Volume 33, Issue I

Page 1


About the cover:

The designer of our cover this semester is Ben Powel and he is a Fine Arts major at Virginia Tech. He drew everything in a comic style to follow our theme of a graphic novel. The fonts used on the cover and throughout the book are Trade Gothic, Laffayette Comic Pro, and Times.

Thoughts from Ben Powel, our cover artist: “I am a Fine Arts major and Biology minor here at Tech, and one day I hope to make comics for a living. Right now I do a lot of ceramics work, and draw silly pictures and make them into shirts in my spare time. Richard Corben, R. Crumb, Stan Lee, and Ralph Bakshi cartoons are who I would name as my inspirations. I enjoy walks through the woods, and reading at night. I can’t be more calm.”

Silhouette Volume 33, Issue 1 was produced by the Silhouette staff and printed by Inove printing. Silhouette Literary and Art magazine is a division of the Educational Media Company at Virginia Tech, Inc. (EMCVT), a nonprofit organization that fosters student media at Virginia Tech. Please send all correspondence to 344 Squires Student Center, Blacksburg, VA 24061. All Virginia Tech students who are not part of the staff are invited to submit to the magazine. All rights revert to the artist upon publication. To become a subscriber to Silhouette, send a check for $10 for each year subscription (two magazines) to the address above, c/o Business Manager or visit EMCVT’s e-commerce Web site at www.collegemedia.com/shop. For more information visit our Web site at www.silhouette.collegemedia.com or call our office at (540) 231-4124.


Silhouette Literary and art magazine Volume 33, Issue 1 Fall 2010

Silhouette literary and art magazine 344 Squires Student Center Blacksburg, VA 24061 silhouette@collegemedia.com www.silhouette.collegemedia.com


Table of

Chapter one: Poetry Stitching up

9

Apocrypha

10

Grandpa Darrel

11

For Sale: ‘72 Barracuda

12

symbiosis

13

Shipping Out

14

On the Bridge

15

Reciprocal

16

Seeds of Destruction Whiskey and Tea Leaves Inconsistent Strangers

17 18 19

Chapter t wo: Art self-portrait

21

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

22

MuntJak

23

Zombie-Farmer

24

Bruises

25

Martinis

26

Atnum skis: king of the jungle

27

Shades

28

Taos Pueblo Growth World of Wonders Circus

29 31 32


contents

Chapter three: Prose

Summer Stone Angel Games Birds fly east

37 42 44 45

Chapter four: Photography milkweed

49

Fern

50

Rude Awakening

51

Logan

52

Winston the watchful eye spring break Grapes Masks Moth Rat Art

53 54 56 57 58 59 59


CHAPTER 1:


poetry


editor’s pick “Everyone has one of those moments. One of those moments where they sit there and wish they could just rewind time and avoid this, leave just a little sooner, or a little later. That’s what this poem came to mean to me: getting a chance to try again, a chance to fix that one mistake that always haunts us. Getting a chance to set it right and find redemption.”

-lauren white


Stitching Up Lauren White

White cloth gives way to crumpled metal and webbed glass. I’d go back if I could: start again. Take the needle, thread my line. Sharp, petite spear, sliding through the Moirae’s fluttering hairs of time – Pull closer: fold the surface substance of the earth, existence, the glittering dust and oil of space. Silver sword, cutting through the air, pushing the impatient hands back with your pricking bite, and need for more ticks and tocks and running sand. God, there’s never enough anymore. If only I could embroider faster and change a quivering moment: that single stitch I left erred. Perhaps I would have leapt forward, faster, or held back, bemused by my sewing of past. And then the nine people in those two cars, crushed between dull metal and sharp glass, would have heard the next grain fall.


Apocrypha erin gloeckner

Daughters melt into the pit There are no mothers left sane to cry Spurts of fire heat bodies on the sidewalk They burn in a different place now. You take my hand as ravens darken the horizon For such a horror, this day is beautiful. Wrath of some god we do not trust, Consuming our metal world in silver light. His world. We run awhile, foolishly hopeful To the ocean edge. It is sable, thick as tar And rises to a scarlet sky to swallow us. Gripping hands, we begin to pray To the god we now trust But mostly fear. Sight is no redeemer And the water covers our tongues. In the struggle your eyes stretch open, blazing into mine The only green left in this lifeless world, Before our hands float apart. The vision of you pulses in my head For a moment, I retain it. Fiery hair fighting the blackness Caressing your lips, blue from breaths of sea. Limbs undulating with waves Your skirt rising to brush fingertips. It darkens as we sink, and you are already gone. It is eternity now, I feel it. My purgatory A dark well of isolation, your body as torment Agonizes me, for you are gone. At what length did you keep this from me, You, faithful? And hidden. Glad as I am you are at peace, my apocrypha, The pain cleaves my heart. I am damned alone.

10


grandpa darrel ashley nicole griffiin Don’t look at him now. He was strong once. He was a conductor for the Santa Fe Railroad for fifty years. Grandma said he’d spend all day on that darn freight train and come home and track soot all over her white carpet. It was smeared across his entire face. Grandma couldn’t even recognize him. He used to paint with his steady hands. The scenes of woods, canyons, and lakes looked so real, I thought about jumping into them. He used to do woodwork. For my ninth birthday, he built me a wooden rocking horse. It had a mane and a tail. And he even painted on the eyes and the reins too. He had such a lively spirit back then… Once, he used the garage window as an ice cream store drive through. He’d charge us a penny for any flavor we wanted. He gave me that chuckle of his when I tried to bargain the price. But his smile has faded away now. He was stripped of his railroad travels, and now he never leaves the house. He hasn’t fired up that saw all year. If he tried to paint a picture of the California mountains, the brush would fall right out of his hand. He’s as steady as a tree during the Santa Anas. Don’t look at him now He just can’t stop shaking…

11


For Sale:

’72 baracuda christian harder

Inventory: Bifurcated cowl. Tongue-flat hood. Black windows. Twisted plating. Arm-thick pipe. His metal-hulking tarmac-eater sits. Its solid shoulders couple shining steel. Its violent shades match the growing Night. It’s all pride and tooth and only aggressive. At thirty-seven, still so handsome same as my father, who on evenings snuck away and fit and screwed and lubricated its parts while quietly I watched and squeezed next to him under the beauty with purple in all the right places. He sang to himself or maybe it, and turning its bolts in time, he would say that she’s his daughter too and we’re both quite fine. Here her belly pipes are veins for living, and here her skin’s smooth and your hand knows just how to follow; her grille smiles wide and even you my little one have heard her heart beat and her words when she’s awake; and even you my little one have seen her eat up the road and drink all the air. She’ll even die like us after many roads swept over. I looked at me in her quiet gleaming sides. I felt my own softness and poked at my frame; my breath came out gentle with no belch or roar and in front of my beaming father I knew I wasn’t cold or brave like her but utterly different with a simple, happy face. I’m only now just sure I was right. But Dad was wrong and some many miles later, as I stand up here and she idles outside, you’ve got to wonder – it’s not completely unimaginable that up there he sits in a celestial scoop seat, nodding sadly and wishing it was her giving his final speech today rather than a soft, doubting me. 12


Symbiosis

alex gomes

Creatures rest on solid stone, Scaffolds bear a heavy weight, Odd are birds that fly alone, And that which sleeps without its mate. Lean back, and passing wind may stay your frame, yet it is fickle, and you will fall. Strong rivers are those who begin as tame, who start to trickle, and slowly crawl. Men are quick to seek a friend, Men have trust in oak and yew, But weary ties may often bend, And sturdy roots may be broken too.

13


shipping out megan waring

I lit my couch on fire, you tell me over the phone. I can smell your whiskey from across the country. It’s three in the afternoon, I tell you, on a Monday. I ship out tomorrow, your heavy voice responds, so I guess I can do whatever the fuck I want. The last time I saw you was at our siblings’ wedding. You stole a bottle of red wine, I snuck some cigarettes. We passed them between us, commiserating as always, on being the black sheep in our now unified families. I remember being sixteen. and sitting on the bleachers, the hot metal burning through our gym shorts. Sweat dampening our backs, laughing as yours puddled by our sneakers below us. I wonder who will laugh when it puddles at your boots?

14


e g d i r b e h t on alexandria pirillo There is a laugh, a smile, a tear, that lingers forgotten on Westminster Bridge, where the buses and taxis continue to fly by running over the memories of that night. A night we were convinced we owned the streets. Invincible. Untouchable. Immortal. We were going to burn the city as we disappeared into the night, desperately attempting to sneak away – to lose ourselves, but find each other. You grabbed my hand and led the way, and I blindly trusted – willingly consumed by the darkness and uncertainty that only a city could bring. High on the charm and the drink we danced our way along the Thames and laid on the South Bank to watch the Eye illuminated against the black, black sky – a sky that I felt could swallow me whole if I breathed in too deep. The purple lights blinked like fairies – giving faith, and trust, and pixie dust – making us hold our bellies as our laughter echoed into the night, leaving imprints embedded in the city’s walls that only we could see. I once was a believer, convinced that Lennon held the truth, I believed him every single time he said, “Love is all you need.” Well, the jukebox inside me was playing that song, but it mixed with our resounding yells, highlighting the feeling that would be forever hidden in our souls, constantly consuming faith, but leaving our love alone on the bridge.

15


Reciprocal Tom Minogue Head humming Heart hammering Hands shaking I will be the broken jaw of your lost kingdoms The thorn of crowns sitting upon your head in The realization of a parasitic bete-noire That we will neither understand nor hope to. Tonight we can dream of God in the green pines Before the dawn of man when there was no imperfection But then we were born conscious and I was the unhinged jaw of your new kingdoms. Hands shaking Heart hammering Head humming.

16


Seeds of

n o i t c u r t Des Lauren white

Pain: a field of violently yellow sunflowers Bright as sirens blaring; small sun flares popping in the encroaching blackness. Head wrenched down by all your hard shelled magazines that crack when freed, and clack! clack! clack! to the floor when they burst open and loose from the cold iron you’re supported with. Impact bites like thunder. Face jaundiced with sick shock – black pupil flares with adrenaline – buzzing parasites gnawing at your skin, tearing at your flesh. Hands stronger than you, filching all your bullets like the coward he is: needing shells to hide in while abandoning you with ‘Loves me’ and ‘Loves me not,’ since he left you defenseless with only amber locks to your name and no nails to bite with. Only nails to hang with and let you dry to putrescent perfume. Bright, awkward star, bowing down and dusting – the millions of satellites fall with you: small comets crashing to earth, linoleum floors, hardwood and asphalt while your black iron bullets scatter: picked up by timid mice and roaches while the crows snap at your barren eyes.

17


whiskey and tea leaves Tom minogue

In the morning there was tea on the table that poured forth From a steaming kettle into a perfect blue-and-white china cup, On a perfect blue-and-white china saucer. The teaScalding though it was- opened the throat and nostrils with an Overwhelming sensation of peppermint. Synapses distracted The Drinker from the early morning fog and chill with Undulating cohesion that was a habit of biology but not of faith. Gazing into the bottom of the china cup there was a tremor of uncertainty That the crumbled leaves, saturated with water, were the sure Signal that the acquiescence of the mornings prior arrived at a mint-flavored close. In the evening there was whiskey on the table that poured forth From a chilled bottle into a crystal highball glass Where the liquid interacted with two slippery crescent-shaped pieces of ice. The first sip from pursed lips sent hints of fire and vanilla down The open throat and up toward the nostrils, and the Drinker immediately Became aware of the overwhelming sensation that was blood traveling Through the veins. Heavy grew the hand, then the heart when Gazing into the inky cosmos there was a tremor of certainty That the fragile stars, saturated with scientific explanation, were the cold Signal that the questions of evenings prior had arrived at an empty opening.

18


inconsistent Strangers

jacqui legard

waiting on the bus to arrive thrown in the midst of colorful strangers each waiting for a way out i’m cemented to a concrete bench look at the world through sylvia plath’s eyes this is as real as it will ever be. but soon i am interrupted interrupted by one of the strangers that i once thought understood my sentimental privacy a man approaches in this wintery weather he has warmed his head but has left his legs bare i am already appalled at his inconsistency ‘do you have a light?’ my eyes widen from behind my sunglasses (which have failed to hide me) why has this man chosen me, the plainest of this elaborate crowd, to ask this question? do i look like a smoker? i answer with a quiet ‘no’ and he walks away. i reach for a pen but my pockets do not present one i feel it appropriate to question this same leg baring man ‘do you have a pen?’ he thinks to himself, do i look like a writer? the literary type who carries ink around just waiting for the ideal moment? he answers with a quiet ‘no’ and i walk away no one is who we think they are.

19


CHAPTER 2: art

20


Self-portrait

kaitlyn fohl

21


Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

artist gallery: Christine Munchak 22


Muntjak

23


Zombie-Farmer Chris Stahl

24


Bruises

Christine Munchak

25


Martinis

26


artist gallery: Chris Stahl

atnum skis: King of the jungle

27


artist gallery: Melanie knoth

Shades 28


Taos PUeblo 29


editor’s pick “I have been painting all of my life because it’s an experience in itself. I created this piece a few years ago, while my concentration at the time was trees. I wanted to create something strong and empowering that represented what I had felt at the time.”

-melanie knoth

30


Growth 31


World of Wonders Circus

32


Christine Munchak

33


CHAPTER 3: 34


prose 35


editor’s pick

“I’ve been writing forever because I love telling stories. stories keep the world interesting. I’m inspired by my family and friends, who keep me entertained every day!”

-caitlin williamson

36


Summer caitlin williamson

I still say that the pressing heat is the easiest thing to remember about the North Carolina summers. In early May, the winds change and blow in steaming gusts that stretch long and hot over the ever-growing days. *** God, the humidity! You’ve never felt such stifling weight in your life! The moisture seeped through our clothes, into the pores of our skin like a disease, leaving a sticky trail over our bodies as sweet as molasses. After a week of sucking in that drenched air, our lungs ached for the parching breaths of the mountains. Those who could afford it escaped to the pristine white beaches of Nags Head, but I can’t say I ever thought that any better – a little saltier was all. I was born and grew up in the same house. I ’spose that these days that sounds like a novelty, but in the ’40’s, no one ever left where they were born. We were like soldiers who go off to war; they may come back, but they never really leave the frontline. The South was my home, and the summer, my battlefield. The winds changed. The days grew longer. Tempers flared. Gossip spread. Lord only knows how many of those small-town Southern women sat huddled together on their yellowing lawns dressed in their bright frocks. Fresh from church, they talked and fanned themselves in a fury. I thought of them as a pack of multicolored seagulls, their flapping and gulls filling the sky. Mama went nearly every Sunday. She’d pin up her hair and pull on her hose (despite the wretched heat), mix up some lemonade and fly out the door. “Keeping up with the what’s what,” she called it. I know Daddy thought less of her for doing so, but she did it anyway. When he frowned and told her such gossip was shameful, Mama just laughed. “Ain’t nothing ‘bout nothing,” she told him, before turning to kiss him, turning his mouth the color of a red rose. When she was gone, my sister, Minnie, and I used to sneak into our folks’ bedroom. Of course, Mama always could tell if anything had been touched while she was away. Usually, she’d make a fuss and use the old threat, “when your daddy gets home...” But Minnie would smile and kiss Mama’s smooth cheek. “Ain’t nothing ‘bout nothing,” she’d say, which made Mama laugh. Minnie was always the smarter and slicker of us two. She constantly got us into trouble, but she just as often got out of it. Sometimes she’d repeat Mama’s words back to her. Sometimes she’d pin it on me by saying “Baby sister did it.” I didn’t mind because I adored Minnie. My sister was everything to me. I idolized the way she spoke, always sounding so intelligent and confident in the way she viewed an illogical world. I knew Minnie was more beautiful than anything or anyone. She was like a star; everything around her seemed brighter while she remained the most incandescent of all. I wanted to be around her light, always. The spring my sister turned fifteen, we had a big party in our yard for the neighbors and for Minnie’s friends from school. They arrived by the dozens — the daughters of the seagulls. They resembled their mothers remarkably, packed together, cackling and whispering. Their chattering turned to outright hysterics 37


when one boy gave Minnie flowers. He sauntered up to her, as bold as brass, and handed her a bouquet of half-wilted daisies. “For you, darling,” he said, and I almost threw up in my mouth. After all, I was only ten, and knew nothing of boys. They were playmates at the best and annoyances at the worst. (Though I do remember an old, spinster aunt saying that men were God’s greatest punishment for Eve’s sin. She died before I could ask her what she meant.) Anyway, you’d have thought the boy had given her diamonds, the way Minnie smiled at him. She looked like a puppy does when you give him his first treat, all eyes and panting. She laughed too loudly at his jokes, which made the seagull chicks giggle some more. For my part, I paid little attention to the boy comedian; I was much too interested in playing with Jeanie. We were best friends for life, at least for that summer. After the party, Minnie talked “We were best friends for to Mama about the flower boy. life, at least for She barely drew breath, she that summer.” spoke so fast. I caught words like “wonderful,” “thoughtful,” and “perfect” from my sister’s mouth. Mama smiled and said things like “gentleman” and “upstanding.” It was like I had disappeared completely. My little ten-year-old heart stung to think that I was no longer the center of my sister’s life, as she was mine. I declared, in the puffed-up way only a child can manage, that Jeanie and I didn’t find any of the flower boy’s jokes very funny. “You were the only one laughing, Minnie,” I said, my nose turned up like Mama’s did when we passed foul garbage. My sister glared at me. “You know nothing ’bout it,” she spat at me, before stomping out of the kitchen, her new perm causing her ringlets to bounce like Shirley Temple’s. I stuck my tongue out at her. Mama put a bar of soap in my mouth. Its bitterness was nothing compared with what I felt as I watched my sister’s retreating figure. That summer, Minnie wasn’t around much. At first, I was jealous. I was no longer the sole occupant of my sister’s life. Then, Jeanie got a new fishing pole for her birthday and we spent a lot of time down by the muddy river, catching some of the tiniest fish I’ve ever caught in my life. I used to bring them home in a bright orange bucket. My daddy would insist that we clean each and every one of them. Mama always fussed about the work of cleaning a fish when it only yielded about a bite of meat, but Daddy insisted. “She caught it, so let’s eat it,” he said in his deep baritone of a voice. “They’ll barely yield a bite,” Mama replied. Daddy shoved the bucket into her hands. “Yes, but they’ll be a bite that Baby worked hard to get. We’ll eat it.” Daddy was special to me in that way. I only saw Minnie at suppertime, when the table was laid out with creamy china and linen napkins. She would come into the room, her eyes bright with something a child such as myself could know nothing about. Daddy worried about her, his dark eyes scrutinizing the situation with the perfect clarity of a father. Mama said it was first love and it was innocent, and she turned his mouth red again. I got real sick of hearing about that flower boy. One night, I complained about Minnie’s absence to Mama. She shrugged and told me, “You’ll be next before you know it.” That scared me so badly I never mentioned it again. But I could tell that 38


this time it wasn’t nothing ‘bout nothing. There was a “something” brewing in the summer wind, and sooner or later it would blow us all away. Winds changed. Days stumped. Temperatures dropped. Tensions rose. In December, Minnie stopped talking so much about her beau at supper. Instead, she and Daddy would go on about some far off place named Pearl. Daddy, shoveling potatoes into his mouth with unusual vigor, said that soon all the boys in town would be enlisting. Mama made a clucking sort of noise, shifting her eyes until they landed on Minnie, who looked very determinedly at her untouched plate. I asked carelessly, “What’s enlisting?” “It’s when you volunteer to go fight the damn Japs,” Daddy said angrily, spearing another potato with his fork. “Will Minnie’s boy volunteer?” I asked, looking at my sister and thinking how pretty she looked, even with her face red and bloated. “If he’s the kind of man I ‘spect Minnie to have, then yes he will.” I felt a rush of fierce joy as the thought of having my sister all to myself entered my head. I looked at Minnie, and the venom spewed from my mouth unchecked. “Well, good. I’m tired of him being around all the time anyway,” I said, and shoved a spoonful of sweet corn into my mouth. Minnie suddenly made a clucking noise of her own. She jumped back from the table and ran into the next room. Mama made me eat the soap again. Daddy just kept eating his supper as though he was waging a war on the vegetables, impervious to his eldest daughter’s sobs. About a month later, just days before all of the volunteers were leaving, I bounded into the living room, smiling from ear to ear. It had been an unseasonably warm day, and with the help of Jeanie’s new pole and a few lazy hours by the river, I had caught a real live bass. I was happy as a cricket and expected a real fuss to be made over my greatest victory yet. Instead, I got the worst shock of my then-short life. My daddy was sitting on the sofa, with his work jacket still on, staring out the window with tears running down his face. I stopped dead, only one thought running through my brain, as loud as a radio broadcast. I had never before seen “The day a child feels the Daddy cry. It made him look so much need to protect a parent, younger, and I had the keen everything changes.” urge to go pat his cheeks like Grandmam sometimes did. The day a child feels the need to protect a parent, everything changes. Mama was sitting next to him, wailing too, but that wasn’t much different than usual. “I want to keep Baby,” someone said, her voice hiccupping with suppressed tears. I turned at my name, but Minnie wasn’t speaking to me. She and that boy were sitting on the sofa across from my parents, clutching each other’s hands like lifelines. Well, at least Minnie was clutching one of his. Her other was over her stomach, like she had a secret and was trying desperately to keep it inside her. Her eyes were shining as she looked at Daddy, who still stared out the window. “I want to keep the baby,” she said again. Daddy didn’t say a word, but stood up and crossed the room, moving past Minnie as he went to his bedroom. She reached out her hand, but he walked so fast that her fingers were left clawing at stale air. The day that a parent denies comfort to their child, everything changes. “Daddy, wait! Look at my fish!” I cried. 39


He didn’t stop, and Mama threw my bass out. The orange bucket cracked when it hit the pavement of the road. I never found another one like it. It was the worst afternoon in my pre-adolescent memory, followed by the worst week, followed by what would become the worst months. Mama cried all the time and Daddy stopped speaking to “Minnie had lost her light and Minnie for awhile. Whenever he she no longer reminded me of a looked at her, his eyes became fallen star. sort of glazed over, like he wasn’t really seeing her. More than once, Instead, she was simply Fallen.” he would open his mouth as if to say something. Minnie and Mama and I would hush. Waiting. But then, Daddy would jerk his head and shut his mouth, and we would go on as though nothing had happened. Then, about three months after his silence began, he woke up one morning and got on the telephone and called some lady at an agency that “handled such matters.” She came by our house within the week, dressed in a smart-looking uniform. She had the prettiest shade of red hair I had ever seen. The agency lady talked with my folks for part of the afternoon then spoke to Minnie privately afterwards. While they were speaking, I cut out Valentine’s hearts from old pieces of lace, concentrating on each snip of the shiny scissors. I heard a sharp crack come from the kitchen and realized it was Minnie. She was screaming, her voice like nails against a chalkboard. “I want to keep my baby,” she cried over and over. Daddy’s voice cut her off. “You don’t have a choice, girl,” he yelled. A softer, richer voice added to the mix. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could tell it must have been coming from the red-haired lady. She left shortly afterward, coming through the den on her way out the door. She smiled when she saw me on the floor, surrounded by lacy hearts. “Pretty. Be careful with those or they might break,” she said. For the next week, Minnie tried to win a war that was already lost. I will never forget when Daddy told her, his voice as steady as a heartbeat, “If you don’t give it up, you will no longer be my daughter.” My sister wilted, her face paling so that she became transparent. The star inside of her died that day, and I never saw its light again. The agency lady brought a lot of papers with her that Daddy and Minnie had to sign. I watched as Minnie sobbed, her hand clenched in a fist. “Please,” she said, over and over. Daddy stood in the corner, his eyes averted from the scene as Mama gripped her daughter’s hand, forcing her to hold the pen. Together, they two, the only mothers in the room, signed away a child. Minnie was growing bigger every month, and her old clothes ceased to fit her. She stopped getting perms or wearing lipstick, and she began to look paler as summer approached. Mama told me that Minnie was going to bless another family with the gift of her baby, but I didn’t see it that way. Minnie had lost her light, and she no longer reminded me of a fallen star. Instead, she was simply fallen. Mama never took lemonade to the flock of seagulls again. I guess she didn’t care about the “what’s what” anymore. She already knew what the town ladies would be talking about. It was the longest day of the year, and my eleventh birthday, when Minnie went to her bed. A doctor came with a nurse who reminded me of Jeanie’s hound dog’s saggy face. I sat on the front porch, in the fading twilight, resigned to wait since there was 40


nothing else to do. Jeanie had stopped asking me over a long time ago. The red-headed agency lady arrived and sat with me. We didn’t talk, but sat shivering in the cool wind together, listening to Minnie holler bloody-murder and the doctor yell at her. I put my hands over my ears in an effort to block out the noise, but it wasn’t any good. After a long while, there came a new, more pitiful kind of wail. I had never heard anything sound so helpless before. The agency lady sighed and looked at me. I looked right back at her. Her eyes were blue. “Pretty,” I thought. She got up without a word and went into the house. The wind caught her scent as she left and I remember sitting there thinking about lilacs, wondering whether the flower boy knew how much trouble his flowers had caused. He had left town with the other volunteers just days after I saw my daddy cry. I hoped he was off being the kind of man Daddy wanted for Minnie. The kind that volunteered to go to far off places named after jewels and fight mysterious enemies. Minnie never spoke about him after he left, but sometimes I’d catch her behind the house, her eyes red and puffy. He wrote to her often at first, and then the letters became fewer and fewer until they stopped altogether. Minnie didn’t seem angry. “It was only a matter of time,” she whispered… My sister never saw the one that made the pitiful wailing. It was her choice to make, I think. The doctor and the saggy-faced nurse took the wailer to the hospital, wrapped in a yellow blanket I recognized from my own crib. I watched it glow faintly under the street lamp, the untucked edges flapping in the breeze slightly. The bundle was so tiny. As the car escaped the misery of our house, I chased them down the driveway, banging on the windows and shouting “Happy Birthday!” at the top of my lungs. I ran and ran, trying to keep up with the car. Finally, my legs gave out and I hit the pavement, my knees scraping against the asphalt. I watched the car disappear around the bend. The day that a parent abandons their child, everything changes. After a few weeks the agency lady came by one last time to tell us that the adoption had taken place. The couple had been real nice, upstanding folks and so on, from several counties away. As she told us about them, Minnie stopped listening. She looked out the window, towards the bend in the road. I watched as her eyes clouded over, the tears running silently down her cheeks like the river in winter. I got up from my seat and went to my sister. My little hand pressed against her face as I leaned in, putting my lips to her ear. “Ain’t nothing ‘bout nothing,” I whispered, all of the hurt and sadness I had felt at my sister’s betrayal in my voice. Minnie knew how I felt. She turned to me, her face showing the trials of the last nine months. She pressed her face into my shoulder, her cries shaking my body. We sat there, us two sisters, feeling one another’s pain like our own. When the agency lady left, I couldn’t help but ask her what kind of perfume she wore. She turned and looked at me for a moment. I will never forget that look; judgment and pity rolled into one. She smiled and said, “I don’t wear any perfume.” I nodded and said, “Oh, I ‘spose it’s just the scent of summer then.”

41


Stone Angel Amber Weyland

“John!” I yelled over the crowd of business suits and wide-eyed teenagers. My focus shifted from the spot John was supposed to be to a tall middleaged woman to my left. The woman was pretty, and not just pretty for her age, she was genuinely attractive. And by the size of the diamond she was ripping off of her finger and stuffing into her purse, she’d married for money. I watched as an equally beautiful man with graying black hair rushed through the crowd, wrapped his arms around the tall woman, and planted a kiss on her thick lips. And as I watched them embrace, I almost felt bad for the pair of them. He too had a pale strip of skin around his ring finger. I wondered if they both knew that the other was married and if the façade was for the people around them. Or if maybe they felt the need to lie to the one person that truly completed them, the one person that they abandoned their perfect lives for. I had no way of knowing that their lives were perfect. How perfect could the lives of two unfaithful soul mates be? Hell, were they even soul mates? John hated this about me, he always had. I could watch a woman put a shirt back after checking the price tag and create a life of hardship and honest work, a life riddled with the after effects of a teen pregnancy and single parenthood. John just saw a woman disgusted by inflation, or maybe he saw nothing at all. Sometimes I wondered if he even saw people. He wasn’t like me, my John. He was a realist. I was a dreamer and half the time neither of us knew why we ever got married. We loved each other, there was no doubting that, but did we complete each other like the two beautiful lovers embracing to my left? No. “Alice.” I heard John’s voice through the crowd, but, as I looked around, I didn’t see him. “Alice.” He said only my name again and I whipped around to see John there…or at least what had been John fifteen months before. “Holy fucking shit…” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “Don’t curse.” John cringed as he corrected me. He hated cursing. He really hated the f-word but sometimes, I couldn’t help it. The man before me wasn’t the man I’d sent overseas all those months ago. “What the fuck did they do to you?” I completely neglected his disdain for foul language as I reached a shaking hand toward his head. His hair had been short when he’d left me, but there hadn’t been a long, thick scar on the right side of his head. The tissue there was completely devoid of hair. “You know that I can’t tell you that.” John’s eyes met mine and I flinched like I’d been smacked in the face. Even his eyes were different. The once vibrant blue had been replaced by a dull, lifeless grey. The light in his eyes, the light that I had fallen in love with, had been snuffed out. I looked him over thoroughly. A large black brace held his right leg perfectly straight, and, if I had noticed him before he noticed me, I would have seen him limping through the crowd. Worse still, his left hand was missing three fingers — his pinky through his middle — and pink scar tissue stretched from the now empty space to his wrist. Tears fell into my open mouth before I realized they were pouring down my 42


cheeks. At least he was alive, even if he wasn’t exactly in one piece. He had come home to me, just like he’d promised fifteen months before. John was never a man to lie and his word was all he ever really had at the end of the day. Louisiana boys are like that, ya’ know. The baby slung across my chest suddenly cooed and I remembered our son, the son John had yet to meet. My husband’s gray eyes almost lit up at the sound. If there had been a spark left, he would have saved it for his boy. “Colin.” John nearly purred our son’s name before offering me his scarred arms. I pulled Colin from the sling and laid him carefully in his father’s arms. And there was that spark. That final spark of life flashed into John’s eyes. I watched, transfixed, as the spark left John and danced through the air toward Colin’s face. It landed in his eyes — bright blue eyes his father had once had. “He’s beautiful.” John said through tears. I’d only seen him cry once before — the day he left me for that fucking sand box across the ocean. “Tell him everyday how much I love him. Tell him how proud I was to be his father.” John’s words gripped my throat like a gloved hand that squeezed until I gasped. “Mom!” My son’s voice ripped the hand from “Maybe they felt the need to lie my throat and with a single to the one person blink, John, the airport, the middle aged lovers all who truly completed them.” disappeared. This wasn’t an airport, there was never an airport. Airplanes and terminals might as well not even exist. But I was in a familiar place, a place I’d come to know better than my own home. Only a stone angel stood before me, not John at all. I wasn’t demanding in my fantasy. I imagined John injured, just like the rest of his battalion had come home. Never did I beg for a whole, healthy John — any form of him would have done. Even dead. I would have had closure; not a stone angel and an empty grave. “Presumed dead” had never been enough for me and it never would be. “Can we go home now? I have soccer at six.” Colin’s voice was closer than it had been before, and so much like his father’s it stung. I placed a hand on the cold stone angel and nodded before meeting my son’s eyes, John’s eyes. “Your father loved you so much and he’d have been so proud of you.” My own voice was older than it had been in my fantasy, just like I was. Sixteen years had come and gone since his plane should have touched down, since he should have come home. “I know.” Colin smiled and I saw John again. He was a dead-ringer for my husband, but he had my mind. Sometimes he was the one standing at this stone, imagining his father coming home. I knew it without his telling me. “I miss him too.” Colin said quietly. Only I understood his missing a man he never met; if I had never met John, I’d have missed him just the same.

43


Games Alex Gomes

The rain dripped off of his head as he shut the door behind him. “You’re late,” said Marten. “Sorry,” apologized Connor, “I didn’t realize we were keeping a tight schedule on this.” Marten smirked. “I just like things to be in order,” he picked up a video game controller and offered it to his friend with a smile. Connor took it with mumbled “Thanks.” He looked at the game, then up at Marten who returned the glance, then back to the blank TV screen, “I guess I’ll be the one to turn on the game, then.” “Oh, right.” Marten agreed quickly. Connor set down the controller and crawled across the carpet. Pressing the power button, Connor brought the television to life. He shuffled back and sat down on the couch. “So what’s up?” asked Connor, eyes fixed on the video game. “Not much since the last time you asked,” replied Marten, stealing a glance towards Connor’s profile before speaking again, “Did you hear about John and Emily?” “What, they break it off?” “Yeah.” “Shame. You thinking of trying to get her?” “No!” Marten quickly shouted. “Why not? She’s cute.” “I guess so.” All their talking went on while the on screen characters followed orders to the quiet clacking of buttons and joysticks hitting the plastic. Occasionally, Marten would have to reassert his attention to the game in front of him, just in time to avoid danger. “Seems like a lot of folks are like that.” “What?” “Breaking up or almost there,” said Connor. “Yeah.” “Maybe it’s not worth trying. Lot of heartache is what it is.” Connor punctuated his sentence with a mild scoff. “Loads of people say that. But three months later you see them falling again.” Marten’s character had stopped moving around, “I figure it’s always worth a shot, at being happy.” “You think?” Marten swallowed, his throat dry. He then nodded to himself, “Yeah. I mean that’s how we get what we want, right? Taking risks?” “I guess. Keep your guy moving,” Connor directed. The two on the screen were being attacked, but the warning was too late and their characters had died. The television repeated a simple message of “Play Again?” After a while, Connor spoke again, “Still seems like a lot of trouble.” “I think it’s always worth a try,” offered Marten, his eyes studied his friend’s shoes, and then moved up to his face. “Don’t you?” He simply grunted in reply, crawling across the floor to hit the reset button again. Marten frowned, sighing quietly. 44


Birds Fly East Drew Knapp

It was funny, it was the first time I’d ever touched holy water and I was getting my head dunked in it by this big, middle-aged bald guy. He was wearing a tropical shirt with these little toucans on it. Some of the toucans were wearing sunglasses and surfing and other toucans were dancing and drinking little cocktails with umbrellas in them. Every time this guy pulled my head out of the water, I could see that a lot of these toucans were covered in my blood. We were in one of those cheesy little chapels in Las Vegas. You know what I mean, those non-descript, stucco buildings offering drive-through matrimony. There was a big sign out front flashing, “ELVIS THEME SPECIAL: HALF OFF,” in blinding yellow light bulbs. The big toucan-shirted guy, he was the pastor at Viva Las Vegas Chapel. Every time he pulled my head back out of the communion fountain I got a blurry snapshot of the chaos around me. Behind the guy there was this girl named Tonya lying on the floor in one of those wedding dresses you’d only find in a Vegas chapel. It was covered in yellow stains, sweat or maybe even semen. Who knew in a place like that. All I could really focus on was how black the spots of blood looked against the white of her chest. Splash. Back underwater, I told myself I’d done this dozens, maybe even hundreds of times and no one’s ever died. It worked the same way every time. Pick up some drunk and lonely girl in a casino or bar, get hitched, and go back to her hotel room to celebrate glorious matrimony. Re: fuck our brains out. Re: steal her jewelry and cash. Then leave before morning a couple thousand dollars richer. I always brought the girls to Viva. The pastor and I split the take in exchange for unlimited false marriages. He didn’t know my name and I didn’t know his. Really we were nothing but a couple of actors. Re: conmen. Re: leeches I guess you could add murderers to that list now too. Breathe. Back out of the water, pastor-guy, he said, “What the fuck kid? What did you do to her?” I just shrugged my shoulders. I could barely breathe through the globs of blood leaking out of my nose. It must have exploded when he hit me. Some of it dyed the water red. I thought of Jesus turning water to wine and laughed. Old baldy thought I was laughing at him. He pushed my head back underwater. He said, “You just had to go and fuck it up, didn’t you? You little shit.” His voice sounded hazy and distant through the water. I felt his fingers tighten their grip on my hair and drag me back out. He pulled me in so close I could smell the stale cheese fries on his breath. Pastor, my ass. His eyes were gray like old age, not steel or silver. He was fading, but weren’t

45


we all. Anyways, he looked me in the eyes and said, “Now tell me what the hell you did to her.” “I didn’t do shit.” That was what I told him. I said, “I came here with Tonya and she went to change and when she didn’t come out, I went to find her. She was like this when I found her. It looks like you shot her.” Then he said, “The blood’s yours kid, from when I busted your nose.” Great, now I’ve got DNA and who knows what else on this girl. I’m done for sure. Re: jail time. Re: fucked. The irony of the situation made me laugh. Of course she was dead and of course I was the one linked to her murder. So I said, “How the fuck did she die then?” And this tourist looking moron, this old pastor phony, he just shrugged and walked away to the bathroom. My whole upper body was wet by now with blood and holy water. That girl, Tonya, she’d been a chump. She’d wanted a tropical theme mixed with a traditional wedding. What that amounted to was her in a wedding dress and a pastor in a toucan shirt and me in a grass skirt and lei. So here I was next to her now like a wet sponge, trying not to look over at her face turning blue. The guy, he came back with a little orange bottle in his hand. He was gripping it loosely, like he was afraid to touch it or something. When he got close he tossed it to me. “It was in her purse,” he said. I popped the white cap off, twisting first to get past the child lock. Then I gave the little container a tip. Out came a handful of prescription drugs. They looked like candy in my hand. A handful of little, white, beetle-shaped Hydrocodones with M357 carefully carved on each one. Blue doughnut Valiums. Blood red DXM’s. I should have figured she was a beamer. I found her at this bar drinking alone. I offered to buy her a drink. She said, “Why the hell not.” I should have known. It shouldn’t have been hard to tell. I mean to begin with, her mouth should have given it away. Her lips were too fat and red and behind them, teeth bleached bright white as beach sand. I should have known it was all a fake. A sham. But aren’t we all. I bet behind the bleach on her teeth and the fat red lips, there’s a woman who used to smoke cigarettes so much the tar would stay stuck between her gums. Lips cracked and chapped yellow so bad she couldn’t open her mouth all the way. She probably had to sew herself together every time she went out. Never two channel clicks from a plastic surgery commercial. After drinks we’d gone to a casino. Slots, she kept saying over and over. That’s all she wanted to do. So we got on a machine. She pulled the little lever and the cherries started spinning. I could see their reflection in her eyes. And when it finally clicked to a stop, it was two red sevens and 46


a yellow bell. Nothing lined up. So she flipped out, started banging on the machine so bad a big bouncer guy had to come sweep us out the door. Pushing us and apologizing at the same time, like he was really upset we had to leave. Outside the big glass doors, she lit up a cig. Her fingernails were bright red just like her lips. All that red should have been like a big stop sign. It was practically screaming at me and I blew through it like I was blind. She used to be a nurse. A fucking nurse. That’s what she tells me as we walked down the strip, her with her cigarette, me trying not to step on all the little pamphlets advertising prostitutes and escorts. I felt weird walking all over a bunch of topless women, with their rocket-ship tit-jobs, legs open, like they actually wanted to fuck you. She said mostly she did reception work. At work she’d say stuff like, “How can I help you today?” Or, “What’s the problem sir?” Or, “Have a nice day.” And the whole time she was talking, I was looking at these women on the ground, thinking they probably say the same stuff at work. She said she was “regretfully let go last year.” Now I was looking at her blue face on the floor and thinking she probably got fired for stealing drugs. Some patient about to piss her pants probably found her on the linoleum floor drooling with her eyes rolled back into her skull. I told the pastor all this and he just laughed. He said, “Jesus Christ kid, you sure know how to pick ’em huh?” He grabbed a towel from the altar and tossed it to me. “Clean up,” he says. “We need to go.” This confused me, not because of the “go” part, because of the “we” part. “What do you mean ‘we’?” I said through the altar cloth. All I could think of was Jesus’ loincloth. So he said, “Not now kid. Just clean up your face. I’m going to change. We need to get out of here.” “Where are we going?” I said. “Kid. There’s a fucking dead girl on the floor with your blood all over her. We’re going anywhere but here,” he said. Cut back to Tonya on the floor. Cut to me thinking I could really use one of her cigarettes right about now. “And for God sakes put something else on.” He rummaged in the outfit closet and pulled out this Elvis costume. “Here, put this on while I go get another shirt.” I started to wrestle my shirt of. He said, “What’s your name kid?” “Slug,” I said. “Slug like the bullet, not the bug.” He nodded and turned to find other clothes. Over his shoulder he said, “Well congratulations Slug, We’re now on the run.” I could just see the TV announcement. WANTED: MURDERER OF DRUGGIE BRIDE, LAST SEEN WEARING TIGHT WHITE BELL-BOTTOMS AND LOW CUT V-NECK. POSSIBLE GOLD CHAINS AND ELVIS WIG. * If you liked “Birds fly east” then check out the full text version available on our web site: www.silhouette.collegemedia.com.

47


CHAPTER 4:

photography 48


milkweed

Kaitlyn fohl

49


artist gallery: nathan tavernaris

Fern

50


rude awakening 51


logan

christine aker

52


winston

felicia brower

53


the watchful eye

54


Lesley Stowe

55


spring break “at the end of the day, all photography boils down to is pushing a button at the right moment. anyone can push a button - the real trick is finding the right moments.�

-k.c. weimann

56


editor’s pick

grapes 57


masks

Thoughts from kc: “I don’t have a specific ‘style’ of shooting. If anything, my style is that I lack a coherent style. I try to let my photos reflect their context. If I’m having a sloppy-drunk night on the town, I try to take sloppy-drunk photos. If I’m at a loud noisy metal show, I try to take loud noisy photos. If I can relate to the viewer a true sense of what it was like to exist in that moment then I’ve succeeded.” 58


moth

rat art

59


SIlhou et katie hagan

te staf

f

editor in chief

elise chretien photography editor

rachel east

brian ivasauskus poetry editor

communications director

rachAel leon

kristen walker

assistant fiction editor

public relations director

alyssa haak

vanessa williams alumni relations director

fiction editor

brittney trimmer

allen jung

art editor

promotions director

kelley junco production manager

alex pirillo

wei hann

distributions manager

graphic designer

sydney morgan

darien foster

general staff

webmaster

marianne duchane general staff 60


Index Aker, Christine

52

Brower, Felicia

53

Fohl, Kaitlyn

21

Gloeckner, Erin

10

Gomes, Alex

13, 44

Griffin, Ashley Nicole 11 Harder, Christian

12

Knapp, Drew

45

Knoth, Melanie

28, 29, 31

Legard, Jacqui

19

Minogue, Tom

16, 18

Munchak, Christine

22, 23, 25, 32, 33

Pirillo, Alexandria

14

Stahl, Chris

24, 26, 27

Stowe, Lesley

54

Tavernaris, Nathan

50, 51

Waring, Megan

15

Weimann, KC

56, 57, 58, 59

Weyland, Amber

42

White, Lauren

8, 17

Williamson, Caitlin

37

If you are an undergraduate or graduate student at Virginia Tech, Silhouette welcomes your submissions. You can submit your work in person at 344 Squires Student Center or you can e-mail your submission to submit@collegemedia.com. More details are located on our Web site www.silhouette.collegemedia.com.

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Dear Readers, At Silhouette, we are all about switching things up from semester to semester. This issue of Silhouette is the first entirely full color issue, the theme of the design is intended to represent a graphic novel, and the printing style is designed around the theme. Inspired by authors and artists who display their gifts through the graphic novel genre, the Silhouette staff has worked all semester to produce the best magazine possible. We contacted a local artist to design the cover and then we based the inside of the magazine on his work. We kept the color use minimal yet attractive to better showcase the magnificent artists, poets, authors, and photographers that have graciously submitted their pieces to this publication. Thank you so much to the entire Silhouette staff for working tirelessly all semester to produce this magazine. A special thanks to Kelley and Wei - you two put all you had into this project and I am so grateful that we got to work together. Read this magazine from cover to cover. I promise, you do not want to miss a thing.

Katherine Hagan Editor in Chief


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