Marquette University Literary Review - Spring 2015

Spring 2015 Issue IX

The Marquette University Literary Review, the official literary magazine and creative writing journal of Marquette University, presents the short fiction, poetry, creative essays, visual art, and flash fiction of Marquette’s most talented student, faculty, staff, and alumni writers. The Marquette University Literary Review is published semi-annually at Marquette University: P.O. Box 1881, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881. Telephone: (414) 288-7179. Web address: marquetteliteraryreview. wordpress.com Email: marquetteuniversitylitreview@gmail.com.

A collection publishing the most unique and powerful voices, the Marquette University Literary Review compiles only the best literary works – those that are honest in their exploration, critical in their presentation of the human experience, and highly valuable in their literary merit.

This publication is edited by undergraduate students in the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences at Marquette University. Materials for publication in each issue are considered by direct submission.

General Editor: Brittany White Editorial Staff: Benjamin McCormick and Michael Welch Faculty Editor: Dr. Larry Watson © 2015 by Marquette University Cover: Nolan Bollier, Summer Crash, 2015. Photograph. Private collection. Courtesy of Nolan Bollier, Milwaukee, WI. Acknowledgments: The Marquette University Literary Review staff extends its sincere gratitude to all who have contributed to the continued success of this publication and offers its special thanks to Dr. Larry Watson, for his mentorship and advising assistance; Dr. Krista Ratcliffe and Wendy Walsh, for their administrative support; Professors CJ Hribal and Angela Sorby for their continued support; all other faculty and staff members of the Marquette University English Department, for their willingness to promote this journal to students, staff, and Marquette English Department alumni; and finally, to all authors who submitted pieces to this Spring 2015 edition of the Marquette University Literary Review, for their courage, talent, and commitment.

Contents

Spring 2015

Larry Watson

Introduction Brittany White

Letter from the Editor

5 6

Laura Litwin

“Champlin, MN”

9

Daniel O’Hara

“Metal Coating Factory”

“Baseball Sounds”

11 13

Claire Kelly

Breakfast Ball

14

Kieran Moriarty

“Nap Time on the Way South to Kerry”

“Not at First Sight”

19 21

Krystin Kantenwein

When You Go to the Record Store Alone

22

Meghan Hartnett

“Telephone Booth, 1928”

Weddings

28 29

Elizabeth Chatterton

The Family’s Burden

33

Alexandra Whittaker

“eBay Lot #6371”

“The Lobo Wolf Girl”

“Post Surgery”

44 45 46

Contents

Spring 2015

Kierstyn Robbins

Letters

48

Amanda Hedberg

Professional Procrastinator 52 Tyler Farrell

“On Finding A College Notebook From Astronomy Class”

“The Cathedral/Basilica of St. Louis, King of France”

54 56

Joseph Dobbs

Callouses 58

“Blink” 62 Morgan Hess

“The Perfect Two”

“Obsolete Manor”

64 65

Allie Ponkratz

To a Note on the Back of My Hand

66

Giulianna Sutkiewicz

“Letter to the Editor: 1968”

69

Emily Walters

Reset 70 Contributors

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Introduction Among the many satisfactions that teaching offers is one that may be unique to writing classes. Students hand in their poems or stories or essays, and you can be reasonably certain that in that stack will be something good, something startlingly imaginative, linguistically inventive, and emotionally powerful. Oh sure, there will be disappointments, but those are nothing alongside the pleasure of discovering new voices, an original talent.

With this issue of the Marquette University Literary Review, that pleasure is waiting for you.

In these pages, you’ll find out how emotionally complicated it can be simply to buy a new pair of jeans. You’ll see how much emotional history can play out in a simple wedding dance. You’ll wonder how that man and woman ever got together after their inauspicious meeting outside an Irish banquet. You’ll be dazzled by the language describing a church in New Orleans. You’ll marvel at how many details of life in a small Minnesota town can be packed into the lines of a single poem. You’ll come close to tears over a young woman’s memories of her father. If you’ve ever believed that procrastination was simply a habit of character, you’ll learn that it’s closer to an art form.

You’ll be amazed at the talent and skill in these pages. And you won’t have to grade anything. Just enjoy!

- Larry Watson

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Letter from the Editor

When I met with my staff to discuss this Spring 2015 issue of the Marquette University Literary Review back in January, each of us came to the table sharing a particular aspiration: obtain and publish quality submissions. We wanted passion in the stories and poems that would be chosen, the kind of passion that can only come from capturing the strange, often conflict-ridden beauty of the human existence. We sought stories filled with indulgent imagery and captivating language -- pieces able to communicate reality without sacrificing the surreal, the profound, and the painful. And then, when nearly 200 pieces of literature and visual art were submitted for this publication in this issue, we realized that our desires had left us with quite a bit of reading to do.

After diligent review of each piece submitted, we chose the pieces that fill the pages that follow, works that represent the very best of that which we received.

Indulgent, arresting, and heart-wrenching, these works reveal the tangible tension and collisions present in our contemporary society, those collisions between love and hate, independence and reliance, burden and desire, and youth and age.

I hope that these pieces do for you what they did for me: challenge and invite you to consider the world with a new perspective.

Sincerely,

Brittany White

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“The Bookstore”

Photo credit: Hannah Klapperich-Mueller

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“One in a Thousand”

Photo credit: Madeline Pieschel

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Laura Litwin

“Champlin, MN” Inspired by Buddy Wakefield’s My Town

I always see someone I know when I go to the grocery store, I keep my head down, hoping my indifference will shadow me from

small talk When people ask me where I’m from, I just say the Twin Cities, Sometimes, even I can’t tell the difference.

My town is close, like football games and Christmas dinners, like parks, parades, and block parties, like didn’t I sit behind you in the third grade?

My town covers itself with an in-security blanket of snow and

backhanded compliments, You call it Minnesota nice, but I think of it more as Minnesota

passive-aggressive, Here, winter coats are thicker than skin My town is stereotypes, Snow, cold. Cabin, moose, cold. Lakes, hockey, hotdish, cold My town always up north, a better angle to look down on you from, My town is picking up the stripes of a broken rainbow. My town is bullied.

9 suicides in two years, my town spells gay, f-a-g.

Always trying, never changing, The people here wear camouflage while they stand in the snow, but it can

be hard to blend in if you aren’t wearing white My town is branded,

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Roads tattooed by potholes, tattooed by churches, kids tattooed by scars, stitching their skin back into the patchwork

quilt of routine My friends are boomerangs, whipped away into the world only to be

tugged backwards by the heartstrings of their guilt, See, we talk about running like it’s a full moon, a bright, white light looming closer than the reality of the thousands of

miles that separate us and the places we wish we could go.

My town is a train whistle slicing through the night, Mississippi flowing faster than the highways Spend more time commuting than sleeping, my town rubs its tired

eyes and goes back to work.

Cornfields parked between sidewalks, Abandoned farmhouses ghost gravel backroads, Suburbia grapples for supremacy, Houses run like boxes on a factory conveyor belt, cranking out new

neighborhoods, for sale signs grow like flowers, grow like trees, Innovation, innovation, innovation I still remember, the house I grew up in had blue carpet, I still remember peeling paint flakes off the swing set, the shape of the cracks in the sidewalk, the twist of pine needles between my fingers, I still remember what it looked like when it was empty.

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Daniel O'Hara

“Metal Coating Factory” They did not envy our rusty cars Or steel toed boots we used to drive them with.

They did not want to change wages with us Or take our graveyard shifts.

They fit papers into briefcases and walk on freshly polishes shoes To the office.

We stuffed our dull, yellow hard hats, Splotched black with dirt and grease, With cheap, plastic glasses, worn gloves And a half hour lunch.

It’s not a quiet building either, But in fact a symphony of labor.

The ovens hummed low and forklifts whirred loud.

The collision of wood and concrete When pallet met ground was a waking snap, A reminder our short break was over And more was to be done.

They did not see a pretty building Because they did not see the inside.

They only saw the unfinished silver that went in, Not what left.

Gentian Blue water fountains preceded Red Rivers and Soft Creams.

John Deere Green hoods floated on hooks As canary yellow grates flew behind them.

Even black was beautiful to us, For they saw black But we saw Vulcan, Cat Gloss, or Night.

To them she was barren and cold, Lifeless.

To us the beams supported not only

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The roof of the building, But the ones we slept under as well.

They were the bones that framed This body of industry And we, the soul that spurred it.

f

13

“Baseball Sounds” The L rumbles above us and I can hear the stale water droplets Plop at our feet as we pass under the viaduct and near the parking lot.

My ears perk up as music fills them, Their source, not the radios from opened car doors, But from the street musicians nearby.

The beats of the bucket drummers Echo down 35th St. as the Smooth sways from the saxophone player Swirl around us.

My brothers and I ask our dad for change and we toss it into his open case.

Walking through the lot we hear Thuds of bags and Sharp snaps of polish sausages on portable grills Overpower the clinking of beers and Discussions of the starting pitcher’s shoulder.

The rustling of plastic as the three of us Battle over the bag of peanuts my dad just bought, Hoping to be the victor in today’s daily fraternal war.

The turnstiles spin as the ticket scanners Beep yes and let us into the hallowed grounds.

The escalators raise our spirits and feet to our seats.

The fans roar as I walk to row 12, For me they yell and cheer, for me Not for the team that had just taken the field behind me.

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Claire Kelly

Breakfast Ball

The crisp summer morning was still as Mr. Hannigan placed a fresh golf ball on the first tee. Connor held his breath, knowing the slightest movement could throw off his golfer’s swing. Mr. Hannigan moved his feet directly below his shoulders and gripped the shaft of his Titleist, swinging gently back and forth.

He paused for a few seconds, staring down at the ball, only the sound of the warm breeze and the song birds awakening filled the silence. Then he moved his shoulders back and swung forward.

“Dammit, Paul,” Mr. Hannigan muttered to himself. After hammering the head of his club into the ground, he took a careless practice swing, something he did after any missed shot. The ball shot off the tee and flew into the creek sixty yards ahead. Connor hoped when he was Paul Hannigan’s age he would never refer to himself in the third person. Mr. Hannigan took a deep breath, held the driver in Connor’s direction and said, “Just warming up.” Connor took the club and nodded curtly.

“Take a breakfast ball, Paul!” Mr. Randall said. Jim Randall cackled, reaching down to grab a ball out of the front pocket of his loud, blue Adidas bag. Mr. Randall’s shorts, polo and golf shoes were bright blue too. Everything about Mr. Randall was loud, Connor thought. Mr. Randall had known Mr. Hannigan for years; they played early every Saturday morning as a two-some. Connor knew he had lucked out again this morning; the Randall and Hannigan round was something most caddies at Janesville Country Club hoped for. It was a free comedy show, watching Mr. Randall and Mr. Hannigan shoot insulting jokes back and forth. Comedy show aside, Connor was just happy to spend more time with Mr. Hannigan; they were becoming good friends.

“No mulligans for me this morning, Jim. Maybe when I’m your age I’ll consider taking a few do-overs.” Mr. Hannigan said. He smiled and winked at Connor. In everything he did, Mr. Hannigan exemplified the phrase ‘young at heart’. Sure, Connor observed, he was hard on himself as a golfer, but he loved to laugh and never let the game truly upset him. It was an admirable thing to see out on the course. As a caddy, Connor was accustomed to golf clubs being thrown, balls being kicked out of the rough, and a colorful array of curse words. The game of golf was a test of character.

“You better keep those jokes of yours in line; we have a lady amongst us today, Paul”. Mr. Randall gestured dramatically to his caddy. Katie smiled politely. Then she rolled her hazel eyes when Connor looked over in her direction. The sexism

was blatantly obvious. There were only a handful of girl caddies at the club and they stuck out like sore thumbs. Katie was new to the club this year, but she had grown up playing golf with her Dad. She was one of the best girl caddies they had. Her knowledge of the game and pretty smile made her a highly sought after caddy at Janesville. Connor often wondered if her being so attractive bettered or worsened her case out on the golf course. Connor also wondered if she and that senior were still dating.

“Oh, it’s not me I’m worried about, Jim,” Mr. Hannigan replied to Mr. Randall.

Mr. Randall chuckled, his round belly shook up and down with the motion.

Pushing his sunglasses up from the tip of his sunburnt nose he looked down at the ball and took a giant, hasty swing. Connor had once overheard someone say that when Jim Randall was swinging a golf club it looked like he was flagging down a plane.

Most every morning from early May to late September, Janesville Country Club came to life. With its rolling green hills, natural rushing waters and wildlife the course had been named “Prettiest Course to play in 2013” by Travel Wisconsin.

By 6:30 a.m., the caddies had trickled in and filled the bag room, packed like sardines. They played cards and swapped dirty jokes to pass the time, waiting for their name to be called off the list. Once called, they grabbed a smock, filled their pockets with wooden tees, wetted a cart towel and ran off to the first hole where the next four hours, fewer if you were lucky, of work would begin.

An 8 x 11 piece of paper hung by a wooden frame was often the focus of the conversations in the caddy shack. The list was the official rankings of all of the Janesville caddies. Every time a caddy went out for a round of golf, they were graded by the golfer with them. At the end of the day, you were “excellent, good, fair, or poor.” Six points for excellent, five points for good and so on. At the end of the year, these points were all added up and the top ten caddies were invited to the Caddy Banquet, a fancy, all-you-can-eat dinner in the clubhouse. Katie was second place on the list, to all of the boys’ dismay. When she talked about the caddy list, she was humble, but Connor could see it in her eyes – she wanted to win. She was competitive, he liked that about her. At age 17, this was Connor’s third summer, making him one of the more experienced caddies at the club. He was a modest seventh on the list. He took Mr. Hannigan’s club, stuck it back into place and threw the golf bag over his shoulder in one fluid motion. They took several strides forward, Connor slightly behind Mr. Hannigan and stopped at the creek where the ball had sunk to the bottom.

“Don’t bother going in to look,” Mr. Hannigan said. “I didn’t bring you along to go fishing. I’ll take my three wood from here.”

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“I appreciate that, didn’t bring my swim trunks today” Connor said and handed him the golf club. After dropping a new golf ball on the dew covered grass, he took a nice easy swing. The ball soared out of the rough and into the middle of the fairway. Mr. Hannigan looked satisfied as he thanked Connor for taking his club. His dark hair was fading to gray and the wrinkles around his eyes were defined from years of laughter and exhaustion. The caddies were all fascinated with the lives of the members at the Country Club. They often debated how successful one had to be for membership fees to become pocket change.

Some were born into the money and others worked for it. One new member to Janesville, Mr. Venici, was formerly a manager of the Chicago Bears. Another member, Mr. Walden, owned several Taco Bells. From what Connor gathered, Mr. Hannigan worked for it. Mr. Hannigan had two sons just a few years older than Connor, which made him love to direct conversations to college and future plans.

Connor had learned it was best to give him a response to work with. In most cases, caddies don’t get to choose. Connor liked talking about the future with Mr. Hannigan; he didn’t make it seem all that scary. ___________________________ Growing up, Connor had never lived in the same place for long. When he hit 14, he’d heard hushed bits and pieces of arguments between his mother and father about moving too often. When these conversations arose, he’d retreated to his room to blast Darkness on the Edge of Town through his cheap headphones.

The results of these arguments had led them to settle down in Janesville.

Connor’s mom had said high school would be hard enough for Connor and they shouldn’t move on top of that. He would never admit it, but he was grateful to his mother for this; he gathered his father would have preferred to follow the promotions wherever in the States his company wanted to send him next. Connor managed to fit into every grade school that he went to because he played the tenor saxophone. Plenty of kids played the alto sax, but tenor saxophone players were harder to come by. From 4th grade onward, he had been warmly welcomed into numerous school bands. Most of them played similar set lists, so the adjustments had never been too hard. Connor’s father had been to one school concert, but had left early for a work emergency. Connor wasn’t under the impression his father found music important.

“Keep your grades up, caddy 200 rounds; you could have the same opportunities I had.” His dad had gotten a full ride to Northwestern through the Evans Scholars caddy program and loved to talk about it. His experience at Northwestern led him to a great internship that led him to a great job. When his

Dad knew one way to get somewhere, he never tried another route. The minute they had settled down in Janesville, he had signed Connor up for caddy training.

Hole Five was a forecaddie hole. That meant before the golfers teed off, the caddies ran a couple hundred yards ahead to make sure they could see where the ball landed. On a personal note, Connor thought it was an extremely dangerous concept. If a caddy wasn’t paying attention for one split second there was potential for a golf ball to hit him smack in the head. This concept was sending young people into the danger zone. Katie and Connor did their best to sprint to the forecaddie spot and wave the golfers forward. They quietly panted to catch their breaths.

“Mr. Hannigan is the best, but I wish he’d hit down the fairway more often.”

Connor said to Katie. She raised her hand to the top of her forehead to block the sun and look towards the golfers teeing up behind them.

“He loves you. I bet he’ll write you a great letter of recommendation for The Evan’s,” she said with a smile. “I hear you’re my competition this year.” They watched Mr. Randall’s shot take off and fly down, landing about twenty yards ahead of them.

“You worried?” Connor teased.

“Not a bit. What number on the caddy list are you right now, Connor?” she said.

“All right now, the summer isn’t over yet,” he said.

“I don’t see why there can’t be two winners from Janesville this year,” she said.

They both looked up to watch Mr. Hannigan’s drive. It soared quickly into the woods. ___________________________ On the fifteenth hole, Mr. Hannigan had already expressed his enthusiasm three times about the Steak and Lobster Fest in Janesville taking place the following week. REO Speedwagon was headlining this year and both golfers assured Connor and Katie that this was a big deal. Mr. Randall was in the middle of telling a wild story about last year’s Steak and Lobster Fest when Katie interrupted. “What the hell?” she said.

The golfers all looked at Katie. Connor couldn’t believe she had said that, but then Connor looked up across the rolling greens and dropped his jaw. He pointed. Two golf carts came bounding up over the hill down the middle of the fairway at record speeds. Connor saw one of the older caddies in the front seat

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of the first cart, wearing a head cover in the shape of an Illinois State University Redbird attached to the top of his head, hollering drove. In the other cart, one of the member’s sons with a bright orange horse head cover on top if his head sped forward. They were yelling at the top of their lungs, laughing hysterically.

Connor had no idea why on earth they had decided to pull that sort of stunt at 7:30am on a Saturday morning. .

“Is that Manning’s boy?” Mr. Hannigan asked.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Mr. Randall said. Mr. Hannigan took a club from Connor, winked at Connor for the second time today and took off like a bullet. He sprinted straight at the carts coming their way, waving the golf club like a madman.

“You shall not pass!” Mr. Hannigan yelled in their direction. The boys in the carts saw Mr. Hannigan running at full speed with wild eyes. They slowed down and started to turn their carts back towards the clubhouse, speeding back in the opposite direction. Mr. Randall pulled out his cell phone.

“Murphey!” Mr. Randall said into his phone. “Morning from the sixth hole, you’ve got two hooligans heading back towards the clubhouse in golf carts.

Catch ‘em before they run off and, Jesus, make them clean out the cart barn or something.”

Mr. Randall hung up the phone, laughed his hearty laugh, picked up a club and started bounding after Mr. Hannigan, at a slower but equally enthusiastic pace. Katie and Connor looked at each other and burst into a fit of laughter. They picked up their golf bags and took turns expressing their disbelief. When they eventually caught up with the golfers again, Mr. Hannigan said, “Connor, Katie, don’t take life too seriously. It’s bad for your health.”

Kieran Moriarty

“Nap Time on the Way South to Kerry” Rain tap-tap-tapped against the windows and roof of the car parked to the side of the road. We were a bit outside Roscrea, having left Dublin Airport an hour and a half ago, and my brother and father were sleeping in the front, Patrick’s head leaning heavily on the passenger window and my dad’s rocking back, mouth agape. It tilted slowly back like Odysseus drawing his mighty bow, and then, when it hit the headrest, it would flick, almost violently, back up. A snort or a stutter in his breath would let out when his neck straightened, letting me know he was still breathing at all. I tried to match my inhalations and exhalations with his, watching his chest rise and fall from the back seat. My heart grew confused at what my lungs were doing, so I instead thought about how long they’d slept, and how much longer they would sleep, and how long it would take for enough rain to fall around us before this thin road, with its borders of stone wall and green fields, would flood, the waters rising high enough to carry away our orange Citroën hatchback.

I was looking at the drops of water run down the window and into each other, placing bets on the racers and winning some when my dad shook awake and cleared his throat. There was a moment of silence as he figured out where he was, having come so far,

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and then he took the keys from the cup-holder on his left and started the car back up. Alright? he asked the crowd of two, and my brother responded by turning his head with half the hair matted down and groaning affirmatively, before returning it to rest. Kieran, you get any sleep? I said yes as I followed the drops on their suddenly diagonal route, racing with more haste than before.

“Road to Nowhere�

Photo credit: Nolan Bollier

Kieran Moriarty

“Not at First Sight”

The singer steps into the cold of a November night, following the pretty girl from table twenty-four.

Wearing cowboy boots, his shirt is a little damp, and he is a little tired from playing music on stage all night.

Joe Moriarty and the Irish Beat finished their set at the 1987 Camogie banquet with “I Still Miss Someone.”

As soon as he is done singing, he watches the pretty one walk out in a fuss saying something about a ride.

My father finds her around the corner of the building talking quietly on a payphone under the ICC’s dim side light.

“If you need one, I can give you a ride home.”

Without looking up, my mother says, “fuck off, and leave me alone.”

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Krystin Kantenwein

When You Go to the Record Store Alone Track One

Jack was the first one to take me to the record store. We’d go on the weekends after we had sex. We’d have sex after his parents left. One time they left us alone up there, in his room, and we thought they were gone. They weren’t. We found that out when his mom walked in and I was on top, shirtless. She stood there in the doorway, waiting for me to pull off. After that, she made us stay in the basement if I was sleeping over, protecting herself so she wouldn’t have to see his girlfriend riding him when she went to get his laundry at 11:15 on a Sunday morning.

So we started having sex, fast, just in case she wasn’t going to the store when we thought she was going to the store. We’d have sex with my shirt on, his shirt on, blanket covering everything but our heads. If we heard the basement door open, I’d pull off of him and curl into the side of his chest, pretending to sleep.

Sometimes you’d think you heard the door creak open. “No one is coming down here. I can be quick,” he’d say. So you’d let him, scared and silent.

When you’re eighteen and having sex there’s no time for foreplay. The only thing worse than his mom seeing you shirtless is his mom seeing you with her son all the way in your mouth. So you fuck, there’s no time for desire. He won’t kiss your neck, or your stomach, and his hands will reach for the button on your jeans before they know the rest of your body. He won’t take your clothes off softly. He will pull them from you, a child yanking an apple from a tree.

When Jack was done, I’d wrestle my hands underneath the blankets, trying to predict the direction in which he would have discarded my jeans and then my shirt and then my bra and then my underwear. Your hands would think they’d found something, only to find a pair of boxers. “Not mine,” you’d whisper, handing him his things. With your clothes on, he’d kiss you. “I love you so much,” he’d say. “So much,” I’d repeat back.

Boys like to go to the record store after sex, finding something to beguile the senses when you aren’t around. There was one on Main Street, downtown, across from the Riverside Bakery. Jack liked it because they sold used records for cheap.

I liked it because Jack liked it. When we were in the record store, I’d look around on my own. I’d flip through the albums, pretending to know what I liked. I’d glance at him, waiting to see if he’d feel my stare and turn around. He never did.

He’d stay focused, picking up albums, putting them down. Mom would say,

“Baby, if he’s not paying you any mind, then give him some of yours.” I never did though. I’d silently search through bands Jack had mentioned in passing, thinking if he found what he wanted, he’d make his way over.

When you’re eighteen and the first boy you’ve loved takes you to the record store, you want to impress him. You want him to know that you know good music, music he likes. I’d pick up Jack’s favorites, flipping them over, memorizing song titles. The Tourist. The Tourist. Exit Music. Exit Music. For a Film, I’d repeat. For a Film, Exit Music…For a Film. When he found the album he wanted, he’d come over to you. “Do you like that album?” He’d ask, seeing you had stopped on one of his favorites. “I like Exit Music-For a Film,” I’d say.

Track Two When Sam started taking me to the record store, he wouldn’t tell his girlfriend.

He would pick me up in his black two-door Honda, stick shift. Sam would pull up to my house on weeknights when I was home from college for a week or two.

He’d show up when his band was done playing shows at the Meridian. Some nights, I’d go watch, blending into the crowd of girls in leather jackets, drunk at twenty, dancing while my long brown hair fell over my face. Sam would look at me between songs, and then he’d look at his girlfriend. You’d feel the rush come over you, taking delight in the fact that you’re the one Sam chooses when he’s bored, the one he takes to the record store.

When you’re in the car with a boy that has a girlfriend, he won’t say much. He will grip the wheel and when the light turns red, he will glance over at you, two seconds too long. You’ll look down at your floral dress, taking in the detail of the daisies, remembering how Mom used to plant a garden in Autumn, so you’d always have flowers on your birthday in Spring. “Never date a man that doesn’t give you flowers, honey” She’d say. “It doesn’t matter if he’s broke. He knows where the fields are.”

Placing my hands over the daisies, I’d glance back up at Sam, and when the light turned green, he’d smirk, accelerating until I laughed and laughed, a child on the playground.

When you’re in the record store with a boy that’s in a band, he will want to show you music. He will want to impress you. You’ll let him take you around the store, hoping you’ll like his taste in music, affirming that you like his band. He will direct you to music he thinks you might like. Standing behind you, he will lean over your shoulder and move your hair so that it rests on your back. He will compliment your perfume, breathing you in. Looking around the store, making

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sure no one is watching, he will lean in and quickly kiss your neck. You’ll act like it tickles, giggling lightly and saying his name. As you push the records back, the records he led you to, he will tell you about how the Beatles only got cool after they met Dylan--after they started smoking pot.

“Let me show you something else,” Sam would say. He’d take me by the hand, leading me down the row. “If anyone ever asks you which band is better, the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, you say the Rolling Stones,” he’d say, picking up “Exile on Main St.” You won’t ask why, you will simply nod in agreement, acting as if that opinion was yours from the start.

When you go to the record store with a boy that has a girlfriend, he knows what he wants to do after. By the time you leave the store, the sun will have set, concealing you from the possibility of being seen in his car by strangers— strangers that might know his girlfriend. On the drive back, he will place his hand on your thigh, working his way up your dress, crumpling the daisies into unidentifiable shapes. Sam would ask if I wanted to talk back at his place, telling me that I understand him better than anyone. I’d look at him and smile and he’d know what that meant.

Sam would park his car in his dark driveway, leaving the engine on. He’d start by saying something about his band, how life was stressful because none of the members put in as much effort as he does. Then he’d talk about how he thought he would have been out of this town by now—how he always told himself he’d make it farther. You’ll tell him he still has time. You’ll tell him that his music is good enough. Feeling more confident, he will move on to his girlfriend. He’d mention how she doesn’t care about his music and how they might be better off as friends.

“Why?” You’ll ask. Inching closer, he will tell you how she doesn’t listen to him like you do, how he isn’t attracted to her, not in the way that he’s attracted to you.

“Wait here a minute,” he’ll say, running inside. When he gets back in the car he will have a bottle of tequila, insisting you drink to friendship. After five shots with a water chaser, you want to get closer. With enough alcohol, you might forget he’s going to want to take you home in twenty minutes. So you try to make it worth his while. You think maybe if it’s good enough, if you’re good enough, he will ask you to stay. You’ll straddle him while he’s in the driver’s seat, the steering wheel pressing into your spine until he reclines.

He will call you names like “Babe,” or “Baby,” trying not to misspeak. As he goes for your underwear, you’ll tell him to stop. He’ll like that. Boys with girlfriends like a challenge. But you will have meant it. Mom would tell me,

“Honey, don’t mess around with boys that need you to make them feel good— they won’t be around when you need them.”

I’d pull off of him, clothes still on, and ask Sam to take me home. He’d think it was a game, that the next time I was in town he’d get further.

Track Three Evan had just broken up with his girlfriend when he started taking me to the record store. He would only come over on week-nights when he was lonely, looking for someone new he could get to know, constantly in need of a fix, something to distract the mind.

There was an initial displeasure to the way he’d want everyone’s attention, while never fully giving his. When you don’t give attention to a boy like that, he wants it. He will pursue you, hoping to figure out why you aren’t like the other girls, continually feeding him smiles and short-winded laughs at the jokes he’d tell.

Evan always liked the attention of girls he was unsure of, girls that aren’t completely available. I figured that out early on, so I would go out of my way to not laugh at his punch-lines. Mom would say, “Sweetie, a boy that loves you won’t want to make the whole world laugh.” So, I’d turn away, rolling my eyes, nearly every time Evan made a joke in a room full of eager, long-haired twentytwo year olds.

When a boy like that starts wanting you to laugh at his jokes, you’ll feel in control, knowing he cares about what you think. With each laugh, you’ll give it away, knowing he’s winning you over. And like that, you’ll let him into your bed, realizing you never liked a boy until you loved a boy.

One night when we were in my apartment, clothes on, he asked me what I was most afraid of, a child without a filter. When a boy asks you what you’re most afraid of, you don’t want to tell him the truth – that you aren’t enough, so you’ll think of something else to say, like spiders, or the dark, or how you used to love roller-coasters until you nearly flew out at eleven years old, so now--heights, avoiding the truth, burying it deep inside of you.

Evan would stare at me when I would give him an answer that wasn’t satisfying, knowing there was more. I would let the seconds pass in silence.

Eventually, I’d ask, “What are you afraid of?” You could always tell when Evan didn’t want to talk. He would say, “There are some things I don’t talk about— that I haven’t told anybody.” You’d think he might tell you, that if he told you it would mean he saw something in you--something worthy of giving a part of

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himself to.

I thought when a boy like that started taking me to the record store, a boy that keeps the most important things inside, like me, that he’d keep to himself. But it was different with Evan.

When Evan took me to the record store, he would show me off, a child with a new pair of shoes. I’d walk through the records, looking for ones I might show him, ones I would think he’d like. As I flipped through the J’s and then the M’s, he’d come over from the other side of the store and without glancing to see who was watching, he’d kiss me on the cheek and I’d smile, never having known a boy that cared to kiss me in public.

Mom would say, “You have to be careful about the ones that put on a show honey, those usually sell out.” And she was right. You let a boy take you to the record store for too long, and he’ll stop kissing you on the cheek—you let a boy into your bed for too long, and he’ll start wanting to make a new girl laugh.

Track Four And sometimes when you love a boy for too long, he will stop loving you back. You won’t notice it for a while, and when you do, you’ll hope you’re over thinking it--that he still wants to take you to the record store, that he’s just busy.

Mom would say things like “Know your worth, baby,” or “If you have to fight for his attention, you aren’t the only one.”

So you get angry. You let your emotions run rampant, spilling out how you thought they were different from the others, disappointed in yourself for not skipping tracks. When you do this, when you let them know how irrelevant you feel, they’ll disappear, not wanting to confront the mess they helped make. You won’t see them anymore, and they’ll ignore your phone calls, turning the tables, making you feel guilty.

When this happens, when you have loved them all and they have left, when the boys who used to take you to the record store have started sharing their favorite albums with new girls, girls without sentiment, you’ll have to go alone.

Mom used to tell me sometimes, when I’d get down, “Sweetie, sometimes you gotta go it alone—just the way it works.” So I did. I would go to the record store across town, not wanting to see the ones I’d loved and lost, not wanting to talk about records I liked or didn’t like. People might say, if they saw me, “Marlena, I didn’t know you collected,” or “Lena, what are you looking for?” And how was I to answer? So I’d go alone.

When you go to the record store alone, you won’t know where to start. You

won’t know what albums to look for, and you will have already searched through all the albums you’ve been shown. You will wander around for a while, a child lost in a department store. You will feel like crying, passing the records you used to know. It will feel as if each album is a different version of you. You’ll see Radiohead and think of Jack and the way he’d say, “You’re my best friend,” before finding out he hadn’t actually loved you in months, or the White Stripes and think of Sam and the way he would say “You just get me,” before dropping you off and heading to his girlfriend’s, or Johnny Cash and think of Evan and how he told you, “I don’t like holding hands,” after you left the record store together for the last time, thinking to yourself that some love just isn’t meant for the streets.

When you go to the record store alone, you’ll walk around staring at the tops of albums, deciding to start by the A’s. You’ll look around at the other customers, trying to see what they have tucked under their arms or resting at the side of their leg. When you go to the record store alone, you’ll find yourself wanting to buy something, needing to prove to yourself that you know good music, music you like. You’ll find yourself lost, feeling belittled and ashamed, unable to pick out an album you’d enjoy. What do I like, you’ll ask yourself, incapable of answering. When you go to the record store alone, you’ll find your counterfeited confidence had lived in the fast sex, secrets, and games. You’ll look down at your worn out boots and your long brown hair and wonder how you got here, in the record store alone.

You’ll walk up to the register, needing to prove to someone that you had a purpose for coming here, to the record store alone. And when you get to the register, avoiding eye contact, the boy working the register will say, “This album is awesome.” “I like Exit Music-For a Film,” you’ll reply – a child playing dress up, a record on repeat.

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Meghan Hartnett

“Telephone Booth, 1928”

She had a bitter tone to her mouth, Lying in bed for a day in her Cool room of a studio that’s quiet, With the eerie feeling of doing something wrong.

I’d climb up the fire escape that led to a window Left half open, never even thinking To use the front door—except once when it was raining And I found newspapers piled up on the table in her front hall All opened to the crossword and all finished in pen.

She was the kind of smart you’d find in a speakeasy girl, The darling, with her barring wit and personal charm, Knowing her audience and her strengths.

Easy on the eyes, and speech, That lays heavy on the heart, sticking In your brain as heavily as the cigarette smoke embedded in my suit, From laying at the foot of her bed. I’d advise, Do something with your desire: Books. Write books.

Those things that look like blocks but come apart On one side. We came apart.

My ambition not as inviting As her smooth legs. She was the best Kind of deal. I’d leave a steady 99 in the pocket Of her coat, draped over the bedside chair.

I only hoped one day I wouldn’t call, Or she wouldn’t answer.

But at every street corner I’d find a telephone booth And her, on the other end of an already blurry line.

By the next week her wires to me didn’t have Much to conceal and I’d be leaving the money In the same pocket of that same coat, Draped over that same chair.

A poor little income.

Goddamn waste.

Meghan Hartnett Weddings

I’m sitting at the white-linen covered table. You’re on the floor dancing to some silly song people always play at weddings, like “Shout” or “The Twist.” I needed a break. All that twisting and spinning had me feeling tired, parched, and dizzy.

Sitting down, I slip off my nude heels and slowly sip the cup of lukewarm coffee next to my plate. The champagne tasted better; too bad they ran out. Catching me pulling up my strapless blue dress, you scrunch your nose at my indecency. I roll my eyes.

The song changes: The Rolling Stones, “Beast of Burden.” I instantly see your face light up. It takes me back to our first summer together. The first time we got to know each other.

I was nervous. My first day on the job. Sixteen years old and people expected me to save lives. Regardless, it was only a twelve foot deep pool in a ritzy country club boasting Chicago Bears players on their member list, but still, the impending possibility of rescuing someone—saving someone—was scary. I decided to hide my nerves by reading a People magazine on the deck during my break.

“What’re you doing here?” was the first thing you ever said to me.

“I work here now,” was my response to your gold-lens, douchey, Oakley sunglasses that were popular back when I was sixteen years old and thought twenty year-olds were gods. Now I’m twenty-one and I know better. We carried on with the polite conversation old acquaintances of the same grade school and high school do.

You grabbed a magazine and sat next to me. I’d soon learn you decided to sit next to me for the next four years. So we closed the pool together that night.

We were putting in Dolphin, the pool cleaner aptly named by the brand-name written on its side. It wasn’t working. Kneeling in the shallow end, with half of my arm submerged underwater, pushing Dolphin down and trying to make it start, I glance up at you across the pool. You stood with your hands on your hips and the sun setting behind your head.

“Can’t we just lie and say it was working when we left?” I ask.

A chuckle. “You’re already a bad influence on me.”

Now you’re pulling me onto the dance floor, my abandoned shoes stashed under the table and that lukewarm coffee still sitting next to my plate. “You remember? This is my favorite song! Come on! You have to dance with me.”

Oh I remembered. I remember the first time “Beast of Burden” played at the

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pool. We were swimming and the second you recognized the song playing on the radio, you held my temple against the gutter. “Who sings this? Who sings this, Lucy? I’m not letting you go until you say it.”

“The Stones!” I finally managed to sputter out.

And I sank to the bottom of that twelve-foot deep pool just like one.

And I think I’ve been sitting there for the past five years.

“You’re a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girl. Pretty, Pretty. Such a pretty, pretty, pretty girl,” you’re singing into my ear. I have no choice but to believe you. I’ve watched you date brunette after brunette, and yet I’m the brunette you run to after every single one of those others doesn’t work out. But I guess I don’t mind as you spin me in, then back out.

And I’ve been spinning for the past five years.

A slow songs plays and I feel your chin upon my shoulder. It reminds me of the first time I felt your face against my back, back at that pool, in the guards’ office.

Pushing me face down against the countertop, you bite my shoulder. Putting on those gold sunglasses and walking out the door, you spit and say, “You taste like sunscreen.”

“I need a drink,” you whisper in my ear. “I’ll grab you one, too.” You return with two gin and tonics. They’re our favorite go-to open bar cocktail: mine with a lemon, yours with a lime.

“Charlie, can I steal this gal from you for a dance?” It’s Skiff, the lucky groom.

You glance at me and, with a delicate curtsy, I quickly reply, “The groom’s wish is my command.”

He sweeps me onto the floor. I instantly notice he keeps time better than you and I tell him that.

“Always so biting towards good ol’ Chuck, even from the very first day.” He’s so happy. He found a girl, the right girl, and married her.

His comment reminds me of the first time I met him. It was towards the end of a summer, a summer I hadn’t seen you much—you’d been busy with the most recent brunette, coincidentally my age, and I’d been busy with a boy with hazel eyes. As I pulled up to your house you told me to park on the road because you and Skiff were shooting baskets in the driveway. The second I stepped out of the car I felt you lift me up. As soon as I wrapped my arms around your neck, I was wrapping my legs around your waist and you were pushing my back against the car. I let my head fall back, eyes closed, and laughed. You nibbled at my neck, and then put me down. “Skiff, this is Lucy. Lucy, meet Skiff.”

“You know, I’m happy he has you,” he tells me. “You’ve always been there for each other.”

I politely smile and lightheartedly reply, “Had he brought another girl I would’ve kicked her out; there’s no way I was missing your wedding. You know you were always my favorite.”

Leaning down towards my ear he whispers, “You were always my favorite of his, too.” He stands upright to wink at me, and then spins me out and into you.

“You know your speech is coming up,” I say. “You nervous?”

“Oh, you mean your speech.”

“Well yes, I did the write the thing, but they’re your memories.”

“I’ll admit, it is a pretty good speech. I’ve been thinking. You’ll have to make one at mine. I want a nice dedication. You will, won’t you?”

You once told me I wouldn’t be a good writer. And it stuck with me—for a very long time. Every once in a while when I start writing, I happen to wonder if it’s just to prove you wrong. I wonder if the one thing I do for myself is inherently linked to you, too.

“That is, unless you’re off seeing the world and simply can’t manage getting back in town for my wedding.”

You say it with fake exasperation, but I know you’re right. And I think it hits me harder than the bass of the cheesy Usher song playing. Will I be at your wedding? I remember when I first started traveling. We said we’d write each other letters because it sounded more exciting than cold emails and broken-up phone connections. We were lying on the couch, watching Modern Family. I knew I would miss the vibration of your hearty laugh against my rib cage.

“Okay,” I agreed. “We’ll write letters.”

We never wrote letters. But everything I write, I write in pen, on paper, like a letter, and you continually tell me it’s stupid: “Use a computer; you’ll lose everything on paper.”

I argue I’m keeping my penmanship intact, “Cursive is a lost art.”

But I remember the reality of it, of us. I kept leaving. And we kept growing up. And for a year and a half that also meant growing apart. More and more brunettes graced and touched your heart, and a boy with blue eyes and dimples, just like yours, graced mine. I began to forget the sound of your voice, the heartiness of your laugh, the ease of our conversation, and the speckle of green in your eyes. But now I see the width of your smile, the depth of your dimple and hear the timbre in your voice as you’re here before me. I know I could never have truly forgotten it. And even when we lost each other, I never really thought it was forever, only a matter of life getting in the way.

Another spin in, then back out. I laugh. You never were able to keep time without me.

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But, inevitably, there’s a brunette across the dance floor in a green dress you’ve been eyeing for the past three songs. And it doesn’t take long for you to make your move.

“You all right by yourself for a while, kid?” Your hand has already dropped from my waist as you start towards her.

“Always am, Charlie. Always am.”

“Gazole”

Photo credit: Maeline Pieschel

Elizabeth Chatterton

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The Family’s Burden

Susan glided across the foyer to switch off her prized Tiffany gleaming in the front window. Her husband, Howard, had retired to bed hours ago, leaving her with the duty of catching all the lights in the house—except one—before doing the same. It was barely eleven o’clock, much earlier than Susan would usually put herself to bed, but she was particularly exhausted from that night’s meeting; given that the TV Guide on the ottoman showed nothing would be on from now until maybe two or two-thirty, she had started the kettle in the kitchen and begun her rounds of the house.

Her prized Tiffany lamp was always the first light to go out, as Susan loved the way the stained glass looked up close, how the knob felt under her fingertips, and the satisfaction it brought her to put it to rest for the day: another day without a crack, a scuff, or an accidental bumping. As young parents, the end of the day was when Susan and Howard would count their losses and wins: financially, socially, and emotionally.

“Stephen broke a plate helping with the dishes tonight,” Howard would say quite often when Stephen was just starting elementary school. It took the loss of a dozen plates before the parents suggested he take a more backseat approach to after-dinner clean-up until he got older.

Susan might have whispered, “Melanie got mud on my white blouse when I picked her up for her nap at lunchtime, but I met a nice woman at the park with a daughter about the same age. I’m going to give her a call this week.” It was typical for her to provide one loss and one win when she and Howard compared notes. She was an occasional optimist.

Howard might lift his arm into Susan’s view. “And here’s a bruise from Melanie hitting me with a golf club in the backyard after dinner.”

Once, Susan shared a story about their oldest, Jacob, who brought home a painting he did at school and said to her, “I’m going to be just like you, Mommy.”

Howard pulled his wife closer to him and kissed her on the forehead. Their heads were the only things peeking out from under the down comforter. “He’ll be lucky if he’s just like you,” he said, in a quieter whisper than was usual.

“We’re going to miss this so much.”

When the kids grew older, Howard and Susan stopped counting their losses and wins because the losses were fewer and farther apart—Jacob taking the car out past midnight to go skinny-dipping at the lake once, Melanie getting caught smoking cigarettes on the high school’s football field a few times, Stephen not

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making the soccer team—and the wins were more implicit. No longer were the children telling them, “I love you,” and meaning it the same way they did when they still had baby fat, needed to be picked up to reach the cabinets, and couldn’t wait to come home and spend the whole weekend with Mom and Dad. Instead, the wins were Jacob writing a paper at school saying his father was the one who inspired him the most, Stephen taking the family out for dinner on his first paycheck from Bennigan’s, or Melanie asking Susan if her outfit looks decent before going out. And the wins were good. ______________________________ Susan had to pass two liquor stores, a family-owned convenience store that sold beer, and a major grocery store with three alcohol aisles on the drive there— which was ironic, she thought, that getting to AA was harder than actually going.

The group mediator, Sal, was usually the last to show up, but the first to say something louder than the sound of a pin drop. “How about these coffeecakes, huh?” he said, parking a seat by the snack bar as he fingered a dry, flavorless square. Susan couldn’t stop herself from scoffing. The texture was comparable to that of cornbread, while the contents were indistinguishable: Craisins? Raisins?

Dried mandarins? There was no way of knowing.

They were 30 minutes into the meeting before Sal called on her. “Do you have anything to share with us, Stephanie?” which was Susan’s AA name, on account of Sal’s only rule: keep AA anonymous.

“Alcoholism is embarrassing, folks. That’s why everyone is going to be somebody else,” Sal had said on the first night Susan attended. From then on, to a group of people whose names were also aliases, Susan was Stephanie.

“No,” Susan replied. She was counting the number of reflectors on the bike lying under the snack bar. Seven.

Sal smiled, but his teeth reminded Susan of pale strands of corn on the cob so she hated when he was happy. “What are you thinking about?” he badgered.

“I’m thinking about how, if I chose to ride a bike to these meetings, I wouldn’t make it here because of all the temptations along the way. And I’m thinking about how much I hate going by a name other than my own when I’m trying to deal with my own problems.” A woman whose tag read a different name every visit (this time, it was Opal) rolled her eyes.

After two years—on, off—Sal knew Susan quite well. He didn’t know that her name was Susan, but he did know about her being a wife and mother; about her mother’s alcoholism, which had paved the way for Susan’s bad habits; about that time that she’d been drunk out of her mind going to pick Jacob up from school

because of a fever, only a month after he received his license and about how she’d had to pull over and let Jacob drive the rest of the way home as she sobbed in the passenger seat; about how adamant she was, in the beginning, to claim that recovery wasn’t her choice; about the time she ordered a Bloody Mary while she was out with the kids and slurred, “It’s a virgin,” every time they reminded her that Mommy wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol; and about her husband’s choice to quit drinking the day that he saw her lying limp in a hospital bed, lucky to even be alive.

“Think of them as obstacles, Stephanie, not temptations. ‘Temptation’ alludes to the fact that giving in would be pleasurable—almost rewarding. Ching’s is an obstacle; Grocery Depot is an obstacle. They’re places you’ve got to pass to get better and, each time you do, you become stronger,” Sal claimed.

Susan was thirteen the only other time she heard alcohol be called an obstacle.

Her sister, Mary, had said it, on the night she came home from her first semester of college. The girls were sitting cross-legged on the carpet, both fisting dixie cups half-full of Jack Daniel’s when Mary had told her, “The only obstacle is getting it past your lips,” and Susan would never forget that she did. ______________________________ The kettle was roaring from the stovetop by the time Susan had made all her rounds. Front door? Checked once. Back door? Checked twice. Children?

Checked once, which was easier tonight than is usual. The past Monday was the first day of classes, each of the children starting a different year at the high school. The eldest two, Melanie and Jacob, had gone out hours before, although Susan was rarely graced with the knowledge as to where—and now was one of those times.

At dessert time, Susan had rushed to the kitchen to get pie for her husband, who was one crescent roll and a tenderloin medallion away from a clean plate.

As she dolloped a spoonful of canned strawberries atop her husband’s slice, the headlights of the Old VW gleamed through the front window as it backed out of the garage. When she returned to the dining room table only a minute later, Jacob’s seat was empty and Melanie was placing a kiss on her father’s cheek before slipping on her shoes and slamming the front door. Susan cleaned up the two half-eaten plates, each blanketed in a cloth napkin, through gridded teeth.

“Did they say where they were going?” she asked when she slid back into her seat.

Howard knew what it did to her. Before it had become second nature to speak sensitively about it, he had to be careful of his word choice when referring to the

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kids. Rather than, “No, he didn’t mention a word about you,” he had to get into the habit of saying, “Stephen needed to go back to work.” Howard used phrases like, “He was in a rush,” instead of, “Jacob didn’t want to talk to you.” He would never say, “She never mentioned you,” because it did just as much good to say, “Melanie says ‘hello.’” Howard justified all of this by believing that, sometimes, it was easier to create something false than to admit what is true—at least, to his wife.

After Howard told one of his old lines, he would put the phone back on the hook or kick his legs back up on the ottoman, while the short moment lingered for Susan still. She didn’t show it very often; she would usually continue to wipe down the kitchen counters without so much as an acknowledgment of Howard’s answer or give an exasperated sigh before smacking her hands together and walking away. Albeit very rarely, Susan wasn’t able to hide her emotions concerning the children’s contempt for her. Howard found it all too hard to watch: the darkening of her blue eyes, the subtle pout and upturn of her brow, the sag in her posture for the rest of the evening. It was impossible to feel proud about being the children’s favorite when it came at the demise of his wife and her sense of self-worth.

In reality, Susan had stopped believing him years ago; he was foolish to think that she couldn’t see when her own husband was telling a fib—especially one as obvious as those. She knew that they never wished to talk to Mom or hope that Dad’d pass on a “hello.” The reason that she never stopped asking was in case they changed their minds.

Howard was brushing his dinner fork against his tongue until it was clean enough for dessert. “Melanie, the movies with Paul. Jacob, picking up Tad—or Brad? Chad?”

“Tad,” Susan corrected. “It’s short for Thaddeus.”

He shrugged his shoulders and hunched over his pie. Catching himself, he added, “They wanted me to tell you, ‘thank you.’” Howard shot an abrupt glance at Stephen, who did the same only a moment later. “And that dinner was delicious.”

The men eyed each other with intensity, wordlessly, as they remained seated kitty-corner to one another. Stephen, who was not characteristically stubborn like his father, broke the stare, placed his palms on the edge of the tabletop, and rose to his feet.

“Thanks for dinner,” he had murmured before tossing his dish in the kitchen sink and scurrying to his bedroom—and in his bedroom he would stay, until Susan conducted her routine check before bed.

It was at that moment, when Susan’s teabag was dancing in and out of the boiling water at the flick of her wrist, that she realized two things: the first was that she had become a stranger in her own home and the second was that she needed a drink. ______________________________ It was Tuesday, the day Susan always saw Dr. Perry. Her office was in the sleek, metallic high-rise built just last year that contrasted greatly with the otherwise flat plane of Susan’s suburb. Until last year, Dr. Perry had worked from home and took appointments in her upstairs loft, before patients started showing up when they weren’t scheduled, on Sundays, in the middle of the night, and—most popularly—on holidays. Given the unpredictability of her unwelcome guests, Dr. Perry had rented an office uptown. The mention of her neediest clients, on the rare occasion that she made one, gave Susan a selfish sense of pride; there was a certain satisfaction to be had from being noted among the “more normal” of—for all intents and purposes—“the abnormal.”

“Do you remember the last time you told yourself you wouldn’t drink anymore?”

Susan nodded.

“When?”

“The last time I drank.”

“Do you decide every time you drink that it’s the last time you’ll drink?”

“No.” Dr. Perry dropped her chin, quickly eyeing a note that she had started blindly.

“What made that time different?”

The summer sun hadn’t yet migrated, so the air was dense with children laughing, bicycles ringing, sneakers clapping, and ice cream trucks singing. “It was the Fourth of July and Howard took the kids to see the parade through town in the early afternoon, but I stayed home to make dinner. We were having ribs.”

For a long minute, an ambulance siren blurred out the sounds Susan often found comforting as it roared past the window. She quickly did a mental check: who the kids were with, where Howard was, which way the ambulance was going, and if it could possibly be going to them…

Dr. Janet Perry was a patient person, but Susan knew that before she’d even met her. Susan had ditched her first four appointments: two made by Howard, one made of her own accord, the last made by Howard as Susan sat at the kitchen table crying insisting she wouldn’t go (and to no one’s surprise, she didn’t). Nevertheless, when she called to make her fifth, Dr. Perry generously

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welcomed her.

“They were supposed to be beer-braised.” Susan paused again—not because she wanted to, but because she didn’t know where to go from there.

“What kind?”

“Foster’s.”

“Big can?”

“Three of them.”

Dr. Perry put her legal pad on an adjacent desk, above and away from where Susan was sitting, which came as a relief. When she took notes, Susan felt simultaneously important and inadequate. Half of the time, she considered the superficial happenings in her life to be worth the ink necessary to write them out.

The other half, she was convinced that Dr. Perry’s comments were nothing but a thesaurus for all the ways to say, “I’m better than you.” Susan would say that choosing a therapist so similar to herself was a mistake more often than not. ______________________________ Howard argued that therapy was like math and that that was why it worked.

“You’re the proof, the living product of the equation! You just go to therapy so you can back-track: How did you get here? What did you do to get here? Why did you do it and did it work?”

All Susan could think was, “That’s your only analogy? You’re trying to convince me to go to therapy and that’s your analogy? I dropped out of high school and that’s your analogy?” but disparaging remarks never did her any good.

“So?” Susan crossed her arms. They were sitting across from each other on a lawn table at the park. Behind them, Jacob was swinging on the monkey bars while Melanie and Stephen were throwing handfuls of wood chips at each other below.

It was impossible for Susan to forget agreeing to start a family. She’d been twenty-six, a successful property manager of several different urban locations, and just married to Howard. At that point, Susan hadn’t talked to her father in five years, her mother in seven. And while it was no longer a raw topic by the time Howard mentioned making a family, Susan nonetheless felt hindered by the fact; she often questioned if the relationship she had with her parents—or lack thereof—would deplete her abilities as a parent, as a mother. Even after she had kids, the fear continued to grow within Susan, who saw herself becoming more and more like her own mother as time went on.

“So,” Howard rested his hands on her tangled forearms. “If you never talk

about how you got to the wrong answer, you’ll never understand how to get to the right one, Susie.” ______________________________ A vast majority of her drinking Susan attributed to false confidence that she would later, after being caught, describe as being momentary and frivolous. It usually wasn’t until the morning after Susan had drank half a bottle of hard liquor that she would remember: alcoholics can’t have a casual drink or two— that is why they are alcoholics. Susan told Dr. Perry that her drinking only got out of hand when she had convinced herself that she was cured, no matter how many times the people in her life reminded her that it would be a lifelong battle.

“What made you do it, Susan?”

“You know it’s never one thing,” and that much was true. To ask Susan to reduce her own irrational thought processes to a dissectible handful was a laughable request at the hands of Dr. Perry. It was never just one thing.

One of Susan’s hands was cuffing the other’s clenched fist. Her thumbs were rubbing together so vigorously that Dr. Perry thought she might start a flesh fire.

With lips pursed, she eyed her calendar which gleamed August. “What day of the week was the Fourth this year?”

“Friday,” Susan recalled.

“So,” Dr. Perry began, “Tell me how it happened. You’re home alone on a Friday and you thought, ‘Hey, I could get away with—’” “I only drank two at first. I had rationalized that one could be enough for the ribs—beer-braised is beer-braised after all—and holidays are so stressful as it is that I thought it’d just make me feel better. It never does, but I never stop being hopeful.” Susan let out an uncomfortable laugh. “I just remember feeling wasted and angry all at once. I was never tipsy and agitated, or even drunk and pissed off!” She leaned up in her seat and took a large breath, shaking her head on the downswing of her gaze which fell back on her nervous fingers. “It took less than a half an hour for me to down the beers, get all screwed up, and justify snooping around the house…”

The legal pad was still placed on the doctor’s desk, one corner hanging off the dark oak edge. She was leaning forward, her elbows grinding against the pantyhose hugging her thighs, when she asked, “Snooping for what?”

Dr. Perry wouldn’t be the first person to tell Susan that she cared too much about what other people thought of her, especially her children. Even her mother, whom Susan had a fleeting relationship with for two months when the kids were 6, 7, and 8, argued that she cared too much about what they thought of

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her—inadvertently perpetuating the habit by forgetting that Susan would never willingly take her mother’s advice.

“You know, the children used to be so much like me. Jacob used to love art.

Melanie looks exactly like I did her age. And Stephen? He’s such a sweetheart; he’ll apologize for anything to fix something, to make everything better. Not an impolite bone in his body.” Susan rambled at a sprint’s pace before hitting a wall.

“Just like me,” she murmured.

“What happened?”

“I let them down.”

“How?” “They can only watch their father yell at their mother so many times before they stop thinking that they’re on the same side. I was snooping because I feel left out. I’ve fallen victim to my alcoholism and they can’t trust me to be strong for them, to be there for them when they most need it. It took away the relationships I could have had with my kids. It made them think I was their father’s enemy, their enemy; I represent a threat to security of the family. They resent me.”

Dr. Perry grasped for her notes without breaking sight of Susan, bringing them to her knees to write a quick phrase which she underlined twice over. She asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?” and Susan shook her head anxiously.

“What did you find?”

There were only ten minutes left until Susan would be able to go—she’d been eyeing the minimalist clock perched on Dr. Perry’s desk since she had walked in at two minutes to four o’clock. When she first started seeing a therapist, she frequently used the dwindling time to excuse herself from “opening a whole new can of worms” in the final minutes of her visit, until Dr. Perry moved Susan to her last slot of the day.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got time,” Dr. Perry would reassure her. “The only place I’ve got to be is in traffic.” ______________________________ Susan was already preparing her third glass by the time a set of car headlights crept up the driveway. She quickly stowed away her cherry schnapps behind the box of stale dog treats and three cans of spam in the cupboard—this month’s best hiding spot—but not before adding one, last generous splash to her chamomile.

Like a precious keepsake, Susan held the mug against her chest as she stumbled to the front window. It was Paul’s Chevy pickup that was in the drive, sitting pretty in the moonlight, and parked right alongside the garage. Melanie was

already sitting atop the shiny red hood, intertwining her fingers with the netting of the family’s basketball hoop mounted on the face of the garage. Still on the ground, Paul ran his palms along the outside of Melanie’s bare calves before stepping up on the chrome bumper and taking a seat next to her.

When her mug was almost empty, Susan concluded that the pair was within earshot. From the living room, she had been peering gingerly at the couple as she downed her concoction—at first, it was only because she couldn’t go upstairs with how badly she reeked; now, it was because she was selfishly fascinated.

She cracked the window open with Stephen King’s Misery from the nearest bookshelf.

Susan was confused by Paul, a regular town hick who she believed was far too mediocre to be idolized the way she knew Melanie did. They had been dating for two months by the time the news of their affection reached Susan, who inevitably despised the pairing ever since. “What boy doesn’t want to meet the mother of his girlfriend right off? Does he not care what I think of him—or what the family thinks of him?” but her argument fell on deaf ears, as those who heard her cries were also the ones who knew far before her that Melanie was seeing Paul.

Paul nuzzled up near Melanie’s ear. “You think we’re ever being watched out here?” He pointed at the string of houses running in both directions, neither end visible through the residential forest.

“Probably not.” Melanie tilted her head to expose a bare neck to Paul, who immediately began worshipping the spot on her pale skin.

As the teenagers fondled each other immodestly, a tipsy Susan was on all fours cleaning up spilled tea. The oriental rug that lay under her Tiffany had fallen victim to a drunk’s heavy-handedness. She dabbed at the dark spots, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” to no one, all the while thanking herself for consuming the dark spots that never touched the ground. ______________________________ Reaching into her black leather purse that had mostly wedged it’s way between the arm and cushion of the couch, Susan pulled out a stray slip of paper: collegeruled, about cut in half, and with a torn top edge. “I found nothing until I got to Melanie’s room.”

“You didn’t.” Dr. Perry shook her head in disapproval. “Her journal, Susan?”

“I’m not proud of it, Janet; I’d never done it and I’d never do it again. I flipped through the pages, just hoping to find something comforting… Something to make me feel close to her.”

Dr. Perry let out a sigh. “Go on.”

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“I stumbled upon a page about me, about a day I was drinking when the boys were away—you remember that soccer tournament, out of state—and it was just me and Mel. I’d spent the first sixty of the money Howard had given us for the week on plain Smirnoff and white pomegranate rum.”

“Thought she wouldn’t know?”

“Of course I knew she’d know—she always knows—but when she caught me and came down like the iron fist she can be, I felt too ashamed to admit it. I told her that, yes, I did drink, but that I was done. Told her I drank it all up. ‘All the bottles are in the garbage,’ I said to her, so that she would stop investigating.”

“Did she?”

“Don’t you know her?” Susan went on to explain how Melanie went straight outside, opened up the bins at the front curb, and searched between the bagcreases for the empty remains. “When she came back inside, she was fuming— for sending her on the chase, for lying to her as always. I told her, ‘I swear they’re gone. I swear I’m done,’ but she didn’t believe me. She went into the master bedroom and started tearing through the drawers to find what she knew was there all along.”

All Dr. Perry said was, “I wish you would have told me about that day,” which was what Susan hated most about having weekly visits. Seeing her therapist so often warranted a type of relationship that was parallel to the one she had with herself: no too-complicated’s, no bending-of-the-truth’s, no wasn’t-thatimportant’s. Even Howard would attest that such a relationship was out of Susan’s reach. For the first decade of their relationship, he called her only one of two names: Susie and Bull (which was short for “bullshit,” the only thing she was spewing when she wasn’t on his good side). The latter was replaced with Mommy, but only because they started raising children, not because she no longer deserved the title. For Susan, the type of relationship that Dr. Perry expected with her was not only out of the question (if she had anything to say about it), but also sounded completely and utterly boring; Susan would have none of it. “What did you find instead?” Dr. Perry pressed.

“She wrote about finding the bottles.” Susan let out a shallow, pitiful cough before reading the cradled slip between her shaking fingers.

Melanie had written, “I take the bottles out and ask her if this makes her happy; if watching me cry makes her happy; if watching me grow up to do the pouring down the sink just like my father did when I was too young to understand makes her proud; if watching me hate her satisfies her because she hated her mom and her addiction, too. I wonder, now, if it’s all just a vicious cycle, that the women in

my family can only bear daughters who hate them.” ______________________________ It was almost two-thirty by the time Melanie strolled in the front door and, had it not been for the light above the foyer, she would have missed her mother who lay barely conscious on the living room floor. She also would have missed, on that late summer’s night, the strong draft pushing through the front window, on account of being wedged open for hours by now.

Melanie wasn’t mad, when she got to the window, that her mother had guillotined one of her school books under the double-hung pane. She wasn’t mad that her mother had spilled on the oriental rug, the third one she’s been gifted in the past five years by Dad. She wasn’t mad that her mother had—probably, most likely, almost definitely—watched her from the house that night. Susan was no stranger to crossing boundaries in the past. “Mom can’t help it. She’s been doing it since she was a kid,” Dad justified to the kids, but Melanie didn’t understand her mother’s reason for never growing up when all of the children did.

Susan’s eyes fluttered open, catching sight of Melanie who was gazing down at her, disgusted. “Go to bed. You’re drunk,” she muttered, slipping off her sandals near the welcome mat, turning off the light above the foyer, and climbing the stairs to her bedroom.

Susan stared back into the darkness, straight at the house she had built full of secrets. When she got back to her feet, she wavered to the staircase, reminding herself that today wasn’t such a big deal. Just another hiccup Susan would confess to Dr. Perry on Tuesday.

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Alexandra Whittaker

“eBay Lot #6371”

We put it on a TV dinner stand, its empty glass eyes fixated on the Mickey Mouse clock in the kitchen.

Mom got it online for $120, a bargain, and we poke it and poke it, but we don’t get thrown to the wall.

We don’t hear scratches on the door or thumps from the attic like the last doll.

Everything is terribly normal.

I think Mom got scammed.

But sometimes I wonder if it does feel.

Does it miss rose bath bombs and bobby pins, and being an alive girl?

Are our words nectar, does it lap up every word?

Maybe its angry. Or maybe I’m disappointed.

A doll without a soul, and we can’t afford another.

But sometimes I dream it’s still a she, and when we put on pajamas in defeat for bed, her eyes wake up to the clock’s ping, and flick towards my door instead.

Alexandra Whittaker

“Post-Surgery”

I only wanted to surf.

I planned to dance on tides that came down from the moon in bulky, antipodal points but my limbs are now like lumber knots shaking off winter’s sweat.

I can’t remember how to move them.

Lying alone in a hospital bed, I send requests to the heavens only to have them returned.

No more surfing, no more running, no more walking until next summer, when my legs get permission to crack these casts open and I can rebuild my leftover jelly bones.

I have become all those words I listened to alone, a far cry from a well-oiled machine.

I hum in sync with the monitors but I’m tired, so I built this wall as a place to stay dormant as I catch my breath.

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Alexandra Whittaker

“The Lobo Wolf Girl”

Calm, again.

Calm. Calm. Calm sprinkling over you with the sky’s breath.

Stars crack and bend and your eyes stop darting when the hills fold over quietly in the distance.

I know you can’t know what you can’t understand and you were born to be a stranger to Viennese waltzes and cheek powder, frock coat buttons and trundle beds.

Life here is no wicked mystery.

I think you’ll do all right.

Goodnight, Goodnight, Goodnight.

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“Kaleidoscope”

Photo credit: Claire Kelly

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Kierstyn Robbins Letters

I used to believe the moon was made of cheese, but now I know that was just another one of many lies he told me. We used to lie in the back yard side-by-side when the sky was wiped clean of cloudy haze and the warm breeze moving through the grass tickled the back of our arms. We would lie in silence for hours, with my tiny head on his stomach, and look up at the moon.

“Me and you, Lexi-Loo, someday we’ll fly up there and gobble up the whole thing,” he would say.

I would laugh and roll around on the cool grass while his fingers prodded my sides. Our voices ringing across the quiet neighborhood and disappearing into the endless dark sky.

I think even then I knew it wasn’t really cheese, but that didn’t stop me from lying in the back yard long after he was gone, looking up at the moon.

“Me and you, Dad,” I whispered into the darkness, my words muffled by the deafening silence beside me. “Someday we’ll fly up there. You’ll come back and we’ll fly up there.”

I never did fly to the moon and he never came back. That’s why my chest tightened when I pulled the stack of papers from the rusty mailbox to see a yellow envelope with Lexi-Loo scribbled in messy lines across the front. I rubbed my thumb over the 35 cent stamp with an image of Saturn hugged by glowing rings and surrounded by a flurry of stars. I slammed the mailbox shut and hurried up the steps of the old house. When I stepped into the kitchen, Sam was collecting dishes off the shelves and putting them into boxes. He stopped when he caught the look on my face. I held up the letter, displaying the name scrawled across the front.

“Shit,” he said, running a hand through his floppy curls.

I dropped the letter on the counter and we both leaned in, waiting for it to explain itself.

“Are you going to open it?” Sam asked, nudging it towards me with his finger.

I sighed and leaned back, plopping onto one of the stools tucked up against the counter, the last pieces of furniture not yet mummified by bubble-wrap and stacked in the living room. Empty take-out boxes and stacks of files were scattered across the counter that had become the hub of the box-filled house. I pulled my knees to my chest and stared at the letter. I knew if I ran upstairs, went to the corner of my old bedroom, and pulled out the wooden music box that it would be filled with stacks of letters with the same writing scribbled across the

front.

He was a truck driver. Sometimes, he would be gone for weeks at a time. He would plant a big smooch on my mother’s lips, ruffle my hair, and hop into the cab of his semi-truck.

“Off to the moon,” he would call out, with a wink meant just for me.

He wrote me letters while he was on the road. I knew he was spending night after night chugging along highways from Texas to Illinois, but his letters told of intergalactic adventures beyond anything I could dream up. Tales of battles with aliens and discoveries of new planets wound their way across the cheese powder stained pages. When he would return from his trips, we would act out his adventures in mountains of blankets and pillows sprawled across the living room with colanders on our heads. My mother would bake chocolate chunk cookies and we would spend the evening showering the living room floor with Nerf pellets.

I pushed the letter back towards Sam and swiveled on the stool.

“We only have an hour until the truck comes,” I said, “and we’re barely packed.”

Sam’s eyes flooded with sympathy, a look of his I had become all too familiar with in the last few days as we packed up my childhood home.

“What?” I snapped at him.

Sam held his hands up in surrender and returned to his box of mugs. I collected a pile of plates from the counter and placed them into one of the empty boxes.

As I withdrew my hand, my finger grated across the deep chip in the side of the top plate and blood prickled along the serrated skin. Sam had asked me a million times why we couldn’t just get rid of that damaged plate. I’d revealed most of my childhood secrets to Sam, but I never told him my mother held that plate when she found out.

It was a boiling, humid day. We didn’t have the kind of money for an air conditioning system so my mother threw open every window in the house, and after one too many complaints about the weather, she banished me outside.

We had a large tree in our yard that cast a shadow over the back of our house. I crawled into the shade and rested my back against the cool concrete foundation just below the kitchen window. I could hear my mother sloshing dishes in the sink, never one to leave the house a mess even when there were waves of heat rolling off every inch of the siding.

The kitchen phone rang and I heard her great her sister who lived in Houston, my mother’s home town. The heat of the day created a cloud of cotton balls in my head and my mother’s voice drifted into the buzz of the cicadas filling the

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backyard. I closed my eyes and let the sticky warmth melt me into the concrete until I was nothing but a puddle. I was jerked out of my trance by a loud clatter in the kitchen. I leapt from my spot and hurried into the room were my mother stood with a hand over her mouth and a single tear rolling down her cheek.

Apparently, my father gave the pretty, blonde at the furniture store more than just deliveries of head boards and glass-front hutches.

One of the beautiful plates from the set my father had saved up to get her for Christmas a few years ago lay upside down on the floor. When I lifted it from the damp linoleum, a large chuck had released itself from the edge and bounced off somewhere into the kitchen. I looked for that piece for two weeks, but I never found it.

My dad never came into our house again. When he returned from that trip all of his things were piled on the porch and every door and window was locked tight. I cried and cried, begging my mom to let me go out and see him, but she held me tightly in her bedroom until he disappeared.

He continued to write me letters for a little while. They became shorter and further between, always without a return address, until they stopped all together.

“Jesus, Lex,” Sam said rushing towards me with a paper towel. The blood had pooled along the scrape and had begun trickling down the sides of my finger. He came up behind me and wrapped the towel around it, “I don’t know why you won’t just let me throw away that stupid plate.”

I leaned back against him, resting my head against his shoulder. I could feel his chest collapse and he let out a sigh.

“It’s that letter, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I said, watching blood bloom across the paper towel creating a bouquet of red poppies against my stinging finger.

An engine rumbling up the driveway caught our attention and we both glanced out the living room window to see the moving truck bouncing along the gravel.

Sam jumped, shoving the last of the glasses into boxes.

“He’s early,” he said, “I’ll go out and talk to him.”

I stepped to the counter and began tossing the take-out boxes in the trash and stuffing the files in an empty box until all that remained on the counter was the letter and the lease for our new apartment in the city. I looked around the empty house and felt it for the first time. I was leaving behind the only home I’d ever known. The home, that after years of working my way up in a small start-up company, I would leave behind. The life I would leave behind.

I grabbed my father’s letter from the counter and rushed up the stairs. I made my way across the creaky hard-wood floor and into my old bedroom. Dropping

in front of the closet, I wiggled the floorboard in the corner until it gave way. I removed the music box, opening it gently, running my fingers along the worn edges of the many-times read letters. My chest heaved with years of caged disappointment.

“Lex,” Sam called from downstairs, “He’s ready for us to start loading it up.”

I breathed deeply and wiped my cheeks. Grabbing the envelope beside me, I placed it on the top of the aged letters, the bold yellow standing out against the others, and snapped the box shut, returning it to its place beneath the floorboard.

The moon is not made of cheese and I’m not coming back.

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Amanda Hedberg

Professional Procrastinator

If you’re finding yourself in one of those “I literally can’t right now” moods and need some dilly-dallying guidance, let me start you off by saying that there’s a right way and a wrong way to put responsibilities on the back burner.

It is an art. No longer are the days when getting your ear talked off by dad could be considered a sufficient diversion from your obligations. Any modern day procrastinator knows that in order to attain success, priorities must be rearranged.

The right way: First and foremost, consume food. You cannot adequately procrastinate without being well nourished. Open the fridge and stare into its sticky corners and grimy drawers; past the leftover postizo your mother made for you because lately, “you don’t seem to have much of an appetite.” Instead of eating leftovers, decide to make something actually involving an oven and time.

Next, change out of your grown-up clothes for the daytime and into sweats.

However, before doing this, you’re going to want to rummage through your dresser and look at pictures jacketed in crinkly, yellowing envelopes. Trudge through the memories.

Now that you have been vividly reminded of how skinny your father was at your fifteenth birthday party and how horrible you looked in braces, meander onto Google and look up kidney disease again on Web MD. Note the early signs.

Every procrastinator knows that while on the internet, Facebook needs to be opened and scrolled though mindlessly. Creep on your neighbor from high school that you used to smoke bowls with in the garage and denounce how life was unfair. Check up on your college boyfriend: your first, and most recent, serious relationship. You never thought you would marry him anyway.

Meanwhile, notice the shards of setting sunlight spilling into the room you’re in, reminding you of the awaiting duty you’re dreading and trying to push aside.

You’ll look at the fridge and wonder if moving out of the house was the right thing to do. You’ll decide, yes. After all, it will be 8 years in August.

You’ll start getting ready and do all that other bullshit after you call your mom.

Pace around the apartment strategically, dodging and selectively answering your mother’s questions. Tap your foot on the sticky patches on the kitchen floor and decide to Swiffer it once you get off the phone. But, cleaning is impossible without music, so be sure to put on Sammy Davis Jr: your father’s favorite.

Sammy never disappoints when looking for a melancholic croon-along.

After the phone call with your mother, and after scouring the kitchen floor, you’ll realize, to your disgust, the too-close-for-comfort encounter with the kitchen filth. You’ll take a hot shower to cleanse yourself. The steam will evaporate memories out of you while simultaneously gluing them back onto your skin like a dollar store tattoo. You know you’ll be late. Your mother and everyone will be waiting for you.

Reaching the conclusion that you cannot avoid leaving any longer, you will get in your car and drive the roads you have driven annually seven times. You will ironically think to yourself, “What a shitty birthday party.” You’ll be zipped in your black dress, but your face will be naked. Not a stitch of makeup. Every procrastinator knows that makeup goes on at the last minute, with the visor mirror and the sunset after a solid car cry on the way to the cemetery so as not to ruin the mascara. Even professional procrastinators have a hard time meeting deadlines.

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Tyler Farrell

“On Finding A College Notebook from Astronomy Class�

Billions of years old, between twelve and eighteen billion years old the universe and the earth only a quarter of life. Light is itself, itself. Gamma rays and ultraviolet rays and visible inside invisible penetrate atmospheres like humans penetrate each other. Both sides famous scientists space as a measure of things: milli, mega, nano, giga.

Exponential notation with hypotheses and data time scale long radio short radio wave center unfolding as bodies fill the stratosphere astronomical units and coordinate systems with light year values.

Knowing the heavens, this celestial globe, mapping earth moves Alpha and Beta, declination and right ascension for prime meridian moves like Foucault’s pendulum measure longest and shortest days in diurnal motion of souls to swim up into the constellations.

Ancient Romans grew weary from sun spots and faces turned toward and away from each other into sacrifices earth and moon, lunar eclipse and the top wobbles, precession directly overhead for time zones and ancient cultures full phases of the lunar surface tell hours when we live our lives again and forever varied distance of shadows form diamond ring effect, eruptions of gas and partial explosions of love, for gravity is of apparent magnitude. Dim stars and bright stars and helical rising from retrograde, each human golden nose sniffing one another, body slide upwards for the laws of inertia are dense and we are thick like terrestrial planets like massive shift in tectonics forming our gracious and fleshy sphere for organic beings are soil and rocky mountains in bodily energy and gas and Calisto cratered surface almost ready to be unearthed, no longer inert, a symptom of magnetic fields and large satellites of chondrite nearly crashing into each other out of want and need displacement laws and flares flow upwards and lost in a hot core.

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“MKE Symmetry”

Photo credit: Nolan Bollier

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T“The Cathedral/Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France”

Previously published in St. Peter’s B-List: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints (Ave Maria Press, 2014) All souls in New Orleans are beautiful when the mist serves us heavenly air trapped on wet streets, the park noises, young artists wash feet with a little fountain water. We crawl along black brick long cracked streets aimed at the Mississippi.

Fog like smoky faces unbound wishes humid people, lives eyeing around the quarter for someone, anyone to tell us about the parties, the great restaurants, the crowded bars and discreet strip clubs.

All the rewards complete test and happiness.

If we could live in this parish forever we could be truly happy our entire lives.

Then a wedding opens chilled cathedral doors with smells of an ordination at the Vatican.

Grey marble and incense – intoxicates honors the crowd, union heat throb Christ.

Sounds draw us nearer the ground in reverence kneeling beneath the sun and crescent moon.

Our minds now unclouded, sins confessed.

Forgiveness is a city of saints, Louis singing a song for Saint Joseph. He sings also for the sinners – bourbon street window swingers bad barkers next to three card monty dealersnear Café Du Monde where a homeless man hit on me as we sat on black iron benches in the park with the Civil War cannon, model 1861 parrot rifle.

He said I had real fair skin and I was sweating.

Beignet powdered sugar fell everywhere.

I smiled, listened, chatted with him for a time about artillery and pirates, about the Jax brewery,

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voodoo. Then I went and had a few beers at the brewery, stumbled back to the Basilica and with other flaming hearts looked skyward.

We prayed, recited plaque history, visitations always pondering a pilgrimage to another bar.

Revelation love from local parishioners indulging the way sinners often indulge.

“Running at Midnight�

Photo credit: Maeline Pieschel

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Joseph Dobbs Callouses

Every Sunday, we race the buses down 4th Street. Most of the guys – and Sharon – don’t have much interest in what 4th has to offer street-side. But the north side of 4th has the best roofs in the county for a straight shot. You hear from all the old runners that true Parkour is in grappling with the unfamiliar.

They’re not wrong, but the 4th Street trace is the only big run we can get everyone in on. It’s straightforward, low-risk and a lot of fun – there’s no need for alley jumps or tic-tacs, just straight fundamentals for a kilometer or so.

Six days a week we run together. Safety first – no one falls or sprains anything alone. 4th Street may be easy fun, but we take everyone along. There’s always enough risk for someone to make a mistake. Hell, last month I flubbed a basic roll and spent two weeks Voodoo Flossing my right arm.

So Sunday is a straight-up race and everyone’s invited. It’s our most visible course, not a bad place to take your time, show off, and get style points. But we race it fast and hard because competition keeps you sharp, because pushing yourself makes you improve, and because Sunday is when Zoe takes the bus to the Catholic church on Burton and 4th.

Zoe and I had dated for a week or two in high school. We went our separate ways after graduation, but I guess she got bored of New York, since she quit college and came home after a few semesters. My parents like to talk about her parents; they’re the closest thing to a rags-to-riches story that this burg has ever had – even moved across the county line. Her dad was some sort of salesman who got a massive promotion. Her mom was a model or something. To be honest, I never listened much; old folks’ business is their own and I don’t need to borrow any. I figure it makes sense that Zoe’s mom was a model, though – they look eerily similar.

I guess I ran into Zoe before I heard she was back. Of course, she’d only been home about a month. We’re not a big town, but the rumor mill still takes a while to spin up. Anyway, Dave Ringfeld had managed to pull a hamstring in the last hundred meters one Sunday. Usually we keep above street level as long as we can on 4th Street, but we figured the bus was the best way to get him back to his car. Zoe came out the back of the bus as we helped Dave up the steps in the front.

She walked right behind me. I smelled her before I saw her. She hadn’t changed at all.

I turned, watching her walk up the steps of St. Felicity’s, her hair done up in a bun that showed the back of her slender neck. The church bells tolled and the

heavy oak doors closed behind her. I was raised Catholic, but I’ve never been to St. Felicity’s. It looks like a nice place, though – a lot of fun to climb or trace, but you can’t take the group. It’s too exposed; people will notice and disapprove. To be honest, climbing a church doesn’t really feel right, either.

So now we run 4th Street on Sundays as fast as we can. Winner gets to ride the bus back, everyone else crowd-runs back. Some say it’s not strictly Parkour, but it’s a useful discipline. I tend to win, though it’s not always by much. And when I win, Zoe and I cross paths on the bus, coming and going. I’ve never seen her recognize me, but I’ve changed a lot since high school. Finally found my niche.

Last Sunday, Sal had to work late so he asked us to push the run back an hour; that meant Mass would be over and I’d ride home with Zoe, and I felt perfectly comfortable with that.

Now, just because I know I can win these races by a decent margin doesn’t mean I ever slack off; the seconds between winning and losing aren’t room for error, they’re room for improvement. It’s my job to make everyone else faster, which means I have to make myself faster first.

I took a front roll instead of the usual shoulder roll on the last jump, and dove into a kip-up. Although we don’t focus on it during a race, there’s always a place for style. I checked my watch; it wasn’t my best time, but it was good enough. An exploratory sniff reminded me that I was not at my most alluring.

I think I read somewhere that women find sweaty men attractive, but I’m pretty sure that has more to do with the kind of men who regularly get all sweaty than the fact that they’re currently sweating. Some of the guys have barefoot shoes; I don’t know how well they handle sweat, but I hate tugging off wet socks. I’m probably due for a new pair of shoes anyway.

I tugged my cap down over my forehead (stupid Under Armour never fits right) and checked my zip-pockets – bus pass and keys and wallet, all I need. I’d thought about bringing some deodorant or something, but Zoe was the kind of girl who would notice the brine beneath the artificial scent.

I checked my watch again, did a little mental math. We were all a little slow – comes with breaking the routine. Still, the bus wasn’t going to change schedule.

There wasn’t time to wait for everyone else and they could get along fine without me. I jogged off towards the corner, my hamstrings reminding me that I had better let them down easy or they would make Monday very unpleasant. Plenty of time, plenty of time.

The church crowd was still filing out as I got to the bus stop. Though my sunglasses always tempt me to stare, I left my attention unfocused. Better to strike up a conversation with Zoe as soon as she gets close than make eye contact

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at twenty meters and feel awkward until halfway through the bus ride.

The bus had just pulled up across from St. Felicity’s when the losers started their run back down the street. They whooped as they passed me, joking and teasing each other as they parted the sidewalk traffic like Moses at the Red Sea. My eyes followed them and I was lost for a few moments. Then I caught a glimpse of Zoe’s hair. She had passed me while I was watching my friends run. I scrambled after her, bumping into a few passengers who had decided to disembark against the tide.

As I waved my bus pass at the driver, another passenger’s elbow caught me in the small of my back, throwing me off-balance. Instinctively, I tried a shoulder roll to break my fall. There just wasn’t room. I ended up crashing into a stroller and its mother. It had been too long since I’d had to juggle soccer moms instead of rooftops. Everyone stared, and someone in the back started giggling. I staggered to my feet, and extended a hand to the woman I had knocked over. She refused it, fuming and muttering something about a “clumsy oaf.” Probably an English teacher.

I was afraid to look up and see the expression on Zoe’s face, but I planted an apologetic half-smile on my lips and scanned the bus in as relaxed a fashion as I could manage, sliding my sunglasses off my face. It was a much nicer crowd than I was used to – the church-going set took themselves quite seriously in this town and dressed to the nines every Sunday. Not many took the bus, but the few who didn’t drive really helped class it all up.

There was only one blonde on the bus: her. The seat next to Zoe was empty, but so were five others between her and me. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained; I walked the distance and settled in next to her, half-facing the aisle, leaving her all the room in the world.

She leaned forward. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m fine. Just slipped a little.” A pause. “This doesn’t usually happen to me.”

She failed to hide her smile. “That doesn’t usually happen to anybody.”

“Yeah, but I’m a traceur. A freerunner? Uh, have you seen Casino Royale?”

“Oh, you do the whole obstacle running thing?”

“That’s right! So this is, like, extra embarrassing for me.”

“Well, I promise not to tell anyone.”

We chatted a while longer, about the weather and our parents and whether she liked taking the bus to church instead of driving – all the little things. And it was enough. Zoe’s a great girl, but I don’t know. Time heals all wounds — maybe too many.

I wanted to talk about Parkour, about what it’s like, about my running friends, but it was just a curiosity to her. She brought up her college, talked about the big city and stuff. Her voice was still pretty, for sure.

After high school, she’d told me that she wanted a more athletic man and that she wasn’t ready to settle down with such a nice, stable guy. Maybe I started Parkour for her, in some sick way. But now that’s all backwards, and I think backwards is the right way round for me. I invited her to run with me on Tuesday. If I don’t see her then, I won’t bother looking for her again. It was good catching up. I found out what I needed to. I don’t have anything to prove.

Someone once watched me run and asked me whether I was running from something or running to something. I spent a long time wondering which it was, and which was better. Since talking to Zoe, I’ve realized the truth: that neither of those answers are good enough. I run because I love it. A life this good deserves to be this simple.

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Tyler Farrell

“Blink�

Wetness reaches out to me one last time The Beyond calls with stronger hands I am doused with sunlight and sudden cold It is too late to wake up again It is a struggle, and always a failure Chill leaps outwards from my skin Now I have somewhere to drip to My baptism receding Pulling away the echoes of silence Noise has entered with the shock of air Pink mountains shape and fire sounds Dueling cacophonies from far above And I am lifted to meet them Nothing is where it was.

How can all this remain unfettered?

Why does the darkness not come brawling back?

I kick out into the bright and my leg returns untouched.

This place is formless, wall-less, lawless.

It wants me for its own; there is no escape.

They scrub me, number me, tag me.

I am twice-blinded by fresh assaults, Passed from one to another, An ignorant, unteachable parcel.

At last I am pressed against something solid, Laid to rest in a soft valley, white and trembling.

Some sense suddenly shouts recognition -My home, my life, is on the far side of this.

This is as close as I will come to it again.

The valley closes around me, Stilling the noise and, somehow, the alarm

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A sense of comfort struggles in my mind -My new home loves me, even as a stranger.

The mountain lifts me up to its face and coos I reach for it, and it embraces me.

And I know myself by the feel of her skin.

“Paris at 1 a.m.�

Photo credit: Maeline Pieschel

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Morgan Hess

“The Perfect Two” Seashore in the morning (Narimamanabad, Azerbaijam) 2011 Mila Teshaieva My mind wanders at first glance to the summers spent by the water— carefree summers spent prancing and basking in the sun and surf.

But, these men do not frolic about or splash around light-heartedly, for these men flock to the water out of leisure not necessity.

Each shadowy figure climbs into his rickety boat, face bathed in sun, back to shore, with the hope of filling his tin, fishing frigate with the catch of the day.

Now, I imagine the sound and clamor that breaks early morning’s peace and permeates through the dewy breath of morning, as the men prepare for their work on the water to begin, and race out into the fog surfaced waters of dawn.

Morning’s growing light, the punch clock, waiting for the first cast of net or rod to begin its ticking.

A noise so unusually loud for day-break that it almost overpowers the faint splash of the waking morning’s ripples.

Waves so small that the crest folds just over my toes as I stand where water washes into sand.

The earth meets and absorbs its companion in a warm embrace— liquid losing its form, sacrificing its self to be one with its true mate.

Morgan Hess

“Obsolete Manor” “The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies.”

-Neil Gaiman, American Gods The sun enters through the crack in the frame of the old casement

window.

Light absorbs the warmth of the red-brown wood as it leaves the mahogany in search of something worthy of its spotlight and shines down through the dim atmosphere of which it now resides.

Mice and roaches scurry over pots thrown askew to hide from morning’s growing glow.

Past the webs spun of spiders’ silk, a batch of cinnamon shortbreads rest upon a smudged plate of china.

Small fingers reach just above the edge of the grease-coated countertop to grasp the round treats and pull them down to meet blue eyes that poke out from under chocolate-colored tufts of hair that sway in front of his forehead.

He anticipates the sweet taste that he remembers so fondly, but is only met with disappointment as his mouth cannot taste, his stomach cannot be full.

With each bite crumbs and clumps of cookie fall into the dust-covered

floorboards, disappearing into the ground as if being absorbed.

Then he too is gone. Vanished from the sight of the living leaving only the dust and the light.

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Allie Ponkratz

To a Note on the Back of My Hand

“Hey Garden, can you text me your schedule for thanksgiving break? I’m trying to fly in so we can coordinate our rides back home. I’m so excited to see you!”

The text appearing on my cellphone substitutes for my father’s voice. I think to myself how it’s only the first week of school and I can’t plan that far ahead, but I suppose plane tickets are cheaper when you buy in advance. I shove the phone back into my pocket and decide to respond later so as to not obstruct the flow of student traffic. With my phone properly secured, I continue on my way. I can’t help but notice the grounds crew’s lovely job of pruning the landscaping for the students returning from summer; for once I actually notice the grass instead of the goose shit dispersed throughout it. I finally make it to my classroom and slip into my desk as quietly as possible. It’s too early in the semester to be noticed. As the fluorescent light casts over me, I quickly scribble on my hand “text dad.” It’s really not a good sign that I have to remind myself.

My father is a Colonel in the Army Reserve. Overall, I think the term “Reserve” is bullshit, because if he is reserved, why has he been gone for half of my life? He has been deployed, or on active duty, for over eight years of my life— missing proms, graduations, and entire years of school. But okay, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable and feel like you have to hold mock sympathy for my sob story and me because in reality, this isn’t a sob story. This is simply my account of growing up with a father in the army. Now at the age of twenty, I feel like I have come to terms with my father’s career and his deployments. However, the same thing cannot be said for when I was a little girl.

The windows were gigantic. I could watch the whole scene perfectly through just one of them. Grey pollution smothered the plane’s original white paint so that the once-valiant machine now looked tired. The grey was everywhere: grey sky, grey asphalt, the grey even worked its way inside and onto the airport walls and floors. The grey murk suffocated you so you had nothing to do but focus your attention on the bits of color shining in through that gigantic window. The rest of my family appeared to be affected by the grey too, because they joined my side at the giant sheet of glass. Even at four years old, I knew the grey, and the way my family was behaving, was not right. Eventually, the frame of the window truly did become a stage for a scene. The story of what happened next has been told to me so many times that I feel comfortable claiming it as my own memory.

I watched my father slowly walk across the pavement toward the plane. His stature emanated pride and demanded the attention of the people inside the airport. I had always thought they were watching him with me, however, now that I look back on it, I suppose they were looking more at the proud man’s family whom he was leaving behind. They were probably looking at the young woman with her three small children: two boys; eight and six, and one four-year old girl. And I now can understand why we held that attention. As my father boarded the plane, the realization of the situation hit me and it was too much.

The man who had been my everything since I had been an anything was leaving. I smashed my tear-stained cheeks against the window screaming for my father to come back. The farther away he got, the more desperate I became. I threw my eyes around the airport searching wildly for anyone who could make this madness end. My mother held me against her side to swallow the volume of my screeching pleas while trying to keep it together herself. My melt down attracted the attention of all surrounding, and eventually strangers were in tears upon witnessing my pain. The airline employees offered tissues to my family and me; partly to help my suffering, and partly to help theirs too. No one could stop him from leaving, so we piled in the van and drove home against the grey sky.

That deployment to Kosovo is the first I remember. Each time after that, though, it became easier and easier to say goodbye until, eventually, it did not even phase me. Sure, I’d go to friends’ houses and think how nice it was to have both parents there, but I never thought I was abnormal. But maybe I did miss out on a complete childhood. According to the movies and television, one is supposed to rustle up an extreme level of emotion whenever a beloved soldier comes home. I can’t relate to that anymore, and I find the dramatization of the fateful return irksome. How can the characters express such extreme happiness every single time his or her soldier returns? They’ve probably only had to deal with one deployment. I guess I would feel the same way too, if it only happened once. But it hasn’t happened only once.

Since my junior year of high school, my dad has been stationed in Tampa, Florida, Washington D.C., and is currently in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Three different addresses in five years and not one of them the same as mine. Due to his absence, my brothers and I have become astoundingly independent. For example in high school, I had to get myself to school every day, which was a feat because it was forty-five minutes away. This forced independence perhaps led to my frigid heart and bitch demeanor; but as the great Tina Fey said, “Bitches get stuff done.” I couldn’t put my life on hold every time my dad left. Stuff had to get done and I had to do it on my own. I used to mark my fathers’ return in my

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kitten-themed calendar with a thousand stickers and gel pen markings. Now his persona has regressed to a scribbled note on the back of my hand. It might sound cold-hearted, but it is how I’ve made it through. I’ve learned that not putting any extra emotion or curiosity into his absence makes everything easier.

The five of us stood huddled in the departure gate waiting for the flight attendants to give the OK to board. I don’t remember what gate it was, maybe gate 3B, maybe gate “see ya in a year and a half, dad.” Either way, we waited until it became annoying. Of course no one let on about his or her annoyance, that would be rude, but it was subtly clear that we all just wanted to get this over with. Finally the time had come. I wrapped my arms around my father, no longer needing to be picked up to accomplish the affection, and hugged him goodbye.

“I love you, Dad,” I said. “I will see you very soon.”

“I love you too Garden, don’t grow up too much while I’m gone.”

The window appeared much differently, much smaller. My family and I rearranged ourselves in order of height to watch the scene through the cramped window: me, my mother, Ben, and finally Jake. It looked like a deranged family photo— smallest in the front, tallest in the back. It was deranged of course because my father was walking towards yet another plane instead of standing next to my mother. My father’s hair matched the grey sky, but his stature still emanated pride. No one watched. No tissues were offered. No tears were shed.

We piled in the van, drove home, and continued with our activities for the day.

Giulianna Sutkiewicz

“Letter to the Editor: 1968”

My grandmother stands at a mere five feet tall, her lips curled in so maybe they won’t accuse her of being unpatriotic, her black armband burning into her skin, just like their eyes are into her back.

She signs the letter, Martha Ann Wortche.

One letter gives way to fifty more, lying at her door.

They read, “You hate this country.

We hate you.”

My grandfather trembles at the thought of what these hawks can do to his family, and my grandmother trembles too, at what they are doing to someone else’s.

Awake in the night, my mother tiptoes down the stairs and reads the letters of people going postal over a tiny, feisty dove.

We know now that they were not really angry with my mother’s mother.

They were just Americans, fearful of a world, where dominos were falling on their heads.

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Emily Walters

Reset

Five.

When I was in high school, regular jeans were making their way out, skinny jeans had not yet made their way in, and leggings were still nothing more than glorified tights. The solution for female pants-wearers, then, were the extraordinary jeggings. The outrageous concept of legwear that looked like denim and fit like denim, but felt soft and stretchy like leggings, almost seemed like cheating at the fashion game, kind of like slipping a pair of worn athletic shorts beneath the airy material of a skirt; it was the best of both worlds. Anyone who was anyone just had to have them.

I scanned the rack at Target, my fingers dancing lightly over the cold metal and the colored plastic hangers of designated sizes, keeping my eyes strictly on the pairs of pants before me. The Target clothing department may be the worst place for one to lose focus and a sense of purpose and budget. My hand found what it was looking for among the faux denim: a size three, tucked out of place between a seven and a nine. I made my way to the dressing room with purposeful steps, resisting any urge to break focus and examine another article of clothing, no matter how bright the color of the sweater or the number of sequins on the shirt.

The fitting room attendant hardly looked up from her sorting of once promising, now abandoned clothing items, when she handed me the chipped red plastic number to hang on the dressing room door. I closed the wood-like plastic behind me, and frowned as I shoved its interior a few times to be sure of the sturdiness of its closure before shimmying out of my khaki school uniform pants.

Unclipping the jeggings from their hanger, I stepped into each leg of fabric and wiggled my lower body slightly as I began to ease them up my legs – hop, tug, yank, stubbed toe – before the waistband came to a prompt halt at the middle of my thighs. I stared down in disbelief at the uncomfortably stretched fabric as beads of sweat began to accumulate on my forehead, my body hot with the kind of heat that I only felt with defeat, with disappointment, with a failure to be disciplined…to be perfect. I peeled the jeggings from my legs and slipped back into my khakis before banging through the fitting room door, tossing the pants, still inside out from their hasty removal, in a crumpled heap toward the sales associate before hurrying back to the clothing rack. I fumbled through the hangers, becoming increasingly agitated at their unorganized disarray, before pulling a pair of jeggings off the rack and holding it out at arm’s length, almost as if I held it too close, it would explode and shatter me into innumerable pieces,

leaving me more broken than I already felt. The plastic size tag was a shade of emerald green, the color attributed to a size five, which, for me, was infinitely bigger than a three.

Four.

The highest assigned number of undergraduate residents to any given dormitory on campus was four people per room. One place these spacious accommodations could be found was in the exclusively-female residence hall, and the square footage of the space, immense when compared to alternative living options such as my own pie-shaped, closet-like room, was the envy of all yoga-doers and dance-partiers and anyone else who enjoyed the luxuries of space in which to move about and a private bathroom. As it turns out, these quads also became prime real estate when it came to cramming vast numbers of residents in for the consumption of underage liquor. The risk was great for a reward that was uncertain; we had all heard stories of freshmen caught by their RAs, their cheap alcohol confiscated before they could even taste a drop or utter the phrase “drinking ticket.” But we were eighteen and therefore, invincible.

There wasn’t a rule in the book or an RA on duty that could spoil the thrill of a vodka buzz and the possibility of trouble.

“It’s green-apple flavored, c’mon you’re gonna love it. Just like a Jolly Rancher,” Riley added with a smile as she gingerly passed the full shot glass from her fingers to my own. I hesitated, peering at the clear liquid through the glass and remembering how many calories come in a shot of vodka – ninetyseven – before giving the waistband of my jeggings an anxious tug. By this time, skinny jeans were all the way in – in style and in the closet of every undergraduate female on campus – but I had yet to cave to the trend; the stiff, unforgiving denim only made me feel worse about my thighs and hips. I raised the tiny glass closer to my lips and breathed in slowly, an aroma much like tangy apple nail polish remover filling my nostrils, and guilt already filling my mind.

I quickly did the math: Ninety-seven here, one hundred and eighty at breakfast, lunch, lunch…no, I skipped that today, and Annie made me take a handful of pretzels for the road before coming here… Feeling the pressure of three pairs of eyes on me, I raised the glass to my lips and poured the liquid down my throat before I could reach a final sum. The girls smiled when I started to cough and sputter; I always needed a chaser.

“Another one, look at me you guys! Aw yeah, you girls look HOT!” I blinked rapidly – one, two, three times – after the flash of Annie’s camera went off; in my green-apple alcohol haze, I wasn’t quite sure if it was a camera flash, or a

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lightning crack, or a power surge, but the shock of momentary blindness wore off quickly as I laughed a high pitched giggle and fell on my back onto the carpet.

I closed my eyes and let my head spin, and felt Miranda collapse beside me, her arm dragging clumsily over my stomach in an attempt of a drunken hug. I became suddenly aware of her arm pulling the hem of my shirt up with its jerky movements, and of Annie’s continual photographing of our inebriated state. In a panic, I wriggled out from Miranda’s half embrace and tugged my shirt down with one hand as I yanked my waistband up with the other, a two-pronged effort to conceal the belly pudge I always imagined was there. Miranda just shrugged, barrel-rolling to the other side of the room, and Annie moved on to document more of the happenings we were sure not to remember the next day. I lay still on the floor, hands clenched protectively around the fabric of my shirt and jeggings, until I felt two palms slip into my own, hoisting me into a standing position, and we drunkenly made our way, the four of us, out the door.

Three.

The house was notorious for undergraduate debauchery and bad decisions; I had never been there, but I had heard enough from more seasoned partygoers about the drinking and tonsil hockey that went on downstairs and the recreational drug use that happened in the upstairs bedrooms. This was the house that our vodka-clouded minds and stumbling feet brought us to that night; I’m sure, at the time, we thought it to be a brilliant and harmless idea.

It was hard to distinguish the darkness of the interior of the house from the blackness of the night outside. The space was louder, the walls pulsing with the driving beat of the blaring music that I could feel thumping in my chest, and once the door closed on the cold winter air, the musty odors of beer and smoke immediately overtook my senses. I found, in my experience, near total darkness to be almost as crucial to a good house party as beer kegs and good music; better to make questionable decisions under the anonymity of poor lighting on Saturday than to face the awkwardness of post-party encounters in class on Monday.

I stepped over the rotting wood of the front doorframe and followed the girls into the house. Inhibited by the lack of lighting, or slowed alcohol thinking, or the vast amount of faces and bodies, or the condition of belonging to a small social circle, I recognized no one. The space was set off in two, three if we were included in the count, distinct clumps; a mass of bodies clustered in what I could only guess would be considered the living room, with those on the edge of the crowd huddled around the keg in an adjacent tiled kitchen space, and every once

in a while, a person would peel off from their respective group to drift up the stairwell, most of which was clouded and hazy from the smoke wafting down from the upper level. Our group dispersed; every woman for herself. Riley and Miranda wandered to the staircase, eager to score some of whatever was being smoked upstairs, leaving Annie and me to shoulder our way through the maze of people to the kitchen. In a near-acrobatic maneuver, she broke free of the dancing bodies and continued her pursuit, eyes on the cheap beer prize.

I, however, found myself walking directly into the chests and shoulders of two boys who stood in my path – an impenetrable wall of man and muscle and mean smiles. I stumbled backward slightly, the impact enough to stun me a bit, but not quite enough to break me out of my vodka stupor. In a rapid sequence of events, I was suddenly slammed up against the wall. One muscly boy stood behind me, his hands planted firmly on my waist as he pushed his own hips into my ass, grinding clumsily to the beat of the music. The other stood before me, his stance so close to my own that he pushed me further backward. I succumbed for just a moment as they both leaned in and kissed me, and I enjoyed what I could of the drunken, sloppy lust. Then their hands began to wander, their fingers fumbling with the hem of my shirt and waistband of my jeggings, finding the bare skin of my stomach – the danger zone, the forbidden territory – and they whispered with hot, sticky breath into my ears forceful invitations to come home with them; turns out, they were roommates, and at least two years older than I was.

In an admirable and unexpected surge of force and effort, I pushed myself free from their strong grasps, and blindly pushed strangers out of the way in a wild pursuit of the kitchen, only to be impeded by a guy reaching for my hand from atop the coffee table. He pulled me up to dance, and I accepted his invitation; twirling around on the table helped me to convince myself the spinning was all coming from my feet, not from my cloudy head. I lost my balance, and he was there to catch me. So I let him.

Drunk on apple vodka and self-loathing, I kissed three boys that night, three boys whose hands I pushed away from my belly and thighs with avid and fearfilled force, but whose lips I accepted as what felt like momentary reliefs for my insecurities. I still don’t know who those three boys were.

Two. Falling in love with him was not meant to be. It wasn’t a perfect alignment of the cosmos, but an accident. It was a mistake. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did anyway. He was broken beyond repair, and allowed me to piece him back together when the time was right; when it wasn’t, he was content to let his

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jagged, broken edges tear my hands and my heart apart while he sat back and watched them bleed. I was broken and working toward repair; I was damaged goods, but striving for reconstructed wholeness all the same. For me, the time was always right, and as I channeled every last bit of energy into our love, gave all of my glue to his pieces, I ran out of everything my own crumbling fragments needed. I guess I always knew that we were bound to crash and burn in the end.

I think I was just hoping for a few fireworks along the way.

In December, in a moment of panic and vulnerability, I told him the secret.

You have to be special to know the secret, its twists and turns and triggers and tipping points. But he was special. He was special enough to listen, to soothe, and to love me all the same. And I thought that made me special.

It was April, and after seven months of keeping our relationship confined behind closed apartment doors, acknowledging its existence only in the hours after 9 PM when no one else was around to observe or ask questions, he finally invited me out with all of his friends, like actually out out, not just a ‘we may encounter my friends when we’re together, but hopefully not’ out. For a week, I spent every moment of my free time deciding on an outfit, what to do with my hair, how much to drink; I settled for my jeggings and a blouse, a ponytail, and a couple glasses of wine to calm my nerves. I felt good; my body, my mind, my soul all felt good. I was in love, with the night, with myself, and with him.

Nothing happened like I imagined it would. We spent the first few hours on his apartment floor, drinking cheap beer and playing video games with his roommates, but in the moment, it was still okay; I still felt good, and I still was in love. I didn’t even notice the rips until I shifted positions, tucking my left ankle beneath my right. But then, there they were: two identical tears, a few inches each in length, along the inside seam of my jeggings, the material barely held together with a few worn strands of fabric remnants. The pasty skin of my inner thighs stood just a few shades darker against the thin white fibers; I could feel the chill of my fingertips on my legs as I traced the rips. Rips. I am fat. Tears. I am disgusting. Skin in sight where it shouldn’t be. I am worthless.

I didn’t want to go anymore; I no longer felt good, and I no longer felt capable of giving or receiving love. But we went anyway. He never noticed that anything was wrong, but I think everyone else did. I was the night’s strange and foreign prop. I was the one that everyone felt a little bit sorry for when he ran off with other girls at the bar and left me alone, with all of his friends I was supposed to be getting to know, if he hadn’t forgotten to introduce me in the first place. As the night wore on, I watched him from across the room, dancing and singing with another girl, his arm across her shoulders, pulling her closer. I sat

alone, my fingers absentmindedly toying with a plastic cup of beer, squeezing my thighs impossibly closer together to hide my shame, knowing in my heart of hearts that he could never love a girl as defective and damaged as me. We were there together, a duo, a couple, the two of us. But I could not have felt any more alone, alone with my thoughts, my broken heart, and my fat thighs.

One. I threw away my jeggings in July. I was newly single and on a rampage for change and newness. Trashing the pants meant trashing everything they stood for: insecurity, a damaged body, a broken spirit; it also just felt good to not open my closet only to stare at the rips, as if they were taunting me. I shoved them in a plastic bag and tossed the bag into the green trash receptacle in the garage, and I even managed to smile. I resolved to dedicate my focus to a single subject, my love to the one and only person who needed it the most: me.

I stood in front of the clothing rack with my mother a few months ago as she haphazardly piled various pairs of denim pants into my open arms, and noticed the hangers didn’t have color-coded sizing tags. She finished her rifling, and shooed me toward the fitting rooms in the back. I tossed the jeans into a careless pile on the tiny fitting room bench, and stripped down to my underwear before selecting a pair at random, a pair of jeggings. I slid into them with ease, fastening them comfortably just below my belly button, and turned to face the full length mirror to evaluate. I loved them; the dark wash color was perfect against my light skin, the cut of the fabric accentuated the curve of my legs and hips perfectly, and – I noticed with glee as I dipped down into a squatting position – they were incredibly soft and stretchy. Sold. I wiggled out of them and fumbled to check the price tag before going to the checkout counter. It was only then that I noticed it; I had somehow overlooked it amidst all the clothing items and the dressing and undressing, but there it was, loud and bright and taunting me from the inside waistband. Size six.

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Contributors

Spring 2015

Nolan Bollier is a sophomore at Marquette University from Portland, Oregon and is studying Mechanical Engineering. He has always enjoyed looking at quality photographs, but only began pursuing photography earlier this year.

Liz Chatterton was born and raised in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

She began attending Marquette University in Fall 2012. She is majoring in Criminology and Writing-Intensive English. After graduating from Marquette, Liz plans to write novels for young adults. Her piece in the Marquette University Literary Review is her first publication.

Joseph Dobbs is a senior at Marquette University majoring in Deadline Avoidance and Sandwich Engineering. In his limited free time, Joseph attends the occasional Political Science class and enjoys brief bursts of creative inspiration, one of which has resulted in the pieces featured in this issue.

Tyler Farrell was educated by the Jesuits at MUHS and Creighton University and by layfolk at UW-Milwaukee. He currently teaches in the English Department at Marquette University. Recent works include a biographical essay for James Liddy’s Selected Poems (Arlen House, 2011) and two collections of poems published by Salmon Poetry, Tethered to the Earth (2008) and The Land of Give and Take (2012).

Meghan Hartnett is a senior at Marquette University, studying history and minoring in English. She is from Arlington Heights, but travels traveled often. She believes writing is great way to express her feelings, opinions, and observations. She loves Bukowski, hates Dickens, and believes that John Mayer is a terribly underrated guitar player.

Amanda Hedberg is a senior at Marquette University majoring in WritingIntensive English and minoring in Spanish. In her free time, she enjoys reading, writing, playing volleyball, and exploring Milwaukee restaurants.

Morgan Hess has always been interested in writing, as writing functions as a means through which she can showcase her talents and connect with her

audience. While she typically focuses on technical writing, she has recenly begun to work within various creative genres, including poetry. Poetry has provided her with a new way to express herself and relate to others.

Krystin Kantenwein is a senior Writing-Intensive English student at Marquette University. She lives in the Chicago suburb of Fox Lake, Illinois. Krystin enjoys hiking, photography, and hanging out with friends. After graduation, Krystin plans to attend Concordia University Chicago for a Master’s in School Counseling.​ Claire Kelly is a senior at Marquette University majoring in Public Relations and minoring in Writing-Intensive English. While at Marquette, she has mentored freshman students as a Resident Assistant, managed the Marquette Radio station, and performed her music at numerous events. She considers herself a singer, a songwriter and an optimist.

Hannah Klapperich-Mueller is a senior at Marquette majoring in Theater Arts and Writing-Intensive English. She is a firm believer in the fact that humans need stories not only to be better people, but to learn to live their own stories too.

Previous works published in the Marquette University Literary Review two of her poems: “A Dinner Engagement” and “Perspective.”

Laura Litwin is a sophomore at Marquette University, majoring in WritingIntensive English and minoring in Corporate Communication and Spanish. She is the secretary of the Live Poets Society, a member of the Bayanihan Student Organization, and Copy Editor for the Marquette Tribune.

Kieran Moriarty is from Walpole, MA, which is twenty minutes south of Boston.

He is a junior at Marquette University and a Writing-Intensive English major. He graduated from Boston College High School in 2012. His mother is from County Derry, Northern Ireland, and his father’s parents are from County Kerry, Ireland.

Daniel O’Hara is a junior at Marquette University studying marketing and a member of the Marquette rugby team. He began writing poetry in spring 2015 through his involvement in a poetry class. Since this course, he has greatly enjoyed writing and reading works within this specific form of art.

Madeline Pieschel is a journalism major and aspiring artist. While she does

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not limit herself or her work to a particular medium, she continues to gravitate toward photography as it allows her to become more familiar with her surroundings. She will graduate Marquette in May 2015 and aims to pursue a Master’s degree in Art history or curatorial/museum studies.

Allie Ponkratz is a senior at Marquette University majoring in Secondary Education and Writing-Intensive English. Upon graduation, she plans to spend the summer rock-climbing, and teaching children at the Milwaukee Zoo. Rock Climbing Gym. Ponkratz is from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Kierstyn Robbins is a senior at Marquette University. Even though writing is her minor, she has a major love for fiction. When not writing, she also enjoys running and pastry making. Someday, she would love to transition from writing short fiction pieces to novels.

Giulianna Sutkiewicz is a junior at Marquette University studying Political Science, Literature, and Sociology. At Marquette, Giulianna is involved with multiple service organizations and enjoys writing. She plans on volunteering after graduation and attending law school.

Emily Walters is a senior in the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences.

Alexandra Whittaker is a senior at Marquette University majoring in Journalism and Writing-Intensive English. She has interned for InStyle, Elle, The Wall Street Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Woman’s Day. She has also freelanced for USA Today, and Women’s Wear Daily during New York Fashion Week. Whittaker is from Naperville, Illinois.

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“Fading”

Photo credit: Nolan Bollier