The Grinnell Review Fall 2013

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Copyright © 2013 by the Student Publications and Radio Committee (SPARC).

The Grinnell Review, Grinnell College’s biannual undergraduate arts and literary magazine, is a student-produced journal devoted to the publication of student writing and artwork. Creative work is solicited from the entire student body and review anonymously by the corresponding Writing and Arts Committees. Students are involved in all aspects of production, including selection of works, layout, publicity, and distribution. By providing a forum for the publication of creative work,The Grinnell Review aims to bolster and contribute to the art and creative writing community on campus.

Acknowledgments: The work and ideas published in The Grinnell Review belong to the individuals to whom such works and ideas are attributed to and do not necessarily represent or express the opinions of SPARC or any other individuals associated with the publication of this journal. © 2013 Poetry, prose, artwork and design rights return to the artists upon publication. No part of this publication may be duplicated without the permission of SPARC, individual artists or the editors.

The Grinnell Review is printed and bound by Pioneer Graphics in Waterloo, IA. It was designed using Adobe InDesign® CS5. The typeface for the body text is 14 pt. Perpetua and the typeface for the titles is 48 pt. Didot.

Cover art: Eye C U by Clara Kirkpatrick.

All editorial and business correspondence should be addressed to: Grinnell College c/o Grinnell Review Grinnell, IA 50112 www.grinnellreview.com Letters to the editor are also welcome. Please send them to the address above or to review@grinnell.edu

XLVI | Fall 2013 ARTS SELECTION COMMITTEE Claire Lowe Gavin Warnock

EDITORS Emily Mester Drew Ohringer Quinn Underriner

WRITING SELECTION COMMITTEE Laura Dripps Melissa Fandos Thomas Foley Alice Ko Clare Mao Eliana Schechter Abby Stevens Alexandra Ullberg Lauren Teixeira Sylvie Warfield Benjamin Zeledon

Contents

Linnea Hurst Vacancy 65

Writing Leo Abbe Iowa

Orgy The Epitome of Wasted

15 44 47

Clare Boerigter The Brother 70 Kat Collins A Note to Myself

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Eva Dawson Vanessa 25

Emily Mester Alien Love Song 16 3 Steps to End Your Baby’s Witching Hour 35 Year 64 Varun Nayar Circus 26 Night Colors 42 Drew Ohringer Notes on the Backyard

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Sam Dunnington The Sun Rises on Food Court 3

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Dylan Fisher Hole in the Wall, Death Valley

I E Prahl Eulogy 36

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Connor Schake To Whom it May Concern

Caroline Froh Leda 40

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Lucy Marcus Boots 11

Emily Johnson Tea 42

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Eliana Schechter Two Night Stand 46

Logan Shearer Ashes Turn 26 Lauren Teixeira Drivers’ Ed 58 Emily Sue Tomac Feminism in India 37 Quinn Underriner Mosaics 28 Intercessions 49

Art Elizabeth Jane Allen Dumb I Sound 22 Corson Androski Because the Landscape is Suffocating 27 Max Christensen Spinemelter 45 Elle Duncombe-Mills Bequia 24 Ezra Edgerton Bryce Canyon 17 Xena Fitzgerald Figure 1-1 43 Gus Fulgoni Life Juice 23 Charlotte Kanzler 14 Cents a Gallon 32 Passive Aggressive 48 5

Chloe Pachovas Na Chainkua (Chainky) Reindorf Fragility of Decadence 34 Linnea Schurig Color 43 Woman in Black 46 Lauren Teixeira Litbro Study #13

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Julianne Thompson Freedom 33 Lite Wei Self Portrait 55 Mary Zheng Old:New 41 Under the High Line 54 Chunk 56

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Letter from the Editors

In their parting letter, last year’s editors compared handing over their job to sending their child off to kindergarten. If that is indeed the case—and we’ll pretend not to take offense—it has been a good first semester in school. Precocious readers, we read everything from litbro litanies to first-year breakup balladry. During lunch, we traded our string cheese for Oedipus complexes. And, like any good kindergarteners, we took a lot of cigarette breaks. We no longer cry when our parents leave us in the morning, and we’re happy to have finally resolved our anal stage. Now it is time for show and tell.

We’d like to thank SPARC for funding us; the English Department for sponsoring this event; and previous editors Andy Delany, Caleb Neubauer and Daniel Waite Penny for helping us with the more difficult parts of the transition. And finally, a huge thank you to the writers and artists who submitted work and the students who served on the selection committees, without whom there would be no 46th Grinnell Review.

Okay, the class is waiting.

Warmly, immaturely, prematurely, Emily Mester, Drew Ohringer, Quinn Underriner

“I thought, ‘You smell like a library.’

But I wanted to have sex right then, so I said, ‘You smell like a poem.’”

Melissa Bank, The Wonder Spot

Boots Lucy Marcus

were strung like little floating fruit gummies. The family that owned the land was hardly there, but when they were, we spied on their tiny figures, envious because it always seemed that they got more sun.

It was the first summer Sophie spent away from the city. Her parents were split, and even though it was a summer community, her mother lived at their house all year round. Her mother was a painter, and unlike the other families, she didn’t host barbeques or invite guests for cocktails. She was what my mother called an “absent parent,” and for this reason, I wasn’t allowed to sleep over there. Sophie’s father owned one of those old-fashioned

Though we pretended that we were alone, we knew he ice-cream shops in Cobble Hill and hadn’t come up to the house was there. Sitting at the lifeguard chair, high up above, smoking his cigarette. From the middle of the lake we couldn’t see his face, in years. In the past, Sophie would spend the summer working the cashier because he didn’t trust anyone else with the money. just the flick of orange light that dimmed and brightened with She earned the most tips, she bragged once, because she was each pull. I wasn’t sure if it made me more scared or less. They “customer friendly.” It was true. She had brown freckles on her said that in the night the snapping turtles came out. A big one could lop off a whole toe if you weren’t careful. So we kicked our nose and light feathery hair and a soft voice that you had to lean in feet forcefully at the lake’s mucky bottom, warding off underwater to hear. creatures hungry for a snack.

He was the lifeguard on duty that summer. His aunt owned

the snack shop at the dock and got him the job because he’d just

I turned fifteen that summer, when Sophie and I doggygraduated college and “needed some time to think.” During the paddled across the lake in our underwear. I went fast because I nights after dinner, we’d stuff our bags with rolled-up towels and a was scared and because I knew we were racing, though we never change of underwear and tell our parents we were going to watch admitted it aloud. The finish line was the beach at the other side, about a half-mile away. It wasn’t really a beach, just a plot of sand a movie. We’d wait for him down at the lake, pretending not to listen to each passing car for the crunching of his rusty Toyota as with a little raft out on the water. A rope tied the raft around the it drove over pebbles in the parking lot. Then he’d come, always thick trunks of two oaks whose branches dipped low, grazing the with a six-pack for Sophie and me to share and a flask just for him. water like tentative toes. Along the rope, red and yellow buoys

Sophie didn’t know it then and she never would, but that summer we both lost our virginities to the same man. He’s got the initials of a bad disease. Eats away at your bones so you can’t move.

Can’t even lift your head from the pillow.

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“You’re my cheap dates,” he joked, opening the bottles off the side of the lifeguard chair, leaving little half-moons in the wood. We laughed as though it was the first time he said it. We jumped in sometime after the second beer, when the water wouldn’t feel so cold.

When we were younger, the bigger kids would tell us that the bottom of the lake was full of slime-filled boots. I imagined that trick-playing kids would dive in wearing their old boots just to see if it was true, that they’d sink into the bottom and get stuck, having to abandon the footwear, worming their way out before it’s too late. Then they’d come up, breathless and proud, lifting wrinkled toes to wiggle and splash at the surface in accomplishment. They said hundreds of boots were down there, but no one knew for sure how many. It was too murky, even with goggles you couldn’t see a thing, not even the feet kicking at you from above.

She lost it to him first. It was the night I stayed in with bad stomach cramps. They did it on the dock and the wooden boards left a small, yellowing bruise on her lower back. She told me the next morning in a low voice as we dipped our toes in the water and watched the ripples overlap. I asked her if it hurt. “Yeah,” she said, watching the caretaker’s boy struggle to balance on his inner tube. “It fucking hurt. But I’m a woman now.” She said it like a joke, but I saw then, it was true. She even talked like a grown up, even her curse words sounded more natural.

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After that, it was different. His jokes felt stale and when

Sophie laughed at them I could hear the shrillness in her voice and it just made me sick. Instead of swimming the lake with Sophie, I sat under the lifeguard chair and watched them. She stripped down to her underwear, slurring her words a little as she beckoned him to join her. Under the moonlight and lake water, her skin glowed yellow. She did a little dance, floating on her back with her nipples piercing the water’s surface now and then. Finally, pretending to be shy, he undid the buttons on his shirt and let his pants fall, revealing little crumpled boxer shorts beneath. “You coming, Leah?” he asked me, but before I could answer he dived in, hardly leaving a splash. I watched them until they nearly got to the beach, before I got up and went home.

In mid-August one of the workers at the ice cream shop quit out of nowhere. It was the busiest season and Sophie’s father made her work the back room until he found a replacement. The first night she was gone, I went down to the lake by myself. I took off all my clothes, everything, and tricked myself into jumping in with my eyes scrunched. The sober cold shocked my limbs and I quickly got out, shivering the whole walk home. The next day at the dock, I came down with some library books and stretched out my towel in a sunny spot near his chair with my shades at the tip of my nose. He startled me when he spoke. “Sucks that she’s gone,” he said, as though she was never coming back.

He came by my house one night, when we were still eating dinner on the porch. He asked my dad if I could come see the outdoor movie that was screening in the town lawn. It was going to be Jaws that night. My dad looked at him and then at me, as

though he was seeing something for the first time. “Not tonight,” I heard him say as I mashed the peas on my plate with a fork. I waited until my parents were in bed to call him.

In the car, he was silent. He drove in the opposite direction of the lawn and parked outside his aunt’s house. “Those lawn movies are so crowded,” he said. “Plus, there’s always a bunch of assholes who take girls there trying to get laid.” I nodded.

“My aunt’s a deep sleeper,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulder as we sat awkwardly on his futon. A Daddy Longlegs climbed up the wall and his sheets were crumpled in the corner.

He spoke as the sound of a jeopardy show played in the room next door. “So eight of us just piled into this guy’s car,” he paused to laugh at himself, leaning back and giving my knee a light slap.

“And none of us knew where the fuck we were going.” I missed the start of his story but pretended to be amused. A muffled applause roared from the television.

Later, afterwards, we didn’t say anything at all. He played a movie on his computer, I can’t remember which. “That wasn’t your first time, was it?” he asked, watching the last of the credits.

“No,” I lied.

The next morning, I left for the lake without telling my parents. At the dock, a slim girl in a red one-piece was sitting in his chair. As I walked to the water she hopped down and introduced herself in a loud voice, unfit for her size. I asked about him and she shrugged, “he was fired or quit or something.” I found

out that afternoon from his aunt that he had left to go home to his parent’s house upstate. “For a job opportunity,” she told me.

Sophie showed up at the dock the next weekend with a tub of lot’s-a-dough ice cream and three spoons. I told her that he had to leave because of a family emergency. “Right,” she said. We ate from the tub on the dock, watching the spheres of cookie dough appear as the ice cream melted slowly in the heat. “Let’s swim the lake tonight,” she said, “one last time.”

In the moonlight, I could see the freckles on her shoulders.

She swam just a few feet ahead. I could imagine her face, all determined, with a hard jaw, nose scrunched up and eyes squinted.

I wondered if she already knew. I wondered if she could tell by the way I spoke, so I held in my curses and feigned uncertainty. I let her swim further ahead, surrendering my feet to the turtles.

When I got to the beach, she was already sitting there, watching our dock from the other side, imported sand stuck to her elbows where she must’ve placed them before changing her mind and sitting up again. “It’s like he’s still there, even when he’s not,” she said when I sat down next to her. “I swear I just saw him but it’s not possible, you know?”

I knew, I knew. But I said nothing. It was too late for that.

She sighed, inhaled, then pressed her hands to her face. I didn’t want to see her cry, so I jumped up and kicked some sand at her legs. “Hey,” I said, “let’s go, I think I heard someone.”

She looked up at me, tired-eyed and stern, and then past me, at the lake. “Some things, Leah,” she said, “you just don’t fucking 13

understand.” She stood up and wiped the sand from her arms before walking into the water.

She swam quickly ahead of me, faster than before, and in the middle of the lake she paused to catch her breath, floating on her back with her eyes closed.

“I’m sorry,” I said once I caught up to her, but her ears were beneath the surface and she didn’t move. I inhaled the warm air into my belly and leaned back into the lake.

For a while, we floated on our backs, the turtles and snakes and moldy boots beneath us, the stars crushing, mocking, as though to say, and you thought this was the end?

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Iowa Leo Abbe I’ve been lonely, and tired and cashed. I’ve been tried and I’ve been wasted.

I came all the way to the Midwest from Los Angeles.

I lost sight of the bright lights and the anxious suits from the middle of the city; I lost my spotlight to the rocking storms and windstorms. I spent the first two months in a tanktop, then the next six absolutely heartbroken.

Then I spent five weeks inside some strawberry blonde girl before getting tripped out by the bars and cars— and I got shitfaced

with the townies and I moved with all the desperate clever chicks.

I don’t like the weather here.

And the people are just alright—yeah, they’re just alright. And at the parties with the cool kids and the self-righteous english majors and the cigarette smokers, I’m the kid swaying side to side beneath the overhang until the music finally stops because if anyone I used to know shows up I don’t want them to know what

I’ve been doing 15

Alien Love Song Emily Mester Do you come here often?

Did it hurt, when you fell?

You must be a broom, Because you smell like sawdust.

Darling, you’re so beautiful, I had to dilate my pupils.

You’re so beautiful, I want to unzip your skin.

You’re so beautiful, I bet your legs hurt.

If you were a bank, I’d give you all my money.

If you were a bankrobber, I’d give you all my money.

Is your dad a thief?

Because I bet your teeth Are good at keeping secrets.

Lizard giggle, Medicine mouth, You make me feel like a physicist 16

Who just quit his job.

Are you a parking ticket?

Because I’ve got WINDSHIELD Written all over me.

Baby, you’ve got a body Like a jack o’lantern.

You’ve got an ass I’d love to sleep on.

You’ve got eyebrows I could kiss for their honesty.

Is it hot in here?

What do you say we Slip into something A little more comfortable.

I’m no astronaut, But if I could rearrange the alphabet, honeytrap, I’d send U and I into space.

Bryce Canyon | Ezra Edgerton| Watercolor

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The Sun Rises On Food Court 3

morning!” Also on the plan: make Team Members feel personal connection with Carl. Allegiance was key to averting the day’s impending disaster. Toby shrugged and started walking towards the TacoPit.

“Not so fast, Toby! Buddy, we are going to have a short meeting before we begin.” Toby slid into one of the chairs farthest from Carl and put his head down to sleep. Fuck you, you little shit sack, thought Carl. Through the roll-down bars he could see a handful of travelers coming off red-eyes. Carl liked serving people coming off red-eyes—concise orders, looking for healthy Sam Dunnington options, whisking away. No lingering like the afternoon families.

Grease stains everywhere and kids fucking up the bathroom. Kids

Carl Pounder arrived early and dunked a big batch of always trying to keep him from his fourth service award. The crullers at Creamio’s. While he waited for his team to arrive he fourth service award meant a lifetime service award, which meant reviewed his checklist: coffee, donuts would be out on the tables, enough scratch to take a vacation, or two alimony payments, very important, do the employee of the month announcement or get Maddie a limo for her prom. Had he already told her he first (for motivation) but then a review of behavior policy (friendly was getting that? Fucking kids. Carl was going to get that fourth but tough reminder). He pulled the crullers out of the fryer and award. dumped cinnamon mix #2 over half and chocolate mix #5 over

He kept smiling as the rest of the team showed up. Rhonda, the rest. Those premium mixes cost more than your basics, of Enrique, good, yes, Benito, Tim, Lassandra, Hi, have coffee and a course, but that was part of the strategy, and he wasn’t 3-time donut, guys! Then Ahmed and Abelard, perfect, that was everyone.

Award-Winning Courtesy Services Manager, Airport Food Court “Hey team, good morning!” He put on his famous Carl Pounder Division, for nothing, goddamn it. He plunked the donuts down Beam. “Glad you could make it to this check-in meeting, I know on the table with two big jugs of coffee and cracked his knuckles. it’s early, but that’s why God made coffee and donuts, ha-ha!”

It was 3:30 AM. (Keep banter light, also a key part of strategy.) Rhonda got up and

Toby arrived first, red flag, Toby wasn’t stoned and no helped herself to another donut. God bless you, Rhonda. head phones in. Toby looked freshly showered. Toby was ready for “We’re here this morning to announce the new food court Bernice’s visit. Fuck! team member of the month!” A couple of people sat up. Come

“Hey, Toby, my man!” called Carl. “Donut? Coffee? Good on, more of you, sit up, come on, goddamn. “I am thrilled to 18

announce that this month, the food court team member that will not only be featured on our wall of fame, but will also enjoy 7% off food-court wide is…” Carl paused and spread hands wide over his flock. “Benito!”

People clapped and Benito shuffled to the front, taking the crisp certificate in liver-spotted hands. Hmmmm. Carl figured Benito as the most inspiring choice but Benito looked like hell at four in the morning under fluorescent lights.

“Benito is receiving this award because of his tireless and excellent work as our head janitor! Thank you, Benito. Do you want to say anything?”

Benito opened his trembling, damp mouth. His thick moustache twitched back and forth for a second before he shook his head and shuffled back to his seat.

Shitcock. Benito’s words were supposed to break up Carl’s

monologue. Carl felt a thin sheen of sweat building at the small of his back.

“For those of you hoping to become team members of the month in the future, keep in mind that, like our good friend Benito, you need to follow protocol! That includes clean up procedures and opening and closing checklists. And no wasting time with food court customers. Those simple guidelines can help you become a food court team member of the month! Especially, no wasting time visiting with food court customers! Okay, any questions?”

Carl slapped his palms together and smiled around at his team. They were, on the whole, great people. He was very lucky to have such a great crew, always willing to pitch in, today would go fine, nothing to worry about, but FUCK. Toby had pulled his

head off the table in the back and raised his hand.

“Carl?” Oh Toby, I’ll fucking kill you, you little cockball shit crust, don’t you dare, Toby, choke and die. “Is this because Bernice is coming in today?”

Seven heads swiveled from Toby to Carl. “Nope,” said Carl.

“Absolutely not! Just a friendly reminder of your responsibilities.

OK? Let’s open!” He strode to the front and started cranking up the grating. People drifted towards their stations. Lights came on above Creamio’s, the TacoPit, RockDaWok. Carl popped a preemptive Tums and tried not to think about 9 AM and Bernice as the first customers appeared. ***

The day picked up speed. Rush between 5 AM and 6 AM as the first flights came in from the East Coast. When TSA shifts rotated at 7:30 AM, Abelard and Rhonda had a basket of Raised Glazed ready at Creamio’s. Brief grease fire at RockDaWok just after 8. Carl handled it quietly and sent Tim home with part of his beard singed off.

It was 8:43 AM and Carl was firing the wok back up when he saw the appraiser. Blue polo, tag hanging down the front. The appraiser drank coffee and ate a TacoPit ChurrWow Cinnamon stick while scribbling on a clipboard. Carl stared out over the shoulders of Ahmed and Lassandra as they rang up orders of Killer Fried Rice and PunkNoodlez. Carl did not recognize the man. It was not Leo, the appraiser responsible for each of Carl’s last awards. Carl’s collar felt tight and he slid out from behind the RockDaWok counter.

He wove between tables. Please, oh god please, not today.

Maybe the man was not on duty. Carl walked across the floor of 19

the food court and extended his hand to the appraiser.

“Hi, hello! Carl Pounder, head manager of Food Court 3!

How are you?”

The appraiser looked up with an owlish stare. “Mr. Pounder, are you aware that you’re not supposed to contact the appraiser? It hinders us from objectively analyzing the performance of you and your team.” Carl stepped back. Keep it together. In the past Leo always seemed happy to see Carl, accepted a free donut.

“Of course, apologies! Always good to see a new face, is all, take care.” Carl dodged a woman toting a roller briefcase and ran back to RockDaWok. Keep cool, all ok, team members will not abandon their

posts. Lines were moving quickly. Benito wiped down a table covered in light green sauce from TacoPit. It was 8:55 am. The appraiser stood up and walked toward the TacoPit. Carl watched him going into the back. Not worried, though. TacoPit met every single food service guideline. Nice try, asshole!

How was he going to find out if he had already promised Maddie the limo? The award money should probably go toward alimony.

The clock moved to 9:03 and Carl started to relax. Maybe Bernice was not coming today. The appraiser had moved quickly through TacoPit, and Toby gave him a thumbs-up from across the room. Nice, Toby, good work. Definitely a good kid. Carl was sorry he’d thought such awful things about him earlier. Regaining his confidence, he stepped forward to man one of the RockDaWok registers.

“Hi, what can I get for you —” He broke off when he saw 20

Bernice’s bun. It bobbed dreamlike from way off by the security checkpoint.

She moved with her usual sluggish stutter-step. Looking to his right and left, Carl saw that Ahmed and Lassandra had seen her too. Ahmed smiled and Lassandra took her apron off. “Guys,” whispered Carl. “Guys.” But Ahmed drifted away from the register and Lassandra was already out into the seating area, smiling broadly and opening her arms to embrace Bernice.

During his first shift as manager 5 years back, Carl had been working at Creamio’s with Bernice when a customer came up to complain about the cream content of his Bismarck.

“It’s too much cream,” said the man. He was sweating.

“Apologies, sir, but I’m afraid we don’t offer refunds on food that’s been fully consumed,” said Carl. Bismarck filling quivered on the man’s chin.

“It’s too much cream!” the man yelled again, slamming his hand on the counter. Bernice came out from where she’d been frying in the back. She nudged Carl out of the way and slid a dollar out of the register.

“Mister, here’s your dollar. Don’t come back here. Wipe your goddamn face.”

The man made a little squealing sound and scuttled away.

Bernice looked at Carl.

“You gotta take it easy, bud.” Bernice went into the back and pulled out another rack of crullers.

Carl learned more about Bernice over the next 3 years: She sponsored Abelard through N.A., she repped service workers against the Port Authority, she helpd Tim through a break up that

left him suicidal. But 7 months ago, Bernice quit. She had to have her baby and find work that would accommodate the infant.

Abelard and Rhonda saw her, now, and they left a customer screaming about getting the wrong FlavorDunk on their Creamio donut. Abelard wore a goofy smile and Rhonda cooed from afar at the baby slung over Bernice’s right shoulder. Carl ran over to Creamio’s and tried to placate the customer. “Sir, sorry, how can we be of service today?” But the man told him to fuck off. Carl spun in place, watching the lines back up at each of his stations.

The appraiser emerged from behind the TacoPit, scribbling furiously. Fuck, no, god no. He wanted to knock the clipboard from the man’s hands. Smash it on the floor. Carl turned once more and found himself staring at Bernice.

“Hi, Carl.” She smiled at him and Carl felt his lip begin to tremble. “Carl, this is Dwayne.” Bernice hefted the baby, a tiny, damp looking thing. “Dwayne, honey, can you say hi to Carl?” The baby kicked its foot in Carl’s direction and spat out a little glob of saliva. With its tiny fist, it grabbed a lock of Bernice’s hair, and let out a shriek of joy when the curly brown lock sprung back into place.

Guys, everyone, please, I am thrilled to see Bernice too, but go back to your stations. Back to stations, everyone, Carl wanted to say. But the baby burbled again and Carl stood dumb.

Toby appeared at his elbow. “Cute kid, Bern,” he said.

“Toby! You moron, how you doing?” said Bernice. “You wanna hold him?”

She passed the baby into Toby’s toothpick arms. The kid reached out for Toby’s chin scruff and Toby laughed. “Aw, man,”

said Toby. “Aw man.” Abelard held out one of his chubby fingers and Bernice said, “Careful,” but it was too late. Little Dwayne opened his mouth wide and chomped down on the finger. Abelard smiled and pulled back his finger. “Strong,” he said. Everyone, the whole team, laughed.

All around them, the food court was sliding into chaos.

People were yelling at each other, starting to leave, the appraiser walking towards Carl. Fuck, Carl thought, gently. Thick tears started pooling in his eyes.

“Carl?” said Bernice. “Carl, you ok? Come here.” Bernice took back Dwayne in one arm and with the other, she pulled Carl into a hug. He felt the hugeness of Bernice all around him and he started to cry in earnest while Baby Dwayne grabbed at his hair.

Bernice ran a hand up and down his back. Shh, Carl.

Warmth washed over Carl, the same warmth he’d felt when he broke his nose in fourth grade. He had sat on a slide, a huge playground slide with his uncles were at the bottom.

They urged him to sack up and go. As Carl rocketed towards the bottom, he seesawed between elation and fear, and then a brief sense of weightlessness overcame him as he shot off the end of the slide. He tried, too quickly, to regain his footing. He flipped face forwards, slamming his nose into the concrete curb that ringed the woodchips. He remembered his uncles over him. They yelled for him not to go to sleep as Carl drifted on glowing tides that pulled him towards unconsciousness.

Now, with the food court buzzing around him, he didn’t think, but let the talcum smell of Dwayne and the light soap scent of Bernice sweep over him. He wanted to lie down and wake up at home. Take the day with Maddie to maybe go to a movie and 21

then take her out to Pagliacci’s like they did when she was still in grade school and he did not have the third shift. God almighty Bernice was warm. Carl wanted to sleep for a thousand years.

Baby Dwayne had a firm grip on his hair and from a very long way off, Carl could hear the infant’s burbling and spitting. The yells of customers rose and fell but Carl still stood in Bernice’s arms.

Carl never knew how long the embrace lasted but when Bernice finally let him go, his eyes were dry. The appraiser stood at his arm, yelling, and a couple of the team members drifted back to their stations. In a trance, Carl and the rest of the team worked through the backlog until 11 in the morning. When he got off shift, he went home to his apartment and slept for 14 hours.

The formal reprimand came down seven days later and Carl was released from managerial duties. As he walked out of Food Court 3 he still felt Bernice and Baby Dwayne, wrapped around him and shot through him like golden light.

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Dumb I Sound |Elizabeth Jane Allen | Watercolor and Colored Pencil

Life Juice | Gus Fulgoni| Digital Photography

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Bequia | Elle Duncombe-Mills | Digital Photograph

Vanessa Eva Dawson From here I can see her ribcage—the slight arc of an underbelly and a thin hood of skin above her navel—a pair of jagged hips rise like arrowheads chipped and smoothed from years of being stomped in the dirt her breasts—barely there—could fit in my palms like hand-painted espresso cups I search for her in every twenty-something year old I see on the metro—I examine

A Note to Myself Kat Collins Do not sleep too softly, On second thought, Do not sleep it all.

Do not become pretentious.

Your hat won’t fit.

Do not pass up a garage sale.

Do not cry.

You’ll make it a habit.

Have no habits.

the way the waistlines on their jeans cling I have eyes only for her iceberg hips

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Circus Varun Nayar you are mischief in the god machine. your voice, sinks like stones through language. this rain is endless.

Ashes Turn Logan Shearer Ash is turned round the line.

Out – the flame – Out – the rhyme – Blue Circumference – Camel – hides – Throw it to the brick – wide

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Because the Landscape is Suffocating | Corson Androski | Digital Photograph

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Mosaics Quinn Underriner

In her basement, there’s a maze. It’s made of miles of milk crates spidering white at the edges, stretched and bruised, about to burst with every voweled Encyclopedia Britannica printed from 1932 up until 2010. That was their final year. She said it was a statement of something. I never asked, just carefully placed the heavy things where she said they felt right. Until she no longer let me.

She created things then.

Down there, even without sunlight, she has ivy growing.

She positioned it to weave itself in and out of the hollow plastic diamonds that make up the maze’s walls. Beaten gold type glowing dimly through healthy greens clinging to lustful crimsons. As far as I can make out there’s no grid, no minotaured center but serpentine loops which on my darker days I can sit and convince myself are infinite. I know it’s an illusion. There’s something I’m just not getting.

I go here sometimes when she isn’t home to take pictures, to walk. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve been drinking.

You get into the basement through a separate entrance, one with those romantic storm cellar doors you imagine frontier families rushing to in nights of unseasonable and vengeful storms.

A padlock holds together a piece of shiny chain that I carefully put back in the right place, every time. That key is separate from 28

her house key. That I gave back. I got this key when her parents came to visit from LA. She introduced me, politely, then I excused myself. They didn’t know we were living together. Catholicism, she tells me. She told me to wait down there. This was near the end; I’m not going to claim I had much say in the matter. Keeping the key is my reward.

We used to travel. Holly had openings in Des Moines, Omaha and even Chicago once. I never before knew that kind of pride. I was happy; we drank wine. I was always credited, in bold black wall type, for helping to put together parts of her installations. Often, when pressed for things to say at these galas, I would tell Midwesterners in tuxedos that I was a “trophy-building trophy-boyfriend.” That always went over better than saying middle-school wood shop teacher. Her fellowship money ran out when there were so many more walls to build. Incomplete, it sits there.

A week before she left I asked Holly to conceive a child with me. We had grown, in my mind we were slouching past middle age. The center couldn’t hold. I was very serious.

Knowing her affinity for dark places, I took her to a magnificent house that had been abandoned during the storms in 2005. All I remember about the outside is that the porch, dilapidated and damaged as it was, still had a hanging bench whose thin rope had somehow survived unscathed. I’m not sure if we broke in through a window or a door, but we went up flight on joyously engraved banistered flight. When we had reached what was, in my mind, from my previous solo visit, a child’s room, I let go of Holly’s hand.

“I don’t think we should go in any further.” She can’t tell I have something planned.

“Holly, look, I think all this molding is gilded, real fucking gold.”

“Is that how gold works?” She runs her hands through her light black hair.

“It might be paint. I guess you would know.”

“Yeah, it might be paint.”

“It’s faded, tarnished maybe? I’m not sure.”

“I think I’m gonna pour some water on it.” I have a plan, a gesture.

“Can I drink some first?”

“There’s not enough. Don’t you want to know our future?

It’s like reading animal entrails.”

“Jesus. Sam, what is?”

“When I pour the water on it, how many times the tendrils cross each other down the wall.” I pour the water, making a show of it as Holly stares. It meanders, pulling strips of blue paint with it.

“So, where are the entrails?”

“When the water drags down the paint chips, leaving those marks.”

“So gravity is determining your life,” she asks.

“Yours too” I say. She rolls her eyes and then looks away, scanning the room.

“If I hold my lighter to those sprinklers will they go off?

Do you think they still even work?” She asks. I’m in love with her sudden interest.

“Not sure, sounds romantic though.” She flickers a black

lighter a few times.

“Wait stop.”

“What, this room could benefit from being cleaned,” she says with a laugh.

“But what if washes away the gold?”

“Then we have gold puddles.” She blackens the little cog like tips of the sprinklers and they sputter in both of our faces.

Everything is soaked. Holly looks down. She turns out her palms, water streaming between her fingers.

“I can see myself, I’m golden.” She shifts her weight. We both look back up at the walls.

“Why didn’t any of the blue wash off?” She asks.

“I think it means we are going to have a boy.”

“What?”

“The blue stayed. I want to have a child.”

“Sam I’m getting cold.” The flicker of energy seems to have left her. She clutches her arms around herself, the beige blouse stretching against its seams like a straightjacket.

“With you, I want to have kids with you.”

She doesn’t look at me for minutes, instead transfixed by the perfect golden orbs that are coalescing on the white marble floor.

That night I dreamt of Holly’s balcony, the second floor post from which she used to watch me leave. The railing is now painted blue and she is nailing her IUD to the door, lit cigarette between her lips. I really thought then she would be the perfect mother for our child, or twins, if I had my way.

There are moments when she and my imaginary children still shimmer in my mind.

29

When my father died, nearly a year ago now, what bothered me most was his computer password. Throughout my life though I had always known that he kept a diary on his laptop. My whole life I assumed at his death I would get to read pages and pages. But the fucking password. Since his death I had set aside first an hour, now down to fifteen minutes from the years of frustration, per day dedicated to trying to guess the code. His laptop is now far out of date and last month I took a cash advance on my VISA to track down a charger for it on eBay. Things could be so much easier.

I’m easily distracted these days.

Holly is in her actuary class now, her new life. I’m sure her aged yuppie parents like her more now that she’s quit smoking pot and started using words like proactive. I should have asked more about what the maze meant to her while I could.

On the safe side, I should have two hours before she gets back. It’s dark enough that the neighbors won’t be able to see me fiddling with the chains and slipping into the cellar. I calmly walk down the steps and meander the familiar paths.

As I get deeper and deeper I begin to worry. The ivy has yellowed, many of its dried leaves have fallen onto the floor and been stomped into fractals. It’s beautiful but I hate seeing the decay. I need this space. I’m only ever calm here, like I’m on the verge of understanding, of something important. I take pictures.

I’ve fantasized about getting arrested coming back from one of these expeditions. I never think of the ride in the back of the cop’s car, but immediately jump to the interrogation room. My hands are cuffed to the table and the officer is calling me pathetic, a creep. He will have to ask me to explain myself three times before I will give him an answer. I know I’ll break.

30

“She took my children. She took my children from me. I have so much to still understand.”

“Motherfucker I’ve looked at your file.You have no children.”

“I would have. I would have, they would be twins named Jacob and Esau.”

“We contacted Holly. She wants a restraining order. One hundred yards.” I would almost smile. This wouldn’t bother me, I can be in the maze for miles and miles.

Lost in this, I almost don’t hear the gravel of Holly’s car pulling in. The front door closes and I think I can hear her kick her shoes into the corner, rock back and forth on the balls of her feet to stretch her arches, arms reaching upwards, content.

Holly came with me to my father’s funeral. Her grace was nearly overwhelming that night. She was the only person I talked to through the entire ceremony. Probably that entire week.

We sat in the pews for over an hour after his body had been taken by a few of his former students to be lain next to my mother.

“He fought for me you know.”

“I’m sure he did, Sam.”

“No, I mean to have me. My mother was determined to adopt but he wanted me.”

She put her gentle hand on my thigh and stared high above us at the mosiac of St. Sebastian’s martyrdom. In ecstasy, his life was slowly leaving him. One arrow at a time.

Hole in the Wall, Death Valley Dylan Fisher Father, a cactus grows upon my chest.

Its pliant spines are made of dusty skin.

Its shallow roots are veins across my breast, fine maps that show the places we have been, and show all the faces we have adored, and all the jagged dreams we have once sighed.

You gave me lovely dreams that I ignored, dreams blossomed spiny flowers when I cried.

Father, these valley floors are cold at night and these cactus flowers scratch my cold hand.

It bleeds as I await the coming light.

It bleeds uneven on the thirsty sand.

This blood will quickly dry. This cactus will fall off. But I will stay. My dreams stay, still.

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14 Cents a Gallon | Charlotte Kanzler| Digital Photograph

Freedom | Julianne Thompson| Digital Photograph

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Fragility of Decadence | Chloe Pachovas and Na Chainkua (Chainky) Reindorf | Digital Photograph

3 Steps to End Your Baby’s Witching Hour Emily Mester Your bed should be only for sleeping and sex

This one, the best yet, but I’ve been waking up on the couch.

Nightly, the cranky box spring Groans up at my infidelity.

Metal, wheeled, and sanitarium brown The old frame can’t believe its luck.

I remember thinking mattresses were Named for their occupants.

Mine is full for the first time, and Only five inches from royalty.

Avoid bright lights. Keep it dark, quiet, cool.

Day a gauze which the Night nurse, ever inopportune Unwraps. Clammy, pale I gape up at the air.

Mornings I speak the language Of holes.

According to Newsweek A third of my life will be Spent like this. At 3 am And 22, is it irony to research your sleep Disorder, or is it Just neighborly?

Jot down worries in a different room, then say goodnight to them.

Lost with a fistful Of maps Maybe this is my fault.

A bus I once saw On its front said Pentacrest Nightline.

A place I’d never heard of It sounded like a poem.

Askew of meaning But a delicacy Dissolved on the tongue.

Maybe this is where I’m headed.

35

Eulogy I E Prahl The last time I saw her we fucked on the couch in my neighbor’s sun room, next to a rabbit hutch.

She was 9 days a dishonor before I learned why. 99 smoke rings are worth less than a single gumball-machine cold band she wore on a limp chain around her neck.

I am not about to forget her dishonest nudity or her attempts to start over again.

I carved it in cold steel, she burnt it in my collar bone.

18 years and some change spent grabbing at people to fix her. When they couldn’t- she was “tired of being infinite.”

36

I set aside a sigh for her, and she kept on her boots.

The mattress was stained and smelled like strangers’ cigarettes.

I couldn’t sleep.

18 years and some change spent waiting to count sheep; dumb, reliable, and forgettable.

Feminism In India Emily Sue Tomac “Women in ancient India enjoyed the highest freedom and respect,” sings Sarasvati, goddess of learning.

(If once she reminds her students, twice she reminds herself.)

But then: Invasion Invasion Invasion.

Protection turned putty in the hands of fathers, husbands, brothers, sons—soon, purdah.

she scorns purdah lifted. (Liberty granted to smell alleyway piss, to wade through cow shit and pan spit: those spattered red loogies melting in the rain, later crusting in the sun, diere diere re-paving the pitted roads one mouthful at a time.)

“I doesn’t like.”

On the rooftop, she does not dream of kites— “Girls from nice houses don’t fly kites.”

Now, in the wake of Westernism, Modernism, the future Dr. Shivangi Singh dreams of small tops, small skirts.

Sent to fetch milk, pencils, soap, masala,

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Notes on the Backyard (An Excerpt) Drew Ohringer My boyhood ended when most of the Belmont Fire Department pulled up to my house one grey afternoon in June, right after my freshman year of high school ended. For almost a year Ned, Colin and I had been blowing things up behind the shed in my backyard. It began with simple stuff, cans of diet coke and maybe a little gasoline meant for our new lawn mower, but it soon became an obsession. After school we’d bike down to Handy Spa and buy a case of Hunt’s canned ketchup; then we’d return to the backyard and, with a few sticks and some sap from the big maple tree, construct a Boy Scout style fire. Once it got hot we’d place a can of ketchup on top and run for cover. A few nervous minutes would pass—we could hear the can clinking, its contents burping—and then, right when we couldn’t stand it any longer, it would happen: hissing, bursting, splattering. For an afternoon of entertainment, we’d put another few on the fire before hosing it down. Even when she wasn’t away from home working, my mother was oblivious to our pyrotechnics.

38

Colin was a tall boy who always had a greedy inch or two over Ned and me. He descends from the Mayflower on his mother’s side, I think, but he got his Aryan features—blonde hair that went translucent in summer, blue eyes—from his German father, a recovered alcoholic who I was told worked for public television but always seemed to be at home. It was his father, Glen, who was angriest that day in June; luckily he never made it to my house because I’d faced his wrath in the past and still feared him.

He had called my mother, though. “It was a windy day,” he told her.

“Do you know how stupid that was?”

My mother needed no assistance in understanding the inanity of our actions. As fate would have it, the fire department’s arrival—a neighbor must have heard or smelled the exploding ketchup—coincided with her lunch break. She came home to find the three of us sitting at the backyard table, under interrogation by one of Belmont’s finest. There was another fireman behind the shed, decked out in gear fit for a three alarm house fire; he stood idly by ground zero, which at this point was merely a smoking patch of dirt. When he emerged from the disaster zone, holding a stone covered in a gooey orange substance, Colin, Ned and I burst out laughing. My mother yelled, “what is that?” Before moving to the ketchup can, we’d tried to cook an egg.

I should have been more specific: my boyhood ended in the kitchen with my mother after the BFD had left. The usual complaints were marshaled against me: you have no respect for the house, for the care I take in keeping it clean and together; I can no longer trust you to stay at home alone. I can’t remember the exact phrase she used, but I’m sure she stressed the immaturity of our transgression. Colin, Ned and I seemed unable to escape this

characterization.Years before, we had heard similar words come from the wrinkled mouth of my elementary school principle, a miniature woman who seemed to sport purple pantsuits every day.

We had been caught throwing rocks in the trash barrels of a family who lived adjacent to the playground.

In our time we’d racked up an impressive record of offenses, the three of us: flying rocks, plastic toys under cars in the street, aerosol can flamethrowers. But now we’d gone too far and, worse, we’d acted like the little boys we were no longer supposed to be. I was aware, embarrassedly, of what that final explosion represented. “You’ve always been wild with Colin,” my mother said in the kitchen, wild in the way 12 year old boys were wild— irresponsible, destructive, taking part in activities that usually ended with the excretion of some chemical or body fluid. And these days of innocent wildness were behind us, that day in June: that year, Colin had started getting drunk and constantly pursuing girls, Ned was attempting both without much success, and I found myself spending more and more time in my room reading.

Perhaps I was wrong from the start: our boyhood--our shared history of pranks and lunchtime persecution—had ended years before that neighbor called the fire department. We sensed that ending—I remember dreading Friday afternoons, when Colin no longer called me to hang out—and by blowing up ketchup in the backyard we clung to our old innocent transgressions, which were quickly being overtaken by more complicated, internally explosive misdeeds.

I hardly saw Colin for the rest of that summer. The fall of our sophomore year he fell in with a group of kids I found unsavory: each weekend they convened in a garage to get an early

start on liquefying their livers. I would call him occasionally, he would half-invite me to one of these events; but we both knew I wasn’t interested. He’d found a new world of girls in puffy jackets and candy-flavored liquor. For most of middle school, we’d managed a dynamic in which Colin provided me with carnal reportage—I hadn’t so much as touched a girl, but he could tell me about their shocking bodily diversity, how some bit and others tongued, their varying degrees of vaginal tightness he had digitally discovered. On my end I told him about Radiohead and Tarantino.

But his narratives were far more engaging than anything in Pulp Fiction. All we shared by the end of freshman year were those backyard explosions.

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Leda (An excerpt of Opium für Ovid by Yoko Tawada, translated from the German) Caroline Froh

Leda’s eyes remain fixed on the empty chair in front of her. A nurse sat there less than an hour ago, a cat the day before, a musician three years before Opium für Ovidthat. But they all stare back at Leda now. She tries to settle herself, disarmed. The chair sits in the middle of a comfortably furnished room. The sharp contours of the furniture grow softer in Leda’s periphery; dusk light seeps in through the windows and throws shadows of leaves onto the walls. Is she standing in the thick of a forest or her writing room? The whorls and knots in the wood of her floor ripple into waves.

40

A single feather on the bathroom tile. Longer than the length of a human hand, white with hints of silver, freshly plucked from an unknown body. Who dips the feather in the ink to initiate a dialogue?

“When was the last time you saw your mother naked?”

“As a child.”

“You’re saying you only know your mother wrapped inside unflattering suits from the department store?

“Why do I need to look at her ancient body? I find our conversations more meaningful.”

“Do you mean to say that the conversation supplies you with an image of her nudity?”

She wanders Sundays through the fish market before first light, a prescription for insomnia. She despises food. Plants and animals are lovely enough, so long as they don’t find themselves on her plate. Once they become vegetables and meat, tasteless. Leda can’t eat fruit because of their hidden seeds. She can’t eat grains, they will ferment all morning producing poison gas. Salad strips her body of warmth, soup thins her strength, sugar causes anxiety, vinegar makes her irritable, and milk is disgusting.

Leda is plagued by frequent earaches. Every electronic has its own hum, even if not immediately detectable. The lightbulb in the kitchen trembles all night with a buzzing of beetle wings.

The clock on the wall and the wristwatch are out of sync, they sound as if they’re constantly trying to outdo one another. The fridge complains day and night. The emptier the shelves, the louder the inner monologue. Leda explains that she sometimes patrols the house with the intention of wrenching every plug from its socket. She walks along the expanse of wall, crawls beneath chests of drawers, checks behind the bed, and pulls and pulls and pulls.There are always too many. Outlets behind the oil painting, on the soft underside of her palm, the top of her head. Even her

bellybutton looks like an outlet. She wants to pull the plug from her body.

“I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“All human beings are equally talented. Some must just have bigger holes in their skulls to allow the spirits to pass through more easily.”

Old:New | Mary Zheng | Digital Photograph

41

Night Colors Varun Nayar the world repeats itself four times before it collapes. underneath the surface, a thousand camels fall asleep. they dream in nucleotide sequences, a world of rendered pixels brooding invisible heavens. i awake and churn tiny wilting suns in my palms, peel my chest and see all the ways a heart can stain another. on certain days, the words just sit in my throat; content, and on fire.

Tea Emily Johnson While the kettle boiled, I sifted through the box of sachets, seeking the best one for you.

Pulled out the plumpest and weighed it in my hand.

The burbling song of the kettle unnerved me, and so I peered closer at the fragrant bundle nestled in my palm.

Cocooned in the tea-dusted packet was a tiny dead blue bird, shrouded in mesh and flora, pristine.

You looked at me in horror; I looked at you, at your blue eyes, so delicate, encased in your shampoo-scented skull.

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Figure 1-1 | Xena F. P. Fitzgerald| Mixed Media Collage

Color | Linnea Schurig| Watercolor

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Orgy Leo Abbe In Maine, in the mid-to-late spring there are one or two nights a year when the frogponds explode into swinger amphibian sex parties. All of the frogs coming together to have glorious divinely inspired, choreographed sexual intercourse.

What if there was one night when all the people in the world got together in NEW YORK CITY and fucked like it was the night before the planet earth committed suicide.

Israelis would be 69ing Palestinians; 44

I want to see the video of Russell Brand doing it with anything and everything and anything willing to bend over or lie down.

I’d walk up the core of the Big Apple hoping to see John McCain lying perfectly nude on his makeshift, grungy, city-style mattress— made out of old chewing gum pieces for cushioning and a blanket made from cigarette ash— shivering while he anxiously awaits his sexual experience with Hilary Clinton: Anal Reverse Cowgirl.

And all the Muslims and the Christians and the Chasidim and all the other pure ones saving themselves for marriage, or god, or perfection or whatever could give up on their stubborn abstinence and physically feel what it’s like to be love

Spinemelter | Max Christensen|Digitally Edited Photograph

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Two-Night Stand Eliana Schechter Two-Night Stand Amazonian women brought back, shining through you, in these throes, so momentous and terrible.

Cathartic wails under streams, murmurs of xx and transgressions pleas for purification some holy water please.

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Woman in Black | Linnea Schurig| Scratchboard

The Epitome Of Wasted Leo Abbe bourgeois middle-class ruffian stuck to a ripped up plaid couch struggling to exist. his eyes rolled back in his head when he said

my friends call me Kennedy—

even though i’m not all that Catholic

and i’m not all that handsome—i just

sleep with Irish women and i keep putting people up on the moon this sorta got me thinking: because when i was thirteen i had a heart made out of pure milk chocolate;

and now sometimes i lie down in the shower and pretend i’m a goldfish with brain trauma sometimes i’m aristotle sometimes it’s friday night and i’m trapped in a drug dealer’s sketchy apartment— like i’m trapped in some sort of cage. i spent a year of my life sitting next to those coked-out clever chicks with their skinny hips and big lips and deep deep pockets. i adored those sizzling hipsters wrapped up in cocktail polka-dots always drifting around the world looking for that certain perfect ratio: where they’re coming from to where they want to go.

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Passive Aggressive | Charlotte Kanzler |Digital Media

“Why were you in such a rush?” She asks. I guess she feels it was the wrong thing to say as blood is still pouring out of me and clumsily rubs her hand over my corduroy covered dick a few times to compensate.

Quinn Underriner

“Well, that just cured it. Come on, let’s go. I’m sure people

Only the unwashed stay for the second encore at The are mobbing the Flushing stop.”

Gramophone. I’m already a bit drunk and I can’t be late to work “Sam, we aren’t taking the subway home, you said you again. They only hired me a month ago. I push through the crowd. would walk with me to Stephanie’s. We can’t bail again.”

I have to use both my hands, nearly dragging Holly through

“Well, actually we could.” the scrum. She yells something at me, the only word I catch is

“I haven’t seen her since she got pregnant.” “narcissist” and as I turn to defend myself I catch an elbow in my

“Yeah and what a blessing that child is gonna be.” My voice face. is muffled as Holly has readjusted the shirt so that more of it

covers my mouth.

I drop to my knees and quickly people start arguing

“She can loan us both new shirts.” She turns from me in a about whether my nose is broken. I’m pretty sure something has manner that suggests she thinks the matter is settled. Stephanie is cracked. My fingers have become fleshy viaducts, trailing red always telling Holly what a fuck-up I am. I’m not going to accept droplets on the industrial tile squares. any shirt from that girl.

Fuck, this hurts.

Reaching up, I try to take her shirt off my face, but she

holds firm.

Now Holly is leading me away to the women’s bathroom

to clean me up, but it’s out of toilet paper and the bleeding is

“Let me take it off, I’ll write your name on the ground.” I getting worse. Locking the door and taking off her blue flannel bend towards the ground, straining my neck and start the H, but shirt, she holds my head back as the cotton absorbs more and Holly scoffs and pulls me back up by my shoulder. more of my warm blood. Some of it slides into my mouth and I enjoy the saltiness of it. She is wearing a nude colored bra that fits

“Comeon Holly, Support twenty-first century calligraphy.” her too tightly.

“You’re such a child.”

Intercessions

49

“But, but, but.” I was hoping something more clever would come to me, but it doesn’t. I stand there for a more moments in silence. I shallowly inhale, pulling air past the trickle of blood.

“Let’s just go home. I’m pretty sure it’s stopped.” I say, swinging my head back and forth but inhaling so none of the blood will come out. I nearly choke.

“No it hasn’t, and if you try and draw a cock on the floor I’m leaving you to fend for yourself.” I stiffen. I know she means here, in the bathroom of this shitty bar, but I can’t help but imagine her soon saying those words more seriously. She stuck through the aftermath of my father’s funeral, she is too noble to have done anything else, but I know she’s tired. I think she is just waiting out the last two weeks of her semester and is going to leave me when I see her off at the airport.

“I would have drawn a heart for you love, but if you protesteth, I don’t have to share our passion with the whole female population who need to shit within these walls.” She rolls her eyes at me and puts her shirt back on, not making any effort to wash it off in the sink.

The blood has blended in well, but her right breast is now glistening. I look at her mouth and taste the salt again. My nostrils flare and blood is no longer dripping, but flowing, gushing, with more and more force. Holly is the only person I have talked to in three weeks. Maybe more.

“Keep your head leaned back, it’ll help.” Holly says.

50

Obeying, I also try to pull my sweater up to catch the blood, but it functions only as a threadbare sieve, the blood staining the bright yellow and continuing onto the concrete. It forms two puddles that fail to coalesce, instead following caulk filled cracks towards opposite ends of the room.

“What’d you do?” she asks with a mixture of concern and exasperation. I want her to take her shirt off again, but when she doesn’t I strip off my own. Shit. Even folded over itself my thin sweater only interrupts the stream, and in moments the fabric is heavy and saturated. I’m getting lightheaded, breathing shallowly through my mouth. Straining my eyes downward as I lean my head back and pinch the bridge of my nose, I slide my feet imprecisely towards the toilet. I don’t think Holly can tell, but I start to drink more of the blood, feeling revitalized, sober even. I think of a reverse French inhale. When I make it to the bowl the splashes are deafening. The toilet has no handle to flush and it’s full in moments. I imagine a torrential downpour in Venice. The fountains are overflowing and the drinking water is soiled. Slipping a little in the steadily rising ichor, I stumble to the sink.

“Sam. What the fuck, are you okay?” I don’t think she wants to touch me anymore. I guess I wouldn’t either. She is still and the blood has risen to the light brown uppers of her boots.

Last spring was all parks. We spent so much time in those flat and lush landscapes. I think of a Sunday night when we were having one of our picnics. I was sprawled out, waiting for her on a patchwork blanket my mother made when she was pregnant with

me. Leading a golden retriever I had never seen before by one of her bright blue belts, Holly, beaming, walked up to me. I’ve never understood her fondness for surprises.

I wait until she is right next to me to say, “Did you bring the wine?”

“You like him? He can keep me company.Your labs always go hours longer than mine.” She was giddy.

“What do you need more companionship for?”

“What, is there a thing as too much?”

“We are in a city full of people and you get a dog? It’s like paying an escort service for someone who can’t talk to you, much less fuck you.”

“Escort? Samuel, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“We can’t afford it.

“I can afford it.”

“Barely.”

“Barely still means I can afford it.”

“Is the wine in your purse? How can you take care of your dog if you can’t remember wine?”

“Pet him, you’ll love him.”

Two months later we ended up giving the dog to my mother. She calls it Matthew.

The pipes have burst. Rust particles now float in the blood that has already started to congeal at my feet. Soon I am lifted, floating by my work-boots. I flail, trying to grab Holly for support, but she has backed up against the door. I cry out.

Holly stares back at me. The blood is now steadily climbing our legs, likes vines on a trellis, twisting with purpose. I am overwhelmed by the softness in her expression, her complexion of empathy. I wish I was more like her. She pulls at the ends of her hair, like I do when I’m anxious. The bleeding slows, but the stream is still steady. Looking down at my tinted reflection, I walk towards her, cupped hands holding trembling blood like an offering.

When I was little my mom would watch me while I slept.

I was her only child, one that came in her old age after years and years of medical tests and homeopathic pills. She still has a little shrine in her closet to a relic of Saint Margaret of Antioch, a sliver of her bone on a blue cloth surrounded by well used votive candles. When she would watch me, she would turn the bone over in her hand, praying to Saint Margaret, thanking her over and over for interceding and blessing my mother so that she could conceive.

I’ve never told her I was always awake for this. One Christmas, when I was nine, I overheard her whispering about it with her own mother. She called me a miracle child.

There are a few staccato pounds at the door. Holly fixates on the handle, calling out,

“Almost done!” She clears her throat to steady her quavering voice. “Just give us a moment!”

My offering has slipped through my fingers and I crouch down to try and scoop up more. I want to paint her face, massage 51

the deep redness into her scalp. The blood won’t collect in my hands, won’t let me tame it anymore. Rather, as if pulled by more than gravity, it seeps through the cracks in my fingers faster than I can gather it. The blood has now risen pass my thighs. My nostrils begin to burn. The skin is getting worn raw.

I tell her I love her.

She grabs at my cheeks with somehow pristine hands, forcing me to look her in the eyes. I start to cry, fearing that my tears will sting, that they will also be bloody, but I’m relieved to find they are not. They fall thickly, forming tributaries that circumvent my lips, denying me a taste.

Back in August, just days after my father passed, Holly came with my mom and me to our house on Lake Michigan. The two of them drank gin on the deck together and gently mocked my childlike eating habits. I eat with my lips instead of my teeth and tongue and always use too much ketchup. After all the years my mother found it off putting. Then, Holly still found it endearing.

They toasted. They spoke of Kew Gardens, of annuals and perennials. My mother was enthralled by her grace. They are both kinder, better people than me.

Holly slackens her grip, dropping her hands to her sides.

Her fingertips trace patterns in the still rising pool. With her neck arched back to avoid getting any blood on her face, she kisses the tip of my nose. Moving with more elegance than the situation should allow, she slowly leans back until she is floating on top 52

of the blood that has now passed our waists. She reaches out to unlock the door and with the sound of metal on metal she is born out on the wave with such force that a few post-concert stragglers, haggling with roadies for set-lists, are momentarily pinned up to the front of the stage. Cold and soaking, I slosh out into the street.

Litbro Study #13 | Lauren Teixeira| Ink Drawing

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Under the High Line | Mary Zheng| Digital Photograph

Self Portrait | Lite Wei| Charcoal

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Chunk | Mary Zheng | Digital Photograph

To Whom It May Concern Connor Schake

Things have been all right. The coffee is gone from the ziplock bag that sits by the mug on my dresser. It is foggy today, and forty-two degrees. My best friend has been out of the country for forty-six days. I have not yet taught myself how to play the guitar.

The scar on my hand that my childhood dog gave me for life always tingles when I first step in the shower. I have heard that nerve endings, at least the big nerves, can never fully grow back. It goes away after a second.

The second-to-last scene was touching in the movie on Friday, when he finally came home and sat in the car in the driveway, watching, with the rain dripping down the windshield.

It is partly cloudy today, and forty-three degrees. I have always found it the longest hour, from noon to one. I have always found it just the hardest thing, that cold walk half-naked to the shower.

57

Driver’s Ed Lauren Teixeira Greg’s Driving School is located in the basement of a lowrent office building on the edge of downtown Silver Spring. Upon exiting the elevator, fluorescent ceiling panels illuminate…gray.

It’s all gray. The tables, the chairs, the coarse carpet: gray. If you get sick of the gray, you can take a break to examine the invariably morbid anti-drunk driving posters that are affixed to the right wall. It seemed a logical, if not particularly pleasant, place to spend dark November afternoons.

Amidst the gray expanse Rakeem sat in stark contrast.

Rakeem was and is the only true Rastafarian I have ever met, and certainly the only Rastafarian drivers’ education instructor I have ever met. No one bothered to ask Rakeem why he’d chosen the career path he had, but I imagine the freedom and relative lack of accountability he enjoyed were factors. During our nightly breaks he was known to pile everyone into the Greg’s Driving School evaluation car and drive to Negril, the Jamaican eatery a few minutes away. Another benefit of the job was the position it put him in to crowd-source his very specific tattoo requests. The first time he caught me working on an art assignment in class he excitedly launched into his latest tattoo idea, which he described as “Pangea reflected in a gem.” It was around this time I found out that a friend from my art program had designed the tattoo of a lion that graced Rakeem’s bicep. A second friend had a design

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in progress. Among Silver Spring 16-year-olds, Rakeem was universally considered a chill guy.

The only problem was that, for some reason, I had missed three or four of the classes of my initial session. The Greg’s Driving School policy was that you could make up classes by attending the equivalent one within a year of your registration.

Somehow, the thought “This might be a good day to make my missed drivers’ education class” was not one that I frequently entertained. When I did entertain it, I tried to ignore it. So it wasn’t until the following November that I came to make up my missed classes. Upon my return, I was disappointed to learn that Rakeem was no longer there. In his place was Mr. Bonn, an ex-cop from Hoboken, New Jersey. In short, Rakeem’s antithesis.

While Mr. Bonn was examining my file I ventured asked him where Rakeem was.

“Rakeem is….at another location,” Mr. Bonn muttered, not looking up.

The manner in which Mr. Bonn imparted this information left some ambiguity. Where was ‘another location’, exactly?

It could be another Greg’s Driving School branch. It could be another job. It could be six feet under. I withheld my follow-ups; it didn’t seem like something Mr. Bonn wanted to discuss further.

Mr. Bonn blended into his surroundings to the same degree that Rakeem stood out from them. Like the rest of the classroom, he was gray. His face and hair were gray and he and

wore gray sweatshirts. He tended to settle in behind his tiny desk with a gravity usually reserved for interrogation rooms, in which I imagined he had also spent some time. Unlike Rakeem, Mr. Bonn made it clear he was a stickler for the curriculum and did not support artistic endeavors in class. Because of this I assumed my make-up sessions were going to be the tedious lectures I had avoided in Rakeem’s class a year ago. This did not turn out to be the case.

In my estimation about 50% of driver’s education is technical, while the other 50% is devoted to some variation on the idea of “Don’t do stupid shit and drive.” Lessons in this category tend to include things like: Don’t drink and drive; don’t do drugs and drive; don’t text while driving; don’t sleep while driving; you get the idea. It’s all pretty intuitive, and, unless you have an inspired teacher, probably pretty boring to the average student.

Fortunately, Mr. Bonn was an ex-cop from Hoboken, New Jersey, and he had plenty of anecdotes from his career with which to supplement these lessons. The most memorable of these was a story involving a car and mattress.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, they just got married and they go to the Mattress Warehouse to buy a mattress. They don’t want to pay for it to get delivered, so they strap it onto the top of their car with bungee cords….like idiots.”

I knew this wasn’t going anywhere good.

“What do they do next? They go driving home down

I-95….like idiots.”

What happened next was that the mattress fell off the roof, causing the guy driving behind them to swerve and crash into the people in his blind spot. The class sat in silence. All of us were going to get our mattresses delivered from now on.

Mr. Bonn possessed a seemingly endless supply of horrifying cautionary tales, from the couple who locked themselves in a heated car to fool around and suffocated to death, to the man on PCP who crashed his motorcycle and then charged the cops with a bone sticking out of his leg. I imagined a dead look in his eyes as he told these stories, although it could have just been the fluorescent lights.

Under Mr. Bonn’s tutelage I graduated from Greg’s Driving School with a 100% score on my final exam. It was some muchneeded momentum; at this point my learner’s permit was due to expire in another year. Unfortunately, I turned out to be much better at the academic part of driving than the driving part of driving. I did not fathom the long road ahead of me. ***

The Maryland road test works like this: For every mistake you make, the instructor gives you points. Certain mistakes will get you more points than others. The moment you get over 8 points, you fail. The test has two portions: a skills portion and an on-road portion. For the first part, you must demonstrate your ability to parallel park and perform a three-point turn in what is basically a giant parking lot. If you do this without failing, you are 59

asked to drive around in the area surrounding the MVA facility so the examiner can observe your ability to negotiate traffic. If, by the time you finish the on-road portion, you still haven’t blown 8 points, you get your Maryland provisional driver’s license.

The day of my first road test came. Sitting in the MVA, waiting for my number to be called, I realized I had no idea what to expect. I was going to fail. When it was my turn to take the test, my heart began to pound in my chest. The first thing my examiner asked me to do was parallel park. On the street outside my house, I’d practiced parallel parking between two garbage cans about 100 times. But with my anxiety in full force, I couldn’t parallel park for my life. An ocean stretched between my Honda Civic and the curb, far in excess of the acceptable maximum of 10 inches. The examiner proceeded to serve me with a phrase I would come to dread: “I need you to put the vehicle in park and hand me your keys.”

“I need you to put the vehicle in park” is the “You’re fired” of Maryland road tests.You already know you’re done for, but they say it anyway. The most humiliating aspect of it all is that, upon failing, you are deemed incapable of driving back to the start point. If you’d just failed the skills portion, like I had, the start point was about 20 feet away.

But I would not be defeated. I scheduled a test for the next month, which is about the soonest you can ever schedule a new test in Maryland. This would be the one, I thought. I had heard somewhere that most people fail their first license test. This time 60

the test began with a three-point turn instead of parallel parking. I had not been expecting this. I attempted to back up into the spot but my angle was too shallow. I promptly knocked over a cone.

My examiner asked me to put my vehicle put in park.

After my second failure there was not enough time to schedule a new test before I left for college. I went to college licenseless. Over winter break, my I let learners’ permit expired quietly. I renewed it over spring break, more determined than ever. ***

Around the time I failed my third test, well-meaning friends began to share with me a BBC article about a Korean woman who took the written driving exam 950 times before she passed it. I appreciated the gesture but found little consolation in it. What where they trying to tell me? That if I persisted, I would probably get my license within the 950th try? At the rate you can schedule road tests in Maryland, I would probably die before then.

Besides, Cha Sa-Soon needed her license so she could start selling vegetables out of a truck. I wanted a license so I could stop asking my parents for rides. It made me feel petty.

I scheduled a fourth test for July. In the intervening weeks my dad drilled me daily on parallel parking. If I protested, he would ask me if I really wanted to get my drivers’ license.

The answer was, of course, yes. For weeks on end, after dinner we would haul out the trash cans and I would practice parking between them for 20 to 30 minutes. Neighbors on evening walks flashed me knowing smiles. I returned them through gritted teeth.

You don’t understand, I wanted to say. I am not a tender 16 year old preparing for her first driving test. I am nearly 19 years old. I am a chronic failure.

I had a good feeling about my fourth test from the start.

I’d scheduled it to take place at the Largo MVA location, which I’d never been to before but regarded favorably. And my examiner was an older man who didn’t seem bent on failing me. He noticed me shaking at the wheel and told me to relax. I tried as hard as I could but it was no use. Instead I attempted to channel my energy into concentrating on the skills test. I executed my three-point turn with relative ease. Then it was time to parallel park. I let muscle memory take over. Breathing deeply, I watched myself pull even with the cones and then made a hard right turn. My examiner opened his passenger door and informed me that I had successfully entered the space.

I couldn’t believe it. I was going to proceed to the on-road portion of the test. This was the promised land. Or at least, the promised exurbia. But the alien environment made me panic. I worried I would accidentally go three miles above the speed limit and fail. I would never forgive myself. I became obsessed with staying at 25. For some reason this had the effect of me starting to slow down in intersections. Maybe I didn’t want to hit anyone. I don’t know. My examiner pointed out to me I had slowed down in an intersection. This made me panic further. I slowed down even more in the next intersection. I heard myself being asked to please pull over and hand over the keys to me vehicle. My examiner shook his head. I should never slow down in intersections. I

opened my mouth to protest but I was already choking back tears.

He drove me back to the MVA. I hadn’t been very far from it at all.

In the car on the way back home, I let the floodgates open.

I bawled. Why couldn’t I just do this simple thing? I wanted to be a normal member of society. I wanted to be able to flash my drivers’ license at airports and pick my brother up from school. I was useless. My dad looked at me with a mixture of pity and disgust.

“Maybe this is just your cross to bear,” he said. God, what a stupid cross to bear.

The day of my fifth test arrived. I woke up nervous. One of the problems with my driving test anxiety was that every time I failed a test, the stakes increased. Every time I failed, I had less time to schedule a new one and even less dignity. Thus I approached every test more nervous than I had been for the previous one. On the day of the fifth test I was a complete wreck before we even got in the car to drive to Largo. It was now or never. If I didn’t get my license before going back to school, I sensed, I would never get it.

One of the things I forgot to mention about license tests is that, between getting your paperwork accepted and beginning your test, you have about an hour of waiting time.You spend it in the in the slowest, longest drive-thru line in the world, inching up slightly whenever someone’s time comes. If you suffer from severe driving test-induced anxiety, like I do, this wait does you no favors. Rather than subsiding, the nervousness festers. It rises and 61

crashes in waves in the pit of your stomach. By the time you’re at the front of the line you are absolutely sure you will fail.You are already despairing. And yet, somewhere in the back of your head, you still hope against hope.

My examiner plopped into the passenger seat and began to intently fill out paperwork. He did not look over at me. I couldn’t tell anything about him other than he was large and bald. I looked at my dad, who was standing outside the passenger window, waiting to give insurance information. Finally, my examiner asked me for my learners permit. Upon examining it he broke into a smile.

“TEIXEIRA,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied. This was my last name.

“You related to Mark?” My dad and I are familiar with this line of inquiry. Most people don’t know how to pronounce my last name, but if they do, it is because of the Yankees baseball player, Mark Teixeira.

“We like to tell people he’s a cousin,” my dad said.

My examiner burst out laughing. Then he gave me a conspiratorial look and the proffered the MVA employee ID that hung on a lanyard around his neck.

It said that his name was Michael Jordan.

“Wow,” I said. He then showed it to my dad. My dad laughed appreciatively.

The interaction had been entertaining, but it did not put 62

me at ease. I wanted to start. Finally, after some discussion of Mark Teixeira’s recent performance with my dad, Mr. Jordan commenced the test.

I was shaking. Mr. Jordan told me not be nervous.

“This is my fifth test,” I blurted in response.Mr. Jordan raised an eyebrow but told me to proceed.

At the stop sign I paused for three beats. I swiveled my head right and left like a goddamn owl.

“I am looking for traffic,” I told Mr. Jordan.

“Okay,” he said.

“Anything, really. Children playing. People on bikes. Stray cats.”

“Okay.”

The first test was the three-point turn. I performed it easily.

“Good job,” said Mr. Jordan.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Please try to calm down.”

“This is my fifth test.”

We proceeded to the parallel parking test. I pulled even with the cone. Before backing into the space I made sure to swivel my head around to check for traffic.

“Checking for traffic,” I told Mr. Jordan. Mr. Jordan gave me another eyebrow.I put the car in reverse. I thought of the dozens of hours of practice with the garbage cans my dad and I had endured. Would this be the end?

Mr. Jordan opened his passenger side window. “Looks a little wide,” he said.

“I think it’s in,” I said automatically. My brain froze. This could not be real. Mr. Jordan shrugged and got out his measuring stick.

“Nine inches. Good call,” Mr. Jordan said. My brain unfroze. There was still hope.

It was time, again, for the on-road portion of the test. At the stop sign before the merge onto Dale I was shaking again.

“You don’t need to be nervous,” Mr. Jordan tried, for the last time.

“This is my fifth test.” It was all I had to say.

This was it. I tried to focus and let my three years of driving experience guide me. With sweaty hands I flicked on turn signals and merged into adjacent lanes. I yielded for pedestrians and slowed down at speed bumps. I resisted mightily the temptation to slow down in intersections. I followed the speed limit. I swiveled my head whenever I was about to do anything.

And then I was done. I had finished the on-road portion of the test and not been asked to pull over. I had kept my keys. I had kept my vehicle.

I pulled up to the Largo MVA. “Congratulations,” Mr. Jordan told me. “You have passed your Maryland drivers’ skills test.” I looked at him. I tried to smile. I couldn’t. “Thank you,” was all I could say.

63

Year Emily Mester of the stain, the talon, small fames, year of pining, of the ocean crossed thrice but never touched year of my mother, becoming yours year of children and year of rolling around. year of lush and villainy. year of tolerances.

of pleasure in sweetness, yes but also in the act of tearing it apart.

year of scraps which the air called confetti and the ground called garbage, which the poet called ennui and the body called inertia, which i called us and you called that.

year of dancing, still, once in a flood and once with a pickpocket and once with you tugging my sleeve, all shrugs and driftwood.

year of shoulders, hair, of curling, confusing fever dreams for my to-do list. year of mmm and ahhh and uggh, year of whispering please don’t rob me into the pillow, bodies laced in venn diagrams of need.

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year of sap, mush, fruit, and slop the heart ripening in the peel of night. year

year of too many syllables transmogrification of pleasure and pain made ornate china cabinets of anxieties.

watch. One of them struggles to remove her heel, “what is this?

Do you see this?”

The other women crowd her like flies to a light, a chorus of high pitched concern, “those heels were new! Oh Trish I’m so sorry, honey, just breathe. My sister knows someone who can Linnea Hurst clean satin heels in Fondren.”

“What is this stuff? Is it paint? I can’t believe this town is so

She runs at night, because she could be anywhere. The filthy that there is just liquid running in the streets. I am bringing pale sidewalk and plastic swings muted and unfamiliar, outlines this to town counsel,” Trish says. Watching these women avoid the illuminated only by the faint yellow of street lamps. An ocean of pink syrup that floods down the sidewalk, the girl isn’t surprised. darkness swallows up the corn fields, red lights flashing on and

Strange substances come and go in this town. She has off from the far shore. The air smells of salt. Those nights were known this since her childhood. The day she lost her first tooth like being caught on the precipice of waking when your brain is dead squirrels littered the streets, so thick in some places the still unfurling, things not yet fully existing. She ran straight into a pavement was not visible. The night of her eighth grade graduation tree once. She was shocked at its solid form and the taste of rust that pooled in her mouth, warm and sudden. After those runs she the air smelled of a family van after a long vacation. The smell became so overpowering and the air so humid the ceremony had would often dream of lions. Lions that ran towards her, moving to be moved inside. For weeks after her hair smelled of juice boxes so fast their manes singed. Although she never moved and they and something rotten. kept running and running, paws splaying out like sea stars, they The next day on her walk to school a group of crows take never reached her. Their eyes were black beetles encased in amber, flight from the telephone wire, wings beating air all at once. The unblinking.

One day she runs past a group of tall women in sundresses. black mass suspends over her, their piercing calls muffled by rows Their tan and brawny arms tote take out bags, their heels echoing and rows of dead corn stalks. She does not notice the pink until she steps in it. It pulsates on the ground, a stain of color on an against cobble. They remind her of the girls in the hallways of her high school, scanning for someone to impress or laugh about. otherwise blank canvas. She slowly dips one finger into the syrup, expecting it to feel warm.Yet it cool, cooler even than the air Their heads constantly tilted at a slight angle to pick up on the around her. undertone of each other’s whispers. Sometimes none of their

Far in the distance she notices man’s silhouette. He is mouths move, yet the whispers still follow them, a faint rotting odor, barely detectable. Now the tall women have passed her, but the tallest thing for miles, his hunched spine and thin frame formidable against open sky. He shuffles to his mailbox, gravel she hears their screeches and stops running to turn around and

Vacancy

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lodging between his slippers. He struggles with the mailbox lid, shaking it back and forth until the whole metal box rattles. His bathrobe is whipped by the wind, twisting around him like a barn cat. He tugs one last time and the lid gives way, springing open with such force his one letter falls onto the gravel. He bends slowly, the creases around his eyes deepening with familiar pain.

The letter is covered in a thin pink film. He walks slowly back to the house and rips the letter open. He holds the contents at arm’s length, now closer, then further again.

“Do you know what it is?” She asks, pointing to the ground.

Usually she would have said hello—that’s what people do around here— but the air today held no room for greetings.

He barely looks up as he replies, “Seen it before. Long time ago. Helped the crops grow but killed Merlin when he ate it.” He keeps shuffling down the driveway. His robe drags behind him, heavy with the pink syrup that hours later will dry into a crust.

She does not linger to ask who Merlin was. Without the old man the skyline threatens to swallow her, and she walks faster. In school the dried film on her finger rains flakes throughout the day. She leaves pink on the indoor track, on the tiled cafeteria floor.

“And let this be an example to the rest of the class that a perfect grade on this test was possible. So I don’t want to hear anymore complaining,” her biology teacher says as he smiles down at her. Snot quivers on the edge of his nose. She focuses on this droplet, and how it refuses to fall, but simply wavers back and forth as the last of the pink crumbles and collects in a pile onto the floor beneath her.

“She is probably sucking his dick,” a girl behind her whispers to her friends. They snicker, rustling and shaking like 66

leaves in the wind.

As she walks home from school she spots the pink again, slinking along cracks in the sidewalk. She follows its trail past her street. She imagines her home, and her mother perched on the kitchen counter, idle and waiting for someone to bang open the screen door and bypass her for the fridge. For her mother, the three minutes of stilted conversation is a feast.

When she is blocks from her house, in a neighbourhood with porches and wider sidewalks, she stops to dip her pinky in the syrup again. She likes how the syrup tightens as it dries, hugging her flesh. She wants somebody to ask her about it. She continues following the pink until it leads her to the outskirts of the college campus. As she takes in the island of green and brick, she recalls throwing her small body across the grass here long ago in a game of tag. She was too young to know that this was a place you didn’t go. People here were from were from big cities and would go back to them as soon as they graduated. They were the reason for broken glass sirens late at night. Mothers would not let you leave the house again— don’t even think about college—if you went to one of their parties.

She steps onto campus, leaving the pink to flow on down the street. With nothing to follow she stands still, waiting. Two figures sprawl in front of her, heads bent over their reading.

One of them turns, and she rubs her thumb violently against the artificial smooth of her pinky as his eyes meet her own.

“Yo, sick sweater,” he says, his gaze focusing on the stitched reindeer on her chest. “Festive, I like that.” She nods and looks down at the reindeer. She had forgotten about this sweater, throwing it on in the dark rush of morning without thought.

“Thanks,” she says.

He sits up and rotates his hips on the grass towards hers.

His friend rises and stuffs his reading into his backpack, papers sticking out like unkempt hair. He stands up too, and she takes a step backwards.

“Walk me to class?” He asks. As they walk she watches girls with wool socks swerve to avoid each other on bikes. Life is faster here. Where she expects corn stalks, pink and purple plants she has never seen before grow. He holds the door open to a brick building and a steady stream of students file through. “I’ve got philosophy,” he says. She isn’t sure how to respond so she just nods, as if she is familiar with his schedule. “Alright, see you later” he says, and slips her a number. She never saw him write it down.

On her walk home she searches for the pink. She doesn’t find it though, accompanied only by long grasses that shudder as she passes. The sky easily blends with the asphalt, one solid wall of grey. She stops alongside the road and the grasses quiet. “Want to hang out later tonight?” she presses send before she can think, the red lights across the corn fields winking at her. The wind picks up again and the grasses hum, “be afraid, afraid, afraid.”

As she brushes her teeth he texts her back, “Yeah. 9823 Pine Street. Come over now.” She stares at the words until they don’t make sense. She brushes her teeth for too long in fast and strong strokes, not noticing her gums bleeding until she spits, red tendrils expanding into the frothy mint.

Later that night she pauses for a moment in the familiar warmth of her home. She then expertly guides the door to the frame without making a sound and begins to walk. She jumps at a truck rumbling past, the wave of air it leaves in its wake making

her feel very lonely.

The house he lives in house is small and white. She enters as one would a home that is not their own, balancing on one foot awkwardly as she removes her shoes. She waits to follow him around unfamiliar corners into the kitchen, or the living room.

Yet after letting her in, he disappears up the stairs. She finds her own way to the kitchen where she waits like an animal caught in headlights for one of his roommates to stumble in, bleary eyed.

Yet it is only him who comes downstairs. He sits and looks at her, saying nothing. “So, where are you from?” She asks. She is still wearing the reindeer sweater, but now it is itchy and embarrassing.

“I’m from San Francisco, you ever been there?” When she shakes her head he asks her nothing further. The silence makes her teeth ache and she suddenly feels very hot. She shrugs off her sweater, and when she re-emerges his face is very close. His lips press against her own, tongue filling her mouth again and again. She sits perfectly still and keeps her eyes open, hearing crows calling outside. His hand quickly travels up her thigh as his other finds its way to the back of her neck, forcing her to stand.

She struggles to find her balance as she follows him as he walks upstairs. “Was San Francisco a fun city to grow up in?” She asks.

She forgot what his voice sounds like, and she needs something to grab hold of.

“Of course,” he says. She starts to laugh, not knowing why.

He shushes her, “Dude, my roommate has an exam tomorrow. We have to be quiet.”

The next morning as she walks home a plastic bag follows her. It floats momentarily as it fills with air, and then empties again to skid along the pavement. It finally snags on the branch 67

of a bush, a contorted white corpse. A group of tall women round the corner, huffing and puffing and arms swinging. She has just emerged from underwater and their voices are much too loud, their neon pink spandex too bright. Their eyes take in her wrinkled clothes and messy hair. Her hands tremble, and she can only think of pigeons, their hearts beating frantically and in unison.

At home in her own bed she lays down for ten minutes before her mother opens the door. “I bought new cheerios and they’re on the top shelf, but we’re out of milk,” she says. The door closes again. Later, as she walks to school she sees them. They emerge from the white house one by one. They continue down the sidewalk towards the college while he stops to unlock his bike.

She is near now, and he stands up and meets her gaze. She raises one hand and smiles slightly. His eyes hold no recognition, and he bends back down.

In class that day her hands are the soft interior of a snail without its shell. She leaves before biology to protect them, surprised how easy it is to walk off the school grounds and enter her empty house. She lies on the couch, buoyant and drifting. She sees red lights blinking again and again until they disappear, the shoreline far away. Instead of water she floats in a mass of black crows, their hot bodies writhing under her weight. At the dinner table she dislodges herself, unhinging from her mother’s relentless words and the father’s easy silence. She stays this way inside her own house, able to carve out a pit in her center that cold air whistles through and her cat attempts to curl up in. Like a limb, she memorizes the weight and shape of this vacancy. She sleeps curled on her side, dreaming of nothing but tall grass rubbing 68

against each other, “we warned you, we warned you.”

She likes to run at sunset and watch as the rest of the world settles into their evenings. She passes families eating dinner and couples intertwined on the couch, the light of the television illuminating their faces. Crows sit on the telephone wires. At the end of the day even they no longer have the energy to take flight.

But they still cry out at once as she runs beneath them, heads cocking back and forth to assess her with their beady eyes. One day she stops to stare up at them, and then she screams. Her lungs have never felt this full, and the crows are silent.

A little boy presses into the earth, reaching deeper and deeper until his hands are absorbed by soil. He sings softly under his breath, uttering words only he knows. He lisps slightly and sings faster now, his high voice distilled in the air. Running his tongue along the gap in the front of his mouth he smiles.Yesterday as he was eating his pancakes he bit down on something solid. He was scared at first that parts of his body were falling out, leaving behind pockets of exposed flesh. But his mother reminded him that they would grow back, stronger than before, permanent this time. He whispers this word under his breath, “permanent, permanent.”

Pink flows down the embankment near him and parts around his skinny wrists, then quickly reforming its single stream.

It travels fast, rolling over itself and leaving behind a thin film. He does not lift his hands from the earth but leans down and licks what is left behind, the remnants of the pink tasting of the cider he got after his last t-ball game. Sweet and a little salty, apple mixed with sweat that dripped off his upper lip. His mother watches her son prostrated on the ground, head bent low. She notices a

girl running towards them. The girl almost slips in the steam of pink, now trickling down the lowest point in the sidewalk. She does not seem surprised however, her brow relaxing as she kneels down. The little boy and the girl hunch together now, heads nearly touching. His mother can’t see their faces, or hear what is being said. Eventually the girl rises and smiles like the movement of a porch swing in August, slow and easy. The sun is setting, red and yellow brimming over the horizon and into the fields. Even decay can be made to look brilliant.

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The Brother Clare Boerigter I went south to find Avi. They wanted me to bring him out of the wilderness.

I said, I’ll do what I can. I said, I’ll try.

And I took the Ford Ranger and I headed down to Moab on Interstate 15. Avi had sent a postcard to our mother from Arches National Park; she’d gotten it a week after his twenty-second birthday. The last word, and that had been back in June.

I couldn’t decide which was the worst bit: that out of the fifteencard set, he’d mailed her one of a minor formation—not Delicate Arch or Landscape Arch or even the Three Gossips—or that it said at the bottom, in fat block letters, ‘SEE AMERICA,’ when he’d been seeing America for the last nineteen months.

I’ve never seen a woman cry so hard as my mother did with that thing in her hand. And I’d just broken up with Charlene. I’d thought I knew crying. …

When Avi was seven, he fell out of the pine tree in front of our house. I’d been up at the top, watching Mr. Mariah run the horses 70

into the corral, their sweat-darked flanks as yet unmarked by the brand. When Avi’d hit, he’d hit like a sack of guts, and then I’d looked down properly and seen that his head was about a handspan away from the concrete driveway. I’d dropped quick from branch to branch to branch until I was dropped down to the ground beside him.

And Avi had looked up at me with those great big eyes of his, and I’d started to bawl and snot all over myself.

“Luce,” he’d said, grabbing at my ponytail. I was the sister who didn’t cry, not when my fingers got slammed in the door or a fishing hook got caught in the thick of my cheek. “It’s alright!” and he spread out his arms like he’d been nailed down right there on the grass. “It’s fine.” But I was still blubbering, thinking about his skull on the drive like a bone-chip puzzle.

And Avi’s cow-long lashes flicked over his eyes once, twice, right before he smiled. …

I’d never seen anything like the Great Salt Lake. The blue of the water melting into the blue of the sky, and everywhere a sheet of salt as fine as dust. There were tracks out into it, trucks churning salt until their wheels sank and they were caught halfway between the pave and the water, and then the doors would flex open like a great bird drying its wings. Or that’s how I thought it would be when I read the sign: NO OFF ROAD DRIVING. I kept looking through my side window, waiting to see a jeep mired to its belly, but all I saw for those hours were the whorls in the covered earth, the salty flutter from white to pink before the shore dove under

the lake.

I took a hotel in Lehi, Utah. Mormon country, more or less. On the radio: Lord Jesus, teach me how to die. It was a nicer hotel than I’d wanted, but the clouds had turned and the wind was driving the dust and my eyes were sore in their sockets from all the seeing. The pretty girl behind the desk sold me a room for the night and apologized for the Temple Square Orchestra, bangles slid high on her thin, freckled arms.

bring his sleeping bag from the house to be with me. It was a thing about my brother—maybe because I’d known him before he rightfully knew himself—that I felt I could say anything to Avi. I think it was the same for him, and though he never did talk directly then about leaving, I imagine it was always there. A restlessness as though something gnawed him on the inside. …

It was like crossing a wasteland, that final stretch into Moab, the Book Cliffs a far-flung border between sky and sand, the highway “We’re so lucky to get them in Lehi for the first part of their tour,” running on straight as a ruler-edge. And then, like the great spines she’d said, tasting the corners of her mouth with her tongue. of things, the red rocks broke from the ground.

“Although the banquet hall is less soundproof then we thought.” A careful pause, Avi was fairly remarkable. The Janes for the coloring, the Morrows “Do you mind?” for the build. I had six photos of him, and I showed the best one— Avi with a cutthroat trout in each hand—to the park ranger in I could hear them practicing as I showered, the swell rising up the Arches Visitor Center. She took it and looked for a long, long through the floor. When the storm knocked the lights out, the time. strings never faltered. I was thinking about Charlene when it happened, about the first time I’d seen her, me coming out of the “We get a lot of folks coming through here, ma’am,” she said gas station with nightcrawlers in plastic, her running by, black hair uncertainly. “Have you talked to the police?” switching against her back. And in the dark and in the water, this is how I listened.

She had delicate skin as though someone had taken vellum and … stretched it over her face bones. Age would set easy on her in a Avi would pick me up when he was bothered. He was fifteen and way that it hadn’t on my aunt or my uncle or my mother, in a way hitting his growth. that it wouldn’t on Avi or me. Not with all the sun, all the weather.

That summer, I helped tend Uncle Bill’s cattle for hours so long I thought it was people that looked funny, no hides and no hooves.

I took to sleeping outside and every few nights a week, Avi would

“He’s not missing, exactly,” I said, touching fingers to my bad elbow. I found some things were hard to tell people: about the way my aunt prayed every night at the dinner table—For Avi, Lord, 71

that you look after Avi; about the two Barkley brothers my uncle’d bridge? You want that,” there was a grin in his voice. “Scenic State hired—money we didn’t have for work Avi should have been there Route 128 along our mighty Colorado.” to be doing.

Route 128 followed the Colorado into lightlessness. The river had She gave her head a little shake, gazing again at Avi in print. It was worn itself into a canyon bed—I pictured this, the slow weight a good photo, his hair backlit by the sun, all gold and red in color. of the water over the rocks over the years—the sandstone walls like a chute to the sky. Nothing else could get in. I felt something “You should really look into filing a missing persons report,” she moving along the backs of my legs, along the naped bit of my pushed it across the glass counter. neck, and it could have been the clean rise of black or it could have been the whiskey.

But it was all there, I could see it in the picture. My brother, who I’d once known like myself.

Twenty minutes later, Eddie yelled at me to bank a left, and I jerked the truck into one of the slender campsites between the “There a lot of bars in Moab, Ranger?” road and the river. Before I could shut the truck off, a boy on the … ground was floodlighted in a white roar.

On the wall, someone had stapled an 8 x 10 of Brigham Young beside a list of Utah’s liquor laws. Written in red ink at the top: “Go to bed with the sun,” Eddie muttered as he stepped out. “Ellis, Welcome to the Booze Blues State. I touched the rendering of that you?”

Brigham, the solid spread of his face. He looked so young.

“Fuck off,” the kid mumbled.

“Better drink up,” Eddie said from behind me. “Like I told you, these boys go to bed early.”

Eddie prodded a boot into spine-bones. “We’re going to borrow you a sec.”

I slid whiskey onto my tongue, felt the spread of heat around my teeth, then down the line of my throat. Paid the tab. Followed I took my headlamp from the glove compartment and the photos Eddie out. He got into the passenger seat as I spun the dial on the of Avi from the visor. Eddie was sunk down on his haunches, dash, headlights breaking the night air into dust and particle. laughing.

“Take the main drag out of Moab.You saw the road cut off after the “You say you’re looking for somebody?” Ellis called after a minute.

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“He’d have been at Arches in June,” I stretched my eyes wide; I’d only seen a red cap and a dark jaw. “A climber.”

In the silence, I heard Ellis’s breath cycling through his chest, up his lungs and out the shell of his mouth. There were more of them in the camp, men strewn on ground pads further down towards the Colorado. Catching sleep for another day, another climb.

took a piss behind the Ranger somewhere in that sea of miles, and dragging my jeans back over my hips, I felt the rush of that desperate place come over me like dust.

“You haven’t seen a rez until you’ve see this rez,” I said into the receiver. I was talking to the machine; no one was home to pick up the landline at mid-morning, and there was no such thing as cell service. Not even Verizon or AT&T had taken interest in setting up “He wouldn’t have liked Arches, the person I’m looking for,” I said. towers for the unincorporateds like Fenn, Elk City or Kooskia.

“He’d have been mad about the road and the RVs and the picnic tables. Taking the wild right out of a place like that, he’d say.”

“And all shit land, of course,” I licked mayonnaise off my knuckles.

“But anyway, I just wanted to say I’m fine and the Arches park And I could almost see my brother, the huge spread of his rangers were very helpful.” shoulders, the hitch in his eyebrow, the white-gloss scar run up his wrist to his forearm.

Outside, three boys loped down the sidewalk on stick-legs, a man with a megaphone yelling at them from a car.

“You’re looking for Avi Morrow,” Ellis said quick into the dark.

“How’d you know him?”

“Sounds like Avi’s in Sedona.You know, the place Uncle Bill used to talk about because of all that mystical crap about vortexes,” the I shouldered into my shirt as the wind came cold off the water: phone pinged. “I’m down on time but tell Charlene I put a box—” “I’m his sister.” …

I hung up, wiping the grease off my palms. Pretty soon I’d be I called my mother from the gas station phone in Tuba City. hitting US-89 and pushing southward. I didn’t have to, of course.

I’d driven south through the snow-blued La Sal Mountains, The choice was mine. If instead I dogged it west, I could nose my crossed the border into Arizona on US-160 and come onto way up to the Grand Canyon. Get a view of things. reservation land more vast and more pure than I could ever have imagined. Mesas swept the yellow earth, and signs—ENTERING We’d been once, Avi and me, on a school trip. Jennie Fields had NAVAJO INDIAN RESERVATION, ENTERING HOPI INDIAN gotten sick all over the bus, and everyone had spent the rest of the RESERVATION—were the only companions to the road. I day smelling like it. But Avi never remembered that part when he 73

told about the Grand Canyon. He’d say about the deepness of it, and he’d say about the shelves dropping away down at the bottom so that you never could know if what you were seeing was the actual canyon floor. He’d read on one of the boards that the great rock spires rising out of the Grand Canyon were called hoodoos, and I’d had to listen to him mumbling it to himself, over and over, for the whole ride home. …

It was being angry really, that had me in the barber chair, a man with scissors taking most of my hair off. I think he felt some of that too, by the way he cut at it in long, vicious strokes.

Avi wasn’t in Sedona.

I’d hauled out to Damfino Canyon, Marges Draw, Coffee Pot Rocks. I’d thrown down at a different campground every night for the last two weeks, waiting for the climbers to start talking. I’d fried my bottom lip so bad out in the sun that when I went into the Sedona supermarket, kids had started to stare at the blister.

“Could you take off a little more of this?”

He nodded, mumbling something that sounded apologetic. Hair was hair was hair, that was my thinking, even when Charlene would whine and tell me to leave it be.

“You mind me asking what brought this on, miss?” the man questioned, chopping at my bangs.

I forced myself to take a steady breath. “Just convenience really,” and I smiled. “Going to be doing a lot of camping in the next few weeks, looks like. Anymore of that hair and I would have strangled myself in it.”

“Mighty practical,” he sighed. “But it does seem like a shame.” And then, as though he were almost embarrassed, “Your mother will be sad to see you’ve lost so much pretty hair.”

The last time my mother had said anything to me about my hair “And you say, you want all of this off?” was when I was thirteen and had gotten sap into it. I’d always thought that if it wasn’t for the screaming, she’d have torn great The biggest hank of it was already on the tile floor. He’d clipped fistfuls of it out, because like she said, that was the easiest way the sides pretty tight, and now he was looking at me in the mirror, with hair and tree sap. wide eyed, as though he couldn’t believe what he himself had done. I bucked my chin, the top curls falling over like a forelock.

Out on the street, it felt funny, and I kept running my hand There’d been a chart of old barbershop classics in the front: the from nape to skullcap for the prick of it on my palms. I stared Brush Cut, the Burr, the High and Tight. I’d forever know my in through the storefront of a New Age shop, a refraction of my uncle by the Regulation. image filtered in crystal.

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Like brother, like sister. I was the closest thing to Avi I’d seen in months. …

She reminded me of Charlene. If I drank enough, she could remind me of Charlene. It was there in her bare shoulders: in the shallow divots of bone and muscle, her sweeping collarbones like spread wings. And I watched and I remembered, Charlene and the tease of sinew under skin, of that motion and that buried strength.

“Goddammit,” I exhaled. I was thinking about hips, how they rose out of a woman when she was flat on her back; how her legs held together, ankle to shin to knee. I wanted to say something to her.

Did she remember what it felt like to fit mouths together? Or what good hands were for?

Pull Charlene’s split ends, move over her, trace along her hairline with a nosetip. Where’s the softest skin?, I’d ask against her, and she’d laugh, the whole of her rising and falling like a series of waves.

Once at the beginning, she’d taken the earrings from my ears, right there in the middle of the room, and that was how I’d know.

She’d find me, the day on me as dirt and horsehair, and she’d take my earrings off. …

Someone was knocking against the side of the Ranger’s topper. I was face down in my work coat, the lined inside hot beneath my stomach. In the closed expanse of the truck bed, the fishing poles and saddle blankets and boot polish gave off a familiar fragrance as though I were home again, and outside the old shapes of Deadwood Mountain and Pilot Knob would be flung back against the sky.

“Sorry to be the wakeup call,” he was talking to me from the other side of the tinted glass. “But you were asking around for somebody?”

I shoved up into a sitting position: “You seen him?”

“No,” he said clearly, and I stopped with my shorts half-on. “But I got an idea where he might be, people he might have run in to.”

I bought a drink for the woman and her bare shoulders. I looked at her, and if I’d had a chance, I would have taken her somewhere and I pulled my shirt from the makeshift bed, popped up the back thought about fucking her. Something to get the taste of Charlene window on the topper, and climbed out. It was late morning; out of my mouth. the campsite nearly empty. There was a dark ring in the grit and shavings by the back tire where I must have crawled out to pee. I “Don’t you ever get tired of whiskey in water bottles?” Charlene couldn’t really remember. had yelled. “Everyone but you knows you’re a sloppy drunk.”

“My name’s Cedar,” he held out a hand. “And I think you should go 75

to Bishop.”

He was short for a man like I was tall for a woman: considerably.

His skin and hair were dark, and above his lip was one of the finest mustaches I had ever seen.

“Bishop?”

“US-95,” Cedar nodded. “Takes you all the way—a bomb test site on one side and Death Valley on the other.” He smiled at me, “Always a fun drive.” …

I could see Las Vegas. Beside me, Cedar groaned. He had been tapping the dashboard, lacing his plain voice with the radio.

“In California. Everyone goes through there at some point,” he continued. “Or knows somebody who has. If he’s not here, I’d say Bishop’s a bet worth money.”

“And there she is. We’ll get through Vegas, then pull over after Beatty.You haven’t camped out,” he added, “until you’ve done it in Death Valley.”

“You a rock climber?” I asked.

I squinted into the rising dark, “It’s what, only seven hours from here to Bishop? That’s an easy slide.”

He grinned, “I boulder. Bishop’s got rocks like you wouldn’t believe.”

The sunlight was playing with my eyes. Cedar looked varnished in the heat, his muscles slicked with tree shade. Around his neck hung a small carved cross.

“I’m not going to lie to you,” he told me. “I could use a ride there pretty bad, but that doesn’t make what I’m saying untrue.” He gestured with a chalky hand, “Ask anybody.”

Avi. I stood there and thought: I cannot go back without Avi. I pictured the road atlas under the passenger seat. “What’s that, I-40 and then something across Nevada?”

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“Nah.You’ll thank me for this.” Cedar turned to study me, “You said you’re what, twenty-six? And this is your first time in the true Southwest?”

I flicked my eyes from mirror to mirror to mirror; another semi route. “Some people have to work.”

“Ranching’s a full time gig, huh?” He rubbed his nose. “Well, no thank you. Once I got out of Muskegon, I said to myself, ‘This life’s a one-shot deal now, so live it how you want.’” He frowned at his knees: “And here I am.”

Cedar made crash pads for boulderers; when they fell out of the sky, no ropes to keep them, they’d meet with his mat before they met with the ground. He’d waggled his fingers at me—the only

things long on him, to my measure—and told me his needle technique was spectacular.

“Alison Krauss!” Cedar punched at the volume: “I’m just an old hound dog, roamin’ around, oh lawwwd!” I laughed as his deep voice jumped after the refrain, “I’ve got all this, and heaven above…”

Up ahead, Las Vegas was beginning to glow. …

I’d been with Cedar out under the starred, unreckoned sky, carving trenches in the sand for where I wanted to put my legs— and then somehow I was sitting on Avi’s chest, something small about me on that big bone plate of his. It was dark in the basement at Uncle Bill’s, with seventies paneling and gilt-frames. Around the base of Avi’s neck was a collar of marks: reddish welts. I had a butter knife in my right hand, the kind mother used for Sunday dinner. From ear to ear, I thought with a shivered dread.You’ve got to make the slit higher.

“Luce,” Avi said, his lips gentle against one another. He made no move to push me off. “Please.”

But I was already leaning forward over him, working at his throat with quick strokes. I felt the dampness of sweat as it sprang out along my shoulderline: his skin was rubbered; it would not open.

“Luce,” he whispered, and his eyes were close on me.

But I couldn’t stop. There was something wrong inside of him and I had to take it out. I began to cry, to howl. The blade was sinking, my hands moving with the familiar memory of elk, and I felt as I caught on the ribbing of his windpipe. He reached out a hand, fingerlight touches on my elbow.

“Oh God,” I sat back on his chest. “I can’t.” I was shaking at the sight of him so unseamed, at his flesh laid open like the raw belly of a fish. I was overcome; I wanted to sew together skin with my hands; I wanted to unmake the seesawing motion of the knife beneath his jaw; I wanted forgiveness; I wanted— I came awake because of the sobbing. I had never felt my body so moved before, the roughness of hysteria in my guts. I clawed out of my sleeping bag, onto the sand, and the constellations looked down on me from on high.

“Cedar!” I was choking, gulping fear from the air.

“Luce?” The shape of him was not far.

I felt it again, that palmful of cold, the knife so wickedly blunt. I coughed, air coming out of me in bursts.

Cedar was over me suddenly; Cedar was touching his fingers to mine. “Luce, be quiet, Luce, say it with me, Luce.” He blocked out the sky, that empty expanse. His nails were on my wrist and he 77

was saying, “Breathe now Luce, say it with me: ‘O God, come to my aid. O Lord, make haste to help me.’”

“O God,” I started, “come to my aid.”

Three, four, five times. The words like stones laid over an inside sickness. And then I was filling up my lungs in steady draws, and Cedar sat back.

“I haven’t done that in years.” He touched his forehead, adding, “I had a friend who would get these attacks.” He tossed his head, “Funny isn’t it? The words that’ll calm a person.”

I looked out at the wind as it shifted the sand and remade the dunes. In the morning, I wondered if we would recognize this place at all.

“It’s the name,” I said at last. “I just kept turning it over while I was driving. Death Valley. And I thought, for the first time, I thought…”

“How long?”

I blinked. “A year and eight months. I was working out at the Gunnery’s. Been there for three weeks, helping haul out elk with the horses.” I tried to meet Cedar’s eyes in the dark. “When I got back, there was no Avi.”

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“Last year I abstained this year I devour without guilt which is also an art.”

-Margaret Atwood, Circe/Mud Poems

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Contributors

Elle Duncombe-Mills ‘16 loves jasmine tea and secretly wants to be a detective.

Leo Abbe ‘16 has been writing poetry for two and a half years.

Sam Dunnington ‘14 eats, prays and loves in Iowa and Washington.

Elizabeth Jane Allen ‘16 is the epitome of a teenage girl.

She has a love for all things ugly and gentle.

Ezra Edgerton ‘16 spreads his artistic seeds all over this fair land.

Corson Androski ‘16 is scared of and confused by all these loud noises and just wants to go out to pasture

Dylan Fisher '14 hopes to plan his life so that one hour of every day can be spent naked in sunlight.

Clare Boerigter ‘14 would like to thank Tony for only hitting her with two trees this fire season, and everybody else for the nicknames Clarise, Clarser, Nancy Struggles and, most especially, Clarabelle.

Xena Fitzgerald ‘17 doesn’t believe in anything.

Max Christensen ‘15 loves many things, including music, photography, roller coasters, waterfalls, cheese fondue, cheese platters, guacamole, poignant social commentaries disguised as racy, raunchy comedies, and Franzia.

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Caroline Froh ‘15 still plays with dolls.

Gus Fulgoni ‘15 20 years old. Art major. From Kalamazoo Michigan. Proud supporter of the "Andrew Kaufman Teaching Method"! Grazie. P.S. Hannah Bernard will in fact be returning in the spring of 2014.

Kat Collins ‘16 catches stars in her hands and then blows them back into the sky where they become balloons that pop and the stretchy ripped bits fall on kids shoulders.

Linnea Hurst ‘15 is currently in London where she cannot afford anything, but she sometimes finds bags of old croissants on the street and eats them. She would like to thank the Review for publishing her very strange story.

Eva Dawson ‘14 is 21 years old and still has never really eaten seafood.

Emily Johnson ‘14 would like to swim, if she swam. She likes naps and sparkles.

Charlotte Kanzler ‘17 is a first year who draws dead birds to seem artsy. Her favorite drawing tools are Photoshop and her Wacom tablet.

Clara Kirkpatrick ‘14 came in like a wrecking ball.

Lucy Marcus ‘14 is an English major and GDS concentrator from New York.

Emily Mester ‘14 is dead inside. ¯\( ̆ ͜ ̆ ✿)/¯ Varun Nayar ‘15 is somewhere in Prague, where he is learning that the moon does not have to be full for us to love it.

Drew Ohringer ‘14 is not like other litbros. He likes Radiohead.

Chloe Pachovas ‘14 is from Boulder, Colorado.

and thinks puppies are God's gift to humans.

Linnea Schurig ‘17 I like sudoku and trapdoors and collarbones and the moon. I would happily get lost in the middle of a crowd.

Logan Shearer ‘14 usually only shares his poetry with close friends. A few of his poems have been selected for published collections, but most of his work stays in his notebooks.

Lauren Teixeira ‘14 is a cyclist.

Julianne Thompson '15 has a really warped sense of time (as her mother always tried to warn her-- but who doesn't?) and a tattoo of a papaya leaf on her right arm.

Emily Sue Tomac ‘15 feels more like her mother every day.

Quinn Underriner ‘14 hopes to one day pursue an advanced I E Prahl ‘15 is a student of poetry and hopes to one day teach degree in Litbro Studies. it.

Mary Zheng ‘15 Meow meow meow meow, meow meow-Na Chainkua (Chainky) Reindorf ‘14 is secretly meow meow meow; meow? obsessed with cotton candy and the smell of freshly laundered Lite Wei ‘16 is from Zhejiang, China. clothes.

Connor Schake ‘14 is Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Eliana Schechter ‘17 is proud of being from New Jersey

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