Mirage 2012 by Cochise College

LITERARY & ARTS M A G A Z I N E Cochise College Cochise & Santa Cruz Counties, Arizona Editors Angel Bustamante Jesse Bustamante Cappy Love Hanson Julia Jones Jeremy Webb College Advisors Shirley Neese Jeff Sturges Jay Treiber Rick Whipple

Mirage 2012

Front and Back Cover Art Art: “Contemplation” by Cassius Matthews Jr. Design: Rick Whipple About Mirage

Mirage Literary and Arts Magazine is designed and produced by students of Cochise College with help from faculty advisors and volunteers from the community. Those interested in participating in the production of Mirage should contact Cochise College at 520515-0500. Visit us at http://skywalker.cochise.edu:8080/mirage/. Hard copies of Mirage can be obtained at both the Douglas and Sierra Vista campus libraries. Acknowledgements The Mirage staff would like to thank the following people for their help in producing the magazine: the staff of the Copper Queen Library, Bisbee; and Elizabeth Lopez, Diane Nadeau, Tracey Neese, George Self and Curt Smith, proofreaders. Creative Writing Celebration Winners Mirage publishes the first-place winners of the previous year’s Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration competitions in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, if available. The Celebration takes place in late March/early April and is produced by Cochise College, the University of Arizona South, and the City of Sierra Vista. The following are the winners of the 2011 competitions: Poetry – Carol Sanger, “View from the Café Next Door” Fiction – Lacy Mayberry, “A Thousand Distant Cousins” Nonfiction – Cappy Love Hanson, Love Life, with Parrots, Chapter 1

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Mirage Mission Statement Mirage Literary and Arts Magazine has a three-part mission: 1. It serves Cochise and Santa Cruz counties by showcasing high-quality art and literature produced by community members. 2. It serves Cochise College by establishing the College as the locus of a creative learning community. 3. It serves Cochise College students by providing them an opportunity to earn college credit and gain academic and professional experience through their participation in all aspects of the production of the literary and arts magazine. Font This year’s Mirage is printed in Minion, an Adobe original typeface designed by Robert Slimbach. Minion is inspired by classical, oldstyle typefaces of the late Renaissance, a period of elegant, beautiful, and highly readable type designs. Copyright Notice All rights herein are retained by the individual author or artist. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without written permission of the author or artist, except for limited scholarly or reference purposes, to include citation of date, page, and source with full acknowledgement of title, author, and edition. Printed in the United States of America. © Cochise College 2012

Mirage 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Literature View from the Café Next Door . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Carol Sanger A Morning Song . . . . . . . . . . .2 Kate Drew-Wilkinson Telepathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Clint Isaak iii

Art Contemplation . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Cassius Matthews Jr. Front Porch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Wayne E. Crane Evening Cranes . . . . . . . . . . . .6 Robert J. Luce Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 David Altamirano Star Gazer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Lindsay Janet Roberts Ravens Rising . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Robert J. Luce Mixture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Cassius Matthews Jr. Sedona Sunset . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Robert J. Luce Datura and the Crabapple . .12 Lisa Galloway Sprietsma Zebras Conflicted . . . . . . . . .13 Robert J. Luce Bisbee House . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Maizie Kay McMillan Fixation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Andrea Sanchez Katy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 Yolanda van der Lelij

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Archie William Sutton The Totemizer . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Ken Boe Yellow Bench . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Valla L. Miller Literature A Thousand Distant Cousins . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 Lacy Mayberry

Art Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 Casney Tadeo Patriotic Plymouth . . . . . . . .29 Richard Byrd Windmill and Sunset . . . . . .30 Mark Hanna Desert Angels #4 . . . . . . . . . .31 Liz Hampton-Derivan Elinor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32 Robin Redding Agave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 Jack Miller Cracked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 David Day Cross Black and White . . . . .35 Sarah Rochford Feed Me–Curve-Billed Thrashers . . . . . . . . . . . . .36 Brian G. Prescott Temby Avenue Bisbee, Arizona . . . . . . . .37 Cathy Murphy

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Pair of Traps . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Archie William Sutton The Attic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 Jack Miller Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Becky Heckman Victorian Yard . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Richard Byrd Giggles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Lindsay Janet Roberts Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Kassandra Willhelm Literature Writing on Bones . . . . . . . . .44 Carol Sanger Walking Home in Hindustan . . . . . . . . . .45 Nadine Lockhart Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Lavendra Copen New Marvels of the Texas Tea Machine . . . . .47 Ken Boe Majnun Fainted at the Sight of Layla’s Foot, Glimpsed . . . . through the tent Door . .49 Carmen Megeath Arrow in the Soft Shield . . . .50 Carol Sanger Unpunctuated . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Lavendra Copen Art Longing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Cassius Matthews Jr.

Blue Medusa . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Niccole Pierre Cat House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 David Day The Old Stone Church . . . . .55 Linda Nichols Wind Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Diane Ricks La Puerta Roja . . . . . . . . . . . .57 Jack Miller The Pot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 Valla L. Miller At Lu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 Lily Schmidt Bridge over Quiet Water . . . .60 Dakota Zimpleman Snow in Ramsey Canyon . . .61 Valla L. Miller Chama Train Station . . . . . . .62 Mark Hanna Brown Canyon Ranch . . . . . .63 Mark Hanna Literature Love Life, With Parrots, Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64 Cappy Love Hanson Growing Old in the Desert . .72 Carmen Megeath Biographical Information . . . . . . . . . . . . .73 Submission Guidelines . . . .80

Mirage 2012 VIEW FROM THE CAFÉ NEXT DOOR

Carol Sanger

First Place, Poetry Competition, Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration, 2011

The door did not close gently. Three quick strides and he was driving away with no back glance at the woman in a helmet hunched over the moped, struggling to tie three small packages to the back. So she did not hear her friend step from the tree shadows. She did not expect the hand on her shoulder. Startled, she turned, and the boxes fell. I watched as they tied and untied what I imagined to be a relationship left dangling, knotting some secret back to whole. Fingers circled buttons, tucked hair back and away, as the story came out—jagged at first, whispered through lips so close they might have been kissing. It quaked them both, and the boxes fell— again—as one pitched forward and the other reached round and they stood locked and rocking, chest against chest, earth against clouds, pouring each other back and forth, cup to cup, parting pain into pieces until they stepped back: full and empty, empty and full.

Mirage 2012 A MORNING SONG

Kate Drew-Wilkinson

Early dawn awaits the day. My Siamese, my Pearl, Steps delicately across my coverlet, Insinuates herself into the curve Of my arm, my breast. Purring, she stretches a confiding paw, Flexing affectionate claws— Chin down, feigning sleep. Watching the colors turn Outside my window, Listening to autumn leaves Rustling on the garden path, The gentle breathing Of my dog, my Daisy, I stir. In a flurry of animal joy We tumble out, Ten bare feet touching, Dancing, on cool tile— Another beginning.

Mirage 2012 TELEPATHY

Clint Isaak

Voiceless but voicing thoughts in my self—conscious of the meaning you say without saying, saying without say what you mean. Letters on a page speak but don’t; though I understand them I don’t. Short-circuited telepathizing wonder of language that translates letters not always meaning, meaning always I don’t translate telepathy how you mean. What say the black words on white is not always black and white, lost in telepathy, translate the spaces black and white and read all over the voiceless mind, the voice of the mindless black and white page.

Mirage 2012 CONTEMPLATION sculpture

Cassius Matthews Jr.

Mirage 2012 FRONT PORCH photograph

Wayne E. Crane

Mirage 2012 EVENING CRANES photograph

Robert J. Luce

Mirage 2012 UNTITLED oil

David Altamirano

Mirage 2012 STAR GAZER metalwork

Lindsay Janet Roberts

Mirage 2012 RAVENS RISING photograph

Robert J. Luce

Mirage 2012 MIXTURE mixed media

Cassius Matthews Jr.

Mirage 2012 SEDONA SUNSET photograph

Robert J. Luce

Mirage 2012 DATURA AND THE CRABAPPLE oil

Lisa Galloway Sprietsma

Mirage 2012 ZEBRAS CONFLICTED photograph

Robert J. Luce

Mirage 2012 BISBEE HOUSE photograph

Maizie Kay McMillan

Mirage 2012 FIXATION photograph

Andrea Sanchez

Mirage 2012 KATY oil

Yolanda van der Lelij

Mirage 2012 24 metalwork

Archie William Sutton

Mirage 2012 THE TOTEMIZER oil with found objects

Ken Boe

Mirage 2012 YELLOW BENCH photograph

Valla L. Miller

Mirage 2012 A THOUSAND DISTANT COUSINS

Lacy Mayberry

First Place, Fiction Competition, Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration, 2011 As a girl in high school, Geraldine combed the St. Johns’ bookmobile for books about her famous relative, Herbert Hoover, first cousin to her great-grandmother on her mother’s side. She pored over his biographies like magazine horoscopes, looking for clues to her own destiny, which turned out to be a decade of goat farming with Nolan Struggs. Driving her daughters into town for school one morning, Geraldine saw the bookmobile—an Airstream bus streaked in a chipped maroon—parked in front of the new library, advertising a book sale. She stopped on her way back. Geraldine ran her hands over the covered book spines. She hadn’t been inside the sweltering vehicle in years. They lived thirteen miles out of town—too far to drive just to catch the bookmobile during its service hours. “Everything’s going for a dime,” the librarian told her. She spent twenty-five dollars and rode home with a truckload of books. Nolan refused to help her carry in the boxes. He scoffed at the waste but couldn’t rebuke her—she’d used the money her brother had sent her for her thirtieth birthday. She’d come away with four Hoover books in total: two biographies, a history of the construction of Hoover Dam, and a small, pamphlet-like book by a Mrs. Ursula G. Jones from West Branch, Iowa—a collection of vignettes titled Musings on the Boy, “Bert” Hoover. These she set on her night table between bronze bookends the shape of apples—a wedding gift from her mother. She carefully ripped out a photograph of Herbert Hoover—his first presidential portrait—from the front pages of one of the biographies and hung it in a frame over the desk. Her shrine, Nolan called it. The rest of the books she stacked against the walls in their bedroom until she could come into a suitable bookshelf. “These things better not get in the way of what’s got to get done around here,” Nolan told her. He was leaving for a goat auction in

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Phoenix that same afternoon and would be gone through the weekend. Geraldine and her daughters had gone with him last year—both Mia and Tanya’s first time in a hotel. The girls had begged to go with him again, but Nolan—still reeling from the death of his two best nannies that spring, lost to impossibly posterior births—said no. “It’s not a vacation,” he told them harshly, and took Thom, the hired man, instead. That evening, Geraldine ladled out the stew she’d made that morning and pulled a loaf of bread from the fridge. The girls poured ketchup into their bowls and spread their bread with mayonnaise, tastes they’d learned from their father. “I have a surprise,” Geraldine announced. The girls looked up from blowing steam off their spoons. “We’re going to Hoover Dam.” Tanya gasped, choking for a moment on inhaled broth. Nolan claimed that Geraldine’s Hoover talk was just a foolish way of putting on airs. But Geraldine’s mother took pride in the connection. “Not everyone can say they’re related to a president,” she’d tell her granddaughters solemnly as they sat together in the front pew on Sundays. “You’re part of a special bloodline.” And then, last spring, Geraldine’s mother unexpectedly developed pneumonia, expelling a great deal of that very blood in her final coughing fit. “When?” Tanya asked. “I thought we’d leave tomorrow morning. We’ll ask Thom’s son to take care of the goats.” “Does Dad know?” Mia asked. Geraldine thought before answering. Nolan would say they couldn’t afford it. And they couldn’t. She’d probably have to take Mia and Tanya over to rummage through the closet of their neighbor, Nora Findlay, for hand-me-downs before school started in a few weeks. “No,” she told her daughter. “He doesn’t.” The girls smiled at each other and kicked their legs under the table in excited rebellion. They bowed their heads to their bowls and ate, scalding their mouths with piping-hot potatoes in their haste.

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Geraldine packed a change of clothes and her stack of Hoover books in her mother’s old hard-case grip. She looked at some of the Hoover Dam construction photographs and then leafed through the collection of vignettes. Mrs. Ursula G. Jones had written a preface: Some stories from those of us who knew “Bert” before he was neither orphan, engineer, millionaire, President, or otherwise. It was a six-hour drive from St. Johns to Hoover Dam. Geraldine kept the front windows down on the freeway to keep from suffocating in the August heat; the air conditioning had gone out three summers ago. In her rearview mirror, the girls’ hair whipped furiously. More than seeing the dam, the girls were looking forward to swimming in the motel pool in Henderson, where Geraldine had reserved a room. “Is it an outdoor pool, Mom, or an indoor pool?” Mia wanted to know. Neither of them could swim. St. Johns had filled in its community pool when Geraldine was a girl, after two children drowned in a single summer. At the hotel pool in Phoenix during the goat auction last year, Mia and Tanya had bounced on their tiptoes in the shallow end, staying in the water until they were purple and pruned. They stopped at a gas station to eat an early lunch of cheese sandwiches and goat’s milk under the shade of a nearby ramada. Geraldine read to them from the Hoover Dam history book. “Have you ever seen it?” Mia asked when her mother finished. Geraldine shook her head. When she was growing up, her family never owned a car that would have made it that far. “But we’re a part of it,” she told them, thinking of her mother. Traffic crawled on the winding highway approaching the dam, and they nearly missed the last tour of the day. They peered over the railing at the stories of concrete and the calm water, awed by the dam’s enormity, by their ability to stand on it without feeling any closer than they had miles away, catching glimpses of the giant white wall from the car windows. They rode the elevator below to see the cogs of the dam. The tour guide boasted about the power it made—how the generators funneled

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electricity to five states. Geraldine marveled at his pride. Besides pulling a government salary, what did he have to do with any of it? Geraldine and her girls, on the other hand, could cite their heritage every time a million people flipped a light switch. “I’m hungry,” Tanya said to her mother over the whirring turbines. When the tour ended, Geraldine thanked the guide. “This is wonderful to see,” she told him. The man wore a pith helmet, even indoors. “Where are you folks from?” Geraldine told him. He nodded. “Not too far, then. Had two groups from Japan today and a German couple this morning. We get all kinds here.” “We’re actually related to Herbert Hoover,” Geraldine told him. “Is that so?” “He was a cousin. On my mother’s side.” The man stroked his face. A few wiry nose hairs settled on top of his hand as he rested it over his mouth for a moment. “I’ve got an aunt who’s really into genealogy. Traced us all the way back to Napoleon Bonaparte! I guess we’re all related to someone like that if you go back far enough.” Traffic heading west toward Vegas had worsened to a standstill. The girls ate candy bars Geraldine bought from a vending machine outside the visitor center restrooms. Without a breeze coming through the windows, their t-shirts clung to their backs with sweat, even after the sun went down. They arrived at the motel late. “Is the pool still open?” Geraldine asked as the clerk handed her the room key. It wasn’t. The pool, he informed them coolly, had been drained earlier that week due to a “fecal incident.” The girls, tired and hot, looked as though they might cry. “But the hot tub is open till eleven,” the clerk suggested. They went to their room and hurriedly changed into their suits. Geraldine stopped to look through the glass doors leading out to the

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pool area. There was a couple already in the hot tub and a handful of people standing around a smoking grill in the corner. A boy about Mia’s age sat with his feet dangling into the empty pool, hunched over a portable video game. “Do you still want to go in?” The girls nodded. They’d both grown considerably since last summer, and their suits pulled at their crotches and necklines. The people outside watched them approach. Geraldine could hear the beeping of the boy’s game above the roar of Jacuzzi bubbles. Her girls hung back, uncertain and embarrassed now. Geraldine lowered herself into the foamy water. Mia and Tanya quickly followed. A few dying palm trees and a low chain-link fence were the only things separating the pool area from the neighborhood of shake-panel duplexes surrounding the motel. The couple across from them sat close together. The man’s chest hair was dark and long, carried up in the sway of the water. The woman had a large and overly tanned cleavage, lapped by gray bubbles. In one corner, Geraldine noticed a pizza crust caught in the swirl of a jet stream. A woman at the grill cackled. “Keep it down!” the tanned woman yelled out to them. “This is a hotel. Some people are trying to sleep!” Mia and Tanya scooted into their mother. A man, laughing, threw a handful of bright orange tortilla chips at the woman. All but one fell short of the water. It joined the whirling pizza crust. The woman laughed, too. Her teeth were straight but stained. “Never mind them,” she said, winking at Geraldine. “Just a bunch of hotel crashers.” She motioned toward the duplexes behind them. “We all live over yonder. My friend Angel’s boyfriend manages this place— lets us use it for a neighborhood pool.” “Oh.” Geraldine tried to check her look of shock. “This your first time to Vegas?” Geraldine nodded. They were going to love it, she told them. “You can get prime rib

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most anywhere for less than you pay for hotcakes!” She leaned forward. “And I know a place here in Henderson that will let kids sit at the slots.” She nodded to the boy playing his video game. “My Turley over there won twenty-two dollars yesterday!” Mia’s eyes widened. Her father paid her five dollars a month for helping to feed the goats after school. The tortilla chip had jumped the whirlpool and was making its way toward them. Geraldine wanted to get out. “Are you girls too hot?” They shook their heads. “Shame about the pool, right?” The woman lowered her voice and pointed at the group behind her through her hand. “Angel’s boy did it. He’s almost five and still not totally potty trained.” She widened her eyes knowingly. “I don’t know about your girls, but my Turley was using the toilet at two! Which is young for a boy.” “We shouldn’t stay too long,” Geraldine said to Mia. “Big day tomorrow,” the woman said, nodding. “What are you going to see first?” “We’re heading back in the morning,” Geraldine told her. She wanted to be home before nightfall to catch up around the farm and shore up against Nolan’s certain fury. “Aren’t you at least going to drive through Vegas?” Geraldine didn’t think so. “We came mainly to see Hoover Dam.” The woman nodded slowly, puzzled. “Do they take you underwater?” “Sort of. They have an electricity plant that’s partway under water. But you can’t see out or anything.” “Oh.” The woman sat back, disappointed. The girls had reacted the same—expecting aquarium glass. Now the tortilla chip floated in front of Tanya. Geraldine wanted to grab for it and fling it out but thought it would seem rude. She wished they’d stayed home. That she’d shown her daughters pictures in her book, rather than thrusting the scale of the actual dam upon them. How could any one person compare to such a thing? Even Hoover himself hadn’t been equal to the dam. The guide told them

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how his name had been stripped from the structure for a period of years after his presidency, such was the disappointment—the anger— of the people over their hardships. Geraldine double-checked it in her Hoover Dam book, back in the car. She imagined Hoover reading about the change in the newspaper, sinking a little into his leather armchair, deflated. She felt silly now to have made so much of the connection. Any great man might have a thousand distant cousins. “We’re related to Herbert Hoover,” Mia told the woman. “No kidding!” She perked up. “Wasn’t he the president or something?” The man beside her smirked. “The thirty-first president,” Mia told her. “He’s our cousin. That’s why we went to see his dam.” The woman gasped, awed. “Your cousin? No kidding!” She hit the man’s chest. “We’re in a hot tub with the president’s cousins!” Geraldine watched the woman’s face slowly form the same baffled question she’d often asked herself: What was she—Hoover’s posterity—doing here? Not just here in this motel, sandwiched between a strip mall and the sort of neighborhood that sent its boys over the fence to mess in the pool. Here. How had she come to stay so insignificant? “He wasn’t a very popular president,” Geraldine told the woman by way of explanation. She could feel her daughters’ eyes on her. “Yeah?” “People blamed him for the Great Depression. For not doing enough to help them.” “Huh.” The woman relaxed back into her seat, back on equal footing. “Meat’s done!” a man called out from the grill. The boy, Turley, scrambled up from his seat by the pool. “You hungry?” The woman asked. Geraldine shook her head. As the woman climbed out, Geraldine noticed her swimwear: a faded pink bra and thin panties. The man, his boxers dripping, followed her out.

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Up in their room, Geraldine ran the bath. The girls peeled off their suits and got into the tub together, something they hadn’t done in years. Geraldine sat on the toilet next to the tub, wrapped in a towel, watching them wring out washcloths over each other’s head. “Mom,” Mia asked, “was Herbert Hoover a bad president?” “Some people thought he was.” Mia lathered her sister’s hair with shampoo. “But was he?” Geraldine thought of a story she’d seen as she’d flipped through the Musings on the Boy, “Bert” Hoover book. She found it in her suitcase and read out to the girls the story told by Esker Thornock, a farmhand who boarded with the Hoovers after Herbert’s father died of heart failure when Herbert was six. Esker remembered the boy finding a wounded possum under the porch one spring, a victim of the dog. “He brung it to me because he knowed I had a way with animals. He seen me raise Mrs. Perkins horse from near death a few weeks before. But a sour stomach in a horse is a sight different from a halfeaten possum with the mange. Bert wrapped the thing up in a blanket. Asked to keep it in my room so his mother wouldn’t find it. He just prayed and prayed over that animal. Even when it died after supper, he kept on praying.” Geraldine paused. “Oh,” Mia said, relieved. Geraldine’s mother had taught her granddaughters that faith was a powerful virtue. A saving belief that covered many sins. Mia rinsed Tanya’s hair with a cupful of water. The suds collected around the girl’s thin waist. Geraldine read on silently the rest of Esker’s story—about Bert burying the possum in a corner of the garden with a handful of rhubarb seeds. That summer, when the plant shot up—dark purple and green—Herbert brought the stalks to his mother to make a pie. But Esker “didn’t fancy tasting rotten possum in my pie.” He couldn’t have known Hoover’s mother would contract typhoid fever and die the following year, but he took pity on the boy, so insistent that Esker try a slice. “I was glad I did,” he told Mrs. Ursula G. Jones, who took his story down longhand, “for it was the sweetest thing I ever et.”

Mirage 2012 UNTITLED acrylic and gold leaf

Casney Tadeo

Mirage 2012 PATRIOTIC PLYMOUTH photograph

Richard Byrd

Mirage 2012 WINDMILL AND SUNSET photograph

Mark Hanna

Mirage 2012 DESERT ANGELS #4 encaustic and mixed media

Liz Hampton-Derivan

Mirage 2012 ELINOR photograph

Robin Redding

Mirage 2012 AGAVE oil

Jack Miller

Mirage 2012 CRACKED photograph

David Day

Mirage 2012 CROSS BLACK AND WHITE photograph

Sarah Rochford

Mirage 2012 FEED ME — CURVEBILLED THRASHERS photograph

Brian G. Prescott

Mirage 2012 TEMBY AVENUE BISBEE, ARIZONA photograph

Cathy Murphy

Mirage 2012 PAIR OF TRAPS metalwork

Archie William Sutton

Mirage 2012 THE ATTIC oil

Jack Miller

Mirage 2012 UTAH photograph

Becky Heckman

Mirage 2012 VICTORIAN YARD photograph

Richard Byrd

Mirage 2012 GIGGLES metalwork

Lindsay Janet Roberts

Mirage 2012 UNTITLED photograph

Kassandra Willhelm

Mirage 2012 WRITING ON BONES

Carol Sanger

1. Deer bones ripen in the buffelgrass as muscle and organs are sawed away. Sutures fusing cranial plates leave sepia scrawl on what’s left of her skull. Ribs separate from ribs. Jaw bones move apart. 2. What do the living edges of scapula say about drought, the birth of twins? How does inspiration arc from sacrum to sternum to the bones in my hand? What glyphs does motherhood leave behind? 3. My bones ask if they can stay together. They would like to lie on a hillside L1 next to L2 for eternity, to be heaved in the next round of plate movements. My pelvis still has things to say.

Mirage 2012 WALKING HOME IN HINDUSTAN

Nadine Lockhart

Chugging auto-rick engines, motorcycles beep shrill, Teeth-tongue click-clicking for attention, Hello, hello—a man pulls a carriage, Hello, hello— A beggar child won’t quit, Jaayo, jaayo— A rupee won’t save her dark cliché, rags and bare feet, Part invisible brood who live in traffic.

Locals stay on the shoulder, not sidewalks— Hopping vent covers, testing others, falling means Broken bones in raw sewage, better than a vehicle hit, Better be heebee-jeebee by the grasses Growing in clumps—cobras, black-hooded and phallic, Two in a basket, a snake-charmer’s catch, Groove on the gourd; later, his snakes stuffed in a satchel, Moving among us, orange-turbaned. Heaps of Ganesh, statues bigger than Lord, happy, and pink. Roadway wall stinks. Pisswalas—of Shanti Path. The men, their backs—thick rows of men, thick rows of spit, Piss, and click-click. Slate sky darkens above the water tower. Umbrellas open. Monsoon is the glory of rain. Mud, paper wrappings, smashed glass cuts into flip-flop Soft soles on the wet road to Raja Park. A camel or monkeys could appear; today only dogs. And momos—hot cabbage in a sticky bun. At home: Pour water, soap feet still in sandals, Offer sweets to Ganesha, god of travel.

Mirage 2012 HAIKU

Lavendra Copen

Fingerling fish, dark nestlings in brine; suddenly, a can opener. Pen, a dagger, draws blood. Paper proffers every possibility. In shade of tree lean boy on bark, girl on grass—two tigers to a hill. Canoe cuts shiny wakes across slumbering lake— silver water bug. Lurking in park grass with spear, a great hunter stabs a candy wrapper. Storm howls in birch, shrieks through pines—chorus of crazy old women cackling.

Mirage 2012 NEW MARVELS OF THE TEXAS TEA MACHINE

Ken Boe

We sit around the colorful table with spinning dials and variables of chance, not understanding the gamble appropriately, appropriating all the dead-wrong tokens which, when we make the fool’s guess, pumps the Gulf of Mexico full of Texas tea.

Now all your chips have been replaced with rust-colored bird bones, and the enforcer is breathing down your neck. So you’re not allowed to leave the table. You must play the game indefinitely, even as your winnings sour and cave inward, resembling a sink hole in gingerbread land. The drones close in, bombing your village in Pakistan you didn’t know was your village, but now you own its bloody bones, too. The Russian roulette continues into Afghanistan, shoving more borrowed dollars onto the table, into the barrels of its gun. Spin the dial: It’s a dream machine! Today the ground is flecked with evanescent song birds pecking at this thing or that, no idea what, but if they come here next year and it’s all gone, then they will leave and not keep pecking. It’s raining, and water travels through cracks. Cracks become creeks which become valleys. Soldiers are like water, as are the villages which dam the water, which soldiers blow up, the surge to become the insurgent demiurge.

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The surest way out of the casino is to lose everything, but they won’t let you. Between winter and spring, the roads are hydraulic; the asphalt cracks, fills with water, then freezes again, which allows the inner self to open up more readily, and where the rubber doesn’t meet the road, flowers will bloom.

Mirage 2012 MAJNUN FAINTED AT THE SIGHT OF LAYLA’S FOOT, GLIMPSED THROUGH THE TENT DOOR Carmen Megeath

As the wind caught the tent door lifted it aside sacred that luminous foot in the dust lifted in the wind as if in dance and the vine twined the pole in a sarabande . . . so I saw the wide swath and a black crow the landscape without music, oh it opened up the far cliffs of the northlands the gray skirts of the virgas sweeping eastward brushing the distant tops of great purple mesas

Mirage 2012 ARROW IN THE SOFT SHIELD

Carol Sanger

A glass in the night shatters, breaking his chest into pieces until breathing stops and starts and becomes agony. He lunges into the stenching shadows, dressed for battle— his eyes seeing and not seeing, but I see him plain as he hacks his way through Persians at Thermopylae, trudges over Alps behind elephants, loads and reloads for three holy days at Gettysburg, seven days at the Marne, then endures months of tanks, guns, and bombs to save Stalingrad. I hold him as he starts marching again, as he rips me from this world and drags me to his. He sweeps through my village, his spear hard and pointed as he thrusts and thrusts, splitting my country, and kills and kills until he is spent, and I turn on the light, and he sees me—both of us horrified and panting, one of us bloody— wounded by the arrow in his soft shield.

Mirage 2012 UNPUNCTUATED

for Bethany Perry and Jeff Sturges

she plucks the punctuation from her poem as though each mark were a tick hating the way they suck out the essential rhythm when in her mind the phonemes leap and splash like meltwater answering only to gravity and their own exuberance the lines breathing in and out like fish inhaling oxygen right out of water the stanzas swelling tumbling up and spilling their bounty on the sand at her feet

Lavendra Copen

Mirage 2012 LONGING sculpture

Cassius Matthews Jr.

Mirage 2012 BLUE MEDUSA sculpture and photograph

Niccole Pierre

Mirage 2012 CAT HOUSE photograph

David Day

Mirage 2012 THE OLD STONE CHURCH photograph

Linda Nichols

Mirage 2012 WIND FARM photograph

Diane Ricks

Mirage 2012 LA PUERTA ROJA oil

Jack Miller

Mirage 2012 THE POT photograph

Valla L. Miller

Mirage 2012 AT LU photograph

Lily Schmidt

Mirage 2012 BRIDGE OVER QUIET WATER photograph

Dakota Zimpleman

Mirage 2012 SNOW IN RAMSEY CANYON photograph

Valla L. Miller

Mirage 2012 CHAMA TRAIN STATION photograph

Mark Hanna

Mirage 2012 BROWN CANYON RANCH photograph

Mark Hanna

Mirage 2012 LOVE LIFE, WITH PARROTS, CHAPTER 1

Cappy Love Hanson

First Place, Nonfiction Competition, Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration, 2011 As I approached his cage, the little parrot turned his orangeand-turquoise head toward the wall and his iridescent back to me. His pointed tail brushed the bars. Then he stood motionless on his wooden dowel perch, looking more like a painter’s brush stroke in light and dark greens than the living being I hoped to share my life with for many years. Peaches had been giving me this cold shoulder ever since I’d brought him home four days before. The way he hunched reminded me of a cartoon vulture. To him, this was life and death, so I couldn’t allow myself to laugh. Besides, I was worried. I’d made an appointment for the following day to have Dr. Kathleen Ramsay look at the black, tarry substance in Peaches’ droppings. I’d never seen anything like it on the bottom of a parrot’s cage. Aside from that, nothing about Peaches surprised me, including his initial reactions. When I brought him home, I had to transfer him from a screened cardboard box to his cage on top of my twodrawer filing cabinet. I’d reached into the box and caught him in a towel. His eyes widened, his heart pistoned, and he stabbed through the fabric with his black beak, bloodying my thumb and forefinger. By now, though, Peaches should have shown some interest in his new surroundings. He was still responding to me as Ms. Clear and Present Danger. I’d deluded myself only briefly into believing that turning his back was a sign of trust. He was trying to avoid eye contact with yet another human captor as he confronted unknown, unpredictable dangers without his wild flock to alert and protect him. Freezing, he hoped to make himself invisible until Ms. Clear and Present went away. He couldn’t know that I had the week between Christmas and New Year’s off from my dental receptionist job and was dedicating it to settling him in. Peaches must have felt like the ultimate alien in my 1940s efficiency apartment in Los Alamos, New Mexico, seven thousand feet

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up on the piñón- and juniper-studded Pajarito Plateau and a continent away from the deciduous South American forest where he’d hatched. I had hoped that my crocheted afghans, hand-ruffled curtains, and art posters would appeal to his color vision and that my mini-jungle of tropical houseplants would help him feel at home. But Peaches knew he was in a strange land and was snubbing all strangers. Predictable as his mistrust was, it stung. I thought I’d done the right thing, bringing him home from the pet store in Albuquerque. My intuition was that I had paid for the privilege of rescuing him. Sighing, I sat down in my desk chair so as not to loom over Peaches. Nothing challenged my self-image like an animal who didn’t recognize me for the friend I intended to be. Back when I was married and living in a Southern California tract house, my husband Thor (yes, Thor) claimed that every stray dog in a fivemile radius found me. I kept looking for the canine equivalent of the hobo code painted on our house’s stucco exterior: nice people, good food. Our rescues hadn’t been limited to dogs and the pregnant, oilcovered cat we’d found living under a car. We had saved a red-tailed hawk tangled in a fence and a black-necked stilt (a long-legged shorebird) after a neighbor’s cat attacked it. The stilt died of his wounds. Wildlife rehabilitators treated the hawk, and local newspaper photographers showed up to commemorate her release in the wild coastal hills of El Toro Marine Base. Peaches ignored me as I got up and paced. Not that there was a lot of space in the twelve-by-fifteen-foot portion of my apartment that served as living room, dining room, bedroom, and office. Thor and I had divorced nine years earlier, and I’d been living in small apartments and rented bedrooms in the company of a charming little gray-cheeked parrot named Feathers. We had moved to Los Alamos three years ago. A year and a half later, I’d buried Feathers in the Jemez Mountains, on a slope I could see through my second-story window. I paused there now, gazing west, noting the approximate spot among

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snow-covered volcanic boulders, pine, spruce, and aspen—remembering my now-broken vow never to bring home another wild-caught creature. My apartment had felt chill and empty after Feathers’ death, despite the view of spectacular sunsets and all I’d done to give the place a homey warmth. Alone, I couldn’t fill even that small space. I knew it was time for another winged companion when I went to a pet shop, looked at the birds, and didn’t cry all the way home. The holiday generosity of my parents in California and Terry, the man I was dating, had made Peaches possible. Next to Peaches, Terry was most on my mind that day. He had a reddish beard and hair, lively green eyes, and a smile that sent a flush from my neck to my hairline when a mutual friend introduced us. Chemistry was at work, and not just because he was a chemical engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, across Omega Bridge from town. Optimist that I was, I believed that Terry and I could get our relationship together despite our differences. I was ready for a life partner. Terry had recently ended a long marriage and was giving the traditional slow-down message: “I need time and space to sort out my life.” I understood his need from my own divorce, but it still pained me. At a recent reading, I’d heard New Mexico writer Judyth Hill recite her poem about wanting to be the woman her lover needed space from. I burst out laughing, along with a lot of other women. It was the kind of laughter that kept us from crying. The intimacy and the everyday give-and-take that I longed for in a human relationship seemed beyond my reach. This was how it could be with Terry: He often told me how touched he was by simple intimacies like long embraces, foot massages, and my waking at night and laying a hand on him. I met his acknowledgements with tears of gratitude and the thought that maybe there was some good in me after all. The “after all” had to do with lifelong feelings of inadequacy I was nowhere near resolving. And this was how it could be: One day, Terry accepted my din-

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ner invitation, so I came home from work and prepared the fixings for stir-fry—cooked and cooled the rice, washed the peapods, diced the baby bok choy, carrots, and tofu, grated the ginger. I set the table—something I never did for myself alone—lit the candles, and turned on some relaxing music. Terry didn’t show up. He didn’t call. I began to worry and phoned his home, where I got his answering machine. I nibbled anxiously at the carrots. At ten o’clock, I was scooping the food into storage dishes when the phone rang. Terry was at his ex-wife’s house. They and their three teenage children had had a nice dinner together. Had he forgotten our date? No, he’d just decided to do this instead. Did he think to call me? Well, uh, no. Even if we got past problems like this and moved into the deeper commitment I longed for, I would still need Peaches the way Terry needed his chow-coyote cross, Mista. I’d known since childhood—living my first five years in the Berkeley Hills of California—that human contacts were never enough. Our sloping yard was full of Steller’s jays and squirrels who ate peanuts and household leftovers from pie pans my father nailed up on the bay trees. The jays made daily forays to the window above the built-in buffet, where they hammered at the glass in a determined but futile effort to reach Spike and Tyke, the baby turtles, who lived in a plastic pond with an island and a palm tree. Then there were the dachshunds, a black-and-tan dog named Chris and a red bitch named Trudy. They accepted me—a mostly hairless mammal who crawled around on the hardwood floors and curled up to nap with them in the green overstuffed chair—as one of their own. Together we made up the Clan of the Underdogs, controlled by those much larger, upright-walking beings whose motives were mysterious and whose commands were unquestionable. Having loved and lost Feathers, I knew I couldn’t go long without a parrot. Not that it looked as if I were going to develop a shred of closeness with Peaches. His resistance struck a note of recognition, though. I could dig in my heels as tenaciously as any other

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Taurus and appreciated that large stubbornness in such a small feathered package. I sat down again in front of Peaches’ cage, cocked my head avian style, and murmured, “Hi, Peaches parrot. Beautiful green Peaches parrot.” Cocked the other way. “How ya doin’, Peaches? It’s all right.” His silence and posture said it all: Yeah, right, lady. Everything’s just dandy. Maybe he doesn’t like the name, I thought. “Peaches” seemed a cheap-shot moniker to pin on a peach-fronted conure. I was just using it as a placeholder until his real name suggested itself—perhaps something classical (Apollo?), exotic (Teotihuacan?), or hippy (Starflower?). “Peaches” was at least unpretentious and had the advantage of applying to either gender. Male and female conures look alike. I supposed that calling the bird a he was some kind of sexist default. At least it gave me a fifty-fifty chance, better than Wall Street or Las Vegas odds. By whatever name, this little parrot had no reason to trust me or any other human. Magazine articles and television nature shows helped me piece together a rough scenario of his capture, probably in Brazil. If he was caught as a baby, his captors either hacked into his nest cavity several feet up in a termite mound or chopped down his tree. Half his siblings might have died in the raid. If he’d already fledged—left the nest—he would have been caught in a net or on a glue-smeared branch. He might have struggled for hours or days, vulnerable to predators, starvation, and dehydration. Peaches and any other birds who survived the rape-and-pillage approach to parrot catching would have been thrust into dirty cages, transferred overland and by boat, and flown to the United States in a cold cargo hold. Their food would have been the cheapest available and anything but fresh, their water contaminated with the local parasites, bacteria, and viruses, and with the birds’ droppings. Fewer than half the captured birds would have survived to enter quarantine in Chicago.

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Quarantine was the opposite of the isolation that the word implied. Parrots from all over the world, in various states of health, were crammed together. Their immune systems were stressed, and many were unable to fight off illness. An Asian parrot might have no natural resistance to an African disease. Workers had hundreds of birds and other animals to process every month and could give Peaches and his comrades only minimal attention. Peaches survived his thirty-day quarantine and was shipped to a pet store in Albuquerque. That was where he was, squawking at a larger mitred conure in a nearby cage, when Terry and I arrived on our parrot quest. My parrot clearly wasn’t as thrilled by Terry’s and my parents’ generosity as I was. Nothing about Peaches’ forty-three-year-old human companion or her compact home impressed him. He turned ever so slowly when I moved, keeping his back to me and watching in the most covert way. I got up and paced again, passing the dining table where I caught sight of the pet bird magazine I’d left lying open to one of the cover articles. Glancing at the headline, I realized I might have a trump card for one of my concerns. I sat down and read. The publication suggested that mimicking a bird’s vocalizations—parroting the parrot—could speed up bonding. Even though my psittacine diction was imperfect, my syntax suspect, and my vocabulary meager, I thought I might make the concept work. There was only one problem: Peaches was filling his MDSR (Minimum Daily Screech Requirement) and then some but wasn’t making the softer noises I remembered from my years with Feathers—the coos, chirps, chuckles, whistles, ri-i-i-cks, and raw-w-wcks, or the contented beak grinding as he fell asleep. I hadn’t heard any of the species-specific sounds with which I hoped to woo Peaches. I looked up from the article and wondered if a badly spoken squeak or squawk could create misunderstandings, even a yearslong feud. On the other hand, what choice did I have? I was forced to count on Peaches’ ability to listen past the lingo—and read, from my tone, my body language, and the fact that I fed him, my good intentions.

Mirage 2012

Given his experience with people, I couldn’t think why Peaches should attribute benevolent intent to me or anyone else. Nevertheless, I sat down near him, cleared my throat, and tried the limited vocabulary my vocal mechanism was capable of producing— kisses, whistles, squeaks, ticks, and chucks. I really got into it, imagining his flock calling to keep in touch as they winged among the trees, murmuring as they groomed each other. All to no avail. Peaches stood stone still, head down, green-andblue wings folded across his back like a shield. I sighed and turned away. Then a flash of inspiration lit up my brain: If vocal communication wasn’t eroding Peaches’ resistance, what about mirroring his body language? I swiveled around with my back to him. There I stayed, arms crossed. I remained as silent and motionless as Peaches while the red numbers on the digital clock crept through five minutes, six, seven. My mind wandered to Terry. It wasn’t dining with his family that bothered me; I’d encouraged him to keep up relationships with his ex and kids. What hurt was being stood up, feeling unimportant to him, being disrespected, not good enough to warrant a phone call before I made all those preparations. How could I make him understand that I— Peaches’ tail feathers brushed the cage bars. Disadvantaged by a predator’s forward-looking eyes, I chanced a slow glimpse over my shoulder. Peaches was standing on his top perch, not only facing me but leaning forward, staring right at me, eyes wide as if to say, You can’t do that. That’s my tactic. Thrilled and humbled, I let the breath I’d been holding collapse out of my chest. Here was this wild-caught parrot, with no apparent reason to acknowledge another in a long line of humans, condescending to communicate with me. Or maybe he wasn’t condescending, exactly. He was a flock animal, and I was the only flock substitute around. I wanted to believe that he saw something special in me. More likely, he was adapting to his new situation. Whatever it was, I couldn’t keep from laughing with delight.

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Peaches blinked and turned his head aside but watched me with one eye as I chatted in English and my best Parrotese. He even offered a couple of low, gravelly whistles in grudging response. I knew that even small conures like Peaches were a lot more intelligent than the term “birdbrain” suggested. The trick was to be smarter than the parrot. If that required failing at a well-thoughtout approach and stumbling onto one that worked, so be it. Parrots often learned in a single lesson. I hoped that we would never have to repeat this one. I couldn’t kid myself, though; there would be more bitten fingers to come. I could never justify the cost of Peaches’ capture but hoped I could make up for his traumas by giving him a happy and satisfying life. Then I thought of what Dr. Ramsay might have to say the next day and gritted my teeth.

Mirage 2012 GROWING OLD IN THE DESERT

Carmen Megeath

Out here it’s always 100 miles or at least 50— the sere earth, mountain islands, blue, rising up out of a mesquite-green desert sea— everything spined, spiked, tangled, thorned, and a horsetail sky streaming over this road which, straight as an arrow, flies toward the crossroads. The dun hills at the turnoff are hungry—their bones show through—their ridges, outcrops. How gracefully they lift themselves up, though, like a woman in a taffeta skirt rising from a chair. And dry yellow grasses crowding the road—nature’s hand ready to cover it all over. The yucca all but steps out onto the highway

Mirage 2012 BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

David Altamirano was born in Douglas and works as an associate faculty art instructor at Cochise College. He is dedicated to bringing art and cultural empowerment to the people of the Douglas area. He hopes to inspire other local artists to show their work. He cherishes art and never limits himself to a particular genre or subject matter.

Ken Boe is a poet, painter, and playwright who lives in Bisbee. He believes that poetry is a sublime medium that requires a certain amount of experiential learning to appreciate, but that all tastes hinge on various learning, much of it random and personal. Richard Byrd began taking pictures in Memphis, Tennessee, at age eight, when his mother gave him a Kodak Brownie. He is known for his photographs of musicians, some of which will be displayed in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His current project is bits of Bisbee—doors, gates, and graffiti. Photography has been a catalyst, capturing decisive moments, whether in events or changing light. It has changed his life. Lavendra Copen farms in the Huachuca Mountain foothills with her two granddaughters and sells produce at local farmers’ markets. During a stay in New York a couple of decades ago, she learned to transcribe legal and medical dictation, which she now does for a living. Poems are her way of dealing with some of the difficult situations she encounters in her work. Wayne E. Crane’s interest in photography began with black and white film and darkroom work in the mid-1980s. Digital photography has enabled him to become more creative. Although many of his best images are of buildings and still life subjects, he enjoys the challenge of photographing people, especially in candid shots. He believes that in photography “light is all there is” and strives to master (and manipulate) lighting techniques.

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David Day has lived in and photographed Bisbee for twenty years. He is amused and astounded by the town’s ever-changing and quirky nature. For the past several months, David has been photographing in Cochise County with the iPhone camera using the Hipstamatic application. He intends to create a book from these images. He loves to share his photographs on Facebook and Flickr and has shown his work in several galleries in Bisbee. Kate Drew-Wilkinson began making glass beads at age fifty. She says she was born an artist, writing poetry and drawing from an early age. Her first career was in acting, primarily Shakespeare. Hollywood and then New York changed everything for this English woman, who now lives in Bisbee. Kate travels each summer to teach bead making in a sixteenth-century glass factory in England, followed by work with French glass workers in Normandy. Liz Hampton-Derivan found her passion for photography in 1979, when she got her first 35mm camera and began studying photography. Now she works digitally, creating soft, romantic, dreamlike images. She added a new dimension to her work in 2009, when she began working in encaustic (beeswax with resin and pigment colors) and mixed media. Liz received a BA in art history before developing her own personal interest in creating art. Mark Hanna was born in Pennsylvania. His family moved to Tucson in the early fifties. He worked at Kitt Peak National Observatory as a lab manager and retired from there after forty memorable years. Shortly after retiring, he moved to Sierra Vista. He enjoys digital photography because it gives the photographer the chance to adjust or control his or her own images. Cappy Love Hanson ditched a lot of college classes in the 1960s to write. Her work has appeared in Writer’s Digest, ByLine, The Santa Fe New Mexican, Blue Mesa Review, New Millennium Writings, Passager, CutThroat, Voices on the Wind e-journal, and other

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publications. She has been on the Mirage staff for several years and is currently working on a memoir about her life with parrots. Becky Heckman lives in the Dragoon area and is a weekend explorer of nearby mountains with her 4x4 enthusiast husband. She is a willing student of photography and art, hoping to capture the beauty of the surrounding area. 75

Clint Isaak recently graduated from the University of Arizona South with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. He lives in Sierra Vista with his wife and three children. Nadine Lockhart received her MA and MFA from ASU; she is currently a PhD candidate in English Literature. Last yer, she studied Hindi in Jaipur, India, on a Department of Education Scholarship. Her most recent artistic passion is theater, and she performed at the Kennedy Center Annual College Theater Festival in February. Nadine lives with Badger the cat, and they travel together throughout the Southwest in search of plays, poetry, and painting. Robert J. Luce was a wildlife biologist in Wyoming before retiring to Arizona. He lives along the San Pedro River and photographs the river in all seasons. He has traveled extensively in Mexico, Latin America, East Africa, Brazil, and the U.S. Virgin Islands for birdwatching and photography. He has authored technical wildlife publications and magazine articles about wildlife, and provided photos for books, outdoor magazines, and wildlife field guides. Cassius Matthews Jr. lives in Sierra Vista. He earned an AA in fine art from Cochise College. His strong passion for drawing, painting, and sculpture has been with him from an early age. He draws his creativity from his family, friends, and his community. Lacy Mayberry lives in Sierra Vista with her husband and two daughters. She is currently a low-residency MFA fiction student at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA.

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Maizie Kay McMillan is new to photography. She recently graduated from Cochise College with a degree in journalism and media. She lives in Benson with her family. Her favorite subjects for photos are animals and landscapes, but recently she diverged into portraits with a fellow photographer. She showed her work in a student gallery in Douglas this past December and plans to continue working in the field of photography. Carmen Megeath was born and raised in Wyoming and educated in Salt Lake City. She has spent many decades living in the beautiful old mining town of Bisbee, a European-like village plunked down in the middle of the Mule Mountains. She is happy, even grateful, to live on the edge of the empire, along the borderlands of Sonora, Mexico, and loves, as other writers on the West have, the solace of open spaces. Jack Miller is retired from the packaging materials field. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and masters degree at the University of Arizona. He is a soft-edge painter and colorist influenced by the expressionists, impressionists, post-impressionists, and others of the modern art movement. Valla L. Miller likes photography, and the digital camera and computer have become her means of artistic expression. Without formal training but influenced and encouraged by her husband, she has developed a discerning eye for beauty and broadened her choice of subject matter. Since moving to Sierra Vista, she has won several awards for her work. Cathy Murphy is a professional photographer who lives in Old Bisbee, Arizona, with her doggies Peaches and Rosie. She teaches digital photography classes, also known as Digital Media Arts DMA 140 and DMA 266, at Cochise College. Her photos may be found in Bisbee at Pan Terra; in Phoenix at ALAC (Arizona Latino Arts & Cultural Center), and occasionally at Bisbee’s Farmer’s Market. She is represented online by Getty Images.

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Linda Nichols was born in Phoenix, Arizona. She graduated from Northern Arizona University and now resides in Sierra Vista with her husband. She has had a career in Human Resources for thirty years and has always had an interest in photography and a passion for travel and food. She completed the master gardener course at the University of Arizona South and plants a summer vegetable garden each year. 77

Niccole Pierre is a Cochise College graduate studying graphic arts and sculpture. She has an AA in fine arts and a certificate in digital imaging. She has worked freelance as a graphic designer and presently designs t-shirt logos. Her individualized sculptures are inspired by personal experiences. Brian G. Prescott developed an interest in photography, travel, and nature as a young man. He concentrated mostly on birds, then expanded his photography to many subjects as well as nature. He has visited Iceland, Spain, Antarctica, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, South Africa, Venezuela, and much of Central America. His photos have appeared in various publications, including a Sierra Club book, American Birds, and several newspapers, including The Sierra Vista Herald. Robin Redding has been a student at Cochise College for three years. She has studied pottery, photography, and watercolor painting. She also enjoys designing and making jewelry. Her previous studies were in the business area, and she earned a BBA in marketing and an MBA from Florida Atlantic University. She and her husband live in Hereford with their fabulous dog, Lexy. Diane Ricks moved to Sierra Vista from Illinois. When she was ten, her parents purchased the Brownie camera that started her passion for photography. After purchasing her first 35mm camera and setting up a darkroom, she entered prints in local contests and county and state fairs, often using her children as models. She and her

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husband have traveled to Germany and Hawaii and have RVed to the east coast, giving her many photographic subjects. Lindsay Janet Roberts has a BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design, 1980, and a MEd from University of Arizona, 2009. With the latter degree, she specialized in secondary education in order to teach art to middle and high school children. She lives, teaches, and breathes art. She also has a huge passion for recycling goods, and therefore much of her work is made from recycled materials. Sarah Rochford moved to Arizona in the summer of 2011. She has lived among the most breathtaking sceneries in the country, including Alaska and northern Idaho. Though photography is not her usual medium, she enrolled in the digital photography class at Cochise College and set out to find the beauty around her new home. Andrea Sanchez is a sophomore at Cochise College. She will be graduating in May of 2012 and then will pursue a bachelor's degree in photography. Carol Sanger has been writing poetry for seventeen years, but it has taken her a long time to admit she is serious about it. It wasn’t until a particularly rough poetry workshop in 2005 that she finally realized that poetry was her home, poets her flock. When the Great Sorting Machine separates us into our true colors, she will be there—with them—with the large, wild tribe that is poets. Lily Schmidt, a recent Cochise College graduate, has pursued and enjoyed photography her whole life. She hopes to inspire the audience by placing familiar subjects or objects in unfamiliar backgrounds. Arizona offers great lighting at all times of the day, and Lily is inspired by all these photo opportunities. She encourages the exploration of new thoughts, ideas, and emotions through her photography.

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Lisa Galloway Sprietsma lives on a farm in Pomerene with her husband, two children, and a plethora of animals, large and small. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona in painting and sculpture.

Archie William Sutton is drawn to doors and metal in an art form, to the allegory that doors are created to open to an inside place with a pure substance. Enjoying the look and feel of copper in the raw, he applies an unruly patina covering. He adds liquid plastic, vinyl and/or mixed media to the fashioned-hanging. Casney Tadeo was born and raised in southern Arizona. She is a fine art major at Cochise College. Her current obsessions are painting Day of the Dead muertos and architecture, and giving life back to broken-down furniture. Casney’s recent works of art are exhibited through the CALACA Cultural Center in Tempe and in the 55 Main Gallery in Bisbee. Yolanda van der Lelij moved from the Netherlands with her husband and kids to farm in Willcox eighteen years ago. She started painting when the kids left for college and has finished her fourth semester at Cochise College with Karina Stanger as her teacher. The painting in this year’s Mirage was inspired by a photograph her daughter took in Aravaipa Canyon. The painting is done in oil. Kassandra Wilhelm is an aspiring fashion photography artist. She is currently taking a digital photography class at the Sierra Vista campus of Cochise College and hopes to break into the fashion world with her pictures. Dakota Zimpelman found her love, photography, after she enrolled for her first black-and- white film photography class at Cochise College. She never imagined, after picking up her first 35mm camera, that she would become hooked and would want to pursue a career in photography. Her goal is to capture the world and memories in her photographs.

Mirage 2012 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

General Information Submissions are accepted from Cochise College students and residents of Cochise and Santa Cruz Counties in Arizona. All entries must be the original work of the person or persons submitting them. Each person may submit up to five pieces of writing and five works of art. Writers and artists who wish to have their works considered for publication must submit their works for the year in which they are solicited. The Mirage staff will evaluate only works submitted specifically for the upcoming issue of the magazine. Writers and artists are welcome to resubmit material that was not previously accepted for publication. However, they should also consider submitting fresh works that represent their most recent and accomplished artistic achievements. Works are selected for publication via an anonymous process: Each submission is judged without disclosure of the writer’s or artist’s name. The staff of Mirage reserves the right to revise language, correct grammar and punctuation, revise formatting, and abridge content of any literary work, including the biographies of writers and artists. In matters of mechanics and style, the Mirage staff defers to A Writer’s Reference by Diana Hacker. The staff also reserves the right to crop, re-size, and modify works of visual art in any way deemed necessary to ready them for inclusion in the magazine. Submissions will not be returned.

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Requirements for All Submissions: A single cover sheet must accompany submissions, listing the titles of all works and giving the submitter’s name, address, phone number, and email or fax. The cover sheet should also include a brief autobiographical statement of seventy-five words or less, written in the third person.

To preserve anonymity during the selection process, no name should appear on the entry itself. Submissions may be attached to emails or sent by mail on compact disc or flash drive. Requirements for Prose: Prose must be submitted as Microsoft Word document files, using Times New Roman font, size 12. Prose must be double spaced. Unless unique formatting is integral to the piece, literary works should be aligned on the left margin and not printed in all upper-case letters. There is a 2,000-word limit for prose entries. Requirements for Poetry: Poetry must be submitted as Microsoft Word document files, using Times New Roman font, size 12. Single spacing is permissible for poetry. Unless unique formatting is integral to the piece, poems should be aligned on the left margin and not printed in all upper-case letters. There is a 2,000-word limit for poetry entries. Requirements for Visual Arts: Artwork and photographs must have titles or must be identified as “Untitled.” If necessary, artists should indicate correct orientation.

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When taking photographs of artwork for submission, pay attention to lighting and orientation in order to prevent shadowing, glare, skewing, or unintentional cropping. Artwork and photographs must be sent as digital files. Compression: Please do not compress photos when emailing them. Compressed photos lose information that cannot be restored. It is not like zipping or stuffing files; photos cannot be “unzipped” or “unstuffed.” Many programs will automatically downsize photos for emailing and viewing on a computer screen, but there is usually an option for sending the photo without reducing its size. Please choose that option. Resolution: Printing on a press requires high resolution. What looks good on a computer screen or from a laser printer will not necessarily look good when printed on a press. An image copied from a webpage will not have the proper resolution. Files of artwork need to be at a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch (DPI) and at 100% of their original size. Photos should be at least 6 x 9 inches. A minimum resolution of 2700 x 1800 pixels in JPEG format is best. Any attempt to resize or resample may cause problems because print resolution will depend on how we ultimately size the photo for the magazine. The minimum size is important. If, for example, a photo is only 640 x 480 pixels, it is too small for the magazine. Important: Unless digital photographs of art are submitted following the guidelines above, the magazine cannot use them. Where to send submissions: Email:

mirage@cochise.edu

Mail:

Cochise College ATTN: Mirage 4190 West Highway 80 Douglas, AZ 85607