Fall 2013 | Illumination: The Undergraduate Journal of Humanities

illumination ART

LITERATURE

ESSAYS

The Undergraduate Journal of Humanities

FALL 2013

Staff Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Blackman Assistant Editor-in-Chief Alice Walker-Lampani Art Editor Megan Tuohy Essays Editor Ma Jaoquin Poetry Editor Majah Carberry Prose Editor Craze McAdam Layout Editor Alice Walker-Lampani Head Copy Editor Mandy Ezell Publicity Director Margaret Fitzpatrick Events & Involvment Coordinator Emily Nelson Art Reviwers Tamara Rosin, Emily Wessing Essays Reviewers Kenneth Anderson, Rebecca Kyser, Sam Pauley Poetry Reviwers Brittany Bravery, Brian Evans, Cody Kour Prose Reviewers Zoe Andews, Alexander Birkholz, Morgan Haefner, James Runde Layout Assistant Ben Smith Copyeditors Amber Decker, Clare Michaud, Tony Paese Marketing Assistants Madeline Sadowski, Maryna Zhdanok

Mission The mission of Illumination is to provide the undergraduate student body of the University of Wisconsin-Madison a chance to publish work in the fields of the humanities and to display some of the school’s best talent. As an approachable portal for writing, art, and scholarly essays, the diverse content in the jounral is focused on being a valuable addition to the intellectual community of the University and all the people it affects.

Special Thanks Illumination would like to extend a special thank you to former

Chancellor John D. Wiley and to the Lemuel R. and Norma B. Boulware estate for setting up the Boulware fund, which funds Illumination each semester.

Cover: Aaron David

Wolf/Parts 22”x28” mono-print

Letter from the Editor Welcome to the Fall 2013 issue of Illumination: The Undergraduate Journal of Humanities. I am pleased to have the opportunity to present some of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s best undergraduate work in the humanities at such a crucial moment in the discipline’s history. Since Illumination was founded almost nine years ago, the strength of the humanities has unfortunately all but grown. In 2013, it is more important than ever to reinstate the humanities into the notion of a “valuable education.” To discard the humanities is to also discard the countless human narratives told throughout our history – these are narratives articulated by endless streams of words found in novels, short stories, poetry, and manifestos among others, but equally present in the near infinite brush strokes, pencil lines, and sculpted forms that human hands have produced. The humanities not only allow us to rediscover the complex and tangled roots we share with one another: they remind us that we are, above it all, human. At Illumination, this is what drives us to publish fantastic undergraduate prose, poetry, essays, and art in a sophisticated and aesthetic way.

I would like to thank the entire staff for the hours they put into editing, reviewing, proofing, and designing the journal. It is their work that makes our mission a tangible reality, and without their enthusiasm for the content and commitment to the idea, what you hold in your hands would not be nearly as powerful. I especially would like to thank Alice Walker-Lampani, whose lead on layout and overall theme has put a heart into the journal. I must also give a special thanks to Ally Jagodzinski and Jim Rogers, both of whose support and guidance have made this semester highly informative, productive, and fun. Kelli Hughes has been beyond helpful in our working with College Library, and Jenny Klaila from UW Communications has been instrumental in making sure the print process runs smoothly.

Thank you both for helping Illumination find its way into the hands and minds of readers. I would finally like to recognize everyone who submitted to this semester’s issue – you ultimately make it possible for Illumination to exist. And, of course, we thank the readers, who make everything worth it.

The foremost purpose of Illumination is to provide the undergraduate student body with the opportunity to publish work in fields of the humanities. Through all this, we hope to show that the humanities are relevant not only in a university environment, but in the minds of the generation that will craft a new, emerging global landscape. We hope you enjoy our newest issue.

All the best,

Benjamin Blackman

CONTENTS

5/30

Prose

3

31/42

Essays

A Rose in Bloom

6

Satan’s Courier

10

The Wristwatch

14

The Man

17

Courts, Field, House

24

Performative Silence

32

If Evolution Wins, Christianity Goes? 37 Mancha

41

Artists

43/51

AARON DAVID MITCHELL HAWES KRISTINA KARLAN NICOLE JOHNSON ALLYSON SHEEHAN LUCIA HODKIEWICZ NATALIE HINAHARA CALLIE MANGAN RYAN YOUNG VICTORIA LU

Poetry Gravestone 44

BRITTANY FAHRES

Icequeen 45 We Keep Our Hearts In Sandcastles

46

Doorknob 47 Extrasensory Perception

48

Poetry’s Mind 50 Mutu 50 Anniversary 51

4

Mitchell Hawes Locks 35mm photograph

5

PROSE

A ROSE IN BLOOM Sarah Lensmire

Theodore used the same oil on his own head that he used on the bald heads of the bodies he was embalming. He started balding at twenty-three. Forty years later, the little hair he had left formed a “u” shape that curved up the back of his head to his ears. He consulted a how-to guide to shaving your head and kept the top of his head smooth and shiny. He spread oil on it daily to keep it moisturized and glossy. Theodore liked looking presentable for the families who trusted him with their deceased loved ones.

He pressed his shirts every morning at seven, after his piece of burnt toast and black coffee. He stood over the ironing board in his white underwear and tall socks. When the shirt was ready he carefully buttoned it up over his white tank top. He loved the sting of the hot fabric and closed his eyes to feel the goose bumps that traveled up his back. Then he ironed his navy blue pants, patiently making a straight crease down the middle of his leg. Afterwards, Theodore finished dressing. His ties hung color coded on his tie rack, each color worn on a specific day of the week. He carefully picked Tuesday’s brick red and tied his

tie just as his father had taught him years ago.

Theodore was the best mortician in his county. He owned his own small business, working in the funeral home that had been passed down through his family for generations.

Theodore loved the job. Spending his time perfecting the quiet, peaceful bodies of the dead was comforting to him. He spent his days in silence, sewing mouths closed and filling empty veins with preservatives.

Theodore saw Alice every other day. They spent their time together cooking dinner or taking walks up and down her street. Theodore loved her, they were very similar, and their relationship was simple. The two of them met when Alice’s father died. He had been a respected dentist and family man.

Alice grieved terribly for him. The quiet, soft demeanor of Theodore as he helped with the arrangements won Alice’s heart.

Theodore thought she was most beautiful when she cried, the wet, salty tears slowly streaming from her green eyes down her plump cheeks. He already knew what he would dress her in if she died first.

He loved her red hair and loved to watch her as she read the comics in her recliner after dinner. He planned to ask her to marry him soon, but needed to find the perfect ring. Alice was patient.

Dark green for Wednesday.

Theodore had an appointment today with a family that lost their daughter, Emily. She was only twenty-nine. After Theodore spoke with the family about arrangements, he asked about the service.

It would take place in one week. Because of the nature of their grief, the family asked for a closed casket. For Theodore this was no different than an open casket.

He prepared and made the body just as beautiful. He liked to imagine the lives of the people before they died. The family told him that their daughter was an actress. She had only been in a few commercials before her aneurysm, but they said she was going to go far. He imagined the way her voice may have sounded, high pitched and feminine. She probably practiced for hours in front of the mirror before an audition. That night he dreamt of her in a commercial for bleach. She spilled coffee on the white dress she was to wear that evening. In-

6

stead of being upset she grabbed the bottle of bleach and smiled into the camera. She threw the dress into the washing machine and measured just the right amount of bleach. After a lapse of time, when she took the dress out of the dryer, the stain had disappeared. The last image in the commercial was a shot of her wearing her dress and walking down a staircase. Theodore thought she was beautiful, and in the morning he decided to talk to the family about dressing her in white.

Theodore was very thorough when he prepared bodies. He studied scars and markings, missing teeth and cavities, a single black hair growing on the chin of an old woman. Emily’s body seemed to be only gently used. She had few scars.

One on her knee, probably a bad fall from childhood. He found a small oval-shaped birthmark on her left shoulder, but other than that, her skin was smooth and clean.

Theodore liked her cleanliness. And he took his time preparing her. He found himself coming to gaze at her often, even when he was engaged in other activities.

He used his forefinger to stroke her cheek, and ran his fingers through her hair.

He began to daydream of kissing Emily.

Her lips were full and soft. He applied Chapstick often to keep them moist. He admired the arch of her feet, and he knew she must have worn high heels regularly.

He painted her nails light pink, and knew that she must have filed and cleaned them often.

On the nights when he wasn’t with Alice, he would go sit with Emily and read to her. He read her children’s stories, like Rumpelstiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, and Rapunzel. Sometimes while he was reading he would rest his hand lightly on her shoulder. He imagined Emily as if she were sleeping, and knew that his touch was comforting to her. He bought her perfume and sprayed her with it every morning before getting to work. He would stop for a moment to breathe in the smell, and before leaving he would speak a few words of parting to her. Emily’s staring eyes blinked in Theodore’s head, and her lips turned up slightly. He would obsess over her when he couldn’t be with her. Theodore imagined her in great silent films, her facial expressions speaking tales of love and magic. He was her co-star, and in his favorite scene they rode the Ferris wheel together at the carnival. The two of them got stuck at the top, and Theodore looked out over the town feeling omniscient. But Emily was

7

frightened by the height. Theodore would look into her eyes and say that everything would be all right. She would scoot closer to him and grab his hand, and the audience knew that the argument from earlier in the film was over.

The only time Theodore could forget about Emily was with Alice. Her green eyes would pierce into his silently and take over his mind. Her dainty fingers would intertwine themselves in his and he would imagine her as his wife. Alice was retired now and lived in a small apartment on top of a record store. She was Theodore’s age and ready to live with someone again. She had been married to a businessman named Larry, but he was always working and she had an affair with a cab driver. When Larry found out he filed for divorce. Theodore trusted Alice, she was too relaxed now, and content in reading and going for walks. He imagined the way he would propose. Nothing too fancy, something simple but elegant. Probably he would do it in their favorite little diner, after buying her dinner and a chocolate malt for dessert. He saw the slight color fill in her cheeks as he got down on one knee.

She would say, “Yes, Teddy.” He would make her so happy.

Orange for Sunday. Tomorrow was the day of Emily’s service. He thought of what her journey would be like after she was buried. He would go visit her grave.

He would bring lipstick and fairy tales because they were her favorite. He listened to her that day. Her fears and hesitations about where she was going next. He asked her to stay but she didn’t answer. He stayed with her that night with his hand on her shoulder. When he dozed he had dreams of the two of them being lowered into a nine foot hole. Their casket didn’t have a cover and the dirt was thrown onto their bodies. She laid face down with her head on his shoulder. The birthmark on her shoulder got lost in the mud and no one had shut Theodore’s eyes.

Forest Green for Monday. Theodore was sad that day. He didn’t want his relationship with Emily to end. He dressed her in a white dress and white heels. Her hair was left down and covered one ear. The family came to see her before more people arrived. Most were crying, tissues stored in the wrist of their sleeves, dabbing eyes outlined in mascara.

Theodore watched them at a distance, imagining where each of them was placed on her family tree. Theodore was startled

by a young gentleman that had sidled up beside him while he was daydreaming.

The man thanked Theodore for making Emily look so beautiful today. Theodore replied that he didn’t have to do much. The man’s mouth turned up a bit and he bit his lower lip slightly. Theodore stared at him wondering where he fit; he must have been a brother. The man stood in silence for a few moments before turning to Theodore and asking if he could open the bottom of the casket to see Emily’s hands. Theodore was disconcerted by this request, and his eyebrows drew together making a deep wrinkle run down his forehead. The young man reached into his pocket for a small box. Tears were running down his face now and he wasn’t making any effort to conceal them. He opened the lid of the box to Theodore and revealed a beautiful ring. Its simple gold band was thin and petite, and would look so romantic on Emily’s finger. The diamond wasn’t large, but the way it sparkled made it expand into the room. It reflected onto the walls and ceilings, catching the morning light streaming in through the windows.

Theodore could only produce a small nod for the man, and lead him to the front. Theodore opened the casket and found her just as he had left her. He stepped aside, but stayed close by. He didn’t know this man well. The gentleman leaned in to Emily’s face, and whispered words that Theodore couldn’t quite make out. Then he lifted her hand and slid the ring onto her finger. He whispered, “I got this for you, and I want you to keep it forever.” He kissed her cheek and stepped away, walking backwards as if he was waiting for her to sit up and say thank you.

He glanced at Theodore but then turned around sharply and left the room. Visitors would be there shortly, and they would move her into the larger room where people could pay their respects. Theodore stood over her for the last time the casket would be open. He said a short prayer and stared into her eyes. He looked over her stunning body and his eyes stopped once again on the ring. For the first time since he set eyes on her, he thought of Alice while he was with Emily.

Gray for Thursday. Two weeks had gone by since Emily’s departure but he visited her grave just as he promised. He read more of Grimm’s Tales to her when no one else was around, and he knew she enjoyed listening. Her favorite was a short one called The Rose. In it, a mother with

two daughters sends one of her daughters to collect wood. In the forest, the young girl is helped by a young boy but as soon as they get home the boy disappears. The mother doesn’t believe he exists, but one morning her daughter brings back a rose and says the boy told her that he would come when it was in full bloom. The mother puts it in water, and on the day it blooms she goes to her daughter’s room to find her dead.

Once when Theodore arrived at the cemetery the young gentleman from the funeral stood over her gravestone.

Theodore stopped abruptly and turned to walk away. He looked back once, and saw the young man on his knees with his head in his hands. He stopped there to watch the man in this vulnerable moment, looking through a lens of indifference and familiarity with death. Theodore walked back over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Theodore asked gently if he would like to join him for dinner tonight.

A strange request, but he felt bad for the boy. The young man looked very confused.

After a few moments of hesitation, he accepted, and the two men walked gravely and expectantly back to Theodore’s truck.

On the ride home, they listened to NPR on the radio. There was an interview with a cook that had just been published for her international dishes. Theodore wasn’t much for international foods; he wasn’t familiar with them. He liked the foods Alice cooked, like pasta, potatoes, and meatloaf.

“Emily would’ve liked Alice’s potatoes,” he thought. She did them just right, baked on Tuesday and mashed on Thursday, with butter and salt and pepper. Sometimes she even fried onions to put on top. Theodore liked when she added the onions.

She would stand chopping in the kitchen, the tears welling up in her eyes like a cup about to overflow, and Theodore would stand by the counter watching. Staring at her silhouette like a painting, he noticed the intricate wrinkles starting to form in the corner of her eyes. They were getting old.

Alice was surprised to see the young man come in with Theodore. He introduced himself as William to her, but Theodore took the liberty of calling him Will; he felt like he knew him because of what they had shared. He wanted to know Will; he was fascinated with this man that his Emily must have loved. There had to be some aspect to him that made her fall for him. He hoped Alice would ask him a lot

of questions like she sometimes did with strangers.

Theodore imagined how he would dress Will if he were dead, but his face didn’t much please Theodore and his shoulders were thin and frail looking. Theodore thought the two of them together would look silly. Will was nice enough, though. He had a placid tone and looked at you straight in the eye when you talked.

He worked as a teacher in one of the area elementary schools. He talked about how hard it was to be focused with the children when his mind was so consumed with Emily’s death. He said he wished there was some sign she had left behind to show him she was looking down on everyone from

a better place. So he could know she was happy. Theodore knew what he had to do.

He reached for Will’s hand and placed his own on top of it.

“Emily is in a better place, Will, and she was very happy with me in the days before the funeral.”

Will pulled his hand back quickly, as if he just discovered a great heat coming from the table that wasn’t there before.

He stared at Theodore with puzzled eyes.

Theodore didn’t notice and excitedly jumped up from the table and shuffled to his bedroom. Alice seemed to have left the conversation; she sat quietly staring out the window as if a silent film were playing on a screen outside.

Kristina Karlan Tender Gildings ceramics 6”x9”x6”

8

When Theodore came back he held a round bottle of perfume. He leaned in and sprayed Will on his sleeve.

“Smell it,” he said excitedly. “It was Emily’s favorite! And I’m giving it to you to keep!”

Will stood up with a force that knocked his chair onto the floor behind him. He lifted his sleeve up to his face and breathed in deeply but quickly. His face seemed to narrate the struggle of trying to recognize this scent happening in his brain.

“This isn’t what she wore when we were going out,” Will said with a small voice.

Theodore felt bad for the boy and took a step closer to him, saying in the most comforting voice he could conjure up, “It’s okay, son. She just must have changed her mind.”

Will stood for a moment staring at the bottle; his face had turned pale with this last conversation, and he stood still for a moment longer. Suddenly his face changed. Blood rushed into his cheeks and nose making it look as though he had just been out in the wind. His eyes moved up to meet Theodore’s oblivious face, and Theodore became frightened of this change in expression. In one swift movement Will slapped Theodore across his face, and Theodore stumbled backwards holding his cheek. Then Will took the perfume on the table and slammed it to the floor, the glass shattering and sending small little droplets of fragrance flying through the air. He twirled on his feet and left without saying a word, leaving the door open to the crisp cool night he disappeared into. Alice stood quietly and moved to the living room, where she grabbed the comics and settled into the recliner. Theodore couldn’t believe she wasn’t concerned about his face. ‘Why had he gotten so angry?’ Theodore pondered.

‘I was giving him a gift, what a rude way to thank me.’ He knelt down on his knees and carefully began to pick up small pieces of glass. The room was overwhelmed with the aroma of the perfume, and images of Emily flashed through his brain. He used paper towels to soak up the liquid and squeezed as much as he could of it out into a water bottle; if Will didn’t want it, he was going to keep it for himself. Once, as he wiped the paper towel across the floor, his finger got cut with a sharp edge of glass.

It began bleeding and some of the blood dripped onto the paper towel. He put his

9

finger in his mouth and continued his pattern, squeezing the perfume and the drops of blood into his bottle.

Plaid for Saturday. This was a big day for Theodore and he was restless when he woke. He was to see Alice for dinner tonight; he was taking her to their favorite diner. He showered his body and oiled his head until it had the perfect amount of shine. He ironed his shirt and creased his pants, tying his tie just the way his father had taught him. He dabbed little bits of Emily’s perfume onto both of his wrists and wore cufflinks on his suit. Theodore looked at himself in the floor length mirror hanging off of his closet door. There was still a slight redness in his right cheek and under his eye, but overall he was pleased with his appearance. Alice would think he looked dapper. He stopped by her house to pick her up and gave her a single rose. Alice put it in water; it would be in full bloom soon.

At the diner, pieces of her graying red hair slipped forward onto her face as she leaned over her plate. Theodore brushed them away for her, stealing glances from those beautiful green eyes that always mesmerized him. They were both satisfied in each other’s company that evening, and they shared their simple meal with few words. Soon the waiter came to take away their empty plates and Theodore ordered a chocolate malt with two spoons.

Alice smiled at him across the table feeling slightly spoiled.

After they finished their malt, Alice began sliding her sweater back on over her shoulders.

“Just one moment,” said Theodore as he stood up and began to kneel down in front of Alice’s booth seat.

Alice brought her hands to her mouth as Theodore grabbed a small velvet box from a pocket on the inner lining of his suit.

“I got this for you,” he said, “and I want you to keep it forever.”

Theodore waited for her to wipe the tears out of her eyes because he wanted her to clearly see his gift to her. “Will you marry me, Alice?”

He opened the box, revealing a simple gold band with a humble diamond, but it sparkled and reflected all the light in the room in such a way that it seemed to grow in size. She gasped at its beauty and excitedly imagined what store he must have bought it from.

“Yes, Teddy.”

SATAN'S COURIER

Cody Houdek

Neither the time nor the place matter.

Only the message is significant. Sometimes the message is lost behind convoluted lexicon and dastardly overused adverbs, showcasing the storyteller’s overwhelmingly gigantic vocabulary, which he employs to piece together the puzzle that is sentence structure in absurdly long sentences that technically aren’t run-ons, but should be.

He should instead use a hammer to pound the message. Like a chorus. This story has a moral. This story has a moral.

Many of the townspeople were clumped together at their town hall, which overlooked the rest of the village. They stood in near silence, watching the hill that marked the entrance to their town. They had always done this. This is why they still did this. Unquestioningly and obligingly.

Why not? This story has a moral.

It had happened every year for as long as they could remember. Same time, same place. Their history books documented it in the same way. It was never changing.The village consisted of a couple hundred people. Some were old, some were young. Inter-village transportation was both expensive and long, so travelling was sparse. When people don’t travel, ideas don’t either. The young were the

same as the old. This story has a moral.

Thatched roofs and flowered gardens covered the horizon. Well, as much as 300 people’s thatched roofs and flowered gardens can cover. Beyond the thatched roofs sloped a large hill that saw all traffic into the village. The dirt road was ignored, and thus nearly impossible to traverse. Maybe that was the reason not many people traveled it. More than likely it was the comfort of their homely ideals. Ignorant ideals. The expansion of ideas is terrifying to many people.

Beyond that hill lay unspeakable horrors, both abstract and concrete. Their fear of progression was not in fact what many of the townsfolk were gathered at the town hall for, though. It was another fear. A fear so bestial that most every living organism actively attempted to avoid it: death. Death manifested was not planning on visiting the town that evening, but the next closest thing: his messenger.

Satan’s courier, as the villagers called him.

Every year he showed up, and every year he took another villager. Like clockwork.

Never questioned. This story has a moral.

The townspeople stood, watching the hillside, waiting for Dark Hermes to ascend upon the village. They stood

not in defiance, but in acceptance. They stood in fear. What would happen if they questioned the norm? Can the gears of the clock be smashed? Wouldn’t the clockmaker seek vengeance? Since it was death they already feared, the vengeance imagined must be worse than death. When one deals with the insane, there is more to fear than death. When one deals with the supernatural, there is more to fear than death.

Two women stood off to the side of the group. Both were well acquainted and both had seen their fair share of sacrifices. Neither had lost anyone significant.

It was difficult to speak on such a day, for what does one talk about? Always talking about the present or dabbling in nostalgia is trite. But talking about the future may be talking about times that will never come to be. Do the convicted on death row discuss their future plans? One woman took a drag on her cigarette because why not kill yourself if someone else won’t? “He’s running late this year,” Grace mused. Abby looked toward the hill and nodded her head in agreement. Both Grace and Abby knew this was a ridiculous statement, but it was a safe conversation starter.

“I imagine he’ll be here within

10

Nicole Johnson Ansel Goat Boy ink, digitally edited

ten minutes. It’s not like he can move very quickly.” They fell silent again. Small talk is painful when your death may be near.

Grace looked down toward her house and saw her similarly dressed husband and son standing at the door. The son, only ten years old, idolized his mother and father.

And why not? They instilled a sense of God into him, and he projected his idea of God onto them. God is the safety blanket of everyone who believes. They pull him close when they need him and snuggle when the nights get cold. God is not tangible. Parents are tangible. To children, their parents are God. What happens when that sense of safety is stripped away? The time a child faces true mortal danger without the protection of his parents is when he first questions God. This story has a moral.

Suddenly, the mood changed as one villager screamed and pointed to the hillside. “There he is!”

The monstrosity emerged from behind the hill. Calling it a human may

11

or may not have been accurate, for he no longer resembled any human in history, unless one counts Frankenstein’s monster, in which case the latter would’ve won a human look-alike contest. This beast had two horns protruding from his head, much like a water buffalo, but unlike the buffalo, other horns reared their ugly heads out the monster’s shoulders, chest, and back. These horns were much smaller and more numerous than the two alphas atop his head. Only three fingers crookedly extended from his left hand, for the middle and pointer fingers were both replaced with bent knife-like blades. His other hand may have still remained whole had his entire forearm not been replaced.

Instead, connected to the humerus was a long rusted chain that dragged a spiked mace-head behind his person. There was in fact nothing funny about this, for the ball of metal and spikes was stained with blood and entrails: Satan’s cocktail. The demon’s left arm and legs were vague-

ly human, despite being gargantuan in relation to the ordinary person. Purple veins pulsed through the charcoaled silver skin. The face though – with the left eye sewn shut and the right eye a swirling red cloud, it was a mystery as to how he could see. In fact, every sense was a mystery, for the two horns sat in the stead of the ears, a skin graft covered the usual spot of the nose, and his skin looked metallic. Maybe he could taste, but a fiend of such wretched looks appeared to simply enjoy tearing skin with his broken teeth.

The monster was known throughout the village as Satan’s courier, a position for which he was employed through only his appearance. Many stories arose concerning the history of the courier. Many elders were adamant that he was once a resident of the village, until one day he was kidnapped. The experiments were torture. Some still claimed he lived in the village, just beyond the hill. Nobody really knew though, for nobody went over the

hill. This story has a moral.

Grace shuddered as he first crossed the threshold of the village. No matter how many times she saw him, his symbol never became easier to handle.

She looked to his left side and fixated her vision on the wooden holster. The courier’s paintbrush, with which he painted the red “X” upon the door of the person who was going to be sacrificed. Many said the red was the blood of past victims. Others simply thought it paint. It didn’t matter.

Grace looked back at her similarly dressed husband and son. They stood facing their door. At least one family member from each home was required to do this, so it was not questioned. Russian roulette with a blindfold. Couldn’t someone cheat?

“I wish I lived in Margarette’s house,” Abby said. “She gets to watch the demon pass her house first.”

“Does it really matter?” Grace retorted. “You both have the same chance of getting picked.” Grace was a realist.

She never cared for gossiping, nor did she partake in the arts. Grace liked tangible products, particularly if she made them.

If she constructed them. She and her husband built their house together, Grace doing most of the work. If you can create an object, can you create an idea? Can you reconstruct God?

The courier slowly stepped down the road, never looking up to see the people or the houses. His decision was already made. His orders were already in. There was nothing else he could do but follow them. Parents and children that stood at their doors couldn’t see, but could hear the menace drag his weapon past them. Visibly their bodies would relax. Everybody always wants somebody else to die.

“It’s not fair ya know,” Abby said.

“Why is it that we have to do this? Are we the only village that succumbs to this madness?”

“I don’t know, Abby. I know as much as you do. You’ve heard the stories from the elders though. Many years ago, somebody fought back, and ten people were taken in response. We aren’t allowed a defense.” Some people don’t consider old beliefs to be gossip. This story has a moral.

“What did we ever do to deserve this? Doesn’t the beast know the pressure that he puts us under? The hatred and depression he brings us? If only he could feel it. If only we could retaliate.”

“Then go ahead. Retaliate, Abby.

Fight the monster right now and stop him from marking somebody. If you succeed, you’ll be a legend, but more than likely you’ll die more hated than the devil himself.”

Abby slumped her shoulders, defeated, and turned back to the oncoming fiend. He had already passed half of the village, so tensions began to rise. Those whose houses he passed were silently celebrating. You could feel it. Jealousy for those who had been passed and happiness that somebody else was going to be chosen. It was very human. When left to our own devices, we will naturally allow others to drop to the bottom if it means we can thrive. Thrive is not the correct word.

Live beyond our means. Conversely, we can never feel anything but contempt for those who accomplish. “Try harder,” we’re told. If somebody else is more successful, it means you didn’t work hard enough.

Abby’s house was two doors away from the beast. She began shifting her weight from leg to leg, slapping her hips.

She danced and the monster walked. He walked past the first house and she started bobbing her head. Slowly, he pressed on.

One house from Abby’s. Two from Grace’s.

She began to cry. Abby didn’t have a family by her door, so only her life was at stake.

The only one she cared about. Closer the beast approached. It seemed even slower than before.

Then it stopped. Ten feet in front of her door, it stopped, dropping its head to the ground. Abby began to sob.

“No God! Please God don’t let him choose me! Don’t let him choose me!

Anybody but me! Choose Grace! Go one more and choose Grace!” It was said. Everyone had the same thought as the beast passed their house, but no one dared speak it. Grace glared at Abby as Abby sobbed.

Would God answer this prayer?

“What about my son, Abby?

Would you rather he takes my son?”

Graced clenched her jaw and cracked her neck. “My ten-year-old son, Abby. You didn’t answer, Abby!” Abby collapsed to the ground and covered her face. In front of her friend, her people, God, she had called for another’s death. Would you kill another to save your life in self-defense?

Would you allow another’s death if it meant saving your own?

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it, Grace, I didn’t! It’s the beast. The fucking creature from Hell! It’s all his fault! How dare he come and force me to make such

brash comments!” Silence ensued. The murmuring from the crowd at the town hall was hushed. Grace looked to the road.

So did Abby. Still standing still, the creature stared at Abby. Abby angrily stood up.

“You heard me you piece of shit!

Fuck you! How dare you walk into this community and tear us apart! You are the bane of this earth, and I wish upon you the worst possible torture.” The beast continued to stare. One man voiced his agreement, followed by others. In a matter of seconds, the crowd began shouting obscenities and hate-filled words at the motionless courier. Grace stared back at Abby.

The beast looked back to the road and continued moving past Abby’s house.

Next to Grace’s house. Grace tensed. Abby no longer cared. The crowd no longer cared. Grace wanted nothing more than to be held at that point. To be told that it was all going to be alright, even if it wasn’t.

She wanted the support of her friends as she and her family stood at the gallows.

Instead, they were banded together against the fiend. Banded through hatred. This story has a moral.

In a matter of seconds, the beast passed Grace’s home and moved on to the last few houses of the village.

Grace should’ve felt relieved, but she was overcome by discomfort. Nobody cared anymore. Friends whose houses were fast approaching responded by shouting the same hate-induced speech towards the creature. Nobody celebrated the survival of over half the village. Nobody supported the remaining village members. They only focused on their hate.

One house now remained. Jenny and Tom’s house. They had two kids, and the whole family stood outside their door, facing away from the commotion. Visibly, their shoulders shook with heavy sobs.

No other houses remained. They were going to be chosen. Each parent took one of the kids in their arms and held tightly.

It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.

Grace began to cry watching them. For a moment, she wanted to be chosen before one of them. The crowd continued to shout. Abby’s eyes were bloodshot with rage as she now stood in front of the rest of the town leading the screams. Nobody supported the family. The family that was going to die.

The beast didn’t stop. He never once hesitated. He continued past the house, dragging his mace and carrying

12

his “paint.” Grace furrowed her brow and looked to the crowd as the beast began to turn the final corner of the village. The exit of the village. Nobody had ever traveled beyond that corner before.

As she stared at the crowd, she noticed a couple of them falling silent.

One by one, like angels falling to Hell, the villagers stopped screaming. Stopped hating. One by one, they fell silent, until Abby was the last one. Mid phrase, she too halted, mouth agape. Puzzled, Grace turned back to the road. She turned back to the ostracized member of their village.

The creature, the fiend, the receiver of all hatred in the village. She watched as he exited the village. She watched as he walked away with a red “X” painted upon his back. This story has a moral.

Allyson Sheehan Shoulders 6”x6” acrylic and charcoal on masonite

13

THE WRISTWATCH Cole Meyer

Tick … tick … tick …

The sound of the clock echoed through Clark’s brain. He checked his watch. Five past twelve. The wind blew through his hair as he stood facing the street from the alleyway. He had forgotten the way the breeze sent a tiny tingle down his back, like a thousand harmless insects crawling under his skin. He took a hesitant step towards the intersection. Immediately regretting this, he stepped back. He clenched his hands into fists quickly, three times, and released. He composed himself and tried again.

Coward.

Clark checked his watch. Less than a minute had passed. Time moved at an awfully slow pace outside of the Rolling Meadows Mental Institute. He was used to the structured days. Consistent, methodical, independent of thought. Every second of every day planned. Eight a.m., wake up.

Eight-fifteen, breakfast and medication.

Eight-sixteen and a half, converse with Tim. Eight-thirty, group session begins.

Break at ten. Twelve, group session ends.

Twelve-fifteen, medication and lunch. His entire day dictated by the clock in the hall.

But not today. Clark checked his watch.

Tick … tick … tick …

Just before group session, he saw it: the exit door slightly ajar, a woodchip stuck at the bottom of the frame, keeping the bolt from locking. Performing a quick surveillance, Clark realized he alone noticed this potential exodus. Without a single thought, he leapt for the opportunity. The sunlight grazed his face like the hand of a dear old friend. Welcome home, it whispered to him with a familiar voice.

Three hours and forty-two minutes later, Clark found himself in an alleyway facing the industrial cityscape. He battled the urge to turn back and fought against the fear to move forward. Frozen, he stood alone.

You worthless piece of shit. No one cares. You could disappear forever, and no one would notice. You’re just a fucking waste of space.

Tim’s voice crawled back into his brain. It was a quiet, infectious shouting that reverberated its way down his spine and into the soles of his tattered grey sneakers. It inhabited every fiber of his clothing; it soaked into every inch of his skin. Clark’s hands instinctively shot up to his ears as he shouted, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” His heart raced.

He staggered around the alley. His feet

clumsily brushed over themselves as they dragged his body towards the fire-escape on the wall, to which his hands grasped firmly. Slowly, they pulled him up. Hand over hand, Clark climbed autonomously to the roof. The open space soothed him. In an instant, the scenery changed. The grey alleyway morphed into a snow-speckled mountain. The passing traffic became grazing sheep. Panting, Clark stood alone.

Far from the sounds of the busy street; far from the corruption, and poverty, and social diseases; far from the silence of Rolling Meadows. Far from Tim. Far from anyone who had ever glanced into Clark’s eyes, into Clark’s file, into Clark’s mind.

Clark checked his watch. We’re never really alone, are we?

He whimpered and forced his eyes shut. Twelve-eighteen. His hand reached out as he tilted forward, groping for something solid. He brushed the rough bark of the evergreen to his left. The crutch teemed with life. He could feel its infinite pulsating force beneath the armor-like exterior. The breeze rustled his hair once again. He felt a sharp pinch on his hand; he opened his eyes to determine the source. A small brownish spider crawled between his fingers and back onto the

14

tree. Its venom coursed through Clark’s veins. His skin began to swell beneath the bite. Clark’s thoughts wandered back to the comic books beneath his mattress at Rolling Meadows. The heroes were lost, without purpose; without purpose, at least, until something extraordinary happened.

This is it.

The scenery transformed again.

The sky filled with hazy grey rainclouds; the mountain became a landmark. Clark’s clothes changed into spandex, and a brightly colored balloon emblazoned itself on his chest. With a gasp of impossibility, Clark’s universe became a frame in a comic book.

You have found purpose in your life, Clark. Finally, you have found your place.

Tim’s voice no longer scratched menacingly in Clark’s brain. In fact, it almost seemed calming, reassuring. A very personal sidekick. Each breath seemed easier; he took each step with confidence.

The watercolor walls beamed brightly as he stared across his vast city. He was its protector. Desperately, it had cried for a hero, and he was finally there to answer the call.

Look down.

Below him, a woman was being attacked. A masked man took a violent swing and knocked her against the wall.

He cocked back for another blow.

This is your chance, Clark. Do not let this slip away.

Suddenly, he was not so sure.

Tick … tick … tick …

Sweat began to drip down his face. He looked at his hands.

You have been given to the power to protect. Do not let it go to waste. He watched the woman take the second hit. Oxygen suddenly seemed sparse. He gasped for air.

Jump. Inflate. Save her. Use the powers that you’ve been given. Your time is running out.

His chest tightened. He inched towards the edge. Tick … tick … tick …

The woman crumbled.

Do it!

His palms clammy, he glanced down.

Twelve stories and twenty-nine windows.

Jump!

Clark leapt. His body inflated to three times its size as he aimed to land between the attacker and his victim. Laughter

15

echoed through Clark’s brain as the wind rushed past his face and the sunlight whispered with a familiar voice for the final time. A smile stretched across his face; a blissfully ignorant moment of pure serenity. In a single instant, Clark’s realities collapsed. The buildings fell into the mountainside; the watercolor walls were destroyed by the iron city. The grazing sheep became the aggressive traffic that they always had been. The victim and her abuser melded into a young business woman smoking a cigarette. Clark’s peace lasted no longer than a single tick of his watch. Tim perished with Clark the instant he crushed the woman he was trying to save. Three deaths in one act of self-torture left only two bodies to be buried. Clark’s watch beeped. Twelve-thirty.

THE MAN Seth Stephanz

What Runs Through The Man Cornelius Rutledge’s Mind As He Is Transfigured Into A Transcendental Being Manifest In Three Persons

What Runs Through The Man Cornelius Rutledge’s Mind As He Is Transfigured Into A Transcendental Being Manifest In Three Persons

What Runs Through The Man Cornelius Rutledge’s Mind As He Is Transfigured Into A Transcendental Being Manifest In Three Persons

My dead son, the revenant. A ghost struck in the fissure. This is the way it happened: the aunt is in the entranceway of the hospital, weeping while the rain comes down in large inky swells.

I smoke and pass the time as I do. She spends her time the way she has chosen.

The hat keeps the cigarette dry and the smoke forms a ribbing under the hatbrim, a sub-brim that seems to hold the hat aloft.

My dead son, the revenant. A ghost struck in the fissure, to become nothing but black air and smoke after flame.

This is how it happens: The lover, the wife, the man, the son, the daughter, the lover’s unson, the aunt, and periphery.

My wife with a different man, carried off, leaving a husk of a bedroom with an enormous dark field of sheets waiting for my waking lying, bed used for general’s table instead of home.

My dead son, the revenant. A ghost struck in the fissure; to become inscrutability and disappear into causality’s black gap: ink where air should be.

A child’s death, painful, unquick and savage, why? To act as counterpoint to another’s life, perhaps undeserved, perhaps a monster’s. My boy was no monster, but should have been. A vice opposed to ingenue would have disposed him to survival in the world.

As the exhaled smoke escapes from under the brim, I see the doctor come out, saying that it has been a success.

The aunt continues her weeping, harder, hysterical. I walk into the ill-lit hospital; my steps click differently than they did outdoors. I consult briefly, and see the daughter. She is unconscious in bed, recovering. I consider what it is to observe and to act as observer, and if it is a weakness to act in that faculty. Later: a family at mealtime, held in indelible ritual and fault and underlying dark mystery of consumption. They don’t risk discussion. Time for bed.

Renege. Start again.

I consider what it is to be other, I consider what exactly difference is. An animal cleft on a country house’s lawn, ribs and muscles, sinews and yellow clots of fat piled around a carcass acting as horsefly’s strange attractor. We meet the lover for the second time as a feast is prepared, long tables drawn in plastic red checkered sheets ready for errant spillage from maws, its vacillation as its plastic is caught in the wind. At this point suspicions are keen but unsubstantiated as the lover makes his way among carrion to meet the family for another time in a rapidly-decaying series. Meal’s intruded ritual.

Renege. Start again.

This is how it will happen: three nonexistent beings waltz across the alter top.

To say that Nothing nothings is an error: Nothing waltzes there, across the alter top, resplendent, sumptuous and unfixed in golden unair, among the void, and I stand here, observing, a man condemned to live.

A homemade pyre, housing captives of my flesh and bounty. It sickens the blood; three humors mingling unnaturally that rightfully takes a disaster to disentangle, and steel and wood and all manner of waste. A Roman peace after a Pyrrhic victory. You want an afterlife, consider how coals die.

Renege. Continue.

16

Lucia Hodkiewicz Airhead photograph

The son: arbiter or harbinger of something ultimate, vessel of all my alms and aims, goals and claims. God kiss and bless my existence and his demise. God kiss his own nonexistence and demise.

The son freckled and tonsured head among the rites of spring. Compared to the unson: infinitely powerful, strong even though weak. His lifelong affliction resulting in his partial paralysis followed quickly by his burnt offering in the basement of the country home.

His sickness’s progress quickened by the daughter and wife’s secessions. I hold them responsible. His crippled legs unable to take him out of that smoking room as twelve rooms collapsed on top of him.

17

The son: breath made flesh or maze made motion. A boy, heir apparent and golden-haired among the summerdusk.

Compared to the daughter: equal in magnanimity, until the lover, and then victor.The bird game played, in which the summer woods were staked, and after hours and many imitations of feathered fowl called, we’d see how many would answer, and shoot the ones we could, and bring home bundles of animal algor mortis. Animalia as automata, bodies without organs, human husks stripped of wills, all relevant, residual, and the same concept carried out to varying extension: human will and inherent helplessness.

The son: auburn and sunburnt among the autumnal offerings. His charred remnant bodied form of brutality of fact. Compared to the wife: a boon and validation, a representation of loyalty and of life and of sickness overcome.

My son, the only strong one. I, standing there that night, before the pyre, along grounds fossilized and blackened verdure frozen over, the remnants of winterwoods positively Pompeian and even before the country home’s implosion: as nightpassenger on nightpassageway, considering the plan of revenge as renege, as going back on a promise made long ago to the wife underneath brush and beside a lolling tide, to be peaceable.

The daughter, the rogue. She’s none of mine, and it bears no more thought.

She’d called him “Mr. Spiffy-Ad-Infinitum” when he appeared like a crass street musician in a seersucker suit in my front room, introduced and hand shaking hand; two hands shaking alone or shaking with each other, but all contact false and evading. They called her the syllogist’s daughter, a small body among lies and false propositions, quick and stern and stolid stuff, unbendable material, except when she saw fit to weave like whip grass in the evening wind and quiet, behind the house and chasing will-o’-the-wisps in the swamp, her dead cousins’ souls taken light and a second nature.

My daughter, when she was young, welcomed me to the “shut-up show,” and rather than taking dull parental offense, I simply thought it curious. She, once grown, elaborated and said that I should cease spouting “vile, violent bullshit.”

I spread my arms wide and welcomed her to The Shut-Up Show. The Shut-Up Show. Christ. Silence. She’d stared at me; taken the quiet right out of my mouth.

I’d simply stared at her, grinning widely and loudly soundless. She’d played the willing victim, seduced him, so she said to me and I believed her and had had no more to do with her then and there, except for the surgery which I conspired to force on her, to have his progeny out.

The daughter: I’d appreciated her infinitely fissile mental material when she was young, the ways in which she could twist logic to suit her own needs, consistently. And there she was, in the dark hospital, recovering under a rough, white flower-printed sheet, her cheeks white with rouge circles and blacken-undered eyes. I heard the thunder beckon and I’d slipped out of the florescence into the rain after the brief consultation in which I’d learned enough. The lover’s son was not. The unsung unson.

Mr. Spiffy-Ad-Nauseum. Christ. Thunder. Light in night’s black maw. Fire like tiger stripes. Sounds like roars imposed on a rolling silence. Quiet, wind.

It doesn’t make me happy, to see waste perforce, and forced, but in the end that’s all there is, the weak annihilated in the mud and trampled by thundering hooves made lightning like beasts quick before the slaughterhouse; a massacre before a rainstorm and all parts reused for new beasts before next summer’s swell. All’s well. Use and reuse and death’s residues. Ghosts useless to me.

The aunt, begging me to let it live, to let her have it, to let her raise it, commanding me, sobbing, hysterical, yelling at the ones around me, to make me see the light, to help me see the vast evils of my actions. I tell her actions simply are.

Not a person, peradventure, no let’s not speak of that, but who’s speaking?

Speaking to oneself in a private language in a linguistic paradise. Language, it’s all we are and all we will be, unfortunately; no substance, only words and hot air: the mind-body’s multiple vortices and anomies. Self-violences inflicted and conflicting with one’s imperatives; human nature: often counterintuitive.

The dark fields with thin and crackling ice, full moon’s blare, a silent klaxon which bares landscape’s body. Trees and grackles. Alders, stony plinths, wide and funereal gravel boulevards, shed detritus from old farms standing out distant and darker against dark.

Die.

Die.

But then carry forth out of spite for that which commends and torments us.

But petty men must press on and perform for the furnace, or at least shovel fuel in, then,

That tormentor’s maw open wide and drawing, its weight pulls us towards our graves:

Exist.

Thrive.

Live.

Not a person, per se. Seeing the world through an upturned hourglass, a cool empiric victor, my enemy and fevered twin, seducing my kin; the methodological derivation of diligence and mental vigorousness; a portrait of industry. My dark antipode lying in the country house, several stories to the sky, stratified, like a geological feature, and crowned with obsidian and spring’s crowned glory: a moment ago, memento mori. A flagpole clangs with the wind’s whipping, seeing the wind come over the bare trees surrounding and ring the pole’s cable is I suppose something, a reminder of one’s place in relation to man’s steep edifices Die.

18

By aver of boldest life. Threat to limb notwithstanding, either going out on one or feeling phantom spasms following the loss of one. A cure, perhaps, a mirror box. How fitting. What composed Narcissus’s vision but Narcissus’s visage? The stage reached by every child but ones blinded or eyeless. Unfortunate and unseeing is unbelieving, unbeing.

The world turns and keeps turning to avoid its own reflection. Nothing new.

Novelty as nightmare, the importance of repetition.

By dint and deign of laws made plain.

Life lies that way, under arbitrary rules chosen well. All’s hell. Ontology as triage. The current issue: nihilism’s open maw. To allay entropy in all its myriad forms, at least its final uniform discursion, its dark isotropy from where there is no return. This age-old issue brought to bear on all great minds of each and every era: finding solid ground through ritual.

Nothing new. Novelty’s nightmare, the importance of repetition.

All memory is language. The wife: two lovers telling lies beneath an alder-inbloom, the couple as one beside the solemn tide, her head on his lap or perhaps his on hers. Ambiguity among the wax grass and small palms. Badly-worded complements and offenses quietly remembered. All’s ambiguity. Insensate.

The couple among the unfrozen summer verdure. Subtle tide sweeping detritus in foaming vortices along eddies and thoroughfares. The man and the wife and the world in repose, the day at rest, as remembered. The sun shining then as remembered, as spoken about, even now.

The wife: two lovers sitting below an alder-at-seed. Two lovers telling lies to each other, trying to outdo each other’s false world. Each imbibing in their respective Real as the sun shines on the pond surface, and the lapping of the tidal springs echoes back the cawing of the geese. The whip grass whipped by wind.

Two rites, one ritual. All’s pell-mell. All’s sangfroid and subtle schadenfreude.

The color of the sound of the sea. Three views of one unapproachable object.

Multiple angles at once, for clarity. My world described in blank verse, its limits where my poetry fails. Where my words are ablated, so is my existence and any thought or action.

And so the woman had fled, god damn them. Across frozen fields laid fallow. I followed, in my time, with five gallons of gasoline, a revolver, and a black steel adze, determined to have this trouble done with. I imagined myself a hunter, hauling hydrocarbons, firearms, and as locus a flinty fixture of our blessed cave days. The sun filtered and diffused via a grey cloud cover. The land bemused; no dividing line between the open ground and sky, trees growing from opaque ice into unlustrous sky. The world’s sutures. Why am I not surprised? The sky brought closer as the man walks straight across the level ground.

19

And so the woman had fled, god bless her. The burning building that stands in the center of the wintered field, the breaking pillars and sagging window ledges and cracked glass like ice shattered and sprayed out into the snow.

Yells of distress. Duress.

All speech acts as sophistry and linguistic sodomy. A definition of violence: all Being; and the innocent: none and no one. Jesus’ corpse as cosmic acrostic and boustrophedon. The son’s burnt remnants echoing those of the remnants of the woods, and of the dark field with whip grass glazed over by compounded rime. The birds in the trees’ tops, waiting for carrion or at least the action producing it.

By wildest, brazen sacrilege. Or rather, perhaps stultify as entropy would have it, remember the coals’ decaying wealth, atrophying even as they glow hot. Graves as autoclaves before limbo; no heaven, only a soft grey space with which to butt up against for all eternity in infinite consideration of what you have done and what you could have done. This is what happens when the coals die. I fear for all of them. Something’s new. A nightmare of novelty, All memory is protein synthesis and storage. The wife: two lovers reclining on an islet reached by homemade bridge, handhewn planks aloft the flotilla. Two lovers telling lies to one another, trying to overwrite or undercut the world, each crafting images more ludic and vapid and grotesque. All that’s created is an increasing distention. All’s Tristan und Isolde. Musical drama and pageantry. Violent acts with full choral accompaniment, buoyed on by the voice of muses. A reaffirmation by bloody hands. My world one of force, its limits where all force is forfeited. Must press on, despite lacking all verve and wit.

And so the woman had fled; God’s death’s head. I reflect on the events conspiring to that end.

There was the lover come into my life, and lighting it like a bleaching sun, and his seduction and sedition, pulling both the wife and daughter away in a menage a trois. The girl returned expectant. The girl fleeing after her mother across the field, a frieze featuring a cavalcade of persons with myself and the lover as two seated anchors at two opposing edges in opposing thrones. My dark twin having a sincerity and eagerness about the way in which he worked to undo me. Bold and strong and effective; I had much to learn.

Nicole Johnson Ed Gein & A Lady Friend at Wal-Mart ink, digitally edited Blackest bird in blackest night. Aggressive dark made whole by full moon’s contrast. Blackest bird has two black eyes blacker than it, two eyes trained on the dark-at-large, and everything: to it, all is periphery. I work along its clearing’s edge as animals do not stir. I skip across some low brush. I think of my son, how I cooed him to sleep in the dark in times before this.

I’d made it so the lover with the wife would be barricaded from exit, by silent entrance and shuffle of furniture in front of their bedroom’s door, while granting the daughter and the son safe passage, yet here’s the wife. Here is the daughter.

Here’s not the son.

The lover: appearing disheveled and disturbed somehow, the country home become a pyre in its frozen field, he looked at me, and recognition flashed, and I was validated for the first and he recoiled like some bow- backed dromedary that evoked in me a feeling that sickened my blood. Five persons locked together in bliss of sin, surrounding the furnace and disheveled pile. The blackbird circles in a decaying spiral, and the far off alders seem to move slowly towards us. The family stands undone, that is, the lover, the wife, the man, the son, the daughter, the lover’s unson, the aunt, and periphery. The family proper stands around in the wind and quiet.

Auspices in treetops: black animals who think in a disguised mathematics akin to pastiches of coloring accrued in one’s mind’s eye: a foreboding of a representation of a representation. Auspices or the objects of auspices in the treetops; auspices’ objects say caw, caw. Two toucans would do, two toucans can can-can, too.

I work my way along their clearing, with care. I lift my gear from the frozen loam and make for a tunnel through the trees.

A passenger in a dark hallway, passing away from the birds’ clearing and towards the country home’s clearing. Two odd nodes connected with a wooded fistula. And as the lover emerged from that blackened plume, wide- eyed and asunder, he caught me with a tightly spiraling glare and before he could act out in this new mode, I grabbed a burning splint and took it up and brought it down into his neck. The black arterial font seemed, for a moment, crystalline in the moonlight, and infinite in fractal, reflecting and refracting my actions and those of those around me and I perceived in this a type of validation, a type of trickle from the violence that made the world and would undo it. The bare trees circled the clearing. I finally look around and the family’s eyes are those of maimed ruminants.

Three beings hang along the aldertops, three beings squawk, three beings talk.

Three beings flap and fight and fuck.

Three beings molt their wings along the aldertops, three beings molt their arms off. Being and World are one, three black birds in one black tree are one.

Deep and away in mind, a timepiece chimes: cuckoo, cuckoo beaucoup, time to shake any terror away.

I work my way along their clearing; equipment suspended as far from the ground as my arms can muster. Clearing fled fleetly. My feet carry myself and themselves. I arrive at the house in the field, some trees far off, where it stands alone among the dark, a figure.

I felt a wild wind dry my eyes and I saw the field and burning pyre, and part of the family standing around it, and the lover driving out like a black ghost in pajamas. I, eyeteeth beaming in the moon- and-firelight, grabbed the lover at a run, and I could feel his breathedout, panicked-animal tones, and see in my mind’s eye his eyes wide, and his eyeteeth beaming beneath the fire-andmoonlight.

A quick struggle ended quickly. Decisive; decisions exist to be made briskly and firmly.

20

Mitchell Hawes above: Paris; below: Decay photography

The family will stand undone, except for myself, who feels a feeling that I know is good. A sort of natural validation only brought out with action and with a simple dedication to efficient work.

So here I sat, in my grey room, and dressed in grey. Two vague shades superimposed one on the other in a new duality that I had grown fond of. Outside my sparse and deep-set window was my constant company: a black flag flapping against a flat grey sky. As the tomb was exhumed, and the remnant dug up, and the blackened alder timbers shuffled off, and the glowing rictus of something rose up, I knew I was alone, and that in that I was a man, and that I was validated before the world as all knew and saw me, and the family was no more, and were saved, and that I was the origin of it all and was as the blackbird in the aldertops, in past being:

21

So in conclusion: for us to live, for us to deserve to die, to aspire to the final spiral by which our commensurate materials become soulless one, and become kith and kin to the black, arterial spew of the world, and become one with it, we are to remember the importance of memory, and repetition, and sacrifice especially, sacrosanct and enumerative.

Here I sit, in my grey room housing within its body the arches of the world, and outside it, beyond illusion, nothing. A perceptual panopticon, the way in which to perceive the world, as all things considered as one, and all things that had been considered and were, in current being:

So here I will sit, in my grey room, and dressed in grey. Two vague shades superimposed one on the other in a new duality that I will grow fond of. Outside my sparse and deep-set window will be my constant company: a black flag flapping against a flat grey sky. As coals die and pass to a pallid pallor mortis, I will sit in this grey space, and find all facets of myself in identical predicament, myself in sum: a glorious corpus, a corpse chorus; lost among the glow of inhuman voices. God’s vox and voces and choices, and world as Word with all Being inherent in it. The reader should consider that there is not much space between himself and the speaker, considered as future being:

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

a

being

through

whom

being

flows,

who

comes

to

be

through

a

world

through

whom

the

world

comes

to

be:

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am

22

courts, field, house

Alex Sherman

Every night that summer we met on the basketball courts, the ones behind the elementary school, set off from the street and cradled by a curve of forest with a dingy, high-banked creek running through it. We would trickle in, in twos and threes, the first group usually showing up just before dusk and the last sometimes not coming until almost midnight. We came, so we claimed, to play basketball. But there was very little actual ball-playing, since most of us only showed up after dark and the lights on the court were just good enough to see each other but not good enough to see an errant pass heading towards your face. We made sure, though, to keep up enough of a pretense, sitting on the balls, standing around and shooting flat-footed midrange shots, even, in the most competitive moments, playing halfhour games of horse filled with gimmicky shots.

Mostly we came so that we would not be at home. Home was not a good place to be, generally speaking. If you lived in a “good” home, then nothing ever happened; you’d eat dinner quietly while chatting about the weather, then maybe two people in the family would watch TV together, something decent and not wholly

23

stupid but nothing that anyone would ever watch alone. Then everyone would drift off to his or her own little corner of the house, a bedroom, a dead-end hallway, a sizeable closet, and sit alone doing quiet, personal things – trimming just barely overgrown toenails, turning the pages of year-old magazines using moisture on a fingertip, ranking favorite people, eras, or organs, examining mosquito bites on the back of a thigh – that sort of thing. I was from a “good” home, and I came every night to the court just so that I could walk around freely without worrying about making too much noise.

If you lived in a “bad” home, things were bad. Tommy was from a bad home. I first met Tommy at the court on a humid July night, nothing else special about it. Well, I had “met” him before, in school, but I’d never talked to him, and we both only had a vague sense of whom the other one was. I came earlier than usual with just one other guy, and there were only four or five people there. The other guys were playing horse, and Tommy was sitting on the side, leaning back against the brick wall of the school. The guy I came with joined the game, but I didn’t feel like playing, so I went and by the wall about

a yard from Tommy. He turned to me, raised his eyebrows:

“Tommy,” he said. The way he said his name, it wasn’t overly friendly, but it wasn’t really gruff, either. It was as if we were both in the back of a class, and Tommy had turned in a test early, and while walking back down the aisle, he would see me chewing on my thumb and looking at the last question. He would kick my chair softly, look me in the eyes, raise his eyebrows and say “C”. That’s it – he said his name like he was helping me cheat on something. I said my name, too, then we turned back to watch the game. Nothing much was happening, since it was a game of horse, so Tommy reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, taking one out and offering me the pack. I didn’t smoke, so I declined. He shrugged and asked if I was sure, so I asked if I could bum one drag, and he nodded, lit the cigarette, and gave me the first solid drag.

I exhaled in a formless, amateurish cloud, thanking Tommy and handing it back. He nodded and started in on it, blowing sharp streams of smoke out of both nostrils.

There was nothing to talk about, so we sat silently, Tommy looking into the middle distance and me checking

the sky to see if any planets were out.

Neither of us was watching the game, so what happened next I only heard about later that night. Apparently Robby, who dicked around all the time, bumped into Ben, who had a crew cut and knew a lot about gun laws, and Ben couldn’t just take a joke and started talking about how he should get three shots as compensation and that Robby should be disqualified, and Robby replied that they were on a basketball court, not a goddamn circuit court.

(Robby always did that sort of thing – I remember way back in junior high, when we were doing acids and bases, Robby thought it would be funny to pour some really weak hydrofluoric acid on the floor.

It was amusing enough, I guess, until Julianne Brittingham walked by, slipped on the puddle, and landed her face on a chair, which resulted in a lot of blood, two missing teeth, and some extended sessions with the school psychologist since Robby’s first reaction was to turn to us, grinning, and say, “I guess we didn’t dilute it enough.” After he said that, somebody, maybe even me, punched him in the eye, and the teacher was too occupied with Julianne to even say anything. That was Robby all over). Then Ben got right up in Robby’s face, and Robby didn’t step off, and their talk started to get pretty loud as all the other guys sort of just stepped back, crossed their arms, and watched. Tommy, though, he sighed as he let out another misty exhalation, then carefully propped his half-smoked cigarette against the brick wall and got up to walk towards the two disputants. I got up, too, since I didn’t just want to sit by myself. When Tommy was close, they both stepped back a little bit, and Tommy took the chance to slink down and step quick between them. Robby saw that he had a reprieve and walked backwards on his toes, but Ben stayed where he was and just looked down at Tommy, edging closer until Tommy was right where Robby had been, chest to chest with Ben, his eyes at Ben’s chin.

Nobody said anything. I was the closest one, and I noticed that the big court light was behind Tommy and Ben so that they were backlit – I couldn’t make out their expressions really, just the silhouettes. They looked peaceful under that light, like they were statues carved out of obsidian, sharing the black base of the asphalt court, their connected chests not fully chiseled out by the sculptor. I hadn’t even noticed earlier that the moon was

behind clouds, so the lamp was the only light, but then the wind picked up so that the moon came out – a waxing gibbous – and I could see their faces. They were both still, but terrifying in the moonlight, Ben’s jaw clenched and his short hair standing pointy, Tommy’s mouth relaxed but his eyes half-narrowed and unblinking.

Before I could think about it, I stepped toward them and said to Ben: “Come on Ben, just fucking relax.”

Ben’s head snapped to look at me and he dropped his left foot back, then deliberately turned his torso towards me.

“What did you say to me?” he said.

“I said that you should just relax, just fucking relax.”

As I was saying that, Ben lightly pushed off Tommy and started towards me. “Fuck,” I thought. (Ben had always been like this. I remember that we went to the same elementary school – the one by the courts – and, when we were in fourth grade, a group of taller sixth graders walked by us in the hallway and glided their hand over my and Ben’s heads while laughing, not even touching us. Ben didn’t even say anything, until, as the last sixth grader was passing, who wasn’t even putting his hand out or laughing, Ben hunched down and darted right in front of him and punched him hard on the inside of the knee, hard enough that the kid fell, and once he was down, Ben locked his legs around the kid’s and started pummeling his stomach. Nothing came of it – Ben’s dad paid off the sixth grader’s doctor bills and smooth talked Ben out of any punishment). I couldn’t move, and then Ben was standing a foot away from me.

“Tell me what to do one more motherfucking time, you worthless speck of shit.”

I shouldn’t have said anything, but I did: “Ben, sorry, but for once, just re-.” I wasn’t even surprised when he hit me. The punch went from his hip to my left ear, the upward momentum making it feel like my ear flap would tear off. I put my head down, swaying back as my hand went to my ear, feeling a little trickle of blood out of it. When I looked back up, Ben was standing in the same spot, his jaw a little unclenched and his lips drawn to one side in a tight half smile, but now Tommy was about a yard behind him so that the three of us formed an obtuse angle, Ben at the vertex with me and Tommy on the two rays. Tommy and I looked at each other,

then Tommy told Ben to “step the fuck off.” Ben turned to Tommy.

“I’ll do what I please,” Ben said.

“If you touch him again, I’ll gouge one of your eyes out.” Tommy said this as though it were an accepted fact.

He might have even shrugged a little, the same way someone would if they were telling you that tomorrow’s forecast had a fifty percent chance of rain.

Ben turned to look at me, looked at Tommy again, then turned and took another step towards me. As he did, Tommy leaped onto his back, and came down on top of Ben. Ben was face-down on the asphalt, so Tommy twisted his head to the side, using his right hand to press Ben’s face against the court as his left thumb pressed on Ben’s eyeball. Nobody did anything – maybe someone bit their lip and muttered a soft expletive. Tommy kept Ben’s face on the ground and got off him, until he was leaning over him. “No more of this shit, okay?” he said lowly and without malice. Then Tommy walked back to the wall, found that his cigarette was still lit, and sat down to finish it. Ben stayed on the ground for a minute, then got up, looked at everyone, and walked off. Robby and the others resumed playing horse, and I walked over to Tommy. I stood in front of him, not knowing what to say, and he raised his eyebrows at me again.

“You’re bleeding a little. Come on.” He took one last drag, exhaled through his nostrils, then got up and started walking towards the forest. He stopped at the edge, and I followed him as he started on the dirt shortcut through the woods that led to his home. ***

Tommy and I never really talked about what happened that night. At his house, he wiped the blood off my ear and rinsed it with alcohol, then we sat on his porch for a while, not talking, just listening to an owl in the woods. Other people talked, though, and for a few months they whispered that Tommy was crazy, a rumor that fizzled out since he never did anything like that again. Through all the rest of high school, I saw Tommy almost every day. It was hard in school, since we never had a class together, but we’d always figure something out – I’d stop by his place after school, or we’d loiter somewhere near school until sunset. He didn’t really like to spend time at my place, since whoever else was home made a big show of welcoming

24

him and feeding him and asking him nice questions and anxiously smiling at all his answers.

Things went on like this for a while. People asked what we talked about, but I can’t really remember. We did a lot of plotting, I guess. Tommy’s dad didn’t keep a good eye on his liquor, and he had a lot of it lying around, so Tommy and I started a scheme where we’d siphon off a bit every day, save some for ourselves, then dilute the rest and sell it to other dumb kids. The money was good, so we started taking more and more, sometimes even taking a whole unopened bottle of whiskey. For a few weeks after that, I was nervous about Tommy’s dad finding us out, but Tommy told me not to worry. I did though, at least until one day, as Tommy was grabbing another bottle from the cabinet, I noticed that someone had left a pile of money where the last bottle had been. After that, I wasn’t worried about getting caught anymore, though I liked the scam less and less, and by our senior year of high school Tommy and I had given it up, accepting transactions for personal use.

Senior year of high school: everyone made such a big deal out of it, but Tommy and I didn’t seem to get it. I remember spring, especially, when everyone started to get all anxious about “life” and “adulthood.” And it was strange, that spring, how everyone either talked about the future – my friends going over what colleges they would go to, Tommy’s debating the merits of living at home or moving out – or the past – everyone going over the same anecdotes from their school years.

Tommy and I participated, but without any enthusiasm. Why talk about the past if we all lived it? Why waste time talking about the future if we’ll find out about it eventually? Tommy asked those questions, and I agreed with the sentiment, so every day, after track practice (Tommy was a good triple-jumper, I was a passable hurdler that never finished last), Tommy and I would go to his house, sit on the back porch, drink his dad’s beers, split cigarettes, and talk in the present tense. We’d talk about all the things actually happening at that time: about whether the creek water was still cold, about the beer we were drinking that day, about how much we hated track practice, about how much we enjoyed our events in track, about the girls’ butts we noticed that day (we were seventeen, after all, and considered ourselves aficionados, not creeps), about all the shit Tommy’s

25

neighbor piled up in his lawn, about whether or not Ben should be institutionalized, about what books we were reading.

Tommy and I both read a lot, and we spent a lot of time talking about books. My favorite one senior year was Wuthering Heights, though I didn’t like to talk about it to anyone but Tommy, while Tommy liked Hardy, especially Jude the Obscure.

I read that one because Tommy liked it so much, but I hated it – why would anyone subject himself to something so sad? One afternoon I asked Tommy that, and he shrugged, looking away off the porch, and didn’t say anything for a few minutes until I brought up Ellen Hays’ butt from second period that day, and things seemed to get back to normal.

We talked the most about Tommy’s dad. I knew I would have to come to this part – any story about Tommy ends up being a story about Tommy’s dad, too.

Even if I didn’t bring up the dad, if I just talked about how Tommy sprained his ankle during practice that day, someone would mention the dad, say, “Oh, he’s Jeff Bella’s son, right?” (Mrs. Bella was said to have died not long after Tommy was born.

Tommy told me that about a week after we met. Some years later, when Tommy and I had gotten into an unopened bottle of his dad’s rum, I asked him, stupidly, what it was like having a dead mom. He said, as calmly as he spoke about algebra, that he wouldn’t know, since he wasn’t sure whether his was dead or alive, only that he couldn’t remember seeing her.)

Not that Mr. Bella was a bad guy; in fact, everyone agreed that he was nice, and it must be tough for him and all. Mr. Bella was trained as a carpenter, and he wasn’t bad at it – everyone said that he was a good carpenter, the best at cabinets. He sometimes moonlighted as a mechanic, too, and he was a pretty good one, and some people said that he could fix a transmission on a dying car so well that it could last another decade. Mr. Bella could do just about anything well, come to think of it: painting houses, working line cook, playing chess, double-entry accounting, raising Tommy. The problem was that, as good as he was, he couldn’t do any of these things for very long. He’d install cabinets for a month or two, then start to think the foreman was underpaying him, and leave the site one day without having put doors on a cabinet; he’d be doing well working in an auto shop, but one day the owner would chew him out over a missing wrench that

another guy stole, and Mr. Bella would up and leave; you’d be playing chess, and he’d have won a few games, and he’d wager on the next game, then give up in the middle of it because it was irritating him, leaving the money on the table; he’d go to all of Tommy’s track meets for a month, then be totally gone for a week, coming home with a bad cut on his forehead and swollen cheeks. Everyone in town had their theories about Mr. Bella. Some said it was booze, but Mr. Bella stayed on the wagon for a whole year and nothing changed.

Others said it was wanderlust, but Mr. Bella hadn’t moved out of town since he was born. A sizeable minority thought a woman was involved, but even when Mr. Bella was seeing the woman who ran the diner, he still couldn’t hold a job for more than three months. I proposed all these hypotheses to Tommy, but he shot them all down. He didn’t have a theory about his dad, and I came to agree by spring of senior year. That was the way the man had been, was, and would be until the day he died, which Tommy laughingly predicted would come about when his dad decided to try being dead for a change, not realizing that, even for him, dying was a real commitment.

When we talked about his dad, sometimes our talk would wander a bit into the future. His dad, Tommy said, was acting odder lately He talked a lot about his graduation gift for Tommy. Tommy said he didn’t need anything special; he was just glad to have gotten through.

(Tommy and I were planning to go to the state college next year, though obviously we didn’t talk about that a lot.) But his dad was always talking about it, and Tommy was getting worried. Mr. Bella had been selling off some things, nothing big, just an old bike, some spare lumber and wire, that sort of thing, and Tommy didn’t want his dad wasting all that money on him. As we got closer to graduation, Mr. Bella got more and more anxious, and Tommy got calmer and calmer; he said that, when his dad got like that, it meant he would be going off for a week or two, and the best way to get through was to relax and wait for it to play out.

A week before graduation, we had county’s for track. We had already had tryouts for state, and Tommy had just missed the cutoff for triple jump, since his ankle was acting funny that day, so this was our last competition. When we arrived at the track, I saw that Mr. Bella

Natalie Hinahara Colorado 12”x12” linoleun cut relief

was already there, sitting in the middle of the bleachers, leaned back and with legs up so that he took up three rows. He sat up straight and waved at Tommy, who smiled a little, waved back, and went up to talk after asking me to hold onto his stuff. I watched them talk, and saw Mr. Bella laugh for the first time that spring, saw him stand up, put his shoulder around Tommy, muss his hair, rub his shoulders. I couldn’t see Tommy’s face.

When Tommy came back, I couldn’t read anything on his face, and we didn’t have time to talk besides, since hurdles were the first event and I was getting ready. Soon enough, I had that out of the way, ending my track career with a third place finish in the fourth out of seven heats, with a time not far off qualifying to run in the final – in short, enough to demonstrate proficiency without the responsibilities of actual skill. I spent the rest of the meet watching Tommy triple jump. I’ve looked back on that day, watch-

ing Tommy jump, so many times and remember it better than almost anything, better even than the night I met Tommy.

The triple jump was set up between the ends of the field and the track, nestled in the crook of the track’s bend.

The strip was red clay with white and blue marks, leading to a pit of sand with too many black pebbles in it. The crowd was watching from inside the curve of the track, looking towards the field, and the sun was behind us so that the area was lit like a stage, the director the line judge, the coaches or involved parents the stagehands, most of the aimlessly waiting and pacing jumpers a confused chorus, a few of the star jumpers doing the showy leaping stretches of prima donnas, and Tommy standing off, a patient Horatio while Hamlet talks to the ghost. When the jumpers came into the spotlight, preparing to jump, most changed their stage business – the pacers hammed, jumping up and down

and flinging their thighs up towards their torsos, while the lead actors wilted, bouncing nervously on their toes and gazing down the strip. Tommy did neither. He walked up to the line, shook out both legs, chuckled lightly, and then ran forward to jump. His legs jangled awkwardly in his oversized track shorts, but once he started running, the uniform fit him exactly, pushing back in the wind like a useless parachute, until, once Tommy had landed, it gently settled forward again, grains of sand and pebbles dropping from the shorts as Tommy got up from the pit.

The format was the same as usual.

Everyone took three jumps; the top twelve jumpers went on to the finals, where they got another three jumps. Tommy’s first three jumps were nothing special, a bit under his usual but still enough to get him into the middle of the finals. Once the finals started, a lot of the extras cleared away from the strip, so that the crowd got

26

Kristina Karlan Venus Reconstituted 22”x33” serigraph

even bigger. The other contestants were more anxious now, bouncing around on their toes between their jumps and taking deep breaths all the while. Tommy didn’t change at all. Well, he did change his routine a bit. Before, he had sat on the ground between jumps, knees elevated and ankles crossed; now, since the sun had gotten a bit lower, the football goalpost’s shadow was in the triple jump area, and Tommy stood, arms crossed, in the narrow line of shade, moving only when he had to

27

jump. And those last three jumps, I still can’t forget them. The first jump was a foot farther than Tommy’s personal best, enough to tie the county record. What did it was the jump at the end, Tommy coming high off his right foot and then, as he was coming towards the pit, throwing his legs forward so hard that he glided another few inches, his loose shorts touching the dirt but his body still hovering barely above until it slid across the sand at a low angle. He knew he’d gone far, and snapped

through the air up to his feet, then pivoted towards the sun, a half-lit light smile on his face. When the official said the score, I ran out of the crowd and up to Tommy – this moment I forget, but I assume we did some sort of dumb handshake – then Tommy turned to look towards the bleachers for his father, who had sat up and was clapping hard enough for us to hear (the only one clapping, in fact, since they were midway through the two-mile on the track), and Tommy’s smile filled.

The next two jumps, Tommy went even farther – three inches, then a full foot beyond the county record. After his last one, I ran to him while he was still sitting in the sand, and picked him up in a hug.

Tommy had been smiling steadily since that fourth jump, and after I let him go, he turned again to look towards the bleachers.

His dad had left. He probably had figured that he’d done enough, and didn’t want to get in Tommy’s way. Tommy looked back to me, shrugged a little while still smiling, and we walked back to the team. We cut across the grass field, the sun lower now and coming down to our left, me on Tommy’s right so that when I looked over to him his face was back lit, his hands on the back of his head and elbows spread as he looked up to the clear sky, seeming to me like a great dark hawk about to open its wings and saunter lazily up on a heavy breeze. Then Tommy snapped his head at me, laughed, and said, “You know what I’m really happy about?”

I took the question seriously, squinting back at Tommy and twisting my face.

He laughed harder and said, “Track is finally fucking over.”

We graduated that week – nothing interesting ever happens at graduations, just kids walking across a stage, people giving self-conscious speeches, the graduates staring straight ahead through the heavy sunlight. That night, Tommy and I went to a graduation party, I think Billy Hornacek’s. Normally we would try to get the other one stumbling drunk, but Tommy was different that night. He seemed relaxed, but it was the reclined and neutral relaxation of a cynic, not of a hedonist. He brought a fifth of gin, and we spent the night sitting on the porch and alternating pulls every few minutes as other people revolved in and out of our conversation. We sat side by side on the steps, Tommy spread out like a ramp down the flight and his arms flat on the highest deck, me sitting on the penultimate step and leaning tightly forward into the acute angle of my legs. I don’t remember what we talked about, and not because we were drunk. I do remember the taste of that gin, though. It was perfect,, a promising first taste of fire replaced temporarily by a throat-clenching alcohol burn, which finally relented into a lightly rosy aftertaste, like an anthology featuring a dreary novella bookended by brief, charming short stories. After the party, when Tommy and

I were leaning just a bit with each stride, Tommy proposed we go back to his place.

He didn’t have to ask – we always did that after parties, since my parents would investigate the sound of two slurring voices talking. We walked away, keeping up the conversation until we could no longer hear the last remnants of the party, and then Tommy stopped. There was only the sound of our steps, two thuds at each of our matched footfalls, until we came to Tommy’s house.

We came in through the front door, and instead of going through the kitchen to the back, as we always did, Tommy turned up the stairs and motioned for me to follow. Tommy went through an open door into his dad’s bedroom. I stopped at the threshold, but Tommy beckoned me to come in. He turned on the light, and I saw the room. I had never been in it before, so I didn’t know how it was supposed to be, but I guessed that the way it was now – all the drawers open, the desk cleared, the closet empty – was wrong. Tommy sat on the stripped bed, next to an unfolded letter he handed to me. I remember the words of it clearly, but I won’t rewrite them, for my and Tommy’s sake. The letter, whose prose was competent and written in a precise, square hand, was to the effect that Mr. Bella had left, and wouldn’t be in Tommy’s way anymore.

I read it, and didn’t ask any questions – the whole situation was clear. Tommy didn’t say anything, and after a while he got up, and I followed him to the door. But instead of leaving, he stopped just outside the door, opened the mailbox, and handed me an unopened letter.

“I want you to read this, just to make sure it is what I think it is,” he said. I opened it, read it. The letter was from a bank, a form letter with “Mr. Bella” and Tommy’s address inserted in a mismatched font in the appropriate spots. The house was in foreclosure, and had been for months. I finished it, then brought it down to my side without looking up. “Guess so, then,” Tommy said, then reached over and gently took it back.

I looked up at him, the moonlight on a diagonal across his face made by the porch roof, and he shrugged, his expression as calm as if he were about to triple jump.

I walked home. A block away from my house, I sat on the curb in front a dewy cut lawn on a half-acre plot. I cried quietly, the tears in my eyes refracting the brown-yellow streetlights to

drought-stricken dandelions. ***

I headed off to college two months after. Tommy stayed in town, working at all the old jobs his father had done. We wrote letters back and forth all through school – we didn’t like talking on the phone, there was too much dead time. At first, they were mostly full of news about what was happening to us just then, but over time, we cut back on present-tense discussions. My letters were more and more about the past; I must have written at least a dozen revolving that night at the basketball court, about what kind of cigarette Tommy smoked, whatever happened to Ben, why Tommy did what he did. Tommy’s, after about a year, assumed a regular form: one paragraph of news, then pages and pages about what he was reading. Even the news that Tommy got married was tacked onto the end of that first paragraph, followed by three pages explaining all the ways Huckleberry Finn irritated Tommy and four pages explaining why it was his favorite book; in these letters, I could see him next to me on his porch after track practice, looking into the woods and speaking evenly. I had a hard time responding to these literary letters, since, despite ostensibly studying English with an emphasis on the Restoration era, I split my time between writing others’ assignments in exchange for free booze and drinking said booze, so that the main skills I picked up from my education were how to expand small encyclopedia entries into term papers and how to rationalize markers of alcoholism.

After school, a mistake was made at a newspaper, and I was given a position copy-editing the arts section, which in a few years, after the aging writers succumbed to cynicism and cirrhosis, led to me becoming a book reviewer. I was terribly unqualified, but muddled through by consulting Tommy’s letters that I had saved, appropriating, warping, and rejiggering his insights in my reviews.

Tommy pushed me to do this. I made a copy of the letter I sent, asking about it. I had just finished writing about a memory of the day Tommy and I spent an hour stalking and cornering a rabbit by a creek. We had it trapped between us and the water, and I took a step forward.

The rabbit sprinted between Tommy’s legs, and I dove behind him, snatching it in my hands, holding it up to Tommy,

28

who rubbed its belly, held onto it so I could do the same, then let it go. In the letter, I asked: “Tommy, I got promoted to do book reviews. I know nothing about books. You do. I’ll be direct. Can I use what you say in your letters? I’m not talking “inspiration” here. This will be theft. You won’t be a muse, you’ll be a mine.” Tommy agreed wholly, attaching some old drafts of letters he hadn’t bothered to send before. All his future letters had the same form, but now the book talk was more energetic now, more aggressive; it was no longer Tommy sitting by the elementary school, smoking and looking ahead, but Tommy leaping onto Ben and jabbing a thumb at his eye.

Our correspondence went on for years like this. During that time, I edged closer and closer to the fate of my forerunners at the newspaper. I had seen it coming since joining the newspaper, but the realization crystallized one day when I met a friend from college for a drink; his eyes went wide when we met, my face haggard and eyes sunken above grey bags, and they stayed that way, with what looked like water starting to accumulate in them, as my drink was joined by several others spreading across the table. We met two or so weeks later, this time for coffee, his face now set and even. After fifteen minutes of chatting, he brought up his cousin’s twelve-step program and how he now had a new life to look forward to. “Having something to look forward to,” I said, “that must be interesting.”

He looked up from his coffee, but when he saw me placidly smiling, and I turned the conversation to the weather, he became disturbed, constantly moving his eyes. I suppose he had hoped to give insight, and had not expected to find awareness.

I went to see Tommy every year or two, staying at his old house. (I never mentioned that I was in town to my parents.) He had a wife and children, but the house didn’t seem too crowded, and we still had plenty of time to sit out on the porch. Things were harder every visit, since we found it impossible to talk about the present. I only wanted to hear about Tommy’s family, but he had nothing to say about them; Tommy only wanted to hear about my work and reading, but I had nothing to say about them.

I remember the last visit, the last time on the porch. I had asked about Tommy’s wife, and he had laughed emptily,

29

saying, “The way you talk, I’d almost say you were jealous of me, having to bum around here, cutting cabinets for the rest of my life.”

He then started talking about some book he read, but I couldn’t listen, because Tommy was right. I was jealous, jealous of him, and from his laugh, I knew he was jealous of me.

I left his house the next day, early enough to get back to the office to hand in a review pulled from what Tommy and I had talked about. Tommy and I didn’t write for a while, until I got a brief letter from his wife, explaining that, while he was installing cabinets in a partially finished house, the beams, rotten from the day they were installed, splintered apart and fell, smashing his skull. I went to the funeral, where I threw in a pack of Tommy’s favorite cigarettes in lieu of dirt. Tommy’s wife invited me to stay at their home, saying that Tommy had something he had said was for me. At the end of that day, I went to Tommy’s home, the same one where we used to sit in the back discussing the day-to-day of our adolescence. His wife answered the door, and led me up to his dad’s old room, now a guest bedroom, where I closed the door behind me and turned on the light to find a shoebox on the bed. I put my bags by the side of the bed, then sat and inspected the box. There was nothing on the outside.

I opened it. Inside, under the cover, Tommy (I couldn’t stand to look at his handwriting long) had written, “From me to you, and you to me.” On the very top, there was a picture that someone had taken of me and Tommy; the young me was laughing hard, my head all the way back, while Tommy looked at the camera and smiled with arched eyebrows. Below that, there was a stack of my reviews, neatly cut out and clipped to the corresponding copies of my and Tommy’s letters. Then, at the bottom, his father’s letter, still intact. Yes, we never could talk long without his father coming up.

I took all the things out of the box.

The letter and my reviews I separated out, then tore up, sprinkling them across his father’s old bed. I looked for a long time at the scattered piles of scraps, like lumps of grey snow on a February sidewalk, then went to my bag. I got out two large bottles of gin, and drank them fast, too fast to notice the piney start, the flowery end, no, nothing but the suffocating middle. Then I grabbed the picture and our letters to each

other, laid down across the scraps, our years of words lying on my chest while I held the picture up to screen out the overhead light, me and Tommy backlit again while I waited for the nausea to finally come.

Callie Mangan Icarus etching

30

Culture Ryan Young acrylic paint and unstretched canvas

31

ESSAYS

Performative linguistic Absence Silence : and veiled voice in "the marryed mans lesson"and

epicene

MCKENNA KOHLENBERG

In his comedy Epicene, Ben Jonson explores and even asserts the significance of noise and a lack thereof in English Renaissance drama. Immediately intimating the role of silence as a uniquely important one in this work’s title, Jonson challenges his audience not only to consider the presence of his characters’ speech but also to acknowledge moments of linguistic absence. Indeed, when coupled with and juxtaposed against the 1634 British broadside ballad “The Marryed Mans Lesson,” Epicene reveals Jonson’s reinvention of silence as a presence, not as an absence.

Though trends in existent scholarship call critics to focus on performative language, Jonson exposes a new kind of performativity—that of silence. Ostensibly characterizing noise as the excess of a corrupt city, London, Jonson perpetuates his ideal of an empowering silence, one that encourages self-containment through the characters Epicene, Morose, and Mute. In this essay, I dispute existent literary criticism that designates silence as a signifier of the oppressed or victimized and suggest that perhaps linguistic absences are not symbolic subversion at all, but a controlled and chosen strategy, a means of power. Indeed, perhaps language is not only performative

when spoken: perhaps it is even more powerful when self-contained, veiled, and left unspoken.

The basis for my argument—that silence is perhaps just as telling and as powerful as speech—necessitates first a definition of silence, an evaluation of its precise components. Existent scholarly research explains silence as a gross extension of a dominant party’s power over a weaker, victimized party (Britland). Often, this domination is gendered and socially-naturalized or expected: a masculine force removes or suppresses a feminine one, thus perpetuating the standards of a patriarchal society (Britland). A Goldie Form of Household Government, an early seventeenth-century English pamphlet, for example, characterizes “silence” as “the best ornament of a woman” explaining that, “therefore the law was given to the man, rather than to the woman, to shew that he should be the teacher, and she the hearer.”

However, I assert that an examination of language performativity dually requires consideration of that which goes unsaid.

How can one be certain of the importance of something without evaluating, too, its antithesis? German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote in his essay “Language”

that a human “speak[s] when [he is] awake and [he] speak[s] in [his] dreams. [He is] always speaking, even when [he] do[es] not utter a single word aloud” (Heidegger).

He further posited that verbal discourse signifies or permits man’s existence in a conscious state, it brings man into consciousness and “enables man to be the living being he is as man” (Heidegger).

Heidegger’s fellow German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, expands the former’s claims and creates an association between that which is stated audibly and man’s ability to preserve himself (Nietzsche). He argues, “as a means for the preservation of the individual, the intellect shows its greatest strengths in dissimulation, since this is the means to preserve those weaker, less robust individuals who, by nature, are denied horns” (Nietzsche).

It is interesting and crucial to note, here, Nietzsche’s connection of self-preservation and dissimulation.

“Dissimulate” insinuates a level of concealment: Nietzsche intimates that to survive well, one must practice a certain degree of self-containment, of revealing only what is necessary. Expanding upon the theoretical tenets of Heidegger and Nietzsche, then, I suggest that perhaps silence is

32

not necessarily or consistently a sign of submission, of a more powerful subject’s domination over a weaker one: perhaps silence is a strategy used by those “denied horns” of self-preservation, self-containment, dissimulation (Nietzsche). Indeed, if language functions as an extension of one’s consciousness into a greater macrocosm than the self, a lack of speech necessarily and consequentially follows as a means of self-protection against external threat.

Analyzing the roles of noise and the dumb show, or the unvoiced, in his article “Dumb Reading: The Noise of the Mute in Jonson’s Epicene,” Professor Adrian Curtin similarly explores instances of silence as meaningful signifiers rather than as moments of oppression imposed by dominant figures onto victimized ones (Curtin). He alludes to instances of unvoiced discourse within the comedy as ones that “open up, and to some extent are, windows onto another space—one that materially and mimetically remains contained within, but which metaphysically and allegorically reaches beyond, the contours of the main spectacle” (Curtin).

In this essay, I equate Curtin’s metaphysical and allegorical implications of the dumb show to instances of soundless speech or the veiled voice within Epicene.

Curtin argues that noise is “figurative as well as actual,” as it is not only heard but “perceived, imagined…and possibly… seen,” yet I suggest that certain instances of silence, too, have perceivable and figurative implications (Curtin). While Curtin examines the role of the dumb show or of gesture in Epicene, I instead posit that there are moments of literal and utter silence within the comedy that voice or sound Jonson’s didacticisms. Ultimately, I suggest that Jonson manipulates the role of silence in Epicene as an enabler of those desiring power and self-protection or self-containment: like a veil, silence explicitly announces the presence of that which is not automatically perceivable.

Indeed, I propose that an examination of moments of linguistic absence within the text exposes Jonson’s direct communication to his audience, a didactic voice when none can be heard.

Attempting to ensure the clarity of this thesis before applying it to Epicene, I will express it microcosmically: consider the English broadside ballad “The Marryed Mans Lesson.” Offering men guidance to guarantee them happy marriages, the speaker of this ballad states:

33

A wife thats indifferent betweene though, functions not only as a physical

good and ill, reminder of the performative ability of

is shee that in huswifery shewes linguistic absence - as the former has the

her good will, literal ability to act - but also as an emphatic

Yet sometimes her voyce shee too contrast to Morose’s hyperbolic verbosity. much elevates Although Morose expresses what Curtin

is that the occasion for which her calls a “pathological aversion to noise,” his

hee hates: own excessive speech patterns reveal the hy A soveraigne remedy for this pocrisy of this abhorrence (Curtin). When disease, commanding Mute, Morose states, “all dis

is to hold thy tongue let her say / courses but mine own afflict me; they

what shee please (1634). seem harsh, imperti- / nent, and irksome” (II, i, li. 3-5). In this very response, Morose Here, the speaker invites his readers to describes the noise of others with three reconsider the value of silence as a source analogous and thus unnecessarily repetiof power and self-preservation rather than tive adjectives, “harsh, imperti- / nent, and as a sign of victimization or submission. irksome,” a clear contradiction of his own Inverting Renaissance expectations of gen- aversion (II, i, li. 4-5). He further asks Mute der and dominance by suggesting the male for affirmation of this monologue, twice, remain voiceless instead of the female, first insisting, “answer me not by speech but the speaker further challenges readers / by silence, unless it be otherwise (—)” (II, to acknowledge the power of “silence” i, li. 8-9) and later demanding, “but with / that “will soonest a Shrew over match” your leg your answer, unless it be otherwise (1634). Silence here explicitly functions (—). Very good” (II, i, li. 12-13). Jonson’s as an unexpected or atypical vehicle of anaphoristic employment of “unless it be power—as a chosen signifier of self-conotherwise” followed with an implicative tainment and as a means to a desired end. silence, the suggested response of Mute, That is, the married man who practices infiltrates Morose’s request for validation of silence not only gains power in ultimately his perspective with doubt. In fact, Mute’s avoiding unpleasantries with his wife, linguistic absences here serve almost as but also he gains power by containing his dubious ellipses, ones that challenge rather jealously—by giving no one access to his than affirm Morose’s speech. Not recognizthoughts, to his consciousness. Refusing to ing this tone in Mute’s responses, Morose externalize his consciousness, his speech, bombastically and grandiosely characterthe married man dually prevents himself izes Mute’s silence and silence itself as “an from the vulnerability that couples voiced exquisite art,” thus exposing the hypocritical thought. Through this self-preservation, nature with which he approaches noise (II, i, the married man not only protects himself li. 21-22). Clearly, Mute’s veiled voice spurs from external threat but also empowers the audience to acknowledge the existence himself as the outcome-determiner of this of silence as an entity, its implicative powsituation. Thus, I argue that all instances of er—one that is great enough to undermine the self-contained voice are not illustrative or challenge the spoken word, and Morose’s of submission; indeed, the married man’s complexly hypocritical rejection of sound. silence here is entirely self-authorizing and Mute’s implicit revelation of performative.

Morose’s hypocrisy, though illustrating the

Whereas “The Marryed Mans significance or performativity of linguistic Lesson” explicitly verbalizes the presence absence, further begs the question, what is of linguistic absence as a means of control, Jonson’s authorial intent for this hypocriJonson uses a slightly more subtle apsy—why is the only character in the play proach while expressing this in Epicene: who seems to value silence exposed as a rather than reveal the significance of sifaçade and ultimately punished? I suggest lence in a straight-forward, verbal manner, that this characterization of Morose is a Jonson literally characterizes it in the form necessary vehicle of Jonson’s final message of Mute. Manipulating the character Mute for his audience: members of society must as silence embodied, Jonson spurs his not consider themselves exempt from social perhaps skeptical reader to acknowledge a corruption, like Morose, and they must lack of speech as something that is, itself, accept responsibility for and actively treat an existence instead of a non-existence. their own demoralization. Curtin, too, Mute’s presence within Morose’s realm, notes Jonson’s juxtaposition of performative

silence against speech as a conclusive, allegorical critique of the city of London: “Morose’s obsession with noise may be exaggerated, but this does not dismiss the underlying anxiety about the urban soundscape that Jonson (via Morose) articulates” (Curtin). Considering unnecessary and excessive noise as signifiers or an extension of a grotesque, immoral social body, Jonson crafts Morose as an individual who perceives the moral degradation of others yet is unable to recognize his own identical decadence. Whereas Mute’s linguistic absences alert the audience of this contradiction, Epicene’s dynamic transformation from a voiceless girl to one who verbalizes her disgust with Morose entirely urges audience members to examine the implications of Morose’s double standards.

Specifically, Epicene infiltrates the realm of self-preservation Morose attempts to create with controlled silence and speech.

Revealing her ability to speak, Epicene demands of Morose, “did you think you had married a statue? / Or a motion, only?

One of the French puppets, with the / eyes turned with a wire?” (III, iv, li. 36-38).

Because of his improper use of silence as a means of self-preservation - he uses it not to control and protect his consciousness (as Nietzsche suggests is the correct use of language) but to protect instead his double standards and façade of moral decency Morose must face consequences. Through such consequences, Jonson establishes a standard for his readers, one that calls them to act contrarily to Morose and not to consider themselves exempt from society’s perpetuation of lascivious behavior and intent. Verbalizing this standard in a meta-theatrical moment, Truewit addresses the audience, “Spectators, if you like this / comedy, rise cheerfully, and, now Morose is gone in, clap” (V, iv, li. 247-248).

Here, Jonson encourages his audience to embrace the cleansing of an impure social excess, Morose, and to “rise” and actively continue the purification of tainted social norms (V, iv, li. 248).

Though existent scholarly research on English Renaissance drama considers a lack of voice as a sense of embodied oppression (Britland), I argue that readers of “The Marryed Mans Lesson” and Epicene must not characterize or reflect upon silence so simply. Indeed, perhaps Jonson’s pedagogical intention— that moments of linguistic absence have the potential to be powerful—extends beyond the microcosmic world he crafts

in his comedy and beyond his creation of characters and castigation of their society.

Imparting the equated importance of spoken word and unvoiced speech onto his audience, Jonson slyly places this group of silenced, possibly unassuming, individuals into discourse with the play itself. In silence or in speech, audience members must respond to this play: either response is a performed, implicative one. Ultimately, Jonson forces readers into this choice and, in their response, creates from his audience the kind of society he suggests is most valuable—one comprised entirely of strategic, thoughtful individuals who approach decisions actively. Indeed, Jonson’s ultimate didacticism, then, transforms a lesson on the performativity of silence and language and encourages the audience not to approach this choice, or any choice, passively, as if only the decision matters, but instead, to reconsider the importance of the decision-making process.

Curtin, Adrian. “Dumb Reading: The Noise of the Mute in Jonson’s Epicene” Comparative Drama 43.1 (2009): n. pag. Project MUSE. Web. 4 Apr. 2013.

Heidegger, Martin. “Language.” The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. 2nd ed.

New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 982-97.

Print.

Jonson, Ben. “Epicene.” English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2002. 775-860. Print.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth & Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.” The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. 759-73. Print.

The Marryed Mans Lesson. N.p.: n.p., 1634.

English Broadside Ballad Archive. Web. 4 Apr. 2013. <http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ ballad/30343/image>.

Notes 1. Throughout this essay, I equate and use “audience” and “reader” interchangeably.

2. Consider English Renaissance Drama: A Norton Anthology’s editor David Bevington’s footnote from Act II, scene iv: “Silence was legally taken to signify consent” (p. 800). This ideal founds or supports the historical context of silence as a sign of submission, of allowing rather than acting against something.

3. I cite material learned in lecture with “(Britland)”.

4. While it can be argued that audience members like gallants are not entirely silent, I consider their voices null to the execution of the play—such viewers effect neither the concepts nor the words scripted in Jonson’s work, as Epicene was conceptualized and written prior to onstage performances of it.

Works cited Britland, Karen. “English 425: Outstanding Figures in 17th Century English Literature.” Humanities Building, Madison.

Feb.-Mar. 2013. Lecture.

34

Aaron David You Were Not There/Child 18”x24” mono-print collection

35

36

If Evolution wins, christiantiy goes?

Albert Budiphromo

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” 1 Pitch-black and empty, the shapeless earth awaited commands from the LORD: “Let there be light! [...] Let the

water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth!” 2 Order after

order came, and everything came to be, as the LORD made it so.

On the sixth day, the deciding moment of the Creation arrived: “Let us make

mankind in our image, our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground!”3

And thus the universe was complete.

‘Make mankind’, God said, ‘in our image’, He said. You and I, we were all made in the image of God. We are not apes, and we have never been apes. We are like God, and we rule over all things; we are subservient to no one but Him. We, Homo sapiens, are the pinnacle of Creation. *** Tell that story to ten Americans, selected completely at random. Chances are, according to Gallup’s 2012 poll, you’ll find this: three of them will believe every word

37

you said.4 Five of them may not agree fully, but they will concur that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form” 5; they will tell you with confidence that the scientists are wrong about evolution. Three will be obese.

Now let’s fly across the Atlantic to Western Europe. Go to Iceland, and pick another ten people to tell that story.

Don’t be surprised if nobody believes you.

Don’t be offended if someone thinks you’re crazy! Just be patient, and pick another fifteen people at random. Now, hopefully, you’ll find one person who will agree with you5—at least about the ‘we’re not apes, we’ve never been apes’ part. Keep traveling around Western Europe, and you’ll find a similar pattern. Few people in Europe hold this belief, so commonly held by Americans: the belief that humans didn’t evolve from earlier species, but were created as is, Creationism. Nowhere, except in Turkey, where our last destination is. While it’s arguable whether Turkey—which borders Iran, Iraq and Syria on its east—is really part of Europe, the following is what you will see: four of ten Turks5 believe in a similar, although slightly different, account of Creation: that not the LORD, but Allah, made everything come to be. United States

and Turkey: cheeseburgers and kebabs, Christians and Muslims—who knew they had anything in common? But they do, and what unites them is their lead, among developed nations, in their populace’s rejection of the modern evolutionary account of life. *** But how could this be? What is so wrong that half of the populace of the United States, today’s world leader in scientific innovation, rejects evolution as one of the most verified, confirmed, and corroborated theories that the scientific method can offer? I looked at the bookshelf hanging on the wall over my desk, and glanced over a few titles in my ever-growing collection: On the Origin of Species, The Selfish Gene, The

Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, The Extended Phenotype, The Ancestor’s Tale, and Evolution.

To me, evolution is as much a fact as the Earth’s revolution around the sun. To think otherwise is as preposterous to me as denying that gravity is preventing me from drifting into space, and as ridiculous as denying that jumping out of my apartment window is a horrendous idea. But it hasn’t always been this way for me; four years ago I would have given the Genesis account of

Creation as the explanation of how we got here. Back then I believed that if God said it, it must be true. Like a third of Americans, I saw the Bible as the inerrant, literal word of God. I believed in the Bible to the extent that I would take on any facts that contradicted my faith and wholeheartedly believed that every contradiction could be reconciled in favor of God’s word.

My journey toward accepting evolution was a tough one; it began with the very devotion to God that made me curious about the natural world. I wanted to explore and learn about God’s wonderful Creation, and to see beauty in every part of His work. I wanted to understand what so many had failed to do: to realize that God’s Word is never mistaken, that those who reject it merely didn’t know enough.

Being the bookworm I am, I set out on a path to discover the Universe through the numerous books that my high school library owned. I read about various topics, ranging from cosmology, to quantum mechanics, to evolution.

Looking back, I’m surprised how unshaken I was—at least in the beginning—by the knowledge those books imparted: that I could, despite believing that God created everything in six days, enjoy books relying on the premise that the Universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old. Despite my passion for science, it seemed as if ignoring logical contradictions—in favor of God’s word—was a lifestyle I had gotten used to.

But I didn’t simply hand-wave those contradictions into thin air; one evening, while walking to my dorm’s canteen for dinner, I thought, ‘perhaps the Universe is indeed billions of years old, but a day for God isn’t a day for us?’ After all, “with the Lord a day is like a thousand years.”6 I did the math, and six days times a thousand years per God’s day—six thousand years—was nowhere close to six billion.

So I was back to square one. But I wasn’t worried; my faith was strong, and my God almighty.

As I kept engaging with the inconsistencies that my extended scientific exploration had brought up, however, I occasionally started to feel tinges of discomfort. I started to feel like something wasn’t right; but I just prayed and told myself, ‘keep the faith’. I knew God’s Word was right; I just had to understand how so.

Then, one day, I picked up Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene.

A British evolutionary biologist and a popular science writer, Richard Dawkins gained fame in 1976 through The Selfish Gene, which today remains his most popular writing on evolution—a topic I had never considered in much depth about back then, and one my parents still reject completely to this day. As I read the book, it was as if a new world was being revealed to me. As if it wasn’t enough that his engaging and clear prose convinced me entirely about evolution, his occasional stabs at the inconsistent beliefs of Creationists such as myself planted a swiftly growing tree of doubt in my mind.

A few months passed, and I still couldn’t discover what I wanted to find — that, in the end, there was no contradiction, and Dawkins was completely wrong about God. I hated the consequences of Dawkins’s writings, but as he said in The Selfish Gene, “Unfortunately, however much we may deplore something, it does not stop being true.” As my faith started to waver, I prayed more and more; I asked my friends at church for help; I cried out to God. I kept convincing myself that this wasn’t true; I didn’t want to accept that my faith was falling apart through my own efforts. I can’t remember an exact day I would consider the turning point; but, at some point, I began to attend church weekly without believing anything he pastor at the pulpit said. I stopped singing along with the crowd, and awkwardly pretended to give offerings when I had not put anything into the offering box. I nodded along with my friends at church, but inside, I had lost my best Friend. I wanted to believe, but I knew I couldn’t anymore.After a few months, I started to tell my friends at church that I was going to church services at a different time from them. I would tell my roommate that I was going to church, but instead would sit at a coffee shops reading more of Dawkins’ books instead. I was living a lie—not to others, but to myself. I stopped believing, and I was afraid of letting anyone know.

It took me a while to eventually come to terms with whom I had become.

After a few years, I began to slowly build myself from the ground up. I could now no longer rely on faith and on God when I was sad; I could no longer celebrate my salvation through Jesus. I had to reevaluate my values, discard my old beliefs, and alter my outlook on life. I no longer felt comfortable associating with my friends at

church, and I felt alone at times. I had lost my fight for faith, and with it, a large part of my identity. *** Just as I lost important parts of whom I was, I wonder if many Americans’ fear of losing part of their own identity is responsible for the American ‘exceptionalism’ in failing to garner greater acceptance of evolution.

Unlike in Europe, where religion today has a lesser stronghold, religious fundamentalism is at the core of a significant portion of Americans’ identity.

To this group, Creationism is not merely a belief, but a central identity and the basis for their Universe. When religion is the fundamental value that shapes one’s beliefs and values, it is not as simple as correcting one’s knowledge about a set of facts: Creationism is a fundamental truth that the fundamentalist Christian must defend; evolution is the enemy, the falsehood that must be exposed. This drive in fundamentalist Christians to defend the Truth and expose the enemy gained momentum in the early 20th century. Let’s take another trip, now through time.

The date was May 25th, 1925. John Scopes, a substitute high school science teacher in Tennessee, had been indicted for violating the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in schools. A few months previously, House Representative John Washington Butler had just introduced the Act in Tennessee, based on his belief that the theory of evolution posed a danger to children. Scopes was found guilty of having taught evolution, as testified by seven high school boys.

The prosecution team included William Jennings Bryan, a three-time Democratic presidential candidate (yet, unfortunately for him, a zero-time president).

On Scopes’ side, funded by the American Civil Liberties Union, was famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow. The case pitted Bryan, a prominent leader in the Christian fundamentalist movement, against modernists like Darrow—who accepted evolution as fact—for eight grueling days. The trial itself was a unique one; for parts of the trial, Bryan testified his literal belief in the Bible’s truth, discussed the possibility of miracles, and addressed Darrow’s questions regarding the book of Genesis—whether Eve was created from Adam’s rib, and how Cain obtained his wife if he was the third human to ever exist. While often seen as a publicity

38

Ryan Young Two-Spirit on Campus various material stunt, the “Scopes monkey trial”, as it is now commonly known, revealed the rise of a divide between religious moderates and the Biblical literalist movement. It demonstrated that conserving the literal, Biblical narrative – and not examining facts - was the chief concern of the movement. To accept evolution was to deny the absolute truth of the Bible, and to undermine the basis of all their beliefs. As William Jennings Bryan said, “If evolution wins, Christianity goes!” *** The subsequent rise of the creation science movement in the 1960s shifted the Biblical literalist movement from rejecting and denouncing of evolution, to attempting to find credence for the ‘science’ of Creationism. One thing, however, is still true: to Creationists, Truth is universally on their side. Like how I used to identify, I already knew the truth, and considered everything else a bonus.

39

This belief calls into question the possibility of progress: if preserving a belief that is part of one’s identity is preferable to revising one’s beliefs according to the best available knowledge, how are we to combat this ignorance? This doesn’t only apply to evolution—how about other forms of scientific knowledge that conflict with one’s religious beliefs? How about scientific knowledge that disrupts other aspects of life; say, findings that reveal sugary drinks’ no small contribution to the increasing prevalence of diabetes, or the discovery that driving an SUV will ultimately damage the Earth’s future? How are we to make this group of Americans know science, and to let go of their deeply held beliefs and lifestyle, even when they don’t want to? Perhaps the solution is what 31% of Americans7 propose in terms of evolution: that preserving one’s beliefs is, in fact, compatible with accepting the best available knowledge.

This solution—theistic evolution, as it is commonly called—is the view that humans did evolve from ancient forms, guided purposefully by God. A position held by most religious moderates, including Francis Collins, the current director of the National Institute of Health and an Evangelical Christian, this compromise between science and religion seems to be a promising solution, and one that keeps both sides happy.

In fact, if the country’s arguably most powerful scientist can believe in God, what could be incompatible? As Collins notes, 40% of scientists believe in God 8,9, further undermining the incompatibilist’s claim. If such is the case, where is the supposed great divide between science and religion? Those who live and breathe science can easily reconcile evolution and the Divine; these scientists are living proof of that middle ground. The omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent Christian God, then, could have created the Universe with human evolution ingrained deep into its

laws and destiny, guiding natural selection towards Homo sapiens as the pinnacle of Creation. In contrast to Bryan’s words, God’s evolution and God’s Creation go hand in hand, both winning and neither disappearing.

seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.”10

*** Charles Darwin and I, however, are not entirely comfortable with the compatibilist view. To understand why, let’s shift gears and take a look at one of those evolutionary Creations: a family of parasitic wasps called the Ichneumonidae. With its intricate antennae, lightweight built, and wings to dexterously navigate the insect realm, the wasp is one of the many evolutionary wonders that not even the world’s best aeronautical engineers can dream to build.

What sets the Ichneumonidae apart is, however, the female stingers, which inject poison along with eggs into the wasp’s hapless victim. This brilliant move by evolution, co-adapting the wasp stinger for a purpose besides self-defense, lets the paralyzing sting of the wasp be utilized to a greater extent—the eggs, having been injected into the host’s body (usually a caterpillar, but also the larvae and pupae of other species), are now incubated in a warm, living body.

Soon after, the eggs hatch, and the tiny Ichneumonidae babies crawl within the host’s immobilized body. These babies feed on the insides of the host and—having been programmed to do so by millions of years of evolution—carefully avoid damaging the vital organs. This clever evolutionary move keeps the host alive as fresh food, pushing back its expiration date until the wasp larvae are ready to pupate. When that time comes, the emerging wasps blow up the host’s crippled body, finally realizing the unfortunate fate of the caterpillar, the butterfly it will never get to be.

What a gruesome invention, you may think. One could easily ask, if God guided evolution, what in the heavens was He thinking? Theistic evolution is no longer as wonderful as it first seems. In fact, Charles Darwin himself was rather appalled by this ingenious, yet appalling strategy employed by the Ichneumonidae.

In his letter to his friend Asa Gray, he wrote:

To Darwin, that a well-intentioned Creator would expressly create such interactions in Nature is inconceivable; the existence of creatures like the Ichneumonidae imply either a Creator that is either malicious, incompetent, indifferent, without mind or intention, or even (God forbid) nonexistent.

“I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There

*** Clearly, reconciling science and God, at least as commonly believed in America— beneficent, omnipotent, and Christian—is not as simple as some in the theistic evolution crowd claim. Perhaps the Creationists are wrong: to reject Creationism in favor of evolution does not entail that all of Christianity must be thrown out at once.

However, neither is to accept evolution without consequence for one’s faith in God; cases such as the Ichneumonidae bring up questions about the central tenets of even moderate Christianity: Is God good? Why did God choose evolution, a method of creation that brings so much suffering? While evolution and God, or science and religion, are not mutually exclusive, one cannot deny that there is friction between the two.

The hazards of scientific illiteracy are manifested when this unavoidable conflict between science and belief occurs, and one chooses to preserve personal beliefs over science; when beliefs unsupported or contradicted by scientific evidence is seen as central to one’s identity, the evidence will be seen with suspicion, rejected altogether, or dismissed as irrelevant.

Scientists who campaign against ignorance are seen as disrespectful, heartless, or rude.

In today’s world, however, an understanding of science and its methods is paramount. To claim that controversy regarding evolution, for example, has no practical effect is to overlook the importance of evolution in medicine, agriculture, and biomedical research. To claim that we should not force facts against personal beliefs and identities is to give up our country to the whims of politicians’ ideals. Should we act against climate

change? Should we spend valuable health care resources on funding alternative medicine? Should the government ban genetically modified foods? Those are questions that have consequences, and simply cannot be left to the fancies of personal ideology, fear, or fantasy. Such is the case, too, with evolution: we cannot simply accept the prevalent rejection of evolution, and the perpetuation of Creationism through its proponents’ efforts to introduce its teaching in schools.

What we need, urgently, is a struggle for science. We must foster understanding that science is not about picking and choosing conclusions that are personally convenient, picking ‘facts’ that are most consistent with one’s dearest beliefs.

Science, at its core, is about stubbornly following wherever the evidence leads, even if it destroys one’s most deeply held beliefs; our modern civilization owes many of its chief accomplishments—from vaccines, electricity, to sending men to the Moon—to the scientific way of thinking. We need a significant fraction of Americans, who have yet to understand this, to realize that we did not achieve our leadership in science and technology without sacrifice. We need them to realize that, when the unavoidable conflict between science and belief occurs, we cannot afford to give up science and evidence. We cannot afford this ignorance if we wish to maintain our legacy as the world’s scientific leader, and to allow science to usher us into a better world. *** Let’s randomly pick ten Americans again.

Ask them: what is DNA, and how does it relate to your body? Unfortunately, you’re lucky if you can get more than five decent answers. That is the state of scientific understanding in America, and that is what we’ve got to fix. I’m not sure how long it will take for us to change this, but we’ve definitely got our work cut out for us.

40

mancha Anonymous

These useless thoughts always come to my head at weird times and I never give them much credit but maybe they won’t be as useless if I write them down. Sitting here doing my homework, or rather attempting to do homework but getting distracted every two seconds, I hug my stuffed hippo.

I tell my roommate about how I got it at Disney World when I was five, and then later when I went again I brought the hippo with me to go on all the rides. She laughs.

I turn my hippo around and look down at the small hole in the stomach, which is nothing new. It’s been there for a long time; I remember feeling around at the stuffing since I was young. Then I remember what else I used the hole for. I went to the hospital once. And then I went again.

I was really sad, and I went there to get better, but it only really served as a safe place for me to stay until I felt a little safer. It also served as a place to get pumped full of medicine. They gave me a sleeping pill to take at night,

41

one that really knocked me out to the point where the next day my head would be cloudy and I would feel like I wasn’t completely in my body.

Although I stopped that medicine long ago, that feeling has never completely gone away. They prescribed me this medicine at the hospital because I was suffering from restless legs, which had come as a side effect of the other medicines I had been put on there.

Medicines to cover up what the other medicines caused. This is nothing new.

So I was really sad, and I wasn’t stupid. I knew there were ways to get around the “protective supervision” of the hospital. When they gave me the sleeping pill at night, I put it under my tongue and faked swallowing. They checked my mouth, but not too thoroughly because I had never done anything wrong before and they trusted me. I’m good at that, developing trust with people so I can do what I want without them noticing. So when I got back to my room, I needed somewhere to hide the pill, to

store them each night without getting caught. The hippo sitting on my bed.

The hole in its stomach. I did the same the next night. How many would it take to do what I wanted? Would I just be able to fall asleep like normal but then not wake up, or would I slowly and painfully lose consciousness?

My hippo’s name is Mancha.

I don’t know how I came up with the name, because I named it when I was five, but I have never heard the name anywhere else. I never really gave it a gender. I don’t think that really seemed necessary as a child, and I am recently rediscovering the same about myself and those around me. In the years between then and now I was stuffed full of ideas that told me to differentiate genders with certain objects or activities, and even now I cannot fully recover from the brainwashing that has been done to me. I can never look at someone without automatically choosing the gender of the individual in my head. At least I have come to the point where I don’t make these gener-

alizations out loud.

During the second night, my restless legs got so bad that I dug around in the hole of the hippo to end the discomfort, but in my frenzied state of insomnia I couldn’t find the pill. That night was so uncomfortable that I decided I would not be able to continue storing the pills for my plan.

When my mother visited the next day, I nervously told her about what I had done. She was calm, and thanked me for telling her and went to tell the nurse. They did a room search, talked with me, and decided I wasn’t much of a threat, so I didn’t get in trouble. I’m good at that too, not getting in trouble when I get caught doing something wrong because I had previously gained all that trust.

Things are different now, but I can’t tell if it is in a good way. People told me with help I would get better, and I used to expect that one day I would not feel anything I had felt

during my rough time. But the truth is that the rough time never fully goes away, the feelings don’t fully go away -- you just learn to work around them.

I have become so good at pretending things are okay that I often fool myself. Who knows? Maybe things are okay. I just thought that if things were really, truly okay I would know that.

But instead I’m left in this uncertain, unfinished thought. And that’s where these words will end too, in this unfinished thought that will leave you feeling like there should have been something more, like a conclusion or realization of some sort.

Above:

Victoria Lu Hex 15”x 22” ink and watercolor

Don’t worry, I have that feeling too.

42

Lucia Hodkiewicz Fleeting photography

POETRY 43

[Gravestone] Ben Elmakias

On the east side, next to the lake beside old friend Joe’s summer house, a memory box lies empty as members slowly depart to learn about themselves. It was once temporarily filled with vicarious young men carving names into table tops and questioning adolescents moving gently about, cracking open paint cans and letting its blood run across paper walls; now it only ever greets, with storm-sealed windows and boarded-up broken doors, vacationing passers-bys manufacturing horror stories to occupy their time.

Wandering the perimeter, fingers dancing through cobwebs, stretched paw purring across washboard walls. The gentle drumbeat wakes sleeping legs, conducting an eight-piece chorus to play silent strings.

Her eyelashes bat away broken dreams, flickering screams. She hums story-filled tunes, tip-toes through imagination, and carries fate strung about her neck as if the lilacs, born in the garden of Eden and dying in her left hand, weren’t enough of a devotion for old grandpa Joe’s final grave.

44

Icequeen

by Sabina

You upset me, ice queen. finger-licking, skinny-limbed, ice queen; I could never imagine being warm with you, or rather you being warm with me, I can just see you with your Coke in one hand and Marlboro Red in the other, you’re trying to quit, ice queen, you’re keeping me up ice queen, I am freezing in your basement with no blanket while you’re chillin upstairs, ice queen, with that bitch, ice queen, think she’ll help you melt or something? shed more skin, more fat or something? always cold, ice queen, cuz your body don’t know temperance and my body is tempting it so why are you condemning it, so cold, ice queen?

I can feel your fear like frostbite and it’s mean, ice queen, say what you mean, ice queen, because your smoke came out my mouth all too clean, ice queen, and that dollar in your nostrils all too green, ice queen, from all I’ve seen, ice queen, think I’d know you better, think I’d be real keen, ice queen, I’d get between ice queen and save you from the terror you been seeing ice queen.

45

Ross

We keep our hearts in sandcastles

by Kait boss The grains grind against the tissue.

Our arms, legs, heads lay Scattered about the sand box.

And we were alive as our parts.

So your left leg didn’t know it was curled Around my neck that didn’t know it was propped Up by my right arm.

And the children played with our floppy limbs.

Susan whacked Jack with your hairy foot.

With its crooked boney toes.

Mary Ann, that sweet girl, intended To piece us back together.

There was just no knowing whose heart was who’s.

And my lips nestled Into the ridge of your ear and whispered Oh so many things.

46

Doorknob

by Kait boss

It is no wonder she lets you caress her cool circumference After all the slamming and the jabbing and the twisting.

She slackens, waits for that sweet salutation To slip through her grooved passage.

The gold flecks of light flow forth Past mysteries of the locksmithâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sole understanding.

Do not bother scratching Your lacquered eyes, For Tiresias narrows her beam And etches. Truth.

She is the attendant of both worlds Privy to that behind closed doors.

47

Extrasensory Perception

By Eric Obscherning

How I love to think of water as a constant, as an expectation always fulfilled â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as a roaring stream, as a bead on your forehead, or your breasts, or your cheek.

Water to Darwin is ecological flux.

Water to Whitman is life-bearing fluid.

Water to You is the tide of the ocean, or the storm of the month.

Water to Me is the rain.

Above:

Lucia Hodkiewicz Approaching digital photography and editing

How I love to feel the rain in Milwaukee before you do in Detroit.

To know the way you feel before you feel it.

48

Brittany Fahres The Mind’s Eye 8.5”x 12” digital print and graphite

49

Poetry's Mind It is there, that coveted thing That remains so elusive amidst The struggling winds and Tumultuous waves. The chaos Swells, ever-expanding in Billows of lightening and Surges of thunder.

The storm may be strong And many a thing may Be lost as it rages on, But the eye is calm and -If only for a moment -- beautiful.

Kristina Karlan Floral Nests 5x15x5 ceramics

by Nicolette Karls

MUtu Many a fancy rests upon the mantle, Once sturdy and gorgeous to behold.

Gold-leaf edged and leather bound; Forthwith squalid, festering, untold.

Erstwhile quill soaked vellum Born forth marrow flourished, misled.

Heavenly benighted, bestowed upon thy kin; Abreast parchment stained with words since unread.

Hither they rest evermore, Abated within thy tome.

This shall be forevermore Their inexorable home.

Kristina Karlan Emerge 6”x14”x5” glass

50

Anniversary

By Kristian

Iliev

You forgot?

Desist talking of addled brains or missed trains.

The eyes enlarging in size flitting like flies

tell tales you never could.

Opposite page: Natalie Hinahara Grow It Yourself 18â&#x20AC;?x24â&#x20AC;? wood cut relief print

51

52