Oakwood 2018 by Oakwood

OAKWOOD | 2018

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Oakwood editorial board would first and foremost like to thank the South Dakota State University Students’ Association for their continued support over the years. We would also like to express our appreciation for the support of the SDSU English Department, especially Jason McEntee, as well as the College of Arts and Sciences. Finally we would particularly like to thank Steven Wingate, Oakwood’s literary advisor, without whom the continuation of Oakwood would not be possible. We give our sincere gratitude to the SDSU Print Lab for their involvement and support. Anita (Sarkees) Bahr has been a longtime supporter of South Dakota State University’s English Department, especially Oakwood. Thanks to her contributions, Oakwood will continue to provide an excellent opportunity for young SDSU writers and artists to publish their pieces in this journal. We have established an award in her name to recognize excellent emerging writers. Begining this year, the award will go specifically to an SDSU student.

THE 2018 ANITA (SARKEES) BAHR AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTOR IS ALLISON KANTACK.

THE OAKWOOD STAFF LITERARY EDITORS Gus Braga-Henebry Megan Caldwell Emily DeWaard Raymond Fuerst Eric Heidel Bridget Henderson Brittany Kopman Mark McLaughlin Shelby Pattison Lillian Schwartzrock LITERARY ADVISOR Steven Wingate, M.F.A. ENGLISH DEPARTMENT HEAD Dr. Jason McEntee COVER ARTIST Jennie Scislow BOOK DESIGN Michael Mazourek LAYOUT Bridget Henderson Brttany Kopman

Hearing Discord D.A. Hickman Conformity is the dullest kind of reality, brittle waves crashing against the shoreline like water seeking land, again and again I hear its straining, pounding its poorly hidden sorrow until I crave a yielding silence to part the sky dance with the wind perch on the tallest tree whistle in the night like an open door.

SDSU English Department In Memoriam

Dr. Margaret Duggan

Dr. Mildred Flynn, SND

The SDSU English Department, the College of Arts & Sciences, and the university and Brookings communities lost two of their long-time faculty members in the past year. Drs. Margaret Duggan and Mildred â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mickiâ&#x20AC;? Flynn, both Professors Emerita of English, have left behind a legacy of excellence in teaching and scholarship at SDSU. Dr. Duggan (Ph.D., Columbia, 1972) joined the SDSU English Department in 1978 and retired in 2001. She regularly taught courses in her area of expertise, Restoration and 18th-century British literature. She also regularly taught courses in world literature, European studies, humanities studies, and composition courses. She also served as the Coordinator of the Humanities program and was active in the European Studies program. She also served as an academic advisor to English majors. Dr. Duggan was a noted scholar of 17th- and 18th-century British literature, having published numerous articles and notes and given numerous conference presentations. Dr. Flynn (Ph.D., Missouri, 1985) joined the SDSU English Department in 1990 and retired in 2009. She regularly taught courses in her area of expertise, Romantic and 19th-century British literature. She also taught courses in world literature, mythology, the Bible as literature, European studies, global studies, and technical communication. She also served as a faculty member in both the European Studies and Honors programs, and she served on the Honors Program committee. She also served as an academic advisor to English majors. Dr. Flynn was a noted scholar of the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, having published numerous articles and notes on his and other works of British literature and given numerous conference presentations. Both Drs. Duggan and Flynn were exemplary faculty members at SDSU. We will miss them dearly, and we will always remember and appreciate their numerous, substantial contributions to SDSU. Dr. Jason McEntee English Department Head Acting Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

OAKWOOD | 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 | Hearing Discord − D.A. Hickman

camping: night three Cliff Taylor sitting on the ground beside a campfire big enough to light up the whole world. sobbing out a story I haven't really told anyone. she puts her hand on my ankle. if I were writing this she wouldn't have a lawyer boyfriend waiting for her back in Oregon. if I were writing this we'd transition into a relationship that'd be as perfect as this night feelsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;at least for awhile. our other friend asleep in the car. buffalo up in the hills behind us. the campfire cooking down like a clock that's about to stop.

Wanaka Jordan Larson

Sweet Home, Oregon Cliff Taylor

A picnic table of us staring up at the stars in Oregon. People who’ve never met becoming like old friends in just a couple days. The deep quiet of the campgrounds lapping around us, our forms the color of night with our swept up eyes the only bits of white. Tomorrow while dancing I’ll see this procession of giant old beings coming into our space through the gap between two trees, visitors appearing in an improvised gateway. In a month I’ll be another nameless new stranger trying to make my way in the sweet and rainy city of Seattle. We look at the gorgeous slow-motion smear of the Milky Way until our necks actually begin to hurt. The past a hand that you haven’t been touched by in months, back half of America away; the future a woman’s hand that you hope will be touching you soon, that you might have to touch first. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the stars like this before,” an older woman with an accent says. My neck aches but I force myself to keep looking up.

Alpenglow Corinna German A sacred time Best experienced from a hammock after sunset Or while scrubbing a sooty face with icy creek water before sunrise Or on mile five of backcountry’s unforgivable climb while inhaling cedar and juniper notes—after sunset Shining, radiating off of the backs of the elk herd stealing back to black timber before sunrise soft cow calls reach the pink-edged peaks touching kestrel’s colorful wings and I look at you, wishing we could remain, in Paradise Valley’s alluvial embrace

Independence Day Allison Kantack You took me to spend the day at your grandparents’ farmhouse, setting off hundreds of fireworks on that dusty, gravel road between two barns. Afterwards, your family had a picnic—grilled hot dogs, corn on the cob, and a sweet potato salad. Then you drove me around the mosquito-infested wood in your grandfather’s golf cart. You stopped to hop over that creek—a tradition you had as a child. Later you taught me how to shoot a gun, but never how to aim. That night, everyone watched your hometown’s fireworks in the dark, summer sky. You held my hand because you thought the thundering cracks would startle me. But after a while, you let go, and I finally knew what it felt like to be free.

Underhand Allison Kantack I grew up in summer dugout days, where diamond, chain link shadows fell upon my sunblocked legs like fishnet tights. And I remember fidgeting in my cleats—my first pair of heels—crunching vagrant grains of sand and salty shells of sunflower seeds beneath my feet. My mother always came to watch me play, while dad stayed home with the boys. I asked my father once to teach me how to pitch. “Can’t,” he said, “girls pitch underhand.” He only knew how to pitch like a man— “—and you pitch like a girl!” the bleacher boys would shout, reminding me of where I am. I turn to my team, painstakingly ready to take the field. Every game, it seems, we bat second. When we take our positions, the neighborly chatter turns into primitive outcries: howls, yammers, and roars that drown in their own futility. Still, our cheers and chants fight through the metallic ring of fences.

Immersion II Jenny Scislow

Halfway to the Master of Arts Jodi Andrews

I. You ask me what I want to do with my degree—once I have it. I scan my bookshelf. I am Malala in The Jungle To Kill a Mockingbird my Beloved Catcher in the Rye, Peace is Every Step in Herland, The Monk, Frankenstein discovers The Mysteries of Udolpho, Lord of the Flies. I pick at my nail polish. What will you write your thesis on? What classes will you take? I check my email. Will you go for more school? and Facebook. Do you know where you are going? II. I paddle my boat on calm water, taking in the sights. Clouds glide, forming shapes then subside. Birds dart between rock clefts; sun sparkles on the water. The paddle glides in; I pull it back and shift forward under the bridge. My orange life jacket starts roasting. I dip my hand into cool water and rub the droplets into my neck and arms and hair. Droplets cling to me — dew in the morning grass. I pull the paddle in with me and wait. I don’t care where I am going. This spot suits me, and I am enjoying the breeze.

Bio Jessie Rasche

Poor, Underappreciated Adjective Leah Alsaker After Mathea Harvey’s “First Person Fabulous”

Adjective knew there would be trouble when she asked for a hissing elixir from the white, cavernous freeze-box and Noun handed her a pop from the fridge. After that, Adjective would hide behind the prepositions and leap out in front of Noun, making him “shrunken” or “moldy” or a “particularly unpleasant shade of puce.” But even then, Noun would caution the rest of the sentence about the “overuse of Adjective” and she would be vanquished in a cloud of rubber eraser dust. So Adjective hovered off the margin of the page, dangling modifiers in front of Noun like they were sugar-glazed donuts. Randomly arriving sun-colored transportation?, offered adjective. Taxi, replied noun. Great internal emptiness, said adjective. Starvation or loneliness, replied noun. Shimmering nocturnal sky jewels, added a hopeful Adjective, stitched throughout the heavens with a steady hand, their flames frozen, shining, crystalline, as beautiful and uninhabitable as a thousand ice castles in the velvet sky. Stars, Noun corrected. A constellation of stars.

Shading a Line Gone Wrong Julie Wakeman-Linn Will edged toward the Airstream’s doorway but his mother blocked his escape route. She filled the door, arguing with the trailer park owner. “We’re temporary residents. We don’t need hurricane cables.” “Your boy could install them for you,” The trailer park owner winked at Will. “This one can’t this week. Sunburn.” She spat out the word. Worse yet—this one—her hint to Will, reminding him what his absent brother Freddie would have been able to. Will slunk away from the door. Last night, blisters rose on his shoulders, two inches high. His mother had flipped out at the raw pinkish skin and dragged him to a clinic. His father had mocked him, telling Freddie on the phone, about “second degree burns from sunshine.” His sister Karen snickered behind her Nancy Drew book, with a nasty half laugh like her mother’s, sounding a lot older than her eight years. “My brother Freddie could it do, lickety-split. Mister. He’s selling Fuller Brushmen in Kansas this summer and he’s going bring me presents.” Will didn’t know who he liked least in his family, his pushy big brother, his whiny brat sister, or his parents. “Check your weather forecast, for pete’s sake.” His mother jabbed a finger at the cloudless sky. Will leaned against the toilet-shower cubicle door. He had to get out of the one room trailer, chockblock full of fold-down, fold-out everything—table, benches, sofa-bed. Baskets for Karen’s Barbie dolls, his mother’s books, his father’s ties shoved under the sofa. “We can’t exactly depend on the accuracy of the fo-casters.” The owner ran his hand down the back of his head, like he was checking for a cowlick. The odor of Aqua Velva polluted the air. “Now, Ma’am. Rules are rules and this is our county rule. You’re required to be either bolted to a concrete slab or you have to install the cables. I’ll do it for you for $25.” “We have car insurance to cover this.” His mother never backed down about money. They didn’t have

enough—ever. Her hands clenched into fists, the way they did when she was about to blow up at somebody. His sister Karen slammed her Nancy Drew mystery shut, trying to get their mother’s attention. She’d met the kids two mobile homes in the main park and wanted to be released to go play. “I don’t believe auto insurance covers hurricanes. I have the materials, the concrete, the buckets, the cables. Your husband’s not around much, is he?” “My husband’s a guest lecturer at the University.” She spoke slowly to stress the significance. Will wanted to laugh--his father’s job was a stop-gap summer appointment, trying to be hired for full time at the bigger college for the fall. His parents rented out their home to summer school grad students and packed up the ridiculous eighteen-foot Airstream to haul to Florida. His father stranded them daily, taking the station wagon, to teach Brit Lit at the college. “Next week is the latest you can wait, Ma’am. By then your boy can do it. You all have a good day.” The owner had already turned away. His mother slammed the inner metal door. “Southern charm. I don’t want to talk to these people.” “Ma—” Will stopped. Even after only three days, he knew she was never going to fit in if his father got the job. The first day, two ladies appeared with a jug of iced tea to welcome them. His mother declared it undrinkable, loaded with sugar. When she’d carped they were half dressed in pedal pusher shorts, Will suspected his mother missed her friends, her sisters, and her mother back in South Dakota. His mother wore her plain colored dresses, always buttoned up, pressed and cinched in at the waist with a matching belt. Except her dresses wrinkled in the heat. “I’m going to—” “No more hitchhiking to the beach! Promise.” She dabbed her forehead with a tissue. “I’ll sit by the pool. I gotta get out of this tin can.” Will opened the inner door. A slight breeze carried heavy air through the screen door. Karen slipped off the sofa, ready to follow. “I’m not taking her either,” he shouted. His mother’s mouth bent into a crooked grimace. He ducked his chin to his chest. Yelling never solved anything. “Sorry. I’ll take Karen another time, 'kay?” “I hate you.” Karen kicked the fold out table, shaking its legs. “I’ll play with my new friends.” She tore around him, banging against her mother and out

the door. His mother squinted, her eyes nearly disappearing. “You. My oldest has fled. My little one has abandoned me. You go, too.” Will stood perfectly still, willing the moment to pass. He didn’t know what to say to soothe his mother. The line of connection between them had failed since his voice dropped. When he was younger, he’d hug her and his chubby arms squeezed her anger away. These past couple of years, he, the cursed middle child, refused to compete with Freddie for grades, in sports, and he’d forgotten how to coax a laugh out of her. But he was nearly seventeen and touching anybody was dangerous territory. “Dad’s gotta be back soon.” “Go find those floozies. Leave me alone with the Israelis and the Arabs.” She turned on the portable TV and fiddled with the rabbit ear antennas. Watching the news about another war wouldn’t help her mood. Her loneliness sickened him, but his impulse to escape meant he couldn’t help her. Grabbing his sketchbook and pen, he latched the outer screen door quietly as he could. The trailer’s metal shell echoed any sharp closing. He crunched across the gravel of the empty travel trailers lots, unused in the heat of summer. Mobile homes, huge compared to the Airstream, with lawns and flower gardens, filled the rest of the trailer park. On the empty pool deck, Will stretched out on the chaise lounge under the palm tree with the biggest canopy. The raw skin on his shoulders stung when the sunlight or his t-shirt touched it. He stripped off his t-shirt and draped it over the back of the chaise. The humid air had made his sketchbook pages spongy. The small pool with its mosaic colored tiles was for horsing around, not lap swimming. The sun beat down, no shade on the shimmering water. The pool deck provided nothing good to sketch until the club house door swung open and six girls, blondes or bleached blondes, all of them in wild twopiece swimsuits, peeled out. Polka-dots, stark white, lacy baby blue, but so much girl skin. He half closed his eyes to keep from staring like an idiot. A transistor radio blared, “Last Train to Clarksville,” and the girls started dancing around, little half steps, twisting to show off their legs. They pretended to ignore him but they kept glancing his way. He focused on a red spiky flower next to his chaise. “Why are you wearing jeans?” A girl in the stark

white bikini, arms akimbo, stood at the end of his chaise. She was the only non-blonde. He shrugged. “Why not?” “It’s hot and how you gonna swim in jeans?” Her brown hair fell around her face, her lips thin but pink, her breasts doing that perfect mounding out of her bikini top. Nobody in South Dakota wore bikinis like hers. “I don’t swim.” “Do you dance?” she asked. In her heart shaped face, her green eyes were popped. Not bug-eyed but big wide eyes, the shade of emerald-green he liked. “Not to that crap.” Will sat motionless against the chaise, playing cool, playing smart. Her hips swayed with the “oh no, no, no” chorus. “Who do you like?” A trick question—he hardly knew music, but the Monkees were a fake made up band of actors. What to answer? “Miles Davis.” He’d read about jazz in a magazine in the public library, but that never heard it. “Can’t dance to jazz.” She spun away. Her girlfriends circled around her, like blonde she-wolves after the alpha had returned, smelling of a kill. So many of them, the odds should have been in his favor but they closed him off. If he was here, Freddie would be dancing with them. He twirled the red flower and laid it on his thigh. Short strokes created the shape of outer pedals. It was only a matter of time until their boyfriends showed up. Their laughter became louder and closer, combined with the clanging of the metal against concrete as the girls dragged their chaises into a circle around him. “What are you doing?” the polka dot girl said. “Sketching.” Will glided his pen, layering strokes to form the shading of the inner pedals. “You must be drawing us. Stop it.” A bleached blonde in the blue bikini taunted. “Let’s show him.” The girls posed in their variations of Twiggy or Cher or some famous female, hips thrust to one side, much flipping of hair, pouting mouths. “I don’t sketch figures.” He added a stem to his flower sketch, using a light rhythm of curling lines. He lied—his hippie art teacher praised his figure drawings. The motion of his hand over the page felt good and let him fake confidence. The green-eyed girl in her white bikini picked up his blossom and tapped his knee with it. She wore

silver rings on all her fingers of her left hand, each one different with swirls, engraving, smooth and one with a tiny blue stone. “When did you move here?” “Three days ago.” He liked looking at all of them, their legs, their breasts, their flashing smiles, but he was glad when they started to lather sunscreen on each other, ignoring him again, so he could talk to her alone. “That explains your sunburn, doesn’t it?” She pushed his feet over and sat next to his sandals. Last night, when the blisters popped, his mother lathered him with Lidocaine and gently trimmed the dead skin. Evenings when the Airstream cooled down were easier for her. “You’re in the travel trailer, aren’t you?” The blue bikini girl, standing taller than the others, hit his sore spot. Around the corner, in the Airstream, his mom, holed up with a dinky table fan, watched the Israeli army fight everybody on the Golan Heights. These girls’ homes all had separate bedrooms and kitchens and probably multiple bathrooms, while in the Airstream, he slept on the pull-out sofa and Karen slept on an air mattress squeezed on the floor in between the stove and the refrigerator. Nobody could get to the toilet door. Freddie had lined up his job in Kansas to avoid this trip to avoid sharing the sofa bed. After the second night, Will gave up the sofa to Karen and slept in the station wagon. He sucked in a slow breath and said, “For a ‘lil while. It’s right cozy.” His mocking the ‘bless your heart’ crap he’d heard all the way across the South shut down the blue bikini’s sass. He’d hitch-hike out of this joint every day once the sunburn healed. The blue bikini turned her back on him and said to the girls, “I’m hot.” Their pack mentality taking over again, the girls turned away, and dove or slipped or jumped into the pool, except the green-eyed girl. “Do you need someone to rub your shoulders with sunscreen?” “Sure, but I don’t have any.” He wished he could conjure up a tube so she’d touch him. “I got burned yesterday when I hitch-hiked to Boca Raton Beach. You ever been?” He’d sketched how the surf crashed against Boca Raton rock formations. He’d thought the ocean spray kept him cool enough. It hadn’t. “Boca—lots of times. I like to go when it rains. I’ve got some cream.” She pivoted on her round bottom and unzipped the pink bag and dug out her Coppertone. She squeezed out a palm-full. “Move up.”

What a gas—she went to the closest beach in bad weather. He put his feet on the pool deck. She pushed him further forward and tucked in behind him, her knees brushing against his back. In her fingertips on his skin, the coconut scented cream felt hot and sticky. “What’s your sport with all these shoulder muscles? Did you letter in tennis? Don’t say football— I hate it.” “Sure, tennis.” He certainly wasn’t going to tell her the truth—shoveling manure for his uncle and snow for his grandma, trying to earn enough for a car. If only he had the Chevy now, his independence, he’d drive them to Boca. Her mistake was almost groovy, thinking he was a varsity athlete, except he hated those jocks, all of them cocky like Freddie. “What’s your name?” “You should guess it.” Her breath on his burned shoulders, her voice was like a secret. “Adriana-celestina-justina-avemaria.” He’d play her games. “Nice try, wise guy. I’m Janice. I graduated from hell hole high school last month. What’s your name?” She slid from behind him and stuck out her hand in a fakey grownup handshake. “I’m Will.” He grabbed her hand and mock-kissed one of her rings. He jumped up and aligned another chaise next to his—his crotch might explode, if she stayed on his chaise. She was the same age as his brother Freddie, named for the favored maternal grandfather. He was named for his father’s father, the alcoholic dead these five years. He imagined his mother expected her sons’ fates to play out in their names. Freddie a winner; him a loser. “This is my summer of discontent, made glorious by the sun of Florida,” Janice said. “I either get a job by fall or get shipped off to college. Not high on my to-do list.” He worried he’d sound stupid if he asked which she’d read—Steinbeck or Shakespeare. Freddie had a faculty brat scholarship for the fall lined up, but Will didn’t want to be trapped in more classrooms after senior year, except to avoid the whole ratshit draft. “What do you want to do?” “Chill out by this pool every single day.” She settled on the pulled-up chaise, pointed her toes, painted pink to match her lips. “Hand me my beach bag, please.” “That’d be cool.” He offered the bag with both hands. She dug out her sunglasses and her paperback,

Cannery Row. He picked up his pen and began to sketch her hand holding the book. A line went wrong and he tore out the page, ready to shred it. “Let me see.” She tugged the page away from him. Will went cold, even in the heat. So what if his hippie teacher liked his work? His father thought his art was a total waste of time. Janice studied it, tracing the lines. “Nice. I like how you included my rings.” “Why do you wear so many?” “I’m unclaimed. I claim myself. Can I have the sketch you’re finished?” She handed it back. “Cool.” He could fix it if he added her wrist. He shaded the line gone wrong and began again. Karen raced through the pool gates and shouted, “Willie, it’s dinner time. Who are you?” She bleated at Janice. “Hello, I’m your brother’s friend. How old are you? My little brother is ten.” Janice tucked a finger in her book to mark her place. “Eight and I don’t like boys. Do you?” Karen smelled like little kid sweat, her hairline damp, her t-shirt stained with red Kool-Aid, her hands swinging. “You gotta come. Dad’s home, dinner’s ready.” “Karen, Jesus, say hello to my friend Janice.” Karen’s brat behavior irritated him. Will tried again, “She’s a reader like you.” “'kay, nice to meet you. Come on, Will, I’m hungry. Mom won’t feed me ‘til she feeds you.” Karen rolled out her lower lip and her eyeballs, trying to act teenaged. “My mother is all about her sons.” Will closed his sketchbook and carefully brushed his fingers over Janice’s thigh. “Next I’m gonna sketch your profile, -kay?” “Mothers’ expectations, I understand that trap. See you tomorrow for my profile. So nice to meet you, little sister.” Janice was already back into her book. For a week of perfect days, they’d lain by the pool, him sketching her, her reading cheap paperback editions of Steinbeck. His sunburn faded away but his shoulders remained untanned under the big tree. No nagging from his father, no whining from his sister. His mother stayed glued to the blurry portable TV, watching the news from Golan Heights analyzing the six-day war, ignoring everything else. Perfect alone together—the other girls gave up trying to get him to swim or her to dance with them. In the pool, the others had lots of camel fights,

girls on girls’ shoulders, splashing, dunking, and halfheartedly trying to unseat each other. They shrieked with giggles if somebody got ahold of somebody else’s bikini top. Boys drifted in, leaping to swipe the top of the pool house’s door frame and dangling from the diving board, cannonballing to splash as many girls as possible. Janice explained, “They’re the ‘little boys, eighth graders and freshmen. All the boys our age had summer jobs at golf courses or the beach.” After a triple-boy cannonball wave hit them, he hopped up and wiped off her legs with a beach towel. When he sat, she held his hand, her soft fingers wrapped around his. No interfering girls, no angry mother, no future either—only this moment. Late one afternoon, with the sun slanting through the western palm trees, a familiar and unwelcome figure appeared. His brother Freddie—his Boy Scout backpack hanging by one shoulder strap came through the pool’s gate. “Thank god I found you first.” Freddie dropped the backpack, now scuffed and torn, from his shoulder. His brother looked shorter, his head hanging low over his chest. “Mom’s gonna be so mad.” “What in hell?” Will asked. His brother, yes, but stooped, sweaty, and out of breath was not his usual brother. “Welcome to Fort Lauderdale, you must be Will’s brother.” Janice seemed to be withholding judgement, pending more information. She’d launched opinions on her books, the music on the radio, the temperature of the air and water all the time, but never about people—not the younger boys, not the other girls, not his mother or sister. Will closed his sketchpad, praying she wouldn’t ditch him for Freddie. The girls at home always did. Freddie straightened as he confronted the situation of his little brother with a sexy girl. He gazed from her breasts up to her face and down her body to her painted toenails. “Thanks, I just got here. Obviously.” “Knock it off. Tell me what’s going on.” Will interrupted to stop his brother’s ogling, embarrassed at the raw male vibes coming off Freddie. Janice stared at Freddie, a smirk flirting with her mouth. Freddie flinched and he hoisted his backpack to another chaise. “Are you all right?” Will asked. Something was wrong with Freddie, always fast with the comeback jab.

Freddie snapped his fingers. “Nope, completely out of it. I got totally screwed. More later for you, little brother.” He stood at the end of Janice’s chaise. “What’s your name?” Will’s concern about Freddie’s status was wrong; his usual asshole-self returned, as he mounted another attempt at Janice’s attention. “Fred, why don’t you just dry up and blow away?” This time—Will wouldn’t let Freddie cut him off with a girl, especially not this girl. “Introduce us properly.” Janice laid her hand on Will’s thigh, suggesting more action than had happened between them, channeling a lie to Freddie. Inside his jeans, under her hand, his skin sizzled. Will watched for his brother’s reaction to her. “Meet my brother Frederick Colin Byrd. Lately of Kansas City where he pursues his fame and fortune.” “Call me Freddie.” He pulled up a chair next to Janice. Freddie seemed to ignore her gesture or more likely he didn’t believe what she was suggesting. “You’re pretty lovely to hang out with my baby brother.” Janice didn’t move her hand from his thigh, choosing him over Freddie. “Shut up.” Will got up to hide his hard-on from Janice and to keep from bashing Freddie’s smug face. “So—what happened in Kansas?” Janice asked. Will loved her so much in her comeback—his bullshit crap didn’t deter her. “Yeah, how’d you screw up?” He resisted adding “you blowhard fake.” “Will, later, huh.” Freddie glanced over his shoulder toward the gate, almost like he was afraid their parents would come marching in. “You’ll help me keep this from the folks.” “Okay boys, I get it. You have manly stuff to talk about. I’ll see you later,” she half-whispered, her voice low and sexier than ever. “Usual place?” Will would play along. Who knew? She might venture out to the station wagon and find him at midnight. She picked up her bag, stood over him, those beautiful breasts so close. She leaned over to kiss him. “Usual place.” Will kissed her back, ignoring Freddie, coughing to object. A flicker of her tongue against his teeth. Every muscle felt alive, Will watched as she walked away. Perfection had claimed him in front of

Freddie. “You’ve been busy. Lucky little shit.” Freddie had dropped his head into his hands. “What the hell happened to you?” Will wanted to savor the heat of her mouth on his, but his brother sat in front of him, totally messed up. “Sell Kansas dry?” “I blew it. I couldn’t make quota. I got drunk one night and pissed in the sample case. I tried cleaning it up but they docked me for damage. I lost my stake hold. Hell, I owe them over $200 dollars.” Freddie’s rush petered out. “The folks are gonna kill me.” “The prodigal son—you never thought you’d be him.” Will had always dreamed he’d crow over Freddie’s first huge failure but he didn’t. His mother’s face swam up in his brain. Their mother wouldn’t be mad but hopelessly disappointed. “I’m going to enlist. I think I get a bonus from the Army.” His words fell out flat in humid air. Will hated his brother’s cocky tone, but he wished it would shoot out of his mouth again. “That’s stupid. You’ll—” He couldn’t say it. Already a dozen boys from their hometown had come back from Vietnam in coffins. “Let me think.” “You—the dreamy artsy screw-up—you’re gonna think.” Freddie’s voice cracked. “I got nothing.” “We’ll hitchhike home and draw out my money. You can’t go to ‘Nam over a stupid bonehead mistake.” “You’d do that—give up your car money? Why?” Freddie asked. “Money? Who cares?” Will wished Janice was here to hear him. He’d worked so hard for the green 1955 Chevy Belair which wasn’t going to be his after all. “We gotta protect Ma.” “I know how to spin this. I’ll tell them business is so good, I’m taking you with me to Kansas City. Dad will never need to know. We’ll be home with good luck by Friday.” Freddie’s spunk came roaring back. He ranged around the pool, spouting all kinds of nutso ideas, about bunking at his girlfriend’s house, drinking with his buddies. The sun nearly set, the tree frogs began their chirrupy chorus, and the mosquito buzzing arose from the red spike flowers. “Shut up, will’ya.” At least, he’d get out of the tin can if he took the fall for Freddie. His summer of perfection and all he had was some sketches of a beautiful hand and one decent profile.

“Oh, hell, get ready.” Freddie said, pointing ahead. Janice led their mother toward the pool, rounding the corner from the travel trailer’s lot. Janice’s white bikini glowed in the twilight. His mother grumbled. Will couldn’t hear her, but he could tell by her fists swinging with each step. “Mom,” Freddie called out. His mother ran the last steps. “Why are you here? I thought this girl was, ly—, um, mistaken.” Freddie wrapped an arm around his mother’s waist and pecked her cheek. “Will and I have huge plans.” His mother stepped away, almost shaking Freddie off. “Pray tell.” “How are you doing? Loving the Florida sunshine? You look tanned, Mom. I’ll bet Karen’s loving the sunshine, too.” Freddie talked faster when he started to con somebody. Janice circled to Will and slid her hand down his arm to interlock their fingers. Will felt their breath, in and out, fall in sync. His mother glared at him, her eyes narrowed and fierce. He could only guess at what she’d said to Janice. He knew she disapproved of the size of Janice’s bikini. Freddie launched his Kansas City fabrication of extraordinary sales, throwing around numbers and names. “You wouldn’t believe it, Mom.” “Yeah, so I’ll go with him to KC.” Will replied at Freddie’s cue. Janice squeezed his fingers hard. “An adventure then.” Will could tell Janice didn’t believe any of it, Freddie’s exaggerations or his compliance. “Why did you come here, if sales were so great?” His mother punctured his story with one swoop of adult logic. Freddie opened his mouth wide and laughed, loud and overly long. “I need Willie-boy’s help to open another territory.” Will struggled to keep from sliding into sarcasm. “You know—money for college for me, too.” “What in the name of all that is holy is really going on with you two!” His mother’s words roared over the empty road. Janice slid a half step, so her hip touched his, as if asking for honesty. Will stared at Freddie, pleading for him to tell the truth, but he knew he wouldn’t. “No, Ma, it’s—” Janice squeezed his hand again. His truth-telling

perfect girl. His mother’s face reddening. Both women knew he and Freddie were lying but Janice wouldn’t accept it and his mother couldn’t. “Why is your backpack ripped up?” His mother grabbed and unzipped it. Brushes tumbled out, falling to the asphalt. Will caught of whiff of urine but it was probably his imagination. “Actually, Ma, we gotta go home and raise some cash.” Freddie’s head hung so low, Will thought it might snap off his neck. His cocky voice now a whisper, he told the truth. His mother was shaking. “You’ll need money, damn Greyhound bus money, won’t you?” “I wish I could come with you,” Janice said. “You see,” his mother spoke directly to Janice, “they always let you down.” “No, Ma, not true.” Will rubbed Janice’s blue stone ring and released her hand. He stepped between his mother and Freddie. “We’ll fix this, Freddie and I. No money needed. Just make us some sandwiches.” He found the courage to draw his mother to his chest, arms around her shoulders, trying to remind her of his younger self when he could soothe her.

How to Speak the Crocodile’s Name Leah Alsaker

I could call you the crocodylinae, fossil in wrinkled bronze skin, lizard with the grin that launched a thousand toothpaste commercials, dragon with no flame, or breathing echo of the dinosaurs. They’ve caricatured you countless times, drawn you into picture books with a bashful smile and sparkling eyes, as if that could drown out the rumors a stray theory at a theology conference, a name whispered in a sleepless night: Leviathan. Are you he, lord of the seas, whom the creator ringed about with fearsome teeth? They say you cut through the oceans and stalked after ships. They say sailors quaked and dropped their harpoons when you roared. But if you are the great Leviathan, why are you penned in the zoo, bloated on sunshine and rat carcasses? You shuffle over rock and gape at me with a gaze as dead as mud. And I wish to see you rave, until the walls crumbled and the clouds thundered your name, wish to see you do anything but curl up in your cage, where you lie, snorting, as you doze— an overstuffed toad in sea monster’s skin.

The Handyshop Cliff Taylor

For about ten years I wrote a poem a night at the gas station where I worked. In the beginning this wounding, lovely, romatnic energy would sweep through me for no reason and it'd stick around for an hour or so. My gas station and the night would ache with beauty, and so would I. After a couple months, when that luminescence would come over me, I'd write a poem wanting to do something with it more than just experience it. I was hesitant that first year, feeling unmanly with the writing of all my small poems; then it became pure soul, a nightly work, a nightly ritual, that MADE ME LIVE. The poems added up into the hundreds and then the thousands over the years. I wrote them between customers, paused when someone came in for some smokes, and then picked up where I'd left off after they'd left. The poems carried me from twenty five to thirty five, became an ark of my life and my people's life. When I left the job, left my beloved downtown ghetto gas station, the thing I really missed was the poem machine of the place. Me, standing in the middle, pen and stolen sheet of paper in hand, the poems coming one by one, endlessly, down from eternity, through me, to live and breathe and sing the human story, trembling and nearly perfect, like they'd been waiting all these years just to open their eyes and blink and finally be.

American Poetry in the Age of Trump Robert Klein Engler Welcome then, O world made new in my eyes, O world now one and whole! O full Credo of things visible and invisible, I accept you with a Catholic heart Arthur Rimbaud Spiritus, ubi vult… John: 4 A discussion of poetry in general may begin with a reference to Augustine’s statement about time. We all know what time is, Augustine said, until we are called upon to define it. So it is that many say they know what poetry is, until they are asked to define it. If they can get over this hurdle with a metaphysical leap, then a higher hurdle presents itself: What is American poetry? Throughout Western Civilization there have been many attempts to define poetry by both poets and philosophers. In our time, definitions of poetry have been influenced by Marxist social and economic theory. In that vein, we will define poetry in this essay as whatever those who have social power say poetry is. A literary work is a poem because those who have social power say it is a poem. In an essay of this length, it is not possible, no matter how desirable, to present examples of individual poems that fit the theory advanced here. And why bother, the cynic may ask? It’s all the same. Pick up any contemporary book of poems and start to read. The poems all seem to be written by the same female author, the progressive spirit of the times. It is enough to say that the question about the future of poetry in the age of Trump is not a question of theory, but a question of practice and the location of social power. When we locate the focus of social power to define poetry, we will be able to understand why some writings are called poems and others are not. Furthermore, we may be able with some degree of certainty, to predict the future of American poetry. The situation with contemporary poetry may be analogous to the situation in contemporary art. When a farmer in Nebraska scratches his head and ask what is contemporary art, we could answer him with the same answer we use to define poetry.

Art is what those who have the social power say it is. In this regards, social power lies in the galleries, auction houses and art schools, along with the critical apparatus that supports these institutions. This being the contemporary case for poetry and art, it is logical to ask where are the centers of poetry located and what are the characteristics of their social power. These days, poetry’s social power is located in college and university writing programs, in departments of English, in the big and small presses and journals, and in workshops scattered throughout the country. For the most part, these centers of power are on the east and west coasts of the United States, although regional locations like Chicago and Iowa play a role. Most of these poetry institutions most likely follow a progressive politics and are funded by progressive foundations. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States sent shock waves through the progressive, poetry community. The unexpected had happened. How could such a reversal occur? There are many explanations for what happened, but the one that may have the most implications for poetry is the one that focuses on the resentment and revolt of white working-class males. The so-called deplorables, itself a poetic term, were instrumental in Trump’s election. To understand that social phenomena even more, let’s consider three aspects often found in poetry power centers. To do so is to point out the contemporary union of poetry and progressive politics in our time, and why the deplorable reject that politics. In so doing, it follows that changes in politics and power will affect changes in poetry. There are three characteristics that most contemporary poems share. First, although contemporary American poems have their roots in English and US geography, these poems aspire to be international and multicultural. Second, contemporary poems are often grounded in progressive political myths. Finally, today’s poems and poets often claim to be the voice of the minority, the voice of the victim and the voice of the socalled marginalized, especially women and sexual minorities. People used to judge the worth of a poem by the rules of rhyme and meter. Now, poems are judged by their politics. When we exhume the body of T. S. Eliot we see that time has taken its toll. Tradition and individual talent has decayed into an absence of

tradition and no talent at all. The fact that university faculties are staffed by progressives is well known. Many will choke on the words, conservative poet. The election of Trump points out that many outside of university faculties have become weary of marginal voices. Readers no longer care about an art that is built upon the back of another’s suffering, if they ever did. Because victimhood no longer inspires or motivates, let along encourages a reader to spend his money to buy a book, we can expect that poetry will eventually undergo a transformation in the age of Trump, or simply become irrelevant as an art form. The dominant metaphor that informed poetry for the last fifty years, the metaphor of civil rights and victimhood is exhausted. This exhaustion happened in spite of Trump’s election, yet with that election it may die sooner than later. It is too early to say what new metaphors will take the place of what is dying, but it may simply be a return to standards as the present generation of progressive university faculty retires, and a new generation of conservative teachers ignore the university classroom for the Internet. Ironically, the Marxist avant-garde has always been fifty years behind the times, even though they claim to be on the right side of history. As the death of the prevailing civil rights metaphor gives way to a new metaphor, so will the voice of American poetry change. If the rise of the white working class continues, then we may expect US poetry to retreat from its international and multicultural interests and become more rooted in the local and the ideals of American exceptionalism. This rise of the white working class may eventually give rise to a uniquely American poetry, a poetry that does not look to Europe or the dead world of a Classical past. The New American poetry may be something like Walt Whitman writing that he has converted from Hinduism to the God of Israel. These changes in American poetry may happen, but not without resistance from the universities and the centers of publishing power. Their resistance will be to double down on what is already dead. There will be more zombie poets writing the dull academic poem that is in rigor mortis. These poets will wander the campus or haunt the faculty lounges looking for the brains of fresh sophomores to devour. All this means is that the poetry we are used to reading and seeing published will become even more irrelevant. In a generation, no one will care about poems that

describe poor Bruce as a transgendered victim. Poems will no longer be what sociology used to be, a way to “explore larger social phenomena that are often silenced, overlooked, and/or distorted.” We do not know if the Trump presidency will last for eight years. If it does, we may expect to see a few things happening that affect American poetry, slowly but surely. First and foremost will be a drying up of government grants and money for the arts and poetry. Government money for the arts has always been political. Why give money to support an art that does not support your politics? In short, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Progressive poets will no longer be paid to pipe a tune. In the long run because of a lack of funding few poems will be published and few students will study creative writing. They may become tofu chefs and water-ski instructors. Instead of hawking chapbooks they may sell chapstick. Then there may be a change of taste. This change of taste could be accomplished by a rise of formalism and traditional poetic forms. Poems that begin with the pronoun “I” will become few and far between. The new formalism will not just reproduce the forms of the past, but may even create new ones. This means there will be a renewed trust in language. The marriage that William Carlos Williams made between poetry and advertising will end in a divorce. Likewise, it is not form we argue about, but content. Because poetry in our time had already assumed the form of advertising, the content of poetry is reduced to nothing more than advertising for the moribund, progressive state. No amount of turning to the Chinese will save the progressive poem. At its highest, Chinese poetry and painting uses landscape to avoid the personal. Like the flat characters of a cartoon, much Chinese art is devoid of tragedy because it is devoid of a self. The self has always been at the heart of Western poetry, from the ancient Greeks to the present. But not so in China. How else can we account for a whole nation accepting what the Judeo-Christian West has rejected, namely Marxism. As American poets retreat from multiculturalism, we may see again the creation of masterpieces. No masterpiece is ever created from diversity and multiculturalism. A masterpiece is created by a master who is rooted in the local. Dante was rooted in Florence. The French impressionists were rooted in Paris. It is only with roots firmly located in the local

that a work of art may rise to be universal. To make art the other way around, is to make art for either the socialist or capitalist corporate market. Those who understand that poetry is not propaganda, also understand that poetry is not an assignment. Yet, to make poetry an assignment is the intention of many poetry workshops and university writing programs. Write a poem about a banana. Write a poem about bicycles. Write a poem about transgendered oppression. By making poetry and assignment instead of the fruit of inspiration, the poem becomes an object in the service of so-called social justice. Furthermore, to say a poem is the product of a poetry workshop, is to appropriate a good working-class word in the service of an illusion. This rubs salt in the wound inflicted on those who work with their hands by an effete, academic elite. The prevalence of poetry workshops is an admission by academicians that poetry is broken. You take your poem to a workshop and get it fixed. Once there, the white, working-class poet discovers it’s not so much the poem that’s broken, but the poet. The poet must be fixed. He must learn the tenets of scientific materialism. He must learn to be a victim. He must give up his privilege and write the poem of his victimhood. Better yet, he must learn to be silent and let the real victims speak. And speak they do, with their metallic voice. The poetry of the workshop millennials is like their music—a desperate attempt to relive the sixties and prove Hegel right: the first time is tragedy, the second time comedy. Without victimhood and civil right the poetry from our current crop of poets would be nothing. Alan Ginsberg gives birth to standup comedians. Because the workshop poem is an assignment, the poem cannot be an inspired work of art. There is no room in scientific materialism for inspiration. The very word has its being in a spirit that Marxists claim is nothing more than an ideology in service of capitalism. When we are assigned by our professors to write poems about gender oppression, Marxist theory dictates the practice, not inspiration. Pervious poets tried to understand the world, when the point, now, is to change it. Today’s poetry needs its victim the same way a drunk needs his booze. But we must ask as Sophocles did, who is the slayer and who is the victim? In the long history of Marxism in the United States, there have been attempts by the Left to identify the real proletariat.

Today, we have gone from a place where the once working-class as proletariat has given way to the victim as proletariat. We have gone from the poetry of the working-class to the poetry of victimhood. The Trump election, in part caused by a resurrected working-class, means that the poetry of victimhood is now dead. In fact, the poetry of victimhood and civil rights has been dead for a long time. That’s why most poetry readings resemble a gathering of zombies. So, what will poetry in the age of Trump look like? A work of art is never completely about social justice. At its core, a work of art is born from talent, and talent is fundamentally unjust and unequal. Some people have it, and some people don’t. No workshops or bottles of vodka will give you talent. You may learn technique and the vocabulary of social justice, but that is not enough. The practically wise know it is not enough, just as they know some countries are shitholes. In short, all that may be left for poetry in the age of Trump is that the poem will return to being a work of art made from words. To get to a work of art made from words, something must be said about the material conditions of poetry. That is to say, the transformation in publishing poetry that the Internet and publishing on demand has brought about. The elites who have until recently controlled the poetry publishing business are being threatened by technological changes that undermine their authority. The vicious circle of, “He is a prize winning poet because we publish him, but because we publish him, he becomes a prize wing poet,” is evaporating. With a computer and a publish on demand printing company, a frail grandmother in Norfolk, Nebraska may sell as many copies of her book of poems as an eminently forgettable winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Which one is a better poet? How dare you ask such a racist, sexist question. Beyond Norfolk, Nebraska, and as hard as it is to say, poetry in the age of Trump may be rooted also in the realization that nations are part of the natural, human order, just as most men and women are naturally drawn to one another and marry. Men and women will write about this because they are not victims but, as Shakespeare knew, are in thought and action like the angels. Does this mean that at the root of poetry and of love there is something irrational, something outside the purview of scientific socialism? That something cannot be taught in a workshop. It remains to be seen what too many workshops can

ruin, but we do know that when it comes to martinis, there can be too much vermouth. As American poetry moves from an international and multicultural interest, we may see the rise of a poetry that is rooted in the local. Perish the thought: Nebraska, with its emphasis on traditional American values, could emerge as the new center for an American poetry, even a new American style of painting. Then again, where the new poetry comes from may be unpredictable. The Spirit goes where it will. Did the spirit already leave Nebraska? When Nebraska celebrated 150 years of statehood in 2017, a volume of Nebraska poems was published that included poetry spanning the state’s 150 years. What do we read in this anthology? Without singling out names or titles we may look at two poems in the anthology and note a distinguishing feature about the course of not only Nebraska poetry, but American poetry in general. When we look at the first and almost last poem in the anthology we see that in the first poem that is written with noticeable stanza, the poet of this 104 line poem uses the personal pronoun “I” only four times. In the poem near the end of the anthology, a poem written about 150 years later, the poet offers us a prose poem, a poem as uncertain about its form as some are today about their gender. In this poem, the personal pronoun “I” is mentioned at least 18 times. What can we conclude from this? One conclusion is that over the course of 150 years the poet as victim intrudes more and more on the poem. Is this good or bad or just a difference in style and taste that has evolved over more than a century? Let’s just leave it at that question. Who knows the future? What we do know is that American poetry cannot continue being what it is now, a cadaver of hope. There may emerge in the age of Trump a poetry that reflects the renewed emphasis on American exceptionalism. Yet, it is doubtful that anyone will sing again of man and arms. Providing there is an America that lasts into the future, a future that soon may be dominated by the Borg civilization of China, we may be in for a surprise.

Urban Decay Adrian S. Potter

It was the worst sort of disenchantmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Midwest in March, winter clutching on to its waning existence like a dying dog. Snow loitered around too long, like an acquaintance who arrives early to a party and shows no discernable sign of ever going home. Everything smelled stale and used; the wind whined like our complaints, and all were sick of the whole business of fighting off the cold. The day was disguised as a hangover and there was no getting over it. I became the nastiest kind of accomplice, prone to exaggeration and discontent. Insincere conversations spindled into arguments. My thoughts heavy with angst, I rode the bus home imagining feral shadows moving along the shoulder. Rumors spread like strip mall fires. Horrible things were happening in this town full of foreclosures and discontented husbands. Approaching sirens and children cowering in closets. Casual violence highlighted in the nightly news. Everything felt futile, like craving privacy in a world subjugated by social media.

In the City Teodora Buba

Infinite Brittany Kopman

Insomnia Adrian S. Potter

I try not to write about this ghost until it haunts me with its narrative. Buildings stand awake against nocturnal skies, restless from midnight until daybreak. I sketch an infinite series of circles inside my mind, tracks for the obsessions racing through my thoughts. Again tonight, I chase the concept of slumber, popping pills until my arteries become tiny pharmacies. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a one-winged angel with a spirit that always comes crashing down, no matter how high I get. The moment sleep arrives it is already leaving, and the moment it leaves I fall apart again. I count the slow drip of seconds leaking from the faucet of time. Sweet dreams.

Morning Poem #3 Scott F. Parker

Recently I read a poem about infinity and wished I’d written it myself. It was just the kind of thing—Infinity—I’d like for my poetry to be about. And perhaps in another universe it was I who wrote the poem, I who made real that impossible thought, I who fit the limitless in a few limited lines, I who made everything more, I who put paradox on paper. Perhaps. But in this universe the sand remains for me to count, and when I stare into the mirror the mirror does not blink.

Final Approach Miles Way

Lieutenant Colonel Robin Hart settled into the seat of his staff car, Toyota’s latest self-driving hybrid, and left the door ajar, staring up at the tacky white trim above him, a document labeled “Honorary Discharge” rolled firmly in his hand. Even climbing into the car was a sore reminder of where the world was heading. Once people began to trust machines’ automation and so-called intelligence, it was inevitable that the military would follow suit. On his last sortie, a Red Flag mission (something he’d requested to stay on for), he’d flown top cover above the Air Force’s largest training area alongside a squadron of computers: drones. There, soaring through the cloudless blue desert, he’d had an epiphany, an almost divine revelation: humans in the pilot seat would soon be a thing of the past. Flesh and blood was becoming obsolete. It was both humbling and terrifying knowing that fewer than two hundred foot away on either side of him, he was flanked by unmanned hunks of metal, held aloft by electrical and aerodynamic witchcraft. He recalled back to when the Air Force had debuted its Raptor fighter jet in the early 1990s. It was becoming clear that development would eventually reach a plateau, a point where pilots would be pushed to their physical limits before reaching the point of self-destruction. Drones were the answer; fast, nimble, and devoid of human needs and functions, they could also carry a larger payload than any manned fighter. They would surpass these human limitations, providing the perfect solution to a specifically sentient problem. A problem he was a part of. He shivered as the thought crossed his mind once again as he sat in his car. That was some dystopianlevel bullshit, something he’d rather not think about. Yet despite his best efforts, the images remained unshakeable, and he gave up resisting. His hands relaxed at his sides as the wheel moved by itself, letting his mind wander as he transposed the metallic, half-skeletal face of Arnold Schwarzenegger on every pedestrian he saw. He chuckled to himself. He still

had enough faith left in humanity that he doubted Skynet would ever become a reality. Then he allowed himself to consider whether this would even be a bad thing. At least a fictitious hostile robot takeover would affect everyone. At least existence as we knew it would end swiftly, a sharp bang rather than the long, whimpering cry that he imagined down his own road. As it seemed to him, few actually stood to lose anything from this transition. His personal disadvantage stemmed from the fact that he put himself in a position of potential eradication to begin with. The public loved the idea. No more soldiers in harm’s way, no human error leading to headline-causing disasters. Technically, he should have been right on board with them. But for whatever reason, he wasn’t. Pulling into his garage, Hart wasted no time plugging the Toyota into its wall outlet. Beside the staff car sat a much different vehicle: a dark green 1968 Mustang crouched low on its haunches in a predatory stance. He eyed the car longingly, but his thoughts were cut short when he saw the white sticker in the corner of the windshield: HEV or High-Emissions Vehicle. The Mustang was a pollutant-belching dinosaur, one that required registration to drive, and he had yet to renew his tags. To be caught on the road without them would result in a significant fine, and a mark on his record, something he couldn’t afford moving into the post-military job market. With a sigh, he turned away from the car and headed inside. The garage door opened into a small, marginally tidy kitchen with a small bar-height counter and all the basic necessities of a single man’s life: can and bottle openers, a few wrinkled dishcloths, a set of knives, anything to make cooking and eating alone a little more enjoyable. A tin sign hung above the kitchen sink: “See the world, fly Adler!” it advertised in blazing red letters just below the image of a sleek Lockheed Electra. He’d never heard of “Adler” before, aside from the fact that it meant “eagle” in German, a language he’d devoted less than a year to in high school, but he loved the image anyway. It was a relic dating back to a time when one didn’t need to carry a brick-sized regulation book, pages of checklists, and a bag of electronics aboard a plane. He felt wistful gazing at it, almost painfully so. He turned away after

washing his hands, snatching a little black tablet off the bar top before collapsing into his couch on the other side. He powered it on and flicked through his emails, sifting the useful stuff from the junk. Only one caught his eye, a message addressed to him from Horizon Aerospace, a firm that he’d submitted a “why the hell not” application to a few weeks back. Intrigued, he read through it, skimming over the usual fluff until something stopped him, a single phrase that seemed to stick out from the rest. “As we march towards the future, we hope to pioneer systems that better integrate automated functions with human ingenuity and creativity.” Hart immediately closed the message and tossed the electronic tablet aside, disgusted. If that was Horizon’s vision, they could kiss his ass. He hadn’t left the military just to go do the same exact thing in the civilian market. There was still hope, he thought. He hadn’t heard anything back from the crop-dusting business in North Dakota, or the aerial firefighting unit in Oregon but he had his doubts about those, too. He suspected automation would be the “magic pill” for both of those jobs in the near future as well. The whole thing was a joke. There were no such things as pioneers anymore. Every improvement in flight technology was being methodically tested by detached scientists growing old in the artificial light of a lab, never having experienced the feeling of a well-trimmed elevator, or a smooth throttle response. It was all numbers now; even before the onset of drones, it had been numbers in the military, too. “Try flying an F-15 Eagle by the feel of it alone,” he remembered telling a journalist once. “You can’t. There’s too much going on, too many computers working to keep the plane in the air. It’s why workload is stressed so heavily in pilot training. We have to multitask all the time.” At the time, the quote had felt more than a little badass, possibly even a lure dropped in the hopes of attracting a prospective love interest, but now he saw it for what it really was: a confession, thinly veiled as praise for his fellow pilots; an admittance that it was the aircraft flying him, not the other way around. He found his eyes returning to the tin sign, to the gleaming silver plane sketched and then painted with

just enough artistic exaggeration to make it appear as if it were leaping headlong into the sky, eagerly throwing itself toward the clouds as it climbed onward to its next adventure. He thought of himself in that seat, leather jacket wrapped around his torso to fight off the cold, red scarf around his neck, maybe a cigar clamped between his teeth because who the hell cared? We all knew we were going to die one day, why not live a little? Why not live a little? Though he felt like an archaic monster for admitting it, safety was the norm now. It was inevitable, really. With flying as mainstream as it was these days, it could not be left to the hands of crazy daredevils and daring aces. It had to be chopped up, restructured, regulated, and then dispersed back to the public in a tamer, less intimidating form. He was reminded of a favorite book of his, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was a force in that story, a dark, formless thing lurking behind the scenes known only as the Combine. It swept across the land, chewing up America and sorting it out into little identical houses with cookie cutter families all working bland, similar jobs. If the last few years were anything to go by, then Kesey had been right: the Combine was real, and it had won. Unsatisfied, in his case, with just transforming, chewing up, and processing the life of the common man, it was now coming for his job, the primary reason for his personal existence. The harvest of his livelihood was inevitable. Hart stood slowly and made his way over to a drawer beneath the sign. He opened it, selecting a pair of shiny, brass-colored keys from inside. It was a simple keyring, no fancy remote starters or fobs, just two keys and a blue rubber oval hanging between them, a logo older than he was: Ford, written out in flowing, white cursive, the same logo that had bedecked the wings and fuselages of the Trimotors, some of the greatest planes of the “golden age of flight.” He smiled as he pocketed them. Then he selected a worn leather jacket from the coat hook by his door, looked one more time up at the tin sign, and re-entered the garage, where the Mustang sat waiting. The engine turned over on the third try with an almost prehistoric roar, the likes of which few heard

anymore. He enjoyed that the neighbors knew what he was up to, just by the sound of things. He was in another world now. His steering wheel had become a stick, his dashboard: an array of gauges, switches, and dials. His shifter: a throttle, and the world beyond his garage, cheering crowds. He took all of this in from his vantage point of control, an eagle, roosted so its majesty might be experienced by all. He glimpsed into his audience, knowing that a simple wink or a smile could inspire a lifetime of achievement. The throaty bellow of the V-8 had become for him the cyclical purr of an enormous rotary engine. He stood now at the threshold of a time where there was a place for him. A golden age of manned flight called to him, beckoning for him to take the next step. No computers, no electronics, just me and the airplane. Hart shifted into reverse. He felt a tug from the back of the aircraft; two young, overall-wearing men were pulling him backwards, away from the crowd and out onto the flight line. The freshly-painted stripes below his wheels welcomed a new era of travel and adventure. He rolled his window down, acknowledged his spectator’s, saluted, and then returned to his minimal preflight tasks. In a crate like this, there wasn’t much to monitor. He ran through the checklists, most of which he knew by heart, mentally checking off every item in rapid succession. He paused for a moment when he noticed, once again, the sticker in the top left corner of his windshield. It once held some significance in another time or place, but here it meant nothing. He shrugged it off just as the boys finished tugging him into position. Hart put his foot down. He ran up the engine, its throaty roar sending a shiver down his spine before he let off the pressure. Everything was in order. He throttled up again, and released the brakes. The craft leapt forward eagerly, clawing at the asphalt as it lunged towards the sky. Hart shifted. With a bone-shaking lurch, he felt the wheels leave the ground, reluctantly at first, then eagerly as he built up speed.

The Mustang barreled through the neighborhood’s entrance, its old tires leaving strips of rubber coating the ground where it slid. As it merged onto the road, Hart opened the throttle wide. Then it was gone, leaving only the rapidly-fading sound of its victory roar in its wake. No more propellers. Now the sound came from behind Hart, a rumbling, bone-shaking sound like thunder in a can. Everything around him was shuddering, protesting against him as he edged his machine closer and closer to the threshold of its peak performance. He could hear radio chatter in his ears, but the words were garbled and nonsensical, unimportant compared to the Mach meter in front of him, a simple dial that counted up to one. He pushed harder on the throttle. What would happen at one? Would his tiny craft shake to pieces, or would he open the gateway to a new era of aviation? Unsure, he pinned the throttle and hoped for the best. The needle edged closer to Mach one, a simple fabrication of fluorescent plastic between him and the coveted sound barrier, the holy grail of all jet jockeys… Behind the Mustang, a white and black police interceptor accelerated, leaping towards the fleeing muscle car, a predatory cat on the hunt, but Hart paid it no heed as he now found himself back in the familiar cockpit of his F-15, cruising steadily at supersonic speeds above some nondescript, sandy location. This was familiar turf for him; he’d flown these skies many times in his life. Lights, red and blue, lit up the sky behind him. Missile warning tones blared in his ears, and he pushed harder on the throttle, coaxing his metal bird to go faster, to pour every ounce of its power into fleeing. But he couldn’t do it. His pursuer was gaining. He rolled the aircraft to the right, hoping the abrupt maneuver might throw the aggressor off, but escape was impossible. No matter what maneuvers Hart flung his Eagle through, nothing would shake his pursuer. Alone and outmatched, he finally decelerated, the mighty jet engines behind him spooling down as he awaited the inevitable. “License and registration, please,” the officer said as he approached, bending down and leaning his elbow up against the car’s low roofline. The driver

turned toward him slowly, fishing his wallet out of his back pocket and passing him the requested documentation. The officer marked down what he needed on the little notepad he carried around with him, then stopped. “Robin Hart? Aren’t you the guy that shot down that satellite last year?” The man behind the wheel nodded. “Well hey, I s’pose you’re human too,” he remarked, handing back the documents and a speeding ticket. Hart didn’t say a word. It took only a moment for the officer to register why. The car was an HEV, and driving an unregistered one without the appropriate documentation was a serious crime. In his former profession, something like that could undoubtedly land the pilot in hot water. Hart could see him thinking things over, his eyes darting between the windshield and the pilot. Hart tried to remain calm, but his fingers shook, tapping Lilliputian drum-beats on the surface of his steering wheel. Both of them knew why. But in that moment, the officer did something that only could have happened on a quiet dirt road between the rows of gently waving corn under an orange sky. He smiled, nodded to the pilot, and said, “might want to make sure all your papers are up to date if you plan on driving this thing,” before returning to his police cruiser. As the officer pulled away, Hart sat silently behind the steering wheel, the warm afternoon light washing over him as he tried to comprehend what just happened. The cheers had vanished, as had the clouds, the wings, the images. Yet something remained. He comprehended then what he’d seen on his tail in that last dogfight, the thing that had overtaken him. It wasn’t the police car, or a fictional missile. It was a squadron of drones, his squadron. Progress, the future; it had caught up with him, stripped him of his wings, and set him back on the ground to make his living in a dull, adventure-free world. And yet it had not changed him; it hadn’t chewed him up and spat him back out as a carbon copy. His interaction with the officer hadn’t been artificial, it had been real, one human being to another. Perhaps, he thought as he twisted the key in its recess and started the car,

there remained room for the human spirit here, in a world that felt as cold and mechanical as the machines that drove it. Hart shifted into reverse, pulling back onto the road in the direction he’d come from.

Waiting Erika Saunders

Transfixed by the rolling rollicking wave crashes and tickling whispering winds mimicking thunder-heads of eternity; my love walked out past the halting wave breaks to but touch the seaweed heave-swell: then sank. Sank in the sea sway dips and lulls reminiscent of her hips gentle undulations. Leaving me aghast along the shore seeking in the twinkling, sparking sunlight glinting-glare water surface: her face. Watching through the sunflare dainty, dancing day and into the cooled even-tempered stars, nights; when the aurora once again washes the cosmos clean and the water is stilled into submission by beauty. Lost in the clear, still, moon-bright night waters lapping-beat; mocking my heartbeat melting flow, I watch for her still. As rolling encased in her seaweed shroud, awash, she will be transmogrified then redeposited upon my shore.

Lessons Megan Baule

There is never a moral. There is only choice, a rationalization that must be taught to children. Lightning begins in the ground. The frost comes six months after the first lightning strike of spring. A small brown band and wide black bands on the caterpillar foretells a long, hard winter. Cattle huddle as far against the wind as possible. A wound can be made to stop bleeding by laying an axe under the bed. A rooster crowing in the night warns of a hasty visitor. The rabbit is always an omen of misfortune. Sundogs bring a cold snap. A wet moon, when water could pour from the moon, warns of precipitation. A dry moon, when the moon is tipped back and no water could pour out, means dry weather or drought. Never begin a new project on a Friday. A curly-haired baby will be full of life and good-natured. The straight-haired baby will be cunning. Burning strands of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hair will tell his future. If the strands burn bright, it is an omen of long life. If a woman cuts the nails of her right hand with her left, she will have the upper hand in marriage. A woman who cannot wash dishes without splashing her clothing will have a drunk for a husband. The thicker the walls on the muskrat den the longer the winter. A ring of light around the moon foretells a storm. The number of stars inside the ring tells how many days to a stormâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s arrival.

Tea Party Shaina Harris

Not Pointless S. D. Bassett

Feeling irritable this morn Yet the sun is in the sky Feeling irritable this morn Not really sure just why. Yet the sun is in the sky The list too long to do Yet the sun is in the sky I’m kind of mad at you. The list too long to do The earth is breathing fog The list too long to do So I’ll just pet the dog. The earth is breathing fog Fingers feel scabby skin The earth is breathing fog Go to the vet again. Fingers feel scabby skin Strange thoughts in mind Fingers feel scabby skin And I’m further behind. Strange thoughts in mind Green leaves frozen hang Strange thoughts in mind Some hookers often sang. Green leaves frozen hang But vilified are most Green leaves frozen hang Societies’ outpost.

But vilified are most Using body to get cash But vilified are most Yet this profession lasts. Using body to get cash Honored above the rest NFL NBL Considered our very best. Honored above the rest It’s pointless to ask why Honored above the rest And the sun is in the sky. It’s pointless to ask why Who will go to hell It’s pointless to ask why STD torn MCL. Who will go to hell The earth rests in snow Who will go to hell Where the molten rivers flow. The earth rests in snow I’ve far too much to do There’s much I do not know But I know that I love you.

Moon Tryst Near Sundance Carol Deering

Watched by red rock, green hills, in shade behind a peeled-satin cabin, we old flames and rivals rendezvous and swagger, roused by an enchanted glow. One tree plays deadpan piano, fingers in arthritic splay bearing down on manic chords, an arpeggio of broken vows in a deafening minor key. Another stays in timid shadows wrapped in a shawl of leaves, nodding and stirring at every tune, swept and stunted, on the verge of a disjointed swoon. A third stands poised, belly out, arms raised warty and bare, wrists bent to clap pom-poms, gut and backbone eager to kick up a knotty cheer. We scrub oaks ache and flutter, lured to this feverish frolic bursting through our bark, and stagger, pose, and croon beneath a crescent wraith of June.

Light Physics Carol Deering The quarter moon proclaims her silver sprawl a dancefloor, a meeting place for pronghorn, rabbits, an occasional skim of birds, anyone drawn to sand and tension, soft vibration, night sensing that light is music, and music is shadows dense with whispered cadence embraced by light.

A Magnum Opus Mary Alice Haug Peggy lifted her hand above her head, middle finger and thumb pinched. She puckered her lips and puffed air to dislodge the tea bag that had settled in the corner of her eye. Several women faced her, shuffling their feet on the stage floor, tea bags swirling from the brims of their hats. Some held funnelcapped kazoos to their lips. One woman clutched a ukulele. Another rested a cluster of metal spoons against the ridges of a wooden washboard that hung from a clothesline around her neck. In the back row, a large woman fidgeted with a broom handle stuck in a washtub, twirled it a few times before wrapping her fingers around the broom. Peggy drew a deep breath, snapped her fingers, and raised a toilet plunger over her head just as Mother’s fingers skipped rhythmically up the bass keys of the piano and the women began to sing. Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In. I sat in the back row of the gym, a chubby, adolescent girl mortified and yet begrudgingly impressed by my mother’s willingness to make a fool of herself on the stage. Until the summer of 1999, I hadn’t thought much about Peggy and those other women. Then they came back to me on a hot steamy July day when I was worn out from dismantling my mother’s home after she had moved to an assisted living facility —filling garbage bags with magazines, tattered linens, out-of-date catalogs and calendars, stuffing boxes with pots and pans, cookbooks, knickknacks, and worn shoes. The air conditioning had been turned off and my head throbbed from the heat and the dust in the carpet. Sweat dampened my neck and the back of my knees. When I was done, all that remained was a withered balloon dangling from the ceiling, the word Grandmother collapsed in wrinkles of latex. I couldn’t bring myself to tear it down, this sad proof of a woman’s life in this house. At the end of the day, I went into the knotty pine room where my mother’s piano and organ, her most precious possessions, waited to be hauled away to other homes. They sat adjacent to one another so she could play them both at the same time, which she often did. I had never spent a day in this house without hearing my mother play ragtime and boogie woogie. Now I heard only the soft wailing of the wind, nature’s muted saxophone blowing against the window screens. I ran a finger over the yellowed keys of the

upright and coaxed a melody from the ivories. Oh when the saints go marching in. But the piano was out of tune, and the lively ditty was a funeral dirge. Tucked in a stack of sheet music on the top of her upright was a glossy photo of my mother, Peggy, and several women gathered around a poster board that read: Chamberlain Tea Bags, the name of the kitchen band they formed in the 1960’s. Kitchen bands are an offshoot of jug bands, sometimes called skiffle bands or spasms bands, a uniquely American style of music born in the early twentieth century. Like the Tea Bags, the musicians played home-made instruments—spoons, washtubs, washboards, and maracas made of dried beans and canning jars. The members were mostly men, except for a few women who flaunted expectations for women by playing in juke joints and street corners. I sat on the bench staring at the picture thinking of the first time I saw the Tea Bags perform at the Brule County Farm Show. The National Guard Armory smelled of coffee, dry hay bales, cigarette smoke, and cotton candy whirling around a cylinder. Men in seed caps ran their hands over combines and manure spreaders and kicked tractor tires with muddy boots. Farm wives clustered around appliance booths admiring harvest-gold ovens and refrigerators. Girls dashed around the room screaming, balloons tied to their wrists, while boys dueled with yardsticks from the lumberyard. All must have seemed like threatening music critics to the Tea Bags who peeked through the door at the ever-growing crowd. The program began with ten-year-old Joey Mitchell’s demonstration of his perfect pitch. His piano teacher, Winnie Willrodt, plunked a key and then nodded at Joey who duplicated the sound. By the time she was done, Joey had sung twenty or thirty notes. Most of us couldn’t have recognized if he was off key or not. But Joey was the town’s only genuine prodigy so the audience applauded politely. The high school jazz band took the stage next performing “Satin Doll” and “In the Mood,” led by Charlie Roberts, whose stumpy arms were shovels moving through mud as he strained to keep the players on beat. And although the difference between the two numbers was barely perceptible, everyone clapped for them as well. When time came for the Tea Bags’ performance, Peggy raised a toilet plunger wrapped in white tulle and decorated with satin ribbons above her head and led the band onto the stage in the flickering of flashbulbs and whistles from husbands. The fringes on her

satin dress shimmied with each long-legged stride, and a necklace of pop-beads bounced across her flat chest. She was tall and carried herself with the flair of a regal if ridiculous diva. She was the perfect conductor for a kitchen band. Despite her horsey face enclosed in a parenthesis of spit curls, Peggy was a glamorous woman who understood the value of an entrance. Every Sunday she arrived late for mass and strode down the aisle of St. James Catholic Church wearing suits rumored to be designed and sewn for her by a tailor in Minneapolis. Diamonds glittered on her fingers and wrists, and a stuffed mink draped around her neck. When I was a small girl, I longed to reach out and stroke its silky fur; at the same time, I feared the pointy-head-

ed creature with its beady eyes glaring at me. Altar boys in lacy vestments scampered to keep up with Peggy, their tennis shoes squeaking on the linoleum. Bringing up the rear of this weekly parade was Father Mac whose bushy eyebrows collided in a scowl, whose jowls jiggled as he huffed down the aisle. The most fleet-footed member of the band was Geneva, a bulky woman with a double chin and toothy grin, During WWII, her husband, Joe, was stationed in Reno, and they often drove to Long Beach where she learned to dance the Lindy to Duke Ellingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s orchestra. I like to imagine them stepping out of the shadows of war into rainbows of light cast by a crystal ball revolving overhead; like to think of Joe grabbing his young bride and whirling her over

his arm, her skirt and legs a pinwheel of fabric and flesh. Geneva’s good cooking and numerous pregnancies put pounds on her over the years. Still when she danced to “Alley Cat” in top hat, black t-shirt and stretch pants, a long tail pinned to her buttocks, she was that nimble-footed, light-hearted girl who once cavorted to “A Train.” A wiry woman with platinum hair, flat breasts, and leathery skin, Jonnie strummed her ukulele as she sang I wanna go back to my little grass shack in Kealakekua, Hawaii, floating across the stage in a Hawaiian shirt and lime-colored sneakers. Her boyish hips in white pedal pushers swiveled so fluidly she seemed to have no bones beneath her skin. She was a nurse who lived a quiet life in a log cabin overlooking the Missouri River where she often trolled for walleye, wrestling those feisty fish out of the water as easily as she lifted patients from their hospital beds. Jonnie was the only divorced woman I knew, and that coupled with her masculine appearance and lack of children, made her mysterious to me. Tillie, a dog-faced woman with wiry gray hair, spoke in a voice that sounded as if she had swallowed a bucket of gravel. We nicknamed her Ma Kettle after a hard-luck movie character who ruled her ineffectual husband and brood of children with equal parts of love and neglect. She played the washtub bass which she devised by drilling a hole in the bottom of an old galvanized washtub, sticking a broom handle through the hole, and then stapling a piece of cord to the top of the handle and running the other end through a metal ring inside the tub. When she plucked the cord, it created the thud of a mallet striking the soft head of a bass drum. Tillie was a fry cook at a truck stop working behind the counter with her apron tucked up beneath her sagging breasts. She flipped pancakes with same laconic motion she used to pluck the washboard string. Flamboyant and sexual, Dixie kept her body tight by exercising, most often in her bra and white panties, to the record “Go You Chicken Fat Go.” She was a secretary for Bell Telephone at a time when being a secretary was a sexy job. Or perhaps Dixie made it seem sexy. She strutted down Main Street in tight skirts and frilly blouses, her cheeks and lips cherry red, violet shadow above her chocolate eyes, and lashes thick with black mascara. The washboard she played bounced against her chest as she sashayed across the stage reminding many of the men of her were perky, round breasts behind it.

Then there was my mother. I grew up hearing the story, perhaps true, perhaps not, of the day my mother, Marie McManus, the youngest of a large Irish clan, crawled up on the piano stool, her stubby legs dangling over the linoleum floor, arched her wrists above the ivories, and played “Tantum Ergo” with chubby three-year-old fingers. When she was done, she twirled on the piano stool, climbed off, and staggered outside to play, her head spinning. Her family was a wee woozy themselves at this unexpected gift of their her talent. During the Tea Bags’ shows, she played “The Tiger Rag” with such ferocity she nudged a spinet across the floor. People in Chamberlain often compared her to Joanne Castle, the bleached-blonde, honky-tonk pianist with the dazzling smile on Lawrence Welk’s show. But I knew they were looking through the wrong lens; Joanne Castle played like my mother. It was a wooden performance at the Farm Show that night lacking the abandon I had witnessed in their rehearsals at our house. Peggy sidestepped around the stage, waving the plunger, and turning around now and then to work the crowd, a determined smile on her face. The Tea Bags appeared relieved when the number was over, and although the audience applauded, I suspect each lady prayed, as I did, that time would pass quickly. Peggy looked at the women and whispered, “Damn, you sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir doing ragtime. Come on now, gals, let’s have some fun!” Geneva began to dance to “Alley Cat.” whipping the long tail back and forth behind her. Midway through the song, she slithered down the steps, plopped on Father Mac’s lap, and sang He goes on the prowl each night, like an old alley cat. Father Mac’s face reddened, but he forced a smile as he dug his elbow into her fleshy hip to nudge her off his lap. Perhaps not being Catholic, Geneva did not understand how her brash act blurred the reverence his collar demanded. Or maybe she knew what she was doing. In later years, Geneva would recall this moment as her finest performance. By the time Peggy led the beat into “Bill Bailey,” the women were lost in the music, and they cavorted to a cacophony of discordant sounds—the thud, thud, thud of the metal bass, the twinging and twanging of the ukulele’s strings, the kreech, kreech, kreeching of metal against the washboard’s ridges. The kazoos were angry bees buzzing around the stage, and the

women danced as if a swarm were attacking them. Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey? They shook their shoulders, tapped their feet, and bobbed their heads, the tea bags on their hats swaying so wildly I grew dizzy just watching them. I know I done you wrong. Jonnie challenged Geneva in a contest of moves. She swayed back and forth, bent forward at the waist so deeply that her head nearly touched her knees and then instantly bent backwards so far that her breasts soared toward the ceiling. Remember that rainy evening, I turned you out. In answer, Geneva broke from the pack and danced the Charleston, arms pumping back and forth around her ample hips, feet zigging and zagging in front of, behind, and around one another, the tail whirling wildly behind her until finally she ran out of breath and staggered across the stage to collapse on the piano bench. “Damn, Marie,” she panted to my mother, “The room went black. I thought I was having a stroke.” Feeding off that energy, Peggy transformed into an ageless majorette high stepping from one side of the stage to the other, her back straight and her head held high, knees nearly touching her chest with each step as she directed the band with the festive toilet plunger, its brilliant ribbons flashing. With nothing but a fine tooth comb Dixie waited until the other women had moved stage left and then made her play, which cemented her certain claim as the town’s only sex symbol. She turned her back to the audience and wiggled her welltuned fanny in its skin-tight capris in a syncopated pattern--da,da,da-da-da-da-- and then in less than one beat of the song whipped herself around to repeat the fanny shake one more time while singing I know I’m to blame, now ain’t that a shame? Bill Bailey won’t you please come home? The crowd went wild. *** The Tea Bags crisscrossed the state performing at farm shows, county fairs, class reunions, charity benefits, the State Fair and Snow Queen contests. Because they needed space for their instruments and costumes, Geneva’s husband, Joe, agreed to chauffeur the women in his van, and they crowded on benches and lawn chairs tucked between tool boxes and coils of wire. They must have been hilarious, those journeys these women made around the state, the van hazy with smoke from Pall Mall cigarettes, women singing in harmony, and boisterous laughter bouncing off the

windows. Later, I would see a different snapshot of those trips, details that my tee-totaling mother would not have stored in her memory album. The women sometimes carried flasks of whisky with them, took frequent sips on those long drives, and once created a scene in a restaurant when Peggy crawled under the table to grab Mother’s leg whose loud screech set off howls of laughter that startled other diners. “Mother, were some of the women drinking before the shows?” I asked her once. “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” she said and changed the subject. I was used to such evasion from her. My mother often framed her life the way she wanted it to be seen. But sometimes, for no clear reason, she would illuminate a person’s story with surprising details. “You know,” she said one day, “Peggy spent a lot of time in her house with a fifth of vodka.” And then, years later, apropos of nothing we were discussing, Mother remarked, “You know, Jonnie preferred women to men.” “Are you telling me that Jonnie was a lesbian?” I asked. Mother squinted at me, annoyed at my ignorance. “I didn’t say that.” Truth’s narrow aperture brought Jonnie into focus, but at the same time it blurred her image. I better understood who she was, but it puzzled me how she coped in that little river town. Later I learned that Jonnie and Harriet, one of the kazoo players, sat close to one another on a bench in the van and covered their laps with a blanket. Soon the blanket rippled in soft waves and the women closed their eyes, their breathing rapid and shallow. Did the Tea Bags ever acknowledge or discuss these moments of furtive pleasure? Did they even understand what they saw? If so what prompted this group of conventional women in 1960 rural America to overlook a sexuality that must have shocked them? Perhaps like the women who played in juke joints and street corners, the Tea Bags relished the opportunity to thumb their noses at small-town conventions. But why did Mother, who despised cigarettes and booze and anything that hinted of sex, as so many Irish mothers do, tolerate this behavior? Years later, on seeing the Tea Bags’ photo, an image came to me. I am sipping a Tom Collins in a room papered in a red-flocked fleur de lis pattern and lit by tapers flickering through amber-colored glass of wrought-iron sconces. Around me are pheasant hunters who have to come to my hometown where

game birds outnumber people. They smell of muddy grass and bloody feathers and the sweet sharp smell of whiskey. They slouch over the bar, elbows splayed over the countertop, and banter with my mother who sits at a piano in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped bar. Her eyes are closed and a dreamy smile curves toward her round cheeks as she bends over the keys. I look at the men, their eyes glazed, tongues stumbling and collapsing until consonants become vowels. Do they understand this moment when a woman and piano yield to one another as lovers do? I realize now that whether smoky vans or lounges, lusty women or drunken hunters, Mother played because she had no choice. She needed an audience astonished at the sight of her hummingbird fingers flittering over the keys as she improvised more fill notes and chords, tremolos and trills, arpeggios and accents than the composer might have imagined. *** Peggy’s life and spirit seemed so indomitable that the news she’d died quietly in her sleep one June morning stunned the entire town. The Tea Bags dialed up one another to reflect on the event, which seemed incomprehensible, beyond explanation to them. “Imagine that, Marie,” Tillie said, her gravelly voice soft with emotion, “she just up and died on us. Just like that, she up and died.” When Peggy’s daughter asked them to sing at her mother’s funeral, they were flattered and yet concerned about the propriety of doing so. But they could not refuse. In a hastily planned rehearsal, the Protestant women tried to learn the Latin and the close harmony of the Gregorian chants, with little success. Mother said at supper that night, “We sound so draggy and dreary. Peggy would hate this.” On the day of the service, I sat in the choir loft nauseated by the fragrance of roses and incense and something I would soon realize smelled of anarchy. As Mother played the prelude, she chewed on her bottom lip and stared over the sanctuary at something only she could see or imagine. I assumed she was holding back tears at memories of Peggy striding down the aisle, Father Mac hustling to catch up with her; Peggy prancing around the stage, her toilet plunger held high. But I was wrong. When the signal was given to begin the procession, I opened the hymnal to “Veni, Creator Spiritus” and waited for Mother to play the simple notes that led to the melody. But Mother had made a decision

that was to become the Tea Bags’ finest hour. Softly, almost imperceptibly, she tapped the bass pedal in a familiar, syncopated rhythm. The Tea Bags knew immediately what she was doing. They began to sing reverently Oh, when the Saints, Go Marching In. The first time through the song, Mother and the Tea Bags kept a somber mood. But as they began the refrain for the second time, they saw the pallbearers carrying Peggy’s flower-covered casket down the aisle. They raised the volume as Mother picked up the pace, adding notes and trills not heard in church. People in the pews below whipped around and looked up at the choir, eyes wide, mouths curved downward in shock or perhaps disgust at such irreverence on this day of mourning. Babies sitting on their mothers’ laps clapped their hands or shook their rattles. Small children danced in the pews. Father Mac following Peggy down the aisle one last time signaled furiously to the mortician, jerked his head toward the choir loft, and mouthed, “Do something. Now!” Flushed, his hands fluttering around his face, the mortician dashed up the stairs shaking his head at the women and hissing, “Stop. Stop it.” Undaunted, the Tea Bags sang on, and as the casket arrived at the altar, they reached the final stanza with unrestrained fervor Oh, well, I want to be in that number, when the saints go marching in. And when the bedlam subsided, and order was again restored, they smiled at one another, knowing they had just given a final, triumphant tribute to a woman who knew the value of an entrance.

Human Geography Allison Kantack

Patches of red broke out on her arm in jagged, craggy shapes like continentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; raw, scorched land bordered by a black, permanent marker to see if it would spread. An allergic reaction to morphine, they think. Yes, it hurts to see her like that. But she is our atlas; people look at maps when they feel lost.

Human Nature Allison Kantack

In the morning, you had wrinkles like river veins or twisted maple arms branching out along your chest We seem much older than beforeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; before the storm that hasn't formed, before the flames that haven't burned. The bud has only started to regrow. And I forget how young we are; how foolish, hurtful, ugly we might be. Despite these sunny skies, those lines across your heart are nothing but the imprints from the creases of your bedsheets.

Trust

Suzanne Marshall Downy thump into glass— a soft gray body trembles on my deck, bobbing head, pulse at throat. Eyelids blink, then close. Behind the pane, I wait in stillness. Soft breath, in and out. I stood like this long ago, watching my baby sleep. Who was I to care for such a fragile thing? Now, outside my window, my son brushes off scuffed knees, climbs on his bike, doesn’t look back. The phoebe shifts, twitches his tail, lifts on twig feet—a balance point. Cocking his head, he opens his beak and mimes a cry. I hold back the wanting to hold. Blur of wings— then gone. Squinting into light, I witness flight.

Carrier Jessie Rasche

Daisy Bridget Henderson

Preparatory Study – Girl in the Wood, c. 1642 Cass Dalglish

He emerged from the buckthorn and juniper along the edge of the brook, wearing a long black coat that made him look tall and pale to the girl. He was carrying something, a rolled parchment, in his right hand while his left was hanging, as though he was walking side-by-side with an animal so low it was hidden in the grass, as though he was tethered to a hound so small it didn’t reach his knee. When he came out of the tall grass and turned up the path toward the girl’s home, the animal disappeared and she began to wonder if there had ever been a hound at all. Maybe she’d seen a phantom, attached by a trace, to the messenger’s shadow. Now he was standing at the front door, waiting. And then her father appeared, so the girl moved a bit closer. The pale man handed the rolled parchment to her father, who turned to go back into the house. But the courier was saying something, something that caused her father to stop, loosen the wrapping string, and unroll the parchment. Once again, the girl moved closer, so she could hear what was being said. Her father was displeased. “This is a demand.” The courier nodded. “By Michaelmas. He demands I repay my debt to him by Michaelmas.” Her father looked her way, the parchment shaking in his fist. “This is about you.” She was handed the page and she recognized the marks and their tone. Her mother was looking over her shoulder, reading the words out loud. “You may not keep her forever in your paradise! The visit must end by Michaelmas.” The girl’s father went inside to his library and came back with a hastily written letter of his own. “Take my reply back to London,” he said. “She will

return on Michaelmas, at first light.” Just like that. Her father was giving his word again. She’d be returned to her husband by Michaelmas—three days away. He was promising he’d see her off by first light on Michaelmas. Could he be serious? Had there been a promise all along that she would return to London by Michaelmas? Her reprieve wasn’t supposed to be a temporary one, was it? Of course the date mentioned was no surprise. Her father was always promising someone, something, by Michaelmas. The last of September – when leases began, when servants were hired, when rent was due, when debts had to be repaid, when borrowed horses had to be returned to their owners. Everything was to happen by Michaelmas. It was her father’s favorite promise. But she couldn’t imagine her father meant to send her back like a debt repaid, like a borrowed horse returned. In her mind, it should have been the other way around. Her husband should be setting her free. He had no need of her. He was a man, and he had his life. A boring one at that, she could see that he was bored, sitting around scowling and writing all day. He was always against something. That was obvious during the pitiful month she’d stayed with him. So she had convinced her parents to bring her home. “Your husband agreed to let you go if you were back by Michaelmas,” her father said. “You made that kind of bargain?” The girl kicked off one shoe. “That was silly of you. Sillier than your decision that I should marry him in the first place.” No one thought they were a good match. Did they even bother to think about her happiness? Not likely. She was 16 years old. What could she do these days in London? There was no life there. The important people were here in Oxford. The people who knew how to dress and have fine parties. “I will not go,” the girl blurted out. “It’s a holiday! Dinners and dancing. Laughing and singing.” That’s where she belonged. Right there in Oxford. People with good sense lived in Oxford. After all, even his royal highness had left London for Oxford. He knew better than to return. People hated him in London.

“There is nothing for me to celebrate in that city.” “Perhaps such amusements are against your husband’s religion,” her father said. He put the rolled parchment in the center drawer of his desk and sat down. Her mother was rubbing her hands together. “This husband you chose for our daughter is old. He dresses in grey. He spends his nights writing complaints.” The girl knew her mother was on her side. “The man argues with everyone. He irritates everyone.” “He is your husband,” her father stood and walked toward the door. The girl’s voice was a whisper. “I gave him a month...” “And I have given my word.” “She is young,” the girl’s mother said. “First light on Michaelmas,” her father said. “She will leave.” The next day, the pale messenger returned, and the girl could see he was scarcely older than she. He carried another note asking for a payment of some kind, a piece of family land perhaps, a parcel that would guarantee the truth of her father’s pledge. “Your failure to make payments in the past is what has brought us to this point,” the note said. The girl’s father shook his head and sent the messenger on his way with nothing. One of her friends said she was lucky to have a husband. Even an old crotchety one. Even in London. But what use was London to her? Didn’t anyone understand? Why did everyone want to tell her what she ought to do? She knew she wouldn’t go back. She’d been spending her mornings alone since she’d come home, walking in the gardens and the fen along the stream. She’d grown to need the scent of the juniper, the shapeliness of sweet berry trees, and the young buckthorns—little more than saplings —growing side-by-side, forming a curtain around patches of yellow and white daisies. For the girl, daisies were flowers that held off the gloom of winter, tokens lovers gave each other until they had no choice but to embrace the chill. Even St.

Michael had used daisies to ward off darkness. But her mother warned her to be careful of the flowers once summer was over, everyone knew that daisies changed their meaning. After Michaelmas, the only message daisies carried was, goodbye. The girl pulled a cluster of berries from a branch and heard the water hissing in the stream. She could see light moving in small wave patterns, and sun tips cutting shallow shadows in the air. It was the end of September and the trees were full of dark berries. But there were warnings about the berries too…you had to eat them by Michaelmas. Her neighbors were always saying things like that, religious things, eat the berries before Lucifer crashes them to the ground. Eat them before he falls. The girl’s husband hadn’t liked her talking that way, too traditional, too Catholic. But if he was so against tradition, why was he sending her father all those letters about Michaelmas? She saw the messenger again the next afternoon. He was telling her father that he would be there, at first light, the next morning. “The gentleman I serve insists…if I do not bring her, I must return with some other adequate token in her place.” In the night, the girl heard her mother’s voice. It was a quiet-quiet-quiet, hush-hush-hush voice. A should not, should not, should not voice. A silence silence silence voice. And then there were the crickets, the crickets. Would first light come early or late the next morning? The girl had been wondering since the messenger’s first visit. Either way, she would not be there when first light made its appearance. She would wake before light and begin her walk in deep shadow. She knew her father well enough to know that he had many debts coming due on Michaelmas. He’d never be able to take care of them all. If he didn’t find her at first light, he’d shuttle the idea of returning her to the back of his mind, stuff it under the clutter of other postponed promises. She knew now what she would do. She would wake before light, be in the woods before morning

opened to full sun, and she would not return until after her father had forgotten his pledge. The next morning the girl arose in the dark and took the path from her parents’ home as it wound down around a soft hill and turned sharply into the buckthorn pressing against the banks of the rushing stream. Just past the turn, she felt something different in the air. A stirring. She listened for a faint streak of sound, a light screech, a high scratch. Not musical, not chimes in a morning breeze, but a hawk circling the tallest trees, frightening a young animal separated from its nest. Then a falconer’s whistle, summoning an unruly peregrine back to the arm of its master. The girl crouched on the side of the path, whispering into the brush. Where was this hunter? Where was the sport in his endeavor? Her brown curls bounced against the shoulders of her deep green dress as her hand swept through the grasses. Safe, safe, safe, safe, safe, she was saying, safe, safe, safe, safe, safe. She wasn’t thinking now about the light seeping into the sky above her. She’d found a small creature and coaxed him into a nest she made in the skirt of her dress. Carefully, she lifted her skirt and moved to the bank of the stream, where there were openings to rabbit burrows. She reached up to the branch of a black berry tree, plucked a handful, and gently dropped them to the rabbit nestled in the folds of her dress. Swish swish swish, she whispered to the rabbit as she rocked the small creature and gently carried him toward an opening in the soft black earth. Trickle trickle trickle trickle, she sang to the brook. The rabbit scurried into shelter, and she moved back to the path, away from the trees so full of berries they looked like shadows. First light was brightening to a morning golden. Her father’s appointed time had come and gone. It was well past the moment that he would worry about his promises…or look for tokens to send in her place. It was Michaelmas Day. Summer was gone. The girl went to the patch of daisies. She slipped off the scarf around her neck, swung it over her head until the air ballooned it into a large sack and filled it

with an armful of yellow and white. She knew they couldn’t ward off darkness and gloom any more, and that was fine with her. Now the daisies would carry the message she wanted to send. She walked back out of the woods and returned to her parents’ home. The tall pale courier was there waiting, but her father was nowhere to be seen, so she gave the messenger a few coins and placed the bundle of Michaelmas Daisies on the seat of his cart. “Take the parcel to the man who demands my return,” she said. She would not be going with him, but he wasn’t to worry. The man in London would understand that the daisies were the “adequate token” he was waiting for.

Field Alex Stolis

She imagines herself in a well lit room: white light, white walls, white heat and all the time she’ll ever need to make herself over again and again. There is a whisper. There is the cock crow. You’re so pretty when you’re unfaithful to me. She gets dressed. They’ll be home any minute. She remembers the first time she rode a bicycle, remembers a rooftop garden, the view of downtown’s skyline. She doesn’t believe in ghosts or the Father or Son. She believes that once upon a created time there were no heroes or villains; only flat-lands, clouds and dirt.

Field Alex Stolis

The Blizzard and the Lost School Bus Rick Skorupski

As it was most Sundays, the Helen House Café was almost full. Many churchgoers continued their Sunday morning with a visit to Helen’s only eatery. Frank looked around. There were no empty tables. As he surveyed the crowd, he realized there were fewer and fewer familiar faces not that he didn’t know the people in the restaurant. It was that those he did know were not former students. A whole generation of children had grown up since he retired from the school system. Because of his status as the oldest living citizen of Helen, South Dakota, Frank Stanbauer would be welcome at any table. He looked around again, this time to see who he would enjoy engaging in conversation. There was Henry Woodson with his wife. No, he saw Henry almost every morning. Tom and Sarah Ogden were there with their children. Max had been Tom’s grandfather, but he only knew this younger family slightly. Maybe he would sit with them. I’m sure they would like to hear about Max and Tom’s father, Robert, as a boy. Then he saw Mike Finney with his family. He was thinking about Roger Finney and the way he showed up during the lost school bus blizzard. Maybe Mike would like to hear that story. “Good morning,” he said as he walked up. “Good morning to you, Mr. Stanbauer,” Mike replied. “I see you have an empty seat. Do you mind if I join you?” “Of course not,” Mike answered. “Please, have a seat.” “Thank you,” Frank grunted slightly as he lowered his ninety-seven-year-old body into the straight back wooden chair. “Tell me, what did your father do with that Deuce-and-a-Half he brought to town?” “That old World War Two Army truck? I haven’t thought about that thing in decades.” Mike’s face indicated he was lost in thought. “I know he still had it when I joined the Navy. By the time I retired and

came back home, it was gone. He was too.” “That’s right. He died while you were away.” “I got emergency leave for the funeral, but I had to go right back. The squadron I was in was about to deploy, and they needed me. I was only here five days. Why do you bring up that old six-by cargo truck?” “You haven’t heard the story about how your father arrived driving that thing in the middle of a blizzard?” Mike smiled, it wasn’t often he got to listen to a story about his father. Mike and his father didn’t get along when he was young. It was only after Mike had joined the Navy did his father warm up to him. “He drove that thing into town in the middle of a blizzard?” *** 1958 The wind had subsided, and Frank could see the street. After the howling wind and whiteout conditions all night, it wasn’t clear, but the visibility was improving. He had put on a warm hat and coat. Rose wrapped a scarf around his neck. Once outside he could see about a hundred feet. Good enough to get out and find that lost bus. Frank could hear the rumble from a block away. Though he realized it was a sound he knew, he couldn’t identify it. It wasn’t the firetruck he had been expecting. Out of the snowy fog came a giant green behemoth. As the vision crystallized, Frank put a name to the sound. “A Deuce-and-a-Half!” he said out loud. No wonder he couldn’t place the sound right away. The last time he saw one of those six-wheel army trucks was in Germany more than ten years ago. The oversized cargo truck’s brakes squealed as it rumbled to a halt. Frank walked over to the driver’s side and stepped up on the sideboard. The window rolled down, and a man said, “I hear you’re looking for another lift soldier.” “Chief Finney!” Frank was as surprised by the driver as much as he had been surprised by the truck. “It’s just Roger, now,” Finney replied. “I’ve been retired for a while.” “What brings you here?”

“That can wait for a while.” He hooked his thumb at the passenger. “Henry here tells me you got some kids lost out there with a school bus. I figured this old veteran truck might come in handy.” It was only then that Frank noticed Henry Earnst, Helen’s Fire Chief, on the other side of the passenger compartment. “Good morning, Henry.” “Good morning.” “This has got to be one hell of a story. I can’t wait to hear it.” Frank stepped off the footboard. “Let’s head inside. Rose has coffee, and I can call around to get the search moving.” “No need for that,” Henry said. “I have Mark calling who he can. Most of the lines are down.” “Coffee can wait,” Roger said. “Besides,” he held up a stainless steel thermos, “I have that covered.” “Good enough. Let me tell Rose I’m heading out with you. Be right back.” As Frank turned, he saw Roger roll up the window. He walked up the walk and into the house. The wind was calming by the minute. He could almost see the end of the block. “Rose!” “What is it, Frank?” Rose rushed into the room. Frank almost never used the front door. “Finney is here with a six-by and Henry Earnst. We are going to look for the bus.” Frank turned to go out again. “Wait, Frank,” Rose said forcefully. “You said a bunch of words in English, but they didn’t mean anything. Who is Finney and what is a six bye?” Frank stopped. He realized his language had reverted to Army talk. He slowed down and took a breath. “Roger Finney is a Navy man I met on the way home from England after the war. I told you about him. He was on the ship.” “I remember now,” Rose said. “What is he doing here, especially in the midst of a winter storm?” “I don’t know, yet,” Frank answered honestly. “He hasn’t told me. To answer your other question, look outside.” “It looks like an army truck,” Rose said after moving the drapes aside. “It is. Or rather it was. Roger Finney owns it now.” “Why does he have an army truck?”

“I don’t know, but look at the tires. Notice there are two on the front and two sets of four on the back? It is a six-wheel-drive truck with a two-and-a-half-ton capacity. That is why they call it a six-by or Deuceand-a-Half.” “Deuce and a half? Plus, it has ten wheels.” Rose looked at her husband. “Frank, this isn’t the time to be teasing.” “I’m not,” Frank replied. “Deuce-and-a-Half refers to its two-and-a-half-ton capacity.” Then he added, “Look, the thing is perfect for what we need to do. It can put power to all of the axles. It will go even where Max’s Power Wagon would get stuck. I’ll try to explain everything when we get back.” “Let me get something,” Rose said and left the room. She returned in under a minute with a brown paper sack. “Here, I packed these earlier. I have six sandwiches in here. When you find the bus, the kids will be hungry.” Frank was surprised. Rose continued to surprise him even after all these years of marriage. “Thank you, Rose. You are a thoughtful and caring woman. I am proud to know you.” “Oh, Frank…” she waved off the compliment. “Now you be careful with that army truck thing. Be careful and find those kids.” “I will. We will.” Frank walked out the door. He moved to the passenger side of the truck and opened the door. Climbing inside, he was amazed at how warm it was. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” Roger Finney’s leg pushed in the clutch, and he shoved the shift lever into gear. The beast lurched forward. “Okay, where to?” “What do you think, Frank? Run the route backwards?” “That’ll work. We need to get to the Ogden farm. The bus route is not the fastest way but it’s only a couple miles different. I think we should backtrack the bus route.” Henry said, “On the next corner, Roger, turn left. That road will take you out of town.” They were sitting three wide on the narrow front seat. Frank was getting too warm in his winter garb. The hat was first to go, then the scarf. He unbuttoned his coat and let it hang open. Roger had complied

with Henry’s instructions, and they were on a gravel road leading away from Helen. Roger was moving slowly. The visibility was almost half a mile in the country. The sky was getting brighter by the moment. Roger slowed as he approached a drift. It looked to be about two feet deep. He moved into and through it with ease. It was as if the old Army truck didn’t even realize it was there. “We stay on this road for two miles, Roger.” “Roger,” he said with a grin. “So, what’s the story?” “No real story. Once I got you and your buddies on the train, I went back to the ship. I told you that was my last trip on the old girl.” “That’s right.” “Well, I transferred to the Navy Yard and was supposed to retire in three to six months.” Frank picked up on the implication. “Supposed to?” “It didn’t work out. I was asked to ship over one more time to put the old tin cans in mothballs.” “What does that mean in English?” “What? Oh, sorry.” Finney continued, “I was asked to volunteer for two more years to help retire and preserve the destroyer fleet. We put them in what we call ‘mothballs’ at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. They are sealed up against the weather, preserved so to speak, in case we need them again. Well, that one hitch turned into two then the two turned into three. Next thing I notice, I have thirty years and they are kicking me out.” “That doesn’t explain why you are here and why I am riding in an army truck after a blizzard.” Frank looked ahead. There was another snow drift across the road. He could feel Finney add power to the wheels. The truck moved quicker as it hit the drift. Frank had his hands on the dash to help hold him in the seat in case of a sudden stop, but nothing happened. There was a brief whiteout and then clear vision again. “This thing is a beast!” he said. “I haven’t hit anything as big as the ones I went through in Montana last month. Some of those drifts I had to back up and hit twice before I got through.” “You drove this thing from Montana?” “I have been driving this thing since I retired last

year. I built a trailer to go with it.” “Where’s the trailer now?” “Parked at a friendly farmer’s house up on the highway. We were coming to Helen to look you up when the storm hit. We have been staying with the Galvin family for the past two days. Great folks. Insisted we sleep inside, even after we said we’d be comfortable in the trailer.” None of this was making sense to Frank. It was as if he was in a dream. On the other hand, it would make sense if it were a dream. Dream logic has a good deal of latitude. “So, let me get this straight. You are driving this behemoth pulling a home built trailer around the country?” “That’s right. Carmen and I weren’t sure where we wanted to live after the Navy. So I suggested we go see this great country and let ‘home’ find us.” Another snow drift was ahead. At four feet it was the biggest one yet. “Hold on!” Finney said and pushed his foot to the floor. When the whiteout dissipated, Frank realized there were blue areas in the sky overhead. The clouds were breaking up. He elbowed Henry and pointed to the sky. “It’s clearing.” “Thank God,” Henry said seriously. “Roger, slow down, you’ll need to turn left up here.” “I don’t see the road,” Roger said as the truck slowed. “It’s here. Go along slowly.” Roger idled the truck along at about ten miles per hour. Six eyes were watching for a change in the flat terrain indicating a road. Frank saw it first. “There it is.” “Where?” “About fifty feet ahead.” “I don’t see it.” “I do. Move up a little and I’ll get out and make sure.” “Okay.” “Stop here,” Frank commanded. He opened the door and was surprised. The cold wind was gone. He stepped out carefully making sure the footboard on the truck hadn’t iced up. There was a layer of snow, but not much. For all the white out and howling wind,

the snow was minimal. It looked to Frank to be about five inches. Couldn’t be right, he was thinking. This must be an area where the snow drifted away. Frank walked to the side of the road. The sun was starting to show. The air was cold, but the wind was all but gone. He was comfortable in his winter coat. He found the ditch on the left side of the road. He followed it to where he thought the intersection was. He was wrong. The ditch continued. Now he had a choice, look for it behind or ahead. He decided to keep walking in the same direction. He could hear the truck creep along behind him. Ahead he saw another flat spot. That had to be it. He walked onto what he thought was the crossroad and then continued down fifty feet. Kicking the snow away with his foot, he found gravel. This was the road. He waved for the truck to follow. When the truck caught up, he climbed back into the cab. “This is the road we want.” Roger Finney was nervous, “What road?” he asked. “All I see is flat landscape.” “The snow has filled up the ditches,” Henry commented. “It’s hard to make out the road.” “Hard?” Roger asked. “Darn near impossible.” “Just go slow and keep it straight,” Frank advised. “See that grouping of trees ahead? They are on the right side of the road. Behind them is the last bus stop. That’s the Higgins farm.” The truck crept along at ten miles an hour. It seemed the trees were not getting any closer, but it was a trick of the eye. The snow had stopped, the wind was gone, and the sky was rapidly turning blue. The storm went as fast as it came. “Oops!” Roger said as the six-by slid off the road to the left. It leaned over toward the ditch. Roger added power and the truck didn’t sink any further, but it also did not climb out of the ditch, the front tires slid on the embankment. Roger reached down and engaged the front wheel drive. “This should do it.” He crept forward. The truck refused to climb out. They still moved along with the left side tires a full foot lower than the right.

“I think we’re stuck,” the fire chief said. “There should be a field approach up here somewhere.” “Field approach?” “That’s where the farmers get into their fields from the road. The approach is the same height as the road. When we get to one, the truck will right itself.” “I’ll get us out.” Roger stopped the truck. He turned the wheels hard to the right and put the truck in reverse. Henry was the first to see what he was going to do, “Roger, you’re going to put the front of the truck deeper into the ditch!” “Yup, and I’m going to put all the rear wheels on the road. A little momentum will do the trick.” As he said it, he engaged the clutch. The truck lurched backwards. With the front wheels turned toward the ditch, the rear wheels popped up onto the road. He kept the power on, and the front followed dutifully. “Okay,” Frank said. “I’m impressed.” “Ain’t much this girl can’t get out of,” Roger said with a smile. “Okay,” Henry said. “Let’s see if we can keep it on the road this time.” “That would be easy; if I could see the road.” *** “So, Dad was driving blind?” “Not blind, we could see just fine by then. The sky was almost clear and the sun was out. It was just that the wind had blown the snow over the ditches, and everything was flat. There was no delineation. The snow all looked the same.” “So did you run off the road again?” “We did, but not as bad. Your dad drove out of it the second time. After that Henry and I took turns walking ahead of the truck.” “That route was miles long!” Mike said. “We only needed to walk that one mile.” Frank continued, “Once we turned again, we could make out the road.” “So it was good from there,” Mike asked as a statement. “No, once we were crossways to the path of the

wind we had drifts to deal with again. It was still slow going.” “So you found them, then?” Doris Finney asked. “Not right away,” Frank replied. “We followed the route all the way back to the Ogden Farm. That’s where Tom and Sarah live now,” Frank said as an aside. “We didn’t find the bus, but we did find Max with Robert.” “They had the Dodge Power Wagon,” Mike said. “I remember that truck.” “That’s right. We met them on the road about a mile from their house. We had stopped at the Bagley’s to make sure they were okay and then moved toward the Ogden farm. That was the last known place anyone had seen the bus.” *** “Our phone is out,” Max Ogden said as he pulled up to the big Deuce-and-a-half. “Oh, excuse me; I thought you were from the phone company.” Frank opened the door and stepped down onto what was about eight inches of wind packed snow. He walked around the front of the truck and to Max’s window. “We know that.” “Hi, Frank.” “Good morning. Did you find the bus?” “No, didn’t you?” “No.” “He could be buried in a ditch,” Max said. “I don’t think so,” Roger said looking down from the driver’s seat. “The drifts haven’t been that high, even around the tree belts.” “Max, this is a friend of mine, Roger Finney.” Max nodded up at the truck driver, “Max Ogden. Pleasure to meet you.” “Mine as well. I only wish it were under better circumstances.” “Me too,” Max agreed. “So.” He looked at Frank. “What now?” “Well, they’re not on the bus route. John must have turned between here and the Bayer’s.” “Why would he do that?” Henry asked. He was still sitting in the middle of the truck seat and leaning over to see out the driver’s window. “Who knows?” Frank replied. “Maybe he thought

he could see.” “I’ll tell you what,” Max said. “Let’s head back to the mile line. You take the road to the east, and I’ll take the road to the west. We’ll go one mile and come back to the intersection to compare notes. Then we’ll start again on the second mile.” “I can do better than that.” Roger got out of the truck. “Come around back.” All the men and young Robert followed Finney to the back of his truck. Roger pulled back the canvas flap to expose what looked like a storeroom filled with closed cabinets. “Let me just hike myself up here,” he said with a small grunt. “I think they are in this cupboard.” He unlocked the padlock and opened a door. Inside were three drawers. He pulled the top one open. “Here they are.” He took out what looked like two pistols. “These are Verey Pistols. They shoot flares. If one of us finds the bus, shoot a flare. The other will do the same when he sees the flare. Sound good?” “Swell!” Frank said. “That’ll work.” “Where did you get these?” Max asked as he took the flare gun and extra one inch canisters. “My Uncle Sam had a bunch of these laying around when I was decommissioning the tin cans. I simply helped ease his burden of disposing of them.” “You stole them?” Henry said. “No, I saved them from the briny deep,” Roger said with a smile. “The Navy had us tossing them over the side. These along with tools, parts and other things as the ships were being towed to Philadelphia. I just held back some things. Figured they might come in handy.” “And they have,” Frank said. “Let’s get going.” As Roger drove, Henry watched out front for any signs of the bus. Frank watched behind in the side mirror for a flare. The motion caught Frank’s eye first. He thought he saw something by an old machine shed. He looked again. There it was, a hat waving above a five-foot snowdrift. “Stop, Roger. I see something.” “Where?” “Over there by that machine shed.” “You mean that broken down old barn?” “Yes.” Frank chose not to go into the terminology.

“I think someone is waving at us.” “I see it now.” Roger started to turn. “Stop!” Henry shouted. “There’s a ditch between them and us.” “Over here!” Frank could hear John’s shouts over the truck engine. “We see you!” he shouted back. “The driveway is another fifty feet!” Frank looked, he could just make it out. “We see it!” “We do?” Roger said. “Sure.” Henry pointed. “Right there.” “You’ll have to show the way.” Roger slowed but kept moving. “This all looks the same to me,” “And you’re driving?” Frank quipped. “Here,” Henry said. “Turn right here.” Roger turned, and the six-by rumbled up the old driveway. The farmstead had been abandoned since the dirty thirties. The house had been moved from the property, but the old machine shed was still there. As they approached, they could see the top half of the yellow bus behind the drift. John had it parked inside the shed to help shield the wind. “Boy, am I glad to see you!” Frank said. “You’re glad?” John Fryer said. “I thought I was going to have to wait for spring before I could get this bus out. We were just getting ready to try to walk out.” “I’m glad you didn’t. We might have missed you and only found the bus. You folks hungry?” “And how!” one of the boys answered. He eagerly took the bag that held the sandwiches Rose had made. He pulled one out and passed it on. “How about water?” “Oh, we had water.” “You had water?” Thuummp! Frank jumped at the loud sound. Then he realized Roger had launched one of his flares. Ten seconds later he said, “There’s the reply.” “I had a tin can on the bus. We cleaned it out as best we could and used the engine to melt the snow. I would run the engine for a while to heat the bus. While it was running, I put the can full of snow under the hood. There is a flat spot on the exhaust manifold that held it perfectly. We took turns drinking the

water.” “That was smart.” It wasn’t more than ten minutes before all the sandwiches were gone. Max arrived with Robert and took out three shovels. Henry had three more in the back of Roger’s truck. The men took little time getting the bus cleared from the drift. Once the thing was clear, Frank asked, “You want me to drive it?” “I’ve never not finished a route,” John replied, “I’ll finish this one.” “All right. If you don’t mind, I’ll ride with you.” Frank was still not sure just how ‘fine’ John was. He figured to be nearby if there was trouble. “I’ll get Roger to follow in the six-by in case you get stuck.” “That might be a good idea,” John said. “Anybody ready to go home?” “Yes! Sure! You Bet!” came the answers in unison. “You got enough gas?” Roger asked. “Don’t tell me you’re carrying gas too,” Frank said. Roger Finney smiled and shrugged his shoulders, “Doesn’t everybody?” “Navy surplus again?” Henry asked. The elation from finding the bus was turning the event into a joke fest. “Army this time. Two five gallon jerry cans came with the truck.” “I still have plenty of gas, thanks for asking.” “Well, let’s get going then. Thanks, Max for all the help.” “Do you know where the phone line is down? I could drive past it and call into town. Let them know John and the kids are found and safe.” “I’m not sure. We didn’t follow the wires. We followed the bus route.” “Makes sense,” Max answered. “Maybe I’ll just head to town.” “I wouldn’t do that, Max,” Henry said. “The eastwest roads are hard to see. The wind drifted the snow in the ditch even with the road surface. We’ll be in town soon enough.” “Suits me. We’ll head home then.” “Thanks again,” John Fryer said. “Anytime,” Max answered.

“None too soon I hope,” John replied with a chuckle. “No, not anytime soon,” Max agreed. The bus followed the tire tracks made by Roger’s Deuce-and-a-half all the way back along the route. As they went, he dropped off the three remaining children. Once in town, John pulled the bus into its designated parking spot and shut the engine down. “Now that’s an adventure I don’t want to repeat.” “I can imagine,” Frank said. “How did you get off the route and into the machine shed?” “After I left the Ogden’s farm, I started toward the Bayer place. Helen Bagley wasn’t on the bus so I didn’t need to stop there. I got to the corner and found a six-foot drift across the road. I had no choice but to turn.” Frank was thinking about how Roger Finney had plowed through the four-foot drifts while they were out searching. He most likely would have tried to blast through a six-foot drift too. “I’m glad it was gone when we got there.” “If it had been, you might have figured out I had to turn and found us sooner,” John commented. “Only by a few minutes. We knew where you had been and where you had stopped delivering kids. It was simply a matter of backtracking. When we didn’t find you on the route, we started searching the crossroads.” “I intended to follow the road around three sides and backtrack to the Bayer ranch. Then the wind really picked up, and the visibility dropped to a few feet. It was just luck or maybe the ‘Man Upstairs’ who let the wind ease off for a minute. I could see the old machine shed on the Baker property. I tucked the bus inside, and that took the sting out of the wind.” *** “So it was just luck that John Fryer saw the shed?” Doris Finney asked. “John said it was more than luck,” Frank answered. “He wasn’t much of a churchgoer before that storm, but after, we would see him every week.” “Thanks for the story, Frank,” Mike Finney said.

“I was wondering how my father got here. It still doesn’t explain why he stayed here.” “That part was easy. He was the town hero. Here was a guy out of the blue willing to put himself at risk for a town he didn’t know,” Frank said. “Once the storm was over, we invited him to stay. The Cooke brothers had stopped working right after the war, and they rented their welding and blacksmithing building to your dad. He set up shop as a mechanic and welder. They lived in the trailer behind. Two years later he bought the house you live in now. By then, he was a fully established Helen resident.”

Whiteout Erika Saunders

If you’ve never been in a blizzard before you’re probably thinking about it all wrong. It isn’t the snow that’ll get you but the wind. Gusting to whiteout. An oppressive wind, that will knock you down and plaster-cast you frigidly in place. When I was summer-young and went swimming; I would break the water surface, throwing my head back to toss my long hair out of the way. When I didn’t use enough force, my hair would stay slicked to my face, an oil spill, and I couldn’t help but try to suck breath through that sealed curtain door. And I marvelled at drowning amidst all that air. Blizzard winds will drown you that way, by suction-cupping snow to your lips while freezing red your nostril tips. It’s said, old-timers would tie a rope from the house to the barn; navigating by feel alone. Trusting that rope in that near-numb, white-blind world. I imagine they heard, on a Sunday, of the priest entering the Holy of Holies with a rope around his ankle, so his dead body could be pulled out if he wasn’t worthy. I wonder if those old-timers gave it a thought as they bundled up to go feed the livestock before facing that suffocating wind. Maybe they strained thinking they heard those ephod bells a-ringing in the wind. Stories tell of those who lost their grip and froze to death within a few feet of their own front door step. You, my love, resembled the rope.

Long underwear and ladyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s slipper Miriam Weinstein For Margaret Hasse We return to spring leaving winter woolens and layers of snow over ice. Back from the season of darkness, of sunbeams held by shadows. Back from long evening solitude. While scilla scatters across the ground, winter still burrows beneath my skin. I stand, arms crossed and eyes wary as lilacs perfume the air. Bleeding hearts hang, and violets multiply in gardens and on grass. Now maple seeds drift to the ground searching for soil. And, now, I peel off my sweater, unbolt the heavy door. I come back to spring: to water surging in swollen brooks, to lilies blooming in the night, to sun falling from lapis skies.

Office Prayer Adrian S. Potter

Lord, deliver me from the drone of rush hour, the surface lot packed with hybrids and SUVs, my face’s tentative reflection in the rearview mirror before I trudge inside to gain the whole world yet forfeit my soul. Lord, deliver me from failing to meet or exceed expectations and/or falling short of productivity goals and key metrics. Deliver me on time to staff meetings and sensitivity training so I can sit anxiously in a conference room. Let me be a fluorescent light shining on dull coworkers whose data is stored in the cloud and who pray to a micromanager above the clouds, creator of vague mission statements and shortsighted company policies. Lord, hear my humble prayer and please deliver me lunch delivery in thirty minutes or less or its free. Deliver me a supply room filled with pens and Post-its so upper management can complain about employees filching them. Lord, I’m guilty of giving too much too often to a career that could easily keel over like a poorly installed cubicle wall. With whom will I hustle through years of faithful employment and make it to the other side of retirement? Lord, give me enough patience to meet my coworkers partway. Show me how to be boastful enough during performance reviews, how to navigate the new software forced onto us by the IT department. I believe in my father’s work ethic, the holy spirit of the broken-down copier, the dignity of dirty laundry, and the indignity of workplace gossip. Lord, please hear my prayer. Lord. Do you hear this prayer?

Cabin in the Minnesota Woods Katherine Edgren

I can name mouse tracks on the road after rain. I know the lobster mushroom, the purple aster, campion, columbine, and wild artichoke. I can find wolf milk slime on decaying logs. Facing wildness every day, I let it stir me, though I can never truly understand. Eagles hail me as I glide along their shore, accustomed to me as I to them; even mottled ones, before they earn their heads and tails of white. Here, like my dog, I’m free to run or sit, sleep or wake when and where I wish. I’ve seen the shapes and colors clouds take. I’ve watched the sun’s slow journey west at the coming equinox, the tilt of Earth imaginable and tangible, at this latitude. I’ve heard the continuum of wind: the Heathcliff kind that renders breathlessness, and the lack of it permitting kayaking along the shore, peering at what’s deep and clear. Having lost power from a downed tree, I’ve come to wholly appreciate electricity. This is the place I’ve come hurt or picked up hurt: a tooth, a foot, a leg, an eye, my old war wounds. Here, I’ve grown intimate with pain, and found the forgiveness that sometimes accompanies healing, but have rarely known insomnia in days so full tumbling into oblivion is easy. Here I put myself in the open face of awe, and build my life upon its rock, possessing knowledge that is sedimentary, layered with years before, years still with me. This is where I know the drop-offs where fish gather, where I spy merganser, kingfisher, and pelican. This is where—hearing the voice of the loon— I’ve scattered ashes, remembering all those lost to me. I’ve sat by woodstove fires for warmth and illumination. I’ve known the cast of light at sunrise, the sweep and rush in just one day, patience that’s deep, and how to love what changes, the thread of transience stitching into me.

Watching the Fog Roll In Meghan Peterson

Reaching for Dusk Lillian Schwartzrock

Heavy Metal O. Alan Weltzien Shifting cues delay migrations a snowstorm pushes 3000 snow geese into Berkeley Pit’s anti-lake, “a 50 billion-gallon toxic stew,” to water and feed and die. Flat surface below ochre tiers curve and twist, a poisonous tide surge governed by no moon; the water, unlike any other, beckons birds, Siren trap that folds their broad white wings, angelic canaries in the open pit remnant of the mines, yawning maw that ate East Butte whose wet gorge rises.

An April Terry Savoie Snowstorm’s forecasted & seems to be bound for our neck of the woods, but what am I to do about it, fall on my knees & pray to the Almighty or simply sit here with my eyes shut tightly & make believe it’s not going to really happen? Trouble is that when I open them again, the threat’s just as immanent. What I’m hearing is this forecast’s for snow that’ll be more than just a brief blast of Arctic cold, it’s a snow with a big blow likely, an unwelcomed guest certainly, perhaps God’s rude gesture telling us what simply must be, must be simply endured so that praying seems to be the only recourse left & a safe gesture at the very least. So I wait. And wait. And pray. But the snows are on the way which makes me pray harder that they may miss us by a mile or, better yet, skirt on by to harass others a hundred miles or more north of here where some other hard-working folk huddled around the stove in their out-of-theway farm & perhaps on their knees as well, begging, pleading no doubt in their oldworld, Amish language with an elaborate system of gestures to the Almighty to be spared & pleading for all they’re worth as I do, sending heartfelt prayers to heaven while casting their eyes earthward in abject humility. Theirs are the same hopes, the same desperate hopes that kindle in my heart, hopes to be spared, please, if only this one time. Here I am, begging those snows might descend on the others & make their hearts ache so that here, just a few miles away, it’ll be my good fortune that the snow will miss me & that spring will come to my fields without any further delay. North a few miles or south for that matter separates the disaster from spring bliss. But, who knows the Lord’s fickle hand with such a razor-thin miscue on His part one way or the other? It took me nearly seven decades to discover how obvious this is so that I wonder now just where my Ma & Pa were who might’ve saved me all this torture in just accepting my destined lot in life & realizing that each new day is my good fortune?

Without a Struggle Adam Luebke

When Brock Harrisburg’s wife left him, he pretty much let her go without a struggle. She’d been driving down to Sioux Falls for night classes once a week, and one night, during her second semester, he called the private university to ask to talk to Camelia Harrisburg, to report that her mother had a heart attack. Camelia’s uncle had called to tell him the bad news. She always turned off her phone while in class and didn’t turn it back on until she came home, so he hoped there was somebody who could peek their head into the classroom and call her out. He still remembered the moment in slow motion—he’d been holding the phone, the TV was on quietly in the background, and his empty dinner plate still set on the couch cushion next to him as he waited for the secretary to look up Camelia’s name on the roster. “Accounting 101,” he said, trying to help. “Account—” the secretary said, and paused. “We don’t offer an Accounting 101. There’s Finance 131. Could you spell her last name?” After he got off the phone, he paced back and forth waiting for her to get home. He flipped past a hundred channels seeking an answer to what could have happened. He refused to let his worst suspicions take hold. He called back the secretary and told her maybe it was Camelia Hunt, her maiden name. “We don’t have a Camelia enrolled this semester, sir,” she said flatly. “Are you sure you have the right university?” “No, I’m not sure anymore,” he said. Embarrassed, confused, and breaking into a sweat, Harrisburg cursed the secretary for not caring, told her it was an emergency, to check her list again. He said rotten things and she hung up, leaving a sickening buzzing in his ear. The buzzing continued after he dropped the phone. It swelled into a low hum, like the city had suddenly erected a powerline over their house. He went to the spare bedroom, opened the window, and hopped on their home gym while the chilly fall air blew through the room. The physical exertion kept his mind busy for a few minutes, but then he realized he’d have to call back Camelia’s

uncle. And tell him what? She doesn’t exist on Tuesday nights? She steps out the door, into a black hole, and she returns whenever she feels like it? Maybe it was all a big mistake. Maybe she hadn’t enrolled properly and they didn’t have her on the list but she was attending classes thinking she was. He almost called back, but remembered how he’d acted toward the secretary and decided to leave it alone. The class went from seven to ten—late, but the university was for working adults. Sometimes she went out for a drink with a couple of classmates and didn’t get home until after midnight, after he was in bed. He couldn’t hack a whole day at the store if he didn’t get to sleep before midnight. He rowed vigorously on the gym. The plastic wheel whirred inside as he tugged the cables. Of course it had to be a mix up. She’d taken holidays off. Columbus Day, most recently. Camelia even felt too tired some evenings to drive the half hour for class. “I can skip a few,” she said. He didn’t care much. It was her life, her degree. She was paying for it herself out of her own paycheck. He didn’t have any hopes that she’d actually graduate and land a decent job—not with taking one course every semester. They’d be retired by the time she walked up the aisle to receive her diploma. Harrisburg worked out most of that night, exhausting himself, holding back the boiling worry that burned in his belly, until he heard a key slip into the lock and her high heels click on the linoleum. It was nearing eleven. Not as late as some nights she came home. He’d planned what to say to her. He met her in the entryway, shirtless. “You’re still up,” Camelia said. She set her bag on the couch. The one holding the textbook, notebook, and little purse of pens. “Just keeping busy exercising,” he said. He focused on looking at her like he always looked at her. He didn’t want to signal anything was wrong. “What about you?” Harrisburg went back into the spare bedroom to grab his shirt from the floor. He balled it into a rag and wiped his neck and chest. “Just another night at class,” she said. “Accounting is kicking my butt.”

“Maybe you just need to study more. I mean, I never see you doing homework.” He tossed the shirt onto the couch as she removed her jacket and hung it up in the closet. “I know, I have to hit the books more. But I’m so tired, darling, you’d better let me get to sleep.” He knew he should be getting on with the news about her mother, and that whatever shame he could dump on her when he found out where she really went every week would be diminished by his holding back the serious information. “How do I get a hold of you if I need you for an emergency?” he asked. She glanced at him but held his gaze an extra second. “My phone,” she said. “How else?” “You turn it off during class.” “It’s better so I can concentrate.” “So if there’s an emergency, what do I do?” She raised an eyebrow. “Leave me a message?” “I mean a serious emergency. Should I call the university?” “Nobody works there at night. The secretary goes home.” She brushed past him and stood in front of the bathroom sink. “Unless this is about something important, I’ve got to sleep. I’ve got a conference call early and I might have to write up new promos.” He knew her conference call was not important. It was an optional company call, where some of the team leaders gushed about the pots of gold they’d all make if they could each just sponsor ten new people. Harrisburg thought of all Camelia’s attempts to score big with affiliate marketing. All those sickening phone calls to “potentials,” when her voice thickened and poured out of her as sticky and sweet as the honey from the jars they bought from the bee farmer in Flandreau. How he cringed, knowing she was lying, or exaggerating about the merits of the product or the compensation plan of the company. And always, an endless pursuit of new clients, potential distributors, and the possibility of losing out to another affiliate shark in the water. Most times the week ended in tears—the small paychecks she generated just enough to pay for her classes. But now he wondered what classes those were. If he dropped the news that her mother was in critical condition ten hours away, in Livingston, he’d never get an answer about where

she’d been. She obviously hadn’t received the message yet. He had to tell her soon. Her mother could already be dead, for all he knew. Her uncle Jim sounded pretty miserable on the phone, like he wasn’t holding out much hope, despite the doctors having stabilized her. Harrisburg wasn’t a cruel man. But Camelia was taller than he was, and a little out of his league, so that he wanted to know straightaway if what was happening involved another man. A taller man. A man with a career, who didn’t work retail. She’d always been tight-lipped about her business, about where she’d been when she didn’t make it home on time. She’d always been like that while they were dating, but he thought she was just guarding her future, scanning the field until she knew he was the right one. He’d done all he could to assure her of that, tried to fit every mold he thought she might desire. Every tone, every glance had held a clue for him during that year of dating, as to what he might improve upon, or how he might alter himself favorably in her eyes. Persistence paid off. She accepted his proposal the second time. But still, she kept too many areas of her life and emotions dark to him. He’d hoped their marriage would be enough to secure her and open her up to him. Yet every morning he seemed to start at zero. “I called,” he said. He was way off script. In his mind, he’d had her sweating, apologizing, and then confessing whatever secret she held. He could take it if she said flat out whatever it was. He couldn’t take it if he never found out. “Sorry, babe, sometimes when the phone is off, it won’t send me the new message until the next day. I’m not sure why that is. I just turned it back on. Did you even leave a message?” she asked. She leaned toward the mirror and began wiping the liner from her eyes with a wet rag. “I called the university, I mean.” He sat on the bed. Her side, with the electric blanket under the comforter. His head felt too light, and a sad tingling crawled through his right side. “I called the university and—” “Like I said, you won’t get anybody.” “I did. A secretary. I was pretty rude to her when she insisted you weren’t enrolled there.”

Her hand, poised between her face and the mirror, paused. Harrisburg held his breath. She went back to wiping her eyes and said, “That doesn’t make sense. She’s probably new there.” All at once, Harrisburg felt like the biggest idiot in the world. Like all the shallow, stupid male figures he watched on TV. Too dumb to know any better, and too aggressive and quick to accuse their wives of something malicious. The secretary didn’t know how to look up the rosters correctly. That was it. “Why would you call, anyway?” Her voice had an edge. “I don’t need people at the school thinking my husband checks up on me.” She swore quietly. Harrisburg felt his conviction rise again. “It’s the 21st century. It’s not hard for even a new secretary to look up a name. She couldn’t find yours. She said there was nobody named Camelia enrolled.” He stood, his legs felt shaky, maybe from the working out, but maybe not. “Where were you?” “This is ridiculous,” she said and stopped wiping her eyes. “Where do you go each week?” She threw down the cloth, rushed straight to the bed, and pulled back the covers. Reaching behind the headboard, she clicked on the electric blanket and got under the sheets still wearing her blouse and pants. “Just what are you saying, anyway?” She held up a hand and let out a laugh. “I actually don’t want to know. Let me go to sleep. I have to study tomorrow. We have an exam next week, at the university that I guess doesn’t exist.” She drew the covers up to her cheek and closed her eyes. Harrisburg reached behind him and switched on the bright vanity bulbs above the sink and mirror. The bed and Camelia were flooded in light. It reminded him of the old days, the happy, carefree days, when he was in high school and he and his friend Dick went out spotlighting coyotes and coons. Totally illegal to shoot at them out the truck’s open window, but they were kids, and it was better than going to the bowling alley. Seeing his wife’s furrowed brow and squinted eyes gave him pleasure, like he had her locked in the hot seat and she’d finally cut loose whatever it was she was hiding. He wanted to see every inch of her face when she squirmed out of

telling the truth and crafted a shitty lie. “It’s not the university that doesn’t exist,” he said, “it’s you who doesn’t seem to exist.” Weeks later he’d revel in that line, especially when he felt his worst. If only he hadn’t been so devastated. “I wanna know where you’re going each week.” She kept her eyes closed, but more tightly than before. Her bleached hair draped across the pillow. Hair he loved so much because it reminded him of the models on TV, but for the two years they’d been married, he’d come to realize it was as much of an effect as her fake smile when she humored him, or her empty little moans when he finished up on her. Her real hair color, as dull as a muddy puddle, a color she’d never shown him in person, but that he’d only seen in her high school photos her mother showed him, was part of a person she hid from him and everybody else, and standing by the bed that night, he understood their relationship had shriveled up a long time before that moment, maybe had never even blossomed in the first place, and that he’d known it was empty all along but had done nothing about it. He’d been as fake as she’d been. When she didn’t answer him, and her eyelids smoothed out so he could tell she wasn’t squeezing them, he said quietly, “Tell me where you go.” She kept silent. Harrisburg said to the room, “I suppose she’s fallen asleep already. After a long night of who knows what.” He grabbed the covers and yanked them clean off the bed. Camelia sat up, her eyes wide and her arm held up in defense. He remembered the morning a few months after they’d married when she woke up sick, but was determined to get to a meeting, and had dressed fully, ready to go out the door, but became so dizzy she fell back into the bed and laid there in her gray slacks and white blouse until the afternoon. “Got your attention now?” he asked. He swiped a handful of her hair and pulled her out of the bed. She screamed and slapped his ear. He let go of her. Pain shot through him, a spike shoved deep into his head. “I don’t have to take this,” she said. “I’m so tired of this.” She grabbed her phone off the floor, unsteadily barged into the bathroom, and slammed the door. The lock clicked.

He turned off the vanity lights and avoided looking in the mirror. His hands were trembling. His mouth had gone dry. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry. But you’ve been lying, and I want to know the truth.” There was silence from the other side of the door. Harrisburg never did find out, exactly. He had his opinions, his circumstantial evidence, but no admission of guilt. Shortly after she locked herself in the bathroom, the shower started. She didn’t come out for over an hour. He stared at the TV, knowing his day at the store was going to be miserable for more than just lack of sleep. From the bedroom he heard a zipping noise. She pulled a large suitcase in to the entryway. “This should have happened a long time ago,” she said. Her phone started ringing. Its familiar tune dug a pit in Harrisburg’s stomach—losing her suddenly seemed like too much to bear. He thought of telling her it was all right, everything would be OK, that any secret was better than splitting up. But then his mood switched, suddenly angry, overcome by not knowing where she’d been going, who she’d been with. “You’d better answer that,” he said, and nodded toward her bag, suddenly remembering her uncle’s hoarse voice all those hours ago on the phone. “It’s probably about your mother.” Camelia opened the door. The ringing stopped. He listened to her steps as they retreated into the night. When he checked his phone, he saw there were half a dozen missed calls from her uncle. He’d never see her in person again.

Titanic James Cihlar

Living a decade in, a decade out of an arduous century, I’ve seen enough of suffering. Trussed up in a lifeboat on a Hollywood set, forty-seven feet above a tank of roiling water, extras in their lifeboats tossed about below me, I surrender to great racking sobs over loss in our time, within our living memory; how different today would be if the ship hadn’t sank. That’s why I built Marwyck, a young woman’s folly, someplace safe from the cracked-up hull of humanity. Brittle stalks of grass by a dry creek bed. The sweet acidic crush of juniper berries. We can taste it, but we can’t live there forever. After a few years I sold my interest in the horse ranch to the Marxes and rented a house with Bob. Now that he’s gone he’s closer than ever. When I clutch my Oscar, he speaks to me. The dead ask us to forget the endings. They request we take a reasoned approach to remembering. Scenes fade out. That’s the nature of scenes. It means nothing. What matters is that somewhere in the Sierra Nevada a herd of wild mustangs, mares and foals, stands on a mountaintop, hissing steam, pawing the snow.

Lonely Codi Vallery-Mills Somehow, lonely fit her. Those around here couldn’t picture her any other way. It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy. She was. It wasn’t that she didn’t have friends. She did. It was that she was carefree, independent and completely living by her own rules. She wore her life like it had been tailor-made. There was no time clock. No social engagement or soccer game she must attend. Life asked nothing of her and she asked all of it. She saw her life as well-lived. She drank good wine, read great authors and found pleasure in the simple things. Others saw her life as a loss. No children, no husband, no civic importance. They said she brought it all on herself, didn’t mind being alone in this world. Was more comfortable where she lay. It may be true. Loneliness is chosen some say. But I think maybe it chose her.

Welsh Willow Jeff West

Over "Koi" Ming Natalie Hilden

Archimedesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Principle of Buoyancy Cheyenne Marco

A body, whole or partial, slips under the surface to learn the lesson of displacement. Sloshing over the sides of an overfull bucket, stop turning tears into roiling rivers running beneath sand. Different bodies behave differently. Some assume the language of broken fish tails while others froth sea foam formed from oil. You are what equals the loss of that which came before.

How to Love the World Leah Alsaker

They will call you naïve, you with your soft doe-eyed wonder. Be doe-eyed anyway. Make a career out of it. Throw your best smile at the woman eating gummi bears at the bus stop, collect memories like flowers pressed between the pages of a book, let your joy bubble as brightly as a child’s lava lamp. Do not despair. There will be nights when you lay awake (as those in unrequited love do) watching your alarm clock flicker, running your fingers over the scars spider-webbed across your arm. The memories groan with voices like blood. Try not to listen. Trace prayers on your worry beads or memorize the cracks in the ceiling. If it helps, think about sporks. (little longnecked halflings with tines like the legs of an infant giraffe) and the other beloved things—red velvet cake from your sister’s birthday, teacup chihuahuas, streetlights that glow like starlight hung on a shepherd’s hook. And when that fails, count your breaths until the morning comes wander outside as the world wakes take out your journal, pick a nearby thistle, press another memory between the pages.

Ronnie

Danielle Johannesen On the last afternoon of his life, he’d thought about her. She’d seemed to blossom that July, under the sun, her back tanned brown and her full face radiant, healthy. I’ve been getting plenty of sleep, she told him that night at the lake. I can stay out late. My folks don’t mind. He’d watched her over at Brookville High. The previous fall she’d worn that gold silk jacket to school every morning, the one with the embroidered flowers all up the back and a buck with big antlers square in the center. He suspected she’d made it herself. He’d noticed her shoving books into her locker, and he’d watched the way hair hung in her face as she struggled to locate overdue copies of books with strange words in their titles; Heliotropes, Divination, Geomancy. He wondered about the designs she drew in the margins of her spiral-bound notebooks while listening to Miss Smith lecture on the nature of free fall. As winter moved in, the color drained from her face. She grew increasingly quiet and wore less colorful clothing. One morning Ronnie spotted the gold silk jacket balled up in her backpack, stained by the ink of an uncapped black marker. Her lips cracked and dried. Flakes and raw patches formed at the corners of her mouth and the half-moons under her eyes looked dark and blue, a dark navy blue like the dashboard of Ronnie’s Monte Carlo. Sometimes he caught her dozing off during class, droplets of drool sneaking out from her mouth, smudging the designs she’d drawn in her notebooks. Sometimes her eyelids fluttered as if she was dreaming. Like everyone else in the area, Ronnie had known her for years. Last names were familiar, the same names recycled, year after year, the same facial features and gaits and smiles wandered the halls of the high school, zoomed down the main drag, crowded into the bleachers for football games. Brothers and sisters of so-and-so. Daughters and sons of locals from way back. Cousins of folks who married nieces of others. But she was an only child from Burg, where she lived in the strange house with her parents. No one knew much about them. Just that they drove the station wagon. Just that they’d always lived there. Ronnie had been drinking for a couple of years. It started one night when his father let him drink a

beer with him out in the garage. Ronnie liked how the booze made him feel more social, more like himself, and he liked how it made him laugh and feel wild. He enjoyed driving out to the lake past dark, parking the Monte in the lot near the swimming beach, counting the stars and guzzling a traveler of whiskey. I’m my own man now, on the brink of busting out of this place he often thought. He dreamed of playing football at Nebraska—the red jersey with THOMPSON stitched on the back and a trophy blonde co-ed riding shotgun in the Monte, her hair whipping wild from a breeze that blew in through the cracked window, her legs smooth and bare like river rocks. He wondered if he had what it took to reach that fine moment, to step into the picture his mind had drawn up for his future. Prolly just end up stuck here, he thought, cranking up the tunes on his radio, staring southwest at the dark spot where the Brookville High football lights would glow on nights when there was a home game. He’d happened upon her at the Taste-E-Freeze that July. She sat alone at a picnic table, sucking a rhubarb shake through a straw, letting a ladybug crawl down the length of her forearm. He’d straddled the picnic bench opposite hers and scratched at his unshaven chin. “Hi Ronnie,” she said. “Sure hot out today.” “Wanna go for a drive with me?” he asked. “Where to?” she said. “Now or later?” Something about her sun-colored face seemed powerful, and Ronnie felt his heart pulse like it did when he ran for a touchdown, under the lights, riding the wave of the Brookville faithful chanting his name from their spots in the stands. He’d heard stories about her getting drunk by herself up in her bedroom, placing strange whispery phone calls to the chemistry teacher, showing her breasts to some of the other football players. He’d heard stories about her throwing up in the Brookville High bathroom. I think she’s pregnant, somebody said. I think she’s bulimic, suggested another. He’d heard she smelled like Peppermint Schnapps. “Later,” he said. “Round dark. Out to the lake. I’ll bring some bug spray and something to drink.” He’d felt invincible after that night, when she’d drawn the design on his palm. She’d told him he’d live for a long time. Then he’d entered her body, broken her dam like a surge from the mighty Missouri, invaded her fjord like a sharp hard glacier, like an old Viking claiming his territory. At that moment

of impact he felt all of his senses spring into life as if freed from dormancy, the lilac scent of her skin filled his nose, the smooth hairless feel of her thighs reminded him of the just born rabbits he’d found under his backyard shed last spring. Her lips tasted like school lunch peach cobbler. He couldn’t shake the sensation of the ballpoint pen rolling across the pad of his index finger. He found himself trying to re-imagine the way her face looked, nose up toward the stars, wide eyes staring at constellations. She knows ‘em by name, he thought. He started driving back to the spot late at night, after the good girls had gone home or down under the football bleachers to make out with their boyfriends. He liked to crank up the tunes, mix more of the whisky into his bottle of cola, rod the Monte Carlo down the dirt road that led to the lake and turn a cookie in the parking lot by the swimming beach. He liked to watch the dust fly up like a halo of brown smoke

Two Beats Tonight Shaina Harris

around him. That afternoon he’d dug in his mother’s shoebox of lipsticks, hoping to find one that smelled like peach cobbler. He’d driven past the Taste-EFreeze where the tables were empty. He’d gone to The Swarm with some buddies, and had sat in the back of the Brookville Cinema where they’d taken pulls from a flask. When they drifted out of the theater that night, the summer seemed to embrace Ronnie. He was just drunk enough to want to keep going, and after he’d dropped his friends off at their houses he’d run a red light on his way out of town. But there’d been no one to see him. He kept taking pulls from the flask down the highway and down the dirt road to the lake. He thought he was almost there when he saw the big bug destroyed on the windshield, bright juices and innards staining his view. Then he blacked out, licking his lips, singing along with the radio, under the stars.

The muse Miriam Weinstein

Sweeping into my chamber unexpectedly, her gifts rain down, and I soak up these offerings like a soldier after long battle. To she who bestows: how can I possibly show my gratitude? During her sojourn, should I lie with her, forego sleep, become a handmaiden to her every need: burning incense, lighting candles, singing praises? I am certain she needs air to breath, oxygen to fuel her fireâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I will not hover. Outside I walk along the creek where I am sheltered by willows. Waters swirl around a cluster of rocks, and I follow the trill of song bird until, heeding the raucous warning of a crow, I leave my refuge. The melody of a gardener humming as she trims rose bushes fills the air. I pause then return the greeting. My gaze is held by deep brown eyes. Did the wistful scent of autumn roses soften my reserve? A reservoir opens before me.

Going Home Patrick Hicks The war was hunting him. He knew this deep in the folds of his brain and far down inside the hidden pathways of his nerves, but he tried to shake these instincts free and look at the instrument panel in front of him. He focused on flying and refused to think of the flak that was detonating around his aircraft in frightening bursts of black. He held the U-shaped yoke with both hands in order to keep everything steady, everything stable, but the whole plane bucked and jolted. The sky cracked open in puffy explosions. Jagged shards of steel zipped through the air. Planes around him fell. Lieutenant Odd Englebretson looked at his instrument panel (altitude, air speed, fuel) and the numbers that kept him aloft all seemed good. He and his co-pilot banked hard and circled around the way they had just come. Odd allowed himself a moment to glance down at the firestorm raging below in Nazi Germany. Docks, ships, warehouses, submarine pens, syn-thetic oil factories and roads were all ablaze in brilliant shades of orange. Bomb bursts marched across factories and enormous shockwaves rippled across the city. The whole harbor boiled in a sea of punishing fire as a column of black smoke vented upwards. It was the color of used motor oil. It foamed and lifted. The 321st Bomb Group had just dropped over thirty tons of TNT onto Hamburg and, now, they were on their way back to the green fields of England. The return journey wouldn’t be easy. Odd and his crew had a blown out engine—the propeller spun lazily as greasy smoke vented from it, and there was tremendous drag on the right wing as he fought to keep everything level, everything purring. He was surrounded by other olive drab airplanes that were also in various states of damage. Odd realized his tongue was dry and he licked his cracked lips. He turned to his co-pilot. “How’s engine three?” he asked, adjusting his rubber air mask. “Think we can we make it home?” Odd pointed the snout of his bomber towards an imaginary dot on the horizon and, like the other B-17 Flying Fortresses thrumming around him, he pushed towards it, dreaming of a cigarette and a tall glass of whiskey. England and all of its safety was just beyond the curvature of the earth. All he had to do was arc

towards it, all he had to do was keep the gyroscope steady and let the simple physics of air speed and thrust work their magic. For now, the long slow fall to earth was being denied. “How’s engine three?” he asked again. His co-pilot, Finn O’Brien, leaned towards the window. “Torn to shit. We got holes out there the size of fucking baseballs.” His Boston accent was strong and he stretched out the word baseballs. “Think we’ll make it?” “Hard to say, skipper.” Engine number three was only one problem to worry about. There was also a large, tangled mess hanging and flapping in front of Odd. Although he couldn’t be sure, it seemed like most of the nosecone had been torn off. A few minutes ago, they’d taken a direct hit with flak and the entire Plexiglas nose had been ripped away. The support beams at the front of the plane sprouted open like some kind of strange metal flower. It looked bad, and Odd wondered if they would have to parachute out. The idea of drifting down to Nazi Germany and then being tossed into a prisoner of war camp made him shake his head. “Naw. We’ll make it,” he said to O’Brien. “We ain’t bailing out. Not today.” His tone was full of conviction but, deep down, he wasn’t so sure. The flak was letting up so, maybe, with a little luck, they might all be gloriously drunk in five hours. Yeah, he thought, thinking of that glass of whiskey again. If the secret gears and switches of his plane kept on doing their thing, maybe he’d be able to light a cigarette and drift into the numb. Easy-peasy, he thought. Just stay focused. Inside his facemask, he pursed his lips and pretended to blow out cigar smoke. His mouth was still dry and he sucked on his tongue to make some spit. Flak continued to burst around the cockpit in dark blots. He looked out, and swallowed. Odd hated flak more than just about anything else in the war. Back on base, while he whittled away time, he often heard phantom explosions in his eardrums. Flak was one of the more diabolical inventions of modern warfare, he thought. The Germans sent artillery shells whistling up into the sky and these canisters exploded around incoming bombers like him. Although it looked like black smoke, lurking inside each of these clouds were fist-sized chunks of metal. If you flew into flak (and it was damn near impossible not to) your plane would be shredded.

Peppered. You’d get holes in the wings, holes in the fuselage, and holes in the tail. The vital linkages of the landing gear might get ruined. Bellies and ribcages might get ripped open. Yes, he nodded, flak was new and terrible. It was a shortening of the German phrase “Fliegerabwehrkanone” and, for the Americans running daylight raids against the Nazi empire, it was the biggest challenge they had to face. In its inert state, a flak shell stood as high as a baseball bat, it was as wide as a cannonball. After it sizzled up into the air, though, after it had climbed to its terminal point of apogee, a fuse snapped open and blackness was spewed out over a radius of forty feet. Shards of steel took flight, hunting for flesh and oil. And whenever Odd closed his eyes, he saw flak—the random bursting of it, the rending of sky, he saw fragments flashing through his skull at 2,200 feet per second. When black flak cracked, the air itself was freighted with oblivion. He sucked his tongue, and tried to swallow. His mouth was so dry. A drop of whiskey would do wonders. On their bomb run over Hamburg, they’d received so much flak it looked like inky dots had been flung against the blue sky. But as they got closer, it looked more like octopus ink or wisps of murk. When they were almost on top of their target, the explosions could be heard above the roaring engines. Ba-boom! Ba-boom! Shrapnel clanked against the wings. It was like being caught in a hailstorm. Ba-boom! Ba-boom! And then a shattering of steel hail. But now, at last, they were leaving the flak behind. Odd looked at the altimeter and considered the hard calculus of what lay ahead. The nosecone had been blasted away, an engine was gone, and they were about to chart a course over the unforgiving North Sea. In a few minutes, parachuting out wouldn’t be an option. No, they wouldn’t last ten minutes in the freezing water below. Their flight suits would weigh them down, they’d get hypothermia, and they’d sink into the dark. Men of the air, drowned at sea. Odd moved the yoke to make sure he still controlled the plane. It seemed flyable and this pleased him to the marrow of his bones. “We’re still in business,” he said, slapping his copilot’s arm. It was only then that he turned his attention to his bombardier. Flak had shattered open the Plexiglas nose, and Mike Adams had been hit. Badly hit.

“How’s Mike?” Odd asked over the interphone. The thunderous rumble of the Wright Cyclone engines was the only answer. The whole plane shook and vibrated. “Pilot to navigator. I say again, how’s Adams?” Jablonski, a lanky guy from Chicago, tapped Odd on the shoulder. His hands were covered in blood and there was a spray of red across his leather flight jacket. A smear of what looked like strawberry jam was on his shoulder. From the look on Jablonski’s face, Odd knew his bombardier was dead. It was just a matter of— “How?” Jablonski said nothing at first. And then, slowly, he pointed to his head. It made Odd worry about the other men under his command, so he cleared his throat and adjusted his mask. He clicked on the interphone. “Listen up, fellas. How’s everyone doing? Check in.” In his headset, Odd heard the familiar voices of his crew. “Tail gunner, okay.” “Right waist gunner, okay.” “Left waist gunner, okay.” “Upper turret, okay.” “Ball turret, okay.” “Radio okay.” “Co-pilot, a-okay.” Odd glanced back at Jablonski. A bit of bone was caught in the fur of the man’s leather jacket—it looked like an eggshell—and there was something else—a clump of pinky cauliflower. Turbulence made the plane lurch up and Jablonski braced himself against a support beam. The jostling knocked him back to reality and he returned to his station without being ordered to do so. He was the navigator, and without him being at his little desk there was little chance of returning to England safely. “Jablonski,” Odd said into the interphone. “You there? What’s your map say?” A moment passed. “Jablonski. Look at your map. Read it.” “There’s . . . there’s a lot of blood on it, skipper” “I don’t care. Read the map. Get us home.” There was a clearing of a throat. “Home. Yes, sir. You need to chart a course northwest by three degrees.” “Roger that. Three degrees.” Odd looked at the compass and focused on an invisible dot, far away.

“Keep it up, Jablonski. You’re doing fine.” That’s what he said for the benefit of his men on the plane but something else was rattling around in the privacy of his head, something that he didn’t want to say aloud. Adams is dead. Adams is dead. Odd heard this phrase echoing in the tissue of his own pink brain and he couldn’t make it go away. If only he’d flown ten feet higher, or lower, or to the left, the flak might have missed the nose and maybe, just maybe, Mike Adams would still be alive. It was all a matter of space and timing. If only he’d pulled back on the yoke half-an-inch, his friend might still be alive and— Odd shook his head. No, the war was hunting them all. It was bad luck. That’s all that it was. Bad, evil, rotten luck. At least they were hit after the bombs had been released, he told himself. It would have been an unholy nightmare to fly his Fortress if two tons of explosives were still pinned inside the belly of the plane. Imagine that. They had been hit, that was true, but what if flak had reeled up into the sky thirty seconds earlier and ignited the bombs? If that had happened, his whole plane would have become a bright point in the sky. It would have become a falling meteor. Bits of mangled nosecone broke free and pinged off the windshield. He and O’Brien instinctively ducked and closed their eyes. An electrical cord flapped away from the snout of the plane and flew back into a propeller. Fluffy insulation burst up and hung on the windscreen for a moment before it skittered away. They were falling behind the other B-17s and Odd wondered if the Germans would send up fighter planes to pick them off. There was nothing he could do about that if it happened. He glanced at the wing and watched the propellers on the engines continue to blur. All he could do was aviate, navigate, and communicate. He let training and experience swallow him up. His crew once said that he had icicles for nerves, and Odd wanted to live up to this image so he got on the interphone again. “I know we’re dinged up pretty bad, but everything’s under control. We’re going to make it home, fellas. Keep your eyes peeled for Kraut warbirds.” He paused and felt like he should add something inspirational, but nothing came to mind. He sucked on his front teeth to make spit. “I’ll keep you posted.” Odd shivered. Although he was from Minnesota and although knew one or two things about subzero

weather, he wasn’t prepared for minus sixty degrees. That’s what the temperature was at 32,000 thousand feet. He wore long johns, two sets of wool socks, two shirts, a sheepskin leather jacket, and heavy gloves that were electrically heated. Even with all of this, his fingertips were still frozen. At such a great height above the earth, the machine guns stammered out bullets slowly because the oil inside their geared parts was as thick as honey. Frost formed at the edges of the windscreen. He could almost see the curvature of the Earth. With such a huge opening in the nose of his plane, the cold was worse now. Wind whistled around them. All they could do was thump through the air as the other B-17s pulled far ahead. White contrails etched the sky behind their engines and they looked like a band of dragonflies on the distant horizon. Time seemed to flow in reverse. An hour slipped by. Then another. No one spoke. The engines were as constant as the pale blue around them. He looked down at the wrinkled ocean and saw a battleship slicing a furrow in the grey waters. British or German? He shrugged because it was impossible to tell. The sun sparkled and the whole world looked so beautiful, so peaceful, so not at war. He tried to move his fingertips but couldn’t feel them. “Navigator to pilot,” Jablonski said on the interphone. His voice was edged with excitement. “We’re getting close. You’ll see England soon.” “Roger that.” The fuel gauge was nearing E and Odd pointed at it. O’Brien winced and, together, they kept the bomber steady. Maybe they’d have to ditch in the ocean after all? If they ran out of fuel they’d have to land on the water and hope they could scramble out before the plane sank. It would be a messy and cold business. Where was the flare gun? “Pilot to crew,” Odd said while keeping his eyes on the instrument panel. “We need to lighten the load to make the most of our remaining gas. Dump anything overboard that’s weighing us down. That means guns, ammo, fire extinguishers—anything not nailed down. Once you dump it, I want all hatches sealed to reduce drag.” A pause and then he added, “I don’t want to go swimming, gentlemen. And I bet you don’t either.” A chorus of voices poured into his ears as he

continued to stare at the fuel gauge. The arrow was just a hair above empty. Come on, Odd thought. He leaned forward in his canvas chair—his ass was numb and full of needling pain—he willed the plane towards the coast of England. Come on, baby, he thought. Come on. And then, materializing up from the horizon as if it were a mythical island, there it was. England. As the low coastline of Norwich got larger and larger, he pushed the yoke forward to begin their descent. The interphone filled with laughter as they roared over the rocky coast. The green and brown quilt of the countryside never looked so magnificent, so welcoming, so sturdy and bountiful. Sheep dotted the fields. Cars were on the other side of the road. Slate roofs clustered around medieval churches and he saw Spitfires from the Royal Air Force flying towards—he squinted—yes, they were flying towards Cambridge. As long as they didn’t crash, they might be in a pub in thirty minutes. Whiskey. Fuel. Odd glanced at the gauges when engine one began to splutter. It sounded like a washing machine slowing down. The nose began to drag and he had trouble keeping the gyroscope steady. Up. Up. Up. He needed lift. “Get ready for a drop in oil pressure,” he shouted to O’Brien. Engine one stopped and a red light winked on. The propeller spun in the airflow, feathering. Odd studied the dials in front of him. Maybe they wouldn’t make it after all? He glanced at a photo of his girlfriend—it was stuck to the corner of the windshield with rubber cement. She smiled back at him and, in that moment, as his plane dropped from the sky, he wanted so very badly to be home in Minnesota. He wanted to walk along the river and talk about the future. He wanted to smell perfume on her neck and hear cicadas in the pine trees. He wanted, yes, her. There would be no second chance at a landing. He knew this. He accepted this. If he got it wrong he’d become just another name in the obituary section of The Stillwater Gazette. Odd glanced at his girlfriend and searched the horizon for the air base. They were close now. Maybe twenty miles out. The shadow of his plane scudded across the landscape below. “Landing gear down,” he said to O’Brien, trying to sound calm. “Roger that. Landing gear down.” A thump and a hydraulic groan came from be-

neath the fuselage as two wheels slowly locked into place. Odd stared at the instrument panel as they flew through a cumulus cloud. It seemed like the gear was down okay. Had flak destroyed the tires? Would they skid sideways as they landed and maybe flip into a crash? Any minute now they’d see the base. Any. Minute. Now. Engine four began to sputter. The whole plane seemed heavier and drowsier than it did even ten seconds ago. “There it is!” Odd yelled. He wished he sounded more cool and relaxed, but he fizzed with joy. His voice was like uncorked champagne. But even as he wiggled his shoulders in celebration, a dark thought crawled into his mind. Two weeks ago the crew of Foxy Phoebe were this close when— Odd measured his words. “Brace for impact, fellas. This might be rough.” They bobbled towards a distant ribbon of runway and Odd tried not to think about the waiting ambulances or the fire engines. He looked at a massive orange windsock. It was beautiful, it was getting closer, and the wind was blowing a north-by-northeast. Most of the other B-17s were already home and he knew all eyes were on him. Visions of what happened to Foxy Phoebe burned in his imagination. He wiggled his fingers on the yoke as O’Brien called out height. “Four hundred feet…three hundred…two hundred…looking good, skipper, one hundred…” They were falling fast. Like a stone. It was going to be a hard landing and Odd pulled back on the stick to get as much air speed as possible. The runway wasn’t below them just yet and, if he landed on the grassy field, the whole plane might flip over. The tires would sink into the damp soil and the tail would summersault end over end. He pulled back on the yoke. “…fifty…” His vision narrowed. He saw only a widening strip of concrete. A bug hit the windscreen in a spray of yellow green. “…twenty…” When the tires yelped against the concrete, the impact pressed him down into his seat. The U-shaped yoke between his hands trembled as they blurred down the runway and then, slowly, with a juddering of brakes and a shriek of metal against metal, they taxied onto a slipway. When the wheels finally came to a stop, Odd and O’Brien looked at each other for a mo-ment.

They shut off the pulsating vibrating shaking engines and then, when silence had settled over the plane like a warm blanket, they sat back. Their world was quiet. That’s when the crew erupted into cheers. “That’s our twelfth mission over with,” O’Brien said, unhooking his seatbelt and climbing out of the co-pilot seat. He patted Odd on the shoulder. “Only eighteen more and my ass gets to go home.” “Home.” Odd said the word as if it were a foreign country. “I can almost taste the beer in Southie,” O’Brien added, moving to the escape hatch. “Nice flying, skipper. You were wicked good up there.” Odd’s wool underwear was sweaty and when he straightened his back it was strange to hear the creaking of his leather jacket. He unclenched his fists from the yoke. For over eight hours he had been holding onto the U-shaped stick and it felt good to wiggle his fingers. After he peeled off his gloves, he sat back and enjoyed the quiet of the cockpit. He even enjoyed the stabbing ache in the base of his spine because it meant that he was alive. Pain was good, he thought. Pain meant survival. Pain meant life. Slowly, he took his feet off the rudder pedals and gave them a shake. He patted the engine throttles and listened to the rest of the crew jumping out of the plane. Odd Englebretson had one secret rule that no one else knew about: no matter what happened, he would always be the last one out of the plane. It didn’t matter if this happened on the ground or if it happened at 32,000 feet. He would always be the last one out. It was a promise he’d made to himself. It was an oath. Odd unhooked his oxygen supply and gathered up his logbook. Before standing up, he smiled at the picture of his girlfriend, Penny. She looked back at him with coifed hair and it seemed like she was on the verge of laughing. Odd had taken the photo at sunset and his long shadow stretched over the grass. The shade of himself lay prostrate before her, his head at her feet. And now, halfway around the globe, the people of Stillwater, Minnesota, were waking up to scrambled eggs and bacon. They were switching on radios and listening to WCCO. Trucks would soon be delivering blocks of ice and newspaper boys would soon be tossing headlines onto front porches. The war rested at each screen door. Soon, it would be brought inside. Odd shook his head. Debriefing still needed to

happen and he needed to inspect the damage done to his plane. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bullet. It was a .22 with his name carved into it. He gave it a kiss. This was part of superstition and his own private ritual. The first thing he did when he climbed into his Fortress was kiss this bullet, and it was the last thing he did before exiting the cockpit. With so much death orbiting around him, and with so many incomprehensible images of bombers breaking apart and being sucked into the ground, the spirit world seemed closer than ever. Thousands of new ghosts were created every time his bomber lifted into the air. Buildings melted. Factories boiled in fire. Bodies disappeared. Although he and his crew never talked about dying—that would be tempting fate—most of them had good luck charms to ward off evil. Nearly all of the airmen who flew into Nazi Germany had something to keep them safe: Saint Christopher medals, rabbit’s feet, four-leaf clovers, locks of hair, coins, rosaries, pebbles, love letters. Such things of-fered the illusion that the war was controllable, that death might not see you. Odd was no different. He put the bullet back into his breast pocket and hurried out of the plane. Mission twelve was in the history books. He dared not whisper the num-ber of their next mission. The ground crew already had a cowling off one of the engines and they were busy loosening bolts. What really caught Odd’s attention was the front of the plane. A large part of it was missing, like a giant hand had ripped it away. Wires and cables dangled. One of the machine guns was bent at an impossible forty-five degree angle. “Where’s Adams?” Odd asked, looking around. Someone pointed to a Red Cross truck where medics were busy tucking a green blanket around a body. They cinched it down with a rope. O’Brien leaned into Odd’s ear. He whispered. “Most of his head got blown off. Poor bastard didn’t feel a thing.” A chubby kid with red hair and crooked teeth stood on a ladder near the bombardier’s station. A hose was handed up to him and he began to slop out the mess. Rumor had it he’d grown up in a slaughterhouse and was used to seeing such things. All that mess. All that blood. As the kid worked, a red puddle formed beneath the plane. Broken glass and rivets floated in a rainbow slick of oil.

Odd had known Mike Adams since their training days in South Dakota. They did bomb runs over the Badlands and dropped sandbags onto enormous chalk targets. Friendly and outgoing, Adams enjoyed the peacefulness of fly fishing—the lazy whip of the line— and like everyone else he too had a good luck charm. His wife had given him a silver necklace and he’d kept coiled in his breast pocket. It was probably still there, Odd thought, useless now. He felt the beginning of a sob and pretended to cough. No, Odd thought bitterly. Such feelings were for later, when he was behind the privacy of a locked door. A member of his crew, Ira Metzger, a little guy from Brooklyn with large hands, hugged one of the chipped propeller blades. The huge engine clicked and ticked above him as it cooled. Dripping oil sizzled onto the tarmac. Metzger gave the blade a loving pat. This too was part of tradition. Metzger may have been short but he didn’t let anyone boss him around. He was Jewish and made a point to have H, for Hebrew, stamped onto his dogtags. In boot camp it was strongly suggested that he leave his religious affiliation blank in case he had to parachute into Germany, but he wasn’t about to change who he was. “I’m a Jew,” he said with a hard face. “You got a problem with that, bub?” Odd watched Metzger give the propeller another pat and then he glanced at the body of his friend being loaded into the Red Cross truck. Four other shapes were already stacked inside like strange unrisen loaves of bread. The medics climbed into the front, they slammed their doors, and they drove off to the morgue. Like everyone else, Odd avoided thinking about that place. It gave him the creeps to think of his body resting there. Someone claimed it was full of ice blocks to keep everything cool. The windows were tinted black to keep people from looking in. The morgue was at the far end of the base, and no one ever talked about it. The morgue was a non-place. It was invisible. Unseen. Odd looked at his flight boots. He wiggled his toes inside the fur lining and decided to do a slow turn around the plane. Had he really landed it safely? Were they really still alive? He could almost feel the crush of his unlived future selves clamoring to get inside the warm shell of his body—they demanded that he survive the war and allow them to exist. He shook such thoughts from his head and went around the plane with a clipboard. He counted twentyseven holes, as well as two massive scorch marks on the fuselage. A chunk of flak was embedded in an

engine and there was a gash in the left wing the size of a hat rack—Odd put his hand through this opening and felt an aileron cable. It was badly frayed and, when he plucked it, the cable snapped in half and clattered inside the guts of the wing. “Sweet Jesus,” he said, shaking his head. “That was close.” The rest of his crew huddled near the ball turret and talked about the mission as if it had happened to someone else. They pointed at holes and crouched near the tires. They whistled and shook their heads in disbelief. It was sobering to realize that their souls hadn’t been released somewhere high above the Third Reich, it was good to slap each other on the back, and it was good to laugh, to feel your diaphragm shudder with the joy of being deliciously and totally alive. “One for the books,” they said, offering high-fives. “Hell of a thing.” “Daaaamn.” “A doozy!” Jablonski, who had seen it all and had to sit with a decapitated body in the nose of the plane, sat on the grass. He smoked a cigarette and stared at a distant field. Blood was smeared across his flight jacket. The little eggshell of skull was still in the fur of his collar. Fifty yards away, on another hardstand, Odd watched the crew of Homing Pigeon gather around the tail-wheel of their Fortress and collectively pee on it as thanksgiving for coming home safe. It was their ritual, this peeing. After they shook themselves dry and zipped up, they started to roughhouse. They acted like school boys. Odd counted them: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine . . . all ten were home. “Safely,” he whispered to himself. He took off his hat and ran a hand through his greasy hair. “Listen up,” he yelled. He whistled to get his crew’s attention. “Fellas! Shut up…listen. Over here. Let’s move along for debriefing. O’Brien and I’ll be there in a minute.” As his crew shuffled towards a large brick building, Metzger held out a hand and pulled Jablonski to his feet. He patted him on the shoulder as if to say, how you doing? And then, together, this group of slouching aviators walked away, cheating the war another day. Bits of gravel skittered away from their boots. They lit cigarettes. They laughed. Their shadows moved as one. Odd walked around to the front of the plane and shook his head at the missing nosecone. The gangly kid with a hose was still spraying and squirting water. Mist

hit Odd’s cheek. “It’s like a wild animal tore it off,” O’Brien said, shielding his eyes from the sun. He stretched out the word animal and it reminded Odd, once again, that his co-pilot was from Boston. “Like a big bad fucking wolf, you know? Tel me Odd…how’d we fly this turd bird home?” He laughed, even though he didn’t feel like laughing. He shrugged a shoulder and added, “Beats me. Luck, I guess.” The two men leaned against a Jeep and looked around. Sickly weeds sprouted up from the asphalt and a cat skulked on the edge of the base. The grand mansion of Milecross House waited behind them. Covered in ivy and crowned with chimneys, it was home to a select group of officers. The dining room was for high level meetings and the huge gaming room in the east wing had been turned into a pub. The house was built in 1740 and it dripped with tapestries, chandeliers, and wall-sized oil paintings. It groaned under the weight of its own history. For the men of the 321st Bomb Group, it was home. After what had just happened over the skies of Germany, many of the beds inside wouldn’t be used tonight. Footlockers would be emptied and the awful work of writing telegrams home to the United States would soon begin. Odd thought about Mike Adams’s wife making breakfast somewhere in Georgia. Yes, he thought. Somewhere bright, where the sun was just beginning to peek through the willow trees, maybe at this very moment, she was cracking eggs into a cast iron skillet. As far as she knew, her husband was still alive. He was still among the breathing and she wasn’t a widow. As eggs hissed and spit in the pan, maybe her daughter came trudging downstairs, rubbing sleep from the corners of her eyes. The two of them might smile at each other, little knowing that their world had just changed forever. His body would be in the morgue by now. Soon, a typewriter would clack out his death certificate. Odd shifted his weight against the Jeep. He imagined his dead bombardier climbing out of their Flying Fortress. In a flashing moment of imagination and longing, he saw Mike Adams squint at the baby blue sky. He held up his arms in a V as the power of a yawn took him over. He was still alive and whole and spirited. Laughter and music waited up ahead. He might sit in the corner of the billiards room at Milecross House later on and write a letter home to

his wife, just like he always did after a mission. His foot might tap to music. And then, after a few pints of warm beer, he might talk about his plans to open a car dealership once the war was over. “Y’all can come work for me,” he would say with his thousand-watt smile. “We got high rollers in Georgia. Them cars’ll be easy to sell. Like sweet tea on a hot day.” Odd stared at the asphalt and pulled out two cigarettes. He offered one to O’Brien and flipped open his Zippo. A flame sparked to attention and the two men puffed in silence. The kid with a hose continued his necessary work. Water sprayed and hissed. “Well,” O’Brien said after a long pause. “It’s good to be home.” Odd looked at rivets, and broken glass, and blood. He stared at the empty spot where Mike Adams had climbed out of his body and drifted off, into the unknown. Odd took in a lungful of smoke and watched water drip from what used to be the nosecone. So it was true after all, he thought. The war really was hunting for souls. And he would never really come back from that brutal, intimate knowledge. He took in a lung full of smoke and exhaled slowly. “Yes,” he said. “I guess it is. Home.

Postcard From My Last Night as a South Dakota Farm Girl Leah Alsaker After Postcard to I. Kaminsky

I was leaving a land of buffalo grass for a city of rain and libraries. I asked the prairies to wait for me, not to become housebroken like the topiaries—trimmed ‘til they’ve forgotten what they were. I filled my bags with alfalfa petals, a pheasant’s feather, a scattering of topsoil, packed the scent of honey crisps at harvest time for my perfume. The bags felt heavy in my hands, but I clung to them, lingering as the coyotes sang their goodnights, howls floating like down over the hills. Hurry, the city beckoned, this land-locked place can bring you nowhere. But I knew the city knew nothing of wheat fields that rise and swell like sea. So I set my bags down and let the mourning dove be my lullaby for one more night.

Monty Hotel Bar Alex Stolis

It’s 2 AM or close enough to last call it doesn’t matter. Her name is Felicia or Melissa or doesn’t matter. She is the Periodic Table of Elements; argon, oxygen, nitrogen. She’s combustible, flammable; one wrong left turn with the right amount of regret. Paradise buys her another drink she rolls a joint tells him Joe Strummer died for their sins. She knows angels are a myth and the way to be saved is to pretend to believe in dying. Paradise takes a big hit, holds the smoke in his lungs until it burns raw. She kisses the crucifix around his neck. He has a bullet, give him a gun and he’ll shoot the moon.

Monty Hotel Bar Alex Stolis

Cross x3 Alex Stolis

The day before the earthquake Kansas was drinking red wine, remembering the first time, knowing how easy it is to confuse wine for blood, blood for love, love for suffering. She knows redemption is simple knows what she cannot see, makes a toast; to the flit of wings and the buzz of leaves in an autumn wind. She remembers everything, how the world became rock and sky; quartz and pyrite, how her name, on his lips, became weightless.

Franklin Bennett: Before He left New York City Evan Sutherland

Frank motions to me across the aisle of books by American Muse, as he waved me toward the literature farm he had on his desk. He scribed furiously as he never spoke, born without the ability; Frank came to conclude that his love was in the next room. In which the note explained, “Look across our room, the season is red and my love is there ahead and she might love me too. I need the courage and the follow through. I care to prove that I won’t be the man to provide her great rue. I smell of cigarettes, speak in sign and hesitate to wave at a hand waving at me. I’m shy and reserved, but in order to live you must present yourself as creation has created.” He looked to me then his note, I smiled, Frank sipped his mug of joe, Coffee breath spewing outward We had to cover awful whisky breathLast night’s endeavor We finished the bottle, Till it was two AM Of course, We failed to write anything clever. As long as I knew Franklin, I deduced with the fact that he would never approach a woman with who he claimed to be in love. Franklin was deaf and wrote passionately translating his brilliance. His voice was represented through the language of his pen stroke, he was a writer, a thoughtful, open minded artist. Franklin always had the NYU look, it was 1966 and he was sprawling throughout our beat gen Greenwich Village, New York City campus. His hair was long and displayed like the fur coats of winter seen around Central Park. His glasses shaped uniquely around his face, giving him a look of intellect. His clothing was one of the poor men, botched by paint, ripped and shredded; what would it matter to him? He was a hippie. He is a man of his word and was a man free like the New York City birds. I wrote, and ignored the chance to sign, “You’re still drunk Franklin, who is this new man?” He signed, quickly “Still the same Franklin Bennett.” His hair rested on his shoulders, Facial upon his lip, Almost blind, his glasses Distracted me from, His wine red eyes, With no chance for him to hide, He bounced from his chair. Being as loud as a marching snare, He drew attention his way. This wasn’t the Franklin Bennett that I’ve seen. Would he be rejected and misunderstood, Or meet the love, he always knew he could.

Social Media Validation S. D. Bassett

Look at me. This my problem. This my plan. This my solution. Tell me you agree. Behold my joy. Behold my sadness. Behold my anger. Tell me you share. View my lover. View my pet. View my child. Tell me I’m favored. Like my project. Like my craft. Like my creation. Tell me I’m skilled. See my gathering. See my event. See my holiday. Tell me I’m loved. Observe my God. Observe my prayer. Observe my creed. Tell me I’m worthy. This my void. This my pain. This my emptiness. Tell me who I am.

100

A Thing or Two About a Thing or Two Tyler Gates

Freckled leaves of melancholy on a floor so blistered. Tiny feet of innocence rattled sweetly across the storied carpet. A daft silence of razored memory wafting through your nostrils like sugared meats being cooked over a well used grill some Saturday evening so many summers ago. Just like you, I never thought we’d end up so far away. Strangers existing in the same knee-high town, what’s left? barely a whimper, hardly an adequate expression of a God that once left our finger tips curling at the sounds of our own peppered laughs. You chose the darkest desert and me I drifted through blinking sprawls. Occupying mildewed corners of tempered steel outlines, filled in with grieving bricks. All I’ve got left is this, and some things are meant to twist your guts every now and again, reminding you that at least it was only your heart that was broken.

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Departed Adrian Koesters

When I was newly married I went to more funerals than I ever had in my life. Most of them were in Earling, Iowa, a Catholic farming town notorious for the exorcisms that had occurred there in the 1920s, and for the string of German monsignors who ruled its Church and congregation for decades and who carved into the culture an even stronger tendency to introversion than the people had been born with, along with a propensity for vicious teasing. My husband had a slew of aunts and uncles on his father’s side who were starting to depart this life with some regularity in those first years of our marriage. We entered St. Joseph’s Church for each new funeral from the front doors into the back vestibule, where an astonishingly old person not much known to me would lay in an open casket, tinted in rose and yellow light from the stained glass wall panels, looking better than he or she had in months or years, jaundiced flesh spackled to a nice pink, personhood quieted inside a set of clothes likely bought for the burial at one of the clothiers in Harlan. The dead relative would be surrounded by hundreds of the living so similar-looking to the deceased and each other I could not keep track of who they were or how they were connected to us. The young men of my husband’s generation, good-looking and many still unshaved of their bicentennial beards, stood close by each other in three-piece suits of varying greys, hairlines receding at various speeds, together as if they could have made up whatever the word for multiple births would be had some poor woman had all thirteen of them at once. One of the cousins, known for strong feeling, broke into a wailing over his father’s casket as we stood in that line, his face shattering as you sometimes hear of a face doing

in grief, the rest of his upper body immobile as an Irish dancer’s. Few others wept openly with him at that moment, but by the end of the Mass, many cried freely. I think the only time I ever saw any member of that family weep was at funerals, although my husband’s father would often get slain in the Spirit during Mass and the tears would sometimes stream down his cheeks then. At Uncle Art’s funeral, though, even the pall bearers struggled not to crack up during the recessional as “How Great Thou Art” spilled from the pipe-organ above us. Art had been a hard drunk, had even bootlegged Templeton Rye whiskey out of a truck during Prohibition. At the end of his life he lived on a small place with the one spinster sister of my father-in-law’s siblings, Netty, a woman whose outsized nose and ears were un-softened by the wisdoms of married life that had lent a kind of harsh loveliness to the faces of her older sisters, though they were said to have been a mean pair, and she seemed to me to carry a celibate meanness of her own perhaps in response to the malice she had met along the way of her life. Betty, the youngest in that family and the sweetest-natured of all of them, had loved Netty deeply and missed her terribly when she died. She revealed to me at Netty’s funeral that her shyness and depression had come from having been taken out of the family every so often, for months at a time, and sent to Detroit to care for their mother’s parents, and that this was why Netty had never married. “Can you believe anyone would do that? Can you believe anyone would do that to their own child?” she asked me, smiling because she always smiled. I shook Betty’s hand again in the funeral line of her husband Jim, a warm-natured man who had had a pleasing and quiet carnal energy you found in some of the men of that town and in others you just didn’t. He, like many of the men there, was quick with a

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good joke and perfect timing to go with it, and his quiet teasing often made Betty’s face light up in a way that I always wondered if anyone else noticed, and if they did, whether seeing it made them happy. Many of us hadn’t known before the funeral that Jim had been christened Leander, but that when he had been a young man some child had not been able to pronounce his name, and rather than put the child to shame, he had let himself be called “Jim” ever after. He had been a plumber, married to Aunt Betty nearly sixty years. The last time we visited them both at home, several times I caught him looking at her with that amused interest and affection, and it seemed to me again that she knew he was watching her without once having to look up. She was stooped with one of the worst cases of spinal osteoporosis I have ever seen, and had the large ears and the nose of all of her family, man, woman, and boy, but there was just that little parcel of appreciation, the beauty of “my wife,” that came over her when Jim looked at her and that he had put there, that awareness of a man who holds the big secret to himself and that no one but she could understand, that felt almost immodest to have noticed. I felt a pang when I saw it, too, but then felt it was the kind of happiness no one ought to be stupid enough to be jealous over. No one ought to ever begrudge another that kind of feeling. As I held her hand in the receiving line in the back vestibule, she appeared to forget me for a minute. I waited, finally said something quiet that I hoped sounded comforting about Jim. She raised her head then, the pink and deeply creased skin of her cheeks soft, the cloudy eyes wet but laughing. “Yes,” she said, her face suffused at once with the light his presence had brought to it so often, smiling but not because she always smiled. “Yes, we sure enjoyed him.”

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Deisem Bridget Henderson

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A Nice Place to Bury Myself Alive Mariah Macklem

I want to find the kindest field on Earth, Where the sweet sun caresses the ground with hands of an old friend, and tall grass sways gently as the wind rocks it to sleep. The clouds will cling overhead, weaving through rays of sunlight. I want to give myself to it, offer myself like an unworthy sacrifice to everything that has ever been quiet. I want the grass to curl around my ankles and pull me right into the cool earth. All of my atoms will softly drift apart, like millions of departing trains going to bigger and better places. Everything festering inside me will turn to mulch, fertilizing the ground as it decomposes and bringing the beginning of softer things. Things that feel better to hold within myself. They will not claw at my insides, will not scream their way out of my mouth. My fists will uncurl and accept the feeling of roots between my fingers. My eyes will close for once not with anguish, but with a sudden rush of belonging. I want to sleep for eternity where my thoughts can finally rest, and all the tar inside my throat can turn into wet earth. It will be a comfortable place to bury myself alive, and give into smoothness Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never known before.

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At Trail's End Lillian Schwartzrock

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Three Samples from DECANTS Heidi Czerwiec

COGNOSCENTI: Germaine Cellier Verde que te quiero verde. —Federico García Lorca Germaine Cellier, foremost female “nose,” a woman working in perfumery when all perfumers were Master, not mistress, despite women’s more sensitive sense of scent. Germaine—meaning “German,” a Frankish people—was born in Bordeaux to a wouldbe Bohemian artist and a melancholy herbalist. Alchemical, she discovered a natural ability with formulas and structures, how chemistry + narrative = perfume, how a story grabs you with its top notes but engages you with its heart, all the while the base notes provide a satisfying backdrop of setting and scene. She debuted producing basenotes for DuPont in the cellier, the storeroom. Then came the Great War. Then afterwards, a regrowth, as of new green germinating. The Forties a fertile era for her, though she budded best on her ownunwilling to work with the male perfumers, she was granted her own lab where, unlike those who composed perfumes according to charts, she flung fragrance like a Fauve, adding ingredients by the ladleful, painting notes in expressionist colors, where juxtaposed components fight and fuck within your nose. An aggression of aroma. A dissonance of scent. Germaine means “armed.” In ’44, her Bandit strongarmed its way on the scene with its nose-searing 1% quinoline, the leathery bitterness a kiss she blew “to the dykes.” Then Vent Vert’s gale-force, the galbanum galvanizing, its stun-gun of green.

‘48’s Fracas “for the femmes,” a buzz up the nose of buttery tuberose – but Germaine means “loud” and it’s not a room—clearer for naught. And Jolie Madame, a leather so green it hurts the head to contemplate even as you swoon. Green her germ, her cell, her scented vernacular. She was famous, while composing her fragrances, for chainsmoking Gauloises and consuming quantities of garlic, breakfasting on sardines. Germaine, loud and outspoken, swore fluently and wore fluid Cossack pants, though ne’er a brassiere. Eventually so much incendiary scent, chemicals, and inhaled smoke germinated in the cells of her lungs, inflamed them, burning off what remained of greenness. What’s green smokes most. What’s germane are the perfumes that remain, encellared, precious. The smell, indelible, pervades everything. *** THE LOVE FOR THREE ORANGES In 1918, Prokofiev wrote The Love for Three Oranges, a surrealist opera-ballet featuring figures from Commedia del’arte—a comic absurdity, an earnest satire—fairy princesses popping out of giant oranges as if cocooned. A 1988 production added to the music, dance, and visual spectacle, distributing scratch-andsniff cards scented to accompany the story at various points: a whiff of sulfur for a gunshot, a fart by the Fool Truffaldino, and the scent of oranges. Now, the fourth wall, bro— ken completely by language, its utter attempts. Aether’s Love for Three Oranges [2015] Inspired by the scratch-and-sniff cards at Prokofiev’s opera, Amber Jobin created a scent to encompass all three aspects of orange: fruit, blossom, and tree. Wearing it, I become bird, concealed among

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glossy leaves in an orange tree abloom and fruiting. Serge Lutens’ Fleurs d’Oranger [1995] Sweetness of blossoms paired with salty, sunwarmed skin: hot flesh after sex. L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Seville à L’Aube [2012] A perfume blogger and perfumer collaborated to create this erotic scent-memory: embracing a Spanish lover under orange trees brimming with bees during a Holy Week procession. I’m a perfume collector, and my son Wyatt is irresistibly attracted to my many bottles and samples, loves sniffing their contents alongside me. While not a connoisseur of the orientals and leather scents I prefer, he’s partial to florals, orange blossom and jasmine in particular. He often pleads for a spritz. I often grant it. We choose a bottle—his tastes are young, and he’s swayed by a flashy flaçon or brightly-colored juice— say, Seville à L’Aube, an orange fluid in a dramatic octagonally-cut glass bottle. I uncap it, spray him lightly. I spray myself too, and we enjoy the greeny orange blossom scent warmed with honey as I rub my arms against his, perfuming him, marking him with my scent like an animal, making him mine. I say, Tell the bees my heart overflows with sorrowful wax. *** DJEDI [1926] Someone scores a priceless bottle, vintage 1927, offers a sample: just a drop or two at the bottom of a tiny tube, sold for a princely sum. Which you spend. It arrives. For days, you only gaze at it, attempt to

sniff it through the glass, up near the stopper, to avoid opening it, using it up. You read what little description is available to prepare yourself, so when the time comes, you can attempt to appreciate it on as many levels as possible before it vanishes, gone forever. Created by Jacques Guerlain, inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and named for an Egyptian magician famed for resurrecting the dead, Djedi is stark departure, alien, anti-Guerlain, sucked dry of all voluptuary, what Roja Dove described as “the driest perfume of all time.” And so, you select a humid night to extend the scent, and apply it. Mineral. Medicinal. Smoke curling from a stone bowl at the limbic, liminal doorway to a tomb. Outside, the smell of dry, reedy vetiver carried on a hot wind blowing over sunbaked bones. And something animalic—a jackal, sinuous in the background. The fumes an ephemeral ghost raised briefly from the past. And though you stay awake as long as possible, you descend to dreams, disquieted. In the morning, Djedi has dissipated like smoke: distant country you can never again visit, sunk beneath the sand.

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Summer Discoveries in the Land of Birdbath and Beyond Katherine Edgren

First, the molecules rush to boil. Then, there’s the slow perk of the coffee pot, like the sound of waves rolling in from the lake, and all the rushy-twittering of leaves in the wind that brings the smells that make the dog howl, and a bed as hard as the floor, floor-hard, and then there are all the uses of beat: the drum, the wife, the cake-batter. We walk the beat, sail the beat, beat it. And the lyrical bracken fern that filters sun, the exclamation points of the tall grasses making a painting, Chinese. Things pop up when we’re not looking: mushrooms, pimples, wrinkles, freckles, warts, moles, no-fat hotdogs, trashy magazines. Fireweed burns on the side of the road, the turtle skips on the river like a stone; it’s the bullfrog who grunts, the green frog who twangs. Strange chants wake us. A giant bird sails over the road. At night, the shadow in the outhouse is a tiny bug on the lens of the flashlight. The sky hammers rain, the dog is exhausted, and untamed, weedy eyebrows run wild and free.

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The Storm, Her Blood Carol Deering

She folded garlands of birds into her hank of river-shine hair, then knotted it â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;til her scalp fairly prickled with distress. Rain pranced and muddled, pooling through her days. When the tide swelled, mud suffocating in feathers, she loosed the birds, climbed onto their tiny backs, and tried to fly to a mound of flattened cars riding out the storm. Her blood, warped as a flame in wind, cried out for light, for cells only I could give. This time letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s say she lived. The sky brandished sunshine, parted the flood, smoothed the hours with birds, and waited.

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Web Bridget Henderson

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Advice Kent Meyers

Certain numbers stick and others don’t. Sometimes I can’t remember my mother’s birthday, and though my father died at 56, I sometimes remember it as 53. There are seven stars in the Big Dipper. I know that as a pure and stand-alone number. On the other hand, Cassiopeia, which lies just across Polaris from the Big Dipper has. . . how many? It’s a W; five, then. But that’s a thinking-through or a counting-inthe-mind, not the number as a just-known fact. And though I’ve looked it up countless times, and bake five loaves of bread every couple of weeks, I cannot remember whether there are three or four teaspoons in a tablespoon. I know an old elite typewriter struck twelve characters per inch and a pica ten—but what a waste of mind space that is. There are 5280 feet in a mile, but without multiplication my mind won’t hold the yards, just as I know there are 640 acres in a square mile, but I can’t tell you how many square feet are in an acre. A kilometer is .6 of a mile, and there are 2.4 centimeters in an inch, though I can’t force my mind to produce even the first digit of the reverse ratios. *** My parents weren’t advice-givers. With nine children born within a dozen years, they didn’t have time to give advice, or it got so thinned out I can’t remember it. But also, it just wasn’t their style. Let’s admit it—giving advice is for blowhards. The most famous advice-giver in literature is Polonius, and he ends up a dead rat. My parents, of sound and wintry Northern European stock, were not only far from blowhards, they had work to do. Even had they been inclined to it, dispensing advice was not something they had time for. Even meals—there was eating to be done and fights to stop and salt to pass. Praying before the meal, sure. But preaching during it? Once the activity of eating started, advice became limited to “eat your peas they’re good for you.” There were broad guidelines, of course, backed up by the church and parochial school and Notre Dame nuns. But ad-

vice? Specific suggestions on what to do? Father—and Mother—Knew Best, but they were inclined to let their children figure it out for themselves. *** Five-hundred-and-forty: It’s a number I remember without effort, as automatic as the seven days of the week or the 365 of the year, a number that comes back with the ease of a mantra or an old prayer, a hail-Mary-full-of-grace or a bless-me-father-for-Ihave-sinned. Even though I’ve been away from farm tractors longer than I’ve been away from confession, I still remember that a power-take-off shaft on tractors in the sixties and seventies spun at 540 revolutionsper-minute. A power-take-off: The contained image is apt— power stored, and the PTO bleeding it off and sending it somewhere else, the tractor roaring, but all event—corn being picked or chopped or ground or shelled, hay being mowed or raked, soybeans being combined—all occurring behind the tractor, in the machine borrowing the power through the spinning PTO. Five-hundred-and-forty RPMs: That’s (I have to think—540 divided by 60) nine revolutions per second. A PTO shaft is about (imprecisely; a guess, a look at a ruler, matching memory to lines) two inches square, which, times four, gives eight inches of outside diameter, which means that if a rope, say, or a piece of cloth got caught by the square edge of the shaft, it would be pulled (8 X 9 = 72 inches) = 6 feet per second. An International 560 tractor, tiny by today’s standards, nevertheless created and stored and lent to the PTO 65 horsepower. The 65 horsepower, like the 540 RPMs, is, for me, a sticky and specific number, but horsepower itself began in extreme vagueness. Sure, it’s the power of a single horse—but what kind of horse? Height, weight, speed, breed (Percheron or Pinto? Arabian or Appaloosa?). An International 560 tractor working southern Minnesota’s Clarion Webster silt-clay-loam pulled a moldboard plow with four-fourteen inch shares (a sticky number: 4-14s). Such a plow, 56 inches wide, would not, I suspect, be even noticed by a magnificent parade of 65 Belgian workhorses pulling it. (But how

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long would it take to turn such a team at the end of the round? You’d have to start the turn halfway down the field.) Still, even if 65 horsepower in a tractor engine is not equal to 65 actual workhorses, it is still a goodly chunk of power. Now consider the number 45 and its relationship to 100. Forty-five is the amount of weight, in pounds, the adult human elbow tendon can withstand before rupturing. When the best fastballers accelerate a baseball to about 100 miles per hour, the ball’s inertia exerts just under 45 pounds of force on that tendon. Since tendons cannot be trained and grown like muscles, this explains why 100 mph is the upper limit of a fastball’s speed. Forty-five pounds, then, marks the strength, or frailty, of the human elbow joint. Against that put a single horse. Now, put sixty-five horses, larger than Pintos, maybe, but probably not Percherons. Between the 45 pounds and the 65 horsepower is a really, really—I mean really—big difference. *** I find it difficult to give advice. Whether or not I learned such reticence from my parents, advice-giving in and of itself has certain inherent problems. Even in the rare cases when I’m asked for advice, I find myself caught between the rock of the obvious and the hard place of the not-obvious-at-all. It’s obvious as Dr. Johnson’s rock, for instance, that when it’s ten degrees outside, a coat should be worn, along with hat and gloves. But my teenage children consistently walked to school in such weather wearing little more than beachwear. Although my wife found advice-giving possible in such cases, I always simply watched them out the door. The school was blocks away, not miles, so their lives weren’t endangered, and they knew what cold was and that clothes were designed to help against it. But the even-harder place of advice-giving is when it isn’t obvious at all, when there are degrees of gray involved: Uncertainties, questions, ambiguities, hidden factors, unknowns, mists and fogs and— people, with all their idiosyncrasies. And time. The future. If a student asks me whether he should go to graduate school, how am I supposed to know? Even if the student is bright and I know he’ll be success-

ful, how can I possibly know what the job market will be like when he graduates, or whether there isn’t some other thing (travel to Malaysia, for instance) that would be better for his life than grad school? I can talk about the options, sure. I can advise. I just can’t give advice. There is that crucial, distinct difference. When my own son was debating whether to go to graduate school in English or Political Science, we spent one afternoon coming down a mountainside in the Bighorns discussing it. I could talk about the field of English and my own experiences, and I could listen to him as he tried to sort it out—but that was all. Giving advice comes too close to making the decision for someone else. And it raises the possibility of emotional factors—the worry in the advice-hearer that not taking the advice will disappoint the giver. And if that weighs in, how would anyone ever know the real decision, or who made it? *** 45: An adult ligament. For a child the number is quite a bit less, I imagine. I currently stand 5’ 8”. In grade school, only two boys in my class were shorter than I was. Not to get too intimate here, but the inseam on my pants is 29 inches. I don’t know how tall I was at twelve, nor how high the inseam on my pants. Just as fuzzy is the specific height of the PTO shaft taking off the 560’s 65 HPs and spinning them at 540 RPMs (6’ per-second linear pull) into the ancient hammermill we used to grind feed for the cattle. But I can hold my hand off the floor and say, about that high, and it looks like 1.5 feet, or 18 inches. < 29 (my current inseam: so maybe 27? 26? when I was 12?) minus 18 (the height of the PTO shaft) = < 11. Inches. Between the shaft and groin. < 45 pounds before the elbow’s ligament is ruptured. Of course, that’s an elbow ligament. Knee ligaments are surely more. Who knows—maybe twice that, 90 or 100. And hip joints, why they must be— well, who can guess? And what must it take to break bones? How many pounds? Surely quite a few. But still, pounds. I watched a baseball player this past summer,

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frustrated at his weak ground ball, break his bat over his knee as he ran to first base, break it as casually and easily as if it were a wishbone. Six feet each second. Not all that fast, really. But factor in human reaction time—for some reason not sticky numbers at all, though I know in driver’s ed I learned them: The time it takes for a driver to lift his foot to the brake and how far a car can travel in that time. I was in a science museum once where they had a machine to measure museum-goers’ reaction times. I put my hand on a button, and when a light flashed, I pushed the button, and a number, in fractions of seconds, appeared, telling me how fast I was. A scientific version of Bop-a-Mole. I was proud of myself in the silly way we are when our bodies outperform a meaningless average. I pushed the button several times, pleasing myself. But I can’t remember the numbers— neither my superior ones nor the poor, pathetic mean. But here’s a picture: The safety advisor visiting my Vocational Agriculture class in high school who dangled a twenty-dollar bill between his thumb and forefinger and invited anyone to step up and put his own thumb and forefinger an inch apart at the bottom edge of the bill. He proposed to give the bill to anyone who could catch it when he released it. The price of greed was humiliation. Starting with the blowhards and in descending order to the more meek and cautious, student after student stood in front of jeering classmates and watched helplessly as the bill wafted to the floor, while their thumbs and forefingers ridiculously, like inept shadow-puppet makers, snapped against each other, the bill already gone. At the end of the class, the instructor placed his twenty-dollars back in his wallet, and offered some advice. He offered, in fact, not just the best advice I’ve ever received, but the only advice that is both obvious and not-obvious, both absolute and modulated—the only advice there really is, when all things are said and the subject of advice is closed: Take care. *** Although horsepower began in vagueness, it has since been precisely enumerated. One horsepower

is the equivalent of 746 watts, or 550 foot-pounds of work per second. 746 watts is a lot of light, but it doesn’t tell us much about power. If we divide those watts by 115—standard U.S. household voltage—we get amps: 746/115 = 6.5 amps. Vacuum cleaners have sometimes 9, sometimes 12-amp motors. Few of us would willingly stick our hand into our vacuum cleaner’s brush when it’s whirling at full tilt. Thus we’re working through the numbers to something knowable. But foot-pounds gets us even closer. The English system, though scientifically clumsy, is a common person’s system, close to the body, full of metaphor. 550 foot-pounds of work per second is much more visceral than amps. Imagine yourself holding a rope running over a pulley and down a cliff. At the end of the rope is 550 pounds. Pull the rope forward one foot in a second. That’s one horsepower. Now we’re beginning to see. An Olympic weightlifter may take 550 pounds and lift it from the ground to over his head—eight feet perhaps—in a second, or less. Eight horsepower, then, or more. Power—or work—is strength applied over time, a ratio. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if you leverage the weight. Put a block and tackle on it with a gearing ratio of 4:1, so that you effectively move 139 pounds 4 feet, and you still have one horsepower. Now I’m starting to think I’m a horse’s equivalent. Could I lift 139 pounds to my chest within a second? I weigh between 150 and 160. Could I climb 4 feet straight up a ladder in a second? Or—again, leverage doesn’t matter—could I run 8 feet up a 45-degree hill in a second? I believe I could do all these things. I couldn’t sustain that horsepower for long, but nevertheless, the proverbial man stronger than a horse turns out to be a college professor who does a little desultory weight lifting in his basement. Pretty much an average Joe. But let’s consider what an average, one-horsepower Joe can do if he’s able to sustain maybe a half-horsepower over the long haul. I can lift a 16-pound splitting mall above my head and bring it down on a piece of oak 16 inches in diameter with force enough to split that oak, if the grain is clean, and send its halves flying, and I can

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keep this up for hours, turning the pile of wood at the edge of my lawn into neat, stacked cords. In a few hours, with a spade, I can turn over my entire garden to prepare it for planting. If I have to, I can carry two sixty-pound third-squares of shingles up a ladder and onto my carport roof, and in an afternoon I can, with hammer and nails, shingle the entire carport roof. I can run, in my average-Joeish way, a mile in seven minutes and sustain the pace three or four miles. It’s quite amazing, how much work—sustained power—a human being can do. Now, gather sixty-five average Joes and imagine they never wear out. Imagine them as strong at the end of the day as when they first lift that mall over their heads. You have a 560 tractor. Put those 65 average Joes on a long crank with 65 handles and tell them start spinning it. Gear it up to 540 revolutions-per-second. Now put a twelve-year-old, unsupervised, near that spinning shaft. Add a tool—a scoop shovel, say, or a corn rake— lying on the other side of the shaft, that the twelveyear-old required for a job he had to accomplish. Should he take the shortcut over the shaft, with the at-most 11-inch clearance between shaft and groin, or should he take the longer route, all the way around the machine? Picture the twelve-year-old’s baggy pants, a bit loose, with a tear, perhaps, in the knee. Picture the squareness of the shaft, those corners blurred to a roundness by their spinning, but glinting in a way round things never glint, hints of abruptness, catchness. Consider loose sheets tangled on a line. Orange plastic surveyor markers twisted around their wooden laths. Maverick plastic grocery bags suffocating twigs. A flag will fly straight out, droop and straighten again, and droop, and then, why is this? lift again but turn into the pole, hug it, cover it, be notflag but golf-club cover for a few moments, and then be flag again. Breezes, nudges, things unfelt. Who can say what small winds nudge and shift near a PTO shaft? The square edges must be fan. But pushing air or pulling it? And with the air, the dust within it, and things that float, that drift. 45. 65. 540. 6.

The known numbers. And all the unknown ones. And the shovel over there. The corn rake. *** Did I step across that shaft? I might have. I’m here. I’m telling it. Like certain numbers that fade, though you know that once you knew them, I can’t be sure. It isn’t true that children have better imaginations than adults. They have better fantasies. The difference is that fantasy includes the capacity to ignore reality—or phrased a different way, the inability to see it. Children cannot imagine the breeze a square, spinning shift must—surely must, really must—create. They can only see themselves over it, tender groin cloud-high. But rotted corn on the other side, slippery as grease? < 11 inches, and their foot coming down on it? They can’t imagine that. Or don’t. *** Once, running a table saw, I ran my push stick into the blade. The board was narrow, and I wanted to make that last, thin cut. The stick erupted, and I was holding one-third of it. The rest had vanished into air. I cursed myself for a stupid fool, and a greedy one at that, wanting that last small bit of wood. Add pride: I believed I could be that precise. But then I realized: That’s why you use a push stick. Because even living the most well-lived life, you sometimes fail to recognize temptations—or shall we call them opportunities?—to the literally deadly sins. They lurk in the most unexpected places, not clearly marked as moral failing, but hushed and hiding in movement, rhythm, absorption, the body’s doing its thing, the tool used, work being done. And then a choice almost not-made, the body’s choice more than the mind’s choice, no discussion or interior argument but just movement going on. It could have been my finger. But I used a push stick. And so I was forgiven. Or this: Once I started to cross a busy, four-lane street in my car. I’d been waiting at the stop sign quite a while, and then a gap in traffic appeared. I looked

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left, then right, then surged forward, checking left again, then quickly right—and screeched to a stop in better-than-average reaction time as two bicycles, hugging the curb but moving 20 mph, appeared as if by magic in my passenger side window. Again I cursed myself for impatience and my eyes for inattention. But that’s why you look twice. Even the Zen master sometimes fails to notice. Look twice, his driving instructor would say. Use a push stick, too. Take care. *** The twenty-dollar bill floating to the ground. Our fingers and thumbs an inch apart. We could not catch it. That spinning shaft. What would be our chances to jerk away should we find ourselves caught up in it? 6 feet per second: 11 inches, then—the distance between groin and shaft in my calculations—in about 1/6 th of a second. Whirling, square edges grinding away, the cloth wrapped around it, tight. And if our foot slips on that rotten corn, if our legs spread wide, if we drop? How frail we are. How slow. Our grasping digits close around nothing. All things move too fast, flit by, waft away. Leaves falling. Seasons churning. We are not quick enough or observant enough or powerful enough to grasp and hold anything: Bills or most numbers, or the smell of a good wine or the glow of children, or the light coming through the window after the first winter storm this year. Everything is falling before we know it’s started falling. We miss the beginning, always, and we’re always late. We can stoop down, pick up what’s fallen sometimes—but that’s salvage, and what we salvage is never what we missed but something else, never what we hoped for. Take care. Don’t step across. It isn’t worth the time saved. Don’t dare the intimate crush of those square edges pulling, yourself frail as a bird, so tenuous and tender. Around power, watch out. Notice breezes and whirling dust. Know blood. Understand the frailty of joints. Keep your balance. Walk around.

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My Grandpa Chief Standing Bear Cliff Taylor

The consciousness of Chief Standing Bear linked up to the Great Spirit, like fumes rising from his head in the night. All their poorly protected feet crunching together in the flickering snow; starlight coating them all. A father changing history for every Indian living upon this land recently renamed America because of a request whispered from his dying son’s lips: bury me where our people are buried, not here. Standing Bear trekking onward with his relatives; ‘escapees’; ‘wards of the state’; ‘savages.’ Can you see all the spirits that walked with them as they suffered frostbite, as they prayed their way home? They stop and rest in a small stretch of trees, actually laughing some, making the smallest fire to get warm. Standing Bear sees his boy running along a riverbank back home and without opening his mouth, without blinking his eyes, quietly, he speaks to him and says, “I promise.”

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that people have in the lives of those around them. Misun is a Lakota word that means younger brother and Pet’a is a Lakota word that means fire. Jessie’s cousin Erin Jensen illustrated the story.

2017 Emerging Tribal Writer Publishes First Book Katy Fiore, an SDSU senior majoring in English, interviews Jessie Taken Alive-Rencountre, the 2017 winner of SDSU’s Emerging Tribal Writer Award. By Katy Fiore In 2013, South Dakota State University established the Emerging Tribal Writer Award to encourage tribal writers who are beginning their writing careers to share their stories and culture with a broader audience. This award is meant to inspire tribal writers to honor and share their tribe’s literary tradition. It is important for these tribes to share their culture and stories to encourage people to learn about tribal culture and history because the oral storytelling tradition is extremely important in Native culture, as it allows them to pass down their histories and stories to future generations. This tradition is vital because there is an unknown amount of information to be shared to help younger generations understand the histories and stories in Native culture. This year’s winner, Jessie Taken Alive-Rencountre, won the Emerging Tribal Writer Award for her story Pet’a Shows Misun Light, which focuses on the themes of kindness and compassion. This story is about a young boy named Misun who learns how to help others and bring light to their life from Pet’a, a wise tribal elder who shows Misun the importance

For years, Jessie was a counselor for students in grades ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade. She wrote this story for students who struggled to understand their importance in the world. In October 2017, Jessie presented Pet’a Shows Misun Light in the traditional oral storytelling format at the Consider the Century Conference. It was amazing to hear the story told in this format because that was how Jessie originally created this story and it is a vital part of her culture. The story was well-received by everyone at the conference and was a great learning experience for all who attended. Since winning the Emerging Tribal Writer Award, Jessie has published Pet’a Shows Misun Light with Mascot Books. I highly recommend this story regardless of your age because it has an incredible message that anyone can be reminded of the important role that they play in the world. Read an excerpt from Jessie’s award-winning submission here. I had the opportunity to meet with Jessie and her family after the conference. She shared the following insights into her story. How did your cultural background inspire your story? My culture highly influenced my story. I had the privilege to grow up with a lot of our Lakota cultural teachings and ceremonies that were passed down to me through my parents and grandparents. Most of the teachings that were included in the story were teachings that were given to me at different times of my life as a young child and adolescent. Is Pet’a Show Misun the Light based on any other story or stories you’ve heard? No, the main lesson of the story came to me through a dream. The scene in the story where Pet’a shows Misun people’s different lights and explains to him about hurt was something that I had been told in a dream. I was in outer space just like the char-

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acter Misun was and an older man had shared with me the reason why people do hurtful things. In our Lakota culture, dreams play a big role. They are used for many different things like giving messages and teaching lessons. I have been blessed with many different dreams since I was young where I was shown many different lessons. This particular lesson was one that resonated with me and came at a point in my life where it was extremely helpful in my career as an elementary school counselor. Who is Pet’a and what does he represent? Pet’a is a wise character in the story that shares a very valuable lesson. He is older man that comes to help teach Misun. Lakota people value our elders because of the vast knowledge and wisdom they carry with them. In our culture we also believe that the Star People hold a lot of our wisdom. For centuries, our ancestors relied on the guidance from the Star People to help navigate them in their journey. Pet’a, be an old man from the Star People, represents the ancient and wise spirits. In a sense, he is helping guide Misun in his own spiritual journey as a young boy. What are the major themes that you want your readers to take away from this story? I want readers to be able to remember that we all come from the same place. It doesn’t matter the color of our skin, how much money we have, the language we speak, or even our different interests, we all are connected because of the one source we come from. I believe we know this as young children, but we learn from modeled behavior around us. I also want readers to understand why some people’s behaviors (perhaps someone they love) are the way they are. It’s usually because they have experienced hurt and don’t know how to forgive and forget how special they are. I hope that readers are able to be inspired to remember how special they are and to also help make our world a better place by helping those around them that are hurting.

The reasons why people are sad or mean are very relatable, how did you decide on the specific problems that lead the characters to be sad or mean? I’ve had hundreds of little ones walk through my door and these seemed to be some popular themes. There are so many families that suffer from abandonment, abuse, bullying, and drug/alcohol use. Who is your audience? I initially had written this book for children in the elementary level. But, soon after I realized that the story can apply to all ages because it reminds us all of lessons that we all knew when we were born but unfortunately have forgotten. How did you hear about the award and what made you decide to apply? I actually heard about the contest when I took some of my students on a college campus tour. They were able to sit in on a class where Sarah Hernandez was presenting and she shared information about the contest with the class. I have always lacked confidence in my potential to become a published writer. That day when I heard of the contest something in me told me to submit the story. I figured I had nothing to lose by submitting it. What I have learned since submitting the story is the lesson of when you have that inner voice or instinct to do something, always follow it because you will more than likely have more opportunities open for you. What is your next writing project? I have a couple of ideas for more children’s books. I definitely want to continue writing with them in mind. I think that is where we can make the biggest impact in our society, by teaching children at a young age about values. I want to continue to incorporate my teachings from my parents and grandparents into the stories. The values I have been taught growing up has helped me have a great outlook on life. I want to have many more young ones have the same experience.

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Excerpt from Pet’a Shows Misun Light Jessie Taken Alive-Rencountre He saw some people standing with bright, blue lights in them. He also saw a lot of people kneeling, crouched to the ground with their heads down. He said “I see some people with lights and some people that don’t have any lights.” Pet’a then smiled and said “Are you sure? Look closer at the ones who are kneeling.” Misun looked closer and realized that the ones that were kneeling did have lights! But they were very dim and hard to see. Pet’a asked “Why do you think some have brighter lights and some have dimmer lights?” Misun looked at those with the dim lights. He realized that they looked very sad, lost, scared, and angry. He looked at Pet’a and realized something that he hadn’t realized before. Suddenly everything made sense! He knew that those with the dim lights were those like Lucy, the kids that hurt Lucy, Thomas’ dad, Thomas, Sammie’s mom, Sammie, people who want to solve things through fighting or war, and last but not least, his mom. Misun slowly said “Those with the dim lights forgot that they too have lights. They are sad. They are the ones that are angry, lost, sick, and scared.” Pet’a smiled and said “you are right grandson. We are all born into the world with bright lights.

*** They are so bright that people are drawn to us. Over the years, others have hurt us with their words and actions. We see so much hurt go on and we begin to forget how beautiful we are.” Misun looked around and saw how many people on earth were hurting. Everything made sense now. It was like he was given new eyes to understand. They act out of hurt. Pet’a watched as Misun observed the many people. He saw Misun’s eyes swell with tears. Pet’a pointed to some of the people and said “Grandson, look at those with the bright lights. They too have experienced a lot of hurt. The only difference between those with the dim lights and those with the bright lights is choice. Those with the bright lights have made a choice to remember how special they are. They have made a choice to treat others with kindness and love. They chose to have compassion and to forgive. They chose happiness. They remember where we come from. You see grandson, we all come from the same place. We all are born with the bright lights. Those with the dim lights are not bad people. There are no bad people, only people with a lot of hurt.

Contributor Notes Leah Alsaker is a recent graduate of SDSU. She grew up on a farm, where she fell in love with the prairies and people of South Dakota. Nowadays, Leah is busy writing poetry for her thesis and pursuing a Master in Fine Arts in creative writing at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She hopes to stay in the Midwest and teach English to middle school students after she graduates in 2019. Jodi Andrews lives in Brookings, SD with her husband, Joel, and teaches English at SDSU. She recently had her debut chapbook of poetry The Shadow of Death accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press. She has had poetry published in Pasque Petals, Oakwood, Anomaly Literary Journal, The Remembered Arts Journal, Calmus Journal, and others. S. D. Bassett has long been established in South Dakota, where she is currently a licensed registered nurse and lecturer at SDSU. Her home is an acreage near Volga, where she lives with her husband and raised their nowgrown sons. Writing has been an important pastime and job requirement, with poetry outweighing professional writing on the enjoyment scale. Megan Baule has an M.F.A in creative writing. She teaches through the Center for Statewide E-Learning at Northern State University. With three small children in her family, her greatest desire is an uninterrupted nap in a warm corner with a book of poetry and a fireplace. Teodora Buba is a visual artist currently living in Rapid City, SD. She graduated from the National University of Fine Arts in Bucharest, Romania with a Masters in Visual Arts and a Fine Art Teaching Degree. She has exhibited in London, Denmark, Japan, Texas, and, in South Dakota, the Dahl Arts Center in Rapid City, the Museum of Visual Materials in Sioux Falls, and most recently at the Sioux Falls Design Center. James Cihlar’s new book, The Shadowgraph, is forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press in 2019. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and he earned his PhD from the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He is the author of the poetry books Rancho Nostalgia (Dream Horse Press, 2013), Undoing (Little Pear Press, 2008), and the chapbooks A Conversation with My Imaginary Daughter (Bloom, 2013) and Metaphysical Bailout (Pudding House, 2010). His writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, and Nimrod. His website is jimcihlar.com.

Heidi Czerwiec, poet and essayist, is the author of the recently-released poetry collection Conjoining and the forthcoming lyric essay collection Fluid States, the winner of Pleiades Press’ 2018 Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose, and also the editor of North Dakota Is Everywhere: An Anthology of Contemporary North Dakota Poets. After more than a decade teaching at UND, she now lives in Minneapolis, where she is Senior Poetry Editor with Poetry City, USA and mentors with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Visit her at heidiczerwiec.com. Cass Dalglish is a Minnesota fiction writer, prose poet, and former broadcast journalist. Her books include the novels Nin (Spinsters Ink) and Sweetgrass (a Minnesota Book Award finalist), and a book-length prose poem Humming the Blues (Calyx Books). Humming the Blues is a jazz interpretation of Sumerian cuneiform signs in Enheduanna’s Song to Inanna (Ancient Iraq, 2350 BCE). She is currently working on two novels—the work-inprogress Castles in Spain, and a fiction project from which the piece in this issue is. She is a fiction mentor in the Augsburg University MFA program. Carol L. Deering has twice received the Wyoming Arts Council Poetry Fellowship (2016, judge Rebecca Foust; 1999, judge Agha Shahid Ali). Her poetry appears in online and traditional journals, and in the recent anthology Blood, Water, Wind & Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers. Carol has lived in Wyoming for thirty-five years. https://www.caroldeering.com Katherine Edgren has spent summers for nearly forty years at her cabin (“Grenjham”—freely translated from Swedish as “little green house in the great green woods”) on Cass Lake in Minnesota. Katherine’s first book, The Grain Beneath the Gloss, published by Finishing Line Press, is available along with her two chapbooks, Long Division and Transports. Katherine served as a City Council member in Ann Arbor, raised funds for the ACLU, and was a project manager on research and intervention projects in Detroit. She’s a retired social worker and lives in Dexter, Michigan. Robert Klein Engler lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Robert holds degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana and the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has received Illinois Arts Council awards for his poetry. His recent article, “Karl Bodmer’s Hat,” appeared in Great Plains Quarterly. Tyler Gates lives in Watertown, SD. His writing has been published in venues such as Whistling Shade, Skullmore, and Reader’s Digest. Tyler is also the author of the chapbook More Than Letters, Less Than Words.

Corinna German writes creative non-fiction and poetry with the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness of Wyoming and Montana over her shoulder. Her work has appeared in Blood, Water, Wind, and Stone: An Anthology of Wyoming Writers (Sastrugi Press), Manifest West: Women of the West (Western Press Books), High Plains Register, Nature Writing magazine, Haiku Journal, and A Quiet Courage: Journal of Micro-fiction and Poetry. When she’s not adventuring the backcountry, you can find her in Laurel, Montana with her husband and four boys. Shaina Harris is an artist originally from Las Vegas, NV. She earned her B.A. in Art Education at SDSU. Her artistic processes draw from a variety of influences focusing on expressing serenity and vulnerability found in nature and the human form. Drawn to materials that allow for exploration and experimentation, she uses a variety of media including Intaglio printmaking, graphite, charcoal, India ink, and watercolor. Mary Alice Haug’s memoir Daughters of the Grasslands was published in 2014. Her work has been widely published and anthologized in River Teeth, South Dakota Review, Notre Dame Magazine, Passager Magazine, Platte Valley Review, Passager Celebrates 21 Years, Because I Love er: Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond, Peril and Promise: Essays on Community in South Dakota and Beyond, Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West, and on the National Parks website. She was twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Haug taught for thirty years in the English Department at SDSU. Originally from Minnesota, Bridget Henderson graduated from Edgeley High School in North Dakota in 2015. She is currently a junior at SDSU pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English and minors in History and French Studies. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in publishing for both writing and designing aspects. D.A. (Daisy) Hickman grew up in Pierre, SD, and has lived in Brookings for ten years now. Much of her literary work explores her prairie roots and the powerful sense of place inspired by the Dakota landscape. Her first book, William Morrow, was about lifestyle, culture, and landscape: the timeless wisdom she’d managed to glean from her humble, yet, beautiful, surroundings. She published her first book of poetry in 2017. Her blog is SunnyRoomStudio. Patrick Hicks is the author of several books, including The Collector of Names, Adoptable, This London, and the critically acclaimed novel The Commandant of Lubizec. He has received grants and fellowships from the Bush Artist Foundation, the Loft Literary Center, the South Dakota Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was recently a finalist for an Emmy in the category of Writer—Short Form. A dual-citizen of Ireland and America, he is the Writer-in-Residence at Augustana University as well as a faculty member at the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College. He grew up in the Twin Cities.

Natalie Hilden is nineteen years old and currently a freshman journalism and studio arts student at SDSU. She is originally from a small town in northern Minnesota and loves being a part of the Great Plains region because there is always something to gain inspiration from. She believes she lives in a beautiful part of the country and can look right outside her window and find natural beauty to spark her interest. Dani Johannesen grew up in Huron, South Dakota, and earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Dakota in 2012, where she studied creative writing and Great Plains literature. She is the co-editor of Iconic Sports Venues: Persuasion in Public Spaces (Peter Lang, 2017), which includes chapters on the Huron Arena in Huron, SD, and the World’s Only Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. Her creative and scholarly work has appeared in Brevity, Midwestern Gothic, South Dakota Women: Influence, Action, and Voice, The Journal of Ecocriticism, The Nautilus, and elsewhere. Originally from Brookings, South Dakota, Allison Kantack has always lived in the Midwest. This May, she will graduate from SDSU with a degree in English Writing. Allison also studied Theatre and served State University Theatre both on stage and off. Her favorite things to write are poetry, prose, and monologues. Besides writing, Allison enjoys reading, playing the piano, and figure skating. She hopes to one day become an editor or otherwise surround herself with books. Adrian Koesters has lived in Nebraska for over three decades. Her volumes of poetry, Many Parishes and Three Days with the Long Moon, were published by Baltimore’s BrickHouse Books, and her short nonfiction work on trauma and prayer, Healing Mysteries, was published by Paulist Press. Her first novel, Union Square, is forthcoming by Apprentice House Press in 2018. She currently is the research editor for the Vice Chancellor of Research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Brittany Kopman is an SDSU student. She grew up in northern Minnesota and has lived in South Dakota for six years. She is a published writer and illustrator, as well as a horse trainer. She plans to continue pursuing success in all three arenas after graduation this May. Jordan Larson is a photographer based in Ames, Iowa. She currently finishing up her undergraduate degree in Political Science at Iowa State University. In her work, Jordan hopes to document both the unusual and mundane in an attempt to discover insights about what it means to live in a constantly changing environment. She will be attending the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University next fall for her graduate degree in Photography and Cinematography. Her works can be seen on www.jordansjourneysphoto.com

Adam Luebke is an ESL instructor at SDSU Brookings and Ashford University, and holds an MFA in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design in Los Angeles. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flyway, Valley Voices, The Bangalore Review, and The Write Place at the Write Time. Mariah Macklem is an undergraduate student who will graduate with a B.A. in English in 2020. She has moved around the Midwest most of her life, having been born in Iowa, growing up in Nebraska, and now attending college in South Dakota. Mariah has been writing as a hobby her whole life, starting with ghost stories when she was little, and wants to continue onto a career of writing. Cheyenne Marco grew up on a Minnesota poultry farm and finds inspiration for writing in her rural upbringing. She teaches at USD, works on the South Dakota Review, does outreach for Friends of the Big Sioux River, and fantasizes about sleep. Her works have appeared in Lake Region Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Turk’s Head Review, and Prairie Winds. Suzanne Rogier Marshall was born and raised in Minnesota. She taught English to middle school students for nearly forty years, publishing a book on teaching poetry. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Heartwood Literary Journal, Up North Literary Journal, Portage Magazine, Watershed Review and other journals and anthologies. She is the author of Blood Knot, a chapbook published by Porkbelly Press in 2015. After retiring, Suzanne moved to the New Hampshire mountains, where she enjoys hiking and canoeing with her husband. Kent Meyers is the author of a memoir about growing up on a Minnesota farm as well as four books of fiction, most recently Twisted Tree, which won a Society of Midland Authors award and a High Plains Book Award and was translated into French. Meyers has twice been included on The New York Times list of notable books and has published an essay in Harper’s about the search for dark matter. Having migrated west of the Missouri in 1980, he lives with his wife in Spearfish, South Dakota, and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program. Scott F. Parker is a writer in Montana. Meghan Peterson loved college at SDSU so much that she never left. After completing a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2002, she earned a Master of Science in counseling in 2005. By day, she serves as a professional academic advisor at SDSU, and by night (and weekends), she paints. Born and raised in the Midwest, she currently lives in Brookings with her husband, Shawn, and the world’s worst studio cat, Clarence.

Adrian S. Potter writes poetry and short fiction. He is the author of the fiction chapbook Survival Notes ( erven Barva Press, 2008) and winner of the 2010 Southern Illinois Writers Guild Poetry Contest. Some publication credits include North American Review, Jet Fuel Review, and Kansas City Voices. A Minnesota resident, he blogs about creativity and motivation at http://adrianspotter.com/. In 2012, Jessie Rasche moved to South Dakota with her husband and son, and her mom moved here soon after. Jessie has been painting the subtle and extreme Great Plains landscapes ever since. One of her other focus areas is painting moms and babies bonding, especially during those simple moments that are easily forgotten. Her artwork has been collected privately from Maine to California, as well as Canada and the UK, and is in two South Dakota public collections. Erika Saunders lives in South Dakota with her husband and three children. Her poetry has appeared in Cholla Needles, Watershed, Pasque Petals and Oakwood, which awarded her the 2017 Anita Bahr Award for Outstanding Contributor. Terry Savoie has been a resident of Iowa for the past five decades. During that time, he has had more than three hundred and fifty poems published in literary journals including The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, North American Review, Cutthroat and American Journal of Poetry among many others. A selection, Reading Sunday, recently won the Bright Hill Competition and will be published this spring. Lillian Schwartzrock was born and raised in South Dakota. She now attends SDSU, exploring the humanities through a major in English and minors in Film Studies, History, and Religion. Her love of art and storytelling will continue to inspire her endeavors after graduation. Jennie Scislow is an Interior Design student at SDSU, graduating in May 2018. Studio Arts and Spanish are added minors to fulfill her passion for the arts and travel. Acrylic is her preferred media by which she uses identifiable objects to help navigate the viewer through abstract spaces. She is a member of the Women’s Soccer and Track teams, the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, and Interior Design Club at SDSU. Jennie originates from the Twin Cities. Richard Skorupski returned to his native New Jersey with his wife, Cheryl, after a twenty-one year career in the US Navy. Ten years later, the dense population of New Jersey encouraged them to find a more peaceful, friendly environment for his second retirement. Since 2004, Richard and Cheryl have happily resided in Spink County, South Dakota. Richard’s love for South Dakota and appreciation for its people are portrayed through his third career as the author of his four novels centering around the fictional small town of Helen in rural NE South Dakota.

Alex Stolis was orphaned in Duluth and lives in Minneapolis. Recent chapbooks include Justice for all (Conversation Paperpress, UK) based on the last words of Texas Death Row inmates, Without Dorothy, There is No Going Home (ELJ Publications), an e-chapbook, From an iPod found in Canal Park; Duluth, MN (Right Hand Pointing), and John Berryman is Dead (White Sky e-books). His chapbook Perspectives on a Crime Scene and a fulllength photo/poetry collection, Pop. 1280, are forthcoming from Grey Borders books. Evan Sutherland is from the Twin Cities of Minnesota and is currently pursuing a degree in English and writing at SDSU. Music is a tremendous influence on his work; in his writing process, he likes to listen to Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Eddie Vedder, and many other great artists. The piece in this issue was inspired by the Beat counterculture of the 1960s. Cliff Taylor is an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. He has written a book on Native spirituality, The Memory of Souls, a book of short stories about the stand for water in Standing Rock, Standing Rock Stories, and a memoir about coming-of-age in Nebraska, Special Dogs, all of which are currently unpublished. His dream is to see those books published and to use his words to help his people. He currently resides in New Orleans, where he is hard at work on his next book. Codi Vallery-Mills is an award-winning agricultural journalist who was born and raised on the shortgrass prairies of western South Dakota. Mills graduated from SDSU in 2003 with a degree in agricultural journalism, which she has used since graduating as an editor and reporter for several agricultural publications in the U.S. She is also the author of a children’s series called Husker the Mule. Mills operates her family’s sixthgeneration ranch along with her husband, daughter, and parents. Julie Wakeman-Linn was born and raised in Brookings, South Dakota and is a proud graduate of the Brookings High School class of 1976. She writes about prairies, the Serengeti and the Great Plains. Julie edited the Potomac Review for twelve years. Her most recent publication is “A Quarter for the Taj Mahal” in Flash Fiction Magazine. Her novel, Chasing the Leopard, Finding the Lion, a finalist for Barbara Kingsolver’s Bellwether Prize, was published by Mkuki Na Nyota in 2012. Her short story collection was a finalist for the WWPH 2014 Fiction prize. Miles Way is a senior English Major at Minot State University. As the son of an Air Force pilot, Miles has developed a fascination for military aviation, and is a licensed private pilot himself. He currently resides in his hometown of Minot, North Dakota, where he balances school life with his hobbies of cooking, reading, writing, and cycling.

O. Alan Weltzien, an English professor in Montana, has published two chapbooks and nine books, including three collections of poetry, most recently Rembrandt in the Stairwell (2016). Weltzien has spent time hiking in Paha Sapa (Black Hills) and paddling a reach of the Missouri River below Gavin’s Point Dam. Weltzien has published articles in Great Plains Quarterly as well as two books with University of Nebraska Press. He still skis in winter and scrambles peaks in summer. Miriam Weinstein completed a two-year apprenticeship program in poetry at the Loft Literary Center (Minneapolis) in 2013. Her chapbook, Twenty Ways of Looking, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016; her poetry appears in several anthologies and journals. She holds two Masters of Education degrees (Adult and Family Life Education) from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Arts (Dramatic Arts) from the University of Winnipeg. Weinstein has lived in Minnesota for close to forty years. She enjoys hiking and birdwatching, especially in the North Shore near Lake Superior. Jeff West’s dad snatched him away from two huge brown bears after he disappeared while setting up camp in Yellowstone at age eight. He was just taking pictures with his Brownie Box camera. Since surviving that encounter, he has been fearlessly taking photos his entire life while traveling the world. Both sets of Jeff’s greatgrandparents and grandparents lived in the Great Plains states before eventually migrating west. He has lived in this region for twenty-three years and tries to learn what he can about where they lived and capture images that might reflect those times and his heritage.

OAKWOOD | 2018

THE 2018 ANITA (SARKEES) BAHR AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTOR IS ALLISON KANTACK.

SDSU English Department In Memoriam

Dr. Margaret Duggan

Dr. Mildred Flynn, SND

OAKWOOD | 2018 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 | Hearing Discord − D.A. Hickman

Wanaka Jordan Larson

Sweet Home, Oregon Cliff Taylor

Immersion II Jenny Scislow

Halfway to the Master of Arts Jodi Andrews

Bio Jessie Rasche

Poor, Underappreciated Adjective Leah Alsaker After Mathea Harvey’s “First Person Fabulous”

How to Speak the Crocodile’s Name Leah Alsaker

The Handyshop Cliff Taylor

Urban Decay Adrian S. Potter

In the City Teodora Buba

Infinite Brittany Kopman

Insomnia Adrian S. Potter

Morning Poem #3 Scott F. Parker

Final Approach Miles Way

Waiting Erika Saunders

Lessons Megan Baule

Tea Party Shaina Harris

Not Pointless S. D. Bassett

Moon Tryst Near Sundance Carol Deering

Human Geography Allison Kantack

Human Nature Allison Kantack

Trust

Carrier Jessie Rasche

Daisy Bridget Henderson

Preparatory Study – Girl in the Wood, c. 1642 Cass Dalglish

Field Alex Stolis

The Blizzard and the Lost School Bus Rick Skorupski

Whiteout Erika Saunders

Office Prayer Adrian S. Potter

Cabin in the Minnesota Woods Katherine Edgren

Watching the Fog Roll In Meghan Peterson

Reaching for Dusk Lillian Schwartzrock

Without a Struggle Adam Luebke

Titanic James Cihlar

Welsh Willow Jeff West

Over "Koi" Ming Natalie Hilden

Archimedesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Principle of Buoyancy Cheyenne Marco

How to Love the World Leah Alsaker

Ronnie

Two Beats Tonight Shaina Harris

The muse Miriam Weinstein

Postcard From My Last Night as a South Dakota Farm Girl Leah Alsaker After Postcard to I. Kaminsky

Monty Hotel Bar Alex Stolis

Cross x3 Alex Stolis

Franklin Bennett: Before He left New York City Evan Sutherland

Social Media Validation S. D. Bassett

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A Thing or Two About a Thing or Two Tyler Gates

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Departed Adrian Koesters

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Deisem Bridget Henderson

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A Nice Place to Bury Myself Alive Mariah Macklem

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At Trail's End Lillian Schwartzrock

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Three Samples from DECANTS Heidi Czerwiec

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Summer Discoveries in the Land of Birdbath and Beyond Katherine Edgren

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The Storm, Her Blood Carol Deering

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Web Bridget Henderson

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Advice Kent Meyers

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My Grandpa Chief Standing Bear Cliff Taylor

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