Fresh Ink 2016

Fresh Ink

Fresh Ink

The Literary Journal of Naugatuck Valley Community College

Naugatuck Valley Community College

2016 2016

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Fresh ink 2016 The Literary Journal of

Naugatuck Valley Community College Waterbury, Connecticut

Editorial Staff:

Joe Adomavicia, Anthony Del Buono, Greg Harding, Tom Nolan, Humberto Perez, Wade Tarzia, Sevastian Volkov Design Staff:

Forrest Fee, Andrew Gillotti, Rachel Lamb, Ray Leite, Veronica Ramirez, Christopher Rangel, Simar Shipley, Ryan Sweet, Neil Thibeault Front Cover Art: CASEY GIANonne Back Cover Art: Yulia Polichshuk

Š 2016 Naugatuck Valley Community College All content and graphics in this publication are protected by U.S. copyright laws and may not be copied or republished without the express written permission of N.V.C.C. or the relevant author. Re-use of content, editorial or graphic, for any purpose is strictly prohibited. Permission to use content is granted on a case-by-case basis, provided content is not modified in any way.

Please submit your permission requests to freshink@nv.edu.

Fresh ink 2016

To Our Readers, Our editors are pleased, as always, to offer you our selections for the 2016 edition of Fresh Ink: the Literary Journal of Naugatuck Valley Community College.

Our contributors are a blend of students from NVCC and other colleges, and writers from the general public, professional and not, teachers and not, each choosing to share with us.

This edition owes much to a community effort between writers, graphic designers and artists as we have added a design staff for laying out and preparing the publication for print. The DAT 102 Digital Design class of Spring 2016 provided digital design skills, software expertise, and much time and effort to populate, design, and organize the selections into a beautiful volume of creative work for you to enjoy, and the editorial staff is thankful for their outstanding contributions.

Further, this year reflects not only a strengthening of students’ roles on the staff, but also a greater increase in the ratio of student to general public submissions. Most of our prose submissions and all of our graphic submissions this year came from student authors and writers.

We welcome, as always, your suggestions about improvements to the journal, and specifically about a possible thematic edition as we approach our 50th year (2019). Please enjoy this latest edition of Fresh Ink, and consider sending us feedback to freshink@nv.edu.

Appreciatively, Greg Harding Greg Harding, Managing Editor

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Fresh Ink 2016 Contents Coumarins – Jay Thumar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ode to a Lost Recipe (Pizza) – Kenneth DiMaggio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rosaleigh – Marissa Ryan* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Prose Winner] It Could Happen, I guess – Raymond McCusker* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Poetry Winner] Words for Blue Eyes – Tom Nolan* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Fear – Jamie Crepeau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lunar Maria – Sarah Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

OsmoSIS – Jeannie Evans-Boniecki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Men of the Jackal –SevastianVolkov* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Prose 2nd Place] Super Nova– Tom Nolan* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Poetry 2nd Place] Hope – Jamie Crepeau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sakura Fall – Sarah Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vision – Paul A Lubenkov . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Untitled– Francis Cienki II* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Free Spirit – Yulia Polichshuk* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Echo – Jessica Ney* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sailors on Board – Esther Wallace* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Graphic 2nd Place] Left Behind – Jessica Ney* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lullabye – Yulia Polichshuk* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Graphic 3rd Place] The Wolf and the Moon – Marissa Ryan* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Body – Tim Rinkerman* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Frustrated Poet – Raymond McCusker* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Final Sunset – Beth Edwards* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Graphic Winner] You Owe the World More – Anna Duchaine* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Poetry 3rd Place] The Artist as an Insecure Man –Beth Edwards* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Student Prose 3rd Place] Ode to a Lost Recipe (Anisette) – Kenneth DiMaggio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My Memory of Possums – Jeannie Evans-Boniecki . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A Tribute to Casey Lynn Giannone *– TV Head -Cover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Aquarius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Self Portrait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * indicates NVCC student submission

1 2 4 6 8 12 13 14 16 21 22 23 24 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 38 39 40 41 42 44 46 51 52 53

Fresh ink 2016

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Coumarins Jay Thumar After placing a trap

where Aunt Jemima laid wounded in the pantry

where we blind hoard black-eyed peas

or tomorrow’s apocalypse, my wife and I dig under the Mondrian quilt, whispering hymns of our religion of drones, believing that we could dodge the ears of shrew gods.

From the heat of our six year old’s

“thank you for giving my pet mouse a house” (and a piece of progress in Coumadin laced cake) we sweat

like two troglodytes, napping, a Fat Man under a glyptodon shell, while winter raged outside,

saber toothed We have no language and yet we must paint our pious questions on the cave walls

What’s up with us?

Hoping that centuries later, our daughter discovers the hand stencils explaining all The necessity of killings.

1

Fresh ink 2016

Ode to a Lost Recipe (Pizza) Kenneth DiMaggio Pizza was how my family fed the relatives showing up for Sunday dinner in their polyester their Oldsmobiles their bee-hive hair-dos and for a great Aunt like Agatha a fur coat the size of a grizzly (while her twin and also unmarried but very Cat’lick sister Lena wore enough crucifixes to scare away a flock of vampires) But because I was too young to disappear like my sister I was drafted to help make the pie in the kitchen where whatever cold cuts did not go on the antipasto or pasta got thrown on the dough that we first had to make rise which was my job to help wrap the gray flour belly in a bowl and with not just any clothes but my sweat shirt my sister’s sweater my father’s turtle neck my mother’s waitress smock (and if she was too drunk to notice --my great aunt’s bear of a coat) because our pizza could never come to life without the help of the family

2

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

--shirts sweaters shawls furs (and it didn’t hurt to have one of Aunt Lena’s crucifixes) that I would soon unwrap and return to the tribe always needed to help bring this food to life

3

Fresh ink 2016

Rosaleigh Marissa Ryan

1st

Her little hand shivered as she placed it on the cold door. The room was completely silent. Her nerves were in tangles as if she was breaking the Student Winner law. The door opened with an ungodly creak and Prose the smell enraptured her. It felt like the comfort of a warm fire and old books. Rosaleigh stepped in, slowly at first, then all together. She smiled, taking in the comforting red walls and smooth hardwood floors.

Rosaleigh ran to the bookshelf and took out ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. Father had a room filled with books, but he only pretended to read everything else, and Rosaleigh knew that. When she opened the book the binding squeaked and the thin pages felt as if they’d disintegrate under her touch.

She placed the book on his desk opened to the last page he’d read. She also took out a pen and clicked it a few times as her father did when he fiddled with it as he read along. She placed it beside the book and took her father’s jacket off the chair.

It was an old, worn, brown leather jacket. It smelled like him and the fact made her smile. She draped it atop her shoulders as he would and held it closed. She went to the bookcase and took out the prettiest colored book and brought it to the window seat. She pretended to pour over the pages with the same look of concentration and occasional bursts of wonder she had seen her father wear a hundred times. Of course, she couldn’t understand the words. She was only able to enjoy the illustrations.

This was the last place that felt right. The house had been silent and cold for a while now. Mother didn’t talk much, and no one seemed to ask why. Rosaleigh played on her own for hours and then went inside and sat on her own. She hated the frigid stillness of everything, but trusted her mother enough not to question it. It had been that way since the morning her mother came in and told Rosaleigh that her father had gone away to live with the holy virgin. She didn’t know why her

4

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

father left, but she wanted his room to be perfect when he came back. She wanted him to be proud of her trying to read.

She couldn’t concentrate on the book, however. Outside the window lived a plethora of vibrantly colored roses billowing in the breeze. They were starting to become frail with age and lack of care. Outside seemed like a magical land to Rosaleigh.

The smell of the roses didn’t touch this room. Inside here, it smelled of raspberries and wildflowers. On special days it smelled like a fire. When she closed her eyes, she could picture the flames crackling and making the shadows of the room dance.

When she came up with a proficient story based on the pictures in the book she knew her father would like, she got up and walked over to the record player. It was very large and ornate and normally Rosaleigh would not be allowed to play with it, but she knew her father would make an exception for her this time. “Everywhere you go, Rosaleigh, you shall have music,” he’d say to her. She picked up the needle and placed it on the record that never changed. “Hold me close and hold me fast, this magic spell you cast….” The record sang. She thought about the story her father would tell her about how her father and mother danced beside the roses to this song, and that’s how she got her name. She pictured her father showing her how they danced and holding her little hands in his as she balanced on his feet. She sighed and smiled. She couldn’t wait for her father to come home. “Give your heart and soul to me, and life will always be la vie en rose.”

5

Fresh ink 2016

It Could Happen, I Guess Raymond McCusker

1st

I started working with this girl young, nineteen, cute, considerate with ideas like Student Winner “homosexuality is caused by bad parenting” Poetry and was vocal about the fact that Jesus will save her soul.

I wanted to tell her the truth: that we choose none of it.

Homosexuality, death, or life in the first place, whom we love, or even what pets we keep.

We are all pushed by the universe, primal drives and society, circumstance, pheromones, gravity and t.v.

Even when we think we’re in control we are only choosing among what has been chosen for us.

I wanted to say: life isn’t fair, the law isn’t just, the Law is antiquated, reality is harsh and death is pointless.

People mostly aren’t good to each other.

I wanted to warn her.

She’s been coddled and what’s coming will crush her.

She should know what to expect.

6

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

But then again, maybe there’s some sort of logic to the fall that her parents and friends and church have set her up for.

A kind of trial by fire.

Maybe if she, full of her wholesome ideals and kindness and consideration, can survive the initial shock and the merciless, soul shattering blows that reality often deals us, then maybe she’ll emerge as beacon.

Maybe her god and love and kindness will envelop the hatred and the anger and the damned and the wretched, and the homosexuals with bad parents, and harden into a pearl or a key or something beautiful.

Maybe she’ll go out into the world wading through the filth, like a torch underground, lighting the way for herself and those around her.

Many will covet her and many will seek to destroy her.

And if she manages to survive the bad loves and bad jobs and icy stairs and drunks on the freeway then maybe she’ll reach out and touch one person and maybe, just maybe, they’ll gently touch her back.

7

Fresh ink 2016

Words for Blue Eyes Tom Nolan*

It isn’t important how I met Daniel, nor are the circumstances by which I came to be in his apartment that evening. What is important is that I was there and we were drinking coffee, swapping stories, debating the merits of our favorite books, our favorite records, the poets we really loved and the movies that we both mutually admired.

Eventually, Daniel excused himself to use the bathroom and I got up and took a short stroll around his apartment. I had never been in Daniel’s home before as our previous social interactions were relegated to department parties thrown by the university or drinks at a bar after a reading or lecture, so I used this opportunity to solidify my impression of the man. How a person lives says a lot about who that person really is.

The apartment wasn’t very big, six or seven hundred square feet, three rooms including the bathroom. The living room and kitchen were in the same quasi-geometrically shaped room. In the front there was a large bay window that jutted out over the street three floors below, and it was cut off from the bedroom by a couple of French doors, both of which were short, with several panes of glass. Coffee was served at a round thrift store table out of mismatched mugs and his bookshelves, from which volumes had been periodically removed during our conversation to help make various points, were constructed from cinder blocks and unpainted boards that bowed significantly under the weight of a life time manifested in books.

Inside the bedroom was the door to the bathroom and a closet. Next to the bed and under the window was a desk piled high with papers, cups filled with pens, and an old typewriter.

Post-It notes dotted the adjacent wall. It was a writer’s space.

It was where he worked and slept and ate simple meals only to then go back to work.

Just as I was finishing my stroll and was heading back to the table to finish off the pot of coffee he had made, I noticed that there was a framed piece of white paper on the wall. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it before but my suspicion is

8

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

that I saw it was a frame and assumed it was a picture and just passed over it, not realizing that it was a poem. It was maybe twenty lines and it was called, “Angie on our Honeymoon.” I saw Daniel emerge from the bedroom and I asked him who Angie was.

“My wife,” he said. “I never mentioned her?”

I told him he hadn’t.

“Well, I’m mentioning her now. Angie’s my wife, was my wife. She died eleven or twelve years ago. What year is this?” he asked.

I told him it was 2015.

“Jesus, yeah, twelve years.”

I read the poem and when I was finished I told him that I liked it but that it was different from his other work.

“It’s from a different series,” he said, “They’re not to publish. They’re just for me.”

“There’s more?” I asked him.

“They’re all over the place,” he told me. I looked around and noticed that in all of the places that one might normally hang a picture there was a poem. I looked at him with a questioning smile that he read correctly as me asking him to explain himself. I sat back down and poured the rest of the coffee pot into my cup. I asked him if I should make more but he shook his head and took a flask out of the inside pocket of his jacket.

“After Angie died,” he said, “I sold our house in the woods - we lived way out in the middle of nowhere - and found this place, to be closer to work.” He took a pull off the flask which he opened while he talked. “And to alcohol.”

I laughed.

“I didn’t bring much with me. I imagined myself breaking down every time I sat down at the kitchen table we’d bought when we moved in together 47 years ago or putting shirts in the armoire or socks in the dresser, never mind laying down on the bed without her next to me.

9

Fresh ink 2016

“But I did bring lots of pictures with me,” he said, “boxes and boxes and for a while I would get lit every night and flip through pictures of Angie and every night my heart would break and I would have to stick it back together with this,” he holds up the flask before taking another sip.

I told him then that I was sorry for his loss. I told him that if that poem was correct she was someone really special and worth all the tears. He nodded, wiped away a few that he had left-over from that time and continued.

“After I pulled myself together, I don’t know how long that took, a month, maybe more, who knows, I went out and bought frames for all of them and as I was framing them I noticed that there was something missing in them. She had the most incredible blue eyes, so blue that sometimes you couldn’t even look at them, you know what I’m talking about?”

I told him I did.

“You could see them, obviously, but they didn’t sparkle like they used to, the way the earth does when you’re looking down on it from space. How you can see the movement of the clouds over the mountains and the oceans. Think about what seeing that for the first time must do to your perception of reality and that’s what looking into her eyes was like sometimes. I just couldn’t see any of that in the pictures I had.”

“So you wrote poems.”

He nodded, “So I wrote poems. For each picture I had of her, I wrote a poem. Then I framed them and hung them up on the wall where the pictures would be and do you want to know something?”

“Sure, of course.”

“When I look at the poems in these frames, I don’t see the poem.”

I ask him what he means.

“I see the picture,” he says “but not simply the image. I see…”

He pauses, lost in thought.

10

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

“I think I trapped something inside of them, something beyond words. Like tiny fragments of reality.”

I got up from my chair and walked to the one directly across from where I was sitting. It was titled, “Angie on the Beach at Lake Sunapee.” I read it and there she was, beaming, her eyes drawing in the sunlight bouncing off the water behind her. Perhaps it was simply the sheer perfection of the words but I could feel a power radiating from that frame, like heat from the sun, the same sun that exploded like stars in those wondrous blue eyes.

I sat back down and he told me more stories about his wife. We drank more coffee, sipped more whiskey. Just as morning was breaking, I left and I walked home to my apartment where my own blue eyed lady was probably fast asleep. As I walked, I tried to come up with all the words I could use to describe her eyes. I stopped when it seemed as if I those eyes were watching me, peeking out over the horizon like a blue sun in a dream.

11

Fresh ink 2016

Fear Jamie Crepeau The configuration of my body from birth has one gland malfunctioning like a gear with broken teeth. The production of its hormone flows like noise traveling through a vacuum. The veins that carry my blood like oil pumps can get lined and clogged with sugar sludge. The pumps may weaken and corrode, causing a low tide drainage in the far reaches at the smallest appendage. The woman I am in love with will sit at my side, arm around my shoulders to comfort like an autumn bonfire. But deep within, I choke on the candied glass fragments, falling apart like a microwave cooking pieces of metal.

12

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Lunar Maria Sarah Page When early scientists dreamed skyward They saw waters lapping on the moon One ocean raging with storms, A sea of nectar, a sea of clouds— Twelve mare casting foam.

But astronomers got glass in their eyes, Woke up and dried out selenic waves, Leaving only dark basaltic plains Cooled from volcanic eruptions— Utterly empty of silver-tide echoes.

Must we trade these fluid fantasias For bays of razor-fine dust?

In the far side of the human mind, Leave space for dreaming up The Unknown Sea.

13

Fresh ink 2016

OsmoSIS Jeannie Evans-Boniecki To a generalizing Poet who aces the specifics of Anatomy.

Osmosis: • the tendency of [the soul], usually [through memories set off by random outbursts of crying], to pass through a semipermeable membrane into a [childhood] where the concentration [of specifics] is higher, thus equalizing the concentrations of materials on either side of the [traumatic episode].

Scratch, scratch, look to your feet…

Tap at the floor - that semipermeable membrane beneath the scattered leaves of flap winged texts, the Rubik’s cubes, the wires and chargers of an intellectual lap top life – you’ll see a plate of Plexi (bored with air holes) and beneath that you’ll see yourself, your little you, (You’re looking down at yourself) looking down to the ground, walking a concrete walk with evenly marked squares.

You counted your steps, pacing your advance, two to one, to go nowhere specific Just thinking of some future Cause any whens better than ten.

You say your brain was beaten down; your heart sang a soft sad song With no chorus but “to overcome….”

14

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

But, Now, you’re a grown up with poems that grapple concepts.

They’re looking upwards waving lofty hands through ethereal clouds of abstractions.

They claw to unmask some cosmic “dysphoria”, Arriving always at the ultimate: “profound state of unease or dissatisfaction.”

And I have to ask, why was that glass plate laid?

That need to encase the hurt of age nine or ten Underneath the pane of generalization –a mind cut off from its heart?

I SAY - STOP and NO MORE I SAY -KNEEL DOWN AND POKE YOUR FINGERS THROUGH THAT PANE OF GLASS. GO ON, POKE YOUR LITTLE SELF IN THE HEAD! POKE POKE POKE AT THOSE CURLS UNTIL YOU FEEL THE CUT OF NAILS IN YOUR SCALP…. POKE HER CHEEK, HER EAR. POKE YOUR LITTLE SELF IN THE FACE. Poke her until she looks up. Poke her until her eyes meet yours.

Poke her until she is provoked to anger and she understands you’re sorry, we’re sorry, the world is sorry.

And then, my friend, in your next poem, allow us to see how THAT feels.

15

Fresh ink 2016

Men of the Jackal Sevastian Volkov We were taught about God the Father, but the canyons were carved by the men of the jackal and to make room for us they swallowed their children whole.

2nd Student Winner Prose

Marriot showed her a bone, once (before we were grown and it was hard for them- man and woman -to talk together like human beings). A bone he found in one of the fading places, which are the passages down a drop too narrow for men to slip through once they’re grown. They belong to children, and when the time comes they’re left alone.

“It’s got marks. Look. Like when a lizard is born from the sky and crawls down to us so we have something to eat. They opened its body, they took its flesh with a knife.”

It belonged to something smaller than a man and something too large to ever have lived in this world. We can see what they used to be, written on the walls. Four-legged things. Things with hooves and horns. We found Marriot staring hard at one once, at what the men of the jackal called a “bull” (or so they say). This bull had its mouth in the groundwater and it had long, smeared horns. The horns, they say, were made out of old age or importance.

“It’s moving,” Marriot told her. “The men of the jackal were trying to show it bending its head down to drink.”

“Look,” he said then, stepping closer to the wall. “Another.” He put his fingertips to the pigment, to what they called the SevenHeaded Bull (one head lifted towards the ceiling and six extra muzzles down its chin in quick succession). “They were trying, but they didn’t know how.”

Marriot was dark and beautiful and wanted the world to end again in a devouring. You could tell that just by looking at him.

16

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

And not in a starving, which is what we figured was going to happen this time.

When the rains came we knew the floods, the white water gone rushing down the passages, the canyons all swelling with the mercy of God. Some parts we wouldn’t be able to pass through for days and we understood that when we came back there’d be food. Lechuguilla, pale sprigs, and algae on the walls.

Children were sent to catch blind fish in the fading places. In the light places, sometimes birds.

What would the walls be, if not clay flown on the wheel of heaven? What would the walls be, if not a thing smoothed by countless hands?

The rains hadn’t come in a while. No. We were sent down into the fading places, although we were nearly grown. Follow the traces and the wetrock. Hear the echoes in the stone. Find the groundwater of the bulls, the lake where the men painted them gathered. The elk and the lion, the cows and the bulls, and the jackals, the watching ones. They told us this, the teachers.

Marriot was an obvious choice. Me and her came along, perhaps because we loved him best.

No, Alejandra, was obvious too. I will not lie. She thought incessantly of the pleasure of God and the men of the jackal and how she could become the object of their love; not out of gain but out of sheer desperate intensity, as if she had some kind of secret duty. She was a shining and beautiful thing. I remember how she laughed, inelegantly, in childhood.

(All this happened overnight. Time obsessed her. She gave us the constant impression, even in the earliest parts of her youth, that she was late -too late- for something drastically important.

17

Fresh ink 2016

Nervousness was her only flaw. This augmented her beauty, from a certain point of view.)

How did she stand getting her hands and knees all wet with clay, shaping pots? Well, she must have done this nobly too.

All this was beyond me. (Well, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of the Lord.)

Marriot? Marriot didn’t even have to try.

When we die, Zion’s children, our bones are harrowed and our fat is rendered into torches. These bones were my father.

There’s no one left to feed me up there in the dry places where we sleep.

Marriot sat in the sand and looked up at the crevice into which he had just fallen. It was high on the walls. There was no getting back to the rest of the canyons now.

Yes, we went down after him, Alejandra and I. Of course we did.

We could not have done otherwise.

I don’t know why Alejandra did it. Out of the principle of Mercy, perhaps. (I am your servant, she told him, with her torrential intensity, and I sat there picking at the dirt.)

I myself, I just could never. I could never have left him alone in the dark.

His torch was out. He did something strange as the ground was slipping, turning to gravel underneath his feet: he hit the torch hard against the wall. Left a long charred mark. He did all this with purpose.

I understood. I think.

A few days before we’d left, Alejandra had taken to strangling

18

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

herself during sermons. Mostly we tried to ignore it. If anyone in the canyons was going to have ecstasies, it was her.

“I’m preparing myself. I want to know what it feels like to die of love. Through love and out of love, a sacrifice that redeems.”

She paused, and added, with the drowning insecure humanity that in our childhoods I once adored: “It’s horrible. At least I’m no better than a Judas. I could never hope to be the object of this. I could never. I could never ... “ There was panic in her eyes, and she looked across the chapel cavern to Marriot.

I thought of all this then, down in the dark places, the places of no return.

“You shouldn’t have come down here,” she told me, with great pity. “You love him too, don’t you?”

Marriot just looked at the both of us, with absolutely no emotion on his face. He was a man resigned to devouring (a hemorrhage, a blossoming, everything in your body opening up and sliding out into the red, Alejandra told him, and not what the rest of us get no not you never you a slow decay a starving a senseless and meaningless rot).

I think he just wanted to see what would happen next.

“Eat my flesh,” she told me. “After this is done I have absolutely nothing else.”

I saw too late that she had a piece of broken rock. And then Marriot was on the ground. Blood fresh as a rain-lit spring.

I was a coward and I ran with him until I lost Alejandra. I ran in the dark.

“Creosote,” said Marriot. My arms ached with the carrying of

19

Fresh ink 2016

him and I rested him against the cavern wall. He was still alive.

And I would hold him to that. I would make him suffer until I strangled the last drop of his presence out of his beautiful body, pathetically. A stupid love, an ugly love, unremarkable.

“It’s the smell of creosote, that comes after the rain, in the light places. But we’re in the dark. We’re...”

I realized then that we were on an incline.

I hauled him to my shoulder and selfishly I bore his weight, sobbing weak and human, Marriot the watcher, and when I turned the corner there was light.

20

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Super Nova Tom Nolan

2nd

The sun doesn’t shine like it used to Student Winner Instead it flickers and swirls Poetry Like old home movies projected on dust.

Movies that show the sun reflected in pool water, the windows of new cars.

In licked clean plates and sweating glasses of white wine held up to shimmering mouths.

But the sun hasn’t been so bright in a long time.

Loosed from our orbits, we drift, Aimlessly, Like Family in a hospital waiting room.

21

Fresh ink 2016

Hope Jamie Crepeau It was found buried alive at the bottom of a box, threaded through webs on a loom of blood and blades that slice innocent hearts into a swarm of meat ribbons snuffing light in every corner below the dreary, starless sky.

It is a mirage, a shadow with fluorescent skin blazing a hollow path into brick walls scraped raw with the dust of visions dropped in the gutter and scattered until the only reality is a vacant room with desire blown out through vents.

22

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Sakura Fall Sarah Page The inherent simplicity of sakura beauty Lies not in the form of the cherry tree, But in how each branch loses its petals— Pervasions of blushing wings floating miles Down river canals, banking mud in pink jade, Or choking gullies with shining star heaps.

Flurries of snow white without cold Lending asphalt the softness of spring The illusion of a clean new thing.

When the sakura groves bloom, It’s as if all the world is crying April tears without water.

As the wind undoes their scented crowns, I wish I could learn to let so easily go— Cast away shade with the grace of sakura.

23

Fresh ink 2016

Vision Paul A Lubenkov You can see Anger in the eye.

A red horse riding Across the sun.

Untitled

Francis Cienki II*

24

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Free Spirit

Yulia Polichshuk*

25

Fresh ink 2016

Echo Jessica Ney*

The vanity was immaculate. The jewelry sparkled in its dish, begging to be worn. The makeup was waiting patiently, ready to use. The trinkets and frames were all intact and unmoved. Rays of sun came in through white lace curtains, and footsteps echoed as if in a hall. The room entranced the girl.

Her hand dragged across the cool metal bedframe and fingered the necklaces. She saw the pink sea conch she had collected over the summer. She remembered the day well; she could still hear the peal of her mother’s laughter as the cold water hit their legs. The photos helped to keep her memory intact. The high cheekbones, a fine nose, dark eyes, and a ready smile. The girl examined her face in the mirror, hunting for a piece of her mother’s. The pop of the lipstick opening was deafening. The sound vibrated through the room, disturbing the air. Her hand trembled as she smoothed the red over her pursed bottom lip- just as she had seen her mother do on at least a hundred different mornings. The door swung open with a slam and the lipstick left a bright red smear on the floor. “What are you doing?!”

26

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Sailors on Board

2nd Student Winner Graphic

Esther Wallace*

27

Fresh ink 2016

Left Behind Jessica Ney* What holds a family together? Is it love? Loyalty?

Obligation? What is that vital force, and what happens when it’s gone?

Something has changed here; besides the obvious, there’s something different. It’s winding itself between the family; creating a rift that cannot be bridged. It splits the family into groups of us and them.

They get the “I’m so sorry for your loss”, they get the hugs and the kisses, the pats on the backs, the stories of how people knew him, or the last time they saw them, “you were only this big”.

We blur into the crowd, becoming just regular mourners... We begin to ask questions. What are we getting out of this? Doesn’t anyone care about us?

The malignant separator lays its first stone.

Everyone goes back home. The mother gives urns to the family; but it’s not enough. Isn’t there any money? He was our brother you know. The mother is aghast, she has two teenagers to raise and her income is newly cut in half, no there isn’t any money…

The mother schedules the many meals coming in from friends; it’s a big help, not having to cook. But she’s not eating.

She returns to work because she has to. Why did you leave us here in all of this?

Work tires the mother out. When she gets home she notices things undone. Everything inside her is broken. She yells and she lectures the one family member she has left to depend

28

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

on; her daughter. “You probably wish it happened to me.” The daughter sits silently in front of her homework and lets the too familiar anger wash over her. The mother has forgotten what the girl’s smile looks like.

Her heart feels like stone; that must be why she isn’t hungry anymore.

The family still comes over; that won’t last long. “We can’t be here; it hurts too much.”

The daughter scoffs. “How do you think we feel? We fucking live here.”

The son is in his room pretending to be asleep. He’s only home because he has school in the morning. During the day, he passes in and out of the house like a specter. Tomorrow he will stay at his friend’s all night; their family is whole, not like his.

Just seeing his childhood home closes him tight like a vice. He hardly speaks. His sister worries endlessly.

The daughter was tired. She cooked and she cleaned and she kept all her grades up to honor roll. Many teachers pulled her aside, “If you ever need to step out, that’s okay.” She hated being defined by this - as if orphan was stamped across her forehead. The daughter was losing friends left and right.

“Don’t you ever talk about anything but your dad? I miss how you used to be.” It hadn’t even been six months.

The elephant in the room is suffocating them all.

The us in the family begin to get angry. They think they’re so much better than us... They begin to point out faults. “Your mother isn’t raising you right; you’re going to get pregnant if

29

Fresh ink 2016

you keep up like this.”

The daughter was still a virgin... Her boyfriend was the only one she could talk to. When he wasn’t yelling at her.

The daughter choked back her grief. She smiled at school. She laughed and talked with peers. When people found out about him, they were surprised. They would tsk their tongue, reach out a hand and tell her she was strong; she would fight the bile rising in her throat. The daughter was child and woman, ignoring the monster caged between her ribs.

The family invited them out. The girl declined. She wasn’t ready to watch basketball again; that was something she had shared with him, so closely. She did something different instead that day, so she wouldn’t be alone; she was sick of that.

“You just use your father’s death to get what you want.”

Those words would haunt her for years.

Slowly, inevitably, us and them broke apart; only seeing each other every now and then. The mother spends time with her nieces; she had practically raised them alongside her husband. She’s polite to her in-laws; does what she has to, but it isn’t the same; it’s been too long.

The daughter tries. But the wall is up. It will never be right. Reminiscing with her first best friend hurts; the family was so close then... Talking about their lives now and laughing together tastes sour in her mouth.

What holds a family together, and when it’s gone, can you ever get it back?

30

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Lullabye

3rd Student Winner Graphic

Yulia Polichshuk*

31

Fresh ink 2016

The Wolf and the Moon Marissa Ryan*

There once was a man with dark hair and tanned skin.

On his body he bore many scars from a great many battles. He was strong and fierce. This man was named Arno, and he was beautiful.

And once he saw a woman with fair hair and a complexion to match. This woman was named Deva, and she was beautiful.

Arno was a hard working man. He worked many long hours, rising and descending with the sun each day without stop. He tried hard to keep his attention to his work, but he constantly thought he heard the sweet chimes of laughter from Deva, and his attention was abruptly stolen. He was haunted by such a beauty that was held by God just beyond his grasp.

She stole his life away like a glorious succubus, devouring and infecting its entirety with her warmth and gentle touch. He became so frustrated and surprised at the devotion he showed to such a woman who could overcome him so easily. Each and every day, he walked by her home and waited for her to emerge, smelling of wild flowers and raspberries. Her smile overtook her face when she saw him, and soon she started to wake even earlier, just so she could see his face for more hours of the day. They cherished the sweet time they spent together.

But soon, Arno became greedy. It wasn’t enough to spend his day with Deva. She had to love him.

The next morning when they saw each other, Arno proclaimed his love for Deva. She was flattered, but appalled all the same. She smiled her warm smile at him and thanked him for speaking to her with such beauty, and continued on their walk. Arno felt as though his body had been ripped in half.

With a disconsolate look on his face, he caught up to her and demanded why she did not reciprocate his feelings. She smiled at him and said, grazing his cheek with her hand,

“It pains my heart to decline the most beautiful of words. But, it has only been a short while, and I am afraid you

32

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

do not know me well enough to have such pangs in your heart.”

She held his hand and continued their walk with him. But, Arno declared his love for her every morning, growing impatient until finally, one morning, Deva smiled back to him and said, “I love you too, sweet Arno.” His heart swelled with such divine feeling, and finally, he was content. He kissed Deva with glorious tenderness. But as time went on, it soon again wasn’t enough for Arno. He wanted to retain her.

The next morning when they saw each other, they passed a beautiful garden of bright tulips, shaded every color of the rainbow, and he turned to Deva and said, “You are so beautiful, dear Deva, will you lay with me in the bed of flowers?

I would like nothing more in the world.” She smiled, thinking he was charming, and said, “It is the sweetest of offers, Arno, but I will only lay with one man in all my life, and I would like to belong to that man first.” Arno felt his pride shatter with his heart into a trillion shards of glass, cutting his intestines on their travels down his body.

Once again each and every morning, as they passed the glorious bed of tulips, Arno asked Deva to lay with him, and each morning she declined. Angered by his desire for this woman, Arno attempted to turn his attentions to other womenwho were not as exceptional as Deva, but whose affections were easier to obtain. Finally, on the last morning he would ask, Deva obliged with a warm smile. They shared the bed of tulips and afterwards Arno placed a red tulip atop of Deva’s ear and they smiled together. Each morning, Arno declared his love for Deva, and they shared the bed of tulips. But, as time went on, that too wasn’t enough for Arno. He wanted to possess her.

The next morning, as they rose from the bed of tulips, Arno picked a petal from Deva’s hair, and said, “My Deva, I will never again find one who is so beautiful and warm. I will cherish you for the entirety of my life. Will you, Deva, cherish me too, for the entirety of your sweet life?”

33

Fresh ink 2016

She held onto his hand and said, “Arno, your words are so kind, but I am afraid I am far too young to belong to a man as of yet. I have only lived eighteen short years. Perhaps we can wait some years, and then I will belong to you and only you.”

Arno felt as though his blood froze and his bones had turned to stone. He could neither move nor speak for several minutes until Deva kissed him upon the lips. Afterwards, he turned away and they continued their walk. For the next several mornings, Arno spoke not a word to Deva and he no longer proclaimed his love to her, nor shared the bed of tulips with her. He only focused on their destination, and worked for hours without speaking or break when they got there. Broken hearted, Deva confided in her friend, Calla, for help. Calla told Deva that she might as well marry Arno, for he was very handsome and hardworking, and what better man could be won? The next morning, when Arno arrived at her home, Deva went to him and asked if he would ask her what he desired once again.

Perking up, he once again said, “My Deva, I will never again find one who is so beautiful and warm. I will cherish you for the entirety of my life. Will you, Deva, cherish me too, for the entirety of your sweet life? Will you be my wife, Deva?”

She grabbed his hand and said, “Yes, Arno, for the remainder of my days on this Earth, I will cherish you each and every one.”

He held her tight, and kissed her brow. They then planned a sensational wedding- the biggest the town had seen in some time. Arno wore an exquisite royal blue suit and Deva wore a stunning beige dress, dressed with jewelry made from gold and lapis lazuli. They were married in the garden, beyond the tulips, beside the lilies. They vowed to each other, “I will love you, for always, until my dying day, I vow to you.” Then they kissed, and belonged to the other in the eyes of God. They lived together in a beautiful, off white house made of stone,

34

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

and were the envy of every young couple in the town, for they were clearly devoted to each other. But, as time went on, Arno still wanted more. He wanted a child, made between them.

So, after a month had passed, Arno asked Deva for a child. She replied, “My love, we have been married for such a short while, I’m not sure if we are yet ready for a child.” Arno impatiently said, “It is a wife’s duty to provide her husband with children, and alas, your husband wants children.” Deva frowned, but agreed. In early June, they welcomed a cherubic daughter, named Lorelei, who had the fairness of her mother but the amber eyes of her father. She grew to be a courageous and lovable child, the perfect half of each parent. Arno loved his daughter and wife very much, but he found he still wanted more. He wanted to never be separated from them.

The next day, Arno went on a journey to find a man who was said to have amazing powers, and could even perform miracles. He traveled for thirteen days until he reached the eastern bank of the Bozsky River. The man’s name was Caspian, and he looked frail and elderly, dressed as a peasant.

Before Arno could approach him, he said, “Strong Arno, what do you desire from me?” Arno, who was taken back, said, “I want to never be separated from my beloved wife.” Caspian chuckled, and said, “Death spares none, Arno, as you well know. It is the proper balance of nature. Every being is allowed time on this great land, and when their time is up, then they must move on so that other beings can be allowed time. It is the way, and it is God’s will.”

Arno became impatient, and said, “It is said that you can perform great miracles. Surely you can grant me what I wish.”

Caspian replied, “Yes, it is true, I am gifted, and can perform things your mind could not even imagine, but I cannot undo the balance of nature. It is very morally wrong. Go home to your beloved, and spend your days with her, and waste not a minute.”

35

Fresh ink 2016

Caspian gave Arno a kind smile, and gestured to the way he came. Angered, Arno trudged away. Not even a mile away from the river, Arno became enraged, “Caspian has the power to allow us an eternity, but he so selfishly keeps his gift to himself! He could very well grant me what I want, but the task is too selfless, and Caspian is so clearly hard hearted.” Arno went back to the river and crept up on Caspian who appeared to be sleeping. “If I can sneak up on feeble Caspian, and spear him through the heart, then I may obtain his powers, and give my family eternity myself!” With his spear, he approached Caspian, and just as he was about to pierce his heart, Caspian awoke, and his body flung itself upward. Caspian transformed into a young, tall, and strong man, who could easily overpower strong Arno.

Caspian’s eyes glowed a cobalt blue.

“Arno, your heart is cold, and your actions reek of greed, rather than love. When rejected, you attempted to take my life. For this, and your irrevocable greed, you and your loved ones will be severely punished.” He approached Arno with an incredible speed, and grabbed his arm. His nails grew into sharp claws, which pierced through Arno’s skin. Arno screamed as the claws pierced through flesh and muscle. When Caspian retracted his claws, the marks left were burning, and Arno’s blood felt as though it had been replaced with acid. He screamed horrible screams, when suddenly, it all stopped. Arno looked upon the marks which glowed an unnatural crimson red, and his face paled with fear. He looked at Caspian, who smiled an eerily knowing smile. Then, his bones began to bend and contort into unnatural positions. His shrill screams echoed against the land around them, and for seven hours Arno’s body was afflicted with horrible pain as his body transformed. He was forced to stand on four, grisly legs, which ended with sharp claws; a tail sprung from his spine; a beastly snout shot outward from his jaw; his skull had contorted, and from it, horrible, razor sharp teeth had forced his human ones out, and ripped through

36

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

his gums; a dense black fur grew from his delicate human skin; and lastly, the most painful of all, when he first closed his eyes, it felt as though his tears were boiling hot, and burned his human eyes, and replaced them with the grey eyes of an animal.

Arno had been transformed into a wolf.

Caspian pet the new head of The Wolf. Before him, from the river, emerged his beloved wife, Deva, and their beautiful daughter, Lorelei.

“Arno, while on this Earth, you were blessed with a beautiful and pure love but you could not appreciate such a love because you had filled your heart with greed. Your wife is indeed very beautiful in such a heavenly manner I do believe I know the proper punishment. You must share your wife’s unveiled beauty with all, but you may never lay a hand on her again.” And before them, Deva was stripped of her Earthly attire and transformed into an unnatural, beautiful being that was so divine mere mortals would never see the true form of this being. Suddenly, a soft, pure glow filled the dark and bitter night. Deva was transformed into The Moon. “And for your pure and delicate daughter, she will be as beautiful as her mother once was, but all love that fills her heart will be cursed as payment for the purest love which was wasted on her wretched father. She will never find true happiness, and that devastation will transform her into a cruel creature. Your family will live on for an eternity, just as you are.” With that, Caspian disappeared.

And, from then on, The Wolf travelled the land, awaiting night fall so that he may gaze upon his beloved, only able to relinquish a beastly howl that would have once sounded like her name. For the entirety of the night, The Wolf cried to himself, howling and pawing at the ground, all the time looking up into the moon- pained by the most precious and cherished love, he would never again touch.

37

Fresh ink 2016

The Body Tim Rinkerman* Frail with a lack of appetite for life.

Eyes -storm clouds waiting for rain that simply won’t come.

The bath waits with warmth.

The body lays staring into the ceiling waiting for it to spin, focusing into the paleness of the ceiling against the soap scum mustard colored walls.

Joints and muscles once stiff with the burden of the mundane dissolve into the water.

Beyond that bathroom door there is nothing.

All that exists is the stillness of the room.

This placidity is happiness, for now that is all that matters.

38

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

The Frustrated Poet Raymond McCusker* Endless empty beer bottles. no, that’s not right Empty beer bottles endlessly? maybe when did this stop being fun? the beer or the word play? screw it. have another. maybe that’ll help.

Everywhere I sit I see what’s wrong with the trees. if you think it’s a tree, you’re an idiot. poems have metaphors, dummy.

Bottle caps become burgeoning ships with which to sail serenity’s seas. see? but it’s fine, isn’t it, to stare at the sun and make a witty remark?

To make the world go round, We make the world go round. who writes this shit? just watch what they don’t say. somehow all this scares me a bit and I just need to sleep again and why isn’t this poem done yet? here I was thinking I was in control

39

Fresh ink 2016

Final Sunset

1st

Student Winner

Graphic

Beth Edwards*

40

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

You Owe the World More Anna Duchaine Blood cannot replace what thoughts can accomplish, Sweat does not inspire like the words we can speak, Tears will dry long before the ink does, We will all fade, After the body is ash, Legacy will linger still, We owe the world more than mere existence.

41

3rd Student Winner Poetry

Fresh ink 2016

The Artist as an Insecure Man Beth Edwards

3rd

Looking back, it seems as if Bill were always a little Student Winner insecure, not sure of where he came from. He had Prose discovered upon entering the army for WWII, that his ‘father’ was actually his stepfather. His mother, until her death, denied him any information on his real father. This lack of knowledge would apparently haunt him forever.

Overly sensitive to the term ‘bastard’, he would often reply to someone who hurled that term his way, (even though it was meant in a different context), with a shrug implied in his tone, “Well, I am”.

Today, his second-hand clothes, usually baggy jeans and a sweater of questionable heritage with some clodhopper shoes or sneakers, present a false front to the public.

His attire seems to say ‘unimportant’, ‘of no consequence’, or ‘just another old man getting in everyone’s way’. What the people do not realize is that the joke is on them. Under that unassuming, at times odorous, exterior is a man who has given much beauty and joy to his fellow humans. An outgoing man whose wit knows no bounds, a vivacious storyteller, he is articulate, intelligent, and an extremely talented artist who can express a range of emotions with brush, paint, and canvas. One whose artwork touches your soul in such a way, you can almost forgive him those moments when he turned that transcendent wit against you, slicing you to pieces.

Even now, he is still tall, lean, with good posture. All of his height is in his legs so that when we sit down together, I am taller than he despite being six inches shorter. For most of his life he had had dark, almost black, wavy hair, but that luxuriant mane has now thinned out and turned a foggy gray, announcing to all that the winter of this man’s life has begun.

The combination of that coal-colored hair with his Vikingblue eyes and sizable nose had always spoke of his English-Irish ancestry. His large, long-fingered hands with knobby joints, surprisingly gentle, have created masterpieces, (in my opinion),

42

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

and controversy, (that risque bookcover banned in Chicago).

He had smoked a pipe for years, traveling with a handful of corncob pipes falling out of his car’s ashtray. He has since stopped, saying that he has emphysema. Though he also complains of limited feeling in his feet and occasional chest pains, none of this keeps him from jogging on a regular basis. He is a rated expert chess player, winner of various tournaments and has helped establish chess clubs wherever he has lived. He has been threatening for years to stop going, only recently telling me “This is it!”, complaining of “rampant assholism”.

He seems to be generally dissatisfied with people, but I think this stems from his own insecurities. Years ago, after a period of tension between us, we lost touch. Two years passed without contact. During this time I had continued at the same address and phone number, but he had moved on. I started a new job and found a co-worker who knew Bill from the local chess club; the co-worker offered to get Bill’s contact info, and, though having some qualms, I accepted. When I called, Bill answered the phone with, “So it only took you two years to call, huh?” This was par for the course with Bill; if you wanted a relationship with him, you had to learn to maneuver around his verbal assaults, stop his games, and cull the good from the bad.

He has since mellowed a bit, not quite so bitter. He still paints, but the output is minimal and he survives on Social Security. He lives in senior citizen housing, unhappy being surrounded by “old people”, not fitting in. He would like to move out, but where would he go? His Social Security benefits would never cover anything else. As I live in someone else’s home, I cannot offer refuge to this man, the one who gave me my long, knobby fingers, the grandfather of my son. And now I sense another insecurity in Bill; not only ‘where did I come from?’, but ‘where am I going?’.

43

Fresh ink 2016

Ode to a Lost Recipe (Anisette) Kenneth DiMaggio Was liquor one of the ingredients but only if a Sicilian grandmother could not get to sleep because of a crying American baby and so sometimes after the cartoons my nonna would give me just the tip of a teaspoon of anisette (the teaspoon that she slurped the rest off of) But even if baby woke up sometime after there were no more animated cave people to entertain him --I was quiet enough to hear her stories and how her nonna back in Catania smoked a pipe and how the boat over rolled back and forth like a big rocking chair

44

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

--how she did not lose my mother just like she would not lose me because according to tradition babies did not die when you sleep next to them especially with a tip of the liquor that tasted like licorice that would briefly let the baby not feel the waves that every new life must cross over

45

Fresh ink 2016

My Memory of Possums Jeannie Evans-Boniecki It’s always the same with her.

She crawls unseen inside the yards and yards of our backyard’s bulging hedge. It’s late Spring and underneath the forsythia bush branches hoop and loop in hollow barrels. The tunnels and tubes are lit by flashes of sun filtering through the dense walls of yellow flowers.

I feel the cool clean dirt beneath her pudgy palms and bend my elbows to get near sighted close enough to the damp earth to eyeball the neat little piles of rabbit droppings stacked like cannon balls ready to fire or clusters of snails.

She knows they’re not good to eat.

She’s giggling little gigs because she knows the rabbits are here, with her, hiding, but she’s not under the bushes to see bunnies; she’s here for the opossum that she had met the night before.

They had driven up the driveway past the darkened tree on the way home from Carvel, her already in her P.J.s –which was ok because it was summer. Her dreamy eyes and sticky ice creamy mouth were caught frozen in amazement at the glowing white creature hanging upside down and naked from the tree by the drive.

The station wagon’s headlights caught it frighteningly head on.

Its eyes blinded, its little paws lifted to block the glare.

The car stopped. “It’s a ‘possum,” she heard from the front seat.

“Ugly…. Where do you suppose it lives?”

There was a pause. “Probably in the forsythia.”

46

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

The four of them sat still for a while, watching the creature hang by its tail, even stiller, in the glaring light.

“BEEP!” Her father pressed down hard on the station wagon’s horn. “Beep!” and the creature suddenly fell, flat and heavy, on its side. Seemingly broken, it lay still.

“Oh!” she’d gasped. Her brother elbowed her back from the opossum side’s window. “Get out of my way, you baby,” he said scrambling over her to get out.

“It’s just fakin’”, her father jeered.

Her older brother, clumsy and impatient, weighed heavily on her lap. He grabbed at the door handle so eager, she knew, to poke or kick the poor animal with his foot, but as the door cracked open, the car rolled on.

“Let dead things lie, Joe,” her father said.

“That thing’s ugly. Who’d want to touch that anyway?” her mother smiled back at him, in her way sounding superior.

“Yeah, it ain’t worth it,” her brother said settling back on his side of the car. ”It’s gross.” He smirked down at his little sister as if to say “like you” and gave her a little elbow to the jaw.

As the car edged slowly past, the girl stared mesmerized by the opossum’s face, flat and sidewise against the ground, as it slipped out of the glare of the car’s headlights and into the night. Its eyes blank, its fanged mouth grossly agape, the body was limp and awkwardly flung. She tried not to cry.

But the next morning, with the brisk sounds and scents of summer upon them, the possum’s dead body was no longer

47

Fresh ink 2016

there.

She’d gone to check, walked around the house away from her brother who was swinging at chunks of gravel with a baseball bat. “Get out of my face then, you sissy,” he’d yelled when she’d run and hid behind the chimney when a rock had smarted her leg below the knee breaking her skin.

She’d checked again, later, after pulling dandelions from the lawn. The dead body was not there, and there were no signs of struggle: no tuffs of bloody fur, or half eaten feet like she’d seen when cats caught mice.

She looked up into the tree, then at its base, looked for holes, not a thing.

She stood silent, amazed. She remembered the face, cold, sagging and lifeless, the pink curled lips, the lolling tongue, the hideous white mask of despair - but now, strangely, she suddenly remembered seeing one eye opening and a wink. She remembered, now, clearly the one round blue eye staring back at her through that space of night and, again, its wink.

“Of course,” she’d thought, a secret smile rising to her lips.

“How could it not be so?” She made her way across the yard further away from the continuous crack of the bat on gravel.

Her eyes scoured the forsythia bushes for an opening just small and round enough to hide a doorway for an opossum and a little girl.

“I’ll show you if you come see me,” the creature’s crooked smile had said. “You’re my friend, so we’ll share secrets.”

She looked back once more at the house before ducking under and into the yellow mound – no face was watching her from the windows, but she knew her brother, the cat, would soon be

48

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

looking for a new distraction. In here, though, for ten minutes or ten hours, she’d be safe. Once under the hedge, she carefully drew the branches over the hole before venturing further in.

The tunnels were wide and soft; cathedral light broke through the flowers lit like stained glass. She crawled forth, content: She knew something big was about to occur. This was a game changer, a source of power, a way to grow old and not die.

Maybe she’d grow old enough to grow up. Once in the deepest alcove of the bush, she sat quietly wiping the twigs and pebbles from where they had embedded into her knees and palms. She was here for the long haul. She would have to be patient, she knew, for in this hollowed out space was the truth she had been seeking, the wisdom of the ages. Here from her secret opossum friend she would learn how to stay alive, by playing dead.

49

Fresh ink 2016

50

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

A Tribute to

CASEY LYNN GIANNONE January 31, 1996 - January 6, 2016

TV Head 51

Fresh ink 2016

Aquarius

Casey Giannone

52

Naugatuck VAlley Community College

Self Portrait

Casey Giannone

53

Fresh ink 2016

Submit to:

Fresh Ink: The Literary Journal of Naugatuck Valley Community College

Who: Anyone may submit. (Only NVCC students are eligible for awards.)

What: Previously unpublished work in three categories - poetry, prose, and graphic image - will be considered. (We will consider submissions that are in any subgenre of these categories: flash fiction, memoir, nonfiction, comics, photos, etc.) Pieces may consider any theme or topic. Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but notification of acceptance elsewhere is required.

• You may submit no more than five total pieces.

• You may submit no more than three pieces in any single category.

• Prose submissions are limited to a TOTAL word count of 1500.

When: Rolling submissions (anytime) but annual deadline of Feb 15.

Where: email to freshink@nv.edu How: All submissions must be emailed as separately attached files. In the email, include your name, address, email address, and phone number, as well as titles of submitted work(s). NVCC students must also include student ID numbers to be eligible for prizes. Files should be formatted as such: • Text files should be Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format files.

• Only title and text should appear in document itself - no names or contact information.

• Graphics should be in high resolution .jpg or .pdf format.

• File names should match titles.

Improperly formatted submissions may not be considered.

Fresh Ink reserves the right to reformat/edit submissions as needed.

Student Prizes: Any NVCC student who provides student ID is eligible for awards in each of three categories.

For more information contact Dr. Jeannie Evans-Boniecki at 203-575-2110 or JEvans-Boniecki@nvcc.commnet.edu.

54

Fresh Ink

Fresh Ink

The Literary Journal of Naugatuck Valley Community College

Naugatuck Valley Community College

2016 2016