Calle Fortaleza Fernando Bocanegra

Huachuca Mountains, Noon Ross Lampert 1st Place, Poetry, Creative Writing Celebration

Mountain horizon: A quartzite scalpel, rough-knapped from the earth to serrate a construction-paper sky

Testimony Tina Quinn Durham 1st Place, Fiction, Creative Writing Celebration

Kate walked past the young bougainvilleas without really noticing their magenta blooms. In her opinion, fast-growing vines were a poor choice of bedding plants. Only the university, with its full-time gardening staff, would attempt something so heroically absurd. By the time she reached the Social Sciences Building, Kate’s right shoulder had begun to ache. Her messenger bag was not designed to carry a notebook, a textbook and a slew of library books. This weekend she would have to make time to shop for a backpack, even if it meant staying up all night to finish that stupid term paper. Did twenty-year-olds have to work as hard as she did to keep up with their classes? Kate studied the young women strolling along the sidewalk in their tight jeans and cute shorts. None of them carried second-hand messenger bags. Some of them weren’t even carrying backpacks or books. They didn’t look as if they had ever struggled with anything in their lives. For a moment, massaging her shoulder and remembering how it felt to have her whole life in front of her, Kate hated those women. When she had been their age, she had been a complete idiot about everything—clothes, make-up and men—unlike those slender-thighed girls striding through life with fashionable day packs and perfectly styled hair. No, that was unfair. Being able to afford a decent hairdresser didn’t guarantee an easy life or a good relationship, for that matter. When Kate had been single, things had been simpler. You went to college, found a man and settled down. After a while, you bought a house and had some kids. That script had worked for her and for a lot of women in her generation, but today it was obsolete. Kate’s daughter, for instance, had good legs and great hair but never seemed to have a good relationship. The best Janelle had ever managed was a divorced man with three kids whose resentment disrupted their weekends and holidays. Even if Janelle had wanted a traditional marriage, her prospects were grim. It was rough out there. Women’s lib had changed the world, but it hadn’t leveled the playing field. Even at a liberal university like this one, women were still underpaid and unlikely to get a full professorship. Kate paused in a little patch of shade to shift the messenger bag to her other shoulder. The sweet scent of orange blossoms drifted down from a tree swathed in waxy white flowers. Kate winced and sneezed. Spring was in the air all right. She should get to class while she could still inhale.

Then something moved in the pink snapdragons at her feet. The flower-laden stalks were swaying from side to side as something hopped