2019 Freshwater Literary Journal by Freshwater Literary Journal

Freshwater Literary Journal 2019

Freshwater Editorial Board 2019 Elisabeth Andrusik Kasey Dennehy Hailey Therrien Editor and Faculty Advisor: John Sheirer Cover Photo and Design: Hailey Therrien Interior Design: Victoria Orifice and Miranda Stephens (2016-2017 Freshwater Editorial Board Members)

Freshwater Literary Journal is published annually by Asnuntuck Community College. We consider poetry and prose. The upcoming reading period will be August 15, 2019, to February 15, 2020. Acceptances and rejections will be sent on a rolling basis, no later than the end of March 2020. Poetry: Three poems maximum, up to 40 lines each. Prose (prose poetry, short stories, flash/micro fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir): One or multiple pieces up to 1,500 words total. No previously published material. Simultaneous submissions considered with proper notification. Email submissions to Freshwater@acc.commnet.edu with a brief, third-person biographical note. No postal submissions, please. The 2019-20 Freshwater Student Writing Contest will focus on short fiction up to 1,000 words. The contest will be open to full- and part-time undergraduate students enrolled during the 2019-20 academic year at Connecticutâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s community colleges and public universities. The entry deadline of January 31, 2020. More information will be available by September 2019 at https://asnuntuck.edu/about/communityengagement/freshwater-literary-journal/ We can be reached at Freshwater@acc.commnet.edu. Please follow Freshwater on Facebook: FreshwaterACC.

Table of Contents 7 / 2019 Freshwater Student Writing Contest 9 / First Prize: Jessica Maier “Storm” 11 / Second Prize: Brandon Kroll “Look Alive” 12 / Third Prize: Elise O’Reilly “Words” 14 / First Honorable Mention: Aidan Cobb “Grey Morning” 15 / Second Honorable Mention: Elizabeth Forsythe “A Street Like the One I Grew Up On” 17 / Third Honorable Mention: Elisabeth Andrusik “9/12” 18 / Contest Judge’s Poems: Ginny Lowe Connors “Everything She Thought She Knew Goes Up in Smoke” “Thirty Miles the First Day” “They Eat. They Sleep.” 23 / Julia Alexander “Catechisms” “When We Meet Halfway” 26 / Elisabeth Andrusik “History of My Teeth” “An Autumn Walk” 30 / Wayne Barr “Rules for Dating My Daughter” 32 / Monica L. Bellon-Harn “Roux” 34 / Gaylord Brewer “Upon Not Attending the Writers Colony in France” 35 / Peter Neil Carroll “The Lake” “Northern Lights” “The Widows Abernathy” 39 / Aidan Cobb “The Woods” 40 / Joe Cottonwood “Just Making a Delivery, Jericho Jones” 41 / Lori Cramer “Driving Home”

42 / J.B. Davin “Pandora’s Box” 46 / Daemian deBidart “I Will Warn You, the Dog Dies in the Beginning” 49 / Ivan de Monbrison “The Scale of Life” “The Nap” 53 / Kasey Dennehy “A Killing in Killingsworth” 55 / Jack Duga “The Story of How I Died” 58 / Michael Estabrook “Lowry” 59 / Jean Esteve “Fireplace” “Comfortably Retired” 61 / Jeannie Evans-Boniecki “Better Late than Never” 63 / Taylor Gaede “Grave Crown” 64 / Timothy Gager “Beautiful Prayers” 65 / Simon R. Gardner “Written on the Receipt” 66 / John Grey “Desert Down Below” “Twenty Years” 68 / Trisha Hall-Muller “Perfectly Imperfect” “Devaluation” 71 / Paul Holler “The Nature of Heaven” 73 / Ruth Holzer “Departure of the Bride” 74 / Katharyn Howd Machan “Cloak” “What a Dreaming Flower Maybe Asks” “Red” 77 / Molly Krew “Kryptonite”

78 / John P. Kristofco “Normandy” 79 / Alex MacConochie “In the Financial District” 80 / Eric Machan Howd “Charming’s Lament” “Claustrophobia Poem #05” “When Autumn Leaves” 83 / Kevin J. McDaniel “Dr. David Banner on Foot” 85 / Bray McDonald “Baby Boomer’s Lament” 86 / Graham McLennan “Coyote” 87 / Diana Pinckney “Little Street, Alexandria, Virginia” 88 / Ken Poyner “Return” 91 / Ron Riekki “Doarro” 93 / Marzelle Robertson “I Will Go to Persimmon Gap” “Waking From a Dream” 95 / Russell Rowland “Mosquitoes Go for the Ears” 96 / Robert Scotellaro “No Peeking” “Something for Henrietta” “Waterfall in Still Life” 102 / John Sheirer “The Story of the Next Hour After Kate Chopin’s ‘The Story of an Hour’” 106 / Maureen Sherbondy “Line” 107 / Alejandra Silvia “Smile” 111 / Richard Smith “Dangerous Street” “Old Soldiers” 113 / Matthew J. Spireng “An Inheritance”

114 / Geo. Staley “How We Learn Serious” 115 / Lisa Sterlein “My Grandmother’s Kitchen” 117 / Ellie Stevens “Look of Triumph” 120 / Robert Joe Stout “Is Love” 121 / Steve Straight “Nowhere, Man” “The Good Ship Steve” “Oh, Possum” 124 / Hailey Therrien “Who I Have Become” 125 / David Thornbrugh “Beyond Our Screens” “Why We Crossed the Rubicon” 127 / Francine Witte “Moondot” 128 / Diana Woodcock “If this is Just a Dream” “Dust on the Flood Plain” 132 / Paula Yup “In the Lagoon” “The Scientist” 134 / James K. Zimmerman “Abe” “My Life in Silage” 137 / About the Authors

Freshwater Student Writing Contest 2019 Our 27th annual contest was open to full- and part-time undergraduate students enrolled during the 2018-19 academic year at Connecticut’s community colleges and/or public universities. This year’s contest focused on poetry. As we do each year, Freshwater hired a judge who is not affiliated with the college. Special thanks to the Asnuntuck Community College Foundation for providing prize funding through the Nadia Kober Writing Scholarship. Our judge this year was Ginny Lowe Connors, a widely published poet and the 2003 New England Association of Teachers of English Poet of the Year.

Judge’s commentary on the winning poems: First Prize: “Storm” by Jessica Maier (Southern Connecticut State University)

Instead of describing the grandparents directly, this poem artfully allows objects to represent them: a basket of quilts, dusty photo albums, collectible baseball cards, the long kitchen table, the worn recliner. The few details of actual description of the grandparents focus on their hands as they drive away from home: the grandfather’s white knuckles (presumably on the steering wheel of the car) and the grandmother’s hands “folded / like the clothes they have packed.” The subtlety and craft of this poem seems the work of a mature writer. Second Prize: “Look Alive” by Brandon Kroll (Asnuntuck Community College)

The title of this poem is also a phrase that is repeated at regular intervals in the poem, and it serves as an ironic reminder of both the alertness a soldier must practice and the inevitable result of war, which is death, the opposite of being alive. The young soldier portrayed in the poem is trying to live a normal life after his terrible war experiences, so he may try to “look alive,” but the innocence that was once a part of him has died. The use of rhyme and form in this poem work to enhance its effects.

Third Prize: “Words” by Elise O’Reilly (Asnuntuck Community College)

“Words” allows us to follow the travails of the poem’s speaker at ages eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one. The format of the poem is effective, with short lines including the words of various people: teachers, a friend, a parent, a therapist, and the speaker herself. The power of words as they affect the narrator is made clear, and the poet uses words powerfully to show us some aspects of a young adult’s life journey. First Honorable Mention: “Grey Morning” by Aidan Cobb (Southern Connecticut State University)

The last stanza deepens the poem and makes it noteworthy. Motifs of greyness and circles give the poem coherence. Second Honorable Mention: “A Street Like the One I Grew Up On” by Elizabeth Forsythe (Eastern Connecticut State University)

This poem features excellent use of sensory details and some interesting fresh word choices, such as “the dishes crying and my mom shattering.” Third Honorable Mention: “9/12” by Elisabeth Andrusik (Asnuntuck Community College)

With its direct language and devastating last line, this short poem packs a punch.

First Prize

Storm Jessica Maier My grandfather packs his baseball cards and sports memorabilia into cardboard boxes labeled: Collectibles. My grandmother stacks her woven baskets and quilts neatly into plastic containers labeled: Crafts. They decide together what stays and what goes on the tense drive to South Carolina. Dusty photo albums discolored with age hold the memories of their childhood, loved ones who have passed away, the life they built together. Hospitals, first days of school, graduations, reunions. Jewelry that shines in the reflection of the waves, bought for birthdays and anniversaries— even the accidentally forgotten ones. Pearls, diamonds, gold. Heirlooms to remind them of the people who faced hardships and survived. Dishware, rings, artwork. As they pull away, they see through the windows the long kitchen table where Thanksgiving meals are shared with family in a circle, filling bellies with desserts too sweet to pass up. And the worn-down recliner reserved for one man, waiting for his return. My grandfather’s knuckles are white like the branches of the birch trees that still hang in the light breeze. My grandmother’s hands are folded

like the clothes they have packed in the suitcases used for vacations. The house full of memories grows distant, disappears from the rearview mirror.

Second Prize

Look Alive Brandon Kroll It was clear the soldier boy who’d just come back from war, Was not the same old boy as before. You could see the fear in his eyes, As he looked to all his sides, That days were not the same any more. Look alive. Loyal comrades who had fallen, And thoughts that he kept recalling; Showed the price of liberty on his face. And waking in the middle of the night, Screaming out in a cold fright; From memories that would never ever erase. Look alive. The folks back home don’t understand, What’s happened to this brave young man. Who went to serve his country with pride. Instead of seeing a broken hero, They see a man who they’ll never really know. A man who now wishes he had died. Look alive. Maybe someday soon, He’ll recover from his inner wounds; And try to live again a normal life. What he’s done cannot be forgotten, What he’s lived cannot be seen, The battles which this boy once fought; And the innocence of the world at eighteen. Look alive.

Third Prize

Words Elise O’Reilly Eighteen, medicated, distracted. “Does not work to potential.” I rip up my painting. “I wish there was a place for people like you.” My favorite art teacher. College, depression, numb from meds. I stop against advice of shrink. “Good luck with your life.” Sarcasm from the professional. I am obstinate, yet stung. Nineteen, unbridled anxiety. Self-doubt, paranoia. I send Professor an angry email. He wants to meet after class. “Have you ever been diagnosed bipolar?” I leave school. Just a break. Desperately avoiding my worst fear: “maybe I’m actually crazy.” I date a lot to distract myself, a temporary reprieve from the pain. Twenty, OCD ravages my thoughts. Advice from a friend: “you just need a drink.” For the first time, it all fades away. Alcohol becomes my new friend. Jobs, parties, boyfriends. He affectionately calls me “Fool.” I realize he scares me. My dad writes me a letter: “I’m so glad you left the loser.”

Twenty-one, I want to heal. I find a therapist. “You are very strong.” I start to see my worth. I realize I’m not crazy. I reflect on the past: Words broke me down. I grew. Words built me up. I grew. I am not the only one flawed, growing. I forgive.

First Honorable Mention

Grey Morning Aidan Cobb I stayed up all night thinking about circles Unable to decompress from the Adderall The orange bottle on my nightstand was watching me As I laid restless Chapel bells signaled it was time to get out of bed I lifted the window shade Turning the room from black to grey Grey is the only color in Canton, New York October to April Grey sky, grey sun Grey ash in the ashtray Next to the bottle of blue capsules As I flicked on the light And the grey shifted to a dull yellow I noticed the shadow of a centipede in the light fixture Trapped in a cylinder of fluorescence Frantically running laps around the circle of glass Trying to escape

Second Honorable Mention

A Street Like the One I Grew Up On Elizabeth Forsythe A nearby car alarm drowns the sound of the door slamming behind me. I’m so focused on escaping the dishes crying and my mom shattering, I don’t have time to gather my thoughts or my jacket or my shoes. I’m not sure where I’m going but I need to fucking leave. My flat feet thud against the black tar earth. The puddles leftover from Monday relieve my naked heels from the boiling asphalt. I fail to lift my feet from the pavement; My soggy sweatpant cuffs drag the ball and chain behind me. The house at the end of the street has statues glued to its cinderblock steps. They smell like marijuana and unemployment and I’m tempted to tell them my name So they can stop calling me beautiful. A hammer bang bang bangs a few houses back; The echoing sound pinballs off staggering dented mailboxes. Normally this sound would drive me crazy, But this street could use some renovations. My eyes tightly closed. Salty acid running down my cheeks, Slipping through my quivering lips, Closing my throat until I literally can’t breathe. I wipe the wet glue from my eyelashes and free my pupils from the darkness. I’ve reached the end of the street where I’m greeted by the broken brown fence. This is where I usually turn around. Instead I venture down a side street I’ve never seen before.

The houses on this street are like the ones you see in movies. They have driveways and cars with four, shiny hubcaps. Pumpkins perch on the wooden porches. Freshly brewed coffee wafts through unbroken blinds, Waking up the peonies in the manicured window boxes. I force the puddle off a bench and allow my feet to rest for a minute. My toes dangle over the recently mowed grass, Memories of my childhood flood my vulnerable brain, And I escape to a place of nostalgia. Marigold rays sneak through the gaps in the leaves, Kissing my tender cheeks, just like my mother used to before she forgot how.

Third Honorable Mention

9/12 Elisabeth Andrusik I have never believed in ghosts That spirits of the dead wander around Playing tricks on the living Today is 9/12 And even as my coworker tells me About the little dead boy who haunts her house I am more afraid of what the living can do

Poems by the 2019 Contest Judge Note: These poems are from a series about real historical events in the life of Joanna Kellogg, a girl of eleven or twelve, who was living in the puritan village of Deerfield, Massachusetts, when it was raided in 1704. She and her siblings were among a large number of people taken captive by the raiders, who were mostly Mohawks living in Canada, but were also accompanied by French Canadian soldiers. Joanna and her siblings grew up in the village of Kahnawake (not far from Montreal), a Mohawk village that was clustered around a Jesuit mission church.

Everything She Thought She Knew Goes Up in Smoke Ginny Lowe Connors Deerfield Village, Massachusetts, February 29, 1704 The night before, her hands chapped and stupid, Joanna dropped a redware pitcher, watched it shatter. Her mother’s flare of anger! Sudden sting of a slap. Her father’s pinched lips. And now this broken morning, how red the rising sun. The air so cold, already her heart is freezing. The wind shrieks and a pig too, galloping past them, squealing, a hatchet in its side, a savage chasing after it and a French soldier laughing like the very devil. Blood on the snow. Bodies. Mash of footprints everywhere. A woman’s shawl whipping in the wind— some crippled thing trying to fly. Flames roaring, consuming their homes. Thick curdles of smoke. Its acrid smell mixes with the odor of blood, cold sweat. Can this be real?

Survivors herded toward the meeting house, she among them. The men are roped like calves. Where is her father? There’s Joseph, his face all smudged. Becca clutches her hand, nose running, eyes like pewter plates. Raiders strut push shout in words she doesn’t know, hauling away woolens and kettles, bread and bacon. And prisoners—a hundred Deerfield villagers, Joanna among them. Reverend Williams, their leading citizen, moves meekly along, his eyes tearing, his lips sputtering. She tries not to cry, but cinders lodge in her eye. Crows flap and hop among the slaughtered, repeating Ack! Ack! Ack! Joanna pulls her sister along, turns to look back, sees a figure in nightclothes fleeing toward the woods—her mother abandoning them, abandoning them.

Thirty Miles the First Day Ginny Lowe Connors Hills, branches, shards of ice, feet of ice. Fingers red and cracking. Place your feet into the footsteps of those who’ve gone before. Your old life—hacked away. Up in flames. Your job now is to survive. Faster, go faster. If you must cry, cry silently. Keep moving, keep moving. A baby that cries too much is killed. And a girl who falls into drifts and flounders, complains, sobs that she can’t, she can’t. Killed. Keep moving, keep moving. Faster, faster. Becca struggles to keep up. Where is Mama she asks, where is Mama? Joanna doesn’t answer, just pulls her along. She’s swallowed a rock. It’s lodged in her throat. Her stomach twists in upon itself. A few sinewy Indians run along their ranks scowling, grunting, tugging, pushing. They must go faster. Do not think. Fill the mind with blankness like endless snow, like pale dull sky. Keep moving, keep moving.

They Eat. They Sleep. Ginny Lowe Connors The French soldiers have left them. The Indians, Mohawks mostly, some Hurons, and the captives toil on. Hard travel for days? months? years? and then they rest two days in a row. A fire is allowed. Joanna must gather twigs and branches to feed it. In the flames she sees her home burning. Billowing smoke. The screams. But she is cold. She is hungry. She folds the past carefully away. The burning wood spits and snaps. Sparks spiral into the darkening sky. Where do they go?

Where are we going? Becca asks. To the Indians’ place.

When will we get there? Joanna doesn’t answer. Because … and then? What? Slams those questions away. Dizzy for a minute. It’s the scent of roasting meat. Some men have killed a moose. The edges of a big skewered hunk turn crisp. Fat sizzles in the embers. That night they feast. Moose meat, dried cranberries, ground nuts. She gets her fair share. Joseph sits near them as they eat. His lips greasy, his freckled face streaked with dirt, his dark hair a thicket. Only his eyes shine, excited by the hunt. Thinks he’ll be a great hunter himself someday. Says farming is terrible dull. Oh, that boy always was a little wild. For the first time, Joanna sleeps through the night, even as a chill seeps through the pine branches, her makeshift mattress. Teka-ron-hioken, her master, has a long scar that splits his cheek, but he’s not all bad. He’s given the sisters a robe of animal fur.

They sleep surrounded by Indians and ragged neighbors. Snores, groans. A quick yelp. And off in the woods, coyotes yip, bark, howl. The sled dogs answer. Joanna shuts it all out, falls heavily into dreams—the white chicken that would follow her, a skein of yellow yarn unraveling—dreams she won’t remember on waking.

Catechisms Julia Alexander When you uncover even the smallest piece of vulnerability, one square inch of exposed white flesh, I dig in with sharpened nail, ready for the dissection. I put blade to skin and pull back the layers to inspect splayed vein and shredded muscle, trying to gain knowledge through these holy texts, mutilating you in return for a quiet understanding of the sacraments. At the first mention of your confession, you suture your wounds and return to your almighty silence. I only regret not prying open your lips to pour holy water down your throat. How often does the moon wish she could drop into the sea, plummet into black waves, float on her back, melt into him like sugar dissolving into tea, but what is transubstantiation? The merging is the confusion. How do simple wafers become the body? What hex do I utter to combine us? I hold my tongue out to you, waiting for the union, but there is no amalgamation, not with you. There is just our bodies touchingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;raw meat dripping red. The blood stains our clothes. I go home smelling like the butcher, but tell myself I havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just nailed my hands to the board to let you slaughter me again.

When We Meet Halfway Julia Alexander Fingers pry open lips revealing bleeding gums, pink and raw. Sliced open by tongues, the cut flesh yawns, cyclamen in full bloom. While you choked on white noise, I ripped out rotting teeth and placed them in your palms. It was the only way left to substantiate the resurrection. Your fingertips learned hunger, but never grasped satisfaction. Is this the story we tell ourselves about scything and burying the evidence? I warm the dirt in my hands before dropping it in your empty grave. The teeth that werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t extracted fell out despite themselves. I convince myself to blame your ghost for the broken mirror and the lie. Dignity long forgotten, knees scraped to bone. You pushed my chin upward at the altar, as if to say, everything depends upon needles scraping my spine, an infertile longing,

the crack in my voice, when I confess the body alone was never enough.

History of My Teeth Elisabeth Andrusik Ten circles on each side of each tooth. That’s how I always brushed my teeth. Every morning and every night. This is what I was taught to do by my mother/homeschool teacher and from countless afternoons spent watching Doctor Oz. When I was maybe ten years old, my dad told me that when you don’t floss, all the extra plaque gets into your arteries and can cause heart attacks. I started flossing, and it payed off. Every trip to the dentist, I would lay in the chair while the person scraping away at my teeth commented over and over on how clean my teeth were. How I “obviously flossed every day,” and it was “like your teeth don’t even need to be cleaned!” Through my efforts, my teeth were in perfect condition, except that my front teeth lived outside of my mouth in true rabbit-like fashion. Two years of braces remedied this. During those two years, I remained committed to the cleanliness of my teeth. Every night, I maneuvered my floss around each wire and brushed every surface of tooth still available. Even during a week at summer camp, I remained faithful to my routine. Several years later found me working at the movie theatre in my town. I had just turned eighteen-years-old, so I was available to work nightshifts. These shifts usually went until one in the morning and were not very coveted among staff members. But being somewhat of a night owl, I didn’t mind the late hours, and they became a part of my regular schedule. A year later, a management position became available at work. I decided not to apply since I had just decided to go to college. It would be not only my first college semester, but my first time ever attending public school, and I didn’t want to add the extra stress of learning a new job. However, after my first few weeks of school had gone well, I ended up taking the management job. The hours were almost exclusively closing shifts, so I would go to school, work late, and get up for school again. I would be so tired after work that I couldn’t waste my precious sleeping time on flossing my teeth. I would brush my teeth for about thirtyseconds and go to bed. During that same semester of college, my brother and my best friend got engaged and started planning their wedding for the following month. I wasn’t excited for them like I should have been. Ever since they had started dating the year before, I barely spent time with either of them and

felt very ignored when I did. Even though I avoided them as much as possible, that month filled me with anxiety that did not go away after the wedding, and I didn’t realize how the stress was making me neglect basic care of myself. My second semester of college was in the “spring,” and I have a low tolerance for the cold. After my cold drive home from work at one in the morning, I would brush my teeth as quickly as I could. I would then go straight to bed only to lie awake from racing thoughts about all the homework I had to do and about my brother and now sister-in-law. In the morning, I would climb out of bed stressed and exhausted, and with a token tooth brushing. I would leave for my cold drive to school. Eventually I had enough. I called my sister-in-law and talked with her. Things got better between us after that and we FaceTime now and again to keep in touch. Sometime later, my brother called with an apology. I think it was his wife’s doing, but I no longer get upset when people talk about him. They even came to visit, and we all had a good time. As summer rolled around, another manager who is in college started to work more hours. My life began to slow down a bit, and I no longer had to endure the cold and the snow, yet, brushing my teeth for longer than my now routine thirty-seconds never even crossed my mind. It had been over a year since I last bothered. In the late summer the retainer on the back of my bottom teeth started losing its glue and sticking me in the tongue whenever I chewed or spoke. I had not been to the dentist in nearly two years because, I guess, my parents had stopped making my appointments for me. Since it was Friday night of Labor Day weekend, I figured I would have to wait until Tuesday to call the dentist. When I did finally call, the earliest I could go in was Thursday. After a full week of strumming the wire in my mouth with my tongue, I finally made it to the dentist’s chair, and twenty minutes later, the wire was securely glued in place. The doctor made an appearance to check the work, and I asked after her son who I used to tutor. She told me that he had just started first grade and had a wonderfully funny personality. She began her examination, and everything looked good, “except …” She started to poke at my molars. “I think you have a cavity.” I couldn’t believe it! Where were the usual compliments on how nice my teeth looked? She kept poking at my teeth. “And one up here.” I suddenly couldn’t bring to mind the last time floss had touched my teeth. At the end of this examination she stood up and announced that I had eight cavities. Eight! Four on each side of my mouth.

As the woman at the front desk wrote up my bill for the drilling that would be done the next morning, I saw the last year flash before my eyes. Life had moved so quickly, and I forced myself to sprint in order to keep up with it. But I also remembered how I had gotten my nerve up to call my best friend and sort things out with her. Now, even though I still work late, I have nothing on my mind to keep me up all night. I also find my homework much easier to do when I’m well rested rather than struggling to stay awake. As I sat in my running car in the parking lot of I Smile Dental Studio, the hefty bill in my hand felt as light as the paper it was printed on. I have always been good at saving money, and with my family’s discounted dental plan, the price wasn’t so bad. I thanked God that even while I wasn’t taking care of myself, He was making sure that I was taken care of, and now I make sure I take care of myself too.

An Autumn Walk Elisabeth Andrusik She walked with her arms crossed, holding her long wool overcoat close to her body to fend off the late October winds. The sky above was a mosaic of clouds in shades of heavy gray and rainy blue. The evening was brooding, but she liked the eerie excitement it made her feel, like anticipating an approaching storm. The lawn of the house on her left was spotted with small plastic gravestones shuttering with the wind. From under a wooden pallet, four plastic arms smeared with red were reaching out. She quickened her pace and turned the corner at the top of the street. A stronger wind threw her long hair in random patterns around her face. She stood still for a moment to watch as the wind played at keeping the yellow and rust colored leaves in the air, tossing them from one gust to another. At last the leaves were left to settle on the ground, and she continued on her way. Overhead, the clouds plotted to sully her journey, and a deliberate rain began to fall. She slowed her pace so that she could feel the large cold drops in her hair and on her face. She listened as the droplets spattered on the pavement and fell through the leaves of tall bushes, then kept walking.

Rules for Dating My Daughter Wayne Barr In the last month or so, I’ve been seeing variations of a “Rules for Dating My Daughter” meme on Facebook and elsewhere. They go something like this: - Understand I don’t like you. - I’m everywhere. - I have a shotgun, a shovel, and five acres behind the house. Do not trifle with me. - Get a lawyer. - She’s my princess, not your conquest. - I don’t mind going back to jail. - Whatever you do to her, I will do to you. And so on. I recognize that it’s natural to feel protective of our children and sometimes difficult to witness the radical transformations that accompany adolescence. However, I’d like to offer a respectful objection to this particular approach, however humorously it may have been offered. I object to this meme because it takes for granted that, from both the father’s and the prospective boyfriend’s point of view, girls are objects of sexual manipulation and nothing more. The daughter is an emblem of virginity to be protected by the father or violated by the boyfriend; neither the father, nor the boyfriend he imagines, see her as a person— someone strong enough to hold and stand for her own principles, someone with her own interesting personality to share, someone with enough intelligence and agency to make any of her own decisions. Instead, the meme takes for granted that the daughter is a poor judge of character, unintelligent and gullible, weak and defenseless, and every moment at risk of becoming sexually ruined. I also object to this meme because it assumes that the emotional and sexual development of boys is violent and predatory. The meme invariably casts the boyfriend as impatient, jobless, slovenly dressed, disrespectful, dishonest. He is a sexual opportunist, a criminal, an idiot. Worst of all, though, he is a rival: he has challenged the authority of the father simply by showing up. And that, perhaps, is the distasteful subtext

to which I most strongly object—that the arrival of a boyfriend signals an attempted usurpation of the role fathers play in their daughters’ lives. I have two daughters and a son. For my daughters, I’m not a male placeholder until some other male comes along. I’m their father. When they have boyfriends (assuming it turns out that way—seems so far that it will), I won’t play the jealous, vengeful lord of the manor. I will be, quite simply, what I am and have been to each of them: an important character of some influence (diminishing as they grow up, perhaps) in the ongoing dramas (and frequent comedies) that are my daughters’ lives; someone to whom they can safely introduce the new characters they bring onstage; someone who, I hope, has helped build a sturdy enough structure and supply a rich enough backstory that they’ll grow into their own wisdom and negotiate the terms of their own experience; someone to whom they can turn when they want to know, well, anything they haven’t quite figured out on their own. I want to be, that is, what I allow each of them to be—a person—and not a stereotype of brutish masculinity. And for my son, for whom these sentiments also apply—I hope that when he starts dating girls (assuming it turns out that way), he won’t encounter a blustering succession of gun-toting fathers who see him as little more than a potential sexual predator. He’s a person, too.

Roux Monica L. Bellon-Harn In Cajun families, the art is the roux. Not born but married Cajun, My mother was late to the form. She worked hard to pull fat out of the rawness of flour and turn the spoon until a brown shade emerged creating the base of everything to come, gumbo, sauce piquante, ettouffe. She tended the roux with kaleidoscope focus searching for perfect contours, exacting fine lines but the repeating reflections in the smoke and liquid made ever-changing patterns with each rotation of the spoon. She watched the women before her choose their own effect, a translucent wash, thinned and lightened, a flour palette, thickened and darkened. She watched them stir and scrape, tolerating minutes that felt like hours, to prevent burnt flour, black and hard. She followed their directives, smothering over a hot, smoky stove. She believed if she found the right technique, She could create her familial masterpiece. Maybe a sepia piece with a dutiful child Fixed in place. I was her muse, her audience, Her ardent devotee waiting in the periphery to be called to taste test. I knew my role after rolling the dense, deep flavors of sausage, tasso, onion, and okra on my tongue was to tell her the choices she made were perfect. But the balance between the heat of the pan with the speed of the spoon is precarious, and I grew weary of her art,

and angry in her efforts to extract the wild out of duck to smooth flavors. She searched in vain for a new muse Someone with uncompromised zeal But there was only me A steadfast reminder of her miscalculations To control the dark brown, olive tones That bled out beyond her fixed canvas So she handed me the wooden spoons the cast iron skillet and yelled through the screen door to keep stirring to not let it burn while she smoked cigarettes and looked across the drainage ditch that cut across our back yard. Alone in the kitchen I added what I wanted to the dishes I made. My palette was exotic and extreme and with my face dusted with flour I layered the recipe books with gravy wet fingerprints before I abandoned them altogether in the discovery of my own taste. I wish I could trace back to the time she stood looking past the edge of our backyard. I would drop the wooden spoon, let the roux burn, and grab her hand to pull her back inside. I would tell her there is time to try again, that the art is in the doing. It is in the twist of the wrist pinching in salt until it is enough, or not, because each temperature shift, each new ingredient, changes everything and becomes something new that is unexpected, uncontrolled but nonetheless delicious.

Upon Not Attending the Writers Colony in France Gaylord Brewer How refreshing, not to relax on the terrace beneath the 900-year-old beams of the bastide, not extol nature’s glorious sunset, to not drink the local wine with old friends and strangers. No name, rank, genre, no frayed war stories, no rubbing of the dull trophies. How invigorating not to listen, from my high room, the owl of midnight, river dissecting valley, and presume they speak to me, me alone, as I comb the hours for meaning, take scoop and shovel to my own darkness, try to serve it up again, inky black. How inspiring not to wake clear-headed, purposeful, and hike the green hills in hunt for wild boar, chapter, and verse. How rejuvenating, that is, to sit here dull at my scarred desk, in our house already showing its age, out the window to see nothing but the garage needing a coat of stain, hear no song but a simple-minded wren. Mug of cold coffee at hand, how fine my deepest thought concerning whether Lucy’s down the hall in the living room, lightly asleep on her pillow or, perhaps, beneath the end table next to my chair, white fur in need of a brushing I’m here to give.

The Lake Peter Neil Carroll As a child of six and seven, I spent summers in the Adirondacks where I learned to swim and row and fish, but what grips my memory is the image of my young father seated in an oared boat, his yellow-glass rod propped across the bow. Nearly each day the same—at dawn, again after noon, then just before sunset, he made three expeditions interrupted by three meals my mother made from his trout and bullheads. Hours he sat bare-chested in sunshine, pleased when I joined him, as pleased when I didn’t, hours he gazed at the line’s play between wet and light. I’ve outlived his span, but come no closer to understanding the lure, what he took from that pristine solitude, besides fish. Maybe we were poorer than I realized.

Northern Lights Peter Neil Carroll Legally blind, old Mr. Ballinger loved to fish at night, the hours without handicap, using his drop line with tender hands, snaring the muscled bullheads that spasm as they bottom in the boat. He couldn’t see the light breathing down from the stars but described their patterns, allowing me to announce his imaginary constellations with my wild guesses and a great desire to please him. Afterwards I’d row our evening catch to the pier near his cottage, and he’d invite in me to play checkers. With nimble memorized finger jumps, he usually won and Mrs. B. would serve us oatmeal cookies and milk. As I left one night near the end of summer, the windless sky seemed to explode like candelabra spilling flame, wild lamps dripped and flashing, I rushed back to pull Mr. Ballinger by his sleeve onto the porch. The carnival of starlight slipped past his years of shadow, the spectacle making him laugh, shaking the buttons of his flannelled belly, his mouth agape, and I wondered what menagerie he thought he saw.

The Widows Abernathy Peter Neil Carroll Near the shores of Lake Ontario, maple and oak dazzle into autumn, air chilly as I trudge affluent streets desperate for an affordable shelter. Luckily, I find a quiet suite, two tiny rooms in the cellar of an old mansion, the landlords widowed sisters-in-law, not one, but two Mrs. Abernathy. They need me to clean the common hall, shovel snow, drag the rubbish bins. A housekeeper shops, cooks, on Sundays ferries the ladies to the Methodist church. Midwest women, they dress alike, dark woolen skirts, white aprons, no make-up. Their long-dead husbands, twin brothers, had been professors of music and art. One widowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voice hums sweetly while the other, her memory shaky, seldom speaks, except when she brings illegible ledgers to collect the monthly rent. She often comes twice a month by mistake. Tall, slender, a dimmed beauty, she blanches whenever she sees me, asks suspiciously why I am in her house. The younger has a keener mind, but nearly blind requires help on the stairs. Overhearing quarrels, I guess they do not like each other, or their situation.

The one who speaks enjoys telling stories of their lost family. Each had a son who served in the war, one wounded at Normandy, the other a sailor returned without a scratch. Housing shortages forced the boys to build the basement flat, where now I sleep. They died young like their fathers, she says, left no grandchildren. The widows donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t appear uncomfortable, but bewildered. This is what they have come to. Virtue, marked by modesty, caution, has rewarded them with long lives. One day I return to find an ambulance flashing in front. The older widow, sitting on a rocker asks, What will they do with me, as the medics swept the other away.

The Woods Aidan Cobb I went back to the woods To look for that rusted jalopy Trudging through forgotten seasons On meandering trails cloaked In autumnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s golden blanket Adorned with flecks of crimson and scarlet Pushing through thorns Past jumbled rock formations Worn smooth from thaws and fluxes Into the clearing where the jalopy once sat Decrepit engine exposed Jagged valves and naked pistons With beaten doors and a crooked frame But there was no old clunker in the clearing Nor a trace of a discarded fender Or scattered nuts and bolts Whose absence made me wonder If I ever did discover a jalopy in the woods In past autumns Or had the old heap of iron Melted with the thaws into moss-clad rocks And sunk into the earth Tangled into the roots of birch trees Transforming rust into brown smudges on silver bark Seeping deep beneath the blonde foliage That coats the November mud?

Just Making a Delivery, Jericho Jones Joe Cottonwood punched in the location on GPS, followed lines on the screen hauling 5 yards of Ready Mix Concrete sloshing in the barrel turning onto a freshly-paved road, a pop-up subdivision like it wasn’t there yesterday where the spaceship beamed him up. So he says. There’s a planet where you drink beer and never pee because machines clean out your body once a day, and a day is 17 hours out there, and you never sleep because machines clean out your mind once a day. The creeks run clear and full of whales. All politicians are in jail. Everybody plays banjo. Nobody has sex because once a day machines light up your nerves. Nobody has babies because nobody dies. They don’t fight because without politicians everybody is happy and without sex nobody cares. Jericho Jones says he didn’t fit in. Couldn’t learn banjo to save his life. Wanted sex. So they beamed him back. Lost his job and nobody believes a word of it. Except so far (6 years) nobody’s found that road. Or that truck. Out in the burbs, how do you lose a cement truck?

Driving Home Lori Cramer On my way home from your apartment, I think about how you go running at 5:30 every morning and put sriracha on your scrambled eggs and root for the Braves, even when they’re playing the Phillies. How are we supposed to build a relationship when we can’t even agree on a baseball team? But halfway to the highway, I remember the goofy love note you wrote me on our three-week anniversary and the time I overheard you telling your sister that being with me makes you feel “beyond happy” and the way you can make me laugh in the middle of a fight. So, okay, we’ve got our differences, but doesn’t every couple? Though I may never understand your allegiance to the Braves, I’m beginning to comprehend all that you mean to me. And isn’t that reason enough to turn the car around and drive back to you?

Pandora’s Box J.B. Davin My body is rebelling against me. I want to stop eating, but I can’t. I stare down at the pile of mixed veggies in sauce, rice, spring rolls, and my stomach gives a heave because all I’ve fed it today were some gluten free crackers, cranberries, and a snack bar of some sort. I’m really hungry. I’m starving. My soon to be ex-husband gave me crap all day via text message, and now he’s offering Chinese food. And Diet Coke for my splitting skull. There are migraines and there are migraines, but today’s migraine left me in bed sobbing and clutching at the vice wrapped around my head. After a day’s emotional abuse, he brings Chinese. I don’t want to eat. But I’m starving, so I do. While he showers, he leaves me here wallowing in my misery. I finish the food and don’t even realize I’ve been staring at my empty plate for twenty minutes until something happens. I blink. Then I realize I’ve been staring but keep on staring because who cares … there’s nobody around to see the crazy woman staring at an empty plate. Two little rejected shitake mushrooms. A couple grains of rice. But the shower’s winding down and I don’t want to be here when he gets out so I scoop up the plate and rinse it, toss it into the dishwasher, because I know if I don’t it will sit there all night, and we have ants. There’s a fortune cookie waiting for me. The cookie parts between my fingers more like taffy than an actual cookie, but that’s not really strange considering it’s been over 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the last few days. The fortune inside the cookie leaves me blinking in awe … Adversity is the parent of

virtue. Well. Fire up the hard drive, baby. Time to write this down. I’m forty years old. I have exactly two weeks to go until I’m forty-one. My daughter is four … she’s sprawled asleep in bed behind me and has only the slightest idea that her mommy is falling apart. Seriously about to lose her mind. That’s largely due to the fact that her father, my husband, is causing me to lose said mind. He drinks a liter of vodka a week, smokes pot regularly and has recently announced he wants to separate. Doesn’t want to be married anymore. Wants his own space because he’s having “an identity crisis.” He’s gone to the dark side. He’s Kylo to my Rey. It seems like all the good ones go to the dark side. And those who are rooted in the dark tend to stay there. In my whole adult life, say since I turned eighteen in what seems to be a past life, there were only three

men. All of them had addictions (I don’t, so I don’t know what that says about me) all of them walked a little on the dark side. To save them further disgrace, I’ll call them Draco, Anakin, and Kylo. Draco was bad. Always. I think he was my youthful rebellion. He partied hard. He drank shots, and took shots. I learned how to shoot a handgun from that one, how to take it apart and clean it. Scary, scary stuff. I could have blown off my hand or my head. I saw that even when I was doing it, out in a field in the middle of nowhere, shooting Glocks like waterguns. At twenty he took me to bars and snuck me drinks, then got drunker than me and said I had to drive him home in a car with a stick shift. Never mind I didn’t know how to drive standard. Again, how I survived Draco I’ll never know. But he ended up with a drug addiction which he blamed on me, and I took off to Paris. By the time I got back there was a showdown in Denny’s where I told him I didn’t want to know him anymore, and to get his car off my property. We never exchanged words again, civil or otherwise. Anakin … you broke my heart. Seriously. This guy was always walking the line between good and bad. He made love like a tiger, played guitar, brooded. He was my college love, and lingered in my thoughts long after he’d gone. We were together five years, on and off again. He taught me how to make campfires. Stack the logs inside like a teepee, outside like a log cabin. He taught me how to catch fish in my hands down on the banks of the Connecticut River. He was all dark hair and piercing pale eyes, six feet tall to my five. He had a laugh that took his whole body, crinkled his eyes. I can’t say it was a great meeting of the minds; while I was heading for grad school, he became a truck driver. But there was something about him I just couldn’t shake. Then he left me for my best friend, and that was a knife in the heart. It took me seven years to get over him. Seven years alone. And then I ended up with Kylo. Kylo … I knew him in high school. My impression back then was that he was really handsome, but a complete jerk. I should have followed my first instincts. But I listened to my heart instead of my head. When I met him again at age twenty-nine, he was fun, musical, creative, loved to travel, loved food. He was the first guy I ever met who was okay with a girl who wanted to eat and not pick at her plate like a sad little bird. He encouraged me to sing, a talent I’d repressed since high school days, mainly because Draco and Anakin scowled at that part of me and I’d hidden it deep down low. After a while we became a couple. He asked me to marry him in 2009 and we’d tied the knot by 2010. The first time he fell off the wagon was our first wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary, I’m on drugs, stole 500 bucks from you

and am now heading off to rehab. I should have divorced him then and there. But what I wanted from him tied me to him … his promises of love, of a family, a home together. So I held on for seven more years … which brings me to today. Little girl asleep in bed, and the pot-smoking alcoholic my husband has become. What do you say to someone who says, “I never really loved you”? Or “If I really wanted to marry you, don’t you think I would have got you a real ring?” Or the worst one of all, “It’s not you, it’s me”? He claims my family pressured him to marry me (which they didn’t) and that he tried to leave me years ago (which he did). How do you get up every morning knowing the person you gave your life to doesn’t want you? That every happy memory you held in your heart was a complete and utter lie? People tell me that life will get better when he moves out. I don’t believe that. I have a part time job, a raised ranch, three quarters of an acre of land, and a four-year-old child. The mortgage is the proverbial sword hanging over my head. When all this hit the fan, I initially wanted to move but the cost of leaving would be higher than the cost of staying. I am almost forty-one years old. I look in the mirror and see wrinkles, gray hair sprouting from my mushroom cut hairdo, as my four-year-old calls it. I see the extra ten pounds from her birth that I never lost. I see unattractive, used up, washed out. I see a woman that can’t keep her husband happy. I don’t know how to mow the lawn or snowblow. Some days I am so overwhelmed with my future I sit at the counter and sob. Some days, I don’t want to get out of bed. I see a black monotony of years rising ahead of me with no future and no end. Recently, a friend of mine who works as a substitute teacher came by asking for advice. “I don’t know what to do,” she said, “my job ends in two weeks and I have no income for the summer. I have to pay bills, a mortgage …” I asked her if she’d ever heard of Pandora’s Box. The story goes, Pandora is given a gift by the Greek Gods. A beautiful box that she is instructed not to open under any circumstances. Pandora, being naturally curious, gives in after a while and opens the box. When she does, horrid little creatures run screaming from the box, biting at her and wounding her deeply. Pandora has let suffering into the world. As they run off, she sits there sobbing, heart broken at what she has done. Until she looks in the box and sees a glimmer deep at the bottom. She picks it up; it is hope. My message to my friend was that even though things may seem hopeless, at the very bottom there is hope. I now find myself trying to take my own advice. Hope may not come from a box; it may not be something as easily attained as reaching down to pick it up. I try instead

to find hope in little things. My daughter’s smile. The glimmer of a ruby throated hummingbird. My nephew’s laughter. My mother’s songs. I look at the details of flowers. I can’t think about the future. I can’t think about my job waiting for me at summer’s end, or a retirement full of cats and cobwebs. I can’t think about facing old age alone, and the cancers and dementia that might be waiting for me there. I can’t think about the past. I can’t think about all the disappointments in my life. I can’t spend time on the Dracos and Anakins and Kylos of the world. I struggle daily to live in the moment. One moment to the next, knowing that even though this one is so full of pain, maybe … just maybe … the next moment will be a little less painful. And even if it isn’t, there will be some moment in the day which is not painful. It will be that smile or that bird, or that laugh or song. It will be there. That’s where I will find hope.

I Will Warn You, the Dog Dies in the Beginning Daemian deBidart Sometimes I return home when the sky is dark and starry. On such occasions, I open and close the door carefully, and step as softly as I can. I have to do this to prevent the big family dog from barking and waking everyone. Lately, though, no matter how loudly I enter, only silence greets me. It is a silence that rings louder in my ears than any noise ever could. The dog doesn’t bark anymore because he is dead, plain and simple. We all knew he would die at some point; he had lasted past his breed’s life expectancy anyway. Despite this, no one was prepared for how suddenly he left us. Over twenty-one days, the dog went from seemingly healthy to unable to move or eat on his own. The veterinarians assured us that his bedsores and bloated stomach were not painful, but my family still made the decision to relieve him of his suffering. On the day my sister took him to the vet for the last time, only I was left to dig the hole. She drove away with the dog in her back seat, leaving me with a shovel as company. I already knew where to dig the hole and how large to dig it, so I broke earth. The grave digging was arduous, but it felt right. It seemed like it should be hard work to dig a hole in which a family member would be laid to rest. It felt designed to draw out everything inside of me. Hacking through a thick layer of roots let me express my rage and frustration on the earth. The summer sun’s furious heat on my back gave me a way to repent for my seemingly inexplicable guilt. The rhythm and monotony of moving dirt gave me time to reflect. Each time the shovel tore into the soil, the cleft earth revealed another memory. A scrape, and I remembered when the dog tried to jump into the pool before the cover was taken off. A crunch, and I remembered how he never could resist exploring beyond the yard, but always came back when called. A stony clang, and I remembered the guilt in his eyes because he knew going potty inside was wrong despite a body that wouldn’t move. A scream, as the dirt confessed a previous dog’s paw. The hole was deep enough. Just before I could collect my thoughts into anything coherent, my sister returned. She left the dog that had spent the last eleven years with us at the vet, and came home with a box. She walked to the side of the house to greet me, and was surprised to see the hole.

“Woah,” she said. “I didn’t expect you to have the entire thing done when I got back.” “Oh, I dunno,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow. “I guess I was motivated.” I neglected to tell her about the paw. “Well it’s good that you’re free,” she said, “because we have a bit of a problem. I can’t actually get the dog out of the car.” She motioned to her car in the driveway, its back doors open. “Yeah, I can do that,” I said, climbing out of the fresh grave. I walked to the car and struggled to pull the box from the back seat. The cardboard box that weighed as much as a dog sagged into my arms. Its weight was soft, malleable, yielded in ways it shouldn’t have. It was sickening. I carried the box to the grave, and set it down on the grass. “Which way do you think he should be facing?” my sister asked. “Uh, maybe towards the back yard?” I answered. “That’s where the other people and the cat usually are.” “I don’t know ...” My sister paid what seemed like endless thought to something trivial considering what had already been done. “What if we face him towards the street?” she asked. “Look, I really don’t know,” I replied, with a deep sigh. “You make the decision.” Between the grave-digging and carrying the repulsively heavy box to its grave, I wanted to keep my mind as numb as possible. “Face him towards the street,” she decided. “He was always trying to sneak out there anyways, I figure at least now we can sort of tell him that he’s allowed to.” “Okay, sure,” I said. “Which end is his head?” “Oh ...” my sister answered, her shifting revealing without words that she didn’t know. “No. That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll check. No worries.” I opened one end of the box just enough to be thankful that only a tail looked back at me. Standing in the grave, I picked up the box again, and the weight settled even more fully into my chest this time. I’m surprised I didn’t vomit. Gently, I set the box into its grave. I climbed out of the grave and, my sister asked me to wait before burying it. She shortly returned with some of the dog’s old toys, mostly ones we forbid the dog from playing with because he tore up the grass trying to pick them up off of the ground. After giving away the dog’s things, she laid her boyfriend’s Minnesota Vikings blanket over the box. “He isn’t going to be upset about that?” I asked. “He’d better not be,” she answered, the sarcasm barely covering the sadness in her voice.

The first pile of dirt dropped back into the grave landed on top of the box, and the sound reverberated loudly. My sister stopped me, and told me to fill in the sides first. She couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t handle hearing the dirt fall onto the box. I was glad she said it. The burial went quickly, with no more words spoken. The leftover pile of dirt seemed much larger than the dog or the box. I wondered if that was significant, but by then my body, brain, and heart were too tired to think. I returned inside to wash away the filth on my hands as well as in my chest. Nearly five months on, the spot where the box hoards its stolen treasures is barely visible. Grass grew over dirt which didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sink down enough to distinguish the spot. I remember where the grave is, though. At times I walk to the spot and stare at where the box that used to be our dog is buried. I try to think, canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to manage anything coherent. Sometimes I return home when the sky is dark and starry. On such occasions, I often forget about the box in its grave. I open and close the door carefully, and step as softly as I can. When I forget, a crushing silence is quick to remind me. It bears down upon me, smothering me with the weight of the grave that cradles a box that used to be a dog.

The Scale of Life Ivan de Monbrison Not far from the edge where nothing moves the other self tilting slightly you walk the thin line of the path winding by the shore from the large city to the cliffs at the end of the mountains ridge with the sea quite still there is so many people now below by the beach and a few gulls hovering above you try to think but your head is clogged so you lie down on the grass for a while you close your eyes and when you wake up you find yourself back in your bed and there is no one beside you but the shadow that you’ve been carrying on your back all day long is so dark on the white sheets of the bed like a rift into a valley you must try to think you should then maybe go to the window and pick up some clouds in the sky to tack them on the wall so when you’ll go at your desk to read or write you’ll still have this feeling of being outside with only the sky for a roof I guess that it was a nice journey on this Earth we might need to say one day sooner than we would like of course as with in one last gasp

weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll certainly try to suck in all the air left in the room and all the life we can but thoughts like tiny ants will be running out from our ears and eyes too fast for us to save and soon enough weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll be mere hollow shells of flesh and bones decaying fast just a bunch of lost memories and cries screaming in the corridors of our past

The Nap Ivan de Monbrison The angle was kept open but we could hardly think and the eyes still closed we had to get out of the grave and walk the thin line that divides the other world from this one I should stab you to death and then strangle your dead body but I am only joking you know and life is always so sad but look the horizon is so close that I feel I could just stretch my arm and touch it with my rose fingertips just like it’s said in the Odyssey that’s all I remember from College that and some words by Yeats I am old school I guess I would like to keep my eyes closed forever and just recess in Time to those years I think that my brain is a pit but only made out of flesh I should put it in an oven and figure out how it tastes would you share some with me for dinner? I walk out in the garden just like the jester in a poem and pick up all the red flowers to make a nice bouquet with them and then put them in a nice vase and put this vase in a blue room and each flower would be the soul of a dead person that I knew so would you share some of my brain with me for dinner dear? Tomorrow will be too late and I guess we’re already dead but we’re not aware of it yet

I walk back to the garden to watch the trees grow by the second and reach the sky with their tops I climb in a hammock between two trunks and close my eyes to see the sea walking on its own shore with its transparent body and all the fish caught inside and the sky is pink like in the poem and all the rivers join their hands and the dead walk out of their graves when I open my eyes again I am still in the hammock gently swung by a breeze on this summer day with all the dead in their graves

A Killing in Killingsworth Kasey Dennehy (Excerpt from a Novel in Progress) It was the scream. That’s what woke the sleeping residents of Killingsworth, Connecticut. It wasn’t a scream like that of a child playing or of joy you’d hear at an amusement park. It was a scream that made the hairs on your neck stand up, a scream that made your senses heighten as you listened to the eerie silence that followed. Nevertheless, soon everyone would find out what had happened. Lucy Black was found murdered on Higganum Road. She was a nineteen-year-old girl with a bad reputation, so it wouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise. She was known for dropping out of high school and sleeping around. Some of the town’s people speculate it was just a rebellious stage or a way to go against her extremely religious family. After all, her father was the local pastor. Others believed it was just the character she grew to be. Not much goes on in Killingworth that isn’t known about, and despite its name, there aren’t a lot of murders either. The head detective called to the case was detective Sarah Johnson and throughout her career she had only seen a handful of murders, but none as gruesome as this. Approaching the scene, Detective Johnson, surveyed the area. Despite being in the early morning, there was already a crowd gathered around the closed off area. Everyone was curious as to what had happened and why. It seems everyone had something to say. As Detective Johnson passed the onlookers by, she could hear the vicious whispers being spoken about the victim. Clearly her reputation preceded her and everyone assumed the worst about what had happened that grim night. It was about 5 a.m. and the sun hadn’t quite risen yet. Mix the low

sun with the fog and rain and you’d think the town was based in a Stephan King novel, only this is real life and not fiction, thought Detective Johnson, and unfortunately nothing can take this nightmare away. She examined the body of Lucy Black. She was sprawled out on her back with a pool of blood surrounding her body, her jet-black hair caked in maroon red on the pavement. A pavement that instead use to hold children chalk drawing. Lucy’s blue eyes were glossed over, almost reflecting the sky that day. The first thing Johnson’s eyes went to, was her slashed throat. Then she saw the bullet holes, one in each knee. Not to mention the bruises that covered the body. It was, no doubt, a brutal act of murder. Crime of passion maybe? Lucy wasn’t the model citizen but

this …? Detective Johnson couldn’t stand to look at the body anymore. So instead she turned to look at the head medical examiner. “By the looks of it, she was shot first in the knees, so she couldn’t get away. Then the killer slit her throat.” Dr. Olivia Faye was the best in her medical division. She was the type of medical examiner that could work for a higher branch in the government but chose the quiet life in a small town. She knew everything there was to know about the human body and mind, yet she couldn’t understand why someone would do something so appalling as this. “The killer must’ve used a silencer. None of the neighbors heard any gunshots,” stated detective Johnson. So probably premeditated, she thought. “It’s very possible, but I won’t know more till I get her back to the lab. She’s also missing a lock of her hair …” Dr. Faye said as she pointed to a braid in the hair that clearly had been cut and looked frayed at the end. “Do you think the killer wanted a trophy?” “Maybe,” said Dr. Faye, “but that’s not the only thing he took.” She opened the girl’s mouth to a small pool of blood that dripped down the side of her pale face. Once it cleared, it revealed what else the poor girl was missing. “By my calculations it was taken out before she died.” “Why take the tongue? There must be a significant reason. Why do that when you are already planning on slitting the throat,” detective Johnson asked. “I don’t know,” said Dr. Faye, “But whatever the reason, he decided to take that too.”

The Story of How I Died Jack Duga The air outside was brisk. I shivered as I crawled out of my cozy bed. Upon touching the ground, my feet felt like ice. I wasn’t sure how anybody was fit to live in this arctic weather. I remember thinking about how much I wished I was a bird flying south for the winter to enjoy the nice, warm air. It was only November, and it was already under 20 degrees. I knew that If I was going to survive through the winter, I would need to find a warmer place to live. Leaving my abode, I stepped out into the frigid air. The tall pine trees were topped with snow, and the only colors within miles were the green of the trees and the white of the snow. Occasionally, there would be a stream or river, but nowhere suitable for me to live. As I walked, I thought about sitting in a nice toasty log house, wearing fuzzy blankets and listening to the crackling of the fire. Oh, how I wanted that fantasy to become a reality. I continued to walk, and with each passing day, the temperature would grow a little bit colder. After a few days, the streams started to freeze over, and the snow started to pile up. Trees that couldn’t take the stress from the snow began to fall. As much as I searched, there was still nowhere suitable for me to live. Each night I would make my bed with the materials that I had and freeze, praying that I would wake up the next morning. I had been through many harsh winters during my lifetime, but this was the worst by far. On the eighth day, the temperature was only 11 degrees. I thought that I would freeze to death once and for all. I was ready to give up, but then I saw it. Smoke. Smoke was steadily rising from a little log cabin, and it wasn’t too far away. I made it! I thought to myself as I started towards the house. Upon arriving, I knocked on the door, but was not greeted. I knocked again. Still no response. I was so cold! All I needed to do was get into the house, and then I could warm up a little. I saw people through the window, but as much as I knocked, nobody came to greet me. Being as small as I was, I tended to get cold quickly, and I was growing desperate for warmth. I decided that I would sneak into the house. It was no big deal, I would only stay there until my feet weren’t blue, then I would move on. I walked up to the back window and made my way in.

The house was so warm, exactly how I had envisioned it. There was a toasty fire crackling in the other room where the people were, and the warmth radiated throughout the house. I found myself instantly dozing off, so I crawled into a closet and hid myself in a dark corner so that I wouldn’t be seen. I slept for what felt like days. Light shined into my eyes, waking me up. I peered out the window and looked at the extra foot of snow that hadn’t been there the night before. Thank goodness I made it here, I thought. One more night, and that would have been the end of me. The aroma of fresh bacon wafted into my little corner. I stood up, and quietly peered into the kitchen. “Hi,” a high-pitched voice said. “Do you wanna be my friend?” I looked up at the little girl who was staring down at me. I nodded. She smiled, and then ran up to her mother, who was cooking the bacon. “Mommy, I made a friend!” the girl said with excitement in her voice. “I want to go outside to play with him!” “Very nice, sweetie,” her mom said, assuming that the little girl’s friend was a bird or a squirrel that she saw through the window. “Your friend will have to wait though, it’s time for breakfast!” The mother and daughter sat down to eat, but they didn’t even seem to notice my existence. An hour went by, and I heard my stomach rumble. All of the bacon was gone, though the smell still filled the air. I went to try to find my new friend. I looked all around the house for the little girl, but I couldn’t find her. Looking out the window, I finally found where my friend was. At the top of the snow-covered hill, she started to run. She had a sled in her hands, and when she reached the hill’s slope, she threw the sled beneath her stomach and gleefully slid down the hill like a penguin. Her mother came down right behind her, both of them laughing. It filled me with joy seeing the two have so much fun together. Fun like that was something that I never got to have. Maybe now, I would get to have fun with this family, my new friends. The mother and daughter continued to slide down that hill for another hour. After their last run, they came inside, tracking snow and water throughout the house. The daughter seemed to notice me watching them, and came up to me. She pointed at me. “Mommy, look! This is my new friend!” The mother turned and looked down at me, terrified. She let out an agonizing shriek, and went into the other room. When she came back, my eyes filled with horror. “No!” the little girl screamed, terror in her eyes. I stood there, motionless.

The mother lifted her arms, clutching a book in both hands. Swinging them down, she struck me three times. As the light faded from my eyes, I heard the girl sob. “But Mommy, that spider was my friend …”

Lowry Michael Estabrook Hoping he’d comprehend the ravages of alcoholism she sent him a copy of

Under the Volcano perhaps the most poignant novel ever written on the subject. A few weeks later she received a thank you note: “I’m enjoying it so much reading a little bit every day out on the back patio under the sun with a nice bottle of Merlot.”

Fireplace Jean Esteve Gray again. A clumsy fog fumbles with buttons of air. The day implodes to further burden us with shame, us who never in our long and righteous lives invited evil in. You must blow and blow and blow on the coals to lift the flames. Comes the rain as a flock of doves wrapped in feather-noise comes to the architrave, shadowing windows in yellowish shade. But the voices of misery cry somewhere far and strange. We cannot be blamed. You must whistle and whoosh at the flames to hold their blaze. A sudden bright sun that stretches its bowstring with exacting aim at our grins. Just what we prayed for. We open our mouths and swallow its beams then regurgitate a series of useless excuses. You must cover the smoldering charred remains with buckets of sand.

Comfortably Retired Jean Esteve We bless the bland colors of the furniture on which we’ve finally landed. Left behind, the snow chains. Left, the ceiling fans. Hides grown thick and rough are proof we’ve had enough, although come some evenings when soft breezes waft off the soughing water, introducing a starful night, then a bit of indigestion grabs the gut, a longing long kept tucked in by a belt of secret leather for the screech of storm or for the baked-potato skin of August burn. Here’s something I have learned: if you curl yourself up fetus-like when you’re alone, and listen hard, so hard it hurts your forehead, you can conjure for yourself a desert sun blazing or winter holding up its drunken sky with mist so cold it makes your windows cry.

Better Late than Never Jeannie Evans-Boniecki As a two-year-old girl I knew that this woman— older with the smell of roses on her clothes— was not my real Mother but, in a bold attempt at attachment, I’d crawled onto her lap and leaned into her breast to attempt a hug but she yelled out in pain and pushed me off onto the floor. I sat there broken until fifty years later after many frozen years, and then deliberate efforts to thaw the frost when dying and in dementia caused us to talk in a new way. In one instance, My Mother, dug deep: “Two weeks after we adopted you I had a cancer scare, a quick lumpectomy, and you, you, as a baby, leaned against the site ...” She knew the moment she’d pushed me That That Was Probably That and she had cried inside, the lonely howl of a terrified woman who had wondered why God hadn’t given her a child. One afternoon, I told her, with love, that for most of my life I had felt alone. And with resignation, she’d said, “Rightfully so.” She told me she had been all alone in the hospital

that night after surgery, because she had always been the strong one, her sisters, her mother, her husband never came and she had felt alone most of her life, and I told her, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Rightfully so.â&#x20AC;? She was too frail to hug, so Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d laid my head upon her lap, and she patted my ear, my hair with a withered hand. And we stayed like that until she fell asleep and a little child rose in me reluctantly shaking loose her delicate embrace feeling for a second she had had a mom.

Grave Crown Taylor Gaede alabaster pearl cunning silver teardrop diamonds constructed into a crown. twilight bleached pearl to bone jointed over head of king prince heir unborn. servants polished its stricken lines fingers hidden behind silk rags until one took it and crowned his head. standing alone in the hall of mirrors it made his face harsh eyes colorless tongue cuttingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and he could not take it off.

Beautiful Prayers Timothy Gager There is beauty in prayers that are answered. Ugly things have better odds of coming true. There is something exquisite about even a maggot. There is a spiral staircase going around and around. You never should try to go up or down because you’ll get stuck in the middle. He wants you to stop spinning. Have an escalator or an elevator in your house, but only sometimes use the stairs. There are options. Even if you had money, you pray to win the lottery. You can rob a bank, because you used to work in one. The woman up the street with dark roots was fatally shot trying to rob one. Five years ago, you swung and connected with a whiskey bottle. You went for a swim—and wished to drown. His #metoo’s grubby hand prints never washed off of you. You wanted him to die instead. You never wanted him to have a chance to pray. A butterfly, in the sun, over a lake is a beautiful thing but the moth in your closet isn’t. New clothes don’t have holes. You caught the moth in a tiny paper cup. It lived and died in Dixie. Depression wrote this short paragraph. No one understands it. You crumbled it up and threw it away. Prayers are not just wishes. God wanted you to know that.

Written on the Receipt Simon R. Gardner No good story starts with salad. I read that on a chopping board in the Pound Shop, annoyed at the presumption and the vacant cuts of meat in the chalk outlines of a butcher’s crime scene. A pithy quote lacking in pith, but one that to me at least seemed to push the burden of proof onto the reader. My grandfather ate salad. Tasteless crunchy iceberg, red chard with a leaf that looked like a miniaturised oak tree, bitter frisee and spiky chicory, soil-stained red romaine, rough strips of cabbage fermented for added “goodness,” peppery arugula and fiery rocket, tomatoes in hues from pasty yellow to blood red, Lollo Rosso with a fringe like a sea anemone, droopy-leafed spinach that in my young eyes could have served as a parachute for some small insect or other. In the village people thought he was mardy and kept their distance, but then they didn’t know why he walked with a limp in both legs. They didn’t know that he had a list of ailments that could scare a newlyqualified doctor half to death, and that sometimes his hands shook so much he couldn’t button up his shirt. They didn’t know that when the pit closed and the Red Lion was rolling in money and drunks, it was my grandfather who put five hundred quid in the collection fund. At home, where he was him, I used to watch his false teeth winch up the leaves, fascinated at how much the world had changed in the tiny spec of history between him and me. “Wha’ you staring at lad?” He’d say with half a smirk and threatening eyes. I used to imagine that he was eating the earth before the earth could eat him, slowly, piece by piece, leaving no bit to waste. With a warm whisky and water inside him, he liked to claim that he was the first vegetarian in Yorkshire, a man from the future unfortunate enough to have been born in the past. Even at the age of eleven though I think I understood he was on borrowed time, and when the earth did eat him, everyone in town talked in hushed tones and doffed their caps and said how sorry they were and what a wonderful man he was. All I could think was that they never said that when he was alive.

Desert Down Below John Grey Land is flat, dry as snakeskin, slow to move. From the plane, I see the Earth’s drab upper thigh, though we’re headed for its soft green torso on a course to make me whole again, as we break off bits of time, west to east. The sun is out there somewhere, done shining on those who’ve already lived this day, now coming for the rest of us, old hours made new by anticipation. The desert is cloudless, gives no impression that people could possibly be living there, all so visible, so straightforward, but as unappetizing as airline food. I am waiting for the familiar, for this steel cocoon to tap a little into my history, not an epiphany but at least an indication of where I belong in this world. But there’s no word from down below. At worst, it’s loveless. At best, an apology.

Twenty Years John Grey Twenty years since the house was here. And now it’s a block of brick condominiums, nothing for all their size. Filled in the basement, the well too, built a monstrosity so un-home-like, so strangers won’t be bothered by my memories. So why do I stand by the stone fence staring up at that cold brown wall? And why must my eyes coil up like rattlers at the sight of a shadow in a window? Or my bones shudder as an automatic garage door opens and a car rolls out backward, a blurred face driving? Twenty years ago, I swung a door wide, stepped out into spring air with a grin as wide as a half-melon. Twenty years ago, I curled up in a bed, while wind slapped the rafters with oak leaves. Twenty years ago, I ate bread, chewed gum, sneaked cigarettes, thumbed through the pages of the old man’s Playboy. Sure, we all wonder where the years have gone. But who wants to see what they’ve done in their absence.

Perfectly Imperfect Trisha Hall-Muller As a child, vacations on the beach were about exploring for critters, sandy hotdogs, the mesmerizing smell of Coppertone on my skin, and making impromptu friendships that lasted the duration of my stay but were forgotten weeks later. As an adult, I yearn for my yearly vacations to the beach as time away with my children. I know their adolescent years are waiting around the corner to swoop away my “cool mom” status and replace it with the maternal nuisance figure who bitches about the importance of SPF, refuses their demands for curfews far too late for their own good, and causes bored faces screaming a longing to be with the likes of Jack The Ripper over the company of their own family. I’m a simple, yet complex human, perfectly imperfect, emotional to a fault, and often so needlessly anxiety-ridden that I could be likened to a neurotic poodle (only I haven’t started piddling on the family carpet ... yet). I worry about the known and unknown, project the worst-case scenarios when problem solving in the present, incessantly find the need to please those around me—even if it means my own dismay. But, in the most condensed way of expressing it, I worry about my children. Will my daughter make good choices as she grows into a young woman who is terrifyingly becoming the likeness of me during my adolescent years? That was an era when my parents probably pondered whether or not they would be shunned and escorted away by armed militia while trying to convince the nuns that I would make a decent addition to their convent. And I’ve ached inside, in a place that I can’t give a physiological name to when I think about my son, about how kind his soul is and how he doesn’t understand how capable he is to succeed. Will he have the strength we’ve tried to instil in him to handle the hurdles before him? Will he stand up to the ignorant assholes he is certain to encounter and hold his head up high when his heart is hurting and his soul wants to cry? And that’s just who I am, how I am made to be. No apologies. Just accept it. Accept it because, every once in a while, moments happen that give the trials and fears we all experience a swift kick in the negative ass. Such was a moment yesterday. My daughter can walk into a barren cave and come out with an abundance of new friends, but my son often

chooses his own solitary company. On rare occasions, he will branch out to others his age in hopes that they might share his same interests. During those times, I watch from a distance with pride and anguish, praying that his acquaintances see him for all that he is—praying that I don’t have to step in and put the fear of God into anyone who doesn’t. My son hit me yesterday. Hard. Figuratively of course, but, nonetheless, hit me with a blow I needed. If there is such a quadrant in the body that holds the painful apprehension organs within a special needs mother, my little man struck it with such force that the wind was knocked out of me. We were seated on the beach parallel to a family with younger children. I was close enough to hear their conversations. They were speaking French, so I hadn’t a clue as to what they spoke of. After a few minutes, I saw Logan at the water’s edge, taking in the waves. As I opened my mouth to ask if he wanted my company, it happened. “Mom, is it okay if I ask those kids next to us if they want to play with me?” No, the hit was still in the works. My quadrant was exposed, unknowing that it was about to be struck with such force, such beauty, such knowledge from the child I thought I had taught about the world. “Logan, that’s a sweet idea, but those children don’t speak English. I’m not sure they will understand what you want.” He didn’t skip a beat, never paused to internalize my rationalization. Instead, he came back swinging. “Mom, who cares if they don’t speak English? I just want to be their friend. We can still be friends and hang out. They don’t have to speak the same language to be my friend!” And just like that, I felt something indescribable leave my body as I exhaled. All those years of college, training, studying, fighting, crying, wanting to give in, wanting to give up, asking why, feeling sorry, feeling angry, feeling envy ... Gone. Even if only for the moment. It was a moment I will cherish. He gave me the gift of a moment that made me realize something I needed to know. I am winning. We are winning. I am learning with him, and we are going to be okay.

Devaluation Trisha Hall-Muller Years back, I worked for an intensive educational program for young individuals with profound autism and varying other special needs. As exhausting and overwhelming as it was at times, I revelled in being a critical aspect of providing my students with the skills they would need to develop simple qualities within their lives. I studied and taught each student according to their individualized plans and spent many painstaking hours trying to extract the desired data and positive results that were demanded in black and white print on each plan. But, most importantly, I greeted them every morning, reassured the angst-painted faces of their families at drop off, asked the students about their days and interests, cheered them on when they met a goal, gave them dignity when they needed an understanding human to help them tend to the personal care that they struggled with or couldn’t tackle alone. Upon my yearly evaluation, I received outstanding marks and was told that I was amazing at the knowledge I had in my chosen line of work. And then came the “but.” But ... I was marked at needing improvement in the area that involved me to keep 100 percent within the students’ plans and to back off from, and I quote, “being so outwardly friendly with the kids. If you come in every day and make small talk with the students, they’ll deviate from wanting to meet their goals because they’ll think all they have to do is communicate with you about the niceties outside of the program.” Needless to say, I cried during my evaluation. I cried for myself, as I was being asked to be the kind of educator and human that I don’t know how to be. I cried for my students, as I realized this world often looks at individuals with special needs as a set of trials on paper to check off in order to prove success and worth. In the eyes of my superior, I would only excel in my position if I began to look at my students—many families’ beautiful miracle children—as a job rather than a person worthy of being treated as such. I have no regrets in what I said at that evaluation. I won’t air those words here, but I left with my head high and my heart aching. We are all in this world together with our own, unique ways of breathing the same air, bleeding red, and trying to find the comforts in just being us. Be kind. We never know what a smile or a soft word might do to brighten another’s world.

The Nature of Heaven Paul Holler Peter rose from his desk chair and looked out the window into the back yard. Annie, seeing her father’s chair was vacant, sat down and reached for the diptych on his desk. She looked at it with wide eyes, first running her fingers over the relief of Christ ascending to Heaven, then staring at the words of the Lord’s Prayer that faced it. “Whatcha looking at, Daddy?” she said. “Oh, I’m just watching the birds.” “Why?” “Why not?” said Peter, bending over and looking into his daughter’s eyes. Across the yard, a crow perched on a high tree branch surveying the grass. Peter studied the grass, too, and decided he should probably mow it. But he liked it the way it was. He had found over the years that when he let the grass grow, little bits of nature found its way back into his yard. The corpse of a squirrel tucked into the deep growth was a case in point. Peter had recently seen a hawk nearby and guessed it had killed the squirrel. He shaded his eyes and looked at the crow, who let go of the tree branch, hovered for a moment, alighted on the corpse and covered it with its wings. “What’s the bird doing?” Annie asked. “Well, you see, that squirrel died. The crow is feeding on its body.” “Eeeeeeiiiiwwww!” Annie cried. “That’s how nature works, Honey. One animal dies and when it does, it gives food to the other animals. Or their bodies return to the ground and the grass and the trees grow up in their place. And then the grass and the trees feed the other animals. See? When something dies, it helps other things come to life. Things die, but life goes on forever.” Annie thought for a moment. “Is that like Heaven?” “What do you mean?” “Isn’t Heaven where everything lives forever?” Peter stood tall and looked warmly at his daughter. He began to speak, but then his face changed and he stepped back. “No,” he said, “it’s not like that at all. You see, Heaven is Heaven and Earth is Earth. They’re not the same. Look, why don’t you run along and play now? Daddy has something he needs to do.”

Annie ran out the door and Peter closed it behind her. Then he opened his top desk drawer, found a round celluloid container, opened it and took out a rosary that had once belonged to his mother. He wrapped the beads around his hand and closed his eyes. Then, with his free hand, he reached across his desk, opened the diptych to the precise angle he remembered and returned it to its place.

Departure of the Bride Ruth Holzer Around a white-ground vase the wedding procession winds its way, young men bearing flasks of wine. Girls with garlands dance before the bride, their dresses shimmering in the light that has taken this long to find us, as they follow Hermes, guide of souls, with his staff and feathered heels, his wide-brimmed scarlet hat, to the door of the husbandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house, which is the door to the underworld as well.

Cloak Katharyn Howd Machan Did it cover her face? Did it tickle her legs? Did it warm her small arms? Did it drape on the basket? Did it brush against trees? Did it choke tender breath? Did it snap mushroom stems? Did it drag upon moss? Did it blow widely open? Did it hang like a shroud? Did it tangle her ankles? Did it crumble the cake? Did it smell of old lavender? Did it pinch at her cheeks? Did it hide frightened eyes? Did it call to a wolf, to a wolf with rough fur, to a wolf who was destined to make story with her?

What a Dreaming Flower Maybe Asks Katharyn Howd Machan Are you dangerous? Do you look for strangers? Where is the library outside the box? Are you an animal of grief? Can you cure the wild birds’ plague? Music at midnight, music: how? Aren’t you dangerous? Who wrote the poem of blackened myth? Why did God become an egg? What are hunters? Who throws stones? When did wolves become storm’s monsters? Where are lovers with good hands? Dangerous? I say dangerous—you? How can my roots run away? Who is the girl that likes to read? What’s in a basket a mother dared fill knowing the forest will threaten in French, sending her daughter naked in red for a last walk through shadows of tongues to where her hungry grandmother lingers silent and lonely in bed?

Red Katharyn Howd Machan “Many are the deceivers ...” - Anne Sexton in Transformations You forget, when you are swallowed. You’ve been forced and glistened, darkened and bent, but when a woodsman’s knife cuts through you easily leave wet fur and rejoice. Maybe you eat cake, drink wine. Maybe you thread a needle and stitch. Almost always you take out your lipstick, the one your grandmother stole for you, the one your mother warned Never wear when you go walking into woods on a path with flowers near.

Kryptonite Molly Krew Everyone has a kryptonite—sometimes it's human, that one thing we cannot seem to resist or say no to. Something we would die for because we could not live without it. We lose our minds trying to protect it since it’s the only thing keeping us sane. It can stop us dead in our tracks, but it’s the one reason we continue to push forward. Its sole purpose is to cause us heartache, yet we find pleasure in it. We let it consume us, because it’s the only thing we’re living for. You feel helpless in its presence, yet more empowered than ever imagined. I could never simply hate it—I love it all too much. I'll strive to be better for it. To deserve it. To deserve you. You knock me off balance and give me structure. I find comfort in knowing you could easily be my undoing. But you are my kryptonite as my biggest fear is losing you and no longer knowing what to live for. Without even trying, you have become the most intimidating journey I have ever known. But I'll never seek to destroy you,

Normandy John P. Kristofco The water knew the ones to take, it seemed, commanded by the spray, the waves that pushed and pulled their Higgins boats further to the sand already red with dawn. Clouds paid no attention as they gathered, broke apart, vapors like all things that come and go. They stared straight ahead, blind inside a trance, too terrified to see the shells that rattled from the rising cliffs; to hear the groan of ramps thrown open to the hungry sea; to know the smell of metal, powder, salt air, and the morning on the coast; the sting of fear across their skin, their souls, not so many years to dream, these heirs to quarter-acre empires planned for meadows past the factories. Instead, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll stand in long white rows and columns, the dominoes of death filed forever in their fields beneath the sun and rain, the clouds that pass as vapors overhead.

In the Financial District Alex MacConochie The sun comes out like a platitude. Shines on cafes, church porches where the homeless Roll old sweaters up in army-navy coats, alleys That don’t look blind, or like escape routes, now In this cheerful, irritating, oh-so-wholesome light. You don’t want to let it touch you. Embarrassing, really, how much sun can change Your mood, a warmth between the shoulders Murmuring no egg was ever made to be Unbroken. Its kindness would compel assent Yet, looking up at skyscrapers, how they harden The glow they’re given into ice, you might want To say sure, but not all eggs were meant as food … You have to know that’s not exactly true.

Charming’s Lament Eric Machan Howd Those seven little men are in our bed again, and I cannot find words to tell her why our marriage seems like it is dead; her heart communes with them. The witch’s spell is what’s to blame: they’re always in our lives, and she indulges every need and more. She spends her waking hours on them and strives to make them happy and all that’s left for me is huff and hassle, a spent Snow White. If I could lose those bitty men, or boot them from our door, I’d show her how a knight can wake his damsel’s dreams, and more … it’s moot. I did not singly rescue her with kiss; her tiny heroes share in that small bliss.

Claustrophobia Poem #05 Eric Machan Howd

Being pushed into A subway car of Clothes and one Knife somewhere in A pocket as doors shut

When Autumn Leaves Eric Machan Howd the bowl of pomegranate seeds argues itself off the table and the pottery brought from Vejer de la Frontera shatters into glazed fragments. The cat drags its kill along the finished floorboards, blood and mouse commingle with spilt seeds. He leaps to sill, chitters at the cardinal on the empty patio feeder and looks back at me to do something. The cardinal waits for me, chits and moves to another home. There is still so much to do in this house.

Dr. David Banner on Foot Kevin McDaniel “A pilgrimage he must on him take Which he in no wise may escape And that he bring with him a sure reckoning …” - Everyman, 68-70 Bill Bixby, Dr. Banner in the 80s, threw a duffle bag over his shoulder and hitchhiked on a lonely road at the end of The Incredible Hulk episodes. I boohooed. Woebegone music mimicked his slow steps. The character casually moved to other locales, other simple storylines, part-time cabbie, rodeo hand, sounding board in somebody’s secret lab until his fists turned radioactive green to rip through skintight straitjackets. Today, I am a man whose mama asks,

Why did you cry at the end of The Hulk?

I never answer, though I have a hunch now. Dr. Banner is everyman under a magnifying glass.

Baby Boomer’s Lament Bray McDonald As one of many princes of “once” I loathe these young energetic runts with their dives and acrobatic stunts. I recall my old high-school days (Though truthfully it’s all a haze.) when I was the one making those plays. But now a baby-boomer I be with brittle ribs and a bum knee and flirting with major surgery. So this year I won’t go out long. I’ll be watching TV or playing Mahjongg safe on my sofa where I belong.

Coyote Graham McLennan He’s out there counting bodies like sheep you stand looking on cherry red ruby to match your lips velvet dress below your knees heels sharp enough to cut sidewalks in half and it hits you you’re his masterpiece the others they’re dead and gone slabs to be numbered but you’re alive and well eyes to be studied and lusted after of the ones that are still breathing some trail behind, spitting at your back others lay over open sewers for you while rats and wise men gnaw at their core where you are now, he isn’t yet all you see, all you touch, all you hear feel, fear, crave, worship is his doing you’re dining on salmon with sterling silver fine china and silk woven to make dynasties weep while warehouses burst at the seams with all of your laughing matters and rainy days just know there will come a day when he’s out there sorting bodies like pills you’ll stand looking on dried out lemon between your cracked lips torn linens over dirt stained knees and bare feet he’ll turn to meet your eyes and dot you with his finger as his mouth turns into a number then another and another as he moves back to the others.

Little Street, Alexandria, Virginia Diana Pinckney for Elizabeth We lived for a time in a rented house on this little street, where I pushed you, my daughter, in your stroller down sidewalks leading to a school where we heard a young man speak in the football stadium, before he was J.F.K., when he was still a brash Boston Senator who wanted to be the presidential nominee. You on my lap, me on the metal seat, a sky too blue to be true, both of you beautiful and gone too soon.

Return Ken Poyner A boy used to play with a ball here. He would come down the lazy street just now behind me, dribbling and dodging, tripping through the slim light reluctantly let loose by city-standard streetlight reeds. He would dart silver-minnow-like between the cars parked nose to tail on both sides of the street, run side-show errands well off linear into an alley, dribble up one side of a set of tenement steps, then dribble down the other side, his eyes nearly independent in looking for defensemen that were never there. He moved like a city odor, mixed well with the smells of the decaying civics around him: in the atmosphere all congressing, yet without capture. He slipped angles and independent geometries in his clothes, bragging of physics: he a spot below the buildings, buildings that actually owned the streets and the steps and held the thick air in place. But he used his tenancy well. He was the gnat who got away. The ball was not a basketball—but it bounced, and it was fun to bounce. It had qualities that were residual and as happy as dust settling in room light. I was that boy, so I know. I remember it was skinned with small dimples and it spoke roughly with the pavement. Its size was right. Its weight was right. Its roundness was right. I would bounce that ball all the way to this spot where the train tracks bisect the world. I was hoping always for a train. The faces confined in the train could see me as they went by exposed in their blurry destiny, each framed by the train cars’ windows. For them, and for the train, I would circle the ball around my body, my arms seeming longer then, passing it dangerously open hand to open hand: the air bullied by the train pulling at me, the train pulling at the ball, the train pulling like it does now against my companion umbrella. Not always was there a train; but when there was, I would tease it— the train and its cargo of speed-smeared faces aghast as I would charge, dribbling the ball. I would post short and rock low on my knees as though to shoot the ball over the unaware top of the train. I could feel them suck in the air of disbelief, the dampness of wonder. Sometimes, I was more cocksure than others. One train—silver and solid and not rocking as much as most of its unsure tribe, with a grip on the rails cat-like and as cocksure as my belief in the success of me—one train goaded me. I watched it at its start, and past it went, and I started to charge the cars defiantly, feint forward and considered restraint back, and without thinking—caught in the lying gravity of the train and its

mocking confidenceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I began to stalk it. I shifted left then right and spun around and the ball followed me everywhere: the ball and I, orbiting. Thoughtless in my own competition with the arrogant train, I stopped flat footed and took the ball to my chest in a grip as though to squeeze its internal organs loose, and I shot. The ball rose in the most effective arc I have ever accomplished that side of sex and bit the event horizon of the disturbed air that accompanied the train. It broke its arc. The rush around it grabbed out and fingered its edges. I could see the thick skin of it shiver in a half second of synthetic material fear, unsure, unsure, and away it went. Away. Where it went was an unknown neighborhood, a place where I knew no one and where I was never welcomed. Perhaps giants lived there. Each dark building sat dull and unhurried on its separate side of the tracks, soaking in sound and giving nothing back. Whereas on my side of the tracks the train rattled and spat and dropped loose light, on that side of the tracks the train was quiet and deferential and its unworried windows were dark and the panes tried not to focus on any one thing listing askew in the long, looming neighborhood. Or perhaps it went with the train, burbling with misplaced happiness in the wash of air a train folds around itself, particularly an angry train, one that made a cauldron of noises and queried the tracks down to their molecules, sparking and growling and brilliant in its own tantrum. The ball might be there still; or perhaps, when the train stopped to apply its will to some lonely station, the ball was dropped off: lost and worse for the slapping of the train-fed air, wondering if ever, in its newly sad shape, a boy would want to fondle it again, with the lights of its joy slowly growing cold. Tonight, as on many nights, I have come back. The walk is pleasant, nothing more. The light still leaks from the streetlights like an afterthought. I lean on my umbrella, resigned for rain. The neighborhoods on both sides of the tracks still hold within their own stumbling borders their never errant citizens. The shadows are familiar; the smells of rot and over use not good, but still welcoming. The lives of buildings are long and proper. An umbrella is a poor replacement for a ball. A ball with thick skin and dimples and a sweet bounce that returns the physics it is given. The faces go by and I think: they are not watching me. A man with an umbrella is no substitute for the bright splash of a boy agile with a ball.

I see your metal-canister misery, your hurry and spite, as thick and mean as it always was. I am here. I am always here. And where have you taken my ball?

Doarro Ron Riekki Part I: I’d Walk the Railroad Tracks Home

for Bamewawagezhikaquay enough ore on the side to make an entire new railroad, enough railroad to make a ladder to hell, enough hell to make so many families move, but we were here before the hell, before the railroad, before the ore piles, when there was heaven everywhere.

Part II: Vái’bmu

for Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm and Sally Brunk Kayaking with an Abenaki who tells me he is about ten years from receiving “his Native name,” I tell him I am proud that my last name is Saami and he seems sad because of his monosyllabic English last name. I know ten years he will embrace his new name

the way the sounds of the loons embrace this lake. He tells me of an Anishinaabe elder who just received his Native name, a man with pancreatic cancer and they wanted to give him a name that would show power in his body to fight the disease and he told me the name and I could imagine cancer running screaming from his body.

I Will Go to Persimmon Gap Marzelle Robertson to touch her dry skin, to listen for the pulse of water deep in her veins, the Precambrian memories of forests and rivers, the sea hushed in her libraries of fossils and bones. She will not speak, not to the rattlers and scorpions she keepsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not to me, and if she is adorned with blooms, it will be for herself alone. Try to gather any brief softness from her weathered face on pain of lances and blades. Comforter in the blackest nights, hers is a passive violence that silences all other violences of our age when I look upon her burning sunsets and do not burn.

Waking From a Dream Marzelle Robertson Who are these children following me? The hollow-eyed children in the breadline? A child myself, I had nothing to give them. No, they are your children, Who crowded with you in the cab of the truck And laughed when you drove into ditches, Distracted by counting new calves That fattened and fed the hungry. The children holding their parentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; hands, Jumping from cliffs into the blood filled sea? As a teenage soldier, I believed We could end the atrocity. They are your childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s children Who knelt at the base of our oak tree, Tunneling under its roots with kitchen spoons, Absorbing the stain of the earth on their hands and knees. Not the little fellows at the home? I sent what I could, But did it bring Any one of them a day to be happy? As happy as you were as a child Leading your terrier on a string. And they would be there just as soon As you would be with the Black man Cub, Slipping down with you to the fishing hole Like a father would have in the afternoon. Who are these children following me? They are the children your grandchildren sired And the children of all the young men you hired, Taught to clear brush, build fence, haul feed, And become themselves someone fit to lead.

Mosquitoes Go for the Ears Russell Rowland Like issues unresolved, they sound larger than they are. No drugstore aerosol prevents their whine at my lobes. Perhaps they have something arrogant to say. We will outlive you. We will outlast your utmost generation. When the final Adam, without a mate, falls witless in a ditch, to rise no more, then we will celebrate in the last abandoned auto tire. Our great-grandchildren will hatch in deserted swimming pools. We will survive the horses, cats. We will see the last sparrow fall, the serpent of Eden curl and die. This will all belong to us someday. I answer: Then where will you get the blood for those precious eggs? Standoff. Prey and predator will coexist, until the climate shifts.

No Peeking Robert Scotellaro He wore his tie as a blindfold when he visited his sightless friend. Tightened it over his eyes right before knocking. The blind friend told him to have a seat, he’d get them some brews, and he felt ashamed when he stumbled around a bit, bumping into things. Had to peek to see where the couch was. When the blind man handed him the cold bottle, he was surprised at how different it felt. The sudden focus on the chilled glass. The cold, slick label he picked at with his fingernail. There was a fight on TV, and he heard Perez mentioned. Something about a strong left hook. “Hey, thanks for coming,” the blind friend said. “This guy’s got some left. Doesn’t seem like the layoff’s hurt him any.” There was a pause as they both lifted their beers. He could hear it being chugged—the excited commentator’s voice rising louder and louder. “How’s Marie?” his friend asked. Christ, he thought. This never tasted better. He had half the label peeled. “Oh, she’s fine. Out buying a new pair of shoes. Like the 500 pairs she’s already got, aren’t enough.” They both laughed. He could hear Edgar in his cage fluttering about on its newspaper flooring. “Looks like Edgar’s a fight fan too” he said. “He’s just excited to see you is all.” It was between rounds and they listened in on a trainer ranting furiously, telling his guy to get his shit together. To clinch when he got tagged like that. “You can take this guy,” he said. The blindfolded man was getting tangled up in this new dark universe: the announcer, the crowd, Edgar’s loud chatter, his blind friend guzzling … “How you like my new shirt?” the blind man asked. Friend of mine brought it back from Hawaii.” “Nice,” he heard himself say quickly. “It’s got pizzazz.” He thought to peek again, but felt he wanted to stick with this thing. Get a sense of what it might be like. The announcer was calling the fight again, and the crowd was getting loud. “He packs a punch,” the blind friend said. “That Perez is a real banger.”

“I can see that,” he said, wishing he could see that. It was like Edgar was watching the fight too. Getting louder, it seemed, along with the crowd. “It’s just a matter of time,” his blind friend said. “Well, cheers.” “Cheers,” he said back, then suddenly wondered if his friend was holding out his bottle for a clink. Shit! He lifted the tie up over one eye, and there was his friend in his boxer shorts, and nothing else, sitting across from him, smiling. Perez was on the mat, and Edgar was pecking away joyfully at a seed bar. He slipped the tie down, and tucked it under his collar. Leaned back and drained his beer. The next fight—the main event—was pretty bland by comparison. A couple of chunky heavyweights. Mostly waltzing around the ring. Even Edgar didn’t seem all that interested.

Something for Henrietta Robert Scotellaro The woman slipped from the bed, then cried out as she stepped on the infant’s head: “Damn! Damn! Damn!” The little girl hurried in and pointed. “She said a bad word, Daddy. And stepped on Henrietta.” The woman hopped back to the bed and sat, rubbing the indentation in the sole of her foot. The father rose from the covers and wiped a bit of goop from one eye. “Now, what?” he said. The little girl crouched down on the rug. She took the tiny plastic baby she’d gotten from a Cracker Jacks box, and put it back inside the halved toilet paper tube, which served as a cradle, and rocked it. The woman glared down at her, at the fifty or so different improvised items that were gradually eating up the floor space in the father’s bedroom. “My foot,” the woman said. “I stepped on that goddamn thing again.” “She said another bad word,” the girl accused. “You okay?” The woman began dressing. “Ooh, I see your butt,” the girl said. “I’ve had it,” the woman said. The man patted her side of the bed. “Come on.” The girl stretched out on the rug and repositioned an aluminum foil swing set, a pizza disc table, and the empty cigarette box that was Henrietta’s dog crate. The actual dog was made of clay—twice mashed underfoot, and reconfigured. There was always something the girl seemed to be adding to Henrietta’s world. “Look, I need a little time,” the woman said. After she put on her high heels, she opened a pack and lit a cigarette. “Not in the house,” the man said. “Screw that,” said the woman, and before the girl could speak, she said, “I know, another bad word from the bad lady.” “Don’t talk like that.” The man patted the bed again. But the woman just stood there and tapped ash into her palm. The night before, she had tried to win over the girl by making chocolate chip cookies (from a family recipe). But when the girl took a bite, and made a twisted face like she was being poisoned, the woman threw up her hands. When the girl picked out the chips and said they could be Henrietta’s poop, and tore off a piece of paper towel for a diaper, the woman tramped out of the kitchen.

“Can we have a minute?” the man told his daughter. “I don’t need a minute,” the woman said. When she passed by the little girl, she pulled the thin cellophane band from her cigarette pack, and let it drift down. “Here,” she said: “a jump rope for Henrietta.” “I’ll call you,” the man said in her wake. Then the door slammed. “She already has a jump rope,” the girl said. “I know sweetie,” the father said. He got up from the bed and looked out the window. He watched the woman drive off. He opened the window and sat on the edge of the bed facing it, and lit a cigarette. “What are we doing today, Daddy?” “Don’t know, honey. I was thinking maybe the playground; the merry-go-round.” “Yippee,” the girl said, hugging him around the neck. He blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth, away from her. The girl detached and glanced down. “Look,” she said, reaching into a small trashcan by the bed. She pulled out a torn open condom foil. “A sleeping bag for Henrietta.” “No,” the father said, coughing out some smoke, and taking it from her. Then, “No, no, not that either.”

Waterfall in Still Life Robert Scotellaro She tore up the lottery tickets and scattered them out the window, a sad confetti for the parade of things that could have been. Her son sat on the couch with his bags packed. He was going where the weather was cold and unforgiving. Where he and a group of friends would attempt to ice climb a frozen waterfall. She came over and sat across from him in her recliner. “Can you imagine,” he said. “a frozen waterfall all that gushing water frozen solid?” “You be careful,” she said. “Of course. I’m stoked.” “You’re what?” “Excited.” “I’ll miss you,” she said. “I’ll write,” he told her. “Send pictures. I’ll call.” They were surrounded by her bobblehead doll collection. Thirty-plus years’ worth. Sometimes they creeped him out. They were everywhere. Their heads on springs: animals, celebrities, sports figures, cartoon characters, politicians, superheroes … She wished his father were here to see him so strapping and full of adventure like he was when they were young. She lit a cigarette. “Those things …” he began. But she held up a hand like a traffic cop. She had a small stack of lottery tickets left on the end table beside her. She caught his eyes landing on them. “There’s a million bucks in there waiting. It’ll give me something to do later.” “You bet,” he said. “Maybe more.” She took a puff, tapped some ash in her hand. He reached for an ashtray, but she waved him off. “You’ve got guts,” she said. “Like your old man. He was brave too. I could tell you stories …” He smiled, looked at his watch. “I’m gonna call Uber,” he said. He gave her a droopy, apologetic look. One she’s seen a lot from him lately. “I’m fine,” she said. “My shows are on later. And your sister’s calling. You know how she can chew your ear off. You stay warm. Hear? A frozen waterfall,” she said. “Whoever heard of such a thing?” He went over and hugged her. “I’m calling,” he said and took out his phone. “They’ll be here in four minutes,” he said. He put his bags and backpack by the door.

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She got up and they hugged again, her one arm at her side, the cigarette smoke curling up. Five minutes later he was out the door. But she wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t alone. One by one she went around the room tapping the head of each bobble doll, till they all wobbled and bobbled and nodded in unison. She sat in the recliner, their nucleus, and soaked up the stillnessdefying energy. She put out her cigarette in the ashtray and reached for the TV remote. She shook her own head, in contrast, from side-to-side. Thought: water just wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t supposed to behave like that. No way, no how.

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The Story of the Next Hour After Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” John Sheirer Because Richards had been so unforgivably careless and made everyone believe that Brently Mallard had been killed in a train crash, it wasn’t that shocking when Brently’s wife, Louise Mallard, dropped over dead from heart trouble on their front stairway after seeing Brently walk in off the street. To Louise, Brently was a ghost, after all, come back to steal her joy. But did anyone know about Brently’s heart trouble? Did Richards bother to inquire about his supposed friend’s health? Did Josephine, Louise’s sister present during these unfortunate events, know that an early mention of Brently’s heart condition might foreshadow his death just as easily as such mention of Louise’s heart portended her own demise? No. None of them knew of Brently’s secret infirmity, save Louise herself, now dead at the foot of the stairway. She had overhead the doctor, just after ministering to her own heart, mention casually to Brently, thinking himself out of Louise’s earshot, that he should take care not to strain his own flawed organ. Brently hid his condition from Louise out of misguided masculine pride, typical of the times, so Louise had carried that secret burden on her shoulders as heavily as if a comfortable, roomy armchair were saddled across her white, slender back. That same doctor came rushing to the Mallard home after Louise’s collapse, bringing with him several other doctors, to proclaim, cryptically, that she had died of, “the joy that kills,” whatever the hell that means. Who were these plural doctors? How did they arrive so quickly? Why so many? Didn’t they have anything better to do than minister to dead aristocrats? Surely there must have been a plague or two ravaging the impoverished side of town so often sensationalized in canonical literature. Brently rushed, immediately and heroically intentioned, to his wife, knocking that foozler Richards onto his arse in the foyer. The story skips this fact, but Louise fell stone dead into Brently’s arms barely five steps up from the foot of the stairs. Rather than catch her valiantly, Brently lost his balance and tumbled backward onto Richards, who was gawking ineffectually. The three of them crumpled together heaped on the floor, almost comically, Brently sandwiched between his doofus friend and presumed-dead wife.

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More than a century hence, upon reading of Louise’s untimely death, college students in introductory literature classes far and wide would be heard to ask, “So, like, was Richards hot for Louise and trying to bump off Brently to get her for himself?” Alas, no. Richards certainly didn’t possess the basic intelligence needed to pull off a murder by train wreck, of all methods. Perhaps a club or revolver, but certainly not locomoticide. He was just too damned dumb. Josephine, on the other hand, good sister though she was, had once considered startling her sister’s weak heart to death to have Brently for herself, marriage-eligible men being scarce in those days. But then she made closer consideration of Brently, always running off on unexplained trips to the point where no one even knew which train he rode half the time, and she decided that being the spinster sister wasn’t that bad a role after all. As Brently rose from the macabre threesome near his front entryway, Richards checked Louise’s pulse and spoke, “Okay, she’s actually dead— unlike some people who barge in when only a second telegram was sent to assure us of the truth of his death.” Brently, in his instant grief, didn’t catch the implication of Richards’s barb. His storm of grief carried him up the stairs and away to his own room, alone, whereupon he flopped down in his Bark-a-Lounger and stared out the man-cave’s window at the symbolic expanse of sky and birds and spring twits and immediately recognized that he was free now to do what he wanted, unencumbered by wife (or children, we assume, who were never mentioned). “Was Brently on the wrong train because he was off fooling around behind Louise’s back?” those future literature students would inevitably inquire, addicted as they were to entertainment programming that features frequent adultery as if that monstrous joy lurked beneath the surface of every marriage throughout history, rather than just most. “Is that what ‘Chop-in’ is doin’ in the story?” mispronouncing “show-pan’s” French name and grating on the fragile nerves of English teachers semester after semester. “Interesting theory,” the noncommittal instructor, possibly an underpaid graduate teaching assistant, would say. “Is there anything in the text of the story to support a claim of adultery?” Sustained silence and much blank staring at highlighter lines on onion-skinned paper in dogeared anthologies would follow, during which the ticking of an oldfashioned analog clock, barely readable to the digital generation, could be heard marking the seconds reproachfully from the classroom’s back wall. After give-or-take an hour of sitting in his big comfy chair (during some of which he nodded off, grief ironically being an unlikely but

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effective soporific), Brently roused himself unwittingly like a god of second-place finishers had nudged him. A vague thought came to him then, gradually sneaking up from that creepily symbolic sky and into the sparrow-infested eaves. The thought mildly surprised him, having not considered it before. “Did Louise love me?” he whispered to himself. “Did she love me, body and soul?” She had loved him—sometimes, he guessed. Often she had not. He had loved her, hadn’t he? Who the hell knows? he thought. What did it matter! She was dead now, probably still lying at the bottom of the stairs with those know-nothing doctors poking at her, possibly considering leeches and bloodletting, the barbarians. Brently decided to get up before Josephine started hissing through the keyhole to see if he was sickening himself or whatever overly dramatic thing people did in situations like this. Brently couldn’t guess that those future students studying these particular moments in the story of his life between their Tinder hookups and keg parties would ask aloud why Louise didn’t just divorce his sorry ass if she was so indifferent about their marriage. How little those students knew of late-1800’s societal norms that kept Louise from following her doomed little heart. In that future Brently might conjure if he had ever found reason to formulate such thoughts, women wouldn’t have to put up with boring marriages or live limited lives. Were he not rendered so myopic by his time and society, Brently might even have imagined that, someday, perhaps in the early decades of the Twenty-First Century, an experienced, competent woman with a long record of public service might win a presidential election over an unqualified, bloviating, fraudulent, misogynistic, racist, criminal man with a thoroughly ridiculous combover and an odious spray tan. Ah, dreams. Brently had enough troubles in his long ago here-and-now to preclude premonitions of the future. Once back on his feet, he resolved to set aside his grief. Men are ruled by their heads, not hearts, he reminded himself. There were arrangements to be made: multiple doctors to hustle off his property, funeral directors to consult, paperwork to file, wood to bring in for the fire, foodstuffs to be hunted and gathered. Brently was a man, after all. He would assert control over the situation because that’s what his experience told him a man would do just then. A man gets stuff done, he knew, especially in difficult circumstances. From the top of the stairs, though, his resolved gave way with the first glimpse of Louise below, prone and now shrouded beneath a blanket. His chest tightened around his foreshadowing heart, his throat constricted, and a wild abandon of tears welled in his eyes. He gripped the railing for

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support and began his step-by-step descent. A peddler, inexplicably, was in the street crying his wares, wherever and whatever those wares were. Richards and Josephine and way more doctors than anyone could ever possibly need stood alongside poor Louise, waiting for Brentley at the bottom of the stairs, at the absolute rock bottom of his life. Somehow, the blanket lifted from beneath and Louise Mallard sat up, her young, fair, face unlined, her eyes wide, keen, and bright, her bosom doing what bosoms do, her mouth open and sharply inhaling the quivering spring air as if drinking in a very elixir of life. She wasn’t dead at all, and didn’t even know that people had thought she was dead. Her pulses beat fast, and so did Brently’s—too fast. The tightness in his chest became heavy, pounding pain. His own bosom now rose and fell tumultuously, and he clutched at his doomed heart with his own surprisingly slender, white hands. This time, Richards didn’t move, and Josephine simply muttered, “Oh, crap, not again.” But Josephine was too late. Those idiotic doctors were already there, of course, maybe a dozen of them, having just wasted another hour. Only this time, they didn’t have any smarty-pants theories about “the joy that kills” or any other such literary malarkey.

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Line Maureen Sherbondy The line leads to nowhere unless you count the rollercoaster or spinning tea cups as somewhere. If you draw a line in the sand some Northerner will likely lunge past it, fists flailing everywhere and nowhere. A room you once entered at nineteen contained a line of boy-men eager to snort cocaine up aquiline snouts so they could forget. One winter, in below-zero temperature you waited at a New York theatre to take a seat and witness a line of Rockettes kicking up feet wanting to dance beyond the audience and staged air. The line of trees is deceptive for the woman trying to pass through a single layer, instead she finds herself wandering, lost inside an entire forest.

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Smile Alejandra Silvia I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and wonder how my life would be if I had pretty teeth. I pick up my bright green toothbrush with soft bristles and apply a dime-sized amount of toothpaste. As I brush my teeth, I stare at my reflection with tears in my eyes. Slowly my gums start to bleed over my yellow rotten looking teeth and I wondered, if only I had

gone to the dentist. If only I had taken care of my teeth. I would be smiling in pictures, and kissing the man of my dreams. After brushing my teeth, I get in the shower and wash my hair and my body with this new product I got from a little gift shop near my apartment. It makes my skin feel silky smooth, and it smells like lavender. Fifteen minutes later, I slowly get out of the shower and start getting ready for work. I put my uniform on, and do my hair and makeup, and spray my favorite perfume (J’adore by Dior) all over my body. For a few moments, I feel beautiful and confident. I look in the mirror one last time before heading out, and I realize what a pretty face I have, and what a pretty body I have—until I smile. Then I remember what horrible, disgusting teeth I have. No one is ever going to love me with teeth like

this. Who would want to kiss me? Who will see past the yellow, rottenlooking teeth? My temporary confidence disappears, and with a frown on my face, I leave my apartment and head to work. I work as a waitress at a diner, two streets away from my apartment. It’s very convenient, however, not very good pay. I also never get generous tips due to never smiling. As I approach the diner, I notice a new face staring through the front glass of the building. Who is that? Oh my God! He is so handsome. Remember not to smile, I remind myself. Remember not to smile! I walk inside, and the first thing I hear is Steve screaming my name, “Sam!” He has this mean look on his face, like when your father catches you coming home past your curfew. “Where have you been?” asks Steve. “What do you mean where have I been?” I reply. “I just left my apartment and walked to work like I always do,” I explain. “All right, all right. Just get to work,” orders Steve. “You have table seven—new customer. Remember to mention our famous Chocolate Pecan Pie.” “Okay, I’m on it,” I say.

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Steve is my manager, and he’s not a bad guy. Just recently, his wife filed for divorce, and he has been grumpy ever since. Poor Steve. When I first moved to California, my dream was to make enough money so I could finally afford to fix my teeth. Growing up in Milwaukee, I remember watching my parents struggle and try to make ends meet. When I graduated from high school, I moved out of my parent’s house, and into a small two-bedroom apartment across the country here in Chico with my crazy cousin Nancy. She’s been in Chico for years, and she was working as a waitress at the Sunny Side Diner then—still is. She’s here tonight, waiting tables with me as our shifts overlap. She got me an interview with Steve, and to my surprise, he hired me immediately. I guess my teeth didn’t gross him out. Two years, I’ve been working here at Sunny Side Diner. It is not a big place, but what it lacks in size, it makes up in character. White and yellow pint-size booths and a yellow bar with white retro stools match the Sunny atmosphere of the diner. Given that the front of the diner is all glass, a lot of light shines through, brightening up the place. It’s a pretty cool diner to work at. I haven’t earned anywhere close to what I need to fix my teeth, but I can help Nancy with the rent and still put a few dollars away each week. As I start walking towards the back to leave my personal belongings, I notice that the handsome stranger who was previously staring through the front glass of the diner is sitting alone at table seven. Table seven. Instantly I feel nauseous. What do I do? What do I do? The nerves kick in, and I feel like this is my first day on the job. My hands begin to sweat, and I can feel my knees start to shake as I approach his table. I glance at Nancy who is winking at me over at the counter and giving me the thumbs up. Jesus, Nancy. As I lean over the table and hand the handsome stranger the menu, I find myself suddenly startled by his striking appearance. He has the kind of face that stops your brain. “Hello. How are you doing today?” I ask. “Great, and you?” asks the handsome stranger. “Well, I’m doing just fine thank you for asking,” I reply. “My name is Sam, and I’ll be your waitress for today.” “Great,” he replies with a smile on his face. Oh my God. Keep your cool. Relax. I take out my notepad and ask, “What can I get for you today?” He looks at the menu, then places his order: “I think I’ll have a turkey sandwich with provolone cheese, tomato, lettuce, and mayonnaise. Lightly toasted please.”

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As I am writing down his order, I stare at his beautiful hazel eyes and his strong jawline. I watch as he puts his right hand through his wavy dark brown hair, then licks his lips slowly right after placing his order. I

hope he didn’t look at my teeth. Did he notice them? Did I open my mouth too much? I’m pretty sure I haven’t smiled. “What would you like to drink with that?” I nervously ask. He responds with a question, “Do you sell fresh-squeezed lemonade here?” “Yes, we do,” I say. “Perfect,” he replies. “One order of the turkey sandwich with provolone cheese, tomato, lettuce, and mayonnaise on a lightly toasted bread with a fresh lemonade drink coming right up,” I say. Then I remember Steve’s orders. “Also, would you like to try our famous Chocolate Pecan Pie?” I ask. “We’re known for it.” “It sounds delicious, but no thank you,” he replies. As I walk away, Nancy calls me over, whispering, “Psss! Sam. Quick, come here.” She has a sparkle in her eyes and an overly excited expression on her face. Nancy’s a single, fifty-something, who never married or had any children. Before I moved in with her, she had lived alone most of her life. I’ve never seen her with anyone. I don’t know why because she’s beautiful, even for her age. Nancy has baby blue eyes and long dirty blonde hair. And she doesn’t have ugly teeth like me. However, when it comes to love, she hasn’t been lucky. I guess that’s why she is so excited for me right now. As I approach Nancy, I whisper back, “What?” “I think that guy likes you,” Nancy says. “You should try to ask for his number.” “You think so?” I ask. Maybe I should. “Yes, ask him,” Nancy says. “He can see you’re beautiful!” With Nancy’s encouragement, I return to the table. I’m going to do it. What’s the worst that could happen? Just as I’m about to say something, he asks for the check. “Thank you so much, Sam. You were wonderful,” the handsome stranger says. “It was my pleasure,” I say. As he gets up and out of the table, he reaches in his wallet and hands me his business card. “Call me,” he says, smiling. His teeth, I notice, are perfect. Then he turns to leave. I smile so big and so hard that my cheeks start to hurt right away. He nods and walks out into the evening air. I watch him until he turns the

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corner and is gone from my sight. I smile the whole time, not caring, for once, who sees my teeth. And then I look down at his card and see his name in big letters: Tom Henderson. And then I see his profession in smaller print on the next line, and my big smile goes away. Tomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a cosmetic dentist.

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Dangerous Street Richard Smith Guns and death on dangerous city streets, today—tonight—tomorrow, my heart pounds in heavy drumming beats, there’s danger on every dark porch with drive-by shootings, when flames leap from gun barrels like fire spewing from a torch. People dying, and the screaming, people screaming, knowing death might be on their porch next. “God help those” who live in these dangerous neighborhoods, for death may come at any hour, any day or night.

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Old Soldiers Richard Smith These old soldiers wander homeless on the streets of todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new society, lost from a familiar time. Scarred of heart, lost in mind searching for recognition left behind, in their days of the old times and old wars in the past, as they settle for the night on old benches in city parks for a cold nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nap and nightmare dreams. They have been cast aside like useless material left out to decay, in a care-less-about-others kind of world, these old veterans who fought the wars to save our country from destruction, now so carelessly discarded.

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An Inheritance Matthew J. Spireng Tools my father left me that I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know: their function, their use. Pieces of metal intended to serve a purpose, and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know the purpose, so to call them tools when they serve no purpose in my hands, seems wrong. If I knew how to use them, things would be constructed or dismantled, fixed or altered with the tools I inherited, though I did not inherit the knowledge needed to use them.

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How We Learn Serious Geo. Staley 3 years after being diagnosed with ALS and having accepted its inevitability of slow death the 36 year old woman still single, no kids being cared for by her dad barely able to hold the pencil in her mouth to type taps out

Imagine the day you can no longer use toilet paper.

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My Grandmother’s Kitchen Lisa Sterlein In my mind’s eye, I travel back to my grandmother’s kitchen. Sky blue tiles adorn the walls, with grout scrubbed bright white weekly. Each glossy square glimmering underneath the kitchen light. The icebox stands exhausted, weighted with papers, of scribbles in every color of the crayon box with each grandchild’s proclamation of love for my Grandmother. The handle weary from the many hands that opened its mighty door to unearth the treasures inside. My grandmother, with her rosy cheeks and immaculate gray hair, stands cheerfully, handwashing dishes at the white porcelain sink, its belly brimming with iridescent bubbles that float through the air. From a yellow bottle fittingly named Joy, I can hear her laughter. Her singing her song, I love you, a bushel and a peck. The oven whines with great responsibility, bearing the load to provide our family feast on this crisp Autumn Sunday. I sit at the kitchen table mindfully tracing the flowers imprinted on the blue and white linen table cloth. I glance around the room that will soon be filled with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Telling stories about their days, reminiscing about old times, creating another memory of an ordinary Sunday at my grandmother’s house.

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I glance around the table, taking a mental photograph, like a photographer snapping pictures of the beloved faces of my family. Some of the faces have now left this world, but in my mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eye, they are all there, just as I remember. If this room could talk, it would replay the sounds of laughter, tears, music, and love. If it was a movie, it would show memories and moments of life happening, all safely held within its walls.

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Look of Triumph Ellie Stevens It was a freak accident. It was a cold, grey afternoon with a dull sky and threatening rain. I was sitting on the frozen ground, not by choice. I knew my leg was broken without even trying to move it. I slowly looked up at the sky as a cool drop of rain fell onto my cheek. I glanced down. In my lap, I could see my own blood pooling up in my jacket. The left side of my face was spewing blood, and I coughed up more as the red liquid also spilled from my nose down into my lap. My face was swollen. My nose was broken. I could feel the destroyed tissue of my left cheek, and knew there was a new hole leading into my mouth. I felt like I had been hit by a bus, yet knew that twelve hundred pounds of muscle had just kicked me in the head. Adrenaline rushed through my entire body. Time stood still. My focus searched for the moving target trotting away from me. My green eyes hazily wandered the horizon to find sight of the horse that had forever changed my life. I remembered. I was leading the young bay-horse back to the barn after an incredible ride when he managed to jolt away from me. I tried to regain control but was too late. Within a flash, head down and hind legs flexed, Riley turned away from me and bucked with a powerful, backward kick. With less than seconds of reaction time, all I could do was turn my head as his hoof collided with my jaw. The borium of the metal horseshoe plate caught and pulled my fair skin, as his winter snowshoe ripped the left side of my face open. The force of impact sent me through the air. Trying to catch myself, I stumbled into a divot of the icy earth. My leg snapped, and I collapsed. My head crashed into frozen, solid ground. My nose shattered. My helmet split in two. My tongue hesitantly traced each tooth in my mouth, gliding over the top set, and then the bottom. Thank God

they’re all there. It was February 2, 2014, Super Bowl Sunday. I was a senior in high school and fresh off a world title with my junior exhibitor horse. Nonetheless, today was the day I would ride my new four-year-old gelding. He was full of great potential but lacked training. This was the horse that would change my life. I thought he was my ticket to becoming a well-known young trainer in the show-horse industry. He would make me “somebody.” However, this gelding, CBMF Momentarily or “Riley” for short, went on to change my life in a

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different way. He was curvy and full, with great, brown, expressive, glistening eyes. His honest face and deep traditional Morgan forehead radiated the look of triumph. He taught me something that no human ever could, forcing me to find strength in myself. This horse taught me to never give up—that life can get tough and life can hurt, but challenging times can make me stronger. I left the barn in an ambulance while Riley made it safely to his stall without a scrape. The surgeon had his finger, two knuckles deep, through the quarter-sized hole that had been ripped from my cheek where he could then view his blood covered finger tip from the inside of my mouth. I had to repetitively verify in my mind that, no one is to

blame for this accident … he is a horse … he has his own thoughts … his actions were not malicious, but only typical for a young horse. With twelve sutures and face glue, this day left me with a scar on my cheek. I suffered nerve damage, and I will never be able to control the left side of my lower lip. Nor will I regain sensation in my chin and bottom lip. Riley’s powerful kick severed nerves that will never regrow. I was left unable to ride until my fibula properly healed nine weeks later and until my major concussion subsided. I was fortunate my jaw didn’t break … I was blessed to be alive. If Riley’s hoof had hit just two inches higher, I wouldn’t be able to share this story. I had an angel on my shoulder that frigid February afternoon. My world was falling apart for what seemed like weeks on end. I had to make a choice to show Riley in the world championship or to call it quits. With nine weeks cut from our training season, this decision was not an easy one. I chose to rise above the negativity and pain and doubt and give this horse the chance he deserved. When I was able to ride again, we worked hard, harder than any other team could ever conceive. This horse taught me that success is no accident—that hard work, perseverance, sacrifice, and, most of all, love are what drives success. Although I hate to admit it, I was nervous the first time I got back on Riley after the accident. Even though the incident took place on the ground while I was leading him, he remained a powerful horse with a great deal of presence. I was uneasy on his back, second guessing myself, and every little thing I asked him to do while I was in the saddle made me lose a little of my breath. I realized that the only way to regain any assurance around this four-legged animal was to work with him one-on-one and slowly find my confidence. I had to start from the ground up, as Riley stood with confidence and elegance throughout this healing process between horse and

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rider. I was the one in need of taking a new approach while working with this young, strong, intimidating colt. I began speaking softly, in a tone of ease. Soon, a silent agreement had been acquired, and Riley made me strong. He made my passion for the show-horse grow more than I ever thought it could, and the two of us went on to compete at the Morgan Grand National Horse Show. Together, we took second in the nation, and third in the world, and I knew that if I could have those lost nine weeks back, we would have carried roses in the winnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s circle. To tell the truth, I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t trade that freak accident for anything as it made me â&#x20AC;Ś me.

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Is Love Robert Joe Stout an impulse darting through the nerves at unsuspecting moments? Like sitting in the grandstand at a baseball game and seeing an attractive young woman lightly brush a kiss against her partner’s ear? Catching the abandon of a Cuban dancer as she whirls past glistening horns, pounding drums? The wink in the eye of a little girl pumping street-corner songs on her accordion as you hand her ten pesos instead of just one or two? That’s not love you say? Not permanent? What is? The knot that binds that taut-faced couple arguing in the pickup across the street? Not rooted deeply as she slams the door and strides away ignoring squealing tires as his swerving drives a passing car into a tree? Or is the word—love—a substitute to describe something we know we feel but cannot define, like watching a toddler play hide-and-seek with his brother? Or seeing the full moon rise?

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Nowhere, Man Steve Straight After we turned off Route 7, I think it was, and stopped meandering along the Housatonic, and took that left by the old mill, crossed those railroad tracks and found ourselves in a deep valley on a narrow road with no turnoffs, when Siri stopped talking to us and our phone announced “No Signal,” we knew we were in the boonies for sure, that is to say out in the middle of nowhere, the sticks, past Podunk and East Overshoe and even East Jebrew, and judging by the rusting truck out back of that house down to its last rows of shingles, its mailbox stove in, we were in Hicksville, Rubeville, some jerkwater town without a stop light, past East Jesus and on the way to Timbuktu, nearly to Upper Buttcrack, the back side of beyond, if you know what I mean, not that we were lost, but let’s just say we were out past the spot where Christ parked his bicycle.

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The Good Ship Steve Steve Straight First I learn that deep within the forest of hair follicles on my eyelidâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and yours, most likely, if you are old enoughâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; lives a community of tiny mites, Demodex folliculorum, apparently farming the coarse terrain of my skin and taking nightly strolls across my face to visit with friends, perhaps in my nose. Then I read that these wee creatures, small as they are, have their own bacteria, no doubt doting on them in some fashion, and my sense of scale starts to get a little tipsy. Soon I am drunk on the idea that several hundred species of microbes, to the tune of a hundred trillion bacteria form a thriving commonwealth on my skin, in my mouth, and of course in the dominion of my gut. I could borrow a microscope to confirm all this, but I think this time I will take the scientists at their word. Mostly freeloaders, commensals, or favor traders, some with a new generation every twenty minutes, much of the time these guys keep the pathogens out, for which I am grateful. I must apologize for the occasional antibiotic typhoon. At ten resident microbes for every single cell of my own, I gradually become uncertain who or what I am, a commander, with duties, merely a protectorate with a striped flag, or am I just a slow freighter ferrying them everywhere, just as Hannibal did over the Alps, and Cook around the globe, not to mention Armstrong on the moon, himself a little mite wriggling on a skin of dust.

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Oh, Possum Steve Straight We know them as gray lumps in the road, with their long rat tails and triangular snouts, their fate the result of their defense against oncoming cars, which is to turn and hiss. But today I find one at the end of its two-year journey on earth, which began as a joey no bigger than a raspberry, now nearly three feet long, nestled and still amid our lemon thyme, under the deep blue and green canopy of the wild indigo. How often a mysterious creature in nature sends me to a book or a computer, as this one does. The only remaining mammal that waddled past dinosaurs, this cousin of koala and kangaroo, night-shift janitor with few peers, which grooms itself like a cat, consuming black-legged ticks at five thousand a season. Nearly immune to rabies, not to mention the venom of rattlesnakes and cottonmouths, the possum thrives in our margins with most of its defenses just bluff until pushed to its involuntary coma, leaking foul excretions to ward off harm, coming to sometimes hours later with the wink of an ear. This one is done playing, done working, having avoided the bobcats, the foxes and owls, even the three-legged coyote I saw loping through the back yard just yesterday. No more carrion, no more spilled seeds, no more ripe persimmons in autumn. Just a gentle repose, an ideal death, a death to be jealous of.

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Who I Have Become Hailey Therrien I was guilt. The kind of guilt that would leave you sick to your stomach. I was sadness. The kind that left you feeling empty and numb and isolated from everything and everyone. I was fragile. Any touch or word would break me. I was easy. I gave too much of myself without getting anything in return. I was broken. Those I gave too much to, left me with a gaping hole hard to patch back up. But I was also fight. The kind of fight that didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to feel broken anymore. The fight that wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let herself be walked all over. The fight that wanted to be free from the isolation. So, who have I become? After the holes began to repair themselves, who am I? I am still fight. The fight to keep fixing myself each day. Allowing myself to be vulnerable and capable enough to feel sadness without letting it consume me. I am also strength. The strength to wake up in the morning when sleeping feels like the only good option. I am powerful. I use my voice and will not sit back and watch myself be taken advantage of again. I am secure in the person I have become. I work as a team. Mind, body, and soul, we are one.

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Beyond Our Screens David Thornbrugh Streams of clear water frothed by rocks, fire in a ring of stones, towers of clouds above mountains, tree tops tousled by wind, sunlight coaxing mist from sodden earth, glitter of moonlight on water, starlight, bird song, bee buzzâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; though dimmed in din, nature still calls, and the heart still hungers.

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Why We Crossed the Rubicon David Thornbrugh We are not here in our father’s footsteps, building bridges with Hershey bars and buying love with cigarettes. We are not here to thank Sergio Leone for stripping Rowdy Yates of his name. We are not here to apologize for the Flying Nun, Chef Boy Ar Dee, frozen pizza, or Godfather III. We are not here to flashbomb George Clooney or excavate Sophia Loren’s cleavage. We are just more tourists in search of refrigerator magnets, the sources of Shakespeare’s inspiration, and gelato that lives up to the reputation of Italian women. We are here to put the bimbo back in the bassinet, acknowledge that throwing babes out with the bath water takes the brain with the beauty. We are here to anneal the sneeze in Leonardo’s nostrils and let Audrey Hepburn escape the palace hugging Gregory Peck on a Vespa. We are here to purge the poison from Lucretia Borgia’s reputation and recognize the administrative skills of her uncle the pope. We are here to admire the Italian army’s ineptitude in Egypt and praise the wolf’s willingness to surrender to sharper teeth. We are here to climb the Dolomites stepping the cleft a sword carved in the Duke of Urbino’s nose, a condottieri who admired books as much as siege weapons. We are here to remember that food is more than mere nourishment and no meal that is fast can do more than stave off starvation.

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Moondot Francine Witte Late night moon, tucked away in the sky, above the buildings and struggling out of the clouds. Small white eye peering down at us, tiny dustmites with our own small thoughts making us believe we are planets. We are so much like that moon tonight. An astronaut standing on the bootstriped surface can wave his arm into the neverending night, but back on earth, he can hide that same moon behind his own held-up thumb. Little more than a morsel, this moon, melting in the nightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dark belly. Small moon, small us but really, the universe.

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If this is Just a Dream Diane Woodcock What better place to reverence creation than along two rivers and that sensation, the smoke that thunders,* Victoria Falls. Late February, early spring, the rains and grey-crowned cranes— everything fertile and wild. Oxpeckers, those inspectors of the backs of cape buffalo, waterbucks and impala. Shadows of baobabs and pinkblossomed teaks on the land. Ambiance of a soft rain shower— leaf, thorn and flower washed fresh. Scent of wild basil to cancel out the stench of the passing male elephant in musth. The karoo thrush spreading its rich full-hearted song like a velveteen shawl over the land. Soulful, not a hint of morbidity or ferocity. I awake from a brief sleep, sneak a peek at vervet monkeys in the canopies of pod-mahoganies. Never mind my vision’s dimmed by cataracts these days. I am inclined to see and hear with perfect acuity all the Zambezi and Chobe offer. If this is just

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a dream, and all is nothing more than in the mind, then let me stay for all time where the spray of the smoke that thunders drifts, and little swifts fly through it like tossed up golden gifts. *Mosi oa Tunya

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Dust on the Flood Plain Diane Woodcock Sundowners, gin and tonics, we mingle among a platoon of baboons and a herd of impalas, a zeal of zebras further afield, myriad birds returning to roost, one pearl-spotted owlet watching us from his perch. Sunset streaming through acacias and cassias, we sip and all the while slip further under the spell of young baboons at play, the red bums of fertile females on display. The light dimming, everything shimmering in a golden hue. Nothing heavy or dark. The heart beating in time with the pristine flood plain, soaring high as the grey-crowned cranes, the scene as priceless as a palace, each pinnacle of a snag flagged with a birdâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;lizard buzzard, martial eagle, dark chanting goshawk. The tangle of fallen branches a play gym for the young baboons who dangle and mingle as I tremble with delight at the sight of them.

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The sky full of songâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a throng of red-billed queleas passing over, the dusk thrust through and through with an inner and outer golden hue to carry me through the long dark night.

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In the Lagoon Paula Yup Across from mist I wade into the glassy water which will not remain glassy the minister recently told my husband for it gets windy later and then the lagoon will be full of choppy waves maybe the water will soothe my arms and hands and my husband snorkels eight children dive off the wreck a lone child looks on from the shore standing beside a tan dog for he is scared of the water and my body relaxes releasing worries in a life made difficult by circumstance happenstance my own limitations for Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m like that timid child on shore looking on while other children dive off the wreck into the lagoon hoping even so for some happiness and comfort for my many fears.

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The Scientist Paula Yup In Maine a wizened elderly man would say the most outrageous things to shock me perhaps I never knew my body under the influence of side-effects to medication which left me less than competent in my dealings with others and although he didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t offend me in quite the same way as the scientist who stood way to close to me during parties so I kept backing up in a comical dance of two sometimes the things he said had me out-of-body or shaking with chattering teeth or sad and blue with tears that it surprised me how this little old man with only words could do this to me.

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Abe James K. Zimmerman he wore long sleeves even in the dead of summer to cover the string of numbers that identified him as one of the nameless who went through something that some now try to claim never took place

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My Life in Silage James K. Zimmerman sometimes I think Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d like to live in a missile silo one that had been safe shelter for an Atlas-F with the power of a hundred Hiroshimas walls of cement and steel three or four feet thick doors of two thousand pounds or more much more naturally air-conditioned and quiet ten stories down in the ground plenty of room for all my books toys and dreams and fantasies of a world in ruin above me I could grow my own hydroponically if I could find the water never have to shave or wear a tux or winter coat or anything at all in fact

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I could keep my thoughts in a file drawer right next to my toenail clippings and no one would ever have to know I could light my way with fireflies if I felt like it I could sniff and snore and scratch in the middle of the afternoon if I knew when that was and I could keep my perfect world alive forever as long as I kept the door tightly shut

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About the Authors Freshwater Literary Journal, 2019 Julia Alexander (Freshwater Editorial Board Member, 2016, 2018) still doesn’t know what she’s doing. Her first book of poetry, The Dirt I Rise From, was published in 2015. She is a former member of the Freshwater Editorial Board. You can find out more at juliaalexanderpoetry.com. Elisabeth Andrusik (Freshwater Editorial Board Member, 2019) is currently a student at Asnuntuck Community College where she enjoys exploring a variety of subjects while working towards her Liberal Arts degree. In her free time, she likes listening to music, reading, and discovering new coffee shops. Wayne Barr has been teaching literature for nineteen years. He lives in Western Massachusetts with his wife, children, cats, dog, tortoise, ferret, guinea pig, and betta fish. When he is not reading or writing, he makes very good grilled cheese sandwiches. Monica L. Bellon-Harn is a native of Lake Charles, Louisiana, and lives near the Texas and Louisiana border. She studied writing through The Writer’s Studio. She is a professor of Speech and Hearing Sciences. Gaylord Brewer is a professor at Middle Tennessee State University, where he founded and for more than twenty years edited the journal Poems & Plays. His most recent books are the cookbook-memoir, The Poet’s Guide to Food, Drink, & Desire (Stephen F. Austin, 2015), and a tenth collection of poetry, The Feral Condition (Negative Capability, 2018). Peter Neil Carroll has published five collections of poetry, including An Elegy for Lovers (Main Street Rag, 2017) and The Truth Lies on Earth: A Year by Dark, by Bright (Turning Point, 2017). Previous titles include Fracking Dakota: Poems for a Wounded Land; Riverborne: A Mississippi Requiem; and A Child Turns Back to Wave: Poetry of Lost Places, which won the Prize Americana. He is currently Poetry Moderator of Portside.org and lives in northern California. Aidan Cobb is a junior at Southern Connecticut State University. He is a creative writing major with aspirations to become a teacher in the future.

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He spent two years attending St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, before transferring to Southern in the fall of 2017. Last fall, he took a poetry class taught by Vivian Shipley, who helped him find his voice as a poet and encouraged him to submit to the 2019 Freshwater contest. Ginny Lowe Connors (2019 Freshwater Student Writing Contest Judge) was the 2003 New England Association of Teachers of English Poet of the Year. Her chapbook, Under the Porch (Hill-Stead Museum, 2010), won the Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. She has published several poetry collections, including Barbarians in the Kitchen (Antrim House Books, 2005), The Unparalleled Beauty of a Crooked Line (Antrim House Books, 2012), and Toward the Hanging Tree: Poems of Salem Village (Antrim House Books, 2016). She’s also edited several poetry anthologies. Recent anthologies include Forgotten Women: A Tribute in Poetry and Laureates of Connecticut: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, and numerous poetry awards have come her way, including Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Competition Prize. A board member of the Connecticut Poetry Society, she also runs a small poetry press, Grayson Books. Currently, she is the editor of Connecticut River Review. Connors has served as the Poet Laureate of the town of West Hartford, Connecticut and is a founding member of the CCPL (Connecticut Coalition of Poets Laureate). In addition, she is on the executive board of The Connecticut Poetry Society. She writes a monthly column for the Hartford Courant called Connecticut Poets Corner, and reviews poetry books for the New York Journal of Books. She earned an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She retired recently after many years as an English teacher in West Hartford, Connecticut. Her husband Marty is also a retired teacher. They have four grown children and several young grandchildren. Joe Cottonwood is a carpenter by day, poet by night. Self-taught in each. His most recent book is Foggy Dog: Poems of the Pacific Coast. Lori Cramer’s short prose has appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, Riggwelter, and Whale Road Review, among others. Her story “Scars” (Fictive Dream, February 2018) was nominated for Best Microfiction 2019. Links to her work can be found at https://loricramerfiction.wordpress.com. Twitter: @LCramer29. J.B. Davin is a writer from New England who enjoys travelling, gardening, and yoga.

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Daemian deBidart is a twenty-one-year-old student at Asnuntuck Community College. From a young age, he has had a deep interest in creative writing, particularly fiction and memoir. Focusing on his writing as a student has allowed him to refine his writing ability in both academic and personal projects. Daemian is able to explore the more imaginative side of writing as the vice president and lead dungeon master of the Asnuntuck’s Dungeons and Dragons Club. Ivan de Monbrison is a French poet, writer, and artist born in 1969 in Paris. His poems or short stories have appeared in several literary magazines in France, Italy, Belgium, The U.K., Canada, India, Australia, Switzerland, and the U.S. Five poetry chapbooks of his works have been published: L’ombre déchirée, Journal, La corde à nu, Ossuaire, and SurFaces. His novels include Les Maldormants, L’Heure Impure, Orgasmes et Fantaisies, Nanaqui ou les Tribulations d’un poète, A Tale of the Insane: Inside The Fire Avid, and The Overflowing Body. Kasey Dennehy (Freshwater Editorial Board Member, 2019) is a General Studies student at Asnuntuck Community College who will be transferring to Western New England University to pursue a Bachelor’s in Marketing, Communications, and Advertising. In her free time, she loves reading, doing digital designs/art, and playing video games. Her dream is to one day work for a gaming company as a community manager and put her passion to use. Jack Duga is an Asnuntuck student who works at the North American headquarters for LEGO in Enfield, Connecticut. This is his first short story, and he hopes to write more. Michael Estabrook has been publishing his poetry in small presses since the 1980s. Hopefully, with each passing decade, the poems have become more clear and concise, succinct and precise, more appealing and “universal.” He has published over twenty collections, a recent one being, Bouncy House, edited by Larry Fagin (Green Zone Editions, 2014). Jean Esteve lives on the Oregon Coast with her two spaniels. They all like to walk and swim, and one of them obviously writes. Jeannie Evans-Boniecki, Ph.D., has served on the English faculty at Naugatuck Valley Community College since 1995 and is currently acting as faculty editor to NVCC’s literary journal, Fresh Ink. She enjoys writing

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poetry and short stories, taking long shady walks with her Newfoundland and Labrador Retriever, and learning about Magic Cards and music from her 13-year-old son, Christopher. Elizabeth Forsythe is a junior accounting student at Eastern Connecticut State University with a strange knack for writing. Throughout her high school years, she fell in love with her English classes, but she decided to follow her passion for numbers in college. Every now and then, she caught glimpses of her real true love through research papers and analytical essays, but nothing quite compared to the intimacy of diving deep into the inner workings of a fictitious story. Then, in fall of 2018, Elizabeth went against her parents’ wishes and joined a creative writing class to rekindle the flame with her old love. The relationship started slowly, easing into poetry exercises, and then, all at once, she fell harder than she ever imagined. She spent late nights behind a keyboard, sneaking in poem stanzas between classes, and jotting down new story ideas the second she woke up. Today, Elizabeth and writing are inseparable. Though she’s continuing to pursue a degree in accounting, she promises to always make time for her love, knowing that’s who she’s meant to be with in the end. Taylor Gaede is a freelance writer in South Florida who has been previously published in Living Waters Review. Timothy Gager is the author of fourteen books of short fiction and poetry. Every Day There Is Something About Elephants, a book of 108 flash fictions, was released by Big Table Publishing in 2018. He’s hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, since 2001 and was the co-founder of The Somerville News Writers Festival. He has had over 500 works of fiction and poetry published, thirteen of which have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work has been read on National Public Radio. Timothy is the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review, the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts, and is employed as a social worker. Simon R. Gardner is a writer based in Liverpool in the United Kingdom. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and others.

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John Grey is an Australian poet and United States resident who has been recently published in the Homestead Review, Poetry East, and Columbia Review, with work upcoming in Harpur Palate, the Hawaii Review, and Visions International. Trisha Hall-Muller is a lifelong resident of Connecticut where she resides with her two children. She attended Asnuntuck Community College and Central Connecticut State University where she received her B.S. in Elementary Education with a concentration in English. In her spare time, she enjoys journaling, vacationing in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, spending time with her family, and advocating for Autism Awareness. Her selections in this issue appear in her first (and hopefully not last) book, All the Feelings All at Once, a parenting memoir written entirely in Facebook posts, just published in spring 2019. Paul Holler’s stories, poems, articles and interviews with noted authors have appeared or are forthcoming in The MacGuffin, Flash: The

International Short-Short Story Magazine, Eclectica, Copperfield Review, Southern Cross Review, Critique Magazine, Bookslut, Greek Fire, Conversations with Jay Parini, and other journals and anthologies. Ruth Holzer’s poetry has appeared previously in Freshwater as well as in a variety of journals and anthologies. She has published three chapbooks and received nominations for the Pushcart Prize. Katharyn Howd Machan, author of thirty-eight collections of poetry (most recently, in 2018, What the Piper Promised from Alexandria Quarterly Press [national chapbook competition winner], her Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press, and Secret Music: Voices from Redwing, 1888 from Cayuga Lake Books), has lived in Ithaca, New York, since 1975 and, now as a full professor, has taught Writing at Ithaca College since 1977, currently with an emphasis on fairy tales. After many years of coordinating the Ithaca Community Poets and directing the national Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops, Inc., she was selected to be Tompkins County’s first poet laureate. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and textbooks, and she has edited three thematic anthologies, most recently a tribute collection celebrating the inspiration of Adrienne Rich. Molly Krew is a water bottle designer from Waterloo, Iowa.

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John P. (Jack) Kristofco has published poetry and short stories in about two hundred publications, including Folio, Rattle, Cimarron Review, Blueline, Slant, Fourth River, Chiron Review, Snowy Egret, Poem, and Caveat Lector. He has published three poetry chapbooks, most recently, The Timekeeperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Garden (The Orchard Street Press) with a fourth, Portraits From the Pilgrimage, due out this fall. Jack has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times. A retired professor of English and college dean at The University of Akron, Jack lives in Highland Heights, Ohio, with his wife Kathy. You can find him at jpkrist@uakron.edu. Brandon Kroll has a great passion for writing. He grew up most of his life in Connecticut with his adopted family. Alex MacConochie is a native of Norfolk, Virginia, who currently lives and writes in Somerville, Massachusetts. His poems appear in The Summerset Review, Louisiana Literature, Constellations, Roanoke Review, and elsewhere. Eric Machan Howd is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College. His work has been published in (selected) Nimrod, River City, The Healing Muse, Yankee Magazine, and Cooweescoowee. Eric was recently invited to read his poetry and lecture on poetics in Slovenia for an American-Slovenian conference. He lives in Ithaca, NY, and writes and loves with his glorious spouse, poet Katharyn Howd Machan (also featured in this issue of Freshwater), and their two cats, Footnote and Byron. Jessica Maier is a sophomore at Southern Connecticut State University, studying Collaborative Education: Special Education and Elementary Education and IDS: English and Biology. She is a member of the Honors College at Southern as well as a player on the field hockey team. Kevin J. McDanielâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the

Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Artemis Journal, Bloodroot, Cloudbank, Free State Review, Hawk & Whippoorwill, IO Lit, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Pikeville Review, Pudding Magazine, Sand Hills, The Heartland Review, The Ocean State Review, and others. He is the author of two chapbooks: Family Talks (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and At the Foot of a Mountain (Old Seventy Creek Press, 2019), in addition to a book of poetry, Rubbernecking (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2019). He teaches English composition at Bluefield College.

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Bray McDonald is an information specialist in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He has been published in many journals recently, including Blue Collar

Review, The Cape Rock, Rockhurst Review, Third Wednesday, Storyteller Magazine, Chiron Review, and Between These Shores Anthology in the UK. He also has poetry forthcoming in Cholla Needles, I-70 Review, Plainsongs, and Avalon Literary Review. Graham McLennan is a graduate of The University of MassachusettsAmherst. He has previously been published in Adelaide Literary Magazine and Little Rose Magazine. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts. Elise O’Reilly is the mother of two boys, ages nine and three. She returned to school to finish what she started many years ago. Her poem in this issue reflects those early confusing years when she felt she just couldn’t get it right. During the years since then, she has been raising two incredible kids. She loves being a mom, but it has always been in the back of her mind that she needed to complete her education. When she found out about Asnuntuck Community College’s free childcare, she signed up as soon as her youngest was old enough to attend. She is currently in her final semester at Asnuntuck before graduating this May. Diana Pinckney is the winner of the Ekphrasis Prize, Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Prize, and Prime Number Magazine’s 2018 Poetry Prize. Her work has been published in RHINO, Cave Wall, Green

Mountains Review, Tar River Poetry, The Pedestal Magazine, Still Point Arts Quarterly, Calyx, San Pedro River Review and other journals and anthologies. Pinckney has authored five books of poetry. Ken Poyner’s collections of short fiction, Constant Animals and Avenging Cartography, and his latest collections of speculative poetry, Victims of a Failed Civics and The Book of Robot, can be obtained from Barking Moose Press, www.barkingmoosepress.com. He serves as bewildering eye-candy at his wife’s power lifting affairs, where she continues to set world raw powerlifting records. His poetry lately has been sunning in Analog, Asimov’s, and Poet Lore; and his fiction has yowled in Spank the Carp, Red Truck, and Café Irreal. Find him at www.kpoyner.com. Ron Riekki’s books include And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017 (Michigan State University Press), Here: Women Writing on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (Michigan State University Press,

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2016 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Great Lakes Best Regional Fiction), The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (Wayne State University Press, 2014 Michigan Notable Book awarded by the Library of Michigan), and U.P.: A Novel (Ghost Road Press). Marzelle Robertson is a former English teacher and counselor living with her husband in East Texas. Her poems have appeared in various journals including Arts and Letters, Borderlands, Cyphers, Oyster River Pages and the inaugural issue of Fresh Water. A poem of hers was nominated for Best of the Net by Blue Heron Review, and her chapbook titled Listen has just been published by Dancing Girl Press. Russell Rowland is a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee who does volunteer trail maintenance in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. Two chapbooks are available from Finishing Line Press, and a full-length collection, “Were All Home Now,” from Beech River Books. Robert Scotellaro has been published widely in national and international books, journals, and anthologies. He is the author of seven literary chapbooks and several books for children. His story “Fun House” is included in the anthology Flash Fiction International, published by W.W. Norton. His collections of flash fiction include Measuring the Distance (2012), What We Know So Far (2015), and Bad Motel (2016). Raised in Manhattan, he currently lives with his wife in San Francisco. John Sheirer lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wonderful wife Betsy and happy dog Libby. He has taught writing and communications for twenty-six years at Asnuntuck Community College, where he also serves as editor and faculty advisor for Freshwater Literary Journal. He writes a monthly column on current events for his hometown newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and his books include memoir, fiction, poetry, essays, political satire, and photography. Find him at JohnSheirer.com. Maureen Sherbondy lives in Durham, North Carolina. Her forthcoming book is Dancing with Dali. Alejandra Silvia majors in Human Services at Asnuntuck Community College. She is a firm believer that kindness and equality are stronger than any differences in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender

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identity, ability, social status, or physical appearance. This is her first published story. Richard Smith has been writing poetry since 1985 and did his first four open-mic readings in Las Vegas in 1987. He has read in many bookstores, coffee shops, libraries, and on Pittsfield Community TV for the last thirteen years, and has been involved with Freshwater since its beginning in 2000. Matthew J. Spireng’s book What Focus Is was published in 2011 by WordTech Communications. His book Out of Body won the 2004 Bluestem Poetry Award and was published in 2006 by Bluestem Press at Emporia State University. His chapbooks include Clear Cut; Young Farmer; Encounters; Inspiration Point, winner of the 2000 Bright Hill Press Poetry Chapbook Competition; and Just This. Since 1990, his poems have appeared in publications across the United States, including North American Review, Tar River Poetry, Rattle, Louisiana Literature, English Journal, Southern Poetry Review, and Poet Lore. He is an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Geo. Staley is retired from twenty-five years of teaching writing and literature at Portland Community College. He previously taught in New England, Appalachia, and on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. His poetry has appeared in Chest, Four Quarters, Loonfeather, RE:AL Artes Liberales, New Mexico Humanities Review, Fireweed, Oregon East, Evening Street Review, Cafe Review, and many others. Lisa Sterlein is a first-year student at Asnuntuck Community College. Her poem in this issue, “My Grandmother’s Kitchen,” brings back the memories of just how wonderful her grandmother was and all of the joy she brought into many children’s lives. Ellie Stevens grew up on an island off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She began riding horses when she was eleven years old. Soon after, she discovered her passion of bringing children and horses together. At age eighteen, she apprenticed under well-known Saddlebred trainer, Smith Lilly. She spent time breaking colts and learning what it takes to make a successful show horse. Today, she is an instructor who trains beginner children through professional adult competitors. Her favorite part of her job is seeing the kids’ faces light up on the back of a horse. Ellie is currently studying Early Childhood Education at Asnuntuck

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Community College. If she’s not on a horse or teaching a lesson, chances are she’s cleaning her house. She’s a perfectionist with terrible OCD, two dogs, and a cat. Robert Joe Stout has published two books and six chapbooks of poetry, worked as a journalist, served on human rights delegations, and participated as an actor and director in regional theater. Newest books: Monkey Screams (FutureCycle Press), Where Gringos Don’t Belong (Anaphora Literary Press), and Hidden Dangers (Sunbury Press). Reissued: Miss Sally (Kindle). Website: https://robertjoestout.weebly.com. Steve Straight’s books include The Almanac (Curbstone/ Northwestern University Press, 2012) and The Water Carrier (Curbstone, 2002). He is professor of English and director of the poetry program at Manchester Community College, in Connecticut. Hailey Therrien (Freshwater Editorial Board Member, 2019) is a Liberal Arts major at Asnuntuck Community College. She plans to enroll in a four-year college in the Boston area to pursue a degree in English and digital arts. Her long-term career goal is to work in the publishing industry. The poem in this issue is her first published poem. David Thornbrugh is a West Coast poet, long resident in Seattle, Washington, where he satisfies his poetic needs mostly by reading at local open mics. His most recent publications have been in Miller’s Pond, Clockwise Cat, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Convergence. Francine Witte is the author of four poetry chapbooks and two flash fiction chapbooks. Her full-length poetry collection, Café Crazy, has recently been published by Kelsay Books. She is reviewer, blogger, photographer, and former English teacher who lives in New York City. Diana Woodcock is the author of six chapbooks and three poetry collections, most recently Tread Softly (FutureCycle Press, 2018). Recipient of the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women, her work appears in Best New Poets 2008 and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Her grand prizewinning poem, “Music as Scripture,” was performed live onstage in Lincoln Park, San Francisco, at Artists Embassy International’s 21st Dancing Poetry Festival. Currently teaching in Qatar at Virginia Commonwealth University’s branch campus, she worked for nearly eight

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years in Tibet, Macau, and on the Thai/ Cambodian border. Widely published in literary journals and anthologies, she is a doctoral candidate (Creative Writing) at Lancaster University. Paula Yup returned to Spokane, Washington, after a dozen years in the Marshall Islands. In the past forty years, she has published over two hundred poems in magazine and anthologies. Her first book of poetry is entitled Making a Clean Space in the Sky. James K. Zimmerman is an award-winning poet and Pushcart Prize nominee. His work appears in The Evansville Review, Confrontation,

Atlanta Review, Nimrod, The Bellingham Review, Vallum, Kestrel, The Cape Rock, Oberon, and The MacGuffin, among others. He is the author of Little Miracles (Passager 2015) and Family Cookout (Comstock 2016), winner of the 2015 Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Prize.

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Notice of Non-discrimination: Asnuntuck Community College does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religious creed, age, sex, national origin, marital status, ancestry, present or past history of mental disorder, learning disability or physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression or genetic information in its programs and activities. In addition, the College does not discriminate in employment on the basis of veteran status or criminal record. The following individuals have been designated to handle inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policies: Yhara Zelinka, Title IX Coordinator, yzelinka@asnuntuck.edu (860) 253-3092 and Deborah Kosior, 504/ADA Coordinator, AS-DisabilityServices@asnuntuck.edu (860) 253-3005, Asnuntuck Community College, 170 Elm Street, Enfield, CT 06082.

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