The Meadowland Review
Summer 2010
Cover Photo Waiting by Hall Jameson
Editorial Note Our spring months were spent reading, viewing, and collecting an incredible batch of poetry, fiction, and photography. We would like to thank all of our wonderful contributors for their stunning work and their patience and understanding as we carefully produced this issue. We would also like to thank you, our readers, for your continued support. We hope you will spend a breezy summer day reading these pages.
Megan Duffy
Editor, Poetry Editor
Lauren Cerruto
Poetry Editor
Jennifer Walkup
Fiction Editor
Ray Caramanna
Photography Editor
For submission guidelines please visit www.themeadowlandreview.com Questions or coments: contact@themeadowlandreview.com Copyright Š 2010 by The Meadowland Review. All rights are one-time rights for this journal.
Poetry Paula Brancato Steven Wingate Margaret Walther Wendilea Virginia Shank William Doreski John Riley Margot Farrington Kara Penn Broeck Wahl Blumberg Roberta Feins Mercedes Lawry Leonore Wilson Marie Kane
The Shortest Night of the Year Questions About Buried Cities Trails/ Flails The Leaving Life is an Onion I love you ninety miles an hour The Plural of Discus Aztec Trash Burning, 1976 Icarus In Reverse After the Procedure Such pleasure can be found Ode to My Belly Linked Acquisition Early Universe Still Life, Three Upon Waking
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Crawl The Day Draft Beer Came to Town
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Fiction Pete Pazmino Kirk Curnutt
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Photography Philip Arnold Anthony Nicaj Wendilea Ellen Lougee Colleen Peddycord Irène Mathieu Nancy Ryan Keeling Hall Jameson
Contributors
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Merry-Go-Round, Navy Pier Austin Stream Skyward Pool Leaves Willamette Valley Velocity II Sculptor Curtains
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Poetry
Merry-Go-Round, Navy Pier by Philip Arnold T he M eadowland R eview Summer 2010
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Paula Brancato The Shortest Night of the Year I left the summer solstice party early. You were born in Prague. You play the piano. You like to run your fingers over the keys. I ran a red light and a stop sign because I was still making love to you. Maybe now I am in danger. As light dies, your fingers move over the keyboard.
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Steven Wingate QUESTIONS ABOUT BURIED CITIES Where does all this soil come from that covers up our cities one layer after the next one age after the next? Point to a field. Beneath that soil may be a buried city, now or tomorrow. Why does time bury cities and not burn them? Where will the dust come from that covers our own cities in their deaths? The moment a city begins to die the dirt descends a cloud-vulture inviting other bits of stranded earth to converge on what once bustled what once fueled human dreams what once constrained human dreams. It gathers with full self-knowledge taking bets with itself over which monolith it can blanket fastest. It hovers in wait for the final death spreading fine dust for us to sweep away every morning, like the old-timers do from the front of their shops the front of their houses. You thought they swept to keep appearances, to impress customers. But now having read this poem you know the truth and I must run before the wind punishes me for attempting to betray its secret and for failing.
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Margaret Walther Trails/ Flails Can‘t believe it. Nearly midnight, I‘m stumbling around in a cow pasture. My son tells me, To get good star pictures there must be no light. I tell him, If a bull shows up, you’d better be ready to grab that camera. The next day he develops the pictures I help mount on poster board. How graceful they are— the geometry of the sky, Bach on paper. White lines scrape across black, delicate as damselflies. Light spills from our bodies, too. What kind of trail would a baby‘s breath leave? Part of the etching, from stars now dead. Comforting, such tenacity. We‘re all in these lines somewhere. I should be more patient. Damn it—how many f’ing pictures do you have to take? I have to go to work tomorrow. I couldn‘t erase the words. Must have looked chagrined. My son just turned to me and laughed. We humans, like cows, piss in our trails.
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Margaret Walther The Leaving In the truck‘s bed, the refrigerator looms above the rest, a pinioned owl. Chairs huddle like sheep. Table, turned sideways, legs useless in the air. Stiff as the man who owns these items, farmer who lifted his tractor front a year ago, contorted, crumpled to the ground. In the cracks of the house, relinquished memories wait for the wind to blow them out. The marriage bed has been yanked up by its roots. Iron stove needs no wood. Pump handle will learn hibernation. Windows whisper to each other. Of the man, drunk on painkillers, screaming at his reflections in the night. Walls recall a back, a thigh encased in plaster. Pounding fists. The sheep dog circles and barks. Twin sisters watch, too young to help. Tar paper roof mirrors the indifferent sun. Screen door has been shut. From the south the creek sings, its notes no longer benedictions. Blue spills everywhere. A woman‘s hand touches pansies. The wooden swing attached to a cottonwood is silent. A hoe in the truck bed dreams of roots and tasseled silk. The brother and father enter the front of the pickup. Their lips, furrowed by restraint. Key turns, engine spits. When the truck clambers through ruts in the dirt driveway the hoe leaps up toward sky; its blade juts over the tailgate. As if it wants to fall out, to delve once more into the sweet dark earth.
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Wendilea Life is an Onion An orb of thin skinned parchment, a velum of belief which coats our past. Peeling the first layer exposes the white lined flesh, layers of thickness like the dendrochronology of trees... somewhere in the undoing of rings is a core, where tears were never meant to be shed.
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Austin Stream by Anthony Nicaj
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Virginia Shank I love you ninety miles an hour headlong down the highway heat heaving the horizon into mirage, which we whip through like the fork I spun for an endless hour, beating cream by hand for you without a whisk or egg beater, no mixer to save my wrists, which ached for days, even when I held the warmth of you that tension did not melt away but married pleasure to pain as it always seems to be in life, each nerve branching toward your skin awake and sending signals that should flash in my brain as STOP but became another act of trust, that the road rolling through the desert will unfurl itself eventually into the quick winds of ocean air, that this will be worth it in the end and we will feel everything awash in endorphins, the cure flowing fast between us like the water, salt and cool.
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William Doreski The Plural of Discus Wielding a standard paper punch with eloquent disdain, I create a thousand tiny rounds to skim across the carpet like discuses. You berate me for the mess and for messing up the plural of discus. But my purpose lingers unspoken between us. I‘m killing time until the crimes we‘ve left quivering in our wake catch up and cuddle us to death. My father, slack-jawed and gone in the nursing home, remains fixed like an antique garden sculpture trimmed with orange lichen and bearded with moss. The day of his burial sulked with midwinter chill. Tires groaned as the hearse turned into the graveyard and the familiar names flaked from stones cracked by years of frost. You want me to ponder the plural of discus? You want me to vacuum the nervous little mess I‘ve made? Each of these punched paper circles represents a hole in my brain. Read the manuscript I‘ve riddled and you‘ll understand that decades ago I sacrificed to strange gods no one else admired. A worn blue dictionary notes that the plural of discus is either discuses or disci, but with a stern look you reject this Solomon‘s decree.
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John Riley Aztec A tube across her flat chest. Drops the color of wheat drip into her arm. He wonders if she'll look at him. The sunlight, she says, look, is varnishing the white tiles an Aztec shade of gold. See how it folds into itself as it climbs the white wall.
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John Riley Trash Burning, 1976 This time the bag's bigger than the boy and the door. He squeezes and spins across the brown yard dragging the boxes, the cans, the chicken bones. We watch as he tosses the last of his chore on the dead ash heap. Right now he sees above the tree line a silo deep in the winter mist waver like the heat over the matchhead's flicker—he shivers when a cardboard lady folds her cold smile into the new flame.
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Skyward by Wendilea
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Margot Farrington Icarus In Reverse See me sucked back out of sea‘s brine, cry returned to my mouth pulls in preceding shriek that inhales the gasp before then there are no more, nor do my wings betray, but pluck treacherous pinions--here, there, snatched with a marvelous fury from air feathers go dart-wise into wax, some quills double-secured by thread (oh, needle-flash, his hands recalled) and swift as you have witnessed metal wink at sun, wax cools round feather-shafts as threads manic and precise continue counter-lash & knot. Don‘t stop--let me keep rising, tumbling upward into grace, gaining errant feathers, homing arrows to me, their quiver: bronze boy regaining control. There! There‘s the definitive wingbeat. I‘m soaring swoopily backward, mouth open in glee, dropping altitude till I beat by my father‘s side, passing on our left Samos and Delos, while on our right Lebynthos whizzes by as below ploughman and shepard share briefest cameos, one pointing, the other leaning on his staff lest he fall down as we flap snap/snap to the island. See us touch earth, toe to heel, my father unkiss me, untake my face in his hands, tears race up his cheeks. He says: ―...safe be will you and me near Keep. .them melt will heat the high too if...‖ and so on, all that he says lost to the speed-slur of the tape that pauses only if you do. Don‘t pause--let our efforts be shorn from the footage, clipped until we stand, yearning at cliff‘s edge. You‘ll sense how time clambers with us in our descent, handhold by foothold, our labors collapsing inward, crazed and intent. I beg you, hurry. Again, Minos imprisons us. Faster! Let the thing be done. I prefer this grounding to the flying. Prefer my father‘s anguish to my own dying.
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Kara Penn After the Procedure I wait for the hospital‘s valet to bring the car, watch a handful of finches outside thick glass panes. Their bodies shimmer through pebbles and dirt. They scoop out earth with puffs of wings, divot the path and ready it to cup spring‘s rain. If they aim to bury themselves, they are failing. If they dig graves, the depth is too shallow. If they act of compulsion, their intent is too steady. If they motivate to their dusty habit out of sheer joy I say dig, and dig again.
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Broeck Wahl Blumberg Such pleasure can be found watching a movie on TV in the afternoon, lying down unplanned, a random click-not the market on CNBC, or Charlie Rose talking to Tom Friedman about a flat, hot world-but Cher and Cage in the bakery humping, the torn blouse, kisses, Puccini. Such pleasure can be found sitting in a cafe off hours, between midday and dinner, strange combos like carrot soup and cappuccino, a loiter through a novel, watching people rush. The observer leans on a ledge-shaped shadow as the summer sun slides through the door.
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Roberta Feins Ode to My Belly Dimpled ripe white peach veined comb-jelly, furred gooseberry, blanched endive. Flask with cork, goatskin full of wine, goblet, gobbler. My Neolithic fecund Goddess. You and my breasts are a jewelry of two opals with an eccentric pearl set in the ring of my spine. Memorist of past pleasures, chocolate, cream cobbler night‘s insatiable hungers, You resist constraint, burst from concealment not jolly or content. Grudgingly share airplane seats, break cheap dining room chairs. Your swell never wanes, never gives birth: pregnant moon, barren barrel.
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Pool Leaves by Ellen Lougee
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Mercedes Lawry Linked How sadness withers the hour. The slow crawl of an insect is magnified to a journey echoing a span of time in terms of life and death, or simply the motions necessary to mark first light as it blooms to harsh gold then fades, paling, until darkness collapses into sleep, rarely a consolation. The truth is you can sit in a room, tree limbs outside the window whipping in a spring wind, without a voice to call you, no miracle or shim of luck, no lost love returned. It could all be just as Beckett said, buried to the neck and clucking at nothing, only the imaginary whirling in your head, a brittle play with language, as if naming it might give it purpose, link it to something more outside the room.
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Mercedes Lawry Acquisition ―Now I am turned 73 and have only one tooth left wherewith to snarl at humanity.‖ Rosa Bonheur The tiger lunges, not the lover. A blue speck in her eye makes perfect sense. And so she comes, willing though no words fall to the pavement, no signs direct her past the jungle to the glass door as her hair sings. The pelicans stay a safe distance, aware of temptations. How humans dream themselves animal. The curl of her ear catches the lies and makes them into paper flowers, burns them, sweeps the ashes back out to the garden. The yellow teeth hide moons and lust. It‘s coming for her, whether or not she‘s prepared, tracing the lines at her wrists, muttering Latin.
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Leonore Wilson Early Universe To explain how baby universes hatch, pretend you have a two-dimensional sheet and under it the mother universe--a curvature arising from gravity, and if that gravity is wolfish enough, the curvature produces a protuberance, it is this shrewd protuberance that forms a mini-universe connected by an umbilical cord, a throat known as a wormhole and from the stuttering mother's universe's throat appears a black hole which in time evaporates, severing the cord, dispatching the baby universe into the salaam of existence, or so says the physicist, which makes me reflect upon the faded conch of days when my eldest would awaken me and I would pull the wild-wafted sheet over my supine body and feign death while he would poke and nudge and tickle until I moved like the mother universe I was, and he would further seek and wrestle my rumbled limbs of my stall and bin existence as he were gravitation itself, this one who removed the nimble dust and spit of slumber and made my vacuous morning boom alive. How I think about that ritual with afresh affection remembering the glad-hearted scent of my visitant, the infra-small odor of his hair-oils, the light and breeze mumblings in the ethereal dawn, those mild-still hours of dwarfed concern when all was ether-cloud beneficence, when mother and son tousled in the warm hummock of each other's gleam as if time began right then when we single-handedly pulled back the scribbled lid of chaos, that dark vacuity of sleep and dream and simply and instinctively created the material- sublime‌.
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Willamette Valley by Colleen Peddycord T he M eadowland R eview Summer 2010
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Marie Kane Still Life, Three Colors have their own meanings. – Paul Gauguin Accept the yellow moon that reveals white dust licking the crooked door that slants above uneven floorboards. Acknowledge flat dirt next to the fireplace with its extinguished intensity, tolerate shivers that run blade to blade when the faucet turns and cold water rinses the hallucinatory richness of red mangos. Their plush skin is ready to explode, to drop tawny flesh on the gilt-edged book that rests on the wooden counter. Its cracked spine flops open as easily as a wounded bird. Recognize the yet-to-be-worn wedding dress hanging on that door, ribbons of brilliant pink spooning down the back, sway of silver fabric, sleeve dropping in a V – and imagine that excited voices will rise in shouts and huzzahs to toast a union and the fruition of coupling. Then, realize that this moon will never set, nor will the dust sheathing the crooked door be disturbed, neither will the voices rise to joyous glee, and the fireplace will remain lifeless, as will the vermilion fruits, open book, splash of water, sterling dress. Understand that stories end unsatisfied, incomplete. Accept Gauguin‘s lemon yellow moon that casts zinc-white light. Accept that his mango red possesses emerald green.
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Marie Kane Upon Waking Slip into summer‘s edge where russet colored grass streams in the wind and redtailed hawks circle over the lake‘s slow swells, where rhythmic blue and blue conform to the shore, mimic rivulets and rushes of the sea – Awaken in that soundless mountain room where the flaked ceiling frowns at the bare bulb's glare, where the twisted cord disappears between rafters, cuts outside to a light pole that salutes the sky and the massive burnt-out pine – Take a walk after breakfast without him – see a barn swallow leaving the courtship dance, flash iridescent blue, rust choker at the neck, how she maneuvers over water, darts like an arrow into August.
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Fiction
Velocity II by Irène Mathieu
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Pete Pazmino Crawl The machine was beeping again. It always began the same, Amit had learned: first the warning, the multi-tone, almost cheerful beep-boop that could shatter even the deepest sleep. Then the silence, the interminable period where he waited for the machine's return to its rhythm of mechanical whirs, those soft internal sounds that meant it still pushed through his body the lifegiving fluids he required. But the silence would stretch on, grow heavy with absence before the real beeping—the alarm—began: Bu-doop. Bu-doop. Bu-doop. He wondered sometimes, while he waited for the nurse to respond, if the machine's beeping might be the last noise he ever heard. Bu-doop. Bu-doop. Some nights, when the hour had grown ungodly late, Amit imagined that he might leap from his bed and lunge at the machine in a scratching, clawing frenzy. He would rip off its cover and rummage through its internal organs to locate its sound chip, the source of its power. He would stroll out of this place with it clenched in his triumphant fist. He would return home and construct the greatest alarm clock the world had ever seen. Nobody would ever oversleep again. He'd be famous. He'd make millions. He'd even want to live. The television remained on CNN. Amit kept it there, the volume just loud enough so that the endless prattle of the Botoxed anchors was only a steady, indecipherable buzz. He hated CNN, hated the news itself. But it soothed him, somehow, to press his head against his pillow and stare at the endless yellow crawl scrolling across the bottom of the screen. One after another, tiny words streaming together to create meaning, connection to the outside world. Was it raining? Sunny? Was there a hurricane? Tornado? Amit didn't know, could barely distinguish night from day. But a mere glance at the crawl revealed that the price of oil in California had spiked again, that wildfires still threatened forests in Wyoming, that a stranded whale continued to defy rescuers in Hawaii. Beautiful. In the hallway, a sudden commotion drew Amit's attention. Through the half-open door, he saw the now-familiar slice of hallway beyond: swath of low-pile carpet, blue and purple with art deco designs like something from a child's geometry primer; corner of a metal desk; short stack of red and yellow folders. A group of four nurses passed, all working together to push a wheeled bed. In it lay an old woman. She seemed limp, under heavy sedation, and Amit watched as the nurses angled into the adjoining room. He felt his pulse quicken, felt just the tiniest flutter of—what? Anticipation? Annoyance?—at the sudden prospect of a neighbor. By habit, his eyes flicked to the Page 27 T he M eadowland R eview Summer 2010
small monitor beside his bed where the triple lines of his vital signs scrolled. Yes, his heartbeat had risen, ninety-eight from ninety-six. The adjoining room had always been empty. Amit had spent much time staring into it, studying through the small window set in their dividing wall the layout that so perfectly mirrored that of his own—steel cupboard, bedside table, sink overhung with cabinets, suspended television in the corner. He'd wondered at first about the window, about why he should be afforded a view into another room when there wasn't even a window to look outside. Jackie, his day nurse, had provided the answer: ―Sometimes we got two patients. You got to be able to see one while you work on the other.‖ But the idea of a patient in that room had never seemed real. The room's emptiness had seemed preordained. He was here, nobody was there, and so it would be until he died. Amit watched the complex motions, like some intricate dance, of the nurses as they set up the woman's bed. They arranged her IV tubes and hung a half dozen glistening bags of medicine from the stands. The woman lay in bed like a stone. Heavy lines creased her gaunt face. Amit guessed her to be sixty-five. Older, maybe. Her thin hair clung to her scalp in loose curls. Through the papery fabric of her hospital gown Amit could see the soft shape of her breasts, a small pudge of stomach. Her legs were spread obscenely, knees wide, and one of the nurses pushed them closer together before covering her with the white bedsheet. Another nurse looked through the window and saw Amit. She stepped to the wall and dragged the brown curtain closed across his view. Later, after waking from a restless doze, Amit noticed that the monitor had changed. His own vitals now occupied only the right half of the screen. It took a moment for him to understand that the new lines scrolling across the left represented the old woman. Her blood pressure, red, was high. Her oxygen rate, blue, was low. Her heart beat, yellow, looked erratic. His own scores, by contrast, seemed robust. Strong. The curtain remained drawn across the window. Amit glanced at the television. Two new instances of Mad Cow Disease were suspected in England. Three alleged terrorists had been arrested in Sri Lanka. Old news. His eyes drifted to the tubes running into his arm. He thought about dying. He imagined the machine continuing on, pumping and pumping without regard for the fact that his spiritless body had become no more than a fleshy sack. He imagined himself filled to overflowing, a brown-skinned balloon stretched to its limits. The new shift's nurse would walk in to the sight of his bloated corpse and gasp in horror. He liked to imagine this gasp, one he had staged countless times in his mind—classic Hollywood heroine, one hand backward over her mouth, her eyes wide. He relished this gasp, cherished the power of it. He had never made a woman gasp before. Page 28
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Always that thought, and always after it the grudging concession—yes, there had been one. Sarah. His first and only time. He'd been nervous, practically hyperventilating, his stomach a bowl of curdling milk. She'd pulled him down on top of her and rubbed her legs against him and that had been the end of it. Her gasp of surprise. She'd lost interest in him shortly thereafter, had probably only been interested at all because he represented something new. Something alien. Often, in the night's waning hours when he lay awake to stare blankly at the flickering television screen, he thought about how he deserved another chance. He was only twenty-two, after all. It wasn't so much to ask. Jackie bustled into the room. Amit watched her inspect the bags on his IV stand. She tapped one that appeared low and jotted some notes onto the clipboard nestled in the crook of her elbow. She was a roundish woman with shoulder-length strawberry hair and piercing green eyes. Amit had originally guessed her to be around forty, although he suspected now that she might, in fact, be significantly older. He appreciated her generally silent presence—how, unlike the other nurses, she seemed not to feel the need to chit-chat about how much urine he'd passed over the last hour, about how his oxygenation or pulse rates remained stable. She would never have asked, as one of the other nameless nurses had, about why his family did not visit. Jackie set the clipboard down on the table and moved briskly about the room, adjusting IVs, hanging new bags, turning the blankets. The bedpan appeared. Amit thought about that earlier nurse. A young one, she'd been, not much older than him. He'd answered her with a shrug, but he thought that if it ever did occur to Jackie to ask about his family, he might tell about the car accident, now four years past. He might tell about how he'd briefly considered, at Uncle Pram's urging, moving back to Pakistan to be reunited with his many aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews. He might even tell about how he'd stayed in the end, had gone to college as his father would have wanted. How he'd sold the house with his uncle's help and then watched as Uncle Pram boarded the plane to fly back to Lahore alone. ―I'm old enough to be on my own. Even here.‖ That's what he'd said then. Nineteen was old enough. But then had come the diagnosis, the complications. ―Nobody comes to visit,‖ he might tell Jackie, ―because I haven't called them.‖ But Jackie never asked, and that was probably just as well. A noise woke him. Amit waited, listened to his breathing in the gloomy dark. He heard the noise again and understood. The old woman was screaming. He looked through the window. The curtains had been pulled open, and he could see that the old woman was sitting up in bed—or, rather, that her bed had been adjusted to more closely resemble a chair. She looked contorted, her head and torso twisted in opposite directions, and Amit wondered if she suffered from some form of spinal problem. Her thin hair hung like moss about
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her forehead and ears. Her lower lip jutted from her mouth. Her breathing looked heavy, ragged, and as Amit watched she pressed her head back against her pillow and screamed again. Amit averted his eyes, waited for the woman's breath to give out before he risked another glance. She had returned to her contorted slump, her head propped awkwardly on her shoulder while she gulped air like a landed fish. Another patient yelled from down the hall: ―Shut up!‖ And then, as if another patient becoming involved was the final straw, a young nurse strolled past Amit's door, in no particular hurry, and appeared at the foot of the old woman's bed. The old woman lifted her head again as if to yell, but instead remained silent, her eyes straight ahead. Although Amit could not hear the nurse's words, the woman's response was clear: ―You all leave me here alone! Alone! I'm tired of being alone!‖ The nurse said something that Amit couldn't hear. ―Don't care none about me. None!‖ The nurse said something else, a little louder this time. Amit thought he heard the word ―sedative.‖ ―Don't care about that! You go right ahead, whore!‖ That last word, like a bomb. Amit twisted in bed to get a better view. The old woman, bolt upright now, leaned forward, her chin outthrust, and Amit dismissed his previous theory of a spinal injury. The young nurse hurried out and passed his open door, retreating as the woman yelled after her: ―Whore! Damn whore! Whore!‖ Amit glanced again at the monitor, at the lines scrolling beside his own. Her heartbeat raced at one hundred sixty-four beats per minute. Impossible. Surely she teetered on the brink of a heart attack. But still she screamed, her face red, her neck muscles cordlike beneath her skin: ―Whore! Whore! Come back, whore!‖ And then, before he could look away, the old woman's head swiveled sideways. To his horror, Amit found himself locked into eye contact. A sudden, heavy silence settled between them. Two seconds. Three. Then: ―What're you looking at? What're you looking at, freak? Raghead!‖ He felt the words like a slap, like a sudden plunge into icy water. He looked away, ripped his gaze from the woman's like a bandage from a festering wound. The woman continued yelling, berating him, berating the world, but now a group of nurses, men and women, hurried past his door. One of them pulled shut the curtain and Amit pressed his head into his pillow in relief. He tried to relax, to force his thudding heart and ragged breathing into more normal patterns. To block the woman's yelling from his mind. Beside his bed, the machine beeped once. A warning. His eyes drifted to the television. Shark attack off the Miami coast, a father had saved his son by beating it away with a bat. Evidence of asbestos in a New York nursing home. The Wyoming wildfires now threatened several multi-million dollar vacation homes. The machine beeped again. The alarm began to sound. Amit shut his eyes and wished himself away. Page 30
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Later, after waking, Amit saw that the curtain once again hung partially open. For a long time he lay there, staring at the television without seeing it, unwilling to commit himself to another glance, but curiosity won out over caution. The woman slept peacefully on her now-flat bed. Jackie bustled into the room, and Amit realized it must be early morning. She checked the bags dangling from the IV stand and pressed buttons with her thumb. Amit watched her move through the familiar routine, watched her jot notes in her clipboard and walk to the door. He found his voice. ―Jackie?‖ Jackie stopped, half turned. ―Yes?‖ ―The woman next door.‖ Amit nodded his chin toward the window. ―She sounded mad earlier. She was yelling.‖ Jackie laughed. ―So I heard.‖ ―I was just wondering. You know. What her deal was.‖ Amit felt embarrassed. He looked at the television. The stock market had closed at a three-day high, investors were hopeful. ―I can't talk about other patients, Amit,‖ Jackie said. ―I know.‖ Amit kept his eyes on the television. A child rapist had escaped police custody in Maine. ―I was just wondering. You know.‖ Jackie glanced over her shoulder and nodded as another nurse walked past. She took three quick steps into the room and leaned close to Amit's ear. ―Brain tumor,‖ she whispered, her breath hot on his skin. ―Probably inoperable.‖ Amit felt something flutter in his stomach. ―Wow,‖ he said. ―That's…‖ He didn't know how to finish. ―Yeah,‖ Jackie said. ―Yeah, it is.‖ She squeezed his foot through the blanket and left the room. The morning drew on. Amit dozed, here and there, short oases of sleep that seemed more like interruption than rest. When awake, he watched the crawl. A gang of monkey smugglers had been arrested in New York. Two alligators were missing from a Florida alligator farm. Scientists suspected that the ozone layer's hole had shrunk, although they could not explain why. The curtain remained open. The old woman was awake, sitting up in bed. The left sleeve of her gown hung loosely off her shoulder, drooped to her elbow to expose the entire top half of her rail-thin arm. Her leathery skin was mottled with brown age spots. The loose curls of her hair looked frazzled, falling apart.
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A nurse walked into the old woman's room. Amit tensed, expecting another round of shouting, but the old woman paid the nurse no attention at all. She sat there rigid, unmoving, her eyes fixed on some point past her feet. The nurse moved about the room, checking tubes, hanging new bags of medicine, drawing blood from the old woman's IV. Amit stared down at the foot of his own bed, where his toes poked like twin islands up from the white sea of his bed sheets. He had no idea what might be holding her attention. The nurse said something to the woman and breezed out of the room. Amit followed her with his eyes as she passed his door. He looked back toward the old woman. She was staring straight at him. Panicked, Amit looked away. He felt his cheeks burn, knew that a flush had risen past his neck. He could feel the woman's eyes bore into him like hot spears. He would not look. He read the crawl. The Pope was due to speak in London under tight security. Two national airlines were on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. A cruise ship had been attacked by pirates off the coast of Africa. He had to look. He dared a quick glance at the window, really no more than a flick sideways of his eyes that he hoped the old woman would interpret as a casual check of the monitor. To his horror, he saw that she had turned in her bed to face him. Her thin legs, bare below the hospital gown's hem, dangled from the side. Amit felt frozen, turned to stone. They stared at each other through the glass. A smile curved the old woman's mouth. Slowly, so slowly that Amit at first didn't even notice movement, she tugged at her gown where it had fallen from her shoulder. She pulled the neck of the gown sideways across her chest to expose her left breast, thin and sagging, the brown areola as wide as a teacup. Amit's breath caught in his throat; he felt a tightening in his stomach and when he finally wrenched his eyes back up to the woman's face he saw that her smile had widened. Her eyes gleamed. She pursed her lips together and blew him a kiss. With shock, Amit felt himself growing erect. He rolled onto his side, embarrassed at the new island growing beneath his sheets. He felt dirty, ashamed. He forced his eyes to the television. At least eighty cats, many dead, had been removed from a Newark woman's home. Heavy thunderstorms threatened the northeast with severe flooding. Later, when Jackie came in and found him, she seemed amused. ―You trying out new positions, Amit?‖ She lay the syringes she would use to draw his blood on the bed. ―I don't think I've ever seen you lie on your side before.‖ Amit rolled to his back, afraid to look at the window. The old woman would still be facing him, baring her awful breast, smiling as she blew kisses. What would Jackie think? Surely she would believe he had engineered the whole thing, that he had somehow encouraged the woman to expose herself for his own amusement. In his mind, he began to knit together excuses, explanations, denials. But Jackie said nothing. When she bent close to Amit's IV and raised the Page 32
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syringe's plunger, Amit dared a quick glance sideways. The old woman lay in her bed. She looked asleep. Amit shut his eyes and sighed, thankful to say nothing at all. He awoke to a noise. He sat up, shivering despite damp heat. There, again—a soft thud, the gentle creak of a floorboard. Footsteps, coming up the stairs. Stairs? He realized that he was home. In his bedroom. But, no. Not his bedroom of today, but his bedroom as a child. He was in the wrong house, the house of his parents before they had died. He had not lived here in four years. Panic surged in his chest. He swung his legs over the bedside as the footsteps paused outside the door. The doorknob gleamed in the moonlight as it began to turn. Amit realized he was naked. Worse, aroused. His penis pointed skyward like a missile, throbbed so hard it hurt. The door began to open. Amit cried out, tried to cup himself, but stumbled backward and could only watch as the old woman, naked also and smiling, walked into the room. Her mouth curled into a clownish grin. His eyes traveled down the wrinkled contours of her body, lingered on her withered breasts and the thick patch of hair between her legs. His pulse thudded. His penis twitched. The old woman stepped toward him and Amit felt something tighten, something spasm, something warm on his stomach. The old woman threw back her head and laughed. The shrill sound filled the room, the house. Amit, desperate to escape, plunged toward the window. He hurled himself through it, felt nothing as he burst through the cold pane and emerged into air on the other side. Tiny shards of glass floated about his body, glimmered in the starlight. He hung there, weightless, for several long seconds. The cold air breathed over his skin. He fell. Awake. Awake for real. Amit lay still in the shadowy room and listened to the ragged sound of his breathing. He felt slickness on his belly and grimaced. A wet dream. He'd had a wet dream. He prodded gingerly at the dampness that had soaked through his gown. But there was more. He'd woken to laughter, and he realized, as his breathing slowed, that he could still hear it. He listened, and as his mind cleared he understood that the sound wasn't laughter at all but an alarm, a machine's alarm, urgent and clanging in a way he'd never heard before. Fear rose like a cold tide in his gut, but in the next instant he realized that the noise came from outside his room. On and on it went, a two-tone siren that sounded like something dragged half-tempo from a European police car—BA doo. BA doo. BA doo. A frenzy of motion erupted in the hall. Nurses raced past his open door. Their hands clutched at the slapping stethoscopes looped around their necks. The sight of nurses running— had he ever seen one run?—brought a new surge of fear. BA doo. BA doo. Two nurses. Three. Four. They piled into the old woman's room and clustered in a circle around her bed, their hands a
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blur of movement as they checked lines and yanked syringes from drawers. BA doo. BA doo. Another nurse hurried past, wheeling into the room a waist-high cart that clattered loudly on four uneven wheels. They cut open the old woman's gown and attached electrodes to her body. Amit saw dark skin, a single brown nipple, thick curls of hair matted between her legs. A male nurse with hard blue eyes met Amit's gaze through the window. He drew the curtain shut with a single yank. They worked for a long time. Amit listened from his bed as the wetness on his gown dried to a flaky crust. The alarm ceased, and for a while in its absence the steady background noise of the ICU—mechanical beeping, electrical drone—seemed more pronounced. More real. He watched the crawl. A commuter plane in California had crashed after takeoff. Auto workers in Detroit were threatening to strike. A new type of beetle had been discovered in Brazil. Amit could hear nothing from the old woman's room. A pair of white-coated doctors appeared outside his door. They whispered together and parted ways. On the monitor, the old woman's numbers dropped steadily. Her heartbeat now hung at sixty beats per minute, and as he watched it dropped even further, to fifty-eight and then fiftyseven and then, for a moment, to fifty-five. Her oxygen rate hovered at seventy-seven. Ventilator territory, or so Jackie had told him. Her blood pressure showed the worst decline; when the screen refreshed, Amit was shocked to see eighty over thirty. He understood, with sudden clarity, that he was watching the old woman's death. One by one, each of her numbers would vanish, replaced by a single flickering X beside a steady, flat line. The thin sheet covering him felt, suddenly, like a thick wool blanket, hot and suffocating. Amit kicked at it, thrashed in his bed so violently that the probe clipped to his fingertip came loose and fell over the bedside to dangle by its cord. Amit clawed at the sheets with his toes, shoved them deep into the crack between the mattress and plastic footboard. Uncovered, he still panted with heat. His heart thudded in his ears and now it was his gown that pressed down on him like a great weight. He tore at it, tried in vain to rip it open from the neck. His night nurse walked in, surprise plain on her face. ―Amit!‖ she said, her voice edged with worry. ―What's gotten into you?‖ Amit tugged at the collar of his gown, ground his teeth and pulled. He could feel the corded veins in his neck. An alarm began to sound. His probe had been disconnected too long. The noise was like a blaring horn. Amit yelled, echoed it, twisted sideways in his bed and tried to roll to the floor. The nurse pressed her hands against his shoulders. ―Marjie!‖ she called. ―Marjie!‖ Another nurse ran into the room. ―A push of Valium!‖ Marjie yanked a plastic syringe from her pocket. She tore back its wrapping. Amit paused, watched as she screwed the syringe to one of the tubes that fed into his body. She pulled back the Page 34
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plunger and clear liquid flowed into the syringe. She unscrewed it with two quick twists and bent closer to Amit's bedside. ―No!‖ Amit kicked at the air as the night nurse tightened her grip on his shoulders. ―No!‖ Marjie screwed the syringe into another portal on Amit's IV tube, one near to where the needle penetrated his forearm. She pushed down the plunger. Amit felt a brief trickle of cold under his skin. It spread quickly up his arm. He felt his eyes grow heavy. ―…don't know,‖ the night nurse was saying. Her hands remained on his shoulders, pressed him against the bed, but he no longer cared. ―Probe fell off and when I come in here, he was acting all crazy.‖ ―I'll get a new gown,‖ Marjie said, and then Amit was asleep. He awoke in silence. The television had been turned off. Amit groped along the left side of his bed, but could not find the remote. He craned his neck sideways to see if it had become wedged between the mattress and rail. The remote's cord looped up behind his neck and under his pillow. He followed it with his fingertips until his hand closed over the familiar shape. As he pulled the remote down to his side, his gaze shifted sideways and he noticed the monitor. Only one readout displayed there now. He looked to the window. The curtains were drawn. He tried to remember the previous night. Alarms. Running nurses. White-coated doctors. The old woman's numbers counting down to zero. The old woman standing in his doorway, naked. No. That last had been a dream. Hadn't it? She had been in her bed, she had lowered her gown. His hand moved to his belly. His robe felt fresh, new. Jackie walked in. ―Good morning,‖ she said. Amit tore his eyes from the window. ―What time is it?‖ ―Actually, about 1:30,‖ Jackie said. She studied the bags on his IV stand and scrawled a quick note on her clipboard. ―I understand you had a bit of a spell last night.‖ ―I don't really remember,‖ Amit said. Jackie appeared unconcerned. She walked to the sink. ―Do you want the bedpan?‖ Amit looked back at the window. ―She died, didn't she?‖ Jackie set the curved steel bedpan at the edge of the bed. She nodded once. ―I'm afraid so.‖ She hesitated. ―You want to talk about what happened last night?‖ ―I don't know what happened last night.‖ ―She didn't have much of a chance, Amit. There was nothing anybody could do.‖ She tapped the bedpan with her fingernail. ―You want this or not?‖ Amit nodded. He averted his eyes while Jackie positioned the pan.
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―The docs are coming by this afternoon,‖ Jackie said. ―They're talking about moving you down to a regular room. Tonight, maybe.‖ She walked to the door. ―I'll be back for that,‖ she said. Amit watched the empty space in the doorway where she had stood. The bedpan's uncomfortable steel rim pressed against him. He clicked on the television. It buzzed for a moment before the hospital's welcome screen displayed. He worked the channel selector, surfed up past the Home network, the local news channel, the Weather Channel, and the morning game shows to where CNN was just coming back from a commercial. Amit's eyes drifted back to the curtained window. He imagined what the old woman's bed would look like, empty, its sheets folded into crisp stacked squares. The machine beeped once. A warning. Jackie would return soon to switch the empty bag and empty the pan. On television, the mute anchor talked. Amit watched the yellow crawl. Thirtyseven dead in an apartment fire outside New York City. A commuter plane had skidded off the runway in Milwaukee. A bull moose had been shot after wandering into a bar in Anchorage. A homeless woman in Seattle had seen Jesus in a tree trunk. Amit hesitated, then squeezed his thumb against the remote's power button. The TV buzzed and flickered. The picture collapsed to a tiny pinpoint of light, one that glowed for an instant in the center and then vanished into black.
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Sculptor by Nancy Ryan Keeling
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Kirk Curnutt The Day Draft Beer Came to Town The mayor‘s wife was against the idea, so naturally my cousin Lizzie and I were for it. Every third Tuesday we rode with her dad, Cot, to the Pennyville city council meeting, where Mrs. Sparks held the seventh district seat. I was a loyal soldier in Cot‘s army because he allowed my mom and me to live rent-free in the loft above his bar. He was the one who started everybody calling me Cat, and in my mind, that one letter‘s difference between our names meant we were closer than anyone else in our family. It was a closeness I pursued by mimicking his every gesture during the council‘s tedious speeches and debates. Bored, Cot would scratch his ankle, strop his tie, pluck an eyelash, and then pop his neck by blotting his ear to his shoulder, all of which I would repeat in a dramatic fashion that irritated the district representatives. As they usually did, halfway through the meeting, they rearranged their agenda to call my uncle up. He went to the podium pretending to stare down Fulton Sparks, who‘d been mayor since before Cot and my mom were even born. We weren‘t alone in knowing it was really Mrs. Sparks he was addressing. The whole town knew it. We grew up hearing people blame her for Cot‘s predicament. If she had her way, everybody said, there‘d be no beer at all in Pennyville, never mind draft beer. ―Lady and gentlemen.‖ Even at my young age I recognized Cot was overweening. ―You‘ve heard this from me before, and you‘ll likely hear it again. I own the third most popular bar in this town. I think I know Pennyville well enough to say that the majority of your citizenry can‘t understand how in a free country a city can prohibit draft beer. A free country! May I remind you that there was liquor in Nazi Germany? Not even Nazis believed in banning beer!‖ While Cot orated, Fulton Sparks scratched at his crew cut, never once looking at his wife. They never admitted to being a couple during council meetings. She addressed him as ―Mr. Mayor,‖ and he called her ―Madame Councilwoman.‖ ―That‘s because he knows what people think,‖ Lizzie‘s stepmom, Deirdre, once explained. ―She‘s got her hand so far up his behind he can‘t move his lips unless she stretches her fingers.‖ The image confirmed what Pennyville knew about Mrs. Sparks: she was a snooty, overbearing crone who believed the world would be better if everybody‘s morals aspired to hers. Lizzie and I had our own reasons for disliking her. The Sparks‘s granddaughter, Jonquil, was our age. Year after year she held the district record for Girl Scout cookie sales. The thought that Mrs. Sparks could make people do her bidding by reaching up inside them was so disturbing that we couldn‘t help but peek under the table to look for her hands. It was always disappointing to find them folded in her lap. Page 38
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―Son,‖ the mayor said when Cot finished. ―You‘re nothing if not persistent. You know the council‘s thinking. You let kegs into Pennyville and you‘ll see underage drinking rates rise. That‘s only one aspect of folks‘ well-being we got to consider. A lot of bacteria clog those keg lines. It‘s a health issue, by and by. Now, as a taxpayer, you got a right to ask us to reconsider, but if you push us for a vote, I can tell you right now how she‘ll turn out.‖ ―I know how the process works,‖ Cot replied. ―I just want to partake of it.‖ Then he gripped the podium as the mayor began polling his colleagues. Lizzie and I sat on our knees to better take in the drama, only there never was, not in all the times we watched the council vote. The only question was how whiter Cot‘s knuckles would turn as each councilperson leaned into his microphone to holler no. ―They got the gall,‖ he groused afterward at the dinner table. ―That nonsense about bacteria—you see people keeling over sick in Tuscaloosa or Auburn? It‘s Gibb Barnt and them distributors that are behind it. They pay that council to keep draft banned because their goddamned profit margin‘s higher on bottles.‖ We‘d heard this before, but Lizzie and I were young enough that profanity still made us giggle, which upset my mom. ―Goddamn it, Cot,‖ she snapped, crunching on snow peas. ―Don‘t talk like that. And you two—if I ever hear that word or any like it coming out of your mouths, you know what happens.‖ Indeed we did. Anytime we swore Mom squirted liquid soap on our tongues and made us sing la la la until bubbles rolled out our mouths. The threat was enough to settle us, but not Cot. He could hardly eat his pork chop he was so worked up. He combed his fingers through his red beard and drank from one of the very beer bottles he claimed to hate. Sometimes when he was this peeved he‘d need as many as four beers before his mood improved. Tonight it took six. ―Time for work,‖ he announced, clapping his hands. ―Cat could stay here tonight,‖ Deirdre suggested. ―She‘ll stick with me,‖ my mom shot back, lighting a cigarette. She was defensive about relying so much on her brother. ―That‘s not fair,‖ Lizzie jumped in. ―I should get to go if Cat does.‖ She said this a couple times a week, unaware that our homelessness wasn‘t something to envy. Cot would‘ve let her stay at the bar anytime she wanted, but Deirdre said no, especially not on school nights. She was afraid of what might happen if a teacher smelled smoke and alcohol on her. ―That bar‘ll have her stinking of something,‖ I‘d heard her claim. Cot never knew which was worse, Deirdre‘s disapproval or Lizzie‘s tantrum. Tonight he wasn‘t in the mood for either.
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―Once won‘t kill her,‖ he decided, sending Lizzie into a flutter of hugs and kisses. ―They‘ll go to bed right off, anyway. And not just to bed but to sleep. You girls got that? No monkeying.‖ I felt Deirdre give me the stink eye as we pulled our coats on. Everybody else said Lizzie and I‘d have been twins if we hadn‘t been born five months apart and to different parents—that‘s how alike we were. But Deirdre was afraid I‘d turn out like Mom. She couldn‘t believe Mom messed up and got us kicked out of Trudy‘s. I‘m not sure she knew what to think about Mom and Trudy in the first place. They came from pretty different worlds. Trudy had money, a house, and a college degree; Mom had me. They‘d met one night at Cot‘s and started living together a week later. The first time I met Trudy we were moving my stuff into her place. If I wanted to get Lizzie in trouble I‘d have told Deirdre she was the one who kept me awake. The nights I slept alone I drifted off, no problem, no matter how loud the noise from the bar. When Lizzie stretched out beside me, however, the distractions were too many to rest. Our hair tangling in each other‘s, the light bleeding under the doorsill, the feel of her breath on my skin, our bedrails shaking from the smack of pool balls—these things all hinted of some fun and excitement we could be having but weren‘t. ―I know you‘re not asleep,‖ Lizzie would roll on top of me and whisper. ―Come on. Let‘s see what they‘re doing.‖ That night, like most we spent together, we crept to the door. Our room was the closed-off half of a loft that overlooked Cot‘s pub. If we peeked over the railing we could watch what went on. Most nights there was nothing to see—just Cot‘s gang huddling along a table, all talking at once as Mom bussed. Hearing them was hard because of the jukebox. Everyone had a favorite song. Some nights, after the third or fourth round of Merle Haggard‘s ―I‘m Always on a Mountain When I Fall‖ or Webb Pierce‘s ―In the Jailhouse Now,‖ Lizzie and I would look at each other and wonder if this was all there was to growing up. We didn‘t return to bed because we knew Mom‘s friends would stop by. They brought Cot‘s to life. They didn‘t like country music, so instead of Merle and Webb we got to hear Drivin ‗n‘ Cryin, whose chorus they‘d shout along with until their voices cracked with laughter: I’m going straight to hell—just like my momma said! After that they danced. Cot‘s gang stopped and turned their chairs to watch Mom join in. ―Which one will try to kiss her?‖ Lizzie asked. ―Tatie.‖ I pointed to the largest of them. ―She‘s drinking tequila, not beer. That makes you go crazy.‖ ―The fat one? She‘s too quiet. I vote for the redhead. She hasn‘t been off her feet.‖ ―That‘s June. Sure you want to bet?‖ I was confident June wouldn‘t love on my mom. She was the reason Trudy booted us. Mom and June were still friendly, but they figured that after the trouble they‘d caused it was smart to Page 40
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keep their distance. Tatie‘s odds were better for the simple reason that she hadn‘t fallen for Mom lately. All the women had crushes on her. Sure enough, Mom let Tatie put her hands on her hips and together they fell into a sway. I don‘t know that I‘ve ever seen two people look more awkward standing that close together. It was as if they were waltzing in 4/4 time. When Tatie felt their chests touch, she backed up two steps, embarrassed. I was on the verge of admitting to Lizzie that this wasn‘t much of a victory to gloat over when the front door flew open and Fulton Sparks strode in. ―Awful loud in here, don‘t you think?‖ With him were two cops and a shaggy-haired man who kept to the wall by the door. ―I hear noise clean in the street.‖ He must have rehearsed this line because he‘d said it before he‘d noticed Tatie and Mom. The more he looked them over the redder his neck turned. We had our own shock to deal with. As far as we knew, the mayor of Pennyville had never been in Cot‘s. ―Music‘s not a crime,‖ Cot said. ―Not yet anyway. You care for a beer, Mayor? I‘ll spot you a first one.‖ The mayor smiled. His jaw was so narrow I didn‘t understand how it held his teeth. ―Oh, we‘re here on a liquor matter, but not our own personal consumption. You know Tommy Mills, I reckon.‖ He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder. The man pressed to the wall, like the two officers, was staring at Mom‘s friends. ―You know I do.‖ ―Well, if you know Tommy, then you know Tommy has a brother and a nephew, Arlo and Isome, who run a pack ‗n‘ sac down in Castleberry. It‘s not much of a store, but it does all right because draft beer‘s legal in that county. Now it‘s come to me through the grapevine that a prominent Pennyville citizen visited Arlo‘s last Saturday to purchase a keg of Miller Genuine Draft. You care to guess who that was?‖ Lizzie and I knew the answer. Cot and Deirdre had thrown a party over the weekend. They hid the keg in an old washer that Cot had gutted so no cops would stop them on the drive home. ―Only one thing bothers me more than keg beer,‖ the mayor continued, ―and that‘s marijuana. Then again, I don‘t worry so much about marijuana because, unlike keg beer, no one‘s on me to legalize it. But keg beer can‘t be drunk in this county because, well, it‘s illegal.‖ Cot folded his arms. ―You want to look around, then look around.‖ Fulton motioned for his officers to do their nosing. We knew they wouldn‘t find any incriminating evidence. The keg had been drained dry during the party. Cot and his friends took turns hoisting themselves upside down over it. Someone would put the spigot between his lips and start squirting, and each would have to chug and chug to keep the beer from bursting his bulging cheeks.
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One of the officers eyed the loft stairs. ―That‘s a lot of steps to drag a keg up,‖ Cot noted. ―I doubt the floorboards could even hold the weight.‖ Fulton caught him peeking, too. ―You keep your pool tables up there, don‘t you? I imagine one of them strains a beam far more than forty gallons of beer. You go on, Charlie.‖ We heard the policeman coming at us. I looked at Lizzie, who was looking at me with my same expectation. We each thought the other would know what to do. The creak of approaching feet told us we didn‘t have time to wonder. We rolled to our knees and scrambled into our room. I was too scared to think straight; I hopped onto the mattress and pulled the duvet over me. Only when Lizzie yanked me to the floor did I realize it was a better idea to hide under the bed. The door swung open, and the policeman clicked the switch. We watched his shoes pace the room. He patted the duvet, checked the closet, and then rifled our chester—why, I never understood. Did he think a keg would fit in a drawer? ―We‘ve got girls clothes, but that‘s about it, boss. Looks like smalls, but I‘m no expert. You want me to toss you a pair?‖ I didn‘t like the idea of a stranger touching my stuff. Mom didn‘t either. I heard her tell Fulton that those clothes were hers. It wasn‘t a lie. We shared shirts and jeans. We had to—we didn‘t have money to waste on wardrobe. ―Come on down, Charlie,‖ the mayor barked. The light went out as the door clapped shut. Lizzie and I didn‘t budge for a half-hour. When we finally crawled from under the bed frame enough moonlight spilled through the window for us to see that our pajama fronts were gray with dust. ―You should sweep under there more often,‖ Lizzie told me, bursting into a giggle. We jumped under the covers in each other‘s arms. We were still giggling minutes later when the door opened again. This time Mom and Cot clicked on the light. ―I can‘t figure it,‖ we heard Cot whisper. ―Charlie should‘ve been blaring sirens to catch them here. Why would he lie?‖ My mom wasn‘t as tolerant. She didn‘t have any use for our possum playing, so she didn‘t bother to lower her voice. ―Only once you‘ll ever lie on your back with a face set that tight. And you‘ll be lying in a casket when you do.‖ It was enough to scare us right to sleep. The next morning we were tired but not enough not to revel in our triumph. Other kids would have to wait until they were sixteen or seventeen to pull a fast one on the police. They‘d probably go to their graves without ever messing with Fulton Sparks. We might‘ve gloated until Page 42
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school was over if we hadn‘t gone to my locker. Lizzie felt responsible when we saw the pink letters scrawled across my locker. ―We could pretend they meant to write my name,‖ she said, trying to be optimistic, ―and they‘re so stupid they misspelled it.‖ It was a clever suggestion. The word was lezzie. ―It‘s lipstick, isn‘t it?‖ Lizzie swabbed one of the Zs with a pencil eraser. ―Hard Candy.‖ She sniffed the rubber tip. ―Pixie, I‘d say, or Love Child.‖ I was down the hall before she caught up. ―You‘ll get in trouble!‖ Lizzie whispered as I hiked a stairwell. I spotted Jonquil Sparks surrounded by a half-dozen attending maidens, each dressed identically alike and each radiating the same sickly sweet aroma of cinnamon and rosewater. They were all toting boxes of Girl Scout cookies, too. ―What are you looking at?‖ Jonquil demanded as I approached. She wasn‘t a pretty girl. Her eyes were asymmetrical and the left side of her mouth drooped below her lip line, sort of like a stroke victim‘s. ―Pixie or Love Child?‖ ―What are you talking about?‖ As Jonquil tried to square the saggy side of her mouth into a frown, I realized this was what Mrs. Sparks probably looked like when she was twelve. It was good to know. It meant Jonquil would grow up to be a crone, too. ―The shade,‖ I said, tapping my lips. ―I know it‘s Hard Candy, but I can‘t tell the difference between metallic and matte. I‘m sort of finish-blind.‖ ―You‘re sort of fat and ugly, too.‖ Her friends chortled, which was their job. ―But since you asked, it‘s Love Child. Maybe you and your muffin—whoops, excuse me.… your cousin … can rub some on each other and make yourselves one. A love child, that is—‖ This time nobody laughed. I‘d socked Jonquil before she could finish her sentence. I hit her so hard the straight side of her face went crooked as the other. Our principal thought he could make me cry by calling my parents. I should‘ve explained to Mr. Mackey that Mom and I lived at Trudy‘s when the school year began, which was why her phone was listed as our emergency contact number. All I could do was cringe and apologize when Trudy hung up on him. When he asked for another number, I gave him the bar‘s, but the message on Cot‘s answering machine shocked him even more. He was understandably suspicious when I told him to call Cot and Deirdre‘s house. He was relieved when Deirdre sounded halfway normal,
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too—right up to when she assured him she‘d bring Mom down to school as soon as she figured out where to find her. I told him to tell her Tatie‘s. That was my bet. And I must‘ve been right, too, because Mom and Deirdre arrived within the half-hour. It was obvious Mom had just woken up. Her hair was mussed and her shirt wrinkled, and every time she talked she had to cough through the gunk of the previous night‘s cigarettes. ―I can‘t believe it! Cat‘s not a brawler. She reads books.‖ ―What she means,‖ Deirdre clarified, ―is that Cat wouldn‘t hit anybody first. Something set her off. What was it?‖ I hadn‘t admitted to Mr. Mackey what Jonquil wrote on my locker. I didn‘t want to; I‘d rather be banished from school than say the word aloud, especially with my mom there. Neither she nor Deirdre would drop it, however. ―Tell him what she did,‖ Mom was saying. ―Tell him how that little snob started it all.‖ Only when I heard myself say lezzie did I understand why Mr. Mackey‘s eyes kept drifting to Deirdre. He thought she and Mom were a couple. ―She was harassed. It‘s your job to know who‘s bullying around here. But you‘re scared, aren‘t you? Of Fulton Sparks! Or maybe his wife! I better not find out their granddaughter is getting off easy. However you punish Cat, that girl better get the same. We have friends who‘re lawyers!‖ ―Can we go home, please?‖ I modestly begged. Deirdre suggested a compromise. ―Cat was in the wrong, and she should be punished. I think a suspension is in order, but not an expulsion. If you were to kick her out for a week or two, say, instead of expelling her for good, we could accept that. And we could also accept you not suspending Jonquil—‖ ―What?‖ Mom erupted. ―We can accept that, but only if Jonquil and her friends go through one of those seminars where they teach you about … what‘s the word?‖ She inadvertently looked at Mom. ―Diversity. Different lifestyles. All that.‖ I would have loved God with all my heart if He‘d been merciful enough to strike me dead at that moment. Deirdre had given Mr. Mackey a good out, though, and he wasn‘t going to pass on it, even if the cost was the inevitable guff he‘d take from Mayor and Mrs. Sparks. I was suspended for two weeks, while Jonquil and her maidens were ordered to attend three days of after-school workshops about being nice to people who are … different.
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―Cat‘s really a good girl,‖ Mr. Mackey told my mom as they shook on the deal. He sounded like he felt sorry for me. I suppose he did. ―She and Lizzie both. They‘ve always been two of my favorites.‖ ―They‘ve always been ours, too,‖ Mom replied. I had my doubts. The first thing she did outside his office was to grab me by a pigtail and fling me into a locker. Not only had I never been kicked out of school before—I‘d never even stayed home sick. I had six years‘ worth of perfect-attendance certificates commemorating my good health. I thought I‘d pass my suspension reading in bed, but Mom and Cot had other plans. For my crime I was stripped of my few pleasures in life: no TV, no books, no CDs, and no Lizzie. As if those weren‘t bad enough, by six the next morning I was cleaning Cot‘s bar. ―You‘ve only got yourself to blame,‖ Cot would say. Then his voice would soften and he‘d quiz me about the fight. ―Did you split her lip? How hard did she cry?‖ I thought he was testing my remorse, making sure I regretted what I‘d done, so after I recounted the gory details I always made sure to add, ―I shouldn‘t have done it. I was wrong.‖ Then we‘d stare at each other until Cot remembered to nod in agreement. At those moments I understood that our relationship had irrevocably changed. I‘d always admired Cot because he was the closest thing I had to a father, but in slugging a Sparks I‘d done the very thing he wished he could do—the thing he knew he‘d never get to do—and that excited not only his envy but his reverence, too. Suddenly, I was twelve years old, and I was my uncle‘s hero. Four days into my punishment, Cot expressed his admiration with an afternoon‘s parole. ―Got errands to run,‖ he told me, licking the ends of his mustache. There was beer spume there; he‘d downed almost a whole six-pack over lunch. ―Your mom won‘t know—she‘s napping.‖ I was excited, especially when our first stop was the ice-cream parlor, where Cot bought me a double scoop of peanut butter cookie dough. Before the first scoop was gone he whipped his Jeep onto a skinny side road and into a gravel lot that housed a grungy trailer. I didn‘t recognize the place until I saw the Doberman. It belonged to Tommy Mills. ―I got business,‖ Cot explained, ―so no spyin‘ this time.‖ ―What business?‖ ―Nunya.‖ Of course, the minute Cot entered Tommy‘s trailer I stuck my cone in the ashtray and tiptoed out of the Jeep. Next to the trailer hitch I found a spare cinder block. I‘d barely grabbed it when I saw the Doberman lumbering at me. I was ready to break for the fence when I realized it wasn‘t a threat. The dog was old and hobbled, with sad, gray gobs of spit dangling off his gums. I
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ignored his whimpering as I set the block next to the window and stepped onto it. A homemade curtain of paper towels blocked my view, but a wadded sock under the lower sash gave me enough space to eavesdrop. ―I didn‘t have no choice.… I got a family. Anybody would‘ve done the same if theirs had been threatened—even you.‖ ―That‘s the point!‖ Cot went. ―I wasn‘t dumb enough to give him anything to threaten me with. But you—I know you. You probably had a damn joint in your hand.‖ ―It was about the beer, honest to God. That‘s all. I didn‘t say nothin‘ else about nothin‘ else.‖ ―Maybe you didn‘t, but what about Arlo? Or Isome? Christ, if they‘re dumb enough to blab about who they sells kegs to, what else they willing to talk about?‖ ―They don‘t know hair from hide. They need the dough. So do I. You ain‘t cuttin‘ me out. I got bills.‖ A wad of something landed on the desk. ―Think of it as severance pay,‖ Cot said. ―Better yet, fink pay.‖ ―This ain‘t right. It ain‘t fair. I started you out. You didn‘t know hydroponic from bubonic when I met you, and now you‘re buying me out? You need me!‖ ―You got caught, you big moron. You let Fulton find your own crop on you.‖ ―They only found rolling papers. There was no merchandise involved. Jesus, I got pulled over for not using my blinker. If they‘d run me to court nothing would have stood up. Don‘t you see? That keg was good cover.‖ ―Fulton‘s not gonna settle for rolling papers. Don‘t you see? He knows there‘s dope in his town—he‘s gonna want to know where it‘s coming from.‖ ―He won‘t bother us. Trust me.‖ ―Ha! Two women can‘t dance together in this town without him getting bothered!‖ I heard Tommy gulp several breaths of shallow air. ―Fulton won‘t hassle us,‖ he said, ―as long as Fulton‘s getting his cut.‖ A loud clunk came from Cot‘s side of the trailer. I thought he‘d dropped dead, but in reality, he‘d kicked Tommy‘s desk. ―I didn‘t get pulled over last weekend,‖ Tommy went. ―I got pulled over a year ago. I didn‘t just have rolling papers on me, either. I had a bag. I was square gone, but Fulton said he‘d get the charges dropped, for a fee. I been paying him half of my third ever since.‖ ―You‘re telling me that son of a bitch has been taking seventeen percent of my farm?‖
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―You‘ll be damning me and him more soon enough. He wants half of your third. This whole business of him busting in on you—it‘s his way of cornering you, just like he cornered me. ‘Course, you‘re not supposed to know. Me telling you, that means I‘m still on your side, see?‖ Cot didn‘t answer at first. ―Give me my damn money back,‖ he finally snapped. I knew he‘d barrel out the trailer, so I ran back to the Jeep. I couldn‘t close my door all the way, though. Cot was on the trailer porch already. All I could do was hold the handle and hope to latch it when he wasn‘t looking. In hindsight, it wasn‘t a brilliant plan. ―Did you get out of this truck?‖ ―No, sir.‖ He leaned through the open window and cocked his arm. I thought for sure he‘d slapped me because my tears flicked as far as the windshield. That was my fault, though. I‘d flinched. ―If you didn‘t get out, then why‘s the god-damned interior light on?‖ Sure enough, the dome above my head was lit. ―I only opened the door.… I got hot.‖ Only Cot wasn‘t looking at the light anymore. He was looking at the ashtray, where a steady stream of peanut butter cookie dough flowed down the cone, pooling at my feet. Now I really thought he‘d smack me, but he only shoved into the backseat and fished for a roll of paper towels. As I mopped up my mess, he jumped behind the wheel and stared at the instrument panel. ―Whatever you think you heard, you didn‘t, all right? Now quit that crying.‖ What I wanted to quit was him. I hated him. I wanted to do to him what I‘d done to Jonquil Sparks. Cot gunned the engine and backed up the Jeep in such a tear that he nearly sideswiped Tommy‘s El Camino. We didn‘t go ten feet in reverse before he shoved the gearshift into neutral, staring at the oily old car, its bed covered by a tarp. He lunged out of his seat and ran to the tailgate, yanking the tarp to the ground. He shouldn‘t have worried. There was nothing more illicit there than Girl Scout cookies. ―Eat some Do-Si-Dos!‖ When I didn‘t open the box fast enough he stabbed a thumb through the cardboard and tore the side straight off. In his excitement cookies went rolling across the floorboards. This time the mess didn‘t bother him. ―These ones are good!‖ I accepted the cookies as an apology. He regretted threatening to smack me, I decided. The truth was I was the furthest thing on his mind. His behavior over the next several days proved it. I barely saw him, and when I did, he didn‘t speak. When the phone rang, he turned his back. Then he‘d zoom off in his Jeep. I don‘t think he drank a lick during this time. At night he‘d sit at the bar scribbling in a little black
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notebook like detectives on television stuff in their shirt pockets. He bought a huge bulletin board mounted on rollers, too, which he wheeled into the storeroom. We were under strict orders not to bother him. There‘d be hell to pay if he caught us peeking under the sheet he shrouded it with. The only hints of what he was up to confused us more. We found pages of cut-up newspaper in the trash and index cards torn in two with thick marker lines blacking out names. One morning we even caught him snipping lengths of red and green yarn. ―Nunya,‖ he said as he cut a single gold one. The Saturday before I was to return to school Deirdre brought Lizzie to the bar. I hadn‘t seen her since I‘d punched Jonquil, so I should‘ve been excited. When she rushed to hug me, though, I couldn‘t throw my arms around her as lovingly as I‘d expected to. I‘d missed her and wanted our reunion desperately, but as we embraced I realized things between us would always be different. Maybe the difference was that I knew a secret about her father. Or maybe it was because with her breath on my neck and her hipbone in my thigh all I could think of was the word Jonquil had scrawled on my locker door. I wondered if I could ever express love again without worrying that somebody might call me that. Maybe I was most worried that I‘d grow up to become one. ―You smell like grease,‖ Lizzie decided when our hug broke. I did my best to laugh like old times. ―Y‘all are coming with me,‖ Cot announced. We piled into the Jeep. Whenever we hit a red light, he pulled out a brush to straighten his beard. ―Today‘s a civics lesson. You‘ll learn more this morning than all your schooling will ever teach you.‖ If that was true, the Waffle House seemed like a funny place to do it. But that‘s where Cot pulled into, parking his Jeep next to a black Cutlass Supreme. ―That‘s the mayor‘s car!‖ Lizzie said in astonishment. Cot smiled wickedly as he led us inside, where Fulton was so surprised to see us he forgot to remove his fork from his mouth. ―Mr. Mayor, I‘m here to tell you why permitting draft beer in Pennyville is in your best interest.‖ Without waiting for an invitation, he slid into the booth next to Jonquil. Fulton gave Lizzie and me the stink eye. ―Which of these two is the fighter? Whichever it is, shame on ya for cold-cocking.‖ Cot looked to Jonquil. ―You‘re district champ again for cookie sales, ain‘t you? I read that in the paper not long ago. How many boxes you sell this year?‖ ―One thousand two hundred and twenty-two.‖ ―The Girl Scouts must be proud of a go-getter like you. Why‘ve you never hit me up? I‘d love me some Double Dutchies. Tommy Mills recommends you highly.‖ It was obvious Jonquil had never heard of Tommy. Fulton laid his knife and fork on his plate. ―Where you going with this?‖ Page 48
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Cot unfolded an 8‖x10‖ from his pocket and spread it on the table. It was a picture of his bulletin board. It was designed like a spider web, with strands of yarn connecting index cards with grainy newsprint portraits glued to them. In the center was a big picture of Fulton, also clipped from the paper. ―See, these red ones represent various business that the city transacts with local suppliers. This one here, for example, is the $40,000 Pennyville paid to Mr. M. J. Shelton for computer hardware. And here‘s the $1,178 that went to Tommy for fixing the city toilets at the fieldhouse. This other one‘s my favorite: $11,456 from Gibb Barnt to the city. Mr. Barnt happens to run the biggest beer distributorship in Pennyville, and that moolah I do believe represents our little municipality's cut of the concessions from the annual softball tourney. All this information‘s public record.‖ ―I read your thinking,‖ he told Fulton. ―What about the green ones? Well, those strands are the folks who buy the Girl Scout cookies that every year wins Jonquil her district championship.‖ He laughed and boasted that he chose green because it‘s the Girl Scouts‘ color. ―Now the truly amazing coincidence here is that each and every local supplier who services this city is also a customer of Jonquil‘s. Mr. M. J. Shelton, for instance, last year purchased‖— He whipped out his black detective‘s notebook—―twenty-seven boxes of All Abouts, Trefoils, and Tag Alongs. Tommy bought sixteen, mostly lemon coolers, and old Gib.… well, he must‘ve been some kind of hungry, because he alone ordered one hundred and sixteen boxes, mostly Thin Mints.‖ Jonquil looked pleadingly to Fulton, who wasn‘t paying attention. He was too busy burning eyeholes into my uncle. ―No harm in helping the girl,‖ the mayor said. ―The Girl Scouts don‘t mind you exercising connections. They only get upset if you auction on the Internet.‖ ―Maybe so, but I‘m guessing your constituents wouldn‘t be so tolerant. I can‘t imagine them happy knowing municipal contracts are doled out to whoever‘s willing to buy Caramel Delights. There‘s another name for exercising connections, you know. It‘s quid pro quo.‖ He made a menacing squeezing gesture. ―That‘s Latin for ‗I got you by the cookies.‘ If you don‘t believe me—‖ He tapped the one gold string in the picture—―ask me about this one.‖ The string connected the mayor to Tommy Mills. When Fulton saw it, the color drained from his face. ―You got gall doing this in front of these girls.‖ Amazingly, Cot agreed. He ordered us outside. Lizzie and I kept our distance from Jonquil, who leaned against the Waffle House window, the saggy side of her face drooping more than usual. I was screwing up the courage to deliver my
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coup de grâce. I planned to inform Jonquil Sparks that she would end up a mean, ugly crone, just like her grandmother. Before I could, Cot danced through the doors, each hand flashing a victory sign. ―We are the champions,‖ he sang. ―You are the losers.‖ Then he promised us breakfast—only at the Huddle House. ―The mood‘s a little dark in the Waffle House right now.‖ We were climbing into the Jeep when Cot spotted Jonquil. I couldn‘t believe what he did. He rushed over to her and said he was sorry. ―All you need to know,‖ he told her, ―is that your granddaddy loves you much.‖ I couldn‘t believe what I was hearing. Here I‘d been raised to believe that the whole world could be boiled down to a Manichean battle between the light legions of beer lovers and the dark armies of Girl Scout cookie sellers, and suddenly my uncle—my generalissimo, my padishah—was consoling the enemy. I was furious. He never did apologize to me. I don‘t know how I thought life would change once Pennyville legalized draft beer. I guess I expected Mom‘s friends to roam the streets like raging Bacchants, ripping men to shreds, or to see Mrs. Sparks ridden to the guillotine in a tumbrel. I figured Cot‘s bar would be mobbed, that the snoozing bodies of dipsomaniacs would litter the sidewalks, that suds would at least run in the streets. Yet the truth is we accommodated the shock of kegs coming into our lives as if it were no more serious than the demolition of a treasured old building or the paving of a new throughway. Nothing seemed to change—nothing at all. It took me a few years to appreciate how, in reality, everything had. It didn‘t happen overnight, of course. First the city council had to vote. Cot made one last impassioned plea on the part of bar owners, but he was humble instead of overweening. So was Fulton. ―We are sensitive to the needs and wants of the people,‖ he assured the assembled crowd. ―We believe in the freedom—and the responsibility—of individual choice! This isn‘t Nazi Germany!‖ He had a good excuse for switching his stand—a public excuse, that is. Pennyville was bidding to host a semi-professional baseball team, and draft beer, as it turned out, was essential to its success. According to the feasibility study Fulton read from, no baseball aficionado could be expected to sit in the hot South Alabama sun without a foamy libation. ―Here! Here!‖ cheered our leading beer distributor, Gibb Barnt, who, despite previously opposing kegs, was now their most vocal advocate—thanks, no doubt, to the thirst he‘d acquired from eating one hundred and sixteen boxes of Jonquil‘s Thin Mints. The proposal passed unanimously.
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Cot celebrated his triumph with a party. It might just be the kick-off to a political career, he informed us. He rolled into the backyard with not one but three kegs. The hollowed-out washer was nowhere in sight. Lizzie and I snuck around to the side of our garage to peek onto the porch where a hundred people or so swarmed. Some danced, some chattered, a few struggled to stay on their feet. In a far corner we even saw a pair of upright legs. I recognized the jeans right away. I should have—I wore them a couple times a week. They were Mom‘s. ―They‘re playing that game again,‖ I said. ―The keg stand.‖ The crowd ticked off the seconds as Mom chugged: thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three! When they hit fifty some began chanting her name. ―I don‘t get the point,‖ Lizzie confessed. ―Why do you have to be upside down?‖ ―The beer stays in your head that way, even after you swallow it.‖ ―That doesn‘t make any sense.‖ A thought came to me: ―You want to find out?‖ I led her to the other side of the garage where the spare kegs rested, and I showed her why it didn‘t take genius to tap a keg. ―All you do is fit the coupler over the ball joint,‖ I said, aligning the lugs and downing the lever. We heard a soft hiss. ―Now we pump.‖ Lizzie didn‘t want to go first, so I grabbed the keg handles and told her to hold my legs. The first gush caught me by surprise. I only remembered to swallow when my cheeks were ready to burst. I gulped and gulped until I choked. ―You only went twenty seconds,‖ Lizzie said. ―Think you can do better? I dare you to try.‖ She had to tuck her nightgown between her knees so it didn‘t fall over her head. I helped her up and then gave her a blast. The beer shot out of her mouth, running into her nose. ―That was only three seconds,‖ I taunted her. We took turns, working our way to half a minute. No matter how fast Lizzie chugged, she couldn‘t beat me. I was enjoying my victory when someone grabbed me by the scruff—Tommy Mills. Apparently, he and Cot had patched things up. He took Lizzie by the arm and dragged us to the porch. I kept stumbling over my feet. My whole body seemed separate from myself, as if it no longer belonged to me. ―Lookee who I found! Creepin‘ in the beer nonetheless.‖ Everybody gawked as Cot and Mom rushed forward. ―What have you done?‖ Mom screamed. ―What have you done?‖
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When I opened my mouth, the rational explanation I expected to provide didn‘t tumble forward. Instead, I let fly with every bad word I‘d ever been told I shouldn‘t say—every one of which I‘d heard Mom use, and on regular occasions, too. The crowd reared back, aghast. Mom looked so stricken I felt bad. I wanted to explain all the confusing things I felt—how I couldn‘t love Lizzie anymore, how I didn‘t believe in heroes after learning about Cot, how much I despised her for being different. It was all too complex, however. As I grabbed for my thoughts, only three things were certain to me: I was twelve, I was drunk, and I liked it. ―Louder, girls,‖ Mom said. ―I can‘t hear you.‖ Lizzie and I stood in the kitchen, wincing at the taste of the liquid soap she squirted on the ends of our tongues. ―Why me?‖ Lizzie howled through her tears. ―I didn‘t say those words—she did!‖ ―You both tapped that keg.‖ Cot was at the breakfast table. Every few seconds, he covered his mouth, hiding his smile. He stopped when I shot him my stink eye. I might never know the exact bargain he and Fulton Sparks struck—whether the mayor got a cut of Cot‘s farm or not— but it didn‘t matter. I knew enough to understand that I‘d never willingly serve in another man‘s army. From here on out, I was my own loyal soldier. ―No talking,‖ Mom told us, capping the soap. ―Only singing.‖ ―La la la,‖ we went, raising our voices when she yelled ―Louder!‖ ―God damn,‖ Cot said with wonder. ―Look at the bubbles.‖ They floated from between our lips as our tongues clicked against our palates and the soap burned our throats. The bubbles weren‘t as prolific as our tears, but they rose and then drifted a little before they popped, disappearing just as we wished we could. I clenched my fists and waited to be a grownup because then nobody would be able to humiliate me. They could make me eat all the soap they wanted, I told myself, but they‘d never get the taste of draft beer out of my mouth.
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Curtains by Hall Jameson
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Contributors Philip Arnold's interest in the image is rooted in poetry. Several of his poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Rattle, Sou'wester and The Journal (England). His photography has most recently appeared in the documentary, "The Silent Realm." Broeck Wahl Blumberg's poems have appeared in Snow Monkey, on the internet in "Poets OnLine," and in performance in the off-Broadway play, ―On the Outside Looking In,‖ summer 2009. A resident of Montclair, NJ, she also works as a part time journalist for a Japanese political/economics journal. Paula Brancato is a fiction writer, poet and filmmaker, currently on faculty at the University of Southern California. She has been published by Mudfish, Georgetown Review, Litchfield Review, Southern California Anthology, Rattle, and Natchez Anthology, among others.
In 2010, Finishing Line Press will be publishing her second
chapbook, Painting Cities. In 2008, her book, Club Paradise, was a May Swenson and Holland Prize finalist and poet Ilya Kaminsky selected her first chapbook, Dar a Luz, for publication by the pacificREVIEW. Additional awards include the 2008 Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry, the 2007 Brushfire Poet Award and first prize Chester H. Jones Foundation. Paula lives in New York and is a graduate of Hunter College and the Harvard Business School. Kirk Curnutt is the author of two novels (Breathing Out the Ghost and Dixie Noir) and a short-story collection (Baby, Let's Make a Baby), as well as eight other books, including Coffee with Hemingway, with a preface by John Updike. William Doreski's work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently Waiting For the Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009).
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Margot Farrington is the author of two collections, most recently Flares and Fathoms (Bright Hill Press). Poems in anthologies include "Other Voices" (Parthian,U.K.) and "Cadence Of Hooves"(Yarroway Mountain Press) both published in 2008. Farrington was a Norton Island fellow in 2009. A 2010 interview and reading may be accessed via the archives of Art On Air International Radio. Roberta Feins lives in Seattle, and works as a computer consultant. She received her MFA in poetry from New England College in 2007. Her poems have been published in Tea Party, Floating Bridge Review, Five AM andAntioch Review. She edits the e-zine Switched On Gutenberg (http://www.switched-ongutenberg.org/) Hall Jameson is a fine art photographer, writer, and poet. She was born in Damariscotta, Maine and lived in New England for thirty years before moving west in 1997. She now lives in Helena, Montana. Her formal study of fine art began at The Maine College of Art in 1994, where she explored both the modern and traditional processes of fine art, majoring in photography. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Metropolitan State College of Denver in 1999 Marie Kane is the 2006 Bucks County (PA) Poet Laureate whose work has been published in The River, Stirring, The Bucks County Writer, U. S. 1 Worksheets, Wordgathering, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Hot Metal Press, the Delaware Valley Poets Anthology, two Philadelphia Inglis House anthologies, and others. She is a second place winner in the Poetry Society of New Hampshire's International Contest, an Honorable Mention winner in the Inglis House Contest in Philadelphia, and a finalist in the 2009 Robert Fraser contest. She has received a recognition award for her poetry from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts, and an award for her teaching of young writers from The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She lives in Yardley, PA, with her husband, Stephen Millner, an artist.
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Nancy Ryan Keeling's work has been published internationally in Finland, Australia, England, Canada, Japan, and Austria. She is a poet, playwright, and multimedia artist. Her art and photography has appeared in Calyx, Juked, Anderbro, Fluttr, and South Loop. Mercedes Lawry has been publishing poetry for over 30 years in such journals as Poetry, Folio, Nimrod and others. She also published fiction and stories and poems for children. Originally from Pittsburgh, PA, Mercedes has lived in Seattle since 1978. She has received honors and awards from Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission, Jack Straw Foundation and others. Ellen Lougee is a 45-year-old painter, student, climber and mother of 8-year-old twin boys. She lives with her husband and kids in southern California and dreams of someday moving to the mountains. Although Irène Mathieu's field is global health and she is preparing for a career in international medicine, she has always been an artist as well. Irène is a poet who occasionally dabbles in fiction and creative nonfiction and from time to time can also be found with a paintbrush, behind a camera lens, in the booth rapping, or on a piano bench. Her work focuses on themes of personal growth, change, and rebirth; travel and experiences in Latin America; relationships; and occasional forays into social justice fare. Previous publications include a photograph and poetry in the magazine 34th Parallel and poetry in Magnapoets. Currently, she is living in the Dominican Republic as a Fulbright Fellow. Anthony Nicaj is twenty-two years old and graduated last spring from SUNY Geneseo. He now writes full-time for an online news publication and works a pizzeria on the weekends. He is an avid bongo player and Chopin fan.
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Pete Pazmino is a graduate of the MA in Writing (fiction) program at Johns Hopkins University. He also attended the 2008 writer‘s conference at Sewanee. His work has previously been published in Monkeybicycle, JMWW, Menda City Review, A Cappella Zoo, You Must Be This Tall to Ride, and elsewhere, and is currently forthcoming in /One/. He was a finalist in the Iowa Review’s 2006 fiction competition, the Black Warrior Review’s 2007 fiction competition, and he received editor nominations for the storySouth Million Writers Award in both 2009 and 2010. He blogs, occasionally, at www.petepazmino.com. Colleen Peddycord is 20 years old and a student at The Fairhaven College in Bellingham, Washington. Kara Penn spends most of her time as a new mom and capacity-building consultant to nonprofits. She toils away as a poet whenever possible, and has been a member of the Writers Block community in Denver, CO and completed a writing residency at Salmon Publishing in Ireland. She holds rather quantitative graduate degrees from MIT and University of Chicago. Kara has published poems in several journals, including Rockhurst Review and Ekphrasis. She lives with her husband, newborn daughter and two dogs in Denver, Colorado. John Riley lives in North Carolina, where he works in educational publishing. His fiction and poetry have appeared in several print and electronic journals, including Soundzine, Falling Star, Hardboiled, SmokeLong Quarterly, Willows Wept Review, Loch Raven Review, and The Centrifugal Eye. Virginia Shank earned an MFA at the University of Idaho and is working on a PhD at Binghamton University. Her poems have appeared in RHINO, Grist, Permafrost, and the Oregon Literary Review. When not writing, teaching, or reading, she bakes, refines her claymation skills, and works as a part-time zookeeper. T he M eadowland R eview Summer 2010
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Margaret Walther is a retired librarian from the Denver metro area and a past president of Columbine Poets, an organization to promote poetry in Colorado. She has poems published or forthcoming in many journals, including Connecticut Review, anderbo.com, Ghoti, Quarterly West, Naugatuck River Review, Chickenpinata, Willow Review and Nimrod. She won the Many Mountains Moving 2009 Poetry Contest. Two of her poems published by In Posse Review were chosen by Web del Sol in 2010 for its eSCENE 44, Best of the Literary Journals. Wendilea is a treehugger who resides in New Jersey and dreams of becoming a gypsy wanderer. Leonore Wilson's poetry has been in such magazines as Quarterly West, Five Fingers Review, Third Coast, Madison Review, Pif, Nimble Spirit, etc. She lives and teaches in Northern California. Steven Wingate's poetry, fiction, cross-genre work, and reviews have recently appeared in Gulf Coast, Witness, Mississippi Review, The Pinch, Colorado Review, Brand (UK), Waccamaw, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. His short story collection, Wifeshopping, won the Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize from the Bread Loaf Writers‘ Conference and was published by Houghton Mifflin in July 2008. In 2010-11 Steven will be Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA.
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The Meadowland Review www.themeadowlandreview.com
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