Folio: SLCC’s Literary & Arts Magazine Fall 2012 To Do Something With The Sky

TO DO Something

WITH THE SKY

Artist Lewis Tilly |1

Speaking without Words

Everything started in early 2006 back in Ivory Coast. My friend Amy suggested I try to immigrate to the United States of America and told me about the visa green card lottery. While we both applied, Amy, unfortunately, did not receive the same opportunities as me. A year after submitting my petition, I received a letter from the National Visa Center informing me that I had won the lottery. I would have a green card that would allow me to live and work in America legally. So many possibilities lay in store for me; however, as the time of my departure approached, I felt devastated. Though anticipating a good life in the US, it was so hard for me to think that I would be without my family and friends during that time.

communicate. At the airport, they gave me paperwork and showed me where to sign. Though I followed their instructions carefully, I could not read the words. Even as they tried to explain, I could not understand the paperwork. In the hustle and bustle of customs, as the officer continued to direct me through the forms, my mind raced with questions. O God, what I got myself into. Where is someone who can translate for me? What am I doing? I need help.

Two months later, I started my job search, but could not find a job because of my lack of English skills. One day, I went to a place called SOS Staffing and filled out the application. During the interview, I was so terrified that my heart raced and my hands shook. Desperate to get a job, I remember looking at the woman interviewing me as if I were a lost puppy, eager to find a friend. As she asked questions I could not understand, my heart pounded faster. After a question, I paused and thought over my answer know-

On October 22, 2007, I left Ivory Coast for a new journey.

Coming to the United States, I noticed how more than the language differences separated me from Americans. Socially, people live private and exclusive lives; it takes months or years to engage in a conversation with your next-door neighbor. In Africa, people are more social; your neighbor can come to your house at any time, to eat, or even help each other. In addition to cultural barriers, everything seemed harder as I struggled with a language barrier.

Being an immigrant is a big risk in life, especially with language difficulty.

From the moment I stepped off the plane, I realized how strange and intimidating it was to be in a place where I could not 2 | Author Fatima Outtara

Artist Shannon Holt || 33

ing that, I might lose the job opportunity if I said no. I took a risk and decided to answer all questions with “yes, yes.” Our interview continued and she said: “Tell me about yourself.”

Having no idea what she said, I responded, “Yes.” She then asked me to describe my experience and skills.

“Yes,” I answered.

She sat there for a second looking at my face before continuing to the next question. I prayed I had not said something wrong, but wondered what she was thinking.

After she asked me what I knew about the company, my nerves took over and I wanted to run from the room. However, considering that would be disrespectful, I looked at her and simply replied, “Yes.” She smiled and wrote on a piece of paper, “What language do you speak?”

I told her “French” and received another gracious smile.

Then slowly, with gestures to emphasize what she said and to help me understand, she told me three simple words. Pointing at me, she said, “You have job” I exhale and smiled at her, not because I got the job, but because the way she had said it was funny and nice of her.

After my interview, I thought about what my father had always said to me, “If you are good, life will be little easier so be strong and patient.”

I got my first job as a sorter at the former DHL, an international shipping company processing facility in Salt Lake. My job was not hard and mainly consisted of matching the city codes on boxes and envelopes with their destination. On my first day, the trainer taught us how to do the work. She would say something and show us how to do it. Though I did not understand a word of what she was saying, I learned by focusing on her movements and 4|

watching her signals. Several thoughts went through my mind. I hoped I was guessing right. I reminded myself to focus and to not make mistakes and tried to reassure myself that everything would be alright.

The job was in a warehouse with so many different people, so many noises, and everyone busy doing their job. After few hours everything stopped. I saw people running, but I did not know why.

Five minutes later, I decided to go check what was going on and found everyone eating in different groups and talking in different languages. Some African people smiled at me and tried to tell me something, but I did not understand. I stood to the side looking at them and thinking, Wow! No one was speaking the same language as me. As the day passed, I became more confused and worried.

As time passed, everything seemed fine until one day while working something hit me in the back. I looked around, but did not see anyone throwing anything. I did not know what to say or ask about it, so I let it go. It happened again and that time I saw the person. He was a medium white American about 140lb, and 5 foot 10inch about. Still, I did not know what to say because of my lack of English skills. Then it became a game for him. Every day he would throw something at me. Though I tried not to let others know, inside, I was sad. I felt sad and did not know why he was so mean to me. In fact, I was afraid to talk or complain. I thought that maybe if I spoke up they would not understand me, and I would be fired. Therefore, I decided to be quiet and do my job, hoping it would stop; nevertheless, the man continued to throw boxes at me.

One day, it was particularly busy at work and I was moving so fast I had forgotten about him when he threw a box at me.

Afterward, he just laughed while I stood there feeling like a stupid girl. My feelings turned from hurt to anger, and I wanted to slap his face. Yet, I remembered what my father had taught me about being good and strong before I left for America. He had told me not to quit on anything, not to feel sorry for myself, not to make excuses, |5

and not to fight. From him, I learned to work hard for my achievements and not to expect anything simply handed to me. Nevertheless, while nothing good comes easily, I should not let anyone push me around. I must respect not only others, but myself. Trying to push back my anger, I determined to talk to my boss.

I did not care if he would understand me, but I had to do it.

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll wrote, “Quand vous ne pouvez-vous rappeler le mot anglais qui désigne tel ou tel objet, parlez français...” which means, when you cannot remember the English word for this or that object, speak French. I decided I would mix all the languages I knew to try help him understand me.

I went to his office, to knock the door. Standing for a while, I tried a couple more times to gather my courage before finally knocking. He answered.

“Talk to you please?” I shakily asked. Seeing my red eyes, he waved his hand and said, “Come on in,” very calmly before asking me what the matter was.

I started talking to him very loudly in French, “Je ne sais pas ce que j’ai fais a ce monsieur, il me jette du carton a chaque occasion.” In an African dialect, I said, “Tougan ka guellait dai,” before returning back to French. “Je ne le connais pas, je ne lui ai jamais parlé.”

I only said one English word, at the end – “Why?” As I think back on this conversation, it makes me remember the film Spanglish. There is a scene where twelve-year old daughter, Cristina, must translate for her mother who does not speak much English. As her head quickly turns from side to side, she in6|

terprets her mother’s anger and another character’s (John) confusion. As the conversation continues, John’s apology is not enough for the mother, who struggles to find the perfect word to describe what enrages her. After some head shaking and hand wringing, she triumphs, and Cristina succeeds in translating to the English equivalent.

My boss calmed me down by slowly moving his hands in the air and told me everything would be alright. Something really touched me inside while I was talking to my boss. The sympathetic look on his face made me feel so great inside as I felt that someone understood a little of what I was trying to say. I knew as if someone touched my heart that he understood what upset me. I was amazed to know the boss did not understand all the different languages I was telling him, but he did understand the meaning. I realized how human connections are so strong when we care for each other and are willing to listen with more than our ears. It does not matter whether you speak different languages or perfect English. Even though my boss did not completely understand me, we sorted out the situation. With a few gestures, I pointed the man out to him. Mercifully, my boss decided to move him to another area.

Today, it has been four years since I came to America. Life is still challenging, but I am trying to experience them with the positive outlook my father taught me. I carefully maneuver through complicated situations with better understanding. Though not as difficult when I first arrived, the language barrier is still there.

Even now, when I am talking in a group of people, someone will respond to me while another will ask them, “What did she say? I do not know how you can understand her.” Though it is easy only to speak with those who understand me, my many experiences here in the US have taught me that communicating with another is more than just understanding the words they say. It is about reaching out, sincerely caring, and wanting to know the other person in a better way. |7

8 | Artist Betty Cuanalo

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injustice You taught me that great writers Break the mold They push the boundaries of Accepted thought And punished me for trying to do the same You proclaimed the talents Of the socially defiant artist Who changed the status quo And defied taboos And criticized when I challenged your ruling You encouraged out-of-the-box ideas The kind of thoughts that give birth To greatness and remembrance that Spans the centuries

To rise to new strength, new heights New thoughts May your red pen turn on you Cancelling your dreams, May your misguided ideals Lead you to broken paths.

That is the fate I condemn you to That is the judgment I pass You were the judge, jury and Executioner Of all I hoped to achieve I shall be the same to your future In the only way I know how With a pen, paper and Wicked tongue

May you never know I wrote this at you But when I crossed that line, I found You shouldn’t be worth my time my way barred But the injustice still stings By red pens and docked points I can’t be who you expect me to be Even after all these years I won’t change who I am And IF I did, And as these words are finished It wouldn’t be for you.

The burns shall heal You hypocritical dream-slayer And I will forget you Do not glory in the works of old If you will not allow Perhaps that is your punishment The next generation

10 | Author Lindsey Stewart

Goddess I used to defy gravity.

I swayed deliberately when I walked.

The boys gave up their hearts to me.

They listened when my body talked.

I swayed deliberately when I walked.

I knew the power in my hips.

They listened when my body talked And answered me with trembling lips.

I knew the power in my hips.

I used it well to make my way.

They answered me with trembling lips And whispered what I couldn’t say.

I used it well to make my way.

Until I found my way to you.

You whispered what I couldn’t say.

It didn’t matter what was true.

Until I found my way to you, I used to defy gravity.

It didn’t matter what was true.

The boys gave up their hearts to me.

Author Teena Brown | 11

Under the Table

More than just the Remains of Dinner Studies have suggested that it is important for families to have at least one meal together around the dinner table. A few of the benefits to eating together include increased communication, superior academic performance, improved nutrition, and healthy child development. My experience around the dinner table was not limited to being around the dinner table with my family; it included being under the table as well.

The house is finally quiet; there is only me and the cat left moving about the house. As I survey the damage that is left behind, I wish there was an army to assist in the clean up. Spaghetti is a simple enough meal but the aftermath is almost not worth the trouble. Although our family cat, Pleepleus, is awesome, he lacks the rewards of being a dog. In times like these I wish I could ask a dog to help me clean up and he would go right to work eating the stray spaghetti. My cat, on the other hand, assumes his role of sitting on the table watching me on all fours pick up each piece of stray spaghetti as if to say, “Oh there’s one over there and some over there and don’t forget that piece over there, good girl!” I can’t help but say out loud, to make it perfectly understandable to Pleepleus, “Don’t get used to the idea of me down here and you up there.” His response; he closes his eyes as if to take a nap, ignoring everything I just said. He begins his routine of himself instead of helping me with the floor.

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Author Lenora Glass

Artist Sarah Abraham | 13

I can see the meal in my mind that created this disaster, the stories of each of our days shared, from the early morning orchestra practice to the mailbox my husband will now replace on Saturday morning for a little old lady. My husband’s kind act will be a great addition to our annual Christmas letter, although I’ll need to leave out the part about my husband backing over it.

I forgot how great it used to be sitting under the dinner table.

As a child, under the kitchen table was my version of an IMAX theater. I remember the coolness of the tile floor during the summer; the tile was a relief from the scorching heat. In winter, the kitchen tile floor offered a chilling zap when stepped on, much like one of those trick fountain pens that shocks you unexpectedly when you push the top down.

Under the table, the world around me could continue to spin and shift and couldn’t be halted because of the small child listening or seeing what was going on. No one ever knew I was there, I was invisible, a fly on the wall if you will. I overheard Christmas discussions and disagreements between my parents: the only ones I have ever witnessed. I saw boyfriend and girlfriend breakups, and the local gossip shared between old ladies having coffee. I didn’t have television to watch; my father wouldn’t allow television in our home until I was in eighth grade, and even then we were limited to one hour a week. I tell my children this story and they are amazed I survived. Now don’t get me wrong, my children barely have time to watch television between hockey and early morning orchestra practice, school and all the other extracurricular activities.

When the kitchen door was open, I could even see far beyond the activities of our kitchen. I could see a neighbor washing his car, our dog weaving left and right making his way through the sage brush toward the next house. He was on his way over to chat it up with another dog. I wonder what they would talk about.

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I could even look far beyond the houses gathered in this small circle and see cars on the highway. I would sometimes imagine I was in one of those cars traveling far away to cities where there are lights everywhere and people, tons of people moving busily, as the ants move, rushing in and out of their ant hill homes. Where were these cars traveling to I would wonder. Was there a small child like me in one of those cars? Was that small child looking back at this small Indian reservation wondering if there was a small child staring back at them? Just as my mind would begin to wonder what life would be like out there instead of here under the table, a gust of wind would come through and quickly slam the door shut, as if to say, “Not so fast,” blowing away the desire to be in one of those cars.

Under the table I heard my mother find out that her father’s long battle with cancer had ended. I could hear her quiet sobbing and the shifting of her feet as she sat at the kitchen table. I wonder what was going through her mind. Was it thoughts of my grandfather as she was growing up? Was she sad we would no longer hear him sing peyote songs in the corner of the living room in the early mornings when we went to visit? Would she miss the combination of spices and a touch of sweetness he had as you wrapped your arms around him to receive his great “bear” hug? I didn’t understand death; I just knew this meant I would not see my grandfather again, and my quiet tears began to flow as well. As we sat there unknowingly crying together, I could see my father’s dusty overworked cowboy boots rush to her side to comfort her. I wished I could take that pain away from my mother. My mother is a strong woman. Years later my mother would make my grandfather proud by becoming the council woman for our tribe. There are very few times I have seen my mother cry, and each have been from under that table.

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Many mornings I could sit there and watch the sun come up over the great Ute Mountain, slowly, brighter and brighter, as it would rise this small reservation would begin to awake. I could hear old pickup trucks groan as their owners turned the key to leave to work, the birds singing and the crisp cold air hit my lungs like a jolt of energy running through my body, making me feel like I could run forever if I wanted to. The smell of coffee would fill the air and compete with the bacon—in my mind the bacon would win. My mother and grandmother would be up making bread; I would sit under the table and build enough courage to steal some bread and sometimes be daring enough to steal a cup of coffee for myself to dunk my bread in, I say courage because if I got caught with coffee let alone bread I would get scolded,

This inability does have its occasional back fire. There are times I am stuck watching ALL of the small children as their mothers help with bread making. When I say all the children I mean ALL the small children, children who could easily fit in a school bus, (okay maybe that’s an exaggeration,) but still, that is a lot of kids for one person to look after. They don’t want to all cooperate and play a game together, it’s like someone dropping a jar of marbles, they explode in every direction some together and some by themselves. It’s during these occasions I think I could get me my rolling pin out and declare I can make bread just as fast as the next person as I hold it above my head like a sword, a knight getting ready to charge into battle, like a scene from Braveheart.

“Coffee isn’t good for kids, wait until breakfast is served to eat some bread,” or,

“You can make fun of me but you can never take away my freedom to make fry bread!”

“That’s it, that is your piece of bread so don’t expect to get another piece.”

I’m the odd ball of my family. I’m the only one besides my Uncle Roderick who is left handed and I’m the only one who learned to tie my shoe laces using a stuffed animal who wore shoes.

Under the table I could hear the flapping sound the bread would make as my mother and grandmother would slap the dough back and forth between their hands making the circular shape on Indian bread. This flapping sound was like the ringing of a cowboy’s dinner bell, when you heard this going on in the kitchen you knew it was almost time to eat a delicious meal. That flapping and shaping of the bread is a technique I have never really mastered.

As I’ve grown up, my family will find a great deal of entertainment from this because I am the only Indian they know of who has to use a rolling pin. I would have to say the joke is on them. As a result, when in search for volunteers to make bread for large gatherings, I am the last person who would be asked to help because I can sit with the men and listen to their stories and laugh at their entertaining adventures.

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I would love for my biggest worry to be about learning to tie my shoe laces instead of the worries of an adult. I don’t take pleasure in picking up spaghetti off the floor under the table, but I am glad that spaghetti can take me back to a simpler time in my life, and I can’t help but chuckle under my own table. As I picked up the remaining spaghetti, I noticed I wasn’t alone under the table. A lone pair of my little boys’ shoe sits on its side in a dark shadow with Buzz Light Year grinning at me. The owner of that shoe looks like he is going to be left handed too.

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Artist Sara Coats

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Freedom To all of our soldiers who are in the fox hole making a deal with god to let this not be how they die.

To all the mothers of our soldiers who let their babies go to war in their camo pants and their guns, never to return or be heard again.

One so Valiant, looking through a sea of glass to his approaching quest in the lower sphere, turned to the King.

To the wives of the soldiers who are building their homes one brick at a time.

“My King, I beg of thee, before I go to that sphere, to take my heart and seal it that it be not sullied.”

To the children of our soldiers who live without so we can be free

And the King did seal the Valiant’s heart – though not in iron, but in Autism. Heart now clad in star-bright light, but light seen only by those with eyes to see and ears to hear. From the rest, however, it would mask his secret identity; all they would see was that he was… different.

To the fathers who have raised their child to be the honorable, peace seeking soldier that they are We all owe you our freedom and we are thankful for it.

We thank all the mothers, wives, fathers, children and most of all the soldiers who have suffered horrible loses and are dead and alive we owe everything to you so thanks.

Thanks doesn’t sound like enough for all the suffering that you have endured but thanks is all that I have so again thanks for all that you have done for me and you are one of the few that stood up for what is right.

“There,” said the King, “Your heart and mind will be safer now from certain soiling in that lower sphere.”

“It is so bright.” said the Valiant, “What is this diamond casing called?”

The Queen spoke now, “It is called Autism,” and then added with a wink, “All the elect are wearing it this season.”

Be safe

20 | Author Stacey Barnett

Author Dannie Libby

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Ice Cream for

Perspective

We are always so busy at our house between the hours of 3:00 and 5:00. Everybody has homework to do. Today, I have my mind set on finishing my math homework, so I send Ethan to the kitchen with the instruction of finishing his homework packet on his own. I’m hoping this seclusion will decrease any distractions from his brother, who is happily reading rather loudly on our couch.

that my own third grade heartbreak makes a dramatic shift in my brain from rosy childhood memory to front line perspective. In a flash, I am brought back to my own moment in time way back in the third grade . . .

I am just logging on to my online math course when I hear it. It’s Ethan . . . crying, that kind of genuine cry that comes out of proud hearted souls so rarely that I know it is deeply felt. Even if I wanted to, my heartstrings won’t let me finish a single math problem now. I walk into the kitchen and without a word between us I take Ethan by the hand and lead him down the hall into my room.

We sit on my bed and I wrap my arms around him as he wets my shirt with tears and snot.

Finally, he is calm enough to talk.

“Mom, I tried really hard. I did my work careful. I even wrote it all out on a piece of paper. I don’t know what I did wrong. I thought I did good but all I got was fifty seven percent!” I thought I was good at math, but I’m not. It took me such a long time. I was sitting there for almost an hour . . . just fifty seven percent!”

He starts to cry again and all I can think to do is hug him. It takes several more moments like this before I realize he is talking about a math test he failed at school today. As I hold him closely, stroking the back of his head, I search my memory for the exactly right way to comfort a third grade heartbreak. It is at this moment

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Author Camille Jensen

****************

There I am, sitting in the van next to my mom as she drives to Baskin Robbins. She’s asking me what flavor I want, then, with no reply from me, she guesses it will be chocolate. Normally I’d be bouncing up and down in my seat in anticipation - envisioning my first lick of that sticky sweet chocolatey ice cream, but not today. Nothing, not even chocolate ice cream, can cheer me up. My heart has completely broken. I have lost my best friend.

I didn’t actually lose her. I know where she is. She is in her house, the same house I’d been to over 50 times in my young life.

We had been best friends since kindergarten.

****************

Even back then, we were wildly imaginative creatures.

We’d made a map of the kindergarten playground with all the possible exit strategies for sneaking out of the school. The goal was

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to sneak away and walk to Laura’s house where we were sure we could convince her mom to let us play in her room all day long instead of going back to school. Once, we actually did get past the guard and out of the playground, but we were caught before turning the last corner and promptly returned to kindergarten. Rats!

We were in the same classroom for first and second grade too, and our bond had just strengthened. We planned our outfits so that we would always match each other and then conveniently pretended it was completely when everyone noticed. We made secret traps to catch leprechauns behind the bushes. We were positive it was just a matter of time before we caught one. We’d successfully defended the girl’s jungle gym from being taken over by the boys and we’d even made up our own secret handshake.

By second grade, our daily routine was ingrained into best friend law. We walked together, played together, stood in the lunch line together. And, even though we sat across the room from each other, to keep connected during class time, we passed notes back and forth. We wrote all our notes in top secret, made up languages that changed so frequently, even we forgot how to decode them. We always made our recess plans in the morning so we knew exactly which spot on the playground to secure as soon as the bell rang. Our favorites were jump rope, jungle gym, hopscotch, and four-square.

Third grade was the first year since preschool that Laura and I were not in the same classroom. This new separation made the school day seem painfully long. I missed the bond we shared when we could pass notes, talk and share funny looks about the lectures all day in class. The absence of my constantly arm linked companion during class time made me realize that I really didn’t have any other friends at school. So, far, I hadn’t worried about anyone besides my best friend. That all changed today.

Laura was not on the playground this morning. Not only 24 |

do we not have a set plan for where to meet at recess, I don’t even know if Laura is coming to school today. As I walk inside my class, a girl asks me if I want to play hopscotch with her and another girl later. “Sure”, I say, without really feeling confident in my decision. I know I’m taking a gamble because I haven’t even talked to Laura yet. I’m hoping that when Laura finally gets to school, I can easily convince her to play hopscotch with us, too.

When it comes time for recess, however, Laura is not thrilled with my surprise request.

“Hopscotch?” she says, “With them?”

“Yes. Can you play with us, too?”

“No.” “Why not?”

“Because, I’m going to go play foursquare with the girls in my class, that’s why not.”

Each of us (a little too proud to back down now), go our separate ways on purpose for the first time ever. I play hopscotch and Laura plays foursquare. I am surprised at one point with how wrapped up in the game I get and that I’m actually enjoying myself without my best friend. This realization makes me miss her and I start to think that maybe I should check on what she is doing. Just as I’m thinking this, the bell rings and we have to go inside.

As uneasy as I realize I am with this new experience, I figure Laura and I can still figure it out later. Like at lunch time, maybe.

Waiting for this proves to be a very difficult thing.

Sitting for the last fifteen minutes in my seat before the lunch bell to ring takes almost as long as it does for the last bell to ring on the last day of school before summer. I am almost certain that the longer I stare at the clock, the slower the second hand tics in response. Finally, I see that there is only one minute left, and I | 25

slowly slide over to the edge of my seat.

As soon as I hear the sound of static fuzz that’s always followed by the loud sound of the bell, I dash out of my seat. Going down the sidewalk, I am half running/half walking. This way, I will get to Laura’s classroom as fast as I can without being slowed down by any of those lunch guards. Unfortunately, it still takes me two whole minutes to get to her classroom and by the time I get to her door, she isn’t there.

Letting out a defeated sigh, I walk to the lunch line by myself, while other kids run, trip and laugh all around me. I am annoyed at this, but I tell myself that Laura is probably in the bathroom and will be glad when she sees that I’ve saved her a spot in the lunch line.

I get to the line and place my hands on my hips. I bow my elbows out from my body so they look like arrows pointing behind me. This way I can keep the kid behind me from bumping me forward in the line. I can stand alone, yet conveniently save room for Laura whenever she arrives. I am twisting around in my spot now, slowly swaying my pointed elbows back and forth, as I search the playground for Laura. I want to call her over to her spot next to me in line as soon as I see her.

Then, to my surprise, I twist around towards the line again and see Laura talking to another girl, standing about twenty kids ahead of me. Without even thinking, I leave my spot to go stand with her. Walking up to Laura, I’m hoping for the usual hugged greeting before we each take our turns explaining what happened earlier. As I get to her, however, she just keeps talking to the other girl.

“Hi,” I say, trying to announce my own presence, since she had failed to do so herself – and also trying to butt into her conversation. She keeps talking. I try again – “Hi,” this time adding 26 |

a wave rather close to Laura’s face so she will be sure to acknowledge me.

With this, Laura stops talking, turns to me and says, “No cutting in line” and then pushes me out of the line and away from her.

My heart drops and my stomach twists into a giant knot.

Did my best friend just push me? Were we actually fighting? Are we no longer friends? My eyes start to water and I realize that I don’t want to be standing there anymore.

Sad and rejected, I walk to the very back of the lunch line where I finally let my tears fall silently to myself. We don’t eat lunch together. We don’t play during the second recess together.

We don’t even wait together for our mom’s to pick us up after school.

****************

Now, as I’m trying my hardest not to re-live this fresh memory over and over, I find myself dragging behind my mom into the Baskin Robbins. I feel like the gloomiest eight year old on the planet about to eat chocolate ice cream. And, then, to add insult to my emotional injury, as we walk inside, I see Laura and her mom seated at a table with their own freshly scooped ice cream cones in hand.

My first instinct is to hide and create a reason to get out of there – but it’s too late. Before I can even think of an excuse to go home, our moms see each other and instantly decide we should all sit at the same table . . . great.

So, there we are, Laura and I. Stuck sitting across from each | 27

other in polite silence, letting our chocolate cones drip down our fingers, occasionally giving a reluctant lick or two.

As Laura and I are busily glancing at every possible thing in the room except for each other, I can feel the memory of standing alone in the lunch line after being rejected returning to me. My ice cream gently greets my fingers again, so I take a few more licks, but I can feel my throat swelling up more and more with each swallow. I’m trying hard not to cry, but I can feel my face is getting red hot with emotion.

Finally, I look at Laura. She looks at me, too.

And then, for no real explainable reason, as if the time to start over just magically appears, Laura and I hand our mom’s our ice cream cones, slide underneath the table, do our secret handshake and decided to stay best friends forever –again.

It isn’t until much later in life that I learn that our mom’s had totally conspired and set up the ice cream encounter at the Baskin Robbins. They must have known we would work it all out and stay friends if given the opportunity to just start over.

****************

I had forgotten all about my third grade heartbreak until today. Raising children provides the best lessons in empathy and full circle perspectives available. If someone else in my family or circle of friends feels sad, I feel bad for them. But, when my sons feel hurt, I hurt too. Sitting here, holding my sweet boy, my heart is just breaking for him too and I want to do anything to help him feel better again.

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After several more minutes of his own bitter tears, he stops crying and gets quiet. I know he is waiting for my wise words that will make it all better. My mind races with the best way to put my thoughts in order for him. How can I validate him but let him realize that all is not really lost? I start with the most basic things first.

“You really are good at math,” I say. “It was just one test.

Remember the other day when you got a ninety eight percent on your math test? I bet you just need to try again . . . “ Then, like magic, before I can even finish the sentence, he gets up and goes back into the kitchen to work on his homework.

Knowing better than to press the issue with him further I change the subject (and my shirt), and get back to my own math homework.

Later, at dinner, we are all taking turns saying what our favorite things were from the day. When it’s Ethan’s turn, he looks right at me and says “My favorite thing today was hugging mom and having her help me calm down.” If appreciation could be a mother’s pay check, I just got a bonus.

Everyone is happy now, swallowing down spaghetti in ways that make me feel glad we aren’t in public. I look at my little Ethan who is all smiles again and I know, just like me, his third grade heartbreak is already a thing of the past.

In the end, it’s almost as if we’re all just waiting for the magic permission to start over after something goes wrong. We need to know that all is not lost in those moments that we feel like we are at our worst. Sometimes, having someone with an outside perspective is all we need to move on. Sometimes, even the tiniest thing, like an ice cream cone or a hug, can inspire us to keep going.

How marvelous we humans are.

| 29

Artist C J Armantrout

30 |

| 31

“Nothing Gold Can Stay”: Wading through the orange sea – I can’t help but think about What will become of me?

Specks of green provide some hope While lines of yellow Contribute to the metal rope.

Anger and confusion Fill my mind – In ten minutes, I’ll be in a bind.

To take such an easy path to Describing nature’s worth.

Has done justice Only to your existence As if not persistent, this gold.

Winters kiss and a fallen garden Nothing gold can lay forgotten.

So is man, so am I.

The sea has ended, but the puddles linger on.

It is a never-ending cycle So, COME ON!

32 | Author Brittany Carlson

| 33 Author C J Armantrout

In the midst of the Rockies sits a 148,733 acre national park.

This region represents 150 million years of aged sedimentation.

With 150 million years in the making you can only imagine all the various history that sculptured this environment. Shallow seas once thrived here. In other eras ponds, lakes, and streams had their measure of time. However, the most dominate forces were when the vast deserts covered this landscape. Winds blew one dune on top of another until the sands reached a depth of more than 2,000 feet. The track of these ancient winds can still be seen in the graceful cross bedded strata of these mighty cliffs, causing the beautiful hues of creams, pinks, reds, oranges and browns greeting the visitor’s eye with such a pleasured plethora of color and contrast .

Humans have been habituating this 232 square mile area for only about 8,000 years. The Anasazi’s, the Parowan Fremont, the Parrusits, followed by the Southern Paiute Native American’s and more recently the early American Mormon settlers in 1858.

Perhaps by now you have guessed the landscape I am referring to. . . Zion National Park.

Nature’s

Silent

Sky-Scrapers 34 | Artist Larene Hobbs

There aren’t many places in the world where the forces of nature have come together with such a dramatic result as in Zion’s.

Over 2.8 million people visit here annually. Zion National Park can be found in the southwestern region of Utah at the intersection of three North American geographic provinces: the Colorado Plateaus, the Great Basin, and the Mojave Desert. I am one of those 2.8 million people that have visited Zion’s. The first time I visited this impressive landscape of remote terraces and narrow gorges was in the summer of 1989. Young and in love, my fiancé and I signed up for a university class that required a 4 day excursion of many of the popular trails and learning of the unique history that created Zion’s. I became fascinated by this oasis of splendor. Did you know there are canyons so hidden that early surveyors overlooked some that are nearly 20 miles long. The Virgin River has carved its way to the desert below through gorges so deep and narAuthor Larene Hobbs | 35

row that in places sunlight rarely penetrates to the bottom. It has taken a million years of flowing water to cut through the red and white beds of the Navajo sandstone that have formed Zion’s sheer sky scraper walls.

It also took over 20 years before I visited this park again.

It feels like it’s been a million years. The fiancé is now the exhusband and I have much greater responsibilities that tug at my elbows. Along the way I have discovered that I love hiking, I see it as an adventure and it has become a passion of mine.

On these adventures my best friend is my camera. What will I observe that I have not noticed before? What will I learn?

My camera becomes my macro eye. The picture becomes an expression of what moves me. Since I picked up a camera a few years ago, the world looks different to me. I see all the magical shades of grey in a cloud. I see the first morning dew on a strange indigenous plant. Snap! The flower blooming so graciously in front of me pulls me in and I see a “Whosville” dance in my imagination. Snap! The beauty and artistic flair of all of God’s creations enchanting our Earth, holds me spellbound.

And so began my weekend in early January 2012 during winter’s peak in Zion’s National Park. I could hardly wait to touch the towering sandstone masterpieces. Would I recognize the vistas I had seen 20 years ago in the roasting summer landscapes? How would the scenery be different in the heart of winter’s touch? How am I different?

What stirred my senses as I meandered alongside the Virgin River did not disappoint me. Patches of marble smooth rock and eroding sandy patches met my touch. There were mysterious mineral patterns leaving various colors painted vertically along the rock face as water roamed its way down with the aid of gravity.

These white washings looked as if painted by a master’s hand with such perfect symmetrical lines and harmonizing hues. As I looked behind my camera’s lens, wishing to capture this display of color, 36 |

I gazed inwardly for a moment, wondering how the washings of life had painted my soul. Do others see the trail of tears? Have I allowed the trail of tears to crystallize into something more beautiful? I see the white washings of life’s torrents of rain and ice along with the welts of heat from the searing sun resting on my bones.

I ask myself, have I allowed the journey of many rains to paint me into unique patterns of tapestry as breathtaking as these before me? I smile secretly to myself as I realize I am still evolving just like this rugged landscape surrounding me. There are those who see only the rugged edges and those who understand the towering strength. It matters not.

Angles Landing tempts me to visit her peak. It is a rigorous climb and at the saddle there is a sweeping view of the effects of erosion from water, heat, and ice. Great slabs of rock breaking off have left random crevices and huge archways to these fortresses of nature’s enigmas. My camera buzzed in my hands, seeking to capture the spirit of this breathtaking landscape that took a millennium of time to create. Sometimes I feel like these rocks, with life’s lessons chipping away at my innocence. Perhaps these crevices to my inner structure somehow give me more depth, more dignity, just like these edifices of nature’s sacrifices. I shake myself out of my revere for there is much to see and continue up the trail.

Along the path, I observe the plant life skillfully thriving in this complex environment of desert heat and winter snow. The wide variety of elevations and moisture levels help support a rich diversity of plant life with over 900 native species. Twenty years ago I learned Zion National Park is home to 75 species of mammals, 271 bird species, 32 reptiles and amphibians, and 8 species of fish. No doubt the plants and animals that live here survive unpredictable weather patterns with temperatures as high as 104°F and as low as -20°F. Water erosion is evident everywhere from the fauna of vegetation erupting from a dripping water source, to the single 40 foot | 37

pine tree growing from a crevice. There is even a place at Weeping Rock where the water that emerges took 1,000 years to travel through the rock from a spring.

Artist Larene Hobbs

I zoom in and look through my camera’s lens, scratching my head, I wonder how a seed could sprout from a rock face towering 1,000 feet above the ground. I wonder how the green and growing cactus plants flourish alongside patches of snow, packed around it’s foliage. Surprisingly, there is as much green and thriving plants in mid-winter as there were withered grasses hanging from the rock face.

I pause and reflect on the similarities I see in my own distinctive landscape. My own weathered journey. I have thrived in spite of the complex circumstances life has served me. I have not faded away because of adversity. I continually seek to find paths leading to sunlight, water to nurture my desire to create positive growth where perhaps none should exist. I have discovered change is as essential to my soul’s journey as is the sculptured and fractured pinnacles of rock peering down at me.

I feel a kinship with these silent sky-scrapers of nature.

Though this towering environment seems unchanged since I last climbed her peaks, erosion is evident everywhere. Likewise, though I have many of the same attributes of 20 years ago. I have changed. I am not the same. There is no negative or positive and no judgment for the changes I see around me. Likewise, there is no negative or positive for the changes in me. The beauty lies in the landscapes ability to flourish in spite of and because of the very nature of change. As I leave, I tuck these reflections in a pocket of my mind to revisit some other time. Knowing this place, Zion, I must visit again and breathe in her magical mysteries.

38 |

| 39

Artist Larene Hobbs

UNTITLED I am not a tree Not a pine tree Nor a maple tree Never an oak tree I am a bird I spread my wings At five foot six I spread my wings.

I fly, fly, fly, fly No roots Nor heavy branches Never moss gathering on my limbs I am a bird I may land on a tree From time to time I may land on a tree I fly, fly, fly, fly No pine cones Nor leaves Never acorns falling from me I am a bird No one clip my wings Cut out my heart before you clip my wings Not a pine Nor a maple Never an oak Just a bird, I fly, fly, fly, fly.

40 |

Author Miranda Lavallee | 41

It was the Best of Times

It was the worst of times

“Aaamaaandaaa! What are you thinking about?” Marielle shouted interrupting my thoughts.

“Camping in Washington; remember when you lost your purse, haha, you are so ridiculous!”

David eager to laugh at Marielle asked, “What did she do?”

“Amanda! Hurry up we need to leave!” Marielle yelled to me.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” I shouted back running down the stairs, with my bag in one hand and my shoes in the other. We all started piling in to the car, excited about our first time camping together; that is, with my brother David as well.

Along the way I started remembering our first time camping, about a year ago. We went on a twelve day journey through many of the state and national parks of Washington. As amateur campers we did not bring any sleeping bags. Instead we had an air mattress and dozens of blankets, which we had to fold up and repack into the car every morning. I began thinking about our first night, with my parents on the air mattress and my sister and I hip to hip.

“Psst! Hey, Amanda,” Marielle whispered so as to not wake up our parents, “do you to want to listen to Oliver Twist with me?”

“Yeah! What part are you on?” I asked as I eagerly fit one of the ear buds into my ear, soon falling asleep to the reader’s wonderful cockney accent. This soon became our nightly ritual leading to an odd association between Dickens and camping something I am sure that− 42 | Amanda Costanza

“Well,” I started, “on our second morning we packed up and left like normal, but after thirty minutes of driving, as we were approaching Mt. Rainier, Marielle suddenly starts looking for her purse. Unable to find it she decided that someone MUST have stolen it from under our feet at night. So she starts shouting, ‘Kisss’im’muck sharmoootah,’ cursing in Arabic, the supposed thief that had stolen her itty-bitty black purse, which could barely contain a wallet. I interrupt her rants about society and lack of humanity, and suggest checking the tent. Mom and Dad interpreted this as me offering to open up the tent in the car and rummage around for her purse. ‘Phsharafik,’ Mom pleaded with me in Arabic. Giving in I eventually freed the tent from the bag and started maneuvering around the material trying to locate the door.

I managed to unzip it and reach back to the furthest corner finally feeling the worn leather, ‘I found the little bastard,’ I shouted, smiling triumphantly. Marielle suddenly hugged me as tightly as possible thrilled, to have her ‘little bastard’ back.”

As I tell this story David began laughing in his typical fashion, first chuckling once or twice, and then the laugh catches similarly to the way gears catch in an engine and suddenly the “engine is revving.” He had just asked Marielle the day before, “Why do you have such a tiny ass purse?” My story had opened | 43

up the door for us all to start making fun of Marielle, and she was less than pleased about it.

“Oh yeah, well what about Dad and the twelve HUGE peaches!?”

“What!?” Dad said joining the conversation for the first time, “I did not say anything about you, don’t bring me into this!”

“Please yourrr dad is crrracy,” Mom said rolling out her r’s and replacing her z’s with c’s.

Then laughing she gives an account of the “incident” at the Canadian border. “So,” she began, “we go to Costco and we get twelve peaches, a box of prrrrunes, some Mountain Dew, a pizza, and put gas.” These trips were another one of our camping rituals. We went to a Costco in every city during our trip. This has also led to an odd association between Costco and camping. “The next morrrning we get to ze Canada borrrderr,” she continues in this case replacing th’s with z’s. “Ze woman,” meaning the border official, “asks, ‘Do you have anything you need to claim, any fruits, vegetables or plants?’ What does yourrrr genius dad say, ‘Yes ma’am we have twelve HUGE, Texas grapefruit sized peaches.’”

My mom says this trying to imitate my dad’s good natured, North Carolinian accent, but fails miserably. “‘Well sir,’ ze woman says sarrrcastically, ‘you cannot bring ze flesh, ze corrre, ze seed, ze skin, ze juice or anything else into Canada!’”

I remember my mom cursing as the border official talked, “Kisss’im’muck sharmoootah, walah, shoo honest ‘Saint Nick’, and HUGE ka’men,” mocking my dad in Arabic for being saintly 44 |

honest and calling the peaches huge. We ended up going to a gas station nearby and eating all twelve peaches as fast as possible. The sweet juice was still dripping down our chins when we returned to our friend at the border.

“So you ate ALL the HUGE peaches?”

“Yes, ma’am,” my mom replied sarcastically from the passenger’s seat.

“Okay… do you have anything else?”

My mom gave my dad a scalding look that could shrivel a blooming daisy, in a way that only Lebanese women, descendants of Jezebel could do.

“No ma’am,” my dad finally answered.

We drove into Canada feeling like fugitives, and making jokes about American criminals fleeing to Canada but American fruit being absolutely forbidden. Just as we quieted down my dad said, “Boy, am I glad we didn’t tell her about the box of prunes. I don’t think it’s healthy to eat those that fast.” All of us laughed in a relieved but somewhat strained way at the time, but now we could not help laughing at how ridiculous it was.

This story naturally led to us making fun of my dad for his entirely laid back attitude and my mom for her uptightness and of course, her accent; she did not take it as well as my dad did.

“Well, what about Amanda?”

That was all she needed to say. Everyone took the cue, whole heartedly shouting over each other to be heard. | 45

“Yeah, like when she went hiking in her Converse shoes and skinny jeans,” my dad managed to say loudly enough to be heard.

“I have never claimed to be outdoorsy…,” I responded, smiling defiantly.

“Haha. Yeah and her bangs curling with the Washington humidity, so that she looked like some sort of California skater boy,” Marielle kindly chimed in.

“Oh shut up, you are so mean,” I said more laughingly than angrily.

My mom without guilt began egging Marielle on, “Rrrememberr how she always used ze excuse of sleepiness to get out of hikes?”

So what, if I am addicted to caffeine, I thought rolling my eyes. Instead I said, “I cannot think of anything worse than gulping down an icy Mountain Dew and a caffeine pill, at 7 a.m. on a chilly morning. All I wanted was a hot cup of coffee.”

“Yup, you are definitely NOT Costanza,” David said pridefully, as I rolled my eyes again. He and Marielle had turned the name Costanza into the equivalent of crazy, intense and hardcore.

“You should have seen herr face when ze headphones broke, just hourrs afterrr we left home. She could not get new ones until we got to Seattle a few days laterrr,” my mom continued heartlessly, laughing a crackly witch’s laugh.

At the time it had seemed a tragedy, but now even I could see the humor in it. Soon we were all laughing at not only me but all of our separate frustrations over the trip.

46 |

David broke the laughter asking, “Didn’t ya’ll get a flat tire in the middle of the night, just minutes from home too?”

“Yeah…,” We all answered.

“Well I don’t get it, from all of your stories you had tons of arguments, a lot of things went wrong, and you even showed up at all of your campsites just at dark so you could blow up an air mattress and lay out a few blankets. You did not even have campfires, and you listened to audio books to fall asleep. I just don’t understand why ya’ll talk like it was the best time ever.”

We thought for a minute and each started explaining our own reasons why we loved it so much. We agreed that we liked playing cards at night each using flashlights, we enjoyed listening to Oliver Twist, we thought that arguing was not so bad, as long as we could laugh about it afterwards, and we realized that all the things that went wrong were what we made our experiences so memorable.

David just looked at each of us and laughed and then threatened to “tickle me until I die.”

“Noooo,” I squealed, laughing before he had even touched me. Thankfully I was saved by our timely arrival at the campsite.

| 47

Artist Larene Hobbs

48 |

| 49

Secret Love Affair

I have been longing for this moment for some time now.

How long, I can’t entirely remember, but I know that I have not given into this carnal desire for a while. I want to, oh so very often, but I have to remind myself over and over of the reasons why I shouldn’t.

I have tried my hardest to wait for the appropriate time. I’ve done my best to get my mind away from what I really want, but nothing seems to work. Everything I do makes me think about it and every thought brings me closer to the actual act, in my mind.

Every magazine, every television show, every over-heard conversation somehow highlights the one thing I am trying my hardest to avoid.

It’s as if the very act of abstaining from this pleasure has heightened all of my senses and my needs are growing impossibly uncontainable, as a result. With a feeling that I will burst otherwise, I have finally decided that waiting is not worth it. I am going to have what I want and I am going to have it now!

I plan everything out just right. I want to be sure to have plenty of time to meet my needs. I wait until just the two of us are in the room together, alone. As an added precaution, I lock the door, to make sure that we are not caught.

My mind races with anticipation because I know what is going to be happening next. I get closer to my love and express out loud how I have been longing for this moment. Slowly, my hand caresses the outer layers as my hand moves down the body. My fingers catch hold of an opening and I gently move it aside, allowing the opening to get big enough to finally reveal my true desire. My eyes widen and my heart flutters a bit as I think about what is about to enter my body.

50 | Author Camille Jensen

I move even closer, until I am only one inch away from actually touching it and I slowly breathe in. Oh yes, this is what I have been waiting for. This is what I have wanted. As if to not let the moment pass by too quickly, I allow myself a little pre-tasting of the goodness that is awaiting me.

I hold it in my hand and my tongue slides all the way from the bottom to the top and I can’t help but smile a little from the experience. Finally, I place the whole thing in my mouth and I let the excitement burst all over every taste bud as my eyes roll back in my head with sheer ecstasy.

It is everything I have dreamed it would be. It is even better than I remembered it to be. It is so good, in fact that I can’t help but let out a deep moaning sigh from the pleasure of having this in my mouth. “Mmmm….”

As I am just finishing up, my tongue presses and rolls the magnificent flavor around the inside of my mouth and I make sure to taste every lingering bit before finally swallowing it down. Afterwards, I just sit there for a minute and let my body and mind slowly regain composure as I think about the experience I’ve just had.

It’s one of those things that even though it’s just ended, enough is never enough. It was so marvelous that I really can’t wait to do that again. I decide that waiting for the next time is something I will not put off in the future. Even though I know I probably shouldn’t be doing this, I want more!

Even though I know very well that the consequences will inevitably catch up to me. . . I promise myself that I will be alone with my love and have my way again soon. After all, how can I deny this desire? How can I put off such a beautiful experience? No, this is what I was made for. This is what I long for each day and dream of at night; my first love, chocolate. | 51

52 Artist | Jennifer Bohn

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This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stone to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down.

All things?

-J.R.R. Tolkien

TIME

Summer. 1996. My neighborhood.

“I remember walking out of my house looking for something to do. I saw this kid eating a sucker, and I wanted one too.”

He said after I asked for one, “Sure. Come inside.” I went inside, and he gave me a re-wrapped, cherry red, half-eaten tootsie pop. I was kind of suspicious and asked, “Did you already eat this?”

He said, “No! Nuh-uh, no!” I said, “Okay.” We started playing Motocross on his N-64, and I had to leave. I [went] home and [saw] Lori (my [older] sister). She yell[ed], “Where did you get that sucker!” I tr[ied] to defend myself and say, “From my new friend, Perry!” “Give me that!” She smelled the sucker, and it turned out he ate it [but in my defense, it was already in my mouth]! That’s the story of how we were friends. According to me, anyway.”

June 23, 2007 54 | Author Alex Maughan

Perry tired of hearing that story about how we met. During those re-tellings he’d focus on something else and say, “Yeah, Alex.”

As I continued on (even though I knew he wasn’t listening) he’d interrupt by declaring (almost angrily), “I know the story! I was there!” That reaction always made me laugh; that’s why I always told the story. I never grew tired of his reaction.

It fascinated my young mind to reminisce on the starting point: the moment when I met him. It felt like he was as much a part of me as Sam was to Frodo: we’d never be separated; I believed that as much as I believed Santa Clause brought me presents every year, or that all fishing trips with my father would be a success.

Though, things change: Santa wasn’t real; my Dad, the expert fisherman, eventually caught nothing.

Perry and I were friends for the next 17 years. I remember when he shaved my head, worked with me at my first job, built a clubhouse in my backyard, stayed up all night playing video games with me, beat me at local neighborhood bike races, flew his kite when mine got stuck at the park, and ate pizza and soda with me till we were sick. These memories of time and place and feeling are all that’s left, and I will share a few of them with you.

Summer. 2000. My backyard.

With my parents’ permission and their unbelieving trust, Perry, Nick (my next-door neighbor), and myself built a clubhouse.

It began with a blueprint written by Nick (the third member, and oldest), modified only by suggestion. The plan was a clubhouse, with strong emphasis on the word house. But we had no money.

The answer? Donations. We did what any group of kids would do, best described in the words of Thorin Oakenshield (one of Tolkien’s many characters in Middle Earth mythology): “There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.”

I remember the three of us walking up to strangers doors, | 55

knocking, and briefly explaining our project. “That’s nice.” they’d say: Then we’d ask for something.

“What is it you’re looking for?”

“Anything. Anything you’re getting rid of.”

Mostly people came back empty handed other than a few pieces of wood. However, we ended up with a door, some trash, odd-shaped pieces of wood, and carpet! We had a large roll of carpet to replace the dirt floor.

My parents bought a large box of nails as a Christmas present, which was a catalyst for our completing it the following summer (alas, they hated the clubhouse). At the rate our imaginations were going, we’d have in-door plumbing by the end of the month.

As for the color, we had 3 colors of paint to choose from in my parents’ basement. Perry decided on black, I chose green, and Nick was certain about white. We compromised by dividing it into 3 equal sections. By the end of the summer, it was black, white, and green; I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

From the clubhouse to my real house, Perry seemed as much a part of both as I did. He never knocked when he came in through the front door. In past journal entries, I referred to my room as “our room.” We watched T.V., talked about the future, and I reminded him of the past. “Alex, I know the story! I was there!” (ha ha). However, it was easy to place him in past and future memories where he hadn’t yet existed. Our future plan was to grow up, have families, and live next door to each other (so we could combine both of our houses).

Still, our friendship wasn’t likely because we were nothing alike: He was practical; I was contemplative. He had common sense; I was studious. He was black; I was white. He was Catholic; I was Mormon. He loved racing games and I loved adventure games.

He listened to rap; I listened to rock. Later in life when my parents let me drive their car, I felt an element of control: I could choose 56 |

what to listen to on the radio. I was sovereign over the musical atmosphere until Perry got in. We both knew that not listening to music was not an option.

“What are we listening to?” he complained.

“Nickelback.” I answered.

“Oh. This is alright then.”

He seemed comfortable enough until he decided he was bored and changed the station. I changed it back but he changed it again. I turned it down and he turned it up; I turned it off and he turned it on so I took it out! He knew how to annoy me and he’d do it all the time. What to do? We compromised. Half the presets were now his: when my song was over (lasting for a few minutes), we’d switch to rap. Sounds like a good deal. For him. If I didn’t like the station, but didn’t know that until after listening to it, that “was my choice” he’d say. Like I said, opposites. One thing we did have in common was that we were friends: that’s all that mattered.

In fact, I’ll never forget the day he shaved my head.

Summer. 2007. Perry’s house.

My mom wouldn’t do it.

I wouldn’t ever think to ask my Dad. Perry.

“What do you mean you can’t shave it off?” I complained to a hair stylist at Great Clips, after she buzzed my head, not taking a razor to it.

“That’s as far as we can go.” She replied tentatively.

“Fine.” I paid for the stupid haircut and thought I’d just go home and do it myself. Then a thought hit me.

“He’ll help me! I’ll ask him.” | 57

I called and he said to come over. When I actually showed up with shaving cream and a razor, he looked at me in dis-belief.

“I thought you were kidding.”

“Nope.”

He pulled up a chair and towel for me in his kitchen.

“Alex, man, I’ve never done this before . . . I dunno . . .” He confided nervously.

“So. Neither have I. Why do you think I’d do it?” I’d never done it before, so why start now?

“Why are you making me do it then?” He retorted.

“Just do it. You’re not going to hurt me.” I said.

tion in two.

I don’t remember saying goodbye. I don’t remember if I explained to Perry what was happening; I tried once by mentioning I had to read the scriptures for that day. His response was a confused accusation: “What? You want to read the scriptures? You never read the scriptures.” That’s as far as it went, and, he was right.

Our parting bears resemblance to Frodo separating from Sam, but was not as potent. Theirs was instant; ours was gradual.

Theirs was across an ocean of water; ours was across an ocean of time. Theirs was coupled with refusal and tears; ours was coupled with unsettled sleep followed by eventual acceptance.

“Only if I slip and cut your throat . . .” He mumbled with sarcastic concern.

It was as much a physical parting as it was mental, for both myself and Frodo.

Those were the days. The photograph you see there has become a symbol to me of what could have been, but more accurately, what has happened to our friendship.

After a long journey of hunger and fire and torture, Frodo and Sam arrive in the land of Mordor, and destroy the ring. Years pass, and Frodo realizes he has one last journey upon which he is to embark.

“This thing all things devours,” includes old photographs.

Our friendship, his Halloween candy, our clubhouse, and late nights gaming were eventually “devoured [and] beat down” as Tolkien described. As a boy I believed this couldn’t happen to us.

I still believe it. But this Devourer believes it can, that it does. But it cannot answer why. Neither can I. I don’t know how a bond— forged through years of amity and compromise—can break. I had heard of such things happening to other people in other places but not in my neighborhood.

We had times when we didn’t talk for a long time, but then we’d reunite and become inseparable. This pattern continued throughout our lives but never changed the foundation. I never knew that something could, or that it would. One day, I left for two years to serve an LDS mission. I didn’t have much contact with Perry, and this was the turning point that finally split our founda58 |

“Where are you going, Master?” crie[s] Sam, though at last he understood . . .

“To the Havens, Sam,” said Frodo.

“And I can’t come.” two.”

“No, Sam. Not yet anyway . . . You cannot always be torn in

Our lives—our welded lives and friendship and closeness— were “torn in two.” Was it time or travel or travail? I will never know, though, it may be all three. When I did leave, it was as though it was to the Havens; Perry remained in the Shire. Tolkien never tells us if Frodo returns from the Havens, but I will tell you my return from missionary service.

“Nothing will change.” I told myself. “I’ll come home and | 59

everything will be just the way it was, only . . . different.

Summer. 2012. My House.

“I’m nervous!”

“Don’t be. It’s Perry! You guys are best friends.”

“Yeah well, we haven’t done anything together for a long time. I don’t know . . .”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun!”

My nephew James had become the new Perry (in a sense) and assured me everything would be fine. Ever the optimist.

I set up a game day to play Risk with my friends, including James and Perry. We hadn’t done anything like this together in 4 years. “What do I say? What does Perry like to talk about? How do I look? What if he’s late? What if I’m late?” “It’s your house, Alex.”

“Yeah, I know, but what if-” “-just relax. It’ll be fun” James reminded me. “Oh yeah. Fun.” He came and the atmosphere was different. Two complex personalities that used to mesh now had to work together like two rusty cogs in an old clock: How could I chip away years of rust in one afternoon? His personality and mine had taken on forms of their own: he was now a man of sound understanding; I was a man of analytical and sometimes over-thought thoughts. We sat across from each other at the table and didn’t say much. What was there to say? Everything. What kept us from saying it? Rust.

He eventually left to go to work and we continued playing. I felt light, like the gravity had been turned down. Suddenly I noticed I wasn’t concentrating so much on my breathing, and my mind relaxed; it stopped pushing against its confinement when the gravity turned down.

answer. Even now I cannot say. The end of this year marks the 22nd of my life with years ahead to live. I will always believe that Perry and I are friends. Best friends. Our friendship can be compared to many things, but here, it has been like a clock: the essence of its existence depends on time.

Time has been called the devourer of all; it has brought rust, now part of us. Time’s rust lurks deep to the core, and the more rust is neglected, the more lies in store.

Time also restores what once was lost. A second here, an hour there, and friendship comes with a particular cost: The cost of time is not in a dime, or penny or nickel or dollar. The substance of time and friendship, you see, is giving our will and doing it freely.

Any friendship beat down, can rise after it falls. Of this I am sure, of this I recall . . .

Another poem from Middle Earth, flowing and fair. This ends my story, but the road of friendship ends not there.

The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can, Pursuing it with weary feet, Until it joins some larger way, Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

“What happened?”

I think I’ve thought that thought only to find no prevailing 60 |

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Caravan

We were free. Our work schedules were cleared and the redundancy of a normal, everyday life was set aside for the enjoyment of an open road. Yellowstone, here we come, I thought. Visibly, I was the most eager of all. Four hours straight, still counting, and I can’t stop talking. I talk about future plans, current events, a crisis in the family, and abruptly the conversation has turned. Inevitably, so have my thoughts. The ear buds go in, a song is chosen at random, and for the next two hours and twenty eight minutes, I watch the scenery as it unfolds, changing from dreary farmland to majestic mountain views. For the next four days, my family will be a caravan of travelers, a convoy of adventurers, a cavalcade of explorers. We’ll eat the most delectable food the Wyoming countryside has to offer and walk among the ravenous black bears, the scavenging bobcats, and the strapping herds of American bison that dot this uninhibited landscape.

We head north to West Yellowstone, Idaho, a small town that straddles the Yellowstone border. The little motel on Madison will be our home away from home for the next two nights, but our car will be our mighty steed, our vessel for adventure. We unpack, we freshen up, and the road welcomes us once more in it’s embrace. A deer skirts the road ahead of us. She’s skittish and perceptive of every small change in her environment. She will be ready to run the moment that she feels threatened. A scrape of rubber tire against gravel, the honk of a horn, the rustle of leaves, and she leaps. She vanishes and reclaims what has always belonged to her: Freedom.

Our caravan continues, abetted by the guidance of a humble park ranger and a pamphlet that unfolds into threes. Tell us more about the park, my grandma encourages, but soon she is drifting back into conversation with my Aunt Kim, the self-proclaimed photographer of our group. Something about charred trees, perhaps a

62 | Author Alexa Rose

wild fire. In big, block letters, the pamphlet warns of goring caused by bison. Up until that instant, I’d never heard of such an expression.

Warning, I read aloud, many guests were gored by buffalo last summer. DO NOT APPROACH BUFFALO. Buffalo appear to be tame, but that is a far, far stretch from the actual truth. Until you have come face to face with one, you would never imagine the massive length of the horns, the ample rise of the hump, or the actual speed of a single run. Sprinting at 30 miles per hour, you’d be fair game to their youngest calf. A human shiskabob. We may not be food to them, but we make excellent target practice.

My aunt happens to be the perfect target. You see, Kim is the kind of person who will ask for your advice and then completely disregard everything you just said five minutes later. Window rolled down, camera perched, she waits. A wayward bison has crossed in front of us. It rears his head to one side, aware that it is being watched.

It turns itself around and snorts in defiance. Beady eyes staring down a dark lens. Get back in the car, Kim. It’s looking right at us, Kim. Our car is not meant for target practice, Kim. Roll up the window before we end up in a Sunday obituary, Kim! I can see us now, plastered across the five o’clock news report with Lindsay Joy and Taylor Vidyo, narrating our unfortunate demise before a segment of crime rates and childhood obesity.

The beast trots forward and the camera clicks away. My hands clench the seat, fingers curved along the fabric and knuckles discolored, pale, white. I open my mouth to issue another complaint and yet the window is rising, rising, rising. Closed. A breath of relief is in order. Maybe two. Hell, maybe five. Channel 5 can bump up crime rates and childhood obesity to their headliner. This caravan of travelers lives to see another day.

It’s midday at Mammoth Springs. Bubbling, endless pools surround us, filled with muggy steam beds, a rotten egg stench, and an array of beautiful colors. Mix pigmented bacteria with microbial mats equate to vibrant oranges, yellows, and reds: the colors of the sun. Add refracted skylight to the mix and you get your blue. Add in

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some chlorophyll and viola! You have your green. Today I see them all. Little Lucifer, Baby Terrace, Tangerine Spring, and River Styx.

Color after color after color.

My aunt is five feet away from me and her camera snaps. It is a rapid procession of shots; a moment of memories captured in thirty-two seconds of swiftly captured photography. She gestures for the rest of our caravan and we assemble ourselves in front of the Opal Terrace. It will be our first family photo of the day. The flash goes off, but the sky darkens, and suddenly the clouds coalesce upon each other. Our smiles falter. A summer storm is rolling in, much too hasty for our eyes to follow. We make an agreement to see what we can and hurry back to our cars, because Mother Nature waits for no one. Her thunder is an impatient reminder of the whirlwind to come. Her noise is created to startle and scare. Who knows whether or not that is by choice or by will. Still, the message comes across.

So we gather as one, climb into our respective cars, and move on as travelers do. We are nomads in a foreign land. Foreign not in context, but in content. Our eyes are newborns to this landscape and like any newborn, we will learn to adapt, to appreciate, to respect, and to love our Mother. For now, Mother is angry. For now, we escape in the hopes of catching her elsewhere in a more sensible and reasonable mood. The road continues, it winds down a beaten path and the day remains long but, alas, we have reached solitude. Twenty-five miles west, Mother Nature is in a happier place. I curl my toes towards the planks of the boardwalk and crouch to sit, stretching my legs out before me. I’m surrounded by fellow adventurers, my caravan, the people that I love. Sitting here with the sun warming my skin, I can’t imagine sharing these little moments of my life with anyone else. A cacophony of eager voices tickle my ears and my back begins to ache. Finally, I think. I sit up a little straighter. My cousins clasp their hands together, waiting. My grandma shields her eyes from the sun, watching. My aunt raises her camera, recording. Old Faithful erupts, cascading, rising, falling, spiraling. Tomorrow, another day will begin. Another adventure still awaits.

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NOT HERE Sometimes I close my eyes and wrap my arms a little tighter around the pillow in your place.

But I can only imagine.

Sometimes I close my eyes and wonder what your hand might feel like brushing against my cheek.

But I can only imagine.

Sometimes I close my eyes and listen as the wind becomes your breath, sighing the rhythms of life.

But I can only imagine.

Sometimes I close my eyes and stay still, yearning for your words t o f i l l t h e c o ff e r s o f m y h e a r t .

But I can only imagine.

Sometimes I close my eyes and bask in the sun as it becomes your lips, dancing warmth onto mine.

But I can only imagine.

Sometimes I close my eyes and hope that the dream I dreamed is real and you’re here when I awake.

But I can only imagine.

I can only imagine, Because you’re not here.

Author Emma C Miller | 65

Artist Miranda Lavallee

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A Note to Him What can I say to him…?

There, laying amidst them in the hereafter.

My answer, not that of a boastful character, but of question and concern— Thirsty for clarity, thirsty for All Who am I to say Dear God, please give me strength

68 | Author Jessica Ash

Dear God, please give me hope Dear God, please give me an answer You see, I am that, of the general and the thrown For I am the Lost and the Uncertain Give me glory And grace A reception for my past, present, and futuristic dwellings I have not yet come to acknowledge them entirely, for Fear emulsifies my truths It is not until I sit, sobbing profusely, asking for another something once again, that I feel Him I do not see Him, I do not know Him, I do not want to want Him, Yes, we are a spoiled People-and, I need him.

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Artist Jennifer Bohn

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Wa i t i n g It’s basically just a waiting place for all of us who have died since the dawn of time. Waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ on Earth so that we could all be sorted out into the kingdoms. There’s the Celestial Kingdom where everyone wants to go, but not everyone will.

There’s the Terrestrial Kingdom, kind of the in between, and the Telestial Kingdom that basically just looks a lot like Earth from what I’m told.

Even those who have done bad things in the previous life, even really bad things, they are still loved by God enough that he allows them to live in a beautiful place after we’re all judged and sorted. The only problem for those who did bad things, or had the chance to accept God and didn’t, they sure as heck know that God exists now! And now they’re stuck in their grief of the possibility of not being able to live with him in the Celestial Kingdom! I truly feel sorry for them. I personally did not have a religious upbringing, but my parents still taught us to believe in God for crying out loud!

My name is Holly and I died when I was 20 years old. Not until I died and came here did I realize what I had been missing out on.

There was so much to learn here (and still is). I learned that most of the churches on the Earth weren’t completely correct, well actually none of them accept one. One that I had always thought was a little strange, one that kids at school, and even adults that I knew used to talk bad about all of the time. I never thought much about that church until coming here when I had that “aha” moment that mortals talk about all of the time.

I’m still learning, but now that I’m here I know that without a doubt the Mormon Church is true. I’m not supposed to use the slang/nickname version of the church though apparently. We’re supposed to refer to it as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—supposed to be more respectful I guess.

The Spirit World isn’t so bad. The angels keep everyone plenty busy with assignments (keep our minds off of the waiting). It’s just hard when an assignment is to be among the living and to have them not

72 |

Author McKell Hadlock

able to see or hear you. There were things that I would remember and want to tell my 14-year old little sister, Lucy or my mom, or my dad and I couldn’t. I miss making them laugh. I have to watch them live their lives without them knowing the truth and honestly, sometimes it drives me a little crazy. Time works differently here though—it’s a little faster than Earth, and that helps to digest the waiting a little. I have plenty of family members here as well that I really had no idea who they were. It’s like going to a family reunion for mortals and everyone telling you they remember how small you used to be, and the time that you did this, or that. Here though, they know about everything that has happened. Not always is one person just watching their family of course, it’s way too busy up here for that. Word gets passed around though. It’s a little embarrassing at times.

There are others up here whom I actually do know though. I’ve started to reacquaint myself with my Grandfather. He died when I was eight so I didn’t really remember him while I was alive. It’s nice to get to know him again. It’s weird for him and me to be here watching Grandma sometimes. It feels unfair that he has to be stuck talking to me when he could be with her. I have to remind myself that God picked us up all at specific times to come here though for specific assignments that we have to do.

It’s also weird watching Grandma with her wrinkles and her slight waddle, when Grandpa’s here looking not that much older than me—full head of hair, thin, no glasses. Everyone is beautiful here. I thought that I was pretty as a mortal, but nothing special. Then I came here and now I’m beautiful, still nothing special though I don’t think— everyone’s beautiful. We all look like we’re between 20 and 30 here for the most part. Age doesn’t matter here. We don’t eat. We don’t sleep. It’s interesting though for people who had addictions in the previous life; they bring their addictions with them with no way to quench them. It’s pretty easy to guess what habits they had by now. Smokers pace a lot.

Alcoholics and druggies curl up in balls and rock back and forth. And over-eating problems. Oh my gosh! Over eatingproblems! There are so many people here who used to be fat in the previous life, and when you

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see them salivating and whining over mortals dinners of roast beef and mashed potatoes, or cookies, or cakes, you can almost picture them fat, even though everyone here is thin and “physically” perfect. I personally suffered with a little bit of depression in the last life and that is my weakness here. Even though it doesn’t feel good, I’ll take that over an eating addiction any day.

eyes were open, staring at the sky, admiring that sunset that would be my last as a mortal. I kept wanting to pull Lucy out of the blood, but there was nothing I could do. Obviously she wasn’t dead otherwise she would have been standing beside me. I looked her over though. She had a few nasty abrasions on her arms that would most likely need stitches, but altogether she looked alright. I had done it. I had saved her.

Sometimes I find myself depressed thinking back on the day that it happened. The day that I died and was parted from my family, until God knows when (literally). We were falling. Lucy and I. Falling after we were both getting our picture taken on the edge of a cliff. In the background a beautiful sunset of oranges, yellows, pinks, and purples. We were just with some friends. My parent’s weren’t there and honestly, I’m glad that they weren’t. They didn’t deserve to see that. Our friends didn’t either of course, but it would have destroyed my parents more than it already did I think. The cliff wasn’t that high. More of a hill really. What a silly way to die. I was praised for what I did when I got here though, and that made it a little better.

It was dark before the ambulance arrived and I never moved from where I was standing. I didn’t have even the slightest thought about what was going to happen to me now. I was worried about Lucy. She hadn’t moved since we hit the ground. Maybe she was more hurt than I thought. After the accident she ended up being in a coma for a week.

I was actually quite thankful that she hadn’t had to see me in that awkward, lifeless state. The only people that saw me like that up close were the medics and they see that kind of thing often enough, I can’t imagine that it was too traumatizing for them.

It was my fault. I tripped. We were just standing too close to the edge. I took a step back only to find that there was no ground behind me.

I waved my right arm around and clutched Lucy with my left, trying to stop the inevitable. I gasped hard. We both went down. It was only about a twenty-thirty foot drop to the road below and I’m sure it looked faster than it felt. But for me, I had time to think and realize what I needed to do. I was going to die, but there was no way I was going to let Lucy die. She kept shrieking the whole way down, but all that ever escaped me was that first gasp, and then logic struck. Keep Lucy alive is all that crossed my mind as we fell. I wrapped my body around her, turning myself towards the ground and willed with all my might that she wouldn’t die and then it was over. I don’t even remember hitting the ground. I went from falling with my little sister in my arms to standing over her unconscious body, and my dead body.

I watched as they pulled her limp little body off of mine and put her in the ambulance. I walked silently over to the ambulance to make sure that she was being well taken care of. After what seemed like a long time, curiosity doused my entire being like ice water, and I had to turn around to see what they were doing with me. I walked back over to my body. Both a male and female medic wereattending to me. Well, not really “attending.” They knew that there was no saving me.

“Looks like she died on impact. Poor girl. Beauty too.”

I turned to look at the face where the deep voice had come from.

Handsome guy. Not much older than me probably. A hiccup came from the other side of my body.

“She saved her life.. She saved her sister.”

The woman looked like she was in her early thirties. A pretty blond, with water building up in her pale blue eyes that reminded me of Lucy’s.

I felt nauseous, but was unable to vomit. Blood seeped out from all angles underneath my body. Mostly from the back of my head. My

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green strawberries innumerable rides home at three in the morning and heroin.

That’s what your names been reduced to.

I put all my memories and simmered on low for a really long time.

I don’t know how else to respond.

This sticky sweet paste smells the same as when you freebased in your car, and we joked about me undressing to fool the cops.

You were the transporter in that blue Subaru.

You were a chipmunk with your wisdom teeth removed.

You were cocky when sixteen year olds hit on you. you were cheesing . you were in control.

I don’t think I could have loved you more.

76 | Artist Shannon Holt

Author AnaLuz Rodriguez | 77

Warrior I am the Warrior Queen Home from the battlefield tired and worn.

My armor heavy and oppressive I hurriedly shed the weight of expectation.

Under it I wear scars inflicted by them, him, me.

Now to sit by the hearth, rest, reflect and recoup strength lost.

I am both general and recruit.

I have made mistakes, lost my way; studied field maps left behind, then forged my own path.

I have stood shoulder to shoulder with comrades, Drawing from their strength; lain defeated in my foxhole choosing to see the dawn; Risen, despite doubts, again joining the fray I am the WARRIOR QUEEN Strong and battle weary I fought victoriously against injustice and repression.

I have battled the selfish, misguided, powerful and myself And I learned which wars are worth blood, as I marched past the scrimmages of the blind and ignorant I have survived the betrayal, of things I knew were true; Stubborn in defense of what is right I am the WARRIOR QUEEN

78 | Author Rebecca Winsor

Queen I’ve held immortality helpless in my arms.

I guard fiercely those under my protection.

On my watch I saw them grow.

I have seen them fall, and rise again on their own.

I have stood helpless in the face of ambushes and discovered surrender.

I know now that what I hold most precious; loyalty, truth, and dignity are never taken from me.

I am the WARRIOR QUEEN Gone is the impetuous and untried girl who believed in happily ever after.

In her place, knowing differently, I stand tall, proud and strong; heart flung open wide, accepting all; battle wounds displayed proudly, afraid of nothing.

I am ready to face dragons.

My strength comes from experience and Love makes me invincible For I Am The WARRIOR QUEEN.

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Artist Ryan Joseph Carter

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LUNA A seemingly timid woman walks to the top of the diving board ladder. She shyly starts to stand up but is trying to cover up every flaw she believes she has, her extra pounds, her breasts, and her nakedness. As the full moon shines brightly in the somber sky the other women cheer her on. Their praise and echoes of confidence help her in standing up and walking to the edge of the diving board. She raises her hands to the moon and proclaims, “I AM STRONG! I AM BEAUTIFUL! I LOVE ME!” She jumps into the pool completely free and arises victorious.

For once she feels beautiful, whole. The women are all cheering and she is beaming. She has owned her power for the first time since she was a kid. She joins all the women in cheering for the next sister to take the plunge. She completely forgets she’s a few dozen pounds heavier than she should be.

Full moon rituals have been going on forever in the wiccan/pagan tradition. They call the moon Luna. She has the energy of the feminine unlike the sun which has the masculine energy. You see the full moon when you look up in the sky and the moon is at its brightest. It is known as one of the most auspicious times of the month. As the full moon starts to move towards the new moon where the sky is black there is known to be more power in letting go. Wiccans and others who believe 82 | Author Brittany Lee

in the moon’s energy will write down things they are ready to let go of in their life, whether addictions or bad behaviors or negative experiences. They can then release them in a fire in order to release them to the universe.

That day that I stood on top of that diving board I crossed over a threshold. I had spent the past two decades hating that flesh that was so exposed that night. I had 4 different eating disorders in the better part of those 20 years. In my journal at age 10 I wrote down my weight and underneath it wrote about how I wished I wasn’t so fat. I wasn’t at all. I was very small. When I hit about sixteen I had made it on my high school drill team.

We had weigh-ins every Tuesday in order to qualify to perform.

I started getting nervous. I had 12 % body fat and thought I was huge. I decided I was going to come up with my own eating plan. I was dancing about 6 hours a day. After weigh in I would | 83

eat normal for a whole day, usually taco bell and mountain dew then for the next 3 days I would eat saltines, carrots and celery.

The final 2 days I wouldn’t eat. I wouldn’t eat anything at all.

Anorexia is an eating disorder where a person severely restricts their food intake and has an irrational fear of gaining weight. I was 5’7” and weighed around 120 lbs. as a senior in high school before the starving obsession took hold. I wore a size 0 or 2. I was known for having the flattest abs in the locker room and had a strong dancer’s body. It was illogical yet I felt some control in the restriction of calories and I always got to perform. It came to a head when I passed out during a practice.

My advisor had concerns being that I was a team choreographer and I admitted to her that maybe I didn’t eat enough.

The scariest part of eating disorders is they have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. I could have died many times but luckily something kept me here.

That night after getting out of the pool we continued to dance under the moon completely nude. The air blew past my skin and it caressed me without any concern for my bumps and bulges. The moon didn’t care that my breasts weren’t exactly symmetrical or that I had a dimple in my bottom. I felt so free.

I wanted to be able to feel this free again. I had been in a flesh prison for so long.

After starving myself on and off for a couple years I decided to try eating normal again. I continued being a vegetarian especially convinced the meat would make me fatter. I ordered a double cheeseburger meal in France without the meat and they didn’t understand what I was talking about. I freaked out when they handed it to me with the meat on it. I couldn’t even have the meat touch the bun or I wouldn’t eat it. I liked people to think I was for the environment but really I was for 84 |

collar bones. I lost 20 lbs. in the three weeks after high school graduation in Europe because I wouldn’t eat much of anything that was provided for us. My dream world took over my real world and I started to replace food with cigarettes. When I put a smoke in my mouth my pulse raced and my blood pressure lowered and I didn’t feel hungry. Yet, it got harder to dance and run while smoking.

Married at 21, I thought my quick pregnancy was such a blessing. I didn’t have to worry about eating too much and I couldn’t starve myself because of course my baby’s life was more important than my own. I had quit smoking and started eating and eating. The food filled this emptiness and gaining weight was normal because I had to “eat for two.” That was a lie by the way. I was eating for two adults at the time, two large adults.

What if I would have felt the love from that moonlight years earlier? After the birth of my last child I was eating regular meals so I didn’t think I had a problem but my schedule was crazy. I would wake up at 5:30 am and drive down to a neighbor’s barn where I would go to an hour long spinning class. When I got home I would meet another neighbor and go running for a couple miles. I would then go home and get my kids ready and then go teach an aerobics class or join one at the local church at 9 am. I thought I had this. I was just being healthy. Well truthfully three hours every day was obsessive and eventually I tore my knee to the point that I could not exercise at all. I sunk into a depression and didn’t know how I was going to keep my weight under control. It was then I had to be more aware. I was afraid I would slip into starving myself again so I justified my behavior of controlling what I was doing.

I started using laxatives. It was a dark secret but there was something so addicting about making everything leave my | 85

body. I convinced myself it was normal. Why would they sell them if they hurt you? I didn’t realize I had a problem even though I had weekly bouts of horrendous stomach pains accompanied by sweating and crying. I didn’t realize it until the one day that I passed out while “handling business.” I woke up on the bathroom floor with a bruised shoulder and sore neck.

I was afraid.

Something about that moment knocked some sense into me.

I realized that I was doing the same thing I had always done and I needed to stop.

The moon shines light on everything. It shined the light on me that night that I decided to stand up against my selfhate, my self-punishment and my imperfections. The moon set me free. Though I am not exactly perfect, standing in that moon allowed me to let perfection go. I have not starved myself again. I have stopped my binging and stopped starving. I feel good with me. As soon as I accepted my size I felt beautiful again. Wouldn’t it be a blessing if other women that were killing themselves to be thin could feel that freedom? I have had a few other nights and days since that one where I let myself be free of clothing and just enjoyed the body I am in. One time I was with a group of women as we took turns jumping off a boat deck into the Pineview Reservoir completely nude with nary an inhibition as if we were telling the world to fuck off because we had all the power we needed to make our own rules.

Last night I ended up under the full moon again. My best friend and I were eating a homemade dinner of coconut korma chicken and catching up after the last two busy weeks we had.

The sky was bright and we realized it was indeed the night of the full moon. I proceeded to tell her about that night on the diving board and how freeing it was. My best friend who I feel has a perfect body has struggled with her own body image issues. I told her how freeing it was being naked under the moon. There wasn’t a pool here but there was a trampoline. We both looked at each other and I saw that gleam in her eye as she started to pull off her shirt and say, “Let’s go for it.” I stood up behind her and undid my jeans. It was time to feel free again.

86 Artist | C J Armantrout

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i believe in pink A SEARCH FOR TRUTH

In my life, I’ve studied inspiration, struggled to walk the path of enlightenment I have been lifted and encouraged by the words Of Jesus, Buddha, Williamson, Dyer, Tolle and Oprah.

And yet…….

The voice that spoke to me in my time of crisis was unexpected.

“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure.

I make mistakes. I am out of control and at times hard to handle.

But if you can’t handle me at me worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best.”

Those words from Marilyn Monroe, Stopped my hemorrhaging self confidence.

88 | Author Rebecca Winsor

Not a candle in the wind, she became a light shining on the hill. She acknowledged both my disillusionment and strength.

She taught doctrines of survival and self reliance in a world of Disappointment and powerlessness.

Her words found my shattered ego and pieced it back together. She opened the door to the possibility That my failed relationship wasn’t because I was flawed beyond lovable, Clown shoes, fat, stupid, old, fake and useless Maybe what I deserved Was someone who would stand by me, through worse; Past the identity crisis, premenopausal mood swings and year of Unemployment.

Her sermon spoke to me, touched my bruised soul.

Her words carried the promise of optimism

“I believe that everything happens for a reason.

People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right, You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together”

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and my mom as well. My grandma slides her arm around my waist, as she is too short to wrap it around my shoulder, and squeezes, “I can’t believe you’re already eighteen love!”

My elbow is propped up on the door handle with my head my warm, curved palm. I am focusing on the slight rain drops slithering slowly down the window. I am imaging a small cottage with emerald green grass, blooming beautiful, multicolored flowers engulfing the garden, and a swaying sign with the words “The Ship Inn” engraved in dark wood with black letters. The silence is broken with my dad’s soft spoken voice. “This is where my Dad took me for me my first drink Sarah.”

I look towards the front of the car still finding it hard to register that we are driving on the left hand side of the road. The window wipers are at a slow pace and both my dad’s hands are gripped on the wheel with all eyes on the road. “I can’t wait Dad!” I exclaim. I wonder if it looks the same as it did when my dad went on his eighteenth birthday.

I hear the sound of the right hand indicator and turn my head to the right to finally see the place where my dad would be looking at his past and I would be looking at my future. We pull slowly into a small parking lot and what I imagined is not what I am observing. The restaurant is larger than what I expected, completely made of red brick, and there is a small strip of garden surrounding the perimeter. The architectural design is that of a 19th century mansion. As I gradually make my way out of the car I stand to notice my dad is, with no time to hesitate, ready with the video camera. He is videotaping me taking the same steps he did towards the entrance of where his first adult choice was made. My dad hands the camera to my mom to take a picture of us both stopped in time, a moment we will never forget under one of the “The Ship Inn” signs, which is positioned above a bay window on the right hand side of the entrance. I am pleased to know I am having this experience not only with my dad but my grandma, my little brother,

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Author Sarah Billingsley

I walk into dim light and a wide entrance with wooden walls.

Two ladies are standing by the host podium and are eager to seat us.

As we follow one of them through an open hall with intruding natural light from big rooms on each side with plenty of empty tables, I can smell the faint deliciousness of sheppards pie. We walk to the end room where in order to enter there are a few stretched out stairs. As I slowly walk up the stairs I notice the room is an octagon shape and a big round table is set in the middle. The host sets the menus on the round table before expressing the hopes that my family and I have a nice meal. “I rented the place out for you!” my dad jokes. We sit down at the table and in each edge of the octagon there is a bay window creating the whole room to be immersed with sunlight bouncing off the wood frames and purifying the white brick wall. I first pick up the drink menu and study it closely wanting to make the right decision.

I can tell my family is eager to know what I will choose. I decide on Pinot Grigio, a white wine.

The waiter performs the usual introduction and asks for our order. I select the fish and chips with my glass of white wine. I have my ID ready in hand waiting for her to ask the adult question, may I see your ID? When she asks I hand her my ID and she looks at the date and then nods at me in approval. She scurries away with our orders and returns within a few minutes with our drinks. My drink is set down before me and my dad is prepared with the camera. He snaps pictures left and right scooting my family close to me and they begin exchanging the camera between them. After my paparazzi moment has finished my dad and family hold up their glasses for a toast. He announces gently “We are proud of you Sarah for receiving your high school diploma and excited on your behalf of becoming a woman.”

We exchange cheers to the words and I take my first sip. The taste is bitter with a slight hint of sweetness and the sensation is strong.

Upon the first few sips I start to feel calm. The combination of fish and white wine goes well together. I do not end up finishing the white

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wine because it is strong, but knowing I had the choice is exactly what I believed at eighteen.

The rest of the trip I was able to engage in any adult set law that I chose to, such as gambling and being allowed to enter bars.

On the flight back home I sat quietly and still in my chair pondering the thought of upon my return to America I would not have the adult freedoms of England. Not only did I realize the changes of laws from country to country, but I also reminisced on the gradual increase of freedom from my parents. One night of being eighteen years old, I got dressed up to go out with some friends with my usual routine of going to ask my dad for permission. My dad was having his traditional night after work of relaxing on the couch watching the news and reading the newspaper. He paused from reading and raised his eyes over his glasses expecting me to tell him where I was going that night. I told him my friends and I were going to a party and without hesitation he said, “Okay be careful and have a good time!” I was shocked and imagined he would ask his typical hundred questions: What time will you be home, whose party is it, what is the party for, who is going to be there, is there going to be alcohol, and the list goes on. This was the first moment it clicked in my mind that my dad had cut the strings of being the adult for me and allowed myself to take on that role of responsibility.

Although my parents treated me and believed at eighteen years old I am an adult the American government thinks otherwise. In America, I now could not have the choice to drink, gamble, rent a car, or even receive financial aid if my parents earned more than a certain amount. However, I am allowed to fight for my country, open a credit card, consent to sex, get married, smoke tobacco, go to jail, pay taxes, vote, and be thrown out of my parents’ house if they choose to do so.

One of the major issues I have with being referred to as an adult is being told my parents can tell me to leave the house but are still responsible for paying for my college. The expected family contribution calculator depends on my parents’ income unless one is married. In order to receive financial aid the questions also involve family size, family members who get more than half the support from the household, and

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how many members are going to college excluding parents (Alexander Par. 14-18). The earned income credit limits depend on the number of qualifying children. According to Mass Resources, the earned credit limit my dad has, considering my mom does not work, is $36,052. My Dad earns more than that amount and only my little brother and I, me being the only college student, live at home. These factors contribute to the decrease of my dad’s earned income credit limit. Therefore, I will never receive financial aid until I am 23 years old, get married, or have a child. I believe America calls a person an adult when it benefits the government, and does not when it is a hindrance. My definition of “adult” is when a person has full responsibility and the choice to abide by each law.

In the article “How Old is Enough,” Catherine Rampell expresses, “…the dawn of adulthood in America is all over the place.” Steven Mintz a historian at Columbia University mentioned in Rampell’s article that “the only thing that is consistent about our notions of when a child becomes an adult is our inconsistency.” From another point of view in science the brain does “...not reach full maturity until the early or mid-20s” but “age boundaries are drawn for mainly political reasons, not scientific ones” (Slotnik par. 1). For example, I can drive a tank in the army, which to science I would be making an impulse decision, but I cannot drive a rental car because the choice is up to politics not science. I do not believe the age at which a person is an adult has to be eighteen, but I do believe a constant age should be chosen, and in my eyes it should be age twenty when minds have further matured.

Not one person is alike and everyone has different maturity levels. I am more mature than most teenagers at nineteen and want the responsibility of my actions and my choices. If I am going to be called an adult then I want to be treated like one. I understand that a person’s brain at the age of eighteen or a few years older is still developing in the maturity aspect. That is why the age to be called an adult should not be eighteen, but when an age is chosen all the choices should be granted to that specific age. In England I felt I was not only called an adult but was treated like one.

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Artist Kerena Peterson | 35

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Re-Entry It was six months after my divorce was final. Like the masses, I flocked to the new trend of online social networking and joined Facebook. Within a few days I had already added fifty friends to my page and a few days after that I received a message from Danny; someone I’d occasionally pal around with in college back when we were both young eager freshmen.

Danny was half Native American Indian, which explained his dark wavy hair, dark eyes and naturally tanned skin. He was nearly six feet tall and extremely nice; “nice” in the way I would describe a cousin or one of my father’s friends or any other man I had no romantic interest in. Not to mention his freshman roommate seemed a little effeminate and the possibility of those two having a hush-hush homosexual relationship crossed my mind more than once.

His message indicated that he was living right here in Utah, not more than fifty miles from me, and that he’d love to get together for lunch. “Sure,” I messaged back. “That sounds like fun.”

Plans were made to meet downtown at the Gateway Mall and I didn’t give it another thought until I was heading down there the following Saturday. We hadn’t seen each other in years and I hoped somehow he wouldn’t notice the extra pounds I’d put on since then or the dark perma-circles under my eyes.

As I approached the deli, I saw Danny already waiting outside. I was surprised at how much older he looked than I. Realizing his profile picture on the website must have been at least ten years old, I suddenly felt confident by my own appearance. His face was

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Author Emma Miller

a bit fuller now, and held many more creases. His once thick black hair had now been taken over by a sea of gray. When he turned and saw me coming though, his wide smile was exactly the same. He stretched out his arms and we embraced in a brief hug before entering the restaurant.

The popular deli was unusually quiet for a Saturday; just two other parties in the entire place. The cashier took our order, directed us to the salad bar and invited us to sit wherever we wanted. After each filling our plates with mounds of lettuce drenched in dressing we settled into the corner booth.

“So, how’ve you been?” Danny asked.

We chatted for a few moments about what we’d each been doing over the past fifteen years and then Danny blurted out something I found to be a little odd. “You two didn’t match,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“You and your ex. I remember when you two got engaged in college. I just never thought the two of you matched; you didn’t really go well together.”

I wasn’t really sure where this conversation was going, but was relieved at the timing of the waiter bringing our food to the table just then.

“I really didn’t think you’d go through with it,” he continued.

“But then you did. You actually got married, you—you broke my heart.” Danny looked up at me, a goofy grin spreading across his face, suddenly making me feel a bit uneasy. I couldn’t tell if he was being funny or serious. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited for this moment,” he said just as I bit into a piece of thick bread.

This moment? Surely he wasn’t implying what I was afraid he was implying, was he? I mean, after all this was lunch. Lunch—a midday meal shared between two cohorts. At work I took clients to lunch all the time. “Let’s do lunch.” “We should go to lunch.” “Want to meet up for lunch?” A common everyday proposition between com-

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mon, everyday friends and

know if you are on a date?”

colleagues; nothing special. Lunch was supposed to be just lunch.

Not a date.

“Because he said let’s do lunch, and people don’t do lunch when they want to take you on a date. They ask you to dinner and a movie or something,” I rattled.

I was grateful my mouth was full, preventing me from saying anything. I offered a half- smile and slight nod in return. Then Danny started talking about how he never got over his crush on me and how he was jealous of the boys I dated back then. The only thing that would have made me more uncomfortable is if he started selling me on some multi-level marketing scheme; which at this point was actually starting to sound better. The more he talked, the more preoccupied I became with my sandwich.

Suddenly the already thick bread seemed to swell and after chewing for several minutes, I nearly choked trying to swallow. I frantically gulped my water just as the waiter brought the check and in one swift move, before I could catch my breath, Danny had already retrieved his card from his wallet and handed it back to the waiter. I excused myself and went to the ladies room.

Locking myself in the stall, I tried to recall those relaxation techniques my counselor had taught me in one of my first visits.

It’s possible the overpowering lilac-scented air freshener was making me dizzy. It’s possible the bright lights caused me to see spots.

It’s even possible that the tiny stall was suffocating me, causing me to hyperventilate. Although I knew in reality it was none of those things. Deep breaths, I said to myself while retrieving my cell phone from my purse. Amelia was my best friend and I knew that she’d know how to handle this.

“Hu-llo,” Amelia said as she always did. “Oh my gosh, Amelia!”

“What?” she responded, mirroring my angst. wrong?” “I think I might be on a date,” I replied.

“What’s

Amy breathed a sigh of relief and offered up a few chuckles before responding. “You think you’re on a date? How do you not

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“Hmmm,” Amelia contemplated. “True, lunch isn’t typically a date, well not a first date anyway. But it also depends on how well you already know each other. How long have you known him?”

“Like fifteen years,” I sighed.

“Is he cute? Do you like him?” she teased in her sing-songy voice.

“He’s okay. And no, not like that.” “Does he know that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He started bringing up how he’s always liked me and couldn’t wait to take me to lunch and blah, blah, blah.”

“I see.” Amelia sat quiet for a minute. “And who paid?” she finally asked. “He did,” I answered.

“So, a guy asks to meet up with you and pays for your lunch all the while professing his fifteen-year crush on you?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Yup. You’re on a date all right.” “Crap,” I sighed.

Returning to the table, my thoughts turned to all things “dating”. Before, when it was just lunch, I wasn’t nervous. But now that I was on a date with Danny, I suddenly wanted to throw up. I intended to let a full year pass from my divorce before I started dating again. How could I not know that Danny wanted to take me on a date? It seemed so obvious once Amelia said it out loud.

“Can I walk you to your car?” Danny asked as we both stood up to leave. Looking up at him I could see the anticipation in the gleam of his eyes. I knew that the question was fully- loaded and if I said he could walk me to my car, I was in essence telling him he could kiss me. It had been a long time since I had kissed someone to

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whom I wasn’t married, and the thought of it was sort of sickening, and well, exciting at the same time.

While my stomach churned, the adventurous voice in my head cheered me on. It’s now or never, Emma. Just do it.

“Okay,” I replied sheepishly. “Sure.”

He reached for my hand and together we left the deli and headed for the parking garage, my breath competing with my heart beat. Stopping in front of my car, I turned to look at him and then, like a complete moron blurted out, “This won’t mean anything.”

Danny stood there, looking at me for a brief moment, seemingly processing the information I just doled out. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head in agreement. “Okay.”

Then he took a step closer to me, cupped my chin into his hands and brought his lips to mine. The ringing in my ears seemed to rush a spell over my head. His lips were soft and slightly moist, although not slobbery like Robbie Stayner from middle school. The kiss lingered for a moment before Danny pulled away and looked down at me with his soft brown eyes.

“Um,” I stammered.

“Was that okay?” he asked, obviously confused by my reaction.

I nodded, offering him a sheepish grin before asking, “Can we do that again?”

Danny laughed before repeating the process, this time lingering just a bit longer. Then as we pulled away from each other, he placed his hands on my shoulders, looked me squarely in the eyes, and stated, “Remember. This means nothing—your words.”

I nodded in agreement and unexpectedly felt empowered— like I could do anything and be anyone—suddenly knowing that I would be okay and that this whole new scary world of dating would be okay.

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Words

Slowly the words dance Slowly they make a story My mind sees the picture I’m captivated by their movement Slowly they pull me in Moving faster now they spin and twirl The scenes move quickly The story goes on I am swept along I battle dragons and monsters Travelling through a world With out knowing it has come alive All around me are things of the book I must read more I’ve become intoxicated with words The more I read The more words I must take They fly at me so fast, I can barely grasp them This world was created by words My eyes are hungry I read on Pages are passing, characters are dying What a world with fascinating words The cover soon is closed Author Dawn Kingston| 101

Welty Listening I feel similarly to Welty, reading was probably the best gift I could have received as a child. I also cannot remember a time when I did not love books, not only as stories, information, and a means to pass time, although I love all these things too, but also for their physical properties, especially old, hardcover books. While I cannot remember having books and being unable to read them, I do remember going to the library and being overwhelmed by all the books I wanted to read, something I still experience.

I also vividly recall my first memory of reading. It was a beautiful spring day in Charlotte, NC. There were caterpillars inching up the trees in their peculiar manner and the birds were singing. All of the white and fuchsia azaleas leading up the driveway, and along the walkway to the door were in bloom, as were the scarlet rhododendrons. These were the days when our small brick house looked its best. My older sister’s best friend Christina was practically my adopted sister, and she was always at our house.

102 | Author Amanda Costanza

On this particular day, my mom had instructed her to read with me, so we placed a blanket under the two towering oak trees that dominated the front yard. We sat down and began reading a simplified version of Snow White, filled with large illustrations. I spent some time reading through it with Christina helping me sound out the words in her sweet, pronounced Southern accent. When we finished she suggested flipping it over and trying to read it upside down. I still remember looking at the words and trying to recall their proper order, and once I had somewhat resolved this, I would try to picture them the right way up and sound them out.

This experience opened a new world to me. I remember that soon after this I would go to the library with my library card number memorized, unwilling to risk bringing my card and possibly losing it. When I came home from these trips, I often carried a stack of books I could hardly see over. I would set them on the floor in my sister and mine’s shared bedroom; I sat looking at them, considering and weighing the pros and cons of each, and ordering them in my mind, eager to begin.

Unsurprisingly, I soon began wearing glasses and by the age of eight I wore bifocals and had gained a reputation as someone that was always reading; a reputation I still maintain.

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Song Of A Sylph i a lukewarm magenta was waning under the horizon i watched it collecting on the hills until sunset when the bells rang, and i watched my goose waddle home with me: and the spearmint wind lick itself into my mouth your daemon was playing in the pumpkin patch wrestling with crows between the corn stalks: i left my window unlatched and gaping open all night that some of her ghost might stumble in and from up that high i could see the lights Of tiny cities and glowworms all below And the chimney would smoke beside me and nestle me in its slight warmth When the ships went marching over the sea: last flames flickering what might be light signals of goodbye; the chakra in my chest started to throb, nothing’s going to change my world * your angel almost slit me with that arrow, i had to break her quiver across my knee and the evening stole the ribcage out of me: so i could slither across the weeping ocean if i pleased and when my crown felt heavy as an anchor below the surf i realized i had been balancing this bloodshot apple on my head all along O, i have been dreaming, i have been dreaming 3 a gale swelled up, sweeping above the shingles and through the pear trees, making the leaf babies wake, their maple cradles shouting into the belly of the squall

104 | Author Ryan Joseph Carter

When the bridge broke into the hungry waves A century turned over in its granite grave and our ancestors rose to nurture new bones, An aftertaste of solemn still lingering in their legs if your daemon were to weep on my unspoken shoulder: i have felt like a woodwind, i promise you its fiction (and i don’t miss it) 4 you visited me as a sylph in the misty pathways where feathers and sapphires hung around your silky hairs and lingered in wisps, where i could see Micah harvesting the dewy marijuana leaves Into twine bins, you sent a message in the wind drifting: and i know you said you’d leave me, though the sweet rye that i threw among the scarecrows attracted you, The magenta mist on the hill sides boiled near the horizon’s rising orb, and the yawn of my room’s window brought gold beaked swans into our river of turquoise dawn waters beginning to Opening up like a rose bud just below the mountains and the morning sun.

My sweater was losing its stitching to the copious novermber breeze, when I whispered back the way the willow grass misses the always departing zephyr, her slender fingers stroking last chills through lover’s silky wilted winter hair: Before disappearing into infinite millennia i’ll never stop saying goodbye

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A Return It’s been a while since I’ve been lost in the scent of paper.

There’s been a fear of the blank page and my bland mind coming together and creating mediocrity.

Not all babies are pretty but they all resemble their parents.

106 Author | AnaLuz Rodriguez

Artist Kieth Kramer | 107

Letters; a Love Hate Relationship

they are beautiful majestic magical worlds are contained they exist if only in the pages of a book Writing is a journey I continue

Artist Daniel Southerland

Oh I hate the books the way the words fill you head taking you away with them I hate them all with passion When I try my hand at writing The letter tease me constantly Dancing at the tip of my mind Forming words that don’t make sense They are there almost falling to my vision seeing letters everywhere would make you crazy I hate them Changing colors on me P is Purple But but it won’t stay that way when I grab one a new world opens Changing with every move suddenly I’m whatever I want They are endless The colors carry the story away writing faster I try to keep up characters are there They choose me to write their story They have body and depth just like the aggravating letters they taunt me so I would quit Put my pencil down for good But the letters draw me in

108 | Author Dawn Kingston

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What a Bibliophile C a n E x pe c t W i t h a S e r ie s A f fa ir It often begins with monotony. Same schedule, same routine, same results. Surely it wouldn’t be hard to spice things up a little? After all, you know people who are willing to help you out here. The right dealers, the right websites, the right stores; your access to thousands of different volumes, different plotlines, different worlds, is virtually unimpeded. Haven’t you heard the saying, “Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card?” Put it to good use.

If you wish to embark on this journey for yourself, you must be seriously determined; this affair is not for the weak of will. You may be putting your heart and sanity in peril. If words are not an explosion of thought, a craving of the utmost persistence, a favored diversion then you needn’t fear. If you are passionate by nature or moved by the art of words then gird your loins and grit your teeth, for adventure never comes without a price.

The first step is research. It isn’t always easy to find a world that catches your eye, imbibes the spirit, and entices the senses. Be cautious, don’t be fooled by the hook on the back cover. I strongly suggest stalking the series as you would a new romantic interest, where GoodReads is the Facebook of your affection. Librarians and booklists are the best friends that you use to inquire of the quirks and nuances of your conquest. They can foretell the ultimate outcome of this relationship, even before it becomes a commitment. Heed their warnings, but take it with a grain of salt. That librarian probably likes cheesy romance novels anyways.

Now for the intrigue, do you take the plunge and dive right in? Is it already too late to stop? Or is this series not worth your efforts, sud-

110 | Author Susan Sommer

denly sprouting an inbred cousin of an offshoot series? Maybe it’s a terrible tease, who doesn’t tell you its creator is dead until you are into the 17th book of the 18 published plots and you are forever withheld from the denouement. Allay your fears, double check forums and book blogs for the answer. Pay special attention to the entries. Look for complaints and compliments alike. Try to detect an inherent fervor for the series; if it cannot inspire a crescendo of conflict, even online, it must be weak indeed.

Begin to read. This is when the seduction happens. The first chapter of the first book, the start of an era in the universe you have chosen. It wears a fine perfume of interest and a lacy negligee of plot points. You may savor this flirty beginning, or ravage it in a crazed lust for more.

The plot thickens. In a maddened heat of prose and protagonists, the story marches through conquests and triumphs or poignant failures.

The vague foreshadowing of what proves to be an epic event demands attention from your subconscious. The sudden twists enchant. A vital clue to solving the mystery appears. What a strange occurrence—that “odd look” simply must lead to forbidden romance. Death, distrust, betrayal, it all contributes to an overwhelming need for more. The thrill of the story unfolding as seen by the eyes of the characters or told by an omnipotent narrator can easily prove to be too much at times.

In truth, with my own history of screaming with frustration or sharing a maniacal laugh with a character (most often in public places) I can only offer this as a light guideline: while the book is tantalizing to you, no one around you is experiencing it as you are, so take pity on them and try not to look like a raging lunatic. Luckily, there are enough strange people in this world to overlook a mere re-enactment of a scene. Hopefully the innocent bystanders saw it as a free theatrical performance and not an emergency requiring the help of the clergy, some salt, and archaic Latin phrases.

Too soon this roller coaster of emotions ends, and you must reach out to hold another part of this series close. You’ll have your reasons for moving on, moving forward. That cliffhanger was a cruel trick. The protagonist has yet to make a needed choice. The antagonist survives

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and plans the climax of the series. No matter how languid or excruciating the reason, you will either be compelled to continue or revolted by the sheer audacity of the series and move on.

Brace yourself. The characters you’ve fallen for, the story arcs that haunt your best and worst dreams, the mystery of “what now?” will pursue you. It may be that you are ridiculously blessed to have started a series that has already been finished. More often you are cursed, stuck between books for months or years at a time. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but this is sheer torture.

The grief cycle begins. Madness ensues. That series never loved you as much as you loved it. It might have been kind, with all plot points resolved. Instead it torments you with author Q&As about the future of the series, tantalizing hints of what it might become. Whether it be a spoiler from the beta readers or the author, fan theories from a source proven correct time and time again, or leaked scenes or chapters that seem too good to be true. The wrong balance of these deliciously dangerous elements and the book might be called off; too little and the online community shuts down. Each new release is a new rollercoaster of hopes and dreams. What a terrible tease, this series. Hinting at hooking up later in life with a brand-new book, like a lover showing up with roses. How could you do anything except give in?

You may try to grasp that magical rapture that occurred, rekindle the fire. You may be tempted to go out with it and get a cup of coffee to prolong the contact. But you are tainted with the knowledge of what the madness of this infatuation has done to you. Come now, when has reason ever interfered with literary madness? Barring any heartbreak or betrayal, it is very easy to crawl back to it, begging for one last release. Crying for a hint of what wonders will come next.

The second read around you often find yourself a little removed from the rapture. This could give you insight needed to predict future actions of the author, or this could be the realization that you were a fool for coming back to it. What was it that so entranced you the first time?

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Words that once captured your interest, now dulled into a sea of mediocre writing with little to no character development. This is when you make the decision, will you stay in love and devoted to this series?

It did promise about 10 more books and an apocalyptic trilogy…

If you choose to leave your series as a fond memory, be prepared for blackmail. Surges in popularity have revived many infatuations. And when that series walks back into your life with a brand new movie deal, a television series spin-off, manga or graphic novel adaptations, or even a play; that is when obsession strikes. Fueled by the peer pressure and the pride of having previously known the series, you slip back into old habits. Dissecting which scenes from what book will make it onto the silver screen is a task that has haunted many. And while you may saunter away, flirting with other series, it is difficult to miss the attention an old love is receiving.

If the series has done it, won your heart and your loyalty, this can spell disaster. That which entrances the mind doesn’t always appeal to the senses. Imagined explosions are never quite as big or as loud as those experienced in film. Wardrobe choices, the actors cast, the new artistic elements warp that which you fell in love with. It could be a nice change, transforming a modest plot into a star. It could steal whatever respect or admiration you once held for the series, with poor set designs, layouts, and cringe-worthy dialogue. The transition from one form of expression to another is never quite perfect, and it is very easy to accidentally fall for this failed clone of your love. If you’re lucky, it can become a ménage à trois of happiness, between the book, the movie, and you. Or it can end amicably, admiring the effort made to preserve and share the beauty of the original. Most likely though, crawling back onto the series bandwagon will be a mistake you regret the morning after.

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An Accidental Marriage I fell in love with Joel in 1989. It was love at first sight… which isn’t to say I loved him the first time we met, only that it felt like that kind of all-encompassing, life-transforming, startlingly, huge emotion; the kind that you see portrayed in romance movies, the same movies my older, wiser self often walks away from chuckling in disbelief. Even then I was a little embarrassed for myself. I realized I was ridiculous in my giddiness, practically intolerable with my constant praise of his sterling qualities, and that people were probably laughing at me behind my back.

But I didn’t care because I was just so grateful that after 4 years of marriage I was finally, for the first time, head over heels for my husband.

We met at a church campout in Southern Utah. My father had taken my brothers and me so we could meet some of the youth, as we’d only recently become members. Since we arrived after dark we hadn’t had time to socialize before bedtime, so it wasn’t until the next morning, as I was leaning against the family car with a box of Kleenex, that Joel and I crossed paths. He had come to retrieve a camera from his own vehicle, parked in the adjacent space, when he heard me sniffing. Concerned, he paused to ask, “Are you OK?” “Sure,” I said. “Are you?”

I could tell he was surprised, and possibly a bit offended, as he quickly explained, “I thought you were crying.”

“Nah, just allergies.” I smiled and waved my tissue at him, a little white flag, declaring a truce and proclaiming my harmlessness. As he walked away I’m sure it occurred to him that maybe I wasn’t like all the other cult girls he had met.

The World English Dictionary has several definitions for the word cult but the one I prefer is: “a quasi-religious organization using devious psychological techniques to gain and control adherents”. By that definition, the Branch, as they call themselves, is a cult. An offshoot of an offshoot of the LDS church, they abide by much of that churches doctrine, while also claiming to have God’s only, true, priesthood authority on earth. Their total membership usually hovers in the range of 200, if

114 | Author Teena Brown

you count children, with the “prophet” and his family at the core, while a fairly constant flow of lost and gullible cycle through. New members with money are granted priesthood titles and additional wives in exchange for tithe. Others without money are tolerated, as long as they contribute their loyalty, labor, and teenage daughters. My father was in the second group.

At 17 I was insecure, sensitive, self-absorbed, and I wanted to get out of my parent’s house very badly. It wasn’t that I disliked them; they were decent parents. I just felt smothered in a small home with four younger siblings and not much money to spare. When we joined the Branch I sensed an opportunity. I reasoned, not very wisely, that even being a plural wife would be preferable to waiting around just to graduate and get a job. So I made an appointment with the “prophet” to find out God’s will for my future.

You see, I couldn’t be trusted to choose a husband for myself. Impaired by my gender, as well as my age, I might make the foolish mistake of basing my choice on superficial things like compatibility, age-appropriateness or, heaven forbid, affection. Instead, the accepted procedure was to ask who I was meant to marry and get my answer by revelation, direct from the mouth of God’s mouthpiece. I’d been informed of this procedure by the man himself within weeks of my baptism, but had waited several months in order to scope out the possibilities, most of whom were old and scary, showing far too much interest in a girl my age. It wasn’t until I met Joel at the campout that I finally got up the courage to ask, “Who does God want me to marry.” For some reason, inspiration or desperation, I was pretty sure it would be him.

I was right of course, but the selection was purely political. Joel at the time was enjoying some celebrity status in the cult because he and another man had been called to go on a mission to South America, their divine mandate to convert the Native Americans, or Lamanites as the LDS scripture refers to them. Joel and his companion were charged with the task of bringing them into the fold, a glorious army for God. For some reason it had been decided that he needed a wife before he went, presumably to impregnate and leave behind. Six weeks after our wedding day, that particular mission was accomplished. Unfortunately, by that time I was quite glad to see him go.

Those six weeks were perhaps the worst of my life. Trapped on

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the cult property with a husband I barely knew, I quickly realized how naïve I had been. Joel and I were placed under the authority of his mission companion who immediately took control of our existence. He gave us instructions on everything from our diets to our sex lives and part of his plan seemed to include a complete personality transplant for me. This meant that everything I did was scrutinized and none of it was acceptable; if I wore jewelry I was being vain; if I visited a friend I was gossiping; if I laughed too much or too loudly I was being light-minded. As an example of perfect submissiveness he held up his own wife, a dull, quiet woman who walked around with her shoulders hunched and her head down.

Though she spoke in support of her husband, she always seemed haunted and heartbroken to me. By the time Joel and his companion were ready to start their journey, I knew that I couldn’t be like her. As soon as they left I went home to my parents and vowed I would never return, not to that place and not to Joel if he expected me to live that way.

In the six weeks that followed I attempted to figure out how I would support myself and a baby, while my parents urged me not to do anything rash. And then Joel returned. My husband is normally robust and stocky, but when he came to find me at my parent’s house that day, he was so thin and gray I almost didn’t recognize him. His “holy mission” had been a nightmare of stolen funds, near starvation and coping with an increasingly unstable companion. He was so sad and broken down I found it impossible to deliver my ultimatum and took him into my arms instead.

Fortunately, because of the failed mission, we were no longer considered worthy to live on the cult property. Instead we bought 20 acres a few miles away and continued our association with the Branch from there.

Though we thought about leaving, we couldn’t see that our marriage had any basis without the organization that had brought us together. Our intent was to continue serving God in the way we knew how without attracting too much attention in the church.

The problem with being in an arranged marriage is that it’s really easy to give yourself an out, to explain away your differences as inevitable. Those first few years I was convinced I had made a mistake, that I never would have chosen Joel if I had actually dated him like normal people do before getting married. Not only was he not my type but we had almost nothing in common. For instance, I am very gregarious and like to

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travel while he would be content to live as a hermit. He likes computers and the outdoors and I prefer literature and art. And when it came to raising our children, he was quite strict while I was rather lenient. We didn’t understand each other at all. Even after many years together, in which his pessimism and my optimism have both settled into pragmatism, there are still many subjects on which we have agreed to disagree. But I was nowhere near that mature back then. I thought that true love meant you were completely in sync with your partner, always and forever, so I was frustrated and disillusioned when we weren’t, angry that I had missed my chance of finding my white knight, but also reluctant to leave him because of our children. And in my unhappiness it was easy to feel that someone else was to blame, someone other than me, someone like him. He patiently did his best to try and placate me, until finally, after another night of quarrels and complaints, he decided he’d had enough.

“Teena,” he said to me, not yelling, but firm. “You MUST STOP criticizing me.”

And inexplicably, instead of arguing, I said,”OK”.

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote an influential book called The Structure of Scientific Revolution, in which he introduces the concept of "paradigm shift". Though he was coming primarily from a scientific standpoint, the idea has been adopted for use in other contexts to represent the complete and sudden change from one way of thinking to another. That is how I describe what happened to me that night. In an instant I realized, through Joel’s gentle prompting, that I had become something I really didn’t want to be: a whiney, nagging harridan of a wife. Even worse, I had become a victim. It occurred to me that just because I hadn’t chosen Joel to begin with, it didn’t mean I couldn’t choose him now. I immediately determined to take responsibility for my “accidental marriage”, to make it into something wonderful, and I began by promising him and myself that I would do as he said and stop criticizing.

Now a funny thing happens when you stop focusing on a person’s faults. You start seeing the good in them. I began to notice how capable my husband was, how kind with our children, how hard he worked every day to provide for us. When our toilet was having issues, he didn’t panic, but dug out a wrench and fixed it in a matter of minutes. The man had skills and I was truly impressed. It was as if I were seeing him for the first

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time; like love at first sight. Four years into our marriage I understood, at last, how lucky I was to have him.

I used to tell Joel that he was born old, because even at the tender age of 19 he knew what he wanted from life. He says that he wanted me from the moment I sassed him in the campground parking lot. It took me a little longer. I’d grown up dreaming of a fairytale romance and when he failed to conform to my pre-pubescent notions I thought it was a bust. It wasn’t until I decided to want what I had that our marriage began to flourish. In the years that followed he proved to me that my dreams were small compared to the reality of what a true partnership can be. However, if I had any lingering doubts, the Thanksgiving of 1998 certainly put them all to rest.

I was pregnant with our 6th and last child and due the 25th, Thanksgiving Day. In a dazzling display of impeccable planning we had invited my parents and several of my siblings, with their families, to Thanksgiving dinner. Since most of my babies had been late coming I figured this one would follow suit and expected to labor the following week. The contractions started that Monday and after a long, exhausting night, Caleb was born in our bathtub the morning of Tues. the 23rd. To be clear, though the bathtub part was unexpected, the do-it-yourself, home delivery was planned. We felt that the five previous times with a midwife had prepared us and remember that day as one of our most triumphant, empowering moments. After catching the baby, Joel managed the house while the rest of us lay around admiring the new addition. The next day he realized our dining table was woefully inadequate for our coming banquet, so he pulled out the tools and, with an old door and scrap lumber, he built a table. And the following day, to top it all off, he cooked Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd. My hero!

Looking back we see this as the culmination of our bid to be free from the cult and its hold over us. It was a way of asserting our independence, proving to ourselves that we only needed each other to thrive.

Though we’d done our best to keep our heads down those intervening years, there finally came a point when we couldn’t anymore. We saw marriages crumble, families torn apart and kept our silence, but when it was my younger sister, awarded to a man 18 years her senior, callously deprived of her innocence and casually tossed aside when his first wife’s

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jealousy became unbearable, we had to take it personally. On her behalf, as well as for our own daughter’s futures, Joel called church headquarters, seeking an explanation. The following Sunday we were barred from services. Our crime: speaking evil of the Lord’s anointed.

A few days later I received a call from one of the top dog’s flunkeys.

“The prophet would like you to know that the Lord doesn’t hold you responsible for your husband’s actions. You’re invited to come back to church… without Joel.”

The sub-text was loud and clear. I was still young, still capable of bearing children. They wanted me back in the wife pool. But it was too late for that. Unwittingly, they had orchestrated an actual, trial-tested, enduring marriage. We didn’t need them anymore.

“No thanks,” I replied. “Joel and I come as a set.”

Recently, on a family outing, while playing a round of miniature golf, my husband happened to comment on my putting. Unlike him, when I’m setting up for a shot, I don’t try to mathematically calculate trajectories, speed ratios or wind drag. Instead, I plop my ball down, take a cursory glance at the target and give it a good whack. It isn’t until my next shot, when my ball is in the actual vicinity of the hole, that I take the time and trouble to aim. What annoys him is that, with this haphazard method, I win as often as he does. It could be said that Joel and I have lived our lives the same way we play miniature golf; he making a plan then carefully and methodically implementing it, I recklessly venturing out to begin with, then working toward my goal once I had it in sight. What we have learned from all of this is that there can be several paths to any destination, and that, sometimes, two very different approaches can still come to the same conclusion. We have also discovered, to our joy and satisfaction, that some games are meant to have two winners.

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My Dear You I’m naked in front of 10, 15, 20 people and the number keeps on growing. The hot sun keeps everything above my knees warm; below my knees the water is cold and noticeably viscous. My toes dig in the smooth silt, disrupting it and causing it to be carried away by the chilly river, to someplace I may never visit. Without clothes, my skin is more sensitive to the slight breeze and gives rise to goose bumps. I laugh. You laugh. We’re naked together in front of the whole world, and more importantly, we’re together.

But here I am getting ahead of myself.

We met in sixth grade and soon became inseparable. If you were a Q, I was your U. You were exotic, a rare and exciting spice in our shared mother tongue. Your enticing flavor was palpable without even needing to talk to you. Your heart pulsed energy, pure energy, and electrified the air around you.

We met at Bonnie Larson’s party. We started playing Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots and both quoted Homer Simpson “Damn you Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots! Can’t we all just get along?” We laughed. We both watched The Simpsons. Your birthday was just 13 days before mine and we were both Scorpios. We played soccer, wanted to be veterinarians, and loved animals. That night, we slept close to one another after a corny horror movie.

After the party, we were like peanut butter and 120 | Author Anonymous

jelly. Most of our communication fell just short of mental telepathy. We walked home from school together, studied together, and watched really bad movies together.

We moved from the innocence of childhood into a life punctuated by our rebellious teenage spirits and gained experiences. We snuck out at night and experienced life as it was illuminated by the stars and the moon. We drank together and tried smoking together. We learned that we could push others’ limits and then create our own. I became an atheist vegetarian and you became a punk rocker who found expression through music. We took on the world with little more than an attitude and snarky humor.

Like the reflection in a mirror, we would learn about ourselves by looking at our reflection through the other. Through you, I found that I wasn’t the only one to use humor as a shield to keep the world at a little more than arms length. I saw your defense mechanisms and adapted them for my own use. I saw your specialized intelligence and wit and learned from you on how to develop specific aspects of my intellectual capabilities while strengthening what was innately mine to begin with. Your rash actions could be tempered by my cautious nature; my paralysis from overanalyzing would give way to your impulses.

It wasn’t all perfect, but we could love each other through what felt like anything. We would fight, but we’d make up. At least we did until that last time.

Let’s go back to the beginning which is really the middle, which is really the beginning of the end. It was a perfect day to be on the parkway in the late afternoon. The indian summer sun saturated the world with warmth that was interrupted by autumn’s cooling gusts. The long, golden, wild grasses were stooping with the weight of their heavy seeds contrasted the emerald green lawns by the path. The Jordan River reflected back the blue of the endless ocean of sky. Sunlight refracted and made the river glitter like a precious sapphire gem.

Moving down the trail, I was captivated by the shimmering water. “Let’s go skinny dipping” slipped out before I could | 121

consciously stop myself. The idea was considered, denied, re-proposed, rejected, and then, miraculously, accepted.

We looked for the perfect spot for a few minutes before we came to it. Down a steep bank of tall grasses to a fairly level edge of the river that had a small land mass that we considered an island only 10 feet away from the edge of the river. The water between the ledge and the island was shallow and much slower moving than that of the main river body.

We stripped down bare, shedding our exoskeletons and defenses. Then, unlike penguins gathered at the edge of the ice shelf that pushes one another in to test for the presence of sea lions, we decided that we should enter the water together- one foot at a time.

Toes, feet, ankles, calves, and knees all moved into the cold water. They submerged into a world that we could not see with our eyes, but our delicate nerve endings could paint a detailed picture of an underwater world. Soft silt compressed underneath our weight and cushioned our feet from the hard earth. We moved a little father into the water. Until I saw it: the overpass above the river, filled with cars, each one having at the very least one occupant.

Somehow, we had not put together the fact that the overpass was a mere 100 yards away from our tiny oasis. Somehow, we had not expected the bank to curve away and our island would not be able to protect us from curious onlookers. Somehow, we did not in any of our discussions go over what to do in front of an audience. Somehow, we both laughed at the same time, and splashed back to shore, back to our exoskeletons and armor for our soft pink flesh.

Rarely in life do we get good stories without scars: mine runs laterally along the inside of my foot from the glass on the bottom of the river. A faint white line now, it is my tattoo of you, of me, of us.

Back on shore, we examined the cut. While it didn’t need stitches, my foot was certainly not going to make it back into my shoe. You offered to let me borrow one of your slippers. Your feet could not fit into my shoes, and out of the spirit of solidarity I 122 |

would not wear your slipper on my uninjured foot. Together, we moved down the parkway with three bare feet and a noticeable limp.

Passing a parkway maintenance vehicle pulled over on the side on the trail, we hobbled past slowly, until we heard two guys laughing hysterically in the truck when they saw us. Without words we knew exactly what they were laughing about and hobbled at a faster rate until we were out of their sight and earshot.

We went to your place. I showered and bandaged my foot.

We decided that I could forego stitches, partially due to the fact that we did not want to explain the origin of the wound and the possibility of a tetanus shot.

Later that year you would run away for a few days with a man eight years our senior, and instead of going home to your parents first you called me and we walked in the park. We sat under a pagoda out of the rain and I listened to you as we watched the foliage bursts of color.

We would listen to Blink-182s album that came out that winter and sing off key to each other while shoveling the sidewalk. You spent Christmas morning at my house. That was our last year together.

We haven’t talked in years, my dear you. I can now understand what you did and why you did it. I never told you how fully I understood what happened to you the next spring, and how I knew it would change you to someone else entirely, as it did me.

We used to move through the world together: testing our boundaries, our limits, ourselves. We used to break through shiny glasslike surfaces of water to a previously unknown world, and somehow, we each found ourselves in a world of liquid sapphire.

I still can’t listen to the Blink 182 song “I Miss You” without thinking of you. Because of the ways the stars looked one December night when you kissed me; I could hear the line “and in the night we'll wish this never ends” over and over.

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Artist Aaron De La Rosa

Among The Grass

Springing from the earth It sways side to side It has no direction, No freedom, of any kind.

The sun looks down upon it, Smirking at its size.

The summer brings life, The winter brings death, but only To those who are listening.

Along comes a blade, among the grass, For those who wait with their eyes closed, What is lost can never be found, And so we sleep, waiting for the rain To wash us down.

124 | Author Alan Castaneda

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Artist Shannon Holt

TAMED HEART Straight like a river A river with no end Across a grassy meadow Over meadow I run Singing in the air The frosty air inhaled Towards me comes the arrow The arrow from the bow The bow held far behind me Behind me in the hands The hands of a goddess The goddess with her eyes Eyes like golden apples Hair like golden sunset Hands like ivory statue Fingers clamped tightly Curling on the bow The bow with the arrow The arrow coming closer Artemis, once again I am yours.

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Author Myra Schjelderup | 127

Slumber

Artist Miranda Lavallee

On the swell of the western mountain’s breast The sun laid its head, Weary of the day and the scurrying Of the milling masses below.

I watched the whole of the heavens drift to sleep, radiant and shimmering In its slumber.

Like the sun I lay down my head Upon a pillow ashamed of itself, We both the same in our desire for warmth, The virginal brush of your hair upon our faces.

“Oh, on that day our hearts’ desire is fulfilled Shall even the sun envy us then.”

And alone I slumber.

128 | Author Tony Jaeger

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Daughter I left you. But you left me first. ***** You left me in my perfectly tucked bed, with the hospital corners that I was never able to learn from you. I had nightmares filled with Disney characters: childhood mixed with the crime shows that you watched with me before I was even in kindergarten. You were honest and not particularly comforting about the possibility that I could be shot through my bedroom window. I never had a bedtime.

I’m not sure if you knew how little I slept. ***** You left me in the silent hallway of the high school once, where I sat after band practice, years before I would be old enough to volunteer, eat lunch, and hide there on a regular basis. You fell asleep, and I waited for hours until you woke up and remembered to come for me.

I lost count of the well-meaning faculty members who asked me questions on their way to the parking lot. Sometimes they were so nice about it that I started crying, unable to justify my abandonment.

You left me on campus, to sink or swim at university, my first time away from home. You asked my permission to skip the parent seminars, and I acquiesced. You took me to lunch, and to Wal-Mart to get extra clutter for my dorm room. You didn’t explain laundry to me, or responsibility. I sent you money and told you that I was fine.

I sank. ***** I left you, low on money like always and bitter over the change you couldn’t control. I took less than what was mine, slipping in and out like a ghost while you were at work. I left my key and my innocence for you to find when you returned. I ignored your calls because I didn’t know how to answer them. I couldn’t be or give you what you wanted.

I’ve never been able to do that. ***** Six years later, you sent a message through your son. It spoke of love and regret, and I heard the words that you didn’t say. Unfortunately, you didn’t teach me forgiveness.

I miss you, too.

*****

130 | Author Toni Cerna

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Artist Shanna King

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My Summer in a Tent I had just finished up the eighth grade in Buena Vista, CO. I was moving yet again to another city. It had become quite routine for me. You see, my mom was a small business owner of a store which sold health foods, supplements, incense, crystals, etc. The store would always do well for the first year and sometimes the second but then when business became slow we would pack up and move. Always to a small town either in the same state or one which shared a surrounding border.

Even as a teenager I knew that if we would move to a big city the business might do well; but my mom is not a big city girl.

When I got the news that we were going to move I threw yet another fit. I didn’t want to leave the friends I had made or the life I thought I had established but when you’re a kid you’re pretty much just along for the ride. Needless to say, I went on many, many rides.

I was under the impression we would be camping along the way from Colorado to New Mexico, where we were moving.

Nothing too extreme, just a week and then we would be on our way to set up shop in the next town that I could call home for another year or two. Although, I always hoped it would be something more permanent. I always dreamed of having lifelong friends that I knew from child hood.

We had been driving a few hours when we came across a small town by the name of Pagosa Springs. I remember a distinct smell, rotten eggs. Later I learned that it was in fact sulfur. I miraculously grew accustomed to it and stopped noticing. There was a camp ground right on the edge of town which I would soon call home for the summer. I didn’t know it at the time but days would turn into weeks and weeks into months. Before I knew it I was a local resident of the Pagosa Springs KOA. 134 | Author Megan Kuhn

I enjoyed camping. We did it often. I shared a tent with my step sister who was a few years younger than I. We worked diligently to set up our tent and blow up our full size air mattresses with an automatic air pump. We laid our olive green sleeping bags out and organized our duffle bags of clothes, each creating our own spaces on our individual sides of our make-shift bedrooms.

As soon as camp was set up I set off to explore. The ground was a mixture of mostly boring dirt and gravel, since the KOA is manmade. Close by was a wide river than ran through town and curved around by the side of our camp ground. Some areas of the river were white and fierce from the water forcing its way to its destination. Other areas were still, quiet, and crystal clear. By the river there were wild flowers and large rocks that were perfect to relax on or to leap from rock to rock, depending on our mood.

There were showers and restroom facilities. Being a 14 year old girl, I definitely needed those luxuries after playing in the dirt.

A week went by. I hiked and explored the lush wild land that surrounded the town, floated the river in a single black tube, sat around the camp fire roasting marsh mellows and turkey dogs, pretty much took part in any camping activities one could think of.

It was a very enjoyable week but I was getting anxious to pack up camp and get back on the road to New Mexico, where a house with my own room awaited me. I had been pestering my mom for days to pack up and go. I remember her words distinctly, “We are going to stay here for the summer”. I was not very pleasant that day or even the weeks after.

The reality had finally settled in that we were going to live in tents for the next few months. We did not have a home, or at least a house. I decided to get a part time job at a local café bussing tables so that I would have some time away from the camp ground and also some spending money. I made many friends, got into mischief and ended up having one of the best summers of my life, all while going to bed and waking up in a tent, every single day. | 135

I’ve given my mom a lot of grief for that summer. I went through a time when I was insistent we were homeless. She’s always been insistent that it was good for us to not be attached to material possessions such as a house! She always had a plan. It just took me some time to understand it. That experience has made a lasting impact in my life and my adaptability that I have grown to appreciate. For some time I thought we may have been without a home but as I grew older I realized home is where you are loved and with the people you love in return.

I think I was an actor so many years ago astounding all the critics, thrilling with my show I think I was an explorer in one of my past lives climbing mountains, discovering seas coming out alive I think I was an artist many ages back using the wondrous colors to express what words can lack I think I was a poet much better way back then different, loved by many wish that could happen again I think I am a dreamer ever since the past – the only thing I’m good at I’ll keep dreaming to the last

136 | Artist Rosemary Gioielli

Author Miranda Lavallee | 137

138 Artist | Shanna King

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Hard to Swallow “What’s wrong with you?” “Why would you even think of doing such a thing?” “You had such a good life!” “There’s no reason why you should have done that.” “Just focus on something else.” These were only a few of the things that people said to me over the past year. And I did have a pretty good life. I grew up in an upper middle class family with two brothers and loving parents.

I went to private catholic schools all the way through high school.

I bought a horse when I was 16 and competed in shows almost every weekend. My parents even bought me a truck for graduation from high school. Even with this great life I lived there was always something missing.

I was the middle child squished between two boys. I was neither the straight A, overachiever older brother, nor the not so smart, babied younger brother. I was average. A, B student, not exceptionally great at any sport, not the leader of any clubs or school functions. I was just…there. When I would bring report cards home with A’s, and B’s my parents would say “Audrey I know you can do better than that!” When my younger brother brought home report cards with C’s and D’s they would say “Tommy you did so GREAT!! We are so proud of you!” When did C’s and D’s become better then A’s and B’s?

High school was a tough time for me. I had always been the “loner”, but this just seemed to get worse through high school. I would hang out with a few girls at school, but really only because I had to. Outside of school, though, I was almost always alone.

My horses were my best friends. I would go out to the barn every day after school, and would just spend hours riding and talking to them.

140 | Scott Jones Artist

Author Audrey Inlow | 141

At the time I only had one horse, Jake. My first horse Mahrsaan had died the year before. It was one of the hardest loses I have ever had to deal with. Jake and Mahrsaan were my best friends. I always felt whole while with them. I was never lacking or not good enough. And when I did talk to them they wouldn’t blab it to everyone like my mom did. They were always there for me, no matter what. Jake was my baby. He came before everything else, even myself. I would give up my time, energy, and money to make him comfortable and happy.

Once in college I hoped that things would get better. I did make a few friends, got a boyfriend, and did a few extracurricular activities. The extracurricular activities and friends faded over time, the boyfriend and I broke up and I became the “loner” again.

I always thought I was fine with it. “I like being alone” I would tell my parents. My mom was especially worried. She grew up in a family with 12 brothers and sisters and so she is used to being loud, outgoing, and in the middle of EVERYTHING! My mom can be somewhat…intense. Both brothers and I are more like my dad then my mom. We are quiet, keep to ourselves, and not super outgoing with tons of friends. My mom tends to base a lot of a person’s worth on schooling and jobs. She always pushed us with school and expected us to get good jobs. She was the top of her class, which was hard to do then. She was one of the few women in the engineering world, and she rose through the ranks quickly.

My third year in college I met Chris. Chris was in the marines with these amazing blue eyes that immediately drew me to him. He was the exact opposite of everything I had been exposed to up to that point in my life. He smoked, shot guns, had tattoos, cussed like a sailor, broke the law, and drank a bit too much. I fell for this guy so fast I hardly knew what happened.

Chris was stationed about two hours from where I was living in LA. I would drive out to see him as often as I could. He 142 |

never came to LA to see me. To this day I have no idea what it was about this man that drew me in so much. I guess it was because he seemed to understand me. He had always felt like there was something missing in his family life as well. Like he was never good enough.

Chris and I dated for about four months before we started talking about getting married. It was fast but I guess that’s what military guys do. He would be deploying oversees that spring so we didn’t have much time. He came down to my house for Christmas and met my parents. They hated him. I didn’t care what they had to say about it being too soon though. I loved this guy and no one could convince me differently.

After New Years I found out my parents did know a bit more than I did. Chris, out of nowhere, became super distant. He would never talk to me anymore. We used to Skype all the time since we weren’t that close to each other. It was nice just hearing each other’s voices. All of a sudden those conversations stopped and I was alone again. I had no idea what was going on. I was young, gullible, and naive. I had never dealt with something like this before. I felt like I wasn’t good enough again. There was something wrong with me. I somehow made him mad and I needed to make things better somehow…anyhow! I became extremely depressed, and after much persuasion by friends and family, I started seeing a therapist at school. I felt humiliated going to his office. No one had fallen for a guy as fast as I did, and oftentimes I felt like my therapist didn’t know how to deal with it. We would sit there and talk for our hour long session and get nowhere. Nothing seemed to be helping my depression and so my therapist decided to put me on antidepressant pills. Hopefully these would help.

At that time I was stressed, not only with school and Chris, but with my family. None of them had really gone through what I was going through. There had never been depression in my family before and so it was something that was foreign to them, as well | 143

as myself. We had grown up in the “perfect” family. No one knew how I truly felt though. My mom would always call and say “just focus on school! I can’t understand why you can’t just forget this guy and just do your work!” I didn’t know why either. I should be like my mom right? I should just be able to forget everything that I cared about and focus on something that will benefit me in the long run. Unfortunately I’m not like my mom. She never really knew what it was like to break up with someone. My dad was her first boyfriend and they have been married for almost 30 years now.

I did try to forget about Chris. I tried to shove him out of my brain and just do my work. I tried to figure out what I was doing wrong to make him so mad at me. I couldn’t though. Eventually I became so depressed I began to make myself physically sick. I wouldn’t eat for days because everything I tried to put down came right back up. I wouldn’t do anything. Weeks would go by and I would just sit in front of the TV and cry. I began drinking. A LOT! I would drink in the morning and at night and all the way through the day. Most nights the only way I could sleep was to pass out from alcohol.

Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to see Chris and talk to him face to face. What was I doing wrong!? I tried several times to make a time when I could come out and see him but every weekend he always seemed to have something going on. Eventually I was able to go out. It felt like it took days to make the two hour drive. I had no idea what was going to happen and was so nervous to see Chris again after so long. It was a cold greeting. Barely even a “hi”. We sat in his barracks, he playing his videogames, and me sitting next to him.

When we did finally leave his room to get some food I finally got up the nerve to ask what was going on. What was I doing to make him so mad? He kept avoiding answering the question until I finally became so annoying that he stopped, turned around and told me in the harshest voice I have ever heard “you are a stage 5 144 |

clinger! You can be such a fucking pain in my ass sometimes! You won’t ever leave me the fuck alone!” Wow that was a lot to take in. I had tried to let him have so much space. I had no idea what to say. We walked back in silence. And again I sat there; staring at the TV, my brain going around and around in circles. What had I done wrong? How could I fix it? What did I need to change? My eyes started to water. I tried my hardest to hide it from Chris. Tears were a bad thing. It meant weakness. It wasn’t allowed.

“You better not cry! If you cry in front of me I WILL make you leave! I don’t care if you have to drive back at 2am you better not cry in front of me!” Crying was bad. Crying was very very bad.

How could I not cry though? I was a fucked up person! I wound up leaving. It was about midnight when I left. I drove the two hours home in silence. I held back all of the tears that threatened to spill out of my eyes. I couldn’t cry. There was something wrong with me. I was the most fucked up person ever. How could I have done this? What can I change to not be so screwed up?

Back home I wound up sitting in Jakes stall all night. He kept me company when no one else could. Jake kept alternating between standing over me and keeping watch to nuzzling my head to see If I was Ok. I tried to sleep but my mind kept going around and around (not to mention Jake did step on my foot once). Chris texted me and acted like nothing had happened. How could he do that when I was such a messed up person!? I needed to go home.

I wanted my mom. Maybe somehow being at home could make it all better. Maybe I wouldn’t be as unwanted, messed up, lacking with my parents as I was with Chris.

My parents knew that I was having problems but they had no idea it was so bad until they saw me in person. I hardly talked. I hardly did anything! On Friday night Chris texted me again.

He said one of his buddies was coming down to San Diego and he wanted to come out, take me to dinner and fix things. Things were going to be ok! Maybe I wasn’t so fucked up! Maybe I had | 145

changed enough that I was acceptable again! All that waiting and crying and praying (even though I don’t believe in God) and hoping had finally paid off! Things were going to get better.

The next day he broke up with me. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.” Where had this come from? Things were supposed to get better! What had I done? I was fucked up again. I was unwanted. I was lacking. Nothing about me was favorable. Why was I even on this earth? What was I still doing here?

My mind raced around and around again as I drove back to LA from my parents house in San Diego. I sat on my bed for hours.

“I’m so fucked up.” I kept repeating to myself. “I shouldn’t be here” I had just refilled my antidepressant prescription. They were supposed to make you not feel anything right? One doesn’t seem to do enough though. One by one each pill slid down my throat.

All thirty of them. I sat there thinking of how fucked up I was.

I had kept a journal for about two months since I started getting depressed. The darkest thing I have ever read in my life! I wrote a goodbye letter in it. Saying that I shouldn’t be here. That I was too messed up for the world. That I was going to make everyone happier if I wasn’t here. I wasn’t good enough for my parents. I wasn’t good enough for my friends. I wasn’t good enough for Chris.

I sat on my bed for about an hour. What about Jake though?

My horse had been my whole life for about 5 years. I couldn’t just leave him to find some new owner. I have been the only person who has been there for him for more than one year of his life! I would just be abandoning him. Jake cared. Jake was there for me when I wasn’t good enough for anyone else. I can’t do this. I can’t leave Jake. Jake wound up saving my life that night. Not a person. Not family or friends or a complete stranger. A horse. A horse saved my life.

of the night was a bit of a blur for me. They drove me to the ER. It was 4 in the morning. I was admitted almost instantly once they found out what I had done. They sat me on a stiff hospital bed and a nurse brought out a white Styrofoam cup with a white straw and the thickest blackest stuff inside. It looked like tar. She said it was charcoal. “It will help absorb the toxins from the pills” she said kindly as she handed it to me. It seemed like she had been through this whole routine a million times. It was disgusting. Thick and chalky and hard to swallow. It seemed to fit the past couple months of my life perfectly. All of those things Chris had said to me and all of the things I thought of myself. All of the alcohol I drank and pills I took to try to stop the pain. All hard to swallow. That’s the last thing I remember. Drinking the most disgusting stuff I ever had in my life.

I woke up two days later. I had no idea where I was or how I got there, but my parents were sitting beside me. “You had a seizure” they told me. I was hooked up to too many monitors to count, and wires and tubes and beeping machines were all around me. I was in a white and blue hospital gown with a blue sheet pulled up to my chest. There was a TV mounted to the right corner of the room. I looked out through the sliding glass doors to a hallway with other glass doors lining one side. The sign on the far side of the hall said ICU. That was the first time I wound up in a hospital. I was a fucked up person.

I went into my roommate, Katie’s, room. While I cried my eyes out on her bed, she called her mom in the other room. The rest 146 |

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Artist Miranda Lavallee

Poverty Scars This may not be the sort of story that comes to mind when you think about the consequences of poverty, but maybe it should be. Maybe the strange, small stories should be the ones told more often.

I have an irrational attachment to toilet paper. Now that we can afford to, my little family buys household supplies in bulk. This naturally leads to overstocking things, like the dental floss that I’ve been trying to use up for two years. But the toilet paper is another story; we overstock it on purpose, because of me. I hoard it. I fill the cupboard under the bathroom sink with it and still worry about the day when we might run out.

I was twelve, or nine, or seven. It was a few dollars to have milk for my cereal, or a few cigarettes to feed my mother’s habit. Or, in the worst case scenario, it was a roll of toilet paper. A marker of shame; I saw our inability to take care of ourselves as the worst sign of wicked character.

That was me: the skinny kid who only half-smiled, then the chubby girl who avoided eye contact. I was the charity case on your street that you couldn’t ignore, long after you’d stopped opening the door to my mother. Grateful but silent, I carried the carefully penned notes folded up like secrets.

I don’t remember if I ever spoke up, if I ever voiced my opposition. It was always necessary, so there seemed no reason for that. I do know that my questions went unanswered. Why can’t you use your cigarette money? Why are we the only ones that seem to live like this? How can I ever talk to her again, now that she knows we can’t even afford soap?

The older that I get the more I shed the memories along with the jackets that I wore until they fell to pieces. I hold on to only the most important memories, like the pillowcase “yearbooks” that I passed around my senior year, when I couldn’t afford the real thing.

I know, logically, that as a smart and capable adult I don’t have to go hungry anymore. I can find work when it’s needed to keep homelessness in the past where it belongs.

But some things seem carved beneath the surface of my skin, like my low self-esteem and religious indoctrination.

The scars of poverty get carried with us into adulthood. I will always eat as though someone might take the food away if I’m too slow. I will always feel like an impostor in a room full of people whose clothes fit and don’t need patching, who carry themselves with a quiet air of security that I will never understand.

And, just in case, I will always have extra toilet paper.

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Author Toni Cerna| 149 | 33

Artist Shanna King

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Wages to Live By If workers in other countries receive wages that are insufficient to elevate their life beyond poverty, and they are producing goods consumed in our country, is that an issue of social injustice for us to be concerned about? Addressing the issue of wages on the international level is vital for the sake of the future of our own country, and also because of ethical justice for the workers all around the world.

Some people will surely say that the capitalist based free market economy is successful in producing wealth and so we should let nature take its course, not adding regulations such as a minimum wage, letting the market set wages, and letting the law of survival of the fittest rule in all the affairs of mankind. Therefore we may choose to model our economy on this motto of Adolf Hitler, “Struggle is the father of all things. It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself above the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle.”

However, we may also consider other voices speaking into this situation. We may choose to view humans as having a higher responsibility than to live by the base rule of survival of the fittest. There may be many factors to consider before casting off our responsibility for the poor of the world. Recognizing that the desperation that comes from poverty will eventually affect us here in the comfort of our affluence, President Truman said in 1947, “The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.” It is foolish and short sighted to think only of the economic prosperity of our own country. If we consider the 152 | Author Mark Anderson

interrelated aspects of our global economy we must consider the economic well-being of other countries as a benefit to world stability.

Because I am a worker I feel especially passionate about this issue. I have been a hard working carpenter most of my adult life.

The first time I saw construction workers in bare feet, my heart was deeply ashamed at my American affluence. When I traveled to India and The Philippines I witnessed first-hand, good hardworking people, who would work 12 hours a day, in an electronics factory, just to stay poor. These people work harder than me for a few dollars a day. I simply think a worker should get paid a decent wage for a day’s work. Some people say that is ok because everything is cheap in their economy. That is a half-truth. True the rent for their shack may only be $25- per month but a computer still costs $750! That is the situation. It is also true that the industrialization of poor countries by western enterprise has already greatly benefited these countries. But it is also true that these benefits have not been great enough to elevate these people beyond dependence upon us.

The benefits are just enough to keep them in financial slavery.

I am not against capitalism, and I am not against rich people-that is their choice. But if people are working at slave labor wages, living in want, producing products so that others may live in luxury, then this is an issue of ethical justice; before man and God. A Biblical passage challenges rich people saying, “You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who harvested your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty!” (James 5:3-4) The solution seems to be voluntary elevation of wages by the corporations. If we don’t want international government regulations then the corporations should take the lead voluntarily.

Major electronics leaders have already taken a huge step in forming the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition, (EICC) (http:// | 153

www.eicc.info/). Membership in this organization is voluntary and its members conduct self audits of their suppliers down to the third tier. The EICC Code of Conduct monitors in the categories of: Labor, Health and safety, Environment, Ethics, and Management systems. Under the labor category it monitors: freely chosen employment, (including child labor avoidance), working hours, (including wages), humane treatment, and freedom of association.

The standards currently established in the EICC Code of Conduct should be modified to mandate a living wage rather than merely conform to local minimum wage and should reduce the rate of overtime pay so that workers will have less motivation for working excessively long hours. This is good ethically and it is good for the world wide economy. If factory workers can get great paying jobs it will boost the economy in the entire region; “Trickle-down economics”. American corporations should take the lead in setting higher standards for the EICC Code of Conduct, including a very high living wage.

Artist Aaron De La Rosa

I am as materialistic as any other American. I have a nice computer, multiple nice cameras and musical instruments, mostly made overseas. But this issue cannot continue to be ignored by Americans. If we are complacent about this because we are the beneficiaries of the current status quo, we may also be the big losers in the long run. Don’t think that the world will continue on forever without major revolutions. Don’t be so short sighted that we only think of our own immediate needs. We must relinquish our insistence to be at the top of the food chain. We must dream of a better world beyond our own borders.

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Artist Jennifer Bohn Why speak of nonsense Thence you condense Life is intense

Happy is the sound of nonsense To great immense I mean no pretense

In a sense it is good suspense

Why

Whence you speak of nonsense

Nonsense

I’m on the fence No offense to the dense

You must commence The practice of nonsense You will dispense Yet make no expense

Hence the best sort of sense Is nonsense

156 | Author Miranda Lavallee

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A House

Artist Aaron De La Rosa

In the middle of the street, a house That contained within it the stench of previous Owners, tirelessly cleansed to make room For new ones.

A place where everything was perfect, but not, Where in front of a neighbor’s house coke machines waited For quarters to once more give it breath And through summers would invariably breathe While children would play, not caring one bit About some world outside that for all they knew Did not exist.

And down the street there was school, Which was some place you learned, though no one Knew what that meant yet, And home meant somewhere to eat, sleep, play, Where you could find the latest thing to do, And where King of the World meant King of the Fire Hydrant.

And times change and memories fade, and loves may too, But that house in the middle of the street might just as well Be the same as I remember it.

158 | Author Josh Miles

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The boy The boy sat on a rock by the river bank. He had been wandering for some time and took rest upon this rock. His soul was in peril as his journey had been not without many horrific hardships. The boy looked upon the river and spoke “Please. Please show me the way.”

The boy was lost not only in reality, but of the mind. He was a broken spirit. He spoke again “Please let me find the way. For no longer can my heart continue to weep”. The boy sat upon the rock hoping for a sign, and then he heard the voice.

“Boy” said the voice. “Why do you cry?”

The boy replied “I am lost voice. Are you here to show me the way?” The boy waited in anticipation for the voice to respond.

“Yes boy. I am here to show you the path to true happiness. Only through my guidance will you be able to achieve it.”

The boy leapt from the rock with excitement. “Anything! I will do anything voice if you just show me the way!” The boy was prepared to give all that was left of his heart and soul to find this path the voice spoke of.

“Listen boy” said the voice, “it will be no easy task indeed. You will experience even more hardships along the way. Are you prepared for such a thing?” The boy quickly responded

The voice returned and said “And?” The boy shook his head and responded “She was beautiful voice, the most beautiful creation I had ever laid my eyes on. Neither sunset nor sunrise could compare to her beauty.

I spent many months with her. We would waltz to music, share stories of the past, cry upon one another’s shoulder when need be. She showed me a great many things voice, but when it came time to offer her my heart she did not accept. Why? Why did I travel so far to experience great joy to be followed by great sadness and pain? Did I fail the task?”

“No.” replied the voice. “You did not fail boy. You did well. It is time for the next threshold.”

The boy grew confused. “But I do not understand. My questions go unanswered.

Why was my time wasted for just another crack to be added to an already withered heart?”

“It was no waste of time boy. Answers will come when the path is present. Now are you ready for your next threshold?”

The boy quietly responded “Yes”.

“Good” said the voice. “Your next task is to travel back through the dessert from which you came. At the end of the dessert there is a great range of mountains. Past the mountains you will find the dancer. Go to her.”

The boy grew frightened and upset at what the voice was asking him to do. “I do not understand voice. I must travel a greater distance to find the one to whom my heart should belong to…what if I am hurt once again?”

“Yes voice. I am ready for anything!”

“That is a risk you will have to take if you wish to discover the path boy. Now go.” The boy left the river and began his journey.

“Very well then” said the voice. “You must overcome three thresholds to discover the path to true happiness. The first task is to travel through the dessert to the west. When you reach the dessert’s end you will find the dancer. Go to her.”

Much more time had passed and the boy found himself back at the river. “VOICE!” he shouted with anger. “TALK TO ME NOW VOICE!”

“I will go to her voice. I will find this dancer of the west.” The boy left the river to begin his journey.

The voice responded ever so gracefully “Yes boy? Did you complete the second threshold?”

After much time had passed the boy found his way back to the river and shouted “Voice! Where are you voice! I traveled through the dessert and found the dancer of whom you spoke of!”

The boy once again shouted “YES VOICE I COMPLETED YOUR MISERABLE THRESHOLD!”

160 | Author Brian Pope

Once again the voice responded “And?”

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The boy had to find words as he was too angry to speak. “I traveled through the dessert and over the mountains to find the Dancer. I gave her my heart once again. This time she accepted only to further widen the crack from before with lies, treachery, and deceit! I loved her and she destroyed all that was pure in my soul!” Tears ran from the boy’s eyes as he shouted to the voice.

“You did well boy. Are you ready for the next threshold?”

The boy spoke with confusion “The next threshold? Why voice?

Why must you do this to me? Can you not see I have no more heart left to give? Give me answers voice! Why must I go through such horrible pain?”

“Boy; when you look into her eyes, what do you see?” The boy wiped his tears and responded. “At first glance I see beauty. A thousand galaxies had collided to create her gaze. But behind her eyes is sadness and despair. A soul that has been broken and beaten several times over. She is lost.”

traveled boy, but there are so many more places you need to go.” The boy pondered the comments of the voice. Everything began to come clear to him. “At the beginning of your journey you stood upon this river a boy, now you stand here a man. It’s time for you to follow your path. Now go.”

The man left the river and began his journey.

Months passed. This was the longest journey the man had yet to travel. He dragged through the dessert with no nourishment, he climbed the mountains with no strength, and he crossed the icy plain with no coat. These things mattered not as his will to be happy kept him going.

The words of the voice always racing through his mind. His curiosity did not allow him to fail. As he reached the end of the icy plain the man stopped. In front of him was a door; a door that reached the sky.

His hand reached out and turned the knob with anticipation; he entered.

Through the door was neither floor nor walls, only the unknown.

Stars surrounded him in every which direction as he stood in confusion, and then their eyes met.

“Sounds as though, perhaps, you are not the one that needs saving, boy” said the voice.

In front of him was a woman he did not know. The man spoke “You are not the dancer.”

The boy sat silent as what the voice had said to him made sense.

“What is the final threshold voice?” asked the boy.

The woman spoke back, “I am the dancer, but you are not the boy.”

“After you complete this final threshold a path will be revealed to you. This path will lead you to a happier life. It is up to you whether or not you go down it. Are you ready?”

The boy reluctantly replied, “Yes.” “For your final task you will travel back through the dessert, over the great range of mountains, and through many miles of the icy plain. At the plain’s edge you will find a door. Behind that door the dancer awaits.

Go to her.”

The boy fell to his knees. “I fear I do not have the will to complete this task voice. I have traveled to hell and back with her, yet you ask me to keep going?”

“Does she take claim to your heart boy?” replied the voice.

“I was a boy, but now I am a man,” the boy replied. “Why are you here dancer?”

“I was sent here by a voice” said the dancer. “I went to the voice in search of happiness, but happiness I did not find. It made me endure thresholds and give my heart to a boy only to be broken down time and time again, until finally the voice sent me here. It said I would find the path I had been searching for, and that the boy would be there.”

The man replied “I too was sent here by the voice. I too was made to go through thresholds and give my heart away only to have it broken.”

The two strangers stared into one another’s eyes as they stood among the heavens. Both finally recognizing their paths.

As they gazed at one another, the hardships they had endured ceased to exist; their hands met, and they stood there and smiled.

“Yes” said the boy. “No other being I care for as I care for her. She is immortal. She is beloved.”

Again the voice spoke, “To hell and back with her you may have

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Artist Kieth Kramer | 29

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LIKE A WELL

Like a well-oiled machine the percussion section played, andante. So slow, to be in time you had to move with a swagger. A rhythm so funky added to the sauntered beat. Cold as ice the bass rolled in and thundered in a stoccato sixteenth note groove, with spared placement, octaves slapped.

The raging solo accordian player tore into his instrument with the heart of a hair metal guitarist (was bald).

166 |

F# to D and back again the band played. Center stage, a twisted mistress squealed with delight, the sound of her voice made the crowd literally flip. A seductress of such her hair hanging wild, she was no stranger to sexy. To the left, it was hard to keep the theorbo in sight. Being a near-extinct instrument, the fundamental fans couldn’t wait to wrap their ears around its screeching minor notes. Woven like a quilt, left and right the melody twisted sweet. Suddenly the crowd was overwhelmed by the strong smell of black licorice. The promoter thought, ‘this is the night.’

In order to win them over he would shower the crowd with a popular beverage. It worked, and this memorable night was linked to a local baby boom.

Author Steven Shell | 167

The Art of Trolling How to Have an Enlightened Political Debate Online

Have you ever had Thanksgiving dinner evolve into a verbal war across three generations, with occasional input from the dog; one that stops just short of a reenactment of your favorite grade-school food fight? It doesn’t take much, just mention to a certain relative that you don’t believe that George Bush really planned 9/11 as a way to fill Dick Cheney’s death quota for Satan; or that Obama probably isn’t actually the Anti-Christ/Secret-Muslim/Atheist/Marxist dictator that certain news channels make him out to be. My family is unfortunately tolerant of each other’s views, so I have never had this particular experience. But I imagine that at the end of the night, when you’re cleaning the gravy and spittle off the ceiling, you are overwhelmed with new insight to American politics.

Fortunately for my poor, deprived self, there is always the internet. Thanks to this wonderful invention, I no longer have to sit around after a dully polite family gathering and wonder how to get my daily dose of vitriol. It’s a simple matter of hopping on the computer and logging into my favorite news aggregator, then browsing the forums for a lively discussion. In a few short moments I can all but hear the rousing cries of “Fascist!” “Commie!” and of course the highest accolade the internet has to offer: “Troll! You’re a Trollololol!!!”

It’s such a heartening experience, and yet it seems I am always hearing the same few people arguing their sides. So, in the interest of getting some new blood (spattered on the walls 168 | Author Nean Michael Hawe

perhaps), I have decided to help out those who have an interest in getting involved, but don’t know how. To that end, here is a useful How-To guide: Step 1 - Pick a Username That’s Sure to Get Attention Not all forums require accounts and usernames, but in those that do choosing the right one is crucial. Your username (or “handle” as it is sometimes called) is how you make a first impression. It is your face, clothes, and opening line. There are several different methods you can go with, but two of the most popular are: obscure yet memorable, or blunt and polarizing.

For an obscure username let’s take an example from someone who just happens to be online as I write this: randomjsa.

I’ve no idea what his name has to do with anything, but it’s not JohnSmith6883; so I’ll be certain not to confuse his enlightened rants with those of some raving lunatic. Blunt and polarizing is far easier to do, and much recommended for beginners. After all, with such names as YoMamaObama, Envirodude, and 911wasaninsidejob your argument is half done before you’ve even said anything.

Step 2 - Choose a Side, There are Only Two and You Have to Choose You may not be aware of this, but the fact is that there are only two sides online: left and right. The middle ground has been scorched clean by the fiery warring of the impassioned, so be sure to steer clear of it. Your only safe refuge is to pick a direction, lower your head, and run as far to the extremes a possible.

Don’t feel that you need to support a particular party though; if you have run to the right be sure to attack Democrats as demonic fetus hating socialists, but there’s no reason to treat Republicans as anything more than corrupt capitulators who are | 169

allowing liberals to destroy the country. Conversely, if you have chosen the left, be sure to call Republicans greedy fascist zealots eager to sacrifice the poor to their wealthy gods, but Democrats can always be referred to as spineless losers, too corrupt and weak willed to stand up for what’s right. Attacking both parties will assure that you are seen as the non-partisan voice of reason, thus earning you the trust of your virtual peers.

Step 3 - Formulating an Argument: Use of Strawmen, Ad Hominem, and Red Herrings Now that you’ve chosen an identity and a side, it’s time to begin formulating an argument. Be sure to learn all the recent buzzwords, and use them as often as possible; this shows that you are an informed and engaged citizen. More importantly though, familiarize yourself with the above mentioned logical constructs, for they are the very basis of any good online discussion. If an opponent’s argument seems to be gaining traction with observers, misquote or misinterpret what they say, then tear their new argument to pieces; doing so will establish you as a person of insight and intellect. If that doesn’t work, attack their character, insinuate the worst possible things about them and their sexual proclivities. After all, no one wants to be seen to agree with a child molester. And if all else fails, divert attention to some other, preferably terrifying, subject. People won’t care that you’re wrong if they are distracted by their fear that terrorists may be secretly living in their own backyard.

Step 4 - Debating Points: Ignore the Facts, They Just Get in the Way There’s really not much else to this step. If someone points out an inconvenient fact (especially if they have a citation to back it up) deflect, divert, or ignore. There’s nothing to be gained by addressing reality, because reality is gray, and politics 170 |

are always black or white. If you find yourself having difficulty with this step, just repeat to yourself: “Facts are not my friends” and you’ll do fine.

Step 5 - Don’t Feel Limited in Forum: YouTube Comments and Unrelated Articles A great deal of political discussion online occurs in the comments sections of news sites or in set political forums. Don’t feel the need to restrict yourself to these limited options. Your opinions are important damn it, and they demand to be heard by anyone and everyone. That YouTube video your grandma sent you of kittens playing in a yarn basket? The perfect place to mention that Obama’s birth certificate is an obvious forgery, and that Kenya is an undeniable Muslim stronghold. In fact, you’ll find that YouTube is an unparalleled location for spouting any political views you’ve a mind to, with a diverse audience of rapt observers. And that article you found on how to make authentic Peruvian tamales? It could not possibly be more relevant to mention that Anne Coulter has obviously had a sex change operation.

Step 6 - Never Retreat, Never Defend, Rinse and Repeat Step six is arguably the most important on the list. No matter what, never apologize, admit that you’re wrong, or stop spouting things you’ve learned from chain emails. Keeping going at full steam, regardless of who opposes you or how much sense they are making. This is the very foundation of online political discussion: never back down. Because, honestly, where would we end up if people changed their minds when presented with clear and reasonable arguments as to why they are incorrect?

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The Sparkling Blanket The sun was unusually bright that day. Its warming rays stung my eyes as I was pulled out of my seat in the car and out into a strange world. There were no trees. The peaceful sounds of their whispers were absent. This was a new place, an alien place.

Gone were the closed in greens and browns that I had always been surrounded by; now replaced with grays, creams and openness –vast spaciousness that was all at once awe inspiring and frightening. The soft sounds of the trees were replaced by loud screeches, bangs – noise, so much noise. Noise in the sky; the white birds here were so very loud.

I looked at my mother’s face. She was smiling, her sparkling eyes crinkling at the corners. I too smiled; it was hard not to when she was happy. My father was walking down along the cream colored, powdery ground behind her. But, all around us were new faces, many new faces, too many.

172 | Author Terra LaRochelle

My mother placed me on my feet, the cream powdered ground felt warm and soft beneath my toes. Slowly she walked me along, holding my hands and cooing praise with each step I took. Until, suddenly, the ground became harder and darker and wet. I looked down and saw my footprint lightly left behind me.

I laughed in amazement and stomped about watching my little marks appear beneath me. With laughter in her voice, my mother beckoned me further out onto the dark, wet ground, and I followed her laughingly.

Then she moved to sit beside where I stood. And –I saw it, a vast blanket that never sat still. A blanket of sparkling lights that appeared and disappeared into foamy froths. I moved forward cautiously, the rhythmic ebb and flow of the dazzling blanket acting like a siren calling me nearer. Step-by-step, I moved towards the point where the frothing edges meet the dark, wet ground.

I gasped. The coolness of the foamy edges washed over my toes –a stark contrast to the heat of the sun. Another step, another gasp, and I laughed as the cool water ran over my feet and back again. I moved to follow it. It rushed forward to chase me back.

With a shrieks and laughter, I played chase with the playful waters. Its sparkling peaks and rolling foam laughing back with me.

It seemed like forever we played our little game.

Until suddenly, I was picked up and carried away from my new friend. I cried A the loss and reached my chubby, little hands towards it. It too seemed to reach out to me before rolling back into itself again, all foam and dazzling peaks.

“HushA, hush, my dear,” my mother cooed as she patted my back, “You’ll see the sea again one day.”

‘The sea,’ I thought as I watched it get further away, ‘a blanket of sparkles and foam.’

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Toruboro Speaks When nobody is sure i have to flip over the hourglass That is my job, It’s not that anyone cares about it anyway But it is just what needs to be done And i have to do it because i am the one who does.

And pigeons and people always complaining to me, Baby, they say, the rain comes down so slowly, Can’t we just get it all over with?

But i tell them, nothing Because I do not like to speak And i never complain about the speed my sand sinks But they complain about other things too, Like, which way is blue, and, why the sky is Timbuktu, i don’t listen to them, very much Not anymore, anyway, because they always disagree, and I have to do it, i have to Lift my wing and flip the Glass over When all is often very free At last, we shall See the widow’s peak Of the sea reclined To a century at peace

174 | Author Ryan Joseph Carter

O, how brave To be Nameless And dwell in a marsh Or whatever the hell You like; then to breath, When you choose to breath, The breath would really be When I was often very young i remember i got lost in the mist-film of an eye froze past tuesday The moon and the stars were my buddies and we spoke how The deep space winds same sifting eerily like white sand between toes feels Makes us wonder if past the glassy bubble of consciousness Two hands could slide perfectly along it We talked about back when the Alaskan polar caps were still under Santa’s hat And Aladdin and Merlock were locked up under my watchful eye Because i have to watch, and i have to look and see To do so is my duty, but really i oversee Because i am very oft like that And because you cannot hit me with 2 stones But anyway that’s a bit too much about me When i was often very young i liked to ride stratus Before they called it shotgun, and before i got into this whole business about the hourglass Back when i was free and the first inhale of mountain was blameless Back when mackeral sky lights littered my mind i never thought i could imagine a flat land as yellow as this (i have to flip, But anyway that is a bit too much about me

| 175

Artist Kerena Peterson

176 |

| 177

For the

Sanctity of Life It was fate. Benjamin’s father had fought on the side of environmentalism, as did his grandfather before him – both men were committed to the preservation of land and sea, and to the animals and creatures living there. His grandfather had worked for the Reno Gazette-Journal and wrote editorials in an effort to stop the eradication of the Nevada mustang. But in the 1950’s, a man’s work was more important than the conservation of a misfit animal, and his articles were eventually banned from publication, as was he. And his father, a mill worker for the Georgia-Pacific Corporation, took up the fight against the dumping of lethal byproducts into the many streams and rivers of northern Oregon. He gathered signatures and petitioned national leaders, and was eventually fired for it. And he spent many long years unemployed in an occupation that was, at the time, the only one for a middle-aged mill worker in the Pacific Northwest. Two generations of men before him had taken up the pen for the cause of environmentalism.

It is why Benjamin now stood on the deck of a ship with a gun in his hand.

The boat heaved upward, its bow crashing against another large swell, and the icy water from it splashed over the railing dousing Benjamin’s bare hand and the side of his leg. He looked up at the pilothouse. Inside was the shadow of the skipper, Dan Smith, a bearded young man wearing a baseball cap.

“Can you see them yet?” Benjamin shouted out.

The young skipper shook his head.

From the elevation of the poop deck, Smith could see the ice field ahead, stretching horizontally in both directions as far 178 Artist | Daniel Southerland

Author Frank Scozzari | 179

as eyes could see, and he could see the opening in it, where the ice-breaker had entered. A deep, black rift etched its way landward through blocks of snow and ice, toward the islands of the Magdalen, a small archipelago in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. As they approached the ice field, Smith eased back on the throttle and brought the engines to a complete idle. He waited for the swells to subside and then throttled ahead into the channel at a slow speed.

The mouth of this man-made waterway was more than thirty meters across, evidence of how many times it had been used to access the permanent snowfields beyond. Either side of the channel was lined in by four-foot walls of ice, out from which stretched large, diagonal cracks.

Benjamin kept his eyes keenly ahead as the ship inched its way upstream. As the channel narrowed, it became littered with chunks of floating ice, and he could hear them thunking off the bow. He frequently glanced up at Smith, checking for a sign, but Smith offered no signal yet.

He glanced down at the rifle in his hand. He could feel the wood stock snugly against his palm and he could feel the cold of the steel trigger against his finger. It is a menace, he recalled his father saying, referring to a rifle he once had. Only to be used by men without reason.

And yet Benjamin imagined the horror he had seen, coming upon the ice where the Sealers had done their work, the bloodied carcasses of hundreds of young harp seals; the pitiful cries of the pups; the repeated thuds of clubs raining down on soft skulls; the Sealers’ laughter echoing across the ice floes. Perhaps a weapon, if used to kill, is a menace of irrational men, he thought, but if you are fighting irrational men of violence, then a menacing weapon is an instrument they can understand. Nevertheless, Benjamin thought, he did not intend to use it to kill. He intended to fire warning shots over their heads.

180 |

Across the ice, perched at the top of his 55-foot, steel-hulled crabber was the old man Kalic, a burly fifty-something Canadian who had run a sealing company for twenty-five years now. From his high point, he watched his men perform their handiwork, that which they had performed in the same brutal, archaic manner for more than two decades straight.

The whiteness of the ice, which stretched out below him, was stained red now with blood. And the redness formed the image of a tangled web, where many blood-lines led to a central hub, a heap of dead or dying seals; their carcasses dumped there after their pelts had been taken. The young seals were shot or bludgeoned to death with hakapiks, a metal hook-tipped club. Then they were dragged back to the ship, sometimes still conscious. It was a scene of butchery, only to be imagined in a dark dream or witnessed in a horror film.

But for Kalic and his boys, it was work, no different than a butcher in a meat shop or a lineman in a packing shed. It was the work of their fathers, and fore-fathers before them. And the animals, though charming in appearance, were nothing but dollars signs, and mortgage payments, and food on the plates of their children.

“There!” he shouted, pointing a strong arm to a young seal scrambling away from the carnage. He looked down at a young man who was working the pelts with a knife below. “Cratton!” he shouted. “There! He is getting away!”

The young man grabbed his hakapik, dashed after the young seal, and gaffed it repeatedly in the head until it stopped moving.

Then he hooked it with the spike at the end of the hakapik and dragged it back to the ship, leaving another blood line in the snow.

The seal lay there on the ice floe with blood running from its nose.

It was still conscious and gasped for air. Not far away, the Sealer sharpened his knife blade, and as he began slicing its fur from its torso, the young seal began thrashing violently, and he thumped it | 181

in the head again with the hakapik until it stopped.

In the distance over the rise of an ice berm, there were three other pups getting away. Kalic shouted to his men, directing them with the long point of his arm. One of the hunters scrambled up to the top of the berm with a rifle and cracked out three shots.

“That’s some fine shooting there, Johnston!” Kalic shouted.

In between directing traffic, Kalic eyed the channel east.

They had been pestered in recent weeks by a small group of rebel activists who coined themselves “The Abalone Alliance,” predominantly because they had come from the West, the Pacific coast, where they had rallied to protect the abalone from the intrusive discharge of a nuclear power plant.

He did not see the ship at first, but heard the familiar sound of a ship’s diesel engine whispering across the ice floes. Then he saw the crown of its crow’s nest moving above the ice toward them.

He entered the wheelhouse, and when he emerged, he had a shotgun in one hand, and several rock-salt filled shells in the other. He had grown tired of these young activists, and of their harassing tactics. They had plastered the local towns with anti-sealing posters, callously displaying the carnage and portraying them as butchers.

They had posted videos on YouTube, and painted the words ‘Baby Killers’ in bright red on the side of his ship. And they had blocked the channel by dragging huge chunks of ice upstream and jamming them in the narrows, although Kalic’s double-hulled crabber made quick work of it. More recently they resorted to more irritating measures, using a loud speaker to insult their families and threaten to ram their ship against the steel-hull crabber.

For Kalic, the activists were more of a nuisance than a threat.

But their activities interrupted work, and some of his men were bothered by it, and by the escalation of it. Each time, it seemed, the activists were ratcheting up their methods, becoming more hostile, and more desperate. And Kalic was determined to put and end to it.

182 |

He looked down at the rock-salt filled shells in his hand. He grunted out a deep-throated laugh as he loaded them into the shotgun. This will teach them! It was their right, nevertheless, Kalic thought. It was the law of the land. It was Canadian law!

The annual seal hunt was a tradition that dated back several centuries. From before the time of Columbus, on through the advent of commercial shipping, young harp seals were taken for their fur, meat and oil. Since the industry’s boom in the mid-fifties, new generations of Sealers lined-up each year, ready to take the catch.

For some in isolated communities, it was the only livelihood; the only means of financial survival. The hunt was even sanctioned by the Department of Fisheries and supported by the government; although Kalic would be first to admit they did not always comply with Canada’s animal welfare standards. But if not for him, there would be others, he knew. It was tradition, and commercially successful, and no greenhorn young activists from California were going to change that.

Benjamin’s mind was still on the rifle held in his hand as he looked forward into the narrowing channel. His father had always taught him the value of life, the value of all life. That which is the greatest treasure of God and Nature, life, the most coveted of all things on earth, was to be respected and preserved above all costs.

It is why his father detested weapons. They were the takers of life.

And yet the very weapon that his father detested was in fact the instrument that could sustain the sanctity of life here in the ice fields of the Saint Lawrence Gulf, Benjamin thought. It was the only tangible thing the hunters understood; the only rationale they could comprehend.

“You must speak their language,” he said quietly, looking down at the rifle.

Then he heard the engines back off. He looked up at Smith.

Smith nodded his head. | 183

Taking a position behind the solid lip of the bow, Benjamin could see now the 55-foot crabber ahead, and up on the master deck, coming around the rail to his side of the ship, was Kalic with an object in his hand, which appeared to be a hakapik. Their ship continued slowly, drifting closer to the crabber, and then Benjamin heard the engines clunk down in reserve and their forward momentum ceased. The ships were a mere thirty yards apart.

“Get the hell out of here,” Kalic shouted. “Go home to California!”

All the seal hunters, who were busy working their pelts on the far side of the ship, stopped and turned their heads.

“Go home!” Kalic’s deep voice rang out again, echoing across the ice floes.

Benjamin leveled his rifle, taking aim at a place in the sky just above Kalic’s head.

“You suck off,” he yelled back.

“Go away before I have to do something serious!”

You want something serious? Benjamin thought, and sighting down the barrel, there at a place in the open sky above the ship, he pulled the trigger.

The bullet zinged harmlessly over Kalic’s head Smith looked on nervously from the poop deck.

“Bastards,” Kalic growled, turning back and looking in the direction where the bullet whiz past. Then he took two deliberate steps forward to the rail, brought the stock of the shotgun securely

“It is a menace...only to be used by men without reason.”

184 |

against his shoulder, and pulled the trigger.

The shotgun bucked and the salt pellets shattered the glass in the pilothouse just in front of Smith’s face. Smith ducked down and to the side, behind the metal frame of the windshield.

Kalic grinned. He knew rock salt was unlikely to cause serious injury, especially at this range, but it would cause painful, stinging injuries and serve as a stern warning to the young activists. He aimed and pulled the trigger again. The second shot sent salt pellets scattering around the pilothouse, some of which hit Smith in his leg, tearing into his skin.

Smith dropped to the floor with a yelp, grasping his leg.

From below, Benjamin could hear all the action.

“You okay?” he yelled out. But there was no answer, only groaning, and when he looked up at the pilothouse, he could not see Smith, only the shattered glass of the pilot’s windshield.

Benjamin immediately lifted his rifle back over the bow’s bridge and took aim again, a more sincere aim this time with the barrel pointing directly at Kalic’s large frame. At the same time, Kalic swung his shotgun around toward the bow of their ship to where Benjamin had fired the original shot. Benjamin pulled the trigger first. The shot narrowly missed, but before Kalic could readjust, Benjamin pulled the trigger again. The large, burly Kalic crumbled to the deck, grasping his chest in his hand.

Kalic’s shotgun discharged skyward as he fell backward and dropped harmlessly to the deck beside him. The two hunters closest to the ship leaped aboard and scrambled up the iron ladder.

They found Kalic flat on his back halfway out the doorway of the wheelhouse. There was blood on his chest and his eyes were lifeless.

“You’ve killed him, you bastards!” one of the hunters yelled.

The other picked up the shotgun and emptied the three remaining shells in the direction of their ship. | 185

Benjamin lay flat now in the bow, cuddled against the cold steel. The three shotgun blasts sent salt pellets ricocheting above on the upper deck. Then he heard another rifle ring out, a different sound, and heard the ping of a bullet digging deep into the metal.

“You Bastards! You killed him!”

Another shot rang out and another bullet dug deep into the metal hull of their ship. Then there were multiple shots, from both land and sea, pummeling the ship from all angles.

Up in the pilothouse, Smith pulled himself to his feet, limped over to the wheel, and dropped the gear-shift into reverse. Keeping his head low, he throttled it down. As the boat picked up momentum, he could hear it, and feel it, slamming against the ice-walls of the channel as the stern tried to find open water. He steered the best he could without the advantage of sight, using the bottom of the wheel.

At a distance of one hundred yards where the channel had widened sufficiently, Smith swung the bow around. He pointed the ship straight out the channel and throttled it all the way down. A few more shots rang out from the Sealers, but eventually they were out of range and out of sight.

Benjamin remained flat on the foredeck, prone with the rifle beneath him. It was still clinched in his hands. He could feel himself breathing hard and shaking. The adrenaline rush from the whole thing was still peaking through his veins.

“Wow! That was something!” he heard Smith yell down from the bridge.

Benjamin turned and looked up at Smith. Behind the broken glass of the pilothouse, beneath the ball-cap, he could see his smiling face.

“I think you killed that old bastard,” Smith shouted.

Benjamin stood up, still holding the rifle in his hand. He looked down at it and realized his hand was trembling.

186 |

“Are you okay?” Smith asked.

“Yes,” Benjamin replied, not sure of it. “How about you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Smith answered. “I think he was shooting salt rock.” Smith paused to turn the wheel. “Did you hear what I said?

I think you killed that old goat.”

Benjamin stared up at the pilothouse without answering.

In all his life, he could not imagine himself killing someone. It was sacrilegious, contrary to the teachings of his father and grandfather; a betrayal of one’s beliefs. He looked down at the rifle – the menacing instrument used by men without reason. The barrel was still warm from its discharge, and although his grasp had unconsciously loosened, it felt uncomfortably comfortable in his hand. A chill passed over his body.

How could this happen? he asked himself. What have you done? He looked up at Smith, his restless brain quiet for a moment.

“Yeah, I really think you got him,” Smith said. “I think you got him in the chest.”

It was a betrayal alright, he thought, of all that his father stood for.

As the ship made its way out the main channel into the open waters of the Gulf, Benjamin remained on the foredeck, feeling the rhythmic thumps of the swells against the bow. They thumped loudly, as did his heart. I have killed a man, he thought. He looked out across the Gulf to the southwest. The dim northern lights faded. He bowed his head and watched the dark water rushing toward the bow. It was fate, he thought, the fate of his fathers.

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Artist Aaron De La Rosa

188 |

| 189

the landfill Perhaps, I have abandoned these words, ages ago before I wrote them, to a wasteland when she was still a jungle (perhaps a mother with Alzheimer’s and cold stony tits when Descartes—homewrecker—was coveting public displays of robophilia). What else would be the purpose of the scientific revolution (or rebellion)?

Feminist children have been pulled out of the right wing medical waste corridor on the top floor of landfills for months now, the medical staff and rescue workers saying they all have elephantiasis. No one knows if they were like that before they were aborted or if it was the sludge from the abortions and computer parts at the landfill that caused the disease (though I hear they make cures from garbage nowadays, after the movie is made of course).

190 | Author Oqwi7Limbo!

Perhaps we should blame the gadfly: blame and shame is the only way to make change; I learned this in physics at a Catholic school when I was five (how do you make a fly feel shame?).

Adjacent to the piles of signed petitions for an end of the term dump, at the Jackson city landfill, there are opinion papers, arguing about political correctness, covering pamphlets asking “what is with all the gender discourse?” Ask Descartes or Freud.

When Sisyphus slipped he was reassigned to the wasteland, pushing his boulder over mounds of junk, mulching it into the ground. There have been rumors that waste has been seeping into our drinking water, smelling of fish and bread, making thousands sick… or blessed. Perhaps this is why all the transcendentalists died off—or was it the postmodernists? I can’t remember. Perhaps this is why all the poets are dying. I hate poetry.

I will never die.

| 191

What It Does

Artist Scott Jones

What does the radio Mean when it emits So much life?

When it acts as though Energy alone Is a substitute For meaning?

When its pronouncements And enunciations of “I know” Sound overly authoritative And omniscient?

Can it ever really let go Of furnishing answers Or even the right questions?

I have felt its electrocutions Course through me Each cell a self-assertion A transmigration There - it seems to say – I have made it all right I have decided for you The very boundaries of being

192 | Author Gary Howard

| 193

Artist Scott Jones

Treasure I went one day to the sea with thee Holding he hand in hand Gleaming in the sunlight with might Laid a coin in the sand

What luck is this? And with a swift kiss He bent low to the ground With much excitement, I went To admire the treasure we found

In my hand so bold shining in gold What looked like a pirate’s doubloon?

Oh so kind our fates combined It must have been sadly marooned

With such glee we thanked the sea Holding all that is grand It was our duty to hide the booty And keep it safe in the plundered land

194 |

Author Miranda Lavallee

| 195

Artist Daniel Southerland

Detestable Me Guilt never, no never forsakes, the heart it continually breaks.

Forever, the the thought of his pain, strangling, going insane.

Forgiveness, never will I know; faultless content, never will I know.

Only, yes only to press forward, dragging that broken heart forward.

To change.

A cardinal promise to live, to love, to be, to be no longer that detestable me.

196 Artist | McKell Hadlock

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198 |

Artist Betty Cuanalo | 199

T E E N AG E

B R A I N S

The teenage brain is a work in progress.

Jordan’s dirt bike was a trophy. Every sticker an accomplishment, every scratch a war wound. Points earned, dust tackled and conquered.

Progress is a filthy word to the teenage brain.

The teenage brain does not grow in size but it does re-mold and re-form itself, making short cuts and new files.

A wiring upgrade of sorts, done in a lightning-strike; fast, bold, uncompromising.

One of the stickers was a picture of a lightning bolt. It was peeling at the edges and the color was mostly bleached out but Jordan kept it on there anyway.

Braxen told Jordan to keep his bike and his bad mood.

Jordan had one little brother, Payden.

Lightning is faster than sound, faster than even its own sound. Thunder is nothing but a rumbling of resentment. Lightning leaves thunder in the past, scrambling to catch up. Thunder screams at lightning that it is needed.

Jordan was talented. He was his little brother’s hero and maybe Braxen’s too.

Resentment, stubbornness, impulse chase a teenage brain like thunder.

Jordan never slowed down. He was never afraid or cautious or worried about what came next. He flew through life. He sometimes flew a little bit too fast.

Lightning never listens; neither do brains undergoing a lightning upgrade.

Girls liked Jordan, he was cute.

Jordan was seventeen.

What can burn brighter and faster than teenage passion?

He had a teenage brain.

“The young are heated by Nature as drunken men by wine.”

Jordan had plans to see his best friend, Braxen on Saturday.

Braxen was going to drive down from the desolate mountain of isolation that his family had made him move to because his Dad was tired of stop lights.

The seventeen year old brain is not yet developed. They process emotional information and external stimuli differently than the adult brain.

They were meeting to ride dirt bikes, like they always had.

The teenage brain runs on impulse.

They decided this the weekend before, on the roof of the tallest building in the city. The maintenance crew forgot to lock the door. They filmed it so that everyone would believe them.

Jordan came to my families Halloween party, he was on my team during the scavenger hunt. I thought he reminded me of my husband when we were young.

Braxen still has the video.

Jordan tried to give Braxen his dirt bike on Monday.

Jordan’s feet where always hot with anticipation. He wanted to run, to dive to sprint into the next adventure; family scavenger hunts just didn’t quite do it.

200 | Author Afton Senechal

| 201

Braxen and Jordan went to a warehouse party on Halloween night and got their shoes dirty. Braxen wanted me to clean them and Jordan thought I couldn’t do it.

Jordan shot himself in the head with his Dad’s gun.

Jordan had tried to bleach his white shoes before and they turned yellow. I tried to explain the complicated workings of bleach but he was uninterested and fully committed to his ideas.

His Dad didn’t know that he knew the combination to his gun safe.

I still hadn’t given them their white shoes back.

The teenage brain is stubborn.

He gave me the shoes anyway. Just in case.

Jordan never talked about it, but Braxen told me that he was smart.

Jordan had a 3.9 GPA. Pretty impressive for someone with lightning in their brain, I thought.

Jordan never made it to their dusty rendezvous.

He blew up his teenage brain.

Jordan’s dirt bike became the object of a classified add.

Whoever bought it probably peeled off that lightning sticker.

Jordan’s little brother looked down from his upstairs window and wondered why there was a hole in the roof of the shed.

His Dad found him.

Jordan would be 20 now. Braxen made it through the lightning upgrade… maybe his was slower or kinder or just a little cooler and it didn’t burn quite as much.

Jordan never made it to Thursday.

Jordan’s Dad locked himself in a closet for two days.

Jordan committed suicide at seventeen.

When his Dad came out he sat on the porch and watched a hundred black birds circle overhead, land in his yard and then fly away again. The same yard he had watched his little boy run through the sprinklers in.

I hate that they call it committed.

I guess it is a commitment; to the end, to a destination, to a solution. I hate it anyway.

He wondered if the birds where Jordan.

I think of Jordan when I see lightning, not birds.

The teenage brain uses the amygdala, the piece of the brain that relates to a “gut” feeling to identify emotion. Adults use the frontal cortex, the part associated with reason.

There is no reason in suicide

Jordan was loved.

By Braxen

By Payden

By his Dad Even by me

There was no note.

I still have his white shoes.

The teenage brain does not possess the ability to understand and rate the subtlety of a reaction; impulsive, spontaneous, un-planned, un-prompted, accidental?

202 |

| 203

Author C J Armantrout

Artist Sarah Abraham

The Antithesis of Oasis The antagonist, surrounded by a world of good-guys, A man in a red hat, standing in an obtrusive box, Telling us why we need to own such a hat as that.

The comfort we will die in surrounded by the nature we crave.

You can call it nothing, but it leys as something, Haunting you like a twist in fate that you can almost sense.

204 |

The spot where there is no wind to feel on your skin, Instead, an internal breeze whispers your secrets, Sounding echoes in the contours of your mind.

A city surrounded by a desert surrounded by an ocean.

What we thought we needed surrounded by What we thought we wanted, surrounded by Our abandoned salvation.

| 205

thing felt fuzzy. I couldn’t tell what was happening.

My Guardian Angel My Grandma was always there for me. She did everything she possibly could to make my childhood a memorable one. From making dolls clothes to making dinner, she wanted nothing more than to see me smile. I can’t remember a time when my grandma wasn’t in my life, but when she was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer in 2011, everything started to change. Grandma decided not to take treatments so the cancer was spreading. It grew all over abdomen in a matter of months. Grandma wasn’t moving around as much. She seemed more tired and fragile. If I hugged her it felt like I would snap her in half. This wasn’t the Grandma I grew up with, and it was tearing me apart.

It was a cold day in March. We had just barely gotten to school when my instructor, Shelli, pulled me aside into her office.

“Dana,” she began, “your mom’s on the phone.”

“What in the world does she need?” I returned.

Shelli responded with “Be careful. She is really upset.”

At this point I was searching my mind for what I could have possibly done. Did I say something I shouldn’t have? Did I forget to make my bed that morning? I answer the phone to hear my mom speaking very quietly.

“Dana, Grandma fell this morning.” My heart sank. “She is in the hospital, and Dana, she isn’t going to make it. They are going to turn off her pace maker.” The tears started coming. This couldn’t be happening. It felt like the walls were getting closer and every206 | Author Dana Brown

My family has a long history of heart problems. They had to go in a couple years back and place a pace maker next to my grandma’s heart, so just in case it stopped beating, the pace maker would spark her heart and it would begin beating again. As far as we knew, the pace maker was the only thing keeping my grandma alive.

I was given the option to either stay at school, or drive up to Bountiful to be with my family during my Grandma’s last hours.

I decided to go see my Grandma so I packed up my things and headed out on the road.

My mom was waiting outside for me. There was snow everywhere here. She led me up through the hospital into my grandma’s room. It smelt like a typical hospital. Mom told me that they were putting grandma on high morphine so she couldn’t feel the pain from the fall.

When she fell, she fell straight back into a door frame, hitting her head and breaking a few ribs. She looked like an alien. I have never seen my grandma look so bad in her life and it was terrifying. She was gasping for air. It was so hard not being able to help her. I felt so useless. I looked around the room and saw my entire family, not one dry eye in sight. My aunt came and informed us that grandma could hear what we were saying, she just had no way to respond.

We all took our turns and walked up next to grandmas bed to say our goodbyes. It was so hard to see everyone walk away after their turn. It was now my chance to go talk to her. I had been pondering what I was going to say. It was my last opportunity to talk to my beloved grandmother. When I was finally standing next to her I drew a blank. Everything I had planned to tell her was gone. Then the words just started coming out of my mouth.

“I love you Grandma. Thank you for everything you have ever done for me. I’ll see you soon.” | 207

When everyone had the opportunity to talk to her, my parents and some of their siblings went out into the hall. They were there talking for a couple minutes. I tried to overhear what they were saying but I couldn’t pick out every word. They were out there for what felt like an eternity. Thoughts were running through my head like wildfire. If they turned off her pace maker, that would be practicing euthanasia.

Euthanasia is pharmacist assisted suicide. Usually, when a patient is terminally ill and seeks death, they would be prescribed an extremely high dosage of drugs. In this case, we had the option of turning off her pace maker, the only thing keeping her alive. We could have kept it on, but had to make her suffer through the pain and let the cancer kill her, or just end this all now.

When they came back in they made the announcement. “We have decided that we are going to turn off the pace maker now.

Everyone is here and everyone has said what they wanted. It is the best decision for grandma and it’s what she wants.” We all knew that is what was going to happen, but hearing it was another story.

We all broke into tears again. This was really going to happen. We made sure everyone was in the room before Grandpa started talking to us.

“LaRee,” He started. “Thank you for all these amazing years you have given me. I love you so much. I’ll see you real soon.” As I looked around everyone had their tissues up to their eyes. I think we could all agree that it was the hardest moment in all of our lives.

The doctor walked into the room and headed over to Grandma with a big blue box. He set it down on the bed then placed a large wand that was connected to the box over her heart. He started pushing some buttons on the box and then that was that. The pacemaker was off. Grandma was gone.

208 |

Silence filled the room. I was scared to talk and it seemed like everyone else was as well. It just seemed so peaceful. It was hard to think that grandma wouldn’t be around anymore. She wouldn’t be at her house when we went to go visit her. The moment they turned off the pace maker, there was another feel to the room. Like someone was missing.

A few moments later some nurses walked into the room and started checking Grandma’s pulse, just to make sure everything went the way it was supposed to. I was scared to look over at grandma. Everyone started walking out into the hall to talk to each other. As I was walking out I glanced over at Grandma. There she was lying on the bed, lifeless. She looked so at peace. This was a hard decision for all of us. But we all know it was the right one.

It is hard for someone to decide if euthanasia is ethically and morally right. I don’t think that people really look into it and have an honest opinion about it until it happens close to home. Only God knows what would have happened to Grandma if we didn’t turn off her pace maker but I miss her so much. I miss going to her house on Sundays. Eating the fresh made banana bread she baked for us or eating her amazing chicken noodle soup as a whole family. Sometimes when I look at her picture I burst into tears, but I know this was the best decision for us and her. With grandma gone, things are a lot different. She was the one that brought out family together, but now she is looking over us pain free and happy.

Just the way she was before the cancer.

| 209

Implicit

Annihilation With the Apocalypse sounding a siren in our minds, we’re thinking of it more as time steps forward

The European ladies’ armpit hair will grow infinitely and the ladies will be living versions of the Addams family “It”

We know of the destruction that will come from the Bible, Mayans, and bigmouthed preachers

Jalapenos in nachos will become so hot that the tongue will burn leaving spots of gustatory agony

But they are only displaying to us as Arctic Circle would say, “the good stuff ”

The televised jerk, Simon Cowell, will be released out of his cocoon and be displayed as Mother Teresa

There are some hidden things in the catastrophe that will stay invisible to our retinas until they appear

Swords will whip out of the trees and behead those who dare step into the forest as murdering leaves

The elements in our bodies will separate and leave us looking like an atom diagram in chemistry classes

The fire in our hearts will ignite our fat while the ice in our souls will freeze our fight or flight responses

The lettuce will attach to our burgers and kick out the bun so you can’t have heaven in grain

The Great Books will manifest themselves into mashed potato cookbooks to obscure their secrets

The zombie mermaids will mug the fish of the sea without first becoming Internet memes

People will be plagued by delicious smells of burritos and fruit roll ups spirits and will attack in hunger

The oil from Renaissance paintings drips out of the canvas and turns into a sea of paint

The demons schizophrenics claim to see will leak out of the frontal lobe and choke without mercy

Angelic music will soften our cochleas and replace the satanic music heard from songs played backwards

It goes to show that the subtle events of chaos are still as terrifying as those we have heard much about

Priests sashay unto podiums and pronounce to the media they shall melt like candles saddened by flame

If we make it through without plunging into evil, we’ll still be the silly humans we originally were

210 | Author Alexandra Self

| 211

At An Angle

I remember stepping by accident

Into a restricted hallway in Washington Too many years ago and stumbling upon A laboratory where scientists were busily engaged And wondering about the many turns I had taken and where I had ended up – There is this lottery to life That each of us may stumble upon It may be by accident Or by design But like the fractal coastline of Britain Each tiny fold is relevantly intertwined About our being so that like the double helix We can never mistake someone else’s For our own Or the perception that We cannot retrace our steps Or that which launched them In the first place They are solitary and indelible And their origins unknown When they move again It will not be like before They will not remember The reason for Bishop to Rook Eight 212 Artist | Shanna King

Author Gary H. Howard | 213

Artist Ryan Joseph Carter

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| 215

Who Am I

My sister is the funny one; she is the one everyone says should be on stage. She is the outdoorsy one; she skips through the forest chasing butterflies. She loves animals; when she was younger, she even collected National Geographic’s animal photographs.

My brother is the endearing one; after all, he is the only boy in a half-Arab family. He is the inventive one; he is a designer, and he knows how to make almost anything. He builds intricate furniture and computers; he remodeled our house and knows how to use machines he has never seen before.

Both my brother and sister are ambitious. They started at the Salt Lake community college when they were sixteen, and graduated from the University of Utah with undergraduate degrees when they were twenty. They went to prestigious graduate schools; my sister got her Master’s from Harvard, and my brother is starting his second Master’s program at MIT.

216 | Author Amanda Costanza

When I say something funny, my mom tells me that I am funny just like my sister. When I fix something that is broken my dad says, “Wow! Just like David.” Then my family calls me “Davida”.

The one trait that my parents always manage to assign to me is laziness.

My family relies on me to be a certain way, so when I am with them I try to live up to it. I am the baker of the family, everyone knows I love baking. I do not talk much with people I do not know, but with my family, I am always telling stories. When they are bored, they always ask me to tell a story. Although I talk a lot, I am also the listener. I love listening to what other people have to say, and they know that I will not only remember every detail, but also, never hurry to give advice.

I am also the practical one. While we are all practical, I take it the most seriously. We are all sarcastic, and although I may not be the wittiest, I am known for my sarcasm, and often my lack of sentimentality.

I have a role in my family that I usually fill. Sometimes there are overlaps; my brother and I are both the vain ones, and my sister and I both love reading and humor. However, there are other points or traits, which are less fluid and more personalized. I always have an opinion, so when I do not, my family assumes I am angry and when I am not telling stories, they think I am upset.

This means that even with the people that I am most willing to be myself, I sometimes play the role of who I should be, rather than who I am.

| 217

Who Needs Normal?

Kitty Lou Brown is a nontraditional parent to say the least.

She fed her kids seaweed as a snack and brought them along on her own “gypsy” journey through life.In her words, she explained it as, “There was absolutely nothing traditional about my children’s upbringing except that I loved them.” She believes mothering is a process of letting go from the moment of conception. Some mothers go the other direction, they hang on. Kitty recognized early on that children are not possessions, they are individuals. They have their own lives. She told me, “I was fortunate enough to bring them here and now I get to watch them grow.”

This mentality is not exactly what she was raised to believe.

She doesn’t recall having a particularly joyous or carefree childhood, although she says she is sure there are times that would qualify as such. However, those memories are buried somewhere in her own perceptions. What she does remember is that from about the age of eight she was very concerned about the “big picture” – war, racism, religion, and even politics. Her parents and grandparents were progressive and active in those arenas; causing her to pick it up early.

Kitty was the oldest child of two girls and for the most part, left to her own devices while her mother worked (sometimes more than one job). She was markedly independent and not easy to discipline, so baby sitters didn’t last long. Her father was in and out of the family structure. By the time she was 13 both of her parents had remarried other people and both families had a baby within three months of her 14th birthday. In addition, her stepfather brought his three children into her primary family, thereby making her the oldest of seven. Eventually, her father’s wife had two more, making her the oldest of nine.

218 | Author Megan Kuhn

Her sense of responsibility was set in stone, although she was hardly capable of assuming it. She did her best to rebel, but was somehow kept within acceptable boundaries. Most of her preteen experiences involved arguments and some physical confrontations with her peers. She always stood out against the grain of popular opinion. Being a “natural-born leader”, she thought it was her job to show everyone the “light” by pointing out the error of their ways. At 14, she gave the Jr. High Commencement speech on World Peace – the main message being, “If you wonder why

the world is in such a mess, take a look in the mirror; it all starts within each of us.” Of course, given that she used broad

references to political events in the 60’s and in clear and direct language, her speech was censored in some areas.

Her best times were in High School, because she found means of expression through theatre and writing. She didn’t have to confront anyone directly through either venue, and experienced a sense of liberation in being able to explore her talents. Her home life was not as supportive and seemed very chaotic most of the time. She loved her brothers and sisters, but couldn’t get along with her stepfather’s paradigm of “I’m the parent and you’ll do what I say as long as you live in my house.”

College offered more avenues of expression and she never missed an opportunity to shake things up when challenged by the status quo – mostly through writing, sometimes out-loud. She continued working in Theatre and studied Human Behavior (“Psychology”) as a major. She was engaged for four years, and successfully ran for Senior Class Secretary (her future husband was Class President). It seemed she was on the middle class path and that her life would run smoothly toward retirement and grandchildren on her knee.

She now has three beautiful grandchildren who are still young enough to sit on her knee, but the rest of the story did not follow the map. She didn't stay married to her college sweetheart | 219

for more than a few months and spent the next 36 years learning about life and raising children.

and truly embrace what it was like to live on this planet. She said, “I think it worked. All three children are adventurous and all three like nature and have an eclectic assortment of friends of all nationalities, beliefs, and backgrounds. It’s really fun to watch.”

She married again at age 32 and began the 80's as a parent the pivotal point of her life; the point at which she started learning to take care of herself in order to be a good mother. She learned about organic foods, herbs and alternative medicine. As she put it, “I like to think I gave my children a good foundation by nourishing their bodies with wholesome food and giving their immune systems a fighting chance with herbal remedies. I got my baby girl out of the antibiotic cycle from recurring ear infections by giving her tincture drops at the first sign of the sniffles.”

Kitty Lou described herself as creative as she chuckled, “I figured out how to make a bedroom out of a closet,” and a home out of a tent. She figured out how to keep her family close to her even though she was a single mom who held two to three jobs at any given time. “Like when I did body work, we even lived in the acupuncture school for a while.” She is able to see the light and optimism even in circumstances where some might give up.

She packed their lunches with peanut butter and rice cracker sandwiches, seaweed, and fruit slices. There was no refined sugar in their diets. She proclaimed, “I was so proud!” Her children seemed perfectly happy until about the 4th grade, when their classmates started noticing the difference in their packed lunches and made fun of them. Although she believed in an organic, clean diet it hurt her that her children felt like outcasts. As the discomfort accelerated, she decided to add more common ingredients to their diets.

One day she went shopping and filled the cupboards with sugared cereals, macaroni and cheese, and all sorts of other undesirable processed and sugary items. The next afternoon, her daughter brought a half dozen friends home to show them the inside of the kitchen cupboards. Kitty stated, “Her delight was indescribable.”

She was influenced by many people throughout her life but most of all her children. They brought her structure, focus, and a reason to be good to herself. They mirrored her so she was able to take a look at her own patterns. They helped her grow and showed her how to play. They gave her a broader view of life. With a smile, she said, “Now, they give me feedback about how I have influenced their lives, which you know, shows me that I did a better job than I thought I did. I get to watch them grow, evolve, experiment and have adventures in completely unique ways. I get to celebrate their success and I am joyful just to see them be happy and take chances to experience life more fully. And then they brought me grandchildren! Surely that it the best thing in life; success of continuation of life, generation, after generation, after generation.”

In addition to her desire to keep the food in the cupboards natural, she didn’t want her family to have a sense of artificial safety within the four walls of a middle-class home. She wanted her children to experience nature and alternative cultures. She wanted them to be able to have adventures in natural surroundings. This was one of the many reasons her children were raised in 13 different geographical areas including suburbia, a single room cabin in the woods, and in a Hogan on the reservation. They were able to be adaptable and experience many kinds of people and life styles

Perhaps the most gratifying thing for her is the expansion of her life as a result of what her children do. Kitty Lou is far from “normal” but none the less, she is my mom. I am proud to be part of the expansion of her life. Though she has never had an abundance of money, possessions, or stability-she is one of the most accomplished people I know. Perhaps like my mom, I feel that those three things don’t always define accomplishment, experiences do. I am grateful that I got to go on that journey with her and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

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Artist Betty Cuanalo| 223

The Painted Pony Thinking back to the best meal I have ever eaten was a daunting but surprisingly easy task. When I looked back, I realized that I have eaten 2-4 meals a day, every day, for the duration of my life. If I run some real quick numbers on myself that means I have eaten somewhere around 30,000 meals in my lifetime. I have to say, that’s a LOT of food to sift through to find that one life changing meal. Not so surprisingly, most of these meals remain unremembered. We forget the trip to the drive through or the breakfast you shovel into your mouth as quickly as possible before dashing out the house in the morning. None of these meals are anything memorable to me and in most cases I regret eating in this way after I do it.

There are a few meals however that stand out in my mind.

Christmas breakfast in my home has always been somewhat of a tradition. My mother always made the same breakfast every year and would reserve this recipe for only Christmas morning. It was a sort of sausage quiche that had to be prepared the night before.

I think that having this meal so closely related to Christmas is the reason behind the memories. The gathering of family to share a meal and celebrate a holiday is far more powerful than the food by itself.

While I try and push these memories of meals away to find the true best meal I go back to a summertime back yard BBQ I had two or three years ago. It was a warm evening and a few of my friends and I decided that we should have a cookout for no other 224 | Author Dave Nelson

reason than to eat good food and be in good company. We were all given our food assignments on what to bring and I was given the job of bringing and cooking the meat. I grabbed a few steaks and some salmon kabobs from the local grocery store. These steaks, coupled with a quick homemade marinade of mine, and we were off and grilling. I remember sitting around the patio table and enjoying all of the rewards from all of our hard work. It was all delicious, and we kept commenting on how wonderful of a day this was. Again, I seem to remember more about the people around me and the great time we were having more than I remember about the food. So maybe this isn’t my perfect meal I’ve been searching for.

There is one meal that sticks out in my mind above all others. I remember it very well and I still claim it to be the best actual dish I have ever been served. I was down in St. George, Utah for ten days on a little break from life. Recently separated from the Marine Corps, my wife had left me for her high school boyfriend.

I felt lost in my world and this trip was my way of coming out of that dark place I had been for so many months. We had arranged to stay in one of our friends house that was living out of the country at the time. It was a beautiful home, tucked right in next to a private golf course with large back windows and an amazing view of the red rock formations. We soon met the caretaker of the home who we will call “Jimmy”.

Jimmy was one of the most interesting people I have ever met in my life. He had grown up in Southern Utah and seemed to know everyone and everything about the area. He was a very large man who would never be caught dead outside of his boots, jeans, plaid “cowboy” shirt, and ten gallon hat. He was overly friendly and his hands seemed to swallow yours when shaking. He and his wife cooked us an amazing meal with his special caramelized onions. I don’t know how he did it but I have never had onions like this before. Over this meal we asked Jimmy what was the best restaurant in the area, as he seemed to be so omnipotent. He told us | 225

we should go to one of his favorite restaurants called The Painted Pony. He immediately opened up his phone, called the restaurant, and after flirting with the hostess made us a special reservation for the next evening. Having no other choice, we thanked him and continued with our meal.

The next evening, four of us sauntered into the restaurant not knowing what to expect. Upon arrival, we found a small, dark, and cozy restaurant with a handful of tables. It was an amazing restaurant and seemed to have no expense spared anywhere. We were greeted by the hostess and after giving our names we were quickly seated at a private table in the back of the room. The floor manager came to our table, greeted us, and said he would be serving us this evening. He then told us how Jimmy and the restaurant have something of a past and apparently he had told them to take VERY good care of us. Pleasantly surprised, we decided to enjoy and indulge in the whole experience. I remember my food in great detail -- despite all of the wine. I had ordered the bacon wrapped duck, which happened to be the house special. The dish looked and smelled wonderful. It was a filet of duck wrapped in bacon with some sort of reduction over the top. With a side of asparagus spears and mashed potatoes, it was my perfect meal. The way the flavors of the food went together was like the precision of a symphony lead by a conductor.

Even with this being my perfect meal, I still seem to remember more about the company I was in and the fun we had sharing and trying each other’s food. Maybe this is the lesson in all of this.

It’s not about where your food came from or how it was prepared but more of who you decide to share these perfect meals with. It could be family coming together for a holiday, friends preparing and sharing food together, or a recommendation for the greatest Chef in the area, but it seems to me that my greatest meals are those that I spend with those I care about.

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Artist Myra Schjelderup | 227

Epitáfio

“But don’t worry Arthur, everything’s okay. He was 84 years old. We already got everything figured out. He will be buried where he wanted to be, right away. He’s fine. Everything is fine.”

“Wha… what about mom?”

“We’re fine, son. Go back to sleep and don’t worry. I love you.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

Sometimes in life we can’t just go by not caring about what’s around us or about what we cause to other people. Sometimes life just gives us no choice, no turning back. I always knew that my actions would have consequences but the time eventually comes where everything around you changes, and there is nothing you can do about it. I learned that the hard way.

Mornings were always a pain in the ass to me. In the first few hours of my days nothing pleased me more than having to do only the necessary and not use my brain to think about any other problem besides reviving it. Waking up early by itself would make me unprepared for any alarming news—but I don’t think I’d ever be prepared for that morning, that cold-blooded morning.

It was a Tuesday, 7:20 am. I remember because I always look at the clock right after I wake up. My phone was vibrating too loud for me to ignore. The number was not from Utah; it was from Brazil. My father only called my cell phone on emergencies, since the rates for international calling to mobile phones were pretty damn expensive. For the fractions of a second that I stopped to think on what my dad had to say, no important payments or requests came to mind. My mind started to worry: “Hi, Arthur” “Hi Dad, how are you?”

“Your grandfather died… Antonio, your mom’s father… He died today.” – my reaction was absent. There were no words coming out of my mouth, no word to think about.

228 | Author Arthur Domingues

After I realized that the call was over, my mind tried to wake up. I had to wake up for that, how could this be happening? Just a few days before that I was thinking about how some people I knew mourn their losses and I never had any happen to me. Was this it? Did someone close to me really just die? I didn’t want that any of those answers would come out positive. My denial lingers until this very day.

The next 30 minutes I had in order to get ready for school were long. I couldn’t stop thinking about how my mom was doing. I couldn’t understand the tears I sensed through the phone on my Dad’s voice. I thought about my sisters, my grandmother, my whole family. Only then I started to think about Antonio.

He was never present; thinking back in my days as a child I can only see a blur. I remember my Grandma making me food, my mom talking to her brothers and sisters, and my Grandfather sitting alone eating soup. I have no memory that can remind me of his personality, nor a memory that told me how any member of my family felt about him. Now I know that he was loved, but I don’t even know why. Was it because it is just common to love your father? Was it because he was old and had to be taken care of? Or was it because he gave 84 years of love and therefore received it back? Those questions were too painful; I was afraid of never getting an answer.

Suddenly I started to look for clues in my own mind, the only place I could reach at the moment. Why did I love him? Did | 229

any of those cold-blooded reasons have anything to do with it? A memory started to play in my mind, like an old tape playing in the VCR as you turn on the TV by accident: It was about a month ago. I was on one of my last days on my latest trip to Brazil. Everything had been so good so far and I was so happy to have spent a day with just my family, my Dad, mom, and two sisters. After a little tour through the neighborhoods of my old city, we stopped at my Grandma’s house. It was already nighttime, but I had to say bye to my family there. After a few hugs and kisses, my sister comes to me and whispers: “Go upstairs. Grandpa wants to talk to you before we leave.” And so I went. I knocked on the door, and there he was, my grandfather. “He looks the same—I thought to myself—same pajamas, same hair. I wonder if he will be different next time I come back here.”

“Hey son, are you leaving?”

“Yes, Grandpa.”

“God bless you my son.” – and so he shook my hand. It wasthat strong and at the same time weak shake he always had; strong enough for me to feel it, weak enough for to remember how fragile he could be at the moment. But this time it was different.

He hugged me. Never have I felt the same way before.

“God bless you too, Vozão” – Vozão is the word Grandpa, altered to denote encouragement, roughly translated to Big Grandpa.

“You never know when it’s going to be the next time. Maybe you come back and I won’t be here anymore. Only He knows.”

“I know, Grandpa. But you’re healthy, you look good!” – right after I said that he pulled away and looked me in the eye.

There were tears! He was crying because he was saying bye to me.

I didn’t know it was a goodbye. I think only he knew.

“May God walk you with you my son.” – and he was back inside the room, one hand closing the door, one hand waving me good230 |

bye.

“May God walk with you too Grandpa.” – after that moment, my eyes instantly filled with tears. The person who never had crossed the line of being lovable but also distant had taken the next step, and so much changed in me right there, during that hug.

At that moment he didn’t care that I would think that was weird.

He didn’t worry about the consequences of that action in no way but the most lovable one. He just put his ego aside and hugged me, cried in front of me, wished that the same God who looked out for him walked right beside me. Even thinking about it makes me cry, the memory is too overwhelming.

On that Tuesday, my mind didn’t wake up. I kept thinking of everything that was changing in my life, reflecting on what was going on. My mind was not only focused on what would change from now on, but also on what my past had to say about all of this. All of those reflections were so sudden and felt so strange.

I’d never stopped and thought about my life in that way before, why now? Maybe because the past seemed more important now, I thought, and I am finally changing my priorities, so that death doesn’t take me by surprise. That’s what most people do after the loss of someone they loved, I mean, someone close to them; and that was definitely what my mom had done.

On the afternoon of the tragic September 30th, I finally called my mom. As soon as she heard my voice she began to cry.

I could feel a new kind of sadness in her voice, but also a comfort that assured me she was fine.

“Hi mom… How are you?”

“I’m good son…” – her tears were almost visible to me.

“How did it happen?”

“He passed away, son. We were all at his house having coffee and he said he wanted to lay down on his bed. When we came back he was already dead.” | 231

“Are you okay?”

“I am, it’s just that… There are so many things I wish I’d said, you know…So many things that I’ll never have another chance to say.”

“I know mom. But, at least he said goodbye to everyone that way he wanted… I love you mom.” – my God I can feel her tears right now as I write this . . .

“I love you too, son.”

After that phone call ended I was revolted. Revolted with myself, with life, with everything. Why does life have to be so unfair to the point that I have to wait my Grandfather die to finally know how much my mom really loves me, and how much I really love her? If it were so easy to know that, then why should my Vozão have to die in order for me to love more? Shouldn’t I have that love already in me just like I was taught in John 3:16 that “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life”?

God gives us life, not love. No, that love we have to earn by ourselves, we have to learn how to love and who to love. Because if we don’t share the love we found while we were alive, the day will come when it will be buried underground, and no one will be there to tell its story.

Thinking back to what happened I also think about my father, about my sisters. How did they take the news? I know for my experience that my sisters were also shocked about having a family member die for the first time and that their memories about my grandfather weren’t all that different. They’re sad about my mom, I assured myself. And I knew my dad wasn’t much different either. I knew that he respected his father-in-law, and would do anything to help him in order to please my mom. The tears I heard over the phone weren’t all about the death. My father was crying because he knew we were six thousand miles apart. Yeah, living 232 |

that far from your family is hard. Everything seems so artificial, especially the bond between father and son. Sometimes when you want that hug you just to settle for the memory of it. Sometimes when you want that advice, it’s better not to wake him up at 3:00 in the morning: just open your iPod and listen to ‘Father and Son’

by Cat Stevens. “I was once like you are now, and I know that it’s not easy, To be calm when you’ve found something going on.”I’m sure these words will sound in your head just like you father’s words sounded when you were young, in the car on the way to that “Look at me, I am old, but I’m happy.” annual family trip.

Done. Now I can finally say that I learned the lesson my grandfather taught me. When death is eminent you will only have questions, no answers. You will remember about the ones you love, the things you love, the regrets, the mistakes, the moments of joy, the memories that comfort you. You will think about the memories that you are about to leave to others. You may try to change them to the best you can, and hope that all that’s left of you are the good things. And even if that doesn’t happen, maybe someone will take your life as a lesson; maybe write about it, who knows. If only one of those things will be achieved you may never know, but the hope will make its justice. “Now there's a way and I know that I have to go away.”

“I know I have to go…”

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Artist Larene Hobbs

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the Irregular Rhythm of Rain; Morning light snuck through the rotting edges of wooden boards and lay still and silent on the dusty floor, illuminating a million wood mites as it listened intently at long moments which, it thought, might prove to sound the woodsmith’s words. The golden arm of time seemed to weight down thick in the room as the woodsmith moved his arms, slowly carving away at his block. Parvasu had been silent for a queasy stretch of hours; the only sound, the bleeding of his uneasy breath and the coarse hug of sandpaper over pine.

He continued to smooth last ridges in the crests of proud engravings, the sides and face of a most marvelous coffin he had ever sculpted, it stood half open like a cathedral that God dissected. The hat removed to show rows of pews and its guts were dust and sap spilling on the woodsmith’s shoes.

Amid this near sultry rhythm of almost silence dead, a sharp moan leaked from the shadow-stained corner of the antique attic. The brooding cry sounded for an ear shivering instance to make the man start.

After an eerie moment he might’ve wondered if the whine had leaked from his own mouth and only echoed though the attic, his eyelids gaped still at the doorway, which was the emptiest place any man had ever mistaken for a grave. He 236 | Author Ryan Joseph Carter

thought he seemed to be playing with himself, deceiving his own dark mind. Then the moan came again like a throat had been stretched by claws more terrible a second time.

“Whose there? The phantom figure of Ramsey’s zombie come to haunt me?” his abrupt voice crackled, a nervous sort of thunder, “Or Jud, back with a bloody hole in his head?” he seemed almost to plead with fear, “O, Jude, tell me it is you sneaking by!” Bleeding whines, he rose to his cold legs and stumbled about the mysterious purple shadows, “Emilie, my love, is that you singing pain like a young swallow in the misty dim?” Seconds slipped by, each a sliver into red skin, and the man swayed on his skinny legs. Appearing comatose, his odd eyes fell slowly into the uninhabited shadow, embracing space with longing sight. He did not blink. A nameless wind floated through the shaded stairwell and chilled his goosey fingers.

Quietly, Parvasu undid his fist and stroked the air as if a ladies gentle face was formed in the smoky sawdust before him, he reconstructed the structure of the nose and cheeks as if a blind man were caressing a love. Her simple long dress seemed to form white before him, her slender arms stretching toward him.

A pleading ring from the streaked light leaking through the ceiling broke his trance: “Tell us about your deaths;” the autumnal sound, like an attic aurora waved and danced in the dark space all around, seeming powerfully omnipresent, “tell us about your deaths, for I can hear your troubled soul by the anguish in your breath.”

The man started forward, falling through his lover made of dust, and splitting her apparition he nearly tripped over the black coffin laying open at his feet, nearly toppling in and stealing his friend’s deathbed. There were two finished box| 237

es at his feet, and one more uncompleted and cluttered with sharp cutting tools and piled sawdust. When he regained his feet, he pulled the stool near his heels and he sat down, his face looked dignified but his hands were shaking terribly, dirtied with stew like a conglomeration of pine scratch and dark blood. He peered about, until the light spoke again: “Come, we know the mind of imagination is a sense more powerful that those which only know the world; tell me of the past so I, too, can ache its waves and view its blasts of boney malice.”

Parvasu cupped his hands to his mouth in pure childlike excitement, a fleeting feeling which came and passed as quickly as gunfire, and the black power explosion stained his white cheeks and throat. He cried out with quick joy and zealous pleasure: “Yes, Emilie, I can account for you whichever memories you desire: the pleasure and emotion of most powerful love, the shiver of romance’s skin, the exquisite pain of iron to the throat in the honorable pursuit of the soul’s missing soul. Emilie tell me, tell me anything you wish to hear.”

The room stood silent for a contemplative time before answering with the flicker of celestial light glancing off the cathedral-like coffin’s tiers: “Tell us of your deaths.”

A knowing smile spread across the face sitting in the shadows: the first grin it had felt in ages. He leaned hauntingly forward so half his brow fell into the smoky light: broken rays about his eye, lay; nostalgic milky swills swept across his wooden half-Indian chin, resting like a misty quilt laced in lavender cross patters, a vague and gentle lie of strings of being in disguise. He began to speak, slowly at first, but gaining speed like a stampede:

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“The first breath of the day is real, A living I have not felt since; The way the grass and warmness feel Where our bodies have left imprints.

Lily strands exhale heavy scent For us and fuzzy bees to breathe.

The cool spring breeze blows the fragments Of past sensations through me.

Sleeping sparrows rustle like horns; Brilliant red roses rub their noses Into the edges of the morning.

A scene celebrating her pose; My love, she rests there at my side, An auburn aurora of hair Haloed around her where it lies In shining strands. I feel her here; I feel her here and I am moved, Inspired by my desires To display the love yet unproved With light music like a lyre: ‘O, the sun’s slants are such a sight When they fall upon your green eyes.

It is a pure heavenly light Which lies and gives your girlish guise So natural and soft a look That I wish we’d rest here now girl, With those pale poppies that I took Woven into your sweeping curls, And myself, a man of more than

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Mere love, a man with souls knowledge And the eagle’s mighty wingspan So this truth will last the testing age--’ She rests beside me and I lean Over, reciting my short lines.

‘No love, that is not what I mean.

No, that last bit is wrong: mere whines Of the lovesick boy! But let think--’ She stirs and leans her head about The long leaves and lavender links; Her lips seem pressed into a pout, Her body bare but a silk skirt Draped casually across her skin; Her arm is slipped in my nightshirt Placed slightly at her side, all unpinned And thin. Dandelion snow flows Toward her on an unseen breeze, And like a peacock butterfly, lows.

With blue hopes that my lines would please I begin again, determined To coo just so and wear my tongue Truly: I think how she’d crimson If I spoke with all loving lungs.

‘O, the sun’s slants are such a sight When they fall upon your green eyes.

It is a pure heavenly light Which lies and gives your girlish guise So natural and soft a look That I wish we’d rest here; pale girl, With those pale poppies that I took

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Woven into your sweeping curls-But soon I shall lose my free tongue.

Sing soft birds, my sleeping she stirs.’

Her body heaves as breath fills lungs And poignantly she shifts to side So I miss her lip’s fresh color.

What used to care and kiss, now hides.

Emilie stretches her slender Arms, and her thin fingers Recline into the grassy bed, That blooming flower pad of ours Where the new leaves are our bedspread And the green growth is our warm blanket.

This grove is known only to us, As are it’s early dew droplets, Love’s whispers, inner wildness, And beauty’s light embrace as told Here, in this expression of life.

Only we know the pleasant cold, As we are the lone wildlife, Of lavender cuddled to breasts Lazily, like the soft lace of White pillow tickling while you rest But with all the more grace and suave For I know it is only me Who breathes within the leaf soft curtain; And she knows it is only she Who lies near herself like Brahman.

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Edible Denizen Upon awakening, the day I greet, The Devil’s face is made of wholegrain wheat; This breakfast I could not swallow a bite Of morning toast— his silhouette applied.

Anointed tinfoil, the toast was wrapped, To slumber demonic intent entrapped.

I bound into the city streets to find A qualified authority to mine My toast for meaning. Science claims defame, “We observe pareidolia, explains Hardwired identity techniques evoked.”

I maintain, scientists must have had strokes.

My Bishop, I thought, will surely receive My Impasse gracefully: my mind reprieved.

He read the beast of field from Genesis, Performing a thorough exegesis.

“A sign, serpent temptation whispers pretense: A sign, etched in bread, by Lucifer’s pen.”

And that is how I came to be afoot before this pond, these swans, to claim the moot: A metaphysical experiment— Does purpose ensue, if signs are present?

Should I be right, dissent will be dispelled: You see, tonight the swans may dine in hell.

242 | Author Oqwi7Limbo!

| 243 Artist Daniel Southerland

Know Your ‘Shrooms By my nineteenth year I’d lived a dozen lifetimes and forgotten the mere existence of one of my closest friends. It was a simpler time, back then, a time when I could take a drug, have a great evening, and move on with my life. I’d tried a few things, but nothing terribly heavy; ecstasy was my limit (and I really enjoyed that one). In my own way, I’ve learned from every drug that has been processed by my liver. Alcohol taught me that it is okay to let go and have fun now and again, also that self-consciousness is a wasted emotion because nobody is actually watching and judging me. Ecstasy taught me that there is magic and wonder in even the most hum-drum of objects, and the majesty of all of creation is there to be admired if you’re willing to take the time and see it. Marijuana taught me a great many things, the breadth of which would take entire volumes to detail. Mushrooms also taught me many things, but the primary lesson I received was this: Do Not Do Mushrooms.

Specifically, do not take a mushroom as long as a man’s forearm and a cap as big around as his wrist. The dealer told Chris that it was enough for four people, but we split it down the middle and took off down the road.

The evening breeze frolicked in my unruly hair as I stood on the balcony of the third floor apartment. At first I didn’t notice that the grass moved and pulsated like a Zerg Overlord from Starcraft, but took great interest in it when I did. Chris didn’t seem to want to talk about it; he just kept smiling and talking about how thirsty he was.

I don’t remember where it was, but we walked into Heaven.

244 | Author Tony Jaeger

As the beep-boo signaling our entrance rang I stood and basked in the overwhelming white light, my arms extended exultantly outward.

A long-haired man wearing a goatee welcomed us. I realized that I was no longer sober enough to drive, let alone to be in public. Chris, an expert in the trade, taught me the secret to feigning sobriety, even when fucked-out-of-your-mind. “Be cool,” he said, “and people will neither know nor care that you’re not sober.” The point of that is that I still cannot believe I was in any way “cool” during my time inside the Pearly Gates. Goatee knew what was up. I watched cherub Doritos bags flit around while Chris purchased a bottle of Holy Water that glowed radiant to my sinner’s eyes. As we left, I found out that the registers in Heaven only kept fifty dollars in them after dark, as dictated by the sign on the sliding glass doors.

We drove around for nearly an hour, trading jokes and stories with varying levels of Truth, Chris savoring his Holy Water. The effects of the drug had been passed-over in our systems in favor of an old-fashioned Good Time. I was enjoying myself thoroughly, but I’d paid dearly for a psychedelic experience and was not getting it. “We should totally smoke a bowl,” I suggested, knowing that he was never without weed.

“I thought you’d never ask. Pull in there,” he smiled, pointing into an innocent-looking Neighborhood in Midvale. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing men that he didn’t exist. This neighborhood, likewise, convinced us of its harmlessness.

I pulled off to the side of the street just before it wound around a bend; what lay beyond it was obscured by the tall wooden fence of the house on the corner. While Chris carefully extracted the bud from a little amber pill bottle and shredded it into his pipe. I looked around, realizing that every house standing innocently around looked vaguely the same.

When singing about heroin, Johnny Cash sings of “the old, familiar sting,” describing the feel of the needle puncturing his skin. For Chris and I, the “old, familiar sting” was the burning in the back of

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our throats as the marijuana smoke passed by. The high crept up like a movie flashback, blurring the edges and making the world seem right.

One of my favorite drug-use songs, Moondance, by Nightwish, began playing on the car’s stereo, lulling me into a contented coma. The song’s spell could as easily have lasted seconds as years after its conclusion; I only knew that when I woke I had not grown a beard. I rejoined what most call reality and understood mental illness in a way I never had before. When at last I trusted myself to move I turned my head to look at Chris in the passenger seat.

Chris sat bolt upright with his arms wrapped around his knees pulled tight to his chest. My closest friend in the world was crying,“Why did I drink all of my water?”

He bashed his head with his knee, something I would see many times in the future.

“You stupid bastard! Why would you drink all of your water?”

“God, I could use a smoke, right now. That would be nice, wouldn’t that be nice?” He sighed, laying his head back, reclining a little. “That would be really—“ “Damn, I am thirsty, are you thirsty? This is ridiculous, Tony.

You should keep some water in here, man.”

“You know better than to drink all of your water!” I couldn’t stop another impact on his skull, this time on the door. “You know better!”

“Okay. I have a clear objective. Water. Cigarettes. Tony, can you drive?”

I slid my fingers around the snakeskin steering wheel, carefully avoiding the head and its dripping fangs, and peeked out of the windshield and as far around the corner as I could see. I knew immediately that there was only one house on that street, repeated on and on forever, and there was no turning around. The road led into Oblivion, and I refused to condemn him to it. I told him that I could not drive.

Tears welled up in his eyes. “Shit,” he whimpered.

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“Shit. Shit. It’s hot in here, dude, I’ve got to get out of here, I need a smoke. How are you not thirsty? Are you going to be okay by yourself?” Without waiting for an answer, or perhaps knowing instinctively that my answer would be ‘yes’, Chris stepped out of the car.

Leaving me alone.

I sat by myself in the driver’s seat in the silence of the darkness, feeling the drug course through my veins and dance along my synapses.

I could feel my intestines churning, absorbing whatever nutritional content the mushroom possessed, my liver taking in and processing the drugs. I found that I understood how consciousness was made inside of the brain. I savored the feeling of each little thought growing and becoming whole. Every little detail of every enzyme secretion I understood to my core, almost instinctively; I knew how it worked as I sensed it happening. I thought back to years of anatomy classes that I . . . never took. I’d never learned anything about how the body works.

This cracked my brain.

I began to remember my life with my wife and two beautiful children. I remembered my years interning, and a decade of medical school. I was successful, happy, middle-aged, and fictional.

“Come on, Tony, let’s come back to reality.” I reclined my seat and remembered the Truth. I was stoned in my car; middle-aged, having wasted my life drifting between drugs and cockroach-infested apartments and unemployment and McJobs (but only in the best of times).

I’d had such high aspirations when I was younger, but had wasted all of the in-between years. I’d destroyed my once keen mind, and done worse to my body. But that wasn’t true, either.

My mind shattered.

Dozens of memories spider webbed out, each crack its own separate lifetime sprouting from that moment.

I was married, Single, Kids, No kids. Unhappy marriage.Unhappy marriage. Dead at 23. Author, Junkie, Entrepreneur.

Felon,

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Doctor, Murderer.

Suicide at 30. 40. 19.

I needed it to stop. I reached out to God; I reached out to the baseball bat in my backseat. It was going to end, one way or another. The bat was in a white-knuckle grip, tapping my forehead with determinedly increasing force. It was going to end, one way or another.

Critic.

Stay-at-home-father.

Deadbeat.

Junkie.

Junkie.

Paraplegic.

Lawyer.

Homosexual.

Husband.

Dead at 28.

Dead at 23.

Dead at 40.

Suicide.

Father.

Suicide.

Successful.

Failure. Failure. Failure.

Failure. Failure. Failure.

Each lifetime’s end was punctuated by the ever-harder smashing of the baseball bat against my skull.

Failure. Failure. Failure.

What am I doing with my life? I’m not in school, I’m barely able to keep a job— Shit, I have work tomorrow! How am I going to function at work? What if this never goes away, what if this is the way I see things for the rest of my life? What am I going to d— My phone rang.

“Hello?” My voice was hoarse, my throat burned as if I’d been screaming nonstop for days. Perhaps I had been.

“Hey, Tony. How are you holding up?” It was a voice I once knew, Chris’ voice came to me from beyond the furthest reaches of my memory, and was sweeter than any single sound I’d heard in all of the lives I’d lived that night.

“We shouldn’t have done this; it was a mistake.”

“Hey,” his voice was soft, like he spoke to an infant wailing from its crib. “Close your eyes, Tony. Are they closed? Think of the word ‘chill’ for a second. Isn’t it just. . . blue?” Chris’ unimaginable moments of wisdom never ceased to amaze me. The wintry word permeated my being calming me, soothing me, whispering in my ear that I wasn’t being cool.

“Yeah,” I giggled and sobbed that single word.

“Yeah, man. Just think of the wor—“ silence. His phone died.

Leaving me alone again.

The cruel world returned with a vengeance in the silence once occupied by Chris’ voice. I called him back immediately, terrified that my life would splinter and spiral out of control again.

Voicemail. I dialed again. Voicemail. He wasn’t going to answer, I

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Artist Daniel Southerland | 249

realized despairing. I called Jeff. The phone rang. Rang. I begged him to answer. Rang. Rang. Voicemail. I’ve reached Jeff, Jeff’s voice informed me. He prompted me to leave a message. I panicked and hung up.

With the world tangibly pressing in on me, I took solace in his voice, even if he wasn’t talking to me directly. . . so I called him back to listen to the voicemail greeting again. . . three times. Five times. Nine times.

“Hey, you’ve reached Jeff, leave a message.”

“Hey, you’ve reached Jeff, leave a message.”

“Hey, you’ve reached Jeff, leave a message. leave a message. leave a message. leave a message.

I called others. My phone bill informed me that I made sixty-two calls that night, seeking shelter in my loved ones’ voices. I called Chris one last time, hoping he’d found a charger and would answer. I hadn’t seen him in entire lifetimes, and missed my friend. Voicemail.

I sat up, looked out of the windshield, and realized that Oblivion was not my only fate if I drove; that I could turn my car around and put my back to the uncertainty that lie in wait around the corner. The world around me still pulsated, but I hoped I’d beaten myself far enough into consciousness to escape. I ran through a mental checklist to find out if I was okay to drive before turning the key in the ignition. The world didn’t move around too much to preclude driving. My feet found the pedals easily enough, but I had to give myself a crash course on how to drive stick (having grown used to an automatic, or taking the bus).

Rationally, I told myself that I shouldn’t drive then, or ever again, for that matter, but I needed to get away. Before putting my car into gear I dialed Chris’ number. When he didn’t answer I decided that I would go home. Sleep. Meet up with him the next day, wherever he was. I hoped that when I found Chris I would be sobered up enough to function, but I feared that the effects of the drug would never fully leave me. They haven’t.

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I was relieved; not many cars cruise State Street at four AM. I tried a few experimental swerves between lanes to test my motor function and laughed aloud triumphantly, having found that I could, indeed, function. I stayed mostly in the lane as I drove homeward bound along State, not trusting myself to introduce music into my sensory perception, fearing an overload and a breakdown. Those are dangerous when in motion. Or not in motion.

My phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hey, man.” Chris’ voice spoke with no apparent urgency. He sounded exhausted. “My phone is about to die. I’m at the Holiday Station on State Street.”

“I’ll be there soon.” My heart leapt and sang at the same time.

I turned my car around and sped back toward the gas station just off Oblivion Street.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw him sitting on the curb with a cigarette drooping from between his lips. I parked and sat next to him on the curb. He offered me a cigarette, which I gratefully accepted.

I knew that another drug was the precise opposite of what I needed to give my body right then. . . but damn, I needed one. We smoked, and when our smokes were gone, we lit another, and another, and another.

We didn’t speak; we didn’t need to. We had everything we needed right there: a calm, cool night, a smoke, and a dear friend from lifetimes ago.

Weeks later, after the Memory had mutually started to fade, Chris admitted that he’d wandered through the deepest bowels of Hell in an endless maze, never finding water. Hours after we reunited on the curb he sat with a pen and paper and drew an incredibly fine, complex maze, which was the first of many. I’ve never asked him, but I imagine that he is still chronicling his passage through the blazing fires of Hell; still hoping to find water at the end of his final maze.

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Artist Betty Cuanalo | 73

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Terra LaRochelle

Conquering the Habit It was 115 degrees outside, another hot summer in Saint George. I was 16. My boyfriend at the time, Johnny Mac we called him, picked me up from school so that we could go hang out at his house. I remember thinking that he was so cool. He was 25 years old; he had his own car, and his own apartment. He always told me how much he loved me and spoiled me rotten. Whenever my parents and I were fighting he made me feel better.

I remember that day as if it were last week. I walked into his house and the air conditioner blew in my face. We sat down on his brown, stained couch and Johnny asked me if I trusted him. I replied, “of course, why?” He said, “I want to share something with you, just hold out your arm.” I remember I was so scared, I was sick to my stomach. The adrenaline and butterflies were extreme.

I asked him what it was, and if I would be okay. I told him that I was scared. He said, “I promise you will be okay, I would never hurt you, just trust me.” My heart started to pound, my eyes rolled back in my head, I felt a rush like nothing I had ever felt before, it was pure euphoria. After about two minutes of this I asked Johnny what he just gave me. He replied, “ just a little oxycontin.” I said, “I want more.” I was instantly hooked. The next few days were a blur. All I can remember is throwing up constantly and not eating.

I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. My life quickly turned into a whirlpool; full of crime, chaos and destruction.

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It was July 2008, I had just had my 19th birthday. I woke up in a cold, hard 8x12 room. I looked up and saw a pink flickering light. I was surrounded by green cinderblocks. My entire body was aching. I had cold sweats, and my mouth felt as if it were full of cotton. I was withdrawing and I was in jail. It took me a while to realize what was going on. I knew that this time in jail was going Author Kaela Liebroder | 255

to be the longest. This was my fifth time being incarcerated, and I knew I was stuck there for a while. The past three years had been a rollercoaster. Shooting heroin, meth, and just about anything I could get my bony hands on. I had one phone call, so of course I called my dad. He wasn’t very surprised by my call; he knew that I was in jail. I cried, begged, and pleaded asking him to bail me out.

He instantly said no. He told me that I needed help and this was the only way I was going to get it. He called it “tough love.”

After a week of no sleep and daily seizures I finally got to go to court. I entered the huge room in my white jumpsuit and shackles on my feet. Every step I took hurt. I weighed a whopping 98 pounds and my ankles bled from the tight chains surrounding them.

My name was called and I approached the bench. The judge looked at me in disgust. My hair was fried and my skin was grey. I looked like I hadn’t eaten in months. He said that my drug levels were the highest he had ever seen. He said that the combination of heroin and meth I was sticking in my arm on a daily basis was going to kill me. The judge and attorneys offered me a deal. They said I had two choices, drug court or 3-5 in the Utah State Prison. I instantly said, “I’ll take drug court your honor.” He told me that because my levels were so high I would need to wait in jail for a bed to open up at the horizon house, which is an impatient rehab. His last words to me were that he wasn’t going to let me die out there and that if he released me from jail I would kill myself from an overdose. I sat down in tears and looked into the audience. My dad and step mom were right there with me; crying and smiling at the same time.

On the drive back to hell I wondered what was going to happen to me. I knew that it was going to be hard, but all I could think about at the time was getting out of jail. I was so angry knowing that every morning I would have to look up at that annoying pink light. I had no idea how long it was going to take to get a bed at the rehab. I was so sick, I couldn’t eat or sleep. I lied in bed all day shacking and throwing up, the worst pain I had ever experienced; I wanted to die.

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Six months had passed and I was still in jail. I woke up one morning and made a decision that I wasn’t going to continue wasting time. I had been wasting away in jail, doing nothing good for myself. I started attending narcotics anonymous meetings that were offered at the jail. I started reading motivational books. I quit associating with all of the losers that I was in there with. I stayed close to my family. My dad wrote me almost every day and came to visit me every week. One visit that I had with my dad I will never forget. He said, “Kaela, this is the last time you have to go through this. You never have to do this again if you choose not to.” Late one night, alone in my freezing 8x12 cell I had a deep thought, I felt hopeless. I dropped to my knees, placed my hands together on top of my cot and prayed. I didn’t know who I was praying to, just someone or something, anything that would listen. The day before Christmas Eve my prayers were answered. I got a call over the intercom to come to the door. I pressed the button and said, “This is 3803.” The officer said, “Roll up.” I instantly began to cry, I was finally going to rehab. This was it! I was out of jail after nine months of waiting for a bed, there was one open just for me!

A feeling of relief passed upon me. I had been running for years and this was my break. No more chasing the high, being sick from running out of heroin or oxy. I didn’t have bruises or scars anymore from the needle I used to inject into my soul on an hourly basis. I was finally in rehab. After living in motels and on the streets, jail gave me some structure. Now that I was in rehab it was like the Hilton compared to the green dungeon I was locked in for months. I was ready to move on, I was so excited to change and get back to the girl I was before I met Johnny and the drug that almost took my life.

I entered my first group meeting with an opened mind. The counselors asked me if there was anything that I wanted to share being that I was the newest member of the group. I quickly wiped the sweat from my hands that were stuck to my chair. I released my bottom lip from my teeth and replied. “Yes, my name is Kaela | 257

and I need help.” “I’m really good at pretending like everything is okay, so please call me out.” I attended group therapy twice a day, went to an NA meeting daily, and completed the first 5 steps of NA. I learned about addiction and what it really is, a brain disease. A doctor who specializes in addiction came to talk to us and teach us about addiction and where it begins. He explained to me that part of it is hereditary. He asked if I had any alcoholism or addiction in my family. My grandma and grandpa, one on each side, and my father were all recovering alcoholics. Knowing this made me feel a little better, but I still had many questions. This doctor explained that an addict mind is much different than what we would call a “norm”. He explained that when an addict is introduced to a drug, such as heroin something is triggered in the frontal cortex. This is where we make decisions and where our values and morals come from. He went on to say that once introduced this part of the brain becomes paralyzed and goes into survival mode. His analogy was if you were stranded on an island with no food or water, you would do whatever necessary to get food and water. This is what happens to an addict brain under the influence, they will do whatever it takes to get their drug. This really helped me to accept that this was a disease that I needed to fight off just like I would if I had cancer or diabetes. I spent 63 days in rehab, and left a totally different person than I was when I entered.

It was May 2008, the sky was blue and the sun was a perfect temperature as it hit my skin. I entered the court house to graduate from drug court. My parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters were all there to support me. I waited impatiently for the judge to call my name. Once I heard it I jumped up smiling from ear to ear. The entire room stood to their feet and applauded. The judge came down off his bench, handed me a completion certificate, and told me that he was dropping all of my charges. He spoke to the crowd telling them that he was proud of me and grateful that I was alive. After 23 months I was done. I was out of drug court, finished in rehab, and most importantly I was sober.

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I completed something that two years prior I never would have imagined possible.

The next few weeks were the most exciting; I was ready to take the next step. I packed my things, put in my two weeks’ notice, and moved to Salt Lake. I wanted to go back to school. I had an academic scholarship for college because I graduated high school as a sophomore when I was 16. This was my chance to make my dreams come true, and I had the wisdom to make it happen. I applied at a rehab and got the job. I worked for Odyssey House located in downtown Salt Lake. I was able to work with adolescents who had gotten in trouble with drugs and were in rehab. Most of these kids were away from their families and ages 13-18. The most popular drug of choice was opiates. My job took me to many different places, sharing my story with other addicts and their families.

Many people don’t understand addiction and what it is. Some think it’s a choice, while others know that it’s a disease. I helped to educate some of these people about addiction and what options there are out there to receive help. I traveled to Utah telling my story in hopes that I could save at least one little boy or girl that was just like me. I wanted to help and give back what had been given to me, a second chance to live.

Getting sober has been a long, bumpy road. Things happened in a way that ended up being almost perfect. I went to jail, completed drug court, and moved back to Salt Lake to finish the life I truly desired. I still attend meetings and work on bettering myself every day. I know that this is an ongoing process and that I will have to work at it forever. I like to tell myself a little saying every morning when I wake up. For example, never give up what you want most in life for what you want at the moment. With the support of my loving family and the great opportunity I was given I can proudly say that I have been clean and sober now for 4 ½ years.

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Misunderstanding Hunger My best friend died today. I’ve known her since I can remember. After hard days I would curl up on her fur, singing songs of loss, between chattering teeth, tell I was tired and warm: a safe place to dream.

For her, like me, our behalf was talked without us, for us. But together, no one talked, we just listened. Compassion: a tranquil state before I cut my name into it.

Her clouded eyes held mine, like mirrors reflecting: hers brown and meek, mine green and blue.

I held her and wept, trying to comfort her like she had I so many times, while my parents fought over funeral costs.

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Author Oqui7Limbo

They dished me up their criticism with dinner. Fighting the burnt spoon like a monkey trying to stay off the heroin, we argued over the meat and potatoes decorating the table.

The Man said, He is clearly broken, with a snicker.

We are carnivores; animals eat other animals; it is natural to eat meat: the girl said.

Lots of things are natural, that doesn’t mean they are right or good.

I can’t imagine you would think it would be right for someone to– The man chimed in with a smirk: Mmmm! oh god, this steak is delicious! What did you say the cow’s name was?

Dinner: said the women.

It was Edward Said who said something like, the characteristics that we attribute to the Orient say more about ourselves than they do about the actual Orient. I often imagine that is the case for just about anything that we subordinate to the position of the Other. In my case at the dinner table, I had become an oddity, unnatural and broken: the Other, lumped in with the nonhumananimals I cared about. Now, these snide jokes where perhaps at my expense, but at the same time said nothing about me or what I stood for. It took me a long time to figure this out: jokes at my | 261

expense always said more about the person making the joke, than me. This is a small consolation, however.

You’re joking, right? That is the dumbest shit I— All right, this conversation is over!

They all laughed. Their laughter, echoing in their bellies and up along their throats, would shatter thinner windows, but they had sealed themselves off from the outside with enough fat and stucco, wooden blinds and plastic glass with fish still caught in the pores, to prevent any kind of disturbance to the convulsing prattle of their self congratulating ceremonies. For some reason—reasons I understand better now than in my more militant days when I was caught up within the fever of a new ideology— my convictions were a joke, an absurdity.

So, tell us, how did you become a vegetarian?: the girl asked.

Well, I have always cared about animals. Just recently, though, I have been talking with my friends a lot—they’re vegetarian too— and I’ve thinking about– Ah ha! It all makes sense now. It’s just peer pressure and groupthink. They have been filling your head with a bunch of hippienonsense-propaganda. Why don’t you try thinking for yourself. It is common sense, man!— Can you pass me the steak sauce?: said the man.

Shut up! What the hell do you know? Are you really going to try to psychoanalyze me?— Would you pass me the broccoli?– That is some reductive bullshit! I’ve been on both side of the debate. I’ve taken the time to think about the issues. You are so damn sure of yourself, without— You’re darn right, I am sure of myself. The Bible, the word of god almighty himself, states that man has dominion over the animals.

We can do with them what we please. It also says to respect your elders. So, you watch your mouth and don’t talk back to me.

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It is hard to have an honest and civil conversation when people disagree, especially about something tied so closely to a one’s emotions and concept of self. Louis Althusser said that ideology has a material existence—roughly, what we believe is manifest through material practices and rituals. The man goes to the LDS church every Sunday, kneels and prays by the bedside or dinner table, hunts animals with the same competitiveness as he works his white collar corporate job, (and much more that I could never know). These actions are imbued with certain ideologies that support itself, giving reason to move, and moving to give reason.

If it is the case that Althusser’s insights on ideology are correct, it is understandable that the man would hold to his belief that humans have the right to use the rest of natural world for whatever means they saw fit to achieve their ends. It is what he has lived has called for. And I am no different in my ideological creations: I was raised with animals—dogs, cats, frogs, fish—; read many philosophers like Peter Singer, Plato, Immanuel Kant in my later years and I have been arguing about philosophical concepts with my friends since I was young; I rebelled in rhythm to the punk rock music playing loudly out of my cd player; and so on. I can imagine other animals having something analogous to this: my dog, sleeping on my bed night, eating scraps at the table and playing fetch in the school yard, would understandably be trusting and loving to their human counterparts; a cat beaten and abandoned in the alleyway between a Chinese Buffet and low-income housing, left to play only with garbage and its nine lives, would understandably be aggressive and untrusting of the human-apes ornamenting the concrete jungle. We are what we have lived; the combined efforts of the world we walk through converged into a singularity, a point of reference rooted in running water. | 263

But don’t get me wrong, I am not supporting relativism. I suppose it is true that everyone has their own opinion (some better than others)—which is not the same thing as an argument— but this doesn’t speak much to anything: it is a tautology, soaking in the rhetoric of individualism. It has become hyper-subjectivism.

Ironically, relativism has been credited with its ability to support tolerance and to give everyone a fair say within a dialogue, and yet, in practice it works to shut down conversations more often than it opens it up. Like my conversations about our ethical obligations to other animals at the dinner table with my family, I can’t count how many times I’ve faced dilemmas starved of any sort of resolution when a disagreement came up because someone dismissed my argument as mere opinion. But, I suppose, what stands for evidence is the first line of business, and that in itself is not an easy thing to agree upon.

Most of the time, the best you could hope for is happy misunderstandings. *

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Artist Missi Ross

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Hunger. Dirt or spit or wishes— the same that place prayers in remission— echo along the throat the demon’s conditions.

I knew a guy, one that could only be remembered, never met—his name was limbo— who chewed off his tongue. Not to stop talking, not through convulsing prattle, but to have a say in the demon’s convictions.

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| 265

No More You left me broken, alone.

Haunted by ghostly thoughts and memories.

You were my Halloween Tree, Tall, strong, happy.

But your leaves were changing color.

The end was coming near.

Winter was coming, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

So I watched your leaves fall, one by one.

Now I want to remember you as my summer tree, Full of green leaves and life.

But you are gone, and I am empty.

I keep my mask and costume on at all times.

To reveal the truth is to die all over again.

I asked for the Treat, but got the Trick instead.

You are a presence that is forever there, forever there.

I wander the haunted house that is my mind, Wishing I had done things differently.

But there are no take-backs and no do-overs.

So you will be forever there, Haunting me.

Giving me my Broken Halloween.

266 | Author Cauleen Hansen

Aint gonna trust

Deep inside,

no more

Trust no more

Hide my fear

No more,

deep inside

Soft heart

Trust no more

Dark world,

Aint gonna show

shark world

my hand

Aint gonna trust

Hide my hand,

no more,

Play my cards,

Hide my fear

Faces down,

deep inside

show no one

Trust

Aint gonna trust

no more.

no more, Hide my fear,

Author Mark Anderson | 267

Goodnight Goodnight

A man, far and distant,

Dreams fall from the heavens

Shadowed, floating close.

Seek refuge in our brains.

A Knife Glistening! Coming near.

Our ideas conquered,

Waking with a screaming throat.

Our imagination slain.

Rays of light peek inside, Gently waking all in sight.

Rays of light creep and fade, As we whisper goodnight.

Beads of sweat, heart pounding.

Darkness Blinds your sight.

Eyelids feeling heavy Hoping for a better goodnight.

Goodnight.

Nightmares rise from fiery hell.

Parasitic force upon the soul, Feasting on feelings of despair.

Fears indulged beyond control.

268 | Author Liz Tallington

| 269

Artist Thomas Western

I Apologize

for ASking I'd like to say thank you then I'd like to say sorry.

Thanks for coming out, sorry if this isn't what you wanted.

Fuck what you think you want.

Sorry if I say things too bluntly.

Thanks if you get easily offended, that’s gonna’ make this fun.

These days there's a lot to be apologetic about; too many people being sorry out-n-about.

Not too much to be proud about.

How about . . .

Shutting the fuck up so you can listen, the way your God intended.

Shut your eyes too, so you can catch the vision.

Then this bla-bla-bla can make some sense.

Stop wasting breath telling everyone how sorry you are . . .

Be.

270 | Author C J Armantrout

| 271

Hate I hate.

I hate hatred itself and, people's annoying flaws that dig into my hate.

I hate my self-pity, I hate pity.

I hate worthless self-indulgence and all of this controlled ignorance.

I hate the fact that I have all this that I'm messing up and I hate wasting this.

I'm wasting time.

I even hate time because it constantly hounds me.

Pounding my body into what it wants.

I hate realizing I hate this much because I realize I love to hate.

I hate being this wrong and I hate these circles that I’m talking in.

But I'm happy loving you sad song; happy hating your voice inside my head.

Waking up in your bed and hating it.

I must be happy.

272 | Author C J Armantrout

It lies in wait outside my door Seems so innocent Yet it waits so cunning, elusive Waiting for my moment of weakness For the moment I fall And it creeps in And puts its arms around my neck Threating to suffocate I reach out To Someone Something But there is no one, nothing but emptiness As I feel the arms tighten The pain rises up in my lungs Threatening to strangle me with tears of grief I almost let go As it attempts to consume me But I find something in my heart that leads me to reach up And let go I’m released

Author Brittany Lee | 273

Zombie

Dreams

My eyes are dead

To run or fight

I lay my head

To risk the bite

I slip and sleep

Where fear has a name

To dreams I keep

To survive is the game

To a frightening place

The gnashing of teeth

Of time and space

With the rise from beneath

Where terrors call

We walk this earth not seeing

And heroes fall

Not living just being

Where screams aren’t heard

Billions of milky eyes

Not even a word

No more blue skies

When the dead come seeking

When will We learn

Heavily reeking

That we All will turn

Author 274 | Miranda Lavallee

| 275

Lock Down Jail. This word brings to mind for the majority of people negative prospective and different thoughts and opinions to different people. To some it may bring to mind images from television shows such as Oz with gangs of different races out to get each other in a free for all environments. To others it may bring th9ughts of thieves, junkies, and other predators of society.

To me it brings to mind a misunderstood cog in the justice system's machine, a cog that is not exactly the right size and is missing a few teeth. Had the unwelcomed opportunity of being a guest for five days and four nights in the Salt Lake County Metro Jail, and I took the time to soak in the sights, smells and sounds of this institution. This is my memoir...

276 | Artist Nicholas Garrett

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So I got out a little thinner because they don't feed you much but also what I consider a little more enlightened than when I went in. I had experienced firsthand what it was like and the people in there.1 noticed right away it didn't fit my initial impression and thoughts of the place. It didn't fit anybody else's thoughts either.

Yeah there were people in there that had made bad mistakes but does that make them bad people? I don't think so. Nobody is perfect and everybody makes mistakes. Mistakes shouldn't scar a person forever. People can and do learn from them and as a society we should do well to remember that.

Since I've been out I have experienced a little of the stigma associated to somebody who has been to jail. By nature I am a tight lipped individual and I don’t confide things about myself to strangers. The only people outside of my family and friends that I have told that I have been to jail are my peers in this class. When I've been asked what I was going to do my memoir on I've been straight forward and said my experience in jail. The reaction has always been the same. They get a look on their face like they are debating whether to give me condolences like they've just heard I've lost a

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loved one or to shy away from me like they've just encountered a rattlesnake. In the end it's the same, a question is asked in a tone just above that of a whisper, “what did you do?" followed by, “if you don't mind me asking." By this time I know that to them I'll be that guy that went to jail, but I tell them the reason I was there.

Next is the part that I've found to be most interesting, it’s what I do after telling them the why of my circumstance. Subconsciously I must feel like I am on trial again because 1 start on a defense of myself, explaining to them what happened and why I'm not a "bad guy” I start to justify my incarceration as just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve just recently noticed this bazaar behavior of mine.1 find this interesting because before I only focused on the label attached to people who have gone to jail.1 hadn't noticed the impact

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Artist Shannon King

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| 289

A Different Choice A dismal gray wave of beings covers the continent.

Red and Blue make gray, I guess.

A convincing puppet with the lyricism of a Stradivarius stands by a shiny robot that seems to silently say, "If I only had a brain."

Here and there sparks of something different emerge.

These newborns rise above the gray fog, unwilling to fall back in line with the masses, unable to fall back asleep.

Slowly, these awakened beings find their voice and find one another.

A passionate man of liberty speaks to the hearts of the peacemakers. He's not willing to back down as the army of gray descends upon him. He's willing to take a stand.

The soldiers of oppression use outdated phrases to instill fear but the man is not affected.

The push to conform on the cognizant assembly meets strong determination to not falter This passionate voice among the conscious would rather die than pick puppet or robot We would rather die than give up our freedom

Uncontainable Cold flat Pepsi In my veins In my cells Slithers through parched gullies I feel it as never before Nothing means Nothing better Cold flat complete Fascination of water Sugar and gas I like it without bubbles Without fizz Crazy as this is The taste itself Carries life And longing and time And don’t ever finish Last longer than Niagara Just so I can drown over and over Never never once begging for air Never never once wishing for more

290 |

Author Brittany Lee

Author Gary H. Howard | 291

Shopping Sterling was awakened by the sunlight coming through his bedroom window. He shot upright in his bed and looked around frantically, getting his bearings and finally remembering. It still took a minute in the mornings for him to realize where he was.

He got up and immediately took a long shower, as hot as he could stand it, spreading rich lather all over his body. He wrapped in a big, fluffy white towel and went into his kitchen. There, he started a pot of coffee to brew while he toweled off then dressed. Sterling smelled each item of clothing he took from his dresser or closet, and rubbed them gently against his face. They were so clean and crisp and soft.

Once dressed, and shaved, he poured himself a cup of the freshly brewed coffee, to which he added milk and a little sugar. The first sip elicited a smacking of the lips and a long satisfied "Aaaaah." Next, Sterling put a pan on the range to heat up, adding a dollop of butter, that sizzled as it melted. Then, he reached into his refrigerator, and brought out three eggs. He put these in a bowl and beat them with a fork for a few seconds, then poured them into the skillet. He loved the popping, crackling sound they made when they hit the pan, and the combined aroma of the butter and eggs made him breathe in deeply. He popped a couple of slices of bread into the toaster, and then turned on the radio.

He loved music with his breakfast, the classical station was the most relaxing. He stripped his bed and made it back up with clean sheets, carefully fluffing the pillows. Sterling loved his comfortable new bed and luxurious pillows.

The toast popped up, and Sterling spread red raspberry jam on both slices. He took a plate from his cupboard, on which he cut the crisp slices diagonally. The toast he arranged near the edges of his plate, then carefully slid his scrambled eggs onto it right from the pan. He poured a glass of orange juice, and took his complete breakfast, juice coffee toast and eggs, over to his table next to his picture window, and sat down to enjoy it, and the morning, slowly. It felt good not to be rushed.

292 | Author John P. Wilkes

Sterling had asked for and received the day off from his new job.

Yesterday he had received his first paycheck in years. That had sure felt good. It felt even better to have a day o ff. He had only worked there for about a month, and Sterling thought it might be too early to ask for time off. So he had hesitated to ask for it at first, afraid he'd be denied, or his boss would get mad and fire him. Sterling didn't want to think about what losing his job might mean. Still, his desire to go and spend a little of his hard-earned pay had overcome those fears. He couldn't remember the last time he had any money for anything at all. Today would be a special day.

After breakfast, Sterling did his dishes and wiped down the range, cupboards and countertops. He swept his floor, grabbed the garbage out of his trash can, to take it out on his way to the transit train. The station was just three blocks away, and would take him right to the new downtown shopping mall. That was where Sterling planned to spend his afternoon.

After about a 20 minute ride, Sterling reached his destination.

The mall seemed out of place in this part of the city, right on the border of "the wrong side of the tracks." The city Redevelopment Agency had been trying to improve this part of town for several years, with limited success. Down and across the street from the mall there were still many empty, run-down buildings, vacant lots, and abandoned cars. The sidewalks were littered with broken glass, used hypodermic needles, and cardboard boxes; some with people still sleeping in them. Dozens of people loitered outside the nearby Greyhound station, smoking cigarettes and other substances, drinking from bottles and flasks. Directly across from the transit station was a homeless shelter and soup kitchen, where even more people roamed the sidewalk or sat on the curb, talking and taking the cool autumn air.

He looked away from these undesirable sights and directed his attention on his destination. This neighborhood brought back disturbing memories and suppressed cravings from his not yet distant enough past.

He marveled, also, at the recent positive turn his life had taken, and he felt great pride and satisfaction from the fact that the detrimental parts of this area were no longer a part of his life.

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He had left here just weeks ago, to take up residence in a new apartment, but he already felt like the years he had spent here, on this street, had been a whole different universe. He had received his first paycheck from his new job, washing dishes for a downtown hotel, and he had come up here to shop because he wanted to. He had told others that he would die before he had to come down here again, and he had meant it.

restaurants today.

Three week's pay, at minimum wage and after taxes, was no fortune, but it was more than nothing. He'd had nothing for a very long time. It felt good to be sleeping under a roof, in an apartment of his own, and to have a little scratch in his pocket. Still, he felt like he lacked sometimes. Today's plan was to buy a new pair of shoes, and boots for the impending winter. He thought he might buy a new pair of pants and a shirt as well. He might even treat himself to lunch in a restaurant. Chinese was his favorite.

Sterling hadn't expected the kid to actually come back or be in the neighborhood when he had finally finished shopping. He realized that he had just been trying to give the boy the brush- off. Sterling felt suddenly guilty about that. He felt guilty about rushing with his head down from the train to the mall earlier, refusing to look upon or acknowledge the squalor and desperation that surrounded him. He felt rotten about thinking for one second that he was now better than all of these people, that he was above all this. He felt ashamed, as ashamed as he had when this neighborhood had been his home.

As Sterling waited for the crossing light to change, a disheveled young man approached him and asked, "Can you spare some change?"

Sterling cringed a little before answering, "No. Sorry."

"How about a cigarette?"

"Don't smoke. Sorry" "Look, man," the panhandler was unshaken, "I'm just trying to get a little money together for something to eat."

The man, Sterling noticed behind the long shaggy hair, was really just a boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen. His jeans were grimy, as was his shirt, which was full of holes. The young man wore no jacket, and must have been cold on this late October early afternoon.

"Look, kid," Sterling replied, "all I have are larger bills right now. If you see me when I come back out of the mall, hit me up then, OK?"

About two hours later, Sterling was headed toward the train station to return back home. He carried two large bags filled with his purchases, and a little container of leftover Chinese food. He was so content and on top of the world that he nearly tripped over the young man he had seen earlier. The kid now sat next to the crosswalk, holding a sign that read "Please Help."

Sterling just stared for a while at the teenager sitting on the hard sidewalk. He took a good look around at the other people within view that were struggling just to survive each day with their dignity intact. It wasn't wrong to be proud of his new situation, but he felt he had been wrong to try and pretend he had never been down and out. Who knew if he wouldn't someday be again?

"So, mister," the kid on the sidewalk called up to Sterling, "Did you get that change or what?"

Sterling walked up to the boy, and before crossing the street, he set his shopping bags with new shoes, boots, shirt and pants, and the doggie bag container full of leftover Chinese food, on the sidewalk.

"I hope things fit. Enjoy the food." Sterling said to the young man, then he crossed the street to catch his train.

"Sure, mister." The boy shuffled off down the street, hanging his head. Sterling stepped onto the brick streets of the open air mall, inhaling the smells of cookies and hamburgers and various other tasty dishes. He decided he was definitely going to have lunch at one of the

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| 295

Have you ever noticed The frost upon your window?

Delicate patterns, Pictures that soon will leave.

Each morn, A new story is told.

Whether of dragons and knights, Or a lost orphan girl.

Or maybe just trees and snow.

They sparkle and glitter Pictures that soon will leave.

But now the sun rises With warm yellow rays.

And a small bit of sadness, For pictures that now have left.

296 Artist | Shanna King

| 297 Author Emily Bradley

Wishing for the Next In the winter there is snow,

In the autumn with the trees towering tall,

I love the glinting and the sparkling glow. I love the trees like skeletons on the sky; the mistletoe, and the smell of pine.

I love the new colors that come with the fall. When a breeze sweeps through the trees, and I hear the crunching of leaves,

So when will the wind blow and let the white crystals flow

a smile comes to my face, a glint into my eyes, and I don’t want to say my goodbyes.

onto the grass that used to be green, so that winter soon will be seen?

Why is is so unbearably hot?

In the spring there is new warmth in the air, I love the way the flowers bloom and life blossoms with care.

When the bright colorers come back into sight

this summer heat, I feel like I rot.

I feel lively like a kid with a kite.

So when will the snow, that has danced around, turn to water, and flow to the ground?

In the summer everything is bright; I love freedom, the water, and the light. I love the sand between my toes and the way time slows.

Why does it snow after winter is gone, During this spring, when it’s been so long?

298 | Author Ari Schjelderup

In love with summer each year I still can’t wait for autumn to appear. I love winter most, but I fear When Ice bound there, It’s a challenge to wait for spring to be in the air.

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Artist Myra Schjameld

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Little Step After Little Step The middle of March, 2009 I decided that I really didn’t feel like waiting to die anymore. I didn’t want to live my life in bed any longer and wanted to get on with my life. I decided to take whatever action needed that would allow me to move forward and enjoy whatever level of life still possible. At this point in my life I was very obese. Doctors refer to this level of obesity as “supermorbidly obese”. That term may be accurate, but I felt that limited me to the extent that I would not be able to do what I needed to overcome my situation. I had tried multiple diets and had tried to eat right. I have been overweight all of my life. However, at this point in my life, I was no longer able to walk more than about fifteen feet at one time and doing so would leave me gasping for breath even though I was on oxygen twenty four hours a day. I went from being extremely obese to being functionally bed ridden in about two years. I was majorly depressed before this but it was my divorce and the death of my mother that just made me feel like giving up and not really want to live or even be a person anymore.

I decided that I needed to do something drastic if that was what it would take to change things and give me my life back. I contacted the office of Rocky Mountain Associated Physicians at St. Marks Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. I explained my situation to them and made an appointment to attend an orientation.

Since, I was not able to walk very far, my brother pushed me into the building in a wheelchair that is so massive that it does not fit in a car. He had to load my wheelchair into the back of his pickup.

I was not able to climb into the cab of his pickup. I had to travel to the orientation with my father in his car. At the orientation they explained that the upper part of my stomach would be cut off from 302 | Author Melvin Young

the rest. Then the unused portion is sutured shut. After that, the top of my stomach would be closed and a segment of small intestine connected to the bottom of my new stomach. The smaller stomach is referred to as a pouch and now holds about two ounces of food.

But, I weighed well over the upper limit of the allowable range for the surgery. I was disappointed that the surgery would not be an option for me. I left without talking to any of the surgeons that perform the operation. I went home even more depressed than before. Four or five months later the office called me and asked how I was doing. I told them that I was fine, but I really felt like there was no hope of me losing weight and thought I would probably die. They suggested that I come back for a consultation with one of their surgeons. They thought that maybe there was at least one alternative option for me. They suggested that maybe the doctors could do some kind of liquid diet. I chose Doctor Rodrick Mckinlay. Doctor Mckinlay was confident that he would be able to help me even though I was out of the weight guidelines that are usually followed. He scheduled me for a Dobutamine echocardiography.

This test detects any blocks that would stop an adequate blood flow to my heart. I also underwent a series of tests to measure my pulmonary function. Both tests found nothing wrong.

Three months later, on January 19th 2011, I had the surgery.

I made it through with no issues and was released three days post op. Three weeks later I had to go back into the hospital, I developed a gastrointestinal bleed; I was bleeding into my new stomach.

This can be a fatal situation if the bleed is not found or cannot be stopped. Since the stomach hadn’t had proper time to heal, all the surgeons could do was give me unit after unit of plasma and whole blood. Lying in my hospital bed, I asked myself over and over, “was this worth all of the pain and risk involved?” I was in for another three days. My bleed resolved itself and I was released from the hospital. Over the course of the next five months, physical therapists would come to my house to help me rehabilitate from the ef| 303

fects of being bed ridden. I had some muscular atrophy in my legs and for the first couple months I was only able walk short distances to increase the strength in them. The first few months I was able to stand for only about ten seconds at a time. This increased gradually. I went from not being able to walk fifteen feet to being able to walk to the end of my drive way, then eventually up my street.

In June of 2011, I walked to my mother’s grave. That was the first time I had been able to. This was a tremendous accomplishment for me. When my mother died I had to attend her funeral in the same wheelchair that I used to get into the hospital for my surgery.

I was not able to walk to her grave for the last part of her service.

She died in the winter of 2007. The day of her funeral, the grass was snow packed and slick. Because of the size of the wheelchair, it was left at the funeral home. I went to the graveside part of the service and sat alone, in the funeral home’s limousine, as the rest of my family stood some distance away at my mother’s grave.

That Summer I kept increasing my ability to walk and do things for myself. I was encouraged by my family and friends to continue my recovery. Even though it is an everyday thing for most people, I looked at small things such as being able to walk into a Starbucks to get a low calorie iced coffee as one of a series of major milestones for myself. I still have a picture of the first cup of Starbucks iced coffee that I was able to walk into the store to purchase on my own. In mid-October of 2011, I walked in the annual Walk from Obesity, sponsored by the Obesity Action Coalition. It was only half a mile, but for me it was like being able to walk a million.

Finishing the course was a major victory for me. Before surgery I thought I would never be able to do anything like it ever again.

Since then I have continued my recovery from being bed ridden and not feeling like a person that mattered or had value, to enjoying most every minute of the day. I enrolled in school and have completed two semesters so far. Fall 2012 is my third semester. I have been earning good grades and enjoy walking around campus.

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Inside I feel like I am ten years younger. I am in better health than I was eleven years ago. I see things differently, I am no longer depressed. Many things have changed for me. There are a lot of changes around me. Businesses have folded and new ones opened.

The children in my family have grown up and are entering adulthood. I notice how society has changed. Everyone has a cell phone now, even little kids. Most of the places that I went before being bed ridden are now gone. Most compact discs, movies, and even books are bought online. I feel like Rip Van Winkle would feel had he been a real person. I feel like I have a hole in my life that was taken from me by depression and it is not possible to get that time back. I live with that feeling in my thoughts constantly. My total time being house, then bed, ridden is about eight years. I look back at the time that I decided to take action no matter how extreme or risky it was and have the surgery and feel a sense of hope not only for myself, but for the world as a whole. If you take one little step towards any goal that you want to achieve, and then follow it with another and then another, soon you achieve one monumental goal that did not feel possible. My wheelchair now sits in my father’s garage, unused and collecting dust. It serves as a reminder to me that even though life may seem horrible and depressing, it is possible to pick yourself up, and move on to a wonderful future.

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Artist Betty Cuanalo

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Biography of a Zucchini Here is the story of my zucchini how he came to be, how we meet and why he let me eat him. I will now let him tell you in his own words.

Hello, I am Dean's zucchini! I was born to Mr. and Mrs. Green Zucchini Plant who live in Magna, Utah where I was grown in Dean's garden in 2012. My parents come from Dean's grandparents garden 36.76 miles away in Lehi, Utah where they were grown in 2011. As I was grown from my parents, they where grown from the seeds of their parents who where eaten by Dean's grandparents who then saved and dried their seeds which they used to grow my grandparents. My dad was a strong tall plant who was watered daily with irrigation water and had strong roots with plenty of good soil to eat. Mom grew right next to dad and they hit it off right away and eventually entwined their roots and soon later started to produce blooms.

My older brothers and sisters grew first and were picked after just a few days on the vine. I grew up not knowing them.

308 | Author Dean Steed

Mom and Dad were strict and protective and didn’t let me grow far from their roots. They feed me, gave me shade and protected me from the elements. After a few days on the vine I was getting rather long and I must admit, getting increasingly round. I knew I would be picked soon I was afraid of what would happen after I got picked. That night, I said my goodbyes and sure enough I was picked later that afternoon and taken into Dean's house. Later that night I was washed, dried and placed in a fridge where I stayed for a few days. There, I meet a bell pepper, a cucumber and a family of carrots. In the fridge I learned I would be cooked and eaten but that it was a good thing. I was educated on how I would provide energy and nutrients to all who would consume me. The next day, Dean himself pulled me out of the fridge and placed me by some of my younger brothers and sisters. What happen next was crazy.

I witnessed my brother and sisters get chopped into round slices and put into a pan. I was extremely scared and shaking because I knew I was food and this was my fate, damned to be chopped up and fried in a non stick pan witch coconut oil and a dash of salt and pepper and eaten. Thoughts flooded though my head; how many people would eat me, will I taste good, was I even ripe enough to eat. What was I to do? How would anyone know my story and where I came from? That's when I decided I would tell my own story! I yelled out to Dean and told him I would help right his paper if he let me tell my story my way and for him to let everyone know how I went to the pan a proud and strong zucchini with no regrets and willing to do my part in the circle of life. By the time you read this I will have been fried along with my fellow vegetables and consumed by Dean and his family. I know I have done my part in making dinner time healthy. So remember your roots my food friends and how you came to the plate, for you are important and loved by all. Yours truly, Lloyd the Zucchini.

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Salutations, my demo, what do you have to say? You suggest that perhaps I should upgrade? There are more things you could do for me, But I prefer you simple, simple and free.

Salutations, my demo, how are you today? What are you doing? What do you have to say? New features to explore? What will I find?

I will use you, my demo, all on my own time.

Salutations, my demo, free from all charge, Better than the other ‘like’ apps at large. What’s this, a bug? Or maybe two?

I’ll find a workaround, and keep using you.

No serial numbers, no codes to remember, no updates needed — oh but only for free. You are my demo, my friend, my companion, It took but one click, and another (and another), then you were with me.

Salutations, my demo, how are you today? You have not expired and I like you that way. I’ll use you forever, never have to pay....

Salutations my demo, come, come this way. \(~**)~/\(~**)~/\(~**)~/\(~**)~/

310 | Author Myra Karine

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My Near Death Experience with a Cookie I’ve always been told that I was a good kid (was being the operative word). I got good grades, I was cute, hell, I even had a job when I was eight as a model in advertisements (Cream O’ Weber yogurt, Wrangler Jeans, you get the picture) in an attempt to help with rent. It was just my mom (name omitted for her protection), my sister (Courtnie), and I living in a duplex in Holladay, Utah. We didn't have oodles of money to spend on frivolous things, but we scraped by, although, due to this lack of funds, we didn’t always get the “wants” in life.

My dad had been working for the magical corporation known as R.J.R. NaAbisco since I was just a bright eyed youth of two years old. He would show his love for the children he left behind by sending boxes and boxes of product. My mom was not such a fan of these because she always had to be the “bad guy” and tell us “NO!” to the fun things in life and provide the basic necessities. You know the boring stuff like a roof over our heads, school supplies, clothes on our backs, etc. My dad would always get us the fun stuff for Christmas and birthdays, so my mom couldn’t help but hate these deliveries. But my sister and I had grown accustomed to these care packages of over-indulgence that would be 312 | Author Parker Checketts

filled with Double-Stuff Oreos, Life Saver Holes (BEFORE they were released to the public!) and other such delicacies. However, my father had recently changed jobs and the flow of sugar had stopped. Our cravings on the other hand, had not, and it had been awhile since our last fix. My sister and I were in dire need of our medication and must have appeared to others as malnourished.

That’s when it all went down. “Hard times make hard people” my Grandpa once told me about his rough experiences during the Great Depression and World War II. Let me tell you a little story about the turning point in my life where I got turned from such a sweet boy into a hard ass.

It all started innocently enough as a family trip to Costco.

On this particular trip, my mother was trying to just escape the traps of retail stores without spending too much. As we cruised through the store, Courtnie and I joked about the things that we knew we couldn’t have. “OOOOH! MOM! Can I get the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for my Nintendo?”

My dad got me the Nintendo for my birthday recently, much to my mom’s chagrin. She didn’t even validate me with a response, so it must have been through some sort of divine providence that our cart sailed into the aisle containing the cookie of the gods: the Oreo. As I mentioned earlier, it had been some time since our last care package, and it showed in both my sister and I with our looks of pure desire and awe while wandering through this particular aisle. Courtnie, being the elder and in middle school, took immediate charge of the situation as the cart came to a rest in front of the aforementioned Oreos. As my mother briefly left the cart unattended to return to the beginning of the aisle to grab something that was forgotten, my sister sprang into action and seized the moment by snagging the nearest 3-pound box of the snack cookie.

She quickly shot me a glance that somehow explained four thoughts very quickly to me: “Help me hide this in the cart”; “Don't tell | 313

mom!”; “She'll find it when we are checking out”; and “It'll just be funny!” all combined in one look that didn't need any more acknowledgment than a quick nod from me and a few readjustments of the items in the cart to hide our dastardly deed. As my mother returned my sister and I continued to banter nonchalantly about whatever came to mind, and we wrapped up the rest of the shopping portion of the trip without any major incidents.

As we approached the checkout lines, my sister and I both knew that the chances of escaping this required component of the transaction was NOT in our favor. When our turn came to scan the items we had selected for purchase, Courtnie and I couldn't think of any tricks. Our minds went blank and I felt almost exactly like Ralphie from The Christmas Story when he finally reaches Santa Claus and forget what he wants. There was no grand plan here.

So it must have been fate that as we were emptying the cart, the cashier was picking up several things at once and scanning/boxing them in a flash. The ginormous box labeled Oreos had made it into the cart before my mom even found her wallet in the oversized luggage that she called a purse. We had done it! Success was ours! We brandished some sinister smiles as we handed our receipt to the person at the exit. We rushed to load everything into the trunk of our silver Toyota Corolla, as to avoid last minute detection. My sister and I embraced each other before she screamed “SHOTGUN!” and trounced off to claim the prize. She was on cloud nine and as she looked at me while I was entering the little brother portion of the car known as the backseat when she winked at me. I knew right then that something very important had been accomplished that day; little did I know just how life altering it would become.

Upon returning home, my sister and I quickly volunteered to empty the car of the loot. My mother shrugged this off as a rare occasion where her stellar parenting had finally began to start 314 |

paying dividends, and opened the trunk without a question. We hurriedly started taking the items upstairs into the kitchen of our small 3 bedroom duplex. Our major oversight was that my mother was perched at the table balancing her checkbook, as she always did after shopping, and the Oreos were on the first load up. As fate would have it, I was carrying the overflowing box with our prize.

I always attempted to carry the same size load as my older sister, as my pride was bigger than my eight year old frame. Why did I have to be so vein?! My arms began to tremble as I stretched the box to put it on the counter and finally gave out when I was nearly there. I stumbled to regain control of the box, but it was no use and the items I was carrying spilled out onto the floor right under the watch of my maternal unit. The secret package was revealed to her and the look on her face quickly turned to disgust. My mother is a very smart woman and quickly figured out our strange behavior and all too happy demeanors without an interrogation.

“Well,” she said, “since you decided that you needed THESE so badly, guess what? You get to have as many as you can handle RIGHT NOW!” It was the Oreos that broke the camel’s back. It was seeing our need for those cookies that only my dad could so amply supply that had snapped her into a rage. As she detailed her punishment to us, my sister and I exchanged the look that only a deer in the headlights can. We were told to eat an entire bag of Oreos each, 3 full rows, in a single sitting, and without ANY liquid refreshment. Oreos? Without milk?! What kind of Gestapo was she running?!

So there my sister and I sat, with a bag of Oreos in front of the both of us at our kitchen table. My sister didn't hesitate and quickly began a methodical destruction of an entire row before I had the opportunity to savor my first few cookies. “This isn't so bad!” I exclaimed with a mouth full of cookie. “I feel just like Cookie Monster from Sesame Street! C is for Cookie and that’s | 315

good enough for me!” I sang merrily.

My sister didn't reply as she was experiencing nirvana. By cookie three or four I was still enjoying the treat that we hadn't received in several months. Then it hit me. My tiny stomach couldn't possibly fit all these cookies and upon reaching the end of the first row, they started to crumble in my mouth and take on the texture of sand. I had hit the brick wall and then came the waterworks.

I was an emotional little kid, and this wasn't the first time I had been reduced to tears against my will. I stumbled through blurred vision to my mother's room down the hall and began explaining to her that there was no way I could finish the whole bag without liquid refreshment.

“MMMMMMM---OOOOOOOOOOOO-MMMMMMM!” I wailed.

“Yes, Parker?”

“It’s like the Sahara in my mouth! SEEEEEEE?!” I stuck my tongue out to illustrate the severe lack of saliva. It must have appeared like a hot airport runway as I thought I saw her demeanor begin to change. I was wrong.

“And what would you like? Milk I bet. Well that’s not happening!” I saw this new look in her eye that was brand new to me.

It was this strange mix of anger, jealousy, and love all rolled into one. “Go ahead and grab a SMALL glass of water, but that is all you get!” She cracked just a little bit because she was still a loving mother. It was this small mercy that stopped me from committing serious crimes in my teenage years.

riousness of the situation began to sink in. I was doomed. It was time to throw in the towel. GAME OVER! My sister on the other hand, was still going strong and had finished her second row and was well into her third. I hung my head in shame and returned to my mother's room. I told her what she wanted to hear. I had learned my lesson (whatever it was) and if I were to eat any more Oreos I would explode in a mess that wouldn't be pleasant to clean up in her kitchen. She sized me up and attempted to determine if I was sincere. I barely passed her screening, and she said I could retire to my room for the rest of the day. Little did she know that wasn’t a punishment in my book. I would just go compete in the NBA Finals with my NERF basketball hoop I had set up on my closet door. IN HER FACE! My sister on the other hand saw her punishment through and continued her destruction (and fulfillment of her calling in life) of the Oreos in her bag and then moved onto the “extras” in mine.

Moral of the story? Parents should really think about their actions a bit before dishing out these cruel and unusual punishments willy-nilly. Sometimes hard-time changes a man and when cornered in a life or death situation with a cookie, sometimes he will make a change for the worse. For example, when people see me now they ask why I’m so callous and mean. I snarl that I survived a near death encounter with the Oreo. Silence is their only response. No more questions are asked as everyone knows that hard times make hard people.

I digress, I'm not sure if anyone has tried water with Oreos, but it is like mixing pickles with orange juice; it just doesn't work.

After returning to the table and attempting to finish what I started, I slowly made another half row disappear. The realization and se316 |

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TACOS Tacos,I like them Ask me why.

I bought my first one from this taco guy.

With olives,lettuce,cheese and cream, when I took my first bite, it was just like a dream Then, I had 20 tacos, all lined in a row I ate and ate, how fast they did go!

I got really sick, it was quite a big fright.

But then I woke up in the middle of the night. ...WHEEW!

318 | Author Misty Parks

Artist Terra LaRochelle | 319

Hello, my name is Tim, and I’m a narcissist.

Well hello there! It’s my pleasure to be here today, as I’m sure it is more then a pleasure for you to have me here. To know me, is to Love me. While I have been constantly accused of being a totally narcissist, let me ask you one question. How can I be a narcissist if I truly am better than everybody else? If I am a narcissist, let be honest, I’m quite an exceptional one!

Being amazing may not come natural to you, but this was just how I was born. Just look at me. Suave good looks. A gorgeous head of perfectly pomade hair. Perfectly manicured toenails. An ass so tight you can bounce a quarter off of it. My jaw line is so chiseled and sharp, it makes Mitt Romney wish he could look more like me. Don’t think I’m being too arrogant about this. I can’t help that I am so aware of my dashing sex appeal. Excuse me I need a moment….

Thank you. I just needed a moment to absorb my radiant glow. I should have brought a full-length mirror, but this will have to do.

I’m really not quite sure what your mentor wanted me to speak to you about. I can’t imagine he didn’t want me to speak about ME. Right?

320 | Author Tim Drake

What’s that sir? This is a self-help seminar? What am selfhelping them from? Suicide? Oh, well this makes things a little awkward now, doesn’t it.

I don’t really know where to go from here.

Sir, stop crying. Crying isn’t going to solve anything.

I’m sure you’re expecting me to tell you that it will be ok, and that you can be just like me, but I would be lying. You would be lucky to even stand in my shadow. Many of you have even failed at suicide attempts. What can you really say to that? You failed at failing. I would never do that, because I never fail. If you want to succeed and even try to be half an incredible as I am, you must try again.

How can you sleep at night knowing you could never be as perfect as me? You just need to accept the fact that I am wonderful, and you are not.

This is all I have for you this evening. Please make sure to pick up the special gift bag I have brought for you. Complete with my new 400 page book, Pictures of Me. I also have included a set of my new bed sheets that have hundreds of different pictures of me, and my perfect smile. Last, I have also included 90” x 102” headshot of me to go directly about your bed at night. My smile in the poster has been brushed with diamonds to help give the same glowing affect. It will even act as a nightlight.

Well, it has been you pleasure to have me. You’re welcome for having me come.

Now will somebody please get that man down from the rafters,he’s been blocking my light all night long.

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Light, sandy brown hair lying atop mottled yet somehow fair skin, multifarious and profoundly intelligent sapphire blue eyes pulled my attention. As I admire the face before me, I ask the question "is that the most perfect imperfection, or what?" The face only grins at me, I get more direct "what is your opinion on the September 11th terrorist attacks?" The same question is repeated back to me. I have always admired people who answer questions with questions, it shows contemplation and maturity of the mind. Trying to catch the owner of this characteristically enticing countenance unaware, I spouted a quick and corny "you, should, always, expect-the-unexpected!"

Lunging in for a kiss as though I were in middle-school and the locking of lips was tantamount to going steady.

My nose hit something hard and lips, something cool. Opening my eyes I perceive sky-blue eyes which are reflected right back….What a narcissist I am!

Feeling asinine and girly I scolded myself and went to build esteem by lifting weights. That built my self-respect until it occurred to me that anyone can build esteem in this manner, not self-esteem however. For me, self-esteem is grown by expanding one's literacy until meritorious and never creating persiflage!

I picked up a pen and a pad of paper, and thought of the reasons why writing builds my self-esteem. Every time a person admires something they've read, they will have an implied opportunity to synthesize their own right with what they have admired while reading. Recently I've read about an endearingly clever narcissist-mercenary; I like to think of myself as endearingly clever, my adolescent pass at the mirror proves my narcissism, and now the last variable to link with-in order to make the relation complete-is the only one that I find morally objectionable. Would I accept…, In order to change…?

That is a question that every man, woman, free-mind, mercenary and writer must ask themselves before finalizing the characteristic identity of their product. Once one is able to accept the principle of retreat, only then can one go forward. Any relation (no matter how insignificant) is sufficient to synthesize with and grow from!

I grab the mirror and pulled it in to give a non-narcissistic kiss. This kiss was for sending my mind on thoughts deep enough to write about!

322 | Author Casey Barnson

Gone In the streets, creeping, curling its way into open windows and the cracks of doors; slowly, slowly finding the path to his skin, to his bones, to his blood. A relentless chanting created a chorus thousands of voices strong rising into the heat, reverberating upon the stones and in the steeled minds of a revolution.

“Ash shab yurid isqat an-nizam! The people want to bring down the regime!”

The sound made his jaw clench. Fadil’s thick dark brows drew together and his shoulders pulled tight, a taut bowstring threatening to set loose. His knuckles blanched against their grip on his gun that glinted an obsidian black under the Egyptian winter sun.

Before him was what had once been Tahrir Square, at its heart a traffic circle, its streets dotted in swaying palm trees and celadon light poles. It was surrounded on all sides by towering ashen government buildings, airy and roomy, open to both freedom and the endless expanse of blue above.

In the course of nearly a week, it had transformed into a spectacle of fools.

“Ash shab yurid isqat an-nizam!”

The determined cry rung shrill in Fadil’s ears, shook inside his veins with the rumble of thunder. Thousands of people had gathered here from all across Egypt. Men who wore anger on their sleeves, and grasped rebellion in their banner and picket filled hands. Women adorned in defiance, beating the sky over and over Author Erin McGuire | 323

with their fisted hands. There were so many packed in tightly side by side that not a speck of concrete could be seen from above.

They lifted flags of red, white, and black into the air, rippling and darting serpents of fabric that arose across the group of people.

Together they were a single sentient mass, a single voice, all with a single intent; to bring down Mubarak.

“Ash shab yurid isqat an-nizam!”

Fadil bit his tongue, the copper taste thick in his mouth, to keep from spitting into the crowd.

Darkness beckoned the most radical and violent of the protestors. As the moon would rise, so too would Fadil and other men who bore the weight of a soldier. They would run through the streets until the stars themselves longed to sleep, trying to extinguish the chaoswhich spilled forth from fury’s desperate, shaking hands. Whispers of escaped prisoners, asphalt colored with the fiery flashes of Molotov cocktails, echoes of gunfire. The promise of night raids, that home was not safe. Fear.

No one ever thinks it could happen to you, until it does.

He stepped into his apartment building that hour past midnight, and knew the impossible had happened to him.

The ground was covered in shattered glass and porcelain, glowing red as they reflected the lingering embers that clung to the wooden objects and doors scattered throughout. Things were strewn, smashed broken disordered across the floor, disheveled or crooked if they managed to still hang. The electric lights flickered dim as wires sparked and sputtered, gasping for life.

He could hear wailing. Raised voices, brimming with anguish and anger blurred one and the same. A boy in the corner curled around himself, still.

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Fadil’s breath quickened, his pulse sped as the sight buzzed in his ears and numbed his mind. He leapt over the pegs of a broken chair and headed up the stairs. His steps boomed in his head, each new scene of chaos snapping against his eyelids. Smashed television women weeping koshari splattered someone running bandages white dripping tea covered eye someone help black blood help hajib red twisted arm black red screaming “Meisha!!”

Her name burst from his mouth. It rose into the emptiness and popped with the gentle nothingness of a bubble. No answer.

He didn’t see her. He tore into their bedroom, the door already swung open, peered down. Her name fell back against his lungs, swallowed, trapped. He dropped to his knees.

Meisha was sprawled at the foot of their bed. Her eyes were closed, her long black hair a matted frame around her bruised cheek. Constellations of shadows bloomed across the skin of her arms, her chest. Mostly there was red; in the blankets, stained in her clothes, slick against her hands which grasped desperately at the swell of her stomach, even unconscious. The drawers hung open; their contents spilled, meshi scattered in stained nova of scarlet and green upon the carpet. A cane lay in the corner, snapped in half.

That time, Fadil let her name wrench from his throat in a sob.

“SabaH al-Xeir, Fadil. Good morning.”

A firm hand landed on his shoulder alongside his name, and he glanced to the side. It was another member of his unit, Ahmed, | 325

wearing the same helmet to hide his shortly cropped black hair and matching camouflaged clothes as Fadil’s own. The man stood beside him from where he leaned against the army tank, overlooking the protests.

“Good morning. SabaH an-nur.” Fadil replied. His gaze was back on the crowd.

Ahmed pushed a small cloth bundle toward him. Fadil could smell the strong spices before he even took the bundle, the ricefilled cabbage leaves from inside crinkling under his loose grasp.

The scent alone sliced his throat. It thickened.

“Teslam iidak. Thank you.”

Silence as Ahmed chewed, a long look, and then, “Sentinel work is dull, but not bad enough for that face you’re making.”

“We wouldn’t be sentries if not for the order this morning.”

“But there was an order this morning,” said Ahmed, “frankly, I’m glad. I hated attacking the protestors when their demonstrations have been peaceful. My stupid brother is out there in that crowd right now.”

Fadil shifted his grip on his gun. “You didn’t stop him?”

“There’s no stopping foolishness.” Ahmed grinned, and then the expression sank like the evening sun. “I tried, but his kids are starving. Who would listen to anything in the face of that? When knowing you could be doing something to make it better? He needs this revolution. The whole country does. Now that the army has given the protestors our support, change might finally come.”

But at what cost?

Fadil wanted to respond, but the words must have been clear in the tremor of his hands. Pieces of meshi slipped from the shaken 326 |

cloth and fell in tiny red and green splatters on the ground. Ahmed watched him, quietly. His lips thinned and drew down, just as quiet.

“Sidd Heilak. Be strong, Fadil. Mubarak can’t feign deafness forever. It’ll be over soon.”

The squeeze of his arm was meant to be a comfort, Fadil knew, but it wasn’t. He didn’t look as Ahmed left, didn’t speak a word, his eyes ever locked onto the writhing mass of people ahead of him.

Ahmed didn’t know what had happened. He wouldn’t know, not as long as that feeling trembled inside of Fadil, fierce and heavy and stinging and bitter, burrowing deep. Not as long as Fadil’s fingers crept, twitching, closer and closer in his mind toward the trigger.

It was already over.

Hours later, a monitor beeps, an IV drips.

Meisha looked up at him. Her eyes were bright, crystals of brown lucid with hope. A bandaged hand rested protectively upon her stomach. He held the other in his, gently stroking his thumb back and forth over her skin.

Hesitation. She licked her lips, nervous, whispered, “Is the…?”

Fadil kissed the back of her hand. A deep, prolonged breath.

“Gone.”

The single word was gentle, as soft as he could possibly | 327

speak it, and still it hit her with the most brutal force. Stricken she turned away, covering her mouth. Tears cascaded swift and hot against her cheeks. She wailed, the tears weren’t enough, choking gasping wails that pierced into him. Fadil murmured to her, continued to hold her hand. He wanted to hold her, he wanted to make everything better. But he knew he was helpless before her heart, its broken pieces lying on the ruby stained carpet of their home.

The image boiled inside Fadil. Seethed and spilled along his veins, intense and growing. He burned. Sweat made his clothes stick to his body, made the black curls of his hair damp upon his head, but he knew the heat wasn’t because of the sun.

All around him the protest in Tahrir Square continued on.

Oblivious. The chants went on chanting, the banners and flags kept on waving. There was laughter, a certain joy in partaking in the revolution, in fighting for liberty. For every grim face was a smile, humor cast about in the form of a joke or a dance or wit or song. None of these people cared about the present, only the future. They would overlook the horrors of now that they’d inspired for the sake of someday.

Fadil struggled to hold down the rising bile. He was dizzy.

It felt like a hammer had repeatedly slammed against his skull.

In the distance was an elevated platform where some of the protestors would stand. Holding microphones or megaphones, they would speak to the crowd or lead their chants or songs. Now a young woman stood there. Her hair was long, beautiful, ebony tresses much like Meisha’s own, unhidden by a hajib. He couldn’t hear her words, didn’t want to hear them, but they rushed out of her in a wave of emotion. It was evident in the rapid sweeping gestures of her hands, the power and passion in her voice, the way she held the people’s attention, each eye drawn unmistakably to her. Her efforts kept the resistance strong.

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She seemed so much like her.

Fadil couldn’t tear his eyes away, even as his thoughts churned blacker. His body shook, the sweat clung more firmly to his skin. He felt ablaze. His fingers slid further down the barrel of his gun.

The woman stood at a close enough range that he could easily shoot her. He could even stand on the tank behind him if he wanted a clearer view, but there at the edge of the square she was still in his direct line of sight. Nobody would realize quick enough to stop the bullet. He’d be caught, he knew that, and fast. But the shot would be devastating in the wake of peace, the chaos dragging the people out of their serene stupor, perhaps more guns firing in the confusion. The military’s promise, broken. The protests stopped, maybe for good. Hope was all these protestors had. It was all Fadil had, too.

His finger enclosed around the gun’s trigger. He lifted his gun, his aim shaky as his grasp trembled and tightened. Locking onto his target, he fired. The bang resounded in his head, the rebound shivered in the hollows of his bones, the smoke of the barrel glinted in the sunlight. The bullet sailed true and impacted straight between her eyes. A spray of crimson, red as the stripe on Egypt’s flag and deep as the Nile, covered the stage, then pooled around her body fallen to the floor. Panic, motion. Screaming. The gun hot, accusing, alive in his hands.

But no, it wasn’t a scream. The woman sang.

Fadil’s fevered vision swam away, left with the reality that this woman still stood. Her voice rose, and those of the people rose with her, at first to the national anthem. The familiar words washed over him, over everyone, a song that all of Egypt loved.

Then she sang a song of the revolution, as did the people. | 329

The lyrics were white noise to his ears. Then gradually the words became clear, soaring over Tahrir Square. They tumbled like frozen stones into his gut, for he knew them too.

It was early, much too early, but the hospital had still let him in.

Fadil walked down the sterile halls, nodding in acknowledgment to the doctors or nurses that he passed, most of them looking frazzled and concerned or smiling in sympathy at recognition.

In his arms he held a bouquet of orange lilies. Many stores were closed during the protests, either because their owners were among the protestors or because times were hard and supplies scarce. So Fadil felt pride at finding a flower shop still selling, sure that the shopkeeper’s open relief had mirrored his own when he purchased it.

He slowed as he drew near Meisha’s room, not wanting to wake her or the other patients nearby if she was still asleep. When he peered around the door to look inside, he saw that the curtains were already drawn back from around her bed. She stared out the window, her lips moving as she sang softly to herself.

Fadil walked in. A strained smile graced her face when she saw him, her eyes drawn, tired. She sang the song’s chorus to its end, and Fadil bent to kiss her on the forehead.

Meisha reached out and touched one of the flower petals.

Swallowing their corpses, he asked, “What was that song you were singing?”

Her hands stilled. Outside the window a stray cloud steadily floated across the sky, fading out of view until it was gone.

“A favorite,” said Meisha, and clasped his hand between hers, “let me teach it to you.”

The song, it was the very same.

Fadil felt caught in the words until the last note had been sung, and the protestors moved onto another. His anger cooled again to a simmer resting just beneath his blood. While his muscles began to relax, his clamped jaw and his hands loosening, a weight of a different kind rested low inside him where the stones had settled.

He scowled. Realized he still held the bundle of meshi.

Grabbing a few from the pile, he threw them into his mouth and began to chew, the warm spicy flavor filling his mouth. The taste, good as it was, couldn’t wash away the sick or the bitter copper from before. Leaning back against the tank, solid metal beneath his head, he shut his eyes.

He was wrong.

Meisha wasn’t like her at all.

Her smile softened, a little more genuine. “Sukran. Thank you. They’re beautiful.”

He let her admire the flowers, watching her. He opened his mouth to speak, stopped. Opened, and closed it again. Each word, so many of them, died on his tongue.

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Artist Betty Cuanalo

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MEMORY OF ISLANDS i have seen islands: i have seen islands budding out of the Ocean.

My eyes have bloomed beside the islands. i have built myself into the white washed boulders of a young Aegean Sea. i have been embraced by the green terraced northern shoulders of the Philippines, lain with my people to sleep in hammocks along the steep mountainous regions as the trade winds were leaning us sidelong above the rainy moonlit gorges. i have met with the mossy shallow waters and tongued the wooden long boats which have always nurtured my kind. i have looked upon the under breast of endless indigo fields, bending my ligaments into the pink coral reef that rests there like opulent pear fields beneath the belly of Poseidon, each of his little hearts soft and palpable.

The easy stretches of the Pacific have often been my eponym while I have stood away or been stuck in centuries. i have woven my feet into the rich archipelagos of my ancestors. i have seen islands: pale and naked in the wake.

My eyes have bloomed beside the islands.

334 | Author Ryan Joseph Carter

How Ironic Is It? How ironic is it?

Today I am alive, And no one is by my side, But if I die tomorrow, Everyone will be close to me.

Today I am alive, And no one gives me a hug, But if I die tomorrow, No one will want to let go.

Today I am alive, And no one gives me a rose, But if I die tomorrow, They will give me many different flowers.

Today I am alive, And no one communicates with me, But if I die tomorrow, I will be popular.

Today I am alive, And everyone makes me cry, But if I die tomorrow, Many will cry for me.

Author Karina Barboza | 335

The DEAD MAN SLEEPS WITH a WIDE OPEN EYE

The dead man sleeps with a wide open eye He hears the birds chirp and the children cry He knows not of the time or the day Only that his heart is wasting away The woman he loved is six feet above She weeps and she cries but never enough Her guilt is her burden, her cross to bear, His eternal sleep will cause her despair The poison laid out had been meant for her He drank it not knowing what would incur His knees became weak as she rush’d inside She cradled his head and slowly he died Now the dead man sleeps with bitter remorse For a life abruptly taken off course

336 74 | Author | Alexa Rose

| 337 Artist Michael Smith Jr.

Artist Terra LaRochelle

All stars are fated to die. Peer into a night sky unclouded by man; look closely. There shines hundreds, thousands, trillions of stars in that fathomless darkness. Scattered like salt broken upon a black table, hard and cold and countless. To us, they are untouchable. Unreachable. Unimaginable.

And yet, with each passing moment, every star hastens towards its inevitable doom, like a stone relentlessly struck by a turbulent sea or a candle that melts its flesh into a pool of waxen blood with every flicker of flame, all fall to a ruin of their own treacherous design, succumb to a tragedy written in the ink of their own inescapable skin.

Beloved are the stars that shine brightest; the stars of high mass, the giants and supergiants, considered gods among the cosmos. But no heavenly body is immortal. Gravity is the reaper of the stars, the force which vows to crush them; for beings so majestic, so enormous, are forever at the mercy of nature’s envy. At the heart of every star is a core where nuclear fusion occurs.

It is the one thing that keeps gravity’s pressure at bay and keeps a star from collapsing under the weight of its own mass. As the star struggles to resist gravity, the fusion in its core causes it to shine across the blackness of space, and the greater the struggle the more beautiful glorious gorgeously brilliant the light it sheds, the more its insides burn and tremble under the magnitude of its fight until all the universe can see the glow of its wounds seeping into the abyss, war blood so luminous it can be seen from a bedroom window.

However, no one can fight forever. Eventually the star exhausts itself, runs out of the energy needed to sustain fusion. It surrenders, and is slain.

The Greatest stars achieve stellar nirvana upon death; the supernova explosion. Its gravitational collapse scatters its fragments in a rainbow burst of elements spreading far across the universe. Thus a high-mass star accomplishes rebirth, for these scattered ashes are the elemental blocks which create all life, including other stars, comets, meteors, asteroids, planets, moons, oceans, mountains, trees, grass, animals, and all of humanity. We are the children of stars. Their legacy, wrought from millennia of the lonely torment of their lives.

But there are stars who suffer in vain. The low-mass, the ones who didn’t swell into giants but relinquished godhood for an existence gentler, longer, for their smaller bodies were slower to catch gravity’s jealous eye and harder to vanquish. But longevity comes with a price. When these stars

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are at last brought to their knees, their deaths result in a planetary nebula, an emission of radiation that thrusts its outer layers into a ghastly shimmering stardust. What is left behind when an inferior star is bereft of its shell? What remains when its soul has been cast away and there is nothing left to give? A decaying corpse; the white dwarf star. A dead heart, warm with the memory of life before it, too, fades to naught but a cooling phantom. They are left to the dark and the cold, just as our bones, moon white, will rest deep within the earth.

Yet even stars leave ghosts. Peer again into the night sky; what you see is not the present, but the far distant past. Even if a star were to perish now, its glow would not disappear from above us for many thousands of years, for its light must journey across the immense vastness of space to reach our eyes.

We gaze upon an after-image. This very moment someone is wishing upon the shadowed light of a star long dead. Praying to the last, dimming remnants of a specter in its grave, unable to hear a whisper.

Yet even stars leave ghosts.

There are many who fear death. Many who wonder what happens after. Many who wish that, even after they have perished, something of themselves will still go on. We desire to scar the world. For traces of us to remain long after our flesh has rotted, something beyond our carved names in stone, to be not simply grains of insignificant sand but the hourglass itself, remembered in the annals of time.

But we are not all stars. Only the few etch their faces into history. The rest of us, aiming to scar the world, end up sinking the knife into those we left behind. We cannot force the earth to remember, so we desperately throb inside of our loved ones instead, to the lives we did touch, to whom we mattered, pulsing and convulsing, becoming an ache, a sore, a pain that will not cease lest we be forgotten. Instead, we fester. We haunt. Memories cling to trembling hands; lay heavy on hung heads, and spill down damp cheeks. A pillow chill upon the bed, a favorite song sudden upon the radio, an empty coffee mug, the space between here and gone, the warmth of a hand, the crease of a coy rust-pink smile, a murmured “I love you”, a black shoe left upon the floor, a lingering scent on the sheets, the cherry-cola taste of a single kiss, the empty chair at the kitchen table and those last words a regret thickly bitter on the tongue, over and over, each another scar engraved on the heart until my body spills pale into the dark beside yours.

And, someday those ghosts, too, will fade.

340 | Artist Terra LaRochelle

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The Light Golden light shimmers Over the inescapable black surface Time passes, Adrenaline flows In an hour, Life changes For better or worse, You judge.

But things can never be the same.

Snow flutters over the opened, And chills the room, Adding to the pall.

Something is missing – it is to be found years later.

And this discovery will match the light – in its time.

342 | Author Brittany Carlson

Empty Shell I Drift…

Not there Not here Not anywhere …Just nothing I hear…

Not listening Not comprehending Not understanding …Just nothing I see…

Not color Not light Not future …Just nothing I feel…

Not warmth Not life Not love …Just nothing …Can’t I feel anything???

Author Liz Tallington | 343

Lines and Shadows The imaginary lines around every object Thick, dark, defiant Make my world a cartoon Happening, yet not quite real They blend, wave, dance, flow From my hand to my pen Creating, describing, bringing to life My imaginary friends Once mere shadows that stained The walls of my imagination They are now fully embodied Hallucinations I try to draw a line between them And my reality Only to find they follow me Across the lines I drew As if they weren’t even there 344 | Author Lindsey Stewart

Like a shadow, always there Forever a dark reflection of myself The lines I placed so carefully Now separate me from The rest of the world But I no longer care I am happy, content, free In this new world Of my own creating Although I know one day I will have to step back into The duller reality For now it is enough to rest In the shade of a great tree In a place no one has heard of I may appear alone, But look closely in my eyes You will see the shadows Of the souls that I have Willed to life They live through me And I through them One and the same The lines that divided Our lives and personalities Are blurred Or perhaps they were never truly there. | 345

Artist Kieth Kramer

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Like Rapture: a Fable Just before he died, he thought he saw Death standing in the corner, smoking a cigarette.

He thought of how strange the day had been, how he should have seen this inevitable fate, this end of his, from the very beginning. But he had not.

Instead, it wasn’t until now, when the light was fading from his eyes and he saw that hooded figure in the corner, now when all was finished, when all was lost and forgotten, that he thought about the day and realized just how peculiar it was.

It began in the morning, as all good days must, except this could not be considered a good day, now could it? Or maybe it was. One thing is for certain, however, and that is that he was not dreaming as he kept telling himself throughout the day.

The morning began as normal, the rooster cocked and it a-doodled and it dooed as it normally did, his eyes opened as normal, and breakfast was laid out on the table as normal, too. He ate in silence, reading the morning paper, which, placed next to the tall glass of orange juice, was normally there. He even mused to himself the normalcy of the day, as with the day previous and the day previous and yet the days previous to them. He finished and did his bathroom and changed his clothes, scrubbing his feet twice with the wet towel before placing them in their slippered shoes (as was his normal custom), and then he walked out of the front door of the house and onto the cobbled streets where carts wobbled and trembled and went about their normal business.

He walked down the street, minding the calling birds of summer and the smells associated with the festivities of the time, and after several minutes he arrived at the church doors. He looked at his watch and saw that it was promptly eight thirty-seven, as, of course, was normal for him. He fitted the key into the slot and gave a turn to the handle and the dusty creaking of the hinges and solid wood gave way and shouted out in upset at him for awakening such a beautiful slumber that they were sharing. He closed the disgruntled door behind him and walked quietly past the pews, noting the placement of each holy book and hymnal and the condition of each separate bench. At nine

348 |Author Brandon Daily

they would begin to show—as normal. And the service would start at 9:30 (a sleepy little village).

Yet it was when he reached the pulpit, from which he had delivered so many uproarious sermons (much in the vein of those who had come before him), that the day ceased its normal course and instead threw him on a different and unexpected one.

This is funny, he thought, I could swear that I left my sermon on the pulpit here. Look here, he thought, Here is the pen I wrote it with but it’s no longer here.

He searched the pulpit, even moving it so he could look underneath the wooden podium, but it was to no avail. Oh well, he thought, I must have taken it home last night.

He was not worried, for he had given this sermon many times before and could speak it off the top of his head without hesitation, but, still, it was odd. He looked at his watch. 8:57. Three minutes, he thought, and then they will be here.

He walked into the back room, behind the large choir platform, behind the large wooden cross hanging on the wall, and took a drink from the faucet.

He set the glass in the sink and sat down, waiting for the steady clamor that always came on Sunday mornings at 9:00. But it never came. Late, he thought, and he waited still. He finally walked out of the back room at a quarter after 9:00, walking out into the empty church. The two heavy swinging doors at the back of the church were still open and sunlight was flooding in onto the back pews, but, aside from that, the room was barren of life.

This is odd, he thought, and he walked to the rear of the church and looked out the open door to the street beyond. The townspeople still walked busily about, but there seemed to be a different sound to the commotion, something he could not place his finger upon; maybe it was just mere intuition getting the better of him. Either way, he shut the doors and looked back to the front of the church and his chest felt heavy. Freezing bumps invaded his skin and a taste of bile crept to his throat. My God, he thought, and he walked toward the pulpit. The large cross was missing. It had been there not twenty five minutes ago, he thought, and if anyone were here to steal it I most certainly would have heard them. It’s impossible. He scratched the side of his face. He sat down on the first pew and wiped the sweat from his face and looked at

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his watch. 9:22. No one is coming, then, and there has now been a theft, he thought, My God. He waited there a few minutes, his eyes never leaving the now blank wall, as if waiting for the cross to return as mysteriously and quietly as it seemed to disappear. This is blasphemy, he thought, No excuse for this at all.

After a while, he stood and began to walk towards the large front doors of the place, but then he sat back down on one of the pews. His heart was still beating fast and he could feel it in his chest; his legs felt heavy and shook. He breathed hard and then reached out and picked up one of the bibles resting in its shelved place on the back of the pew in front of him. He flipped through the pages and almost cried out. He dropped the book on the ground; a loud thud sounded and echoed all about him. He stared at the book on the floor for several seconds more, and then, with shaking hands, reached down and picked up the book again. The pages were white, blank without any sign of ever having had print on them. He stood and moved down on the pew and picked up another bible and looked through it. It too was full only of white pages. Blank.

The priest stood and hurried out the doors at a quick pace, thinking to himself how horrible and rotten this trick was that someone was playing on him.

At first, the sun blinded him, but eventually his eyes adjusted and he looked at the town and the people around him. His eyes darted about and he looked for anyone who might have been watching him or the church with any special interest. But there was nothing different that he could see. The same people were walking, just as they always did.

He looked up at the sky and cried out in anguish, calling out in some hope of relief. And then things seemed quiet.

A young boy saw the priest screaming aloud and slowly walked up to him. The boy asked if the priest was alright and the priest looked at the boy with terror in his eyes and asked the boy who it was. The boy responded that he did not understand, and the priest turned and pointed to the church behind him and told the boy that someone was playing a horrible trick on him, that someone had broken into the church and destroyed the sanctity of the place.

The boy looked at the priest with surprise and timidity and confusion.

He responded that he did not know what the man was talking about, that

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he had no idea. Then the priest asked the boy why he and his family were not at church that morning and the boy said that he still did not understand.

“Church,” he asked, “What is that?”

The priest gasped and stepped back. “You are in on it, too,” he said.

He turned from the boy and walked away quickly. The boy watched for a few seconds as the man made his way up the street before giving chase to the man, catching the priest up and stopping him. The boy gently placing his hand on the man’s arm. “Stay away,” the priest said.

But the boy responded, saying he still did not understand, but wanted to.

“There’s nothing to understand for you,” the priest said. “Nothing.”

The priest turned to leave the boy again, but the boy called out that he had never heard of church. With that, the man stopped and walked over to the boy.

“I have seen you at service, son,” the priest said. “I have seen you and your family. Please stop this trick.”

“But it is no trick,” the boy said. There was a pleading look on his face.

The priest reached to his own neck and took off the small metal cross that hanged there. He handed it to the boy. “Tell me what this is then.”

The boy took the cross and studied it and then said to the man, “It’s a letter T.” The boy’s face hardened. “Why would you have a necklace with a letter on it? Does your name start with T?” The priest’s breath grew shorter and he looked about, helpless. “Give me that,” he said, snatching it from the boy’s hands and placing it in his pocket. He walked off, calling behind to the boy, “Why do you think the sun shines today?”

The boy called back, confused, “Because it does, and it is beautiful.”

As the priest walked up the street, he looked at the people—they all seemed to go about their day as if nothing were different. He saw the postman walking, pushing his cart full of letters to be delivered; the priest walked up to him—he had known this man since the man was a young boy. “Why are you working on Sunday?”

The postman looked up and smiled. “Hello,” the man said, and then he looked around him and said quietly, “I work today because I work every day.”

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“What about the Sabbath, though? The post office is never open on Sunday,” “What is Sunday? I’ve never heard of that,” the postman responded.

The priest looked back quietly, then the postman said, “It’s First Day, yesterday was Seventh.”

“And what month is it? Is it June?” the priest asked.

The postman looked puzzled. “June? No, you’re talking nonsense, old man.” The postman laughed a bit. “Never heard of June before.”

The priest sank to his knees. I have missed the holy rapture, he thought to himself. I have missed it, I was not a good enough man.

The postman looked at the priest and reached down to help the kneeling man up and asked with a soothing sympathy, “What is it? What is wrong?”

The priest looked back at the postman; a confusion shown on his face and he asked, his voice unsteady, “So, God is dead then? There is no God anymore?”

The man, with a hesitant pause, said, “There never was any God. That, whatever that is, never existed.”

The priest looked to the sky and then back to the postman. “And what of religion?”

“I honestly don’t know what that is, sir.”

“What of Jesus, what of Buddha, what of God, of Zeus, of Juno, of anything? What of Satan?”

The postman looked back at the priest and shook his head.

The priest reached into his pocket saying to the man, “And what of the cross? What of this?” But when he reached inside for the necklace, he could not find it. He shrugged his shoulders and said quietly, “That, too, has disappeared, I suppose.” And then he thought to himself, If I am a man of God and God has disappeared or never even existed, has this been a dream this whole while? Will I too disappear and never exist? And he got angry, angry for devoting himself to something that had proved futile, unreal, a dream. But, inside, he thought of his past and the pain that his belief had led him through and he smiled sadly in remembrance of it all. And he turned to walk back from where he had come from, not knowing exactly where he would end. His head hung down, his eyes watching his feet.

After a few steps, he turned back to the postman and called out to him.

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“Why does the sun shine then?”

The postman thought for a second and called back, “Because it does.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and then he called out, “And it’s a beautiful day.”

The priest came to the front of his church and looked at it. The once painted walls were now decayed, and holes were cut in the ceilings where birds flew randomly in and out. He walked to the opened entrance, the large doors missing, wooden planks blocking the way. A notice of destruction had been posted on the planks. He squeezed his body through the slit opening and into the musty church room, now a large opened space. Dust flew everywhere and settled here and there, and he walked to where the cross had once adorned the wall and he turned in amazement at the dilapidation of the place that had occurred in the few minutes he had been gone.

He walked to the corner and sat, his back resting against the wall, and he closed his eyes. He felt a deep pain in his chest and his breath quickened; there was a steady beating sound in his ears. This is a dream, he thought.

When he opened his eyes, the priest could see the hazy shrouded figure off in the far corner of the room. His chest began to hurt even more, and he strained to keep his head up. The figure in the corner looked to be dressed all in black, a cigarette sticking from its mouth. It is Death, the priest thought, and, for the first time, he was not afraid to die. The figure began to walk slowly toward him, the thing’s clothing swishing about its form, and then the priest closed his eyes and his breath stopped.

When the man opened his eyes again, he saw that he was sitting in a vast room. No one else was around. He could hear birds flying above him. He tried to remember why he was there, but he could not. He stood, brushing the dust from his black clothes, and walked out the barred doorway to the outside world. He did not know it anymore, he did not know any of it. Pentagrams, the golden star, a cross, all now meaningless symbols, for without importance placed upon them by humans throughout time, these designs and symbols become mere child’s scribble. He looked back at the building after he came out into the open street. It stretched high above him. He sighed. He did not know why, but for a fleeting moment he felt sad. But then he turned and walked up the sunlit street and quietly, to himself, he said, “The sun is shining and it is beautiful.”

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God was real God came to me in a dream last night. He told me how he was feeling displaced.

I said take a number. I didn't know it was God. To tell the truth, I might not even believe in God. The false confidence I had in my ability not to give a fuck caught up with me like a slap in the face.

God was real.

In my dream God was angry and though my sarcasm and ill demeanor were over looked.

My eyes were not.

“Eyes are the windows to the truth,” God said. “Souls are clearly visible through those windows”.

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In my dream God was hungry.

One man is all it took to piss him off.

In my dream, God made all the “everything” we deem him capable of seem obsolete. And he grumbled as we analyzed his words; as we claimed privilege to his message.

I believe one day God won't matter as much as he does today, and it may be that's good.

Maybe T.V. will dry up one day and people will try to live their lives again. Maybe God will help us find our roots.

Maybe God is more than just a glorified Jiminy cricket, probably an entity that's been around as long as God has more than a few tricks up his sleeve. I will never say I don't believe in God. God is everywhere. I can’t say I will ever say I believe in God. With a straight face I can say I can double talk with the best of them, if that’s what they want to hear.

Author C J Armantrout | 355

thing down. He looks at me for a moment, and raises an eyebrow.

“And how does that make you feel?”

“I’ve started dreaming again,” I say breaking the silence.

The doctor looks up from his pad somewhat interested. “What about?”

I stare at him for a moment. “Really, Doc? Kind of a crock question.” He sighs again. I decide to placate him; I make his life hard enough with these sessions. I open up and I tell him that it feels like she’s really there. When I wake up it feels like she was just in my bed. That dealing with her death is getting hard again.

He gives me a relieved look. I feel proud of myself.

“I’m in this completely red room. And there’s this gorgeous woman and a midget and they’re all speaking backwards—”

“You gonna pull some Freudian dream interpretation shit on me now?” I ask chuckling.

He stops me, “Don’t fuck with me. We’ve circled the drain for too long. Just tell me the damn dream already.” I stare at my hands, smirking, counting each line, thinking carefully of the right words to say.

He shakes his head. “James, I’m just here to help you deal with everything that has happened. You’ve been coming here for nearly a year and you’ve barely even tried to discuss that night. You just keep pulling these wise-ass quips. This is your defense mechanism when it comes to discussing things you’d rather not talk about or remember. You can do that out there,” he points at the door, “but in here is honesty time. So you better start fucking talking or we’re going to have to find you a different doctor.” He pauses noticing my shame. “Time to be real now. No one can handle walking in on their deceased girlfriend well. It’s horrible, it’s ugly.

But it’s why you’re here. Learning to cope, learning to move on.”

“Well, it’s her again,” I begin. He looks up from his pad again and raises a questioning brow. “She’s showing up, no matter what I’m doing: going back to kindergarten, doing my own cooking show, banging the three tit chick from Total Recall.”

He starts writing on the pad, “What was she doing?”

“Well, she shows up at my door saying, ‘Mail Call’, and I let her in then,” he starts to sit up straighter, “ she tells me she needs a mammogram, and she takes off her shirt and let’s those three lovelies fly. And then I—” “Jesus fucking Christ, James.” He throws his notebook on the floor. “I didn’t want to hear your perverted fucking fantasies.” He sighs.

“Tell me about Caroline. How does she show up in every dream?”

I quietly refuse by remaining silent. He checks his watch and just as he’s about to open his mouth I take a deep breath and speak.

“She starts out really far away. Like, if I’m inside a house, I can see her standing outside across the street. And every time I look away she comes closer, like some sick game of ‘Red Light, Green Light.’ It ends with her peering at me through a window, smiling. And then she’ll put her hand on the window and disappear. There’ll be this bloody handprint left behind.”

He makes a “hmmm” sound, picks up his pad, and writes some-

356 | Author Danielle Uber Alles

I look at the floor for a moment. My ears are on fire. I can see the bathroom door; feel my hand twist the knob and push. I see the candles, the bathtub, hear the music. The bathtub is empty except for the blood red water. I get sick.

He hands me the garbage can next to his chair. I dry heave for a moment. He apologizes for his bluntness. I wave him off. He tells me to lie down on the chaise lounge.

He allows me to relax for a few minutes before asking, “Does she always come to you the same way in your dreams? Being far away and creeping closer?”

This question rings in my ears for a moment. I lie, tell him that she does. But really though, she’s been getting closer to me. And it freaks me out.

He looks at his watch. “Times up.” He says this quietly, watch-

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ing me for a moment. “Will you be alright, or should I use the office next door for my next appointment?” I shake my head, stand up.

I am falling to the ground, but it never gets any closer. I just have this sick feeling; the air is just rushing past me.

He goes to his desk and pulls out a small Moleskin notepad and brings it to me. “There. Now do this for me.” I look at it quizzically. “To help you relax, start keeping a dream journal. Every time she shows up, write it down.”

So, here I am falling, and I suddenly I flip over on my back and I’m looking up. Caroline is falling above me, smiling down at me. She was just as I remembered her: her long, honey blonde hair, her blue eyes, her fucking beautiful legs. She tells me not to be afraid and she falls faster and falls right through me and then crash! I hit the ground. My body has left a me-shaped dent in the ground. And all I can hear is her laughter.

That beautiful fucking laughter. I’d almost forgotten.

As I’m walking out the door he pats me on the back. “See you next time. Like usual, Barbara will set up your appointment.” **************** Night 1 Well, this is stupid. It’s 3 am. I dreamed. Shit happened. And now I’m awake.

Night 2 FUCK FUCK FUCK. I was hiking in the rainforest and a giant spider landed on my neck and bit me. I need a shower.

Night 5 She touched my face. I woke up crying.

Night 6 She was in my bed, she told me to lay with her. I told her she wasn’t really there and she disappeared.

Night 7 She came up behind me, wrapped her arms around my waist. She whispered in my ear it was all going as planned. I didn’t need her anymore. I can’t help but not believe her.

Night 3 Your secretary called to make sure I was doing this. Asshole. You don’t trust me now?

***************

Stayed up too late watching the Food Network so my dream was very food related. I was at some diner being interviewed by Guy Fieri— you know, that bleached blonde, fat fuck—and Caroline is my waitress and she keeps bringing me these plates of burgers, fries, pizza, onion rings. And when she brings me my check, there’s blood smeared on it.

And I wake up.

When I go in for my next appointment, I lie and tell the doctor about more stupid sex dreams I had as a teen—Seven of Nine from Voyager, Trinity fromMatrix… Tell him she’s showed up less and less. He rolls his eyes at me and asks for the notepad. I reluctantly hand it to him.

Night 4 It’s 5 am. Just had a nightmare—I guess you can call it that. I was falling from the sky. Don’t know how I got there, but you know. So, here

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He flips through it, quietly. He closes it and asks about my job, am I still performing up to snuff. We talk about this and family for the rest of the session.

As he walks me to the door, he hugs me, tells me that I will be ok, this is all just part of the process. He says goodbye. I just nod and go.

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90 | Artist Larene Hobbs

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a Poem about Dreams With notes by the author and a seagull drowning in the ocean.

and the course of a coarser and coarser sea drifts past me, era past and era be

when it was dark dawn out and out-, we called, we felt the cold morning of frost already upon us

and candle wax arms like these grow slowly Yet shrink within minutes when we don’t control the fire When your burning bush has consumed you

and we called matches to attention gathering them out of our pockets we lit tiny flames around us like witch circles, we huddled i mean, my arms huddled Two arms are never lonely Under the full moon But candle wax arms like these grow slowly… we constructed an alter, out of a simple night stand and: On this morning, ripe and sour I hold to bind my holy power Into complete accord with me.

As i will it, so mote it be; an oil holder, and the once stub of a consecrated candle we used it to see, stones of quartz and onyx, incense,

362 | Author Ryan Joseph Carter

the heavens, you said, look like some master plan we are pawns in, the earth you no longer called her home or mother, and what did you call me do you remember; ii i am the once stub of a consecrated candle stones of quartz and make wishes over rivers with some of them; incantations floating in my mind i don’t speak but as i will it so mote it be. ii

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The end of time, No reason or rhyme.

We are out of time.

We have wasted what we have been given, Taken for granted the world we live in.

We are out of time.

Wondering how it all went so bad, so fast, Humankind was not made to last.

We are out of time.

We have ruined the Earth, trashed it again and again, and we will never be forgiven.

The Mayans are right, and we have lost sight.

We are out of time.

There is no time left to right the wrong, and no one is left to appreciate the Earth's song.

We are out of time.

A new era must be born, A new race without the scorn.

We are out of time.

We have lied, cheated, and stole, Taken what was not ours, conquered our so-called role.

We are out of time.

We are out of time.

364 | Author Cauleen Hansen

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The Possibility of Reiteration You awoke with a cry Startled back to reality You reminded me that Breath is not an inherent right But borrowed – leased For so long I caught the heave in your eye The effort to fight your way back To assert to exist To carry on into what we know And the fear that thought may stop – That because of one, then two, And then another – Extinction – ever is near – Waits in ambush Waits to see if 1 + 1 + 1 Is self-sustaining

366 Artist | Daniel Southerland

Author Gary Howard | 367

Artist Betty Cuanalo

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| 369

ARMAGEDDON One by one they march, Tens, hundreds, thousands Pilaging, looting, ravenous marauders Marching ever on, destroying, devouring Through the day, through the night.

What can turn them back?

Is there a wall they cannot climb?

A pit they cannot forge?

END

Ghengis, Kubla, Alexander, Napolean, are mere students, They know nothing of your conquering might!

Just one of your soldiers has the strength of ten.

But there are thousands, And when they pass there are more.

Oh to rid my kitchen of these ants!

370 | Author Mark Anderson

Artist Ryan Joseph Carter | 371

If the content didn’t say it, I have even less hopes of being able to.

Folio Fall 2012 Edition is the reflection our lives cast while we are busy living them. We can try to explain where it comes from or why it’s there, but usually to do so will just cheapen things.

To Do Something With The Sky has been a wonderful road to walk down and explore. Thank you to everyone that put those places into the page and then those pages into our hands. Also, thanks to the staff, for all they did to help shape this semesters’ Zine.

Enjoy your journey,

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