Quilt Literary & Arts Journal 2011

2011 QUILT LITERARY & ARTS JOURNAL • THE UNIVERSITY OF TAMPA

QUILT The University of Tampa Literary and Arts Journal Vol. 32

Quilt

The University of Tampa Literary and Arts Journal 2011

Seduction of the Fallacious Masquerade Ciara Ross Relief Print

Quilt is an annually published, student-run literary journal that publishes selected works by the students of the University of Tampa. All artwork and writing is chosen through blind review based on skill, craft, and creativity. Quilt does not affiliate itself with any specific religion, race, or creed.

Š 2011 QUILT, The University of Tampa, and by the individual writers and artists. No part of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the individual author or artist.

Cover design by Laura Theobald.

Cover artwork by Julia Ponzek, with paint in my hair.

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Special Thanks I would like to thank the following people for making Quilt possible: Assitant Editor Laura Theobald, I couldn’t have done it these past three years without you.

Genre editors Sarah Gottlieb and Amanda Sieradzki for dedicating three years to Quilt, Micheal Rumore for his wonderful debut as Art Editor, and Cody Waters for graciously filling in as Poetry Editor.

Quilt’s new and future members: Keep UT’s artistic community vibrant for years to come.

John Capouya, our faculty advisor.

Kacy Tillman, Lisa Suter, Sadie Harlan, and Sigma Tau Delta for championing English and Writing on campus.

The English and Writing Department, for their continued support.

Student Government, for funding Quilt and supporting the arts.

Stephanie Holz and Cheryl Chernoff, for their graciousness and aid during my time as Editor-in-Chief.

Facilities, Media Services, and Sodehxo, for making our events possible.

Kate Greenstreet, for being our Coffeehouse writer and a wonderful spirit.

Mike Trobiano and Alex Vera, for supporting Quilt in The Minaret.

Shelley Manes and Designer’s Press, for printing the journal beautifully.

My mother, father, and brother.

I would not only like to dedicate my final issue of Quilt to everyone I’ve worked with, editors past and present, but to the friends, new and old, who’ve supported me for four years. I have no words to describe how much I love all of you.

Derrick L. Austin Editor-in-Chief

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Contest Winners Art and Photography: First Place: Honorable Mention: Honorable Mention:

Julia Ponzek Amanda Pulham Shannon Kenny

with paint in my hair Untitled Lifelines

Fiction: First Place: Conner McDonough Honorable Mention: Stephanie Selander Honorable Mention: Liza Pichette

Rosie’s Waltz Phantoms

Desire

Creative Non-Fiction: First Place: Micheal Angelo Rumore

Honorable Mention: Valerie Moorer

Searching for Beat New York Hardly Ybored

Poetry: First Place: Conner McDonough Honorable Mention: Amanda Sieradzki Honorable Mention: Ashley Eakin

Tim O’Connor Award:

(Presented to a Quilt Writer showing outstanding writing talent)

•Laura Theobald (2010)

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North Country Lessons Ghazal of the Jealous Sun

Crossing the Rubicon

Quilt 2011 Staff Editor-in-Chief Derrick L. Austin Submissions Manager Alysia Sawchyn

Assistant Editor

Laura Theobald

SG Representative Cody Waters, Kathleen Kreiser & Cory Testaverde-Emerson

Art and Photography Editor: Micheal Angelo Rumore Art and Photography Assitant Editors: Alysia Sawchyn

Creative Nonfiction Editor: Sarah Gottlieb Creative Nonfiction Assistant Editors: Stephanie Selander, Valerie Moorer & Kathleen Kreiser

Fiction Editors: Amanda Sieradzki Fiction Assistant Editor: Jillian Kneeland, Sadie Harlan, & Jake Koniszewski

Poetry Editor: Cody Waters Poetry Assistant Editors: Philippa Hatendi & Valerie Moorer

Faculty Advisor: John Capouya

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Table of Contents

By Genre

Art and Photography: Ciara Ross Amanda Pulham Kristin O’Connor Sasha Brito Julia Ponzek Tamara Turk Cliff Klein Shannon Kenny Cliff Klein Shannon Kenny Sam Burns Julia Ponzek Julia Ponzek

Seduction of the Fallacious Masquerade Untitled Make Freedom of Speech with a sheet to hide behind Sufi Elementary Fundamentals You Can Only Rise From Rock Bottom Elementary Fundamentals To Be Wise Is To Be Wealthy Gare de Lyon with paint in my hair with the blue ring on

1 24 28 32 36 48 74 53 57 59 62 72 73

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Creative Nonfiction: Micheal Angelo Rumore Searching for Beat New York Valerie Moorer Hardly Ybored Micheal Angelo Rumore Tone of the Oaks

15 29 54

Fiction: Liza Pichette Conner McDonough Jake Koniszewski Stephanie Selander Sara Melendez Conner McDonough Conner McDonough Kathleen Kresier

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Desire Rosie’s Waltz For Happiness Phantoms

Tasks to Fulfill Drying Out Roman Candles Trap Door

18 22 25 33 37 51 60 63

Poetry: Cody Waters Derrick Austin Conner McDonough Amanda Sieradzki Derrick Austin Laura Theobald Ashley Eakin Derrick Austin Conner McDonough Laura Theobald

Hunger Poem (Lady Gaga has collapsed!)

The Last of the Colorado Italians Ghazal of the Jealous Sun Joseph of Arimathea desert cactus Crossing the Rubicon December Quartet North Country Lessons the dead and the living

17 31 35 47 49 50 58 71 74 76

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Table of Contents Sequential

Ciara Ross Micheal Angelo Rumore Cody Waters Liza Pichette Conner McDonough Amanda Pulham Jake Koniszewski Kristin O’Connor Valerie Moorer Derrick Austin Sasha Brito Stephanie Selander Conner McDonough Julia Ponzek Sara Melendez Amanda Sieradzki Tamara Turk Derrick Austin Laura Theobald Conner McDonough Shannon Kenny Micheal Angelo Rumore Cliff Klein Ashley Eakin Shannon Kenny Conner McDonough Sam Burns Kathleen Kresier Derrick Austin Julia Ponzek Julia Ponzek Conner McDonough Laura Theobald Shannon Kenny

Seduction of the Fallacious Masquerade Searching for Beat New York Hunger Desire Rosie’s Waltz Untitled For Happiness Make Hardly Ybored Poem (Lady Gaga has collapsed!)

Freedom of Speech Phantoms

The Last of the Colorado Italians with a sheet to hide behind Tasks to Fulfill Ghazal of the Jealous Sun Sufi Joseph of Arimathea desert cactus Drying Out You Can Only Rise From Rock Bottom Tone of the Oaks Elementary Fundamentals Crossing the Rubicon To Be Wise Is To Be Wealthy Roman Candles Gare de Lyon Trap Door December Quartet with paint in my hair with the blue ring on North Country Lessons the dead and the living Lifelines

Contributer’s Notes Submission Guidelines

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1 15 17 18 22 24 25 28 29 31 32 33 35 36 37 47 48 49 50 51 53 54 57 58 59 60 62 63 71 72 73 74 76 77

79 82

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Writer to Writer The poet is someone who feasts at the same table as other people. —But at a certain point he feels a lack.

—Anne Carson

Whatever our texts are, we today are dealing with new philosophical or political questions of which Shakespeare knew nothing. Ancient massacres are taking on new forms that call for new protests and new silences…Shakespeare, who does warn us, can’t have predicted it all. It’s up to us to find the language that will prophesy our age.

—Helene Cixous

I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but I know I mean it.

—J.D. Salinger

It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.

—Sylvia Plath

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I am learning something myself—I don’t know exactly what it is—but if I did—if I could put it clearly into form it would cure you

—Georgia O’Keefe

We real cool.

—Gwendolyn Brooks

Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

—Erica Jong

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Searching for Beat New York Micheal Angelo Rumore First Place—Creative Non-Fiction

Beat Generation and American counterculture enthusiasts regularly make the trek to the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City in hopes of finding a sprawling Bohemia of Beatnik writers and aging hippies. Regrettably, this Greenwich Village no longer exists.

Rapid gentrification and extremely high housing costs have long since taken their toll on the neighborhood’s reputation as the pulse of American counterculture.

Being something of a recovering hippie, I came to Greenwich with a hard head. It was, after all, the mecca where Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg loitered about, where William S. Burroughs scored smack, where an entire sixties culture generated spontaneously from the vibrations of Bob Dylan’s harmonica. There had to be some traces of all this. But where?

I started at Bleecker Street, once a main artery for Bohemian consciousness. I quickly became discouraged. The street was littered with Marc Jacobs boutiques and groups of girls wearing Juicy Couture sweaters and Jimmy Choo pumps, speculating where Rachel Zoe would appear during Fashion’s Night Out. Such places and people belonged on Madison Avenue, not my Beat New York. I left disappointed and disenchanted.

I followed the rich girls to New York University’s campus—now the Greenwich’s most notable feature. I passed the signature fountain at Washington Square Park, the pulse of the NYU area. The more straight-laced students threw frisbees, walked their dogs, or caught up on schoolwork. Others feigned inconspicuousness as they puffed one-hitters under the trees. A chess player at an empty table beckoned me to play a game. I considered, but figured I’d either be roped up for hours or embarrassed in ten minutes. I decided to press on.

I left Washington Square and made my way to Broadway. A bookstore caught my eye— Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers. I went inside and glanced over at “K” for “Kerouac.” I expected to find the same old editions of On the Road and The Dharma Bums. To my surprise, I was immediately taken by a book that seemed to be thrown in. The Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac’s City by Bill Morgan. The book lays out walking tours one can take through the New York frequented by figures of the Beat Generation. Just start at page one and follow the directions. Still, most of the places were no longer Beat, but once Beat.

Nonetheless, I found the book helpful to my Beatnik quest and went to the cashier to buy it.

Sensing my interest in the Beats, the cashier said, “You going to the Howl Festival?”

Off guard, I answered, “The what?”

“The Howl Festival. You know, like Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl.’ There’s a festival celebrating it in the East Village this weekend. Poetry readings and stuff.”

I thanked him and rushed out the door and, sitting on the Broadway curb, I confirmed the festival on my iPhone, feeling stupid that I had not heard of it. The Howl Festival has been held at Tompkins Square Park in the East Village every year since 2003. Inspired by Allen Ginsberg, it is a free three-day festival of art and poetry on two stages. Later that night was the first event, a poetry reading. I knew I would be there, but what kind of audience would attend? Do people still care about the Beats? Does anyone still care about poetry? Judging by the new attitude of The Village, I wasn’t so sure I’d get a favorable answer.

At Tompkins Square Park I was floored. Various poets performed a group reading of Alan Ginsberg’s “Howl”—the crowning achievement of Beat Generation poetry—that brought me to tears. On a big stage, even! And, most amazingly, a sizeable crowd to hear it. All kinds of

Quilt 15

people filled the park—wearing everything from office ties to dashikis. I thought poetry wasn’t read on big stages anymore, much less to anyone.

Newly renewed, I returned to Greenwich Village to again search for vestiges of the Beats’ New York. This time I found them. I stopped at the nearby Café Wha?, the site of Bob Dylan’s first New York performance. Though Café Wha? is closed during daytime hours, a sign by the door recounted musicians that played at the venue in their younger years, including Jimi Hendrix, but most notably Dylan. Dylan’s fingerprints were hidden all around, actually. Thanks to a quick glance at the Greenwich Village section of The Beat Generation in New York, I found that above an unremarkable vintage clothing store I had previously passed was an apartment once owned by Dylan.

I had coffee at the Cornelia Street Café, a refuge for the old Greenwich spirit. Opened in 1977, Jack Kerouac may not have been alive to see it, but the café holds live jazz, poetry, and art exhibitions almost nightly. Outside a girl walked the block, a Bluetooth planted in her ear, reciting poetry to whoever was lucky enough to be on the other line, proof that the Beat Generation spirit still exists if you look deep enough for it.

A sign outside a bookstore, Left Bank Books on 8th Avenue, promised: Books!!! Rare first editions! They had a section devoted to first edition Beat books—Allen Ginsberg poetry collections, masterpieces by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. I wanted desperately to flip through them, but sadly I could not. Housed in a glass case, only those with serious money could touch much less afford them.

Instantly I thought it a perfect metaphor for what’s happened to Greenwich Village. Despite jacked prices and protective barriers, the spirit of the Beats is still there, through the glass. The Bohemian stereotype of Greenwich Villagers may no longer be true, but those that want to experience Beat New York for themselves can still do so. You just have to look closely.

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Hunger

Cody Waters Poetry

for Nathan

Twice a year I do this cross Brooklyn to South Ferry to be with you, darling.

I have traveled miles— hundreds of miles to join you this evening; beckoned by your scent— heady perfumes of olive and oregano Come to me, my love, and ease my aching need to touch you, taste you, consume you Answer these moans from deep within— inhuman growls of my lust!

My body cries out for you!

And here you are, spread before me picture of perfection you melt in my tender hands as I whisper my readiness: I need you inside me.

Bur first, I must take all your growing length in my mouth and sate my lust, savor your taste Swallowing might quench the flames of my desire but my heart burns still for you.

Quilt 17

Desire

Liza Pichette Honorable Mention—Fiction

Stephanie had always let her emotions steer her life. She didn’t recall how she had learned to do this, but she did know that to ignore her heart would make her miserable. Perhaps it was the dreamer in her soul that dictated to her; she didn’t care. If you don’t want to do something, you’re not going to enjoy it.

She leaned against the wall of her studio, staring at the endless blue splotch on her new canvas. She had been toying with this for weeks, unable to get it just right. If only she could remember the next part of the dream, she could finally finish this project.

While other people dreamed in color, black and white, or snapshots of the future, Stephanie dreamed abstract art. She hadn’t even realized that she was different from the other kids until she had told her friends about it. They had teased her, or ignored her. Now they accepted her difference as a tool to improve her art.

She had other projects, of course. Mrs. Brown, her art teacher, required three different pieces every semester, which Stephanie managed to deliver. Her own work, however, was abstract. She tried to turn out one finished canvas every few weeks; usually they were retooled snapshots of her dreams, sometimes she worked on them in her dreams. She loved it, even now, when she was blocked.

Letting out a breath, she set down her brush, and left her art studio. Her attic-studio above her bedroom had a staircase that led to the roof, a feature she often used to for inspiration. She scaled the creaky staircase, careful not to wake her parents in the house below. Just because she stayed up most hours of the night didn’t mean they wanted to.

The stairs led to a small balcony, hidden between the peaks of the house. She walked along the edge to climb into the hammock that hung off the end of the point to her left. She used to sleep out here during the summer when the house became too unbearable. She still did. Mostly she lay in midair, staring into space until she was struck with inspiration.

Stephanie reclined against the sturdy netting, searching for stars amid the night sky. The wind rocked the hammock slightly, the cool breeze felt divine against her heated body. She loved it up here; she felt weightless.

She put aside the thoughts of her painting for the moment, handing the unfinished work to her unconscious. She had read somewhere that writers often let their work “marinate” in their heads for a while if they got stuck; she knew it was true for artists as well. She loved how she could create beautiful things with a brush and paint. What she hated sometimes was how long it took to get there.

Cass always said that he didn’t mind the wait it took for her to create her “daily masterpieces,” as he called them. He claimed that it was an artist’s prerogative to keep their audience in suspense.

Stephanie smiled. Cass appreciated her work in a way few people did. Her friends and parents naturally supported her in everything she did, but Cass understood why she did what she did. He related to it, even though his creative passion was photography. He told her once that his ambition was to create one photograph that held as much desire as ten of her paintings.

They had been friends for almost ten years, and were still as close as the day they met.

She missed Cass a lot these days. He got accepted to the leading college in photography, which was located three hours away from their hometown. She understood that he needed to

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get out, with everything he had been through, but she sometimes was selfish and wished he had stayed.

They kept in touch as much as possible, but it wasn’t the same as hanging out in her studio every day after school and discussing art, life, and everything in between. Phone conversations were nice, but she missed his presence more than anything.

Her pocket buzzed. She squirmed to dig her phone out of the folded abyss of her jeans, wondering who could be calling at this hour. Granted, she didn’t know the hour, but she knew it was later than most of her friends stayed up.

She squinted her night-eyes, blinded by the backlight, and grinned as she read Cass’s name.

She opened the phone. “Hey, I was just thinking about you.”

“Gee, don’t I feel special,” Cass’ voice replied. He was smiling; she knew because his voice went up a little in tone when he did, something that made her smile even more. “How are you?”

“Just trying to finish the picture of the dream I had two weeks ago. How about you? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”

“Sorry, I’ve been kinda busy. I’m actually walking home from a six-hour photo shoot that was rescheduled; remember, for my senior thesis in two years?”

“Yeah, don’t you have to use a different element of art in every picture?”

“Yeah, and it’s giving me a headache.”

“You love it,” she teased. “Don’t lie.”

“Just because I love it doesn’t mean I don’t get stress headaches from it,” he said. But he was laughing. “What’s your dream about?”

“I can only remember some of it. All I have is a blue background and a red bar in the foreground. I think there was some yellow and green in there somewhere, but it’s all eluding me.”

“You’ll figure it out. Just give it time.”

“I am. I was lying in the hammock when you called.”

“Good, you need to rest. You’re stressing yourself out too much.”

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! You just got off an all-night photo shoot!”

“It only took up most of the night,” Cass replied indignantly. “There’s still twelve hours left in the day, I’ll sleep then.”

“You’ll sleep when you’re dead.”

“Then I’ll finally be able to sleep in.”

Stephanie laughed. She missed him so much. None of her crazy-art-student friends were this interesting, or workaholics.

Cass’ voice broke through her thoughts. “How are things with you and Corey? Your Facebook says you’re single.”

She let out a sigh. Corey, her on-again-off-again lover, was a complicated issue. One minute he wanted her, the next he was flirting with anything in a skirt, which was why she dumped him. She didn’t even know why she still went back to him when he didn’t give her anything real. She related this to Cass.

“Maybe you’re lonely,” he suggested. “Liza’s gone, Laura’s married, Lennae’s in France, and I’m three hours away. Your whole support system is shot.”

“I’d hate to think I’d be so desperate for attention that I’d like being manhandled by the likes of him.”

That made him pause. “Steph, did he...”

“I’m fine,” she answered quickly. Too quickly. “I’m just so sick of immature guys, you know?

Am I crazy to think that I could ever be in a real relationship?”

Quilt 19

“You definitely are crazy, but not about this,” he teased.

“Thanks,” she retorted. “Always knew you could cheer me up.”

“Believe it or not, I called you to cheer me up.”

She felt an unexpected flush in her cheeks. “Did it work?”

“Like a charm,” he replied, his voice going up once more.

Stephanie’s heart began to flutter in a nervous rhythm. Why was she acting this way? She knew Cass so well, he was like a brother. Why was she acting like a six year-old in love?

“Steph, you okay?”

She cleared her throat. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Ten?” he asked, his voice going up.

She laughed. For a reason she couldn’t quite recall, ten had always been their number. They met when they were ten; they lived ten houses away from each other; their birthdays were ten days apart, and they were both born in October. A million little things, like “seven” in Where the Heart Is, made them closer than anyone else. So, whenever they wanted to know something that would stay between them, all they had to do was say their number, and the other person had to tell.

“Nothing, I must be dehydrated or something. I feel funny.”

“Ten?” “My face feels hot, my stomach is doing this crazy flip thing, and I don’t know why.”

He was silent for a moment. “Steph, I’m coming back for spring break in a few days.”

“Good, we can hang out.”

“I’m bringing someone with me.”

“Who?” “Julie.”

“Cool, she’s nice.” She knew there was something more; he was just being chicken about it.

“Ten?” “We’re getting married in the summer.”

Stephanie’s face fell. “I didn’t know you two were that serious.” Why was her heart aching?

She had certainly dated other guys; she didn’t own Cass. But she had never been engaged.

Was she threatened because she never had to share him before? She didn’t think what she was feeling was that one-dimensional.

Cass was talking again. “...She’s always been there, and she just gets me, you know? I didn’t expect any of this, and then it happened.”

She fought off the urge to say “ten.” It wasn’t any of her business, even if he was her best friend. “She’s a good girl. I’m happy for you.”

She could hear the relief in his voice as they ended the call. He had been dreading the moment he told her for the whole conversation, she realized suddenly. It was why he had called her in the first place.

The feeling in her stomach would not go away. A feeling she wasn’t sure why she had to begin with.

She leaned back against the hammock, closing her eyes and letting out a breath. Out of habit, she began to classify every feeling in her body as colors. It had aided her when she was younger and confused about the world. Everything always seemed so simple when it was reduced to colors.

A heartbeat later, her thoughts clicked. She understood everything: her dream, what she was feeling, and how to make sense of it. She climbed down from her perch and hurried inside to finish the painting.

The dream had been a blue foreground with a glimpse of green separating red from yellow

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in a cyclical fashion. Blue meant truthfulness; red meant love; yellow meant happiness; green meant knowledge. The knowledge of Cass’s engagement had made her sad, breaking her dreams of happiness and love with him, but, by the end, the red and yellow were united again in a brilliant shade of orange. She would mourn this loss like she had all the others, and she would become the brilliant orange she had been before.

The sun was a flaming sphere by the time she was herself again. Painting took everything from her when she gave in to its whisper: time, energy, and sanity. The result, however, always was worth the price in her mind. She collapsed in a chair facing her easel, too tired to lift her arm and wipe the sweat from her brow.

She would sleep for the rest of the day, and awake in time to watch the moon begin its slow cycle through the stars. She would have a new painting in mind by then. She always did. No matter how much she painted, there was always more to create. It was a hunger that would not let her go, and she had no desire to change anything.

Stephanie had always let her emotions steer her life. Slowly, she was letting them steer her art as well.

Quilt 21

Rosie’s Waltz

Conner McDonough First Place—Fiction

Neal picked up the piano bench, still waterlogged, from the end of the small driveway and brought it up to the front porch.

The day burned like the Chesterfield jutting from the corner of his mouth and the smoke hung on his skin as though it were a damp shirt. He smelled the tobacco mixed with his sweat as it poured over his upper lip. Piano bench, couch, loveseat, chair, bookshelf, dining room table he thought as he looked them over in the yard, making a mental note to tell Rosie to write it down on the list.

Next door, Burt and Marie dragged chairs from the street and stacked them next to their shed. Neal watched as their dog wandered in circles in the front yard; it whimpered and barked every now and then at nothing in particular. Neal had heard somewhere before that after a hard rain or a flood dogs walked aimlessly, constantly searching for their scents.

“What’s wrong with their dog?” asked Rosie, stepping from the front doorway and down the steps of the porch.

“He’s searching for his scent. The water washed it away.”

“Never thought we’d be in the same boat as a dog,” Rosie said plucking a wet leaf from a rip in the cushion of the piano bench. “He’s looking for his scent and we can’t find half our goddamn furniture.”

“It’s probably all the way down on Decatur Street,” Neal murmured, exhaling smoke with every word. He flicked the butt into the gutter and it landed near someone’s photo album, now soggy and the leather split.

Overhead, a helicopter from the local station was filming the clean-up.

“I wonder if they can see the watermark on the side of the house,” Neal said.

“Probably not from that angle,” said Rosie as she pulled a steno pad from her shirt pocket.

She scribbled down the furniture they had found so far. There was no point searching for photo albums, clothes, paperwork, and books. They were probably in the Gulf by now.

“Mostly everything in the garage is still there. We did lose some boxes, though,” said Rosie.

“But the piano’s still there. It looks like it’s still in one piece.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re probably going to have to scrap it,” Neal said as he walked to the garage door. He grabbed the steel handle, unlocked the door, heaved it up, and pushed it back. The smell of wet wood and cardboard rushed from the dripping garage.

The smell reminded him of when he was thirteen and he and his father dragged a piece of driftwood from the port after his father got off work. They dried it on their back porch and carved the family’s last name into it with his father’s K-Bar knife from Grenada. It hung in the living room until his mother complained about the smell.

“Give me a hand,” he said to Rosie as he grabbed the wet sheet from the top of the piano.

“I’m going to lift this end and I want you to slide the sheet under it. Then we’ll do the other side.”

Though it was still slick and the varnish had come off making it slicker, they got the piano onto the sheet and dragged it into the yard, Neal dragging and Rosie holding the top to keep it from tipping over. A little bit of it sank into the wet earth.

22 Quilt

“Do you think it still works?” asked Rosie. She stood beside it with her hands on her hips and scraped some mud off the side of it with her shoe.

“I don’t think so,” Neal began. He fished another Chesterfield from the pack in his shirt pocket, lit it, and slid the lighter into the back pocket of his pants. He took a drag and passed it to Rosie who did the same. “It’s been sitting in water for a week now.”

Rosie took another drag and handed the cigarette to Neal. She pushed back the keyboard cover and hit a couple of keys. Abrasive music drifted from the old upright to the surprise of both of them.

“Well, hell,” said Neal. He walked over to the porch and picked up the piano bench and placed it in front of the piano. He sat down, motioning for Rosie to sit beside him. She did and took the cigarette, taking another long drag before placing it between his lips.

Neal took a drag, tossed the cigarette, and began playing “Heart and Soul.” Rosie laughed and grinned at him and played the solo as he played the rhythm. She kissed him on the cheek and he could smell the faint scent of peony on her cheeks as she pulled away and got up from the bench.

Neal slid over to the center of the bench and began to play a waltz his mother taught him and as he played, he swore he could hear the horn his sister used to play drift alongside his waltz, note for note. He looked over at Rosie.

She was in the center of the lawn, dancing alone, shifting weight from one foot to another and back again. Sweat formed on the collar of her shirt and in the center of her back. She waltzed as though she would never tire, as if she were in a trance. Eyes closed and head tilted back, she spun in the wet lawn, which sucked at her shoes, but she did not notice it.

Neal thought Rosie had never looked so beautiful and he played as she continued her lonely waltz and the city picked up the remains of the storm.

Quilt 23

Untitled

Amanda Pulham Oil

Honorable Mention—Art

24 Quilt

For Happiness Jake Koniszewski Fiction

I didn’t really want to go to the party, but I had to find out if the rumors were true. I watched from across the country club’s ballroom past the sea of socialites as a woman in her late twenties laughed along with the rotund geezer, her long raven hair rippling with each tilt of her head.

The chandelier’s light bouncing off her monster of a diamond ring confirmed the rumors.

Angela was engaged again. Why was she doing this to herself?

After the balding man waddled over to the h’orderves table, my feet weaved me through the crowd. My eyes traveled over her body, sliding down her body like an elevator. Her red dress clung to her like an extra layer of skin, promoting her modest curves. Angela taunted me with silence when I leaned beside her on the table so I said the first thing that jumped into my head and slid out of my mouth. “You look great.”

She turned her head at me, her cherry lips curling into a passable smile. “Thanks Nolan. I try.” “ Of course you do,” I chuckled as I watched her fiancée suck cocktail sauce from his fingers.

It was quite the spectacle to watch the fiancée’s bulging girth struggle against his worn black belt. Thoughts of Jabba the Hutt grew in my head as I watched his bug eyes stare down a deviled egg. His sausage-like fingers snapped up the egg before popping it into his gaping mouth. “He’s quite a catch.”

She rolled her amber eyes at me before staring at the door to the far left balcony. “Shut up.

Frank and I are in love.”

“Just like the other two, right?” I said with a annoyance concealing chuckle. “So how long until he kicks the bucket and you run off with his money?” Her cardinal red-gloved hand grabbed my wrist as she pulled me out towards the far left balcony. I didn’t really mind her leading me away like this. It reminded me of the old Angela. Perhaps that Angela was still living somewhere inside that shell.

My brief nostalgia broke away as Angela released me. We were standing on the stone balcony overlooking the eighteenth hole and the practice putting green. Thanks to the overhanging lights, I could barely make out a few stars in the night sky. I couldn’t tell if Angela was crossing her arms because she was mad at me or the fresh breeze was chilling her. Due to the goose bumps on her upper pale upper arms and her contorted scowl, I’d say both.

“What the hell gives you the right to talk about my husbands like that?” she spat with her hands clenched.

“Because I’m your friend,” I snapped. “Or at least I use to be your friend. I don’t know what you see me as anymore. All I know is that you have a tendency to tie yourself to guys who already have the Grim Reaper on speed dial and a mountain of money to blow.”

Angela sighed as she shook her head. “Nolan, this isn’t what it looks like.”

“Then what is it?” I hissed while she stood with her heels rooted to the ground. “Why Henry? Why Charlie? Why Frank? If this isn’t about money, then what are you doing? Are you telling me you loved them?”

Angela’s chin jutted forward as if to spew forth a rebuttal, but her reply dribbled out like a leaky faucet. “No.” I watched the fight evaporate from her body. Her clenched fists opened and her arms dangled at her sides like limbs of a weeping willow tree. The amber moistened, fighting against the dam.

Quilt 25

“Look, I didn’t mean to yell like that,” I said as Angela turned away from me. “I just don’t understand what happened to you. Weren’t you the girl who watched old Disney movies every weekend and talk about how you wanted to find your “prince”? Your “true love”? Your “happily ever after”?”

“I use to be that girl,” replied Angela as she slumped down and rested her arms on the stone railing. “I don’t think you’re completely aware of this, but that girl you knew isn’t here anymore.” She looked over at me, the corners of her mouth dragging themselves upwards. “I use to think about finding my other half, but then I met Henry. You’ve probably heard he was a quiet man. He never found someone to love him. Can you imagine living for eighty six years without someone to love you?” I wanted to answer her, but I didn’t feel like anything I said would help. Sometimes the best thing you can do is say nothing.

“We started talking to each other about two years ago at a charity casino night. We were at the same blackjack table and he kept winning.” She giggled briefly as another blink-and-you’llmiss-it smile flashed across her face. “He called me his “Lady Luck”. Seeing her smile, even for a second, was contagious. Was the old Angela still in there?

The smile dropped from her face, as if too heavy to bear. “And then there was that doctor’s appointment. He said it was just a routine check-up. When he came back out, he popped the question, right in the waiting room.” A couple of stray tears crawled down her cheeks. “How could I turn away a dying man?” Angela turned her face towards the driving range, avoiding my gaze. “We married a month later. I remember the guests telling me I looked like a princess at the reception.” Her throat bobbed as if forcing down a giant knot of spaghetti. “We flew to Maui for the honeymoon. He…he told me he wanted to make love with me.”

“At his age?” I asked as my mind attempted to erase any images of naked old men. “Could he even-?”

“He had a heart attack a few minutes into it,” choked Angela as she covered her quivering lips with a gloved hand. “I told him he didn’t have to, but…” She shook her head as her lips locked away the rest of the sentence. “He was gone before the doctors arrived.”

They say there are always two sides to a story. The only side I heard was the rumors, rumors about a black widow taking an old man’s life, rumors about a gold digger looking for her next payday. I guess the rumors make a better story. Her chest heaved in and out as she chugged gulps of night air. “What about Charlie?”

“I met him a few months later at a member-guest golf tournament,” explained Angela as she stood up from her slouch, still refusing to look at me. “I heard he was fighting lung cancer for the past five months. Charlie wasn’t much older than me, but it was like life sped up on him.

He seemed so old. He was just like Henry.”

“So you married him,” I guessed, which she confirmed with a nod. Her dark hair cloaked her face, even as it bobbed with her nodding. “You don’t have to hide from me. It’s not like I haven’t seen you cry before.”

“He proposed after three months,” continued Angela. “Then we married the next month, and two months later…he was gone.” For the first time in the past few minutes, she looked at me. Her leaking amber eyes blinked past smeared makeup and tired wrinkles. “The day before Charlie died, even with that machine pumping air into him, he said he was happy.”

“And what about Frank?” I asked, half hoping to hold Angela in my arms and feel her calm herself against my chest. “Is he dying too?” Angela kept her distance as she stared at her fiancée, the bottomless pit, with a stack of dirty plates next to him. I swear he gained at least another ten pound since I last saw him. It was as if someone stuck an air pump into him.

“I know you’re not blind or stupid Nolan,” explained Angela. “If that Biggest Loser show is anything to go by, Frank will be dead in a year or two. I know he’s dying, but he’s happy. Who

26 Quilt

am I to take away his happiness?”

“Are you happy?” I asked.

I could see Angela’s eyes twitch in every direction, as if moving an internal pair of eyes through her insides. They were searching through years of sorrow, death, and heartbreak like moving through wet cement in the dark. Her eyes finally stopped, the light fading from the amber. “Don’t worry about me Nolan. I’m still young. I’ve got years to find happiness.”

There may be parts of the old Angela inside whomever I was speaking to, but she was drowning in that cement. She had buried herself in her sadness. “You know, Henry, Charlie, and Frank were young once too. They had time to find their happiness.” I began to walk away from what use to be Angela, looking back at her one more time. “Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Find your happiness Angela.”

I steered through the partygoers towards the door. There wasn’t really a reason for me to be at the party anymore. Other than Angela, there wasn’t anyone I really wanted to talk to here.

Suddenly, I felt someone’s hand in my pocket. I turned to see Angela walking towards her humungous husband-to-be. I pulled out a napkin from my pocket with Angela’s handwriting and a phone number.

We lost touch once. I don’t want that to happen again.

-Angela Perhaps the old Angela wasn’t buried as deep as I thought.

Quilt 27

Make

Kristin O’Connor

Acrylic on Masonite

28 Quilt

Hardly Ybored

Valerie Moorer Honorable Mention—Creative Non-Fiction

A pounding bassline echoed through the parking garage in sync with my throbbing head.

My eyelids were slow to rise. I lifted the lever underneath my seat and shot upright, unsure where I was or what had happened. All I knew was a steering wheel makes for a terrible pillow.

Details surfaced in fragments: an abandoned cigar perched in an ashtray, tendrils of smoke curling skyward, laughter muffled by mouthfuls of Mojo pork and Cuban bread, a trolley ambling its tracks, the conductor’s ears strained by the metallic clang of passenger fare, a bell rung to assert departure.

(In)famous Ybor City. Memories were suddenly vivid. Earlier that afternoon I’d decided to dispel the recurrent headlines of date-rape and gunfire and give this historical town a shot. Slamming my car door, I encountered no stray bullets but was assailed by a peddler of handcrafted trinkets. Hesitant at first, but firm in my resolve to experience the city to its fullest, a crumpled bill entered an unwashed hand. From the array of braided leaves I selected a Palmetto crucifix to occupy my pocket now drained from parking fees and this transaction.

Famished from the search to tether my Mustang, food was of utmost priority. I chose The Columbia, renowned for its authentic Spanish cuisine, and was not disappointed. I took a seat at the bar and asked directions to the washroom. While scrubbing, I gazed at the architectural molding and colorful mosaic of tiled walls. Returning to my seat, I scoured the menu and salivated from the decadent possibilities. After several attempts to sway my indecision, the waiter was pleased to jot my order of a tapas sampler, the paella ‘marinera’ and a strong Mojito.

The mixologist, a balding gentleman in a tailored button-down, bow-tie, and cuff-links, proceeded to display his mastery of the craft. He retrieved a highball glass from the overhead rack with his right hand as his left pulled rum from the back-bar, all the while maintaining eye contact and engaging small-talk. My expectations of the food and service were surpassed as I paid the tab and returned to 7th avenue.

With time to spare before the 7:25 pm showing at the Muvico cinema, I strolled down 8th.

I wandered into Gameworks, a facility known to intermingle juvenile pleasures with adult beverages. After a couple of beers my coordination at ticket-dispensing arcade games earned me a Tootsie Roll from the glass case of prizes. Stumbling back onto the street, an annoyingly upbeat guy rushed me, his smile as starched as his suit. He waved a personality quiz in my face. I felt nauseous and not from the booze. What the hell, I figured, it was free, and staggered toward his building to begin the test. I smirked as he evaluated pages of my answers bubbled at random and grew concerned when his already large smile expanded. Turns out I was the perfect candidate for Scientology. Then again, who isn’t? He insisted on further analysis but I had a movie to catch. The stadium seating and surround sound was a far cry from the primitive Rivoli Theatre of the 1920s. The flick wasn’t bad but the overpriced refreshments were better.

The sun, aware of the chaos to come, had sought refuge below the horizon when I left the theatre. Streetlamps flickered: the Ybor experience was incomplete without a taste of nightlife.

From the sewer grates and cobblestone crevices the night-crawlers emerged. Girls were halfdressed, vying for attention from guys in $80 t-shirts. In front of the dance club Prana I was handed a flier by a female promoter in the strangest get-up I’d ever seen. Furry legwarmers, either paying homage to the Clydesdale or preparation for those sudden Florida blizzards, were paired with shorts designed more to conceal the lower-back than the ass cheek.

Quilt 29

The word ‘prana’ is Sanskrit for ‘vital life’, but after watching the crowd writhe on the dance floor like maggots undulating on a carcass, the word ‘prawn’ seemed more appropriate. Bottomfeeders scavenging for sex or money. As I swam to the bar for my last round of the night, my hand sought the comfort of the crucifix in my pocket. I shouted “gin on the rocks” to the girl behind the bar—too young to drink, herself! My thoughts turned to the Columbia: gone was any notion of customer service when service itself was in such high demand. The balding gentleman had carefully measured with a jigger as she frantically free-poured, proportions be damned. It was real-life Tapper, the early 80s arcade game. Objective: serve myriad drinks to relentless clientele and simultaneously collect empty cups and cash. Here, tips were earned with saline implants, not competence at the craft. The only bow-tie in sight was on my restroom attendant. In there, the molding on the ceiling was actual mold. Upon hearing my flush she leapt from her stool in the corner to dispense soap in my palm, turn the spigot, and hand me a towel. She then sprayed me in the eye with the perfume of my choice, rendering me unaware of which bill I dropped in her tip jar.

I could only remember fragments of the rest of that night. I imagine my trip back to the parking garage was uneventful, save the jovial ramblings of either Yuppies on Bluetooth earpieces or homeless schizophrenics—it’s difficult to tell which. Perhaps both.

My reflection of Centro Ybor? Nothing dull about it. My skepticism was unfounded: I’d come out unscathed. Backing out of my $15 daylong space, I’d spoken too soon: a glint in the rearview mirror caught my eye. Looks like I’d stumbled into a tattoo parlor and acquired a piercing at some point that night. I shifted to park and reclined my seat for a much-needed, sobering nap.

30 Quilt

Poem (Lady Gaga has collapsed!)

Derrick Austin Poetry

after Frank O’Hara

Lady Gaga has collapsed!

I was drinking alone and suddenly the room glittered and I was falling and you said I was on the floor but floors are hard so it was really your queen-sized bed and I was saving your gin for tonight but the room was acting exactly like me and suddenly I receive a text OMG! LADY GAGA HAS COLLAPSED! there is no glitter in Tampa there is no fall in Florida I have been to lots of gay bars and acted perfectly disgraceful but I have never actually collapsed oh Lady Gaga we don’t care stay pretty

Quilt 31

Freedom of Speech Sasha Brito

Photography (Photoshop)

32 Quilt

Phantoms

Stephanie Selander Honorable Mention—Fiction The radio crackles with sound, hissing and sputtering so that the music is choked out. Can’t really tell if it’s Ke$ha or Lady Gaga, but these days, it’s all sounding the same. She rolls over and the blankets roll with her, falling off her bare legs and joining her laundry puddled on the floor. Late night. Empty night. Hands rub her eyes until they’re pink, not red, and she fumbles for her glasses. She can see now, but the room’s still dark, and it’s still a bad dream.

An hour of watching through the windowpane, and you still can’t bring yourself to call her.

Not long ago, you’d be lying on that bed beside her, fondly kissing her neck and laughing about last night. You don’t know what happened last night anymore. You’re not sure you’d laugh if you did.

Your cereal has probably gone stale, sitting on the shelf, but it’s become almost a shrine—he was here, it says. She always did prefer waffles over Captain Crunch. Your gaze has followed her to the kitchen. She dribbles syrup over her Eggos, bending down low to pour her orange juice before sitting. You try not to, but your eyes are glued to where her shirt rides up. You remember that tattoo. Still think the butterfly was a dumb idea, but you remember it.

It’s funny, but the same chair remains empty when she does sit down (even though she’d always liked your chair better, something about the sunlight hitting it in just the right place).

When the phone rings, she ignores it the first two times, before remembering you won’t pick it up. That used to drive you crazy. You press your ears against the wall to listen.

Something about a football game. It kills you to see her smile at the offer.

You realize you’ve stopped breathing when she shakes her head “no” and hangs up.

You’re outside the front door, debating if you should knock. You have a key, but knocking is more polite, less demanding. Your hand isn’t as bold as your prying eyes. They follow her through the window; her tiny frame scurrying about the kitchen, barely clothed except for a t-shirt and mismatched socks. You remember that shirt she’s wearing is yours, too baggy for her. It slopes over her shoulder and reaches just below her hips. “Life is Good,” it says. Life is good.

Finally, you suck it up and ring the doorbell, you ring it dammit, and hear the frantic running about as she throws on something, anything, before cracking the door open. You don’t remember there being so many locks on the door. Turns out your key wasn’t enough, anyhow.

“What the hell do you want?” she demands. Now that she’s here, your tongue is dry, and you just stare at her splotchy face and wonder how much she’s cried since that night. You wonder why you didn’t cry. You didn’t sleep, but you didn’t cry.

“I forgot some things,” comes out clipped, forced.

Her hands tousle her messy curls and she scowls before beckoning you to follow. “Guess I’ve got no choice,” she laughs quietly. “Your shit’s somewhere around here.”

Part of you wants to ask about the shirt you know she’s wearing beneath that robe. Another part is satisfied knowing she’s wearing it at night.

In your haste to leave the first time, you’d forgotten many things: your coat, a few DVDs of Star Wars, that one belt you owned that had just enough loops. Bed sheets, flip flops, your printer. You cart them out through the hallway to your Honda, pretending not to notice the junk that’s been littered about in your absence. You’d always been the one cleaning things up, hadn’t you?

Quilt 33

“Where are you staying now?” she inquires blandly as she leans against the door. Inspecting her nails, she nods dumbly at your answer. “Sounds cramped. Sounds cheap.”

A few items are hidden too well for even you to draw out. Some photos, for example—you’ve no idea if she’s burned them or kept them. You decide not to ask.

It’s unwise, but you walk slowly to the kitchen again. She follows in your shadow. You pretend to be looking all around you, but the moment your hand reaches for that cabinet you hear a decisive snort from her direction. “I didn’t drink all of it,” she snaps. “You’re not worth that much wine.”

All the same, you notice new labels behind the old. You nod.

It’d been a strange day, the day you realized all days could be like that one. Nursing a broken spirit on the couch, trying to laugh when she, once again, overdid it and passed out. Wishing she were as fun sober as she was as a drunk—or wishing she’d be drunk off you, not drunk off stupidity. Making excuses instead of changes.

“Marisol is going to move in soon,” she says. You nod again. “She needs a new place, and I need help with rent. So if you ever come around again, don’t expect to stay.”

A wry smile passes your lips. “I don’t expect anything,” you say.

“Got a call from that guy at work I told you about,” she continues. “He wants to take me out tonight. Says I’m cute.” Her eyes dart towards yours, the message clear: I’m not broken, you bastard.

“He’s honest,” you reply. “You are pretty cute.”

Old habits die hard. You ruffle her hair before shifting your bearings to leave one final time.

The steps down the front porch creak like they always did. You frown a bit as you notice the lawn hasn’t been mowed. She’s outside now, waving idly at you as you open your car door. Her robe has slipped a bit—“Good” can be read now. “Is Good.”

The car roars with new energy. Despite yourself, you look in your rear view mirror to see her. She’s got that Captain Crunch in her hands. She’s dumping it. Tossing the whole box into the garbage. You aren’t sure if the constricting in your throat is relief, or regret. Before you can decide, you drive off.

You know exactly where you’re going, but you’ve left your blinker on.

34 Quilt

The Last of the Colorado Italians Conner McDonough Poetry

Breathing the weighty air stale with smoke from her

mother’s Marlboro, the late November night wind clawing between the spaces in the basement

window and caulking, she teaches me how to love the way I’ve seen in French movies.

Say love but not like the catholic you still are, and

know that Father Deveraux cannot see you.

Know that when she cuts the flesh of your back with

her nails, it’s not out of spite or hate. Think back to grade school, when you kicked girls out of love.

She tells me to read the body, read it like a novel I

refused to pick up until now: voraciously. Map the freckles and commit the path to memory. It’s like

speeding through a metropolitan night, where lights stream and loop and hands shake from decontrol.

Kiss like you love me and not from lust. She says the

acid test is to feel the cheeks—the hotter they are, the more in love you are. Mine burn like trash fires

in Tangiers. Guide the hips and count rhythms because it can save your lives. Rock like driftwood.

Sleep is best afterwards. The wind howls over the Eastern

Plain, the scrub grass now gray with the approaching winter. I dream that I am Adam, with neither Lilith nor Eve,

but with the last of the Colorado Italians. I am without two ribs to make sure that this counts for good.

All that’s left when the phantom rib begins to ache

are Indians from dreams, still wearing leather coats that smell of sleep. I wanted to be them when I

was a kid. Tough, pock-marked and twirling butterfly knives like maypole streamers. What gall.

Quilt 35

with a sheet to hide behind Julia Ponzek

Oil, Gesso, and Hair on Board

36 Quilt

Tasks to Fulfill Sara Melendez Fiction

Childkicker was in love with Marcy Mannings across the hall. Marcy was a born-again Christian. Childkicker had a pentagram tattooed on the left side of his neck. It was the most prominent in an array of challenges that had piled up in his psyche, but, despite this detail, he’d continued monitoring Marcy from a safe distance for the past several weeks and felt his longing for this neighbor intensify. He watched her reading a book in the courtyard, picking up her mail, carrying her garbage to the chute—little things led to captivation. If he’d been drawn to compile his thoughts via cliché, he might have described her as a beacon in the dead of night, and he, the insect helplessly lured to its destruction.

It was only by chance that Childkicker, distracted with carrying a large box down the stairs, finally introduced himself to Marcy. They passed in the corridor of their Parkway Apartments stairwell and Marcy cast a scowling glance at his tattoo—a scraggly and hardly identifiable Sigil of Baphomet Childkicker had done with a safety pin and India ink five years ago.

“Hi,” he said in a rush, feeling obligated to say something now that they were so close. Marcy spun around, as if the devil himself had spoken to her. In a state of terror, his mind gushed out the first thing it could: “I just moved in across the hall from you. My name is Childkicker, and I’m metal as—” He managed to stop himself before saying fuck, but he could see from her deepened frown that she knew where his sentence had been headed.

He wanted to kick himself. He’d meant to be classy when he finally gave his introduction, to say something that established personal value, something like, “My name is William Finn. I like classical music and finely aged wine. How are you?”

His nerves had a tendency to ruin things.

Two months ago, he’d decided to stop being “metal as fuck” and start being an adult. He’d cut off thirteen inches of hair with a pair of blunt-tip Crayola scissors and ordered a subscription to Newsweek. He still worked at the local Circle K, but that was largely due to the unbearable thought of parting with his collection of band t-shirts. He was working on abandoning his high school nickname, but in moments of anxiety his mind often let loose the contents that had been most ingrained. His instinct was saying anything at all to help move a situation to its end. It was at times like these that he damned his hippy parents for not indoctrinating him with a good set of social skills during childhood.

Marcy’s glare did not dissipate. When he held out his hand to shake in formality, she shoved both hers behind her back and said, “I’m not touching you. You’ve marked yourself to align with Satan, and I will not pollute my pores with your sin. Furthermore, it would do you well to watch the language that you think to use, particularly in the presence of females. May your soul find salvation soon.”

She broke the glare and continued up to her apartment. Her heels clanged against the metal of each stair, sending an echo to mark each step she took. Marcy was appalled at the audacity of this new neighbor. She may be a God-fearing woman, but she was no idiot. “Childkicker”, “metal as the f-word,”—did he think that was funny? As she set her purse down on her kitchen table, the encounter loitered in her mind.

His voice had trembled, Marcy remembered, and at this recollection she softened. His voice had trembled the way her voice had trembled the morning she accepted her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into her life. Marcy recalled the memory of Father Mitchell dipping her into the

Quilt 37

cool autumn waters of his baptismal river. As she traipsed through this memory, it began to become clear to her that Childkicker was not some distant spawn of Satan; on the contrary, he was a test from the Lord. She knew this because that was what God did, as pointed out by Father Mitchell in last week’s sermon. Like Abraham or Christ himself, Marcy Mannings knew she was undergoing a test. God, ever watchful of her, had finally concluded that Marcy was the same caliber as the Biblical figures she read about each evening. She’d always known that she was, but it was an immensely satisfying feeling to know that the Almighty had recognized this at long last.

Aside from the donut line after mass, men did not approach Marcy. It was not that she was unbearably homely; she applied a modest amount of makeup before leaving her apartment and in general dressed to flatter what few curves God had given her. But there was an atmosphere about Marcy that seemed to repel potential suitors. In large part, this was generated from the presence of religious symbols dangling from her earlobes, her neck, her wrist, and—in the form of a faux-leather satchel embossed with crosses—from her elbow. The general consensus of men seemed to be that Marcy was far too involved in her affair with Jesus to be an easy lay or engaging conversation.

Such a detail led Marcy to the conclusion about Childkicker. The more she thought, the more she slanted toward reasoning that his introduction had in fact been some misconstrued romantic advance, propelled by the power of the Lord in order for Marcy to help a lost young man find his way to the path of holy deliverance.

“Forgive my foolishness.” Marcy clasped her hands and raised her gaze as if the Lord was in her popcorn ceiling. “I am too quick to dismiss the responsibilities you give to me. I accept the task of Childkicker’s conversion. Praise be unto you, oh Lord.”

Marcy was vivified by the duty that she felt she had been given and before she resumed the regularity of praying the Rosary, she propped open the door of her apartment so that she could keep an eye out for Childkicker’s return.

Childkicker, however, would not return until later that evening. He was spending his day hopping through pawnshops in an effort to negotiate sale of the collectible remnants from his heavy metal life. He was ready to become William Finn and abandon the false front that was Childkicker. It had gotten him through life all right so far; it was easier to seem unfriendly than to admit to a crippling social timidity. The natural alignment of his lips into a frown only aided in this. But after his mother banished him from his basement refuge in her home, he quickly came to a realization: being awkward and alone was more dissatisfying when it was constant.

Sitting in front of the television in his apartment each night became more intolerable as the days bore on. He finally reached his breaking point on the afternoon he realized that the only thing he was looking forward to was that night’s Roseanne marathon. And so, unable to settle on any other conclusion, he decided that the pinnacle of happiness must reside in the opposite of him.

As it was, gathering up the courage to haggle a price on his bass guitars and rare vinyl was proving to be a challenge. So Childkicker, ever mindful of stereotype, sat behind the wheel of his Geo Metro and did what he always did when his nerves began to get the best of him: he buckled on his spiked leather bracelets, turned on a death metal album, and headbanged for several minutes while grunting along with the guttural growls of the vocalist.

His tension began to subside through physical release and by the time the track was over, had disappeared nearly entirely. Roused as a result of the ritual, he picked up his box of records and strode into Pawnorama.

Behind the counter stood a wiry man whose bronze nametag announced his identity as “Earl.” He squinted up his face when he noticed Childkicker carrying a box of records. As

38 Quilt

Childkicker shoved his box onto the countertop, Earl gave a half-hearted grunt, “What you got there, kid? Some Beatles? Some nice old rock ‘n roll from daddy’s collection?”

Childkicker began to pull them out as he spoke, “One of only two hundred copies of Nordic Laceration’s debut Screams of Skulls, imported from Norway. Look here, a first release of Slimedog’s Hate Hate Hate signed by the entire band. I have Draconian Orgy’s entire discography, including the hard to find Corroded Sanity of Undead Jesus, which I spent years looking for.”

“Alright,” Earl interrupted. “You’ve got what, fifty records here—” “Ninety-seven.”

“Ninety-seven. I’ll give you fifty bucks for it.”

“Really? But—” Childkicker knew this was in no amount a return on his investment and couldn’t accept it. His nerves were beginning to return, however, at the thought of prolonged bargaining. He had not thought of the possibility that other people did not realize the worth of his collection. He had forgotten to remember that the obscurity of his musical interests meant that his collection was not in particularly high demand. His lack of foresight had been propelled by the thought that a pawn shop would be both faster and easier than selling over the internet, and such a thought may have been valid had he not been selling a stockpile of vinyl unheralded by the general public.

“Take it or leave it.” Earl tapped his pen against the register.

Childkicker was pinned by indecision. He opened his mouth to haggle, but instead began to stutter. “I-I-I d-d—” he cut himself off, and feeling the anxious shame blooming in his cheeks, spat out the easiest thing he could: “Fine.” *** When Childkicker returned to the parking lot of his apartment complex, he did so after visiting four pawn shops and selling one box of records, three guitars, two amplifiers, and half a box of medieval weaponry—each selling for far less than he had hoped. All that remained of his former lifestyle was a faded collection of metal-themed t-shirts and a brick from the Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church that the drummer of Wounded Slime burned down in ’97.

He felt a vague emptiness at having so intensely begun the extinction of a large part of his youth, but he was determined that it was a necessary step to his goal.

He clomped up the stairs, and from her open apartment, Marcy could hear his footsteps.

She had been working on cooking dinner, and in anticipation of Childkicker’s return and conversion, had made an extra serving of tilapia and brown rice. As his shadow came close, Marcy darted to her door and waved.

“Hello . . .Childkicker. I’m so sorry about earlier. I can’t believe I said that to you, I was in some awful mood this afternoon. My name is Marcy. It really is a pleasure to have met you.

Would you like to come in for dinner?”

Childkicker was stunned into silence. He had felt an intense affection for Marcy Mannings since he’d first seen her two weeks before. She had been carrying her groceries from her car and on her way in had stopped to coo to a squirrel on the sidewalk. He had watched from his balcony as she stood talking to it for several minutes. He’d thought it was strange, but as his stare continued, he began to see it as endearing and started piecing together an idealized version of Marcy. For the duration of his youth, he’d fixated on women who subscribed to the metalhead subculture. The only female metalhead at his high school, a girl who’d nicknamed herself Alice Anal, had held his obsession until the day they graduated and she fled west to become a groupie.

But Marcy was different. Marcy had a natural hair color and no piercings. She didn’t blare her radio when she drove and he’d never seen her stumbling drunk. She never came home later

Quilt 39

than eight. She was one of the good, Christian girls his mother had always suggested he settle down with. The more he observed Marcy, the more he realized that she was the opposite of girls like Alice Anal. He assumed, therefore, that she would add further contentment in his quest and as he thought more about his own transformation, he began to think that Marcy Mannings might be one of the keys to his happiness.

But as he stood there in the hall, her approach had come as too much of a surprise for him to answer quickly; he was terrified of making the mistake of earlier and his thoughts refused to compile with any haste. So Marcy grabbed him by the arm and led him into her apartment before he managed to speak a single word.

“I made tilapia.” Marcy felt an acute discomfort at having a man with a pentagram tattoo inside her apartment, but she calmed herself with the belief that the Lord was by her side.

“Please, sit.”

He sat in the chair across from Marcy. His placemat, plate, and napkin were all decorated with Bible verse, and, had Marcy not been running behind on dishwashing, his glass of water would have as well. Childkicker, overwhelmed by the stress of the situation and fixated on observing Marcy up close, was oblivious to these details of his surroundings. He stared at her low forehead, her thickly lined eyebrows, her nose—the right nostril was slightly larger than the left and he found this imperfection charming enough that he would have commented on it, had Marcy not interrupted the idea by sliding a filet onto his plate.

“Thank you,” Childkicker said. He could not imagine why Marcy would invite him in for dinner, but in an anxious scramble for her motivation, he came to the conclusion that Marcy must feel the same interest in him that he had in her. After all, women did not just invite men in for no reason. He knew this, not from personal experience, but from television and films.

With this feeling of preconceived acceptance, he began to fill with confidence as he continued, “Sorry about that ‘metal as fuck thing,’ by the way. I was only joking. It was a bad joke.”

“Oh, no, no, no. I’m ashamed of myself for how rude I was to you. It was entirely uncalled for. We’ve just managed to get off on the wrong foot,” Marcy assured him.

“You’re right,” he spoke with a mouthful of rice and Marcy suppressed a grimace. “But my name isn’t really Childkicker. It’s William. Or Will. Whatever you want. I’m not a metalhead anymore, either, that’s why I was gone all day. I was selling all my old shit.”

“Oh,” Marcy saw this as an excellent sign. “That’s a much nicer name. Why were you selling your, stuff?”

“Well, I’d been living at home and I woke up one day and realized I had to get out and live my own life. It was time to grow up and get outta there, you know?” He was unsure if telling Marcy the truth was a good idea or not, and so he left out the details of his mother forcing him out as an attempt to dislodge his so-called parasitically hermitic lifestyle. Even the vague recollection caused him a twinge of a hurt feeling from the memory of his coming home from his grandmother’s to find his possessions piled in boxes in his room and his mother’s last words to him: “I love you, sweetie, but you’re too old to be sponging all of Mommy’s money away.

Go get a job or you’ll be sleeping in your car god knows where. Call me when you have a nineto-five, we can go out to dinner to celebrate.”

He stuffed the last of the fish in his mouth and dropped his fork to the plate with a clang.

“Well good for you! The world just doesn’t have enough go-getters,” Marcy still had half a plate left, but she felt there were far more important tasks at hand than eating, and so cleared the plates from the table and suggested that he relax on the couch.

Childkicker, when he wasn’t watching Roseanne reruns, had a tendency to spend the other portion of his free time engaged in watching pornography. As he sat on Marcy’s couch, the only thing that pervaded in his thoughts was a montage of plots that had involved incidences of

40 Quilt

couch copulation. His gaze glanced over the religious paintings on the walls, the crucifixes that hung over each door, the Bible on the coffee table, the devotionals and doctrinal literature on the bookshelves, but his brain was not focused enough to register these as clues against his idea of Marcy having invited him in for sex. As this thought continued, his nerves became stirred again. He was not ready for an actual sexual encounter with Marcy and the persisting idea of doing so made him more and more agitated with each passing second. He began to attempt to focus on a polite way to refuse Marcy’s advances, and his foot began twitching against the floor as she sat beside him on the couch and rested her hand on his arm.

“Are you all right?” Marcy asked, noticing Childkicker’s distress. She was empowered by seeing him in this state. She could see that his fidgeting and nervous demeanor was clearly caused by being in the presence of the spirit of God and so she inched closer.

“Fine.” He avoided Marcy’s gaze. He felt his flesh prickling at her touch, and was overwhelmed with the sense that he needed to escape this situation. He still, however, wanted to be around Marcy. It was this paradox that led him to withdraw his arm from her grasp and to avoid defaulting to his standard unfriendly demeanor. Be the new William, he reminded himself, not Childkicker. “Tell me about yourself, Marcy.”

“Well,” Marcy said as she straightened her posture, “I moved here a year and a half ago and am now an active member of Resurrection Ministries. Every Saturday I wake up at four in the morning to help them package food for the homeless. I work as a secretary in the front office of the Sacred Spirit Christian School, although occasionally I get to substitute for a class. But the ministry has really changed my life, William. Do you have a church you attend?”

“No.” “You should come to Resurrection with me tomorrow morning. I was on an awful path before I met Father Mitchell. I was just living life day-by-day, and life is entirely void of any meaning when you don’t have a friend like Jesus by your side. Do you have Jesus by your side or do you intend to suffer an eternity with Satan?”

He wasn’t sure what to say. His Satanist phase had ended at seventeen after a two-year run and he’d never managed to have any animosity lingering against Catholicism. He was rather apathetic about it, as he was toward most subjects. His interest in Satanism had largely been an attempt at gaining the attention of Alice Anal. She’d liked his tattoo and his distant demeanor, but when he couldn’t procure a connection for hard liquor, Alice’s interest dwindled as quickly as it had sprung.

Childkicker decided to be honest with Marcy. “I don’t think so.”

“Let me tell you, Jesus is the best person that’s ever come into my life.” Marcy was a firm believer of this. She had been an official born-again Christian for the past year after a lifetime of what she bitterly referred to as the devil’s influence. Her parents—may God forgive their Hell-bound souls—raised Marcy an atheist. It was only after Marcy had her tenth experience of being dumped (simultaneously her sixth of being cheated on) that Father Mitchell came across her sobbing in the parking lot of the mall and introduced her to a man that would never let her down.

Marcy never had to worry about what Jesus was doing. She had faith in His eternal love for her and the thought of Him indulging Himself in the many female souls frolicking His kingdom never persisted long. Jesus wasn’t like the scum she dated before. Marcy knew she wouldn’t come home to find Jesus leaning over the dining room table with the redhead from down the hall. She’d never find Jesus in the backyard with three women and his pants down.

Jesus would never say he loved her and dump her a week later for a woman with scales tattooed across her breasts. Jesus, with his eternal love for her, would always return her faith.

Marcy also knew that Jesus loved everyone, but she believed that He loved her most deeply

Quilt 41

of all. She saw herself as the most devout, and combined with an attractive appearance and winning personality, she couldn’t imagine a girl that He would love more. And so she spoke to Him as though He were a friend, including with her nightly ritual of Church-sanctioned prayer a personal touch of anecdote.

She would rest under the covers before sleeping, her hands folded and eyes closed, reciting the story of her day. She knew, of course, that Jesus had been watching her and knew everything that had gone on, but she felt it was important to explain her motivations in case He gathered any sort of wrong idea. “Forgive me for any unintentional sins,” Marcy would begin, before recounting her activities: “When I went for a cup of coffee, I did not give the homeless man outside any change, because I wanted to save it for the Church and I was afraid that he looked like someone who was on the side of Satan. You saw him, so certainly you can understand.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but he had an empty carton of cigarettes and nowhere did I see a Bible.”

Marcy felt dirty sitting next to Childkicker after he admitted to walking without Jesus, but she knew that she had been given a Holy Task that she must fulfill and so she continued.

“William, you should open your heart and accept Jesus into it. You seem to me,” she touched a hand to his shoulder, “like a wonderful young man, you know.”

He straightened his posture at her compliment. Of course she would think this. Marcy wasn’t like other girls. She invited him in even after he acted like an idiot. He stared at her plump lips as she spoke and imagined them forming the words “I love you.” He responded, “Maybe. I used to be into Satanism,” he said as he rubbed his tattoo with regret, “but that was really just for a girl. I’ve never thought much about religion.” He began to realize in this moment that Marcy had an underlying desire to convert him, and that, rather than being bothered by their different goals, he considered that this may be what he needed to do in order to achieve his happiness. Marcy was his opposite, he saw. Marcy was, therefore, perfect.

Marcy felt as though her lungs had stopped working when she heard the word “Satanism.”

She felt her fingers begin to twitch and she moved a hand over her heart as though that would stop its frantic pounding. “Oh, my Lord.”

Childkicker made an attempt at calming her shock. “I’m not anymore. It was too complicated.

I never even read all of the literature.”

“Oh, Jesus. Jesus, I need you now,” Marcy said, feeling as though the devil had snaked into her apartment to attempt to corrupt her. She took deep breaths, her arms held out to the side as if to steady her with an invisible entity. Her eyes closed and she sat in silence, waiting for her Savior to wash over her with a wave of calm.

Childkicker did not know what to do. He scratched at the side of his head out of a need to do something, then studied his arm as he tried to find words to say.

Marcy took a long breath and spoke again. “You used to be a Satanist . . . for a girl.”

“She was called Alice Anal, but I never got that far.” Childkicker felt sheepish at the admission of his failure. Alice had been the only girl he’d attempted to pursue, although, aside from the tattoo and the casual satanic name-dropping, he’d never made a real move on her.

“William.” Marcy took a deep breath. “Would you come to Resurrection with me tomorrow morning?”

Childkicker’s heart began pounding. Going out with Marcy Mannings. It was like a date. He was being invited on a date with Marcy Mannings. He wanted to jump in the air and cry out in victory, but instead he stared past her shoulder as he fought the twitching of his lips into a grin. “Alright,” he said.

Marcy did not hide her own triumphant smile. “I’m so happy you’ll come with me. We’ll have your soul saved in no time.”

42 Quilt

*** Resurrection Ministries looked less like a Church and more like a warehouse. Its whitepaneled exterior was void of windows and the only indication of its divine intentions lay in the plastic Nativity scene near the door, the innards of the figurines lit up with neon bulbs.

The gravel beneath the wheels of Childkicker’s car crackled as he jolted into the rocky parking lot. Marcy dozed in the passenger seat, having fallen asleep only after she made sure he had exited off the highway and started down the straight shot of the state road. The palpitations of his heart persisted. He had not said anything but a squeaky “good morning” to Marcy, when she’d knocked on his door earlier. He’d decided to say as little as possible today. He didn’t want another close call.

He glanced over at her now, her head tilted back against the glass and her pale lips parted to reveal tiny teeth. Like a cat, Childkicker thought as he indulged in the moment.

He grew worried that she was awake, that this was some kind of test, and wished he was alone and could calm himself with a thrashing musical blare. He resigned himself to tapping the steering wheel and contemplating what he was going to do at a church.

They were nearly forty-five minutes early. There was another parked car, and Childkicker watched as its driver hobbled into the church alone. He didn’t know whether he should wake Marcy or not. He’d thought that she’d wake up when he’d turned the car off, or that she’d subconsciously recognize the turns or the amount of driving time, but instead she remained slumped in sleep. He thought maybe he should wake her, and moved his hand to, but wasn’t certain if he should shake her or tap her or caress her, so he dropped it back into his lap and stared at her profile.

“Marcy,” he said.

She didn’t so much as twitch. He unbuckled and leaned closer to check that she was alive, his affirmation in the steady movement of her chest with each breath.

He dropped back against his seat. He had never been to a church. He didn’t see the point, really, but now that he was here, his curiosity prodded him to explore on his own while Marcy slept.

The slamming shut of his car door woke her. Marcy jumped out, checking that her hair was flat with her reflection in the window.

“Are we late?” Being late to church wasn’t a written sin, but Marcy was certain that it was a sin nonetheless.

“No,” Childkicker told her, disappointed that she had disturbed his plan. “I was just going to look around, at the stuff. The church and . . .” He trailed off, not knowing how to finish his sentence.

“Oh! I’ll show you around, I know this place like I know the Bible,” Marcy said. “Which is to say, I know it very well. C’mon, I’ll give you a great tour.”

He was disappointed in the lack of wandering he could do now, but he did want to be with her, and so he followed her into the front door of Resurrection Ministries.

When she swung the door open, the odor of Lysol was the first assault his nostrils encountered.

There was a counter for a secretary to sit behind, although it was unoccupied for the moment, and sheets of printer paper with Bible quotes were taped onto the yellow walls.

“This is the book of Christ Crusaders.” Marcy held up a binder full of notebook paper.

“When you start coming regularly you can sign this, but it might not be right for you to do that now. Have you been baptized?”

“I think so.” He assumed he had, figuring that since he’d never heard of anyone who wasn’t baptized, the chances were fine that his parents had followed suit.

“What about communion? Confirmation? Probably not, since your parents let you become

Quilt 43

a Satanist.” Marcy left hardly any space for him to respond. “I don’t know, William, we’ll talk to Father Mitchell. He’ll help you get holy and right, but come on, this is only the entry room.

You can buy a t-shirt here if you want, but since Edna isn’t at the desk right now you’ll have to do it later.”

Marcy led him into the back of the church, the floor altering to a magenta carpet up the main aisle. There must have been at least a hundred rows of oak pews on each side, leading up to a wide pulpit. An LED display hung behind it, scrolling through announcements of events and the occasional phrase of inspiration. Candles were stacked to its left like an Aztec temple. Frames of stained glass were nailed onto the white walls of the church, although they held only abstract shapes rather than religious symbolism. Childkicker ambled behind Marcy, bewildered. In the very middle of the room was what looked like a birdbath, and here she stopped.

“This,” Marcy’s voice echoed as she dipped in a finger and blessed herself, “is holy water. I don’t think you should touch it.”

“What’s it for?” he asked, watching a lone droplet clasping to her forehead.

“To wash away sins.” She could hardly believe the extent of his ignorance, but reminded herself that it was her duty to help embed the Lord into his heart. “Sins and evil. Maybe you should use some, after all.”

He was confused, and seeing him not moving, Marcy grabbed his hand and plunged it into the water. She directed it over his body. Forehead, chest, shoulder, shoulder.

His heart leapt with the synchronous feeling of panic and delight. The sensation of her soft flesh grasping his was better than his mind could have imagined. He would’ve traded front row tickets to the farewell show of his favorite metal band for this moment to never end. So as she lowered his arm back down, he did the boldest thing he’d ever done.

Childkicker grabbed Marcy’s hand.

Marcy froze. He was trying to make a move on her, this Satan-worshipping, pentagramstained boy. This was a test. This was a test from the Lord. She inhaled deeply as his clammy palm clenched her fingers into a pile. She reminded herself that the conversion of Childkicker was a task that was given to her, and that she must do whatever is necessary to bring another sheep to her shepherd. She softened her expression and breathed slowly.

Now that he had her hand he wasn’t sure what next to do. But she didn’t pull her hand away, and so, as he remained uncomfortably aware of the heavy pounding of his heart, he thought he’d say something romantic while they were in the dim ambiance.

“You have a nice nose. I like your nostrils, they’re cute,” he said. It was the compliment he’d intended to give the night before.

“Thank you.” Marcy didn’t know how else to respond. She’d never met anyone as awkward as him. The Lord must have great faith in her, she figured, to assign her this duty.

She composed herself with her belief and pulled Childkicker down the aisle. “You like music, don’t you?” she asked. “I saw you carrying all those records yesterday.”

“Yes.” He could hardly believe her hand was still in his. He had a strange grip on it, but she wasn’t protesting and he wasn’t going to let go to readjust. He was holding her hand. The thought made him smile to himself as she stopped beside a row of instruments.

She saw his smile and supposed it was at the sight of the instruments. “Can you play any of these?”

“The guitar. And the drums. Only a little of the piano,” he lied, only knowing the basics of the guitar, but eager to impress her with some sort of assumed skill. He knew that girls, after all, loved men with musical ability.

“That’s fantastic!” Marcy had an idea. “I sing the hymns during mass. Father Mitchell added

44 Quilt

all sorts of instruments to spice up the music. But only our piano player is left. The others moved away, or in the case of our tambourine player, died. We haven’t gotten to hear drums or a guitar in months. So since you’re my guest of honor, you can play the guitar for today’s service.”

Childkicker instinctively dropped her hand to rub his own hands together nervously. He’d never played for anyone except Wild Bob’s Teach Yourself Guitar on the television during his pre-pubescent years. He couldn’t play for a congregation of people. He wanted to refuse and retreat, but Marcy was a girl taking interest in him and having little faith that it would happen again, he swallowed the pile of nervous spit that had gathered on his tongue and nodded.

“Okay.”

The pews were slowly filling up and as he looked around his anxiety grew. A middle-aged man in a white robe, his hair the color of ground paprika, approached Marcy’s side and her grin grew until nearly all her teeth were exposed.

It was Father Mitchell, and after a prolonged embrace, Marcy introduced the two men. Like Marcy, Father Mitchell seemed pleased that Childkicker was working toward salvation.

As Childkicker watched Father Mitchell retreat, it was as though a mental floodgate had suddenly been opened and a Niagara of realization gushed into the forefront of his mind. The recollection of the past day pooled into the awareness that he was an idiot. He watched Marcy adjusting the microphones and it dawned on him his delusion. They hadn’t gotten off to a bad start, he’d blown it. Marcy only gave him a second chance because she was some kind of Jesus fangirl and wanted him to be the same. Marcy Mannings did not love him. In realizing the foolishness of himself, he perceived his futility. He felt in the moment a mortifying sense of despair. He was a dimwit. Becoming the opposite of himself would not give him happiness, he realized. He could not sit through an hour in this church with the shame of his inanity festering inside. He turned to leave, but by now nearly all of the seats in the pews had been filled and despite the impossibility, he felt as though every person in the church would know his denseness. He was an idiot and he was trapped. He wanted nothing more than to withdraw to his car and the comfort of his metal music, but he felt imprisoned in the chair beside the guitar.

The piano began to play and the murmurs of the parishioners softened.

“This is your music,” Marcy whispered, handing him a sheet. “We’re playing this one first.

Are you ready?”

She saw him nod and knew he must be nervous. He’d been nervous the entire time, she could tell. She knew it wasn’t because of her. It was just the presence of the Lord, helping to let Childkicker’s guard down and Jesus in. She felt lifted by her effort to save his soul. She knew Jesus was watching her now, an affectionate smile forming on his lips. He might be nudging one of the apostles, pointing her out and saying, “See that girl down there? She’s wonderful and I love her like I love no one else.”

She began to sing the opening hymn as she heard the twang of the guitar join in. Her voice was off-tune, but it was always and the crowd had grown accustomed to it. Marcy was unaware, and, her eyes closed and feeling surrounded by the spirit of God, she wouldn’t have cared regardless.

Childkicker strummed, watching the children in the crowd cover their ears. A few of the older adults looked at him, their heads nodding approvingly, and he was grateful that the song only used a simple melody. He could do one thing right, and at seeing this, his nerves began to fade. As the song neared its end, he felt a burst of inspiration. He had nothing left to lose. The crowd enjoyed his playing. Marcy only cared about his soul.

So as the notes on the sheet ended and the priest reached the pulpit, instead of silencing

Quilt 45

playing, Childkicker stood up, a foot on the chair and continued strumming with an increasing speed. He played no notes in particular, but began to thrash his head as he attempted the best rendition of a metal guitar solo that he could on an acoustic guitar.

The church was silent. Marcy’s mouth hung agape, horrified. She felt as though she had brought Satan himself into this sacred assembly. She felt nauseous as she stared at the performance. There were titters and confused whispering throughout the audience, but not a single person moved to stop Childkicker from his eight-and-a-half minute solo.

He stopped only when the last of the strings had snapped and looked up to see the stupefied expression of the parish. He started laughing, hardly believing what he’d done, but he’d done it and it was over and he was still alive.

Letting the guitar drop to the floor, Childkicker walked out the side exit of the church and into the fresh air of a new morning.

46 Quilt

Ghazal of the Jealous Sun Amanda Sieradzki Honorable Mention—Poetry

I never burn, just love too much. Salted envy paints my sky moonstruck.

Laying on granules of glass; did the tides pull you in? Wash you up moonstruck?

Warring with heat, you took everything off. Stood up the burning world for moon-lit backdrop.

Pricking fire in blood to sink the servile seagulls stuck, caught in the moon: struck.

Fancy time as flares. Desire roping you close enough to melt wax wings.

Steam washed ashore in icy mood beams. Wouldn’t fire fancy us all moonstruck?

Fearful fits of drowned blue, bruising the bark and pulling down starfruit.

Black rings sprayed ‘round the mouths of palms, beckoning to you, Mr. Moonstruck.

Warm bathwater refused, you drown down to the frozen unknown. There’s no saving you now.

Sinker you deep into moray’s mouths who swallow your spine. I pine away, moonstruck.

I beg you, bring to boil what night cooled away. Snap out of tidal trance. Chance catching a ray.

Stay away from Artemis. Boil. Bask in warmblooded noon away from midnight’s moonstruck.

She’ll swallow you whole. You’ll wallow alone inside her bluish scars, pockmarked insides; Sucked right up into constricting straws of gravity, paralyzing beams of moonstruck.

Helios’ favorite daughter eclipsed by a celestial empty cell. No ultra violet kiss. It’s only a phase.

Would you escape summer’s sweet blood orange for night’s foreplay? For the moonstruck?

Come pillowed February you’ll miss me. A cage of dirty cotton balls keeps me locked away.

Not even your precious moonlight will peak through, leaving you crazed: left alone, moonstruck.

Quilt 47

Sufi

Tamara Turk Oil

48 Quilt

Joseph of Arimathea Derrick Austin Poetry

After the miracles there is blood

and an ugly body no father could love. Joseph can’t believe this strata of bruise

and shattered bone. His hand trembles against the relief of His face.

Despite the bramble, disbelieving,

he combs brittle hair, reaching deep into those reeds beaten into scrolls of loss.

Scrubbing the flesh with olive oil, he is awed by his grumbling stomach. What fills me never fails

to abandon, he thinks. The body beneath me, battered and empty like a basin is more perfect for it.

Myrrh-dusted, he strokes the wound below His ribs. It smells like the blacksmith’s furnace,

the fittings of a lock on an old door. He wonders at the mouth-sized hole,

cauterized by air, crusted over like a split fruit, a sweet scent dribbling out like a fig

in the dust, swift and sudden joy— in three days, sealed, memorial.

Quilt 49

desert cactus Laura Theobald Poetry

if i’m warm beside you, i must be a heater. sometimes i’m a heater and sometimes i’m a photograph: when i can stay. then i love you like a mouth, a mouth that loves you like a hand. then i fade—so gentle sometimes you want to cover me with a black cloth. i must be like the galleries: rows and rows of frames we peer into and step away— peer and step away—or i must learn to close like one. i must be a heater on the fritz when i’m warm beside you: you complain about the heat, remove your clothes, close your mouth, and start humming like a busted pipe. there is a small desert cactus. it throws little fuchsia tantrums like quick fires you can spot at a distance on a dark enough night. it must be a beacon for me on those nights, a way through the shrubs on the backs of your hands, when i am not.

50 Quilt

Drying Out

Conner McDonough Fiction

Drying out is never any fun and this was the first time I was doing it. Frank took me shopping at the Price Chopper for medicine and water and other “necessities” as he called them. He told me that all was going to be well, as long as I didn’t get the DT’s.

“The what?” I asked.

“The DT’s. Delirium tremens; you know, the heebie jeebies, the fear, the rats.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Look man, I’m not in the mood for any of your bullshit.”

“It’s no bullshit! Delirium tremens is rare, but if you get it you can develop schizophrenia, hallucinate, even die.”

Another reason not to dry out.

“The only thing I think you’re going to have to worry about,” he began as he grabbed trash bags from the shelf, “is all the other symptoms of withdrawal.”

He handed me the trash bags and I eyed them. “You’re going to be puking a lot, so we have to stock up now.”

Frank was a good guy. He used to work at the paper mill near Black River until he was laid off for drinking on the job. Every guy who worked at the paper mill drank on the job, it was just that Frank drank a little bit more. He was also one of the guys operating the press, making his job a little more important than, say, the foreman or the inspector.

He had jumped off the bridge three miles from our house and was swept onto the banks about 400 feet downriver. That was a damned miracle. Most people in this part of upstate can count on one hand how many people have survived the Black River. Since then he’d dried out and was trying to help me.

I think he felt bad about my pop and wanted to help me avoid the dipsomania that put pop under ice in the nearby pond.

“You know, Henry, I’m real glad you’re doing this. After what happened to your pa, and all.”

“I know, Frank.”

“Well, as they say, third time’s the charm, right?”

“I guess so,” I murmured, kicking the wheel on the shopping cart. I noticed I was getting real antsy lately. “What are the symptoms again?”

“Of what?”

“Of withdrawal, you Canuck.”

“There’s the sweats, no sleep, loss of appetite, restlessness, diarrhea, puking, hostility, depression. The list is pretty long and I can’t remember all of it. I left the book in the car and marked off the ones I experienced when I gave it up. I’ll let you borrow it and you can mark the ones you’re experiencing, yeah?”

It sounded okay to me. Frank was a good guy, you know, a real mensch. He was a big Quebecois, too, who wore a slouch hat and had to wear a diaper because of the ulcer he developed from drinking. Luckily, I hadn’t hit that point yet. All I needed to do was a quick swipe with some paper and I was as good as new. Blood-free.

We finished shopping and Frank paid for everything, flirting with the cashier behind the counter.

Quilt 51

“You know you look just like La Bolduc?”

She blushed a little and it was true, she did look a little like Madame Bolduc.

“I’m not sure who that is,” she said.

“Shame,” said Frank as he and I grabbed the bags and set out into the windblown parking lot.

Small snow dunes had piled up around the light posts and thin wisps were blowing across the salted asphalt like the thin streams of sand I’d seen blowing across the deserts on the television. The sun was just beginning to drop behind the black skeletons of trees, reaching their bony arms to the top of the sun and helping force it down.

We climbed into Frank’s truck and he started it, letting it warm up so it wouldn’t stall on the way back to his place. He figured I ought to dry out there. He said that ma, God bless her, would get her ti Henri and drink if I screamed loud enough and made things difficult, which I was bound to do.

“Who knows,” he said as we pulled onto the bleached road just south of Watertown, “maybe once you get clean you can give Valerie a call again. I’m sure she’d love to hear that you kicked the bottle.”

“Maybe,” I said. I figured I’d give her a call sometime soon.

52 Quilt

You Can Only Rise From Rock Bottom Shannon Kenny

Cigarettes, PVC, spray paint, metal, and blood bags

Quilt 53

Tone of the Oaks

Micheal Angelo Rumore Creative Non-Fiction

Being semi-retired from the whole Rock’n’Roll thing, I found Skipper’s Smokehouse in Tampa the only venue worth relapsing in. For being stuck a city with a deteriorating live music scene, Skippers has survived as other clubs died off. Storied venues like the old RockIt Club are no more. More recently, New Port Richey’s Bourbon Street closed its doors. The Masquerade, an Ybor City venue once accessible to local bands became the upscale pay-to-play Ritz. The Tampa musician has long been suffering as access to venues shrinks and the ones still standing can barely afford to stay in business, much less pay the bands a fair wage. But Skippers, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, stands as proof that a venue can survive and treat its musicians with respect. And Skipper’s has done so by simply refusing to change.

Last October I once again found myself at the rusty and dirty Skipperdome, the affectionate name for the venue portion of Skipper’s. A smattering of bayou bluesmen, aging hippies, and young hipsters congregated underneath the towering oaks. The air was musty from the trees, the wooden benches, the wooden shack that housed the stage. Just as the tone of a guitar’s wood grows sweeter with age, the wear of Skipper’s wooden exterior grows more charming as it deteriorates.

The house was sold out, as expected, for WMNF’s “Do Me Like That,” a tribute to the music of Tom Petty. Seventeen local bands, my band Hat Trick Heroes included, were to play Tom Petty songs from six through midnight in their own style. We had coordinated carefully to avoid repeating songs as to spare the audience from hearing “Free Falling” seventeen times.

WMNF 88.5, Tampa’s local community radio station, has been holding such tribute shows for years. Hat Trick Heroes had become something of perennial tribute show favorites, my theory being because we played the loudest. Our first tribute show was to Bob Dylan in 2004.

“Do Me Like That” was our ninth tribute since.

I went up to the ticket counter. The regular guy was running the door. He seemed to have his hands full with people trying to get in. Though the show was sold out, he was allowed to let a certain number of people in as others left. I walked in inconspicuously and went behind the ticket counter, putting my hand on his shoulder.

“You cut your hair!” he said.

“I did. It’s too hot around here,” I replied.

“Well, damn, you look like a college professor or something.”

I laughed. “I wont get tenure as a rock’n’roller, that’s for sure.”

“Let me see your wrist.” He slapped a wristband on me that read: VIP. I saluted him and went to mingle amongst the Petty fans.

Gracing the Skipperdome stage was Charlie Souza & the New Tropics, a vestige of the influential 1960s Tampa-based band The Tropics. Charlie Souza was in a unique position to pay tribute to Tom Petty’s music—he was the original bassist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Tom Petty, a Gainesville native, was a fan of The Tropics, having seen them live whenever they travelled to Gainesville. After Tom Petty’s original group Mudcrutch fell apart, Petty approached Souza about playing bass. Souza agreed and, with Petty, left Tampa for Shelter Records, a converted house on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, collaborating on what would ultimately become Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ self-titled debut album. Souza can be heard playing saxophone on the album in the song “Hometown Blues.”

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I ran into my younger brother Santino, guitarist of Hat Trick Heroes, and he mentioned that my parents and my grandparents were eating in the restaurant. I’m a sucker for deep-fried bayou sludge, so I went to sit with them. The restaurant, a shack beside the Skipperdome, operates separately from the venue, but it’s definitely an integral part of the Skipper’s experience.

I found the table with my parents and grandparents. Don and Lauren, two of my grandparents’ friends from the retirement community, were also there. “Come here and give me a kiss,” said Lauren boisterously. I hugged her and she smooched my cheek, smearing red lipstick down the side of my face. I rubbed it off with one hand and shook Don’s hand with the other. Don and Lauren had become our most faithful groupies. I don’t think they’d missed a show for over a year. It was quite a sight watching them from stage. Lauren especially, as she pumps her fist in the air, her old hips swerving to the backbeat, getting kicks she never could on bingo night.

“What to drink?” asked the waitress, wearing a tye-dyed Skipper’s tee.

“Black coffee,” I said.

“We’ll have to make some, I guess.”

I suppose most don’t order the coffee at seafood houses.

To eat, I ordered the Cajun Popcorn Po-Boy, my Skipper’s staple. A take on the traditional N’awlins po-boy of fried popcorn shrimp sandwich on french bread, Skipper’s po-boy substitutes the shrimp for a mountain of fried crawfish. I considered ordering the gator tail bites, also delicious, but decided against it. It was too filling, and I don’t like performing on a heavy stomach. Plus, local singer-songwriter Rebecca Pulley ruined them for me years ago.

She was wasted during the tribute to protest music, hovering over my plate, asking me to spare more “gatorade bites.”

The coffee, mixed with pre-show nervousness, went right through me and I took up to opportunity to visit Skipper’s most interesting feature: the men’s bathroom1.

The toilets are nothing special or anything. Hell, they’re not even very clean. But Skipper’s has the most engaging bathroom wall I’ve ever seen. Scrawled on the multi-colored walls are witticisms for the ages. Consider the proclamation written above the largest toilet stall: “I’d rather have a half a bottle in front of me then a full frontal lobotomy.”

Then there are passive aggressive debates over, for example, Eric Clapton’s religious persuasion: “Clapton isn’t Godless.”

There are also strange left/right political debates: “Yee-haw is NOT a foreign policy!” Or: “Vote for commies—Obama/Clinton.”

Even aspiring poets:

Here I sit

Feeling some Pain and Shock

When from my butt

Comes John McCain’s cock

I’m obviously a lib as you can tell

I need Republican cock

To give my butthole hell!

All in all, a charming panorama of American diversity. *** I was sitting on one of the oak benches reading over print-outs of Tom Petty lyrics. I’m notoriously bad at remembering words, usually resorting to mumbling or making up what I don’t remember. Tom Petty’s lyrics just weren’t sticking. I wished I could ask him what in the 1

Unfortunately, I cannot vouch for the womens’.

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hell lines like “You never said you had no longer to” or “If two is one I might as well be three” mean.

In between bands WMNF program director Lee Courtney, better known as “Flee,” was on stage pushing raffle tickets. Flee has spearheaded almost every WMNF tribute show and served as the perennial MC, dressing as whatever artist is being paid tribute to. This time he had a long blonde wig and dark sunglasses, ala Petty. I pushed to the side of the stage to catch him.

“Hat Trick!” Flee exclaimed.

“I’m glad everything worked out at the station,” I said. I was referring to a recent episode where Flee was laid off by WMNF after a bout of poor fundraising, only to be reinstated after miracle donations flowed in. Flee was well-loved by the Tampa music community.

“Eh, everything’s alright,” he said, his jovial demeanor dying down. “For now.”

It must have really been tough times in public radio to bring down old Flee’s enthusiasm like that. But then the next band, Experimental Pilot, signaled that they were ready and Flee brightened up, darting back to the stage to introduce them.

Amongst the backstage fervor, our drummer Greg Costa had arrived. Hat Trick’s regular drummer Chris Peters was stuck working three jobs in Des Moines (long story), so Costa, an old friend, filled in. Costa was a pro, but a fifteen minute Tom Petty blitz was about all he could handle at this point in his rehabilitation. He had gotten in an accident with his back concerning a flight of stairs. And this was after his basement full of vintage drums in Nashville flooded and his wife left him. But I had the utmost faith. Costa was as solid a drummer as any band could ask for.

“I’ve got my doctor coming,” Greg said. “Tell the doorman to let in the hippy chiropractor.”

“Do you know how many hippy chiropractors there probably are in that crowd?”

“I’m going to need them,” Greg said, clutching his back through his black-leather vest. *** Soon nine o’clock rolled around and we were set to go on. Changeover between bands at Skipper’s tribute shows were a mad rush. Each band, in the cramped backstage quarters, had only twelve minutes to get their equipment ready. And the band leaving the stage is never in any hurry to get off. But the show must go on, as the saying goes. I was more or less used to the grind, but the lyrics just wouldn’t stick. I had my bass slung around my shoulder, tuned and everything, but still I was reading the lyrics. “You ready to go?” asked the stage hand.

“No, uh, yes,” I muttered. “You got any scotch tape?”

I ended up taping the lyrics to the microphone stand. A couple in the front took this as cheating and shouted, “I know the lyrics to every Tom Petty song. Why don’t you just ask me?”

I ignored them and soon Flee was introducing us. “The place seems to always come alive when these guys play,” he said. “Give it up for Hat Trick Heroes!”

Costa counted it off and we went into “Fooled Again,” which we jammed out gratuitously. I didn’t miss a lyric and didn’t even have to ask my front row friends for help. *** Local treasures like Skipper’s should not come and go lightly. They are harbingers of local culture and local history not easily documented. I mean, who remembers Doc Lovitt’s bluesromp of “Folsom Prison Blues” at the Johnny Cash tribute? Or Catherine Kelly and Sons of Hippies ripping through “She’s So Heavy” at the Beatles tribute? Names like Freight Train Annie, Tailgunner Joe and the Earls of Slander, Ronny Elliot. Skipper’s is the last significant bloc of Tampa Bay’s musical culture. It cannot be allowed to fall like Tampa’s former popular venues. The names will die with it.

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Elementary Fundamentals Cliff Klein

Latex on Wood Board

Quilt 57

Crossing the Rubicon Ashley Eakin Honorable Mention—Poetry

An ice cube an interruption in your ripple I lie warming my hands on your chest catching my fingers in the curls like soft, little hooks.

A hair on my tongue disrupts the deafening pleasure of touching my toes to your thigh sending chills that amount to a half-conscious smile and then vanish.

You rest in the smell of rose hips and remnants of cigarette smoke sticking to your fingertips and lips that taste of cheap liqour.

I take it inthe morning taking shape around us questioning its ability to reach us but instead collecting in unseen crooks beneath your bed.

The illusion lessens as we lie like this allowing the sheets to form treacherous shapes that awake you and suggest that I leave.

Outside, the air is warm and thick forewarning us of the approaching solstice slicking back your hair in perfect curves.

The wind wrinkles your flame then licks it into shape again dry licks that overwhelm me and force me to spitall of you in a single emission that is swept into stains on the ground.

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To Be Wise Is To Be Wealthy Shannon Kenny

Acrylic and Charcoal on Paper

Quilt 59

Roman Candles

Conner McDonough Fiction

When he got back from the war, my father spent every Fourth of July in the bathtub with the Rottweiler.

He never talked about why he did it; as soon as the heave and pop of aluminum-tube and labor red mortars launched from the cul-de-sac, he’d follow the dog into the bathroom and sit in the tub with her. He said he loved her and wanted her to feel safe.

Mom and Liz and I would sit on the curb and point to the explosions above us and laugh and stomp our feet in excitement.

An hour later, dad would have sweat stains under the armpits and on the center of his shirt as he left the bathroom, trying to coax my dog out with promises of treats that she knew, or at least I’d imagine she knew, would only be worth it if another rocket did not shriek across the roof of the house. When the occasional thump-boom went off in the distance, she and my dad would look at each other, waiting for any signal to return to the tub.

“Sorry, guys,” dad would say, wringing his hands, “just looking out for the Maggie-dog here.” He’d give her a pat on the side and she’d mournfully look up at him.

I never asked him about it, because I knew it was uncomfortable for him to talk about it in front of mom and Liz. Hell, Liz was so young anyway—she would always laugh when someone accidentally dropped a heavy book on the tile floor, making dad jump.

We figured he’d never come out for fireworks again.

On a Fourth about two years ago, after having a few beers, he and I stepped out to the front porch to drink a few more. He said he needed to do it sooner or later.

We drank the beers and he relaxed a little and became chatty. We talked about mom, Liz, the dog, work, how school was going, how life was going. The sun fell behind the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and he laughed and slapped his knee when I told him the joke about Brendan Behan trying to drink Canada dry.

“You know,” he said looking up at the film of clouds in the night, “I don’t think they’re going to do it tonight. Too many clouds. How are people supposed to see the show?”

“I don’t know, pop.”

A wheeze shot from the mortar tube down the street and there was a great explosion of streaming blue and white light, sparks and all, and the air was thick with the rotten-egg stench of sulfur.

The smile he had slowly stretched out and down into a tight-lipped stern expression.

“It’s okay, pop,” I said, “just fireworks.”

The booms became more frequent and sometimes there was the sizzle of hot spark-trailed cardboard bodies over the roof of the porch and it sounded just like grease frying in a pan.

It was a hell of a sight: rockets exploding what seemed like only a few feet over the house, shaking the windows and throwing the ribcage around until the heart was beating with the same flame-driven fury that controlled the fireworks.

The children next door ran excitedly through their front yard. They wildly fired off Roman candles into the street, first launching a red star and then a green star, then repeated the same color scheme. The candles made a low shoomp, shoomp as the stars were fired into asphalt, bouncing into storm drains and gutters.

“It sounds like...” dad began before trailing off.

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“Sounds like what?”

“Indirect fire. You know, incoming artillery with no specific target. Just to scare us, keep us up.” His eyes glazed over and the bursts of sparks and fire reflected off of them.

“Pop?”

“I’m just going to go in and see how the dog’s doing,” he said as he stood up from the chair and walked in through the front door.

The night continued to explode before me.

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Gare de Lyon Sam Burns

House Paint

62 Quilt

Trap Door

Kathleen Kreiser Fiction

“You’re handling this Nicholas.” She sounded angry. “I don’t care. Just tell the little bitch you have to be with Christina today.” She walked back and forth from the counter to the fridge.

Her high heels made a clomping noise. “I don’t care, Nicholas. That hamster is going in the ground tonight.”

She didn’t know I was listening.

I looked at Cookie lying in the woodchips. His mouth was open. I don’t know how he died, but it happened yesterday night. My lips were salty from crying.

She hung up the phone. The high heel clomps got louder. “Christina, honey,” she knelt down. “Daddy’s going to come over tonight to see you. He promised to help you buy a new hamster.”

I tasted the salt on my lips again. “We have to have a funeral.”

“A funeral?” she asked.

“Yes.” I was surprised she didn’t know. “Cookie died. So, he needs a funeral.”

“Honey, hamsters don’t have funerals. Only people have funerals.”

I sucked my bottom lip and bit down.

“Fine.” She looked tired. “We’ll have a funeral for Cookie.”

“We need a coffin,” I told her.

“Tell Daddy to take care of it.” *** I saw Daddy’s new car in front of our house. Mommy calls it his “James Bond car.” It only has two seats. I stood near the door and waited for him to ring the bell, so I could let him in.

He hugged me. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

I wanted to cry again, but tried not to. “We’re going to have a funeral.”

He smiled and did something weird with his eyebrows.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

He looked at Mommy. “A funeral for a hamster?”

“Yes. Cookie died, so we have to have a funeral,” I told him.

Mommy crossed her arms and looked back at Daddy. “You’re handling this, Nicholas. Find yourself a coffin.”

Daddy made a coffin out of a shoebox. I put in cotton balls from the bathroom, so that Cookie would be comfortable. “Don’t tell Mommy I used them all,” I told him.

He winked. “I’ll buy her some more.” He put the lid on the shoebox and tape on the sides, so that it wouldn’t ever come off. “Come on. Let’s get Mommy for the funeral.” We went into the backyard and Daddy dug a hole in the dirt with the big shovel. He got his suit a little dirty.

Mommy came out with the blanket from the couch wrapped around her. She gave me my blue sweatshirt.

“I’m not cold,” I told her.

“Honey, it’s chilly out.”

“No. I told you, I’m not cold.”

Daddy took off his jacket and put it on me. “Mommy’s right, Sweetheart, It’s getting pretty cold out.”

I rolled up my sleeves and took the coffin from Daddy. I put it in the hole. Daddy went to

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get the shovel.

“Wait,” I shouted. “Say something.”

“Like what, Sweetheart?”

I pulled at his arm. “Just something. Please.”

He coughed a little and clapped his hands together in front of him. He looked at Mommy again. “A eulogy for a hamster?”

She put her hands on her hips.

“Okay. I get it,” he said. “Hmm… Cookie was a good hamster, I suppose. He was clean.

He made Christina very happy. And today we lay him to rest.” He looked at Mommy.

“Enough?”

“Christina?” she asked, “Do you want to say anything else?”

“No.” I walked to the grave and picked up a handful of dirt. I looked at the coffin and let the dirt fall in. “God bless Cookie. May he rest in peace.” I knelt down like we do in church and did the father-son-holy-ghost with my right hand.

I heard Mommy say, “Nicholas, please.” She sounded angry.

“Now you go,” I told them.

Mommy went first. The blanket she was wearing got in the grave. She knelt down and said, “God bless Cookie.” Then she got up and came back.

Daddy knelt down and said “God bless Cookie.” He was smiling. I didn’t know why. He got the shovel and filled in the rest of the grave. We went inside and Mommy went to the kitchen.

I gave Daddy his jacket.

He put it on and called in to her, “Okay, Adrienne. I’m leaving now.” He hugged me again and said, “Sweetheart, I gotta go now. But I’ll see you this weekend, all right? Maybe we’ll go to the arcade again? Or we can get a new hamster?”

“Can you stay for dinner?” I asked him.

“Depends. What’s Mommy cooking?”

The pot in the kitchen was smoking. “Spaghetti,” she yelled.

I made a cross-eyed face. “Again?”

Daddy laughed. “Eating a lot of spaghetti lately?” I nodded. “I’m sorry. I can’t stay tonight, Christina. Maybe another time.” He kissed the top of my head and shouted a goodbye to Mommy. He got in his James Bond car and drove away. I sat at the dinner table and Mommy put a plate of spaghetti and red sauce down for me.

“I’m not hungry,” I said. I got up and went to my room. *** Daddy picked me up Saturday morning. I waited at the window until he rang the doorbell.

I let him in. Tasha was waiting in the car.

“Where’s Christina supposed to sit?” Mommy asked. “On your lap?”

“There’s a seatbelt in the middle. We sit three across. Relax, I thought of that.”

Daddy opened the car door. I climbed in between him and Tasha. I didn’t like riding in the car with Tasha. Her hair always blew in my face.

“Hi, Christina,” she said. Her voice reminded me of a cartoon.

“Hi.” “I love your little dress.”

“Thank you.”

“How’s school going? Any boyfriends?”

She always asked that. I thought it was gross. I didn’t answer and pretended I didn’t hear.

“Christina’s going to marry that boy from the Disney movie we saw,” Daddy said. He winked at me and they both laughed. I was angry again.

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Daddy stopped in front of the Blockbuster. “Okay, Nick. I’ll leave you here.” Tasha picked up her purse and Daddy stopped in front of the video store where she worked.

“Sweetheart, stay here. I’m just going to drop off Tasha. I’ll be right back.”

I moved over into Tasha’s seat and put on the seatbelt. I saw Daddy kiss Tasha goodbye. I said, “Eww,” out loud. *** Daddy got back in the car and we dove to the pet store. I put on his sunglasses. “You look like a bug,” he said. I wore them into the store.

“Where are the hamsters?” I asked the lady.

“With the rodents in the back cages.”

There were thirty-seven hamsters. I counted them.

“Which one do you want, Sweetheart?”

I picked an orange one and named him “Bubbles.” *** “Wonderful,” Mommy said when she saw Bubbles. “Thanks, Nicolas.” She didn’t sound happy.

“Let’s put him in my room.” I pulled Daddy’s hand.

“I suppose he’ll be my responsibility until it’s time for another funeral, right?” she asked.

Mommy followed us upstairs. I put Bubbles in Cookie’s old cage and gave him some hamster food.

“Look, Adrienne. It makes her so happy.”

Mommy rolled her eyes. I get in trouble for doing that.

“Well I better go get Tasha now.” Daddy picked up his sweater and checked the clock. “I’m late.” He kissed my forehead. “Bye, Christina. Love you.” I followed him down the stairs. “See you next week.”

I crossed my arms and looked at Mommy. “We’re having spaghetti again tonight aren’t we?” *** After dinner, while Mommy was washing the dishes, I went outside to visit Cookie. I sat down Indian-style.

“Bubbles is living in your cage now,” I told him. “He’s very nice so far. Daddy got him for me.” All the flowers were dead because it was too cold. I broke off a piece of the holly bush and put it over the grave. “I miss you.”

It was too cold to stay outside any longer. *** When I woke up the next morning, Bubbles wasn’t moving. He was lying on his stomach in the woodchips, but I couldn’t tell if his mouth was open. He had knocked over his food dish.

I screamed and Mommy came in. “He’s dead.”

She sat down on my bed and hugged me. “I’m so sorry, Honey. I can’t believe it either. He must have been sick.”

I wiped my eyes. “I need a tissue.”

Mommy brought the box from my dresser and pulled one out. “It’s gonna be alright. He’s in heaven with Cookie now.”

I blew my nose. “We have to have another funeral,” I reminded her.

She scrunched her lips together, but said, “Okay. Whatever you want.”

“And we have to call Daddy.” ***

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I decided to start doing my homework. Mommy went upstairs to call Daddy. I picked up the phone in the living room to listen.

“It’s dead, Nicholas. The hamster’s dead. You couldn’t ask if the damn thing was sick before you bought it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” I heard him say.

“Now she’s crying her eyes out again and I have to deal with it again.”

“I told you I was sorry. What the hell do you want me to do, CPR on the hamster?”

“I want you to get over here to be with your daughter. She wants another funeral.”

“Seriously?”

“You heard me. Another dead rodent, another dead rodent funeral.”

I was getting angry, but I didn’t want them to know I was listening.

“But I have to go with Tasha to her hearing tonight.”

“Little bitch can go to divorce court all by herself. Lord knows I did. And having the man she’s sleeping with right there isn’t going to make her look too hot.”

“But I promised Tasha.”

“She’s your daughter, Nicholas. And when this train-wreck of a woman leaves you for a schmuck with more money, she’s going to be all you have left.” Mommy hung up. *** Daddy came over that night. He was in the house before I saw his car pull up. I ran to him and hugged him.

“I’m so sorry, Christina. I didn’t know he was sick.”

“We need a coffin,” I reminded him. “And I used up all the cotton balls.”

He nodded. “Go find another shoebox. I have something we can use instead of cotton balls.”

I looked under my bed and took out the shoebox with my Communion shoes inside. I put the shoes in the closet and took the box. I left the tissue paper inside. Daddy had gone out to his car and came back with the bag that he brings to Gold’s Gym. He took out a t-shirt that said “Penn State” on it, and put it in the box. He went upstairs and came back with the coffin taped shut.

“Let’s get Mommy,” he said.

“Wait.” I ran upstairs and put on my Communion shoes. They were too tight, but they looked pretty even with my jeans.

Daddy was digging the hole by the time I got there. No one said anything about my shoes.

Mommy was holding the coffin. She gave it to me and I put it in the hole, picked up a handful of dirt and dropped it in.

“Shouldn’t I say something?” Daddy asked.

“Yes, go ahead.”

He stood next to me. Mommy came too.

“Bubbles was a good hamster.” Daddy stopped talking and coughed. “Excuse me.” He spat into the grass. “Sorry about that. He was a good hamster. Though he was only with us a short while, he managed to touch our lives… so greatly” Mommy rolled her eyes at him.

“He meant a lot to Christina. May he rest in peace.” Just like last time, Daddy filled in the hole and we went inside.

“Can you stay for dinner? It’s not spaghetti,” I told him.

“Sunday is pizza night,” Mommy said He shook his head. “I really can’t stay, Sweetheart,” “But I never see you anymore ever.” I was going to cry; I could feel it.

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“What are you talking about? I’ve seen you three times this week.”

“Nicholas, that’s terrible.” Mommy was angry.

Daddy put his hands in his pockets and looked at the carpet. “Sorry. Sorry, Christina.” He looked up at Mommy and then took his sweater off. “Looks like I’m staying for a slice.”

“Wonderful. I’ll call Domino’s.” Mommy went into the kitchen, “Don’t bother. I’ll go pick it up.” He put his sweater back on. “Christina, want to go for a ride?” *** Domino’s was the second building past the stoplight on the right side. But Daddy made a left and said, “You know, the pet store is still open. Do you want to try again?”

“I’m not sure.” My seatbelt was too loose.

We pulled into the parking lot. Daddy took my hand. “Come on.”

“We’re about to close up, Sir,” a lady said.

“This will just take a minute.”

This time there were forty-one hamsters. I picked a light brown one and named him Cinnamon.

“This one will be different,” he promised when we got to Domino’s. *** “Where the hell were you?” Mommy was yelling. “It does not take that long to get to Domino’s and back.” I took out Cinnamon.

“Look what Daddy bought me,” I said.

“This is just like you. I send you for food and you come home with rodents.” Mommy threw her hands up in the air. “And another thing for me to take care of while you look like a hero.”

“That’s not entirely fair. I remembered the pizza. Think of Cinnamon as the toy that comes with the Happy Meal.” Daddy laughed.

“Jackass.”

Daddy led the way into the kitchen and took out some paper plates and napkins.

“Pepperoni still your favorite?” he asked me.

“Yup.” Mommy sat down across from me. Daddy put my plate in front of me and looked at her.

“Pineapple?”

Mommy smiled and nodded. “I’m surprised you remembered.”

“Of course I remember,” he said.

Daddy stayed while I watched cartoons in the living room. Mommy opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. She curled into her favorite armchair and Daddy sat on the couch with me until the cartoon was over. He was still there after I was supposed to be asleep. I got out of bed and put my face between the poles of the banister to watch them.

“Going so soon?” Mommy asked.

Daddy started to pick up his coat. “Yeah, I should go. Thanks.” He kissed her on the cheek and she put her glass down.

“You can stay if you want.”

I held onto the banister poles with my fists.

He put his coat on. “I can’t. Sorry.” *** On Saturday, I waited to see Daddy again. I held Cinnamon in my hands. His body was cold and he wasn’t breathing. I picked the woodchips from between his toenails. Mommy walked back and forth across the kitchen floor, yelling into the phone. “Is this pet store on some kind of Indian burial ground, Nicholas? Because this is the third one now.”

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I closed Cinnamon’s eyes with my finger.

“Christina, put that thing down. It’s dead and disgusting.”

Daddy came over that night. We couldn’t find any more shoeboxes. He took the pizza box out of the blue bucket and taped it shut. He dug an extra big hole and we buried Cinnamon in the backyard next to Bubbles and Cookie.

“Nicholas, this is getting eerie. That’s the third time,” Mommy said as we went back inside.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“But I want my hamster,” I cried out. “I want to get another one.”

Daddy knelt down next to me. “We can try again, Honey.” He looked at Mommy. “Adrienne, it can be different this time. We’ll get a new cage and different food. It’s got to be that cage— maybe mold or something. Come on. We’ll all go together to pick it out.”

Mommy had her arms crossed in front of her, but she let them fall and said, “Okay.”

I knelt down next to Cinnamon’s coffin and did the father-son-holy-ghost. “God bless Cinnamon.”

Daddy opened the car door and Mommy and I slid in. Mommy did her hair in a ponytail.

“Nice car, Nick. At least some good came out of this midlife crisis.”

Daddy smiled and put on the radio. “Glad you approve.”

There were seventeen hamsters in the pet store.

I chose a dark brown one and named him Mittens. We chose a new cage and bought the food the salesman Paul said was the best.

“We needed a fresh start,” Daddy told him.

“Whatever,” Paul said.

We set the cage up in my room and threw the old one in the garbage. Mittens dug a hole in the woodchips. Mommy and Daddy watched when I gave him food.

“Good girl,” Daddy said. He put his hand on my shoulder.

Mittens lay down in his cage. I stuck my hand in to check on him. His belly was rising and he was breathing. “Phew,” I said out loud.

Mommy laughed. “I have a little more faith with this one, honey.”

“Can Daddy stay for dinner?” I asked. I pulled on the bottom of her shirt.

“I don’t know, Nick. Can Daddy stay for dinner?” The way she said it was snotty.

“Twist my arm, why don’t you.” Daddy sighed. “Okay, but I have to make a call first.”

“Yes!” I was excited.

Mommy left to start cooking. I ran over to Daddy, “Can we watch cartoons and—“ “Honey, I’m on the phone. Just a second.” He interrupted me. I looked at Mittens again. He was still asleep and his belly was still rising. “Okay, Tasha. I’m sorry. I know.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Love you too.” He made a kissy noise into the phone.

I put my finger down my throat and pretended to be puking. He hung up. *** Mommy had the table all set when we got downstairs. She poured wine for her and Daddy and grape juice for me. We were having meatloaf.

“And here I thought you’d forgotten how to cook,” Daddy said.

Mommy pretended not to hear and started cutting slices of meatloaf.

“She means business, Christina. She’s serving it and everything.” Mommy dropped a piece on his plate. “She’s even—“ “Would you just be quiet and have dinner with your family?” Mommy interrupted.

“Sorry.”

We were quiet while we were eating.

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“Do hamsters go to heaven?” I asked.

“Of course they do,” Daddy said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Well, I don’t know for sure.” He took a sip of wine. “But when I was seven, I had a dog named “Spike.” And when Spike died, we had a funeral for him.” He put his glass down and his eyes wandered away. “And my Dad told me that I would see Spike again in heaven because in heaven, you get to see all the things that made you happy in your life.”

Mommy nodded and sipped from her glass.

I liked that answer.

After dinner, Mommy sent me up to bed early. I put on my pajamas and turned out the lights. I waited by the window to watch the James Bond car drive away, but it stayed parked across the street.

The next morning I got ready for school and Mittens was running on his wheel. Daddy was still there. I heard him talking to Mommy through the door, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Daddy knocked and called, “Christina, ready for school?”

I opened the door. “You’re taking me?”

“Yeah. Come on.”

I got my backpack and climbed into the car. I was smiling a lot.

“What’re you so happy about?” He asked.

“Nothing.” I turned on the radio. *** That night, Mommy was making spaghetti when the telephone rang. I was in my room playing with Mittens. All I could hear was, “Calm down, Tasha, sheesh. Don’t worry, he couldn’t have gone far.”

I went downstairs.

“No, Tasha. I don’t know where he would have gone. Did you try calling his parents?”

Mommy was walking back and forth while she was talking and didn’t notice that the spaghetti was bubbling over. “And he never brought the car back at all?”

“Is Daddy missing?” I asked.

Mommy pretended not to hear me. “Have you tried the office? Maybe he went there?” The stove was making hissing sounds as the water hit the fire. “Tasha, I don’t know where he is. I promise you, if I knew, I’d send him home.” She hung up the phone.

“Is Daddy missing?” I asked again.

Mommy tried to fix the spaghetti. “I don’t think so, Christina.” She put it in the strainer and turned on the sink. “Damn. Overcooked.” She let out a big sigh and tapped her fingernails on the ledge. She went to the phone and dialed a number. “Nick, pick up. Pick up, Nick. Your girlfriend is looking for you and she’s started calling your ex-wife for answers and I want to know where the hell you are.”

Mommy sat down when she hung up. She had a black line on her face from smudging her make up. She looked at me. “I ruined the spaghetti.”

“That’s okay,” I said. *** Daddy still hadn’t called the next morning. Neither did Tasha. But a few days later, I got an invitation in the mail that told me that I was invited to a wedding. The card was pink and had daisies on it. I showed it to Mommy and she sighed.

“Son of a bitch.”

She handed it back to me. “Do you want to go, Christina?”

I looked at Mittens again and he was digging a hole in his woodchips. I bit my bottom lip.

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“They want you to be the flower girl.”

I shook my head no.

“You don’t have to decide right now,” Mommy said. *** On the day of the wedding, I woke up and Mittens wasn’t moving. His belly wasn’t rising.

He was dead.

“Do you want me to call Daddy?” Mommy asked.

“No,” I sniffed. “We can bury him ourselves.”

My shoes for the wedding came in a nice box and we used the tissue paper to keep Mittens comfortable. Mommy dug a hole next to Cinnamon.

I did the father-son-hold-ghost and Mommy did too.

“God bless Mittens,” Mommy said. “He was a good hamster and he made Christina very happy. Now we lay him to rest.”

“Will I get Daddy back in heaven?” I asked.

Mommy looked surprised. “Daddy’s still alive, honey.” She patted the dirt off the bottom of my dress and handed me my flowers. “You look beautiful.” *** I saw Daddy standing at the other end of the church wearing a tuxedo. His hair was wet looking. Tasha stood at the back of the line of ladies wearing a white gown. Her hair was piled up. She fluffed out her skirt and her bridesmaids told her she looked pretty. One of them told me to start walking, so I did. From far away, Daddy smiled.

I got to the alter and I looked at Daddy.

“Mittens died,” I told him.

“I’m so sorry, Sweetie.” He knelt down. “Did it happen today?”

I nodded and he put his hand on my shoulders.

“We’ll try again, Christina, I promise. We’ll get a brand new hamster and start over.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want another one.”

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t want any more hamsters.” I walked away towards the side and knelt down at the alter. I did the father-son-holy-ghost. “God bless Cookie and Bubbles and Cinnamon and Mittens and Daddy. May I see them all again in heaven.”

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December Quartet Derrick Austin Poetry

Most nights start with Lucky Strikes.

We talk about cold beds and absent fathers.

Smoke spirals off, a haze like captions in a silent film.

The slow, wet scorch of cigarettes disrupts the river.

Sitting on the riverbank, we lean forward toward a dolphin misting the air, the spray like snow on a TV with no reception. We listen to each other’s stories, songs of attachment and unattachment, saying, oh, oh, oh.

This is how we run out of cigarettes and breath.

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with paint in my hair Julia Ponzek

Oil on Board First Place—Art

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with the blue ring on Julia Ponzek Oil on Board

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North Country Lessons Conner McDonough First Place—Poetry

The North Country wind blows through the yard as you lace up my gloves, then your gloves.

Time to teach you how to be a man. Your breath stinks of whiskey, Chesterfields. You got soft after Ma died. Need to learn that everyone takes a beating but it takes a man to give a beating back.

You swing hard against my jaw, knocking me on my back.

You pick me up by the wrist from the yard, brushing grass from my hair. I whimper like a beaten cur. Don’t cry. You wipe tears away with your glove, color of oxblood, leather cracked and soft against my cheek. Take a knee, take a breath, get back up and keep swinging. You say, between breaths, that I shouldn’t get used to people helping me back up. Not the way the world works. The ground is soft beneath my feet, damp from the melting snow in the yard.

It squishes, the same sound my nose makes as your glove connects with it. When the world gives you a beating does it hurt this much, Papa? You’ve been beaten around your whole life. It’s worse. The next blow’s a breath of violence, exhaled from your lungs, through your gloves into my chest. But I’m swinging now, swinging back at you. Smiling, you dance backwards across the yard letting my fragile blows, a child’s blows, fall softly upon your chest, your stomach. That’s it, you say in soft tones. Encourage me, Papa. Teach me to beat life, to beat the world. We leave muddy footprints across the yard as we box; you box for Ma’s last desperate breaths, I box for the hope that one day she’ll come back.

Seems we box forever, until the blood stops, until the gloves fill with sweat, until we can’t punch anymore. Your hand, gloved in blood that sweats from split knuckles, dangles softly against your leg. Let me hold your hand, Papa, let me rub your back and tell you that it’ll be okay. Papa, I’m tired of the beatings.

You say you are too. The wind from the north blows again, a breath that chills both of us as we sway like dying trees in the yard.

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Our hearts beat together. Breathlessly anchored by grief, we throw our gloves over our shoulders, against our backs.

The wind blows strong, howling, then blows softly, whispering.

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the dead and the living Laura Theobald Poetry

it’s good the dead stay dead. remember, i felt you crying from the other room? your friend was dead. killed himself. hung himself or some awful thing. i sat beside you and you were alright. there’s no mistaking something irreversible. there is a sick feeling like you’ve swallowed a pit. i sat at the window for a long time thinking i’d heard your voice.

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Lifelines

Shannon Kenny

Acrylic and Charcoal on Paper Honorable Mention—Art

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Contributor’s Notes Derrick Austin is graduating in May. He could use a drink. His poetry has appeared in storySouth, Relief: A Christian Literary Expression, receiving an Editor’s Choice for Poetry, The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle, Ganymede Unfinished, and Poets for Living Waters. He received an honorable mention in the 2009 International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize contest and is a runner up for the Robinson Prize sponsored by the University of Houston.

Sasha Brito has lived in Brazil most of her life and has recently expressed a great interest in photography as well as painting.

Samantha Burns was raised and lives in Seminole, Florida. She is a fine arts major with a concentration in photography and painting. Currently, Samantha is exploring the use of nontraditional mediums and applications of sculptural elements within her paintings.

Ashley Eakin is a Writing major, which she intends to follow through with, although the other fine arts are quite enticing. She aspires to someday teach at a secondary level and to always aim true. You may say she’s a dreamer, and, well, you’d be right.

Shannon Kenny is a Trinidad born artist who is a senior at the University of Tampa. She is an Art Therapy major, but plans to continue her studies in art with a MFA in the fall.

Cliff Klein was born and raised in the community of Boynton Beach, Florida, taking a liking to visual art a very young age he auditioned and was accepted into the Bak Middle School of the Arts then for high school the Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts where he was taught the aesthetic and conceptual skills needed to continually grow as an artist.

This artistic foundation guides Klein in his attempt to create muli-layered, abstract expressive, paintings that create non-linear space through color relationships. He is currently attended the University of Tampa where he continues his studies in the field of fine art.

John “Jake” Koniszewski is a freshman from Vienna, VA. He is a writing major who will write his own fantasy and/or mystery novels.

Kathleen Kreiser is a film major from Long Island, NY. She has enjoyed her time at UT working with Quilt Literary Magazine and wishes the best to her fellow graduating seniors.

Conner McDonough is a poet and fiction writer in Tampa. His writing is influenced by dipsomania, chain-smoking, Catholic Guilt, and loss. If he fails at becoming the next Great American Novelist his plan is to become the next great American bankrobber.

Sara Melendez is a student at the University of Tampa.

Valerie Moorer is a literature student with a passion for nature and travel. She enjoys riding horses, bellydancing, writing fiction and raising exotic animals (timberwolves and pythons).

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Kristin O’Connor, a sophomore and native Floridian, has been drawing incessantly ever since she could hold a pencil. Fascinated by the infinite expressions the human face and body are capable of, Kristin often uses candid photographs of her sisters and friends as inspiration for her work. While enjoying experimentation in a variety of media and styles, she aims to ease the tension between the artist and the everyday viewer. Kristin is majoring in Art with a concentration in Painting.

Elizabeth “Liza” Pichette is a junior Writing major/French minor who is living her dream by studying abroad for the Spring 2011 semester. She dreams of being a published author and being happy.

Julia Ponzek is a semi-professional cattle herder from Somewhere Outside of Philadelphia, PA. When she isn’t tending to her bovine or piloting small aircraft, she enjoys digging in the sand for buried treasure. Her ultimate dream is to live an isolated and nomadic life in the Alps as an anthropomorphic stalk of broccoli.

Amanda Pulham is from Allentown, Pennsylvania. A senior at the University of Tampa, Amanda is completing degrees in Art and Philosophy. More paintings are available at www. amandapulham.com.

Ciara Ross is an Art History major graduating in May. Micheal Angelo Rumore is. Or isn’t he? It’s difficult to say for sure. Proving a universal affirmative is pretty much impossible. If he does indeed exist, he is most likely writing short stories on a typewriter in some dark Ybor City shack or hanging out with pretentious University of Tampa poets.

Stephanie Selander is a junior at the University of Tampa and Stadium’s resident insomniac, known for a change of temperament when the full moon rises and the Nintendo 64 turns on.

Amanda Sieradzki is a sophomore writing major and dance minor. These areas of study cause her to constantly try and merge movement with words. She enjoys going to the beach, eating 2 lb. bags of Twizzlers, and manipulating the English language.

Laura Theobald is a senior in English and writing at the University of Tampa hoping to pursue an MFA in poetry. Her poems have also appeared in plain china and The Secret of Salt.

She was recently awarded the Robertson Poetry Prize by the University of Houston’s Glass Mountain.

Tamara Turk is an international student from Jordan majoring in Art Therapy. As a senior at The University of Tampa, Tamara hopes to continue her studies in art therapy at a graduate school in The United States and become a certified therapist. Oil paint and Drawing are among her favorites when it comes to making art.

Cody Waters is a senior English major and seer. Burdened with visions of the future (as well as a sick cosmic caveat that prevents him from affecting change), he begins every day with a tarot reading and a double shot of Sailor Jerry. He does a mean Sylvia Plath impression, likes boats, and his eyes are heroin spoons.

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Submission Guidelines Quilt 2012 Submission Guidelines Deadline: February 12 E-mail submissions only! Send your work to quilt@ut.edu with your name and the genre you’re submitting in the subject line. Please attach your submissions in a single Microsoft Word file (.doc not .docx). Do not put your submissions in the body of the e-mail. Save the file as your first and last name. Do not mix genres; save poems in one file, save fiction in another file, and save creative non-fiction in another file. No pictures or fancy fonts, please.

In the body of the e-mail, type your name, phone number, mailing address, titles of your submitted pieces, the medium if it’s an art submission, and a short bio (1-3 sentences) about yourself in third person.

Fiction: Stream-of-consciousness, minimalist, surreal—we encourage all types of fiction. We’re looking for the best stories on campus with strong characters, powerful language, original plots, but most importantly with sense of personal style. We want a feel for you as the author.

Submit no more than three stories, 5,000 words or less.

Creative Non-Fiction: Remember when you entered a pie eating contest and saw God in the flakey tin? Or listened to Janis Joplin for the first time and felt real heartache? We’re looking for the stories of your life that go beyond being an interesting anecdote. Submit no more than three pieces, 5,000 words or less. We do not accept research papers. (If you have a good research paper, submit to Respondez!)

Poetry: Rhymed or unrhymed, love poems or elegies, raunchy or elegant, we want to read poems that make our heads explode! Avoid clichés: If you’ve heard it before then make it better, make it your own! Submit no more than four poems. If your poem goes beyond a page make sure you include “continues with stanza break” or “continues without stanza break” in parenthesis beside the last line on the page.

Art and Photography: Any reasonable number of submissions will be accepted. Take a high resolution photo of the painting or sculpture; if you don’t have access to a high resolution camera contact our art editor at quilt@ut.edu and we’ll help out. Submit these as JPEG files please!

Quilt’s Corner: If you’ve submitted the maximum number of prose or poems, don’t despair! Quilt’s Corner

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is our section in UT’s student newspaper, The Minaret, which runs weekly, so submissions are unlimited. We accept poetry, art and photography, flash fiction, and short stories (which will be serialized). If you’re published in Quilt’s Corner that piece will be considered for publication in our journal (and it doesn’t count towards your limit total). E-mail these submissions to quilt@ut.edu with Quilt’s Corner Submission and your name in the subject line.

Check us out online: www.youtube.com/Quilt2008 and friend us on Facebook: search Quilt magazine.

Best of luck and looking forward to reading your work!

The Quilt staff

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