Conceptions Southwest 2011

ConceptionsSouthwest 2011 Volume xxxiv The Fine Arts and Literature Magazine of the University of New Mexico

sw

Copyright © 2011 Conceptions Southwest Published by the Student Publication Board University of New Mexico All rights revert to authors upon publication ISSN 1048-8790

Conceptions Southwest is published annually by student volunteers and acts as a beneficiary to the Student Publications Board. This issue is brought to you by Associated Students of the University of New Mexico (ASUNM) and the Graduate Professional Student Association (GPSA). The magazine has provided a home for UNM’s creative community since 1978. Submissions are accepted by anyone with affiliation to the university and selected by the staff in a blind-jury process.

Copies and back issues are acailable in the Daily Lobo Classified Advertising Office – Marron Hall Rm.107.

Conceptions Southwest’s office is located in Marron Hall Rm.225

Cover Art: “Sky Boy Lives in the Now” by Eva Dameron

505-277-5656 csw@unm.edu www.unm.edu/~csw

c/o Student Publications MSC03-2230 University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

Printed by Starline Printing 7111 Pan American West Freeway NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 505-345-8900

Special Thanks To all the artists and contributors who made this magazine possible, your work represents a cultural snapshot of UNMʼs diversity. We thank you yet again for making Conceptions Southwest a home for your art.

The Student Publications Board The Daily Lobo Advertisement Office & News Room UNM English & Creative Writing Department ASUNM & GPSA for funding Valerie Thomas’s Visual Rhetoric Class for flier design Jim Fischer for setting a fire beneath our feet Starline Printing for assistance with publication process Blue Mesa Review – Bob Sabatini, Best Student Essays – Jay Reeidy, and Scribendi – Andrew Quick for all the Pub Fair Fun Thanks to this year’s staff—your hard work really paid off.

sw

Staff Editor-in-Chief

Chris Quintana Managing Editor

Vittoria Totaro Staff Manager

Craig Dubyk Selection and Copyediting Commitee

Antonio Sanchez Gianna May Glenna Mattenson Scott Palmer Veena Patel Music Editor

Laura Eberhardt Photo Editor

Junfu Han Design Director

Jordan Unverzagt Advertising Designer

Alexis Magna

Table of Contents Poetry Six Years as a Couch................................................................................................................................1

by Christina Faris Rubix Cube.................................................................................................................................................2

by Tracy Butler Laughter at the Weeping Vigas...............................................................................................................6

by Beckett S. Nodal Tin Roof Blues............................................................................................................................................7

by Nancy Thomas Fish Stick...................................................................................................................................................14

by Joshua Montoya Of Societal Sins.......................................................................................................................................24

by Arun Ahuja Wild Open...............................................................................................................................................25

by Nancy Thomas Super Lot..................................................................................................................................................30

by Beckett S. Nodal Diane Arbus Photographs the Dead Girl with the Doll.......................................................................31

by Terri Brown-Davidson My Muse Anew.......................................................................................................................................43

by Graham Gentz Immoral....................................................................................................................................................44

by Christina Faris One Night in the Lab, We Created a Human......................................................................................51

by Joshua Montoya Monday Night........................................................................................................................................53

by Morgan Podraza Shadows..................................................................................................................................................59

by Sarah Parro 42.............................................................................................................................................................65

by Bob Sabatini

sw

Fiction and Non-Fiction Pancake is Tired...........................................................................................................................................................3

by Eva Damerson Vondelpark...................................................................................................................................................................8

by Philip Charles Stevens Blackbird.................................................................................................................................................................... 15

by Mary Luttrel Escapes Collide......................................................................................................................................................... 18

by Madeline Coen-Mozley No, You Can’t Sleep in the Grocery Store............................................................................................................ 26

by Kimberly Keller And Vampire Makes 3..............................................................................................................................................32

by Bob Sabatin Fidelis..........................................................................................................................................................................38

by Madeline Coen-Mozley The Bestowal..............................................................................................................................................................49

by Mary Luttrel The Devil’s First Love.................................................................................................................................................55

by Tom Ta The Blood Factory.....................................................................................................................................................60

by Terri Brown-Davidson The Looking Glass.....................................................................................................................................................66

by Graham Gentz

Visual Art Vertical Descent 1.....................................................................................................................................................42

by Emma Difani Flophouse...................................................................................................................................................................45

by Beckett S. Nodal Hurricane Pass...........................................................................................................................................................46

by Dylan Smith Light Movement.........................................................................................................................................................47

By Leo York Woman.......................................................................................................................................................................50

by Angela Arrey-Wastavino Sunburst Reflection-Rose...........................................................................................................................................52

by Emma Difani The Party You Didn’t Show Up To...........................................................................................................................54

by Eva Dameron Descanso....................................................................................................................................................................58

by Bevin Ehn

Music Compositions..............................................................................................................................................81

A Note From the Editor I ask anyone who has found this copy of Conceptions Southwest to read and enjoy what’s inside of it, but then I am going to ask for something a bit stranger. Instead of letting the magazine become covered in dust on some forgotten bookshelf, I ask that you pass it onto someone else who cares about the arts.

Put simply, the works contained in this magazine deserved to be seen by everyone at UNM. Like we have been saying since the beginning of the year, we have been trying to present a cultural snapshot of the arts at the University of the New Mexico, and, as we have been doing for the last 34 years, this issue succeeds with flying colors.

Within you’ll find a collection of intriguing prose and captivating poetry. You’ll view a small sampling of the masterful photography the university has to offer as well as fascinating sketches and paintings. This year we were also fortunate to have a sampling of compositions from the music department. Truly, this year was one of the most diverse for the magazine, and I can only hope that the reader who happens upon this issue will appreciate the work the artists have done to the fullest extent.

Again, however, I ask that it doesn’t stop with the reader. While each year many artists submit to the magazine, the wider population of the University is still unaware of its existence. Right now, we exist in the minds of the most dedicated artists, which is good because it’s their work we strive to publish, but the rest of the population needs to know what these creators have accomplished. And that’s where we need your help.

We spent the last two semesters advertising, promoting, pitching, reading, editing, and designing this magazine, and now we need you to spread it across the campus. By all means enjoy and savor the work, but make sure you give someone else the chance to do the same.

Chris Quintana

sw

I want to call her Laverne, her middle name.

Gayle Grinds is too harsh and I don’t want to remember her like that. The woman from Stuart, Florida, who fused with her couch. Flesh flowed over her sides, piss and crumbs staining and crusting her to her seat, walls thick with feces.

She sat there, unmovable.

I think she was patient and calm, only getting upset when they tried to remove her from her couch – her body.

I feel her skin and

I want to feel the edges of the seams from the inside, touching the stiff cloroxed fabric that no one else can see.

It asks that I come closer to the back, so I can feel separation of cushions.

I want to live inside the shapes that geometrically conform to La-Z-Boys.

I’ll have no say who sits on me, but I’ll have to collapse under their weight.

I want to grow Into the couch, threads coyly unraveling my sweatshirt, attaching to my sleeve, where they gently tug my arm, whispering stay here forever.

I want to become the couch.

I know it’ll be tender when it fuses with my nerves because I am it, now.

Why can’t you just accept that?

I want to sink into the cushion, foam invading my eyes, threads weaving gently with my skin, bringing to my attention that it’s warmer with a body on top.

SixYearsasaCouch

by Christina Faris

sw Vol. XXXIV

1

Rubix Cube

by Tracy Buckler

1

3

2

4

The plastic cube, 3 by 3 by 3, its body parts segmented and color-coded: a compressed beach ball. All of the colors forced to mix, though the centerpieces refuse to move, begging for their friends to once again surround them. Each clique was meant to be separate – touching shoulders, the only tolerance. Complete opposites, like jock and nerd, should never touch directly.

It all used to be a mystery, and I’d watch as others snub Eris and put the chaos right. Has it been so long since I stood in the audience to watch the magic show? I’d even mix it up for the performers so I’d know for sure they weren’t cheating. But Harmonia would always win, and my jaw would drop.

2

Conceptions Southwest 2011

My fingers mechanically shift the sides. I hardly need to look at it since my muscles memorized the patterns. It looks as if I mess up the progress, but somehow the progress always returns, and the small crowd anticipates the ending. For two minutes I master the cube. For two minutes the cube masters them. For two minutes, the transitive relation gives me control.

The plastic’s power lies in the mystery.

Front twice, top right, down right, (It has no power over me anymore) down left, front twice, up left, (I know how the magic’s done) up right, top right, left twice, solved.

Fascinating. “How did you do that?” In two days I was taught the magician’s ways. Now I ask the same thing – “How did a piece of multi-colored plastic ever do that to me?”

Pancake is Tired

By Eva Dameron

At the doctor’s office Dr. Duck and Pancake McScratchy, who’s in for a check up. And some nurses.

NURSE Dr. Duck will see you now, Mr. McScratcher PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY McScratchy.

NURSE Whatever.

She leads him into the doctor’s office DR. DUCK McFetchel! What’s new? Sick again? You look bad. Hey, real bad. Hold this potato, I’ll get my thermometer.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY It’s McScratchy. I been good. I been real good, Dr. Duck. I been lazy and tired, though. I been a couch potato. Why am I holding this?

DR. DUCK I’m gonna stick the thermometer in, check if it’s done. I’m on lunch break.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY Oh, I can…

DR. DUCK No, stay, stay. Want some cheese diddlies?

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY How ‘bout you check my heartbeat?

DR. DUCK Right, right.

Holds megaphone up to Pancake’s chest. A sound goes BOOM BOOM BOOM Jesus! That’s loud. We’ll have to do surgery. High blood pressure. Better cut down on those cheese diddlies.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY I don’t really eat cheese diddlies.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

3

DR. DUCK Hold still that potato (sticks in cooking thermometer). Oh, it’s cold!

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY It’s raw.

DR. DUCK Hmm? Yes, yes. Raw. Mm. Indeed.

Holds megaphone up to potato. Silence.

It’s dead. Well, throw it out. I’m a vegetarian, and that potato is very dead.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY I’m sorry.

DR. DUCK That’s alright, McDonald. Thanks.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY McScratchy.

DR. DUCK Whatever.

Nurse walks into the room.

NURSE Doctor, your lunch break is up. Shall I send in the next patient?

DR. DUCK Yes, yes. Good to see you, McScratchems. You’re doing fine. Everything works great. Get some rest and call me next year.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY Really? But you didn’t even DR. DUCK Yes, yes. I know. It’s a miracle. We’ve all got something these days, but you’re fine.

Just fine. Nurse, bury that potato out back. And look smart about it.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY Dr. Duck, you didn’t check me out at all. I could have mono.

DR. DUCK That guy from U2? How’d you end up with him? I’d love to meet him.

4

Conceptions Southwest 2011

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY No, the virus that makes you tired. Or… I don’t know, but I been real tired too early in the day.

DR. DUCK Alright. Hold this squash, lemme see what magic I got in my drawer.

Shuffles through drawer.

Aha! Take three a day. Yes, take three of these a day and call me if you haven’t improved in a week.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY What are they?

DR. DUCK Energy pills.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY They look like candy corn.

DR. DUCK Nonsense! … What’s candy corn?

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY These “pills” sir. They are candy corn.

DR. DUCK Right. Mmm. Hold this tomato, let me see what else I can find, McRabies.

PANCAKE MCSCRATCHY McScratchy. And don’t…(yawn)…don’t worry about it. I’ll visit Dr. Stacks down the road. He’ll give me a second opinion.

DR. DUCK Sure, sure. Keep the tomato.

sw Vol. XXXIV

5

Have you looked out the window today?

Clouds caress the endless blue heavens.

Besos y abrazos.

Did you see?

The old brown chapel crowns the street corner.

Stuccoed adobe, saltillo tile, and the weeping vigas, all in sweet decay.

Sublime repose of the city saints.

Laughter at the Weeping Vigas

By Beckett S. Nodal

Did you see the men labor in the sun?

Ball caps and crooked smiles.

Smoking in the shade—laughing, daydreaming, shouting.

The tin can rhythm of an old stereo carries through the flighty showers, Tejano, Norteño and the bells of the paletería.

Trumpets and car horns unified in passing.

The children laughing too, tumbling like chile roasting in the sweeping sunset flame; fire and fervor.

The men rise slowly.

The breeze cools the sweat on their backs and carries the faint scent of honeysuckle and dampened earth.

Today the city awoke to familiar rhythms, grandeur found in common places.

Beauty on the avenues.

Laughter, love and anger.

The sweetness of life.

Did you step outside and see?

6

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Tin Roof Blues rocked on the porch to the pulse of heaven’s cloudburst God played tympani on the tin shed roof

By Nancy Thomas

said can you hear me Lord midst all your pounding I don’t want no sharecropper sons lived on the Benton place chopped and picked their cotton. lived on the Crosby place topped and strung tobacco lived on the Carter place tended corn and melons tenant house to tenant house claimed our share of harvest mule and wagon moved us to nothing ever better heated with open fireplace cooked on iron trivets toted well-water that morning flames burned my baby dead said much obliged, Lord, for daily bread some fatback some grits some collards coffee and snuff a sack of quilt scraps but save my boys from the hoe and the plow in somebody else’s field storm quieted down rainbow lit a corn row rocked so slow seemed somebody listened

sw Vol. XXXIV

7

sw

Vondelpark

By Philip Charles Stevens

W

8

e’d arrived at Central Station just after five, so there was no chance of getting a cheap room.

Mick and Johnny headed straight for the Red Light district, and that left Dominic, Sue, Daz and me to make our own way to some pub or cafe. I stowed my pack in one of the station’s fancy lockers and followed the others out onto the street. It was October and freezing. Dominic was smiling in his thick pea coat and Daz was stamping his feet and shivering in a thin denim jacket.

“Where to first, James?” Sue said. “You want to get a bevvy?”

Bevvy? Sue was a scouser, and I couldn’t understand her half the time. She was blond and slim. Kind of good looking, but you could tell her pointed face wouldn’t age well, and she had this scar running from the left corner of her lip down along the curve of her jaw that some ex had given her with a bottle in a pub years ago.

“A pint would be nice,” I said. I couldn’t care less where we went.

Last July, I’d separated from my wife, Katie. She’d decided to get with some guy in a club, and my friend, Dominic, had witnessed it. I can remember him telling me as I stood in my kitchen at two in the morning, tired and drunk. He was wearing a smile that said, “Sorry, mate. I know it’s bad news, but thank fuck it’s happening to you and not me.” Katie went straight to her parents and didn’t return my calls for two days. She had yet to explain why she’d done it.

That was three months ago, but I still got angry whenever Katie’s black bob and chalk-white face intruded on my memories. A month before, I had smashed up my (our) bedroom after seeing her strolling about town, and my phone had not survived our last conversation. The call had been about her hamster, Snurp—the nose-twitching, bristly, orange fuzz ball that had once inhabited the steel cage in my (our) living room. Unfortunately, as I’d explained to her many times, Snurp had escaped into the world the night of her betrayal, and, like me, he was lost to her. Katie had then accused me of harming Snurp out of spite. I was planning a visit to Katie and her family’s little house in Monkwick to continue this discussion, when Dominic decided that action was needed and, along with our mutual friends Sue, Daz, Mick and Johnny, brought me here, to Amsterdam, for a ‘head-clearing’ trip.

“We can get a beer and a joint in the Grass Hopper,” Daz said, shivering and scratching at his beard.

“That place only serves Heineken, Daz. You I know I don’t drink that piss,” Sue said, shaking a red Bic lighter

Conceptions Southwest 2011

and trying to light an Embassy. “Let’s hit a pub.”

In the end, Dominic, who was a diabetic, announced that he had to eat something, so we stopped in this restaurant on the corner. I ordered an omelet, and the waiter looked at me funny. “An omelet is breakfast food,” he said with a weird foreign accent and a big smirk on his face.

I stared at the cunt until he left.

“What’s with the omelet, James?” Dominic said, leaning across the table. “You need to start eating meat again, mate. You lose muscle when you stop eating muscle.”

His words were slurred. I didn’t know if this was because of his blood sugar or the dozen or so halves of lager he’d downed on the ferry over. He was smirking, too.

Smoking and smirking.

“Smoking isn’t fucking healthy, is it?” I replied, similarly lighting up. “And that’s bollocks about losing muscle. I go to the gym.”

“I thought you just went there to look at men.”

“Fuck off.”

“Hey. I think we should go to the sex museum after we’ve hit a coffee shop or two,” Daz said from the other side of the table. “I’ve heard it’s got pictures of people fucking cows and donkeys and shit. Fucking weird.”

“You on the lookout for a good looking cow, Daz?” Dominic said, sniggering. “The one back home get a puncture, did it?”

Our food arrived. Dominic and Daz had ordered burgers, and Su got a steak. Proper lunch food. My omelet arrived and I focused on unrolling my knife and fork so as to ignore Dominic who with busying himself with his injection. When I finally looked up, Sue was scowling at Daz. “How can you enjoy seeing a cow getting fucked?

That’s terrible, Daz. The poor cows. How can you find that funny?” She looked genuinely offended as she cut into her steak.

“I’d feel sorrier for the prozzies tonight, what with Mick and Johnny headed their way,” Dominic interjected.

He’d finished administering his insulin and was unrolling his utensils. “Actually, knowing Johnny, he’s probably done already.”

“He’s probably already gone a couple of times,” Sue laughed.

The conversation continued like this for a while.

I chewed the omelet, swallowed, nodded at Daz when he mentioned cocaine and winked conspiratorially. I thought about Katie and our modest wedding last year. The small flat we shared. The joint account we’d started together.

“Cheer up, you cunt,” Dominic said, his mouth full of half-chewed beef and processed cheese.

O

ur next stop, per Daz’s request, was the Grass Hopper, a generic hash café managed by some young idiot wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a red tie. He glared at us with unconcealed distrust while Daz purchased two grams of purple haze.

“Probably because we’re English,” Dominic said, his eyes narrowed. “Chelsea’s playing Ajax tomorrow.

There’s bound to be some shit.”

“Yeah. Some of those Dutch boys are well mental,” Daz murmured, his eyes fixed on his purchase. He sniffed at the bag of violet, green, and white before gesturing to a table by the window. “Let’s sit over there. I’m gonna make a joint so big it’ll shit over those little tampax things Mick roles.”

The results of his labor looked uncannily like a tampon, but I had a couple of tokes. Weed rarely did anything for me, but the cotton wool haze it produced was welcome in this instance. I’d come to Amsterdam to stop thinking. The city’s liberal drug policy and unfamiliar streets, coupled with some time away from the rental agency, appealed to me as a solution to the strange uncertainty of my life sans Katie.

“Katie was a Chelsea fan, wasn’t she, James,” Daz said. “How could you abide that, you being a Fulham supporter?”

Dominic frowned. “Would you shut up, Daz? We didn’t come here to discuss that fucking topic,” he said, shaking his head.

“What topic? Football rivalries?” Daz said, laughing.

“Fulham are in the Europa Cup, dickhead. Milwall’s only famous for its fucking hoodlums,” I said, hoping to end the subject.

It didn’t. Daz got even more excited and started reeling off Milwall statistics and club honors, before getting into an argument with Sue about the attacking merits of Everton FC. Dominic leaned over to me and chinked his glass against mine. “Good to see you’re still alive, mate. I think we can survive these idiots if we get drunk enough, yeah?

Oh, wait a sec.” He pulled his Blackberry out and thumbed at the keypad a couple of times. “It’s Mick. They’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

“Great,” I said, taking a swig of Stella. More madness could only be beneficial in my search for oblivion.

“Shit.”

“What?” I said, my mouth suddenly dry. Dominic

sw

looked at me with that same smile he’d worn in the flat three months ago. He held out his phone to me, and I saw that the second page of the text read: ‘Bumped into katie at station, shes looking for james, I told her you was in uk.’

Fuck. Fuck.

“We need to get out of here,” I mumbled.

A burning heat was blossoming behind my brow and Amsterdam’s chill October air was suddenly inviting.

“We need to get out of here. Everyone comes to the Grass Hopper. It’s the first place she’ll look.”

“How the fuck did she find out you were here? We only decided on this trip two days ago,” Daz said, frowning.

“Someone at work probably told her,” Dominic said. “I’ll fucking bottle the twat if I find out who it was.”

“Let’s go to that bar we passed on the way here,” Sue said.

“The sex museum!” Daz exclaimed. “Katie’ll never go in there, will she? We can hide out for an hour and then go clubbing or something.”

We all agreed that this plan would do, although Sue made it clear she wasn’t interested in any of the museum’s bestiality exhibits. I downed my beer and reached for my jacket.

I

t was freezing and dark. I kept seeing flashes of Katie in the shadows and in the glass windows of the buildings that lined the street. Daz passed me the remains of the joint, and I kept my hand cupped over it as I smoked so the glowing ember didn’t reveal my features to any pursuer.

There was frost on the walls, but I felt warm and alive, even as I feared a confrontation with Katie and the topic of Snurp which would no doubt arise.

I missed Snurp. As hamsters went, he had been both cute and intelligent; it was these two qualities, in fact, that had led to his disappearance on the night of my detachment from Katie.

The night I had learned of my wife’s infidelity, I had decided to drink myself to death. With Dominic my willing accomplice, we had finished all my beer as well as the half bottle of vodka I kept in the freezer. The sun was rising, and I had that aching chill you get on those occasions when you reach the divine state of being dehydrated, sleep-deprived, and broken-hearted all at once.

We were sitting in the kitchen, pondering the lack of drugs in the house, when I’d remembered there was a bottle of tequila in the living room. Katie’s tequila. I stumbled into the room and found the bottle on its spot above the fireplace. Grabbing it, I’d turned to leave, but then my eyes had rested upon Snurp, confined within his steel enclosure with only his wheel, plastic igloo, and scat-

Vol. XXXIV

9

tering of seeds and grains to relieve his boredom. I knew he hated being in there, so I popped open the cage’s lid, put him on my shoulder, and went back into the kitchen where I proceeded to regale Dominic with stories demonstrating Katie’s many faults, while Snurp provided loyal testimony from his perch beside my right cheek. When I woke up a few hours later, slumped over the kitchen table, the little hamster was nowhere to be found.

“You’re fucking depraved, Daz. James, please tell me you’re not into this fucking bestiality shit, too.” Sue was tugging at my jacket. I shook my head.

The museum’s entrance was at the end of a hall lined by cabinets displaying various rude artifacts. Stone fertility idols, decks of obscene playing cards, archaic pornographic magazines, phallic sculptures, and a multitude of other erotic artworks.

We got to the turnstile, paid, and entered the museum proper.

“I’d better not catch any of you lot wanking, alright?”

Dominic said, as we walked up to a montage of nineteenth century pornographic images. “I’ll be watching you especially, James.”

“Oh, so you’ll be the one wanking, eh?” I muttered cheerlessly. Dominic laughed and told me to fuck off.

I examined the different photos; they were black and white and featured mustachioed, unsmiling men penetrating pale, unsmiling women. The pictures were ancient, but if their participants had attempted expressions of ecstasy, rather than repression, and had their moustaches been handlebar, rather than Victorian-dad, they would have looked no different than half the stuff available on the internet today.

My eyes strayed down to the lower corner, where two young, unsmiling, mustachioed men were captured in joyless copulation. I turned away quickly and followed Sue and Daz over to a penny-operated peepshow. “‘What the Butler Saw,’ this is a fucking classic, man,” Daz was saying. “A bit tame for my taste, but I’m sure it’ll get spicier.”

“You’re fucking revolting, Daz. No wonder you can’t get a girl. You’re just a perverted little boy, aren’t you?” Sue was looking at him in disgust.

“I can pull women, Sue; I just don’t conceal my natural desires. If you weren’t such a prude, you might get a girl yourself.”

“I fucking might do that, considering the quality of men these days!”

“Keep it down,” Dominic hissed. He walked over

from where he’d been examining a vibrator built in the 1920’s. “Mick and Johnny are going to meet us here in five minutes, so let’s try not to get kicked out until then.”

We walked on through the halls of the museum, passing a display of aphrodisiacs, an interactive biography on the Marquis de Sade, and an entire room dedicated to scatophilia, before we got to a black curtain and a sign that read, “Warning.

Graphic depictions of bestiality beyond this point. Not for the faint hearted.”

“See you when you’re done,” Sue said, turning back toward the room of shit. “I hope you enjoy your twisted show, perverts.”

“Are you coming in?” Dominic asked me. Daz had his head under the curtain and I could hear him talking excitedly, although his words were unintelligible.

“I don’t think so. It’s a bit too weird for me.” My nerves were delicate at present, and I was worried that a bestiality display might finish me off.

“That’s why you have to come in,” Dominic said in exasperation. “When have you ever seen a man fucking a goat? Some people never get the chance to witness that.

It’s a taboo that is now within your grasp.”

“It just doesn’t appeal to me, Dominic.

Sorry,” I said, shrugging. It really didn’t.

Daz popped his head out. “Hurry up, lads!

There’re some pictures in here that will make your nose bleed.” He disappeared behind the curtain.

Dominic grinned and ducked under it as well, leaving me alone in the hallway.

I’d turned off my phone in case Katie had tried to contact me, but now she was in Amsterdam and she knew I was here, too, so what difference did it make. I took it out, pressed ‘on’, and waited while it loaded.

“James! James!”

It was Sue. She was running back toward me, a cigarette in one hand and her lighter in the other. She arrived next to me and stood panting.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Katie’s here with Mick and Johnny! The idiots must’ve brought her!” Sue said, the perspiration on her forehead mirroring the sweat on my own brow.

I stood speechless, eyes wide but blind to everything.

Katie. The betrayer.

“Hide in there, James. I’ll try to distract her,” Sue said as she pushed me toward the black curtain and the violated animals beyond it.

In a daze, I felt myself enveloped by soft fabric and stale air. The harsh light reflected on framed photographs

I examined the different “photos; they were black and

whiteandfeaturedmustachioed, unsmiling men penetrating pale, unsmiling women.

10

Conceptions Southwest 2011

”

of cows, pigs, donkeys, even a snake, and I turned my head back towards Sue and sanity, but then the white face and black bob of Katie came into view, the curtain fell, and I was concealed, along with the cows and pigs.

The room was small, and only Daz, Dominic, and a couple of teenagers speaking French had decided to view such disturbing content. I walked past the graphic pictures, my eyes alighting on one revolting scene and then darting quickly to another. I wondered how much money a woman would need to appear in such a photo. For some reason, I suspected the men taking part didn’t require payment.

“No, no. I don’t like that one,” Dominic was saying.

“No. It’s shaped like a corkscrew.”

“It’s a fucking pig, Dom.” Daz was giggling stupidly. He spotted me. “James! You came in then, you fucking pervert.”

I was still freaked out by Katie’s appearance and the insane images around me, so I just nodded at him.

“It’s nuts, isn’t it?” he said. “Did you see the one of the snake?”

“Don’t look at that one, mate,” Dominic said, shaking his head and pointing at the rear end of a pig. “It’s fucked up.”

“Katie’s here,” I muttered. “She came with Mick and Johnny.”

“Katie’s out there?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would Mick or Johnny bring her here?”

Dominic said, puzzled.

“Yeah, Mick said you were in England,” Daz added, still admiring the photography.

“Maybe she didn’t believe him,” I hissed.

“I don’t think you’re giving Mick any credit, James.

He has an honest face.”

My hands were balled into fists and I took a deep breath. “How am I going to leave if Katie’s out there? She still thinks I had something to do with her hamster’s disappearance.”

“Snurp,” Dominic said.

“Yes, Snurp.”

Dominic and Daz were silent. The French kids left and I glanced through the gap they made in the curtain, but neither Katie nor Sue was visible.

“Let’s face it,” Dominic said. “Katie knows you’re in Amsterdam, so there’s no point trying to bullshit her. I’ll go out there, and if she asks about you, I’ll tell her to go fuck herself.”

I signaled my consent and leaned back in the shadows to one side of the exit. Daz slapped me on the back and followed Dominic cautiously through the curtain, leaving me with obscene photography and the sound of my own blood surging in my ears. I could hear murmured

sw

voices; one deep, one shrill. Dominic and Katie? Daz and Sue? My eyes were wide and my breath shallow as I listened desperately for some clue as to what was going on outside. I edged closer to the curtain and took hold of an edge, thinking I might risk a peek outside, but I hesitated and beheld a sight that drained all moisture from my throat.

It wasn’t Snurp, but it looked like him—brighteyed, orange, and fluffy. But Snurp was lost, and this hamster—the one in this picture—was being forced into a place Snurp would never go. Never.

Katie had left me, Snurp had left me, and here I was, hiding in a room as dirty as any of the bodily orifices so boldly displayed. I felt a fierce heat growing within my chest and shoved aside the curtain.

Black hair, white skin, blue eyes.

Katie gazed at me from beneath thick artificial eyelashes, and I could see words forming on her lips, but then she looked past me into the room, and her eyes grew so big I couldn’t help but think of how she’d looked in the bedroom on those passionate, albeit rare occasions when we’d both fallen satisfied to sleep.

“What on Earth are you’re looking at, James?” she said, every syllable articulated precisely. She started laughing, her eyes not meeting mine, her hand covering her mouth. I hated that God-damned laugh.

“Get the fuck out of here, Katie. The two of you can sort this out back in England, alright?” Sue said, lighting her cigarette, apparently oblivious to the no-smoking sign fastened to the wall behind her. I saw Dominic next to her, but Daz had gone and I couldn’t see Mick or Johnny either.

“Why the fuck are you here?” Dominic said with a sneer.

“Yeah, why are you following me,” I muttered, conscious that I couldn’t let my friends do all the talking. It would only give her more ammunition.

“I’m here for the game.” She was wearing a blue and white jersey under her coat. “I saw Mick and Johnny loitering at the window of some cheap prostitute and asked if you were here. I convinced them to help me with a couple of E’s.”

Mick and Johnny. The pill popping bastards.

“What do you want?” I said.

Katie had stopped laughing, but her face retained a familiar mocking quality, the precise cause of which I had never been able to pinpoint. She turned to Dominic and Sue. “I want a quick word with James, and then I’ll leave you all to your depraved hobbies. Are you capable of conversation, James?” she said, taunting me once more with her eyes.

Sue exhaled a cloud of smoke. “What the fuck, Katie? You bring your shit over here and—”

Vol. XXXIV

11

“Wait,” I said, interrupting Sue, and looking Katie in the eye. “Afterwards, you’ll fuck off and leave me alone, right?”

Dominic raised an eyebrow. Sue raised her cigarette to her lips. Katie smiled, and I felt a sudden urge to slap her across the face. I could wipe the vanity and the selfishness off of her makeup-concealed features with a flick of my wrist. Instead, I let her walk past me into the room. Dominic raised his Blackberry toward me and smiled encouragingly, but then the curtain dropped, the room grew dark, and I was once again separated from reality.

There had been many times when I’d wanted to confront Katie during the last couple of months, but now that she was in front of me I felt out of place and isolated. She looked at me with a half smile, and all I could think was how much I wanted her out of my sight.

“James,” she said. “I’m sorry how this has turned out, but you left me no choice. You never showed any appreciation for me or our marriage.”

“Were you going to tell me you were committing adultery or was it something you intended to maintain until I was dead?”

“It was just a hug, James. I didn’t have sex with him.”

“Bullshit, you fucking liar.”

She paused, a look of hurt on her face. I could practically see the thoughts formulating in her head.

“Ok. It was more than a hug, but I didn’t do anything else.”

“Whatever.”

“Although I aim to soon.”

At these words, my train of thought stuttered and the surreal environment I had immersed myself in grew darker and more unreal. I knew my expression must appear quite laughable to her and I turned away, fixing my eyes on a picture of a ram. When I looked back, her lips were turned up in that little smile I found so infuriating and I realized that my reaction had just made her night. The bitch.

“Why are you telling me this?” My throat felt tight and the words sounded alien to my own ears.

Her smile broadened. “The divorce papers should be at your flat by now and I’d appreciate it if you signed them immediately.”

“Why wouldn’t I? Why the fuck would I want to

remain married to a cheating bitch like you?”

Katie’s mouth screwed up and her eyes narrowed.

I could see tears forming, but I knew from past experience they probably weren’t genuine.

“God, James,” she hissed. “This is why I did it.

You’re totally incapable of adult conversation. You’re immature, you have anger problems—” “And you can’t keep your hands off of other men’s dicks! Why don’t you show some God-damn restraint, you mature-adult-fucking whore!”

“I want somebody man enough to raise a child, James. You couldn’t even look after Snurp. You couldn’t even take care of a fucking hamster.”

Then she was crying.

Sobbing. Her hands over her eyes, her shoulders heaving.

“Snurp? You want to know what happened to Snurp?” I said, almost whispering. “I’ll fucking show you.”

I spun on my heel, tore the picture of the hamster from the corner of the board and shoved the image in her face, making sure she could see every detail of the little orange rodent; its eyes, its whiskers, its puffy cheeks, and, most importantly, its predicament. The scene was rendered with surprising clarity on the cheap paper and Katie’s eyes widened.

“Snurp got a role in a film. I suppose you could say he was the protagonist’s understudy.” I couldn’t help smiling.

“Snurp?” Katie clutched the picture before her, her voice and her hands trembled. “What are you talking about? That’s not Snurp.”

“What, you don’t know your own hamster? The photos should be on your doormat in the next week. I wanted them to be a surprise.”

Katie lips were pursed. She looked up at me from the paper, her eyes watery, and she opened her mouth, though no words came out.

“You were right, Katie,” I said. “I did away with Snurp because I hate you. And now I’m going straight to the Red Light District so I can betray you while we’re still married. Go to fucking Hell.”

She screamed some words that I couldn’t make out and spat in my face. I wiped it off with a sleeve, but then she was on me, scratching and shrieking. I pushed her and shouted for her to get off of me, but she kept coming, her hair writhing like snakes. She grabbed and pulled at my shirt and spat insults. I grabbed her wrists and told her how much I despised her. She caught me in the groin and I staggered back, but when I looked up, she’d fallen to her knees, her eyes red, her cheeks stained black. I left her there in the bestiality room and hastened for the exit, not even noticing

smiled,andIfeltasuddenurge “ Katie to slap her across the face. I could wipethevanityandtheselfishness off of her makeup-concealed features with a flick of my wrist.

12

Conceptions Southwest 2011

”

the naked bodies that had so distracted me earlier.

Leaving the museum, I walked aimlessly past cafés, coffee shops, and pubs, before encountering the crowds of the Red Light District. Faced by this mass of humanity and with Katie cries still ringing in my mind, I kept walking.

The brackish scent of a canal filled my nostrils and I heard the ripple of water, but it was too dark to see it. I followed the bank for a good ten minutes, before stopping to catch my breath next to a green sign.

“Vondelpark,” I read aloud, “one kilometer.”

Hugging myself, I continued along the frozen street, until, gradually, the leafless branches of tall trees became visible. As I entered the park, frost-covered bushes gave way to a vast expanse of white grass that crunched beneath my trainers. The pond at the park’s center was frozen, but the trees and hedges provided shelter from the cold, so I sat down on an icy bench, lit a cigarette, and admired the twisting outline of the trees in the dim moonlight. I could barely hear my phone when it started ringing. csw

sw Vol. XXXIV

13

By Joshua Montoya

Fish Stick I never thought a chunk of my ass would be so meticulously carved into finger-esque battered-made-for-fun meat sticks. Children from all parts of the projects will soar my former self into the air before wolfing my delectables. “Look up into the sky,” they spurt.

“It’s a bird, it’s cellophane, it’s a man-eating mammoth! I better soak you in mustard before you terrorize the city.” Now let’s take my belly for example. Perhaps if they suck up my fat for fish sticks, then I’ll be able to 69 myself in the morning. The taste of my tongue keeps my tummy full for days. I anticipate the gnawing of my inner thigh by the senile, and when I have you guys over for drinks, you decide to wallow over my crisp shins. Janet, I see you eyeing my gonads. I’ve always wanted to be eaten out so maul me with passion please.

14

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Blackbird

By Mary Luttrel

I

once had a midnight conversation with a dead girl while driving through a snowstorm, high in the Cascade Mountains. I never discovered her name, and I’m still not sure that she knew that she was dead, but I think that she suspected, or at least had vacillating moments of clarity and acceptance. Her chest and belly were riddled with bullet holes that she never acknowledged. She was luridly pale and her wounds were bloodless.

It took some time for me to adjust to her, but once I accepted the idea that she was real, I tried to memorize every detail. I knew I would never see anything like her again—this presence that I still can’t quite define. She taught me many things on that unnerving night. I learned that ghosts don’t experience time the way that we do. I learned that even the most cheerful of them can’t help rolling in despair like a dog in a dead thing. And I learned that they can demonstrate a rollicking Charleston with spectral tears shining in their eyes. They’re something less than human, yes, but still human enough to break your heart. But the biggest thing that I learned was that you don’t have to be dead to be one of them. Dead or alive, ghosts are selfcreated.

I was driving a Packard built in 1927, a true antique. It was called a 343 Third Series Eight, DualWindshield Phaeton, a two-tone cabriolet of white and beige with tomato red interior. Its hood was graced with Packard’s famous angel, her wings swept out behind as she glided through the air with her silver steering wheel. I couldn’t deny the car’s grace and style. It made you want to fix your hair and polish your shoes. It made you smile and yearn and wonder at the power of good design, and how it can distill an entire era into its distinct shapes and contours.

The shapes all came together in a jaunty wink that said: Ziegfeld Follies and the Cotton Club, Duke Ellington and bathtub gin, Art Deco, silent movies, Josephine Baker and flagpole sitters, flappers and jazz babies.

How does a car convey all this? Call it a trick of time, but it did.

The Packard was worth a hundred grand, something I could never afford. But thanks to a friend of a friend, I’d been hired by a group of collectors to drive it from Seattle to Spokane for a classic car auction. It was their showpiece. I knew nothing of its personal history, and at the time, I didn’t really care.

I couldn’t care about much of anything then. He was gone, and my life as I knew it went with him. Numb denial was falling away, and all I could see in front of me

sw

was vast and nauseating emptiness, the rest of my life. I needed the cash. I drove the car.

That’s how I found myself close to midnight, late one January, alternately creeping and sliding down Interstate 90 on the east side of the Cascades. There were no other vehicles around. Apparently, I was the only one ignorant enough to tackle the pass in these conditions. To be honest, I hadn’t even checked the weather report. The winding mountain road was shrouded in snow that relentlessly flung itself sideways out of the dark and onto my puny windshield. I crept along at ten miles an hour. The Packard had no heater to defrost it, so I kept having to crank down the window to clear the fog away. The tires were thin, and the headlights weak, suggesting the dense pine forests looming around me. Everything was ash and shadows, and I felt jumpy and tense. I really screwed up.

Worst of all, I knew I was fully responsible. I would never say that I felt suicidal, just that I was too focused on my suffering to work up any energy to care. I was a person who suddenly had no past and no sense of self to protect.

Whoever I’d imagined I was hadn’t been real enough to withstand this sudden solitude. I was, then, nobody.

With my nose almost pressed to the glass, I drifted into a snow-blind trance. To my right was a persistent, intermittent drop-off. Trying to avoid it was exhausting.

Suddenly, something big and dark materialized out of the dovetailing snow flurries, barreling straight towards me.

Panicked, I pumped the Packard’s brakes. All at once, I was staring into flailing black feathers, and an open, screaming mouth. The thing smashed into my windshield with a thump as I slid out of control. Luckily, the car skidded toward the wall of rock to my left and not the precipice on my right. I slammed into a narrow ditch, inches from the wall. Whatever had struck the windshield was blocking it, but I still couldn’t tell what it was. I waited until my breath-

alive, ghosts are “Dead orself-created. ” ing calmed, and then, leaving the engine on, I pushed opened the driver’s side door. My boots sank deep into the snow. The night was inky and I couldn’t see much, but the

Vol. XXXIV

15

headlights reflecting off the ice-glazed rock helped some.

It was a big crow, or raven, its wings spread crookedly out across the windshield. It was dead.

“Great!” I muttered. He should be here to be tell me what to do. He wasn’t, and never would be, again.

There was only me. Tentatively, I touched the feathers of the creature, then carefully pulled on both its wings and turned it over. It was very light and still warm. Its saffron eyes were open and seemed to stare right at me. Its breast was wet with blood, but, strangely, it didn’t look like an impact injury. Instead, the raven seemed to have been shot. Who would be out in a storm hunting at this time of night on the roof of a mountain pass in a National Forest?

I peered into the flurries, but I saw nothing, so I decided to take the bird with me. It was too dark to inspect the car now, but if it turned out that the Packard was damaged, I wanted some proof of the cause.

I pulled off my coat, and then took one of my wool sweaters and spread it over the car’s back seat. Keeping the thing’s ragged wings folded in, I laid it on the sweater. Swallowing my self-pity, I set to work digging the car out of the snow-packed ditch bank, not an easy job without a shovel.

I had no gloves and my hands were wet and freezing, so I was glad for the distraction of the car’s radio. It was playing something vaguely familiar, a melancholy a cappella lullaby.

Pack up all my cares and woe, here I go, singing low...

Suddenly I stopped. This car didn’t have a radio.

And I hadn’t brought one with me.

Bye... bye... blackbird...

A female voice, throaty and mournful. The sound was eerie, and I felt a stab of fear course through me. For a moment I just stood there in the mute snowfall. Then, slowly, I moved toward the door handle, curling my numb fingers around it. I yanked it open and froze.

Lying in the back seat was a woman, looking up at me. I forgot to tell you that I also learned something about love that night: how it’s always felt to me like some cruelly frustrating alloy of joy and pain, I mean, the kind of love when all you want from someone is their happiness and the pleasure of their company, how, suddenly, you can’t be you without this thing that they’ve inspired, this strange new feeling germinating in your heart something so delicate, so potent, aching and outrageous that you almost can’t stand it. You can’t stand it and you can’t understand it, so all that’s left is just to surrender to its impact. And that’s another thing about ghosts—they’re masters of impact.

And I knew she was a ghost immediately. It’s hard to articulate why, but it began with a peculiar sensation of time shifting and abating as I gazed down at her. Her body wasn’t translucent, but it wasn’t solid either. Its detail and density wavered and skipped like a faulty videotape.

She smiled up at me, then laughed—only it was more like the echo of a laugh, strange and half-swallowed. It had an

16

Conceptions Southwest 2011

unusual, warped quality to it, wobbling briefly on the icy air before fading. No fog of breath accompanied it.

The car headlights bouncing off the rock were enough to see by. She was wearing a pale shift dress covered in shimmering beads. Rolled white stockings, a soft cloche hat with a jeweled dragonfly pinned to the front, and a long string of pearls completed the look. Her skin was pale and

“

SHe smiled up at me, then laughed—onlyitwasmorelike theechoofalaugh,strangeand half-swallowed.

”

waxen, with a peculiar sheen. She had ebony hair cut into a bob, with two perfectly formed curls adorning each cheek and a dark, bee-stung mouth. The eyes looking up at me were large and dusky, with thinly arched brows. Along her narrow chest her dress was torn in a path of ragged holes that trailed diagonally across her belly. The wounds were black in this light. Bullet holes.

Speechless, I slammed the door shut and then, just as quickly, opened it again. It had stopped snowing and I was shaking. I checked again and she was still there, looking up at me with an odd smile.

“Who are you?” I finally muttered, “What are you?”

“I’m... I’m pain,” she whispered in her strange, echoing voice. As she said this, her form stabilized and brightened a little, as though her molecules were coming together more solidly. But it didn’t last. My heart thumped crazily.

“Are you a... are you a ghost?” I asked. She looked at me and smiled.

“Now you’re on the trolley.” Her voice seemed less sorrowful, although it still sounded as though it was traveling across space from somewhere remote. She sat up and turned toward me, her movements halting and tentative.

She waved her fingers in the frigid air. “Spirit. Haunt.

Apparition,” she teased in her warbling voice. “Banshee, phantom, poltergeist. Shade. Specter, spook or wraith. Take your pick, Bearcat.”

It was obvious, even though I’d never seen a ghost before and hadn’t really believed that they existed. We stared at each other in silence as I tried to take it in. Slowly, her smile faded.

“Sorry, Doll,” she said in a halting voice. “Hey listen... everything’s Jake, I promise. Could you just... could you maybe help a girl out here? I’m just... I’m a little balled up...” Her voice was fading, her eyes were clouding up again and her heart-shaped face grew tense. Her image

seemed to weaken, shifting out of focus.

“I... what should I do?” I stuttered, still paralyzed. I stood there staring at her with my mouth hanging open and my heart going a million miles an hour. Then she smiled again, dolefully.

“Huh,” she chided, “Aren’t you a hoot? I thought maybe you’d seen him, somewhere. My... man. I don’t know, I can’t seem to think of his name right now. My man.

My guy. Last thing I remember, we were dancing at the club.

But now I can’t...” She looked confused again, as I was. I’d thought that she understood that she was dead. Hadn’t she admitted it earlier? Now she seemed to have forgotten this.

She was alternating between awareness and confusion. She stared into space for a moment and then turned to face me.

Her eyes were anguished. Her image wavered and shook.

“Where is he?” she whispered. Her voice was unsteady now, fading in and out of my hearing. I felt a stab of recognition. I’d been asking myself the same question since he left me weeks ago. I suddenly felt that I was just as insubstantial as she was. Was she, looking so much like the past... actually my future?

She gazed at me and then her eyes suddenly grew soft.

“I remember now,” she whispered, smiling again, “Oh. Yeah. He said to me, ‘Baby-doll, you’re the berries.’ ” She hesitated again. “But now he’s dead. He is... isn’t he?”

Her voice was broken. She was still and quiet then. I had nothing to say, and she didn’t seem to either. She wiped her eyes, then slowly stepped out into the snow. I noticed that she made no tracks at all as she moved to the middle of the road. Her back was long, so elegant. She began humming to herself, softly at first but growing louder. She turned and started to dance, her movements lithe and graceful. I stood

though trying to rub her out.

“I’m lost...” she whispered, “lost...”

She turned and stumbled toward the forest. I stepped forward to grab her, but then I stopped. I couldn’t touch her, and I couldn’t follow her into those pitch-black woods. Not in the middle of a snowstorm. I’d never find my way out again. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again she was gone.

I stood there shaking, my sense of shock complete.

Time then seemed to waver and pulse again, briefly. Slowly, I walked back to the Packard. My red wool sweater was still in the back seat, and with it, a single black feather. The raven was gone. I sat in the driver’s seat perfectly still.

Then, as though from far away, faint and echoing, I thought I heard her singing.

Where somebody waits for me....sugar’s sweet... so is he....

Bye... bye... blackbird. csw

hadnothingtosay,andshe “Ididn’t seemtoeither.Shewiped hereyes,thenslowlystepped out into the snow.

”

there and watched her, mesmerized. The rope of pearls swung out around her and her beaded dress shimmered.

She paused a moment, suddenly grinned impishly, and switched to the Charleston—that impudent, joyful dance that’s so alive, so all about living. The snow began falling again. She stopped and turned her face up toward the night sky. When she looked down again her eyes had changed.

She was staring straight ahead and into space with a look of broken anguish. Her waxen cheeks were wet, her face a mask of pain. The snow started coming faster then, as

sw

Vol. XXXIV

17

EscapesCollide

ByMadelineCoen-Mozley

FADE IN: INT. SAM’S HOUSE - SAM’S BEDROOM - EARLY MORNING SAM lies in bed. Her bedroom is small with faded, baby pink paint on the walls. Dirty clothes are strewn everywhere. The sound of a man SHOUTING obscenities down the hall wakes her. She opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling BLANKLY. SAM (sighs) Shit.

Sam gets up. She is seventeen, has light blonde hair, and is wearing an over-sized tee shirt and panties. She walks out into the hall, toward the shouting in the living room.

INT. SAM’S HOUSE - LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS LEVI is sitting on the couch in a messy living room with flea market quality furniture. He colors his nails with a black sharpie. He is fourteen and scrawny. DAD, a man in his forties wearing a police uniform, stands in front of the couch and TOWERS over Levi as Sam enters.

DAD You fag. I’m tired of this SHIT! Sam moves to stand behind the couch as she talks to Dad. SAM It’s 7am. Give it a rest.

He ignores her and holds his hand out toward Levi.

DAD (deadpan) Give me the marker.

Levi stops coloring his nails and freezes.

DAD I said give me the goddamn MARKER! Dad goes for the marker but Levi tries to get away. Dad GRABS Levi’s wrists and they struggle. Sam jumps over the couch to tackle Dad and is thrown onto the coffee table, breaking it. Dad prepares to hit Levi.

SAM Fucking PIG. Dad stops and turns to face Sam as she lies on the ground.

DAD Did you just— SAM —call you a pig? Yes. DAD I’m your father, bitch. Shut up.

SAM Oh, sorry. I meant, you are a fucking pig, DAD. Dad is sweaty and his eyes are wild. SUDDENLY, he steps HARD on her ribs. Sam CRIES OUT in pain.

18

Conceptions Southwest 2011

LEVI Sam! Dad grabs his keys off the table and leaves the room. We hear a door SLAM Offstage. Levi kneels next to Sam as she fights to catch her breath.

SAM (with great effort) Go get ready for school.

INT. SAM’S HOUSE - SAM’S BEDROOM - MORNING Sam stands, wearing jeans and a bra, by her open closet. She grabs a tank top and stands in front of a mirror. She examines her bruised torso and WINCES as she pulls on the tank top.

SAM (half shouting) You ready to go Levi?

She pauses as she listens for a response. She looks at her alarm clock and shouts again, louder now.

SAM We’re gonna be late. Are you ready?

She picks up her backpack.

INT. SAM’S HOUSE - HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS The hallway is skinny and dark. Sam walks through the hall and glances in Levi’s room. He’s not there. She heads toward the living room but hears a NOISE in Dad’s room. She pushes the cracked door open a bit but Levi pulls it open from the other side.

SAM (startled) What were you doing in his room?

Levi hesitates, shoving his hands deep into the FRONT POCKET of his hoodie.

LEVI Nothing.

Sam pauses in thought for a beat.

SAM Where’s your bag? We’re gonna be late.

INT. SCHOOL BUS - MORNING The yellow bus is full of chattering HIGH SCHOOLERS. Sam and Levi sit together, Levi in the window seat. Sam’s arm is around her torso. The bus hits a bump and she GRUNTS. LEVI You okay?

SAM Don’t worry about it.

TWO GUYS sitting three seats behind Sam and Levi launch a rubber band at the back of Levi’s head. Levi rubs where it hit as the guys LAUGH and Sam turns to face them.

SAM Watch it you little punks!

The guys laugh harder. Levi pulls Sam back around.

Forget it.

sw

LEVI

Vol. XXXIV

19

SAM Those idiots need to be stopped. I can’t let them— LEVI —Let them.

Levi SNIFFS tears back and turns to face the window. His hands are still in his hoodie POCKET. EXT. HIGH SCHOOL - BUS STOP - MORNING High schoolers, Sam, and Levi get off the bus. Dozens of STUDENTS, including Sam and Levi, head for the school in front of them. Levi takes off ahead of Sam. SAM (calling) Hey, lunch in the library conference room, right?

Levi stops and Sam catches up. Levi doesn’t look at her but nods before he goes into the school. Sam looks after him for a second and then heads inside as well.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - HISTORY CLASSROOM - MORNING A TEACHER lectures to the STUDENTS about the Civil War. The classroom has a typical history class set up with maps on the wall, a chalkboard, etc. Sam sits in the back of the room near the door with her eyes closed. She wraps her arms around her waist. She is visibly sick. She gets up and walks QUICKLY through the door.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - GIRL’S BATHROOM - MORNING Sam PUKES in a metal stall O.S. She FLUSHES the toilet and leaves the stall to wash her hands. She shoves hair off of her face when a WOMAN’S VOICE sounds over the INTERCOM. WOMAN Attention staff and students: proceed into full lockdown. A possible shooter has been identified inside the school. Repeat...

Sam’s eyes widen. Her hands TIGHTEN on the sink’s edge before she RUSHES for the bathroom door.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - SOUTH HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS Sam heads carefully down an empty hallway, stepping quietly on the white linoleum tile. She PASSES her classroom and turns a corner, intent on where she’s going. Suddenly, a GUN SHOT sounds nearby and a MALE STUDENT shouts.

Sam trips in surprise and scrambles toward the nearest classroom door. She opens the door and goes inside.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - EMPTY CLASSROOM - CONTINUOUS Sam shuts the door of the dark classroom. Little is visible in the room, but we see the faint shapes of desks. BREATHING HARD, Sam sits beneath a window to the hall. She cautiously props herself up to look out of it. A guy in a black hoodie with the hood up walks by, startling Sam. After he passes, Sam gets a clearer view of him. The guy is Levi. Sam’s breath catches. She gropes for the door handle and yanks on it.

IN HALLWAY Sam lunges after Levi and GRABS the back of his hoodie.

SAM What the hell are you doing out here? I was on my way to your class. There’s a shooter.

Get inside the— Sam looks down at Levi’s hand. He’s holding a six shooter PISTOL. Sam stares at him, her mouth gaping. Levi meets Sam’s eyes. They both don’t move or speak for a beat.

EXT. HIGH SCHOOL - FRONT PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS Six POLICE CARS pull up, sirens blaring, their red and blue lights flashing on the front of the school. A YOUNG COP gets out of one of the cars and stares at the school. He wipes his forehead with his sleeve. Another cop gets out of the car

20

Conceptions Southwest 2011

next to him. His hat is pulled down so that we can’t see his face clearly. He goes up to the young cop and slaps him on the back. The young cop jumps and looks at the other cop who we now see is Sam and Levi’s Dad. DAD Easy boy. We’ll be fine. When you piss yourself try not to get any on me, though.

Dad laughs and his flushed cheeks and nose turn even pinker. The young cop is quiet. A SWAT VAN suddenly pulls into the lot. Six men fully outfitted get out, huddle up briefly, and head toward the school. Dad watches the swat team, his stance relaxed as he leans against his cop car.

DAD Hope they shoot the little shit.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - EMPTY CLASSROOM - CONTINUOUS Sam and Levi are still frozen in the hallway, Sam fixated on the gun in Levi’s hand. The sound of FOOTSTEPS approaches from an adjoining hallway, snapping them out of their trance. Sam turns toward the noise, thinks for a second, and then pulls Levi by his elbow into the classroom she just emerged from.

IN CLASSROOM They SLIDE on the tile floor into the darkness of the room. The door closes most of the way behind them. The FOOTSTEPS grow nearer and we hear door handles being RATTLED on each door in that hall in succession. The RATTLING grows louder as the footsteps approach the classroom in which they’re hiding.

SAM (whispering quickly) They’re checking to make sure the doors are locked.

Levi’s eyes, illuminated only slightly by the light coming in through the window, shoot frantically to the door. It is open a crack. Sam crawls to the door. The FOOTSTEPS and RATTLING are louder than ever as someone checks the door before theirs. Sam gently pushes the door shut and turns the lock. A person tries the door from the other side. SAM and LEVI hold their breath.

The person leaves the door and moves to the window. It is male ADMINISTRATOR, dressed in a button down. He cups his hand over his eyes and tries to see inside the room. Sam and Levi hide behind the door. The administrator moves on, disappearing from view.

SAM (quietly) Why are you doing this?

Levi, gun still in hand, avoids eye contact with Sam. LEVI You of all people won’t understand.

SAM What’s that supposed to mean? I’m not the one who’s lost it and turned serial killer.

Sam goes to take the gun from Levi. He pulls away from her and points the GUN at her.

LEVI (yelling) I don’t want you to save me this time! Hear me? GET AWAY! Sam stares at the GUN. Levi’s hand shakes slightly. We hear someone RUNNING in the hallway.

Sam and Levi don’t have time to move before the administrator reappears in the window. He clearly spots Sam and Levi. He unlocks the door, opens it slightly, and hides behind it as he talks.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

21

ADMINISTRATOR You don’t want to do that, son. Put the gun down.

Levi looks to the door, to Sam, back to the door. Before he has time to respond, the teacher throws the door open and SHOOTS Levi with a taser, hitting him square in the chest. Levi CONVULSES and falls to the floor. His head SMACKS the tile and he goes unconscious. Sam falls to her knees beside him, her hand to her mouth.

ADMINISTRATOR Got him! Thank God. Administrator goes for a radio on his hip. Sam hesitates for a second, but then picks up the GUN, stands, and points it at the administrator.

SAM Put it on the ground!

Administrator freezes with the radio to his mouth. A beat passes.

ADMINISTRATOR Whoa, whoa young lady. Take it easy— SAM —I said put it DOWN! Administrator puts the radio on the ground.

SAM Turn around.

Administrator hesitates.

SAM I said TURN AROUND! DO IT! Her hand holding the gun is steady as tears fall down her face. She doesn’t move to wipe them away. The administrator slowly turns around. A beat passes in silence.

SAM (quietly) I’m so sorry.

Sam SHOOTS. The administrator collapses to the floor face down, his limbs landing awkwardly. The bullet passed through, exiting the left side of his chest. He is clearly DEAD. BLOOD stains his polo shirt and pools around his chest, turning the white tile red. Sam doesn’t move. We hear the voice of a MAN coming from the radio.

MAN Shot fired in South Hall! All units proceed to South Hall immediately. Use caution.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - NORTH HALL - CONTINUOUS SWAT TEAM of six men begins moving through the school toward South Hall, guns poised, faces set in all-business expressions. Their gear makes a RUCKUS as they jog through the halls.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - EMPTY CLASSROOM - CONTINUOUS Sam moves to where Levi is still lying unconscious. She looms over him, holding the gun relaxed by her side. She bends down next to him.

INT. HIGH SCHOOL - SOUTH HALL - CONTINUOUS The swat team LEADER speaks through the radio while jogging.

LEADER Entering South Hall. Hall vacant. Searching rooms now.

22

Conceptions Southwest 2011

The leader makes hand signals to his men. They split off into twos and start opening doors. The leader and his PARTNER reach Sam and Levi’s room. They find it unlocked and share a look and a nod before moving in with guns raised.

LEADER Freeze!

EXT. HIGH SCHOOL - FRONT PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS Cops draw their guns as they listen to the events going on inside over their radios.

LEADER (over radio) Shooter neutralized. Exiting building now.

Dad lazily draws his gun and aims it at the school as the other cops are doing. He speaks to the young cop.

DAD That was quicker than expected. Must be a real pussy, this kid.

Swat team exits through the front doors of the school. In their center is a figure in a black hoodie, hood up. As the group heads down the front steps, the hood falls back. Sam’s face is revealed. She’s silent and keeps her gaze forward. Dad sees her. He drops his gun. It smacks loudly against the asphalt. Sam sees Dad. She stares him down and mouths the word PIG. FADE OUT.

sw Vol. XXXIV

23

Of Societal Sins

By Arun Ahuja

A sapling that springs back from being stepped on deserves to grow the tallest A girl squandered in a son-only country deserves to be the next queen A soldier still steady from six years of torture deserves to hold high the flag A dying elder silent through family spat at death bed deserves to have the last word

24

Conceptions Southwest 2011

trumpet player’s supplication

Wild Open

ascended among rafters beseeched relief

By Nancy Thomas

descended in sharps slit open my wild

tidal flats drowned demure buoyed brazen

afloat in the current of the horn player’s notes I bobbled I bobbed I nodded assent

sw Vol. XXXIV

25

No, You Can’t Sleep In The Grocery Store I

By Kimberly Keller

t started when I was sixteen. I hid, tucked in the patio corner of my local grocery store, watching people, with their cloth shopping bags and leather sandals, come and go. For most of my sixteen years, I lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico quietly observing people bustle around me, wondering if my life would turn out like theirs. Many people, like my mother, stayed in New Mexico for their entire lives.

Every summer, Albuquerque was dry heat, the clammy feeling of a swamp cooler, and the hot, sweet smell of green chile roasting. It was adobe houses, clear blue skies, inky sunsets and thunder in August. By the winter it was cold, dry, desert air and red chile at Christmas.

Home was the wide, green front lawn my father refused to part with; because in Washington, where he grew up, the grass springs up between your toes if you stand still.

Home was my mother yelling at me to hurry up in Spanish even though she didn’t speak Spanish and had hijacked the phrase from our neighbor. Home was floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; mine bowed under the weight of what I called my “library.” Home was my sister playing beauty salon with her hair and my brother ordering around Roman soldiers on the computer. Home was all I had ever known, and it was ordinary.

When I was seventeen, it didn’t shock my parents when I told them I wanted to graduate high school early.

I suffered through hot summer school PE and took off for Boston, too young to sign a lease, too young to apply for a job without a work permit, and too restless to wait out one more year in high school before starting college. New Mexico is called the Land of Entrapment. The last thing I wanted to be was trapped. With little more planning than what I wanted for lunch, I hopped on a plane and left home behind. Flat New Mexican desert turned into rolling, green Massachusetts hills while the plane landed at Logan International Airport. New Mexico faded into the back of my memory as my suitcase clattered over the redbrick sidewalks, and as I stared at the skyscraping buildings and the wide, gray band of the Charles River that ran right through the city. New Mexico’s penetrating summer heat, which usually extends deep into winter, is a luxury I took for granted when I started sitting outside of grocery stores.

In Boston, I could stand in direct sunlight in the middle of

26

Conceptions Southwest 2011

a sunny, winter afternoon and not feel the heat on my skin, as if the sun held no warmth.

At first, I wore holes in my shoes walking all over the city. I tripped over curbs because I was too busy looking at the buildings, the bridges, and the trees. Boston was colonial architecture, the smell of wet leaves and rain, and a damp chill that filled the walls. I watched the world move around me, but I was not a part of it.

At Rosie’s, the bakery where I worked, my customers went in and out of the swinging doors to buy cakes for birthdays, cupcakes for Valentine’s Day, and pastries for their anniversary breakfasts— holidays that I only celebrated because I was busy restocking the display case with cakes. Rosie’s was a small corner bakery that catered to families and grandmothers. We played the same twelve crooning love songs and the uniforms were white t-shirts with large pink hearts on them that said “Rosie’s Bakery” in swooping, cursive type. I watched the mothers, daughters, couples, children, parents, hippies, and yuppies go in and out, but I when I got off work, the only place I could go was back to my apartment. Home was permanently absent roommates, a stack of dishes in the sink, and two easily offended Burmese cats. Everything about Boston was different than where I grew up in Albuquerque, everything but the grocery stores. I started walking to the grocery store after I got off work at noon instead of going back to my apartment. The nearest grocery store was Whole Foods, which was roughly three tracks away on my iPod.

The Whole Foods was relatively small. It had one entrance, covered by a green awning, and usually had stands of flowers and firewood set up off to the side. There were four or five wrought iron tables outside and parking was sparse. There was, however, a church parking lot directly next to the grocery store that many people used. I would sometimes sit on the short brick wall between the church lot and the grocery store; I didn’t always feel like sharing a table.

Grocery stores are the airports of everyday life.

There is a comforting consistency with them. They all have a dairy section, a produce section, a deli section, and then there are linoleum aisles after linoleum aisles of packaged and boxed goods that are the same despite their colorful packaging differences. There are breads, canned soups,

beans, vegetables, cereals, cookies, candy, gum, rice, ice cream, and frozen dinners. I bought individual wedges of cheese and pieces of fruit like I used to in Albuquerque.

Sometimes I went to the grocery store just to look around; just to pretend that I was shopping for something I needed.

I wandered the aisles, checking out the different products, picking up boxes, reading the nutrition labels, and putting them back down; as if I were going to find answers to all of my questions on the back of a cereal box. I quickly found more grocery stores than I knew what to do with.

There was a grocery store for every mood, fancy, whim and delight. If I wasn’t meandering the aisles of my nearby organic grocery store, there was Cardullo’s which had imported candy, bottles of truffle oil, twenty-dollar boxes of hot chocolate mix and clotted English cream. Hidden away in Beacon Hill was DeLuca’s, and in the South End, Formaggio’s. They both had rounds of exotic cheese, gourmet salami, little jars of caviar, stone-ground mustard and cured olives. Haymarket was a wide, open-air grocery store that was only open on the weekends. At Haymarket you barter for your food, if you’re brave enough. Burly men behind

“

Nooneeverseemedtolook atanyoneelse,whichgaveme theopportunitytostareand imaginetheirlivesinsteadof thinking about my own.

”

booths yelled “Potatoes! Ten pounds for one dollar! One dollar!” and I would leave with ten pounds of potatoes.

Other stores were grungier, some were generic, some were cheap and filled with inexpensive bouquets of roses and junk food. I searched the aisles of grocery stores for new foods to try. I relied on them to provide the foods I already loved, and I always left with a small, satisfying purchase.

I stopped cooking and started to rely on grocery stores as if they really were my own personal kitchens. Even if the weather was unfamiliar, even if I knew no one, I could always go to the grocery store and find a new meal. I could make anything out of seemingly random, single purchases because they required no more preparation than to open a package or peel off a foil top. My dining rooms were the outdoor patios, my kitchen utensils the plastic silverware packets, and my television set was the world around me.

I propped up my feet on the chair across from me, peeled the lid off my cup of yogurt, and absorbed other people’s lives. There were grocery store boys leaning against brick walls while smoking cigarettes who left me wondering why

sw

the boys seemed so apathetic. There were old ladies with knit hats and pinched faces that made me hope I would never grow up to look so disappointed with life. There were fat women with small salads and skinny girls with smaller salads, middle-aged men who stared off into space, boys with their mothers, babies who screamed, and parents who shushed them. No one ever seemed to look at anyone else, which gave me the opportunity to stare and imagine their lives instead of thinking about my own. Home had developed into an endless cycle of cigarettes and black coffee.

When I was home, I wrapped myself up in a blanket and sat on the back porch of my apartment, staring out at the tiny patch of dead grass in the back yard until the next day when I could go back to the grocery store.

At Whole Foods I had a family. I smiled and said ‘thank you’ to the Indian girl who scanned my food and collected my money, who was a sullen Bostonian that kept everyone at arms length. I knew the boisterous, middleaged cheese guys because every day I asked them to slice me a wedge of cheese that was rarely more than a couple of ounces. I was the single serving cheese lady, and they always had something new for me to try. The cashiers and the stocking boys always saw me in my yellow boots decorated with ducks, wandering up and down the aisles looking for something new, something I hadn’t tried before.

I was there every day, same time, same place, roaming the produce section, buying one apple and one carrot and one cup of yogurt. Yet, it was hard for me to tell if they every truly noticed me the way I noticed them; they saw hundreds of new faces every day, but every day I looked forward to theirs.

I sat outside. Even in the cold and the rain, I watched and participated in the rhythm of the grocery store. I didn’t care that I had to wear gloves and two sweatshirts to eat lunch— my hands poking out from under layers of clothing to grab at my plastic cutlery— there was something comforting about eating surrounded by people.

I considered myself a modern forager, an urban scavenger, and the grocery store was my hunting ground. I tried almost every different kind of yogurt. Then I discovered the mini baguettes. Small enough for lunch and dinner once a day, but they only cost a dollar. The best days were when I found a warm one nestled in its brown paper bag like a special present just for me.

I became enthralled not only with grocery stores, but also with food. Eating became a necessary delight, a daily ritual that I created for myself. I ate half a cup of oatmeal with one ounce of raisins and a tablespoon of almond butter every day. I walked to the grocery store in the afternoon and systematically tried every single kind and flavor of yogurt until I found my favorite. There were so many options with each new product and each new flavor; there were so many possibilities for adventure. The yogurt section at Whole Foods took up nearly an entire wall. There

Vol. XXXIV

27

was Greek yogurt, Icelandic yogurt, goat’s milk yogurt, soymilk yogurt, sheep’s milk yogurt, plain yogurt, fruit on the bottom, low fat, whole fat, or no fat. Greek yogurt was thick and creamy; goat’s milk had a woody, tangy flavor; and non-fat yogurt was my least favorite because it was dry and pasty on its own. I was no longer in a city where I knew no one and no one knew me, I was a grocery store connoisseur, a yogurt aficionado.

I was sitting outside at a metal table eating lunch at the grocery store when my phone rang.

“Hello?” I said as I balanced my phone in one hand and my cup of yogurt in the other.

“Hey, it’s your mother,” the phone said back.

“Hi mama, what’s up?” I said.

“Not much,” she paused, “not much really, but how is Boston?”

“Cold, really fucking cold. And green chile is a myth out here, so is salsa. They only sell green bell peppers and some crappy tomato sauce stuff that they call chili and salsa,” I said and gestured to the grocery store behind me even though she couldn’t see me.

She laughed and we talked for a couple minutes about the minutia of our lives until she finally said why she was calling.

“Your father and I are probably getting a divorce,” she said and paused.

“What?” I said, caught off guard and trying to shift from salsa to divorces.

“I know it’s sudden, but I haven’t made any immediate plans or anything,” she said quickly.

“Oh… ok,” I said, not knowing exactly what to tell her. My family wasn’t supposed to dissolve without me, it wasn’t supposed to change while I was gone. I was supposed to come home to find my parents standing next to each other at the gate where I had left them.

I was quiet for what seemed like minutes.

“What does that mean? When is this happening?” I said. Despite the fact that I was living across the country I didn’t want to feel like my family was scattering without me.

“I don’t know, Kimberly” she said, and she sounded tired.

“Ok,” I said and we changed the subject.

We got off the phone after a couple more minutes of strained conversation about anything but the obvious. I hit “end call” on my phone and put my yogurt on the table, which I had completely forgotten about. I was 2000 miles away from Albuquerque, from my family, and suddenly that distance seemed vast and intangible. Even my most familiar place felt strange. Although I talked to my family once every couple of weeks, if not more than that, it now felt like I wasn’t a part of it. My parents, who had lived in separate

28

Conceptions Southwest 2011

corners of the house for most of my life, were suddenly more than parental figures of authority that didn’t need relationships: they were people. My mother, in particular, was lonely.

Days and weeks passed without much more information except that my mother confirmed that she and my father would be getting a divorce, and probably before I started college the following fall. I started going to the grocery store more often. Fruit, yogurt, coffee and individual bags of trail mix became my daily fixation. No piece of fruit was good enough, ripe enough, big enough, for me the first walk around the produce section. I had to circle at least twice more, re-inspecting the fruit I had already passed over. Picking up two peaches and weighing them in my hands was like I was weighing souls in the underworld. The consistency of lunch felt safe and comfortable. I knew I could always have the same thing, that there was something I could keep from changing. The first time plain, whole milk, Greek yogurt was out of stock I nearly cried. I began counting calories like Catholics count prayers on rosaries.

I knew the calorie and carbohydrate content of everything I ate, and if it didn’t have a label on the back I looked it up and memorized it. One cup of Greek yogurt, 260 calories, 20 grams of fat, 6 grams of carbohydrates; one medium peach, 40 calories, 0.2 grams of fat, 8 grams of carbohydrates; one cup of black coffee, 0 calories. My mind was a welloiled machine of food calculations that I kept running and running, to keep myself from getting stopped by the dust of introspection. If I was torn between two different foods I used the number of calories to decide between them.

The one with fewer calories and fewer carbohydrates always won. With the feeling of self-restriction came the deep and gratifying feeling of control. I couldn’t control my family, but I could control what I ate. No, you don’t need sugar in your coffee.

Yes, one ounce of cheese is plenty. Haven’t you heard? Smaller portions are healthier for you. I monitored my food intake each morning like a stock broker watching the numbers rise and fall, and I became increasingly more intrigued with the minor details and fluctuations. Yogurt was an easy investment; it was reliable and always enjoyable. However, fruit varied, peaches were a safe bet with low carbs, but sometimes apples were irresistible, causing the system to buck a little as the carb count for the morning shot through the roof. Bread was completely out of the question. Any investments made in the super-carby grain department completely crashed the system leaving my food economy as stable as the depression. I stopped wondering

what I wanted for lunch and started planning my lunch according to patterns instead. All raw foods, raw snow peas, an apple, raw goat’s milk cheese paired with the raw apple.

All vegan foods, all green foods, only gluten-free foods. At 18 I filled my head with numbers so I wouldn’t have to think about everything else.

I paced the streets of Boston in search of the most exotic specialty grocery stores. When I found them, I spent hours staring at packages, deliberating over cheeses, and trying every sample in the store. I became an even more permanent fixture at my organic grocery store, fastened to the wrought iron tables with my eyes shaded in oversized sunglasses. I ate, I sat, and I watched. Maybe I was waiting for something. At the time I would have said all I was waiting for was to finish my coffee. I wouldn’t have mentioned that I could sip the same cup of coffee endlessly and somehow never manage to finish it. By the time I left I always had at least one more sip in the cup that I threw away.

Winter finally gave in to spring and my college admissions and scholarship letters started rolling in. I sat in my apartment one afternoon, on my teal green bedspread— the only bright thing in the room— picking through letters and wondering how I was going to afford to go anywhere but back to the University of New Mexico. I finally gave up and threw them all on the floor beside me, got up, and went to the grocery store.

“Mama,” I said once she’d picked up the phone, “I don’t know what I want to do about college.”

“Well where do you want to go?” she said.

“Boston U or Berkeley maybe?” I said, hopeful that she would tell me everything would be ok and I could go wherever I wanted. Because that was how it was supposed to work.

“How much do they cost? I know Berkeley is expensive for out of state tuition,” she said.

I hesitated, “B.U. is like, fifty thousand?” I said, knowing full well it was.

“A year?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“How much did you get in scholarships to these places?” she asked.

“Not that much…” I said, disappointed, “not enough.”

“Your dad and I can’t afford much these days,” she said, “I am going to have to get a new place eventually.”

“I know,” I said.

I wandered around the grocery store after I got off the phone and knew what was inevitable: I was going to go back to New Mexico.

Summer came and by June I was leaving Boston. I had decided to go back home to my family that I hadn’t seen in nearly a year. As much as I had wanted to go somewhere exotic for college, I also wanted to be with my

sw

family. I packed my bag with some Greek yogurt and some carrots and took the train home. For two days I huddled into myself and watched the changing landscapes of Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, Kansas and finally New Mexico fly by. Lush, green trees and meadows transformed back into the flat desert and red-brown sandstone canyons.

When I finally did get off that cold, bullet-shaped box of metal, I was hit with oven like, bone-drying New Mexico heat and saw my mother. My divorced mother was a different woman. She had grown out her hair and wore it down; she smiled and brimmed with excitement about her life that was new to me; she wore ankle bracelets and flip-flops and loose linen shirts that showed off her delicate collarbones.

It was an almost unrecognizable contrast to the reserved, quiet woman I had grown up with.

“Where would you like to go get lunch? You are hungry right? Do you want to have lunch at my place?” she said.

“Ahh…” I hesitated, “I guess we could get lunch at the grocery store.”

She seemed mildly surprised, “Ok, which one?”

“Whole Foods?” I asked.

We went to the nearest Whole Foods, and I went through the automatic double doors.

“Do you know what you want?” she said.

“No, I think I am going to look around for a minute, but go ahead and get something. I will only be a minute,” I said.

I walked around and picked up apples and put them back down. I walked down the aisle with salsa in it and was satisfied that there were still jars of salsa on the shelves from local farms that were made with real chile. I ate the cheese samples and the chip samples, but I was disappointed that the yogurt section was not as broad as it had been in Boston. My heart started beating just a little quicker as I looked for Greek yogurt. “Fage, Greek Yogurt,” the label read and I breathed a sigh of relief. I picked up a cup of it and a plastic spoon and found my mother by the deli.

“Is that all you want?” she asked.

“And a cup of coffee,” I said.

We paid and sat outside at wrought iron tables just like the ones outside the Whole Foods in Boston. Even after the divorce was finalized and my first semester of college started I continued to bike to the grocery store and sit outside, drink coffee, and eat yogurt. Businessmen will come and go and continue to grab lunch. Grandmothers will spoil their grandchildren. People like me, who seem to be in the grocery store for no other reason than to have somewhere to be, will continue to observe the world from the edge of an automated entrance, knowing that as long as people need carrots and chocolate and cheese, grocery stores will be there. csw

Vol. XXXIV

29

I park at the end of the lot to get some fresh air.

SuperLot

Seeking the empty spaces so that my car’s delicate door panels don’t get mashed up, avoiding the aggravation of contending for a fleeting piece of automotive real estate with the others who have been funneled in here.

ByBeckettS.Nodal

The tar and gum and dread build with each step. Puddles and no rain. A grandfather in orange, struggling to power and steer a shopping cart freight train.

A woman sees me approach, mirrored in the pool of oil and gasoline, her thin arms folded, wrapped in a sweater, like she just stepped off her porch to greet me. I get hit up for some change so she can buy gas,

diapers, food, water, air. Ten

feet from the entrance, already

feeling the jaundiced glow of

fluorescent light wash over me,

I begin to weigh the cost again.

30

Conceptions Southwest 2011

A lot of fresh air will do that to you.

Diane Arbus Photographs the Deaf Girl with the Doll

By Terri

What silence summons from leaf-cover is more succulent than song.

The woods fluttering hundreds of red-gold, shredding leaves that detached suddenly, updrafted, wafting like a crimson blanket never allowed to settle, the blanket furling, floating, Brown-Davidson skimming the brown cold ground with its whisper of dying insects and bird skeletons crumbling, and the deaf girl hears it all, sitting by a lightning-struck tree in a forest, between huge curling roots that pin her between the bark, the whisper floating up from the frost-rimmed soil and its cacophony of secrets that only the deaf girl hears, rocking cross-legged in a black-velvet pinafore, a white turtleneck that Arbus selected for this day, as she chose the girl’s doll, a pink plastic baby, forehead cracked to reveal the missing brain, a too-obvious irony that Arbus wanted to “play with” though who—sane—could detect how the girl would spread-eagle herself on the ground to listen to what only she could hear was coming: the death of the season, her own death years later, a heart attack while she rocked in the asylum’s broken rocker, gazing at the institution’s albino and yellow canaries, then out the smudged window at blunt brown wheat fields that seemed to wither from season to season, and the heart jerking and stopping that she’s never even heard except in this minute’s contact with the earth that whispered, then—more forcefully—spoke.

God’s voice? she wondered, Arbus’s?

The mystery of her death, and Arbus, eyes glazing, sprawled sideways in a blood-smeared bathtub.

sw Vol. XXXIV

31

And Vampire Makes 3

By Bob Sabatini

Scene I: A maternity ward. The miracle of life has just occurred as lights come up on an exhausted MOM, a harried DAD, a crying BABY, and dedicated and professional DOCTOR and NURSE. DOCTOR Congratulations, Mrs. Harker. It’s...

DOCTOR is cut off as BABY lunges for his throat. DOCTOR screams, nurse rushes in and tries to pull BABY away. DOCTOR is bleeding copiously from the throat. NURSE pulls BABY away.

DOCTOR (As he dies) He is the spawn of Satan!

NURSE has been trying to hold BABY away, but BABY lunges at her too.

NURSE Ahhhh! The cursed un-born new-dead! New-cursed un-dead! Un-cursed neardead. Newborn Undead! Life-sucking, bloodthirsty... Vampire!

NURSE throws BABY to MOM as NURSE dies. BABY coos contentedly.

DAD Honey?

MOM Yes? DAD Am I Satan?

MOM No dear.

DAD Am I a vampire?

MOM No. DAD Is there something... anything you want to tell me?

MOM No.

32

Conceptions Southwest 2011

DAD Funny. Those don’t look like my teeth. Yours either.

MOM Well, maybe it’s a recessive gene. He has got your eyes. Look at him, he’s so precious!

DAD He is kinda cute.

(Baby talk) Better wook out dere widow fellow, or someone’s going to steal your nose.

DAD sticks his finger out towards BABY, then pulls it back quickly.

OW! Bastard son-of-a-bitch bit me!

MOM Language!

Lights out.

Scene II: A suburban kitchen. DAD and 9-year old CHILD are carving a pumpkin, MOM is arranging trick-or-treat candy in a bowl.

MOM What do you want to be this year?

CHILD Dracula!

DAD Again?

MOM But you’ve been Dracula the last four years. Wouldn’t you rather be a zombie?

CHILD No. MOM Or a ghost?

Borrrrrr-ing!

sw

CHILD

Vol. XXXIV

33

DAD I’m not sure I want you to be Dracula, son. Remember what happened last year?

CHILD Oh, come on. That cat was, like, 30 years old.

MOM That is completely beside the point. He was the only friend Mrs. Green had in the whole world.

CHILD Come on, let that go. I bought her a new one.

DAD And how many weeks allowance did that cost you?

CHILD A lot.

DAD Well, that’s the kind of trouble you get into when you go as Dracula. You can’t get into trouble if we just throw a sheet over you.

CHILD I guess you’re right.

MOM I’m glad that’s settled.

Unearthly yowl from offstage.

MOM What was that?

Another yowl. A VAMPIRE CAT with bat wings flies across the stage.

MOM Isn’t that Mrs. Green’s cat?

DAD Looks like it.

MOM (To CHILD) Do you want to tell me why Mister Fluffy-kins is a vampire and flying through the house?

CHILD I didn’t do it.

34

Conceptions Southwest 2011

DAD Oh yeah? Then who did?

MOM Don’t you lie to me, young man.

CHILD I didn’t mean to! I just... couldn’t stop myself.

DAD I guess I know what you’re going to be for Halloween: grounded!

CHILD Oh, come on!

MOM You’ve got to learn. Now go to your room.

CHILD But mom— DAD No buts. You are going to go to your room and write an apology to Mrs. Green this minute, or else you don’t get dinner.

CHILD Do I have to, Mom? MOM Yes. CHILD I hate you both!

CHILD exits. MOM and DAD share a disappointed look. Lights out.

Scene III: A living room. MOM and DAD, now have graying hair. DAD is whittling away at a large stake, getting the point nice and sharp.

MOM Put that thing away. You know he hasn’t caused any trouble in almost two years.

DAD But we’re getting close to Halloween now. He seems to get just a little crazy right about now. I don’t want to use this damn thing, but Lord knows I will if I have to.

MOM Come on, give it a rest. He knows what he’s capable of, what’s at stake.

He’s a teenager.

sw

DAD Vol. XXXIV

35

MOM Yeah, but he’s responsible. He’s conscientious. He’s a good kid.

DAD I don’t think you understand. At his age, his brain is physically incapable of good judgment. He’s liable to lose his head, do something stupid. And if he does, I’m gonna be ready.

MOM Don’t tell me you never “lost your head” when you were his age.

DAD I did. One day I stole dad’s car and took it drag racing. That’s different. Sure, I coulda killed myself and one or two others. That’s just good, clean American fun.

But if he screws up, we’re gonna have an army of the undead on our hands.

He’s a good kid.

MOM

There is a sound outside the door, DAD hides the stake hurriedly. SON enters, now a handsome 17 year old. Following him is LUCY, also 17, who is very plain but “cute.”

SON Hi! Mom, dad, I want you to meet Lucy.

LUCY (To MOM) Hi mister Harker. Missus, I mean. Johnny’s told me so much about you.

SON (Aside to LUCY) No I haven’t.

(To his parents) Lucy’s in my history class. We’ve got a big test coming up tomorrow, so we’re going to study tonight.

LUCY Yup. Study. Study long and hard. That’s a cool knife. What’cha doing with it?

DAD fumbles for an answer.

What’s the test about?

MOM LUCY

Oh, kings and queens and stuff. (to SON) Which way’s your room?

He points, LUCY exits.

MOM I thought you were taking American history this year.

I am. Lucy needs to study a lot.

36

Conceptions Southwest 2011

SON

He exits. MOM frets, DAD pulls out the stake again.

MOM

I don’t like this.

DAD

He’s responsible.

MOM

Don’t like this one little bit.

DAD

He’s conscientious.

MOM He’s a teenager, for crying out loud!

DAD What’re you so worried about all of a sudden?

We hear LUCY scream from offstage. DAD grabs the stake and runs offstage. MOM is frozen in horror. Soon, DAD returns, looking relieved.

MOM What happened? Are they... Did he...?

DAD

Nah, they’re just having sex.

MOM slaps him upside the head, grabs the stake and starts for SON’s room.

MOM Jonathan Junior, you come out here right this minute!

DAD

Mina! Settle down.

She exits quickly, DAD follows more slowly. Lights out.

sw Vol. XXXIV

37

C

ameron had been watching her house for the last half-hour, staring through the gaping rectangle where the windshield should be on his father’s fifteen-year-old Jeep Cherokee. The Jeep was hidden behind a massive lavender bush down the street; the warm, heady smell seeped into Cameron’s skin. The New Mexico sun sank slowly, lazily, as if it had to think about it beforehand and decide if it was truly right to abandon the sky. Cameron would wait another hour before approaching the house—she would be asleep by then.

She had blown past him on her old Ducati about ten minutes ago, pushing sixty on the quiet residential street—completely oblivious to his presence. Her bike hopped over the lip of the driveway.

Although Cameron was a good distance down the street, he could hear Puccini being blasted from her bedroom. He knew the aria intimately: Si mi chiamano Mimi.

He leaned back against the cracked, plastic headrest of the driver’s seat and mouthed the words, liking the shape of the Italian vowels.

The boys in his Marine unit had given him hell about his need for that opera. It hadn’t been the extreme desert heat of Afghanistan that kept him awake, nor was it his fear of dying. He couldn’t sleep without listening to at least one piece from La Boheme on his MP3 player each night. When the MP3 batteries died, he’d had no choice but to sing the pieces aloud before falling soundly into REM stage amidst his comrades’ exasperated curses.

Now, he realized Leah still couldn’t sleep without it, either. Cameron doubted either of them would ever be able to … not after more than a decade of their methaddicted mother playing the damn thing at one hundred decibels every night to drown out the voices in her head.

The aria ended without crescendo or a grand ‘dadum’ of finality.

He opened the glove compartment, grabbed the flashlight that was stashed there, and got out of the Jeep.

The front of the house was doused in mustard-gold light from a streetlamp on the corner. He noted the house’s New Mexican style: a simple tan, stucco box. Earlier, he’d noticed long cracks branching along the front of the house like widening fissures in a sandy shoreline. The two wooden posts framing the doorway looked like the whittled-down toothpicks of a giant. Even the chimney wasn’t quite right.

It leaned toward the street and threatened to suck him up like a square straw.

Cameron was determined to break inside. He had to speak to Leah about tomorrow.

She would not want to speak to him.

He zipped up his leather jacket, worn soft and musky-smelling, which covered up his white T-shirt in the darkness.

38

Conceptions Southwest 2011

The front door was locked, or at The door looked like it hadn’t been used as a point of entry for years. Dirt was caked into the cracks around it. He checked a pair of asymmetrical windows on the side of the house next. They quivered and could have easily been broken, but he didn’t want to get in that way. He slinked his way around the house and ended up at the back door.

It swung inward.

He was thankful for the entrance, and yet, his chest tightened more than it ever had in combat—his sister was in danger here. Who knows who might break in on any given night? There were crazy people in the city, after all.

He turned on the flashlight and made a wide sweep of the room he’d breached. It was the kitchen and it was a bare, utilitarian sight. The sink was concrete and the floor, made of one massive sheet of linoleum, curled up around the edges like a dried flower petal. A humming came from the fridge and soaked into the floor and walls immediately surrounding it.

A hot water heater in the corner kicked on and with it came bile into Cameron’s throat. He pictured himself taking a crowbar to it, making huge dents like deep clench-marks in a soda can. He pictured the pipes coming off and spraying like limbs bleeding in a firefight.

But he caught himself before he could sprint to the garage in search of a blunt object. The water heater was inanimate. It wasn’t the same one from the accident either, and Leah’s injuries couldn’t be blamed on it. Their parents hadn’t turned the vent on and left chemicals out to fill the room with flammable fumes. He could not hold a water heater accountable for simply turning on.

He shook his head and dabbed at the perspiration on his upper lip with cold fingertips.

He made his way across the room to the drawers set into a steel counter-top and cabinet unit. Without trying to be too stealthy, he opened one with enough force to make it sound a short shriek into the room as it jammed along the tracks.

She didn’t come running.

Feeling his way along, he went across a narrow hallway into the room across from the kitchen. It was an almost perfectly square living room, too dark to get a good look at. He took position on the side of the doorway just as he heard painfully slow footsteps. They padded along the hardwood in the hallway toward his position.

It was time to get her attention. With a flick of his wrist, he flashed the beam of his light across the hall and into the kitchen before swiftly retracting it.

In the hall, her breath caught.

The careful footsteps became pounding bounds of panic. He sighed and moved into the doorway.

ByMadelineCoen-Mozleyleast, it didn’t open.

Fidelis

Without thinking, he grabbed the baseball bat she’d tried to bring down on his face. She screamed, though it wasn’t nearly loud enough to wake the neighbors, as he’d hoped it would be.

“Rape, murder, kidnapping!” he shouted close to her ear.

Her scream cut off with the abruptness of bone snapping.

“Cameron?” she rasped.

He turned on his flashlight again and shone it on his face like a kid preparing to tell a scary story.

“Those are just three of the things that can happen to you when you leave your back door unlocked, Leah!

Damn it, you have to be smarter than that! You didn’t even hear me come in, did you?”

He felt her weight pull on the bat as she hunched over from relief. He fingered around the doorframe for a light switch. An overhead fixture turned on, clicking and blinking for a few seconds. It shed its dim light on the white pleather loveseat and the square coffee table with enough water rings to make a decorative design.

The light a revealed that Leah was barely dressed.

She wore white, cotton panties and a slip of a sports bra.

She used to be his little sprite with forest green eyes that rivaled the sun’s gravitational pull. Now he saw her scars— her skin was mottled and puckered—not the creamy texture it had been when he’d last seen her three years ago. The scars were pink and roped and he imagined he felt them groping and spreading beneath his clothes like living, transmutable creatures. He swallowed past the acid that tried to climb up his esophagus again.

“Sit,” he said.

“It’s my house,” she said in a monotone. Her lips were pink like her scars. Cameron watched them stretch and shrink as they shaped her rebuke.

“Older brother or not, you can’t command me here, sergeant. Or whatever rank you are.”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he marched across the hardwood and sat. His spine settled into an upright position a few inches away from the back of the loveseat.

Air squeezed out of the cushions in a hissing rush. She leaned against the doorway and dropped the bat. It bounced once and then rocked slowly back and forth on the hardwood. She crossed her arms and Cameron wondered how it didn’t hurt her skin when she created friction between her limbs like that.

“So, you’re still alive. Nice haircut,” she snorted.

He couldn’t stop himself from running his palm over his head to feel the buzzed surface. He’d been a longhaired, perforated, Sex-Pistols wannabe a few years ago.

“

He’d woken up that morning three years prior with the utter determination to get out. He’d heard his mother groaning through her closed bedroom door as he tred to the kitchen. His father was there, hovering over the scales like a turkey vulture as he measured grams. He didn’t look up when Cameron came in. He’d left a note, just one sentence on a paper lunch bag stuck to the fridge with a heavy, black magnet. ‘Off to join the Marines—getting shot sounds like an upgrade.’ The note was intended for his parents—he’d left an actual letter for Leah in one of her Auto Trader magazines. Judging by the current ravine of a crease in her brow, she hadn’t gotten the letter. Or if she had, its words had rung hollow.

“Why didn’t you lock your door? It’s not hard, Le,” he said.

“You look like hell.”

“You’re not listen—” “And don’t call me ‘Le’.”

She dug her heels into the ground and did an about-face into the kitchen. She yanked on her choppy hair with fingers contorted into comb-like claws. The kitchen door slammed. Cameron followed behind her.

He opened the door, knowing she’d be standing with her face to the wall. Her thumbs were hooked into the waist-band of her panties. She didn’t turn when he came in.

“You didn’t hear me until I opened this,” he sighed as he patted the squeaky drawer. “You need a big dog. A German Shepherd.”

He was so close to her that he began imagining eyes staring at him through the scars on her arms. The eyes didn’t blink, they didn’t move from him, and of course, they didn’t exist. He took off his leather jacket and put it over her shoulders.

“I hope you close your bedroom blinds, at least,” he said. “No need to give people a free show every night.”

She shuddered and left the jacket on as she lunged for the fridge. Her hand emerged with a dark bottle of cheap beer.

He could go for one but didn’t ask. She didn’t offer. After a surprisingly deep gulp, she said, “So, kill anyone yet?”

He took on an enigmatic, GI-Joe expression. Of course he’d killed people—he could recall each one of them in order and tell you how they’d died. His closest friend in his unit had said, “He carried himself with the confident

He’dleftaNote,justonesentence onapaperlunchbagstucktothe fridgewithaheavy,blackmagnet.

‘OfftotheMarines—gettingshot sounds like an upgrade.’

sw

”

Vol. XXXIV

39

weight of a man who had ‘seen things’ but didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Did you suffer horrific ordeals over there? Have PTSD? Poor thing,” Leah said. She finished the beer.

The sting in her voice was lost on him; he was too busy trying not to gawk at how she’d changed. Her once otherworldly eyes were puffy and rimmed in red like sagging Christmas ornaments. The grace she’d used to move with had been replaced with the rigidity that came from simply functioning.

He stood with his back against the door of the fridge to keep her from getting another beer. His weight made the appliance groan. “You’re not twenty-one,” he said.

“Neither were you that night I had to force water down your throat to make you puke so you wouldn’t die from alcohol poisoning. Remember that?” She raised a dark eyebrow at him, a steeple of curiosity. “No, wait, you repress your past life, so of course you don’t remember.”

She slammed the empty bottle down on the counter.

He grabbed her hand after she’d barely let go of the brown glass. He ran his thumb along the back of it as if stroking taut tissue paper. “Sorry, Le. I should have been here.”

She ripped her hand away. “That’s why you came back: to do your time in purgatory here at home so you can feel better about yourself ?”

He redirected the argument. “When was the last time you saw them?” There was a firmness he put on the word ‘them’ that gave it a conspiratorial feel.

She looked as if he’d just asked her to pull out her fingernails. She closed her eyes and he noticed her eyelashes were gone. He was afraid she might bite through her lower lip. “Four months ago,” she spit out. “When I left home.”

“Their court date’s tomorrow. You know that?”

Her face turned a light shade of olive.

“You can’t avoid this, Le,” he said. “That’s part of why I’m here—you have to testify tomorrow, same as me.”

He bent down to reach her eyes. “I went to the middle of nowhere in Afghanistan but the Attorney General still tracked me down and all but dragged me back through the sat phone—desert sand and all. You’re still in the city— there’s no escaping this.”

Her eyes began to dart back and forth as if she saw monsters he was blind to.

“They’re still our parents. We’re family,” he whispered. To him, the word ‘family’ sounded too simple, as if love joined its syllables together like folded hands. He didn’t know of soft, clasping hands. He knew his mother’s because they’d fought against his as he tried to calm her every time she’d had a bad trip and he knew what the bony back of his father’s felt like. They weren’t warm.

40

Conceptions Southwest 2011

At first, Cameron thought Leah wasn’t going to respond. She stood still as a bird perched in the park and said nothing. He was about to repeat himself when she bellowed, “They’re not my parents! This is what they gave

homefromschoolto “Ificame ndthekitchenupinflames.

I didn’t even stop to take off mybikehelmetbeforediving in to save them.

”

me!” She held her marred hands an inch from his eyes. “I came home from school to find the kitchen up in flames. I didn’t even stop to take off my bike helmet before diving in to save them. They have a few cuts and second degree burns—they don’t deserve to grow old together, getting fed three meals a day! I’ll be damned to take the stand in their defense! Besides, you left! This isn’t your problem anymore.

Give up because they’re not getting out of this.” She pointed every finger on her right hand at him because her pointer alone would not suffice.

He sighed again and reached into the pocket of his jeans for a pen. There was a 7-11 napkin on the counter.

He scribbled directions to the courthouse and the time of the trial on it before making his closing statement. “Sometimes humans do stupid, selfish things. Why’d I leave?

Because I’m an idiot. Why’d mom and dad deal poison and abuse us? Because they’re irrational. And you’re right, they’ll be judged guilty tomorrow no matter what we say.

It’s showing up that matters.” He squeezed her shoulder and gave her a brusque kiss on the forehead before heading for the back door.

Her voice was a grin through a tight jaw as she spoke from behind him. “Hooah, brother.”

He stopped, turned, and smiled. “The Army says that, Le, not the Marines. Say ‘Semper Fi’.”

He went back to the old house where the accident had happened. There was no other place for him to stay. He walked through the rooms and felt his age melt away, leaving a scrawny punk of a nineteen-years, and a high school dropout, slinking through each doorway. The fire damage was still in the kitchen—blackened walls and patchy ceiling dropped ash on him like a quiet winter storm in the underworld.

He went outside and watched from the front porch as the dark, early morning sky changed to a deep purple, then changing to a cobalt blue as dawn approached. It

seemed he had been watching for years now, watching people die and others live, and still more traipsed through life completely unaware of their own existence. He did not know which category his sister fell into, nor did he know which he wanted to fall into himself.

A few hours later, he stood beside a bench in front of the courthouse. His stance was standard Marine issued—sturdy, shoulders straight, hands together behind his back. His uniform was crisp. The peppermint Altoid, which the defense lawyer had given him, burned the back of his throat.

The trial would start in ten minutes.

Leah walked into the sun. Cameron’s jacket was draped over her arm. She wore a sleeveless black shirt and black dress pants. She spotted him and came his way without so much as a tug at the corners of her mouth or a hand raised in salute. The scars on her arms blushed. One stretched around the front of her neck and down her right bicep, coming to a point near her elbow.

Cameron’s left knee cramped, his stance buckled, and he let his hands fall to his sides. csw

sw Vol. XXXIV

41

Vertical Descent 1

Graphite Sketch

By Emma Difani

42

Conceptions Southwest 2011

I.

II.

III.

In past imaginings of a love like pleasured lore, With archival toils that I knew I would contend, Fearing naught but onward which came before, Mindful thus to spy the mockery at ends, Bathing but once in the soft gleaming light.

Yet, crawls to maturity, where with being crowned, And Time found ways and feeds parallels in spite.

But Time is worth more when the verses confound.

So, as beauty’s gaze doth flourish and bloom, forsooth, To wishes fulfilled when thunderous skies clear blank, I wake from a slumber into a glided gift of lov’d youth, Not knowing if it was friend and fate I thank, But to wonder and weave by way of a single strand, And to delve upon volant fervor I need but extend my hand.

My Muse Anew

By Graham Just as the temperate warmth of thou’est divine embrace, With my stony moths that flick and float about the fear I face, I’m left to wonder if the cool slips of dripping dreams Hold ʻgainst swirling darkness wither is as black as it seems.

Who takes a chance on one small sliver of spirit piercing long enough to, But a sudden smooth grinding stops fluid and feeling that falls further through, A glisten and glint of gold flutters, settling icy and cold, Then the tongue tastes flesh, restrained, but bold.

A fire and blast boasting hot air, The fierce vibrating tangle of skin, breath, and hair, The cry, then a sigh, feeling the night as it goes, A final glass whisper, the one I chose.

So lo, here I lie. But the truth now knows, Yet I long for her lips and to live in my rose.

Gentz

When small voices fade whence prickly shadows ensue, Rising frozen to greet me, I doth aver your name.

For, daring hope in light and breath renew, To free wild my tongue speaking and crush frosty shame.

Humble be the warmth and worth I declare for strength, A proud heat as memory of but one night our lips caressed.

My Lady Orchid, a love yet blooming to undue length, Yet stepping false ʻgainst the golden haze I might transgress.

Be naught an eggshell waltz for a drifting seraph’s soul, Whilst praying down in dark ocean depths doth not die, On virgin sand by choice, instead lacking control, I seek a lasting dream, more than godly deny.

So, might amour thrive and cast past the fray, This to my Wild Flower— and hope for love that does not sway.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

43

Immoral

By Christina Faris

After the painting Venus and Adonis in

Encyclopedia of Sex Worship

I’ll start from the left, still-framed with her milky, white foot, and a blackened tree cradling her naked body. Some other man’s coat lies beneath her — golden studs line the inner flap. Her arms contort her body to seize your chest to stay. But you’re already moving into the shadows as your hounds tug you to the right. You kept your sandals on the whole time as the angel watched from the bend in the tree, arrow in hand.

44

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Flophouse

By Beckett S. Nodal

sw

Sculpture Vol. XXXIV

45

Hurricane Pass

By Dylan Smith

Photograph

46

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Photograph

Light sw Movement

By Leo York

Vol. XXXIV

47

The Bestowal

By Mary Luttrel

S

he stared at him brazenly with her clairvoyant eye, which, to others, just looked clouded by cataracts.

Though nearly blind, she felt that it saw more than form and color. She could and did gaze blatantly at strangers, knowing it was rude. Liking it. You take your pleasures where you find them when you’re old.

And she was old—old as hell. She’d lost all interest in her body’s failings. She had watched its slow decline from a thing of joy and pleasure to a tolerable reality, then a cause for irritation, a frustrating disappointment, and at last, a hated burden. She was bored with its crude deterioration and treacherous betrayals, the bones and sinews and skins and shells of it, the bits and pieces moving gracelessly through time. What had once been strong and radiant now was useless. Or offensive. Not only that, but her withered limbs and organs twitched and pained her. She grasped the subway pole with gnarled fingers and braced her thick-soled shoes against its base. Bodies pressed down into her with their smells and weights and priorities. She radiated malice and was generally ignored. Or worse, pitied. Fleetingly. Her skull throbbed.

And there he sat. So young and strong, so insolent, so utterly despicable. His heavy eyelids at half-mast, lashes casting shadows on cafe aú lait skin, and a lazy head in woolen ski cap lolling on the window glass. Feet planted wide and taking up space. She stared at his headphones and envisioned ripping them from his ears, shoving them up his proud, wide nostrils. That would wake him up quick. But she didn’t have the energy. Instead she stood there mute and bitter. It wouldn’t even cross his mind, she knew, to offer her his seat. Her contempt was toothache dull.

Bodies shifted, jostled by the train’s velocity, and then someone stepped on the side of her foot. It was just for a second, but she suffered their full weight. A soft, involuntary cry escaped her. And from her special eye she saw his lids spring open. His irises were malachite and purely

takeyourpleasures “You whereyoufindthemwhen you’re old. ”

48

Conceptions Southwest 2011

wrong for the color of his skin. But they stayed open, focused on her.

She glowered with hatred towards him as she watched him slowly rise, rise up. And there he stood, rocking with the subway’s flux, inches from her, towering over her. And then he nodded. It took her several seconds to understand. He wasn’t telling her yes, you’re old and useless and you really ought to die. He was granting her his seat.

Confused, she followed her aching body as it staggered to the plastic bench. She wouldn’t look at him, but she felt her arm brush against his. And what was this?

Something passed between them. A mysterious interchange, both sharp and subterranean, striking hard at the center of her being. Something fantastic and strange and unspeakably dynamic, sparking so densely at its nucleus that it took her breath away. She felt dizzy, off-balance. She closed her eyes and dropped her head, inhaling a strange scent of ozone. And when she opened them again, she gasped.

She was him. She had his body.

She sat perfectly still, feeling the blood pump warmly through her veins. Her vision was clear, her hearing acute. She felt the warm weight of young and masculine muscle, compact and solid on springy limbs. Dense, packed with energy. Nothing ached, her body was a cartoon of health. And she was strong. She breathed deeply, filling her lungs with pure, rich air. Without thinking, she shot up and bounded to the subway door, just as it came to a stop. She did not look back.

She ran. She couldn’t not run. Her thighs leapt forward and she sprinted through the thinning crowds of people in the subway station, muscles pumping, lungs responding beautifully, perfectly. It was pure joy to move, just move. Her heart sang and she whooped out loud, a war cry and a shout of jubilation. And then she skidded to a stop.

Her whoop, her cry, it had not been hers. It had sounded very masculine. Rich and deep. She stood there catching her breath, unwilling to comprehend. And then she didn’t care. It was a gift, some strange and wonderful gift, and she would snatch it without question while she had the chance. Even if it was a dream. Even if she was, in fact, slowly dying of some insidious blood clot or strangling heart attack, skewered to that dismal plastic subway seat.

Hallucination, fantasy, mirage... whatever it was, she would not risk doubting it.

Again, she ran. She ran out the station doors and bounded joyfully up the stairs. She spun and jumped, enraptured. Annoyed pedestrians muttered under their breath and gave her a slight berth. Bits of city trash whirled toward her; precious offerings. Colors glimmered and glowed. The cool evening streamed like water over her skin. She was so alive that she could hardly bear it. Hot tears sprang to her eyes and even these were immensely pleasurable.

felt more aware, awake, alive “She thansheeverhadbefore.Something

deepandcarnalstirredwithinher.It waspowerfulandtrue.Isthiswhatsex is like for men?

”

Abruptly, she turned and leapt up a set of concrete steps. Someone opened a doorway, and she pushed past them. She shoved through another graffiti-splattered door and up a flight of metal stairs. Her heart was thudding now, but not with effort. With anticipation.

She knew this door. She knew this knob. She watched her strong, male hand grasp it, turning. And then she was inside. A fluid delight coursed through her. She turned at the sound of a low velvet laugh. Through new eyes, she looked. Through malachite eyes.

And she could not stop looking. It was a teenaged girl, young and full-bodied. She appeared to be Hispanic, maybe partly African American. Definitely exotic. She stood there with a faded sheet wrapped around bare shoulders. Her dark eyes glimmered. She was like some soft, warm little animal. The old woman ached to inhale her scent. She felt more aware, awake, alive than she ever had before. Something deep and carnal stirred within her. It was powerful and true. Is this what sex is like for men? She’d never understood it. It was simply overwhelming. It was pure, fecund, emphatic. And she didn’t care, didn’t care.

The girl sauntered toward her, letting the sheet fall.

I am an old woman, probably dying alone on a subway, she thought. And then she let go. Deep within her rose up rich, masculine laughter. She watched her strong young arms reach out. csw

sw Vol. XXXIV

49

Painting

Woman

ByAngelaArrey-wastavino

50

Conceptions Southwest 2011

One night in the lab, We sprinkled self-dependence in your herbal tea Stuck a thermometer down your throat as far As possible. We programmed sex analog in Your blood cells—recyclables behind your eyes.

Be careful not to ignite with all the serendipity Crackling in your rib cage; the botched placenta Beneath your tongue.

we created

a human

by Joshua

We adjust the innocence from your ankles to lust Assuming candy makes you happy. You’re built so Semen converges with fat cell subduction—electrons Over your brain waves causing brain freeze when You huff paint. May milk help your bone marrow Montoya Evolution. Let us pin you with authenticity.

On good days we’ll put you to play out back, Grow friendships with ant pile communities. You’ll Consumerise with cancer cats then put glass in their Tuna.

sw Vol. XXXIV

51

SUNBURSTREFLECTION-ROSE

Sketch

By Emma Difani

52

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Monday Night

By Morgan Podraza

A kid, you have fallen into milk, but you cannot float. Splashing in the sea, you feel your weight.

The crumbs on your mouth tell me you have been in the cookie jar.

Dinner is in the oven, and you’ve caused the bread to burn.

sw Vol. XXXIV

53

Watercolor

54

Conceptions Southwest 2011

The Party you didn’t show up to

By Eva Damerson

The Devil’s First Love Gold:

By Tom Ta

There it was, gold, adapted in the form of individual, weightless papers, bundled together by a thin, worn-out rubber band. Together, there were three thin stacks, which all contained inside a moldy drawer that is a part of a massive cabinet.

I have never understood how such inanimate things could have so much power over a person—power to make people succumb and crumble. As soon as I extended my hand forward with the intention to conquer money, my world suddenly came to a full stop. It was the first time in my life where my conscience was in full momentum, sucking me into a whirlpool of doubt. I felt as though someone had stabbed a hole through the hourglass and the sand was pouring out from the side. Time was running out.

Kingdom: My overprotective mother had always treated me like a prince. Although I was able to live within my kingdom as I pleased, the queen forbade me to step outside into a world she deemed as ‘evil.’ But as soon as I was old enough to trust my curious feet to take me places, I snuck out without hesitation from my enclosed kingdom and took refuge in the house next door. From what I can recall, it was a machine workshop with countless complex machines being operated by the workers. There were so many things to marvel at—the sparks coming off of the spinning wheels in short intervals and the ferocious buzzing sound of automatic saws cutting large sheets of metal into wieldy size as well as the thumping of the dreaded metal flattener. The heart of the house was just beyond the workshop in the front. The interior was a lot more different than mine, even though both houses were built next to one another. As the ambassador of my kingdom, the representative of my royal family, I was a bit agitated when no one in the shop took notice of me, not even the frightening man sitting above everyone in the shop, with a table at least twice as big as that of the other workers. He had golden framed spectacles as well as a red armband tightened around his arm to demonstrate his authority over the shop.

Princesses: Compelled by the spectacles, I came back again and again to the foreign kingdom. However, the king of the machine noticed my presence and invited me inside where he introduced his daughters. The older girl was three years older than me. It was the first time I had ever laid my eyes on her.

Even now I can still roughly recall her flustering fair skin, the silky short hair that fell no longer than her shoulders. From

sw

the way her fierce, amber-brown eyes looked, I knew that she wasn’t like any other girls I had known. The younger one was a year younger than me; she had features that were much softer, but one could clearly see the resemblance between the two who were four years apart. Although both of their familiar faces pop into my mind when I dream from time to time, the only name I remembered was the younger sister’s, Li. Her name, however, is lost forever inside my fragmented childhood memories.

Durian and Grape: If I could compare the two sisters to any fruit, I would link the older sister to a durian and the younger sister to a single grape. Even though they were blood-bound sisters, each stood their ground firmly on the complete opposite end of the personality spectrum. The younger girl was like a grape, her sweetness was expected and there was no secondguessing. Li was my safe place, even if it’s a tiny violet island amid the entire Pacific Ocean. The older, although, was encased by a thick spiky shell that was meant to prick and tear the hands of whomever touches it; the inside is composed of a dulcet paradise. Its content was vast as well, diverse in taste, each section tasting differently; you never eat the same durian twice.

Alpha: Even for a girl, she was a world apart. At first I really believed that she was some kind of delinquent boy stuck inside a girl’s body. When I didn’t listen to her and obey each and every command, she would punch me. The kicks were saved for when she was feeling bashful. When it came to our financial relationship she extorted what little allowance money I had. But strangely enough, I have never seen her use it for herself. Instead, she put all of it inside a pink piggy bank constructed of clay. She called it “our” war fund. As much as I would like to believe that the piggy bank was our shared property, I was actually simply bullied into handing over my lunch money. But once when a boy from the next neighborhood picked a fight with me, she beat him senseless; so bad that he ran all the way down the street crying over his black eye and bruised limbs. She was invincible; not even the neighborhood bullies dared to mess with her. The money I lost to her coincidentally turned into protection money. I was physically weak, and I was naturally drawn to things stronger in nature.

Discovery: Once the two princesses were tasked with the duty

Vol. XXXIV

55

to clean the entire kitchen area of the kingdom. The kitchen itself was strange; it wasn’t like the kind of kitchen that usually pops into one’s mind when it is mentioned. Their entire kitchen was a huge open area that is built to sink a little into the floor. In the far corner formed by the intersection of two walls, there was the fridge, kitchen counter and stove all aligned against the wall, elevated from the floor by a platform. The sunken area was floored with some kind of smooth, solid material in a red, green, and brown floral design.

By the time I got there, they were already dousing the floor with warm water and emptying an entire bottle of liquid soap onto the floor. When I saw the look each of the spoiled sisters had on their face, I immediately knew that they were up to no good. My prediction came true as they began to disrobe themselves before diving into the slippery floor. I closed my eyes out of embarrassment, as a way for me to keep up the spirit of chivalry, and the selfish princesses splashed water at me. Although I would usually counter their naval preemptive strike with my own barrage, I wasn’t about to sully my role as a gentleman. In the end, I was able to marvel at the female anatomy. I was eight at the time. The big discovery added yet another step into the long stairway to adulthood.

First Kiss:

My curfew was approaching. The sun had set and the night was approaching at a tantalizing speed. It was the first time her face had been so close to mine. I was clueless at what she wanted to tell me with her eyes, expecting something completely ridiculous. “Hey, let’s kiss,” she said with a straight-toned voice.

Unable to respond, I immediately flustered and shied away from her face. “But your aunt is downstairs, she might see us.” I came up with a sound excuse, hoping I could get out of her unreasonable demand, also not wanting to be punched. Strong-willed and stubborn as she was, the excuse was ignored. Instead, she pulled me to her room and pushed me onto the bed. With no time to fend off the attack, I remained helpless as her cold hand brushed against my burning cheek. The sensation of her cool palm was soon undermined by touch of her lips. As we locked lips, transferring the torrid heat back and forth, I melted in her embrace. The feeling of the soft flesh washed away all of resistance I had left as my strained face began to relax. But it was a mistake to let my guard down as she quickly removed her lips from mine, attaching herself to my neck. The image of a lioness eating into a defenseless gazelle came into mind. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t completely feel good.

The rough housing and the assault left me to go home with a nasty, inerasable red mark on my neck and limbs that night. Every time I looked in the mirror, I would fluster at the outline of her lips sitting right in the middle

56

Conceptions Southwest 2011

of my neck. When I ran my finger over it, I was reminded of the soft sensation that melted on my lips. I was burning up in the mid of the rainy season, the heat that seeped out from my body was enough to dry the rain, allowing me to be seduced by the haughty slumber as the last of the raindrop chimed a little pop on the roof.

Weakness:

“Come on, just do it! What are you a wuss?” She abhorred indecisiveness, even more so when it came to things between us. It had been at least a couple of years since we met each other, but never before were any of the games we played this hard. She convinced me to steal from my mom. I knew that it was a bad thing, but every time she called me a wuss, something ate at my core. How was I supposed to protect the girl I love if I did not have any strength, physically and emotionally?

But between love and my royal crown, I was split. To condone a dishonorable act meant to relinquish my noble title. Because I failed to realize what true strength was, I let her dulcet words sway me. I stepped down from the throne that day. Although I had always imagined a ceremony as grand as a coronation, all I felt was regret.

After my clumsy attempt, I got whipped until horizontal red line sunk into my rear. When mom threw me into the time-out room where she made me sleep for a day before forbidding me to step out from the house, I did not have a single visitor. It was the first time I had ever attempted to dirty my hands and was punished for it—I succumbed to my desire of wanting to make her mine. But at the time, I did not fully realize that blind love is a tornado. It blows you out of the water and carries you to paradise. The higher up you go, the harder you know you’re going to fall.

Good-bye:

The huge cars came to take away all of our stuff.

We were moving early. The government decided that it was a good time to expand the long-etched river. In order to do that, they had to wreck the entire block up to the street bisecting our block from the next one over. It was sudden; no one had a chance to prepare. They didn’t exactly care, they never cared; the people were the least of their problems. But they gave out money as compensation for those who had to move. When I heard of the news, all I could think about was spending as much of my time packing as possible. The excitement of exploring the new house after it had legally been purchased was simply overwhelming, so much that I forgot about her. I got into the car that took me to my new house, and away from the neighborhood for good.

Reunion:

A year later I found out where the two girls moved.

From my house, it was a twenty-minute walk through the ur-

ban jungle of Ho Chi Minh City. Each step alongside one of the busiest streets in the city was a daunting quest, even for a brave boy. Nostalgia washed over me as I stood before my destination. It was twice as high as the old house and even busier than before the migration. Because it was her family’s main source of income, the first floor had the same machinery workshop, positioned just like how it was back before it moved “Hoh… you’ve gotten bigger huh? Still shorter than me though.” She said. Although I had grown quite a bit since we last met, I still couldn’t beat her. I had gotten more confident and sturdy, but these qualities were easily overlooked when in comparison to her.

Difference: The six months after reconnecting were spent with me following her around like a baby goose to its mother. I was happy to be around she who I considered my first love.

But the yearlong gap was an eternity for us. She had changed so much from how I remembered her. What once was a pair of cherry-gloss lips was now dry-cracked and paler than normal. There were some heavy rings under her eyes, and a few red peaks erected from her sharp jaw line. Although she used to be a wild and uncontrollable princess, her incessant craving for a cigarette had fogged much of that mischievous innocence. Since her dad ruled the house with patriarchal, iron fists, she escaped persecution by hiding her cigarettes under the flowerpot on the roof.

Absurdity: She wasn’t popular at school, but she did have a group of guy friends who were all as addicted as she was.

Every time they came over to hang out with us on the roof, there would be a cigarette-sharing circle. Every time she offered me cigarette, I would refuse. There would often be a dagger-cold glare that was sent my way, but I was numb to her silent outburst. One day, while I was watching over her as she smoked with the three junior high school boys, I warned her that her mother was returning and that she should hide her cigarette. She suddenly let a nasty remark out loud, “Why are you such a busy body? You wanna fuck me don’t you? Sorry buddy, I don’t think I find you that much of a man.” She waved her hand dismissingly as the boys began to laugh quietly, casting their red, cannibalistic eyes at me.

I clenched fists as uncontrollable heat radiated from my core, making my face luster. I showed the four of them the worst side of me possible, my tears. They weren’t the kind of tears that come out when one is sad. The entire time I felt salty beads forming at the corner of my eyes and streaming down my cheeks as though they were descending comets, my teeth grinded together as I bore my beastly fang. But regardless of what kind of tears they were, they were my weakness.

I never showed my face around that house, ever again.

Longing: It only took a few whiny words to make me snap. He usually was picked up by his dad in a four-wheeled car, the symbol of wealth in a small and low-standard country like Vietnam. I patiently waited until the day when he had to walk home alone. A painful squeak, devoid of consciousness could be heard every time I drew my fist backward before hurling it back into the grotesque face, smeared with blood and tears. Every single punch was meaningful, serving as reminders that I was still living in the past. How happy she must have been to see me turned into such a degenerate.

Every single punch was for her, every inch of warmth resulted from spilled blood—my offering to her. She was a dead weight that I had locked around my ankle. It was undeniable that I was still living for her.

Although it took me a good while, I realized that I wasn’t living an easy life anymore and I needed money.

The Devil: There they were, gold, adapted in the form of paper with a peculiar stench. Individually, might not be worth much, but with a stack thick enough to need a rubber band restraint, one need not worry. As if the scene was taken right out of one of those Chinese dramas, where affluent feudal lords store their riches in masterly crafted, mahogany cabinets, all three stacks were nearly placed inside mold-ridden drawers which completely mismatched the apparel of a little video rental shop.

I used to be perplexed over how weak a man has to be for inanimate things to have the power to make or break him. Yet here I was drowning in hypocrisy as the money whispered devil to me. It was the first time I felt my conscience rising from the depths and clutching onto my innards, wringing them in a grotesque manner; my stomach painfully cramped up.

I did not have much time, I had to make my move soon or be caught. I thought logically to myself. Even though the option presented itself to turn back and to leave the devil buried inside his casket, I could not retreat. I could not run away. I did not want to run away. At last, my hand attained paradise. Quietly shutting the drawer back to how it was, I quietly shoved the laughing money inside my pocket as walked out of the store. I tamed my guilt by blaming her, turning me into such a weak man. Deep down inside, I knew that I was responsible for my actions. That day, the devil whispered to me and I complied.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

57

Descanso

Photograph

By Bevin Ehn

58

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Shadows

They are everywhere: unclaimed, unidentifiable, faces burned, clothes burned, skin burned black.

A young human lies face-up, arms bent unnaturally in front of him, his face turned, recoiling, and his body that was once filled with life now just adds to the rubble.

Even the sky is tinged with ash and smoke, and it’s as if nothing will ever be bright or alive again.

They are burned for the crimes of those with more power, more threat, like an offering.

A sacrifice.

By Sarah Parro

Ridiculously, part of a bridge still stands, and on it there are two discolored patches that could be oil stains, dingy blotches on the cement.

There were two people standing here, and these are their shadows.

Maybe one of them had stopped to ask for the time.

Maybe they were talking about what to have for dinner.

Maybe they were watching and pointing as that strange bullet-shaped object slid silently down the sky like a raindrop on a window pane.

Their shadows are all that is left, Ghosts, condemned to haunt the concrete.

Maybe they were the lucky ones.

Maybe they didn’t feel it.

They frighten me more than the disfigured boy.

The boy still looks somewhat human, but people aren’t supposed to vaporize.

But at least there is a record that they existed, that there was a time when they were real, and alive.

Picture their faces.

Their hair being blown back by the wind from the blast, their eyes, squinting in the toxic light.

Remember that image, for it is the proof that they were once real.

Their shadows are not all that is left.

They are right here.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

59

The Blood I

’m forty-six and disintegrating. It’s not unpleasant, though. In some respects, it’s fascinating. I gaze down into the toilet. The shape of my blackish-red blood elongates, forms its own Rorshach. A bulbous head swells from the tip of the blood, distends as if the blood-patch had grown a brain; I gaze at it almost tenderly, lift my bare heel, curl my toes tenderly, my heel testing that cool, red-splashed bowl; it may be blood, hemorrhaging, but it’s also art.

The blood toward the top of the bowl thins.

Disperses.

It looks like a tadpole.

What would a shrink say?

What can you say about a tadpole that’s indicative of psychological damage?

I stand before the toilet, reluctant to flush. Instead, I glance behind me though I know there’s no one else in the bathroom. I imagine her there, though, this woman I love, in the latest photo I’ve located: her bony face crawling with

toilet roars when I flush; “theTheblood keepstricklingdownmy thighs,andIhaveonlytobowmy bodyoverthebowlformoreblood to drop in, cloud the water.

”

shadows, the shadows Stieglitz arranged to make her look half-mad, though really she was only exhausted, seriously underweight, tired of Stieglitz chasing her for another cuntshot atop a radiator.

And the latest photo—God. It’s open, the new O’Keeffe bio, on my bed, but it’s so wonderful, that shot, that I can’t bear to look at it more than once or twice a day.

Smiling, thinking about her languorous fingersqueeze (both nipples protruding, crushed and pale, between her fingers), I attend to the task at hand. Dip two fingers into the bowl, move the fingers through the water.

Red-black clouds, shining like the stirred-up dust of a New Mexico desert. I love the blacks. The browns. The golds.

That’s what the pencils are for.

I can’t forget the beginning of the journey.

Or where the journey took me.

It’s a mystery. One’s escaped from the machine, or a girl in my class pushed a dime in then fled before she could claim it.

I crouch in the milky, dirty window light, gaze at the cardboard box. I can barely swallow. I know what’s

60

Conceptions Southwest 2011

inside isn’t alive. Know it won’t bite me.

And yet, I’m sure what I’ve heard can’t be true.

The woman bleeds until she’s pregnant. Or dead. Those are the only choices. And, for her to have a baby, the man has to put his hot-dog in her light socket.

The girls’ bathroom turns cold, though it’s a warm spring day outside.

I stare, rubbing my mouth, and think of my steady, Jess R. Russell, so devoted that—when I told him I didn’t like his too-short haircut—he wore his mother’s curlers to bed to “stretch” his hair. I don’t understand his devotion.

Consented to “go steady” because I didn’t know what it meant. Now he says we have to lie down together, like Adam and Eve. Do it in the woods behind the elementary school, near the sad browning trees that rub up against the fence. I’m twelve years old, feel unattached to my body... sometimes, before school, I watch my head detach from the bloodless stump of my neck and waft out the door, up into the sky, float toward Westwood Elementary. Watching my head depart, I wonder about this turn of events. Wonder if all my limbs will fall off one by one, become spider food.

I touch, gingerly, the cardboard box. Then grab it, pull it toward me, tuck it into my lap. I sit there on the floor, listening to the shouts of the sixth-graders playing dodgeball. In any minute the bathroom door will swing open behind me and some snot will see me on the floor of the bathroom clutching a Kotex in my hand.

I rip the end of the box. Pull out the white thing. I wonder why they call it a “napkin.” I arc up onto my knees.

Wipe the white, soft thing gingerly across my mouth. It tastes clean. Pure, like spun cotton.

A voice: “Jesus,” somebody says.

I turn around on my knees, hold the napkin against my neck. Melanie Justwell. Black-hosed legs, a minijumper that shows off her body, long blonde hair that hangs like scrubbed silk. She’s always hated me, Melanie. But I can’t summon up any feelings for her. It’d be like a toad hating a Shih Tzu. A lizard hating an eagle.

“What a retard,” Melanie says, and turns around, swinging her hair over one shoulder, leaves without peeing or checking her lipstick.

The toilet roars when I flush; the blood keeps trickling down my thighs, and I have only to bow my body over the bowl for more blood to drop in, cloud the water.

I admit that I become weirdly fascinated with watching its progress: the way it strikes the water and disperses from a rage-filled red into a more white-washed hue— less offensive. I go to the bedroom, get my colored pencils. It’s eerily quiet here without the Kidlet, who’s at preschool.

It’s weird how, at the oddest times, my mind seems to drift: I’m not conscious of not thinking, and yet it seems that—somehow—I’ve shut down. My mind is a twig in

Factory

By Terri Brown-Davidson

a current, gathering moss and debris along the banks. I look at the white, scrubbed walls of the bathroom, decide I’m losing my mind, though my test results are normal.

“Hyperplasia” a condition that attacks only fat women. Or smokers. I’m fifteen pounds underweight. And I’ve never even lit up. But I can’t get it out of my mind, the way they rolled me without my glasses into the OR, how fucking cold the place was, how they had to knock me out with a general to get between my legs, pry me open, scrape my uterus walls. I’m forty-six years old and still playing the virgin. I bleed but dislike being penetrated.

I’m fucked up, but at least I know what I want.

Came to New Mexico to draw it.

The Blood Factory.

When the whispers start, at first I don’t hear them.

Jess acts as a filter, though he’s a loser too. Last week he wore his hair rollers to class; the boys called him “faggot,” pushed him till he fell down. I couldn’t defend Jess, even if I wanted to—he’s so much odder that I don’t want to be associated with him. But for years I’ve felt like an alien; the rounded sack of my stomach sagging beneath jumpers, my ears like sweet pink waterwings thrusting out from my oversized head—my hair perpetually greasy.

My mother swears I’m going through a “phase.”

But I know better. The “phase” has been deepening since third grade, when the other kids first started making fun of my pale skin, my look that of an astonished peeled egg whenever I’m photographed.

And, thanks to all the hot-fudge sundaes I consume (my sweets fetish growing daily), I have a double-chin that I press into a flesh-beard, calling myself “Abe Lincoln.”

The best defense is a good offense.

So when the whispers start, I’m always walking behind Jess, and his soft, boneless body prevents me from seeing the mouths move, the white teeth flash.

I put my hands over my ears.

And run, behind Jess, to the shelter of the nearest bathroom.

It’s the boys’ bathroom, as it turns out. Instantly, my fright goes away, is replaced by the curiosity I experienced on finding the cardboard box.

“What’re these?” I ask Jess, and glance toward the door.

“Urinals.” “‘Urinals’?”

“To pee in, Dork.”

I pause. Glance. They’re all white-looking, crusty.

They have stains inside, along the grungy grayish sides that look like maps.

“No, really.”

“Yes, really.”

“Why don’t they just pee in the toilet?”

sw

Jess looks at me then. “They’re right about you, you know? You don’t know much.”

“What’re they saying?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“No,” I say, and Jess tugs on his curls, smiles.

I sink onto my knees before the bowl. O’Keeffe was famous in an age when women could be renowned for photography but not painting. So what did she do?

She cropped and framed images AS IF THEY WERE PHOTOS. And that gave even her gigantic flower paintings an air of familiarity which made her oils, so hyperreal and shockingly garish, amenable to critics. And now, I’m attempting the same thing. I’m drawing the Blood Factory but in such a way, I hope, as to not alienate my critics. And what is the Blood Factory, you might ask? A woman’s life blood. Shed blood. Birth blood. The periods she gets when she’s about to lose them. Become the fucking blank canvas that she was—that I was—before the first blood stained her panties, before she became connected to the universe in terms of its anxiety and ache and savagery.

I’m about to become the girl I was at twelve, the girl who didn’t know what a sanitary napkin was…or a urinal.

I’m about to become a Tabula Rasa.

And I can’t fucking wait.

My mother tells me about the blood. At the time, I think she’s joking. It’s like when I first heard about the light bulb and the hot-dog; it seems so impossible that I wait for her mouth corners to twitch.

“So, you don’t use it to wash your face,” she says.

“You don’t use it to wipe your mouth.”

She touches my hand as if she’s worried. She’s the one who found the sanitary napkin under my pillow; I hid it there, using it each night after dinner to wipe bacon grease and roast beef stains off my mouth, though I felt weird doing it, felt that something wasn’t right. And now— I stare.

My mother’s aging badly.

Her eyes, once a vivid blue, have blood threads that blossom out from the irises. Her skin, since we moved to Nebraska, has gotten dry, sloughs off onto her pillow at night in dusty little patches I find in the morning; I lifted one once on the end of my finger, tasted it though I knew I wasn’t supposed to; it crunched brittley between my teeth, and I realized that I was tasting human skin and had to run to the bathroom.

The next time I hemorrhage over the bowl, I don’t flush but go to the bedroom, fetch my best wooden case of colored pencils. I love to draw, started before I moved from Nebraska to New Mexico, though it took a while to uncover my subject matter. The process is mostly psychological: lingering for hours around the subject that obsesses you until you’re finally able to work up the nerve to circle in closer. For me, I discovered, that’s blood. Menstrual blood,

Vol. XXXIV

61

partly because it’s easy to acquire: every month, until I experience the end, I’ll be “back in business,” so to speak. In the meantime, I work from memory. The blood clouds float in different ways: some drop to the bowl bottom as if they contained lead content. Others disperse quickly, turn wispy in seconds, the pale red threaded with cloud-like patches.

Sometimes the blood is a rich black: somber, freighted with death. That blood has more of an oily sheen and makes me melancholy when I look at it.

I pick out a crimson pencil, incredibly stark, draw a blood arc dispersing within the bowl. All at once I wonder if O’Keeffe did this, gazed upon her own blood.

Certainly she examined her genitalia, had to in the photos.

What did she think about her monthly shedding, about the babies she’d never had? Like Kahlo, did she regret her miscarriages? Or was she more like me, hardening herself to the possibility of giving birth, persuading herself that her art was her brain-children, a substitute for everything from the babies she couldn’t birth to the terror she experienced during cold winter nights when Abiquiu became buried in snow and there was nothing to look at for miles, everything inside her turning warped, frigid, cold, as it does for me now, selecting an ebony pencil, trying to capture the deathsad nature of my blood?

Jess first invites my fascination, describes his interest while we’re sitting by ourselves on the quad, unwrapping our lunches: everybody knows which stone bench is ours.

Never comes close.

“I mean, all those serial-killers guys,” Jess says, touching his sandwich: liver and onions. “They had to be on to something.”

“Serial killers? You’re sick.”

My mother made me a thermos of hot soup. I hate soup, especially chicken noodle; it always makes me feel sick.

I pick up the thermos, dump the contents out over the grass.

“And regular killers, too. You know, like older criminals: Bonnie and Clyde.”

meanallthoseserial-killers “ Iguys.

They had to be on to something. ”

“And why did these people ‘like’ blood?”

“It gave them a feeling of power,” Jess says. He bites into his sandwich; a moist, rank smell; I shudder.

“Same as when you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Jesus, you’re naive. You know...‘it.’”

“But people don’t really do that, you know,” I say.

62

Conceptions Southwest 2011

“I mean—not really.”

“Sure they do. Did your parents take you to see ‘The Bible’?”

“What? The movie?”

“Adam and Eve,” Jess says. “Look,” he says. “I’ll prove it to you. I’ll prove it to you. ‘Kay?” I look at him.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Does it hurt?”

He pauses a respectful second.

Then he says, “You think it’s not real. So can something that’s not real hurt?”

“Ok,” I say, rising to his challenge—I’m nothing if not competitive. “Name the time. Name the place.”

“Tomorrow night. Midnight. Behind the woods.”

“How do I get in? Westwood’s locked.”

“Just scale the fence,” Jess says. “It’s short.

Anybody can do it. Even a shrimp like you.”

“Ok,” I say. “But it’d better not hurt.”

We kiss once then, lightly, to seal the bargain.

But what if I’m wrong? What if it does hurt?

Worse, what if it changes me?

I don’t want to go.

But nobody—not even Jess, who all the kids laugh at more than me—can call me a chickenshit.

I stop breathing before midnight arrives. All that day at school I’m panicky, avoiding Jess in the hallways, in class, though he tries to make eye contact. Finally he corners me in the cafeteria, where I stand leaning against the wall, looking for a table to sit down, holding my redplastic tray and my limp-lettuced cheeseburger on top.

Smart boy, my Jess. He glides by me, cuts his eyes toward me, whispers, “Tonight.”

I don’t dare nod.

Instead, I hurry to the table with the Fat Kids, the lowest rung on Westwood’s social ladder. They’re thrilled when anyone sits with them, even a loser like me.

“Girls’ tits!” somebody laughs.

I turn around.

Jess.

Oh, God. I chew my cheeseburger—too scared to do anything—and watch as, across the room, they hoist him atop the radiator. As a joke, he’s tried again to sit with the jocks. Once again, they’ve pulled his shirt over his head and dumped him atop the radiator.

Poor Jess. He looks at me then away. His food’s on the floor. His tray. He has his shirt back on now. It’s pink.

But everybody in the cafeteria’s seen his scrawny pale chest, lurid with bright red nipples. When I look at him, I ache.

Not for him, exactly. Maybe for his and my loser status. It’s hard not to be liked. Hard to be dumped on day after day.

Hard for me to admit that, hell, I don’t like Jess either, even though we’re going steady.

The night of the woods I can’t sleep. I go to bed

early, listen to my parents in the kitchen. A warm yellow light slides beneath my door. “Derrick,” my mother says, and laughs. Then she makes a weird sound—a purr?—and her voice gets strange. My father laughs, too. “The only time we get,” he says. I listen to them carefully, trying to figure out how they’ve changed. Some memory’s pressing down. As if a small cement block’s settled atop my mind.

I’m trying to picture something, bright white flashes, my parents lying together in bed.

I want them to come to me. I want them to tuck me in. Headlights from passing cars ease across my walls, make shapes. I wonder if it’ll kill me, what Jess and I have planned. I want to call my parents into my room, have them sit down on the bed, reassure me. But—though I can’t be positive—some part of me senses they won’t approve.

At 11:45 (not even sleepy), I double-check my clock then slip out of bed. Push the window open; it sticks a little, because of the cold and damp, hurts my palms. Finally I get it up. Step over the sill, onto the hard black winter dirt.

Ease the window closed. The kitchen light still burning—I can see it from the side of the yard.

Westwood’s two blocks away.

I run.

Before I even get there I wish I’d brought a blanket. A fleece throw. Anything. I’m wearing the rose-colored, loosefitting sweatsuit that I put on instead of jammies, but I’ve forgotten to bring a coat, and bright clouds of frost hang before my mouth. I can feel my face getting more red, chapped, by the second. It’s crazy, what we’re doing. What if my parents find out I’m gone? I know them. They won’t wait five minutes, even. If they discover I’m missing, by the time I return, there’ll be cop cars around our house.

The streets look different late at night. Weird. More gray, lifeless. As if the houses I see every morning on my way to school, shadow-wrapped, aren’t real. I look down at my white sneakers advancing along the streets, trailing their laces in the gutter, and even they don’t look real. Like limp white worms falling dead. All of a sudden I get the prickly sensation I’m being watched. Then I realize that it’s only the tail end of my sweat shirt, hanging down past my butt. I’m following myself. I try to laugh but it’s too eerie: I can’t. I trot and my sneakers make fake slapping sounds on cement.

And then, almost before I can draw another breath, I’m at the fence. The fence, which I marked on my first day of first grade, when my mother walked me to school. I was already reading pretty well by then (my mother, being the overprotective type, had kept me out of kindergarten), and so I could pronounce the words written all over in a smeared red ink that struck me as scary, though I didn’t

sw

know what they meant. “Ignore them,” my momma said then, gripping my hand. “They’re bad words. Written by bad kids. You’ll see.”

Now, of course, I can not only read them but have scrawled a few of my own, though I still don’t know what they mean: Tyra James is a Lesbo.

Kevin Halter Sucks Dick.

If You Want a Good Fuck, Call Cherelle at 398-8204.

And the drawing that’s haunted me since first grade, though now I’m going to find out what it means.

From a distance, Jess doesn’t look real. The rickety little fence shortens to a gate that faces the elementary school, a gate that’s rumored to keep bad men out though anybody can jump it.

Then, there’s the taller mesh fence, which is always unlocked when I visit it during school hours. I peer through the mesh, watching the small, white figure that I know is Jess sitting by the woods. I don’t think he can see me from here. It isn’t too late to forget the whole thing. And, truthfully, part of me’s scared. Wants to turn back.

All my life, though, I’ve had moments which didn’t feel like much at the time but—in retrospect—felt like destiny.

Meeting Jess on this dark, near-moonless night by the woods feels like one of those moments.

I hook one sneaker into the fence. Grip the mesh with both hands, pull myself up. Keep climbing. It’s easy.

Always, in PE, I’m the girl who can’t hang onto the rope that’s attached to the ceiling. Miss Parkins always says it’s because I’m too fat. And that’s one of my nightmares, my face turning red as I struggle to climb, the armpits of my regulation “Westwood Elementary School” t-shirt getting wet, my palms developing ropeburn, the kids laughing at my jiggling white thighs. The moment when I give up and fall to the gym mat. All the kids laughing, Miss Parkins trying not to, though her mouth keeps twitching. “We are what we eat, Kerry,” she says, before turning to the next victim. I want to ask her what the fuck she consumes. Nails and boards? Dog turds on toast?

Of course I don’t say anything.

I’m a chickenshit through and through.

As I walk closer, I feel him receding. Maybe it’s that I’m just getting colder. I can’t wrap my arms tightly enough around myself. My sweatshirt sleeves keep pushing up over my elbows; my whole body turns stiff; my knees lock. His pale face hovering. The dense black curtain of trees, flickering in the moonlight. The sprinklers go on, and my sneakers get soaked, sink again and again into mud and flattening grass. I look up at the dark streaks of clouds

Vol. XXXIV

63

filtering across the moon and want to be home again, in bed, listening to my parents speak in hushed tones in the kitchen. The sanitary napkin in my pocket. The sweatpants’ drawstring, pulled too tight, cutting off my breathing. Jess on the edge of the woods. I walk up to him. He has a large, navy-blue blanket spread across his lap.

“I thought you weren’t coming,” he says.

My jaw’s paralyzed.

“It was just hard,” I say. “Hard to walk. Colder than I thought.”

“You’re not scared, are you?”

I examine his pale, floating face, his closely cropped blond curls.

“Yes,” I say. “No. I don’t know.”

He glances at his fingers; they looked shredded in the moonlight. Jess is the only boy I know who bites his nails.

“Get under the blanket,” he says. “I’ll help you keep warm.”

My teeth are chattering so I unlock my knees then sit down in the rough brown woodchips that make up Westwood’s forest floor. Jess moves away from me slightly, as if surprised by my presence, surprised to find any part of my body touching him. Then he wraps the blanket around our necks; feeling the fabric there isn’t funny and

IfeelI’mnottalkingtoJess “Suddenly R.Russell,theotherloserwhohappens

tobemybestfriend,buttosomeone incredibly warm, comforting.

”

yet, strangely, makes me grin, or maybe I’m just nervous.

My body starts to unfreeze and warm, and his body, toasty beneath the blanket, begins to feel good, or least vaguely familiar, parts of it distinguishable: this is his belt buckle.

This is the hard, threaded pocket of his jeans. When he tucks his hand in mine, I’m startled. Then I feel his fingers.

They’re rough, chapped—from the cold? I run my fingers over his nails. They feel like confetti—too soft, fragile, but I keep holding them.

“It’s ok,” he whispers, “ok,” and suddenly I feel I’m not talking to Jess R. Russell, the other loser who happens to be my best friend, but to someone incredibly warm, comforting. I lie down on my back, gazing up at the blackening sky, a few stars overhead, their whiteness shining through layers of smog. And I see the tree tops move, blackgreen in their own thick shadows; I can see everything beyond the clouds, the faint graininess of the night sky, grayer beyond the black. I spread my fingers before my eyes: they look shadowy, elongated. And when I feel Jess’s weight, it’s a shock. I didn’t know he was going to climb on top, and he’s much heavier than I expected. For seconds I can’t breathe; even my skeleton feels crushed. Then, cold air seeps up my legs as he rolls my sweatpants down.

His fingers fumble.

64

Conceptions Southwest 2011

I draw a breath, quickly.

Then, a sudden warmth. A pushing that’s strange but rapidly becomes normal. His fingers, stroking me. I breathe more easily now, lift my legs, wrap them around his hips. We start moving together while I keep watching the sky, his breath warm and fragrant against my cheek. I rock against him and push up against his hips and the sky starts to drop, swing down in its blackness and shadows and stars, closer and closer until it stretches itself over my face, moves inside my mouth. I feel it, then. Taste it. What?

Everything. Nothing. Me. His sudden movement, the way he stops. What comes out of me, greasing my thighs with a warmth that takes me back to a place I haven’t thought of in years, a place where I lie in my toddler bed with the blankets pulled up to my neck and feel that warmth, savor it, on every part of my skin.

“Are you bleeding?” Jess asks, his voice very quiet.

I don’t answer, touch his head instead, his skull, feeling its shape, the bones in his neck. What are losers, anyway? Maybe they just aren’t alive. But the best part is that I don’t feel like a loser, at least not right now. Don’t feel ugly, not even when we gather our clothes up silently and go home to our separate houses.

The pencil snaps.

I throw the sheared-off lead into the toilet.

Mystery. Yes. There’s a collection that photographers love called “The Stieglitz Series on O’Keeffe.” What it is, actually, is the 300+ black-and-white photos that Stieglitz took of O’Keeffe when she became his muse. In some of the photos, she posed before her own paintings. This imbued her with the mythical quality that later led to her becoming one of the most mysterious women in American painting.

Were her flowers about sex? Were her sun-bleached cow skulls about death?

Nobody knows, and that’s why viewers return so avidly to her paintings.

I want that for my work.

I’ve never celebrated any part of this before, any part of the blood or pain or mystery that will be leaving me soon.

Before, I always thought it was masochistic to recognize the body’s decay, from birth to menses to death.

Now, I rather enjoy my finiteness.

Like O’Keeffe in the new photo I’ve found, the one where she twists both nipples so hard that, even in the darkening sepia tones, you can see the nipples blanch, maybe nothing is as painful as we believe.

Because all pain, all suffering, are a part of transcendence—right?

I don’t know.

I don’t know anything for sure.

All I’m certain of is that—like O’Keeffe—I’m glad I moved to New Mexico. I’m glad I’m here next to the toilet, watching the red water shift and rotate and glisten, sketching in bold primary colors the movement of my own blood, the flow of what’s left of me toward the grave. csw

42

By Bob Sabatini

The office was sweltering. The building was erected in 1913, when the only notion of air conditioning was to open a window. On this day, opening a window would only let in the muggy Brooklyn summer. Two men were inside, and though they must have been frying, neither took off his coat. There was business to attend to.

The one who was standing did most of the talking.

“Mother-fucking nigger, who the hell do you think you are, wearing that uniform?” Word was, this man was a minister’s son.

“Goddamn it, boy, you set one foot in my town and I’ll shoot you dead.”

The younger man sat, listening. He watched intently: how flailing arms caused the rolls of fat to jiggle, how the sweat running down his face made his cheeks shine. He said nothing.

“Hey nigger, how ʻbout a shine? Where do you think you’re going, nigger? Niggers eat over there. You know that, and if you don’t, you’d better learn it quick, boy.” The speaker took a moment to clear his throat. He’d been at this for an hour. The young man listened, never flinching or dodging.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, you black bastard.

We’re gonna find your wife and string her up from a tree.

Tell me something, Jack. How can you possibly think a nigger is a human being?” The sermon was over, and still the young man sat, waiting. “Judas Priest, are you sure you can handle that?”

The voice was surprisingly squeaky for a man of his build, but it never wavered. “I’ve handled it all my life.”

“Can you handle it for three more years, without fighting back?”

The young man retreated into thought for quite some time. Then he stood. “Mr. Rickey, if you’re willing to take this risk, I am too.”

The old man made a wry smile. “Your funeral,” he muttered, as he offered his hand.

sw Vol. XXXIV

65

The Looking Glass

By Graham Gentz

(Lights up. The lighting of the set is done so with a checkered, chessboard-like fashion. At the back wall is a wide black panel. WHITE KING and RED KING sit opposite each other [stage left and right, respectively] playing on a mounted chessboard at center stage, with each playing the other’s color. WHITE KNIGHT enters.)

A boat beneath a sunny sky, Lingering onward dreamily In an evening of July—

WHITE KNIGHT

Children three that nestle near, Eager eye and willing ear, Pleased a simple tale to hear— Long has paled that sunny sky: Echoes fade and memories die.

Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise, Alice moving under skies Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear, Eager eye and willing ear, Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie, Dreaming as the days go by, Dreaming as the summers die: Ever drifting down the stream— Lingering in the golden gleam— Life, what is it but a dream?

Had any good dreams lately?

(exits) WHITE KING (while playing)

RED KING Oh, you know. The usual. I was this massive hand moving these pieces around.

WHITE KING Really?

RED KING Oh, yes. The odd thing was I couldn’t remember what was going to happen before it happened. Time moved as though things that happened first came before those that came second.

(ALICE enters) WHITE KING How very surreal.

RED KING Oh, yes. Check.

WHITE KING Imperial fiddlestick! How am I to get out of that now— RED KING No, no. You just moved. I’m in check.

66

Conceptions Southwest 2011

WHITE KING What? Oh, yes! Of course! How silly of me. I am good that this, aren’t I? ALICE What do you mean? That isn’t how the game is played at all!

WHITE KING And who might you be, missy, to tell kings how to play chess?

RED KING Quite right.

ALICE Well, my name is Alice, and you— WHITE KING You will refer to me as “Your Majesty!”

RED KING It’s always good to try to say it as much as possible.

ALICE I’m sorry, your Majesty, but you’re playing it all backwards! When you put someone in check, you say, “Check.” The other person doesn’t say it for you.

WHITE KING Hrmph. Well, then, you obviously don’t know how to play at all. You’re probably not nearly as good as I am either. You’re the one that’s backwards.

RED KING Likely insane.

WHITE KING Stark raving mad, I’d say! It’s to be expected now- a-days. Never know who might pop in existence from some dreamer’s dream.

ALICE I’m not insane!

RED KING Yes, well, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Check.

WHITE KING Oh! Right again! This truly is a fun game, isn’t it?

RED KING Quite. Now, where was I? WHITE KING The hand.

RED KING Right, right. The hand. So, with things moving forward, as they were, I began to wonder, what if— ALICE Excuse me, but where am I? RED KING You hear something?

WHITE KING I don’t rightly think so.

ALICE Ugh! Beg your precious pardons, highest of majesties, but— RED KING Butt? But, what? The butt of what? A cigarette? A joke?

ALICE I— WHITE KING Aye! That is the answer! Her eyesight deceives her!

ALICE No, it’s— RED KING Yes, but do you truly “know” what you know? Or do you merely think you know? If you think in words, then you think the words, not the thoughts, and then one can never be certain.

WHITE KING True, true.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

67

Stop it! You’re twisting my words!

ALICE

RED KING My dear, we are not the twisters. Words twist themselves. Words are fluidic by nature. They move in and out as they will.

WHITE KING (agreement) And out and in. (pause) ALICE ...You’re confusing me.

RED KING So sorry, dear. Language tends to have that effect.

WHITE KING We sympathize. (turns back to the game) Where were we?

RED KING I’m in check.

WHITE KING Oh, yes. That’s right.

ALICE Wait! (crosses to chess board) I didn’t get to ask! Just...where am I? RED KING “Where?” “Where” is easy. I think you want to be asking better questions. Like, “who,” for example.

ALICE Who? WHITE KING Identity is an elusive thing, my dear. It is more alterable than most language.

ALICE But I know who I am! I’m—(recalling) Alice! I’m Alice!

RED KING Alice this, Alice that. One can never completely be certain.

WHITE KING Or uncertain.

ALICE Fine. But what about “where?”

WHITE KING Ah, where! Why, my dear, you’re in the Looking Glass! The land where outcomes precede events— WHITE KING —cakes are passed out before being cut— RED KING —destinations are reached by walking in the opposite direction— WHITE KING —the future is remembered— RED KING —one must run as fast as they can to stand still— WHITE KING —and thinking is done best whilst standing on the head!

ALICE This sounds like a very confusing place.

WHITE KING No more confusing than most.

ALICE It is! It’s nothing like home!

RED KING “Home?”

ALICE Yes! WHITE KING (skeptically) What is...“home?”

ALICE Why, it’s where I was before I was here!

68

Conceptions Southwest 2011

RED KING (shocked) “Before?” Oh, dear. You are mad. You probably don’t even remember what going to happen later on.

ALICE I am not!

WHITE KING What is...“home” like? It sounds dreadful.

ALICE No, it— (freezes) I— ... I can’t remember...

RED KING Ah! That’s a relief ! I was beginning to worry about you, my dear! You might even be well enough to play in the game!

WHITE KING Not that you need to be well in the head to do so, anyway.

(KINGS laugh.)

ALICE What game?

RED KING Why, the grandest game of all!

WHITE KING The game that we all play and struggle to win!

ALICE ...chess?

(KINGS laugh.)

RED KING You will make a wonderful pawn.

(KINGS each move a chess piece simultaneously) KINGS Checkmate.

(KINGS laugh.)

WHITE KING Well, we ought to be getting to the real one, I suppose. You there?

RED KING Quite.

(Each king stands, turns around and then exits walking backwards. Lights dim to shallow focus on ALICE) ALICE No! Wait! Where are you going? What do you mean I— Hey! I— (stops, looks around) Where am I? (moves down stage) What am I doing here? (sigh) I must be going crazy. (sits) How did I even get here? (puts head in hands) Why can’t I remember?!

ACK! I was...talking to mom and... Dr. Lewis about...something... Mom was shouting...I— (jumps up) AAH! What is wrong with me? I gotta get out of here! (turns stage left) Where did they go? (squints) I can’t see anything... HEY! (runs off down stage left; after a few beats, enters up stage left and crosses to center stage) What— What am I still doing here?

(RED KNIGHT enters stage right, crosses behind ALICE) Wait— (shaking head) What was it that they said about— (freezes) AH! This isn’t happening! I must be— RED KNIGHT —dreaming?

ALICE (jumps) Oh! You surprised me! I didn’t see you com— (sighs) Never mind. Who are you?

RED KNIGHT (smiles) I’m the Red Knight. I don’t think you’re dreaming.

ALICE (sighs) Well, thank you, it’s— RED KNIGHT We may be a dream, but you’re not the dreamer.

ALICE (stops) ...dreamer?

sw

Vol. XXXIV

69

We are all part of the dream. ...What dream?

This. All of it. It is all around us.

I... I don’t understand.

RED KNIGHT ALICE RED KNIGHT ALICE

RED KNIGHT It is difficult to understand fully. We are all bordered. Bounded by reality.

ALICE Reality? Isn’t this place reality?

RED KNIGHT (smiles) Is it? (pause) ALICE I— I need to figure this out, in order to get out of here— right?

(RED KNIGHT stares blankly) Um— OK. (thinking) You said things about reality? And dreams? But, they’re different.

RED KNIGHT Not so.

ALICE How? RED KNIGHT Things are not one or the other. So called “reality” restrains true thought and conception. It limits it.

ALICE “Bounded?”

RED KNIGHT Yes. ALICE Bounding what?

RED KNIGHT It doesn’t matter. Nothingness, chaos. That’s not important. The key is the border itself. The line between existence and oblivion.

ALICE Why? How can a “line” be more important than what is being separated? A line has only one dimension: its length.

RED KNIGHT A misnomer. Existence yearns to exist so much that it always finds a way. Wrapped around it and inside it is what matters.

Infinity folds in on itself within a line. Each side of the line is the true limitation. The planes of existence, because they exist, are limited in that respect. Because the “space” of a line cannot exist, there is no limit to what the middle ground can contain.

ALICE But, with limitation and boundaries comes law and reason. If existence, true existence, is limited, then it is ruled by laws.

Waking, unlike Dream, is reality.

RED KNIGHT Then if waking is reality, what is Dream? Chaos? Delusion?

ALICE It certainly seems that way!

RED KNIGHT But there is order. Rules. Law. ALICE Where?

RED KNIGHT (points) Do you see that flower over there?

ALICE Yes...

70

Conceptions Southwest 2011

What kind of flower is it?

It’s a rose. (looks back at RED KNIGHT) So what?

Look again.

RED KNIGHT ALICE (squints) RED KNIGHT ALICE (looks. jumps)

There are more of them! How did they grow so fast?!

RED KNIGHT How are they arranged?

ALICE They’re lined up in— rows. (looks back at RED KNIGHT) This is ridiculous! What did you do?!

RED KNIGHT I did nothing.

ALICE Of course you did! First, you point out a “rose,” and then suddenly, there’s more and they’ve popped up in “rows?”

RED KNIGHT I did nothing. It was the words themselves that did it. Your words, in fact.

ALICE How could they? Those words have nothing to do with one another! Merely because they sound the same does not make them the same! They’re completely different!

RED KNIGHT This is the way of things. Rather than recording and describing events that have already happened, words give rise to actions simply by being spoken.

ALICE How?! Words aren’t alive!

RED KNIGHT This is the nature of language. At its most basic form, it is solely fluidic. True, there is no relationship between a thorny red flower and being lined up in columns, but here, their linguistic likeness results in a functional common ground. If a flower is a rose, it is thus much more likely to be found, naturally, growing in rows.

ALICE But what does this have to do with me?!

RED KNIGHT You have yet to grab hold again, Alice. This is your world. Your grasp has been shaken free.

ALICE Shaken? What’s been shaken? I’m— (lights dim though grow harsher. ALICE begins clutching her head in pain) AAH! What is going on?!

RED KNIGHT Something is splitting the sacred boundary, Alice. The untouchable middle ground. Creasing it. Crunching it. Its dimensions are warped and it’s beginning to fracture. The seams of reality are being ripped out and tossed aside like a design stitched by mistake.

ALICE How? How can I be freed?

RED KNIGHT Free? You can never be free. But— (he hesitates) ALICE (shouting) WHAT?! BUT WHAT?!

RED KNIGHT I cannot say for certain. But I do know, in order to do anything, you must seek out the Source.

ALICE Source? What Source?

RED KNIGHT The Source of the fracture. That is, the heart of the distortion causing this madness.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

71

ALICE And what then? Even if I can find...“the Source”— what then?

RED KNIGHT (sighs) I do not know. I am only a Knight. You will need to seek out higher powers and knowledge than I. Farwell, Alice. (begins exiting, backwards, stage right) ALICE Wait! What do mean “seek out?” Where?! How?!

RED KNIGHT Outcomes precede events, Alice. They are coming. All things must pass. Goodbye. (exits) ALICE Wait! Don’t go! I— Damn it! Why is everyone leaving me? (sighs) What am I doing here? (clutches head) Nothing’s making sense! I gotta remember! I can feel myself forgetting! Things slipping away! What was it that the Red Knight said about my ...grasp? AAH! (starts pacing) I gotta get of here! Nothing’s making sense! I need— I need to— (stops) I need to stop. Focus. Gotta keep oriented. Can’t lose my head. (sighs) What is this place anyway? Life? A Dream? (scoffs) “Reality?” How can it? Even now, the very fibers of reality seem as brittle as glass. (thinks) What was it that the Kings said about glass? About this place? That this is... a mirror? The “Looking Glass?” (sighs) Everything’s distorted. Confused. My mirror is cracking. I must be dreaming. Or a Dream. (shakes head) But everything still seems so... raw. Defined. Literal. (touches head) I can’t hold on to anything. —Am I dead? I feel alive. Real. It’s just like I’m... floating. (sighs, sits) I should sit down.

(ALICE inhaling deeply. Closes eyes and relaxes. RED QUEEN enters stage right and WHITE QUEEN enters stage left. They cross to center stage, link arms, spin until they face down stage, and cross down stage until they reach ALICE) WHITE QUEEN Oh, my. The Jabberwock has certainly gotten you good, I see.

ALICE (opens eyes) —What?

RED QUEEN What are you doing?

ALICE I’m...sitting.

WHITE QUEEN (sympathetically) Well, it’s good you’re finally here.

ALICE Here?

WHITE QUEEN (nods) Being here. Living.

ALICE Living? I thought I was dreaming.

RED QUEEN Are they not the same?

ALICE Um, well— I’m existing, at least.

RED QUEEN Existence is a fragile thing, girl. Like glass. Because we are so limited and focused in what we “think” is existing, we have no concept of Reality outside perception.

ALICE Um...and because Reality limited us, we perceive only what time allows?

WHITE QUEEN But time is a trick, too, Miss Alice.

RED QUEEN Oh, yes. There is binding through words; language; and limited perception. Time is a fallacy. Eternity is but an instant, just as all of existence passes with a flash. Life is nothing but a dream, a blinking moment in God’s mind.

ALICE So, am I— nothing but a...Dream?

72

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Mayhap. Or mayhap you are the dreamer.

WHITE QUEEN

RED QUEEN Or her. Or I. It all depends on how you look at it. (smiles) Like madness. If we are the dream, who is the dreamer?

Language is a literal work, the deceiver, none other. Each has a meaning, who or however reflected.

ALICE (sighs) So...I’m not even myself. Or, rather, I don’t have a self. Nothing I do is really me doing it. I’m...(winces) “Me?” What is... “me?” (grabs head) I don’t even know who I am.

RED QUEEN The madness is creeping in.

WHITE QUEEN Attacking at lengths with mortal sin.

ALICE I...just feel so weak. Alone.

WHITE QUEEN Isolated?

ALICE Yes! RED QUEEN Blind?

ALICE YES! WHITE QUEEN Why, ‘tis because you play the game!

ALICE Game? What game?

RED QUEEN This game. The game we all play. We have no choice— but we play our parts. We play them well. And within our parts, woven in glass, are our egos. They guide us. Reflect us, but also blind us.

ALICE What glass? What reflection?! What— “part?!”

WHITE QUEEN You are a pawn, Alice.

ALICE I am not a pawn!

RED QUEEN I’m afraid you are, girl. You have always been a pawn. You have been a pawn as long as you’ve been playing the game.

WHITE QUEEN And so, the game rages on. The warring, the struggle, has been fought on unstable ground. All of existence quakes.

ALICE The war? —Do you mean the red against white?

WHITE QUEEN Not just that, dear. That is only the beginning. Yes, there is red, and there is white, but nothing is completely serene or changeless. It is the natural order of things. There is always conflict.

ALICE But not like this!

RED QUEEN No. The sickness is real. It has always been there. But not these symptoms. Not like this. No, this is shadow. Something foreign is creeping up within you. A swirling darkness, its corruption branching out, oozing and filling in the cracks of your mirror.

WHITE QUEEN The lunacy is overtaking her.

RED QUEEN Those surrounding lost in murmurs.

ALICE (hysterics) Then what is changed?! What is going on?! What is wrong with me?! (pause. QUEENS gaze upon ALICE with pity.)

sw

Vol. XXXIV

73

WHITE QUEEN You are a pawn, Alice. But the question is, whose pawn? The Red King? Mine? This very place of glass? Or are you yours, Alice? You are limited now. Frail. Severed. Why? But, can you change it?

ALICE I— I want to. But how? I don’t know. I just don’t know. I just can’t think straight. I can think, but everything just comes out backwards.

WHITE QUEEN (laughs, shakes her head) Oh, the Jabberwock has got you good, I see. (nods) RED QUEEN “The jaws that bite, the claws that catch.”

ALICE What?

WHITE QUEEN Dream away, Alice.

ALICE I— RED QUEEN (suddenly) The song!

WHITE QUEEN (agreement) The song!

RED QUEEN The beautiful, glorious, haunting song! It’s the voice! The image. It swirls, fading, but sharpens. Oh, yes, it indeed clearer now. Cracked, devilish, but there. It is always there, Alice.

WHITE QUEEN ‘Tis the source.

RED QUEEN The Source, the Source!

WHITE QUEEN The root of it all.

ALICE The root of what?

RED QUEEN “The root of what?” Of plants? Of squares? Of evil?

ALICE No, no!

RED QUEEN Dare I say itALICE Tell me, tell me!

WHITE QUEEN The root— RED QUEEN The root of it all, Alice. The Dream. The Life. All Life.

WHITE QUEEN The Source is ever-changing. Evolving, though not always for the better, losing its essence. Its thoughts. Its mind.

ALICE Its mind?

WHITE QUEEN Yes, the mind.

RED QUEEN Don’t you see, Alice? You’re Living. You’re dreaming. All this—these points, this instant, this Being. It is all you. It’s warping and cracking. Splintering at the ends. Still, the very nature of it all is being shaken loose and is losing control.

ALICE How can it be so? Through and through, I feel nothing! How can I see when I am blind?

74

Conceptions Southwest 2011

RED QUEEN You are on the wrong side of the Looking Glass, Alice. Your very mind is the fun house mirror in which we dwell.

ALICE But, it’s not me! I’m not the Dreamer! If Life is a Dream, then— I can’t! I’m just some girl! I can’t create anything! I am no great benign being!

WHITE QUEEN So, what of the dreamer? If you exist within the dream, why must the dreamer be a benevolent force? Where does the corruption—? The perversion—? The sickness in life come from? What happens if the dreamer no longer has dreams— but nightmares? (lights waver. ALICE clutches her head in pain) ALICE AAH! Where— is it?!

RED QUEEN It is calling you, Alice. The Source wants you. It cries for you.

ALICE —Where?!

WHITE QUEEN You must go to the Source, Alice. The root of the corruption. The great shadow where the madness begins.

RED QUEEN It will spread if you do not stop it soon. It distorts everything it touches. Your mind is cracking, Alice. Stop it before it shatters.

WHITE QUEEN Farwell, Alice. End the song before your own requiem begins.

(QUEENS cross to center stage, link arms, spin, then RED QUEEN exits stage right and WHITE QUEEN exits stage left. ALICE thinks about saying something to stop them, but reconsiders, merely sitting quietly. After a moment, ALICE begins to cry. WHITE KNIGHT enters stage left and crosses behind ALICE) WHITE KNIGHT Do not cry little pawn.

ALICE (fiercely) I am not a pawn! (pushes away tears) WHITE KNIGHT Mayhap. Mayhap not.

ALICE (snorts) So. Are you here to torture me, too?

WHITE KNIGHT No! Of course not, little one. I am your White Knight.

ALICE (blinks) ...What?

WHITE KNIGHT I am your White Knight. Your holy might. For you, great evil I will smite. Against vast hordes— ALICE OK, OK. I get it.

(WHITE KNIGHT smiles. ALICE looks at him skeptically) So, then, what exactly are you here for?

(WHITE KNIGHT stares blankly at ALICE) WHITE KNIGHT I am your White— ALICE Yeah, yeah, I know all that!

WHITE KNIGHT (happily) Then it should be clear!

ALICE (makes a face) “Clear?!” Nothing’s clear! I can’t think of anything that has been less clear!

sw

Vol. XXXIV

75

If nothing is clear, then stare into the mirror.

WHITE KNIGHT

ALICE (angrily) You know, the way everybody here speaks in riddles is really starting to piss me off !

WHITE KNIGHT (blinking) ...I’m sorry.

ALICE (sighs) Whatever.

WHITE KNIGHT (shifts uncomfortably) So...um...is there any evil that need slaying? Corruption that requires delaying?

ALICE (rolls eyes) Yeah. I need to go to the Source or something.

WHITE KNIGHT (nods knowingly) The root of the madness.

ALICE (suddenly) You know of it?!

WHITE KNIGHT (nods) Aye, the Jabberwock lives.

ALICE (yelling) The Jabberwock! What do you know about the Jabberwock?!

WHITE KNIGHT Well, may your heart be still, young Alice, and I will tell you the tale of the most dreaded of things. (clears throat) ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!’

He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back.

‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

76

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

(WHITE KNIGHT finishes looking very pleased with himself. ALICE, however, does not.)

Is that it?

What do you mean?

ALICE WHITE KNIGHT (confused)

ALICE How the hell was that supposed to help me? All the words were made up! (WHITE KNIGHT looks rather taken back) What is “brillig?!” Or a “tumtum tree?!”

WHITE KNIGHT I— ALICE (hysterics) That’s because you can’t! Of course you can’t! No one can! Why did I ever think you could! It’s because I’m stupid! And useless! And— (begins crying) —I don’t even remember my name!! (sobs louder) WHITE KNIGHT (rushes over to ALICE and holds her) Shh! It’s alright, Alice. It’ll be alright. Be strong. I know you can. I see it. I feel it. I know it. My strength is your strength, Alice.

ALICE (between sobs) I just— I can’t— WHITE KNIGHT Shh— Nonsense. You can. You must. This is your world. There is nothing you cannot do. All the Jabberwock has done to you is an infection of doubt.

ALICE (sobbing begins slowing) —Doubt?

WHITE KNIGHT (smiles kindly) Yes. You have begun to forget yourself. (stares into ALICE’s eyes) Alice.

ALICE (slowly) ...Alice? ...I’m...Alice? (happily) I’m Alice! (laughs, jumps up, but then stops) But— even if I know that, how am I supposed to slay the Jabberwock? Or even find it for that matter? Every time I try to leave, I end up at the same place.

WHITE KNIGHT (smiling) Finding the Jabberwock is easy, Alice. Everything is a reflection. The Jabberwock waits at the center of the madness. You reach the madness by trying to escape it.

ALICE (absorbing) Hmm. Ok. But what about Jabberwock? What am I supposed to do? Galump into battle, vorpal blade in hand?

WHITE KNIGHT (laughing softly) You have your vorpal blade, Alice. (crosses to ALICE and softly touches her forehead with his index and middle fingers) It is here. As long as your vorpal blade is intact, there is nothing the Jabberwock can do to you. It will try to confuse you. Blur the truth.

Remember yourself, Alice. The Jabberwock is nothing but a reflection. (kisses ALICE on the forehead) Do not forget.

sw

(WHITE KNIGHT bows and exits stage left. ALICE watches him go. After he is gone from sight, she takes a deep breath begins focusing)

Vol. XXXIV

77

ALICE Ok. I can do this. No problem. (looks around) Escape the madness. (stares off down stage right. Pauses. Then exits through the down stage right door. Lights dim. Chessboard pattern disappears. Soft, ominous church bells begin playing. JABBERWOCK enters from behind the back panel. It crosses to center stage and the mounted chess board. It calmly begins setting up pieces. When this is finished, JABBERWOCK cracks its neck. From stage left and stage right, respectively, the WHITE and RED KNIGHTS charge JABBERWOCK, who flicks the knights upon the chess board over, and the KNIGHTS instantly collapse. The QUEENS charge as well, and are dealt with in the same fashion by the JABBERWOCK. The QUEENS collapse. Finally, the KINGS charge and meet the same fate as the other pieces. JABBERWOCK briefly surveys the scattered bodies, then takes a pawn from the board and holds it above its head, examining it. JABBERWOCK turns so its back it to the audience, still clutching the pawn. ALICE enters through the audience, out of breath, along the stage right wall. Light level increases slightly.)

JABBERWOCK

Hello, Alice.

ALICE

...You’re the Jabberwock.

Yes. (smiles) Come. Stay a while.

What— what did you do?!

JABBERWOCK (head turns towards left shoulder, looking at ALICE) ALICE (slowly walks closer, but stops, noticing the bodies, and jumps back.)

JABBERWOCK (turns, surveying its handiwork, almost bored) Nothing that wouldn’t have happened anyway. (smiles at ALICE) Why don’t you come closer?

ALICE (eyes locked on JABBERWOCK, and shakes her head) You can’t do anything to me.

JABBERWOCK (smile widens) It doesn’t sound like you believe that.

ALICE (swallows hard) I— I do! You’re nothing but a reflection!

JABBERWOCK (laughs) “Reflection?” What did you get that idea? (nods head towards bodies) From one of these sorry souls? There is no such thing as a “reflection.”

ALICE Of course there is! There are reflections in mirrors! Metals! Pools of water!

JABBERWOCK (sighs impatiently) A “reflection” is the same as the original. There is no change. Such a thing is never possible, and it never happens. (spreads arms towards the bodies) So which is it? There is Red and there is White, Alice. Which are you? One reflects the other, do they not? If you stare into the Looking Glass, what do you see? A reflection. It is identical, is it not? Mayhap. But, there is a change. It is subtle. But it is there. Everything is reversed. Altered, yes, but surely a harmless one. But, you see, Alice, often there is not so much reflection, as refraction. More often the smallest deviation than a static duplicate.

ALICE You’re— you’re just trying to trick me.

JABBERWOCK (completely faces ALICE) It is not I who deceives you, Alice. The screaming of your broken mind blinds you, Alice. The quivering. Shaking.

Splintering.

ALICE You’re just a deviant of the mind!

JABBERWOCK “The mind?” (takes a step towards ALICE) Whose mind?

78

Conceptions Southwest 2011

My— my mind is my own!

“Your” mind? Just who are you?

ALICE JABBERWOCK (takes another step towards ALICE) ALICE

I’m— I’m Alice!

JABBERWOCK (laughs) You’re not Alice. (holds up pawn) You’re a pawn. A tiny insignificant pawn, struggling to find its way across the chessboard.

ALICE I am not...a pawn.

JABBERWOCK Of course you are! Haven’t you wondered why you can’t see anything? Why you’re so limited? (laughs) You’re so blind, you can’t even see how weak and stupid you actually are!

ALICE No! You’re wrong!

JABBERWOCK (smiles) No need to get angry. (beckons) Come over here, we have a nice, civil talk.

ALICE I— JABBERWOCK No need to fight. (slowly crosses back to chessboard) Come now. Don’t be afraid.

(JABBERWOCK continues slowly crossing while beckoning ALICE. ALICE, at first, resists, but slowly begins following the JABBERWOCK) JABBERWOCK That’s a good girl.

(ALICE continues following the JABBERWOCK, but once it reaches the chessboard, ALICE breaks free and runs to down center stage) ALICE No! You can’t make me!

JABBERWOCK You stupid little girl! Why do you keep fighting?! Can’t you see you’ve already lost?! All you’re doing is delaying the inevitable.

ALICE You’re not real!

JABBERWOCK (stops, confused) “Real?” (laughs) Of course, I’m real, girl. I’m as real as they come. I am your shadows. Your fears. (JABBERWOCK’s eyes gleam) I am your Doppelganger.

ALICE No! No! JABBERWOCK I’m afraid so, my dear. (thoughtful) In fact, I suppose I have to thank you. Without you, I wouldn’t even be here.

ALICE No! I’m nothing like you!

JABBERWOCK “Like me?” My dear, I am you. Your doubts. Your sickness. Your evils. The deepest darkness pits of your soul. (smiles) I am all the demons that lay inside you.

ALICE No! Go away!

JABBERWOCK I’m afraid I can’t. Even if I wanted to. But, you, dear, should make up your mind. You yourself summoned me here.

ALICE No! I didn’t!

JABBERWOCK Oh, you did. And there’s nothing you can do about it now, my dear. Nothing at all.

sw

Vol. XXXIV

79

ALICE (breaking down)

No! No...

(JABBERWOCK stares at ALICE intently, as if staring into her. An expansive grin spreads across JABBERWOCK’s face, as if it’s thoroughly enjoying itself.)

JABBERWOCK Scream, Alice. Scream. I want to feel you. Be you. All is lost, if not for me, Alice.

ALICE (quietly, spirit leaving her) No... You can’t make me— JABBERWOCK (enraged, tossed the chessboard aside) SCREAM FOR ME! (ALICE screams. And screams. And screams. JABBERWOCK laughs forcefully, beckons to the bodies laying on the ground. They rise up, as will not under there own will, and drudge offstage, carrying their chess piece counterparts. JABBERWOCK grabs the chessboard and disappears behind the black panel, leaving the screaming ALICE alone onstage. Lights up completely and harshly.)

INTERCOM Welcome to Looking Glass Correctional Asylum. All patients must be in their chambers by 10 o’clock. Today’s quotation, “All is nobler in the mind of kings.” Remember, this week, in the Placid Room, there are chess seminars for patient recreation. Last night’s winning game: Red Queen to B8. White Knight to E4. Red King to G7. (fades) Alice to I9...

(Lights down) END

80

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Music Compositions Be sure to check out the selections from our musicians who submitted fantastic pieces of art at our sound cloud:

soundcloud.com/csw-1 Cesar Aviles Viejos Tiempos

Lucas Floyd The Downside of Paris

Jesse Lee Nocturnes

Matthew Loftus Shadows of Impermanence

Christian M. Newman Prelude #1 and 2 for Amplified Piano

Jack Telfer St. Claire Sorrow

Sabrine Wilden Pathways of the Soul: A Piece for Piano and Dancers

sw Vol. XXXIV

81

Contributors

Arun Ahuja Arun Ahuja got his M.S. in biomedical engineering and is certified to teach Qijong exercises. At UNM he is taking a string of awareness movement classes which so far have included feldenkrais, Tai Chi and Yoga.

Dr. Angela Arrey-Wastavino

Dr. Arrey-Wastavino, has authored fiction and non-fiction work. Her professional research expertise includes diversity integration, equity and social justice; themes that lead not only her academic career, but also inspire her fiction.

She has volunteered for diverse grassroots groups and non-profit organizations. Her multi-ethnic background has motivated her to extensively participate in multicultural art community projects in the US, Europe and Latin America.

Cesar Aviles Cesar Aviles is a violinist/composer born in Puerto Rico. As a composer he was invited to play his caprice #1 for violin solo on Fox News in a commercial for the Eastern Music Festival in 2007. Cesar is an active orchestral and chamber musician with a very strong interest in film music.

Terri Brown-Davidson Terri Brown-Davidson’s poetry has received the AWP Intro Award and a Yaddo fellowship among other honors. She was also awarded , the New Mexico Writer’s Scholarship for fiction.

Tracy Buckler Tracy is an English major and hopes to go into publishing someday. She loves creative writing of all sorts and is currently working on several books.

Philip Charles Stephens Philip Charles Stephens grew up in the town of Colchester in England, but has lived in Rio Rancho for nine years. He has had poetry published in Leonardo Magazine and recently completed English-Departmental honors for which he received cum laude. He is finishing his first novel.

Madeleine Coen-Mozley Madeleine Coen-Mozley is a junior at UNM, pursuing a B.A. in creative writing with a fiction concentration. Literature is one of her lifelong passions.

Eva (Avenue) Dameron Eva (Avenue) Dameron publishes Nightly Noodle Monthly, a politico-absurdicoartarded-foot-in-mouth satire rag, which placed second for “Best Local Zine” for 2010 in Best of Burque. She also exhibits her abnormal-behaviorist paintings around town and around the country. She composes and performs doom-saloon music in the band Eva Ave. and Carlosaur.

sw Vol. XXXIV

83

Bevin received her degree in mass communication from UNM in December 2009. She is continually inspired by the faces, places, sights, and sounds of her native home, New Mexico. Her most recent publication, “Staff Lines and Lifelines,” received the staff choice award for Literature in the 2010 issue of Scribendi.

Christia Farris Christia Farris is a junior at the University of the New Mexico. Her favorite poets include Pablo Nevada, Ai, Kim Addonizo, and Lucille Clifton. She studied for a year in North Carolina and proceeded to work in Yellowstone National Park the following summer; needless to say, she loves to travel.

Lucas Floyd Lucas Floyd has been writing and performing music since the age of 14. He is now a music student at UNM and will graduate in May 2011.

Graham Gentz Graham is an Astrophysics/Creative Writing major at UNM. He is an actor and director, who finds his home at the “Daily Lobo,” writing as the film and theatre critic.

Kimberly Keller Kimberly Keller is an undergraduate majoring in philosophy and creative writing. She tried to avoid writing when she was younger, but she finally gave in.

Jesse Lee Jesse Lee is a graduate student studying music theory and composition. His work has been published by HaMaR Percussion Publications. Jesse is a native of Laramie, Wyoming.

Matthew Lee Loftus Matthew Lee Loftus is a drummer/composer, alumnus, (and periodic guest faculty member) of the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He is currently continuing his musical education at UNM as well as studying physics, mathematics, and engineering.

Mary Luttrel Mary Luttrel is 48 years old and back at school to get her degree in English with a concentration on creative writing. She’s published stories in The Sun Magazine and The McGuffin.

Joshua Montoya Josh is a student at UNM and is working towards a degree in English.

Christian M. Newman Christian M. Newman is a pianist, percussionist, and composer from Albuquerque.

He has played with local rock and experimental groups, as well as giving recitals in Europe. He has appeared on several dozen rock albums by soccer mom records.

84

Conceptions Southwest 2011

Contributors

Bevin Ehn

Contributors

Sarah Parro Sarah Parro is a junior studying professional writing and theatre. She believes in the power of words, both written on the page and performed on stage, and enjoys expressing herself through both mediums.

Morgan Podraza Morgan is a junior, double majoring in English and environmental science. Her obsessions are green chile and semicolons.

Dylan Smith Dylan Smith is a freelance photographer for the Daily Lobo. He is a junior at UNM and majoring in Art Studio.

Molly Sroges Molly Sroges is majoring in English and minoring in linguistics. When she is not busy writing, she enjoys cooking.

Tom Ta With English as his second language, Tom Ta aspires to follow in the footsteps of many other non-native writers who have captured the heart of American audiences.

This is the second time after his work in Eldorado High School’s magazine.

Jack Telfer St. Claire Jack Telfer St. Claire is an exchange student from England, studying for a degree in mathematics. He started composing at the age of six and has written around 50 works, mainly for solo piano. He plays paino, bassoon, recorder, sings and beat boxes.

Nancy Thomas Nancy is a retired early childhood educator who discovered the language of poetry in a UNM Continuing Education class. Her work has previously been published in Conceptions Southwest.

Sabine Wilden Sabine Wilden is a multidisciplinary artist from Germany. She is currently a triple major at the University of New Mexico, pursuing a master’s degree in solo and collaborative piano, as well as in theory and composition. Her pieces’ involving are inspired by her own work as a modern dancer.

Leo York

Leo York is a senior finishing up a degree in history. He hopes to one day travel around the world and document it with photos.

sw Vol. XXXIV

85

sw

8