Kansas City Voices

KANSAS CITY

VOICES

a periodical of writing and art

volume 10

10 YRS

O

KANSAS CITY VOICES 4 10th anniversary issue

table of contents

POETRY Aubade Amy Ash

69

Deep Song, Andalucia Susan Carman

68

Incident at Riders Ford Gary Lechliter

44

Mine Creek Kansas Marie Asner

52

The End of the Day Toby Goostree

30

Borrowed Brilliance Glenn North

70

A Levee Road Judith Bader Jones

15

Death of a Gucci Handbag 25 Tina Hacker

Red Wattles Run Stacy Post

Jelly Bean Greenscreen James Bellard

33

29

Craigslist Nina Bennett

10

Marlene Mae’s Bout with Cancer Lois Marie Harrod

Soliloquy For Bruce Proctor Alan Proctor

16

75

Map-Reading Stuart Larner

8

Nothing Missing, Nothing Broken Rita Roth

9

The Guest List Ebba Blake

Prairie Rumors Lisa Hase-Jackson

Blood of My Kin Jack Kline

11

The Rise Natalie McAllister

For the Love of God, Sean Kuno: Jeff Tigchelaar

38

37

74

Robert Ford and Jack Ruby Sit Down For A Drink Timothy Volpert

53

Dutiful Anne Wickliffe

66

Please Take a Bow Deborah Shouse

28

54

Everything Ginny Taylor

45

Headed South Anne Muccino

71

The Deadline Amy Weir

46

The Bad Seed Ron Pruitt

6

Wedding Secrets Anne Wickliffe

26

PROSE A Gift From God Marilee Aufdenkamp

14

34

5

Triptych of a White Chick with Dreadlocks Chelsey Clammer

Such a Sound Thomas Fox Averill Modigliani’s Birth Anne Baber

31

The Inheritance Dawn Downey

48

Have a Chair Robert T. Chrisman

39

Mister Speaker J. C. Elkin

67

ART Radium Carolyn Adams

20

Fog Fence Dona Corben

17

Shadows and Light Bess Duston

24

Staci John Sebelius

57

The Timing Eleanor Leonne Bennett

65

Dahlia Galaxy Marla Craven

60

Under Bridge Richard Fritz

63

A Day at the Zoo Sondy Sloan

19

Arikaree Homestead Julie Blichmann

61

Hat Scape Marla Craven

59

Arrangement No. 1 Stephen T. Johnson

22

Yellow Nude Ken Buch

21

Herman Wood Dickinson

64

Elves on a Shelf Michelle LeGault

58

Parting Ways Alberta Cifolelli

18

Three Trees Wood Dickinson

62

Mondrian Blues Johne Richardson

23

KANSAS CITY

VOICES VOLUME 10

KANSAS CITY VOICES EDITORIAL STAFF MANAGING EDITOR Jessica Conoley

ART EDITORS Pamela Boles Eglinski Jay Meara Janet Satz

COPY EDITOR Betty L. Barnett

MARKETING & PUBLICITY Valorie Wells Fenton

PROSE EDITORS Susan Peters Martha Varzaly Teresa Vratil

POETRY EDITORS Maril Crabtree Pat Daneman Polly Swafford

GRANT WRITING Janet Sunderland

LAYOUT Caleb Harman

SOCIAL MEDIA Jason Preu

WHISPERING PRAIRIE PRESS BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2nd VICE-PRESIDENT Valorie Wells Fenton SECRETARY Jason Preu

PRESIDENT Jessica Conoley

VICE-PRESIDENT Janet Sunderland TREASURER Theresa Hupp

Kansas City Voices is published annually in the fall by Whispering Prairie Press, a non-profit, tax-exempt corporation. All rights reserved. Reproduction or utilization of the contents in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, or in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Whispering Prairie Press is not responsible for errors, copyright or other infringement made by contributors. Nor does Whispering Prairie Press assume any responsibility for loss or damage of unsolicited material.

Submission guidelines for the next issue will be posted on our website when the next submissions period opens. See http:// www.wppress.org. All materials, manuscripts and contest entries received by Kansas City Voices must be original and in no way an infringement upon the rights of others. The responsibility for receiving permission from others regarding reprint rights or the right to use a real person or place in an article or on artwork lies exclusively with the writer and/or artist.

ISBN 978-0-9644170-3-8 ďż˝ NOVEMBER 2012 KANSAS CITY VOICES 2

THE HEROES OF WHISPERING PRAIRIE PRESS

Whispering Prairie Press was founded in 1991. Deborah Shouse and Carolyn Riddle, co-leaders of the Kansas City Writers Group (KCWG) at the time, wanted to publish an anthology of writing by group members. They asked Sally Whitney to be in charge of the project.

Judith laughed as she told a charming story about the garage sale. “Marian Godfrey, an early board member, brought a 1950s bathing suit to the garage sale at Phyllis Westover’s house. I told her no one would want an old bathing suit! But it was the first thing to sell.”

Several members of KCWG volunteered to be on the anthology planning committee, and they met for lunch following each KCWG session. The meetings evolved from lunch time meetings at PoPo’s, a small café, to more formal meetings at the Plaza Library in Kansas City, Missouri.

The early publications of Whispering Prairie Press were three anthologies of work by KCWG members. Earnings from each publication paid for publication of the subsequent issue.

Judith Bader Jones, currently a KCWG member and a former, long-time board member of Whispering Prairie Press, was part of that first planning group. She described Sally Whitney as “a soft-spoken woman from North Carolina with a degree from Duke University.

We lost her to New Jersey in 1994 when she became director of Best Review, a magazine for the insurance industry.”

When the production cost for the first anthology was determined, Sally Whitney applied for 501(c)(3) status for the fledgling publishing house. Chalise Miner, a KCWG and WPP member and volunteer until 2008 when she moved to Florida, suggested the name “Whispering Prairie Press.”

The planning committee thought that, as a not-for-profit organization, Whispering Prairie Press would be able to raise seed money for the project through donations. As it turned out, the board raised most of the money through fundraisers. Judith said of these early fundraising efforts: “I suggested we clean houses to make money, but this was immediately voted down! What was I thinking? Money raised from a dinner reading at PoPo’s, a writer’s retreat at Cado Creek Cabin, two used book sales, a garage sale, and manuscript critiques paid for the first anthology. The used book sales alone raised more than $750.”

The first anthology, Beginning from the Middle, was published in 1994. The blurb read, “Every piece in this book is a commitment from people who love words and love to write.”

In 1997, the second anthology, Handprint in the Woods, was published under the editing leadership of Mary-Lane Kamberg and Terry Hoyland. “As these authors explored their environment, their work became unquestionably linked with people who live on the land.” By then, Mary-Lane had also become co-leader of KCWG with Deborah Shouse.

In 2001, Larry and Suella Walsh edited Season of Light, a third anthology. Rex Rogers offered his expertise for the layout. According to the foreword in this volume, “This anthology lingers within the season framed by light: candles, hearth, moon, sun.”

In the months between publication of the anthologies, Whispering Prairie Press offered programs in “Writing for Publication” at libraries all over the metropolitan area and as distant as Lone Jack, Missouri. People came out in large numbers for these classes and the Q&A sessions often continued until the libraries closed for the evening, according to Alberta James Daw, a long-time board member and historian of Whispering Prairie Press.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 3

The Heroes of Whispering Prairie Press continued

In 2003, the board, under the leadership of Larry and Suella Walsh, undertook a new challenge. Larry envisioned a high quality annual literary magazine dedicated to Kansas City and environs, and Suella suggested the name, Kansas City Voices.

As Managing Editor, Larry suggested and the board voted to approve a layout of 10 poems, 10 fiction, 10 nonfiction, and 10 art pieces. Variations on that format have continued throughout ten years of Kansas City Voices publication, which still publishes high quality poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art.

Kansas City Voices is now publishing its tenth volume under the leadership of Jessica Conoley, Board President and Managing Editor. The magazine solicits writers and artists worldwide. In recent years, twenty to thirty volunteers have selected material to publish from hundreds of submissions, edited the work and worked with local design professionals to lay out a professional magazine. Other volunteers have organized readings where artists read and/or show their work to audiences in Missouri and Kansas. Under Jessica Conoley’s leadership, WPP also developed a new web site with online ordering.

In reminiscing about the first issues of Kansas City Voices, Larry said, “The best part was finding great writers. Tim Todd, Brian Daldorph, Phil Miller, and Lenore Carroll were all published in the early years.” Other recognized writers published in Kansas City Voices included Stanley Banks, Nancy Pickard, Steve Shapiro, Maril Crabtree, and, of course, Judith Bader Jones. All of these writers have published books.

Each year, the Board raises money through magazine sales, a writing conference, a writing contest, and a donation drive, as well as through grants from the Missouri Arts Council. These funds have paid for professional layout of the magazine, printing the magazine at a long-time Missouri publisher (Walsworth Publishing in Marceline, Missouri), and for promotional events and media publicity.

Larry said that critiquing others’ writing also helped his own. “You can pick up things as an editor that helps you practice as a writer and bleeds over into your own creative process.” Larry and Suella, along with being successful writers, find teaching to be rewarding. “Everyone is creative, themselves, somehow,” Larry said.

“But people don’t realize they are, whether they’re writing or tying fishing flies.”

Whispering Prairie Press is in its twenty-first year and has published a hard-copy edition of Kansas City Voices every year for the past ten years. In the current publishing environment, that alone is worth celebrating. But the real heroes are the literally hundreds of volunteers who have committed their time, resources, and talent to making Kansas City Voices a nationally recognized arts and literary magazine, and, in the process, developed their own skills and knowledge about the publishing side of writing. Recently, Poets and Writers added Kansas City Voices to their list of magazines worthy of professional recognition.

After Larry and Suella Walsh stepped down, Rex Rogers held the job of Managing Editor until his death in 2010. At the time of his death, Volume 8 of Kansas City Voices was halfway completed and needed leadership to bring to fruition. Mary-Lane Kamberg stepped into the breach, led Volume 8 through to publication, and rebuilt the Board of Whispering Prairie Press. A tribute to Rex was included in the magazine. Following Mary-Lane, Theresa Hupp took over as Board President for Volume 9, and instituted a successful donation drive.

The board is looking at the possibilities for expanding publication into e-books and adding a contest for chapbooks. The work is never finished.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 4

PROSE

SUCH A SOUND Thomas Fox Averill

One summer, some nights, after a rain, the night still and soft, the windows open for what was always a cool breeze, if I awoke in pre-dawn light, I heard a sigh, a shudder, a soft moan just outside my bedroom window, coming, I thought, from my garden. Was it an animal, stretching itself after nocturnal prowling, readying itself for a daytime burrow?

Sometimes the sound was slick, like running a finger down a sweating glass, making me think of a cat, licking dew from the grass. When I sneaked to the windows, though, I saw no cat, dog, possum or raccoon. Was an earthworm turning in the newly wet soil? A caterpillar crawling on a cabbage leaf, soon to cocoon?

A bird sharpening its beak on a fence post? Rain, sound, fruitless investigation, until the summer wore its way into fall, and I harvested the garden and, though rain continued, the sound stopped.

The next year, my grandfather came for a visit. An old farmer, he had to undergo some medical tests, so he stayed with me for a week. My garden was just coming along, tomatoes setting, beans forming at the ends of their vines, corn rising, young beets ready to boil. The rain came down hard one day, and that night I heard the sounds from the summer before.

I described what I was hearing to my grandfather, asked him to solve the mystery. He smiled. That day he drove a stake into the garden, and late afternoon we watered well. Same sounds that night.

“Go look at the stake,” he said in the morning.

The stake was just as he’d driven it in the day before.

“What do you notice?” he asked.

Nothing, I told him.

“And the corn?” he asked.

The sweet corn, young and thriving, had outgrown the stake driven to its height, all in one night.

“Some nights,” said my grandfather, “out on the farm, next to a field of corn, I can hardly sleep for listening to it grow. Such a sound.”

KANSAS CITY VOICES 5

PROSE

The Bad Seed Ron Pruitt

Granny died on a Thursday toward the end of January. I’m sorry to say I didn’t mark the exact day in the panic that followed.

Granny died alone, in her bed. Peacefully, I hope. I found her when I came home from school and checked on her. My first thought was to call an ambulance, but when I touched her, she was cold, the warmth of life long gone.

I was stunned, shocked, and scared. I should have felt sorrow and guilt, but what I felt was trapped, like a giant weight was pressing down, keeping me from breathing. I had to get out of that house. I went into the kitchen and grabbed a handful of matches and walked off up the road, lighting the kitchen matches one by one with my thumbnail and flicking them onto the roadside. Most of them just fizzled, but sometimes one would land among dry grasses and flame up. I walked until I ran out of matches, and then I turned back and stood and watched crescents of grassfires crawl across the fields.

Somehow, the fires made me feel better, calmer, more in control.

I was too upset to eat supper. I wandered around Granny’s old house until late that night, numb and dazed. Exhaustion finally brought sleep and the next morning I went off to school and tried not to think about it. I’m ashamed to say I left her lying there under a quilt for two days before I did anything, but then this whole story is filled up with regret.

After two days, I rolled Granny up in her quilt and put her out in the smokehouse. Winter’s deep freeze would preserve her until spring, giving me time to figure things out. It sounds horrible and morbid, but I had my reasons. I was sixteen, a sophomore in high school, and if Granny was dead, I’d be going to live with Uncle Fred.

I’d do just about anything to keep that from happening.

I put a padlock on the smokehouse door just in case anyone came snooping around. It was mostly precautionary because Granny and I never had visitors. She lived so far out in the country, at the dead end of a dirt road, just a little south of the back of beyond. The only people we ever saw were Jehovah’s Witnesses who came and knocked on her door and when nobody answered, left copies of the Watchtower on the porch before they went away. Persistent people, those Witnesses.

Granny had been bedfast for years, so she didn’t go anywhere. Dad took care of her until I was fourteen, but then he was sent off to the state pen for killing a man in a knife fight at a beer joint.

He started doing a twenty-year stretch and I took over everything with Granny, her feeding, medicine, even bathing her. I took care of her as best I could, did the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, saw to her animals. I paid the bills out of Granny’s social security check, and we somehow scraped by on the little that was left. I knew if I reported Granny’s death, those checks would stop coming.

I guess you could say things went along OK until spring came in. There was a warm spell in late March and I knew I had to get Granny out of the smokehouse. I gave her a nice burial out in the meadow under a sassafras tree, read some scripture over her and tried to think on her good points. Which was hard, because she was really a mean old woman who never thanked me once for helping her and continually threatened to whip my butt first chance she got.

I guess meanness just runs in my family, and I guess I’m a bad seed too, but you can’t choose your family so I don’t see how I’m to blame.

Granny hadn’t been in the ground a week when Uncle Fred showed up. It was a Saturday afternoon when I heard his big Cadillac crunch down the gravel drive. I rushed around locked the doors, turned out all the lights and went and hid in the bathroom. He pounded hard on the front door for a while and shouted our names, but he gave up after a while and left, just like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I finished my sophomore year and school let out for the summer. A nice blanket of grass had grown up on Granny’s grave. It sounds bad to admit it, but life was pretty good. I lazed around the farm and spent a lot of my free time reading or listening to music. I did whatever I felt like doing, sleeping late, eating what I liked, and going for long drives in Grandpa’s old pick-up. I had more money to spend too, because I didn’t have to buy food and meds for Granny. It was a solitary life, but I didn’t mind that. The people I’d lived around all my life had pretty much soured me on humans entirely.

Most of the time I felt happy, but sometimes a feeling of doom crept in and ruined it. I’m not stupid. I knew my vacation couldn’t last forever, but I was determined to make it last as long as I could.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 6

I was out mowing the lawn the next time Uncle Fred came over. He looked really small when he climbed out of that giant Cadillac of his. I swear he’d shrunk some since the last time I saw him. He walked kind of bent over, and to see him shuffle along, you wouldn’t think he was much of anything. But if you knew him, you kept your distance, because Uncle Fred would slap you across the face quicker than a scalded cat if you so much as held your mouth wrong.

He headed for the porch, ignoring me. I shut off the mower and hustled over and put myself in his path.

“What do you want, you little pissant?” he spat out at me, which was kind of funny because he never came over unless he wanted something himself.

“Granny’s asleep. Just leave her alone.”

“Get out of my way boy,” he said, and reared back and socked me in the mouth. I stumbled back and tasted coppery blood filling my mouth.

He walked slowly by me before I could recover and started climbing the porch steps. I grabbed up an old shovel and ran over and caught up to him on the porch. He heard me coming and turned his head around to look at me. I saw fear in his eyes just before the shovel hit him hard, full in the face. He fell like a stalk of grain being scythed and lay there on the porch knocked out. I don’t how many times I hit him after that. I lost count. But it was more than enough to kill him.

I threw my uncle over my shoulder and carried him down to the meadow and dug a big hole with the same shovel. I put him a good distance from Granny. I didn’t think she’d want him very close, even in death.

By the time I had Uncle Fred under ground, I was dirty and tired. I also felt shaken, all quivery inside. I’d killed animals, chickens, squirrels, rabbits, deer, a hog, and even though the world was a better place without my uncle, I didn’t feel right about it. I took a long, hot bath with lots of soap, but I still didn’t feel clean. After dark, I drove Uncle Fred’s Cadillac over to his place. My uncle was too ornery to keep a woman or kids, so he lived alone in a nice, new trailer-house that perched on the rim of a draw.

I torched his place. I squirted out a can of lighter fluid on his couch and set it afire. Then I went out and stood in the yard and watched the windows light up with yellow flames licking at the walls and ceiling. I watched it burn until I could hear the distant sirens of the fire trucks. It was easy enough to slip off into the darkness and by the time I walked back to Granny’s house, I was feeling all right again.

I slept in the next morning and I was still drinking coffee when the sheriff came with a big burly deputy. They arrested me and cuffed my hands behind my back and hauled me off to jail. The danged Jehovah’s Witnesses had seen me putting Uncle Fred in the ground and called the law. They had me cold, so I confessed, but that wasn’t enough for them. They’d realized by then that Granny was missing, so I told them what had happened and helped them find her body, but that just made them believe I’d killed her too.

They grilled me hard, but I held out and stuck to my story.

The big deputy got mad and backhanded me across the face. He put a gun to my head and said he was going to kill me. Sometime in the early hours of the next morning, I broke and told them what they wanted to hear. They wrote it up, I signed it, and they put me in a cell and left me alone after that.

The public defender got me a deal, a life sentence for saying I was guilty of both killings, and they stuck me in the same prison as Dad. Sometimes I see him in the chow hall, or he’ll walk shackled past my cell, and he always grins real wide like it’s all a big joke.

The pen is a stinky, noisy and dangerous hole, but you have a lot of time to think things over. I started writing to pass the time. I’m working on my GED. I’ll say one thing about being in jail, there’s no place left to go but up. I’ll be out when I’m in my thirties and when they finally turn me loose, I’m going to go out and set the whole world on fire.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 7

POETRY

MAP READING “This is where we started from,” you say.

A feeble line, on uncertain ground, Wispy as your hair once on my coat.

“This is where we think we went,” you say.

A wavering contour took us round And back – though no higher, yet so close.

“This is where we meet again,” you say.

Looking for pointers is how we found Each other when thinking we were lost.

Stuart Larner

KANSAS CITY VOICES 8

POETRY

NOTHING MISSING NOTHING BROKEN What words soothe and what words shatter?

What words nourish, reconcile?

What do damage? What that matter?

What are left to rot, revile?

Words we didn’t know we needed.

Words when voiced with balm descend, smoothing edges and when seeded, empty hollows sprout, amend.

Nothing missing, nothing broken.

Say it, tell me yet again.

Every time these words are spoken— heal the hurt, remove the stain.

Rita Roth

KANSAS CITY VOICES 9

POETRY

CRAIGSLIST For sale: Red ribbons of various sizes, satin edges frayed. Two metal ribbon pins, paint flecked, backs missing.

Twenty years of AIDS walk t-shirts, rolled, stuffed in a dresser drawer.

The Color of Light, tattered, precise triangles creased at page tops, highlighting, back cover ripped.

Thirty-seven folded, faded memorial programs, some with pictures.

One copy of advance directives, never completed.

Nina Bennett

KANSAS CITY VOICES 10

PROSE

BLOOD OF MY KIN Jack Kline

To understand why I done what I done, I guess you need to know about Ma and Pa. Now I ain’t saying it’s their fault, not at all. It all bears laying on me. I want that clear. But I come from them and their blood runs through me and makes me what I am as much as anything else. It’s like Hickory Grove Elementary art class back in ‘02.

Miss Parmenter give me these colors and some water and she says “Okay Henry, now mix a glob of that red with a glob of blue.” Out came purple.

That’s me, purple. Pa’s always been like that blue color and Ma is as red as a Washington apple. My Pa’s the calm one. He don’t get riled, he don’t ever cry and he don’t hardly laugh nor smile. Folks can’t tell much of what he’s thinking, not even Ma. He’s so quiet you could follow him around of a day and not count a hundred words. I never got much praise from him – Lord knows I wanted it – but I never got much yelling neither. I learned to read his eyes, and in them I could often see when he was pissed or proud.

Somehow Pa found a woman as far different from him as God is to the Devil. Fiery. That’s what Ma is. You always know what she thinks and feels because she wears it on the outside. I got more hugs and swats and ears cuffed in any one week from Ma than in the whole run of my life from Pa. Ma’s mostly a happy chatterbox, but when she gets mad, folks get out of her way. She comes on like a Flint Hills thunderstorm, blows in quick and furious, and just as quick she blows on, chatting along like nothing ever happened. While her fury’s blowing though, things get throwed and broken and people in her path get hurt. But most of the time she’s the lovingest person I know.

So that’s the red and the blue of my upbringing, and like many folks I mixed them colors up inside me and came out a little of both. Growing up I favored Pa. I guess that’s only natural. I hid everything inside, anger, pain, love, all of it buried like our old dog

Shadow buries his steer bones. Pa is a hard man really, and I tried to be that way. Sometimes it was tough because the Ma in me fought to come out. Like when Pa and I hunted, and I shot me a deer, I felt more sorrow than pride. I kept silent though, wanting to be just like Pa and all.

I might have growed up to become my Pa, squeezed that redness down until it would never poke itself out, had it not been for Becky Consolo. My second year in high school she blew a love hole in me the size of a cannon ball. Sure I’d felt stirrings before, and I’d thought about girls in school and also at night as I lay in bed. But I’d never before felt horse-hind-legs-kick-in-the-gut love before.

I don’t know if Pa ever felt that way about Ma, and if he did how he dealt with it, but love must give blue folks fits. I’d noticed Becky since sixth grade, but she never paid much mind to me.

She was every boy’s cheerleader dream. I’d just figured she was something I could never have, like me wanting a green Camaro. I was a rusty pickup and she was like a shiny, forest green Camaro with dual chrome tailpipes. Yep, those tailpipes were mighty fine.

Maybe it was because I’d made a flash on the varsity football team that fall, but come spring Becky set her sights on me. I made for an easy catch. She was everything good I thought about since I started thinking about them things.

But I didn’t know how to feel those feelings, love and all. And I didn’t know how to show her how and what I felt, even though the feeling part was there. I couldn’t play that lovey-dovey game so well and she began to carp at me about the not telling and not showing enough. I tried to put the feelings in the kiss and in the roaming hands that we did in the pickup, but that wasn’t enough for her. She needed more, she said. But we was mostly happy and went

KANSAS CITY VOICES 11

Blood of My Kin continued

everywhere together and were boyfriend and girlfriend until right after the prom.

It was a Friday night at the Sonic when she told me that she wanted to date other boys.

“I still love you Henry, but I want to be sure that you’re the one true one. I want to see what other boys are like,” Becky said.

I couldn’t say nothing. I was consternated.

“If you do love me like you say, why would you do this to me?” I finally sputtered.

Then she said things about how she still wanted to date with me, even to the city for our movie date the next weekend. But she wanted to be sure that I was the true one for her.

That’s when the Ma inside me started pouring out. I told her for the first time, and the best time, how much I loved her and what she meant to me, and she cried and I cried my Ma’s tears right there at the Sonic. All Pa’s blueness disappeared. Becky touched the tears on my face and she took my hand and put it in her lap. I’m not the brightest kid in school, but I figured that was a signal.

I fired up my old F-150 and we fish-tailed out of there and down to Crooked Creek Lake where I pulled out the horse blanket from behind the seat and right there on the pickup bed we made love. It was just like I’d imagined, only in real life it all went too fast.

The second time was better, slower.

Things went good for a month or so. Crooked Creek became a regular nighttime stop. And I tried to be more like she wanted me, to do the telling and the showing of love, but it came hard.

Sometimes Becky seemed different, but I thought it was because we’d moved to a higher place, a place of love and sex. I figured the next higher place we’d move to would be the marrying after graduation place. I guess she figured different.

My pickup was nestled in the edge of the woods at Crooked Creek Saturday night, and we had just made love. I had even blurted out that I loved her, hard as that was. We stuck some clothes on and were lying on the truck bed. Stars were everywhere and crickets croaked and the wind rustled oak and maple leaves, making music better than anything you can get from the radio. I don’t remember what I was thinking at that very moment, but it was something good.

I know I wore a smile.

“Henry?”

“Yeah?”

“I have a date with Randy next Friday. I wanted to be up front about it”

My smile ended right there, and my life.

“Say something, Henry.” But I couldn’t say nothing. Things flew around inside my brain but they wouldn’t sort out. Pressure built up and I felt like steam would come out my nose and ears.

“We’ve talked about this before,” she said. “I need to know if you’re the one. And how can I tell if I don’t look around some?” By then we were both sitting up.

“But you said that you loved me.” At that point I think I was whining some, but she was as calm as Pa’s fishing pond on a windless morning.

“I do love you, Henry. Listen, every boy I’ve dated for very long has come closer to being the perfect one than the last, closer to the one that I know I’ll love forever.” Her eyes glowed fierce in the moonlight. “You’re the closest yet. I mean it. Maybe you’re as close as I’ll ever get, but I’ve got to find out. And I do still want to go out with you.”

I had never really dated any other girls. But I knew she was that one true one for me. And she said that maybe I’m as close as she’ll ever get? Anger grew in me, hot and red. I’d been in scrapes

KANSAS CITY VOICES 12

with other boys before and won most all of them, but I hadn’t never hit a girl. I tried to think it out. I figured me dating her while she gallivanted with other boys would be like being her old pickup truck and driving her around as she shopped for a new car. I folded my arms and told her so, and I told her that things don’t work that way.

She looked at me, pleading, and said “I’ve got to do this.”

And then she shook her head. “You don’t understand, do you? It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that …”

I had stopped listening, every muscle was taut, taut like they get when I’m about to lay out a running back. But at the end of all her speeching I did hear her say “I have to do this, Henry, and I guess you must do what you must do.”

I punched her in the face – hard.

I was all set to tell her what was what, but seeing the blood drip from her nose and her mouth fill with wet redness, red as her lipstick, red as my fury, it disarmed me. What had I done? I moved to help her.

Becky swatted my hand away and began screaming at me.

She was crying and blubbering, red spittle flying. Her voice sounded like she nursed a cold, but I knew it was because I stove in her nose.

She spit a glob of blood on me and yelled for me to take her home.

I didn’t know what to do. She called me a bastard and said her Pa would call the cops.

I watched her bloody lips quiver and her tears stream, and I said “I’m so sorry, Becky.” I reached out to her, saying “Let me help you.” She smacked me in the face.

“I hate you. I never want to see you again!” She screamed some other bad things too and before I knew it I hit her again, and again. I don’t know how many times. When I was done with the hitting she was quiet, lying on the truck bed.

Turns out she was dead.

I cried and cried. I cried about what I had done and about not having Becky as my girl ever again. I had my twelve-gauge pump in the truck window and thought about sticking it into my mouth and ending it. That’s what I should’ve done. It’s what I deserved. But the stars still shone up there, and the crickets still croaked and leaves still rustled. I didn’t want to die even though I deserved dying.

I sat next to her for a long time, brushing her bloodcaked blond hair with my fingertips. I wasn’t worried about what if somebody showed up. Maybe I wanted to be caught.

Becky’s at the bottom of Crooked Creek Lake now, held there for a time with an old quarter horse lead line and some rocks.

I headed south on 69 highway and crossed over into Missouri. At Carthage I used my debit to get $240. I figured they could trace me by the use of the card so I got all I could and then pitched it.

I’m holed up here in Mark Twain National Forest somewhere near Mountain Home. For a time, folks at home will figure Becky and I run off together. But not for long. I sit here on the bed of my truck; her blood washed clean days ago. The sky darkens and it will rain soon. My twelve-gauge rests in my lap and the blood of my kin cries out to me to set things right.

For a second I think that maybe I will just up and fill my skull with buckshot. You can’t get righter than that. But Ma’s out of my system now. I’m sorry and all about Becky, but that wasn’t me. I’m as blue as a cold Kansas sky in January, and I’m going to stay that way.

There are folks here in these Ozark hills who know how to disappear somebody, and I’m going to find one to help me ditch the truck and change my name. And then I’ll find me another girl like Becky, someone to love and to love me. And this time I’ll be her one true one and she’ll be mine.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 13

PROSE

A GIFT FROM GOD Marilee Aufdenkamp

The day I met Mrs. Archer was when she walked over to me while I was sitting on my porch step and asked me how I liked my new country. She wore lipstick the color of dark red chilies and a big yellow hat that looked like an upside-down flower. I lied and told her that I like it very much. She said she wasn’t sure because I looked so sad. I felt nervous, at first, talking so openly with a stranger, but when Mrs. Archer sat down beside me, and looked so completely at my face, I could feel the warmth and goodness coming right off of her.

My sister Kiran said I should pretend to be happy for Mataji and Pitaji.

“At school no one eats lunch with me,” I tell my new neighbor. “I sit at a table in the cafeteria with three Asian girls who are also ignored. They speak their own language. No one even looks at me.” I tell her about the time I lost my pencil and I asked one of my classmates if she had an extra one. “I don’t think that I do,” she said, and then she went into our classroom and asked all of the other students if they wanted to borrow one of her extra pencils.

I was glad we didn’t come to this foreign place until April. It was hard starting school so late in the year, but I was happy we had missed the snow, and that summer was coming soon. I did not want to see snow, or feel cold, along with feeling lonely and homesick. Mrs. A. said she felt lonely and misplaced too when she first arrived; I can’t believe it though, she is so friendly. She told me she moved here from Tennessee and, just like me, she thought Nebraska was the farthest place from home that she could imagine. She had the prettiest white skin and the gentlest way of speaking, not quiet really, just soft and comfortable.

Before long I was sitting on Mrs. A’s porch nearly every day after school. I was still sad a lot, but whenever we were together, Mrs. A. made me laugh. She had a big jar with a wide mouth that she filled with water and tea bags and put out in the sun. She told me that in Tennessee everyone drinks sweet tea, and I stood in her white kitchen while she boiled water and made sugar syrup for our tea. Mrs. A’s first name was Thea. Thea Eleanor Archer. She told me that her name, before she was married, was Thea Eleanor Ainslie. “T.E.A.,” she said.

Just like the afternoon drink we shared on her porch each day. She said that she loved sweet tea so much that when she was ready to find a husband she made sure to catch one whose last name started with an A so she would always remind herself of her favorite drink.

We sat like that, on Mrs. A’s porch, nearly each afternoon,

all through that first summer. In May the lilac bushes released their beautiful fragrance, and in June the linden trees made perfume in the air. “It’s possible to make perfume from the flowers of a linden tree,” Mrs. A. said, “and it’s also said that prayers offered under the linden have a good chance of being answered.” She knew so many things about nature, and about people and what they need. She said that her favorite trees were dogwoods and magnolias but that linden trees and lilac bushes were pretty good substitutes.

We drank our sweet tea out of jewel-toned glasses. Their rich colors reminded me of India. Mrs. A. said that she didn’t need a thermometer to tell her how hot it was, she could guess within two degrees by how quickly the little streams of water formed on the sides of our metal glasses. We didn’t sip our tea, we drank it, and when the ice was halfway melted Mrs. A. threw the rest of it into the grass. “So the ants and little crawly creatures can enjoy their afternoon too,” she said. Then she went into the house and filled our glasses with big, clear, crescent-shaped ice cubes, and we drank some more.

Before school started in the fall, Mrs. A. and I sat on her porch so late one day that the fireflies came out. I told Mrs. A. that when the weather got cooler she would have to come indoors with me and drink black tea with cardamom pods and cinnamon stick and with milk and honey like we do in India. She said she would love that. I was feeling so much better by then. Mrs. A. was kind enough, in her usual way, to introduce me to a few girls from school. She said that she played a game called Bunko with their mothers. “Bunko will do in a pinch,” Mrs. A. said, ‘but I’d much rather be playing Mahjong or Canasta.” And she told me that she would have to teach me how to play those games some day.

Long before I was ready for it to, summer ended. I hated the idea of going back to school, but Mrs. A. told me that she knew I would be fine, and I knew that she was right. She told me that I had been a gift to her that summer because she’d never been able to have any children of her own. If I am lucky enough to have a daughter of my own, someday, I know that I will sit on the porch with her and drink sweet tea in the summer and Indian tea in the winter. I know, too, that I’ll name her Thea. Mrs. A. told me that Thea means gift from God, and I know that in my new country, Mrs. Thea Eleanor Archer was a gift from God to me.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 14

POETRY

A LEVEE ROAD runs penciled-in on high ground, closer to the Almighty, above ruler rows of soybeans planted on one levee side. The river resides on the other side, hounds the shore, ready to rock forth a force that can shake the heart of the hold and yet, on a calm night in bare light, water’s easy ride sings a choir’s song, leaves a farmer’s crop-side dry and safe.

A car parks on the levee road.

Windows roll down. The motor shudders and settles. A boy and a girl find each other in church-like light, in the bold, black night heat.

His arms look field-work-brown.

Her hair stays bleached from a fired-up sun, and the soybeans grow tall in the night and the river rides by without flooding survival and the heart holds onto journeys like these.

Judith Bader Jones

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POETRY

PRAIRIE RUMORS When Aurora Borealis crept into the northern plains of Kansas like a tire-shattering arctic front, sheriffs of sparsely populated counties received reports of fire and aliens. Second-coming predictions echoed within the walls of steepled buildings.

Hearing the clash of atoms, one young woman, a farmer’s wife, could not find sleep beneath magnetized particles, and rose from her bed.

Leaving the house where her children slept, she passed the chicken coop, the pigsty, the barn of cattle and hay, and found herself upon the prairie.

Here the pulsing arch of reds and greens synchronized her heart’s rhythm and she was moved to remove her clothes, lay against the cold damp earth of spring, press her ear close against the soil, and listen as one does for the breath of a sleeping child.

Lisa Hase-Jackson

KANSAS CITY VOICES 16

ART

PARTING WAYS, Alberta Cifolelli Oil on Board

Previous Page FOG FENCE, Dona Corben Photograph

KANSAS CITY VOICES 18

A DAY AT THE ZOO, Sondy Sloan Pen & Ink

KANSAS CITY VOICES 19

ART

RADIUM, Carolyn Adams Digitally Enhanced Photograph

YELLOW NUDE, Ken Buch Acrylic on Canvas

KANSAS CITY VOICES 20

KANSAS CITY VOICES 21

ART

ART

SHADOWS AND LIGHT, Bess Duston Watercolor

Previous Pages ARRANGEMENT No. 1, Stephen T, Johnson Collage Mounted on Canvas (pg. 22)

MONDRIAN BLUES, Johne Richardson Mixed Media on Board (pg. 23)

KANSAS CITY VOICES 24

POETRY

DEATH OF A GUCCI HANDBAG Within a week.

Dropped inside the bag during a showing of Out of Africa, buttery popcorn liquefies words scribbled on scraps of paper scattered on the bottom.

Gumbo of oil and ink permanently tattoo the cotton jacquard lining.

Within two weeks.

Stuffed with books and rubber-banded slabs of coupons on the edge of expiration, the bag bulges and swells like a can of rotting tomatoes.

Tissue nests choke zippers, leaving toothy yawns.

Within three weeks.

Swung at a spider crawling up the wall, the strap fractures.

Safety pins come to the rescue, pierce, connect, but hold steadfast until the holes expand, explode into crevices that split the strap end to end.

The death.

Money-back-guaranteed leather cleaners ignore scrapes as they slide over them.

Gucci pattern mimics peeling sunburn under the onslaught of cleanser and before a tribunal in the garbage can, testifies to the bag’s demise.

Tina Hacker KANSAS CITY VOICES 25

PROSE

WEDDING SECRETS Anne Wickliffe

I toss an airy bit of family news to my sister and she tosses it back, like a beach ball. We are sitting in our mother’s room on a Saturday afternoon. I have traveled through half of Missouri, and all of Arkansas to make my summer visit here. My sister comes twice a month from North Little Rock to visit in this skilled nursing facility in Texarkana, Texas.

Everything we say must be light enough to become air borne and we speak in that Southern hospitality fashion so designed as to suggest intimacy and reveal nothing. We play this game to gently entertain our mother who is nearly bed-ridden and almost completely aphasic - without speech - as a result of a stroke. It is an ironic game for us to play, since our family style has always inclined to sarcasm and inappropriate frankness.

Mother is comfortable with this game. When I make eye contact and direct a remark to her, she waves me away, as if to say: “Talk among yourselves.”

I wish now I had been more persistent in trying to get Mom to write down her story or speak it into a recorder. I wish now I had asked more questions. What was it like growing up with six older siblings? How did you feel about those basketball uniforms with the puffy legs that you wore in high school? Were you a good player?

What position did you play?

Mostly what I want to know is - what was that wedding day all about? For decades I never questioned it. The story you told about your wedding has always been part of our family mythology.

But now I want to know.

September 5, 1942. Why don’t you have a photograph of your wedding day? I have seen pictures of you and Dad in front of his father’s Model T; snaps of your older sisters in truly unattractive bathing costumes of the thirties. Even a shot taken by a street photographer in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1943 - your hair in a pompadour, Dad in an Army uniform. Nothing of your wedding day.

Why was the wedding under an oak tree? You don’t even like the outdoors - the bugs, the sweat, the effect the sun has on the pale skin you inherited from the Irish. Why was your wedding outdoors, in a field west of the church?

I used to picture a sunny day, the Arkansas air still hot; a light wind stirring the browning oak leaves and sweeping through your russet colored hair. What did you wear? You never said.

Why did you marry that September when you were only sixteen? Years ago you told me that your mother, dead a year by then, came to you and said, “How can I be happy when you are so miserable?” That evening, after a day of work in the railroad yard, he came to walk with you. Every night for weeks he had asked you, “When are we going to get married?” This night he didn’t ask. So, before you said good night and climbed the steps to the front door, you asked him: “When are we going to get married?”

Sixteen years old, you abandoned your senior year of high school: married girls were not allowed to attend public school in 1942. Why did you do that? And where was your dad? His dad went with the two of you to the courthouse and attested under oath that you were 18 and old enough to marry without parental consent.

Why was that?

KANSAS CITY VOICES 26

​ There is, of course, the obvious answer – you were pregnant. You did have a miscarriage before I was born. But you’ve never been that predictable. My sister and I have ferreted out a few family secrets you never gave up. Like your brother Charles’s wife, Nova, who had an affair with your brother, Harry; your niece, Phyllis, who delivered a child at the age of 15 in 1958.

Why did your dad throw you out of the house in July of 1942, leaving you to shunt between the homes of your married sisters? Were you pregnant? Or could it have been because you were marrying that half-breed? Technically speaking, he was only an eighth-breed. But your true love’s hair was black, black, black, and his skin was dark. He had a long, thin mouth and an angular nose; to look at him, he could have just walked into town from the Cherokee reservation.

Is that why your dad was not at your wedding? Is that why you weren’t married inside the Levy Methodist Church, where your dad was a founding member? Or inside the Baptist church, for that matter, where his dad was a deacon?

Where was the rest of the family? You stood beside that lean, dark man under the oak tree, with his dad and the Baptist preacher. Where were his mother and sister; his brothers and their wives? More importantly, where were your brothers that Saturday, and your sisters? I don’t understand why the baby of the family was left alone to be married under an oak tree.

You have always been a puzzle to me. A story written in Middle English, in words that are strange, but vaguely familiar. When I picture you on September 5, 1942 – a sixteen-year-old girl, getting

married under a tree, your mother dead, estranged from your father, abandoned by sisters and brothers - I see fear. I see that tonguebehind-the-teeth thing you do when you’re distressed, but will not speak, and I wish I had asked you.​

For a long time I’ve longed to know what that wedding under the oak tree was about. Dad is gone, and you can no longer speak for yourself. The explanation wouldn’t change much for me, but it would matter to you. The only thing I do know about the wedding under the tree is that you do not regret it. And I envy you that.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 27

PROSE

PLEASE TAKE A BOW Deborah Shouse The stage thrilled with activities. One man juggled 12 balls.

From overhead, a woman floated down on streamers of royal blue fabric, and then wound herself back up to the arena ceiling.

Lithe performers dressed as jungle animals danced and tumbled.

People scaled a stilted wall on stage right, while alcove, two singers resplendent in golden costumes sent their voices soaring.

I sat in the audience, awed by the amazing creativity of Cirque de Soleil. I hardly knew where to look, so much was going on. But one performer consistently drew my attention. A woman dressed as a wood nymph walked around pointing to whichever feat she most admired. As a man juggled dangerously long sticks, the nymph held out her arms toward him, her gesture saying, “Ta Da, Look at this!”

The singer burst into an acrobatic aria and the wood nymph ran towards her, unfurling her arms in another “Ta Da” gesture, focusing our attention and directing our applause. One act after another somersaulted, soared and danced and the wood nymph was always there to shine extra attention on them.

Afterwards, I stood in the corridors with Ron and our friends, Jacqueline and Michael, talking over favorite parts of the show.

“I really liked the wood nymph,” I told Jacqueline. “We should take turns doing that for each other.”

She agreed. But then we both wondered, what would we applaud? Jacqueline and I did our writing work practically immobilized in front of the computer. Michael was a legal aid attorney and Ron had an antique shop. The last time any of us had even somersaulted was eons ago, in our firefly laden summertime back yards. Yes, we juggled, but it was the usual middle class shticks, wildly tossing around work, family, exercise, community, friends and more. All the more reason, I thought, to find an appreciator who understood when we performed at our personal peak.

As we continued to discuss the amazing acrobatic skills we had just seen, I imagined going over to Jacqueline’s. There she sits at her dining room table, her computer screen bright, her fingers nimble. She is a great writer and she is working her craft. I stand nearby, face the imaginary audience seated in her living room, and hold out my arms, gesturing proudly towards Jacqueline. She smiles shyly and I hold my appreciative pose. Then Michael walks through

on his way to the kitchen.

“Hi Deborah, what are you up to?” he says.

I nod towards Jacqueline, who is writing briskly, and unfurl my arms towards her.

“Oh, yes, I see,” Michael says. He applauds. Jacqueline sits up straighter and allows herself a little bow. A lot of people don’t understand what hard work writing is and I am here to make sure her audience appreciates the subtlety and strength of this art form.

Suddenly, Jacqueline stops. I imagine a drum roll as she presses her lips together, furrows her brow and stares into space. She is trying to think of the right word. We all know how hard that is—it’s the equivalent of the back flip followed by the double mid-air somersault. She shakes her head in despair. The audience is on the edges of its seats, mouths agape, hearts racing. Will Jacqueline find the word? Or will she crash to the ground, her sentence in shambles, her paragraphs paralyzed?

Finally, Jacqueline grins and returns to the keyboard, her fingers dancing. I point to her—“Ta Da”—and her audience erupts into applause.

Meanwhile, while I daydreamed, the Cirque de Soleil arena was emptying. We walked to our cars and the image of the wood nymph stayed with me all the way home.

As Ron and I walked toward our house, I remembered a conversation we’d had several weeks ago. “Why don’t you ever mention how great the yard looks?” he’d said. “I’ve worked hard on creating this.”

I had started to defend myself. Then I realized he was right.

I liked the yard but its lushness was part of my normal world, the world I rushed blindly past. I hadn’t taken time to appreciate all the effort he had put into creating it.

Now I stopped on the sidewalk. The porch light illuminated the plants and ivy as I swept my arms toward the yard, then back to Ron. “Ta Da!” I said, pointing to his lawn, then applauding him.

He stared at me, and then smiled.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for noticing.” He took a bow.

I followed him as he left the stage and went into the house.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 28

POETRY

MARLENE MAE’S BOUT WITH CANCER Before my illness, my cancer, Marlene said, now owning it as she had owned her car— in which black leather tallied more than gas mileage or engine tuning— payment by payment.

Before my illness, Marlene told Alice Ann, her only sister, side-kick, comrade, thick-and-thin friend.

Before my radiation and my chemo and the Dalmatian dying in the closet, I wanted love— now I’ll settle for a wig.

A good one, and some expensive make-up, no more alpha-hydroxy stuff from Walmart, but cream made of organic avocados.

That’s what I want, said Marlene Mae, sitting gaunt at Alice Ann’s kitchen table.

Lois Marie Harrod

KANSAS CITY VOICES 29

POETRY

THE END OF THE DAY Things begin and end apart from each other.

I think we can agree on that.

We know by the sound of the key in the door No one can account for the day’s invisible clutter.

And I think we can agree that Once you’ve asked the question, it’s already over— No one can account for the day’s invisible clutter Or negotiate the apartment’s shifting floor.

Because once you’ve asked the question, it’s already over— The day was fine; I hope the night will be better.

I need a minute to negotiate the shifting floor Which isn’t the same as wanting the night to be over.

The day was fine, I know the night will be better.

We’ll keep busy by coming up with things to do So that we’ll both be sorry when the night is over In a mutual way we can’t admit to.

We’ll keep busy by coming up with things to do Because we’re so afraid that we don’t fulfill the other In a mutual way we can’t admit to.

We are distracted during our time together.

We’re both so afraid that we don’t fulfill the other That we know by the sound of the key in the door We are distracted during our time together.

Things begin and end apart from each other.

Toby Goostree

KANSAS CITY VOICES 30

PROSE

MODIGLIANI’S BIRTH Anne Baber

See her hurrying down the street under billowing clouds of laundry on lines that criss-cross above her. The hem of her long black dress is hiked up in the front by the huge lump of her unborn child, swaddled now by a white, lace-trimmed apron already limp in the heat. There’s purpose in every rushed step and panted breath. One hand, deep her pocket, probably clutches a few coins for the market.

He sits, head bowed in his hands, at the bare table. She can hear the children’s voices in another room. She heaves herself down across from him, grabs his hands, tells him the news. He leaps up and dashes around the table to pull her up into an awkward embrace, waltzes her around and around until, dizzy with hope and a future they can now see before them, they collapse again into the chairs.

She turns the corner and slows to walk with more dignity toward the stalls. Look, someone holds her arm, stops her. I’m so sorry for your troubles, the woman says. Everyone knows that Flaminio Modigliani’s business has failed. Do they know, Eugenia wonders, that tomorrow the bailiffs will come to take everything they own to pay his creditors? It’s good you have the baby, the woman continues, reaching out to put her other hand on the mound of Eugenia’s belly, he will save you.

Eugenia, listening ever more intently, leans toward her. They are talking, gesturing broadly. Smiling now, Eugenia spins away and heads back even faster the way she came.

Watch them as they plan, their heads nearly touching across the table.

She’s shouting for Flaminio even before she can get the heavy door open and step over the broad stone into the shadowy hallway.

He may have failed at money changing, but he has the talent that is needed now: the knack of stacking. Don’t laugh. Not everyone can see, when they lay everything out on the floor, how to stow it in the least possible space.

They enlist the three children and begin to pull together everything they want to save. Did you get the matches? The lamps?

The oil? My best petticoat? The combs for my hair? The photographs of Mama back in France? They are dervishes, whirling, sending dust flying, golden motes that float in the heat of this July day.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 31

Modigliani’s Birth continued

The bed, he calls, help me move the bed. It takes the strength of all of them to shove it into the corner. His eyes gleam with possibilities. He stands, considering the bed. He walks back into the other room. He stands, considering the pile of possessions. The family lines up behind him.

Eventually, he begins to stack the bed with everything they want to save. He’s careful, methodical. A few times, he pushes at the pile. If it jiggles, he dismantles it, re-does it.

With the twilight, the room dims. The corner with the bed bulks high and heavy. The other corners fill with darkness. He calls to her. She climbs up, tries out her perch, clambers down. He pats her stomach. She nods. The children sprawl on the floor on a pile of ragged bedding. The parents join them. The moon spills a pool of light on the empty floor.They sleep.

The day dawns, thick and humid. Smell it: the odor from the canal seeps in and settles, a miasma, fetid and dank. They wait, the children gnaw on the last crusts of bread.

Nobody says anything. They’ve already had the conversation about how the birth pangs must begin, have to begin – and soon. They concentrate, as if by will alone they could make them happen.

In the room, Flaminio stands his ground. The children watch, wide-eyed. The bailiffs look around, and their faces crumple into puzzlement. They stand, unsure, moving their weight from foot to foot. Flaminio begins to speak, telling them of the ancient and obscure law his wife heard about at the market. The bed of a woman in childbirth – and everything on it – is sacrosanct, he says. You can take nothing from that bed. Hear Eugenia, obliging with sound effects.

Groans, muffled screams emanate from the structure in the corner.

She is invisible.

More shuffling of feet. One of the men is sent away to consult with a senior officer, someone at the court. They wait. The children run around the clump of men. The heat in the room rises with the breathing of the men, sweating in their black uniforms. Flaminio and Eugenia call encouragement back and forth. She screams. He climbs up to take a look and sees his son. He wipes him off, cuts the cord.

The child howls and sees reflected in the treasured silver teapot his own small face, slightly elongated.

His father holds him up, introduces him: My son, he announces. The men’s faces, looking up, soften. They cheer, shout good-humored congratulations, begin to move toward the door.

The baby, frightened, wails. He won’t remember, of course, but he’ll hear the story of his birth a hundred times. And he’ll always have a a strange predilection for slightly elongated faces.

In the street, a commotion, pounding on the door. The bailiffs fling it open as Eugenia mounts the edifice. They enter.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 32

POETRY

JELLY BEAN GREENSCREEN Earth is a canister of jellybeans grape Jellybeans are worth 3.5 million dollars; cherry Jellybeans are worth 3.5 cents jellybeans Feel sweet but taste sticky Al Gore has a Castle made of jellybeans on the Sun I submerse my Body in jelly beans to Prevent global warming jellybeans, so White you could shake a stick at them the Plastic goblin of disestablishmentarianism al Grows a Beanstalk made of jelly a Smiley-faced giant with a golden machete fuzzy Knows the woods, the mass-produced Animals and tree-filtered Sunlight jellybeans Boom like thunder when dropped to the Earth by a man on the Sun when the World ends Pterodactyls will rise up from Hades to lick up all your jelly beans! unless You act Now: Get Yo Shizzle Out On The Grizzle jellybeans possess the aroma of black-beardian tooth decay – Huzzah!

I assure you, All of my data has been Thoroughly Researched and Scientifically Proven by Oxford’s Best team of monkeys on unicycles ¡señor pollo es muy Fuego en la casa de Traje de Mono, Arriba! jelly bean go to store. jelly bean buy jelly beans. jelly beans different colors. jelly eat jelly. grape Jellybeans are worth 3.5 cents; cherry Jellybeans are worth 3.5 million dollars al gore will build us a Rocket Unicycle and we will Blast into space, to a land where the jelly beans sing Green and the only goblin is Santa Claus.

James Bellard

KANSAS CITY VOICES 33

PROSE

TRIPTYCH OF A WHITE CHICK WITH DREADLOCKS: SWARMED SERIES Chelsey Clammer Summer 2004, Cripple Creek, Colorado

It has been two months since my friends put my short brown hair in dreadlocks. I wanted my hair in dreads because the woman who I have a crush on loves Ani Difranco, a singer with dreads, so if I have dreads, well, then. Four of my friends sat around me for eight hours, backcombing and twisting and knotting and coating my hair into baby dreads with the help of beeswax. Now, two months later, I take a vacation to Colorado with my crush-turned-girlfriend.

We started dating the week after I put my hair in dreads (plan successful), and she has started to associate the smell of beeswax with sex (added bonus). I brought a huge container of beeswax with me on this vacation.

After putting an intentional thick coat of beeswax in my hair, and thus having the best sex of my life, ever, I decide to go out onto the mountain roads for a run before I take a shower. Smelling of sticky sweetness, both coming from my body and from what was coated onto my hair, I jog down a long mountain road. And then I hear it, a faint buzzing near my ear. It is a vague sound of a series of zzz’s that starts out as a singular buzz, then pluralizes as a swarm gathers around my head. While the beeswax is an aphrodisiac for my girlfriend, it is also apparently a homing device for bees. I am out in the world, a head full of wax, and it hits me, the serious situation in which I find myself, this moment in which I realize the air around me

is swarming with bees, and all they want to do is dive into my hair. I surge forward, try not to swat at the yellow and black cloud that has started to engulf my head for fear of angering the little stingers that are growing in numbers with each step I take.

The beeswax is so thick in my hair that it starts to drip with the sweat I accumulate as I run. Now I fear the bees will divert into the greasy streaks on my neck. But I must stay calm, must try to keep the body still, the endorphins stagnant. But I am faced with an impossible situation: I am running, so the endorphins are starting to kick in, and I can’t stop running because I’m out in the middle of some nowhere mountain, on some gravel road that only leads up and up, and bees are coming after me. I can’t stop and walk in order to quell my endorphins because I have to get home somehow. Plus, if I stop running then the bees will really be able to settle into my hair.

I am starting to feel anxious, and bees sense anxiety, so, fuck, I must keep going but I must also somehow convince my body that I am still, stagnant, that nothing is going on around me. And I’m getting tired. I try to squash my anxiety with deep breaths of air, while not inhaling any of the zipping bees into my mouth with those big gulps. This is a hard task as I am also running on a mountain in the thin mountain air, and steadying the breath when there is barely any air to breathe is proving difficult.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 34

With the bees swarming around me, mistaking me for one of their kind, I feel as if I have been found out, pegged for something I am not. I am not a large bee, though my hair says otherwise. And I am not that big of a hippie, not the kind of peace-loving person who would put her hair in dreads because she wants to feel more attached to the earth and she loves to smoke a lot of pot, though again my hair says otherwise. I’m just a white chick with dreadlocks trying to find her footing in the world, trying to find what hairstyle she wants to inhabit. I have been wanting for an identity lately, for something about me I can call my own. Dreadlocks were my answer, the way in which I would think I could stick out and have an easy hairstyle to go along with the laid back life I want to have. Now my hair, my smell, sticks out to these bees. And now I must practice staying calm, trying to find my sense of safety in a swarm of anxiety.

Summer 2008, Chicago, Illinois

“He must not have seen your dreadlocks, or he wouldn’t have attacked you.”

I am on the phone with my sister, talking with her a few days after I was assaulted by a stranger on the street. The man ran up behind me, grabbed my shoulder with one hand, stuck his hand under my skirt with the other, and pulled me in closer to him. I swung my right fist at him as I twisted my body out of his grip. After shouting at him with all of my strength to just go away, he left. I walked home, shaking and sobbing, trying to pick back up the pieces of me that felt shattered.

After the assault, I am an emotional wreck. My family lives many states away, and so I talk with them on the phone to try and feel comfort, love, safety. My sister doesn’t do much to comfort me, and instead offers her opinion about my experience, says my dreadlocks should have protected me. She thinks that my hairstyle, my supposed rough exterior brought on by such an unfeminine hair style should be able to keep the swarms of bad men away from me. But the bad dude didn’t see this tough me, he mistook me for a female in a skirt he thought he could overpower. The dreadlocks, meant to prove to the world that I am not your average female, didn’t keep my femininity hidden from a man who thought it was his Godgiven right to attack a female.

The dreads do not swat away bad men and their hands and their comments. In fact, the dreadlocks attract more bad, lecherous dudes than my long wavy hair did. As I walk down the street on any given day, I get more practice at what it is like to keep calm when surrounded by things that want to attack. There are the heavy stares I can feel piercing into my body, cutting past the thick layer of supposed dreadlock protection. Then there are the whistles I try to become deaf to, the constant buzzing of harassment I try to drone out, to zone out the tingling sensation of unwanted sounds and comments in my ear. But the hey baby’s, the damn girl, you look fine’s, the hey rasta girl’s, the commands to come closer, to just come chill with me, and even the less lecherous hey dreadlocks all creep under my skin.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 35

Triptych of a White Chick with Dreadlocks continued

My endorphins pump as I want to scream, to lash out, to bat away at the clouds of men that just want more of me. But I know that would lead to no good, would perhaps even lead to another man grabbing me again, and harder, and so I take a deep breath, avoid breathing in the toxicity of their comments, focus on my sense of tranquility, tuck my dreadlocks behind my ear, pray that one day the comments will stop, that my appearance will start to protect my feminine side the way my sister says it should, and I continue my walk down the street.

Fall 2010, Chicago, Illinois

Curious little fingers reach out and grab. I am swarmed, again, unable to get away from hands that reach out and just want to touch. They are young hands this time, though, intrigued hands of teenage youth. I work in an all-black high school on the west side of Chicago. The students here have never seen a white person with dreadlocks. And a white woman with dreadlocks, well, that is completely unheard of. They are fascinated by me and my hair. Some of my youth have dreadlocks, many of them have hair extensions.

I am frequently asked, “Them real dreads?” Yes, they are real. Yes, this is my hair. No, I cannot cut them out. Yes, they are soft. I would prefer if you did not touch them. I never get a chance to say this last comment, but only whisper it to myself in my head. Because they are always around me. They are buzzing, and they are swarming. Little teenage hands grab at the dreads, play with them. Twirl them with their curious fingers, as if they have to hold them in their hands to really see them, to know they are real, are really there. I walk down the corridors of the school, go into the cafeteria to find some youth, and

I am immediately bombarded. Hey dreadlocks! Come here! Some of them don’t shout, don’t even ask. They just flutter over to me and start playing with the strands, start grabbing as if homing in on my hair: my little bees, circling my head, trying to get a whiff of what I am.

I wonder at what it is they must smell. Lesbian? Feminist?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Most likely it’s Hippie. I am not a hippie, but I look like one with the dreadlocks that graze the base of my back.

And so they name me as such, think that I’m some pot-smoking Rastafarian, even though they know nothing of the political and spiritual connotations of that identity. They do not see past the dread-headed stereotypes to ask me, why dreads? So they will never know that I put my hair in dreads because I wanted a girl to like me.

How would they feel about that, if they knew the real reason, if they knew who I really was? So even though I am not black and have never identified with the Rastafarian movement, I am called “Rasta Girl” by the youth, “Hippie” by the ones who think the word sounds funny, who like to feel the uppity syllables of it flicker past their lips. This is not who I am, but this is who they see me as. At night, I retreat to my house, twirl my dreads in my fingers as I fall to sleep, and wonder if anyone will ever see past them, see that there is something more beyond the hair, that there is a me behind the curtain of knots.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 36

POETRY

ROBERT FORD AND JACK RUBY SIT DOWN FOR A DRINK and each assassin’s hands shake as he reaches for his glass, each unsure of the other’s intentions, even now that nothing could harm them.

Theirs is an unease unknown to most—when you have killed a killer, all four walls resent you, even those your picture should be hung from.

And behind the bar I pretend not to notice the meeting taking place, faces snub-nosed and immediately familiar, the low words they intone between them— I take comfort in the Cobra tucked away in my coat pocket, I clean the shot glasses, overturn the stools to the bar-top’s smooth surface.

It is, otherwise, a slow night, and I’d like to go home.

Timothy Volpert

KANSAS CITY VOICES 37

POETRY

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SEAN KUNO: …I’ve never worked this hard to be somebody’s friend…

– Letter, found 11-10-09, Lawrence, Kansas She writes to you from Topeka. Pours it out neatly in black ink. Lays it all on some thin blue lines

and now it’s there in your hands.

She wants to still be your friend.

She has no idea what she did

– yet begs forgiveness.

The silence is getting to her head.

It’s your move, Sean Kuno. What are you going to do?

Just please don’t toss it all out your window near the corner of 31st and Iowa.

It’ll sit for days in the rain.

The envelope will turn from white to gray.

The ink will bleed.

Jeff Tigchelaar

KANSAS CITY VOICES 38

PROSE

Robert T. Chrisman

HAVE A CHAIR

Alec Bandenwine sat at the defense table with his public defender, Christine McDowell.

The bailiff called, “All rise.” Everyone stood as the judge entered the courtroom and took her chair. “Please be seated.”

The judge pounded her gavel. “I want to remind everyone this is a court of law. While this is a very emotional issue, I cannot and will not allow any commotion. Is that understood?”

She lowered her head and looked at the crowd over the top of her glasses. “Alrighty then, Madame Foreman, please stand.”

The woman rose and faced the judge.

“Has the jury reached a decision in the case of The State of Kansas versus Alec X. Brandenwine?”

“We have, your honor.”

The judge nodded. “Mr. Brandenwine, would you and your counsel please stand and face the jury?”

Alec rose as did his attorney.

“What is your verdict?”

“We, the members of the jury, find the defendant, Alec X. Brandenwine…” The foreman paused and looked directly at Alec.

A year ago during his annual physical, Alec had made a mistake.

His doctor asked, “Any problems?”

“No, everything’s working fine. My vasectomy…” Alec stopped. “No, I haven’t noticed any problems at all.”

The doctor put down the chart and looked Alec in the eyes.

“You said something about a vasectomy?”

Alec laughed. “Just kidding. Guess it’s like talking about bombs at the airport, not a good idea, huh?”

The doctor sat on his stool and rolled to the foot of the exam table. “No, not a good idea. You know I’m required by law to notify the local Board of Health about any sexual reproductive interference procedures.” He looked up at Alec. “My failure to do so could result in the revocation of my license and legal action against me.”

“Come on, Doc, I was only joking. I’d never break the law.

Can’t we forget a bad joke and get on with it?”

“Sure. No one should go to jail for a bad joke. I’m just telling you what the law requires.” He slapped Alec’s thigh. “Let’s get on with the exam and get you back to work.”

Alec sighed. He’d bluffed his way out of that one.

A month after the appointment Alec returned to his desk to find a note from his boss. “Come to my office ASAP. Stan.”

He grabbed his notepad and headed down the hall.

As he approached his boss’ office he saw the executive secretary. “Hi, Gwen. How are you?”

She ignored him.

He paused in the doorway when he noticed two police officers standing in the office.

Stan looked up without his usual smile. “Come in, Alec. We need to talk.”

Alec took a seat. One of the lawmen shut the door. The other one approached him and said, “Mr. Brandenwine, I’m Officer James. We’ve come to arrest you for violation of the Right-to-Life Laws.”

“What? This is a a mistake.”

“The law doesn’t think reproductive terminations are an unconscious mistake, especially when illegal actions have been taken

KANSAS CITY VOICES 39

Have a Chair continued

or performed.”

“But how?”

“How did we find out?”

Alec nodded.

“Your doctor notified us.”

Dazed, Alex looked at his boss.

Stan stared back at him. “I never thought you’d do something like this. You’ve disappointed me.”

The officers handcuffed Alec and took him out of the building as his coworkers watched. An hour later he sat in the city detention center. A day later he was transferred to the Johnson County jail in Olathe.

Christine McDowell examined the case file that had just landed on her desk. Public defenders handled lots of boring cases, domestic abuse, and bankruptcies, but, occasionally a high profile case, like this one, came their way.

“Damn! Why me?” She slammed the folder shut and looked up to see Yvonne, her secretary, staring at her. “Well, say something.”

The young woman walked into the office and shut the door.

Yvonne cocked her head as she looked at her boss. “I’d say that none of the big boys want to prosecute their fellow man for doing what men all across the state and country have done, or thought about doing, legally and illegally. The same men who happily passed laws against women controlling their reproductive organs and bodies have very bad feelings about the State doing the same thing to them, the spineless bastards.”

Christine laughed, “Outside my office that remark qualifies as sedition. And you know we have people in this office, both men and women, who would report you to the authorities.”

Yvonne looked around the room squinting as though searching for the spies. “They’re everywhere, Counselor. That’s why I work for you and no one else in this abattoir of life.” She looked at her blood red nails. “Should I make an appointment at the county jail for you to see Mr. Brandenwine?”

Christine nodded.

The guard in the gray outfit swaggered down the corridor

banging his keys against the bars of empty cells. “Hey, Brandenwine, your legal counsel’s here. Get over here so I can cuff you before I open the cell.”

The jailer escorted Alec down the hall to a glassed-in interview room where Christine sat stiffly at the lone table. The guard opened the door and pushed Alex into the room before he unlocked the cuffs. “No, funny stuff, Brandenwine. I’m right outside this door at all times.”

“Thanks, officer. I’ll ring when I’m ready to leave.” The jailer shut the door. Christine offered her hand to Alec. “Mr. Brandenwine, I’m Christine McDowell, your public defender.”

After they were seated, she pulled out a device and scanned the room. Alec watched in surprise.

“Just wanted to make sure the room isn’t bugged.” She looked at the device. “It isn’t. You can never tell to what extent the forces of good will go to punish evil.”

She opened the file on the table.

“First, let me advise you that anything you say to me in this room is confidential. These rooms are not bugged by law, but as I said, I’ll check every time before we talk. Anything said outside this room is probably taped and will be used against you. Remember that. Only talk to me here or when I tell you it’s safe. Okay?”

He nodded. “What’s the charge?”

She laughed. “Charges, Mr. Brandenwine, charges: murder, intent to commit genocide, and immorality.”

“For having a vasectomy?”

“The state legislators passed a law five years ago which made vasectomies illegal after January 1, 2021.”

“Why?”

“A vasectomy destroys a man’s ability to impregnate women, a direct violation of the Right-to-Life laws enacted in 2014, or weren’t you paying attention?”

“Yeah, I knew about them, but they applied to women and having abortions. I agreed with them. Women killed lots of innocent babies. It was immoral.”

Christine’s upper lip curled back from her teeth. “Then I know you’ll agree with the laws passed in 2020 which included bans

KANSAS CITY VOICES 40

on masturbation, any sex act which does not have the possibility of impregnating a woman, and the useless spilling of a man’s seed, not otherwise defined by the law.”

“Those are stupid laws.”

Christine smiled. “‘Stupid’ or not, Mr. Brandenwine, they are the laws of the land.”

“So tell me about this bogus genocide charge.”

“Having a vasectomy kills millions of sperm that, when used properly, could impregnate hundreds of millions of women.

Genocide is legally defined as the ‘deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.’ In this case, your vasectomy will deliberately destroy whole generations of Americans.”

“That’s bullshit. Besides, I could’ve had a vasectomy back when it was legal.”

She shrugged. “Certainly, if it was performed prior to January 1, 2021, the effective date of the laws against such procedures.” She stopped and stared at him. “Was it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then you’ll be a free man as soon as I have the name, address and phone number of the doctor who performed the procedure and verify the facts.”

Alec leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I can’t remember. I was in a hurry that day.”

Christine glared at her client. “Quit lying to me. You’re in enough trouble. Either tell me the truth or I’m out of here.

Understand?”

He looked away from her.

She stuffed the file and her notepad in her briefcase. Rising from the chair, she leaned over the table. “Look, Mister Brandenwine, your life’s at stake here. You don’t stand much of a chance even with the best lawyer, so either cooperate, or I’ll ask to be dismissed.” She grabbed her briefcase and started for the door.

“Okay. I’ll tell you the truth.”

Christine returned to the table. “No more games.

Understand?”

“Jeez, doesn’t anyone have a sense of humor?” He leaned

across the table. “I had this done in a back alley. Since they banned all forms of contraception, what’s a healthy guy like me to do?

Masturbation’s a crime. Pulling out before ejaculation’s a crime.

Besides, it doesn’t work. Hell, I want to have sex and not worry about fathering any little bastards.”

Christine leaned close to him. “Where were you when your legislators passed laws against women controlling their own bodies?

Did you miss the anti-abortion laws of the early 2000s and early 2010s or the anti-contraception laws of the 2010s? Were you asleep or too busy beating off?”

“Those were laws aimed at women. What did I care?”

Christine stood up and knocked her chair over. “Welcome to Post-Right-to-Life America.”

She closed her folder and walked to the door. “Mr. Brandenwine, my advice to you is: decide whether you prefer life in prison or death in the electric chair.”

Alec yelled. “Don’t try to scare me.”

The guard opened the door. As Christine walked through the door she said, “That was to inform you of your choices. The scare comes during the trial. Have a good evening, Mr. Brandenwine.”

Back in his cell, Alec thought about their discussion.

Abortion and contraception were women’s issues. They’re the ones that got knocked up. They’re the ones that carried the babies. The guys just provided the sperm. Besides, a condom didn’t feel natural.

Women should be the ones to take the precautions, since they were the ones who could get pregnant.

Yvonne placed a cup of coffee and a donut on Christine’s desk. “Boss, you need to eat something. You look like you’ve been at work all night. How’s the new client?”

Christine ran her hand through her hair. “An asshole who sees no relationship between the Right-to-Life laws of the last thirty years and his current situation. I bet he still masturbates.”

Covering her mouth with the back of her hand, Yvonne gasped. “OMG, think of all those potential babies that ended up on a tissue, or down the shower drain. Murderer.”

Christine wiped the sleepiness from her eyes. “We shouldn’t

KANSAS CITY VOICES 41

Have a Chair continued

joke. The law says masturbation is a crime punishable with jail time or, in very serious cases, death.”

“These anti-sex people take the joy out of living.”

Christine looked at her secretary. “Off with you. I’ve got to manufacture a defense.”

“Good luck, Counselor.” Yvonne closed the door.

“Luck? No, I need a miracle.”

The first day of the trial, Alec listened to the description of his mass murder of unborn American children. Equally as frightening were the humorless faces of the jury. They frowned and grimaced as they listened to the prosecutor describe the charges.

Christine rose to deliver her opening remarks. As she approached the jury box, she smiled. “You all are good, decent lawabiding citizens, aren’t you?”

Some nodded.

“How many children have you murdered in your lifetime?”

Looks of confusion spread through the jury box.

“I don’t mean intentionally, but the Right-to-Life laws don’t differentiate between intentional and unintentional reproductive crimes. Remember the case of Allison Michaels who was convicted of murder when her car slid on ice and rammed into a telephone pole killing her fetus? The jury decided she had not intended to kill her baby, but she should have known how slick the streets were and chosen not to drive anywhere.”

Some jurors nodded.

“I’m talking at a more basic level. Let me address the women of the jury first.”

She stood in front of a female juror. “A woman produces 400-450 eggs in her lifetime, but, for the sake of argument, let’s say only one can be fertilized and grow into a baby every year. If a woman obeyed the current laws she would have as many as 30 or 40 babies in her lifetime. How many of you women have even five children?

What happened to all those other potential children? They died due to the activities of you, their mothers.”

She turned to face a male juror. “And you men are the worst

murderers of unborn children. Ejaculate contains two million sperm that could impregnate a woman. How many of you have two million children?”

Some men snickered.

“Is my client any more guilty than anyone else in this courtroom? He isn’t. Remember that. Because, if he’s guilty of murder and genocide, you all are guilty too.”

She walked back to the defense table and sat down.

Alec said, “Great opening. I think we have a chance.”

“Idiot,” she smiled through clenched teeth. “You’re in deeper trouble than I thought if you believe in my defense. It’s all I had.”

By day three Alec understood completely. Witness after witness explained in detail how Alec had broken the law. The prosecutor took every opportunity to emphasize that, regardless of what anyone though about the laws, Alec had broken them. That alone was the issue.

Christine hammered away at the ridiculousness of laws and questioned their intent. The jurors remained expressionless.

When the jury left the courtroom to deliberate, Alec and Christine retired to a secure room to wait. Alec asked, “Why does it matter to the State what I do with my body?”

Christine’s eyes opened wide. “Mr. Brandenwine, now’s a hell of a time to ask that question. You should’ve asked it in the 1990’s when the anti-sex people took aim at abortion providers and the rights of a woman to control her own body.”

“But abortion’s wrong.”

“For the sake of argument, I’ll agree, but why can’t women make the decision for themselves? Were they so self-centered or ignorant that the State needed to tell them what they could and could not do?

Alex pondered the question. “Obviously, or the state legislators wouldn’t have passed laws eliminating abortion. If women had been more responsible …”

KANSAS CITY VOICES 42

Christine leaned across the table. “What is your responsibility in the process of reproduction?”

“Very little, so why make laws against men controlling their bodies?”

“Did you want to talk about anything related to the case or just ask more stupid questions?”

“Yeah, what’s the punishment for my crimes if I’m convicted?”

“Life imprisonment or death in the electric chair.”

“Don’t joke.”

“I’m not laughing, am I? I told you how serious this was from the beginning.”

Alex felt faint. “Isn’t that extreme for a vasectomy?”

A smile crossed Christine’s face. “Mr. Brandenwine, extreme is the word for the hanging of the Utah woman who refused to have children. Refusal to conceive is a crime punishable by death in that state.”

Alec started to say something, but Christine held up her hand. “Extreme is Jean Stanton’s sentence of twenty-five years for discussing birth control in a public forum, her women’s circle.”

“But those women broke the law.”

Christine rubbed her forehead. “As did you.”

“But I can’t have children.”

“Oh, Mr. Brandenwine, you have the greatest gift of all between your legs, and I’m not talking your penis and balls. Your sperm, when properly used, could impregnate millions of women.”

A knock at the door interrupted their conversation. The bailiff leaned into the room and said, “The jury’s back. Please return to the courtroom.” He shut the door.

Alec asked, “Whose side are you on?”

“Yours, but I’m trying to impress upon you the seriousness of the law.”

“I don’t deserve this.”

“Maybe not, but no woman ever deserved to have anyone tell her what she could or could not do with her body.”

Alex laid his head on the table.

He heard Christine’s chair scrape the floor. When he looked up, he saw her headed to the door. “What should I have done?”

She turned and faced him. “Maybe you could have spoken up when all this anti-abortion, anti-contraceptive stuff started. Then perhaps we wouldn’t be here today. Let’s go.”

Christine waited for him to rise from the chair.

He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

“That, Mr. Brandenwine, is the whole problem in a nutshell.”

Focusing on Alec, the jury foreman continued, “We, the members of the jury find the defendant, Alec X. Brandenwine, guilty of murder in the first degree, guilty of genocide, and guilty of immorality as defined by the Kansas Penal Code and recommend death by electrocution.”

Alec grabbed his attorney’s arm. “But…”

Christine put her hand over his.

Alec looked at the jury. “But, I’m not a woman.”

KANSAS CITY VOICES 43

POETRY

INCIDENT AT RIDERS FORD (WINTER, 1967)

More feminine than girls I knew, he had more verve than the boys.

Quiet and polite, he was easily bullied

by Baptists and Catholics alike.

All the bible-thumpers preached that different people are doomed.

This is how it was in the Heartland, for anyone far from the norm.

He wore panties beneath his slacks.

Someone said he was queer.

But the rumor was never vetted.

All that mattered in our town was to fit in where you could, do your part, walk like a man and spit snuff, gaze through cracks in the girls’ shower, say fuck daily just to say it, damn the Russians, the Chinese, the Jews.

But he would have none of bigotry.

A kind soul with a warm smile, the FFA boys took him to the river, depantsed him and left him naked in darkness that hides stupidity.

When the police found him, dazed and shivering in the street, he refused to identify the thugs or press charges, and nothing was done; they got away with simian, primordial acts.

GARY LECHLITER KANSAS CITY VOICES 44

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PROSE

EVERYTHING Ginny Taylor When your husband texts you in the afternoon that he’ll pick you up after work, and that he’ll pack an overnight bag for you, you should worry. Not about the evening he’s planned at a winery or the bargain hotel he’s found on the Internet. For these things you are grateful. No, what you should worry about is that overnight bag.

Quickly, you text him: Please pack me clean underwear and white shirt in laundry room. Then work distracts you from sending further reminders.

He shows up in your office door promptly at 5:00. You know you should check the bag before starting out. Yet, you think, how bad could it be?

While he drives, you exchange the details of the day. It’s been a hellish week for both of you. You share stories, listen, and share more. If you weren’t each other’s best friend, on whom would you unload your tales of woe, your stress, your insecurities?

In the hotel room, you lift the overnight bag onto the bed and realize it’s lighter than your pocket-sized purse. Immediately, you wonder, What did he remember to pack? That shirt you asked him to bring, along with clean underwear for both of you, a black t-shirt for him, his toiletry items which include his toothbrush, his shaving cream, contact lens solution, a couple of q-tips, and dental floss.

What’s missing? Your toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, face cream, hair gel. The four prescription meds and vitamins you take daily. Tweezers—you never leave home without them. Shampoo.

Face wash. Make-up. Clean clothes for the next day. Pajamas—you wonder if this last omission was intentional on his part.

He says he’ll share his toothbrush with you and that you can borrow his t-shirt. You take him up on both offers.

At the winery, you drink and listen to a band that has a karaoke drum beat. You both laugh: where is the drummer? I hear him, but can’t see him. He, too, is missing. You both have another drink, another piece of cheese, another pretzel. Eventually hungry for real food, you leave and end up a local bar where the burgers are slathered with cheese and onions and tomatoes, and the band is live

with a drummer. They play blues while couples dance on a crowded floor. The bandleader announces that one of the couples—the one that dances like they need a hotel room—has been married 34 years.

Your husband leans over and whispers, what do you think we’ll be doing on our 34th? You say, probably not dancing like that. Let’s just get through our 30th this year.

Back at the hotel you go to bed in his black t-shirt. You think about sex, you know he’s probably thinking about sex, but you don’t have any. Instead you sleep, sort of. He snores. You snore. But the room is cool and the sheets are fresh, and it feels like some sort of rare luxury to sleep in the next morning when you again use his toothbrush. While he’s in the bathroom, you pack your few items back into the overnight bag. Then sitting on the edge of the bed, still wearing his oversized black t-shirt with yesterday’s jeans, you contemplate your reflection in the mirror—hair disheveled, face unmade, those annoying chin hairs unplucked. You laugh at yourself.

How could you have ever let him pack a bag for you? Even after thirty years of marriage, no husband could possibly remember everything.

You stand ready to leave, and he suggests stopping for a nice sit-down breakfast at a nearby diner before heading home.

You counter with the drive-through at McDonald’s. No one should see you in this condition. Then while gripping the overnight bag, he casually asks, as he has so many other times before when you leave home or a hotel room, do you have everything?

He means no duplicity behind this simple question.

Then why has it stopped your heart?

Suddenly you realize that it’s the deepness of the question that has made you speechless; it’s how the word everything has wrapped its arms around more than just the contents of an overnight bag.

You’ve paused too long. Even now his eyebrows are arched, silently asking the same question, do you have everything?

Finally, coming back to the present moment, you smile and firmly grasp his hand. As you both head for the door, you say without a backward glance, Yes, dear, I’ve got everything.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 45

PROSE

THE DEADLINE Amy Weir

I sat in the front row of my mother’s funeral thinking about boobs.

Not that I was some crazed teenage boy desperate to get a peek – on the contrary – I was a thirteen year old girl wanting to get rid of mine. They were mere golf balls at that point, still growing under the lace of my dress, but their potential was limitless. Just look at what Mother’s boobs had done. They’d completely wrecked her life.

And they hadn’t done much good for mine, either.

I was only nine when Mom and Dad gathered us kids in the living room to give us the news, and though I didn’t know what “cancer” meant, I could tell they were nervous about it. Mom stared at the floor while Dad reassured us that everything would be fine after an operation and chemotherapy. She looked over at him and smiled a couple of times, but she wouldn’t look at any of us. And Dad was waving his hands around much more than usual as he spoke. Something just wasn’t right.

She was forty then.

Forty – that sounded like a good deadline. Maybe I could get them cut off before I turned forty.

The white casket was so close that I could have touched it with my toe if I straightened out my leg. There it sat, right in front of us, looking like a rectangular wedding cake with all those flowers and ribbons piled on top. Each flower’s perfume competed with the one next to it, bathing the first few pews with a sickly-sweet potpourri.

And I had to sit there in it with hundreds of people staring their pity into the back of my head.

Their pity was late, though. I’d lost my mother a long time ago, back when the morphine levels got so high that she couldn’t remember our names anymore.

Instead of touching the casket, I simply pushed my big glasses back into place and wondered what would be left of Mom in one thousand years. Or even a million. The bookworm in me – the one that had been consuming far too many sci-fi novels lately – figured that intelligent cockroaches would have taken over by then.

And of course, when they opened the huge white box, they’d only find bone dust, a few fillings, and a round bag of silicone.

“Even in our childhood,” Scary Gary was saying from the pulpit, “she had everyone wrapped around her little finger.”

My gaze went from the casket to Uncle Gary. I hadn’t seen him since our last dental appointment two years ago. He was skinnier now, but obviously hadn’t bought himself a new suit. The jacket hung loose, and the pants were bunched up around his waist, making him look like a little boy who was trying on his daddy’s clothes.

“All the neighborhood kids always wanted to play with her,” he continued. “Whenever you saw Jane, you’d see a group of kids at her heels, following her every footstep.”

I remembered lying back in the dentist’s chair with Scary Gary’s fleshy fingers jammed into my mouth at that appointment.

“Open wider,” he kept saying.

But I was opening my mouth so wide already that it felt like my jaw was going to break.

“Okay, almost got it…just a little more…” he mumbled while his assistant sprayed and sucked at random intervals.

The tangy smell of burnt bone wafted out of my mouth whenever he used the squealing drill and I shut my eyes to block out the blazing light he’d shoved into my face.

“Just a little more…” he repeated as the drill hit a nerve.

I squawked and winced but he didn’t flinch.

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“Just one more minute,” he said, his voice rising, “you don’t need any Novocain, I’m almost done…”

I squeezed my eyes shut so tight that my eyeballs hurt, but a few tears still managed to escape. Fortunately, he only hit the nerve one more time before he finished.

“She was a light to us all,” he said with a shaky voice from the pulpit, “the embodiment of everything good in the world.”

He got fired soon after he worked on us.

“She was a loving mother…”

The office didn’t give him his last paycheck, so one day he walked in dressed as a woman and stole some dental equipment. “…a devoted wife…”

He didn’t get very far. I guess the fact that he was almost six and a half feet tall gave him away. “…and the best sister anyone could ever have.”

I tried to picture him in a dress. Maybe he’d worn a blue dress with flowers that day. Or stripes, he’d look good in stripes. I bet they made him wear stripes in jail.

Scary Gary finished and one of Mom’s friends sang a song, then everyone slowly headed for the cemetery.

By the time we stood around the hole in the ground, a light January snow was coming down. It was the perfect movie scene – snow falling, the extras in black, and the main characters huddled together, somber and silent. I didn’t want to be a main character, though. Everyone focuses on the main characters. Everyone focused on me. The extras had their fleshy fingers in my mouth and their hot eyes on my face and I could hear their pity buzzing like a tiny drill.

I winced but they wouldn’t stop.

“Just one more minute…”

The pallbearers lowered the casket into the hole.

“You don’t need any Novocaine…”

The Bishop said a prayer.

“I’m almost done…”

The funeral director got a shovel and began burying her.

Slowly, the crowd dispersed and we went home.

You’d think I’d be relieved then, to get home and into my bed where it was safe and warm. But I could still smell the burnt bone no matter how far under the covers I went.

Forty.

Forty for sure.

They’d be gone before I was forty, even if I had to do it myself.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 47

PROSE

THE INHERITANCE Dawn Downey Day One. I didn’t know if I was trying to outrun my history–– or catch up with it.

I sat by myself in a college student lounge, waiting for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference to convene. Tension knotted my shoulders as other would-be authors filed in, meandered toward the registration table and settled in overstuffed chairs. Avoiding eye contact, I scanned the room for familiar faces. Did they know Dad? Is that one of his students? Will anyone remember me?

I’d grown up in Santa Barbara and then moved away. I hadn’t returned in the ten years since my parents had died. Dad was a local hero. He’d taught at this conference for twenty years. He’d also published five books, authored 500 newspaper columns and taught creative writing to 7,000 Santa Barbarinos.

In the meantime, I had limped through high school and college, and then dabbled in the careers of school librarian, fashion designer, hotel manager, university counselor and hospital administrator. I’d resigned from the last position to become a writer.

Along the way there were clues to an eventual love affair with the written word. As an undergrad, I preferred the essay question to the multiple-choice, the term paper to the final exam. Graduate school brought insight and the stirrings of a voice. My first research paper earned an A+ from my M. A. advisor. He added the comment, “You don’t know how good you are.” I flirted with prose in every job: sculpted memos into works of art, transformed newsletters into novels, reviewed dance productions for the hometown paper and even proofed copy for classifieds. But I didn’t notice the pattern. Like a haughty cheerleader pursued by the captain of the chess team, I didn’t know writing existed until the day I ran away with it.

I quit my job to follow in Dad’s footsteps. He would have disapproved.

I’m 41. After sojourns in Portland, St. Louis and Minneapolis, I’ve landed in Kansas City. I’ve found the perfect job, and call my parents to share the news.

“Dad, guess what?” He barely gets in a “Hi, Tootie” before I launch into my story. I pause for his congratulations.

He coughs from advancing lung disease. “I don’t know why you keep quitting, but this job sounds good. I guess you’re failing up.”

I laugh along with him, but my cheeks burn, because I can’t tell if he’s praising me or mocking me.

CNN drones behind his wheezing.

Day Two. The leader of the morning workshop––a Fred Astaire type––stacked papers and books on a table at the front of the room. He wore sharply creased trousers and a crisp oxford shirt, with a cardigan draped across his shoulders. After introducing himself to the class, he strolled toward me. I averted my gaze from his face to the floor. His loafers advanced, stopping just opposite my sandals. I peeked at his knees, glanced at his belt buckle and finally looked into his eyes.

He took my hand in both of his. “They told me you were coming. Your papa was a dear, dear friend. I miss him.”

The breath I was holding escaped in a sigh. “Thank you. So do I.” I’m 28, home for the holidays. My teen-aged sister and I are feuding. She sweeps past me to greet other family members with effusive air kisses. Wherever she stands, she turns her back to me. Her haughtiness reduces me from career woman to kindergarten victim.

After a day of toughing it out, I confide in Dad. We stand outside the front door. The night-blooming jasmine he’d planted along the driveway gleams in the moonlight. I tell him I’d rather spend

KANSAS CITY VOICES 48

Christmas with friends than endure that little shit’s silent treatment.

“I wish you’d stay,” he says. “You’re not a quitter. I don’t call you Snake Bite for nothing.”

It’s the only time he’s called me Snake Bite.

He opens the door to encourage me back into the house.

The scents of pine and cinnamon fill the living room. Seduced by this flirtation with his approval, I follow Dad inside and stay for Christmas.

Day Three. I broke the silence.

Other writers read their work aloud and endured the critiques. Their hands shook and their voices halted, while I hunkered down in the back of the room.

They’ll find out I’m a fraud.

I imagined Dad’s colleague embarrassed to discover his dear friend’s daughter had no talent. When Mr. Fred Astaire read my name from his sign-up sheet, I interpreted his wry smile and the ironic lilt in his voice as we’ll just see what you can do, missy.

I stood in front of the class and read an essay. The group was supposed to offer suggestions, but no one spoke. I looked up from the page. They applauded. I gasped. It seemed polite to murmur thank you, but I wanted the clapping to stop. Surely I’d get into trouble for breaking some rule.

The teacher held up his copy of my composition. “You see,” he said in that same clever tone, an eyebrow raised. “She did everything I told you to do in creative nonfiction.”

I did? How in the world did that happen?

The afternoon session had already begun by the time I located it on the sprawling campus. At first the room looked empty.

The chairs had been pushed back against the walls, forming a semicircle that faced a stool labeled the Hot Seat. One after another, participants perched there, read a work-in-progress and listened to

their colleagues’ evaluations.

The facilitator directed the proceedings from behind a bare wooden desk. Reading glasses perched halfway down her nose emphasized her deadpan expression. After the class discussed chapter one of a memoir and the latest draft of a how-to manual, she tapped her roster with a pencil. “Dawn Downey is next.”

Oh no, not me. My face grew hot and my hands cold, but I clutched my papers and stood.

I’m twenty. I stand at the sink, washing dishes. Dad sits at the kitchen table. He slouches in the chair with his legs stretched out. His size twelve feet block the doorway. He studies my report card, which he holds in one hand, and then looks at me over his glasses. “You’re failing.”

“No I’m not. They’re Cs, not Fs.” “Watch your mouth.” His voice is low. It rumbles through the kitchen like a herd of buffalo stampeding over the plains.

I scour away at nonexistent grime in a skillet until Dad stalks out of the room.

The Hot Seat vibrated with menace. I willed my rubbery legs to move, and crossed the expanse as though wading through waisthigh mud. When I’d reached the middle of the room, a booming voice broke the silence.

“Dawn Downey? Bill’s daughter? We lived up the street when you were in high school.”

I turned to locate the source. A shout from the opposite corner rang out. “Bill’s daughter? God, I loved that old man. I took his class six times.”

The instructor frowned. She took off her spectacles.

“Downey. I should have recognized the name. Your dad is the reason

KANSAS CITY VOICES 49

The Inheritance continued

I’m here.”

They converged on me. They hugged and patted and kissed. Their affection quelled my internal voices, which criticized and second-guessed. After cowering in the shadows for a lifetime, I basked in this newfound celebrity.

Order was restored and I took my place on the Hot Seat.

When I finished my recitation, someone yelled out, “You can’t stop there. I’ve got to know what happens next.”

The instructor held up her hand to prevent me from responding. “You’ll just have to buy her book. Excellent work.”

Maybe I could be a writer.

I’m eighteen. Dad drops me off at the Greyhound station. The brick building looms in front of me like Mount Doom. A bus labeled “Los Angeles” idles nearby. Exhaust blackens the air and stings my lungs.

I’m returning to college after a weekend at home spent begging my parents to let me quit. When they refuse, I plead for a year off, and then a semester.

College life suffocates me. The co-ed dorms force me into unwanted intimacy with men I don’t know. Stodgy literature professors suck the energy from Hemingway. The social pressure cooker that is 1970s affirmative action pits privileged white students from the suburbs against “un-privileged” black students from the inner city. As a middle class black girl, I’m trapped between the two factions.

Dad sends me back to a world where I’m lost, but his eyes are misty when he kisses me goodbye.

His tears embarrass me, as though I’ve accidentally seen him naked.

Day Four. I strained to hear my neighbor’s voice above the din in the crowded cafeteria. Three of us had walked to lunch

together and occupied one end of a rectangular table. A group of women we hadn’t met took the remainder of the seats. They appeared to be conference staff, judging from the number of people vying for their attention. Snippets of their conversation broke through the surrounding racket. “ . . . sales figures for my book.” “ . . . find the time to write my column.” “ . . . have to call my agent back.” They represented everything I aspired to be. Popular, polished, published.

One of them picked up her chair and squeezed it in beside mine. “If it wasn’t for your father, I wouldn’t be a writer.”

We sat knee to knee. As she leaned in to me, the noisy room receded. There was only the intensity of her gaze and the sweetness of her memory.

“When I came here as a student,” she said, “I was scared to death. I took your dad’s workshop because I heard he was friendly.

On the last day, he asked, ‘When are we going to hear from you?’

I was too nervous to read my own work, but he talked me into it. I walked to the front of the room, shaking, close to tears. He leaned over and whispered, ‘You’re safe here.’ And he held my hand while I read.”

I was spellbound. We sat wordlessly for a few seconds. Our mingled breath held her story aloft like a feather. As it floated away, she rose and returned to her colleagues, and to the anonymity of clanking plates and peeling laughter.

He’d held her hand while she read.

A stranger had just revealed that my father was Superman, and his secret power was tenderness. Maybe, if I’d known his identity before he’d died, Superman would have held my hand, too.

I’m sixteen. Dad and I sit with his boss, the editor of the Santa Barbara NewsPress. Our three chairs form a tight circle.

I propose an article for the paper: race relations among high

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school students. I rattle off prospective interview questions for my classmates. I read my synopsis, stumbling over the power of the two men beside me. Intimidation halts my speech. Excitement propels me.

The editor nods while I talk. He smiles at me, then turns to Dad. “What do you think, Bill?”

Dad folds his hands in his lap.“I wish I’d heard about it before now.”His words press in on my chest.

I freeze. “Sorry, Dad.”My heart races. I study my feet. “Sorry.”

I feel him next to me like a rock face I can’t possibly scale.

The editor’s comments drift by. “Flesh it out.” “Meet again.”

They grow fainter as the room fades away and I disappear.

Day Five. Dad’s former students caught up with me as I entered buildings, emerged from restrooms and strolled down walkways. Messengers from my father, they shared the words of encouragement he’d written across their manuscripts. Some had continued to meet for a decade after Dad’s death, reserving an empty seat for him at the head of the table. They recited his pithy advice.

“Take more risks.” “Write outrageously.” They repeated phrases unfamiliar to my ears. “I’m proud of your progress.” “Just incredible.”

They unveiled my inheritance: Dad’s Technicolor self-portrait, which I’d only seen in shades of gray.

I’m ten years old, lying in the bow of his cabin cruiser. We’ve been fishing, just the two of us. He sits on the deck smoking his pipe.

Vin Scully is calling a Dodgers game on the radio. Mosquitoes buzz; lightning bugs flicker. The river rocks me to sleep.

resounded with shouted compliments and promises to email. There were flurries of exchanged business cards.

After finishing the meal, we settled in for the awards ceremony. Each announcement of someone else’s accomplishment stabbed me with a sense of failure, and then I felt guilty for my lack of generosity. The inner turmoil distracted me, until the sound of the family name yanked my attention back. “ . . . Downey . . . first prize . . . creative nonfiction.” A tablemate poked me in the ribs, while another squeezed my shoulders, assuring me I’d heard correctly. I grinned so hard my cheeks hurt as I made my way to the stage.

I’m six years old. Dad sits on the step stool in the kitchen, holding a jar of pickled pigs’ feet. I climb onto his lap. His big arms surround me as he reaches into the jar and offers me a bite. The tangy taste plays hopscotch on my tongue. Dad grins. I swing my legs.

When I reached the stage, the conference founder presented me with a certificate and kissed me on the forehead. I read my winning essay aloud at the pace of chocolate melting in my mouth. I savored this bit of success at the craft my dad loved. The spotlight’s glow made up for all the years I’d felt invisible. When I took my bow, students whom my father had encouraged and teachers he had taught applauded my achievement. They nodded their approval. Invisible arms wrapped around me and I knew Dad’s hand held mine.

I’m 54. My father beams. “Incredible, Snake Bite, just incredible.”

Day Six. I juggled a plate of fruit and a glass of orange juice as I navigated around the buffet table at the closing brunch. Suitcases, backpacks and tote bags left little space for walking. The ballroom

KANSAS CITY VOICES 51

POETRY

MINE CREEK KANSAS Borders had been drawn and words would not cross them

We were told they were as savage as the wolves in my part of the country, but I knew wolves only hunted what they needed and not wantonly

Our guide took us through stands of grass so tall they were like young trees and you could smell tansy here

By the river, we moved silently along the shore and shadows befriended us with hidden spaces

Up the shoreline, we could see the enemy had been here by the crushed primrose petals

Along the horizon, we could see an old wood cabin with open windows, leaning chimney but, carrying a secret of ball and musket already inside

We were frightened and threw our rifles on the hard ground, legs unsteady dropped us to the earth, and we heard the devil’s roar of cannon so even the grass curled and died

At night, what friends were left ran, north, south, east and west

There is no relief from the pain in my side and I feel like a wounded owl trying to grasp a moving branch

When I can dream, it is the same one, the morning lake breeze moves my grandmother’s lace curtains she brought from the old country and they touch my face

In this hidden space, you pray for yourself and everyone else you ever knew comes last.

Marie Asner KANSAS CITY VOICES 52

SOLILOQUY For Bruce Proctor, 1943-2011 If heaven loved not wine, A Wine Star would not be in heaven….

From Vindication by Li Po

Li Po, like my brother, Bruce, died drunk trying to embrace the moon on the Yellow River.

His eyes filled up and sank.

They both preferred starlight to straight answers, chased maple seeds through mind fields yet were sought for sober counsel.

They were the Tao’s tricksters, greenhouse soldiers, red-eyed gazers mastering the cloud’s soliloquy, never masters of their own fates.

Bruce had a fondness for single malt.

He chose to die at home where each of the five days was worth years of abstinence, feeding tubes and opiate thugs.

He sought our permission, hoped we understood the exquisite value of homesipped scotch. It’s spring and whirling maple seeds rain upon me.

My eyes fill up and sink.

Alan Proctor

KANSAS CITY VOICES 53

PROSE

THE RISE

Natalie McAllister

At first, he felt her elbow in his side and thought it was a mistake. She was next to him sifting through fly fishing shirts with SPF fabrics. A saleswoman helped a young woman into waders on the other side of the fly shop. He could hear them talking, with their voices both pushed up into higher than natural octaves, those feminine cooings like glass in his ears and so unnatural in this lodge of blasted wood and heavy boots and, in the afternoons, dirty hands stinking of river water and fish. These hands reminded him of his long-dead grandfather, of wooden tackle, calloused palms.

The second time she knocked her elbow into his stomach he knew it wasn’t a mistake. She held apart two fly fishing shirts on the rack and stared at him.

“You needed a shirt,” she said. “These are the shirts.”

He looked at the shirts, looked at the patterns. Most of them were solid greens and blues, lightweight and embroidered with various fishing-related icons. An outline of a man in mid-cast with a range of mountains behind him. A brook trout on a line. A stonefly.

From across the store, he heard the saleswoman: “These are perfect for you. You have the perfect body for this pair.”

The woman in the waders said something he couldn’t hear and touched the saleswoman on the shoulder. Her body twisted and curved beneath the heavy waders and she moved as if she were wading through water, as if a current were against her. He imagined the twists and curves happening inside the waders, like a trout twisting in shallow water, coming up on the line.

Her elbow came into his side a third time, harder. He felt the point of it pass by his lower ribs.

“Daniel,” his wife, Susan, said. “Look at the shirts. We’re here to look at the shirts.”

The saleswoman said, “Have you considered modeling waders before? You’re just perfect for it.”

The woman in waders smiled and laughed, her body

twisting and curving. She had red hair, like the blast of pink running up the sides of a rainbow trout.

“Fine,” Susan said. “Fine. I came in here because you said you wanted me to help you look at shirts. You’re not even looking at the shirts, Daniel.”

“I’m looking now,” he said. “See?” “No,” Susan said. “You’re looking at that woman.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’m looking at the shirts now.” When he said it that way, it didn’t feel like a lie to him. He flipped the tags of a checked pattern shirt.

“You do this,” she said, “like you expect that I’m stupid.”

“Please,” he said. “I don’t think you’re stupid. I’m not doing anything but looking at shirts with you.”

He knew some of the guides from years of fishing up here in the past. Some of them stood along the far wall, laughing and telling each other stories about clients. He wondered what they thought of his cast, of his fly selection. He could remember every time a guide had pulled his trout from the fly for him, how they didn’t trust him to know better than to touch a fish with dry hands, how that shame followed him back to the shop and into the photographs of clients and their fish taped to the glass countertop. In fifteen years of coming to this shop, he had never had a guide ask for a picture of his fish for the glass countertop. He sent one in once, a picture of himself holding forth an eighteen inch brown trout in the Madison River. The manager claimed the next year that the photograph had been ruined by a spilled coffee and could not be salvaged.

“Did you just look again?” she asked. “I’m going out to the car. Pick a shirt and come on. You said you wanted to fish today, and that’s fine, but I’m not standing in here with you anymore.”

“Please,” he said again. “Stay.”

Susan left him standing by the shirts with the woman in waders in front of him, on the other side of the store. He heard the bell chirp on the door and the rental car horn. He waited for something to move in him, to tell him to chase after her. He stood waiting to want her, counting his heartbeats, his breath. Jam band music sifted from the stereo in the rafters.

In the car on the way up from Idaho Falls, the fact had been wedged between them—he could feel it as fat, obtrusive. The weight

KANSAS CITY VOICES 54

of it overwhelmed him. He could feel that fact pressing against his arm, pushing him from her in that fixed space of the car. It was simple: she had to take off work to come up here and he didn’t. She had to make concessions and arrangements so that he could have a break from the stress of his unemployment. She had to pay for the plane tickets when they had planned, at first, for him to pay. That was when they both woke up at six in the morning and showered together and dressed in the same mirror and shared a pot of coffee, equally poured into two travel mugs. This was back when they spoke in smiles and nudges and raised eyebrows. Now she sat in the car, arms crossed, waiting for him to pick out a shirt.

The woman pulled the waders off her thighs and handed them to the salesclerk. Daniel watched her try on a pair of wading boots the saleswoman had also brought out. He remembered a banana left in the front pocket of his spare waders, how the smell as it rotted had ruined them and how he had tried to hose them out in the backyard until Susan took them from him and threw them out.

He saw this as an excuse and walked across the sales floor. He looked up at the mounted rainbows and cutthroats on the wall above the register counter as he walked by the glass front door, wondering if Susan could see him through the glare.

He fingered through the waders hanging on the wall and pulled out his favorite brand—there was a logo of rod and reel on the front pocket. He had his back to the woman and he tried to imagine what it might feel like if her eyes were on him. She was much younger than he had expected her to be, but she was alone—in the fly shop without a husband or father or brother to force her to be there. With Susan, fly fishing had been something he’d convinced her to do—he thought maybe it was this way with all women, that fly fishing was something women did because they didn’t want their men leaving them at home alone. He held the pair of waders away from the hanging stack and pretended to look them over, rubbing his fingers on the Gore-tex lining, checking the tags as if he were reading them.

“What are you fishing for?” he asked the woman. He spoke into the waders, afraid to see her expression before her response.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. He could hear the guides laughing at the back of the shop. He wondered if they were telling

stories or laughing at him.

“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Are you talking to me?”

“I was letting you know that I heard about a caddis hatch on the Madison. If you were interested,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on the Madison. But thank you.”

“Salmon flies in the Park. You need a different permit, but it’s not expensive.”

“I was going to St. Anthony,” she said. “With a guide tomorrow.”

“Do you need flies? Which waders did you buy?” His voice came out too quick, too pushy. He couldn’t bring himself to turn and face her, but he had already thumbed through each pair of waders hanging before him, so he turned to face the counter of flies—hundreds of hand-tied glittering hooks wrapped with feathers, deer hair, foam, shining thread.

“I’m renting,” she said. “The guide didn’t mention that I should buy any flies.”

“I could help you,” he said. A salesclerk hunched over his phone at the counter. Another straightened the shirts he had rifled through earlier. He thought he could take her over to the flies without having one of them interfere.

“Um,” she started, looking around the shop. “Okay, sure.”

Then Daniel could face her, could see the bridge of her nose taper like that of a brown trout’s. Her neck flushed in the July heat of the shop and he thought of cutthroats, cutbows, the thin blueish shine of a grayling’s sail. He imagined them thigh-deep in the Millionaire’s Pool, his hand behind her, on hers, ticking a rod back and forth, asking her to wait on the back cast.

“I tie my own flies,” he said. “I like to make up the species, give the fish something different to look at. See this?”

Daniel tapped on the glass, pointing to a square of bunched together dyed orange deer hair.

“What is that?” she asked.

“It’s a Quigley’s Cripple. That’s a great fly. That’s a fly you could use.”

The woman nodded and looked beyond him, out through

KANSAS CITY VOICES 55

The Rise continued

the glass front door.

“Was that your wife in here earlier?” She flicked her hand and let it fall on her hip.

There was a moment, he remembered with that subtle flick, that paralleled this one. There was another fly shop, one in a mall, another woman—his wife. He had met her much this way, browsing through fly boxes so that she wouldn’t have to pay for parking. Her cheekbones so hard and high then, having caught much of summer’s heat so that her face, he thought, simmered like the burnt orange belly of a brown trout.

“Look,” she said. “It’s okay. I know that’s your wife.”

His shirt felt so wet under his arms. He felt caught in a lie he didn’t know he was telling. He had no idea why he was standing here telling this woman about flies. The flies were in small compartments, tangled together—long-tailed streamers, the small blue bodies of nymphs, feathered mayflies. Just beyond the bank of flies was the glass top counter cluttered with the confident, smiling faces of clients and the thick bodies of their glimmering trout.

“My favorite trout is a rainbow,” he said. “They hit the line so precise, so purposeful. You know it’s a rainbow when you feel the hit.

You always know it’s a rainbow.”

“I should mention that my boyfriend is going on the guide trip, too,” the woman said. “It’s his idea, actually. I’m just going along.”

“Hope for a rainbow,” he said. He had meant the trout, but she looked at him as if he were intentionally screwing with her with a stupid pun.

“Right, okay,” she said. “Look, I’m not here to really chat. I should get going.”

“The Ranch is where you should talk him into taking you.

Your boyfriend, I mean.” He was grasping, trying to pull her back so that he could convince her he was not a predatory late middleaged man, that he was not trying to cheat on his wife, that he knew something.

She started backing away from him—not in fear, but pity, he thought. As one might back away from a dying animal. The guides were laughing again. He felt sure this time the laughs were for him.

“The Harriman Ranch—that’s what it’s called, if he asks. It’s easy to get to. I could give you directions. The trout there like ants.

Tell your guide that—they like ants,” he called after her, but he was speaking to her back. The bell on the front door chimed again and he was left with the rows and rows of multicolored flies.

“Did you need something, buddy?” the salesclerk called to him. He was still leaned over the countertop, pressing his fingers onto his phone screen. “Some flies? Boots? A wading belt?”

“Give me a rubberlegs,” he said. “The stoneflies are hatching.”

“Only if you’re on the Madison, buddy,” the salesclerk said.

“They’re moving up, going about two miles a day. You got to start at Lyon’s Bridge or you’re not getting anything on that fly.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I knew that already. I heard that.”

He took the plastic dish of flies from the salesclerk and turned to leave.

“Hey, buddy,” the clerk called after him. “Did you want to just set up a guide trip? You’re guaranteed to catch a big fish if you go out with one of our guides.”

He let the door shut behind him and stepped out into the Idaho dry heat, hearing behind him the bell banging on the glass, the thick laughing of the guides on the back wall, the salesclerk shouting to the guides something about greenhorns. In the car, he watched his wife turn the ignition, noted how tight her lips pulled together.

“You didn’t buy any shirts.” she said. “Not a single shirt.”

The rubberlegs shook in his hand, its legs humming along in time with the motion of the car. He wanted to touch her hand but she held them both on the steering wheel. Sometimes he could feel her heart beat against her inner thigh but he was afraid to try. Along the far side of the horizon, he watched the Tetons stay motionless against the flat potato fields, alfalfa fields, and long stretches of sage still tipped with a purple smoke of flowers.

Because later, on the river, the current of the fast water tugging him down, pulling his heavy feet across slick rocks, the water so clear he could count the pebbles between the rocks, his fly—mayfly? Ant?—will land in the flat water behind that boulder or in front of that tree and he will watch the drift, watch his fly drift downstream, down, down. He will mend his line, cast so the fly drifts without drag. He will watch the rise, the gulp, the soft sucking of the surface from the trout beneath. He will cast tight loops that will not snag in the willows or the fallen aspens or the tall grasses on the banks. A trout will rise—a rainbow, with a fast strike—and eat his fly from the real mayflies hatching, spinning, mating and dying on the fast current. His line bending as he holds the fish upstream, feeding out as the rainbow runs, calling to Susan for the net, the camera—she will be impressed with this fish as she will hurry to the bank and smile he will pull the fish in, holding it in his wet hands, unhooking the fly from the rainbow’s white jaw. Her words will fall like mayflies into the surface bubble, and he will watch as the trout rise to eat those, too.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 56

ART

STACI, John Sebelius Mixed Media on Panel

KANSAS CITY VOICES 57

ART

ELVES ON A SHELF, Michelle LeGault 35mm Digital Photography

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HATSCAPE, Marla Craven Photography

KANSAS CITY VOICES 59

ART

DAHLIA GALAXY, Marla Craven Photography

ARIKAREE HOMESTEAD, Julie Blichmann Photography

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ART

THE TIMING, Eleanor Leonne Bennett Photography

Previous Pages THREE TREES, Wood Dickinson Inkjet Print on Harman Gloss FB AI (pg. 62)

HERMAN, Wood Dickinson

UNDER BRIDGE, Richard Fritz

Inkjet Print on Harman Gloss FB AI

Acrylic on Canvas (pg. 63)

KANSAS CITY VOICES 65

POETRY

DUTIFUL I drive all day from my city home, south by the compass, by the sun, to my mother’s small yellow house.

I turn into the driveway at dusk, stop beside a pink-blossomed mimosa, a row of purple iris.

I hear from somewhere a chiming of the hours.

I shift the car into Park, step out into heat like an ether-soaked rag.

My carriage shrivels into a pumpkin.

The sidewalk is lined with bobble-headed pansies.

Fireflies blink on and off, mosquitoes nip.

At the top of the stairs, I notice I have lost a shoe.

I knock; Mom’s dogs raise a furor.

My ball gown is left in tatters.

I spend the next two days on my knees, picking lentils out of the ashes.

Anne Wickliffe

KANSAS CITY VOICES 66

PROSE

MISTER SPEAKER J.C. Elkin

The Right Reverend Cornelius Rash fell to his knees, hands folded against his double-breasted grey pinstripe, and he prayed.

“Heavenly, omnipotent Father, hear your humble servant this day.”

A voice whispered in his ear-bud, “Camera 3- full face”. He breathed deeply, cupping one hand over the offending instrument and raising the other to the cheap seats, then turned to his television audience with eyes closed in his tortured Jim Caviezel Passion of the Christ pose.

“Make me a channel of your peace, O Lord, and the voice of your most Holy Word.”

“Holy Word,” a voice volleyed back from the choir.

“That the words I speak…I speak not of myself, but the Father that dwelleth in me.”

His words flashed up on the Jumbo Tron with chapter and verse—John 14:10. Affirmations rumbled through the assembly.

“Speak for the Father!” they echoed.

“Make of me, oh Spirit, a holy mouthpiece, that I may speak your will to the multitudes – that heathens may not educate your youth, nor fornicators kill your unborn, nor sodomites mock your matrimonial blessing.”

Words of hate peppered the mouths of the faithful, “Heathens! Fornicators! Sodomites!” Some cried in silent anguish.

Others, overcome by the Spirit, spoke in mysterious tongues.

“Gawgaw, gollickdaw. Yabobo gadadadot ganoo.” Rev. Rash neither channeled nor understood this language of the chosen few, but welcomed the spectacle all the same.

“All this I ask in sweet Jesus’ most holy name, ready to serve when so e’er it should please you. For all just prayers are answered at your bidding and in your own good time. Amen.”

The crowd leapt to their feet, crying, “Amen,” and waving signs of crimson and white. “Re-Elect God’s Elect. Vote Rash for Congress,” they proclaimed as the praise band launched into Awesome God.

Three months later he stood poised to ascend his earthly throne, smoothing his pompadour and straightening his power tie.

He panned the chamber packed with pols and press.

A blonde crooned into a camera, “This is Tiffany Silver, live at the Capitol, where controversy continues to brew following this election’s surprise upset of the incumbent Democratic majority where, for the first time, a man of the cloth assumes the leadership mantle in Congress.”

Cornelius fingered his ring, a diamond-encrusted cross, and said a silent prayer of thanks. His time had come. Truly, God is good. Tiffany talked on, about him, and he shivered in anticipation.

The voice of your most holy word, he mouthed to the ceiling with a nod.

“We go now to the swearing-in ceremony of the newly elected Speaker of the House, long-time Republican Representative and famed televangelist, Cornelius Rash.”

He bounded up the steps and beamed from the podium, acknowledging the four points of the compass with arms that spread wide, then clasped in a prayerful bow of thanks. Radiant as the risen Lord, he placed his hand on the Bible for the oath of office.

“Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic?”

He opened his mouth to speak, and out came a protracted, “Ahhhhh.”

He cleared his throat and tried again, “Ahhhhh dddd gollala bedormegah.”

He clapped his hand over his mouth, feigned a sneeze and tried once more.

“Ahhhhh dddd fefollala pashtopan geeren maydew.”

What? Not now!

“Jimbefooshen melalagebock tefoy…”

“Something is very wrong here at the Speaker’s podium. The House doctor is pushing his way through the crowd to Representative Rash’s side, as he appears to be suffering from a seizure of some sort – a stroke perhaps…”

Damn you, God. I still have so much to say…

Tiffany did not understand. No one in the chamber understood. But the chosen few in the television audience, those infected with the Spirit, did understand, and they cried in silent anguish.

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POETRY

DEEP SONG, ANDALUCIA “The guitar makes dreams weep. The sobbing of lost souls escapes through its round mouth.”

-Federico García Lorca, “The Six Strings,” translated from the Spanish At midnight, a lone musician takes the stage, begins to coax a mournful melody from the strings of his guitar, soft as raindrops on cobblestones.

A young woman joins him, black-clad, her skirt flared and ruffled, bare arms visible through the fringe of a shawl.

She claps in rhythm with the music, three fingers on palm; soft cries of alé urge the guitarist on as his notes take to the air. They flutter, they rush and soar to a fiery crescendo like waves breaking on the bluffs at Nerja. A gasp of silence – the woman begins a plaintive song, born in a place deep and painful.

Eyes closed, face severe as her tightly restrained hair.

The music is fluent in the language of love and loss. It seasons white-washed villages with the muezzin’s call to prayer and the swirling smoke of gypsy fires.

Susan Carman

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AUBADE Last night, on 2nd Street in the only spot open past 3:00, I saw you, leaning against the bar with your Marlboro Red and your gin and tonic. You looked like someone I knew. You must have said something familiar, something inviting.

I only remember the green felt of the pool table, how it looked somewhat like these flannel sheets, pulled tight. How you bent me over, whispered in my ear, helped me angle a shot. How we must have looked like lovers.

And how the yellow one-ball sunk into the side pocket like a setting sun.

The smokiness of the bar, like morning mist.

Fire alarm.

No, alarm clock.

Amy Ash

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POETRY

BORROWED BRILLIANCE For Charlie Parker

I was once ruled by my appetites too, man.

Got so high one night I cried because I didn’t think anyone deserved to feel that good. I know the constant need for stimulation, what it’s like to have your body ache for the very thing that will cause its destruction. And now, as I listen to KoKo , I hear you race through chords like a schizophrenic running when no one is chasing him.

I want to meet you somewhere in the music, to borrow some of your brilliance for these poems I long to write.

I hope, like a junkie whose friend just scored, you will be willing to share.

Glenn North

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PROSE

HEADED SOUTH Anne Muccino

I was four days out when I realized I was being followed.

I dropped off the trail, then doubled back around to take measure of the tracks and was surprised to see they were animal. I wasn’t expecting that. They were too big for wolf, or at least I believed so, which comforted me some. When the night lays down a dankness to the air, and dark wraps its arms tight across your chest, that’s when the wolves on the plains come alive. They howl in the darkness, talking with each other, telling themselves things only their ears are meant to hear, wanting me to know that it is by their good grace that I’m laying claim to a piece of their night.

On the fifth day I spotted the cur. It tracked me at a safe distance, far enough back to mask its scent from Ruby, but close enough to keep me in sight. The idea that it was following me made me believe it wasn’t born wild, but in the secreted way it hung back it must have gotten that way. I pulled my rifle from the saddle and took aim. My finger eased onto the trigger and I felt the drag of the hammer as I drew it back, sighting the stray along the barrel. At the last, when I jerked the muzzle away to fire at the rocks, the animal skittered and I knew by the way it moved it weren’t no wolf. Some kind of mongrel or half-breed set out in the middle of nowhere. It occurred to me that this animal and me had something in common.

I rode on, and even behind me at five hundred yards I could feel its breath on my neck. And it felt good.

When dusk settled in, I broke for the night and made camp in a shaded-up pine grove beside a stream. After settling Ruby I skinned the rabbit I caught at the shallow creek bed earlier in the day, spitted it and laid it over the fire to cook. The smell of snapping and sizzling roasted meat brought the stray to the edge of the camp, its hunger driving it forward, its fear keeping it checked. Ruby picked up its scent and whinnied, that’s how I knew it was close. I started talking in a soft voice, not saying anything of particular importance, still keeping my eyes focused on the fire. I turned the spit, all the while talking smooth, keeping my voice friendly and low and childlike without looking in its direction. It hung back in the shadows of the night but I knew it was hungry. I ‘hear boy’d it, holding the piece of cooked rabbit in my hand, letting the stray smell it. The animal stepped forward again, then back, then forward again. Only its

forefeet were exposed in the fire’s light. They were the color of wet sand and I watched as drops of liquid dampened the dirt at the tips of them, saliva that dripped from the cur’s tongue. I called him forward but he wouldn’t come. There weren’t too many hungry dogs I knew that would pass up a meal when they were starving, unless the amount of mistrust pent up in their minds far outweighed their need to breathe. I knew what that felt like. So I threw the meat into the shadows and after a while I heard his grunts in the dark, swallowing the pieces whole. Then silence.

The next morning a cold rain fell and the air was misty eyed and wet. The fire had blown out long before, in that time before night makes peace with dawn, and as I looked out over the plains I saw no movement of any kind except a low whispered wind crossing the plains. I was alone again.

The next five days were uneventful, save for the downpours that lengthened my days considerably, the rain soaking me clear down through my boots and at the same time whitewashing the land clean. The smell of earth and a sense of newness washed over the plains. There was an odd quality in the air and I stopped and sat Ruby for a few minutes, savoring the feeling. Then I kept moving.

I kept close to the trail, but off the beaten track for the most part, remembering I was a guest in this territory and treating it as such. I made my way past Tucumcari, then stopped in Santa Rosa just long enough to dry out and get myself a decent meal. From there I headed on down to the outskirts of Carrizozo and stopped at a cantina for supper where I declined the special of the day, carne de coyote tacos, and ate chicken tacos instead, wrapped in greasy brown paper that smelled of coyote.

Every now and then I felt the cur behind me. Sometimes it was in the way Ruby reached behind and looked; sometimes it was in the way the gravel shifted; sometimes it was in my sixth sense that dictated I was not alone. Each night we broke bread together, and although the animal had not given over wholly to trusting me, we definitely had made progress. When I threw him his dinner two nights ago, he stayed put to receive it. And last night he ventured farther out into the fire light so I could get a better look at him. Only he was a she, and I took my first good look at how long she had been scavenging.

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Headed South continued

The mongrel was a rawboned thing, and I had no doubt if I were to rub my hands along her ribcage I would feel the bones protruding against her skin. Cartilage in her left ear was broke and the flap hung limply to the side, the symmetry of her face cockeyed.

A deep gash, raked across her muzzle had healed but left an ugly scar that trailed off along the jaw line. Her coat ragged and stained with red mud, showed signs of mange at the hindquarters. Her fur was spattered white with large patches of umber, reminding me of that barred owl we caught sight of last summer on the ranch. Pa brought it down with a six shooter just for sport and we secretly cursed him for it. We could still hear its mate calling vainly from its roost, whocooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all, not yet comprehending the deafened silence.

From the corner of my eye I watched her lay down, but when I turned towards her, she stood and squared off from me, her eyes level with where I sat. This was the only thing that seemed untouched by the ravages of the wilderness—her eyes—deep set and dark almond in color, that glowed with such tenacity and grit it was hard to reconcile them with the disfigured animal. I felt drawn to them in a mesmerized way. And when I looked into those eyes I realized my stake in this was bigger than I had bargained for; that I needed this more than I wanted it. I had been out on these plains too long. It was just going to take more time. Time was something I was heavy with.

She trusted me enough to come out into the light and accept the nourishment I offered up nightly. I spoke softly to her each night, telling her some of the truth I still held inside myself and hadn’t spoken out loud to anyone. I talked about Harlan and how much I missed him and how wishing for him was not going to bring him back, no how. And how I was waiting for some kind of glimpse of him; that I couldn’t believe my brother would ever totally abandon me, even in death. I knew she couldn’t make sense of my words, but I credited her with understanding the timbre of my voice and how it was meant to soothe, not aggravate. She stayed her distance, then eventually laid down again, her unyielding eyes aflame in the blue black of the fire light. I closed my eyes and dreamed of wild dogs and wolves, and standing in the dark on the precipice of a steep bluff.

Of dropping a lantern into its mouth and watching the light die as it descended into the bowl. Once more surrounded by dark. When I awoke during the early dawn the air was thick with dew and the fire was out. I was alone.

The next day I rode through a low range of mountains and found myself outside of the city of Alamogordo, bordered on one side by an escarpment that rimmed the plateau. That night I made camp in the bank of an arroyo and made a meal out of a pair of quail that surprised me by scaring out of the brush as I came alongside them. I brought both down within a yard of each other and after the feathers were plucked there was little meat to be had, but I figured enough for a meal and some scraps. I was setting the pot over the stove when a movement to my left made me reach for my gun I turned to see a man there, standing ten feet from me. When he saw the rifle aimed at him, he raised his hands to the sides of his head, a witling grin on his face.

“Easy there amigo,” he said, drawing the words out. “Just passing through.”

I kept the rifle trained on him, not trusting the idiocy of someone sneaking up on a person in the way he did. I took in the weariness of his clothes that smelled strong with horse and sweat; the creased grease lines, the hair matted under his hat. An unshaven growth covered his chin, and in his belt sat holstered a Colt revolver.

He turned his head and spat on the ground. I followed its trajectory, grimacing when I noticed the spurs attached to his boots.

“Didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“What did you mean?”

“I should have called out.”

“Hell. Why didn’t you?”

“Wasn’t thinking, that’s all.”

“A man could get himself killed not thinking.”

“Are we back to that again?”

I studied him, taking the time to get my adrenaline under control.

“What were you thinking?”

The rider raised his shoulders and gestured helplessly with his hands. I lowered my gun.

“Truth is, I didn’t know I was planning to stop ‘til the very last. The smell of whatever you’re cooking convinced me.”

We stood eyeing each other a few moments longer. Then I motioned for him to sit and he did.

I didn’t have another plate to serve him up so I pulled from the pot a full ladle and handed him the spoon, then sat down opposite him and watched him eat. He supped from the ladle and tore into the flesh of the quail, sucking the bones clean, the grime

KANSAS CITY VOICES 72

under his fingernails black and deep. I left a little meat on my meal to throw to the stray.

We didn’t speak as he licked the ladle clean. He handed it back to me and I set it on the stone.

“Where you headed?” he said.

“West.”

“Just west?”

“Just west.”

“Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot here. I’ve been riding for a while now and smelled the stew you was cooking. That’s all. Didn’t mean to startle you none. Name is Roy.” “JT.”

“Does that stand for something?”

“No. Just JT.”

“Glad to meet you JT. Man can get lonely out here with only his horse to keep him company.”

The fire crackled as wind trapped in the low swale of the grasslands fashioned a whistling sound that combed the land and blew over and around the camp.

“Where you headed?” he said.

“You sure ask a lot of questions.”

“Do I?”

“I just said you did.”

“Just trying to make conversation.”

I realized then that I was nursing a grudge against the man.

His coming up out of the night unsettled me.

“Heading West?”

I looked at him again, hard.

“Where are you headed?” I asked.

“I’m headed to Mexico.”

“Mexico is a pretty big place.”

The man laughed. “I know it. I’m looking to cross the border at Juarez.”

“Why Juarez?”

“No reason, other than I’ve been there before.”

I thought about that for awhile.

“And you?”

“I’m headed to Tucson.”

‘You’ve got a ways to go.”

“Don’t I know it.”

We both laughed and I felt the knot in my chest loosening.

“Where’s home?”

I had to think about that for a minute. “Clayton.”

He nodded. “Clayton’s a pretty place.”

I doubted he had ever been to Clayton and was only working at being polite, but I nodded just the same. Then everything after that happened real fast.

One minute we were talking and the next he was standing with his gun drawn. Before I could stop him he pulled back on the hammer and fired into the bush. Not once, but three times.

“Goddamn scavengers,” he said.

A wildness possessed me, and I flew at him with all the fury of a caged bear, knocking the gun from his hand and kicking it across the dirt.

“What the hell?” he said.

My hands curled into fists at my side and I stood there, stocked with anger.

“You best leave.” The steel in my voice was checked, but no one could mistake the seething that lay right behind it. He looked at me in surprise. Then he looked at the dead dog, then back at me.

“What? It was just a mangy cur. Could have been rabid for all we know.”

“It ain’t no rabid cur.”

“Is that your animal?”

“No.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

I couldn’t answer that.

“Like I said. You best be on your way.”

His mouth opened to say something, then closed again. He holstered his gun and walked out to the horses. He swung up in the saddle, tossed his head back and stared at me for what seemed like a long time, then shook his head. He made a small tossing motion with his jaw as he pulled the reins around and said, “Adios.”

I watched him go. Waited until the sound of his horse’s hooves could no longer be heard on the hardness of the ground.

Then I walked to the bush he had fired into. Stretched out in mock surrender lay the stray, unmoving, her tongue protruding, blood spilled at the corners of her mouth. I took off my hat and laid it on the ground, rubbing my eyes that burned hot to the very back of my skull. It seemed everything I touched turned to shit.

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POETRY

RED WATTLES RUN Chickens clucked in my sleep in the morning the yard was strewn with straw and eggshells the barnyard thick with silence in the afternoon with the sun high and warm they emerged a suspicious dream in brown and red I went to sleep in April I dreamed of peeping chicks and Easter in the morning feathers appeared in my cereal bowl.

Stacy Post

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POETRY

THE GUEST LIST We don’t invite foxes to our parties.

Though they do ask politely and we regret leaving them out, we have found it is not a good idea.

On a previous occasion, there was a small incident.

We neglected to prepare adequate hors d’oeuvres and some of the guests arrived expecting a full meal.

It was an oversight, a miscommunication, and entirely our fault.

Our guests, understandably hungry, became entirely too friendly with their dance partners and before anyone knew what was happening, quite a few were more than simply swept off their feet.

Ever since, we have found it necessary to restrict the guest list somewhat.

We may start with fewer guests, but we finish with more.

Ebba Blake

KANSAS CITY VOICES 75

BIOGRAPHIES

Jack Kline’s stories and essays have appeared in publications in the

PROSE

Natalie Teal McAllister completed her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2010 at the University of Kansas. McAllister seeks to connect her love for story to her journalistic endeavors as a freelance writer and marketing specialist. Her work appears in Glimmer Train and Coal City Review. She is in the process of completing her first novel.

U.S. and Great Britian, including Chicken Soup for the Soul and previous editions of Kansas City Voices. He graduated from the University of Kansas recently with a degree in Creative Writing. Jack lives near Louisburg, Kansas with his family, horses and dogs.

Marilee Aufdenkamp teaches nursing at a Midwestern university.

She and her family have enjoyed hosting three high-school exchange students. Marilee is learning to speak Chinese and is working on a novel about the Germans from Russia who settled in Nebraska at the turn of the last century. Her favorite beverage really is tea.

An O. Henry Award winning short story writer, Thomas Fox Averill is Writer-in-residence at Washburn University. His novel, rode, was named Outstanding Western Novel of 2011 as part of the Western Heritage Awards administered by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. His publisher, University of New Mexico Press, just reprinted his 2001 novel, Secrets of the Tsil Cafe. For more information, please visit: http://www.washburn.edu/cas/english/taverill.

Anne Baber has co-authored seven books of nonfiction. Her first poetry chapbook, Endless, was published in 2011. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Kansas City Voices, Potpourri, I-70 Review, Begin Again: 150 Kansas Poems, and on the Grammy-nominated CD, Food for Thought.

Bob Chrisman lives and works in Kansas City. Actually, “works” may be too strong a word. He writes in whatever genre he wants. His work has been published in Kansas City Voices, on Red Ravine, and in two Chicken Soup for the Soul books.

Chelsey Clammer received her MA in Women’s Studies from Loyola University Chicago. She has been published in THIS, Revolution House, Spittoon, and Make/shift among many others. She is currently working on a collection of essays about finding the concept of home in the body. You can read more about her here: www.chelseyclammer. wordpress.com.

Dawn Downey is an essayist whose work has been published in The Christian Science Monitor, Skirt! Magazine, ShambhalaSun.com, Kansas City Voices Magazine, The Best Times newspaper and three anthologies.

Her pieces have earned top honors in competitions sponsored by the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, Oklahoma Writers Federation, Missouri Writers Guild and the Johnson County KS Library. She’s a member of the performance group Consciousness Trifecta, a seamless blend of metaphysical art, music and spoken word.

Anne Muccino lives in the Kansas City area and is currently pursuing her BA in English at UMKC with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Headed South is a condensed chapter of her current novel-in-progress, Red Bricks. Website: www.annemuccino.com Email: amuccino@swbell.net Ron Pruitt lives atop a mountain ridge near Fayetteville, Arkansas with his wife Ann and 26 cats. A former journalist and college teacher, he is the author of two novels, As The Crow Flies and Down By The River, and a collection of short stories, Meth Lab and Other Stories.

Deborah Shouse loves working as a writer, speaker, editor and creativity catalyst. Her writing has appeared in New Letters, Persimmon Tree, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Women’s Day, and dozens of Chicken Soup anthologies. She has written a variety of books and she serves as co-facilitator of the Kansas City Writer’s Group.

Ginny Taylor writes from Northeastern Ohio where she lives with her husband Scott and their two boisterous dogs. Her work has appeared in This I Believe: On Love, Hiram, U.S.A., and Ohio Writer. A year after completing her MFA in Creative Writing, she is happy to return to yoga.

Amy Weir has loved writing for as long as she can remember, from the silly stories she wrote as a kid to the many magazine articles she’s published since. After moving to Bentonville, Arkansas four years ago with her husband and two sons, she began writing historical fiction and personal essays.

Anne Wickliffe is a Kansas City attorney and a member of the Escape Clause Writers Group, The Writers Place, the Missouri Poetry Society, and the William Baker Choral Foundation. Her work has previously been published in Kansas City Voices.

J.C. Elkin is the author of prize-winning poetry, fiction and non-fiction published in such journals as Kestrel, Ducts, Snowy Egret, Obsession, The Way of the Buffalo and Earth’s Daughters. Founder of the Broadneck Writers’ Workshop in Annapolis, MD, she is a language teacher, theater critic and proud Independent voter.

KANSAS CITY VOICES 76

POETRY Amy Ash is a PhD student at the University of Kansas. Her work has been published in various journals, including Lake Effect, Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate, and Mid-American Review. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets prize.

Marie Asner is a writer, editor, workshop presenter, film critic and poet in the Kansas City area. One of her stories was selected for the Last Book project with displays in Buenos Aires, Zurich and New York City.

She is a past member of Kansas Arts on Tour.

Judith Bader Jones’s collection of short fiction, Delta Pearls, received the William Rockhill Nelson 2007 Fiction Award. Her chapbooks, Moon Flowers on the Fence, (2010) and The Language of Small Rooms, (2011), were published by Finishing Line Press. The Oklahoma Writers’ Federation selected The Language of Small Rooms as their 2012 Best Book of Poetry. Jones is an avid gardener and backyard photographer.

James Bellard is a poetry and fiction writer from Louisiana. This is the first piece of writing he has sold. His style is often dark and chaotic. If you would like to follow his writing, you can do so at jamesbellard. blogspot.com.

Nina Bennett is the author of Forgotten Tears: A Grandmother’s Journey Through Grief. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Tipton Poetry Journal, San Pedro River Review, The Summerset Review, Bryant Literary Review, The Broadkill Review, and anthologies such as Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS. www. transcanalwriters.com.

Lisa Hase-Jackson holds a master’s degree in English from Kansas State University and is a trained creativity coach for writers. Her poems have appeared in several literary magazines and an anthology. She currently edits 200 New Mexico Poems (200newmexicopoems.wordpress.com), a project celebrating New Mexico’s centennial.

Stuart Larner has an extensive background as an expert clinical psychologist. He is a writer of poems, stories and articles for numerous international magazines, newspapers, and websites. He is a keen cricketer, qualified umpire, and lives in North Yorkshire, UK. See his publications at http://stuartlarner.blogspot.co.uk/ Gary Lechliter’s poetry has recently appeared in Main Street Rag, New Mexico Poetry Review, Straylight, Tears in the Fence, and Wisconsin Review. He has a recent book, Foggy Bottoms: Poems about Myths and Legends, published by Coal City Press.

Glenn North is the Poet-in-Residence of the American Jazz Museum.

He’s a Cave Canem fellow and a recipient of Charlotte Street’s Generative Performing Artist award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sixth Surface, Caper Literary Journal, Platte Valley Review, Cave Canem Anthology XII and The African American Review.

Stacy Post, a native Hoosier and librarian, who sometimes suffers from chicken envy, resides in the heartland with her adorable family.

Her poetry has appeared in Pearl, Iodine Poetry Journal, Referential Magazine, Every Day Poets and Skylark. She placed in the Whispering Prairie Press Writing Awards in 2011. www.stacypost.blogspot.com

Ebba Blake lives with her husband and two daughters on fourteen acres of Michigan soil. Visit her at www.ebbablake.com.

Alan R. Proctor has published poetry and/or prose in New Letters, Crosstimbers, The Red Book, Off Channel, Loon 6 and Kansas City Voices, among other journals. A retired fundraiser and avid classical guitarist, Alan lives in Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Dr. Susan Proctor.

Susan Carman is a Pushcart Prize nominee and former poetry co-editor for Kansas City Voices. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Coal City Review, Catholic Digest, St. Anthony Messenger, Imagination & Place, and Kalliope, where she was a finalist for the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Award.

Rita Roth grew up in central Pennsylvania and returned to writing poetry after retiring from teaching at Rockhurst University. Her book The Story Road to Literacy is based on folktales collected from immigrant students, and Power of Song and Other Sephardic Tales received the National Jewish Book Award. www.ritaroth.com.

Toby Goostree lives with his wife, Amy, in Kansas City, MO. He is a graduate of the University of Arizona’s MFA program. His work has been published in Oxford Magazine.

Jeff Tigchelaar is a stay-at-home dad. His poems appear in Blue Island Review, Coal City Review, Hunger Mountain Online, Juked, Best New Poets 2011, VerseDaily.com, and elsewhere. His work received a Langston Hughes Award for Creative Writing, a grant from the Ohio Arts Council, and has been reviewed at cellpoems.org.

Tina Hacker’s chapbook, Cutting It, was released in 2010 and is available on Amazon.com. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and Editor’s Choice for two journals, she was a finalist in New Letters and George F. Wedge competitions. Her poetry has appeared in a wide variety of journals and anthologies.

Lois Marie Harrod’s The Only Is won the 2012 Tennessee Chapbook Contest (Poems & Plays) and her 11th book, Brief Term, a poetry collection about teachers and teaching was published by Black Buzzard in March 2011. She teaches creative writing at The College of New Jersey. www.loismarieharrod.com

Timothy Volpert is a poet and musician from Topeka, KS. He has a band called The Slow Fade, and is not as young as he used to be.

Anne Wickliffe is a Kansas City attorney and a member of the Escape Clause Writers Group, The Writers Place, the Missouri Poetry Society, and the William Baker Choral Foundation. Her work has previously been published in Kansas City Voices.

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BIOGRAPHIES

ART Carolyn Adams’s poetry, photography and art have appeared in Caveat Lector, The Alembic, and Clare Literary Journal, among others.

She has authored the chapbooks Beautiful Strangers (Lily Press, 2006), What Do You See? (Right Hand Pointing, 2007), and An Ocean of Names (Red Shoe Press, 2011).

Alberta Cifolelli’s paintings are metaphors for choices and events. Often identified with the feminist movement, her work is in the permanent collection of The National Museum of Women in the Arts. She was included in the monumental exhibition Four Centuries of Women’s Art 1990, she is in The Archives of American Art.

Radium 5.25” X 7” Digitally enhanced color photograph

Parting Ways 36” x 72” Oil on board, triptych

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 16 year old internationally award winning artist. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC News Website, and on the cover of books and magazines in the United states and Canada.

Dona Corben, Artist Statement: My camera captures a moment; my computer helps define that moment by enhancing the mood or effect.

I strive to create graphic design in my images and white is an important element. See more of my work at Northland Exposure Artists’ Gallery in Parkville, Missouri and www.thedonacollection.com.

The timing 8” x 10” Photograph

Fog Fence 12” x 18” Photograph

Located in Oskaloosa, KS, Julie Blichmann specializes in Equine, Infrared and High Dynamic Range (HDR) Fine Art Photography. She has been published in Camera Obscura Journal and has juried into the Black and White Exhibit at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO. www.julieblichmannphotography.com Arikaree Homestead metal print 12” x 18” Photograph

Since 1996 Marla Craven has been juried into many local and regional shows, including the Five-State Photography Exhibit, Art at the Center, Images Juried Show, and State of the Arts. She has received numerous awards including 1st, Juror’s Choice, and Best of Photography. To see more of her work visit: www.imagesbymarla.com.

Hatscape 20” x 30” Photograph

At the age of 40, Ken Buch chose the red pill over the blue. Since then he has been compelled by a force known as the collective unconscious to paint and write. As Carl Jung said of Goethe‚ Ken does not create works of art, they create Ken.

Dahlia Galaxy 16” x 24” Photograph

Yellow Nude 16” x 20” Acrylic on canvas

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Wood Dickinson started photography in 1968, then studied art at Texas Christian University. He holds a BFA and MA in Communications.

His last exhibition was in March 2011. His work has been published in Shutterbug Magazine, PRO Digital Imaging, and Popular Photography.

Wood uses a Nikon D2Xs, Leica M8, and iPhone. He creates negatives from digital media for the creation of handmade palladium prints.

Wood lives in Fairway, Kansas with his wife Patti. www.wooddickinson. com Herman 13”x 19” Inkjet print on Harman Gloss FB AI

Michelle LeGault lives in Minneapolis, MN. From 2006-08, she was photography editor of Grand Valley State University’s undergraduate literary journal, fishladder, but this is the first time her own photography is being published in something other than a newspaper. She’d like to thank Grandma Arlene for never giving up on retro wallpaper.

Elves on a Shelf 4” x 6” 35mm digital photography Johne Richardson has been painting and taking photographs for more than thirty years, and has always called the Midwest home. Landscapes, particularly the prairie, and figures are his passion, and it is the play of light upon a subject that moves him to pick up camera, pencil, and brush. http://johnerichardson.squarespace.com/

Three Trees 13” x 19” Inkjet print on Harman Gloss FB AI Bess Duston’s work has been in several juried exhibitions over the years. The watercolor titled, Shadows and Light, was awarded 2nd prize in the 2006 Heartland Exhibition at the Irene B. French Community Center, Miriam, KS., and was in the Kansas Watercolor Society’s National exhibition. Originally, the macaw was not in the painting. After comments from a fellow artist about missing some complimentary color, and thinking about the comment, I removed the painting from the frame and added the macaw.

Shadows and Light 18” x 27” Watercolor

Mondrian Blues 18” x 24” Mixed media on board John Sebelius graduated with honors from Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. He recently received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Kansas in 2012. Sebelius’ work has been featured in: Express, The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, Harper’s, DETAILS, CNN, and The Washington Post. www.johnsebelius.com Staci 4’ x 5’ Mixed media on panel

Richard Fritz holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and has over 20 years experience in artistic projects in diverse mediums for non-profit organizations, commercial, and private clients. Richard’s work ranges from 1% for the arts public art projects to large commission paintings, video animations, and documentaries. www.artbytheyard.us Under Bridge 36” x 60” Acrylic on Canvas Stephen T. Johnson’s artwork forges connections between words, objects and idea through painting, collage, drawing, sculpture and installations. His work can be seen in museum and gallery exhibitions, site-specific public art commissions, and through his original awardwinning children’s books. Please visit him at www.stephentjohnson. com

Sondy Sloan, Lawrence, KS, has won awards for writing and art in print and internet media. Featured here, is a piece from a trio of handcolored prints designed for kids. Check out two companion pieces and other artwork: www.facebook.com/sondysquirrel. For purchase, contact Sondy, www.sondyksloan@gmail.com. Variety of sizes and styles available.

A Day at the Zoo 11” X 14” Pen and ink, hand-colored print.

Arrangement No. 1, 2002-2006 19 ½” x 10” (49.1 x 25.4 cm) Collage mounted on canvas

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KANSAS CITY

VOICES

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10th ANNIVERSARY KANSAS CITY VOICES

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