Edition 75, Volume 1

FALL 2022

EDITION 75, VOLUME 1

UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA, RENO

Copyright © 2022 Brushfire and its individual contributors. All rights reserved by the respective artists. Original work is used with the expressed permission of the artists. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher.

The opinions expressed in this publication and its associated website and social media are not necessarily those of the University of Nevada, Reno, or of the student body.

Brushfire is funded by The Associated Students of the University of Nevada.

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Glass Frogs

Ashley Taylor

Time moves on… bear with me—I know that sounds cliche!

But time and turbulence are universal constants in this vast and uncertain sea of life. Undoubtedly, all of us can recognize how change descends rapidly, no matter how determined we are to keep things the same. With this comes a certain human need to render the fleeting moment permanent through art. A small mark on the world saying “I’ve been here!” manifests in drawings upon ancient cave walls as surely as it does graffiti on multi-million dollar bridges.

So what happens when art contemplates time? Well, that strange inception seems a fitting playground for the first volume of Brushfire’s 75th edition. Having seen so many changes since its creation in 1950, UNR’s oldest literature and arts journal celebrates a milestone publication while, at its heart, remaining dedicated to sharing artwork, stories, and student voices.

The pieces compiled in this volume are a wonderful testament to the human capacity for persistence throughout life’s uncertainties. Each contemplates growth, aging, and what it means to reflect on a life long-lived, well-lived, shortlived, or some strange combination of all three.

I hope as you spend time reading about time, you’ll come away reassured that change isn’t a negative thing. It’s daunting, thinking of all those ticking clocks and chances that will never come again, but moving backward isn’t only counterintuitive, it’s impossible. There’s only the path forward into whatever challenging excitement the future holds.

Without further ado, it is my absolute pleasure to serve as Brushfire’s new Editor-in-Chief and present to you Edition 75, Volume 1.

—Phoebe Coogle

“Ensnared”EvaElliot

Ashley Taylor

Eva Elliot

Jason Mennel

Sarah Cryan

Maxton Cwik

Jason Mennel

Edward Supranowicz

Sarah Cryan

Angela Porada

Sarah Cryan

Nancy Vazquez Loera

Angela Porada

Nancy Vazquez Loera

Nancy Vazquez Loera

Ashley Taylor

Luke Rizzotto

Hannah Potts

Max Smith-Hambright

James Reade Venable

Ria Anand

Brooke Germain

Edward Supranowicz

Richard Hanus

Eva Shipley

Angela Porada

Maxton Cwik

Jason Mennel

Sarah Cryan

Glass Frogs

Ensnared

Empire of Light

Bounty

Gallant Gallivant

Desert Oasis

Almost Nude

Color Factory

Calla Lily

Fine Arts

Cyborg Pattern

Athena

Emerald

Glass Frogs

Lounging, Waiting

Baby Teeth

A Crowded Room

Frogger

Water

Us and Ours

Laughing Shroud

Untitled

Smoke Day

Fence

Gallant Gallivant

Gates of the Great Beyond

The Birds

Michael Ansara

Kimberly Nunes

Caroline Maun

Besty Martin

Lynn Cohen

Madeline Gauthier

Laura Schulkind

Jane Costain

Marc Tretin

Aspen Schuyler

Yvonne Higgins Leach

John Tustin

Hannah Potts

Marie-Andree Auclair

Percy Neavez

Ian Egan

Robert Qualls

Nichole Zachary

Michael Ansara

Holly Day

Jane Costain

Jaqueline Martinez

Expulsion

My Father’s Garden

Batmobile

A Head of His Time

Elephant

Grief is an Empty Mailbox

Visiting in Winter

Advent Again

Maya Sapped of the Power to Comfort Her Daughter

Fallen Monument

On the Origin of My Brother

Alive and Alone

Baby Teeth

Cohabitation

Together in Time

[My Love]

Hazel Eyes

Things I Am Afraid Of September Storms

Harvest About Trees

I Come From a Different Land

“Empire of Light”

Jason Mennel

EXPULSION

Michael Ansara

Was not once the known world— with its cooling streams, wandering forests, frost-rimmed seas, all its seductions, overlaid, wound loose and tight, tight and loose as a pair of snakes in sun —infinite until revealed as a spinning speck in the dust-filled womb of the universe?

Splitting the dark, a lamp throws its halo of safety over my daughter, her infant son, the two touching closer than lovers, within that soft heat, a certain instant of grace.

Are we not all seeking a way back to that?

MY FATHER’S GARDEN

Kimberly Nunes

I have the ornamental orange trees. After he died, I took them. The fruit are not sweet. The rind hard to peel. He never picked them, nor ate them, but loved to walk there, and talk with ease, sometimes, lost in thought. In large terra cotta pots, impatiens surrounded each tree. In winter, the gardeners planted chicories.

He left three letters for me and my brother, wanted to explain our aborted “siblings,” the women unknown to us. He wrote, I’ll be with them soon, in his desire to apologize.

Cymbidium orchids clumped in pots in the southwest corner of the courtyard. Nearby, the floral spikes obscured the statue of St. Francis he loved so much, a hundred purple irises. Salvias, pink roses, thick heather thrusting up from loamy beds. This, his garden.

And in the distance, beyond the stucco wall, tall coastal pines in blue California sky, unwavering. He called them his sentinels. One could see how they watched over him.

“Bounty” Sarah Cryan

Regret, contrition, disgrace. Hell’s eternity. Something’s wrong? How did I miss this soul-withering pain in his final years of life?

My brother’s wife took the orchids. I preferred the trees—two Inoki cypress in tall black urns. They look out of place on my small Carmel plot—one on each side of the path along the west side, toward the ocean. My sentinels now.

And I saved the old Christmas cactuses, in their rustic pots. My daughter has loved them, and now, they’ll go to her.

His grief relieved at Roman Catholic retreats in the mountains, he wrote. Before he died, he told me

the flasks of vodka helped him cope with the priests—

The huge chestnut-colored pots spill over in my garden now, with speckled geraniums, begonias, dwarf maples, and vines. I have tucked them into odd places—near the chimney, and large camellias, the glazes and heft impress me with his taste.

He esteemed the bodhisattva statue kneeling with hands held out—where we placed her—she stared in gratified blankness as my children brought offerings of flowers when they were small. She’s now sheltered among the ferns near my giant redwood tree.

where and when they must have asked him to name the children.

It’s true, high stakes to transplant citrus trees. One still struggles, from pot to new soil. This winter, the oranges were the size of kumquats. Undesirable to me.

One he called Mary, the other Michael; the last fetus aborted, he named Rebecca—he must have wanted to tell me while we walked in his garden, but never did, too trapped in thought.

Pawn takes pawn

Rusty removed mine from the board.

We were fairly well-matched, as he had been with my father before his death, but occasionally he’d make an incisive move, totally unforeseen, that hinted his mind had once been exceptionally sharp. He had, after all, co-founded a chain of highly successful discount stores, ultimately selling his share so he could now comfortably till and thresh his remaining years in the Ridgeview Retirement Residence where he’d befriended my father and, through him on my visits, me.

I liked him from the outset. His bearing showed he hadn’t come through the maze of living in tatters but neither had he put on airs. Somehow, in those thousands of hours of promoting the sizzle as well as the steak of his products, he’d refined thoughtfulness. As if at the close of day, his mouth and his brain, having worked together towards their livelihood, went their separate ways. After my father succumbed to his heart attack eleven months earlier, another unforeseen development, I had without fanfare taken his place across the chessboard from Rusty Solberg. Whenever neither of us was occupied on a Saturday morning, I’d drop into Ridgeview to chat and play.

Knight takes pawn

I removed his.

Rusty had wriggled into seventy fit, clear-eyed, and sporting all his marbles. He did have a scar on his leg from the knee to inside his white sock, like a dried irrigation canal, and I wondered if there wasn’t a similar one down his chest under his polo shirt. To his full head of graying hair, he’d recently added a circle beard, whiter on the sides of his chin. Trimmed and accessorized with his current ball cap and a pair of sunglasses, he passed for a well-aging action movie star—which he deflated by replying, “Ain’t nobody pretty no more.” Without them, and if he’d let the chin sides thicken, he reminded me of a medium schnauzer I’d had as a child. I felt sufficiently at ease with him to mention this too and, of course, he was able to laugh at himself.

“What’s that new contraption?” I asked. We were both able and willing—until we reached crunch time, anyway—to temporarily break off focus and take up whatever else had arisen in our pondering.

At the farthest end of Ridgeview’s garden, a yellow mechanism hung from a pole near the rose bushes. Apart from ourselves at the rear patio table, only a couple had ventured out to enjoy the freshening hour.

He looked over his shoulder. “Japanese beetle trap. It lets off a sex and floral chemical that attracts them. They empty it every night.”

The Japanese beetle had been invading our neck of the woods for several years

and I’d considered getting one for my backyard. “I read they may actually attract more beetles than they kill. Seems self-defeating.”

“Efficient or not, a bunch regularly go missing. No more letters home. We should tell them there’s more to life than feeding and mating.”

We went back to studying the board.

My father had related he’d been married once, and briefly, to a woman for whom, according to Rusty, love, friendship, fidelity, more or less everything, was a calculation. But for a calculating person, she calculated poorly; and she confused willful with determined. Following the divorce, she’d speedily evaporated. Childless, himself an only child, Rusty was apparently down to a handful of cousins, one of whom still came to spend time, along with his former business partner and a lady or two who’d likely been, or might yet be classified as, lovers.

Bishop to B5

“Any of your friends started disappearing,” Rusty asked “or aren’t you at that stage of life?”

I’d already prepared a countermove and looked up. “You mean dying?”

“It’s not that you see them about and the next time they’re shrunken in a casket. That’s how it usually goes. You lose contact with them first. Like those beetles. Not over some argument, just drift off while on good terms. Then you hear they died but their resting place has gone too.”

“Can’t think of anyone right off. You’re excluding parents?”

“Friends specifically. The ones you’d had no trouble locating when you weren’t quite flourishing.”

Trying to distract before a move with a weightier matter wasn’t Rusty’s style. He observed the protocols. I benignly scoffed, “You’re feeling bad for the beetles.”

“Something crossed my mind not long ago. When friends disappear, when there’s nobody left to share your history, is it the end of you?”

“Might make a good line for a song.”

Knight to c5

Like something sticky adhering to his hand that couldn’t immediately be got rid of, he lingered on the subject: “Friends go missing lots of ways. Soldiers in wars. Civilians in dementia. In faraway geography. Or could just be nearby neglect. Turns out quite a few of mine went missing. Some left the world, some the friendship. That’s not counting those who have plenty of friends but not enough friendship. When most of your friends have gone, sometimes you have to fight the idea that what’s left isn’t much of a party.”

Rook to c1

His response was so swift, he must’ve anticipated mine. But overconfidence always exposes an opportunity.

My father didn’t carry grudges. If he failed fairly. Or it could have been the

egalitarian in him that prompted one of his quotes: “At the end of the game, both the king and the pawns go into the same box.”

“Your dad was right. But before that, sometimes the queen rides off with the knight.”

I chuckled at his suddenly lighthearted comeback. “Hadn’t ever heard that.”

His tone as quickly switched off. “There are four or five on the tip of my tongue. First job I had, my boss became a sort of mentor. Older man, younger wife. A nasty child custody fight did him in. He went AWOL and was found months later in a demolished car out west. The second, alongside a country road not far from here. We hadn’t crossed paths for years but no animosity. Roommates once. Off hunting at dawn. Heart attack like your dad. Later, a professor I’d kept contact with. Saw him on a Sunday, made an appointment a few weeks forward and the next call came from his executor. And throw in a cousin too. Married a Brit, moved to England. We’d email back and forth. She got a cancer, bowels I recall, and then it was her husband on the phone. Four undisclosed gravesites. Four persons I knew who knew me. The best-laid plans go up in smoke.” And the heaviness vanished again. “That’s how I’m going. Better cremation than holding on to a plot of land.”

“It won’t be for a while. Hope you have that down on paper because things get lost in translation.”

“World’s designed to make us surly. If not designed, it still turns out that way.”

I more-or-less nodded in more-or-less agreement, then concentrated on avoiding a blunder.

Castle 0-0

Elapsed time between our moves lengthened, nothing seemingly happening, but any activity where the minutes quit nagging almost assures pleasure. Fewer pieces, more spaces, greater choices, enhanced pitfalls.

Until an obligation whispered as I defended an attack. I checked my watch. The chessboard was still hoarding an infinity of moves that might take an hour to resolve, barring a howler from one of us or a startling breakthrough. We’d poured a second coffee that morning and kibitzed before getting started and now I was running late.

“I’m sorry, Rusty. Your game. Duty calls; promised the wife only one and I’d be home to help her pack.”

“A draw then. It’s not how we score a win.”

“Draw it is.” I stood up. “Oh, another sorry. I’ll be away the next two Saturdays. This trip is overdue. We’re making the rounds of our far-flung kids. Email you when I’m back.”

“You gave me a heads-up last week.”

“Did I? Early version of a senior moment.”

“I’m luckier. All my moments are senior. But if you can hold on one more sec or I’ll forget. I’d like you to listen to this.”

He pulled the smartphone from his shorts pocket, logged on, and tapped the screen

deftly as in a fast-forward recapitulation of our game moves; or the upcoming ones we’d abandoned.

“It’s called ‘Come Saturday Morning’. The song in a movie about first love between this uptight freshman and a kooky girl. Don’t recall the title. Pretty good movie but it doesn’t end with wedding bells.”

The song he’d selected began, gentle and harmonious, and in a sotto voce he spoke the lyrics, as if verifying them, checking for rust, without disturbing the music:

Come Saturday morning

I’m going away with my friend we’ll Saturday spend till the end of the day just I and my friend we’ll travel for miles on our Saturday smiles and then we’ll move on

He let the rest lilt and soothe unaccompanied.

“Know it? From the Seventies.”

“Can’t say I do. I’d have been a baby.”

“Every time it came on AFVN radio in ’71, all firing on the rifle range ceased and we’d listen to it, then go back about our business after it finished. It came on a fair bit too, maybe by request, because the station didn’t have commercials. Instead they were always telling us to clean our weapons, take malaria pills, change socks, avoid marijuana.”

“Wacky deejays if you ask me.”

“Not on the Armed Forces Vietnam Network.”

“In Vietnam?”

“That would be a safe guess. At the sniper school.”

“Sniper school in Vietnam?”

“The enemy’s there. Then he’s down. And his buddies know nothing about it,” he said, as if repeating an ingrained training mantra.

I’ve always believed choices aren’t made, can’t be made, separate from character and this seemed a disconnection. I don’t know if I actually gaped but I stood there feeling as if he’d just introduced me to a stranger, a stranger worth frequenting.

“You mind if I ask you about that when I get back?”

He shrugged casually. “The story hasn’t changed.”

Draw

It was the following dozy Saturday, after breakfast, while my wife was driving us from daughter two to son one that the conversation revived in me. I searched for the

song with my smartphone, dodged the advertisement, and unmuted the sound.

“That’s a nice song,” my wife said in recognition. “Haven’t heard it forever. When mum baked she was happy, or the other way around. She’d half-mumble, half-hum along. Going away with a friend, traveling for miles. Don’t think she’s been on an airplane more than twice.”

“More a take-to-the-road song. Rusty played it for me. A history comes with it.”

“Usually the case. Like mine. Start it again.”

I was intrigued by Rusty at that school and maybe what came after, but also by all these young men honing their sniping but stopping to listen to such a dreamy, contemplative song rather than something more raucous, the Rolling Stones or similar adrenaline-pumping rock-and-rollers. That was the soundtrack of any Vietnam movie I’d ever seen. Unless they had meant it as a spoof. On the other hand, being patient snipers, not the drudgery of infantry, maybe they preferred to slow the blood instead of rousing it. It’s what worked best for their absorption and their triggers.

I was surprised how eagerly I wanted to get back to Ridgeview. But running counter to it, as the music tailed off, an absurd and grotesque endgame flashed at me: Rusty had died and been cremated. His cousin had taken him away in an urn and, as a disappearing friend, neither a headstone, plaque, or disposal site would exist to indicate his presence.

“Desert Oasis” Jason Mennel

BATMOBILE

Caroline Maun

is what I called it in self-defense. My father was dying by then, but we didn’t quite know it, or maybe he knew something was pivoting in him, traveling up the bloodand-lymph highway from lungs into his brain, remapping it so that he couldn’t tell his shoe from the phone in three months. Soon enough everything he did would be maybe the last time.

“Almost Nude” Edward Supranowicz

But that May, he was still alive and helping me buy a car. He dismissed the Chevette, a tin can. He picked the black ’75 Lincoln Continental instead, full of pine needles, crumpled leather, the dashboard all green, liquid light. It drove like it had a sail, the wheel a half-turn of play. I kept hitting things with it, swiping curbs, leaving whole hunks of trim behind at the drive-through. On the way to college, it wove gently in the gusts over the Sunshine Skyway, just before they had to fix it, before that boat smashed it and all those cars drove without once hitting their brakes, straight up and over into the night sky.

By the end of September, my Dad was dead. The Lincoln was ridiculous, but it was the last gift he gave me, five thousand pounds of metal carapace.

“Color Factory” Sarah Cryan

A HEAD OF HIS TIME

Betsy Martin

Dad in his eighties had a summer hat he found at a yard sale.

It was a women’s hat with a broad brim and a bright pink-and-orange ribbon.

Mom told him, that’s a woman’s hat, as did I.

This? he said and patted the brim. Nooo... It fit him well, his hat.

ELEPHANT

Lynn Cohen

My mother used to drive carpools to Hebrew school. Now she asks for the fifth time, “Where are we going?”

I could tell her anything, anything at all.

First, she lost her car, then her wallet, not misplaced (though that too), but absconded by adult children concerned for scams, safety. In the early days, forgetting upset her. Now she

sits in the sun and looks at clouds. “There’s an elephant!”

Delighted as a child.

Is that really so bad?

“Fine Arts”

Sarah Cryan

GRIEF IS AN EMPTY MAILBOX

Madeline Gauthier

I was an archive of well wishes, Of Merry Christmases and birthday kisses, And you were a purple pen That found every small thing noteworthy.

Looking back on the cards you sent, It’s easy to recognize you in the Crisp columns of your consonants That stood like sentries at the start.

But as I move through the miles of memories, I can barely stand to see how The solid swipe of your L’s became shaky, And the twist of your T’s toppled over.

Like a shadow cast long at the end of the day, Your name looms black from the final card, Written in charcoal pencil by Your nurse’s unfamiliar hand.

Now I am a long-empty mailbox, and you Are nothing more than the slant of your signature, Destined to spend the rest of eternity Buried in a box beneath my bed.

VISITING IN WINTER

Laura Schulkind

The leaves have fallen, revealing the year’s comings and goings, stories heard more than seen in the leafy privacy of summer— the arrival of hungry chicks and rat-a-tat of woodpeckers. The bickering squirrels and sharp crack of tired limbs.

Now all there to see—

An empty warblers’ nest anchored in the nearest alder, above it an abandoned squirrel drey, wedged in the highest fork. Puckered woundwood in the sycamore surrounding a series of new, dark holes. A fallen branch, caught in the arms of lower boughs.

And in the tallest of the alders across the creek, the twisted, silent chimes, hung impossibly high. Only on seeing them, I realize how long it has been since they kept me company in the garden.

But you are here, and follow the crooks and toeholds you used last summer to hang them there, the tapering upper trunk bending with your weight as you reach up and gently comb out the tangles.

And I hold my breath— all of me exhilarated, all of me terrified. You have always reached for the highest branch, while I watch rooted to this earth, heart soaring, arms aching.

Freed, the chimes sing again. Greeting and farewell, greeting and farewell. And I know that soon you will be off, the wind their muse and yours.

“Cyborg”

Nancy Vazquez Loera

ADVENT AGAIN

Jane Costain

Like remnants of snow forgotten in the shade of buildings and trees vague longings linger still in our seasonal offerings.

Long ago, the angels folded their wings unto themselves. Silent now as shadows they have nothing more to say.

Once they even sang to us, multitudes of them, appearing in the startled night sky. We listened then and ran to see.

Now we content ourselves with icons, decorative but mute. Our expectations, reminiscent flames in the candles we light.

“Athena” Nancy Vazquez Loera

MAYA SAPPED OF THE POWER TO COMFORT HER DAUGHTER

Marc Tretin

You are my daughter’s voice Inside my squealing tinnitus, And though I ascend on shaky legs To the slammed door of her bedroom, And though I know my clammy hands Will be limp at my sides, Afraid to knock, And though I’d recall how afraid I was to hold her head, Her head always slipping From the crook of my arm, And hear, But then she’d upchuck My milk and squall

And I could not put her down Fast enough, And now she’s calling, “Daddy, Daddy,”

I want to keep going up the steps, But call out, “Mommy is not feeling well. I’m going to rest in the basement,” Because You speak to me In the squealing tinnitus That feels like her voice saying, “Get out of here. Go. Go.”

I slink to the basement to complete A sculpture Of a false God from Egypt Who does not scare me The way she does

“Emerald” Nancy Vazquez Lorea

FALLEN MONUMENT

Aspen Schuyler

I want to break— I want to shatter at the seams Of my perpetual dreams. A small fissure in time, Bleeding like ink, like wine In relentless memories.

Pain has a way of hurting Just right; Effervescent, always present, Always waiting For the wrong time. I wish to tear myself apart, Like I could burn every piece of you From me, Like I could take out the rot That destroyed the whole And start anew With pieces I’ve foraged myself.

How satisfying the shatter, the collapse, How much like a war cry, The sound of falling apart. All that is broken in me— Is you.

I am the rubble Of a rotten pillar that was once A formidable tree— The same rot that lives in you

Lives in me…

ON THE ORIGIN OF MY BROTHER

Yvonne Higgins Leach for Tim

In the collision of sperm and egg, a Creator said, Let him become. A bright mind, a storyteller, a lover of language, my brother is an ecosystem of contrasts. The pleasantries of life—an evening with family, a job well done, and the good storm of children—clash with the cement forests of too much drink, the oil spills of overeating, and the wildfires of gambling. He lives in a genetic landscape of addictions.

A life spent wanting another life.

When finally the seasons added up and the mountain breathed, he found a way beyond the dark and tired nights, beyond being the helpless animal forced from home. He planted a garden inside himself. He lives.

“Glass Frogs” Ashley Taylor

“Lounging, Waiting” Luke Rizzotto

ALIVE AND ALONE

John Tustin

I am alive and I am alone, No longer beaten with fists or words, Now suffering in the silence of four walls With just one heart beating within.

Rain falls and the sky makes mud. I am alive and alone In this place where the air breathes stillness Into the grass that cannot stir.

I open a can and dump the contents Into a bowl and begin to eat. I am alive and alone, Watching television in the dark.

Outside a cat’s footsteps make noises In the wet night and she trods on unconcerned. I lie in bed, fat and older, limp and wiser, Alive and alone and the rain whispers the names

Of the living and the dead.

I am alive and alone, fat and older in the dark. I know this bed and these walls.

I close my eyes, reciting the names of the living and the dead.

I lie as still as the stillness of the air. I am alive and alone, The bed is a dead thing

Bloated and floating frowzily on a river of melted wax.

I am alive and alone.

I am alone and alive.

The rain leaves for a little while. The breeze does not return.

BLUE PLATE SPECIAL Russell Thayer

Maggie could almost hear the unlubricated gears screeching against each other inside Eve’s brain as the girl began to speak.

“Mrs. Bragana says y’all was a Jap prisoner.”

After rolling her eyes to their full extent, Maggie steered them toward Eve. The new waitress didn’t speak to her very often, but the gooey drawl of her hillbilly tongue, and the idiotic things she said when she did open her ugly mouth, encouraged Maggie to drive the tip of a long knife into the well-oiled board upon which she was chopping celery into fine bits for soup. She ground the tip slowly, turning the blade side to side until a rough shard of wood cleaved off.

“As you can plainly see, Eve, I do not possess an Oriental face. In fact, I am as pale as you are, with red hair and blue eyes. I fear we’re both drawn from the same European stock. However, since you brought up this painful topic from my recent history, I will tell you that I was a prisoner of the Japanese for a few years, if that’s what you meant to ask, and I wasn’t raped by any of their soldiers, if that’s what you’re going to ask me next.” That question often came right away, pouring out of curious strangers once they got wind of her past in the Philippines.

“I weren’t gonna ask that. That ain’t my business.” Eve took a cigarette from behind her ear, lighting it with the remains of the previous one. “You sure like to talk above me.”

It wasn’t hard. And was Eve judging her? Good heavens! Eve with her moldy teeth, still bright at the tips but an earthy shade of brown near the festering gums. Maggie imagined herself pushing them over one by one with her finger, like rotting fence posts. It didn’t help that Eve stood with her mouth open most of the time, breathing in raspy gusts, her breath as foul as the gas oozing from a bloated corpse disturbed at the side of a hot jungle road.

“Is it even possible for you to breathe around your septum?” Maggie asked. The stupid girl would have no idea.

“I dunno.”

“Through your nose,” said Maggie, with a smirk.

“No, ma’am, not much anyhow. Done been broke too many times.” Eve smiled for some reason.

“Don’t call me ma’am,” said Maggie. “I’m younger than you are, in case you hadn’t noticed, and we’re both waitresses here, making the same wages, as galling as that sounds.”

Eve just stood there, stupid, on the opposite side of the steel table, assembling salads in the kitchen before the dinner rush claimed their time, making eyes at the new dishwasher, a muscular Italian boy bent over the deep sink, his thick black hair shiny with grease or sweat.

“Ain’t he cute?” said Eve in her strident voice, knowing the boy could hear her. He moved his broad shoulders unnecessarily as he scrubbed at a pot with steel wool and cleansing powder.

Maggie flicked her cigarette into a garbage pail.

“Yes, and he looks quite capable of breaking your nose again, if that’s what interests you.”

Eve turned her enormous green eyes toward Maggie.

“What y’all talkin’ ’bout?” The curve of her high, pale cheeks seemed to darken, and Maggie almost felt mean for hating her.

“Never mind.”

Eve came from Tennessee, another dumb hick left behind in San Francisco after the long war detonated to a fiery end in the skies above Nagasaki. She’d worked in a munitions factory before peacetime set her free, and she couldn’t find her way back to Tennessee because she probably couldn’t read a map, if she could read at all. Her nose leaned to one side, giving her a thrown-away quality that most likely wasn’t far off the mark. Her teeth rotted in her head, her breath like poison, but Maggie could see from the rest of the tall girl, by the way she wore her yellow uniform, the buttons straining at her chest like the painted women on the covers of the pulp novels Maggie sometimes took off the rack at the back of the pharmacy, by the wide curve of her hips, the soft lemon curls, that for all her observable faults, she had a carnal effect on men that Maggie never would possess. Her own uniform, the color of mustard, hung limply over a thin frame that had been compared more than once to that of a young boy. The owner of narrow sarcastic lips, Maggie marveled at Eve’s heavy pair, lips men would ache to kiss, to feel on their bodies. Movie-star lips. Maggie scrubbed her pits and crotch every morning in an attempt to smell fresh when she came to work, and she’d tried to cut down on the cigarettes, but that didn’t mean much to a world in heat. Being refined didn’t matter at all. No one cared what clever thing she said or how well she played the piano. Personal evaluation was rendered now by the amount of tingle one felt between the legs. It was that kind of a world.

And Maggie knew Eve earned better tips.

“You are the stupidest girl I’ve ever known,” Maggie said, her finger in Eve’s face. “Can’t you even add up two lines of a check properly? Why do I have to do all your thinking for you? That bowl of minestrone soup has more intellect. OW. GOD DAMN IT.”

The sudden jolt of pain made Maggie snap her head around. Mrs. Bragana had flicked the back of her ear with one of her muscular fingers.

“You leave-a dat girl alone. She have a hard life. As hard as you, you proud thing.”

Maggie thought about rolling her eyes, which she often did with great exaggeration, but Mrs. Bragana held a ladle in her hand, and that could sting Maggie’s bony arms.

Rubbing the throbbing cartilage at the side of her head, she decided she’d start wearing her hair down over her ears if the woman was going to appear behind her back every time she rebuked an incompetent fellow worker.

“You apologize to Eve. You be nice to her or I kick-a you out on the street.”

“I really doubt she’s had a harder time of it than I have.”

“You go make-a nice or I kick-a you out.”

Maggie rolled her eyes finally.

“Please don’t kick-a me out. Jesus Christ.”

She shared the apartment above the restaurant with Mrs. Bragana, working nearly every hour of every day for the old thing. They tended to treat each other like mother and daughter, which meant they often bickered out of love. Eve lived in a rough boardinghouse on Van Ness, but had struck the restaurant owner in a profound way, almost as much as Maggie had. Maggie knew that Mrs. Bragana would never kick her back out onto the street, that the restaurant would cease to function if the woman fired her smartest waitress, but she turned up her nose and marched over to where Eve now stood facing a wall by the toilet, out of earshot, her head down, cigarette burning in her fingers. Maggie tapped a shoulder, and when Eve turned to pout down at the freckled face, Maggie whispered a filthy joke she’d learned from a man standing over her as she sat at the bar of the Can-Do Club one evening, cadging drinks while waiting for the music to start. She figured Eve would understand the joke because it was crudely graphic in the description of a man’s genitalia, and Eve must have seen a lot of that. Maggie was hardly surprised when the tall woman guffawed, laying an arm across Maggie’s shoulders while coughing out an atomic cloud of cigarette smoke.

When Maggie turned, looking for approval, Mrs. Bragana nodded, the apology acknowledged. Maggie then made a slight curtsy toward the woman, who groaned as she returned to the dining room.

“Cain’t we be friends?” Eve asked, smiling down at Maggie. “I can look after y’all. And y’all can look after me.”

“I can’t imagine the circumstances where I’d need your looking after,” said Maggie with a sigh, “but it’s a deal, as long as my ears are left in peace by the both of you.”

Mr. Mancini winked at Maggie as she set a plate of veal in front of him. She didn’t mind the customers flirting with her, especially the ones who tipped like Mr. Mancini. The man liked her for some reason, though he only winked, never touching her bottom, which was something the other waitresses often complained about. He probably couldn’t spot her rump under the limp folds of her uniform.

Suddenly, Maggie had an idea. Mr. Mancini had mentioned once that he made his money while bent over a dentist’s chair. Maggie dropped into the seat opposite him, a bold move in Mrs. Bragana’s highly respectable establishment, looking over her

shoulder with mock jumpiness, to show Mr. Mancini that this was a moment of major significance. The man appeared to be in his late thirties, thin, with dark hair just turning to gray over his ears. He had once mentioned to Maggie quite pointedly that he was unmarried, though she wasn’t sure she believed him. He didn’t really want her, but she never fought back when he made off-color suggestions. Tips were tips.

“Mr. Mancini, sir, you’re a dentist if I remember correctly. Is this true?”

“Why yes, my dear. I didn’t think you cared.”

“I’ve just begun to.” Maggie studied his face. “You don’t look like the sort of man who would hit a woman out of frustration with her blind stupidity.”

“What does a man like that look like, I wonder?”

“He looks like the sort of man who would have to deal with me.”

“I see,” said Mr. Mancini. “What are you getting at? And I would never hit a charming girl like you if we become friends.”

“I’m much more interested in whether there’s anything that can be done for teeth that seem to be rotten at the roots?”

Mr. Mancini stared back at Maggie with confusion.

“Your teeth look healthy to me. Is the crookedness affecting your bite? I could recommend a man to help you straighten them with wire bands. I have to warn you, though, that the treatment is an expensive and somewhat uncomfortable ordeal.”

“Thanks for your professional observations, but I wasn’t talking about my mouth.”

“Who then, my dear?” Mr. Mancini smiled.

Eve hovered over two elderly women at the next table. Maggie pointed her eyebrows toward the waitress, turning to watch Eve walk away, hips rolling like the swells off the beach at Sunset Park.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “The new girl. Magnetic physical appearance. Pity about her teeth.”

“Could you do anything for her?”

“I suppose so. It may be costly. Especially if we have to consider false teeth. Can she pay for it?”

Maggie leaned forward in the chair, putting her hands on the dentist’s thighs under the table. He twitched, his eyes growing wide with attention, but didn’t push her hands away.

“May I tell you something, sir?” she whispered.

Mr. Mancini wiped his lips with the red-and-white checkered napkin from his lap, then nodded.

“She likes men a whole lot more than I do.”

“I see. What exactly are you proposing?”

“I’m not proposing,” said Maggie. “I’m promoting, if you get my drift.”

“Are you her manager?”

“Let’s just say I have all of our interests at heart.”

Mr. Mancini swallowed awkwardly. “How old are you, if I may ask?”

“I’ll be nineteen in four months.”

Though Maggie did not believe in miracles, certain that everything in her life happened for a discoverable reason, she clasped her hands together in mock piety when she discovered, while looking at the restaurant work schedule one afternoon, that she and Eve both had the day off on the Friday following Thanksgiving. The reason for this miracle was that Mrs. Bragana had decided to close the restaurant in order to visit a sister in Oakland.

It wasn’t hard to convince Eve, who appeared to have no friends or family, to come out shopping with her best girlfriend that Friday afternoon, though neither of them had money to squander on new things.

After pawing through the stockings and pocketbooks at the City of Paris department store on Union Square, Maggie suggested they take a bus west to Fillmore Street and grab some lunch at the Balboa Cafe. She offered to pay for Eve’s meal, which made the girl smile and nod with excitement. Eve admitted that she hadn’t been out to lunch with anyone female in years.

“Are you seeing someone?” Maggie asked casually after the two of them were seated in a booth by the front window of the Balboa, then offered menus and a plate of cut bread with butter pats.

“Huh?”

Maggie finished chewing a bite of bread, then swallowed, then took a sip from her water glass, then coughed delicately into her fist.

“Is there a man in your life?”

“You mean like a boyfriend?”

“Yes,” said Maggie. “Congratulations. That’s exactly what I mean.”

Eve made a cheerless face, turning it toward the window. “Naw. My last man run out on me three months ago. I ain’t had a tumble since.”

“That’s a very sad story. You’re a pretty girl. You should grab every opportunity for love.”

“Anybody ballin’ you regular, Miss Maggie?”

“That’s none of your business, Eve.”

“Sorry.”

They picked up their menus at this awkward point and became interested in the wide assortment of non-Italian dishes on display. Maggie was grateful that she didn’t have to embarrass Eve by telling her to turn the menu right side up.

Growing a little anxious about the timed arrival of Mr. Mancini, Maggie scanned

the restaurant around the sides of her menu. The man was a dentist. He ought to respect the concept of keeping an appointment.

A middle-aged waitress stood with her hand on her hip, glaring out the front window, tapping her pencil on the table as she waited for Maggie to order. Maggie slowly read each item on the menu out loud, one eye cocked for the appearance of Mr. Mancini, who arrived just in time to save her the four dollars she would otherwise have to spend on lunch for herself, and of all people, Eve. Mr. Mancini soon spotted Maggie, waving like an idiot before ambling toward the table with exaggerated nonchalance.

“Mr. Mancini? Is that you?” Maggie snagged his passing wrist. “What a surprise. Would you join us for lunch?” She giggled. “Every time we see you, it’s in a restaurant.”

“Why, hello, Maggie. Good heavens! And Eve. You’re both looking very pretty today. Certainly, I’ll join you, if I’m not interrupting your silly girl talk.”

Maggie slid out, letting Mr. Mancini squeeze in on her side of the booth.

“Are you folks ever gonna order?” asked the waitress.

“Give us a few minutes, please,” Maggie said as she took a seat next to Mr. Mancini, dismissing the waitress with a wave of her fingers. The waitress stormed away, incensed, unlikely to return any time soon.

“What brings you young ladies out on the town?” asked Mr. Mancini. “Am I tipping you too much?” He laughed. Maggie rolled her eyes. Eve looked frightened.

“We’re not slaves,” said Maggie. “We have lives, as simple as they may seem to you.”

“Ah, the noble waitress.”

“I won the Far East Chopin Piano Competition in Shanghai when I was just thirteen.”

Mr. Mancini glanced at Eve.

“What are you going to order, my dear, now that it’s your turn to be waited on?”

Eve picked up her menu, every thought probably gone from her head. She stared at Mr. Mancini. Then she smiled. It was done.

“My goodness.” Maggie rubbed her temples. “A severe headache has come upon me rather quickly. I think I’m going to trot home to my bed.” She sighed as she stood, watching Eve’s face grow fearful again. “Mr. Mancini, can I trust you to get Eve home safely?”

“Of course, you can. We’ll have a nice lunch here, and then maybe Eve will agree to take a walk with me up Telegraph Hill.”

Maggie intended to kill a few hours playing the piano in the apartment before making a little dinner for herself in the deserted kitchen.

“Oh, I think Eve would love a walk,” she said. “She has very strong legs.”

On a slow spring afternoon, in a corner of the quiet kitchen, Maggie leaned against the dish caddy, holding a heavy white coffee mug in both hands, staring at the wall.

Mrs. Bragana breezed into the room, tying an apron behind her back.

“Eve just telephone, tell-a me she quit. She pregnant. She getting-a married to that dentist what fix-a her teeth. Mr. Mancini. I no believe it.”

Maggie took a long sip, then set the mug on the metal counter.

“I hope it lasts, I really do, but girls like Eve are the Blue Plate Special of love.”

“Eh? Sometimes you make-a no sense. No wonder you got-a no husband.”

“A cheap meal changed daily,” said Maggie, feeling her tart analogy turning into weak tea.

Mrs. Bragana sighed with impatience, shaking her head. “And when-a you done with your daydream, you put-a the WANT HELP sign in window. We need a new girl. Pronto.”

“Why don’t we just forget the sign, Mrs. B.,” said Maggie, giving the coffee mug a little spin. “I’m the only help you’ll ever need.”

“A Crowded Room” Max Smith-Hambright

“Frogger” James Reade Venable

“Water” Ria Anand

COHABITATION

Marie-Andree Auclair

“Don’t worry, spiders, I keep house casually”

Kobayashi Issa, translated by Robert Haas

You hold the silence of the place better than I do: I sing, clang dishes inhabit a space where noises shout and at times whisper the boundaries.

I like you, holding the ceiling with a delicate weave, as if walls and ceiling needed strands of conversation and you, an eye on me.

I like you, keeping secrets I spilled all winter long. Come spring, I hesitate to let you live, because of the shame of your life, or the guilt of your death. Guests will pass judgement on my housekeeping so I yield to the customs of my peers.

I climb on a stool, wobble, stretch to catch you in a glass and free you in the garden, near the azaleas. Will this move hurt you? I watch you tiptoe away on dancer’s legs without a glance back.

“Us and Ours” Brooke Germain

TOGETHER IN TIME

Percy Neavez

I asked you once why we never seem to stay angry with each other when we argue. Our teeth bared, our blood boiling. Bickering wolves, snarling. You repliedTime.

We learned how the other fought a long time ago and now we know our cues, like rehearsing for a play. I move.....You move. Then, we move. Together. I sighed because I expected your answer - Time. But there never seems to be enough of it anymore. Not for me at least. My hourglass is half empty- more and more these days. Sand filling the bottom to its brim before I can take one more breath. Creating a: wall, barrier, dividebetween where I want to be and where I find myself now, beneath the surface, sinkingwith my arms outstretched. You surprised me then and said that- Time, was only part of it. Exhaled and whispered, Trust. It’s something that we’ve built together with Time. But, let’s not rest any laurels on Its head quite yet. Our shoulders brushing and our feet grounded against the asphalt, you continuedEven more hushed now, cradling the words as they made their way out.

I Trust that when I get upset and voice my opinion, you won’t stop being my friend because of it. When we first met all those years ago we would have described that as a prayer, but somewhere along the way we learned better. We now recognize it for what it really is. A promise that we keep to each other. Over and over again. So we take our cues, I move....You move. Then, we move. Together.

My love–––

I don’t prefer you straightjacketed

felinity facsimiled put so prosaically together

You asked me once, “What is a bird?”

Then coughed up a yellow feather

Nothing is absurd!

Not even the weather–––

Or the way in which a dream absconds with memory Swim, swam, swum

I am a verb

(My life has not gone swimmingly)

What a pity to be pitted Of the petty & pearlescent

Salamandrian quintessence Of the salinizing soul

Stripped of my credentials & become so pestilential

I plead I plead I plead For all the world’s fool’s gold

The tidy final Full stop (.)

Or ex nihilo Exclamation (!)

But if you can Please do withhold

The bet-hedging Semicolon (;)

I cannot wait I have to go

Bereft of second chances I won’t be pugilized by glances

Here in The whirl and throw

A saint eaten by lions

Uttering the famous last words

“Live, blossom, dwell”

Before ceasing to be

“Untitled” Richard Hanus

HAZEL EYES

Robert Qualls

They begin in the purest of ivory, those concentric worlds, unflecked with angioma or shots of blood. And inside a ring of the purest cerulean, blue bestowed only by the skies.

Inside, it gathers into a green that would be the rival of Amazonia as seen from the moon, the pulse almost pounding “los tambores del corazón.”

Inside, an iris around her soul, a total eclipse of the sun. And in that blackest disc, you believe you see your future.

The aurora around it, the corona of solar mass ejections in purest amber, hints of vermillion, spice of cinnamon.

In that amber, one ancient organism is trapped to live in suspended animation. And if you should peer inside, it looks very much like your heart.

THINGS I AM

OF: Nichole Zachary

AFRAID

Birds. Toxic Shock Syndrome. Bodily Fluids. Horses. Back acne. My old Bedroom’s crawl space. Driving. Men With “dark humor.” Debt. Men. Moldy White bread. Loud noises. Goodbye without a planned hello again. Failure. That silent moment after you Say I love you. Not loving you. Death. Cole slaw. Loving you. The raw edges of an opened can. The raw edges of everything else.

“Smoke Day” Eva Shipley

Michael Ansara

September 2005

1. On the Dock

The dock splits the surface of two worlds, the illusion of calm; ambient energy imprisoned in the amber, swirls below; above, a black lab stretches long into the risen sun; first rays refract around my wife, her every fluid motion forming a lapping golden nimbus, rapidly undone; under the surface, her naked blur a slow, white wavering flag.

In the serene, caressed in the smoothing sheen of that morning, our privileged pores quiver, alive, oblivious to the coming shattered end of this summer: lives left; lives lost.

2. There it is, then: Stay ignorant enough and you can be anything. When what’s slow doesn’t slow, but rises; when for four days and four nights, there is no ark, and when those always behind are left, the cost becomes visible and stark, at all times, paid by others in the arithmetic of the heart. And every word will be written down, and what exactly is wrong.

3. The rain after the flood Butterflies gather again, 60 million in the mountains of Mexico, riding thermals three thousand miles to find each other, pulsing to the beat of the sun.

The bent birches, white and winter-bowed, warmed by the first days of spring, will shed their snow loads, sometimes rising fresh and impolite.

The surprising strength of your back, dappled to my touch, capable of inciting a moment within me of the infinite.

I cling to these few facts, still: rains follow the flood; fires race after waves; denial after the deaths

HARVEST

Holly Day

we found the tomatoes grew best in the cemetery sending their thick roots deep into the soil, wrapping thickly-furred cilia between sinew and bone, found new life in places left for the dead.

we threw our seeds random between the overgrown plots, hoping the tiny plants would escape the eyes of the caretaker, the blades of his mower the heavy footsteps of other people visiting other graves.

late summer, when the vines rose high climbed around the rough trunks of ancient willows of firs we crept into the graveyard, baskets under our arms collected enough ripe fruit to last through the long, cold winter ahead.

ABOUT TREES

Jane Costain

It’s never been about clouds, those ever-shifting shapes, small tufts fleeting across the sky or large ones creeping by in their soundless escape. They impart little.

Trees remain where they are, casting down their brilliant offerings of blood-crimson and gold. Naked now, bare arms exposed to sky, they stand silent beside the voiceless river. But a time will come when they are clothed in their green swirls, where the wind pauses to whisper, and the river will sing again.

“Gates of the Great Beyond”

Jason Mennel

“The Birds”

Sarah Cryan

I COME FROM A DIFFERENT LAND

Jaqueline Martinez

Not me. Not physically. But who I am.

Who I am, Is the strong burn of ground chiles in a blender, tough to breathe coughing and hacking, water blurring my eyes.

This was home to me.

I am not only the smells but the touch of thick stacked blankets with the animals of all kinds.

Who I am, is a woman who speaks two tongues repressed in one but connects to the homeland in the other.

My hands are partly utensils tortillas, tostadas, and pan and being laughed at for eating the way I do at home.

Impatiently waiting for the clock to strike midnight to sing in a discordant collection of voices

To walk the streets with white candles Sagrado y seguro.

This is home to me.

Who I am, Is watching my father walk down the stairs legs barren and slow from his labor, carrying the weight of academic success to recognize his sacrifice.

I am the collection the never ending one for many generations to come.

The Brushfire is the oldest literature and arts journal at the University of Nevada, Reno. Established in 1950, the nationally recognized, biannual publication provides an opportunity for emerging artists and writers to publish and share their work. Each iteration of the Brushfire strives to represent diversity, originality, and creativity.

As an entirely student-run, UNR organization, the publication is also a creative outlet for University’s student body. It seeks to connect with and promote various art communities throughout Reno while highlighting student pieces. While, each edition primarily contains student and Reno-based work, we continually receive and publish art from across the country. Brushfire welcomes submissions from anyone anywhere.

Brushfire received the 2016 ACP Best-0f-Show Award for Literary Magazine, received an honorable mention for the 2017 Pinnacle Awards, and was a finalist for the 2018 ACP Magazine Pacemaker.

Thank you for reading the first volume of Brushfire’s 75th edition. Our team hopes the poetry, prose, and artwork collected within these pages made you laugh, cry, and—most of all—think. It’s a big hectic world out there, but great art can bring us all a little closer together.

To all of our submitters: we greatly appreciate your creativity, dedication, love for the arts and freedom of expression. You are what makes Brushfire unique.

Again, thank you for your enjoyment of UNR’s literature and arts. We’ve brought the Brushfire to you for 72 years and the fire continues blazing thanks to passionate readers like you.

With your support, 75 more editions of Brushfire await. We couldn’t be more excited.

—The Fall 2022 Brushfire Staff

FALL 2022 BRUSHFIRE STAFF

The Publication Currently Employs 5 Part-Time Student Workers. Meet the Small Dream Team Below!

Editor In Chief

Phoebe Coogle

Hello Brushfire readers! My name is Phoebe Coogle, and I’m an English Literature major, Economics minor here at UNR. Fiction and creative writing are my predominant passions, so I’m extremely excited to serve as Brushfire’s EIC. When I’m not ranting about niche English topics, I enjoy cooking, animation, and, of course, being generally nerdy.

Literary Editor

Abigail MacDiarmid

Hello! I’m Abigail MacDiarmid, the Literary Editor at Brushfire. I am an English Literature major and Mathematics minor at the University of Nevada, Reno. My favorite genres are speculative fiction, magical realism, and gothic fiction, but I am open to any and all types of writing. One thing I love about this position is discovering new perspectives and writing styles. I hope that this journal will inspire all those who submit to not be afraid to experiment because sometimes the weirder, the better.

Visual Arts Director

Danian Arguello

Hey everyone! I’m Danian Arguello, the Visual Arts Director at Brushfire. I’m a Fine Arts major and minoring in Entrepreneurship. I absolutely love art, so drawing and creating take up a lot of my time. Besides art, I love listening to music, hanging out with friends, watching anime, and chilling with my dog named Appa.

PR Manager

Sequoya Casey

Hey there! I’m Sequoya Casey, the PR Manager at Brushfire. I’m majoring in Political Science and Philosophy with a minor in Spanish. Aside from my love for politics and philosophy, I’m very passionate about the arts— particularly music and literature. When I’m not out and about (as I do love a good adventure!), I’m usually immersing myself in a good book. I also enjoy cooking, horseback riding, and hanging out with friends!

Audiobook Producer

Israel Cruz

Greetings everyone! I’m Israel Cruz, Audiobook Producer for Brushfire. I am studying Applied Mathematics while minoring in Music Industry and Japanese. I love sound and anything to do with it and its transformation. When not racking my brain on maths I can barely understand or making some new cacophony I will probably be playing games with friends or trying some new series with my family.

Interested in volunteering, upcoming gallery exhibitions, poetry nights, or other literature-and-arts-related events at UNR?

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BE PUBLISHED IN OUR NEXT EDITION

Yearly, Brushfire publishes a spring and fall volume. We accept poetry, prose, and all printable forms of art from everyone, everywhere. Our deadlines for the spring and fall semesters can be found online.

To learn more about submitting, visit us at unrbrushfire.org