The Shawnee Silhouette is published quarterly by the editorial staff at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio. Subscriptions are available for $2.00 a copy or $5.00 a year. The three issues will be published during Fall, Winter, and Spring Quarters. Submissions are invited in the areas of prose (800 words maximum), poetry, art, and photography.
Staff
Charles M. Whitt, Editor-in-chief
Teresa Lodwick, Poetry Editor
Tamela Carmichael, Fiction Editor
Darrell Andronis, Photography Editor
Fred Lester, Art Editor
Printed by Shawnee State Print Shop Director, Kenneth Powell
Copyright December 1986
All Rights revert back to the authors upon publication
Cover Credit Goes to Janet Nesler
The Shawnee Silhouette, Literary Magazine
Shawnee State University
940 Second Street Portsmouth, OH 45662
Guest Editorial
William Butler Yeats said that when he was a young man he had many ideas, but he had not discovered which ones belonged to him and to no one else. For Yeats, becoming a poet consisted in large part in his discovering those materials and themes that belonged peculiarly to him.
Those things that belong to a writer, and maybe to no one else, may be tied up with a writer's place with a locale, a way of life, a collective experience in which the creative process and the writer's resources meet.
It has not always been easy for the American writer to get into the right relationship to the materials and ideas that may belong to him or her and to no one else. Archibald.. Higbie, tha • failed artist in Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River· Anthology, so identifies with a highbrow tradition that he is alienated from the life of Spoon River, the life he really knows and which is, as a consequence, only inadvertently available to him as an artist. A pathetic figure, Higbie confesses that he was ashamed of Spoon River, Illinois. Trying to rise above his ordinary background, he goes to Rome and Paris, lives among other artists , and tries "to breathe the air that the masters breathed," and to see the world with their eyes. But when he exhibits his works, people look at them and say, "What are you driving at, my friend?/ Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's./ At others it has a trace of Lincoln's."
Higbie thinks he fails because there was no culture in Spoon River. But it is clear that Spo River had a culture, and Higbie fled it only to discover, in Europe, that the culture of Spoon River was still in him, and kept coming out in spite of all his efforts, with the result that he painted figures that looked sometimes like Apollo, sometimes like his countryman, Lincoln. Higbie failed because he could not acknowledge those things that belonged to him.
Like Higbie, American writers have not always been able to get into the right relationship to those things that truly belong to them for the reason that Emerson points out in "The ADlerican S~bolat:": ''as a young nation, we had our culture from one place (Europe) and our duties (the settlement of the land, the building of the nation) from another ! 1 Robert Frost has this notion and this difficulty in mind in his poem "The Gift Outright" when he asserts: "The land was ours before we were the land's." Like Archibald Higbie, we were withholding ourselves from our place, Frost says, and this made us weak.
These insights of Emerson, Masters and Frost make it clear that, because of our history, place is especially important for the American writer. And I say this without wishing to impute some mystique to place. My work, for example, is associated with southern Appalachia, the mountain South. But I do not think you will find any witless yodeling about mountains in my poems. I am aware of a tradition, much in evidence since the late 18th century, which romanticizes mountains and mountain people. The French critic Roland Barthes speaks of a bourgeoise Alpine myth-a mystique about mountains-- which, he says, causes people to take leave of their senses "anytime the ground is uneven." I do not want to participate in this literary enthusiasm for mountains. I am not particularly interested in mountains as mere landscape, or in any place as mere topography or terrain. What interests me, as a writer, is people in their place: how they have coped, what they have come to be as a result of living in that place.
Place makes a difference in people's lives, as Wallace Stevens suggests when he observes: "One is not a duchess/ A hundred
yards from a carriage." Elaborating on the relationship between people and their place, Stevens writes (in a poem entitled "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand"): "There are men of a province/ Who are that province./ There are men of a valley/ Who are that valley./ There are men whose words/ Are as natural sounds/ Of their places •••• The dress of a woman of Lhassa,/ In its place,/ Is an invisible element of a place and, as a poet, in ways of making that invisible element visible. 11
It happens that our place, the Appalachian region of America, being neither north nor south exactly, neither east nor west, but a geographical, historical, cultural and spiritual borderland, has an interesting and cgmplicated past. The historian Carl Degler speaks of the Appalachian region as having a "triple history"--a history shared with the rest of America, a history shared with the rest of the South, and a third, not very well-known history, that is its own. As a poet, I am interested in this triple history, in the individual and collective experiences of the people, and in contemporary conditions and future possibilities that flow from this history.
One of the things that has happened in our Appalachian region in recent years is that we have become aware of ourselves--as a region. We have begun to see across county and state lines and see that we have this conunon history and experience. We have begun to awaken to our situation.
"A society waking up," Kentucky poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren says, "is more apt to write than it is to do anything else." Why should this be so? Why is writing, telling stories, or simply telling, so often the respom to heightened self-consciousness? Barbara Meyerhoff, author of Number Our Days (1979),
offers insight into the importance of storytelling. Meyerhoff's book is an oral history of a group of east European Jews, survivors of the holocaust, now living in a retirement home in California. In a discussion of her book published in The Center Magazine (March, 1980).Meyerhoff explains how she came to the realization that "something which is very familiar and which seems so simple--storytelling-raises quite profound questions about selfknowledge and self-preservation.'"
According to Meyerhoff, socially marginal people, disdained or ignored or stereotyped groups --such as Appalachian people!-- have what a sociologist has called "spoiled identities," the result of having been defined by others. Such people tend to seek out opportunities to appear before others and present themselves as they believe themselves. They want to write their own script rather than be actors in somebody else's play. In the process of telling their own story, writing their own script, they invent themselves, make themselves up.
Like the east European Jews, Barbara Meyerhoff has written about, Appalachians are a marginal group with shared experiences. And much of the current writing by Appalachians is, in part at least, a reaction to what has previously been written about the region. Writers native to the region--Jesse Stuart, James Still, Harriette Amow--whose works are an expression of Appalachia, and not a report on it, began to emerge as early as the 1920's and 1930's. Given our new appreciation for the importance to marginal groups of storytelling, it is not surprising that some of the early work should suggest a connection between reading, writing, and identity. Elizabeth Madox Roberts' novel The Time -2!_ Man (1926), opens as Ellen Chesser, a young Kentucky girl, awakening to an awareness of herself and the world around her,
writes her name in the air with her finger.
Ellen Chesser's awakening to herself is both a unique and a universal experience. Her awakening, in a particular time and place and set of circumstances, is her very own experience. But this sort of ' timing to oneself is an experien of all young people, in all times and places. And certainly Ellen Chesser's awakening is also the experience of the region, the Appalachian region of America, which is in many ways a region waking to an awareness of itself.
The writers collected here are all participa in this on-going awakening. Like Ellen Chesser, they are writing their names--in poems, stories, essays, reflections and recollections.
--Jim Wayne Miller
Jim Wayne Miller is a teacher of German at Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Ky. He is a lecturer and consultant to the Jesse Stuart Foundation.
A clock Is ticking Away
At my life
It's Taking
My years So surely
That's life Away Time Is ticking
I'm aging I sigh
One day It will tick One last time And I'll Die
H. C. Mason
I wish that I c To rid sou l
I have a press re With no effect ! I get depresse !'y sorrov boi l I live past I vish that I Could drain •Y And start 11 A life vithout A life vithout
A life that o To float aroun
We look aroun an Way deep dovn in r Rut all ve fin ' are That are better l e~ · Times of past for tt The of deeds For var von't die Just people die When are veto learn
non't hold me backj I cannot breathe, I've dreamed a thousand little dreams. Give me my life, and I'll give you yours, We've been apart• Together.
Turn back; let me go. The end had some. The sweetness of the new, Has soured with age.
Bread away. Routine.
Life is not the same1 We are not transfixedj We a re not lovers. Love is gone~ Love never was. Breathe anew, Live~
-Sue Lashbrook
When I viev the aovtOf actions ands I grasp a fleetia
As eye surveys t A fleeting charging t~
But alas it quic
Perhaps to
Right here, vie•i
The gifts of prac Begin to 1,uil" a About the pict re
Now nearly rea
To o tl er
To build OV1l co Of tough and ten
Gratefully accept. Gaining living lea
Learning hov to lear• Well satisfies
The winter> of little other valuea a good time for reflecting. I am alone, and the sound that rattles late night air is the sound of my own thoughts spilling out onto a dry, ruled page. I think of a winter ago. and a summer. Come> gone. leaving their wispy residue swirling like cigarette smoke inside my head Obscuring probing eyes that want to make order from a year of unrelated happenings. The task proves too much as I end up with a patchwork that looks too new. Freshly sewn» still wrinkled, and needing years on a closet shelf to make them smooth.
-Taylor Pierce
giant tidal bores like war elephants ransacking the natural grandeur that governs the ricefields blood-sparks bursting mid-air creating barbaric patterns peel off the skin of her teeth the mother wolf gnawed centrality, a strange neuralgia deadens, on the bog of civilization, glaciers reclined a little too long for the Second Flood.
-Syed Khwaja Moinul Hassan
The River
As I hike down the hill to of the Shawnee tribe that once thoughts drift, 1D-, 1liDd s bending at the river's eda,e. out gourd, she cool vat.er stream. The brtJJ1aace of across the crystal clear ri-wer heart.
I then blagine ber tr&ft l.iJt.t decades to the present. Sbe at the river's edge. bat le · water flows brOIID. Ber eyes floating belly-up . ride the current. The j visiting this aighty ri.ar This tragedy, thia seD.fleJ•M __ .,,_,_ life-giving river~overvbelaa her knees, reverently b08II bu "Great White Father. forgl1'e
r1-...r. I think bare. Hy • squaw aparltling aun dances ber the -,re for the fish .. tbey t while 09. of the ops to whispers,
--Slleila :t"ab tree
Last night I laundered memories and wrung my tears out on shadows of the moon. This morning, in wet grass, I wade among them, From those tears will bloom a rainbow on morning's sun and yet another memory.
-Harding Stedler
Yesterday·s desolate, harren emptiness White blanketed stillness Stretched infinitely.
Now, tender green shoots through wastelands.
Gentle white sways on fragile poles. Gold light draws endless energies that awakens all it touches
Barren emptiness ••••
Lost in this day's warmth, -Betty Hoy
Ghosting night soundlessly, an apricot orb with a Picasso face sneaks into the evening scratching surreal etchings on my mind, I mooribathe in tangerine rayscool to the touch, touching me cool. niana silvers as she rises her fingers playing in my hair and reaching deep into my mind until I suffer moon burn.
-Rev~ Benedict Auer
One blue egret Stands in fine iris Crying great white tears Alone
-Martin Burwell
Old broken; r reaeaber cobblestone.
John Sbeirer
Because they take no special pains the sand Is scarlet has the look of painted mud. Downwind, in the part that understands The subleties we choke on human blood And having once seen this, we recognize Beneath the dozers masterly pretense Of order there are several million cries
Unheeded; strands of barb; a wire fence That offers up a brief, transparent view: A contrast for a judgment close at hand• Trees that reach to touch a sky of blue; Bubbles seeping up through scarlet sand.
-Nick R. 7.emaiduk
the frost is on the pumpkin like the peach fuzz on a young boy's chin
the leaves lie in heaps in the gutter like crippled derelicts & the moon the moon sticks out like a triumphant cue ball gloating with white supremacy after having bumped off the rest of the world.
-Ronald Edward Kittell
JttgJ.~i
It was in the mezzanine of the Kricker Gallery late last night when Remhrandt looked at me with wonder in his eye as though he had remembered the night in downtown Amsterdam when we waded in the birdbath at JluFranc's. So long ago, but he remembered. The hour was two beyond the striking of the midnight chime when the city slept, He talked of Cathay and I of sailing west. The night patrol who caught us in the park suggested we go home. Rut with adventure on our mind~ we ·knew we could not sleep ••• so painted naked bosoms on the floodwall for the pirates.
-Harding Stedler
Lupa
The night sounds were man~ crickets chirping, nocturnal birds swooping down on unsuspecting prey, the victim's one cry of agony, and then silence. Lupa's pads noiselessly treaded the worn path by the river's edge. Suddenly, she lifted her keen nose and sniffed the air. Her ears pricked up, and the fur on her nick started to bristle as she sensed something different in the air. Humans!
Slowly--inch by inch--she crept toward a basket Sitting by the river bank. Lupa looked around in puzzlement. Nowhere could her sharp eyes detect any humans, and,yet, she sensed their presence.
Then something strange happened; a feeble cry, and then another feeble cry came from the basket. Lupa sat down by the basket and looked in. The only thing she could see was a piece of cloth moving in a strange manner. Then she heard another feeble cry; she jumped back and growled. Nothing happened; she sat down once more. Again the cry, and again she jumped back, and growled. Once more she sat down; this time nothing happened.
Lupa edged closer to the basket, and she reached in with her sharp pointed teeth and pulled the piece of cloth out. Amazement filled her eyes as she saw two tiny humans lying sideby-side. At first she didn't know what to do; she could eat them, but she was full from an earlier kill. She could take them back to her den where she had three pups waiting for her.
While she was deciding what to do 1 the humans started to cry. She Sniffed one, and then the other one. These humans are just babies; what could have happened to their
mother? They must be hungry. The maternal instinct was strong in Lupa, so,gently, she lifted the babies from the basket, and she lay down beside them so they might reach her milk-filled breats. The babies could smell the milk, and eagerly, they reached out, clutching and pulling until both of them were contented nursing on warm sweet wolf's milk.
Lupa licked their faces with her long red tongue until they were through drinking. She thenput them back into the basket, aacl,vith her strong teeth clasped firaly around the handle, she trotted briskly to her deu where her own pups waited for her return.
- Donna Nichols
The loneliest place I've ever known was an apartment with a half empty closet in a big city.
--Abbra Gray
How do you handle all your problems? Just ignore them - they'll go away.
Well, since I am one of your problems Ignore me I'll go away.
-Rosemary Decker
What · can compare to the beauty of a summer's sky? Huge cumulous clouds warn of impending storms, But like all dangers We enjoy the tantalizing beauty that teases Without heeding the warning of what is to come.
-Rosemary Decker
Loneliness feeds upon my brain like a caterpillar slowly devouring a crisp green leaf, leaving in its path, only the gnawed edges of your once tender memory.
-Elizabeth Michaels
the sun sinks into the concrete canyon the lights of the city come up a new breed comes out tough kids in their tougher cars all cruising as if desperately seeking an answer.
-Gary A. Scheinoha
On the railroad track~ there is variety-misused spice of 1 if e. spent shell cas~s litteG sudden death to squirrels. Muddy creek meanders below the trestle> a beer can wafted in the curren~ Here it is simple; there is still sanity but I cannot stay
-Gary A-Scheinoha
I watch you running
You have no problems playing there worries cares
Things that intrigue a normal child
You get bored with after a while
You have special problems God knows this is true ~ut son I've learned so much from you
I've watched you grow these last three years
You've given me laughter, you've given me tears
You make my problems seem so few When I am busy watching you
So thank you son for helping me grow Your dad has special problems too you know
-Mike Hammons
Like snowflakes falling in the shadow of your bike, Days with you are changing, strangely. No two alike.
-Gary E. Andrews
It's just nothing He said For I have nothing Left to give Only this pause: It may be meaningless But it is free.
-Brian Croth
The phantom is A basement writer Who eats a melancholy Breakfast who cannot Rememher his name Or act on his own :Rest intentions.
-Brian Groth
Kate's Plan
Kate knew it wasn't right to take other people's things. But she also knew it wasn't right for the Poplins to suffer either. So,she took the whiskey and poured it out and floated the bottle down the creek. She had watched old man Poplin stumble along from far down the dirt road, stop on the bridge and take the bottle from his torn, dirty pocket, talk to it kindly, then,in a mean voice, drink big gulps that rolled down his throat like eggs down a gutterspout. Then.reeling and pitching,he had come on across the bridge and fallen heavily against the tree below the limb where Kate sat looking at a robin's nest. Kate saw leaves in his dirty hair. She watched him look around, looked around with him. Then she saw him secure the bottle in the deep wet hole where she had put her foot to climb up and, making shushing gestures to his shiny red lips, he staggered away down the hill toward the Poplin house. Kate could see the chimney sticking up above the grove of trees in the little valley between the hills that hid the house where her friend Jenny Poplin lived. Jenny couldn't come out today. She had chores to do and for some secret reason,Kate couldn't stay and help. Now she knew the reason.
"Ain't 'at awful,Miz Robin?" Kate asked the absent bird. "Anything that would make a man leave hisself go like 'at cain't be good, Miz Robin." _ Kate hung by her knees and reached into the hole retrieving not just the full bottle but another one that was half full. She raised herself up and sat on the fork in the limb and looked at the labels. A noble face stared back and she wondered at how different it was from old man Poplin's. The bottles were sticky and Kate put the fuller one back in the
hole and the other she passed from hand to hand flicking her hand open and closed, feeling the stickiness. She smelled it and took off the lid.
"It smells kinda good long's ya don't take too much," she told the robin, replacing the lid, "but I see why they call it stinkin' drunk." Kate nearly dropped the bottle as she heard the yelling; horrible words and threats! She heard the screen door slam back against the house. Through the leaves she saw down the road where young Dean Poplin ran out and jumped the fence and ran up the road and into the woods. He was in eleventh grade and the cutest boy there. She felt sorry for him, his mouth drawn sadly down as he looked back toward the house before he disappeared.
Old man Poplin stumbled out in the middle of the road then,saying things Kate hadn't heard since Grampa Wheeler got kicked by the mule. Above the trees Kate saw Mrs. Poplin and Jenny and the two smaller girls going up the hill toward the horse barn, her arms spread to herd them along.
"She looks like a mother goose tryin' to get her younguns away from the fox," Kate commented.
When she looked back,old man Poplin was coming up the road!
Kate swung down and dropped the bottle back into the hole and it clinked on the other and she winced. She climbed higher in the tree. The thick leaves of fall were still on the maple tree and Kate couldn't see him from where she hid, but she could hear. Oh,how evil he sounded. · His voice rose and fell, cursing and vowing to 'wail the tar out o' that youngun. Kate ignored the word,but she knew what it meant. Old man Poplin came under the tree and thrust his hand into the hole, his face cast up so Kate thought he had to see her! His tongue hung out; his black look began to smile
and the tongue went in as he came out with the half bottle and rolled around onto his back on the trunk and drank heavily. Kate was scared a moment until she realized there was no way he could get at her in his condition. He dropped the empty bottle in a big round hole where the creek had caused the ground to sink about six feet down. He leaned on the tree and belched.
"Broke 'ees bowl, 'e did," he was muttering. "No more meals for him. Boy orta fine a job. 's big 'nuff to work. Ain't no reason ••• " Kate listened as the old man staggered back down the hill again and disappeared into the yard. She heard him call for Dean, a tone of forgiveness in his voice that made Kate feel sorry for him, knowing he was going into the sad, empty house to be alone. She waited until the screen door slammed before she climbed down again.
"Miz Robin," she said, "you know what we gotta do." Kate retrieved the bottle as she slipped out of the tree, watching over her shoulder down the road. She stepped carefully down the rabbit path among the greenbriars to the creek beneath the bridge and poured the whiskey out. Replacing the cap,she let the bottle float away. As she walked home down the dusty road she thought of poor Jenny sitting, scared probably, up in the horse barn, and Dean somewhere in the woods, Mrs. Poplin, helpless and hugging the little girls, and poor old man Poplin, stone alone in the dark house. As she walked by the house,the goofy pumpkin faces in the windows looked gay compared to the sadness inside. Kate worried that Jenny may not get her homework done for tomorrow and thought of making a copy of her own.
"That won't do," she told herself in a voice like Miss Ponchartrain's.
Jenny Poplin looked tired in class the next day, but she had her homework done. When Kate heard Miss Ponchartrain pronounce 'That won't do: she turned from her halloween drawing to see if it was Jenny she said it to. It wasn't, thank heaven, Kate thought. It was big Bill Trowman. He was the oldest boy in the eighth grade the only one who had to register for the selective service. Bill wasn't a bullv nor was he really mean, but he didn't have a chance to show that. His size and an unconscious smirking smile made everyone sure he was about to do some evil or had just come from doing some and was thinking about it now. He was also clumsy and any accidents were also believed to be purposeful acts of a mean boy. But Kate knew him as a gentle farmer. Kate had met him in the woods up the ridge that ran between her house and his, past the Poplin's. Her cat, Cleopatra, had run off, pregnant and overdue. She had found her, the kittens all delivered but in trouble. She had found big Bill on the road and,with her school scissors,he had cut the umbilical cords from around Kate's cat's kittens, his big hands gently freeing the necks and legs that were so entwined that they all died but one,and he was left crosseyed. Big Bill had been very kind and took the dead babies away so Kate wouldn't have to bury them. He had been the one who had shown her Mi·z Robin may never set on it again and the little babies in the eggs would be mortified. She hadn't,but someone must have, Kate figured, because Miz Robin had gone and left two eggs.
Bill had also warned her about old man Poplin coming that way drunk enough: to hurt a young girl without even meaning to. They had gone on down the road ahead of him that day and Kate had stood on the ridge where she and Bill parted, leaving the road, and watched the old man linger under the tree. Kate had sworn she'd kick his shins if he bothered Miz Robin,but he didn't. He continued down the road and Kate had heard the yelling li~~ ah~ heard again yesterday.
Then Miss Ponchartrain said it was time for the costume party and everyone got on their masks. Bill Haas dressed up as an old lady with a big bust,but Miss Ponchartrain made him take out the pillows. Jenny Poplin was wearing a pig mask,and Kate thought her eyes looked strangely sad behind the smiling pig face. Kate had pointed plastic ears and a robin-hood hat with a feather and used an eyebrow pencil to put freckles on her eheeks,but she had to tell everyone she was a pixie.
But Bill Trowman's costume needed no explanation! He put on a rubber devil mask that covered his whole · head, red as fire and with horns and evil eyes and an evil grin. A red cape and his red shirt and a pitchfork painted red completed the look. He looked just like the devil! A lantern covered with red cellophane lit the room in errie red light,and Miss Ponchartrain let him light a cigar and blow smoke around and turn off the lights so he could wave the lantern around in the eerie mist. Bill laughed evilly and everyone voted for his costume to win. A plan was forming in Kate's head, a plan so bold, so good, that she didn't hear the question Miss Ponchartrain asked and everyone giggled.
''You've been hanging around Bill Trowman too much," the teacher said and everyone laughed again. Kate smiled at Bill and shook her head a little and he began to smile,too. After school, Kate ran after him and skipped along to keep up with his long legs.
"Bill," Kate said, "Why do fools drink whiskey? Don't do 'em no goodness. Makes 'em mean and dirty. Why do they wanna be like 'at?"
"I don't know," he answered, his mind elsewhere.
"Why does people sell it?" Kate asked. "Do they want fools to be mean?" Bill shrugged. "Well, why in the world is there such a thing? Don't do nobody no good. Just makes 'em mean and hateful and stinky so nobody can stay with 'em. It makes 'em hurt the fools they love and that hurts them and then they drink some more an' start all over."
"Old man Poplin," Bill said. Kate started to say 'yes' as if Bill was asking if that's what she meant but stopped herself as she saw Bill looking far ahead. There in the road was old man Poplin down on one knee and one hand and dirty all over like he'd been rolling in it. Kate turned Bill around to face her.
"Bill," she said, "I need your help on a dangerous undertakin'. Are ya willin'?" she asked. Bill turned and started walking, looking ahead to where old man Poplin had gotten to his feet and stumbled on. Kate scissor-stepped along beside him.gesturing and talking excitedly as she defined her plan. Bill laughed to the sky and they took off across the field.
Old man Poplin came up to the bridge and leaned on the rail He was miserably sick. His head ached and his insides were retched out somewhere back down the road. He wanted a drink,but the thought of it made him feel sick again. He began to move toward the tree when he noticed smoke and a red light coming from a hole in the ground!
"Ed Poplin," a deep voice called, solemn as a church bell at midnight! Then a higher, eerie, squeaky voice harmonized with the first and said his name again, "Ed Poplin!" and again, "Ed Poplin!"
Steadying himself on the rail he inched toward the lighted hole and a big puff of smoke came out! As if cleared,he looked down and saw a red lantern held high, silhouetting a strange horned shape. The hand brought the lantern forward,and it lit the evil face, the scowling, darting eyes, the hungry grin, the short curled horns! A pointed tail switched idly like a cat's and the other hand raised the pitchfork to point at him. Then,a demon with pointy ears and an evil little grin looked out from beneath the raised arm and said. "Com' on down Ed!" in a squeaky little voice etched with evil. ":t.et's have another drink."
"Com' on down, Ed, : the devil growled. "It's time for another drink. Com' on down. We been waitin' for ya! ,,
Ed Poplin dropped his bottle and the demon caught it! The devil didn't even flinch. The demon opened the cap and waved the bottle, grinning up at him. He backed away in a sideways circle, found his legs and ran down the road, falling and rolling back up without slowing down. Kate and Bill scrambled out of the hole laughing and watched him go. They were scared by his screams; then>as he found his voice and got to the house, ~hey ran down the rabbit path and away down the creekbed where Bill got out of his costume. They came up through the pasture and through the woods near the road at the ridge just in time to see Dean Poplin going up the road with a shotgun, far ahead of his father, toward the bridge. Then they ran away home.
The next day was Saturday,and Kate came across the ridge and down the road by the Poplin's. Dean was fixing the screen door and Kate leaned over the top rail of the fence and hollered, "Hi.,Dean Poplin! Is Jenny ta' home?" Jenny came out smiling and looking everso pretty. It was happiness in her.
"Wanna go see Miz Robin?" Kate asked her.
"Miz Robin?" Jenny said. "Who's 'at?"
"Com 'on." Kate told her and they ran up the hill to the bridge and skinnied up the tree. Kate looked at the hole in the ground and the one in the tree and wondered if there was a bottle in there. She couldn't remember what she had done with the one old man Poplin had dropped in the hole. She was bursting with her secret as she looked into Jenny's smiling eyes. They sat quietly looking at the next and the two blue eggs.
"Blue as the sky!" Jenny whispered in amazement. Then they heard footsteps on the bridge and then in the gravels on the near end.
"Hi,Poppa," Jenny called and Kate looked down. She scarcely recognized Mr. Poplin. His hair was white as snow, his clothes clean and mended, and his face tired but sober.
''Hello., child," he said kindly. ''What choo doin' up a tree?" His voice was soft and gentle warm.
''My friend Kate' s show in' me Mr. and Miz Robin's nest," Jenny answered. "They got two eggs blue as sky!"
"Uh huh," he said glancing at Kate. "You be careful" He glanced over at the hole in the ground and Kate felt a shiver creep up her spine. Then he went on down the road. Kate and Jenny climbed down and Kate stared after him.
"How'd your poppa's hair get so white?" she asked.
"I don't know," Jenny answered. "He prayed all night long,and Monnna said it was the Holy
Ghost comin' into him or the devil goin' out. I don't know. I sure like him this way though." Kate felt a little guilty, a little pleased.
"Let's go over by Bill Trowman's," she said.
"Bill Trowman?" Jenny sneered. "How come you hang around that old dumb, mean boy?"
"Oh,he ain't so bad," Kate defended. "He's like everybody else. They got their purpose in the world." The girls skipped off down the road. Jenny called to her mother as they passed the house and told her where she was going. Mrs. Poplin was standing hugging Mr. Poplin and admiring Dean's handiwork as he opened and closed the screen. Kate smiled to herself and breathed deeply to hold back the tear at the corner of her eye.
-~ary E. Andrews
Orville Ramey
My stereo pumps love music into my ears: lovers abandoned, lovers unfaithful) lovers searchin~
1 o v e r s , 1 o v e rs\ 1 o v e rsbut not real love, only make-believe.
The radio station purveys a facadea love without 1 you fill in the blan~ sacrifice, or maybe give and take. And I hear my students playing out what they hearfourteen year olds prentending to be Clint Eastwood and jumping from girl to girl, afraid they can•t produce the right notes to beat upon their walk-man brains
~Rev. Benedict Auer
Rhythms beat upon my brain. The yellow eves of sin Cast aside my shadow~ The conceptual flash That once conceived me now takes me awa~~ lHiss. All is void~
Huge vacuums of space Crushing then exploding 1 Molecules of time.
I am no more. Was I ever?
-Sue Lashbrook
the world is cruel & discerning lunatics lounge in luxuriant chairs scoundrels lead our procession & as the toads crouch before the fly & the cats pounce on other wings banjo beggars wail their tales & strum for petty charge songs of the sun & moon the sun a sore a fever in bloom the moon a leper the sun its wound in a sky clotted with stars.
-Ronald Edward Kittell
Aquatic eyes entwined genial arms and honey-tongued kisses eased a fragile petal from a shattered spirit
-Catherine Elrod Liddle
doom has found its prey bombs larger than the languid space between our ears & when the sun comes down & meets the earth like a blow torch you'll come streaming thru the door & shimmy with laughter your peaks & valleys all ajar & we'll serenande the blaze then waltz wilt & fade into the dark souls of flowers.
-Ronald Edward Kittell
FICTION CONTRUBUTORS
Gary Andrews - Poet, songwriter, guitarist of Scioto County.
Sheila Crabtree - s.s.u. Elementary education major. Winner of The Shawnee Silhouette Invitational Poetry Contest, 1986
Donna Nichols - An Ohio University psychology major.
ART CONTRIBUTORS
Orville Ramey - Recording artist and painter from Blue Creek, Ohio.
Debbie Spears - Poet, artist, and singer from Ironton, Ohio.
PHOTOGRAPHY CONTRIBUTORS - .~
Darrell Andronis - Photographer and member of Shawnee State student senate.
Janet Nesler - Author of The Show Must Go On, and Glimpse of !. Soul. - -
POETRY CONTRIBUTORS
Rev. Benedict Auer - Author of Touching Fingers With~
Russell Bolen - Viet Nam veteran and cat poet.
Martin Burwell - First time contributor from Detroit, Ml.
Rosemary Decker - Keynote speaker at the 1986 Writer's Conference and stars as Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst.
Abbra Gray - Contemporary Columbus poet.
Brian Groth - First time contributor from Queens, N.Y.
Mike Hammons - SS student and previous contributor.
Syed Hassan - First time contributor from West Lafayette, Indiana.
Ronald Edward Kittell - Author of Raw Sienna and a sign technician in Auburn "wA:'
Sue Lashbrook - Former SS student and a previous contributor.
Catherine Elrod Liddle - Marshall University journalism major.
H. c. Mason - SS student and first time contributor.
Elizabeth Michaels - Follower of the contemporary poet, Nikki Giovanni.
Taylor Pierce - KY. Poet and previous contributor. Gary A. Scheinoha - First time contributor from Eden, WI.
John Sheirer - Ohio Univ. English major.
Harding Stedler - Former Arkansan and consultant to Shawnee Hills FOetry 'Workshop.
Fredick E. Van Nostran - Science teacher at South Point High school in Ohio.
Nick R. Zemaiduk - First time contributor from Hillsdale, MI.
