2015 chameleon

2015 Chameleon

Norwich University

The 2015 Chameleon

Table of Contents

Editor-in-Chief Abi Donahue

Faculty Advisor

Professor Sean Prentiss

Editorial Board

Leah Coombs, Dana DeMartino, Danielle Franco, Josie Gibb, Giselle Lopez, Kendall Manning, Matthew McEldowney, Anthony O’Neill, Alanna Robertson-Webb, Katy Rutkowski, Kenneth Sikora We would like to give a special thanks to Jacque Day and Steve Perkins.

The Allan Nason Prose Prize Allan Leonard Hastings Nason (1889-1970) was a Norwich graduate of 1920. Nason was an untamed spirit, and it shows in his writing. He wrote about war and soldiers, and his characters are not respectful of authority. Typically, they are trying to find a way to come out ahead, though not at the expense of the war effort. His accounts of war focus on an individual in relation to the whole war machine, and the way the machine grinds all down. The Allan Nason Prose Prize goes to the best piece of prose that deals with Corps of Cadets life or war.

The Robert Halleck Poetry Prize

Robert Halleck is a 1964 graduate of Norwich University. He lives in Del Mar, California, with two retired racing greyhounds and fills his days with poetry, golf, and volunteer care giving with a local hospice. He has written poetry for over 50 years and published three poetry books. His latest, Cabbages and Kings, is available as an e-book on Amazon. His works appear frequently depending on the level of rejection notices in various magazines and poetry blogs. The Robert Halleck Poetry Prize is awarded to the best poem by a Norwich student.

Cowdrey Prose Prize

The Cowdrey Creative Writing Prize, founded in 1981, is given to the best piece of creative writing by a Norwich student. The award is sponsored by Sherman and Jan Cowdrey. Sherman is a 1954 graduate of Norwich, with a degree in English.

Winterberry Snowflake, Meghan Mason.......................................................................1 What They Don’t Teach You, Sophie Mundell..............................................................2 Interview with a Poet .......................................................................................................3 Waiting for the Rain, Kenneth Sikora.............................................................................4 Of Cats and Goddesses, Alanna Robertson-Webb.......................................................5 Smoke, Chris Hougham....................................................................................................7 New York Lights, Dong Kim...........................................................................................8 Freshman Year, Giavan Di Giorno..................................................................................9 Foreign Ground, Baylee Annis......................................................................................10 Stale Coffee and Saw Blades, Connor Keating............................................................13 Home, Faron Roth...........................................................................................................15 Spring Time, Faron Roth................................................................................................15 Winter, Giavana Di Giorno.............................................................................................16 San Francisco, Sophie Mundell......................................................................................17 Frank Sinatra, Chris Hougham......................................................................................20 Fox Run: Life, Alanna Robertson-Webb.......................................................................21 Fox Run: Return, Alanna Robertson-Webb.................................................................21 Untitled, Anonymous......................................................................................................22 Ahead Flank, Tim Clemens............................................................................................23 Ready for Action, Eleanor Leonne Bennett..................................................................23 Hymn to Sorrow, Leah Coombs....................................................................................24

“If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being an artist.”

-Seth Godin

Winterberry Snowflake

What They Don’t Teach You

Meghan Mason

Sophie Mundell

They teach you how to reduce fractions, to divide both sides by 7, to isolate the variable.

[What they don’t teach you is how lonely 3AM feels when your bed is a party of one, and

she’s across town wrapped in someone else’s much stronger, much less worrisome, much

more stable arms.]

You learn to bullshit. Due tomorrow, do tomorrow. Diamonds require certain pressure—right?

[What you don’t learn is how to recognize the warning signs. When Be home in 5! phone calls from her turn into Where are you? text messages from you.]

You know Italy looks like a boot and Turkey is more than just what you eat on Thanksgiving.

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[What you don’t know is that missing her comes in 4 sets of 10 reps, and the soreness of your muscles masks the nagging pain you feel just left of your sternum.]

[Missing her isn’t 7 shots of tequila on a Saturday.]

[Missing her isn’t the entire pack of Marlboro Red’s you smoked on Friday.]

[Missing her is your 9 AM cup of coffee on Sunday when the smell of sunlight pouring over a dusty kitchen table reminds you so much of her that you forget what to do with your hands.]

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Interview with a Poet Dana DeMartino and Giselle Lopez of The Chameleon sat down with David Budbill on his recent visit to Norwich University. The following interview discusses his work, his creative process, and his advice to aspiring writers:

CHAMELEON: What made you want to be a writer?

DB: I had a teacher in high school, and I remember sitting there, in 1958, listening to him read from

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a novel he never published about what it was like to go up this beach and have all your friends dying all around you … and I was so impressed about how he could control our lives, I mean he had us right where he wanted us, we were right in the palm of his hands, listening to this story about Iwo Jima. And somewhere along the line I said to myself, man, I want to control people like that. So in a way you could call it a desire to control people. And I think that’s where it started, when I was a senior in high school.

And it just grew and grew until by the time I got out of college, I knew I wanted to be a writer; I just didn’t know how I was going to do it.

CHAMELEON: What advice do you have to aspiring writers?

DB: In order to be a writer you have to have a thick skin and a thin skin. You have to be

sensitive to what’s around you and yet you have to have a thick skin for all the rejections you’re going to get. Everyone’s going to paper the wall in rejection slips. Also, get a job! Get a job. Get one that will allow you to still be creative—not a nine to five—but one that will support you.

CHAMELEON: Do you have a specific creative process that you follow?

DB: I have a specific time of the day… I have a room in which I work. I go there in the morning before

breakfast, then again after. I go to my room so I am available to the Muse when she knocks on the door.

But I don’t necessarily hear a knock every day. So I have other things I do instead, but I make myself available to the creative process every day.

CHAMELEON: What do you do when you have writer’s block?

DB: Well when I was younger, I used to have it a lot. And what’d I do? I suffered… I just

suffered. I waited, and then after a while it would go away. Now that I’m older, I know that process happens, so I don’t sweat it so much. And ironically, or not, I don’t have writers block. So maybe you don’t have writers block if you’re not so uptight about it. I don’t know.

CHAMELEON: What books or poets would you tell an aspiring writer to read?

DB: I would say read as widely as you can, and outside your own venue. So read Chinese

literature, read African literature, but get outside of your own genre. You should read as widely as you possibly can.

Waiting for the Rain Kenneth Sikora

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Of Cats and Goddesses Alanna Robertson-Webb

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“Awaken the ashen cat. Your lucky numbers are 2 and 7.”

Oh boy, cheap Chinese restaurants must be desperate and running out of new fortune cookie ideas if they were stooping to printing things that didn’t even make sense. Richelle dusted off her hands, the cookie crumbs landing squarely on her pant legs instead. She stood with a sigh, choosing to skimp on the tip so that she could put a few bucks woth of gas in her car. She really shouldn’t have bought that urn at that garage sale earlier, but who can say no to a pushy little old grandma?

After pulling into her driveway, Richelle gathered up the lapis lazuli colored Egyptian urn and carefully brought it inside. She had liked the urn the moment she saw it, and it perfectly complements her study, which had slowly gathered an Egyptian theme around itself since she graduated from Norwich University four years ago. After the blue-gold urn was perched on her now-overfilled bookshelf, she took the time to study its design more carefully. The little grandma had almost cried when Richelle said she wasn’t interested in a fifty-dollar vase, and somehow those old, big, doe-like eyes brimming with tears had budged Richelle’s stony heart just enough so that she gave in and bought it. How vexing…

As her long fingers traced the inlay on the urn, she noticed that the design, which was either a light bronze or deep gold, was mostly obscured with layers of dust. Ten minutes and two Windex-soaked paper towels later, the urn was gleaming, and a stray shaft of afternoon sunlight peeking in through the lone window in the study was illuminating a golden lion intertwining its tail with that of a bronze tiger.

There were hieroglyphics swirling around the two, and as she peered closer she spotted English words at the bottom that read “Bastet and her head priestess.”

Richelle had been an English major in college and had harbored a love of Egyptian mythology since she was a child. Being a cat lover herself, she had taken a liking to the fierce-but-motherly figure of the goddess Bastet right from the start. Bastet had been one of the most prominent goddesses in Egypt during the time of Pharaoh Poltmey XII, which was when many of the myths about Bastet had sprung to life. Yet the date etched in the bottom of the vase was from a mere thousand years ago, long after the priestesses and priests of Bastet had been wiped out by the progress of Western civilization.

The need to straighten her neck after craning it upwards to study the urn was overwhelming. Richelle stretched her arms over her head, letting her arms languidly stretch towards the plaster ceiling, and promptly knocked the urn to the ground. With a shatter that seemed to echo forever, she watched in what felt like slow motion as the urn hit the floor, cracked into itty bitty little pieces and then belched fourth a cloud of dust.

A stunned Richelle stood there, even her wavy auburn hair covered in dust. She ran her hand through a few strands absentmindedly, realizing after a moment that the texture wasn’t dust-like. It felt more like sand, and something softer like ash. In that moment a golden glow began to emanate from the shattered urn, and a soft chuckle seemed to rise from the shattered pieces. It was followed by such a quiet voice that Richelle almost missed it.

“I…have…risen…”

Thinking that a cold rum and Coke was in order to cool down her obviously sand-clogged brain, Richelle turned around with the intent of heading into her kitchen.

“Stay…my last…priestess…”

“Huh?” The particles from the urn began to swirl into a vortex, much like a mini-tornado. They swiveled up to the ceiling and then funneled back downwards with a sound that could only be described as a cat hacking a hairball. In place of the particles now stood a lion, but not just any lion. The lack of a mane made its gender obvious, and she was clad in a kalasiris, which was an ancient Egyptian style of a pure white sheath dress with a single shoulder strap. Black eyeliner swirled across the lion’s eyelids and out from the corners of her eyes, and a pleated shawl of gold muslin completed her outfit.

“Okay, I am definitely seeing things. There is not a Cleopatra lion chick standing in front of me. I must be dehydrated, or maybe I knocked the urn on my head and I’m dreaming. Either way this is not real.”

“Ohhhh it has been sooooo long since I had a priestess with a sense of humor! Normally they are so worried about serving me correctly that they allow little time for jokes. As you obviously know I am Bastet, Goddess of the Hearth, Protector of the Young and one of the daughters of Ra, if you believe some of the stories. You did well to awaken me, so I shall grant you a reward.”

The goddess let out an ear-splitting roar, and before she could blink Richelle was holding an armful of rats. With a shriek she dropped them, closing her eyes in terror as they began to flood her study. With a laugh and a chuff the goddess promptly started chasing them around the study with cat-like focus, and the casual observer would never have guessed that she had been holed up in an urn for the past millennia. Richelle slumped against her desk, her hands trembling as she buried her face in them. After several minutes of crunching and snapping sounds Bastet sauntered over, licking the last traces of red off of her muzzle.

“Dear one, you must never fear our prey, they are too delicious to be frightening! As my priestess you must strive to overcome this fear. What is your name, child?”

“Ra-ra-ra-shell.”

“Oh, how fortuitous! You have Ra’s name within yours, so you must be a descendant of one of his priests. You must know even more spells and rites than many priestesses have. Purrrrfect!”

“N-no, it’s spelled w-w-with an RI not RA…”

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“Never mind all that! Who is the current pharaoh and what day is this?”

“There aren’t a-any more pharaohs anymore, and it’s July 27th, 2015. Plus, we’re not even in Egypt.”

“Not in the Motherland!? But your décor…”

The goddess looked around in bewilderment, and then dropped onto all fours and began to sniff the floor. After a minute she raised her head, her tongue poking out between her lips disdainfully.

“You speak the truth; this land is far from mine. Yet you still found me, so now it will only be a matter of time before we reconquer Egypt!”

“What!? You can’t do that, it would start World War III!” “I care for no human wars, only for reclaiming what is mine. As soon as we get there I will shower my people with mice and milk!”

“Oh God…this isn’t happening…”

“I am a goddess, dear, and yes it is. Now, where do you keep the litter box sand?”

New York Lights Dong Kim

Smoke

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Chris Hougham Taking a break, on a park bench Cool breeze rippling water Curling up, rising high A rushing feeling from inside Freedon from the world around The stress melts like the spring snow Nevertheless all that smoke Is another vice of death

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Freshman Year Giavana Di Giorno

Foreign Ground Baylee Annis

The house marked Foreclosed across from mine was abandoned with the windows wide open. Twin squares like eyes peering deep into my house. Or rather, the house I’d come to call my own, simply because it was the only thing left. The basketball hoop on my parent’s garage down the street, that I swore I would take if I ever left, didn’t fit in the faded leather suitcase. Neither did the uncorked barrel of 1935 French Bordeaux my best man had given to me on my wedding day. Even my collection of Whitman, which I had lugged from dorm room to apartment to ranch house, pulled too heavily on the worn handle.

*

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I’d seen these same empty eyes in another life. The day before I’d left her, that life, those belongings, that mistake—rather that choice, for this cold place, even in the humid summer afternoons.

I’d eaten out every night since I moved into this unfamiliar town, unable to make anything more than breakfast foods. She had always done the cooking.

*

When the waiter took my order, I spoke too much. Did I think he’d take me around and introduce me to all his buddies like a fresh transfer student? I hoped for anyone in the booths around mine to say anything about home, or the ocean, or business. To say anything about any course I’d studied in college. A snippet of familiar conversation that I could weigh in on. No such luck. Me, with my hard city consonants and rushed sentences, like pushing my way into a subway, couldn’t understand their slow, gutteral noises that crawled from their lips. My native tongue was in The Lake, around “prairies” where Cub-inspired kids gathered nightly to play. They spoke in a language of trees, these mountain-dwellers, something I knew nothing about.

“Those damn American mountainash that keeps shedding its flowers on my driveway. Had to pay Tom 500 bucks to reseal it without the frickin’ flowers.”

*

She would’ve loved it. Flowers sealed forever atop tarmac. A little natural beauty never hurt anyone, she’d say.

*

10

A week later, a man in line behind me at the hardware store spoke in the same dialect.

“I can’t stand all the birds in the hawthorn growing in the front yard. The wife wakes up with them at 4 AM. Even on Sundays. Don’t the things know it’s the Lord’s Day? It’s unethical to get up before 10! ” At least the birds and I shared something in common, awakening before dawn every morning from necessity of survival. It was impossible to imagine staying in the house for another sleepless, unspoken hour. The silence echoed from the bedroom to the kitchen, into the bathroom and back downstairs to the hungry pantry, bouncing off the bare walls. Piercing my ears. But to speak out of tongue to these local men felt like a death sentence. Even if I had the guts to talk to them, these men cared little about what time it was, or about my inability to make a single friend. They weren’t Ed, my childhood neighbor, who had cut my hair for free since I was born, even though he’d sold his barber shop years before. These men didn’t punch through adolescence with my parents, didn’t watch Tommy pull the trigger of his father’s pistol and fall from the Dearborn Street Bridge, didn’t follow the Bears on their television sets balancing a Hopslam Ale on their growing bellies.

*

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The yipping dog down the street gnaws at his oversized bone and glares at any passerby. His barking is a constant reminder of his loneliness. And mine. The lonely hung across my shoulders like the hand-woven sweaters she gave me every Christmas, even though I’d never wore them in public. It itched and no matter how raw I scraped my skin, these irritants remained. The dog screams to the world night after night, begging for one single listener. I’m the only one. I want to howl back, to throw a conversation in the air. Let it hang above just to know neither one of us is alone. I don’t. His reminders continue into the night, keep my eyes open and staring through the cracked ceiling of my bedroom. Listening, I always think of the next morning, what adventures I will attempt, what squinted stares I will shrug off. And then I realize: the dog is my only companion.

*

The empty dent in the bed where she used to lay pulls me towards the wall, something naked and new and entirely my own. This keeps me awake longer than the needy dog ever could.

*

Maybe tomorrow I’ll step off the porch of my apartment for the first time in days, or has it been weeks?

There’s been no reason to leave. No reason to remember the day before. No point in recalling the empty list of events in my unopened planner. I’d bought it 3 months ago at the Staples a few towns over.

Back then I hoped to fill it with BBQ parties and informal summer meeting times. Maybe even a date with a local girl I’d meet at the bar. The local girl would be enamored with the foreign stench that everyone else shuffled away from, ready for a man who had never carried her mother home from the bar to the tiny apartment they shared. That was when I had thought there was no one here to fill what I had left behind, 3,000 miles away.

I never did meet that other girl.

* *

The sharp smile of the moon gives me hope. I make a habit of riding my bike around town after the locals have gone to sleep. I wait until they are relieved from their guard of the stoops of their houses.

Until their bedside lamps flick out. Until their overstuffed wives curl around them. Only then do I sneak from my bed, down the stairs, out the front door, onto the porch and under the blanket of stars.

Mounting the bike I reclaimed from the junkyard, now repainted and freshly tuned, I breathe in and it fills me up. The air bubbles in my toes and then pushes upward towards my hips, spilling across my chest down to my elbows and palms. The streetlights map my route. Only then do I feel comfortable enough to make this place mine. I take the sidewalks, the roads, the bridge, the pharmacy, the town hall, the grocery store. I take the rivers, the trees, the fields, the forest, the mountains, the valleys, the sky, the moon, the clouds. I am an adventurer of the night. A greedy pirate sailing the uncharted concrete seas, taking everything in sight for my own.

*

How romantic, she would say, keeping the night as your only prisoner.

*

“The empty dent in the bed where she used to lay pulls me towards the wall, something naked and new and entirely my own.”

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Stale Coffee and Saw Blades I.

Connor Keating

Six days a week my mother serves sandwiches and stale coffee to the loyal customers of Lets Eat! Diner.

She wears her hair in a tight bun, tennis shoes, and silver bracelets wrapped around each wrist. In the evenings she is an insatiable reader; our house is filled with cardboard boxes overflowing with books that feature olive-skinned men with manes of hair, and beautiful women teasing behind silk veils. She escapes for hours, seated in the living room cross-legged, her back pressed to the door, consumed by a paper world. She goes out on Wednesday nights and puts on lipstick and walks to the neighbor’s house to play nickel-a-hand gin rummy.

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II. I’m seventeen with shaggy hair, my face lightly shadowed with the promise of a beard. I spend my days bent over an industrial polisher breathing in the perfume of coolant, mildew, and bleach. The fragrances swirl and mingle, folding in and on top of one another. In the background lying underneath a blanket of a mechanical hum, an old radio plays the chorus to “American Woman” by The Guess Who. A bow-legged man in blue jean cutoffs saunters in pushing a cart full of the latest order of saw blades. He spends his breaks locked in the bathroom, drinking Longstreet whiskey, smirking, pleased by his own cunning. Sometimes when the days are slow or the whiskey is fast he’ll take out his wallet and unfold a fading picture of a grinning lanky boy with long blonde hair dressed in a pressed white and baby blue Royals baseball uniform. Coach says I coulda gone pro, he might even whisper to no one in particular, My boss calls me to his office, a room dominated by a square metal desk and 1,000 yellow sticky notes.

Dented filing cabinets tower in, spewing out last year’s order forms. With a groan he drops into his seat, knees popping, his leather chair creaks in empathy. He tells me I’m a good kid and bestows upon me a 25 cent an hour raise before casting me back to work. I think about shutting myself in the bathroom to take salvation in a drink of Longstreet.

III. When the doors are locked and those machines are put to sleep, a friend takes me to a spot in the woods, a clearing where the crowds of trees disperse and starlight splashes from a black envelope. A place where the sons of struggling waitresses and the daughters of unemployed mechanics go to fight and drink too much and make clumsy love in the back of a car or in the fictitious privacy of a tent. We navigate through trenches of sloppy mud that sucks at our tires, inviting us to stay a while longer.

IV. I pack my life in a '96 hatchback and make it as far as the other side of the mountain. I get a job driving truck for the great state of Vermont and make my home in a barn that has been converted to apartments.

I drive to work in silence, my head bobbing from side to side, set to the tempo of potholes, to the rhythm of dirt roads. It’s Wednesday night and I’m submerged in the downy cushions of a couch with a rock propped under a missing leg. Moonlight filters through a torn screen and paints a worn caricature of my features. I reach down between my feet and pull free a can of PBR. My back lets out an audible pop. I drink. When I’m finished, I squeeze one eye shut and peer inside the mouth to see what I can find.

The phone rings and my mother is on the other end, her words greased with gin. She reads to me from a chapter in one of her books a story about a young man who explores the vastness of the world in search of treasure, only to discover the treasure was the search itself. When she is finished she asks me if I understand. I tell her I do. The phone nestles back into the receiver. Silence.

V. I turn my back to the town and my chest to the mountains. Beneath my feet are the skeletons of leaves the bones of oak trees. The trail diminishes and the branches lean further in, taking me in a quiet embrace. To my left the broke babbles telling stories, spilling secrets. I lean in and collect its cool words in my cupped hands and splash them over my face. I wash away lingering odors of coolant cleansing myself of the smog of trucks, the residue of time-cards. Closing my eyes I turn my face up to the sun and breathe in with my entirety. My nose is filled with the sharp smell of pine, the mellow and somehow dark odor of the birch trees rooted deeply in the sweet musk of earth. These scents drift to me, gathering with them the dank odor of algae and moss. I hear my mother’s words, and with my face still turned to the sky my lips mouth a single ghost word, “enough”.

VI. I am one year out of college. It’s summer in Bangkok. Three days a week I pilot a yellow bike to work through a stagnant river of cars. Locals with smooth brown faces eye me with guarded wonder. Exhaust and smog and dust and sun caress their foreheads, kissing their cheeks. I spend warm days teaching English to smiling shoeless students who wear matching uniforms and sit in neatly rowed desks. They turn in drawings of their families and dare one another in Thai to touch my hairy arms. Once a week my girlfriend and I sneak out of work early and ride the express elevator to the top of the tallest building in the city. The speed of the ride leaves our stomachs behind. The top is quiet, the discord below dimmed by distance. We are worlds away from saw blades, or broken games of gin rummy. We are giants, towering undetected above the city, free to listen and not be heard, safe to look and not be seen. Holding hands we peer over the edge and marvel at the ant people below.

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Winter

Giavana Di Giorno

Home Faron Roth

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The prairies and open skies.

The wind whistling over grassland.

A slow steady roll Plays softly in my ears.

My own heart Or the drums of my ancestors?

I hear them now Calling to me in the wind.

Their bones long bleached by the sun, Buried under prairie they so loved.

The wind whirls hair about my face.

War paint under my eyes, A steady pony beneath me.

The buffalo run before my clan.

Settlers stare at us wide-eyed, Fear and wonder intertwined.

The wind stops and so do the drums.

The sun is cold.

But in my heart I am home.

Spring Time Faron Roth

Have you ever grabbed a handful Of fresh plowed earth?

Held it to your nostrils and breathed?

The smell is more intoxicating than liquor, More maddening than love.

I am a farmer, To us spring is life.

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San Francisco

Maybe one day we’ll meet again. Maybe we could give it another go—but this is what we need right now.

No, Natalie, you’re not changing my mind.

She slams the trunk of her 1999 Saturn station wagon shut with the same vicious resentment that she wore draped over her shoulders during last night’s dinner. You haven’t moved from the gray tweed passenger seat—convinced that if you extend your pleading roots into the fabric, she’ll change her mind.

She taps the glass of the window; you pretend you can’t hear a thing.

“You’re pathetic,” she mouths—exasperated—and slams her palm against the glass. You don’t reply. It’s not like you, to talk in moments like these. Silence has always suited you so much better; words create regrets and regrets stem from two hour arguments that could have been avoided by simply keeping your mouth shut. So you keep it shut.

“Get out of the fucking car, Natalie,” she says loudly enough for you to hear it through the glass. You grip the sides of the gray fabric so hard that your knuckles turn white and the tips of your fingers burn.

You sling the hiking pack over your right shoulder, pick up the duffle with your left hand, and plod towards the terminal. It feels like you're walking through mud—your thoughts are a whirling tornado and you’re pretty sure you’re not in Kansas anymore. You wade through the mental bog and trudge towards the ticket counter. You show the nice young man behind the counter your passport and he hands you two boarding passes—one from Boston to Charlotte, and one from Charlotte to San Francisco.

Sophie Mundell

*

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Don’t pretend you didn't see this coming—why are you so shocked? Tell me, I'm begging you, tell me the last time you felt genuinely HAPPY?

*

She stands on the curb with your faded black duffle bag and that silver hiking pack bloated with your over-worn clothes. You let go of the sides of the gray passenger seat and the blood rushes back to your fingertips—a deep breath in and the lingering smell of her perfume stings your nostrils.

*

I’ve tried everything, Natalie. It isn't working anymore, WE aren’t working anymore. I bought you a plane ticket to San Francisco—you leave in the morning.

*

You pull the black lever on the passenger door and the rush of airport noise snaps you back into reality.

She looks at you like she’s sorry for your existence—so much different than she looked at you nine years ago when you first met in that dingy coffee shop on the corner of 7th and Main. She embraces you in a half hearted, limp hug—you’re seconds from tears so you let go. She’s already driving away by the time you grab your bags and turn around. Your heart feels like a ten pound weight.

*

*

*

STOP LYING TO YOURSELF! I’m done with the arguments; I’m done with you coming home at 3 in the morning; I’m done going to sleep fucking angry; we can do better for ourselves. God dammit, Natalie. Accept it.

*

The line for security takes what feels like seventeen hours. The nice gentleman that checks your passport and ticket tells you “Happy Holidays”—you smile back—convinced that your bleak grin will hide the nagging sensation that you are a million little pieces about to fall apart. Gate B6 is on the complete opposite side of the terminal and your feet don’t want to move. Twenty minutes later you finally see the silver and black sign that reads B6—you make it just in time. “Now boarding zone 4,” cracks a high pitched voice over the intercom.

*

I’m doing this because I love you.

*

The gate attendant scans your boarding pass and smiles at you. You return all you can manage—a crooked half smile, half grimace. There are seven people in front of you on the jet bridge—three are blonde and from the back they sort of resemble her. You finally make it onto the plane but you can’t remember the last five minutes—the three blondes in front of you sent you into a spiraling vortex of memories and regrets and more memories. You wonder how long it will take before stuff like that stops happening.

*

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Stop acting like this is the end of the world.

*

You pass row eleven, twelve, and thirteen—finally you see your row up ahead. Of course—you’ve got the dreaded middle seat and there’s already someone sitting in the aisle. You make it to row sixteen and give the girl in the aisle a half smile and motion to the middle seat—16B. She jumps up, gives you a big grin, and moves out of your way. You remember you’re still carrying your silver hiking pack and a quick scan of the overhead compartments proves there is absolutely no room left. The aisle seat girl reaches up into a compartment over row nineteen and somehow squishes the bags far enough to the right to make room for your pack. You smile and say a quick thank you—realizing that is the first genuine smile your cheeks have felt in a while.

Frank Sinatra Chris Hougham

*

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You hunker down in the middle seat of row sixteen and the aisle girl slips into 16C. You lean over and ask her where she’s headed.

“Las Vegas—my sister lives there,” she says, “How about you?”

You pause—the last day rips through your thoughts. Flashes of your first date kaleidoscope with images of your five year anniversary paired with a snap shot of two months ago when you went to New York City for the weekend and plaster themselves across the back of your corneas.

“I’m headed to San Francisco!” You exclaim, determined to seem excited about it.

The girl in the aisle seat nods, “Rock on, that’s awesome! Just ‘cause?”

“Yeah, actually. I’m gonna start new out there. My partner and I just split— nine years together.”

Aisle girl gives a concerned eye, “Nine years?! Wow, I’m sorry, that must be rough,” she says.

“Oh no way! It’s what we both wanted,” you lie.

20

*

“Maybe one day we’ll meet again.

Maybe we could give it another go—”

“The best revenge is massive success.”

-Frank Sinatra

Fox Run: Life Alanna Robertson-Webb

Anonymous

The trees flicker by as paws pound the frozen earth.

Frozen puffs of breath come faster and faster As the hounds draw nearer and nearer.

The ripe scent of her blood lingers in the frosted air.

There! Cold, black, deadly, unforgiving but safer, The river beckons the fox into its chilled embrace.

Dark water consumes bright red fur.

A dark cloud swallows a fiery lightening bolt.

Emerging on the other side, 21

Wet fur plastered to trembling bones and shaking limbs, She still stands proudly As the hounds bay in confusion.

Fox Run: Return Alanna Robertson-Webb

Her kits bark in joy as their mother returns, Their tiny white paws tapping her playfully Just to make sure she’s fine.

The fright of her night flight Slowly fades as she basks in the warmth Of her kits’ love.

A tender morsel of hare her kits saved for her Is made all the sweeter By the gift of life.

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Ahead Flank

Hymn to Sorrow

Wake up. Eat chow. Relieve the watch.

We continue our cruise beneath the waves.

My dear little child, I know you have grown tired As you silently hold all of those sorrows at bay I will build you a fire, a funeral pyre To burn all of your sadness away

Tim Clemens

The boat has left drydock for sea trials.

Every capability must be tested.

I’ve read the plan. I know what’s coming.

The call goes out. Ahead Flank.

Reactor power rises. Update the logs.

Head on a swivel. Look for the worst.

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My world is a compact metal tube And every inch of it shakes and shudders.

Years of training. Petty indignities.

All for this one glorious moment.

Leah Coombs

As I build you this fire, your funeral pyre I beg you, lay on it all of your sadness and hate And let joy once again find its way into your face Trust me child, it is not too late Watch the funeral pyre grow higher and higher As you stand on your own, trying to look unafraid I see darkness cloaks you in his cold, hollow embrace Yes, child, I know you are afraid In the heart of this fire, the flames burn brighter Let go of your sorrows and out of shadow you’ll stray Let those dark ashes drift higher, higher and higher Watch as your troubles burn away

Ready for Action, Eleanor Leonne Benne

Ready for Action, Leonne Bennett Ready for Action, EleanorEleanor Leonne Benne

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“If you dream it, you can do it.”

-Walt Disney Edge, by Caitlyn Trepess

*To submit pieces online, please visit The Chameleon page on Norwich University’s College of Liberal Arts site.