Issue 3: Reconstruction

faith in literature and art

r e c o n s t ru c t i o n

/.

prose

Surviving Nashville and The Perils of Testimony from

Stacy Barton and Melanie Springer Mock

/. poetry

Self-Addressed,

Dilemma, and Holy Weak from Otto Selles, Luci Shaw, and Joe Ricke

/. art

Invocation and Bare Oak from Philippe Visson and Katie Jenkins

03 ISSUE

Spring 2007 $8.00

why

ruminate ?

der e; to think again; to pon

; to meditat ru’mi-nate: to chew the cud; to muse

RUMINATE is a quarterly magazine for those who desire the space to share short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, memoirs and visual art that resonate with the complexity and truth of the Christian faith. Each issue is a forum for literature and art that speaks to the existence of our daily lives while nudging us toward a greater hope. Because of this, we strive to publish quality work that accounts for the grappling pleas, as well as the quiet assurances of an authentic faith. RUMINATE MAGAZINE was created for every person who has paused over a good word, a real story, a perfect brushstroke—longing for the significance they point us toward. Every RUMINATE issue has its own theme or focus with the hope of drawing rich connections between art, life and faith. Please join us.

The cover image and inside cover image, Escaliers de la vieille ville (acrylic on canvas, 36 x 29 inches) and Invocation (acrylic on canvas, 40 x 28 inches), were created by Philippe Visson. At the age of fifteen, Philippe began painting. At sixteen, he was offered a one-man show at the Gallery Craven in Paris. Visson has shown extensively in galleries and museums during his nearly fifty-year career, the latter part of which has been concentrated in Switzerland. He’s been classified by critics as anything from Neuer Wilder to the controversial Art brut, but considers his work rooted in the Russian icon. He has lived with his wife in Switzerland since 1983. Visson has his working studio and six thousand paintings in the Montreux Palace.

The back cover image and inside back cover image, Bare Oak (linoleum print, 6.5 x 8.5) and Duets Are Best, (linoleum print, 8.5 x 7.5), were created by Katie Jenkins. After graduating from the University of Texas with a degree in Chemistry, Katie returned to her first love and began a career in wedding and portrait photography. She enjoys variety and dabbles in printmaking, oils, and watercolor. Katie currently resides in Fort Collins, CO, with her husband Ryan and their two catahoulas, Lucy and Gunner.

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Spring 2007

RUMINATE MAGAZINE

Issue 03

RUMINATE (ISSN 1932-6130) is published quarterly by RUMINATE MAGAZINE, INC., 140 North Roosevelt Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80521. Postage paid at Fort Collins, CO. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the editors or publisher.

WHERE TO WRITE Send all subscription orders, queries and changes of address to RUMINATE, 140 N. Roosevelt Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80521 or send an email to editor@ruminatemagazine. com. If you are moving and want to ensure uninterrupted service, please allow six weeks of notice. (The post office will not automatically forward magazines.) For information on back issues, advertising rates, RUMINATE submission guidelines, artist groups, and RUMINATE resources, please visit our website at www.ruminatemagazine.com. We welcome unsolicited manuscripts and visual art—you may submit online at our website.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES Subscriptions are the meat and bones of this operation and what keep the printers printing and the postage paid. Please consider subscribing to RUMINATE and supporting the quality work produced. One year, $28. Two Years, $52. If you receive a defective issue or have a problem with your subscription order, please email us at editor@ruminatemagazine.com.

POSTMASTER Send address changes to: RUMINATE MAGAZINE, 140 North Roosevelt Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80521.

Copyright

2007 RUMINATE MAGAZINE. All rights reserved.

Much thanks to darwill press in Chicago, Il, for taking on the task of printing RUMINATE—without Darwill there would be no RUMINATE.

s t

a f f

Brianna Van Dyke Amy Lowe Lacee Perrin Nicholas Price Jonathan Van Dyke Anne Pageau Shannon Smiley

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editor-in-chief prose editor poetry editor visual art editor consulting editor design intern

A few fellow local readers and myself think a new section should be added to RUMINATE called “Brewminate.” We envision it being a collection of thoughts on the previous issue written by those who love to read RUMINATE while drinking the finest ales available for consumption in Fort Collins, CO. We believe this could be the key to the survival of your magazine.

Josh Roloff Fort Collins, CO *Thank you for your clever suggestion Josh. We are waiting on pins and needles to learn more about your vision for “Brewminate”—the “key to our survival.”

Spent the afternoon ruminating yesterday thanks to your stylish and evocative publication—a kind of playpen for the eyes and mind. The tastefully presented pages are so infused with wit, art and much heart. Kudos, and best of luck in RUMINATE becoming all you wish it to be.

Yahia Lababidi Fort Lauderdale, FL This semester, while enrolled in a poetry writing class, my professor introduced me to RUMINATE, and I truly enjoyed looking through your first issue. Your desire to publish literature that “[nudges] us toward a greater hope” echoes my own desire to produce such literature. I want my writing to reflect this hope of Christ—Hebrews’ “evidence of things not seen”—which is the source of an abundant life.

Stacy Nott Jackson, MS RUMINATE has been a tremendous source of encouragement and inspiration to me. This is evident by how often a poem or short story has shown up in one of my sermons. I use illustrations that have first touched me deeply, and Margaret Smith’s poem “Winter leaves about to,” from your last issue, did just that for me.

The beauty and pure simplicity of aging love was made so clear and gripping! Thank you.

ruminators NOTES FROM YOU

Richard Rieves Fort Collins, CO

Send your thoughts, questions, and comments to

editor@ruminatemagazine.com

*Our sincere apologies to our close readers and especially to D.R. James for mistakenly omitting Mr. James from the table of contents in our last issue—his poems were anything but forgettable.

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ruminating

EDITOR’S NOTE

Thumbing through an old literary theory book,

thumbing being the predominant word, I found some writing on deconstruction. For some reason this relationship between deconstruction and our theme, “Reconstruction,” took hold of me and kind of became an obsession. And, of course, after some nonextensive research, I found that as usual “nothing is new under the sun” and more apt minds have found this idea interesting and even worthy of scholarship. So, that being said, I do not attempt to add to this discussion but simply want to “ruminate” the connection.

The pairings of photography and poetry in this issue created a jumping off point for my obsession. Separately the works are complete; but when viewed together, new ideas, even new images are created. Jennifer Steensma-Hoag and Otto Selles’ collaboration re/construct was, consequently, the inspiration for this issue’s theme. One of their pairings (p.10-11) was so visually intriguing that I found myself yearning for context. Then as I viewed it alongside the poem, the image, the curved concrete, became words evading a single purpose and encompassing both movement and permanence. Both the decontextualizing of the image along with the ambiguity of definition challenged my assumptions about the nature of meaning.

Is our inability to come up with one definitive meaning in the above pairing evidence of a universe with no center, no epitome as Derrida seems to posit? Or could it be that some realities are subjective, limited to time and space, while spiritual reality or that which connects us to one another and with something greater than ourselves is still universal? C. S. Lewis said that “If the whole world has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.” It does seem odd that we would long for something that doesn’t even exist. That we would intuitively try to define, to make sense of our life and the world around us, even reach out to others in hopes of appeasing that longing.

Is this issue, reconstructing takes us to a place of hope, a place of grace, and even a place of meaning. Language, lives, and images find themselves participating in the exercise of reconstruction. Words have been deciphered and redefined, life-giving language found in the silence of a brooding bird and the loyalty of an unexpected friend. Grace experienced through the reality of a mundane testimony, the comfort of a muddy field, and the drunken kiss of a tainted whore. And, our artists have challenged and made us rethink our visual expectations mining out fresh meanings through their communal efforts.

Thank you contributors! After too much contemplation, your reconstructing has given me hope, pulled me out of myself and into the lives of my children, friends, and loving husband making me see the beauty in my daughter’s giant red house shoes and my son’s fixation with peeing in the snow. Thank you readers! You have made it possible for me to participate in this adventure. We welcome you to Issue 03: “Reconstruct” in hopes that your taking apart and putting back together will be fruitful and hopeful endeavors.

Grace and Peace,

Amy Lowe

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table of contents

Poetry Otto Selles

Selections from re/construct Revision Poem Self-Addressed Envelope Simultaneous Submission

8 10

Prose

33 34 35 36

22

Nicholas Allin

31

Cover, Spring 12

Judith Deem Dupree What Frost Said

43

13

Damon Falke

I-IV, Selections from Broken Cycles 14, 16, 18, 20

Randy Smith

The Road 29 Talking to the Dove 30

Daniel Ritchie

“Wholeness, After George Herbert� 41

Luci Shaw

Dilemma 42

Joe Ricke

Holy Weak 54 Profit 54

Stacy Barton

Surviving Nashville

Melanie Springer Mock The Perils of Testimony

Ellen Visson

Hollow Places

Art Philippe Visson

Cover Escaliers de la vieille ville Inside Front Cover Invocation

Jennifer Steensma-Hoag

8, 11, 33-36 Untitled, Selections from re/construct

Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton

15, 17, 19, 21 I-IV, Selections from Broken Cycles

Katie Jenkins

Inside Back Cover Duets Are Best Back Cover Bare Oak

Stacy Barton

At the Store 55

Elizabeth Carlson

Waiting for Kairos 56 Leaving the Shore 57

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Otto Selles

Revision Annotations and exclamations

choke the margins

and smother each word.

Dive in,

swallow everything,

and breathe again.

Jennifer Steensma-Hoag, Untitled, re/construct. *Originals in color

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ruminations

ARTIST’S NOTE

jennifer steensma hoag was born in Rochester, New York, and graduated with her MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has an extensive national exhibition record. Her new series The Nature of Invasion addresses our conflicted relationship with animals. She is a professor of Art at Calvin College.

Terra Incognita is a series of color photographs that document land sites that are under construction or have been altered by other human activity. In the photographs, I omit contextual information leading viewers to believe they are viewing documents of land art or installations. Many of the photographs were taken in the same remote western landscape.

Upon the suggestion of an art critic, I approached Otto to write some poems that intersected with the images. We titled our collaborative project re/construct because the poetry and photographs exist independent of one another, yet when combined, encourage a reconstruction of both forms.

otto selles grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, and graduated from McMaster University. He completed his doctor-

ate in French at the University of Paris-IV Sorbonne. In 2001, he published new songs (Pandora Press), a collection of poems illustrated by his sister Geraldine Selles-Ysselstein. He is a professor of French at Calvin College.

When Jennifer asked me to participate in her project, I was unsure of how to proceed. Was I to illustrate the photos’ physical content through poetic images or even monologues? I nearly abandoned the project, but could not resist the challenge. I first considered writing a formal sequence, emphasizing metered construction. The starkness of the landscapes required a tighter style. I had found, however, a parallel to Jennifer’s photographic re-construction. Beginning with the first word that popped into my mind upon seeing a picture, I decided to re-construct the how-to advice commonly given in workshops and writers’ guides.

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Otto Selles

Poem This is a poem,

not because it is flat,

with some space around it, but because it curves slender and wide,

because it turns

hard

and rough.

And it moves

still.

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Jennifer Steensma-Hoag, Untitled, re/construct. *Originals in color

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Nicholas Allin

Cover, Spring

You spoke a cloud into being, filled the throat

swallowed the puffed air and it vibrated your whole body, the forearms

and the toes trembling like rainclouds, the wet of it washing through your coughing mouth your watery lips. You said white and the world became cloud-covered, gray and the rain gathered around it like a chain constricting, swarmed

and muddied the place. And why then should I close my eyes when your chest begins the deep gush of black. black. black.

Ezekiel’s valley, I clattered through the bones

a collar, a finger—my feet dried, my skin tightening. You must have begun

with my skeleton, lightly snapping me into being, from the mist pouring from your throat, you sang me into the world, your tongue flooded in warm

honey. You rattled me awake, stretched tendon to ulna, soleus to calcanius.

Your palm held me

up. These bones, standing quiet, slumped under your strong wings— My stomach was a stone—you hollered

for wind! and tumbled me about.

nicholas allin has an MA in Creative Writing from Florida State University. He reads for The Southeast Review and teaches Logic and Modern Drama at Christ Classical Academy.

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LORD I plant my feet into your soil, five toes

five seeds digging past the top of a muddy field, I roll downward

I heat in the damp ground.

You wave me into a sprouting leaf, you whistle forth, you channel a river through my skin, you spread my ankles

to a gurgling stream, you break the mist and shatter it to shards of the day

I rush my hands out

I giggle the leaves, they dazzle, flutter— The air is chocolate, I fall drowsy in your earth, I sleep, my arms flung,

pears, plums, peaches, grapes.

Judith Deem Dupree

What Frost Said “Make every poem your final poem,” he told her.* Find the edge of it, where it slipped away, where it wandered off, unattended, like a wounded animal that curls around itself.

Lift it up, this empty body with its dangling limbs.

Feel it quiver. Listen for a sign— a ragged heartbeat.

Draw it unto you; breathe fiercely into its maw, its guts— down to where the blood congealed too soon.

Call it back gently, like God recovering His sixth day.

It will know its name.

*Robert Frost to Maxine Kumin

judith deem dupree is the founding

Ad Lib, a Colorado-based retreat/ Christians in the arts. She also co-directs an arts council in San Diego County, where she lives. Judith writes poetry, fiction, and theologically based contemplations and teaching materials. She has taught poetry and creative writing at various workshops over the years, and is currently focusing on “picking up loose threads.” In other words, finishing what she started once upon a time. director of

workshop for

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Broken Cycles is a collaborative pairing of photography and poetry.

Damon Falke

I Among ruins in Cumbria he paused to unearth the sure measure of forgotten urns

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Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton, I, Broken Cycles

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Damon Falke

II Inside Baiju the passenger paused to listen as monks chanted private hymns among the bones of still unrisen lamas

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Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton, II, Broken Cycles

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Damon Falke

III From his room in Shigatse the passenger watched as eleven monks passed as many butter-candles to children

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Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton, III, Broken Cycles

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Damon Falke

IV Pools lit by fire covered the ocean near South Cape where a single gull once followed him for days

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Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton, IV, Broken Cycles

rebekah wilkins-pepiton, photographer, lives in

East Texas with her husband and dog. She

works as a freelance photographer and teaches at

Longview High School. Ms. Pepiton’s art has been featured in galleries in Marshall, TX, Moscow, ID, Coeur d’ Alene, ID, and Plainview, TX. Ms. Pepiton is a graduate of Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, TX, and the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID.

damon falke, writer, lives in Marshall,

TX, with his wife and young son. His writing is published in the forthcoming edition of Snow Monkey, The Chattanooga Review, Southern Ocean Review, Paragraph, and other journals. Mr. Falke is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and St. John’s College in Santa Fe, NM.

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surviving nashville Last night I sat on the living room rug and cried. It was my thirty-fifth birthday, and all I could think was My God, I can’t do this for fifty more years. I walked back through the sleeping house and stood beside each little bed. Lydia suddenly looked long to me, the bones in her face just beginning to widen into girlhood. Across the room, Mary slept with one hand curled beneath her cheek. In the next room, Drew lay in his loft—a chubby little boy with the mind of an ancient cleric, full of words too big for his tiny mouth to say. The baby was asleep next to Jack in our bed, and I stood motionless watching them both breathe gently—in and out, in and out. I counted seventeen breaths, went back into the living room, and let the stillness fill my ears like the rush of an ocean tide. ** “Push, Meg, push!” I grabbed my knees and leaned into the pain. I could feel the baby’s head heavy and near. The sounds ran together, and the room blurred into a sunset. Eyes were on me; I kept pushing.

“Wait for the pain; don’t push until you feel the contraction!” someone shouted. I think it was the midwife.

Jack was near, stroking my forehead, telling me the baby was coming. I threw up in a bedpan and took a breath and pushed as hard as I could. Suddenly she was there, all warm and wet and wriggly. I heard someone crying and singing at the same time. It was me. Jack cried, too. We wept as we touched her little wrinkled body.

She smelled like new earth and felt like second skin, stretched lengthwise between my breasts. **

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stacy bar ton

Today I locked myself in the closet; I was scared of my own existence and the dark thoughts that pressed against the inside of my eyelids. I waited until the darkness of the closet quieted my mind, and then I came out and made cookies with the children. We walked to the park, and I laughed. Life is good. I can smell the sun.

Yesterday Jack and I went to the Outback Steakhouse. I love their Caesar salad. I told him between the garlic croutons and the New York strip that I thought I might be going crazy. Then I laughed, like it was nothing.

The next day was Palm Sunday, and the children and I made flags of ribbon and sticks from the yard. We were going to have a parade for Jesus. I read them the Bible story from the book my father read to me. I loved my babies so much; it was only sometimes that I screamed at them. I didn’t mean to.

Lydia shouted at me that I looked like Ursula, the witch in The Little Mermaid, and I shouted back that I felt like Ursula! I stood in the bathroom for a while and ran water in the sink. I came out and asked them to forgive me. Then we ate grilled cheese. We left the ribbon and sticks and glue and scissors all over the floor and laid out a blanket, turned off the lights, and watched old movies from when Lydia and Mary were small. ** I sat in the parking lot and breathed into a paper sack before I could get up the courage to go into the therapist’s office. It was very proper and tidy, like any doctor’s office. I filled out the paperwork like I was told. One of the questions puzzled me. It asked, “Why are you here?” I thought it was a funny question. It seemed to me that if I knew why I was there, I wouldn’t have come. The therapist came to the waiting room to get me himself. I

knew him from church. He smiled at me and ushered me down the hallway of bad paneling.

It’s funny what you remember.

“How are we going to tell us apart?”

He wrote lots of things down on a yellow legal pad, and I heard myself saying things I didn’t know I had ever thought. I just decided to answer with the first thing that came into my mind. He asked me if I felt the sadness of my life, and I looked at him. No one had ever thought my life was sad. “No,” I said.

“I guess not.”

“Yes, Margaret, I’ve already thought about that.” The teacher turned to me, “You see, we already have a Margaret in the third grade, and you even have the same last initial. Her last name is O’Brien. Perhaps we can tell you apart by your middle name?”

**

Everyone laughed.

I didn’t say a word. The trees turned into grasshoppers, and a million eyes stared at me without blinking, like I was just a piece of grass.

I have been given an assignment. I am to imagine that the little girl I used to be is sitting in a chair beside me. Then I am to try to feel sad for her. This all came about because I told the doctor that I cried every time I went to the school to pick up the children. I cried at every school program and PTA meeting—just the smell of metal school desks and the sight of small children lined up together could bring tears to my eyes. I cried over my own babies—how I was certainly ruining their lives with my inadequacies. But the doctor said I never cried for myself. He said that wasn’t good. He said I needed to feel for the little girl I used to be.

“What’s your middle name?”

What he didn’t tell me was that the little girl I used to be might show up beside me in the Wal-Mart checkout line. He didn’t tell me that she might suddenly burst into tears at the sight of a refrigerator magnet. Or that she would start telling my stories.

The girl with the long brown hair didn’t even raise her hand.

**

I stood in the doorway and held up my chin. I looked at them all at once. They looked like a forest, and I felt like a very small squirrel.

“Well,” the teacher started, and, when she looked at me, I knew I had lost. “Since you are new here, why don’t we call you Margaret Anne, and we’ll just keep calling Margaret O’Brien Margaret. Now, everyone take out your penmanship books and turn to page thirty-nine.

Copy these sentences in your best cursive.”

A pretty girl with long, straight brown hair smiled at the teacher and raised her hand.

I sat in the chair she pointed to and made my face plain. The girl beside me was the one with

“Class, this is Margaret O’Sullivan.”

“Anne,” I whispered. I didn’t want to be called by two names.

The girl with the long brown hair raised her hand again.

“That’s my middle name, too.”

The class laughed even more. My face got hot.

“My goodness, isn’t that funny?” The teacher laughed. “Well, we can call one of you Margaret and the other one Margaret Anne.”

“I don’t want to be called Margaret Anne; I want to be Margaret, like always,” she blurted out, glaring at me.

23

the long brown hair. I made a little smile at her, but she stuck out her tongue when the teacher wasn’t looking.

ly the great masters didn’t have to be bothered with their baby brothers when they were on important jobs like ceilings and things!

The teacher handed me a book, and I turned to page thirty-nine. I stared at the long words with their loops and curls and couldn’t breathe.

I only knew Ls. In Tennessee, we had only just started drawing Ls. In Tennessee, my teacher read us stories while we lay on shag rugs. In Tennessee, I was the only Margaret, and my best friend had red hair. Short. Curly. Red hair.

Then Mary and Drew trailed in after Lydia, Zoë popped up from my breast looking deliriously drunk with Mamma’s milk, and the morning was over.

**

“Let’s go to the park!”

I saw the doctor again today. We talked about third grade. He said most eight-year-olds don’t contemplate suicide, but I remember standing at the top of the school stairs and imagining how I would look crumpled in a heap at the bottom—motionless, legs and arms bent at awkward angles, a small trickle of blood sneaking from the corner of my mouth.

They squealed with delight, and I was only too happy to leave behind the mountains of dirty dishes and laundry. I grabbed some apple juice and a couple of diapers for Zoë, and off we went. I watched them climb unfettered at the park and wrote poetry on a paper napkin that no one would ever see.

There they were—all four of them perched on my bed. It was only 10:30, and there would be no Jack until seven.

** ** The baby was absolutely precious. Creamy and sweet. The other three were playing under the table. They were Michelangelo. I had taped butcher paper to the underside, and they were painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I heard one of them squeal every time the paint hit them in the face. I only got angry a little, because I knew the paint would clean up, and it was keeping them busy. I put on some harpsichord music and nursed Zoë in the other room.

Peace only lasted a little while before Lydia came in shouting with seven-year-old indignation about how Drew had ruined the entire chapel because he didn’t know anything about painting because he was only two! And certain-

The late summer evening reminded me of lightning bugs and Tennessee breezes. I put on the Indigo Girls, and the children and I danced for Jack. We jumped and twirled in the evening light, and I put my arms over my head and spun my hips. I grinned sideways at Jack; he loved it. I felt the beer smooth me and giggled. The children enjoyed my play, and so we danced. Bare feet across the cool earth, arms and hair flying. ** “What else happened in Tennessee?” the therapist asked.

y, and so we la p y m d ye jo n e n re ild The ch ol earth, o c e th ss ro c a t e fe re danced. Ba arms and hair flying.

“The summer between my second- and thirdgrade years, the locusts came. Did you know they come every thirteen years?”

“Go straight to the hospital,” my boyfriend practically shouted into the telephone. I sat on the other end and refused.

He shook his head no and wrote something on his pad.

“I already threw up! I’m not going to the emergency room; they’ll just laugh at me.”

“They’re born underground, but when they finally come out, they die after a few weeks.”

“You took three bottles of pills. Go to the hospital!”

“I think I’ve heard of that.”

“No!”

“Every bush and shrub and tree in Nashville was full of them. In the mornings after breakfast, the women would come out on the front porch and sweep the dead bodies into the yards.”

I hung up on him and sat on the hallway floor of the dorm, traced the carpet design with my fingers, and felt my breath in my mouth. It was still there. I was still there.

He waited for me to continue.

“I heard them singing the night my sister was born. Grandma Jean and I decided they had come to sing for her.”

He studied me.

“I only held her once. She died before the locusts quit singing.”

“That must have been hard.”

“After she died, Mamma wouldn’t go back in the house. We just left. Grandma Jean took me back to pack a suitcase. Daddy said I could only fill one because the movers would come later. Grandma Jean packed Mamma’s.

I made sure to get my Holly Hobby picture album and my white sundress. It had these tiny raised blue polka dots that you could feel even with your eyes closed—and a silky blue ribbon for a sash.”

I left his office, got in the car, and drove hard. I got on the highway and drove harder. I watched every truck as it passed on the other side. One slip of the wheel, one tiny jerk . . . **

It felt like my head wasn’t exactly attached to my body, and if I tilted my head to the side, my eyes didn’t follow. The clock on the wall said 2:12, and the hall was quiet with sleep. I decided to skip my early morning class and put my head on the carpet and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, there were men in orange suspenders poking at me.

“Get off me! Stop touching me! Leave me alone!”

I screamed and screamed, but they held me down.

“You don’t understand! I can’t breathe.

Stop touching me!”

Everyone on my dorm floor was standing in their doorways. They were all looking at me—huge locusts with bulging eyes. Their sticky feet burned my skin. I started clawing at my arms; the locusts were itching me. I heard a growl and tasted blood in my mouth. And everything went black. ** I didn’t have any of my children in hospitals. I hate hospitals. Hospitals are for sick

25

people, and childbirth is a healthy, holy thing. I had my babies at home. All four of them. Little Zoë was a water baby. ** I was curled up inside Jack’s love. My head pillowed on his shoulder. We breathed in tandem.

Mamma and Daddy were here this week. When they left, I cried all the way home from the airport. Later Jack and I made love, and as I came, I cried. I couldn’t stop. Jack held me fast and took it all. He was amazing. I think maybe he is not from the same planet as I. “Jack, am I crazy?”

“No, honey.”

“But how can you be sure?”

“Because I’ve watched you with the children . . . the way you talk to them, the way you look when Zoë’s nursing, the way you make their peanut butter and jelly. You’re not crazy.” ** I sat in his brown office. I had to pay someone to talk to me. I breathed slowly, but I was certain I sounded like the giant fan at the train station—the one that whirs and sticks and whirs and sticks—up in the corner where the wall meets the ceiling.

“Do you think I need to be here?”

I looked at him, and he realized I was serious.

“Yes, I think if you could have worked through this any other way you would have.”

“So, I’m not just being dramatic?”

“No, Meg, you’re not just being dramatic.” **

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I was so excited; I didn’t even care that I was Margaret Anne. My best friend Becky was coming to Virginia to visit me. I hadn’t seen her in a whole entire year! Her mamma and daddy were bringing her to Williamsburg for summer vacation on account of its having historical significance. Daddy said we could drive all the way in to meet them and see the blacksmith and the tailor. And we each would get to make our own mop cap, Mamma said.

I was imagining what Becky looked like. She said she still had her hair cut in a pixie. I had a pixie too, but I didn’t like mine. Becky was cute with hers because she had curly red hair, but I hated mine because Mamma made me get it cut with my cousin last year. And I don’t even like pixies. When my long hair was gone, Clay, the boy I liked, stopped chasing me on the playground and started chasing Cynthia because she still had long hair. Becky tried to comfort me; she said it made us more like sisters. I liked that. ** The kids were looking at their baby pictures today. It was funny how they loved that. They would be happy for hours squealing over how cute they were “when we were little.”

While the kids looked through their photo albums, I put the baby down for a morning nap and went to the china cabinet. On the bottom shelf, tucked behind my wedding bouquet and Grandma Jean’s silver plate, was a small blue Holly Hobby photo album. Inside there were a few pictures of me from when I was little. I flipped through them until I came to a picture of me and Becky Goodwin standing in front of the fudge shop wearing our mop caps.

Lydia came over to show me a particularly funny picture of Drew covered in blue ink.

While we laughed at him, looking like a blue hobo from trying to eat a stamp pad, Lydia asked me what I was looking at. Once they discovered I had pictures from when I was a kid, they all jockeyed for position to get a look at them.

“Who’s that?” Lydia pointed to the picture of Becky and me in our homemade hats. Mary giggled with her thumb in her mouth, and Drew pulled the book over so he could see, too.

“That’s a picture of me and my best friend, Becky.”

“Cool!” Lydia said. “What grade were you in?”

“That picture was taken the summer before the fourth grade, but I only went to school with Becky for first and second grades.”

“Why?” The kids looked at me, surprised. They didn’t know.

“We moved from Tennessee, and I never saw Becky again—except for the time she came to visit me in Virginia. That’s when this picture was taken.”

They studied the picture. I looked at them all crowded together, intent on knowing the little girl I had been.

“Nana had a baby that died in Tennessee. A baby girl. She was born sick, and they couldn’t make her better, and when she died, we moved.”

“That’s awful!” Lydia looked at me in horror, and I felt my voice go a little shaky.

“Yeah, I guess it was.”

Mary rubbed my cheek with her soft little hand, and Drew stopped pulling on the book for a moment.

Lydia studied the picture again, gently. It was quiet, like the time we buried Mary’s hamster.

out loud to the kids and passed out squirt cheese on crackers. We were on our way to Virginia to see my folks. The kids couldn’t wait to see Nana and Pop-Pop. It was summer, and we were full of hope.

“Nana! Pop-Pop! We’re here! We’re here!”

The kids jumped out of the truck and ran up the hill to the porch. My folks met them in the yard; they had seen us pull up the long drive. There was a tangle of arms and legs as I watched my children wash my parents in love.

The kids ran in the yard, and Pop-Pop chased them. In between their squeals, he stopped and grinned at me from behind the peonies. Mamma hugged me, twice, and patted my arm. I breathed in the sugar maple and remembered my first poem.

Later that night, as I lay in my old rose bedroom, the familiar sound of the attic fan mingled with the crickets in the trees below.

I watched the children asleep on their pallet; they were so beautiful I waited a moment to breathe, so I wouldn’t miss it. Zoë stirred, and Lydia put her arm out. The smell of summer grass wafted across the bed, and I was every age I had ever been. **

** All six of us were piled in the truck. Jack drove while I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

d e t f a w s s a r g r e m The smell of sum y r e v e s a w I d n a across the bed, n. e e b r e v e d a h I age 27

I sat in his office for the last time. I’m not sure how I knew. I just knew I would not be back. I closed my eyes and thought about Zoë’s sweet, sweaty smell, her tiny curls, moist with summer, clinging to the nape of her neck. I thought about Lydia, wise and strong and full of knowing. Of Mary, funny and bright with thumb-sucked hands. Of Drew, sturdy and certain and all boy.

“Sometimes,” I told him, “I think I’ve found her.”

He looked up from his yellow pad. He had always been kind and interested.

“She’s the only one that shares my skin.” I rubbed the back of my hand and found that I was far away.

“The little girl I used to be is right here.”

I showed him.

He nodded.

I stared at the floor and noticed how brown the carpet was. I felt my hand again, softly, and tasted the salt of my own tears.

stacy barton lives in Florida with her husband, four kids, and assorted pets.

is a free-lance scriptwriter for the

She Disney

Company and the published author of short stories, children’s picture books, plays, and poetry. She is the author of the children’s book, Babba and I Went Hunting Today, and her literary short story collection, Surviving Nashville, will be released this April.

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Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road...

Late, on the first day of the week, Cleopas and I hung fire on the Emmaus road, stopped to talk and rest our cramped legs by a bank of wild, climbing roses that weren’t even blooming as we walked that way the week before (little did we know how, that day, plants all over Judea burst mysteriously into bloom under a sudden morning rain). Our boots caked with mud, so we cleaned them dejectedly by the rose-bank, retelling the bewildering tales burned in our heads: Angels shining like white bolts of light, saying, “He has risen! Come and see the place where he lay!”—those crazed, thunderstruck women stumbling into the meeting room, smelling like spilled spice, babbling about angelic earthquakes and the inhuman stone rolled to the side, the grave open wide as a mortal wound—even Peter stooped in the musty tomb, holding pieces of linen gravecloth like a puzzle of Jesus he could not deny.

Randy Smith

The Road

Luke 24:32

Dark deepening, we slumped back into the wet road, unable to believe what our own eyes had not seen.

Ten steps toward home and a cloaked man appeared from nowhere, as if he stepped out of the rose-bank itself, and—his voice—arose from the very fragrance and redness of fresh roses. Our sadness apparent, we answered questions about the mighty Nazarene who spoke the dead to life; we told of ringing hammers on a bald hill, four soldiers terrified by the forsaken sun—their tiny, impromptu fire. Speaking kindly, but with authority, rebuking some coldness in us, the hooded man unveiled, scroll by scroll, prophecies about the Christ: “Behold a virgin will be with child— A shoot springing from Jesse’s stem will bear fruit— Like a rose of Sharon, the Messiah will bloom, a lily among the thorns—On the day of his coming, He will refine the nations with consuming fire—Bruised and cursed, He will crush the serpent’s scaley head.”

Even then, we sensed how he pealed back the black petals of our unbelieving hearts—how his words burned like bright coals in the dark pits of our minds.

At the door of our house, not able to let such hope walk on, we asked him to stay for supper and sleep.

While I set the table, Cleopas arranged a rosette of damp wood in the hearth, the fire catching barely, smoking and popping into life. Seated, the man we almost knew insisted on praying and breaking bread: it was the way he held the loaf, the motion reversed, thumbs starting out on top, pushing down in the middle, the slow falling of underside crumbs, and—then—the up-turned backs of the hands— holding broken bread—there—through the backs of the hands—the holes—in those wonderful hands— more glorious than roses and fire. Cleopas gasped, and—like smoke vanishing in tongues of flame, like a bud disappearing in the flower’s full bloom— He was gone. And the hard brown pieces of bread bounced once near the butter on the table top.

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Randy Smith

Talking to the Dove

When I was five years old, I could talk to birds— me sitting in Aunt Mildred’s big-bosomed lap on the porch swing

after dinner, her smelling sweet like some fried food or Avon perfume. In our summer ritual, she swung me to sleep through slackening heat above azaleas and daylilies grown dark in the yard.

Across the silent road, a solitary mourning dove called from the permanent flatwoods green of slash and longleaf pine.

(I have since seen his meek form in the Audubon guide: dreamless bird perched on a limb; feet slim as nails driven into wood; black eyes, unblinking, haloed in blue; his perfect breast a complexion of feathers, gray and rouge.) Mostly, I remember his call—a low, mournful coo-ah followed by three long coos—

which came as the word who to me and Aunt Mildred in the swing. A pure, sinless sound: like bone breaking, dropped china, hail or rain on tin, fine sand blown through screen, the last clear vowel heard

randy smith directs the creative writ-

Belhaven College in Jackson, Mississippi, where he lives with his wife, Laura, and three children: Benjamin, Nathanael, and Flannery. Previously, he has published poetry in Yemassee and has had poems selected for inclusion in the anthology The Best of Sandhills. His poetry is forthcoming in Rock and Sling: A Journal of Literature, Art and Faith. Three of Randy’s articles on the relationship between Christian faith and art— “A Pilgrim’s Progress to the Heavenly City,” “The Love That Moves the Sun,” and “The Wonder of It All”— were originally published in The Creative Spirit and now may be accessed online. ing program at

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before waking or sleep. When the bird’s call met us in some contingency of air, my aunt said: “Talk to the dove—

talk to the dove.”

And I answered across night’s wide field, “Who Who Who”—not a question or repetition of doubt, but a salutation called over paved road, the first words of a language I had just begun to learn.

THE

PERILS OF

TESTIMONY Melanie Springer Mock Several months into my first year of college, I realized there was an optional worship service for students every Sunday evening and that anyone who wanted to be considered a Christian by her peers had better show up. For weeks, I had been blissfully deluded, spending my Sunday evenings playing outside or hanging out in the dorm lobby—a lobby which was, I’ll admit, eerily empty, as if the rapture had come and carried everyone save me away. Students bursting through the lobby doors on those nights always provided certain relief.

Monday morning after Monday morning, my friends asked me why I hadn’t attended “Celebration,” the student-contrived moniker given these services. Their queries always seemed a bit weighted, as if my absence really meant something, either about me or about the services. Yet, oblivious to the gravity with which friends interrogated me about my Sunday activities, I innocently persisted in my weekend rituals throughout the fall. Only when a friend suggested quite strongly that I accompany her to Celebration did its import become clear: some were concerned my soul was in jeopardy, and only a weekly hajj to the school’s cafeteria—and to a night of singing praise hymns and giving testimonies—could save me. So, although I much more wanted to be outside in the fall’s waning warmth, I joined my friends.

That initial Celebration was my first real foray into Christian fundamentalism, although I was eighteen and had been a Christian virtually my entire life. Baptized at fourteen, my official entry into the Kingdom, I had nonetheless attended church with hyper-regularity throughout my youth; as the daughter of a Mennonite pastor, my life was consumed with the church, its machinations and dysfunctions, its mission and its doctrines. Despite my immersion in a Christian culture, I had only heard rumors about evangelical Christians, about their frenzied worship services and about the tongue-speaking parishioners who danced in church aisles. Their services seemed so far removed from my own church—from the music sung a cappella, from my father’s austere sermons—that I could little believe such Christians existed. In my mind fundamentalists seemed more an image manufactured by made-for-television movies, akin to the crazy religious zealots who bit heads off snakes and stole money from poor widows.

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That I chose to attend an Evangelical Christian college must have concerned my parents a little, if they even knew it was Evangelical. Ostensibly a Quaker institution, only twenty percent of the college’s student population was Quaker; most students, including a good number of the Quakers, were evangelicals, practitioners of an ethos and a worship style somewhat foreign to my own ethnic Mennonitism. Yet I didn’t realize how different I was from the majority of the student body until my friend dragged me to Celebration. Up until that point, I had been going to chapel services several times a week, a college requirement. But these proved to be mostly staid affairs, where students sang hymns half-heartedly, then fell asleep or studied while some speaker droned on about sanctification, justification, fornication. In other words, chapel seemed pretty much like what I assumed church should be.

At Celebration, the worship took on a more fevered pitch than at chapel. Students swayed to the beat of a drum set and piano and bass guitar, raised their hands, and moved from praise chorus to chorus with nary a break; as one song ended, the band changed key and off they were again. Everyone apparently knew the words to each song by heart, but I sat dumbly by, unfamiliar with even the simplest refrains. Soon, the student chaplain implored worshippers to kneel and bow down to “truly praise The Lord,” and most did, singing robustly as they planted their faces in the cafeteria carpet, home of smashed french fries and pot roast drippings.

SOON, THE

STUDENT CHAPLAIN IMPLORED WORSHIPPERS TO KNEEL AND BOW DOWN TO “TRULY PRAISE THE LORD,” AND MOST DID, SINGING ROBUSTLY AS THEY PLANTED THEIR FACES IN

THE CAFETERIA CARPET, HOME

OF SMASHED FRENCH FRIES AND POT ROAST DRIPPINGS Continued on page 37

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Otto Selles

Self-Addressed You may have the knack

of writing

about yourself.

And I know

you write best

by yourself.

It would seem though

that you write mostly

for yourself.

Jennifer Steensma-Hoag, Untitled, re/construct.

33

Otto Selles

Envelope I like to stuff some string

and a few matches

in an envelope,

so you can

follow what

I say.

Jennifer Steensma-Hoag, Untitled, re/construct.

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Otto Selles

Simultaneous As we wandered

over rocks and roots,

we tripped, fell,

and stood up again, until we noticed

the way we

tripped and fell

over each other.

Jennifer Steensma-Hoag, Untitled, re/construct.

35

Otto Selles

Submission I accept your criticism—

the part about the sky

swallowing the ground

and coughing up

a rocky hillside—

that might sound

somewhat overwrought.

But can’t I keep the other part,

where you are likened

to some lint

found

between my toes?

Jennifer Steensma-Hoag, Untitled, re/construct.

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Continued from page 32

After what seemed to me an interminable hour of singing, the second phase of Celebration began. At this point, students were invited to share their testimonies, their stories of an amazing grace that could uplift even the greatest of sinners. One student, an unlikely sophomore who always struck me as a little dazed, perhaps stoned, began. His truly was a tale of woe: born into a broken home, his parents aimlessly adrift in despair, he spent his high school years drinking and partying and snorting coke. A serendipitous encounter with a youth pastor had saved him, however, and here he was, at college, looking forward to a life of ministry.

Another student stood to testify. Her story was a modification of the first; the same song, but in a different key. Her parents loved her, really they did, but they were swept up in their own upper middle-class longing for acquisition and the chimera of prestige. She went to church regularly, was in fact president of her youth group, but drank heavily to medicate her middle class malaise; she lost her virginity in a beer-soaked affair before coming clean with her parents.

One twelve-step program and a Christian counselor later, she was here, at college, anticipating a future doing the Lord’s work.

And so it went. Student after student arose to spin astounding stories of sin and decrepitude.

The narratives turned on the axis of God’s mercy, a mercy manifest through the kind ministrations of youth pastors, teachers, church leaders, and friends. Even the sincerest believers in my midst—those who lead singing and Bible Study and who always smiled broadly because of The Lord’s good works—were branded by the stain of iniquity, by a boozy night on the town and salacious feels in their parents’ Buick. Or so they suggested in their testimonies, often told with tear-stained faces but the same broad smiles.

I had never heard anything like this, not ever in my years of Mennonite church camp and Vacation Bible School and youth fellowship. For some reason, giving testimony had never been part of my Mennonite religious instruction, perhaps because testifying and altar calls never held the fore among reserved twentieth-century Mennonites. Perhaps, too, my well-meaning elders who taught Sunday School and led youth groups assumed the lives of Mennonite youth followed a certain trajectory: born into the church, we would be baptized in the church, married in the church, eulogized in the church. Straying into temptation—especially the most heinous kind, like drinking and dancing—was never much of an option. Constricted by this teleology, our narratives would be stultifyingly monolithic: “I was born to Mennonites, I went to church, I died.” Now, of course, I know how unreal that trajectory really is, as the friends of my Mennonite youth succumbed in their twenties to the haze of drugs and the burdens of unmarried pregnancies. Had they found God again, their testimonies would fit well among the Evangelical brethren who testified in my college cafeteria.

The same Evangelicals whose testimonies filled me with incredible guilt and fear: guilt, because my life had been so serene by comparison, and fear, because my life had been so serene by comparison. After all, I was certain I would have to impart my narrative to the masses, too, and I had no lurid sins to which I could confess, only run-of-the-mill transgressions like envy and

37

sloth. I could little imagine that my auditors wanted to hear I had lusted after someone’s $100 shoes or that I watched five hours of television each day. Somehow, being saved from the clutch of these sins paled in comparison to those who had been rescued from the depths of chemical dependency or promiscuity. If I had observed aright, that meant everyone else at Celebration— and, for all I knew, everyone else at the school.

I was of two minds that night when I returned to my dorm after Celebration. First, I could forget that Celebration ever existed, fall back on my own Sunday rituals, and escape the threat of giving testimony; in doing so, I would also prove to friends that I gave no care to my “Christian Walk,” as they liked to say. Second, I could become a Celebration regular, await my turn to testify, appear the fool with my paltry sins, and prove to friends that I had no deep faith, untried by sin as I had been. Evasion or acceptance: I believed myself a loser whatever path I took.

I chose evasion, which worked for a good long while, no matter how askance my friends looked at me or how often I imagine they prayed for my soul. Evasion worked, I should say, until the coach of my track team suggested it would be nice (read: obligatory) if we shared our testimonies with teammates during our daily devotional time. The lair had been sprung, and I was trapped. I had to choose between giving testimony and giving up my one true love, running.

Like most young suitors unwilling to let go the object of their affection no matter the pain involved, I made my choice. I would have to testify, the consequences be damned.

Already an astute student of literature, though, I knew my testimony, my narrative, had to contain a certain level of excitement to captivate my audience. After hearing my peers’ testimonies at Celebration, I also knew exactly what constituted excitement: sin, and plenty of it, the tawdriest kind. For days, as I contemplated the construction of my narrative, its dramatic progression, the persona of its protagonist, its denouement, I came to a momentous conclusion: I decided that if I couldn’t conform the conventions of the testimony to fit the relative blandness of my life, I needed to make my life fit the conventions of testimony.

Thus, when my turn finally came to testify, I made sure my life, and my transgressions, took on the darkest hue imaginable. The sips of beer my grandfather gave me in his garage were really a sign of my weakness for alcohol. The one time I went cruising against my parents’ will signaled my utter and long-seated disregard for their authority. The puff of a cigar, shared as a celebration with friends, began my spiral into the seedy world of drugs. On and on I went, fabricating a fabulous tale of teenage rebellion based on half-truths and exaggerations. At the end of my story appeared the obligatory saint—in this case a high school running coach—who turned the tide of sin and led me to the promised land; this was a nice touch to my story, I knew, since my audience, composed of runners, would especially appreciate this type of savior. And my audience, I could tell, was rapt.

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Of course, in my testimony I did not mention that I had immediately told my parents about the one drag on the cigar, nor that during my sole cruising adventure, I wore a seatbelt, got nauseous from gas fumes, and made my friend—driving her mom’s Plymouth station wagon—take me home early. Nor did I discuss what I deep-down believed were the graver sins of my youth: the envy which rotted my soul and turned me against friends and family; the gossip which forked my tongue; the complete disregard I showed for peers who were uglier or poorer or stupider than me. Nor did I reveal that my saint was an agnostic who did little more than express faith, not in God, but in my ability to be a good student and a good person, giving me confidence I never had and making me more a believer in myself than in God. Admitting these things, I knew, would weaken my testimony, would put limits on God’s ability to heal the darkest of sinners. After all, it was easy to see how God could transform the envious; but to make a drunk sober—now brother, that took some powerful miracle working.

I COULD LITTLE IMAGINE THAT MY AUDITORS WANTED TO HEAR I HAD LUSTED OVER SOMEONE’S $100 SHOES OR THAT I WATCHED FIVE HOURS OF TELEVISION EACH DAY. I had embellished most of the details about my life in testifying about God’s role in that life; in essence, I had lied about my relationship to God, about its nuances and about the wonder of its eighteen year evolution. Nonetheless, when I finished my testimony and fielded questions from my audience that day, I felt definite relief. More than relief, actually: I sensed that giving my testimony was a powerful elixir, freeing me from the burden of difference, of being unlike my Evangelical peers in so many ways. I had at last been welcomed into their club, a fellow sojourner who had also felt the lick of flames before finding everlasting life. My testimony had allowed me to throw off the shackles of my staid Mennonite past, of the Sunday upon Sunday of church school and youth activities and potlucks that had made the story of my life, and of my faith, boring and predictable. Instead, I could become as the protagonist in my narrative: the wild child, high on beer and nicotine, cruising through town searching for fun, in need of a savior and remarkably transformed by the savior she had found.

After that day, giving my testimony became easier: the worshippers at Celebration soon heard my story, as did members of my Bible Study. While I never ornamented my narrative more than I already had, I never bothered to tell the real story, either; I had found a narrative that worked and felt no need to make major revisions one way or the other. That was my story, and I was sticking to it. On occasion, I was able to manufacture tears as I wove my tale, the clearest possible mark of my contrition—though manufacture may be too strong a word, for these tears were real, as was my contrition. Perhaps viscerally I knew I was a sinner hoping for God’s mercy, even if my gravest sins were not the ones I detailed at length in my testimony.

In the years following my college graduation, as I found my way in the “secular” world and eased back into a fellowship among Mennonites, my testimony became rusty with disuse: no one called upon me to testify, nor did I feel

39

a similar pressure to sacrifice my life’s narrative for the scrutiny of others. And now, at least a decade has past since I last testified in any formal sense, though surely I’ve shared with friends the narrative of my past and of my faith’s development. Without augmentation, this story no doubt lacks the verve of my earlier testimony. Sips of beer in my grandpa’s garage of just that—sips of beer, given to me by a 70-year-old man whose attention I craved. The cigar I smoked? If I mention this bit of my story at all, I admit that the cigar was a crazy stunt, that I felt sick after one puff, that my parents laughed when I confessed my transgression. With closer friends especially, I’m more likely to divulge the more significant sins of my youth: the contemptuous relationship I had with siblings, fueled by my envy for my brother’s scholastic success and for the ease with which my sister drew friends—especially boys—around her; the snobbery I imparted to a family in our church whose kids, part of my youth group, were poor and ugly and out of sync with popular culture; the sullen demeanor I gave my family for years, so much did I resent being with them and away from friends. These, ultimately, are the iniquities that have stained me, continue to stain me, and from which I need saved; they are part of the true narrative of my life, part of my nonfictive testimony.

Still, even in discourse among friends, I feel a tug towards the other testimony, the one that captivated my college peers so long ago, the one that privileges weaknesses of the flesh, rather than of the spirit. In some ways, I am much like a war veteran who only served stateside and never proved his mettle in battle but hides this from his home community. I worry that I have not yet proved my mettle as a Christian, so unremarkable are the sins that have whittled away my armor and have forced my trench salvation. The temptation to fictionalize my narrative would be especially strong were I called to testify in front of the Evangelical students who now populate my classrooms. After all, I figure I know what my audience wants and what my audience expects from a testimony, and I fear that my real narrative might disappoint.

I cannot fault them their expectations, though; few want to hear a prosaic tale without the essential ingredients of madness, mayhem, and then mercy. Perhaps that’s the problem with testimonies: we are compelled by compelling narrative. We don’t want to read a book without conflict, a story without a turning point and a resolution. I also imagine we are drawn to stories which reveal a remarkable God who enacts miracles, not some wimpy God who gives people boring lives, lives unchallenged by the trials that will compel them to seek contrition, to seek God. Still, somehow, we need to privilege an alternative story as well: a narrative founded not on climax, conflict, and change, but on God’s enduring mercy and love. For God’s powerful forgiveness extends not only to the gravest of sinners, but to those of us who live, day by day, felled by routine transgression. Such mercy as this, extended to all, truly deserves its own kind of Celebration.

melanie springer mock is an associate professor in the Department of Writing

Literature at George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon. Her book Writing Peace: The Unheard Voices of Mennonite Great War Objectors was published by Cascadia in 2003, and her work has appeared in Adoptive Families, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Brain, Child, among other places. She lives in Dundee, Oregon, with her husband and two boys. and

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SPRING 2007

Daniel Ritchie

“Wholeness, After George Herbert” I found a plant that lacked a bud, I watered, pruned, enriched its mould.

I heard a voice that stopped my hand: “Let me make it whole.”

I found a pot that lacked design, I planned new glaze and fired the bowl.

I heard a voice that stopped my mind: “Let me make it whole.”

I found a man who lacked repose, I offered to perfect his soul— Stopped by the voice that stopped my heart: “I will make you whole.”

daniel ritchie has taught English Literature at

Bethel University since 1985, where he’s also developed a Humanities Program. Daniel published Reconstructing Literature in an Idealogical Age (Eerdmans, 1996) and is finishing a book for Baylor University Press that links critiques of enlightenment thought by eighteenth century and postmodern authors.

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luci shaw

Dilemma Desperate to leave words behind (rubbing me raw from every inside surface—my deeply-papered desk, the spines of the books on the shelves, the magazines exploding with syllables, the verbal assault of the cereal box on the counter, even the Jonathan apples’ stuck-on labels) I open my window over the ravine. Falling rain with its splash and hush. A deep breath. The intake—a lovely wet, fungal smell. A squirrel’s sharp decrescendo of chirrup. All good, but not enough.

When the front door swung wide the world pulled me out, a cork from a bottle, to where the only words came when wind emptied its bowlful of power in my face. The clouds spoke a drench of rain.

A wide bib of creek water over rocks intoned its own original poem. Later the sun came out, articulating its meaning on a pool. It all began to become enough, even the bird, in its purse of a nest, brooding, not singing, even silence its own pure language.

Yet how, without this raw spate of words, can I tell you how it felt?

luci shaw is the author of nine volumes of poetry

What the Light Was Like (WordFarm, 2006), Accompanied by Angels (Eerdmans, 2006), The Genesis of It All (Paraclete, 2006), and the nonfiction prose book The Crime of Living Cautiously (IVP, 2005). She is Writer-inResidence at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C. Widely anthologized, her poetry has appeared in Weavings, Image, Books & Culture, The Christian Century, Rock & Sling, Radix, Crux, Stonework, Nimble Spirit and others. including

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issue 03 //

SPRING 2007

I took Mary to Eu

rope in 1957. That wa her son Slicky was s before dragged to death in Mississippi behind pickup during the a Civil Rights Movem ent. But Mary had witnessed her fathe already r strung up in Arka nsas. As a child, sh forced to witness his e’d been kicking feet before they grew limp. Ju feet stopped, one of st as the the ghost-men point ed out the hard bu his crotch. Mary de lge in scribed the lynching to me while frying and eggs for brunch bacon while I drank my tw o morning beers to steady my hands. Bu t then, last week sh e’d told me about woman who’d given a white birth to a litter of puppies.

Mary stood at five feet. She was thin and looked like som you’d wind up and ething let go. She was alw ays moving, yet th a calm about her. ere was Her copper tint, hig h cheekbones and nose testified of In aquiline dian blood. Her tw o front teeth were m The morning she issing. told me about her father, her black ey me: “Look at’chya es pinned . You just wastin’ ya’self.” Her voice water pushing thro gargled, ugh gravel. She plo pped down the pla somfin in dat stom te. “Put ach other den dos beers.” I couldn’t ea fifteen. My prep sch t. I was ool in D.C. though t I was traveling wi parents and a tutor th my .

That was also the morning my hallu cinations started. I to begin savoring my was about daily quart of whisk ey when rock music filtered through th e house just before noon. I listened, try catch the words, th ing to en realized there we re none as I peed int yesterday’s empty o bottle.

Mary came into my I looked up. “Why

room. “Telefo’,” sh

are you playing El vis

“Boy. You in troub le.”

e said. without the words?”

I tucked myself ba ck into my pajamas and carefully screw the bottle’s cap to ed on prove my lucidity.

“Who’s on the phon e?”

“Dat fren’ of your s. Has dat name lik e bacon spacklin’ in a pan.”

It was Ted Springle . Mary didn’t like him and massacre name. I tried to ge d his t up but my legs we re absent. I massage thighs, pretending d my an itch while Mary examined me, her weights on each hip fis ts like .

Afraid of a break-i n, I’d wheedled th e loan of a gun fro while my parents we m Ted re away. He wanted it back. Perhaps he thought I might kil l myself because he knew I was weak. my hand next to my Flipping ear to express com mand of the situatio said: “Tell Ted I’ll n, I call him back.” Bu t at the wrong end telescope, my tiny of some self fluttered like a panicked moth. Th paniment to All Sh e accomook Up played on in my head.

H LL W O

PLACES

E lle n Vi ss o n

That day I admitted my panic to Mary.

“You can get offa’ dat booze.” Sh e said it like it was tru e. “Booze’s de devil’s hook. But de re ain’t never been a sin simmered up by Satan dat did n’ come with God’s ow n redemption stamped right on it.”

“But I’m too weak

.”

“We all weak. Only strenf on dis earth come from God. You think one lil’ wh ite boy able to reach down into hiz big ol’ self and mu sser up what only God can give?”

“You don’t underst and. I’m all hollow where my courage is supposed to be.”

“You not list’nin’, is yah? Anyways, yo u been born wit’ all yahr fah’cultries . You can walk, yo u can think. Stop dis fool bizyness of feelin’ sorry for ya ’self. You gots uh father. You gots ah -vandages. Start co untin’ ‘em.”

My father was in Pa ris, a top journalist covering the Algerian crisis. My m other was with him . My parents had known each other as privileged child ren in Russia and then, after the Bolsh eviks, as poor in Pa ris before they married and emigr ated to America. In 1934 my father had interviewed H itler in the new Ch ancellor’s private railway car for a Be lgian daily, and fle d soon afterwards.

But they remained perpetual refugees— always on the move, and spendin g. Why save? Why build? Money transfor ms human s into bait. Bait for revolutions, governments, mobs— anything with unhe eding force and its blind momentu m.

43

e excessive in my parents wer ns sia us R te hi d weighed-in en ke most W l they wanted an e always did. Li al H k . an ris edr Pa d ng an yi e enjo would recite, “b it. They at My father was es,” my father sing to look at ex fu pl re m co by r e lif no d es face rong. pimpl everything and proving them w ds. “I’ve neither hundred poun e. I was bent on e as fiv ph ly a ar ng ne ki at in masse idered my dr ok.” They cons otel. cause I never lo ed Heartbreak H y’s rasp explod ar M ” s? le ub ever got tro de first boychil’ I’m too weak.”

“You think you out my parents, ith w n ow y m e out on es. I can’t mak ill inherit fortun w ds en fri y m “All “We all weak.”

t weak.”

ary. Slicky’s no

k, M . You’re not wea “Not everyone id, her eyes de

ies, “you don’ nse with memor

t even know wha

‘weak’ is.”

ary. I e anytime. “M t, they could di gh ei w d an es nts’ ag . Given my pare over the ethers ed ho ec og D nd Hou r sofa pt on the leathe want to stop.” e house. She sle th to ld in ou ed w ov es m or y, Mary s even sn ing and, that da metimes Mary’ ng So lo y , and d. m up t ba d e ou le er d w bb de first nights ghtmares ba y ni m Her stare soun e til us un ca ep be sle mless d stay xt to my room doze into a drea a wingchair an in the library ne as to waves, to She’d curl into d. em be th y to m n e te sid lis ing be lull me, and I’d find Mary stand I roared back I’d n he W . ed ar ro room was wn. ew drank. My with me until da eryone else I kn ev e us r where. ca be be em y, couldn’t rem cept for Mar I t ex bu ed es on ttl er bo ap s the hidden is way, unch oset, waiting. A en friendly. I’d I had to do it th at had once be ouched in my cl th cr ps ds oo sense in a en tr e fri y ak at em m ch other to rough diplom ea th riddled with en er ht ov ug ng bo pi I’d ip ave suicide, garbled, tr ee whiskey dared me to br . My thoughts at in Cases of duty-fr th e ed w on g flo n tin io e—a taun gun, snapped out, confus voice reached m I loaded Ted’s , nt alcohol drained om re ro he th co e ba e on e in th won. Only bling and alon race they never ps, muscles trem am cr m fro e. k zl ea ue muz and escape. W ed its perfect bl ng and my ck, and examin ba r be am ch until my ears ra e ts th fis y m ith w t the gun. my head or searched ou eeping, hitting et w e os cl m y d m ar in he ll d e cases sti d a lifeline. out this. She’ th a burden an or mentioned th bo Mary knew ab in e as w m t ca us r tr ve er sted. H d. But she ne y would be arre knuckles swelle anything, Mar d di I if er knew at th n but no one ev We both knew d eleven childre ha y e a real ar m M e t. ad gh Jones, he m ed every ni a sit iss vi M d at an gs “D in . bootiful?” ifted away Mary her th boy. But ain’t he e who hadn’t dr Slicky brought k on ac ly bl on g e bi a th as ky w. “Slic rs. Slicky w ook of his elbo which were he m within the cr fro e kl uc ch d niggah,” she’ attering of my ld grin.

And Slicky wou t through the ch ou e ak m ’t dn at I coul ere grappling ed discussion th needle-claws w sh ith hu w s a d er id ha Sp ky hours. y and Slic k for ninety-six One night Mar dn’t had a drin ha I , en th by e teeth becaus

“Chil’,” she sa

44

issue 03 //

SPRING 2007

Spiders

ING

E GRAPPL R E W S W A L C E L D WITH NEE

up my esophagus to parachute by web into my stomach again. I heard the heavy front door shut and a car gun off. I staggered from my room but Mary was still there.

Ted came by three days later on my sixteenth birthday. Mary didn’t let him in right away. She planted herself before the doorway even though he filled its frame. Ted played second-string at his university and I was proud to be his friend. “Missa Spacklin’s here,” she gargled over her shoulder, inviting me to send him away.

“Here. Ted.” My voice barely made it downstairs.

When he examined the wreck, prone and sweating on the library sofa, Ted knew. “Man. Let me get you a drink.”

I raised myself until my freeze-dried liver began to crack. “No thanks.”

He bent down, his eyes a watery blue flecked with yellow brine. Volcanic pimples brimming with yellow confronted me from his forehead.

“Vesuvius,” I noted. “On the sea. Erupting.”

“Man. You’re a ruin.”

“Pompeii,” I agreed.

“You’re sixteen today. We should celebrate.”

Though Ted was older we depended on each other. For the last two summers I’d broken the tedium of his stay at his mother’s villa near Aix-enProvence, and we always had our two weeks in Paris before. I’d be no fun dry. “What’re you trying to prove?” he asked.

“Nothing.” I’d answered him fifty seconds too late.

“Let’s go get Trisha. We’ll hit the Caverns. A new quartet’s down from Harlem. It wracks you out, Trisha says.”

“The gun’s in my night table drawer.”

AGAIN. H C A M O T S Y M O T

BY WEB IN E T U H C A R A P O T S UP MY ESOPHAGU 45

better class uh tta get ya’self a

ff they atered-down stu to add to the w e, ttl chbo ut a cl g in ck “I’ll br d came ba to my closet an in t his en w in d s es Te el ” serve. and defens appeared tiny It . but ck m ne ar s r as pe gl ing a d my up sed.” He grippe es dr . et ed “G om . lo nd e bottl big ha e my head. The sid be g tin sit up ended ked. ing this?” he as “Why’re you do

id later, “you go “Boy,” Mary sa friends.”

een, sit. But in betw d the next to vi an t of gh ni um at cu th ithin the va Slicky came by pied because w cu oc ck be ba to e d m d yank each minute ha drying cells coul traction of my e th , ornings were nt M sta . in m an ercise progra ex an n veral ga be I tween I read se into drinking. e weights. In be er w ns oo rn te calisthenics; af r nothing. ’ but remembe ‘complete works ring a “Have to.” ky arrived wea two weeks, Slic e en ic be vo going ve he as ha T w ht e .” t drinking onniere. H After what mig ugh life withou sebud as a bout ro ro th ts d ts us shone re tr ge a in e y sk ith on od is w “Nob asked. H esides, no white tuxedo pretty?” Mary nfirmed this. “B he co ’t e in ad on “A he e . y or m om w e insid d like he to his senior pr x that he carrie tu n’t drink.” es the ed do nt as re w ho a is w th to ne k anyo id. I thin midnight next t od, Slicky,” I sa ou go g al ne in re eo ck m ok ha lo so e er ght of as if she w everyday. “You ng that I’d thou ’,” Mary called ’fon.”

I’d begun drinki le ce te sin “Missa Spacklin de e on tim u st yo fir r ’pody askin’ fo phlegm. “Som besides myself. ot rg cted fo I’d . in where they expe head back t to Lausanne, ter he stuck his en la w s es nt to ut re in ed pa m ifi y rr w te A fe After Paris, m break. But I was me. during summer ten he’d ever co me to join them he done it again. T leave the house. hysterics. She’s d In an a. ish ay y sat at w Tr r ei as w th “It de Lord.” Mar t are on and psychiatris s un and gif it to a’ er sh ish th di fa n’ lged Tr cu d er bu s e H an di cl d ts. us ke wris ts of m be fun.” Te “You jus’ ta her ar ms. Kno o. This should on to g in e, esus ev m an “J d le . ts e he ay an bl cl as w ta tr h she e she’s s beneat the kitchen other. “This tim e small mound lik ch s r’s ea ne d ’ he bo te ot an ha er m in er nd nd pa fath n’ an’ r great-gra along her sle u’ all de weepi Chippendale, he and I heard beside you—tr om ht ro rig erything—the y r m now.” de to u en in yo t be id a stay w hing.” He wen stiness. He gonn na Lalique. Everyt om . ’ro f en ba op s drawer slide elled of the night table’ d my sweat sm calisthenics, an hisw ed a ish ith fin w ue muzst bl irs ju its ta Ted’s gun, “I can’t.” I’d come downs d te ’d et he gr at re th I r e l. te th ho la inhabited. and alco safety on Mary told me decomposition the world I now le checking the hi an w th m g ar tin s vi hi ne in r someo d more key bottle unde cket. Afterwards zle far shinier an ong enough.” slid into his po stnut ’d he he C ch in r life. I’m not str hi fo ch w e at n, ad w m e gu t id ic no su ’m on “I isha was back told me that Tr one. dn’t even pee al ul Lodge. She co

46

issue 03 //

SPRING 2007

“You got strenf mixed up with obstenizy and bullyin’. Strenf ain’t force. Strenf some’fin’ gentle comes from above, from som’fin’ bigger den us. ‘An’ God split de hollow place, and de water sprung out, an’ Samson drank, an’ revived.’” The dark gap between her teeth fixed me like another eye. “Yah’ll lookin’ in de wrong place. You lookin’ down into your own pit’ful self, like that Spacklin’ boy. Nofin’ ever come up from down dere but de miseries.”

I’d heard this before but somehow, when Mary spoke these words, they began to grow flesh around them. I wept. She leaned over to pat my arm but I pretended to need its sleeve for my nose. Yet something hard in me was melting.

I remember this conversation, and all the ones after it. That taunting voice dissipated with the mist but left behind a world that was too fast for me. The velocity of mundane events pierced my being and words ran me through like swords. I might have bled to death, had not colors and sounds begun to enthrall me. Free of alcohol, life became inebriating. A month after my sixteenth birthday, I marveled through the library window as birch bark exploded into sun-struck silver. Buds were opening, their infant leaves growing almost as I watched. A cardinal landed while I observed its claws extend in slow motion to grip a branch, its helmet of a head screaming red.

My mother called again from Lausanne and I told her I’d come soon. She asked what was wrong with me. Since I was fourteen she’d only heard me drunk. “I’m fine,” I said. When I hung up, the phone jumped to life in my hand. It was Ted, calling from New York.

I was coherent so Ted assumed I’d fallen back into drinking. I asked about Trisha. “She’s got new bracelets,” Ted said about her slashed wrists. “She won’t be coming to Paris this summer.” When he mentioned Trisha, I heard a girl snicker. I liked Trisha and didn’t like this girl knowing about her.

“But you’ll be there,” he said about Paris. “Mother will be there, too. For the fall collections.” He imitated his mother beautifully, the words mounting to his nose. “She’s on her fifth trousseau but we’ve a good ten days to party before she arrives. We can use her suite at the George V.” “Sure.” At the time I thought I might.

Slicky took Mary back home with him that night. Before she left I asked what I could do for her. I insisted pretty hard but her protests didn’t last long: “I wanna see where yah’ll goes ever’ summer.” Her

life.

I’M NOT MADE FOR I’M NOT STRONG ENOUGH. 47

de summer. An’ I ky’s look. “D.C.’s hot in voice grated louder at Slic Joo-ly.” in dem mountains even heared talk ‘bout snow on “Get a passport,” I told

rland.”

itze her. “I’m taking you to Sw

anyway around ate but got her passport Mary had no birth certific mit. Slicky per ped me get my driver’s the same time Slicky hel tcase tied with sui t carrying a cardboard brought her to the airpor toe protruding. big ng filthy Keds with her a string. Mary was weari ford’able in com be her feet. “I wants to She caught me looking at drops into de oh-shen.” heav’n if dis here plane nged shoes. In ocean but Mary never cha We didn’t drop into the They’d gotten us. parents were waiting for the Lausanne hotel, my and Alps. e lak roof with a view on the Mary a room under the understood she nk thi I wasn’t drunk and I Only my mother noticed in my y iske wh al without my habitu about Mary. At dinner and toasting t kep and too. He became merry hand, my father noticed imistic opt felt r eve s the first time he’d my willpower. I think it wa about my future.

Chrysler, the next day to pick up our I took the train for France is.

Par in Calais, I phoned Ted shipped over on a liner. At

into a Chrysler, Mary had settled When I returned with the wearl stil ors rid h wide hotel cor routine. She bustled throug maitre the led cal e toe protruding. Sh ing the sneakers with big reese’ oe‘M es— rge by their first nam d’hôtel and night concie ucoup’ bea rci ‘me for ’ off ‘maxi booksie and ‘Pee-hair’. She rattled ’est-ce que c’est?’. and ‘Kess-kee-kay?’ for ‘Qu

ced.

“I can’t come,” I announ “Why not?”

and “I’ve got a friend with me

have to take care of her.”

s ahead of us.” ng. We still have six day “Well great, bring her alo “Can’t do it, Ted.” Silence swelled space. n’t you.”

“Still on the wagon. Are

t my parents want dose,” I lied. “It’s just tha ly dai my e tak I no, o, “N e to drive them up the mountains and I hav to spend a few weeks in sha?” to Crans. Any news of Tri ctly on the best Her father and I aren’t exa rd. hea I last y, oka e’s “Sh Good-bye, then.”

The line crackled. “Well. of ter ms. Remember?” . too up, back before I hung I hesitated about calling

48

issue 03 //

SPRING 2007

elaborate she hustled me under an As soon as we were alone, listening and ed oss which half-drap belle-époque archway acr she s?” ple peo d here’s all de colore ladies were perched. “W hens, kitc de in n eve t colored here. No hissed. “Dey ain’t got no where ya cants see ‘em.” rope were

the only Negroes in Eu I explained to Mary that .

American jazz musicians

ed, then shot back: “Den “Imagine dat,” she ponder all de dirty work?”

“People come from poorer

who duz

s.” countries. Mostly Italian

“I-talens? Fom Italy?” ’d wanted e Bicycle Thief because she I’d once taken Mary to Th subtitles the d rea ’t gh she couldn to see a foreign film. Althou ry well enough. she’d understood the sto nc . “But the high Swiss fra “Their pay is low,” I said ly.” port whole families in Ita s? Dey ain’t got “Den dere’s no colored folk or somefin’?” p cam som’ consee-tay-shun

can sup-

dem shut up in

e Negroes Mary. And they don’t hav “There’re no more camps, peasants but slaves. They had serfs and because they never had not slaves from Africa.” a mountain ed me until we were on I don’t think Mary believ altitude, and t tha at l Crans. It was coo road climbing slowly to Chrysler as e tibl ver n into the con the sun beat pleasantly dow stretched ley val one the sky. The Rh its hood tipped towards around us ead spr ks pea and towering below in misty turquoise, loding with light. like petals, their snow exp wind, “to see s,” she hurled above the “I wish I had dem fly-eye heav’n!” ever’thin’. We’s almos’ in

My mother asked me what Mary was shouting about.

“But wher’s all de colored folks?” Mary insisted. We’d passed a few tool shacks and I think she expected sudden shantytowns to appear. My father looked up from his fourteen dailies. “Qu’est-ce qu’elle est en train de hurler?”

“Switzerland doesn’t have any colored people, Mary.” My father’s eyes tipped briefly into wonderment before returning to his newspapers. Mary clucked her tongue.

In our rented chalet, Mary entertained my friends each night.

She made me promise to bring back the whole group from the Sporting Club and, around midnight, she’d cut, batter and fry eight chickens. Her meal was so exotic that I remained as popular as if I’d still been drinking.

One night my African friend Charlie arrived at the Sporting. He was also driving that year, and owned the latest Ferrari equipped with a Swedish girlfriend. She was an anorexic blond with a wide jaw and big bones. Her pasty skin and light eyes made Charlie look even blacker. He let me drive his Ferrari to the chalet and she came along.

As I reined in the booming pistons, I caught Mary’s face at the window. She examined the car and the Swede and smiled in approval, her gap merry. When the Swede and I came in, Mary winked at me above her spattering chicken.

“And who’s dis here young lady?”

“A friend of a friend.”

“Sho’ t’ing, uh-huh. But where all yah other friends?”

I was explaining they were coming on foot when the phone rang.

Mary took the pan off the fire and grabbed the receiver to bark “Kess-kee-kay?” She enjoyed her new language but evidently the caller spoke English because Mary didn’t pass the phone to me but howled into the mouthpiece: “We ain’t got no princes here. And no kings, needer.” She hung up, laughing.

Then Charlie walked into the kitchen with the others. He was blacker than Slicky, with a blue iridescence shimmering across

49

uh our his neck. “One r ar ms around he ng fli t. d gh an him ry strai held himself ve ngs to run up to dn’t let go. He dropped her to di en y th ar , M ed t us bu pa d y retreate his skin. Mar rgled. Charlie r boys,” she ga ou uh e on , ys bo u is.” try? Black as yo ha inta de coun tc le y de ow H here, boy?

“How you get veut, cette femme?”

“Qu’est-ce qu’elle e. ac br em s y’ broke Mar enchy stuff?”

Charlie fir mly speakin’ dat Fr u yo hy w ut “B back. ary Mary chanted receiver and M kess-kee-kay?” e. He took the “Kess-kee-kay, rli ha C ld ab to I ho e, w ur toi,” d over to Charli ered it. “C’est po Swede sauntere ain and I answ he ag T plained. “And ng it. ex ra I e to ” in on e, rli ff” ph Just then the . “That’s Cha at Frenchy stu on “d e ld ok he I sp t e bu rli ained while Cha waist. Mary str made big eyes nd her spaghetti ou ar m ar s hi sently laced girl.” that’s Charlie’s ain’t dead?”

“How come he . th bo em th d y dissecte “Hiz girl.” Mar In Africa.” ce of a country. in Pr n w ro C e “Charlie’s th f ’ika…”

“A prince. In A

es the car. It’s a

m. And so do try belongs to hi

“The coun

Ferrari.”

addylac?”

r den a C ed. “Is dat bette Mary consider

she great country,” re Swissylan’s a he and a is rl, “D gi w. te bo f ’s him a whi leased her el gi re , I ce e. in ed pr a Sw e m d th akes hi ated Charlie an gets one, dey m Mary contempl s, but when dey lk fo ove here.” d m re d lo an co t got no a get Slicky nn go “I . said. “Dey ain’ ok lo e a sly why I ” She threw m . I don’t know Sarari to drive. with the others in ed gl ag . str au d usse eyes, Te her imminent tro sound out her his mother and t before I could pt bu ce ex ng ni ris in Pa gr in e Mary was ust, with no on rred.

It was mid-Aug was surprised. ammad,” he slu s come to Moh ha in n’ ou m he e cool night. “T door against th issueTe 03d // ed the 2007 closSPRING “Some say so.”

50

WE WERE

safe.

HERMETICALLY SEALED ATOP MY SECURE MO

UNTAIN.

“I’m glad you came, Ted.” I was. This would be Ted’s fourth stepfather, and he needed someone who knew. “Summer isn’t really sum mer unless you’re around,” Ted grin ned, grabbed a chicken thigh and sat down.

But then he started going after the Swe de. Charlie placed a quiet hand agai nst Ted’s big chest. “To her you’re just a side of a beef.” His accent was very strong in English. “Tu vas la laisser tranquille.”

Ted grinned at Charlie as he wiped his hands and pretended not to care . Mary slid a second platter before us. Everyone except Ted and the Swede reached for more. Ted slid a flask from his jacket and dolloped whiskey into paper cups . He pushed one to Charlie, one to the Swede and one to me.

I sensed Mary’s eyes.

“Santé,” Ted chanted with a Swiss acce nt, then drained his cup. The Swede downed her whiskey but Charlie didn’t. Mine shivered befo re me as the table jumped with activ ity around the chicken.

Between red-checkered curtains, a sum mer storm ignited in the distance.

Charlie took his Swede and went outs ide to fasten the hardtop onto his Ferr ari. Laughter swelled the kitchen, and the ceiling beams gave back a pleasant wood smell. A fire crac kled in the salon’s hearth. We were safe, hermetically seale d atop my secure mountain. I picked up the cup. Mary was sitting on a high stool before the stove , her tongs poised. I drained it.

I got very drunk very quickly. But the next night, and the next, the whiskey went down like water. I couldn’t get drunk yet I don’t rememb er much. I know Ted stayed less than a week before leaving with someone for Nice. I didn’t notic e him go. I kept bringing people hom e for fried chicken but nights began to merge. Mary never knew when I’d show up and often, the chic ken was tepid and Mary was already in bed. I’d see her around noon for my morning beers, and our D.C . routine was resurrected atop a Swiss mountain.

51

**

SOMETcIoMmEeSs

grace

through..

REAL QUIET LIKE

52

issue 03 //

SPRING 2007

was This time there drinking again. ed y pp M . sto I ld or re w fo a six years be into a sepi e clinic, it was It was another n th ow of y t m ou of d t ke as when I wal e furnace bl th by ed er ith no Mary and, e in th been w sparrows rolled ne and life had parents were go s. Only common al in rd ca d re were no mortality. There n. ing, summer su bb sta a dust under e first time out Slicky for th ab ad re I s, tte cigare been ack town, he’d over coffee and edominantly bl That same day pr a in rsary of y ve bo ni . an .C st er. As a D mark the fir to n io ct se in the newspap ty st’s ci in Georgew lines in the Po She was living . ok bo e on honored by a fe ph in the eded to ched Mary out to see her. I ne his death. I sear se but I wanted cu ex y m e. as on w be al . Slicky I needed not to town’s last slum sober but mostly as r he to f el present mys of a ing, metal claw under the loom t en tm en ar be ap d t basemen swamps ha Mary rented a mac, where the to Po e wn. The th do ar d re ne e was sunlight filte tle lit t ha w bridge’s base. Sh t ked ou ove over the gh bridge bloc rattled from ab y le ol tr l na drained. The hi sio occa etual fog, and of cars and an ads in the perp be g tin ea distant clacking sw e es wer ater. The hous elled of sewage. slow-moving w dry. The fog sm d ne ai m re s rd ya rt yet their di n’t surprised sober. She was as w I ew kn e sh or, of tricks. Pery opened the do tire repertoire en its t ou As soon as Mar ed ay y pl nst the poison if life had alread of fatality agai s se do l al by my visit, as sm with . ridated herself led into her face haps she’d mith uction was chise str de s hi , ay w h. Any of Slicky’s deat y radiated. hich lines alread w m fro e, in m ted ely. The only rrowed as she no look was still liv r he t bu t Mary’s eyes na gh ei ed w e teeth and gain She’d lost mor . ky ic Sl as w r eyes deadness in he sat ere damp and re the bricks w he w o di ol. sto stu t en atop a high into her basem y, she perched ra ht as She bustled me an e m ing ar mchair. Pass me in the only ssy.” I named ns. For an emba tio la re ic bl pu in nd I’m around have a job. It’s at it, I think. A od go be “Me?” I said. “I ’ll “I e. all but solid on the country, a sm me.” sh bu am t n’ it ca liquor all day so p. “Dat’s real d them in her la pe op dr e en th , ther smooth. We wer her palms toge had been worn e ic vo Mary clapped r he in el thed. The grav good,” she brea st. pa d le rt hu en e sir silent as a polic e with arthritis joints were wid er H e. ffe co e onto her perch. her stool to mak d climbed back an d se Mary slid from fu re e Sh r my ar mchair. and I offered he r h the gap in he was spat throug ’ ey ‘d ve he ha T .” to n Mary killed my Slicky k. I’d never know sin y “You know dey rt di r e th he d out ach darted into ug him.” I stare front teeth. A ro a pickup and dr to m by. “Dem hi d ed pe ck fli ro ey alk. Ankles ew sid e a dirty sink. “D th to on en but I had it t window and af de coffin op le to e narrow basemen m s d te an arled “Forgivin’ doubl’ A-C-P w idened as she sn w h et . folks from de N te ay r aw he n em hisked th The gap betwee rung but she w sp s ar clos’t anyway.”

Te .” ne n work I ever do de hardest dam

“Sometimes grace comes though. Real quiet like.”

“They killed Charlie, too,” was all I could offer.

Our eyes met. “Charlie? Dat pretty-boy prince? Kilt?”

The pouches beneath hers tensed. “In Swissylan’?”

“Not in Switzerland. His father died so Charlie went back to Africa to be king. But there was a Marxist rebellion.

Soldiers killed him. They tortured him first,” I added, as though this could somehow compensate for Slicky.

Mary slid down to get me more coffee. The roaches around the sink stood their ground. “Dat po’ chil’,” I heard her sigh. Her breath sounded wet.

ellen visson began submitting in

2002. She is nominated twice for a 2008 Pushcart in fiction and was nominated twice for a 2005 Pushcart, also in fiction.

In 2006, her fiction appeared in Ascent, The Chattahoochee Review, Absinthe: New European Writing, descant, and Tiferet.

Recent fiction has appeared in The Literary Review and ByLine; nonfiction in Das Beste and International Living; and humor in The Journal of Irreproducible Results. Ellen arrived in Switzerland with little money and no permits in 1983 with her future husband Philippe Visson, an artist. The couple has lived there these twenty-three years only from his art, which is shown extensively in museums and galleries.

When she climbed back onto her stool she said: “Ain’t dis a funny world.”

I admitted it was.

“One wast kilt ‘cause of no prif ’lege. De other wast kilt ‘cause he had too much.”

We were silent for a while. Then she asked: “And where’s dat Missa Spacklin’?”

“Working in a bank. His father’s.” The bitterness I usually heard in my voice was absent. “He’s on his third divorce but swears it’s his last, he doesn’t want to end up like his mother.” I lit another cigarette. “He always could hold his liquor,” I added, the bitterness back.

“Dis ain’t de strenf ’ dat really rules,” Mary said, her voice grating like in the past. “You knows dat. Don’cha?” Mary was still trying to protect me. “Don’cha?”

She was asking this time. I met her gaze. “I know real strength isn’t mine. I know I can’t do it alone. Someone very wise once taught me that.”

The basement window framed a set of stiletto heels and wingtips. They paused, toe-to-toe, before tapping by, slim ankles buttressing up youthful laughter.

“But, Mary. Can you still believe?”

And she looked me straight in the eye.

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Joe Ricke

Joe Ricke

Holy Weak

Profit

G*d—

When the whore, his wife,

In the details.

The scattered crumbs,

Staggered back to their run-down dump of a home

The broken crusts, The crushed, bloody fruit,

And cursed him quick before collapsing

In the sickening wheeze

Spread-eagled on their tainted bed,

Of the suffocating lungs, And the first fierce gasp

When he kissed her drunken, fevered lips

Of new life.

The taste of her many lovers mixed With cheap liquor and the flesh of pork, Hosea believed in Yahweh.

joe ricke teaches English at Taylor University.

He mostly writes about early drama, but sometimes waxes poetic. Previous poems have appeared in Rolling Coulter and other journals. He lives in Huntington, Indiana, with his wife Lynn and daughter Jenny.

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SPRING 2007

Stacy Barton

At the Store I saw you today, yin depleted, you sniffed the cellophane cylinder of a quick-store rose.

Black bucket on stilts lifting its treasure like a bulky crane to a Rembrandt of a woman.

Your nose, beneath a grey shock of unkempt hair, moved quickly, eyes too, ashamed to be caught doing such a girlish thing between the snickers and the tabloids.

But I saw you, old and stooped and smiling as the door swung closed. * See Stacy’s bio on page 28 55

ELIZABETH CARLSON

Waiting for Kairos “And why, in Heaven’s name, is the back of your head bald?”

“Because none whom I have once raced by on my winged feet will now, though he wishes it sore, take hold of me from behind.”

Inscription by Poseidippos on the statue Kairos

There were days that held the weight of years, like hands gripping stone tablets.

There were years light as dancers feet— their hands shaking tambourines that glinted in the sunlight.

The thickest times were in the middle— the years that stuck like rocks in our throats.

The prophets were silent 400 years.

The time has come, the Hebrews said, for the Lord to act.

But time dragged his feet, while kairos hung thin on a cross.

And now, the concert plunges into the night— voices rasping in fatigue, dancers collapsing against the band-stand.

The prophets have been silent 2000 years.

And the fat go on devouring.

They think time will last forever as do the hungry.

Do not close your eyes, He told the few, the hour has come.

Do not listen, they tell us, the thief is silent.

“Why did the artist fashion you?”

“For your sake, stranger, and he set me up in the porch as a lesson.”

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ELIZABETH CARLSON

Leaving the Shore Her head nods and edges progressively closer to me in sleep like a buoy forced down by the waves.

The situation is almost laughable. Listening to such a serious sermon I half expect the preacher to shout “Awake ye sleepers!” and ruin everything.

Her daughter-in-law reaches an arm around her each time her head bobs too close to my shoulder.

I imagine my old woman when she was a pert young Methodist raising a family in Arkansas in 1952.

Now sleep has become inevitable even for the once fervent saint.

Her mind has ceased to anchor her body so firmly—like seaweed loosed from its moorings.

And I am glad when her daughter-in-law prays too long and I feel the dry cheek dip and settle onto my shoulder.

elizabeth carlson is an undergraduate in writing at

Whitworth College with a hunger to

pursue writing that involves social justice and art.

Her preferred forms of writing are creative

nonfiction and poetry and much of her writing is

Washington State, Montana, and Sierra Leone. Elizabeth considers herself a clay-pot Christian who is continually broken and remolded by her Father in Heaven. inspired by her experiences living in

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Short Stories in the Tradition of Flannery O’Connor “Stacy Barton’s brilliant collection will haunt you. It’s courageous, honest and smart.”

JOhn DuFreSne, author of Louisiana Power and Light, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“The wonder of Stacy Barton’s fiction is the emotional connection of her characters. . . .

Authentic all the way.”

PhILIP F. DeAVer, author of Silent Retreats, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

WORDFARM

Available from your local bookstore or online at Amazon.com Visit us on the web at www.wordfarm.net

ruminated

LAST NOTE

reconstruct, reclaim, revisit, retell, revise, relocate,

a n d h o p e f u l l y. . .

The Ruminate Staff

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redeem.

Katie Jenkins, Duets Are Best. Linoleum Print, 8.5 x 7.5 inches.

Katie Jenkins, Bare Oak. Linoleum Print, 6.5 x 8.5 inches.