Canyon Voices Issue 10

Creative Non-Fiction A Rant on Bananas Brahm Capoor

Poetry Disco Lights in 1994

Scripts A Conversation Among the Ruins Julianne Homokay

Fiction The Sundown Side of the Rock Judith Day

Marcus Clayton

Artwork Sorrowful Awakening Dylan Pham Cover Art by Dylan Pham

Photo 3 by Jennifer Ortiz (see Artwork for full image)

FICTION The Sundown Side of the Rock Judith Day Lost to the Light Frank Scozzari Flightless Birds Matthew Di Paoli Of Mothers & Mountains Kayla Miller Epicures Kelly Neal Belongings Michael Washburn Warhorse Colin James History of Music Simon Jimenez

CREATIVE NON-FICTION The Bakery in My Head Max Schlienger Figments Maggie Sullivan Basilisk David Mitchell Always Stare and Never Blink Preston Hagerman Razbliuto Anna Sandy Scribing in the Snow Max Schlienger A Rant on Bananas Brahm Capoor Together Anonymous

POETRY When I was Sixteen John Grey Birth of Regrets Valentina Cano Old Cutler Waterhole Nicole Hospital-Medina Babalu Anna Sandy Disco Lights Marcus Clayton Coyote Crossing the Road George Kalamaras Brain-Tanning the Hides George Kalamaras New Land Dwight Cosper For the Moment Dwight Cosper Two Descents Jessica Temple My Grandmother Turns Eighty-Eight Jessica Temple Mālama Jessica Temple

ARTWORK

SCRIPTS

Photo 3 Jennifer Ortiz Interpolate Laurence Wensel Barking at the Clouds Marie Luna At Peace Marie Luna Untitled Thomas Ingersoll Untitled Thomas Ingersoll Wilt in Warmth Becca Daltroff Bee Eric Anderson Sky Eric Anderson Moon and Jupiter Matt Champlin I didn’t think I could do it Matt Champlin Sedona Matt Champlin State Flag Matt Champlin Untitled Cree W Reminsicing Ruth Zachomler Aquamarine Dylan Pham Chromafish Dylan Pham Dreaming Colors Dylan Pham Sorrowful Awakening Dylan Pham Pinetop Eric Anderson Meadow Eric Anderson Untitled Cree W Untitled David Ritchey Untitled David Ritchey Madrid Kasey Esling Liz Eischen Oneanata Gorge Tida Gherman Untitled Sydney Cisco Coal Canyon Troy Farrah Lake Grass Troy Farrah Mill Troy Farrah Tangle Troy Farrah Eagle Dylan Pham

See Him Jacob Juntunen Favors Julianne Homokay Absinthe Kevin Talley Conversation Among the Ruins Julianne Homokay The Author’s Autopsy Stacey Lane Best Night of His Life Jacob Juntunen Saint Joe and the Christmas Gift Norman Bert Lost Boys Found Julie Amparano Garcia

ABOUT US Submission Guidelines Staff Listing Contact Us

AUTHOR’S ALCOVE Max Schlienger Speaks: A Dialogue with John Cruz Sister to Sister: Corie Cisco Talks Art with Sydney Cisco Lance Graham Speaks Drama: A Chat with Julie Amparano Kissing the Moon: Raquelle Potts Interviews George Kalamaras Colin James and the Fictive Dream: A Conversation with Bruce Kimura The Art of Observation with Jessica Temple: By Raquelle Potts

Meadow by Eric Anderson (see Artwork for full image)

Fiction

2

The Sundown Side of the Rock Judith Day

Lost to the Light Frank Scozzari

Flightless Birds Matthew Di Paoli

Of Mothers & Mountains Kayla Miller

Epicures Kelly Neal

Belongings Michael Washburn

Warhorse Colin James

History of Music Simon Jimenez

3

Fiction

The Sundown Side of the Rock

By Judith Day

“B

illy, that's it!"

My brother pokes his arm from the back seat and points straight ahead at the giant rock standing in the middle of the desert. He's been sleeping for hours and I see in the rear-view mirror that his eyes are dumb and his hair sticks out on top like a blond knife.

"Yeah, that's it, ain't it?" I say. We've been looking for the thing for a week and I saw it about half an hour ago. The road is a straight dust track and the rock is the only thing there is to see, rising up a couple hundred feet high out of the sagebrush. The desert is red and brown colored around here and the rock doesn't match. It's dark gray. As we get closer, I'm totally sure this is the one. I see the split partway up where one side is rounded off and smooth, and the other side is jagged and sharp. It was that jagged side where Dad and I climbed up.

Tom squeezes himself into the front, dragging his sneakers over the metal box taped between the seats. "Damn," he says as he leans back against the vinyl. It's hot and we don't have shirts on. His chest is striped with ridges from the blanket on the back seat.

I shove a box of Oreos across the dash. "Want a cookie?"

He sticks his head out the window to look all around at the sky. He's looking for the cloud we've been following, which is more or less how we get from one place to another. That's how Dad used to travel.

"It's gone," I say. "It dissolved. But it was right over here somewhere."

He sits back and says nothing.

I can tell he remembered he's mad at me, so I say,"Tom-o, have a cookie."

"Thomas," he reminds me. Last week, he decided he wants to be called Thomas but I usually forget. He takes the last three Oreos in the box.

"Thomas," I say. Making peace, I hope.

“Out on the horizon, the moonlight is starting to shine. It glows around the edges of the rock like a halo.”

I gear down as we get close. I've always remembered this place but I didn't Id abhorreant appellantur exactly know how to get here. It wasvix, three yearscu ago whenblandit we camped here with sumo detracto per.my dad. Tom was six and I was thirteen. Back scriptorem eloquentiam then,Augue Tom always sat in back and I rode shotgun.pro We ei. drove up this utroque same dirt road Semper then in the same old Jeep Cherokee, and volumus sea which cu. Est ignota Dad said, "Hey, Billy, side is sundown?"

I pulled out my compass and doming alienum ad, docendi told him to go around the right side of the commune sea te. Affert vocibus rock to about one o'clock, one-thirty. That ei eam. assum commodo should line usBrute up with sundown.

ut mel, vero omittam usu cu.

We always camped on the sundown side of anything that was big enough to keep you in its shadow for quite a while when the sun came up. My dad didn't want nonumy to wake upNo tooveniam early because he said he was consectetuer on vacation, which true. I est,wasn't meis quite ancillae didn't want to because I'm usually up most philosophia duo et. Ne vis of the night and when I fall asleep just inermis suscipiantur, nefor libris before dawn I like to stay asleep a while.

Tom was little and he liked to go along aeterno scaevola his. Meis with what Dad and I wanted.

movet at has, facer scripta iuvaret mei ea. Alii dicit ad usu, ad cetero detracto duo. Quis quando quaeque te sea, modus cetero per eu.

Fiction Driving up to the rock back then, Dad pushed his Rockies cap back from down over his eyes.

“Gonna be a good place, up there.”

He licked his lips and gave me a punch on my arm, smiling big with his mouth closed. He was tall and thin, and his knees flopped around some as he drove, especially when he’d been driving a long time. His feet were duck-toed on the pedals.

I was learning to drive then and paid close attention to how you do it. He dangled his arm out the window and banged on the door with his fingers and sang, "Oh, she jumped in bed and covered up her head and said I'd never find her! Da-da ad a da, da-da ad a da, so I jumped right in behind her!" He always sang that.

I hum the same song now as I pull around and park right where he did. I turn off the engine. Like before, we are the only ones here. It's dead quiet except for insects.

Tom jumps out and starts to unload the back. I sit for a minute looking at the steam coming out from under the hood. It wasn't even a climb but just the hot sun got it going. It's time to get rid of this Jeep. Dad used to trade cars a lot but he kept this Jeep Cherokee for a long time. "One of the first SUVs ever made. V-8 juice." I like it, too.

But it's hell to sleep in. I've always been big for my age but I'm probably too big to sleep in any car now. Before the Jeep, when I was about twelve, we had a green Falcon station wagon where Tom and I could lie in the back and it was almost long enough for me. It felt good in there at night with my brother breathing so close to me.

Dad slept across the front seat. Back before that, when I was about nine or ten, we had a Chevy El Camino. I hated sleeping under that low cover. I asked Dad why he got so many old cars. He told me they weren't old and that he always bought something from the year he was born, 1974.

Tom's already got the cooler and sleeping bags hauled down the slope into a wash of willow trees to the same spot as before. He comes back to the Jeep and climbs on top and unties the chairs and hands them down to me. He carries them and I carry the box of pots and dishes and the box of food on top of that and we go back down the hill to the camp.

Not too many people must ever come here because it looks about the same to me. There are the stones ringed up for fire, some logs to lean on, and two big flat rocks for fixing food. Three years ago, Tom and I slept under a tree where somebody at some point had hung up a string mop, and the mop is still hanging there. I look at another tree and see the wooden bowl I fixed between some branches to give water to the birds.

We make the fire and I start peeling potatoes and boiling a pot of water. I bring it up again.

"You gotta go to school sometime."

Tom is breaking up dead sticks for more fire. "Nuh-uh."

"Yes, you do."

"Don't."

"Do." "Don't either."

"Do you even remember school? It's fun. You can screw around with a lot of kids."

"I never went to school."

"Yes, you did." Once we stayed at Aunt Laurie's and Tom went to kindergarten. I got put into the fourth grade with kids a lot smaller than me. We left in early spring so neither of us finished.

4

5

Fiction "I know everything I need to know," he says. "I can read and write, better than you. I'm good at math. Dad taught me everything I need. There isn't any reason to go to school."

"You can't read better than me."

"I didn't say that. I said I write better."

We both laugh because it's true.

Tom falls asleep before dark and I pull my pouch out from my underwear and count the money. There's about enough left for one more tank of gas. It used to be when Dad got down that low, he got some work for a while. I can do that too, but Dad never saw gas get up to four bucks.

It was over a year ago that he didn't come back one day after he walked into the town of Barstow, California. He had been arrested before, but he always came back in three or four days. This time we waited a week and then I walked on into town, too. I asked around at the library, at a couple town squares where guys hung around, in a Piggly Wiggly and a Safeway, and at two pool halls. I watched the county jail for a while. A lady and a boy about Tom's age came along and were going in, so I ran over and asked if they would keep an eye out for a tall, thin man with not much hair and a brown beard. They came out after a while and said they hadn't seen him in there. I worked the second half of that day at a fruit stand and then went and got bread and lunchmeat, taking it back to the county park where we were staying.

We waited a whole month and I went into town looking every few days, but didn't have any luck. I moved the Jeep around to different parks but there were only so many where we could stay for free. We'd been getting the eye from the park attendants, so we finally took off. It was a hard thing to do.

I never traded a car but I'm going to look for a little station wagon. A Toyota or Honda, or a Subaru. From 1996, my year.

I sit in the fold-up chair a long time thinking about girls. Last night, we stayed at a hot springs in the middle of nowhere, where anybody who can find the place and four-wheel up there goes in naked and relaxes with joints and beer. Dad used to go there. It's a good place to sell weed and I've been there a few times already this year.

Last night there was this girl there named Juniper. Her hair was as short as a boy’s and spiked with frosty blue-green like pine needles. My dad likes girls’ hair long and blond but I don’t mind it being short and green. Her neck was pale so maybe the hair got cut just the other day. She was pale all over. Out of the water, she put a white shirt on.

Her and I wandered off from everybody and got into a lower pool. The sun was going down when we paddled around the edge of a big hot bubble to a place under a little cliff where there was a rock or two underneath the surface to stand on so you didn't have to tread water. She started asking about where I live and all so I said Oregon. But I didn't ask about her because I don't care about that, so she took the hint and got quiet, too. Her face got red from the heat but she stayed. We waved our arms around in the water and her boobs moved with the waves. I thought of saying things and maybe kissing her, but after a while I just took off. I swam back and went to check on Tom, who was still playing with some littler kids in the shallow part. I took him to get some food and then we went on to bed, but as usual I was awake forever. I kept on thinking about Juniper. I even thought of getting up and going to find her.

One time right before he left Dad asked me about a girl who had followed me around at one of the campgrounds. We were in the Jeep the day after leaving there,

Fiction and Tom was asleep. "So what'd you think of that girl?" he said.

I hadn't thought anything of her.

"She was okay," I said. Dad was driving barefoot and that looked good to me, so I took off my shoes and socks, too. "She asked me where I went to school," I said.

People always did that. "I said Flagstaff."

Then I told him I missed school and I asked him if he would get a house.

"Maybe," he said. "So you liked her?"

"Okay, some. Nothing special," I said, which was something he always said.

"Nothing special," he said. "That's the truth sometimes." After a few minutes he said, "But you know, Bill, you're going to have to try that thing out sometime." He gestured at my lap. "Hell, I was just a little older than you when you were born. Oh, she jumped in bed da-da-da-da-da."

I was fourteen then. I keep thinking if I meet somebody now it might be different, but last night I just walked away from Juniper.

Finally I lie down in my bag. It's dead quiet, but after a while I hear a wind picking up out across the open space. It's another while before the branches above us start waving. The light sky between the branches is like a moving lace curtain. Once or twice the handle on the string mop clunks against the tree. Out on the horizon, the moonlight is starting to shine. It glows around the edges of the rock like a halo. The place Dad and I climbed up is on the moon side. I could walk over there right now and it would be lit up so bright I could see well enough to climb it again. But I'm not going to, tonight or tomorrow either. I can do most things by myself but I wouldn't try that without him.

I sleep then because the next time I look the moon is dead overhead and everything is all lit up. Even the Jeep, which

is blue, looks like bright white in the moonlight. The orange paint over the rusted places looks like strange letters. The wind is really flying around us, the mop is banging like crazy and the lace up above is a wild dance. I sit up and get hit dead on by bugs and moths and dust, which is funny so I laugh and lie back down.

But I don't sleep. A small cloud comes up, moving across the sky at a good clip. If it was morning and we were ready to drive, we'd start off chasing it. That's what Tom wants to do. He wants to go here and there and follow the clouds and not care where we end up, like we did with Dad. But I know something he doesn't: Dad didn't really do it that way, he only said he did. Sometimes he did that for fun, but most of the time he had some things in mind about where to go. And so do I. Yesterday's cloud just happened to bring us to the rock we were looking for, and I'm thinking there's a cloud coming up pretty soon that might end us up at Aunt Laurie's around the time that school starts, for a nine-year-old. That will be just around the time of my seventeenth birthday, which is when they will let me into the army. Tom might be mad at me for the rest of his life but you gotta do what you gotta do, Dad would say.

Problem is, I don't really know what to do. I’ve tried following the clouds, but that turns out to be harder than I knew it was.

The army might not be so bad. They teach you a job, but the thought of dropping my brother off at some schoolhouse makes me sick to my stomach.

Just before I fall asleep I think about Dad, maybe in prison. I'll bet he's thinking about us.

I wake up to the sound of birds singing. I come up from way down in my bag and pull the hair out of my face and look around. Tom is over in the sun just outside the big shadow of the rock, writing in his notebook. I get up and pee and drink

6

7

Fiction some water and start to sing: "Oh, she jumped in the lake to get away from a snake and said it would never find her. But the snake jumped in and the girl couldn't swim, so da-da da da da daaa da." I wash up and look in the mirror to see how my beard is coming along. I had sunglasses on yesterday at the hot springs and there's a band of white over my eyes. That gives me four different colors: the white band, my blue eyes, the black circles under them, and the sunburned rest of my face. I brush my hair. It's almost white blond and goes nearly down to my shoulder blades. I put it in a ponytail for the hot day.

Tom comes over and shows me some pictures in his old notebook: stick people and an antelope, rows of lines and dots. "Remember this, Billy? It's the Indian writing."

Of course I remember. He drew them when we were here before, from me and Dad telling him what we found up at the top of the rock.

It was on the second day we were here. Tom was playing with a toy horse and some cowboys and I was watching a wasp skittle along the ground covering up a hole with little stones. Dad was sitting in a chair, until he got up and came over to where I was. "Hey, Bill."

"Hey." "I got something we ought to do."

"What?"

"You're not gonna like it."

"What?"

He crouched down next to me.

"You and me need to climb up this rock."

My dad knew I was afraid of heights, but I could tell that nothing I would say

would make any difference. "Come on, Bill.

You'll be alright. " He told Tom we'd be back soon and to get in the Jeep if anything happened. He'd seen a good place to start up, and we put gloves on and he brought a long rope and we started to climb.

The way looked worn, like maybe other people had done it before, but it was really steep. The sun was glaring and the Jeep's rear bumper was shining out below like a mirror. When my bare arm touched the rock, and one time my cheek touched it because I was holding so close in, it burned my skin. My heart wouldn't settle down and I was sick to my stomach. I was holding on so tight my hands and arms got more tired than they needed to. Dad looked down at me pretty often.

After a time it got flatter and easier, and then I came up over a little rise and there was Dad sitting down in the shade, in a very small cave. "Hey," he said.

All around and above him on the dark gray rocks were white pictures, pecked out one little dot at a time by some people a zillion years ago. I whistled and took off my gloves and rubbed my arm where I'd scraped it. It would have been good to bring water but we didn't. Dad lay down and hung his knee over a rock. I moved around and looked at the pictures. There were square box patterns and other squares made up of rows of big dots, each big dot was the result of a lot of tiny pecked dots. There were wavy lines, and rows of wavy lines. There were stick figures of people with their arms out. There were lightning lines, and footprint lines, and snake lines, and rainfall lines.

There was one deer or antelope. All of it was clear but really worn into the weathered rock.

I sat down. Looking out, all I could see was sky. Huge clouds had built up over the southwest but the sun still blazed outside the cave. I watched the clouds moving closer and getting darker. There was some lightning on the horizon. It

Fiction seemed very far away. Even though we were way up above the ground I felt like I was down underneath it, down inside a cave that was underneath everything. The place I was sitting in was a little seat made just for me. It seemed like I belonged there, and the whole world was up above pressing me down with all of its weight.

Finally, Dad sat up. He scooted over to the edge and sat there for a while. Then he turned around and smiled at me and wiggled his eyebrows. "Let's go, pardner."

We started down and when we turned a bend I got queasy when I saw the Jeep. It looked like a toy car down below. I focused on where I was stepping and kept close behind Dad until he got to a tough spot and I had to wait for him to figure out how to go.

The clouds closed in above us and it got very dark. Thunder nearly broke my ears and lightning flashed close.

Dad was moving on but I was stuck.

I kept turning around trying to go down backwards like he had, and then I would turn around again and look down. I smelled rain and heard it splattering over the ground not far away. Dad was waiting, looking up at me. I must have turned around five or six times and finally said the hell with it and dropped my foot onto something I hoped would hold me, and it did. I kept going, scraping my elbows and banging my forehead, and slid down next to him. He grabbed me around the shoulders and kissed my head and the rest of the way was easy. We ran into camp just as the rain hit.

My brother was already in the Jeep and we piled in too, then it poured.

"We'd have been down sooner, Tom-o. But Billy had to do quite a dance on this one ledge."

"He must have done a rain dance," Tom said.

We slept in the Jeep that night because everything was wet. When I closed my eyes I felt the rock again, next to my

belly, and I could tell I was going to fall asleep easy. Right before I did, I heard my dad singing. "Oh, she climbed up a rock to get away from a jock and said he'd never catch her. Da-da ad a da, da-da ad a da."

The next morning Dad and I drew all the pictures we could remember in the mud to show Tom, and he copied them into his notebook.

I’m looking at them right now and Tom is looking at me. "You want to climb the rock with me, Billy?"

"I don't think so. There are some hard places and you have to really reach and stretch. I don't think you're big enough."

"Yes, I am." He walks over and puts his notebook in the Jeep.

I move the chair more into the shade and sit down. When I look up Tom's headed for the rock. "Hey," I call out.

Of course, he ignores me. He disappears out of my sight around to the other side.

Going over to look for him I walk past the Jeep and see the ground is all wet underneath the engine. I raise the hood and take off the radiator cap. There's some water in it but it's way down. We used up the Stop-Leak a few days ago. "Tom-o!

Thomas! Help me with the Jeep." I wait to see if he'll come. He doesn't, so I close the hood. Then I crunch up through the rocks and around the corner.

Tom's climbed up about fifteen feet and looks to be stuck. Even that low, he looks small against the rock. He makes a few false starts and waves some bug away from his face, and then starts stepping backwards down. He slips and I hear him shout. "Shit," I say, and hustle up to where

8

9

Fiction he is standing, bending over holding his head with one hand and his knee with the other.

I turn him towards me. He's crying and blood's running down his face. I don't have a shirt on so I pull his off and press on the right side of his skull. A dark spot comes through and spreads slowly. I take the shirt away and rumple through his hair and look.

It's a gash and a couple scrapes, not too deep. "It's not bad, Tom-o. Let's go wash it."

We walk back. Passing the Jeep, I see the wet spot under the engine is bigger and getting all muddy.

We clean him up and he takes a nap. I wake him to eat, peanut butter and potatoes. He goes to sleep again and I go over and look at the Jeep. There's no water in the radiator. I go back to sit in the chair and watch the sky turn orange and red and gold as the sun goes down. The rock turns red and gold, and so do the trees, and after a while it all gets gray. The temperature drops and I want to lie down in my bag, but I go over to the Jeep instead.

I get out our packs. We've got almost three-gallon jugs of water left, and I put two of them into my pack. I wrap my jeans and three t-shirts and underwear around the jugs. My coat will sling over the top. I stand in front of the Jeep with no clothes on and pour a few sloshes of leftover water over my head and rub it over myself and stand there shivering while the air dries me. The moon's not up yet and the Milky Way is like somebody brushed a wide stroke of silver paint over the top of me. I put on my shorts and my long-sleeve shirt and shoes and sit in the tailgate of the Cherokee and sort through our stuff. Pots and dishes we'll leave. Three Snickers bars, the peanut butter and a bag of dried milk I stick in my pockets to take. The knife, rope, flashlight, batteries will all go with us, as well as the cigarette lighter and matches. I find the envelope of important papers and put it in the bottom of Tom's pack, along with his notebooks and pens and his extra pants. I pull the blanket off the driver’s seat

and dig the package of weed out from the hole. It looks to be worth about six hundred.

I wrap it in Tom's extra shirt and put it in his pack on top of the rest. It doesn't weigh much and cops don't bother little kids, but it’s on top where I can get to it quick and toss it if I need to. I stuff his jacket over the top of everything. His jacket is my old green one and I hold it up before I put it in. I can't remember when I was small enough for it to fit me.

I sleep for a while and then wake up my brother. We roll up our sleeping bags and tie them onto our packs and put quart bottles of water into the side pouches. Tom writes a note "Help yourself" to put on the box of pots and dishes that we leave at the campsite. He writes another note "Keep out" to leave on the Jeep's dash. We lock it up and split a Snickers and finish off the water.

Then we take off walking.

It's peaceful tonight, not windy at all.

When the moon rises, we'll have bright light all night and maybe we'll reach the highway by dawn. There isn't a cloud anywhere. I'll have to figure where to go without one, but there's only the one road out to the highway and turning west will get us headed toward Aunt Laurie’s.

Fiction

More about the Author

Judith Day was born and raised in St. Louis and headed west at age nineteen, in 1966.

After moving around a great deal she settled with her husband in 1986 in a small town near the ocean in northern California.

Judith worked as a cook, cab driver, and nonprofit staffer before becoming a psychotherapist in 1990. She has practiced Buddhism for forty years and has taught meditation for twenty years. For the past six years she has worked on U.S. military bases around the world, counseling service members and their families.Always a writer of fiction, Judith recently was published in the New Lit Salon Press’ Behind the Yellow Wallpaper, a spring 2014 anthology on women and madness. A story is scheduled to appear next year in Persimmon Tree.

10

11

Fiction

Lost to the Light

By Frank Scozzari

T

he reel spun futilely. The end of the film flapped repeatedly against the empty film gate while a steady beam of light shone out onto the screen below, featuring nothing more than dust particles flashing by. And through the keyhole from the theater seats in the grand old auditorium, came the grumbling sounds of patrons.

“Roll the film, damn it!” one cried out.

“Come’on for God’s sake, start the movie!” yelled another.

But the old man in the booth did not awake. He lay still, breathing heavily, his head resting on his arm on the table. In his mind was a vision of Greta Garbo in full Mata Hari headdress, dancing seductively before a mesmerized crowd. His ears were full of the sultry sounds of middle-eastern music and he could see smoke rising from the incense burners in the nightclub’s elegant showroom.

Dancing in his head, Garbo approached the multi-armed deity, a statue of Shiva, and her hips began moving feverishly and the coin-laden scarf around her waist chattered with great intensity. The audience, consisting of bartenders, politicians, tourists, and military attachés, went silent with anticipation.

Then she came right up against the statue, took her top off, and pressed her body into it. For a moment it was as though she was going to make love to it. Everyone was breathless. Then the room darkened and a cloaked woman dashed by, coving Garbo from view.

“She’s not a spy,” the old man mumbled. “She is not the great enemy of France like everyone thinks! She is not!”

“You are a good machine,” he said, patting it on its side.

“You bring life to the ordinary. You create magic from nothing.” Then he sighed. “But like me, you are old and replaceable!”

A loud bang awoke him. And when he Id lifted his head heappellantur saw the projection abhorreant vix, cu booth door slammed opened against the sumo per. the Augue front wall.blandit Throughdetracto it came René, theater scriptorem manager,eloquentiam rushing past him pro likeei. a madman.

Semper utroque volumus sea cu. imbecile!” he alienum yelled. ad, Est“You ignota doming docendi te. Affert René commune bolted for thesea second projector and clicked theei ‘switch button. vocibus eam.over’ Brute assum Instantly the film began to roll and angled commodo ut mel, vero omittam beams of light shone once again through usuback cu. to life the the keyhole, bringing oscillating images of characters and the sound of their dialogue.

“Bravo!” nonumy somebodyconsectetuer yelled from No veniam theater seats.

est, meis ancillae philosophia duo René back to the first et. Ne vis came inermis suscipiantur, ne machine, turned it off, and pressed his palm libristheaeterno scaevola against lamp canister, but ithis. wasMeis so hot he hadmovet to withdraw his facer hand quickly. at has, scripta iuvaret mei ea. Alii dicit ad usu, “Where is your brain?” he cried. He adatcetero duo. pushed the olddetracto man’s chest; hisQuis eyes were burning.

“What is it with you?” quando quaeque te sea, modus cetero per eu.

Falli tantas oporteat mel in, sea id debet explicari. Sumo ubique ei

Fiction In truth, the old man knew, he had taken too many naps, too often at the wrong times, and with greater frequency in the past weeks. It was a problem he could not cure.

“If you cannot do the job,” René cried. “I will find someone who can.”

He was referring to the time the old man had forgotten to shut off a projection lamp and burnt out an expensive bulb.

“Yes.” “And lock up properly.”

“Of course.”

The old man only looked up at René with sorry, puppy-dog eyes.

René looked around. The projection booth was in a typical state of disarray.

There were film canisters lying on the floor, some with their lids off, candy wrappers shattered about, and a half-eaten sandwich dried and crusty from the day before, lying on the table. The trashcan near the door was full and overflowing.

“You can’t leave this place in such a mess,” he said. “You can’t leave these cans lying around.” He gathered them up, put their lids back on, and stacked them in a neat pile against the wall. “You have to clean this place up! It’s part of your job. If you want to sleep, go home and sleep.”

The old man remained silent.

After a few more minutes of huffing, René stood silently with his hands on his hips. He glanced up at the big wall clock.

“This is the last showing. Can you handle it?”

“Yes.” “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” “Don’t forget to cap the film canisters!”

“I know.”

“And the lamps! Remember to shut off the lamps!”

René took another glance around the projection booth. “Only three more months!” he said, shaking his head.

When he turned to exit, the old man mumbled something under his breath.

“What?” René asked.

“Nothing.”

René hesitated at the door, but then left, closing it securely behind him.

When the film finished, the audience slowly cleared the auditorium and departed out the front lobby doors. The old man watched them through the key hole until the last patron was gone. Then he canned the two film reels and set the canisters on top of the neat pile René had stacked against the wall. He tidied up the projection booth, swept it clean with a broom, hiding the small pile of trash in a corner, and he made sure the lamps were off. Then he exited, locking the projection booth door twice around with the key before descending the narrow staircase to the foyer.

He swept up the popcorn and garbage scattered throughout the theater auditorium, dumped a garbage pail into the dumpster out back, and fixed the large theater curtain so no screen was showing.

Finally he returned to the lobby, opened a wall panel and pulled down the switch that doused the large marquee light out front.

A lonely walk down a lonely street brought the old man to his dreary, one-room apartment. He has lived there for too many years, but was thankful for the home all the

12

13

Fiction same. It was a place to lay his head and close his eyes, and imagine himself in another world, a cinematic world of swashbuckling swordsmen and adventurous sea captains. There were no windows inside the apartment; only a bed, a little table, a sink, a small closet, and a separate closet for the toilet. He took off his jacket, hung it on a hanger, and lay down on his shaggy old mattress.

Though he lay there very tired, he was unable to sleep. He stared up at the dark, opaque ceiling.

There is no magic, he thought. Not there in this lifeless cubical he called home.

Though he could obtain a semblance of peace in his apartment, he could never find the remedial harmony of the projection booth, and the peace he did find was only because he had etched so many cinematic scenes in his mind. Thank God he had red carpet connections, and Hollywood’s high society to depend on, he thought.

“You are the beauty,” he said, speaking to Garbo. “I understand every word you speak. I understand every move of your dance.”

The old man felt rather privileged that way; that he and he alone could communicate with Greta Garbo. It was some kind of telepathic, kinetic energy, and he found great delight in it.

seen how it ends, and we will end it differently. Together we will overcome the French military and German spies. Okay?”

He waited for her reply, but there was none. It didn’t always work, he knew.

Sometimes things just happen that way, but tonight he was really hoping for a two-way dialog and he was sad that there was not.

Then he thought of René’s words and he became even more depressed.

‘Only three more months!’ It was true he knew, the era of film projection at the Arlington was to come to a horrific end.

When he first heard the news, he didn’t believe or accept it was possible. How could an art form requiring such skill and finesse be replaced by a computerized robot? But the change was going to happen. He had even read about it in the papers. A new, digitized projector was to be delivered in the coming months and the old-school method of threading film and swapping reels was to become obsolete. As the silent era gave way to sound, the film era would go down to light; the light of new technology. Which meant the craft of the projectionist would die with it.

Curse all new technology and all those who advocate it! the old man thought.

Especially René! Sometimes the old way is the better way!

He pictured her clearly, as if she was standing there in the room beside him. Her image was as vivid and beautiful as she had ever been on screen.

He looked over to his small table.

There was a bottle of gin there waiting for him. He could see it in the darkness. For over five years now had been there. It had been that long since he’d been away from the stuff. And if he returned to the sharptasting liquid now, he knew he would return to it for good – until the end. It was the great morphine, he thought. It was the anesthesia for life’s tragedies; the sweetest of all escapes.

“If you want, I’ll help you. I’ll be your secret accomplice, your attaché fidèle. I know where to go, how to end it. I have

And it was not unusual. All the stars had this vice in one form or another. For Ray Milland it was whiskey on his long Lost

“It is you, yes? It is you who will save the world from itself? And not for country, but for love itself. Am I correct in my thinking? Of course I am.”

Fiction Weekend. For Richard Burton it was vodka and soda water, which he liked as much in life as he did in his on-screen rants with Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And as for Sinatra, well, of course, he preferred a well-mixed cocktail with the merest hint of dry vermouth, although heroin was his fix in The Man with the Golden Arm.

note René had left on the clipboard along with the daily features. It read: “Don’t fall asleep! And don’t forget to turn off the lamps!”

But it was gin that Spencer Tracy liked best. Gin was his favorite, his one and only; the drink he used to kill the real-life pain of the ordinary man.

“He knows nothing of film projection!

He is the boss of no one!”

The old man closed his eyes and tried to sleep. And though he finally drifted off, his sleep was restless. On through the night he awoke often, and when he did he looked over at the table and saw the bottle of gin still there waiting.

The morning was usual, nothing different; a poached egg at the corner café, some time to browse the newsstands, and a long walk along the river. He kept occupied until it was time for work. That was his routine, anything to keep him from his dreary apartment. When the afternoon came, he made his way to the old downtown district. A long sidewalk led him to the vertical, art deco marquee of the Arlington Theater. The overhead billboard displayed the films ‘Now Playing;’ Beat the Devil and The African Queen.

“Ah, it will be Bogie night,” the old man mumbled.

He unlocked the front door, went into the lobby, and looked around.

Everything was as he had left it the night before. He climbed the narrow staircase to the projection booth, slipped the key into the door lock, and opened it.

As always, the projection booth greeted him like the arms of a beautiful woman. Stepping inside always gave him a warm feeling, like a welcoming home. He smiled broadly. That is, until he saw the

The old man tore the note off the clipboard, crumbled it up, and tossed it in the corner.

He searched though the pile of film canisters, and when he could not find the scheduled films, he glanced around the room and located them on top of the projection table. Evidently René had placed the films there to make it easier for the old man.

“So now he thinks I’m not capable of finding the proper film cans?”

There were only four reels, which was good, he thought, only requiring two changeovers per film. Not like the old days when you had to do three or four reel changeovers for one movie.

He opened the ‘Beat the Devil’ canister; the one marked ‘one of two,’ and took out the reel. He flipped opened the cover on the first projector, placed the reel on the sprocket, pulled out an arm’s length of film, and held it to the light. Once he found where the numeric countdown begun, he threaded the film through the gate, running the machine just long enough for it to catch, then looped the end of it onto the empty reel and advanced the film to the opening credits. He repeated the process on the second projector, loading the second reel and advancing it to the switch-over cue.

“Life is an illusion,” he mumbled. “It is best to live it as such. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.”

He sat at the table and ate a sandwich. After forty minutes, he looked down through the keyhole and saw only one

14

15

Fiction person seated in the theater auditorium.

When he looked down a second time, the audience had grown by three. At a quarter to four, he pressed the mechanical button which opened the theater curtains. And when it was exactly four o’clock, he started the film, framing it first, sharpening the focus, and synchronizing the sound. When all was set and done, he sat at the table and listened, to what, for him, was a most beautiful melody – the sound of film clicking through a gate at twenty-four frames a second. It was a six-thousand foot reel, which meant he’d have an hour before he would need to switch over to the second projector.

Through the keyhole came the sound of Humphrey Bogart’s voice. Though he could not see the film from his seated position, he knew every scene, every film angle, and every word of dialogue, verbatim. He had seen the film a hundred times, maybe two hundred.

“What's our wide-eyed Irish leprechaun doing outside my door?”

Bogart’s voice asked “Just wanted to have a little talk,” the voice of Peter Lorre replied.

“Okay, but make it fast,” said the old man quickly, stealing the line before Bogart could speak it.

“Okay, but make it fast,” Bogart then repeated on the big screen.

The old man chuckled.

After fifty minutes, he turned on the lamp on the second machine, giving it time to warm up. After another five minutes he began watching for the cue mark; a small circular flash in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, and when he saw it, he clicked on the motor of the second projector. And when it flashed a second time, he pressed the changeover button.

Then he heard the splice go through the

machine and the images from the second projector immediately took over, flicking out the black and white celluloid, without interruption, exactly where the first reel had finished off.

“Now that’s the way to do it!” he said.

“None of this three, two, one,” referring to the numerical countdown seen onscreen if the cue mark was missed.

The old man chuckled, thinking back to a time when René had mistimed a changeover. He had been left to manage the projection booth for only a minute and still couldn’t get it right! And there was that awful gap of white screen between the reels, and the painful groans of all the theater patrons.

He clicked off the motor on the first machine and began watching the film through the keyhole. On screen now were Jennifer Jones and Humphrey Bogart, standing on the Terrace of Infinity, high above the Amalfi Coast. The cinemascope image provided a panoramic view of sea and mountains that stretched from one side of the screen to the other. It seemed to be filmed from the height of an airplane, which gave a real appreciation for the beauty of this place. And the dialog was the quick and clever, bringing a smile to the old man’s face.

“There are two good reasons for falling in love,” Jennifer Jones said. “One is that the object of your affection is unlike anyone else, a rare spirit. The other is that he’s like everyone else, only superior, the very best of a type.”

“Well if you must know, I’m a very typical rare spirit,” the old man said before Bogart echoed the same line onscreen.

“How long have you lived here?” asked Jennifer Jones.

Fiction “The longest I’ve lived anywhere,” the old man recited, again beating Bogart to the punch.

“Didn’t you ever have a mother and a father and a house?”

“No I was an orphan,” the old man said loudly. “Then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.”

The old man smiled as Bogart repeated the lines; “No I was an orphan.

Then a rich and beautiful woman adopted me.”

It was like Sunday mass, the old man thought, easier than reciting lines from the good book. And as the movie progressed, the old man lost himself, as he often did, in the romantic action and intriguing storyline. The images on the screen danced in his head as if they were real.

Now a trio of characters, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, and Bogart, found themselves shipwrecked and washed ashore on a deserted beach. A hoard of horse-backed nomads stormed down a hillside firing shots at them. Everyone in the scene was frightened, except Bogart, and the old man, who stood fearless in the projection booth.

The old man raised his hands and said bravely, “Better get down everyone!”

He made his voice sound tough and cynical.

Seconds later, Bogart raised his hands and repeated the line on the big screen.

“Africa,” the old man then said aloud as if he were speaking directly to the nomad chieftain. “It’s not a bad place to land. No customs forms to fill out.”

When Bogart repeated the lines, the old man chuckled.

The film finished, and during the intermission the old man replaced the reels with the second feature, The African Queen.

He waited the customary twenty minutes for everyone to return from the concessions and then rolled the film. Once he heard the projector running smoothly, he sat down at the projection table and listened to its melodic sound.

“You are a good machine,” he said, patting it on its side. “You bring life to the ordinary. You create magic from nothing.”

Then he sighed. “But like me, you are old and replaceable!”

He stretched his arm out comfortably on the table and laid his head upon it, and in his mind he watched the movie, following along as if it were playing in his head. He knew every scene, every word; all the facial expressions. The smooth clicking sound of film rushing through the gate, coupled with his cerebral reenactment, brought him to the place he loved best, his nirvana.

But he did not watch Bogart and Hepburn. He was with them in the boat, going down the Congo River. And he recited Bogart’s lines as if they were his own. And he watched Katherine Hepburn’s transformation from one who despised an aging old drunk, to one who loved. And now that she’d become smitten with this rugged old guy who was as unkempt and yet as capable as he, he accepted her expressions of adornment as if they were meant for him.

The celluloid images danced vividly in his head. Before he knew it, Humphrey Bogart was strapped to the mast of a ship and was being interrogated by a nasty German sea-captain as Hepburn was held helplessly to the side.

But it was not Bogart; it was he, the old man, strapped to the mass.

“Don’t give in!” the old man mumbled, feeling the ship rocking beneath

16

17

Fiction him. “Be brave Rose! Be strong! It is for love and country!”

“This is it!” he screamed. “You are through!”

As the large German vessel, the Louisa, drifted closer to the African Queen, dancing on stormy seas with its makeshift torpedoes pointing from its bow, it was like the old man was having an out-of-body experience. He could see it all from above.

He could see the torpedoes, closing in on the hull of the Louisa, and he knew, at any moment, they would strike and the entire ship would explode and sink.

The old man lifted his head and looked on as René rushed past him and pressed the changeover button on the second projector. Instantly, the images returned to the silver screen below.

“Thank you!” someone yelled from the auditorium.

“Take cover Rose!” he shouted, looking over to Hepburn. “I’ll be with you shortly!”

And he braced himself for the inevitable.

“About time!” another screamed out.

“You are finished!” René shouted to the old man. “Get your things and leave!”

“What?” the old man asked.

“You’re fired!”

In his head, the reels spun forward at lightning speed. Though the movie had reached its end in his mind, it had barely finished the first reel on the projector beside him. On the screen, the first cue marked flashed by, then the second, then the end of the film looped through the gate, and suddenly, nothing but a white stream of light shone out from the projector. And the groaning and booing from the audience was almost instantaneous.

It took a moment for the old man to gather himself. He had barely stepped off the deck of the Louisa.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Get your things and leave! Now! I’ll mail you your check.”

“But I thought I had three more months?”

“Roll the damned film!”

“Not no more. You are through, “Hey! Wakeup up there!” another screamed from the front of the house.

But the old man’s head remained down on the table, resting on his out-stretched arm; his eyes closed and his expression intense.

Even if he wanted to move he could not. He was strapped to a ship’s mast nevertheless!

And the ropes were so tightly around him, he could feel them cutting into his arms.

“Be brave, Rose!” he mumbled again.

Then the projection room door swung open with a bang, slamming against the forward wall, and in stormed René, as livid as he could possibly be.

now!”

René grabbed the old man’s collar, lifted him from the chair, and using his grip, escorted him to his bag, which was against the wall. The old man picked up the bag and then René pushed him to the door.

There was nothing the old man could do. He was too dazed and confused to resist, and when he was heaved through the door, pushed out like a rag doll, he nearly tumbled down the stairs. He dropped several steps before he could stop his momentum and regain his balance. Then he straightened himself, turned back, and looked up at René, who stood with both hands on his hips.

Fiction

“Get out!” René yelled, pointing toward the front door of the lobby.

More about the Author

The old man continued down the steps, made his way through the foyer, and pushed his way out the front doors.

“He is a man without honor,” he mumbled to himself. “He is a man with no loyalty.”

As he walked down the street in darkness to his apartment, he thought of Garbo; her persona as Mata Hari, strong and defiance against all odds and in the face of certain death. Her image danced in his head, feverously; the coins of her hipscarf chattering like wind chimes in a hurricane. Every movement of her body showed him her strength and will to overcome. She is the bold and daring one, he thought; the one never to give in to the misalignments and abuses of power.

Then, in his mind, he saw the bottle of gin awaiting him, there on his table in his dreary apartment, and the image of Garbo faded to black.

Pushcart Prize nominee Frank Scozzari resides in Nipomo, a small town on the California central coast. His award-winning short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines including The Emerson Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, Tampa Review, Pacific Review, Eleven Eleven, South Dakota Review, Minetta Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Reed Magazine, The Broken Plate, Roanoke Review, and Short Story America, and have been featured in literary theater.

18

19

Fiction

Flightless Birds

(Loosely) Based on a True Story

J

By Matthew Di Paoli

ean never made mashed potatoes unless it was a special occasion.

She liked to cook healthy for Herbert, who was out in the fields all day. He worked and sweated, and when he was done, he wore soil and white salt lines on his cheeks and hands. He'd come home and knock back three or four Millers. All the liquid seemed to go straight to his gut, which laid flat on her belly during their lovemaking and made a swishing sound like a half-full water balloon.

It was the beginning of June and the fireflies crackled through the wheat fields like winged candles. Jean could make out Herbert beating his way through the long stalks, knocking his stubby arms against the wheat as he cleared a path to the house.

There was just enough light from the moon and the insects and the yellow porch lamp to spot his thick body in the grain.

Jean let go of the curtain and returned to the kitchen, lifting the cover off the potatoes and stirring some more butter into them. It swirled in so smoothly, she thought, like it was supposed to be there.

Sometimes she found pleasure in small, meaningless things.

Herbert snapped open the screen door and entered as it clattered behind him.

The heat from outside rushed into the house, and Jean could feel it bear down on her, even in the kitchen.

"I'm making potatoes," she called out.

"Goddamn crop is dry. You’d think with all the technology now they could make it rain once in a while.”

Jean ran some cold water into a large pot, pretending not to hear. She ran her palm around the pot’s steel mouth.

He poked his head into the kitchen.

"Jean, you listening?"

"Hmm?"

“You bring a nonindigenous bird to this farm for God knows what reason, it starts eating your wheat, and now you think it wants to have sex with you?"

"I said no one cares about the common farmer anymore." Herbert went Id abhorreant appellantur straight into the fridge and opened a beer.

“They’re vix, too interested in tweeting cu sumo blanditto worry about a little rain now and then.”

detracto per. Augue The sounds ofeloquentiam the beer opening scriptorem made Jean think of having a Coke on a hot proin ei.

Semper utroque day back Missouri.

She hadn't seen her family in a while.sea She cu. saw his the time. volumus Estallignota doming alienum Herbert exhaled and sat ad, down at the table with his Miller.

He stared at the cutlery docendi commune sea te. and the glass plates already set out for him.

Affert vocibus ei eam.

"What are you making?"

Brute assum commodo ut "Meatloaf and mashed potatoes." mel, vero omittam usu cu.

"That sounds good, I guess. There was something eating the crops again today. More of it this time."

No veniam nonumy consectetuer est, meis ancillae philosophia duo et. Ne vis inermis suscipiantur, ne libris aeterno scaevola his. Meis movet at has, facer scripta

Fiction Jean had her back turned to him.

She opened the oven to check on the loaf.

"Probably just rabbits."

"Big fucking rabbits if that’s what it is. Real big. I've got no respect for rabbits. I don't like them. Don’t create anything."

"I know, dear."

"But they've never put such a dent in my wheat. And there was no hole in the fence I could see."

Jean slipped on a couple of burnt, mismatched oven mitts. She removed the meatloaf from the oven, careful not to touch her forearms to the stove roof. She'd done it before and two small, raised minus signs on her skin reminded her.

"Well you've always beaten the rabbits before,” she said. “I have complete confidence in you." She placed the meatloaf in the center of the table as if it were a bouquet. "Careful, it's hot."

"I know it's hot. You just took it out of the oven."

"You're not a cartoon character. I think you're excellent at catching rabbits.

That one on the cartoon's terrible. He's always fooled by it. When was the last time a rabbit fooled you?"

"Well that's not--" "When?"

"Never."

"That's right. Never.”

Herbert puffed out his chest and leaned back, taking another sip of beer.

Jean always knew how to make him feel like a provider. She considered it a skill in the way that a nanny takes pride in making a child fall asleep.

"This really is a good meal, honey."

"Mm, good," she said, distractedly, looking out toward the window. She saw something moving out in the fields where the shadow of something much bigger than a rabbit grew over the sheer blue curtains. **

"You're right," she said. She went back and grabbed the mashed potatoes and a large spoon. She dug in for a big scoop and plopped it on Herbert's plate.

"Thanks," he said. "It's just that--" he took one look at the mashed potatoes, dug his fork in and shoveled a chunk into his mouth. "I love mashed potatoes."

"I know."

There were certain foods Herbert liked more than anyone she’d ever known.

She enjoyed that about him.

He got up, went to the fridge and opened up another Miller. He took a gulp, pressed his bottom teeth against his lip.

"Who chases rabbits around for a living? A cartoon character, that’s who."

The next morning, Herbert searched for holes in the chicken wire surrounding the fields. He couldn't find a single one, but there was more wheat had gone missing.

Big, sweeping patches just shorn off. The wheat was tall, so that it came up nearly to his eyes. He swatted it away with his palms as he slogged through, foregoing the usual cleared paths. The sky swirled pepper black. Each cloud resembled a dense chunk of coal bobbing along the horizon.

In the distance, Herbert heard the hollow crack of thunder, and the air began to cool. Should be getting back, he thought.

But as he waded through the wheat, he noticed a small, bulbous shape bobbing just above the stalks. His vision wasn't strong like it used to be. Jean always bothered him to get glasses, but what did he need to see

20

21

Fiction except for wheat and the TV screen, and he could sit as close as he wanted to either. He squinted to get a better look, and as he did, the bulbous shape moved closer. He moved closer and it moved closer, and he squinted and pushed aside the grain; and when he got about fifty feet away, he saw something clearer than he had before. There was something white in the center of it. It was a beady, little eyeball.

Herbert stopped dead in his tracks.

"The fuck is that?" He cocked his head.

"Winston, is that you?" he called out.

Winston was a veteran farmer with a lazy eye and large collection of old shoe horns that he'd sometimes invite Herbert over to see. It was funny how the man fit the horn and not the other way around, Herbert had come to realize.

Herbert called out again, but there was no answer. The eye came into focus and a figure appeared. It was a large, seemingly flightless bird, and it was staring straight into Herbert as if it could see into his soul. Maybe it could, thought Herbert, a little spooked.

"You been stealing my grain?"

The bird didn't answer. It ambled forward, its neck gaunt and long like a wilted string bean.

leader bird had a salacious look in its eyes.

He moved in closer.

Just then, Herbert heard Jean's voice calling from only a little ways away.

"Herbert, it's lunchtime. You out here?"

"I'm over here!" yelled Herbert, desperately. Jean poked her head into the small patch where the two birds held down Herbert, and the leader twisted its head around to observe her. It had a tuft of black feathers on its white forehead that differentiated it from the others.

"And just what in the hell is going on here?" said Jean.

Confused and startled, the birds scattered back into the field and disappeared from sight. Herbert remained on the ground, his pride shattered, sick at the thought of what might have happened next.

"Herbert?" Jean knelt down and rubbed his back.

"What's going on?"

He remained silent.

"You can tell me. Did you bring those emus here?"

"Emus?"

Herbert waved his hands in a startling fashion. "Get outta here!"

But the bird didn't leave; it lingered.

It undressed Herbert with its eyes. It dominated him. Herbert felt very alone, very vulnerable.

From behind, two more birds ambled up to Herbert and began pushing him. They jabbed him with their beaks and shoved him to the ground. Herbert tried to get up off the dirt, but the two birds held him down. The

"Yeah, those were emus. You know, large, flightless birds. Don't know what they're doing here though."

"Well they were gonna--" Jean pressed her skirt against the back of her thighs and sat down in the dirt with Herbert. "I've never seen you this frazzled."

"I think they were gonna molest me."

"What?"

Fiction "The emus. They were gonna have their way with me."

Jean jumped up off the ground.

"What in the hell are you talking about? Are you insane? You bring a nonindigenous bird to this farm for God knows what reason, it starts eating your wheat, and now you think it wants to have sex with you?"

Herbert regained some of his typical temperament as his nostrils flared. He pushed up off the ground. "I know what I saw. It had that look in its eyes. You weren't here."

Jean sighed. "You know, half the time I don't even want to have sex with you and I'm a human woman. Now you think large, flightless birds just can't resist you so much that they're going to forcefully take you in a wheat field like that Forest Gump girl?"

Herbert pushed past Jean and headed back toward the house.

"Where are you going now?"

"To get my gun.”

Jean lowered her head and began to follow him. "Great. I'll just go ahead and put your lunch in the fridge then." ** Herbert grabbed his best Remington from the gun cabinet and loaded it. He didn't keep any of the rifles loaded because Jean asked him not to. He was always listening to Jean, he realized. She came in the screen door. It rattled shut behind her, and she went straight into the kitchen to put away his sandwich.

"I'll be right back," Herbert yelled into the kitchen. He headed straight outside with his rifle, and that's when he saw it. It was a cornucopia of emus. They'd formed small v-

like patterns, and in the middle stood the leader, its black tuft of feathers glistening like oil in the midday sun. It eyed Herbert in a way that made him uncomfortable. Like at any moment that emu could have him. He raised his rifle and peered through the sites.

He zeroed in on the leader. It gazed back, unrepentant. Herbert's hands sweated. He felt a flutter in his gut. He squeezed the trigger and released a shot just wide. Two emus rushed him and pinned him to the ground. They began pecking at him and bandying about triumphantly with their gray tail feathers in the air.

Jean burst out of the front door with a broom. "You stay away from him!" She swung the broom wildly as the congregation of emus zigzagged away through the wheat fields, their gullets vibrating with bile and belligerence. ** Later, at the police station, Herbert attempted to describe the event: "They were searching with their lids."

His vocabulary eluded him when he was nervous. It was like he was ten again.

"Searching for what, sir?" asked the officer.

"My manhood," said Herbert.

"Your manhood."

"That's right."

Jean sat next to Herbert, holding his hand. The station chairs were small and hard. It was uncomfortable to sit there. She felt a mixture of concern and shame.

"Was it a male or a female fowl?"

"Fowl only refers to birds that are domesticated," said Jean.

22

23

Fiction The officer shot her a look and then returned his gaze to Herbert.

"Male," said Herbert.

"How could you possibly know that?"

Jean tilted her head.

That cocky black tuft of feathers on his head.

"That's him."

"We've gotten a few other reports just like yours of the past couple days."

"Really?” said Jean, flatly. "Just like

"Things slow down when you're in danger."

The officer leaned across the desk.

"So what you mean to tell me, sir, is that this emu creature had designs to assault you?"

"In a sense," Herbert corrected.

"A sense?"

"That's correct."

Jean felt as uncomfortable as the time Herbert ate all of the Gorgonzola at the Jinkson's anniversary party and threw up in the fireplace. It was white and green and it sparkled when it burned, she remembered.

"Excuse me a moment," said the officer. He got up and shut the door behind him.

Through the glass Jean could see he was speaking with two other officers.

"Don't you think they have better things to do?"

"Better than an assault case?" said Herbert, gravely.

"No not an actual assault case,” she whispered aggressively.

The officer returned and shut the door behind him. He leaned in again. He was holding something in his fist. "Is this the emu?" He held up a glossy 5" x 10" headshot.

There it was. It was horrific for Herbert to gaze into its soulless eyes again.

his?"

"These birds have an incredible sex drive. They can go four or five times a night without even hydrating," said the officer, glancing at a folder on his desk.

"What does that have to do with anything? You mean with other birds?"

The officer took a deep breath and locked eyes with Jean. "Other birds, men-don't make a difference to an emu. Don't make no difference at all." ** For the next few days, Herbert refused to leave the house. He gathered up all his canned goods that he’d stockpiled since 9/11 and stacked them into a pyramid in the kitchen like an aisle display. He locked all the windows and doors and told Jean if she left he wasn’t going to let her back in until the infestation was over. She cooked stews and beans for all three meals, watching a Designing Women marathon as she waited.

The firefights mostly took place at night when the emus were more lethargic.

Crack and flash lit up the wheat fields.

Herbert recalled an old war movie he’d watched with his father starring Audey Murphy, To Hell And Back. He knew the feeling now.

Outside, the battle was more brutal than Herbert could have imagined. These officers had mostly arrested drunks and unskilled prostitutes giving handjobs by the badminton courts. Most of them hadn’t even discharged their guns outside of the firing

Fiction range. Much of the time they ended up fighting “hand-to-hand” with the emus. And though flightless, their wings had grown muscular and veiny. Many policemen were injured and one was even temporarily paralyzed when he fell on a stalk of wheat funny.

Incandescent flashbangs lit up the skies, but the noise only seemed to excite the emus, which let their gullets flap wildly in the breeze and chirped war songs in the darkness. Beak against riot shield, feather against skin—they fought for three grisly days until things got very quiet one morning, and that was when there was a knock at the door.

Surreptitiously, Herbert crept to the door, careful not to allow himself to be seen through the window. He snuck a peek outside. It was the same officer they’d spoken to at the station. His mouth bled and he’d heavily bandaged his fingers. Herbert opened up and pulled the officer inside, quickly slamming the screen door shut behind. It rattled closed.

“What happened?” asked Herbert.

The officer tried to catch his breath.

“You’ll need to evacuate.”

Jean overheard and rushed into the living room. She had soap on her hands.

Herbert sunk.

“For how long?”

The officer shook his head. “Emus got these lands now. They control the fields.” He pulled out a small map of the territory, pointing at two blue dots. “They cut off our supplies here and here.”

“Now hold on a minute,” demanded Jean. “You mean to tell me you all lost to a bunch of flightless birds?”

“Flight’s got nothing to do with it!” the officer snapped. He regained his composure. “I’m sorry, it’s just -- they’re made for this sort of combat. Like they lured us in. Like they planned it all along.”

Herbert placed his palm on the officer’s shoulder in solidarity. “Well,” he said, “we’d best get packing.”

“I’m not leaving our home,” insisted Jean.

Herbert looked at the officer, his bloodied lips, his reddened eyes. He must not have slept in days, thought Herbert. He looked at his wife. She looked so pretty when her face got red, like a shiny bobbing apple. “It is our land.” Herbert picked up his shotgun and opened the door. The leader stood there, anticipating Herbert, his black head feathers greased and glistening in the sun. Herbert charged out of the house. The screen door rattled shut behind him.

Those who tell the story now make Herbert out to be something he wasn’t. He was just a man who liked potatoes, who wasn’t as smart as his wife, who came close to being sexually assaulted by an emu. He was a man like any other man, but he was also the man who saved the town. And that’s why there’s a statue of him in the parking lot behind the 7/11.

24

25

Fiction

More about the Author

Matthew Di Paoli received his BA at Boston College where he won the Dever Fellowship and the Cardinal Cushing Award for Creative Writing. He obtained his MFA in Fiction at Columbia University. He has been published in Neon, Carte Blanche, Black Denim Lit, Blue Penny Quarterly, Poydras Review, Gigantic, FictionWeek Literary Review, Ascent Aspirations, Newport Review, and Post Road literary magazines among others. Currently, he's publishing a novel entitled Killstanbul with El Balazo Media, shopping a novel entitled Holliday, and is teaching Writing and Literature at Monroe College.

Fiction

Of Mothers & Mountains

By Kayla Miller

M

ama was tired at the wheel. Her eyelids kept closing, heavy-like.

William kept seeing the slight give of her neck, the drop and then sudden snap back to wakefulness, his Mama driving him down the bleakness of interstate.

They'd started up from Jonesboro, Georgia, the Rockies affixed in Mama's pinprick pupils and William's rain sweating on the truck's tarp-covered and musty seat.

They started using a tarp in that old turquoise Ford when Mama noticed small mushrooms growing in the moist, tight spaces between the seats; hazards of her raining son. Mama blared Bob Segar and Johnny Cash through the pickup's speakers. William’s thick-dropped rain fell rhythmic on the blue plastic; he kept the cab humid. They didn't say much for all those long hours, but their eyes stayed open and they sang often, singin' about crying women and beautiful losers. Did you know you can see those Rockies all the way from Kansas?

From one-hundred-and-fifty miles away, the mountains broke the flat Kansan horizon like a scar, an overgrown and greedy birthmark, a sky-scar. William and Mama hadn't seen nothin' like it. Mama was listening to Michael Jackson's song from Free Willy, what was it? -- "Will You Be There" -- and she had it turned up as loud as those speakers would get, which wasn't insignificant.

When her and William crested a small hill on the highway and saw them impressive mountains, Mama pulled over.

To sob.

Eventually, she stopped cryin'.

William just sat there that exaggerated

stretch of minutes, uncomfortable-like, and his fingers ran small circles and loops and figure eights around one another, ten acrobats, ten Olympians, ten worker men in matching skin uniforms. Listenin' to Mama cry made William's rain come down in steadier sheets, because no one likes to see their mother cry. Do you?

Mama noticed of course, but she couldn’t stop; because she saw how big it was, because she knew how far away those Rockies were, because she didn't think she had anyone around who would “carry her boldly,” or “be there” -- except for William and his rain, of course.

Eventually, she kept driving, pulled off the shoulder and back onto the Kansan I - 80 W; continued their movement towards those too-big mounds of earth. But she didn't stop crying. William watched his Mama cry those next one-hundred-and-fifty miles to Estes Park, Colorado, that same Michael Jackson song on repeat, and he rained pretty rhythmic, too. She picked Estes Park because Stephen King wrote The Shining there. Mama liked the mountains, and likened herself to a mountain woman, and her son to a thunderstorm.

For the past hundred miles, Mama had just cried and watched them mountains, not really getting closer despite the so-many miles they’d traveled. It was at this time in that long, long road trip, around the Rockies and Colorado state line, that Mama started talking more. When only fifty miles separated William and his Mama from Estes Park, city of ghosts and snow and fictional hotels, she spoke. She spoke after drying up, pulling herself together, patting her puffed eyes and whispering "okay, okay, okay" over and over under her breath. She broke her speech-fast by saying,

26

27

Fiction “Baby?”

William didn't know if his mother tired of the country gold she poured from the Ford’s speakers, or if his own steady blipblipblips of rain hitting tarp annoyed her, or if she just missed the sound of human voices, which he thought was often the reason Mama talked to him. Just to have some noise in all his silence. Whatever it was, something in those mountains looming got Mama to talking, driving into Colorado; she kept her eyes on their black slash in the distance and talked without lookin' her son's way once.

"Eventually," Mama said, “Eventually, baby, you learn that men won't love you after they hurt you. They'll scar your face when they fuck you, and then find the scar ugly."

William Leroy Gardner kept quiet.

"There ain't nothing but women on my side of the family, though you don't know any of ‘em. Our men die off. Or leave.

You can't invest in folks, William. That's why you don't know ‘em, the family I still got.

That's why I don't know ‘em. And they don't know me.

“You got this sadness that leaks out your pores and roams about the earth with you and hovers over you like a bad dream and it's always been there.”

And I don't know you, William. You

Id abhorreant appellantur got this rain I don't understand.

Youvix, got cu this sadness that leaks out your pores and sumo blandit detracto per. Augue roams about the earth with you and hovers scriptorem ei. over you like a badeloquentiam dream and it's pro always beenSemper there. I remember this small cloud in utroque volumus sea cu. your incubator, the condensation that built Est ignota doming alienum ad, docendi commune sea te. Affert vocibus ei eam. Brute assum commodo ut mel, vero omittam usu cu.

up on the inside of your first plastic cage.

And you don't know me either, baby.

You don't."

The woman behind the steering wheel bit her lip, shook her head, and said nothing else. The only sounds were the thick splashes of water hitting the tarp on the pickup’s seat. The Rocky Mountains still didn't look any closer. Another ten minutes passed. She cleared her throat.

"The first time I tried to die, I figured I'd been careless. Or lacked conviction. I was only ten-years-old,” Mama said.

“You don't wanna know this, baby, I know you don't, but my secrets ain’t explicit like yours, they don’t walk around with me and greet folks before I say a word. And besides, eventually all things come to light."

You can empathize with this, surely.

She continued, "No one even found me. It was so undramatic. I felt sleepy in the bathtub, and nodded off after setting the razor on the ivory of the tub's rim. I don't know how long I slept. I woke up in my twin bed with red lines in my white skin, felt a little lightheaded, stood up and saw my sheets dotted with blood, but not much.

Nothin’ to worry about. When I walked to the bathroom, the tub was filled with red-brown water. I drained it. Stuck little pieces of toilet paper to my open skin, the same way you’ll do eventually, when you start to shave your face.

But that wasn’t the last time. William, I’m sorry, I’m real sorry, I hear you rainin’ harder; I know you’re getting all nervous hearing about this. But that wasn’t the last time I tried to die, unsuccessfully.

Baby, I have to break everything to feel anything."

That was it. William kept so still; he tried to hold his rain in, even, in efforts to

Fiction leave the spellcast cab undisturbed, to let his Mama keep talking about her family and her youth. Though it was strange and sad, William Leroy Gardner knew so little about the mother he so loved, and soaked this knowledge up like water in soil, like the ground does after he walks on it.

Mama didn't say nothing else 'til their second day waking in a log cabin across the street from the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. Not a word. And only then 'cause she had to.

(But she did this sometimes, reader, you know? Mama was known to make vows of silence and carry around little notebooks to voice her misgivings. Vows of silence that would last for weeks. Sometimes, she left William alone in their shitty house in Jonesboro, Georgia because she felt called to Florida, to the ocean, to its simultaneous silence and not-silence. She often came back not saying a word, clutching a notepad and quick-scribbling commands like “do the dishes” and “the house needs dusting.”)

They couldn't afford to stay in the Stanley Hotel, the giant white ghost overlooking all of Estes Park that inspired The Shining’s Overlook Hotel. It was where King stayed, and Mama wanted too real bad, but with what the pickup drank in gas, she couldn't pay $187 a night, no matter how haunted the hotel. So mother and son stayed directly across the street, in a log cabin motel that had a shared balcony looking smack at a singular white-topped mountain. William couldn't believe it, that mountain from that balcony; how giant it was. When he woke and saw its huge, white peak through the window, he felt it akin to God's oversized eyeball, and William didn't like it none. Made him nervous.

Before Colorado and Kansas, William and his Mama drove through lightening storms in St. Louis, Missouri; pushed the pickup to ninety when they spotted the dark mass of a tornado in the rearview in Texas; watched the sun rise

over Tennessee's Blue Ridge Mountains.

When they first drove into Estes Park, it was seventy-five degrees and bright, the sun hittin' the mountains' sharp edges and cliffs at harsh angles. Mama gasped when she saw how clear that one big Rocky Mountain was off their balcony, and William thought he saw a sheen in her eye that said she was in love with this place, more than she'd ever looked at him with love in her eyes, but so much the way he looked at her.

The pair's second morning in Colorado revealed a springtime mountain city turned frozen. The Georgians had never seen so much snow, if you can believe it.

Overnight, the lines in the motel parking lot were covered in thick white inches of snow and ice, the likes of which William and his Mama didn't know how to combat. Mama broke her two-day silence: "I'll be goddamned.”

Sometimes, you have to look folks in the eye after you hurt them and rip them apart and take them for granted and leave them alone. Sometimes, you get caught in snowstorms without a tool to clear your truck's iced-over windows. Sometimes, your mother looks out a motel window and speaks to no one, like you're not even there.

"I'll go talk to the folks at the front desk."

Mama can be cajoling and sweet and snake-charming when she wants. Or maybe the front desk men took pity on the graying woman with the Southern accent who didn't know how to drive in snow. The motel workers lent her an ice scraper. The younger of the two men, with brighter eyes and a kinder smile, proffered to Mama: "The most important thing is to take your time. Don't worry about going fast. And if you hit some ice, pump your brakes. Don't slam 'em down."

She relayed this to William while she

28

29

Fiction scraped frantically at the Ford and he watched. William imagined his Mama nodding and flirting with the receptionist men.

She instructed him to stand in the truck bed while she scraped the front windshield and the back windshield and the headlights and the taillights and the windows and the side mirrors. William Leroy Gardner rained on the truck, and Mama kept the engine runnin' with the heater blasting. The ice was thick and stubborn.

Mama worked in silence, but she softened as the ice did.

"Baby, we gotta get outta here. This snow ain't gonna let up. If we don't leave now, we'll get snowed in for two weeks. And we can’t afford no hotel for two weeks."

Mother and son got into the warm cab of the truck, and the crunch of their plastic ponchos when they climbed in, layered over long-johns and sweaters and hoodies and multiple pairs of socks, reminded William of potato chips. They wore them ponchos constantly to keep out his precipitation. His rain would freeze them in this weather if they didn't keep dry, reader. Think on this. *** Since Mama didn’t believe in “newfangled GPS,” she road-tripped like this: picked a place, picked a reason, and looked on the Internet for directions. Bought an atlas that she never used. Told folks, usually a day or two before departure.

Packed what mother and son needed.

Printed out directions and used the speedometer to keep track of the miles.

Mama did the math, knew exactly how many miles her truck got to the gallon, and always let it ride on empty, ‘til it was just burnin’ fumes, really. Only then did she feed the pickup its gasoline dinner. This was how she road-tripped.

Packing up and leaving town --

Mama didn’t know she’d be so good at it; that it’d feel so good. Easily, she claimed this stumbled-upon cowboy wanderlust and coiled her feline identity around it. Mama touted herself the chameleon but truth was, she had more feline in her than a witch’s familiar. Cat-spine routes carved pathways across the country, over plains and through underwater tunnels, and Mama shirked off old skin with every state line her and William crossed.

The drive from Jonesboro had some close calls, to be sure, but nothing that created a serious deterrent. Almost running out of gas in the middle of night on an empty roadway in Alabama hundreds of miles from anyone they knew -- even that wasn’t such a thing to Mama, with her car insurance’s roadside assistance. No flat tires to speak of, and even though the pair gambled, they hadn’t hit shit-out-of-luck status neither. Mama felt herself the professional vagabond, likened their travels to something more romantic than the noeating-no-sleeping-coffee-shitting attempts to flee they were. She didn’t tell William much about all this, though.

Instead, they checked out of the motel early and rolled into one of Estes Parks’ two gas stations. Mama said, “You stay here. I’ll go inside.”

Maybe she didn’t think much of it, but what with the temperature being down below freezing, and the truck’s engine off, and William Leroy Gardner just raining and raining a death blanket in the truck’s cab, each second Mama spent laughing with the station’s clerk seemed momentous to her son. She bought sports drinks on sale, filled the Ford with unleaded, and rounded out of the station with tires slipping on iced blacktop. His fingernails were just barely blue.

She was quiet. She was focused.

William could tell. Mama drove the pickup so slow it hardly moved, and hitting thirty-

Fiction miles-per-hour when going downhill was a terror. Her knuckles were whiter than what he guessed ghosts looked like. The truck hydroplaned every hundred feet or so, sliding just enough to make Mama pull her breath deep down into her lungs all at once, sharp-like and loud.

She followed her Internet directions, taking the two up a locals-only road, thin and one-laned and hanging perched off the side of a Rocky Mountain. William saw a sign that said “ELEVATION: 8,000 FEET.” The passenger side hugged the light brown wall of mountain; Mama’s side overlooked a sharp cliff, nothing stopping the truck from falling over but wooden sticks planted upright in the frozen earth, every twenty or so feet. A thick layer of ice covered by a layer of fresh powder slept on the roadway, obscuring its finer details.

They were on this access road for only eight miles when Mama lost control of the car. They had only eleven more miles before connecting with the interstate that would take ‘em into Utah.

William rained. Mama rounded a mountain curve and the pickup’s wheels stopped grabbing the ground and slid toward that cliff’s edge. The bed fishtailed, back wheels moving irrevocably away from the mountainside and in death’s direction.

William heard his mother’s foot lift and punch and lift and punch again, pumping the brakes as instructed by the motel workers.

Though neither prayed, William and his Mama fishtailed again, in the other direction. The pair went off the road, not over a cliff but into a snowdrift, tires just spinning and spinning and William’s point of view all shifted and diagonal since the truck was off-balance. Mama clicked the engine off and said, “Well fuck.” ***

They sat in cold quiet for a few minutes. Then William’s Mama said, “The second time I tried to die was a few years later, when I was thirteen.” Don’t say nothin’, baby, I just want you to know this, know why I’m doing this.” When I was thirteen, I wrapped an extension cord around my unlined throat.

Look at my throat now, baby: if I wrapped fifty extension cords around it, you wouldn’t be able to tell their marks apart from the deep wrinkles in my damn neck.”

I took a wooden kitchen chair into my bedroom. Lucky, really; up ‘til that point, me and my little sister, your aunt, had shared a room. I had only got my own room a few months before. And I knew how to make good use of it.

That first time when I was ten left a few light scars, but not much and definitely not enough for anyone to notice, least of all my own mama. See baby, I would notice something like that on you. Even through that rainy wet periphery you got, I would see scars on your wrists. My mother didn’t.”

William shifted his weight. He shivered. They were just sitting in the cold, the truck quiet and the snow quiet and his mother’s voice low and quiet like a storyteller in movies when they get to the important parts. He shifted again, slightly, so slightly, and the tarp under his ass rustled like crunching grocery bags. William held his breath and hoped the little noise wouldn’t stop Mama from talkin’.

It didn’t.

“It’s not like I weren’t one of her own, but my mama had six kids, and I was second to youngest, and didn’t get paid much attention, which was just fine with me, baby, since I didn’t want none of ‘em to know what I was up to anyways.”

The second time I tried to die, I looped a brown extension cord around my

30

31 Fiction 99 neck once, twice, thrice, four times. I wasn’t slipping, wasn’t missing, wasn’t gonna fuck this up like I had before. I stood on my own mama’s chair from the kitchen table, and then threw the extension cord up and around one of my bedroom’s ceiling beams.

I threw it again just to be sure. Didn’t want that cord snapping with the weight of my body, alive then dead, swinging and waiting to be found.”

More about the Author

William’s Mama breathed. He didn’t.

“I remember stepping off it. The chair. I remember I stepped off it and felt a swift tightness around my neck, heard more than felt the crack of my spine. I remember the last thing I thought was how I must look like a ballerina, all toes-pointed-floating- onair-grace, my feet dangling a foot or so above my bedroom floor. Then came a time where I didn’t remember nothin’.”

She breathed some more. Her breath was frosty and she shook as she pushed it out of her body then invited more mountain air in.

“I woke again in my twin bed, I think the next morning. My throat was sore, like I was gettin’ a cold, but that was it. The extension cord was gone like it didn’t exist.

So was the kitchen chair. Touching my unlined, unmarked neck felt tender, though I became unsure if even that was mine.”

That’s when I started thinking I was a cat. Y’know how they got them nine lives?”

Kayla Miller lives and writes in Las Vegas with her English bulldog, F.I.L.A. She hails from Jonesboro, Georgia, and often finds her work set in the American South. She is the author of the e-chapbook See & Be Seen & Be Scene, published by Five [Quarterly], and her fiction and creative nonfiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the journals Gravel, Gesture, the Tahoma Literary Review, and the Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, among others. She writes about villains like herself.

Fiction

Epicures

By Kelly Neal

S

he eats salmon on her first date with him, because she knows better than to make a big show of eating a salad. She eats one piece of bread from the basket when she’s still hungry afterwards, and snakes small bits of it through the olive oil as they talk. She eats half the slice of cherry cheesecake they order together at the end of the meal, and drinks the last of the moscato. She eats a mint in the bathroom as she re-applies her lipstick, attempting to cover up the wine stain.

At 2:00 a.m. she eats a burger on the way home from his house, having slipped from his bed and mumbled something about needing to let the dog out.

She stands in her kitchen the next morning and eats a Gala apple over the sink, hoping it will get the onion and wine taste out. At work she takes a strawberry doughnut from the conference room, because it’s there.

She returns for another because there’s no work to be done. She melts a block of Gouda cheese in her mouth when she gets home. She permits the cheese and the doughnut and the apple and the burger to remain inside her because there’s nothing more hellish than the taste of dairy going in the opposite direction.

She eats Pad Thai takeout when she’s bored and tired. She eats deep-dish pizza when she’s so hungry she’s shaking.

She dips French fries in chipotle mayonnaise when she’s sad, and buys chocolate truffles to reward herself for having painted the bathroom or mowed the lawn. She nibbles on pretzels in small bags when she flies out to visit her mother, and eats frozen mashed potatoes from the cafeteria once she gets there. She stirs Hershey’s syrup into the mint chip ice cream

her mother offers her for dessert, even though it’s freezer-burned and well past its expiration date.

She orders pesto pasta on her second date with him because she’s already had too much wine by the time they order.

She eats nearly all of the tiramisu they get for dessert. She forgets to suck on a mint after they split the check. She stays the whole night this time and takes the banana he offers her for breakfast because that’s all he has, and they make the obvious joke about it. She remembers the mint this time because she doesn’t have a toothbrush with her.

“She permits the cheese and the doughnut and the apple to remain inside her because there’s nothing more hellish than the taste of dairy going in the opposite direction.”

She eats hardboiled eggs for breakfast when that article comes out Id abhorreant vix, cuShe saying they’ll help appellantur her prevent cancer. quits eggs when detracto the other article comes out sumo blandit per. Augue saying they’ll cause cancer. She buys scriptorem eloquentiam pro ei. whole grain bread when she remembers that she’s approaching the midpoint of her Semper utroque volumus sea cu. life. She eats grapefruits for breakfast when Est ignota doming alienum ad, that book comes out saying it’ll make her docendi te. Affert skinny.

Shecommune eats bacon sea for breakfast once shevocibus realizes that’s bullshit.

She freezes ei eam. Brute assum grapes to eat while she watches movies on commodo ut mel, vero omittam Saturdays.

usu cu.

No veniam nonumy consectetuer est, meis ancillae philosophia duo et. Ne vis inermis suscipiantur, ne

32

33

Fiction She serves Froot Loops at breakfast when her nephew comes to visit, even though her sister will only feed him Corn Flakes at home, and she drinks all of the sugary, beige milk they leave behind. She sticks with the Froot Loops long after her nephew goes back home because, as he reminded her, she’s a grownup and can eat whatever she wants. She forgets about whole grains and fruits for a while.

When her mother dies after having wasted away, slowly, for almost a decade, she dips carrots in ranch dressing from the veggie plate during the reception after the funeral. She continues to snack on the carrots, then the broccoli, and then even the cauliflower, while she ducks out and shares a joint with one of the cousins. Once she runs out of vegetables she dips her pinky finger in the groove at the edge of the Styrofoam plate and licks the dressing off.

She tastes some of her tears and snot, too, when she falls apart at the memory of her mother scolding her for eating only the dressing and trying to make her father eat the rest of the salad.

She pours the good bourbon over ice when she returns home. She throws away the tuna, broccoli, and meat casseroles the aunts sent with her. She discards the to-go boxes and flushes the expired milk down the toilet. She ignores the strawberry doughnuts at work and drinks black coffee. She feeds the dog the rest of the cheese and throws the crackers in the pond. She swallows pills to quiet the pinpricks in her stomach.

When he calls her again, he says he wants to try the other Italian place. He says he will pick up the entire check. She cups her hipbones, which are obstructed by less flesh now, and says no, thank you. I can’t.

More about the Author

An Ohio native, Kelly graduated from the Ohio State University with a dual BA in Music and English in 2009. She is currently an MFA candidate in Fiction at Georgia State University, where she teaches Creative Writing and Composition. She also works as an Assistant Fiction Editor for New South, and has previously worked as an Assistant Fiction Editor for Five Points. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is currently at work on her first novel set in a music conservatory. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, playing the violin, and learning everything she can about Early Modern England.

Fiction

Belongings

By Michael Washburn

“G

areth. Wake up. Wake up.”

In the bed, Gareth Lang stirred, hearing the rain patter on the weathered boards above him, wondering what in fuck’s name the desperado outside could be bothering him about at this hour.

“Gareth, get up, man.”

His guess was that one of the cattle had bust through the wire fence yet again, and this time the farmer across the road could not forbear putting a bullet between its beady eyes. Or maybe the cow had gotten into a fight with the farmer’s pit bull. Lord how Gareth didn’t want to budge. In the damp air, he’d been prone to imaginings about a girl named Ellen Hughes who lived three farms away and who had once let Gareth unbutton the front of her shirt as they sat in a field where they felt sure of being unobserved. His mind wanted to complement this memory with vivid images of the field and the trees surrounding the two paramours, but now the voice outside was even more urgent.

“Gareth, get up now!”

Finally he made himself swing his legs to the side of the bed. Beyond the edges of his wool underwear, his hairy feet brushed the dusty boards. Gareth picked himself up, pulled on a checkered red and black flannel shirt and a pair of trousers, and finally a pair of work boots encrusted with mud. In this spare room of his family’s farmhouse, it was dim, but not so dim that he couldn’t make out gradations of darkness where someone had stubbed out a cigarette on one of the walls. He rubbed his eyes, opened the door, and stepped out. Outside

it was as if all the clouds in the world had converged above three acres of trees and pasture. The hiss of the rain sounded a bit like Gareth’s mom when she never tired of listing all her boy’s faults. Sometimes Gareth missed the three-pack-a-day lady, but often he didn’t at all.

“Come on, Gareth. Use the rifle. Put it right in the bastard’s mouth.”

Pete Sutter was waiting. Gareth clambered down off the porch, following Pete across the muddy turf in the direction of a shed with peeling navy blue paint. Pete dialed the combination of the lock on the weathered front door. They stepped inside, pulled a saw, a chain, and two Remington rifles with checkered grips from hooks on the walls, and laid them on a table. Then Pete indicated they were to take two strips of plastic from a roller and lay them out on the ground. Every time Gareth was about to ask Pete a question, Pete preempted him with an order. When the plastic was spread nearly across the width of the shed, they laid the items down and wrapped them tightly. Then each man took a bundle in his arms, they walked outside, and Pete locked the shed.

Beyond the hissing they could hear a noise, faint but unmistakable, from the barn. It was the cat, Tracy, the cat that Gareth had discovered as a kitten going through a heap of garbage outside the tavern where he and Pete used to go before they got on bad terms with the owner.

Gareth had cradled Tracy, taken her to the

34

35

Fiction barn, and made a nest for her in the hay, and Tracy turned out to be a sweet, rolypoly type of cat that responded to affection and was generally a low-maintenance pet.

As she aged, Tracy grew more needy, emotionally speaking. She was aware of the presence of humans near the barn even if she couldn’t see them.

“Shut up, Tracy,” Pete muttered.

They trudged across the mud, yard after yard, toward Pete’s weathered house, then in a new direction. Gareth was still waking up, so he did not press Pete about anything. He started to think of Ellen again, but as so often, memories intruded of a discovery that Gareth had made, in different weather, coming up the trail from the field where he’d once sat with Ellen. It wasn’t so long ago, but the sun was high in the heavens, and all around Gareth were frogs and birds and all the other miracles. Gareth had advanced happily through the clear air.

Once again, his mind wanted to flesh out the recollection, but Pete’s harsh voice restored pertinence.

“Step lively, now,” Pete barked.

Clutching the items wrapped in plastic in the crook of his left arm, Gareth reached up with his right to push his dripping locks from his eyes. Ahead of the two men were blurry forms, the houses and barns of their neighbors. As they pressed ahead through the muck, Gareth realized that Pete planned to knock on the door of one of the neighbors before continuing on to whatever their destination was this dreary morning. The blurs grew larger, without becoming much more distinct. But Gareth knew who lived in the one-story house they were coming to, the one with the bird feeder whose tray gushed above an empty rectangle of a porch.

“No, Pete. Let’s not stop there.

Forget it.”

Pete paused, not welcoming the suggestion but not rejecting it out of hand either.

“Forget it, Pete. I’m not going anywhere with Bill Danvers,” Gareth said.

No, he would not stop there under any circumstances. Bill Danvers and Gareth’s father had had such a, what was the word, complex relationship.

“What is it? Think he’s still mad at you? You must think he’ll always be mad at you. He’s not like that, Gareth. He’s really more like you than you realize. He’s forgiving.”

Gareth couldn’t believe what Pete was telling him. It looked like he’d won the argument in the short term, and they weren’t going to stop. But he knew that his mind would circle back to the occasions when Bill had belittled the senior Lang, whether for his aim on hunting trips or for staying married for so many years to a woman who hissed and seethed and squinted her eyes.

Bill made much of the fact that the Langs were not selling milk at nearly the rate of the Griffins or the Petersons or the Rendlemans or the Laucks.

“I have to say, you just don’t strike me as much of a man, Paul,” Bill told Gareth’s dad once when the two old pals were sitting around in front of the fireplace at the Danver’s house while Gareth and Bill’s kid, Nick, who was too young to shoot a rifle, sat in the next room watching a movie. The boys heard Bill scoff, “Come on, get over it, drink your beer, we’ll go out in a couple of weeks and you’ll prove yourself.”

Most of Bill’s scorn was, in fact, reserved for the junior Lang. It was Gareth whom Bill ceaselessly mocked as a “wuss,” as a non-male, as a slender weak boy who could never act ruthless when invaders from somewhere out there in the world undermined the order of daily life on the

Fiction farms. Bill said, “If you don’t believe me, don’t worry, you’ll soon see why I talk this way to you, Gareth, oh yes, what you take to be my mocking will appear justified when a situation you never, ever expected lands on your lap. And it will be soon.”

Not long after that chat in the Danvers house, they set out, the boys accompanying them, and it seemed Bill Danvers always had the advantage. He could bag an elk from 300 meters, resting the barrel of his rifle on his left elbow, no sweat. Bill was fire-lapping the barrel of his rifle. Gareth might never have suspected it, but Nick volunteered the information once when they were alone. Nick described how Bill coated his bullets with an abrasive grit and fired them at a remote point in the woods, ridding the inner surface of the barrel of any irregularities, the bullets losing just enough of the grit before exiting that barely measurable gradations still clung to the end of the barrel. So Bill might now be the better shot, yes, but he was loony if he sat out on that porch imagining that none of the distant human shapes out there in the drizzle knew why.

At Gareth’s insistence, they dodged the edges of Bill’s place, continuing in the direction of the plains to the south where the shapes of buildings looked almost as widely spaced as legal abortion providers in Texas.

At length, they made out one remote form that Gareth had visited before, the sight of which prompted him to think that maybe Pete took a whore out here and he done got rough with her and snapped her neck. But no, Pete had said he didn’t like whores.

Didn’t like the way they looked, talked, chewed gum all the time, Pete had said.

Hell, how many of them had Pete ever seen besides Jodi Foster in Taxi Driver? Well, there was that skanky lady at the tavern they used to visit, what was her name, Melissa Getz or something like that. The

boys trudged ahead, mud spattering the lower regions of their pants.

“Pete,” Gareth said.

Pete did not look at him. Maybe Gareth meant as little to him, right now, as a “friend” who gets roped into accompanying someone to score a bag of hash on the logic that the dealer is less likely to blow away two guys if the deal turns to shit. So Gareth felt, but he pressed ahead as the rain kept up its even tattoo on their heads and on the mud all around. He weighed the idea of dropping what he carried and turning around, wrestled with the feeling that any mission that might involve Bill Danvers was unworthy of him. But still he followed the older boy through the sheets of rain, listening to the squish squish their boots made, hoping that Pete would at last pause to explain their mission. Every time he began to talk, Pete hit back with an order to pick up the pace or to keep the ends of the plastic out of the mud. Within a few minutes, they would reach that form on the far side of the treacherous field.

As they progressed across the field, Gareth could not help thinking of a house that was not in their direct path, but about 300 yards to the southeast. Gareth had known the family there, Walter and Angela Heise and their son Kurt, since he was 12.

He thought back to when he and Kurt had walked in the door of that house one rainy afternoon, where there were no adults, just a lonely living room with a view through four windows of soggy fields for miles all around.

Someone had left a VHS tape on top of the television. The movie was Dirty Harry, a film they were not officially old enough to watch, but as the boys looked around the nearly bare interior of the place, they could have no doubt that some powerful force in the universe had left it there. They started the film, and when they got up to scour the fridge, they found inside it a pair of long-

36

37

Fiction necked bottles of Molson Ale. It did not take long to guess whom those were for. For one afternoon, Kurt and Gareth were the adults in that house. Their friendship blossomed.

Then came the morning that Kurt called Gareth quite unexpectedly and pleaded with him to come right over. Gareth put on a windbreaker and hurried down to the Heise place, as he thought of it even in the present. Inside, he found a scene devoid of drama. Here was no sobbing, no hugging, just a 46-year-old man in jeans and a winter vest and his wife and son industriously moving items from a heap, the repository of everything from the parents’ bedroom, Kurt’s room, and three closets, into three long duffel bags lying parallel before the TV. Here were tattered jeans, a scarlet sweater, old boots, handheld mirrors, a lipstick case, a wooden shelf where you could fit maybe two dozen paperbacks, an iron with the cord wrapped around it, a little chest of drawers with a hole the size of a quarter in the bottom drawer, a copy of Guns & Ammo, and other assorted bric-a-brac. A tiny photo with writing on the back had fluttered to the ground beside the TV. Gareth stooped and picked it up to find a photo of a brunette, about 23, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans, crouching in a field, clutching a pup. On the reverse side were the words, “Mary + Spirit.

He is 1/2 Boxer, 1/2 German Shepherd. He is 6 weeks in this picture. Wait till you see him now at 6 mos.” Gareth helped the family fill the bags, then move them into the pickup parked outside in the mud. He hadn’t known what a foreclosure was except that it had something to do with men in suits looking at computer screens and spreadsheets and making cold, bloodless decisions. Here you had it. No one seemed too upset, but at one point Kurt’s dad predicted that a certain acquaintance of Gareth’s father was going to find delight in this development.

Gareth did not see this family again, but events played out with a strange fidelity to the senior Heise’s prophecy.

Gareth accompanied his father and Bill Danvers on a trip into the hills not more than 20 miles from the flat lands where the farms were. At the summit of one of the hills, the men set down their gear and weapons and Bill poured out coffee from a thermos for the three of them before taking Gareth’s dad by the arm and leading him to a point where the hill slowly began its descent. The two men looked out over the expanse of fir trees with intent curiosity, taking turns with Bill’s binoculars. Gareth heard Bill whisper to his dad, “Let’s give your runt of a son a rifle and see if he don’t put a round in his foot.” When both men laughed, there could be little doubt that Mr. Lang was laughing with his companion. The adults stood around for a while scoping for stags. They talked about the life of the community, referring inevitably to the foreclosure on the Heise property. Bill wondered who needed those “poor struggling runts” around. Stealthily, Gareth removed the gum he was chewing from his mouth, pulled off a sliver of it, stuck that piece onto the edge of a stick, and thrust the stick into the fire-lapped bore of Bill’s rifle. With a deft maneuver, he applied the bit of gum to the barrel before yanking the stick free and restoring the rifle to its position beside his dad’s. Gareth would hear the bellowing of wounded beasts later that day, oh yes indeed.

The memory faded as Gareth and Pete trudged onward in the mud. From the knees down, Gareth’s pants were filthy. He tried to force the issue.

“What in God’s name did you make me drag my ass out of bed for, Pete?”

His friend grinned.

Fiction “To hear you mention God and your ass in the same breath, I guess,” Pete said.

Now as they moved onto the porch of the squat brown house, the things under Gareth’s left arm slipped and clattered on the boards. Cursing, grunting, he stooped to pick up the bundle, but Pete stayed his arm.

Pete deposited his own bundle on the porch and gestured that they should unravel the plastic. Gareth felt an urge to humiliate Bill Danvers, to show how well he could shoot when he made an effort. Right now, Bill Danvers was everyone who had ever disrespected Gareth. But that was irrelevant now. Pete moved forward, gave a special knock on the door, pounding twice with normal force, then three times hard and fast, impossible to mistake. The door opened, and there was Pete’s friend Eric Voss. Behind Eric, in a chair, was a stranger. Ah yes, Gareth could see clearly now. The man wore a dark blue windbreaker over a t-shirt, black dungarees, and sneakers that had once been white. He had a stubbly black crew cut and his skin was coated with sweat like lumps of soggy dough. He’d pissed himself, and his eyes were pleading.

“Eric and I caught the fucker this mornin’,” Pete proclaimed.

“Sonofabitch was in the same spot where he was at it before. Same goddamn spot. Pete and I got the drop on him,” Eric explained.

Gareth’s thoughts circled back to that afternoon when he had walked through the unstinting sunshine up a trail between the meadow where he’d once sat with Ellen and the outer reaches of the farms. He would have been whistling, if he were the type of lad who whistles. Up the trail he strolled thinking of that girl, how he’d have her back there soon enough, oh yes, and he thought of the edges of her shirt parting in slow motion. He wanted to keep following

the mental image, but his thoughts returned to the trail. Then Gareth saw the head. The head must not have been there long for it was dripping, though the dripping had eased up a bit, and blood was caking on the strips of flesh dangling below the chin.

Gareth had never seen a cow look angry, but the head he beheld now appeared to make eye contact, to carry a look of reproach for the boy’s dereliction of duty.

Even so, even in death, the eyes were like those of the other cows on these farms, black with a hint of amber playing at the pupils. For several minutes, the boy stood there in the airy passage, staring into the cow’s eyes, not thinking of what others would never tire of telling him later, that his delay gave someone ample time to flee.

The dark eyes pulled hard at Gareth’s.

After that occasion, the radical environmentalist was far from done. He snuck into a field two nights later and shot 12 cows, of which 10 died on the spot, the remaining two after weeks of agony. Some of the men who worked in the fields began carrying sidearms after that point, but no one was really worried about what might happen during the day. They wouldn’t let the cattle graze in the moonlight anymore, but keeping them inside threw everything off. The cattle wailed, and kicked at doors.

Following five weeks of this, they decided the perp was probably in another time zone, and they might as well not change their lives around on his account. So they let the cattle graze under the moon again, with guards working in shifts. Before long everyone knew that the guards weren’t so punctual or attentive, and then they stopped showing up altogether. But Pete, for one, never doubted that whoever did it hadn’t gone more than a few miles away, and was waiting for the guards to tire of this seemingly pointless detail. Two of the cows that had died belonged to the Langs and none to the Sutters, yet it was Pete who showed such

38

39

Fiction diligence, above and beyond the call, when it came to busting the creep, and now bust him they had.

“Come on, Gareth. Use the rifle. Put it right in the bastard’s mouth,” Pete said.

“No,” said Gareth.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t have Bill here for you, but I’d say we done pretty good,” Pete added.

“I ain’t gonna do it.”

“This here is the scum of the earth, and ain’t no one gonna see or know what you do,” Pete pressed.

In the eyes of the man tied to the chair was a terror that wanted to express itself in pleas, or in tears that would make all the rains out there in the broad world seem paltry. The captive sat there, shifting, moving his bound wrists to the top of the chair and back, rotating his feet nervously.

“Let’s let him go, Pete. Let’s take that saw and cut him loose. Or at least give him to the cops,” said Gareth.

Pete and Eric looked at Gareth as if he were a child who’d thrown an expensive present on the floor.

“No. I mean it, guys.”

A look passed between Pete and Eric. Pete asked Gareth to accompany him into the next room. He didn’t want anyone to see them standing together on the porch just now. For a moment, Gareth just stood there uncertainly. He looked at the captive, at the man’s hair like a moist Brillo pad, his trembling jaw, the smooth pasty skin of his sweaty neck. Then Gareth obeyed Pete.

When they were in the spartan chamber adjoining the room where the captive was, Pete continued: “He wasn’t like this the whole time, you know. Bastard was bragging about all

the cattle he bagged and how us bumpkins is the dumbest fucks that ever lived. Said the educated people in this country have to apologize to the rest of the world on account of us dumbshits with our Bibles and our guns. Said it like he meant it, man.”

Gareth tensed, thinking of the cattle, of hunting trips, of his mom, how she’d never given him what they call constructive criticism, not once, only scoldings laced with sarcasm. What was it that made the man in the next room choose the Langs’ cows, anyway? Pete knew that Gareth had never ceased wondering about this. And that man tied to the chair would rub salt into the festering sore of the Lang family’s insecurity if he were able. But then, Gareth was not a vicious son of a bitch. He was not at all like Bill Danvers, oh no. Sniping is cowardly, hit and run attacks are cowardly, three against one is cowardly, ain’t no business for a man. There are many uses for a saw, but right now Gareth just wanted to cut the rope holding the man to the chair.

“Look, Pete, we could smack him around—hell, we could fuck him up, do some shit he’ll never forget, make him embarrassed to be in public for a long time.

You get what I’m talkin’ about here,” Gareth asserted.

Pete shook his head.

“You got an awful short memory, kid.

Think he ain’t gonna go and do it again?”

“He ain’t. Not if we fuck him up bad enough and tell him he won’t be so lucky—” “Then his friends will see how fucked up he looks and they’ll retaliate. This way, the fucker just disappears,” Pete urged.

Gareth had begun sweating. He swallowed, ran his hand through his dripping locks, clenched his fists. Even, steady came the patter on the boards above their heads. He wanted to describe, to

Fiction analyze, to explicate, but Gareth could not find the words now.

More about the Author

“I don’t know, Pete, I don’t know.”

“You know fucking well what we gotta do.”

“No, I don’t. They didn’t raise me to do nothin’ like what you say.”

“Maybe you forget—maybe it’s true what Bill Danvers said about the little runt,” Pete said leering.

They argued some more but Gareth kept thinking of those two words.

Finally they went back into the room where the man sat sweating in the wooden chair.

Gareth looked at the rope around his hands, studied the smooth pasty skin of the man’s glistening neck.

They went onto the porch.

“Give me that rifle,” Gareth said.

Pete began to obey.

“No—no. Screw the rifle. Give me that saw,” Gareth said.

Michael Washburn is a novelist, short story writer, journalist, and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. He studied literature and history at Grinnell College and the University of Wisconsin. His short stories have appeared in The Bryant Literary Review, Rosebud, The New Orphic Review, Raven Chronicles, The Brooklyn Rail, Nomadic Sojourns, Floyd County Moonshine, Stand, Crimespree, The Marathon Literary Review, The Montreal Review, and The Weird Fiction Review.

Michael is currently in search of a publisher for two novels.

40

41

Fiction

War Horse

By Colin James

I

t’s starting to rain, and I sit myself next to a man at a bus stop; don’t say much, don’t have to. You know the type: late to middling years, neatly dressed, tied and shirted, exuding a martial air. His jacket brushed, his tie shaped, his trousers creased – burnished black brogues mirrored to a shave-yourself sheen. It’s always a giveaway. On his hands the faded blues and blacks of inks indelible, crisscrossing his gnarled flesh, changing the once female-formed renderings into daubed ink smudges. Tattooed beauties picked out in some foreign port and needled for posterity on willing flesh. An age when there wasn’t a tomorrow, when one lived in the moment, for the hour, for the possibility.

upper lip, “mind your p’s and q’s’” back home for tea and crumpets – or more likely a beer and a cuddle at the Pig and Whistle.

Squared shoulders, straight-limbed bravado, the epitome of hidden youth. A warrior spirit concealed within the trenches of wrinkled skin, behind the camouflage of greyed hair and sandbagged eyes. Hard to shake memories of when the air sang.

“Surrounded by forgetful ignorance, a public more interested in commercialism, than in recent history, there are no handshakes, shoulder slaps or words of gratitude.”

The shelter’s cold and damp, stinks of piss, and, as per usual, the bus is late.

The gent next to me looks to the front, his thousand-yard stare burning holes in the concrete of the municipal Ministry-of-WhatNot across the street. Despite his tenuous hold on life, he has time enough. No rush, no haste, if not today, then tomorrow; obviously he’s post ticketed for the fast track experience – voyaged an ocean of pain – ridden the bullet train to hell – and in no hurry to go back. Been there, done that, and purchased the rights to a t-shirt printing press of the mind. No doubt remembering when minutes lasted hours, seconds a lifetime. A time when waiting for public transport would have been a luxury, a urinesplashed bus shelter a God-send.

Dream-filled insomnia of death and destruction, oceans ofappellantur sand and mud, vix, of Id abhorreant men screaming for their mothers. Seas of cu sumofaces blandit detracto per. unforgotten left and lost on unpronounceable on foreign Auguebattlefields, scriptorem shores in countries now packaged for eloquentiam pro ei. Semper summer holidays. The rows of white stones, utroque volumus sea cu.

Est part of the attraction, the Dunkirk Kodak moment that you can show to friends and ignota doming alienum ad, smear onto the Web. Not happier times, just docendi sea te. different.

When commune thoughts of tomorrow were as Affert improbable as moon shots, their only vocibus ei eam. Brute possession the here and now – love today assumwho commodo ut dawn mel,would vero because knew what the bring. omittam usu cu.

You can always tell. It doesn’t take badges and medals, blue-blazered crested affirmation or regimental bands and battle honors. The horror of conflict under jungle canopies and death-raked beaches does something to a man. Marks him forever, stamps him as an initiate forged in an era of getting things done. No complaining, stiff

The rain comes down harder, pelting the shelter, water streaking down the glass, framing the tardiness of a red number seven No veniam nonumy as it splashes its way to a hurried stop. The est,of meis clang consectetuer of bells and the crump pneumatics asancillae the door close.

The old boy in frontet. of me philosophia duo fishes for plastic tokens and a faded photo Ne the vis ephemera inermis suscipiantur, neLife pass, of a grateful nation.

libris aeterno scaevola his.

Meis movet at has, facer scripta iuvaret mei ea. Alii dicit ad usu, ad cetero

Fiction and limb given for half price transportation but then only outside of rush hours and dependent on calendar dates – excluding Easter and Christmas! There’s no complaining, no whining, just smiles as he thanks the driver and takes his seat.

Surrounded by forgetful ignorance, a public more interested in commercialism than recent history, there are no handshakes, shoulder slaps or words of gratitude. Deep down he probably likes it that way; no fuss, no bother, just insulated anonymity. No point in blowing one’s own trumpet, nobody appreciates a bore, and what would be the point anyway?

The bus stops, and I make my way to the exit, hanging on to the handle before electing to eject myself into the dank wet of the city street and away from the wombed warmth of metropolitan transportation. I catch his eye, and he finally notices me. I scream my recognition, implore my understanding, open my mind to telepathic transmissions and broadcast my affinity with the warrior code – what it is to be a soldier.

The old boy simply looks right at me. Does he recognize one of his old mates in my face, or is he even now crouched in a shell hole screaming for his life, pissing himself in abject fear? Perception is reality, and thankfully mine involves takeaway Chinese and a couple of cans of lager.

I stare up at the rain-spattered windows and the condensed fug of the bus as it drives away – wheels splashing through gouts of water. I pull my jacket around my ears, tighten my scarf, and try to avoid the puddles. The weather is really starting to close in, and I have a hungry wife and a couple of starving kids at home.

Decisions, decisions. What will it be, chicken Chow Mein or egg fried rice?

More about the Author

Colin James, an Englishman by birth and a Yorkshireman by the grace of the gods, who emigrated to the U.S back in 2001, is a happily married man with two terrible children. After various junctures in New Mexico and New York, he and his family are now settled in Arizona. The career path he has followed has taken him from the ranks of the British Army (R.E.M.E.) to the tops of Austrian mountains as a ski guide. A former engineering professional in the semiconductor industry, he currently runs a successful company in sunny Phoenix. A senior student of English literature at ASU and a member of the WEST VALLEY WRITERS WORKSHP Colin has been published in online and print literary magazines. To date Colin has published three books, including the historical fiction novel, “Lord Alf,” which are available on Amazon. He can be reached cjames7@cox.net or at 623-687-5907.

42

43

Fiction

History of Music

By Simon Jimenez

T

he instruments were tuning, cacophonous.

The symphony was about to begin.

The technicians lifted my comatose body onto the hospital bed. They extracted my clothes. Fine razors were dipped in alcohol and did arpeggios across my chest.

Wet clumps of hair fell away in grace notes.

A nurse squeezed cool gel on my hairless patches and on those hairless patches now sticky with blue viscosity she slapped on electrodes. She slapped them on my sternum, my arms, and my legs. My body was a medusa of cables. The technician inserted the cable leads into the box; the box was switched on, and thus began my pulse, the resting heart rate of 4/4, c major.

A pulse hypnotic; the walls fell away, and the technicians and nurses and leads and nodes fell away, and I found myself seated at a grand piano, my father beside me. He was teaching me how to play. There was no room, no outside world.

Only us and the piano.

He was deaf, my father, so he played with one hand, and signed with the other. He played the middle key.

“This is C,” he signed to me. I signed back the letter C to show that I understood.

He nodded, absently smoothing out the wrinkles of his ratty sweater. He signed, “The first scale you will learn is C.” He then played all the notes, starting from C, naming them as he went.

C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. And then back down.

C, B, A, G, F, E, D, C, I signed, “Why C?” His small eyes narrowed. “Explain,” he signed.

“The alphabet starts with A. Why not start with A?” He replied, “The alphabet starts with A, but the piano starts with C.” “Stupid,” I signed.

“A severed arm lay on his chest in lover’s repose. He scrambled to his feet. All around him was dust and shattered facades…”

He slapped the back of my head.

“This is not your world,” he signed. “This is veniam nonumy the worldNo of music.

You are a visitor. There are rules you must obey.

Rule The first consectetuer est,one: meis note is C.”

ancillae philosophia duo et.

Ne“I’m vissorry.” inermis suscipiantur, ne“No libris aeterno scaevola matter,” he signed.

“Play C.” his. Meis movet at has, facer I played C. There was surprising scripta iuvaret mei ea. resistance when I pressed down on Alii the ivory key.

Thead bones in my vibrated dicit usu, adarms cetero pleasantly. My father stood up and laid his detracto Quis quando bald head on theduo. hood of the piano.

“Again,” he signed.

I played te C again. hummed quaeque sea,He modus with the note, brows furrowed; searching for cetero per eu. whatever it was that would make him happy.

“Again,” he signed. I asked him when I would be allowed to play another

Falli tantas oporteat mel in, sea id debet explicari. Sumo ubique ei nec. Ne sit ferri meliore. Vel justo dicit consul at, mea ne quem

Fiction Fiction note, like D. His gaunt face darkened. “You can play D,” he said, “when you are able to play C.” “Again,” he signed, his hand swooping like a dolphin.

I played C many times. Eventually I mimicked my father, and pressed my face against the piano, listening to the subtle vibrations, trying to divine my error. C, C, C, C. The impatience of father’s tapping foot.

C. The pitch of father’s dinner bell.

Repetitive, unremarkable C. “You are hitting C,” he signed, “you are not playing C.” “Explain,” I signed.

“This,” he frowned, “I cannot explain.”

Again.

It was then that the hospital door opened, and the dream split, and two scenes played side by side.

On one stage, I was six years old, crying as my father demanded me to play Again. On the other stage, my own son, Sam, sat in silence beside my hospital bed as the electronic monotone of the EKG sped up, an invisible hand dialing up my heart’s metronome until it went beep-beep-beepbeep. Again, my father signed, and then there was no distinguishing one beat from the next. A high-pitched wailing of C. This was the sound of my heart attack, my swan song. The note of C swelled into a crescendo. My son gripped my limp hand.

The note held for three measures, three tied whole notes, and then it dimmed out; decrescendo, down, into a sweet, allencompassing silence.

My son Sam, and his mother, Mari, visited my attic to excavate anything of emotional value. The attic was stuffy and humid. Sam relieved himself of his leather

jacket. He knelt down by a cardboard box labeled ‘MISC’ and he smiled; the box housed my old vinyls. One by one, he held the sleeves up to the skylight. “Hayden.

Beethoven. Queen. Depeche Mode—wait, Dad liked Depeche Mode?”

Mari hitched up her black sarong and knelt beside Sam for a better look. “Oh yes, this was right before you were born. If I remember correctly, he wanted to stay current with popular music so he would be a ‘hip’ father to you.”

Sam laughed and slipped my shame back into the box. He thumbed further through my catalogue.

“I wish I was there with you,” Mari said softly. “When it happened.”

“I know,” he said and then brightened when he found a particular record. “This is the first record I ever listened to. Look.” He flipped over the sleeve for Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. In the bottom left corner, in sharpie, were his initials, right below mine.

S.H. and R.H. “He said he used to listen to this when he was a kid.”

“This is true. He told me as much when we started dating.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine what he’d be like on a date.”

Thank you, Sam. “He was charming, in a quiet way.”

She smiled fondly, and for a moment her wrinkles were gone, and she was a young stenographer in Geneva again. “He had a troubled childhood.”

“I heard grandpa was an asshole.”

“A difficult and particular man, to be sure. I never felt comfortable around him.

But you must understand, he himself had a, an intense childhood. These things are

44

45

Fiction passed down.” She paused, her finger resting lightly on her thin lips. “After such an experience, I am amazed that your father turned out as well as he did.”

Sam wiped a layer of dust off the Tchaikovsky jacket and drew out the vinyl with gravity, studying it for cracks. “I have a friend who deejays for a local radio station.

I’m thinking of bringing this over to him; have him play it for Dad’s anniversary.”

Mari smiled. “I think that is a wonderful idea.”

When they were done with the attic, Sam called a taxi for Mari. It arrived shortly; ready to whisk Mari off to the airport, back to whatever eastern country she currently laid claim to. She hugged Sam tightly before she left, and wished him and his husband Marcus well. She told him that she would think of them often.

“I love you too,” Sam said.

He played a show that night at the Beacon Bowl, with his band The Pussy Panthers. The theater was sold out. Marcus, off from his shift at the hospital, waited backstage for my son to finish. He watched, bemused, as young girls threw themselves on Sam after the show with religious fervor.

They got home at midnight, and shared a bottle of red wine while Sam relayed the surreal experience of attic spelunking.

Marcus listened with the best of his ability, but half of his mind was still back in the hospital, in the operating room, where an old woman’s heart exploded on his scrubs.

The other half of his mind was nulled by the wine, drifting away.

“Uh-huh,” he said, and then fell asleep. Sam sighed, and moved into the kitchen with his ukulele, plucking scales absently as the sun rose beyond the perimeter walls.

That day he visited his DJ friend at WJM9 New York and presented him the

ancient Tchaikovsky vinyl. His DJ friend held the vinyl uncomfortably.

“You know I host a classic rock station, right?” he said.

“Of course,” Sam said sweetly. “I also know that you really like old scotch.”

The bottle of Glenfidditch 1973 rang tremulously on the desk.

“Radio’s going the way of the dodo,” his friend said, eyes on the bottle of liquid gold. “Not many people are gonna hear this little tribute of yours.”

“That’s fine,” Sam said. “It’s not for them.”

The DJ acquiesced, and he fitted the vinyl into the record player. After Pink Floyd faded out, he told all his 52 listeners that they were in for a special treat. “So Sam ‘Jammer’ Hammerstein’s in the hatch. You may know him as the lead singer of the Pussy Panthers, or you may not know him at all, I know I don’t care. But he’s here now, and he’d like to play a song for all you boys and girls—sorry, not a song, rather a ‘piece of music’, as they’d say in the olden times.

Yes, I’m talkin’ good ol’ classical music.

Don’t worry folks; it’s only seven minutes long.” He covered the mic. “You wanna say anything?”

“Just play the damn thing,” Sam said.

The record spun like a clay plate.

Carefully, the DJ lowered the needle. There was a scratch, a hiss. A pulse of French horns.

The radio waves that carried “Waltz of the Flowers” echoed out from Earth in ripples. Travel time to Mars was eight minutes. By the time Sam pulled into his driveway, The Waltz had skimmed the rings of Saturn, and after he kicked off his boots and climbed into bed with Marcus, Uranus and Neptune were small in the rearview. His

Fiction hand traveled up his husband’s back, fascinated with the freckles along the muscular grooves. The radio wave expanded through the ice and dust, eroding through the disturbance. Sam nestled against Marcus and shut his eyes, and soon, a hint of a dream flashed in the dark.

The wave crashed through the Kuiper Belt’s curtain of ice, the orchestra crackled and the instruments fell apart, and my song now a roiling wave of white noise.

The wave glided through the space between stars, fading more with each light year. Before long it was a band of incomprehensible, garbled sound, its citizen particles absorbed by greater sources of radiation until the wave itself was no longer a discreet object, but wedded with the fabric of mighty celestial bodies.

By then Sam, Marcus, and Mari were long deceased. Most of us were. The few that remained lived in old, massive derelicts, walking the length of the corridors, waiting for the last of the stars to burn out bright.

“Listen,” the last of us said to her child. They stood together on the hull, naked, breathing in the dust of the hard vacuum with their advanced lungs, catching the rays of radiation on their translucent, artificial skin. She directed his ear toward that broken bloody egg Proxima Centauri, and again told him to “Listen.”

The boy closed his eyes and stretched out his small hands and fingers, and felt on their tips the vibrations of what came before; the invisible tidal forces of shifting planets and black holes bursting and stars erupting. Somewhere beneath the noise he divined a thing more subtle than those giants, something that was less a thing than a shadow. The remnants of an old song.

It tickled.

He giggled, and threw out his hands.

The wave was pushed on for one final stretch, and as it passed, the stars winked out one by one, and space turned finally dark. It was a held breath, a sustain pedal holding onto the recesses of a last, solitary note. And then the universe sucked in its breath, squeezing in on itself, and wave sandwiched into wave until all of existence was a bubble of thingness no bigger than a grown man’s fist, suspended in nothing.

It was quiet for a time.

Then, a pulse. A spark.

And that fist of thingness exploded and the universe rippled outward in arms of dust and fire, and fists of rubble and chemical clouds crashed, and the worlds were forged again. The Earth spit up mountains and water and air, and the sun arced the sky, and one of the First Men dashed his rival’s skull on a sharp rock.

He stood over the dead body, triumphant.

The innards and the larger bits of brain were collected and brought back to the tribe for offerings, the skin boiled into taut, useable material, then fashioned into a drum. He played it on slower days, thrumming the tight circumference with his fingertips, smiling while his daughter danced spastically to the listless beat. And he played it, and played it, until the skin cracked and split apart, and the remnant drum was tossed into the air.

The base of the drum was excavated some miles south of Mesopotamia in 1832, the scientists of the time determining it to be a kind of rudimentary wheel, then passed around various museums for study: Oslo, Leipzig, Berlin. In Berlin they realized it was not a wheel but a drum. A replica was sent back to Leipzig, back to Oslo, and one sent to Dresden by request, where it resided in a shipping crate in the Museum für

46

47

Fiction Völkerkunde Dresden until the night of the bombing.

change from dust, to light, to countryside, all a silent movie in his head.

And in Dresden, on the night of the bombing, a woman pulled away from a kiss, and she looked up at the stars.

The boy sitting beside him tapped him on the shoulder. My father stared at the boy’s mouth as it flapped, and after a few repetitions, he was able to decipher the words as “Look” and “My” and “Drum”. And sure enough, in the boy’s lap, there was a round, flat drum that he had found in the wreckage of the city.

“Do you hear that?” she said.

The man said he heard nothing, and kissed her neck with urgency while she listened to the thrumming of propellers up above, and the choir of whistling that followed.

My father woke up in a gutter the morning after, dazed, blood streaming from his ears. A severed arm lay on his chest in lover’s repose. He scrambled to his feet. All around him was dust and shattered facades and a persistent humming noise in his head that would remain until his death years later, when a blood clot would switch off his brain.

Only half aware that his city was destroyed; he snapped his fingers beside his ear. All he could hear was a dull and distant thump, like a heartbeat from another room. He screamed, and then screamed louder.

My father took the replica drum in his own lap. He smoothed his hand over the rough, cracked pig’s skin, and he tapped it once with his finger. A tremulous vibration cut through the silence.

He shivered with delight.

“Again,” he signed to me.

I played Waltz of the Flowers again as he lay on the floor of the living room, belly first, following the vibrations of the music’s bouncy triumph with his hands. He ran them slowly over the warped hardwood; it was as though he was making a snow angel. It was a kind of dancing.

Nothing.

He wandered the brick strewn streets, unable to locate any familiar landmarks. What was once home was now an alien landscape of half-formed things. He had no energy to weep for those he had most likely lost. Mother, Father, Brother. He slept that night under the streets, clawing at the humming in his head, unable to hear the sirens above, or the bombings that flowed.

There was even less city the next morning.

He decided it was time to leave.

Luck was with him when he reached the outskirts of the city and found a family with a working truck willing to take him along. He sat in the bed beside the children and stared out at the landscape, watching it

Outside I saw my friend run down the street with the other kids, chasing a stray cat with sticks. One of them stopped by my window and waved for me to follow.

They were going to the East Pier to drink with the older boys.

I hadn’t realized I had stopped playing. My father stood up without a word, and he slapped my hand with the latch of his belt. I dropped off the bench, and curled into myself, watching with horror as my knuckles swelled, and he fell on top of me, squeezing me with his bear arms, signing “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forgive, forgive.”

We ate dinner by candlelight to save money on our electricity. Spiced sausages and wilted spinach was served. He gave me his portion of sausage, and watched me eat with my damaged hands, watching with the

Fiction fondness of a child feeding his dog after a beating.

came. A blood clot: a fall: a foreshadowing of my own demise.

“A game,” he signed. He knocked on the table in sets of four.

After my father was buried, the priest patted my shoulder, and he asked me with a killing kindness how I was coping. I told him that I felt nothing at all, which was not quite the truth, for my knuckles still tingled when I thought about the piano.

I knocked in sets of four, with my wrists, for my knuckles could not take any more violence. I subdivided my quarter notes into eighth notes and sixteenth notes.

Our rhythms played with each other through the wooden table. Our knocks grew furious.

We were two telegraphists in deep conversation. And soon we were slamming our fists on the table, shaking the plates, flooding the kitchen with our percussion.

And then my father was slapping me awake, his eyes wild and red.

“What country is this?” He signed.

During a conference in Geneva, a young Swedish stenographer asked me in passing why I could no longer ball my hand into a fist, and I glibly told her that it was due to how much I abhor violence.

That night, after we had finished our work, we walked together through a promenade strung up with ghostly white lights. An old man played guitar on the elevated platform. He sang the song Me Japanese Boy, I Love You.

I don’t understand.

Another slap. “WHERE AM I?” And then I was in front of my class, giving a presentation on the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when suddenly the other children began to laugh.

“Oh Roland…” Mrs. Leland sighed.

I looked down and discovered I had wet myself.

And then I told my father I was leaving for Washington DC to attend university. That it was a scholarship program for prospective diplomats, and he would not have to worry about the money.

And wouldn’t it be nice if I earned enough money to move him out of this small apartment?

“Go on,” he signed from his bed, turning toward the wilting wallpaper. Leave me to the wolves.

And then I left him to the wolves, and at the end of my second year, the call

We paused for a bit and listened.

Mari took my hand. I let her trace my knuckles with her thumb.

The old man crooned: Then he gently held her hand, and said ‘Me Japanese Boy, I love you, I do love you.

You Japanese Girl, you love me, please say you do.’

“Pity,” she said when the song was over. I asked her what the matter was. “This is our song now, and it is so horribly racist.”

I laughed. “Why not choose another song?”

“No. This is the moment,” she said with chilling absoluteness. “We cannot simply choose another moment. This is happening, right now. Our song is Me Japanese Boy, and it is racist, and we simply have to live with that.”

“I do like the melody,” I admitted.

48

49

Fiction “Well then,” she said, “The matter is settled.” She dragged me off to a dark side street, and from there, the rest of the world.

She wanted to give birth in a bathtub. This was to, and I quote, “introduce our son to a world of good flow.” I nodded, pretending that I understood. We hired a midwife to handle the particularly gruesome bits of pregnancy. When I asked her ‘why the midwife?’ she said, “I do not trust American doctors, and you faint at the sight of blood.” We also “invited” a Hari Krishna dancer to sing and drum on the bongo. I especially liked her reasoning for this one: “We must invite him so that the energy and the vibrations in the room are in correct alignment, and because I am the one—what is the word—shitting out seven pounds of meat and I do not have to explain myself to you.”

It was an interesting scene: the pale and pimple Krishna anxiously drumming in the corner, making a conscious attempt not to look at my naked wife; the midwife, calmly chewing her spearmint gum, her mannish hands hidden in the depths of the brackish bathtub waters; and my wife, my darling wife, screaming Swedish curses as our son stretched her vagina like a basketball through a rubber band.

But then it was over; the screaming stopped, and the Krishna remembered to play his bongo. The midwife raised my son from the water soup. Blood dripped from his curled little fists like tears.

“He’s here,” she said.

The midwife spoke words of magic that day, words filled with the power to cataract time and space. He’s here. Six years passed with such brevity that Mari and I both thought the record had accidentally skipped, but no, the record had not skipped. He was here, and he was four and a half feet tall. He preferred packaged bologna to a well prepped steak. He was here, and he broke my Liebestraum vinyl

over his knee in a television inspired tantrum. He was here, and he ran away from home, and for five hours we thought he was dead and we had failed.

“We were supposed to travel the Nile together,” Mari said one night.

I told her that there was time enough for that. In the next room over, Sam was screaming himself to sleep. “He’ll be older soon.”

“I know,” she said, and she crawled over the bed and kissed me as though we were about to dance to an old racist ballad.

“I know.”

And then, one day Sam and I were walking home from school, and he was complaining about some mild infarction a fellow child had committed on the swing set, when suddenly his big blue eyes lighted upon the windows of the local music store, and he pointed at the grand piano as if possessed by some ancient muse.

“This is called the C key.”

“C,” Sam repeated.

We began with an electronic keyboard first, to make sure he was sure.

He was captured by the many sonic optionsthe keyboard was capable of, and was as delighted as I was dismayed that there was a fart button. Though it took time for him to focus on the proper exercises, the more he played, the more focus he leant the instrument, and the better he got, accepting the rules as they came.

Soon, movers were negotiating an upright piano through our front door.

“And here’s D.” “Deeee.”

It was a mistake to show him Star Wars. He played the Imperial March on the

Fiction piano for hours on end. Mari and I lost our minds.

Once, in the dead of night, I heard her curse John Williams in her sleep.

We thanked the musical gods when Sam’s interested moved toward the string instruments; namely, the classic guitar.

“Now we come to E.”

“Geeee whizz!”

The second gig went better. He got through a whole song before the crowd booed him off stage so they could drink uninterrupted. Gig after gig, he played for the unimpressed, for the uninitiated. He was bleeding money. I asked him after a show if he was doing alright financially, and he told me that I didn’t have to worry about him, so naturally I worried about him as I traveled, as I emailed, as I took my walks.

“E.” And then we cursed the musical gods, for Sam had formed a band with his high school friends in our garage. They wore black, and only black, and banged out sonic garbage every beautiful, suburban afternoon. Mari, ever the hostess, served them all spiced lemonade, and they thanked her with child-like politeness before screaming curses over their cacophony of drums and electric arpeggios.

“This is F.” “Eff.” “Excuse me,” I said, and “Sorry, so sorry,” as I shuffled through the crowd. I sat in the back of the bar, with the smokers, afraid to embarrass Sam during his first gig.

The show had yet to start; people were more focused on their drinks than the stage.

I felt anxious for Sam. I ordered a gin and tonic. I drummed my fingers on the table. Air was thicker around my left ring finger. I wondered if Mari was happy, wherever she was.

And then I clapped, alone, as my son stepped into the spotlight with his Les Paul. He surveyed the room with a bitten lip, and he strummed his first chord.

The G string snapped in half like illfitted pants.

“G. G, g, g.”

But he was right in the end. I didn’t have to worry about anything.

“A. Our eggy little A.” “Eggy, eggy A.” Success is an accumulation of things. I realized that as I watched him and his ridiculously named band strut around the amphitheater with theatrical cockiness. The Pussy Panthers had thousands upon millions of fans, and they were chanting my son’s name. I remembered choosing his name with Mari. We liked the way it rounded the mouth when spoken.

Strange to hear it shouted by the masses.

“Buh-buh B.” “Bah-bah booey!”

And there he was, walking up to the microphone, moving the electricity in the air with every step he took. Yes, success was an accumulation of things. I understood that as he stood there, eyes shut, one hand held out, feeling the desperate screams on his fingertips, feeling the vibrations of those around him, his body an echo chamber through which played the music of the spheres.

He raised his pick to the light like a sword of fire, and brought it down with

50

51

Fiction angelic vengeance, and the theatre roared against the wave.

More about the Author

“And finally—” “C!” “C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C.” He played the notes as he named them, his unpracticed hand punching the keys instead of playing them. He looked up at me, apprehensive, excited, and waiting for my next instruction. In his eyes I saw myself at his age; that same look of wondrous anxiety. At the tips of our tongues lay the same question that has been asked for millennia before us, and after.

What happens next?

I ignored the tingling in my knuckles, and nodded.

“Good,” I said. “Let’s hear it again.”

Simon Jimenez is a prospective short story author and novelist. He is currently a graduate student working on his MFA at Emerson College.

Fiction

END OF FICTION

52

Wilt in Warmth by Becca Daltroff (see Art for full image)

Poetry

54

When I was Sixteen John Grey

Birth of Regrets Valentina Cano

Old Cutler Waterhole Nicole Hospital-Medina

Babalu Anna Sandy

Disco Lights Marcus Clayton

Coyote Crossing the Road George Kalamaras

Brain-Tanning the Hides George Kalamaras

New Land Dwight Cosper

For the Moment Dwight Cosper

Two Descents Jessica Temple

My Grandmother Turns Eighty-Eight Jessica Temple

Mālama Jessica Temple

55

Poetry

When I was Sixteen

By John Grey Love makes the man, you reckon.

So kiss, you say,

Impatient, I await

threatening a whole heap

more maturity

of maturing in the context of your lips.

to ward off your glances,

I could grow old in your spit

a load of knowledge

It could lead to my extinction.

to still the shudder.

Mouth-locked, I beg for mercy in my own way.

And so to touch.

Or, if that won't work, appeal to reason.

A boy would giggle.

And sex beyond my years.

A man must touch back.

So do I run?

Or do I fondle my way forward, howl at the best parts?

So what's between the two of us anyhow.

How often I shave?

Whether I crack open a school book or the classifieds?

I'm back and forth, back and forth, between prime ascendency and false definitions.

Love boasts its clichés and its fear.

Forget maturity.

Love doesn't grow me up, it jerks me sideways.

Poetry

More about the Poet John Grey is Australian born poet, playwright, musician, Providence RI resident since late seventies. He has been published in numerous magazines including Weird Tales, Christian Science Monitor, Greensboro Poetry Review, Poem, Agni, Poet Lore and Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as the horror anthology What Fears Become and the science fiction anthology Futuredaze. He has had plays produced in Los Angeles and off-off Broadway in New York. He is the winner of Rhysling Award for short genre poetry in 1999.

56

57

Poetry

Birth of Regrets

By Valentina Cano He walks and his legs splinter with every step away from her.

Bone rips his pant legs, opening them up, stabbing through meat and skin.

Thoughts and words spill out, bloody, slippery, a placenta of the undone trailing its oozing path behind.

Poetry

More about the Poet Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals, A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, A Narrow Fellow, Super Poetry Highway, Stream Press, Stone Telling, Popshot, Golden Sparrow Literary Review, Rem Magazine, Structo, The 22 Magazine, The Black Fox Literary Magazine, Niteblade, Tuck Magazine, Ontologica, Congruent Spaces Magazine, Pipe Dream, Decades Review, Anatomy, Lowest of Chronicle, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lady Ink Magazine, Spark Anthology, Awaken Consciousness Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, Caduceus, White Masquerade Anthology and Perhaps I'm Wrong About the World. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize. Her debut novel, The Rose Master, was published in June 2014. You can find her here: http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com

58

59

Poetry

Old Cutler Waterhole

By Nicole Hospital-Medina Hiking around the muddy

Up the rocks, the small bank

puddles we’ve memorized,

you govern, muscles flexed

we pretend it’s a new adventure.

and hurting, you flop

You study the base of each royal

your gift, the naughty

palm, as though we’ve grounded

orb, no longer yellow,

ashore on a Galápagos island.

but gangrened in green. Sprinkler

Each tree whispers new scent.

tail poised, ready to retrieve.

We march and stumble brazenly

Target in hand, tank top soaked

afore any buccaneer or pirate.

from eager fur, I identify love,

Inevitably, as always, your paws

remove my straw fedora,

prance quicker. Like horse to barn,

and throw.

the trot fades into a gallop, then into flight. Your confidence, on course, crusades accurately to the pond. Brave body broadens— the audacity of a flying squirrel, the belly flop of a seven year old, the delight of your tail and tongue, the splash of a dog in stagnant water. The forgotten murk martyrs its gloom for you. One turtle taps the surface. You’re blinded by a moldy tennis ball, nostrils heaving, spritzing focus.

Poetry

More about the Poet Nicole Hospital-Medina earned her MFA at the University of Miami where she now instructs writing; she also instructs writing at Barry University. She is the current Writer in Residence of the Deering Estate at Cutler.

Her poems can be read in the anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence, as well as in CURA: A Journal of Art and Action, The Miami Herald, Linden Lane Magazine, Paper Nautilus, Blunderbuss Magazine, The Acentos Review and more. She authors and designs productiveprofessor.wordpress.com, pinkcurlers.com and starfishstamps.tumblr.com. Nicole, teacher, Floridian, surfer, sailor, artist and environmentalist, ventures to write. She is a poet-activist.

60

61

Poetry

Babalu

By Anna Sandy In Utila, I spent a week trying to sleep under the weight of silence and heatIn the days, I bought bread from a woman who spoke Spanish so beautifully I pretended to understand.

Salt and coconut rum hung heavy in the air as the sun fell downríete de las calles torcidas de la isla.

On the raw wood deck of a dockside bar swayed over the night-blue ocean, there were no rails to catch the press of my heat-soaked limbs.

The wind played with the hem of my dress and the waves sprayed my skin with all the places they had been.

I was dying to fall.

Poetry

More about the Poet Anna Sandy was raised in a suburb of Memphis, TN, just across the Mississippi state line. She received her undergrad degree in English-Creative Writing from the University of Memphis, and is now an MFA poetry student at Georgia State University, adjusting to life (and traffic) in Atlanta.

62

63

Poetry

Disco Lights in 1994

By Marcus Clayton Dad told five year old me to stay

Dad, with salt and pepper

in the other room where strobe

buzz cut, torn from mom—stoic, hair

lights oozed through our limpid

defeathered, covering a discolored

window, strained through lace

socket—and dragged by faceless

curtains, which painted

blue leisure suits. Everyone mute.

walls red and blue oscillating to the tune

All I wanted was to show

of alarms atop police

them all the lights inside

cars, swirling over silhouetted

and let “The Hustle” boom

furniture. I wondered

through our taciturn home. But only the sound of sirens broke

Were these the lights my parents boogied under when my dad robed himself in loud leisure suits, helmet black sheen and tight curled?

When my mother was a queen with Farrah Fawcett headdress, two hoops of golden gloss hung from each ear.

Youth swam in both their brains like morphine, hearts face to face perpetually embraced, exuberant smiles frozen in the 70’s.

Red and blue grew brighter inside. Neighbors hushed, refusing to dance in the glow.

the silence like a bone.

Poetry

More about the Poet Marcus Clayton - Marcus grew up in South Gate, CA, and graduated from CSU Long Beach in 2012 with a B.A. in English. While currently working on an M.F.A. in Poetry from the same university, he also tutors extensively at the Los Angeles Southwest College and teaches a section of poetry at CSULB. Outside of academia, he is a passionate fan of music and comics—both of which play a significant role in his poems.

His work can be seen in RipRap Journal, Shark Reef, Bird's Thumb, Cadence Collective, and FreezeRay Poetry.

64

65

Poetry

Coyote Crossing the Road

By George Kalamaras Livermore, Colorado This is home because some animals die.

On opposite days, I could be a woman.

She came to alter my skin with her breathing.

Some things we say are sweet, then die.

This crude wind. Somewhere in the scaling knife we call life.

Cutthroat flying through dense air. We struggle to breathe the unfamiliar.

Say I was a coyote. Say a grayling, a crappie, yanked from blue mountain depth.

Say the Western horizon. My entire sky falling down a draw.

She is too young to be young.

She moves as if the first season, exacting her stance.

More dog than wolf, more wolf than the mange she manages to avoid.

Ask your skin how and why it aches.

I once wrote Woolrich, angry, because their parka hoods were trimmed with coyote ruff.

So much of us is covered in the obliteration of others.

Ask your skin. Ache it. Ask it and ache of it as if.

As if alive, cottonwoods moan when I step onto blades of buffalo grass.

We don’t know the weight of things.

We can’t measure pounds of her fur because her coat weighs differently when dead.

Some things we say. Some we safe away in a pile of dried bones.

With nineteen recognized subspecies, the coyote is many animals at once.

We cross a road; we drive it. The distance between words. Worlds.

On opposite days, I could be a coyote. She—the proper need, an immediate wind, shadow blessings of seasonal luck.

Poetry

Brain-Tanning the Hides

By George Kalamaras

One-year anniversary of the High Park Fire, Livermore, Colorado A kerosene lantern the color of pheasant blood.

Tonight’s full moon, close to the earth, can tan any hide.

A wife recovers from forty-nine weeks of cancer.

A sister struggles with the doctors’ dour sense of time. Alkaline. Pungent.

We somehow go on living.

Grief-bruised dust of the heart. A Wyoming sky is falling down a draw. Sighing into the mad mud-flats of the Sinks.

Robert says he lost five elk hides in our fire.

How can it possibly be 365 days of loss. Of building. Blossoms feeling back far past possibility to ash?

The skins are dried stiff. Dirty with soil and gore.

Soak them in urine. Loosen the fibers. Unhair the hide with a knife.

We should brain-tan our own selves.

Like the Blackfeet, remove the brains from the elk and wrap them in the hide thirty perfect days.

How soft we become when we think the animal. When we think with and through our skin.

How tanned. Tender. A solution of animal brains to break down the hide, smooth away the holes. The ripping from here to there. All that separates us from us.

66

67

Poetry

More about the Poet George Kalamaras, Poet Laureate of Indiana, is the author of fourteen books of poetry, seven of which are full-length, including The Mining Camps of the Mouth, winner of the New Michigan Press Chapbook Award (2012), Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize (2011), and The Theory and Function of Mangoes, winner of the Four Way Books Intro Series (2000). He is Professor of English at Indiana UniversityPurdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990.

Poetry

New Land

By Dwight Cosper is it all right that I trespass into the feel of this new land one without season or birth where time evolves on forgotten hands and face the ocean is stunning narrow inlet to the bay waters reflecting bright sky beyond the etched shoreline string of hills parade skyline sharp horizon line extending in round circumference below peaceful blue with drifting ships of fluff

68

69

Poetry

For the Moment

By Dwight Cosper can't get these messages out of my head while you are the epitome of kindness somehow need to gain the sight delight in the same wait for me by the kiosk there will be a note under sienna sky when seven turns to twelve float on the loose footing while our hearts go spiraling and for the moment feel bigger than limits

Poetry

More about the Poet Dwight has aspired to write poetry since he was a kid. Memorizing A.A. Milne at six.

Dreaming of love with Kalil Gibran, at twelve. And at seventeen, finding himself stunned at the genious of Mark Twain and Will Rogers. The influences are varied and many. Over time, being a seeker of Truth, doors of perception open, elegant ideas and deeper understanding mold writing into something to be determined only by the reader. As he procures new growth, the physical world fades behind the discoveries that accompany meditation and an explorative mind.

70

71

Poetry

Two Descents

By Jessica Temple I.

II.

"At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car."

"A person falls headfirst after jumping from the north tower of the World Trade Center"

– Life Magazine

– The New York Times 12 September 2001

2 May 1947 First you sent your white scarf drifting down towards Fifth and Thirty-Fourth.

Then a sound like an explosion.

The black car's windows ruptured and metal bent beneath your body.

As you fell, you turned to face the sky,

Falling Man, you look more superhero than suicide, left leg bent like you're running toward the ground.

It didn't seem fair to call you jumper, so your death was ruled a homicide— so few choices, none of them easy.

spotted planes behind the clouds in the narrowing window of blue.

Ankles crossed with bare feet exposed, and still clutching the strand of pearls around your neck, you are all red lips and impeccable eyebrows.

As you fall, you stare straight ahead into the windows rushing past, your expression, perhaps, calming to those inside, only momentarily, before they realize what it means.

Poetry

My Grandmother Turns Eighty-Eight

By Jessica Temple Wind pushes past us, hard and steady, as we roll her down the gravel path in a rented wheelchair, her body hiding beneath a mass of yarn: green sweater, gray toboggan, patchworked granny-square blanket.

Bumping her across a bridge of two-by-fours, we joke—my sisters, my aunt, and I— of tipping her sideways into the swampy shallows.

Our clicking hips and misaligned knees carry us to the observation area's glass doors.

It takes time to spot across the field what we have come to see: seven white whooping cranes, delicately balanced on thick black stilts.

We cannot hear their sounds, which I imagine to be somewhere between the screech owl's screech and a phlegmy cough, but we see their crispness slide over the dull, brittle field just above the stalks.

72

73

Poetry

Mālama

By Jessica Temple When I ask about the picture of you, a haole still in diapers, kissing the little Hawaiian girl on the beach at Kahanamoku, your blonde curls whispering to her much darker ones, you scratch your head in pana poʻo, as if you’ve forgotten banana trees in the backyard, slippers by the door, fresh coconut sliced open by machete, your mother wading through the house after a flood washed in – electricity waving through the water, shocking her ankles, then kneecaps – bringing you photos, books, anything to pat dry on the counter.

Poetry

More about the Poet Jessica Temple earned her BA from the University of Alabama and her MA from Mississippi State University. She is currently a PhD student in poetry at Georgia State University, where she works for the syndicated poetry college radio show melodically challenged and reads for Five Points. Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Negative Capability Press's Georgia poetry anthology, Loose Change Magazine, Red Clay Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, and decomP magazinE. Her chapbook, “Seamless and Other Legends”, is available from Finishing Line Press.

74

Photo 3 Jennifer Ortiz

Interpolate Laurence Wensel

Barking at the Clouds Marie Luna

At Peace Marie Luna

Untitled Thomas Ingersoll

Untitled Thomas Ingersoll

Wilt in Warmth Becca Daltroff

Bee Eric Anderson

Sky Eric Anderson

Moon and Jupiter Matt Champlin

I didn’t think I could do it Matt Champlin

Sedona Matt Champlin

State Flag Matt Champlin

Untitled Cree W

Reminsicing Ruth Zachomler

Aquamarine Dylan Pham

Sorrowful Awakening by Dylan Pham (see Artwork for full image)

Artwork

76

Chromafish Dylan Pham

Dreaming Colors Dylan Pham

Sorrowful Awakening Dylan Pham

Pinetop Eric Anderson

Meadow Eric Anderson

Untitled Cree W

Untitled David Ritchey

Untitled David Ritchey

Madrid Kasey Esling

Liz Eischen Oneanata Gorge Tida Gherman

Untitled Sydney Cisco

Coal Canyon Troy Farrah

Lake Grass Troy Farrah

Mill Troy Farrah

Tangle Troy Farrah

Eagle Dylan Pham

77

Artwork

Lacrimose

By Sydney Cisco

Medium – Charcoal and White Conte on grey paper

More about the Artist My name is Sydney Cisco and I've been drawing as long as I can remember. It is an escape for me to take a blank paper and create a whole world that is my own out of nothing. My favorite things to draw are people and I love giving things a surreal vibe. I think it gives my portraits a unique feel.

Artwork

Madrid

By Kasey Esling

Medium – Water Color

More about the Artist Kasey Esling is an aspiring author, artist, and soon to be filmmaker. She wants to live out her life creatively and spends her free time working to achieve that goal.

Currently she is a sophomore at Verrado High School and hopes to attend her dream college, Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

78 1

79

Artwork

Untitled

By Thomas Ingersoll

Medium – Photography

Artwork

Untitled

By Thomas Ingersoll

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist My name is Thomas Ingersoll. I am a photographer/artist. My images often reflect my own feelings. They are a reflection of the obstacles in my life. I manipulate photos in order create unique images that draw a curiosity from the viewer. I want my audience to feel a connection with the images; I want them to identify with the emotion being displayed.

.

80

81

Artwork

Liz Eischen Oneanata Gorge

By Tida Gherman

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist Tida Gherman comes from a traditional Romanian family. She grew up in Arizona and moved to Oregon in her teenage years, where she currently resides in Portland. She has a love for adventure, nature, and people. She hopes to one day soon experience different cultures while on mission trips. She hopes to capture the raw existence of people and life and show that rawthere is beauty in everything if you look close enough. Her future plans include starting an awareness for the homeless of Portland, because every story deserves to be heard, and everyone has a story to tell. Through the lens of her faith, she intends to capture these stories through the influence of her photography.

Artwork

82

Wilt in Warmth

By Becca Daltroff

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist As a self-identified introvert, hiking is how she recharges her soul (where most of my photos come from). Sometimes she likes to get upside down and do handstands on top of mountains. She believes that she gets back what she puts out and continues to vibrate on a deeper level, through mindfulness, gratitude, positivity and living an authentic life. Becca is a graduate student in the Masters of Communication Program at ASU West, and a staff member in the Disability Resource Center. Her job and education continue to reveal irreplaceable experiences and humans that inspire gratitude and generate genuine connections.

83

Artwork

Moon and Jupiter

By Matt Champlin

Medium – Photography

Artwork

84

I didn’t think I could do it

By Matt Champlin

Medium – Photography

85

Artwork

State Flag

By Matt Champlin

Medium – Photography

Artwork

86

Sedona

By Matt Champlin

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist I’m a photographer and a filmmaker. I look at life through the lens I was born with. I live for architecture, nature landscapes, and all that is beautiful in the world. Light is my oldest friend. I’ve worked in print labs, dark rooms and taught photography. I shoot digital, 35mm and medium format. I just want people to enjoy my work as much as I enjoy making it.

87

Artwork

Bee

By Eric Anderson

Medium – Photography

Artwork

Sky

By Eric Anderson

Medium – Photography

88

89

Artwork

Meadow

By Eric Anderson

Medium – Photography

Artwork

90

Pinetop Pano

By Eric Anderson

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist

Eric Robert Anderson is a photographer from Phoenix, Arizona. He earned his degree in photography from Phoenix College and is currently working toward earning a degree in conservation biology and ecology at ASU. His love for the outdoors has influenced the direction of his work as an artist. He enjoys sharing the beauties of nature from his perspective. His most recent work focuses on the cosmos and the view of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, from this tiny planet. These works include both still frame pieces and time-lapse video sequences.

To see more of ericrobertanderson.com

his

work,

visit:

90

Artwork

At Peace

By Marie Luna

Medium – Photography

Artwork

91

Barking at the Clouds

By Marie Luna

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist I am an amateur photographer who takes photos as a way to capture the pieces of our world which I find beautiful and intriguing.

These often include images of my children, natural landscapes, and macro bits of larger subjects. Photography is my way of freezing time and making a memory tangible for myself and future generations. I appreciate the intricate detail and accuracy of this art as well as the freedom to shoot common subjects in creative ways. Although I find subject matter in common settings I also enjoy seeking subjects new places and themes to snap.

93

Artwork

Interpolate

By Laurence Wensel

More about the Artist Laurence Wensel is a playwright and theatre director. He is currently a student in his final semester at Goddard College. He has an MA and BFA in Theatre Directing with a minor in Costuming. His first play, "Tu Amor Secreto/You're Secret Love" was produced in the Fall of 2012 with Teatro Chicano de Laredo.

He enjoys photography, and creating algorithm art.

Artwork

94

Photo 3

By Jennifer Ortiz

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist Jennifer Ortiz is currently a PhD graduate student at the University of Washington. Her research currently focuses on finding ways to help scientists analyze their data. For fun she enjoys bowling, traveling, photography and spending time with family.

95

Artwork

Coal Canyon

By Troy Farrah

Medium – Photography

Artwork

96

Mill

By Troy Farrah

Medium – Photography

97

Artwork

Lake Grass

By Troy Farrah

Medium – Photography

Artwork

98

Tangle

By Troy Farrah

Medium – Photography

More about the Artist Troy Farah prefers analogue to digital, but is more interested in the deliberate decay of his images than the medium.

He often chooses expired film or disposable cameras found in thrift stores.

“Field Trip” is a series of images from road trips and other excursions throughout the Southwest [2008-2014] shot using a broken Canon AE-1 on 35mm black and white film. His photos have appeared in VICE, XCity Magazine, Phoenix New Times, and more. His website is troyfarah.com

99

Artwork

Untitled

By Cree Brothers-Watahomigie

Medium – Water Color

Artwork

Untitled

By Cree Brothers-Watahomigie

Medium – Water Color

More about the Artist Cree Brothers-Watahomigie is a Native American 16 year old junior from Grand Canyon High School. Growing up in the isolated area of the National Park gave her lots of time to create art, starting from an age before she could talk. Reading books, hiking, drinking coffee, and listening to Nirvana are her hobbies, but her passion is creating art. The emotional aspects and physical features surrounding her is what contributes most to the production and drive of her art, as well as her artistic aesthetic. Her artistic goal is to express human emotion through symbolism, color, texture, and shape. She hopes to perhaps attend ASU and pursue an artistic and happy life.

100

101

Artwork

Reminiscing

By Ruth Zschomler

More about the Artist Ruth Zschomler is a native of the Pacific Northwest. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, as well as a BA in English/Creative Writing, a second BA in Humanities/Digital Technologies and Culture, and a Professional Writing Certificate from Washington State University. She has been published in The Oregonian and The Columbian, The Vancouver Voice and The Pitkin Review.

Medium – Photography

Artwork

102

Sorrowful Awakening

By Dylan Pham

Medium – Water Color

103

Artwork

Eagle

By Dylan Pham

Medium – Scratchboard

Artwork

104

Dreaming Colors

By Dylan Pham

Medium – Water Color

105

Artwork

Chromafish

By Dylan Pham

Medium – Water Color

Artwork

106

Aquamarine

By Dylan Pham

More about the Artist

Medium – Water Color

I have been drawing since I was 4 years old. My mom taught me how to draw simple butterflies with markers and my dad showed be how to draw simple trains. I then started to draw fantasy creatures such as dragons, insects, serpents, etc. I guess my inspiration at that time came from the TV shows and movies I watched. I didn't truly get into art until my Junior year in high school. I wanted to see what the art classes there was like and I wanted a class that I could just relax and do what I loved. I was surprised I learned so much from my art classes. I started to work in color and applying value to my art pieces for the first time! Near the end of my junior high school year, I started to explore different types of mediums: Colored pencil, acrylics, oils and watercolors. Watercolor became my focus point in my senior year. I loved to paint portraits or people and showing their emotions. I developed my own unique style and hope to always improve my art skills. Most of my art works have a story to tell or a meaning behind them. I usually incorporate symbolisms to further support the message and idea. I like to ask people what my art pieces say to them personally, and what message did they get from them.

107

Artwork

Untitled

By David Ritchey

Medium – Wood Burning

Artwork

Untitled

By David Ritchey

Medium – Wood Burning

More about the Artist About 2 years ago Kip adopted wood burning as his newest approach in the visual arena. More professionally known as "Pyrography", wood burning uses a combinations of strokes and pressures to create various images via wood and a soldering tool.

With a B.A in Sociology, Kip has an interest in cultural inequality and relations that make up our reality. He often times expresses these concepts in his art through controversial pieces like "Cicade de Deus" and "Radiant Depression". Kip experiments with various techniques for shading and most commonly does portraits. He is inspired by and oftencommonly does other contemporary artists like Frida Kahlo, Basqiuat and his favorite, Salvidor Dali. Being that he's so young in the game, he is constantly trying new techniques and learning daily. You can catch him at various shows throughout Tallahassee and contact him for personal pieces or interviews.

Contact info: Twitter/Instagram: @maestro389 Email: dritchey6@gmail.com Phone: (954)628-2924

108

Mill by Troy Farrah (see Artwork for full image)

Creative Non Fiction

110

The Bakery in My Head Max Schlienger

Figments Maggie Sullivan

Basilisk David Mitchell

Always Stare and Never Blink Preston Hagerman

Razbliuto Anna Sandy

Scribing in the Snow Max Schlienger

A Rant on Bananas Brahm Capoor

Together Anonymous

111

Creative Non Fiction

The Bakery in my Head

By Max Patrick Schlienger

L

et me tell you something about my ears.

They look normal enough. One is slightly bent, but it’s not really noticeable unless I show you. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself… but that’s not the point. The point is that my ears are very unusual. They are probably the only ones like them in the universe. You see, my ears contain an unrivaled supply of cookies.

True fact.

To this very day, they sit in there, waiting to be eaten. (The cookies, I mean, not my ears.) I have chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, peanut butter cookies, double fudge cookies, and even a few that I’ve never heard of, but that I've been told I will "love if I try them." With ears as unique as mine, you’d think that I’d be living the high life, with servants waiting on my every whim.

There’s a catch, though... and it was that catch which led me to my horrible loss of innocence.

Maybe I should explain.

See, my dad was an amateur magician while I was growing up, and he was always performing his tricks for me. He wasn’t half bad, either, and he’d constantly find ways of working his acts into everyday life. One of his favorite things to do was palm cookies and surprise me with them periodically. He’d have one hidden, and then with a well-practiced motion, he’d reach behind my ear and seemingly pull it out. Of course, since it came from my ear, it was my cookie to do with as I wanted, and I always wanted to eat it. Occasionally (usually), I’d politely request that he extract a few more, but I was almost always met with a response like "Not right now, I don’t want to stretch your ear out," or some spiel

about the declining cookie population and the necessity for crop cycling. I may have made that last one up.

Regardless of what the response actually was, it almost always remained in the realm of the dreaded "No" answer. So, after eating my one cookie in full view of my father, I’d casually wander back to my room, close the door, and spend the next half an hour trying to get a second cookie out of my ear. This was not as painful a procedure as you might be thinking. As I said, my dad would pull this trick on me rather frequently, and I was very well aware of how it felt to have a cookie pulled from my ear... specifically, it felt like he barely touched the back of my earlobe. With this sensation in mind, I sought to duplicate the necessary motion for harvesting my own cookies. I never did get it quite right, but I was reasonably sure that the problem was a matter of angle; I simply could not move my hand in the correct way. The solution to this problem was rather evident: I had to bribe my friends to do it for me.

Coming up with the collateral for the bribe was easy: I’d just offer them one of the cookies that they pulled from my ear.

However, getting actual results was far more difficult than I’d originally guessed that it would be. Most of the individuals whom I approached would first look in my ear and state that they couldn’t see any cookies.

When I told them that it was normal and that they should try anyway, their first action was to try and shove their finger down to my eardrum. Finally, after I’d patiently explained what they had to do, they would get bored and wander off in search of someone less delusional to play with. That left me with no other choice but to seek the help of my teacher.

Now, the woman in question had been my teacher for four years in a row:

Creative Non Fiction The first two were in preschool, and the second two were for both of my years of kindergarten. (The reason I had to take two years of kindergarten was because I was too loud, obnoxious, and immature for first grade. Imagine how my poor teacher felt.)

Naturally, when I approached her with a request for ear-based cookie extraction, she was put in the awkward situation of wondering what bizarre game I was playing this week, and she had little choice but to try and work with the situation at hand. Being a kindergarten teacher, her first instinct was to play along and pull an imaginary cookie out of my ear. This only served to irritate me, and I was forced to explain yet again exactly what I wanted and how it was to be accomplished.

“Coming up with the collateral for the bribe was easy: I’d just offer them one of the cookies that they pulled from my ear.”

Well, as a result, my teacher had a talk with my mother and my mother had a talk with my father. In the end, my father had to sit down with me and explain some things about cookies and ears and the laws of physics. He also had to endure a long list of technical questions as offered by his fiveyear-old son. Still, after quite a lengthy discussion and an even lengthier period of apologies, I came to understand the harsh, disappointing truth about the cookies in my ears.

So, I’d offer you one, but only my dad can get them out.

More about the Author

Max Patrick Schlienger is a storyteller in many mediums, often under the nome de plume of “RamsesThePigeon.” He is the author of Nearly Departed (available as a free eBook at http://www.nearlydeparted. net), a humorous thriller about hidden fortunes, con men, and possessed furniture.

When he’s not wasting time on the Internet, Max can be found haunting various hardware and craft stores, ostensibly in preparation for completing his latest illconceived invention. He intends to continue in the glamorous profession of making stuff up until such time as the position of Superman becomes available.

112

113

Creative Non Fiction Creative Non Fiction

Figments

By Maggie Sullivan

T

here are figments of my past I’m still trying to forget.

Everything is faded and worn like dreams in mornings pink. I remember fields of brown grass. An old Victorian house with a woman who had lived there since she was a little girl. I don’t remember her name.

She was nearly blind, and smelled as musty as the outdated furniture and molding floorboards, her entire skin covered in smoke caught in the wrinkle folds of her smiling face and the places where teeth should have been. She wore an outdated floral nightgown that had buttons all down the front, white buttons because white was a good color, and she wore coarse blue slipons on her calloused and otherwise bare ashen feet. Her hair was peppered with strands of white, ratty ends either falling over her shoulders or poking out of her bun.

Ever since I knew her, she never got her hair cut. She always served me cold, untoasted bread smeared with ketchup while I watched black and white cartoons on her old 1970’s TV set. Without her teeth, soft bread and liquids was all she could eat.

She was always nice to me. Red-bodied daddy longlegs were constantly crossing the faded, chipped and peeling smoke gray paint of the house. I think she likes her white buttons because it was the only thing in the house that still was.

I’m an undergraduate senior tomorrow. There’s a buzz in my head because I’ve been drinking glasses of white wine after a long day of unpacking and reuniting with my sorority sister roommates.

Alexis has 27 Dresses cued up, Nasie is popping popcorn, and Kate is talking to the latest beau in her life. I too want to see if my boyfriend has messaged me because he

graduated in May and I am here in Delaware, Ohio, while he is back home in Chicago. The distance is not unfamiliar, but that does not make it any easier. Click on Facebook; the little person icon is illuminated red, a bubble with a number one slashed right in the middle of it, and I saw the name attached to that bubble. My heart froze. Mike Walker wants to be friends, accept or ignore? That’s his name, Mike. It used to be my last name, Walker. No more pretenses and disguises. It’s there, as plain as my reflection in the glass that can’t move away from his name and I am flooded with a sudden sensation of wanting to run till my lungs burst, but I can’t breathe anymore. I need to move, but I can’t and this reaction isn’t unusual; years of abuse have left me sporadically paralyzed with shivers and short breaths.

I remember a girl named Crystal who lived in the trailer next door. I think she was five years older than I was, but she was one of my only friends in the field our trailers shared. She had blonde frizzy hair. She hid me from Mike once as a joke after we had been dancing in her bedroom to Madonna and TLC, telling me she’d adopt me as her sister, take me away from him. I half wanted to believe her, I have hoped she was being truthful, but she just thought being a rebel was funny when he kept yelling my name out for the whole field to hear. It wasn’t funny when he hit me and sent me to bed without dinner.

I remember being told to never run barefoot through the fields, to always take the road. My cousin Stormy, at least, that’s what I had always called her, dared me to go running through the fields with her to visit Crystal. She was barefoot and cut her foot

Creative Non Fiction on a broken Miller bottle. She had a cast on her foot for two months and over twenty stitches. No one yelled at her, punished her, beat her for her mistake. And still, I never ran barefoot through the fields.

make the colors move down the screen fast and he yelled that if I was going to play a game to play the game right. When I didn’t, he never let me play on his computer again, and I haven’t played a game of Tetris since.

I remember shotguns of various lengths and caliber and color combinations lined along the back wall in between two army green filing cabinets; some were gathering dust in the middle of the line, others recently oiled and ready for a hunt he’d go one after I’d left. I remember being terrified of those guns, wondering which one he might use to carry out the threats he made. “If you ever tell your mother, I’ll bring my gun and take you away from her, and you’ll never see her again.” I never told her, but she still found out and until we left Ohio, I feared every night he’d break down the door, shoot her, and take me away.

I remember at night, Mike always smoked long, cheap cigars inside the trailer, a permanent mulled spiced odor on the shag puke green carpet, red and blue kilted love seat fabric, and thin white cotton sheets I slept on. He always drank fingers of whiskey neat. His fingers were always dusty and skin hard as the dirt road because he was a construction worker. He meticulously groomed his dark, bushy major-generalstyle mustache and I remember that I never liked to look at him because he looked scary.

I think he beat the happier times out of me, because when I try to remember them, I can’t. There was nothing good about my visits, not even when we would visit a cousin who had horses because the horses had flies that would bite me. Or when Uncle John would stay the night because I was told he beat his wife too and went to jail, though he happened to be nice to me when I lost a tooth, giving me a glass of salt water to rinse and spit in the kitchen sink. Or when I would have to sleep with my step-sister Danielle when the couch was taken and she would push me up against the wall so hard that I woke up with lines on my forehead and dried blood around my nostrils.

There was an office in the trailer that had dark, fake wood paneling all around it, the olive puke green shag rug continuing throughout the whole trailer as though they had loved the look when they bought it.

Sometimes he would let me sit in his office chair and play Tetris on his computer and I couldn’t really play the game well, but I loved the bright neon magentas, tangerines, and limes that shot down the screen. I remember telling him I only liked to play to

7

I always feel dirty when I look at the faint red splotch on my right thigh. Dirty like the looks people gave me and my mother because she was a divorced single woman whose daughter was not the child of her exhusband. My body is tainted beneath the microscope of judging eyes, but the mark that is left is always more noticeable underwater. The hundreds of little red dots, like dead daddy longlegs, dried up bits of blood stuck to the cells of my skin. They look as though they were once all together before my skin stretched and expanded to fit the shape of my body today, a constellation gravitating out of orbit. I can’t remember if that’s actually the leg he hit, no, Creative Non Fiction beat, no, whipped. Maybe they’re from something else, but then again, since that night, I don’t ever remember them not being there once the blue, purple, and black hues disappeared.

It was my birthday, I was newly seven, and I would be going back home in the morning.

114

115

Creative Non Fiction My stepmom, Louis, told Mike that I said something bad. I was instantly alert, slowly sitting up on the small, green and red plaid couch that was my bed, confused, scared. She told him I said something earlier that day, in the truck, at the party store. She told him we had been talking about what happened the last time he dropped me off at my mom’s. He grabbed my arm. He told me to tell him what I said.

His fingers dug into the bones of my arm, hurting me. I wanted to cry. I told him. “I thought I saw you hug my mom.” He called me a liar.

He took off his belt. He stepped back. He raised the buckle over his head and brought it down on me. A sickening crack of metal against skin. He broke me. I curled up. Instinct. I screamed. I cried. I shut down. He hit me over and over. The constant snapping of leather in empty air, the flash of cold pressure. And when his arm got tired, he used his hand, hard and calloused. He pulled me off the couch, threw me on the floor. I covered my head, squinting my eyes shut. The darkness made it all go by faster, made it hurt less, my body numbing itself from shock. I was a filthy, dirty liar. I was a bad girl. A horrible, rotten girl.

And then it stopped, my body tingling, dull, slowly throbbing itself back to life. Louis looked terrified. He breathed heavily, his eyes angry, almost red, burning onto my crumpled, curled up, and exposed body. He walked out of the trailer, she went to the bedroom, and I was alone, feeling legless as I pulled the white sheet over me, checking to see if I was bleeding. No blood, but dark hues crawled up and down my skin. I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t stop hurting. I wanted to call my mom, but Louis told me no. I’d tell her what he did, I’d get him in trouble. She was scared. She saw what he was capable of in a bout of blind, drunken, illogical anger. It was a mistake, he would

tell me later, trying to hug the pain away, saying he was sorry. Another horrible mistake. The hug didn’t help and the apology was nothing but words.

In the bed at college, afraid to tear my eyes away from the bubble with Mike Walker written in it, I called my mother, but she didn’t answer because she couldn’t hear her phone, but she was in Hong Kong and the time difference made it hard for us to always connect. So I called my boyfriend and he asked for my log-in, he told me he’d take care of it; he talked me through what he was doing, telling me it would go away and things would be okay. I started to worry about guns and seeing him on campus, asking around for me, looking for a Maggie Walker who no longer existed and then asking for Maggie Sullivan and being pointed in my direction. I feared being alone, I feared being found. I sat in the corner and ignored the knocks that called for me because I was too scared to move away from the bed that seemed to be the only place where I was alone and safe.

I remember going to the pool after my birthday. My mother took out her big, black camera. The loud clicks and grinding of gears as she took one photo of my leg, then another. They’re for the doctor and judge, she told me, evidence. I had to hike my swimsuit up my body so she could see the handprints on my bottom, on my back. I remember being embarrassed, parents and children looking and pointing and whispering, and I wished she didn’t have to take so many photos. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me, judging me with their silent, intruding questions. Even in the water, their eyes could not be refracted from the dark stain on my white skin, like squid ink in ocean. I don’t remember going back to the pool again until the bruises faded.

I have sometimes caught myself wondering where he is in the world. Right

Creative Non Fiction now. Is he still in the same trailer, propped on old concrete cinder blocks somewhere in Kentucky? Or has he moved? Does he still have a wife, a family? Or has he beaten them away? Since last year, I had even wondered if he was dead. I would ask myself if I would even care if all those nights of smoking and drinking finally caught up with him. I always imagined he would go by cancer. But I know that he is not dead, and at this moment, I doubt I would care. Does it make me a horrible person for thinking these things? Would I care if he ever knew I had thought about him dying? That hasn’t happened yet either, but in all honesty, I don’t think I can even try to answer that.

I was twelve and it was the last time I would ever have to look at him, say something to him. He had just lost his motion to redeem visitation rights. I was living half a world away in Hong Kong, where he could never touch me again. I was glad for it. We were waiting for mom to come out of the courtroom with the verdict, but he came out first. I tried to hide behind my grandmother, I was still terrified of him. I couldn’t look him in the eye, I couldn’t even look him in the face when she told me to tell him goodbye. I looked past him, into an unfocused space of air, only white hair and gold-rimmed specks in my periphery. I think he asked me to hug him goodbye, but I don’t remember. I just remember being repulsed and terrified at the thought of being close to him. My grandmother pushed me to do something, so I shook his hand, but I didn’t say goodbye. Now, I still don’t care that I didn’t.

It is getting easier to say “this happened to me, this broke me, but it made me stronger when I found most of the pieces to myself again.” I am proud to say I survived because I know others have not. It gets easier for me to tell the Mike in my head that I am not a part of him any more by name or law, an adopted Sullivan in

every permanent sense that a last name can give to an identity. The nightmares are few and far between now, and I have enveloped myself in the things that make me happy and give me hope that life is good despite its bad.

“It is getting easier to say “this happened to me, this broke me, but it made me stronger when I found most of the pieces to myself again.”

The words were written in my head, ready to go on paper. The humidity was high, my bus ride long, lonely, spent staring out the window as lush green palms and banyans protruded out of the side of the mountain sides that lined the roads of Hong Kong island. I was still not making friends, unable to really connect to anyone, to talk to someone as myself and not some “new” me living in this “new” place.

I envisioned my arrival at home, most likely just an empty apartment, my mom out shopping for food while Delia, our live-in ohma, cleaned, or ironed outside of her room located in the hallway past the kitchen. I saw myself go into my mother’s room, backpack left by the door, rummaging under her sink for the pills, the drowsy kind.

I could see myself falling asleep, giving in to the tiredness that had slowly been overtaking me, making my body heave as I repeated my schedule. Wake up, get dressed, go to school, come back, do homework, watch TV, eat dinner, go to bed.

Wake up again, but always tired. It never changed. I could see myself lying on my bed, writing the note I had been writing over and over in my head, then falling asleep.

Falling into darkness, releasing myself from the hurt I couldn’t put words or feelings to.

116

117

Creative Non Fiction I have your anger and darkness. I know I do by the way it springs on me, the way I want to react. Physically. I have reacted on my little brothers when I was younger and didn’t know how to stop myself. I hate myself the most when I am angry, when I am like you. I don’t want to be like you. I am nothing like you. I find myself still getting angry on rare occasions when my buttons are pressed to the point of breakage. I want to yell, throw my fists, embrace the red that pumps in my body, shaking, flushed. I burn them with a stare, glance, acknowledgement. I let you and the rage I have inherited whither to nothing when I do not react to it. I refuse to give into the blood I have refused to accept as my own. You cannot control me, you cannot influence me if you are not in my life.

I stand in my kitchen, remembering a dream in which one of my students started to relentlessly beat me over a grade he didn’t like. Another morning of sweaty hair matted on the back of my neck, like a dirty hug. But then I can’t breathe, my eyes wanting to bathe my cheeks, my shirt, my cheap kitchen linoleum floor. I start to gasp like a drowning fish, unable to get a grasp on myself, my restraint, my courage cracked. My hands start shaking, I’m shrinking against the kitchen pillar, more afraid of the fog falling on me than the hot pan that was popping with hot oil. I relive the fear, I cry like I am ten again, I gasp and hiccup still not breathing and I shake uncontrollably, but I find a way to say the names of those who give me strength in the life I’ve been living: Mom, Mamaw, Papaw, Tim…no, dad, Sam, Nick, Grandma, Grandpa, Gaya, Tal, Vicky, Frankie, Lauren, Alexis. The names go on and on until my heartbeat steadies.

I never did it. I wanted to. I wanted to end the pain because no one I talked to understood and I was tired of talking and being ignored. Not ignored in the sense that no one saw me. People saw me, but no one heard me. I’m not a religious person, but I believe in miracles, and when my mom got

pregnant with my brother Sam, and then two years later with my brother Nick, I knew someone had been listening and waiting till I was at my weakest to see if I still had the strength to pull myself back from the edge.

God, fate, something, I don’t know, but I believe someone was listening and gave my parents a pregnancy of perfect timing, days before I had decided to kill myself with pills.

I flushed the note, hid the pills back in my mother’s bathroom cabinet, and asked her for the help I needed. Admitting you are fallible, that you are not okay is the hardest thing anyone in pain can do.

I have not sought him out, I never will. I have moments of weakness, but years of therapy and awareness have taught me how to best handle those moments of constricting ribs and shaking throat so I can stand up and keep moving. With every new good thing that comes into my life, the bad have lessened and I no longer get nightmares that cause me to shake and sweat, I do not cry for no reason as much, and thoughts of darkness only arise when I purposefully think about them to help me find new inspiration in the writing I have pursued as a vocation rather than therapy.

And when I think of that night when Mike Walker added me as a friend on Facebook, I thank God, fate, whoever was listening before, that his profile picture had been the defaulted shadow of a figure instead of his face. I don’t think I’d be able to forget it now that his face is simply a shape that is white, hard, and mustached.

Creative Non Fiction

More about the Author

11

Maggie Sullivan is an Ohio native who moved to the exotic bowels of Hong Kong at the age of ten. She is currently a Nonfiction MFA Candidate at Columbia College Chicago where she also works as a Graduate Student Instructor and the Creative Writing Department’s Graduate Events Coordinator. She was also an Assistant Editorfor South Loop Review and Hotel Amerika. Maggie has also been published in Entropy, Felled Limbs, Cartridge Lit., 3Elements Review, and The Collapsar. She has a habit of living in the colors of her writing.

118

119

Creative Non Fiction

Basilisk

(An excerpt)

By D. E. Mitchell

I

t was nostalgia for the first game that caused me to join the Tomb Raider forums community. I’d heard that Crystal Dynamics was in the process of remaking the original, which was an idea I detested on the same grounds as remaking a movie classic, though I felt compelled to learn more about it. After reading reviews, participating in forum discussions, and watching video clips of the game at youtube, I decided I didn’t need to invest in buying a console system to play the remake. I soon lost interest in most game-related discussions on that forum, but I stayed because I liked the community. It was certainly better than remaining on the message board my ex girlfriend and I used to post on together, and I could always expect to find sympathetic ears amidst the dark carnival of cyberspace when the real world let me down.

In this place I called myself Tyrannosaurus. When I wasn’t busy venting about the last woman who broke my heart, I was reminding people that the proper abbreviation for my species name was T.rex and not T-Rex, explaining why the dinosaur that appeared in the first Tomb Raider game more closely resembled a Giganotosaurus or Mapusaurus instead, and replying to any thread where dinosaurs happened to pop up in the discussion. Since I knew an inhuman amount of information on the subject, the only viable explanation was that I was not human at all. I was, obviously, a dinosaur.

Not any dinosaur, but their last and greatest king, patiently waiting for the time in which I could awaken from my Cthulhu-esqe slumber, destroy humanity, and rule the world once again. To facilitate my resurrection, I needed human worshippers, whom I would spare. When someone pointed out that a T.rex couldn’t possibly type with its tiny arms, I explained that a human posted on my behalf. When

discussing my personal life, I referred to myself as “the human who posts for me.” I kept this up for more than two years.

One day, early June of 2008, some poor fool by the name of Forwen irked me by suggesting I was consulting Google and Wikipedia for my dinosaur knowledge. I furiously typed The human who posts for me is capable of naming not one, but two dinosaurs off the top of his head for every letter of the alphabet, at any time, if you should ask him to. He may be reached at: I typed the number of my cell phone.

Then I added TAKE THAT YOU COWARDS!!! and hit “reply”.

No one called. I was disappointed. # In the midst of an ethereal storm fluttered a tiny white dove from Canada, who called herself Veronica Ma. She clutched an olive branch in her beak as she beat her wings furiously. Beneath her was a blasted apocalyptic landscape crisscrossed with chasms, burnt tree trunks, crumbling ruins, and the spiritual residue of deferred hope. A grey mist shrouded everything under her, but tiny beacons of light shone through here and there, and these things could guide her from the top of one peak to the next. And occasionally there were rainbows. Her neighbors lived at these places, and while they were capable of sending signals back and forth to each other, they were all separated by steep chasms and craggy cliffs. Veronica Ma found the wind harsher today, but she had someone to visit.

Creative Non Fiction On an island plateau in the middle the next chasm, there was a mammoth cavern between two spires. The entrance was rough-hewn, but it had once been a powerful temple. Crumbling stairs lead outward, and formed precipices off the mountain. Gigantic vines choked the cliff and the temple, trailing into the chasm below. Huge bones littered the outside.

They were dinosaur bones.

“When I wasn’t busy venting about the last woman who broke my heart, I was reminding people that the proper abbreviation for my species was T.rex.”

This was the temple of the last Cretaceous God-King. He was an enormous multi-ton creature with mosaic scales and the muscle tone of a mammal, though in youth he sported feathers. Now they were nothing more than a bristly integument. He stood on two legs that resembled a chicken, with three toes that pointed forward and the fourth vestigial toe pointing inward. He carried his barrel-shaped body horizontally when he stood up, and balanced himself with his heavy tail. His arms, though muscular, were so tiny they could not touch his chin or each other, and each pointed inward with two small fingers. His neck, though short and corded, naturally curved into the shape of an ‘S’. His head sported the most demonic set of jaws in the universe, a mechanism both brutal and elegant, with more absolute and relative bite force than any the world had ever seen, or would see again. His jaws were lined with serrated banana-shaped teeth. They were far less knife blades than they were railroad spikes, for his bite never sliced or hooked, but crushed bone and expanded outward to swallow any chunk of a carcass it could

break away. His snout, broad at the base but narrow at the end, contained a huge olfactory rivaling an entire pack of bloodhounds. His hawk-like eyes pointed forward so that he saw you with true depth perception. His ears, too, or rather ear openings, pointed forward. When he stood at the edge of the chasm and bellowed across, people listened.

Today Veronica Ma saw the GodKing laying listlessly on the inside of the temple, his massive head resting on a stone altar. His eyes were half-closed, but he was not sleeping. She perched herself on his back, between his shoulder blades, looking for any annoying insect she could make a snack of. Failing to find any, she walked up the length of his neck and nestled herself between the bony crests above his eyes.

She tucked the olive branch beneath her breast. He did not resist, though she had no reason to think he would. Unlike the other inhabitants of the realm, she knew the GodKing personally. He was indeed a fearsome beast, but he was also solemn and introspective, always contemplating his fallen empire. He was the saddest being she knew.

“How are you these days?” said Veronica Ma. Her voice was cheerful. The dinosaur sighed.

“Confused,” he said in a low rumble, “You may have read it in some of the posts I’ve made about that lady I met a little while ago. She taught me a few things. I don’t know whether to feel sad or grateful.”

“Hmm, yes,” said the dove, “I've enjoyed reading your posts on your recent experiences and I must say the one that involves the Buddhist woman is particularly interesting to me because I am also Buddhist. But I think she's given Buddhism a bit of a bad rap because of her behavior towards you. Yes, it's true about love and attachment and how it is best to avoid getting caught in these kinds of entanglements because they only result in dissatisfaction due to their transient nature.”

120

121

Creative Non Fiction Veronica Ma stood up and wobbled her way across Tyrannosaurus’ snout, checking his nostrils for parasites, but not missing a beat in her speech: “But what she perhaps has not revealed is the fact that she's probably broken several moral precepts that we laypeople try to uphold in order to behave in a moral and humane manner towards all living beings. She's not done herself a service by behaving the way she did towards you. But Buddhists also believe in karma which simply is the law of cause and effect, so whatever bad actions an individual has done will come back to them someday.

That fact alone may give you some solace, I don't know.”

“It doesn’t.”

Veronica Ma hopped off of his snout and onto the stone altar. Tyrannosaurus had a bit of an overbite, and she studied his protruding upper teeth, occasionally helping herself to a morsel from somewhere in between them.

“As for me,” she continued, “I too have been caught far too many times in the entanglements of love and attachment. And like you, have also gained knowledge about myself but most importantly about the nature of life and the world . . . how everything is in constant flux, impermanent and subject to change. And because of this impermanence, we suffer because we all want and attach to good things, expecting them to last forever.”

“Hmmm . . .” rumbled Tyrannosaurus, raising his head slightly, “Well, don’t worry about me thinking any less of your religion as a result. I think it’s a pretty kickass religion, myself. There are many interesting parallels between the teachings of Christ and Buddha.”

Veronica Ma blinked.

“Just curious about how you define ‘religion’ here,” she said, “I don’t view

Buddhism as a religion at all . . . more like a philosophy.”

“If the word ‘religion’ carries a negative connotation for you, though it doesn’t for me, then call it a philosophy. All I’m saying is that I can recognize its spiritual value.”

“Ah,” said the bird, “Well I hope you don't mind me skipping ahead regarding the ‘Buddhist’ woman but I'll just say that everyone ‘owns’ their own karma, which is simply the results or repercussions of previous actions, and that eventually whatever goes around, comes around.”

The dove looked around the temple for a moment, then flapped her wings and perched on the frill of a Triceratops skull. It was picked clean of morsels, as were the rest of the bones in the temple. Veronica Ma hopped down onto the brow of the skull, resting on the broken stump of the beast’s right brow horn. Tyrannosaurus was looking at her, but he was still resting on the ground. Now that she’d aroused his attention, she took another deep breath to speak.

“May I make a rather bold observation at this time?” she said, “I noticed that we have a mutual friend in Basilisk, or um, Jenni. I've ‘known’ her for many, many years now from a previous forum and now here at Tomb Raider forums and from what I've experienced, she is truly a wonderful person. Are you currently on speaking terms with her? Because I've noticed, and call it ‘female intuition’ if you like, that she might just have a bit of a crush on you! Now I haven't spoken to her about this AT ALL and NEVER would but just thought I'd toss that bit of insight your way in case you've thought of pursuing something or hadn't picked up on it yet.”

“Really?” said Tyrannosaurus, “Well I haven’t spoken with her outside the forums, but I’ve always liked her, and enjoyed reading her posts. I guess I get a little fuzzy whenever I think about her for some reason. I thought she was a guy at

Creative Non Fiction first. When I learned she was a chick, I sometimes wondered where she lived and if she was do-able, but that’s about it. And you say she has a crush on me?”

“Now,” the bird said with soapy inflection, “I don't want to have to hit you over the head with a two by four but . . .

YES! I really, really think so and it's been there for quite some time now.”

“Hmmm, I did leave my number on that stupid dinosaur thread too. She did say she was tempted to call me. I wonder if she's really contemplating it.”

By now Tyrannosaurus was beginning to push himself off the cave floor with his tiny arms, tilting his head back and arching his back to stand. After a moment of awkward flexing, he stood, exposing the scars on his stomach from having been gored by one Triceratops too many.

“Now, the way I think you could have REALLY clinched it is to have replied with a response like . . . ‘I’m looking forward to it’ or something like that.”

“Hmm,” said Tyrannosaurus, gazing out the cavern entrance, “Perhaps I will.”

“Well do it then!” said the dove, flapping her wings excitedly, “Like you, I think she’s a little shy. It will take some nudging.”

“Just a minute . . .”

Tyrannosaurus began to lumber out of his cave. # I was sitting in the computer room on the second floor of my parents’ house that evening, contemplating Veronica Ma’s avatar. It was an animated JPG of a dove flapping its wings while carrying a branch in its beak. Somewhere beneath my avatar, which was a Tyrannosaurus, Myrmaad posted that the phone number in question was likely a $200 porn chat line, but that

baffled me. What would the joke be in that case? That the human who posted for Tyrannosaurus was a phone sex worker? I didn’t get it. Then my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so whether or not the person with the bad sense to call me was hoping for phone sex, I answered.

I heard the voice of a young woman on the other end, intelligent, spunky, sweet, and vulnerable. She had a New York accent. This was the sort of voice that made me want to hug its source immediately.

“Hi,” she said, “This is, uh, Basilisk from Tomb Raider forums. Or Jenni. I’m calling the number you posted on the . . .”

“Jenni!” I said, my voice animating in ways it normally didn’t, “Hi, I’m the uh . . . human who posts for Tyrannosaurus. How are you? You want me to make good on that challenge, is that it?”

“Yeah, sure!”

I stood up, sweeping Jenni off her feet in my mind. I found myself stepping out of the room as I spoke to her, carrying her in my mind, heading downstairs, through the living room, and into the basement, where I made sure to close the door before we continued. Talking to her was easy and comfortable. We spent some time discussing Tomb Raider at first, inevitably agreeing about the quality of Core’s games over that of Crystal Dynamics. Of course, I hadn’t played any of the latter, but she had.

Her video game knowledge far exceeded mine. And while we did this, I made my way through the alphabet, naming two dinosaurs for every letter. I think I started with Acrocanthosaurus and Allosaurus and continued from there. Unfortunately, I only managed to mention one dinosaur name that began with the letters ‘Q’ and ‘U’, and my brain was wracked for the duration of the conversation, but Jenni assured me that I’d passed the challenge. I laid down on the futon and listened, placing her next to me in my mind. We talked until my cell phone ran out of minutes, as I was using a crappy payas-you-go phone at the time.

122

123

Creative Non Fiction Quaesitosaurus and Udanoceratops! I smacked my forehead.

It mattered little, as Jenni would later tell me that she went to work much more chipper the next morning. When someone asked why, she told her she’d had a good conversation the night before with a guy over the phone. “Was he your boyfriend?” her co-worker asked. “Not yet,” Jenni told her. She became a constant and endearing presence whenever I was online. I found myself confiding in her more than I expected. I always appreciated friendship, but my opinion was that online relationships were worthless if you couldn’t meet in person. Jenni mostly agreed.

To read the full version of Basilisk, please visit: http://coelophysis.deviantart.com/art/Basilis k-141507152

More about the Author

D. E. Mitchell was born on Holy Saturday of 1982, in Saginaw, Michigan. He has lived in Indiana, Pittsburgh, Georgia, San Francisco, and Massachusetts. In 2011, he received an M.F.A. in Writing from California College of the Arts. His work has been published in The Bridge, Samizdat Literary Journal, and Blank Fiction Magazine. He currently lives in the Boston area, and is at work on his first novel.

Tyrannosaurus rex ruled western North America between 67 and 65 million years ago. After the fall of his empire, he remained in obscurity until his discovery and christening by Henry Fairfield Osborn in 1905. He has since enjoyed lasting popularity among mankind, and plans on returning to re-conquer the world. As of 2007, D. E. Mitchell posts on his behalf at www.tombraiderforums.com

Creative Non Fiction

Always Stare & Never Blink

By Preston Hagerman

I have told many lies. I have fabricated fictions and hatched half-truths for reasons that I can no longer rationalize. But—for all of my tall tales—I have never lied to anyone as much as I have to myself. There has been no introspective debate; I did not forget; I did not rewrite my past like a villainous historian, or blot out the truth like wicked men of the cloth. I have altogether denied it. I have made the conscious decision to ignore the pin pricks of distant memory, even as they drill into my ears and fill my head with onyx whispers of that one wretched moment not so long ago. So, in the interest of verisimilitude, permit me, if I may, to begin with the place of my birth.

I

Whenever my parents left me with him to be babysat, we would play hide-and-seek and other adolescent games in that gloomy green-walled room that I mentioned before.

But on one particular day—the Day of Yellow Eyes—things were different.

If you were to ask my folks or consult legal records, they would tell you that the stork dropped me in the porcelain bowl of Alma, Michigan, on November 9, 1989. If you were to ask me, I’d tell you that while this may have been the place of my birth it was not where I was born. I was actually born five years later in the gloomy green-walled backroom of a dusty old shack that some sad sap had the testicular fortitude to call a house. This broken down infrastructure, which belonged to my aunt and uncle, was not much worse off than Briarwood Estates—the tin can kingdom where I and other Bridge Card kids grew up.

“Hi Uncle Keith,” I exclaimed, running to him for a hug.

And it was here that neither my mother nor father nor human being at all gave birth to me.

I was created by a man who was not a person for not all humans are people. I knew him well. For a time—as long as can be conceived by a five-year old—he was my hero. Uncle Keith was my world and during a time before he metamorphosed into my second father, he was actually human.

I hadn’t seen my uncle for the better part of three months so I was especially excited to get out of my parents’ hair that day. Before I got out of the car that day, my father told me to be on my best behavior because Uncle Keith had something very important to tell me. When I went inside I was surprised to see that only Uncle Keith was in the house. My aunt and cousin had gone off to the park earlier in the day so we had the place to ourselves.

“Don’t come any closer!” he said rather forcefully from the shadow of the corner of the room. The room was too dark for me to make out his face but I could tell he had shaved his head.

“What happened to all of your hair?” I asked.

“I’m very sick, Preston,” he told me, coughing softly. “And when you’re my kind of sick your body changes. Your hair falls out and you look dead. Like a zombie or something. So I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“What kind of sick are you?”

Uncle Keith didn’t answer. He just motioned for me to sit on the couch on the opposite side of the room as him. He rose from his seat and disappeared into the kitchen. As he stood up, I noticed that he was far more slender than I remembered—

124

125

Creative Non Fiction cadaverous even. He returned a few moments later and placed a glass full of bubbly liquid on the end-table at the far side of the couch.

“Drink,” he said. “I don’t need you catching what I have.”

“What kind of sick are you?” I asked again, retrieving the glass.

Uncle Keith sighed. “It’s called cancer, Preston.”

I grimaced as the bitter liquid washed down my throat and although I still was not able to make out his countenance in the dimly lit room I could have sworn I saw a Cheshire Cat grin stretch across the center of his darkened face. I instantly felt sick to my stomach.

“I think I am going to barf,” I cried, rising to my feet.

—And then came the big beautiful blackness from which I wish I never awoke.

I cannot say how long I was out but as I lifted my face slightly from the rough textured carpet of the green-walled room, I could feel the pattern of the floor indented in it. That’s when I realized; I was naked, lying spread-eagle with my back to the ceiling and bound by a four-point mechanical restraint with cords wrapped around my wrists and ankles and extending outward to connect to plastic hooks which were drilled into the four walls of the room.

I remembered seeing this contraption before. Months earlier, I had entered the green-walled room without knocking and saw that my older cousin was in this restraint. Uncle Keith told me that they were playing a game about knights and dungeons and that it would be too scary for me to join in. I never questioned it then, but was in great discomfort at this point so I attempted to wiggle my way out. I again lifted my head from the floor and saw in front of me a tall-rectangular mirror. In the

near darkness of the room, all that I could see in the mirror was my head arched upwards—it was as though it were floating in midair. Suddenly I heard a click and found myself imbued in the citrine glow of lights I never knew were in place in that room.

After my eyes adjusted to the light, I peered into the mirror and saw Uncle Keith standing behind me. I was situated in such a way that it was physically impossible for me to turn and face him directly. But, he saw me trying.

“Damn it,” he snapped with genuine surprise. “You weren’t supposed to wake up.”

“I don’t want to play dungeons!” I found myself blurting out in a sore and raspy voice. Whatever I had drunk caused my throat to swell up and become raw.

“But I do,” Uncle Keith said plainly. “And don’t you want your old Uncle Keith to be happy? After all, I might not be around for much longer.” earing some rustling behind me, I strained my neck trying to see what Uncle Keith was doing. In the reflection I saw that he had stripped down to his bare skin. He appeared tall, lanky, and a very pale shade of yellow. He had dark bruises covering his forearms and leading up to his sunken chest. There was hardly any flesh covering his bony cheeks and a dark shade of red surrounded his eyes.

With my chin to the floor and my head arched slightly upward, I could not help but stare into the mirror before me. I don’t know if it was because of the lack of blood flow to my brain but the room suddenly became dim—dark in fact--and all that could be seen in the mirror’s cruel reflection was the pure white Cheshire grin beneath two yellow eyes which glowed with animosity as black as the surrounding room.

Creative Non Fiction When my physical anguish reached its incomparable zenith, my mind left my flesh and hovered above the room, watching the pederast encompass his prey below. *** —I came back to consciousness and that brief moment which was absent of misery was all but gone. I felt the terror of my organic drum beat like a thousand pattering feet. His influence ripping through the flesh of my innocence seeping down my thighs onto the floor; all of my adolescent innocence inundated into one crimson puddle of filth and pain and hate and excrement. When the serpent had his fill he undid my straps and exited the room saying “Get dressed.”

“I felt the terror of my organic drum beat like a thousand pattering feet.”

Alone in the dark—surrounded by walls that devolved from the happy-toned green-walled room of my youth into the mass of mold which resides there now—I sobbed so ferociously that not a single silver tear could muster the courage to slither out of the corner of my eye; that not a semblance of sounds could be heard in the silent vastness of the crystal clustered canvas that is outer space; not even physical pain and misery which literally and figuratively raped me could burden me with the sense of touch…of feeling. All sensation from then on and forever more was gone.

When I concluded my tearless sob, I did what I was told. I always do. I slipped on my khakis and t-shirt and limped out of the green-walled room searching for a sign of Uncle Keith so as not to be surprised again.

“Those will not do,” Uncle Keith said suddenly. “You’ve got blood on them. Go

get on a pair of your cousin’s pants.” I did as I was told. I always do. “Oh, and Preston,” he said. “This didn’t happen. Tell them something—anything else.”

I did as I was told. I always do. The cover story I crafted for what happened to my clothes and why I walked bowlegged was just one lie in a lifetime full of virulent utterances; just one laceration on a backside full of slashes and gashes that stretch and expand to proportions so deep that my stained and shattered-self releases a Whitmanic yaaaawwwwp so poignant that it can be heard from the depths of my vessel and seen sparkled from my cerulean eyes.

It wasn’t that difficult for my five-year old imagination to cook up a tale about why I was wearing jeans when I was dropped off in khakis—I said that I had “pissed my pants.” I wasn’t old enough then to see the repercussions from this one little lie.

Disappointed that I had messed myself at an unreasonable age, my father took me home and beat me with a belt. I was already sore and torn before he started beating me so I attempted to ward off the wisp of his leathery whip, but that only made him angrier. To him, I had an issue with pissing my pants and challenging authority.

At some point in the years following the Day of Yellow Eyes, I somehow managed to push that memory into dormancy. But I had never really fully forgotten. Beneath the gratuitous profanity and dirty jokes, beneath the double-dog dares and after-school detention, beneath all of the wacky antics of my adolescence and over-compensating generosity of my young adulthood, I always knew in the back of my mind that I was unclean. Damaged.

Broken. And I have carried that with me every day of my life.

*** This fragility of my youth was a vengeful spirit of sorts, hitching a ride in my vessel and lying dormant in the back of my mind

126

127

Creative Non Fiction waiting to awaken when life seemed happy and comfortable. The first time I made love that memory crept into my mind like a cancer far more vicious than the one that ravaged the body of my second father. I spent a considerable amount of my time and energy blocking out those images but as my relationship with my first real love flourished, I could no longer stomach the feeling. I climbed off of her, telling her I was seeing someone else.

My relationship with Jean was actually the first time I had even legitimately fallen in love with a girl. So when I went home in tears that night, my father and stepmother demanded to know what was wrong. I told them that Jean and I broke up and when they asked why, before I could even think, I found myself spoon-feeding them some bull-crap about her cheating on me. Once again, I had lied as I had done a million times before but the fact that I found myself creating alibis and stories entirely in the stream of consciousness was disturbing.

Yes. I have told many lies. And the truths I have told about the lies I’ve told barely begin to articulate how severe it is.

My lies have become an illness of sorts, an incurable disease that encompasses the mind and heart and soul. Much like cancer.

The biggest lie that I have told myself, however, is not that I never experienced the atrocities done unto me in my long-gone forgotten youth, although that would give the winner a run for its money. In truth, the biggest lie is that someday I will fall asleep and have the benefit of not seeing those two big yellow eyes peering back at me through the darkness of my unconscious mind. Like my own eyes since the minute of my second birth, they always stare and never blink. Always stare and never blink. Always stare and never blink.

More about the Author

Preston Hagerman primarily writes nonfiction pieces from his very weird personal life and enjoys writing in the stream of consciousness. He has numerous publications in a variety of literary magazines. He works and spends most of hist time at a psychiatric juvenile detention facility in Michigan.

Creative Non Fiction

Creative Non Fiction

Razbliuto

By Anna Sandy

A

venged Sevenfold It’s not my kind of music, not anymore. But it fit the harsh, ringing time of my life when all I wanted was something loud enough to drown out my own mind. It fit the boy who slouched against a wall, his legs long and spread out as if to take up every bit of empty space around us.

My own legs were tucked beneath me, and I leaned toward him so that the earphones one in his ear, one in mine- would reach between us. I didn’t touch him. It was that song, the one that started like a lullaby and changed in an instant to something vicious, that rattled inside our skulls.

Blue I remember the exact shade of his sweater. I don’t remember why we were arguing. I don’t remember whether his hair was short or long at the time. I don’t remember much at all about that day, whether it was one of our good ones or one of the ones that made me go home and sit on the shower floor until the water ran cold.

But I remember that color blue. I remember the feel of the tight-woven threads smooth underneath my fingertip. It was the only time I ever touched him gently, timid, like he was something that could be broken too.

Cold I have always hated the cold. There is nothing worse to me than the feeling that the chill has slipped through all the layers of skin and come to rest inside my bones. The rawness at the back of my throat when I breathe deeply in the frigid air scrapes against me and makes me cringe. I hate the rattling of my body’s minor bits and pieces when I shiver to keep myself from dying like everything else the winter has killed.

Winters are short in Mississippi, but while they’re here, I’m always afraid that I might

never get warm again. I knew something was wrong with us when he started to make me feel cold all the time.

Dad My dad taught me, not intentionally, what it looks like to be trapped in a life with someone who doesn’t love you- at least not the way you need to be loved. People love how they were taught. Maybe sometimes they just don’t know how to find better ways.

Before I was old enough to know much, I was already desperate not to repeat his mistakes. If it were up to me, I’d have never loved anyone at all.

Emily When I was younger, I had a friend named Emily. I didn’t like that he thought she was pretty. I shouldn’t have minded; I thought she was pretty too. In fact, I think I said it first. But I didn’t like that he thought it.

I suppose that makes me jealous, petty, insecure… Maybe it just makes me fifteen and scared of everything. I don’t think he ever even spoke to her, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind for a while.

Friends He said, “We’re friends. It would ruin everything.”

But in the end, everything was ruined anyway, so really, we ought to have been braver.

God We were raised so religious that it’s either a shock or none at all that we unraveled so fast. The pastor’s granddaughter and the church drummer, a lifetime of sermons and Sundays spent on church pews, and all it took was each other for us to lose our faith. Both of us tried to turn ourselves inside out, as if maybe to forget how hard it was to fall asleep the

128

129

Creative Non Fiction more we pretended that we didn’t still believe. I never understood his reasons, but mine were easy and impossible all at once. I always loved him more than God, and that simply couldn’t be.

Hot If you’ve ever been to Mississippi in August, you’d probably wonder why any of us fear hell. It couldn’t be much hotter. But maybe knowing is the whole reason we’re so afraid.

I He says that I think I’m the center of the universe. Except that I’m always getting distracted by the thought of all the lives -the complete lives, full of mundane moments and thrilling ones, families and loves and heartbreaks- that are always, always whirling about around me. And I’m always thinking about how desperate I am to mean something, to leave some kind of print on the world. I guess I do think I’m the center of the universe though. I hate to feel small, but I twist myself into bundles when I sit.

Joy I used to define joy as the way it felt to be with him. Joy was knowing he would laugh when I made a joke. Joy was the way he always knew what I was about to say before I said it, because I liked feeling as if someone understood the way my mind moves. Joy was how we were falling apart together instead of alone. I later realized that none of this was joy at all.

Kristin His sister was my best friend. She still is, and I guess that’s the thing that makes our story different. It’s not really an original plot, falling in love with your best friend’s older brother. But nothing that happened after was anything like a romance.

Love I wrote a poem once, about the reason that people are so obsessed with finding love. I crumpled up a dozen different

versions before I finally just wrote about how I’m the last person who would know. I loved him, and at the time I’d have let the world and everyone in it burn down around me for him. There’s a perverse kind of freedom in that.

Marriage I never wanted to get married. The entire idea of being bound to one person, someone other than myself, made me feel like I was being suffocated. Watching a marriage fail slowly and painfully the way my parents’ did would do that to anyone.

But I would have tied myself to him in a minute.

Now I loved him in all the ways I needed to be loved when I was too young to know any better. I’m older and almost definitely wiser, but I feel more like a child than I ever did before. He says I smile more now, and I haven’t stopped to count but the easy way the corners of my mouth turns up tell me he’s probably right. I always laughed at everything, but it’s lighter now. It doesn’t have to fight through as much to come out.

“I was sixteen before I realized that love should be better than the absence of it.”

Over I don’t love him like that anymore. I haven’t in years. Learning how not to came slowly, and horribly, and then all at once.

But I don’t consider that part of my life as being over. I know we’ll never really be anything again, except two people who used to be a whole. I don’t miss himusually. He doesn’t give me a reason to want him again- usually. But we will never really be over. I still see him around. I hear his name brought up in conversation. We go to the same places and we care about the

Creative Non Fiction same group of people. He’s always there on the fringes of my life, threaded in, permanent. And we will both carry the marks of the way I used to love him.

Pretty I used to think it was because I wasn’t pretty enough. Sometimes I wonder why girls do that, where we learn to blame all the bad things that happen to us on our looks, why we judge ourselves by the appearance of our bodies and faces and hair. But for the longest time, I thought it was because I wasn’t pretty enough. Or skinny enough. Or something enough. I only stopped when he married a girl who was two sizes larger than me. I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone else.

Quiet I used to hate the quiet. When things were quiet, I had to think. And because thinking was painful, I never gave my mind one spare moment to confront me with all the things I didn’t want to admit were true. I stayed busy. I texted while I ate. I read in the bathtub. I watched TV until I fell asleep.

I kept music on all the time. These days, I fall asleep listening to myself breathe in the dark.

Right I hate admitting that I’m wrong. But I was wrong about us.

“We aren’t right for each other,” he said.

“Yes, we are,” I replied. “We’re perfect. We could be perfect.”

Summer We were both in love with the summer. It seemed like we always fell apart once things got cool, but in the summers we were perfect. Infinite. Almost within reaching distance of all the things we were looking for. We were on overdrive in the summers.

They were long, hot days of laughing and screaming and adrenaline that seemed like it might burst from us and have a life of its’ own. Once, we jumped into a creek in the Ozarks at two in the morning, high on being

young and alive. The current pulled at me, but he caught my arm and held me steady, and we let the waterfall from the cliffs above us pour over our bodies in the dark. The mountain water was freezing, so cold that our lips turned blue and our bodies numbed so that we didn’t feel any of the bumps and scrapes that left bruises we’d find in the morning, but the stars were limitless and it was the most gorgeous moment that I can remember.

Twice I told him that I hated him twice.

Both times he believed me. Both times I knew I was lying. We never managed to get our brain waves on the same plane. He knew me better than anyone, and he didn’t know me at all. I didn’t understand why he refused to listen to the things I didn’t say out loud.

Um I have a memory that captures moments and stores them away in perfect clarity, and because of that I can tell you every conversation we ever had that meant anything to me. I can almost quote them, down to each and every placement of the word “um.” All of the words that led us to our breaking point are filed away in my mind, and still I can’t tell you what finally did it.

Vortex Even when I was a child, I wanted to be wherever he was. I would always rather have him around. I was twelve when I announced that I was in love with him, and, even now, I don’t think I was wrong. He was the pinpoint that I revolved around, and I didn’t care. He sucked me in, and I never knew a time when it wasn’t that way. I was sixteen before I realized that love should be better than the absence of it.

Wednesday I told him that I loved him on a humid Wednesday night in June. He asked me if I could fix it. I almost hated him for that, for treating my feelings as if they were a toy with a broken piece, as if they could be

130

131

Creative Non Fiction repaired with a bit of glue and a little work. It took me a moment to find the words to tell him it didn’t work that way. He never said he was sorry. I never let him see me cry.

More about the Author

X-Rays If you take an x-ray of my uncle’s arm, you can see the pellet my mother shot at him when they were children. I wonder, if you took an x-ray of me, whether you would see all the shots he’s aimed at me across the table and under his breath and from the side of whatever new girlfriend he had at the time.

Y2K I was seven when the Y2K panic swept the nation. At the time, I didn’t think that I even thought it was a possibility that something could come along and end the entire world from one second to the next.

After him, I do.

Zero I looked up one night, maybe about six months after we stopped speaking, and he was walking through the door. I was talking to his brother, laughing about something, and I paused, expecting to feel it like a shot, to feel the change in the room that I always felt when he walked in. I felt nothing at all.

Anna Sandy (photo) - Anna Sandy was raised in a suburb of Memphis, TN, just across the Mississippi state line. She received her undergrad degree in EnglishCreative Writing from the University of Memphis, and is now an MFA poetry student at Georgia State University, adjusting to life (and traffic) in Atlanta.

Creative Non Fiction

Scribing in the Snow

By Max Patrick Schlienger

S

pelling your name in the snow with your own urine is one of the simple joys of growing up male. It’s a little more difficult than many people realize, because the snow starts to melt as soon as your stream hits, which necessitates a few changes in tactics for different varieties (and depths) of snow.

When I was about seven or eight, I made a point of developing these different tactics. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was turning snow-peeing into something of a subtle science. Unfortunately, I couldn’t experiment as frequently as I would have liked, both because finding spots to discreetly pee was a bit of a challenge and because excessive hydration leads to clear urine (which just isn’t as impressive).

was incredibly proud of what I managed to accomplish.

When I eventually got caught, I couldn’t understand how the deed had been traced back to me... nor did I understand why my father had thought that the name was so goddamned funny.

Anyway, I maintain that it was Jennifer who peed in my backyard.

More about the Author

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was turning snowpeeing into something of a subtle science.”

Besides, it’s a little difficult to feign innocence when your parents can clearly see your name spelled out in the snow.

Still, I was a wily enough child to figure out a way past that problem, and I took to spelling other names with my organic ink. I had learned that swooping, curved letters were easiest to write, which is probably why “Sam” and “Bob” were frequent visitors to the back yard. Before the winter was over, I was a skilled enough scribe to spell much longer words, and for my magnum opus, I decided to write the longest name that came to mind. In retrospect, I realize that I should have given it a little more thought... but at the time, I

Max Patrick Schlienger is a storyteller in many mediums, often under the nome de plume of “RamsesThePigeon.” He is the author of Nearly Departed (available as a free eBook at http://www.nearlydeparted. net), a humorous thriller about hidden fortunes, con men, and possessed furniture.

When he’s not wasting time on the Internet, Max can be found haunting various hardware and craft stores, ostensibly in preparation for completing his latest illconceived invention. He intends to continue in the glamorous profession of making stuff up until such time as the position of Superman becomes available.

132

133

Creative Non Fiction

A Rant on Bananas

By Brahm Capoor

F

ucking Bananas.

Now let me preface what is sure to be a long and venomous diatribe on these greatest examples of Satan's work by making clear that I am no lightweight when it comes to eating these foul fruits. I have, since the age of 2, eaten at least 5 bananas a week, 50 weeks a year.

I'm 17, and so have to go to school every weekday. Unfortunately, this means that I have to be on my school bus by 7 a.m., and since I'm a lazy fuck and wake up at 6:45, I don't have time to eat a proper breakfast. Since I can't convince my mum to let me go without breakfast, I am obligated to eat a banana every day before I leave.

Everything about that fruit disgusts me. The sickly yellow color of the peel punctuated by the vaguely amorphous black spots that seem to appear just spontaneously on it. The strings of fiber that fall onto your hand as you peel the banana and seem too attached to ever let go again.

The pale color and its obnoxious curve which makes it that much more difficult to peel because it means that at any one point, at least one part of the peel will be resting awkwardly on your hand, desperate to grace you with its clammy embrace.

Then we come to the actual first bite.

Angling it so that it enters your mouth in the least phallic way possible, you reluctantly bring your teeth together, trying not to puke as the sickly sweet of the banana dominates your every taste bud. You chew it, acutely aware of its soft, too soft, texture that gradually becomes more and more slimy as it is reduced into a mucus-like mush. You

swallow, and you feel it slip right down as you regret your life decisions.

“All you feel is an impending sense of doom.”

There is no relief though. You know that there are at least 6 more bites of this, at least another minute or two of this torture most egregious, and then you come to the absolute worst part. You come to end of the banana. Ordinarily, this would be a joyous occasion, but no. Because the end of the banana is no ordinary last bite. Instead, it's the end of the curve of the banana. In order to get this bit out, you need to envelop it in your mouth before you can even separate it from the peel. Your lips need to brush against the rough inside of the peel, and you must be careful not to hit the creepy black bit at the bottom. Finally, you separate the bottom from the peel, endure the last swallow, and you are done.

But there is still no happiness. Now, all you feel is an impending sense of doom because you know the same will happen tomorrow.

I know that once I leave my home and go out into the wide world that one day, my parents will call me and casually inquire what I had for breakfast.

I don't know what my answer will be.

It could be eggs. It could be leftover pizza. It could be pancakes. Hell, it could be nothing.

But I do know it won't be a fucking banana.

Creative Non Fiction

More about the Author Brahm is a 17 year old Indian student living in Singapore and studying in an international school here. Other than writing, his hobbies & interests include mathematics, physics, reading (especially science fiction and mystery), and pondering random things when he really should be doing my homework. If you’re desperate to find out more about him, you can find him online at www.abzonnianramblings.com.

134

135

Creative Non Fiction

Together

By Anonymous

W

e lived together.

We were so happy.

She had been drinking, had a manic episode, and I told her I wasn't going to put up with her "bullshit" any more.

I left our apartment to sleep at a friend’s for the night.

She jumped to her death from our balcony.

It tears you apart.

We had been talking about buying a house after our lease was up. Instead, I spent last week packing up our apartment, moving, and shipping her belongings to her family. She had never shown signs of being suicidal. Counselors have told me she had in all likelihood been suffering from undiagnosed bipolar depression. She was the bubbliest, a positive girl.

We had a fight, she acted in a manner I had never seen before, completely hysterical, getting violent to prevent me from leaving the apartment. I called the police on her and left the apartment to sleep at a friend's place. She allegedly harmed herself and then jumped to her death. I am heartbroken. We were in love and so, so happy.

I've spoken with grief counselors, and they pointed out textbook examples of her demonstrating bi-polar tendencies as I spoke of our relationship. I never realized the severity of the symptoms. She was so unselfish. She literally did everything from the perspective of making me happy.

Meanwhile, I was often selfish and at times doubted the relationship. But then I'd see her face and see how fervently she loved me, and I'd wonder how I could have ever doubted us being together.

I was so cold to her that night. I told her I was done with her bullshit. I told her to get the hell away from me. I called the cops on her. I know the choice to jump was hers, and hers alone. And I know that it was probably the culmination of several months of a troubled state of mind. But I didn't see it. I didn't reciprocate the level of affection that she constantly showed me. She must have felt so alone, so betrayed at the end.

I'm devastated. We did everything together. I couldn't even drink a Coke Zero yesterday because I remembered she would surprise me with it whenever I was stuck at my desk working.

I'm a strong person. I'm able to rationally examine a situation, and I feel as though I'm better equipped than most to recognize my emotions and identify the driving forces behind them. And I guess that's why I'm here. I've never felt this way before. I miss her. I grieve for all of the things we'll never be able to cross off our list. I don't know if those feelings are a kneejerk reaction to her death, or...

“I grieve for all the things we’ll never be able to cross off our list.”

For years, I wondered how it would feel to have someone love me so

Creative Non Fiction unconditionally. And now, not only do I know that magical feeling, I know the horror of knowing that depth of love drove her to do something unfathomable.

I guess this turned into me venting. I have an appointment with a counselor tomorrow, and I hope that'll help. But it's twenty hours away from now. I'm sitting in a hotel room because they advised me to let a cleaning crew take care of the apartment first. I'm so sad.

Our relationship burned hot and fast.

Within a month, we were exclusive. Within four months, we were living together. The last three months of living with her were the best three months of my life.

My dream job, my dream girlfriend, in my dream city.

her best friends. They'd tell me how glowingly she'd speak of me. But she was beautiful on the inside too. What an amazing personality. She was a nurse.

She'd come back home so proud of all the patient nominated awards she'd won that week/month. So full of energy too. She slept 3-4 hours a day because she worked the night shifts and then would come "bother" me while I'd be working from the home office. She'd eventually convince me to go nap with her and watch an episode of 24.

She took Adderall regularly, which may have contributed to her state of mind.

Looking back, the last few weeks were abnormal. She would sleep 8-9 hours.

I was happy - she was finally getting her rest, and I was finally able to work. Maybe she was depressed. She spoke of how much anxiety she had. I told her we'd get through everything together.

But dissecting it, you could see some of the flaws. We moved so fast. She brought up moving in with each other so soon, and, because she had already been living at my house most of the time, it made sense to me (and the thousands we saved in rent let us do so many amazing things).

She brought up children and her fear that she would never be able to give me a son (she had recently had a doctor's exam where they had discovered something abnormal - cancer in that area was part of her family's genetic history). She would talk about marriage as a "when", rather than an "if". She planned her entire life around me, around us. And while it scared me, it also made me so, so happy to have someone like that in my life.

She had always begged me to never leave her, telling me that everyone in her life had always, at some point, left her. In the end, she left me.

She was one of those truly beautiful girls. One of those girls that, initially, I was worried in letting her go to the pool alone because she'd instantly be swarmed by guys. She was so tiny and alcohol was always involved at the pool. But she'd turn them down with such charm, they'd become

24-Hour National Crisis Hotlines

More about the Author At the author’s request, this piece is also accompanied by information/resources for suicide prevention programs. If you know of a loved one that is in this situation, please seek help. There is always hope.

1-800-SUICIDE – HopeLine Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-TALK or 1-800-273-8255 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

136

At Peace by Marie Luna (see Artwork for full image)

Scripts

138

See Him Jacob Juntunen

Favors Julianne Homokay

Absinthe Kevin Talley

Conversation Among the Ruins Julianne Homokay

The Author’s Autopsy Stacey Lane

Best Night of His Life Jacob Juntunen

Saint Joe and the Christmas Gift Norman Bert

Lost Boys Found Julie Amparano Garcia

139

Scripts

See Him?

By Jacob Juntunen Characters A: A woman.

B: A woman.

Setting: They sit onstage.

(Two women, A and B, sit onstage together. A has a bottle of whiskey. B just sits.)

A See the way that guy gets the boat in the water? You can tell he’ll get it off the trailer quick.

Some of these guys take forever getting their boats in the water. Sammy hated that.

(A takes a drink of the whiskey.)

B You learned a lot about boats.

A We were out here every day, even when Sammy only had the strength for one swim. But we had to wait for the fishermen to get their boats in the water. He’d just lie there where you’re sitting, ball in his mouth, waiting to fetch again. You want a swig of this?

B It’s not even five.

A So? The sun’s starting to set. Winter’s coming.

B He still wanted to fetch? Even when— A Right up to the last week. He was a retriever to the end. Okay, that guy’s gonna go park his truck, then he’ll take the boat on the lake. Then we should be able to see Sammy.

(A takes another drink) B Maybe you should take it easy on that whiskey.

A I’m not so drunk that I’m hallucinating. We’ll just sit here in the grass, the sun will hit its golden hour, and the rays will be this nice diffuse red… And we’ll see him.

B It was nice of your colleague to pay for his cremation.

A (Taking a swig) Yup. B I’m glad coming out here helps.

A You don’t think we’re going to see him, do you?

Scripts

B Well, he’s not here anymore.

A You’ll see. Oh, shit. Another boat. This was always a busy hour. Hey, Joe. B You know him?

A I got to know a lot of these guys. It’s a pretty male space, but I’d be out here in my wading boots, and they’d ask how old Sammy was. All that grey on his muzzle, you know? Once they found out he had cancer in his back leg but still wanted to swim, they didn’t mind I was out here.

B Maybe we should go?

A Don’t worry. Joe knows what he’s doing; he’ll get the boat right in there. Then you’ll see Sammy swimming. He looks more like when he was a pup. That boxy little face and worried eyebrows. And he always makes this grunting sound while he swims, especially when he’s got a ball in his mouth.

B No, I mean, maybe we should go before you get drunker? I thought you were just going to tell me about him, that maybe it would be good for you to get it off your chest, not— A Sure, I’ll tell you about him while we’re waiting for Joe to get his boat in— B We’re not going to see Sammy— A (Overlapping) After his back leg was ruined by the cancer, he could only get in the water from this boat dock.

He needed the sloping ground, you know? But I still had to help him get out. The water sucked at him and tried to pull him under, but I’d wear my waders, and go in after him, put my hand under his hips, and walk him out. Phew. Even at the end he was close to 90 pounds.

B Come on, let’s go— A But he was still graceful in the water, like a seal pup. Golden retrievers have webs between their toes, and he used his tail like a rudder. After John gets his boat out on the lake, you’ll see him, see how he goes after that tennis ball with a little snap of the jaws— B Put that whiskey down and get up— A Hey, let go of me— B Come on, we’re getting out of here— A What the fuck’s wrong with you?

140

141

Scripts

B We’re not going to see him. He’s gone. He’s a box of ashes on your mantel. I’m sorry, but it’s true, and coming out here, getting drunk, talking about him like he’s still around— A I know he’s not around. Fuck you. I know that. I know exactly where his ashes are. I hate to say it, but it was exhausting doing this every day. At the end I had to lift him every time he wanted to stand up. I had to lift him in and out of the car. I had to wade into the lake and hold his butt up and frog march him until he was lying down where we’re sitting now. You think I don’t know that’s over? My whole body knows that’s over: my cracking back, my burning shoulders, my wet feet.

B Let’s just get in the car.

A The sun sets, and I see him when I could throw the ball into the water for hours, and he’d still want more. When I was alone and he was my best friend. Before I had you. Before I had anybody. He never let me down. And you’ll see him. See how these last few months were worth it. Just sit down. John’s going to launch in just a second and you’ll see Sammy out there, swimming after that tennis ball.

(They sit) Want a swig of this?

B No. (A moment) A Catch one for me, John! Tell him good luck.

B Good luck, John.

(A moment) A There Sammy is! Do you see him?

B Um… A God. He’s gorgeous. Seeing him like this, how happy he is— well, it just makes everything I did these last few months worth it. Look at him. Right there. See him?

B Yeah. Sure I do. He’s right there.

A Almost at the tennis ball.

B He looks great. And it makes it all worth it? Right?

A It sure does.

B Then, yeah. I see him. He looks great. Pass that whiskey.

(B takes a drink. Blackout.)

Scripts

More about the Author

Jacob Juntunen is a playwright and theatre scholar whose work focuses on people struggling against society’s boundaries. He is the Head of Playwriting at SIU (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale). His latest play, IN THE SHADOW OF HIS LANGUAGE (O’Neill Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist; Princess Grace Fellowship Semi-Finalist; Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Contest Finalist) was read at Chicago Dramatists and as part of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs “In the Works” series. Other plays include UNDER AMERICA and JOAN’S LAUGHTER. Juntunen’s work has been performed at the Barrow Group (NYC), Source Festival (DC), the Vestige Group (Austin), and, in Chicago, at the Side Project, Chicago Dramatists, and others. Saddam’s Lions is published in Plays for Two (Vintage Press). His academic essays and reviews concentrating on the politics of performance are in Theatre Journal, Puppetry International, Polish-AngloSaxon Studies, and a variety of anthologies.

Additionally, he received a 2011 Fulbright Fellowship (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland).

142

143

Scripts

Favors

By Julianne Homokay Cast of Characters (2F) PENNIE, 30’s, married; the type of eternally popular, timeless beauty who can still pull off the latest trends.

ALISON, PENNIE’s best friend, 30’s, single; always a step behind, slightly frumpy, a bit overweight, yet cute because she’s so infectious.

Time/Place Afternoon; a typical brass-and-fern restaurant where two women friends would meet for lunch without thinking twice about it.

Synopsis An attractive woman opens a new chapter in her relationship with her frumpy, longtime best friend when she asks her BFF for a very special favor.

(Lights up on a typical brass-and-fern restaurant. PENNIE and ALISON are mock-arguing over the check.)

PENNIE No let me get this.

ALISON You got the last one.

PENNIE You don’t have a job.

ALISON I told you, I just got hired at Office Depot.

PENNIE Take your dirty hands off that bill before I clobber you.

(ALISON relents. Beat.)

So why won’t you do it?

ALISON You were serious?

PENNIE Yes. ALISON Well think about it, Pennie, Jesus.

PENNIE You need a job.

ALISON I told you, I found a job.

PENNIE That job’s beneath you.

Scripts

ALISON And this isn’t?

PENNIE That blue smock they make you wear?

ALISON I don’t have an issue with the blue smock.

PENNIE You’ll look even fatter than you do normally.

ALISON You still wear jelly shoes, for Christ’s Sake.

PENNIE At least jelly shoes don’t make me look fat.

ALISON Nothing makes you look fat, geez. Thanks for picking me up when I’m down.

What an awesome best friend.

PENNIE If you really were my best friend, you’d do this for me.

(Beat) ALISON Just say for a second.

PENNIE Yeah.

ALISON Just say I considered it.

PENNIE Yeah?

ALISON Not that I am.

PENNIE Of course.

ALISON How much would it pay?

PENNIE Double what you’d make at Office Depot.

ALISON That’s... (Calculates) 760 a week?

PENNIE Yep. ALISON You’d pay me 760 dollars a week.

PENNIE Yes I would.

ALISON You’d pay me 760 dollars a week to sleep with your husband.

PENNIE And I’d take taxes out.

(Beat)

144

145

Scripts

ALISON Is he that bad?

PENNIE Oh, no.

ALISON Small dick?

PENNIE Well, it’s not the size, it’s what they do with it.

ALISON That’s a myth.

PENNIE No, it’s not.

ALISON So Brad’s got a small dick, you never told me that before.

PENNIE No, he doesn’t, I’m just saying.

ALISON If it’s not the dick, then what is it?

PENNIE It’s just that...

ALISON Just what?

PENNIE I’m so tired, you know?

ALISON I think we’ve already established that I don’t.

PENNIE Lingerie is scratchy.

ALISON I wouldn’t know about that, either.

PENNIE Some positions are a lot of work.

ALISON So I’ve heard on Jerry Springer.

PENNIE I’ve got a thong callus in my butt smile.

ALISON That’s the price you pay.

PENNIE So I’m tired is all I’m saying.

ALISON For love.

PENNIE I want to wear flannel jammie bottoms.

ALISON For companionship.

PENNIE I want to binge-watch “Gilmore Girls.”

Scripts

ALISON For having a gorgeous husband who loves you.

PENNIE I just want my body to myself for awhile.

ALISON Oh. Do you not....? You know.

PENNIE What?

ALISON You know what I mean.

PENNIE You mean?

ALISON Yeah.

PENNIE Every time.

ALISON Now you’ve really lost me.

PENNIE He makes sure that I do, which is totally generous, but when I’m done first it gets painful, and when he’s done it’s done as far as he’s concerned. So it’s not like reversing the order is an option. So I’ve been foregoing. Because I can’t take it anymore. He’s about to go outside the marriage, Alison. Which believe it or not, I’m fine with, but I want it to be with someone I trust, and you need a job, a better job, so why don’t you goddam do this one goddam thing for me, goddammit?

(Beat) ALISON I’m not saying I’ll do it.

PENNIE But? ALISON I’m not saying I won’t. How would this work?

PENNIE Well. We could set a schedule at the beginning of every week.

ALISON How can you guarantee he’ll be in the mood?

PENNIE He’s always in the mood.

ALISON Fair enough. What kind of, you know, landscaping does he like?

PENNIE Clean. With like a landing strip.

ALISON That will require some Nair. Positions?

PENNIE We’d put the standard three in the contract. Anything beyond that you’d earn hazard pay.

ALISON Good, ‘cause I don’t think I can get my legs behind my head.

146

147

Scripts

PENNIE Remember I was a cheerleader. How about I attach a rider for yoga classes?

ALISON I could shoot for the knees up by the ears.

PENNIE And you’d get a per diem. For accoutrements.

ALISON DVDs, Frederick’s of Hollywood, Trojans— PENNIE Magnums, I might add.

ALISON Whoo.

PENNIE I told you it wasn’t the dick. But we’ll supply the birth control, that won’t have to come out of your per diem.

ALISON And Brad’s okay with this?

PENNIE Brad thinks it’s a great idea. He’s always thought you were cute.

ALISON Brad thinks I’m cute?

PENNIE Especially since the Jenny Craig.

ALISON Guys like him usually don’t think girls like me are cute. I mean, he was our high school’s star wide receiver. I was in the Home Economics club.

PENNIE You’re in a higher league than you think you are, Alison.

ALISON Thank you.

PENNIE And anyway, when’s the last time you had a good roll in the hay?

ALISON “Roll in the hay?” Is there a bright golden haze on the meadow, too?

PENNIE Since college, I bet.

ALISON I’ve had sex since college, Pennie.

PENNIE Oh yeah? When?

ALISON You don’t know everything about my life.

PENNIE Yes I do. You tell me everything. I bet it was college. I bet it was that Gavin guy from MIT. That geek.

Scripts

ALISON Who you and Buffy and Clare made me break up with.

PENNIE So here’s my chance to make that up to you. Don’t you miss that physical intimacy with a man?

Wouldn’t that feel nice? C’mon, Alison. Whadya say. This is win-win here. Please?

(Beat) I’ll throw in a 401K. ALISON Why me, Pennie?

PENNIE Haven’t I gone through like a thousand reasons?

ALISON It’s not like he’ll be banging his secretary. The three of us have some history.

What if this starts messing with your relationship?

(PENNIE cackles.)

What?

PENNIE You’re afraid Brad might fall for you?

ALISON People bond when they have sex on a regular basis.

PENNIE Wouldn’t you be more worried about the reverse?

ALISON So you’re saying there’s no way a guy like him could fall for someone like me.

PENNIE Basically, yes.

ALISON There’s no way in the infinite universe he’d ever want to leave you for me if we became involved.

PENNIE It’s not “involved,” it’s a paycheck. And no, I’m not worried. Mating is an exact science.

ALISON Again with the league theory.

PENNIE That’s right. If you mate outside your league, the person in the league below will always be insecure that the person in the league above will stray for something better.

ALISON And the person above will resent that they settled, I remember.

PENNIE So you’ll do it? So to speak?

ALISON Fuck you, Penelope.

PENNIE What’s wrong?

ALISON You basically sat there and told me Brad would never fall for me because I’m too ugly for him and you’re still thinking I’m gonna do this?

148

149

Scripts

PENNIE Yeah, I do.

ALISON You’re jacked.

PENNIE No one says “you’re jacked” anymore, Alison. And that’s exactly why you’re gonna do this.

People like you need people like me to have any sort of meaningful social life at all. And you’re getting a chance to fuck a guy you wouldn’t be able to get on your own in a million years, and we both know it. Because I love Brad, but I simply can’t fuck him for awhile, I just can’t, and if I lose him because of that, it will be your missed opportunity. I don’t know why it’s such a crime to acknowledge all this. We all know it’s true.

(Beat) ALISON Okay. Here’s the deal.

PENNIE Okay you’ll do it?

ALISON Not under the current terms.

PENNIE You’re making a mistake.

ALISON You’re my friend, and I love you, Pennie, so I’m gonna tell it to you straight. You might think you’re extending me this great opportunity here, but what you’re forgetting is that there’s a blessing in not being gorgeous. Oh yeah. We have to work a whole lot harder at being real human beings. And it seems readily apparent that the bottom line is your husband is getting sick of your high maintenance, shallow ass. Now as I said, I love you, but I don’t like you all that much. And you’ve pissed me off enough today that I’m willing to prove it to you. I’ll still fuck your husband, if you’d like. But I’ll do it because I want to, not because you’re paying me. I’ll do it because I can. As long as we establish who’s doing who the favor here.

(ALISON extends her hand.)

We still on?

(They shake on it.)

PENNIE You bet.

ALISON Good. I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll come over after work. I’ll be wearing the blue smock. Only the blue smock.

(ALISON snatches the check away from PENNIE.) You’re going to live to regret this.

(PENNIE snatches the check back.)

PENNIE Oh yeah?

ALISON Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(ALISON snatches the check back one more time and exits to pay it.)

PENNIE Keep dreamin, my friend.

Scripts

(PENNIE slings her purse over her shoulder and follows ALISON off.)

(End of play.)

More about the Author

Julianne Homokay began her career as a performer following a BA in Theatre from Point Park University. After a year in the Pittsburgh cast of NUNSENSE, many silly theme park shows, dinner theatre gigs too scary to mention and a stint in a hen suit, Julianne turned her focus to writing, completing an MFA at UNLV. Credits include Venus Theatre, Mill Mountain, the Fulton, American Theatre of Actors, the Blank, the William Inge Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Kennedy Center, SkyPilot Theatre, Whitefire Theatre and several oral history projects for the Bellarmine Forum and Center for Reconciliation and Justice at LMU. She is published by Original Works, Meriwether, McGraw-Hill and 10-Minute-Plays.com. Currently, she serves as Managing Director of North By South Theatre Los Angeles, works on THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON, and is an Active Member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

150

151

Scripts

Absinthe: A Short Film

By Kevin Talley FADE IN. ESTABLISHING SHOT: Suburban neighborhood development in the Texas Panhandle.

EXT. PETE'S HOUSE - AFTERNOON PETE (balding 29 years old) sits in a camp chair and mans a lemonade stand on the sidewalk.

The stand is a wonder of plywood and paint to rival any trendy cafe. It's styled as, "Addie's Sunsplash Lemonade!" A vintage metal cooler sits beside Pete.

Pete wears pressed khaki shorts, a wrinkle-free polo tucked in and new boat shoes. He idly mists himself with a spray bottle.

A low-end luxury sedan a few years old comes to a halt at the curb. MAX (25-year-old insurance salesmen) steps out with bravado. He's disheveled, wrinkled and slightly drunk. He carries some papers. Max raises his arms in triumph.

MAX Ding dong the bitch is dead!

PETE That's a pleasant greeting.

Max jogs up and presents papers to Pete.

MAX It's official. I am a divorcee.

PETE These aren't signed.

Max finds the spare camp chair, unfolds it and takes a seat.

MAX Soon. Very soon.

PETE Okay. Now. (Pete offers Max a pen from the stand.)

MAX What's the rush? Libations first. What'cha got to drink?

PETE You understand what a lemonade stand is, right?

MAX When you said Addie had her own stand I figured cardboard box with an open sign.

PETE She's not a Peanuts character.

MAX She's nine. You're not going to tell me she made this herself.

PETE Sandy had the design guy for her stores collaborate with Addie.

Scripts

MAX Again, she's nine.

PETE Sandy says the stand has to make an impression. It's about differentiation from your competition.

MAX And by competition you mean other fourth graders?

PETE Sandy, wants to teach Addie some business skills, okay? Drop it.

(Pete opens the cooler. Surrounded by ice are three pitchers of lemonade, one of which is pink.)

PETE (CONT'D) Pick your poison. We've got our original splash, pink splash or diet original splash. All organic.

MAX Splash?

PETE That's what Sandy calls the lemonade. It's marketing.

MAX I love Addie even though she's my stepbrother's stepdaughter, which by law makes her absolutely nothing to me but some kid. However, this is stupid. Like extremely so.

PETE Then you get the diet splash. It tastes like all organic cat piss.

(Pete pours diet lemonade into a plastic cup and hands it to Max, who pulls a flask from his pocket and adds generous amounts of liquor to the drink.)

PETE (CONT'D) So, how you doing Max? MAX Fantastic. Why you ask?

(Max shakes the last drops of liquid from the flask.)

PETE Oh, I don't know. Your stubble, your wrinkled clothes, the lurking cloud of sadness following you.

MAX No sadness here, brother.

(He takes a deep drink and winces. He catches Pete's grimace and offers the cup to him.)

Absinthe infused splash?

PETE Christ. You're worse than I feared.

MAX What's wrong with drinking absinthe?

PETE Nothing if you're a California gold prospector or dying.

(Then) You need to cry. You have to accept what's happening in your life: you're getting divorced. Now cry.

MAX I'm not sad. What's sad is a grown man operating a little girl's lemonade stand.

152

153

Scripts

PETE Don't deflect your anger. This is about Olivia. (then) Look, I'm your brother MAX Stepbrother.

PETE I've seen a majority of your failures. You put off grieving as long as possible until it explodes out of you.

MAX No I do not!

PETE You wept in Best Buy. MAX My eyes misted.

PETE Wept. Over losing your fantasy football league. You'll bottle this divorce up until you lose your shit when you can't afford to lose your shit, so man up and weep!

MAX I am happy and joyous and gleefully liberated by this fucking divorce! I can be my own man.

She always wanted to "take care" of me. Never again will I hear her condescending tone: "I'll take care of you."

PETE Then sign the papers. {Pete pulls back up the pen. They eye each other like gunfighters. Max slowly takes the pen. Beat. Something catches Pete's eye beyond Max .His expression shifts.} Oh shit. Red alert.

MAX What?

PETE Red alert!

(Pete smoothes his clothes and hair. He plasters a broad smile on his face and waves to someone O.S.) REVEAL- KOURTNEY jogging up the sidewalk. She's a 35-year-old super woman. A mom with a body that makes overweight high school girls suicidal.

(Kourtney returns Pete's wave and jogs up to the stand.)

KOURTNEY Hey Pete!

PETE (Excessively neighborly) Hey Kourtney! How are you?

KOURTNEY Oh you know, trying to get a run in. Summers are killers. Buddy's in so many activities I'm just a mommy taxi-service!

(Kourtney and Pete share a hearty laugh over this. Max gives a weak smile and sips his drink.)

Scripts

PETE Tell me about it! Sandy's got Addie running all over the place. She's inside right now practicing cello.

KOURTNEY The cello? That Sandy certainly likes to motivate. Just between us, all the moms around here are so jealous of her success with the sporting goods stores. I mean being the district manager of four stores and everything!

PETE Well, between us I don't know how she does it - and I live with her!

(Another hearty laugh. Max stares at his stepbrother) I'm being so rude. This is my brother, Max. MAX Stepbrother.

PETE He's helping man the old lemonade stand today.

KOURTNEY (to Max) Aren't you sweet? Love the shirt.

MAX Oh. Thanks. It was on sale.

KOURTNEY And this lemonade stand is so cute! I think it's really great you run it when Addie's practicing.

PETE Sandy says maintaining regular business hours is key to building a client base. (then) Care for a drink? All organic.

KOURTNEY Not during the run but I'll send Buddy your way. I better go shower. Dinner plans at six. No rest for the wicked, right?

PETE Not that I've found!

(They share one last laugh and Kourtney jogs off. Pete laughs a beat longer and abruptly stops. He watches her wonderful frame disappear down the block.)

There goes every wet dream I've ever had.

MAX No wedding ring. Ass that won't quit. Mommy may I? What's her address?

PETE Just knock on her door and ask her out? That's your plan?

MAX I've got divorce momentum. I'm an enticing mix of long term commitment and availability with a dash of venerable. Women can smell that on you. It's the divorced guy super power.

PETE Brother, I love you but let it go.

MAX At least I'm willing to try. You're not even a man anymore. You're so domesticated you sound like an old maid gossiping in a Harper Lee novel.

154

155

Scripts

PETE We're neighborly around here.

MAX (Southern accent) Mercy, you hear that Atticus Finch is representing a colored fella in court?

PETE Colored? Really?

MAX Before you met Sandy you worked at a laser tag arena. Your direct supervisor was a nineteenyear-old with a cleft lip.

PETE I was adrift. Lost at sea. Much like you are now. I know change is scary but it's for the best.

MAX How is my divorce for the best?

PETE It's hard to explain but it's - it's like how I love pie.

MAX This is the analogy you're going with? Pie? This moment, this subject and you're going with pie?

PETE I'm saying I love pie but Sandy and I discussed it and we decided to ban unhealthy desserts from the house. Guess what I did?

MAX Had Sandy store your testicles in the attic with the Christmas decorations?

PETE I adapted. I chew dessert gum now. They got everything: apple pie, cobbler, chocolate chip ice cream.

MAX Pete, my marriage of five years fell apart and that's still far more depressing. Pathetic really.

PETE You know what? Stand's closed.

(Pete starts packing up.)

MAX What?

PETE Piss off.

MAX So, what? I make you mad and you pack your toys and go home?

PETE Yup. (Pete picks up the cooler and starts marching to the house.} MAX Oh this is very mature. Well done. (giving a sarcastic applause) Very big of you to abandon your brother!

Scripts

PETE (Over his shoulder) Stepbrother.

MAX What do you want from me?

(Pete stops and drops the cooler.)

PETE I want you to stop bottling everything up or it'll explode out at your work or somewhere worst!

MAX I'm fine!

PETE Explode! Explode on me!

MAX As your stepbrother I'm going to formally request you never ask me to explode on you again.

PETE You stubborn asshole! Olivia is gone and probably screwing that guy from her office.

MAX You don't know that!

PETE Oh, don't I? That's all she talked about, "He was a philosophy major. He speaks fluent Portuguese." She's pounding it. Pounding it hard!

MAX She's free to do as she pleases. Just like I'm free. Free to find that soccer mom's house and screw her in her soccer mom van!

(Beat. The stepbrothers stare each other down.)

(REVEAL: BUDDY, Kourtney's pudgy 8 year-old son with his scooter on the sidewalk in front of the stand. He stares blankly at the step-brothers. Pete finally notices him.)

PETE Hey - there chief. Your mom send you over for some lemonade?

(Buddy nods and holds out a dollar bill. Pete takes it.)

It's actually two-fifty a glass.

MAX He's a kid, Pete.

PETE Sandy counts the drawer every night. It's got to add up.

(Max pulls out his wallet. He hands Pete two more dollars.)

MAX Don't you see what you've become?

(Pete opens the cooler and removes a pitcher of lemonade.)

PETE A husband? A father?

MAX Stepfather.

PETE A productive member of society?

MAX A lemonade monger! Hassling a kid over a buck fifty! The Pete I knew would never do that.

156

157

Scripts

PETE And the Max I knew could express his feelings openly!

(Pete pours a glass of lemonade and turns to give it to Buddy.)

MAX Yes: my marriage is ending. No: I'm not weeping and wailing. Doesn't mean I'm not processing the events.

PETE Hey. Hey. Hey! Where's the kid?

(REVEAL: Buddy, scooter and all, have vanished.)

MAX He's down the block.

(Max points. Buddy scooters away down the block. He holds a cup of lemonade. Buddy turns a corner and disappears.)

PETE This is his cup of lemonade. Where did he get that one?

(Max looks at the lemonade stand. His cup of spiked cup of lemonade gone. He contemplates. Then . . .)

MAX Shit!

(Max sprints past Pete in a mad dash after Buddy. Pete retraces Max's mental process: the missing cup, Buddy scootering away. Finally . . .)

PETE Shit!

(Pete sprints after Max.) EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD - CONTINUOUS (Max is running full blast down the sidewalk in hot pursuit. Pete appears behind him, full stride, a few yards behind.)

PETE He took your cup?

MAX (not breaking stride) Yeah!

PETE With the MAX Yeah!

PETE Fuck!

MAX Yeah!

EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD - CONTINUOUS (Max barrels around the corner of the block. He runs past the empty cup then the abandoned scooter. Buddy is collapsed on his knees in the grass moaning. Max gets to him.)

MAX Hey Buddy. How you feel?

Scripts

(Buddy only moans. Pete finally catches up and comes to a stop. He's physically devastated, taking in painful deep breaths. He picks up the cup in the grass.)

PETE It's empty.

MAX Did you drink the whole glass?

(Buddy weakly nods.)

PETE Kid's a champ. He's got to purge.

MAX Purge?

PETE Purge! Clear his stomach out. We can't take him home drunk.

MAX How do we do that?

PETE Stick your finger down his throat.

MAX What? No! PETE He has to purge, Maxwell! He's not going to puke on command?

(Buddy spews absinthe infused vomit all over the front of Max's shirt. Beat.)

I stand corrected.

EXT. KOURTNEY'S HOUSE - LATER (Kourtney opens her front door to find Max and Buddy, both covered in dry vomit.

Kourtney gapes at them. Max smiles.)

MAX So, funny story INT. KOURTNEY'S HOUSE - LATER (Max and Buddy sit on the couch. Buddy is wrapped in a blanket and wearing a fresh shirt. He sips a juice box while watching TV. Max sits next to him in his undershirt.)

KOURTNEY (O.S.) And you found him laying in grass?

MAX Sounds unbelievable but that's what happened. He looked sick and then he, well you know, purged.

(Kourtney comes to the doorway.)

KOURTNEY So strange. I regulate his diet. Don't know what would've made him sick.

MAX Well - kids. You know?

KOURTNEY True. Thank you for checking on him. Your shirt's in the wash.

MAX It's my neighborly duty. Actually, I was hoping to talk to you.

(Max leads her into the kitchen away from Buddy.)

158

159

Scripts

INT. KOURTNEY'S HOUSE - CONTINUOUS (Max and Kourtney move to the counter.)

MAX So - I'm divorced.

KOURTNEY Oh no.

MAX Or getting there. We're in the process but, um, I don't really know what to do. I want to, you know, get out there. But what does that even mean "get out there" I'm . . . I'm lost Kourtney. So lost.

KOURTNEY Oh baby. Come here. (they embrace) Hush now. I've been there. I divorced Buddy's father two years back. These first few months are torture but you will survive. How about I cancel my dinner plans but keep Buddy's baby sitter?

We'll go to your place and talk this thing out? Huh? MAX You're a good neighbor. So warm. So - inviting. Thank you.

KOURTNEY I'll take care of you.

(Beat. Max falls silent.)

Max? (Max weeps. Hard. Ridiculously hard.)

MAX I miss her so much!

KOURTNEY Oh baby! It's okay!

(She hugs him. He weeps.)

MAX What's happening to me? I can't stop feeling!

EXT. KOURTNEY'S HOUSE - LATER (Max, red eyed, sits on the curb. Pete walks up. He sits.)

PETE I'm not going to say I told you so.

MAX You can say it if you PETE I told you! I. Told. You! I respect your confidence but I told you so.

(Max holds up a slip of paper) MAX I still got it.

PETE Holy shit, this is her number.

MAX Divorced guy super power.

Scripts

(He crumples the paper and tosses it in the street.)

PETE You're not MAX No. Can't. You're not supposed to get divorced at twenty-five . . .

PETE (patting his back) How about some comfort food? (offering a stick of gum) Peach cobbler.

(Max takes the gum. Chews. He nods approvingly.)

MAX Not awful.

PETE Told you.

MAX I love you, brother.

PETE Stepbrother.

MAX Even so.

PETE Yeah. Me too. Even so.

FADE OUT.

More about the Author

Kevin Talley (photo) - Kevin Talley is in his third year at Texas State University as an MFA playwriting candidate. His plays "Dear Psychopath, I Love You" and "Adult By Association" have received productions throughout Texas and his short story, "Urgency" won the Gates Thomas Award for Fiction from Texas State University. He lives in San Marcos, Texas with his cat, Roosevelt.

160

161

Scripts

Conversation Among the Ruins A short play by Julianne Homokay

A dramatic response to the poem by Sylvia Plath Cast of Characters FRANZ, early- to mid-thirties.

PALOMA, his girlfriend, early- to mid-thirties.

Scene/Time The Acropolis, Athens, Greece. Now. Synopsis A couple in the last death-throes of their relationship find out whether or not it's possible to travel round the world to fix problems at home. or, put more poetically: “With such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate, What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?”

-Sylvia Plath

(The Acropolis.) FRANZ hikes into the scene, high-end camera in hand. He snaps a few photos. He then looks behind him for PALOMA, offers his hand, helps her up the last few steps to the top.)

PALOMA Thanks.

FRANZ Tired, baby?

PALOMA Not so much. (pause) FRANZ You know, I haven’t said— PALOMA

Scripts

It’s all right.

FRANZ I’m sorry about London.

PALOMA You don’t have to— FRANZ I was a jackass.

PALOMA It wasn’t all you.

FRANZ Well—.

(PALOMA sits upon a crumbling step near fractured pillars that frame prospects of rock.

She lights a cigarette.)

(A heavy silence descends between them. It hangs there for a moment.)

FRANZ You want to carry my camera bag?

PALOMA I'm fine.

FRANZ You used to like to carry my camera bag.

PALOMA I still do, baby, I just don't feel like it right now.

FRANZ There are some amazing old rocks down there, columns once, maybe. Remember your Greek? It looks like they've been inscripted.

PALOMA I don't remember my Greek.

FRANZ Don't you want to look around a little?

PALOMA I'm fine, Franz.

FRANZ Damn it, why did you agree to come on this trip if you're not interested in anything?

PALOMA Who said I'm not interested?

FRANZ You're just sitting there.

PALOMA I'm enjoying it in my own way. I'm taking it in.

(FRANZ sits next to her and changes lenses.)

FRANZ Sure seems like a damn waste of money, but if you're enjoying yourself.

PALOMA I am. {pause} Franz?

FRANZ

162

163

Scripts

Yeah?

(No response.)

What?

(No response.)

What?!

PALOMA Nothing.

(FRANZ shuffles back a few feet.)

FRANZ Smile!

(She grimaces. He snaps a picture.)

PALOMA Damn it!

FRANZ Sorry. Jesus.

PALOMA You know I hate that.

FRANZ I keep hoping you'll get used to it.

PALOMA Well, stop hoping.

(FRANZ moves away to photograph a delicate cluster of bell-like wildflowers growing through a crack in a rocky ruin.)

What do you want to do for dinner?

FRANZ Whatever you want, baby.

PALOMA Damn. I should've thought to bring a picnic basket. That would have been nice to spread a blanket down and watch the sun sink into the ruins. Drink a little wine.

FRANZ It sure would have.

PALOMA What's that supposed to mean?

FRANZ What? What’s what supposed to mean? I’m agreeing with you.

PALOMA I’m sorry. I thought you were insinuating.

FRANZ Well, I wasn't. It's a great idea. We'll do it tomorrow.

(FRANZ picks one of the flowers and wanders back over to PALOMA. He presents the flower on one knee on the step below (As he is about to speak :) PALOMA (Moving away) Franz, don't.

FRANZ Holy God, I give up.

PALOMA

Scripts

Good. Me, too.

FRANZ What is all this? You are still mad about London, aren’t you. That’s why you were silent the whole train ride through Italy.

PALOMA Did it ever occur to you that maybe there's nothing left to say?

FRANZ No. Let's get married.

PALOMA Unreal.

FRANZ What? We love each other.

PALOMA We have great sex.

FRANZ Well, there you go.

PALOMA (Exasperated) Maybe you're right, Franz. Maybe that's as good a reason as any to marry. Don DeLillo wrote: "Marriage is something we make from available materials."

FRANZ Actually, it was V.S. Naipaul.

PALOMA No, I'm sure it was DeLillo.

FRANZ You're wrong. It was Naipaul.

PALOMA Who gives a shit who said it?

FRANZ All right, fuck it, I'm sorry. I didn't think you'd want to go around quoting DeLillo when it's really Naipaul.

PALOMA Jesus, I want this conversation to end.

FRANZ You told me you'd want me to tell you when you had spinach in your teeth. You want me to tell you when you have spinach in your teeth, right?

PALOMA Yeah, like the other day and the other day and every Goddamned day before that?

FRANZ Am I right? Just tell me if I’m right.

PALOMA Shut up.

FRANZ It seems I am indeed right. Zing! Point for Franz.

PALOMA

164

165

Scripts

Fine. You want to be honest? Then why don't you stop lugging that ridiculous camera bag all around the Mediterranean making an ass out of yourself because you really have not a clue how to use any of that equipment. You may as well pull your gym socks up to your knees and wear a sign around your neck that screams "TOURIST!" FRANZ Excuse the fuck out of me, but I am an accomplished photographer.

PALOMA When you're not removing your thumb from your ass to put it in your pictures.

FRANZ Why are you being such a bitch?

PALOMA Zing! Point for Paloma!

(Pause) A minute ago, you wanted to marry me and now I'm a bitch. Zing. Point for Franz. Point, set, and match, I think.

FRANZ I'm sorry. I thought this trip would be a good idea. I thought it would make up for everything.

PALOMA Apparently, we need more than a band-aid.

FRANZ What do we need? I'll get it. Tell me what to do to fix it.

PALOMA What's to be done? We should congratulate ourselves, actually. We lasted a lot longer than most couples who screw on the first date.

FRANZ A regular fucking icicle.

(He steals her cigarette and takes a drag.)

PALOMA You won, Franz, leave it alone.

FRANZ (Tossing the cigarette away) What did I win, then? Tell me what I won.

PALOMA Leave it alone.

FRANZ I don't want to leave it alone. I don't want to be alone. I want you to be with me. I want you to be next to me in my bed and I want us to screw like it's our first date for the rest of our lives.

What's so wrong in that? Is that such a God-damned fairy tale? Say something.

PALOMA No. FRANZ No, what?

PALOMA It's not such a God-damned fairy tale.

FRANZ So, you want to marry me, or what?

PALOMA

Scripts

Why not, Franz? I'm overwhelmed by the romance, let me die in your arms.

FRANZ I gave you a flower and you picked a fight.

(PALOMA giggles.)

What?

(She laughs even harder.)

What? What is it?

PALOMA I think people are looking at us.

(FRANZ starts laughing.)

FRANZ What a scene.

PALOMA We should get out of here.

FRANZ No. Not until we settle one thing. We came all the way to the Acropolis for God's sake.

(He pulls her to him.)

I’m not pretending we don’t have problems. But we’ve had good times, too.

Remember that first trip we took, Benidorm, Spain?

(He kisses her neck.)

PALOMA It was perfect.

FRANZ And our first date?

(He kisses her neck.)

PALOMA It was the single best date of my life.

FRANZ And how about that day we met?

(He kisses her forehead.)

Be my wife?

(Pause) Oh, baby, don't do this to me. Say something. Even if it's no.

PALOMA Yes. Can we go now?

FRANZ What?

PALOMA You heard me.

FRANZ I want to hear it again.

PALOMA Cut it out, Franz, people are staring.

FRANZ I don't care! Again!

PALOMA Yes! FRANZ

166

167

Scripts

(Picking up his camera) I want to capture the moment.

PALOMA No! FRANZ Okay, okay, just kidding.

PALOMA What do you say we get some dinner?

FRANZ If you'll carry my camera bag. Please? Won't you carry my bag? I want to take some shots on the way down.

PALOMA All right already.

(They pack up his equipment.)

FRANZ By the way, it really was Naipaul.

PALOMA What?

FRANZ That quote about the available materials. It wasn't DeLillo, it was Naipaul.

PALOMA Zing. Point for Franz. You win. It was Naipaul.

FRANZ Thank you.

PALOMA (Holding a very expensive zoom lens) It was V.S. Fucking Naipaul.

FRANZ Don't get bent out of shape, baby, just know your literature.

(He packs everything but the lens PALOMA is holding.)

FRANZ Hand me that lens, will you?

(She doesn't.)

May I have the lens, please?

(No, he may not.)

Paloma, give me the damn lens.

PALOMA I don't love you anymore.

(PALOMA hands over the lens.)

FRANZ (After her line sinks in) Great. So. What do you want to do?

PALOMA We could go back to the hotel.

(He packs the lens. She takes his camera bag. He offers his arm; she takes it as they exit.)

FADE OUT

Scripts

More about the Author

Julianne Homokay began her career as a performer following a BA in Theatre from Point Park University. After a year in the Pittsburgh cast of NUNSENSE, many silly theme park shows, dinner theatre gigs too scary to mention and a stint in a hen suit, Julianne turned her focus to writing, completing an MFA at UNLV. Credits include Venus Theatre, Mill Mountain, the Fulton, American Theatre of Actors, the Blank, the William Inge Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, the Kennedy Center, SkyPilot Theatre, Whitefire Theatre and several oral history projects for the Bellarmine Forum and Center for Reconciliation and Justice at LMU. She is published by Original Works, Meriwether, McGraw-Hill and 10-Minute-Plays.com. Currently, she serves as Managing Director of North By South Theatre Los Angeles, works on THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH CRAIG FERGUSON, and is an Active Member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

168

169

Scripts

THE AUTHOR’S AUTOPSY A Short Play By Stacey Lane Cast of Characters Dr. Owens: Chief forensic pathologist Dr. Shifflet: Resident Scene The autopsy suite of a morgue.

Time The present.

SETTING: An examination table at a morgue.

AT RISE: DR. OWENS and DR. SHIFFLET stand over a corpse, tools at the ready.

DR. OWENS If you need to vomit in this bucket, I won’t think less of you.

DR. SHIFFLET This may be my first autopsy, Doctor, but I assure you I come highly trained.

DR. OWENS Nothing you read in books can prepare you for this. Shall we begin with the standard Y incision of the cavity or the coronal incision of the scalp?

DR. SHIFFLET The brain, if you don’t mind.

DR. OWENS Do the honors.

(DR. SHIFFLET makes the incision to the head.)

DR. SHIFFLET Hmmmm. Uh… DR. OWENS This man was an artist, an author.

DR. SHIFFLET Awh, that accounts for the abnormalities.

DR. OWENS Begin your examination.

(DR. SHIFFLET pulls out a small yellow note.)

DR. OWENS What did you find?

DR. SHIFFLET Some sappy sentiments about a sunset.

DR. OWENS Pass me the puke pail.

Scripts

DR. SHIFFLET Pardon?

DR. OWENS My apologies. But when you’ve seen as many of these as I have…

(DR. OWENS pulls out hundreds upon hundreds of notes. DR. SHIFFLET follows suit.)

DR. OWENS Plotlines, premises, possible titles, possible pen names, character descriptions, witty observations about life, rants on religion, questioning of political ideals, unresolved father issues, inkling of genius, overheard conversations at restaurants, clever sayings stolen from friendsDR. SHIFFLET (Studying a note.)

Hmmmm…

DR. OWENS Discover something noteworthy?

DR. SHIFFLET An idea for a novel.

DR. OWENS Yes, yes. There are plenty of those in here.

DR. SHIFFLET But this one’s not bad. I mean I’d read that book.

DR. OWENS Yes. Well, you’ll never get the chance now.

(DR. OWENS measures the notes on a scale and writes on the chart.)

For this much material, the volume of work is surprisingly low.

DR. SHIFFLET So that’s what killed him then. All those jumbled thoughts wrapped in angst and discontent crashing against each other in a quest for ultimately unattainable fulfillment.

DR. OWENS No. No. That’s the norm for these creative types. When there’s nothing up there, that’s when there’s cause for concern. Shall we move on to the standard Y incision?

DR. SHIFFLET Yes, Doctor.

(DR. SHIFFLET makes the incision to the body.)

DR. OWENS My! My! I’ve never seen bowel blockage of this magnitude.

(Pulling out gobs and gobs of crumpled up notebook paper and typed pages.)

Discarded drafts, abandoned books, neglected novels, rejected rewrites…

DR. SHIFFLET What a waste!

DR. OWENS Aha. There it is. The cause of death.

(Pulls out a nicely bound book.)

170

171

Scripts

DR. SHIFFLET (Reading title.)

“My Magnum Opus”.

DR. OWENS It was pressing on his heart.

DR. SHIFFLET (Opening book.)

It’s blank.

(BLACKOUT) (END OF PLAY)

More about the Author

Stacey Lane (photo) - Stacey Lane’s plays are published with Canyon Voices, Dramatic Publishing, Playscripts Inc., Smith and Kraus, Eldridge, Pioneer, Heuer, Brooklyn Publishers, Next Stage Press, Manhattan Theatre Source, JAC Publishing, Thunderbolt Theatre & Film Productions, Seraphemera Books, San Luis Obispo Little Theatre, Sterling, Freshwater, Poydras Review, The Quotable, Euphony Journal, Mock Turtle Zine, Indian Ink, The Other Otter, Germ Magazine, Furious Gazelle, Steel Bananas and Scene4. Her scripts have been performed at over four hundred theatres on six continents. She is the recipient of the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency Grant, the Montgomery County Arts & Cultural District’s Literary Artist Fellowship and winner of the Unpublished Play Reading Project Award at the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. www.StaceyLaneInk.com

Scripts

The Best Night of His Life

By Jacob Juntunen Cast of Characters: BOY: An African American senior in high school.

GIRL: A Caucasian senior in high school.

MAN: A Caucasian man.

Setting: An empty stage.

(An African American BOY and Caucasian GIRL enter, excited and out of breath. A Caucasian MAN stands to the side, watching and holding a white sheet.)

GIRL Why are we stopping in the mall parking lot?

BOY I’m tired! I can’t run all the way home. And I want to spin under the stars!

GIRL In the mall parking lot?

BOY That was the best dance ever!

GIRL Even with the stupid "under the sea" theme?

BOY The gym should always be covered in blue crepe paper.

GIRL Happiness is ruining your taste. Come on. Let’s get home.

BOY It was like The Little Mermaid.

GIRL It was like the party store vomited its entire stock of sea foam and teal bunting-BOY This is the best night of my life.

GIRL Better than when we drove to Orlando?

BOY It's only an hour away. I've been to Orlando a hundred times.

GIRL Better than meeting Ariel at Disney World?

BOY Who wants to meet an out of work actor in a fake tail?

GIRL Better than Ariel making you an honorary princess?

BOY Well, that was pretty good.

GIRL Better than that? (a pause)

172

173

Scripts

BOY Yes! Tonight is better than that. Did you see Christina in her tux dancing with Rebecca?

GIRL Did you see Matt and Tony leave holding hands? How's the football team going to handle that?

BOY "I wanna be where the people are!"

GIRL "I wanna see!"

GIRL AND BOY "I wanna see them dancing!"

GIRL I saw you with Mark.

BOY No you didn't.

GIRL I didn't even know Mark liked boys.

BOY What's wrong? Is the straight, blonde girl jealous of the black gay boy after prom?

GIRL I only went out with you out of pity.

BOY Maybe Mark didn't know he liked boys before he met me.

GIRL You're disgusting.

BOY Some of us just have it.

GIRL Stop it.

BOY (tickling her) Admit it! Admit it!

GIRL (laughing) Stop! Stop! Stop!

(BOY and GIRL freeze; suddenly the MAN steps forward and covers the BOY with the white sheet) MAN (addressing the audience) That's exactly what she was saying, your Honor.

(GIRL reanimates and also addresses the audience) GIRL He was only tickling me, your Honor.

MAN She said she only went out with him out of pity.

GIRL I was joking!

MAN She said that he was disgusting--

Scripts

GIRL He was my best friend, your Honor.

MAN He had his filthy black paws all over her while she screamed for him to stop. What else was I supposed to assume? So, yeah, I shot him. And I'm proud of it, your Honor.

GIRL How can you just acquit him and let him go?

MAN I think, under the circumstances, my actions are perfectly understandable. I appreciate the jury finding me not guilty.

GIRL He killed my best friend, and he just walks?

MAN I'm proud that I saw a woman getting raped and that I acted to protect her. If there was any misunderstanding about the circumstances, I'm sorry. But I gotta say, I always wanted to help people, to protect them. That's why I'm a security guard at the mall. To save people. So getting to save that little girl, and knowing the state understands my point of view, well... This is the best night of my life.

BLACKOUT

More about the Author

Jacob Juntunen is a playwright and theatre scholar whose work focuses on people struggling against society’s boundaries. He is the Head of Playwriting at SIU (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale). His latest play, IN THE SHADOW OF HIS LANGUAGE (O’Neill Playwrights Conference Semi-Finalist; Princess Grace Fellowship Semi-Finalist; Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Contest Finalist) was read at Chicago Dramatists and as part of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs “In the Works” series. Other plays include UNDER AMERICA and JOAN’S LAUGHTER. Juntunen’s work has been performed at the Barrow Group (NYC), Source Festival (DC), the Vestige Group (Austin), and, in Chicago, at the Side Project, Chicago Dramatists, and others. Saddam’s Lions is published in Plays for Two (Vintage Press). His academic essays and reviews concentrating on the politics of performance are in Theatre Journal, Puppetry International, Polish-AngloSaxon Studies, and a variety of anthologies.

Additionally, he received a 2011 Fulbright Fellowship (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland).

174

175

Scripts

SAINT JOE AND THE CHRISTMAS GIFT

by Norman A. Bert CAST OF CHARACTERS GASPAR, a Latino farm worker BALZAR, another Latino farm worker GLORIA, 40s, an African American woman JOE, 30s, a homeless man MJ, 16, a homeless girl PEG, 50s, a bar tender SETTINGS: A simultaneous set with a sidewalk bench for Scene One and a bar interior (bar, stool, and one table with two chairs) for Scene Two. TIME: The action of the play takes place in the present in Lubbock, Texas.

SCENE ONE: GREAT EXPECTATIONS On a chilly early April morning, JOE enters, sits on a sidewalk bench, pulls a half-smoked cigarette from his pocket, lights up, and smokes. GASPAR and BALZAR stagger in arm in arm, apparently on their way home from a long night. They stop downstage and begin to sing.

GASPAR and BALZAR Hark! The herald angels sing, “Glory to the new-born king; Peace on earth, and mercy mild; . . .”

GLORIA (She enters while they sing and interrupts them.)

Herald angels, my Aunt Fanny! Gloria here—that’s me—come as close to an angel as you ever gonna see. And don’t be harkin’ me no harks. This here’s early April. You April fools, muchachos? Christmas a long way off. Bethlehem further yet. Other side the world from this here Lubbock, Texas. As for peace on earth— Here. Y’all move over. Listen to Gloria tell it how it is.

(The two Mexicans move to one side. She snaps her fingers to set a beat and then raps.)

Ain’t no angels round In this Lubbock town.

As for Jesus child, Mary meek and mild, And that rosy scene All swept and clean— Where the ox and ass Gently munch their grass And the shepherds there Are without a care— (MJ has entered and stands at stage’s edge.)

Here we got M-J

Scripts

Who has lost her way.

She been turnin’ tricks Just to get a fix.

Then there’s good ol’ Joe Comin’ off o’ the blow.

So we’ll watch these two, Tell their story true.

Through their ashes sift While our visions shift And a glass we lift, If ya get my drift— It’s “Saint Joe and the Christmas Gift.”

(She and the two Latinos exit, and MJ begins to cross the stage. JOE sees her.)

JOE Yo, M-J. MJ Hey, Joe. You got any on ya?

JOE Fresh out, more’s the pity.

MJ Scored some cash yesterday. I’m lookin’.

JOE Money burnin’ holes in your pockets. You workin’?

MJ Always.

JOE Yeah, well. Can’t help you, girl. You doin’ OK? MJ Too good. Never been so happy when I’m down.

JOE Where you stayin’?

MJ At the church last night. You? JOE Library.

MJ Froze your butt.

JOE ‘Zekiel loaned me a blanket.

MJ Where’s yours?

JOE Cops got it when they cleaned out the gazebo last week.

MJ Bastards. Froze your butt.

JOE Maybe try the church tonight.

176

177

Scripts

MJ Go ahead. Too spooky for me.

JOE Yeah?

MJ I saw an angel.

JOE What?

MJ At the church.

JOE Weird! What she look like?

MJ He. A him.

JOE How long you been off the crack?

MJ Too long. Too, too long.

(Pause.)

What’s it gonna— I don’t know— JOE What’s that?

(Pause. She’s somewhere else.)

Goin’ ta eat?

(No response. He gets up and starts to walk off.)

See you at Loaves ‘n Fishes.

MJ I’m pregnant, Joe. JOE The heck you say? (Pause.) What, girl?

MJ Yeah.

JOE What you goin’ ta do?

MJ I’m happy, Joe. That’s the thing.

JOE Hard to have a kid on the street.

MJ It’ll work out.

JOE So what you gonna do?

MJ Nothin’. Nothin’ to do.

JOE You gotta go to the clinic.

MJ He said it’s God’s gift.

Scripts

JOE God’s gift?

MJ Guess that’s why I’m happy. The angel said.

JOE What angel?

MJ At the church last night. You listenin’ to me or what?

JOE The angel told you it’s God’s gift.

MJ So you mind if I’m happy?

JOE Dang, M-J. It’s about time.

MJ Time for what?

JOE Been two thousand years since this happened last time.

MJ Whatever. Gonna find Jingo.

(She starts to leave.)

JOE (Stopping her.)

You ain’t goin’ nowhere.

MJ Gonna celebrate. If I’m gonna have God’s gift, I gotta celebrate.

JOE You’re comin’ with me to the clinic.

MJ Let go of me.

JOE Listen to me, girl.

MJ You my mama now? What the heck, man? Let go.

JOE Listen to me.

MJ The clinic’s gonna ask questions.

JOE So we answer ‘em. Or not.

MJ We? Ain’t no “we.”

JOE Bad enough a girl alone on the street. A pregnant girl? A woman with a kid? Well— MJ He’s gonna lift us all up. Gonna open the eyes of the blind. Gonna lay the big man low.

178

179

Scripts

JOE Who’s that?

MJ The kid.

(Patting her belly.)

This kid. The angel said so.

JOE The angel had a lot to say, I guess. You gonna need more than angels.

MJ So you gonna take care of me? You? You’re a junkie, Joe. JOE Just as us junkies gotta hang together. Let’s go.

(He tries to take her arm, but she shakes him off.)

MJ OK, OK. The clinic. Then we gonna find some stuff.

JOE You stayin’ clean until you cradlin’ God’s gift.

MJ (She snorts a laugh.)

Like that’s gonna happen.

JOE (Leading her in the direction of the clinic.)

Come on, Baby.

MJ (Shaking him off again.)

Don’t Baby me, no Babies.

JOE I’m just sayin’ . . .

MJ Don’t push it, Joe. I’m goin’ to the clinic, all right? Just don’t push it.

(They exit toward the clinic, and GLORIA enters accompanied by GASPAR and BALZAR. Using maracas or other percussion instruments, the two Latinos set a beat.)

GLORIA (As she raps, PEG and JOE enter. He takes a seat at the bar, and she fixes him a drink.)

So the months creep past And we come at last To that Christmas Eve That the kids believe Brings the girls and boys All their hoped for toys.

On a dark side street Glazed with frozen sleet In an empty bar Known as Peg’s Gold Star Good ol’ Joe sits down And knocks back Crown.

Scripts

GASPAR and BALZAR (Singing.)

Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad!

Prospero Año y Felicidad!

(As they sing, they and GLORIA exit.)

SCENE TWO: BIRTH PAINS (PEG serves JOE his drink, and JOE hands her a fistful of ones.)

PEG (Straightening the money out so she can count it.)

Last of the big spenders.

JOE You got it, you use it.

PEG You got it, you use it. Me, I save it. That’s why I got this place ‘stead o’ sleepin’ on the streets.

JOE This place and a clock to punch and bills to pay, not to mention taxes and permits and inspections and inventory and payroll. I could go on and on.

PEG Not with me you couldn’t. I got stuff to do. Anyhow, that’s your third Crown ‘n Seven. Don’t make me toss you outta here.

JOE Afraid I’m gonna run down some little old lady in my limo?

PEG Never seen you drink Crown before. Where’d you come into the money?

JOE Christmas bonus. How ‘bout the next one on the house, Season’s Greetings ‘n all? Why not?

PEG ‘Cause I’m the house, that’s why not.

(Pause.)

How come you didn’t bring the old lady along to celebrate with you?

JOE Double your crowd, wouldn’t it? Not that she wouldn’t want to. I tell her, “Well, there’s already Yolanda’s Jack—how many fetal alcohol kids you want in your family?”

PEG Where is she, anyhow? Hope you didn’t leave her on the street. Supposed to snow tonight.

JOE In the shelter, over there to the Sally. Safe and warm.

PEG And alone. On Christmas Eve. JOE The better the day, the better the deed.

PEG She must be about due.

JOE Freakin’ walkin’ calendar, ain’t ya.

180

181

Scripts

PEG Think I got no eyes? Last time I saw her, she looked about ready to pop.

JOE What am I gonna do with a kid, Peg? PEG Guess you’ll be gettin’ a job. I heard McDugg’s hiring carpenters. You done that before.

JOE Kid ain’t even mine.

PEG That’s what they all say.

JOE Wonder what the weather’s like in San Diego this time o’ year.

PEG You got a little vacation time comin’, Joe? A little run and hide time?

JOE Up yours, Peg. PEG Ooo! Snappy comeback.

(As she says this, the door opens, and GASPAR and BALZAR enter noisily.)

GASPAR (In media sententia as he enters.)

Yo se. Abrimos la boca y nos corren. (I know. We open our mouths and we get fired.)

BALZAR ¿Poco pago es mejor que nada, no? (So better half pay than no job?)

GASPAR ¿Que piensas? (What do you think?)

BALZAR ¿Tiene que mover las ovejas hoy? ¡Feliz Navidad! (He had to have those sheep moved today?

Merry Christmas!)

GASPAR Va estar muy frio. (Twenty below, I’m telling you.)

BALZAR Ni nos van a pagar por todo el dia por este trabajo sucio. (We can’t even get a full day’s pay for doing the dirty work.)

GASPAR (He notices the Anglos and switches to English for their benefit.)

But, Balzar! Mr. Jones is a fine Christian man! “Why don’t you come to church tonight, boys?

After you move them sheeps, that is. Why don’t you get saved so you can cheat your workers like I do?”

BALZAR (To PEG.) Dos cervezas, por favor.

PEG (To JOE.) If you’ll excuse me, sir, I gotta go take care of the crowds.

(She goes to serve the two guys.)

Scripts

JOE There it is. The smell of money in the till, and my only friend in the world leaves me high and dry. Money over friends. Isn’t that always the way?

PEG (To the two Mexicans.)

So what kind of cerveza? Dos Equis?

GASPAR Lone Star.

BALZAR For we have seen his Lone Star in the east and have come to worship!

PEG Lone Star it is. If I got it.

(She goes behind the bar, comes up with two Lone Stars, and pops the tops. No pause in dialogue.)

JOE This is freakin’ Texas, girl. ‘Gainst the law to run outta Lone Star in Texas.

PEG Just what I need. More regulations, more laws. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

(She serves the two beers to the Mexicans.)

Four fifty. Ain’t runnin’ no tabs tonight.

(While the two get out their money and hand it to her, the door opens, and GLORIA enters. She glances around the room and goes straight to JOE.) GLORIA There you are, you no good piece of crap.

JOE Merry Christmas to you, too, Gloria.

GLORIA You sittin’ here proppin’ up the bar, and she like to die.

JOE Say what?

GLORIA Somethin’ went wrong. Good thing they could find a doctor that’d come out Christmas Eve. Even donated his time.

JOE Who says the age of miracles is past?

GLORIA Doctor says they gotta go to the hospital.

JOE He gonna take her?

GLORIA Gotta get the money first. Then he take both of ‘em.

JOE Where’s the money?

GLORIA Don’t screw with me, Joe. Give me the money.

JOE I ain’t got no money.

182

183

Scripts

GLORIA She gave you her momma’s wedding ring to hock so as she could go to the hospital.

JOE That what she told you? That woman got more stories.

GLORIA You sorry, scum sucking— You done drunk up her birthin’ money, didn’t you? You pitiful drunk.

(She heads for the door, then turns.)

Congratulations, big man. You got a son, as if you care. She named him Jesse.

JOE Jesse? Where’d she get a name like Jesse?

(But GLORIA’s gone.)

Hey, Peg. Hear that? God’s gift done come tonight.

(He raises his glass in salute, then empties it.)

PEG Is that how you been paying for them Crown ‘n Sevens? Her doctor money?

JOE How ‘bout a round for the room? Ain’t no time to be mopin’ around over spilt milk, even if it is Crown.

PEG Times like this I hate my job. Myself and my job.

JOE Unto us a child is born! Unto us a son is given!

BALZAR You got a son on Christmas Eve? Good luck, man! ¡Buena Suerte!

GASPAR Ta vez es el regreso de Jesus Cristo. ¡Feliz Navidad! (Maybe it’s Jesus, come again. Merry Christmas!)

BALZAR Hoye, Gaspar. Vamos a ver el niño. (Hey, Gaspar. Let’s go see the baby.)

GASPAR ¿Somos pastores, no? Las ovejas del Señor Jones piensan que si. ¡Vamos! (We’re shepherds, aren’t we? Mr. Jones’s sheep think we are. Let’s go!)

BALZAR Hey, man! Us shepherds gonna go see your baby. See if he’s Jesus.

JOE Yeah, well you’ll find ‘em over there in the Salvation Army manger.

GASPAR ¡Vamos!

(He starts singing “Feliz Navidad.” BALZAR joins in, and they get up and leave, taking their beers.)

PEG Hey! You can’t carry those beers outta here! Hey! (But they’re gone.)

Freakin’ Mexicans. Gonna get me shut down.

JOE Lighten up, Peg. It’s my kid’s birthday.

PEG I thought it wasn’t your kid.

Scripts

JOE For tonight, it’s my kid.

PEG Your kid, their kid, everyone’s kid.

JOE Then tomorrow it’s hello, San Diego.

PEG God help the kid, whoever its father is. God have mercy on his poor, sorry soul.

GLORIA (She enters as PEG and JOE hold in tableau.)

So the world goes round And we hear the sound That the angels sang As the heavens rang Wishing peace on earth ‘Cause of Jesus’ birth.

Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad!

Prosperó Año Y Felicidad!

(All exit.)

END OF PLAY

184

185

Scripts

More about the Author

Norman Bert (photo) - Norman Bert’s plays focus on poverty, death and dying, gender and relationships, immigration, diversity, and similar religious and social justice issues. He specializes in writing short plays. His play for young audiences Pedrito’s Road, set in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, recently won a Marilyn Hall Award from the Beverly Hills Theatre Guild, and his Haboob was published in the on-line journal Canyon Voices. He is currently writing A New Corpus Christi, a collection of short plays for use in churches. Bert teaches playwriting and dramatic analysis in Texas Tech’s Department of Theatre & Dance.

Scripts

Lost Boys Found

By Julie Amparano Garcia Lights up Sound of traditional South Sudanese drum music. A montage of iconic images of Lost Boys flash on the screen. Three actors on stools are watching the images.

PAUL That was me in that CNN video. (Chuckles) I look so sad, don’t I? Have you ever seen such a miserable little boy? (He shakes his head laughing) When I see that picture of myself, I just want to cry.

MARY (Chuckling) When I see that picture of you, Paul, I want to cry.

ABRAHAM I don’t think I would recognize myself in a news photograph. It’s strange thing to see ourselves back then (beat) so young and so full of suffering. I can never look at those pictures too long.

MARY You must not, Abraham. It’s like glaring at the sun, you have to look away quickly or your eyes will fill with tears.

They all fall silent PAUL (Brightening) But look at us now. We’re as sturdy as some of the cows in my old village.

MARY You know in America it isn’t good to call people a cow, especially women, and I think I have been here long enough to be called an American woman!

They all laugh ABRAHAM How can we forget, Sister American Woman? You remind us nearly every time we see you.

MARY Well, Abraham, from time to time, you need reminding.

PAUL He’s just forgetful.

ABRAHAM Maybe it’s on purpose. Maybe, sometimes, I just want to forget.

MARY Yes, we all want to forget (beat) for a while.

They all look down Lights down Sound of drum music. Screen flashes pictures of Sudanese villages being attacked.

Lights up ABRAHAM I was young. Maybe 11 or 12 years old. My job was to watch the cattle. It was early in the morning, but the sun was climbing high into the sky. I heard the attack before I saw it. There was a piercing sound in the sky. Like this: (makes a whistling sound)…then boom! It was the

186

187

Scripts

loudest sound I had ever heard. I fell to the ground and covered my ears. When I looked up, fire was pouring from the sky.

MARY In my village, they came in the night, riding horses and camels. I think I was eight or nine years old. I was sleeping in a hut with the other children. I awoke when I heard screams and cries and the banging sound of bullets. They were carrying torches. They burned everything. They killed all the boys and men they found. The girls were carried away, screaming. I ran and hid, trembling in the tall grass.

PAUL I ran home to my village and found it burned to the ground. The boys in my village had been away at cattle camp. It was our duty and it was a good job for a boy. We would play while the cattle grazed. But we noticed smoke coming from the North and the West. “How could there be fires?” we asked ourselves, “so soon after the rainy season?” When it was time to return to the village we discovered the truth. I remember falling to my knees, unable to breathe. My family’s hut was nothing but ashes.

They begin talking in rapid succession.

MARY I was so scared.

PAUL I didn’t know what to do.

ABRAHAM I knew I had to run.

MARY But my legs were paralyzed.

PAUL I couldn’t even scream.

ABRAHAM Or cry.

(They stand and look around wildly.)

MARY Next thing I knew, my uncle was next to me.

ABRAHAM I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to leave the cows.

PAUL We couldn’t stop staring at the remains of our village.

MARY Then, my uncle grabbed my hand. We could see the torches in the distance. Soldiers were combing the fields and getting closer and closer to us.

ABRAHAM I could smell the smoke. It wouldn’t be long before they found us.

PAUL We fled to the next village, only to find it had been burned down too. And the next one… and the next one. Then, we got ambushed by the militia. There were firing bullets. I was so shocked, I couldn’t do anything. I just stood there staring. Dazed.

ABRAHAM RUN! Everyone kept yelling, RUN! From out of nowhere, my legs began to run.

(Actors run and hide. Sound of bullets, and explosions. The flash of explosions.)

Scripts

PAUL Why God why?!

(Paul is frozen in place, watching in shock while everyone else is running) MARY Someone please help us! (She’s running and falls) Please tell me I’m dreaming!

ABRAHAM Keep running! (He’s signaling to the others to keep running.) You must keep moving.

MARY I can’t! I can’t run anymore!

ABRAHAM Don’t give up!

MARY Go on. Go without me!

ABRAHAM We must stay together!

MARY I’m so scared uncle! Please, let me catch my breath.

ABRAHAM Keep running. They will kill youuuuuu!

(PAUL is still standing, frozen, watching everything. He gasps. Stretches his hand out to someone off stage and collapses to the ground.)

Lights out Drums beat.

Lights up Actors are sitting on their stools again.

PAUL I do not know how the bullets missed me that day, but found my cousin. He was one of the fastest runners in our village. He was like my brother. After he was hit, he stretched his hand out to me for a second, then he went blank and I collapsed.

MARY We didn’t stop running until it was almost day.

ABRAHAM We ran as fast as we could. But their bullets were too fast. At some point, we fell to our knees exhausted.

MARY That’s when the tears came.

PAUL And the trembling. I could not stop shaking. I kept thinking about my cousin being hit and falling to the ground.

MARY I sat on the ground looking at my bloody feet. My knees and elbows had deep scrapes from falling so many times. I asked my uncle, “Where is our family?” He looked at me and said: “They will join us soon.” I later learned the soldiers were combing the fields with their torches and found my father and brothers hiding in the grass (beat) and shot them. One brother was younger than me.

188

189

Scripts

ABRAHAM When we finally stopped, we too began wondering about our family. There were six of us who had been tending cattle. We didn’t know how many of our family had been killed. As the sun set that evening, we held hands and sang a prayer for them (beat) and for us.

THEY STAND, HOLD HANDS AND SING A PRAYER TO THE BEATING DRUMS. LIGHTS DOWN DRUMS CONTINUE BEATING. PROJECTIONS OF THE MARCH TO THE REFUGEE CAMPS. LIGHTS UP PAUL That night, we found some shelter near a tree. I couldn’t stop thinking about why anyone would burn down a village with women, children and men who had no weapons. I knew the people from the north were Arabs and Muslim, different from us…We in the south were Christians. But how does that make it right? Weren’t we all Sudanese?

ABRAHAM Sudan's president at that time had decreed the country would become a Muslim state and that Sharia law would be instituted. No one in our villages wanted this. At night, I would hear the elders talk of war and that we were the true Sudanese.

MARY The elders in my village would say the Arabs were colonialists who had migrated to our land and had no right to it.

PAUL When I first saw the smoke, I should have known what it was. I had seen the people from other villages passing through, hungry, scared and forlorn. They told stories of fighting and war. We would give them food and water. Soon, my mother began feeding us less and less. Sometimes, she would make us go without food and water until the evening. She told us “If war comes to our village, you must get used to eating less. Food will become very, very scarce.”

MARY Scarce. (She chuckles) It seems so abundant now.

ABRAHAM (Chuckles) Yes, I know what you mean. Scarce is better than none.

Talking in rapid succession.

PAUL We ate almost nothing.

MARY Roots. Leaves. Mud. ABRAHAM Pumpkins we would steal from a village farm.

PAUL Grasshoppers when we could find them.

MARY The bark off of trees.

ABRAHAM But the pain of my hunger was no match for the pain of my thirst.

MARY I wished we had just one gourd for water.

Scripts

PAUL But we marched on and on.

ABRAHAM Until we were skin and bone.

MARY Until we were just barely alive.

Actors rise and walk in a line. Screen projects film clips or a photo of the Lost Boys and Girls marching. A projected map shows their route.

ABRAHAM Do you think we will find food today?

PAUL You mustn’t think about it.

MARY I want water. Just a drop or two.

PAUL You mustn’t think about water either.

They march on in silence.

MARY We haven’t had a drink all day.

ABRAHAM It’s been two days.

PAUL Soon, we will. Soon. You must believe.

MARY I am trying to believe. But look at us!

ABRAHAM We are the walking dead.

PAUL No, we are the living. We will find refugee.

MARY Will we? I don’t think ... (she is interrupted by PAUL) PAUL Shhhh!

(They all stop in their tracks sensing danger.)

PAUL Did you hear that?

(All listen. The sound of frogs is heard in the distance.)

PAUL Frogs! Frogs! Water must be close by!

They are elated. Running and hugging. Sound of drums.

Lights out Lights up The actors have returned to their stools.

PAUL We found water that day. But we also found the militia. They were drinking at the pond too.

Lucky for us, they did not hear us.

190

191

Scripts

MARY It was torture to hide in the reeds, wanting water so badly.

ABRAHAM My body began to shake.

PAUL Somehow, we found a way to march onward. Ever since the day we were ambushed, we knew we had to keep moving if we were to stay alive. We had to get out of Sudan and cross into Ethiopia or Kenya. To avoid the militia, we used the narrow footpaths that went through grasses so high the tops of our heads couldn’t be seen. After walking for three days, we ran into another group. This one had 20 boys and three men. I remember a few of the boys were so very young – just four or five years old. When they grew too tired, we would carry them.

ABRAHAM Fear never left our souls. But our group found its strength in numbers. On the fifth day of walking, we found a main road and that’s when I saw it. A line of boys. (Abraham stands, watching the line of boys pass…) It had no beginning and no end. Many of the boys were naked. Many of them were near starvation. I could not stop staring. We all just stood there staring and staring. I could not help thinking, “Has God forgotten about us?”

(A pause. Abraham sits.)

MARY Like the others, my uncle and I found a band of refugees. This one was made up of a few villages. About 50 people. We were the only ones from our village, but we knew some of them from a neighboring village. They were good people, but they were not family. I asked my uncle nearly every day when our family would be coming. After a while, he stopped answering me (beat) and I stopped asking.

ABRAHAM Nights were the most terrifying. Wild animals, leopards, hyenas and lions would stalk us, especially a group as large as ours. Sometimes, at night, it would be so pitch black that you couldn’t see your hand in front of you. But the animals could see us. You could hear the lions’ growls and the screams of boys as they were hauled away.

Lights out (Pitch darkness on stage. Animal low growl. Sound of animal rustling in the grass and brush. Growls get louder and louder. Sound of beating drums, then silence.)

Lights up PAUL Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months.

ABRAHAM We grew weaker and weaker.

MARY Each day, we lost at least one person.

PAUL They would grow weary and fall out of line.

ABRAHAM At first, we took time to bury them.

MARY Later, we just kept on marching.

PAUL There were so many dead. The roadways were littered with them.

Scripts

ABRAHAM The ponds and streams too. To drink, you would have to push the bodies away.

MARY Sometimes, I would see vultures eating the dead. (beat) I was certain I would be next. We had been marching for more than a month. It was getting drier and drier. My uncle was leading us to a river called Kangen. We were crying because we were so hungry and thirsty, but no tears would come. My tongue was so swollen I could barely speak. But when we got to Kangen, there was no water. Just dirt, caked and cracked by the hot sun. Many in our group, lost hope that day. They couldn’t go any further. Desperate, my uncle made a small bowl out of bark, urinated into it, and gave it to me to drink.

PAUL We began to sleep during the day and march at night. Shortly after uniting with the other group of refugees, a band of militia found us. They tied up the men and beat them with sticks and kicked them with their boots. “Where is the Sudanese People's Liberation Army camping out?” they demanded to know But we did not know. We were not soldiers. We were shepherds. They threatened to kill the boys one by one until they told them. Finally, they let us go. I do not know why.

MARY That little bit of urine was enough to get me through the day, just long enough to survive until we luckily found a marshy area a few hours walk away. We were all so happy! We flung ourselves into the mud and drank until our bellies hurt. The swamp was filled with tortoise and fish and grasshoppers. We roasted them and ate and ate until we could feel death leaving our souls. We stayed there a few weeks, long enough to regain the strength to make the walk to western Ethiopia. This time, we walked at night, so the hot sun wouldn’t make us so thirsty.

PAUL …and so the militia would not find us again.

ABRAHAM We walked because that was our only hope.

MARY Finally, we made it to the refugee camp, but of original group, there were only 11 of us left.

PAUL Of the 20 in our group, only six survived.

ABRAHAM Only two from my village made it to the camp.

LIGHTS DOWN. DRUMS BEATING. IMAGES OF THE LOST BOYS/GIRLS ARRIVING AND LIVING IN THE REFUGEE CAMPS. IMAGES DEPICT a MAP SHOWING HOW FAR THEY TRAVELLED. LIGHTS UP. MARY The horrors that come from war didn’t end when we arrived at the camps.

ABRAHAM We went from one nightmare to an entirely different one.

PAUL It wasn’t the fault of the camps. No one had anticipated such a mass exodus. So many refugees were pouring into the camps sick, severely dehydrated and near starvation. Thousands and thousands of us.

192

193

Scripts

MARY When my uncle and I arrived at the Pinyudu refugee camp in Ethiopia it was chaos. Droves of people were streaming in. The United Nations had not arrived yet. The local Ethiopians tried to help us but they did not have the resources. I remember that it was so hot, over 110 degrees, and there were no shelters. The burning sun scorched everything. We had no shoes and the ground was like a frying pan, searing our feet. All we could do was find shade under trees or small bushes. There was almost nothing to eat. Each day we were given a small bit of cereal.

ABRAHAM I too was in Ethiopia, but we found our way to Itang. There weren’t any tents, so we had to sleep outside. Some boys had a mat or a piece of cardboard to sleep on. But most of us had nothing.

The mosquitos at night were fierce. Because I was an older boy, I was put in charge of 300 others. They begged me for food. They wanted to know when the UN was coming. They needed so much and I had nothing to give them. Every day, someone died. Starvation. Malaria.

Dysentery. Cholera. Many called out for their mother or father. I tried to stay with them. No one wanted to die alone.

PAUL When we arrived to the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, cholera had struck. Boys were dying everywhere. If they got sick in the middle of the night, they wouldn’t make it to the morning. We tried to help them, but it seemed like there was nothing we could do. We did our best to give them a burial. We used sticks to dig graves, but they were too shallow. Sometimes, a hand or foot would later jut out. At night, hyenas would come looking for the bodies… and eat them.

MARY Some people went crazy.

PAUL They couldn’t take the horrors anymore.

ABRAHAM Even I began to feel that death might be better.

MARY I wondered why death had spared us and not them?

PAUL Somehow, we found a reason to live.

ABRAHAM Somehow, we went on.

PAUL Finally, the United Nations arrived and gradually our camp became a real camp. We were taught how to make mud and thatch huts. We would go out into the forest nearby and collect the biggest branches we could find. Sometimes, we would climb high into the trees and break off thick branches. We needed those for the logs of our hut. Then we pulled tall grass and set it out to dry for the roof. The first night I slept inside the hut, I dreamt I was back home in my village.

ABRAHAM They also showed us how to dig latrines that wouldn’t runoff into the rivers or ponds where we got our water or fished for our food. They told us sewage carried germs and caused cholera and other illnesses. We didn’t know about germs. We were just boys.

MARY I became a vegetable hunter, learning to recognize and harvest wild vegetables. Because we weren’t from the area, we did not know what could be eaten. When we went into the forest, we

Scripts

Mary (cont’) had to be very careful. Leopards, lions and hyenas roamed the area. While collecting vegetables one day, a woman told us a big cat was stalking her. She heard branches break and turned to see the cat jump out from some bushes. She crouched into a rocky cove before he could see her. She only escaped because the wind blew her scent away. (pause) Yet, every day we set out again to collect our wild vegetables. (beat) Our hunger was stronger than our fear.

Lights out.

Drums beating.

Lights up on actors.

(They are carrying paper bags with clothing and blankets. They set them on the stools.)

PAUL One day, the United Nations came with blankets and clothing.

MARY (Pulling out her blanket) I wrapped my blanket around me and ran around my hut, leaping into the air.

ABRAHAM (Pulling out some shorts) I got a pair of shorts. Until then, I had only been wearing a long shirt that barely covered my underwear. I was one of the lucky ones. Others had no clothes at all.

PAUL I was the opposite of you, Abraham. I had shorts but no shirt! I was given a shirt with four letters on it. (Pulling out the shirt and showing it off) N – I – K – E. Someone who knew how to read told me how to pronounce it – nee-ick-eh. (Shaking his head) We knew so little.

MARY Another day to remember was when the Ethiopian soldiers arrived with drums of corn, lentils and oil. They would roll them off the trucks and down the ramps. Once opened, it was like a feast. The smell of the cooking food was too much for some to resist, and they would eat the food when it was still hard and get sick in the night. I had my uncle who taught me to wait. But other’s had no one.

ABRAHAM Food in the camp was feast or fast.

PAUL I sometimes went days without food. My mother’s words would ring in my ears, “If war comes, food will become scarce.”

ABRAHAM Your mother was right. The problem was the camps were overcrowded and there was never enough food for everyone.

MARY At least there was water. But water doesn’t quench the hunger.

PAUL People came in droves. Hundreds, turned into thousands, and thousands into tens of thousands.

MARY There were so many vegetable hunters that soon there were no more vegetables to be found.

ABRAHAM I went from being in charge of 300 boys to nearly 1,000.

PAUL On days when my hunger was so strong, I hated seeing the line of people arriving.

194

195

Scripts

ABRAHAM We did not want to hate them, because they were just like us.

LIGHTS DOWN. DRUMS BEATING. LIGHTS UP. MARY After a while, there weren’t as many refugees. We figured they had all found camps. My uncle would ask the UN workers who went to different camps if they had seen anyone from our village. But how could they know with so many people from so many places.

PAUL We all asked. They tried to give us hope. They would tell us, we will keep looking for you. You must believe. You must not give up. Just when I felt like there was nothing left for us to believe in, the teachers came.

ABRAHAM For the first time in my life, I was learning mathematics and to read and write.

MARY We had no paper or pencils, so we would use sticks to write in the dirt.

PAUL I learned how to read my own shirt. It said NIKE not nee-ick-eh.

They pull out books and their sticks to write in the dirt. They sit on the floor.

ABRAHAM If you take these numbers here and add this with this group here, you get the correct answer.

PAUL Let me try it.

(They scratch out the numbers in the dirt.)

MARY No, Paul. You are forgetting this step.

ABRAHAM It was a dream come true to be getting an education.

PAUL Life had meaning again.

MARY But for those of us in Ethiopia, it didn’t last. After about four years in Pinyudu, the elders began meeting and whispering again. Civil war had now erupted in Ethiopia. Local villagers told the elders that we must flee back to Sudan or to Kenya. The camps were going to be attached by soldiers sympathetic to Sudan’s Arab leaders.

ABRAHAM We, too, had to flee from out camp in Ethiopia.

PAUL I was lucky to be in Kenya. Those fleeing Ethiopia’s camp had to cross the treacherous River Gilo, which separated Ethiopia from Sudan.

MARY Because we had advanced warning, we could prepare our escape this time. We made backpacks out of meal ration sacks and used plastics and tins to store food. Then we set out, 27,000 of us. We walked down a narrow path, almost in single file. We were a sight. The line went on for days.

Scripts

ABRAHAM Despite the warning, it was too late. The Ethiopian militia in tanks and jeeps found us and opened fire. We rushed toward the River Gilo.

MARY We could see crocodiles on the bank. But what choice did we have? The bullets and tanks were getting closer and closer.

ABRAHAM Those of us who could swim, jumped into the water.

MARY Others clung to a rope that ran across the river. But there were too many clinging to it and it ripped apart.

ABRAHAM I could see people being washed down the river. Some tried to hang on to me. But the river was too fast and full from the rainy season. I couldn’t carry them to safety.

MARY I could hear people screaming all around me. Many were drowning. Crocodiles were attacking. I could hear the bombs and the pop-pop-pop of the rifles. It was too much. I was sure I would faint and sink into the dark depths below.

PAUL We heard of River Gilo massacre all the way in Kakuma. They said about 9,000 people died that day. The day we heard the news, we said a prayer in memory of our brothers and sisters, and for the safety of those making the trek to join us.

LIGHTS DOWN DRUMS BEATING AND SONGS OF PRAYER. A MAP OF ETHIOPIA AND ROUTE TO KAKUMA. LIGHTS UP ABRAHAM It took us nearly a year to reach Kakuma.

MARY Many were lost to militia attacks.

ABRAHAM Starvation, disease and dehydration claimed the lives of others.

MARY I don’t know how I survived it all again.

ABRAHAM This time, the UN was on the look out for us. They would bring us supplies and water when they could. They would put the sick on Lorries and drive them to the camps or makeshift medical centers.

MARY Two days after we arrived in Kakuma, I began to shiver so hard that I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I was burning hot. I had contracted malaria. The UN doctors told I would have died if I had not made it to the camp.

ABRAHAM Of the 27,000 people who fled Ethiopia, only half made it to Kakuma. My friends and cousins from my village all perished. I cried for days and days, wondering, “Why God? Why?”

196

197

Scripts

LIGHTS DOWN DRUMS BEATING AND SONGS OF PRAYER. LIGHTS UP PAUL The schooling we were provided is what got us all through this. It had been my father’s dream for all of his children to become educated. I am the first and the only offered that privilege. Even when school in the refugee camps was done, I would spend the day writing with my stick in the dirt. Solving equations over and over again. In my village in South Sudan, there was no school.

The closest one was a day’s walk away. I wish my father could see me now.

MARY I believe he can see you from heaven, Brother Paul.

ABRAHAM In the camp, we liked to say that education was our mother and our father. It is what cared for us and what will help us survive in the world.

PAUL Without it, we would never be here in America. We learned to read, write, geography and all of those other subjects, but nothing prepared us completely for our lives to come in the USA. (chuckles) MARY Like the fact that here three or four men don’t walk down the street around holding hands.

ABRAHAM (laughing) That always stopped traffic! There we were we were, holding hands. Groups of us.

But that is what we did when we walked across Sudan.

Flash iconic photos of the boys holding hands.

PAUL I was shocked to discover that in America, men don’t have to buy their wives with cows.

ABRAHAM In Sudan, my uncle had to pay 75 cows for his wife.

MARY Listen to you two. You pay here too, but not with cows. You have to buy her a ring. My husband won’t buy me with cows. He’ll have to get me a ring from one of those places I hear on the radio so much. The Shane Company or (singing) London Gold…It’s the best!

PAUL Listen to Sister American Woman!

(They all laugh.)

Lights down.

Sound of beating drums.

Lights up.

(The three of them are staring at a crudely made bulletin board with paper tacked onto it with a list of names.)

ABRAHAM I remember leaving Kakuma.

MARY It is a memory none of us will ever forget.

Scripts

PAUL My name! It is there! My friends, look! My name is on the list! (reading) I am going to P-hoe-nix. (to the audience) Later, I would be told that it is pronounced Phoenix.

(All Laugh. MARY and ABRAHAM hug and congratulate PAUL. PAUL is overwhelmed. He sits on the ground.)

PAUL It’s so hard to believe that I will be leaving. (He appears to be on the verge of crying.) After being in this camp for 5 years, I’m leaving.

ABRAHAM I am very happy for you my friend. I hope they will send me to your same city. (beat) Hmmm.

Will it be cold there?

MARY I will go anywhere they send me in America. (Beat) But I pray everyday that it will not be someplace cold.

PAUL We will find out soon enough, my friends. We will find out soon enough.

ABRAHAM When we left the camp bound for the airport, we left most of our belongings behind.

MARY If you want to call them belongings.

PAUL These were not things most Americans would value.

ABRAHAM But in the camp, they were almost like gold.

PAUL I had a chalkboard. Others only had sticks to write with.

MARY I had a needle to stitch clothes with.

PAUL I had an extra pair of sandals.

MARY We were told we would not need these things in America.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT (V.O.) Welcome to Flight 1041.

(Mary, Paul and Abraham are on the plane peering out of the windows.)

MARY It was so frightening being on a plane.

PAUL We all so afraid to board it.

ABRAHAM We didn’t understand how this enormous chunk of metal would be able to fly in the sky.

PAUL At the camp, we would try to make toy airplanes out of twigs and scraps of wood.

MARY They would never fly very far.

PAUL There was so much we didn’t know.

198

199

Scripts

FLIGHT ATTENDANT Good Morning! Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome aboard. My name is Jennifer and I'm your Inflight Service Director. Your cabin crew is here to ensure you have an enjoyable flight to Nairobi, FLIGHT ATTENDANT (cont’) then Brussels and New York. We will be taking off shortly. So please take a moment to make sure your seat belt is securely fastened.

The actors fumble with their seat belts. They find them but don’t know what to do with them.

They look at the other passengers for assistance.

MARY There was so much we did not know. A nice lady on the plane asked if we wanted a beverage. I tried a Coca-Cola for the first time in my life. It had so many bubbles. They seemed to come out of my nose and ears. I didn’t know how anyone could enjoy a drink that would fizz and hurt in your nose.

ABRAHAM When the meal came, I didn’t know the butter went on the bun or that the salad dressing went on the lettuce. I thought it was for drinking. It was terrible.

PAUL The flight was so long. When we got to New York there was snow on the ground. I wanted to go outside to see it. But I had no gloves, or hat or winter jacket. When I stepped outside, the cold just hit me. My ears hurt so badly they were pounding. I thought someone had thrown a rock at them.

MARY It’s funny now, but it was a bit scary at the time.

PAUL I was used to British English, I couldn’t understand the Americans.

ABRAHAM Everyone was walking so fast.

MARY They knew where they were going.

PAUL But we did not.

ABRAHAM People kept bumping into us.

MARY Finally, some kind man asked us if we needed help. He showed us where to go to catch our next flight.

PAUL When we arrived at our destinations, most of us where put in a hotel.

ABRAHAM The relocation people gave us $20 for food for the morning. They pointed us to a McDonald’s across the street.

MARY We didn’t know how to use money.

ABRAHAM We had never been into a McDonalds.

PAUL The number 4 looked good and I ordered those for everyone. It was the hot and spicy McChicken.

Scripts

(They all hoot and laugh.)

PAUL Yes, the hot and spicy McChicken. We had never had spicy food. We ran around with our mouths on fire. The next day, we went to the marketplace. There (beat) we knew exactly what to get.

MARY Many of the relocation people forgot that we came from a refugee camp and before that we lived in small villages. Fast food for us was milk from a cow or goat.

ABRAHAM I couldn’t sleep the first few days I was in America because no one showed us how to turn off the TV. They taught us how to turn on lights, how to flush toilets and how to use faucets. But nothing about the TV. Those nights in the hotel, I learned all about an exercise machine called the gazelle.

PAUL It looked nothing like a gazelle. (beat) The man on the machine kept yelling "buttocks!" and “Yeah, Baby!”, and I thought Americans must be crazy!

ABRAHAM What I remember most when we arrived in New York City was how the doors opened magically for us. Shoosh! (he makes a hand motion) I must have gone back and forth through that first door 10 times.

They stand up and simulate going through the doors for the first time.

ABRAHAM How did that door just open?

PAUL It must see us coming.

MARY Hide to the side. We’ll jump out suddenly. See if it opens then.

(They go to the side and jump out. The doors open.)

ABRAHAM Let’s walk backwards. See if it opens then. (They walk through backwards.)

PAUL Shoosh! Magic!

MARY America, in our eyes, was full of magic. (Jumps through the door) ABRAHAM So many doors opened for us – (PAUL finishes the sentence for him.)

PAUL … and we walked right through.

MARY After walking for so long… after being lost for so long… we finally found the place we belonged.

All stand, hold hands, then march off stage.

Drums play.

Lights fade.

Screen flashes facts about Lost Boys in the United States.

200

201

Scripts

More about the Author

Julie Amparano is the founder, publisher, and advisor of the Canyon Voices Literary team.

Serving in the School of Humanities Arts and Cultural Studies at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Prof. Amparano oversees the school's Writing Certificate and teaches a variety of writing courses that include scriptwriting, cross-cultural writing, fiction, persuasive writing, and others. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles in 2006 and is working on a collection of short stories.

Scripts

END OF SCRIPTS

202

Bee by Eric Anderson (see Artwork for full image)

Alcove

204

Max Schlienger Speaks: A Dialogue with John Cruz Sister to Sister: Corie Cisco Talks Art with Sydney Cisco Lance Graham Speaks Drama: A Chat with Julie Amparano Kissing the Moon: Raquelle Potts Interviews George Kalamaras Colin James and the Fictive Dream: A Conversation with Bruce Kimura The Art of Observation with Jessica Temple:

By Raquelle Potts

205

Alcove

Max Schlienger Speaks A Dialogue with John Cruz Witty and entertaining, Max Schlienger has a way of weaving his childhood innocence into intricate and funny short stories that reflect on the silly things all children do.

Revisiting some of his most entertaining moments, Max calls out to every child at heart with his tales. Certainly, Max is a creative, talented, and entertaining scribe.

Both “Scribing in the Snow” and “Bakery in my Head” have given our readers a fun peek into your childhood. Can you tell us a little about where you grew up and how the settings of these spirited pieces inspired your work?

Each of those stories took place in a small town called Ukiah, which is about two hours north of San Francisco. This may just be the nostalgia talking, but I’ve long regarded the location as being like something out of a heartwarming movie (or a slasher film, depending on the weather). Truth be told, though, I think it was the town’s influence on my parents that wound up having the largest effect on me.

My father was working for my grandfather at the time, in a large industrial laboratory that he (my grandfather) had built from scratch.

This led to an entertaining kind of resonant mischief that would always permeate family gatherings and everyday encounters alike.

Meanwhile, my mother stayed at home to keep my younger brother and me from getting into too much trouble, and she’d often fill the time by telling us ancient myths and fairy tales.

Both of my parents did their part to make sure that I was always involved in some adventure or another, which likely cultivated both my odd way of looking at the world and my love of a good story. As a result, I have

a tendency to ask “What if?” about almost everything... and more often than not, to try and find out. The practice has found me in more than a few strange situations, which have long been the source of my many tales.

Did you excel at English and writing as a child or did you prefer another subject?

English was always my favorite subject in school, particularly when the assignments were centered on creative writing. My third grade class, for instance, would be given a writing prompt each morning... which I’d usually ignore in favor of continuing my multipart tale about an anthropomorphic ferret. As such, I didn’t always get the best grades in my peer group, but I probably had the most fun.

Were there any authors from your youth who influenced your writing?

Some of the first novels that I read were the original books starring the Hardy Boys, so I suppose you could say that Leslie McFarlane had a considerable influence on me. I also used to be fairly obsessed with a science fiction author named Alan Dean Foster, the first “celebrity” to whom I ever wrote a fan letter. When he actually responded, it prompted me to try and imitate one of his signature pieces of humor, in which the third-person narrator describes the way in which the protagonists barely miss stumbling onto an immense fortune of some kind. Although that particular practice eventually lost its appeal to me, I do still enjoy putting subtle shifts of perspective into my work.

Is creative non-fiction your favorite genre or do you prefer another genre?

Alcove Creative nonfiction certainly comes most easily to me, but I prefer to write (and to read) witty humor and psychological horror.

Both Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett are favorites of mine, as is H.P. Lovecraft, and I consider the few times I’ve been compared to those authors as being the highest praise that I’ve ever received.

school for the first time for about a year and a half. After the lack of discipline proved to be a problem – though it did result in quite a few of my stories – I was put back into Catholic school, then removed again (back into public school) for fifth grade, when a new campus opened not five minutes from my family’s house.

What is it that draws you to writing?

The years that followed were pretty typical (although my family did move back to Northern California), until I got into my junior year of high school. There was – and still is – a school in Napa with a focus on “projectbased learning.” Everything was done on computers, there was very little homework, and every learned concept had an immediately applicable use. For example, literally the first thing that my physics class did was break into groups and attempt to design a sport to be played on the moon, with the one caveat being that everything had to be scientifically accurate. My entire tenure there was incredibly enjoyable, and it also managed to be the most informative time of my educational career.

While I wasn’t always a writer, I have always been a storyteller. I can vaguely recall being about three years old and having my mother ask me how the innards of a cassette tape had wound up tangled in the blinds. Rather than telling her the truth directly, I spun a long-winded yarn about being afraid of a monster, discovering a means of keeping it from entering the house, and ultimately making the best of a bad situation. (Basically, unraveling the tape had been an accident, and it kind of spiraled outward from there.)

The thing is, I didn’t actually start writing until my parents – my mother in particular – informed me that people would be more receptive to my stories if I wrote them down.

I resisted at first, trying instead to cut corners by producing poorly drawn comic books... but after discovering that I had the artistic ability of a drunken mollusk, I finally broke down picked up a pen. I did have a bit of a knack for it, likely because I always had my nose stuck in a novel from age eight or so onward, but even with that “natural” ability, I’d often have to struggle with the practice of getting my ideas out of my head and onto the paper.

That’s... not as much of a problem anymore.

What is your educational background?

I attended Catholic school for the first several years of my educational career, starting with two years of preschool and two of kindergarten. My family moved to New Mexico when I was midway through second grade, which resulted in me attending public

Unfortunately, after attending that school, college felt like a bit of a chore for me. I went in with a major in electrical engineering and a minor in physics, but I ultimately left my studies to pursue a career in filmmaking.

What is your profession? Does is allow you to write full time, part time or just occasionally?

As I mentioned, I left college to try my hand in the world of cinema. However, I soon discovered that the sporadic availability of film projects would leave me without a steady stream of income, so I wound up turning to video game development. My lack of a degree forced me to rely on whatever I could learn on my own time, which was probably the least efficient (but most entertaining) route I could have taken.

Nowadays, I’m a manager at a large game company, which only leaves my evenings and weekends free for actual typing-of-stuff.

With that said, I’ll frequently make notes

206

207

Alcove when ideas occur to me, and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that I’m always writing in one form or another.

Do you use an outline when you are writing or do you prefer to see where an idea takes you?

Outlines, to my mind, are either the backbone of a story or its Achilles’ heel. I rarely use them when I’m writing a story from my life, since... well, there’s little point, since the story in question actually happened to me. When I write fiction, though, I’ll often come up with scenes outof-order, and having an outline is an immense help when it comes time to piece everything together. The one warning that I try to keep in mind is that relying on an outline can occasionally be limiting, so I try to regard them as being vague guidelines rather than concrete structures.

What do you find most challenging about writing?

Brevity.

Do you ever have writer’s block, if so how do you get out of it?

I’ve yet to meet a writer who didn’t experience writer’s block from time to time.

My method of combating it really depends on the particular variety: If I can’t figure out the way in which a story should progress, I’ll usually just write something that happens later on, then figure out how to link the two pieces. If it’s an actual dearth of ideas, I’ll essentially play Mad Libs with my characters until something feels like it might fit. Perhaps the most common variety for me, though, is when I know what I want to write, but not how to write it. In those cases, I’ll start by jotting down “Blah blah so-and-so did something, and someone else reacted by doing something else.” That’s not an exaggeration, either: I will literally write “blah blah” and then slowly flesh out and refine the concept until I get the phrasing that I want.

Have you been published elsewhere?

Very little of my work has been published in traditional media, but I have a bit of an Internet presence. I have a novel out – available as a free eBook – about a con artist who, while masquerading as a paranormal investigator, encounters a real ghost. I’ve also had my writing featured in a few video games, a handful of films, and the odd cartoon. Finally, I’m an avid storyteller on Reddit, and I’ll occasionally work on writing collaborations with other authors.

What have you been working on recently?

My three most exciting projects (to me, at least) are a prequel novel to Nearly Departed (the story about the con artist), a horror/fantasy novel set in Bronze Age Arabia, and an anthology of stories that I first posted on Reddit, entitled “TL;DR.” Those are just my personal endeavors, though. An animator and I have been putting together the first episode of what we hope will be an ongoing series, and I’ve been discussing the prospect of releasing a children’s book (that will decidedly not be for children).

What are your publishing goals for the future?

Ideally, I’d love to be able to write full-time, which will require that I stop releasing my work for free. The thing is, my top priority has always been to entertain, so putting a set price on my writing strikes me as being a bit presumptuous. I’ll likely implement a pay-what-you-want system for my next novel, should I go the route of releasing it myself again. (With that said, I’m definitely open to queries from interested literary agents. I have a bottle of fancy rum that I’ve been waiting to open until I get my first traditional publishing deal, and it’s taking up space in my cupboard.)

I’d also love to write for a television show like South Park or whatever Tina Fey comes

Alcove up with next. For the moment, though, I just amuse myself by writing fan scripts and sporadically bothering voice actors.

Lastly, do you have any advice for authors who are struggling to write their own creative non-fiction pieces?

Here’s the thing: You already have the story. It happened to you. It wrote itself. The only thing that you need to do is remember.

Writing creative nonfiction is less about finding an entertaining story and more about telling a story in an entertaining way. Start with something entirely mundane, like the time that you went shopping and saw a banana peel in an aisle. What went through your head? Did you picture someone slipping and falling, cartoon-like, with a loud shout and an unlikely sound effect?

Describe that mental image! Make it seem like such an event was imminent... and then, as a punchline, state how disappointed you were when a store employee unceremoniously picked up the errant peel and dropped it in a nearby trashcan. Anything can be an amusing story, given the right perspective.

Once you’re past that point, you’ll start to realize that many, many stories from your life have the beginnings of narrative structures and even punch lines. Even if you’ve spent your entire existence in an empty room, you can still tell the tale of that one time that the paint cracked a little bit (in an attempt to escape from the oppressive regime that was the wall).

Just ask yourself “What if?”

Author – Max Schlienger

208

209

Alcove

Sister to Sister Corie Cisco Talks Art with Sydney Cisco 1. When did you begin to make art?

As soon as I had the motor skills to hold a pencil or a brush, I started to create things.

My mother always encouraged us to craft and draw because she is an artist herself. I have been drawing pictures for as long as I can remember.

2. What inspires you?

Everything around me can create inspiration. Since I love drawing people, the human body is always very inspiring to me.

There are moments where sunlight catches someone’s face in such a perfect way that I tell them to hold still so I can take a reference picture on my phone. However, I am not above scrolling through pinterest and drawing inspiration from other’s work.

3. Do you have a routine when making a piece of art?

The process varies a bit but I always take my time with the outline of a piece because it’s the most important part. There is usually music and tea involved in the process too. If I get excited about something, a little dancing is involved as well. Also, I always take the time to get second opinions from my sister or boyfriend.

4. What is your favorite medium to create with?

It depends on the mood I am in but charcoal has quickly gone from my least favorite medium to my favorite for portraits, which I like to do the best. When I use it on darker paper and accent highlights with white conte crayons, it gives a high range of value that creates drama that I love.

5. Are you currently working on anything?

Lately, I’ve gotten busy doing typographical pieces because it’s a fun style that I like to

play around with. These also don’t require as much time and effort as portraits so I can fit them into my busy school and work schedule.

Artist - Sydney Cisco

Alcove

Lance Graham Speaks Drama A Chat with Julie Amparano How long have you practiced playwriting/scriptwriting? In addition, what is it that attracted you to the craft?

I really just dabble in plays. I started writing plays around 2000. What attracted to me to the craft is the spoken word. I have always loved dialogue, especially when people aren’t really saying what they mean. My intrigue with dialogue began when I was very young. I remember going to my grandma’s house and all the adults would sit around this large, round breakfast table and talk about everyone and everything. But what was interesting to me was what they omitted or what they accentuated.

As a writer, learning the craft, did any authors inspire you? In addition, do you have a favorite playwright?

I love David Mamet. He won a Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glenn Ross, a play a New York City real estate sales crew that is given the news that everyone will be fired at the end of the week – except for the top two.

His plays are witty, complex and are a commentary on American society. The first thing I saw from him was Sexual Perversity in Chicago. It was later made into a film with a happy ending, which was not how Mamet wrote the play. The original film script starred Demi Moore and Rob Lowe – need I say more?

This script deals with a very real and often overlooked issue by focusing on those who survived it. How did you find your inspiration to tell such a strong, moving, and real story?

A few years ago, I was teaching a Professional Writing class here at ASU. One student in particular stood out. He was

African and very tall and skinny. We got to know each other and I discovered he was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan. He had an amazing story. When civil war broke out in his village, he was playing in the fields. He was only four years old. He got separated from his family and had to march for months without knowing where they would find food or water. At night, wild animals would stalk them and drag off a shrieking boy. What these Lost Boys had to endure was terribly beyond believe. Yet, here was one of them, in my classroom, and each day, he came with a genuine smile on his face. He was inspirational.

I knew I had to do something to help them.

What came to mind was that their stories must be preserved forever so that the world can see what war does to children and so that world never forgets what the Lost Boys endured. I decided to launch an Oral History project and to record the Oral Histories of every Lost Boy and Girl who wanted their story preserved. So far, we have about 20 Oral Histories saved on ASU’s Library’s Digital Repository under the Lost Boys Found project.

The next part was making their stories accessible to the public. Finding an Oral History on ASU’s Library system may not be the easiest for many people. So I decided to write a play that will their stories to the general public. The format of the play, as you can read, is memory and testimonial.

Then the actors go into scene and recreate the moment. What is printed in Canyon Voices is the workshop production. I’m now rewriting it for a full production. I’ve been going through the interviews and writing characters based on these true stories.

When I write, I keep a box of tissues on desk. Their stories always make me cry.

210

211

Alcove Was it difficult to adapt an oral history stage to the stage?

Actually, it was really easy in the case of the Lost Boys. Their stories are so very powerful. The hardest part was finding a format for the play and a narrative style.

Would I just follow one main character?

Would it be composite characters? Would it chronological? Would I begin with them as children? In the end, I decided to tell the story from them as adults looking back on what happened to them. I’m just wondering about how to open it? Right now, I open with the characters looking at pictures of the themselves finding refuge.

Have you put on many staged performances? If so, any favorites?

I have only done two. My first one was A Mother’s Will. It’s about a mother who is dying and cancer and she knows her family will fall apart then she dies. She’s trying to get her eldest daughter to promise to keep the family together. It sounds heavy, but there are many funny moments, I have ghosts who float in and out. No Hispanic family story is complete without ghosts. It was nominated for an ariZoni for best original script. Then I have my Lost Boys Found script. I wouldn’t be able to pick a favorite, since it’s just these two.

Recently, you went on a writer's/artist retreat, how did that help with inspiration? Did it make it easier to write?

I was awarded a Hermitage Artist Retreat fellowship and in October, I spent two weeks at the Hermitage, which is this wonderful place on the gulf coast of Florida.

Every artist is given a private space with views of the ocean to just create. Now, I have never been away from my family for more than a week. So I was worried. But it was great. I have never written so much in my two weeks – and that’s because that’s all I had to do. All I did was write. I could think about my characters uninterrupted. I

could write and rewrite and take breaks to clear my head or rethink my characters while walking on the beach. I highly recommend that all serious writers take writing retreats. You don’t have to go to an Oceanside cottage. You just have to find a quiet place to write interrupted. After my Hermitage residency is done, I think I’ll look for local cabins, staycations and other getaways, where I can go alone for a few days and just write.

Are there any specific genres or themes that you focus on in your plays?

In A Mother’s Will I explore the question of what is family and just because you have the same bloodline, does that make you family? In Lost Boys Found, I’m showing the human spirit to survive and persevere. But I have a list of plays I want to write and most of them deal with society expectations.

Do you have any advice for aspiring play writers /scriptwriters?

Be an active observer. There are great stories unfolding right beneath our own very eyes. Look and listen at what people are doing and saying and read between those lines. What’s really happening? Then write about that. Write about what’s between the lines. You’ll be guaranteed to have a story that’s rich and complex and thought provoking. And if you can add humor – it’ll be even better!

Author – Julie Amparano

Alcove

Kissing the Moon Raquelle Potts Interviews George Kalamaras Both of your poems featured in this issue—“Brain-Tanning the Hides” and “Coyote Crossing the Road”—are prefaced by the city of Livermore, Colorado. How do places inspire your writing and how does that affect the context of these two pieces?

I’ve been working on a series of poems about the American West for some years now and have a couple of book manuscripts of such. I have spent a great deal of time in Colorado, having previously lived there full time in the 1980s and still returning there often (to Livermore, north of Fort Collins).

Place inspires me because I think all poems occur in psychic, bodily, and geographical spaces. Too often, poets are divorced from their bodies, from the physicality of experience, living too much in their heads.

But we are a mixture of head and heart, and our hearts are enlarged by the physical landscapes around us. One poet of the American West who knew this was Richard Hugo, who knew and chronicled the small towns of Montana intimately. Location—as a sub-heading or a title or even as something mentioned in the poem itself—necessarily affects context because it locates the poem in a very real environment, announcing that the physicality of experience is important and integral to our being.

Now, as Indiana’s Poet Laureate, I am also concerned with place in a larger, cultural sense. What does it mean to promote poetry throughout one’s home state? How does one adequately represent and serve that state—in public and through one’s poetry? Isn’t the “state” more than a

physical place but equally a state of mind or consciousness? Poetry is—or should be— an act of loving service. One such service is to give one’s individual ego over unto something larger, such as the environment that feeds one’s inner being. The body is a transparent membrane between inner and outer geographies.

We are really enamored by the concept of "brain-tanning.” What does it mean to you?

Thanks for saying that. I’m really glad to learn of your interest. Brain-tanning is a very real process. One way to tan a hide, as given to us through certain indigenous peoples, is to use the brains of an animal as a tanning agent for its own hide. One rubs the hide with the brains (after cooking them in a mixture of water) and then wraps the brains in the hide. First, my poems often chronicle the world around us as a kind of cultural history of humans and animals, as well as their relationship. So, it’s important that these traditions get passed on and that people are made aware of certain lost arts.

Second, the idea of using the brains of an animal to tan its own hide is a very rich and highly charged metaphor. It brings the body and the mind together—once again saying that it’s the reciprocity between these two aspects of the self that is important. This helps reconfigure a more binary view of the world, posing critical and complex questions about all sorts of similar dichotomies.

The coyote in “Coyote Crossing the Road” is metaphorically transformational as the poem progresses. Is the title an indication of how this piece came to be?

How did that image help you explore so much ground in your work?

212

213

Alcove Yes, one day I saw a coyote crossing the road in the mountains in Livermore, and I began to grieve for the coyote, as outlaw hero—something that has to hide and/or act stealthily, particularly among humans. The road-crossing also led me to reconsider the idea that there are, indeed, two sides to the road, and that this animal’s various crossings—that all of our crossings in our daily interactions in the world—in some ways bring the two sides of experience together, just by virtue of the act of moving from here to there, from one place to another. What other crossings do we encounter? I asked myself. One is obviously the question of divergent perceptions, as with what constitutes justifiable and unjustifiable obliteration of certain species.

Another is the great crossing of language (even when we speak the same tongue), or of the meanings of words themselves.

What does the coyote symbolize for you?

I think the coyote symbolizes what I say immediately above—but let me expand on this a bit. Coyote, in certain indigenous traditions, is the trickster. As a trickster, the coyote is central yet marginalized, a sort of wise-fool, perhaps in the ways a shaman often inhabits that role. Too often we neglect our animal bodies—those lost parts in ourselves that feel and sense and know.

We are incredibly broken off in our culture from the animal kingdom in general—and from our own internal animal consciousness. Certain technologies and responsibilities perpetuate this rupture, to mix my metaphors. But the coyote has always inhabited more than one world simultaneously—both as a physical presence and as a mythological one. If the coyote can cross “the road”—and does— then we, too, can cross the road of binary division and more fully reinhabit an integration of seeming contradictions, recasting seeming opposites into something more complementary than conflictive.

When did you first begin to love writing?

I’ve always loved writing, as far back as age nine or ten, when I first picked up pen and paper and wrote a tiny little “novel” about— you guessed it—animals. I came to poetry at age twelve, writing my first poem. Around age sixteen or so, I felt that poetry was a field in which I might come to know myself more deeply—an attentiveness practice that I could engage in as a form of meditation.

Finally, what is your writing process like?

I hate to use a word like “organic” because it sounds so clichéd. However, my process is very much like an organic unfoldment of knowing. I rarely set out knowing where the poem is going, or what the focus of a poem will be. That only becomes clarified as I write. I often begin with an image. Then I rub another image up against the first. Then I step back and see what that combination of images if trying to reveal to me, perhaps from my unconscious. I try to listen to the inner music of the phrase as well as the psychic music this combination of images— like the collision of two molecules—is trying to reveal. So I begin with a thread, asking the poem to tell me what it wants to be and where it wants to go. This is not a relativistic way of writing. I don’t simply write what some writers might refer to as free-flowing “stream of consciousness.” Rather, I try to divest myself of imposing my will upon the poem, but I equally exert a great deal of willpower to focus upon and understand the inner workings of the poem. It becomes a complex dance of what’s on my mind, what’s in my consciousness, and what’s buried in my unconscious, all together with what the poem—as an unfoldment of consciousness—is itself saying back to me.

It’s like dancing with a partner, an equal partner, in which one needs to remain responsive to the rhythms of the dance.

Sometimes one leads; other times one needs to remain attentive to the reciprocity of the dance and follow (though with deep attention). Poems are alive. They are

Alcove organic entities. The worst thing one can do is impose upon a poem, tugging it this way and that. Respect the poem as you would respect any living thing. For me, the composing process is a lot like making love.

A lot like kissing the moon or the inside of a star. A lot like meditation and watching the rise and fall of breath—merging one’s consciousness with the inner workings of that breathing.

Poet – George Kalamaras

214

215

Alcove

Colin James and the Fictive Dream A Conversation with Bruce Kimura 1. Tell us a little about yourself. When did you begin writing?

I have been writing seriously for a little over four years. As with most of us, our ability was recognized at an early age by others.

However, recognizing our own affinity with writing sometimes takes a little longer. For me it took a three week work stint in Israel, locked in a dismal hotel room in Tel Aviv before I finally put pen to paper. Stuck in the most expensive cupboard in Israel, or at least it seemed so to me, I wrote the first two chapters of my novel “Lord Alf.” Upon my return I joined a writing group and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.

2. Do you like to settle into a routine when writing?

I am fairly manic in my writing style and so when I need to write, I sit and work until the piece is finished. I favor neither early mornings nor late evenings. I simply recognize that I have something that I have to put down and then find the most convenient flat surface to get it done.

3. What inspires you as a writer?

It is a combination of historicism tempered by the quotidian. I run a small business that puts me into contact with many different people who are all eager to tell their own stories. Sometimes I don’t know which story to write first. I am fortunate, as being an Englishman in America I am a novelty and so conversation comes exceptionally easy.

People are always keen to hear other's story which ultimately leads to their own. It is amazing, the depth of experience in one’s own back yard, so to speak, if one would only take the time to listen. I tell my children all the time that when a senior opens their mouth, they should listen, as they very well might learn something

4. Was there any difficulty in writing this piece?

None at all. This was a very natural piece that literally flowed. The idea of representing a British veteran was something that I had wanted to do for a long time as unfortunately, the military in Britain are not viewed in the same light in which the Americans view their own. Soldiering was always considered the profession of the lowest of the low and consequently there is a monumental lack of respect for those who fought and died for the freedoms we enjoy today. The paradox of age is also extremely relevant to the story. In a society where beauty and youth are revered as something special, we tend to forget that the wrinkled, gray haired individuals who populate this world and who’ve already lead long lives are people as well, and not simply just ciphers in a demographic.

5. How has your writing been affected by your travels and immigration to the U.S? Enormously. Travel is the only true, worthwhile education. Everything else is simply icing on the cake. One has to experience life and oneself before embellishing in formal study. It should be mandatory for the youth to experience life in some form or another before swapping high school for thee college experience. Not only would this allow individuals to discover themselves, but would help to generate empathy and an understanding for the world at large. As global citizens, it would help to break down some of the enormous barriers and cultural stereotypes which society seems unable to overcome.

6. Did your experience in the British Army serve as an inspiration for "Warhorse"?

Alcove As a former soldier, I have an affinity with others who have served. I have sat down with any number of nationalities and invariably it is the shared experience of military service that imbues friendship. This story though is really about my Uncle Jack, a veteran of the Second World War and a holder of the “Burma Star.”(An award given to soldiers who served in the Far East.)

Jack was the mildest mannered man you could ever expect to meet and yet, according to his former commanding officer, was also the bravest. Jack in his later years would dig gardens for the elderly, collect their shopping, and generally help out in any way he could. It was hard to reconcile the old man who sat by the fire with the warrior he had once been.

7. In your opinion, what quality makes good fiction stand out?

Readability. George Orwell said that, “good writing should be like clear glass.” When one reads a piece and finds that the story flows, this is generally an indication that rather than a simplistic approach, the author has taken time to craft their story. It isn’t an easy thing to do and yet we recognize it instantly the moment we see it.

8. Are you currently working on anything?

I am busy with my second novel called the “Chip‘Ole.” (Yorkshire slang for a fish and chip shop.) The story is set in rural England where a crime boss is determined to take over all the chip shops in the local area, no matter the cost to life and property, in order establish a fast food empire.

9. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

Never wait for inspiration. Simply sit down and start writing and the doors of perception will open. Before you know it, you will discover characters and situations that you never thought possible populating the blank pages that once seemed so insurmountable.

Fiction Author – Colin James

216

217

Alcove

The Art of Observation with Jessica Temple

By Raquelle Pots In reading your poem titled “Mālama”, the strong ties to Hawaiian culture are extremely prevalent. How does Hawaiian culture and language speak to your life and writing?

care of yourself" as well as broader concepts like to protect the environment and preserve your history or memories. I thought it worked well with the idea of preservation of memories in the poem.

All language fascinates me, especially words that are so tied to the culture from which they emerge, as is often the case with the Hawaiian language. I've actually never been to Hawaii, though I would love to go.

My husband lived there as a kid, from age 3-7, first on a 40-foot sailboat with his parents and sister (Can you imagine living on a boat with two toddlers?!), and then in a house after his little brother came along. I have a handful of poems based on things he and his family talk about from that time. I hope I've depicted the lifestyle and culture accurately here. If any Hawaiians out there read the poem, please let me know what you think!

The scene you describe in “My Grandmother Turns Eighty-Eight” is beautifully constructed and very vivid.

As a writer, do you often find yourself taking moments from your own life and transforming them into pieces like this?

What does "mālama" mean to you, and how did you become inspired to write that particular piece?

This poem started with "pana po'o." I was looking through a list of foreign words that cannot really be translated into English.

"Pana po'o" is the act of scratching one's head when trying to remember something.

We all do it, but most of us don't really have a word for it. The Hawaiian word, of course, made me think of my husband's childhood in Hawaii, which he claims not to remember much of, though all the images in the poem are things he remembers. In trying to title the poem, I looked up a list of Hawaiian words. I found "mālama," which means to take care of, attend to, or preserve. As I understand it, it is used for things like "take

Thank you! I'd say most of my poems do grow out of personal experience, though lately I think I'm moving away from that kind of poem. Maybe I'm running out of stories to tell! This event did actually happen pretty much the way it does in the poem. I knew I wanted to write about it when my grandmother said it was the best birthday she'd ever had. The first version of the poem didn't mention the whooping cranes outright. My idea was to have it sort of like a riddle so readers would figure out what they were without being told. But in workshop, readers had a hard time figuring it out. This, I think, is the biggest danger of writing from real life. It’s harder to look at the poem as a reader would because I can't help seeing it as it actually happened.

How do your own personal experiences and observing the world around you shape your writing?

I think it would be nearly impossible for personal experiences and observations not to shape one's writing. Everything we experience shapes how we see and think about the world around us, which in turn determines how we write and what we write about. I draw inspiration from all kinds of

Alcove things I see and hear: things I do, places I go, words I overhear, things I see online.

One of my engineer friends told last year that I see things differently, in a more poetic way, than most people do, which I took as a great compliment. I guess I'd like to think along the lines of Walt Whitman and Gary Snyder's idea of poet as shaman and Emerson's of the transparent eyeball in that I see the poet's job as interpreting the world for his readers. I try to pay attention and notice interesting things that I could write about, but I also like to write about more ordinary things in interesting ways. I hope my poems help readers see something familiar in a new way.

When did you first begin writing? What about writing made you decide to let it take you to where you are today?

I wrote my first award-winning poem when I was about six years old. It started, "Fuzzy was a little worm, sometimes hard to see. / He crawls on bushes, and he crawls on me." My grandmother, also a poet, had my sisters and I writing at a young age, so I thank her for getting me started initially. I stopped writing for a long time, though, and I didn’t really plan on pursuing it as career until I went back to school for my master's degree. But it was always something I kind of came back to along the way. I guess it was inescapable.

Finally, what is your writing process like?

I have a few different methods that seem to work for me. Usually, I tend to write a poem very quickly, and the first version I get down is usually pretty close to how it turns out.

But I do a lot of drafting in my head beforehand. I usually wait to try to draft a poem until I'm pretty clear on what I want to say already. I also keep a list of ideas for poems and words and phrases I like in my phone—the 21st-Century version of a journal—so whenever I sit down to write, I open that up and pull out anything that might be relevant. Another way I sometimes

write is that something comes to me all at once, like right before I fall asleep or sitting in a meeting or something, and I jot down as much as I can right away. This kind of poem usually requires a lot more revision and isn't always very successful, but I still write them down when they pop into my head on the off chance that it works out. The third way is sort of the method of last resort. This is what happens when I have to turn in a poem for workshop and don't feel like I have anything or when I haven’t written in a while and I feel like I really need to be writing something. When this happens, I pick a word or idea from my running list or just start googling all kinds of strange topics until I find something I think might make a good poem and then just make myself write it.

"Two Descents" came from this kind of exercise.

Author – Jessica Temple

218

C

anyon Voices Literary Magazine is a burgeoning journal dedicated to displaying the works of emerging writers and artists. Founded in the Spring of 2010 at Arizona University’s West campus by one professor and six students, this journal strives to bring the creativity of its writers and artists to light within the community and beyond. Supported by students and faculty of ASU’s New College (HArCS), Canyon Voices accepts writing and art from undergraduates, graduates, faculty members, and the community.

The work of maintaining and producing this magazine is entirely student driven. Since the formation of the magazine in Spring of 2010, Canyon Voices has expanded into an actual class offered through Arizona State University West. Students build a full literary journal each semester, heading every aspect of production from soliciting submissions to publication. We eagerly anticipate further involvement from students interested in magazine publication for our future issues.

OUR MISSION Canyon Voices provides an online environment to highlight emerging voices in the artistic community. By publishing works that engender thought, Canyon Voices seeks to enrich the scape of language, style, culture and gender.

CONTACT US Questions, comments, feedback? We would like to hear from you. You may contact us via email at: CanyonVoicesLitMag@gmail.com You can also visit us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/asucanyonvoices State Flag by Matt Champlin (see Artwork for full image)

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Poetry: Up to six (6) poems may be submitted (no longer than two pages each) per publishing period. All poems must have a title.

Non-Fiction: Up to four (4) creative non-fiction stories per publishing period. Two stories may be 20 pages or shorter, double spaced, Two flash pieces 5 pages or shorter, double spaced.

12 point font in Times New Roman or Arial.

Fiction: Up to two (2) fiction stories per publishing period. Each story may be 20 pages or shorter, double spaced, 12 point font in Times New Roman or Arial. Flash fiction is accepted to a maximum of 1,000 words.

Artwork: Up to ten (10) photographs or pieces of art work, which is at a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch (dpi) or JPEG format to make sure the file is less than 1 MB, may be submitted per publishing period.

Scripts: Up to two (2) scripts may be submitted per publishing period. A maximum of a 15 page script can be submitted.

All documents submitted should be double-spaced with a 12 point font, in either Times New Roman or Arial. Poetry may be single-spaced. All documents must be submitted in a (.doc) or (.rtf) format.

All work submitted must have a title.

Submitting Work: To submit your work, please send it to CanyonVoicesLitMag@gmail.com.

Be sure to attach all the work you wish to submit to the e-mail. You may include an author biography and a photo, which will be included on your page should your work be chosen for publication. Because we are affiliated with Arizona State University, we uphold academic standards. If your work is accepted we reserve the right to make minor superficial changes (ie: grammar, punctuation, etc.). You will be contacted should your work require more than basic edits. We accept simultaneous submissions.

Explicit Materials: Because this is a university magazine, submissions containing sexually explicit material and explicit language will be accepted and determined eligible for publishing depending on the context of the explicit material in the work. Material deemed inappropriate or unnecessarily explicit will be summarily rejected.

Reading Period: Our editors read submissions in August, September and October for the fall issue. The reading period re-opens in January, February and March for the spring issue.

Please note, if your submissions do not follow our submission guidelines we reserve the right to not accept your work for review. If you have any questions about your submissions and if they follow our guidelines, please e-mail us right away so we can answer any questions as soon as possible so you will be able to make the submission deadlines.

OUR STAFF

Julie Amparano Publisher Julie Amparano is the founder, publisher, and advisor of the Canyon Voices Literary team.

Serving in the School of Humanities Arts and Cultural Studies at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Prof.

Amparano oversees the school's Writing Certificate and teaches a variety of writing courses that include scriptwriting, crosscultural writing, fiction, persuasive writing, and others. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Antioch University in Los Angeles in 2006 and is working on a collection of short stories.

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Corie Cisco

Lance Graham Senior Scripts Editor Lance is pursuing a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies degree at Arizona State University, where he also graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in English, a minor in Communication, and a Writing Certificate in Creative Writing.

Ideally, after graduation, Lance would like to continue his education in at a doctorate level. Lance's favorite things include films, music and sports, which are three areas where he would like to focus on writing about in the future. Lance spends a lot of time focused on the future, however he has no secure plans because he views life as something that is always changing and evolving.

Arthur Morales

Senior Fiction Editor, Art Editor

Senior Poetry Editor, Art Editor, Alcove Editor

Corie Cisco is an Arizona State University alumna with a Bachelors in English and Religious Studies as well as a Creative Writing certification.

Currently, she is a graduate student with the Masters of Interdisciplinary Studies program. Corie is a literature enthusiast, lover of landscapes and compulsive questioner. Upon graduating in 2016, she hopes to teach people about the beauty of words, backpack the world and pursue a PhD.

Arthur Abdiel Morales is a graduate student at Arizona State University through the Interdisciplinary Studies M.A. program and his focuses include oral history and poetry.

He is also the Admissions Specialist for Graduate Studies at ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. Arthur also serves as the President of the Interdisciplinary Student

OUR STAFF Association at ASU and is a Student Advisor on the Fletcher Library Student Advisory Committee. Arthur is also working under the direction of Lecturer Julie Amparano and her Lost Boys Found oral history project. He also has an interest in slam poetry, oral traditions, and philosophy.

He enjoys swimming laps, grilling for his family and watering his organic garden.

“No matter where your interest lies, you will not be able to accomplish anything unless you bring your deepest devotion to it” – Matsuo Bashō

MANAGING EDITOR Lisa Tsosie Design Editor, Poetry Editor Lisa Tsosie, cursed with a last name nine out of ten people will inevitably butcher, is an artist, a sister, a lover of all things beautiful. Loving language but not fortunate enough to be gifted with the tongue of a linguist, she enjoys the structure and malleability of English. Tsosie will be graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Applied Computing with a focus on Database Systems and will also receive her Writing Certificate in Technical Writing in December 2014.

SENIOR EDITORS Sarah Cox Lead Associate Scripts Editor Sarah Cox is a senior at ASU. She is majoring in English, but focusing more on literature and editing. This is her 3rd semester with Canyon Voices.

She is currently a Lead Scripts Associate Editor. She is 25 years old, and has actually attended 5 years of college, due to first attending 2 years at community college, then majoring in Journalism with a minor in English at Northern Arizona University for a year and half, then transferring to ASU after a year break to work, and switching her major to English. She is now in the final semester needed to graduate after attending a year at ASU. She has loved reading from a young age, and wants to be wither a freelance or a magazine editor for her career. She currently works at a Starbucks kiosk in a Safeway grocery store.

Elisabeth Heath Co-Lead Associate Fiction Editor Elisabeth Heath is a senior at Arizona State University. She will be graduating in May 2015 with a degree in English and a minor in Communication.

This is her second time working on the Canyon Voices Literary Magazine as an editor in the fiction section.

Her love of stories and culture continues to bring her back to Canyon Voices.

OUR STAFF

Cassie Kellogg

Esther Lee

Co-Lead Associate Poetry Editor

Lead Associate Creative NonFiction Editor

Cassie Kellogg is currently an undergraduate student at Arizona State University studying English and Philosophy.

She is the colead poetry editor for Canyon Voices Literary Magazine and an Editorial Intern for the children's/YA publishing company, Pants On Fire Press. Her first short story, "Dirty Feet, Squashed Tomatoes", was recently published in the Summer '14 issue of The Writing Disorder.

After she graduates this December, she plans on either pursuing a career in marketing or editing.

Bruce Kimura Co-Lead Associate Fiction Editor Bruce Kimura is a fiction editor at Canyon Voices, and a senior at ASU in the English program. He believes in the power of fiction, and its ability to convey unspoken truth.

When he is not working as a writing tutor at ASU or as an intern at Chicano's Por La Causa, he enjoys playing video games, binge watching Netflix, and pathetically following the Phoenix Suns. Looking towards the future, he hopes to improve his own writing while continuing to work in publishing.

Majoring in English and minoring in Political Science, Esther Lee believes that there is no such thing as bad writing - only lazy writers.

As a writing tutor and Canyon Voices Literary Magazine editor, she hopes to take writers and nurture their talent and let them flourish to the best of their ability. Although she loves the Creative Non-Fiction genre, she has strong passion for fiction as well as dabbling in (reading) poetry. She will graduate this December.

Raquelle Potts Co-Lead Associate Poetry Editor Raquelle Potts is an undergraduate student studying English at the New College of Interdisciplinar y Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University, and plans to graduate in December ‘14. She is the co-lead poetry editor for Canyon Voices Literary Magazine, and has had both poetry and a short fiction story titled “On Paper” published in previous issues of the

OUR STAFF same magazine. Raquelle is also a social networking marketing services intern for A-1 Van Leasing, Inc. Upon graduating, she hopes to pursue careers in either editing or marketing.

EDITORS Alexis Burnett Fiction Editor When not working as a barista, Alexis Burnett majors in English and is a fiction editor at Canyon Voices Literary Magazine. After dabbling at NAU in a Journalism major and in newspaper writing, she transferred to ASU West and found meaning in furthering the development of writers and the literary community. Now, she wants to go into working in publishing and eventually as a professor. She writes mainly short stories, poetry, and fantasy novels. Her few other hobbies include blogging about writing, reading and editing others’ writing, playing games, and doodling.

John Cruz Creative Non-Fiction Editor Currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English, John Cruz, as a student in the accelerated MAIS program at ASU West,

is also working on a Master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. Graduating with his bachelor’s degree in December 2015, John hopes to finish his Master’s program in the Spring 2016 semester. After attaining both degrees, John plans to teach literature at the community college level.

Emily Cunningham Poetry Editor, Art Editor Emily Cunningham is a poetry and art editor at Canyon Voices. She plans on majoring with a BS in communicatio n with an emphasis in public relations. She has found a new found love for reading (not writing) poetry by working on the magazine this issue. In her free time she loves to pick up a good book and read just for the fun of it. Classic movies are her weakness and she loves education and loves to learn and experience new and fun adventures.

"I hate the idea that when it comes to books and learning, hard is often seen as the opposite of fun. It’s strange to me that we should be so quick to give up on a book or a math problem when we are s willing to grapple for centuries if needed on a single level of Angry Birds.” –John Green

OUR STAFF

Nineb Daniel Fiction Editor Nineb Daniel was born in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. He works as a fiction editor for Canyon Voices and is a junior at Arizona State University, majoring in English and minoring in Political Science.

Transferring to ASU in 2013 after graduating with honors from Glendale Community College, Nineb plans on obtaining his Bachelor’s degree by the end of 2015. His short story, An Iraqi Fairy Tale, previously appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of Canyon Voices.

Nicholas Hall Scripts Editor My name is Nicholas Hall. I am an English major, script writer and script editor for Canyon Voices Literary Magazine.

Transfer student from LATTC, and Junior at ASU expected to graduate in Spring of 2016. Initial intentions were to just be an English professor but have developed a passion for script writing as well. After graduating from here I plan to continue my higher education working towards my PhD in English, creative writing being the main focus. I also plan to develop great scripts to be published, parodies and maybe a Netflix series. Since when I am not writing, doing homework or enjoying live music, I Netflix binge.

Morgan Henderson Creative Non-Fiction Editor As a Junior Editor for Canyon Voices, Morgan Ashleigh Henderson is wildly passionate about helping author's develop and complete their works. When she is not busy with work or school she loves working on her own poetry, listening to all genres of music, and exploring vintage book stores. She is currently working on completing her Bachelors Degree in Interdisciplinary Arts with an emphasis in English from The New College at Arizona State University West.

She aspires to develop a career in publishing after she graduates.

Delwin Johnson Scripts Editor Delwin Johnson is a good guy. He has a son A.J. who he loves most. He is about to graduate with a Batchlers degree and is planning on a Masters degree. He is also a song writer and loves to take care of his kids. He also works at the V.A. and is going to school

OUR STAFF to better his career. He one day wants to be an ethics major. That is all about him.

God bless.

Erin McDowell

Megan Kizer

Erin McDowell has been an editor of Canyon Voices for four consecutive issues. She is a graduate student working on her M.A. of Interdisciplinary Studies with her core focus areas being Psychology and Communication.

She graduated with her B.A. of Psychology in Spring 2012 with dual minors: Public Relations & Strategic Communications and Family and Human Development. She is the mother of three children with whom she shares her love for reading and writing.

Always doing something to give back to the community, she works as a coach in the First-Year Success Center at ASU and in her spare time is an active member of Girl Scout’s Cactus Pine Council and proud baseball mom.

Creative Non-Fiction Editor Megan Kizer is currently a student at Arizona State University earning a BA in both English and Psychology through the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. She is also earning a certificate in writing for publishing and editing. Presently, she is a social networker at Superstition Review and a creative non-fiction editor at Canyon Voices. Upon graduation, she hopes to secure a career in publishing and editing.

Kasidy Manisco Community Liaison Fiction Editor Kasidy Manisco holds two Bachelor’s degrees, one in English and one in Secondary Education, and a Master’s degree in English. She has been a fiction editor and lead fiction editor for Canyon Voices for previous issues and loves the written word. She writes adult and young adult fantasy (though mostly urban fantasy) and occasionally dabbles in science fiction.

Currently she works at a mortgage company, and has recently been published in volume three of Inaccurate Realities Magazine and in the anthology Happily Never After. In her spare time she writes as much as she can, reads everything she can get her hands on, and spends time with family.

Social Media Editor

Melissa Selleys Scripts Editor Melissa is a 21year- old English Linguistics Major at the New College on ASU's West campus. This is her first professional publication experience, and she is very excited to be a part of the Canyon Voices Scripts team! When not at school, Melissa enjoys long walks with her two dogs, sketching, and reading countless novels. Upon earning her B.A. next year, Melissa hopes to enter into the publishing industry and become a world traveler.

OUR STAFF

Jonathan Smith Poetry Editor Jonathan Smith is pursuing his degree in Secondary Education for History and Minoring in English Literature.

Canyon Voices has allowed Jonathan the opportunity to be a poetry editor as well as explore the aspects of magazine creation. After graduating in Fall 2015, Jonathan will go into teaching at the high school level and seek opportunities with newspaper or yearbook after school activities. As a long term goal, Jonathan will be coming back to ASU to pursue his Masters and Doctorate in History.

Olivia Tejada Fiction Editor Olivia Tejeda is a fiction editor at Canyon Voices.

She has had a lifelong passion for words, and after a career in writing, editing, publishing, and bookselling, she decided to hit the books in a whole new way at ASU. Olivia enjoys yoga, running, knitting, and living in different cities, but no matter what else she’s doing, in her head she’s always writing. “It’s a natural part of my daily life,” she says. Or as Franz Kafka put it, "A non writing writer is a monster courting insanity." She’s not 100% sure that not writing would lead to insanity, but she's not willing to risk it.

Melanie Wheelen Fiction Editor Melanie is earning her B.A. in English and a Creative Writing Certificate.

She's a lover of books, fiction editor for Canyon Voices and future author. With high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, she hopes to inspire and encourage other Aspies and Autistics with her writing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Fall 2014 Canyon Voices Staff wants to give special thanks to Lauren Griswold, ASU’s Media Relations and Marketing Manager, and Ruth Dempsey, ASU’s Web Content Developer, for their dedication, vision, and long hours in transferring our literary magazine into this inaugural flipbook platform. We tip our hats to you both!