The Meadowland Review
Cover Image Time Collage
By Nancy Scott
Megan Duffy
Poetry Editor
Lauren Cerruto
Poetry Editor
Jennifer Walkup
Fiction Editor
Ray Caramanna
Photography Editor
For submission guidelines please visit www.themeadowlandreview.com Questions or comments: contact@themeadowlandreview.com Copyright Š 2011 by The Meadowland Review. All rights are one-time rights for this journal.
Poetry M.J. Iuppa Ann Douglas Chris Haven Margaret Gilbert Buxton Wells Jeff Whitney Michael Diebert Matthew Haughton David McAleavey Alyse Bensel Djelloul Marbrook Jane Rosenberg LaForge
Waking, all the same Snow-pack February 1997 The Scarf Squiggling Like Saxophones Another Uncomfortable Thought Starlings The Coming Out of Spring Blossoming pear with goldfinch Zinnia Belated Valentine What belongs to us On the Day of the Military Coup Vowels
3 4 5 6 8 9 11 12 14 15 16 17 19 20
A Fine Winter Day
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Fiction Kristy Feltenberger
Photography and Art Nancy Scott Jessie Carty Colleen Purcell
Contributors
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Figures in the Park Montage An Opening Fear Bridge Swetzville
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Poetry
Figures in the Park by Nancy Scott Page 2
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M.J. Iuppa Waking, all the same Despite a brief reprieve, more snow falls in its sugarcoated hush, sealing every crack and crevice. Hinges will be stuck this morning. Ducks will sleep beneath the lilacs. The mail truck will wobble along . . . What will pry me from this ennui? Which jar? My want of _____? Odysseus? (I haven‘t thought of him in twenty years) A pair of cardinals flirt incessantly in the crabapple tree– deep red & dusky green– a cautionary tale.
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Ann Douglas Snow-pack Snow slips the rises deepens roadsides, rots. Gravity‘s adipose slide—fat dame on the tracks or it could be a man rather sinuously slung. Yes, yes it‘s dwindling snow but across the back slope why drag on the world so entreatingly winters later, long into the slick skull-pan of a lesson and it in return bucking back.
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Chris Haven February 1997 The imprint of a shoe will survive a melting. Sole edges laced with snow. Footprints skirt brick buildings. They stand undedicated. A child traces his finger across the grout. Later, they will be understood as places of worship. More snow coming. The prints will disappear. We will have to make our own. I lay them down, peninsulas without connection. They will only carry so far. My father died last night.
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Margaret Gilbert The Scarf I imagined you wearing this in Paris, a mantle of pale purple, the color of plums, endlessly long and winding. When Paris is both grey and cold, it‘s bright and warm, you wrote, and sent back your ―warm bright wishes‖ to me far away in America. Lancelot wore upon his crest the scarf of the maid of Shalott in battle, the day he told her he couldn‘t love her, Geraint of King Arthur‘s court rode into the wind with a purple scarf at his neck to seek adventure. And Madame Bovary, who killed herself for love, gave Rodolphe a seal engraved with ―Amor nel Cor,‖ a scarf, and a cigarette case. At night, like Emma, I dream of running away to Paris with you. But you were away for two whole days or so you wrote, and the package didn‘t arrive in time. They don‘t deliver things here, you wrote, they disappear. Don‘t send anything Express Post. Nights you appear in my dreams like a siren, a sorceress luring me on to the shoal, swathed in purpleness, silk to the touch, but as I wake you vanish like smoke, leaving me alone. It‘s been days since you‘ve written. Page 6
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An Opening By Jessie Carty T he M eadowland R eview Spring 2011
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Buxton Wells Squiggling Like Saxophones
Think, that a man of this century— this century to be named later—who is without a cell and so is beyond recall is like that twentieth century man who, without a car to convey his person, was a man of undampened zest for advancement. Think that he was walking, maybe to or from some fornication with words, but it was not aerobic work. Think of a flowering as a business, cut along the bleeding edge of his card.
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Jeff Whitney Another Uncomfortable Thought Out on the deck some winter night I pause from the broom to ponder starlight crossing centuries ago into the Milky Way in order to arrive at this very moment. Light as old as the universe itself, I recall, when I realize we ourselves are equally as old. We were there at the beginning too. We were part of the shock. What can we now do, knowing our days are sweet and meaningless as a bowl of dried fruit consumed out on the deck some winter night beneath the very stars we become?
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Bridge By Colleen Purcell Page 10
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Michael Diebert Starlings Dad fixed faucets, built shelves, ate what was put in front of him. Nights when he slid open the glass door and shot BB‘s at the tops of trees, he had a pure, malicious motive in his eyes. Merely being there we egged him on. The starlings, he said. Noisy, ugly, diseased, speckled swarms direct from the Old Testament, expanding, shrinking at the slightest tweak of the ethereal fabric, prophesying in their squawk the world would wipe itself out just fine, without their help. The glee of hearing that gun go off was sweet as chess pie, pure as boiled water. Nothing ever fell, but we knew he always aimed. Maybe he wished to blast a permanent pinhole in the sky and the sky was Father Knows Best, or he wanted neither to kill nor scare but stall sundown, or time was a theory he needed to obliterate, he who wouldn‘t harm anything bigger than his hand.
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Matthew Haughton The Coming Out of Spring Small town winds shake copper out of the limbs. The spring-births learn their songs. The songs diverge as all songs must diverge; songs from branches, songs from ground. This time around, no one else notices as the wind veers within the falling copper‘s interval. Along the bark mushrooms grow in steady tiers, spiraling upward in fleshy runs, while below — across the roots and bladed grass, the copper heaps.
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Swetzville By Colleen Purcell
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David McAleavey Blossoming pear with goldfinch Tight bud-clusters, pinkish just two days ago, today white bells & wide beyond bell, as petals open back flat away from each other, stretched, oblivious: like putting up a billboard. Come fall: miniature fruit all over the decorative tree occasional perch for catbird & goldfinch prettily instructed by their DNA which in us builds bliss, a way of being stunned open.
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Alyse Bensel Zinnia Give up on classification. Autumn bouquets are the likeness of scraped paint when you looked close at Monets lined up, hung up, on a freshly painted wall. Think of the luna moth we put in a sealed glass jar. It came back to life in the dark cabinet. Its fluttering wings matched the tick of the housecat‘s eyes. We often misname common flowers. A gerber daisy is taken for the zinnia. Its mass of leaves shoots up pink after pink flower, even after October frost. All the bees are dead. No cross-pollination except in the greenhouses where you rub stamen to stamen. Be fruitful and multiply. Flowers, now all colors, die and fade like butterflies that cling to the inside of glass sliding doors, mistaking silica for sugar.
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Djelloul Marbrook Belated Valentine I‘ll tire of climate before I tire of you, not the climate, I didn‘t say that, but all that could do without me this is what I know of love and of song, that for a thousand years every day you choose to endure me
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Djelloul Marbrook What belongs to us What would Emily Dickinson make of this, that some in their delight think of others and others think it all belongs to them? I often wonder what she‘d think and how she‘d say it or if she would; all I‘d have to say to her is this is my homage.
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Fear By Jessie Carty Page 18
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Jane Rosenberg LaForge On the Day of the Military Coup The age begins in the eyes— not the soggy folds beneath the escarpment, but the muscles and ridges that presage the arrival of color and light, in a congenital alignment—so that age surges asymmetrically in the iris, as if a flood with hesitant fingers, regretting the damage it cannot avoid. Not the scorching knowledge of the gravest of blades, or the desperation of red petals to be noticed before they are discarded, but a temperate wisdom, seeded and groomed, like the cool resignation of the clouds. Low, low is the line of our vision, the gauze we warp ourselves in, our fame and our vigilance: it is aching to fray at the first moment of promise, an error in refraction, like pressure relieved in faults and tectonics, the measure of the earth and a soul deprived of its share.
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Jane Rosenberg LaForge Vowels 1. I have no knowledge of Hart Crane and his flight over water, nor of the Snake River and the baby that comes back as God‘s hostile bequest. I was not born to symmetry or the movies or a benighted soul of breath and yet the want of desire, the patterns and the consonants, speak of something so much different. 2. The animals that do not plead for breath or language; that do not convert or possess; they nip as if words were lettuce, stems and circulation made transparent. They drink, they swim; there is no distinguishing wheat from the juices; and in my mouth I accumulate the worlds their tongues have neglected. 3. The third is a phantom, the face apportioned in ambiguous percentages: so much for verve, so much for satire, this much for repetition. The objective in looking at faces is to see in which direction they will detach from the scaffold of their original bright intentions. Page 20
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4. Before sound catches up to this picture, before breath sinks this letter into quicksilver: let me remember these angles and riches, the curl of warm toes, the blond joy of these ringlets: the climb we undertook upon one another‘s surfaces. I thought I might be spice and alabaster, when I was just a façade of juts and false landings, and the constitution of your ankles was so frail, so if there was an echo I would think nothing of leaving it unanswered.
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Fiction
Montage By Nancy Scott Page 22
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Kristy Feltenberger Gillespie A Fine Winter Day My twin sister Corinne enters our bedroom clutching five gift boxes overflowing with khaki pants and bulky sweaters. She drops them on our coffee stained carpeting before adding her red leather jacket, matching gloves and purple Doc Marten boots to the heap. I fling the pens and torn note book papers that were scattered across my unmade bed as a gesture for her to sit down. Corinne embraces the stuffed reindeer which is a gift from our Uncle Ted, who is a hoarder and auction addict; therefore each one of the twenty-eight family members receive an annual Christmas and birthday gift from him. Two days prior was Christmas day and we celebrated at Grandma and Pap‘s. Corinne spent most of the day huddled in Pap‘s recliner, clutching that reindeer. Our relatives assumed she was suffering from monthly cramps or a nasty stomach bug. It helps that one doesn‘t have to try too hard to disappear in a large family. Before I have a chance to ask how she is, she snaps, ―Chloe, I‘m fine.‖ I nod and finger the gaudy ring on my left pointer finger. ―Can I make you a cup of tea? It always makes me feel better.‖ Crap-what an incredibly stupid thing to say. She doesn‘t have a sore throat for crying out loud. ―No, what I need is a cigarette,‖ she says while riffling through her purse which reeks of smoke and cheap perfume. With slim shaking fingers she lights a Marlboro Light. I almost comment on how pissed our mother and step-father will be if they smell smoke but I light a peach scented incense stick instead. ―Are those gifts from Jack?‖ Corinne glares at me. ―I‘m sorry, that was another stupid thing to say.‖ ―Yes, they‘re from Jack. Evidently Jack assumed that clothes from J.C. Penney would cheer me up. What am I, seventy and spending the holiday in Aspen? The only thing that‘s cheering me up is this cigarette. He doesn‘t allow anyone to smoke in his precious truck.‖ ―Corinne, I‘m so sorry,‖ I say while reaching to stroke her long tangled hair but she swats my hand away. ―What have you done all day?‖ she asks while brushing a tear from her eye and slowly exhaling smoke. ―I remained in our room writing crappy poetry and sleeping. It was boring.‖ ―It sure beats my day.‖
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―What was it like?‖ ―I really don‘t want to talk about it,‖ she drops the cigarette butt into a cold cup of coffee. There is a rap on our bedroom door. I spray CK One perfume to mask the lingering smoke. ―I really don‘t want to speak to her either,‖ Corinne mutters while I open the door a crack. ―Chloe, how are you feeling?‖ My mother‘s arms are folded tightly and the muscles in her jaw are twitching. ―I‘m fine.‖ ―Would you like some tea?‖ I shake my head vehemently from side to side. Why was she asking me if I needed tea? I was fine. ―Make sure you rest.‖ My mother opens her mouth as if to say more but turns away instead. I ease the door closed and glance at the clock which reads 7:00 pm. Mother Love Bone blares from the speakers and Corinne sings along, ―Chloe don‘t know better. Chloe‘s just like me, only beautiful.‖ In turn, I start to cry and it is she who once again comforts me. ―I‘m fine but I‘ll tell you everything if it will make you feel better.‖ She hands me a fistful of clean tissues and rubs my back in rhythmic circles. ―I would have gone with you,‖ I sniff. ―I know that but I didn‘t want both of us to suffer with Jack for six hours in a confined space,‖ she laughs bitterly. ―I hope to never see him again.‖ ―Was he an ass?‖ ―He is an ass. He actually asked if I wanted to go to a basketball game tonightunbelievable.‖ She rolls her eyes while more tears form. ―And after the procedure we stopped at a diner because the ass was hungry and fast food wasn‘t up to par. It was cold in the truck, so I sat across from him in the tattered booth, cramping and bleeding. While he dipped nugget after nugget in honey mustard sauce, I imagined plucking the steak knife from the man adjacent from us and stabbing Jack through his shriveled heart. I suppose it‘s mainly my fault because I should have realized from the get go what a spoiled little boy he is.‖ ―He seemed charming, at least in the beginning. However, as time went on, I didn‘t like how cocky he was; as if going to school to be a physician‘s assistant is right up there with brain surgery. And I didn‘t like how he teased us for majoring in psychology. And the fact that he gave you morning after pills a week later- what an idiot.‖
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She laughs. ―I‘m returning the gifts I bought him from American Eagle. The procedure was four hundred dollars and he didn‘t offer a dime.‖ She bites her lip and shakes her head slowly from side to side. ―Bastard,‖ I mutter while lighting two cigarettes. ―Well, it‘s over.‖ ―Did it hurt? Are you in pain?‖ ―I wish that I was in pain for doing such a horribly selfish, evil thing. But it only feels like a heavy period.‖ ―Thank God you‘re ok. I kept glancing at the clock all day. Where did you have to go that it took so long?‖ ―We had to drive to Maryland because that was the closest place. I wanted the day to be frigid and gray but it was clear and crisp and beautiful- at least on the trip there,‖ Corinne sighs. The only part of winter that we like is the brief exhilaration of wind whipping through our skin, muscle and bone like shards of ice ricocheting off of withered tree branches. We think of spring as a bipolar season, summer as manic, fall as anxious and winter as melancholy. ―Were there any protesters?‖ I ask. ―No and the building was nondescript like a post office. However, we had to be buzzed in and there was a plastic partition at the receptionist‘s desk and it was smudged with finger prints. She made me pay even before I finished filling out the paperwork. And then we sat in the grungy waiting room.‖ ―Were there a lot of couples there?‖ ―Not really. Mostly just women and I was surprised that they were of all ages; for some reason I was expecting only teens.‖ ―I thought the same thing.‖ ―After an eternity sitting next to the ass, who kept making snide remarks about the various cautionary signs concerning STDs, I was summoned one step closer on my quest to see the wizard. I peed in a plastic container and held it up to the light. I noticed how gold and cloudy it was. I really need to drink more water. Regardless, a few minutes later a stocky woman in scrubs whose nametag read ―Bonnie B.‖ announced I was pregnant- duh. Then I was forced to speak to Counselor Brandy who looked like she was twelve. Her office was so small our knees nearly touched. She asked several times if I was absolutely positive that I wanted to go through with it. ‗This is permanent,‘ she emphasized as if I couldn‘t grasp the concept. After I convinced Counselor Brandy that I was at least partially sane; Bonnie brought me to another waiting room. 9 to 5 the movie with Dolly Parton was on but no one seemed to be watching it. No one said
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anything. Some stared off into space with tears threatening to fall, others bit their nails and tapped their feet, and the remaining women angrily flipped through out- dated magazines. Finally Bonnie B. led me into a surgical room which looked just like any other gynecologist office only with more medical equipment. I was allowed to keep my socks, bra and sweatshirt on. The elderly doctor kept urging me to shimmy my backside lower, just like Dr. Stevens does. I wish that I could say that it hurt like hell but it didn‘t. I just laid there and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about what the whirring sound meant. After the procedure, which took like five minutes, Bonnie B. led me to a recovery room, which was bare except for a few chairs and a table. I was handed a light sedative, enormous maxi pads, apple juice and peanut butter crackers. Bonnie B. strongly suggested that I use birth control from then on and ordered that I make an appointment with my gynecologist within a few days. After about twenty-minutes, I was free to leave. And that was it.‖ ―Wow. How do you feel? I mean emotionally?‖ ―I hate to admit this even to you but I feel relieved. As if this were an inconvenience like a cavity.‖ ―Mom and Pete would have raised it, or some other couple.‖ ―Chloe, are you trying to make me feel worse? Don‘t you think I know that you‘re the good twin?‖ ―I‘m sorry but for once I don‘t know what to say or do to make you feel better.‖ ―I think that the only thing that will make me feel better is time. What a cliché.‖ Corinne went on to explain that she had been two months along and that the baby had weighed about an ounce, had started to develop a head, eyes, a mouth, legs, arms, and organs including a heart and lungs. I wonder if the baby was a boy or a girl and for some reason think it was a boy. We talk until Pete bangs on the door and tells me to ―get off the phone and go to bed.‖ Were Pete and Mom ignoring Corinne for what she had done? I went to sleep that night thinking that Corinne‘s relief might one day grow into sadness, guilt and regret. Although my sister and I are nineteen- years- old and technically adults; it‘s as if we‘re in limbo with half of our bodies stuck in childhood and half in adulthood. Corinne fell asleep clutching the stuffed reindeer. At ten o‘clock the next morning a message is left on my cell phone. ―Chloe, this is Bonnie B. from the clinic. We just want to make sure that you are fine and well. Please give us a call back at 443-391-0054.‖ ―I‘m fine,‖ I whisper while waking up alone in my twin bed clutching a stuffed reindeer. * Page 26
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―So what do you think?‖ I ask. It‘s a Saturday afternoon in mid February and my girl friends and I are lounging in my bedroom. ―What happens next?‖ Liz asks while wrinkling her small, pointed nose. ―Nothing, that was the end.‖ ―But it doesn‘t feel complete,‖ Celeste says. ―What do you mean?‖ I ask. ―First of all, I don‘t understand. What‘s wrong with Chloe? Is she Schizophrenic?‖ Celeste asks. I light a Kool brand cigarette and lay my head against the wall. ―Corrine is Chloe‘s alterego.‖ ―Oh, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,‖ Liz says. ―Not really because Chloe is not all good and Corrine is not all evil. No one is,‖ I point out. ―Then why did Corrine call Chloe ―the good twin?‖ Liz asks. ―Chloe summons Corrine whenever she has to make a difficult decision,‖ I close my eyes and exhale a ring of smoke. ―I think that it would be more interesting if you talked about Jack more,‖ Celeste suggests. ―Jack isn‘t supposed to be the focal point,‖ I sigh. ―No offense, but if you‘re serious about becoming an author, you‘ll have to learn to accept criticism,‖ Liz adds. ―Why do some people think that adding no offense to whatever insulting thing they say excuses their rudeness?‖ ―Easy girls. Let‘s talk about something else,‖ Celeste says while placing a Rusted Root CD into the player. ―What‘s your view on abortion?‖ Liz stares directly at me. ―I don‘t think that it‘s all right or all wrong. It‘s one of those issues that fall in the gray area.‖ ―It‘s pretty clear to me considering its murder,‖ Liz‘s cheeks flush. ―It‘s also considered a medical procedure,‖ I say. ―So what concert are we going to next?‖ Celeste asks. ―Its wrong period,‖ Liz fires back. ―I wouldn‘t make absolute statements until I‘ve walked in another person‘s purple Doc Martens,‖ I retort. ―It‘s different when it‘s morally wrong,‖ Liz says. ―Get. Out. Of. My. House,‖ I feel my nostrils flare and my left fist clench.
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Liz‘s mouth drops open as she grabs her brown purse made from hemp. Like Tinkerbelle, she flits down the steps before slamming the front door. ―What was that all about?‖ Celeste asks. She inches closer to me and strokes my hair. ―I can‘t stand judgmental people- especially when they‘re supposed to be my friends.‖ ―Is there something else that you want to tell me, Talia?‖ Celeste prods. ―No. I‘m fine.‖ * I often feel like a well-worn 3x3x3 Rubik‘s cube with peeling, fading stickers. Perhaps Corrine is the top level, Chloe the bottom, and whatever is left of Talia in the center. In real life, the ass‘s name isn‘t Jack and he‘s not my boyfriend. His actual name is Mark and he‘s my uncle. Like Uncle Ted, the character in my story, Mark is an auction junkie and borderline hoarder. He‘s also the one who insisted that I abort the pregnancy. He‘s not my uncle by blood but by marriage. Mark is married to Aunt Sherrie, who is my mother‘s youngest sister. Mark began to pluck the feathers of my innocence six years ago, when I was thirteen and he twenty one. It was Easter Sunday and the entire family was gathered at Grandma and Pap‘s. Half were eating dinner on the sun porch and the rest at the dining room table, including me. My eight year old cousin Alexia sat to my left and my forty- some- year-old Uncle Don sat to my right. I was spooning potato salad onto my plate when Aunt Sherrie entered the room. ―Mark, this is everyone, everyone, this is Mark,‖ she giggled. Aunt Sherrie and a God of some sort sat in the last remaining chairs across from me. The first thing I noticed was his mouth- full lips and straight white teeth. Then his five o‘clock shadow, prominent nose, wavy black hair, and finally his piercing green eyes which at some point met mine. I had felt tingles between my thighs before, but these tingles were like the Grand Finale of a Forth of July fireworks exhibition. With Mark at the table, dinner was both excruciating and fascinating. I divided the time between fantasizing about touching Mark‘s body and comparing my body to my aunt‘s. Her round, full breasts were like cantaloupes whereas mine were barely plums. However, the rest of her body was thick like rope, whereas mine was trim yet muscular from years of ballet class. Her facial features were soft and pretty but so were mine. However, she smiled so easily, whereas my lips were typically pursed in a frown. Once my favorite aunt, Sherrie was now my competition. *
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Several Sunday‘s later, my mother asked if I would bring her a Diet Coke from the fridge in the basement. Reluctantly, I ambled down the rickety steps. Mark was making himself a cocktail behind the bar. ―Hi, Mark,‖ I said with a surprised grin as I slid onto a bar stool. ―What‘ll it be?‖ ―Just a Diet Coke for my mother, please.‖ ―And what would you like?‖ He smirked. ―I guess a Sprite.‖ ―Nah, I‘ll make you a Screw Driver instead.‖ ―What‘s that?‖ I wrinkled my nose. ―It‘s just vodka and orange juice.‖ ―Then why is it called a Screw Driver?‖ ―In the 1950‘s, American engineers working in the Middle East oil fields would mix vodka into small cans of orange juice and mix it with a screw driver.‖[1] ―Oh.‖ While he mixed the cocktail, I noticed a tattoo underneath the right side of his white T-shirt. ―I didn‘t know you had a tattoo,‖ I exclaimed. He pulled up the sleeve of his T-shirt, exposing a black dragon. ―You can touch it if you want.‖ I reached across the bar and gingerly touched his tattoo while my heart raced and chills ran up and down my entire body. He tilted my face towards his, as if he were about to kiss me, however he abruptly let me go when my cousin Matt bounded down the steps. ―Enjoy the orange juice,‖ he winked at me while I backed out of the basement clutching my cocktail and my mother‘s Diet Coke. ―What‘ll it be, Matt?‖ * I grew bolder as the months passed. Once I followed Mark upstairs and waited for him outside of the bathroom. When he emerged, I took his hand and led him into a guest bedroom, which my mother and Aunt Sherrie used to share. ―What do you think you‘re doing?‖ he whispered as we fell side by side onto the bed. He stroked my hair as I replied, ―I just want to talk.‖ ―About what?‖ he fingered my lips and cupped my chin. ―Do you think I‘m pretty?‖ I asked stupidly. ―Dangerously so,‖ he said before crushing my lips with his. His hands slipped beneath my blouse before he stopped suddenly. ―We can‘t do this, Talia.‖ ―Why?‖
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―You know why. Pretend this never happened,‖ he said as he got up from the bed and walked swiftly toward the door without a backward glance. * After that encounter, my goal was to tease and tempt him whenever possible which was much easier in the summer months when I could parade around in a bikini. However, the summer I turned sixteen was the worst summer of my young life for it was then that Mark proposed to Sherrie. They married the following spring and I spent the majority of the time throwing up in the church restroom. At the reception, I drank watered down Screw Drivers and remained in the shadows of their wedded bliss. * Late that night, in my bedroom, I gathered every birthday and Christmas gift that Mark had ever given me: a small box to house trinkets, a red journal made of pleather, a green cubic zirconia ring, a faux silver plated writing pen, a stuffed swan wearing a ballet costume, a pink locker mirror, bangle bracelets and a black beaded purse. I wanted to destroy all of it but when I picked up the stuffed swan, all I could do was cry. * Less than a year later, Aunt Sherrie gave birth to a daughter. Without consulting me, my mother said that I would be more than happy to watch Hannah whenever they needed some alone time, which turned out to be that summer. Mark insisted on picking me up, so I nervously climbed into his new red truck. I wish that I could say that I felt no butterflies but they were fluttering throughout my entire body. ―Hi Talia,‖ he said with a wide grin. ―Hi,‖ I said stiffly. ―Do you mind if I have a smoke?‖ ―Sorry- no smoking in the truck.‖ I shoved the cigarette packet back into my purse. ―I have Altoids if you want,‖ he said, fishing in the middle compartment until he found a tin. ―Thanks, but I hate cinnamon.‖ He nodded and fiddled with the stereo. ―Strawberry Wine‖ blared from the speakers and he sang along, ―My first taste of love, oh bittersweet, green on the vine, like strawberry wine…‖ I couldn‘t help but laugh. ―So Aunt Sherrie has brainwashed you into liking country, huh?‖ ―It‘s not half bad,‖ he admitted. ―Who sings this song?‖ ―Deana Carter,‖ he replied. ―Let‘s keep it that way,‖ I joked. Page 30
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He reached over and played with the threads hanging from my jean short cutoffs, before his fingers traveled higher. I closed my eyes, rested my head against the leather upholstery and didn‘t stop him. * Like clockwork, with each passing birthday and Christmas I would receive another gift from Mark: strawberry scented body spray, a jewelry box with a plastic ballerina, Altoid tins in every flavor but cinnamon, fluffy pink slippers, earrings which left green marks on my ear lobes, and lastly the stuffed reindeer. * The night of the abortion, I gathered all of the gifts and shoved them into a black garbage bag. After I was certain that my mother and step-father were asleep, I crept into my white Pontiac Sunfire and drove to the town park. I built a pyramid of gifts in the center of a fire pit and lit a match. I saved the stuffed reindeer for the grand finale.
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Contributors Alyse Bensel is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Penn State. When not engaged in her teaching and studies, she works at non-profit art organizations and at the local CSA. Her book reviews have appeared in Newpages, Coldfront (forthcoming), CALYX (forthcoming), and on WPSU radio. Jessie Carty's writing has appeared in publications such as, MARGIE, decomP and Connotation Press. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks At the A & P Meridiem (Pudding House 2009) and The Wait of Atom (Folded Word 2009) as well as a full length poetry collection,Paper House (Folded Word 2010). Jessie teaches at RCCC in Concord, NC. She is also the photographer and editor for Referential Magazine. She can be found around the web, especially at http://jessiecarty.com where she blogs about everything from housework to the act of blogging itself. Michael Diebert teaches writing and literature at Georgia Perimeter College in Atlanta, and is poetry editor for The Chattahoochee Review. Recent poems have appeared in RATTLE, Southern Poetry Review, and The Pedestal and are forthcoming in an anthology of Georgia poets to be published by Texas Review Press. Ann Douglas lives in Washington State and has an MFA from Columbia University. Kristy Feltenberger Gillespie is from Johnstown, PA and attended the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. She graduated in spring of 2003 with a Bachelor‘s of Science degree in Psychology and a minor in English Literature.She attended Marymount University in Arlington, VA and received a Masters in School Counseling in the spring of 2006. She is employed as a full time middle school counselor in Northern VA, works part time at a winery and writes stories, poems and novels with every minute of free time. She also is an avid reader and Steeler fan. Margaret Gilbert is a writer living in New York City. Her poems have appeared in Callaloo, Crazyhorse, Mudfish, Poetry East, The New York Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, The Hollins Critic, Poets and Artists, and recently Hotel Amerika. Excerpts from Sugaring Off, a book-length prose poem about a young girl's adventures in New York, were awarded Third Place for the Mudfish Poetry Prize by C.K. Williams. ―Eating Oatmeal‖ is included in the Everyman Library anthology Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems (Alfred Knopf, 2007). Page 32
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Matthew Haughton has published one chapbook, "Bee-coursing Box" (Accents Publishing).His poetry has appeared/set to appear in many journals including Appalachian Journal, Still, Tipton Poetry Journal, and The James Dickey Review. Haughton lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Chris Haven's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of journals including New York Quarterly, Smartish Pace, Memorious, The Normal School and Sentence. Chris teaches creative writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan and edits the journal Wake: Great LakesThought & Culture. M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Recent and forthcoming poems in Grey Sparrow Journal, The Bryant Review, Tar River Poetry, The Apple Valley Review, 5923 Quarterly, tinfoildresses, The Chariton Review, The Raleigh Review, Victorian Violet Press, Le Mot Juste, 2009,Nova Scotia Review, Blueline, The Centrifugal Eye; in the following anthologies: From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright, edited by Bruce Henricksen and Robert Johnson, Lost Hills Books (2007); Eating the Pure Light, Poems honoring Thomas McGrath, edited by John Bradley, Backwaters Press (2009; The Poets Guide to the Birds, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, Anhinga Press (2009); Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about Alzheimer’s Disease, edited by Holly Hughes, Kent State UP (2009); Eating her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems, edited by Vasiliki Katsarou, Ruth O‘Toole and Ellen Foos, Ragged Sky Press (2009); a lyrical essay in Gulf Coast, fiction in The Northville Review and Six Sentences; a chapbook, As the Crow Flies, Foothills Publishing, (2008). And most recently, a second full collection, Within Reach, Cherry Grove Collections (2010). She is Writer-inResidence and Director of the Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College; and is currently serving as a poetry advisor for the New York Foundation for the Arts (2007-2011). David McAleavey's fifth and most recent book is HUGE HAIKU (Chax Press, 2005), and he's published poems in many journals, including Poetry, Ploughshares, and The Georgia Review. In the past few months he's had work appear in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Chiron Review, Poet Lore, Medulla Review, DMQ Review, Magma Poetry (U.K.), and several other places. He also has work forthcoming in Hubbub, Epoch, Stand (U.K.), diode poetry journal, American Letters & Commentary, and elsewhere. He teaches literature and creative writing at George Washington University in DC. Djelloul Marbrook’s first book, Far from Algiers (Kent State University Press, 2008) won the 2007 Wick Prize and the 2010 International Book Award in poetry. His second book is Brushstrokes and Glances (2010, Deerbrook Editions). Recent poems are in American Poetry Review, Barrow Street, Oberon, Reed, The Ledge, Poemeleon, Poets Against War, Fledgling Rag, and Daylight Burglary. T he M eadowland R eview Spring 2011
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Colleen Purcell has lived most of her life in Chile, where she was a photographer. She was especially interested in photographing religious festivities in the Atacama. Colleen presently lives in Colorado. Her photos have been published in Puffin Circus, Anderbo, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Foliate Oak, Ken * Again, and a few others. Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of two chapbooks of poetry: After Voices, from Burning River in Cleveland and Half Life from Big Table Publishing Co. in Boston. Jane has also published short fiction; and critical and personal essays online and in print, in publications such as the Ne'er-Do-Well Literary Magazine, The Adirondack Review, Fifth Wednesday Journal; and the Western Journal of Black Studies. Nancy Scott is the author of four books of poetry. Her foray into the art world began in January, 2010 with a course in collage/mixed media at the Arts Council in Princeton, NJ. Since then she has exhibited her work in several juried shows and has a two-person show forthcoming in June, all in central New Jersey. A mixed media piece, along with an original poem, is posted on the Shot Glass Journal website. More of her work can be seen at www.nancyscott.net.
Buxton Wells lives in Memphis, TN. He has published online with Umbrella, Poetry Super Highway, carte blanche and others. Jeff Whitney was born in Texas, but has pent most of his life in northern California. He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Montana.
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