Vortex 38

Vortex 38

V

R T O

E

38

X

edition

The University of Central Arkansas vortexmagazine.squarespace.com

Vortex Magazine of Literature and Fine Art Thompson Hall 201 Donaghey Ave. Conway, AR 72034

The Staff Editor McKenzie Hobbs Assistant Editor Sarah F. Wilson* Faculty Advisor Garry Craig Powell

Print Layout & Design Editors Shea Higgerson Britney Toombs

Online Layout & Design Editors Shea Higgerson Sarah F. Wilson

Cover Alan Masingill

Judges Allison Vandenberg Meleah Bowles Deidra Just Katherine Sneed Meghan Feeney Taylor Neal Allyson Mead* Emily Qualls Lyren Grate Brittnee Donaldson Britney Toombs Christopher Hall*

Section Editors Art: Colleen Hathaway* Media: Douglas Knight Poetry: Taylor Gladwin Fiction: Will King Nonfiction: Audrey Manning Advertising Committee Chair Allison Vandenberg

*Advertising Committee

3

Letter from the Editor During warm nights, I like walking to the sands of my apartment complex’s volleyball court. I take off my shoes, stare at the stars, and pretend I am on a beach. The sound of cars become waves, and the sand catching in between the crevasses of my bare feet is the sand of a far off place, a place that is here and there, a fantasy and a home. It is in these minutes that I feel the electricity of life beating through my veins. I feel a spark of something that I have to share. I hope while reading this magazine, you feel the same spark, because this is a fantasy, this is a home, and this is the voice and vision of us all.

This vision has had many components to help make it happen: A special thanks to our faculty advisor, Garry Craig Powell, the man with the British accent and an eye for great writing. A thanks goes out as well to Bill Ferguson at Conway Printing who has made sure this print edition is as great as ever. Also, I would like to thank Sarah-Faye Wilson for being the best assistant editor I could ever ask for, and a thanks to Shea Higgerson, Britney Toombs, and Sarah (again), for making sure the print and digital editions look fantastic. This year’s staff deserves a round of thanks as well, considering they dealt with submissions, readings, and deadlines on top of their normal pile of schoolwork. A special thanks to Christopher Hall for filming our readings, and Douglas Knight for being our tireless MC. And finally, I would like to thank: you, the readers, for subscribing to our fantasy, and our home, our voice, our vision. I hope you let the spark that rises inside of you, flow from your lips, or pen, or paintbrush, like a wave on a distant beach hitting the shore, and move the sand.

4

Poetry

6 - I Saw God in a Puddle by Audrey Manning 18 - State of Mind by Taylor Gladwin 19 - Poem vs. Poet: A Manifesto by Mica Hamilton 20 - Alabaster Horses by Kaileigh Wilcox 22 - To the Funks Grove, Chicago by Taylor Gladwin 26 - When My Brain Wakes Up and Other Horror Stories by Mica Hamilton 43 - Home is Where the Heart is by Savannah Moix 44 - In the Morning by Seth Taylor Kenney 46 - Flight Feather by Colleen Hathaway 51 - Being There by Timothy Snediker 57 - Mechanics by Sarah Jane Rawlinson 62 - Flat by Savannah Moix 78 - To the Late William, with Love by Kaileigh Wilcox 80 - Ruminations by Morgan A. Kolafa 88 - Rover and the Big Red Plants by Kaileigh Wilcox 89 - Sound of a Peasant’s Army by Seth Taylor Kenney 96 - La Petite Mort by Timothy Snediker 107 - Living Room Walls by Mica Hamilton 109 - Bad Plumbing by Douglas Knight 116 - Cars and Feet by Sarah Jane Rawlinson 117 - Some Things About Clouds Which I’m Not Sure I Sincerly Feel by Will King 118 - Ritual: A Sonnet by Mica Hamilton 120 - Regarding Meredith Thomas: Session Number One by Kaileigh Wilcox 123 - Ode to Modern Art by Oleg Artsykhovskyy 134 - In Between Your Legs by Taylor Gladwin 136 - Delirium by Audrey Manning 137 - Death of Me by Meghan Feeney 139 - Ammo by Chelsea Callentine 140 - Burn by Taylor Gladwin 141 - Death Drifts In by Oleg Artsykhovskyy 144 - On the Source of Poetry by Oleg Artsykhovskyy 146 - The Wolf Run by Christopher Hall 149 - Snow Day by Sanders Lewis 151 - Ramble, Ramble by Mike Ivens 152 - Timeline by Taylor Gladwin 154 - I Been Blown Up Before by Jordan Dunn* 157 - Speak by Sarah Jane Rawlinson

5

Contents Fiction

27 - Salvation by Alli Muller 29 - The Sight by Audrey Manning 49 - The Pot Roast by Sarah F. Wilson 52 - Machine by Taylor Lea Hicks 58 - Midtown Cattails by Lisa Ference 64 - Universal Dreams by Sydney Jones 75 - Surfaces by Will King 86 - Blinking by Robert W. Downing 90 - Playing with the Pieces by Audrey Manning 104 - A Conversation to End by McKenzie Hobbs 110 - Pride (Scene 2, Draft 5) by Sarah F. Wilson 119 - Eternity by Erica Lewis 124 - Drug Test by Mike Ivens 142 - Things That Never Happened by Alli Muller

Nonfiction

8 - A Smell Like Jasmine by Deidra Just 12 - Best Friend and First Loves by Sarah F. Wilson 33 - Dodge Ball for the Gifted by Lisa Ference 40 - Math of Marriage by Douglas Knight 115 - Apartment #1505 by Mica Hamilton 127 - Four on a Cell Screen by Allyson Mead 128 - Fear Not by Alli Muller

Art

7 - Bay Watch by Colleen Hathaway 11 - Wonderland Girl by Erica Lewis 17 - Everyone Loves a Volkswagen by Spencer Seastrom 25 - Beauty Frames the Sky by Elizabeth A. Sneed 37 - The Think Tank by Jay Haynes 42 - City Design by Caty McMains 45 - City on the Sun by McKenzie Hobbs 56 - City Scape by Caty McMains 67 - The Shed in the Forest by Caty McMains 73 -Grey Dapple by Erica Lewis 74 - Make City by Caty McMains 77- Nostalgia by Carissa Gan 85 - Untitled by Caty McMains 95 - Saint Louis by Mable Priss Hernandez 103 - Ye Olde UFO by Tyler Gunther 106 - Little Life by Erica Lewis 114 - Bittersweet Journey by Elizabeth A. Sneed 126 - 001 by Spencer Seastrom 130 - Fairy Tale Reverie by Erica Lewis 135 - Rider by Carissa Gan 138 - Fighters by Sarah F. Wilson 145 - Book Bound by Erica Lewis 150 - San Francisco Sky by Carissa Gan

*Originally published in Vortex 37 under wrong author’s name. The Vortex sincerely apologizes to the author and has republished the poem under the correct author’s name.

6

I Saw God in a Puddle audrey manning

I saw God in a puddle I wondered how he fit in there He said, “what makes you assume I'm so big?”

“You made everything,” I replied, “surely you're bigger than your creation.”

“Was Frankenstein bigger than his monster?”

God had a point.

Then a man stepped in him.

7

Bay Watch colleen hathaway

8

A Smell Like Jasmine deidra Just I. The sheets are white and crumbled around me, and smell like my mother, a familiar smell like jasmine in this shocking environment. I'm a small girl, with brown hair, but tonight I try to make myself smaller, a more insignificant version of myself, even though my mom and dad have always told me that I am the baby of the family, and that I matter to everyone. It doesn't matter how small I make myself, and how much I want to shrink into the folds of white, he finds me again in the tangle of blankets that have tangled around my legs like a fortress. His big arms are on either side of me, and I shut my eyes. Just pretend.

He's caught me off guard while my mother is at work, and my big sister, who is seven years older than I, went out with her best friend, a rare treat for her, as she's usually the designated babysitter. He told my mom that he would babysit me, and that I would be perfectly safe. It's just him and me, and the devil makes three. I want to die of embarrassment. You know I love you, right?

It's my nightmare, my girlie, silky underwear are displaced and flung somewhere, and there's so much pain, so much that there isn't any time to scream, and even if I wanted to, I couldn't because he's put his large hand on my face, covering my petite nose and mouth. I can't breathe, but I'm in so much pain that it doesn't matter if I can breathe or not. The pain fills me and consumes me like a fire, and I feel as though I might be split in two.

He puts my face in the pillow, and I hit full on panic mode. His ecstasy has become my anguish, and I try to get his attention that I'm blacking out He flips me over on my back and I draw in one single breath that hurts just as much as it feels sweet. I'm crying and praying to a God that I don't think exists anymore, and as I do, the smell of sex lingers in the air more potent than my mother's jasmine perfume. I stare at the night table, and at my mother and stepfather's wedding photo, with his black hair and big arms around her rotund waist, until the light comes on, and I have to squint to see.

9

II. In my pretend world, Barbie loves ken, Ken loves Barbie, and Ken would never dream of hitting her.

However, Barbie is leggy and beautiful, and has a mansion. My mother is on the large side, with dyed blonde hair and green eyes. I spin fairy tales in my mind to keep out my mom and stepfather's voices as they fight about me, the bills, my sister, and everything else that they can think of. Sometimes they turn violent, and they pull me between them like dogs over a piece of meat, while they argue over who I am going to side with on that particular fight. The sad thing is that I side with my stepfather, watching the light die in my mother's eyes when she thinks that there's no one on her side. The truth is, my stepfather scares me.

The fight that is starting in the kitchen is one that sends me running down the stairs, even though I have no control over the situation. I fly down the stairs, like I'm bringing the crusade, even though I have no idea what I can do to prevent what I know is going on. I stop in my tracks, as I see my mother being picked up by my stepfather's large arms and thrown down on the kitchen linoleum. My stepfather is a prize winning bull in his rage, the red flag, while it could have been small, is still flashing before his eyes. He kicks my mother, over and over again. There's nothing I can do but scream at him, scream at him to LEAVE HER ALONE! My tiny black Pomeranian poodle is barking at his feet, as my mother is begging my stepfather to stop, for my sake. Its pandemonium and it happens all the time.

In an instant that seems like an hour too long, he quits being a monster and returns to his room, where he is playing video games, like every other night. I try to help my mother up, but she's too big for me, so I lay beside her on the floor for a second. I smell jasmine, which is what my mother always smells like, even now when she is lying broken. We stare up at the ceiling, the two of us. I cry and whisper, We can both run away, and he'll never find us. She says, “It's just not that easy.”

In my world, Ken takes Barbie's face and strokes it, and tells her that she would never hurt her.

III. The iPhone in Jenn's hand goes off, yet again, and as she's typing another text message to her boyfriend, I pretend I don't see her face fall. At the concert that we're at, she's putting herself through the motions. She wants a little piece of heaven all to herself; so that she can say that she has a romance that is rock ballad-worthy. Behind every song she strives to find a meaning that will bring her closer to the boy that she's

10

with, and keep her there. She confesses that she knows that he's holding her back, and thinks that she could find happiness elsewhere, but she thinks that she loves him too much to do that to him. It's a catch- 22. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em.

I've never seen Tyler, her boyfriend, act in a way that would deform Jenn's pretty features with her cute button nose and milky white skin, offset by freckles and dark brown hair. He's never beat her, not taken a hand to her shoulder to even steer her in the right direction. It's the feeling of the moment, the one that he's too hard on her feelings even though she's done everything she can do for the moment.

I can see it in her face when she's upset as she answers her phone and walks away. He wants to know where she's at, even though we're all at the rock concert that we've all paid to go see, the one that he knew that we are all at. He didn't want to go, and so is at work, wondering about her. He wants to know who she is with, even though she's with me and my boyfriend, and not running wild, looking for strange men. It's not a case of him being concerned, it's a case of him keeping tabs on her, and making sure that she's not doing anything that she's not supposed to, like hanging around with other guys.

He already knows the answers to these questions, but he asks anyway. She's with me, her friend, trying to have fun, but he's ruined the night with his constant probing and texting. It's apparent in the way that she's slow to answer to me, not really into the concert anymore, and answering questions on autopilot.

I see the way that when he's mad at her, the temperature in the room drops and Jenn's smile freezes on her face. I don't have to hear him yell at her. There are the quiet places in the soul where whispers and glances hurt more than screaming. It's in those places where the memories of Tyler's words dwell.

Tyler is in control, and all he has to do is hold Jenn, in the palm of his hand, like a delicate jasmine flower until he crushes her slowly.

11

Wonderland Girl erica lewis

12

Best Friends and First Loves sarah f. wilson

I. MOM’S AREN’T SUPPOSED TO BE NAKED

When I was younger I used to have to roll out of bed and stand on my tippy toes to see out the window

over the big prickly bushes outside, but now I have a big bed, so I can just roll over and peer out the blinds.

When Caitlin comes over for sleepovers we like to peek out the window at exactly 7:53 PM, because Kyle has to be home at 8. I love Kyle.

Last week we discovered something totally disgusting. We call her Mrs. Rolly-Polly. She’s very differ-

ent from the people who normally live on our street. Her son is very sexy, at least that’s what Caitlin says, but I think he’s creepy. He walks out to his car after dark all the time at 10 or 11 and goes places. We guess he’s selling some sort of drugs or getting drunk. He must be a drug dealer if he’s living with his mom and leaving after bedtime. Right?

Mrs. Rolly-Polly has the bedroom at the front of the house. This is odd, because in every other house on

the street, the children get the front windows, but Mrs. Rolly-Polly has the room with the pretty front windows.

The windows are long and her room is deep. She likes to turn the lights on every night around seven thirty or eight and take off her clothes. That’s why we call her Mrs. Rolly-Polly. She wears these silky nude bras. Caitlin said that if she ever buys one of those to slap her silly then make her get a pretty one. Not that either of us wear bras yet, but we hope to someday. The bras are shiny and her underwear is dull like the color of her skin. She usually sits on her bed for a moment which is fine, but then she starts walking around her house naked. With a boy living there! What kind of sickness does she have? We thought about telling my Dad, but we decided he didn’t need to see Mrs. Rolly-Polly all naked.

Caitlin and I have sleepovers every weekend at my house and every time we pretend to sing Spice Girls

songs on my karaoke machine while staring out the window to see if Mrs. Rolly-Polly is naked again. Tonight we were pretending to be the different Spice Girls with my sister, Becky, and her friend Lizzy. They were ar-

13

guing again over who got to be Baby and who got to be Posh. No one was Scary Spice. No one ever wanted to be Scary Spice. Caitlin and I thought it would end the argument by letting them peek out the window. That’s when I exposed my little sister to something bad. Instead of the naked lady, which we thought would be funny; it was her creepy son in his panties dancing around the room with the long windows. At least I think they’re panties because they’re not like daddy’s boxers, they just look more like mommy’s panties. The white cotton one. Becky and Lizzy screamed and then we all laughed really hard.

That’s when my Dad walked in to see what we were doing. When he looked out the window he didn’t see

the kid, he just saw a very naked Mrs. Rolly-Polly singing into her hair brush. He wasn’t too happy with Mrs. Rolly-Polly. He walked out the door and across the street, so we cracked open the window, just a bit, to hear what he was saying. Our bodies were pressed to the floor and our ears against the screen in the window. We thought he was going to yell and scream at the weird lady who didn’t wear clothes.

We were wrong.

“Ma’am, um, do you think you could close your blinds from now on? My daughters and their friends

find you quite amusing, but I don’t think you want them staring at you.”

We could see the woman, now wrapped in a robe, through the cracks in the bushes. She was bright red

and apologizing to my father. She looked embarrassed. She rushed in and shut the curtains.

We’re not sure how many other people saw Mrs. Rolly-Polly naked, but she now buys the most Girl

Scout cookies from me.

II. THE CHASE

Today after school my mom let Caitlin come over to play. Allison lives down the street and around the

corner, so we walked over to her house to ask if she and Sarah wanted to play with us. The best part about Allison’s house is that it’s across the street (and a couple houses over) from Kyle’s house.

Caitlin walked ahead of me. She always walks faster than me. “Caitlin, wait up!”

“Hurry up Sarah Faye!” She said with a giggle that held a hint of evilness in it. She knows how much I

hate my middle name. Why couldn’t my mom name me Sarah Elizabeth? Sarah’s middle name is Elizabeth. It’s what makes us different, that and she has red hair and freckles, while I have brown hair and blue eyes.

“Okay Katie Lynn.” I say back. She hates that name.

“Sarah Faye!”

14

“Katie Lynn!”

“Sarah Faye!”

“Katie Lynn!”

“Sarah Faye!”

“Katie Ly-“, I stop dead in my tracks. Kyle is outside his house with his basketball. He’s my heartthrob.

Forget Lance Bass, I want Kyle.

“Ooooo Sarah and Kyle sittin’ in a tree –“, Caitlin starts to sing when she sees him.

“Shush up!” I say to Caitlin. Walking up the sidewalk to Allison’s house and ringing the doorbell. “Does

he see me? Do I look okay?”

Allison’s mom answers the door and invites us inside. We walk straight to Allison’s room where they are

playing a game. They jump up and we all hug each other tightly because we’re best friends ‘til the end.

“Guess who is outside,” Caitlin says.

“Kyle!” The other two say in unison. My cheeks turn red.

“Sarah,” Sarah says to me, “when is he going to be your boyfriend?”

“I don’t know. When he wants to be?” I said. I really hoped it would be now and not later.

“I have an idea.” Allison said.

We whispered together. I wasn’t too sure, but the plan was set and there was no stopping us now.

Calmly, maybe too calmly, we walked down the hall and waved to Allison’s mom. She asked where we were going and Allison told her my house. It wasn’t exactly a lie, we would eventually get there. Then we split up. Two girls ran after Kyle, starting a game of chase, I ran off towards my house, the final destination. He would end up there.

We ran around the houses, through the streets, until I saw him cut through the houses and dart into my

alley. I corralled him into my back yard. Cinnamon, my beloved beagle, sniffed at him and then licked him with approval. Good. I needed her to like all my boyfriends. And Kyle would be my boyfriend.

As I drug Kyle inside by the hand, Allison, Caitlin and Sarah watched. We all went to my room and sat

him down in the new desk chair my parents bought me for being a third grader, since I was now old enough to do homework in my own room by myself in my room. Kyle squirmed as we held him down and then tied him up with my Winnie the Pooh sheets off the bed.

“Okay, you caught me. Now what?” he asked.

“We want to make you pretty!” Allison said.

15

With my allowance I had just bought a new makeup set. All sorts of bright colorful eye shadows, eye lin-

ers, lipsticks, nail polishes, it was the works and I loved it! We went to work, he didn’t make it easy.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

We didn’t have an answer. It was just fun… for us, maybe not for him. He figured that out too I guess,

because eventually he did stop fighting and began laughing with us, asking us to really make him look nice.

We decided to do his face in pink, pink eye shadow, pink blush, pink eyeliner, pink lipstick, and to top it all off, pink glitter. We all agreed that pink went nicely with his blonde hair.

When he was done, we let him up because we thought we might be able to get him into one of my

dresses, but he burst out the door and ran for home. My friends looked at me and shrugged.

“If he still doesn’t love you, he never will..” Allison said.

“Yeah, the only reason a girl ever shares her makeup is if it’s true love or with her best friends.” Sarah

added.

We burst out in laughter, then did our own makeovers.

III. THE BEST MOST ROMANTIC LOVE SONG EVER I jumped up and down on the small bed in Caitlin’s bright yellow room.

“Do it!” She said, handing me the phone.

“But then he’ll knoooow.” I said.

“He already knows!”

“But I really like him, do you think he’ll go out with me if I call he’ll go out with me?”

“Of course he will!”

“But what if he doesn’t hear it?” I asked her. That was a very good question, considering that boys prob-

ably don’t listen to the Delilah show.

“Just do it! Then I’ll call and tell him to listen. Then he’ll have to go out with you.” Caitlin was a very

demanding best friend, but she always had my best interest at heart so I took the phone from her and dialed the toll-free number.

The phone beeped.

“It’s busy.”

“Well duh, she’s the best woman on the planet! Everyone wants to talk to her, try again!”

16

I dialed the number again. This time the phone rang. It rang and rang for endless minutes as the but-

terflies danced in my stomach and made me want to vomit. Then a voice said, “Hello, The Delilah show.”

I froze. What to say now? Could I even say anything? I mean, it’s the Delilah show. But it just came

out, “Hi, my name is Sarah and I would like to tell the Kyle that I love him on the show and dedicate a song to him, please.”

“How old are you?” The man on the other end asked.

“I’m 8!” I said proudly.

“One moment please, Delilah will talk to you shortly.”

I let out a shriek and Caitlin pressed her ear up against mine so she could listen in on the phone. We

bounced up and down, sitting on the edge of her bed until finally we heard a voice, her voice, but this time it wasn’t coming from the radio, she was talking to us. On the phone.

“We have a special caller on the phone now who wants to dedicate a song to the boy she loves. Hello?”

“Hello.” I answered, over Caitlin’s muffled snickers.

“Why don’t you tell us about your boy¸ Sarah?” Again I paused. She knew my name!

Almost without any control at all I began to blurt out everything that I loved about Kyle from his

blonde hair to his blue eyes, to the way he laughed, to his stupid gapped teeth, to how much I imagined him being my boyfriend someday. Occasionally she would ask me questions and I would reply and after what seemed like no time at all she finally asked me the question, “What song would you like to play for Kyle?”

This was the moment. I had to think of the most romantic song that I could and then it hit me, “My

Heart Will Go On”, I replied, because what could be more romantic than the love story from Titanic?

17

Everyone Loves a Volkswagen spencer seastrom

18

State of Mind taylor gladwin

Catastrophe is in the blood of my being More than once I will trick instead of treat or fall out of my seat drunk inevitably while my roommate meditates peacefully I down the day repeatedly telling myself there is no other way I remember the ways of my daze I think back to when you told me I looked cute in shorts and long sleeve shirts they were different concepts from one another ironic in that sense I haven't realized until now in this pale-ale moment that I had something going for me I do think that we will taste as many rich as raw wines and that for every time we spill red on our white shirts we will recognize a fatal fault and remove one stain from our genetic juice line improving our children and making for super humans I watched the beer slip out the spout of the mouth it swelled as I stared it down and I blushed it's like the way you witness grass growing as you lay beside it in anticipation keeping it company in that moment all you both need is each other with that the last drop fell

19

Poem vs. Poet: A Manifesto mica hamilton

i.

The poet. Climbing into the skin of a bear she floats between hibernation trances and roaring furies beyond her reach. At once paralyzed like a leaf between panes of ice, caught in mid-blink words filter through thick animal eyelashes into pale human eyes and then rabidly scrawling on bark, on park benches, on her own thin skin, Like a preacher speaking in tongues, her self is not her own, she belongs to the words. ii.

The poem. At first misspelled, poorly penned, broken like a mirror on the backs of receipts, the inside of a palm, the edge of a full notebook, It is now that what the mania has given is achingly sculpted like a welder with his torch. A creature begins to take form, some dancing demons, some farmhouses with yellow lamplight at night, some the curve of a woman's thigh. The words pulled from the poet's hands become entities themselves; demi-gods of barbarian yells, dance, the color orange. iii.

Poem and poet together. The poet must say nothing and the poem everything, else they fall apart like a puzzle dropped down the stairs. The poet must never seek to control the words nor fight them off, only shape the words, strangle them, grow them, superheat them, The words must always possess like a Catholic saint or horned devil. They must come in hibernation, in manicmanicmanic roaring. They must hold fast against the welder, bending only when torch becomes sun. The poet must succumb to the poem.

20

Alabaster Horses kaileigh wilcox

Alabaster horses galloped across the expanse of the front living room windowsill― their hard bodies hugged by small fingers while, on the other side of the glass, a man in brown cargo pants and a sweat stained white t-shirt loaded boxes full of things Elisa had never realized belonged to her mother: gleaming bone china plates with tiny, pink roses around the rim; an oil painting of three young girls washing white cotton sheets under a sticky maize sun.

Standing quietly in the far side of the room, Lois watched her daughter while pulling idly on a beige thread from the arm of the recliner Randall had purchased when pregnancy reflux kept her awake and away from their bed. In those early days, she had been thankful and squeezed his left hand, comforted by the band of cool metal pressed against the triangle center of her palm.

21

The man outside tapped impatiently on the glass, and the rogue string snapped.

White, patent leather Mary Janes, bound across Elisa’s feet, were blackened around the toes―always a clumsy girl with frayed dressed and scuffed shoes.

Lois reached her hand out instinctively to warn her child to be more careful, but her fingers retracted themselves before the words could make it out of her mouth.

The small girl, careful to rotate her body on the hard heels of her shoes, moved slowly, trying not to disturb the auburn bangs that concealed sunflower eyes. She faced her mother while, behind her back, she rubbed the smooth flank of her favorite horse. A dry, firm kiss was planted on Elisa’s forehead and Lois felt her child grow rigid under her lips.

“You know, this has nothing to do with you.”

Elisa nodded at the words, then returned to the endless white pasture and tried not to watch as her mother’s van turned out of the drive way.

22

To the Funks Grove, Chicago taylor gladwin Rolling Rolling Rolling Rolling

The wheels They have No choice

To Lebanon

Where lesbians lay between longitudinal legs of lust amongst loosened viva la vulva lips and there is no pleasure in coming up for air

To Livingston

Where children lie gagging their dreams to death on skillet streets ravished alive by the feverish heat with no hand to hold

To the Forsee Winery

Where creeps crawl and collaborate behind the footprints of angels boozing their wings away hoping to meet the face of God at the base of the bottle

23

To Swapping Genitals

Where unzipped zippers zigzag through Fruitful Loins until the rubber ruptures in Sangamon Space

To Smog Skies

Where sea horses splash mermaids in the straps of their strapped on spotlight spanked poles

To Grinarm

Where giants gleam all sunday into purple night splooge wettened by raining spit of the riveting mouth

To East of the Mississippi

Where delays are expected to steam smoke from cylinders aiming to fog the mind body soul windows of Heaven

To Camp Butler National Cemetery

Where dirty demons navigate the thoughts and philosophies of forgotten ghost bums clinging to shreds of dreams between the cracks in their skulls

Where Sherman is more than a mushroom and no longer a skeleton on my porch

To Williamsville

Where Sunflower Carrier Trucks cart money making green but no pollen yellow

Where Nussbaum is Setting New Ideas in Motion and babies drink their first thirst from a nipple

24

To Elkhart

Where dear are more or less than men with bar code tattoos on their necks driving driving driving passed themselves as I roll away from the nowhere of which I come

Where I spilt black ink on my silk pink tongue screaming my words which tasted like chemicals and cancer

Back in Arkansas when my head was the road and your road was the head

how we gave the car wings

Where we had no patience to chew our frenzy and still

100 miles of skin to swallow

25

Beauty Frames the Sky elizabeth a. sneed

26

When My Brain Wakes Up and Other Horror Stories mica hamilton

I find my brain in a box under my bed With a lung, my heart, and part of a liver.

I put them there years ago, when I first left home.

My lung is filled with smoke, the scratch of tobacco And something peachy sweet.

My heart is full of pictures, sharp corner Polaroids Poor quality, they jab into thin muscle A blonde haired boy from East Texas The poet in Chicago The girl next door My veins catch fire, the scratchy stuff on the edge of a matchbox.

My liver is in parts, this one filled with vodka warm memories Dancing on the tables, black out face first Asleep in the hallway, head down, brain already missing Kissing my best friend Sometimes my brain wakes up, it talks too much Rapid –fire words like machine gun bullets Always in a panic The lungs start to close The heart starts to speed The liver sits and craves whiskey, gin, tequila Anything to freeze, pickle these thoughts

27

Salvation alli muller

He was some guy my mom met around town. I don't remember his name. I'm not sure I ever knew it. Maybe

he wasn't even the first. I don't remember. A lot was foggy back then; I call those years the dark ages.

But I do remember the rape…vividly. I remember that he was much bigger and stronger and that he towered over me even as he pushed me to the floor and climbed on top of me so that I couldn't escape. He grabbed my arms so hard they bruised and thrust them so that they were sticking straight out on either side of me. My legs were dead, screwed to the ground beneath us, his weight cutting off all the blood flow. They were squeezed tightly together, but that didn't protect me for long. I remember the blood pooling around my legs and dripping slowly onto the white patch of carpet beneath us. More than anything else, though, I remember the necklace.

My persecutor wore a gaudy wooden cross around his neck that had a carving of Jesus in the middle. He was dying on the cross, with his arms straight out and his feet pinned, and his face downcast and distraught, as if he were already defeated. As my persecutor thrust against me, crushing me under his weight, the thing moved back and forth. It darted in front of my face, moving first closer and then pulling away. It was a cruel joke, to think help was at once so near and so far. Soon the man's assaults and God's taunts fused together until I could no longer distinguish one tormentor from the other.

He stuck around, lived with us for awhile. Whenever my mom was passed out, he came at me licking his lips like a wolf hunting his prey. No matter how loud I screamed, she never woke up and no one came to rescue me.

He always wore the cross. Always. I think he did it to mock me. *** I used to walk to Sunday school, before he started staying with us. The church nearby had an angel outside, and my mom had once told me that angels could save people.

The Sunday school teacher told me about Jesus. How he loved me, how he died for me, how he could help me if I were in trouble.

I believed her. I think I even prayed to Jesus' image as it bobbed in front of my face.

I like to call Jesus the Patron Saint of Bullshit.

28

Sunday school teachers are his disciples. *** Time passed in a fog. It passed in a thick layer of smoke and lights and liquid by which I did whatever I could to stay afloat. Nothing mattered but survival, except I didn't know what I needed to survive for.

One day when I was cleaning up after one of my mom's all night fuck-fests, I found a Bible hidden under some blankets. I don't why, but I started reading. I guess I wanted to drown.

In one of her more beautiful lies, my Sunday school teacher told me that the Bible was the word of God and that if you looked inside of it, God would tell you what to do.

I opened up to the passage about Sodom and Gomorrah.

God said that there was no hope of redemption; the only way to rid the world of sin and sinners was to burn them. *** A few hours later, I lit a match and watched my life burn.

The fire moved slowly at first. I watched, mesmerized , as the flames licked over the walls and danced past the windows like graceful orange ballerinas. Then the flames began to dance more quickly, until they moved like fierce serpents, swift glowing dragons devouring everything in their path. I'd never seen anything more beautiful.

Oh yes, I heard their screams. I saw the melting ash faces as they pressed against the window and begged for mercy, but I paid them no heed. They were only the desperate shrieking of the guilty as the serpents of justice devoured them, and I was the angel of death.

“We make our own mercy,” I whispered into the flames. “We are our own justice. We save ourselves. For the wages of sin is death.” *** In the rubble and ashes of my former house, I found something small that had been saved from the flames.

A cross. The same cross that had watched me during my worst moments.

I picked it up and slid it around my neck.

29

The Sight audrey manning

I keep to the wall. Steady. Watchful. My day on duty. This mall is crawling with Blind Ones. Well, the whole world is. Everywhere I go. Everywhere We go.

My boots keep me stable. The air sustains me roughly 20 feet above the meandering shoppers. Every few minutes I do a scoop, scanning, seeing if any of these people notice the mass in the corner by the Christmas tree.

Nothing.

Hours go by. My partner/boss (it's more of a relationship of equals) comes to give me a break.

“No one?'

“Not today. Rare finds. You know that,” I reply, while packing my gear in my bag. I press the buttons on my boots that slowly lower me down to the ground. I signal my co-worker and begin the familiar task of dodging through crowds of people who can't see me.

I jump on a display mattress and take a glance back at the huge, undulating blob near the Christmas tree.

The “oohs” and “aahs” of wonder that I'd heard over and over during the first part of my shift today, of people reacting to “that great big Christmas tree,” “it must be Heaven sent,” “how did they fit that gigantic thing in here?”

If they could see the other Thing right by that tree…if…just if…no, it's much better they didn't. Of course.

The masses and mysterious phenomena don't work together particularly well.

Best leave it to us few who see the benign stuff. Manage it. Use it.

I get off the mattress and continue my trek through the crowds. I find a bathroom and go into a stall. Wait until no one is there. Then I de-activate my “covering,” as we call it. Now I'm visible. I leave the bathroom, go get something to eat at the food court, and reverse the bathroom process when I'm done. Enter stall. Activate covering. Exist Stall.

Ghost mode.

30

Making may way back to the lookout position, I'm not surprised to see my partner watching the people vigilantly. He has been the one to find several of us.

He found me.

This man is probably approaching 40. He is serious and stern, but not by nature. This job, this lifestyle, has made him that way. When he talks to me, though, he is much less businesslike and much more…I suppose human is the best way to describe it. One of these days I will work up my nerve to ask him something. Until then, I just have a gut feeling about why he treats me that way.

He found me, like I said. He was very young then, probably the age I am now. Although to me, a four-yearold at the time, he didn't seem “young” at all. He seemed like a “grown-up stranger taking me away.” Because he saw me…seeing. I saw him, and I saw one of the creatures just like the one currently residing by the great Christmas tree.

I don't remember much about my life before all this, but the memories I do have, I cling to. The day I was taken, I had been with my mother in a supermarket. It was shortly after the divorce. I don't remember my father, other than that he was almost never around. She had been wearing a dress with roses on it. Bright, vivid, blood red roses. Every day I wear a necklace with a rose pendant on it. Something I snatched for myself years back at a department store, knowing full well it was against the rules. I didn't care. I was invisible, surrounded by things so easy to take, and all I wanted was one necklace.

Back to the day of my abduction. My mother had asked what I wanted for lunch on my first day of Kindergarten. I was starting early, at four instead of five. A gifted child. I remember telling her I wanted apple juice and chocolate chip cookies. She turned her back on me to peruse the selection of juices, trusting me to stay by her side, me having been a well-behaved little girl.

If it had been a normal day, I would have. If I had not been in that store, I may have gone to Kindergarten, and to college, and may be doing something…else with my life. But that is a different me. That me didn't have a chance. Not for a life in normal society.

When you are four, you are attached to several things. For me, these things were toys, snacks, cartoons, naptime, and Mommy. I was attached, most of all, to my Mommy. It took several years for me to understand why I couldn't live with her anymore, or even ever see her again, and that my new family was with the Others who had the Sight, too.

There is no forgetting the hours of crying, screaming, inconsolable sobbing, the sleepless nights, and the women who tried their best to comfort me while I tried my best to punch and scratch and kick them. None of

31

them were Mommy; therefore, I didn't want to see any of them.

The man who took me came to see me one day. It was a day I was so exhausted I couldn't throw any fits or punches.

He held my hand and said, “I'm sorry. I know what you're going through. I will answer any questions you have.”

He spoke to me like I was an adult, an equal. He wasn't like those women who acted as nannies or babysitters. I wanted to be told the truth, and he offered it to me. For the first time since my abduction, I felt reasonable. I asked him questions. He answered. It was a start.

And now, we're here. Me, propelling myself up to his position, about to ask how things have been going.

Him, nodding, with an aura of lifetime understanding. I never knew my father, so in the past few years, I've started to see that he has been a father figure to me.

“I picked up some activity while you were gone, but, vague, on the move. I got a call a few minutes ago from the base. They need me to help map this thing. We need to haul it in within the week. We're running low on energy. Can't do our jobs if they can see us,” he gave me a half smile. “Keep a very careful watch from here on out. That person is still here. We need numbers.”

He gave me a thoughtful nod and left.

I put my goggles on to look for the person. Within half an hour or less, I spot the blip. Zoom in.

My god.

A little girl. Around six years old. With her parents. She is staring at what they think is the Christmas tree, but no, it's the creature next to it. She smiles so innocently, so curiously. She looks up at me. She sees me. She points, and I see her mouth moving, murmuring words.

I turn on my sound amplifier and lock in on her position. Now I can hear what she says as well as the people nearby her.

“Daddy, there's a lady on the wall, like Spiderman! Over there!”

“Haha, oh, I'm sure she'll be drawing that one later tonight, honey,” the father says to his wife.

“What is the lady doing, sweetheart?” the mother asks, stroking the girl's hair.

“She's just floating up there. It's cool!”

“Best selling author someday, this kid,” the father chimes in.

“Oh, I know! She'll be a star at the academy,” the mother replies.

“The big blue thingie is dancing over there,” the girl says, pointing in the direction of the Christmas tree.

32

She was right. It had started moving more recently. Which was why we needed to get it into our base ASAP before it transported to another location. We use the energy from these creatures to make ourselves invisible.

“Yeah, you want a pretty ornament for our tree at home?” the mother says to the girl, oblivious, as usual.

Why did it have to be a little girl? Why did it have to be one who was my age when I was taken? Why did she even have to look like me as a child? Years of training to disregard emotions when it comes to people this important can't help me now. I've taken a teenage boy, and a middle aged woman, but not a child, never a child!

I forced myself to stop thinking as much as I could for now. I floated over to the little girl and hovered over her and her family. She stared up at me, and I smiled at her.

A teardrop fell from my eye onto her forehead.

“Is something leaking in here?” the father asked, indignantly.

“The girl from the wall is floating over me. But now she's crying. It's okay. You don't have to be sad. We can be friends.”

She was talking to me and only me.

I had a decision to make.

The same decision my partner made all those years ago when he took me. He told me the story. He gently inserted the syringe into my neck, then carried my unconscious, invisible body away, tears spilling down his face.

He knew I had to be taken, I had to be with the Others. If he didn't take me, someone less gentle would.

And what kind of life could this child live, could I have lived, seeing those people, those things, every few years? A psych ward seems likely. That takes you away from society in its own way, even if its temporary. No. No. It can't be that way. They can't live with the Sight alone. They have to know what it is.

She would not want to be my friend if I decided to take her.

Eventually, though, she would.

We are all friends. A grab bag family.

We are so few.

33

Dodge Ball for the Gifted lisa ference

I love feeling smarter than other people. I know this sounds bad, and I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but it's true. Like so many things in life, however, I can honestly say it is not my fault - it is the fault of Mr. Lindsey, my sixth grade social studies teacher.

In sixth grade I was one of those awkward, chubby, ugly little girls much like the ones I often see in Walmart now thinking to myself, oh honey, I am SO sorry. And this “affliction,� if you will, was very traumatic.

Sixth grade was the time of dodge ball, that horrible game that started with the pretty, popular team captains choosing the most athletic, capable kids in the class and ended with me, fat and disheveled, sitting on the gym floor after having been pounded in the face with the awful little red ball, wishing we had played four square instead. I was always picked last (or at least close to last as admittedly there were those in a more desperate state than myself - those who had been cursed with headgear or corrective coke bottle lenses for glasses) and this was less than great for my self-esteem.

Enter Mr. Lindsey, an intellect (not unlike myself) who undoubtedly chose to teach sixth grade social studies so that he could, in his free time, write a Pulitzer Prize winning novel or craft a dissertation on the indigenous tribes of South America while dreaming of the day when his name would be uttered during my acceptance speech for the Presidency. An intellect who, in his quest for social equality, leveled the middle school playing field by holding a weekly social studies bee in his classroom.

Now this game I could play - instead of hard rubber spheres being launched haphazardly at kids with corrective orthopedic shoes, there were questions flying around and they weren't easy. They were questions that required critical thought, a concept that escaped many of my freshly permed classmates with their perfectly tight rolled jeans, and it was for this reason that I was consistently the first to be chosen for teams.

This was perhaps the first taste of superiority I ever had. Oh, Mr. Lindsey - how I loved that man.

From that point on I understood that my intelligence and somewhat quick wit was kryptonite for stupid people. They may have had that feeling of acceptance that I secretly longed for so desperately, but they couldn't spell acceptance. Hell, some of them couldn't even spell spell. I, on the other hand, had begun reading Robert Cormier, a voice for all pubescent outsiders, and had accepted my misfit as being poetic. I was a poetic

34

misfit. How romantic.

If ever I felt threatened or someone deliberately attempted to isolate me, I was fast to throw a verbal dagger in their direction. A little blonde boy named Robert used to call me “Thunder Thighs.” While this admittedly set my cheeks on fire with the quick heat of tears, instead of becoming a complete emotional wreck I always managed to get out a few words regarding the incestuous relationship that his mother must have had with his daddy-uncle in order for him to turn out so stupid and misshapen.

Although more often than not my intellectual jabs were misunderstood, there was a strange satisfaction in realizing that although Robert had no idea what I had just said, he knew without question that it was not good. He would just stare at me like doe in headlights. It was beautiful. This self-defense mechanism was quite effective in helping me to survive puberty and I feel sure that somewhere out there, Robert is sitting in a dark room asking himself if it's odd that his mother called her brother honey and why his daddy doesn't love him as much as his siblings. Yes. I'm sure of it.

As I outgrew ugly, I mellowed a bit, settled into social circles that appreciated my attention to grammatical detail, and eventually stopped verbally assaulting the intellectually-challenged. This personal growth, however, in no way changed my love for feeling smarter than others. If anything, it just challenged me to listen more closely to the universe, seeking out the stupid like a pied piper for those with low IQs. In restaurants, on television, while drinking coffee at Starbucks, if there is a less than smart conversation going on I will hear it, and mark my words, I will laugh out loud.

Recently, I was doing my weekly grocery shopping, obsessively walking aisle to aisle seeking out the lowest cost on each individual item that I had on my list while refusing to sacrifice quality or value. As I was comparing packages of steamable sweet corn, these two ladies, both dawning hairdos that screamed “Kiss my grits!” and wearing cut off shorts and Budweiser tank tops as I remember - (Although the latter part may be a fabrication. It is highly unlikely that they were both wearing Budweiser shirts, one may have said Marlboro.) joined me on the frozen food aisle. As I continued obsessing over which frozen vegetables to purchase, one said to the other, “Did you know there was a ban on Mexican food?”

“Oh shit really?” her friend replied. “Why's that happenin?”

“Well, I don't know, but I been to three different grocery stores this week and ain't none of 'em got no Mexican TV dinners.”

To which her friend, with an astonished look of disbelief replied, “Oh shit, something bad must be goin' on.”

I couldn't make this up. These people really walk among us. Yes it is mean, I will probably go to hell, but I laughed. And what is worse, I felt a little better about the fifteen pounds I've gained in the last two years.

35

But that is just one example. There are always more.

Like this pretty little girl, for instance, that sits next to me in my Astronomy class. This particular young lady thought that the Sun orbited the Earth, the Earth being the center of the universe. When, in an attempt to help her out, I assured her that in actuality the Earth orbits the sun and that Earth is not the center of the universe, she looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Now, how do you know that for sure?” I told her that she was right- what was I thinking? I laughed to myself and went on with my day.

The thing is, everyone likes to feel smarter than others sometimes. This is evidenced by television, now littered with mind numbing reality based programs that literally showcase the stupidity in our society. It's like a freak show out there that leaves me wondering if mass groups of people drank bad kool-aid or something, but America watches anyway. Why? In simple terms- these people make us feel better about ourselves.

Even I on occasion, while sitting on my couch in my self-righteous smarty pants, have fallen victim to the entrancing stupidity of the Jersey Shore. (For its anthropological value of course.) When searching for a self-esteem pick-me-up one must look no further than a monologue from Snooki, one of the shows many endearing characters. Though she will never be part of a think tank, her occasional trips to the drunk tank paired with her charming lack of intellect and very large breasts apparently make her a national treasure of sorts.

America doesn't love her, we just love that we are not her. And of course, she makes us all feel smarter.

Now if others refuse to admit this, that's just fine with me. I am comfortable enough with my various neuroses to accept that I have this problem, this complex disorder- “intellect,” and these days I make a conscious effort to keep my smart in check. In the rare case that I speak down to someone, or make them feel less than adequately equipped with knowledge, it is purely accidental. I don't set out to make others feel stupid, it just happens - like bananas go bad. I buy a bunch, a little under ripe so that they will last longer, I eat one, to satisfy that insane banana craving, then they rot on my kitchen counter and I'm like, what the hell? I just bought those bananas! Such is the feeling that people must have as they walk away from my assault on their intelligence. It's not their fault, it's just bad bananas.

None of this is to say that I am smarter than people, I certainly am not in most cases. I just have a way with words. Others have striking blue eyes, chiseled upper bodies, amazing natural abilities, or old money… I have a thesaurus and I know how to use it. This is my special gift- crafting sentences that work out well most of the time. If I find joy in the fact that I have this ability that some others may not, if I get a little kick out of the fact that some random person thinks that the Louvre is a place where you get your oil changed, or that my old neighbor thinks that Mississippi is the capital of Alabama, is that really such a large infraction? After all, I give money to the poor when I have it and I never kick dogs or yell at small children who scream in restaurants.

36

Besides, everyone who loves me makes it their personal mission to make me feel stupid. For example, feeding on my naivety, my father once told me that in his spare time Leonard Nemoy is a gifted architect.

Believing that since my father, mi patre, my dear old daddy passed me this information it must be true, I went on thinking that every building he and the rest of my family pointed out to me on various car trips as a Nemoy treasure was just that. This continued for some time until one day, finding it hard to speak on the topic with a straight face any longer, my dad finally explained to me that he and the others had been duping me for a long, long, long time and that it was ridiculous for me to believe that Mr. Spock built skyscrapers when not on the set. Devastation quickly set in as I realized that this was sure to go down in the family record book- score one home team. I have to say however that I was more disappointed with the fact that Leonard Nemoy was not an architect than anything else. Especially since William Shatner moonlights as a composer. Wait, that is true, right?

Sure, this mistake was more misplaced trust than stupidity, but there are plenty examples to choose from. Like when I was in Junior High and had to take this test to assess my degree of intelligence for the gifted program. When asked what direction the sun set in I responded east, an answer that all but got me kicked out of the program for which the test was being conducted and is brought up by my father to this day. I can still hear him asking, “When cowboys ride off into the sunset, are they heading east? Do you really think they are heading east?!� I've thoughtfully considered this question more than once and I think that the answer is yes.

Yes I did think they were headed east, perhaps to Mississippi, Alabama.

Also, I thought that self-deprecation was actually self-defecation well into my twenties. It made sense to me- to shit on one's self. It was quite embarrassing to have a professor point out to me in front of a class full of people that this is not the proper term, but certainly made for an unforgettable moment for them. Had I not scoffed at so many of their collective analyses of Shakespeare, perhaps not as many of them would have asked me repeatedly for the remainder of the class if I had shat on myself lately. Which, by the way, I hadn't.

The point is that I at times am stupid too and I often find the most pleasure in laughing at myself. After all, if we can't shit on ourselves, what fun is shitting on everyone else? Although it's definitely comforting feeling smarter than other people from time to time as I often feel I don't measure up in so many other ways, I love even more when I am outsmarted as perhaps this is an indication that overall the world is more intelligent than I give it credit for. Perhaps among the Snookies there are more girls longing for a good old fashioned social studies bee than I realize. Perhaps there is hope for people like me after all.

37

The Think Tank jay haynes

38

39

40

The Math of Marriage douglas knight

At our wedding, my wife and I counted up the tables we rented and the chairs that sat under them.

Thirty-two white rectangular tables. Two hundred and fifty brown fold out chairs. We could have tallied the women in sundresses dinning in the field, their fingers snacking on barbeque and beer, belching as dogs ran under tables to snap a fallen strand of sweet meat from the grass. Someone listening closely could have counted the number of men who whispered “beautiful,” to describe the wedding or their dates or how it felt to be a piece of it all that afternoon. Everything was numbers. So we kept them in folders and scribbled them on the back of receipts. But most figures ran howling, gathering, combusting, collapsing towards totals we could never compute. It had been a month of mashing dates and phone calls for favors. A steady climb through invitation designing, dress stitching, suspender smacking, cake lapping, and a careful choosing of tea lights; it all brought us to this one moment, flickering up a small pond of oceanic light. “You may kiss the Bride.” And then flow out.

Crabs caught in the summer tide. I had to stand up for a minute, on the lip of the tip of the toes of my shoes, to become the lift of elation and the sweep of the sand. If once there were gods here that had drowned like trees in the ocean, then again their saplings grew from the surf and named each other with a mummer, a recognition of love. Soaked in every last bit of that summer, we danced barefoot across the grass, counting time with the feel of our toes standing on end, seeing ourselves a little taller than we ever realized we were before, or forgot we had been. Spinning, spinning, spinning to the blue grass picking, we smiled into a familiar carnival of faces.

They had whispered to us our own names in recognition of some collective motion, drawing each eye, flashing with candle wicks. This light they had seen us by before, looking too long, redefining the limits of each other’s curling skin and lips that tongue and linger on phonetics (lateral approximate consonants eventually sounding love) that were heard by nibbled ears and not counted but multiplied, reacted, and raised to the exponential power of each instance--never islands unto themselves. And us, ourselves--hands joined, rings bound, shoes kicked off--beholding the panoramic view of our beginning: with the intake of breath before, I love you; with angry exhalations and shaking knees; with the thought that moved our hands to hold; with the light that

41

showed our refusal to turn away; with the wonder of the possibility that there was something stronger than gravity between us; with all the same illusions of beginnings between our grey and wrinkling parents who (beginning in similar fashions) had made the two of us. As we made our way through the night we could feel it, the cycle spinning around us, The Moment, a temporary peak of wave rushing nowhere. There is only one. Count it, and all else is accounted for. We could have counted the stars rising. We could have counted the logs on the bonfire, burning. We could have counted the two-hundred fifty chairs at our wedding, and added the three toilet seats, and added the ten benches. We could have added the people who came to fill them and the car seats that carried them there. We will always have to add the arm chair that my grandmother sat in, shelling purple-hull peas, teaching us that sometimes you get more from a garden than you ever thought you had planted. Â

42

City Design caty mcmains

43

Home is Where the Heart is savannah moix

Sweet as a honey-do list, he runs from place to place.

A gallon here, hang a picture there.

A happy wife is a happy home – Away from home, he grips the steering wheel tight.

Raining like a ton of bricks, the precipitation violently hits his windshield — shield against elements from the outside and requests, favors – oh, but this is no party.

Up the driveway, back to stormy suburbia.

And the beat goes on— off, on, off he flips the light switch revealing neat and tidy, spick and span.

There’s no need for requests, favors, nothin.’

Milk sits still in the frigid box, the screen print hangs above his mantle.

44

In the Morning seth taylor kenney Burning Bloodshot Eyes Tightened Stiff Neck Much Too Much Throbbing Pulsing Resonating Headache Affirmative Hangover Hamburger Necessary Now

45

City on the Sun mckenzie hobbs

46

Flight Feather colleen hathaway

mapped out scribbles on tea-stained paper arid tears cover her plan each time

knew where she was going until her birth when the world brought pains scurrying onto her path over and over

rinse and repeat

swords of betrayal pinned her to privacy stripped of what's precious she'd [s h r u g] her shoulders knowing no difference

while we sketched her sheltered soul ran around with the wind new ideas exposed tiny pinch of hope

who she was made charades of smiles who she'll become n o k n o w s o n e

long travelers fail her

seeing isn't believing

47

mind a destination hidden locked keys swallowed years before

no deep digging into hearts on her sleeves only clues fingerprints of lust wringing her out she's cut and parched yet full of warmth turning hell into beauty shaking pains off with rachis sturdy

catching those who fall but stumbling inside

brightening days of others crazy things pelting from her mouth what's coming you'll never know

she'll keep you on your toes and bring you to earth tell you what she thinks about it all

always changing mindset drifting around the settling now soaring in containment

rustling when necessary still tucked away in dreams even when she sleeps

48

believing is seeing

she's headed somewhere new

life is not a plan never has it been

steering in the breeze going where we call vanes abrupt and eager taking flight

keep me high

keep her close

now I know

49

The Pot Roast sarah f. wilson

The day the two men came with a letter for mama she broke down crying in the door as the warm breeze rushed over her and into the house. She sat there for over an hour crying as our friends and neighbors walked by. None of them stopped to ask what was wrong. They already knew. She clenched the letter in her hand, screaming and sobbing. Then she stopped and stared at the street, as if waiting for something. She just stared and stared and stared as the sun went down.

Billy and Maggie kept talking to mama, trying to get her to come inside, but I don’t think she heard them.

So I took them back to their rooms and popped in a movie for them, then went back to watching mama watch the street.

The next morning she woke up and went to the grocery store before any of us even thought about getting out of bed. When we walked in the kitchen there was a feast on the table of eggs, sausages, bacon, pancakes, waffles, fruits, whipped cream, syrup, chocolate sauce, and coco puffs for Billy. Mama never did anything like this. She sat down at the table and told us it was a new day. That the letter said they weren’t sure when Daddy was coming home, but it could be any day now. She said he was missing, but they were going to find him and bring him home. It was a promise. We all cheered and my mama smiled, but it wasn’t a real smile. I could see that. But Billy and Maggie believed it.

That night we had a roast for dinner, Billy and Maggie don’t like roast, but that’s because they’re five and not seven like me, so they whined the whole time until Mama said roast was daddy’s favourite food and she promised it’d be on the table when he got home, and Daddy might be home for dinner. This put smiles on their faces and they began to wait impatiently to impress Daddy with how they’d eat pot roast now. Eventually mama let Billy and Maggie up from the table to wait. I wanted to stay with her even though she didn’t talk. The roast just sat there while Billy and Maggie watched both Shrek and Shrek 2 on TV with commercials and all. Mama stared. Occasionally I checked out the window. The street was empty. No one ever came. So finally mama told us we could eat.

The night after that was the same, and the night after that, and the night after that. After a while we would

50

ask to go over to friends’ houses, but mama would never let us go, ‘cause that would be the night daddy came home. When he didn’t come home, sometimes mama would go to bed without clearing off the table. But I don’t think she ever slept.

One night Maggie saw mama crying in the tree house from our window after she thought we were all asleep in bed. She snuck over and opened the window to hear her crying and screaming at Jesus and telling God “damn it” over and over. We didn’t know where mama wanted God to build a dam, but she must have wanted it real bad because she just kept screaming it over and over. I closed the window and for a moment I think mama knew we were out of bed, but she just went back to crying alone in the tree house.

After a while mama got a necklace from a man. I only saw the chain falling out of her hand while she walked to her room, wiping tears away from her eyes. That night we had chicken.

51

Being There timothy snediker

Rumor has it I’m the man on the moon but I swear to God Awmighty I never heard her breathe her own name aloud.

Now the time the wind danced in the yard and left her panties hanging from the eaves, that was more than a metaphor,

and what’s more, I keep secrets with her.

And she silvers my blood--what with the striptease for four straight weeks, slipping that sundress

on and off and on until gravity kisses me goodbye and waves bon voyage and I learn the twin virtues of onamatapoeia and myopia: both of which sound

like the name of a beautiful woman. I round her humming circumference, cover myself in shade and slumber with her the silence.

52

Machine taylor lea hicks

In a cave in the mountains, there is a machine. A machine with no buttons, or switches, or slots, or

screens. Only a lever. This machine can give you a new life; a life that should have never been yours. Just one pull of the lever, and you can be a brand new person in a brand new world.

This lever is one-way. Down.

Hudson Bailey stumbled upon the machine during a spelunking blunder. He studied the machine in wonder, its modern sleekness alien in the raw cavern. He ran his hands over the surface, smooth and gray and taller than his head. He cautiously fingered the lever, silver, centered in the machine’s face like Excalibur in its stone.

After some hesitation, Hudson Bailey pulled the lever.

Hudson Bailey awoke in a room that he didn’t remember going to sleep in. He hopped out of a bed he didn’t recognize and caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror hanging on the wall. His usually stubbly face was clean shaven, and his hair was cut shorter than he preferred, but otherwise he was the no different than the day before. Or was it even the next day? He couldn’t remember the previous day at all.

A memory flashed across his mind. A machine in a rock room. A cave. He was exploring He had pulled the lever.

The door opened.

“Good morning, Mr. Bailey,” said the man in the doorway. He was smartly dressed, in a pressed suit and tie, and carrying a tray of food. “Will you be taking your breakfast in your bedroom or the dining room, today, sir?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your breakfast, sir. Where will you be taking it?”

“Um, the dining room, I guess.”

“Excellent, Mr. Bailey. And may I remind you that you have an appointment at eleven with your banker, sir, to discuss your rising stocks.”

“My banker? My stocks?” Hudson leaned against the bed for support. “You can’t be serious.”

53

“I am entirely serious, sir, as always. Mr. Farris will be here promptly at eleven. I presume you would like to receive him in your office?”

“Uh, yes. Yes. My office….” Hudson rested his head against the bedpost dreamily.

“Very good, sir. I will take your breakfast to the dining room, then,” the man began to exit the bedroom, pulling the door with him.

“Wait, wait!” Hudson called, rushing forward to grab the door. “Remind me where the dining room is again?” The man--his butler, Hudson now realized, his butler!--cocked a curious eyebrow. “I, uh, didn’t sleep well and seem to be having a bit of a memory lapse.”

The butler nodded and started off, leading the way with practiced steps and a steady hand. Hudson clapped his hands together and followed, thinking of bacon and bankers and stocks and, above all, silver levers.

It was two months before Hudson Bailey decided he must again pull the lever. It was then that Hudson realized he could not recall how to reach the machine’s cave. He spent days trying to puzzle it out in his head, pouring over every map of the area. He must remember. This life was becoming too stressful for him. With one bad stock decision, he had nearly bankrupted all his accounts. One more and it could all be over. He had to pull that lever.

He set out on his own to find it; wouldn’t stop searching until he did. He had stumbled upon it before, and dammit, he would do it again!

He explored the caves for days, taking breaks only to sleep or eat. He fell often, once bashing his leg on the rocks and squirting blood everywhere, staining the rock walls. He bandaged himself up and kept going.

He finally reached the point when rations were running dangerously low, his body battered and bruised. He knew he was going to have to give up. He hadn’t found the cave.

Hudson had started his retreat home when he came across the rock stained with his own blood. Staring at it, the dried human blood spattered on the sun-burnt rocks, he began to giggle. It reminded him of a kid’s fingerpainting, thumbed out on nature’s canvas. It was almost shaped like a face, mocking him in his failure. Between this and the sun beating down on his back, he couldn’t contain the laughter. He rocked back on his heels, chuckles bursting from his chest. His balance slipped and he fell backwards, rocks rolling with him, landing on his back not too far below the bleeding face. Directly below it was a hole, opened up by the mini-landslide.

Curiosity was his curse. Hudson eagerly entered the hole, almost falling onto a rock floor. He carefully lowered himself down, then let go of the opening, dropping down into a cavern. Dusting himself off, he peered around.

54

There, on the far wall, was the machine.

He had done it. He had found the machine a second time. And from now on he had a marker; a way to never again lose the impossible machine that was now his life. He could do this for eternity.

Hudson Bailey stepped up and pulled the lever for the second time.

Hudson woke up as a famous actor. He spent four months acting on a soap opera, but when he was cast in a movie it became apparent that he wasn’t cut out for acting.

Hudson Bailey pulled the lever.

He woke up as a publisher. His first book sold barely any copies and lost his company millions of dollars.

Hudson Bailey pulled the lever.

He woke up as a doctor.

Hudson Bailey pulled the lever.

He woke up as a pilot.

Hudson Bailey pulled the lever.

He woke up as President of the United States. In the first six months of his term, he raised taxes obscenely, cheated on his wife, wrote a book, accidentally started World War III, and was almost assassinated.

Hudson Bailey pulled the lever.

And pulled. and pulled and pulled and pulled…

Hudson Bailey woke up as the machine.

At first he didn’t know where or what he was. It was a cave, obviously, but who lives in a cave? He tried to walk, but he couldn’t. He tried to lift his hand, but he couldn’t even feel it. He cried out in his mind, but he had no voice. He began to panic, his eyes sweeping the room. Why did the rock walls look so familiar? He helplessly looked up at the cave ceiling, then down.

His heart stopped. If he even had a heart anymore.

His chest was sleek, silver, and square. And sticking out of his chest, menacingly clean in the dusty cavity, was the lever. He was the machine.

Was this how the machine was powered? A life for a life? His fully human existence in return for the lives he had wasted--now too many to count? This was hardly a fair exchange!

55

A man dropped down from the hole, grunting as he landed.

No, Hudson thought. I can’t let this keep happening. Don’t pull the lever!

The man walked slowly toward the Hudson, no shock or awe in his eyes, only hard determination. He had used the machine before. He knew exactly what it would do for him.

No! Hudson screamed internally. Don’t touch that lever!

But it was no use. The man couldn’t hear him. Hudson was no longer Hudson. He was what was left of Hudson Bailey, the machine’s payment. And this was his last life.

The man came to a halt just before the machine, eyeing it hostilely. He studied every inch of the sleek surface, stopping on the lever. Hudson screeched protests that only he could hear. The man’s hand twitched. His arm moved behind his back.

He brought out a large hammer.

“I’m done switchin’ lives,” the man said. “I got no idea who I am anymore, but I’m gonna start with this. I choose this life. It may be crap compared to what I could have if I pulled that lever, but I know it ain’t worth it. One day I’m gonna have to make a life on my own, and that day is today.” He lifted the hammer, poised to smash. “You’re done stealin’ lives from people.” He brought the hammer down with a clack, melding with Hudson’s shrieks as the hammer came down again and again. In seconds the machine was no more, the lever poking out of the pile of metal rubble as if in defiance. With one swift swing the hammer shattered the lever in two.

Hudson Bailey did not wake up.

56

Cityscape caty mcmains

57

Mechanics

sarah jane rawlinson I associate the smells of gasoline and motor oil with icees because of gas stations.

I stand in the mechanics shop and think of being on road trips, seven years old.

I was braver then; I dove headfirst into my grandparent's pool, I climbed a forty foot ladder in Mesa Verde.

My only fears were of the irrational--a burglar was not frightening, only a vampire.

I wasn't even afraid of being shot until I dreamed a man held a gun pressed to the back of my head. Now my nightmares are made of demons and people, and now I climb more cautiously, and hold my nose when I swim.

58

Midtown Cattails lisa ference

It’s early morning at a café and I sit on the patio drinking coffee, watching cars passing, enveloped by

the warmth of the morning sun. As I stare over the edge of the patio wall a swallow dances beneath the vacant table next to me, reminding me that it’s summer. A storefront in the distance barely peaks through an ivy covered trellis, and its deep blue color is reminiscent of morning glories but it fails to draw the bees.

Water pools beneath my over priced cup of iced coffee and is pushed like an amoeba towards the hard

edge of the table. It is bound to form a river, then a waterfall, then pool again on the cool cement ground, an oasis for ants. I plunge my cigarette into the black hole emptiness of the ashtray on my table. As it is extinguished I feel the cold hard waterfall drops hit my naked calf and drip down to my foot. Wind cuts through my hair and snaps on my cheek like a whip, but I allow it. It billows my dress as the patio umbrellas crack and moan, their stainless steel spines stiffened and swaying like an erection wishing to go limp.

I wiggle my toes and pretend not to hear the ramblings of the pseudo-intellectuals next to me; I am

secretly screaming at them behind unnecessary sunglasses. They speak about art that has no feeling, Petri dish Jackson Pollocks who toss paint on panels and stand back to take it in as though it were the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And as they bow their heads in reverence of modernism, a group of nuns exit the café in their Tevas and sanctimonious habits and I wonder if God drinks Seattle’s Best as he stares at us and laughs.

The work hour approaches and a crowd begins pushing in and out of the storefront like tinker toys on

an assembly line. Men carrying monogrammed leather briefcases, doctors changing shifts, people who hail from the Banana Republic with titles and alphabets that follow their names. “Hello, I’m Dr. John Smith, P-HD-P-R-E-T-E-N-T-I-O-U-S.” Nuevo hippies stand hip to hip in line with them, anxiously awaiting the purchase of fair trade Guatemalan coffee cup koozies, banana leaf paper journals and Paul Simon’s latest album in an absolute cornucopia of desires, each person desperate for a fix.

A young man, adorned by a large ink crucifix with the words “Forever Faithful” beneath it, is on his

phone across from me asking the person on the other end in a very polite voice for a refill on his Xanex. It ap-

59

pears as though he is refused, though his well crafted story of a looming trip to Nashville for his grandfather’s funeral seems rather convincing to me. He mutters a series of expletives after ending the call, then pulls a small plastic bag from his pocket and ingests its contents before grabbing his coffee and wandering off into the parking lot abyss.

To my right, a woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses and loose curls unfastened from bristle barrel curl-

ers and left to hang where they will, sits quietly and reads, slowly sipping her sugar-free non-fat decaf delight.

As she thumbs through the pages of her book she highlights the passages that best describe the Berlitz recommended path that she travels through Europe in her head. She’ll have a gelato at point A before walking to point B where she’ll see antiquities and meet a man with a Vespa and a villa and a very nice smile.

A thin cotton dress hangs on her delicate frame like an old flour sack and her cheeks glow as she throws

an occasional come hither stare at the clouds, imagining how lovely Paris must be for lovers. Her timidity won’t shackle her to a wrought iron patio chair in Florence, nor will her diffidence cage her while walking through Prague. In Europe, one day, she’ll find her voice. Until then, she sits alone and imagines.

To my left, a woman, not so quiet, prescribes the antidote for loneliness to someone over the phone as

she eats the five dollar bowl of fifty cent oatmeal that she was far too busy to fix for herself. She twists her bleach blond hair on her finger between bites and I’m enamored by the staying power of her deep red lipstick that doesn’t seems to fade no matter how many times her lips touch her spoon or cup. She taps her long manicured fingernails on the table as she talks with her mouth full and a man in a pin striped blazer and jeans passes and sighs with disapproval before sitting at the table furthest from her. He’s a striking man, tall with dark hair and expensive looking glasses. When he moves past I catch his scent, sandalwood and maybe the slightest hint of lavender. I imagine him in an office: Making calls, making plans, making time, but not for others. I hear him speak, in French, and I understand what he is saying to mean, “My cow has met me in the city,” but my French is lacking, as is his taste in literature judging by the copy of In Touch that lies on the table before him.

As the name I have given him in my head is just on the tip of my tongue, my thoughts are interrupted by

the loud woman. It seems that she cannot control her excitement for the Container Store she has noticed across the plaza as obviously she is in desperate need of a box for her desires and a lined wicker basket for her needs, too bulky to carry in a reusable shopping bag.

The excitement is short lived and she quickly shifts gears and is back on her phone, summoning a new

rental car as the compact they gave her yesterday is simply too small for her ego and stinks of cigarette smoke.

It’s difficult to resist blowing a daisy chain of smoke rings in her direction as I picture her coughing, just a little

60

at first as though there’s a tickle in her throat, building into a crescendo that ends with her clasping her chest and saying, ”Goodbye cruel world,” as she dramatically keels over like a Looney Toons character. “A, dee, a, dee, a, dee- That’s all folks!”

My daydream comes to an abrupt halt as a pasty woman in a fitted suit approaches the blue jean debo-

nair. She’s very animated, her voice so high pitched it may shatter the café windows, and it quickly becomes clear that he is a doctor, and she an eager colleague. Her name is Jennifer and she has a Monday migraine.

How funny it is seeing him here, what a small world, though you can see the ER lights from where he sits.

She takes the liberty of joining him, and although but a moment ago I imagined him a bastard, I feel a light pang of pity for him as he tries to cut short her conversation about her interest in and intimate understanding of his research, and then her own work, and then her recent trip to Paris, which she so kindly reminds him is his hometown, as though he has forgotten.

“What a rich city! So full of culture, so full of history! The shopping is amazing and the food- well I don’t

have to tell you, do I?!” she says. She points out that the shoes she’s wearing are from a French boutique and asks if his are as well because, “well you know- you can just tell by looking at them that they are.” He smiles courageously and says in his French accent that he bought them last week at “le Carnaval des Chaussures,” screaming behind his unnecessary sunglasses in an all too familiar way.

She grimaces for a moment and licks her wounds but quickly returns to her illustrious story and it’s

hard not to hear her boisterous account of the jet lag, chateaubriand, and her perusing of the Louve, and I notice that the quiet reader in horn-rimmed glasses hears her too, her face suddenly changing from soft to hard.

“Each time I visit I say to myself, Jennifer, you really belong here. You have no idea how close I was this

last trip to just staying, you know? Europe really isn’t for everyone,” she says, bringing her voice down to a loud whisper. “I mean, you know? Well, I don’t have to tell you! But some of us really just belong there.”

The quiet woman glances up at the clouds again but doesn’t imagine herself in Paris. Hearing Jennifer’s ranting she’s so small, trapped in her head. Perhaps her dreams are best remaining just that. How could she ever fit into a world full of Jennifers shopping at boutiques and sipping champagne? Europe really isn’t for everyone.

Especially a no one like her. How little each word she reads seems to her now. How unsubstantial the notes she so carefully crafted in the margins. The highlighter no longer touches the page; it just floats above like a hovering aircraft, the lines deepening in her forehead. After a moment she gently closes the book, caps the highlighter, and places them back in her quilted bag. As the relentless description of what she had long imagined to be her Europe continues like the taunting voices of a playground, she stares blankly into the sea of cars in

61

the parking lot, all bound for places she’ll only read about and as Jennifer with the migraine is saying her long overdue goodbyes to Dr. Frenchman, she picks up her bag and her cup and goes in the café to complain to the barista that she’s sure that her “decaf” was “caf” indeed as it’s now causing her to feel quite anxious.

“Well I know what I feel! I’m no fool!” she screams at him, tears welling in her eyes as he assures her

that her order was correct with a highly confused look on his face. “I told you when I ordered that I can’t tolerate caffeine!” She blushes, embarrassed by the sound of her voice, unfamiliar and foreign. She leaves angry and moves quickly, unnoticed by most, including the doctor who is busy glancing around him, curious about his surroundings but ignorant to her and her obvious distress.

Two overweight police officers board their motorcycles after their morning cup of joe and head off to protect and serve the city, and I wish Jennifer in her French shoes with her American ambitions could be arrested for the hijacking of the quiet woman’s dream.

The doctor, in his visual inquest, looks over at me and then quickly away, embarrassed to have noticed

the Chinese characters tattooed on my partially exposed cleavage. He wants to know what it means, considers asking for a moment, but fears it as inappropriate as his thoughts and quickly escapes to his phone, scheduling afternoon tennis with an American colleague who possesses nothing if not the ability to serve as a worthy adversary on the court.

The midtown cattails blow and curl in the landscaping and I wish I were one of them as I picture my-

self swaying and bowing a head to the warm summer breeze, ignorant to the doctor, the nuns and the junkies, aware only of the gentle movement.

I wonder to myself if I would belong in Paris, if I am indeed a Jennifer beneath my thrift store linen

skirt. My cheeks become hot, whether by the sun or my guilt as I try to accept that perhaps I am both. I almost begin to crumble as I ponder my own place amongst the wolves, but my phone rings and there is much to do, so I pack up my accusations and my purse, both too big for what’s inside, say au revoir to the doctor as I pass and walk over to the Container Store to see what’s on sale.

62

Flat

savannah moix

Her arch told a story with every Forced flex and every wrinkled-toe point, carrying Her from line to line. Leaps that Would make you stretch from tight bun To knotted pink laces – Figure 8 in Shape and form guided by gravity, fluidity.

Sneaker flat foot switches from left to Right as others press on around her On their own time. Rhythms inspiring growth And movement of limbs flow in, out Of her ears, mind, and emotional capacity.

With the clang and crunch of what Seemed like an orchestrated transition of auditory Focus, she soared – ejected from her seat.

As if it were choreographed to follow The climax of her artful number – a Climax created by her God, the one She always chose to dance for. Always.

Laid out upon a table gray – so Cold to the living touch, she rests.

Still, heavy, flat-footed. There is nothing about Her straight, flattened expression that resonates Or stirs. The second position stance she Now loosely hits is not the dream Of the ballet maker. It was inevitable.

A chassé is too joyful, first position Stance is too structured for a footprint

63

Left temporarily by young age, lost ambitions.

A pliÊ is too considerate, a pointed Toe means you’re careful, dainty, and cautious.

A flat foot makes the angel vulnerable, Left with red roses and bittersweet applause That she cannot take with her. No, She cannot hear the claps and encores.

Curtains have been tightly drawn; all I See is crushed red velvet. No more.

64

Universal Dreams sydney jones

One out of every four people will have at least one prophetic dream in their lifetime. Most deal with seemingly insignificant matters, such as Debbie dreaming her telephone will go out soon. Others are far more alarming. Mr. Edgars once dreamt that he would be part of a 10 car pile-up on Interstate 42. The next day, he decided to stay home. The evening news showcased a 9 car pile-up on Interstate 42. Even the seemingly insignificant dreams, like the phone malfunctioning, should not be taken lightly. If Debbie would have replaced her phone, she would have been able to answer a call from her friend, Maggie, who was driving to work. Unable to reach Debbie, Maggie had to check her email on her phone thus not paying the road any attention, eventually causing a 9 car pile-up on Interstate 42.

This isn't a story about Debbie or Maggie though; this is a story about dreams. Not goals and aspirations, but actual REM state dreams. One out of every four people. These numbers have not changed in centuries because the dream process has not changed in centuries. These numbers were expected to remain a constant for the foreseeable future. But, it's about that time for the universe to do something unexpected. **** It all started with a dream. There's no science in determining if a dream is prophetic; consequently there's no way to determine if misfortune will befall you if you choose to ignore it. Everyone must choose what to believe, and 90 percent of the time the right choice is made. Reid Thompson is the one out of four people expected to have a prophetic dream. Sadly, he is also part of the 10 percent that made the wrong choice.

Reid sits at the bar, sipping his daiquiri and playing on his phone. A sphinx is playing checkers with Barack Obama in the corner, each taking a Jello shot when a piece is jumped. “Huzzah!” is yelled when someone flies, slithers, swims, or teleports into the bar. A boy in a green jumpsuit offers to buy Reid his next drink, but he politely declines.

“Huzzah!”

65

“Come on! One drink! What do you have to lose?” The boy pushes his blonde hair from him face, snaps his fingers, and a daiquiri appears in his hand.

“How do I know you aren't trying to slip me roofies? You probably plan to drag me off and have your wicked way with me. I'd probably get some kind of disease with my luck.”

“Would you mind if I looked like this instead?” The little boy grows a couple of feet taller, above average breasts rise from the chest, and a nicely shaped posterior bulges out from the back of the newly reformed black dress.

“How'd you do that?” he doesn't bother to play off his staring.

“It's my dream. I can do what I want.”

Reid takes the daiquiri, appeased. “Oh, I thought for a moment it was my dream. I guess I really have nothing to worry about.” He salutes with his glass, takes a sip, and promptly dies.

You would think that Reid would have shown a little caution. In the, excuse the cliché, good old days, humans were a highly superstitious bunch. But, with every wrong choice made by the one in four, religion lost a little more credibility and eventually man fully embraced science and had no further need for superstitions. So, the next night, Reid went to a bar that looked remarkably similar to the one from his dream. A man dressed in an olive green sweater by the name of Devon was considering chatting up a gaggle of barely of-age-to-drink girls before he determined that he wasn't drunk enough to deal with their ear piercing laughs. Instead, Devon went to the bar to order a shot that would help him with the transition from tipsy to drunk. Feeling that special generosity that humans only acquire when drunk, Devon offered to buy Reid another daiquiri, which he accepted. The drink wasn't poisoned and the two of them had a lovely evening discussing their childhoods, their jobs, and somehow the conversation turned to Devon's drug induced dreams. Reid was fascinated, having never had a particularly memorable dream apart from his dream from last night which Occam's razor suggested he simply chalk it up to the questionable Indian food bought at a gas station and falling asleep with the Broadway Classics on. As with most ambitions, it started with envy. What if he could have the same dream? He'd look into that. **** Three years later and Reid ran the final test to confirm that his project was a success. Actually, the test was running by itself as Reid lounged on the couch, while his longtime friend, recently test subject, Devon, lay on a cot surrounded by an EEG, an MRI, and various other machines with obnoxiously long names that also require acronyms. Multi-colored electrodes were suctioned all over his head. A needle scratched the brain waves onto the prepared paper. When the needle began to slow, Reid switched the machines off and plucked the elec-

66

trodes from his friend's face.

“Hey, Devon, wake up. It's time for you to tell me how awesome I am.”

With a groan, Devon sat up and massaged his face, removing the slimy residue.

“You're the shit, Reid. It was exactly like you said it would be. Right down to the bumper stickers on the car, to the creepy ass mannequins in the windows. Why would you dream about driving through the streets of Munich, though?”

“Who cares?” Reid pulled out the paper beneath the needle and held it up next to another piece. The two were identical. Every zig, every zag, every little fluctuation was the same. “I've just recreated a dream. You've just experienced the same dream I had 3 weeks ago, every last detail of it. Devon, I've just changed the world!”

But he wasn't done yet.

Devon insisted that the two go out to celebrate and demanded that alcohol be present. They went to their local bar, the bar where they met. As usual, the atmosphere was relaxed and the majority of the patrons were quietly absorbed with their phones. Four to six people sat at each table, but they rarely conversed; they drank and performed numerous tasks on their smart-phones which are still around, much to the chagrin of Devon (who loves to hear himself talk). Occasionally someone might actually laugh out loud and slide their phone into their neighbor's eyesight creating a quick chain of chuckles. Then the silence resumed.

The irony of human invention never ceases to amaze. The telephone was created to bring people together; to allow them the ability to communicate. Its purpose has devolved, now it is simply an instrument on which to play when a person doesn't want to make eye contact with another person, when a person doesn't want to communicate.

Devon ordered 3 strawberry daiquiris, one for Reid, two for him. With everyone too engrossed with their phones, no one makes snide comments about what grown men choose to drink. Devon found Reid at a tiny table in the corner, papers already covering the surface.

“So that's it?” Devon pointed at the paper in Reid's hand. “You recorded a dream on a piece of paper? How does that even work?” He handed the drink over, and Reid blindly tongued the air, searching for the straw, not taking his eyes off of the papers.

“I tried explaining it to you a month ago, but you wouldn't listen. Why should I explain now?”

Devon snatched the dream paper from Reid.

“Because now I know you're not losing it. You actually know what you're doing. More importantly, I now have an alcoholic beverage in my hand, two actually, should your rendition begin to bore and or confuse me.”

67

The Shed in the Forest caty mcmains

68

So Reid began explaining, again. Most of the explanation sailed over Devon's head on a strawberry river, but he did get the gist of it. The electroencephalography (EEG) records the brainwave activity while someone is dreaming, creating a jagged little line on a rather plain piece of paper. Apparently, that's nothing new. The new part, according to Reid, is to carve that same EEG reading into a flattened piece of copper. Then a needle composed of multiple metals follows the groove, creating some sort of electrical current that flows back through to the electrodes stuck on a subject's face. The electrical currents cause specific neurons to fire off and apparently the dream is recreated, or something along those lines. Many drinks and bathroom breaks later, the friends went to their respective homes.

If Reid had never gone to the bar that night, he probably would have remained focused solely on the recording and recreation of dreams. But, while taking a piss, he overheard a conversation: a conversation concerning how hundreds of people are making decent money making and selling smart-phone applications. No, it's not what you think. He didn't make an app that allowed you to experience other people's dreams. Let's face it, that's absolutely ridiculous. He did, however, get an idea, and probably an STD. It was this idea that kept him busy for another 2 months, eventually taking a leave of absence from work to dedicate all of his time to this idea. Every night, every nap during the first month, Devon slept with the machine hooked to his face. Reid would recreate a dream and then experience it himself, deciphering and cataloguing every dream upon awakening. After adding his own dreams to the database he began cross referencing, comparing the dips and spikes between dreams that shared the same elements. **** Devon drives down the middle of the streets as he explores Munich, only returning to his lane when traffic approaches. Small cars and SUVs are parked alongside the roads with a notable absence of trucks. People dine at tiny tables on the sidewalks. In front of the Hotel Orly is a wall of water that separates underwater Munich from the normally dry city. Having nothing better to do, Devon drives straight through it. His little BMW doesn't slow at all. The front end begins to drift upwards, and soon he's driving at an angle towards the surface, the tires somehow managing to propel him along. When the hood of the car breaches the surface, it balances itself out, then begins to cruise atop the water, eventually reaching a speed that would put the drivers of the autobahn to shame. Devon manages to ramp a whale before he wakes up.

And he woke up with a fairly bad attitude.

“Dammit, Reid!” He started snatching the suctions off his face. “That was awesome, why did you wake me

69

up?”

Ignoring the question, Reid assisted removing the electrodes, much more delicately, lovingly wrapping the wires around a piece of plastic.

“What did you see?”

“It started off as your Munich dream, you know, with me driving around. Then, oh! It got sweet. Seriously, this is the best dream you've ever had!”

“It wasn't my dream.”

“Then whose is it?” Devon slipped from the table and picked up the innocuous piece of paper. “Cuz I think I'd rather hang out with them. No offense.”

“I made it!” Reid held out two other dream recordings. There were circles drawn around specific inclines, with arrows and lines pointing and connecting to other circles. The words 'water', 'speed', and even 'whale' were squeezed between the lines. “I took zigs and zags from our old dreams, strung them together, and made the frame for that one.”

Devon's eyes followed the scribbles on the papers in Reid's hand, and then studied the one in his hand, mentally drawing his own lines and arrows to connect everything. When he looked back to Reid, he smiled and said, “Now you've changed the world.” **** You might think no real harm could come from the building of dreams: that's what Reid and Devon believed, but people stopped natural dreaming. Why would you risk dreaming about being chased down a dark hallway, your mom dying, or working an endless cashiering shift when you could have a guarantee to dream about riding a unicorn, flying to the moon, or having sex? The problem with the guarantee is that one out of four people didn't get to dream their one prophetic dream and their lives changed for the worse. The world slowly changed for the worse.

If Reid could see the future that he created with his dream machine he might have taken heed from his initial dream. If he had, he would not have met Devon, and thus have no reason to envy Devon's dreams and the world would be spared the future that eventually occurred. If he never went to that bar and met Devon, Reid probably would have lived to see 35. But, he too, succumbed to the allure of dreaming dreams not meant for him. Sleeping pill consumption escalated. It became far more likely for someone to have a copious amount of Ambien or Temazepam on their person than a pack of cigarettes. Reid was one of the first accidental overdoses contributed to the new dream craze. Thousands have followed since then.

70

It didn't take long for the dream machine to be incorporated into the correctional facilities as well.

Glenn was a dream machine operator who reviewed the files that his partner, Dave, sent from the correctional facility. The files contained information one would expect the facility to know on a prisoner: age, medical history, family background, psychological profile, etc. Recently, however, the files have been updated to include a week's worth of dream read-outs. Dave's job was to apply the electrodes, monitor the prisoner as they dreamed, making note of any unusual behavior, and then send the results to Glenn. Glenn, with his degree in psychology, would then study the information, the analyses, and dreams. Then he would create a dream to send back to Dave to administer to the prisoner. The people who approved of this “research” believed it to be just that--research. Those higher ups who felt this invasion of the mind was justified in the name of science. Rodents and monkeys have always been a part of scientific “research” and you know how they turn out.

Where's the harm in acquiring more accurate data from criminals, rapists, and murderers?

Glenn picked up the top folder on the ever increasing stack of folders. Dave's job of collecting data was far easier, but Glenn thoroughly enjoyed his part. He thought back to all of the criminal psychology courses. He knew how to mess with people's heads. It also gave him the rare opportunity to express his creativity. He had always enjoyed writing growing up, but there was no money in writing. Now, however, he was paid handsomely for basically writing and scripting a person's worst nightmare.

“John Jacobs.” He muttered to himself as he spread the contents across his desk. “Name like that and I might go on a killing spree too.”

According to the file, John Jacobs killed six people after he lost custody of his eight year old daughter including: his ex-wife, the judge who granted his ex-wife sole custody, his ex-boss who fired him and made sure he couldn't get another job thus making him an unfit caregiver, and his lawyer that sabotaged his case and later became the step-father to his daughter.

“Poor little psycho. And they deemed him unfit to care for a child. The audacity.” Glenn spent the next three hours building the perfect nightmare for Mr. Jacobs.

John Jacobs stands outside the house that was once his home. The moon is but a small sliver in the sky, providing little light in the expanse of darkness. There are no streetlights and no other houses. The only light comes from the bedroom that he had painted a soft lilac years ago. His ex-wife is putting clothes into the wicker dresser while his daughter is tucked into her bed. His lawyer sits on the edge of the bed, an open storybook in hand, reading some fantastic tale to the little girl who was not his daughter. Her eyes are wide open, a smile connecting her rosy cheeks. The ex-wife moves to stand behind the lawyer and gently squeezes

71

his shoulders as she kisses his neck.

“It's time for bed” The little girl opens her mouth in protest, but the lawyer cuts in, “It's o.k., sweetie, we'll finish the story tomorrow night, I promise. You need your sleep though if we're going to the park tomorrow.” He leans forward and kisses her forehead. “`Night, honey.”

“Night” she mumbles, pulling the blankets higher. The lawyer and the ex-wife hold hands as they walk to the door; and when he reaches to turn out the light he softly says, “I love you.”

The little girl closes her eyes and whispers, “I love you too, daddy.”

The lights go out. No one notices John.

Originally, Glenn considered stopping there, but then he remembered the bet with Dave that was on the table: a bet saying that Glenn couldn't make a prisoner scream from a created dream. Glenn vowed Mr. Jacobs would be that prisoner, so he continued…

The glass separating John from his former life disappears and he enters the black room. He follows the same path as the couple into the hallway to the master bedroom. The blackness isn't confined to the underlying lilac room, it fills the entirety of the house, but John can navigate just fine without a light. He knows to walk on the left side to avoid the useless table that his ex-wife had insisted they put against the wall. He opens the door that led to his bedroom, once upon a time.

He knows his ex-wife sleeps on the right side of the bed. He doesn't know how his hunting knife comes to be in his hand, but he doesn't question it. He knows it was a risky move, trying to slit two someones' throats in complete blackness. If he misses, they will have time to alert the other.

John isn't worried. He slashes the knife down and he can feel the jerk of the body, can feel the knife sink into the delicate feminine neck, can feel the warm liquid coat his knife and hand--it's thicker than what he imagined. He can't see a thing, but no sound is heard.

He wipes the blade against the comforter, ridding it of its blood because that's what he's seen done in movies.

He moves to the other side of the bed and raises the knife, preparing to put more power behind this swing as it is aimed for a man's neck.

He swings down, but he doesn't feel the skin give, doesn't feel new warmth spread across his fingers, doesn't feel a body jerk. It feels like cutting a…pillow? Thunder cracks and the lights come on. He's in the lilac room. He's beside the bed. The wall is silly stringed with blood. He looks at the bed. His daughter's eyes are wide open, but no smile connects her cheeks. Her mouth is open in shock. The second swing, he had

72

slashed a pillow. The first swing, he had slashed his daughter's neck.

“He screamed. John Jacobs bawled like a baby.” Glenn read the text from Dave, smirking as he read, “Double or nothing?”

As you can imagine the facilities got progressively worse, each operator trying to build more traumatic nightmares than everyone else. The story of mankind--who can best who? Reid Thompson never imagined that his creation would or could be used for such brutal psychological torture. Then again, human beings never really do think of the lasting implications of their actions, do they?

As you've seen, one person has the ability to inadvertently change the world for the worse. If someone bothered to try dreaming naturally again, they might find that the universe is desperate, willing to select damn near anybody to be the next one of the four, to be the person who will be shown the way. All it takes it one person to change it. The universe wants to fix itself, but no one will hear.

73

Grey Dapple erica lewis

74

Make City caty mcmains

75

Surfaces will king

His dessicated skin kisses the seat’s porcelain lips. His form is crumpled. His head slumps down be-

low his knees and his horny feet rest flat on the linoleum. As a child he maintained a similar position while dangling his legs over the edge of a pier on Lake Ouachita. His breathing then was labored and the arch of his back heaved. He watched silver flashes of little fish as they nibbled on algae which accumulated in a snotty film around the pier’s wooden supports. The mound of his back now does not heave. The protuberances of his vertebrae bisect his torso with a dashed line and raise a sort of necropolis upon him.

Just outside the door on the concrete entranceway there is an injured cricket. One of the bowed legs of the insect is twitching rhythmically as though it wished to continue singing. Tiny black carpenter ants crawl upon him and invade his throes. An hour earlier a young neighbor of the man on the toilet was passing and smoking a cigarette and noticed the cricket. He knelt over it and watched the ants as they engaged in their slow work.

He considered them. They were like chocolate sprinkles upon ice-cream. A crow swooped low over the parking lot a couple of dozen feet away; it landed expertly upon a fence-plank; the maneuver was swiftly and perfectly executed; the maneuver was beautiful; it was as though such flight and freedom--such a perfect skimming arc on untarnished, glossy black wings--was built into the fabric of the atmosphere. The crow shat immediately afterward; it expelled a small glob of white from its cloaca and took to the air again.

All of these things occur in and around an apartment building that belongs to a larger, fenced complex with ten buildings which harbor twelve apartments each. This housing--for many in the city--is attractively affordable. There are several old residents. The man on the toilet possessed just the perfect ratios of light dementia, life savings, and relationships to come to the point he finds himself. Next door to the complex is an unattractively beige strip mall development full of failing, ill-conceived businesses and stripped storefronts. There are four churches in this development. Some in the small, quaint city refer to the apartment complex as among the city’s “ghettos” though of course such a designation is objectively preposterous in light of certain neighborhoods in major metropolitan areas and the shantytowns in many countries. The police do regularly drive through the complex. In the building which the cricket is dying in front of there are currently five varieties of

76

illegal drug (counting illegally obtained prescription drugs intended for abuse). The most serious of these drugs is a long-forgotten, well-hidden baggie of crystal meth. The total would be six if the young neighbor hadn’t smoked his dose of DMT the night before. He felt true for fifteen minutes.

We are in Arkansas.

If the man on the toilet were still able, he would reminisce. He would remember Lake Ouachita. In his childhood, he and his father used to travel the new lake in a small fishing boat. When the sun would begin its retreat down below the distant, green-topped mountains the surface of the lake would become vibrant with brief blinks of gold. It was an image for him more than the Great Wall or the Pyramids or even the Statue of Liberty. For his young neighbor that water would later shine precisely the same way. 1958 and 1997 are the years that they both wish had been forever, but the lake still shimmers with every sunset.

Right now, however, the man is on the toilet. It will be days still before the smell is noticeable enough to be reported by his young neighbor who is at this moment beating away lingering images of the cricket. The old man’s last movement taints the plane of the water below him and among it there are many simpleton prokaryotes that blissfully swim. Yet thousands more similar microbes already have begun to consume him from the inside. He is an environment. He is a world.

77

Nostalgia carissa gan

78

To the Late William, with Love kaileigh wilcox

I stand above the kitchen sink washing stubborn clumps of fresh soil captured under red-stained fingernails while under my feet, wood floors ache with age; the once luminous buff worn down to a dull glow in the steadfast morning sun.

Across the tomato-vine patterned wallpaper, long past moments hang from hooks like ushers, our faces encased in iron and glass―grinning as if they just heard the punch line to a joke told by a homely old pastor.

(Remember how your ring didn’t fit?

Even then, crooked knuckles hindered vows.)

The soft scent of powdered sugar and maple syrup drifts through open doorways.

Melted butter spills onto ceramic red plates.

The sharp knife in my hand feels warm and comfortable―slicing through muscle and fat with ease.

Black cast-iron pans sizzle and pop.

Coffee drips slowly into a green pot, spiraling downwards―crashing into a dark wet sea; the imported

79

South American blend heavy and moist in the air.

(Black. Did she know you took your coffee black?)

I crack open the window above the sink, inhaling deeply, oxygen rushing in to fill my lungs. A slow, red smile stretches the width of my face.

Salty winds flutter the lace curtains and a whiff of dew and dead possum floats into the kitchen. A lone gull, fat and dirty, perches and picks at the freshly upheaveled mound of soil underneath a young orange tree.

(You did love the smell of air perfumed by a new carcass and budding spring flowers.)

80

Ruminations morgan a kolafa

Self-fulfilling prophecy is too common An occurrence. We design fear With catious preditations of our Failings. Exacerbating the problems, Exposing the rot, although oblivious.

“The Natural State” of being, please.

Medicated, antiquated ideology holds us Prisoner to fabrication. 97 and rock hard, yeah?

Yet euphoria of nature’s bounty is forbidden? Everything Has a pill. But they test it on us, exposing impulse.

Let’s make a pill to fix it, better yet, invent the problem for the pill. “Do you wake up in the morning?”

Holy shit, I have that. Put it on paper, save it for later You hypocritical hypochondriac. Kill the lights, Take the white pill, you’ll feel alright.

We fall to turmoil and squander. At what?

The incessant noise of our religion. The invention Of lying to desperately justify meaning With nonexistent purpose. That. Is. All. Karma is the true belief.

Simplicity of Nature. Good Reciprocates a weary or lost entitlement To life. One simple rule, but I can bet you, My bottom dollar,

81

Jesus must be pissed!

Catholic sabatours, Protestant heretics, Muslims, Mormons, Jews and Hindu’s.

Who is to say they are right or wrong?

To profess divine knowledge only shows absolute ignorance of your own cause.

You have your reward. Cake or death?

And by the way, We ate the cake.

Judging by the judgers, Avoiding, what? Our real selves.

Homeless, instructed to save. The right Of all men to provide. Judged, Judge.

They ask for the scrap we waste, Receiving nothing except dirtier thoughts “just buy weed or alcohol” But standing there in my thoughts I realize (Face-palm sarcasm) “That’s what I’m going to do with it.” Who Am I to decide and codify this poor bastard.

Who are we to judge Such a person? This being of life And loss, maybe not all this But lesser does it make him? Actuality No. Reality is open to perception, unfortunately.

“Get a job ya bum.”

Like the no shoed, lice riden . . .

At the corner really can. Resume, Nonexistent, Hygiene, a thing of the past, Secondary education: The fucking streets.

82

Safe bet to guess his shit Isn’t the most applicable, especially When “contagious fear” is a character Quality listed in the interview.

Speaking of qualities, more bad than good.

We have epidemics of disease, Preventable, Controllable, willed into existence By lack of will and appropriate campaign Contributions.

Number one cause of preventable death, Obesity.

Beats cancer, drugs and all the other thing we fear, But no “No 14 Liter cokes in school” policies.

Countries eat less than an American family.

Double sized biggie fries and a 55 Gallon barrel of Pop, FOR ONLY A QUARTER MORE !^_^!

Don’t know why? What the fuck, LOOK IT. Five and Fat. Energy? Too much, not enough?

Fucking kid, run, jump, fly down hills with reckless Abandon- be a kid.

Control the input, To avoid the outcome. We’re set For Failure by the lowest bidder And the biggest dollar. Funded by Those that shackle and poison, processing Producing and providing for the long Procession of ignorant sleep.

How best explained? Do we say what we want To hear? It supports everything we “need”

83

To preserve on the long and winding road.

Or Truth to set us free? First remove the Blindfold. Start the self loathing and disGraceful disgust. Our shame worn on our Waist, hips and thighs.

Ventilated, automated Reminescing “Pork-chops and sauce farther than the eye Can see.” Terrible to lose, more so to have had at all.

Liberal sentiments beat the curve.

Ahead of the game and keeping the lead.

My sky is always blue, stars never dull.

My grass is green on both sides Of the fence I straddle. Solid mind, Determination harder than A left turn down-town.

No Language is Neutral, and we Are here to wake you “THE FUCK UP!” Tomorrows For-cast: Zombie Apocalypse Cardio Rule 1 bitches. Foot fly or die.

Head n Dead only works to an extent.

Where did morality and self-esteem enter?

Everyone is valuable. We have purpose. No. Pretty sure the herion addict O.D.ing on the Sidewalk is expending resources.

Most likely we are no different.

Probability points to your being Completely irrelavent and relegated to oblivion.

A waste of space, food, air and all the

84

Other amenities, present company excluded.

Of course, of course.

Don’t despair just get out of there.

Clear the way for the active engagers.

Happiness without grand purpose is as Good as gospel. Don’t plant the seed, Destined for the pain of mediocrity.

Harsh? Pragmatic? Perception colors the action.

Elevate to dominate the disease Of ignorance. Don’t ignore, fix/ate And good will come.

Keep the liberty, Lose the boundary.

We are either all equal Or we’re not. 99% hunger on one side Of the wall, 1% fear on the other. Volatile.

Change is coming, the dividers are falling.

This is happening, the sooner you come To peace with this, the better.

85

Untitled caty mcmains

86

Blinking

robert w. downing

You blinked. You knew you shouldn’t have, but you did anyway. It gave away your next move. Maria

already had taken your knights and left you without religion. Now she wanted your royalty too. You overcompensated by blinking more. It didn’t work.

“Sorry, Josh. I know you too well,” she said with a bishop and a smile.

It had always been that way between you two. With every sport, every game. Badminton, basketball, volleyball, cricket, squash, Super Mario, poker (Don’t mention that, or she might remember you still owe her thirty bucks from that game), pool, polo--hell, you were sure by now that she could probably do the Hammer Throw better than you.

At first, you thought, you were just going easy on her. When you played basketball, she made a fuss about not knowing how to throw a shot well. Halfway into a game to twenty points, you realize that she was up by eight on her own without your help. It still took another eight consecutive losses to Maria to realize you were being hustled (after those three straight games of eight-ball). It took another five losses to realize that she was doing it to make you the game, rather than play games with you.

It was the tennis match when you realized it. The score was 30-15, and it was her serve, as usual. You bounded right and made the best slice of your life--right into the perfect zone for her to slam it back. But she didn’t. She let the light get in her eye, and it fell with two thuds beside her. “Good shot,” she laughed, and then bent over to retrieve the ball. She could have picked up the ball by bouncing it with her racket, which she usually did. But this time she took a bow to grab the tennis ball personally, arching her back toward you in a strange, crane-like way, lifting her leg a little to keep balance and letting her white skirt flutter in the wind for only a second. And then, with a soldier’s snap-to, she was back planted on her feet with a grin and a serve. You saw in her eyes that she knew that you knew that she knew she was bending over that way just to play another game. It worked, your game was off for the rest of the day, and she won, uncontested, for the next three sets.

You couldn’t get the image she subversively put in your head, that crane-like swoop of her back, the slight lilt in

87

the way her leg bounced, softly bent, running the length of her shimmering thigh all the way up to her-- Your queen was dead (long live the queen) and swept from the board. The triumphant bishop stood with the cavalry and most of its foot soldiers behind it. All you had left was both rooks and three pawns. Another mind game. Something she’d been doing had knocked you off your game again. All you wanted to do is win one game against her. One lousy game where she wasn’t trying to give you pity points like you tried to do for her in basketball (look how that turned out). You pulled your king back, a defensive move for a defensive player. Her clergy pushed forward again, taking your rook.

Of course she knew how defensively you played, the same strategy every time. That’s how you lost those pool games, she told you. Guarding yourself too much instead of trying to get the goal, she told you. It was just like when she broke up with Paul, the school’s lead quarterback, and the stories about their abusive relationship came out--what they did and what he made her do. You were her friend. And she needed a friend. But that wasn’t all that it could have been. It could have turned into “the next step,” if you had played the right cards, if you had said the right things, if you had made the right moves. You knew and she knew you both knew it. But she needed a friend. So you stayed the friend. You had guarded what you had instead of trying to reach that goal and risk losing it all. You played defensively.

Your rook fell on her bishop like the image on a Tower tarot card. Her knight took care of the rook. You stepped back again, internalizing each small loss in attempt to keep from losing what was left. She reclined back against the lawn chair, with the shallow slope of her neck to the sharp point of her shoulder, with her unblinking, splintery-wood amber eyes, tussled blonde hair, and that coy, yet almost disappointed smile she always had. She swept her other rook into its resting place.

“Check-mate.”

88

Rover and the Big Red Plants kaileigh wilcox

The fat brown dog laps lazily from the trickling green water hose; his ears twitching as buzzing flies dance around the short hairs standing straight like sharp antennas― shaded by the red blossoms of an Arapaho Crape Myrtle my mother planted four years ago; its limbs bowing like folded fingers in prayer from an ice storm that slicked roads and took her into the ground.

I kneel beside the dog, my hands wet with a muddy film and press the soil firm around the base of a Hibiscus Lord Baltimore―the petals a red, open face―Argus-eyed and vigilant. My bare shoulders sprout freckles; the sun colors my cheeks light pink, and I think how my mother would have stood in her blue dress at the cracked screen door―a bottle of aloe vera waiting in her hands to ease summer’s kiss.

89

Sound of a Peasants Army seth taylor kenney Douchebag Asshole Dickhead Cunt Bastard Dumbass Faggot Pussy All the Words They fire catapult tongues with hollow voices All the Phrases Furthering righteous ignorance of self-entitlement to judge All the Shit Wash, rinse, and repeat the filth All the Opinions Regurgitated slop lacking in thought All the Irony Maggot food insults maggot food to feel better about maggot food All the Hate Empty and pointless as words on this page

90

It doesn’t change a thing.

Playing with the Pieces audrey manning

I married my wife in a fit of good judgment.

One year of solid, stable dating. I thought I should be legally linked to a woman like that. A woman who wore skirts never too short, never too long. Ate enough to be pleasantly plump in the right spots but not, by any means, “chubby,” unless you count her round, rosy cheeks. A reader, a casual writer. A jovial, petite, curlyhaired darling. We’d keep on with our games for a while, then leave them at the bottom floor as we rose to the very top. What a view.

This would be the ideal life. The ideal woman.

And me, with the job at the firm right after graduation. Promotions. Bonuses. Big man. I could buy her so many luxurious knickknacks and accessories and dresses and jewels. She was the jewel herself. But let her have what she wanted.

This was how it would be. The grand high life. Our marriage would be an example. It would be studied. Envied. Put on a pedestal.

---- I married my husband when I knew him, and when he knew me. He proposed to me with an average ring. A decent diamond for my small hand to display all my days. The gold band glistened with a murmur, not a stunning exciting adrenalatious voice. I accepted it.

In our university years, we played games. Board games. Puzzles. Look and find. We were childlike. Me, they called childish. There is a difference, you know. We agreed that “growing up” did not mean we ever had to let go of the small fun things from our youth. We agreed that doing what you enjoy made life worth living, no matter what the social boundaries.

We also played games with people. We made fun of the ones who aspired to be “big time” with glitz and glam and/or piles of cash. Make it to Hollywood or Wall Street or the best seller list.

91

We would never be like them. We live for playtime. Free falling through life. We have skills, of course. But we don’t expect thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions.

Being rich. What a sin. What a waste. Magpies grabbing all they can. Keeping their treasures. Their “earned” piles of dragon’s gold.

----- The stores started making puzzles out of famous paintings. Some of our favorites. The greats, you know, Van Gogh, John Singer Sargent, Monet, Da Vinci, Matisse, and so on.

My wife had her eyes locked on Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. I was entranced myself. The umbrellas. The faces. The hats. The uncertainty.

This painting would be a grand puzzle for this married couple to piece together.

---- When we got that puzzle, I didn’t care one bit about assembling the damn thing. I knew, as soon as I looked at that painting, seeing it again, years after art appreciation courses in University.

Yes. We would happily put the puzzle together. But I would take two pieces. They would be missing. There would be a new game. Where are the heads of the standing woman with the flower on her hat and the reclining man on the grass?

When we finished the puzzle and there were two pieces missing, my dear husband was bewildered.

“Of all the sets at the store, we ended up with the defective one that the factory machines left two pieces out of. Two important pieces, at that!”

“The factory has nothing to do with this, my love. I’m the one who took those pieces...”

I was so flirty when I said it, my skirt hiked up to my thigh, garter showing. He would surely drag the Missus to the bedroom that night. I thought. He didn’t even glance.

“Why did you go and do that for? Come on, give ‘em back, let’s have this beauty finished!”

I lowered my skirt. Crossed my arms.

“No. Where’s the fun in that? Now, let’s keep this out. Our work, and Seurat’s. We will tango around these puzzle piece faces every now and then for a while.”

I stood up, slipped the piece with the reclining man’s face in my husband’s jacket pocket, and went to bed.

“Sweetheart, this is far too silly. And since when do you go to bed this early?”

“Nothing exciting to keep me awake, my heart!”

I kept my piece close to me at all times. We had an unspoken arrangement from that night on. But when we

92

really started not speaking was when I got a job of my own.

---- My wife had started changing in small ways.

She mucked up that puzzle. Then she went and got a job at the five star hotel downtown.

She was the hostess. She sat behind the counter, signed guests in, handed them their keys, flashed her mischievous teeth, and applied lipstick every few hours, as needed, for show. She was the face of the hotel. She had to look her best. That’s the blur I remember of what she babbled about on her first few days.

That hotel couldn’t have hired a better face, in my opinion. She has a symmetrical, aesthetically pleasing face, warm and inviting, just perfect for welcoming hotel guests.

I just don’t like her working hours. 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. That’s no time for a woman to be out on her own, at least the nighttime hours. Sure, she takes a cab, I watch, and there’s doormen, 24-hour people, people surrounding her.

I can’t be blamed for still worrying. That’s my prize and joy.

I asked my secretary if she ever had any trouble when she used to have an overnight job before I handpicked her as my personal assistant. She told me nothing more than catcalls and that she tripped and fell in a puddle wearing high heels.

My secretary wears those spiky, calf enhancing stilettos that all the young women wear these days. My wife doesn’t own any. They are…rather inviting.

---- My unemployed habit of strolling the city streets by day landed me my sitting position in this beautiful hotel by night. I just saw a “help wanted” sign. I thought, I could use some help. Help me keep entertained day after day, night after night, won’t you please?

I walked into that hotel a housewife. I walked out an overnight hostess. Paychecks in my name. Working class. With class. That’s me. The little lady. She still has her puzzle piece.

As the weeks went by, my husband and I saw less of each other. Only traces, clues that we’d been there. We shared the bed, but not at the same time. Stacked dishes. Piled mail.

After washing a set of said stacked dishes, I dried my hands, and looked at our pristine, pure, mint, downright plain refrigerator. It was begging for something. It was naked.

I taped a large sheet of paper to it. Wrote a short note to my husband and circled it with a heart. Later on I would leave kisses next to my notes with my flaming red lipstick. Things to keep the marriage lively, dancing,

93

happy.

---- Those notes started out quite charming. I looked forward to them. It’s sad that they spiraled into another ridiculous game. My wife refused to let go of them. A thirty-two year old woman, for God’s sake!

I wouldn’t put it past her to ask my boss over for a night of fondue and Monopoly. I really wouldn’t. That’s why I’m not telling her about the Thanksgiving party at the office. I’ll tell them my wife is sick. I don’t need to be embarrassed, sweating, have my work performance on the line when I’m in competition with three other lawyers for a major promotion at the beginning of the year. If only I could bribe her into acting the part of a regular sort of wife. Just be a display piece.

My secretary will be at the party. She will be wearing those pantyhose and the stilettos. If I sweat, I doubt it will be about any stress for the promotion. Her company has become much more enjoyable than my wife’s lately, sad to say. And my wife still carries that puzzle piece with the face that reminds me of my young little assistant. It angers me.

Things meant nothing to my wife. She enjoyed them, but could let go of them as easily as she could get attached. Hence the humor behind the note she left for me recently: “Naughty boy! Leaving the window open when it’s so cold out, I nearly froze my naughty bits off! As the saying goes, ‘time flies,’ so I have thrown all the wall clocks out of that window you left open. They were quite ugly for my taste, anyway. I will take your credit card and buy us new ones. And, for your absent-minded mistake that left me shivering in frigid misery, you owe me one luxurious fur coat of the softest, most expensive variety!”

I opened the window and looked down all fifteen stories to see what did indeed look like the debris of our clocks. I shut the window, and looked around our apartment. No clocks anywhere. No way to tell the time, except for my watch.

She was getting out of hand.

---- The handsome young doorman flirts with me so much anymore that it’s absolutely scandalous. I asked him if he liked to play cards, or dominos, or any kind of play. He said he liked to roleplay. That kind of play I had never experienced. If I ever did, I’d be hard pressed to get that bull in the mud husband of mine to do anything.

He hasn’t touched me in two months, by God. He never left a reply to my hilarious note about his leaving the window open. Ignoring that note was a slap

94

in the face, a punch in the stomach, a mental wound that pulsed. I compulsively turned and rubbed the puzzle piece in my pocket for days and weeks after.

---- I came home a week before Christmas. I went to the kitchen to make some hot tea. I stopped when I noticed the door of the refrigerator. The puzzle piece of the woman’s head was taped on the sheet of paper, and my wife had written, “YOU WIN.” What had I won?

I shrugged, and went on making my tea.

---- The holiday season lets everyone celebrate. Flutes of champagne for the whole staff tonight. The doorman was inside from the cold, making the rounds, handing everyone a glass.

He is quite the looker this evening. He sort of reminded me of the puzzle piece I gave to my husband. The doorman has a reclining personality. The reclining man. He makes me feel so relaxed.

I hadn’t had a drink in over a year. My, the warmth, the giddiness...the fun!

“Oh, Mr. Doorman, be a dear and come give the hostess a…refill…”

95

Saint Louis

mable priss hernandez

96

La Petite Mort timothy snediker

1.

She didn’t take my life she gave me death in the woods

the black cat was slinking in the periphery

she killed me for the first time

I slipped into her I slipped off the planet

an old Indian man with no beard met up with me chewing on a Milky Way

I said you’ll rot your teeth

he roared at that told me to keep my eye out

I said I’m wounded I’m leaking starstuff white as light spreading out

he said ask the Panther what to do

I blanked out

97

I wished for whiskey or a cigarette or something to wake me up

on the river I watched a snake doctor turning in circles he buzzed me low down he sped off to shallow water I sank like clouded lungs

she was calling my name I came up for air

she spoke soft like a doe who darts into brambles after her kid

I was hard as stone I felt the aftershock I went liquid and easy

2.

the provocateurs showed up they were bleeding from their hands and feet they brought glass bottles and some nails teeth like thorns slashing up their tongues they brought mason jars full of nebulae they had sucked the cosmos dry

“you ever wrestled with the angel of the Lord?” they asked “you ever been sucker-punched by Grace?”

98

we stood up naked as gods she didn’t cover herself sweet Jesus there was hair between her legs there was moonlight dripping down her thighs

I was outside of myself

I joked to her I said I was a spelunker I woke up in a cave I licked the salt off the walls I lit a candle and drew galloping scenes

she rolled the stone away

3.

a man took a drink he took a long drink and watched me I saw his eyes cheating at her

the black cat licked it paws

the man licked his lips he was favoring his right leg I could see the veins in his thigh erupting like he had been touched there

he knelt and rolled the glass to me I unscrewed the lid and drank a supernova it felt like a firecracker all the way down trying to bang its way out of my body

she took a drink

99

it ran down her neck stuck in the well of her shoulder she was covered in the universe she freckled over her skin like a star chart

the black cat was conversing with the conifers I felt deciduous drooping in the heat of the dream

she grabbed me there were inky stars on her feet she pulled me she pushed me she said “some things I cannot believe”

the constellations in her skin a black hole at the fulcrum

I knew the event horizon was muggy as summertime I had been there and back again

4.

a man said, “you are naked but you are not ashamed”

I said, “I am awake” and the moon went scarlet

the black cat yowled the man was bleeding

100

she said “do you love me?”

I proved it to her in front of the cloud of witnesses

I laid her down I crawled inside

5.

the fruit dropped into the water the devil was kamikaze with his needle I blinked I brushed past myself while I was diving

I went deep and came up for air I went down

I begged the Panther to steal air I suffocated I went away

the old Indian offered me his pipe so I swallowed it whole

I choked to death on the galaxy

6.

the bleeding men circled us they tightened their collars

101

waiting for the ripples

I didn’t know it but I was skipping rocks I was the arm and the speed and the stone cantankerous nineteen years old at the river dipping my feet in the wet

there was impact and unraveling she was all folded up she whispered

the moon was upside down the black cat spun the owl’s head around

my bones were moaning her heart was shedding pounds oh God her hips were the dirt I was buried in I spit words like knives I stabbed her her blood pumped the whole sex electric

somewhere in Palestine a veil shredded itself in a fury of sunlight

7.

I woke up surrounded by broken glass

I saw the moon swimming in her navel I saw her chin dripping

102

the men were each fastened to trees nailed hands and feet

Jesus Christ her legs were my legs I suckled her like a mother I ate her like a peach

the black cat crept from trunk to trunk chewing off the toes of the dying men

everything was illuminated and deadly

103

Ye Olde UFO tyler gunther

104

A Conversation to End mckenzie hobbs “Get up,” says the cat.

And so I do.

“You have a lot to do today. A story to write, another to edit. You need to call your son, ask him how the wife and kids are. Tell him you’re proud of him. Also, and this is of the utmost urgency, you need to clean my litter box, and I would really appreciate some new food in my bowl.”

“Okay,” I mumble, as my feet land rather heavily on the floor. It seems it has been a while since I last used my legs... but surely, it hasn’t been longer than a moment. I had just closed my eyes, and woke to the cat talking at me.

“Please,” says the cat, “can we put a move on this? Some of us have a schedule.”

I want to argue, you’re a cat, you sit and lick yourself in awkward positions all day, but my tongue seems to catch between the edges of my teeth as a bushy, yet preened, tail brushes around the edge of the door and disappears to the other side.

I follow.

My living room walls are breathing. In and out they do a somber dance, speaking of life, whispering secrets of alternate lives.

“What are you staring at?” asks the cat.

After quite a bit of mumbled trying (and quite a bit of my cat staring at me with the type of sanctimonious disgust that can only be found in cats), my swollen tongue finally seems to contact my brain, “The walls are moving.”

“Yeah, that happens,” says the cat, “Now, you see my litter box? There, in the corner where it always is, yes, it’s normal for the sand to move like that, you need to change it.” The cat leads me to the pantry where her clean sand is kept, like I wouldn’t know where it was, and starts to rub against my leg. Pretentious little thing.

“Just dump the old stuff out, and put the new stuff in, thanks.”

And so I do.

105

“Now the food,” the cat says, “open up a can of the kind that tastes like tuna and whitefish. It’s my favorite.”

I fumble with the can opener for a second as the cat wraps longingly around my feet, almost tripping me.

The word, “Finally,” purrs out of the cat’s mouth as I set the food on the floor.

I stare at the moving mouth, the serrated teeth moving easily through mashed meat.

The cat stops and stares at me for a while, saying nothing, but with an accusing glare that says I should be on my own way now; I’ve served my purpose.

And so I go.

I trip over different parts of my tan carpet, never quite knowing which fragment of dust will sneak and trip me next. I reach my phone; I dial his number, and it rings.

“Hi,” he answers, and I begin to speak, begin to tell him that I’m sorry, that I’m proud of him of his life, that he might be the only thing I can say this of, but my tongue gets caught between the edges of my teeth again, “I’m sorry you missed me, but please leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you.”

An echoing beep resonates through my brain.

“Love,” and, “sorry,” are the only words I manage to say before my cheek leans a little too heavily on the red button, and then there is nothing.

The cat decides to land heavily on my chest. She stares into my eyes, her yellows mixing with my blues,

her marquise with my round. My hand knocks an empty prescription bottle.

“But who will take care of me now?” the cat asks.

And with absolutely no trouble from my tongue or teeth this time, “Who indeed?” I reply.

106

Little Life erica lewis

107

Living Room Walls mica hamilton

Sarah dances I spin Amanda smiles bruises are kisses living eight people to a couch always hungry fill our bellies with fire and burnt toast nothing sticks Sarah paints Amanda cooks I look out the window Vodka warm voices crush a chorus, shout out we are the champions hiccup Free love baby and all that hippie shit Bob Dylan and a pink crucifix watch us smoke dance, kisskiss together It’s easy to find love laying like lizards in sunwet rooms draped on couch counter floor Waiting—

108

Summer rain spills purple against the screen dumpster chair creaks, pours me and Sarah into a pile of legs and curly hair Amanda laughs.

Taylor’s hand and a bottle of whiskey bandana wrapped perfect We fall fast—

Sarah down the stairs, head over heels

Me quietly screaming on his motorcycle

Amanda with hands in his hair

109

Bad Plumbing douglas knight

marulas plumping on branch tips turning in limb-like orbit over Africa shimmering sugars of the firmament crystallize in their deep fruit ripe for life colonies of bacteria bloom from cradles on the crust migrate across membrane oceans fleeing mother countries mining to the core feeding and fermenting flatulence and consequent co2 fluctuation alcoholic urinations ruin the sphere sanitized sipping my third coffee and liqueur amarula I stumble outside to piss happily at the roots of a tree

110

Pride (Scene 2, Draft 5) sarah f. wilson

( A light comes up on a street bench where

MEG and DARLA , both in their early twenties,

are sitting, each with a suitcase by their side.

They are both dressed in comfortable winter clothing).

DARLA Sorry again, you know, about having to take the bus.

MEG (Wrapping her arm around DARLA and hugging her closely.)

Baby, don’t worry about it.

(She leans in and kisses her on the cheek.)

I love you. Plus this way we have time to calm each other down over and over again before I meet your parents.

DARLA I’m sure they’ll … well, they’ll like you, they have to.

MEG They don’t have to do anything.

DARLA I know. But they love me and Dad’s always saying they just want to see me happy. You make me happy.

Plus when they meet you and see how beautiful and wonderful you are, they’ll like you. I don’t think anyone could ever not like you, honestly.

111

MEG Awww, Really?

DARLA Really.

MEG Good, but you know, Mitchell’s parents said that too.

DARLA Well thanks for that vote of confidence.

MEG You’re welcome.

DARLA (Making a face at MEG.) Well they obviously didn’t mean what they said.

MEG Hence why he is still crashing on our couch. PS you have to tell him to stop bringing home his nightly gays,. Please, for once I want to just hear you snoring and not multiple people screaming, moaning, graning in our living room. Speaking of which, he’s buying us a new couch.

DARLA Hello, poor college students, you know he can’t do that.

MEG Well he should think about that before he coats the seat cushions in stranger sperm. Hell, forget the stranger part … just no more sperm. Pleeease.

112

DARLA We’ll have him clean it.

MEG Like that will do a lot. That couch is nasty! It’s soaked in man juice. And I am not a fan of man juice.

DARLA Im glad you don’t like man juice.

MEG So what are you going to tell your parents?

DARLA About what?

MEG About me.

DARLA Like I know. Probably just that I love you and you make me really happy.

MEG Awwww, I love you too.

DARLA They’re going to love you, and if not they’ll come around... eventually.

MEG Oh yes, the parents who sent you to gay camp, and “Christian counseling” to fix your “perversion” are totally going to come around.

113

DARLA You never know.

MEG I know, I’m sorry … it’s just I really want them to like me, you know?

DARLA I know baby, but no matter what happens I’ll still love you.

MEG You sure about that?

DARLA Without a doubt.

MEG Do you think I look okay? I mean I don’t want to make a bad first impression or anything.

DARLA Baby, you always look beautiful to me.

MEG Just promise me you won’t hate me after this.

DARLA Promise.

(The girls wrap their pinkies around one

another’s and then kiss. The sound of a bus

driving up is heard and the girls exit with their bags while holding hands).

114

Bittersweet Journey elizabeth a. sneed

115

Apartment #1505 mica hamilton

Five rooms on a second story breezeway next door to a whiskey drinking mother fucker across from a

millionaire’s nineteen year old son and a crazy beautiful cat girl, where windows never close the door never locks sleep never happens.

Two beds, a couch, a dumpster chair.

No television, no air-conditioning, no internet

Sometimes no lights

Smoking a pack a day we drink thirstily from plastic half-gallons of vodka, eat flowers, and never worry

about waking up or not waking up because the plan is to live as much life as possible and fuck the consequences.

Smelling like opium and chlorinated sunshine we start to make plans—

Move out, get a house, four bedrooms suntrees in the backyard a puppy named Mota. Grow mush-

rooms, finish school, live like sisters.

Buy land, start families, raise our children like a village. Build a commune, keep chickens, a fully

stocked garden with carrots and tomatoes and Christmas-tree shaped bud plants. Teach our children that yellow paint and blue paint make green paint, that trees can be pink, that balancing checkbooks balances the self, that lava comes from inside the earth, that life is love, how to find the derivative of x. Love each other the way we’d never been loved.

Laugh so hard it hurts. Keep laughing.

But two beds, a couch, and a dumpster chair aren’t enough to keep four girls together.

Almost twenty, we all know everything. We fight, we scream. Break make-up, hair dryers, glass bottles,

and plates. Pull hair, hold hands, soul-hate each other. Sleep with legs a tangle, leave each other—

Looking out closed windows.

116

Cars and Feet sarah jane rawlinson

“Do you like me?” The words often come out.

They are what's in my script.

I associate people with their cars.

I've slept in hers and had an existential crisis in his. But I don't prefer cars to feet.

They carry a person, independent of licensure; that is the beauty of feet.

But only having those, and no other mode of transportation is like the Edvard Munch painting. “Existential angst” the critic says, is being let out.

“I want a way out” is what's in his script, and in yours and mine. But our way out is through our feet, not our cars.

117

Some Things About Clouds Which I'm Not Sure I Sincerely Feel will king

One particular day the sun and sky were shockingly clear--as vivid and solid cyan as if a child’s hand had taken the task of coloring the universe. I was driving home, where another night would soon creep and erase that toddler’s heaven, and the golden filaments stretched across sunset give way to soft, silver ribbons that snake up among the dark. My car sputtered along in an automobile parade; compared to mine most were shinier, better maintained, more stylish, cleaner, not quite so dented and scratched, and etc. and etc. There was a confluence of clouds gathered above the horizon--a great and textured tower that could almost be painted on, as though I were only somewhere in the background of Raphael’s reality. The Madonna must lurk somewhere, surely. From where I observed the clouds were a distant, cruel, whipped-cream fiction, but then I remembered that from the inside they are only so much vapor and void.

118

Ritual: A Sonnet mica hamilton

Night and we dance in the yard with no shoes and t-shirts dripping, We are lightning with wind in our veins. Laughing like children spinning bubbling in circles, Eyes closed fingertips brushing spider eyelashes.

Midnight and we light candles invoking deities and devils palms pressed tight to faded denim. Wanting to pray, “Hail Mary full of grace…” we stumble like witches. You, a priest’s son ought to have known better. Demons nest in our bellies.

Noon and we wear nothing but sunlight searching dizzily for the little monsters. Hands flicker seamlessly on slippery skin. We find them on lips, in hair, beneath ribs, your tongue says love, asks where god is.

Letting specters play on my eyelids, I see you with eyes closed, across state lines. My tongue knows where god is, the white space between heart and forgetting.

119

Eternity erica lewis

The comet did not care that I would be dead the next time it tore through the black sky, a silver burning tail etched between the stars. It had no sympathy for my family and the immortality we shared. Backpacking through Europe, exploring hidden caves, and feasting under the radiant trees for eons to come were of no consequence to the comet. Listening to my grandmother speak her fluent native tongue and interpreting her words with my own was insignificant. The dusty books standing side by side whispering secrets of the human mind and the world we live in was trivial to the visitor from outer space. The next time the comet would travel to the deep blue hues of Earth, its journey would be lonely one. There would be no eyes amazed, inspired, or threatened by its brilliant magnitude, but the comet was not concerned with these matters. I was five years old when I looked for the comet on my father’s shoulders with my mother and sister down below. I cried when my father told me we would be long gone the next time the comet passed through our Milky Way galaxy. The immortality of everything and everyone I loved was stolen that night by the shimmering comet, a beautiful, quiet death reaper who did not care about my eternity.

120

Regarding Merdedith Thomas: Session Number One kaileigh wilcox

“I’m in love with Kerouac.”

The good man across the desk, a proper doctor of the mind― his eyes slide around me like my edges are made of etch-n-sketch bits.

He wears his PhD like a shroud―letting it weigh down on his mind heavy and unforgiving, forming little ridges and burrows between his temples.

He scribbles bits of myself onto a crisp sheet of paper, and I wonder why his eyebrows never seem to move.

“He always promised to take me away from this ―all this Karma, that is― to Mexico City.”

I watch a silver pin―shaped so oddly, a single dove with wings spread over black terrain, bouncing off his left breast pocket.

121

My lacy red bra strap― it peeps so sweetly, from the scoop of my cozy Monday morning winter weather sweater.

His heart―it can’t help but to beat― ka-thumping ka-thumping until the pin, it starts drumming out its own Mexico City Blues.

“But then, I’m sure you know about the mess with Jan, and how tragic it must be to only know a father through his words.

But Jack―that was his way.

So I said to him, I said, ‘Jack, this isn’t the same world and there are wild, wild men roaming and inhabiting all the dark nooks and quiet places.

But there is a beach down in Mexico.

Sandy white beaches and water like sky.’ and he said, ‘That’s all very fine.’ but he was drunk and we never spoke of it again.”

I pause.

The good man, he takes this all in.

Making notes while that silly bird, it flies even faster after my legs―which I always found too skinny anyway―they make a pass, one over the other, and I briefly consider that I should have worn a longer skirt.

122

I lean forward, waiting for the good man’s verdict.

A woman stares back at me in the reflection of his glasses― all pasty with cheeks bones just a little bit too sharp.

She tilts her head to the left, winking before sitting straight back up and becoming lost behind the doctor’s brown eyes.

I wanted to ask who she was, but instead remain silent― the good man’s pen scratches rapidly against paper.

I wait for his reaction.

He tugs at his bottom lip, only for a moment, before replacing meticulously groomed fingers with the cap of his pen.

He waits for me to continue.

A tingling sensation begins at my toes, creepy crawling up my legs to my heart as blood tries to outrun panic.

“Look, doc. I’m in love with Kerouac. And that is just that.”

He nods once.

Hands me a small, blue card with a time and date for next week’s appointment.

123

Ode to Modern Art oleg artsykhovskyy

The splotch unfolds like a spider spreading like the look of ‘oh shit’ on your face (on my face) Red wine across the carpet fading blood, burgundy, brown We watch Instead of cleaning we admire the artistic merit of gravity and wine the placement of movement on the canvas (the carpet) In the morning we will puch a chair over the spot when it stops unfolding But for now we will wait praise critique the art on the floor It is lovely this stain evolving.

124

Drug Test mike ivens

I slammed my apartment door open with an eagerness that would make a paranoid schizophrenic with Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome cum in her pants. The door shut and I turned to see my girlfriend sitting on our couch with an expression on her face that told me there was a chance she had just shit her pants. I smiled and pointed at her startled face. She had blonde hair that had a natural wave to it, and since she hadn’t been brushing it for a few days, it began to form dreadlocks on its own. Her cheekbones sat on top of her slightly sunken cheeks, and if you drew lines from her nose to her cheek bones, then connected the lines down to her chin, it would make a heart.

“Marley, congratulate me,” my mouth widened into a smile that I had no control over. My excitement attempted to rush out of me like diarrhea from a man with an irritable bowel after a fast food binge.

My place of employment recommended that I take a mandatory drug test since I had been promoted to an Inventory Manager. Not only was I being drug tested, but also evaluated to make sure that I was a trustworthy individual and that I would not be stealing any of the items from the store, after all, the inventory was my responsibility. Knowing about the drug test ahead of time, and knowing for certain that I would fail, I was able to get a bottle of clean piss before the testing. I tried desperately to warm up the plastic bag of piss that I had taped to my leg. I knew that the fat middle-aged nurse outside the door would be able to tell a slightly warmer than lukewarm cup of piss was obviously not mine, and I also knew she would be able to hear our shitty loud running sink faucets if I decided to run the warm water. I stuck the bag under my arm pit hoping it would be warm enough. After a couple seconds, I felt the bag and it hadn’t gotten any warmer.

Suddenly the idea came to me. I carefully opened the top of the bag and sucked a mouthful of the piss out.

I held it in for a moment and felt my stomach began to punch up towards my throat. I gagged, but was able to keep my mouth closed. I spit into the cup and saw that it had only been filled up half of the way up to the line.

The cup felt warm, so I knew the effort wasn’t wasted, so I drew in more of the piss and held it. My stomach

125

punched my throat again, this time causing a portion of the piss to seep out of my nose. I spit into the cup and held it towards the light.

It was perfect.

There was something soothing about perfectly hitting the line when you put fake piss, or ever your own for that matter, in a drug testing cup. I poured the rest of the bag into the blue toilet water and threw it in the trash can. I, quietly as possible, dispensed two handfuls of paper towels and put them in the trash can on top of the bag. I thought about rinsing my mouth out, but again, that bitch nurse would hear the faucet running and, no doubt, assume I was attempting to be fraudulent with my drug test, because she knew how us goddamned kids were.

I walked out of the bathroom and smiled when I handed her the cup.

“Everything come out alright?” she asked.

“Why yes ma’am. warm and smooth,” I said with a smile. She pursed her lips at my sarcasm and placed a lid on the cup. She had me sign some papers and told me to have a nice day.

I paced our apartment living room as I recalled the story. Marley looked at me with a face that held either disgust, or disappointment.

“Do you need to brush your teeth?”

126

001

spencer seastrom

127

Four on a Cell Screen allyson mead

We are some catty bitches. I mean, we go for blood every time and if we’re not laughing with you we’re

laughing at you and if we’re laughing at you we’re doing it behind your back. Excluding Patrick and that-girlwhose-name-I-didn’t-catch-but-think-is-Sarah, we were sucking down some Haterade (Elena supplementing with a Corona and lime). I wasn’t paying attention so I don’t remember the guy’s name, but at our little table in the corner, freezing cold because they left the door to the rooftop open and Ariel was shivering in her little black dress, we called him “the wannabe Jack Kerouac.” When Megan was tapping away at her cell phone keyboard, I thought it was Z again because it’s always Z, but no not this time. She handed the phone to Elena who gave it to me and on and on like a note in fifth grade – “pass it on.” “Who talks after sex? Unless it’s about wanting to have more sex.” And we all snickered because even at this age sex is funny. It passed back from Ariel to me, me to Elena, who added “Fetish?” and showed it to us before giving Megan her phone. Polite by our standards, I assure you. Now, today is A Day of Peace on Facebook; don’t say or think anything bad about others. But I agreed when Megan wrote, “This guy is a total creeper!” and Ariel replied, “Definitely.”

128

Fear Not alli muller

When I am small, I think my parents are giants. My earliest years are consumed with falling down, getting back up and running with tears in my eyes to the shelter and safety of my parents’ strong arms. My mother holds me and rocks me to sleep nights and during the days my father carries me on his shoulders when I am too tired to walk.

When I am first learning to walk, my father takes hold of my hands as I stand on his feet and lets me feel his movements so I can mimic them. I try, but I fall and am scared. When I cry, he lifts me in his arms and says, “Fear not little one. I am here to protect thee.”

My mother never loved my father; she tells me so after they divorce, but she doesn’t need to. Even if I hadn’t been able to guess by their separate bedrooms or their indifferent interaction, I would have been able to break it down by numbers. My father was thirty when they married; my mother was thirty-five. I read somewhere that at that age, a woman is more likely to get hit by a plane than she is to find a husband, and my mother desperately wanted children. Their marriage was closer to a business arrangement than a love match.

I suppose I always assumed that her feelings were mutual, but a week after my mother interrupts me mid-frost on some strawberry cupcakes to tell me she’s getting a divorce, my father turns to me as he drives down a darkened street with me riding shotgun and speaks over the Zac Brown Band’s “Highway 20 Ride”.

“I want you to know I still love her,” he says.

An hour later, I lock myself in my room with my iPod, listen to the song and cry.

My mother diets a lot. I am very young when I notice this, and at first I don’t understand. She is the most beautiful woman in the world, so hearing her use the words ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ to describe herself confuses me. When I ask my father about this, he shrugs.

There is a refrigerator magnet on our white Kenmore. It is a double sided wooden block about the size of a five-year old girl’s palm, with a chain made of tiny golden balls connecting it to another wooden block like a tiny yellow brick road. The top block reads ‘Diet is’ and the lower block is double-sided, with one side reading ‘on’ and declaring the family diet is ‘off’. My brother and I spend hours flipping it from one side to another. It is

129

one of our first toys.

My mother talks about her weight a lot. She is always afraid people are making fun of her, that they are judging her because of her weight. When we see overweight people in restaurants, she leans over and asks in a quiet voice, “Am I that big?” And I always answer no. But the more she mentions it, the more I notice it.

At age nine, I look in the mirror and see a fat, stupid, blob with straw-colored hair and an ugly face.

That day at a school pizza party, I throw my piece into a trash can.

Mother is God in the eyes of a child.

When I first admit I have a problem, I have just turned seventeen. I am on a mission trip to Muncie, Indiana. My knees to my chin, hunching in a corner of the elementary school where the groups of churches are staying, I am surrounded by glass, shut up in the entry way. The other children walk by and stare but no one says anything. They pretend I am invisible. I call my mother, clutch the phone to my cheek and sob that I have an eating disorder.

One Sunday, my mother and I are driving home from church. I am wearing a beige skirt and a blacktop with gold beads around the neckline. We are talking and laughing, and for once we’re actually getting along and I look at her and smile, thinking I’ve never been so happy.

She starts to cry. She’s crying so hard I wonder how she can drive. Touching her shoulder, I ask her what is wrong and try to comfort her, but she is hysterical.

Finally, I understand her. “You’re so beautiful! You’re so so beautiful!” Through choking sobs, she says this over and over again until we get home.

A few weeks after my mother cries, my father pulls me into his bedroom and demands that I explain myself. He has noticed that I am sad today and he wants to know why. I tell him he will not understand and he gets upset. How can he not understand? He’s my father.

I want to explain, but I just start crying. I tell him that life is meaningless and I am worthless and I want to die so that I won’t be walking around feeling so empty. He gets angry and frustrated and argues with me for a long time before finally throwing up his hands and screaming, “You’re right! I don’t understand!”

After mom tells us she’s leaving, my dad and I sit out on the back porch and smoke cigarettes. With a lukewarm Sam Adams in his hand, my father looks out into our overgrown backyard and shakes his head, saying it’s a disaster.

“Nah.” Admiring the tall, proud weeds, I smile at him. “It’s like living in a jungle.”

130

Fairy Tale Reverie erica lewis

131

“I should have done something about them years ago,” he says genially. “I’m just a lazy son of a bitch.”

With a smile, he takes a swig of beer and adds, “It’s probably why your mom is divorcing me.”

I don’t know why, but my heart hurts and even though we’re outside I suddenly need some air. When I get back from wherever I found an excuse to drive to, I see my father. As soon as I pull into the drive, I see him through the gaps of our crooked fence and the holes in its rotten wood. He is in the backyard with a dumpster, a pair of gloves and six plastic trash bags.

He is pulling up the weeds.

About halfway through my senior year, when we are all firmly entrenched in this hellhole I feel like I have created, my father notices gashes on my arms. He yells at me in front of my brother and afterwards, he and mom fight. I hunch down in the hallway and listen to dad yelling. I can’t hear everything, but I hear him saying that he’s fed up, that he doesn’t want me living in his house marking up my arms.

“It’s not right!” my father yells. “It’s not right to you and me for her to be doing that!”

My mother’s voice is soft, so soft I can’t make out everything she’s saying, but I hear one sentence that burns into me even from the distance.

“Sometimes you hurt so much on the inside that you have to hurt on the outside.” She is speaking from the wisdom that comes from experience, from the perspective of someone who has suffered and the strength of someone who has survived, but I do not learn that until later.

But though I will never forget my mother’s word that night, my father, it seems, did not hear them. He just keeps yelling.

My father may not understand me, but I understand him. He is a man uncomfortable with emotion; a man who abhors any trace of weakness as a hated enemy to be cut down. For these reasons, I fear a part of him may hate me for sinning against him in this way. For breaking the family code of covered wounds and silent agony. But more than that, I think he hates me because and he’s finally realized that, no matter what you do, you can’t make someone want to live. He sees me drowning and has lost his breath trying to convince me to save myself. Standing at the other side of the wind tossed waves, he can only watch as I sink under, his arms reaching but never taking hold.

Futility; that is what I represent.

Later, I’m lying on my friend Deniece’s bed and she traces her fingers up my scars.

“This right here,” she says, tracing her fingers up the patterns. “This is the darkness. You can’t go into the darkness, Allison.”

132

Towards the end of senior year, my father drives me home from a play and loses his mind. He slams his

hands on the steering wheel and starts screaming that I’m killing my mother and that I’m killing myself. He starts screaming this and shouting that and “Eat something for God’s sake!” Slamming on the brakes, he whips into the Kroger parking lot and swears he’ll force feed me if he has to. He demands to know who I think I am and why I’m doing this to him and I start getting hysterical.

“This isn’t about you!” I scream at him over the shrill sounds of my ever-present weeping. “And some things just aren’t!”

He punches the steering wheel so hard I wince. He whips around, raises his fist and warns that I’m close enough for him to hit me. He says if I don’t stop talking, he will. His fist looms over me like a dagger, cloaked in darkness; the moon strikes it at an angle and it glints like metal. In seventeen years, my father has never hit me, and I clutch the arm rest of the passenger side door with m heart pounding, and for the first time in my life, I’m truly afraid of him. But I am my father’s daughter and I will not show my fear. Pushing back mere inches from the arm rest, I do not back away; I actually get closer. My eyes widening, I just sit there breathing, silently daring him to, but he doesn’t. His breathing coming in rapid pants, he lowers his fist.

Seconds later, he gets out of the car.

After the divorce is finalized, my mother moves out. She is hurt by my decision to stay with my father instead of coming to live with her, but she puts on a brave face as I explain that it just makes more sense: UCA is just a block over from dad’s. Plus, I figure I’ll move out soon anyway and this is just one less time I’ll have to pack up and leave. She smiles, and even though she doesn’t understand, she pretends she does.

We go out to dinner and talk for a long time. She asks if I blame her for the divorce and I admit that I did, but I don’t anymore. She tells me that she and dad are two good people in a bad marriage and that this was always going to happen. They talked about divorcing years ago, she says, that fateful summer when I was seventeen. But all such talk had ended the second I made that phone call. When I ask her why that was, she looks at me like I am crazy.

As we’re about to get into her shiny red car, she turns to me and says, “I love you, sweetie, and I want you to know I did the best I could.”

I look at my mother and the change is striking. Since my senior year, she has lost two hundred pounds and now can fit into the high heels and trendy ‘it-girl’ clothes she always wanted to wear. As we hop into the car and mom opens the sun-roof, I wonder enviously if my mom is cooler than me.

Looking at me through oversized sunglasses, she smiles warmly and says, “I don’t want you to worry, sweetie. Your dad and I are still friends. It’s not like we’re going to fight over the money or anything.”

My eyes expanding to the size of UFOs, I open my mouth and ask, “We have money?”

133

In the last weeks of senior year, I go out with a bang—I stop eating altogether and finally my mind is so gone that I zone-out behind the wheel and crash my car. My dad stops speaking to me for two days.

That night, I cry in my room as my mom holds me and rocks me in her arms, trying to quiet me. I tell her I know dad doesn’t love me anymore because all I do is mess-up. I keep thinking I’m the consummate fuck-up kid and am glad they have my brother as a spare. When I tell her this, my mother cries with me and tells me she feels like she failed at raising me…the only thing she ever wanted to be good at. I’d bet she regrets not having better dreams for herself, but as if reading my mind, she looks over at me all nestled in my purple bedspread and says having me is the best thing she ever did.

Two days later, my father comes and sits with me while I watch American Idol. He hits the mute button while Sanjaya Malakar is performing (which is quite fortunate since at that very moment people across the nation are hunger-striking to protest his teenage metro-sexual tonedeaf presence on the show) looks into my eyes and says, “Everything is going to be okay. Fear not little one, I am here to protect thee.”

When I am twenty, Nevaeh Elizabeth Williams is born. Before I step into the hospital, I know she is to be my goddaughter and I am not sure I want the responsibility.

I don’t like babies. They are usually ugly.

I come into that darkened room where my smiling best friend greets me and points to that crying baby.

Deniece’s mother walks over and hands her grandchild to me before I can protest. When she fits perfectly into my arms, she stops crying and all at once I am hit with the startling force of my own inadequacy and I know that I cannot do this.

But as she lifts her sweet little face to mine and opens those beautiful eyes, I lose the option to walk away. I am the most imperfect example anyone can imagine. I am weak and I am frail, and though I have found myself over the years, in many ways I am still searching.

But I love her. And in that moment my arms are the only thing holding her tiny head up and keeping her tiny body from crashing and breaking, so they have to be strong enough.

When she raises those little arms above her head and yawns like a mewling kitten, she reminds me of myself. Seeing her sleep with her arms over her head like a makeshift halo reminds me of a similar picture I have in a photo album, taken when I was not much bigger than her, as I slept in the arms of the only man I have ever trusted.

Pressing a kiss to that precious forehead, I shield her against the world. “Fear not little one,” I whisper for her alone to hear. “I am here to protect thee.”

134

In Between Your Legs taylor gladwin

coming home from the liquor store a spider web storm of veins ignited across sky as if the gods had something spunky to say driving onward I pondered the potential of the beer in my backseat and the wine in between your legs

135

Rider

carissa gan

136

Delirium

audrey manning

Raining at a 360 degree angle

Pinky swear

foul mouthed pinkies Now chew digest at your leisure I promise

merely admitting my

I’m

psychiatric disorder

fun fun fun

run with the mad I passed you the talking stick

the best kind

Tell which one you have

You prefer interpretive dance

I love a game of shareades

137

Death of Me meghan feeney

I felt my life leeched from my frozen form. You took away the pillow.

138

Fighters

sarah f. wilson

139

Ammo

chelsea callentine busy as a gun, poking a hole in every passerby.

Leaving them lying facedown, breathing in the dirt, bleeding everything but blood sweating out bullets.

Once the deed is done, you come back to pick up your ammo.

140

Burn

taylor gladwin I drink my sweat and dissect the cracks of sun encompassed streets a search and rescue mission for the last drop of water on this anhydrous Earth her tortured features and heated tongue crying violence into the silence of space “WHERE ARE YOU FAILED LEADERS?” only to mutilate her mouth on the twinkling blades of falling stars weighted down by oil's rainbows Posted on poles of metal and hollow warning signs lash out at me the fine for littering my once wet eyes dissolve to dust like the deforestation before me trees to grass to desert to my children's garden where crimson flowers never bloomed but were crushed and corrupted by corporate cash seeds overgrown with greed Both soil and I are capitol condemned flora genocide personifies human suicide as my tongue scrapes flakes that were my lips I remember the taste of irregular rain sulfuric but at least it was something until dryness diseased the once blushing face of what is now a parched planet her surviving bushes are rare where I walk dead brothers crunch beneath my feet I feed them my holy perspiration the only rain left

141

Death Drifts In oleg artsykhovskyy

As death drifts steady from the East, the Sun is at Her hind.

And calmly, surely, here below Her shadow fills the mind.

So great, this terror grows in size: soon, all in shade is cast; in panic, we begin to flee, westward: so free and vast.

I’ve watched this chase puff to a halt, in stagnant, stale allure: we’d wait with Gloom, for some great light to take Ted with grandeur.

But no One came, Ted only left, and Woe lingered a while...

Now all was still, the chase was through; Death met him with a smile.

She meets us like a knowing mom, who’s waited through the night, while we were chasing Hesperus: from Past comes future-sight.

She let us play, and hurt, and laugh for years, it seemed; but not.

A day to youth, is life to us, and Death is patient night.

142

Things That Never Happened alli muller

You like telling lies to yourself. That's what your mother says. You like to invent things, fantastic tales of things that never were, and you like to read them to yourself in your head at night, over and over again like a bedtime story.

“That never happened,” she tells you the first time you tell her your story, only at first she calls it a dream.

“It's just those scary movies John lets you watch. You're letting them give you nightmares.”

She doesn't believe you about the monster that sneaks into your room every night. Some nights you hear it come in, and you shut your eyes and grip your blanket tight, feeling every muscle go tense and every hair stick straight up like hundreds of tiny needles. You listen even though you don't want to, straining to hear every footstep and every tiny whisper you're not sure is real. But all you hear is labored breathing and your own pounding heart. Other nights you wake up and the monster is already there, just sitting at the foot of your bed with dull black-red eyes glowing like cinders in the dark. Once you even felt it reach out and touch you, with its long, slimy arm, deep in the night when it thought you were sound asleep.

Your mother doesn't believe you, and neither does your counselor when you go to her several months later after the monster has begun to grow and morph and change until his face is one that you recognize. By then he's already gotten closer and closer until he crawled inside your bed and under your covers, and you don't understand what's happening or why.

“I understand this is a difficult time,” says the counselor, who knows about your parents' recent divorce.

“Some times we make things up. Just to cope.”

And you wish you could believe her.

The counselor understands, but your mother doesn't. “You lie so much, you start to believe it,” she fumes as she stands at the kitchen countertop, brutally shredding carrots. “You let those thoughts get into your head, and they run wild.”

While your mother is murdering carrots, your older brother picks through the refrigerator his eyes downcast and looking off to some faraway spot you can't see, that shaggy blonde hair--damp with the oil that's breaking his face out--hanging past his shoulders and bringing back memories of the monster's slimy fur covering your face, and that sweaty hand covering your mouth when you try to yell to wake yourself up.

143

Your mother doesn't believe you, but Hollie does. Hollie believes everything. In fairies, in dragons, and in Santa Claus; in sacrificing your Barbie dolls in the muddy stream behind your house to some mystical river god she read about in those books her older sister hides under her bed so their mother won't find them--and in scary monsters who visit your bed at night with their shaggy hair and sweaty palms.

One Saturday she comes over after you've just finished abandoned a heap of stuffed animals and a Care Bears Tshirt to the river god, to make room for the new training bra and teeny tiny miniskirt the two of you shoplifted from a department store. She spends the night, but stays up until the first hours of the morning. When the monster doesn't come, she reaches into her pink and green backpack and pulls out a stick with jagged pieces of aluminum she's cut from a coke can and tied to the end. “Let's go to its den,” she says, and then you sneak into John's room and cover his mouth while Hollie presses the silvery blades against his neck, the aluminum slivers glinting in the darkness like a monster's eyes. “This isn't happening,” she whispers. “Stay in your own room or it won't happen again.”

The next day, John says he wants to go and live with dad. His room is made into a game room, and you don't miss him.

For years, you and Hollie live in your own world, where everything is real and everything exists except lies. The two of you do everything together. You are almost the same person until you leave room 217 after and walk down that dark stairwell. The geometry study group has run later than usual, and now the moon cuts through the lone window at the top of the stairs, catching Hollie's penny-colored hair and making it shine so that it's the only real light in this dark little world. Through the darkness, Hollie brushes your hand and even though she's touched you dozens of times, this feels different.

When her lips press against your mouth, you stumble off the third step from the bottom and fall against the beige wall with its cracked plaster. “This isn't happening,” she whispers as her rainbow-painted fingernails clasp the bottom of your black tank top and hoist it over your head. It flutters to the ground like a dark flag of surrender, and as the new pleasure makes you shudder, all you feel is yourself shattering.

Two weeks later, Hollie still won't look at you. She looks near you and through you, but she won't look at you, and she won't talk about it. You want to take her by the shoulders and shake her. You want to drag her to the stream and hold her underwater and force the river gods to make her confess, to bring her back the way she was. But maybe part of her is shattered too.

“It didn't happen,” she says quietly, her eyes hooded under heavy, purple-painted eyelids she's kept half-closed around you since the day nothing happened. “It wasn't really real.”

When she faces the stream and brings her knees to her chin, staring down into the water, she reminds you of yourself when you were younger.

You wonder if she lies to herself too.

144

On the Source of Poetry oleg artsykhovskyy

There is a rumble in my head, from distant, rhythmic drums.

Their leather hums a speechless song, roaring, rising in sums.

A Zeitgeist chants an ancient tune, in tongues we’ve long forgot; the song flows on, and sings of Man, while Man floats on through rot.

Though if I wander from the Earth, till I escape my reek; Man’s language learns a foreign chord, the drums instead, then speak.

For just one instant, in a breath, the muse plays me a note, it rings so true to every drum: the ripples form a quote.

Incessant passion overtakes, and I, then, trembling, write; A rip-tide, I, rolling to shore, break, for a taste of flight.

145

Book Bound erica lewis

146

The Wolf Run christopher hall

The full moon has risen signal for the coming lunacy we join in spiritual jubilation my brothers my sisters each a different person celebrating our collective individual bonds that hold us in separation and make us the same alive Smells fill the air grass and water flowers and pollen chokes our noses struggling overpowering the beer and mead that passes freely from one to others celebrating the rebirth shouting at the spring moon pushing towards the oncoming tradition holds getting natural as the animals the babies and the jaybird All the alcohol helps feel truth fuel indestructibility knowing the chill of night is going to shrivel our

147

bricks and sharpen our points when we go to the spring moon running under its non-warming light dressed as men and women were meant to be skin shimmering in silvery-white screaming out rage toward the dying winter howling to the oncoming season to be kind and allow growth and the rebuilding of the land this ancient rite calls up feelings carnal natural releasingly human Our pack kept the night young until the moon was straight above celebrations went beyond into a drunken wilderness of stumbling stupidities on three wheels as running instead of falling became a large horde driving electric mobility scooters through forest paths dirt roads the howl sounded a raging gurgling laugh through a packed campground nakedly waking over a hundred my bansheeing at the tail never imagining more freedom “Oh shit� I fly into the night wrecking smashing cracking a quick tumble I go my moon soon facing the Earth’s

148

righting my world seeing through the ghostly drunken haze of silver light my riding herd disappearing ahead standing proudly the winning stone embedded in the ground behind where roused sleepy campers now appear Promptly grabbing the trusty steed I help it on up to its feet where again it stands seemingly ready hearing people in the camps I kick my mule without a single buck the invincibility potion suddenly leaves time slows to an hour when a fellow reveler savingly comes checking on things two minutes later we both were exposed to the natives their wonderings getting closer he found a plug disconnected a broken clip from the mounts stomach hastily we performed the required surgery with tools given to us by nature herself teeth and nails fingers and ingenuity the stallions hit by Thor fly away the dangerous Bushmen left wondering in the night Rejoining the pack in den it was all laughter and drinks the Geriatric Wolf Run became a roaring success of semi-remembered indignities crashing in full view only saw by an Unlucky …phew.

149

Snow Day sanders lewis

the season exposes the guts of trees like veins and capillaries crystal leaves shed like a second autumn (although the equinox isn’t over) a flake hits my tongue mmmmm tastes like clean coal the smokers say things like “snow this early means a cold winter” and “it’ll be green and brown when I wake up” thoughts of carbon summers— the planet cracked like buckshot salt columns and semi-liquid oceans filled with bud cans snicker’s wrappers— and mcdonald’s toys vfw post 2259 evan williams and glazed donuts keep me warm

150

San Francisco Skyline carissa gan

151

Ramble Ramble mike ivens

Perhaps it was an abusive collective and shards of the elected that made me dream that I could be important but what the fuck does that mean. I am drinking cheap whiskey on a bed with tattered grey sheets and no one knows what my name is and I will remain silent for all eternity not silent like nighttime, no the crickets break that silence. But silence like violence and the violence is now silence because I stopped listening you see, I don’t listen to it anymore.

America the cleric of the modern world wide epidemic. No ending, but break for the trembling, and the world never quits spinning.

152

Timeline

taylor gladwin Timeline  tritting and trotting down my computer screen I feel like a knock off version of some beautiful movie star created in a foreign sweat shop where the creators don't speak the language of where their products are sold  scratching at my skin I drink beer a blur enters my bedroom and invites me to a party which leads to increased chances of developing A BADASS liver disease I'll wear a sign proudly dangling against my neck strapped to my hospital bed

153

I will relish in the level of bodacious partying I can kick it to I glow with the freshness of a Mid Summer's Night peach thriving with juicy junk of which I fail to take advantage of Last night I pranced around the coffee table like a doll on acid while Miles Davis reversed all the bad in the world back to dust when the possibility of surviving dystopia lingered in the daylight it's two days later I'm wrinkled like foil all the parts of me that I exhausted left crumbled and illuminated

154

I Been Blown Up Before jordan dunn

Mechanized they call us The infantry with tread; no wheel Plodding beasts set course for nowhere The defenders of asphalt A steel bench made for no man Cushion can’t cover the lack of a seat Hunched in my mental rolling box Claustrophobia just a joke out here Man on top got a bullet to fire Green as nothing out here End o’ the line for me Right here in the front of the line Experience will get you blown up You run the course enough The best get the chance first I been blown up before Night riding on this endless beach Only water in our bottles Lined up like aluminum on a fence Darkness hiding the fear What country is it here?

Same as any country you ain’t from Nobody loves you

155

Another day in paradise Married is just ring on the finger Living only a break before dyin’ Bunk, no bed to sleep Food a dried package in a pack I guess I felt it before That point right when you think Body just in tune with the path I been blown up before Car on fire by the road Could it be more obvious?

Like a terrorist’s calling card I ain’t the best cause I don’t know “Gunner, sweep the road.”

Nothin out there “Sweep it again” Nothin out there Stupid as the day he enlisted “We don’t move til you find it” Sweep it, for god’s sake No surprise at the answer Radio to the man It ain’t happenin’ again Gotta move forward Damnit! I been blown up before Rubber burned chokes the air I just might not move This ain’t gonna stall the war Send anyone else

156

First in is first dead Prayin’ swift in this coffin Can’t sit forever “Onward Christian soldier” Controls stutter under hand Tread seems slow Past the burning beacon Onward to the finale Tense before the hit Slammed to the roof My life for my country I been blown up before Five feet off the ground Gunner safe in his place Can’t breathe here in my box Cushion gone somewhere What goes up Surely blows up It’s the fall that makes it Compressed to the core Is this the last one?

Did he just kill me?

Waste of life out here Time just stops Rolled away on my cushion Gunner holdin’ my hand Guess I didn’t die after all I been blown up before

157

Speak

sarah jane rawlinson Speak up.

I can't. I'm dependent.

Did I choose this? How can you learn without being taught?

But no one is stuck in ignorance. Each lung must find air for itself. Doctors can stimulate the chest, but each heart must keep itself up.

But everything is dependent.

The window is stuck to the wall it makes a break in. The air our lungs discover, as someone told me, once occupied another's chest.

So we learn to speak undaunted by our unaccustomed, clumsy tongues; tongues dependent, yet our own.

Tongues that taste the air our lungs can only take.

My chest is filled, on its own, but only through others can my own tongue now speak.

158

Dedication

dr. stephanie vanderslice and dr. john vanderslice.

159

We dedicate this edition to two of UCA’s beloved writing professors.

Whether it is together or individually, John and Stephanie Vanderslice work to expand and strengthen UCA’s writing department and its writers. They take the time to work with their students and help them with everything from school to living life. Their encouragment helps our community to thrive. We thank them for everything they do for the department, their students, our local writing community and Vortex.

160

THANK YOU!

The 2011 - 2012 Vortex staff woud like to thank La Lucha Space, the Honors College and ShortDenney STARS Residential College, the UCA writing department and the University of Central Arkansas for offering Art and Word space. Thank you to everyone who submitted work, donated time to the Vortex and attended Vortex sponsored events.

161

Guidelines and Awards Editorial Guidelines Vortex has a specific process for eiting all submissions. All submissions of Art, Poetry, Fiction, Non-fiction and media are considered for both online and print publiation. The process of judging consists of all work being submitted online to Vortex filestorage system powered by Squarespace. The Editors view each piece, ensuring all author’s names are omitted, and then distributes submissions via email to the section editors who distribute to their team of judges every month. All judges give a vote of yes, no, or maybe. Work with a majority of yes votes are published. Judges are required to vote no automatically on their own submissions to ensure fairness. Only students currently enrolled at UCA are eligible to submit and they must provide their real name to be considered for publication.

Awards Arkansas College Media Association 2000 - Literary Magazine, 2nd Place 2003 - Literary Magazine, 3rd Place 2004 - Literary Magazine 1st Place 2006 - Literary Magazine, Sweepstakes 2007 - Literary Magazine, 1st Place 2008 - Literary Magazine, 1st Place 2009 - Literary Magaine, 1st Place 2010 - Literary Magazine, 1st Place

162

Columbia Scholastic Press Association 2010 - Literary Magzine, Gold Circle

Colophon Vortex was created on a Macintosh iMac, using InDesign CS5.5; Photoshop CS5.5; and Illustrator CS5.5. Theme fonts are Light Up the World and Georgia with varying font sizes and styles throughout.

163

164

165