in her purse. Another wave of that stench stopped her before she had even opened the cover. The homeless man had boarded the bus be hind her, slotting coins slowly into the farebox, and she firmly glanced away the moment he turned down the aisle, holding her breath as he passed. He took a seat near the back of the bus - probably planned to sleep there until he was kicked out at the end of the circuit - and the driver pulled away into the thoroughfare, leaving her in a steel box with that horrible stink.

After suffering it for five minutes, she glanced cautiously to the left and ahead of her, gauging the reaction of the other passengers — really, it smelled so bad she thought someone else must have noticed it, but none of the other commuters seemed bothered. The old wom an sitting across the aisle from her had glanced toward the back of the bus once with an expression of sadness, or maybe pity, but that was all. Humans had weaker senses as a rule, but she didn’t know how they could miss it — that horrible, pervasive stench of spoiled rotten vegetables.

And... something else, she thought. The overlaying smell of alco hol made it hard to pick out, but there was something beneath it, too — a sort of musky, polecat odor that made her think of roadkill. She curled her lip at the thought, then frowned at a tickling familiarity the smell tried to bring her. It was a vague thing, and she couldn’t quite seem to get it, fleeing further away the harder she tried to focus on it. Shaking her head like a dog trying to clear its ears of water, she deter minedly opened her book and tried to read.

She managed twenty minutes of the hour-long drive across town before she finally gave into the urge to actually turn around in her seat and look at the man, whose presence she didn’t seem able to com pletely shut out. She had been prepared to look away immediately if she thought he might catch her, but she found that she needn’t have worried: the homeless man did indeed appear to have fallen asleep, his forehead pressed to the grimy bus window, mouth a little ajar, breathing slow and even. He was older, long, bone white hair shot through with strands of steel gray, but just looking at his weather-beat en face, she couldn’t have said if he was fifty or seventy. She got the sense that he might have been remarkably handsome, once — in the strong cleft of his chin, the shape of his jaw, the evenly spaced eyes — but she couldn’t bring herself to find any beauty in the dirty ruin of a thing he was now. She felt another surge of contempt for him, stronger this time.

He had stuffed one hand into his coat as if to hold in the warmth, and his other hand rested lax on his lap, tough, pitted fingers curled between the V of his bowed knees. He looked dead to the world, and she thought the odds that he would get off before her stop extremely slim. She thought of mentioning the man to the driver and asking to have him removed, but she had seen him pay his fare, and no one else seemed the least bit bothered by him, or even aware of him.

She tried to read again, actually angry now, but after little more than a page or so found her mind wandering, snagging again and again on that lingering sense of familiarity that was trying to become memory somewhere in the back of her mind. It niggled at her, like something important that she knew she had forgotten. She smoothed her hair again and she didn’t see the single blood-shot disc of an iris gleaming at her from under coal gray eyelashes.

As the bus trundled through the sun-bleached glitz of Miracle Mile, the elusive memory began to infuriate her even more than the smell, and she was glaring intently out the window when the bus passed Sunrise Deli, and the muscles in her lower belly tightened into a stone.

All at once, it recurred to her: she remembered this smell from the first time she saw the graffiti, on the alley wall of that very deli. She had had to pass through the alley to get to the subway station from the Italian restaurant across the street, where she had stayed late with a date she had ultimately decided she could do better than. She had noted the graffiti then, passed it by, and then had given herself quite a scare along the following blocks toward the subway. It had been that smell — not the booze, but the rotten stink, and that underlying musky odor that tickled something in her lizard brain. She had fancied

she heard footsteps behind her, been absolutely convinced at one point that she was being stalked, and had made the trip down the last block at a clipped powerwalk with her keys clenched between her fingers, thinking Southpaw Man, Southpaw Man, Southpaw Man.

But she had reached the station safely, mingling among the night shift commuters unharmed. She had looked up the street be fore descending the stairs underground, and all she had seen had been a homeless man, staggering across the street toward the bar on the far side.

She sucked in a breath between her teeth, first resisting the urge to turn and look again, and then giving into it, turning her head very slowly over her right shoulder so she could see him, across the aisle and three rows back. He was still asleep; his face had slid a little down the pane of the bus window, pulling up the top lid of his eye to reveal a crescent of cornea. His breathing was still slow — and in his lap sat a whole, unmangled hand. She was about to turn around again and scold herself for being stupid when her eye fixed on his right arm stuffed into his coat — hiding the hand. Or maybe the lack thereof.

A flicker of real fear had begun to take the place of paranoia, and she desperately tried to place his face, to determine if she had ever seen it before. It was hopeless; she hadn’t seen the face of the hobo that night by the subway, and who in Neon Palms paid atten tion to the faces of the homeless anyway?

Vagues, but what if that was it? They said the Southpaw Man had a glam, something that kept him safe from notice until he was right behind you, but why would he need a glam when every Neo nite worked so hard not to see vagrants by choice that it eventually became a second nature? A homeless person was the only type in the city who never looked out of place, and as a result never drew any special attention.

Her heart ran cold for over half a century, but she felt as if it had lodged itself in her throat, and when the old woman across the aisle gave her a curious look, she turned stiffly to face the front of the bus again, fear crawling on her back like a skittering insect. She was safe — she had to be. Who could look less like a monster than she did? Middle-aged, middle-class, pretty but not quite beautiful, quietly articulate and modestly dressed — there were tens of thousands of women just like her in this city, and to think that she might be suspected of anything so far-fetched was ludicrous. The homeless man was human — foul-smelling, but undoubtedly human. She had nothing to fear.

The homeless man snorted, then belched, face sliding a little further down the pane. If he was pretending, he was very good, and she tried again to convince herself that she was being silly. She shut her eyes tight and tried to clear her mind. She wasn’t such of a much as perception went, had never been all that potent even among her own kind, but her senses were still keen, and with concentration she could call upon them — could hear the quiet rasp of his steady breathing. And the steady thrum of his heart, thud-THUD, thud-THUD.

Too fast. The man’s heart wasn’t just clipping along, it was racing, and all at once she was in a paroxysm of terror, absolutely certain of his identity. Certain that she was trapped in a bus with the Southpaw Man, and that there was nothing she could do. Cry out? Make a scene? No, she would look like the aggressor, with him feigning sleep so artfully back there, and even if she didn’t simply provoke him into pouncing on her immediately, she could be detained, and he could just wait in some alley for her release. Ask to be let off the bus, go somewhere crowded? She’d give away that she knew, then, and he might simply follow her. No matter where she went, it would close eventually, and she would have to leave — he’d just have to lie in wait.

Home. She would have to go home, exactly as she had intend ed — she had a gun in her closet, and once she was inside she could call in at Paradisco. If she said the Southpaw Man was outside of her house, the Union would be at her door in minutes, and he would ei ther be caught or driven away. If the latter happened, she would just appeal to Angelo to relocate her. It would cost her a few more years’ indenture, but she could cope with that for peace of mind. Yes, there — that was a solid plan.

But the last fifteen minutes of the drive felt like an eternity, con stantly aware of his slow breathing and dark polecat odor some where behind her, and it took all of her willpower not to run off the bus the moment the door was open. She walked slowly, forcing herself to look absent, natural, and preoccupied, and when she reached the curb she even took a moment to glance at her watch — in reality, glancing over it at the bus window, where the homeless man was apparently still sleeping, his breath visibly fogging the win dow. He stayed there, unmoving, even as the bus door closed and it began to pull away with a shriek of gears and exhaust. She watched, nonplussed, as it chugged on down the street and turned into the adjoining avenue and out of sight.

And just like that, he was gone. Swept out of her life, and after another minute of standing she had to make herself turn in the oth

er direction and begin to walk. For the average person — and, for all that she wasn’t a person, she was at least quite average — six blocks of walking is more than enough to begin doubting the mem ory of an irrational fear. What feels so visceral and absolutely true in the heat of the moment becomes blurry, uncertain, because the mind is eager to discard the confounding, and will look without thinking for reasons to do so.

By the time she stepped into her brownstone and considered actually contacting Angelo, she didn’t just feel silly — she felt ridic ulous. Was she really going to give Mr. “Angel of Angels” and his bookies a foot through the door of her privacy because she had gotten spooked by a sleeping homeless man on the bus? It was two in the afternoon, for heaven’s sake — broad daylight! The idea that the haggard man on the bus might have planned their meeting and deliberately stalked her, now, when the world was white with sunshine and stark blue skies, was completely absurd. Even if he had gotten off at the next stop, he would have had no way of knowing where she’d gone from there. She was not going to call Angelo.

She did take the revolver out of her closet and load it, but she placed it on the coffee table when she sat down in her loungewear to read and listen to a record, and after an hour she had nearly forgotten about it. By four, she had forgotten about it, and got up to make herself a late lunch, leaving the gun in the living room. When she discovered that the trash was fully beyond her ability to jam it back down into the can and, grumbling, slipped on shoes to take it out, she did not take the gun with her.

The sunlight had taken on an oversaturated hue as early af ternoon became late, but the day was still dazzling, and she took a moment to breathe it in before padding down the front steps and heading around to the dumpster between her building and the next. It didn’t smell half so pleasant in the alley — it didn’t mat ter how much you paid per month, alleyways in The Palms always smelled like wet garbage — and she held her nose as she flipped the dumpster’s lid up and dropped her bag inside. She held it, and did not smell that polecat musk when it mingled with the rest of the alleway stink.

If the shriek and crash of a fender close by hadn’t startled her into turning, she would have died immediately.

A heavy carpenter’s hammer cut through the air inches from her head with a sharp whoomp, and she uttered a breathless scream, turning to see the man from the bus, his shock-white hair windblown, chapped lips drawn back over his teeth. Surprise and fury mingled

with a pair of wide, wild, red-rimmed eyes. She tried to scream again, but could manage none, because it wasn’t the hand holding the hammer that had arrested her attention, but the other arm, clutching what she realized was her book between ribs and elbow. Forgotten on the bus, her book, with her name and mailing address written in side the back cover. His ratty right sleeve folded over on itself, unfilled.

“No, no, no, please,” she hissed, backing further into the alley. He advanced on her, and in the avidity of those mad eyes she thought she read not just rage, but fear. Was he scared? Afraid now that the element of surprise was lost? She was afraid, oh yes, but she was also a predator, and even when fearful a predator is crafty - perhaps especially then.

“Please, I don’t understand — I haven’t done anything to you!” Her voice quailed, and as she made her body small and held her tiny hands in a warding gesture, she was sure this time that she saw him hesitate, swallow, saw those strange eyes flicker. The thing inside of her with its low cunning scented the air, smelling vulnerability.

“I don’t have any money — it’s all inside! Bu-but... but you can have my jewelry!” She started to frantically remove her sapphire earrings, then went for her ring as well when she saw an expres sion of horror dawn on his face. “Here, take them!” She shoved her palms out at him, and he actually took a step backward, raising his truncated arm as if to say ‘oh cripes, I’m so sorry, my mistake.’ His mouth worked soundlessly. Her book lay abandoned on the cement, cracked open where she had left a business card tucked between the pages.

“Please, I don’t want to die.” She played up the pathos as much as she could, hearkening back to decades-old memories of what it had been like to feel, and he staggered back another step, arms dropping to his sides, bamboozled by doubt. When his fingers went lax around the handle of the hammer, she knew she had him, and lunged.

There were tulpae more powerful than she — most of them, in fact — but even she could dominate this human given an opening. Her strength would surely match his, even if it didn’t exceed it. Her glam shattered like a champagne glass, and there was wrinkled gray hide and bristling black quills along a backbone steep as the barren, jagged alps.

Serpentine fangs slit through her gums with shocking abruptness as she pounced on the stranger, hooked her claws into him in a nightmare mockery of an embrace. Her jaw unhinged with a sinewy crack, and she opened her great, gaping mouth over his throat.

Her long, reptilian tongue scarcely grazed his skin. The second her mouth made contact with his flesh, she was overwhelmed with the stench, that dark animal musk that had been lingering under the rot like a dirty secret. It hit the pits at the back of her throat like an open-palmed slap to the face, and she immediately began to heave, driven away from that primeval pheromone by instinct that lived in her blood. Not for you, that smell said. He is not for you. You are not allowed.

She staggered away from him, gagging, and in the moments before her death she looked up and saw a horror. There was a sickly, bile yellow aura hanging around the old man’s head like a miasma, slicked over his cheeks and his chin and down his neck like glow ing paint, staining his tongue, his teeth. His head had caved in on one side, cruching his eye down into a permanent wink, and his lips had been cut to ribbons by his broken teeth. The empty sleeve was soaked to the elbow in gangrenous blood.

All at once she knew that putrid stench for what it had been all along. She had seen it in the desert once, lurching down the moonlit highway as she looked on from across the goat pasture. The Wretch ed Stag, god of offal smeared asphalt, of blowfiles and buzzards and the sudden silence in the aftermath of the accident. God of unfors een and incomprehensible loss — the infintely gentle, infinitely suffer ing thing.

The Southpaw Man smelled like hot copper sizzling on blacktop, bent chrome and gasoline and red garlands unspooled half a mile from end to end down the avenue. Sickly-sweet and overripe like spoiled vegetables that the rot refused to take. The Roadkill God had touched him. It had led him into the witherlands, into the place outside of time where there is no suffering.

And he had chosen not to follow.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” she moaned, and for a moment the man looked absolutely thunderstruck, bright eye wide. “Why did you do that?”

He looked gutted by what some dim, forgotten part of her rec ognized as raw anguish. Then his lips snarled back over his broken teeth, like surf receding before the surge, and when he swung the hammer back over his head, she screamed.

And because this is Neon Palms, even the neighbors that were home on a weekday afternoon did not look out their windows.

The homeless man stood in the alley in the aftermath of what he had done. He looked down at the open book, at Ana Sofia Cabrita,

109 Chuparosa Crossing. At the thing crumpled up behind the dump ster. At the great, black eye staring out from under a sheet of brown blood. At himself reflected in the lens of that eye.

The hammer dropped, and he reached for his face, blunt finger tips frantically crawling through thinning hair. He breathed, shook, jammed the heel of his palm into his own eye as if he expected it to no longer be there.

He started to cry. Great, guttural sobs breaking through the dam of human endurance like the flash flood that follows the monsoon.

The angle of the light had shifted, electric amber as the skyline overtook the sun, and he was whole again, for a moment or two. He sat with his back to the brick wall, sucking air through his clamped fingers, thin lips, crooked teeth. He couldn’t taste his own insides any more.

But the smell never went away.

He stood. Picked up the book. Left the hammer where it lay. The man left the alley the way he had come and wandered back down to the bus stop. When the 5:00 bus arrived, he boarded it,and when he saw the bar he had in mind out the window, spotted the graffiti on the bench in front of it, he decided to stay on a few more stops — and the city swallowed him, because it was hungry. The city was always hungry, and not all of those it devoured were unwilling.

Self-Portrait Jennifer Ovalle-Zelaya

Social

Jessica Alba

2nd Place in Poetry, Student Contest

You play the music of last year’s party. Where the sun burned skin. The water spread into our clothes. The ice cream became sticky. You play the music. It’s shallow now.

Like the pool outside that hasn’t been cleaned since March. The energy is drained. It is not the same. It’s happy. We’re smiling. But there is something wrong with the way we are sitting here. Because now the lyrics are louder than the music. It’s like we know it.

But don’t.

I’m going to say goodbye to you. And we are going to cry. So you play last year’s summer song. Expecting. To go back.

The Space Between the Notes Fred Chitwood

Alone Time Joyce Genske Project Truck Ashleigh Ratkovich

Fairy Tale Childhood Adriana Aguilar

Little Treasures Ruth O’Donogue

3rd Place in Art, Student Contest

Isolation Haley Bright

3rd Place in Poetry, Student Contest

A lonely hut in a brooding wood, paint peeling from its frame in long curls, like the fingers of a corpse, grabbing at the empty air for mercy. Far from the hum, the groan and thrum of a car and truck and mad city bus, trading tones for snaps of twig and the elegy of evening birdsong.

I stood on my toes to tap my nose at the tip of the window and whisper hello, hello, into the black cavity before me. No scornful tone, no mournful moan or word of reproach returned to my ear. Just the void of the wrecked hole, a hollow echo of the deep and lonely lake to which we all will soon belong.

Candle Nails Yanira Lopez

Cafeteria el Arriero Adriana Aguilar Soul Search Nicholas Heinz

Dragon and Butterfly Tea Set Virginia Worthington Together Tino Montano

Biographies

Melissa Adams: Melissa is a Culinary Arts student at Cochise College, but has always been interested in learning how to paint. She is a military spouse and has thoroughly enjoyed living in different areas of the world. She hopes to one day own and operate a small bakery that brings warmth to others through a shared love of foods.

Adriana Aguilar: I am a student at the Douglas Campus, and my major is in Elementary Education. I was born and raised in Agua Prieta, Sonora and I would like to dedicate myself to help English Language Learner (ELL) students that struggle with English as their second language. My goal is to make an impact on my border community and inspire my future students through my artwork as well as encourage them to follow their dreams.

Jessica Alba: I am a Fine Arts student at Cochise College. I love art and writing. I spend my time combining both. I am in the pursuit of recognition for my work because it is something I am very passionate about.

David Altamirano: David received his BFA from the University of Arizona in 2006 and his Master of Arts degree from Western New Mexico University (2014). David works as an art instructor for Cochise College and is dedicated to bringing art and cultural empowerment to the people of Douglas and the surrounding area.

Nelida Amaro: My name is Nelida, but feel free to call me Nelly. I am majoring in Fine Arts and I would love to be a muralist in the future. I enjoy drawing and listening to bands like Ateez and LUCY.

Eric Bos: Social clown. Existential worrier. Simulation participant.

Haley Bright: Haley is a first-generation, nontraditional student at Cochise College, majoring in Theatre Arts. Her interests are varied; aside from her passion for acting on stage, she also loves music, writing, hiking, studying history, and riding Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. She has lived all over the United States and in Ireland.

Angela Chandler: I have returned to college this year to finally com plete my Associate’s Degree. I am a wife and mother, and it is these two titles that happen to be my favorite thus far in life. I have worked in the field of Education for over twelve years and anytime that I have the opportunity to be creative I seize the moment.

Fred Chitwood: I am a full time student who is currently enrolled at Cochise College and studying for a degree in music creative stud ies. I was born and raised in Sierra Vista, Arizona, and have always wanted to travel around the world to see new forms of music and art. Over the years, I’ve spent most of my life drawing and creating

digital art for custom greeting cards, gifts, and personal artwork. With all the work I have done, I am far from finished. I am keen on taking my work to the next level and to grow as an artist.

Kimberly Fragoso: I am from Douglas, AZ, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, MX. I am studying to work in health care and hopefully one day work as a travel nurse while continuing to take photographs of memora ble moments.

Kira Gee: I am a singer, composer, lyricist, and music major at Cochise College. For my entire life, I have used writing as a coping mechanism to process emotions I could not express and grief that I did not understand. Whether it be articulating my often controver sial opinions through essays and articles or processing my emotions through music lyrics and poetry, writing has always existed as free dom for me.

Joyce Genske: She fell in love with photography at a very young age and has been taking pictures since. She enjoys capturing things other people miss and showing them the world through her eyes. She likes to find different ways to photograph everyday scenes as well as special ones.

Kameron Goulding: I am a freshman at Cochise College with a passion for creative writing, especially poetry. I am getting married in January of 2021, and look forward to a lifetime of poetic inspiration by the hand of my beautiful fiancé.

Nicholas Heinz: I’m pursuing my Associate’s in Business at Cochise Community College. I’ve always enjoyed photography as a hobby and was thrilled with the skills I was able to obtain from taking DMA 266 Digital Photography over the summer to fulfill my art requirement.

Yanira Lopez: I grew up between Douglas and Agua Prieta, Sonora. My passion is for photography. It’s been with me since I was a kid. I love to watch the sunsets in Cochise County.

Jay Melzer: He is a graduating student with a side passion for visual arts. He has had to put his drawing largely on hold during a rigorous journey towards his degree with career obligations. He decided to spend the last of his time at Cochise College dedicating himself to developing his neglected hobbies, and is excited to see where they take him in the future.

Tino Montano: My art style is Neo-Expressionism mixed with One Line Art. My inspiration comes from the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Most of my paintings have a crown in them in honor of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Ruth O’Donogue: I am 19 years old and I have been drawing for as long as I can remember.

Kennedy Otto: I am 25 years old. I am attending Cochise College to get my associates degree in Fine Arts. Since I could remember I love art and couldn’t see myself doing anything but just that.

Jennifer Ovalle-Zelaya: I’m a culinary arts and business major. I also have a baker’s apprentice certificate, and I absolutely love baking! I took Painting Foundations and was surprised by how much I grew in terms of skill. After some encouragement, I decided to enter my last project from Painting Foundations because it’s my best painting so far after building up a lot of painting experience.

Ashleigh Ratkovich: I love to do photography in my spare time. I love taking pictures of anything unique or interesting. Nature pictures are my favorite, but I have also done shoots for people including senior pictures, engagement pictures, wedding reception pictures, and family pictures. Now that I have taken classes in digital editing, I look forward to taking my photography to the next level.

Lindsay Roberts: I have been a professional artist for over 40 years; nine of those have been spent teaching high school art, ceramics, and photography in Cochise County. Teaching inspires me to more creative endeavors. Every piece I make is a new learning experi ence, even as I age more every year. Creating art is like breathing to me, necessary for my survival and sanity.

Andrea Savage: She enjoys experimenting with different techniques and working in a variety of genres. She didn’t set out to be a pho tographer, but her passion to express herself evolved into a pursuit to document her world through artistic photographs.

Lexis Shorter: She is a full-time college student attending the Cochise Sierra Vista campus for Pre-Nursing. She works a part-time job as an administrative assistant for one of the schools in town. In her free time, she enjoys reading and collecting books for her per sonal library.

Miguel Vasquez: I started doing art when I was around ten. I then took up graphic design in high school. When I entered college I wanted to become an animator and so decided to pursue a de gree in art. I have taken many classes at Cochise and have been growing as an artist.

Virginia Worthington: I love art and I respect artists, but I love making ceramic pieces that look unique and have character. I am going to school for an elementary education degree in hopes of becoming a teacher. Since taking a ceramics class this semester I have learned and made a lot of work. I want to share my work with people who love and care about art. I have always wanted to see something I have made published in a printed piece even though I consider myself an amateur at art.