THE EARL VOL. 1 - ISSUE 4 - FALL 2011
INSIDE -Photography from inside Chambersburg's historical Jail -A Cultural Calender -Poetry, Short Stories, Essays, photography and a review, all from the creative minds of Central PA.
From the Vice President and Artistic Director of Post Now PA
Since Post Now PA’s birth about two years ago, we have undergone many changes. Many successes and many setbacks, many ups and downs. The introduction of The Earl has been a positive for us in more ways than one. The Earl stands as a representative for the quality, understanding, and creative prowess Post Now PA embodies. At the begining of this year The Earl was first published. Since then it has not failed to impress, empower and inspire everyone who has read it. . As we look to the future our organization now sees great success on the horizon. Most notably our organization is currently 501c3-pending. With that comes great responsibility to our mission statement. However the question is not are we up to the challenge, but are our our patrons ready for a great year? In the next year we have many great contemporary art exhibits, numerous independent music shows, and a buzzing new arts center in downtown Shippensburg open for all to enjoy. We hope to see some new faces and many old ones as we embark on a new year and a new chapter in Post Now PA. Sincerely, Aaron Treher Vice President of Post Now PA
Contents Poems By Ernest Garcia pg. 4 "Driftwood" By Christina Harrington pg. 6 Poems By Benjamin Balutis Pg. 9 "Control (Post Eup)" By Matthew Furman Pg. 12 Poems By Matthew Grove Pg. 15 A Review of the Only Living Boy's New Album By Katie Dempsey Pg. 19 CULTURAL CALENDAR Pg 16 "Cecilia's Life" By Amy Lauren Pg. 20 (SELECTED BY SHIP NEWS NOW AS "BEST OF THE EARL") "Keen" By Lisa Andrews Pg. 21 "Dirty Words" By William Hoffacker Pg. 22 Photography from Chambersburg's Old Jail By Eric Harbaugh Pg. 26 "Autumn Love" By Robert Brenize Pg. 28 "It Never Ends" By Raymond Cressler Pg. 30 **Cover Photo By Brooke Coover Wherever you see the POINTING FINGER click to link to photographers' pages
Poetry By Ernest Garcia
"Bet You Battle With Ghosts"
bet you battle with ghosts they stand at the window showing you 8 mm movies of her she's pouting in a room filled with boxes of pictures of her lovers and of her riots and the ghost like to tell you she has no pictures of you so you pull out a harmonica that's in some absurd key and play moon river 'cause those ghost will hate you and hate you some more because you play it with soul and you play by ear curse the thirty two frames a second they know that you're the man who shot liberty balance
PHOTO BY ERIC HARBAUGH
4
The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
A Series I because the night sometimes is so quiet that it lays upon me like a stray kitten just fed i dare not move for fear of waking it these are the nights that i dream of you
II and when i must i sing that song i forces that sly smile across my face i have no choice reminds me of the time we were in the dark playing cards with that deck we bought in vegas for eighty-nine cents you were wearing those torn jeans we were doing shots and i hit that inside straight i won the pot and the treat of kissing that butterfly tattoo just above those skimpy blues i could hear a train coming you called me the super chief L.A. to Chicago with stops in albuquerque and oklahoma city all night long
III cough, i sit at night with a ghost that was a doc holiday poet who wrote about you and how he would undress you and let your clothes fall to the floor what a fine sculpture that pile of fabric would make he would rhyme your body with selfish kiss and greedy touch and he'd swear to you all up and down on that pile of clothes like they were bibles that the words would ignite and burn his anger and his sadness from his soul cough, i bet i lied
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
5
"Driftwood" An Essay by Christina Harrinton
I’m in T’shani Village on the Wild Coast of South Africa and the morning sun is already bright and harsh.
Sweat runs down my spine as I stand in front of one of Colin’s five mud huts and I wish I was in the shade of its cylindrical wall. Luckily the wind comes sweeping in from the nearby ocean and it runs across the green hill tops, waving the long grass at us in friendly sweeps. I am not alone here, standing with two other Susquehanna University students and Colin’s small family group, including several teenagers and three small children who giggle whenever we glance in their direction. I wonder if they’re as grateful for the breeze as I am. “You want me to do what?” I ask Jay, my small group’s translator. The Xhosa people who live in this village speak a beautifully eclectic language full of rich consonants and whimsical clicks. I’m sure that whatever Jay is really asking me to do has been lost in translation, because I’m sure no one knowingly massages cow dung into their floors. Jay gives me his toothsome smile. “We are going to take the dung,” here he points to a white bucket that might be used to hold chlorine in the states, “and rub it on the floor. Bonawe will show you how.” He gestures to an older woman with large forearms and a short haircut. Together we enter the small hut and I can feel the temperature drop almost immediately. The mud walls and thatched roof works wonders with keeping the heat out. Bonawe flips the bucket over and a large brown pile drops to the floor and hits with a
6
wet sound. My nostrils are filled with the unmistakable smell of cow pooppungent and earthy and something I’ve never associated with sticking my hands into. But Bonawe does just this, and with a practiced movement she slides the mess across the clay floor, rubbing it into the corners, before using the side of her hand to scrape the leftovers towards the door and back into a pile. She steps back, holding her fingers out so they look like two dark starfish and grins at me. I look at Jay and he has a matching grin. “Your turn,” he says, but there’s no need for translation here. I know what’s expected of me. Their grins want me to refuse or better yet, to stick one finger into the steaming pile and run out of the hut to barf in the bushes. I kneel hesitantly on the cool floor, the pile only a foot or two from my face and I immediately start to breathe through my mouth. It’s the only way I can control my gag reflex. The dung is surprisingly cool to the touch and more fibrous than I expected. I mimic Bonawe, sweeping the pile of dung across the floor, into nooks and crannies and eventually the rest of the group joins me. I hope they are impressed or at the very least, not annoyed by me. For the past three days we’ve been hiking out from Mdumbi Backpackers, the only ‘hotel’ of any kind around here, and visiting this same family. I feel as though I’m a burden, that our presence, our insisting that they teach us about Xhosa culture is obnoxious at best and exploitive at worst. Earlier I made Jay promise to teach us things that needed getting
The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
done. I didn’t want them going out of their way to show us something that they don’t normally do. That way I figure that Colin’s family gets some free labor for a few days and we get to experience a genuine Xhosa lifestyle. I just didn’t expect to be wrist deep in cow shit while I learned about another society’s cultural norms. Xhosa houses constantly have to be rebuilt or else they’ll quickly disappear into the hillside. The cow dung is plentiful and smearing it into floors once a week helps moisturize the clay and keep it from cracking, which would require much more effort and time to fix. The movement is simple and the cool dung is actually kind of fun to play with, provided I don’t spend too much time thinking about what it is I’m actually touching. It rubs against my palms and I imagine I’m getting some expensive spa exfoliating treatment, though I’ve never visited a spa in my life. In only a few minutes the hut, which serves as the kitchen for Colin’s family, is done and I drag the now small amount of cow dung to the edge of the doorway. I leave it there and back out into the sun, where I gratefully accept the soap and water Bonawe offers me. Her own rough hands are clean already. The children watch me with interest, wrinkling their noses at the idea of touching poop and giggling when I make a face at them. Bonawe is talking in Xhosa with Jay and I get the feeling they are talking about me. Jay confirms this. “She says you should stay here,” he says with the wide and white grin that seems to be his trademark. “You’ll go back to the States and finish your education, of course. But then you should come back
and marry a Xhosa boy.” I don’t answer, instead I wiggle my fingers at the little kids watching me with bright eyes, and they burst into giggles and run away. I give chase under the South African sun, my bare feet swishing through long grass, the playful breeze pulling at my short hair and I think that Jay’s idea isn’t a bad one at all.
morning and in college I found travel as a means of coping- a week long run to London in 2009 where I crashed on a friend’s floor, a month long stay in Nepal in August of 2010. I never stopped sinking into the dark place, but movement and exposure to new places offered a distraction from these feelings and thoughts that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I take pills to help me with the worst of the symptoms It’s January of 2011 and I’m in now- the mood swings and irrational South Africa, in a remote part of the racing thoughts. Twenty milligrams Transkei to be specific, on a trip every morning. They’re an orange color stemming from Susquehanna and every time I take one, I can’t help University, where I attend school in but imagine that I’m swallowing a the states. Our group of fourteen sunset. The one thing the pills haven’t creative writing majors has been really helped me with is my desire to tasked by its leader, our professor Glen move, to keep moving, to never stop. Retief, to engage in cross cultural So when Jay laughingly suggests that I experiences. Hence the cow shit. Every stay in T’shani Village I want to take it morning our larger group separates seriously. Everything about this area into groups of four—three students of South Africa is new and different, and one translator—and we head out from the shockingly green hills to the across the green hills to meet people ragged beauty of the horseshoe shaped and learn about their lives. beach where my friends and I spend I didn’t know what to expect on this bright afternoons. There is no way to two and a half week trip. Preferring to explore this place properly if I give in keep my mind open rather than worry to my desire to move, to find or risk disappointment, somewhere newer. I didn’t spend much This is why I’m happy I'M MORE time thinking about when Jay continually how the Transkei would us to Colin’s INTRIGUED THEN brings be different from home, rather than Connecticut or doing what the other Pennsylvania, the two SHAMED WHEN groups are and taking states I know the best. us to meet a new I’ve travelled before so I THEY LAUGH. family every day. I’m knew there would be eager to learn about fundamental this new place and so differences, but I didn’t CULTURE? THEY when I mention this to spend any time Nosipho and Zolekadwelling on these. SAY. THESE ARE Bonawe’s adult niece Instead I waited to see and grown daughter, what T’Shani Village respectfully- I’m more JUST CHORES.. and its inhabitants intrigued than shamed would really be like. when they laugh. When Glen asked me Culture? They say. why I had signed up for such a trip, I These are just chores. didn’t know what to tell him besides that I always want to be somewhere Zoleka and Nosipho were different and that I love to travel . standing close to the salmon colored For years I’ve struggled with Rondavels when we made it over the depression, always strong-arming it hill by Colin’s home for the first time. beneath the surface. Movement always Nosipho saw us first and leaned into helped to alleviate the dark moods I’d her friend, cupping her chin and often find myself trapped in. When I saying something in Xhosa I didn’t was in high school I’d go for night understand. It’s just clicks and drives until two or three in the nonsense to me but the two broke out
laughing and I smiled, even though I was sure they were laughing at us. And why wouldn’t they? Our small group has trudged up hills and down hills, across a cold stream, ankle deep in mud at times and we had to have been a funny sight. I knew that my cheeks were flushed and my hair was matted down with sweat and that my shoulders were already blooming with sunburn. Nosipho and Zoleka are both beautiful and this more than anything turns my tongue to knots. Pretty people always do that to me. I guess I’ve been fed too much Hollywood. Both women are petite, with features to match, and they wear long skirts and headscarves gracefully. Nosipho has skin the color of Café Ole and beneath the pockmarks on her face there is mischief. Zoleka hangs back a little and she hides behind a smile and her cousin and this reminded me of myself in some ways. Their laughter made me self-conscious, but it also tugged a matching smile to my own lips. The whole family took it good naturedly- our curiosity- and the two women, who bumped shoulders and shared jokes the whole time, agreed to show Angela and myself how to balance buckets of stream water on our heads, to crush meal beneath a heavy stone. They are both patient with us, even when I almost drop my bucket, when my shoe gets lost in the mud, when I spill kernels onto the dirt floor. I look at us, with our burning white skin and our clumsy hands, from Zoleka’s perspective. She must think we’re so strange to want to try things that are so every day to her and I can’t help but wonder if she’s ever wanted to be somewhere different. The second day we come to Colin’s group of five huts there is a neighbor already there and after we rub shit into the floor and help to weed the sprawling field outside, Colin invites us into his home. The room is one we’ve been in before- with two tables pushed against the left wall, each one covered with a plastic flowerpatterned tablecloth. Natural light comes in through the open door and windows. As always, the clay structure and thatched roof keeps out most of the heat. It’s not even noon yet, but the
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
7
sun is bright in the cloudless sky and I’m sure another layer of sunburn is going to be burnt into me by the end of the day. “So what do you want to know?” Jay asks and the conversation begins. We exchange small talk for a while, translating through Jay, before the neighbor breaks into the conversation. His name is Mbyi, pronounced m-oy, and it turns out he speaks excellent English. He is even able to explain the Xhosa real estate scene, including the different by-laws that need to be satisfied before an outsider can buy property. “ You inherit everything around here, everything is done through family,” he tells us. “But if an outsider, such as yourselves, wanted to buy a piece of land you’d have to approach the headman and he’d act as intermediary between you and the family you’d want to buy from. Everything is decided by the community here,” Mbyi says and he takes another sip from his glass of beer. “So you live around here then?” Andrew asks. Andrew, Angela, and myself make up our small group and we’ve been listening to Mbyi with fascination. “I’ve moved to Mthatha,” He says. “It is not modern enough here." Mthatha is the city where we’ll be flying out of in a few days for our final stop in Johannesburg before we head back to the United States. I ask him what it’s like and Mbyi shrugs. “It is alright. I have a steady job, which is more than I would have if I stayed here. And I own a house that doesn’t need to be constantly rebuilt.” “Do you miss it here?” I ask and I’m conscious of how little I miss my own home. “Not really,” Mbyi answers. “I’m more of a city person, it’s too quiet here. And besides I visit often enough. My brother and his family live on our parent’s land and he takes care of it, but I still come home for traditional ceremonies. Even for non-traditional ones. I’m visiting for the New Year.” “I’m not a city person,” I admit. “City’s are too noisy and they’re too many people I don’t know.”
8
“In the city,” Mbyi says and he frowns. “In the city, people put walls up all around their homes with barbed wire and broken glass at the top. They make their own prisons because they do not trust their neighbors.” He shakes his head. “I do not have walls like that. I trust my neighbors. I know they will watch my property for me when I’m gone and I would do the same for them if they had to leave. I know I could not live in a place that was more of a prison than a home.”
ocean. I think about Mbyi and building our own prisons and I think about my home. While the rest of the group has found a little time to go onto the one computer here and send emails to their families and to update friends on Facebook, I haven’t bothered. I know that whatever is at home will still be there when I arrive in a few days. It’ll still be gray and cold and snowy. My mother will be late to pick me up at the airport and my duffle bag will sit for days in my small book-crowded bedroom until I get On one of the last nights we’re the nerve to unpack it. Everything in T’shani Village, I take the short back home will be normal and I know walk down to the crescent MAYBE SHE that a dark mood is shaped beach with the rest waiting for me there. I of our travel group, all had felt so light the THINKS ABOUT entire trip, easily fourteen of us. We have bottles of beer in our hands forgetting that I take and dreams of a bonfire in THESE THINGS those orange pills for a our heads. Over the past very good and dangerous two weeks we’ve all gotten reason, but now standing BEFORE SHE close and I’ve come to on a foreign shore, I value their friendship, but can’t help but imagine tonight I find their noise to FALLS ASLEEP what it would be like to be annoying and it grates be happy to go home. at me. For the first time in AT NIGHT The connections that a long while I feel a dark I’d seen in Bonawe’s mood coming on and I try family- in the smiles to distract myself by building a fire. shared between Colin and Mbyi, in the Nate, a lanky, blond sophomore, and I whispers drifting from Nosipho’s lips to are the only ones who know how to do Zoleka’s ears- show me the merits of this and so while the rest of the group staying put. I love my family, share plays a game of Truth or Dare we build similar whispers and smiles with my what we can in a darkness punctuated three siblings, but the town they live in only by flashlight beams, the ocean is not my home. Too many dark moods surf, and sharp laughter. have stained the place for me, made it The driftwood burns much easier to stop seeing things that are faster than we thought and I grab a good and to let my depression define large piece of wood, half eaten by who I am. For the first time in my life I flames already, hoping to maneuver it feel normal and have normal control into a better burning position. The over the way I feel, and to return to a underside of the tide-warped branch is place where I’d often surrendered already burning though and I hiss and normalcy for deep pits of unhappiness flinch away as the orange embers bite makes me reluctant to turn my mind into the pad of my index finger. towards the states. But I also know “You ok?” Nate asks. staying here, with Bonawe and Colin “Fine,” I growl at him and stalk and Zoleka, is impossible and away from the rest of the group. unrealistic. I can’t see the shoreline in the My finger feels like there is a dark, but the waves greet me by heartbeat in it and I hear my peers soaking the bottoms of my pajama laughing behind me. I wonder if pants, by whispering over my bare feet. they’ve ever felt the way that I do. All The salt water is cold and calms the at once, I need to know If my desire for angry red blister I can feel boiling on movement is because of my depression the surface of my finger and after it is or if it’s something else that is wrong soothed I look out across the invisible with me, that needs to be fixed with
The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
more pills and in that moment my mind slips to Zoleka, a girl who is my own age and yet has had such a different life experience than me. I wonder if Zoleka has ever left her village. Zoleka wants a better education, she told us so, and I wonder if she’ll ever get one. I wonder if she’d ever leave this place for the city, like Mbyi has. I imagine she’s never been beyond high school or Coffee Bay. That she wants to study in East London, but when she lets herself dream she can see herself in Cape Town with Table Mountain on her right and the wide Atlantic to her left. Sometimes she thinks about moving away from her green hilled life, if only to escape the color. She longs for the grays of city life. I imagine that she dreams of an airplane to take her away from the
constant weeding and planting, the heavy weight of the water bucket grounded in the small of her back, the rough meal stone in her wet hands. Maybe she thinks about these things before she falls asleep at night and weighs the pros and cons over and over. I imagine that sometimes the cons- sheer difference of a city, being far from her mother, missing the surfoutweigh the pros and that sometimes the pros- the chance for education, the adventure, the pure joy of absolute change- outweigh the cons. I imagine that she imagines her future in ways all young people do. I imagine it’s a constant across cultures and oceans. I know that I’m projecting onto her, but I need her to want the difference as badly as I need it. I want to know if someone else feels that need for controlled change or if it’s just me. But
I also know I’ll never be able to gather the courage to ask. Would she even answer if I did? I’ve known her for less than a week and no matter how many connections I see between Zoleka and her family, I can’t pretend there is any profound connection between myself and the people here that would justify asking such questions. I try not to think about her or about my feet. They want me to start walking down the coast and see where that gets me, keep pointing me in that direction so the ocean is to my right and the dunes are to my left, but I can’t bring myself to venture into the dark. So I turn my back on the echoing surf and I return to the dying fire.
Poetry by Benjamin Balutis Kettle of Fish. I. The reverie of the moon. Foreign mouths sing sweet songs of propane in the palms of my cupped hands. To your ears I string bean sprouts and lilac blooms. II. Freckled sky in a pageant of silent lullabies. Bare skin. Bare tan skin. Bare black skin. Bare naked skin shivering under fog breath weather. Toe tip touch. Cold, ice cube water. III. Ebbs of secret wet hymnals. Pulling backwards among the ferns. Step. Step. Stepping a dance of crescent movements. Wrinkled flesh on pink lips. The lip below the upper lip. The lower lip. IV. Devil. Dark shadow of the nearest hand. The back of the hand gracing faces with fragile touches. Tender contact. V. Kettle of symphony. Melody tunes in a kettle of fish. Scooping sour chowder for simple eyes. Washing winter fingers. Tingle warmth.
PHOTO BY KATE FRY
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
9
Alvarez You will never know but today was the day I collected the sun with needle and thread. Placed it in my lunch box on the way downtown to the sideway streets to your house. I watched as you were dried with tissues collected by bridge building cranes. Patted down with the softest fabric your silence was a color breathed inside this honeycomb chest. For days you were quiet in the hornet’s nests hiding faces underneath the arms of your black hair. Some day we will play with crystalline patterns staring at hands filled with a picture collage. She died when you were twenty five. We all went to the viewing in single lines. Placed a crown of flowers in her hair and remarked how small this body of time could be. I washed the dreams away with this yellow heat. Found a way to cure a worried heart with silver strands. Pulled tight to a canary fingers. Placed within this rusted tin box I will collect your melancholy songs.
10 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
Battle Creek Hymn. I heard winter pounding on my September door as I drank coffee sitting on the bathroom floor/ She rubbed my hands with sugar salts, gave me a glass and whiskey to fill my time/ It was in late June that I smelled perfume floating on the carpet below/ A friendly stranger I did not care to know walked along my own regular path/ She removed familiar things and left me with the sounds of temptation, remorse, and justification/ It was deep within the city limits that I realized these shoes were not made to fit my feet/ The days when summer fires burned before and warmed my night skin are now over/ We heard drums in the horizon while she whispered eighty-two hundred names in my ear.
Make War. It was in the winter that the lions kept me warm divided among the break boulders of the north shore. A collapsible bloodshed that broke into the limped sky. I’ve began to beg on the megaphone. I started to beat on my chest to hear the weather sound, a lake of seafood fed swans. I drank a lollipop sickness handed with hands to my thirsty lips. Inserted a dispensable distress with the consequence of change.
PHOTO BY JESSICA ROBINSON
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
11
"Control (Post-Eup)" A Short Story by Matthew Furman
The six-story Gettysburg Mellott’s idea all along. “What for? Is there a fire?” Hotel on the town square was famous for visits by Presidents says Mellott quietly, so Elizabeth can’t hear. Lincoln and Ike. Mellott had met the latter, but never told anyone about it, not even his wife. She didn’t take in much about other people. The pounding on Mellott’s hotel door sounds like it’s coming from a tall person. Mellott looks at his travel alarm clock and sighs. This is a full five hours before his wake-up call. Today the Mellotts are checking out the Gettysburg Cyclorama, which sounds like something to do with bicycles, but is really a stunning painting of the battle. Elizabeth: “Just ignore it. It’s not for us.” Mellott usually follows Elizabeth’s lead because it’s easier, and it keeps their interactions to a minimum, but when a voice that sounds like it’s coming from underwater says their shared last name, he knows something is up. He re-packs his teeth into his puss, and opens the door. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Mellott. I’m Guy from the front desk,” says Guy from the front desk, even though Mellott is the only person standing in front of him. Mellott has nothing to say, and gets the feeling Guy thinks this is all natural at 2 in the morning. “We’re going to need you to go ahead and come downstairs with the rest of the guests from the sixth floor,” says Guy, as if this has been the
“Well, we’re not exactly sure at the moment. All I can tell you is my manager has asked us to clear out the guests on the sixth floor. I’m told it shouldn’t take long. We’ve put out complementary mini muffins, juice and coffee in the lobby for our inconvenienced guests.” “I Mellot usually don’t want coffee follows Elizabeth's now, I want to lead because it's get back to sleep,” grumbles easier, and it keeps an 84year-old their interactions man who shouldn’t have to to a minimum put up with this crap anymore. Mellott tells a now wide-awake Elizabeth the news, and they don their matching bathrobes (Elizabeth called hers a “housecoat”), and follow Guy into the hall. If the maid had done her job last night, Mellott would probably never have seen the airplane. But the maid was in a hurry to meet her girlfriends at The Pike, which had a real electric bull you could ride, and she didn’t pull the shades down on the window roughly six feet from the
12 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
Mellott’s hotel door. Mellott hears the Piper Cub before he sees it. The craft buzzes the hotel so close one of its landing gear misses the window by 18 inches. A Piper Cub does not sound like a Lancaster bomber, but to Mellott it sounds enough like one to start the old movie recorder in his heart, the one he had played back once for Elizabeth, and than quite unconsciously forgot. He’s running down the hall, and the Limey air boys are screwing him over even more than the last time he dealt with them. Dropping bombs on him is much worse than dropping him five miles away from his insertion point. Mellott is young, and the walls are dripping fire, and he is in a place called Dresden. He has no concept of how long he has been there, him and the rest, mostly American, some British, a few Poles with pictures of wives and girlfriends so wide-faced, simple and beautiful you wanted them for your own. With his high school German he has actually gotten to know a few of his captors, and they aren’t as bad as he had imagined. If you run, you get shot, but other than that, things are mostly cordial. Anything beat time with the Japs and getting flaming bamboo slivers ran up your nails. Mellott is screaming “Francis! Francis! Francis!” in three-word bursts over and over. Francis is his kid brother, and he is in the infirmary, and that is the only place Mellott wants to go before the building falls in on itself. It’s near the wooden water
barrel that he sees the flaming German officer give his regards to the Fuhrer. Mellott had seen Keitel kick and scream at a few of the English troops, but the German always seemed in slight awe of the Americans. Keitel doesn’t seem in awe of anything now as he sits down Indianstyle, flames dancing off him and still wearing his officer’s cap, and puts his Luger to his temple. Years later, Mellott will see a poster on his grandson’s wall that reminds him of something he can’t quite place, a poster of a flaming Tibetan monk used to advertise a band called Rage Against the Machine. Mellott walks by Keitel’s corpse without a thought, even as brains bounce up into his face. Even without his brother in danger, Mellott wouldn’t have stopped, anyway. The things you think of when the world is falling down around you. The brothers are 7 and 3, and Francis has hid in the icebox, that’s the only place Mellott hasn’t checked, and he and his dad are racing downstairs, his father praying softly and his mother already fainted dead away. Mellott will kiss the grownup Francis like his daddy kissed the 3year-old’s red face, red but not blue, thank God. And they will leave this place and never feel like heroes, even when the holidays insist they are. Francis was in the infirmary for what Mellott told the others was appendicitis, but was really just a monster hangover. For some reason, Francis felt the need to try German wine for the first time. Francis had had the wine smuggled in, and was lying in an infirmary cot when the bombing started. The
captives knew the bombers were Brits because of the airplane’s distinctive propeller sound. Mellott found out later American bombers had been in the mix, too. Lying in his prison bed at night, Mellott had actually wondered about the possibility of something like this happening, and always figured if it did, he’d be mad enough to kill.
looks like a children’s depiction of a ghost. Only this ghost is flaming and screaming like a little boy. Mellott realizes the shape under the blanket is his brother. A burning blanket must have fallen on him as he was sleeping it off. It’s sticking to Francis like it was soaking wet. Instead of rolling Francis on the floor,
Instead, he feels nothing, just movement, motorized instinct as adrenaline turns to stale copper in his mouth. Mellott lets loose his litany a few more times, and dodges a flaming chunk of wall. The infirmary was little more than a collection of beds made into a walled room by hung sheets. He knew exactly where Francis was kept – the upper right corner of the “room,” near two building exits, one near a corner and one in the middle of a wall. Mellott flings open the blanket wall and sees two people holding what
the men appear to be arguing. Maybe they’re afraid he’ll be burned worse if they roll him. Mellott cannot move. The scream, so like that scream they could hear outside that ice box, has him rooted to the floor. The two men are pulling on Francis now, one wants to go one way, the other wants to go another. There is very little time left, and both men have been abandoned by reason when they pull even harder on Francis. It happens when both men,
PHOTO BY JESSICA ROBINSON
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
13
huge and strong, plant their feet on the ground. Francis’ arms are bare sticking out of the sheet, and as the two tug even harder, a yard of skin from each arm sloughs off like the condoms the boat troops stretch over their rifle barrels. The skin-sleeves land in a heap on the ground, and give up sparks like when you throw a log in the fire. Nothing happens after this, except everything that happened before. Mellott’s walking, he sees Keitel take one for the Reich, and Francis gets pulled apart. The bombs, the flames, the brains, the ripping. Five times this goes on, and five times it gets strangely easier to bear. Each time, Mellott gets a little closer to Francis before he starts over again. The last time, he gets to the exact spot where Francis stands. Mellott blinks, and there’s no one there. ***
Mellott blinks again and this time he is in the hotel’s lobby popping another mini muffin into his mouth. The “episode,” as Elizabeth would probably call it, left him in a state where he could walk and even talk. Mellott learns the evacuation was caused by reports of an out-ofcontrol Piper, piloted by an unskilled high school student who took it for an early-morning flight without asking daddy’s permission. He is stuffing a handful of mini muffins into his robe pocket when he realizes that something is very different. Mellott has had a certain feeling so long he cannot remember a time without it. His chest has been home to a tightness, and he’s always been a little short of breath. Doctors blame it on inherited nerves. But at this moment in the Gettysburg Hotel, Mellott feels like steel bands have been removed from his torso, and he takes a breath that’s clear and sweet.
Francis was dead the second those firebombs hit their makeshift prison. He was dead because a pin on a map ended up where it didn’t belong. He died because he couldn’t hold his alcohol. He died bad in a war that defined it. Another first for Mellott: He is looking at things as they really are. He only has seven years, two months and 14 days left, but he’ll spend them in reality, which isn’t harsh all the time. His first instinct is to sequester Elizabeth, ditch their history day, and tell her what he now knows about Francis. By the time he reaches the elevator, he decides not to bother. Her senses had been overloaded the first and only time he’d talked to her about that war day; why should he expect her to process it this time? He wonders if it’s possible to get a little sleep before their tour forms.
PHOTO BY ERIC HARBAUGH 14 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
hoodagurooni By Matthew Grove
those sitting watching want us for dead like a foursome of triumphs standing in the way like a hunt-ess, like a pigtail, like a mine, like step away “wait a minute I dropped the clouds and I felt it roll. I ain’t got no chance, like I’ma set in stone like I’m a pistol blown away” I’m a skink dunked in water, you might be overhead I’m somebody’s slaughter as far as the swan sings send me a black one, other than the white common
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
15
A Cultural Calendar Click on the event to link to more information.
November 26th- Post Now Presents Figuratively Speaking, an exhibit of contemporary figurative art works by artists from around the region and the state of Pennsylvania. All works featured in the exhibit reference the human form or are representative of the human form. The opening will take place at The Thought Lot at 7:00pm, and the show will be up for three weeks. See www.postnowpa.com for details.
December 3rd: The Chambersburg Ballet Theatre Company performs "The Gift of the Magi and NutcrackerSuite". For times and tickets visit www.thecapitoltheatre.org
December 8th-11th: The Chambersburg Community Theatre presents "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever".For times and tickets visit www.thecapitoltheatre.org
December 11th- The movie Lebanon will be shown at The Thought Lot as part of Post Now PA's Second Sunday Film Series. Go to www.postnowpa.com and click on the events page for more details.
December 12th - The Moscow Ballet presents a lavish production of "TheGreat Russian Nutcracker". The fairy- tale begins at 7:30p.m. Visitwww.gettysburgmajestic.org for tickets!
December 15th - Will Knox, Alec Gross, Jim Hanft & Jake Hill, will be bringing thier brilliant songwriting talents to The Thought Lot as part of thier "Cold As Elf Tour." See www.postnowpa.com in the events section for more details.
December 18th - The Capitol Theatre hosts a "HagerstownMunicipal Band Holiday Show". Show begins at 3:00p.m. Ticketsavailable online at www.thecapitoltheatre.org
December 20th - Enjoy an Irish Christmas with Eileen Ivers at the Majestic Theater. Show begins at 7:30p.m. For tickets visit www.gettysburgmajestic.org
December 31st - Post Now PA will be capping the year off with Enlightening, a new media exhibit in which the lighting is created by the works themselves. Also featuring musical guest Anova, this event from 6-11 is just a block away from Shippensburg's New Years Anchor Drop.
PHOTO BY JESSICA ROBINSON 16 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
January 6th -27th - Revisit "HistoricShippensburg" at the SHAPE Gallery. Opening reception from 6:00p.m. to 9:00p.m. For more information about the exhibit visit www. shapeart.org
January 28th - "Clifford the Big Red Dog" goes musical at the Luhrs Center! Showings at 1:00p.m. and4:00p.m. Grab your tickets online at www.luhrscenter.com
January 27th - Gear up for "Riders in the Sky" as "America's favorite singing cowboys" take the stage of the Majestic Theater. Show starts at 8:00p.m. Tickets available at www.gettysburgmajectic.org
January 28th - Catch the "Firebirdand Winter Scene" at the Capitol Theatre. Shows at 2:00p.m. and7:00p.m. Tickets available at www.thecapitoltheatre.org
February 3rd - Liza Minnelli enchants the Luhrs Center stage. Show begins at 8:00p.m. For tickets visit www.luhrscenter.com February 3rd-24th - SHAPE Gallery presents "Earth,Water, Fire and, Glaze": an exhibition dedicated to the art of ceramics and pottery. Opening reception from 6:00p.m. to 9:00p.m.
February 14th - Experience the timeless classic "Fiddler on the Roof" at the Luhrs Center stage. Showbegins at 7:30p.m. For tickets visit www.luhrscenter.com
February 14th - Following the famed musical "Fiddler on the Roof" aspecial Valentine Dessert Reception includingan assortment of decadent desserts and hot & cold beverages will be hostedin the Upper Lobby of the Luhrs Center. For details about this delicious eventvisit www.luhrscenter.com
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
17
Sunofabitch By Matthew Grove
i'm drifting across the plaeides right now mama looking for a stop off from this journey sometime soon i wish to be soaking sun, soaking up the desert sun of mars cuz i enjoy the cosmic scope of it all i'd rather touch the moon than try to take on thinking hang onto the tail of the comet mama cuz i just got an intergalactic message a glitch in the supersonic system is causing a nova i damned that sun of a bitch the cosmic splatter is luminescent and appealing
PHOTO BY JESSICA ROBINSON 18 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
An Album Review By Katie Dempsey New Jersey-based rock trio Only Living Boy just released their newest album Hide Nothing, and while I was listening to
level—the way a song can make you feel like crying one minute and smiling the next. Across almost all cultures, people have been able to identify the emotions that a certain series of it, I found myself searching for what chords conveys—wistfulness, anger, set it apart from other albums. What joy, sadness, a whole range of complex was their (x) factor? and varied feelings. I’m obsessed with classifying The sequence of emotions can things. I blame the five years I spent in college majoring in English. This was make listening to a collection of songs or a very long song can almost feel like five years of books, short stories, newspaper articles and movie reviews reading a book or watching a movie. Songs can tell stories, even without for which my professors demanded I unearth a main argument to drive my words, which is why you can listen to an opera in a language you don’t analysis. Now my brain is formed in understand and still get the gist of it. such a way that for every item (y) there must be a special (x) factor that It’s purely nonverbal storytelling, makes it unique –with (x) being formed getting straight to the core of it—emotions without the pesky by the combination of (abcd). complexity of word usage. The album’s sound is great—I got a Classical music was more obvious strong Black Keys vibe from it about this kind of thing, as it was a (specifically, their 2010 album format that lent itself to more Brothers), with the style gauge overblown, dramatic shifts of musical sometimes dipping into heavier hard rock or punk. But there was another “emotion”. With Rock’n’roll, a much simpler format, musical movement quality in this album that I found myself needing to identify. And about became subtler and less varied. A fourminute rock song can’t tell as complex halfway through, I had it. This album—that is, the whole album, from of a story as a 2-hour symphony. A rock album can go either track one to track sixteen, had way, really. One the one hand, it could movement. be like a collection of short stories, Sure, all songs have with each song standing on its own movement. Music is the process of and not really relating to a ‘greater moving from one note on a musical scale to the other or moving from one emotional story’ of the album. On the other, the whole album could feel like chord to the next. The rhythms a novel, which each song as more of a constitute movement too—the beats, ‘chapter’ leading into the next. the syncopation of skipping an The best novel-type rock expected “straight” beat, the polyrhythms of having several syncopated albums are the ones that feel like they have emotional movement driving the patterns going at once. whole album from start to finish. But the movement of chord These are the albums where it would changes works on an emotional
be sacrilegious to use the ‘shuffle’ function on your iPod. Where if you hear one of the songs from that album on the radio, your brain immediately expects to hear the next track off that album. I remember when I bought the Gorillaz self-titled album in 2001. I was fourteen, and it had just been released. I remember how each track seemed to leap into the next in a surreal journey of sick beats, strange raps and dreamlike ambient waves of sound. This was a movement album—and it helped me survive my adolescence. Or when, upon my 2009 college graduation, I finally downloaded Arcade Fire’s 2004 album Funeral, and it quickly became my friend and companion during long drives back and forth across the city of Pittsburgh as I raced from client to client in my stressful, newly-acquired social work job. This was, most certainly, a movement album too—helping me through the scary, awkward transition out of college and into the real world. You can recognize these albums right away. Listening to these types of albums is like watching a movie—on your first listen, you just don’t feel right getting up and leaving in the middle because the story hasn’t ended yet. And even halfway through, you recognize it as a story you’re going to want to hear again and again and again. Although the songs on Hide Nothing vary in style (sometimes dramatically) they all seem to come from the same place—that is, they all seem the product of the same personality. After the first couple songs, I felt myself searching for the identity of this album—I couldn’t quite place what they were trying to do or who they were. But by about the sixth song I was getting a better sense of it, and by about track ten I was loving it. Whether this was intentional or not, the end result of Hide Nothing is that of an amazing album with emotional depth and great personality, which become more developed, more whole, as the album progressed. This is a hard-rocking, rollicking, kick-ass bluesrock-punk-metal album that you can listen to on long car rides or during your 5k jog or, hell, even just sitting at home—as long as you listen to the whole thing the whole way through.
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
19
Best of the Earl!
"Cecilia's Life" A Short Story by Amy Lauren Cecelia hums “Moon River” to herself quietly, so as not to disturb the empty cradle, where her beautiful little daughter should be. Her
own mother never actually taught her to sew because she didn’t know herself. Cecelia would be a better mother, a proper mother—domestic. She keeps a gentle rhythm to her hushed song, sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the nursery. She continues making stitches connecting two squares of mismatched fabric that would never be put to use, but simply join her collection in the wicker basket on the floor of the linen closet. When she has run out of thread, she stands, letting the long skirt of her dress barely skim across the hardwood floor. Cecelia leans over the edge of the cradle and smiles before leaving the room and crossing the dark hallway to the kitchen. There was no fire in the fireplace, yet she holds out her hands to feel the warmth. After tying her white apron around her waist, Cecelia takes the dishes out of the cupboards and begins to wash them at the sink. She looks out of the window above the countertop, waits for a husband that would never come to appear on the pathway leading up to the cottage. He would be ready for a nice meal, made up
of freshly grown fruits and vegetables from Cecelia’s own meticulously cared for garden. It was her duty, after all, as a loving wife, to dote upon her husband after he had spent such a long day at work. There would be candles and wine, as usual, while their favorite Italian music drifted softly over them from across the room. The pathway is deserted and the garden is barren, say for the weeds which flourish in sinister clusters. The moon is high in the sky as Cecelia finishes sweeping the kitchen floor. Her precious child is fast asleep and dreaming pretty dreams and her darling husband is calling for her to come rest as well, she has already worked so hard today, all for her family. Yes, Cecelia can finish the laundry tomorrow, after she tends to the baby, of course. Right now she is going into the parlor, where she will read aloud from the classics while her husband practices the violin softly in the background. This is how Cecelia enjoys passing the evening—humble, simple, quaint. Let her be.
PHOTO BY ERIC HARBAUGH The “Best of the Earl” is a writing award and content sharing partnership between ShipNewsNow and “The Earl,” Shippensburg’s local literary magazine. Each issue, the award is given to the author of the magazines best submission and is republished on the ShipNewsNow.com website. CLICK HERE TO GO DIRECTLY TO SHIPNEWNOW
20 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
"Keen" A Poem by Lisa Andrews
Fiery hues fading into oblivion, brought by mornings shroud, glide down the fathomless mountain to unfurl in the keen of a starlings cry. Dampness seeps into once warm bones; stiffens as layers of ozone settle over stately oaks. These dull eyes no longer weep though the drip of beading water, coursing from bough to bough, flows from the canopy in final lament as the sun begins to rise, bidding, farewell.
PHOTO BY BROOKE COOVER
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
21
"Dirty Words" An Essay by William Hoffacker
“Let me make one thing very clear,” my father says, looking down at me from his seat next to me on the living room couch. “I never, ever want to hear you say the word ‘fuck.’ Do you understand?” A lump rises to my throat when I hear my dad say the f-word. My parents have protected me from swear words so much, I’ve been taught I’m not even supposed to hear them, much less say them. I look up from the book we’re holding between us and nod, never thinking to question why. “Promise me,” he says. “I promise,” I say, while I think that his talk about the birds and the bees has suddenly taken an odd turn. About half an hour earlier, shortly after eating our home cooked dinner in front of the television, my mother left the house to pick up some groceries, leaving me and my father to sitting alone in the living room. Once she drove off, my father, sitting up stiffly, picked up the remote control and turned off the Seinfeld
rerun without warning. We were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa, until he shifted closer, into the middle seat. “While your mother is out,” he says, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.” My fourth-grade mind races at the thought that I might be in trouble, reaching for anything I might have done to earn a lecture or a scolding, and my dad notices as my muscles tense up with the anticipation. “You’re not in trouble. I just have to teach you about something.” Now I know what to expect, and it doesn’t come as a relief. No teacher in my Catholic school would dream of approaching sex education: it’s a forbidden subject, a dirty word. So my dad will be the one to teach me what the word “sex” means. I try to relax, stay calm, take deep breaths. I want him to think I’m mature enough to handle the stuff of the adult world. Television has shown me some parodies of moments like this one—a father having “the talk” with his son. The father is usually
22 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
bumbling and nervous, and maybe he uses comical props to illustrate his points, holding up two of his son’s action figures or borrowing a sister’s Barbie doll. My own father uses a different kind of visual aide. From the magazine rack beside the couch, he pulls out a large, colorful book, entitled It’s So Amazing!, roughly the same size and shape as a book in the Where’s Waldo? series that I like. The cover image feature several curious children gathered around a beaming, pregnant woman. She has her arms wrapped around her huge belly as she looks down with a proud smile. Opening the book, my father places the cover in my lap. We each hold one end like we’re reading a storybook together. He reads each page word for word, stopping once in a while to ask if I have any questions. I stay silent and just nod my head. Why couldn’t it be a video? I think to myself as I stare at the colorful, glossy pages. I wish I could hear these words spoken by some
unfamiliar narrator, not from my own father. His deep voice is not a comfort to me in these moments; I want to separate my family from the unclean stigma of these lines. Every page has some kid-friendly illustration. I see the male and female anatomy on two figures with wide grins on their faces, apparently happy to be naked. I see ivory sperm with squiggly tales and smiling faces on their heads as they approach the blushing, pink egg. I learn the difference between identical and fraternal twins through images of babies stuffed in wombs shaped like perfect circles. Halfway through the book, my father asks me to get him a glass of water, and I’m happy to have the excuse to leave the room. I walk to the kitchen and take my time as I pour two cups of water from a pitcher in the fridge. When I return to the living room couch, I see that my dad has opened the book to a new page, one in which five kids stand a few feet apart
PHOTO BY SYDNEY COSTA
from each other. They all look to be teenagers, clad in t-shirts, jeans, and baseball caps. Above their heads, largely printed words float in the sky—words like “faggot” and “dyke.” The teens have their heads turned down to the ground, their eyes look sunken, and their mouths are curled downward. After he reads the page aloud, my father pauses. “Let me make one thing very clear,” he says. And from then on the word “fuck” is forbidden. “It’s a dirty, disgusting word,” he tells me, “and there’s no reason you should ever say it.” I always understood that certain words were forbidden in my home and at school because they were dirty, but I never thought to ask why they were dirty. The answer comes to me as quickly as the question, as I find it in these pages of the sex book. Those teens are hurt by the words floating around them, haunting them, and my dad’s tone instills in me that the word “fuck” has the same weight as the ghostly hate speech. A dirty word is one that made people feel bad, so saying “fuck” means becoming a bully. *** Several months later, in the basement of my aunt’s and uncle’s house, I sit on the soft couch with the large, blue cushions beside my cousin Andrew. He holds the game controller for the Nintendo 64 as he plays through the latest chapter in the Legend of Zelda. This isn’t a multiplayer game. Andrew plays because it’s his game and he’s older, while I sit and watch, the same way we spend a lot of our afternoons. My legs dangle from the plushy seat cushion, and my feet barely touch the maroon carpet,
covered in most places by old laundry, papers, VHS tapes, golf bags, and dog hair. This room is nothing like my parents’ basement at home. Sure, they both have laundry rooms, but our basement has water damage and a low ceiling, and it certainly doesn’t have a couch and a working television. This basement is a safe haven for me and Andrew, where we can have fun without his parents or any of his four older siblings getting in our way. I hear the door to the basement open, and my eyes dart left to the creaking stairs. Andrew’s sister Katie, the dark-haired middle child, enters the room, kicking things out of her way as she walks to the laundry room and out of sight. When the argument starts, I have no idea what’s going on. Katie confronts Andrew about something, laundry taken out of a machine too soon possibly. Beyond that, I’m lost. I try to focus all of my attention on the screen, where I see that Andrew is still playing the game even as his sister talks to him and he talks back. Katie is the first one to raise her voice, and I cringe because I’m between them. Andrew sits on the edge of his seat at my right. Katie stands near the stairs to my left, moving closer as the argument gets more heated. They yell louder and louder for a while, and I sink back into the couch as far as I can, which feels like not very far at all. I suddenly become aware of how small the basement is. Even with all the mess and junk piled up in storage, still there’s nowhere that I can hide. So I try to shrink, try to disappear, but I only become aware of how big I am. The shouting match rages on.
Every time Andrew finishes a sentence, he turns right back to the television and keeps on playing his video game, as if the argument has just ended in his triumph. At times he doesn’t even look up at his sister while he yells at her. Katie sees her little brother playing Nintendo until finally she gets fed up with it. She marches a few steps forward, reaches for the game console, and yanks the power cord right out of it. The whirring sound of the little, black machine dissipates into silence, like a vacuum shutting off. The images on the screen turn to black in an instant. She turns about face and storms away, climbing the stairs with a stomp on each step. Andrew drops the game controller and leaps to his feet, shouting up at her, “You fucking bitch!” She doesn’t turn around or say anything more. Andrew says those same words a few more times after we hear the basement door slam shut. He mutters them to himself between frustrated sighs as he picks up the cord and sets up the Nintendo 64 again. “That fucking bitch,” he repeats. I stay silent for a long time. Andrew sits down and resumes playing, but still I don’t dare to say a word. For a while neither of us says anything. Andrew, I figure, is still fuming inside, and anything I might say could set him off again. I fight to contain tears as they well up in my eyes. Long after Katie left, I can still feel my heart beating too fast and too hard. I feel it in my head, too, like all the blood is rushing there. During the silence, I think about my parents, asking myself whether I
should tell them what I heard. The thought of keeping it a secret sends guilt rushing over me in waves, swelling up the urge to tell on Andrew. But as I think on it longer, I decide I don’t want them to know that they regularly send me to a house where my cousin calls his sister a “fucking bitch” because he’s upset that he didn’t have a chance to save his game before she pulled the plug. I like my time here, and I want to come back, after all. *** Weeks later, I sit at my desk on a Friday afternoon in Mrs. Sacco’s fifth grade class at St. Luke’s School. We have just completed the annual Walk-a-Thon, one and a half miles around the suburban neighborhood, and now we’re not having any classes. I’m eager to go home, but we’re expected to attend Mass in the afternoon. Until then, we’re left to just waste time however we please around the classroom, reading from the bookshelf or playing little games. My classmates stand all around the room in small packs. They always have something to talk about or some game to play with their hands—some form of pattycake for the girls and quick draw games for the boys. I sit alone at my desk. I feel the urge to create something, so I take out a blank sheet of unlined paper and a red marker from my desk. Before I can even remove the cap from the marker, Matt Frey approaches the desk. St. Luke’s is a small school, with no more than two dozen kids per grade, so there’s no room for cliques or popular crowds. Still, I recognize that Matt has much of what it takes to be one of those kids, the
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
23
socially superior ones. Matt is athletic, plays a lot of baseball. He wears his dirty blonde hair short, slicked up in little spikes on the top of his head. He’s funny and charming, or at least other kids think so. Matt has a lot of qualities I don’t have, not the least of which is confidence, and he likes to play rough and tease other kids. I keep my eyes down on the blank page as Matt takes a seat on top of a desk to my right. “What’re you doing, Will?” he asks. I feel the annoying sensation of noticing someone peering over my shoulder, even though Matt’s not behind me. “Nothing,” I say. “I’m just writing something.” I press the marker to the paper at the center of the page—just like I’ve seen books start out, never at the top but in the center—and write the first words that came to mind: “Today we walked…” “What’re you writing about?” Matt asks. “None of your business,” I tell him. Matt slides off of the desk, and for a moment I’m relieved. Then, as I’m writing the Walk-a-Thon’s distance in miles, Matt lunges forward with phony flailing gestures. He puts his hands out in front of him, catching his imaginary fall, and they land at the edges of my paper. He jerks the page back and forth underneath the tip of the marker, and my words turns to red scribbles. “Oh, sorry,” Matt says with a laugh as he stands up. My fingers tighten around the edges of my desk, and I grind my teeth as I wonder if this is how Andrew felt that day. I open my mouth and can’t bring myself to close it before the
familiar words slip out. “You fucking bitch,” I let out, partly like a whisper but also like a grunt, stammering a little because I can’t clear my head. Matt hears me, and I see the shock come upon him. He seems struck dumb, much like I was upon hearing my cousin scream those same words. I try to apologize, think of pleading with him to forget this ever happened, but he’s gone before I know it. Within minutes Matt has told everyone except for Mrs. Sacco. Some of my classmates give me lingering stares, like you might give to a recently identified psychopath who’s been living in your midst all this time. They speak about it in whispers. Later, as we’re lining up to walk over to the church, another kid, Ricky, approaches me and asks, “Why did you say that?” I don’t try to explain. Inside the church, I stand in the back row of the children’s choir, behind the altar, where the whole congregation can see us. My mother arrives, sitting at a pew on the left side where she can see me best. Before the Mass starts, she locks eyes with me and waves. I wave back and force a smile. The guilt weighs upon my mind for the entire Mass, over an hour. I can barely focus hard enough on the hymns to sing along. I called Matt Frey a “fucking bitch.” And why? I didn’t care much about that piece of paper, but I was using it to express myself. Maybe Matt was a fucking bitch because he ruined that for me, but that didn’t change the awful fact that I said those words out loud. In celebration of a feast day, the Mass features a practice called the
24 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
Veneration of the Cross. A small crucifix is presented to each member of the congregation, who must then kiss the feet of Jesus. The Mass drags on even longer as line after line of worshippers stand up to approach the priest holding out the crucifix. My eyes are fixed on my mother as she comes forward, but I’m careful to avert my gaze if she looks up at me. The members of the choir are the last to kiss the crucifix. I feel worthless as I stand in line with the other singers, and I feel even worse when I come face to face with the priest. Can he look into my soul and see it’s tainted with sin? Do I look dirty? Choking down the urge to confess my sins to him right then and there, I bend down and kiss the feet of the metal, suffering figure. After Mass, my mother is waiting for me outside. I stay quiet as we walk the two blocks to my home. Once inside, my mother sits down in the living room, and I tell her I have to fess up about something. I explain what Matt Frey did and say I swore at him. “What did you say?” my mother asks, still calm. “I said the f-word and the b-word,” I tell her. “Tell me exactly what you said,” she says, more sternly now. “I called him a…” I say, getting quieter with each word, “fucking bitch.” My mother reacts as furiously as if I’ve used those words towards her. She demands to know why I’d say such a thing, and I tell her of the time when I heard those words from Andrew. She tells me that’s no excuse, and she sends me upstairs to my room. I climb the pink carpeted stairs
slowly, tears already filling up my eyes. “Wait,” my mother yells up when I reach the top. “Did you kiss Jesus in church today?” she asks, looking up at me from the landing. “What?” I say, as if I didn’t hear her. “Did you use that mouth to kiss Jesus Christ?” she asks. I think about lying, telling her I didn’t kiss the crucifix because I knew in my heart the error of my ways, but I don’t dare to make the guilt any worse for myself. “Yes,” I say. “I can’t believe you,” she yells, and she goes on about showing respect for our Lord and Savior while I run to my bedroom and lock the door behind me. I sob openly and throw myself onto the bed. My pillow absorbs my tears for a little while, but soon I somehow get it into my head that I don’t deserve to lie in bed. I stand up, pull out my chair, and crawl underneath my small wooden desk. I sit on the floor with my knees bent up to my chest, cramped in the uncomfortable space. Alone with my regret, I remember Matt telling all of my classmates about my offense, and I figure word will spread just as quickly among my family. I imagine my aunt and uncle no longer welcoming me into their home. I think of my grandmother weeping once she learns that her youngest grandchild is a potty-mouth and a bully. Worst of all, I picture Jesus Christ, bearded and robed and standing at the gates of Heaven, looking down as I kneel at his sandaled feet and pulling them away from my lips.
Chambersburg's Old Jail
Photography by Eric Harbaugh
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
25
26 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
27
Autumn Love A Poem by Robert Brenize It has been said that spring is the season of love, when life buds on tree branches, when the new litters of animals are born, filling the air with their tiny chirps and cutsie squeals. The choking white snow of winter has passed away, traded for a green expanse peppered with colorful flowers. But I would trade all the flowers in the world just to touch you, to hold you oh so tenderly in my arms, to feel the wet, gentle embrace of your lips upon mine. Now is the season of passing, a time when the heat of summer slowly dies, creeping to a crawling chill, which makes teeth chatter and arms shake in thick coats. It is a season of holidays, which have been overly commercialized, immortalized with thousands of songs,
28 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
PHOTO BY JESSICA ROBINSON
It is in the season of autumn where the ghouls come out to feast on living flesh, knashing their teeth as you cry for mercy, but the zombie hordes would never relent. It is the season when every wolf howl instill fear, especially when coupled with the glaring eye of a full moon. It is when the succubi and vampires alike are most seductive. Many crave that eternal kiss and writhe with the thought of passionate vampiric love. Others dress in sheets, Or not much more than a hankercheif, adding some animal ears and whiskers so they look like a slutty feline. Or you might dress as a famous character from cinema, media, or written fiction. Capes wave, metallic limbs shine, mummified hands grope slowly, wolf hands tear and reach for your throat, witch cackle and warlocks spackle or the gender border is crossed in a way that some might see as grotesque, while other smile and wink, and possibly have a feel. It is a season for many Bachnalian orgies. The merlot and cardonay is poured freely, joined by vodka shooters and cosmopolitans, rum and cokes, and vicious tokes. It is the season where I met a beautiful girl, her hair as red as the turning leaves, or perhaps a vampires kiss, Her pale skin freckled with marks to match her hair, I could say so much more, but dare not utter anything base or crass, for when I think of her there is a gleaming light in my mind and a howling storm in my torso. All my mind can handle is the thought of a single touch, To even think of a kiss brings me to the brink of insanity. Nay, spring is not the season of love. It is in the fall that we most notice a rise. In every fallen leaf, we see a fallen hope, which makes every joy cherished all the more. As the green grass is slowly devoured by choking white, it is in the warmth of others that we find much pleasure. Their touch can banish away the cold of the world. So I tell you my friends, my family, my neighbors, my lovers, it is in the Fall that the Rise is most important. It is in Autumn that Love shines.
PHOTO BY JESSICA ROBINSON www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
29
"It Never Ends" A Poem by Raymond Cressler A sine curve, I today at the bottom must breathe and heave and look up with loosely deduced strands of certainty, and walk towards tomorrow when all will be beautiful again.
30 The Earl Vol. 1 - Issue 4 - Fall 2011
PHOTO BY JESSICA ROBINSON
Check out our contributing photographers: Eric Harbaugh
www.ericseyesphotography.com
Eric Harbaugh is a local photographer from Chambersburg who got into the business when a co-worker saw something in his work and encouraged him to take the next step. Eric specializes in shooting senior portraits, families, couples, children, and models, all in outdoor settings. He also shoots small or large
Sydney Costa
http://scosta.500px.com/
Sydney Costa is a student at Susquehanna University studying Creative Writing and Film. He is originally
Jessica Robinson
http://www.facebook.com/#!/jessicacreaphotography
Brooke Coover Kate Fry
Earl Staff Brooke Coover- Research Katie Dempsey- Staff writer Kurt Smith- Advice support and patience Ray Cressler- Editor, layout, design
www.TheEarlofShippensburg.com
31
“Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.�
Interested in being a contributor to The Earl? Email Submissions to editor@postnowpa.com