Windfall 2014

such sudden fortune: wind’s gift of crisp, ripened fruit fallen at our feet — Founders, 1976

windfall Vol. XXXVII 2014 Undergraduate Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Art Truman State University

DEAR READER, I am delighted to finally present to you the 2014 edition of Windfall.

In your hands lies not only the culmination of a year of effort—it is the newest addition to a legacy of great talent. One of the primary goals of this magazine is to showcase the exceptional work of Truman students, and this year’s book does not disappoint.

Before you get lost in these pages, many thanks are in order. First and foremost I am grateful for the English Department and all of its faculty: it is abundantly clear that they are dedicated to the personal, professional, and aesthetic development of their students. I am also deeply indebted to our Department Chair, Dr. Royce Kallerud, for his unwavering support of the magazine. We are fortunate to have leadership that recognizes the value of a magazine like Windfall and continues to sustain it as a service of the University. I must also thank our advisor Dr. Ed Rogers; he has proved to be a vital source of wisdom, assistance, and mischievous laughter.

This magazine would be nothing without its staff. Their dedication and intellect proved invaluable as we reviewed hundreds of pages of submissions.

Our genre editors never failed to cultivate insightful discussion and analysis.

I’m indebted to Samantha Arvin, whose creativity and acumen brought about many events to support the magazine and the artistic community here at Truman. Helen Stanley, our Submissions Editor, also deserves recognition for her outstanding and dependable work that keeps this magazine afloat. I could not have asked for a more reliable Assistant Editor—Kira Lubahn is consistently the first to volunteer both her time and her passionate comments.

I am also exceedingly grateful for our Design Editor, Kathryn Sutton. Not only has she designed professional and attractive posters for the magazine all year, but I am even confident enough to call this edition of Windfall the most beautiful in almost forty years of publication.

Most importantly though, I must thank all of you who read Windfall and submit work to the magazine. Without those of you creating, we would have nothing to compile. Without those of you reading, we would have no reason to exist. I am proud to be able to share with you this testament to the talent of our students. It is my deepest desire that you would enjoy reading the 37th edition of Windfall as much as I enjoyed producing it.

Sincerely, Kevin Kotur Editor-in-Chief

WINDFALL STAFF Kevin Kotur Kira Lubahn Kathryn Sutton Helen Stanley Samantha Arvin

Editor-in-Chief Assistant Editor Design Editor Submissions Editor Publicity/Events Organizer

Conor Gearin Leela Chapman

Prose Editor Assistant Prose Editor

Hope Benefield & Josiah Rosell Nichole Schroeder

Poetry Editors Assistant Poetry Editor

Kim Wronkiewicz Emily Wild

Art Editor Assistant Art Editor

Elle Fitzgibbons Kate Hawkins

Webmaster Office Support Staff

Dr. Ed Rogers Shannan Cantu Brian Cary Nathan Fridley Sebastian Maldonado-Velez Catherine O’Mara Matthew Preacher Anthony Sandifer Keilah Sullivan Paige Yungermann

Faculty Advisor General Staff

CO NTE N T S POETRY 6 8 9 10 12 13 16 19 29 30 35 42 44 45 46 48 50 60 62 64 66 68 71 76 77 79 80 90 92 94 96 99

Jordyn Williams Marisa Gearin Kira Lubahn Kirk Schlueter Alex Wennerberg Hope Benefield Carter Datz Josiah Rosell Adriana Maria Long Lydia Frank Keilah Sullivan Sebastion Maldonado-Velez Keilah Sullivan Robert Overmann Conor Gearin Kirk Schueter Marisa Gearin Hope Benefield Paula Vaught Conor Gearin Hayen Wilsey Adriana Maria Long Adriana Maria Long Carter Datz Allison Bearly Kirk Schlueter Sebastion Maldonado-Velez Hope Benefield Carter Datz Kirk Schlueter Lydia Frank Hope Benefield

PROSE Blood Red Poll The Girl in My Closet Full Fathom Five Digital Watches To Be Her Waiting Tear Stephen Untitled Wordplay Schoolyard Fantasies Farce Senseless Violence Napping in Late November City of Bridges Some Days it’s Cold And And Laid Open Teddy Bear Revolution Architect Veins Of New York Artist Talk Farewell to Hello Too Soon...Too Late Is This Children’s Sad Dance with Death When I Knew You But When I Look at Her The Road to Hannibal Untitled And Then the After

14 20 32 36 53 72 88

Josiah Rosell Alexandra Timmer Carter Datz Samantha Arvin Robert Overmann Mary Oliver Adriana Maria Long

You Burn Shelf Life Vacation The Seriousness of Wendell Chrystler l’Esprit de l’Escalier Path Ciudadana

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY Cover 11 17 18 28 33 34 41 51 52 65 69 69 70 78 87 98

Kristen Williams Nathan Aden Rebecca Reitz Lauren Radix Kristen Williams Lauren Moll Rebecca Reitz McKenzie Grabish Kristen Williams Sara Murillo Kira Lubahn Lauren Radix Lauren Radix Rebecca Reitz Sara Murillo Kathryn Sutton Anna Barry-Ford

Travel Untitled Veiled Embrace Exposed Eye of the Tiger An Interpretation of Number 3 Barbara LeAnne Bass Fish Untitled Snow Quartet Tea Couple Illustrate ‘Till You Die Untitled El Diablo Family Reunion

Jordyn Williams

BLOOD RED Alive, breathing dragon’s breath, the sky bled in the sun’s last attempt to cling to

the horizon.

Shrieking gashes from the heart, the war torn sky howls, protesting agony as its outstretched arm is ripped off: limb from limb, dismantling dismembering disappearing still

fighting.

What life looks like:

torn apart.

Raw fingers sawing clawing clinging bleeding:

the horizon cries out.

Trembling quaking red vision smears dusk like blown brains— dark tendrils gnawing flesh from bone, fighting frenzied flails.

But sun is still falling,

heart is still throbbing, tearing into darkness.

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A blaze of explosion—day fighting night— burning a hole through space, through time: stopping to watch thralls of shredded crimson fingers quivering in cold night, clenching heat from the gaping hole of pulsing blood—

nothing to hold onto— slipping fire on bleeding heart.

What life looks like on the line.

Prostrated to heaven, choking fire breaths hissing into wisps of smoky ash charred into jagged rust, thrusted into bruised red, the heart of the beast slides from glory on slick ropes of rancid fire.

Blood black as death sponges scars, birthing tiny twinkles from grimaces.

What life looks like falling from

the sky.

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Marisa Gearin

POLL How satisfied are you with our Sun? a. not very b. yes c. on long walks d. on Saturdays e. the flowers I appreciate f. it burns g. I get dizzy sometimes h. I wonder if it’s satisfied with us Kira Lubahn

THE GIRL IN MY CLOSET She is foreign to me, the girl in my closet.

Seaweed hair dripping, rough coral fingers scratch, scratch, scratching against the door until I softly step toward and let her out.

Eyes wide and white as sea foam, she stares at me.

My mouth is salty, my lungs feel tight.

Every night I drown, her fingertips crashing in waves against my skin.

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Kirk Schlueter

FULL FATHOM FIVE My father lies in a bed of simple pleasures: flossing an hour before your death in order to greet God with a clean and gleaming smile, a Blue Moon with an orange slice for a cocked hat at Christmas, like fruit popping from the fertile boughs of the stars, and the earth Tantalus stretching his frustrated gorge wide.

But what brings me close to him, the pillow I slide under his marbling hair, are the tawny leaves of mid-autumn blown from three houses down until our backyard is a rusty lake. With a rake for a pole, he glides our ferry across a blanket that could be sunset.

The gloves he hands me are licked by needle sap and the fingers smooth and black from labor, the radio murmurs low and yellow the new gladiators, rough collisions of their bodies across a country of silt and corn, the throngs and their roar, the violence cool and pleasing as he works, lifting the rake with a hand close to hold captive leaves at bay, bundling into the trash can marked with a red X like a doomed tree.

All afternoon I sit in the clearing grass, neck purring with the calls of men miles and miles away while my father doesn’t rest, he is algae draining the corruption from the lake, restoring its natural environment.

And all this time he never mentions graves, in all his sweat and competent vigor, he never once talks of death.

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Untitled | Nathan Aden

Alex Wennerberg

Hope Benefield

DIGITAL WATCHES

TO BE HER

“Most of the gold in the solar system is in the sun,” you say before leaving for Boston in four hundred and fourteen thousand pounds of aluminum

& other things.

We rode into the storm and the air was pure electricity, no sign of rain, yet, but we would soon catch a shaft, swiftly approaching as our tires spun fiercely forward.

The road is like the asphalt of your back; I’d like to lay my chin on your spine, but your skin prickles and hardens against my cheek, many travel you, I think.

A fence stands against the wind, water drips like paint; we don’t get pickets here, we have chain-link, abandoned and sometimes flattered with barbed teeth.

The hair-breaths lining the breadth of our skin are flattened in response to the thunder, you say the boom is welcoming; I count the seconds after the shock of light fades.

We attempt language the way thunder shouts after lightning—as if she is too fast, she quickly disappears into the cover of night-clouds. I want to hold her mystery, I want to tear apart trees, blacken them, limbs found scattered in the morning, I want to be destruction, flash and vanish—next morning two boys will have a stick fight and trace the scars left behind on the tree bark, they’ll carve their names and take credit for forces of nature beyond their control; they’ll take the sticks home with them.

For now we see these boys walking home along the highway, I think I hear you smile at them; you don’t want me to know you were a boy once and now see them through glass.

We’ll be home soon. This bed is always too big. We hear the storm outside and think we are larger than the rain, clouds waiting for the sky to spill open and make sound.

The air is filled with invisible dust and visible people and you look at me through the four panes of glass separating our eyes that look like encyclopedia illustrations, “which they are,” you remind me.

On one of the moving walkways unique to airports

(which we laughed at together among the iPhoned people), I meet eyes with a smiling human

(non-iPhoned) whose face betrays his love for the universe like how for you I am a smiling human whose face betrays my body’s perpetual sense that I am going to die and I will be dead forever among the dead you and the dead sun.

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13

Josiah Rosell

YOU BURN In the early years, we didn’t know you were there. You didn’t eat with us when Ma called for supper, standing on our backyard deck. You didn’t try to catch trout in our backwoods creek. Even when you came out, lurking just off the road as we passed, I didn’t recognize you. You weren’t alive.

Ma and Pa first told me about you after Auntie Pattie met you. I rolled your name around on my tongue. It was like a piece of cold, limp fish, tasteless and curling in the corners of my mouth. I looked at Matt. His mouth was slightly ajar, tasting air. Later, we both acquired your taste, bitterer than Pa’s beer. We grew familiar with your smell, rank and heavy, like when he had too much.

I hated you after you slithered out of the shadows like the first snake. You tempted me to come with you, with Ma. I nursed your whispers, sheltered them behind cold hands and blew it and watched as they began to burn. Pa wrapped them in swaths of cloth, her old clothes.

That was when Matt wasn’t around. When he was, I didn’t have to think about you. We could go down to the creek, toss stones at squirrels or build little forts, just like before. We never looked behind trees or under the rocks in the rapids for you - you weren’t alive, then. Even when we knocked the squirrels down, you weren’t alive.

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How could you live with yourself, taking Ma away? You didn’t reach out and catch our bitterness like rain in a barrel.

No, you preferred to let us grow new little dandelions and spread their seeds before showing us they could not plant.

My hands have burned for years with your words. Now, Pa gives me some of the stuff in the barrels out back for the fire in the rest of my body. I can’t stand to take it, but after he forces it down, it dies down to an ember. I smolder and spin. I think of Ma all the time, but I don’t have water to be bitter.

I can’t play with Matt now. He tries to sit by my side, but he’s got a different kind of fire. I wouldn’t stay, either, just to swirl with Ma, to hear Pa’s drinking. Out at the creek, you’re still dead.

I guess I should have followed you that first time, right after Ma. She always told me I’d see her in heaven one day. This is probably too soon. I’d rather have played in the creek more, seen you at the other end of the shotgun as we hunted with Pa. But the fire isn’t so bad since the burns scarred. And Pa says we’ll go hunting once I’m better.

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Carter Datz

WAITING My eyelids swing heavy.

These ponderous anchors pull me under the crashing azure seafoam while I blink back anachronistic tears and yawn A submarine finds me nestled in the coral and pauses in the doorway She gazes at the crown of algae adorning her bedpost and realizes this sanctuary is no longer her own.

I’ve been awake for a hundred thousand years and my lungs are flooding from the inside silently pleading for her oxygen chambers to respire into my offensive mouth But the submarine drifts into the current and I am bound by my iron shackles in the depths until it knows how to find me.

Veiled | Rebecca Reitz 16

Josiah Rosell

TEAR gap between words like through leaky roof come thoughts that seep ‘round hands, down arms, attempting to plug that tear

Embrace | Lauren Radix 19

Alexandra Timmer

SHELF LIFE It was in the winter when Diana Caraway opened something that wasn’t meant to be opened a second time. Diana hadn’t left the apartment in almost two days. She didn’t need to. There were no classes to attend and she yet again cancelled an appointment with a university therapist. Her tiny college town was too cold right now to make her want to leave her bed. Except for stuff: stuff was always good and she needed more stuff. Her older roommate would be graduating in a few months and taking most of the stuff in their apartment with her. This prompted Diana to emerge from her own particular cocoon of warmth and blankets, and venture out to a “going out of business” sale that an antique store located on the town square was having for today only. She took care before leaving her apartment, running a brush through her blonde hair that looked almost sandy with oil. She would remember to shower when she got back. She decided against putting on any makeup. Her lips were already red from being so chapped and she didn’t have enough foundation to cover up the dark bags underneath her blue eyes. With her gloves and scarf already on, she easily buttoned up her coat thanks to loss of appetite and headed out of the apartment.

The sale was set up market style and was mainly in the basement of the old store. Now, all the tables and vendors were cramped together in a damp basement that felt just as cold as the outside. There were a few big pieces of furniture sprinkled about the venue, but mostly it was filled with long, plastic tables with no tablecloths that had piles of stuff in no particular order. It was more like a chaotic rummage sale.

Diana spent about ten minutes wandering around and trying not to get pulled into conversations with people she didn’t know. She didn’t see any other university students there, but nonetheless it felt good to be out of her apartment and out of a lecture hall. It was when she was looking at a selection of timeworn, stained books with their pages still stuck together that she came across a very pretty, decorative vase. It reminded her of the French vases she had to study last semester in Western Art, when trading with the East had begun and porcelain was the height of fashion. It was perhaps one of the few things there that could actually be classified as an antique.

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The vase was a mixture of gold and cobalt and was large enough to hold two pints of water. It had two golden arms that wrapped around its neck and quiet country scenes were depicted on either side of its stomach. It looked old and beautiful, and she wanted it.

When she picked it up she almost dropped it. It was heavy as if it was completely solid and the lid seemed to be glued on. There was no one near the table, so she cradled the urn to her, tipping it this way and that as she searched for some sort of price tag. Finding nothing, she walked toward the closest adult she saw, an old man. He was sitting in a corner reading a newspaper. She turned a timid squeak into a cough as she asked how much. He hardly glanced up to say “That’ll be twenty,” and she dug into her coat pocket, her thick-gloved hands getting stuck as she tried to find the wrinkly bill that had been in the pocket of the pair of jeans she had just washed. Once found, she handed it to him and waited. Diana was a true believer in retail therapy. Buying things to cheer herself up was quickly becoming a pastime to her. Buying the vase had cost her all the cash she had brought and so she decided it was best to return to the warmth of her apartment. She buried her face in her scarf and hugged the vase to her chest all the way back to the apartment.

Their apartment was a true student apartment: nothing matched and everything in it was a hodgepodge of cheap, new and used. It was also perpetually messy. Both Diana and her roommate Amber hated cleaning and as a result they were almost always stepping on something or touching something that was sticky and needed to be washed.

Setting the urn down on the floor, Diana worked to clear the coffee table in the middle of the living room of her roommate’s stuff.

She moved Amber’s laptop, empty soda cans, various candles, nail polish bottles and toenail clippers onto the floor for now and then went to place the urn on the now empty coffee table. Diana hated confrontation in general, but with Amber she avoided it completely.

She almost felt meek at times as she cleared off the shared coffee table that she had brought, only to put everything back exactly where it was before Amber came back. Amber tended to be very defensive and held grudges like it was an art form, so it was just easier to suffer these little apartment issues in silence. She turned toward the kitchen, where she reached for her roommate’s toolbox above the fridge. Amber had a boyfriend. It wasn’t much of a description to give a person, but it 21

was how Amber was defining herself and how Diana summed her up nowadays whenever her mother called to check-in. Diana didn’t particularly care for the boyfriend. It wasn’t that he was rude or anything.

Actually, it was almost the opposite. He never talked to her and when Diana was in the apartment, he tended to ignore her very presence.

He and Amber went out to the bars or to dinner almost every night, leaving Diana to sit alone in her apartment, microwaving soup for dinner night after night. When they actually were in the apartment they tended to monopolize the shared living space by intimately cuddling up on the couch. This always left Diana with no choice but to retreat back to her room before she politely threw up in her hands from the sight of them. Amber was practically her only friend. They lived together and, before the boyfriend, used to hang out in the living room, watching movies all the time. Now with Amber gone almost all the time and Diana’s social anxiety building up, she was feeling more alone than ever before.

Now she finally had something to do other than attend class and she was overexcited about it. She wanted to open the vase, she wanted to see why it was so heavy or if something was inside, but mostly she wanted something to do.

After nearly half an hour of trying every tool in the box besides the hammer, the lid finally loosened and Diana was finally able to tug it off with her hands. After looking down into the vase with confusion, she swiftly remembered that vases aren’t just used for decoration and can be urns in disguise. Ash: nothing but pale, chalky ash filled the vase to the brim. There was a person in this urn. She had just bought a dead person and they were now sitting on top of her coffee table in her living room. She laughed softly when she realized the irony that there was an urn in the living room, but she swiftly returned her attention to the larger concern of accidentally purchasing a dead person. What if they were going to have a funeral for this urn after the sale and she had just run off with the funeral’s main attraction? That was unlikely of course, but just the thought of it made her stomach muscles tighten and she started to feel light-headed as if she was about to faint. She sat cross-legged on the floor with her head between her hands as she tried to breath out a rising panic attack.

She took care in putting the lid back on and the urn on the floor, careful not to knock it over as she put Amber’s stuff back on the 22

coffee table just the way she found it and shifted the coffee table back towards her couch. She put her coat and scarf back on and snatched the urn back up into her arms, trying to keep it at arm’s length as she walked, but it was exceedingly heavy. The sale had been cleaned out by the time she arrived and there was no frantic mob combing the place looking for a body, only a small group of old women in the corner counting the sales’ proceeds. A large sign behind the old women read, “No Refunds,” making Diana swallow thickly as she stepped toward the group.

“Umm, excuse me?”

Diana tried to sound confident without seeming rude as she unconsciously clutched the urn closer for support. For some reason she didn’t outright say that she had just bought an urn filled with human ash. Instead she asked if anyone knew who the old man who sold it was. The old woman who was sorting pennies from dimes looked up.

“Dear, all the sellers were volunteers. All the items have been hanging around storage units, basements and bankrupt antique shops for ages.”

“So, there are no records for where the items came from?”

“Sorry, no refunds, all the money that isn’t going to the bank is going towards fixing the church’s heat.” That wasn’t what she had asked.

“If you don’t want it anymore dear then just re-gift it. It is a reasonably pretty vase.” She said as she nodded toward her.

“It’s just that there is,” Diana tried, but the women had turned their heads and hearing aids down, and went back to counting the money. With anxiety and possibly something else rising, Diana left.

This was no longer a beautiful shelf piece. It was now a person, with emphasis on the was. She couldn’t just throw it out and she couldn’t just give it to someone. She momentarily thought she could find it a new home somewhere on the Internet, but then thought again when she started to imagine the kind of people who would knowingly buy an occupied urn. She arrived back at the apartment and quickly retreated to her room. She didn’t want to put the urn back in the living room for fear of Amber lifting the lid and overreacting like she always did. So she cleared some room on her tall and overly stuffed bookshelf and put the urn next to the Jane Austen section. The urn could have easily been in a Regency home and she comforted herself by thinking that whoever this once was, was once 23

a lover of Austen. She couldn’t return it, sell it or throw it out. She wasn’t going to risk being haunted: the undergraduate program was exhausting enough already. It looked like she would have to keep it, at least for now.

For the urn’s sake as well as her own, she needed to know who this person once was. Just then she heard Amber come in the front door and slam it shut, as was her habit. There had to be a clue as to who this was. She didn’t have much experience with death, but Diana was certain that there had to be some sort of labeling system. She saw no name amongst the swirls of gold and the painted scenes, and she didn’t want to dump out the urn like a box of crackerjacks just to see if there was a slip of paper buried inside. The only thing that wasn’t part of the design that she could find was the year “1944” handwritten in red paint on the inside of the lid.

Diana started to recreate the urn’s life, like a child crafts an imaginary friend by hastily fashioning a stencil and then carefully coloring in the lines with detail over time. First and foremost, she decided her name was Eleanor. Over the next few days, in-between classes, too many cups of coffee, and hiding away in her room from her roommate and her boyfriend, Eleanor started to fill in and become more colorful. By now Diana had stared at the urn for so long that she had started to see a face. Eleanor had the same deep cobalt eyes that the urn had, along with the same flawless porcelain skin. Eleanor had died young. She was around Diana’s age and was a student at the Sorbonne, where she was studying female authors like Austen. During late night study sessions, Eleanor’s story grew more dramatic. She was still in school when the Nazis occupied Paris. She waited out the Germans and in the midst of Liberation in August of that year she became a nurse for the allies. Diana couldn’t help but build this person, who was sitting on her shelf, up. It was on one of her shifts when she had died. The German bombs plunging from the sky had caused the hospital to catch on fire. Eleanor and many others tragically burned to death. With no possible way to identify the remains amongst the rumble, the people of Paris had no choice but to scoop up the charred remains and place them in a nameless urn, with nothing but the year of death to identify them. Part of Diana thought she was crazy to make up such a detailed story, but nonetheless it was comforting to feel like this was no longer a stranger. Eleanor was currently spending 24

her afterlife on a stranger’s bookshelf, entombed between Austen and Chopin, and Diana thought she owed her a comfortable shelf life.

It had been almost a month since Diana had bought Eleanor and still she had not told a soul that she had someone’s ashes in her room.

The subject never came up. Amber hadn’t been in Diana’s room and therefore didn’t even know she had bought an urn. Whenever her mother called, she had always forgotten to mention it and she had again cancelled her appointment with the university therapist. Diana now only ever left her apartment for class. As the semester wore on, she had begun feeling exhausted no matter how many hours of sleep she got or how much coffee she drank. The days she saw Amber were now few and far between. She had taken to sleeping at her boyfriend’s apartment now and frequently went home on the weekends. She didn’t even share any of the same classes in the same building as Diana, and Diana was starting to feel like she lived alone. Diana now took comfort in reading more than ever. Eleanor had been moved to the bookshelf next to the front door in order to make room for all the new books she bought. For the most part Diana found comfort in her new solitude. After a long day of classes where she was forced to face her anxiety and natural shyness head on for the sake of her participation grade, it was nice to come back to a place where she didn’t have to speak. She spoke more to Eleanor, however, than she did to any person alive. Eleanor was a great listener and Diana could picture Eleanor around the apartment easier than she could picture Amber.

She was starting to see Eleanor everywhere and she was no longer in an urn. Instead, she was out walking to class with Diana and sitting next to her in class making witty remarks about the subject matter as she tried to get Diana to relax enough to speak up. Diana had built up Eleanor so much that she knew what her laugh sounded like. She had stopped trying to schedule appointments with the university therapist she knew she would never keep and she no longer counted how many times she saw Amber in a week. Eleanor was everywhere.

Amber had come back for a shower and a change of clothes.

Upon leaving, she slammed the door shut and the vibration from it caused Eleanor to topple off the bookshelf. The urn was in pieces now and ash covered the carpet. Amber must have not heard the noise because she didn’t come back. It felt like Eleanor was dying all over again. The urn was beyond super glue. Diana felt the bile in her 25

throat as she scrambled to vacuum up Eleanor. The sounds from the vacuum almost sounded like screaming as Diana ran the vacuum over the carpet again and again, making sure she got every piece that was Eleanor. She walked to the kitchen where she grabbed the almost empty coffee can and poured Eleanor in with a sympathetic, “I hoped you liked coffee.” She placed coffee-canned Eleanor on the counter and took the broken urn to her room, where she put the shards of glass into a plastic bag. It wasn’t until the next morning when Diana entered the kitchen half awake that she remembered where she had left Eleanor the night before. Amber was already in the kitchen getting ready for an early class.

“Oh good, you got more coffee,” she greeted scooping up the coffee and putting it in the coffee pot. Diana had never woken up so quickly and without the aid of caffeine before.

“No!” Amber just stared at her. “Don’t drink her!” Amber was turning red and pale at the same time, making her look pink as she removed the lid and looked in at the grey “coffee.”

“What! Are you telling me I almost just drank someone?” To Amber’s credit she didn’t drop the coffee can. “Who is this?” She was nearly purple now.

Diana could feel the faintness coming on strong as she answered weakly, “I don’t technically know.”

“So, I nearly just drank some random person?” Diana should have rethought what she said next.

“Would it make you feel worse or better if you, like, almost drank my grandmother or something?” Amber didn’t answer, so she continued. “Well, to be fair you should have looked first! Coffee grounds are dark brown, not grey. Does it even smell like coffee to you?” Their friendship was probably over now.

“Of course it does, and it’s in a coffee can and what’s in a coffee can? Coffee! Why on Earth would I even for a second stop to think that there is human ash and not coffee in here! Why do you have a cremated body in the apartment and in the coffee can? This shouldn’t be in here!” Somewhere in the back of Diana’s mind she realized that this was the longest conversion that they had had in weeks.

“The lease just said no pets...well, excluding fish. They didn’t say anything about cremated bodies of people we never knew.”

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“Oh my god! You have totally lost it. What have you been doing with a random person’s ashes?” It was then that Diana finally felt the effects of all those cancelled appointments to see a therapist.

She felt sick, mentally sick and she needed help. She didn’t want to push Amber away anymore, so she ran into the bathroom so Amber wouldn’t see her. Diana turned the shower on to drown out the noise that would soon be coming. She stared to cry and hyperventilate at the same time. She bit down on her lip until it bled as she tried to focus on her breath. Meanwhile, Amber was on the other side in confused tears. She didn’t know that Diana had gotten so bad without her here.

“If you would just stop hanging out with the dead then maybe you wouldn’t be so awkward with the living.” It was noon and they were walking arm and arm to campus. Amber had insisted that they skip classes for the day and after a heartfelt conversation they were now going to the counseling service to make Diana an appointment for the next day. On the way back to the apartment, they stopped for some coffee and then at the local graveyard. Amber pulled Eleanor out of her bag and traded her for Diana’s coffee cup. Diana removed the plastic lid and poured Eleanor out near the biggest head stone and left her there.

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Adriana Maria Long

STEPHEN turn me inside-out and i will show you every mark, every limb torn from its socket in an attempt to hold you, make you stay. i will point out scars like a trail— i am breadcrumbs and leaky faucets, black lung and vacant apartment buildings. take my spine and split me down the center, crack me open to your favorite page— read the passages that pulse through my veins and quote me as if the words you ground between your teeth sharpened were a city of gold, a fountain of youth. read me to your children, grandchildren i dare you— tell them of the woman you ransacked like a village, how you set fire to her soul and watched her burn like salem. i pray you remember as elephants do that the words from your lips are tainted—red, and that the monsters in your favorite books are much less frightening than the man who reads of them.

Exposed | Kristen Williams 29

Lydia Frank

UNTITLED I. sometimes i look at you and you’re just a person but sometimes i look at you and there’s this deep, aching sense of loss like all the stars have suddenly quit their jobs and last night they were there but i was too distracted by something else and i forgot to look up II. sometimes when your body folds around mine it feels like a question mark III. i trace the connect-the-dot freckles on your arms and i thought that i had finally found a place to anchor myself but clenched fists, damp sidewalks, and shoes with holes make me think that love is not spelled like your name after all

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IV. there should be a word for the way that i only sleep on one side of the bed and never change your pillowcase anymore; the way that i still fill the coffeepot with enough grounds for both of us; the way that gravity increases its weight on my shoulders when i inexplicably catch your scent in an unfamiliar place V. silence clings to the corners of your mouth the same way your t-shirt outlined the thirty-three vertebrae of your spine as your words left a five-fingered outline on my face and that day the sky tasted like tears VI. it’s been eight hundred and seventy-six hours since you last talked to me and i still remember what the edges of your fingernails look like and whenever it rains i think of you

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Carter Datz

VACATION The house was filled with a sterile silence, punctuated by brief fits of groaning from the glossy white refrigerator. A dark grey tabby lay outstretched on the seat of a cushy armchair in the master bedroom, basking and snoozing in the golden rays of sunshine streaming in through the window, as if her dreams were solar powered. Dreams of warm laps and soothing voices and the wild, fishy smell of tuna that elicited her ancient memories. She stirred, extending her spine to span the armchair paw to paw. The lingering dream tickled her whiskers, and suddenly a sharp pang of hunger prodded her with a querulous claw. When was the last time there was food in her bowl? She jumped down to the hardwood floor and padded along to the kitchen, the stale aroma of disinfectant pervading her nostrils.

Still nothing in her bowl. Nothing. The kitchen was tidy with everything in its place, but they had left nothing for her. Not even a suitcase for her to curl up inside, like she had just days earlier. Back when there were strings to chase and hands to stroke her and legs to rub against, so she could leave behind her scent and call them her own, because that’s who they were—they were hers, and now they were gone.

The phone rang and she waited to see if anyone would come to pick it up. One ring. Two rings. Three rings. After a while there was a beep, and then a hysterical voice, gushing garbled words her brain could not comprehend. She sat anxiously, feeling as though everything looked orderly and sterile on the surface but on the inside it was all falling apart, the couch collapsing in on itself, the white porcelain tiles shattering and screaming as the house shook on its very foundations— Quiet. And then someone at the front door, turning the key in the lock, footsteps. She gave an excited mew and ran from the kitchen to the front entryway, because her family was back for her, they had come home! But her next meow caught in her throat as a foreign voice greeted her, a strange man all in white was reaching for her with rough hands that were not hers, his horn-rimmed glasses were not hers, not hers. She wriggled in his grip but could do nothing but mew helplessly as the rough, calloused hands carried her out the door where an army of alien faces stared coldly.

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Eye of the Tiger | Lauren Moll

Keilah Sullivan

WORDPLAY See them flounce and frolic along: a few scattered vowels, a rigid diphthong, linguistic crimson-cheeked delicacies flirting like so: here the stoic, there the tease.

Sensical, sensual, sexual, please, or some other passions more heated than these, or perhaps something frivolous, fanatic, and fun or circumlocutious, though that’s overdone.

First they hold hands, now they try tongue— Hurry, the funnery’s only begun: to tease and to alternate—certainty, doubt— spelling to bash, snickety rules to flout.

Bumbling, bumping, and bouncing about in search of some opus or literary clout.

To string them together and reap accolades: the amusication and mission of spicy wordplay.

An Interpretation of Number 3 | Rebecca Reitz 35

Samantha Arvin

THE SERIOUSNESS OF WENDELL CHRYSTLER Wendell Crystler wanted nothing to do with jokes, smiles, fantasies, children, lollies, and most importantly, he wanted absolutely nothing at all to do with TOMFOOLERY. As Wendell had only just entered his ninth year of life, his parents were quite concerned. Wendell was convinced that these people, who called themselves his parents, were in all actuality quite insane. The stork simply must have dropped him off at the wrong house.

On the morning of the 21st day of August, Wendell sat in his “mother’s” kitchen, looking down at his breakfast with his mouth twisted and his eyebrows furrowed. Pancakes; with eggs for eyes and chocolate chips forming a smiling mouth. His breakfast had a face.

Not just any face, but a smiling face.

“What’s wrong, Wendell?” asked Mindy. Mindy was Wendell’s “mother.” A short and wiry woman, her periwinkle eyes were wide with worry.

“Mindy, why exactly is my breakfast smiling at me?” he asked as he stood up, flinging his napkin on the checkered linoleum floor.

“Well…I thought…I thought…” She cowered, shrinking into the corner of the brightly lit room, still holding the frying pan.

“WHAT? WHAT DID YOU THINK, MINDY?” raged Wendell.

Now, don’t go thinking Wendell is unreasonable. He is simply a boy who knows what he wants. And who in their right mind would want to eat a face? That’s right. Nobody.

“How now, old boy!” came Wendell’s father’s voice as he raced down the stairs.

As always, Jim’s tie was on backwards and his pants were unzipped.

“What is all this howling about?”

“Jim, Mindy put a face on my breakfast!”

“It’s alright dear, it was my mistake,” replied Mindy, shifting her footing.

Jim shook his head. “Wendell, it is high time you give us some respect! We are your parents, boy! If your mother wants to decorate your breakfast, then she can decorate your breakfast, damn it!”

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“My parents? Pshaw!” Wendell grimaced at the very thought.

“You are ridiculous, sir. Button your pants and redo your tie! Then we can have a serious conversation!” Wendell marched out of the room as Jim frantically fixed his appearance.

At school Wendell sat in the back row and wore his horn-rimmed glasses so he could see the board. Wendell sat in the chipped plastic orange chair, bile building up in his throat. He hated everything about school: the posters of puppies on the walls, the garden gnome standing stupidly by the door, the orange carpets and chairs, and most importantly he hated the children. Games were also most certainly a horrific aspect of school. All day Wendell snorted and sniggered when his classmates got questions wrong, and delighted in correcting them and, occasionally, his teacher. Mrs. Snicket sat in her rolling chair like it was a throne. The logs of fat that bulged through her pink polyester were an eyesore that caused Wendell to close his eyes frequently during class.

At the end of the day when the bell rang, Wendell was so determined to get out of that place that he accidentally tripped over something pink and fluffy on the sidewalk.

It was exactly 2:34 in the morning on the 21st day in August when Winona Willard, while laying on her purple carpet in her violet bedroom with its lilac tinted lights, realized that her beloved cat, Dog, was missing.

Winona sat up straight, and looked intently about the room.

Crawling on all fours, she searched underneath her plum-colored dresser and over her magenta colored bedspread on the bed she did not sleep on. “Hereeee Dog, hereeee kitty kitty.”

Winona’s lower lip sank into a most uncustomary frown. Her little feet pitter-pattered across the black-and-white tiled floor, and stopped at the large door down the hall decorated with large carved peacocks.

“Momma! I am going on an expedition!” shouted Winona at the peacock.

Winona waited 4.7 seconds. The door burst open and nearly knocked little Winona to the ground.

“Darling, why ever would you start on an expedition at 2:37 in the morning?” asked Winona’s mother. Her soft brown hair was pulled into an intricate updo that was remarkably intact for this particular hour. She wore a white silk robe, and Winona was reminded of a swan.

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“Dog has gone missing, missing! Momma, I simply must find her,” said Winona calmly.

“Well certainly you must! But put on your coat, and be back by dinner! We are having a roasted duck tonight! I’ll tell Papa when he wakes up,” Winona’s mother kissed her daughter on the forehead and retreated back into her room.

Winona slid down the mahogany banister to the first floor, grabbed her bright red parka, a rucksack full of select items, and marched through the front gate into the outer world.

Wendell was fuming. He laid spreadeagle on the concrete, and something was sitting on him.

“What in blazes do you think you’re doing, cat! If you are in fact a cat!” shouted Wendell, pushing the pink fluff ball off himself as he stood up. Wendell started to walk away when something most mysterious happened. The cat barked.

“Hmm…a barking pink cat. This is certainly a first. I must be imagining this.” As soon as Wendell muttered this to himself he regretted it. He did not approve of imagination—he had no imagination. Therefore this barking pink cat must be real.

“Well, go on, shoo!” said Wendell, waving his school bag at the pink cat.

“Ruff!”

“Dear God.” “Ruff, ruff!”

“Quit that abnormality this instant!” said Wendell angrily, in a hushed tone, aiming a kick at the thing.

It let out a loud howl and winced at the sight of the underside of Wendell’s sneaker. Wendell huffed and turned his back on the creature. As he was walking away, he heard the distinct sound of paws on concrete behind him. He looked around his shoulder, and sure enough the pink cat-dog was following him.

“What do you want? Kibbles and bits? Because I do not have such things.” The cat barked again, and nuzzled itself between Wendell’s legs. He sighed, and rolled his eyes—a motion he was most accustomed to. “Listen, cat, you cannot follow me. Go away, Mindy would simply fawn over you and there is quite enough fawning in my house already. Now shoo.”

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The cat merely stared at him.

Winona Willard’s head popped out of the sewer in front of Smirnoff Elementary School 11 hours after she left her home. Parents in the carpool line pointed through their windows at the small girl, muttering about uncleanliness and neglect.

Winona took no notice of the looks she was getting; she was on a mission. She reached into her bag and took out a golden instrument resembling a pocket watch, and looking down on it, walked until she collided with a boy.

“What the devil—dear God! You are filthy! Watch where you’re going!” shouted the boy. Winona noted that he had red hair and horn rimmed glasses before she glanced down. “DOG!” Winona shouted, as the pink cat leapt into her arms.

“This animal is yours?” asked the boy. He was very rude,Winona thought.

“Yes indeed, this is my cat! You have a very mean voice, you know.”

“I—what?” His eyebrows furrowed as he adjusted his glasses.

“I just meant that it is not polite to speak in such a way. Momma would not stand for it. What are you called? I wish to thank you for finding Dog.” “Wendell—” “Thank you, Wendell! No matter how rude you are it is good of you to care for my cat,” said Winona. Wendell looked more confused than ever. He pointed to Winona’s hand when he said, “What’s that you’ve got there?”

“Oh—this?” Winona opened up the thing that resembled a pocket watch. “This is the Cat Tracker 3000.”

Wendell rolled his eyes and shook his head. “That’s it! This must be a hallucination!”

“Hmmpf ! What makes you think that!” Winona stepped backwards, holding her cat close to her chest.

“You have a pink cat that barks! You think that pocket watch is some kind of mystical cat tracking device! This must be a hallucination!” shouted Wendell, his eyes wild as he ruffled up his carefullybrushed hair.

“You, sir, have a very narrow mind! I will prove I am not a hallucinogen!”

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40

Barbara LeAnne | McKenzie Grabish

“No, hallucinat—” “You there! Boy!” shouted Winona, pointing to a startled-looking five year old. “Can you see me?”

“Yes—” “There. See. I am real!” Winona looked simply delighted, stroking the pink fur on her cat. Wendell looked more baffled than ever, just staring open-mouthed at the filthy girl and her cat-dog. “Now I really must be off, Wendell, I’ve promised Momma I’ll be home for dinner. Now, I won’t make it back if I walk…yes…only way. Goodbye! Thank you again for finding my cat, he won’t come out for just anyone you know!”

Winona did something Wendell was absolutely not prepared for: she kissed him right on the cheek. If the latter had not happened, the next thing Wendell saw would have been the most astonishing thing Wendell had witnessed all day. Winona reached into her coat pocket, and when her delicate little hand came back out it was filled with glitter. With a smile on her face she threw the glitter onto the ground and vanished in a swirl of sparkles.

Wendell looked all around, but she was gone. No one seemed to have noticed the girl and her strange cat disappearing into thin air, nor did they notice the change in the boy standing on the corner.

There was a slow smile forming on Wendell Crystler’s face, and a pink blush that flushed his face as he touched his cheek.

Sebastian Maldonado-Velez

SCHOOLYARD FANTASIES i can’t write a love poem clichés strung together like dried macaroni on a string but i still think back to those schoolyard years hanging from the monkey bars thinking we were cool do you remember the time when joey got stuck up that tree? the same tree where we would sit and whisper our secrets thinking back my jaw is heavy with regret heavy with the possibility of letting out the wrong string of words i fear that if i open my mouth too wide i won’t be able to get the words in again they won’t just be mine anymore they would be ours i bullshit about my entire life waking up with the taste of death in my mouth i still think about you fear feeds on the human soul

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we are born alone but we don’t have to die the same way new man comes into this world naked old man leaves this world clothed with regret of a life not pursued writhing with the worms one last time i can’t swing as high as i used to the merry go round is caked with rust and still i can’t forget the time you laughed at me when i fell over i forgot your name a couple of times rain is tapping on our shoulders reminding us that we are under this swing set in the same playground where you kissed josh and i kissed jillian but now we are older having kissed a multitude of joshes and jillians but it still feels like it did that day mrs. downing yelled at us for holding hands

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Keilah Sullivan

FARCE Watch the sidelong glances of unsubtle romances, exchanging gold-tinged obsessions in place of gold-stamped monies, a transient transfixion upon that which gleams at a certain time of day a certain positioning of sunlight spotlight limelight.

Witness the pairing, uncaring, despairing, unpairing and rapid reunion of love reignited, discarding remnants of first fatal affections: the incestual interchange of lovers combing over careless words, lashing fickle memory for hints at caring coveting craving.

Worship the feigned surprise, saccharine sunrise, dissolution of free tongues and free thought: self-effacement for the sake of a sham soulmate, and ask me again why I don’t believe, why I don’t have the heart to pursue, this farce we trill after, this beast we call like lust love.

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Robert Overmann

SENSELESS VIOLENCE It was an apostrophe catastrophe.

It all started when the ellipses declared they felt… misused.

“They’ve got guns!” The exclamation points yelled.

The dashes dashed—the hyphens barely held-it-together.

The question marks couldn’t help but ask for an explanation.

The commas all lapsed into comas and the periods bled for a week.

The colons seized the opportunity: they began colonizing.

The semi-colons joined the fray; they were torn between two independent causes.

Was it over Where did it end The punctuation laid punctured in senseless violence Nobody knew how to read the situation

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Conor Gearin

NAPPING IN LATE NOVEMBER znoi: the Russian word for intense heat. I want it: I want everything and exactly what it means.

I am under the blanket here waiting in a strange exact shape as yet never described by science.

Not just any kind of heat, this znoi. “Hot dry sand gleams,” says Bunin in his poem about znoi. “Not air, but gold, liquid gold poured into the world,” is how Gorodetsky saw it.

I want the hot hands of summer wringing my shoulders.

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But if you touch a moth cocoon in winter and give it your heat, it opens early with twisted wings.

No one must touch me yet.

Like the sleeping sweetness of winter trees that shows as black gold of bark, we do not drink the bright juice of oranges now, but black tea, whose sweetness comes through between the sips, between the heat and the spice.

If there is no spring I will glow inwardly.

Reckless with untouchable heat, I am a one-tree-spring in an unwatched forest.

The birds, at least, will speak of me.

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Kirk Schlueter

CITY OF BRIDGES Lightning in distant clouds like a candelabra in a haunted house, and watching the sky switch itself on and off again like a television, crowning the dark hills with a few tufts of an old woman’s impossibly bright hair, it’s easy to believe all the humans have gone into their back rooms, put their toys away and unzipped themselves, pushing out from their skin as little clouds. That I am an insect pushing its way along the now obsolete highways, amber mouth gaping open like a lover asking in vain for a kiss, purple feelers beating the pavement in anguish as the prey sprints away, warned by the advancing lights.

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Nothing here is connected—

not the grocery stores, not the snow, not the people inside them, not the landscape splintered hard

into a code between the moon and earth. Oh, they were lovers once but you knew that already,

too much salt in your blood from watching chickenhawks drop for the river

painted below the town

in all its verisimilitude, all its imitation of a normal life,

as if their talons can slice the current.

What’s the use of talking love here, eh, beneath a sky pale as china?

Down where the old men still sit

on the docks

in their flat hats, words run like fish through the water dark as a hawk’s iris,

carrying all the truth you ever wished for.

All you must do is build it up.

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Marisa Gearin

SOME DAYS IT’S COLD AND at each new gust of wind I feel like a piece of paper in a typewriter with the keys punching their shapes into my skin.

In my hand I hold new strawberries; I’m holding them out to you but you’re not taking them. I can wait. The hands on my watch are spinning progressively faster as wax builds stalagmites beneath a lit candle. In the mornings the sun gently pours in through the window and it’s hard to believe that its surface is roaring with flames.

Bass Fish | Kristen Williams 50

Robert Overmann

L’ESPRIT DE L’ESCALIER There’s nothing more disorienting and simultaneously freeing than not understanding a word of what is said around you. It’s a bit like trying to communicate with a bunch of televisions broadcasting “white noise.” But one quickly learns to tune it out; one learns to let go of the need for understanding and is able to turn one’s focus inward toward one’s own thoughts. In this way, a place of constant stress and distraction becomes one of peaceable introspection.

Untitled | Sara Murill

“Parlez-vous anglais?” was the only French I knew when I booked my plane ticket to Paris. I did not expect to travel further after arriving in Scotland, but chances were slim that the great cities of Europe would ever again be within a two-hour flight. Incredulous that I was purchasing a plane ticket to Paris, I plopped my £55 on the desk of Mike, our German travel agent who spoke little more English than I did French.

Ticket in hand, I invited two of my roommates to join me. We booked the cheapest hotel room we could find for three nights and counted down the days until the following Friday when we were to catch a flight out of Edinburgh.

From when I stepped onto the tarmac of the Aéroport Paris—Charles de Gaulle until my departure the following Sunday evening, I ate one proper, full-course meal. I’m a food tourist—anytime I travel, I want to try the local cuisine. Unfortunately, food in Paris is exorbitantly expensive—in some areas of Paris, a single bowl of French onion soup can cost in the ballpark of €14, or about $18, so I ate mainly at grocery stores and street vendors. My diet consisted of everything from Nutella crepes to smoked salmon wraps, gazpacho, and even a carton of soured milk—a delicacy whose appeal still mystifies me. Purchasing food was always an adventure, since I couldn’t read any labels. My Saturday evening meal, though, was by far the best, and worst, of my time in Paris.

By 4:30 Saturday afternoon, I was the hungriest I’d been thus far during my trip. I’d ridden the first RER train into the city at 8:00 a.m.—a substation lay just a few blocks from my room at L’Hôtel Hipotel 53

Paris Hippodrome in the suburb of Joinville-le-Pont. My feet were blistered and weary; earlier that day I’d been to L’Opéra National de Paris, La Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, L’Hôtel National des Invalides, and le tombeau de Napoléon. According to a local who spoke English, the cheapest food in town could be found in the Latin Quarter, a region of Paris known for its cuisine, its small alleyways, and its nightlife. I rode the Paris Metro one stop past Notre Dame de Paris into the grungy station of Place St. Michel.

Stepping off the metro train into throngs of people, I struggled to find space on the platform for myself and the only luggage I’d brought, my backpack. Surrounding me stood wealthy businessmen, clean-shaven and wearing pinstriped suits; students spoke excitedly to one another, wearing berets or floral dresses; young children clung tightly to their mothers; black men, likely from French Algeria, bobbed their heads to music from the young man beat-boxing, a change-cup in front of him, relying on the generosity of others.

Subway stations truly were a microcosm of the greater city.

I made my way through the crowd and the station’s concrete corridors. Searching for an exit, I was flanked by unsettling advertisements depicting a scowling, sadistic biped cat gripping the French soda “Orangina.” A sortie sign directed me up a set of steep beige steps to ground level. People chatted amiably, producing a collective din, though it wasn’t agonizingly loud. As I climbed further, I began to hear the deep echoes of a drumbeat, and the muffled tones of street music. Sunlight graced me as I emerged onto the sidewalk, immediately next to the banks of the Seine River. A large baroque-style stone fountain depicting Saint Michel slaying a demon of some sort dominated the plaza in front of me. A jongleur performed, and I dodged bicyclists hurriedly weaving between crazed motorists as I crossed the street to stand closer to the Saint Michel fountain. Traffic laws are more like suggestions in other nations, and it isn’t uncommon to see motorcyclists on sidewalks, or cars blatantly disobeying traffic signals and lane markings.

As I walked into the heart of the plaza, I saw a line of gendarmes in the distance clad in full riot gear. The pulse of the drum beat increased in volume as I approached, and rainbow flags waved above heads in the crowd. Curiosity piqued, I pushed my way through the 54

crowds to get a better view. Soon, I was standing directly in front of a tight-lipped gendarme, his clear fiberglass shield planted squarely in front of him. He was youthful, clean shaven, and looked straight ahead, black club in his free hand.

I turned to a woman next to me who was wearing a pair of highwaisted red shorts and a blue and white tank-top, the colors of the French flag. She held an open bottle of malt liquor in one hand, her other hand in the air to cheer on the parade.

“Parlez-vous anglais?” I inquired.

“Oui, un peu,” she responded — a stroke of luck.

“Do you know what’s going on here?”

“Gay marriage was just legalized in France; they’re celebrating!” she responded. I was fully aware of how non-Parisian I must have looked.

I made my way through the narrow alleyways of the Latin Quarter, walking past bars and restaurants that served food from nearly every ethnicity one could imagine. Children leaned out from jutting balconies above me, and young black men attempted to peddle small Eiffel Tower souvenirs. I finally found an area where the parade was not lined by the gendarmerie, and I made my way to the front. Men in tight thongs held hands and swigged beer as they marched; some men were dressed as women, rather convincingly. Women marched in tandem with their partners, some topless, others holding banners and gay rights flags. Trucks with trailers crawled down the street at a walking pace, blaring both French and American music. Parisians young and old had taken to the streets to celebrate their rights with an incredible fervor and absurdity.

I heard a barely-audible meow next to me as I stood drinking in the sights and taking photos. I looked to my left toward the sound’s origin. There a frail-looking, blonde-haired woman lay on the ground, napping on an uncomfortable-looking sewer grate in the sidewalk. A Siamese cat sat patiently beside her, as if to guard the discarded McDonalds cup she was using to solicit loose change. She was probably about 50, though she looked older; her skin was significantly weatherbeaten, her hair frail and disheveled. Though the streets were packed, the parade’s participants were giving her and her feline companion a wide berth. I have no idea how she had been sleeping, but she began to stir, and her cat nuzzled the side of her head. She muttered some55

thing indecipherable in French, still lying on the ground. A small pool of bloody saliva lay on the sidewalk next to her.

“Déplacez! Excusez-moi!” a man yelled from my left. I swiveled my head to see a gendarme in riot gear pushing his way through the crowd. I stepped backwards, immediately next to the homeless woman, though I wasn’t in his path, given his current trajectory. The man walked in front of me, then looked toward the homeless woman, then downward. He planted his high-laced black boot directly on top of her change cup, squashing it. Tink tink tink; the woman’s loose change fell down the sewer grate. Without looking back, the man continued to push through the jubilant masses.

An ethereal hand clutched my throat with an empathetic sadness.

I looked down at the woman; she didn’t get up, didn’t speak, didn’t move in the slightest except to pet her cat, running her hand from its brown head-markings down its long, too-slender back. The cat purred and sat with grace I’d never before seen from a cat in a crowd.

I reached my hand into my back pocket, then remembered that I had transferred my wallet to my front left pocket: Paris has a significant pick-pocketing problem, and I was alone. My travel companions and I had had a disagreement over which attractions to visit, and elected to enjoy the trip separately; thus, I had to take extra care as a lone American student in a foreign country.

I extracted a €5 note from my wallet, as I’d judged she lost about €3 from the cup that had been so maliciously crushed.

Just €5? You can do better.

I need it, though. That’s more than she had before.

“Merci,” she whispered, almost inaudibly, taking the note from my hand.

I nodded, and asked if I could pet her cat.

She shrugged her shoulders from her sitting position. I’d forgotten once again that English is not the spoken language here. I pointed at her cat and made a petting motion; when all else fails, mime.

She held it up to me, the cat still purring. I ran my hands through its soft, albeit slightly mangy fur and scratched its throat. It closed its eyes and nuzzled the back of my hand. Au revoir.

It was about 6:00 p.m., and my stomach growled harder than ever. I counted €33 left in my wallet, and turned my attention to the 56

multitude of eateries lining the Latin Quarter. There were gyros, Spanish food, Mexican food, Thai food, Indian food, and more available. I was in Paris, though, and wanted to eat a traditional French dinner. After diligent menu-comparing at multiple brasseries, I settled upon La cuillère et les couteaux, or “The spoon and the knives.” Just about all restaurants in Paris have tables on the sidewalks, which was important to me, as I wanted to eat outside. This particular brasserie had a “Choisissez 3 pour €15,” menu, and other patrons seemed to be enjoying their meals. Red and white checked tablecloths also charmed me.

I fortuitously chose the restaurant whose server spoke decent English; I asked him what was his favorite dish, and he pointed me toward the cheese fondue. Not one to distrust a Frenchman’s taste in food, I ordered Spanish mussels, a loaf of bread with Dijon mustard, followed by the acclaimed fondue, then crème brûlée for dessert.

Because dinner is a social event in France, wine isn’t available by the single glass at many brasseries; I opted for the 50 cL pitcher instead of the entire bottle. Remembering to ask for flat water so as to avoid being served carbonated water, I sat back and reflected on my day.

I listened to the spoken French around me, and I couldn’t help but appreciate the old French architecture.

My appetizer was delicious — the mussels were fresh and cooked perfectly; the bread was slightly sweet and well-toasted, though, word to the wise, Parisian Dijon mustard is meant to be used sparingly, no matter how much you, like myself, might like mustard. I drank the cool blush wine, and, about half an hour later, my main course arrived. The server steered me well, I thought. The cheese fondue was rich and strong. I couldn’t have been enjoying myself more. That was, until I heard a familiar meow.

I looked to my right, though I knew immediately what cat had uttered that meow. Weakly ambling down the street was the woman I’d encountered on the sidelines of the gay rights parade, Siamese companion following loyally. She walked laboriously, but deliberately, with a small Ziploc bag of cat food in her left hand. Though clearly hungry, she didn’t eye my food. She glanced briefly at me and nodded as she passed by my table.

I looked downward, examining myself and my food. I was eating a three-course meal that cost no less than €23, which amounts to 57

about $31 in American currency. My clothes were reasonably nice and my backpack contained some terribly expensive sunglasses. I had a wonderful family who had graciously suggested I spend part of my summer abroad on their dime. I would be returning home to my family, my girlfriend, my pets. That familiar phantom hand returned to my throat, its strong, slender fingers squeezing ever-tighter.

I sipped my wine, loosening the spectral grasp on my gullet. You paid for this, Bob. You’ll never enjoy this again. My hand returned to my spoon, and I picked further at my crème brûlée.

She’s never tasted anything like this.

You don’t know that.

But I did know it. At least, it had been many years since she’d eaten such a delicacy, I thought.

It’s incredible how much one’s mindset influences their other senses. My previously heavenly crème brûlée tasted dirty and too rich.

I finished the last of it, and poured the remaining wine into my glass.

Sipping more to drown the clamors of injustice in my head than for the taste, I waited for the check. I looked at the table-cloth, trying to count checkers in a square foot; I searched the crowd for interesting-looking passerby; I looked up at the sky, puffy clouds so high above.

She can enjoy the clouds just as I do.

Is that the best you can do?

My server brought me the check. “Avoir une bonne soirée, monsieur,” he intoned. I paid hastily, happy to have my meal behind me. My heart beat anxiously. My head was fuzzy with cognitive dissonance and too many glasses of vin. So I did the only thing I could think to do at the time: I jumped up, kicked my chair out of my way, and I ran.

I ran hard in the direction she had walked a half hour before, dodging through the mostly-dispersed crowds of the afternoon’s parade. My backpack swung back and forth against my back and sweat beads rolled down my face. I didn’t know the Latin Quarter, and I had no idea where I was headed. I scanned the crowd as best I could at my clip. Maybe she’s taking another nap on the ground.

I dodged rightward next to Église Saint-Séverin, and looked across the steps of the church. Sometimes poor people gathered there, banking on strangers’ generosity. Not seeing her, I continued to run. On a 58

whim, I veered left down an alleyway, struggling to make out shapes in the growing darkness. My feet carried me down the boulevard next to the Latin Quarter; I ran in the gutter of the road so as to avoid flattening somebody on the crowded sidewalks.

Fuck. You’ll never find her. She’s gone.

I knew it — I knew I had no hope of finding her. I stopped, panting hard. I had been running for approximately ten minutes, I thought, though I could barely remember the streets I’d ran down. Reaching toward the metal banister that separated the sidewalk from the banks of the Seine, I bowed my head, allowing the welling tears to mix with the sweat cascading down my face. I felt no shame in my spectacle, no embarrassment for acting uncouthly, only a sickening sadness.

The French phrase l’esprit de l’escalier has no English equivalent. It translates roughly to “staircase wit,” and is most often used in the context of past conversations: one wishes they had whipped out the perfect witticism or retort. It also can refer to the sense of poignant regret one feels when one realizes they should have made their choices differently.

I wish I had given the old woman more money. I wish I had offered her some of my dinner. I wish I had gotten up immediately and walked beside her and her Siamese. I wish I had bought her a blanket instead of lavishing myself with such a meal. I wish I had treated her with the generosity I look for in others.

You gave me far more than I gave to you. Au revoir, belle âme.

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Hope Benefield

AND LAID OPEN Pray the Lord your soul to keep, finding the structure of a prayer is not sound, seeking sleep and easy silence

I think you must have disappeared into yourself somewhere in the middle of love’s haphazard soliloquy.

Your mother died when you were three,

and somehow the pain of this is connected, hanging around your throat where your Adam’s apple chokes back Jacob and the angel, struggling— You ordered Chinese, faltered with the pronunciation

of the last meal.

Judas was just a man caught in a love affair he couldn’t finish, and maybe if you died for his sins, you would have written the scripture differently.

The bible would have been a love letter instead of a tool for bigotry, use it how you want to justify weaponized morality—you can’t write something out of existence

simply

because it makes you uncomfortable.

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And how does it feel to hide part of yourself for the wrong reasons? I think you understand Jesus when your feet are washed by her long silken hair, and you want to forgive her for thinking she could love you

you who brushed God with your fingertips, felt holy in the arms of spiritual awakening.

You who will be persecuted and crucified

And your broken body held by no one.

The sword in your side is the phantom pain of unspoken passage.

30 silver coins, Chinese from a white carton, and the white cap of 30 pharmaceuticals You see something like soft hands and angels dancing, but you never found the words to rewrite your religion.

The Judas tree still stands, redbuds opening to the sun.

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Paula Vaught

TEDDY BEAR I found a bear candle In the back of my closet.

His little waxen face is rubbed raw, Particularly at the nose, The black nub giving way To the colorless wax beneath.

The noses always look worn first.

He clutches a doll, also run ragged And a wick protrudes from his head.

Gotta be the worst idea ever, or else Some candle-maker, embittered with life Decided to impose some cruelty on children.

Cute little bear.

Watch ‘im burn!

Head first!

How d’y’like ‘im now?

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I carried him to the kitchen, Crowing over my mastery Of silly childhood nostalgia.

Time to let the past die! I declared Striking a match and holding it to the milky wick Atop the bear’s head.

He was wearing a red bow.

I reveled at my clear closet space And when the heat of the flame Reached the crown of his head I came unglued.

I got down at eye level And looked into his guileless eyes And at his teddy bear frown.

My childhood is dying, I said.

My mother came by and blew out the flame And I was left staring At the crater in the back of his head Like a hole blown out by a shotgun.

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Conor Gearin

REVOLUTION

On some days I miss running with the London punks, kicking against the bobbies’ truncheons, but they seem far away to me now— but Wenceslas Square in ’89, in the crowds retaking gray old Prague, that sure feels like just yesterday.

But maybe this evening we could start a revolution of our own in the basement of that coffee shop you like or the break room at work— it would be just you and me at the beginning until we establish a regular meeting place and a reputation for fiery speeches, or rock and roll.

Eventually we’d need a cause, but I thought for now we could skip the bayonets and barricades, and go straight to the empty streets, the victory kisses and the wine.

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Snow | Kira Lubahn

I was late for the Spanish Civil War, though I had been on time for the Paris Uprising of 1832. But next time the Catalonians come round with their shoddy caps and jackets, their wineskins and red flags weathered pink, I’ll be there with them, picking up a defective Russian gun and toasting the worker’s state.

Hayden Wilsey

ARCHITECT VEINS Even the plumbing is beautiful, made of sterling silver in our new home on the bluff.

We fell in love there once abandoned; we climbed through boarded-up windows and wandered aimlessly in the dark must, hand in hand.

The stair case to the bedroom where their mattress slept.

We counted constellations through the hole in the moss-covered roof, a hole as large as an airplane’s cabin indicating a possible accident we’d joked We joined the gods in the stars that night.

Hand in hand clutching, scratching, feasting, ravaging animals killing one another in a new way.

We sweated and sniffled and cried and felt ashamed of our seventeen-year-old selves and worried about the next time.

Today we are thirty-four and married.

This reworked house on the bluff is our home, with a small porch and a rocking chair, a floral-patterned kitchen and living room, a squeaky staircase which will be my downfall, a small ramp to the back door in case mother comes to visit, a doggy door despite not having a dog yet, a nursery despite not having a child yet, the cracked bathroom tile I dropped carrying up the stairs, and a bedroom with skylights.

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In thirty years I don’t think I’ll like it here.

The dust-ridden bookshelves, our kids will sneak behind our backs into abandoned buildings doing what we did, and I’ll be afraid that they’ll become like us.

And on top of that, I’ll be driving thirty six miles

every morning every evening to bring home a little money to fix up the rusty sink and our relationship.

I am afraid I might be Prufrock, stuck in the streets, wandering, lurking, praying that I didn’t miss something cosmic.

I always wanted to be Siddhartha, but I doubt that my life will become such a journey.

Instead it all revolves around this house, this place that I am afraid of; with a basement like a dungeon with a wood furnace that will break one day and burn all of our things and all the while we will be trapped in our sky light bedroom, smoldering flames when the house goes up.

I don’t want to regret this choice we’ve made; any of these choices we’ve made, but I’m afraid today might be too late for that.

I just hope that you’ll hold my hand as I breathe my last and that death can wait until I build the mantle over the fireplace for my shattered urn.

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Adriana Maria Long

OF NEW YORK they say the brooklyn skyline is the brightest – that beneath the feet of foundation, the rubble and steel, there is enough soul between the cracks in the concrete to make aretha franklin blush. a city chock-full of smoker’s lung and chain link fences, swearing mothers and sawed-off shotguns; home is where the heart is and you happen to have misplaced yours six or so years ago in a crowded subway station one winter afternoon. lips laced with traces of gunpowder from crossfire at the junction, veins capable of mapping each and every street – your gaze holds more life than a cluster of crowded complexes, and your heart, more fire than the russet setting sun.

Quartet | Lauren Radix

Tea Couple | Lauren Radix 68

Adriana Maria Long

ARTIST TALK what do you fear he’d asked between mouthfuls of black coffee. i fear arthritis in my fingers and joints she’d said, carpal tunnel in my wrists for when i can no longer seem to create i will cease to live and begin to exist.

Illustrate ‘Till You Die | Rebecca Reitz 71

Mary Oliver

PATH We create technology and give it authority to rule us. Any flaw there is with technology is our fault as its creators. We shouldn’t blame the hammer when the fool strikes his hand with it.

According to the weather website it wasn’t supposed to rain. I looked out the window and saw bloated, black clouds suspended overhead. Shadows darkened and colors deepened in this eerie prestorm light. The smell of ozone rode on the draft from my window, the outside mingling with the indoors. The primal thrill of a coming storm coursed in my chest. I neglected my umbrella and walked outside. It wasn’t supposed to rain, my app said there was only a 10% chance.

It didn’t rain. The sky simply hosed down the world as if it were trying to put out hell’s fire. It couldn’t rain because my app said it wouldn’t. Why did I trust the app and the computer rather than myself ? It rained.

I will imagine a future.

I walked across the black glass streets surrounded by black glass buildings. I didn’t know where I was, every building was identical—a cube with other cubes stacked on it. Overhead, sleet pelted the bioshield so hard that I couldn’t see the sky. The only light came from beneath my feet and the feet of others around me, where several inches under the glass green lines of light traveled. Around me other commuters followed their Path as well. Mine veered to the left into a building. I followed it. Doors shot smoothly into walls as I approached and walked through them.

“Warning: Citizen is off Path,” a cool, unsexed voice spoke.

Everyone’s eyes darted down to check their Path. My green line of light sallied forth and I followed in its wake. Why would anybody ignore Path? Path guides us to where we need to be. Our Paths are vital to our health; when the health monitor on my wrist learns that I need a bath it will alert Path and Path will take me to the showers.

People who ignore Path make mistakes. They get lost. There are no landmarks in our city and every building is identical. Without Path we wouldn’t be able to get from point A to point B. 72

The building I entered boasted white interior walls, ceiling, and floor. Light came from the floor and from windows behind me. I followed Path to a locker room where I held my ID card to the card reader. My locker opened and I walked to it, changed into black scrubs, and grabbed the Chart. I closed my locker and followed my Path. It already knows which patients I have to take care of today and in case of emergency it will alter my schedule.

I work in the Death Chamber. Most of the Health Complex has white walls, ceiling, and floor, but the Death Chamber is all black.

When a patient is going to die, they go to the Death Chamber.

There, they are monitored by DeathWatch, a system that tracks their vitals. It records time and cause of death. My job is to make the patients comfortable and clean up when it is done. All patients in the Death Chamber die.

I walked down a spiral staircase that came through the ceiling of the Chamber and descended five stories. On the third story it passed through the office, a square platform full of desks and workers. Catwalks spanned the distance from the office to the walkways wrapping along the walls. Four elevators in the corner, and the spiral stairs in the middle of the room reached the floor two stories below.

A light sat above every door. A few of the lights were on, emitting waning illumination.

My desk flashed and I stood to look down at its screen which displayed the number 78. The light above room 78 went dark. Its occupant had died. I rose from the desk to the spiraling staircase, climbed to the fourth floor and walked out on the catwalk to my left.

I reached the walkway along the wall and approached the 78th room.

The door shot into the wall as I drew near and stepped through.

Something crashed into me.

I stumbled back. The patient lay on the ground where she had fallen when we collided.

She wasn’t dead. She coughed, an action which involved her entire body. Bloody red sputum flecked her chapped lips.

She was supposed to be dead. I stared down at her. DeathWatch said she had died. It couldn’t be wrong. So why was she still alive?

I looked down at Path. There was nothing. I wanted to speak, but Path was gone and gave me no lines or prompts.

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DeathWatch was mistaken? Where was Path? I could feel my heart battering in my chest. I looked at my Chart. The newest entry read: DeathWatch Patient: Samuelle Location: NYC Time of Death: Hour 20 on the 13th day from the 7th moon of the 60th rotation Cause of Death: Cardiac arrest She coughed more, this time spattering the floor with droplets of blood. Sweat drenched her red hair, darkening it and making it stick to her cheeks and forehead. The girl struggled to control her breathing.

My heart raced and I felt as if the world was beginning to tilt.

Not enough air could enter my lungs. I felt my knees begin to buckle.

I looked at the ground for Path. It wasn’t there.

“Humans make mistakes.” I muttered. Path and DeathWatch weren’t human— they weren’t fallible. “You can’t be alive! I can’t do anything for you!”

Coughing wracked her body which had curled into the fetal position. Her fists clenched and twisted the fabric of her sick gown.

Despite it, her face held a defiant expression.

She was going to die. There was nothing I could do about it. I had no reason to care. So why couldn’t I turn around and walk away?

Where would I walk to? Chart didn’t have any new entries. Without Path it would be aimless wandering. I checked Chart again, nothing.

My hands were trembling.

“JUST DIE!” I shouted at the girl. “You have no right to live after DeathWatch has declared you dead!” Heat burned my face.

“DIE!” I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. Suddenly the world spun and I was on my knees. “What the hell are you doing to me?” I sobbed. Incoherent noises escaped from me.

Her stormy eyes met mine, full of pain and incomprehension.

Chills ran down my spine. I vomited. “Path…” I gasped, bile stinging the back of my throat. “Please come back… I don’t… know what to do.”

I hated her. It was her fault.

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She’d been quiet for about a minutes before I realized it. I stood shakily and looked down at her. She lay catatonic on the black floor, her body suddenly still. A spill of dark red hair splayed across her pale cheek. A shallow breath lifted her chest, she exhaled. I waited for her next breath, my own held. Her chest didn’t rise and her clenched fist relaxed. She inhaled suddenly and continued breathing weakly.

Path flickered to life beneath my feet. I exhaled, tension drained from my body. I checked my Chart and saw a new entry. I was to take her to the crematorium.

I stepped forward and grabbed the girl’s wrist. Her fingers clenched around my wrist so tight it hurt. I pulled her to her feet.

She fell into me and looked up at me with stormy colored eyes before her head lolled back as her body went limp. I lifted her back onto the bed. A blanket was rolled up at the foot of the bed. I unraveled it over her body and face. I stepped behind the bed and pushed it forward on its wheels. Path moved forward where I could see it past the bed, guiding me out of the room and to a set of double doors.

The doors opened as I got close, letting out a blast of heat. A man in protective clothing took hold of the bed as I pushed it inside and backed away. The doors closed.

I had come back from my walk soaked to the bone.

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Carter Datz

FAREWELL TO HELLO Farewell to furtive glances and mating dances and the rhythmic spinning polyphony of hips.

Goodbye to the shadows of moonly-illuminated knuckles smoothing over the rude jolts of a cab.

A brush here— A hush now.

So long to the rubber mask stretched taut like flesh up and over a skeleton smile.

To the flickering neon stars under which two wind-up souls met and caressed: You will not be missed.

Goodnight, first kiss.

Goodnight, cycle of this night and day and brokenness and bitterness.

Sleep well.

Sleep well.

Allison Bearly

TOO SOON...TOO LATE We’ve not talked since that late September day.

When the hard Missouri clay was packed back down with the rest of the earth.

I know it wasn’t intentional, our ceasing to speak.

There was nothing to say at first— no way of putting our thoughts into words.

Eventually I spoke with others.

They were sympathetic about everything, quite so, but not how you would have been.

But still I didn’t speak to you.

It’s too soon, I thought.

The others grew tired of my talking, of my grieving.

They didn’t say so, but I could sense it.

They were sick of my words.

Why don’t you talk to—they would begin No. I can’t.

It’s too late, I thought.

Now it’s July and the grass that had begun to grow over the packed dirt has wilted, browned, died.

It’s been ten long months since we last spoke.

I came here thinking that could change but I realize that more than one thing was dead and buried all those months ago.

It’s too different, I know the chance of speaking is dead, just like that brown grass under the harsh Missouri sun.

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Kirk Schlueter

IS THIS In magic there’s what’s known as the fake reveal, when you produce from the deck the wrong card, and act disappointed when it’s incorrect in order to increase the potency of the moment when the real card— tucked away safely somewhere hidden— is finally produced, and the mark exclaims, face illuminated with wonder oh my god how did you do that?

For almost a year now I’ve felt caught up in a magic trick, manipulated by some outside force shuffling through his deck, because I know your body is hidden inside the earth, but that doesn’t stop me from turning a corner and seeing someone with your hair or eyes, lightning scampering through my marrow for a moment. But I’m still waiting for the true reveal, the day you emerge from the crowd fully you, not a poor unrealized copy, and I turn my face toward heaven as you must have at the end, stammering with wonder oh my god, how did you do that?

Untitled | Sara Murillo 79

Sebastian Maldonado-Velez

CHILDREN’S SAD DANCE WITH DEATH

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El Diablo | Kathryn Sutton 86

Adriana Maria Long

CIUDADANA I knew a woman once who tasted of copper, bare shoulders russet in ways that made cents. The sounds that sprung from the flick of her tongue were like nails, stakes pounded into your every bone. A student of architecture, Islamic arches; support, she’d said between sips of black coffee—you need to learn how to distribute the weight.

She was a carpenter, preacher—halfway house savior; breaker of dollar menu buns and boxed red and white wine seals. On Sunday mornings you could find her in torn tees and too-shorts. They kept her knee-deep in after-church boys she sifted like landfill.

She made alters from cardboard. She consecrated the trash.

Eyes like bright headlights, she was yellow-cab incarnate.

Men would wave hands at her, arms, stick out their sore thumbs. She must see you. She must see you. She must stop because she sees you.

She was red-light running meter, pawn shops and barred windows; second-rate security system and neon district lights.

She will draw you into her nine-to-five traffic; oncoming, you jump ‘front of slow-moving cars. You are convinced you can paint streets, burst veins—scarlet. Bumpers paint you purple, paint you blue, paint you black.

She will knock you down like recession and you will get back up because you love her.

She was black-bagged windows, two-tap needle sans dope —lead-me-home breadcrumbs with a dislike for long sleeves.

She was artwork with a name that licked lips like Metropolitan. Walmart Banksy in a can—only five bucks a pop. In subways, you may find her between stops five and six. She was blank canvas and warped paper, eraser and hot glue. Permanent marker—she stained things, hid holes in the wall with her eight by ten frame.

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Veins a tangle of power lines and current, she was pulsing to the touch. She will spark your interest like outlets with a fear of blowing fuse.

You tell yourself you have learnt her, trace with fingers on her hips stop-go intersections and steel railways. You are train-hopping, a vagabond. She is a joy ride. You will fuck her like a drive-by and reference Vegas roadmaps.

Come morning, she will have become a collection of outcries. The acts of defiance published on her flesh will outnumber the words in every failed actor’s this-will-be-my-bigbreak manuscript. Late at night, you lay beside her and read them. Late at night, you cannot sleep.

She will find sanctuary, a hostel in the confines of your chest.

You think you can hold her. My God, you think you can hold her.

You will kiss her once, twice, third time’s a charm, and fish from her stomach the remains of bodies mangled; head, hands, five fingers severed. You will tread her thoughts like the Hudson, wary of yellow-tape lines.

Months will pass and she will remain starless, swear her eyes are only dark because of their color. Galileo, your punchand-go bus passes will not thin the smog in her throat.

On white-knuckle nights, she will take coat hangers to her abdomen; back-alley abort the forever’s you tried so hard to plant. She will not believe them. She will not let them grow.

Hide-and-seek, she will run and you will not know where to find her. You will spend nights checking beds and garbage bags in shelters to no avail.

You will become bulletins with tear-away numbers, dialed payphones and spare change.

You will find her. You will find her. One day, you will find her.

I knew a woman once.

Please, tell me if you’ve seen her.

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Hope Benefield

WHEN I KNEW YOU Remember when you bought that old, second-hand corduroy jacket from the shop on West and Third, on a Thursday afternoon because you had taken the day? You paid too much, and when you leaned on the elbows to shoot marbles, you wore the fabric down to threads; we call it thread-bare, here, when we talk of you, and Remember the auctioneer that spoke too slowly? I believe he was relieved of his position soon after that Saturday evening at the museum. You gave up the impersonation and became him, cracking voice and selling the complete dining set and old silk-woven tapestries that wrapped me softly on Sunday mornings, and Remember the sigh of leaving, the sight of airplanes taking off from ground, the orange sticks flashing frantically, the man squeezing into his seat, and the

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oddly placed scar on that woman’s cheek in the fifth row? No peanuts this time out because Joyce has a peanut allergy; she shares very vocally with the surrounding seats that she will just “die” if she catches even a “whiff”—we do not dare to doubt her, simply return to the morning newspaper, and pretend to read about business; we’re all business on planes in the morning, every Remedy tucked into our pockets like silver coins run out of circulation, a crime. We see other couples, as I trace the side of my coffee cup with a nail, and the paper is too thin; the heat leaks through, there is no texture like the folds of your jacket, no time to say goodbye again before forgetting about the places—I could have met you in February on the deck of the ferry, locked eyes and I would have known you in the intimate way we sometimes believe we know strangers.

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Carter Datz

BUT WHEN I LOOK AT HER But when I look at her I see spring I see a speckled robin’s egg blue tucked in the pockets of her dress drizzles of rain melting rose petals and a milky white easter lily nestled in her hair When we dance in the smoldering flicker of fireflies I smell wild strawberries in her hair cinnamon and baby powder in her skin A freshly-cut lawn stings in my nostrils as a breath of salt water in the sea breeze tickles behind her ear When I press my ear against her chest I hear an old upright piano playing Chopin and tricycles squeaking and bed sheets rustling mahogany floorboards squeaking and leaves crunching

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When her lips touch mine I taste snowflakes and embers and stardust in december; my tongue is aflame with peppermint tea trickling into two porcelain cups for two porcelain children When our fingers intertwine I can feel samsara wither our skin into cellophane grey— but I grasp even tighter and smile for all of my days for all of my days

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Kirk Schlueter

THE ROAD TO HANNIBAL

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The river dribbles like milky venom from a serpent’s fang, coils grinding into the limestone. The trees are showering

The grass is going back to dawn like a hound licking its ear, seeking warm roots among the undisturbed dead.

in acid, burning from the tops down, a melted runoff into autumn’s cauldron, the town cooking in afternoon sun

She drinks nightly of the potion simmering, its coolness splashing over her like the fall into mud. God is green, she sees. Only the sky

like a witch’s brew: cinnamon, saffron, persimmon, mandrake root and apple seed. A woman tired of the radio

hollow all the way to heaven is blue and hard.

Stirring the concoction reflecting a shallow basin of stars, she sees me stop impatiently on the hill

drives to a table under pines as undisturbed by the turning world’s encroachment as copper coins on eyelids. She dreams lazily

outside of town while the sun plants its flag hours above the horizon. Kicking rocks into the highway, waiting for pink light to fall, she memorizes me

of the sky unrolling like shark skin, of cutting your hand on a cloud’s edge, drops of falling blood the cats lick from the concrete.

through the trees and mute wind, the last hawk crowned in a tree, even the rawhide air aching for something to come along and fill it up from below.

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Lydia Frank

UNT ITLED i was once told that the most important word in a line of poetry is the first and that is why i always begin with you: your kinetic veins and your angeltouched eyes and other things that are blue, like lightening and labyrinths, the maybes and the things i could have said, or do i mean should have done; the night your ribcage kissed my snowmelt spine and the entire vocabulary of heartcrushed. every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end—not necessarily in that order. some days the words crest over the roughly hewn edges of the first law of thermodynamics and the blank page is Alaska, that which the sea breaks against; bits of white froth stained with green typewriter ink, a creative burst of energy like the final flares of a dying star, typeface supernovaing out onto the page. but other days the words must be ripped forcefully from between my ribs, each and every penstroke as heavy as the sense of sundering that rends my body apart as audibly as the cracking of the spine on a virgin book when i wake up and the bed is still empty, my limbs tangled with dirty sheets instead of your extremities and i realize that i can’t see the indentation that your head made on the pillow anymore— these are the days it feels like the rest of the story has been swallowed by chapters upon chapters of endings.

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tell me how your story goes. i stand at the door of your heart with my heart but your reticent fingers curl around the unturned knob like question marks, punctuational afterthoughts designed to deflect. and i want to tell you that the chamber of your chest is still the most beautiful thing i have ever seen and your body is a universe blurry at the edges, that you have dizzying galaxies contained in your tenebrous pupils, but the paperthin membrane of particles permanently separating skin from skin has swelled into a vast ocean and boats made from words do not float. i was once told that the most important word in a line of poetry is the last and that is why the periods at the ends of my stanzas always have your overwhelmingly fragile DNA mixed in with the ink and the paper upon which you are printed tastes like your lips and the space between your freckled ellipsis

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Hope Benefield

AND THEN THE AFTER

Family Reunion | Anna Barry-Ford

i think we spent too much time almost believing we were in love

and chasing after love

and wanting love to be the end-all be-all after all and then life happened like quicksand one moment—you’re quasi-intellectual/sexual you’re fromage on a

baked ricotta omelet and then it lets you down slowly next moment—the sky opens and there’s the same shade of sun, lengthening

on a clichéd phrase we almost had it all until we didn’t, we really didn’t we really shouldn’t have tried at all but how else would we have known about the sanctity of American sunsets

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COLOPHON Windfall was founded in the fall of 1976 by students and faculty. The magazine contains the creative works of Truman State University undergraduates. All submissions are judged by a blind jury of students, and consideration is given to each work solely based on its artistic merit.

This issue of Windfall was designed using Adobe InDesign CS 6.

The font used throughout the magazine’s body text is 11-point Baskerville; 20-point Bebas Neue for titles, and 11-point Baskerville Italic for author names.

Six hundred copies were printed by the Missourian Publishing Company in Washington, MO. Windfall is funded by the Division of Language and Literature at Truman State University.

Any queries or request for copies of Windfall may be sent to: 100 E. Normal SUB CSI Mailbox Kirksville, MO 63501 or windfall@truman.edu Please visit our website at windfall.truman.edu.

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