Thel

Thel 2010

THEL

Literary / Art Magazine MEMBERS

Sarah Amundson Reina Apraez Roger Arnold Martyna Boruta Courtney Brodie Khalym Burke-Thomas Tim Carter Cassie Diaz Grace Gallagher Tim Hollinger Abby Kent Cecelia Lefurgy Whitman Littlefield Evan Phail Stephen Raulli David Stalfa

ADVISERS

Melanie Conroy-Goldman Karl Parker

Pipes

Jenny Wu

Cover: Perspectives of an Estranged Gastropod Easton Smith Back Cover: Stephen Raulli

2010

Evan Phail Khalym Burke-Thomas Sarah Amundson Roger Arnold John Lawrence Evan Phail Nate Ginnetty Sarah Amundson Courtney Brodie Easton Smith Joshua Sargent Stephen Raulli

1-2 3 4 5-6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14-15

Tribute to Michael Brecker “Imaginary” Once Upon a Time in Mayville “On the Train” “Sacrifice of Isaac” “Dissolving” Untitled “Manus” “Bone Marrow Transplant Ward” Untitled incontinence “Things that Eat and Things that are Eaten” “Episode” Untitled “Untitled” He Brought Home an Antler “I’d Be Okay With Dying” “All in a Day’s Paint

Easton Smith Amanda Whelan Jenny Wu Grace Gallagher Khalym Burke-Thomas Grace Gallagher Imani Schectman Jenny O’Brien Jenny O’Brien Imani Schectman Khalym Burke-Thomas Roger Arnold Tim Carter Reina Apraez Whitman Littlefield Yeasmine Khalique Evan Phail Abby Kent

16 17-24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31-32 33 34 35-36 37 38 39-44 45 46 47-48

CONTENTS

“The Statue” “a swelling” “Coupling” “The Opening” This Way “Boys in a Junkyard” “Cave Paintings” “You Moved / The Golden State” “College and the Search for Enlightenment” Birds “Little Tiny Guy” “At the Breakfast Table”

The Statue

Evan Phail The statue has been sitting in the same spot, A part of the world that finally stopped.

All that is left is its steady breaths.

The last of its blood flowing through the chest.

Hands as still as the pedestal where it loiters.

Useless it is, like a house without a boarder, Like a fountain without water, Like a law without order.

The lack of motion Makes the fingers numb, From the start of the wrist To the end of the thumb.

The lack of motion Makes it seem dumb, But it is the statue watching the world.

Frozen in place, Watching the monotonous space Right in front of its face, Stuck to a base Just watching the world.

Watches the people walk by Without a cry, Without a concern, As it crumbles and burns.

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It takes its last breath And prepares for death, Looks at the sky And wonders why.

In the deep blue above the statue Is the story why everything is so askew.

It can only tell through the colors in the sky Why everything goes awry.

Ruby reds, emerald greens, Like a diamond, it has seen A transparent world— Where nothing has substance Nothing has meaning.

This place that its eyes Are stuck on reading Is not receiving the vision That it once had beaming.

Like a crystal, the statue hopes to see A clear world— One where its copper form Can be put to rest, A feeling of the norm, A guarantee for the best.

Until that day comes, The statue might as well hold its breath.

2

a swelling

Khalym Burke-Thomas

please do not have shame as I traverse the folds of your loins and revisit those shriveled parts where there was once a swelling. to me, you are still a man

3

Coupling

Sarah Amundson

I In nakedness their willful warring ends.

Wakeful, she reproaches and regretting and reliving mends the truth.

Impotent, they lie under swells of trees,

her full figure proof of other pasts.

II

When it was delivered it seemed to him a changeling—some other’s.

Under covers, he saw him (drew him close) pale and puckered

choked back tears and bile.

Though she refused—to admit, she wished it had been her.

III garden the left they When he demanded back his rib but she commanded life and had a fair point.

Enraged he held her—down she clawed for centuries and gasped, grasped until she felt a hair and pulled.

4

The Opening

Roger Arnold

In my dream, I knelt before your throat because you were dying. There was a red round wound. I pushed my mouth onto it as if the wound were any other prayerless mouth and god and all his baggage made me do it, someone said into my hot ear, but when I looked up there was no body and the sky was orange and long, as if we were in a tube of sunlight as it pulled away from the earth.

God and all his mighty winds and metals and the earthworms underneath me full of dirt but no blood and your huge eyes, wet like coins, could not stop me from pressing my mouth once again to that busted part of you, that opening. I don’t believe in God, I said into the mess of your throat, and three times when I should have perhaps been blowing into you, to save you, I said this again but each time in a way that was different

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and in the end of the dream I was sucking at the air around the wound, the air that was still shaped like something missing, determined to have your life. It was difficult going at first but then it rushed out of you like water from the well’s pump and I used my hands to sheppard your soul. That swindler gets so many.

I would like to finally take this one all for myself.

6

This Way

John Lawrence

7

Boys in a Junkyard

Evan Phail The boys found entertainment in a barren place.

They did not play soccer, Nor cops and robbers, They had discarded cards, That is why they were in the junkyard.

The boys found delight in destroying things.

With keys ripped from strings, Their ears focused on the discord of chords of a derelict piano.

The harmony of the hurricane’s rampage resonated.

They lifted rubble over their heads, Causing trouble as they smashed down on the musical beds, Breaking through delicate oak threads That were once a part of the same wasteland years ago When nature had not yet been touched By the hands of men.

But the boys do not care.

To them, It’s just entertainment.

8

Cave Paintings

Nate Ginnetty

Cave paintings remain mute without linguistic mediation, so when I woke up spitting chalk and clay, I waited on translation.

I let the truth be conquered by encyclopedic lies and by choosing cautious words I became what I despised.

Now I recognize the beautiful by keeping my mouth closed; it’s the meek voice of the universe that resonates the most.

9

You Moved / The Golden State

Sarah Amundson I remember when we put that bear between us, before breasts and writhing, young and hip bone pressed to undiscovered cavity (until a year from then) our well-rehearsed diversion.

When those plastic playthings weren’t enough too curious we spent hours practicing (movements— in our adulthood making) love.

And because, in the game, you or I played he

the shame in it was minimal— careful, hidden from the keyhole.

10

College and the Search for Enlightenment

Courtney Brodie

It suffices – It quenches my thirst for poetry – I was free-falling in space In bed It was awesome Until I threw up

11

Birds

Easton Smith

12

Little Tiny Guy

Joshua Sargent There’s a tiny little man in my desk Who steals all my pencils.

He takes them and he shreds them Into tiny shards No larger than the distance From your knuckle To your knuckle, And he uses these shards To beat his wife and child.

It’s fucked up, and I’m not cool with it, So in the interest of preventing domestic violence I’m keeping very careful track of my pencils.

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At the Breakfast Table

Stephen Rualli Mother licked her fingertips to flip through the newspaper.

Father noisily slurped his black as coal coffee.

‘How awful’ mother muttered.

‘A man killed his parents.’

‘He cut their bodies apart and hid their limbs in the septic tank.’

We all paused.

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‘Why would someone do such a horrific thing?’

Father asked.

There was no resisting.

‘They must have pissed him off’ I said..‘Watch it!’

Father snapped.

I swallowed my cocoa puffs.

‘Talk to me like that one more time ‘and you will end up in the toilet tank.’

I hopped down from my booster seat-and brought my blankie with me.

15

Tribute to Michael Brecker

Easton Smith 16

Imaginary

Amanda Whelan

Catherine considered herself a generous and understanding woman but this was just too much.

How was a mother supposed to take this? She knew it was normal to behave like that but how could Sabine take it so far? Surely that couldn’t be healthy?

The window started only a foot off the ground and rose far above Catherine’s head covered in curls. The heavy curtains were tied back on either side of the clear glass, allowing light to fall on the soft, cream-colored carpet.

Below her, a story down on the sweeping green lawn of their Maryland home was a small girl, flitting around, playing in the open air. She ran about, jumping like a deer, her legs like scissors, throwing her arms up and laughing. Her dress was yellow with little yellow daisies on it and her brown hair was pulled back from her chubby face with plastic, yellow barrettes.

The little girl stopped suddenly and turned. Catherine leaned forward in her window, her breath catching as she watched her daughter start talking to the air beside her. Sabine would speak, stop, listen and giggle, or respond. Sometimes she nodded, always she smiled. Sometimes she was even thoughtful and it displeased Catherine to no end.

Something here was not right.

“But Jules-” Jules stopped in the middle of the stairs and held up a hand, his shoulders in his work shirt slanting downwards. The orange light of dawn crept through the window in the front door, casting everything in an almost crimson glow.

Catherine tried once more.

“Jules, please. I-” “Catherine, I. Said. No.” Jules started walking back up the stairs once more. “She’s just a little girl, Catherine. She’s five. Everyone has imaginary friends when they’re five.”

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“Not like this, Jules,” Catherine insisted, trotting up the stairs after him. “This is bizarre. She’s changed, Jules. She does things that no five-year-old would think of, she says things to me… she… it’s unhealthy. It’s not right, Jules.”

Jules stopped suddenly and Catherine crashed into his back. He whipped around and caught her wrist in his fist before she fell back.

“Shut it, Catherine,” he snarled. Catherine’s eyes widened and she could feel the tell-tale prickle behind them.

Jules shook her wrist and Catherine wobbled precariously on the step.

“I am sick of this. I get home at the crack of dawn, I’m out all night working – I do not want to hear about your crack theories on our daughter’s imagination. It’s not real, Catherine. It’s a motherfucking imaginary friend.”

With that, he tossed her arm away and stomped up the stairs, slamming the door to the master bedroom behind him.

Catherine sank down onto the steps, her wrist in her hand as she leaned her head against the cool wall. Tears welled up and spilled past her eyelids, flowing down her cheeks and off the tip of her chin. She cried quietly.

A prickling sensation snuck up the back of her neck and she stood, whipping around.

Nothing stood at the top of the stairs but it felt like there was someone there.

Catherine backed down the stairs, here eyes staying on the second level of the house. She stumbled when she reached the bottom step but her gaze never wavered. Instead, she threw an arm out behind her and she grasped blindly for the door and pulled it open. Once outside, she shut it quickly and ran from the house to stand in the middle of the driveway.

The cool spring air was only beginning to heat up in the Maryland morning, but Catherine felt as though it were the dead of winter in her hometown in Maine. She rubbed her hands over her bare arms and stared at the door.

The urge to run was incredible. To take off down the street in her sensible, white Keds and 18

never look back. To feel her heart pounding in her throat and her chest and the crook of her elbows. It was a childish urge, though, like how a child runs from her room after a nightmare. Only Catherine had no protective bedside to seek out, no sleepy mother to pull her under the covers and hush her back to sleep.

In fact, she was the mother. She should be the one comforting her daughter in nightmares and being strong. She should be keeping house and greeting her husband cheerfully when he came home only now there were fights and scary faces and separate bedrooms. He slept during the day in a house she kept silent while their daughter played with imaginary people in her head and his wife watched her from the girl’s bedroom window.

Why didn’t she want to go back inside?

“Mommy, what’s that?”

Sabine pointed to Catherine’s wrist.

“Nothing, sweetie,” Catherine kept her eyes on the breakfast she was cooking. “Be extra quiet today, okay, honey? Daddy had a lot of work last night and he was tired this morning.”

Sabine stared up at Catherine with her brown eyes and her hair still in her nightly braids.

“Daddy pushed you down the stairs this morning.”

Catherine broke her staring contest with the bacon and looked sharply at Sabine.

“What were you doing up so early?” she demanded.

“I wasn’t!” Sabine cried. “Jeremy was up! I swear! He told me!”

Catherine blinked, thrown off. “Who’s Jeremy?”

“My friend. Jeremy.”

“Sabine,” Catherine repeated, her voice turning harsher. “Who exactly is Jeremy?”

“My friend, Mommy! I play with him all the time.”

“I’ve never met a Jeremy. What was he doing in our house this morning?” Catherine felt her heart beating faster and she fought the urge to push at her chest to try to stop it from popping out.

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Sabine pouted. “He says you watch us from the window all the time.”

Catherine stumbled back a step. “What?”

“He says Daddy’s mean to you. He says you don’t sleep in the same bed anymore. He says that’s not good for you and Daddy’s relationship.”

“And what would he know?” Catherine asked, too stunned by the words coming out of her daughter’s mouth to question the logic in asking at all.

Sabine’s eyes never wavered, though Catherine’s spine did.

“He says even if Mommies and Daddies don’t sleep-sleep together, they should sleep together.”

“Sabine!”

“That’s what he says! And he also says Daddies should be nice to Mommies!” Sabine stopped and dropped her chubby chin to her chest as she frowned up at her mother. “And I think he’s right. If Daddy pushes you, you should push back!”

“Sabine,” Catherine spoke slowly, thankful to finally be on ground she knew how to cover, thankful that this was something familiar at least. “We don’t hit people, even if they hit us.” Catherine paused and the way that had sounded sunk into her brain. “And of course your father didn’t hit me!

Your father loves me – and you – very, very much.”

Sabine shrugged in a gesture that looked only all-too-grown up for a five-year-old.

“Jeremy doesn’t think so.”

“Well, Jeremy’s wrong,” Catherine snapped. “Now go sit at the table and wait for breakfast.

Quietly.”

Sabine huffed but did what she was told. She slid up onto the chair. She cocked her head to the side and nodded, looking as if she were listening to a voice only she could hear. Catherine felt a shiver dance up her body and her eyes were drawn to a particular, empty chair.

When she set the table, Sabine asked for a third plate.

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“For Jeremy, Mommy,” she begged.

Catherine hesitated but her daughter’s eyes were too much for her to withstand.

“Just this once,” she specified.

After they finished, Sabine jumped from the table and ran upstairs to get ready for school. As she passed Catherine, she called out: “Jeremy says he liked your eggs, Mommy!”

When Catherine went upstairs to help her daughter dress after breakfast, she was surprised to find Sabine already dressed, her hair brushed and pulled back from her face in pigtails.

“Sabine!” Catherine exclaimed, her face flushing in pride. “This is amazing! When did you learn to dress yourself?”

“I didn’t,” Sabine said, surprised. “Jeremy helped me.”

Catherine halted.

“Jeremy helped you,” she repeated.

“Yup,” Sabine nodded.

And while technically Catherine couldn’t find fault with it because Jeremy didn’t even really exist, it still creeped her out a little bit.

“You’re superstitious, Catherine,” Jules scoffed. “It’s just a figment of our daughter’s imagination. Before you were saying it was a delusion and now you’re setting places for it at the dinner table. You need a nap or something. You’re going insane.”

Really? thought Catherine. Why do you sound like you don’t care then? But her lungs contracted and desperation overtook her.

“Jeremy, please listen to me!”

Jules raised an eyebrow and looked down at her from the several steps above her on the staircase.

The circles under his eyes stained his features so that he resembled a skeleton. His face was bright red in 21

the light crawling through the windows.

“What did you call me?”

Catherine blanched.

“Jules?” she asked, wringing her hands.

“No,” Jules said softly and he walked down the stairs, one heavy footfall at a time. “You called me Jeremy… who is Jeremy?”

Catherine took a step back. “I-I- he’s…”

“Who is he?” Jules thundered as he lunged forward and grabbed at Catherine. She shut her eyes and held up her hands limply. She wasn’t sure what he was grabbing at – her shoulder, her throat, her wrist again, but his fingers scraped across her shoulder and his thumb dug into her collarbone before he grabbed a fistful of her nightgown.

She cried out in almost a mew, the sound surprised out of her when she didn’t want to make any noise at all.

“Who is he, Catherine?” Jules roared and slammed her back against the wall.

It hurt more than she would have imagined. Her head had snapped back on her neck and struck the wall with a crack, white lights danced up into her vision painfully. Her eyes opened and her teeth crashed while blood pooled in her mouth from where she must have bitten her tongue.

“Sabine!” she choked out. “Sabine’s friend…”

Jules froze. Catherine didn’t even want to breathe but her chest rose and fell incredibly faster than the situation warranted and the blood in her ears was deafening.

His hand unfisted from her nightgown and she watched as he turned and walked steadily up the stairs, almost as if he were in a state of shock, before going to the master bedroom and shutting the door.

Catherine sank to the ground. When wetness fell onto the backs of her hands, she knew she was crying again and the knowledge of it swallowed her and it took over, wracking sobs tearing through her body as she tried not to wail, but it was so difficult…

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“No more…” she gasped in between feeling pitiful and weak. She shook her head but the pain lanced through her and she cried out. “No more!”

Something whispered past her face; it felt like fingers slid through her curly hair and hands took her shoulders with warmth and gentleness.

Catherine felt her sobs subside and her heart felt clearer and her head hurt less. She sat back against the wall and looked up to the side, seeing the bright red light through the glass in the door. She looked down at her hands and had the morbid thought that the light looked like blood and though she couldn’t imagine who else’s it could be – for who would a woman like Catherine ever kill? – she imagined it wasn’t hers.

Eventually, though, she stood once more and made her way to Sabine’s door and knocked.

“Sabine?” she called, in a voice that was surprisingly normal. “It’s time to wake up.”

“I can’t leave my room,” Sabine called back. It sounded like she was only a few feet on the other side.

“What?” Catherine asked and tried to open the door. The handle turned but the door wouldn’t open and Catherine jiggled it a little in panic.

“Sabine?” Catherine called. “Open the door. Open the door right now, Sabine.”

“I can’t, Mommy,” Sabine responded. through the muffled sound of her voice, Catherine thought she was crying. “Jeremy said I had to wait in here until he was done. What’s he doing, Mommy? Where is he?”

Catherine felt what was now a familiar chill and furiously shook the doorknob again. “Why won’t the door open, Sabine?”

Sabine’s voice was quieter this time, as if sharing something she didn’t want to.

“My dresser’s in front of it and the desk is on top of that.”

Catherine stopped.

“What?”

“Jeremy put my dresser and my desk in front of the door, Mommy.”

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Catherine stepped back from the door like it burned her. Spinning, she stumbled to the closed master bedroom door and opened it. The bed was empty, only messy on the side she had slept in.

She walked to the closed door of the bathroom, her eyes sweeping the room for the husband she might have missed the first time.

At the door, she pushed at it, half expecting it to be locked like Sabine’s door but finding it gave away very easily. Catherine tripped over her own feet and caught herself on the doorknob and looked up.

Hanging from the curtain rod of the bath was her husband.

Catherine screamed.

Catherine stood in the kitchen only a week later, dressed in black on the morning of her husband’s funeral. Sabine sat in her usual chair, solemn. The light that came through the windows was clear, in a bright cheerfulness that seemed at odds with the behavior of those in the room.

Catherine brought the pan of eggs over to the table and scooped them onto everyone’s plate.

Sitting down and flicking out her napkin, Catherine felt the chill race up her spine. Glancing at the seat across from her, she tried to suppress the shudder so he couldn’t see and concentrated on her plate.

Sabine’s fork clinked loudly against her plate and Catherine looked up at her in surprise.

Fidgeting, Sabine looked at her plate and murmured something.

Catherine tried to speak but it caught in her throat and she had to clear her throat and try again.

“Yes, Sabine?”

“He says he liked the eggs. Mommy.”

Catherine looked at the now empty plate across from her and swallowed. Nodding her head she cleared her throat once more and said: “Thank you, Jeremy.”

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Once Upon a Time in Mayville

Jenny Wu 25

On the Train

Grace Gallagher

On the train to Syracuse, and the water outside my window is wide, framed by these fall colors.

Last night I slept in your bed and thought of all the things that must be said to those who aren’t you. The I love you now what? The I need more than this.

Under the covers we don’t touch much, you face down, and then me: sprawled out like the number four.

I dream your home is a floating wooden plank I keep slipping off of into the glossy water that is wide, like the reservoir that whizzes by me now on the train to Syracuse.

This morning on the subway after you bought me black coffee, you kissed my cheek and said good-bye dearlike we had been married for years like last night had been different like you would be sad to see me board the train to Syracuse .

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Sacrifice of Isaac

Caravaggio, oil on canvas, 1603

Khalym Burke-Thomas Abraham clutched his son’s tender face and poured the blush out of from his cheeks into his chest—where it gathered, then rose like yeast—nipples stiff Isaac abandoned his pale, boy body.

His inner thighs, already sensitive to the brush of the wind, spasmed at the touch of his father’s hand

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Dissolving

Grace Gallagher I like to think of disappearing, sometimes.

Of being neither here nor there and Not somewhere in between. Alive but On a break, I think of melting into The waters of Cinque-Terre, of slowly Slipping between the cracks of San FranciscoEvaporating into humid Dusky India leaving behind Only a half-eaten orangeTo let the world know I’d been there once, and would be returningIt’s peel lain like the Earth if it were flat.

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Imani Schectman

29

Manus

Jenny O’Brien Ossify and I am hands - carpals

and phalanges, knuckle hair and nail beds, veiny blue-backs and sweat-streaked palms.

Fine motor neurons fire so I can be whatever I want when I grow up.

Mother’s gentle

caressers, dextrous piano-key

strikers, roughened dishwasher’s

task force.

Curl and seize, unfurl and let go the gains Thumbs opponents stout, yet commanding enough a match (alone) for neighboring army of four that can read as eyes, but mostly feel the coarse circumference of a your hairstrands, the rubbery unfeeling of your left-arm scar, the soft, unchartered

territory behind your ear.

But I cannot speak what I have felt of you.

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Bone Marrow Transplant Ward

Jenny O’Brien I A doctor herself, but a perfect patient (improbably) She runs 3 miles a day -- treadmill -facing the bare taupe wall, forgetting her status as “sick person.”

Her (allogeneic) transplant goes as planned, no resentment of host by the graft. Her fitness helps her reach near perfect recovery. Yet, obstinate malignancy, against all signs and symptoms

takes her anyway.

II Henry’s hit weeks after his wife’s end. Well into his 70s, he races Porches. Round and round, fast and fleeting. He expects and welcomes his.

III A textbook case of mucusitis, they say.

Nods of agreement murmurs

of hamburger mouth.

Sores pus and bleed inside his cheeks, down his trachea.

Ever unstoppable, he slaps the asses of the tired nurses while he warns of his 3 girlfriends and whispers of

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labored secrecy.

Successful gemcitabine and vincristine let him reenter his polygamous fiftysomething life.

IV The woman with the nipples like Hershey’s Special Dark hand-hewn ashtrays seizes and shudders as blood foams and falls frothy from her lips -mortality looming.

No room for shame, the patterned “gown” (in lively technicolor) slips, uncovering all her remaining dignity, exposing her beautiful black, flaking off, darker still.

Her family, if contacted at all, will be told she died comfortably.

We wash our hands careful to avoid her Clostridium difficile.

Difficult, indeed, to forget the fermenting melon scent of her renal failure and the exact color, consistancy, and quantity of byproduct from her misbehaving bowels (More intimate than even sex)

V Christy, 35, cries as she chooses a week of “comfort care” with her children over 6 months and more cycles of chemo. She dies the next day.

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incontinence

Khalym Burke-Thomas

for mama

it was the way which you hauled yourself out of that sofa as if to say enough and the way you didn’t even notice your own body surrender to that urge as you walked to the bathroom that told me that, surely, you were going to die

33

Imani Schectman

34

Things that Eat and Things that are Eaten

Roger Arnold When you die, I want to eat you, I tell you, sitting in your parked mustang, with its plush manila seats, busted radio, and lusty silence. We have just come back from the gas station, and I have already smoked two from the new pack. My coffee is too hot, and the cold October night so dark and dry I can’t remember what it feels like to be warm all over.

Secretly, I am waiting for you to open the door. It is a test that even I don’t realize: Will this be the time you open it before we finish because your hands are too cold, because you have to take a piss, because you want to get upstairs to where the yellow light from the lamps make us feel safe and there is enough space to not talk, without it feeling heavy as the body’s two-thousand bones?

I try to imagine if I would really want to eat you, and what part.

I imagine your heart, naturally, perhaps the lonely muscle of your tongue. Do I want something I have touched, often, or that which I have only imagined, which is entirely your own--a part of you that might remain colorless until you die, until they open you to see what went bad and suddenly

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you have become a buffet of petals.

I don’t know if I could eat anything after you died.

Would you hold my heart, in your hand, if you could, if I was dead? I ask you, and you ask me if I mean your bare hand.

It doesn’t matter, you say, I would hold your heart.

I don’t tell you that you will never get to hold my heart because there is nothing but a burning apple in there, up near the base of my throat. It does not matter if I love you or if I try not to love you. The fire just eats and eats. How can I tell you that I am leaving you because you have become the only thing I love?

Because somehow it is the same as saying I can’t stop imagining your body as if you were already dead?

Your eyes are the color of porchlight on snow, you are a matchbook of bones and in your mustang I can see my breath, white and boring and not even mine anymore.

I have been trying my whole life to find a beautiful way to say I am afraid of so many things. The October night is so cold and round I want to either eat it, or throw it onto the roof, with us still inside it.

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Episode

Tim Carter My father and I would spend long evenings staring at the gentle data of the backyard. Dusk was when the grass looked serious. He works with numbers and says he doesn’t believe in angels (I said: she’s still there you know, she’s just no angel). He couldn’t understand how many dreams people had every night. Dreams make grass blades look small.

My dad said: become a minister if you don’t feel upset about what’s buried in the garden. Share it with the bloody people, dammit—your dad’s doing the best he can here.

Get a free house, find a wife who cooks and looks into the important places in your eyes. Be a minister and maybe help your old man when he’s done and banging on the cover of his own casket.

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Reina Apraez 45

Whitman Littlefield Bobbie parked his black and white Chevy Caprice behind to the row of mud coated trucks and radioed into town that he had arrived, “10-64 at 9:15am, over.”

“Be advised tipster suggested as many as 10 trespassers” came the crackling response from Linda, the radio operator. He holstered his gun and stepped outside. Bobbie hated supervising these logging operations and he didn’t understand what those tree huggers thought they could accomplish out in the middle of the woods. Why didn’t they understand Buckeye and his men were dangerous?

As he approached the group of loggers finishing their coffee and Winstons, one man stood above all the rest and said, “Something I can do for you, Officer?” He didn’t yell but his voice always seemed unnecessarily loud to Bobbie.

“We received a tip-off this morning that some wackos were planning on slowing you guys down with all the usual methods. I’m sure you don’t mind if I survey the situation.” He paused. “Long time no see, Buckeye.”

The one eyed giant just grunted in recognition, “I’ve got all the permission I need right here,” he said grabbing his back pocket and shaking, “Do what you want, just keep ‘em out of my way.”

Turning back to his crew, Buckeye surveyed the dense Maine woods with his one good peeper, “There’s some good Spruce in here but it’ll get fetched up on this fucking underbrush,” with that, his thumb pushed up on the orange cap of the spray can letting out a pure, resounding pop. The trees shuttered in the wind. The bottle spun in the palm of his hand, like some cowboy circus act. Once, twice, three times; the metallic rattle of the ball bearing inside was all the warning the spruce or anyone else was likely to get, thought Bobbie.

As Buckeye’s first footsteps fell, the on looking policeman wondered who would win this fight.

With scars and shot still buried in Buckeye’s face, the policeman thought: You can say he’s looked down the worse end of the barrel and lived to tell about it. He didn’t strike Bobbie as the kind of fellow who steered clear of the fall line.

Suddenly the officer was aware of the revving of saws from behind, and it sounded to him like 39

being too close to a bunch of lions fulfilling a powerful itch. Buckshot, Buckeye, or to his wife just Buckley, was well ahead of the pride, eye rolling this way and that like a seasick dog. His hands worked to apply orange stamps- tagging trees, seemingly without any direction from the light. His boys were much slower getting started; many of them were busy screwing on the tops to their thermoses or squishing their butts into the dewy ground.

Bobbie had done this kind of work before. Being a cop in Northern Maine rarely required the kind of heroics that America and his training associated with his job. It was pretty standard to observe logging outfits, most of them had their share of radical environmentalists to deal with. It was these experiences that lead him to use the earplugs he had carried from home, which drowned the roar of the chainsaws. There was little he could do about the smell of burnt oil and gas. When the sound dropped out, he thought of his wife and his daughter Sharleen who was doing a presentation on Thomas Jefferson that day in class. As his thoughts drifted farther from the work at hand, he dwelled on the promotion he would qualify for in six months, and if he got it, would they finally give him a secretary? He hoped so.

What brought him abruptly out of this daydreaming back into the world of screaming trees, heated machines, and smelly tough men was a swift hard tackle that sent him several feet back and ended with a big, hard man directly on top of him- something rigid pressing into his leg. Bobbie wrestled his arm out from underneath himself, yanking on the plastic cord connecting his earplugs.

“Easy. That ain’t me Boy, it’s my Axe,” spat the logger Otis, as he jacked himself off of Officer Sarggent, “Fucking Bobbie. No wonder you didn’t hear me shout! Going to get yourself killed out here with those things.”

Bobbie sat up, rubbed his neck, getting his bearings. Several of the trees around him had been pre-cut to Domino and one had gone early. “You know Domino felling is not permitted.” he said, regaining some degree of authority.

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“What?” shouted the logger, his back already turned.

“Domino felling. It’s illegal,” the now exasperated and shaken policeman claimed.

“WHAT? I’m a little hard of hearing!”

Bobbie pointed to the cuts in the eight or nine trees still standing and screamed, “ Illegal!”

“One more time!” said the logger and with his back still turned he gave one great yank recapturing and restarting his saw. He turned, now with the moving chain only inches from Bobbie’s face and spat/roared, “Now then, what were you saying about illegal?”A sudden sharp pat from behind connecting just above where Bobbie wore his gun holster cut the tension and turned his torso around forcing limited eye contact with a reappeared Buckeye; who faced the deaf logger nodding with a distinctly crooked movement commanding the man.

“We got a Clue!” the big man pitched, redirecting the officer deeper into the woods. Bobbie wrinkled his brow unintentionally dwelling on the motherfucker behind him, Buckeye’s seamless condemnation, and the empty socket in his face.

Bobbie felt sorry for the tree huggers hidden somewhere in the forest and Buckeye’s passion for ferreting them out. He strove after the big man, driving deeper and deeper into the thick canopy of fur that stretched overhead, breaking the sunlight into fractions. Although he had lost his earplugs, he still couldn’t hear anything. The crash of timber falling and the squealing saws obscured any explanation Buckeye may have offered.

The deeper they went the louder and darker it seemed to Bobbie and his palms began to sweat.

Buckeye was visually excited, striding faster and faster turning every now and then to make sure the policeman was still in tow. Reaching just beyond the view of the encamped loggers Bobbie began to hear singing over the roar. “ No possessions, I wonder if you can, No need for greed or hunger, A brotherhood of man!”

When Bobbie began to see glimpses of color through the trees Buckleye stopped and turned toward him, leaning down so that his mouth was eye level and his chew squirted Bobbie; who won41

dered if they called him Buckteeth before he was shot in the face. He pulled himself inward and up seeming to inflate. It was clear the man wanted one more chat with the police, everyone does, thought Bobbie. They all have to make sure the fuzz is on their side. Buckeye had done this before too. Bobbie just wanted to finish this thing up and send the hippies packing. The incessant noise had given him a headache and the chew dribbles were rolling down his neck, staining his uniform. He didn’t want to pay for dry-cleaning.

Silently Buckeye dropped his hand down to his waist. Drawing his billfold out he flicked it open, aimed at the officer so that the crinkled white paper protruded from the right hand side like some mashed up paper airplane. “I guess that’s your written permission from the National Forest Service,” the officer guessed aloud as he unfolded the legal document.

“Lets you and I not have any problems over this. I know your office told you what to do.

Why don’t you get these tree huggers out of my way and off my trees,” he paused, “And don’t be shy about asking for any help.” All this was followed by a toothy grin.

Now Bobby took the lead, permission slip in hand, and walked away from the terrible sounds of the loggers and toward the howls of the Flatlanders over compensating voices. The only one to come into view had wrapped his arms around a freshly tagged tree so that his face had picked up the orange tint, making him look like an Oompa Loompa, or at least to Bobbie. The boy was very young and wore a shirt that read ‘Live for The Trees’ which was written in green text on what the policeman guessed was organic cotton. When Bobbie saw his profiled face displayed behind the barked background it reminded him of when he felt determined and unstoppable like that at the academe. Buckeye just touched his gut and chuckled, “Got a good grip of the Holding Wood don’t he?”

Bobbie walked up to the kid offering his hand to shake “I’m Serggant, officer Serggant” and kept it there for a few seconds, his arm extended perfectly at 90 degrees. The boy replied with the same determined and unstoppable look and continued to clutch the tree. Bobbie didn’t pay any attention and began to read aloud the National Forest Service’s letter. He concluded by saying, “In 42

accordance with state law I am now authorized and requested to remove you from this property in all hast. Do you agree to leave peacefully?”

The boy answered only by turning his cheek, completing his war paint and continuing to sing.

Bobbie walked around the big tree this boy had attached himself to and once again stood face-to-face, “Look, um… can’t you just make this easier on all of us?” Bobbie pleaded, “Just let go, and we can get out of this racket.”

The boy shook his head so that his uvula wobbled back and forth, “IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE!” The cop just wanted to shout that John was dead, even Neil Young would have been more appropriate. Really, what did they learn in college today? Plucking the cuffs from his belt, Bobbie thought about saying sorry but knew it would be lost somewhere between sawing and singing. Then, wrapping the metal bracelet around the first wrist, he tugged gently on the boy’s hand to let him know it was over.

Buckeye broke in, “Once you haul one of them out of here the pansies will all break for their Prius. That’s how they all are.” Try as he might, Bobbie could not get the man to release the tree or stop singing. “You going to get him out of my way or what?” Buckeye spat after speaking.

Bobbie now had his leg against the tree providing leverage. His knuckles on his left hand dug into the bark while his right gripped the chain itself. He was glad there were no cameras this time.

“I thought you could fucking handle this! And stop that fucking singing,” screeched Buckeye, turning to the kid. Bobbie wanted to agree with him but just shifted arms and tried again while simultaneously yelling in the man’s ear, “This is resisting arrest mister!”

Suddenly, Buckeye was there pushing Bobbie aside. His face turning red, the Cyclops bellowed, “Get out of my way” and latched onto the boy’s long hair. With tremendous effort, he rapped the boy’s head on the ground knocking him like dead pups. The now dislodged, bleeding boy, spat teeth from his mouth like popping corn. Blood and mud shot into the air as the boy’s body was tossed 43

like a fish. Bobbie didn’t think but threw himself at the beating, hoping his sheer weight would be enough protection for the boy. When his body collided with theirs, the three toppled to the ground, one big pile of meat and broken bones.

Bobbie had time to think how absurd this cop sandwich must look as he struggled to keep from waking heads with the boy and the ground. He felt the boy underneath him reach up and begin to hug his belt. Buckeye continued to indiscernibly crunch and mash the two below, working himself into a greater and greater furry By the time Bobbie realized the fight was out of his hands and his gun had been drawn from its holster, it was too late. His hands came up to cover his ears as the shot went off and the weight above and below went limp. For a few seconds after, the student had discharged of S&W .357 there was silence and then a terrible roaring. Bobbie did three things all at once: recaptured the gun, felt the warn blood on the back of his neck, and exhaled.

Buckeye was up, staggering around. He clutched the fragments of his face, blindly wobbling back and forth, screaming in rage.Â

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He Brought Home an Antler

Yeasmine Khalique 45

I’d Be Okay With Dying

Evan Phail I’d be okay with dying at fifty, If everything I ever longed for, I got.

I wouldn’t really mind dying at forty, If everything I ever wanted to do, I did.

I’d even die at thirty, If every risk I took, paid off.

I’d die at twenty, If everything I ever loved, loved me.

I’d die tomorrow, If today I had everything I ever dreamed of.

I’d be okay dying like that, As long as you were with me.

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All in a Day’s Paint

Abby Kent

Flexible steel bends to my will mashing, scraping, mixing my cerulean my phthalo green, outdated prussian blue and titanium white -- strong as expected.

And there it is, just as I’d imagined but not quite homogeneous, streaks

and depth on flattest palatte. I reach

with the extension of my fingerstips, my number 6 sable brush, its once red handle paled,

painted and peeled.

Unmown grass spots with pinpricks lavender yellow and white, too, peek through in the lushest green I overlook Light streaming, brightening, livening.

I see it, dewy reflections and move to begin with that winding creek where children squeal at unexpected chill of unwarmed water.

But my hand resists or cannot reach or my canvas blinds me and repels all paint, embracing

its potential. Womb of newness, of possibility. I refuse to end my education and slam open the academic door. It shatters into a looking glass in which I reflect my future, mother, my ghosts of Christmasses past, some

Freudian projection, my fear of butterfliesa mere symp-

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tom of my mysogyny, stomach cramps proof of repressed homosexuality.

I can’t keep up wth my own id (or is it ego?)

Perhaps the drugs will reign

in my wrist and make it form poppies

window panes or rainclouds. But you can’t unstain canvas nor can you unshrink that single cashmere sock.

Hearts cannot renew like starfish and scar tissue never quite unstiffens, no matter how much Neosporin and cocoa butter you slather on.

And my taut canvas remains bare, gleaming with promise,

unchartered

paint

whorls.

Waiting, I hear the Viridian calling, growing tired of Burnt Umber’s dull whine.

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