Sanskrit 2014

SANSKRIT LITERARY-ARTS MAGAZINE

Editor-in-Chief Athina Hinson

Fingers tracing scars, tattoos, stretch marks, stubble, dipping into trenches formed by clavicles and coxa, playing connect the dots with freckles and beaming blemishes.

With veins popping, strongly gripping solid arms, soft stomachs, face, hair...or just the hand of a companion, eyes bright, cheeks swollen together. A firm embrace with long lost friend, drunken caress of hair or cheek with new, these and many more are the ways we express love for our bodies and the minds and hearts and souls they hold within.

Just like the body, this book holds within it the hearts and souls of all those who worked to produce it, from the authors and artists to the Sanskrit staff. We hope that you show this book affection as you would a body: thoroughly flip through every page, trace your fingers along the lines of text, linger on your favorite parts, and treat it gently, except maybe when overcome with passion.

Most of all, use this book to reach what it holds inside: the emotion and creativity of lovely souls that echoes throughout.

We hope you enjoy...

Athina Hinson, Editor-in-Chief

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Table Of Contents 7

Waiting

Claire Scott

8

Kansas

Robert Schillinger

11 And Then It Turned Into A Picture Of Us 12 A Door 13 Dream Studies 14 In Another Life, Dream 15 Ashes 16 On The Manner Of Addressing Lettuce 17 Drift 18 I Held The Pieces Close To My Heart 19 Red Eye 20 Rapid City Blues 22 Definitions Of Manhood/Womanhood?

23 The Ride Home From Juvenile Hall

Kimberlee Thompson Demi Fedur Christina Hall Jessica Harmon Joan Roberta Allison Scott Cindy Bonilla Alison Hicks Robert Schillinger Myque Harris Jon Epstein

30 Safe

Laura Pendell

31 I Was Born In The Wrong Time Period

Elena Calebro

32 Toy 33 Kenzie With A Newport 34 Lovers And Fighters 35 La Santisima De La Muerto 36 Prayer

Ken Haas Katherine McKeon Iab Lee Michael Patrick Emery Mimi Plevin-Foust

37 Pope Of Fashion

Elisa Sanchez

38 Strange Girl Nancy With Crackers

Cindy Bonilla

39 Red Shift 40 Fit

Claire Scott Robert Schillinger

42 Composite Of A Mother

Rachel Landrum Crumble

43 The Valued Meal Part II

Demi Fedur

44 The Arsonist 45 Tilda 46 Phantasmagoric 47 Untitled

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Cindy Bonilla

Ken Haas Dakota Rose Katharine VanDewark Ashley Moore

48 Good-Bye, Dad 49 Home Again

Mimi Plevin-Foust Cathy Allman

50 Wine Glass Series-Tension Below

Nii Yartney

51 Snipped

Wendy Fox

55 Wedding 56 Serpentins 58 Something Frayed 60 Poudres 62 Things 67 Teapot Wrapped In Foil Signing To Me 68 Untitled 69 Ignore The Hornet 70 Morpheus

Kylie Niemand Je ´ro ˆ me Karsenti Alima Sherman Je ´ro ˆ me Karsenti Gay Baines Cindy Bonilla Jenna Colhouer Marc Berman Donna L. Emerson

71 We Were Exhausted And Utterly Hopeless

Cindy Bonilla

72 I Think I’m Getting Married

Cindy Bonilla

73 Pajama Party Barbie 74 Greyhound 76 Still In His Chest 77 The Wooing 78 I’ve Been Asked To Judge 79 The Stare 80 Waiters 82 Asphyxia 83 Fractured

Joan Roberta Ryan Robert Schillinger Jed Myers Joan Marie Wood Cindy Bonilla Mark Belair Claire Scott Ashley Moore Jack King

90 Contributor Biographies 95 Jury 96 Staff Biographies 98 Thank You 99 Colophon

Category Key: Poetry Fine Art Short Story v

Waiting Claire Scott

What if this is all: Stale space spreading dull depletion Rootless and leafless waiting for spring What if there is no next No change in the unchanged the unchangeable Only a still born butterfly Blown aimless across a barren field Parched of possibility Stunted wings of dust.

Altars to faded gods, effigies swinging sick with hope dizzy with death Curdled prayers wind tossed In this desert of dry space waiting for Subtle peace to seep into stagnant silence Dreaming a future that is past And a past that never was Forcing meaning on emptiness Making meaning to survive The ever lowering light waiting for the stubbed out nub signaling the end of time.

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 7

Kansas Robert Schillinger

The train groans as it crawls through the Kansas night. The hum of tires rise and fall as cars disappear down the interstate. There are no clouds and the constellations we could never name slide quietly through a clear sky. A field of sunflowers, swaying shadows of their former selves. We lay halfway out of our tent, heads against the grass. We are passing a joint back and forth. Our knot started unraveling in California, in Big Sur, some three thousand miles ago. Years from now, I’ll mark this as the night that we finally came untangled.

“We can’t keep doing this,” you say. “We can’t wander around the country forever.”

“There are other roads. Other countries.”

“But we can’t. I can’t.”

Our hands fumble in the secondhand sunlight, neither of us wanting to take our eyes off the stars you don’t see in cities. I close my eyes as I inhale, feel the ash dust my cheek like you used to those lazy Saturday mornings. It’s like a game of hide and seek. My eyes closed, I’ll count to ten. And when I open them, you’ll wish you picked a better place to hide. Anywhere but here.

“You didn’t think you could camp backcountry. Or survive a blizzard in the mountains out in Glacier,” I say.

“We almost froze to death that night.”

“But we didn’t. And you didn’t think you could live on the road for, what, three months now?”

“That was different,” you say. “I’m glad we did. I’m glad I did it with you. But I can’t keep doing it.”

“Why?” The look on your face says you’ve told me this a million times. But I didn’t hear you or didn’t believe you, or didn’t want to believe you.

“Because I don’t want to. This was fun, but it’s not fun anymore. I’m tired. I’ve had my fill. I don’t feel like we’re moving forward anymore, and I want to move forward. I want a house, I want a family. I want to feel like I’m making progress.”

“But we are,” I say. “Look how far we’ve come.” You close your eyes. I see the freckles in a delicate spread across your cheeks. It’s hard to remember the last time I really saw them. Noticed them. I try and match them to the constellations and find the North Star beneath the corner of your left eye.

“Are we? Yeah, we’ve been all over the country, seen a ton of things I didn’t think I’d see, not for a long time, but are we really? We’re moving, but it feels like we’re moving in circles. We’re in the same place we started. We have no idea what we’re doing, and you have no idea what you want to do. You said you’d find it out here. You said you wanted to write a book about all of this, but I haven’t seen you writing at all. You haven’t so much as picked up a pen unless it was to sign a receipt.”

“I am writing it.”

“Where? When?” you say. “I haven’t seen any of it.”

I smile and point to my head. “Here,” I say. “I’m writing it in here. I’ve got lines, I’ve got passages. I’m organizing.” A month ago this would have made you

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smile, maybe fake a laugh, something. But now your eyes are closed and a sigh slips out between your lips. I want to kiss you, but I can’t. Something tells me you wouldn’t kiss me back and that scares me to death.

“Look. I’m working on it. I really am.

But I feel like there’s not enough. It needs more. I need more. This story isn’t done.”

You rub your face and stop with your palms resting on your cheeks. Your words are muffled, but I hear you clearly when you say, “You’re the only writer that doesn’t actually write.”

A silence settles between us. Then I do what I always do when I feel like I’ve been attacked. I joke. I say, “Far from it. I’d say there’s quite a few of us.”

No laugh, no smile. Just another sigh.

Three years is long enough to know when to stop talking. Inside the tent I pull out the white cardboard box. The size of a large tissue box, it was filled to the brim with pot, coke, molly, acid and other things when we left. But after dragging it across the country it’s nearly empty. I fish out the one-hitter and the few grams of pot we have left. The DMT, too, just to be safe. A little weed, a little DMT, a little more weed, the perfect psychedelic sandwich. As I lay back in the grass beside you, half in and half out of the tent, you say, “And the drugs, I can’t do it anymore.

Constantly tripping, you’re always quiet, and I can’t stand that 2C crap anymore.

It gives me a headache. I can’t remember the last time I spent the whole day sober without seeing shit moving all the time.”

There’s nothing I can say to that. I know what I want to say. That’s the point.

It helps me see the things I wouldn’t normally see. See life in another light, another angle. From someone’s view other than my own. But you’ll say that’s bullshit, and half of me thinks you’re right. “So you don’t want any of this then?”

A look of disgust comes over your face. One I haven’t seen before. I wonder if you’ve just found it, or if you’ve held it for the past three years. Saving it for that one moment it would do the most damage. I’ve found the end of the Earth, can feel the ground crumbling beneath me, leaving me with that feeling like I’ve just been punched in the gut.

You kick the sleeping bag off your feet and put on your boots. “I’m going for a walk,” you say.

“Don’t get lost.”

You lift your hands and drop them and the sound is deafening. “Like I could get lost in Kansas. Of all the places, all the states, we’re in Kansas. What kind of idiot actually wants to go to Kansas, let alone stay there longer than they have to?”

“This idiot,” I say, but I’m talking to the wind. Inside the tent again, I zip up the flap. I light the one-hitter and inhale. The first signs are all too familiar now. My eyelids take on added weight that slowly shifts to the rest of my head. It slips into my limbs, then my chest. Here comes five minutes of an acid peak.

I focus on the side of the tent. The nylon begins to waver, the wrinkles flatten

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 9

out and it melts from gray to a light pastel blue. The humming tires in the distance shift pitches into something minor, and the heavy metal crash of boxcar joints takes on a steady rhythm. A soft banjo picking floats between my ears, but I can’t place it as anything that really exists. The side of the tent balloons out. A line cuts diagonally across the nylon sheet and curves into a soft arc. The top half fades into a deeper blue, the sky before an approaching storm. The bottom half is green. A slow-rolling hill. I can see the wind as it ripples through the grass like a secret. I’m not sure how I know, but I know it’s California. A piece of California I haven’t seen before. And I know that’s where I need to go, where I need to be.

Then the side of the tent turns back into a tent, the music fades, and I feel exhausted. My mind feels like a broken mirror, and I’m left reeling with thoughts of California. I’m not sure exactly where you are, but I know you don’t want to go back to California, especially if the sole reason for going is because a drug-induced vision told me that’s where I should go.

Not knowing what else to do, I dig out my notebook and a pen. I crack the spine and stare at the first page, naked and unadorned. The beginnings of something great, or tinder for our next campfire. For the first time in five thousand miles, for the first time in 3 months, I write something other than my name.

I write: The train groans as it crawls through the Kansas night.

I write until I can’t take it, until my hand cramps and refuses to let go of the pen, until I can think of nothing but sleep. I leave the notebook out, open to the first page dense with scribbles and scratched out words, so you can read it whenever you get back.

I woke up and you were there, but not really, and you were sleeping, your boots still on and caked in dirt. I found the North Star beneath the corner of your left eye.

I traced the constellations across your cheek and gave them names and committed them to memory. In the curves of your hair I saw the open road hugging the cliffs of Big Sur. When your eyelids fluttered, I heard the ocean crashing against the cliffs a hundred feet beneath us. And when you opened your eyes and said, “Good morning,” I knew there was nothing left to write.

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And Then It Turned Into A Picture Of Us Cindy Bonilla

Archival inkjet print, 20”x20” | 11

A Door Kimberlee Thompson

Things happen on either side but I am no part of them.

No one thinks of me as a portal, a first step, a welcome home.

There are more than two sides between two views.

Once shut, there’s still no end of it.

I swing I swing I swing.

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Dream Studies Demi Fedur

Hand-sanitizer transfer, 8�x8� | 13

In Another Life, Dream Christina Hall

14 | Acrylic on canvas, 30”x40”

Ashes Jessica Harmon

not just a tray of cigarette butts not just a pile of smoldering wood feel the grit between my fingers like grains of sand between my toes a flash of fragmented pearly bone like brittle shells along the coast hands through her ashes touching her death i can see pieces of her bones on my skin i should have touched her skin more skin that’s now mixed in a swirl of death with organs and bile and blood hold it tightly to my chest but there is no squish of body parts just gray fragments like old dust not the smoky black I had imagined just a pile of old fire minus the spark

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 15

On The Manner of Addressing Lettuce Joan Roberta

“You Americans,” Marie Celeste tells the class, “make such a mess of your salads.

In France, it is a matter of greens, lightly dressed, a dish that refreshes the palate, served between the main course and dessert.

You start by tearing the lettuces so.”

“I assume you have washed them with soap,” says the man in the lavender shirt.

She rolls her eyes. From my place at the sink, I nod vigorously. “Mais oui,” she lies, half filling the bowl with rinsed oak leaf, arugula and mâche.

For the dressing, we switch roles. I talk of proportion, balance, vinegar, lemon, oils.

“Marie,” interrupts the lavender shirt, “how much…”

He calls me “Marie”? Me—the girl from New York who speaks French, my Nicoise friend claims, like une vache d’Espagne, whose couture is “Bloomingdale’s peasant”?

This has happened before. Last week at the mall, a pleasantly honeyed voice yoo-hooed “Marie-ee” to tell me how much she enjoyed my stories of life in Provence.

And I suddenly come to see that here, in this land where magnolia trees blossom at Christmas, Marie Celeste and I, with our barbaric accents, unkempt hair, bicycles, bare nails, and odd dress, look and sound the same—in one word, foreign.

As endive, radicchio, escarole, cress and frisée all wash down to strange lettuce.

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Drift Allison Scott

Paper, watercolor paint, map clippings, card stock, string, cardboard, sticks, 13.5”x9.5”x2” | 17

I Held The Pieces Close To My Heart Cindy Bonilla

18 | Archival inkjet print, 20”x20”

Red Eye Alison Hicks

There’s a skirt I wanted you to see me in, short and silk —inner thigh like a hard-boiled egg— My diaphragm a bellows that fans that punk, my heart.

My body remembers for me, singing through headphones.

The man across the aisle snores.

The airliner like silk, our conversation, threads going one way laid over those going another.

The bolt unwinds.

We chase dawn through night, losing time.

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 19

Rapid City Blues Robert Schillinger

You said the best songs were written in motel bathrooms, like the one we’re in now.

Shady structures always standing on the wrong side of town, neon signs flashing in epileptic fits, and the sound of nearby sirens singing ever so slightly out of tune.

You shook with intimate familiarity, but they don’t sing for you.

The rooms are sick with the scent of stale smoke, once-white walls stained yellow, a constellation of cigarette burns scattered like buckshot across the sheets.

There in the bathroom, the one where I saw you last, where the fake granite counters peel at the corners, all of it soaked in the sickly green light of the fluorescent bulb burning, you lay in the tub like a corpse in a casket: hands crossed, eyes closed, lips turned in a queer smile you never wore.

The soot-covered spoon by your shoulder was the first one to your funeral,

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its head bent low, painted black.

I threw away my record collection because of you.

Because every spinning record reminds me of the insides of your arms— those well-worn grooves where the needle sits so at home, pushing slowly toward center until the music stops and the world spins slowly round.

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 21

Definitions Of Manhood/Womanhood?

Myque Harris

Him: I don’t like your short hair...real women have long hair.

Her: Well, I don’t like your little dick...real men have big dicks.

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The Ride Home From Juvenile Hall Jon Epstein

The faces melting on the walls have ceased. The LSD I took this morning is wearing off. But Mom and Dad’s voices are inside my head. I’m not ready to greet their reprimands.

“You’re no son of ours. You’re no good. You’re a disgrace.”

Their condemnations will whack me dead on arrival.

“Ca, clannnggg, cach, cnnnn…..unnnggggg, ca clanggggg,” echoing sound of gates opening and closing filters through the ventilation system into my cell.

I gotta get out of this.

“Unnnnggggg,” another awful mechanical buzzer buzzes. Someone other than me is being released.

I look out the broken window of my cell. Several panes of glass are missing.

Cold air attacks me, and traces of the outdoor security floodlights beam in too.

It’s still raining.

I hope Mom and Dad don’t decide to leave me here. They just might. They swore they would the last time I got busted.

“The next time you get arrested, we’re going to leave you to rot,” they said.

Christ, I pray they don’t make good on their promise.

“Alright Brown, wake up,” a guard says to another kid in a nearby cell.

My quarters feel barbaric. I’ve been freezing my ass off all day. Being alone in this dark, cold cell, on a lumpy mattress with busted springs, are conditions ill suited for coming down off a high-powered acid trip.

How am I gonna beat this thing? What am I gonna tell Mom and Dad? Fuck, what’s Coz gonna say?

I wish a flood from the constant rain would come and take me. That would be easier. What if I just floated away? Getting busted for sales is gonna rock every goddamn family boat there’s ever been. The first two times I was arrested were bad enough, and they were just for marijuana possession. Being charged with three counts of selling narcotics to an undercover narc is gonna be a whole other enchilada, one NOT for the family books.

“Unnnggggg,” another buzzer buzzes.

Another kid’s getting released.

“Jacobs, let’s move,” the guard says.

“Clnaggggg…cla-ca-cnggg,” the kid’s gate opens while I sit and wait.

“No, nooooooo,” the kid yells.

“Shut the fuck up, Jacobs.”

“Fuck you,” the kid says.

He’s got balls. Or maybe he is more scared of his parents than the guard.

“Don’t make me come in there and get you,” the deputy says.

Silence.

“Fwap.”

I cringe at the sound of flesh being struck. I picture Dad’s belt and the swatting paddle.

“Aweeeee,” the kid groans.

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 23

“You want more? Or you gonna come out?”

Echoing footsteps shuffle away.

“Clannnnngggg,” more gates open and close. The ongoing clatter of the security iron is mind-bending.

I hope Mom and Dad don’t make me stay here. I hope they come soon. What am I gonna tell them?

“Hey Henry,” a kid several cells down calls out. “Pass me that shit.”

“Fuck you Frank.”

I wish the rain would just wash all this away. I wish I was sleeping and it was all a dream. I wish I could wake up in my bed to the smell of bacon and eggs cooking upstairs.

“Come on Henry, at least save me the roach.”

I smell weed. I can’t believe someone is toking up in here.

Shit, I could really use a hit.

“Fuck you Frank.”

I hear footsteps right outside. I turn over on the mattress. A spring harpoons me in the side, poking into my rib.

“Unnngggggg,” a buzzer buzzes close by.

I jump out of my skin. I look up. I see a dark silhouette.

A hulking guard is hovering at my doorway. He’s blocking the light from the wall fixture just outside my cell.

“Okay Epstein, time to go.”

I roll off the torture bed.

“Clannnggg, ca….clnnnn, cack,” the deputy opens up my cell.

I walk out, unsure. I’m weak and wobbly.

“Okay, you know the drill.” He says. “Turn around,” his bad breath hits me in the face. A large, ugly zit protrudes from his cheek.

I turn towards the wall like he says.

The cuffs jangle. Then they make a ratcheting sound. He places them on my sore, chewed up wrists.

“Alright, move,” the guard isn’t kind.

None of them have been. Not one. Not all day long.

The corridor is long. Each step gets heavier. This is the worse I’ve ever felt.

The idea of seeing Mom and Dad under these circumstances is awful. I picture Dad’s face, wrinkled and tight, his forehead like a washboard. Downturned lips.

Sad, angry eyes. Sagging shoulders. I imagine Mom puffing on a lipstick-smudged Pall Mall, looking down at her ring finger, turning her small diamond like she does, avoiding eye contact.

Everything they wanted from me I’ve blown.

“Ough,” I stumble over my feet, and trip.

I wish I could tell mom and dad I’m a good businessman. I wish I could tell them I’ve turned a nice profit. I wish I could talk about my accomplishments.

They could never appreciate that I built a thriving business. They could never acknowledge that I have repeat, cash paying customers. They could never understand how good it feels to have several hundred dollars of inventory, a bundle of money hidden in my bedroom safe, and for once, just once some goddam position.

“Come on Epstein, walk like you got a pair!” The guard says.

The cold air is getting thicker. The empty space between my ears is getting hot.

The sweat forming on the back of my neck and behind my knees is getting sticky.

And the knots in my stomach are getting tighter and tighter.

“Sigh,” I exhale.

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“Save it kid,” the guard says.

We continue down the dim concrete hallway, passing one cell after the other.

Some are empty. Some are filled with kids. Some are gloomy. Most all of the kids’ faces look dead. I’m walking through chocolate pudding.

“Get the lead out, Epstein,” the guard says.

We near an intersection; bright light pours in from the right. I see my parents’ faces everywhere. I hear their voices replaying the same stuff: “You’re stupid, you’re slow, you’re too wild.”

It’s haunting. I shiver.

“Turn right,” the guard says.

We approach another iron gate. There are ball bearings under my feet.

I want to grip on to something. I need a lifeline, like the time I fell into the Russian River and clutched onto tree roots so I wouldn’t get swept away in the wild current. I’m getting sucked down a drain.

“Come on Epstein, move it.”

The iron-gate is in spitting distance. We’re feet away from where it all began.

I see the bench where me, Duncan and Rick were cuffed earlier in the afternoon.

“Unnnnnngggg,” another goddamn gate alarm sounds.

Now I think I know what it must feel like to face a firing squad. I can’t bear to look at mom and dad. I can’t bear their judgment. I can’t bear their disappointment.

I can’t bear their pain. I just want to smoke something. I just want to snort something. I just want to swallow something. I just want to be numb. I just want to sleep.

“ I just want to be invisible. I just want to close my eyes and die like a hero.”

“Clannnnngggg…ca…an…cucn…chuck,” the gate slides open.

We step through.

“Clannnnngggg…ca…an…cucn…chuck,” the gate shuts loud. Ringing vibrations travel up my spine.

“Up to the counter,” the deputy says.

I walk to the booking desk.

“Hold still,” the deputy takes off the cuffs, his soggy hot fish breath beats down on my neck.

“Here you go Sarge, I’ll go get the Chink.”

“Cool your jets Reynolds,” says the officer behind the counter.

“Name?” Says the tall man.

He looks halfway decent. He’s older, but in good shape. His short kaki shirtsleeves are rolled up an inch or so, showing off bulging biceps. His thick mustache is peppered gray. He’s got high check bones that rise up to bright eyes.

They’re not dull like the other guards. His nametag says “Sargent Grand, Booking.”

“Jon Epstein,” I say.

“Last name only.”

“Sigh…Epstein.”

“Sit tight,” he walks to the end of the counter and bends over.

I can’t escape Deputy Reynolds’s hot breath. I need a drink of water.

Sargent Grand returns. He slides the envelope I put my things in earlier, towards me, across the counter.

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 25

“Check the envelopes contents and sign here,” he says. He shoves a clipboard at me.

I open the clasp and look inside. I thought I came down from the acid, but now I know I haven’t, at least not all the way. Everything inside the envelope looks foreign and disorganized. Swirling.

“Well?” Grand says.

At this point, I can’t really tell if all my shit is in the envelope or not. I don’t really care if it is or isn’t. I mean, I do, but if it isn’t, what am I gonna do? I’m not gonna make a stink. If some of my stuff is missing, it’s not like the guards are gonna go look for it.

I pick up the clipboard and sign it.

“Your father is through that door,” Grand says, pointing to my right.

Thank God, no Mom. I walk to the exit, rubbing my sore wrists, dreading what’s on the other side.

I open the door slow.

“Ungggggggg,” the damn buzzer buzzes behind me. Another dude is coming out.

I enter a room with shabby furniture. It’s like my dentist, Dr. Okrand’s waiting room.

I don’t see dad. I look over the large room. Then I see him. He’s slumped over in the far corner reading a newspaper. He’s turning pages too fast to actually read.

He looks like he’s in a trance.

I walk towards him. He glances up. His face is knotted and tight, like I imagined earlier. He drops the newspaper on the chair and stands. I contemplate going in for a hug but am afraid he may spit on me.

“You ready?” He says.

That’s it. No censure. No questions. No consoling. No nothing.

“Yeah,” I look away from his eyes.

He turns towards the glass door, muttering.

Rain is coming down like a mother. I follow him, grasping the manila envelope under my right arm, both hands in my pockets, my head retracting into my shoulders.

“I bet it’s snowing in the mountains,” I say.

I think back to last winter after Jimmy Hansen got back from Wisconsin. Dad took us skiing up at June Lake. The three of us had a blast. If only we were back in that damn parking lot at June Lake. I remember sleeping in the camper after skiing all day, snuggled in my toasty mummy bag. I remember the camper was colder than hell, the heat from the catalytic heater barely kept icicles from forming inside.

I remember me and Jimmy begging Dad to get us a motel room. Now I’d give anything to be back in that freezing tin box camper, surrounded by the sound of falling snow and the low rumble of grinding Cat diesel plows.

“Deputy Throson, report to the print room,” rumbles from the loud speakers.

“Do you think?” I make a feeble attempt at breaking the juvenile hall ice.

Dad turns his head. He glares at me, and turns back, opening the glass door.

He takes off, walking fast to the truck, unaffected by the rain coming down.

I follow, hunched over, imagining the shit storm that will unleash when Dad lets go. I know he’s going to lay down some wrath, I’m just not sure how much or when.

We reach his truck. He comes to the passenger side first. I wait for him to find his keys. We’re getting soaked. He pulls them out from his Levi jacket pocket. I rest my hand on his wrist while he unlocks the door.

“I didn’t do it,” I say.

I want him to cave in. I want him to hold me. I want him to tell me he loves me. I want him to tell me it’s going to be okay. I want him to tell me we’re gonna beat the bastards.

He looks at me with disgust and pulls away his wrist, shaking his head from 26 | SANSKRIT

side to side, like he’s heard it all before. I want to pretend he hasn’t. The parking lot floodlights illuminate the falling rain, and the contempt on his face.

He opens the truck door.

“Inside,” he says.

I creep in. Dad walks around to his side. He slides in without looking at me.

He’s silent. He turns over the ignition.

The motor fires up. It rumbles. Dad shifts into reverse. He looks over his right shoulder, avoiding any eye contact. He backs up.

“I…” “Save it,” he turns back, and looks forward.

“Your mother and I are so God damn sick of your lies and bullshit.”

He shifts into second and guns it.

The left windshield wiper blade needs replacing, its squeaking noise and the engine sounds are loud, but not loud enough to drown out the voices in my head.

We exit the rough asphalt parking lot, and turn left, the truck splashing through a puddle. I want to die.

We stop at a red light before turning onto Mission. I steal a glance at him gripping the steering wheel. He looks like he might break it.

His left turn signal is ticking.

“No son of mine is gonna sell pot,” he says.

I want to tell him my side. I want to tell him it wasn’t fair. I want to tell him it was an entrapment. I want to tell him I was good at what I did. I want to tell him it’s a victimless crime. I want to tell him I’m a scapegoat. I want to tell him he should be proud of me.

“I.” “I don’t want to hear it,” he says.

The light turns green, dad lets out the clutch and we head towards the freeway.

I want to crawl into a cave and hibernate until I’m eighteen and can move out. We come to the freeway onramp and stop at another red light. There’s no cross traffic, the coast is clear, but the car in front is blocking us from turning right.

“Move your God damn ass,” dad shouts at the guy.

“Whaaaaah,” Dad lays on the horn.

I think I see the driver flip us off through his rear window.

Dad must have seen it too.

“You cocksucker,” dad says. “Whaaaaah,” dad lays on the horn again. He’s fuming.

My heart pounds harder. The busted wiper squeaks louder too. The rain is coming down like cats and dogs, and everything is blurry. I pray Dad doesn’t get out to lecture the guy.

The red light turns green.

Thank God. Dad grinds the truck up the Mission on-ramp. He upshifts, builds speed, and moves one lane over. I think he wants to kill us. Cars whoosh by on both sides. His speedometer says “60.” The speed limit sign says “55,” but everyone’s going faster.

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Dad takes his right hand from the steering wheel and pulls out a pipe from his jacket pocket. He returns his grip to the wheel. His left hand pulls his pouch of Prince Albert tobacco from his opposite jacket pocket. Hands, pipe, and tobacco are all back on wheel. He fills the pipe, sets the tobacco down on the seat, and packs down the cherry crimp with his right thumb.

“UNNGGGGG,” a car in the lane to the left honks.

Dad pulls back over the white dots into his lane, and reaches for a book of matches sitting on top of the dash.

A highway patrol car barrels by on the left. It’s lights flash and sirens wail.

Red strobes wash over Dad’s sad face.

Both hands are back on the wheel again. One holds the pipe, the other holds the matches, each shake with every jiggle the truck makes. Dad takes the pipe in his teeth, and pulls a match from the pack. Striking it, while still holding the wheel, he leans in close, hunching to the lit match, and lights the jiggling pipe.

Dad puffs, and waves the match out, flicking it into the overfilled ashtray. It falls to the floor.

Dad puffs. Flames shoot off the top of the pipe. The tobacco pops and expands.

Dad puffs. He pulls a silvery thing from his shirt pocket and pokes at the bowl.

Dad puffs, and puffs, and puffs, and for a split second, looks content.

Smoke fills the cab. I’m grateful for the diversion, relieved to hide in the cherry crimp fog.

Dad puffs more. He leans back. His shoulders drop some. His face relaxes. His expression looks like he’s trying to sort things out. Then he frowns, like his ideas are no good.

I watch him stare into the taillights and rain. I want to say something to his quiet face, lit by the headlights from the oncoming traffic. I want to convince him I’m not so bad. I’m good enough. Maybe I’m not as good as my brother and sister, but I am enough.

I can’t bare the silence any longer.

“I didn’t do it, I swear.”

The rain is falling harder than the faulty wipers can manage. The frantic noise of the cars swooshing by is unbearable.

Dad takes the pipe from his mouth, and holds it in his right hand atop the steering wheel.

“Cicck cicck, cicck, cicck, cicck, cicck cicck ciccck,” it bounces against the jiggling steering wheel.

The thin plume of smoke rising from the bowl ceases.

Dad’s face turns blank.

I’m on pins and needles. I’m dying for Dad to say, “it’s okay,” or “we’ll beat the sons of bitches,” or “don’t worry.”

His lips part. He pauses. Then, he turns his head enough to make eye contact.

“I’m so sick of your God damn lies,” he says. “For once, why don’t you just stop?”

He stares back into the rain and taillights.

The noise from the windshield wipers, pelting rain, and squeaky seat springs is too much. My head is ready to split wide open. I’m still just a teenager, but feel sucked dry.

I slump down, my heart twisted, feeling like the time I was six, and Dad caught me shoplifting at Food Giant.

“What’s in your God damn pants?” He asks, mad as hell, pointing at my bulging pockets. I look down at my feet, trying to disappear. “Look at me God damn it,” he says. I raise my head, not enough to look at his face, my eyes resting

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on his chest. “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” he grabs my chin, jerking my head up to look him in the eyes. “Empty your God damn pockets,” he yells, while dead shoppers roll their carts past us by the checkout stands. I pull the individually wrapped Brach orange candy slices from my pockets. I have about six or seven of them. “Open the fucking things.” I do as he says, one at a time, balling up the cellophane wrappers, shoving them back in my pockets. “Put em in your mouth, you lying thief.” I’m confused. Does he want me to eat all the candy? I put one in my mouth, then another, I do as he says, but too slow. He takes the remaining three for four pieces and crams them into my mouth at once. “Chew the fucking things,” he says. I chew, and chew, and chew. I’m fearful. I’m crying, hoping one of the ladies with frosted hair will stop wheeling their cart to help me. “Now swallow them,” he says. I get the mouthful down in one gross gulp, orange candy juice, saliva, and snot dribbles down my chin.

The truck hits a bump in the road. We bounce off the seat an inch or so.

“I’m not lying this time,” I say, needing him to love me, if only for a moment, “I swear, I didn’t do it.”

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Safe Laura Pendell

After the priest when she was 16 And the army guy when she was 26 She only hung out with the boys She didn’t care what the others called her (fag hag) because she was safe she could dance all night she could have a drink or even two she could laugh and party and still arrive home untouched

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I Was Born In The Wrong Time Period Elena Calebro

Screen-print, 8”x12” | 31

Toy Ken Haas

Love me like a child loves a toy, with furious attachment, like there’s no authority.

Mix me with your food, put parts of me in your mouth that don’t belong there, open me up to see what’s inside, then put me back together in a different order that pleases you.

Work me like an engineer left instructions you were too excited to read.

Pat me when you’re feeling praised, wring me when you’re angry, rub me on the rug when you’re confused, so I’ll never forget your touch.

Put me aside for a while, then find me by accident when you need a tether.

Lay me on my face in the snow, between your cream body and the frozen earth, then ride me, shuddering with joy, down the upper slope of your life.

Show me off to your friends to make them jealous, worry a bit if you drop me, cry if you lose me or they take me away, and if your house is burning down as you’re being rousted to the car, make them go back to get me because there’s nothing else worth saving.

Love me like a child loves a toy, through all your guileless days, and in your hour of darkest need, pick me up, hold me like a mirror to your wild, unbroken heart and make believe I can love you back.

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Kenzie With A Newport Katherine McKeon

Silver print, 16”x20” | 33

Lovers And Fighters Iab Lee

34 | Digital printing, 11”x17”

La Santisima De La Muerto Michael Patrick Emery

Death is a woman, I think, a mother even, Though the killers she serves Be the most machismo, linear, effective, or ruthless: Coming in fours on horses like disease, War, famine, and pestilence of old, Or by computer-programmed corporate efficiency, Like radiation, pollution or bomber drones, Land mines, poverty, dead water, Unfunded hospitals, Bloated bank accounts, and suffocated souls; Indifferent, calculated, as ultimately lifeless as their victims.

But Death is a woman, moon priestess recurring, Goddess of bones in an elegant hat, La Katrina of the enveloping empathies.

She dances your days in the shadow of time And brings you home with her, Into her wisdom, and loves you.

Hers is the voice at the end of your arm, The song that sings your life.

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Prayer Mimi Plevin-Foust

She will not be shaken senseless by our nice young sitter.

She will not drink turpentine or crack her head on tile.

She will not be molested by a friendly neighbor.

She will never be orphaned and left alone to cry.

And she will not be cyberbullied by unkind girls.

She will not be harassed by men or boys.

Her image will not grace the late-night news.

No, she will never be battered, stalked, or raped.

In fifty years, when I pass from this world, Her bright blue eyes will shine from the last face I see— My beautiful infant daughter, Who sleeps beside me with outstretched arms.

She will take a thousand falls, then toddle, then run to embrace The unpredictable, wonder-filled, terrifying world. And she will live.

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Pope Of Fashion Elisa Sanchez

Ink and watercolor, 8”x10” | 37

Strange Girl Nancy With Crackers Cindy Bonilla

38 | Archival inkjet print, 20”x20”

Red Shift Claire Scott

Stars that are moving away emit red shifted light. Light shifts down on the color spectrum as the wavelength appears stretched. Stars speeding toward us emit blue shifted light, the color waves closer together.

I see red light around Your familiar body You didn’t come home last night Or the night before You turn away when I ask Shoulders hunched Truncated calls at Two am, strange Scratches on your neck Odd interest in tennis Odd trips to where?

Nights on the couch Nights in scotch My black nightie No longer suffices No longer entices I can’t find the center Where we lived the Nanosecond before The big bang exploded Our world Your red shifted light Moving faster and Farther away You a distant galaxy Each day I pray for Your body beside me Bathed in blue light.

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Fit Robert Schillinger

I saw you quietly sipping on some drink with a name too complicated to remember, and the nape of your neck, holding light like classical statues do; in your collarbones the shadows pool and play I look at the curve of your arms and wonder how we might fit— Would it be odd, awkward, like nervous teenagers?

Weak-kneed conquerors of the undiscovered, untouched, stumbling, stirring, searching, traversing with trembling fingers across curves and crevices, sharing souls with every breath passed in that immeasurable distance between our lips.

Or— like the well-worn pieces of practiced machinery?

Every movement choreographed, composed, rehearsed well into early morning hours, with devilish grins and gritted teeth, rolling eyes,

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half closed, lust dressed in the best intentions, destined by some divine design.

And when all is said and done, will we share secrets and, soaked in sin, watch the stars blink out of the night, become nothing?

Or will we say nothing, and only sleep and wonder when our teenage hearts left us so jaded?

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Composite Of A Mother Rachel Landrum Crumble

In an imagined life, you conjure a mother who sleeps nights instead of pleading with God or wrestling with demons, whose life has an ordered spontaneity, like rows of cedars in the winding French countryside.

For each child, she orders cross-stitched birth announcements, instead of personalized astrological charts. She reads, paints, works at some quiet sensible job: an office manager, a curator, a midwife, instead of living borrowed lives as a minister’s mistress, a gangster’s girlfriend, a model, awaiting the next trust fund check to pay the rent on the red-shingled bungalow in the second-hand suburbs on the outskirts of affluence.

She can give without bankrupting herself, take without bankrupting you.

She enters your life by the front door; she doesn’t sleep on the back porch of your sorrow, coat stuffed with rejected manuscripts against the night cold.

She flies in, years later, to see the grandkids, helps make Thanksgiving dinner, is lighthearted, takes her place but not your heart. When it’s time to go, kisses everyone goodbye, leaves small gifts and funny notes under pillows like the Tooth Fairy.

She doesn’t steal out the window of your life like a thief at midnight, taking only valuables, leaving behind the chaos of anger, the cut glass of grief, the small change of regret.

You search yourself for that mother, but cannot find her, an amateur detective, with so few clues.

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The Valued Meal Part II Demi Fedur

Inkjet print, 21”x20” | 43

The Arsonist Ken Haas

During our third dinner together, right after she told me her ski cabin had gone up in a blaze last winter, though Allstate still doubted her tale of the bad candle, she said next time we can make love, so my mind and body had a week to take what they’d learned from spells with her scarlet neck, her dragon tongue, and mull what her hips might make of a blank white bed, moving me to ask, when the moment came, precisely how the place had burned, to which she whispered that the drapes went first, and I dipped my paws in her backlit curls, sucked her ingrown nipple out, that by the time she’d crossed the street, smoke arms were fluxing through blown skylights, windows torched like pumpkin eyes, and her pink tights sparked as I peeled them, lit my throat with sweat, that the shingled roof became a cattle brand, searing dry the gaze she gave to trance, as trapped heat cracked the walls apart, and I spread her lushly over me, a rage of flesh, an arc of time, that lustrated ribs alone were left, some selfish beams aglow, a buckled gate, the hearth turned inside out, a floor of coal, and I slept in her a long, gray while, then woke to a note of fake regret, as if in the house of fire it cannot be known who struck the stone or bore the flame, who tried to turn it up or down, who called it good or wrote it cruel, who gave it words of love or sticks and bones to burn.

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Tilda Dakota Rose

Acrylic, 22”x30” | 45

Phantasmagoric Katharine VanDewark

She lets her teeth show. The teeth that weep blood on weekday mornings. The teeth she uses to pull up flowering sagebrush, clearing an entire hillside in the time it takes black ink to turn green.

Her lip curls and wraps itself around the sparkling legs of suntanned bathers walking innocent into the waves.

She lets her hair scream, a gathering brace of funnel winds that sweep the plains clean of wrought iron beds tossed like hot air Ping Pong balls in beer-soaked poolrooms.

She hides her heart in neighbors’ kitchen trash cans the rubber belts of Detroit engines the slide of a tongue over it.

She watches night after night the holds of cargo ships bound for questionable places their metal hides slowly eaten through by liquid gases.

In flowering hysteria, Byzantium purple like mountaintops where frozen bodies lie, down dark hallways barefoot from room to room.

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Untitled Ashley Moore

Cyanotype, 19.75”x19.75” | 47

Good-Bye, Dad Mimi Plevin-Foust

The soul has its own schedule.

While we check the clock, talk on the phone, plan vacations, or rush to work, the soul consults its inner ledger, asking: Have I done what I came to?

Have I settled accounts?

While the cat licks her back, the water boils, the nurse makes a joke and checks your pulse, the soul tallies each victory with its pain and asks: Have I made my mark?

Have I set things right?

While the car engine sputters and the coffee steams, the soul—full of longing—stands in the doorway, asks: Can they live without me?

Have I suffered enough?

On Tuesday, without warning, you answered: Yes.

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Home Again Cathy Allman

Before she leaves each morning, my twenty-four-year-old daughter pulls the yellow quilt on her childhood bed up to the rumpled pillows.

When she is at work, I smooth, straighten, and tuck in loose corners, then pick up her stuffed panda and pillow from the floor.

I close every half-opened drawer in her dresser.

I wipe spilled toothpaste from her granite counter.

For her dates, she shops my closet for clothes she seldom returns.

Clothes I don’t want back because in reality, they look better on her.

When she does her laundry, she removes mine from the dryer, heaps it all in a basket on the dining room table for me to fold.

She comes in long past when I fall asleep, that is if she comes home, and doesn’t stay at her boyfriend’s.

She has a suitcase in her car at all times. I tell her it would be more discrete to keep her overnight bag in the trunk.

She rolls her eyes, says, “No one cares— You have no idea how things are these days.”

If she jogs with me, I find my lost eight-minute mile strength, but then she turns, goes her own way at the stop sign.

If I wake up at 3 a.m., I get out of my bed, crack open her bedroom door to see if maybe she is home again.

Then I turn off the porch light, return to my room, and watch a TV rerun.

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Wine Glass Series - Tension Below Nii Yartney

50 | Digital photo, 30.75”x42.5”

Snipped Wendy Fox

Brian came home from work, and nothing much had changed since the morning. His daughter was twirling in a tutu in the living room where his son was watching television. Neither looked up at the sound of the latch in the door, nor at the sound of Brian shuffling his things into the closet, just as they hadn’t in the morning, when he did this in the opposite order. He was both a little hurt that they did not notice him and relieved that he did not have to talk to them yet. He made sure his jacket was hanging properly, and then he continued on quietly. It was Wednesday and he had increasingly become less and less glad for the middle point of the work week because the weekends drug, and Brian found himself scrolling through his BlackBerry and thinking about the office. He checked the device in the hallway but there was nothing.

In the kitchen his wife, Jenny, was deciding what to cook for dinner, and she was standing in a way that terrified him, with her hand cradling her belly—when she was pregnant with their children she was always in this posture, and he had come to fear it.

“Jenny,” he said, maybe a little sharply, and she looked up from her cookbook.

When she turned a little toward him, he could see in the other hand a glass of wine— a good sign for baby watch, a bad sign if he wanted to get laid later—and he thought that perhaps it was just the angle; perhaps she wasn’t doing the belly cradle at all.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m home.”

“Hi,” she said. “Chicken or pork, do you think?” She swirled the wine and tipped her face into the stemware. The wine looked cool and golden, suspended in the glass.

“Chicken,” he said. “Just that and a salad is okay for me.”

“The kids won’t eat salad,” she said.

“I’ll make salads for us then,” he said. He was still not sure about her right hand—it was lingering just at the top of her pants. Maybe she doesn’t know yet, he worried.

He loved his children. He reminded himself of this frequently, when he was frustrated at them, or frustrated at his wife, whom he thought should go back to work. The children were beautiful; even he could admit this. Like most children they did strange and wonderful things and expressed themselves in a way that Brian found pure, but he did not find them satisfying, and he did not quite understand how Jenny could either.

“What if I just made some pasta for all of us,” she said. “I’ll put broccoli in it for you, and they can pick it out.”

“Make whatever they want. It’s fine,” Brian said. “Is there more wine?”

She nodded and he was relieved when she flipped the cookbook closed and poured for him. The hand was busy—she was rummaging for pans and chopping vegetables. She topped off her glass and suggested they open another bottle.

He looked at her closely, for signs of what her friends called the pregnancy glow. When Jenny was pregnant, she always said her fingers were swollen and took off her rings— when Brian looked, her fingers were circled in silver and their platinum marriage band. He opened a second bottle.

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After their son Connor was a year old, Brian had gotten snipped, but she could still get pregnant from some other man, and he had heard of vasectomies reversing.

It had not been one of his best moments. There was a clinic on the lower floor of his office building, and he’d made the appointment for the end of the day, taken the stairs down, so no one from his office would see him, and he was on his way home in twenty minutes. He felt very efficient and there was little pain, at first. The aftercare instructions specified he should ice his groin and by the time he arrived home and the local wore off, this seemed like a very good idea. He took a magazine and a cold pack that he’d snuck out of the freezer to the master bath and lay down on the plush rug. He set his watch timer. He realized, there on the bathroom floor, that he would need to wear the dressing to bed. He realized this would go on for several days. It wasn’t like he and his wife had sex every night, but they were still intimate, even with two children down the hall.

The situation suddenly seemed difficult.

Brian realized he couldn’t hide himself from her through the entire weekend, and he wished he had done this when he was out of town or when Jenny and the children were visiting her mother. He thought for what seemed like a long time, and he wondered if he should just get up but that seemed impossible. His BlackBerry was still in his pants pocket, and so he called the home phone. When she answered, she sounded puzzled; she would have seen his name on the caller ID. Please come upstairs, he said.

When Jenny opened the door, she gasped. “What the fuck?” He understood how it must look to her, his clothes in a pile and a wound on his crotch, so Brian told her about the clinic and how he had thought this would just be something that he would take care of, without bothering her, but now he realized there was a little more work involved than what he had anticipated.

“Can you bring me a glass of water?” he asked her.

“You want me to bring you water?” she said.

“Cold water,” he said.

“Say ‘please,’” she said and Brian understood that she was very angry.

He accepted this.

“Please.”

He was relieved when she turned from the bathroom and he heard her padding down the stairs. The pain was picking up. He closed his eyes. It had been such a small incision, and they’d shown him what they’d done—two tiny pieces of vas deferens on the stainless steel like bits of overcooked macaroni. They told him they had put titanium pins in to close the hole, and he asked if he would now set off airport metal detectors. The nurse said that he had no idea, since he never flew and offered him a Valium. They hadn’t wanted him to come on his own, but he told them he just lived around the corner and he had paid cash.

Jenny came back and he heard ice clinking. He was grateful for even the thought of coolness. She was talking but he couldn’t really hear her, even though her voice was raised. The ice rattled in the glass, and he wished she would lay on the floor with him, her head in the crook of his arm like they did at night, her breath hot on his neck.

When he blinked his eyes open into the light, Jenny was above him with the glass, and the water poured across his face. For a moment he thought he might cry, but the cold was so perfect. It calmed him. *** 52 | SANSKRIT

When Brian was young, he had been a very average child and an only child.

He was not really sure why his parents never had another one; he couldn’t say that he had wished for a sibling or that the topic had ever even come up. Some of his friends at school had brothers and sisters, and they mostly seemed annoying. They seemed like they made things crowded.

Brian’s parents had not gone to college, and they were very keen on him having an education. He could say that if he had done one, good, sacrificial thing in his life, it was putting himself through university. His family didn’t have money, and he wasn’t really ambitious or bright enough to go after scholarships, so he worked fulltime and lived in a ratty studio apartment in a part of town that he wasn’t sure his classmates even knew existed. Once he came home and there was blood on the stairs of the entryway, and when he told the building manager, the building manager said that he would get it cleaned up. Brian said that while he believed that cleaning up the blood would be helpful, the building manager should consider their conversation to be Brian’s month notice that he would be moving out.

“I need it in writing,” the building manager said.

“Okay, I’ll get it to you tomorrow,” Brian said. He was very tired. He had classes in the day and after that he worked in the stockroom of a grocery store, breaking down pallet after pallet of trucked in cereal and watermelons and mustard jars.

The building manager thought for a second, and then he asked Brian if he would stay if the rent were lowered.

“By how much?” he asked.

“How about fifty bucks?” He was a short man, and Brian had no complaints about him. The building was horrible, but he didn’t actually think it was the manager’s fault.

“Okay,” Brian said. Fifty dollars was more than half a shift.

They shook on it and Brian stayed.

That night in his apartment, he made sure that the deadbolt was engaged.

He checked it several times. He was not sure whose blood had been on the building steps, and he reminded himself that it didn’t necessarily mean violence—maybe someone had sneezed and busted a capillary of terrific size. Maybe it wasn’t even from a person. His grandmother, before she died, would sometimes get a jug of pork blood from the butcher and cook it down to make the black pudding her own grandmother had made. He could just as easily imagine an old woman with a recipe in her head tripping up the stairs and creating a spill as getting their face smashed in, so he tried to focus on this. He remembered that he did not think black pudding was the most delicious aspect of his grandmother’s cooking, but that he didn’t dislike it either. He wasn’t sure that he had ever really put it all together; if he had, he was sure as a child he wouldn’t have touched it.

The night was a very long night. He was not a fearful person by nature, but there were sounds in the apartment that made him jittery and restless. He wondered why the building manager hadn’t heard anything or noticed anything on the steps until late at night when Brian came home. He wondered if he had just missed whatever had happened, and even if it was just a grandmother stumbling on the stairs, shouldn’t someone have come to help her?

Sometimes Brian was depressed at the thought that if he fell in the shower and hit his head and his brains dashed into the tub with the soap and the water, the first people to notice him missing would be work and the second maybe one of his professors who actually took roll. But they wouldn’t do anything—his job would give him a pink slip for no call, no show, and his professor would scratch him from the class list. He had no friends who would report his absence, and while his mother would be upset if he didn’t call her from a payphone on Sunday like he almost always LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 53

did—the almost would be important here—he wasn’t regular enough that she would send some kind of squad. She would only keep close to the phone until Monday and then hope for the next weekend—Brian immobile in the tub, until the water ran cold.

In the morning Brian could not exactly say that he was grateful to be alive but he was relieved. His dreams had been restless, and his sheets were wadded up around him. He thought of the fifty dollars.

While there were sometimes loud noises late at night or early in the morning, Brian stayed in the apartment until he graduated. On that day, his parents sat in the stands of the school gymnasium, and he could have sworn that when his name was called, he heard them clapping through all the other chatter and applause, and for just a minute it was only the three of them, swelling with pride over, over him. *** The pasta Jenny was making turned out perfect, how he liked it, just a little al dente. He made his salad and watched his children pick around their vegetables.

He felt his son and daughter became stranger as they got older. They were either oblivious or hyper-aware. He didn’t remember being like them. At his parents’ table, he would not have been allowed to make a pile on his plate of the things he didn’t like. He would have been told to eat it. It puzzled him how Jenny indulged them.

He didn’t think this was the best way.

Frequently, he thought back to what life had been like for them in a downtown condo, when he walked to work and Jenny boarded the train, her pretty shoes clicking down the pavements. He liked the shine of her hair and the way her skirts fell across her ass—her ass was still lovely; he was happy to have a wife who had stayed pretty—and he would watch her walking until she turned the corner, and he would think how much he loved her and loved their life. He would think that he couldn’t imagine waking up next to anyone but her, the mole on her cheek, the sour of her breath when she’d been drinking wine all night.

In those days when he’d come home early from work, he’d ramble through the condo and wonder when Jenny would get in. He would listen for the train, check his phone compulsively, and miss her. He would make sure there was fresh ice and limes. Now whether he was early or late, she was always there, with Stella and Connor—when his car would swing around the last corner, he would hope sometimes that they were all out on an errand, but they never were. He’d turn the key in the lock, hang up his coat, and disappear into the house to join them.

He had reasons for wanting to get the vasectomy on his own. He had been scared it would open up a conversation about a third child. He was scared Jenny would simply not like the idea. He was scared that at some point in the future, he and Jenny would divorce, and he’d meet another woman who wanted children, and if he hadn’t had the procedure, he would give into her.

If he did it all over again, Brian wanted something different. He wanted to vacation in places where there was no kiddie pool reeking of pee and to live in a home that was not a tripping hazard from all of the plastic and plush scattered through the halls. He wanted to work late and call his wife from the office and suggest she get off the train a stop early and meet him for a drink.

He wanted to see her walk into a downtown bar, in the deep of winter, steam coming off her hair, shaking snow from her coat, and watch every other man in the place look at the woman who had just rattled the door, the woman making a beeline for him, just like Jenny had, when they were new.

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Wedding Kylie Niemand

Inkjet print, 12”x9” | 55

Serpentins Je´ro ˆme Karsenti

56 | Acrylic on Chromalux Paper 75cm x 60cm

LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 57

Something Frayed Alima Sherman

A baby bird fell from his nest and sits now on our back patio, a small battered ship of dark feathers, eyes sunk deep.

His tiny mouth slammed closed, he waits.

His parents fly in a frenzy back and forth from their perch on the sharp green blades of the palm tree, twisting their black heads sideways to where he landed.

I watch from the back-door window. Soon it will be dark, the neighbor’s cat in the shadows is not far off.

There is only this dark and familiar place of the body I can’t turn from, call it grief, or fear, something frayed and tender.

The tiny bird suddenly lifts his wing, just one, to stretch, to signal, to say Here I am, all pain and fury.

His gesture makes him shine.

As if he sees the whole world in his leaping from to the opening out,

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to something in him, in me— he finds the portal where the dark circuit moves—limb, nest, sharp blade, and wing:

See here, he seems to say, life exists gigantically, as his wing unfolds, flexes into dusk.

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Poudres Je´ro ˆme Karsenti

60 | SiliconCarbon on Canvas 200cm x230cm

SiliconCarbon on Canvas 200cm x300cm | 61

Things Gay Baines

Josie and Alan had married not in haste but after a year of deepening association, which began when they were graduate students at Syracuse University.

Alan, who was legally blind, was finishing his Ph.D. in psychology. Josie was working toward an M.S. in library service and had a job in the Music Department of the university library. Among her tasks were playing reference records and tapes for students and faculty. Alan used the Music Department record players frequently to listen to recorded books from the Library of Congress. Josie played these for him coolly, resisting the urge to feel sorry for him. Her father had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and she knew the futility of pity. When Alan commented on the unavailability of many texts he was expected to read, she volunteered to read them aloud to him. They spent long hours together every day.

At first they took “breaks” which consisted of thermos coffee and pastries. Then they began bringing elaborate lunches to share with each other. Finally they went out to dinner. Nothing fancy, just baked beans and sauerkraut with thick bread and margarine at the Crouse Irving Hospital cafeteria.

As winter approached they took long walks, Alan leaning on Josie’s arm, though he could see just enough to make his way on his own if he had to. Soon they were going to concerts and poetry readings. One black February night in the snow, after hearing Rosalyn Tureck play Bach, Alan proposed. Over Easter vacation they were married in the living room of Josie’s mother’s house in Carmel. Josie’s mother cried.

“He’ll never see what a lovely bride he’s got,” she told Josie.

“Rubbish, Mother,” Josie said. “It doesn’t matter; and Alan won’t care anyway.” Josie didn’t consider herself “lovely” in any case. Alan, on the other hand, was tall and would have been handsome were it not for the vacancy in his eyes.

Josie’s fellow students teased her, saying she could wear the same dress every day and Alan would never notice. “You can get as fat as you like,” one plump woman in the Gov Docs class said. “Or let your hair go stringy.”

“He’d still know,” Josie said.

After they had completed their degrees, Alan was hired as a psychotherapist in Rochester, with a university teaching appointment. Josie took a job as cataloger at a small women’s college. Over the next ten years, they had three children and bought a house in Henrietta with two acres, a garden, and a library. In the alumni newsletter Josie described their life as “dull but idyllic.” Lizbeth, her former roommate at Syracuse, wrote envious letters from New York, where she was a map librarian.

“I love the city,” she said, “but it’s so hard. You’re lucky to be upstate, with all the trees and a lake next to you.” The part about the lake was inaccurate, but Josie did not correct her. She told Lizbeth about the children, about her roses, about the Children’s Department of Rochester Public Library, where she worked part time now that the kids were all in school. Everything was lovely in her letters.

She didn’t mention that Alan had had surgery, which had alleviated, if not completely corrected, his blindness. He still could not drive nor go to the movies,

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but he could see his patients, which was gratifying. His first look at Josie was a lovely moment. When the bandages were removed, Josie stood at the foot of Alan’s bed, smiling. He saw a small, dark eyed woman with glasses. Her glossy hair was parted in the middle and drawn back into a twist. She wore a rag cardigan sweater over a dotted turtleneck and green corduroy jeans.

“Josie,” he said. “I’d know you anywhere.” The nurses and the surgeon laughed. But Josie wondered if Alan had known not her face nor her person but the muguet scent she always wore.

Alan was happy to be able to see his wife after so many years of perceiving her only as a shape or warmth in the night. But after awhile he had to admit to a certain disappointment. Everyone had told him what a lovely wife he had. To him “lovely” meant beautiful. He remembered his mother, who had died while he was in college.

Though his memory was clouded by the blindness, which struck when he was five, he remembered her as beautiful, a natural blonde with swimming blue eyes. He attempted to reason with himself, using tired phrases and admonitions (“Beauty cometh from within”). But he could not escape the feeling that he had missed out, over the years, on a world of gorgeous women. He was also aware, looking in the bathroom mirror, that he, himself, was better looking than he had realized. Three months after his operation, he started an affair with Jackie, a pre med student. She was nineteen and had frizzy yellow hair. Despite (or perhaps because of) her heavy academic load, she acted giggly and silly, given to wearing oversized, sequined turtlenecks over stirrup tights and scratched western boots. Alan noticed her clothes because he was obsessed with seeing things. Some of his patients began to complain that he was so interested in “seeing” them that he no longer listened. One woman said his ability to see had become invasive. She switched to another therapist.

Others canceled or postponed appointments.

Josie knew about Jackie. She told her best friend at the RPL about it.

“It’s just a phase,” the friend said. “Ignore it. All husbands wander.”

Josie thought this idea preposterous at first, then revised it. If husbands “wander,” then wives can too. She signed up for swimming lessons at the YWCA. “But you already know how to swim,” Alan objected on one of his rare evenings at home.

“I never learned the sidestroke,” she said.

After swimming class she and the other swimmers went out to eat. At the coffee shop one evening, Josie met Kevin, a man five years her junior, who was staying with his sister in Henrietta. He had just taken a job at Kodak and was looking for a house for himself and his two boys. His wife had left him. “Just up and went west,” he said. Josie didn’t inquire further but asked nice, friendly questions.

Persist, she thought. Persistence won and soon she and Kevin were lovers in his new, empty house (the furniture was still in Ohio). Josie liked the barrenness of his house, the bare mattress on the plain floor.

Over the next ten years, Alan had five different lovers and Josie had three.

Neither of them made any effort to hide their affairs. Josie took up smoking, which she had given up for Alan’s sake, years earlier. In fact the cigarettes were a front.

Her second lover smoked marijuana and shared it with her. She smoked her regular brand at home, in secret.

One day Alan heard some rumors among his colleagues and friends on the medical school faculty. A mysterious new ailment had appeared, called AIDS. Soon it became a nightly subject on the national TV news. Josie and Alan decided to be LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 63

more careful. Alan began dating Estelle, who was older, safely married, and good looking. He took her to galleries, concerts, and poetry readings. It was a bit like the life in Syracuse when he had courted Josie. Except, of course, now Alan was graying a little and had a thick red mustache. Estelle had had a facelift and wore black dresses trimmed with fur or rhinestones. She wore rings on every finger. Alan looked at her aging, ringed hands lying in her satin lap. Years ago, in Syracuse, Josie’s small, plain hands must have lain the same way on her wool skirts. Sometimes the sight of Estelle’s hands and the sound of Schubert played by the Guarneri made Alan homesick.

Josie left her latest lover and applied to the university graduate school of philosophy. She was accepted in the master’s program, acquired an assistantship, and quit her job at the library. Alan was dumbfounded.

“I come home and find you out,” he said.

Josie stared at him. “I’ve been working since the kids were in school,” she said.

“I haven’t been home three quarters of the time when you came in.”

“This is different,” he said, but could not explain why it was different. He didn’t mind her being at the public library working, but he hated the idea of her in the university library studying. It seemed silly to him. He shut up and asked how he could help around the house. He faced the fact that he felt guilty. Josie had done everything—no, more than everything, during their first years together: bought the house, signed all the documents, drove the car––still drove it, in fact. She had selected his clothes, with better taste than he could.

He owed her something. He was not sure what it was and he hated it.

The first thing to go bad was the car. It died one day on the Outer Loop. Josie called a neighbor to come for her. The next day the manager of the garage towed it back to his shop, dropping Josie off at the university on the way. She got a lift home from class with a fellow student. A week later she had a flat tire, which she changed herself in a light spring rain. The next day the windshield wipers were stolen. The day after that the alternator broke, leaving her stranded on campus.

“Maybe we need a new car,” Alan said.

“Not now. We should wait until fall,” she said. Since Alan didn’t drive, he left it at that.

The next thing to break was the television. Alan didn’t watch it much, but he liked certain “worthwhile” programs. Their elder daughter, Susie, away at college, had left behind a small black and white set in her bedroom. Josie suggested he watch that.

“Black and white?” he said.

“What difference does it make?” she said. “All the programs you like are people talking. You don’t need to see what color suit Jim Lehrer is wearing, for heaven’s sake.”

He grumbled and went upstairs. Josie had intended to transplant some bulbs, but she had to read two hundred pages of Heidegger before the next morning’s seminar. She went into the room they called the “library.” Upstairs Alan slammed the door of Susie’s room. Josie could hear tinny voices chatting about the Middle East.

She concentrated on the pages in front of her, began to take notes, and forgot about Alan.

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The next evening they carted the TV to a neighboring repair shop. “Can’t even use the VCR,” Alan said gloomily as they sat down to supper.

“There’s that new Eco novel,” Josie said. She reviewed her notes for class as she ate.

“What’s this?” Alan asked. “Hot dogs?”

“Chili dogs, actually,” Josie said. “I got them at Sugg’s Diner.”

He stared at her. She realized how arrogant his face had become since the vacancy of blindness had left it. “Take out food again?” he said. “This is the fourth time this week.”

“I don’t have time to cook,” she said. “Sorry.”

“It’s not the food,” he said. “It’s the–the money.”

“I’ll pay you back,” she said.

“You know a couple of the kids’ rooms need repapering?” he said. “Now they’re away, we should have them done over.”

“Fine.”

But they didn’t have the rooms done. There were too many arrangements to make, wallpaper to be selected; and, worst of all, the possibility that replastering or even new ceilings were necessary.

When the TV was returned, Alan found that it still didn’t work right. “The channels are all one notch off,” he said.

“Use the VCR then,” Josie said. “You’ve taped every movie Fellini ever made.”

Alan found that the VCR would not rewind. He considered buying a tape rewinder, but thought better of it. He could barely manage to work the VCR. Another gadget seemed like too much. Josie was no help. She had filled the dining table with piles of books and bunches of scribbled notes for her seminar paper.

One midnight, just after they sent the VCR off to be fixed, the dishwasher stopped working. It was full of the usual three days’ accumulation, plus glasses, plates, and cups from an evening gathering of Josie’s classmates, who had met to discuss existentialism. Within the same week the hot water heater sprung a leak, the thermostat had to be replaced, and a heavy September rain flooded the basement. Josie triaged these disasters. The flooded cellar came first, then the hot water heater, then the thermostat, and, last of all, the dishwasher.

“We can always wash dishes in the sink,” she said to Alan.

“I can, you mean,” he said sourly.

“Whatever. Anyway, for that we need hot water. The thermostat can wait a little. We have warm clothes and a fireplace. I took care of the cellar first. The drain was plugged, is all.”

Alan began taking more time with his patients, talking to them at length when they telephoned, staying at his office into the late evening to refine his notes. Somewhere in the disaster of my own life lie the seeds of helping others, he wrote in his journal. He read this over and wondered what the hell he was writing. What “disaster”? And what did he mean by “seeds,” for Christ’s sake? He changed “seeds” to “beginnings,” changed “helping others” (an inane phrase in any event) to “vision,” then looked at the sentence again. I’m becoming a pompous ass, he thought and turned over a fresh page. No ideas came. He sighed, cleared off his desk, and left, not for home but for the condominium where Estelle lived in great splendor, separated from her husband. She was surprised and pleased to see him. He told her he was miserable, saying, “Things don’t work anymore.”

“Life’s like that,” she said. “You find a pattern or a groove––but then you grow too much to fit in it.”

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He disliked talk of “growing” among adults, so he said no more, dared not explain that by “things” he meant just that. Things. A patient of his, a single woman with three children from three marriages, had told him, “Things are dangerous. They own you after awhile.” This was true, he thought, truer than his own studious meanderings.

Josie began throwing things out. She discarded toys, old clothes, unused furniture, cans of dried paint, and bags of plaster left over from the early days of the house, when she had had it done over. Alan did not know she had done this. He hunted in the spare room closet for an old pair of walking shoes one day and ended by heaving the entire contents of the closet into the room in a rage. They fought over that, but it ended with Alan putting everything back and even agreeing that she had been right to throw things away. Josie brought him a Diet Pepsi, and they shared it, sitting on the edge of the spare bed. Her throat was sore from screaming.

Alan said, “I think we’ve had it,” and she didn’t try to disagree. He moved out a few days later to live with Estelle.

That would have been the end if it hadn’t been for Alan’s old manual typewriter, which he left behind. He tried calling Josie to see if she could drop it off, but she was out (the answering machine had stopped working). He asked Clay, a graduate student, to drive him to the house. As they approached they saw a light in the bedroom. Alan detected an odor, which he recognized, in a panic, as smoke.

He gave the house key to Clay, who unlocked the door and dashed for the kitchen telephone to dial 911. Alan stood in the front hall.

“Josie!” he bellowed. Upstairs, Josie awoke in a smolder of hot wool. She had been reading Sartre in bed and smoking. Downstairs, Alan knew only that she had vanished. “Josie!” he yelled again. He started up the stairs, but Clay, having summoned the fire department, pushed past him. Alan held back. Suddenly his vision seemed very fragile. He felt like Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester. He watched Clay lead Josie, wearing a blue robe and coughing, to the head of the stairs. Alan seized her with both arms. They ran downstairs together and took refuge in the house across the street as the sirens grew louder.

The fire, a small one, was put out in short order, but the house was soaked.

The neighbors offered to put them up for the night, but they refused.

“I have a place to stay,” Alan said, “but––” Josie interrupted. “I can call one of the people in my study group,” she said.

“The smell here is too strong. We’ll have to deal with it later.”

They stood in the shelter of the neighbors’ porch, wondering at the loss of their life, the near loss of their house. Alan said, “Did we have too much?”

“Probably.”

“I realize now. In some ways I was better off blind.”

“I knew that,” Josie said.

THE END

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Teapot Wrapped In Foil Signing To Me Cindy Bonilla

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Untitled Jenna Colhouer

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Ignore The Hornet Marc Berman

If you leave the hornet alone it leaves you alone.

Just yesterday, sipping pink wine on the porch, one came close enough to lock eyes.

I let it float around watching it watch me, knowing I should just get up and slam it with my shoe but I didn’t.

So it stung me just out of my reach below my shoulder blade.

On this green earth you never can tell what, if allowed, another creature will subject you to

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Morpheus Donna L. Emerson

My sky is black with small birds bearing south.

I cannot see between them.

Each morning I wake and sleep, stir and drift, wonder when and where the day ends.

We will try Maine’s cold waters Sunday next to shake this lethargy.

The medicine no longer works, carries death inside me. Long I lie and lies become my hour, my day, my year. My flesh crawls, I crawl, struggle to muffle pain, pain the feudal master, tyrant, king.

Take me from here; carry me to high water.

Cleanse my matted hair, shake from me this blackness. * First line is from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Two Seasons”

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We Were Exhausted and Utterly Hopeless Cindy Bonilla

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I Think I’m Getting Married Cindy Bonilla

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Pajama Party Barbie Joan Roberta Ryan

Pajama Party Barbie (1965) came with pink satin pajamas, bathrobe, curlers, a scale, and a book titled How to Lose Weight.

I remember you from senior year, the dorm and Statistics 203— your second time through.

Transfer from Vassar, psych major and part-time model, with a voice from Brooklyn and a body like Penelope Tree— skinny, gorgeous, outrageous, you were what Carol and I wanted to be as we followed you down to the pantry and pilfered the sheet cake waiting for Sunday tea.

Our last time together, never-acknowledged complicity, cutting thick corner chunks piped with chocolate roses, slaking deep chocolate lust, orgasmic moans, greedy fingers thrust in blue and gold buttercream, the violated cake naked, obscenely rolled to doughy fistfuls, and flushed as you retched from your stall, clueing us in on your movie-svelte secret of eating your cake and having it too.

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Greyhound Robert Schillinger

I met God on a Greyhound bus.

Shoulders sloped, broken, from carrying a world’s worth of grief; I couldn’t bear to burden Him with my own.

He smelled of showers in gas station sinks, hands shaking, the skin cracked like desert mud.

With a nicotine-stained smile, in solemn tones swimming in whiskey, He asked if the seat was taken, and I told Him, “no.”

He wore an old army coat, faded from a wandering sun, torn and tattered, stained with the scent of seven states.

His soft leather shoes were stories of untold miles on open roads.

For hours, we rode in silence, God running calloused fingers over the frayed threads of the seat in front of Him, trying to push them back into place.

But it was like a thrift store puzzle, where a third of the pieces are missing, and half of what’s left doesn’t fit.

I thought of confessing everything I’d ever done wrong, but there wasn’t enough time.

There’s never enough time.

Besides, He seemed busy enough already.

At the next station, while passengers pulled their lives from the belly of the bus, I watched the stars slow-sailing in a sea of ink, the moon drifting in a gentle arc, pockmarked, pale, naked,

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shining with secondhand sunlight.

A deep drag on the cigarette and the world glowed orange, the ember burning bright as though it consumed the darkness itself.

Turning to me, God asked: “Can I bum a smoke?”

He said He’d pay me back.

Even though I never really believed in Him, here He was, asking me for a favor.

Not wanting to be the one that told God no, I gave Him two.

He climbed into the back of a rust bucket pick-up with a busted mirror and cracked taillights, and as He faded into that pale blue country, into the ephemeral dust of disturbed dirt roads, into nothing, I wondered if I could trust Him.

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Still In His Chest Jed Myers

A young warrior wanders the airport in his fresh-laundered chaos-cloth colored sage, eucalyptus, tumbleweed.

Guess he’s had to murder a fair lot of boys his own age, no Goliath but terrified men who stumble and bleed.

Still he’s beefed-up on belief, hair short as Astroturf, eyelids like fast moth wings. Doesn’t know what he’ll need for relief back here—might be weed, Oxycontin, beer, white froth of speed in a spoon…. He’s just bought a little golden bear for his kid— holding it seems to quiver his mouth.

He grits his teeth, temples taut as tripwire. Who knows what he did over there. Has his soul flown south?

I bet it’s still in his chest, in a knot.

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The Wooing Joan Marie Wood

she notices first his curls his height then his gaze gray-eyed unfettered warm looking beyond her across the sparsely-grassed field toward the inlet no sails now the channel open she turns half away from his glance sees him pull his collar up with an ungloved hand in the coffee shop he gestures with lively hand to a laughing friend she sits near the hearth her gaze shielded by shadow a popping spark glances from fire to brick a startle warm expletive his eyes catch hers he grins openmouthed tosses his hair a colt in a windy field he overtakes her on a walk across the playing field next day they talk she watches his hands broad strong palms long fingers muscular open a gentle touch on her arm his gaze steady let’s walk back where there’s less breeze the warmth of his voice a sudden shyness drops her glance he plays for her his fingertips brush & glance off strings soft beat on the cherry wood the field of her perceptions expands within the warm resonance of his baritone the fingers of his left hand an easy stretch up guitar neck his gaze turned within then to her curious open she walks these hills he taps his toe the room fills with his open throated ve-e-il her flush the touch of his glance her glance nobody knows, nobody sees the sun in his gaze holding her at song’s end nothing to field its power but her own a sturdy desire hand over hand turning in her core rooted & warm in the quiet common room he leans toward her warmly she rises steps forward opens her lips he stands too her hand on his wool-clad arm his faintly sweet scent his glance her cheek bone’s sheen in this ancient field the gods bow their heads his trembling breath O gaze O fierce & tender gaze warmed through body’s field open me open O glance separation’s door with your arrow’s hand LITERARY-ARTS MAGAzINE | 77

I’ve Been Asked To Judge Cindy Bonilla

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The Stare Mark Belair

Family photograph albums kept from generations past fall open to sepia-toned ancestors whose names—unrecorded— have been forgotten; yield pages of carefully posed yet carelessly lost identities staring out of a mysterious past and into a mysterious future that turned out to be, accurately, this mystery we find ourselves inhabiting; a mystery that we all, in our final, sepia-toned hours— as we forget, at the last, even our own names— stare out of and into.

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Waiters Claire Scott

There must be a prayer for waiters not the ones who serve food in cafes or coffee shops although god knows they could use a prayer every now and then scrabbling on scanty wages and stingy tips no, I mean waiters who wait for test results CT scan MRI Sonogram waiters who wait for news of bypass surgery lung transplant liver biopsy unable to read or wander through the tangle of halls (lights too bright smells too strong disembodied voices urgently calling: Dr. Castor, Dr. Castor) convinced if they remain faithful to this hospital-green chair nailed to the floor all will be well.

Waiters hollowed out by tossed nights and curdled appetites waiting to receive a wafer from a white coated doctor

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with news of the future put out your tongue news that will return some to the world of bosses babysitters barbeques spirits sun-raised, relieved their sojourn was short news that leaves others betrayed by false gods of medicine spinning in recursive loops appointments tests doctors more doctors limping from hope to hope lives shaped by sorrow.

God, if you exist somewhere in the vast cerulean sky counting hairs on the heads of your children, pulling camels through the eye of a needle reach down your heavenly hand and touch each waiter.

Place a wafer on each tongue.

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Asphyxia Ashley Moore

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Fractured Jack King

It had been a morbidly hot June, and Raleigh Evans didn’t think the summer would get any better. He stood on a low hilltop with Western Maryland unfurled around him. The farmlands were broken by clusters of neighborhoods and tightly packed strip malls that grew in density the further east you went. Just beyond the horizon lay Baltimore City and the vast urban sprawl that stretched along the east coast, countless millions that would one day thrive off the gas wells he and his intern were mapping out.

Raleigh took in a lung-full of honeysuckle and pine scented air, which brought memories of summer evenings watching fireflies with Emily. Funny how the simplest things are the ones you miss the most. He checked his map, noted the drilling sites that still needed surveys. Maybe a month of work and then he could become one of those tubby corporate geologists who lounge in air-conditioning all day. More than a mile underground laid the edge of the Marcellus Shale, the vast reservoir of natural gas that spanned from Tennessee to upstate New York. If not for the intern, Raleigh would’ve been doing the job alone. Would’ve preferred it, actually. But an ARECO executive had a son he wanted to keep out of trouble for the summer, and truthfully Raleigh needed a companion in a way he couldn’t articulate, like scratching an itch you didn’t realize you had. He wanted to think of Kyle as a hemorrhoid because babysitting the boss’s son put him in a remarkably awkward position he didn’t appreciate, but nothing ever works out like you think it will. The boy had an innate curiosity that reminded Raleigh how much he enjoyed geology. Every rock had a story, every pebble was tied to the great chain of shifting earth and colliding continents put in motion when the planet cooled. The summer held a promise he’d forgotten could exist. Asking for anything more seemed foolishly optimistic.

Raleigh felt a tremor and thought of the burrito he ate for lunch. Gas had a bad way of vibrating his insides before leaking out, and lately his farts had a stench that likely violated some Geneva Convention. He thought it wouldn’t be good to let one rip in front of the intern. Good thing the boy was on the opposite hill. But the vibrating wasn’t in his bowels; it was in the earth.

Kyle’s voice crackled through the radio. “You feel that?”

Raleigh scanned the horizon, saw trees shake and birds dart into the sky.

“Earthquake,” he said. “Unusual on the East Coast.” Ideas flooded his mind bringing the same kind of adrenaline-fueled panic he felt when Emily told him about her biopsy results. They were in the middle of a divorce at the time, and Raleigh never would understand her infidelity.

He thought about the forty-five test wells already producing, deep holes sunk a mile into the earth that formed a dotted line across fields of premature corn. The quake subsided, and his panic stalled. “It’s fine,” he said into the radio.

“Because the bedrock is the pee-more plateau,” Kyle said.

“Piedmont,” Raleigh laughed.

“Piedmont Plateau, and it’s more than three hundred billion years old.”

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Raleigh smiled. “That’s right. Now take two steps to your left. Perfect. Mark it.”

“Copy that.” Kyle brushed reedy strands of hair behind his ear, swatted at a cloud of gnats, and hammered a yellow survey marker into the ground.

Emily had died seven months, one week, and three days ago, not that Raleigh was counting because that would be obsessive. After she passed, he went to the gym every afternoon because he believed crying on the treadmill would look like sweat to the casual observer. It left him in the best shape of his life, and yet he still couldn’t compete with Kyle.

The boy was twenty-two and had spent the previous summer hiking through Yellowstone with friends while Raleigh slept in uncomfortable hospital chairs and watched Emily’s life wilt away. The truth was that he’d lost her long before she died.

The tripod in front of him held a theodolite, a boxy metal tool that resembled the mutant offspring of a telescope and a power sander. He lowered himself to the monocle, adjusted the lens, and centered Kyle’s survey marker into view. The theodolite calculated angles and distances and fed the data into Raleigh’s GPS. Not thinking about Emily brought up images Raleigh had been trying to suppress, and suppressing memories was like stifling a cough; the harder you tried the worse it got. He had to grit his teeth to keep the tears from clogging his eyes.

Raleigh never saw himself as a manager, but he was pretty sure bawling didn’t inspire confidence.

Kyle started down the hill as he spoke into the radio. “These markers are where we put the wells?”

“No, we’re recording elevation,” Raleigh said.

“How do you know where gas is?”

“Not gas,” Raleigh corrected. He put the radio down long enough to heave the tripod over his shoulder. “We’re looking for shale. Porous rock that holds gas.

We’ll do some seismic surveys in a couple of months. You’ll like that; we get to use explosives.”

“Awesome,” Kyle said. “I can blow stuff up.”

“It’s more like firing a bullet into the ground.”

“Now it sounds boring.”

Raleigh laughed. “You ever watch submarine movies?”

“Sure,” Kyle said.

“It’s like sonar pinging through deep water. Only we’re pinging through rock, and we’re not looking for rogue Russian subs. OK, I guess it’s nothing like sub movies.”

At thirty-five, Raleigh’s premature gray was just beginning to light the edges of his hair. He felt far older.

Emily would’ve been thirty-three next month.

Her final days were unkind. She was beautiful once, had a timeless softness to the curve of her cheeks and the slope of her nose. By the end, her skin had become gray and loose, her hair thinned to sparse strands.

After they were married, he took a job on an ARECO project in Colorado while she worked a paleontology dig in Montana. They saw each other every few weeks and spent most of that time in a hotel bed. Long-distance relationships never work, but they were going to be different. They talked of owning a house, raising kids. Raleigh tried to tell himself that it wasn’t his fault. Absence makes the heart wander; or does it make the heart grow fonder? She began skipping their weekends and he began to suspect. He worked up the courage to ask, and she admitted

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everything except the name, not that it mattered. After that, he couldn’t look at her without thinking of a faceless man, a better man, someone who could make her come the way he never could.

A year later when Emily told him about her biopsy results, Raleigh swallowed his anger and stayed with her to the end because she had no family still living, and no friends who cared. He held her hand, wiped sweat from pale skin, fed her ice chips through long nights. They talked like an old couple in the twilight of their lives. Raleigh never asked what he needed to know.

Questions without answers brought scars that might never heal, and Raleigh feared becoming a bruised shadow of himself. The person he was, the confident man who loved Emily and argued for ARECO to invest in safe drilling, that man was gone.

He was no longer what he wanted to be. In Kyle he saw hope, a chance to change himself.

They walked across a field of knee-high grass following a trodden path that wound towards a dirt road. The cloudless blue sky was pierced by the fading contrail of a plane. The grass swayed in a breeze, rustling waves of sun-bleached green like a rolling ocean breaking against a thin line of trees in the distance; the sound was like a promise of better days, and for the first time in a long while, Raleigh believed.

They reached a utility road that was little more than a pair of dirt ruts. Raleigh’s car was a rusting hulk with dull maroon paint that peeled in uneven layers. Rust had eaten through the body around the wheel wells. He kept it more as defiance against the bargaining involved with car sales than as a testament to his sentimentality.

Buying a car was a battle of wills he was sure he’d lose.

The trunk’s hinges screamed when opened. The space was littered with empty motor oil bottles, dirty rags, and loose wrenches marked with engine grease. Rolled in a ball in the far corner was a fringed red blanket that Emily had given him for some future encounter in a field, should the mood ever take them.

It never did.

Kyle slid the tripod off his shoulder. “Can I have tomorrow off?”

“What is tomorrow? Friday?”

“Yep,” Kyle nodded. “Today is Thursday, the college Friday.”

“What the hell does Thursday have to do with Friday?”

“Nobody schedules classes on Friday except freshman who don’t know any better. That way you always get a three-day weekend!”

Raleigh fell in behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine took its time lurching to life. They cranked the windows down because the air-conditioning could only manage a faint hiss of warm air. “Isn’t school out?”

“She has summer classes,” Kyle said. “So, is Friday OK?” Raleigh didn’t know who she was, and didn’t want to know. He nodded agreement and put the car into gear. It lurched forward and thudded into the road’s ruts. “Why am I not invited to your Thursday College Friday?”

“You can come if you want.”

“I’m only kidding, Kyle. I wouldn’t—” Raleigh had to stop himself. He was going to say: I wouldn’t go out with your kind, but Kyle no longer fit the mold of a rich man’s son. Kyle might be privileged but he wasn’t cocky, and even if he could use his dad as a crutch or a club, he never did. Raleigh considered going to a bar, which only made him think of Emily.

He missed lying above the sweat-soaked sheets beside her, panting and spent.

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He felt immortal in those moments; he could accomplish anything he ever dreamed of if only he could keep touching her. It was a fleeting feeling, as painful as it was ecstatic, shortened further when she would remember they had to be somewhere or that there was laundry to do.

She could never dwell in a moment except in his memory, and even there she seemed restless.

When the car began shaking he thought the engine was giving up its final groan before joining the car afterlife until he noticed the trees rustling. He slammed on the brakes and the CD ejected with such force that it spat into the back seat.

Kyle laughed, “You need a new car.”

Raleigh turned the engine off.

The vibrating didn’t stop.

He got out, nearly toppled to the ground when the shaking worsened. There was a low growl coming up through the earth, an animal roar that shuddered his insides.

“Another quake!” Kyle yelled.

A rending sound caught their attention and a tree toppled over, kicking up a fan of dirt.

The rumbling faded like a toy winding down.

Raleigh’s thoughts were drawn to the forty-five wells. A part of him knew what happened, but he couldn’t acknowledge it any more than he could admit he was still angry with Emily. “Get back in the car,” he said.

He gunned the engine before Kyle had closed the door. “We’re not blasting or anything, so this can’t be us.”

Kyle nodded, but Raleigh suspected the boy didn’t truly understand.

“So drilling caused the quake?”

Raleigh shook his head. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

They reached the main road. The world didn’t look any different. There was no shattered pavement, no power lines down.

The squawking sound that came from the back seat startled both of them.

Kyle twisted around, grabbed the radio and switched it on. A panicked voice barked, “Raleigh, where the hell are…”

“I’m here Charlie,” Raleigh said.

Charlie was the drilling foreman, and Raleigh’s last friend. He was at site thirty-two, the operations headquarters. “Where the hell you been? I got hell breaking loose here. Pressure readings off the damn scope.”

“Shut the pumps off,” Raleigh said.

“Which ones?”

“All of them.” Raleigh thought about the wells, the mile-deep shafts that cut through rock before sliding horizontally for another mile. Hydro-fracturing meant forcing so much water down the well that the shale where the gas was trapped would crack. The rock would split and gas would bubble up the well bore. It was an oversimplification because Raleigh didn’t want to think about the chemicals added to the water—emulsifiers and benzenes and ethelynes. Chemicals with toxic-

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sounding names that no living thing should ever consume.

A few minutes passed before Charlie returned to the radio. “Shane is gonna be pissed.”

“I’ll deal with him,” Raleigh said. “Tell me about the pressure readings.” He concentrated on the road, driving with one hand while balancing the radio by his ear.

“Sites twenty-eight through thirty-four are showing nineteen-thou PSI.” “That’s four thousand over pressure,” Raleigh said. “What else?”

“Shattered sodium arc lights at forty-two, and a drill rig collapsed at thirty.”

“We’re ten minutes out,” Raleigh said. He pressed the accelerator and the car backfired before sputtering only slightly faster. Raleigh needed to see data from the wells. He needed to get to the trailer at site thirty-two. He needed to know this wasn’t his fault.

He needed Emily to be alive.

Kyle was shaking. “How the hell are you so calm?”

Raleigh didn’t answer. He wasn’t calm; he was terrified. He’d gotten quite good at hiding his fear. The last months with Emily were all the practice he would ever need. She would ask about test results, and he would keep a straight face as he lied to her. She would ask how she looked, and he would barely register a pause before saying that she hardly looked sick. He would kiss her cracked and yellowing lips, brush her thinning hair, and smile like nothing had changed.

You can hide a lot behind a smile, and he learned to be convincing.

Kyle asked, “What if one of the wells is on a fault line or something?”

Raleigh shook his head. “Wouldn’t happen.”

But it could.

Raleigh wanted to drill further west, away from the East Coast and dense neighborhoods. He relented because ARECO would drill whether he wanted them to or not, and at least if he set the wells he could make sure they did it right.

There was a lot riding on low-cost safe drilling. ARECO was banking on the hope that safety wouldn’t impact profit, and that’s what it came down to. Shareholders wouldn’t accept losses, and the world needed cheap energy.

By the time they reached site thirty-two the sun was beginning to slip behind the low line of mountains. The site resembled a construction project in its early stages; level dirt pad housed a deep, rectangular pool where wastewater could be stored before processing. Beside the reclamation pool sat the rigging derrick and the wellhead, the water pumps, and the tanks.

The car slid to a stop beside the office trailer. Raleigh climbed out into silence.

The pumps were off, the generators were idle. He should’ve had them shut off sooner, after the first quake.

Charlie strode towards them. He was round and balding with stocky arms and a half-chewed cigar hanging out of his mouth. Bright red suspenders held up stained jeans.

“Heya Raleigh, Kyle. I got all the sites shut down. Nobody got hurt, but we’re still getting damage reports. Got a water truck which done fell into the rec pool at site ten. Helluva mess.”

Raleigh climbed the wooden steps to the trailer. Inside was much cooler, the wall-mounted air-conditioner rattled at full capacity. The trailer was filled with bookshelves lined with well-worn equipment manuals. A frayed couch sat along the far wall. Kyle sunk in and put his face in his hands.

Raleigh sat at the closest desk and switched the computer on. “Are the pools OK?” Charlie said, “Two cracked, but they was empty.”

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Raleigh keyed up the remote sensors. The drilling sites formed a line across the Western Maryland countryside. He worked through the logic. Six sites with overpressure all in a row. He keyed up the gas sensor readings.

“Fractured wells,” Raleigh said.

Charlie shook his head. “Ain’t possible. Wellbores is all lined with half a foot of steel reinforced concrete. Ain’t no way they’d pop.”

Raleigh said, “That’s not what I’m seeing here.”

Charlie said, “We ain’t even finished drilling in most of them sites.”

“Twenty-eight through thirty-four are done.”

“Which ones you think are collapsed?”

Raleigh felt numb and dizzy. “Twenty-eight through thirty-four.” He swallowed a wave of nausea and pushed past Charlie.

“Hey,” Charlie called. “You all right?”

Raleigh ignored him and walked across the lot and slid down a dirt slope into weedy grass. Kyle had asked if it were possible to cause a quake by drilling into a fault line. Instead, by drilling wells across the countryside in an even row, he’d made a fault line, a new shift along the continental crust.

It shouldn’t have happened. There had to be something he was missing, something he didn’t catch in the initial surveys. Raleigh kept walking through the grass and into the trees. There was a stream nearby, fed by a natural spring. He made his way through the thinner parts of the forest, picking a path through the trees until he found it, twenty meters in.

The gully was a few feet wide, worn from where the stream had overflowed the banks. Today the water was a slow, casual trickle only a few inches deep. Raleigh bent down and stared at his reflection on the unsteady surface. He remembered being a boy, playing in streams like this, stomping in the water until his pants were soaked and shoes were filled with mud. He reached into the cool water and plucked up a six-pack of beer, right where he left it. Coolers were impractical when hiking, but the constant motion of water was perfect for chilling beer, a natural Peltier cooler. He popped the tab and guzzled.

It would take a few days, but the wastewater would bubble up and kill this stream, along with every other water source within a hundred miles. In a few days, his name would be all over the news. Chief geologist causes earthquake. Or maybe Geologist kills East Coast. He could’ve stopped it at any time, if he wasn’t so distracted with his own grief. Could’ve radioed to Charlie after the first quake and shut down the pumps. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, or maybe it would’ve meant all the difference in the world.

Maybe if he paid Emily more attention she wouldn’t have strayed.

He wanted to forgive her but he couldn’t bring himself to forget.

Some scars run too deep, and like fractures in rock, they never heal. * * *

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Contributors

Contributor Biographies Cathy Allman entered the writing field as a reporter after attending the school of Cinema and Television at the University of Southern California. She teaches creativity workshops at high schools, at Norwalk Community College, and at her Connecticut office.

Gay Baines lives in East Aurora, New York and is a member of the Roycroft Wordsmiths. She has a B.A. in English from Russell Sage College, and has done graduate work at Syracuse University and SUNY - Buffalo. She won the National Writers Union Poetry Prize in 1991, Honorable Mention in the Ruth Cable Memorial Poetry Contest in 1996, and the 2008 Mary Roelofs Stott Award for poetry as well as other prizes.

Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Poetry East. His books include the collection While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013) and two chapbook collections: Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013) and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). For further information, please visit www.markbelair.com Marc Berman is a business executive, having owned and operated commercial radio stations for 35 years. Originally from Boston, he began writing in airplanes while traveling from his home in western Massachusetts.

Cindy Bonilla was born in February 1991 in Othello, WA. She moved to North Carolina in 2000, and since has fallen in love with the country air and its southern hospitality. In the summer of 2008, Cindy was inspired to pick up a camera and capture everyday moments, everyday people from sunrise to sunset. December of 2013, Cindy received her B.F.A in Photography, at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her photographs have consisted of the figure in experimental means and self-portraiture.

Elena Calebro is an amateur painter working on her BFA in Painting and Art Education. Her longterm plan is to get her Masters in Arts Administration, and open her own gallery.

Jenna Colhouer is a student attaining her Bachelors in Art at UNCC. Jenna likes to practice delving into the voids of imagination. She makes the miniscule, enormous; and preys on daydreams for content. Jenna acts as a magician in her artwork and makes alternative realms of reality from ordinary materials.

Rachel Landrum Crumble received her MFA from Vermont College. Her work has appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Louisville Review, among others, and recently in Saint Katherine Review, and Stickman Review. She has been awarded scholarships to Bread Loaf, Vermont Studio Center, and participated in Vermont College’s Postgraduate workshops. She received Honorable Mention in Writer’s Relief Peter K. Hixson Award for Poetry in 2013. She teaches at Ridgeland H.S. in Rossville, GA and lives down the highway in Chattanooga, TN with her husband and youngest son.

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Donna L. Emerson is a college instructor, licensed clinical social worker, photographer, and writer. Her publications include Alembic, Assisi, CQ (California Quarterly), The Chaffin, Eclipse, Euphony, Forge, Fourth River, Fox Cry Review, The Los Angeles Review, New Ohio Review, Paterson Literary Review, Praxis: Gender & Cultural Critiques, Quiddity, Rougarou, Sanskrit, The Schuykill Valley Journal, Soundings East, So To Speak, The South Carolina Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Spillway.

Michael Patrick Emery, as an undergrad at Occidental College, worked a variety of odd jobs to finance his degree in psychology and philosophy. From there, he attended the Teachers College at Columbia University for his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He went on to spend some time in the Peace Corps before returning to Idaho. Now semi-retired, he came to New Mexico via the Creativity and Madness continuing education series and now lives at an artist’s colony in El Morro.

Jon Epstein, originally from Hollywood Hills, resides in the West Fernando Valley with his wife of twenty-five years. Jon considers himself an emerging writer and a fine artist—one who is inspired by the daily trials and joys of simple life—not to mention: an entrepreneur, musician, surfer, and chef.

Demi Fedur is currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina, studying to receive her B.F.A in Photography at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Most of her photographic subjects deal a lot with consumption and the economy. One of her favorite photographers is the Bechers.

She only hopes that you can see their influence in her work.

Wendy Fox earned her MFA from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers in Spokane, Washington. After working as an adjunct instructor in the local community colleges, she moved to Turkey to teach literature in a state university. She was included in the anthology The Expat Harem: Foreign Women In Modern Turkey (Seal Press, 2005). In 2011, she was a top-five finalist for the Minnesota State University at Mankato’s Rooster Hill Press short fiction competition and her story Ten Penny was selected as part of a series by The Emerging Writer’s Network for 2011 National Short Story Month.

Ken Haas is an avid skier, bike rider, yoga practitioner, and volunteer. Ken has created (and continues to sponsor) a weekly poetry writing program at UCSF Children’s Hospital, which employs two poet-teachers from California Poets in the Schools.

Christina Hall is a fledging artist with a strong passion for painting. Her goal is to obtain an MFA in Painting. Her work always has an idea of depth, and how every layer is visible. Her favorite way to work is in mixed media combining both painting and drawing materials. She wants to inspire every viewer.

Jessica Harmon is a 23-year-old fiction writer trying to break into the world of poetry. Jessica earned her Bachelor’s degree in English at UNC Charlotte, with minors in philosophy, women’s studies, and American studies. She is currently earning her master’s in English with a concentration in creative writing. Her major interests include diet soda and watching popular American film and television.

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Myque (pronounced “Mike”) Harris is a Psychotherapist, School Counselor and yogi who is an artist at heart. She wrote her first major piece in 1998 when she was a sophomore in college, and continues to write whenever the inspiration hits. She recently authored her first book, called Ellington’s Hat, a children’s book beautifully illustrated by Gregg Balkcum, documenting the journey of a little girl in a Cranial Orthotics Helmet. If Myque was a bagel, she would be a rye and sourdough swirled one. It looks smooth, brown and average on the outside, but when you crack it open, you’ll discover it is no ordinary bagel!

Alison Hicks is the author of Kiss, a collection of poems, Falling Dreams, a chapbook Love: A Story of Images. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Licking River Review, The Louisville Review, Pearl, Permafrost, Quiddity, Rougarou, Whiskey Island, and other journals. She has won awards from Philadelphia City Paper and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.

Jérôme Karsenti is an artist, painter, and poet. He grew up in Nice, studied in Marseilles and Paris, and earned a degree in architecture from the Ecole d’architecture de la Villette, Paris. He has entirely dedicated himself to his painting and writing since 1997. His research leads him to reflect on the idea of simplicity within the arts and architecture, following the idea of “less is more”, the point at which concentration transforms into exuberance, architecture...- converge through the prism of poetry.

Jack King is an MFA graduate of Queens University, and has worked for over fifteen years in the IT industry and still remembers when floppy drives were new and cool. While building data centers and server farms, he discovered the beauty of well-crafted fiction by practicing the underappreciated art of business proposals. When not fixing his wife’s laptop, he serves as a cloud computing engineer for a large Baltimore/Washington area firm. He’s studied with Pinckney Benedict, Fred Leebron, and Naeem Murr, who taught him that nothing is more powerful than the written word, except maybe cat fur because that stuff just doesn’t go away.

Iab Lee started drawing with a creative mindset as a child, who was deeply inspired by her father’s stylized illustrations. Everyone starts drawing as a child, but Iab didn’t stop, and she continues to draw as she gets older. Today Iab makes art; she is an illustrator who is very passionate with her work.

Iab does not just one particular style or medium she calls her own, but she has evolved her variety of styles over the years with her study in illustration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Katherine McKeon is a Bachelors of Fine Arts Photography major at UNC Charlotte. She also has a background in bio-communications, which often shows through in her work. Her photos vary greatly from vast landscapes, to intimate portraits and the smallest details are in the macro.

Ashley Moore is a senior at UNC Charlotte, pursuing a BFA in Art with a concentration in Photography. Her photographic interests include: formal and institutionalized ideas of beauty, the black female body as an aesthetic, and interpretations of race. Ashley plans to pursue her MFA, after taking some time to recover from all the countless hours she has spent in Rowe over the last four years.

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Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Barely South Review, Atlanta Review, Moon City Review, Grey Sparrow Journal, Crab Creek Review, The Journal of the American Medical Association, and elsewhere.

He’s a Pushcart nominee, winner of the 2012 Mary C. Mohr Editors’ Award from Southern Indiana Review, and winner of the 2013 Literal Latte Poetry Award. His collection The Nameless is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.

Kylie Niemand is a photography student at UNC Charlotte with minors in Art History and Sociology. She is a member of both the University Honors Program and the College of Art and Architecture Honors Program.

Laura Pendell’s artist’s book, Hibernation, has been featured in three juried book art shows. Her poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in the Nevada County Poetry Series Anthology, the Minotaur Press anthology, Assisi, Blue Lake Review, Cocktails & Confessions, Crack the Spine, Edison Literary Review, Foliate Oak, Jelly Bucket, Limestone, Mary: A Journal Of New Writing, OVS Magazine, Soundings East, Talking River, The Tulane Review, and Wild Violet.

Mimi Plevin-Foust’s poetry, screenplays, and articles have been or will be published by Forge Journal, Fourteen Hills, LearnVest.com, POZ Magazine, SCRIPT, Spoon River Poetry Review, Stickman Review, and Willow Review. She received her MFA from NYU’s Dramatic Writing program. Mimi produced ‘Wide Time: An HIV Odyssey’ and ‘Hopes and Fears: Rusti’s Story’, two widely screened documentaries about long-term AIDS survivors and their secrets for making life not only long—but wide.

Joan Roberta Ryan is a professional writer with lifelong passions for skiing, eclectic cooking, and—above all—poetry. Before devoting her life to creative writing, she owned and operated her own direct response advertising firm, worked as a copy chief at the Franklin Mint, and held other advertising jobs for New York publishers. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlanta Review, Roanoke Review, Calyx, Off The Coast, Concho River Review, Prick of the Spindle, Taos Journal of Poetry and Art, and other venues, as well as in the anthology Poems for Malala Yousafzai (FutureCycle Press).

Dakota Rose is a junior working towards a BFA in Illustration with a particular interest in the figure.

She was able to contact the actress, Tilda Swinton, to show her a photo of the portrait that is published in this edition of Sanskrit, and received a thoughtful and encouraging response from Tilda herself.

Elisa Sanchez is a second year art student about to complete her two degrees in Art and Music.

She loves the world of illustration and exploring various other art fields as well.

Robert Schillinger read too much Kerouac during his formative years. After three years in an Engineering program, he left to pursue his life on the road. Two years of wandering about the country aimlessly, and he returned to complete a Bachelors Degree in UNCC’s English program.

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Allison Scott is currently pursuing a B.A. in Art and a minor in Art Education. Her work explores the natural world and environmental issues such as human consumption and consumerism. As an educator, Allison integrates her own interests as an artist into her teaching curriculum in order for students to make connections to common problems within humanity, and to appreciate the world around them in a more conscious manner.

Claire Scott has an MA in Counseling Psychology and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice in Berkeley, CA. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of PA. Claire is a published poet who has been reading and writing poetry for many years. She is a mother of two children, has two children by marriage and four grandchildren. She lives with her husband in Oakland, CA. Alima Sherman, after a professional path as a clinical psychologist, took a deep breath and started writing poetry. Writing saved her life. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod, Coracle (Millennium Issue), Poet Lore, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Permafrost, Paterson Literary Review, and Talking River. She has published three chapbooks and she is working on a book of poems, Sloping East. She has studied with Regina O’Melveny, Deena Metzger, Peter Levitt, and Jack Grapes.

Kimberlee Thompson is a founding member of Somerset Ink Writer’s Group, and has published fairy-tale-related poetry and short fiction, and has won a case of tomatoes in a Furmano’s “Get Your Sauce On” recipe contest. She has a menagerie of cats, most of them black, because she believes they are good luck.

Katharine VanDewark was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and lived a bicoastal life as a child. Moves were regular-every three years-with final settlement in Southern California, where she graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a BFA in painting. She has been a fine art photographer and dancer, and has been writing poetry since the 1980s. She hosts a monthly writing group in her living room and seeks out open mike nights to read her poetry and hear that of others.

Joan Marie Wood’s poetry has appeared in Peregrine, decomP, and Paterson Literary Review.

Her Voice is Blackberries, a book of poems, was published by AWA Press. She has led writing workshops in Oakland, CA since 1995.

Nii Yartey, as a philosopher, photographer, digital media artist, and graphic designer, tries to use his art to show others what they miss when they live an unexamined and largely unappreciated life.

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Jury Art Jurors Kristin Rothrock teaches art Foundation courses and Book Arts at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Rothrock graduated from Skidmore College in 1990 with a BS concentration in Printmaking. She received her MFA in Graphics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1998.

Jae Emerling is an associate professor of art history in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. In 2011 he was visiting professor of contemporary art in the Faculty of Arts at VU Amsterdam. He received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Theory for Art History (2005) and the award-winning Photography: History and Theory (2012) Pete Hurdle has served as the Graphics and Production Coordinator for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Niner Media since 2008. He works with students on a daily basis in their print, video, and online publications. In the past he has taught digital media for UNC Charlotte’s art department and is currently the advisor for the TOMS Campus Club and Radio Free Charlotte. Pete has strong ties to Sanskrit as he worked on the magazine as a student in 2006-2007.

Outside of University work he spends his time doing freelance design, attends Charlotte Checker games, plays guitar in the band, “weekenders,” and has a passionate interest in time travel.

Literature Jurors Dr. Kirk Melnikoff is an Associate Professor in the English Department at UNC Charlotte where he teaches courses in Shakespeare, early English poetry, Renaissance culture, and film. He has written books on Shakespeare’s contemporary Robert Greene and is presently finishing scholarly projects on Christopher Marlowe and Elizabethan print culture.

Christopher Davis is a professor of creative writing at UNC Charlotte. He is the author of three books of poetry: The Tyrant of the Past and the Slave of the Future, The Patriot, and A History of the Only War. He is currently working on a fourth book, to be titled Oath. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, and Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on Their Muses.

Aimee Parkison is a William Randolph Hearst Creative Artist Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society and has been awarded a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in Prose Writing. Parkison has an MFA from Cornell University and is an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she is the coordinator of the creative writing program.

Information about Parkison’s work can be found at www.aimeeparkison.com

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Staff Biographies

Athina Hinson Editor in Chief Athina is an anthropology and philosophy double major suffering from senioritis and wanderlust. Her notebooks are filled with more doodles and song lyrics than actual notes. When she isn’t busy trying not to lose complete control of her life, Athina can be found procrastinating on tumblr and taking pictures of her cats. If she ever gets around to growing up, she plans on traveling the world, doing ethnography, and writing about everyone she meets. Athina would like to dedicate this publication of Sanskrit to her mother who is currently battling cancer.

Nortina Simmons Fall Associate Editor Nortina recently graduated from UNC Charlotte in December 2013.

She plans to use her English degree and experience with Sanskrit to pursue a promising career in publication. She currently lives at home, developing a strong voice for her writing and taking care of a silly puppy who would rather lick the kitchen floor than eat her dog food from the food bowl.

Joshua Wood Spring Associate Editor Joshua is a junior at UNCC trying to obtain a BFA with a concentration in illustration and a double minor in art history and women and gender studies. He hopes to work in animation studios doing concept art and storyboards. When he’s not wasting his time watching Netflix he can be found working away in the studio.

Leah Chapman Content Leah is a sophomore majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. She prefers writing screenplays over short stories because she finds writing dialogue to be very liberating and empowering. Leah always adds more sugar than she should to her coffee, and if it was possible, she would eat dessert for every meal.

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Stephanie Alonzo Lead Designer Stephanie is a bilingual, senior graphic designer at UNC Charlotte. Born and raised in Miami, she has grown to love North Carolina for all of the outdoor adventures it has to offer. She enjoys going out and dancing with her friends. Stephanie has recently picked up strength training, and is always open to trying new things. She has a creative eye for every aspect of life and really enjoys making design more visually pleasing and effective.

Graduating this May, Stephanie is eager to embark on new endeavors in the wonderful world of graphic design.

Jerrad Stone Designer Jerrad is a super senior Graphic Designer at UNC Charlotte. He spends most of his days now designing on the computer. Although he is inside a lot, when he gets out he likes to go out with friends and have a grand time. Jerrad likes to be active when he isn’t sitting, and does things like skateboarding, exercising, archery, and boxing. Many of the things he does give him inspiration for design. Upon his graduation this spring, he hopes to find exciting employment to further his creativity and to challenge him.

Laura Borbely Social Media and Promotions Laura, renowned the world over for her extensive vernacular and ability to nap any where at any time, enjoys traveling from city to city, photographing everything she sees, and reading in empty museums. An anthropology major and future museum curator, Laura sees social media as the next frontier in promoting the up-and-coming and whatever DIY craft comes her way.

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Thank You Contributors: Thank you for choosing us to showcase your incredible work.

Without you, none of this would be possible.

Wayne Maikranz: We thank you for all of the work you put in to support and guide us, and the helpful advice you give us along the way.

Mark Haire: Thank you for your patience in answering question after question after question…and of course, always being there with a friendly hello.

Pete Hurdle: For yet again helping us narrow down the art selection, and for letting us bug you with random inquiries and design guidance, we thank you.

Kelly Merges: Thank you for your help with circulation and for encouraging us to showcase Sanskrit to the world.

Art and Literature Jury: Thank you for dedicating your time to helping us pick the best work for Sanskrit. Your excellent taste is key for our success!

Rachel Ward: Thanks for using your incredible photography skills to make our faces look pretty.

Laurie Cuddy: Thank you for being such an excellent Business Manager and an important part of Student Niner Media.

Reuben Bonsra and Rosalba Arroyo: Thank you for modeling for our “sketchy” winter garage photo shoot and letting us spray you with oil and water. Glad we had space heaters!

Graphic Impressions: Thank you for taking our vision and turning it into reality.

Michael Teague and Angel Cox: For helping us out whenever the technology just did not want to cooperate (or maybe we just didn’t know how to use it).

Janitors of the Student Union: Thank you for keeping the office clean, even when we fail to keep it tidy.

Students of UNC Charlotte, SAFC, and Readers: Thank you for all your support and the interest in our work. We hope you enjoy it!

Family, Friends, and Loved Ones: For being there to support our hard work and passions, thank you.

To all of our incredible and dedicated staff members and volunteers, thank you!

We have all worked very hard to put forth another beautifully made publication of Sanskrit. We have come a long way from our initial literature read-throughs and our calls for submissions. We should all be proud. Congratulations on an awesome job well done!

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Colophon Copyright © 2014 Sanskit Literary-Arts Magazine and the Student Media Board of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte. All rights reserved. No Part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form electronic, mechanic, photocoping, recording or otherwise, without the permission of the copy holder.

Graphic Impressions, Charlotte NC 3500 copies for the Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine were printed on 80# Athen Silk with 130#DTC Recycled 100 Bright White. This magazine has one 92 page book, with a trim size of 6.75” x 9”.

Typography Open Sans Bold, Open Sans Regular, Open Sans Italic, Borgia Pro Regular, Borgia Italic, Borgia Pro Bold, Gill Sans Regular, Gill Sans Bold.

Appropriated iMac computers Macbook Pro laptops running OS X version 10.7.5 Adobe Creative Suite 6.0 Canon EOS Rebel T2i Canon EOS 5d Mark II Canon 7D Cookout Tray

Credits Cover Design: Stephanie Alonzo, Jerrad Stone Type Setting: Jerrad Stone, Stephanie Alonzo Page Illustration: Stephanie Alonzo, Jerrad Stone Layout: Jerrad Stone, Stephanie Alonzo Photography: Cover and inside cover images by Stephanie Alonzo, special assistance from Ryan Davis. Staff Biography images by Rachel Ward.

Image Editing: Stephanie Alonzo, Jerrad Stone Copy Editing: Athina Hinson, Nortina Simmons, Joshua Wood, Leah Chapman, Laura Borbely.

Models: Reuben Bonsra and Rosalba Arroyo

Submission Guidlines: Please visit sanskrit.uncc.edu to download submission forms, view back issues, or view map of where all our submissions come from, all over the world.

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