Sisyphus - Winter 2009

SISYPHUS The St. Louis U. High Magazine of Literature and the Arts Winter ’09 LITERARY EDITORS Chris Brennan Dylan Kickham James Fister Ben Kim Eric Lewis Ben Minden-Birkenmaier Michael Blair Conor Fellin Conor Gearin ART EDITORS Dan Baxter Zac Boesch Kevin Kickham Nevin Peeples LAYOUT EDITOR Chris Brennan MODERATORS Frank Kovarik Rich Moran Manuscripts are considered anonymously.

Thanks to all who offered their writing and artwork for consideration.

Special thanks to Joan Bugnitz, Chuck Hussung, John Mueller, Terry Quinn, Matt Sciuto, and Mary Whealon.

SISYPHUS Winter ’09 ANGUISH OF AN AFRICAN DAISY

Cover artwork by Alex Reich Masthead photography by Zac Boesch Inside front cover artwork by Phil Sigillito Inside back cover photography by Zac Boesch

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Anguish of an African Daisy, poetry by Louis Hotop 3 artwork by Phil Sigillito 4 artwork by Matt Kocisak 5 Afterthoughts, ction by Pat Nugent 7 artwork by Matt Kocisak 9 artwork by Joe Quinlan 10 To Julia and every waitress I have ever loved, poetry by Chris Brennan 11 artwork by Phil Sigillito 12 Victory, ction by Nick Bomar 12 artwork by Matt Nahlik 13 photography by Zac Boesch 14 Grand Theft, ction by Michael Tynan 15 artwork by Phil Sigillito 16 Adoption, poetry by Dylan Kickham 17 artwork by Dylan Kickham 18 Phil’s Sub Shoppe, ction by John Berger 19 artwork by Adam Bremerkamp 21 artwork by Adam Bremerkamp 22 For Wildy, in Delmas 31 Hospital, poetry by Peter Winfrey 22 artwork by Dylan Kickham 23 Language, ction by Jack Leahy 26 Lights, ction by Mark Holzum 27 photography by Zac Boesch 29 That One Drop, poetry by Dylan Kickham 29 photography by Kevin Casey 30-31 photography by Dan Baxter 32 Patriot Street, poetry by Dylan Kickham 32 artwork by Conor Gearin 33 Bronze Horseman on Art Hill, poetry

by Chris Brennan

Louis Hotop

33 34 35 37 38 39 40 42 43 43 44 46 46 47 48 49 50 51 51 52 54 54 55 56 57 58 58 59 60

photography by Zac Boesch Spotlight, ction by John Berger artwork by Matt Kocisak artwork by Matt Garvey Tremors, poetry by Dan Baxter photography by William Page Contingencies, nonction by Eric Lewis photography by Tony Melillo Dandelion Boy, poetry by Anthony Re’ artwork by Andrew Beckerle The Nickel, poetry by Joseph Zanaboni Change in my Pocket, poetry by Chris Brennan photography by Zac Boesch In Memoriam, poetry by Michael Blair Silent Last Words, nonction by Joel Geders artwork by Matt Nahlik photography by Zac Boesch A New Eden at Last, poetry by Bill George artwork by Phil Sigillito SLUHboy, poetry by Gary Newcomer The Way I Feel, poetry by Louis Hotop photography by Kevin Casey Story of a Competitor, ction by Mike Lumetta artwork by Matt Garvey The Squirrel, poetry by Collin McCabe Umbrella Tree, poetry by Alex Madinger photography by Zac Boesch artwork by Dan Baxter Fiction, poetry by Michael Blair

I spend all night alone with thoughts of you, Obsessively churning in my folds of great Despair. Your love—something I thought I knew: A love so fully given, pure, innate.

Why do I still open to you? Why must You ignore my pleas to stay with me—please, stay With me. Your light deceives me; makes me trust, It bids me, “Open up—shhh—it’s okay.”

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Believing it, I surrender wholly. Then Night intrudes carrying you beyond My sight. Where do you go with Night? Again, How can I trust you? I just … well—at last! Dawn Has come! You have returned to me, sweet ame.

Forget my rambling. Today I’m glad you came.

PHIL SIGILLITO

AFTERTHOUGHTS

MATT KOCISAK

Pat Nugent

A 4

lone light bulb, tinged a dark yellow, flickers on, illuminating a grungy room.

Shadows jut out at odd angles, seeping across the groaning floorboards and pooling at the base of the walls where they lick at the peeling wallpaper. A door rots on its hinges and there are no windows.

A boy sits hunched in a chair in the middle of the room. Ropes, tied tightly, lacerate his skin through his t-shirt and a blindfold covers his eyes as his head rocks from side to side. His cracked lips tremble and twitch, and his tongue runs along them like sandpaper, yet all his words get caught in the very bers of the air, in between the heavy particles of dust.

This is how it ends, he thinks softly to himself. van wakes up with his nose in the divide of his calculus book. A rope of spittle hangs from his lower lip, connecting it to the globs of saliva on the crisp pages below.

“Whoa, man. You better wipe that up, that’s disgusting.”

Kyle sits laid back in the seat across the aisle from Evan, staring at him through his shaggy brown hair that nearly covers his eyes. Evan wipes his mouth and shakes his head, trying to wake himself up. He blinks once, then twice, the world reconstructing itself around him as his eyelids shutter up and down.

“How many more minutes?”

Kyle looks at his watch. “Three.”

Mrs. Paolini stands at the front of the room, gurgling equations from her abby cheeks. In response to the monotone jargon, the students look at each other and mouth What the hell is going on?! About twenty kids sit in various positions at their desks, attentive expressions fading toward the back of the room near the window.

Outside, the yellow and orange leaves were

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oating down like magic carpets and clawing at the pavement.

Suddenly Evan becomes aware of a pulsating beat in the right pocket of his jeans. The vibration explodes and seems to shake the room. He pulls out his cell phone and reads the text message.

You’re coming tonight, right?

He follows a leaf as it wafts in the breeze and then takes a glance at the teacher before responding. Yeah, see you there I guess.

The bell rings.

“You’re not gonna make it.”

Kyle slams on the gas pedal and barely makes it through the yellow light. He grins over at Evan. As they speed away, some of the adults in the other cars shake their heads and scowl.

“Hey, by the way, was that Lauren who texted you?”

Evan waits a moment before nodding his head. He was examining the smudges smeared on the front windows.

“Yeah, how did you know?”

He doesn’t know what else to say. She seemed to be back in the picture again. The girl who had proposed to him in third grade wants to see him again.

“Just a funny feeling,” Kyle laughs.

They drive in silence for the next several minutes, sliding through stop signs and trying desperately to nail galloping squirrels while the speakers warble music. Kyle’s car, an old blue Buick Century, was a remnant of his parents’ good days. You could still nd hard French fries encrusted in the fraying gray seats, evidence of drive-through meals from the ’80s and What-ABurger.

Eventually they pull into the gas station.

Evan slams the door hard to make sure it would keep and catches a glimpse of the bare and gnarled trees in the distance. They stand against the clear blue sky like cracks fracturing upward through glass.

“Damn, it’s so freaking cold today,” he whispers.

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nside the gas station, Kyle focuses on what energy drink to buy while Evan wanders up and down the aisles of snacks. She wants to see you again, he thinks. He can’t stop thinking about her, how she smiles, how she always looks neat with her hair properly combed and her clothing perfectly tidy. She’s too good for him.

Kyle nally chooses his drink, an especially green and sugary bottled liquid, and picks up a thirty pack of Bud Light on the way to the cash register, almost as an afterthought. The Bosnian man behind the register never seemed to care as long as Kyle had his fake I.D., the one that used to belong to one Edward Higgins, a tall bearded man who resembles Kyle in skin color alone.

Kyle pays for the thirty pack and they both walk casually back to the car. In a restaurant a few blocks away, a truck driver orders his rst beer.

She wants to see you again, Evan thinks.

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hat did you tell your parents about tonight?”

Evan rips his thumb against the crank of the lighter.

“Well, my mom’s working late at the hospital again and my dad’s out of town for business. I’ll call her later and tell her I’m sleeping over at Bryan’s.”

Evan knows his mom wouldn’t call Bryan’s house because she doesn’t know his family and she’d be too tired from work anyway. Kyle’s parents, Evan assumes, don’t care what he does tonight.

“Sweet,” said Kyle, pulling the steering wheel counter clockwise, “You have your bathing suit, right? Emily is opening up her pool tonight.”

“Yeah, I brought it. Emily better crank up that heater, it’s almost winter.”

Evan takes a puff on his cigarette and rubs his eyelids. The music in Kyle’s car is blaring now. Emily’s house is only a few streets away.

She wants to see you again, is all Evan hears in the rumble of the songs.

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mily and her family shared a massive house at the end of a wealthy cul-de-sac. The pine trees were almost strategically placed for those times when Emily’s parents went out of town.

They hid the inebriated and hyper teenagers as they performed on their weekend nights, as they danced around the trampoline and pool in the backyard and the arching hallways and finely sculpted rooms within the white stucco walls of the house itself. Yet the trees also hid the kids when, just before they left in the early morning, they contemplated the crops of stars in the purple night sky and the slopes of the mountains on the moon.

The moon is already out when Evan and Kyle park in the winding driveway that snakes before Emily’s house. By the end of the night, when the police nally come and round everyone up, there will be cars lining the street.

They get out of the car and trudge around to the backyard of Emily’s house. A dozen kids sit around the steaming rectangular pool.

“Looks like she has the heater on,” says Kyle.

Evan recognizes most of the people from school. They looked odd in their bathing suits, whose strings and fabrics had faded since summer, as they stood before chairs covered with sweaters and heavy jackets.

The heads of the crowd bob up and down as they acknowledge Evan and Kyle’s approach.

Evan catches a glimpse of Lauren as she looks over at him, her smile gleaming, but he changes into his suit in the woods and dives into the pool like he hasn’t seen her yet, like he hadn’t been thinking about her. hen she’s levitating above his head, with her small pale feet stirring around the extended wisps of his blonde hair, Evan decides to make his move. Headless bodies hang around him yet he reaches up and tickles Lauren’s foot, which immediately retreats back. Evan laughs, releasing bubbles from between his lips that float towards the sky.

When he comes to the surface of the pool,

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he nds Lauren’s intense hazel eyes xed on him and a smile squirming on her face. He stares seriously back and notices immediately that her hair is a little darker than the last time he had seen her. They go to the same school but it’s easy not to see someone you want to in the clusters of people. She is also much thinner, he realizes, and the folds of her grin stretch gauntly over her cheek bones. Something about her, maybe the way in which her golden freckles lie permanently and stolidly on her nose or the way in which a few shadows of fatigue hang limply under her eyes, make her look a little older or perhaps a little more tired.

“What was that?” she sputters through mouthfuls of water.

“Oh, I was just testing something.”

“What were you testing?”

In a nerdy voice, Evan answers, “Well, I believe there is a direct correlation between how ticklish a girl is and how beautiful her eyes are. I was just testing this hypothesis.”

An even bigger grin begins to tingle into the corners of her mouth. She can’t help it. She treads a little closer to Evan.

“Unfortunately for you,” he continues, “I have discovered that the direct correlation is that the more ticklish a girl is, the more likely she is to be completely unattractive and…”

“—That’s NOT true!” she says and splashes him.

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ater in the night, a movie booms over the plasma screen TV in the living room. Ice cream cartons lie upside down on the floor of the kitchen. Off-beat music reverberates through the grill of a speaker, sending echoes along the arching hallways, echoes that drift over the kids who have already passed out and spiral up the staircase to the second floor where kids in smoke filled rooms think they see monsters lurking in their own silhouettes on the carpet. Evan and Lauren sit together in an armchair, with their hands intertwined, and whisper sweet nothings back and forth.

“You look so pretty tonight,” he says.

She rubs a finger along the line of his jaw.

Suddenly the pocket of her jeans began to pulsate. She took out her phone.

“Shit, it’s my mom.

I should’ve been home a half hour ago.”

“Yikes.”

“Yeah, I know. I parked at Abby’s house, do you think you could drive me there?”

“Yeah, I didn’t drive my car though, so I just need to get Kyle’s keys.”

Evan slowly slides out from beneath Lauren and stumbles through the debris-ridden house. He nds Kyle sitting by himself in the basement.

He’s whistling dryly and quietly, making a sound like the wind rustling through the foliage of a tree.

“Hey, man, can I borrow your keys?”

MATT KOCISAK

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Kyle looks at him, completely dumbfounded, before tossing the keys over. Evan starts to climb the rickety steps.

“Watch out for that truck, dude,” Kyle mutters as he squints into the darkness, seeking the troglodytes, the cave dwellers.

“What’d you say?”

Kyle continues to whistle through his puckered lips. Evan shakes his head and climbs the “stairs. hat made you text me today?”

Evan stops at a stop sign and glances in every direction before moving forward. Lauren is trying to nd something to listen to on the radio.

“I saw you the other day and you just looked tired. I thought we should hang out.”

“You look more tired than I do these days.

I mean jeez, did you get any sleep this week.”

“Do I?” she asks. She pulls down the mirror on the back of the sun visor. The light reects off of her ashen eyes. “Well, maybe that’s why I called you then. So that we can be tired together.”

She places her hand on Evan’s. She squeezes his hand when seconds later the shipping truck explodes into the side of their car.

When the truck hits, Lauren lets out a gasp before her head rocks back and cracks open on her door window. Her ears are ringing as she silently starts bleeding. Evan’s torso rips backwards as his head falls forward. He hits the dash so fast.

The police nd his broken body in the Buick Century but his mind is already drifting off.

Drifting and oating and sailing away.

She wants to see you again. or an indistinguishable period of time, Evan floats in the abysmal oceans in his mind. He hums songs unconsciously, thinking about Lauren.

At last though, he becomes conscious of voices drifting towards him from over the waves.

“We’re going to try to force open his eyelid today, Mrs. Cooper.”

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Moments pass and then suddenly light pours into the labyrinths of his cerebrum. The rst thing Evan sees is a red cross. It’s on the name tag of the nurse that’s gently prying his left eye open.

“There we go,” she mouths quietly.

Evan’s mom steps into his view and leans over him. She stares at him, her eyes welling.

“Can he hear me?”

Evan tries to nod his head, tries to say something, but he can’t. He realizes, with a surge of blood, that he’s paralyzed. Shit. Lauren.

“We’re not sure ma’am. He still isn’t responding to anything really. We’re hoping that now that we have his eye open we’ll be able to make some major progress.”

Shit. Lauren. Lauren!

Evan’s mom begins to well up. She kisses his forehead and pulls a chair to his bedside.

“How do I know if he can even think still?

How do I know if there’s anything going on?”

The nurse shufes her feet. “There is no way, Mrs. Cooper. We’re just gonna have to work through this.”

“What has he been thinking about this whole time? It’s been weeks and he hasn’t been able to hear or talk or see!”

The nurse whispers back, “I don’t know.

Maybe he’s been dreaming, Mrs. Cooper.”

Evan’s eyelid slowly begins to droop. The muscles aren’t ready yet. The curtains close and he drifts back into his mind, seeing colors that don’t really exist, hearing sounds that really aren’t sounds, reconstructing memories from his damaged brain. He recreates his eighth birthday party, except this time his dad is there, tousling his hair and patting his back. He re-imagines a day of school, but he gets good grades this time and makes his parents proud. He pictures the day he had the car crash, except this time he has Lauren in the car, bleeding out next to him rather than lying on a couch with some other guy at Emily’s. Instead of his falling asleep at the wheel while driving Kyle’s car around the block and hitting a tree, he has a truck blindside the car while he and Lauren grasp each other’s

hands. few days later, Lauren tries to visit Evan at the hospital. She had been speechless since the accident. I wanted to see you so bad, she thought as she stood outside the room. I proposed to you in third grade and you should’ve taken me to prom and I should have been in that car with you. She sits down in a chair on one side of the hallway and rolls up into a ball.

She sobs for several minutes before getting up and going home. lone dirty light bulb flickers on, illuminating a grungy room in Evan’s mind. He rises from the chair, loosening the ropes around his body and yanking off the blindfold from around his eyes. He’s just now starting to make sense of things as his memory starts to strengthen.

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I don’t think Lauren’s dead; I think she wants to see me again.

He stumbles toward the rotting door, placing his palm on the golden door knob.

Come on, he whispers. Wake up.

He twists the knob and pulls open the door.

He staggers back; a wall of concrete blocks him in.

The light bulb blinks off. The light utters away from his eyes like dozens of white moths.

An afterthought echoes through his synapses: This is how it always ends. van would only ever wake up with his nose in the divide of his calculus book, reimagining and reconstructing the day on which he died.

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JOE QUINLAN

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TO JULIA AND EVERY WAITRESS I HAVE EVER LOVED Chris Brennan

I love you, I knew when you asked me if I’d like a drink that the awkward pickup-lining rules of the toecrushing courtship dance in phony clubs and bars did not apply to you.

Julia, I want to listen to your smoke-break communist philosophy.

Julia, “I’d like a Cuba Libre.”

Julia, I love that you know exactly what is special today.

Today is destiny. Today I am tragically in love and could not be happier about it.

Julia, you are beautiful even though your crooked golden name tag clashes with the silver nose ring that you’ve spent the whole day trying to conceal from your manager.

I hate your manager.

He is rst against the wall when the revolution comes.

Julia, I want to fully express myself to you by manifesting our distaste for the sexual mores of your manager and upper-middle-class, blue-haired, booth-by-the-window BLT enthusiasts.

I want to have sex with you.

This feeling cannot be brushed aside like the loose locks of hair knocked loose from a tryst behind the cerulean sh tank.

The businesswoman’s ice tea does not need relling.

Julia, I don’t want to grow old waiting for you to return again.

Julia, I don’t want to grow old.

I’ll be like Romeo and wear masks and dance and kiss and make my friend Mercutio jealous be cause he’s never had a girlfriend.

Would you like to dance to the bad pop radio mix with me?

I’ve memorized Queen Mab and am fully ready to throw all of it out of the balcony window of my brain.

I’ve memorized poetry and can play “A Time for Us” on the piano.

My breath is minty fresh, I carry chapstick around so my lips aren’t chapped.

Julia, I want to go on a pilgrimage.

Life is not delicious, I lied to you when I said, “Everything is ne.”

Julia, I want to run away.

Let’s run away.

Let’s run away to a humid hilltop in the south of France.

Let’s go to the rooftop of my Toyota on the top of the parking garage and count the stars.

Let’s count the stars until we have counted them all, not caring if we miss one and have to start all over again.

I want to eat ridiculously caloric chocolate desserts and drink fair trade coffee with you while discussing the philosophy of being and the transcendence of love beyond death.

I want to die by subliming into the air on a humid hilltop in the south of France.

Julia, I want to make love to you.

Julia, I wish I knew your last name.

Sadly, I will never be ready for the check.

My deferred dreams explode in the colors blue-green, Che Guevara t-shirt red, and tangerine.

Julia, you walk away like reworks.

Julia, I still love you Tragedy is Diet Coke’s aftertaste, such sweet sorrow.

I hope you have a nice night too.

Julia, I’ll be sitting on top of my car...

PHIL SIGILLITO

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ZAC BOESCH

VICTORY

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Nick Bomar

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e were standing on the track, watching the football game. She slid closer to me. A yellow flag flew into the air. She smiled

at me.

The booming voice seemed far in the distance. I slipped my arm around her waist. The referee sounded his whistle. She kissed me on the cheek. Pads clashed. I ran my ngers through her hair. The defense was waving their arms in the air.

I whispered in her ear. The ball oated downeld. The cool night breeze gave me chills. We scored. Amy said no.

The buzzer sounded. The players lined up to shake hands with each other.

We rushed the eld.

MATT NAHLIK

GRAND THEFT Mike Tynan

I 14

peered from behind the tall uniform bookshelf at the burly security guard standing next to the door, filling every inch of his pale blue shirt. He kept one hand hanging freely at his side while the other curled around his belt, supporting some weight of the standard black tools and few weapons clipped there. Though no badge shone on his chest, his thick fingers drummed against this black leather belt, keeping me mindful of his ability to transform my scrawny build into a stain on the dark wood doorframe if I failed.

He began to turn in my direction, routinely scanning the long aisles between shelves. I twitched, turned to hide behind the wall of books, and quickly buried my eyes in a nearby paperback. As soon as I felt I had waited long enough, I pushed my head slowly around the corner, stopping when the tip of my nose touched the inner side of the shelf so that only one eye would be visible to anyone on the other side. The bulky guard eyed a tall man currently paying for three small paperbacks. I slipped my head back into the row, and glanced at the novel I had hastily grabbed seconds earlier.

Nice cover, idiot, I thought to myself as I stared down at ve middle-aged women in navy blue shorts skipping across the hot pink cover of The Elegant Gathering of White Snows. I grimaced as I threw the novel back on the shelf to join its equally obnoxious sisters.

This was a hell beyond all others. I stood trapped by three solid walls, tough, thick, and cold. The fourth wall was much worse. In front of the door, two wooden pillars stood silently waiting for any one of thousands of magnetic strips to set off an ear-splitting alarm, triggering a bone-shattering response from the stone-eyed guard. My thoughts drifted to what my older brother Matt said in the car minutes earlier.

You’re here for a reason, little bro. For the

whole 15 years you’ve been on this planet, I haven’t seen or heard of you doing anything that wouldn’t get an A-damn-plus or a gold-damnstar. I’m here to show you that there’s more to life than the rules. But, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to turn you into some kind of kleptomaniac. You’re here because you need to learn that no matter what people tell you to do, there is an alternative.

It was true, I was tired of following the same routine everyday, and Matt was trying to nurse that minuscule inner rebel to a healthy size. I argued intensely and quickly with him that he was out of his mind. He pointed to my 4.4 GPA, and a spotless demerit card and told me I was trying to be perfect, playing God, sucking the life out of myself one crisp page of outlined notes at a time. I sat there motionless for several second s, then ung the door of Matt’s white Nissan open into the darkness. I stormed into the nearest store of the far-reaching strip mall Matt had parked in front of, Barnes & Noble, partly because I was setting up a quick get away, but mostly because I did not want any of my sudden audacity to fade.

Even as I reminded myself of my brother’s encouragement, this stand-off felt hopeless. As if that was not enough, all the morals ingrained in me now strangled me slowly, coating my throat with an icy lacquer. I stepped back slowly from the shelf, trying to control the paste of conscience sliding down my throat. My eyes searched spasmodically across the shelves, looking for any kind of distraction. Colorful covers started blending in with blank ones, blood-dripping mouths of horror meshed with the soft autumn leaves of romance. My eyes twitched from author to author as I walked further and further from the isle.

Potok. Poe. Plain. Percy. Patterson.

The shame continued to close around my neck and slip down the length of my throat. I could feel my heart beat relentlessly against my skin. Pounding at my ribs, as a tortured prisoner would assault the bars of his cell, it sent overloads of blood crushing through my veins. Every

tissue in my body began to pulse in time with its unyielding punches. I continued to stumble down the row of books.

Palahniuk. Ovid. Ondaatje. O’Connor.

O’Brien.

I tried to think of a way out. The two crumpled dollar bills in the back pocket of my jeans did not offer any help, and to return to the car empty-handed would bring a harsh punch to the head, and no ride to my home six miles away.

Matt had promised these two things, and we both knew there would be years of disrespect to follow should Matt have to keep his promise.

I stopped suddenly in the middle of the row.

My eyes had stopped twitching between covers and now started to blur as I paused for a moment. The silence that followed was not from thought. I let my vision dull while I waited. In one swift movement, I grabbed a pale paperback from the top shelf and ripped the square magnetic strip from the back page, taking several thin layers of the page with it. I slammed the strip against the inner side of a shelf, while tearing the barcode sticker from the back cover and slipping it into the pages of another nearby volume, just to be sure of my non-detection. With eyes quickly turned toward the ceiling to check for nearby cameras, I shoved the book against my hip, quickly covering the spot with my jacket.

I started my slow walk toward the door and the steel-eyed guard. I turned the corner and walked faster, fearing I was going slower than any reasonable person would. I stared at him as his gaze slowly turned to me. Conscience tightened its chokehold, and I was soon drowning in its cold gloss slipping down my throat. My veins bulged from the pressure, and my heart let out a last desperate lash at its cruel cage.

As I continued toward the statue-like guard, who now looked straight at me, I reached my numb hands down to zip up my jacket. Now I was only a few feet from the iron gure occupying the tight blue uniform.

“Have a good night,” I said shakily as I passed him trying to justify my incorrigible stare.

He did not reply as I stepped between the wooden pillars, stopping time for several seconds to drown in anticipation of breaking the cold silence, pressing against me on all sides.

The silence continued until my st pounded the dark wood to open the door.

I continued my march, keeping my eyes xed on the tinted window of the white Nissan and feeling my knees begin to liquefy.

Breaking into a jog, I reached the Nissan before the pressure of every nerve in my body would force me to collapse.

I whipped the car door open, removing the book from my jeans as I jerked the door close again.

Hurling the paperback at my brother’s smiling face, I tried to yell while exhaling as if I had held my breath for several minutes, “You happy now?”

My brother grabbed the book after it smacked the window behind him and rebounded into his lap. A long smile stretched across his face, and he began to laugh quietly.

“It’s not funny,” I gasped angrily.

“Jake, did you even bother to notice what you stole?” he asked, calm, and still smiling.

Matt held up the paperback with a casual hand, and I looked into the pale blue eye staring back at me with narrowed black horror.

George Orwell: 1984 Big Brother was indeed watching, and judging from that delighted grin, he approved.

PHIL SIGILLITO

15

ADOPTION

Dylan Kickham

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Of the manifold organisms she locked onto the one Whose unnatural smile created two Deep dimples. The man followed her gaze to that picture, “He is three.”

She looked up scientically and saw the clock strike four— It was time to heat her TV dinner—she looked in surprise at his ve Pudgy ngers; there might as well have been six.

She eventually had her ll of the curious image and at six Left the man’s ofce. —While opening her door, she thought of that one Inside her house, her icy palace for some ve Years; she would show it where it would stay to Clear up that confusion, and teach it the procedures, for It should be able to follow directions by age three.

Her TV dinner broke her trance: the microwave emitted three High-pitched beeps. She wondered why she was considering letting Sick’s Home and Filth’s hearth into her pristine house. For So long she had been alone, with her affection never won.

Inside her white cocoon, she would not allow anything to Lessen her dignity, not even a casual high-ve.

That meeting was all that she could think of. “I’ve never needed anyone else.” Her confusion was answered by three Drips from the sink, and a draft that struck even her as too Cold. She sat down at the TV and ipped in disgust through sex Until, like manna, nding the news, which told her stories of death, each one Was more depressing and defeatist than the one that came before.

These were the stories that interested her, unforTunate tales that did not sugarcoat the unpredictability of life. The sink Continued to drip, calling for her, and she walked back to kitchen when A monarch buttery sat on the exterior of her kitchen window. The tresPasser gazed into the colorless house, his six Legs pressed against the pane. His two Large, colorful wings allowed the unnaturally strong moonlight to Trickle through, and the colors shown into the white home. For The rst time she could see her rmly planted alabaster socks Radiate a bright orange, and ve Specks of vibrant light warmed her cold cheek. Three Seconds had not gone by before her affection was won.

Those six legs left the pane much too Soon. She was ready for him now: that little dimpled one.

And she would welcome the three-year-old with a high-ve.

DYLAN KICKHAM

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PHIL’S GOURMET SUB SHOPPE John Berger

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18

he summer before senior year, I got a job working at Phil’s Gourmet Sub Shoppe downtown. I had never heard of it before my brother told me about the opening, and neither had he or my parents, or any of my friends that I told about the job opening too. Apparently it was one of those places that had stores all over the country that people had never heard of.

I had to go to an orientation the last week of school before I starting working. The guy who showed me around the store, Kenny, was probably thirty-ve, had long, straw-like blond hair down to his chest, and was starting to bald on the crown of his head. He hunched over when he walked, wore torn baggy jeans that covered all but the tips of his red tennis shoes, and had a huge gap between his front two teeth. He smelled like smoke and air freshener, but at least he made an attempt to cover up the smoke. He had worked previously at Subway, so he knew the ins and outs of the sub sandwich business.

He showed me around the store, told me that the refrigerator was here, the freezer there, and if you ever got locked in, there was an emergency latch to unlock it from the inside. He said someone had locked him in there on April Fools Day a few years ago, and his ngers were blue and icicles were in his hair by the time he gured out how to get out. He had to huddle next to the bread ovens for half and hour to completely unfreeze himself.

“I’m not going to lie though, it was pretty radical,” he said, nodding his head, squishing his eyes shut.

Then he showed me the cash register, which buttons to push when someone ordered a number fourteen or a slim three, or whatever, and where the button for extra cheese and peppers was. This button was the most important button, it was

the most worn, it made up forty ve per cent of sales; it was the bread and butter of Phil’s… I wasn’t listening. A lot of people like cheese and peppers apparently, that’s all I needed to know.

He then told me that I should never take a shit without washing my hands with soap, and that actually I probably shouldn’t even take a shit at all, because the restrooms were shit.

“Not my goddamn problem,” he said. “Fixing the toilets—that’s the assholes at Corporate’s job.”

He sat me down in a booth, slid in next to me, and pulled out a packet of paper he had had tucked into the back of his jeans so it stuck out over his shirt. He opened it and slid it between us on the table. It didn’t actually slide though, because the table was kind of sticky.

“Corporate makes me read this bullshit to you, and you got to sign off next to everything I say to show that you understand. It’s obvious, I know, but I have to do it, and so do you, or I could get red.”

For some reason I didn’t quite think that would be the worst thing in the world. I wondered if all sub shops had Kennys as managers.

He told me how I should never come to work high, and how stealing food could get me red.

I signed on the lines next to both sentences. The word “red” was in big bold letters. He continued telling me how I especially shouldn’t come to work high and steal food because I was hungry.

That was a common mistake in new employees.

Even he had fallen into that trap a few times himself. He told me how yelling at customers wasn’t allowed, and how we shouldn’t say the n-word to black people or call women anything derogatory. Or “dero-gay-tory” as he said, a huge grin on his face. We also should dress respectfully and professionally. Our words should be professional too, no cursing or bad-mouthing.

We should neatly groom our hair and face. And take a shower within eight hours of coming to work. Not eight and a half hours, but eight. That half an hour makes a huge difference.

After twenty minutes of this, my hand

hurt from all the autographs, and I wondered if Kenny’s head hurt as much as my hand did.

“All done, kiddo.”

“That was easy enough,” I told him, shaking my hand out beside me, as he got up to get my uniform, a black t-shirt with “Phil’s Gourmet Sub Sandwiches” on the chest and a hat with the same. He told me I could just wear jeans and tennis shoes. All I would be doing was working the cash register and cleaning.

O

n my first day, I met the other guy that would be working the day shift with me.

His name was Courtney, and he was a black guy, probably six-foot-five.

He had a tattoo of a guy doing a slam-dunk on his arm; the guy had his tongue out. I assumed it was supposed to be Michael Jordan. “ H e r e comes the lunch stampede,” Courtney said as he nudged me, faking a smile to the rst guy coming in. He snapped on rubber gloves, and I went through my “Welcome to Phil’s, would you like to try a number eighteen today?” speech.

It was a slick young businessman, tailored suit, shiny shoes, groomed black hair, a smile so white it was annoying. Either he didn’t hear me or he just didn’t care. He was just staring at the menu, even as he started to talk.

“Uh, give me a number six no lettuce, cut in half, easy on the mayo, with cherry and banana peppers on the side, and an extra few tomatoes

and cucumbers,” he said without taking his eyes off the menu.

The next guy was a construction worker. His phone was rmly attached to his ear. He gave me his order between shouting at his construction foreman and telling his wife that he was going to be late coming home because he was going out and getting drinks with guys from the construction site.

It was going to be a long summer.

The next hundred and forty-six customers were either businesspeople or construction workers, and they ADAM BREMERKAMP made a line that trailed out the door and snaked around the block.

I would know, I counted.

They stepped up, gave me their order, I would type it in to the cash register, print out the receipt, and slide the receipt into the holder above the cold table, where Courtney would squint at it and make the sandwich. All this was supposed to be done in thirty seconds, because “Fresh Food Fast” was our motto. But that was all I ever saw him doing, making sandwiches. It was that or taking a smoking break outside. He took a lot of smoking breaks.

I got through the rst few weeks just ne. I discovered that after work, whether you liked it or not, you always ended up smelling like vinegar, and girls didn’t nd that too attractive. Kenny and me also started to get pretty close; I mean, ADAM BREMERKAMP

19

20

as close as a 35-year-old and a teenager can get.

We skipped taking inventory one evening and instead played hockey with brooms and frozen bread rolls. And on the fourth of July, we took recrackers and set them off in the store when nobody was around. We ducked behind booths and acted out a gun battle, using cardboard cutouts of machine guns, the recrackers as bullets, and ketchup and vinegar as blood and guts.

Kenny showed me his collection of bottle caps. He had caps from every kind of beverage you could imagine. He had soda caps, beer bottle caps, and even milk and juice bottle caps. He had every brand of soda I could think of, the major ones—Coke, Pepsi, A&W—but also ones I had never heard of: Vimto, Jarritos, and Pakola, to name a few. He told me that during his vacation time, he liked to travel abroad to drink stuff in other countries and bring the bottle caps back as souvenirs. His collection took up an entire empty bread roll box, which was about as high as my knees and just as long. There must have been a thousand bottle caps in there.

“I don’t show these to just anyone, you know.” He raised his eyebrows and gave me a look that I gured meant that I was initiated into some sort of secret sub-sandwich bottle cap-collecting club.

In mid-July Kenny told me that a lady from Corporate would be coming in to observe our workow, to make sure that we were running at maximum efciency.

“Just do everything like you know you’re supposed to, and make sure you don’t use any of those shortcuts I’ve showed you when you’re cleaning,” Kenny said, “Just be cool; it’s my ass that will be on the line.”

She got there on a Wednesday. She had a pantsuit on and hair tightly coiled around the back of her head with a metal hair clip. She wore little makeup and was taller than most everybody in the store, even without her heels. She was wearing a grey pantsuit, and had the stern look of a pissed-off auto mechanic. She just stood behind the counter, clipboard rmly pressed into

her stomach, lips puckered, methodically taking notes on our performance.

She commented on our workplace environment, how it wasn’t professional-looking. She stated that we needed to be friendlier to our customers, and that meant shouting hello and goodbye to each individual customer, regardless of how busy we were. It would denitely contribute to the friendly workplace environment, she said, as she made a little note on her clipboard, shaking her head slightly. I saw Kenny in the back of the store, his tongue out, eyes wide, hands behind his head, thrusting his pelvis in her direction.

A few minutes later, in the midst of a long line of customers, I noticed her looking over my shoulder as I was working the register. I tried to ignore her, and smiled at the next customer, but before I could open my mouth, she yelled at Kenny to work the register, and pulled me away by my elbow. Her pull was so strong, I had to hop a few times to keep from falling over.

“I don’t see you using your suggestive selling techniques,” she said to me, a sly little grin on her face.

“Well, I don’t use them for everyone. Just occasionally.”

“You know you’re supposed to ask every customer if they want a cookie, chips, or a bigger drink, no matter what. Even if they’ve been coming in everyday for ten years.”

“But half the people who come in get the same thing everyday, and I know they’re not going to change.”

“I don’t care.”

Kenny had mentioned in passing that I was supposed to try to sell more food by suggesting it to customers, although he never did it himself and never really encouraged me to. I hate when asshole cashiers try to sell me something before I even open my mouth, and I didn’t want to be an asshole. I didn’t really think it would contribute to the friendly environment.

She took Kenny to the back room and I heard her talking, but the murmur of the freezer and

the buzzing of the refrigerator garbled her voice.

He walked out, a defeated look on his face, eyes glued on the oor.

“I’ve got bad news, brother.”

“Oh, I’m sorry man,” I said. I gured that the corporate lady nally realized what was best for the company and had let Kenny go.

“I’m going to have to let you go,” Kenny said.

As much as I couldn’t believe that I was being let go, I realized why Kenny had been the manager for so long. It made perfect sense.

For a while I was really angry, and I ate Subway everyday just to spite Kenny. But I realized that I couldn’t be mad at Kenny. It must’ve just been his way of sticking it to the man.

B

efore senior year started, I went back to the store and returned my shirt and hat; I was never going to wear them again, so I gave them to the guy at the counter, a teenager like me. While I was there, I ordered a sandwich and sat down and ate it, watching Kenny, who was busy slicing meat in the back. I imagined

Kenny there, rotting away—the only constant in the ever-changing line of seventeen-year-old employees.

I used the restrooms for the rst time. Kenny was right. They were shit. There was grafti on the walls, on the mirror, on the paper towel dispenser, and even on the ceiling. They smelled of piss and 409, and there were mysterious yellow stains on the oor.

I tried to get out without Kenny seeing me. I wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to say, but I had a feeling it was an apology I really didn’t want to hear. I left him a little envelope on the counter with his name on it. It had a few bottle caps I had brought back from a family trip to Germany from two summers earlier. I gured I owed it to him, being in the bottle cap collecting club and all.

I didn’t see him pick the envelope up, but I have a feeling I know about how he reacted.

He squished his eyes shut, nodded his head, and shouted “radical,” and then got back to work slicing meat, knowing why he still worked at a sub sandwich store.

ADAM BREMERKAMP

21

LANGUAGE FOR WILDY, IN DELMAS 31 HOSPITAL1 Pete Winfrey

22

When tears no longer sufce to bring a boy like you justice, can my shouting answer your questions that are not forgotten yet serve pathetic, futile means? Without a toy, your crib becomes your greatest asset. Coy smiles can get you nothing more than your perch on blanket mountain, the lowest summit on earth.

Though it may seem as if the world has ploys to bring your growth to a familiar end, you have no way to escape the fatal hole that is your country. Sisters take the toll in their thankless holy mission, but they can mend nothing. In my perfect world the tears I shed tell me that I wish I, not you, were dead.

1

located in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and run by the Missionaries of Charity DYLAN DYLAN KICKHAM KICKHAM

Jack Leahy

Y

eah, I liked her. But what pissed me off even more is that I just told myself the day before that I didn’t like her. I had finally convinced myself that this whole thing was stupid—that I, like my guy friends who irrationally liked my other girl friends, just felt like having an attraction for someone, and I had unfortunately chosen Jessica. Me and her had met back in January while I was breaking up with a girl whom I had been dating for two years, and as we talked more and exchanged e-mails more and eventually spent time together more, I had always told myself that we were just friends, but for some reason, I also told myself, and I knew I was telling myself, as if it was some little secret that I had promised not to tell my other self, that I liked her. It wasn’t denial. It was acceptance and denial. But I had finally gotten over this. I realized that I should be mature, and my eyes opened up and I saw that we really were just friends, and I wanted to be just friends, because relationships are terrible and they suck life away. But now, there I was sitting across from her new boyfriend. Oh no, wait, sorry. They weren’t official, they were just a boy and a girl who made sure they spent a lot of time together so they could sit really close to each other and kiss when none of us were looking.

His name was Joe, and he really was not that cool. I say that not out of jealousy but out of objective criticism. This was a guy who, when comparing music tastes would list the band you were just laughing about with your friends. You know, the two-hit wonders from the ’90s that used phrases like, “Semi-charmed kind of life” or “that’s what I said, now!” or maybe half the lyrics were “doo doo doo.”

The only few things that would make him more attractive than me were that he didn’t have acne, and I’ll give him that one, and that he didn’t

have a huge body or anything, but he was compact. You could see by looking at his chest that he did have a little bit of some pectoralis majors going on. He had a cute little face with perfect teeth. But that was it. Jessica was sitting next to me, and Joe was across from me. Al, my best friend, was having a delightful time sitting next to Joe, and Emmie, who Al had a crush on, was sitting next to Jessica at the end of the booth.

“So what do you wanna do when you grow up?” I asked. I already knew the answer to the question. I had been talking to Jessica about him before, and she had told me how they had snuck out together and laid on a blanket in some park in Glendale until ve o’clock. She had said that he wanted to be— “A um, rocket scientist,” he said as he looked down with a probably fake blush as everybody around the table let out their own little personal gasps that both me and him could feel. Then he looked back at me with a cute little smile. “I’ve always really been into airplanes and stuff, and ight really interests me, you know. So yeah, I’m hoping to do stuff with like, NASA and stuff.”

“No shit?” I asked. “Wow, sounds… smart.

Kind of reminds me of my own safe and reliable aspirations.”

“Why?” he laughed.

That son of a bitch, I thought. He was appearing friendly by acting like he enjoyed being around me, or even worse…he legitimately enjoyed being around me. This was a total ass card to play, because he knew, or at least I knew, that I didn’t enjoy being around him, and if we were together long enough, my friends would start realizing this and begin to think that I was not the nice Rocky that they thought they knew.

Then he chuckled a, “What do you wanna do?”

And here it came. Curse my subconscious massive interest in myself. But when I get pissed off, I become a smart ass. By this point I had already become a smart ass. But when I become a smart ass, I start thinking that I’m better than I really am, and then I want to talk about myself.

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But that was okay because I happen to be an experienced jerk.

“Nah,” I said. Then I gave him a taste of his own medicine and looked down at the table.

“It’s kind of hard to explain, and it’s really not that cool.”

“Rocky wants to do comedy,” Jessica said as if I were the ventriloquist and she was the dummy. Then I mouthed Joe’s next words to myself.

“So, like stand-up?” he asked in an innocently stupid way.

“No, not really” I said with a smile. “I’m more into like, improv and sketch comedy. Like you know, you ever watch that show Whose Line Is It Anyway?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s really cool.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“So where do you go for that?” he asked in an unfortunately believable and interested manner.

I explained to him the whole business with Chicago, and its history of producing comedy greats, and then when he got confused at certain points and as I got purposefully vague, Al listed to Joe all the famous people to come out of The Second City. I added in some celebrities that I knew he wouldn’t know of like Fred Willard and Catherine O’Hara, but I felt like making explicit my knowledge of the eld.

“Goddamit!” I told Al as I drove him home.

It was just us two in the car. “This is such bullshit.

He’s not even that cool. Seriously, what the hell is so great about him? He likes Third Eye Blind.

You know what really pisses me off? When I ask about him, like, what he’s like, like to describe him and stuff, you know what they all say? All the girls? They say he’s a nice guy. Oh, bullshit.

I mean c’mon, everybody’s a nice guy. You are a nice guy, and on top of that you’re also funny and interesting and can carry on a conversation without sounding like a total self-absorbent douchebag. But that’s what they say.”

I listened to the music for a minute to try and calm myself down. Then I got myself going

again. “I mean of course he’s going to be a nice guy. He likes this girl a lot so he’s nice to her and he’s nice to her friends. You and me are nice guys, and you don’t see any of them wanting to kiss us. Seriously. You know like after the second night they hung out, they made out? Who the hell does that? Me and Jessica have known each other for months and all it takes for this guy is two nights? Do you know what he did to get her?”

“What?”

“He played ‘Hallelujah’ on the piano! I mean c’mon! Are you serious? Are you seriously serious? How can she fall for that? Like, seriously, how could she think to herself, ‘Wow, this is so romantic. This guy is really cool and really talented and it’s not awkward at all that he’s just singing in this empty room and I think I’m going to kiss him.’ Seriously, that’s what happened. He was sitting there, playing and singing ‘Hallelujah,’ upon no request, for her.

And then they kissed. Al, seriously, I know I like to play piano at parties, but if you ever see me start singing and playing, take me away and kick my ass. Because singing and playing piano at a party to impress a girl is quite possibly the most cliché thing ever to be witnessed by man.

Jesus, I’m pissed. Why am I so pissed?”

There was silence for a while in the car. That was all right. I didn’t really expect Al to respond at all.

“People just kiss because they don’t know how to do anything else,” I went on. “No one knows how to be mature when it comes to meeting guys and girls. Why do people think they can totally bypass the whole friendship thing when they meet ? You know I’ve never made out with a person randomly. You know, without knowing them. Why does everybody else? And they get drunk so they can have an excuse to do it.”

“I don’t know,” Al sighed.

“Okay, the only time that I have ever caught myself doing something even close to that was with Sophie.”

“Who?”

“You know, that chick that’s always hanging out at your house. She’s uh, most notably noted for her tail.”

“Oh yeah,” he returned the joke. “My dog.

That was a pretty crazy night.”

“Yeah, dude…what a bitch.” We both laughed. Me and my friends always had a tendency to carry dumb jokes on for too long.

I sighed into an “I just don’t know, man.” And then I kind of grimaced at myself for saying those words in the tone that I said them.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s really not that bad.” Al said.

“No, I know I know, but—” “No really, it’s not that bad, and you know what? You really shouldn’t be surprised beca—” “What?” I laughed. I never get insulted. I take things pretty easily. Well, not things, but insults, or in this case constructive criticism. Obviously, I don’t take some guy getting a girl over me very easily, but I’m willing to hear from other people about myself. I’m an ass, I’ll admit that. But I’m a fair ass. So when I screamed “What?” I was really wondering “What” and not “What you say isn’t credible.” “Don’t say anything stupid like he’s a nice guy and he’s cute and that’s the kind of guy girls go for.”

“But, they do. He is nice. Is he funny like you? No. Is he as quick and crazy and out there as you are? No. And you know what? Everybody loves you for that. But you know, people like that guy for who he is too.”

“But he has nothing to offer.”

“Rocky, he is what they want. They, being Jessica. So technically he does have something to offer and it happens to be a relationship with a nice girl. And you know, he’s probably not doing what you’re doing right now. He’s not screaming about how much of a douche you are.”

“That’s because he has nothing to be mad about. Because he has his girl, slash, my girl.”

There was a brief moment of silence as we turned left onto Forsyth. “And plus I’m not a douche.” I laughed. And he sighed. We came to

the intersection at Asbury. Lourdes Church was lit up to the left, making the surrounding parking lot look like absolutely nothing. I took a right.

“I’m just saying,” he continued. “You’ve got to realize that she likes this kind of a guy because he’s simple. He doesn’t poke fun at himself all the time, not to say that you’re a self-degrading guy, but he’s just a guy who is him. People like you for poking fun at yourself, and everybody needs that guy to be around, because not only are you funny but you’re honest. But hey, he’s honest too. But he’s nice and simple honest. She is a simple girl and wants simple. He’s just him and that’s it. He’s… him.”

“Well, what the hell, I’m me.”

“Yeah, I know I know. But you get what I’m saying. I think you’ll be all right.”

“Oh I know, I’ll be all right. I really don’t even care about this. Well, no. That’s not true at all. I do care about this. But what the hell, he wants to be a rocket scientist? I mean what the fuck is that?” I took a left on Lindell.

“What? That’s what he said his dream was.”

“But that’s like, so cliché.”

“You always say that! You always say things are cliché, but Rocky, they’re cliché because they are the way things are. Not everybody has to be clever and original like you.” We pulled up to his house and he got out.

“All right, I’ll see you later man.” He closed the door. He wasn’t mad, or anything. I really wanted to go inside with him. I realized that my purpose was to just drive him to his house, and then just drive me to my house, but I always enjoyed a conversation. And it seemed like nobody else ever did. Not that they didn’t want to talk to me, but they had stuff to do, which is understandable. I could have sat there with Al for an hour more and talked about anything, and it would have been nice because we would have been defying the purpose of a ride home. But he was sensible, and there was a purpose to why he was getting out of the car. So I put the car in reverse and drove home.

25

LIGHTS

Mark Holzum

H 26

way. Reaching up behind me, I grabbed the lip of the dumpster, its chipped paint breaking into my hand, and pulled myself up. My legs were in pretty good shape but I stretched out the other sore muscles, taking in the damage.

I picked up my wallet, took out the rest of the cash and slid all of it into my shoe. Then I threw the wallet, along with the two credit cards, into the dumpster. I felt for my glasses in my shirt pocket and discovered them crushed. Oh well. I started walking out of the alley when I felt that something was wrong. I walked ne. No limp, no pathetic crawl. I sighed, then walked back to the dumpster, braced my hands on the top of it, closed my eyes, and slammed my left knee into it as hard as I could. I dented the metal and the clang reverberated around the stone walls. And I now had a denite limp.

As I hobbled out of the alley and down the street, I caught my reection in an advertisement.

Both eyes were purpled, my lower lip split and puffy. Good, I thought to myself, very nice. I walked about eight city blocks until I could see my Lexus, then I pulled out my cell phone and called my wife.

e hit me again. 23. I pried my eyes open to glance down the alley and make sure no one was there. 24. I was lying on the ground, my face pressed against the warm, cracked asphalt and I focused on the broken glass in front of me that caught the light spilling into the alley.

25. It was that creepy orange light that the city insisted on using. It sketched horns on every terrifying shadow and made every night feel like a watered-down Halloween. 26. For a broken thing, the glass was beautiful. Every smashed piece had its own little sparkle, an inner light.

27. 28. It reminded me of something one of my theology teachers had said, something about how all humans have their own spark of God in them. 29. One more. 30. I lay still a moment longer, catching my breath and focusing my thoughts. My palms scratched against the ground as I pushed myself to an upright position against the dumpster.

Talking around my bruised lips, I said, “Well, I think that’s thirty. Here’s—“ A st slammed work in a pretty typical office. I’m an actuinto my temple, light bulbs popped in my head ary, so I work for insurance companies. It’s and gongs rang as my brain ricocheted around a lot of math and configurations, and most my skull. Back down on the ground, I wiped a people would find it boring. Lately, I have hand across my lips and felt blood. “What the been finding it boring. I leave at 6:00 a.m., hell is your problem?!” come home at 5:00 p.m. I work for the same “That one made thirty.” I pushed back up insurance companies, the same kind of work. and hawked spit and blood out of my mouth. I Every day at around one, I have an orange and looked up under my swelling eyes at the man in a granola bar.

A peanut butter and chocolate front of me. He had shifty eyes, and I could tell chip granola bar.

In fact, I eat both in the same he wanted to book it. But not without his cash. I way.

I combine.

One bite of one, another bite slid my hand into my pocket and handed him the of the other.

I have no idea why.

I always used two hundred bucks I had ashed him earlier. to laugh at people who talked about mid-life “Well, here you go. Thanks.”

“Uh…yeah. Sure.” He pocketed the bills crises. But I think I’m having one. and walked briskly out of the alley, melding ello?” My wife’s voice was teeny in the into the shadows. I watched him go then rested “ phone, a voice muffled by throw pillows my head against the dumpster. “Shit,” I sighed. I and Egyptian cotton sheets. hurt everywhere. I should have told him fteen.

“Sophie, it’s me.”

But I told him thirty and it would be better that

I

H

“Oh my God, Jon, where have you been?

What happened?” Her panic struck something deep in me. A gut feeling that pulled from the inside.

“Well, honey, I got mugged.” Her cries of sorrow and concern pulsed out of the phone.

I held it away from me until I heard silence.

“Honey, I feel terrible. I need to go so I can focus on driving. I love you, I’ll be home shortly.” She started to protest, wanted answers and reasons, but I had nothing to say to her.

“Sophie, I’m okay. I just hurt. I need…I need to be home.” This quieted her. And a calmness took over her voice. She hung up.

It had started to rain. My windshield wipers needed replacing. Every time they passed around the top of the windshield, they would pop and squeal. I focused on their sounds, the silent car, the rain as it pattered over the Lexus, and the asphalt as the tires grinded against it. Anything to not think of what I just did. I just paid a man to beat the crap out of me. But I felt good. Well, except for my face. And my ribs. But inside, I felt good. Really good. And I shouldn’t. I felt out of my mind.

A terrible noise erupted from outside the car as I drifted towards the edge of the road, too close to the warning tracks. What a genius idea, I thought. I could have ended up right in that median if it weren’t for the guy who came up with that idea. And for that matter, who the hell came up with the idea of asphalt? We use it for so much, driving and traveling and running. Like my wife and how she runs every morning. My sporadic thoughts cleared as I thought of Sophie.

My chest contracted as I thought of her sobs that I had refused to hear. I shook my head, trying to get the image of her folded up on the couch crying by the phone out of my head. I switched on the radio and replaced my thoughts with the vocals of John Mellencamp.

I

had started taking different routes home. Mix things up a little. Take 270 and get off at 40, then hit 70, then back to 270. Wander around in some little neighborhood. Stop at different gas stations. Sure, it took me longer, but I felt better afterwards. And then I stopped. I realized how stupid my attempt at change was. I wasn’t going to advance in my job, there was no ZAC BOESCH

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place to advance to, unless I wanted to be in charge of the company, which wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t quit my job and start something new. I had two kids to pay for. I couldn’t just pack up and go like Jim. I had run into Jim about a month earlier. We had gone to grade school together and we had had lunch for old times’ sake. And I think all of these thoughts about change started because of Jim. He talked about this new traveling business he’d been doing. His face was weathered and he looked like a traveler. And he said he’d found God. Said he’d re-discovered what he’d already had.

I

turned my lights off as I got closer to my house. I don’t know why. So I could have a moment to myself, I think. I stopped in the middle of the road and put the car in park. And rested my head on the steering wheel, its cool leather soothing my bruised face. I needed to figure out for myself why I had done what I did. For a change? For adventure? For stories at parties? To say, “Oh, you broke your nose boxing? Well, I was mugged once. And I was hit thirty times. Thirty.” And then Sophie would swoon over me, and the romance would be back.

Ridiculous. I had gained nothing. Just a broken body, and a confused mind. My chest hurt as all my emotions of the past couple weeks began to rip through me. My hands gripped the seat next to me and my breathing became rapid and too short. I didn’t even notice the flashing lights until there was a knock on my car window. I jumped and banged my bad knee against the steering wheel. Lights flashed around me and I looked in my rearview mirror. Jesus Christ.

A cop car was sitting right behind me, all of its lights twirling. I closed up, bottled what had been coming and breathed in deep. Then I rolled down my window.

His ashlight beam swung over my car and then onto me, low and out of my eyes.

“Sir, you do realize you were just parked in the middle of the road?”

“Uh, yes ofcer. I was just thinking. I, I live…down the block.” His light slowly crept up my face.

“Can I get some ID and—holy shit are you okay?” The light had completely uncovered my destroyed face, which had been shadowed in the dark. “Are you…uh, what happened, sir?”

“I got mugged, ofcer. Now I’m ne, really.

I just want to go home.”

“Did you call it in?”

“What?”

“The mugging. Did you call the police and inform them?” I shook my head.

“No.” He looked again at my bruised lips and bones.

“I will need some ID, but I’ll take care of it for you.” He did it all as I sat in a daze. I had been getting somewhere in my thought process, but now I just wanted to go home. I thanked him and he drove away. I ipped my lights back on and pulled into my driveway. Sophie’s shadow was outlined in the window, waiting for me. I walked into my house, the door opening for me and I was swept up in the warmth and perfume of my wife, wrapped around me in a hug.

“I was so worried.” I said nothing, my body numb. She took a step back from me and held my head in her hands. Examined my face.

“Jesus, you poor thing. This guy really whaled into you.” And then I started laughing.

“Yeah,” I laughed. “He really did. Oh God, why am I laughing right now?” Sophie started laughing too. And I hugged her close again. It felt like I hadn’t hugged her this way in along time, or her to me. It felt good. She looked at my face and left to get a rag to help clean my face up. I sat on the couch, everything aching but still okay. The headlights of the Lexus still shined in through the window. Sophie came back and started cleaning my bruises and cuts.

“I’m so glad you are okay.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The headlights framed Sophie’s face, catching her high cheeks and sparkling off her eyes.

Then the light went out.

THAT ONE DROP Dylan Kickham

That one drop of bloody liquid inside his virgin throat woke him from his mindless obedience.

That one drop showed him that the things they condemn are the best ways to the things they praise.

That one drop broke down the dam they had built up in him and allowed the oodwaters to carry that obtrusive debris away.

Through his eyes, the dark and articial night was the brilliant and dazzling halo of blurred neon and stars.

Through his ears, the raucous cacophony was an unintelligibly mystifying psalm in which every one sang.

Through his mouth, the avorless night air was the savory manna he had unknowingly waited his whole life to taste.

Through his nose, the putrid trash-crusted city street was redolent with perfumed incense that rose to the heavens in its aromatic wisps.

Through his skin, the cold rough road was enveloped in the warmth of dancing tongues of ame.

Through his mind, his materialistic and petty thoughts turned into sheer amazement at the beauty he had never before been able to see in the familiar city.

Through his heart, those all-important feelings that governed his life became subordinate to grandeur of the night sky.

This was no longer the realm with which he had grown familiar; it was a world hidden by a gate that he was never able to unlock with virtue or Scripture.

That one drop was the key to the gate, and though serpents lie beyond the threshold, so do the high wonders that the thirsty can never experience.

KEVIN CASEY

29

DAN BAXTER

30

31

PATRIOT STREET Dylan Kickham

32

BRONZE HORSEMAN ON ART HILL

Resistance Avenue was closed today due to construction, so I had to walk through Patriot Street to get to work.

A beautiful road, full of industrious men alight in the golden sunlight, whose hats cast an impenetrable shadow over their faces; a shadow that only succumbed to the blue glow of a cell phone.

The immense theater was a majestic purple and it advertised thoughtful movies about death and depression, and newspapers on display declared terrorism and bankruptcy in a stylish font and layout.

Then the hospital, a place of miracles, where women drenched in diamonds and fur came out ten years younger.

Through the window of an electronics store, television screens showed men and women scrambling over each other, vying for fame.

Further down past two McDonalds, each of which advertised McSalads and low-fat McYogurt, I was glad that corporations genuinely cared about our McWellbeing.

Everybody was wired the same: Blackberry (plucked from the elds of a Radio Shack) in the right hand, Starbucks in the left, and nobody needed to say hello to anyone else, because their souls were on display in their Facebook statuses.

This street is awless and will never need construction.

CONOR GEARIN

Chris Brennan

Your Majesty, What are you looking at?

I guess the same thing that I always have: Highways and Starbucks, stores for God knows what.

At times I wonder who it was that gave your name to this old asphalt, brick and stone.

A royal man of elegance and presence, The king of empty streets. You walk alone in quiet village squares without the peasants, Your loyal subjects, part of who I am.

Strangers who sweat in unison with me on August nights in blood-red nose-bleed stands or raised their voice for “Meet Me in St. Louie.”

The characters in memories I’ve had.

With them, I guess the view is not that bad.

33

ZAC BOESCH

SPOTLIGHT

I 34

John Berger

t was 11:30. The phone sat silent. I followed the cord back to the wall. It was still connected. Maybe she’ll still call, I thought.

The room was dark, just the occasional wave of light sweeping through the window from a passing car. I heard dogs barking outside, and the clock above the stove ticked slowly. My car keys were still clenched tightly in my hand. I was hunched over, staring at the fire, watching the embers crackle and wisp, smoke dancing up the chimney. It billowed up and blew into the night sky, where the stars glimmered and the moon illuminated the ground below in shades of black and grey.

She wasn’t going to call.

I stood up. The re was still blazing. I unbolted the front door and broke the silence with its creak. The air outside was brisk. I could barely see my breath. I took a stroll down the street and into the park. It was past curfew, and I hid behind a tree when the park rangers drove by. I always like the park in the nighttime. It was peaceful. There were no joggers, no bustling family reunions, no pick-up games on the soccer elds. Just calmness, except for the occasional fox scurrying back to its den.

I liked the park at times like these. It was like the shower, a place to be alone. I wandered over to the playground. I climbed up to the top and lay on my back, watching the stars overhead.

The hard plastic was cold against my skin and looked grey in the absence of light.

When I was walking back home, a grizzled man wearing all black and a red beanie asked if I had any cigarettes. I don’t smoke, I told him. As I walked away I looked over my shoulder and saw that he was rummaging through a dumpster, a smoking cigarette in his hand.

I

first saw her at the theatre. She worked there pointing the spotlight at the people on stage.

It seemed like a monotonous job. She would

sit up in the little box above the balcony and keep the spotlight on whoever was talking.

Sometimes she would change the color of the thing, so it beamed red when someone was dying onstage.

I saw her because I always watch the people behind the scenes. Most of the time, they’re more fun to watch than the actors that are actually on stage. Dressed in all black, hustling on stage between acts when the lights are dimmed, dragging pieces of the set offstage with them. The sound guys are my favorite though, with their little headsets on, pushing the knobs on the board randomly. They always seem the most bored out of anybody.

But she was different. She didn’t wear all black. Maybe because she was where nobody could see her. She had a warm face and a bright red sweater on. I waited around after the play was over and talked to her. She was surprised that I noticed her up in the balcony. “You must have good eyes to see me up there in the dark,” she said, a puzzled look on her face. She was about my age, and had the spotlight gig because her dad owned the theatre. I scribbled my number on the back of my playbook and told her she should call me sometime.

She did call me the next weekend, and we went and saw a movie. We were the only ones in the theatre, so we laughed obnoxiously, and yelled at the actors on screen. It was like having our own private little theatre. We went on a picnic in the snow a few days later. We ate in the middle of an open eld in the park. The snow blanketed the ground, and the sun reected off of it so brightly that we had to squint to see each other.

We spent every night talking to each other on the phone. Most of the time we talked until well past two; sleep was a distant need compared to talking to her.

One night we both snuck out and met in the park. We went over to the swings. We tried to swing all the way over the bar. We pumped our legs, leaning forward, then leaned back,

straightening out, and speeding through the crisp night air. Then we climbed the slide and found an open spot where we lay, her arms around my waist and her head on my chest, rising and falling with my breath. She told me my heart was beating fast, like I had just run a marathon.

O

n a stormy Tuesday afternoon in January, we started talking about where we wanted to be in ten years. She saw herself in a nice New England home, with three kids, all boys. They went to a first-class private school and played polo with other boys from around the neighborhood.

Her husband was a well-known and well-liked corporate executive.

He was five foot ten and stylishly dressed in a suit with a red tie, but h e d i d n ’t have a face.

The darkness and blurriness of time distorted it into only a fuzzy likeness of a man. I was merely a peg in her ladder to the roof of her big New England mansion.

She asked where I could see myself.

I couldn’t picture kids, neighborhoods, jobs, polo clubs; all I could see was being with her.

She told me that her parents divorced when she was seven, and she mainly lived with her dad now. She had a Dalmatian named Suzy. She joked that Suzy was more of a mother to her than her mother was.

I told her about this little lizard my uncle caught in the Grand Canyon when I was thirteen.

It was a cute little thing—brown with red stripes running down its back. He told me to keep it warm, because it wasn’t used to the cold in the northeast. So I bought a heat lamp but decided that it probably needed two, since the Grand Canyon is probably twice as hot as it is here. I made a little routine of feeding it every morning.

One time we went on vacation in July, and when we got back, it was dead. Got overheated, my dad said; I forgot to turn off the heat lamps.

W

e went to a diner one night a few weeks later; we both wanted some soup. I held the door for an old couple as they exited the diner, bringing with them a warm blast of air that soothed my raw face.

We slurped down our soup, mine chicken noodle and hers potato, and left to enjoy a cozy night in at her place.

I enjoyed these lazy evenings, just the two of us. I never could get enough of them.

We talked. She talked about what it would be like in the future. If everyone would live in huge open-air skyscrapers where all of our light would come directly from the sun—no light bulbs or res or ashlights. They have a design for one of those in Japan. She also heard that the world was going to end in 2012. The Mayan calendar predicted that that was the end of the world, and they had everything gured out, especially the stars and eclipses.

MATT KOCISAK

35

36

I listened, content, but I didn’t care. I never thought about the future. I couldn’t even stop thinking that I should’ve ordered the cream or broccoli soup at dinner.

Then we listened to the radio and we danced.

I held the small of her back and pulled it closer to me. It was stiff and soft at the same time. Her head sank into the groove in my shoulder. We swayed back and forth. And I pretended that we were alone on a dance oor. A real dance oor—a shiny wooden one with a big band full of trumpets and saxophones and violins, playing music that would never stop. The only light was that shining on us, a beam that darkened the rest of the room to us.

Then we kissed. We kept dancing, twisting and turning around the room. Then a little blotch of red oozed into her neck. It grew larger with twists and twirls of our mouths. It was purple now, and I wished that it wouldn’t disappear.

And then, something happened. It was like the spotlight she had been working seemed to nally shed light on the gloomy gure in the shadows. It illuminated an ugly truth. Maybe she even turned the beam red. It seemed to consume her; she stopped moving, and her ears turned red. Her eyes went blank, staring into the lamp in the corner of the room. Her lips parted as if she were about to say something.

Closing her mouth, she looked at me, then at my feet, and then into my eyes, and opened her mouth again.

“I don’t think we’re going to work out.”

“What?”

We stopped moving. My hands were frozen on her back and hers were stuck on my shoulders.

Time seemed to stand still. You could hear the ticking of the clock in the kitchen. The ticks seemed to get slower and slower, until minutes

passed between each reverberation.

I went outside and she followed. I cut through the lawn to get to my car. The dampness of the grass wet the bottom of my pants. She was running behind me, yelling my name. I couldn’t hear her. She nally grabbed my wrist when I was reaching for the car door handle.

The streetlight ickered above us. From light to dark, then back on again. It buzzed. An old man and his wife were on their porch down the street drinking coffee together. They were laughing loudly, and I couldn’t help but think that they had to be freezing out on their porch on such a brisk night.

Then she cried. Her head sunk into my shoulder, her tears and snot dampening the top of my jacket. I wanted to believe the words I was telling her—that I would be ne, that I could move on, that we would make great friends, that it would be okay. She squeezed the back of my coat and snifed. I should be the one crying here. The streetlight nally went out. We were alone in the darkness again.

Then she told me that she would call me soon. Next weekend. We would go out to dinner and sort everything out. We would go out at seven. Get some soup and talk everything over.

Make sure it would be all right.

I took a look at her neck. It had faded back into a pale blotch. Her face was fair too. I touched her cheek. It was cold; she wasn’t wearing a jacket.

I looked at her one more time.

“I’d better go.”

“Okay.”

I opened the car door and got in. I turned the key and drove home. She was still standing there, under the streetlight, motionless as she shrank in the rearview mirror.

MATT GARVEY

37

TREMORS Dan Baxter

38

Pebbles roll along the beaten path, As the man walks toward the ďƒželd.

He approaches the white-speckled hill, Where the dead wait to love again.

Millions of marbled dead across the ground, Some forgotten, some barely passed.

The man maneuvers through their shells, Into the tremors of his past.

Sunday night comes again, The house the same as last.

At the door he greets them, Held warm within his grasp.

In the house, the laughter grows, Someone drops a glass.

The night has grown deeper, They saunter off at last.

Sunday night comes again, The house the same as last.

Up the driveway the boy wanders, The empty doorway in his path.

In the house, the laughter’s gone, The glass lay in the sink.

All around are somber faces, Somewhere else, a person weeps.

Down the stairs, the boy wanders, Thinking every step.

The others get up to greet him, He laughs with them a bit.

Still, the night is deepening.

The faces all run dry.

The boy begins to wonder, When was grandpa coming back?

The man maneuvers through the shells, Recognizing one at last.

On the ground he kneels, The roses there he sets.

WILLIAM PAGE

39

CONTINGENCIES Eric Lewis

I 40

t may sound odd, but the person whom I admire most in my family is my Aunt Susan, to whom I am not even technically related.

Long before I was born, however, she and my family were brought together by love and held together by a shared sense of loss.

Suzie awoke on November 27, 1982, to a morning like any other. A tightening just below her ribs wrenched her eyes open, and she threw the sheets and hobbled quickly to the bathroom on stiff legs. She threw herself to her knees in front of the toilet and did not take the time to pull back her hair before hacking last night’s dinner into the bowl. She winced when something splattered off the toilet seat that her husband, Jay, had just learned to keep down and caught her in the cheek.

“Mom had been right about short hair,” Aunt Susan told me when she told me the story a couple of years ago, blushing. “She was right about most things, though, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Did you know that she didn’t even want me to marry Jay? She only let me after your father helped him through college.” She smiled warmly across the coffee table at me, and I courteously returned the favor. “I wish I had cut it earlier,” she continued. “My hair, I mean. You know how people always say how expectant mothers are radiant and glowing?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Lies. All of it,” she said briskly, taking a sip of her coffee. “My pregnancy was probably the most disgusting time of my life. It was rewarding, of course,” she added quickly. “Just disgusting.”

“Do you think that was because of Jay or just in general?” I asked hesitantly.

“Things certainly could have gone better,” she said before continuing.

Jay entered the room to nd Suzie kneeling

before the toilet like a supplicant to some unknown god, her elbows resting on the seat and hands linked above her head which hung limply from her shoulders. A thin strand of spittle hung quivering from her lip.

“Can I get anything for you?” he asked timidly. He stood awkwardly in the doorway, shufing his bare feet periodically and twirling the wedding band on his left hand with his thumb. He wore a brown suit and tie with a white shirt and had a full winter coat tucked under his left arm. “Do you need anything, Suze?” He said in a louder voice to overcome the wet sound of her ragged breaths.

“No,” she moaned. “Why do you ask?”

“I made some coffee for you. I thought it would help you wake up a bit. Maybe it’ll help settle your stomach.” Jay rambled on and seemed worried by Suzie’s refusal to respond.

“It smells really good,” he said, holding the mug before his nose.

“I can’t have caffeine,” she snapped. “I’m pregnant, remember?”

From the stories I have heard, Uncle Jay was not a very patient man, and I am sure that he was angry with Suzie at the moment for being short-tempered with him after all the things he had done to help her. I can also understand Suzie’s position, however. She was frustrated by her morning sickness, and though Jay was just as responsible as she for the pregnancy, he seemed perfectly trim, vibrant, independent, and well-caffeinated.

“I’m taking your car to work today, okay?

I’m worried about the tires. We should really see about getting new ones soon.” Suzie did not answer him but instead walked to the sink and began to wash her noticeably pale face and arms.

“I’ll just leave your coffee on the table,” he continued. “I have to go now. I have an audit at Prairie Farms today.” He kissed Suzie on the cheek after she nished drying her face, and he walked out the door, calling “I love you” over his shoulder.

“I love you, too,” Suzie answered weakly.

She turned her attention to brushing her teeth.

After a few minutes spent presumably getting into his socks and shoes, Jay started the car and pulled out of the driveway.

“I wish I hadn’t let him go like that,” Aunt Susan whispered.

“What else could you have done?” I asked.

“Or would you have done, I guess?”

“You don’t want to know how much time I have spent thinking about that,” she said. “I would have at least told him I loved him, or more likely dragged him back to bed so I could sleep in his arms. Well, that’s what I would have done knowing what I know now.” Aunt Susan sat there for a few minutes gazing at the dark surface of the cup of coffee she held in her lap as I waited patiently.

“Damn it all, Jay,” Suzie groaned as she started his car. The tank was nearly empty, and she came to the reasonable conclusion that Jay had lied about the tires to get out of having to pay for gas. After going well out of her way to ll up and nearly getting sick again at the smell of gasoline, Suzie arrived at work and rushed to see her rst patient. She had only been with him a few minutes and was still going at his teeth with hook and mirror when the dentist, Dr. Whit, stepped in and told her she had a phone call. Suzie followed Dr. Whit to his ofce and took the phone he offered her.

“Hello?”

“Hello. Is this Suzanne Dunstan?” A man’s voice asked.

“Yes it is,” Suzie answered, winding the telephone cord through her ngers. “And who is this?”

“Wife of Jay Dunstan?”

“Yes. But who are you?”

“I’m Ofcer Macklin of the Carlinville Police Department, and I’m sorry to tell you, but there’s been an accident.”

“What do you mean?”

“A car accident.”

“But it isn’t even bad out,” Suzie said,

turning to look out the window. The sky was clear, and the sun beamed down at her through the tinted window.

“Your husband hit a patch of ice while crossing the Route 4 bridge crossing Interstate 55. He lost control of the car and spun into opposing trafc—I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

Suzie’s face blanched, and she saw what was really beyond that window, a world that was bleak, cold, and colorless despite the sun’s promise. Suzie was twenty-four at the time, but she must have aged decades in that single moment. She had gone from young wife to widow in an instant, and was now the type of woman that a policeman twice her age would call “ma’am.”

“That’s not possible,” Suzie stuttered.

“How was there ice? It didn’t snow.”

“The bridges always ice over rst, ma’am.”

“You must have the wrong guy,” Suzie collapsed into Dr. Whit’s chair. “How’d you know it was Jay?” “He had his wallet on him. We checked his ID.” “You’re wrong,” she gasped.

“If it’s any consolation,” Macklin continued. “He felt no pain. He was probably gone before he realized what happened.”

Suzie dropped the phone and turned to look at Dr. Whit. “They say Jay’s dead,” she said. He at rst opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it and just stood in silence. “I want to see him.”

The only other thing Aunt Susan could tell me was that she slept in the passenger seat of Dr. Whit’s car all the way to Carlinville. She spent most of the following week asleep, but whether this change was a symptom of depression or just a simple desire to see her husband alive in her dreams, she would not say.

Aunt Susan may not have been willing to share what she had seen on the Route 4 bridge that afternoon, but from what I have heard of Uncle Jay, I can make an educated guess. Her

41

42

black Chevrolet Cavalier bent at the driver’s side door to embrace a relatively unharmed Ford pickup. Jay’s winter coat would be sitting on the passenger’s seat since he insisted on wearing it only when he absolutely had to.

Somewhere there would be a gray driver’s cap which Jay always wore in public to hide his receding hairline. And Suzie would have taken it all in silence with wide eyes, blank and cold as the sun’s gaze.

When Jay died and left Aunt Suzie a young widow, my parents took her in, and even now, I am closer to the family she created with her second husband than to any of my actual relatives. I guess spilt blood is thicker than that coursing through veins.

What inspired me to learn more about Uncle Jay and Aunt Suzie was not a story, however, but something that I was fortunate

enough to witness myself. Three years ago last July, Jennifer—Jay and Suzie’s daughter—got married. After the wedding, as the song for Jennifer’s rst dance with her groom, Aunt Susan played Chicago’s “Colour My World” on the ute. It was the same song that she and Jay had rst danced to at their wedding. The notes she trilled were soft and seemed eeting at rst, but they resonated in the dark as Jennifer and her newly wedded husband danced in the lone spotlight. I could nally understand how one such as Aunt Susan could, after losing the man she loved after only nineteen months of marriage, continue to live. I guess that is why anyone might dare to love anything as fragile as a human being. Life is a chaos game, a seemingly random and cruel process that sometimes yields beautiful results.

TONY MELILLO

DANDELION BOY Anthony Re’

I started out conned to the grassy vastness, Alone with just my thoughts and desires.

Then you came along and plucked me from my roots, For you saw more in me than I did in myself.

I do not know why you chose me, but I was happy.

You put me in a glass of water and took care of me.

We ourished, for a while, but good things never last.

You’re still here and so am I, but everything seems gone.

I am dying because you plucked me from my roots.

I don’t blame you at all, for I once loved our days.

I realize you gave me life when I needed it most, But now you’ve moved on and naturally so must I. I sit here, again conned, slowly fading, And I realize that my time will soon have passed.

I envy the other dandelions basking in the autumn sun As their green beds slowly fade to gold.

I dream of again being rooted there with them, But instead here I will stay to wilt, soon lost to the ages.

I wish I were spreading my silver tufted fruit free in the wind, Yet here I will stay wilting away with you.

ANDREW BECKERLE

43

THE NICKEL Joseph Zanaboni

Once upon a rhyme, There was a nickel Who was quite ckle And wished he was a dime.

44

“Boy, this world makes little cents,” moaned the angry little ve pence.

“Give me a few days, just a little time And you will see that I can be a dime.”

His wife Nicole patiently listened While her husband’s sweaty coating glistened.

But still, she was not convinced— Only taken back by his recalcitrance.

Nicole, also a nickel, but more humble and meek felt a little tear trickle down her short, shiny cheek.

“Honey darling, who cares what you’re worth?

You are the most extraordinary coin on earth!

Coins like you—how rare, how special.

You are not alone—just ask Abe Heschel!”

But through the windowpane, Nickel could hear the dimes’ voices From their expensive Rolls-Royces Rolling down Unum Lane.

“You deserve to have only nice things, presidential coins who live like kings.”

But at these words, Nicole became sadder.

“Sweetheart, you know I love you no matter.”

And at Nickel’s shrug, She wrapped him in a hug.

They held each other In a great smother

As they had not in such a long time.

She pulled herself near, And he could feel her heart slow And her soft, warm breath blow Gently in his ear.

He pushed her away.

“I love you,” the Nickel started.

“And it may seem half-hearted, But it’s truly true.

I’m just not good enough for you.”

“You are! You are!” she pleaded, But knew that her beau would ultimately go and could not be impeded.

“Why must I be abandoned?” the love of his life demanded.

“Why oh why must I cry and have to say goodbye?”

“Goodbye, teddy bear?

This is quite truly ‘Hello.’

Farewell, lady fair?

We’ll always have Monticello.”

And he chose to leap: Right out of the pocket, Rolling like a spry sprocket, As Nicole began to weep, She watched him roll across the oor And then out through the door To pursue dreams disguised, Fantasies unrealized.

But the Nickel could not recognize What the lowest penny could surmise: When he held her tight in frozen time, They were worth more than any dime.

45

IN MEMORIAM

CHANGE IN MY POCKET

Michael Blair

Chris Brennan

46

I went back to my grandparents’ house today— the place where I grew up and drew smiling purple faces on the plaster walls of the basement— the place where I spooned sugar in my orange juice and later, where I had my rst sip of whiskey.

Still looking left forever blank and straight, You’re searching for the god in which you trust.

But your age has darkened, jaded Liberty.

So much has changed since nineteen sixty-eight Or the days of revolution. Only dust In your old powdered wig. It seems to me That you have lost your value—have no worth.

But behind your face the words are not so dull.

From ancient times the message that still shines: That out of many, one may join, unite Beneath a bird that’s old but maybe still Is relevant. An olive branch, a sign Beneath broad wings, America in ight, Gives reason to believe its mettle, mirth.

But all I saw were tattered cardboard boxes lled with moth-ridden clothes and a dimly lit kitchen, with pots scattered, desolate, across the oor.

ZAC BOESCH

I stood motionless as the memories failed to come: I couldn’t remember the symphony I had once made with those pots and the wooden spoons that Grandma would use to make her warm soup. And I couldn’t strain my face and cry out like I used to when Grandpa would pick me up by the ears with his coarse, loving hands.

All I could do was sit down, huddled on the dusty brown oor and hope that my cool breath might ll the void between past and present, hope and despair.

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SILENT LAST WORDS Joel Geders

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y grandpa, Joel Hammack, started smoking cigarettes in 1939, when he was fifteen. After having his right leg operated on in 1970 because of built up plaque that had hardened his arteries, the surgeons told him he could either keep smoking, have it happen again, and lose a leg, or quit smoking—so he quit. He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer due to smoking on Thanksgiving Day, November 20, 1978. On the morning of December 20, 1978, he had been sleeping when he awoke coughing furiously, and eventually spat up some blood. The doctors ran several x-ray tests and discovered that his lung tumor had grown so large so quickly it was growing over his pulmonary artery, eroding it. It would take less than twenty-four hours for the tumor to rupture the artery, killing him. My grandma, mother, and uncle were called and told of the situation. It was agreed that my grandpa would not be told anything about what was going on.

The day played out as usual, except his family showed up a little earlier than normal that day, but he didn’t mind that—he’d have loved nothing more than for them to decide to live there with him, however unrealistic that dream might have been. Even he didn’t want to be at the hospital. The ever present smell resulting from a combination of urine and antiseptic and owers found only in hospitals annoyed him to no end, and compounding his annoyance as well as adding a somber feel to his particular room was the constant “ping…ping...ping...ping...” of the cardiac monitor he was hooked up to combined with the constant clicks and whirls of the oxygen tank he was connected to through tubes in his nose. The tubes had a nearly unbearable stench of plastic that would have sickened most. The only two things that made the room bearable were his family, and when they weren’t around, all the pictures and “Get Well Soon” cards and bouquets

he had to remind him of them. The room was so full of these colorful ower bouquets of all kinds (yellow tulips, white and red roses, purple lilies, and lilacs of every shade) and many bright, shiny, rigid, paper cards that one almost forgot it was the hospital room of a doomed man and begin to see it as a hospital ower shop .

He began thinking to himself as he was watching television with his daughter, wife, and son. I really hope that doctor didn’t tell them about that blood I spat up. I know it would just make them worry about me more.

For some reason he felt compelled to tell his wife something that happened after he had coughed up the blood and the doctor had left the room something even he really didn’t get.

“Guess who I saw today, Regina,” he said grinning a bit, knowing she’d never in a million years guess who he had seen.

“I don’t know Joel. Who?” she remarked sarcastically.

“Jim O’Toole,” he responded sharply as his grin grew a bit.

She was shocked to hear the words coming out of his mouth. He might as well have told her he had talked to Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He could tell she had no clue how to respond to it.

“Yeah, I know he’s dead.” he told her, his grin now taking up his whole face.

Whenever my mom tells me this part of the story, she smiles and cringes a bit—I laugh. I’ve heard too many stories of instances where my grandpa was an absolute smartass about something most people would have tried to erase to be able to count them. I have always been a fan of the way he handled things. Most people, had they seen and talked to a dead friend, would have given an elegy of what the phantom told them, and how it pertains to the “bigger picture,” but all he did was laugh it off. From the wealth of knowledge I have collected about my grandpa over the years through descriptions of his character, stories about his life, and the general feeling he gave people, if I were ever asked to briey describe my grandpa to somebody, I would tell

them this story, how ever clichéd and unoriginal I may sound.

Later on, at about ve or six in the evening, he was lying in bed, his daughter sitting next to him. He turned his head and looked at his now eighteen-year-old daughter, and he was ooded with all kinds of serene feelings of warmth and contentment and joy.

“You know what, Karen?” he asked his daughter with a soft smile on his face, his eyes shimmering and a little watery.

“No dad. What?” she replied, not quite sure what he was going to say.

“I’ve had a great life. I would be perfectly happy if it ended tomorrow. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want it to, but if it had to end tomorrow, I really wouldn’t mind.”

He could tell his daughter had to force herself to hold back her tears.

Maybe the blood he spat up reminded him of the cancer-related death that he took one more step towards each day, triggering the sentimental side of himself to come out, for however brief a time. I believe that sentimental side to be the real him, but it always hid underneath all the jokes unless he felt a need to show it, and if that’s the case, then I really am his clone (as my mother so often insists). This part of the story really helps me understand my grandpa.

It’s hard for me to admit, but my goofy self is just to cover up the serious person I am inside, the person that only comes out when I feel it is necessary. I think my grandpa was the same way, this story and my mom’s constant comparison of me to my grandpa being my evidence.

At about 9:30, Joel felt that lump of blood in his throat build up again. His daughter was holding his hand. He began thinking to himself again. Why does this have to happen while sh-.

His thought was interrupted as the blood quickly surged up his throat and he had no choice but to spit it out. He didn’t notice his daughter run out of the room to get the nurse, for, unlike before, he kept coughing more blood.

Wi t h e a c h cough, more blood was gushing up his throat, and he felt like he was somebody with the stomach flu who couldn’t stop vomiting.

By the time his daughter returned, he was coughing up handfuls of blood. The nurse ran to the intercom, slammed the button so hard she probably jammed her nger, and yelled out across the oor intercom system, “CODE BLUE! CODE BLUE!” He knew what was happening, and he knew now he did not have much more time as the blood loss started to weaken him.

Soon the room was a frenzy of doctors and nurses frantically trying to save his life even MATT NAHLIK

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though they knew he was going to die anyways, like the soldier dragging his friend back to the med-tent even though he knows his friend is already dead.

It comforted him that, among the chaos, his daughter remained at his side, holding his hand as he entered what he knew would be the nal minutes of his life.

“Dad,” his daughter said to him, her eyes full of tears, her voice high pitched and crackling, “if you love me, and you can hear me, squeeze my hand.” He was far too weak to reply with words, he was far beyond being too weak for that—and she knew it.

J o e l , straining himself heavily, digging up his final bits of strength, with barely enough blood left in him to remain alive even, looked up into his daughter’s eyes and squeezed his hands for the few seconds he could, then, let go, his head falling simultaneously. He fell unconscious and died a few minutes later.

I never knew my grandpa, even though he’s the man I was named after. All I’ve ever known about him are the stories my mom and grandma tell me every now and then. Apparently we would have gotten along well. My mom has always told me I’m exactly like him. She’s often told me how much of a goofy man he was. She tells me—after losing his teeth at the age of twentythree to gum disease—he bought dentures, and would sit on his porch pushing them out of his

mouth and pulling them back in with his tongue to scare passing teenagers.

When I run around the house acting like a monkey (hunched over, eating a banana, making sounds and all), and my mom hears me yell, “I’m a monkey! I’m a freaking monkey!” she always will laugh very hard, look at me with her “Oh Joel” look, and say, “You’re exactly like my dad.” It makes me feel like I have a purpose to my strangeness, however accidental it may be—making my mother feel like her dad never left, just shrunk and became less mature.

Of all the stories I hear, this one has always struck me the most. In my younger years, when I still had leukemia, I thought of it more as one of those stories you connect with through a common enemy—ours being cancer. Slowly, as I grew older, I realized a better connection we had. For all his gooness, my mother saw how serious he was underneath, and she has always seen the same in me. Hearing this story when I was six made me think about how Joel was strong during his battle with cancer, and how I should make him proud by doing the same.

Hearing this story when I was fteen made me think about what was important to me—loving my family. My mom always told me my grandpa’s last words were to her, and he had said, “I love you.” It’s taken me ten years to understand what she meant.

ZAC BOESCH

A NEW EDEN AT LAST for Megan and Luke, May 16, 2008

Bill George It stands to reason that old Adam and Eve despite that sadness with their bloody son and, yes, their monumental fall to grief are models still of man and mate made one, for no one had before them married better.

Who among us now could say the same except these two who sit before us here an Eden of their two lives to proclaim?

Arise, arise, for long winter is past.

Fragrant owers mottle the waking earth.

The time of singing birds has come at last.

God graces us with tender grapes and mirth to celebrate this joyous day with you as you create old Eve and Adam new.

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PHIL SIGILLITO

SLUHBOY

Gary Newcomer

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We couldn’t help but love that boy Who lived so others could enjoy His selessness and swanky grace (Not to mention his charming face).

His school embraced long tradition, Best sports, talent, high ambition.

An intellect unmatched by all, No argument and no close call, Since his ACT proved it true.

There’s nothing sweeter than SLUH blue.

All the rest are jokes: Notre Dame, DeSmet, DuBourg, Rosati-Kain, And what the hell is this St. John?

Oh, it closed, who cares if it’s gone?

No one had ever heard of it.

Are you sure it owned a permit?— In the city?—Well it varies.

It’s a shithole like St. Mary’s Or a center for conception.

(SLUH is the only exception.)

This boy had much to live up to As you can see, but this he knew.

He’s nameless (you can call him Joe) But rose, leaving others below, Becoming the best in each trait That his parents paid to create.

Walking toward his second class He thought, “Can I somehow surpass Myself in any way today?”

(Of course never stopping to pray) But as a proper SLUH boy would, He found a new way to do good.

“I will report for the Prep News.

Attend a game or write reviews, So long as my name shows in type.

Such a great idea. What a snipe!”

However, his next reaction Provided quite the distraction.

A junior fully dressed in black, Not a priest, though under attack— “It’s far too easy to see him,” At his locker, a black beacon.

An endless source of deep despair— Joe could tell from his long, dark hair Studded belt, long sleeves, and tight jeans.

“He’s just one of those painful scenes That you refuse to watch, just skip.

The page you won’t read, so you ip To the part about the hero Much like the emperor Nero— Who saves the city!—What a freak.

Can’t he just turn the other cheek Instead of cutting his thin wrist?

How can these sad people exist?

You know that they are all alike And write page-long poems just like ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m a vampire who hates life too.’”

But as Joe stood, lling with hate, Displaying himself as irate, The black-haired junior grabbed his pen, Ended his quick prayer with “Amen” And ran toward Missey’s class to write An essay showing that the light Always triumphs, defeating night, Despite the cunning shadows’ might.

Stunned, Joe stood there, mouth agape At this unauthorized escape.

Then Joe trudged slowly down the hall, Wondering why he tries at all Since life dealt him this losing hand And gave him nothing to command.

Until none like him could disrupt, His school would always be corrupt.

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THE WAY I FEEL

STORY OF A COMPETITOR

Louis Hotop

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I could write a poem about the man I saw today who was standing in the bitter cold waiting for a bus without gloves or a scarf and I could say that I felt something for him, but that might seem too cliché and me being the “poet,” as you’ve labeled me, would never write anything like that Or I could write about my love for The Creator, who made this beautiful earth and all of its inhabitants—you, me, whales, zebras, butteries, sweet-gum trees—the same creator that made the stale night sky and the magnicent galaxies, but that has been done and you wouldn’t want to hear it again—I’m sure the Creator is tired of it too Or maybe I could tell you about the death of my cousin who died too young and too soon, she was only twelve, and I would tell you how I never felt closer to the members of my family and that we learned the importance of love and other things you’re tired of reading about But I won’t because I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, the reader, who expects me to simply compose something totally original and brilliant—something that no one has ever experienced or ever felt before—and so I won’t write a poem today or maybe ever; not until I’m the only one who feels the way I do.

KEVIN CASEY

Mike Lumetta

T

he photographer knelt off to the side of the wrestling mat, lifting his bulky camera to his eye. He worked for the local paper, covering several small sporting events, including the finals of this prestigious holiday tournament held in the dimly lit gym of some high school, whose name the photographer had forgotten. The other occupants of the gym had created a feverish frenzy as the finalists’ names were announced over the mic. Now, as the action began, parents, coaches, and teammates rained down cheers of encouragement, screams of advice, and yells of disbelief (often at an offending referee) from the stands, forming an incomprehensible sea of noise. Besides these ordinary fans, cheerleaders, dressed in green and white, pounded away enthusiastically with their rhythmic chants, while a group of wild seniors painted red and black, stomped on the stands. With this mayhem surrounding him, the photographer only stared blankly in the direction of the struggling contenders, ignoring the jumping and cheering crowd nearby. He leaned forward and dropped his elbow onto his knee, swaying off balance from the force of his lazy elbow. Yawning, he resumed working, though his shoulders and head remained slump forward.

The photographer contemplated the monotony of his job. Coming out of college a year and a half earlier, he had envisioned a quick rise to prominence and respect. What disappointment he had experienced once he realized the impossibility of his misplaced hopes. For a while the boring work bothered him, but then he gradually began to accept it. His dreams of eventually becoming a lead photographer for the Washington Post, covering meaningful events, like President-elect Obama’s Inauguration in a few weeks, had faded, and were replaced by

apathy and complacency. His editors gave him no important assignments, sending him instead to small sporting events like this tournament: local things for high schools and tiny colleges.

And these events included jobs like today’s, on sports he didn’t even understand. But you gotta make a living, he told himself.

The photographer looked up abruptly as a sudden shriek of pain rent the air. The cry came from one of the wrestlers, the one wearing white—a small, stringy kid with a ’stache and a black cap to restrain his hair. As the ref blew the whistle to stop the match, the kid stumbled away from the center of the ring, still screaming from the agony of his injury. Unable to put weight on his left leg, he collapsed at the edge of the ring, falling to his back. His coaches rushed over to him as the ref frantically signaled for a trainer.

The photographer stood up, staring toward the injured competitor. Wow, that sucks, he thought. That guy’s probably done. Gotta hurt to lose like that. He watched as the trainer tended to the wrestler, stretching his leg and trying to gauge the severity of the injury. The coach, meanwhile, sat anxiously by the wrestler’s head, trying to talk his athlete through the injury.

The wrestler himself leaned his head back and closed his eyes, ghting to block out the pain. With the persistent screams piercing the still gym, the photographer looked away and shifted uncomfortably. He felt like an intruder in someone else’s moment of weakness. It seemed too intimate, too personal. He knew he would want no spectators if he had a moment of such vulnerability, and this guy had a whole gymful.

That dude’s pretty tough, though, the photographer thought.

The photographer glanced toward the scoreboard. He saw that the injured man trailed his purple-clad opponent by ve with only thirty seconds remaining. He should just take care of the pain and sit this one out, mused the photographer.

By the time he returned his attention to the mat, the two competitors had resumed their starting positions. Surprised, the photographer raised

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his camera to eye level. So he’s really going to keep going through that, huh? the photographer wondered as the shutter clicked.

From the time the ref blew the whistle, the match turned into a farce. The hurt wrestler immediately tried to shoot for his opponents’ legs, but his injured leg opped clumsily on the mat.

He tried though, the photographer thought to himself. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s working hard. He wants this thing bad. His opponent contented himself with fending off the desperate grabs and kept his distance, running out the clock. He needed only to block the hurt wrestler with his hands and forehead to ensure

that the handicapped man could not score.

Finally, the hurt wrestler slowly stood up as straight as he could, giving in at last. Then, to the photographer’s astonishment, his opponent straightened up too and put his arm around the injured competitor’s shoulder with three seconds still remaining. The crowd, rising, gave a standing ovation for both wrestlers as the champion helped the hurt man to his coach’s chair. The photographer took a picture of the two very different but remarkably similar men. Then the young man dropped his camera, letting it hang from its strap, and applauded.

MATT GARVEY

THE SQUIRREL Collin McCabe

the same squirrel jumps out in front of the metallic beast every morning around six forty-ve. he stares into its shining eyes while it skids and screeches to a stop, leaving behind its dark tracks. he gazes at its teeth, fearless, trembling, considering running or praying living or staying. his tail icks behind his back, his eyes jam shut, and he does not move. seconds later, the two pearls shine again and the squirrel sees the beast, snarling, wheezing, growling down at him, letting him pass, and giving him another chance to risk his life same time tomorrow.

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UMBRELLA TREE

DAN BAXTER

Alex Madinger

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Water drops refracting golden light lounge idly on leaves of luscious verde.

Silver sh shimmer in liquid air below wondering what it’s like to have wings.

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A candle perched atop a warped iron fork supports the life that made its supporter.

But it came at a small price, a silly price.

I got impatient, and I cut my hand.

A riot of energy comes crashing down to earth, yelling for all to hear in a resounding crash.

Bullets pelt the ground around me, piercing everything not under my umbrella tree.

The wind, the warm Spring winds.

Wild yet tame, a friend yet a force, everywhere, nowhere, totally inconstant but always the same.

The wind is free.

Behind the bright lights of modern life hidden by the strolling dark clouds are the stars, each a ery ball of ominous energy reminding us how small we really are.

ZAC BOESCH

FICTION

Michael Blair I think I’ll write a story tomorrow.

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I’ll take a man to the moon 2and back— place his life of action in my palm like a melting ake of snow.

His life will be mine, his adventures and his loves my own.

He’ll see the world for me and never stop moving, so I can nd comfort in staying home.

The story will end and he’ll evaporate into tiny drops until he’ll leave me completely alone, like the used skin of an orange— dry and lonely, lost without its inside.

I think I’ll write a story tomorrow.