BL 7 by Blood Lotus Journal

Issue #7, December 2007

Scholar by Lafayette Wattles 1

In This Issue... Letter from the Editors

Poems

Painting by Maxwell Thurman

Paul Hostovsky

Driving to Work with Britney Spears Perfect Forgiveness What They Did to Those People

7 8 9

Allison Taj

Operation Desert Freedom

Frederick Pollack

Lucidity

Joseph Kerschbaum

Drowning the Ocean (Bleaching The White Noise)

Rachel Bennett

Denotation

Joshua Young

Tuxedo Fittings and Gum

Jeanine Hall Gailey

The Night I Realize I Wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Be Able to Have Children The Princess and Her Swan Brothers

17 18

Margaret Mason Tate

Afternoon at Lake Jocasee

Michael Angelo Tata

Progress Narrative

Mark Russell Brown

A Sense of Misplace

Fiction

Painting by Peter Schwartz

Amy Prodromou

March Hollows

James W. Hritz

Omar G. Vondruke

Jamie Lin

Poking Holes

Darren J. Akerman

Small Change

Creative Nonfiction

Painting by Peter Schwartz

John Pahle

Michigan Bakery

Jamie Rand

Scars

The Politics of Dancing and Loving

Music Column Rane Arroyo Contributor Bios

#7 Letter from the Editors We the editors, while pleased to offer you another issue of our burgeoning little online magazine, are trying to figure out what‘s so special about Issue 7. It isn‘t our anniversary issue (stay tuned for February 2008, when Blood Lotus will celebrate two years!). The newness of our lovely archives page, where we‘ve collected all the wonderful work of our previous six issues, may have worn off a bit, but we still think everything before now is just as worthy of your attention. We didn‘t even set out in our reading this fall to create a themed issue—but never yet have we read so many pieces about war, poverty, the environment, and the general malaise of the masses. So here it is, Issue 7, our inadvertent ―political issue.‖ Let us be clear: we are not interested in endorsing a specific political party or school of thought. At the same time, we are completely unafraid to be controversial, and we find that many of the 300+ writers who are submitting their work to Blood Lotus for each quarterly issue seem to feel the same way. Our mission is and will always be to promote work which takes risks. First, we must direct your attention to the second new feature of our web site (the first being this address of you, our readers): a music column by poet and activist Rane Arroyo. Please revisit the poem he wrote for our journal on the homepage, then treat yourself to his review of three musical artists who are composing from the same places and with the same fervor as the writers you‘ll find here. Why a music column? Because art is art. Believe Arroyo when he insists that we ―can still spark revolutions outside and inside‖ of ourselves. Like the art? Make sure you look at the Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction pages for a few minutes before diving into the writing, because while trying to avoid a too-holiday color scheme with our somewhat somber charcoal and cream, we think Maxwell Thurman and Peter Schwartz do a great job of punching up the palette, and the gorgeous cover photo by Lafayette Wattles could symbolize any artist in any lifetime. Now, deep breath. And another. We think the nonfiction in this issue creates the perfect inversion. The piece by Jamie Rand is a terrifying bit of memoir by a young soldier just returned from Iraq, and with a chilling story about the day the war really began for him. The soldier Jamie has a hard time conveying to ―civilians‖ at bars what fear really is, but the writer Jamie does so with moving realism. John Pahle‘s piece is the average civilian personified, as the speaker takes a stroll through his Michigan town with a sack of freshly baked rolls he‘s purchased at a bakery where ―not much is different‖ than it was a hundred years ago. Pahle muses over a bulletin board rife with events both current and historic to his town; his thoughts begin with the trivial ―pancake breakfast, sublet available, lawn mowers tuned up and blades sharpened‖ and ends up with ―Plato was right; only the dead have seen the end of war.‖ Just as he delves into reminiscing about a friend‘s personal tragedy on the Afghanistan front lines, he

stops abruptly, having run out of his snack, and heads back to the bakery, where things are ―unbroken and unchanging.‖ Issue 7‘s fiction serves up two stories about doomed relationships by Amy Prodromou and Jamie Lin; a longer story by Darren Akerman about two very different adolescent boys, their unlikely friendship, and the town they rebel against in more ways than one; and a disturbing but fascinating portraiture by James Hritz of an obsessive compulsive who gives one confession after another and collects words in Mason jars. These stories feature varying degrees of the dark sides of humanity; while not overtly political, the argument can be made that their authors have effectively captured the turbulence and chaos of this modern era and funneled it into downward-spiraling characters who themselves embody the very idea that the personal IS political. That the personal trials we daily undergo to keep ourselves afloat are reflections of what‘s going on around us. The poems of this issue are more succinct offerings of the same sentiments, and are some of the strongest we‘ve published to date. Work by Mark Brown and Michael Angelo Tata insists on the relevance of the gay experience, and Tata‘s poem reminds us of James Schuyler‘s aesthetic— narratives rich with details and just a bit of attitude. Margaret Mason Tate dilates the experience of an afternoon swimming to connect with other places and come to the belief that ―each generation thinks / it invented bad behavior, / good sex, / and yearning.‖ Jeanine Hall Gailey, a poet who recasts fairy tales and comic books to expound on the female experience, discusses childlessness and children in two different poems. A piece by Joshua Young is all about what is expected of us, from hetero marriage to what causes an erection. Allison Taj, Joseph Kerschbaum, and Paul Hostovsky are more directly political in poems about Muslim wives, soldiers as ―pawns in a war,‖ and our social infatuation with everything from the retelling of morbid stories to Britney Spears. Lastly, Rachel Bennett and Frederick Pollack both offer poems about how hard it is to write poems of importance today. We hope you enjoy the art and writing of #7 as much as we enjoyed putting it together and presenting it to you. Personal stories, past and present, continue to inspire us because, to quote Arroyo once more, ―This is why art matters: ghosts need to be honored for their years of scars.‖ We appreciate, especially in these times, in this country, all of you who insist that your scars be seen. This very act is political. Sincerely, The Editors

#7 Poems

Faultline by Maxwell Thurman

Paul Hostovsky DRIVING TO WORK WITH BRITNEY SPEARS I don‘t care what anyone says, I‘ve had to pee so bad in traffic I‘ve pulled over in the breakdown lane where the courtships of small animals go on in the ravines. I‘ve been so full of shit I‘ve had to turn the radio on just to drown me out. But I like her voice. I like her signature low note, that guttural thing she does that sounds like pushing. Like she‘s climbed down into a ravine and she‘s squatting there among the animals, pushing. It could be a bowel movement. It could be a baby. It could be a second baby. Baby, baby, it‘s very effective, whatever it is, and I don‘t care what you think because I‘m happy singing along on my way to work, my thumbs keeping time on my steering wheel, my head full of bullshit and beauty and Britney Spears pushing and singing and making babies.

Paul Hostovsky PERFECT FORGIVENESS He left his wife and threw his back out packing books and clothes into his Toyota and drove in hybrid pain to his Aunt Edieâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s who lived with her dementia in a house in Easton and stayed with her for a month and everyday she was pleasantly surprised to see him and asked him what he did to his back and asked him what he did to his marriage and the repetition was good for him and good for her because she couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t remember and he couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t forget as the days passed and his loneliness and pain increased so they sat together at her kitchen table and she listened as he told the painful story again and again and each time he told it a little different and each time she heard it for the first time and shook her head at the same sad and truly unforgivable parts which were all true and took his plate to the sink and promptly forgot took his plate and washed it completely clean

Paul Hostovsky WHAT THEY DID TO THOSE PEOPLE When we heard what they did to those people we imagined ourselves in their place at first those people to whom it was done those poor frightened people who probably didn‘t believe it at first when they heard it was being done to them and oh my god the children who didn‘t know that people could do such things and have always done such things but when we tried to imagine how people could do such things we couldn‘t we couldn‘t imagine it couldn‘t imagine ourselves in their place at all those people who did those things because we believe that we could never do those things we who teach our children to love all people including such people as would do such things to us who imagine we are different from such people who do such things

Allison Taj OPERATION DESERT FREEDOM “It’s kind of like bullying ants,‖ He said, “You know, pouring Tabasco sauce on them before squashing them.‖ I didn‘t know, but fought not to judge him. I was a pauper begging for his memories like the women who begged by the road for food as he rolled with the rest of the convoy through their town. “Yeah, we did that,‖ he said, embarrassed when I asked if he ever tried to get the Muslim women to lift their veils, to show their faces or legs for soldiers‘ rations. “You just don’t see them as people,” he said. I listened, imagined what it must be like for these women returning home with the food. Do they hide it from their neighbors? Feed it to the children only at night far away from disdainful, watching eyes afraid of their husband‘s wrath for speaking to, begging from Americans? The soldier wasn‘t aware that one tear shown, bare ankle could bring about eternal shame. He didn‘t think of the violent tradition of those Shi‘ah men who refuse to see women as equal, how they also bully them as ants, reigning fire hot fists upon hidden faces pouring out prayers before killing them.

Frederick Pollack

LUCIDITY At any moment, all the poems you could ever write hover between you and the leaf-strewn lawns, bland prospects of your neighborhood, the more distant abstractions of politics, the horror of age. They‘re a kind of counter-broadcasting, a cable channel no one is watching, including you. A baby‘s abandoned mitten on a low stone ledge could theoretically fill infinite metaphors, but all you think about is that oppressive infinity and Borges. Two nymphets chatter, wearing the same pink T-shirt in some kind of solidarity; they are attended by the gods of genetics, who hopefully will guide the sinews of the blonde, the blobs of the redhead to beauty. At outside tables, the professional faces above dogs, beside phones, could be tiles in a wall of supreme compassion but aren‘t; they read and you create the dull poem of the world, that aimless epic. In an eccentric orbit between the outer gasbags and the sun, one day a ship appears. It‘s huge, and transmitting garbage. Its presence unites mankind, i.e., all chiefs of staff. Eventually we decode. He‘s big, a kind of soulful jellyfish starfish floating repulsively in a tank. His race is dying. He wants our help. We give none.

Joseph Kerschbaum DROWNING THE OCEAN (BLEACHING THE WHITE NOISE) Their marching is hushed like whispers or rumors. The synchronized stomping of feet sounds like thousands of clocks ticking toward a moment of silence. The soldiers are pawns in a war much like watches can't run backwards. Ordered to march, so the soldiers march until they are told to halt but that order never comes. They march all the way to ocean cliffs where they drop off like seconds lost in sleep. All they have been told is the ocean is a problem long unresolved. Even before they take that first step in unison their uniforms are empty. Armed hollow shells of soldiers marching toward the sea like days are powerless to not follow each other toward the apocalypse. No heads sprouting from the collars, no fists clinched at the end of sleeves means no hands to shake, no faces to remember. Point them in the direction of those cliffs, wait for the sound of the waves to dissipate as the soldiers fill the ocean. Wait until this solution is no longer the desired variable but the new constant that needs solved. Wait until you can't tell who is winning, when you can't discern quiet marching from waves breaking against rocks, when they are the same thing.

Rachel Bennett DENOTATION They told me, "Not one word over what is," and all song ceased. I could not write my name. They told me it was simpler and proffered unity and proffered relief. I saw a boat. I wrote boat. I did not think coat, stoat, smote, sail, ocean, salt air, lost. I saw a boat. I could not write swan. But I dreamed of you in ink, your skin's incongruous benediction of skin and thing at once: sun, leaf, anchor, rabbit, circle, knife. I begged you to cut away my eyes, but it was forbidden as dreams would be. Every body was body. "The rain is someone crying," someone said, and they killed him. In my last dream you held your palms to the glass and gave me two closed eyes, 13

Rachel Bennett then closed your fingers over the last possible thing.

Joshua Young TUXEDO FITTINGS AND GUM

his brother‘s wedding was supposed to be spectacular— that is the word his mother used ―spectacular‖ so, being the best man and all he goes to the fitting, all the tapes and buttons and pins from tomatoes filled with sand

pulled

the woman measures his waist from her knees, her fingertips slipping past his waistband, checks the tightness she asks him questions like ―are you excited?‖ ―how do you know the groom‖ ―what do you do for work?‖ she lifts her eyes to his for the answers he quivers at that touch, another woman, and his blood moves his penis moves, it‘s as though her skin touches his he only feels skin, even when there are layers and thinks about her naked body, all those young curves and bumps, the way she might walk differently unclothed, but who hasn‘t had that flashbulb pop and I‘m sure we‘ve all been guilty of that, like shoplifting gum from register displays the Extra Winter Fresh he stole so kids at school would stop calling him ―nasty breath‖ then, he thought that gum was for people with bad breath cause his father said cologne was for people who didn‘t shower, and naturally he thought those rules applied to gum so, he slid

Joshua Young the package into his shorts his mother found him chewing

that night

with his head down, he returned the gum and apologized and his mother paid—the cashier smirked he, the kid, assumed the smirk was because the cashier knew about gum‘s one purpose but the cashier found the apology endearing, or perhaps cute the kid, defeated whenever he chews gum he thinks of that cashier, even now that he knows it wasn‘t about the breath and here at the tailors, her on her knees in front of him, he can‘t help but feel the climb of lust into his skin it tightens and pulls as though he asked it to

Jeanine Hall Gailey THE NIGHT I REALIZE I WON'T BE ABLE TO HAVE CHILDREN I am slow dancing in my living room with my too-tall husband as the stereo hums Mazzy Star‘s ―Fade Into You.‖ The dark‘s so bright it‘s shining. It is cold. I think frantically of gifts I will never pass down to you, all my never-to-be-born children: Barbie dolls, wedding dress, my damaged DNA. I will write, I know that already. And I will always have time to learn new things. Instead of wrestling with toddlers, I will take up a language, possibly exotic, perhaps Portuguese. We two will never be a family, as we‘ve come to think of families on television or in books: four heads around a table, three bodies walking through a park, two children squabbling at a mother‘s feet. We will continue to be two. And I will grow old without you, my children, I will never worry over you at night, your cough, your piercings, your prom dates. Doctors have taken these little fears. In the years to come, I will look back on tonight, wonder how I took it all so calmly, barely stopping my feet from shuffling across the dim winter light.

Jeanine Hall Gailey THE PRINCESS AND HER SWAN BROTHERS My father made a casket for each son so I might inherit the kingdom all I could do was pick nettles, nettles shirts for my swan siblings I lived in a cave and a king found me I would not speak and he took me to a castle but all I would do was weave nettles, nettles I could not speak a word and then my brothers the swans visit me at night weep tears on blistered fingers. If I speak they will be birds forever the king wanted me for his bride I could not speak his people tried to burn me my hands full of nettles and feathers I wept but could not speak The flames startle upwards my brothers your shirts made of nettles, here in the sky seven swans circled the village crying and the swans flew out of the sky human

Jeanine Hall Gailey I opened my mouth to speak the sound like air rushing through white feathers

Margaret Mason Tate AFTERNOON AT LAKE JOCASSEE

winds blow west from better, worldly places— Morocco, Greece, unnamed islands— bringing with them the ashes of centuries and longing the Carolina clay of which i was born, which colors my hair and my attitude, slips through my fingers, back into the lake water, glinting and winking and plopping and gliding down to the bottom, settling back in— to its telos between my rejoicing toes how many times have i been here, in different incarnations? –in the wombs of my female kin, in the deliberate gaits of the family menfolk? could they smell the Moroccan saffron, even then, without the luxury of geography? did they hear the faint, exultant opas echoing across the muddy water? each generation thinks it invented bad behavior, good sex, and yearning.

Michael Angelo Tata PROGRESS NARRATIVE Absolutely nothing got accomplished in my life today—and I mean nothing, and I mean my life: zero. At 11:30 the phone rang, and I was sleeping (up ‘til 5 listening to Crystal Waters remixes and writing letters). I waited until the answering machine picked up (Who doesn‘t? Telephones can be such a trap). It was BB, just calling to say he hit the skids and wouldn‘t be coming to the City for the weekend. Then he told me about a terrible stabbing two streets away from our old apartment and hung up. Well, that depressed me so much I went back to sleep until 1:30, when my mother called. She was watching Leah, Susanna‘s new baby. ―Baby Leah is going to gurgle into the phone for you.‖ I told her that when I‘m in California, I‘ll be taking the Mercedes down the PCH to visit Cha-Cha in Malibu, and she interjected, ―There was a reporter from Philadelphia at the OJ trial— he went out to grab a sandwich and had a terrible accident—he died. Those roads out there are treacherous.‖ She‘s still a little girl—neither of us will ever grow up. Then the little girl who is my mother hung up to go feed Leah, and I threw on some underwear—do other people talk to their mothers 21

Michael Angelo Tata naked? The phone rang—this time I didn‘t pick up, and the mystery caller hung up. It rang again, and I thought ―Ha! I‘ll find out who that was!,‖ but it was only Bill, who had not just called and hung up, my previous call a mystery for all time (gotta get Caller ID). Bill was a mess about Swimmerboy and wanted to know the 411 on Lotterina and had a lot to say about Sharon Stone, when the other line blipped and it was Nelson, who was coming over to pick up his sweater. I talked to Bill some more, when the door buzzer buzzed: ―It‘s Pachuquito from LA—let me in.‖ Bitch—buzz. Then back to Bill and Nelson in a Pepsi shirt, smart ass. I hung up and made a protein shake, as I cursed l’Être Supreme because there were no ice cubes and all the bananas had fruit flies. I drank my shake leisurely and made that little honey walk my ass to Crunch Fitness, where Mistress America was waiting and we talked too much (―Contempa! Look at that colorblock sweater! Mommy and Me!‖) and I had to skip my abs, but then this guy in the locker room who bartends at Crobar was there with his sculpted sixpack and I thought to myself, ―See, you‘ll never look like that.‖ A steamy douche made me feel better and since the day was already shot I ran over to Starbucks for lemon-iced angelfood and the café du jour—it‘s not like I had time to run home and eat a real meal, since I promised Bill I‘d meet him 22

Michael Angelo Tata at the Gap, 8th and B‘way, 5:30 p.m. Lord only knows where he‘s taking me—Banditos? Some trash pit. Thanks to Ben Franklin, it‘s dark by now. Only the EXIT sign shines bright, like a Warhol Electric Chair silkscreen

Mark Russell Brown A SENSE OF MISPLACE Rural Kentucky plus gay equals ache of never feeling planted when all around you are rows and rows of tobacco rooted so deep it canâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t be pulled. I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t tap this soil for pabulum or grip the clods that others held tight. I never conjured the magic of plunging gnarled fingers into this hard clay. I was the anti-farmer, the odd non-member, the alfalfa sprout that flaunted its clean, blanched root obscenely in the air.

#7 Fiction

Anthropology by Peter Schwartz

Amy Prodromou MARCH HOLLOWS In Sydney, things happen in scenes. And I see myself the major player. I am a girl, who suddenly catches sight of herself in a train’s double-glass doors. I am there at the instant she becomes aware of the dormant power lying just within a certain tilt of her neck. I am lecherous, watching her. Feel the air become slightly less charged when she leaves. I find myself within a group of adolescent boys. When 1994 was a long time ago—the colour of burnt sienna. We almost smell like men. I am posing now in the middle of a baseball swing, invisible bat raised above a large forearm. I have a story to illustrate. I am for a second dazed in Sydney’s underground, an old woman with dyed lilac hair sitting on a bench. I have chosen my skirt carefully to match. As the train pulls up, I feel the wind rush in from the tunnel to lift my lacquered hair. Feel the sudden chill on my scalp. I am toothless, stinking, dirty. My skin has become the colour of oxidized iron or dried-up blood, a colour that grows naturally on my skin if I do not wash it off. It claims possession of me. Unadulterated. Au Naturel. I could have been anybody. But I was Elizabeth. In Sydney. Six years ago. *** Paul had left a candle burning in their bedroom. Elizabeth noticed it as she moved towards the front door. It caught and mimicked the late-afternoon shadows forming just outside the window. It illuminated—just so—a fine layer of ash that covered the new hardwood floors and somewhat prematurely aged the fresh white paint on the walls. The day before, the ceiling fan in their bathroom had overheated, caused a minor fire, and then scattered a fine powder of ash around their new house before blowing itself out. Of course there was much to be grateful for. The house was still standing. And the paint in the backroom looked almost untouched. And of course the furniture had all been covered. Thank god they had not yet had time to remove the couches from their protective plastic. So there was just the small matter of the ash to attend to. The ash and the wedding. The ash covered every inch of available surface in the house, though was less obvious in the back rooms. Like a sort of visible silence, it covered the floors of the front room, the living room, the dining room; it floated onto the kitchen counters, worked itself into the top-most corners and light fixtures to settle finally across the backdoor screen, lending a darker shade to the netting there. So just this ash to see to before the wedding. Before her mother and father arrived next week. It was August in Australia, but Elizabeth would wear the dress she had always imagined she would to her wedding, her summer 26

Amy Prodromou wedding. She would wear a simple white dress, crocheted, with yellow flowers on the straps. So simple that some people might not even know she was getting married and would think she was out for the day on a picnic. The reception hall—a renovated castle—would offset its simplicity. She could already see the picture album and how the yellow flowers would stand out underneath grey arches. But first she needed to see to all of this. The ash and the silence. She could do it. In a week. She had been in worse situations. And Paul had left her a candle. Had left her with that stubborn human faith in the power of light to heal. It would be five months since she had known him. Hardly any time at all, Elizabeth‘s rational mind told her, to be getting married. And yet maybe time enough. She remembered, even at the beginning, how they had fallen comfortably into being a couple before she realised that she had only known him a week. It was only when she put it to herself like that that she felt any amount of shock. Because it didn't feel like she was moving too quickly. Setting herself up for disappointment. Everything felt almost frighteningly normal. And when they met in late March it had been a sort of falling towards one another. They had met in a club on George Street. A club not renowned for its flavour of men; indeed, Elizabeth was not thinking of other men. She was full of those she had left behind, in Cyprus. *** And yet, there Paul was (―Peull‖ it was pronounced, with a hard ‗l‘, though Elizabeth could only ever pronounce it in its anglicised, biblical form). He was in front of her now. Smiling and nodding, his eyebrows raised, his face open and honest. She couldn‘t think of how exactly they had started talking. Perhaps she had taken a step to the left and bumped into his shoulder. One of them must have said ―Sorry.‖ She must have leaned in first. Because his mouth was warm and soft. She sucked at the tanginess of the beer still on his tongue. His kiss was wide and generous. He gave to her with his mouth. It was something she had missed, this searching within the thick, fragrant nightclub air. The way the music fell to a low insistent drumming in the ear. The way the people around her blurred into one another, like a picture of streaming city lights taken from a moving car. She knew every part of it, from the surface of the painted faces, to the thighs and hips beneath swaying fabric, all the way to the deep hollow that tugged and pulled from somewhere just below her ribcage. He was moving towards this hollow now—lulled precisely because it is unassuming—moving, as things will, to occupy a void. And she wanted to push him deeper into it; holding on to the back of his neck, she anchored him to her, felt him lean and fall inward. 27

Amy Prodromou Elizabeth timed the precise moment when the swelling seemed to peak, and stepped back, as if coming up for air. They looked at one another and laughed, surprised by the intensity of the kiss, embarrassed now. Paul raised a thumb to his eyebrow. Something in her rippled and was smooth for a moment. It was then she supposed that she found out his name. And that he was French. From the Pyrenees. He had learned English in Ireland, and the Irish lilt broke out every so often from his thick French accent. Probably the amount of alcohol caused her to focus on this almost obsessively. “But of course!” “Not at all!” “Oui oui oui!” Her friends had already left. Elizabeth was aware enough to know that she was now unsteady on her high heels. Paul alternately held her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulder to steady her. His step was athletic. He steered her securely towards Hyde Park. She pissed behind the bushes. They stood in the middle of a concrete pathway, the streetlight full on them. Flooding them against the trees. His ―Hs‖ were soft. As they kissed, she touched his face. Traced the soft lines of his jaw with her finger. Rubbed her thumb against the stubble there. She felt him hard against her stomach. She had to hold onto his waist to keep from falling backwards and sinking into the flood of light. His hands were moving over her thighs. Underneath her skirt, over the lift of her buttocks, pulling at her underwear. As though standing somehow outside of herself, she let him slide his fingers under them, noticed his breathing getting heavier. Then the fingers reached further inward, under her. With a quick breath, she drew away from him abruptly. The streetlights faded as the sky lightened. She said, ―I'm cold,‖ and he untied his light beige and grey jumper from around his waist. He helped her into it, and Elizabeth allowed herself to be dressed. When she'd put both arms through the soft fabric, she stood before him, limply, and he held both ends together, zipping her up. The sound of the zip propelled Elizabeth back to her childhood, and suddenly she was facing her mother in a bulky winter coat. The zipper had about it the sound of surrender. ―There,‖ he said, and was suddenly fatherly. ―Now I'll have to see you again to get it back.‖ Oui oui oui. But of course. *** But the next day Elizabeth woke up, and, unable to picture his face, broke into a panic. A rising nausea grew in her stomach and she recognized this as more than just the signs of alcohol leaving her body. She rose and looked at herself 28

Amy Prodromou in the mirror. Her lips were unusually red. Wandering back towards the bed, she saw the jumper—she had thrown it on her couch, then on her bed, where it lay sprawled, one arm thrown across the hump in the blankets. She picked it up and smelled it. It had the faint odour of cologne, cigarette smoke, and clinging nightclub air. When she met Paul that evening, he was crisp and wide-eyed. Taller and better looking than she remembered. He had a straight nose and a pursed, neat mouth. She was relieved when he took out his pack of cigarettes. They sat awkwardly at first, trying to grow into the intimacy of the night before. Paul's hand cupped her knee. It was eager. Animated. He was waiting to meet her on her way back from the bathroom. The kiss he gave her was forceful and familiar. She had spilt wine on her jeans, and he smoothed the spot with his hand, as if he could brush it off. She grabbed it. ―It's okay. It'll dry.‖ But he kept her hand in his. With her thumb she absently smoothed his large knuckles. *** At her house, Paul voluntarily chose to watch Moulin Rouge from the pile of DVDs in her cabinet. On the couch they couldn't get comfortable. Every time Elizabeth moved, his elbow jabbed into her. Her lower back twisted to fit alongside his hips. They pretended not to notice. Her arm fell asleep in time to Paul's soft humming. It was only getting later. They would have to go to bed at some point— Paul lived too far away to go home now. They had only managed to finish half a glass of wine each. Elizabeth stared at Paul's feet in white sport socks, criss-crossed under her own. She propped herself up on her elbow. The blood rushed forward in relief. Paul carefully prepared for bed. He spent a long time in the bathroom. When he came out he hopped neatly over her and lay next to the wall. They kissed for a little while, the hollow receding to a damp pull within them. Elizabeth knew it had to be over quickly—this intimacy sat like an awkward child swinging its legs on a bench. He was no longer polite. The force of his thrusting left her dry and bewildered. He took off the condom with an irritated snap. It was nice to have someone to sleep next to. ***

Amy Prodromou In the morning she woke before he did. He came outside to join her later. He seemed to have settled into her house during the night, the walls and shadows growing comfortably around him. He sat on the wooden chair next to her, blowing on his tea. He pointed to two birds huddled together on the stone wall. ―Look at them. They are like an old married couple. Look. He's kissing her.‖ Elizabeth thought that it is always bizarre to see the way affection is manifested in the animal kingdom. Surely, birds can't kiss. They cannot process an emotion so highly evolved as endearment, or the growing into of one another's habits, the resigned acceptance of what cannot be changed. And yet there they were. Their faces touching. The smaller one's shoulder tucked securely beneath the other's wing. They bowed their heads together. Inside Elizabeth, something rippled. She thought, ―There is no loneliness like theirs.‖ Funny how we assume the larger bird is the male, though with birds it is mostly the opposite. *** In the early days, Elizabeth felt that she had been hit over the head with normality, and it felt wonderfully strange. There were no deep, dark layers to Paul. Everything about him could be read at a glance in the open spread of his features, in the absence of lines around his mouth, in the way his ears stuck out eagerly. There was no hidden turmoil, no tortured soul waiting to be unearthed. He walked her to her bus stop. Bought her chocolate milk (remembered to get soy) in the morning. *** They were sitting in a café on Oxford Street . Paul's right side sloped in his chair, aligned with the angle of the uneven sidewalk. ―So you never introduced me to your friends.‖ It was true. Paul was her secret. Her hurried breath at night. He broke himself on her during those nights, but always seemed to steady himself in the morning. Ready to meet a new, firm day. Paul anchored himself to Elizabeth . He planned vacations for them. No deep, dark layers to get in the way. No hollows. Simply wide-open spaces where she was welcome to come and sit for a while. And then they were headed for the Blue Mountains. *** Elizabeth was surprised to find that the Blue Mountains, like all places that relied on tourism, had given up a large portion of themselves and surrendered 30

Amy Prodromou to the dead tackiness of that industry. And yet such an attitude seemed incongruous with what they were. The splendor of nature rose from out of stagnancy and knick-knacks. The place seemed to represent the end chapter of life, when time is truly measured by how fast a mountain grows. The smell of burning wood met Paul and Elizabeth at their hotel room. Velvet flowered wallpaper surrounded ornate mirrors. The stairs seemed to rest on aging air heavy all around them. Their room was flowered as well; the frills on the bedspread and curtains moved to crowd all the available space in the room. Paul and Elizabeth tried to fit in to a space that seemed suddenly too small. They left quickly. It was a short walk to Echo Point. Paul held Elizabeth‘s hand, and they looked like all the other couples. In the picture, she is alone, staring painfully into a low sun, the Three Sisters standing like disapproving aunts in the background. The wind was powerful and insistent; it never let Elizabeth stand comfortably in any one place. She put her arms around Paul and put her forehead against his chest to escape it. Felt the carpet of hair push against his T-shirt. Back at the hotel Elizabeth‘s cheeks were red from wine and fire. The cushions were soft, and they sloped towards one another. They kissed between sips. There was a jacuzzi in the far room. The windows steamed on the outside. Elizabeth changed into her bikini, then darted through the poolroom where some old men had gathered. She was a flash of skin. When Elizabeth stepped into the jacuzzi, the hot water brought sudden goose bumps to her skin. The heat pulled at her abdomen. Paul jumped into the swimming pool first, then came to join her. They faced each other, legs floating, joining in the middle. A silence fell between them and contained itself within the low hum of the jets. Elizabeth spoke, and her voice popped the silence sitting around them like a bubble. ―So do you want to see other people?‖ ―What?‖ (A soft ―t.‖ An Irish ―t‖). In answer, Elizabeth pressed her foot against one of the lower jets, flexing her leg against its force. The silence had given Paul time to hear what she had said. He looked at her as though humouring a child. ―No.‖ Not at all! ―Where did all this come from?‖ ―Haven't you thought about it?‖ ―No.‖ He smiled. ―I'm just floating.‖ ―I know but, I just want—I guess—I just want you to be there—‖ Elizabeth stopped talking as Paul moved forward. It was easy, through water, to pull her closer. ―I'm here.‖ 31

Amy Prodromou ―Okay then.‖ They kissed, and Elizabeth liked the way his body felt in the water. She thought that it is hard not to be happy in water. She took off her bikini top, feeling the light tickle of bubbles against her breasts. Soon he was tugging at the bottoms. ―Take them off.‖ Elizabeth laughed. ―No. What if someone sees?‖ ―Then we'll give them something to look at.‖ Wet skin slid against wet skin. He was slower in the water. It felt better. Elizabeth closed her eyes and leaned back against the tiles. She could hear the soft tapping of the water against her back. *** The next morning, Paul woke up Elizabeth, excited. He wanted to go bushwalking. Elizabeth opened her eyes to the confusion of frills. She looked up at Paul. His excitement was pushing the sleep out of his eyes. The skin around them had taken on a burgundy hue. He was close above her, unembarrassed by the morning, unembarrassed by the skin on his cheeks that had formed itself into two red points overnight. Elizabeth moved her hands to her abdomen. It was sticky from the night before. ―C‘mon, sleepyhead,‖ he said, pushing her. ―Let‘s get out of here.‖ His ―h‘s‖ were soft. She was careful to lock the bathroom door behind her. In the shower, there was not much pressure, but she felt the image of him above her fade as the water fell across her skin. When she came out, Paul was fully dressed, lying on the bed with his feet crossed. He was watching the small TV in the overhead corner. She had dressed in the bathroom. Now she stood self-consciously by the mirror, fixing her hair. It somehow felt as if they hadn‘t earned this intimacy—that the stage within the relationship where you dress easy in front of one another, pull on tight jeans while holding your lover‘s gaze—was not yet theirs. She sat heavily on the bed and Paul adjusted himself to her weight. Stopped himself from rolling towards her. Then he sat up and put a hand on her back. Its heat gently spread into the wing of her shoulder blade. They were lucky in the weather. It was a short walk to Echo Point. Elizabeth thought she might be too dressed up for a bushwalk—with oversized dark sunglasses, a short white jacket with faux fur collar, and brown suede boots. Paul had not changed his jeans from the day before and wore his tan thermo-lined raincoat in case the weather turned. When they got to Echo Point, it seemed like a different place to what it had been the day before. The wind, which had been forceful, had calmed to lightness. The sun was gentle as well. Elizabeth waited as Paul walked the large semi-circle, looking at signs. He had gotten it into his head that he 32

Amy Prodromou wanted to take the bush trek from there to Scenic World. Elizabeth looked at the shuttle bus headed towards them. ―What about that?‖ she said to him as he approached. ―What, the shuttle bus?‖ Then he saw her face, and laughed. ―No, not today. Today we are Bush Walking!‖ Once they had walked down the stairs, Paul paused for a moment on the soft patch of dirt that began the trail. He was busy, impatient, determined they should be organized. He reminded Elizabeth of a host on a travel show. His body primed itself for adventure. His small neat mouthed pursed as he looked her up and down, seeming to notice what she was wearing for the first time. ―Here, let me take your jacket. You‘ll be too hot in a bit.‖ Elizabeth handed him her jacket and he busied himself clipping both of their jackets to the sides of his backpack. He took the water bottles she was holding and put those in the backpack too. ―Do you have anything else?‖ ―No. I think that‘s it.‖ Elizabeth smiled. She was enjoying being fussed over. She could picture Paul on the mountains of Sweden, in the snow. Hiking. Skiing. She looked at him and suddenly wanted to take off around the world with him. She felt she could even sleep in a tent. Rough it. She suddenly saw him as the traveller he was, before Sydney, before his job at the restaurant. This Paul she could not see settling any time soon. He adjusted her own smaller backpack and tightened the straps. She felt the pull on her shoulders and the welcome stretch in her spine. Then he looked at her once more as though to check if he had missed anything. ―Are you going to be alright in those?‖ He pointed to her boots. ―Here, let me see.‖ He bent down quickly and lifted her ankle to see the sole underneath. Elizabeth, caught off balance, screamed and laughed and grabbed onto his belt. They both peered over at the sole. Though flat, it was smooth and shiny, with no grips. ―It‘ll be okay.‖ He put her foot down. ―You can just hold on to me for the steep parts.‖ She was still holding on to his belt. She was suddenly excited as well, as though they were setting off on a long journey. She pulled on his belt to bring him forward, kissed him. The sign said that it was four hours to the ruined castle. *** Paul was on fire. As they walked he spoke about the places he had been to— Thailand, the ski slopes of New Zealand, the forests around his home in the Pyrenees. It was as though the slopes of the mountains, the hard dirt underfoot, had stretched something within him—he sprung forward with a tautness kept even more firm by the tension in Elizabeth‘s slower pace. He moved his hands as he walked, swiping at flies and stray branches, and spoke towards the pathway ahead. Every now and then he turned back to see if Elizabeth was keeping up. He had become bird-like—the restlessness within 33

Amy Prodromou him manifesting in sharp quick movements barely contained by the narrow path. It seemed as if he would find no release. They continued in this way for a while. Then Paul spoke less. After a while, she could hear the relative silence around them gather its own distinctive pace, interrupted only by the occasional erratic scream from a bird. They stopped sometimes for Paul to get a close-up of a cockatoo. He didn‘t try to take any more pictures of the two of them. Elizabeth kept her eyes on the back of his legs. On the sure swinging of his knees. She mostly listened to the companionable tramping of their feet. But she was growing tired. Even Paul seemed to have spent most of the energy he had had during the first part of their walk, and he became patient, holding his hand out for her frequently. The path was getting more difficult to follow. Elizabeth‘s thighs started to ache from climbing over rocks that stood in her way. Paul seemed to be slowing down as well. Then they emerged from the cover of trees into a sunlight bright and welcoming. Rocks were scattered across a clearing. Elizabeth sat down heavily and Paul got comfortable on a rock just behind and above her. He pulled out the sandwiches they had brought. As they ate, people occasionally passed them, on their way to the ruined castle. It stood directly across from them on the other side of the mountain. The forest floor spread out below them and sloped upwards—from this vantage point, the trees seemed to be holding up the small grey stone structure. The path continued to the right of them—it wrapped itself around the side of the mountain and disappeared into darkened bushes. The whole of the mountain to their right was in shadow. Bees swarmed around the remnants of their lunch—the paper from Elizabeth‘s sandwich hung limply to the side under the weight of mayonnaise and smeared tomato seeds. They grew lazy with the sun and the food. Standing up, Elizabeth felt fresh protest from her aching legs. Paul saw it in her glance. They would be going no further. They abandoned the idea of reaching the castle. *** I have been thinking late of Paul. He is like something that should have happened but did not. He is something left unfinished—not terribly important— more like an errand that you have left off completing until tomorrow. And yet the feeling stays with you; nags, pricks at your brain, makes your heart jump that much faster in little anxious, probing beats. It’s hardly enough for you to outright worry about—you were together, now you are not. You wish him well. But there are the nights when you wonder what you could have done differently. What could you have said across a wooden table at an over-priced Greek restaurant that would somehow soften the hard insistence of the wind coming off of the 34

Amy Prodromou mountains, what could you have done to warm you both during the dark walk home? *** Afterwards, Elizabeth would always think back and find that the blame lay with the bees. Or the sunlight. Or the heavy mayonnaise spreading eternal apathy across her soggy bones. When she thought of it at all, she came invariably back to this place. To her decision to turn back. To the consequent dejected slope in Paul‘s shoulders. She had felt it then. Paul‘s irritation. A new thing to her. Keeping pace with the rising heat. His insistent buzzing. *** Of course, it is absurd to think that this was the reason why he left. True, that the Blue Mountains became the beginning of his leaving. After that he took his time, leaving in shades over the next five years. What I didn’t know was that there would come a time when Paul would sit me down at a nondescript café and tell me he was going to reject his boss’s contract for permanent residency. I did not know that my features would remain unchanged except for a rational blinking. That I would think of a ruined castle. And how I had known him for five years. Five years of March-shaped hollows filled in. *** In Sydney, alone, I feel my perception sharpen. It isn’t only that I have begun to see the world differently—the things—the outward shape of things—have changed. It’s the angles, I’ve realised—the change lay all in the angles. Buildings stretch quite differently. The dim light in train stations blurs the corners of advertisement billboard posters—I can feel the ticket machines sloping towards me. Objects have became softer—blurred, so that even brick walls lean into me. *** In this way I walk through Sydney. A watcher. A schoolgirl playfully pushes her boyfriend beyond the yellow line at Central. He punches her back. I don’t know if he meant to hit her that hard. But it means that now his apologies can rush to mix in with the wind hurrying through the tunnel. Now he can wrap his arm playfully around her shoulders. But only I can see the longing that tightens his veins.

James W. Hritz OMAR G. VONDRUKE I am a shame. I am afraid. I am Omar G. Vondruke. I am a black man. I have done something terrible. I have done something terrible. I have a boring life and I have done something terrible. I am a terrible person. The first time I have done something that was not boring and it was the most terrible thing I could ever do. I am writing this so that I will not be forgotten. I have not written anything except my name, telephone number, address, and order specifications in almost five years. I have been afraid that someone will see what I write and exploit me. I am afraid of a lot of things. I never used to be. But I am now and I am a terrible person. I want to learn all the new words that rappers and celebrities use. I am afraid that I will someday lose my voice. I am afraid that I will lose my voice so I speak all the words I know into mason jars so that I can save my words in case I lose them and open them and people will hear what I have to say. My favorite word is SAFFRON. I have SAFFRON in a mason jar. I know it is a spice from India that is very expensive. I have never tasted saffron but I still love it. I have never been to India. I have never left Ohio. I have never left Cleveland. I am afraid to leave my apartment unless I have to go to work or buy cigarettes or groceries. I like tuna fish sandwiches. I eat five tuna fish sandwiches a day. I smoke one pack of cigarettes a day. I am not a smart man. I dropped out of Aviation High School when I was seventeen because I did not want to work on airplanes. My father wanted me to work on airplanes because he said that was where all the money was. He worked for Blue-Line Bus Company Plant Number Two for fifty years. They made him retire and then he died the next day. He was run over by a bus. I miss my father. My father was a good person. I also work at the Blue-Line Bus Company Building Plant Number Two in Cleveland, Ohio. I have BLUELINE BUS COMPANY PLANT NUMBER TWO in a mason jar in my collection of words that I want to use when I lose my voice. I run a machine that bores holes in the manifold so the pistons can run better. I have worked at every station in the factory. I can build a bus all by myself. I have worked at this factory since I was seventeen. I have been a janitor. I have been a copy boy. I drive a fork-lift. I am a machinist now. I am not a smart man but I work hard. I try to work harder but sometimes I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t. I live two miles away. I ride on the busses that I build to get to work every day. I live above Alâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s Deli where I grew up and where my father grew up. I have no water in my apartment so I take showers at work so that I do not smell like a skunk. One mile from where I live is the Cleveland Museum of Art. I have never been there. I am afraid of public places, afraid of germs, afraid of the chemicals used in art, afraid that I might be forced to cut off my ears. 36

James W. Hritz I am a terrible person. I do not care that someone might read this and know that I am a terrible person. Because I am a terrible person. I used to read a lot. But only owner‘s manuals, Do It Yourself Books and machinists‘ magazines. I have lots of mason jars in my collections with mechanical words in them. I have MACHINE and JOB and BORE and METAL and MANIFOLD and DRILL and INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE in my collection. Just in case the world ended tomorrow I would be able to build and repair buses, build a house and construct a bomb shelter. I don‘t read anymore. I am only writing this so that I am not forgotten. I used to leave the TV on but I never watched it. I only left it on so that I could not hear any noise outside my apartment. Then September 11 happened and all I do now is watch TV when I am not at work. On September 11 I said AFRAID into one of my mason jars because I was afraid. All I watch is The Music Channel. I can‘t stop watching it. I am obsessed. I want to know what the celebrities are wearing. I want to know about celebrities. I have the word CELEBRITIES in a mason jar in my collection on a shelf in my apartment because I like celebrities. What do they eat? What do they drink? What do they watch? I want to be skinny. I have a pot-belly. I want to be in good shape. I want a pretty wife. I am afraid of women. I was a virgin until last week. I was a thirty-eight year old virgin. After I had sex I broke my mason jar that said VIRGIN because I am no longer a virgin. I only watch The Music Channel because it is the only station that comes in on my TV, it is very old and in black-and-white. The Music Channel does not have Music on it. The Music Channel only talks about celebrities and what they like to do. I know I am very sick right now but I will not go to the doctor because I am afraid that he will tell me that I am dying. I am afraid of dying but I do not want to go to the doctors because I do not want to know that I will die even if I am going to die tomorrow. I know I am going to die. I do not want to die but I know that I have to die. I will die because I am a terrible person. I have only one friend in the world that I know of. Her name is Ida Thora. She is a nice person. She is black like me. She comes over every day to talk to me because she is my friend and friends talk to each other every day. She has a nice smile and likes to laugh. I have no idea about what is funny. I think everything that someone says is serious. Ida Thora says that there is something called sarcasm and people say something that sounds serious but is supposed to be funny. I do not understand sarcasm. I asked some of the guys at work and they said that

James W. Hritz Ida is right and that I have been missing their jokes for the last twenty-one years. I do not understand why this is funny. I saved Ida Thoraâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s life two years ago in front of my apartment. She was almost run over by a Blue-Line bus but I pushed her out of the way. She said she could not thank me enough for saving her. She said she would do anything to help me. I said that I did not know what she could do. I told her I would think about it. She came up to my apartment while I tried to think of something she could do. When she saw my collection of words in mason jars she said she would buy me brand new ones since I had to find them in the garbage before she started buying me new jars. I was not afraid of Ida. She was very nice to me. I am a terrible person. Ida was trying to explain sarcasm to me again the other day. I had her speak SARCASM into a jar so that I would not forget it. She said that people are not serious all the time. I asked her to tell me about sarcasm. She said that someone might say something that they do not mean because they are trying to be cute. I asked her to give me an example. She said that she did not want to have sex with me. I said that I understood and that it was okay because I am afraid of sex. She told me that she said that because she giving me an example of sarcasm. That people saying the opposite of what they really mean. I understood. She wanted to have sex with me and she said YES! We had sex on the floor. It was great. I am not a virgin anymore. I am not afraid of sex anymore. I am not afraid of Ida. She was a very nice person. I had her speak SEX into a new mason jar that she gave so that I could add that word into my collection. I am happy that I finally had SEX in my collection. I forgot about that word but I finally had it! Ida and I talk about lots of things. I talk about celebrities and what scares me and where I work and my collection of words and September 11. Ida talks about these things. Ida also talks about how beautiful she is. I also talk about how beautiful she is. I had her speak BEAUTIFUL into a mason jar so that I could add it to my collection. She talks about being a receptionist for Doctor Johnson five miles from my apartment. She talks about disease and medicines. She told me about anthrax. There was a scare at her office and she told me she might have anthrax. She laughed about this. I asked her why she is happy about having anthrax. She said that I should know by now. I said I did not understand. She said that since we have had sex that I have anthrax. She was laughing. I said that I understood. I said ANTHRAX into a mason jar because I have anthrax. I killed Ida Thora. She had anthrax. She gave me anthrax. I did not want her to give anyone else anthrax so I killed her. I strangled her. I strangled her until her eyes turned red. She started to yell when I put my hands around her throat. She started to kick me. I pushed her against my shelves of mason jars with every important word I know and they fell off the shelves and hit the ground and shattered. When I was finished strangling Ida I held a mason jar that I had not used and was not broken to her mouth so that 38

James W. Hritz I could finally add the word BREATHLESS to my collection. It is the first word in my new collection since all the other jars are broken and I had to start all over again. She was mean to me. I am a terrible person. I did not know what to do with Idaâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s breathless body until today. She has been in my bathtub that does not work covered in ice for the last two days. I am going to dress her up like beautiful celebrity and throw her in Lake Erie. I am going to kill myself in Lake Erie. I am going to dress like a rapper. I am going to Lake Erie now. It is dark outside. No one will see me. Ida is in the trunk of her car waiting for me. The drive is three miles. I am going to kill myself so no one else gets anthrax. I look like a rapper. I am a terrible person. I said I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON into one of my mason jars and set it on my shelf. -Omar G. Vondruke

Jamie Lin POKING HOLES I read erotica and felt deprived. I missed watching porn, the way they'd moan with hysterical, brutal need. I tossed his credit card in the air, juggling it with the ball the cat often chewed on. It was his cat. I was probably allergic to it. I used to say, I try hard for you. He used to say, I'm so in love with you, so lost in your eyes, you have beautiful eyes, incredible, is this the Capricorn beauty they're fussing about? His waitress introduced him to Astrology one Tuesday afternoon as he dined on a triple-decker, toasted whole wheat, chicken salad sandwich with two glasses of apricot brandy. He was a dentist. His life insurance was higher than mine. Must be something about endless rows of decaying teeth that made the career fatally depressing. To be fair, I couldn't look at my own teeth without feeling sick. It was Friday night and he was still at the office in Manhattan. Here in suburbia, the sky watered lightly with a zillion single dribbles. The window to the living room was flung wide open, waiting for him to crawl through, though he always entered by the front door. Guilty or not. I was aroused by the winds blowing through the nonexistent barrier. The winds carried a taste of salty bitter sweetness. The room smelled of a mystical creaminess. I scrolled through the site. Bondage. Fantasy. Interracial. The most popular sections were labeled Incest/Taboo. The day I found out he was having an affair from his secretary, I spent most of the day in Chinatown, walking around and looking at people. I realized with a deep ache that that was the real reason why he said no to children after six years of decent marriage. He said it was because he hated little sticky hands, little whiny noises and little dirty clothes. What a liar. He didn't mind any of those listed above from a twenty-year-old woman now, did he? In my rage, I had stormed by an alley near where most of the seafood stores were. The sidewalks smelled like melting frozen fishes. There was a roof over the alley. It was impossibly narrow and pitch black. An old man sat within on a stool with ten or so pairs of shoes lying around him. There was no light in his eyes. His head was crooked on its neck, its spotted fingers shaking as he tried to tie a thread around the needle. The sunlight made it gleam and my eyes felt like they were on fire. I calmed down. Just half a street past, I found myself staring into a bucket of frogs. A woman was picking one up with forceps, squeezing its head and then its legs. It didn't struggle in her grip. She showed it to her husband, smiling. "You think this will taste good? Better than this one?" She poked at the head of another. It didn't bite. I bit my lip. After she was gone, I leaned in and saw twenty or thirty frogs. Their eyes all peeked up at me. Some tried to hop or swim or something. Their eyes shone with innocence. I leaned closer, looking around, wondering if I could set them free somehow. 40

Jamie Lin They'd only be run over by cars if I just tip over the bucket. Or they would sit there and not move because they were born and raised together in a bucket. I looked around for a possible accomplice but no one showed interest in anything other than their cell phones and bread. I had thought that life wasn't bad, that it could be so much worst. I tried not to hate but that was impossible. I hated dial up for making it impossible to watch porn. I hated my husband for making it impossible to not watch porn. Most of all, I hated his mistress. She was an Aquarius and his perfect second half, according to a webpage with pictures of cute pixies in sultry dresses and enough purple to make me envision vomiting so hard that my stomach would hurl out of my throat to lie on the coffee table making a very wet smack. Very wet smacks. I yearned to chew on someone's skin, as it was a lifesized Gummy bear. First, the legs and then the head. The essentials, the target vulnerabilities. I imagined my husband like that in the center of my kitchen table, facing up, bloodless and helpless. I wanted to look at him up there and purr under my breath like a fat cat licking milk after days of fishy water. Just thinking about sex made my mouth dry up and my stomach clench. A car rolled up outside. I closed the site and deleted the browsing history. The front door opened. He stood there smelling like a cunt, closing his black umbrella. "Evening, honey." "Hello." "How was your day?" "Fabulous. You?" "I brought most of the work home with me." "Great." "I also got you some flowers." "Great." The petals that fell onto my lap were wet. I let the droplets caress my heated skin. "And dinner too." "Great." "I got your favorite grilled chicken from Velvet's. Barbecue sauce on the side." "Honey, I became a vegetarian a month ago. I told you." The color escaped his cheeks leaving them puffy like the white cheddar cheese doodles I was inhaling earlier, a cheat on my diet. I smirked lightly at the sinful stench of animal from the wet, brown bag once proudly situated between his hands. Later, I watched him fall asleep near the edge of our bed, his back uncomfortable with my acceptance of his mistake to which I had said with a wave of my hand, "You have been working such long hours.." I had drank in his guilty grin of utter relief. Now, I pulled open the bottom shelf of his side of the night table and pulled out a brand new box of condoms. The thought of them finishing the other box filled me with disgust. He wasn't even attractive anymore, losing a good fist of hair every morning. I 41

Jamie Lin opened my drawer, looking for a needle. While his was full of sexual things like ass plugs and feathered cuffs, mine was full of useful things like flashlights, mint cookies and needles. Afterwards, I picked up his credit card from the coffee table, the cat from her basket and left. Outside, it had stopped raining and the scent of the drying air took my breath away. Next on my to-do list, get rid of the cat. Hate fucking cats. And yeah, get DSL.

Darren J. Akerman SMALL CHANGE The reign of terror ended in late August, a week before the start of Junior High School. Billy Marshall and Jake Towle had been scolded a dozen times by neighbors they‘d known all their lives, chased out of backyards by broomwielding mothers, and hid out at the train trestle on Lake Makinachook after Officer Endicott called them over to his blue police cruiser, asking if they knew anything about Mr. Flaherty‘s woodpile floating in the mill stream. ―It‘s a shame when a retired fella like that won‘t have more‘n half a cord left to keep himself warm come fall,‖ he said. ―The chief‘s gone over there himself, and brought along every piece of equipment in the department to examine the evidence those perpetrators left behind. Oh, he‘ll find them, too. Let me tell you, Roland Flaherty used to walk the beat in this town twenty years before you boys were born. If you can help us out, I‘m sure it‘d go a long way towards settin‘ things right. So do you know anything about it?‖ Billy shook his head, and Jake scratched his neck in the warm breeze of the cruiser‘s dashboard fan against their faces, agape at the radio, the nightstick, and the holstered gun. Officer Endicott rested his elbow on the window edge, waiting. ―No, Sir,‖ Billy said. ―I‘ll bet they weren‘t even from Wentworth. Nobody around here would do something like that to Mr. Flaherty.‖ ―What kind of evidence?‖ Jake asked. ―Well, that‘s confidential information, Jake,‖ Officer Endicott said. He jotted a few notes in his black leather log book. ―Let‘s just say more‘n enough already.‖ At least, that‘s the word at the station.‖ The cruiser‘s radio crackled with a voice. Officer Endicott lifted the silvermeshed microphone from its mount, his gaunt, weathered face alert but composed. Half-moons of perspiration seeped through the underarms of his dark blue uniform, and he tossed his police cap off his glistening gray crewcut. Wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, he swept it around the back of his neck. ―Got‘cha, Charlie,‖ he said. ―The Burse Road past Folsom‘s farm. I‘m heading out that way now. No need for sirens and the cherrytop for a stray pooch, though, huh? It‘s probably heat struck. Tell the chief I‘ll catch up to him at Roland Flaherty‘s before long. Right. Ten-four.‖ Officer Endicott slipped on a pair of olive-green aviator sunglasses, then slapped a hand on Jake‘s shoulder from the driver‘s seat window. ―I‘ll be back this way later just to see if you might remember something you hadn‘t thought of,‖ he said. The cruiser lurched forward along Hanson Street, gliding past the sedate houses and trim sun-bleached gardens, the tin mailboxes and shade-drawn parlor windows. ―Jeezum Crow, Jake,‖ Billy said. ―What‘d you have to say anything about 43

Darren J. Akerman evidence? That was really stupid. We shouldn‘t of done it, but I think he‘s on to us now. Maybe we‘d better get out of here before he comes back.‖ Jake yanked the frayed brim of his black baseball cap down over his forehead, tightened his lips, and spat. ―Yeah,‖ he said. ―We‘d better lam out of here.‖ On the long walk around the perimeter of Makinachook Lake on Memorial Drive past the summer camps and pine groves, Billy didn‘t talk much. He thought about everything they‘d done over the past few weeks. It was no secret that they had been raising hell since early August. In the dog day afternoons of ninety-eight degree temperatures when electric fans whirred musty air through shade-drawn houses, and sprinklers flicked feeble arcs of water on the tawny sun-parched lawns of Hanson Street, most adults had suffered enough without heated words to the boys‘ parents. Anyone in Wentworth knew that most twelve-year-old boys should have been swimming at the public beach at Makinachook Lake rather than hiding out at the train trestle on its far side, where teenagers guzzled beer after dark, had make-out sessions with girls, and dared each other to dive. Unfortunately, Billy and Jake had been banished from the beach by John Hartley, the life guard, Wentworth High School‘s star quarterback, after they lobbed ice cream cones onto the bare abdomen of Missy Gallagher, who sunbathed in a lawn chair with queenly recumbence. It didn‘t help when they rode Jeanette Pendleton‘s bicycle off the dock, or tied the line of Tommy Gillen‘s fishing pole to Mr. Leighton‘s boat until the reel snapped off. In his orange swimsuit and sun lotion-greased nose, John Hartley leapt from his lookout chair, sprinting after Billy and Jake to the enthusiastic applause of picnicking families, toddlers building sandcastles on the shore, and a contingent of wheelchair-bound residents from Ryerson‘s Nursing Home. ―Both of you, beat it!‖ John Hartley yelled, chasing them as far as the Legion Hall. ―Don‘t let me catch either of you back here unless you really want trouble!‖ At the train trestle, Billy and Jake swam beneath the moss-reeking stanchions, floating in the cool tea-colored lake, and stared at the fluorescent graffiti on the iron bridge panels above. ―What‘dya say we take a dive from up there?‖ Jake said. ―We could do it.‖ ―Kenny Drew split his head open last year trying that,‖ Billy said. ―He got twenty-six stitches.‖ Jake paddled to the shore and hoisted himself up on a lichen-crusted rock. ―He didn‘t jump out far enough,‖ Jake said. ―All you gotta do is jump headfirst. Unless you‘re yellow, that is.‖ ―Forget it, Jake,‖ Billy said. He backstroked further away from the shore, treading at the center of the inlet between the trestles, the water deep and cold against his wavering legs.

Darren J. Akerman Jake clambered up the rocky slope and hopped along the hot, creosote-stinking ties until he reached the middle of the bridge. ―Don‘t be a damn fool! ‖ Billy called up at him. Get off it, Jake!‖ ―You said it, pal!‖ Jake called back. Billy watched his friend dive from the edge, plummet through the air, and splash into the water not three feet away from where he floated. An uproarious explosion echoed between the stone and mortared stanchions. A blue heron rustled out of the cattails, taking flight with ungainly flaps of its long bluish-white wings. Lily pads wavered in the ripples. Jake emerged to the surface with a triumphant grin, gulped a mouthful of water, and spit it in a stream at Billy. ―At least I got the guts,‖ Jake said. ―Yeah, all guts, no brains,‖ Billy said. For Billy, the return to Hanson Street, then, was less siege than retreat. He cursed himself in dour silence for not having the courage to dive like Jake, and determined to make up for it. The next day, Billy staged a number of covert misdeeds closer to home with Jake. They tried to empty Mrs. Trombley‘s bird feeder with a B-B gun fired from the roof of Billy‘s garage, until the heat on the tin roof burned their bare elbows and scorched their knees. They pitched ripe tomatoes from Mr. Bernier‘s garden from behind a forsythia bush at a laundry van that only thudded against the rear cargo door and rolled off beside the curb. Finally, they dropped a string of lit firecrackers through the sewer grate in the torrid calm of noon, but didn‘t elicit a single shout of surprise or raised shade on the block. In the tree fort above Billy‘s backyard, shaded by the pine boughs, Jake recounted their misdemeanors as if they had been criminal exploits from one of the gangster movies he loved so much at the Starlight Theater during Saturday matinees. With a tart pine needle between his lips, Billy listened to Jake imitating the terse citified dialect of a mob kingpin. ―Yeah, we showed ‗em, all right,‖ Jake said. ―This berg know who‘s boss around here now, don‘t they? You just gotta have the guts to pull off jobs like that, and now it‘s our turf. Get it?‖ Angry with himself for re-igniting the series of misdeeds that had failed so miserably, he bristled at Jake‘s boasts. ―Get what, Jake?‖ Billy said. ―They were just stupid pranks. Nobody‘s going to give a damn about stuff like that. Jeezum Crow, it‘s bad enough we got run off the beach, and I‘ll bet‘cha Officer Endicott‘s got it all figured out about what we did to old man Flaherty‘s woodpile. He‘ll be coming back to talk to us anytime.‖ ―That copper ain‘t gonna slap the cuffs on me,‖ Jake said. ―He was just tryin‘ to give us the third degree. But we ain‘t gonna crack.‖ Billy flicked the pine needle from his lips with a bitter laugh.

Darren J. Akerman ―Oh, we‘re cracked all right,‖ he said. ―Cracking up maybe. Listen to yourself. Copper. Slap the cuffs. The third degree. Ha! What do you think we are, a couple of racketeers?‖ Jake retrieved a wilted cheroot cigar from his shirt pocket, bit off the end, and spat. ―Gimme a light, will ya?‖ he said. ―Where the hell did you get that?‖ Billy asked. ―I got my ways,‖ Jake said. ―You got that light?‖ Billy fished out a damp packet of matches from his pocket, and tried to light one after another. Jake snatched the pack away from him, struck the match, and cupped his hand around the flame until a sweet cloud of bluish smoke billowed in the shade of the pines. ―That‘s your problem, Billy,‖ Jake said reflectively, with a hint of disdain. ―You ain‘t got no fire. You gotta get hot if you don‘t wanna get burned. Get it?‖ Jake took a long puff on the cigar, exhaling a luxurious cloud of smoke, and handed it to Billy. Billy inhaled. His lungs rumbled until he coughed and sputtered, the acrid taste of the smoke stinging his nose and throat. ―Jeezum Crow,‖ he gasped. ―That stinks.‖ ―Well,‖ Jake said, taking the cigar back and inhaling deeply, ―if you can‘t take the heat, I guess it‘s a good thing you can‘t even light a match.‖ A plume of smoke blossomed in Billy‘s face, and he coughed again. ―Knock it off, Jake,‖ Billy said. ―You think you‘re some kind of tough guy, huh? What the hell are you so scared of that you‘ve got to keep this up? You‘re acting like some kind of two-bit punk, that‘s all. Maybe that‘s the kind of language you get. Everything we‘ve done is small change. Get it? Small change. Hey, there‘s some real words you can use for all your phony gangster crap.‖ ―Shut your trap, Billy,‖ Jake said. He flicked the lit cigar at the tree trunk in a spray of sparks inches past Billy‘s face; it dropped to the tan circle of pine needles on the ground. ―You get out of my tree fort and put that goddamned cigar out, Jake,‖ Billy said. ―You trying to burn the place down to the ground? The police aren‘t enough for you? Now you‘ve got to take on the fire department? You put that thing out now. Get it?‖ ―Make me,‖ Jake said. Billy climbed down the nailed two-by-four rungs, swung off the lowermost branch, and stomped on the cigar. Jake started down after him, leaping off from the fourth rung up. Billy ground the cigar under his heel and crossed his arms. ―Maybe you ought to get this through your thick head, Jake,‖ he said. ―No matter how much of a goddamned gangster you think you are, you‘re just a stupid kid. And I guess I was just as stupid for going along with it. All your small change.‖

Darren J. Akerman Billy started across the front lawn for his house on the corner, a pastel green split-level ranch with a screen porch. He didn‘t look back. Jake traipsed after him on his heels. ―Hey, Billy,‖ Jake said behind him. Billy swung around to face him. The fist caught Billy on the chin by surprise. He‘d never been hit like that before—a sudden, fierce blow. His jaw snapped shut, his teeth clicked together, and he stumbled two steps backwards. Then he felt the sting of the punch. He tasted the warm, coppery blood of his gashed tongue. Lunging at Jake with both hands, he rammed his shoulder against him, knocking him to the ground, and pounced on him. The boys swung their arms and rolled, kicking and cursing, across the lawn in the fiery summer sun. ―You son of a bitch!‖ Billy shouted. ―Sucker punchin‘ me!‖ Billy saw a glint of fear in Jake‘s eyes and pummeled him in the ribs. Jake glanced Billy‘s chin with a weak uppercut that sent him into a frenzy. The stout figure of Mrs. Couture appeared on her front porch next door. ―Stop it! Both of you!‖ she shrieked. ―I‘ll call the police if you don‘t!‖ But the fight didn‘t stop. Billy pinned Jake‘s shoulders against the bristled grass with his knees and punched him across the cheek with a savage blow. Jake began to whimper. Billy got up, rubbing his chin. Mrs. Couture flounced toward them in her white apron, her face florid with anguish. ―That‘s enough, both of you!‖ she cried. ―Who the hell do you think you are, Jake Towle?‖ Billy shouted over her. ―You and your goddamned stupid ideas! Tough guy, huh? Maybe you just want to act tough because you haven‘t got the brains to know any better!‖ Billy‘s voice sounded strange to him, as if he were someone else talking. Jake straggled to his feet, wiped the tears from his face, and started to brush himself off. Mrs. Couture arrived beside them, harried and panting. ―Haven‘t you two hoodlums done enough around here already?‖ she said. Billy and Jake stared at each other with smoldering contempt, ignoring her frantic presence. Jake spat and stalked down Hanson Street to his house, pulling his the brim of his black cap low. Heat waves blurred the distant asphalt. Billy headed up the porch steps to his house. Mrs. Couture stood in the blazing sun, dabbing the doughy folds of her neck with the edge of her apron. ―You both ought to be ashamed of yourselves for the way you‘re behaving,‖ she called after them. ―I ought to call both your parents.‖ Billy caught a glimpse of Jake limping down Hanson Street, his shadow dragging after him. Storming inside, Billy slammed the screen door behind him. His mother would be home from grocery shopping in a few hours, his father from the office by five-thirty. The house was empty; for that, he was thankful. Billy held his tears until he got into the bathroom. He locked the door, examining his bruised features in the mirror: a split lip, a puffy eyelid,

Darren J. Akerman and the ruddy pulp of his tooth-gashed tongue. His eyes stung, his chin quivered. He splashed cold water on his face from the faucet again and again. After a few minutes, Billy went into the living room. He peeled off his tshirt and sat down in front of the electric fan. Warm air brushed over his bare chest. He tried to soothe himself with deep, sobbing breaths. But his hands still shook, and his mind whirled with thoughts of vengeance and surrender: one minute he wished he had continued to punch Jake when he had him pinned, the next minute he considered marching down Hanson Street with two cold bottles of Moxie from the frigidaire. Billy knew they had both gone too far. Now they were paying the price for it with their friendship. He and Jake had been friends since Kindergarten. Soon they would be Sixth graders—almost teenagers—and they had been talking about their induction into the ranks of the Junior High School for weeks. Billy hated to think of going it alone. The telephone rang. He got up from the couch and picked up the black receiver in the kitchen. ―Hello?‖ Billy said. ―Who‘s this?‖ a man‘s voice asked. ―Billy,‖ he said. The voice had the deeply animated tone of one of his father‘s business associates, another of the clients who were always calling about his father‘s tax business to inquire about their financial status with the federal and state government. Sometimes they even showed up at the house with reams of documents, disheveled in their tie-strangled white shirts, hopeful, taciturn, or too talkative. Billy‘s father had a knack for allaying their concerns over a cup of coffee with a few optimistic words. Billy expected a shout of familiarity, a quickly rattled off message of minor import punctuated by the phrase, ―Atta boy.‖ Billy took a pencil out of the drawer and a used envelope, ready to write down anything that needed to be related to his father. Instead, there was silence. ―Hello?‖ Billy asked. ―Where are your parents?‖ the man asked. ―My father‘s at his office in Augusta, and my mother‘s gone grocery shopping,‖ Billy explained. ―They should be back—‖ ―And you‘re alone?‖ he asked. ―Well . . . yes,‖ Billy said. ―So what are you doing all by yourself?‖ he inquired with sudden interest. ―Nothing,‖ Billy said. ―Oh, come on, Billy,‖ the man laughed. ―You must be doing something. I‘ve never heard of a boy who wasn‘t up to something. That‘s the way it is with boys. Always up to something.‖ ―Not much,‖ Billy said. An involuntary smile formed on his lips, and he stifled the odd impulse to laugh. Billy wanted to bring the conversation around 48

Darren J. Akerman to the point of the call, to interrupt the man‘s chatter amiably, but he felt he‘d spoken too long to ask the man‘s name or purpose without seeming rude. Probably the caller was some ‗card‘ his father knew from the office. ―Not much? Now just what kind of boy are you? Not much? You can tell me all about it, Billy,‖ the man said, amused by Billy‘s reticence. ―Scout‘s honor, I won‘t tell a soul. Say, how old are you, anyway, kiddo?‖ ―Almost twelve,‖ said Billy. ―Twelve-years-old!‖ the man exclaimed. ―Why I thought you were at least sixteen. Oh, I remember the things I did when I was your age.‖ ―Like what?‖ Billy asked, giddily. ―I‘m sure I don‘t have to tell you,‖ the man said. ―You wouldn‘t believe the things I‘ve done in my day. Now, you wouldn‘t do anything wrong now, would you, Billy?‖ ―Nope,‖ Billy said. ―Jake neither.‖ ―So you have a friend then,‖ he said. ―I know how boys can be. I was twelve myself once, you know. Why, I still can‘t believe half the things I did with my friends. Don‘t you think grownups can be too hard on young fellows sometimes?‖ ―We didn‘t do anything too bad,‖ Billy said, soothed by the impromptu confidant he‘d suddenly encountered, a stranger who remembered what it was like to be a boy. ―I mean, we shouldn‘t have done most of what we did, but it wasn‘t like we meant to—‖ ―Meant to what?‖ he said. ―What did you do, Billy? I‘m only asking because I can tell you‘ve got something to get off your chest. Look, we‘ll keep this between us, man to man. I think it‘s important for boys to have that chance. I think it‘s important to get it out in the open. I‘ll bet it‘ll make you feel better.‖ ―I suppose we did everything Jake wanted us to do,‖ he said, ―but I know that‘s no excuse. Just fooling around stuff. That‘s all.‖ ―Let me tell you something, Billy, the man said. ―You‘re not the first boy to ever fool around, and you won‘t be last. That‘s the nature of life. What did you do with Jake that was so bad?‖ ―It wasn‘t so bad,‖ Billy said. ―I‘m sure it wasn‘t,‖ the man said. His voice softened, and though Billy did not know who he was, he realized that the man understood intuitively that everything he and Jake had done wasn‘t as serious as it seemed. Other than the fight between them, nobody had gotten hurt. ―Maybe you and Jake are acting like big boys now. Or let‘s say, young men, shall we? That‘s all. I‘m sure it was all just small change in the long run.‖ ―That‘s right,‖ said Billy. ―That‘s what I called it, too. Small change.‖ ―And it probably doesn‘t add up to much when all‘s said and done,‖ he said. ―I‘m sure you didn‘t rob a bank or anything.‖ Billy glanced nervously around the kitchen. He held the black receiver against his bare chest, listening for the rumble of his mother‘s car in the 49

Darren J. Akerman driveway, or the jangle of keys at the front door. There was only the insinuating buzz of the frigidaire, and the fan whirring in the living room. ―Well,‖ Billy began, ―Jake shouldn‘t have done what he did at the railroad trestle because that got me going about doing other stuff. We had a fight about it. That‘s all.‖ ―That‘s too bad,‖ said the man in a hoarse whisper. ―The railroad trestle . . . hmm. I‘ll bet nobody else was around, either. Just the two of you, right?‖ ―Right,‖ Billy said. ―I didn‘t dare him or anything. He just did it.‖ ―And I‘ll bet he wanted you to do it, too,‖ the man said. ―But you were afraid.‖ ―Yeah,‖ said Billy. ―I wanted to, but I just didn‘t have the guts.‖ ―Billy, you don‘t have to be afraid of anything Jake did to you,‖ the man said. ―And punishing him for doing those things won‘t make it better. He‘s your friend, and he was just trying to share something special with you. Something only boys understand.‖ ―I suppose so,‖ said Billy. ―I‘m not trying to punish Jake, though. It‘s just that he hit me first.‖ ―Because of the bad things you did with him at the railroad trestle,‖ said the man. His voice dipped to a whisper. ―And all the other things you did with him.‖ ―No,‖ Billy said, ―because I called him—‖ ―Calling names won‘t help,‖ the man interrupted. ―You‘re both doing what boys like to do, and there‘s no crime in that. But punishing each other for those bad things won‘t make them go away, Billy. You‘ll keep on doing those bad things with Jake because you like them, don‘t you? You may as well admit it. They make you feel good, don‘t they?‖ ―No, Billy said. ―I don‘t like what we did and—‖ ―Maybe you should both be punished,‖ the man said. His voice rasped frantically. ―And I know just how bad boys should be punished, too, Billy. I know just what to do. I‘d make you do those bad things with each other and whip you both like you‘ve never been whipped before. I‘d whip you both ‗til you‘d do anything to make me stop. I‘d whip your bare asses with your pants down and—‖ Billy hung up the receiver. He inhaled deeply. A mild nausea assailed him, and the parlor walls seemed to spin. Leaning his naked back against the smooth white surface of the frigidaire, Billy closed his eyes. ―Jeezum,‖ Billy said aloud in the empty kitchen. ―Jeezum Crow.‖ The weather turned cooler before early September and the start of Junior High School. The powdery-sweet scent of goldenrod and lilacs swept over the backyards. White clouds tumbled across the blue sky. In late afternoons, the air sparkled as clear as cider. Along Hanson Street neighbors assessed each others‘ deliveries of cord wood, exchanged mason jars of strawberry preserves, and left baskets of late summer squash and rhubarb on doorsteps. With the

Darren J. Akerman end of barbeques and garden-tending, the citizens of Wentworth prepared for fall with the brisk efficiency of northern New Englanders. Billy took his place as a Sixth grade student at Junior High School. In his stiff leather shoes and tartan sweaters, he applied himself to his studies and maintained excellent grades. He tried out for the football team, distinguishing himself as a running back and apt wide receiver. Although they were in different classes, Billy still waved to Jake. Once he even walked him to the door of the remedial classroom at the far end of the hall. ―Hey, Billy,‖ Jake said. ―There‘s a new movie at the Starlight coming on Saturday night. I hear it‘s a really good one about a gang and G-men with big shoot outs and everything. Maybe we can go. What‘dya say?‖ Billy looked at his watch and then down the length of the hall. ―I can‘t, Jake‖ he said. ―I‘ve got practice with the football team. The bell‘s going to ring so I‘ve got to run.‖ Billy trotted down the hall. ―Yeah, that bell‘s always ringin‘, ain‘t it?‖ Jake said. ―Maybe some other time then, huh?‖ ―I‘ll give you a call sometime, Jake,‖ he said.

#7 Creative Nonfiction

Hokum by Peter Schwartz

John Pahle MICHIGAN BAKERY The outside has changed as much as the inside has in nearly a hundred years. They both have changed as much as the ovens, as much as the rolls and loaves and cakes, as much as the wire racks and glass bell jars: that is to say, not much is different. The wet, yeasty heat I feel as I open the door, brass bells jingling and clanking happily against the screen: that, too, hasn‘t changed, because, well, what can change? The baking process is much what is was in Sumerian hearths, in Egyptian bakeries, in the clay ovens of Çatal Hüyük eight thousand years ago. So, the bread remains the same, and this shop takes on the charm, the character, of the small town it serves. Over the door, brushed by a tepid, lifeless summer breeze, a bright American flag tries to salute passers-by. The mailbox is painted to look like a loaf. On the ledge inside the plate glass window (on which is painted in gold the same hue as a summer wheat field ―Michigan Bakery‖), seemingly in formation, are nearly forty framed photographs of young women, young men, in uniform, eyes honest, chins jutting, scowls forced. These soldiers and marines and sailors are all dead, all from Michigan. Two frames were lined with black ribbons. I recognized the faces from the front page of the town‘s newspaper. ―What‘ll it be, honey?‖ the owner asked me, her hair limp with sweat on this mid-July day. Only a powdering of flour across her blue apron could make her appear more harried. Her daughter, brown paper bag in hand, looked on expectantly. I glanced at the rack behind her, full and hopeful as a library shelf. ―Six buttermilk rolls.‖ I said, thinking about dinner. ―That‘s it?‖ I paused. The raisin bread was tempting. ―How much for the raisin loaf?‖ ―Two thirty-five‖; her voice inflected slightly, making it a question. Do you want it? ―Yeah, I‘ll take that, too.‖ As quickly as I answered, the little girl stepped on a stool, retrieved the rum-colored loaf, and jabbed it into a paper bag. Deftly, and with a competent smile, she slipped in a plastic bag and a twist tie. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, which watched me closely and eagerly should I add to my order. A box fan hummed to itself in the corner. The baker totaled the bill on a slip of paper and entered it into an ancient cash register, the numbers jumping up into a little window on top. I gave her a five-dollar bill, which she traded me for a handful of change. She smiled and turned to the back room of the bakery, from which I could feel the heat of the ovens. Shouldn‘t they bake in the morning, before it got hot? Perhaps they did,

John Pahle but the heat, with nowhere else to go—reflected down from the stamped-tin plates on the ceiling—stayed there, waiting until midnight to dissipate. I turned to look at the bulletin board, thick with posters, announcements, and business cards, and I looked at my watch. A snack was in order, so I opened the bag and broke off a piece of a roll. It was a still warm; what else is necessary in life? Man—at least this man—can live on bread alone. I paused; my wife wouldn‘t be expecting me back with the bread anytime soon. I read the announcements: pancake breakfast, sublet available, lawn mowers tuned up and blades sharpened, musicians available for parties and weddings. Lost pet. Next to this were photographs. This small town, fifty, seventy-five, a hundred years ago, in black and white, in sepia. Horses and phaetons, spindly black Model Ts and Model As. Lush trees and mud streets. Top hats and spats. Long-dead mayors. Skinny children and white-bearded elders watched the camera warily. There were photographs of parades with elephants; a biplane on the village green flanked by white-dressed woman in flouncy hats. A formation of doughboys, rifles at their sides, high brown leather boots and steel helmets, glaring sternly at the camera, ready to face the Hun. A moment later, I‘m outside, warm bag under my arm, half-chewed roll in my mouth. Here, outside the bakery, is where the change is obvious and the contrast can be seen. The buildings, the apartments, and roads—yes, they look much the same as they did when McKinley was president, but the differences jut out as insistently as the tiny green weeds pushing through the seams of the concrete sidewalk. Main Street is bisected by another avenue, forming an X, a four-corner town like many others in the Midwest, still following centuries later an invisible Indian trace. Ocher bricks, on top of the cobblestones that once covered that packed-dirt path, peek here and there from thinning asphalt. I walked along, watching the old and the new shifting, combining, the way an optical illusion flits back and forth. Now you see it, now it’s gone. What was ninety years ago a dry-goods store, according to a reproduced daguerreotype on the bakery wall, is currently an outlet for a national pizza chain. Opposite, in what used to be a Woolworth‘s, there stands a dollar store, a sullen teenaged clerk leaning against the front doorway, taking a break from the tacky Chinese rubbish inside. Crossing the street, I smile, she looks away, and I bite into another roll. Chiseled into marble and set into the cornice of a brick building taking up half a block is I.O.O.F. That‘s been painted over; you have to know what you‘re looking for to see it. Before it was the Odd Fellow lodge, this used to be a theater. Operas and vaudeville played here long ago. Now it‘s owned by a chiropractor who is advertising additional upstairs office space for rent. I continue down the sidewalk where empty, round iron grilles are set into the pavement every twenty feet. Close to the curb, trees used to grow here. Making up for their loss, the city has planted geraniums in terracotta pots the size and shape of garbage cans, pots the same color as the façade of what 54

John Pahle twenty years ago was the Donauer Haus German Restaurant. But it wasn‘t always that. Our town was once a railhead, and while trains still grumble through daily (diesel, of course, not steam), the passengers are gone. What was once a German restaurant had been long before a twenty-room grand hotel— built just for the overnight travelers waiting to continue to Detroit or Chicago and points west—and appointed with the same elegance and detail they would have found in New York, here in the cornfields. The Donauer is now an empty hulk, looking for a renovation and a new owner. I sit on its cracked brick steps and eat. Across from me, there is the Michigan Bakery again, and I realize I have to go back: My paper bag is half empty. I wait for the traffic to pass, and I glance at the forty portraits of the dead soldiers, still standing at attention, waiting in vain to be dismissed. The flag next to the bakery‘s door still hangs loosely in the heat, and I am back where nothing changes. As regular and poignant and pungent as rolls and loaves, as soldiers, as entire city blocks and as memories sworn to be solid, there they are—the doughboys, the photographs, the flags, the bread and the icing—all the same as a dozen decades ago. Plato was right; only the dead have seen the end of war. A month ago, in the coffee shop that was once a milliner‘s, a barista told me about his brother, injured in Afghanistan, a kneecap shot away. Change a century and the merchandise, and couldn‘t a hat maker, over a glass counter piled high with lace, feathers, ribbon, and felt, have told a customer about his brother‘s injury in Cuba, in the Philippines? Change another decade, and the décor, and couldn‘t a greased-back soda jerk mourn the death of his brother in Malmédy or Hue? Here, today, and now in the Michigan Bakery, there are fresh faces and names, but they are as dead and gone as the doughboys in the pictures on the wall. The images are different, but the tricolored bunting stays the same. Soldiers and bread, yeast cultures and patriotism, feeding and nourishing, leavening and defiling. Thanatos and eros. Unbroken and unchanging, here in the corner of a small Michigan town constantly rebuilding and renewing— though it may take a score of years for you to see. In the back of the shop, an oven door slammed and a tray clattered on a steel counter. I opened the screen door, jangling the little bells, and left the summer sidewalk. The bakery was here waiting for me.

Jamie Rand SCARS It‘s my first morning in Kuwait, our staging area for convoys up to Iraq, and I wake up before sunrise and go outside and sit on the sandbags that line the hooch. No one else is awake yet and Camp Fox is quiet, and I take the time to get to know this place I had only ever read about, this cradle of civilization. This is an alien land with alien sights and smells and sounds. The desert countryside is littered with trash—so much fucking trash it‘s unbelievable. Cars just abandoned on the side of the road. Landfills of uncovered water bottles and food wrappers. Livestock left staked out in the sun to die. Flies buzzing around heaps of bones and patches of fur and decomposing skin and muscle. And there‘s a smell to this place. A third-world musk. It‘s in the air, in the sand that blows everywhere and gets into everything, in the people. It‘s the smell of dried earth and dead wind. It gets in my hair, and when I run my hands over my face I smell it in my skin. It‘s in the water. It‘s my sweat. It‘s the stink of sunburned flesh. It‘s the smell of a land with no life; there‘s no pollen in the air, no mold, nothing to work your allergies. It‘s dry and dead. But despite all these things I‘m not yet conditioned to, there‘s a soft breeze blowing, the temperature is pleasant, and for what it‘s worth, this whole situation isn‘t bad. Sitting there on the sandbags I feel a weird sort of contentment. This is war and this is supposed to be terrible, but it isn‘t. Here I am, sitting outside my new home and staring up at the stars, no calls for reveille for another half hour, the world quiet and me alone with my thoughts. This place sucks and the company isn‘t much better, but things could be a lot worse. As we form for chow a few hours later, we get told the war started last night, and even right now they‘re raining death and destruction—shock and awe—up north. People are dying, getting shot and blown up and screaming and bleeding a hundred miles away and I‘m sitting in the chow hooch and enjoying eggs and croissants and Pepsi with the rest of the platoon. The cooks are Hajjis wearing hats that say Chi-Chi’s Restaurants, and they sing Youth of the Nation in broken English. There‘s a television at the far end of the hooch and we watch the start of the war like civilians would back in the States; reporters are closer to the action than we are, wearing helmets and flak jackets while explosions rock the land in the far distance behind them, and here we are, fucking Marines, born to fight and trained to kill, and we‘re sitting in a chow hall having a good old time. I catch my friend‘s eye—Corporal Jon Bryant—and tell him that this is the worst war ever. He laughs and agrees. And I continue stuffing my face because, fuck, I‘m pretty fucking happy with how things turned out. I want to see action to justify the training I went through to be who I am, but I‘m not stupid enough to argue with good chow and no imminent danger.

Jamie Rand We have classes next, and we sit down cross-legged in front of the chow hall, in a school circle around a staff sergeant from Camp Fox who‘s giving us a quick brief on enemy prisoner of war handling. We‘re all fat and happy and the majority of us have after-chow dip in and we‘re cheerfully spitting onto the sand in front of us, and smashing the shit into the ground to make sure we don‘t accidentally sit on it if we move. It‘s a disgusting habit but one most of us have acquired; as infantry, we can‘t smoke around live ammunition so we stuff our cheeks with Skoal and Kodiak. Not long into the class, a Humvee comes rolling down the main supply route honking its horn in patterns of three. I turn to ask what that‘s about when a siren goes off, an old air-raid siren that sounds straight out of World War Two. We glance around at each other, confused, and some starts shouting Gas gas gas! And all of a sudden the morning air is full of people screaming the same thing, echoing it, and now it‘s not just voices but the ripping sound of Velcro flaps and the jingle of mask straps. I had never believed that one word could make my heart-rate double in the space of five seconds, but that word does it. The mask goes on and I tighten the straps and don and clear and I grab my rifle and my daypack with my MOPP suit inside and scramble for the bunkers, following the herd of Marines that are doing the same thing. And even though I‘m pretty fucking frightened, I‘m not terrified. Probably just a drill, I think. Probably just some shithead officer up in admin pressing the button and laughing while he watches us dive like cowards, a game to keep us on our toes. People higher in rank love that justification. I‘m sitting in the bunker with my rifle and my pack between my legs, my back against the concrete, and Marines are jammed in there, pressing against each other, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee. I look at the daylight outside and recognize the head of my staff sergeant sitting at the end of the bunker, and he‘s looking around outside, too, trying to see what‘s going on. I see him lean out and then lean back in and he shouts, The guys on post are getting into their suits! MOPP FOUR! MOPP FOUR! Get your fucking suits on! That fright becomes terror. We all jump out of the bunkers and rip open our daypacks and pull out the MOPP suits. They‘re encased in white plastic bags that are hard to open—harder, now, since my hands are shaking, and shaking bad. I look up and see another Marine reach into his pocket, pull out a butterfly knife, and in one swift fucking move the likes of which I‘ve never seen repeated, flip the knife open, cut the bag, flip it closed. I look back down at mine and discover that, by some fucking miracle, I‘ve gotten the fucker torn open. Terror becomes horror when I realize these MOPP suits aren‘t the ones we practiced on in the drill center. These trousers have suspenders. This blouse goes on differently. And while I‘m struggling through all this with shaking hands and adrenaline pulsing through my body, I realize somewhere in the back of my head that I can see things with a flawless fucking clarity. I‘m 57

Jamie Rand thinking that there‘s VX gas out there, that shit that melts faces like in that movie The Rock; I‘m thinking there‘s mustard gas settling down right now in a fine layer over everything in Camp Fox; I‘m thinking fuck fuck fuck, but that‘s only on the surface, the surface that‘s also struggling to get this fucking suit on. In the back of my mind I‘m looking at the scar on my right wrist I got from playing in the woods when I was a kid, I had cut my wrist on a piece of metal, and I‘m seeing that scar, that puckered skin, and thinking that it‘s the last thing I‘ll ever see in my life. I‘m going to fucking die thinking of that scar, I‘m going to die while my fucking skin blisters and my fucking lungs sear, I‘m going to fucking die and all I can fucking think of isn‘t friends or family or my girl but that fucking scar on my hand, what is this bullshit? I finally get the suit on—blouse, trousers, boots, gloves—but I forget to adjust the suspenders inside the trousers so I do a loping, hunch-backed run back to the bunkers. I sit down and I‘m cold even though I‘m sweating my ass off inside this suit. For the next minute or so Marines keep piling in and I keep scooting around to let us get in tighter. And still the siren keeps sounding. Five minutes pass. Maybe. It might be more. Might be less. Time gets skewed when you wonder if you got your suit on in time. When you wonder if that itch on your arm is the suit chafing against your skin or if it‘s the start of a chemical blister. The guy across from me starts coughing. I don‘t know who it is. It‘s hard to tell when everyone looks the same inside their mask, when their lenses fog up and their suits make them into black and green blobs that stand out against the desert sand. But this motherfucker starts coughing. Badly. And this brown shit starts running from underneath the seal in his mask and running down his neck. Horror becomes dread when I see that. And I think he got fucking gassed. I think this isn‘t a drill, this is real shit, and we‘re all going to fucking die. Someone next to him holds up syringes of atropine and pam-2-chloride. If someone got gassed, we had been told, we were supposed to inject him with both. The atropine stops the gas from killing them; the chloride stops the atropine from doing the same. The Marine shakes his head and waves his hands frantically and says he‘s fine. I can barely understand him from inside his mask. He‘s coughing but he‘s not doing the funky chicken and I wonder if he only got a small dose of whatever fucking gas is out there. But he‘s breathing and talking and so maybe he‘s doing okay. Ten, maybe fifteen, maybe twenty minutes later, the all clear sounds. It comes across the speakers and someone not far away is shouting it through a bullhorn. We crawl out of the bunkers, surprised and confused and alive, and pull our gas masks off and breathe fresh desert air. I look back at the Marine who was choking and watch as he pulls his mask off. There‘s a brown ring of shit around his mouth and his lower jaw is covered in slime, and it comes to me. 58

Jamie Rand His dip. He forgot to spit his fucking dip out before he put his mask on. I want to punch him in the face and hug him; I want to kick his ass from here back to America and yell at him for scaring the shit out of me, but what I do instead is laugh. And laugh hard. I can‘t fucking stop laughing. I‘m alive and there‘s no fucking gas and this war fucking sucks. I find Jon and ask if he‘s okay. He gives a shaky smile and says yes. Worst war ever, I say, and he laughs and replies, Don’t ever fucking say that again. Eight months later, my deployment behind me and a thousand memories fresh in my mind, I‘m home at my desk, trying to write about it. Only I‘m not really writing because what I‘m really doing is looking out over the back yard and seeing green leaves and green grass and a soft sun; I‘m still color-blinded by all the shades of this land where I was born, this land where everything isn‘t just a shade of yellow. It‘s October and it‘s cold but the door is open because I can‘t get enough of the smell of this place. It‘s autumn and things are beginning to die but it doesn‘t fucking matter; it‘s still the sweetest air I‘ve ever taken in. It‘s home. I live in a small town, and when there‘s a fire they sound a siren to get the volunteer department mobilized. And, by the greatest fucking coincidence, as I‘m sitting there staring out over the yard and thinking of the last eight months of my life, that fucking siren goes off and I fall out of my chair and nearly piss my pants. I‘m looking at that scar on my hand and thinking I‘m going to die. I‘m looking for my daypack with my suit inside. I‘m looking for the gas mask that should be at my hip, but isn‘t. Except in a way, it is. And I think it always will be. Sometimes I tell this story with a smile on my face. Sometimes I make a long and absurd joke out of it, and it makes people laugh. Sometimes—most usually when I‘m drunk—I tell it honestly; I tell people how fucking terrified I was, how true fear really feels, and how it felt later, when I found out all the shit I went through that day was unnecessary and somehow pointless. But no matter how I tell it, two old fundamental truths always apply. First, listeners never understand; they can pretend they do, they can nod in all the right places, they can have an understanding ear, but to them it‘s still just a story, still just entertainment. The second and more important truth is this: when I tell the story, it doesn‘t matter if it makes people laugh, and it doesn‘t matter if I‘m laughing with them at the absurdity of it; deep inside I‘m not laughing at all because I remember exactly what it was like.

Rane Arroyo MUSIC COLUMN: THE POLITICS OF DANCING AND LOVING Three Favorites: Storybox, Brendan James and Splitting Adam 1983: news of AIDS (or what was then Gay Cancer or God‘s Punishment—how melodramatic and evil), I‘m fairly new in a relationship with another poet, and we‘re at Carol‘s Speakeasy in Chicago when Re-Flex‘s ―The Politics of Dancing‖ comes on. The boys go wild and take off their shirts so that we‘re like an army of lovers warring against all the social justices outside of the corporeal disco. It was an era when curious sweat shined on our questioned bodies, when psychic arms went into the air to bring down the spying moon just on the other side of the roof. The lyrics for ―The Politics of Dancing‖ say this: We got the message I heard it on the airwaves The politicians Are now D.J.s And we understand that the media is being Reaganized, that we gays are cultural and spiritual criminals simply because of declarations that simplify us. So some of us choose to resist—by dancing! By keeping the sexuality in homosexuality. Take a look at the original music video by Re-Flex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAS7RxK4Uvc This memory has been stirred by Storybox‘s LP, No Dancing Allowed. This LP‘s scenario is even more apocalyptic than in the 1980‘s. In the title song, the singer wails and demands that the revolution against tyranny begins with the individual body. Big Brother is everywhere; dancing is wisely forbidden by the powers that be (read Republican, I suspect). This is a great dance tune that offers hope as resilience while Storybox sings and plays: ―Your hands on your back / your face on the ground /Thou shalt not dance.‖ The music swells into a song you must dance to for in small acts of defiance do wise choices become apparent. This is a song about defiance through dancing, through the body, through the right of being a citizen equal to anyone else. The police sirens, the Biblical passages, the disco hook of repeating a chorus are powerful presentations of the human spirit‘s embroilment in the contemporary. Finally: imagine a world without music, not the kind one can dance to or that is allowed to negotiate between cosmic and human powers. The rest of the LP is also solid as it investigates love and place, passion and the times. My favorite song is ―Dream Ghosts‖ for it reminds me of life in a contemporary city in which one‘s memories collide with the present architecture, people, facts. Storybox moans, ―just release me from this pain‖ but it is obviously an impossible request. They go on, ―wake me, wake me, I 60

Rane Arroyo can‘t take it anymore.‖ Again, I‘m returned to the Chicago of my 1980‘s after AIDS has invaded Boystown. I remember one night walking home from the clubs and noticing it was less crowded than it had been years ago, that the city looked haunted, that the mannequins were mostly dressed in circumspect black. I opted for a winged taxi and the driver said, ―Where to?‖ And I didn‘t know the answer right away—the past? the future? home? But I thought of the young men I knew, some who were lovers, whose bodies were shipped back to Kentucky, Mississippi, elsewhere as if their years in Chicago were nothing, as if they hadn‘t been forced to seek solace and joy far from families and religion. This is why art matters: ghosts need to be honored for their years of scars. There are other great songs of course, like ―Therapy,‖ and I recommend this LP without any hesitation. Storybox is a new discovery to me and the sound reminds me of Thomas Dolby having a love child with The Thompson Twins (all three of them!). It‘s rare to find someone who follows his own way and yet generously invites us along. Dancing and revolution, I‘m convinced as the years add on, are synonyms. Taking a different approach is Brendan James‘ EP, The Ballroom Break In. With just four songs, Brendan astonishes; having your heart broken by astonishment is worse than having it broken by sorrow. How dare he give us hope even as he doesn‘t deny issues of war, familial failures, and the struggles that any and all artists face in trying to be honest about their witnessing. In the first song, ―All I Can See,‖ Brendan tries to teach himself optimism. This is political work indeed, for the singer insists that we mustn‘t be myopic; all the while, his dreamy voice, gentle but self-confident, is like Virgil talking to Dante. Being a performance artist in Chicago, I learned that it was easy (and popular) to be jaded. I remember when Tim Miller flirted with me and said something casual that he probably doesn‘t remember, ―I survived just to be here.‖ That struck something in me, or as Brendan says, ―I will never rest until I see all that I can see.‖ Obstacles must not define us. In my favorite song, ―The Hero‘s Song,‖ war is evoked but not in a tone of anger or resignation; this is a song about sorrow, what Wordsworth talked about when he wrote what ―man has done to man.‖ A soldier is in the desert, a voice admitting that ―a flood of hate surrounds me…I cannot die this way,‖ a place of explosions (physical and mental). This song makes me choke up, I who have no sons or daughters in Iraq or Afghanistan. But I do have students who‘ve returned profoundly changed—often bitter, silent. What strikes me about this song is that Brendan‘s voice sounds fragile, catchy, and he never lets his lyrics overpower his talents. This is a classic song. There are two other songs, ―The Other Side,‖ a personal song about singing near a town where his Father, who abandoned the family, lives. This is a beguiling song about strength and learning to value life‘s lessons. Finally, there is ―Let Your Beat Go On.‖ Brendan has one of the most beautiful voices I‘ve heard in years—not just for the sound of it, but there is color in it, an 61

Rane Arroyo honesty rare in these pre-packaged days. He is earnest and in this age where any show of sincere emotion is suspect, I find this song to be brave: ―let the silence be the music.‖ The references to uncertainty are counterbalanced by the desire for more, for the freedom to be yourself—at last. This EP is a prophecy of great things ahead for Brendan James. I chose this LP and EP for my first column because everyday I watch CNN advertise that it is the place for politics in 2008. What politics? Storybox reminds us of how oppression longs to stop being subtle and Brendan James reminds us that our interior selves must become realized. Listen to the politics of dancing, the dancing politicians, the dances that defy politics, and the slow dances that are more political than DC handshakes and embraces. I‘m going home to Chicago this December and I‘m taking this music with me on my iPod for sometimes I must remember that I‘m not a ghost yet, that I can still spark revolutions outside and inside of me. Also, The Future Is Here Vancouver‘s Splitting Adam has a two song EP/demo that is full of promises. ―Sleeping With Strangers‖ sounds like a sure hit and it reminds me of the confusion of sexual politics and the expression that we‘ve forgotten collectively: ―the personal is political.‖ The singer asks, ―Is it right to need you / when I disappear?‖ We can wear masks but there are intimate moments when the masks fail at veiling us from ourselves—how do we act as citizens if we have to hide from ourselves? This catchy, rhythm-driven song, wearing the voice of the weary, captures how confusion, in the long term, can offer little balm. In ―Daylight,‖ Splitting Adam changes pace and offers a percussive interpretation of wistfulness—―somewhere where daylight never fades.‖ Utopia always seem impossible and yet ever a goal. This band is solid and the singer‘s terrific voice is unafraid of being vulnerable to tenderness and fear. Their music reminds me of my fantasy of being a singer in a rock band, to tell people in song what is fragile in me even while muscular in appearance on stage. Contradiction, as Whitman insists, is very New World. I‘ve sneaked one of my song lyrics into my Selected Poems, ―The New Jezebel.‖ It‘s from a time period when some of my friends gathered at my place and we performed for ourselves in my loft without worrying about our talent or lack of fans. How we sang and performed and it was a better education about music and rhythm than any course I took in my Ph.D. studies. Listening to Splitting Adam, I hear us as we heard us—behind closed doors! We wrote the song lyrics, stole music samples before it became an industry, looped them, choreographed, and created costumes. Later, these private performances led to my first major performance art piece at Randolph Street Gallery: Private Radio. This demo reminds me how talent and desire are key ingredients in alchemy.

Rane Arroyo Where to find this music: Storybox: www.myspace.com/storybox (site and info for purchase) Brendan James: www.brendanjames.com & www.myspace.com/brendanjames Splitting Adam: www.myspace.com/splittingadam Rane Arroyo www.ranearroyo.com & www.myspace.com/ranearroyo

#7 Contributor Bios Darren J. Akerman is an administrator for a Maine school district. Previous publications include Rosebud, North Atlantic Review, and on-line journals including Sugar Mule, Prick of the Spindle, and Terrain.org. He has completed two novels, Fables of the Fatherland and City Song. Rachel Bennett was born in Rock Island, Illinois, in 1979, and moved to New York City in 2001, after participating in the Iowa Writers‘ Workshop Irish Writing Program in Dublin, working in a nursing home in Ecuador, and earning a B.A. in English from Grinnell College. Her poems have won two Whitcomb Prizes judged by Gerald Stern and James Galvin, respectively, and appeared in Buffalo Carp, Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Rhapsoidia, elimae, Alba, The Big Toe Review, zafusy, Adagio Quarterly Review, and Laika Poetry Review; two poems included in Rhapsoidia were 2006 Pushcart Prize nominees. In July 2007, Miss Bennett was invited back to Dublin to give a reading and talk to current students in the Irish Writing Program. She currently lives in Brooklyn, develops programs for the Medicare Rights Center, and teaches poetry in New York University‘s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Mark Russell Brown’s poems have appeared in Bloom, The Louisville Review, Wind, and What Goes On. His poetry criticism appears regularly in the Green River Writer‘s newsletter. He has presented his poetry and literary criticism at the LGBT Center in NYC and Princeton University. The finishing touches have been applied to his manuscript, A Boney-Fingered Reach for God, which is his first collection of poetry. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University and works as a research editor with a public relations resource firm. Jeanine Hall Gailey is a Seattle-area writer whose first book of poetry, Becoming the Villainess, was published in the spring of 2006 by Steel Toe Books. Poems from the book have appeared multiple times on NPR‘s The Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily, and two appeared in the 2007 The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She was awarded the Washington State Artist Trust GAP Grant in 2007 and recently joined the core faculty of the Young Artists Program at Centrum. She has published poems in journals like The Iowa Review, The Columbia Poetry Review, The Evansville Review, and Rattle. She has reviewed books of poetry for The American Book Review, Calyx, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She has an M.A. in English from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific University. She volunteers as an editorial consultant for Crab Creek Review. 64

Paul Hostovsky's poems appear widely online and in print. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and the Writer's Almanac. He has two poetry chapbooks, Bird in the Hand (Grayson Books, 2006) and Dusk Outside the Braille Press (Riverstone Press, 2006). He works in Boston as an interpreter for the deaf. James W. Hritz is a post-undergraduate English student at Kent State University. He graduated from the University of Akron in 2004 with a BA in Political Science. Jamie Lin is currently wobbling around on her own in college, a bit cluelessly but not without a general idea of what she wants. She aims to major in creative writing while also taking classes in philosophy and human rights. She spends her days thinking, avoiding doing work, drinking caffeine, and having conversations with her roommate who told her once her philosophical shit is a turn off. She has pieces scheduled for publication near and after the New Year at Storyglossia, Pequin, Yellow Mama, Sub-Lit and Mud Luscious. Her past stories can be found at Laura Hird, Cherry Bleeds, Edifice Wrecked, the Beat, Insolent Rudder and some others. Joseph Kerschbaum lives in Bloomington, Indiana. His latest book, Dead Stars Have No Graves, was published by Pathwise Press in 2006. Josephâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s new spoken word album, Our Voices Sound Like Silence, will be released this November. John Pahle teaches high school English near Ypsilanti, Michigan. He's still trying to convince his students that, yes, people do write for fun. Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, "The Adventure" and "Happiness," both published by Story Line Press. Other of his poems and essays have appeared in Hudson Review, Southern Review, Fulcrum, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), Representations and elsewhere. Poems have most recently appeared in the print journals Iota (UK), Orbis (UK), Naked Punch (UK), and The Hat, are forthcoming in Magma (UK). Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Snorkel, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Denver Syntax, Barnwood, elimae, Wheelhouse and elsewhere, and are

forthcoming in Mudlark. Pollack is an adjunct professor of creative writing at George Washington University, Washington, DC. Amy Prodromou’s fiction has been published in some small magazines, such as Cadences: A Literary Journal of the Arts in Cyprus, EAPSU: An Online Journal of Critical and Creative Writing, and most recently in R-KV-R-Y Quarterly Literary Journal. She is currently a Ph.D. student at Lancaster University and completing a novel. Jamie Rand has no previously published works. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in July 2001 and was in recruit training for September 11th. He finished his enlistment in July 2007 and returned to school full-time at the University of Toledo where he'll eventually graduate as an English major, with a focus in creative writing. Peter Schwartz is a painter, poet and writer. He's also an associate art editor for Mad Hatters' Review. His artwork can be seen all over the Internet but specifically at www.sitrahahra.com. He's had hundreds of paintings, poems, and stories published both online and in print and is constantly submitting new work as if his very life depended on it. His last exhibition was through Aesthetica Magazine and featured a projection of his digital painting ―Terminal 4‖ on a busy street in York, UK. His work will be featured the entire month of December at the Amsterdam Whitney Gallery in Chelsea NYC. Allison Taj is a Southern writer who currently resides in Wisconsin with her husband, various children (biological and otherwise), and pets. She attends Spalding University‘s MFA program and is a student editor for The Louisville Review. Allison is also honored to guest edit other literary journals and magazines. Michael Angelo Tata’s poetry has been exhibited as sculpture in ―The Weather,‖ a multimedia exhibit at the Parlor Gallery (Lancaster, PA), and as fashion through the Long Beach Foundation for the Arts. His poetry has most recently appeared in the journals Origami Condom, LinQ, FRIGG, and Ugly Couch. He is currently American editor for Australian interdisciplinary journal Nebula. Margaret Mason Tate is a twenty-old-year-old senior at St. Andrews College majoring in Creative Writing. She recently returned from doing an intensive

study of Ezra Pound with his daughter in Italy, and this fall she will be making preparations to enroll in an MFA program. She is deeply petrified of birds, and she has ten different gazpacho recipes. Maxwell Thurman would love to paint his native Toronto red in the dead of some winter night, but a certain inherent adherence to law and the tenets of good citizenship bar him from such activities. Meanwhile he contents himself creating, mainly, illustrations in oil pastels. Lafayette Wattles recently earned his MFA in Writing and has done a little bit of everything. He's modeled for Tommy Hilfiger (okay, two shows back in the 80's), acted with Amanda Plummer (so what if he played her dead husband), taught kids in England (perhaps setting them back hundreds of years). Well, he hasn't hunted polar bear or been stripped-searched or gone clogging, so he hasn't literally done everything, but he is quite the dancerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;ask his dance team members. He has had poetry published most recently or forthcoming in Shit Creek Review, Prick of the Spindle, RUNES, Eclectica, and Slurve among others. Although he has long loved art, "Scholar" is Lafayette's first published photograph. Joshua Young is a Graduate Student of Creative Writing at Western Washington University located in Bellingham, Washington. His first two novels (there and have you heard of wes anderson?) were published by local indie press lines and blood books. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Wheelhouse, Jeopardy, Midst Mountain's Shadow, Fragments of Youth, among others. He wrote and directed his first feature film, Afraid to Merge, this past June with his twin brother Caleb. The film will soon start the festival rounds.