Watch Magazine - Spring 2013

SPRING 2013 —VOLUME 33

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Friday Night - Lillian Saul The Death of Mr. John Singleton - Andrew Thompson

Better than this - Jenny Ulber

Horrid Things - Katherine Fair

Contributors Elliott Crosland, Benton Franklin, Savanna Barrineau, Rachel Kupferman, Joe Ayers, Garland Blanchard, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Childs Smith, Aaron Lehman, Karleigh Hambrick Cover Art by Kate Bryan

Things I love - Lillian Saul

Hilary’s Bluff

Elizabeth Norton

Death’s Perpetual Cradle - Erin Heaton Davis The

Twilight Between

Waltz the Lines

Bobby Faith R. Kupfer man

Ready. Aim. Fire. - L. Joe Ayers

1st Place, Poetry — Lillian Saul

Friday Night

Friday night Is the night that I read reader’s write magazines which feature beautiful people who write beautiful things, anonymously.

Is the night that I plan to stay up late and paint the boy’s face that I saw in my dreams on Thursday night.

Only to discover it is the same boy in my chemistry class… third row, second seat from the left, horn rimmed glasses, red hair, blue eyes, two freckles drifting below the left ear.

But Friday night is the night that I have the freedom to go to bed early. And I nearly always do.

The night that I sit listlessly and am only aware of my own listlessness upon hearing in the background of my thoughts My mother’s remarks on my lack of movement.

But why is she surprised?

The night that I give way to feelings and feel in a way I have yearned to feel while I busy about my day, Monday through Friday.

I sensitize, sympathize, recreationalize, and smile.

The night that I wait alone in my room for an angel to come and kiss me goodbye so maybe I’ll be peaceful, pass away and die.

And the night that has a purpose of being perfectly purposeless.

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artwork by Elizabeth McGehee

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Andrew Thompson

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Place, Fiction

The Death of Mr. John Singleton The door to apartment number 1 at 100 Broad Street for the very first time since it had been occupied by a John Singleton opened and closed at 8:13 rather than 8:00. The clockwork existence of 100 Broad Street Apartments was in fact in serious disarray. John Singleton’s outward appearance with his overcoat buttoned up high but not high enough to hide the perfect double Windsor knot, shoes that shone from polishing, and black and grey fedora strategically placed to hide a bald spot, bespoke a man well-prepared for his day, but beneath the surface a morning of battling the coffee maker had its casualties. These casualties—taking the form of an unwound watch and thirteen minutes of lost time—would eventually prove fatal. If there resided a Madeleine-esque mother abbess at 100 Broad Street, she would surely be running through the halls chanting, “Something is not right.”

The morning had begun in the standard fashion: wake up at 7:30, shower, and dress. However, when John proceeded from “dress” to “eat,” the Chinesemanufactured “built to last” coffee maker all but exploded. The ensuing thirteen minutes of kitchen salvage caused John to be in severe danger of missing his 8:15 bus.

He didn’t let his mind wander to the consequences of missing his bus and the four windy city blocks that would have to be braved in order to arrive at Newman Self &Trust.

Thus, with a driven pace, John Singleton descended the flight of stairs from his apartment to ground level. Halfway down the stairwell, however, the light of the foyer was dimmed by a massive presence, the tenant of apartment 2. A massive man reminiscent of a lumberjack ascended the steps at a painfully slow gait. Tenant 2 was always one notch below well-dressed in the standard “genius writer” disarray, but today his disorder seemed almost a purposeful strike at John’s peace of mind. Tenant 2’s hair was habitually uncombed, his shirttails were given a large degree of freedom, and he wore only one pink rabbit slipper. Thus, with shirttails billowing back and forth, and making a clack-thump, Tenant 2 climbed the steps.

Clutched in his hand was a crumpled letter and an open envelope. Each step seemed to John an effort as 2 ascended the stairs with shaking hands and unsteady footfalls. Oblivious to the Army Crest that adorned the letter and the opening, “We are sorry to inform you that your son was lost in action,” John dodged this massive obstacle by neatly side-stepping the man and finding the politeness to say “excuse me” as he shouldered by.

The foyer was free of obstacles, and only fifty feet separated John from his destination. Luck would not be so kind to John out on the street, however. He had donned his immaculately cleaned sunglasses and proceeded not ten steps when a conglomeration of rags holding a sign assailed him. The pathogen infected the

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picture-perfect all-right-angle boxwoods that guarded 100 Broad Street and aided to the slow decay this morning was causing John’s mind. In crude handwriting contrasting the vibrant shade of red with which they were written, the letters on the cardboard sign read, “To love another man is to see the face of God.” From within the rags emerged a raspy voice that was followed by an almost human head. “Brother, you have already missed that boat.”

Not waiting for the request for money to “help a veteran in need” or to suddenly lose his wallet, John sped on. The green bus was already humming in its usual spot at the street corner, but prior to John’s arrival and deaf to his cries as he ran towards it, the bus crawled into traffic seemingly unaware that its principal occupant was not onboard.

The injustice of it all weighed heavily on Mr. Singleton. His feet began to carry him onward, but the left-right-repeat was interrupted by the pulsing of the sidewalk.

Everything around him seemed to vibrate with some kind of rhythm. Lifting his eyes from the pavement, John was confronted with a large church signboard. This particular signboard was one of the highlights of John’s week. As seen from the bus, this sign contained a plethora of witty sayings that provided food for thought on slow work days, and today in proud letters it stated, “Invest In Eternity.”

John himself had never entered the church building despite his love for the sign and the countless invitations to community outreach events. It seemed to John that the world of Dante’s Inferno was preferable to these gatherings. It was a collection of community “do-gooders” getting their weekly philanthropic fix and then proceeding onward in their immoral, yet somehow far more moral than others’, lives. It seemed all these events did was hand out a license to attendees to make others feel less “involved.” It was safer to view the sign from afar than risk the perils of the church.

It was for this very reason that John would have increased his pace, flipped up his collar, and lowered his hat as he passed by, but the song emerging from the church gripped him. It was an old jazz standard from his youth, which he had spent innumerable childhood hours sitting beside the family record player listening to. The “family” record player meant there was only an hour window during the school week in which he could sit and listen before his siblings stampeded in. It was only long enough for a few songs, but the one emanating from the church always numbered among the list. It wasn’t something he had thought of in a long time, and in a nostalgic daze he drifted into the church.

The room was packed and almost tropical in climate. It was a large circular room with a high ceiling and a band set up on a stage opposite the door. John elbowed through the crowd until he was next to the stage. Feeling uncomfortably hot, he took off his hat and the sunglasses. Shades off, John could now see the musicians onstage, and his attention was quickly drawn to the trumpet player in front of him. The boy’s talent was immeasurable. The gold of his trumpet clashed with the drab inner city clothing of the throngs in front of the stage, and the caliber of his music clashed with the throng’s appreciation, save one balding banker. This man did not belong hidden away in this small church, thought John; his timeless talent should have been the delight of kings.

Behind the music, however, there was a discordant beat. It seemed too slow to keep up and yet somehow far too fast. It began as a minor annoyance, and now it

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rose not in volume but in focus until John could no longer hear the music. Looking around for the source of the ticking to find what person was interrupting such music, John realized it was his watch. 10:40?!?! The first round of meetings was coming to a close, and John had missed them entirely. John sped out of the church so fast he forgot his hat and shades on the stage.

Almost to the point of running, grey hair blowing in the breeze, Mr. Singleton, Corporate Banker, was quite a sight to see, but this unstoppable force soon met an immovable object. A multitude of orange-jacketed sidewalk maintenance workers milled about in an impassible sea of cones and caution tape. True, the next block had fallen into disrepair, ruining the neighborhood, but it was plain no amount of sidewalk maintenance would disguise it. It was a collection of buildings that had been built back in the ‘20’s to help out immigrants. The classic case of a charity run amok, the fund that had kept the place working had run out twenty years ago, and these ruined tenements of a by-gone era stood in opposition to the otherwise pictureperfect area.

To avoid the city’s vain crusade at self-improvement by masking real problems with cosmetic fixes, John planned to cut through a vacant corner lot. This was a lot that had always bothered him. It is one thing to let a prized piece of real-estate, despite its depreciating neighboring buildings, sit undeveloped, but it is entirely another to let weeds grow on it until they dwarf even the fence enclosure. As the vacant lot came closer into view, the weeds became oddly well organized into rows, but it was not until John reached the gate that he realized the concrete jungle gave way to a garden of sorts.

Just as the buildings surrounding the garden were drifting into disarray, the once-ordered garden had reverted back to its primordial roots. The rows of carefully planted tulips had given way to islands of crocuses. The rose bushes in the corner had grown to the point where Sleeping Beauty’s castle might very well lie within their thorns. A row of apple trees lined the far side of the garden, its limbs hanging low with unpicked decayed fruit, and a hedge harkening to Tolkien’s Shire in both height and girth ran the length of the surrounding fence. In the center stood the last testament to the fact that this was a man-made garden, a stone bench. Cracked and worn with age, this silent sentinel watched over the garden. Something about the bench called out to John. It was almost as if this garden yearned for some attention.

A quick glance to his watch revealed that he was already horrendously late and thus a few minutes more could hardly affect his day.

John’s watch made a loud clink as he put his wrist down beside him on the bench.

Bringing his full attention to the watch, he realized just how heavy it was. More of a status symbol than anything else, its ostentatious size was now rendered ridiculous in the simplicity of the garden. John’s wrist under the watch was itching something terrible, and so he took the watch off and set it on the bench beside him.

John sensed something missing in the garden. There was, however, something unnervingly charming about it. But John was disquieted by the sheer lack of upkeep in this garden that was more akin to a forest glen, but at the same time it was the unrestrained beauty that gave it appeal. There is something to the floral archipelagoes

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of the garden with which rows cannot compete. Nature in her wisdom saw fit where to place each plant. It was far more beautiful to see the vortex of roses in the corner than the artificial ninety-degree angles of 100 Broad Street’s hedges. The naturally ordered chaos of the garden seemed closer to perfect than anything John had previously seen.

It was not until John’s watch stopped ticking, however, that he noticed what was missing: sound. The unkempt hedges had risen to enormous heights that blocked out the noise of the city. The sheer magnitude of the silence in this dome of foliage was overwhelming. A silence so assaulting and beautiful that it takes many moments for it to be truly appreciated.

When John finally rose from the bench, he somehow forgot his revered timepiece.

Climbing the remaining few blocks to his office in dwindling light, John paused at an alleyway. The alley was a remnant of an earlier era and was barely wide enough for a man to walk through. Hunched low against a wall, a young man took refuge from the cold. The man looked up at John with piercingly blue eyes. Eyes that neither judged nor begged, neither condescended nor hated, but pitied.

Looking down, John watched as he handed over his coat, which he didn’t quite remember taking off, to the man. It wasn’t until he had moved ten steps farther down the sidewalk that the realization hit him that he had just given his coat away to some homeless vagabond who would probably pawn it for his own purposes. Half tempted to turn around and retrieve his property, John stood shivering on the sidewalk.

It is really cold, John thought to himself. If I am really cold in my designer shirt, undershirt, pants, woolen socks, and loafers, what must he be feeling? Well, maybe I have seen the face of God, he thought to himself with a laugh, contemplating the ridiculous image of the hobo clad in white wearing a halo and wings.

At last coming to the mirror-like reflective glass door of Newman Self & Trust, John was confronted with a face he didn’t recognize. The face staring back at him in the failing light was familiar, but not quite. The lips were the trumpet player’s, the unkempt wind-blown hair curled in rose blooms, and the piercingly blue eyes saw the hobo. As the sun sank lower in the sky, these features blurred away leaving only a dark silhouette.

A bystander walking by would have noticed a man holding a door handle for an unreasonably long time, but by the time a decision was made there was no person on the street to witness the death of John Singleton. The only witnesses were the last rays of sunlight, and the moon alone watched John Singleton leaving behind the corpse of his old life in the form of a wallet and corporate I.D. The following week there were a few unrelated occurrences: a crumpled newspaper tossed in the subway trashcan would contain the headline “Corporate Banker John Singleton Missing;” David Gregorie’s military funeral would include one uninvited gray-haired guest; a memo on the local deacon’s desk would read “anonymous donation of $1,000,000” with an accompanying note, “play on;” the trust fund at Hope’s Lodgings received similar news with the caveat, “Don’t change the garden;” and a rabbit slipper-clad old man would start to stand on the corner of sidewalks. This modern-day prophet stood among falling buildings, and his hands grasped not cardboard but meaning.

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2nd Place, Poetry — Jenny Ulber

Better than this No, I cannot imagine it gets better than this, Sitting here with you, on the soft emerald grass, Watching the clouds as they shift in the serene sky, Your sweet smile brightening my soul.

No, I cannot imagine it gets better than this, Your hand and mine entwined with love Having thoughts of decisions in the future, present or past And with you, I am not terrified to face them.

No, I cannot imagine it gets better than this, You pull me to your side and tell me your secrets I feel your grace surround me and I am overcome with glee I feel as though I have reached the top of the mountain.

No, I cannot imagine it gets better than this, Or maybe perhaps I can.

Maybe if you were really here next to me, And not just in my wild dreams.

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artwork by Logan Livingston 10

Katherine Fair

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Place, Fiction

Horrid Things

I used to see them when I was a young boy growing up in the mountains, miles from the fringes of the Great City. I had been there, of course. Everyone had. The bright lights, the unusual odors, and the pulsing sounds that assailed our senses dazzled us. In those moments, I was certain that I had been born for the city life.

It was just the two of us back then. She said that I would never be lonely, that unlike the captives of the Great City who were constantly alone in a sea of people—I wouldn’t understand her meaning until years later—I would always have a place among the residents of our town. For our kind, she told me, looked out for one another. We had never forgotten the way since that fateful day when our ancestors had departed from the Great City in order to escape the fate of those who remained. Exactly what that fate was the adults never would tell us, but they grew somber with each mention of it, a silent understanding in which we were too young to take part.

The only time I ever asked my mother for one of the technologies enjoyed by the city folk, she grew pale and told me I must never succumb to their ways. I must remember always the story of my ancestors. But it was a story that no one was willing to tell.

Though my covetous young heart could not understand why not, I never asked for such a thing again.

At that time, I was happy. The other children and I scarcely knew what we were missing. After classes, we frolicked at the playground, running races and skipping rope, holding contests to see who could swing the highest and jump the farthest. My mother and I shared everything. I told her how Lina Garrison broke my heart in the ninth grade. She told me how she met my father and how he had died when I was a baby.

Nothing could part us two.

Nothing, it seemed, but cancer. When I was sixteen years old, she passed away. All of our closest friends came to the funeral, as well as a few city folk I didn’t recognize. My grandmother had been from the Great City.

Several weeks later, a strange man appeared at the house that was now mine to ask me if I was ready to go. Discovering that I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant, he informed me that I was to go live with my father. My father died fifteen years ago, I told him stupidly, but it seemed that wasn’t the case.

I quickly found that my mother had not shared everything with me. My father was not, in fact, dead, but one of the city folk. He had suffered their fate, as my people would say, rather than choosing my mother and the way. He, as my mother had described, was constantly alone in a sea of people. He had become a slave to technology, the cruel eventuality that his and my ancestors had striven to escape.

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When I saw him for the first time, I could not suppress the utter disgust that must have been evident in my face. His pale and withered complexion made me shudder.

Attending his ex-wife’s funeral had been his only venture out of the house in years. His skin hung loosely about his bones, the horrible result of life in the Great City. I could not bring myself to look him in the eye.

Yet as my days in the Great City passed, this appearance, common to so many of the adults dwelling there, became tolerable to my eyes. The sights and sounds faded to a dull hum of activity constantly in the background of every place I went. My hair grew oily and my face pallid as my body situated itself into the groove of the city folk. My mind followed, and I found myself scorning the way of my people in the mountains.

But one evening, I chanced to look up while rushing home for curfew. What I saw shocked me. They were gone! Could it be that they had never been there? Perhaps they were only found in the mountains. I had grown so used to the Great City’s method of rushing along with one’s head down that not once had I thought to look up for the old comfort that had greeted me all those nights as a child.

I posted a thread on my forum. “Why are there no dots in the sky here?” After a few initial comments deriding my faith in such urban legends, the traffic to my thread tapered off. I resigned myself to puzzlement and resumed my business.

Months later, I received notification of a response. “You’ve seen them, too?”

I arranged a meeting with the commenter, a young woman with hair that was somehow sort of orange. I wondered how she had made it do that, rather than staying yellow like normal hair. To my dismay, she took me far outside the Great City, where we waited for nightfall. Slowly, the tiny glowing dots I had known and loved as a child emerged, adorning the night sky with a spattering of light. “They’re called stars,” she said breathlessly, looking at me with the tiny lights shimmering in her eyes.

I studied her and the ‘stars’ for a moment. Then, “Horrid things,” I sniffed, turning to go.

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3rd Place, Poetry — Lillian Saul

Things I love

Warm strawberries The small kind from the farm, Using the word “fetch” A happy face and a thoughtful smile Approval Never wearing contacts Lack of conflict Control Taking pictures of people And having my picture taken when I don’t know it.

Books that I really enjoy and books that I really don’t enjoy Movies that are inspiring (about sharks) Keeping secrets and knowing secrets Poetry Especially my own Wearing someone else’s clothes (primarily those of my grandparents) Lying in the sun Sweating on a cold day and sweating on a hot day Being technology free Vinalhaven Sailing in wind or in no wind.

Having nothing to do Being super busy Stretching my toes Forgetting.

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artwork by Madeleine Fennell

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Elizabeth Norton

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Place, Fiction

Hilary’s Bluff As the lights of the stage whirled frenetically around the coliseum, I was enthralled in a starstruck trance as I watched my childhood idol perform only a short distance away from me. Pink and purple fluorescent lights shone against the top of the stage, spelling out “Hilary Duff.” A dozen lanky backup dancers fought for the attention but could not outshine the headlining artist herself. Hilary confidently sashayed across the stage, not missing a single beat along the way.

Her long blonde hair framed her face in just the right way: she appeared unflawed. Her hazel eyes twinkled, and her pink glossed lips sang every lyric so mesmerizingly that I was completely entranced by the performance. The metallic sheen of her miniskirt and cropped tube top would have clashed if anyone else had worn it, but on Hilary, it was perfection. I was suddenly drawn out of my Hilary-induced haze as the screams and cheers in the arena intensified. Hilary was about to perform my favorite song, “Wake Up”—a fitting song for the galvanizing and energized feeling shooting up my spine.

As I looked around, I knew I was her number one fan. As I sang along with the lyrics, I eagerly spotted a young girl around my age with a “Hilary” sticker on her pale pink cheek and a tattered grey “Hilary” t-shirt that she had clearly made herself. I then saw a girl with glow sticks around her neck and Hilary’s named doodled all over her last season’s Sketchers. It was in that moment I knew that nobody could beat my brand new pink “Hilary Duff 2004 Most Wanted Concert” T-shirt, my bedazzled jeans, and my copious Hilary tattoos all over my arms and face.

As the music of the final number began to fade away, my heartbeat quickened. The time had finally come to meet my idol.

I quickly scampered down the grey cinderblock-lined hallways; my neck was adorned with a very exclusive “Backstage Access” pass, complete with a laminated picture of Hilary’s flawless face. Turning the corner, I saw a short line of girls accompanied by parents, and a little further ahead I laid eyes on the superstar herself. Adrenaline pumping and hands shaking, I struggled to contain my excitement. After a wait that seemed to last centuries, a stocky man I assumed to be her bodyguard muttered, “Next.”

I shyly approached the shaggy pink carpet that had been arranged in front of a blown-up cover of her latest CD: standing on the carpet beside me was Hilary herself. She had changed into a pair of tattered jeans and a simple white tee. Her makeup was smudged and beginning to wear off. Her tangled and ratty looking hair hung flatly around her pale complexion.

“Hi!” I began, lips quivering and hands still shaking. “I’m Elizabeth! I’m your biggest fan, and I think you’re so cool and—” Suddenly, a camera flashed inches from my face. And the photographer thrust a Polaroid into my hands.

“Next,” declared the bodyguard, as his clammy hand escorted me around the corner with more force than courtesy.

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artwork by Grayce Bailey

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Erin Heaton Davis

Death’s Perpetual Cradle ’Twas not common chance or fate Nor residue of antiqued love That I alone trod upon, This fabled outstretched dove.

A sign, perchance, of majesty Yea! Assembled on the throne A Godhead three in one looks down Omnipotent, unseen and known.

Years of toil, strife and tears Led me to these pearly gates.

In one moment, ‘Hark!’ Another— Mine soul had shifted weights.

Born airless, free with sanctity I donned those shining wings White as cream with gold entwined.

Oh! How my heart did sing!

As one ruminates, though, on past misdeeds, Memories crafted as clay To find one silver lining in gaiety— Why does one not live by day?

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Honorable Mention, Poetry

How now, was I, this careless thing?

A demon of my own folly, Sin and hate and stormy path Life tempest-tossed in volley.

Death, instead, held my body daunted, Its domineering power my agent.

Bitter tears wept in solitude, Mine eyes ne’er cast for the Reagent.

Standing here alone I see The pounding of the wave.

The gull is crying out to me, ‘For you, mere mortal, all he gave.’

From Babel to the Jordan, The Red Sea to the Nile, Guilt, the plague of nations— Redemption all the while.

Why did the black mask faze me?

This stark cold vagrant thought Overbearing, ne’er I say!

Yet in glory was it wrought!

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Bobby Faith

Honorable Mention, Fiction

The Twilight Waltz The autumn air is crisp. Quiet. There is a rustle in the leaves; the cabin creaks as I walk slowly, slowly, towards the porch, away from the couch. My wife, you know, she says—well said—that I would become a part of it one day—the couch, that is. I would laugh—and see a reflection of that laughter in her eyes, looking at me, watching, smiling, as I would pretend to sink deeper and deeper into that musty leather and hide like the children used to under the quilt. That was a long time ago.

There’s a chill in my bones these days, creeping slowly, slowly. Not even the fire can bring me warmth. Her sweet voice is gone now but still there, I like to think, in the rustle of the leaves, the whistle of the wind, in the creak of the old rocking chair I long for now.

Quick towards the porch! These old legs are growing as rheumatic as my hands, ha!

Almost there, to my chair, ah yes, my chair. I built it, you know, with these old hands. They weren’t always so stiff! It was for her birthday—I found the wood near the creek, hickory I think it was, down the mountain a little ways. I tried to keep it a surprise, but she found it.

She always would. I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.

It started with a cough. She’d laugh and say it was nothing, and so I too would laugh. But it got worse—so much worse. The doctor said it was the cigarettes. “But she quit when she had the kids! So did I! We both did.”

It had been forty years since I last had a cigarette, yet I held it there, trembling in my hand, smoking it to ash—hoping that perhaps I could share in her burden. I never thought she would go before me. I was the older one; it wasn’t supposed to be this way! The cigarette didn’t help.

It was so terribly fast. She was always cold then, so I would bundle her up, and holding her now frail body in my arms, try to rub life back into her. I cried. I would never let her see it, but I think she knew. I held her hand, yes I did, right up until the last minute. I wish I had been more brave, but she always was the brave one anyways.

Ah, yes, my chair, these damned knees, sure took long enough! Our chair, that is. Well, mine now, I guess, but still hers—her name is carved at the top here, see! She used to sit and watch the moon rise over the trees as I do now. That was her favorite time. Twilight. “It’s as if the day and night are dancing, honey! The stars!”

They were our divine audience as we danced in the dusk, then and now. Silent sentinels, immaculate immortals—still watching as the light swirls and fades.

“The colors!” she’d say, “It’s like God’s tapestry, woven together in a waltz. Oh, don’t you see! Spinning together, fluid, fast now, then slowly, slowly. The dark approaches.” She always saw things like that. “Poetically,” I suppose, would be the word for it. I never could see things the same, but the way she would say it, it seemed beautiful to me.

So now the moon rises again. And I watch the dance, and listen to the rustle of the leaves and silent angels on the wing. I look to the stars—they are dimmer now, barely staving off the dark of night. Winter’s in the air I suppose, but I’ve been cold for a while now.

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artwork by Sam Blakeney 20

Will Bennett The following personal reflection was submitted as part of a recent college application.

I am a man. Perhaps not a full-grown, football-playing, manly man, but a man nonetheless. And it is commonly understood that men, solely when in the company of other men, tend to display stereotypical masculine behavior. Swapping tall tales about past girlfriends, eating copious amounts of unhealthy food, and explaining why one’s favorite football team will win the Super Bowl are commonplace in male social gatherings.

Sentimental discussions of vulnerability, weakness, and sensitivity are not only absent but also tend to be discouraged. Boys will be boys. An unspoken agreement. The man code.

My grandmother had been in the hospital for two weeks when my grandfather called and requested that I accompany my mother to Winston-Salem so that we could discuss important topics (meaning football, basketball, and any other sport about which we could regurgitate interesting new facts or rumors). I immediately accepted the request, excited to catch up with my grandfather, but scared about having to see one of my grandparents in the hospital for the first time in my life. My sole duty, as given to me by my mother, was to keep my grandfather positive about the uncertainty of my grandmother’s future and distract him by keeping him active. Our daily schedule for the week was as follows: wake up, eat breakfast, play a round of golf, watch football, eat dinner at Chicago’s (his favorite restaurant), watch more football, fall asleep, and repeat. Just two men living the way men were intended to live.

Halfway through my weeklong stay, we were lounging in our booth in Chicago’s, staring at the overhead television displaying the first half highlights of a football game.

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Putting down his straight black coffee with an attention-grabbing thud, my grandfather said, in a voice that revealed a time where he smoked a pack a day, “You’re my best friend.”

Glancing up, stunned by this profound statement, I slowly replied, “I know, Granddaddy,” and turned back to the television.

“You’re my best friend, and I’m scared.”

I turned back towards my grandfather, looking into the eyes of a man who had been through a war, medical school, and the everyday theatrics that I’d imagine a father of three daughters must have experienced.

“Scared about what?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“NaNa.” A long pause followed his answer as I pondered what I should say next. I took a breath and broke the silence between us. “Do you want to talk about it?”

And we did. The next three hours consisted initially of nervous predictions as to the outcome of my grandmother’s risky stomach surgery, with these predictions ultimately turning to heart-warming, smile-invoking stories about the various escapades NaNa and the family had experienced together. It was late into the night when my grandfather, still laughing from his story of how NaNa had dressed up as Princess Leia for his 70th Star Wars-themed birthday party, looked up and said, “I know my girl. She’ll be fine.”

We rose from our booth, two men who had defied the typical understanding of what it meant to be men. My grandfather thanked me, and we both exchanged brief smiles and an embrace. We headed back to the house to catch the second half of the game.

artwork by Lexi Winoski 22

artwork on this page clockwork from bottom left: Sarah Carlton Christian Naylor Grace Robards Claire Hughes

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artwork on this page clockwork from bottom left: Hugh Buyck Ansley Thomson Emily Ball Marla Sagatelian

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Rachel Kupferman

Between the Lines

Interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan

On Thursday, April 11th, nationally renowned writer John Jeremiah Sullivan will visit Porter-Gaud as our annual Visiting Writer. Author of the critically acclaimed Blood Horses and the essay collection Pulphead, Sullivan is the Southern editor of The Paris Review, a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and is frequently found on the pages of The New York Times Magazine and several other well-known publications. He has received many distinctions, including two National Magazine Awards, the Whiting Writers Award, and the Pushcart Prize, and he was also a finalist for the PEN Prize in memoir and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In all of his work, Sullivan, a Sewanee graduate, manages to create an unmistakable voice: his abiding curiosity about all things American (and human) allows him to bring together a great expanse of topics, from the personal to the historical to the pop-cultural.

Admired for his “shimmering” narrative voice and tangible descriptions, Sullivan presents one of the most discerning critical eyes we have on the American scene today; one critic, for example, describes his work in Pulphead as “outlandishly brilliant, enlivening stuff.” Below, Sullivan shares his insights regarding his personal writing process and its evolution, challenges that confront him, inspiration for thematic decisions, and advice for student writers.

As a high school student, was writing a passion and/or an outlet for you? When did you determine that you wanted to be a writer? I always knew I wanted to write, even from childhood, but it was during high school that my interest solidified. I started reading in a hungrier way. And I started keeping notebooks. That really made a difference somehow, the notebooks. I liked making them, and that urge, of wanting to make something, is still what draws me most powerfully to write.

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Are there any particular works or authors who have inspired your career or influenced your writing in a significant way? It’s a tough question, since in order to answer it with anything like truthfulness, I’d have to list hundred of authors and books, and would list different ones for different times in my life, and would list some that I don’t even “like” anymore but who were hugely important to me when I encountered them. But a short, random answer would be: Faulkner, Borges, Willa Cather, Eudora Welty, Edith Wharton, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Hemingway, Twain. Each of those is a writer with whom I had an intense, immersive experience that changed me.

The collection of essays found in Pulphead covers a wide expanse of topics that range from personal narratives to global developments. How do you choose the topics you write about? What is it about America generally that makes you so curious? A lot of my topics come up naturally, through the professional mechanisms of “being a magazine writer.” I’m always talking with different editors about potential ideas. Some sink and others float to the surface. But I look for ideas that allow me to tap into subjects I really need to write about. Axl Rose and Michael Jackson, for instance, were interesting in themselves, but they also made it possible for me to write about Indiana. As for your question regarding America, it’s our capacity for surprise or at least unpredictability that interests me most, and our often comical self-regard, and our music.

Is it ever challenging for you to recount such personal stories such as your brother’s near death experience described in “Feet in Smoke”? It’s always challenging. And you’ve always failed. But it’s harder not to do it. The definition of a writer: someone for whom not writing is slightly more horrifying.

Have you ever considered writing fiction? Why or why not? Is nonfiction a more challenging form of expression?

I do sometimes mess around with fiction, but I don’t know yet if I’ll ever try to publish any of it. Since I’ve written pretty much exclusively non-fiction, it would be guess work on my part to say which is harder. But my suspicion is that no genre is inherently harder or easier than any other. What’s hard is, once you’ve chosen a genre, to do good work in it. To satisfy its formal demands while doing your best

Photo by Maria Sullivan

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to expose and subvert them. It’s like, is tennis harder than basketball? No. But what’s very hard and equally hard is to be a very good tennis player, or a very good basketball player. And a person can easily suck at either, in countless ways.

Do you attend to a structured writing schedule? I read interviews with writers who claim to work between six and ten in the morning--to punch in and out, as it were--but I never quite believe them. For me it’s more of a compulsive thing. I’m always thinking, on some level, about whatever I’m working on, and I’ll seize any chance, any block of empty time, to work on it. Now that my wife and I have two children, the time-pressure is pretty intense, so if there’s nothing family-related going on, I’m working. Either reading or writing. Or sitting there failing at writing. But definitely not idle. Idleness has never been my problem. Spastic self-distraction, yes, but not inactivity or boredom.

Do you struggle with any particular part of the process the most? For example, is it more difficult for you to introduce your topic with an appropriate hook or to conclude with an encapsulating statement? Do you ever experience writer’s block?

How do you deal with it? Conversely, what aspects are fun? I’ve never had the kind of writers block people talk about, where you freeze up for months or years. A paralyzing thought. But I’ll have some block with almost every piece. The only way to deal with it--this isn’t a very elegant answer, but it’s mine--is just to keep messing with it. Keep wadding up the pieces of paper and throwing them into the trash. Keep typing and deleting, typing and deleting. Learn to like this process, if possible, in a masochistic way. After all so much of writing comes down to this, and not to triumphant creation.

The fun part of writing is the hardest to articulate or describe, because it comes when you enter a more or less meditative state, and time slows or stops, and your whole mind is absorbed in what you’re trying to say. It’s not “fun” like playing badminton or something. It’s more like, ecstasy.

What projects are you currently working on? A long non-fiction book, set in the early 18th century, about a forgotten figure from early American history. Much of the action takes place in Charleston and other parts of South Carolina.

Do you have any advice for high school students who are interested in pursuing a career in writing? The ones who are meant to write won’t need my advice, or anyone’s.

But I wish them all--the ones who go on to write and those who do something else-good luck and courage. Fight to live your life in a passionate, principled way, and be as kind as possible to others along the road.

Mr. Sullivan will be speaking and attending English classes April 11th and 12th.

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artwork by Lexie Meyer

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Ready. Aim. Fire.

L. Joe Ayers

You raise a finely-tuned machine. You put your eye up to it, look through, seeing your target off in the distance. You breathe slowly in, then out.

Ready, aim, fire. The only sound is a resounding click as your target is frozen, immobilized. Forever.

No, this is no gunshot. Your target, fixed eternally, is actually an image. A single still frame immortalized as a 14.2 Megapixel file.

Life itself has been trapped in a tiny, metal box. You capture the essence of the world, the essence of whatever you want. Photography frees you and captures everything else. The world is your Red-Green-Blue oyster.

The thing about using a camera is that it changes you. You stop simply moving through the world and start living in it, enjoying it. You see everything for once. Every little thing is free to be taken into your digital grasp. You don’t simply see what the world looks like currently; you learn to see what it could look like perfectly. A little knowledge about your

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precision tool, and suddenly you know exactly what you can make the world look like with the press of a few buttons, forever altering exactly how one moment took place.

Your camera can be your best friend. Spend long enough with it, and your camera may take on a name, a personality. I’ve had hundreds of adventures with Rosie, and oh, how beautiful she is: a Sony NEX-5, 14.2 Megapixels, Canon 50mm fixed-focus lens, no flash. Once you know exactly how your camera works, you feel you can do anything.

A simple light bulb can be transformed into a raging flame; the ordinary can become shockingly beautiful. You’ll constantly find yourself thinking, “How could I shoot that?”

And, before long, you’ll know exactly how.

Cameras make you learn not only how to take pictures but how to look at the world in terms of pictures. By that I mean that every second becomes an opportunity for you.

Every interesting little item, object, or instant can be captured for a lifetime, happy moments remembered forever. It’s an amazing mindset to be in. You start to really appreciate the world visually.

The best choice you may make in your life is to find an artistic medium that works for you.

An easy way to start is to grab your camera and start shooting.

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watch literary issue Porter-Gaud School 300 Albemarle Road Charleston, SC 29407

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