Ivory Tower 2012 by The Tower

Acknowledgements Ivory Tower is extremely grateful for the help and support we have received from the following individuals throughout the year. We could not have done it without you. Bradley Hoff

Eric Lorberer

Judith Katz

Kasia Wasko

Rose Hendrickon

Michelle Filkins

Denise Mazone

MC Hyland

Rebecca Aylesworth

Sarah Caflish

Ellen Messer-Davidow

Allan Kornblum

Coca-Cola Activity Initiative

John Colburn

UMN Department of English

Guante

Lisa Vetsch and Johnson & Litho Printing

Meghan, Jamie, Courtney, Holly, and Regan of Paper Darts

Erin George and Beth Kaplan from University Archives

Ryan for untangling our PoeTree and scolding us in rhyme

And our infinite thanks to Sarah Fox, who is always an inspiration. Ivory Tower is a non-profit annual student production. Graduate Advisor: Sarah Fox

Ivory Tower

Magazine Design: Shannon Fletcher and Teresa Hayes

University of Minnesota

Interior Art (Pages ------): Megan Sharp

English Department

Printed by Johnson Litho Graphics

207 Church Street SE

Eau Claire, WI

Minneapolis, MN 55455

To find out more about Ivory Tower, please visit our website at:

207 Lind Hall

ivorytower.umn.edu

Table of Contents

Floor. Title Author, (Genre) 50. Cuban S. P. Rodney (A) 42. Because of Herman Melville Laura Burnes (F) 41. The Pressure is Lessening (donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let go) Jennifer Snider (P) 39. With Me in Akeley Jake Tallent (NF) 38. As Is Amanda Rezutek (A) 37. Absolution Jessica Sanko (P) 36. Log 3 (Portrait of My Sister) & Log 2 Nicholas Vander Loop (A) 33. City Michael Anderson (F) 32. Dwelling Digestion Dan Forke (A) 31. Whales in the Sky Mike Trost (P) 30. Touching Torsten Johnson (P) 28. Relentless Sun Sarah Moen (F) 27. Abby Katie Lindgren (A) 26. Hooray America Mark Brenden (P) 25. No Sugar, No Cream Vanessa Ramstack (P) 24. Brothers Christine Nicholson (A) 23. Immortality Kestutis Micke (P) 22. Rain Man Kristina Laskowski (A) 21. Vibhavadi Road Sacha Chandavong (NF) 16. Zamboni Leah Lancaster (F) 15. Glow Ashley Zelenka (A) 14. Erosion Erin Murphy (P) 13. The Ceiling Tim Schumacher (P) 12. Frank, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got a fine boy here. Joseph Wise (P) 11. Framework Daniel Opheim (A) 10. Future Jazz Steve Sitek (P) 7. Car Horns & Chicken Pox Erez Rosenberg (NF) 6. Water Nicholas Vander Loop (P) 5. Lightflood Wake, Awake Hannah Miller (P) 4. Self Portrait Rachel Mosey (A) 3. The Willard J. Ramstad (A) 2. Two Souls on a Tandem Bike, in Beige Trenchcoats Matthew Ullery (P) 1. Consider the Egg Erez Rosenberg (P)

Musical Selections

Sleep Stance Caroline Rich Man St. Peter 1998 Ever Again

Dan Forke Angela Johnson Joe Kopel Joe Kopel Alyssa Pintar

Please visit www.ivorytowermag.com to listen to the music portion of our magazine.

This has been a year of transformation for Ivory Tower. We have learned that Literature and art are not meant to collect dust on bookshelves and walls. Writing is an exchange--art is an interaction. The two play off each other in a ceaseless conversation. This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s issue is meant to Encourage that process even after our staff has left the school. We are a magazine in motion. Creative expression is a tool and a toy. a blank page is meant to be tagged. In compiling this issue, we have created a journey for our readers through imagined worlds that come to life on onceblank pages. But the journey does not end with the last printed image--it carries on with you. We have included pages at the end of the book meant for you, our readers, to fill with your creativity. So give us to a friend, or lay us on a coffee table. Continue the conversation and, please, keep passing it on. We move with you .

Hanna Kjeldbjerg

Jen Rosenberg

Erez Rosenberg

Consider the egg.

Ponder the captivity within the bounds of your valence shell.

Consider

Think of your cowering crouching fetal position inside the off-white walls.

its slightly bumpy,

Shoulders pressed.

yet entirely smooth,

Head tucked.

white surface.

Naked.

Consider its slimy silvery placenta.

There is a world beyond your white home.

Are you in the egg?

For now, you are blind to it.

It is the place where you are born.

But remember your origins when you can see

Where you die.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;or when you learn to live in the dark.

Where you are reborn. Where you re-die.

Two Souls on a Tandem Bike, In Beige Trenchcoats

Matthew Ullery

his movements slow, his bones are ashes. he drags heavy feet, hands clasped together, a realist with a sense of humor, a half-eaten apple, brown.

she’s wearing your grandmother’s perfume. a shoe falling off, eyes on the ground, moving quickly, an idealist with an air of sadness, a cup of coffee, empty. they’re dressed for the rain with an endless list of ways to apologize, each word a mirror of another time; a half-eaten apple, green. a cup of coffee, full.

The Willard J. Ramstad Watercolor

Self Portrait Rachel Mosey

Colored Pencil, Chalk Pastel, Acrylic Paint

Lightflood Wake, Awake sun-conversation crescendos in the newly open water fluid bright reflective red dogwood, yellow willow branches interrupt. radishes are up, rhubarb, and it’s crinkled, bunched— leaves like a handkerchief too stubborn realize late: the fist that swallowed them now stolen away to knock at the far north for winter to enter there and play the tired bear. half-and-half coaxing to open myself to this season— barefoot in the morning to open the door to the breeze

I can barely stand

the flood of light’s eager current past my feet a shadow wake, you awake.

Hannah Miller

Water

Transparency trapped, Form amorphous, Bending light like an enormous mass in space. We stick to skin and surface Pass through moving bodies The air will make spheres out of us Gravity into ellipse. Old face winding onwards And silently mimics the city.

Nicholas Vander Loop

Car Horns & 1. I don’t remember my first day of school, but I remember crying. 2. Whether they were competing to see how high they could get on the swing set, how fast they could run up the slide, or how many ways they could make it across the jungle gym without touching the ground, I knew they were laughing at me the entire time. Especially Evan Post. Every time he smiled that toothy, cynical smile, I could just hear that goose-honk snicker of his. Nick Sasson was always nice. I considered him my best friend in the neighborhood. That’s why it hurt so much when I could vividly imagine him joining Evan and making fun of me.

3. They were playing on the swing set in my backyard. It was mid-morning on a warm, sunny summer day, and I remember watching them through the kitchen window. The sunlight bleached their faces in a way that made it look like every one of their actions was divine, yet diabolical.

4. I remember when I had to return the Robin action figure I stole. It went along with the Batman one I already had. I don’t remember stealing it.

5. I don’t think they ever saw me standing inside watching them through the kitchen window, but I could tell that they were talking about me the whole time. They were the only boys my age in the whole neighborhood—so I was stuck with them for better or for worse. On that day, it was for worse.

6. I remember talking about salmonella in music class during a xylophone lesson. I don’t remember learning to play the xylophone.

7. I shuffled over to the glass sliding door, slid it open, stepped outside, and slid it shut behind me. I was now alone in the world with those two—no adults, kids rule. It really was a beautiful day—blue sky, bright sun, perfectly mown green grass, a calm breeze rippling through the green leaves on the tall trees overhead, birds chirping, cars zooming by in some extremely far-away distance.

Chicken Pox

Erez Rosenberg

8. I don’t remember salmonella. I remember the I.V. 9. I said, “Hey,” to the boys and asked them if I could play with them. For some reason the fact that it was my jungle gym failed to register in my memory then. Evan answered before Nick could speak. Nick probably would

have said yes. “Not now. We’re having our secret club meeting,” Evan said. I asked if I could be in their club. Evan told me that I would have to wait while he discussed it with Nick. They discussed it and came back to me with an answer. They told me I could be in their club only if I passed some tests, as every club member had to do.

10. I remember when my parents told me never to make a promise because only God knows and controls the future. I don’t remember when I decided that I control my own future.

11. I ran up the slide like they asked. I made it across the jungle gym (including the swing set) without touching the ground. I even swung as high as the top of the swing set and jumped off, practically landing on two feet. After the test, Evan told me that there was actually one more that I needed to pass. “Follow me,” he said. He took off running through the neighborhood and into the wooded forest beyond, Nick in close pursuit, and my pudgy legs churning as fast as they could carry me in the caboose of this little caravan.

12. I don’t remember eating pizza, but I remember throwing it up in the swimming pool at the hotel in Tel Aviv.

13. Evan was a soccer player. Nick played basketball. Whether they were running at full-speed I couldn’t tell you, but I know that I was. We were off-trail and in the shadows of the dark woods now, dodging trees, running through muddy puddles, and jumping over stumps and fallen logs. Out of breath, we emerged onto a tar sidewalk that went through a tunnel. We jogged through the tunnel. Each of us was panting. We walked up a hill to our right, and I realized that we were now on the wrong side of Highway 30. I stared across the busy road at my

neighborhood. Cars and trucks sped by in blurs of sight and sound. Evan then told me that my last test was to cross this road, and then I would be admitted into their secret club. I had gone this far. There was no turning back. Three tons of metal flashed by four feet in front of me.

14. I remember breaking my foot playing tag with my dad. I don’t remember limping around at the State Fair the next day because my parents didn’t think it was broken. I guess it was the end of summer.

15. Evan went first. His way of getting me to follow suit, I suppose. He waited until no cars approached in the horizon, then dashed straight across the street. He was safe on the other side just as a procession of cars came into view. I waited for them to pass by.

16. I don’t remember chicken pox. I remember the scars they left. 17. Nick said that I should go next, and that he would go last. No cars in sight, I stepped into the street and started to sprint with all of my might. I don’t know if I was too slow, or if I just hesitated before I actually started to cross, but I do know that a car came into view at that moment, zipping down the hill at 50 miles per hour.

18. I remember when I first learned my grandma’s name. Dalia. Not Daya. I learned it from a plaque on her office door. I remember asking Daya who Dalia was. I remember her laughing and saying, “I’m Dalia.” I remember when the world crashed around me as I met my grandma, Dalia, for the first time. I don’t remember seeing her that day. I just remember the door.

19. Cars were honking at me before I was even halfway across. I felt like the entire world was mad at me— yelling and honking. My stomach was in my throat, and my bladder felt like it had shrunk to the size of a golf ball.

20.

It took me years not to flinch and jump every time I heard the trumpeted F-sharp of a car horn.

Future Jazz A

serious purpose in the state of perpetual rock and jazz. We flip prescription

pill bottles and stuff them and cram tilted concoctions that ooze five hours with grainy sediment drinks to crash down the foam. It lasts for hundreds of years and repeats itself, coloring a deeper gray with each tick. In the middle of a tin-can graveyard I watched from a distance the melted magnetic lava wash. The glistened cries that I heard scar me. The dark gaze of space and magenta light in the distance reminds me, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not far from what was once home. Just east of the tin-canned porcelain cup row. The hilarity jubilation of sticky thumb stick junk drop drives. The silicon vitamins involve themselves. The wires and chords chomp and chomp. And sometimes when I find that spot, my mind dips far away into a manic chamber fetished market. Where I wish I were near a forest where one goes mad creating their own light and dark reflections. Where cut silver beckons shadows. And no chords are able to be rapped spoilt, with wiry snaps. And if one has no sunglasses one has no sun. Because the lights dimmed and went down for the count. Down to count out the cries from the wired papers. In cellars. In dark. In dank pits of rooms. Computers, chords, and all crash. What a graveyard, what a spectacle of zoom.

Steve Sitek

collage, ink, tracing paper

Framework

Daniel Opheim

Frank, you’ve got a fine boy here.

Joseph Wise

He’s impatient, waiting for the

He remembers that today is his birthday.

Chemical crashes and lights to begin,

He stomps his sandy Nikes on his wet feet

But everyone’s filing back to their cars, lined

And swings his leg over his red Huffy.

All the way up and down the next four blocks.

The road is laminated in warm rain.

Sulfur makes the night air droop,

The moon in a manhole cover

But he doesn’t remember the explosions.

Eclipses at every intersection.

His neck is sore.

The new moon always follows the waning

He wishes he could see the stars.

Crescent, but the cones were missing

Only a 747’s guiding light is up there, and he

And

Wonders if they can see them.

The blood from his whipped head runs down Cedar

He turns to walk, but his lifted foot

And

Is a leaky faucet over a brimming bath.

Regroups like kids in a fire drill as it weaves

The black glass wrinkles over the asphalt, and

Through the silt and sticks of a sewer dam.

The glints that catch the wall of a cresting wave Swim atop his feet like small fish.

The

Ceiling

Tim Schumacher

There’s something beyond the granite here On the ceiling where the cracks boil over with that foul-smelling ooze that freezes into shale when it bleeds onto us And the heat seeps out on occasion in

hungry gusts that get our blood flowing again

But we know there’s something beyond the granite

when our skin turns from white to grey to black

since we’ve all seen it before it hardened over us

And the granite that crawls over us over years

and over our unified body and we want to believe

Spreads like gangrene on our bodies to

that our skin will soften and our ceiling will soften

weigh us down so that the ceiling towering

and our world will soften and our color will explode

over our single head stays towering over us

like this infectious stone has erupted over us and

Within and out of reach for as long as we

blocked us from that heat that kept us and kept him

are able to look up.

alive.

you and your hair like raindrowned blades of grass. Some days my gaze grazes your face and believes into me that I was born only eyes, as though no other organ can know you. But I hope thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not true. Because your

Erosion

I should warn you I adore

skin, I think, might smell sweet like loam and could rise and swell to match with heart can come to with time, if ever you choose to overflow. I pour into you, now, love. And if I could,

Erin Murphy

mine, as a groundwater

I would sweep you sweet into the belly of my bed and do nothing else forever. Mistaken faiths may find us tangled at the end of all days and, laid together, the truth will no longer be hard to discern: you are the earth and I yearn to be the waves, breaking over and over you.

Ashley Zelenka

Black and White Film Photography

Leah Lancaster I meet Jennifer Gray at Felpausch on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. I’m at my sample station, hairnet on, handing out bite-sized squares of organic cinnamon swirl bread when she decides right then and there she’s going to march into my life. Her red heels leave black marks on the tile as she clicks over. “Nice balloons,” she says in a completely serious tone, flicking the blue one with her spiky nail. I brace myself for it to pop, that’s how sharp those things look. She shaped them into exact points as if, one day, she would need them as weapons. “It’s my kid’s birthday today, mind if I take one?” It’s hard not to stare. In the middle of November she’s wearing a short black dress with no sleeves. Her body is average, a little thick in the ankle and wide in the hips. She’s probably only in her thirties, but something in her face makes her seem a hundred years old. “Uh...I don’t—” I mumble hesitantly, wondering how festive a birthday balloon can be with FREE SAMPLE stamped across it in bold letters. Before I can even finish responding, she rips the tape off the strings and clicks away with all four balloons trailing behind her. I watch her disappear down the frozen food aisle and find myself wondering if she’s cold walking past all those freezers, if she owns a coat or if she forgot it somewhere, wherever she’s from. I know what she is. She’s one of the prostitutes that hang out in front; she’s one of those ladies who press her breasts up against the windows of cars lingering in the parking lot. “What kind of party are you looking for, gentlemen?” she’ll say with her painted lips split into a wide smile. My manager doesn’t mind the loitering; it’s been going on for years. “Don’t worry about the whores in front,” he tells me on my first day. “Brings in business, ya know? People come in here, buy shit they don’t need so they look innocent with all their bags and what not, then leave with some extra goodies.” He chuckles with glee and gives me a wink before waddling off down the aisle, leaving me to resume stocking orange juice as if nothing remotely strange had just taken place. I remember feeling surprised at my dad’s reaction when I told him about my new job. “The Felpausch on 5th? The one with all

the whores?” He asked in between mouthfuls of Doritos. He didn’t wait for my answer. He laughed good and hard for a minute before swiveling his Lay-Z- Boy back towards the TV. I don’t know why I ever expect anything more. My dad has lived in Battle Creek his whole life, and when you’ve lived here that long nothing surprises you anymore. We’re different, my dad and I, but we get along fine and let each other be. I like to go with him to the ice rink and sit on the back of the Zamboni machine while he drives it in slow, wide circles. My favorite thing to do is look down and watch as the bumpy, gray ice disappears under me, then reappears shiny and new. I swear you would think that slick, white surface was the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. The ice rink is the only place my dad and I spend time together. In his free time he’s in front of the TV, watching America’s Funniest Home

Videos. I try watching it with him, but can never muster a laugh. A dog gets stuck in a box or a person falls and nearly dies and my dad will be laughing hysterically, slapping his knee and everything. Then he’ll look at my blank face and punch me in the shoulder. “You gotta stop bein’ so serious, son. Seriously, you’re too young to have a stick up your ass all the goddamn time.” I never respond to my dad’s comments. I honestly can’t remember the last time we’ve had a conversation. He talks at me and his words settle in my stomach. I get up and go to bed, to school, to work. I don’t think about it.

On Friday, she’s back. I see her flipping through a fashion magazine and for whatever reason I can sense that she’s looking for me. My reflex is to hide when people want to talk to me, so I duck behind a Pringles display. It’s too late. “Hey. Hey! You!” She walks over to me and digs a cell phone out of her bag. “I wanted to thank you for the balloons. My daughter really loved them. Here, look.” She shoves the tiny display screen in front of my face and I can make out a little blonde toddler holding all four balloons. FREE SAMPLE has been scribbled over with marker, making each balloon look like an inky smudge. “I want to take you out to eat. I’m starving. There’s a McDonalds a couple blocks up the road. When do you get off ?” Panic seizes me as I try to figure out a polite way to say no. Questions that I don’t have the balls to ask get stuck in my throat. Is she even allowed to leave here? Doesn’t she have a pimp? What if she’s drunk? What if she has a gun? Does she expect me to pay her? She rolls her eyes at me as I stand there, mumbling things that don’t make sense. “Whatever. Like you have somewhere else you gotta be.” She starts walking away, and guilt slaps me across the face. “Yeah, okay sure,” I hear myself say.

“Alright, meet me out in front when you get off,” she says, annoyed. “And don’t even think about blowing me off, I know where to find you.” I choke out a laugh and stand there awkwardly, afraid to move in case it might offend her in some way. She turns on her heel and heads for the door. It’s Friday night, and the parking lot is full.

“Two Big Mac meals. Make both drinks orange soda.” She pulls a few wrinkled bills out of her bra and smoothes them out on the counter. The worker, a young guy a little older than myself, stares at her, then looks at me. Don’t ask, I wish I could say. She carries our tray to a sticky plastic table by a window. “So, tell me about yourself,” she says, ignoring the food. “Tell me everything.” I pause for a moment, taken aback by her boldness, though I’m not sure why. “Er...I don’t know. You go first.” She sighs, and makes a face that says stop being so boring. “I’m Jennifer. Jennifer Gray.” She props her elbows up on the table. “I was born in Nevada, but I’ve moved around quite a bit. I moved to Battle Creek three years ago, and I’ve been turning tricks outside Felpausch ever since. In my spare time I take care of my niece, Lina. I call her my daughter, though, because I like to. She’s the girl on my phone. She turned five on the Tuesday I met you. My favorite color is red. I live in a shitty apartment. Sometimes I’m happy and sometimes I’m not. That’s about it. Kay, now it’s your turn.” I can’t help but laugh. She smiles at me and I find myself smiling back. “You should smile more, you look better when you smile,” she says. My muscles start to relax and I begin to talk. I talk for hours, suddenly unable to stop. The workers start to stack chairs and sweep. The burgers sit on the tray, unwrapped and ignored. She asks occasional questions, but never interrupts. She smiles when I try to be funny and nods her head when I talk about sad stuff, like she’s been there before. I tell her about my dad, and how I don’t know my mother. I tell her my dad use to sleep with a lot of prostitutes back in the day. Hell, he probably still does. I tell her that I don’t have any friends because it’s easier that way. She asks if I get lonely and I tell her that I used to, but not anymore. I tell her that I tried to kill myself two years ago. She asks how, and I tell her that I drank a bottle of vodka and jumped off a bridge. The bridge turned out to only be seven feet off the ground. I got two badly sprained ankles and a trip to detox, and I never tried to kill myself again. She sucks in her lips so she won’t laugh, but gives up and starts howling, right there at the table. Gasp—“oh my god I’m so sorry”— gasp. “Oh my god...HAHAHAHA.” I start laughing too. We laugh for a long time, until we’re both crying and holding our sides. She leans over the table and wipes the tears off my cheeks. “Let me tell you something I’ve never told anyone before.” Her eyes glaze over and she looks at the ceiling. “I had an abortion

when I was fifteen. It was a boy, and I know that if I’d kept it he would be just like you.” Something breaks inside of me and I start to cry—silently at first, then violently until my eyes swell and my fingers wrinkle. “Let’s get you home,” she says softly. She grabs my hands and leads me to the door.

I dangle my feet over the edge of the Zamboni and slide precariously close to the edge. What would happen if I fell off ? I wonder. Probably nothing, but it’s fun to think about. “What time did you get in last night?” My Dad asks as he swerves the machine around a corner. I almost lose my balance, and quickly clamor back onto the flat surface near the driver’s seat. “Around four in the morning. I met a friend after work. Sorry I didn’t call.” He keeps his eyes on the ice in front of him. My dad doesn’t like to look people in the eye, it makes him nervous. “I don’t give a damn if you call me or not, I was just curious,” he says. “I’m glad you’re going out. I never liked how you sat in your room moping around for hours and what not. When I was your age, I was out every night doing crazy shit, becoming a man. That’s what you should be doing. Jesus H. Christ it’s about time!”

She’s thirty minutes late. I decide to stop waiting, and tie on my skates. They’re old and smell bad, leftover from my junior high hockey days. I wobble out onto the ice—rusty, at first, since I haven’t skated in years—but it comes back to me in a few laps. I soar through the air, weaving effortlessly through the crowd. Why did I ever stop? I think to myself as my blades cut graceful lines in the ice behind me and shoot up snow when I turn corners. I start to forget about her and how she’s late, how everyone’s always late, and then I see her. She waves from the entrance before stepping cautiously onto the ice. She slips immediately, but catches herself on the wall. I glide over to her and expertly stop a few inches away from her. “Well aren’t you a little Todd Hamilton?” She says teasingly. “Sorry I’m late, my sister was late coming back from her errands and I had to watch Lina.” “It’s fine,” I say, even though she has a bruise on her cheek and a split lip. She’s excessively bundled up with mittens, a scarf, a sweater, and a coat on top of everything else. You’d almost think she had a normal life besides the marks on her face. She doesn’t say anything about it, so I don’t ask. “You need to teach me how to skate or I’m going to be sitting on the bleachers all day. I can’t just break my neck, I don’t have health insurance. Fuck my life, right?” “You’ll be fine, just let go of the

wall.” She collapses into me, and I grab her hands and lead her while skating backwards. Pretty soon she can skate on her own, slowly, but without falling. I turn a bucket upside down so she can sit on it and shove it across the rink. She screams and I start apologizing until we both start laughing. She buys me hot chocolate and we promise to meet every Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. for the free skate. Two months pass without notice and every Tuesday she’s there, with her mittens and scarf. The bruises fade, and I begin to think they were only a figment of my imagination.

“Let me drive the Zamboni tonight, please, I swear I’ll lock everything up!” I’m almost on my knees and my Dad looks completely bewildered. He’s done trying to reason with me. “Fine, whatever, I’ll be home, you know where to find me. If you get me fired your ass is grass.” He shoots me one last suspicious look before walking out to his car. It’s Tuesday 11:00 p.m., and she’s not here. I race around the rink as fast as I can. I’m sweating and panting and I have to keep going so I don’t have an anxiety attack. I hear the front door swing open and recognize her footsteps (loud, quick, more like a stomp than anything else). “Jennifer?” She steps onto the ice and my heart drops to the bottom of my stomach. Her left eye is swollen to the size of a golf ball and chunk of her hair is ripped out. She has stitches in her nose and scratches on her neck. Her feet are bare, and the dress she’s wearing is ripped and stained. She walks to the middle of the rink and lies down on her back, her arms spread out like she’s being crucified. I lie down next to her and we stare at the rafters in silence. She grabs my hand, and it occurs to me that one day she will disappear. This thought hovers over me like a cloud before enveloping me in its gentle mist. She squeezes my hand tighter, and we lay there for hours until our bodies become numb, and we feel nothing.

Nam has been reading the news on the Internet for weeks, preparing sandbags, making telephone calls, and gathering any last items for the trek. He knows what is ahead. Wattana, his mother, also

(Road

Vibhavadi

knows but sits in denial, staring blankly out the window and losing sight of what could be her final days in this very house. This morning he paces the cold tile floor. Cup of coffee in hand, he overhears the neighbors say

something about moving. Moving where? Evacuate, they say. The whole street, neighborhood, and districtâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;everyone has to go. In the bedroom across the hall, his mother sighs deeply, her thoughts heavy. Stubborn as always, she refuses to leave her home.

Vibhavadi Road drowned in the Chao Praya River just two weeks ago. The main road that fed life into their neighborhood is long gone. Sediment-laden water seeps under the cracks of front doors, forging a path of its own. It keeps rising, and it does not stop, stripping away over thirty years of memories. There is no street food today. No wafts of red curry and homemade Thai iced coffee brewing around the corner. The banks and automated cash machines are closed. No cars, motorcycles or rickshaw cabs running their meters. No signs of life returning anytime soon. Silence. An eerie silence that fills the humid, sticky air.

Sacha Chandavong

She tells him she wants to play caretaker one last time before the water crests.

Kristina Laskowski

Rain Man

Colored Pencil and Acrylic Painting

“I believed that I was perishing with the world, and the world with me, which was a great consolation for death.” -Pliny

Immortality 30

Two small loaves of bread

which nourish the rising pine tree

branching out needles

Sit over the hearth.

A small flame licks their tan bellies

piercing

Which slowly swell

screams sounded in the air

Until cracks appear and sigh.

choked by falling stars

I brought some sticks from the courtyard.

We tried to count them all.

Something changed in your face.

our breath fell short

A bead of sweat made

like the last wave of high tide

A run at salvation,

morning fog never lifting

But was killed scaping the cheek.

a dawn’s sunset

I washed my hands in the cistern.

when the world is gray and silent ly dies

And saw Vulcan tremble. A low hiss. Smoke.

two bodies lay in the fire

sweating ash.

The grate had collapsed And two bodies lay in the fire Turning black. The compluvium has begun to cry tears of ash

Kestutis Micke

Christine Nicholson Charcoal on Paper

Brothers

No Sugar, No Cream in a moment of sour silence, my lungs exploded! into glitter and danced out of my throat i’d found my newest enemy—the apathy toward trying the itching in the middle of my palm screams: “don’t let him touch your body” but i scratch my skin and take the kiss oh the sweet crystalline rock candy i have become i had this fear i was a donkey pulling a box (of confinement) along a crowded street my dick was my biggest problem and when love cut it off— another grew in its place oh perfect unlike everyone else i’m not here to change the world i’m here to be kind to cool the steaming coffee i remember when a billion was one and civilization was still in our minds.

Vanessa Ramstack

Hooray America Working words carve mahogany tragedy

Cowboy banjo fires tobacco jersey

when 4x4 dreams tow famous bifocals

an athletic scripture forms

cigarette senators hit broken jukeboxes

a 21st-century sport of screech crash

& whiskey goatee twirls ceiling fan arcadia

governor singer smash together indeed

& what is left but v-neck vengeance

under the deserted decade

or lonesome gravitas or dust-covered sheds

& a streetcar named inquire

stern countenance recites evening news

scary drunk the music emerges

while Cash rides off singing

from a loaded passage & a filthy grain elevator

you got it all wrong, buddy

while automobile companion & incredible outlaw

& the teapot whistles

needle away 2008 a pasture of wind & rain & fire & earth & woman & shotgun

hooray America drinks are on you hooray America the west is one Pinned Ecclesiastes serves greasy dinner to beaten Geronimo in ugly darkness while beautiful bodies huff laughter around knitted expanse landscape horseman yeehaws a false machismo into plunging wind oh dirt ridden brother where is your toolbelt? oh fallen sister when will your laughter return? hooray America the kids are losing again

Mark Brenden

Abby

Katie Lindgren

Black and White Film Photography

The Relentless Sun It was a frost-coated day when the sun decided to shine its brightest, in attempt to see its reflection in the snow. The earth shown as bright as the flashlight bulbs I stared into as a child trying to fall asleep, making all the tungsten lamps of daily life dim by comparison. Even staring at its reflection in my wood paneled floors left a neon kaleidoscope behind my eyelids and a temporary blind spot on all I saw. It was time to start the day, but I had to close my eyes to see. Richard was setting up the day’s second pot of coffee, carefully placing six tablespoons of grounds into the filter with a shaky hand. The smoke from an abandoned cigarette wafted up to the already stained ceiling and I lit up my own and took my place at the table. Newspapers open and toes touching, I couldn’t ask for anything more. I’ve seen a lot in my days and now it is time to rest with the ones I love. Staring over the paper I examined the wrinkles that have faded their way onto Dick’s face: the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes from reading his books too late into the night, the brow lines from working out a problem, the marionettes from smiling. They’re familiar to me now and yet I can still picture the youthful face I met. I know my face mirrors his, but I no longer feel a connection to the image I present; my physical body doesn’t match my soul. I wonder what God has in store for me now. With the harsh realization of melting time, I’ve started praying again. For his sake, not my own.

A branch hits the window and I sit up abruptly in bed. Reaching out for Dick I notice his side of the bed empty and already cold. This seems to be happening more frequently these days. I lay my head back down for a minute’s rest. Walking hand in hand we make the trip around the farm that Richard grew up in and now we call our own. The little building out front that was once the house of the property now serves as a tool shed and seems to look up in

awe at the new home, triple its size. We have been lucky in this life and I know that we always will be with his fingers interlaced in mine. I have no need of time these days, but judging by the angle of the sun it’s time to head in for Richard’s medications. That blinding light seems to be haunting me these days and I tightly shut the blinds to prevent the red glare and veined patterns on my sight. It seems each day I can see less.

Three of the round red, two of the large white. One blue gel capsule. Two tablespoons of tan powder mixed with one cup water. Our lives have been measured down to pills; our days have become a science. I line them up perfectly against the marbled counter top. I stare until my vision goes blurry and they transform into the pebbles at the headwaters of the Mississippi. The water trickling over them, with hints of glitter sparkling in the summer sun. The start of something great traced back to a trickling stream, as if linear time was embodied in its path, showing growth and accumulation only to have it dispersed in a wide sea, drowned. Suddenly, I’m floating in it, being pushed and pulled by the currents. I don’t know which way is up nor if it is safe to breathe. All my life I expected a great epiphany, that moment when I realized I was old and wise. It never came. There is no acceptance of a full life, because you will never feel like you led one. There was always more knowledge out there for me to grasp, if only I could reach it, if only it could graze my fingertips and sink into my memory. I can’t hold my breath any longer and reality seeps into my lungs, filling them up, weighing me down.

The red before my eyes is too much to bear and I open them to be blinded by the morning sun. Dick’s side of the bed is still made, still cold as it was when I checked it last. I slowly swing my feet to my slippers and make my way to the empty kitchen. There is no familiar smell of smoke, no coffee on the pot. I measure out the scoops with a heavy hand—six just like Dick used to. Sitting down, I stare at the hands that are not my own, yet no one else’s. I wish for a hand to hold or a heart to feel. I stare at the table to sleep through the day, waiting to awake in the night, still haunted by the sun.

To touch my thoughts with words

clinging to sweaty legs

will leave me scrambling to explain the reasons

and hairy

for my leaving you last night

genitals

as we lay beneath the sooty spot on your ceiling

so tightly there’s no space for my self

where a candle once was lit and now is not

and choice

Torsten Johnson

Touching

so I stand and leave you and on and on I’ll run from you

kissing your face

being chased by my heart to my head

hesitating

and back

to put on my shoes

thinking in flashes of warmth and sticky lips

but leaving just the same.

sucking on my skin pushing you away before you force me to surrender which is the word you speak of— spoke of, in red orange blue green light as we discussed in fragments the implications of certain words that describe uncertain feelings that we both describe in other ways but hesitate to embrace like we embrace each other

Dwelling Digestion Dan Forke

Pencil Drawing with Digital Color

Whales inMiketheTrostSky Sometimes the monster

Underneath your boat Is the shadow of a cloud.

City It was there on the scarred wooden park bench that Morsey confessed his ailment. “It’s not as if it’s debilitating to the point where I won’t leave the house or anything. It’s just...” He winces before readjusting his face, regaining composure, exhaling a long, wheezing sigh. “Okay. Well, I have considered—never mind. Not important.” “Just say it.” “Well, I mean...not that it makes any difference, but every once in a while I’m gripped by an aggressive sort of paranoia. Like, I don’t know, there is something I’m not quite in on. A joke or something. To me, that would be hell—experiencing life halfaware of what is going on around you. Being unable to, I don’t know, have access to an area of consciousness everyone else does.” “Area of consciousness?” “Imagine moving to a new city: New York, Philadelphia, whatever. You try to acquaint yourself with the layout: the streets, buildings, landmarks, and so on. After living there for a few weeks, you come to know what you think you need to know. The route that takes you to the bus. The stop you have to get off on to walk a block to the supermarket. The avenues run north-south and the streets east-west. After a while, the feel of the city sort of soaks into you. You no longer really have to think about what you’re doing—you can just sort of walk around with this subconscious assurance that at some point you’ve learned what you need to know to get around. I feel like this isn’t making any sense.”

“Look. Let’s walk to Dick’s. You can finish your thought there.” Dick’s was two blocks east in a small strip mall just outside the town’s main consumer hub. It had a vaguely old-west kind of feel, the strip mall, with dirt brown paneling and trees oddly withered and shriveled under the Midwestern sun. Dick’s served breakfast all day, which is why, even though its aesthetics weren’t exactly pleasing, Morsey and Jules frequented the joint. Two plates scarred with soap scum and topped with eggs, toast, parsley, and ham dropped onto the table, propelling dust to swirl up in the sunbeams shining through the brown-tinted window. “Bit melodramatic, don’t you think? Hell? It’s like that one Twilight Zone episode, with the clown and the soldier. What’s it called? You know, it’s like five characters stuck in some kind of limbo or something.” She talked with a mouth full of eggs, something Morsey found oddly endearing—attractive, even. “Five Characters in Search of an Exit. It’s a thinly veiled homage to Sartre, I think. But you’re right, it is melodramatic – you can’t date someone with thespian ambitions and not expect some over-the-top dramatization of everyday life.” He pauses. “The Twilight Zone. Let’s just say I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone. Not hell.” “Fine. Finish your thought.” “Okay. You’ve just moved to a new city, remember. Well at some point someone pulls up next to you in a green caravan asking for directions. For whatever reason. You’re on 4th and 15th and they need to get to, say, 8th and 12th. You tell them what you think they need to know and continue walking to your bus stop.”

Michael Anderson

“Uh-huh.” “While there—at the bus stop—you spot the green caravan pulled off to the side. And the guy—the guy in the car—is talking to another guy, two blocks from where you encountered him. Anyway, you see the two shapes talking in a kind of blurred myopia. You swear, for a second, that both of them look over at you.” “This better be going somewhere.” “The green caravan, anyway, pulls off headed the direction opposite of where you told him to go. At this point you have to reconsider everything. Maybe it was a matter of miscommunication—he misheard you or you misspoke. Maybe you were misguided in thinking you had any sort of understanding of the city. Maybe you imperfectly soaked up the streets and avenues: the streets really run north-south and the avenues east-west. Maybe your understanding of the city only makes sense to you.

Log 3 (portrait of my sister) Log 2 Nicholas Vander Loop oil on board

Jessica Sanko

absolution

today we received a visit from the bug inspector who disguises poison in delight to rid of those undesirables he says we all live in a little box built atop rock thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s carved by lonely winds and that living with an absence of wastes is the only way to live healthily except we all fail at that surrounded by bacteria and other grimes life creeps sluggishly within our borders in this little box, where sounds donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t soften although true chaos is the state of things boxes stacked upon boxes of human enterprise

Amanda Rezutek

As Is

Mixed Media Collage

With Me in Akeley

Jake Tallent

Deer are supposed to call, grunt, bawl, bleat, bellow, sniff, or wheeze. This sound wasn’t any of those. We need another word for this sound. I didn’t hear it at first when we got out to check on the car. (Why the car? Who cares about the goddamn car?) It was a two-part experience: The first half was like when I rolled my old Malibu into a pile of snow. There was a moment of selfish fear, followed by calm—disconcerting calm which felt so inappropriate I had to fake a reaction. I remember calling my dad, putting on distress, injecting a bunch of “oh my God”s to seem like a human. We hit the thing; I felt it crumple and roll past my left side. If not for the three inches of leather and steel between us, his shoulder would have brushed mine. I stopped—not suddenly, but slowly, like I was parallel parking. You said, “It’s okay. Let’s get out and check the car.” Fuck the car! Did I even ask if you were okay? I got out, cool as a goddamn cucumber, saw brown hair snagged between steel panels and flecks of blood in a barrel dent. I looked back and saw him as a pile. I assumed he was dead. I accepted this, like a thousand flies spread across a windshield.

The second part of the experience was like when you rolled your old Saturn. This was true fear for me. You got out, by yourself, on crutches. You were helping me, calling to find out what to do, when I heard him. The noise he made was abject; it reminded me of my own voice mid-spin back in the Malibu—desperate, brutally hopeful, fearsome, undignified. His voice was an outpouring of bile. I wanted so badly to kill him, but I had no means besides the car, and I didn’t think I could handle the brutality of that. For a moment I was him. I looked at and past you, as I imagine he would if he could, and said, “What am I supposed to do?” God, Ashley—we’d just come from the hospital. I had no right to lean on you, but I did. I’d like to think I swerved right to put myself between you and the deer, but more likely I was running on stupid impulse. I could have easily gone left and killed us both—or worse, just you. I was following orders hereafter. You told me to get back in the car, and I did. You were savagely compassionate; you turned on the radio to drown out the awful, unnamed sound, but I could still hear it. You told me to drive, and I drove, to pull off at the Akeley gas station, and I did. You sat with your arms around me under a streetlamp between the police station and post office, crutches beside us. You told me true things: that it wasn’t my fault and that I should open up to you instead of containing my grief. God, Ashley. I was the deer, making terrible sounds, prostrate on asphalt, alone in darkness, profoundly alone, universally, sucking, grinding, death and nothing and hell and desertion—but then I wasn’t. You were there with me, and I wasn’t alone and dying.

The Pressure is Lessening (don't let go) We're crossing mountains—You and I— brushing hips and holding backs. Our bodies' swing-swing hiccups at first. We slide, swooshing down the slopes like a breeze with knobby knees. Chickadees tango in Our hair and Warblers lace Our hands together with sticks and spit and lay eggs between Our fingers. The black Oaks glide upward shadowing Our fleshy branches in testaments of green faces— their leathery cheeks breaking kisses with afternoon stars, hymning: We are here; We are here! Woman and Woman, We are Here—and the World is blue, all blooming blue. We rest under a baring sky one mess of love feathers two Robins—now One—in luxury.

Jennifer Snider

Laura Burnes She wasn’t the only woman in the room, but as far as Charlie was concerned, she was the only one that mattered. Her hair was curly, brown and long, and she wore a dress that was slinky, red, and knee-length, though it had no back, eliminating all notions of modesty. She was just sitting at the bar with an air of the Lauren Bacall about her as she sipped strange-looking alien blue juice in a martini glass. There was no visible purse, and Charlie reasoned that this was because men simply bought her things. The gem gleaming on her left middle finger, big as a sparrow’s egg and the diamonds sparkling around her neck screamed luxury. He gulped, and wondered why this perfect woman would waste her time at this cheesy book launch at this chintzy, cheesy bar. It was thought to be an appropriate place to introduce the latest novel from Clancy Kirkfritzen, a faux divey joint called the Writer’s Dive. The décor was secondhand furniture and portraits of famous authors in their prime strung up along the walls, from Poe to Brontë to Hemingway. Kirkfritzen was past his prime in age, but not in his writing ability, judging by the applause he was getting for his latest book as he approached the front of the house. Young Dolly was destined to be a bestseller, at least according to Charlie’s boss, the author’s editor, who referred to it as “this generation’s

Lolita.”

“Thank you,” Kirkfritzen was saying, concluding his speech. “And let me begin by saying it’s the common man, that’s who I seek to speak to. I seek to use their language. I think I have finally succeeded.” Charlie was closing in on the woman at the bar, and saw her glance sullenly at Kirkfritzen, then return to her drink, a snicker plainly written on her face. When he got up close, he realized she wasn’t quite as perfect as he thought, or indeed, as she could have been. Too much black eye makeup hid her sparkling blue eyes, and even the foundation couldn’t conceal small bumps of acne along her jaw line. She was perfect, but only in the artificial sense. Still, she intrigued Charlie. Intrigued and suddenly intimidated. It was one thing to see a girl across the room, another entirely to approach her, and another thing altogether to try and talk to her, as he was quickly realizing, his artificial confidence quickly fleeing as he cleared his throat. She didn’t turn. She probably didn’t hear over the applause and her derisive snort as the author said something about the “poetic quality of true love.” “Hello,” Charlie said, loudly. She swiveled in her barstool and asked, annoyed, “What?” Charlie opened his mouth, but no words came out. He hadn’t anticipated much past this part. The “how’s it going?” came out stupid and inept. She knew what he was up to at once. She was used to being hit on. Her smile was dripping with disdain when she said, “Do I look like a taxi?” “Sorry?” Charlie asked . “Do I look like a taxi? Do you see any lights on over my head?” she asked , waving her hands above her head.

“No,” he said. “Obviously I’m not in service then,” she said. “So no dice. I’m commissioned already.” Charlie had expected her voice to be high pitched and airy. Instead, it was deep, full, and thoughtful. Normal. This made things more embarrassing for him as he said, “Oh, well, I wasn’t trying to—that is to say—” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Sure you weren’t. You look like you’re about to puke.” Charlie opened his mouth, but didn’t quite know what to say. He wanted to slink away, maybe go cry from shame somewhere. He didn’t belong here. What was he thinking, approaching a woman who clearly was used to the attention of basketball stars and millionaire brokers who bought her diamonds. She seemed to take pity on him. She set down her glass, introducing herself as Marjorie, which seemed an unlikely, grandmotherly name for someone wearing a backless dress and hooker heels. “I’m Charlie,” Charlie said, shaking her hand. Her fingers were cold, so it was like grasping several thin popsicles at once, but her handshake was determined. He asked, conversationally, “So, who do you work for? I’ve never seen you around the office.” “No,” she said. “I don’t work in an office. I work for him.” Marjorie pointed with one finger, the other three wrapped around her glass, at Kirkfritzen. “Oh,” said Charlie. “Like an assistant?” She shrugged. “I guess. I assist his daily rise. Well, me and the miracle that is Viagra.” She took a long dragging gulp.

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Right. Like…you’re his prostitute.” Crap, he thought, stupid Charlie, stupid, tactless. Thankfully, she didn’t seem upset by it. “Technically,” she said smiling, “he’s what the kids call a sugar daddy, but if you ask me, that sounds worse than anything else, like he’s the candy that I suck on. Let me tell you, it isn’t candy, all shriveled up like grape nuts.” She glanced back up at Kirkfritzen on stage, who was waving his arms about to make his point. “It’s disgusting.” “I can imagine,” Charlie said, picturing grape nut nuts and shuddering. “No, not just that, I mean, his whole act up there, like he’s god or something,” Marjorie said. “I wanted to be a writer.” “Hey, so did I!” Charlie said, eagerly jumping in at the chance to explain his life story, though Marjorie didn’t seem quite so eager to hear tales of his exploits, the award-winning essays, the publications in student run literary magazines, stories about love and the pain of growing up, and then his realization, or perhaps delusion, that the world wasn’t ready for his literary masterpieces yet, repressing the notion that he actually just wasn’t that good. “Let me guess,” she said. “You were the best writer in school and you managed to publish some stories about love and the pain of growing up?” Charlie gulped. She continued, “Then once you graduated, you realized you were shit out of luck because no real person gives two mouse dicks about your generic short stories, but since you got good grades and recommendations, you landed this poised-for-power literary gig, where you rub shoulders with people

that make or break puny, naïve writers like yourself. I would say, going by your wrinkled dress shirt and loose tie, you’re not used to this kind of scene. It’s a place where, judging by the misplaced sense of selfconfidence that initiated your feeble attempts to hit on me, is not where you belong, or even where you want to belong. ” Spot on, Charlie thought, admiring her bluntness. “Still,” Marjorie said, turning away from him, “you’re lucky. You got a job. At least you can respect yourself. Do you think you could you respect yourself if you fell for that little piece of sanctimonious shit’s shtick? ‘Oh, I’ll look at your writing, sure, I’ll pay you for the rights to this, oh, you should move in with me, oh, here’s this diamond, here’s a new necklace, here’s some clothes, well, why aren’t you jerking me off already?’” She downed the rest of her drink in one furious gulp and continued, as if trying to defend herself. “It just snowballed. All of the sudden I’ve got cash, he’s got my book, and I think, oh, what’ll it hurt? Next thing you know I’ve practically got a sex contract with the pervy bastard and he’s getting published. It’s a breed of men like him who take advantage of naïve idiots like me, and it’s men like him that make me think that Bobbitt lady had the right idea.” “Right,” Charlie said, nervously crossing his legs. She rolled her eyes and gestured up at Kirkfritzen, saying, “I mean, just listen to this dunce.” He was emphasizing a point, saying, “Love is poetry.” “How original,” she muttered. “Regular Byron up there.” “Love, as Dolly so wisely puts it in my book, is not about finding someone who’s perfect. It’s about finding someone who,” he pulled out the book and read the sentence verbatim, “‘is as full of horseshit as everyone else, and together, you can crap your beautiful, messed up shit onto the world.’”

This was met with laughs and applause at the overall appreciation of young Dolly’s naïveté concerning the world and her charming use of excrement as metaphor for love. Marjorie rolled her eyes and said, “As if that old fart could have written something like that.” Charlie said, “You mean he didn’t write it?” “No,” she said. “Of course not. I wrote it. I sold the rights to him. I just told you. You think he knew what it was like being a teenager in the 90s, or being preyed on by an older man? Well, maybe that part he could work out, but he’s got no imagination. He’s not a writer, he doesn’t know anything except about getting born into upper middle class suburbia and growing up in upper middle class academia. Even before I came along, the stuff he wrote was complete garbage.” She finished her drink. “But I guess I can’t criticize that. I was the same way when I met him. I didn’t have a life, I didn’t have any experiences, and that’s why I wasn’t a real writer.” She clinked her glass with a chipped fingernail, indicating the bartender should send her another one. Then she said, “Herman Melville.” “Excuse me?” said Charlie. She pointed at Melville’s author portrait, hanging directly over the bar, gazing disapprovingly at her. “Herman Melville. Now he was a writer. Don’t get me wrong, Moby Dick was as boring as waiting for an oil change, five hundred pages of allegorical bullshit. I mean, Jesus, the whale is God, the Peqod is America, and man can’t save her, we get it, now just get to the end already, but Herman Melville was a writer. You wanna know why? ‘Cause he lived that shit. He traveled the world, saw everything he wrote about. I respect that. He wrote real poetry, not this contrived bullshit everyone writes nowadays.” The bartender handed her another drink. He looked at Charlie. “Can I get you anything?” Charlie shook his head. They were both quiet for a minute, Charlie because he didn’t know what to say, but she finally said, “I’m pretty sure that’s why I stayed. I wanted to be like Herman Melville. I wanted

experiences. I didn’t live before I met Kirkfritzen. I didn’t have anything to write about. When I met him, I thought I’d have an adventure, a laugh. Now I have. I don’t think I’m better for it.” On stage, Kirkfritzen was finishing up his talk. “And let me conclude by stating how honored I am to have this work published. I do think it is the greatest thing I have ever had the pleasure of writing.” Charlie looked over at Marjorie. She sipped her drink, but the glass jerked slightly in her trembling hand. “Why don’t you just leave?” he asked. She smiled, sadly. “I realized I like being safe, and with him I am.” Kirkfritzen bowed on stage. She sighed. “Now I’m stuck. Now he’s all that’s keeping me afloat. And I kind of hate myself for it.” Charlie looked back up at him, a sickening feeling in his stomach as the man leered around at everyone, drinking in the applause like a greedy walrus basking alone on a sea rock. Kirkfritzen bowed, stepped off the stage. Marjorie shook her head and muttered sarcastically as Kirkfritzen approached them, “Now comes the fun part.” “What’s going on?” he asked, walking up beside Marjorie and glaring at Charlie. Charlie wanted to say something to him, something devastating, but Marjorie’s face snapped from sarcastic cynicism to affectionate adoration. “Nothing,” she said, and suddenly, her voice becoming breathy, high pitched, more Valley Girl. “Charlie here was just expressing great interest in your book.”

“Was he? How interesting,” the author said, glancing at Charlie briefly, then reverting all his attention back on Marjorie. “Let’s get out of here, Tanya, darling, shall we?” Charlie frowned. “Tanya?” he mouthed at her questioningly, as Kirkfritzen turned to get Marjorie’s coat. She shrugged, and then smiled at the author as he held the coat out for her. “Are you ready?” “God yes,” the author said. This new lady, this Tanya, giggled, in a way that would have made Marjorie puke, and walked out with the pervy old fart, who didn’t even wait until he got outside to grope her ass. Charlie shook his head and looked up at the portrait of Herman Melville above the bar. “Bastard,” he muttered, and then he walked out behind them.

Cuban Acrylic on Wood

Steph Rodney

Ramble on

We move with you. 61

Ivory Tower is extremely grateful for the help and support we have received from the following individuals throughout the year. We could not have done it without you.

Ivory Tower is a non-profit annual student production. Graduate Advisor: Sarah Fox Magazine Design: Shannon Fletcher and Teresa Hayes

Bradley Hoff