SCC Vortex Magazine 2016

Vortex 2016

Vortex

2016

A collection of Art, Essay, Plays, Poetry, Scripts, & Short Stories

A vortex is spiraling energy, like a whirlwind or a tornado that exists throughout all of nature. The Milky Way, our greater home, spirals.

Moving water spirals as it flows over and around things.

Our bones spiral.

The Maricopa County Community College District is an EEO/AA institution and an equal opportunity employer of protected veterans and individuals with disabilities.

A Publication of Scottsdale Community College

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Artist and Author Acknowledgment Cody Achin for “Evil in the Dirt” ©2016

Delvan Gonzales for “Abandoned” ©2016

Jacob Akers for “The Great Tomato Forest” ©2016

Matthew Hoober for “A Centerfold in Marble”

Volina Armstrong for “Dinner for Two” ©2016

©2016

Colleen Austin, “Revelation”©2016 Lily Baye-Wallace for “Blink” ©2016 Asmarrah Lila Eslynne Bedford for “Latchkey” ©2016

Aiyana Irwin for “Slipping Through the Universes” ©2016

Melinda Keels for “The Last Mile” ©2016 Junko Kinoshita, “After Surf in Costa Rica” ©2016 Back Cover: Gloria Langer, “WTF!?” ©2016

Asmarrah Lila Eslynne Bedford for “The Last Desert Roadhouse” ©2016

Bonnie Lewis, “Come Along With Me” ©2016

Benjamin Bisgard for “Trumpin’” ©2016

Marcia Losh, “Kaleidoscope 3” ©2016

Benjamin Bisgard for “Mr. Traffic” ©2016

Caitlyn Mitchell, “Close to a Phoenician’s Heart”©2016

Vidushi Chaudhry for “The Venkats” ©2016 Vidushi Chaudhry for “I Belonged” ©2016

Meagan Murphy, “Waste”©2016

Matthew Cohen, “Historic Soweto and the AntiApartheid Movement”©2016

Sean O’Day, “Reflections” ©2016 Anazia Potee for “Sideshow” ©2016

Stormy Current for “The Hat” ©2016

David Ready, “The One Who Came Before”©2016

Front Cover: Kathy Dioguardi, “For Your Pleasure” ©2016

Joshua Sandrock for “Brothers in Arms” ©2016

Joyce Erbach, “Flowers” ©2016

Raquel Spencer, “Native Queen ‘81” ©2016

Judith Feldman, “Arizona Sunset”©2016 Carol Gibson for “The Good Mother” ©2016 Gabrielle Glessing for “The Exit” ©2016 Delvan Gonzales, “Thief ” ©2016

Taylor Shelton for “Under the City” ©2016 Patricia Turpin for “Kassi Stars” ©2016 Devan Watson for “Little Brown Flecks” ©2016 Angelika Zgainer, “Spirit World” ©2016

Cover - Kathy Dioguardi,

Back Cover - Gloria Langer,

Mixed Media Acrylic, 24” x 36”

Acrylic, 20” x 30”

“For Your Pleasure” ©2016

“WTF!?” ©2016

I want to thank all of our student writers and artists here at Scottsdale Community College! It is because of them that we are able to create such an eclectic and high quality anthology. The writing and art in this journal represent a wide range of subjects, styles, and experiences that allows us to think, question, and feel. Without our artists’ visions and revisions, without their insights and sensitivities, without their devotion to art, we would all be diminished as a community of learners and as human beings.

I am deeply indebted to our very smart and dedicated executive administrative assistants! Buffie Diglio manages all Vortex contracts, processes winners’ awards, ticket sales, designs and prints award certificates and guest name badges, and maintains the website. Kathryn Kinney-Foe processes all of the paperwork with contest participants, fields questions and organizes the RSVPs. Michelle Blake assists all of us whenever and wherever she is needed.

I also want to thank Shachi Kale, the graphic designer of Vortex, for her beautiful spirit, artistic innovations, and remarkable skill in the design of Vortex. Still, none of this would be possible each year without the endorsement from our president, Dr. Jan Gehler. Her far-reaching vision for what makes an academic institution a strong community has touched every part of SCC. I am also immensely grateful to Dr. Daniel Corr, SCC’s Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs, for his invaluable friendship and support through the many years of Vortex. I also want to thank Susan Moore, Chair of the English, World Languages, and Journalism Division, for her continued enthusiastic backing, and Dr. Larry Tualla, Chair of the English Department, for his support.

My gratitude also goes to our amazing judges: Dr. Jared Aragona, Dr. Cameron MacElvee, Robert Mugford, and Dr. Lois Roma-Deeley, all of whom sacrificed a portion of their Spring Break for art’s sake! I also want to thank my wonderful colleagues at SCC who continually encourage our students in their writing and artwork!

Sandra Desjardins, Vortex Coordinator

Support the Arts!

We need your support to keep the fire of creativity burning in all of our talented students for many years to come.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to Vortex.

Your support helps to pay for supplies, special programs, annual events and the very book you’re reading.

For more information on how you can show your support for education and the arts, please contact Sandra Desjardins at (480) 423-6415 or visit our website at:

https://foundation.maricopa.edu College: Scottsdale, Designation: Vortex Student Publication

“The rapidly evolving global economy demands a dynamic and creative workforce.

The arts and its related businesses are responsible for billions of dollars in cultural exports for this country. It is imperative that we continue to support the arts and arts education both on the national and local levels. The strength of every democracy is measured by its commitment to the arts.”

–Charles Segars, CEO of Ovation 4

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Vortex Donors 2015 - 2016 Anonymous Artist

Roger R. John

Richard Pihl

Jared L. Aragona

Kathryn Kinney-Foe

Jeanne Sabrack

Sirio Calogero

Val Kossak

Cheryl Shea

Sandra Desjardins

Gloria Langer

Linda van der Wal

Buffie and Matt Diglio

Bonnie and Bob Lewis

Joyce Erbach

Leviathan Ventures Consulting

VI at Grayhawk “Redefining Senior Living”

Judith A. Feldman Michele R. Florea Friends of Vortex Pledges Jan L. Gehler

E. E. Moe

Jennifer L. Watson

Susan C. Moore Robert Mugford

A Special Thank You to the following for their contributions for the Vortex Awards Event: Barbara Olsen for her extraordinary table floralscapes Vases Courtesy of AJ’s Purveyors of Find Foods The Chaparral Suites and Shelley Brown for their support of Vortex And all of The Retro Muse Musicians: Krista Ban, Ryan King, Shelby Tsui, & Ettasuren Bowie Yule Nancy Neff, Executive Director, Institutional Advancement and Community Engagement, for her generous support of Vortex.

Ronald Zhang, for technical support.

About the 2016 Vortex Graphic Designer Shachi Kale

Shachi is an artist, graphic designer, and children’s book illustrator.

You can see her work at www.shachikale.com

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Table of Contents Creative Non-Fiction Essay “A Centerfold in Marble” Matthew Hoober - First Place.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

“The Venkats” Vidushi Chaudhry - Second Place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

“Blink” Lily Baye-Wallace - Third Place.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

“Trumpin’” Benjamin Bisgard.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

“The Last Mile” Melinda Keels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

“Little Brown Flecks” Devan Watson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Short Story “The Last Desert Roadhouse” Asmarrah Lila Eslynne Bedford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

“I Belonged” Vidushi Chaudhry.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

“Mr. Traffic” Benjamin Bisgard.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

“The Exit” Gabrielle Glessing.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4 6

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Table of Contents Sustainability “Life’s Circle” Delvan Gonzales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Art “Come Along With Me” Bonnie Lewis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

“Historic Soweto and the Anti-Apartheid Movement” Matthew Cohen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

“Arizona Sunset” Judith Feldman.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

“The One Who Came Before” David Ready. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

“Spirit World” Angelika Zgainer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

“Kaleidoscope 3” Marcia Losh.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

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Table of Contents “Flowers” Joyce Erbach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

“Reflections” Sean O’Day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

“After Surf in Costa Rica” Junko Kinoshita. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

“Waste” Meagan Murphy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

“Revelation” Colleen Austin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

“Close to a Phoenician’s Heart” Caitlyn Mitchell.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

“Kassi Stars” Patricia Turpin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

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Table of Contents Native Voices and Visions “Thief ” Delvan Gonzales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

“Native Queen ‘81 Raquel Spencer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Poetry “Slipping Through the Universes” Aiyana Irwin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

“Evil in the Dirt” Cody Achin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

“Under the City” Taylor Shelton. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

“The Hat” Stormy Current. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

“Abandoned” Delvan Gonzales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

“Brothers in Arms” Joshua Sandrock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

“The Great Tomato Forest” Jacob Akers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

“Latchkey” Asmarrah Lila Eslynne Bedford. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

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Table of Contents Playwriting “Sideshow” Anazia Potee.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

“The Good Mother” Carol Gibson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

“Dinner for Two Volina Armstrong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Writers’ and Artists’ Personal Statements

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Vortex 2016 Creative Non-Fiction Essay

“The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It’s in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay.” ~ Richard Rodriguez

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The National League of American Pen Women We gratefully acknowledge the contributions to SCC writers, artists, and musicians made by the Scottsdale Branch of The National League of American Pen Women– the oldest women’s arts organization in the country. We appreciate the continued support of these dynamic and creative women!

Awards Each year, the Scottsdale Branch of American Pen Women honors a winning student in writing, art, or music at the Vortex Awards Reception.

This year’s award is in writing.

Matthew Hoober is the recipient of this

award for his Creative Non-Fiction Essay, “A Centerfold in Marble”.

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“A Centerfold in Marble” j Matthew Hoober- First Place i

The blistered leather seats of the red family hatchback burned the skin of my

inner thighs. My father had resorted to driving with his knees because the steering wheel was too hot to touch. So was the gear shift, which he would barely tap with the palm of his hand, swearing under his breath each time.

This was the sort of late Sunday afternoon that seemed to never end. I recall

many such weekends, back before I could tell time when the long, black minute and hour hands on the clock seemed to move as slowly as the long, dark shadows cast by the setting sun. That is what I remember, a victim of some kind of emotional time dilation; looking back, time slows down, lengths contract, and the memory is distorted.

My father was taking my brother and me to get a hair cut. We were going to a

barber’s shop he had discovered a few weeks before. My father, though nearly bald, was very particular about the hair he had left, thin like grains of salt and pepper. The further his hair receded, the more particular he became. He said this was “a real barber and not a beauty shop.” I didn’t understand at the time that going to a salon would have been emasculating and obviously beneath the dignity of a middle-aged married man and his two sons in their dented, barely paid for used Subaru.

I looked out the back window, shielding my eyes from the bright afternoon

glare. The pavement seemed incandescent and bruised my vision with blue and purple splotches, like staring at a lightbulb. The countless strip malls and parking lots racing past appeared to blur into a single, vast expanse of concrete and glass, hardened by the desert heat like glazed pottery in a kiln oven. Those suburban surroundings seem to me now to be just as monotonous and bleak as the rigid rows of saguaro and brown, brittle scrub brush they had replaced.

Abruptly, out of the rolling landscape of concrete and steel, a strip mall with

a red brick facade and circular windows appeared. We had arrived. Turning off the car

Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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my father looked over at my brother and me and said, “Now I expect the two of you to behave yourselves.” Though it was a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer, my father was wearing a green wool vest, a pair of pressed, khaki slacks, and polished black dress shoes that squeaked when he walked. “I mean it boys: no fighting,” he concluded as he adjusted his glasses, the lenses so thick that Galileo would have envied them.

Ignoring my father’s exhortation to decency, my brother and I leapt out of the

car and raced up the sidewalk. He shoved me out of the way and beat me to the door.

This was typical of our relationship.

My brother was five years older, a foot taller, and at least thirty pounds lighter

than I. Having reached middle school, he had begun to grow his hair out as was fashionable at the time and over my father’s protests. I, on the other hand, was still getting the same military-style buzz cut that was so adored by my parents but horribly unflattering. I knew that my overweight body, my stomach and chest which bounced and shook with every step I took, cut a pathetic figure next to my athletic brother.

I don’t remember if the barber’s shop had a name, but it did have a red and

white striped pole. The waiting area was small with a linoleum floor that might have borne a checkered pattern or might have just been really dirty. The stale, uncirculated air smelled like rubbing alcohol and sweat and seemed to stick to my skin or catch in my lungs.

My father and brother immediately began arguing about how short he was

going to cut his hair. I had not yet received the gift of teenage self-righteousness. I knew I was going to get the same ugly hair cut I always did, whether I liked it or not. They continued fighting even after the barber had led my brother back and begun to wash his scissors and combs in preparation.

Left alone I perused the magazines left on the coffee table in the waiting area.

There were several heavy books with worn cloth covers and gilded letters that had faded from gold to a dull copper. Renaissance art, page after page of biblical scenes or stories from mythology rendered in bronze and marble and tempera by Titian and Botticelli and Raphael. I remembered having watched a television program with my mother about the Sistine Chapel and how frightened I had become by Michelangelo’s the Last 14

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Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

Judgment. Visions of terrified sinners being dragged to hell by demonic imps with horrible faces worse than Halloween masks had given me nightmares.

Tossing the book aside, I noticed that there was a stack of magazines

underneath the table. I grabbed one figuring I would soon be reading an issue of Sports Illustrated older than I was but quickly realized that these magazines had nothing to do with strikes or batting averages. I was holding the latest issue of Playboy. I was young enough never to have seen one before but old enough to know exactly what it was. I could remember my friends from school telling me about how they had found their father’s or their uncle’s and what they had seen inside. I remember how excited they had become, how their hands trembled as they traced circles and triangles in the air almost spastically. I had lied and told them that I knew exactly what they were talking about, that I had looked at Playboy plenty of times. But, finally, here was my chance.

My heart was beating so hard and fast I thought I could feel my ribs beginning

to crack; my hands were shaking so much that the first couple pages of the magazine were little more than a blur, streaks of color, and spiraling lines of text. Setting it out on the coffee table, everything returned to focus, and I saw there what had so excited my friends from school.

I had never seen a naked woman before. Reclining against a tree and holding

an apple to her cheek, she reminded me of Eve in the Garden of Eden. I had seen many depictions of that Biblical story; there was an entire book of them sitting on the coffee table. The Eve of Michelangelo and Titian had smooth white skin that looked like marble, but the Eve of the magazine was fleshy and alive; the Eve of the Renaissance modestly covered her breasts while the Eve in Playboy did not, hers spread out flat against her chest like pancake batter; the Eve of classical art was not usually portrayed fully nude while the Eve in that magazine was naked but had a tangle of coarse, black hair between her legs that seemed to resemble the shape of a fig leaf. The woman on those glossy pages had long, manicured fingernails that were as red as the apple she was holding; and her hair was an unearthly shade of blond, glowing around her head like a peroxide halo.

Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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I threw the magazine back under the table and grabbed one of the moth-

eaten art books. Turning the old, rough pages, I was reassured to discover that visions of the Garden of Eden from the 15th century were less pornographic than what I had just seen in the so-called “gentleman’s magazine.” Nonetheless, there were just as many nude figures, just as many bare-breasted Eves staring back at me. However, if the Eve in Playboy was a threatening temptress, then the one in those paintings seemed more like a friendly neighbor.

Once I had completely calmed down, my gaze came to rest on Michelangelo’s

David. I had seen the statue dozens of times in the past, but this time was different. I knew I would certainly never look at Eve the same way again, but what about Adam?

Looking at David, I drank in the statue off of the dirty page with eager eyes.

I tried to memorize every detail: his broad shoulders and abdominal muscles that seemed to ripple enough that they might crack the marble; his thick uncircumcised penis hanging like overripe fruit between his two strong legs, as thick as tree trunks. I would be immensely gratified several months later when I found the modest beginnings of pubic hair between my own legs, just like the perfectly coiffed patch on the statue.

Nightmares of the Last Judgment were replaced by day dreams about David. For many weeks to come, I would lay awake in bed thinking about his handsome face, his distinguished nose, and soft lips. Perhaps more often I found myself unable to sleep while thinking about his how his nipples thrust out from his taut, firm chest with the power and shape of a pair of bullets; or his generous scrotum, heavy and full enough to burst. I would often dream about caressing his beautiful body. I would run my fat, stubby fingers over his lean, muscular torso, across his flat stomach and then down between his legs. Although I knew, of course, that David was a statue, when he came to me while I slept, his skin did not feel like cold, inanimate stone but real, living flesh.

His hands were open and inviting, and the warmth from his touch would linger on my cheeks like a fever, even after I woke up.

But this is where that kind of time dilation begins to take its toll. To me now it

seems as though I sat in that barber’s shop, sweating and breathing in fumes of Barbasol, for hours. However, like the sun that never set or the strip malls and parking lots that

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appeared to grow organically from the Earth, that is a distortion. The warped contours of my reminiscence can manipulate light, perhaps even swallowing it altogether, and I know I couldn’t have been there for longer than a half hour. Like space-time, the fabric of memory can be bent by an object with enough gravity.

I don’t remember actually getting my hair cut. I don’t remember the car ride

back home. I don’t even remember the storm that replaced the unending blue sky with claustrophobic gray clouds or the rain that made the pavement shine like a polished mirror. What I do remember is that after dinner that night, the skies had cleared, and my father and I went out into the backyard to look at the stars. The storm clouds had stumbled over the mountains to the east and fallen out of view. They had taken with them the soot and smog which usually hung about the edges of the city, staining the sky brown like tarnished bronze.

“Even here in town we can still see plenty of stars,” my father said. I could feel

the wet grass between my toes and hear the mosquitos, whining and buzzing in my ears.

It was unpleasantly humid, which my father acknowledged when he laughed and said, “We’re going to have to grow gills in order to breathe out here.”

This was not the first time that he and I had gone stargazing. I could never

see any of the constellations that he would try to point out to me. I never saw a bear or a snake or a lion but a random assortment of dull, barely illuminated dots. I always ended up feeling disappointed, but I never could see any of the fantastic shapes that he claimed were hanging just above our heads. I was still feeling unsettled from what I had seen, had not seen, or maybe thought that I had seen at the barber’s shop earlier that day. What I didn’t yet understand was that not only had my eyes not really turned into glass or fallen out of my skull from the sight of all that naked flesh but could now, perhaps, see things that weren’t there before.

“Ursa Major,” my father said pointing to the north, “the Great Bear.”

I strained to see the faint collection of flickering points of light in the sky. The

individual stars burned as delicately as candles, and it seemed that one single, strong gust of wind might blow them out. Fortunately, the wind had already died down. I saw

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the obvious, angular shape of the Big Dipper, consisting of the brightest stars in Ursa Major; it looked like an enormous cooking pot resting on the horizon. But the longer I stared the more I could see.

Suddenly, the handle of the Dipper contracted, raising up the broad, powerful

shoulders and fearsome head of a bear. As the stars slipped in and out of focus, their light became fuzzy like thick fur and rippled across the constellation like sinewy muscle. The bottom of the pot thrust down two gigantic legs to the northwest, seeming to merely brush the other stars out of the way.

“I can see it!” I exclaimed.

My father put his arm around me and said, “Now, what about Polaris?”

I looked due north and found a dim, white flash hovering just over the back of

the bear. I pointed proudly and smiled.

“That is the pole star,” my father explained. “It never moves and is always

aligned with true north.”

Polaris is not one of the brightest stars in the sky, and I had never noticed

it before. Now, I struggled to figure out how I could have ever possibly missed it.

Enchanted, I stayed outside even after my father went back into the house.

I watched the sky heave like a giant wheel and turn around the celestial north

pole. The stars in Draco glistened like scales as the writhing serpent slithered around the north star; Cassiopeia, the vain queen of Greek myth chained to her throne, was still being punished as she tumbled above and below Polaris; and Ursa Major too silently stalked the small, twinkling star at the center in a wide circle. All of the constellations spun around each other in one great arc, but Polaris never moved.

I watched Andromeda struggle to free herself; the stars had the blue luster of

steel and seemed to clink together like chains which bound her arms and legs. I felt I could see her white dress draped across the sky and her shining blond hair hanging down and getting tangled in the trees. I anxiously wondered if she too looked like the Eve in that Playboy magazine. Should I tear that white dress off the constellation to

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find her round, naked breasts with nipples that were also shaped like stars? Should I want to?

Looking to the East I could see the figure of a man bearing a shield and a

sword. He was clad in armor and wore a helmet that covered his face. This was Perseus, the hero who would rescue Andromeda and save the day. He thrust his sword to the west as the star at its tip pulsed and throbbed. All of the starlight flowed together, uniting to form a more familiar image, that of David with his perfect proportion and beautiful body.

The humid air of late summer which condensed into salty drops of water on

my cheeks and the mosquitoes that summoned itchy, red bumps to appear on the back of my hands seemed oddly reassuring. It was true that the thoughts and questions I had struggled with since the barber’s shop earlier that afternoon continued to swirl about in my head, projecting themselves onto the night sky above me; but, just like the constellations my father had shown me, they too all turned around a single, luminous point of light. I had found Polaris.

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The Venkats j Vidushi Chaudhry - Second Place i On my last day at my old house, I fastened the lock and high-tailed it out of the door, juggling my lip gloss, cellphone, bag, comb, and peanuts in a paper bag, traversing the three flights of narrow stairs in the chawl1 I’d lived in. I passed middle-aged aunties, already resigned to their paisley-cotton-nightie fates, sitting on cane stools in the long corridors, cutting vegetables or hanging on the balcony staring at boys playing cricket.

I lumbered across the dusty courtyard, avoiding the ball flying across the bat. The boys gestured apologetically as I teetered before restoring my balance.

I heard the bestial sound of Venkat’s car reversing back into the street before my phone burst into a melodious rendition of ‘Kaisi Paheli Hai Yeh Zindagani’2. I silenced it and approached the car, now halted in the middle of the street. The foot traffic was heavy, and many people speared their car with glares. Piya burst out, elfin-small and lovely, grabbing me for a quick hug and cheek buss.

“Get in.” Then after a quick once-over, “You look fabulous.” I did. After all, it was Saturday night in Mumbai’s monsoons. I was 27, unattached, successful and always looking for an excuse to wear high heels.

I slid into the back seat, unhappy that my flirty little top and I had to sit amidst the office papers, empty water bottles and sack of soiled clothes. Her husband Venkat murmured hi, something about how late we were, and off we went. The scenic drive from Worli to Town3 is largely parallel to the ocean. No matter how gnarly the traffic or humid the weather, the route always made me smile. But Venkat chose to deprive us of this beauty and drove instead through the cloistered interiors of Dadar, Byculla, and Laal Baugh. This pre-Google-Maps decision added twenty minutes to our commute time and an edge to Venkat’s temper.

1 Chawl- 3-sided Mumbai buildings. 3 floors, dusty courtyard. Families living cheek by jowl.

2 Kaisi paheli hai yeh zindagani’- Bollywood song: ‘What a puzzle life is?’

3 Town- South Mumbai. Wealthy, decadent, beautiful.

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Piya and I chatted, oblivious to his growing ire. We spoke about her boss tribulations, my entertaining students, their demanding parents, gossiped about a gal pal, my eternal quest for a soul mate and inexplicable magnetism to losers. We talked with the need to share stockpiled items, in the shorthand that characterizes a long friendship.

Venkat stayed silent, sullen until Piya brought him back. “So where do you want to eat? I’m thinking Chinese. Somewhere near Vid’s new place.” Her head swiveled back to face him.

“Aman recommended Koyla,” he answered.

“Indian? We just ate Indian food last night.” She turned back to me. “Vid, what do you want?”

I hadn’t learnt then to stay out of their exchanges. “Yeah, I’m craving hot and sour soup.”

“We are going to Koyla,” Venkat said, turning too quickly and making the car jump precarious inches into the air.

I heard Piya sigh as she settled back into her seat.

I mused this was a case of langoor ke haath hoor4. I’d met Venkat when Piya had been relocated to Goa. It was the first time she’d been outside hugging distance of her friends and parents in Delhi, and my brave girl had plummeted into debilitating depression.

For the first time, sensible Piya made dangerous choices in men. Once she hooked up with a nameless stranger, then with a close friend whose affections she’d ignored for years. The psychiatrist had prescribed her pills to allay crying jags, and I’d introduced her to Buddhism, but it was a person she’d needed to step into her empty evenings in the too-quiet two-bedroom Goa apartment. Venkat had seen his chance. And pounced.

Piya, already drowning, had found solace in the hunter and the familiar comfort of being hunted.

“Vidushi, why do you teach? It can’t be money.” Venkat’s voice was without edge, controlled.

“I love it.”

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“But how can you be happy when you don’t have a car, can’t eat out, or take a vacation?” Venkat’s eyes stayed on the road and Piya looked out the window.

“Because while you sell soap and shampoo with your MBA, earning lakhs, I change the world. One student at a time.”

“Really?” he snorted, “Changing the world? You’re not just hiding from a real career?

Those who can’t do, teach.” His laughter bounced off the silence. In the persistent melee of party night Bombay, in that moment, I could hear everything. I stared at the dark 7:30 sky, cloudy, tiny shards of light winking through, and leaned away from this monstrosity my friend had married.

I’d seen Venkat twice in Goa over the blinks of a year, first, as Piya’s colleague in August, before the depression had taken home in her and then in the role of boyfriend.

The Venkat I first met pretended to know many things but when we borrowed a car, it was I who drove because he didn’t know how. He was a weak, foolish, chubby boy, enamored with his fancy IIT-IIM 5education, but Piya was still unattainable. The second time I met him, he’d beat his body to physical perfection by months on the treadmill. While the outside was now attractive, his single-minded pursuit of the girl only solidified my instinctive dislike of him.

I’d shared my uncensored opinion of his faults. She married him though, twice, one Punjabi wedding for her parents and the other Tamil for his. All my attempts to stop her failed.

“How dare you speak like that to her? You owe Vidushi an apology,” Piya barked. She twisted half-way back in her seat to look at me; “Vid, I can’t believe you aren’t yelling at him. That was unforgivable.”

I stared at the little bottle-shaped air freshener wedged between the ac vents. “It’s ok.”

But she continued to bluster, and Venkat and I remained mum, adversarial. Her voice was distant as we reached the faded glory of Kala Ghoda, in Colaba, a confusion of cars and taxis. After ten minutes of slow driving, searching for a space large enough for Venkat to insert his dinky car, we found a spot. He sandwiched us between a Mercedes and a BMW. 5 IIT-IIM- Elite colleges comparable to MIT/ Harvard

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Venkat and I continued sniping at each other through dinner while Piya, drink in hand, played mediator. We moved to a well-hidden little bar in Colaba’s seedy Pasta Lane. Bootleggers was an anomaly, a tiny bar, non-Bollywood music, and haphazard stacks of board games. Venkat was a religious teetotaler, and I never could afford drinks outside. So only Piya drank. We tried to chat over the music.

“Let’s try one of these games,” I said.

“Who comes to a bar to play games?” Venkat jumped in.

“Who comes to a bar if they don’t drink?” I bit back.

And so it went.

We played Pictionary and Taboo. I remember Venkat’s losing face, eyes glittering with suppressed fury. I gloated all through the next hour. The guy I was dancing with bought me a drink, while those two stayed at the table, murmuring. The bar closed at one, we headed out, Piya and I loud, Venkat very quiet. We headed to the last frontier open to the South Bombay clubber: Bachelors.

Bachelors occupied prime real estate, facing the ocean at Marine Drive, a long boulevard lined with buildings glowing in the night. Trees blocked the ocean view.

Behind Bachelors lay the busy Western railway track with piles of passenger debris.

The tiny shop front did thriving night-time business and was rumored to be one of the best hafta6 payers in Bombay. A line of late-night revelers sat in their cars or lolled around them, eating fruit ice creams, shakes, and giant sandwiches. Sometimes, they carried more than candy. On display were glitzy party clothes, occasional sightings of the famous, and a certain kind of male gang that came every weekend to admire the unattainable female landscape.

Venkat wanted ice-cream. We sat outside, at a Formica table, on plastic lawn chairs, watching each other and trains rumble by. Piya and I chatted about my new house in Colaba. School was giving it to me, and Piya and Venkat were both going to stay over on this, my first night there. Its ground floor isolation, shared wall with a park, and spooky grey backyard were troubling. I was happy to have the comfort of friends over.

Venkat interrupted the conversation with some smarmy remark. I was feeling a 6 Hafta- weekly bribe to Policemen/underworld goons. Ensures a business runs undisturbed.

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mellow mix of tipsiness and accomplishment. School had given me a house. I could be magnanimous.

“Arre! Venkat, we’ve been snapping at each other all evening. Let’s call it a truce.”

“What? If you don’t like what I’m saying, leave. Nobody asked you to stay.”

I stared at him for a fulminating moment. Piya played with the plastic covered menu, then with the thin silver bangle I’d given her on a long-ago birthday, Venkat’s expression, smug, finally victorious.

“All right. I will go home.” I stood up, all bravado and certainty that she would stop me.

Piya said, “Make sure you text me when you reach home.” A train roared by.

“I won’t.” I snarled. “You stay. With him.” I strode away, righteous fury propelling me.

But as soon as I was out of view, I started to see the other things. The men with their leering grinning faces, the cars, gleaming yet grimy. I was suddenly aware of my bare arms, slinky top, tightness of my jeans and the isolated stretch of road ahead. The police cars had just passed; it would be a while before they’d return, sweeping up late revelers on the sea front. Then there would be no one. My new house would be empty, and my clumsy fingers hadn’t learned how to work the locks yet. It faced an Arabic hotel, and I’d seen women in black abayas and sheikhs in white robes with checked keffiyehs. My mother’s warnings about Muslims flooded back. A colleague had mentioned Colaba’s red light district, and women of the night walked the streets one lane away.

The fear must have shown in my face as I felt a man a few feet away move towards me.

My survival instincts kicked in. In nanoseconds, I scanned for allies, but found none.

Fear bloomed. I looked back, measuring the humiliation of retreat. My heels were cumbersome, but it would take deadly seconds to unbuckle them. A college self-defense class came back. I dug out my keys, ready to use them to tear into skin. My mind clinically listed other weapons-- belt buckle, stiletto heels, shiny nails-- and prepared to hit him in the jewels. As he approached me, his teeth gray-green, I opened my mouth to shriek. That’s when I saw a hawaldar7 approaching, his brown uniform and lathi8 7 Hawaldar- beat constable 8 Lathi- Government issued stick

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shining under the streetlights.

“Help, please!” I shouted across the street and careened to him. The attacker fell behind, thwarted. Wordlessly, the constable flagged a black and yellow down for me.

“Drop her home,” he instructed the driver in Marathi.

As soon as I sat in the taxi, on the furry flowered fabric, I was in helpless tears. I reached home without incident, ignoring the text messages from Piya. The thought that repeated itself, Sisyphean: Piya had chosen Venkat. And I, when faced with threat of physical danger, had chosen jeopardy rather than returning to her.

The unknown dangers of the new house were obliterated. Shock, betrayal, and grief had taken their place.

For the years since their marriage, I had tolerated him and his daily horrors. No more.

Not now. Not when Piya had become a Venkat. 9

9 Piya became a Venkat- In this Tamil community, wife takes her husband’s first name and makes it her last name.

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Blink j Lily Baye-Wallace - Third Place i

I am miniscule in comparison to the gargantuan fir trees and blinding lights

of the metropolitan storefront in the night. My face is framed in layers upon layers of clothing, and the hat I am wearing forces my bespectacled vision to be tunneled into a tiny area of inevitably foggy space. The Minnesota night feels as if someone is repeatedly opening and closing the door of a freezer, creating wave after wave of infuriatingly erratic wind. I wait patiently with colleagues of my parents for my mother to finish her work. The parade route is long and cold, but I really can’t complain. My mother is the chauffeur for Santa Claus on his annual ride about Minneapolis. Even though I can’t see her driving the truck that hides beneath the shell of the float, I know she is there and I am proud. I wait, she finishes, I go home, I sleep.

I blink, and all is gone.

On the edge of the dying yellow lawn, there is a line of various trees, all large

and tall that separate the house from the rural Illinois cornfield. One of these, a strong pine, is quite close to the old, decrepit brown barn, which is filled with kittens that will die within six months either from the cold, disease, or even exploding within the car where they take shelter. Its base is larger than I can physically hug with my lanky adolescent arms. There is a large branch, at least two feet in diameter, jutting perpendicularly just a few feet above the poison ivy that coats the earth. It is the one place I can sit, in the light of a sherbert sun, melting and running down the sky with its sticky residue, and read. My irritable, parochial, and frankly primitive grandmother seldom bothers me here, and I much prefer the coarse bark and sticky sap over her company. Her domain is her lawnmower, and As-Seen-On-TV crap filled house. I try to stay outside as long as possible, I am forced to enter the house, I pretend to appreciate her existence, I fail.

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I blink, and all is gone.

There is hardly any room to ride in the heart of the city. We are in the suburbs

of the Valley, yet the houses are still crammed together like children in a school bus.

Only every once in a while can we ride side by side. When possible, we must be hesitant, for vicious dogs live in many of the yards we pass. My paint horse is calm beneath me, but I am not. Riding in the cinderblock alleyways surrounded by graffiti and god knows what else puts me on edge. It is a beautiful day, but the empty, garbage filled slides and swimming pools we pass seem fit to be the setting of a horror movie. I feel nauseous. The backyards into which we peer are often in disrepair, and many were once grandiose mansions. The desolation is so much more frightening when it appears to have crept from wealth and neglect rather than necessity. I continue along the trail, I turn around, I unsaddle the horse, I head home.

I blink, and all is gone.

I sit in this unfamiliar theater quietly next to my mother. The performing arts

have always come easily to me but I have no background for this audition whatsoever.

Being in a new theater in a new town is stressful enough, but I honestly have no idea as to the concept of this story. Where am I? When am I? Why is this occurring? All I know is I am “Helen,” I’m blind, and I’m being positioned onto this stool, but refusing to sit. I close my eyes and pretend to struggle. The director with a deadpan face tells me to actually leave the chair. Confused, I stand. The person behind me wrenches me back into place. I stand again, and this time fight. They struggle against me. I don’t know how hard to fight. I try to keep my eyes as closed as I struggle, for I feel I cannot merely pretend to be blind--I have to be. My eyes flash open and close as I wrench one of my arms free and close again as I stumble forth. The director tells me to sit. I’m still confused, I go home, I’m not so sure if I like living in Texas, I worry, I (try to) sleep.

I blink, and all is gone.

The sun embarks upon its arching path across the sky as my mother begins my

tour. She leads me from a quiet neighborhood checker boarded between the dirtiest slum and oldest plantation palace to a sparkling island in the menagerie of people. The Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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marketplace ebbs and flows with the movement of people in and out of stores, sitting in cafes and standing at bars. Gold, purple, and green overwhelm me as I begin to discern the crisp, clean sound of a saxophone from the clamor of Downtown New Orleans. The tide of people carries me through the covered marketplace where local farmers bring their produce and my mother purchases some tiny eggplant here, and a loaf of bread or two there. My body washes up on the shore that is Cafe Du Monde, and I take a much desired respite. I look like a fool as I am coated in the powdered sugar that falls off of my warm, fluffy beignet, as if it were falling snow. From the patio of the cafe I can see a chapel; the fence surrounding it is circumvented with artists and their obscure wares, and on each street corner, a performer painted a different color. I walk, I talk, I return to my new home.

I blink, and all is gone.

I am simultaneously as rigid as brick and as fluid as mortar. My hand grips the wooden bar running parallel to the ground with a ferocity I know is evidence of bad posture. I think in my head in scores of eight, and as I kick my leg high into the air, turned out and pointed perfectly, the breath runs out of my lungs, and I collapse to the floor. The high elevation of Santa Fe is taking its toll, and in the midst of the audition, I am weak and incapacitated. I have yet to get accustomed to the thin air here, and physical exertion does not come without a price. Somehow the judges find it in them to forgive my weakness and I take a moment to recover. I breathe deeply and dance through the thin air. This chance to spend every moment not in respite and doing what I love, attending a school where life is nothing more than eating, sleeping, and dancing, is something worth fighting for. I turn, I leap, I fly, I try, I say my thanks, I leave.

I blink, and all is gone.

I awkwardly approach the shiny black podium in the GCU gym, in front of my friends, and the one family member who bothers to show up to these stupid things, my proud mother. I have a large, projecting voice which works well for public speaking, but when I do speak to a large audience, my face turns redder than a ripe cherry tomato.

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say it like this is what everyone will remember until the day they die. I understand this is just the gateway from one part of life to the next, but I feel as if this part was more crucial than I’ve been giving it credit. As we march out of the gym in a formal, military style, I remember why I can’t take this seriously. I tower over everyone in my class with the exception of three boys, and even without my heels on, most girls get nowhere even near my height even with four inch heels. I can only assume this idiocy is for the sake of those who won’t actually graduate high school. I pose for pictures, I get lunch, I head home.

I blink, and all is gone.

I cram my long limbs underneath my hunter green desk to work. Oil paint, brushes, and paper towels are scattered about the floor, and my palette rests on my bed.

The old wooden lamp on my desk bathes my room in a warm light as I crouch over my painting. It’s been over an hour now. I was already working on this turtle for my father when my boyfriend called me. He has been frantically apologizing and pleading with me, and it’s taking all I have to not just hang up on him. He insists he’s going to hell.

“To--to commit adultery in your heart is to-to commit adultery in the eyes of Jesus!” he wailed through my phone on speaker. According to him, imagining us having any relation that is even vaguely sexual is sinning and it is going to land him in hell. I sigh.

To be frank, it’s all I can do. Between brushstrokes I try to talk sense into him. “Having sexual thoughts is a natural part of pubescent growth. If you weren’t thinking about that every once in a while, I’d be worried for your health.” He is legitimately crying now.

The turtle is based on a photograph my father took while snorkeling in the Bahamas.

In it the turtle seems to be broken in half by the refraction of light. The dark blue green of its shell would blend in with the waves if it weren’t for how the sunlight reflects off of the edges of its exoskeleton, giving the turtle a golden outline. Eventually I give up trying to multitask. Painting requires focus. All of this creationist bullshit is going to drive me insane. I listen, I plead, I ignore, I hang up, I sleep.

I blink, and all is gone.

I cautiously turn out of the driveway, looking left and right with same look as a child sitting down for the first time in the principal’s office. I creep my car from Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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intersection to intersection and eventually turn onto the highway, punching the gas a little too hard. The ramp curves, and I am on the highway. It is just a little bit before noon, and my phone chirps at me in an annoying voice ensuring I stay en route. I just go for it and lane change. In the furthest left lane I stay, a solid five miles faster than the speed limit. I take a deep breath and turn up the radio. The highway enters a portion surrounded by tall pines. I roll down my window and the onslaught of fresh air and deep green is invigorating. I cannot escape responsibility or my obligations, but in the short amount of time I am in the car driving, I am alone. I am away from the expectations of others, and I am forced to focus upon one thing--driving. By taking my brain that is constantly running at the speed of sound and forcing it to do only one thing, I am relieved of my emotions. My troubles leave me behind, and my life becomes the road. Eventually, I will turn off of the highway and my life will start again from where I left off. I shift, I change lanes, I turn, I stop.

I blink, and time goes on.

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Trumpin’ j Benjamin Bisgard - Honorable Mention i

A stranger walked in on me today. The worst part is that I let him in. I watched in horror as this handyman walked past the obscene images cast forth by the television.

It wasn’t until the handyman interrupted the dirty sounds I had been engrossed in for the last twelve minutes, did it finally register as being very loud. My eyes scrambled to find the remote. I tried to act casually as I turned the volume down from 80. I was sure he could read the shame on my face and embarrassment in my averted eyes as he made his way to the kitchen. For weeks now, I had been watching these videos nonstop. Most of the time I was by myself, but sometimes I could persuade my girlfriend to join me.

Luckily, she’s open minded and supports any weird fetish I go through, but this one was now affecting my greater social life. I unintentionally laid bare those perverted thoughts that I expected to remain in the privacy of my home forever. Even though he hadn’t said anything about it, the handyman was definitely going to tell people about this. From now on, I will be known as a supporter of Donald J. Trump.

I sat down on the couch in despair as I tried to think of a way to explain my

Trumping to the handyman. Bringing the topic up at all was an admission of wrongdoing. Explaining it away as just a joke would only confirm to the guy that I probably have a Trump shrine in my closet. I wouldn’t be in this predicament if it weren’t for late night talk show hosts. For the past couple of months, millions of Americans and I have been watching Trump lambasted by Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah. Brilliant material, such as comparing Trump to an African dictator or declaring him to be “White ISIS,” provided some great funny-because-it’s-terrifyingly-true humor. I watched the videos again and again. I just couldn’t get enough of the Trump Enterprises Presidential Campaign. As any junkie inevitably will, I eventually decided to cut out the middle man. I haven’t been the same since I typed “trump campaign rally” into YouTube.

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While I observed the handyman unpack his tools, I thought about the first

assembly I had watched. Never had I been so entertained. Trump just came out on stage and started talking to the crowd.

“I see a LOT of red hats out there! We’re gonna make America great again!”

“Shall we go over some polls? Who wants to talk about polls?”

The crowd roared back, so he began to speak about how far ahead he was. The people seemed excited that their opinion was sought in the decision. I think he would have read them either way. He was winning by double digits in most polls and smiling like Celebrity Apprentice was renewed for another decade.

The rush of Trump content was exhilarating. I went from a little bump of

Trump every night to an official TRUMP I.V. mainlined into the bloodstream. Almost every day, a new full-length event would be streamed online. I eagerly devoured them all, just like I would a Trump Steak, “World’s Greatest Steaks!”™ Trump Steaks were so “marvelously marbled”, they can’t be purchased anywhere. While my belly was not full of beef branded “Trump,” my mind was fed plenty. After digesting a few events, a certain rhythm and pattern to his speeches emerged.

He never prepared any specific remarks, but knew what he would talk about.

He always had opening speakers warm up the crowd and introduce him. Capturing attention with facial expressions and gesticulating, he spoke at the crowd, never to them.

Certain bits began to appear in every campaign rally as they were met with favor by the mob. The most popular theme he has is the self-funded campaign. He loves bringing up the banks and corporations that have contributed to his opponents’ campaigns.

“It’s my money I’m spending, I’m not owned by anybody,” Trump will say. “No corporations will be able to corrupt me!”

Trump is right, and this might be where a businessman’s sense of efficiency is invaluable. Instead of politicians being corrupted by corporate money, we’ll just elect the corporate money right into politics. I’m sure the Donald would be excited to save copious amounts of cash on political contributions (bribes) too.

The Trump edition of the Iran Nuclear Deal is a personal favorite. Donald

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always spent a few minutes explaining how he would have negotiated the deal. From Trump’s thrilling narrative, we would have gotten everything we desired, even a Red Ryder BB gun from Santa! “The Art of the Deal” is to simply walk out whenever the other side refuses to concede a point. All real diplomats know this is exactly how treaties are negotiated. But he knows that fans always want the classics and began to work his “You’re Fired!”© slogan into the material for the real die-hard Trumpers.

Of course, there are always protestors. Trump, ever a model for efficiency, has empowered his fans to subdue protestors themselves. This saves on security costs and allows for audience participation. These interruptions are not any cause for despair, however, for the crowd’s custom is to start a U.S.A. chant while the heckler is forcibly removed. Nothing says America like responding to words with violence.

Watching the handyman diagnose the broken food disposal, I thought about how The Trumpster always incites his supporters to finish his speeches. A preliminary favorite is being “Greedy for America.” The premise is that his ego is so large and rapacious, it is no longer satisfied from his couple billion dollars. Now, it wants to be greedy and help all of America rob their kid’s piggy banks. Donald loves to use his “Build the Wall” promise for a closing routine too. I was struck by my brain choosing the phrase “closing routine.” Big, gold, flashy words lit up my brain like the sign on Trump Tower, and I finally realized what Trump was doing.

Trump is America’s first stand up politician. His success on the campaign trail is due to his outstanding success at entertaining crowds. It’s the inaugural Tour de Trump! Just like a comedian, Trump is able to walk in front of a crowd of people and keep them listening to the things he says. As a comedian tells stories and seeks laughter, so does Trump. Stand-ups know that a story doesn’t have to be entirely true to be effective, and so does Trump. All that is required is a believable premise. His Iran deal commentary is total fiction, yet the fans love it. The more I thought about his “show,” the more it all made sense. He did impressions of his rival candidates. He ripped into protestors like a comedian would a drunken lady interrupting his set. Trump had built a blockbuster stage act in a matter of months, continually performing to crowds of thousands.

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It was quiet for about half a minute. I sat on the couch, nonplussed, wondering how the crossroads of culture and history supplied us with a presidential performer. A simple question from the kitchen roused me out of my stupor.

“How’s your day goin’?” the repairman asked cheerfully.

The tension melted with this simple communication. I was relieved he didn’t

think I must be a sociopath, although he caught me watching Trump speeches.

“It’s goin’ great!” I replied enthusiastically, “How’s yours?”

“Not bad,” he replied. “Just livin’ the dream.”

Despite his hands being submerged in rotting food, the man’s optimism was

genuine. America needs that more than the particular brand of comedy provided by Donald Trump. At least spoiled food can be converted into biofuel.

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The Last Mile j Melinda Keels - Honorable Mention i

The soloist finished the final notes of “Amazing Grace,” which drifted gently across the chapel as a young dancer in a white leotard and skirt approached the stage.

Her face was expressionless as she began to dance a cappella, arms floating gracefully above her head. Suddenly her movements became hurried and sharp as if she were struggling. She ran down the aisle past me, and the flutter of her skirt brushed my thigh. The hair on my arm rose.

Reaching the end of the aisle, she turned sharply and spun herself round and

round until she reached the stage, where she dove to the floor and hit the ground. She bent at the waist and writhed with her knees crooked in dramatic form until finally stopping with a gasp. The dancer lay in a white heap of arms and legs with her skirt over her shoulders.

For a moment, I could see Kristine lying on the pavement of the freeway, arms

and legs twisted, her clear blue eyes staring into the night.

Kristine’s sister, Stacy, told me that the psychosis most likely began during the middle of our years at Yale. It was the likely reason she took time off and finished a year after the rest of us. Kristine never truly graduated, however. She walked in the commencement ceremonies, but she did not graduate because she failed to complete her senior thesis. The Latin diploma memorializing her achievement was never printed.

“When do you think you’ll finish it?” I asked her once.

“I don’t know. I can’t settle on a topic,” she answered. “I’m buried in all of the research.”

I suppose I should have realized something was wrong then. Who makes it all

the way through Yale and fails to walk the last mile? The university had granted her an open-ended extension on her thesis. All she had to do was submit something that met the basic requirements.

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Kristine had always seemed the most grounded of all of us. This wholesome girl-next-door with a round face and apple cheeks melted even the toughest armor with genuine compassion and good-natured humility.

“How are you feeling today?” she’d ask, quietly.

“Okay,” I’d offer with a sigh. She always knew better.

“We’re going out for Chinese tonight, you should come.”

She was one of a handful of people who knew about my depression. She saw it ravage my life freshman year. If I had been perceptive enough to recognize I needed to ask about her state of mind, would she have told me the truth? Did she realize that she was becoming delusional? Did she hear voices?

After Kristine graduated, she spent another year in New Haven working for the university. While there, she began attending what seemed a cult-like Christian church with a strict code of conduct. She spent hours on her knees in prayer, repenting for her sins and the sins of her family.

“Sometimes the back of my legs ache so much that I can barely stand after a few hours of praying, but it is a necessary sacrifice,” she wrote to me in one of her letters. “The men and the women each pray in different rooms because it’s sinful to observe one another for so long,” she continued.

Her letters belied the cheerful co-ed whose blonde curls bounced as she boogied to Hip Hop music and Jazz with the student dance company. During our sophomore year, Kristine performed a solo to Madonna’s “Vogue,” striking highly sexualized poses and gyrating her hips to the beat.

When Stacy called me about her death she told me Kristine had colored her long, wavy blonde locks dark brown, preferring a “purer” brunette.

“In her mind, having blonde hair was an affront to God,” explained Stacy. At about the same time, she had begun wearing long, baggy dresses like the fundamentalist Mormons. “She wanted to hide her body. She believed sex was a sin.”

“She began taking antipsychotics about five weeks ago,” said Stacy, who was a psychiatric nurse. “She hadn’t taken them long enough for them to take effect.”

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Kristine had been living with Stacy and her husband for about three weeks when Stacy realized Kristine was delusional.

“She kept talking about God and judgment, and she had dyed her hair that awful brown,” exclaimed Stacy. “I knew something was very wrong.”

What Stacy did not know was that Kristine had a schedule to keep. On December 31, 1998, Kristine lay down on a Lake Mary, Florida freeway and was crushed by a passing car. She was 25.

“Women rarely choose such violent means of suicide, and they rarely involve others in their deaths,” said Stacy. “Jim and I went out for dinner on New Year’s Eve, and when we returned, she was gone.”

Schizophrenia typically develops in individuals during their early twenties.

Kristine was right on schedule. According to Stacy, their mother’s uncle was diagnosed with the disease when he was in college. He never completed his degree and spent his life drifting in and out of psychiatric hospitals.

I was the only one of Kristine’s college friends that Stacy called as I was the only person in Kristine’s phone book whose name Stacy recognized. Kristine hadn’t kept track of anyone else. Stacy remembered that Kristine had traveled from their older sister’s home in Champaign, Illinois, to attend my wedding in suburban Detroit a few years past.

It was the summer after Kristine finished college – before she returned to New

Haven. Kristine was doing research at the University of Illinois-Champaign. Stacy remembered that Kristine read 1 Corinthians 13 during my wedding ceremony. It was August 1996, and Kristine, Liz, and Lucy had all traveled to Michigan for my wedding.

We stayed at my mother’s house, living in each other’s back pockets just like college.

It was Liz and her fiancée who traveled with me and my husband to Kristine’s memorial in Lake Mary. The apparent significance of her New Year’s Eve suicide escaped none of us. It was the year that was puzzling to us. A suicide during the dawn of the year 2000 was something we could fathom as the delusional underpinning of a young woman’s psychosis. Her death seemed a year premature.

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“What is the significance of 1999?” asked Liz as the four of us stood on a hotel balcony in Lake Mary overlooking the Atlantic drinking Mike’s Hard Cider.

“Is there something evil about that year?” Liz and I had been virtual teetotalers in college, but that night we drank ourselves into a stupor.

The next morning we arrived at the chapel as light from the stained glass win-

dows refracted off the podium and was absorbed by the pews in the front row. People quietly filed into the chapel, and we found seats in a middle row along the inside aisle.

The soloist’s hymn began the service followed by the white dancer. I heard nothing after the dancer raised herself from the floor and floated off the stage. Kristine’s ashen body and lifeless eyes remained emblazoned before me.

“Are you ready to go?” said my husband.

“We can’t leave before the eulogy,” I quipped.

“The service is over,” he replied, looking puzzled.

I sat in the pew starring for several minutes at Kristine’s face, the hair on my arm still quivering.

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Little Brown Flecks j Devan Watson - Honorable Mention i I used to stare into the bathroom mirror for long periods of time, wondering why I was encased in such a strangely patterned pelt. Each time, a peculiar, young girl in the mirror would stare back at me as we analyzed each other’s forms. Pale white skin provided the backdrop for the chaotic clusters of brown spots that covered the areas of her body that had been brushed by the sun’s rays. Slowly, the girl would raise her hands to cover the splotches that were strewn across her cheeks. My cheeks. For a moment, a portion of freckles would disappear underneath the palms of my small hands.

I often wondered what I would look like if each minuscule dot were to flake off into oblivion. What would it be like to have a smooth, unblemished epidermis exposed to the world? Being only eleven years old, I was routinely reassured by my mother that I was still young and that the dark spots would fade with time, just as they had with my father, who had passed them on to me. But I didn’t want them to fade. I wanted them to disappear completely. A phrase painted on thin parchment paper hung on a wall in my room next to an old, white Victorian-style dresser: “A face without freckles is like a night without stars.” These words flew past me like a feeble breeze, as I believed that the world I lived in did not acknowledge the beauty of stars. Like most little girls, I wanted to be pretty when I grew up. From a young age, I learned that being attractive was as an important asset for my gender to acquire and maintain. However, I began to realize over time that the images of beauty that had been sold to me did not include any of the features that I possessed. I feared that I would not be able to live up to the standards that had been laid out for me.

In an attempt to evade the broiling summer sun of Arizona, my friends and I would hide indoors and draw pictures of everything from the outlandishly fantastical to the familiar and mundane. In the midst of scattered papers and markers, we would crowd around a craft table and set to work on colorful, cartoonish depictions of each other. Markers in hand, each of us carefully brought to life the impressions we had of ourselves. I was always startled to see the final products of our creative pursuits. The Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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way I represented myself on ink and paper did not match what my friends produced.

The version of myself that I doodled across countless drawings looked similar to that of how I drew them: smooth, blemish-free skin. In my drawings, I blended in. To my dismay, my companions never failed to neglect my most prominent, defining feature in their own representations. I despised being confronted with their freckle-spattered drawings.

Occasionally, my friends and I would brave the desert heat and venture out to one of the local waterparks. It was at these locales that my distinct characteristic would grab the most attention. The summer sun would beat down on the blinding white canvas of my skin, creating an undesirable contrast against the small discolorations that peppered my body’s outermost layer. Vibrant and conspicuous, my freckles caught the eyes of all passersby. Strangers regularly asked if I was a native of the sunny desert state and showed concern as to whether or not I was wearing enough sunscreen. I dreaded taking pictures on swim-filled days, for my skin would hungrily soak up the sun’s rays, giving my freckles a strange, orange glow. I was embarrassed to find that the resulting photos captured this phenomenon, which made me appear radioactive.

Being vocal about the issue, the displeasure I expressed towards my polka-dotted appearance did not go unnoticed.

One day, my mother pulled me into the master bedroom of our house, which opened up into a wide-mirrored bathroom that housed a large, rectangular counter with a pair of sinks hollowed out into the surface. It was from the wooden cabinets beneath the sinks that my mom withdrew her makeup kit. As she sat me on the cold counter top between two faucets, she offered to hide the little imperfections that caused me so much frustration. My heart leaped with excitement, and I immediately accepted. I swung my legs gently against the wooden cabinets, rejuvenated by newfound hope. She removed a small case of pale, white foundation from the kit she had placed on the counter next to me. I carefully watched as she retrieved a small, circular pad from within the case. Dabbing the spongy disc into the powdery white substance, she gently smudged the makeup across my face. The grainy concealer immediately felt strange against my skin. As my mother worked her magic, a slight panic boiled up in my chest. A feeling of something foreign began to overwhelm me. Determined to match the vision I had of myself, I gritted my teeth and allowed my mother to proceed 40

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without interruption. Each smudge of foundation added to the density of the uncomfortable mask choking my flesh. With several more strokes she applied a thick layer of concealer across my face. I clutched the counter top tightly as I fought through the discomfort. Layer after layer of makeup was applied, burying the undesirable specks alive. Suddenly, the layering ceased. Slowly, my eyes followed the makeup saturated pad as it crossed over from one side of my face to the other. As the disc approached the fresh, make-up free skin, the panic that had been swelling within me finally ruptured. Unexpectedly, I pushed my mother’s hand aside and leapt off of the counter.

I quickly turned to face the mirror and inspected my transformation. The peculiar little girl on the other side of the glass that I had become accustomed to greeting did not welcome me this time. A chimera stood in her place. The bizarre creature was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. The half that I recognized resembled that of the little girl; flawed and freckled, but warm and welcoming. The unsettling shocking half, the stranger, appeared cold and factitious. The concealer that suffocated my true self looked as strange as it felt. As I stared at the two distinct halves of my face, I realized that what I thought I had desired was not what I had been seeking.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong? I’m not finished yet,” my mother said, staring with confusion.

“No, I think we’re done,” I replied.

The faucet ran at full speed as I rapidly splashed cold, revitalizing water across my face.

Powder-saturated droplets ran down my cheeks as my mom proceeded to badger me.

“If you needed a break we could have taken one. Was I applying the foundation too hard? I could have been softer if you had asked.”

“I’m fine, Mom. Really.”

I brushed a dry towel across my skin as I reassured her multiple times that everything was okay. Gently, I brought the cloth away from my eyes and stared into the mirror once more. The familiar girl I thought I would never miss smiled at me encouragingly.

I was relieved to find that the stars had returned to the night, to know that their light had never been truly diminished. Meeting the bizarre stranger woke me up from the long, drawn out illusion I had forced myself to live in. In the moment that I had been confronted by the jarring reflection, I decided that I would rather wake Creative Non-Fiction (Essay)

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up every day greeting the familiar, freckled little girl than be confronted by an artificial stranger. The gorgeous women I had admired shifted into the realm of fantasy as I realized that they were carefully crafted characters, just as fake and cartoonish as the freckle-free drawings I had tried to pass off as representations of myself. If being beautiful meant giving up a part of me, then beauty is not something I desire. It was not until I had lost my little brown flecks that I came to cherish them, for they are a distinct characteristic of who I am and always will be.

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Vortex 2016 Short Story

“Short stories are tiny windows into other worlds and other minds and other dreams. They are journeys you can make to the far side of the universe and still be back in time for dinner.� ~ Neil Gaiman

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The Last Desert Roadhouse j Asmarrah Lila Eslynne Bedford - First Place i

Events I

I.

The woman (myself ) is perched uneasily atop the very last bar stool as far away

from the door and foot traffic as possible. She gently sways to the sounds of the steel guitar and tambourine that serenade her over the murmured repartee from the lawyers, Angelinos and just plain decent folks gathered at the Pioneertown Palace tonight. Pappy and Harriet’s. It’s the prototypical desert oasis 125 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the middle of the Mojave. The place where pilgrimages end in the partaking of stiff drinks served in Mason jars, greasy good eats and live music. The woman runs a lazy finger up the side of the Glencairn glass, admiring the contrast between the gold liquid and the bar top stained a yellowish-brown by years of pre-nineties nicotine and the spilled drinks and spilled worries of the woeful, wretched and wandering, like her.

She’s one of the only women at the bar, and while her State Forty-Eight racerback and jeans are nothing to write home about, she’s always had a pretty face and looks nice with her hair recently straightened. Her mother hated it when she wore her hair natural, but now it wouldn’t really matter, would it? She knocks back the scotch and orders another. Glenlivet Twenty-One, neat of course, which causes a few of the older men in her vicinity to raise eyebrows and strike up conversation with her but mostly at her and amongst themselves. She politely declines by simply responding with a smile, or wince; she’s not sure. Feeling exposed, her eyes dart to her phone and she picks it up out of reflex, or maybe duty, or a little of both, but sets it down again as fresh tears begin to well.

She carefully directs her gaze over or away from those of the men she’s trying to ignore and secretly hopes they’re unaware of the fresh glaze of red in her eyes.

Her drink arrives (salvation!), and she switches to busying herself with surveying the scene as any good anthropologist would. Vintage license plates from California to 44

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Maine in dingy yellows and rusted blacks form a metal patchwork quilt on the wood and adobe walls. One-hundred year-old oil cans and adverts from the same era, steer skulls, jukeboxes, an old, upright baby-blue piano and a long-broken clock that still manages to tell the correct time twice a day transport the patrons to a time that refused to be forgotten. A time that forged a permanent place in the nostalgic hearts of those who’ve sought its stories to keep safe within the bulwarks of the last desert roadhouse.

Characters II

I.

The woman. Born and raised in So-Cal, world-traveler, historian, anthropolo-

gist, and youngest and only female child in a family of Jamaican immigrants. She loves beautiful machines, wood, leather and knows how to pair a fine cigar with a great glass of single malt whiskey when there’s cause for celebration. The woman is convinced she was a playboy or a dandy in a past life. She’s slightly taller than average, five feet eight inches, but according to her older brother Christopher, she’s always had a problem with overachievement. She’s even taller looking still when she wears her hair in an Afro, which she doesn’t do often because of her helmet and the eons lost trying to detangle her hair afterward. Dogs who normally love her flee in terror when she wears her hair like that. Once, an older couple from Ojai asked her how she got it to go like that. She told them it grows out of her head that way, and that it (my Afro) draws its power directly from the sun and pulls it right into her crown. You watch! It’s going to be a little darker out tomorrow. It’s not going to be as bright out! She thinks she’s funny. Maybe she is. Maybe not.

II.

The man. She doesn’t notice that someone’s invaded her space until he’s pulling

out the stool right next to hers and smiling. Shit. He smells like leather and wood and his eyes remind the woman of the black bottom pool at home. He’s taller than she is and his jeans are covered in dust, but that doesn’t bother her because hers are too. Most real bikers are usually covered in something. He smiles and looks her up and down, taking her for a biker as well. Probably since there’s a leather jacket on the peg in front of her in the middle of July. Without wasting time, he drawls out a story concerning his first summer ride to Palm Springs when he parked his bike on the asphalt without

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putting a plate under the kickstand. She laughs and guesses he’s a Texan. He smiles his response, impressed, as his eyes briefly travel from her face down to her chest then up again.

III.

The brothers. Rich and Christopher. Like Laurel and Hardy if both of them

were extremely tall and one of them was a total dickhead. Six-foot eight and six-foot five, respectively; middle and eldest child, respectively. Everyone has a favorite sibling, that would definitely be Rich. Christopher has a different father from a previous marriage, which he’s always seemed to hold against Rich and the woman. After her MA graduation ceremony, Rich hugged and praised her and Christopher punched her in the arm. I hope you don’t think this means you’re better than us! She still had a big purple bruise there when she went to pick up her actual degree four days later.

IV.

Mom. A Jamaican jet-setter and entrepreneur born to a farmer and a house-

wife whose mother (Mom’s mom) lost her battle with breast cancer when Mom was just sixteen. The queen in the family of giants at five-foot, nine-inches tall. Well, she used to be that tall. This is who taught the woman how to make Ackee and Salt Fish with dumplings, yellow yam, green bananas and Irish potatoes, and the one who didn’t get mad when the woman, who was in the third grade at the time, forgot the coconut milk in the Rice and Peas. This is the woman who dropped out of business school at nineteen and successfully started her own clothing line. She’s the one who always told the woman that the world was a very big place, told her to get an education despite her brothers’ warnings about her duties as the youngest girl. She’s the one who took back her “husband” the woman’s “father” after he left for nine years. At this point, the woman still hasn’t forgiven her for that.

Background Characters III

II.

Butters. The woman’s motorcycle. A 1995 Kawasaki Vulcan 800 with the

sweetest temperament a bike could ever have. Always kept clean, always, and classically good looking with her buttercream sparkle tank and custom crocodile-skin seat and saddlebags. The woman got her as an early graduation gift to herself a few years ago so she could weave through traffic and home to South Hills from school in LA quickly if

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she needed to. Her Cobra pipes signal the woman’s presence from about a mile away, and she gets a note tucked between the tack asking if she’s for sale about once a month.

Butters is freedom for the woman, the ability to move around unattached. So no. The answer will always be no.

Sub-Characters IV

I.

The one who fathered the woman.

Locale V

I.

Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, but everyone knows to just say, “Pap-

py ‘n’ Harriet’s.” An unforgettable honkytonk in forgotten Pioneertown. Not too far from Route 66, that iconic highway of song, film and the wet dreams of weekend warriors from Coronado to Calabasas. The woman always stops here on her way home for a drink to re-group, then it’s back on the 62 to the 10 and home. This time is different though. This time she has somewhere she’s been told she’s supposed to be, but the lull of the Texan’s voice and the warmth of the scotch down her throat suggest otherwise.

Events VI (about two or three years ago)

I.

The woman is visiting Mom at home after a few weeks in Europe. Mom asked

the woman how New York was and when she’d be getting her doctorate degree. The woman visited New York once more than a decade ago and had not yet even applied to PhD programs.

Events VII (about three years ago)

I.

The woman is visiting Mom. Her visits are less frequent now because they’re

unpleasant. Mom doesn’t appear to be in the house, and there’s an offensive smell coming from the kitchen. The woman finds the blackened, carbonized remains of an egg on the stove in a pot whose water has long evaporated to a thick layer of calcium. The fire is still on underneath it. Mom is outside in the back garden.

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Events VIII (about two years ago)

I.

Mom is pissed. She claims someone has moved her bed with a “power ma-

chine” and that the one who fathered the woman has built an elevator in Mom’s closet and uses it at night to steal money from a stack of one hundred dollar bills that she keeps in there.

II.

Christopher calls a family meeting at his house in Chino Hills. He tells the

woman that she’s a piece of shit for being such a selfish little fucking bitch and going to school instead of moving in with Mom and the one who fathered her in order to take care of them. The woman is crying because she’s usually assertive but can’t seem to find the words nor strength to defend herself. She thinks for a moment, maybe Chris is right. The growl of a motorcycle passing is the only thing that gets him to stop talking for a few seconds.

Events IX (about twenty years ago)

I.

Mom is sewing, and the woman, who is now just in junior high school, is

making her a cup of tea. The one who fathered the woman is shouting about something. He seems to do that a lot since he’s been back for a month after being absent for nine years. The tea is finished, and the woman brings it to Mom, but apparently doesn’t hear something the one who fathered her is saying (she doesn’t really listen to him).

She knows she must have missed something because now she’s laying on the hardwood floor in a puddle of tea next to a broken cup and a tremendous throbbing pain in her left cheek. He’s right handed, the one who fathered her. A few years later, the woman would retaliate with a high heel, and the one who fathered her will never hit her again.

Events X

I.

The man and woman have been talking for a while and walk out into the cool

night air, scotch in hand. Summer nights in the desert hold a magic that the woman thinks has been around since the creation of the Universe. The two walk in silence towards the silhouette of Joshua Trees waiting on the horizon to impart some wisdom upon her, or just give her something beautiful to think about. Something else to think about. She isn’t greedy. They walk to where Butters and a softail in sand camo are 48

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parked and both point, then laugh. Out of all the Harleys and Triumphs, Kawas and Beemers, they managed to find one another. They hold each other’s gaze a little too long, and the man clears his throat as the woman takes sudden interest in the tracks in the sand, reflecting for a bit on all the places she’s left hers. The man asks if she’d like to share his My Father No.2 with her in celebration, but before she can answer, she gets a phone call from Christopher. Where the fuck are you? Are you coming? They said she’s not going to make it through the night. You’re the one that should have been here!

You’re supposed to be here!

Rich and Christopher are wrong, she realizes, because Mom is already gone. She has been for a long time now. Her brain is at least. The brain that knows you need to wait until the black eyed peas have completely sunk before you add the coconut milk, fried onion and tomato and then stir in the rice. The brain that would notice the woman managed to get it together, straighten her hair, and ride 350 miles from Phoenix to South Hills in a matter of hours just to be at her side. The brain that says I’m proud of you is gone. She looks at the man with the impossible blue eyes, standing next to Butters, waiting with a fine cigar and a great glass of scotch.

“No.” I say. “I’m at the last desert roadhouse, and I’m not coming home.”

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I Belonged j Vidushi Chaudhry - Second Place i I was never good with words, but I always had grit. I have always wished for courage. I still do.

I could have run away. Rabinder waited in his Dad’s Fiat in the lane behind the wedding hall in Delhi. He had flown in from Bombay, where we grew up. He even had a priest with him. I had promised him I would come. We would leave movie style. He had made all the arrangements. He had booked a hall for a week at the temple. Had given someone in the Marriage Registrar’s office a fat fist of notes. All I had to do was sneak out the back door. It would have taken 30 brave seconds.

But I married Vijay instead.

Vijay, who couldn’t afford a scooter when we got married, so his mother asked for it in my dowry.

Vijay, who was thrilled to move into the posh South Delhi apartment that my work at the Taj hotel allocated me.

Vijay who mortgaged the house I bought, so that he could pay off business debts.

Vijay, who had promised I wouldn’t have to work when the baby was born. But when he met Vidushi in the hospital for the first time, he asked when I was starting work again.

While he was touching the downy hair on her head. The doctors couldn’t explain why the milk dried up in my breasts. I knew. Six long days I tried to feed my baby. But the milk wouldn’t come out. On the 7th day her crying melted the hard rock that seemed to be constricting my chest.

Rabinder went back to Bombay. He never called again. We never even held hands.

On October 28th, on a cool day in 1979, the garish wedding hall my in-laws had chosen was lit with flowers, lights and smiling faces. Vijay rode on a white horse alongside 50

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the baraat, a dancing group of his family and friends. Inside, I was arguing with the beautician.

“Shahnaz, I am not going out unless you change this lipstick.” I stared at my reflection in the ornate oval mirror she had handed me.

“But orange is what all the brides are wearing this year! I just did this wedding in Jaipur,” she whispered in that hushed tone that beauticians use. Then she showed me a picture of a beautiful, very famous bride. She wore lipstick that matched her rust colored salwar kameez.

“I don’t care what Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth or Zeenat Aman are wearing.

I will not wear orange with this.. this..” I sputtered pointing to the deep fuchsia saree, speckled with gold that my future in-laws had asked me to wear.

“C’mon Reitha. Don’t fuss. You look…” Here she searched for a word to describe my face as she reached for the vat of concealer she had used to cover my pimples that broke out this morning.

You’ve probably heard of Shahnaz Hussain or used her shampoo, or love her henna products. But that day it was all I could do not to yank her crowd of orange hair or slap the smugness of those raccoon like eyes.

She slammed out of the room, a whirl of flying hair and jangling bangles, and I erased her work with a wet rag. Then I started again. I used the imported make up my friend had given me in the blue makeup case that looked like a mini suitcase.

The orange reminded me sharply of the way we smeared our mouths with bright mango juice when we were little. In Union Park, only 3 houses had mango trees and Vicky’s house had two. The sweetest fruits. Our gang rushed back from school and gobbled lunch. We scuttled out and clambered up the roof of his house, loading pebbles in our catapults. There were always competitions! The one who broke the ripest mangoes won!

Then he or she chose to share them. But after the windshield broke, and a friend broke his leg after falling off the roof and Vicky’s family complained about having no mangos left--Vicky’s mother hit upon a solution. The gardener would pick all the ripe mangoes Short Story

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then put them into steel buckets filled with water. We removed our T shirts and sat in our undershirts in a line on the plastic-lined floor. We were each given a plump yellow mango, and a spit bowl to throw the peels in.

Someone knocked at the door to tell me the baraat had arrived. By the time they reached the gate, I had finished the makeup and worn my nose ring. The men wore traditional pink turbans. They hugged and smiled for the cameras. They exchanged the golden envelopes we had filled with crisp notes Daddy had got from the bank. I looked something like a bride. Not if you looked at the eyes. But my eyes were supposed to be downcast through the ceremony anyway.

Vijay and I have lived in Delhi for 36 years. I still wish I could return to the Bombay of my childhood. Everyone belonged. I belonged to my family where ten kids, six adults, and four servants plus one or two assorted visitors easily cohabited 15,000 square feet. I belonged to Bombay. To eating chuski lollies dripping in syrup on Juhu beach. To long drives where Rabinder drove a car piled with six or seven of us, as we drove to the beach or hill station.

The wedding location had been a thorny issue. Just like everything preceding it. Daddy and Boji, my grandfather, wanted to invite all their friends in the film industry, so Bombay was their choice. But the Chaudhrys insisted that they were the boys’ family and thus we were doing it in Delhi. Only one among my friends could take three days off and afford the train ticket to come.

Yesterday I had tried talking to Boji for the sixth time.

“I don’t want to marry him, Boji. Please.”

“Reitha beta, every girl has jitters. Come smile na, look, even your mehendi is deepening.”

He pointed to the intricate pattern of flowers and vines that Bina had rubbed lemon and sugar on for hours. “That’s a sign that the marriage will be long and happy.”

“Boji, he’s not like me. I don’t know what to say to him.” I twisted the red and white wedding bangles around my wrists.

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“He’s a good boy. Has a big house. He’ll keep you happy, “ Boji smiled.

“But .. but.. Boji…”

I belonged to a family of romantics and film-makers. The days after Daddy or Boji’s movies released were suspenseful. If there was food and parties, it was a hit. When the movie flopped, food disappeared from the table and everyone wore long faces.

One February afternoon in 1979, my older sister said she was going to Ahmedabad with her husband, Sati Jijaji. I couldn’t believe my luck when they asked me to accompany them. Nobody ever took me anywhere. The Gujarat Express journey was fun. Like my life was. We played cards with our neighbors as a mellow voice sang Mukhesh songs punctuated by applause and whistles, at the end of the compartment. In the tradition of trains, steel boxes full of food were exchanged and we gorged on paranthas with chili pickles, steaming dhoklas with sputtered mustard seeds and crisp fried bread. Outside the window, green fields and grazing cows flew by. Inside, toddlers ran about in search of the best food and an adult who’d want to entertain them. They day was cloudless and everyone was a friend. Until someone pulled the red emergency chain and the train ground to a sluggish stop.

I think about that stop often. I wish I had paid more attention. But we were engrossed in playing Bridge. All I remember is that a handsome fellow with a sharp moustache got off. He waved in apology to his companions in the train. Then the image of him strutting away. His back to us, his flared pants and tight shirt made him look like a popular Hindi movie hero.

When we reached Ahmedabad, a friend of theirs had arranged for us to stay in the Navy guest house. There we met the debonair Mr Mukherjee. He spoke in flawless English and looked dashing in his crisp white uniform and badges. He ate his rice and dal with his hands with such obvious relish that it was impossible not to trust him. In the three days we spent there, my sister and I went sight-seeing about town. He and Sati Jijaji stayed home. They had multiple conversations. But whenever I entered the room, their whispers would be replaced by talk about India’s dismal World Cup performance. I was

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brought up to respect my elders. To listen, not question. Why didn’t I ask them what they were talking about?

Mr. Mukherjee liked me for his brother-in law, Vijay. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I should’ve guessed. At 27, I was already old for marriage. But I was gullible. Stupid. Blind to the obvious. 36 years have passed and I am still blind. Last year, two famous movie stars visited the Taj every Thursday evening. My staff prepared their room. I thought they were friends. Until the news broke in the papers. Everybody else had known for months.

When we returned to Bombay, I came back from work one day to find a Family meeting in the large living room. I couldn’t see any of my siblings, but my grandparents, parents, uncle and aunt, sat around the wooden table. Their expressions were serious in the light of the chandelier. I was dismissed to my friend’s house. But something made me pause.

The last time there had been such a meeting, we had eaten green chillies and onions with our rotis for a week. Boji’s movie hadn’t even made it through the first weekend. I wanted to know. So I snuck out of the door and then came back and hid in the bushes below the window to hear what was so important. “ … he’s a good boy, “ Jijaji was saying.

“Even her younger friends are married and last week she bought gold bangles. She’s ready,” Mummy’s softer voice, muffled by the dupatta she wore on her head, when in the company of elders.

“But to send her to Delhi? We won’t ever see her.” Boji’s voice was rusty.

“She’s dark, taller than most boys--it’s not like we have many options,” Jijaji said cutting off his protest.

“But shouldn’t we ask her what she thinks?” My Boji.

I dream about Boji sometimes. It’s always the same dream. We sit by a river, and he hands me sticks as we create a pile. I must make a pile as large as a house. The dreams started when I got married. A few months later, he passed away. But I always wake up before we are done, sometimes with moisture on my cheeks.

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I belonged to that gang of 21 kids who grew up together. We plucked mangos together.

We played together. From when we were toddlers to college. Not one of us married within the group. What a waste that we were proud of that! Now there are four broken marriages, two stupid affairs, a case of domestic abuse and many broken hearts among us.

One evening, a few of us were playing “Bandar” or “Monkeys”. That cheater Vicky invented the game. We shimmied up trees and the Den’s job was to guard a tin can in the middle of the street. Six of us were monkeys. We had to climb down from our trees to steal the can, without getting caught. Mala was the den and I was in charge of baiting her, while the others stole the can. I was the fastest amongst the girls and as I teased Mala, she finally moved away from the can, and started chasing. I ran smack into a soft object, falling down, as the object emitted an ‘oof ’. That was how we met. Rabinder was tall. He carried weight around his middle. It’s not chance that we collided. That’s how we always were. Pver the years we disagreed about everything. It was petty things-he wasn’t a sport.

Ever. We argued about whose turn it was to be den. Then, if girls could ride bikes as fast as boys. Then whether Arts or Science was better. Love marriage or arranged.

We argued everyday outside his house. Because his mom had the softest heart and the best cook in Union Park. We drank so much lemonade and cold water that their family didn’t have any left n the fridge. While we argued, Mala sang. Sometimes we all joined her. Every time I hear a song from the 70’s, I can see the gang. Sitting on the ‘Adda’, our assembly spot where two big grey rocks that lay at the entrance of their house. Rabinder and the boys standing with arms slung around each other. The girls scattered and joining in. And Mala in the middle, her dark hair swinging. That low voice, the smell of the bougainvillea in his house. The floating paper boats in puddles of water.

I found three huge sacks of plastic on the dining table. “Nathu’s Sweets” was stamped in bright orange on them. Boji came in and took out some boxes of mithai from one.

He handed the red box with its golden ribbon to the maid. “Tell them it’s for Reitha’s wedding.” Then spotting me, he patted my shoulder and then my head. “You are happy, na, beta?”

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Mr. Traffic j Benjamin Bisgard - Third Place i The e-mail that had brought Fred Bloomhust here was very specific in its instructions. Shea Boulevard and the 101 Freeway. Southwest Corner. Concrete island.

3 p.m. It wasn’t so unusual to have a client wish to begin right when the HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lane restriction came into play, but Fred was accustomed to meeting his customers at their homes or businesses. The public meeting place was partly why he overcame his reservations about this particular yet ambiguous service inquiry.

He learned long ago to steer clear of solicitations with vague requests for extra assistance. This decision was finalized after he had encountered that middle aged executive who had unzipped his pants while driving 65 mph in the carpool lane. The businessman lamented that the combination of adrenaline brought on by speed and the fear of crashing was the only catalyst that got his hormones pumping anymore. Although Fred did pity the man’s predicament, he didn’t oblige the businessman’s wishes.

Fred had helped stressed out moms grocery shop, moved furniture for older clients, and was even a licensed notary. Although willing to go the extra mile, road head is where he drew the line, regardless of his client’s gender.

Fred considered himself a professional passenger, not some destitute hitchhiker. Anywhere people wanted to go within the concentric Phoenix Metro Freeway System, he was their man. His domain stretched from The Loop 202 to the south and east, the Loop 101 from the north to the west, and Interstate 10 cutting right through the middle. He had spent the last couple years legitimizing his service to his discerning clientele. He had carved out his own niche and was content with the modest, mandatory donations of customers for his time and presence. He had pretty low operating costs with his bus pass and pre-paid phone being the only essentials.

It is a distinct person that pays a stranger to ride with her. Often, it’s a suburban parent gripping the wheel tightly, slaloming through cars as she rips through traffic to shave

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five minutes off her commute home. Fred was also the confidante of a few regulars who, isolated by their wealth or prestige, trusted no one else to communicate their hopes, fears, and desires to. Fred had also been a mobile make-up artist to business women onthe-go. There was even one man who paid Fred very well to roll blunts while he cruised around town while getting high regurgitating the supposed benefits of daily marijuana use. Fred would nod his head every other sentence and laugh whenever his client would, but he did not partake in the process.

The staccato beep of the little foreign car’s horn seized his attention as it pulled up alongside him. The elegant protruding curves of the car’s body hung over the low slung wheel wells, giving the impression of eyebrows raised in wonder. Shiny chrome wheels, like bright eyeballs, reflected the brilliance of the world. The car was the timeless off-white hue of ancient Greek ruins. Impenetrable limo tint veiled the inner workings of the coupe from unwanted gazers.

Fred bent down to the driver’s window. The faint whir of an electric motor inside the door popped the seal of the window from the narrow tolerances of its upright position.

To Fred’s surprise, it rolled down to reveal a plush, yet empty, white leather seat that would have looked more at home inside a private jet. His eyes flitted across the blinding arctic white interior to what should have been the passenger side of the vehicle. With two hands holding the bottom half of a white steering wheel as if supporting the weight of a stone column sat a slender youthful man wearing the brightest Hawaiian shirt Fred had ever seen.

“Sir Fred Bloomhurst, Professional Passenger?” the driver asked with a gentle

emphasis on the first syllable of each word, as his shimmering, starburst brown eyes appraised Fred. Noticing Fred’s apparent shock at seeing a right-hand drive vehicle for the first time, he added in a lighter tone, “The man they call Faithful Freddy?”

“Yes sir, that’s me,” Fred responded, entranced by the stranger’s odd address.

He unwittingly leaned in closer towards him.

A wailing chorus of sirens shattered the moment as cars began driving around them.

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“Pardon me and my hypocrisy right now. Please come in so that we may resume the flow,” the Hawaiian-shirt-man calmly suggested as a younger woman, hanging halfway out her window, flipped him the bird and sped past screaming unintelligible hate. Fred swiftly hopped into the car. The door latched softly as the man let off the brake.

Fred immediately grabbed the $100 bill that peeked out from the center console, where he always instructed clients to place their donation. It had been a long time since Fred hadn’t been paid after sitting shotgun with a client. Now, he was always compensated beforehand.

Fred surveyed the cars marching forth through the crisp white lines on the freshly paved black road below. They looked like a swarming colony of agitated metal ants, constantly morphing due to individual, undulating speeds.

“Here, take these,” the client said while blindly depositing a pen, notebook, and stopwatch into Fred’s lap. The driver had yet to glance away from the traffic ahead.

His eyes were fixated on the point where the armada of cars banked left with the sweeping curve of the raised roadway. They had finally rolled down the couple hundred yards of on-ramp at their leisurely 15 mph pace. Two lines of cars were stopped at the bottom of the hill by the lights that grant access to the freeway. Every three seconds the lights would alternate. A flash of green permitted a new car to pass, which would take off as if competing in a drag race.

Fred flipped through pages full of scribbled graphs and sloppy data tables in the notebook while the man glided through his green light. The car never came to a complete stop; he maintained their momentum in the line.

“Would you mind starting that timer, Fred?” the driver asked. Fred clicked the black plastic button to start the time. The man accelerated quickly until he matched the pace of traffic and merged from the exit lane into the first freeway lane. “Find the first blank page and write down the time.” Fred checked his cell phone, “It’s 3:02 p.m. We got a little off schedule picking you up, but that’s okay.” Fred found a white virgin page and made the notes.

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After completing his duty, Fred finally asked, “What are we doing?”

“We’re just playing a little game,” the Hawaiian-shirt-man responded.

“Which is what, exactly?”

“Progress. We never want to come to a complete stop. And if we can keep our speed above 15 mph, even better.”

“And I’m supposed to…” Fred mused aloud.

“Record our rate of travel so that we may know how effective we were today,” the strange man replied.

The driver had been cruising steadily, albeit slightly more slowly than the rest of the cars that were creeping by them. They were approaching the curve east. “As soon as we pass the Pima and 90th St. exit, I’m going to let off the gas as there will be a wall of stopped cars once we go through that curve up ahead.” The words rolled out precisely as he began this maneuver. At the crest of the hill, the whole eastern Valley of the Sun came into view. The vast expanse of desert land comprised the Salt River Indian Reservation and eventually yielded to the southeast Phoenix metropolitan area. Everything was framed by rocky mountain ranges that had vigilantly guarded the land for millennia. Fred ignored the landscape and stared at the road as it snaked back to the right a half mile down. There was nothing but red brake lights flashing. Cars were coming to a complete stop where the freeway began to run north and south again.

The Hawaiian-shirt-man was coasting, allowing a large gap to grow between the car directly in front of them. He lightly tapped the brakes for a few seconds until he reached his desired speed. Brake pads squealed in the left lane, as 3000 pound cars tried to stop themselves from travelling 65 mph. This chain reaction ran backwards like a bolt of red lightning. They began to pass braking cars that had previously sped past them in the last minute. Fred, facing out his window, watched the line of cars that stretched backwards. The man continued to stare forward, never taking his eyes off the point where the cars met the sky. The gap was closing, but with a couple of light brake taps, they had just enough space to reaccelerate with the vehicle ahead. All three lanes Short Story

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started to flow again after the second curve, but their car was the first one in any lane that hadn’t stopped. The conservation of momentum raised the corners of the man’s mouth into a content little smile.

“Have you ever considered what starts a traffic jam, Fred?” he replied.

After a moment of consideration, Fred said flatly, “Stupid people. If everyone just moved, then everything would be fine.”

“You’re right. If everyone could just get up to 65 and hit cruise control, the freeway would run perfectly. But that’s never gonna happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because there are only two things that every car on the freeway must do. Everyone gets on the freeway, everyone gets off the freeway. Everything in between that is for the individual driver to decide himself. But there are just too many vehicles during high car volume. All the changing of lanes that is required of a freeway can’t take place at 65 mph,” the man professed as they passed the Via de Ventura exit. “What’s the timer say?”

“2 minutes, 42 seconds,” Fred fired back.

“Mark that down, not too bad. Just shy of a…25 mph average. Which is what I’m maintaining right now, even though the car in front of us is probably doing 35,” the man guessed. Again, a black maw of asphalt expanded between the car in front of them, as the Hawaiian-shirt-man committed to his course. “Up here in a mile is Indian Bend.

The southbound on-ramp lane merges directly into our right lane. It’s always a mess. I never go in faster than 25, no matter how much space I’ve made in front.”

Fred watched him operate the vehicle. The man sat perfectly upright. He squeezed the brake pedal meticulously by flexing the middle of his foot instead of pressing down with his leg. His hands gripped the wheel hard, as if he was trying to choke it out, and his steering was tightly controlled. Fred could see the calm determination in his focused eyes and firm jaw. The man certainly seemed to believe himself at least.

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“What’s in this for you?” Fred asked curiously.

“I’m just ruling my kingdom,” the man answered plainly.

“How do you figure that?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I’ve done this for a while alone so I’m not used to thinking, driving, and talking,” the man said, eyes turned down before picking his head back up. “I asked you if you ever thought what caused traffic jams. I spent a lot of afternoons in the back seat of a car as a child stuck in traffic, and had that thought one day. I decided that there had to be someone at the start of traffic, some cause. What I really wanted was someone to blame. I pictured a car with nothing but open road in front of it, barely moving, with a pack of cars just waiting to get around it. That a person at the head of traffic might actually be a leader didn’t occur to me until a few years ago.”

“Can’t they just go around you though? It’s not like there aren’t other lanes.”

“Inevitably a few do, and I wish them the best of luck in their pursuit to lead. I’m not out here forcing people to follow me. Opportunists seize these openings that my measured rate of change creates. Nine times out of ten, however, I come upon them a quarter mile down the road at a complete stop. They rev their engines up and cut someone off only to have to slam on the brakes in 15 seconds. This massive wear is put on their vehicles to further themselves five yards in the overall scheme of things.”

They climbed the overpass of Indian Bend and the prognosticated scene of merger mayhem lay a few hundred yards before them. A dozen cars were staggered closely next to each other, waiting for some space to appear, so that the two lines of cars could mesh together.

The Hawaiian-shirt-man rhythmically pushed the brakes until they were wafting down the motorway at the sluggish speed of smell. “Some people just don’t get it. It’s not about how fast you go, it’s about never stopping,” he rattled off while the paralyzed cars in front of them slowly unkinked themselves. The coupe rolled up right as the cars formed a single file and began to move forward as one. “Timer?”

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“6:17,” said Fred.

“Well, it’s not 20 mph, but it’s closer to 20 than 15. It’s getting better there. I used to run 10 mph averages on that mile, but it’s still a problem area. People posturing, not letting those that must come onto the freeway merge. Squabbling over a one car difference ahead in line makes no sense on a miles long commute. I see it every day.”

Fred didn’t have to be told to write down the time. Scribbling it down, he returned to his interrogation, “I still don’t get how slowing down makes you a leader? Seems like you’re just trying to control people.”

“Well that’s why I’m trying to convince people. I’ve driven the same stretch of highway, at the same time, Monday through Friday, for the last year. I’ve been trying to collect data from my drives the past couple weeks to prove my traffic thesis, but it’s been too much. But you don’t need numbers to see that it works. Look behind us and you will see my flock prospering,” the man challenged.

Fred obliged him, unbuckling his seatbelt to peek out the back window. There was an uninterrupted line of cars that went back as far as Fred could see, synced up perfectly with the coupe’s movements. They were the head of a massive disjointed serpent, slithering around the outskirts of the city. Fred took the scene in for a moment before he turned around and strapped back in. Despite their odd phrasing, the man’s words matched his actions.

“What’s your name, man?” Fred asked.

“A direct question that requires a direct answer,” the man said with a sigh. “I am the man who wishes everyone gets home to their loved ones every night. That cooperation is necessary for survival in this age of cities. That when we are closely bunched together we must be mindful of our neighbors. That whatever we do in our traffic system, we do to ourselves, for we are the system. I am the Rush Hour Messiah, and I’m here for traffic salvation.” The words hung in the air for a moment, as Fred absorbed their full meaning. Then he laughed. The Messiah was confused by Fred’s bemusement.

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“That’s the worst name I’ve ever heard,” Fred managed to say between bursts of laughter. He kept cackling and The Messiah even permitted himself a grin while the coupe ate up the pavement underneath. The Messiah continued guiding his flock home while Fred transcribed the data of their passage.

The Messiah eventually acquired enough information for the day and instructed Fred to close the notebook. He asked Fred if he wanted to be taken back to where he had been picked up, but Fred politely declined. A professional passenger only goes as far as he is needed. He asked the driver to pull over as soon as possible. Fred raised himself from the immaculate leather bucket seat and out of the coupe.

Fred reached back into the car and shook hands with the Messiah. The man grasped Fred’s hand securely. “Any plans tomorrow, Fred?” he asked.

“I only have a client in the morning,” Fred replied.

“Same time, same place?” the Messiah inquired.

“Sounds good, man. I’ll see you then.” Fred responded. The Traffic Messiah relaxed the pressure of his foot off the brake, and the coupe, unanchored, began to roll down the black pavement, into the pink and blue streaked Arizona sunset.

Fred watched him pull away while he fingered the crisp Benjamin he had made for an hour’s work. He thought about how he would earn another one tomorrow and that money spent the same whether it came from a crazy person or not. He grinned, knowing that business was good.

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The Exit j Gabrielle Glessing - Honorable Mention i The heavy clouds that hung in the sky were a sure sign of the massive storm that was about to strike. I regarded them carefully, noting the utter irony of a cloud appearing menacing. I poured some milk into my coffee, creating clouds of my own.

The music playing from the ceiling swam sweetly throughout the café, reminding me of my grandparents. They had grown up during a time when jazz music was fairly popular and had collected a sizable amount of records in that genre which now sat stacked in a brown box beneath the stairs. I realized that I had better be heading out before the rain hit, but I couldn’t seem to get myself up from the chair in which I sat. Something about the way the saxophone playing mixed with the scent of dark roasted coffee made me want to stay; a perfect symphony of the intangibles. An atmosphere of mood and moxie exuded from the room. A certain sweetness built up inside of me that felt foreign and unusual, though I wanted it to stay and not be so- foreign. I wanted the feeling to make itself at home beneath my bones and spill through my bloodstream like quicksilver. The disappointments from the past year had chipped away at my happiness like ice and all that was left were its shavings, melting and nonexistent. If I went home now, I would be faced with schoolwork and the little letdowns I’d find on my face while brushing my teeth before the mirror. A fat tear of a raindrop splattered upon the concrete outside. Even from behind the glass window, I could hear the splatter of the drop, reaching its end. With my cheek cupped in my left hand, I mourned the death of the first of many raindrops to break out of heaven on a whim, just to meet their untimely ends. It’s no doubt that rain would continue to fall if there were nothing to stop it. Like blind suicide attempts, without the intention to die. The rain now came in buckets, falling on the shiny black roads and collecting in the gutters. The tear-streaked window I had been looking out of was now reflecting red, green, and then yellow of the ever-changing traffic lights. Every car that went sloshing by created an up-spray of puddle that would send the nearest clump of pedestrians scattering. This made me laugh to myself so nonsensically that coffee nearly came out my nose.

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Retiring my gaze down to my hands in my lap, I regained my composure and decided to plan out my next move. I’m going to go outside, and I’m going leave the city, I told myself. Just then, like being woken up from a dream, a voice sounded behind me, “Who would ever want to go out with that storm raging on outside?” A bolt of lightning rumbled from the roof in agreement. I, both surprised and caught off guard, looked up at the person who woke me. It was a boy. His dark brown hair covered his forehead and fell just upon his eyes; which were brown as well and big enough. He wore a white button down shirt that was rolled at the sleeves beneath a black apron. In his left hand he carried a tray, clad white mugs, pearly on the outside, but coffee stained on the inside. He worked here. I gathered the courage to speak up, “Me, apparently.”

Something played upon his lips; either a smirk or smile, but I couldn’t tell. “Is that right? I just got word it’s going to flood. It might be dangerous now…” His words began to melt into the background as they were replaced with words from someone else. My favorite record sounded from the walls. “I fall in love too terribly hard, for love to ever last.” Chet Baker’s voice was honey, and I felt myself beginning to dream again. Though again, that same outside force was trying to wake me up. Reality came into focus. A pair of eyes that looked as if they belonged to a deer were staring into mine, leaving me feeling quite exposed. “I’m sorry, but are you going to be okay?” I wanted to be mad for being bothered, but the anger excused itself.

“No, I mean yes, I’ll be okay, but no, you don’t have to apologize.”

Nodding, he looked down at his shoes before looking back up, “Just let me know if I can get you another coffee.”

How could I have been so rude to have dozed off while having a conversation with another human being? This is why I don’t have friends. “Thanks.” I smiled. “Chet Baker,” I pointed my finger up, “I love him.” The boy returned my smile, but not in an ungrateful way, he returned it with a smile of his own.

“You have good taste, I made this playlist actually.”

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conversation took, he placed the tray he was holding onto my table.

“Um, yeah I actually do. I’ve never taken it, but I have a map. I found it here while I was closing late one night. It was wedged between the bottom of a teacup and the saucer below it. Why do you want to leave the city?”

My heart leapt. “I’ve always wanted to leave the city.” I leaned my chin onto my right knuckle and looked up at him, “People don’t leave ever, do they?”

He took a breath and began, “They could, if they chose to, but they don’t. I think people get so comfortable in their own world, that they’re afraid to visit new ones.”

“Well I don’t want to be afraid.” I answered. “Can you show me the way?”

Silence spilled in the space between us.

He picked the tray back up into his hand, “I get off in 15, meet me outside by the street lamp. I’ll take you.”

Moonlight dripped off his face and fell into a murky puddle beneath his feet. My reflection pooled within it as I dropped my head down. The city was a machine and it had finally reached its end; smoke plumed from under its buildings and quickly disappeared into the black sky; surges of electricity sparked from its many neon signs before reaching their untimely ends, dimming like blown out candles upon a birthday cake.

I caught myself thinking about the way the rain depended on the earth, like it had the clouds in the sky, to give it form and function. I’m kind of dependent on others too.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“J.W. What’s yours?”

“It’s Yoon,” I responded, “Nice to meet you officially.”

J.W’s black apron was now replaced with an unbuttoned grey pea coat, though his same white collared shirt was underneath. His glossy black oxfords shone in the street light.

“The pleasure is all mine,” he replied, pulling something out of his coat pocket; it was 66

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the map. As J.W unfolded it, I got excited, feeling like I was a part of some top secret mission. This was so much better than just going back home to brush my teeth before bed. While the two of us were standing in the rain, the city provided shelter with its towering buildings, signs, and alley way awnings. However, everything was still coated in its translucent sheen; every machine needs oil. Spreading the map against the side of a brick wall, J.W pointed to the middle, “Here’s the heart of neo-Seoul, and it’s also where we happen to be. According to the map, the exit is located in the northwestern part of the city.”

“Is that the only exit?” I asked. “I’m sure there’s other ways, but this specific map only tells of one exit.” J.W’s eyes sliced through the dark like high beams. I shifted from my right foot to my left, to avoid being blinded.

“Well, we can take the subway. I think I know which stop to get off at after peeking at the map.” Stuffing the map back in his pockets, followed by his hands, J.W did that this with lips again, but this time I was sure it was a smirk, “I had something else in mind.”

I never flew before, but this felt like the closest thing to it. I also never thought

that tonight I’d end up on the back of a motorcycle, speeding through the streets of neo-Seoul, but this felt like the closest thing to it; maybe because it was. It was raining hard now, but in thin sheets instead of thick blankets. J.W and I were going so fast though, that it only felt like a fine mist. Still, this flood was going to follow us down whichever street we turned. Before we took off, I put the directions from the map into J.W’s phone; it would serve as a GPS, but I know he wasn’t using it. He was getting us to the exit by memory, which means he must’ve been studying that map for a long time prior to this moment. Had he taken this route before? And if so, why was he still here? So many thoughts were running through my mind. Was he even taking me to the exit at all? I fall in love too fast. I now realized we were heading farther from the heart of the city. The buildings that surrounded us began to shrink as we covered more pavement. During stop lights, I noticed there were no people walking about, and little to no cars. It could’ve been the flood warning, but it also could be the fact that we were Short Story

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on the outskirts of neo-Seoul. Flood warnings, however, are a dime a dozen here since the rain never really seems to go away, like a looming ghost that haunts. J.W began to slow down, pulling over to the side of the street. The motorcycle came to a complete stop, and I felt nervous; I wanted to find the exit out of the city. Watching him release his grip from the handles, I also released my grip from his chest and silently folded my hands in my lap, waiting to see what he had to say. J.W pulled off his black helmet, “I know this wasn’t part of the plan, but I saw this noodle house right here, and hoped you were as hungry as I am.” I sighed with relief. With all the spontaneity that this night held, I had ignored the grumble that had been taking place in my stomach this whole time.

“I’m starving, actually.”

“Perfect!” J.W clapped his gloved hands together, “the sign says its open 24 hours.” I strained my ears to hear him over the pouring rain.

We sat, sopping wet, across from one another in the tiny booth. Thankfully,

the hostess took our coats when we walked in, and hung them next to the heater to dry. J.W’s hair was pushed all the way back. It looked black now that it was wet, and his white skin gave off a dewy glow. The button down shirt he wore clung to his thin frame, and the sleeves remained rolled below his elbows, just as it had in the cafe where we met.

I broke the silence, “There’s so much I still don’t know about you.”

“I feel the same,” he mirrored.

I held up my palm, “You like jazz music,” I flicked down my pinky, “specifically Chet Baker,” my ring finger went down, “you ride a motorcycle, and fast at that,” my middle finger followed, “you’ve taken this route before,” my index finger, “you lied to me,” I tucked my thumb into my palm. The warm red light that hung above our table illuminated his face. “You made me sound so cool in the beginning, and then towards the end… ehh not so much.” The waitress popped by our booth, placing a bowl of steaming hot noodles before us each, but the staring match between us remained intact.

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“You’re right, I have followed the map before; multiple times.” I gasped out loud in response, feeling embarrassed by just how loud the gasp was. “But I promise, I’ve never actually taken the exit. I just kind of enjoy the journey there and the feeling that accompanies that journey, the city in my rearview mirror. It’s always about the journey; it’s there where are the action happens; the goal is just a moment in time, sometimes even less than that, a mere fantasy.”

I digested everything he said, mulling over the information in my brain.

He began again, “Why is it exactly, that you want to find the exit? Is it more about the journey, or the exit?” Any explanation I ever had disappeared like smoke at that moment. I had to come up with some sort of response; something to say back to those words that J.W so truthfully wove together.

“To be honest, I never thought about the journey to the exit, I didn’t plan for it. . . never could I ever planned getting there with you, and that’s only because I didn’t know you were going to come into my life and take me,” was all I could manage.

J.W nodded, “We have dreams and don’t exactly know how we’ll get there, but the best thing we can do is set our intention and put ourselves in the way for those dreams to reach us, and that’s what you did. I commend you!”

“You’re awfully thoughtful,” I responded, my cheeks felt hot; “I realize the truth in what you say, thank you.”

“Just one last thing I want you to know,” J.W began, “I never had the courage to actually leave, as you now know. I’ve come this way nearly a hundred times. I knew finding the map must’ve been destiny, but it never felt like it to me. I was just like everyone else in this city; afraid to see what was beyond here, but that was before I met you. The trust that you put in me to take you. . . and at cafe you were so confident about wanting to go. It sparked something in me.” Duke Ellington’s ‘Sophisticated Lady’ began to play.

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laughed a laugh that sounded nice put to the music that was playing. “I forgot they were sitting there.”

The waitress had warned us not to head out in the storm, but we did anyways.

I could tell J.W was nervous, but he proceeded with the plan anyways. The sky was a pinkish orange, and it was then that I realized I couldn’t find the moon. J.W was driving fast as he was before, but the water level in the street was high. I hoped we reached the exit soon, for I didn’t know how much farther the bike could go. The mass of neo-Seoul was far in the distance now, and we were surrounded mostly by industrial warehouses; the pavement before us was empty and lined with street lamps, some burning out as we passed. It was then that I spotted the exit. It was easy to recognize, because it was there where the rain had stopped. J.W pulled his bike to the side of the street and cut the engine. We took off our helmets and stepped off the bike, staring in bewilderment. This was the exit that so many people never even spent time thinking about, cast away at the edge of the city, out of sight and out of mind. I had finally arrived. The pink sky extended for miles and not a star was to be seen. I extended my palm to J.W, fingers spread apart. It was with his fingers that he filled those spaces.

“It doesn’t look like the journey ends here,” he said.

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Vortex 2016 Sustainability

“The great challenge of the twentyfirst century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.� ~ Edward O. Wilson

Sustainability

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The Sustainability Action Council Creative Writing Scholarship The Sustainability Action Council plans, develops and sponsors strategic initiatives and activities in pursuit of the triple-bottom-line of sustainability: environmental awareness, social responsibility, and sound financial stewardship.

Community, diversity and inclusiveness, ethics, human rights, and health and safety, constitute principle aspects of the social responsibility bottom line.

Each year the Sustainability Action Council offers scholarship opportunities for students who creatively illustrate these values.

This year, Delvan Gonzales is the recipient of the Sustainability Action Council’s Scholarship for his poem, “Life’s Circle”.

Life’s Circle Delvan Gonzales

My stomach battles the bear of hunger.

Eating newspaper to stuff the empty.

Shadows banging on the cardboard door.

A man sneers at my dirty skin.

My knobby joints poke through my pocked marked clothes.

Jerked muscles ridges of ribs almost a skeleton except for my breath.

Maggots – flies eating a carcass vultures, the garbage men of the desert.

My last desire feeding the hungered, my flesh – their food so something else can live.

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Vortex 2016 Art

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for. ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

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Art

“Come Along With Me”

Bonnie Lewis

Medium: Mixed Size: 30” x 30” Art

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“Historic Soweto and the Anti-Apartheid Movement�

Matthew Cohen 76

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Medium: Photography Size: 3600 x 2400 px Art

“Arizona Sunset”

Judith Feldman

Medium: Oil Size: 36” x 36” Art

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“The One Who Came Before”

David Ready

Medium: Conte and Graphite Size: 18” x 24” 78

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“Spirit World”

Angelika Zgainer

Medium: Acrylic Size: 30” x 40” Art

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“Kaleidoscope 3”

Marcia Losh

Medium: Digital Photography Size: 12” x 12” 80

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“Flowers”

Joyce Erbach

Medium: Oil Size: 12” x 16” Art

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“Reflections”

Sean O’Day

Medium: Nikon D7100 Size: 4” x 6” 82

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“After Surf in Costa Rica”

Junko Kinoshita

Medium: Oil Size: 18” x 24” Art

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“Waste”

Meagan Murphy

Medium: Digital and Lumens Size: 8” x 10” 84

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“Revelation”

Colleen Austin

Medium: Ball Point Pen Illustration Size: 11” x 14” Art

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“Close to a Phoenician’s Heart”

Caitlyn Mitchell

Medium: Computer graphics and Digital Photography 86

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“Kassi Stars”

Patricia Turpin

Medium: Acrylic, Acid-free paper Size: 36” x 48” Art

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Vortex 2016 Native Voices and Visions

“My generation is now the door to memory. That is why I am remembering.� ~ Joy Harjo

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“Honoring our Native Voices and Visions� was created to allow an opportunity for American Indian students to share their stories, culture, history and/or experiences. Each year, Ana Cuddington, Director of the American Indian Program at SCC, awards two scholarships in writing and/or art to winning students.

If you are a member of a federally recognized tribe and attend SCC, you can submit artwork and writing in the Vortex competition. For more information contact Ana Cuddington at ana.cuddington@scottsdalecc.edu or call the American Indian Program at 480/423-6531.

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Thief

j Delvan Gonzales i I listen to whispers across generations.

But hear the cries of the present, the ones you’re deaf to: “Avenge us!”

Our warriors days away on a hunt, when greed and vengeance galloped in wearing blue coats.

Shiny brass fired commands: “Annihilate! Obliterate!

Take the land from those animals!”

Native people trampled, our buckskins torn.

These invaders, seeing savages instead of human beings, bought land for blankets that wrapped us in smallpox.

So death marches us to new homes.

Reservations of disease and starvation, where now blowing sand scrubs the grave mounds, generations emasculated.

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And they shot buffalo from train windows.

Our food, their fun.

Murdered.

Rotting waste robbed of their furs.

Coup is our way, not bullets.

But through the lies of history, the dregs of time their hyena laughs scavenge our souls.

From ethnic cleansing, a profit.

This Native genocide still benefits the white man.

Your shameful denial endures.

You wear it like a crown.

Cursed.

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Native Queen ’81 j Raquel Spencer i

My sophomore year had come to a close just as second grade had for my sister. I was free spirited as ever and excited for the summer plans to come. My grandparents have been my guardians for the last sixteen years of my life, and for the first time they left me alone with my sister. That day when I heard the rapid ringing of the doorbell, I knew it was my mother because, just hours before, I was ignoring her drunk phone calls. I yanked open the old blue squeaky door, and she walked past me.

My mom always reminded me of a rose. Her beauty inspired a popularity that many envied, and men could not help being lured into her charms. My mother appeared flawless, but we all knew she had thorns. She had a fiery short temper and was definitely a hopeless romantic. She fell in love young and never stopped looking for “the one.” I believe everyone was attracted to Mom’s Native Queen looks. She had long dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. She had a light complected, round face, and her smile shone naturally, with dimples so deep everyone fell in love. To many, my mom was “Ray Ray” from the street. She made plenty of friends because of her charismatic personality.

She was brave, full of courage, and always had some jokes. But her adventurous side made her do crazy things as well. My mother had unconditional love for my sisters and me. I remember that every holiday, she came bringing us gifts on Christmas and every single Valentine’s Day, showing more love than ever. But the best gift she could ever give me was her being sober, when she would share wild stories and laughter with me.

She had tattoos of our family names which reminded her she still had a family. Her first tattoo was dedicated to me, but it was more her; it read “Native Queen” and the year of my birth with a little feather. My name along with my two little sisters’ was engraved into her skin beautifully. She had a microphone next to mine and knew how much I loved music, which she always encouraged when times were rough. I remember we had just moved, and I was awfully scared about my first day at a new high school. That 92

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morning, she awoke bright and early to start breakfast. After we ate, she walked me to the bus stop but not all the way so she wouldn’t embarrass me. My mother was “the cool mom”; she was always there to talk about boys, friends, and school and she always knew the right answers.

This is what I saw when she visited this morning, not what she had transformed herself into. Her thick dark brown hair that usually cascaded beautifully down her back was pulled into a messy bun, and she wore baggy jeans and a grey, long sleeved shirt.

She smiled as she came toward me and asked for a hug, but I could smell the alcohol, and I declined. She ended up squeezing me with one arm while the other hand held the black plastic from the liquor store. She always wanted me to stay her “baby,” and so reluctantly, I let her hold me longer. When she was finally done hugging me, she asked for a couple of George Washingtons and Abe Lincolns. I stood before her in distress because I had to be the one to explain to my own mother that her aunt had passed away.

She was beaten to death over money for beer and was so drunk, she passed out in a ditch and froze to death.

The sun was dropping in the west and beginning to fade. I watched my mother’s eyes fill with cold but happy memories. This would become an image I cannot shake. Her beautiful eyes looked weary and saddened. It took a moment, but she swallowed her tears and said with a crack in her voice, “She’s in a better place. She can rest now, and you know how hard she worked.” She could tell I was in a lot of pain from this loss.

But what she didn’t know was that I was suffering now for her as well. I knew her next words would be “I love you, but I have to go now.” She was a runner. She ran away from me, my family, from cops. Hell, she ran away from everything. But she ran toward beer which was her family, her everything. It hurt me more than usual that day.

I could not know that this would be our last conversation, our last time to look at each other, and our last time to hold each other. The days passed, and there was no word from my mother. Something changed, and I began to miss her like I never have before. I missed her late night calls, her crazy laughter, and me singing off tune songs she liked so she’d fall asleep.

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One hot afternoon when we were all driving home, laughing and conversing with my grandparents, and we suddenly got the call. An investigator told us my mother was in the hospital. In my shock, I felt horribly disappointed and alone. I was so discouraged that she never thought about her actions for our sake. I was so hurt and angry and afraid that I didn’t want anything to do with her.

My grandparents went to see for themselves what had happened, and when they returned, I had became frantic and worried. My grandma walked in and sat on the edge of our couch. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes, so I kneeled before her and grasped her hand, looking for an answer in her face. I waited for her to speak, and when she did, she said “It doesn’t look good, Raquel, and you should think about visiting her soon.”

I ran into my room with tears I tried hiding from my grandma. I then realized why my mom was a runner, too. I sat on my bed alone, trying to remember those pretty dark brown eyes. Instead my mind went dark, and I envisioned her on a cold bed alone.

Immediately my head rushed with blood. The blood of her blood.

We drove quickly to the hospital. The wind blew through the car windows, making my skin sticky and my hair bushy. I had my earphones in to block out the sobs of my grandma’s prayers to a god I had no relation to in years. When we arrived at the hospital, I realized I had been too consumed with my own feelings, and I had failed to protect my seven year old sister from this loss. Suddenly, a code blue alarmed the hallways; we did not know that it was for my mom needing life support. We rode the elevator to the ICU and the next chapter of our lives. We learned that she had been struck by a car and knocked five feet into the air. My mom lay there on the hot midnight pavement, and no one knew who she was.

As we walked to our mother’s room, I reached down and took my sister’s hand and held it so tight. I could feel my heart trying to escape the pain and terror. There she was, my beautiful queen, half shaved and half dead, alone on a cold bed. Her long dark brown hair was shaved away where her brain was beginning to spill. She lay broken. We stood beside her bed, and I held my sister in my arms like our mom would have. I felt my sister’s tears, and they were more tears than I’ve ever seen in my life. So for the first time in ages, I prayed, that afternoon, and for a whole week. I bartered promises for miracles.

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My mom was known to be tough as nails. She could handle her beer, her men, her business, her own damn self . The only thing she couldn’t handle was heartache. For years, she ached for love and drank to numb the loneliness. She became another Native American cliché. And as much as I had inherited her physical attributes, I always knew that I needed to become something more than that.

Finally, the doctors informed us there was no hope, and it was time to let the her go.

I felt like I never could. I rushed out of the ICU with tears flooding my vision. I ran into my uncle’s arms, and he kept hugging me, reassuring me.

I screamed, “It’s all my fault! She called a thousand times wanting rides, but I just didn’t care. I gave up on her.” I felt that she wasn’t supposed to die like this. Within the hour, the family formed a chain hand in hand around her bed. While the nurses lived in motion, we were all frozen. I held her warm hand until it went cold as she tried to gasp for more air. I sang that old Waylon song we loved, “ I’ve always been crazy and the trouble that it’s put me through,” and her favorite MJ hit, “Man in the Mirror.” It was like singing her to sleep one last time. I kissed her as many times as I could, and the scent of her skin was rose soft. Then her soul was ready to be set free. My uncle and cousin sat in the chapel and later said that they felt a gentle touch of comfort on their shoulders.

I knew my mother was exhausted. I knew how hard she worked, and I knew how her heart must have been so heavy every day. She was my mother, my guidance, my support, my best friend, my everything. Losing her, I realized that no one could hurt her anymore, not even herself. I wish she was here today to see me make my way in life. I want to accomplish each goal and challenge with strength for her sake, letting her go with the dreams that fill my heart with joy. And that’s all she ever wanted for her baby girl.

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Vortex 2016 Poetry “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.� ~ E.E. Cummings

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Slipping Through the Universes j Aiyana Irwin - First Place i

The wrong door is opened by accident, and through it we fall, tumbling past clouds twirling across oceans of rain that reflect the gray fire of the ghostly moon.

To laugh as air motions us forwards, towards islands encased within pages of liquid words that can only flow into a mind that is open.

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Evil in the Dirt

j Cody Achin - Second Place i

Dear Dylan, I remembered acts of evil Our pact as kids to kill your father someday, My father seeing your sinister stare in the demons hour when you used to spend the night, My shock when you viciously tossed that cat around the room to death, When you tried to drown me in my own swimming pool I remember all the evil in your soul I was never afraid of you I was older than you I often was the one to stop you from getting out of control Stopped your wailing fists upon our younger cousin Taking the BB gun away from shooting roaming dogs I never saw you as a threat I saw you as my other half acting out We were both intelligent We had conversations that no one could understand besides us I should have told you that if you weren’t here, I would be driven crazy, With no one to share insight On insidious life sometimes, I once thought, you would always be my evil half

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I needed your evil, to be around To keep me sane I should have told you Here, now Looking into a 6-foot rectangular hole in the dirt I see my other half, being buried Beautifully dressed, Sleeping soundlessly Bullet hole in the head Is nowhere to be found A simple white cross bearing your name The resting place where you reside now Shares from those, all of your belongings now Heavy quilted blanket, adorned With Native jewelry, Brightly colored flowers Cupped into his stiff hands For a safe journey into the after, Finally, your big canvas suitcase, Always from family to family, You never stood still, For every family couldn’t withstand Your evil ways This bag, was always The sign of your presence, My tears wished, For one thing To have you here Still with us, still With me

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Under the City

j Taylor Shelton - Third Place i

Like the friend I used to walk beside: Us two, by a lake, on clear nights.

There the splash-less lamplight would stretch, and lay our city out like skin on the surface.

The ever-motion of blood underneath would not stare darkly back, and small fish could eat together in seamless schools.

And if you and I go tonight, I’ll show you the bones, the words that are harder than fish teeth.

This time, maybe we’ll lose our footing as well, dive straight under the city, and be devoured by little scared creatures.

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The Hat

j Stormy Current - Honorable Mention i

As the wheels turn and time is revealed the standing of the shield begins to arise.

The sycamore tree will see the colors of the leaves turn to gray, the faces of the angels turn to stone.

The mirror will reflect the image that you have for yourself, again.

Is it beauty, is it fate that brings you as one with yourself ?

The beauty stands alone, but the old hat that you wear is still there!

And so are you as the hat you wear so well.

But today I took a ride as I always do and the hat blew off in the wind.

I saw it in the rear view mirror, and decided to let it go this time.

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Abandoned

j Delvan Gonzales - Honorable Mention i

Dumped off at Grandma’s, an L.A. puppy at the Phoenix pound.

Crying in the yard, I watched you walk away to another family of step brothers and sisters.

Starting a new school parent teacher conferences, another father duty, ditched by you.

I walk home, anxious, alone, running streetlight to streetlight, panting in the pools of white safety, running through the deserts of darkness.

Homeless men teaching me things a father should have.

A scruffy, shaky, bloodshot stepfather, but Mom buys him Colt 45.

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Years later, I’m standing at your door, but you turn off the lights.

You’re not home for me.

Rejected by the men I knew, I inherited that self-hate from you. Just like your dead leaf brown eyes.

A salted slug in a crowded room vanishing from Dad’s life.

Orphaned.

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103

Brothers in Arms

j Joshua Sandrock - Honorable Mention i

Only one cut ever left a scar.

Our time was measured in broken bottles and knives, piled on the inside of doorways in weak moments, our arms the field on which we battled ourselves, together.

His wounds were gouges from icepicks, crude and round, he never let heal: the damage of self loathing.

My arms were plagued in shallow cuts centimeters apart and across, clean and concise, just enough to contain my anger, my addiction.

The cut that left the scar was the last.

I cut so deep I saw tendon, blood waited to fill the wound just long enough for me to see I couldn’t control it.

The scar will remain, no matter how the skin heals.

My arm will still itch, desperate to feel flesh give beneath the edge of steel.

I still miss it.

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The Great Tomato Forest j Jacob Akers - Honorable Mention i

Heavy fog, seemingly weightless, yet an unstoppable force.

Carried by the wind, blankets a home in its shadowy cloak.

It sneaks past the house creeping eerily into the garden like a thief.

As it enters, it caresses the stalks and leaves of the tomato plants.

Lady bugs retreat like soldiers in their planes, earthworms descend, digging from danger.

Curiosity leaves the home and enters the garden with excitement and clumsy feet, brought about by the arriving of a new atmosphere.

Yet scared of lurking danger, also safe in the protection of a sanctuary.

The stalks and leaves reach up and out to the unseen sky, through the ghost ceiling made of fog that blocks only vision.

When heaven is still real, and these plants able to reach it.

Who was curiosity to limit itself from achieving the same stature?

Covetous of the power that comes with the prominence.

Holding the power to amaze those that are lesser.

It is a time when a wish is made and believed.

How fleeting are these times when inhibition crumbles, and in my mind, grow as tall as the tomato plants.

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105

Latchkey

j Asmarrah Lila Eslynne Bedford - Honorable Mention i

Saturday morning cartoons. Our parents by proxy.

They gave us life uncomplicated, perfected. Presented in simple drawings at five frames per second.

Food, clothing, warmth and care were basic necessities existing only in fantasy. My brother and I watched a kaleidoscope of color cartwheel across the screen.

However, white is absent from that spectrum. Like unexpired milk in the fridge clean white sheets on the bed hard-boiled eggs toilet paper the bread belonging to peanut butter and jelly sammies on a spotless plate.

The white of rice and clean socks, mashed potatoes and toothpaste. Like hot spaghetti noodles and a clean bathtub.

These whites are never home.

Neither are our parents.

Our legs grew gangly in front of the television.

Our strained ears waiting waiting for the jangle of keys.

Our hearts mimic the pounding at the door.

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We know the drill. Our mother’s Jamaican accent heavy with warning, “if anyone knock, you hide!” My brother is up running sliding to a stop.

The TV is turned off in one fluid motion too late. The happy colors of whole and happy families disappear into a single white dot. Red and blue lights twirl through tightly closed curtains as we’re led out into the rain.

The back of the police car is different from how it is in the cartoons. In the cartoons, you can escape.

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Vortex 2016 Playwriting

“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.� ~Tom Stoppard

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Sideshow

j Anazia Potee - First Place i FADE IN: EXT. DIRT ROAD - DAY The serene picture of a desert landscape, bathing in bright sunlight, is shattered by a speeding pink 58’ Cadillac, kicking up dust as it goes by. The Cadillac haphazardly takes a two-tire turn around a cactus-decorated corner.

INT. CAR - CONTINUOUS Two women sit in the car. In the passenger seat is JOSEPHINE “JOEY” PLACK. Joey, late teens, stares out of the car window blankly. Joey is a very pretty girl, and although only half of her face is shown, it’s solemn. She’s dressed conservatively, but is seething with teen angst and contemptuous intelligence.

Joey’s shy eyes continuously dart to the steering wheel.

JOEY Jesus, you’re going to kill us.

NATALIE PLACK, mid-forties, is a woman always putting on airs. Behind her thick cake of makeup hides the reminiscence of someone who once, quite possibly, used to be beautiful.

Natalie jerks the steering wheel for another Bill Hickman like turn.

NATALIE Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, Josephine.

Joey’s eyes dart to the discombobulated steering wheel.

NATALIE (CONT’D) Is that why you have that look on your face? Because of my driving?

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JOEY What?

NATALIE That look on your face. It’s positively depressing.

JOEY We are going to a funeral. You know, my father’s funeral?

NATALIE I’m perfectly aware of our destination, Josephine– JOEY Joey.

NATALIE Josephine, that doesn’t change the fact that your face is depressing me.

JOEY Am I supposed to be smiling?

NATALIE Not necessarily, but a grimace like that will give you wrinkles. And you’ve all ready got so much going against you.

Natalie hastily pulls into the dirt parking lot of the Coven of Praise Baptist Church, a ramshackle brown building, with a cactus out front.

EXT. CHURCH PARKING LOT - CONTINUOUS Natalie recklessly pulls into a spot. The makeshift parking lot is full of cars that are obviously trying to “keep up with the Joneses.”

INT. CAR - CONTINUOUS NATALIE For Christ’s sake, it looks like the whole town is here.

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JOEY He was a teacher. They’re probably students who want to pay their respects.

NATALIE Please! They’re here to see Edgar Allan Poe’s Rapunzel. Just keep your hair flat and put your hat on.

JOEY These are the things you’re worried about before your husband’s funeral?

NATALIE He was my husband, Josephine. When people die we put them in the ground and go on with our lives.

Natalie flings open the door and walks towards the dilapidated church with an ex-beauty queen swivel. Joey watches her with disdain.

Joey pulls down the vanity mirror. She pulls back a small tuft of hair. Behind the hair is a discolored and leathery piece of skin. Joey places the hair back dispiritedly.

Joey takes a pillbox hat, with attached birdcage veil from her lap. She puts it on with the determination of a soldier going into battle. Joey sighs and exits the car.

INT. JOEY’S BEDROOM - DAY This is Joey’s sanctuary. It’s cluttered with thick books, stacks of vinyl records, posters of musicians and piles of sheet music. She sits on a window seat reading The Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin.

The cackling of Natalie and her friend BERTHA BEAUREGARD seeps into the bedroom.

NATALIE (O.S.) No, she’s been in her bedroom for days. Doing nothing but reading, of all things.

BERTHA (O.S.) What a shame. Do you at least know what you’re going to do with his things?

Joey drops her book and begins to listen without a distraction.

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NATALIE (O.S.) Sell it, I suppose. There’s no use for it now.

Joey gets up and walks to her record player. She picks up an album and delicately places it on the player. She moves the needle onto the record.

SOFT JAZZ begins to play, but Bertha’s shrill voice can still be heard.

BERTHA (O.S.) Good, when my sister’s husband died she was a disaster. She spent weeks wearing nothing but his underwear. Not to mention the poor thing listened to nothing but George Gershwin, of all things.

INT. DINING ROOM - CONTINUOUS Natalie and Bertha Beauregard sit at a table covered with a dramatic tea set.

Bertha is in her early sixties. She’s a large woman, whose fake pearls are fighting to be seen under her vast amount of neck fat.

BERTHA What about Josephine? What are you going to do with her? You know, with her condition?

NATALIE To be honest, I don’t really know.

BERTHA You could sell her, too, if you wanted.

Natalie gives an awkward chuckle.

BERTHA (CONT’D) I’m serious. I know a Russian.

Natalie diverts her eyes and fills her mouth with a random pastry from the smorgasbord.

INT. JOEY’S BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS Joey turns up the volume on the record player and walks back to her window seat. Through the window past the barren landscape, a large red and white circus tent rises.

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INT. JOEY’S BEDROOM - DAY Fresh sunlight bleeds into Joey’s room and illuminates her sleeping face. After a moment the sunlight wakes Joey like a natural alarm clock.

The window now frames a full-fledged circus.

INT. LIVING ROOM - CONTINUOUS The room is brimming with high tech equipment and high-end furniture. It’s all the same, except for a baby grand piano in the corner. Joey enters the room and sits at the piano.

Joey looks at it for a moment with sentimentality. Her fingers glide across the piano, filling the house with a melodic tune. Joey becomes engulfed in the music.

NATALIE Finish up. The movers are here.

The last note echoes throughout the house.

JOEY What movers?

NATALIE The movers that are taking your father’s things.

JOEY You’re selling the piano, too?

NATALIE There’s no room for it.

JOEY It’s a Pleyel.

NATALIE I don’t know what that means.

JOEY It means it’s rare, expensive, and supposed to be mine.

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NATALIE Well, your father, the free radical that he was, did not have a will, which makes this mine.

A burly set of MOVERS walk into the living room.

MOVER #1 Is this the piano?

NATALIE Yes. MOVER #2 Is that a Pleyel?

JOEY Yes. Joey rises from the piano as the movers surround it.

MOVER #2 Never moved one of these before. Kind of excited.

The movers pick up the piano and carry it away. Joey follows.

EXT. PLACK HOUSE - CONTINUOUS Joey watches the movers haul the piano into the truck. Natalie joins her on the stoop.

NATALIE It’s for the best.

JOEY No, it’s not. I want that piano.

NATALIE Too bad, Josephine, I need the room.

Joey contemplates her next words, and she speaks them with hesitation and uneasiness.

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JOEY Well, then you can have my room, too, because I’m going to leave.

NATALIE Leave?

JOEY Yes. NATALIE You? JOEY Yes. NATALIE You’re just going to pack up your bags and runaway to nowhere?

JOEY I wouldn’t necessarily call it running away.

NATALIE Don’t be ridiculous, Josephine.

JOEY I’m not being ridiculous. I’m going to leave. I think I need to leave.

Joey walks back into the house.

NATALIE I know you’re not going to leave. (yelling into the house)

You got no place to go. You don’t know anybody! Half your face looks like Lon Chaney!

Natalie notices the workers have stopped moving and have begun intently watching her dramatic outburst.

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NATALIE (CONT’D) I’m not paying you to stare. I’m paying you to move.

The movers snap back to attention and scramble halfheartedly back to work.

INT. JOEY’S BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS Joey walks into the room with a vivacious tenacity, slamming the door behind her. The THUD causes a stack of books to fall.

A copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury falls at her feet. Joey looks at the title then out her window; her face fills with a spectacular realization.

INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT Joey creeps down the last step, a suitcase in each hand. She wears a bulky jacket and a tilted hat. Natalie walks into the only light in the room, which oozes in from the moon.

NATALIE Why are you wearing a coat? It’s July.

JOEY I thought I might need it later.

NATALIE Fine, just remember that jacket needs to be dry-cleaned.

Natalie walks past Joey to the staircase.

JOEY Okay, I’ll remember.

NATALIE Don’t get killed or anything, Josephine. I’m sick of planning funerals.

(A beat) Natalie disappears up the stares.

JOEY Bye. EXT. DIRT ROAD - NIGHT 116

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Joey walks down the same cactus lined dirt road as before. But it is now drenched in darkness and infested with an eerie silence.

Kicking up a gust of wind, a car passes by Joey. A look of panic sweeps across her face. She frantically puts a hand to her hair to make sure not an inch of skin is exposed.

But just like that, the car is gone, and she is back on the street alone.

JOEY (to herself )

I can do this. I can do this. Nothing to worry about, only a small chance I can be murdered and dismembered. Or eaten by a pack of coyotes. Though with my luck, I’ll probably be murdered, dismembered, and fed to coyotes.

In the distance a BRANCH CRACKS and its sound ECHOES through the stillness of the night. Joey looks around for a moment then begins to run.

EXT. CIRCUS GROUNDS - NIGHT Joey absentmindedly runs into the fairgrounds and into a handsome YOUNG MAN.

JOEY Sorry.

YOUNG MAN It’s fine. Are you okay?

JOEY Yeah, I think so. Sorry.

Joey picks up her suitcases and walks away. She takes in the magnificence that is Dr. Mundungus Daleman’s traveling circus.

The circus has decorated the vacant land with bright lights and multi-color tents. Giant posters showing the performers hang proudly. In the center of all this is the big top.

JOEY (CONT’D) Wow. The thick Russian accent of Boris, the knife thrower, roars over the audience’s chatter.

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BORIS (O.S.) Is no one brave enough to face my flying daggers?

Joey joins the circle of people clamoring to see Boris.

BORIS (CONT’D) No one? No one at all has the guts? First volunteer gets a free ticket to tonight’s big top show.

Joey looks at the fantastically illuminated big top. Her hand shoots up.

JOEY I volunteer. I’ll do it.

The crowd parts like the Red Sea. Joey hesitantly walks up to Boris and his display of daggers.

BORIS PETROV, early forties, is tall and bear shaped.

BORIS What’s your name, darling?

JOEY Josephine. But I prefer people to call me Joey.

BORIS Well, Joey, I promise I’ve done this before.

JOEY You’ve done what before exactly?

Boris gives Joey a coy smile.

The screen goes black.

BORIS (V.O.) (counting in Russian)

Odin, dva, tri.

The sound of a knife CUTTING THROUGH WIND and HITTING WOOD follows.

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A crowd cheers.

The scene comes back, just as Joey opens her eyes. A silver knife with the word Petrov engraved on the handle has landed next to her face.

BORIS Ladies and gentlemen, another round of applause for Miss Josephine.

The crowd obeys and claps. Joey slowly walks away from the knife- filled board behind her.

The crowd now unamused begins to scatter.

Boris walks to Joey and gives her a ticket from his vest pocket.

JOEY Thank you.

BORIS No, thank you, Mushka. It’s always more fun when someone volunteers.

JOEY Glad to hear it.

BORIS I hope I didn’t mess up your hair.

JOEY No, a tornado couldn’t mess up this hair.

Boris lets out a hearty chuckle.

BORIS I like you, Mushka. But you better get going to the big top. That show starts in five minutes.

JOEY Okay, thank you, Mr. Petrov.

BORIS Please, I’m in denial about my old age. Call me Boris.

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JOEY Thank you, Boris.

Joey picks up her suitcases and heads toward the big top.

INT. BIG TOP - NIGHT The inside of the big top is gargantuan. Dead center is a brightly lit stage. With the exception of a small opening a small opening that leads backstage, the rest of the big top is seating.

Joey walks into the big top. A wave of amazement passes over her face. A soft cough from DINKY PEMBERTON breaks her concentration.

DINKY, late twenties, stands 4’3” but has the presence of a man twice his size. His hands grasp tightly to a gold hole puncher.

DINKY Madame, your ticket please.

JOEY Of course, sir.

Joey passes the ticket to Dinky. He inspects it, and upon his approval, he punches a hole in it.

DINKY Pick any seat you like, Miss. But hurry. The show’s starting soon.

JOEY Okay, thank you.

Joey looks around at the seating. Almost every seat is full. But she notices one near the front and runs to it. Just as she sits, the lights dim.

A rumble of drums accompanies a barrage of moving spotlights. As soon as they begin, a single spotlight shines in the middle of the stage. The RINGMASTER appears.

The Ringmaster, late forties, is a lanky man. With a boisterous personality and an eerie disposition. His only redeeming quality is a bushy handlebar mustache that he constantly twirls between two skeletal fingers.

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RINGMASTER Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to Dr. Mundungus Daleman’s traveling circus. Before we begin, I urge you to prepare yourself. For you will be amazed, shocked, and even bewildered at the magnificence you are about to witness.

The lights dim again. When they rise “ANTAEOUS: THE STRONG” pulls Joey’s father’s Pleyel baby grand piano into view.

Antaeous, mid-twenties, is a handsome man with bulging biceps and towering height. His coal black hair glistens under the big top lights.

Antaeous places the piano in the middle of the stage. Joey’s eyes fill with the same sentimentality as before.

EDMUND O’REILLY and ESMERALDA BARKER enter the stage. As they pass, Antaeous and Esmerlda share a look. The audience goes wild for the beautiful couple.

Esmeralda Barker, mid twenties, is a beautiful and voluptuous blonde. A spitting image of a young Anita Ekberg. Esmeralda is perfectly aware of her assets and how to use them.

Edmund O’Reilly, mid twenties, is a classic kind of handsome. He is tall with a chiseled face. He exudes mystique and charisma.

Esmeralda stops at her Shure Unidyne microphone. The two glisten under the spotlight.

Esmeralda’s emerald eyes lull the audience.

Edmund cracks his fingers and a familiar tune sweeps through the big top. With this cue, two pieces of blue aerial fabric fall from the ceiling accompanied by two aerial dancers. The crowd gasps.

ESMERALDA (singing)

She wore blue velvet. Bluer than velvet was the night. Softer than satin was the light.

Joey’s face is agonizingly blank. The world seems to fade around her as she takes in the scene. After a moment of nothing, she blinks.

The song has ended, the lights have risen. The big top is bright and empty. But the piano still sits in the middle of the stage.

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Joey rises from her seat and walks toward the piano. She glides her fingers over the keys before playing.

Edmund enters the big top. His bow tie hanging sloppily undone from his broad shoulders.

Joey, engulfed in the music, doesn’t notice him take a seat in the audience. After a moment, Joey’s last note RINGS throughout the empty big top.

EDMUND Very impressive, Veronica Lake. You’re very good.

Joey gasps.

EDMUND (CONT’D) Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.

JOEY You startled me is all. (beat)

But shouldn’t I be apologizing to you? I don’t think I should be here.

EDMUND It’s fine. You play like that, I don’t mind. In fact, I think he likes you.

Edmund gives Joey a charming smile.

JOEY I’m sorry?

EDMUND The piano, I think he likes you. You two sync very well together.

JOEY Well, it was my father’s until my mom sold it.

Joey spits the last words with venom.

EDMUND Oh, well, you know each other; that’s cheating.

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JOEY It’s just a piano. It doesn’t know me.

Edmund walks closer as if he’s going to divulge a secret.

EDMUND Instruments are like pets. You bond with them, become one with them. Well, that’s what I believe anyway.

JOEY Interesting.

EDMUND That’s a nice way to say it. What do they call you, kid?

JOEY Josephine, is my name. But I despise it, so everyone calls me Joey.

Edmund holds out his hand. Joey looks at it with uncertainty.

EDMUND Hello, Joey. I’m Edmund, Edmund O’Reilly.

Joey gives Edmund her hand. The two shake.

JOEY Wow, that’s really Irish.

EDMUND Yea, it is. I guess that’s why some people choose to call me Ed. JOEY No, I like Edmund. Hello, Edmund.

EDMUND Hello, Joey. Joey, can I ask you a question?

JOEY Sure.

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Edmund sits next to Joey on the too small piano stool.

EDMUND Have you run away from home?

JOEY How did you come to that conclusion?

EDMUND The bag over there.

Edmund points to the two suitcases still in the audience.

EDMUND (CONT’D) Not to mention, it’s very late. But you don’t look like someone who has someplace to be.

JOEY With those deductions I must admit, I have ran away.

EDMUND Well, then you’ve come to the right place.

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The Good Mother A short play

j Carol Gibson - Second Place i Cast of Characters DIANNA: Late 30s to early 40s TOM: Her husband, a successful attorney MELODY: Dianna’s mother, deceased, late 50s to early 60s NOTE: While Dianna and Melody are mother and daughter, they do NOT resemble each other.

One may be very tall, the other short; or one dark and the other light. Reference in script may be appropriately adjusted.

Place A suburban 50s style house somewhere in the Midwest Time Now At Rise: MELODY sits in an attic room amidst her cluttered belongings–a rocking chair, boxes of documents and old photographs, some in albums, others in shoeboxes. TOM and DIANNA cannot see or hear her, and while she cannot actually touch anything, she uses her energy to move things and influence the two of them.

MELODY I know what you’re thinking. I know what this looks like. But I’m NOT a hoarder…

I’ll bet if I went into any of your homes, I could find a garage or attic or maybe even a whole room just as cluttered as this. We all have stuff we just can’t find the strength to get rid of. Or is it heart? Whichever. …Some people collect magazines or comic books, or just books. …I once knew a woman who rented a storage locker for books she’d

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already read, and never intended to read again! So before you judge too harshly, look in your own closet.

(points to a battered stuffed toy)

This was my daughter’s favorite toy when she was three. When I look at it, I see her toddling around the house with Scrappy in her hand. I miss that little girl. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love the woman she’s become, but it was just so much easier back then, and she was so sweet, so compliant. Now...

She is interrupted by the entrance of TOM and DIANNA who each carry a large cardboard box. One is labeled “KEEP” the other “TOSS.” They set the boxes down and look around the room in dismay.

TOM We’re going to need more boxes.

TOM exits and returns with two more large cardboard boxes labeled “Donate” and “Recycle.”

DIANNA picks through a box of papers. They sort and discard items into the various boxes during MELODY’S lines.

MELODY It’s finally happening…. The day I’ve longed for and feared. …Now I’m not sure I want her to learn the truth. (Beat) I should’ve thrown all this away and left things as they are.

(Beat) No, this is best…. Dianna deserves the truth…. I should’ve told her when I was alive. … Now I have to be strong for her, and hope she’s strong too.

MELODY moves around the room creating a breeze that rustles some papers. TOM and DIANNA are oblivious and continue tossing papers, clothes, and other items into boxes.

DIANNA God, remind me to start throwing stuff away when we get home. Why did Mom keep this stuff ? I never thought of her as a hoarder, but… man…

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MELODY I kept it for you.

TOM Well, I can think of one roomful of stuff I’d start with.

DIANNA Not fair! Things just keep coming up. And you should talk. What about the garage?

TOM Those are tools; they don’t count!

DIANNA Right.

MELODY No need to look at anything. There’s nothing here for you. It won’t make you happier.

TOM This is going to take days. Do you really want to go through all this junk? What do you expect to find, anyway?

DIANNA I don’t know. It just seems wrong to just throw it all away. And I need to find my birth certificate. Mom couldn’t remember where she put it. She was so confused. She even called me Marie.

MELODY Yes. You’re right. You do need to look; you need to find out. You deserve to know. (moves to a box of photo albums.)

Perfect!

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Using her energy to push the box, it tips over, spilling its contents, and the album on top falls open. TOM and DIANNA look up, startled. They glance at the fallen box, then each other, and laugh.

TOM Must be the house shifting. These old houses do that all the time. (picks up the album)

Hey, Hon, look at this.

DIANNA What is it? Oh! Pictures! Let’s see. Was this our Disneyland trip? Oh… hmm… I’ve never seen these before. That looks like Mom, but I don’t know the other woman.

That’s strange. I wonder if that’s Marie?

MELODY (to audience) That’s Lucia. We met in Phoenix. We were both running away. Me from my parents, her from being trapped in the ghetto raising a dozen screaming brats. I had graduated from nursing school and was working at the county hospital in Phoenix. Obstetrics. I was a baby catcher and a Doula. Lucia was one of my clients. I counseled her through her pregnancy.

TOM If you don’t know them, it doesn’t matter. We can’t afford to take this much time anyway. I have to get back to work on Monday, and I don’t want you staying here alone.

We should just toss all this and go home. There’s nothing worth keeping here.

MELODY No! Don’t stop now. I want you to understand.

She moves toward DIANNA, as if to appeal to her. DIANNA does not acknowledge her, but picks up the album and turns the pages again.

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DIANNA We don’t need to be back today, do we? (Beat) That album is full of photos of the same woman–a pregnant woman. I wonder why there aren’t any of the baby?

TOM What baby?

MELODY sits in the rocking chair, causing it to move slightly. They don’t notice.

MELODY My baby.

DIANNA The woman’s baby. Mom has pages and pages of the same woman when she was pregnant, but none of her with a baby. What happened?

MELODY Now you’re on it.

TOM Well, what does it matter?

DIANNA It’s so odd. Did the baby die? Did the woman move away? But if she was Mom’s friend, why aren’t there more pictures? And why didn’t I know her?

TOM Maybe she’s some relative.

DIANNA We never had a Marie in the family.

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TOM I thought you never met your relatives.

DIANNA I didn’t. But she told me about them, and there were some pictures. Not many, though.

That’s why it’s so strange for her to have a whole album of a woman I’ve never seen.

MELODY Keep looking.

DIANNA You know, I always sensed that there was something Mom was hiding. Something about me. She didn’t like to talk about when I was born…or my father. All she’d ever say about him was that he left before I was born. Nothing else. It used to infuriate me.

We shared so much. I never could understand why she wouldn’t tell me more. I mean, I know he was a jerk. I guess I just wanted to know what I got from him.

TOM Must be your looks. You sure don’t look like your mom.

MELODY There’s a reason for that.

DIANNA Yeah, it used to cause me lots of grief. We’d go out and people would think we were friends, not related at all. I think it secretly pleased Mom, but it always annoyed me. I used to think I was adopted.

MELODY leads TOM to a box of documents.

TOM (picking up an official looking paper)

Well, huh! Here’s a birth certificate.

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DIANNA Mine?

TOM No, Marie’s.

MELODY Marie.

DIANNA rushes over to TOM, takes the paper from him and inspects it closely.

DIANNA That’s strange.

TOM What? She’s probably just someone your mom helped out. Although, it is weird to have her birth certificate.

MELODY I had to keep something of your past.

DIANNA That’s not what I meant.

TOM Then what?

DIANNA She’s got the same birthdate as me. And she was born in the same hospital –the one where Mom worked as an Obstetric Nurse, a baby catcher. Mom loved babies.

Both stand silent for a moment, over-awed and confused. MELODY moves closer to DIANNA.

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MELODY There’s more for you to find, but first remember how much I loved you. That’s what matters in the end.

DIANNA And another thing, I keep finding newspaper stories about babies. They’re probably kids she helped deliver. I don’t know why she’d save them otherwise. But I don’t see any other birth certificates.

TOM Aw, she probably found this one at a yard sale. You know how she loved looking for treasures. She must’ve thought it was a funny coincidence that you both had the same birthdate and hospital. (Beat). Whatever. It doesn’t matter now anyway. I mean, it doesn’t change anything. And we still need to finish this up so I can get back to work on Monday.

He moves on to another box, adding a couple of old books to the “Donate” box.

MELODY He’s wrong, Darling. It does matter. Maybe it won’t change anything… or it will change everything. Don’t give up now.

DIANNA Are you serious? This changes everything! Right now I don’t even know who my mother was. How could she hide something like this? It wouldn’t have changed how I felt about her.

MELODY Oh, my sweet Dianna. We had a good life. I know I wasn’t rich, but you never wanted for anything. (looks around at all the old toys and clothes)

We had each other.

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TOM Oh, come on, Di. You were fine before and you’ll be fine now. It’s all ancient history.

Who cares?

DIANNA That’s easy for you to say with a family history going back to the Mayflower. You know exactly who you are, and who your parents are, and your grandparents, and greatgrandparents, and great-great-great– TOM Damn it, you’re just being dramatic. Cut it out. NOW! We’ve got to get this done and get back home. (Beat) You’ll see. When we get home, things will look different, and you won’t care about this.

MELODY Maybe that would be best.

MELODY leans forward slightly, causing the chair to move. DIANNA and TOM look at it, startled. TOM laughs.

TOM See, it’s a sign. It’s time to go. (Beat) Oh, come on. It’s an old house. It’s just settling, or about to fall apart. It doesn’t matter. Look. We’re not finding anything worth keeping.

Take the photos, but let’s hire someone to dispose of this stuff. It’s a waste of our time, and it’s costing us money. I could cover the cost of hiring someone in fifteen minutes, and here we are wasting hours. I’m done.

TOM dumps a final stack of junk in the “Dispose” box, now over-flowing, and heads to the door.

Are you coming?

MELODY rises in anticipation as Dianna moves to the rocking chair.

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MELODY Go home, Darling. You’ll be happier in the end. Go home with your husband and forget about all this.

DIANNA No. I have to stay. I loved my mother, but I need answers, no matter what. You go on back. I’ll be fine here. You’ll be fine there. I have to know.

TOM What are you talking about? Stop this nonsense right now. I’m serious. I’ll leave without you.

He moves toward the door.

DIANNA Then leave.

TOM stops, shocked.

DIANNA I have to find out who I am! I can’t go on not knowing.

TOM You’re serious, aren’t you?

DIANNA I am. I understand you need to go. That’s okay. I need to stay…at least for a while longer.

MELODY No! Go home with your husband. You won’t like what you find.

TOM All right, then. I’ll stay and help as long as I can.

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DIANNA I know. You have to go back. It’s okay. I can do this on my own.

TOM Who is this dynamo? I like her!

DIANNA I guess I’ve never had anything this important to do before. This is… well, it’s like a mission. You understand?

TOM nods and picks up a new box of papers.

TOM Okay, so what are we looking for?

DIANNA I wish I knew. I guess anything that seems related to the babies or me or Mom. That’s not very helpful, is it?

TOM Well, it eliminates all of the old clothes at least!

Both return to their task of sorting and tossing but with a greater purpose. They work silently for a while.

TOM Why didn’t your mom have any other kids? I know how much she loved them. I’d have thought she’d have had a bunch. She was always after us to give her a grandchild.

MELODY I’d have loved a grandbaby.

DIANNA There was some kind of problem when I was born, and she couldn’t have any more. At Playwriting

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least that’s what she told me. I used to beg her for a baby brother or sister.

TOM But she was forty-years-old when you were born. Why none before?

DIANNA Maybe I was a miracle baby. (Beat) You know, Mom never liked to talk about that.

Maybe he had low sperm count.

TOM Or maybe she had some kind of problem conceiving. Who was her doctor? If it was something genetic, it might be why we– DIANNA We’ve been through all of that. You were tested…I was tested. If it was genetic, they’d have found something by now.

MELODY It’s not you, Baby. It was me.

MELODY goes to DIANNA.

DIANNA It’ll happen. I just wish it’d been before she died. She did love babies. She used to volunteer to hold the crack babies to help calm them.

MELODY Poor babies. In such torment and pain. My baby wouldn’t have suffered like that. It’s so unfair. Crack whores having babies while I couldn’t.

They continue searching through boxes, occasionally stopping to read something more

closely.

TOM pulls out a thick file, leafs through it, reads closely, turns more pages.

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TOM Hey, Hon, did your mom ever talk about any medical problems?

DIANNA She had high blood pressure. Why? TOM These are her medical records. I think you need to see this.

MELODY It all has to come out or she’ll never understand.

DIANNA What is it, Tom? What did you find?

TOM Melody can’t have been your natural mother. Take a look. Apparently she had an abortion when she was just a teenager, and it didn’t go well.

MELODY That butcher! It wasn’t legal back then. I was only fifteen and my parents forced me into it. I wanted to keep the baby, but they said it’d ruin my life and theirs. They didn’t want to end up raising another baby. They said I’d been enough trouble.

DIANNA sits down in the rocking chair, too shocked for words. She takes the file and reads. Picks up the photo album again and peruses the image of the pregnant woman. TOM comes over to her and looks at the image, too.

TOM She’s dark like you. Look at those eyes. I wonder.

MELODY takes one of the photos out of the album and turns it over.

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DIANNA Honey, do you think you could go and fix us something to eat? I’d like to be alone for a while to digest all of this.

TOM Sure, Sweetheart. It’s a lot to take in. Come on down to the kitchen when you’re ready.

Dianna settles into the chair, rocking gently. She reads through the file then picks up an old stuffed animal.

MELODY Please don’t judge me.

MELODY moves closer to the chair. It rocks forward. Dianna looks up, still hugging the toy.

DIANNA Oh, Mom, I wish you were here. What in the world happened?

She goes back to the box of photos and albums.

MELODY It’s a long story, Darling. It all begins with love, and I don’t mean the physical kind.

DIANNA (Picking up a photo of the pregnant woman)

Who are you?

MELODY She’s your real mother, Marie. Lucia Benedict. Look at the back of the picture.

DIANNA “Lucia. 1979.” I wonder where she is. It doesn’t look like Illinois, for sure. Somewhere out west maybe.

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DIANNA picks up an old file folder. Checks the contents, then dumps them into the recycle box.

Gotta start somewhere. I can scan this and post it. Somebody is bound to recognize this place or her.

During MELODY’s speech, DIANNA takes one of the now empty file, labels it “evidence,” then continues looking through photos and documents.

MELODY We met in Phoenix, Arizona. That’s where her family lived, still lives, maybe. We hit it off right away. We were both single. The baby’s father took off when he found out she was pregnant. Her family had kicked her out. Back then, unwed pregnancies weren’t accepted like they are now.

DIANNA Here’s one that looks like Mom with Lucia. So she did know her.

DIANNA considers something for a beat, then hurries over to the box of clippings, finds the ones about the stolen baby and reads more carefully.

Yes! Here it is. Lucia Benedict reported her baby stolen from the hospital ward when it was only a few days old. What’s its name?

She scans one article, then another. Finally.

Oh…my…God…Marie.

MELODY Yes. Such a beautiful little baby. So sweet. So perfect. I couldn’t resist her. She was just what I’d always wanted. My own little girl. What I’d always wanted and could never have. And Lucia was going to give her up! Can you believe that? I told her I’d raise the baby, and she agreed. But then she found out she could sell you. Yes! Sell you to the highest bidder. Like you’d auction off a vase or a painting. $5000. That’s what you went for. I couldn’t let that happen. I knew you belonged with me, not some strangers.

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DIANNA “The baby was being adopted by Ellen and Charles Garland. They are offering one hundred thousand dollars for her return.”

MELODY You see how much I loved you? I wasn’t even tempted by that much money. I could’ve lived the rest of my life without working a day. But I gave it up for you. To give you a good and loving home. You understand, don’t you? You needed me! Not some rich snobs who’d turned you over to a nanny. You needed a mother. You needed me.

DIANNA Oh, Mom.

CURTAIN

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Dinner for Two A Comedy Short j Volina Armstrong - Third Place i

Cast of Characters DOROTHY SIMPSON: 70 something year old elegant lady.

ANDREW RIDDLE: 20 something year old young man.

JACK MASON: 20 something year old young man.

Place Fine Dining Restaurant Midtown Manhattan

Time Valentine’s Night, current year

1 Act I Scene I DOROTHY SIMPSON, An elderly lady elegantly dressed, is sitting at a fine table adorned in pressed white linen. The table is set for two. A server, ANDREW RIDDLE, a twenty something year old young man approaches with a menu and a glass of water.

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ANDREW Good evening ma’am. Welcome to Le’Amor’. My name is Andrew, and I will be your server this evening. Is this your first time dinning with us?

DOROTHY Good evening, and certainly not young man. We come here every year for Valentine’s Day. Don’t we George? (Smiles at the empty chair sitting across from her.)

ANDREW (Looks over at empty chair.)

Oh, I didn’t know...

DOROTHY Why of course you didn’t silly. You must be new here because I’ve never seen you before.

ANDREW Uh, yeah I’m new, but...

DOROTHY What’s that George? Well speak up dear. (Smiles again at the empty chair.) Oh, that’s nice.

I almost forgot.

ANDREW looking confused.

DOROTHY CONT’D My husband’s right, we will have our usual 2 ribeye steak dinners. I want a baked potato, lots of butter, chives, hold the sour cream. But George will have the mashed potatoes. (Holds up the menu to her face and whispers to ANDREW.) The mashed potatoes are better on his stomach you know. Oh, but this year we want 2 glasses of your finest white wine.

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ANDREW Uh, are you sure you want 2 steak…

DOROTHY Yes, young man. We know what we want. Are you sure you know what you want when you order? We may be old, but we’re certainly not crazy.

ANDREW Yes ma’am. So that’s 2 ribeye dinners. One with a baked potato extra butter, chives, hold the sour cream. And the other dinner with mashed potatoes. Oh, and 2 glasses of our finest white wine. Will that be all?

DOROTHY Yes sir, that will do. Can I keep the menu? We might have room for dessert.

ANDREW Of course.

ANDREW walks away running into another server, JACK. ANDREW CONT’D Hey, uh. I got this situation at table 15. Some elderly lady is ordering for herself and her imaginary husband. She says they come every year for Valentine’s Day? JACK Ohhh...yeah. (Looks behind ANDREW) Old Lady Simpson. Yeah she’s a wack job bro.

But hey as long as she pays, who cares? She comes in here every Valentine’s Day doin’ the same weird shit. Eh, just give her what she asks for. The quicker she gets it, the quicker the old hag leaves.

ANDREW nods to JACK. He walks away to put her order in. When the food is ready he brings everything to the table. He places everything on the table.

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ANDREW Will there be anything else?

DOROTHY Oh no. Thank you young man, everything looks beautiful.

ANDREW smiles and walks away, but he immediately walks back.

ANDREW Is this seat taken?

DOROTHY (Looks up with a tear in her eye.)

No it isn’t.

ANDREW smiles and sits down in the place of her imaginary husband.

DOROTHY (Smiles and whispers across the table)

You know, I’m not crazy Andrew. I’m just a girl that never fell out of love.

CURTAIN

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Writers’ and Artists’ Personal Statements Cody Achin Without knowing it, I have always written poetry, and I strive to learn more about it and to always keep writing. This attitude took me to creative writing in classes that helped me focus on what is going on around me. Because anything can be a story or a poem. That’s where the idea for this poem came from. “Evil in the Dirt” is a true account of my cousin who passed away recently, and I wanted to show people that there is always someone to counteract us. For me, this was my cousin. He was just as smart as I was but had a more sinister way of thinking. I never told him this, but I’ve always wanted to. With him gone, I feel that sometimes he is still around me in spirit. Thank you for taking the time to read this poem, and I hope that you enjoy it. Thank You.

Jacob Akers I live in Mesa, and I work as a house painter. I am honored to go to SCC and have the opportunity to submit a poem!

Volina Armstrong I began writing stories from the moment I learned to write. I am passionate about expressing my creativity through writing and acting. I especially enjoy writing to raise awareness to social issues that plague our communities, and I operate a website and blog that offer support to other women. I am currently pursuing an Arts degree at Scottsdale Community College. As an avid volunteer, I believe in being active in the community.

Any given Sunday, you can find me teaching children at church and working as the technical director for the video production at my church.

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Colleen Austin I will be graduating from Scottsdale Community College in the spring of 2016 with my Associates of Art degree in Fine Art. I plan on continuing my education in the arts at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, MI. I like working with many mediums, and enjoying trying out new techniques, but I prefer making hand drawn illustrations.

Someday I would like to design music album cover and illustrate books--among other things.

Asmarrah Lila Eslynne Bedford My husband and I just moved to Phoenix from Joshua Tree, California. I’m back in school studying screenwriting after a six-year hiatus. I have a master’s degree in history from UCLA and have taught at two community colleges for awhile. I want to share my stories with the would through film after winning my battle with breast cancer and partaking in an epic 15,000 mile motorcycle ride from Joshua Tree to Ecuador and then across the South . I did this just a few weeks after finishing months of radiation treatment. Movies inspired me to take the trip, and the trip itself is what got me better, so I want to share that in case there’s someone out there that needs a little inspiration too.

Benjamin Bisgard I enjoy Arizona summer sunsets and Dr. Pepper just above its freezing point. I have a passion for chemistry and the expansion of knowledge. I am always the person who starts the dance party. I love In-n-Out Burger so much that the employees have memorized my order. One day, I hope humans will recognize that all DNA based life is precious and must be nurtured.

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Vidushi Chaudhry I am a writer. That is a startling, powerful thing that I couldn’t have imagined saying.

I write to be sane, to remember my voice, and to share the contraband characters that populate the India I left behind. My writing is published in India and the US, including the After Happy Hour Review, Vortex, Teacher Plus, and Passages. I aspire to channel a love for education and a facility with words into a profession.

Matthew Cohen I am a returning student after obtaining 3 degrees and finishing my career. I have earned two Certificates in Digital Photography, and enjoy taking and supporting Art programs in the Valley where I live. My passions are traveling, photography, and bicycling. My photos and articles have been published and sold at charity events, and I recently displayed an exhibit of 28 travel photos. I am very happy and proud to be married to my wonderful wife.

Stormy Current I love writing. I feel that I am writing all the time, either in my mind or on paper. It’s a constant for me, and I can be both inside my head and out of it at the same time. Thank you all for reading my words.

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Kathy Dioguardi The art I create is a snapshot of my mind at a point in time. Sometimes I am very clear about what I would like to communicate. On other occasions the work takes me where it wants to go from a content, message and technique perspective. The artwork on the cover of Vortex 2016 began as a personal challenge to create a piece that was highly textured and colorful. My initial vision was a huge flower garden. When I began the garden, however, it became evident that painting a highly textured canvas was a major challenge. As a result, I experimented with ways to effectively apply pigment. I discovered that by using a medicinal syringe, heavy medium, a pointed pallet knife and some cooking tools I could move the paint around and create a variety of designs. The technique was labor intensive and it took several hours to cover a few square inches.

As the piece progressed, rework of color and design occurred and I invested more and more time. Surprisingly, instead of becoming completely frustrated by the slow progress, it began to be meditative. As a result, many ideas came to me about what belonged in the garden and what story might be told. The content of the work kept expanding until I felt satisfied that I had captured my thoughts, but that there was enough left unsaid that a viewer might have their own story about the figures and other elements in the painting.

Joyce Erbach I always loved to draw and paint; however, now I call it “playing with paint.” I place the paint on the palette with warms and cools where they belong and get lost in the process. I mostly paint with the palette knife; I have an idea in mind and let “karma” take over. Painting moves my mind and spirit!

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Judith Feldman I’m greatly influenced by the wonderful post-impressionist and fauvist artists, particularly Henri Matisse. I use strong hues and interesting shapes to create a scene and a certain mood - a place where my viewers might like to be. Sometimes, my dog Cleo or another four-legged friend find their way into a painting.

Carol Gibson My interest in writing began in third grade with my mom’s encouragement and my creation of two children’s stories. Later, my friends and I staged original plays for our neighbors. From that came a love of acting. After I retired from teaching English in the Paradise Valley Unified School District, I decided to try acting again and have appeared in theaters around the valley, on TV, and in independent films. The shortage of opportunities in the Valley pushed me to try writing some roles for myself and led me to E.E. Moe’s Playwriting class. Many thanks to her and my classmates for their kind words, encouragement and critical reviews!

Gabrielle Glessing I always find it difficult to give brief personal statements about myself. I’d say the entirety of “The Exit” is a clear snapshot of my personality and where my mind has been recently. Heavily inspired and fascinated by the sense of detachment those may feel in a big city, I wanted to express that through this short story. Of course, love always makes things more interesting as well. I hope I was able to reach you through this world of words.

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Delvan Gonzales I am a member of the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community. My life has dramatically changed since I started attending SCC a year and a half ago. I have discovered that I have the potential to be a great writer. I enjoy the different aspects of writing, creating characters, and different settings. Through writing, I hope to influence people to dream their dreams, to get away from their daily lives for a while when they read something I have written, and to use their imaginations to make their lives more exciting and fulfilling. One day I hope what I write will be a benefit to my wife, family, friends, Scottsdale Community College, S.R.P.M.I.C., and many others. I would like to thank Jesus and my wife, Natalie, who has helped me in every facet of this new life that the Lord has given us, and our families. Without her in my life, I would be in a worse place than I was before. I owe a great acknowledgement and thank you to my elders for the love, support, encouragement and prayers that they all have given me. I want to thank the Writing Center staff–my second home at the college–all my teachers, the SCC American Indian Program, and the staff at SCC who have helped me with this new journey. Without them, I wouldn’t be here today.

Matthew Hoober I am studying late 19th and early 20th century German history, with an emphasis on the First World War, at Scottsdale Community College. I plan on pursuing my doctorate and becoming a teacher. In addition to writing poetry and creative nonfiction essays, I enjoy attending the symphony and admiring the solar system through the telescope in my backyard. I would like to thank my family and boyfriend of 5 years for their unwavering support, without which none of this would be possible.

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Aiyana Irwin I am a theatre and film student at SCC and have been writing for as long as I can remember. I mostly write screenplays and shorts stories, and love the way stories can change perceptions and take people away from their everyday lives. I have a passion for the arts that is centered on writing and storytelling.

Melinda Keels After graduating from Yale University with a B.A. in English, I cut my teeth in business writing and marketing. I have worked with top-notch agencies and celebrated client brands such as Campbell-Ewald Advertising, OnStar, General Motors, Chevrolet and R. R. Donnelley. I live in Mesa, Arizona with my husband two cats. I spend my spare time remodeling my house with my husband and taking in the occasional theatrical performance in downtown Phoenix.

Junko Kinoshita I have been painting since 2009. I love nature and to paint the serenity of moments being there.

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Gloria Langer Born in Portugal, I was fortunate enough to travel and experience a diversity of countries and cultures. My background as a graphic designer enabled me to develop an artistic perception that relates to the imagery of pop culture. I believe that art, as a multi-dimensionally complex communication form, has the responsibility of reflecting the issues of current life as well as captivating the viewer’s attention in its narrative.

“WTF!?” is a reflection on a new reality of fast paced images and information where pondering falls short. Communication today, through social media, has become so overwhelming that it is like a trip (like a drug), creating delusion and addiction at the same time, voyeurism and the illusion of fame for all.

Bonnie Lewis I’ve been cutting and pasting since the 3rd grade!! I still love taking bits and pieces of images that I photograph or remixing them to create unexpected whimsical and mysterious stories. Most often I start with an abstract painted surface that conjures up dreams or personal stories that I want to tell. My mixed media portraits may include photo transfers, drawing, painting, lettering, sewing--and lots of cutting and pasting! I thoroughly enjoy creating visual narratives with a sense of the complexity and wonder of life.

Marcia Losh Creating kaleidoscopic images from the photographs that I take has become a passion for me. Learning how to use Photoshop at SCC gave me the tools to develop my art in this way. I enjoy sharing my work and my process with others.

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Caitlyn Mitchell I am a college student and full time employee, and I find joy in finding new places in Phoenix to show the world, via my art, through the eyes of someone who loves Phoenix and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Meagan Murphy Aside from creating art as a student and in personal endeavors, I find great enjoyment in travel. I love to explore (especially through hiking); fresh environments give way to innovation, self growth, and learning. I try as best as possible to implement this in my work. As of late, my art focal area has been black and white film photography, with a dabbling into the digital sphere. I have merged travel and photography starting small with local places, whether it is the Desert Botanical Gardens or Seven Falls in Tucson.

With larger aspirations to travel the world and use photography as a tool to capture everything each distinctive environment has to offer, I am excited for what the future brings.

Sean O’Day I am a west coast inspired artist lost in the desert. My art is surrealistic and combines youth culture with a mix of contemporary and old school themes. My favorite medium is pencil, and I never get enough sleep.

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Anazia Potee I chose to be an only child. When my parents asked if I wanted siblings I declined, choosing to spend my days in front of the television surrounded by stuffed animals and watching black and white movies. And I got to pick the movies we saw as we hid away from the Arizona summer in an ice cool movie theater. Now I find myself perusing a degree in film production and screenwriting at SCC hoping that I can engage the imagination of anyone who comes across my work just the way I was inspired by the screenwriters and filmmakers before me.

David Ready Art has been a part of my life ever since I was a child. I tend to create for myself and others, via good-old-fashioned pencil and paper. Most of my works have top do with my favorite ideas: objects, feelings, personal thoughts, dreams, and other developments in my life.

Joshua Sandrock I write. I don’t always know what for or about, or even where the writing intends to take me. Every piece is a journey I willingly take and share.

Taylor Shelton I am currently studying philosophy, as a writing degree. I hope to make some sort of living out of writing, if I can.

Raquel Spencer I am a Native American girl searching to accomplish my dreams of becoming the first doctor and writer in my family.

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Patricia Turpin I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona and have a degree in philosophy and science from Northern Arizona University. I have been creating art since I was old enough to hold pencils and paintbrushes, and before that if you count finger-painting! For most of my adult life I worked in the business and non-profit worlds and created art around the edges of day-to-day responsibilities. In 2010, I began to devote more time to my art.

I have spent significant time in art classes and private instruction, as well as studying art history. Growing up in a developing city and a beautiful state instilled in me an appreciation for urban energy and images, as well as a deep love of the natural world.

I have always found nature restorative and the city invigorating. My work includes acrylic paintings, mixed media pieces, installation art, sculpture, and drawing. I am inspired by the gorgeous complexity of the natural world, science and exploration, and the works and lives of human beings living on a small blue planet. My pieces invite you to delve into other realities, move in enchanted places, and appreciate the beauty and complexity of all things big and small.

Lily Baye-Wallace I am a student on scholarship at SCC through the ACE program, and I am grateful for the chance to submit my work to a professional publication. This piece is made of bits and pieces of my short life and how it seems time passes far too quickly.

Devan Watson As a child I always enjoyed reading and writing. I unfortunately lost the creative writer in me somewhere between high school and college, but luckily recently found this identity again in 2013, after I graduated from ASU. Since then I have actively been working on writing projects, and honing my craft. I typically write creative fiction under a penname, but occasionally take a stab at nonfiction under my legal name.

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Angelika Zgainer As a result of my solo travels around the world experiencing different cultures, beliefs, and traditions in addition to days spent in museums, my deeply rooted philosophical, spiritual and romantic ideas make me want to explore various expressions on the canvas.

I find my own voice in an expressionistic art form by using bold colors and strong brush strokes to express moments in my life, rendering myself to my analytic and emotional mind, to tell my story in a lyrical way without words. I constantly like to explore new techniques and approaches in colors, surface and design. My emphasis is on composition, lines, movement and proportion. Image transfers and mix media as well as metal embossing and ceramics capture my interest at the current time.

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