Brushfire Issue #59

Brushfire59 the university of nevada, reno literary arts journal spring 2007

kelly r bridegum, editor sarah corinne king, assistant art editor ashley noĂŤl hennefer, assistant literature editor

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dedicated in memory of Ray Hardin (1964- 2007)

Published by the Associated Students of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Opinions and viewpoints expressed are not necessarily those of the ASUN, faculty, staff, or administration of the University of Nevada, Reno.

Copyright Š 2007 BrushďŹ re and the individual contributors.

All rights are reserved by the respective authors and artists.

Cover design by Kelly Bridegum

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Layout Design by Kelly Bridegum, Sarah King, and Ashley Noel Hennefer Printed by Leopard Printing www.leopardprintmail.com

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”quotes” from the review porcess will appear throughout the book, but do not correlate to any particular piece.

“I think I get it, but I don’t know...”

Art, as in life, ricochets from extreme to extreme while crossing everything in between: from blissful to heartbreaking, frivolous to evocative, and every conceivable variation. While some may fancy the world to be strictly black and white, these artists, writers, poets, and philosophers wittingly and ironically toy, traverse, and question this notion. With topics ranging from the cliché to the unimaginable, no stone is left unturned and no shadow unexplored in this bittersweet odyssey that is edition 59.

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The Brushfire is a unique creature—both charismatic and spine-tingling— hatched by hundreds of artists and writers over the past fifty-seven years with only a select few joining the ranks with each new edition. The talent, zeal, and commitment of these artists and writers have once again rendered me speechless, and I can only hope this edition will capture you with its eclectic charm.

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...introduction

light...

peaceful vivacious encouraging

brithany thomson, Where Tahoe meets Taylor Creek, photograph

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Just as there is no one definition of light, there is no one criterion to label a submission as a light piece. Light may flow from humorous, to a little off the wall, to unique, to emotional, yet still bring a sense of optimism and serenity to the reader. Keep in mind the amorphous nature of light as you delve deeper into the unknown.

—s.c.k.

E-mail to Boyfriend – Currently Ex-Boyfriend From: “R.B” To: “E.M” Subject: Some ideas for you! With Love Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 My Great Words of Wisdom:

matt fong, untitled, photograph

13. Never sleep with someone for a favor 14. Never let a bully strike twice 15. Love is always harder than it feels 16. There is only two ways to justify killing a critter: - if you’re going to eat it - if it wants to eat you 17. Never let a person by the name of “Elliott” know he is winning and usually right.

Adore a man that sings in the shower...

18. The poem ends when the feeling is gone 19. Rumba 20. “Always Be All In”!!!

21. Live to Live Life!!!!!!!!!!!!

His Response:

nick polinko, untitled, pencil on paper

Some Wisdom for YOU! 1. Become friends with someone who’s face does look like a toilet seat....you will be their only friend, so they will buy you stuff!!!!

2. If you’re broke, road kill is cheap 3. If you don’t have a place to stay.... bare ass a highway patrol... and you’re sure to have a roof over your head for at least a night!

4. Snitch on a sibling if your mom gives you a cookie to do it.

5. Why listen to only one? It’s better to hear how much their life sucks!

6. Its much more fun to see the look on your neighbors face when he sees you peeing in your yard 7. The best things in life are simple.

8. Why learn to lap dance if you can go to a club and watch it for free.

9. If you don’t want her…whistle anyways... while she’s looking at you she might run into something!

10. Getting caught between 2 dogs kicking dirt just means you have your face in their butts, so you deserve it!

11. Any body can make gravy..... go to the store... buy it...then add water 12. Mumbling makes you look stupid and the other person deaf...sounds like you both win!

13. Sleep with some one as a favor if they pay for it!

14. Never let a bully strike in the first place!

15. Love is as hard as you make it 16. There is only one way to justify killing a critter: “ I saw it first!”

17. Elliott ALWAYS WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

18. The poem ends when your instructor says so 19. Rumbar...words of an alcoholic when separated rum....bar.... rumbar 20. “Always be you!”

21. Live to eventually die.

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1. Never become friends with someone that has a smile like a cold toilet seat.

2. Don’t eat road kill 3. Don’t bare-ass highway patrol 4. Never snitch on family or friends 5. Try to enjoy at least one country song 6. Avoid living any place you can’t take a piss of the front porch 7. Just because it’s simple doesn’t make it easy.

8. Learn to lap dance 9. If you don’t want her, don’t whistle 10. Don’t get caught between two dogs kicking dirt 11. Anybody can make mash potatoes, but it takes a chef to make gravy 12. Don’t’ mumble and be assertive

bryan christiansen and joel zerr, untitled installation, 3000 latex balloons

Diaspora by jed locquiao

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Whilst eating my cereal, I had a sneeze.

Pieces of cereal ew away from me.

Landing on a table cloth, dribble on my knee; But no matter how far away, still a part of me.

To Tactfully Decline an Entreaty by jed locquiao Flattered as I am, pick up your pants.

Lest I run away really, really fast.

anthony alston, Subsequently, found objects and wood fabrication

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athiwan yaemmuan, Swan Butt, photograph

Paper Lantern Lullaby by linsay oakden Sunshine’s left us for moonlight’s grace the lantern whispers light rice paper shadows paint the walls and quiet the nursery night

kimberly orr, Swingzee, photograph

look to me before you close your eyes blue ovals meet my green

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slow your breath match my pace rock with me and dream

brithany thomson, Sophia Sleeps, photograph

by katie reed mike thomas, Metal, photograph

died of natural causes.

Found floating, belly up under the fourth lily pad down from his last known residence.

His neighbors said he was quiet, reserved, kept to himself, never married, lived alone.

No foul play suspected he was sealed in a black body bag, number four one three.

The autopsy was a standard procedure.

Kermit 413 was unzipped, splayed out and weighed in, six point six pounds.

For the Y incision the coroner passed Kermit to the cute little red-headed intern in row six. She fumbled, unsure of the cold, surgical steel in her hand.

But the first cut sank smoothly through rigid flesh, the second slipped, went through Kermit 413, the latex glove, and her skin bathing Kermit in his final swim.

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Kermit 413

“Should I laugh? I want to laugh, but I’m not sure that’s what they wanted?”

kevin clifford, Energy, photograph

rebecca holmstrom, The Whole Picture, photograph

Mice

by steven berg

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Mrs. Phelps led her son to Mrs. Armstrong’s house. The sun hung like an amulet; birds sang. It smelled like early morning, but it was almost eleven.

“Go play with Johnny outside, Freddie,” said Mrs. Phelps. The boys spun snowflake-like out of the house. The door crashed shut behind them.

Mrs. Phelps fell into Mrs. Armstrong’s arms and they began to kiss.

Mrs. Armstrong’s kisses journeyed all around Mrs. Phelps’s face; her nose, her lips, her cheeks, her neck, her hair; they planted themselves into her dimples like flowers.

They collapsed over one another into a dusty corner. “Be careful, be careful,” said Mrs. Phelps. “This is a new dress. John will notice. He’ll wonder what happened to it.”

“Shhh,” said Mrs. Armstrong. “Shhhh.”

Later they sat still, one of Mrs. Armstrong’s hands cupped on one of Mrs. Phelps’s breasts.

“I hate this,” said Mrs. Phelps, between labored breaths.

“I love you,” said Mrs. Armstrong.

“So do I, but if John… or Arthur—” “Don’t say his name. He isn’t here. Shush.”

“But….”

Mrs. Armstrong silenced her with a long kiss on the mouth.

“Mm,” said Mrs. Phelps.

Then they heard little quiet giggles, like voices of mice, and when they looked up they saw little Johnny and little Freddie, in the doorway, smiles on their faces, pointing.

athiwan yaemmuan, Nostalgia, photograph

rebecca holmstrom, Slipping Through, photograph

Inventory by jed locquiao Sans romance Sans panache Sans maitre d’ nor self-serve for me Sans arable land Sans sensibilities d’un gourmand Sans sans sans ...sans whiteout!

Sans mansuetude Sans comprehension too Sans immortality Sans thighs of proportionality Sans a prodigious captain’s quarters Sans a spice garden for my pestle and mortar So sans tarragon to ground into fine sand° Sans serif typeface—man! ° To eat

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zachary porter, Manzinita Pond in Fall, oil on canvas

Ne Pas Me Dire* by ashley dodge Ne pas me dire que que cette vie est tragique il est juste un beau désordre.

Nous vivons, et nous respirons, à la fin du jour ne pas me dire que cette vie est tragique, son juste un beau désordre. *Don’t Tell Me Don’t tell me that this life is tragic it is just a beautiful mess.

We live, and we breathe, at the end of the day don’t tell me that this life is tragic, its Just a beautiful mess.

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jenny nelson, Untitled, acrylic on canvas

by jeff gesick Is there really any question more difficult to answer for the modern American than, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Everyone knows the old line where a 40 or even 50 year old answers that question by saying they still don’t have a clue. It seems they at least have come to terms with their inability to know or decide. I unfortunately have not and since I am in college where I pay large sums of money to help me get to doing whatever it is that I want, it is a fairly terrifying position.

When I got into college I knew for a fact that I wanted to be a psychologist; I wanted to own my own practice and do one on one counseling, preferably with teens.

After one semester, I discovered that I did not have the patience nor the professional emotional distance required to make it in such a field. I then moved on to wanting to be a teacher, but did I want to teach psychology? No, of course not; I decided that I would teach English because it is fun, I enjoy reading, and I am a stickler for grammar and word variety. After some large personal problems, I rediscovered my faith and decided I wanted to be a pastor in a church. With this new career choice I could continue as an English major and then move on to seminary once I graduated. Unfortunately after a semester and a half or so I realized that I did not know enough about myself or my own beliefs and relationship with God for me to be teaching anyone else about it, so I placed that profession on the back burner and reexamined my plan of becoming a high school English teacher. This seemed safe and fulfilling, yet I was still restless. My next plan of action was to possibly go into editing and publishing after I earned my degree and maybe one day becoming an author myself. While this plan stewed, I became impatient and unsure, once again looking at several different majors that I could see myself taking up, but alas, I felt at the time that I was too far into school to change my path now, especially with my mother breathing down my neck to graduate within four years. I mean I had already plowed through two years of college, granted many of the courses were core requirements, but still, two years! Could I just throw that away on an anxious feeling within me?

These fears kept me on my track as an English major for this last summer, albeit no school, but I am currently in the process of becoming a personal trainer, a career I know I will find exciting, rewarding and thoroughly enjoyable. My only qualm is the pay; one could make a decent living out of being a personal trainer but it would take around 40 hours a week like any other job, but in the profession of personal training, the hours are not conveniently lumped together, oh no, they would be spread out over 10 and 11 hour days for maybe all seven days of the week. Would that really be worth it while trying to start a satisfying life and raising a family? This question plagues me to this moment. I know I could become a teacher and train in the summers or after school, but would I be able to find an acceptable gym that would want that kind of second place dedication? Once again, I have no answer.

Even now, up to this exact second that I am writing this and you are reading this I am still unsure, still impatient and still searching for a calling which college can help me attain. Back when I was examining all of the majors I could see myself enjoying I came across the anthropology major at my school. It looked exciting and rewarding,

even though as with all liberal arts majors, the job prospects upon graduation are shaky. When I was looking at the specializations of the major, I remembered the one anthropology class I took as a diversity requirement my first semester of college. The class itself had been a drawn out two and a half hour, once a week class which was taught by a doctor who only taught the class so she could claim a home base for grant money to do her research; however, she was competent and enthusiastic about her work. I also remembered that I was interested in the content of the class, the different societies and their functions all fascinated me, and I thought to myself, “Yes, this is something I could spend a life studying”. I mean, think about it; the study of the peoples past and present of our world. It is a truly exciting prospect.

Today once again, I was struck by the overwhelming feeling that while I enjoy what I am doing it is neither something I am passionate about nor something that I am fascinated by. I also think that the study of English literature is a little narrow minded and obsolete in the world in which we now reside. So it is with these thoughts, and the excitement I feel when looking at the course options in the anthropology major that I have decided to attempt to sign up for the introductory anthropology classes tomorrow, and if that goes well, then I may very well make an entire life shift into this exciting field. There will be repercussions, and I will be in school longer, but won’t it be worth it if this turns out to be what I was meant to chase after? Is it not worth it to take a little extra time to answer the age old question, “What to I want to be when I grow up?” I think it is, and I am willing to find out. I advise you to do the same.

Having written this, and giving it plenty of time to sit and accumulate any criticism I could level at it, I return to this essay and am still inspired by it. I have learned one or two things since I wrote it however. First, I don’t have one life passion, I have several, no make that many, and I suspect that you do as well. As we “speak” I am compiling a list in my head as well as here life passions, jobs and careers that I want to have. I have included some here for you; I want to own a bar, to own a restaurant of my own invention, I want to teach college students, I want to go on an expedition and study some sort of ancient civilization or animal (perhaps apes and monkeys), I want to work in a national park, I want to write and be published for several different topics and mediums and I want to be a bush pilot in Alaska. These are many of the careers I want in my life many of which I can achieve without college, but that is not the important point. What is important, what is completely essential to the matter of things is that I, you and everyone else needs to follow their very soul in the pursuit of the so mundanely called “work”. It doesn’t matter what your career is or how long you have it as long as you chose something that excites you and challenges you to grow and become a different, wiser person. Do what you want to do, regardless of time or effort to do it. You only live once, try not to waste it playing the economic game of the nation.

So once again, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” I want to be the kind of person who does what they feel utterly compelled to do, the kind of person who doesn’t waste life being afraid of what the economic consequences could be, I want to be a unique, thriving and fighting human being who accomplishes their task whatever it is that they choose their task to be.

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A Life Shift

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kelly bridegum, Duck (from the series Dissected), photograph alex chambers, Untitled, ceramic

addiction. by kelly bridegum Addiction- a compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its consequences.

My addiction: photography. Yes. It is, for me, an addiction. I have to photograph.

I have to photograph. I have to photograph. It is more than an obsession. It is not some insatiable longing after an ethereal idea. It is an addiction. The act of photographing. The act of deciding a scene. The act of printing. The act of mixing chemicals. The act of digital manipulation. The acts of photography. The behaviors of the medium echo in every action I take. The relation or correlation always exists. I will photograph all the time and anytime regardless of the outcome.

Regardless of the cost. Regardless of the time. Regardless of the risks. Regardless of the success. Regardless of the failure. It is essential to my existence. It is photography. It is creative expression. It is an addiction. It is my addiction.

Mirrors

by frances arnold shaw Spirit keeps me alive always fills and provides the reflections of my Mind you know Life is Divine

cause Love works through Truth Positivity is up to you Negativity will just confuse and dilute Love’s good

kelsey page, Untitled, mutli-media

how we live in our minds will materialize I’m not out to dramatize just to open your eyes see, what we believe is what we receive your thoughts are Seeds for either Flowers or Weeds

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kimberly orr, Ascend, photograph

you’d best be believing i’m only receiving returns from my acting so don’t be deceiving

… by david pena

frances arnold shaw, A Sign Divine, photograph

…neither is nor is ain’t in the here or the there since my eyes are a cube of infinite shapes what may or could or would or was maybe shall or should or maybe has when ‘we’ is fake and our fake is your truth it is hard to control the accidental nuke. as we think and grow down on the steel of the tank the social is social at best here at home and the home is at best yet another nuke…again

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why we are no longer they and the same when we pray and we hate and we scre…am we feel what ain’t ain’t. And ain’t ain’t we. what is, simply ain’t. And what ain’t…still ain’t

athiwan yaemmuan, My Manzinita Girls, photograph

Between Two Doors by amelia nickol The white cat sneaks Her steps on glass Proceeding with caution.

I sit.

Between two doors.

The white cat stares Serenely at me Pondering my stillness

anthony alson, Untitled, ďŹ lm still

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diana bernard, Untitled light form, photograph

Beso

by katie reed red and yellow leaves scatter on dry grass, a jack rabbit sits, munching she hears the rustle of sheets as i head to the bathroom.

She pulls her feet in, knees rising to keep away from the chill in the air. Fingers tighten around the sheets, the silver band catching a slice of light, shimmers.

Turning her head she nuzzles the nearby pillow, inhales violet and honeysuckle, and feels the press of mint lips on her cheek.

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“That is such an awesom idea!�

daniel mcgowan, Off Campus, photograph

heather horn, Fall, photograph

The Captain and Messiah by tara dawn connolly With the same mischievous look in our eyes We knew something they didn’t We were destiny It was all part of God’s little plan to see if Two screwed up kids could keep each other out of too much trouble How’s that for a laugh!

Chasing each other around the apartment Screaming at the top of our lungs “DO THE DISHES ASSHOLE!” Or standing on our third floor balcony Throwing them into the dumpster 40 feet below us Because they had turned into living creatures In our opened-once-a-month refrigerator We found sanctuary on that balcony Listening to the Truckee rush past us Concealing the sounds of sobbing Over this and that Something and nothing I drenched your shoulder at least once a month You returned the favor (Don’t try to deny it) I sit alone on the stage at Wingfield now Remembering our inconsiderate practices at 3:00am I sit by the river and feel you there in spirit Telling me about all your “psychotic” girlfriends I sit on the balcony Alone Praying you’ll come home Knowing you’re where you need to be I compose history on six strings in Reno Your six strings compose in New York Twelve perfect silk and steel strings for two imperfect kids Still the same unfinished song

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I was so nervous the day I met you You were my idol My musical hero I never expected you to become my best friend I only wanted our bands to play together Did you ever think such a story would unfold I didn’t There you were Revealing your visions of two imperfect strangers Creating one perfect sound A reality that materialized within days Two bands became one Getting to know each other during the day Composing our history on twelve strings by night Soon working and living together How many days at work did we spend Ripping on each others “significant others” (mine may have been asses but at least they weren’t your materialistic bitches) While pulling shots of espresso Competing to see whose foam was better Of course you won But I was the Mocha Messiah And you were Captain Cappuccino We were superheroes Saving the day one “Iced Non-Fat Caramel White Mocha with Extra Foam” At a time Saving the night one “Rage Against the Machine Meets Simon & Garfunkel Song” At a time Mirror images of each other in every way Always being asked if we were Brother and sister Boyfriend and girlfriend “Hell no!” we would say

tyler mcpherron, Riverwalk, digital compilation

The Circus by gurpreet takher

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athiwan yaemmuan, Tranquility, photograph

Rain drops cascade sideways into my vision, Flooding my perception with wet dreams of fixations, While I sleep open eyed on the wet lawn, In the circus of cement and neo-classical structures, Looking occasionally at your washed away hair color, Leaving the truth of its roots swimming in the rain, And your eyes sluice my heart from its dampness, The world goes quiet in that instance, as my fingers relax, My mouth opens to the onslaught of the gods, Filling my belly with acidic elements, but you move in, Your tongue cloaks my mouth, with its beautiful red guards, Making my heart beat like the thunder that we don’t hear, It races, slides, surfs around on waves of your affection, Tickling my soul with feathers of your soft, short kisses, I wonder of the skies tears will ever come to an end, As the sky turns a darker gray, and while the world goes in, We elect to remain in the ocean of the flood lands, Alone, together, tasting each others pains, fears and loves, We are coming together, while everything else washes away.

The Strangest Emotion by nick flemming

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ben johnson, Sitting, photograph

Love is a very confusing sort of thing, True love sounds like a song we love to sing.

But there are two sides to every story, Not all tales of love end in remarkable glory.

Some end with lots of sadness and tears, And even more pain throughout the years.

Others are terminated with a great big smile, The feeling had been mutual for quite a while.

As for the pain, the thing which hurts the most, Your heart becomes a parasite eating away at its host.

Your mind becomes an uncontrollable beast, Your crazed emotions will be its feast.

You become confused and don’t quite know what is wrong, You realize the journey to the land of love is so very long.

It is full of hidden dangers along the way, Like what may be the right thing to do or say.

Sometimes you will get sidetracked from the road to love, When all hope seems lost you may receive guidance from above.

Somehow you will see a light to guide you back to your path, Something will save you from wandering towards the gloomy wrath.

There is somebody out there for each and everyone, Now finding that person can sometimes be half the fun.

If it doesn’t work on the first try, don’t give up hope, Often it takes more than one try to reach the end of the rope.

Our hearts are fragile things and can easily be shattered, Especially by that person in your mind who really mattered.

But at the same time they can also be quite easy to mend, If you find the right person that to your heart they will tend.

Love is indeed the strangest of all emotions ever to be found, It can send you to an extreme of any other emotion around.

SUPO: An Introduction to Epistemology

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By curtis bradley vickers

Dude sort of looked like a retard, and the tilted table and the convulsions didn’t seem normal. Oh, and lying down on the floor in McDonald’s and twitching is really a weird thing to do if you’re 45. She knelt by him, took his head into her lap and petted his hair. The crowd gathered round and called 911. She wiped the foam from his mouth but couldn’t stop him from rolling his eyes into the back of his head. She held her hand on his forehead until he fell into a deep sleep. She didn’t mind his pockmarks and skunk breath too much.

Pulling his fingers out of the mud, he felt the prickly flesh of an earthworm on his skin, little balls of mud clinging in creases between the segments of the creature. It kind of reminded him of a baby spring roll. It curled around his fingers—tight, tight. He put it in his mouth. A saliva web connected his fingers together. He wondered what it would be like to be a duck.

She used to think of her vagina as a paper cut gone mad. When she discovered that it bled, it didn’t surprise her all that much. It was no tempera paint, but it would do.

When he took a particularly corny shit, he kind of could understand ribbed condoms.

It wasn’t the most fun she had had, but Charlie sort of deserved it. What with his helmet head, acne, and ever-sinking gray eyes. “Charlie, I love you. Charlie, you’re gorgeous. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Smoochy, smoochy, smoo.” It was an epistemological miracle, but true nonetheless that she could see the moment when he understood the ruse. Something like that starts inside but can’t hide itself long. Yeah, she cried that night. But she laughed tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and….

So, yeah okay, he probably deserved it when his black bear hamster, Spotty, made his foreskin bleed. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when two little bubbles of yellow pus formed at the tip of his penis, he thought to himself: No, that wasn’t a good idea, after all.

She spent a good year on it. Her fingers callused over. Her knuckles kind of had a pre-rheumatoid arthritic feeling and would sometimes lock into place. But it was a good year. And when her nylon strings held their notes out—out, quietly, powerfully—and the conductor stopped looking at her breasts to nod approval, she smiled. My dear, your fingering is lovely, just lovely. Yes, she thought, yes and you don’t know the half of it. She imagined the conductor fucking his hand and thinking of her breasts. That was the night she had her first erection.

Times were tough and he didn’t really think he’d want to have one of his own anyway, so he borrowed Ivan’s dildo and wondered what it was he had to wash off of it. He was pretty sure it wasn’t good. A few weeks later he found himself scratching his asshole to no relief. Probably should have splurged on a new one.

It’s true—or so the evidence indicates—only a mother can nurse a child.

For a week in 2003, his driver’s license read “Mike Hunt.” He showed it to his mother, who had just experienced a man digging her entire uterus out like it was hard-pack ice cream. She didn’t like the name and he changed it back, with the addition of the words “His Highness” at the end.

She was walking down the street one day, and this guy in a trench coat called her. She looked. He grinned his best Steve Buscemi grin and flung out his junk. She caught his eye and thought, I can handle this.

One day while watching Schindler’s List, he coughed and felt his sphincter/ prostate/something else rise. He wished he could talk to Plato to set the record straight: Man is a unity. Instead, he laughed and his sphincter/prostate/something else danced.

Liam Neeson didn’t seem to mind.

The first time she smoked marijuana she caught her hair on fire. She laughed and rolled off the roof.

Enough. It was enough that he had wasted the last hour and a half listening to an ABD Ph.D. give his spiel about the Salt River and the incredible luck he’d had to have the Mesa room of the Mesa Public Library to document the irrigation habits of Mesans. In fact, the pain might have been alleviated by something more than an oral presentation of the man’s bibliography. When a break with free refreshments was offered, he stuffed his cheeks, pockets, and meaty paws hamster-style with as many chocolate chip cookies as he could and ran out the door.

A 16-year old, moving in the opposite direction, yelled to her friend, Damn they’re eating all the cookies, and increased her velocity.

Stupid Until Proven Otherwise. She had just received her DDS when a three-inch rubber ball came flying at her. She jumped to kick it and in the hubbub the ball landed beneath her right foot, at which point she slipped and broke her assbone.

Stupid Until Proven Otherwise. Ropes hang from ceilings for various reasons. In this case, the rope was the means of admission into the attic of his grandmother’s house and it even had a knot tied at the end of it for easy handling. It was indeed within a few inches of his head, and he wondered what else he could open the attic access with. He wore dentures the rest of his life.

Human flesh is surprisingly resilient. However, when she dropped a needle on a lightly sedated patient, it stuck directly into her chest, just to the left of her sternum. The patient regained consciousness to the sound of the dental hygienist’s voice: Oh my god!

It was perhaps a good thing in the long run. At the time, though, it looked like a bloody brainball soup. And so when he was called in to extract the brainbits, clean the elevator, and remove the stench, he finished his pizza, downed a glass of apple juice, and wrote himself a note for later: Polydent Doritos milk bread apples oranges ice cream green beans hand sanitizer deodorant toilet paper. To his regret, he forgot to put condoms on the list. When the last bit of brain had been sealed in the last of the ten-gallon drums and the fur balls, which he thought probably weren’t from the woman but which he gathered up out of good will anyway, had been disposed of, he could have sworn that someone winked at him. True, women like a man in uniform, but a full-body hazardous-materials get-up isn’t exactly Air Force blues. He put his junk in her trunk that night and had to apologize

“I know its a clicke, but its beautiful...”

her clothes in and improvised. Crouching and creaking next to the sudsy water, she felt a little like a Vermeer painting. Of course, the ringing of her cell phone destroyed that illusion. Then she realized her destiny. She was in fact Rosie the Riveter, her thickvein-laced ostensibly-lesbian muscles rippling, bulging, and throbbing. Charlie couldn’t do this. He’d call a plumber and mope around eating Cheetos until the burly woman came to his rescue. The feeling of empowerment, though, was a little lessened when she discovered wads of dried up toilet paper on her skirts. She decided that it was too hasty of her to use a toilet brush to stir the laundry.

When he found himself on his deathbed, his family surrounding him like he was a quarterback in a huddle. He smiled at each of them, passing on some secret thought that only they could understand, and felt himself growing translucent. Thoroughly convinced that he had made amends for all of his trespasses, he began to feel the putrefaction of the soul that, he imagined, preceded death. He said, Huh, and felt satisfied, even content. And as death wrapped itself around him, he thought to himself, This dying stuff ain’t so ba

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that what she had seen him cleaning up earlier wasn’t his doing. She moped around a bit, rubbed herself on his dripping penis awhile, and then kicked him in the nuts and left.

It was perhaps a good thing in the long run. At the time, though, it looked like a bloody brainball soup. She assured her guests that it was in fact cow flesh, extracted from an animal whose throat had been slit after his head shot in at pointblank (which sort of made the animal stagger but not die due to the imprecision of the marksman), that the cow’s flesh had been sanitarily stripped from its bones and skull (which would make a great soup the next day, by the way) and had passed through a series of amazingly efficient and fast rotating blades until it was the consistency of thick toothpaste and looked like a pile of pink worms. It was out of this product, she assured her guests, that their meal had been formed. After her guests left, she was surprised by how large the Tupperware had to be to hold her leftovers.

He couldn’t, in fact, stick it inside the vacuum.

She felt a little lightheaded at first. It was a long way down and there was no assurance that what lay beneath the blue blanket was more blue blanket and not a thousand sharp rocks ready to crush and pierce her ribcage and liver. It was a thought she thought she had to at least acknowledge and so turned to her friend, kissed her hand, and told her that her Back to the Future trilogy was all hers, you know, if something happens. She inched her way out a little bit farther, felt the smallest rocks man knows stick between her toes and raised each foot in succession to fling the bastards off. She took one last breath and dove into the sky and into the water, the one being a dry precursor of the next. And she swam, felt the contents of her lungs spill out of her face and follow her to the surface of the water. She smiled and raised her feet to the water’s level as she gently rowed herself backward, wet hair clinging to her cheeks and forehead. She felt warm all over, said it was beautiful, thought she was beautiful, and realized it was the same thing.

That’s what one does with zits. One pops them. But when zits multiply seemingly of their own accord, lay claim to two or three inches of one’s skin, and congregate in the dozens on one’s perineum and scrotum, and seem to have a morning commute, you probably shouldn’t pop them. In fact, attempting to pop these kinds of zits makes them angry, he discovered one day, needle in hand, and turn the relatively sun-seeking beasts into Jacques Cousteau divers, which whatever it means is decidedly not good.

The first time she made love, she felt the semen seeping out of her vagina.

She told her lover that they never told her about that and could he pass her a towel.

Ayn Rand. It sort of sounded like the name of some sex-less toothless biddy hag.

But what the hell, huh, it was $2,500, after all. So what if the beast of a book was damn near a thousand pages. He could handle her. So from the months of June through August, he dutifully settled in and tried to find the answer to the question of who John Galt is. In response to the contest’s question, he wrote an epic poem, for which was granted a form letter rejection slip folded quickly enough that it appeared to be a mirror image of itself with, as a consolation prize, a copy of Rand’s paperback Philosophy: Who Needs It? which prompted him to wonder: Ayn Rand: who needs it?

When her washing machine broke, she ran hot water into her tub, dumped

The Ocean Cliff by laurel topken There is a cliff in California that is most inviting to all who gaze upon it.

Don’t let it fool you.

It cannot be conquered it will conquer you.

The ocean looks peaceful until you are high above clinging to the cliff then it becomes angry.

That is when you realize that you are not in charge.

You are at the mercy of the cliff and the will of the ocean.

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jacquelyn fuzell, Illusion, photograph printed on canvas

“

�

Painting is an emotional reaction which brings me something unexpected.

featured artists...

Untitled, painting

Untitled, painting

artist name: Keiko Kominami medium of choice: Painting, drawing major: Anthropology year: Senior recent work: Portraits and still-lifes inuences: Daily life; people I meet; emotions life makes me feel, especially from the skies.

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Untitled, painting

...grey

Bodie by julien pellegrini (3-31-2004)

indistinct, somber, livid jaded, shadowed, uncertain

Grey is that one shade you can never define, the one tone that is neither light nor dark, the one color that forever exists somewhere between extremes. It’s where most of life’s circumstances and emotions lie., where most of our most common thoughts and feelings live when we don’t know what to make of them. The pieces you will see on the following pages represent the abstraction of grey—the complexity of emotion, the pull of nostalgia, the sadness of finality, the optimism of acceptance. Grey represents the strange, surreal, and uncertain, but ultimately, the beauty and magic of everyday life

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—a.n.h

Dog-eared cards came to rest where dust and rust lust solitude, Bottles on shelves age near tarnished yellow newspaper pages Lay torn and contorted behind a rotting bar table once polished, Dances in afternoon shadows distend across a scattered tile floor.

Fine attire, evening campfires, and summer days bleach in old photographs, Brush invades, palisades and stockades decaying shops down empty streets, Broken glass, square nails, dusty winds wail in to rest on billiards tables, The story’s end blurs, people’s names fade with newspaper words, Empty shops gaze through vacant broken eyes at empty gusty streets.

Ax heads and red brick vestiges rest in the tranquil pinion hills, Where bygone voices persist to exist, echo off high basaltic ridges, Weathered saddles rot, cracked blackened leather turns to cold desert dust.

Starlight campsites rust red-orange tinge, purple bottle chards lay scattered in the wind, Sun cascades to shadow their vain desert abode where coyotes roam and old memories wane.

Through broken windows and open doors, across empty lots, and vacant city blocks, Eyes long since laid to rest investigate our evanescent presence pass by, Long desert nights pacifies time, forgotten faces fade in darkening twilight Empty wagons rot, their past withers and dies, saddle blankets fray, pages fade.

They defy forgotten time, prevail in rusty relics of former generations gone by, Reminiscent winds scour afternoon desert flowers grow gracefully through wagon wheel rays, Down the sandy washes they rode and snow-capped hills they strode, Buckskins and bays they tamed, rock pile graves they laid, Horseshoes thrown, mills rose, railroads strewn and empty dismal buckboard beds, Unfilled pipe bowls and dog-eared cards laid to rest where settling dust facilitates age, Unexplainable passing generations, conglomerations, decades engage imaginations Spirits, breezy gusts, ghostly breathes polish doorknobs and sterling bridles, Bottles on shelves, and dusty tables where dog-eared cards lay and decay…

Nobody Surfs In Fallon by ben johnson It’s the last time I will chase tumbleweeds Out from under my departed grandmother’s trailer.

No more castles of gravel in the driveway.

Or hunting lizards in the miles of sagebrush.

No more Styrofoam noodles at the community pool.

Not ever another farmer’s tan.

When Principal Kent introduces us I don’t throw my cap, I smile big, and leave the big crowds on the field.

It’s the last time I will see Mr. Rippee’s boat in his driveway.

It’s not seen water since before I was born.

At the cemetery, I pay respects to my lost family.

I kiss goodbye to fields of Green Waves, and head west to blue ones.

My truck is bed stacked with milk crates of a few most precious mementos.

Wrestling trophies, photographs, my dad’s old 12-guage shotgun.

Those good ol’ days by joaquin rafael roces When mom worked three jobs, and was never home; dear ol’ dad was always drunk, wasted, or stonedthose were the good ol’ days.

Growing up on a dirt lot and a trailer home with blackened eyes and broken bones.

Those were the good ol’ days.

My wasted youth... and wicked, wicked ways; with every limp and flinch Oh yes, I remember those good ol’ days.

The rest of the class of 2007 will be trapped in the undertow of this two-cow town, Working at the Dairy Queen, getting pregnant, marrying young, Never leaving what they’ve called home all their lives.

Counting all of their “what-if ’s” at our 10-year reunion.

As I roll out of town, my white, rusty, pickup hiccups past Harry’s used cars, I will never again eyeball the “low-miles,” “price-reduced,” red 97’ Camaro.

I look into my cracked rear view as I peel off my turtle-green robe, Throw it out the window, and drive out of this town for the last time.

I tell myself that no matter how hard it is, that it’s better than Spending my life never knowing how it feels

kimberly orr, Virginia, photograph

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To float quietly on a nine foot plank in the Pacific Ocean Waiting with a local boy, to ride a four-foot roller.

Driving Lessons

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by linsay oakden He was always gone by the time I got out of bed on weekday mornings.

Sometimes I could hear him long before the sun came up. I could hear him crumpling old newspapers into the fire place, warming the house before the rest of us left our quilts. I could hear him stir his coffee, clinking the metal spoon against the sides of his chipped ceramic cup. Later I would hear the start of the old farm truck and the grinding and shifting of gears as he left our dirt driveway. Hours after, walking to the school bus stop, I would follow the tire marks of the GMC like a balance beam, walking in his tracks.

He spent his weekdays working as an electrician in a plant on the outskirts of town. He spent his weekends catching up on a week worth of farming. For me, the weekend offered little time for sleeping in. If we were not irrigating, branding, or wood splitting, there were always weeds to pull, pens to build and animals to feed. Life on the farm offered few vacations. I usually woke up to a litter of dogs jumping on my bed at his encouragement. Before I could even pull the covers over my head he would ask, “You want to come help me, hon’?” which wasn’t really a question, since he never waited for my answer. My tasks were often minimal and boring. I would hold a flashlight over a tractor engine, pick up the Russian Olive limbs, or paint the panels on the corral gate.

While my sisters and I always tired of the farm chores and were back in the house well before sunset, my father had to be tracked down and called in to dinner and was gone again before the table could be cleared, trying to squeeze in one last chore before it was too dark to see. While we ate our meals, he would watch the news. We knew to be silent when the weather was on, and not to fight or complain about the meal. No one ever wanted to hear, “I’ll give you something to cry about.” But through all of his stern warnings, he was still harmless, sometimes exchanging his furrowed brow for a good belly laugh.

While daylight occupied his time with equipment maintenance, vaccinations, and crop work, there were a few occasions when he would break from the fence building to join us in the swimming hole. Our own irrigation-made pool offered a sandy bank and a hard clay platform to jump from. My sister and I wore our swimsuit handme-downs and dime store nose plugs while performing intricate synchronized swimming routines. We would erupt in excited laughter when Dad would near the swimming hole.

His unnaturally white legs were exposed by his old jean cut-offs. He took quick careful steps with tender bare feet. My sisters and I would squeal with delight when he finally dove in our direction. He never stayed in long, just enough to cool off, no matter how much we begged him to stay.

When he finally came in for the day, he would open a Bud Light or dish a bowl

of ice cream. He would pretend to watch TV, but we all knew that as soon as he sat down in his broken brown recliner, he would be asleep. We would wait until his snoring grew steady and then we would carefully pull the remote control from his hand and change the channel. His snoring would grow louder and louder until he would wake himself up, then settle back into sleep, barely cracking an eye.

Winter chores were the worst. The cold air swirled around us as we broke the top layer of ice from the water troughs, replaced the bulbs in the heat lamps in the barn and fed flakes of hay to the cows in the lower pasture.

Tired of freezing from the exposure of the corral, I asked my father if I could drive for him. I was the last Oakden to learn to tricks of a stick shift. I had steered the Case tractor from my father’s lap, and learned the exchange of the clutch and gas while my older sister practiced, but now it was time for my own lessons. Dad pointed to the old farm truck and told me to bring it down to the hay stack to help him feed the herd.

The GMC pickup looked like it was pealing from a winter sunburn. The paint curled off in chunks, revealing bare metal, as if a blister had just popped. Dad called him the Chief. He was solid and tough. Silver racks lined his bed like a headdress, allowing more hay to be hauled. The dent in the tailgate made a perfect seat for a small rear end.

I opened the driver’s side door and slid onto the disintegrating saddle blanket seat. My pre-teen legs reached for the pedals, barely grazing the clutch. I turned the key and Chief lurched forward. My foot pushed the brake, then the clutch again, then slowly the gas, another lurch; this time in the right direction. I drove to the bottom field; Chief stumbled and sputtered and finally rolled to a stop at the foot of the tumbling haystack.

Dad loaded the feed then climbed into the bed and thumped on the top on the cab, the usual signal to go. Chief roared to the lower pasture. The window was rolled down and stuck halfway, inviting the wind into the cab. The heater was on full blast, always; the sliding on/off lever had busted off long before I started driving. My legs were hot from the blowing vents, but my face froze from the winter gust.

From the bed of the Chief my father hollered over the wind, “Whoa.” At the sound of his voice I stopped and pressed the brake with urgency, rocking the truck to a halt. Dad, from years of experience, had learned to hold on to the racks when his daughters were driving. His balance was shaken, but he was still standing. He cut the baling wire from the rectangles of hay, kicked the bales open and started to fling the flakes in the direction of the herd.

He thumped the cap again, “Go.” I pushed the gas and Chief lunged forward, then promptly died.

“Come on, get going.” I barely heard him. The wind had found the peeling seal of the door and began to whistle through it, as well as through the window. I leaned my

austin baker, Sod Lounge, graphic rendering for sculpture

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head closer to the door, my ears searching for his directions. I heard another thump on the cab and deciphered its code to get moving. I turned the key, eased off the clutch, pressed the gas and finally got Chief to bounce forward.

“Slow” Dad hollered, but I heard “go” and so I punched the gas and hay went flying.

“No,” he blared, and I realized my blunder. I slowed down as easily as Chief would allow, and I saw in the rear view mirror that Dad’s face was red and squished and he was ready to yell. “W h o a,” he repeated himself, as if English were my second language. I stopped. I started to get mad. So did Dad. My ear was now frozen; it felt like it would shatter if it were flicked. For all of its strain, I still could barely hear my father.

“Go” he said quick and low. I eased the clutch, but chief died again. Dad was impatient. “Come on.” I finally got Chief started and he lurched into motion. I headed back to the barn as Dad kicked off the remaining chunks of green dried alfalfa. I stopped at the big iron gate and pulled the parking break from the under the dash. I started to get out to open the gate.

Dad hollered “No,” so I got back in the cab. I thought he was trying to keep me warm by letting my stay in. But when he didn’t make any move to open the gate himself, I looked through the back window and saw that he was not telling me no; instead was scolding the dogs who were nipping at the heals of the new calves. His voice was meant to stop them, not to keep my warm.

When he saw that I was just sitting there he yelled “Let’s go.” I opened the gate then got back in. I took off the parking brake, eased in the clutch and the slight hill made Chief roll. I pressed the gas. The truck grunted through the gate then died again. I saw my Dad stumble back, regain his footing and grind his teeth.

“Just shut him off,” Dad yelled. I pulled the key, pressed the brake and slammed the door that barely shut. I crossed my coat covered arms. I stomped my feet with each step toward the house, but the snow muted the desired noise, instead sounding like a playful crunch.

As I pouted toward the house I heard, barely audible, the words of my sorry father. “Love ya hon, thanks for the help.” I sniffed the freezing snot from my nose and turned to him. I would have given him a little smile, but he had already turned, headed toward another chore.

Vibram Soul by joel m. lippert Wingtips, loafers, the odd oxford – in twos, My feet are indentured foreigners in mere shoes.

They miss their native tongue of boots from The Hike, Miss smelling of bee’s wax, of moleskin, of sweat and the like.

So I slip on the cottons, and then the wool blends, And let my soles take me to where my soul mends...

Out of the office and through the choked lots, And into the woods where I can think my own thoughts.

Yet I need not “go boldly where none has before” – (When I take such strolls, my wife gets quite sore).

Just worn trails with quick rises and slow bends, Such places cauterize frayed nerves on their ends.

I leave only foot prints, but take photographs, And step to the side so that others may pass.

I catch wind of the flowers and pass notes to the birds, And whisper a small prayer to see elk in great herds.

I cool in the streams and warm on the rocks, Knowing it’s pedestrian to take such a walk, but Don’t need you to tell me, I’m proof of my own – Even though there’s no roof, it still feels like home.

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emily clark, Reverie No.2, photograph

keiko kominami, HANA-MI, pencil on paper

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chris dyer, Untitled, photograph

Beaucoup, Missouri by mackenzie leighton A town, French in its name where no one speaks French is a town that believes Mrs. Winters is a birdwatcher.

She has seen the tea stained lips of the naked.

The thin cedar smoke before the church burned and fell.

She sits, riveted as she sits, sturdy.

Mrs. Winters craned neck in an evening grazing grazing night.

The minister’s wife is an alcoholic in a town that teeters between quaint and frail.

Mrs. Winters’ spectacles meander and she sees the world that waits on her shoulders.

As she sits saintly and waits resigned.

The mayor hates women but he wears cowboy boots and no one cares.

Mrs. Winters stores intimacies like plum pudding in a mason jar and her many jars need brimming.

So the kinglets go unwatched and weavers watch themselves Mrs. Winters feigns an interest in her book of forfeited chapters.

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As her many jars need brimming.

burton hilton, Untitled, photograph

Back Porch Light

by ben johnson

by patricia romano

On an early Thursday morning, In your sprout colored apron,

He came for her— warm toes escaped worn flannel as they crept down the dark swollen corridors through the old farmhouse to the room behind the kitchen.

I saw that your mascara was too thick For this ungodly hour And you are too chipper for the still dark hours As I watch you press your glasses to your cute nose Your breath is a coctail of whisky, daiquiri mix, lemon drops, and midori when you say: “What can I get started for you?”

I believe I detect a hint of Bailey’s from your own personalized porcelain cup.

Mama’s pantry— her prized canned peaches silent witnesses to paternal obsessions the back porch light igniting the scene of sublime betrayal.

Was it your best friend’s bachelorette party?

Or your roommate’s birthday?

Or that you were bored and your paycheck was burning a hole in your pocket?

You’re not the kind of girl who joins a sorority.

Hush Hush— the litany of his words her only bridge to sanity as his possession of her begins so does her journey. she is the butterfly dancing with the sun, the lazy cat asleep under the cool porch steps, the plump baby pig finding its mother’s milk.

Either way, I could see that your hair was still crispy from lastnight’s hairspray, And your big pouty lips word dark lipstick still, And I could tell that you hadn’t slept a wink.

I can’t stop staring at that weird shaped stain on your apron.

Nessie? A tree or something?

My eyes cross, Lost between your breasts.

“Oh, I do beg your pardon.

Don’t get me wrong, I think your bosoms are lovely.

But would it be too much to ask for your number?”

Because tonight, I can’t wait to see you sleeping in my favorite Green Day Tee shirt Scrambling before the sun comes up To be on time for tomorrow.

she is wandering over wooded trails, through wild, willowy grass, running and searching for answers and the man he used to be.

Not all hideous crimes require corpses.

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You Served Me Coffee

An Entheogenic Day

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by brett phelps Mixed in with the crowd, it is hard to single him out. As he crosses from one side of campus to another, there is not much to distinguish him from the other students all around him. A cream colored beanie covers his shaggy brown hair, its brim pulled low, preventing passing eye contact; the way strangers on sidewalks usually prefer. He is dressed in baggy, dark blue jeans that are somewhat wrinkled; as if he grabbed them off the floor in his scramble to get to class on time. He also wears a hooded sweatshirt, olive green with a brand name emblazoned across the chest that is so familiar nobody even notices it. Even the shoes blend in: a simple pair of well-worn sneakers partially hidden under the hem of his jeans. People pass by without so much as raising an eyebrow, assuming he is on his way to the library or another lecture, just like the rest of them. Maybe he is even lucky enough to be heading home, some of them think, as they observe that this man is moving at a slightly slower pace than the frantic hustle surrounding him. But as this stranger among strangers strolls nonchalantly down the pathway, he too avoids eye contact with the people around him. He knows that only his eyes could ever give away his secret.

Where he started he is no longer sure of. How he arrived in his present location, equally mysterious. All he can tell for sure is that although everything around him appears vaguely familiar, at the moment it feels like a brand new world. And while his body is very much grounded on earth, the same cannot be said for his mind. He is as oblivious to their presence as they are his, not noticing a single face as his own head works overtime. Though the thoughts in his mind are fleeting, as he thinks them he knows they are all of utmost importance. His neurons have begun firing off randomly, same as they do in the moments before death, and they seem to be tapping into the deepest, most primitive recesses of his brain.

Just as he is recognizing this, he reaches to massage his skull and realizes that something has made its way into his ears. For a brief instant terror fills his thoughts, but upon closer inspection the man identifies the two white wires that have crept out from under his clothes and onto his head and revels in his new discovery. He must have inserted them at some point, but he has no recollection of doing so and there is no sound coming from them. Slowly, he reaches into the front pocket of his hoodie, pushes some buttons and lets the music flood his ears, soothing his overworked brain.

As people continue passing he no longer goes unnoticed. It is obvious that the music is having an effect on him. His head and hands have changed patterns from

their usual walking tempo. They now follow a beat that goes unheard by others only steps away, instantly ruining this man’s anonymity. While he has not disturbed them to the point of worry, people are definitely taking notice of his now peculiar gait. If observed closely enough, it is even possible to see a slight change in the steps of his feet; his entire body now moving down the sidewalk to the rhythm of otherwise undetectable music. Those with their own headphones nod with acknowledgement, and those without begin humming their own tunes, trying to feel the music the same way they have just witnessed. But it is impossible for them to tell that this man is no longer just listening to his music, he has become it.

The sound of a wailing guitar enters his ears and travels all the way through him, exiting where the bottom of his shoe meets the pavement. The song is Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” and although he has listened to it enough to know every word by heart, this time it sounds entirely new. Just like the campus surrounding him, the song is both familiar and foreign at the same time. For the first time in his life he is no longer singing just the lyrics in his head, he is singing the whole song.

His brain is reciting more than words; it is reciting every sound coming from each instrument simultaneously. He also finds his mind reflecting on every note, taking great appreciation in the slightest nuances that until now he had not noticed or even known existed. This new absorption turns the song from a mere listening experience into a full body one, and as the crescendo crashes down with a mantra of “Feed your head,” he feels a physical connection to it that is so strong it should normally be reserved only for those things that can be touched. He not only hears the music, but he feels every note inside him, and it shows in the rhythm of his steps.

With each footstep he takes his mind becomes more removed from reality.

Like a snake shedding its skin, the world around him peels away, left behind until there is nothing but the man and his thoughts. He ponders the universe and all its great mysteries. “How did the universe begin?” “Why are we here?” “More importantly, why am I here?” He questions the world that everyone else has already accepted as reality, wondering if there is more out there than we know. “Are there really other dimensions, parallel universes filled with things so alien they cannot be comprehended by humans?” After trying in vain to answer these questions himself, he realizes that the only way to find the truth is through God. Although not a particularly religious person, this is not the first time he has tried speaking with God. However, this is the first time God has ever spoken back.

He gave up on hearing from the divinity when he was eight and failed to receive an explanation for why God had taken his dog Rex’s life with a passing car, so this shocked

jeff gesick, Say Hello to Tomorrow, photograph

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him at first. After comprehending the immenseness of the situation, he begins conversing with God, picking his brain about the inner workings of his great creation. Upon receiving satisfactory answers to his most pressing questions, the man thanks God, asks him to say hello to Rex for him when he gets back to heaven, and wishes him a good day. Following the realization that he has just created God in his head, only to have a quick chat and then bid him goodbye, the man asks himself one last question: “What do they put in these mushrooms?”

From the perspective of those around him, he is no more than a stranger in passing. Just a blank face in a sea of people. Nothing he does is bizarre enough to single him out from the crowd. To others, he is seen as a criminal. Breaking the law, simple as that. Just a no good druggie ruining his own life and the lives of those around him. But to some, he is using his free choice to explore new realms of consciousness. He is learning about both himself and the world around him, gaining a better perspective on life and the people who live it. To him, this trip has been a religious experience. He has expanded his mind, seen life in a different light, and bettered himself because of it. And what could possibly be wrong with that?

sarah king, Jewel Leaves, photograph

Stuck Between Seasons by michael seibert The pink and blue cloud feathers spread over the mountaintop like a peacock’s tail until the last beam of light retreats, and only gray wisps and smoky fragments remain. The night is closing in; long shadows and silhouettes paint the landscape, bending and blotting out features, until all is dark.

Thin black fingers of countless bushes spread, and wait to snag a down jacket or scratch some hand skin, drawing soft feathers or red blood.

Dabbing the colorless feathers on the colorless blood: Without light blood has no color, just a warm drip and iron taste. Feathers have no weight, only a hard hollow spine and a sneeze smell.

Trying to imagine the appearance of the blood soaked feathers, I picture the crimson clouds tinted by the setting sun only hours ago. A liquor-warm feeling radiates in my stomach.

Sitting beneath the blood bush breathing slowly: The earth smells damp, almost sweet, and I choke. Pushing my blood and feather encrusted hand into the ground, I drain into the earth.

I plunge my free hand into the dirt and press hard. The dirt pushes deep into the nail and creates channels. Blood and earth are one. The left fingers, now human roots, soak up the dirt vigorously. Of the right fingers, the earth satiatingly saps the blood. Eventually, the transfusion completes.

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I start to harden. Pulling out my hands, I lean back into the bush and twist around the base. Just before I am completely rigid, I push my knarled fingers out with the rest -ready for the next victim.

athiwan yaemmuan, Freedom, photograph

off by beth ann thompson I can still feel it crawling over inside, up claiming, destroying me like property I want to burn it inside out every inch my skin, my soul char it

by linsay oakden Don’t dismiss bird shadows of nature’s explanation The flutter of wings that sunlight draws in migration A break in transit, a fallen leaf stop Settling on the wire, a pause in migration Tree warm weather turned rain gutter floods The chill of the feather, a cause for migration The right left shuffle, the arrowed flight plan The tree branch clutch and release of claws in migration I’ve no wings to spread, no intuitive explanation No southern house to vacation the flaws of migration.

anthony alston, 1/17/07 Plumas, photograph

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Ghazal

“I can’t even imagine how long this must have taken...”

Get it off, away get off burn, cleanse not here, never off of me

Elysia

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by ashley noël hennefer Do all cities glow with such a simplistic skyline? There’s inspiration in the stars but the lights are too bright to see them. I bet from the moon, each city looks like its own universe, each building and streetlight a speck of brightness amongst a dark land.

I wonder if the artificial lights are as mystifying as the glow that radiates from the stars that are a billion years old.

We look outside and it’s still dark out. We’ve been up all night, restless and hungry. I haven’t eaten in hours but something else has taken the empty place in my stomach.

I’m shivering hard even before we get outside. I’ve been shivering for the better part of the night – I blame fatigue, excitement. Staying up all night drinking and smoking and talking and laughing and watching movies, feeling a closeness with those around me that I can’t describe any other way, except by calling it an intense feeling of belonging that I never expected to feel before.

We walk to the top of the hill and I can barely feel my feet or my hands, and goosebumps cover every bare inch of my skin even under the jacket I’m wearing.

A breeze runs through my body, chilling me down to my core. I feel transparent and invisible, as if in reality I am not really a young girl made out of skin and bones and blood and more emotion than I know what to do with.

I look out over the hill and I can see all of the city, covered by a faintly pulsating fog of pollution. It still looks beautiful, I think, all laid out in front of me, as if I could hold it in my arms. It’s gritty and gaudy and all of it is so painstakingly characteristic and I think that’s why I love it so much. I love that the whole city is small enough for me to see it in one look, something I could try to keep in a Polaroid or a painting. But even if I tried I couldn’t capture it; a photograph wouldn’t catch the sky’s perfect pre-sunrise gradients and a painting could never imitate the solidity and sparseness of the thousands of houses and buildings that look so tiny from here.

It seems like we are up here forever waiting for the sun to rise and we laugh at our bad timing. I don’t mind waiting but I wish I weren’t so damn cold. I feel like I’m going to fall apart from shivering so badly and I breathe into the sleeves of the jacket I’m wearing. My warm breath makes my fingertips tingle.

I try to get my mind off of my trembling so I look out again into the landscape. Behind the city are the mountains, smaller and less intimidating than the ones I’m used to seeing outside of my bedroom window at home. It’s like a little oasis, like a secret city tucked away in the foothills of a mountain range. I think of my clean, small, beautiful Valley and my stomach aches with longing for it, but when I look around I feel okay here, too. It’s funny how the one place I never wanted to be is one of the few places I’ve called home, one of the few places that’s made me feel like I belong. This is my Elysia, where everything glitters and moments are all now-or-never and everyone is living for just today with no thoughts about tomorrow, just now, always and forever now.

The sky, which was a minute ago a deep dark blue, is now lightening and

fading into lavender and orange and pink. To my left the sun finally begins to rise, and it rises quickly, impatiently, as if competing with the moon to light up the sky. I can feel a vague warmth on my skin from the early morning sun and some of my goosebumps fade away and my skin is smooth again.

I turn my face so the sun catches my eyes. I know whenever this happens the sunlight fades away any traces of dark brown and my usually hazel eyes are left radiating an electric green that pierces all who glance my way. I can only imagine how this clashes with the paleness of my cheeks and the redness of my freezing nose, and I’m tempted to laugh when I think about how disheveled and washed-out and tired I must look.

But I could care less what I look like right now; all I can think about is how I feel. This is one of those “infinite” moments people are always talking about, and I’m amazed at how invincible I feel. This is one of those moments where I feel myself getting older but somehow it doesn’t bother me like it usually does.

I look at him and smile the best I can, even though my lips are numb; I bite my lower lip lightly and it burns. He and I have barely spoken since we’ve been up here but there’s a mutual understanding of our shared experience. He feels it too, I can tell. I think of my other friends back in the apartment, still fully dressed and sprawled out on beds and couches, sleeping heavily, substances and exhaustion weighing down their young bodies. We’ll all end up sleeping until the afternoon, carefree and careless. I smile to myself about being a part of something so intimate, the kind of friendships that only existed in stories or movies.

We talk for a while and stare into the wide, endless Nevada sky, before deciding to go back inside and maybe get some sleep or something. When we start to walk again I feel as if I am walking for the first time. My legs are shaky from standing still for so long and my muscles tense with the sudden movement. We make our way down slowly, and every few steps I glance back until the city skyline is out of view and I am back at the same level as the rest of the world. Being on top of that hill made me feel like I was in the center of everything.

When I am done with my Elysia I will have my garden in the Valley to run to, where everything is safe and pretty and slow-paced. But for now, I have these moments of infinity and these notions of invincibility and these sleepless nights and empty stomachs and unspoken implications. And that’s all I need. That’s all anyone needs when they’re young.

We get back inside and I collapse onto the couch. My eyelids are heavy and I’m still freezing but the sun is shining through the window blinds. Sometimes I forget that the sun is just another star.

I begin to dream, even before I fall asleep. I dream of the sky, of the sun shining over the city. All stars shine, I think, but some burn a little more brightly than others.

Fly by christy cencer We’ll never get out of this town.

All we once dreamed of hoped for wanted gone. Abrasive Reality left in the rubble of what once was.

We’ll never make anything of ourselves.

All of us so lifted high in our high thoughts and our high education We’ll be dropped Stopped, as soon as we begin to spread our wings caught in the cage that holds us in.

We’ll never leave this town All of us staring stupidly at what we are supposed to be and what we are Dreams chased away by life broken into pieces that will never fit together

mike thomas, Solo, photograph

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We’ll be here forever looking at ourselves at the nothing we did and wonder what happened?

I was supposed to be something bigger brighter than me.

Stories…

A Sense of Self

by grigory lukin

by jeff gesick

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“I love the way this story starts...”

The greatest stories are the ones that weren’t told. The ones where people attempted heroic - cruel - feats in the name of passion. The ones that might not have left anybody to tell the tale.

The ones that, for some reason, disappeared into the abyss of time.

Scientists say that there have been about 72 billion people that lived and died on this planet of ours. Aside from the ones who died in infancy, most of those people probably had their own stories. The stories about love, adventures, burning of Rome, hunting the mammoths, war, disasters of unimaginable scale, etc. Some of them have never been told and died with their owners. Others disappeared in the river of time as their listeners, too, succumbed to old age. So very few of them were immortalized, written down, passed from one generation to another, that it makes one wonder, “How much were we not told?”

Movies and books are but bleak imitations of our lives. Try as they may, writers can rarely come up with a story so elaborate and well developed that it would make our own experiences seem bleak by comparison.

As of now, there are some 6.5 billion people in the world. Each of them has a story. What’s yours?..

bryan christiansen, Hedon, MDF

I just wanna get high, so I can write I can dream I can play I can fly; I just wanna get low, so I can relax not care that I don’t have anywhere to go; I just wanna get faded, so nothings real but the colors are so real where things feel nice and no one’s jaded; I just wanna get bombed, so I can talk shit hit on you forget tomorrow cause I was totally gone; Why is it, that I need to be someone else to feel like myself?

Why do I have to do something new to feel like plain old me?

Why does the normal seem strange and the foreign home grown?

Why am I an alien In my own life?

Porcelain

Everything so... by andrew gerthoffer

by ashley dodge

One angel in the snow with two lips of silky smooth seduction,

Somehow today I promised myself, to be nice, to not hatewhat I abuse.

and two hips: tall tales to the touch (how she gets me)

And it cries because it hurts, and bleeds to be treated fairlyto belong.

(every time).

So I understand and say “I’m sorry”, and, “its not your fault”, its mine.

The porcelain skin, that cries to be forgiven, for its imperfections.

How she lets me rhyme and rhyme again with the time on her hands

I love the porcelain skin, the red hair, blue eyes bunny nose and puppy eyesI’m sorry.

and the beautiful sin! that lies in the taste of those two little lumps of sugar (sweet on my plate).

Please forgive me and maybe we can love each other again, like when you and I were innocent.

Untainted by the world’s abuse and sorrows.

Everything so (sweet on my plate).

Goodnight, porcelain skin, I love you.

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diana bernard, Untitled light form, photograph

Sarah

La Fée Verté

by andrew gerthoffer

by michael witkowski

A Nobody Girl Sings Tonight

I tickled her last night— from the rim to the base of a frosted green martini glass savoring the icy cool, relished in the sticky sweet… she delighted me.

She lifted me away— smiled—vibrantly red lips stretched, a smile that swerved all over the road slammed me into insanity, temptingly smeared blush wine up, and down my neck.

I tickled her again, lost her somewhere in a green mist toasting to self-control.

She spun me round, & kissed me—fluttering iridescent wings, driving the mist away, —tasting sweet as licorice.

I heard a baritone saxophone, ringing and singing the blues obligingly pouring insipid liquid, dripping with induced inspiration…

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jill ransom, Untitled (from Faces of Eve series), photograph

She swerved another smile with me kissed me, wings quivered, pulling me deeper— she whispered: “find a cure for pain.”

by ashley noël hennefer Her voice is like an ocean, dark blue lyrics floating over a sea of grey-green melodies. She sings of lovers and God and a sense of intimacy I haven’t felt yet, but I can almost taste it when she sinks into those minor chords on her guitar. Something painful and I question the times I’ve been hurt or if it’s even really happened yet.

I’ve cried enough about things to feel that unexplainable sadness, that state of such deep insecurity that it takes everything you have to feel good again, that intense anger that produces dry tears of frustration. I have felt these things but feelings can be complicated and often i wonder if mine are as stable as I assume them to be or if they’re merely imagined.

Her voice is beautifully imperfect and she finishes her song on a soprano note that sends shivers rippling through my spine. I wrap my cold hands around my bare shoulders and I can feel the bobby pins holding my hair up at the base of my neck. I pull them loose and my hair falls around my ears. The new warmth makes me shiver again.

She starts a new melody, faster but with the same sighs of melancholy.

She dives into strumming and she begins to sing again and I swear it sounds like everything I’ve ever felt. Something lonely and sad and inspired and searching and wandering and always hopeful, always wanting, always wishing.

I wonder how I can find all of this in a song but this is what I find in everything. Maybe I create it. Or maybe it’s really there. I like to think I have some ability to invent my own ideal of beauty but I’m always so wrapped up in my own ideals that I keep losing sight of everything else. Everything real.

She finishes her song and I’m left hanging on by a thread. I can feel my heartbeat in my wrist. Intensity rushing through my veins, full to bursting. I need to laugh or smile or make fun of something, comedic relief from the consistent seriousness that surrounds me like a storm cloud.

Her set is finished and concludes with a scattered applause of awe and misunderstanding. She thanks the audience and smiles something that doesn’t reach her eyes, perhaps disappointed or expecting a connection, someone to stand up and yell YES I GET IT! or even I know I don’t understand but I want to. I want to.

When she walks out the door, her guitar slung heavy in defeat over her shoulder, I have to resist the urge to follow her.

The next musician stands up and pulls his hand drums out of his backpack.

He sits on the stool and introduces himself.

My eyes go straight to his beautiful calloused hands and I see that he has his thumb pressed against his wrist. Does he feel it too?

When he starts to sing it’s like a spectrum of colors. Dark deep red when he starts, a low rumbling from the center of his chest. It works up into a frantic blue during the chorus and I can feel the whole room holding their chairs when it breaks

into white, strong and clear and controlled.

He’s holding back a scream, I can see it working in his throat. Instead, he uses it to form his voice around the microphone, shaping words with his tongue.

His mouth is so close to it I can hear his short breaths amplified and lingering above him. Breathe, I want to tell him. Just breathe.

But he is singing so hard and pounding on his drums as if they are everything he has, as if they will evaporate at any second. His voice is now his breath and I breathe deeper to compensate. His voice cracks on his last note and I swear my heart skips a beat.

And this is empathy. This is about feeling like painting with a boy who can sing colors, feeling like drowning into a girl who sings like the sea. And there are other girls with melodies like rain and other boys with their pulses like a drum beat.

And this is about how yes, it is possible to feel everything at once, in your body, in your breathing. These are the energies of emotion, how they bury themselves inside of you and linger forever. This what feeling something really feels like.

daniel mcgowan, Simple, yet Complex, photograph

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Pulses like a Drum Beat

Nothing by christine spinetta She sat on the curb, shading her eyes from the sun and staring into the hot asphalt. Not that she could see into it, or anything. She just always felt like that. She never saw the surface, or even the ‘deeper meaning,’ really. She never looked at things, or through things. Nope – just into them. Taking a deep breath, and fighting the urge to cough on the dusty air being forced into her lungs, she fixed her eyes on her watch. 3:47. “Twelve minutes.” The words were barely above the sound of her breath. They weren’t a complaint or an expression of anger. Just words.

Shifting her gaze once again, she began to stare into her own feet. They had been tied into her sneakers with ratty laces – ratty from being worn years and years past their date of purchase. Not that they had actually been purchased. A small twitch on the corner of her mouth briefly broke her stone-like expression. Back in the days when she had believed in things like Santa Clause, best friends, and dreaming big, the laces had been given to her as a gift. Presented proudly, wrapped childishly in a small piece of fabric, she had been given new pink shoe laces to match those of her best friend. Her friend had left only a few months after that day – moved away to a place that had been much too far for the post man to deliver letters from. It was the first birthday she had really enjoyed, and she should have realized right then and there that life isn’t full of cake and pink shoe laces.

With a slight expression of anger, she ran her hand through her shoulder-length, jet black hair. The sun seemed to be pouring into her scalp, with the dark hair simply encouraging the insufferable heat and holding in hundreds of beads of sweat. The color had been called raven black, and it was encouraging the sun along every inch of hair – straight up to the roots. She was sure of that. If nothing else, she was good at dying hair.

Standing up, she tried to pull her sweat soaked shorts from her body. A breeze would have been nice, and therefore, there was not even a scrap of wind. The world seemed to be at a standstill – no movement anywhere, and not a single sound. Straining her ears for any sign of life, she was somewhat pleased to hear the quiet chirp of a beetle. Taking comfort in the fact that she was not alone, she sat down quietly and stretched her legs in front of her as far as they would go.

Pointing her toes and willing her bone and muscle to reach their fullest, she relished in the brief moment of comfort as she stretched into the road. Glancing at her wrist watch, she seemed to once again become a stone statue. Eyes gazing into the air in front of her, mouth closed firmly, elbows on knees, and ratty shoelaces resting on the road. Even the beetle seemed to have deserted her now. Sitting in the intense and lonely heat, she resumed her wait. Slowly lowering her eyes to the watch, she took note of the time. 4:02.

“Thirty-two minutes.” The words had come quietly from the still statue, and even if there had been anyone else in that hot sun, they would not have heard her.

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athiwan yaemmuan, I Miss You, photograph

athiwan yaemmuan, Dreamesr Pipes, photograph

November Mercury by emmaline leighton I saw a black wind move over the land.

All the trees were crying and bending to your will.

In the barn, we were naked heart-shaped torsos, Shuddering to keep out the cold, Biting our lips to keep in the noise.

I swallowed your black crow ink, To keep Mr. Adams from hearing us.

Mr. Adams is a bitter soul.

He saw the face of Jesus in his mashed potatoes.

His land is forgotten and cold.

The field mice hide from the dark under the old tractor.

Mr. Adams has sailor tattoos on his arms That he covers with long sleeved shirts and a sense of regret.

You were shuddering to keep out the cold.

The mercury contracted and fell.

My chest rose and fell.

A November silence hushed the evening.

Your cheeks were cranberry in the undulating Ebony that was the night and the end.

And you slept, and I shivered, And Mr. Adams moved, unnerved, in his sleep.

Mr. Adams’ wife left him after the war baby was born.

He took to the bottle right as the baby did.

His misery is seen in every inch of neglected earth.

The timber stands tall and watchful.

Mr. Adams sullen nose tells whiskey tales.

Mr. Adams still remembers, sometimes, but chooses to forget.

kelly bridegum, Grid, polaroid

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You and I hid where the owl lives, Preying in the moment and considering us, carefully.

Mr. Adams prayed, deep in his sleeping, That we’d grow loud enough to merit scolding.

mike thomas, Illusion, photograph

Take My Picture When I am Asleep by grigory lukin

Take my picture when I am asleep, When my face is devoid of thought, And my body - a useless heap, Tired, resting, immobile, caught.

Still awake (haiku) by grigory lukin

I am sleep deprived.

My consciousness is crystal.

My movements are swift.

Take my picture, so when I awake I would no longer have to ask, What I look like when I don’t fake, When without my social mask.

Take my picture, and what you will see Is the body without mind, Quiet, placid, awareness-free, Peaceful, neutral and self-defined. by kathy jakolat

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“Sounds like a Cake song...”

Evening shadows tiptoe before us witnessing our ritual of reverie.

We walk together near the start of midnight over the hills and rocky paths.

The reach of night lies ahead.

We wander and climb closer to the ancients.

I hear them whispering.

Moonlight leaks through the night vastness massaging the paths to nowhere.

An eternity lives within this hour circling our lives from nothing to nothing.

I feel the pull of the swallowed sun Beckoning.

I go on. You sit. You stay.

frances arnold shaw, Bringing the Light, photograph

kelly bridegum, Untitled, polaroid transfer on watercolor paper

Last Walk (in memory of Ray Hardin)

Memories of July by dylan j. malfa I sing a song to pass the time Write a story of lies and make sure it rhymes.

A Lonely Lion lost among the dying trees, casinos, fast lanes and money scrapers Realize that answers that were looking for just can’t be found in what we roll up in those papers.

She’s my heart and soul, and my biggest little fantasy Wake yourself up from that dream, So it doesn’t feel so real.

The last thing I need to do is go throw money on black at the Peppermill.

Almost had it all Built it up to watch it fall.

It’s those that never learn to cope with life That resort to the bottle, pipe, and knife.

Lost once again, but on a familiar street I find the answers from my favorites songs, words, hooks and beats.

Wake up and find Love Be strong enough to rise above.

Never quite as bad as it seems.

But not quite as good as you had hoped for.

Another song about the rain, Well you’ve got yourself to blame.

So…I’m just supposed to go strike another match and start a new, Is it really all over now, baby blue?

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mike thomas, Bike, photograph

You should sit down, I have some bad news... by katie reed

I wonder, who’s fate it will be when I die to sit with a phone book and phone in hand, going down a list of names.

Perhaps my large plush Jack Skellington, disproportionate head bent over, trying to make it easier to hear the other end, holding the phone with chubby little arms. While the tattered Panda Bear hobbles to the door each time the bell rings, accepting the flowers and food with a grim face. Before giving her eulogy Kyleigh would get her elastics re-strung, to help her knees from giving out a third of the way through.

The trio would lomber home, rely on the strength of the half broken zombie at the front steps, to see them through.

carolyn bautista, Goleta, CA, photograph

Essay Inspired by Giant Mustard by chantelle sousa

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Mass corruption, mass production and mass consumption, define much of today. We buy not one salad dressing, but two because we can, and somehow we just gawk at a homeless man. A thousand companies fill our heads, while gas prices rise and we blame the feds. It couldn’’t possibly be based on supply and demand. We live in a society that thinks gay marriage should be banned.

“Double the flavor, double the fun; it’s the statement of the great mint in double mint gum.” Advertisement after advertisement is thrown at you, and there’s a sale at Macy’s so what should you do? Buy that pair of jeans because they’re twenty-percent off the original price, and wouldn’t the matching jacket look nice? Never mind that you already have twenty-two pairs of jeans, and that credit card bills are all that the mailman brings.

Rows and rows of double-stuffed, newly formulated, longer lasting, better tasting merchandise, and everything is easier like microwaveable hot packets and instant ride.

Grandma’s homeade chocolate cookikes are a thing of the past, and we all use drive-thrus because they are fast. Hey mommy, we want the green one too, and I sprained my ankle at school so we better sue.

Tonight we’re having a party for four, and maybe we shouldn’t bring up the war. Billions and billions of dollars are being spent while our soldiers sleep on dirt, and the media’s main focus is Martha Stewart. Did you hear about Bradjolina and Bennifer? I think Nick Lachey is cheating for sure.

Stereotyping is at an all-time high, and you find yourself getting answers from that Chinese guy. Oh, he must be smart because he’s Chinese, and it’s still the fat kid with the fanny pack who gets teased. Our neighbor’s an idiot because he doesn’t have the latest satellite dish. Don’t you know that it’s all about who catches the biggest fish?

While we continue to kill off pidgeons and murder every bird, I can’t help thinking that I really need that foot-and-a-half-tall mustard.

Chiseled corner outlook on death steel like winter mountain rail.

Synchronized dancing cold time on edge of summer in desert’s isolated inspection.

Atop bitter-sweet indifferent, conflicting and secluded glass shattered hillspeckled and dull reflected whitebrowngreen covered dirt pinhole sun Western antique bottles--cragged bullet broken Nevada outline.

One warm old road trip, and sensual traveling stories.

Echoing soundly crushed angles--and empty shells.

Repeating lost potential of time in nature.

Decomposed car crammed sits rutted Indian style axles awkwardly crossed, middle uncomfortably folded.

Bull’s Eyes shinning through ripped metal holes.

Squinting at early exhausted stained mountain.

Now crying out Nevada rust.

Harmonic steel wind singing and thirty degree age old tears.

Lucid unwrapped desert stretched by its years. Soaring scent-filled cold wind-whipped gloomy green and tin coffee shaded sage cutting skin exposed, not in sun somewhere outin middle of immense Monitor and Big Smokey Valley.

Arrowheads of Indian spiritsa carved blanket left, covering ground.

And ghosts pointing to compass corners and circle between religion.

Dreaming day dreams, a modern native dances to the beat beating away.

Alone whisper almost silent.

Desert drumming spirit sage.

Granada by nathan slinker clay and glass and gypsy dance I reside inside the Pomegranate her beads fling free and fall crimson seeds into gloomy cracks I am but a fraction of meat my mother’s milky Sangria flowing all about it is indeed a strange fruit blossoming suddenly, unanticipated my lens unfocused, this palate of mud dust heavy with tannin I will remember the taste laying in creek bottoms waiting with patched pants for forty years ago today to rhythms of flutes swaying swan necks drift downstream I too float lazily along in a stream of sweet blood over Queen Elizabeth’s ghost writhing on the smooth riverbed

sarah king, Fountain of Eden, photograph

“ The ending is a total cliche... but I really liked it.”

by stephan molder

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Chiseled Out Like Desert Indian Spirits

The Dance by kendra lisum He watched the couple dancing to a silent melody, played in the shadows of a second story apartment. He studied the soft gyrations of her body and the effortless movement of the stranger’s feet. Her head rested on his shoulder, their hands clasped together between them. In the darkened vehicle, he watched and he listened, but he could not hear the music.

As he took a deep drink from his cigarette, he remembered what it was like.

It’s strange the things remembered of the past. Insignificant details that go by unnoticed until one day they come back, biting like knats on a warm summer evening.

The dancing couple slowed; their silhouette nearly stationary against the white curtained window.

The cigarette smoke hovered in the air like unworldly spirits, swaying to their own silence. He thought about cracking a window but the smoke added a sort of justice to his suffocating thoughts.

He could not say it was love at first sight. She had come into the store to buy scissors. He was sitting to the left of the door, pretending to read a newspaper, while really he was watching the man in the tweed suit talking in the phone booth outside.

She bought her scissors and walked out. The man in the tweed suit continued to talk on the telephone, cutting through the air with his hand.

It wasn’t until the man in the tweed suit left the phone booth that he realized he was in love with her.

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Now the dancing couple seemed to have stopped moving altogether. She and the stranger stood, holding one another. He listened again for the music. Silence.

The man in the tweed suit had pushed open the door of the booth as if the air inside had turned poison. He stepped out, pulled on his jacket and headed downtown.

Inside the store, he stood up from his chair, placed the newspaper neatly on the table, and left. He stayed forty yards away from the tweed suit at all times.

When the suit turned into a music store three blocks away, he went in, too.

And there she was again, flicking through the records under a sign that read Jazz. She was dressed in a beige skirt and black blouse. Her hair was brown, set neatly in a bun. A single hair trailed down her neck.

He walked over to her. She glanced towards him and continued to flip the records one by one.

The man in the tweed coat was talking to a boy of about sixteen near the classical section. The boy was playing nervously with the zipper on his red work vest. A nametag sat crooked on the right lapel.

The woman found the record she was looking for and walked toward the counter. He, in turn, picked a record from the shelf and followed.

After paying, the woman left the store. He did the same. He walked to the bus stop on the corner of the street and sat on the bench, turned sideways to watch for the tweed suit.

“Excuse me, sir?” He turned his head. It was the same woman. “Can I help you with something?” Her voice was harsh and accusing.

He smiled and asked her why she felt she could help him.

“You seem to be following me,” she said sharply.

He laughed. It was the first time he had laughed in weeks. It sounded like the crunching of leaves underfoot.

“I don’t think it’s funny.” She stood and looked down at him, arms crossed. “If you don’t make for another bus stop, I’m gonna call the police.”

The man in the tweed suit emerged from the music store, and walked briskly in the opposite direction of the bus stop.

He stood, tipped his hat at the woman, and followed the suit.

He lit another cigarette. The burnt sulpher of the match was quickly swallowed by the smell of stale, sweet tobacco.

The couple was dancing again, moving across the room in tune to the painfully secret melody of an upbeat rhythm. He picked a tobacco crumb from his tongue and watched in silence.

He had followed the tweed suit for three more days until it was torn to shreds by an automatic. In all that time, he never spared a thought for the woman in the beige skirt.

The chief had come down hard on him for losing the trail the tweed suit was leading, but the man knew there’d be other opportunities.

Before the week was out, he was following a different man. This time the man wore a sleek pinstripe made of silk.

He trailed the pinstripe to a small club, writhing with the pulse of the new jazz.

He sat at the bar and ordered a scotch. The pinstripe had disappeared into the back room.

He swallowed the drink and moved silently over to the phone booth stuck abruptly onto the wall near the door of the club. He dialed the chief.

The jazz beat slowed when he emerged from the booth. The dance floor emptied but for three: a couple and a woman. He had to look twice before recognizing her. Her hair flowed gently over her shoulders and she wore glasses. She moved her hips to the music.

He went to her.

“You again,” she said flatly. Her fear had been replaced by an intrepid curiosity.

That night they danced three dances together before the cops arrived.

The couple in the window had slowed again. They moved against each other, as though each heard a different song. And yet, strangely, they were one.

His hands shook slightly as they gripped the steering wheel. The cigarette sloughed its ashes onto the steering column. The silent melody tormented him like the grasping scent of her perfume: as subtle as flowers but as piquant as a Creole summer’s eve.

They had met a few times after that night in the club. He took her to a movie, to a diner, and to the theatre.

That night they sat under the dull light of an outdoor cafÈ. The night was humid and uncomfortable but perspiration never showed on her brow.

They laughed together at a joke they’d each heard a hundred times before. He ordered a scotch, she a glass of champagne.

The night wandered on like a violin melody played softly in the silence of a room. He listened as she related the story of her father’s proposal to her mother. “He was so smitten by her,” she continued, chuckling at the untold ending, “that he yelled at the owner of the spatula and ran out the door.” She took a sip of her now half-empty champagne. “And he was still wearing the wig ---” He heard the fast frenetic sound, like a snare drum, before he felt the white heat of the bullets. Instinctively, he stood and reached into his jacket. His fingers gripped the cold metal of the .22. He pulled, fired twice.

The last thing he remembered were the two fine lines that bordered her mouth. Her scream.

Although she had been uninjured, she refused to see him after that night. And now all he could do was watch.

The light in the window went out. He crumpled the empty cigarette package and let it fall to the floor. The plastic and aluminum crinkled, slowly trying to reshape itself in the silence.

He pushed the hair out of his eyes. His side ached where the bullets had struck.

With a roar, the engine turned over. Its incongruous rumblings cut the night. He stubbed out the last of the cigarette. With a quick movement, the engine fell into rhythm and the car pulled from the curb.

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jill ransom, Untitled (from Faces of Eve seriies), photograph

52 grey gwynne middleton, Cost-Benefit Analysis; Norhtern Nevada, photograph

“Interesting take on modern mythology...”

gwynne middleton, Landscape Disruption #2, photograph

gwynne middleton, Landscape Disruption #1, photograph

brianne hall, Drift, photograph

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gwynne middleton, Outhouse: Central Alabama, photograph

featured artists...

“

Disappear here.

”

Upon Neon

by mario ponzio Stop. Sit tight, let the wind breeze against your hair.

Rain drops, plip-plop on the sidewalk, and a soggy cigarette butt jutting out of my lip.

Don’t smoke, but like the way it feels. Eyes pulse, jaw clenches, and body tightens. Look into the sky. Gray, wet. The city lights pump the air with neon pink, and I can only crack my neck. Where’s a light? Maybe I’ll smoke this thing. Nah, bad for the lungs.

Vibrations on the wall behind me, sensual music sauntering through wood. Half-naked ladies dance inside, gently gliding smooth, milky hips in erotic beats. But I, I enjoy the rain.

The cool realization that this is it, that this is all. Ethereal, eternal, ever-lasting. I need a light.

54 grey

The Bacardi begins to hit strong, watching a tight body in a little black two piece enter with a quick smile. I feel the world wave around, the sounds and smells and sights slowly dim and I am a dream. Awake, yet translucent. Allow my hands to fall to the side, feel like I can fly. But music brings me back to the ground, back down inside. A quick kiss on the lips and the taste of strawberry chap stick sober me, as I look into her eyes.

She bites down hard on her lips, enough to leave an imprint, rubbing herself against me, desperately appealing to my most visceral sense. Looking up through batted, painted eye lashes, her brown eyes beg me. Come with me, both literal and imaginative. But I only shake my head... we’ve done this dance before. She comes from a fucked up family, a dad who took delight in only his rum and his clenched fists covered in lover’s blood. I crack my neck, look her over, feel myself become hard. Ain’t too bad, but ain’t too great, not worthy of a predator.

name: Mario Ponzio medium of choice: Prose major: Psychology / English (writing) minor year: Junior recent work: Curriculum, muddled with the occasional splatter of creativity influences: Bret Easton Ellis, Dante Alighieri, Kurt Vonnegut, David Cronenberg, Ted Tally, and Darren Aronofsky... I’m a kaleidoscope of unoriginality

I shake my head again, she bites her lip hard, disappointed, before grabbing somebody next to me. Some fat pig with a 3.6GPA is goin’ get laid tonight. I become a wallflower, lick the cigarette on the tip, and hope some girl looking for ass offers a light. Readjust myself, looking for prey, seeing nothing but dull drones dance to the devil’s drum. Shake my head, probably time for bed, abandon my cool delight. To the door, the back this time, looking for my keys and coat as I go.

Bump into her, cool red head with a great physique and a smile that asks to die. Already tipsy, I can tell, she looks at me with faded, glossy blues and tells me what class I have with her. I nod slowly, ask her to my bed, and she accepts. Because I’m that kind of guy.

She leans on me, her protector, as we get into my car, and soon the engine is on, and we are off.

We go from the lights, escape the neon hell, heading into an abyss of black. I look her over, see her head in my lap, moving in rhythm with the music... up and down, to the side a bit. Slobbery, but excited. I smile a wicked grin, realize we’re going to her final bin.

Yet I realize, suddenly, with a shiver of my spine, that even as this girl’s blood is on my flesh, the only thing that I’ll want is a light.

I pull the cigarette further into my mouth and roll down the window, despite her protest.

Colosus*

*Colossus

Ofrecemos todo.

Añeramos algo.

Recibimos poco.

Poseemos nada.

We offer everything.

Añeramos something.

We received little.

We have nothing.

Movemos mares.

Brindamos manos.

Hacemos obras.

Rompemos tierra.

We move seas.

We offered hands.

We make works.

We break earth.

Cruzamos rios.

Plantamos fruta.

Vendemos chilte.

Barremos calles.

We crossed rios.

We planted fruit.

We sell chilte.

We sweep streets.

Sentimos frío.

Sangramos llanto.

Callamos torturas.

Vivimos muertos

We felt cold.

We bled weeping.

We shut up tortures.

We lived dead.

kelsey page, Night, acrylic on canvas

jeff gesick, Electric Dreams, photograph

“ I really wanted to laugh... but I thought it wasn’t appropriate. So complete ironic.”

by david pena

55 grey

by david pena

dark...

emily clark, untitled light and landscape, photographs

aphotic, black, caliginous, dingy, lurid, ominous, shady, somber, tenebrous

Dark is lightless, devoid but far from empty.... it encompasses night, fear, death, suspense and the unknown. It is this unknown element that entices, entangles us with darkness. These pieces will haunt and linger with their sardonic style and leave you half afraid and ironically amused.

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—k.r.b

Untitled

emily clark, Daybreak, photograph

rossitza todorova, Crossroads, pencil drawing

A Dialogue at the End of Time by alex miller

Here we are Again.

Yes, We’ve come full circle-Eden to Eden.

I wonder If we can preserve it, This time around.

Not a chance, But we’re here now.

Snakes have apples.

And men have reasons.

What a tragedy.

No such thing.

A paradise lost!

A circle completed.

True, I suppose it’s inevitable-It will all fade to dust.

But we’re Here Now.

“ The ending is a total cliche... but I really liked it.”

I Ran you were on the pavement your I-can’t-tears blew with the wind in my face and I ran the sun retreated to its slumber and the cold veil of darkness crept over the sky Every word that poured from your mouth Echoed and rang in the Over flowing corner in my mind As words and strings of words spilled onto the ground like apples from a truck on the highway My feet beat up the pavement fighting Fighting and I ran

57 dark

by jeana bertoldi

The Darkness brian sweeney, YouTube Lives (video content was generated by searching YouTube for videos tagged with the word “me.”), photographs

by brian wallace mcgee As I sit upon my chair and wander through my thoughts, the Darkness sits and rests with me while time is held at bay

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Iíve never known what side itís on -for evil or for goodfor long Iíve sat with both in hand and neither say a word...

At times can be so comforting far more than love could be with deepest care and loyalty and strong security And then so truly terrifying the fear brings me to tears its all-consuming endlessness matched only by despair

And yet how comforting to know that such a thing can sit with me a kin of sorts ñ weíre both alone while time is held at bay The Darkness from Before all Times now sits and thinks aloud with me with secret words and deeds untold all waiting to be thought upon Ancient lore, forgotten lands, mystic knowledge long since lost All have left their mark on him like riddles that few understand I think again on what it is and know that I will never know Not least until I seek it out Wherever it may be

And as I sit upon my chair with Darkness at my side, I start to feel a growing threat but could I ever hide?

Forever will it wander round within our hearts and at our back behind the world and past the sun beyond the reaches of the Known

With fear and death sheathed at his side and Sorrow following in his wake Silent terror ~ Patient persistence Deathís grinning face at every turn

The darkness has eternally been subject to the light which then, in turn, is overthrown by darkness once again.

Its timeless depths of emptiness despairís own dark abyss alone from all existences confined in eternity It was before our God was borne and long before the Earth was here It is in every place we go And will be after all are gone

But like immortal prophesies from ëere the Time of Men The Darkness will -for good or badbe waiting once again.

by tara dawn connolly She sits there everyday Never minding all the bustling that surrounds her Just sits there With her grubby bag And a box of stale cereal A lovely treat for her legion of pigeons She is their god She’ll fill her knotted hand with their longing And hold it out Still as the metal post beside her throne Now she is loved Though not by many The three piece suit passes Muttering something under his breath He’ll never understand The old hag on the shit-painted bench Trash for trash He continues on The god continues to entreat her people A select group Not for everyone Not for the cell phones Not for the Wall Street geek Not even the careless young lovers Enamored with each other on the other side The groomed side of the park Do you know god?

The god on the bench I could be god Surrounded by my pigeons One’s a waitress One’s in a band One just watches TV We don’t like stale cereal Just coffee, sex, and cigarettes

Culpable by becca anderson Fucked a guy in the apartment four doors down My son slept sound -alone Did he know?

Fucked a guy in his girlfriend’s car I didn’t know he had oneThrew my cigarette out the window It blew back burning my son’s chest Now I’m not the only one scarred Did I ruin him?

It started with a longing thought An obsession to be-(in what way I do not know) Eating the apple?

Drinking Dancing Fucking Trying to live Beyond what I was able Heartbreaks and vomit smell up my memoriesA rule broken is all rules broken (to them) My forehead tainted…

Spotted up Always guilty They can all see it tooLike on Ash Wednesday Like a woman eight months along

I can’t stop worrying He is going to kill me I can’t stop biting my nails I deserve destruction I can’t stop pulling my eyebrows Should I go back?

Fear of destruction I’m out of breath Hands envelope my throat “Please!

Stop- I can’t breathe Stop!

Someone help…” I well plead But my manifestation reveals My own dirty hands around my throat Dripping with the life That once lived there In my lungs I dare to breathe a new breath Defining sin Not as me Defining myself As becoming every moment Even in these sinful moments Becoming me-

God has left me Peace has left-if It was ever there I’m so scared Of the image I can’t imagine

59 dark

the god of what

The Perfect Date

60 dark

by andrea tyrell

I let him slip his tongue in my mouth. It tasted like the two bottles of chardonnay we managed to down at that new French restaurant over on 4th Street.

Well, he did more of the drinking than I did. While he sipped, I slowly ran my finger around the rim of the glass and hung on to every one of his spoken words, staring into his abnormally green eyes. Trying to be flirty; not too desperate, but not too suspicious. He let go of his kiss and turned around, fumbled in his coat pocket for his keys and finally, let me in inside his apartment.

His bachelor pad was of the typical Reno-male norm; a small one bedroom, artistically decorated with multicolored furniture, a large entertainment center and a handful of abstract paintings mounted on the egg-shelled colored walls.

The thing that got me was that his apartment was immaculately clean. The cleanliness didn’t fit his personality and the demeanors I observed during dinner.

“Can I take your jacket?” he asked, removing his and gently laying it on the arm of the couch.

“Sure. Thanks,” I replied, handing him my coat. The apartment’s air conditioning hit my bare arms, giving them goose bumps. It was silent between us, just for a moment, but we both knew what was to be expected.

It lingered on the tips of our tongues and in the bitter air.

I smiled sweetly, as if it was a notion for him to come closer to me. He took my hint and wrapped his arms around my waist; dipped his head so our lips touched.

The simplicity of the kiss turned violent rapidly; our tongues racing, his hands running through my hair, my hands unbuttoning his shirt. We somehow made it to his bedroom, where I threw myself on the bed. He followed and began to kiss me once again with such intensity. My fingers nimbly unbuttoned the last button and he took a moment to throw his shirt to the floor. My lips moved to his clavicle. It tasted of an alcohol-based cologne. I hated that taste, but continued to lick his throat, pretending to take pleasure out of it.

I began to breathe a bit heavier as his hand moved down my side to the hem of my blouse. He lifted it up, pulling it over my head, exposing my bra.

Using his thumb and index finger, he undid the clasp and tossed the bra over his shoulder. He stared at my chest in awe and I had to smile at his sheer coyness.

His lips moved down to my stomach. My abdomen throbbed beneath his touch as he unbuttoned my pants, making haste taking them off. He touched the inside of my thighs with his gentle finger tips. My body tensed and everything became warm.

I didn’t want to tell him to stop. My hand dropped to his waistband and I unzipped his pants. He kicked them off and I helped his slide his boxers to his feet. I climbed on top of him, sitting on his pelvis. I leaned down and whispered in his ear.

“Do you have any ties?”

My question must have got him of his sexual daze because he gave me an

odd look.

“Ties?”

I kissed his soft cheeks. “Yeah, ties,” I said, giving back a playful grin.

“Let me play.”

He kissed my back and got up. I watched his naked form walk to the standing bureau in the corner of the bedroom and rummaged through a drawer, pulling out a fist full of brightly colored ties.

He walked back and climbed into bed with a humongous smile on his face.

“This is kinky,” he laughed. I giggled in return, grabbing the ties from his clenched fist. Trying to be seductive, I tied his wrists to the bedposts, making the knots tight and taunt. He couldn’t escape even if he screamed and begged for mercy. I kissed the length of this torso and smiled again.

We began to kiss violently again; bodies thrusting. I dug my nails into his smooth skin. He groaned, feeling a shock bolt up his spine. I was loving it. I looked down at his body. With his arms outstretched, he almost looked Christ-like. His face was glowing with sweat and beneath my fingernails, blood. The scratch I dug rung deep. I knew he was feeling pain. We groaned together, making love with each other.

My orgasm ceased and I was brought back down to reality. The thought that was buried in the back of my brain begin to tick. I leaned toward the front of the bed, grabbed a pillow from under his head and smiled as I held it against his face, pressing it down as hard as I could. He began to panic, yelling out muffled cries for help. His body struggled under mine; his limbs shaking violently. The sight turned me on. I rose and he fell dead. That lifeless body. My burning desire.

I bit both his lips, drawing blood and did the same to his ear lobes, fingers, the tip of his nose and nipples. His nipples were the most beautiful of all; little studs of skin standing straight on edge. I wanted them, wanted to feel his pinkish skin in my teeth; lap his radiant blood with my tongue.

Grabbing them both by the areolas, I peeled his nipples off his chest. The wounds bled freely and I licked the exposed muscle. My teeth found the ripped edge of skin and I torn flesh down, from his chest to his navel.

I pounded him. I’m sure I was making myself bleed, but this was the best sex I had in a long time. I then looked for something I could bruise his body with. I reached over to his nightstand and grabbed a lamp, raising it over my head. I took in a gulp of air and with all my might, slammed it down on his head. I knew I heard his skull crush. I did it again and again and again. His face became distorted, unrecognizable.

Those high cheekbones I admired over dinner fell low. Bone fragments stuck out of his thick cheeks like macabre flower petals. I kissed his bruised lips and pried them open with my finger; the majority of his teeth were lodged in the back of his throat.

Knowing that made me smile.

Taking the lamp’s cord in my hand, with the plug between my fingers, I took the pries and started to stab him, first his face, then his bloody chest and arms. He was so beautiful now.

I climaxed for the last time. I finished stabbing his body; his back, his legs. I

diane tay, Past Wounds, drawing

61 dark

flipped him back over and I wrapped the cord around his neck; so tight, his face turned purple and seemed like it was about to burst.

I stood beside the bed, feeling happy and magical. Nothing was lovelier to see than his mutilated body. I could make love to it all over again. I was proud of myself. He was quicker to kill than the others, especially the last four.

His bed linens were drenched with his blood. It gleamed bright red and looked luxurious. I quickly wiped off everything I might have left my finger prints on and put my clothes back on. Holding my hair with my hand, I kissed his gorgeous mouth for the last time. I touched his torn cheeks and whispered in the place where his ear should have been.

“You were amazing,” I smiled running my fingers through his hair. I blew him a kiss as I walked from his bedroom to the living room. I picked up my jacket and using its sleeve, I closed the door and left the building, enjoying the silent scream in my head, trying not to orgasm as I caught a cab home.

Ghosts

62 dark

by jeff gesick Striking off on a path that one has never tread before is always something I have experienced with utterly mixed emotions. On one hand, I am completely excited about everything; where I am going, why I am going there, what I will do on my way there, and so on; however I am also filled with trepidation at what unfortunate things might pop up and ruin my experience or even worse cause some damage to me personally.

One particular and rather unremarkable experience sticks out in my mind regarding this topic. One night at the end of a heavy evening of drinking with several of my friends, I decided I would walk home. While this wasn’t a large feat, seeing as my house was only across campus (a distance of around a mile) it was something I had never done, let alone as drunk as I was. On the one hand, I was pretty excited because it just so happened that a few months earlier several of my friends had done the same thing and they had a great time. Much of this had to do with a combination of how drunk they were and certain campus ghost stories I had related to them before they left.

When they returned later that night, because instead of returning home for the night, they had simply gone to get more beer, they were all excited, exhilarated and a little afraid. This being a state I enjoy being in very much, it is easy to see why I was looking forward to my first 3 AM stroll home through a supposedly haunted campus.

As I embarked on my way home, my friends reminded me of all the stories I had told them, as if I they were not already playing through my mind. For the most part, the walk home was uneventful, it was a cool and breezy night with no cloud cover but due to the garish yellow night lamps on campus, no stars were visible. There in fact was only one peculiar instance which made me quicken my pace for the remainder of the walk.

On the way to the school I had crossed the main street of the town and then entered at the south end of the campus. The south end of this particular university is taken up mostly by an artificial lake in which people have drowned; this is reputed to be one of the places on the grounds where ghosts are supposed to roam. My path took me across a dark, tree-covered walk way which served as the south wall of the lake and upon reaching the path I felt some apprehension mingled with excitement; however, my lake crossing passed without anything more unusual than my shaky stride. When I cleared the walkway I rounded an old building which used to house the school’s library. Once around the building I was on a large open boulevard which, in the day time, was always bustling with students. One side of the path was flanked by some of the oldest buildings in the school, most of which were built around the time of the Civil War. On the other side of the path lay newer building, constructed in the 70s, which were squat, ugly structures created at a low time in architectural fashion. On a dark, windy night neither kind of architecture looks particularly inviting; however, true to the Victorian era in which they were built, the older buildings proved to be much eerier.

It was as I was staggering down the boulevard, thinking these very thoughts I came to the realization that the wind had utterly stopped and I was cloaked in utter silence. For a brief moment I tried to explain the silence by reminding myself that I was in a school at three in the morning, of course it would be quiet. Unfortunately, this line of reasoning broke down as soon as I remembered just how busy the streets surrounding the school were, and in a city that truly never sleeps there was no explaining away this unnerving quiet. Another thing that made me slightly more uneasy was a sudden drop

in the temperature; the air should feel warmer if there was no longer any wind, and it was as that thought went through my head that I heard it. It was not much more than the sound of an object sliding across concrete, but at the same time it was so much more than that. It was a sneaky, malevolent sound that no one except the maker of that sound is supposed to hear. I froze completely still and as cold as the air might have been, my insides had just plummeted below that so that I broke out into a freezing sweat. I waited, not moving, listening, and there it was again! Louder this time, longer as well, and I had managed to locate where it was coming from. My paralysis broke just enough for me to pivot my head to my left where the Victorian buildings stood, and in the darkness of the alley between two of the buildings I saw what appeared to be one very large unbelievably shaped object, or two objects arranged in a manner that befitted that first awful scraping noise I heard. I am almost positive that it was the latter combination I saw, that of a human figure splayed out limply on the ground and another figure hunched over where its torso would be. While I gaped, the dominant figure shifted and the prone body followed causing a long, drawn out scraping noise. As my original fear crept up into a growing horror I grasped on to the remembrance that I was drunk, quite drunk to be honest, and that I must be seeing things. At that point I blinked furiously several times and shook my head about so as to clear anything I may have imagined to see. Once I was done I quickly looked back to the alley, and it was totally empty; not even trash littered the ground. I let out a great sigh of relief; it had just been a hallucination after all! I was so relieved that I almost started laughing when I heard a scrape directly behind me.

I was off, running through campus like a child avoiding a bully on the playground and I have never once been ashamed of my actions. No matter what I like to tell myself in the safe hours of daylight, I know that I witnessed ghosts, real ghosts, not the kind that you hear about in the fun ghost story-telling sense, but those of a much more gruesome and evil nature, of that I am sure. And if you ever feel brave wait until you hear a noise like that or see some stealthy figure hiding in the shadows and think to yourself, “What usually happens to those who hear sneaky, cruel sounds not meant for their ears?” And it is because of the answer to that question that I will always be glad that I ran.

mike losco, On Ice, photograph

by tara dawn connolly be happy for you for me because today yes! today is a good day the last day I will ever write of you never again will I use precious ink to immortalize you or the pain you filled me with which I thank you for because it was you your thoughts written words actions who taught me the easiest way to forget any good I had seen in you but know this I will always be there to pick up the broken pieces for you are so good at shattering your life not to mention the lives of everyone around you those who were blind enough to fall for you empty words cold embraces emotionless kisses dear angel of death thank you for using me and lying to me and trampling over my spirit

thank you for teaching me the truth trust no one I trusted you it took me many months to do so but don’t worry I’m older and wiser and jaded now never again shall I trust you dear angel of death thank you for hurting me (without which I wouldn’t be able to write) thank you for introducing me to sex but I must say I’d rather be playing my guitar honestly speaking a one night stand is more exhilarating and that’s all we were an extended one night stand something I never dreamed I’d be capable of but I’ve done it not once not twice three’s a charm and you you’re my omen and when I die I’m taking you with me I’ll kill you softly the way you tortured me so gently

mike thomas, Smoke, photograph

dear angle of death I am the second coming and my time is now . . .

diana bernard, untitled light form, photograph

63 dark

Angel of Death

Green Light Special

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by tara dawn connolly Her name was Andrea though I always referred to her as princess. You know the type: rich and beautiful and all too well aware of it. She came from a long line of money. Andrea had a not so subtle way of telling everyone this within ten minutes of meeting them. It was never the money that bothered me. I, too, came from a family better off than the average household. It was not the beauty that got to me either. By all means nature had blessed her; no one could deny that. She was 5’9” and all leg, thin but with curves in all the right places. It was as though God had breathed life into a da Vinci sculpture. Her eyes were a shade of green that reminded me of flying into Shannon airport over the patchwork fields of Ireland. And what a smile! It was not that she was married to my ex-boyfriend. I had called off the relationship and had never regretted that decision.

It was the way that Andrea equated human worth in dollar signs and decimal points. It was the way she could dismiss a new acquaintance after just a look, without exchanging even one word. It was the fact that she had been like this since we were ten years old. Sixteen years later she still thought meaningful conversation revolved around the $300 Coach handbag she had purchased to use one night only for an outdoor concert so as not to risk damaging one of her nice purses. Andrea was a name brand whore. Everything, down to her socks and underwear, was name brand: Tommy, Ralph Lauren, Givenchy, Versace, Armani. And that was the cheap-everyday-loungearound clothing. She wouldn’t be caught dead wearing “common” clothing as she stated.

Andrea could never understand why I would shop at Welfare Heaven, more commonly known as Wal-Mart.

Her parents were delightful people, as was her grandmother. Ever since fourth grade her parents had volunteered at every school event rather than “buying out” their service hours. Her grandmother, who had worked everyday of her life without need, spent her retirement years volunteering at the Reno-Sparks Gospel Mission and WARC. To this day I am perplexed about where Andrea’s self-righteous attitude came from.

When we were younger I could easily shrug off the irritated feeling she instilled in me.

Even in high school I could tolerate her pretentious ways. It wasn’t until college that my dislike turned to loathing.

We had many of the same classes during our first semester. The worst was an introduction to acting class. Andrea seemed to believe that acting was simply flipping her waist length hair over her shoulder in an almost whip like action and peering out from under her mascara caked eyelashes. It brought her great pleasure to accidentally hit people with her hair. I was convinced that her hair was how she showed hierarchal

status over other people. Secretly, I wanted to carry scissors with me and chop off her hair every time she whipped it around. But she flipped her hair to Shakespeare, to Simon, to Moliere. While I’m no expert on the subject of acting, Andrea was horrible. She honestly believed that beauty equaled talent and made many of our fellow classmates uncomfortable around her. I had explained to a couple of new friends in that class that Andrea was nothing more than a conceited bitch who wasn’t worth a second thought. At the end of the semester our professor gave us a dreadful final assignment. He put us into groups, gave us a script, and said, “Be ready to perform next week.”

I was in a group with Andrea and Amy to work on Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley. The first thing we had to do was determine who would play which role.

Andrea felt she should play Meg, the attractive, feisty one. Amy asked Andrea why she felt like this. Andrea flipped her thick, brown hair over her shoulder dramatically and replied, “Look at me! I’m the beautiful one in the group.”

Amy laughed and then was somewhat stunned when she realized that Andrea was dead serious. I simply sat there wishing, yet again, that I had scissors to cut off that damn hair.

The next week we performed. Andrea gave a hollow, dimensionless interpretation of Meg. Amy was pissed. I simply wanted a Midori Sour and a shot of Goldschlager. In an attempt to smooth things over, I invited Andrea and Amy to the Green Light, my favorite bar. Everything seemed pacified until we got on the subject of cosmetic surgery. Amy was talking about getting collagen lip injections. Andrea, being her usual tactless self, said, “Your lips are fine Amy. Really, you’d be beautiful if you weren’t so fat.”

Silence. Tears filled Amy’s eyes and she ran off to the bathroom. Ian, Andrea’s husband, followed after Amy. I asked Andrea to step outside for a moment.

“What the hell was that?” I snapped as soon as we reached the rear parking lot.

“What was what?”

“You just called Amy fat. You know she just got out of treatment for Anorexia.

Damn it Andrea. Who the hell do you think you are? Amy’s skinnier than you,” I yelled in a rage.

“Well she obviously doesn’t carry it as well as I do,” Andrea replied coldly.

“So what does that make me,” I asked. “A hippo?”

She flipped her long, thick French braid over her shoulder as she started to walk away saying, “Well if the shoe fits.”

Everything after that happened so fast. I grabbed her left arm in one hand and her braid in the other and quickly wrapped it clockwise around her neck. I yanked.

mike thomas, untitled, photograph

65 dark

I yanked for Amy, in tears in the bathroom. I yanked for Ian who had spent the last two years constantly apologizing for his wife’s callousness. I yanked in a blind rage for sixteen years of tears I had wiped from the cheeks of those Andrea had torn down. I yanked and Beethoven’s Fifth in C Minor, aptly known as Fate, played out in an orchestra of knuckle sounds as Andrea’s porcelain neck snapped. She hit the pavement as the symphony ended.

I stared down at her. She almost looked angelic. Then I thought of Amy who would end up back in therapy and I smiled at the motionless lump on the black asphalt. I looked up to see Ian staring at me with tears in his eyes.

“Get out of here,” he said. “No one saw you come out here except me. Get out of here now and nothing will happen to you. It was an accident; I understand that. Just go now before it’s too late.”

“Ian,” I started with a strange sense of confidence and serenity, “it wasn’t an accident.”

“Get the hell out of here. Hell, if it wasn’t an accident that could be Murder One. You’ll go away for that; you could get life.”

“I’m not sorry Andrea’s dead Ian. She deserved it. But you know me, I need roots. I need stability. I can’t live on the run.”

“Andrea had so many enemies. It will take the cops forever to figure it out.”

The silence was broken by the sound of sirens getting louder and closer. I walked to the curb a few feet away and sat down. I was so calm, unafraid as I waited to be discovered and arrested. Someone must have seen me. Why else would the police be on their way?

I gazed up at him. He came and sat beside me. I rested my head on his shoulder.

He draped his arm around me as he had done so many years before. Every star was visible in the parking lot of the Green Light that night. We sat there, staring at Andrea, with no regrets. No regrets.

Non-Funeral

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by lacey damron The ADD child in the pew behind me won’t shut up. Won’t sit still. Which means his mother won’t shut up and won’t sit still. He asks when they are going to Disneyland. She says, “Right after the service, now shush.”

A memorial service is like a fast-food funeral; I’m surprised there’s no drivethrough. It’s the grief process in fast-forward, then on to Tomorrowland. Twenty minutes only leaves four minutes for denial, four minutes for anger, four minutes for bargaining, four minutes for depression, and four minutes to move into acceptance.

The mothers shushes echo louder than the boys questions. He begins chanting, “I wanna go now, I wanna go now,” and kicking the back of my pew. In a world of speed, everything is now. I envision myself whipping around, taking them both by the neck and growling, “If you don’t shut the hell up, you’re gonna be joining the deceased. Have some respect.”

I don’t do this. Think it, don’t do it. That’s the kind of self-restraint I have.

The Filipino priest no one can understand seems oblivious to all of this. He prattles on about the deceased whom he obviously never met.

Then the boy is up and running through the empty pews behind us toward the open set of mahogany-and-stained-glass doors. His mother is in tow, yelling, “Mark! Mark!

Come back here this instant!”

If the twenty whole minutes of grieving time simply cannot be spared, there is always www. familyguestbook. com. Log on, sign in, log off; three minutes tops. This can be done between checking e-mails. Between FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: The good luck fairy don’t delete and HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA. As of late, all I’ve attended are memorials of the deceased with no publicists.

Obituaries simply stating where the “celebration of life” is to be held. Obituaries with no effort whatsoever put into them.

I’m a chronic malcontent; the funeral is my penance and these memorials just aren’t doing it for me. The memorial is like one “Hail Mary,” whereas the funeral is more the equivalent of ten “Hail Mary’s” plus ten “Our Father’s.”

There are no biographies. No survived by’s. No proceeded in death by’s.

No photo of PHILLIP H. HUTCHINSON, who was shot six times, by an unknown assailant, presumably a hitchhiker, leaving him faceless on the side of Highway 50 between Austin and Fallon, Nevada. No photo of DANIEL S. ROSSI, who, excited about his special order toupee, ran to his car, glued it on, admired himself in the rear view, then lit a Marlboro and presumably from the glue fumes, burst into flames.

These are the tid-bits you receive from the family after the service. When the grieving process is over, but before Disneyland.

No photo of JAMIE A. KINSLEY who was decapitated when the strap broke on the eighteen wheeler she was following and two hundred pieces of 24-inch PVC pipe came through her windshield at seventy miles per hour. This is the service I am currently attending. Trust me, freak accidents aren’t only consigned to freaks.

There is only an urn, centered on the pulpit, posing as a compact, space- saving casket. Cremation has become the improved, faster than ever decomposition.

The Filipino priest no one can understand closes his eyes and bows his head.

Everyone follows his lead—it’s kind of a Catholic game of Simon Says. Father Reyes says, “Let us pray.” Everyone prays. Father Reyes says, “Bow your heads.” Everyone bows their

heads. Father Reyes says, “The Lord be with you.” Everyone says, “And also with you.”

Catholic conditioning; there is much power in the priesthood though he has to say amen twice before anyone realizes he’s done with his prayer.

A fifty-ish woman with Alice Cooper-like mascara runs - probably JAMIE A. KINSLEY’s mother or aunt - announces the reception will be held at her house immediately following the service. The after-party. Normally, this is where I get my tid-bits.

I simply follow the procession to the reception.

Sometimes, I am an old boyfriend the deceased dated for only a month. “Oh, she never mentioned me?” - with the hurt look -has become a staple. Sometimes, I used to work with the deceased. This one you can only use if you can obtain prior knowledge of the deceased’s previous place of employ. Once, I had to resort to being the guy at the post office where the deceased bought stamps. There were too many attendees at that one to have been the deceased’s coworker or third cousin.

The smaller the turnout at the funeral, the broader your options for relation to the deceased. The fewer mourners, the more choices.

I can’t make the after-party because my car crapped out last week and I am subject to public transportation.

On the bus ride home, I’m still irritated by the boy and his mother, angry that I didn’t feel the memorial like I should have. Angry that JAIME A. KINSLEY didn’t warrant a full-blown funeral. Angry that I didn’t find another service to attend today, a plan B, even from a biography and photo-deficient obituary. Angry that I didn’t get my penance; so angry that I hardly notice this neo-hippie chick sitting across the aisle from me, staring. I’m not so much self-centered as self-saturated.

Dirty brown dreadlocks hide her so I can’t really see her face or the size of her breasts. The hair is parted by her shoulders so what I can see of her is the host of angels tattooed up and down her right arm, all naked and flying up toward her head. They aren’t quite prison tats but still pretty amateurish. Her skirt looks like a potato sack - same brown color - that falls almost to her black army-issue combat boots. There is a film of white dirt on them, probably remnants from Burning Man last Labor Day. Nothing about her is brand name. She looks homemade, like a voodoo doll with patchwork clothing sewn on. She peeks between two thick tendrils at me from the corner of her eye.

“So, how did you know my sister?”

“Excuse me?” I say.

“How did you know my sister?” she repeats, as the bus screeches to a halt.

Everything inside leans forward the same distance then falls back into place.

“Huh?” “The memorial? My sister?” She turns toward me. She’s beautiful. Her face is pale with two language barrier blue eyes painted upon it—no words can describe them, at least no words I know. The hydraulic door hisses open and people file past us.

“How did you know my sister?”

“Oh. I…we dated for a couple of weeks, a long time ago.” I put on the hurt look but don’t say ‘Oh, she never mentioned me?’

“My sister was a lesbian since age twelve. Try again.”

Oh shit.

“Okay, we didn’t actually date. I used to ask her out all the time when we worked together, but we never actually went out.” Nice recovery. Good job.

“That bitch never worked a day in her life. This is kinda fun. Do you want to try

following the rhythm of the ride. Her hand bounces from her leg to mine as the driver takes a wide left turn. She doesn’t remove it. Neither do I. I miss my stop on purpose.

Brakes screech. Hydraulic doors open. She stands and so do I. I follow her as she departs.

I watch her dreadlocks sway in unison with her skirt as she walks. She descends the three steps to the sidewalk and I imagine her breasts bouncing.

It’s when my feet hit concrete that she turns to me and says; “It was so very sweet that you did that for my sister. I hope someday someone will do something like that for me.” Her words are punctuated by another hydraulic hiss and the bus pulls away. We stand staring at each other. If we were co-starring in a movie, this would be that tense moment before the dramatic kiss.

But she ruins it with: “Well, I’ve gotta run; I’m always late. Always in a hurry. James, it was nice to meet you.”

The traffic creates a gust of wind with every vehicle that blurs by. In a world of speed, no one ever stops. Even after I push her into the street, there is a slowing down - a gawking - but only the furniture store truck that hits her stops, everyone else honks and goes around. In a world of speed, some don’t even have enough time to breathe.

Following JONIKA A. KINSLEY’S memorial, at the after-party, when the fifty-ish woman with Alice Cooper-like mascara runs asks me how I knew her, I just tell the truth: “I met Jonnika on the bus. I was there when she ran in front of that truck. I’ll never be able to get the image out of my head.” I’m not so much full of shit as full of sorrow for myself that Genetically Engineered Food-Free Jonika didn’t get a chance to biodegrade.

alex tam, Hitchhiker, photograph compilation

67 dark

again?” She smiles, raising an eyebrow as a fat black lady in a yellow spaghetti-strapped sundress stops between us looking for a seat. I decide to hurdle the person in front of me and exit but the hydraulic door closes and the bus lurches forward. Before the black lady can fall, the girl is standing and giving up her seat. They trade places and the line of people behind them are rolling their eyes and sighing through puffed cheeks. One suit and tie guy even yells, “Come on, hurry up!” In a world of speed, impatience is a virtue.

My inquisitor finally squeezes by and tells me to “Squooch over” and when I do the suit and tie guy says, “Damn it!” as if I am actually holding a seat for him. She sits and sets her backpack on her lap. It is made of the same hemp material as her skirt with the drawstring cinch acting as the shoulder strap. Several sewn patches read Patagonia and Greenpeace. A draft of patchouli follows her.

“I’m Jonika,” she says, extending her slim hand.

“James,” I say, quickly, so I don’t lose my train of thought. I know her line of questioning will continue the next time her mouth opens so I’m racking my brain for an adequate answer.

“So, James, how did you really know my sister? Just tell me the truth.”

“I…um…well, it’s hard to explain.” The truth. Sure, Jonika. I’m the one who cut the strap just enough so that when that eighteen-wheeler hit a pothole or dip in the road, the strap would snap and release the PVC pipe that came through your sister’s windshield at seventy miles an hour and ripped her head clean off. There, feel better?

I don’t do this. Think it, don’t say it. That’s the kind of self-restraint I have.

“Just do it. Come on.” Environmentally-Safe Jonika attempts to extract the information by hand motions, palms up, like she’s fanning herself in slow motion. “You can do it, James.” I feign a chuckle at her animation.

“Okay. Don’t…don’t think I’m a stalker or anything but…I work at a coffee shop she used come to. I…I didn’t really know her. Just her name. From her credit card.” I say, stammering. At this point I’m not so much full of shit as full of fear.

“That’s kinda sweet. Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?” She puts her hand on my knee for a second, too long for a pat but not long enough to construe the gesture as a flirt.

“I just didn’t want you to think some wide-eyed psycho showed up at your sister’s memorial,” I say, so very relieved.

“Trust, if you were some wide-eyed psycho, you’d have fit right in.” Dolphin-Safe Jonika stares straight ahead, boring a hole into the back of the lady’s head in front of us.

“Huh?” “My family. They’re the deluded epitome of dysfunctional. They’re all greedy materialists who think their salvation lies in status, trends, bigger, better, faster, more than everyone else.” Her voice starts to rise and her eyes are fixed like she’s unable to avert them from whatever she sees in her mind’s eye. “They’re selfish, capitalist, Republican…”

“So, they’re pretty much like eighty-five percent of the population of the United States,” I say, cutting her off, more bored than in agreement.

“Yeah, exactly.” MSG-Free Jonika says, nodding her head. “James, even if you were a wide-eyed psycho, I’d still dig you.”

“Thanks,” I say, feigning a smile and look of embarrassment.

We sit the remainder of the ride in silence as the bus rumbles on. Screeching to stops, hissing, spitting people out, sucking people in and continuing. Over and over. Every so often All- Natural Jonika looks over at me and smiles. Her smile says we’ve connected, we fit, that our meeting is kismet, karma, destined, fate. Ours knees touch again and again

68 dark

“ I like it... it creates a surreal experience for me”

rebecca holstrom, untitled, photograph

crista hecht, Outlet, photograph

bryan christianen, Left Hands, MDF, parafin wax and acrylic paint

Stroke

by mario ponzio And then there was crimson.

His delicate mask strewn to the side without care as his eyes broke from the façade that had long shackled him. With wild abandon he took each stroke, slashing across the white flesh hoping to dissuade the humanity within. She was his now, and his alone. The colors blended, became one, and in his eyes, he saw all that was human and all that is- washed away into sheets of wet fabric. And he was pleased.

Step back now, enjoy the work.

He sighed heavily, allowing thick gulps of stagnant urban air to fill his lungs, renewing despite its stench. His hair, usually straight, stuck in curls upon his soaked forehead, reflecting a thin film of milky sweat. The black dots that were his eyes scanned this image, lifeless upon the ground. He stared with such a cruel distaste that it almost seemed he loathed his creation. Yet, once he stared into his hands and to the colors that painted him for what he was, his smeary disguise broke, and the ceramic veil that comprised his context fell to the ground.

She stared upon this sad man, overwhelmed by his work, a splatter of red on a canvas of beige. She remained there, allowing the warm, thick air to brush over her bare breast with a delicate touch. She stayed still, partially out of obligation to the painter and to her work, but mostly out of fear for the beast he had become. She was mute to this man’s hate, this man’s passion, this man’s everything. During the love making beforehand, he had been raw and inhuman, pulsating within her sans substance. Now, though, he was more human than her eyes had ever wanted to see.

“Are we done here?” she asked, the words choked in her throat.

“The money’s on the table,” he said, never removing his eyes from the brutish strokes upon the canvas even as she kissed him upon the cheek or even as she began to sob before she slammed the door. The world without was dead to him. The only life was his within and without in the image.

An image of himself.

The care was gone, though.

This was his, and nobody could strip him of his property. Locke guaranteed it. What is his, is his, and his alone. Who would want this, anyhow? This demented vision, this twisted muse. Well spent in the eyes of the creator, yet murderous and profane to the beholder. He stopped at last, allowing the sweat to merge with the foreign red upon his face and blend in a violent tango upon his cheek. With a crack of his neck and a wave of his wrist, it was so, and all was won. The life was gone, and its soul was his. He no longer stared into the eyes of a femme, but the eyes of himself.

A halted breathe.

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A work incomplete, still heaving with its own feigned independence. It needed more work, and it needed finality. No screams, no cries, no dreams, no. Nothing. It was his now, and he was captivated by his new founded ownership, this newly crafted trophy to an already exquisite collection. The grin broke, and the mask was put back in place as he allowed a long, penetrating swipe to graze the surface of its skin, watching as the harsh shade dripped down its deeply contrasting background. He swung the handle in his hand, allowing sickly drops of red to splatter upon his clothes, already drenched in the sticky stuff.

austin baker, Brick, concrete, resin and pen on paper

Smiling, a wide grin.

The Shade Tree by julien pellegrini There is a tree in the desert Neither living nor dead It grows from rain water Trickles seldom down a sandy wash bed.

It grew from a seed Carried in by a crow It harbors life in the desert Be it hot day or night cold.

When once long ago in quiet solitude it grew It grew green and free as any tree can grow It sprang to life in the hot desert sun Gave shade to the jackrabbit on the run, And a perch to the owls of the long quiet night.

Now it rests all alone, in quiet tranquil peace, No voice of its own, no spirits to appease The wind for a whisper in its few remaining leaves It heeds only blue sky, and the dust that rides high.

Still today on a limb of mighty girth Bears the scar of a rope once tied tightly there From which it held in death-tight grip The grizzly remains of a man hung high.

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toby obrien, Fertilizers are Steroids for Trees, crayon on paper

He was hung for murder, after a brief gun fight When he should have come here to the shade tree of life He killed a man over cards late one night So instead they took him here and tied him up tight Spooked the clay bank mare he sat upon with pride And left him to die beneath the clear blue sky.

The cold man’s remains once living and named Gave back to the earth what life was given at birth

He is now the rolling dust, whirlwinds, and hot desert gusts That rise from the desert floor and never rest.

We dream of life after life Reincarnation and rebirth To go on again after all is gone Come back as the hawk or maybe a desert fox.

But even to the hawk and the small desert fox The shade tree is life and the embodiment of home In autumn desert sun the colors of crimson and gold Under great thunder heads the umbrella of gnomes.

So when it is my turn to go I will return here alone And lie down below the shade tree of life Go to sleep and then die, let her take me far away Become her limbs and leaves, her bark and white pith.

I will visit the hawk and small desert fox In a land I know well where sun and life dwells Then rise with the sand in the hot desert wind And whisper through the leaves of the mighty shade tree...

by lacey damron For Kaska, the letter lying on the table is such a stark, sterile, blinding white that the words typed on it seem so black they look evil, almost as ominous as Bryan’s 9mm, also on the table. The paper is wrinkled from drying tears and palm sweat. The heading begins with her name, Kaska Samojlowicz, and Bryan’s address. She reaches toward the gun but instead picks up the cordless phone next to it and dials his cell phone.

“GoldTown Casino. This is Bryan. How may I help you?”

“They… denied… my visa.” Kaska says, through hyperventilating sobs.

“What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” Bryan says, putting his hand to his other ear. “Shit. Hold on. I can’t hear you. I’m gonna walk outside.”

Kaska can hear the ding, ding, ding of a slot machine that just hit a taxable jackpot. A woman screams the same excited screams Kaska would have, had the letter from immigration read something else.

“I’m almost outside. Hold on,” Bryan says. He can barely hear her crying over the constant din of the casino. Her cries emanating through the cell phone become louder as the mahogany door closes behind him.

“You got a letter from Immigration?”

“They denied me.”

“Are you sure that’s what it says?”

“Bryan, Do you think I’m a special kid?! Do you think I can’t read?!” Kaska yells, barely able to breathe.

“No, no, no. Maybe you just read it wrong.” Bryan says. “Read it to me.”

“The applicant is no longer in a valid nonimmigrant status and therefore must depart the United States.” Her accent pronounces status as statoose and Bryan would correct her, tell her how cute she is, how much he loves that accent had there not been so much hurt, so much anger in her voice, were the situation not so dire. “Do you need me to read anymore?!”

“Oh shit. Now what? What happens now?” A nauseous cauldron bubbles in his gut. Bryan sits down on the sidewalk to keep from vomiting. He feels the passersby looking down at him and he wants to trip them, wants to drop the phone and hit them or push them into Virginia street into oncoming traffic. Hurt them like his Kaska’s been hurt.

“It is all such a bullshit! Poland is the only country that helped after the 9-11 and now they are denying me!” Her sobs are now voice-cracking screams. “Kurva! I am in ten months prison in this country. No work. I cannot attend school. I just have to wait and wait and then they deny me! That’s a bullshit!”

“Calm down,” Bryan says, his head in his hands, raking his hair. “ You’ve got to calm down. You’re gonna make yourself sick. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

“I even went to Mass today. I ate the holy bread. I made confession. I lit the candle. I prayed so hard. Bog just does not want me to be happy.” Bog always sounds like book to Bryan.

“Honey, God’s obviously not in charge of the US immigration office,” Bryan

says, attempting to lighten her.

“Bog just wants me to be in suffering.”

“Sweetie, we can fix this.”

“Bryan, do you not understand?! There is nothing. And I will not go back to Poland. I cannot leave without you.”

“We’ll appeal. There’s gotta be something…”

“I will not leave without you.” Kaska’s voice is an echo, faint and far away.

“Kocham ciebie.”

Bryan says, “I love you, too,” before a gunshot explodes in his ear and he suddenly realizes that she was not saying, “I will not leave with out you.“ Her live always sounds like leave.

crista hecht, Tree, photograph

71 dark

Denial

Untitled

sarah king, Alien Moon, photograph

by julia walde

72 dark

Moon Puddle, photograph

Carried by a single sound The sun comes up and she cant be found Its like a game she wants to play She wont get to close but she wont run too far away It would be foolish of me to ask her to stay I can only see her pain, I cannot wash away the stains She is like a single rose her thorns prevent her from being adored and every night and every day I saw her wilt, I saw her decay until I took her in my arms one time and felt a faint spirit crying to be alive it gave me hope it gave me joy but how do you revive someone who has been completely destroyed?

It seemed like only one thing to do Nourish what was left until happiness ensued For her heart was like a piece of glass Once shattered people found it useless So she found comfort in this remedy Finding herself in the ‘hopeless to fix’ category Never wanting anything from anybody Running away from the person she knew she wanted to be Caught in a web that society created for her Innocence was lost before she could be sure Broken down and giving up she could never get back all she had lost I kept telling her everything was going to turn out fine I only hoped that in time she would see the sign Posted outside her door, and inside her heart That reads “its not the script you were assigned that makes you anything extraordinary, its how you play the part”

by grayian pheonix

In the night, when the words of that moment knew not of when to flow from my quill I asked of the mistress to which, I begged for the simplicity of even a function of a word.

Nothing came, but the the night called to me from out of my shell.

Like a werewolf begging to be let out of this manhood, he was enslaved to answer.

I could hear nothing, if not for the howling, beckoning to call me on the night of no words.

Telling myself of the foolish abstinece, I was forced to bring to the page.

I felt the chair slip out from under me and the blackness from the hit, left me falling to a slumber that only could stir, from the conversating forces around me.

Awaking to the sight of the fog, that masked the capers of London, by only reminiscing the tantilizing glow around the mystigues of the west side.

The moon in its cresent glory, echoed me to find the voice behind the illusion of hope.

My muse in the darkness of nights glittering gown.

The gate of which I stumbled, told me to unlock the testimonies of time.

To find the pieces, of puzzles left alone and unglued. Whisk me away to the reminisces of past longings.

The voice of an angel, kept calling to me, never to tell of its sex. Man? Woman?

Or that of another nature.

I followed the path of the rocky

cobblestone, and took my heart in my hand, to know of what I asked of the night.

Did I long for death or was there a greater purpose for the penniless sod.

Cursing the black moon, for its non-irridescent glow.

Harvest Moon, ha?

I could hear my soul shudder, and the path to the darkness try to swallow me whole.

I didn’t ask for the depth of my soul, but begging of the outreachings of unspoken darkness to take me on a ride.

With the dust of sand, still cclinging to my lids.

I passed breaths of turmoil, and took in to retrospect, the idea I might not come back.

A blink....A blink....A blink....

Then I saw something, upon the decrepid old-stones of past years.

The closer I got the more distant, this orb of light became.

Blink, damn it, blink.....

When I got to a spot not far from a tree.

There she was......

Her skin was flowing of silk-strung white.

I wanted to taste of it, like a feline yearning for that quart of milk, in the mists of the nightly beggings.

A mistress of the moon, and slave to no ones desires but her own.

Black hair clung to her back like that of a raven.

Reminiscent of the cloaks, worn by men under less than holy circumstances.

Caring into the night the fear of consequences.

Eyes that mimiked to be told, of the decident whispers by candlelight.

Emeralds glow with the despiration of the poor.

But drip with the blood of saints, when pressed to the churchs altar of Christ.

Her face of the agonys,

that broke the chains, of servitude to escape the life of the redemption in Heavens gate.

Her attitude, told me that she knew of the secret language of the ways of the flesh.

Clothes were her boundaries. Out of them....

She stood as the vampiric undertones of society that called her.....Gothic.

In them....she was a dark angel in the night...

A solider....if you will.

I asked of her, nothing in her imaged presence, except the most harmless thing of all, her name.

She told me: That the most simple sentimentalities, reprsent the ways of man, in which she felt trapped by her name.

I asked of her: What she would like to be called?

She answered by saying this: “LIsten to the night” That...there...that is what I answer to.”

My eyes, closed so my ears could pray.

May I hear the sounds of the night, may I hear the whispers of the dead?

As my ears attuned to the many aspects of words.

I opened my eyes.....

I told her, if I ever was meant to Grace her lips.

May she speak of the stranger that night... me In the fondest of memories. She nodded.

I watched her sing her song, that tolds me of her origins.

Of the birth, that took angels wrapped in the bed, of demon wings, that excentuated the evenings clinging marks to realism. As her pregnancy was of a sinful lust, to dominate a demons urges for the flesh of man.

She gave the night when blood spilled to know

the forbidden love that took on a fury like hell hath, no punishment.

Of that of a forbidden love, ber mothers wild ways.

Dawn took its light upon the horizion.

And I asked myself, when closing my eyes, to shild from the powerful light.

What had I come her for?

Was my purpose ever forfilled?

But then a brush of wind, came beside me to remind me of home.

Behind me dare I look?

I could feel her presence, fading with the morning glow.

Then a sound, a “purr” It was as simple as that.

Companionship?

That is what I ached for.

When I opened my eyes, the cat, that cat of hers was in my arms, and a kiss only felt on the wings of love, graced my lips, to know she was real.

As long as I remembered, the night, I took myself beyond reality and ended up in the lengthest of forbidden tales...

The Graveyard.....

73 dark

Cursing on the Black Moon: To A Graveyard Dance

Where Darkness Lies

april joy f. scoble, Tulip Caress, photograph

by matthew burton

But heed this warning and try to flee Before the darkness comes to thee.

Where happiness dies and shadows dwell, A place exists of living hell.

Madness encircles all those here As the end of existence draws ever near.

Our sins helped draw it out to feed Off of our rage, our lust, and our greed.

But now that it’s here, it will not rest Until it has taken what we value best.

It comes ever closer every day, And one only hopes they can run away.

Let nothing slow you, not even doubt, Or else you might never make it out.

In a breath your soul will disappear, Leaving nothing but your deepest fears.

But just when you think it’s finally through, You’ll find there’s nothing left of you.

One hopes they’ll see the golden light As they run in fear and fright, But all they’ll see is endless gloom Leading them to certain doom.

So ignore the promising, heavenly light Because shadows always follow just out of sight.

Steer clear of the shrilling, piercing cries For that is where the darkness lies.

Your body could freeze in a moment’s pass And your courage may break like fragile glass,

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casey diskin, Rubber Duck Lee, oil on canvas

“ featured artists...

”

...camouflaged by the silk skins we tend to hide inside...

by nathan slinker in the sunniest of falls ma an pop visit me carefree among diers in the street on endless wine my mother drinks herself into a wonderfully low armchair “how long ‘till we eat?” she eats only peapods an rice an I drive the car uptown (to the theater) (later) I go showin’ off town dream houses with stained glass inside the most beautiful walks pop, then ma, an me last (course) on the first banister she tries to slide as a youngster might an as I start to object (“ma don…”) falls three flights before breaking her body on a rail she lies still and twisted I run down around around down blood seeps from her head on the oak floor I scream for my dad to call nine-one-one an I lay my head down an cry on her breasts an blackness sweeps down the stairs like we’re just dust in a forgot day

name: nathan slinker medium of choice: poems major: Journalism/Art year: Junior recent work: I have been experimenting with language and word combinations to create vivid and distorted images, while also trying to make my poems more accessible. Building spiral staircases to underwater lava flows. influences: Bob Dylan, Pam Steele, the Beats, John Ashbery, Picasso, and Edward Weston.

“I see naturally abstract shadow forms created by tree bark, swing sets, etc. and I write those moments down on paper. Sometimes they depict a picture of reality.

Usually some surreal landscape emerges that exists in our minds but is camouflaged by the silk skins we tend to hide inside.”

75 dark

day before my birthday

Untitled by jeff gesick As I stare into the mirror deep within I can hear— my self image standing there and as I stare, He also stares until he sees himself.

Then, noticing his imperfections he screams, he moans he cries He bangs against the mirror but trapped by glass only I can see. and no one else can hear.

Then he begins to tear, to cut Himself here and there And while an image He only is I feel the pain, his pain and curl to a ball But no one sees, no one hears as we both fall trapped inside ourselves again me and my own image crawl

frances arnold shaw, Abondoned, photograph

nicholas connoly, Three Two Two, holga photograph

tap by diane tay the tap is overflowing, the heat reverberates against the metal cup, the constant droning of the ‘beeps’ and ‘bangs’, the light is pale as the yellow beats and the white burns, “close the curtains”, she says in a most hallucinatory tone, the walls, the peeling wallpaper reminds him of an open wound, “no”, he says.

The door creaks,

76 dark

The door creaks, The door creaks.

The Next Twenty Years Will Leave Us by ray hardin (1964- 2007) Staring at shot glasses hated and revered like chalices empty in a damp row feeling like we’ll never be home home like shellshock and rows of empty shot glasses wondering if immobile and thunderstruck are the only words that will ever describe the way we feel anymore while we sit here inert on barstools in an otherwise empty bar asking how long it’ll be until we’re counting like 58,148 U.S. soldiers, 4 million civilians, 20,000 50-gallon barrels of Agent Orange or whatever pesticide they use these days to make it easier to kill people we don’t really consider people and after 20 years and too many shots of “What you got?” remembering about Odysseus from school all that time he spent trying to get back home but dumbstruck

by Circe’s spells stopped cold by Polyphemus’ boulder and his own idiotic desire to be a fucking martyr or hero or martyr to heroism or some fucking martyr-hero thing and imagining him later staring at lantern flickers on a mortared wall paralyzed by the insanity of Telemachus his only son sailing overseas with more troops for yet another fucking war yes paralyzed like us on these stools staring at fresh shots of whiskey and without the use of our legs.

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kelsey page, Letters, oil on canvas

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Students, faculty, and all members of the community are encouraged to submit.

The Brushfire is available to the University and greater Reno community. It is a publication that continues to grow year after year and is primarily funded by the Associated Students of the University of Nevada.

However, in order for the Brushfire to continue its growth it needs your support.

All submissions should include contact information, title(s), and medium(s). Written work should be submitted as a Microsoft Word Document or Rich Text File and under 2500 words. Visual work should be submitted as a JPG or TIFF file with dimensions no smaller than 6” x 8” at 300 dpi.

Submissions may be submitted in CD format at the JTSU Info Center or emailed to brushfire@asun.unr.edu.

All submissions must be recieved by 5:00pm Friday, October 12, 2007 to be considered for the fall edition.

78 submit

Have questions? email brushfire@asun.unr.edu or go online www.asun.unr.edu/brushfire

If you would like to contribute to the Brushfire through a financial donation or as a volunteer please contact the editor via email at brushfire@asun.unr.edu.

Sarah Corinne King, assistant art editor

Ashley Noël Hennefer, assistant literature editor

...acknowledgements

I began working as editor in the fall of 2006 and have loved every hectic minute since. I am passionate and dedicated to visual and photographic literacy and excellence and I believe the Brushfire is continued proof of that passion and excellence in this community. I’m currently a senior majoring in Art (photography) and minoring in Philosophy. I love hiking, camping, traveling, my puppy Sierra (who always tags along), visiting art galleries, reading women authored literature, writing poetry and prose, and obsessing over an idea and turning it into a photograph. I do not like flying, heights, driving across bridges, any kind of fruit, and being allergic to things.

I would like to thank my two very talented and enthusiastic assistants:

I am currently a junior majoring in Criminal Justice, although my true passion is photography. I have been taking pictures for as long as I can remember, and I am currently starting my own photography business. I love taking pictures of everything from family portraits to sports, and I hope to eventually earn a living with my art. Things that keep me going: Momma, Daddy, and my brother Mikey, my fiancé Tristan, my wonderful friends, Kevin Smith movies, great days for taking photos, poignant and mind expanding books, my cats, rainy days, music, coffee, and chocolate.

I am majoring in English (writing) and hopefully minoring in Theatre and French. J’aime writers who make the smaller things in life seem magical, traveling to amazing places in the United States and beyond, watching foreign films, going on little adventures in Reno with my friends, reading books until the sun comes up, and the quote “times are hard for dreamers.” Je n’aime pas anything mathematical, people who don’t like to read, worrying about grades, black licorice, and ice on the ground after it snows. I can’t wait to travel and write as much as I can, and I aspire to someday win a Pulitzer Prize or work for National Geographic.

Ashley and Sarah. Thank you, without your help this edition would not have reached its realization. I would like to extend a special thank you to the Brushfire Review Committe whose time and expertise helped shape this edition: Keiko Kominami, Chris Trillo, Alex Gevedon, Skyler FuzellCasey, Ryan Philips, Tiffany Threatt, Amy Koeckes, Nathan Slinker, Dylan Mucklow, Marji Vecchio, Ashley Hennefer, and Sarah King. Thank you to the ASUN and the publications board, for your continual support. Thank you to the faculty of the art department and the english department for encouraging and inspiring your students. Thank you to the Fuzell-Casey Family for your generous support. Thank you to the Sheppard Fine Arts Gallery for hosting our release celebration. Finally, thank you to every artist and writer for submitting your work and allowing the Brushfire to share your talent with the community.

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Kelly R. Bridegum, editor

...about us

80 index

Alex Chambers (14) Alex Miller (57) Alex Tam (67) Amelia Nickol (17) Andrea Tyrell (60) Anthony Alston (7, 17, 37) April Joy F. Scoble (74) Ashley Dodge (12, 41) Ashley Noel Hennefer (38, 43) Athiwan Yaemmuan (7, 10, 16, 20, 37, 44, 45) Austin Baker (29, 69) Becca Anderson (59) Ben Johnson (21, 27, 33) Beth Ann Thompson (37) Brett Phelps (34) Brian McGee (58) Brian Sweeney (58) Brianne Hall (53) Brithany Thomson (4, 8) Bryan Christiansen (6, 40, 68) Burton Hilton (32) Carolyn Bautista (48) Casey Diskin (74) Chantelle Sousa (48) Chris Dyer (31) Crista Hecht (68, 71) Christine Spinetta (44) Christy Cencer (39) Curtis Bradley Vickers (22) Daniel McGowan (18, 43) David Pena (16, 55)

Diana Bernard (17, 41, 63) Diane Tay (61, 76) Drew Gerthoffer (41, 42) Dylan Malfa (47) Emily Clark (30, 56, 57) Emmaline Leighton (45) Frances Arnold Shaw (15, 16, 46, 76) Grayian Pheonix (73) Grigory Lukin (40, 46) Gurpreet Takher (20) Gwynne Middleton (52, 53) Heather Horn (18) Jacquelyn Fuzell (24) Jeana Bertoldi (57) Jed Locquiao (6, 7, 11) Jeff Gesick (13, 35, 40, 55, 62, 76) Jenny Nelson (12) Jill Ransom (42, 51) Joaquin Rafael Roces (27) Joel Lippert (30) Julia Walde (72) Julien Pellegrini (26, 70) Kathy Jakolat (46) Katie Reed (9, 18, 48) Keiko Kominami (25, 31) Kelly Bridegum (14, 45, 46) Kelsey Page (15, 55, 77) Kendra Lisum (50) Kevin Clifford (9) Kimberly Orr (8, 15, 27) Lacey Damron (66, 71)

Laurel Topken (24) Linsey Oakden (8, 28, 37) Mackenzie Leighton (32) Mario Ponzio (54, 69) Matt Fong (5) Matthew Burton (74) Michael Seibert (36) Michael Witkowski (42) Mike Losco (62) Mike Thomas (9, 39, 46, 47, 63, 65) Nathan Slinker (49, 75) Nicholas Connolly (76) Nick Flemming (21) Nick Polinko (5) Patricia Romano (33) Ray Hardin (77)* Rebecca Holmstrom (10, 11, 68) Reva Brandt (5) Rossitza Todorova (57) Sarah King (36, 49, 72) Stephan Molder (49) Steven Berg (10) Tara Dawn Connolly (19, 59, 63, 64) Toby OBrien (70) Tyler McPherron (20) Zachary Porter (11)

introduction (3) submit/ sponsor (78) acknowledgments (79)

featured artists are selected at the sole discretion of the BrushďŹ re staff