M iscellany VOLUME LVII ISSUE 1
Georgia Southern’s Magazine of the Arts
MISCELLANY 1
STAFF
Magazines Editor-In-Chief ARIELLE COAMBES Editor DUSTIN TILLIGKEIT Production Manager JOSE GIL Design Editor MATT VEAL Designer BRITTNI FAVORITE Designer KELLY SLYFIELD Designer ALEXANDRA TOBIA Business Manager CHLOE DOUGLAS Distribution Manager BRADLEY YORK Distribution Assistant MANUEL GIRBAL Distribution Assistant MARCELO SANDOVAL Marketing Manager MARISSA MARTIN Projects Coordinator AYANNA BEYAH Public Relations Coordinator PEYTON CALLANAN Branding Coordinator EMILY SKOLROOD
OFFICE OF STUDENT MEDIA Interim Director KERRY GREENSTEIN
The Miscellany is copyrighted 2012 by Miscellany and Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, Ga. It is printed by South Georgia Graphics, Claxton, Ga. The Miscellany is operated by GSU students who are members of Student Media, a Georgia Southern student-led organization operating through the Dean of Student Affairs Office and the Division of Student Affairs & Enrollment Management. The magazine is produced three times a year by GSU students for the Georgia Southern University community. Opinions expressed herein are those of the student writers and editors and DO NOT reflect those of the faculty, staff, administration of GSU, Student Media Advisory Board nor the University System of Georgia. Partial funding for this publication is provided by the GSU Activities Budget Committee. Advertisements fund the remaining costs. Advertising inquiries may be sent to Office of Student Media, PO Box 8001, or by calling the Business Office at 912-478-5418. Inquiries concerning content should be sent to Magazine EIC at 912-478-0565 or by emailing magseditor@georgiasouthern.edu. All students are allowed to have one free copy of this publication. Additional copies cost $1 each and are available at the Office of Student Media in the Williams Center. Unauthorized removal of additional copies from a distribution site will constitute theft under Georgia law, a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine and/or jail time 2 Fall 2013
COVER DESIGN
Transit
Alexander Smith Graphic design major Digital artwork “I was born in Colorado Springs on April 2nd, 1992. Because my dad was in the military, I did a lot of traveling in my childhood, especially around Europe and America. This exposure to different cultures fostered my interest in the arts. I dabbled in traditional arts until my freshman year of high school, when I started teaching myself to use Adobe Photoshop. From that point on I developed my skill with a number of digital design programs, such as Cinema 4D, Terragen, and Adobe Illustrator. I am currently studying Graphic Design at Georgia Southern. My designs fall within a number of genres, but I’m especially passionate about science fiction and space themes.
The concept for this piece is a large structure used for faster-than-light travel, a staple of space sci-fi. It was inspired by a number of stories that share this concept. The design for the actual structure was intended to be organic to imply a very futuristic civilization that merges aesthetics and functionality. About a week was spent modeling it in Cinema 4D. The planet it orbits was created in Terragen over a period of days. Finally, I took the two elements to Photoshop and spent another few days doing things such as adding the stars in the background, brushing in the lighting for the structure and planet, and adding the spaceships in transit.” MISCELLANY 3
EDITOR'S LETTER I would like to thank all of you brave enough – and crazy enough – to submit your amazing work to the Miscellany. Without you, this publication could never exist. As a fiction writer and a past submitter, I understand the difficulties and stress that comes with this process. You have to pick out your best work from a dozen other pieces and then you have to wait for weeks at a time while it’s judged. It is a stressful process, but in the end, all of that is worth it. It is an awesome feeling to see your work published and I am very happy that all of you took the leap and sent in your work. This issue of the Miscellany is somewhat different from past issues. That I am the editor is not the only piece of newness to accompany this publication. Going into this semester, everyone who worked on this issue was absolutely dedicated to improving the magazine wherever possible. We wanted to do this not only to produce a quality magazine, but also to give our submitters something to be proud of. We wanted to host an even larger release party to honor all of our submitters. We wanted to build a website where every submitter could be featured, rather than the small few we are able to print in this edition. And we wanted the magazine to be produced with the highest standards of quality in mind. In order to do this, we decided to enact submission fees. I understand that many of you may have found it difficult to submit because of the fees and our new process, but please understand how necessary it is. With your help, we are able to stretch our limited resources even further and give you guys the celebration you deserve. We wanted to create a publication that reflected how much effort you have all put into these submissions, so we chose to strive for better and we have achieved it. As is typical of any project as complex as this, there were hiccups in the process. As always, the Miscellany is dependent on the work and creativity of the students of Georgia Southern. You guys have certainly delivered and in order to present your work in the best possible way, my coworkers and I have worked hard to deliver a publication that you can be proud to be in, so I hope you enjoy it. It has been my goal since I started working with Student Media in 2011 to work on this magazine and seeing all the wonderful art and writing that goes into it makes me immensely proud to present the fall 2013 Miscellany Magazine of the Arts. Sincerely,
Dustin E. Tilligkeit Miscellany Magazine of the Arts Editor 4 Fall 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS Student & FACULTY Work 6. The River Alexander Arnold
21. Grandpa Abbie Hooks
36. Six o’ Clock Aleyna Rentz
7. The Wrist Sara Adams
22. Daily Worship Kaylee Johnson
38. SuperMoon Jeff Schmuki
8. Meek Sara Adams
23. Bad Taste Kiera Johnson
39. The One Who Got Away Melita Smith
9. Bonding Ashley Alabo
24. Leaping Turtles Erika Jordan
40. Zealot Will Price
10. Rocephin Kendall Arakawa
25. Hidden Treasure Shatonna Leverette
42. Spirit Bear Ileana Silivasi
11. Zaynsational Courtney Bath
26. Bridge to Washington State Kayleh-Marie Law
43. The Trifocal Snapshot Toni Todd
12. Koi Series Brooch Haley Coker
27. Independent Woman Shatonna Leverette
44. Changeling Armond Snowden
28. The Other Side Tasha Lund
46. Togetherness and Loneliness Toni Todd
14. Moon TeKeya Carter
29. Driven Alysia Marion
47. The Longest Mile Brandon Warnock
15. Dat Thorax Chase Chalker
30. The Owl and the Rose Mallory Morgan
48. Winter Still Life Brandon Warnock
16. Changeling Mathew Dean
31. My Monster Jessie Reese
49. Worth Less Carlie Ayn Williams
18. Infidel Nadia Dreid
32. Bourbon Kimeko McCoy
50. Ursa Major Kalee Woodard
19. Curiosity Box Lindsay DeBlasio
34. Marbles Samantha Reid
20. Cuban Missile Crisis Lindsay DeBlasio
35. Windows Aleyna Rentz
13. The Calm Before the Storm TeKeya Carter
JUDGES 28. 2D Art Elsie Hill
36. Fashion Judge Ashley Newsome
30. Photography Judge Jessica Hines
38. Nonfiction Judge Danny Bauer
32. Digital Art Judge Santanu Majumdar
40. Poetry Judge Zach Bush
34. 3D Art Jason McCoy
42. Fiction Judge Jared Sexton
MISCELLANY 5
The River
Alexandra Arnold 2D art Oil on Canvas
6 Fall 2013
The Wrist The Wrist Sara Adams 2D design Short nonfiction
Your blood pulses through your body, from your heart, to your heart. You bring two fingers down the arm stopping just before the hand. The pulse, the throb, that movement beneath the very tips of your fingers proves you are alive. The skin you feel is soft to the touch. It’s cold in the winter and neutral in the summer. In rage, the veins will reveal themselves to you in the green and blue tints they seem to be. Sometimes those colors are seen even with the subtle limpness it can have. A bracelet loosely surrounds it, depending on the circumstances, a scar can cover it. It can be delicate as with a lady or firm like a life depends on it. It connects the tightness of an arm with the mobility of the hands. It can be broken, it can be sprained, it can be gone in an instant. It is what allows lovers to swing hands, two friends to high five, to form balance during an exercise, to maintain your time, or even a parent to reach for a child. Most people see the hands before the wrist, but I see the wrist before the hands. The wrist reveals your life through the veins that meet at the surface. Some tarnish that surface with objects and ink, while some celebrate its importance with a simple thrust in the air with joy. For my strength, I reach for my wrist. With two fingers against that delicate skin between the forearm and the palm of my hand, I can feel my pulse. Slow or fast, limp or firm, scarred or not, broken or fixed, the wrist reminds me that I’m alive.
MISCELLANY 7
Meek
Sara Adams 2D design Oil on canvas
8 Fall 2013
Bonding Ashley Alabo 2D art major
Digital artwork
MISCELLANY 9
Rocephin Kendall Arakawa Nursing major Poetry
A darkening morning awoken so selenic. Down he drove me to the clinic With my nose buckled into tears. I got a shot in the left shoulder and He petted my hair while I cried: An elegy of getting older- now forgotten fears And though sick- we were- surrounded, We founded (he and me, his afferent moll) A daring to meet our staurolite burning And tanzanite Thursday morning stroll: Caring and tipsy with one and the other. And the dawn we, though with proffering, stole.
10 Fall 2013
Zaynsational Courtney Bath
Studio art major Colored pencil
MISCELLANY 11
Koi Series Brooch Haley Coker Art major Enamel on copper, sterling silver
12 Fall 2013
The Calm Before the Storm
TeKeya Carter
Studio art major Acrylic paint
MISCELLANY 13
Moon
TeKeya Carter Studio art Pencil
14 Fall 2013
Dat Thorax
Chase Chalker
Journalism major Photography
MISCELLANY 15
Changeling Mathew Dean English education Short fiction
It wasn’t so bad being rushed into my room almost every day. I did many things. My favorite place to go was through the woods. In that small room I was able to incorporate the noises, some from my mother in the other room, laughing, snorting, and others from a man with an unfamiliar voice, into my surroundings; they were birds and other animals, loving what they have. There were no woods where I lived, the most we had was a tangled, irregular mesh of trailers speckling an area where even grass did not grow. So I would go there, and I would walk through them until after a while, the air was so electrified you knew it was magic. I would arrive at an insurmountable row of thorns. I would hear noises from the inside of it. Gasps and roars and moans and sighs, they were the noises of the Fae folk: ogres and trolls and fairies and goblins. I would know this horror, and yet I resolved to go through it. Each time though, before I could go through, my sister would be home from school, and she would come get me, and we would come out of my room and there would be no man and there will just be mother smiling, eyes red. We would go on with the day like every family. Mother would talk to my sister about school, and I would tell them about where I went on my adventure that day, and then my sister will talk about boys and how uninteresting they were and how she’s waiting for a man. Mother would smile, and say something maternal; we were a happy family, nevermind mom’s shaky hands. There was one time I left my room after being told to stay in; I don’t remember why
16 Fall 2013
I did anymore. I looked around and saw no one, but heard noises. I was instantly taken to the woods. As I walked, I got closer and closer to the source of the noises, the wall of thorns. I stood, hesitant, I heard the noises of the supernatural creatures on the other side and then I took a deep breath. And then I began to put my hand to the thorns, I smelt a strong musk mixed with sugar, and then I heard my mother’s voice, “What are you doing out here?!” I was standing in front of her door, she was frantic, and had the door only slightly ajar. The room was smoky, and I could see a shirtless man through the crack. He stood looking at me, he had a beard, his body was hairy and he was an average size, and I can remember his face, I just can’t describe it, but he had a beard, he was handsome, and his eyes were able to be clearly seen through the smoke. They weren’t red like my mother’s. He had to have been in his 30’s or so, a good ten years younger than mother. She took me by the arm and brought me back to my room, and I heard the man say, “Be gentle with him, he’s just lonely.” I remember being shocked, hearing a man’s voice and now knowing the face too. She sighed, put me in my room, kissed me on the head, looked me in the eyes, closed the door and went back. I was too scared to go back to the woods. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I heard his voice again. I pushed my ear up to the wall and I would listen. I thought about what his life was like. Did he work in town, in the city? Did he have a family? If so, why is he here instead? Did he like the zoo? What was
his favorite color? Does he wear ties? Would he help me get through the woods? I was infatuated with the man and thought about him often, but never brought him up. I was sitting in the living room one day, playing with some toys, when my mother said she needed to go to town and discuss things with him, and get the child support check, and asked for my sister to watch me. She didn’t mind, she never did. We loved each other. I brought her to the woods a few times, but she never heard the noises. After mom left, my sister went to her room. After a while she came out. She was dressed and made up. She looked beautiful, and I told her so. She smiled, and then asked me to go into my room, I asked why, she didn’t answer me, but she told me to go to the woods. So I went in my room, and I heard her get on the phone and call someone. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I heard it open and heard that man say hello to her. I immediately put my ear to the door, thrilled and hopeful. They talked for a while, she giggled nervously, he laughed confidently, and then I heard them go in her room. I thought about him, and the questions I would ask. I thought that my sister would let me speak to him, so I walked out and went towards her room. I smelled the same smell as the time when I went to mother’s room. It brought me to the woods. I heard noises. I saw the wall of thorns, and I felt confident from my belief in what was unknown and finding the answers, I pushed in. The smell was stronger, the noises were sharper, his eyes stared at me, the thorns tore at my skin. He was on top of her, both naked. It was like seeing an ogre atop a fairy. She was so pretty, he was so gruff, her eyes were so red, she did not react to my presence. I didn’t ask any questions, I closed the door and ran out of the woods so no fairy or ogre can get me. If you keep getting too close,
I would later learn, the Fae will take you. They are fascinated with human children, stealing them away because they cannot have their own. After they take you they leave behind are placement of you to live out your life, while you were a slave to the unknown. I will not go back there, that is not what I want. A few months later, mother yelled at my sister. She yelled and yelled and yelled and cried. The smell got stronger. I ignored it. I would hear his voice. I ignored it. I heard my sister’s voice. I ignored it. Mother would be gone each time. I kept out of the woods. I didn’t want to get caught. I wanted to go to a new place of my own accord, not because I was stolen away to it. My sister looked different. I ignored it, and so did mother. Then I was forced back into the woods. I was in my room. The man and the smell was there with my sister. The noises were there but I didn’t focus on them. Then, a noise I could not ignore, something guttural, I’m at the wall of thorns. They’re after me, the fairies and ogres and goblins and trolls know that I’ve been trying to get into their world and they want me as a slave. I hear another raucous noise that made me face what I’ve done. I looked for a way out. I heard a much deeper yell, a roar, and then I heard the front door slam. Are they in my home? I needed to hide. They wouldn’t look for me in the thorns. I pushed through and before I noticed, I was on the other side. I stood there, staring at my sister. She was slumped over outside her room, naked, bleeding from between her legs, her skin pale and her belly slightly swollen, yellow liquid coming from the side of her mouth. They knew what I did. I went through, and this is the consequence. They took her, and now I’ll never see her again.
MISCELLANY 17
Infidel
Nadia Dreid Journalism major Poetry you have built entire shrines to his mouth, living in a cathedral shaped of all his harsh words and discarded teeth. stop writing psalms about his tongue, prostrating yourself at his lips. he does not understand you are hanging your moon on him, this is sacrilege. neither he nor your god deserve that. his jaw you’ve made into a hollowed out ship you ride home from loneliness. on the sea of your insecurities, he is fresh water, scarce. how many pilgrimages have you made into his body? how often have you offered your burnt hopes to the holy space inside his throat? the way you breathe his name is blasphemy. i know you think burrowing yourself into the inside of his cheek each night is paradise. but when he swallows you whole, the false gods you found in his wisdom teeth will only prove wood to the fire in his belly.
18 Fall 2013
Curiosity Box
Lindsay DeBlasio
Art history and Spanish Ceramic
MISCELLANY 19
Curiosity Box Lindsay DeBlasio
Art history and Spanish Ceramic
20 Fall 2013
Grandpa Abbie Hooks English Poetry
I cried about you today it’s been awhile since I let it go I always think of you but I don’t let myself get to the point of sadness its been over 2 years 2 long years since you left since you went to heaven. I love you grandpa I always will I just wish that for one day, you could come back just a day twenty-four hours just so I could tell you I love you again I know you knew up until the moment you left I know you were in pain I don’t want you to be in pain I just don’t want to live without you you didn’t get to see me graduate you didn’t get to see my sister get married you won’t see me go through college you won’t meet your great-grandchildren and I know you would love to be here but I know you’re in a better place a place of joy a place of love it’s nights like these I wish I could join you to hug your neck to rejoice with you I know you may not be here physically but you’re in our hearts and grandpa, my mentor the man i want my husband to be I love you and I’ll see you soon.
MISCELLANY 21
Daily Worship Kaylee Johnson History Poetry
Daily Worship Cellphones are of the Devil. People worship them as they walk; With heads bowed like in prayer, praising the evil that is Blackberry.
22 Fall 2013
Bad Taste
Kiera Johnson Art
Ceramic and fired clay
MISCELLANY 23
Leaping Turtles
Erika Jordan
Graphic design major Tempera paint
24 Fall 2013
Hidden Treasure Shatonna Leverette Counselor Registrar’s Office Poetry
My heart goes out to the little field that has never been occupied How lovely are its flowers that sway from side to side So many people will ride by only to enjoy the view But no one ever has the time to stop and just walk through Nobody’s had a picnic there….nor lay there in the sun Through the blades of bright, green grass, no child has ever run If only someone would take the time.......what a treat they would receive The possibilities are endless! No! They’d never want to leave The moment they stepped inside, they’d immediately want to stay Such peace and serenity- only a fool would walk away Even the temperature is comfortable- always 70 degrees And every now and then, they’d feel a soft, refreshing breeze The soil is so rich and fertile, that anything planted there would grow But everybody rushes by, so how will they ever know? My heart goes out to the little field that has never been occupied But my heart goes out more to the people passing who don’t know that there’s a treasure inside
MISCELLANY 25
Bridge to Washington State Kayleh-Marie Law Art major Photography
26 Fall 2013
Independent Woman Shatonna Leverette Counselor Registrar’s Office Poetry
You always have to be strong even when weak is what you feel inside Telling yourself that everything’s okay, but knowing it is a lie Wondering… “Where did I go wrong?”…and….“Is it beyond repair?” But you’re forced to quickly dry your eyes and shout out, “I DON’T CARE!!” Pretending that you’re not bothered as they turn and walk away When in reality your heart is aching and begging them to stay Wanting to just LET IT GO and surrender to your heart Yet admitting to yourself that you don’t know where to start Being independent is all that you can do But praying for the day when the dependent one is you To have someone be there and you know that they are true Someone who will commit….. And stay….And not give up on you The person who can read your heart by looking in your eyes The one to whom you are special and treated like a prize Oh, Independent Woman......I know that it’s been hard But someday you will find THAT PLACE and finally let down your guard
MISCELLANY 27
The Other Side Tasha Lund
Studio art major Photography
28 Fall 2013
Driven
Alysia Marion Spanish and multimedia Poetry I became driven to be his main a slave to the lane drifting faster than the heartbeats I got listening to him chatter sweet nothing’s in my ear it didn’t matter if he was causing me to veer off the road or that I couldn’t quite see I was steering out of control because I was too caught up in the pretenses he presented when promising to nurture my mind body and soul So I never minded when his body sold me kindness wrapped neatly in linen sheets its so easy to lose sight of the destination when you’re busy sight seeing I couldn’t be more blind to the signs 30 more miles until I arrive at heartbreak and 60 before my soul aches but I speed up step on the gas because I believe if I pass the exits there’ll be one more that says meant to be and I’ll outlast all the trouble It’ll be worth it I’ll just have to double my efforts but I can’t quite concentrate with all the distractions I grip the steering wheel tighter but it’s not turning the way it should so I drastically slam on the breaks I swerve out of control until the shoulder and rail shoulder the mess I’ve made and I’m far from composed The wheels are still screeching and there’s steam seeping out of every crevice that can’t be consoled All glass is shattered and there’s still the matter that there’s nothing left we can salvage This wasn’t supposed to be a crash course but incidentally that’s what happened in the aftermath I should’ve been gauging his speed he wasn’t slowing down anytime soon but I proceeded to succeed he liked the body and style slowed down and pressed cruise control I was doing 50 miles over what I could control, just to keep up But looking back at the way I handled it It was only right that I ended up in the accident I tried to keep up with a speed demon Never going the speed limit Didn’t register to me that even if I caught up I couldn’t get him to go steady But the allure of his rev, smooth rides and the way he handled himself behind that wheel triggered my drive MISCELLANY 29
The Owl and the Rose Mallory Morgan
Studio art major Block print
30 Fall 2013
My Monster Jessie Reese Journalism major Nonfiction
Those first few days, my life went by in flashes. My friends surrounding my hospital bed in a circle, the harsh looks of concern on their faces, pulling the corners of their lips down. The monster in my chest beating on my ribcage, ripping me apart with every breath I took. A nurse smiling at me as she pushed the syringe into the tube that stretched the skin of my hand. The monster lost the fight against the morphine, lessening his bite to a dull nibble. The pale green eyes of my mother, tearing up as she rubbed my back and I screamed. I was hooked up to machine upon machine, one read my oxygen, and was constantly beeping, telling the doctors my levels were too low. One read my heartbeats, and left sticky pads and wires that even if I could move, I’d never escape from. One delivered fluids that made my skin puffy and had a small port that could hold the magic that quieted my monster. I had been in that small bed for a few days, but when my monster finally let go of me enough to go home, I had been stuck in those sheets that were constantly wet with fever, and paper-thin gowns that left little to the imagination for fifteen long days and sixteen longer nights. The first night was by far the worst. The monster had been yelling all that day, but he had waited to show me what he was really made of for that night. I felt him awaken and begged my mom to call the nurse. She said it was too early for another dose. The monster stretched his arms far too wide for my chest to hold, trying to break me, trying to rip me to pieces. He took hold of my lung and pulled. He won and his victory spilled out into my ribcage. I screamed over and over as tears spilled down my cheeks. My mother watched in horror as I begged and screamed until the nurse broke protocol and delivered salvation in a little syringe. She had quieted my monster, for now, but the damage had been done. He had taken part of my lung, and laughed as it died and my chest filled, making each thick gulp of air my body demanded the hardest struggle I’d ever have to endure. That night, during the battle, through the screams, I had decided to give up. A part of me whispered her surrender, let the monster win. Through the red-hot pain, it’s hard to see the other side. It’s hard to see that things will get better. It’s hard to think about what you’d leave behind. It’s hard to fight. Part of me, though, was waiting for something. Part of me knew that I had something worth waiting for. Something that was then speeding down an interstate, far too fast, in the pouring down rain. After that nurse quieted my monster, my head was a foggy mess. All it remembered was how to close my eyes, and let the warmth of my blood carry me away. When I awoke from my medicated, mutated sleep, the room was dark. My monster was still quiet; more of a gnawing than an attack, and a monitor was steadily beeping, suggesting that I was still alive. Though my brain was hazy, and thoughts hard to articulate, I felt a large hand holding mine and a heaviness resting next to my leg on the sheets. I must have moved, because I watched a shadowy figure reach up and turn on the light above my head. I then stared into the dark green eyes that my heart had been waiting for and I made out a smile as lips pressed to my forehead. I whispered, “You’re here.” Then the warmth took me under again. MISCELLANY 31
Bourbon Kimeko McCoy Journalism major Fiction
“Won’t you come in Mickey?” “Yes. Thank you.” “Can I get you something to drink? I have white wine, bourbon and sweet tea.” “Definitely bourbon.” “Alright. I’ll get it for you.” I went in to the kitchen as my cat, Ezra Pound, followed closely behind and just as unsure as I was of what to make of the situation. Pulling down a glass cup and bourbon that I had received at my 30th birthday party and had not yet managed to finish, I peered to see. My best friend’s husband Mickey was sitting on the couch with his hands on his knees tapping his foot quietly. There was no rhythm to the tapping. Just tapping. I finished pouring the drink and poured a little for myself before walking back out to meet Mickey on the couch where he sat. He’d been to my house once before to take my best friend and his wife, Katherine, home once after we spent a day out together but I did find it peculiar that
32 Fall 2013
he’d found his way back to my house without Katherine this time. “So you must tell me what caused you to come pay me a visit.” “Oh nothing really,” Mickey started. “I just wanted to come by being that I was in the area. I was just taking a walk really. You know the doctor’s in the paper say that type of thing is good for you?” He swirled the cup around a few times before raising it to his face to take a small sip and then continued to finish most of the drink. I had set mine down after a small sip, I had more of a taste for wine for as long as I can remember. “Of course. I’ve heard that as well.” “Well yeah, I decided to try it out and here I am.” “Certainly. If you don’t mind me asking, where is Katherine?” “Home. You know Kat don’t believe in that stuff and she don’t listen to much that I say, so I left the house. Kat hasn’t had too much to drink yet, so she’ll be fine.”
“Oh of course.” I gave a nervous laugh and took another sip of my drink and we sat in silence for a few minutes monitoring the walls as well as one another. “It is getting rather late isn’t it Mickey?” “I figure it is. The sun’s started setting. You don’t mind if I stay a little longer do you?” “I suppose not,” he turned and looked at me. “Red’s a nice color for you. It reminds me of the dress that you had on yesterday. It was a fine dress.” “Thank you.” I finished the last of my bourbon and went to stand up to avoid what seemed like a train wreck that I couldn’t prevent from happening. “Would you like some more to drink? I have plenty.” Mickey tugged at my robe and slunk his arm around my waist. “That’s quite alright. I figure I’ve had enough to drink. Honest. Why don’t you sit back down and talk to me for a while?” It was true that I had felt a little woozy and I did indeed want Mickey but not enough for me to act upon all of my thoughts. He was a fool anyways. A plain faced fool. I stood
up and wobbled to find my balance.“I need to lie down. I’m a little tired dear.” I left my drink sitting on the wooden coffee table before us and started for my bedroom in an attempt to encourage Mickey to leave. That’s what normal guests, though I didn’t have very many, did. I looked for Ezra Pound and was comforted by the fact that he was in the same spot as always in my room, which was the bottom left corner of my bed. “If it’s no problem, see yourself out. Goodnight Mickey,” I called down the hall. I hung my robe up on the small golden coat hanger that was attached to the back of my door, closed it and got in the bed with hopes that he would take the hint. Knocks came at my bedroom door and Mickey stood before me again with his hands in his pockets and smiled at me until my legs felt like they were attached to 30-pound weights. “You never finished your drink darlin’.” I’m not sure if I wanted Mickey to stay, but I didn’t want him to go either. “Come in.”
MISCELLANY 33
Marbles
Samantha Reid MPA graduate student Oil on canvas
34 Fall 2013
Windows
Aleyna Rentz Writing and linguistics major Fiction Hannah was thinking about windows. She was thinking about Mr. McClellan’s bedroom window that Tom had shattered while playing catch with those older boys from down the street. She was thinking about her own windows that could have used a good scrubbing. She was thinking about the kitchen window. As Hannah doused the afternoon’s dishes in the soapy sink water, she recalled that, as far as she could remember, all the kitchen windows she had ever seen were right over the sink. She wondered why that was. She remembered washing the plates and glasses after dinner each night when she was eleven, hands deftly and unconsciously working through sauces and suds, lips humming some melody, eyes wandering out the window and onto the scene before her: A pastoral poem written on the horizon, grass as high as Hannah’s forehead clamoring towards the pink evening sky, set ablaze by a weary sun- what if the sun caught the field on fire? Never mind that, God wouldn’t allow it. And the white picket fence, its whitewash sweating in the sleepy afternoon and its gate swinging lazily on a rusty hinge, and the horses
grazing- Fancy and Glory, Sol and Luna. Sol and Luna- those were the colts, and Hannah knew that one day they would grow up mighty and strong and she might ride one of them through that field, beyond the limpid gate, to wherever the field ended- but Hannah liked to think that the field never ended, that its tall grasses stretched on towards the sky, towards the rising sun, towards anything… Hannah had happily accepted the honor of naming the colts. Hannah’s curiosity, always running, never resting, had inspired her to flip through her older sister’s high school Spanish textbook one day: Luna was “moon” and Sol was “sun.” And they stood in the field, growing as swiftly as the grass, while Hannah’s hands flew and she imagined where the moon and the sun would one day take her. A wasp flew into the torn window screen and bounced angrily back into flight. Hannah wasn’t eleven; the sun had burned to ashes, the moon had waned, the poem had been ripped from the sky. All Hannah saw was the back of Mr. McClellan’s house, the shattered glass of his bedroom window, and little Tom pulling at the grass that barely tickled his ankles.
MISCELLANY 35
Six o’ Clock Aleyna Rentz Writing and Linguistics Short fiction
The room was lit by a slither of light that slanted through one of the windows. The walls were perhaps more window than plaster or paint; Sarah took notice of this rather blankly, and then, suddenly aware of why she had come into the room in the first place, cleared her throat. “Um,” she said, testing her voice. It worked well enough, only wavering slightly. Sarah opened her mouth again, this time surer of herself, if only minutely. “Hello,” she said. “We’re going to have a conversation.” Her trembling tones might have suggested otherwise. “I’m going to talk to you, and you’re going to listen. You are going to…goddamn it.” It was a whisper, and she regretted it immediately. “Sorry. I have to stop that. Bad habit, I guess.” A smirk. “You’d like it if I stopped cussing- that would make you happy, wouldn’t it?” No response. The stream of light, now only a gaunt line, was obscured by some unseen cloud and stripped of its opulence.
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“I wanted to ask you about something, something I kind of, um, need help with, I guess. Andrew- Andrew with the lisp and the freckles- told me I oughta ask you for advice. You helped him when his dog died, he said. Biscuit. I think that’s a stupid name for a dog. It’s dehumanizing.” Sarah chuckled without mirth. Silence. “You aren’t one for humor, then, are you? Well…listen. I have a problem, see. It isn’t like Andrew’s problem, where it was just his dog dying or whatever. You can always buy a new dog. You can’t buy what my problem is about. Well, see...” She looked at the ceiling. There was a cobweb hanging in the corner. “This is hard for me to put into words, I guess.” Her tongue felt like a foreign object in her mouth, as if she had never had one before, did not know how to flick it into words, into sounds that meant something. Maybe they didn’t mean anything, she thought
before continuing. “Okay, this is how it is. Are you listening? Well, I go to school every day, and I have English class first, which is fine because I really like English. But then I have calculus and biology and computer applications, and I just- Are you even paying attention at all? English is okay because I like Hamlet and Prufrock and all those guys, but I don’t need calculus or biology for the rest of my life. And all we do in computer class is type the same sentences over and over. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown-” She wiped her eyes with the skirt of her dress. “That’s five hours of every day wasted for me. Five hours of my life that I could be discussing dreams and questions and, well, what it means to be alive with someone, or just sitting on the porch with Gatsby or somebody- just living, you know? But no one will let me and I don’t understand why. I know it could be worse, but it scares me a lot because I feel like I’m losing something, and when I feel that way I start to think about…about dying, I guess.” She thought about her father snoring deeply while the clock in the kitchen ticked towards dawn, while she was awake and all she could think about instead of sheep was the quick brown fox that kept jumping over the lazy dog. Maybe she was the lazy dog. She stared out a window as she breathed a shallow sigh, and began
again in hesitant stutters: “And whenever I get home from school, I’m so tired from doing a lot of nothing all day that I don’t want to do anything else. I watch TV, I sit around on the computer, and before I know it, I’m going to bed and waking up again and I just haven’t done anything. I mean, I’ve done something, but it isn’t anything that I remember the next day, even if I want to.” Sarah stopped to consider what she had just said. It frightened her considerably. “I just get this terrible feeling that it’s always six ‘o clock. Does that make sense?” She gave a dry laugh that sounded like a cough. “It’s so silly.” The sun sent a dramatic flourish of light into the room that was just as soon extinguished by a cloud. Sarah felt sudden anger swell in her chest. “You know, you’re a lousy conversationalist! Don’t you have anything to say to me at all?” Stillness reverberated off the walls. “Aren’t you going to help me?” The room was large and dim. It looked like six ‘o clock. “Say something! Just one word! Just one.” Dimmer; clouds. No answer. Her voice sunk to a low whisper. “Andrew said you would help me. All that was wrong with him was that his dog died. Who cares about a dog. Isn’t this more important? What’d you tell him, that all dogs go to heaven? Well,” she stood up. “I don’t think they do.” Without a goodbye from either party, Sarah left the room through a heavy door.
MISCELLANY 37
Super Moon Jeff Schmuki
Faculty in the Department of Art Photography
38 Fall 2013
The One Who Got Away Melita Smith Education Poetry
As we reminisce over The past twenty five years The words you spoke Made my eyes come to tears of The one who got away We talked with laughter of The times we had, Our intimate moments, of The good and the bad of The one who got away But as I searched my heart, It became very clear you see, The one who got away, Well………….it was not me. Melita R. Smith 2012 Ga. Home
MISCELLANY 39
Zealot Will Price Business intelligence major Fiction
A young boy dressed in his older brother’s hand-me-downs was wandering up a hill somewhere outside of London. The boy was searching for a mansion his older brother had spoken of. The old mansion just outside the city had burned to the ground long ago. The house took the inhabitants with it in the inferno. He was bent over sifting through the tall grass looking for singed rocks and burned roots when he lifted his head and found what he came looking for. The boy saw four, maybe five stone columns strewn out across the hilltop, all charred and blackened. The boy shifted his gaze over his right shoulder and noticed a dark, ash-covered headstone standing in solitude amongst the rubble. The boy sheepishly brushed the thick layer of ash from the old headstone and read, “Moderation.” The ruins confused the boy. In his bewilderment he lost focus and stumbled over an old birch tree.
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The top of his head crashed into the unforgiving side of one of the fallen pillars. The boy’s vision began to falter. The corners of his eyes grew darker and darker as he fell into sleep. He began to hear voices and see faces. The voices and faces were both foreign to him. At first he strained to catch a word or two from their drabbled speech. “Tea… Where?” a man said. Like a camera the voices began to come into focus. “I asked for tea twenty-seven and a half minutes ago and it remains absent from my sight. I believed this to be a relatively simple task, even for the dimwitted like yourself.” An old man hissed. The old man was dressed in a hunter green lounge robe and silk sleeping pants. His affluence could be felt by his south London accent alone. Sitting in his great room at a throne made of leopard skin the man puffed on a pipe made of briarwood. He sat surrounded by a semi-circle of encyclopedias and almanacs and other scholarly works.
A girl came into view. She carried a tray made of the finest silver with the man’s tea resting on top of it.
hope where it’s hard to find, and drives them through struggles that seem impassible!”
“For the Queen’s sake, finally.” The old man spat.
The old man’s anger grew linearly with the fire behind him. “Hope. Hope cannot be quantified, appraised, or calibrated. Hope isn’t numbers. Only a feeble mind can put their wellbeing in the hands of something they do not control. Hope. Ha!” The old man beamed at the girl while the fire behind him sprawled to the almanacs and encyclopedias.
“What are you reading, sir?” The girl queried. “It’s none of your damned business,” The old man grumbled. “But, if you must know, I am reading an account of the Spanish Inquisition.” The old man shifted in his seat. “Disgusting, isn’t it? The brutality a man’s religion can force him to commit.” The old man said in a self-righteous tone, as if getting on a soapbox. “It disturbs me something as trivial as a religion can manipulate even an intelligent man’s brain to the point of absurdity.” The old man huffed. “Well, I do not claim to know much about the Inquisition, but I don’t think a belief system to be trivial,” the girl started towards the old man. “Don’t you think it’s a good thing? To have everything planned out for you?” Instantly, the old man became furious, “I live my life empirically, dear, there is no evidence pointing to an intelligent creator therefore there cannot be one. To think there is one is childish.” The fireplace situated behind the man’s chair hacked out a small contingent of sparks on to the fur rug adorning the man’s feet. The rug was set ablaze. The girl reciprocated, “Childish or not, believing in things gives people
The old man continued, “Even if this creator exists, who’s to say he is infallible and worthy of leadership? Throughout history gods have thrown floods, plagues, and great storms at the people of earth, even starting wars for their own pleasure. Hardly qualities of great leaders, I’d say!” The blaze now reached the ceiling and had consumed the entire room. “The creator works in mysterious ways!” The girl cried. “We cannot know, nor should we question their intentions!” Gasping for air, the girl shrieked, “We cannot question things we cannot understand, that’s hogwash! Nothing that happens needs any explanation! To think otherwise is nonsense!” “Everything must be questioned! Everything that happens can be explained numerically and evidentially! To think otherwise is nonsense!” The old man gasped as the flames took him. The boy opened his eyes and held his stare at one word. Moderation. MISCELLANY 41
Spirit Bear Ileana Silivasi
Anthropology major Watercolor
42 Fall 2013
The Trifocal Snapshot Toni Todd
3D art major Charcoal
MISCELLANY 43
The Beginning Armond Snowden Information systems Short fiction
Claire bursts into the bedroom, tearing open the closet and began throwing clothes into every available suitcase. The call she just got left her in such a state of shock, she doesn’t realize that she’s trying to stuff make up into a sock for a solid minute. She finally sits down in a corner of the bed. I can’t believe this! To have fallen into this trap again. Keep giving him a chance Claire, He will be different this time Claire. How’d I miss the signs? The late nights, the missed calls. Anger finally reaching the tipping point, she throws her head into a pile of the hastily crammed shirts and lets loose a roar the shirts barely contain. After shaking her head clear, she begins to rationalize with herself. I’ll leave town. Start a new life. As she gathers her fullest bag and moves into the hallway she continues to think of ways to best start her new life, she hears the front door open and her boyfriend Mitchell walk in. “Hello? Anyone here? Babe?” Claire, mind racing, is rooted to the floor. Why is he here so early? Why does he sound so, cautious? “Claire? You home?” Claire snaps back to attention. “Yeah sweetie I’m right here.” As she walks toward the foyer, she kicks the 44 Fall 2013
suitcase into a hallway closet. “I’m here hun. You sure are home early.” As she turns the corner into the foyer she sees her beau hastily lock the door behind him. “Hey, hun how was work?” As she leans in to kiss, she gets a look at how disheveled he is, as if he had ran the twenty miles from the office. “Hey are you okay?” a touch of concern creeping into her voice. Mitchell, having been scanning the area, finally seems to take notice of Claire. “What? No everything’s fine.” He puts on a reassuring smile. “What’s for dinner?” Now Claire is uneasy. “Dinner? It’s like 3 o’clock, babe.” Mitchell reacts with an exaggerated palm to the forehead. “Of course, well let’s call it a late lun-” he stops mid-sentence as he walks into the hallway. The phone is still dangling from it’s cradle on the wall. “In a hurry?” there is a new edge to his voice. He turns to look at Claire, his once haphazard appearance now even more broken by quiet rage. Claire, shocked by his sudden change stammers out, “I..I don’t know what you’re talking about. I.. I must have hit it on the way ou-“ Mitchell explodes across the hall and has Claire pinned to the wall.
Arm across her throat he growls in her face, “What’d did they tell you? Are they coming here? Answer me!” Claire, what little color left on her face fading, begins to sputter and choke. Mitchell, furious, throws her to the ground. From behind his back, he draws a silenced pistol and levels it on Claire. Mitchell takes a deep breath and gives Claire that calming smile, the one that had won her heart at a birthday party from four months ago. It might as well have been a lifetime. “Now babe, what did they tell you?” Claire, half-sobs mixed into her coughing fits, looks at Mitchell through tear clouded eyes. Her voice cracking she coughs out, “Who are you?” Mitchell shakes his head. “What did they tell you?” Claire begins shaking her head. “Nothing! They just..” Mitchell is on her again, his face centimeters from hers. “What? What did the tell you?” At that moment a car is heard outside the house. Stricken, Mitchell goes to the window and peers through the blinds. “Are they sending someone?” Mitchell cocks his gun as the car pulls into the driveway. A tense moment passes then the car pulls out into the street and drives away. “Just turning around,” He mutters to himself, “Now where were we?” Turning around he sees Claire now standing in front of him, the suitcase she had placed in the closet now open at her feet. In her hand is a gun similar to Mitchell’s, the barrel trained on his heart. “What?” disbelief begins to replace the fury in his eyes. “Lower the gun, Mitchell.” Mitchell stares for a moment then his gun clatters to the floor. “So they sent you?” he spits at Claire. “Well why haven’t you done it yet?’ He notices the open suitcase and
the hastily packed clothes. “Did you think you could just run from this?’ he snorts derisively, “If only I’d picked up on you sooner.” Now he chuckles. “My own girl. They get me with my own girl.” Now his countenance changes. His words are hate-filled. “What they threaten you with? Your family? Friends? Let me tell you something. They’re gone now. You have no family. You have no friends. All of it is gone. So pull the trigger Claire. End everything.” Claire looks at him for a long moment, really considering his words. That winning smile begins to creep back on Mitchell’s face, just as Claire squeezes off two shots. Both find their mark and Mitchell crumples to the floor. Claire lowers her weapon and advances on Mitchell. Not dead yet, but each heartbeat bringing him closer to death, his hand reaches for his gun. Claire kicks it out of reach, and then kneels to look into Mitchell’s eyes. His eyes find hers as his breaths become shorter and shorter. “I’m sorry.” Mitchell’s eyes become fixed as his ragged breaths stop. Claire feels something leave her. She’s shaken but is able to quickly regain herself. She’s changed. Claire rises from the body and walks back into the hall. She picks up the phone and dials out a number. After a few rings, a voice answers, “Is it done?” “He’s gone. “ Claire clips out. She’s not Claire anymore. What left her when she pulled the trigger has been replaced by something stronger, powerful. Her new life has been chosen. The voice replies, “Excellent. We’ll send a collector for you. Well done.” The line goes dead. Claire replaces the phone in the cradle. Placing the gun inside of the suitcase, she grabs the handle and, after one last look at Mitchell’s body, exits the house. MISCELLANY 45
Togetherness and Loneliness Toni Todd
3D art major Charcoal
46 Fall 2013
The Longest Mile Brandon Warnock 2D studio art Painting
MISCELLANY 47
Winter Still Life Brandon Warnock 2D studio art Painting
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Worth Less Carlie Ann Williams Poetry
75 Print that on your face The price of womanhood Stitch it on your clothes Red embroidery running down Blood pulsing through wood and silk 75 Sing it to your daughters Standing proud in their black robes Their armor’s not thick enough For the battlefield of wealth And the warfare of being 75 Carve mud and plaster Weave straw and bone Until it stands tall above your head An effigy of worthlessness Let it Burn 75 A penny for a penny A dime for a dime Word for Word For richer or poorer 100 That’s the equality I will fight for
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Ursa Major Kalee Woodard Psychology Spray paint and permanent marker
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JUDGES SPOTLIGHT
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
Elsie Hill 2D Art judge
Elsie Hill has taught painting and drawing at the City of Savannah Visual Arts Department, Harlem School of the Arts, Columbia University School of the Arts, Savannah College of Art and Design and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University. She has exhibited her paintings continuously since 1995 and was most recently selected as a finalist in the Natural Resource Defense Council Environmental Art Award in New York City and awarded second place in the Inaugural Armstrong National 2-D Competition Exhibition, in Savannah, Georgia.
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Nest
Elsie Hill Painting
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT JESSICA HINES digital Art Judge
Artist and storyteller Jessica Hines uses the camera’s inherent quality as a recording device to explore illusion and to suggest truths that underlie the visible world. At the core of Hines’ work lies an inquisitive nature inspired by personal memory, experience and the unconscious mind. Hines began to cultivate her creative disposition early in life and her love of the arts led her to attend Washington University in St. Louis, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Continuing to pursue her interests, she studied photography at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a Master of Fine Arts degree. Hines is a winner of the PDN Magazine’s Photo Annual 2013, The Annenberg Space for Photography, War/Photography presentation, Los Angeles, California, The Kolga Award for Best Experimental Photography, Kolga Tbislisi Photo in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2012, Humanitarian Documentary Grant in the WPGA Annual 2010 Pollux Awards, juried by Philip Brookman, Chief Curator and Head of Research at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, First Prize in Fine Art Portfolio in the World Wide Photography Gala Awards 2010, Grand Prize for portfolio in the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards 2010 and exhibited in the New York Photo Festival 2011 PhotoVisuara’s In Love and War, NYPF!!, curated by Adriana Teresa, and exhibited in Subjective/Objective, curated by Elisabeth Biondi, 2011, New York, New York. Jessica Hines’ work has been widely exhibited and published throughout the world in North and South America, throughout Asia, Europe, and Oceania, Her work continues to be seen in The New Yorker magazine.
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The Remembrance #20, My Brother’s War
Jessica Hines Photography
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
SANTANU MAJUMDAR digital Art Judge Since the last decade, Santanu have lived in India, England and USA. During this time, he worked with designers, craftsmen, engineers, architects and professionals of all these nations. Santanu gathered experience in exhibition design, retail design, packaging, signage system design, interactive design, short films, game design and print production. At present his interest has grown to technology based communication design. The last few years have given him exposure to different work cultures, languages, local customs, learning styles and political perspectives. Santanu speaks four different languages. English, Hindi, Gujrati and Bengali. Santanu has received several national and international awards, which makes him recognized as a successful designer. He has worked professionally for well-known organizations like the United Nation, UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme, Help the Aged, Design C, JWT, Tesco, Londis Super Markets, Day Lewis Pharmacy, Government of Madhya Pradesh, India, and Government of India.
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BRBLA LOGO Santanu Majumdar Digital art
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
JASON MCCOY 3d Art judge
Jason McCoy is an artist living in Statesboro, Georgia who holds an MFA in Sculpture and a BFA in Ceramics. Jason is currently the Studio Supervisor for the Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University. His bodies of work are comprised of large scale hand hewn timbers that he uses to construct sculptures that manipulate space and balance, abstract figurative cast metal works, and functional pottery. His most recent exhibitions were in The Kinsey Institute Juried Exhibition, and a solo Exhibition at Middle Georgia College.
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Cantilever
Jason McCoy Sculpture
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
ASHLEY NEWSOME Fashion judge Ashley Newsome earned a Masters of Fine Art degree in Fashion from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a Bachelors of Art degree in Art and Design/Apparel Technology from the North Carolina State University College of Design and Textiles. Study in these areas has directed her interests towards apparel design, manufacturing, and textile development. She is currently a visiting instructor of Fashion Merchandising and Apparel Design at Georgia Southern University, teaching courses in fashion design, theory and development. She is passionate about the advancement of craft culture as well as the implementation of sustainable practices in the fashion industry. She views her works of wearable art as a marriage between historically inspired techniques and modern aesthetics. Outside of teaching, she creates apparel and fiber art collections and conducts research on the sociology and ethnography of dress. Her work can be viewed at www.behance.net/ashleynewsome
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Heart Strings Romper
Ashley Newsome Fashion design MISCELLANY 61
JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
DANNYBAUER Nonfiction judge
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Dan Bauer serves as chair and professor in the Department of Writing and Linguistics. He came to Georgia Southern after ten years as a faculty member at Georgia College in Milledgeville, and seven years before that at two small private liberal arts colleges, one in upstate New York and another in Iowa. His wide research interests bridge many disciplines but focus especially on the genre of the essay, writing assessment, the crucial intersection of composition and epistemology, and the legacy of public educational institutions with regard to racial equity, opportunity, and curriculum. He has published in College Composition and Communication and The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, among other places, and he is currently at work on a book that simultaneously aligns the work of Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee, the Harlem Renaissance, and important black leaders and educators who emerged out of Hancock County (just 30 miles east of Milledgeville) in the early 20th century. A former secondary language arts teacher and debate coach, he held a joint appointment in both Middle Grades Education and English at Georgia College, which included directing a local site of the National Writing Project, parallel to the site housed in his new home department at Georgia Southern. He has been recognized for his teaching and his involvement with students beyond the classroom on all campuses where has worked in the past, and he currently serves, along with one of his Georgia College colleagues, as research publication editor for the Association of Middle Level Education (AMLE), which includes oversight of both Middle School Journal and RMLE Online.
From "Beyond Written Off: Surviving and Thriving Through Adolescent Literacy" As professionals, teachers can play an important role in resisting norms and traditions in education that lead to writing students off and accepting failure for some. We revolt against all practices and structures that threaten access to equitable, meaningful, and authentic learning opportunities for all students. We revolt in order to blend what we are required to do with what we know fosters student learning, based on both research and experience. High stakes standardized tests too often simply reduce students to a score. These tests decontextualize and compartmentalize. They compact 180 days of school into a few hours. They reduce fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and drama into short passages and then reduce those snippets to a few questions. In the name of leaving no child behind, these tests reduce reading proficiency to four rigid responses, only one of which is “correct.” Such measures offer little space—figuratively or literally—for the complexity inherent in full engagement with texts. Through the title, Writing On Demand (2000), Anne Ruggles Gere names the artificial, high-stakes conflation of the writing process with often-superficial prompts that allow perhaps thirty minutes for composing. These tests emphasize product over all other aspects of writing processes. We do our profession and our students a disservice to conceptualize writing only in this way. Cognition and complexity often demand collaboration and careful consideration. Revolt requires ensuring that these high-stakes tests do not displace the kind of wonder and inquisitiveness that we hope to inspire in the lives of our adolescent students. Multiple external pressures create the need for revolt. Certainly, we cannot blame teachers, who facing budget cuts that result in increased class sizes, may choose to assign fewer papers. We empathize with teachers who face immense pressure from administrators to raise test scores, and who try to foist exercises like daily grammar practice into classrooms as a means to that end. Yet, more than a hundred years of research document that this practice does not transfer to writing and often creates
negativity toward writing, confusion, fear and shame of one’s home dialect (i.e., Braddock Lloyd-Jones, & Schoer, 1963; Smith, 1986; Hillocks, 1987). Furthermore, too many writing classes serve thirty or more students. We know better. Governors and legislators should know better. NCTE reminds us unambiguously that classes should cap at twenty, with no more than fifteen for remedial classes. We revolt against busy work and repeated drills in arbitrary correctness, in order to teach writing as a thoughtful, generative process of discovery that recognizes research and that reaffirms and rescues students. To fully embrace the kind of culture of writing and thinking that most enriches and inhabits an integral place in overall happiness and wellbeing, we must not only rebel against the testing mania and external pressures that have done so much to deaden teaching and learning. We must also restore the ownership of language to all students and teachers in order to encourage many forms of “correct” expression. The Five R model we advocate here welcomes students fully and unconditionally. It reminds us of the importance of a symbiotic relationship, the type of relationship that best honors what teachers and students both bring to the classroom. This environment differs dramatically from more capitalist classrooms where students end up as winners or losers as they compete to become the best learner or simply fall to the bottom of the heap. In considering the purpose of literacy, we remember the words of Tom Romano (2007), Language is not just for expression and communication. Language is for discovery… Language is our canoe up the wilderness river, our bush plane, our space capsule, our magic. Instead of ‘now you see it, now you don’t,’ using language works in reverse: ‘now you don’t see it, now you do’ (p. 170). Writing helps teachers and students learn to see not the obvious, but the sublime. The Five R’s model of teaching writers helps move beyond “written off” toward more rewarding relationships between adolescents, texts, and teachers.
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
zach busH Poetry judge
Zach Bush is the author of ANGLES OF DISORDER (BlazeVOX books, 2009), AT SWAN DECAPITATION (VOX Press, 2010), THE SILENCE OF SICKNESS (Gold Wake Press, 2010) and COVENANT (*co-authored with Donora Hillard/ Gold Wake Press, 2010). He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry (2010). Bush holds a B.A. in Writing and Linguistics from Georgia Southern University (2007) and a M.F.A. in Poetry from the City College of New York (2010). He is a D.LITT. candidate at Drew University. With all graduate coursework behind him, he is currently writing his doctoral dissertation in Ancient Greek Mythology (Homeric Studies). Bush works as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing at Georgia Southern University. He and his fiancee live in Savannah, GA. He blogs @ zacharycbush.com.
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Gazing Father Zach Bush Poetry
Some stars don’t just fall and disappear, and most don’t explode all at once. It’s not that simple, it’s not like all of the sudden there’s this cosmic Wop Pop-Pop BAM! No, a star death takes time; explosions are a process. It’s like some stars are stronger than others. Maybe there is a universal timeline, or maybe there is no order. It’s probably wrong to expect a star to glow forever, even if you swear your star is unique; the process is impartial to favoritism. So, as I put my sunglasses on, I prepare myself for this final explosion, the one that my unique star is 65 years ripe for. Yet, no matter how much I hope for a different ending, I know that once it happens, there’ll be no brilliant showers of golden dust; nothing will reach down to touch and comfort me.
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JUDGE SPOTLIGHT
Jared sexton Fiction judge
Jared Yates Sexton is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and serves as Managing Editor of the literary magazine BULL. His work has appeared in publications around the world and has been nominated for a pair of Pushcart’s, The Million Writer’s Award, Best of The Web, and was judged by Lee K. Abbott to be a finalist for The New American Fiction Prize. His first book, An End To All Things, is available from Atticus Books and his website can be found at jysexton.com
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When Jared Yates Sexton finished his MFA and returned to his hometown in Indiana, he found a population plagued by the kind of turmoil and tension usually reserved for fiction. Unemployment and uncertainty lurked everywhere he looked. In his debut story collection, this pervasive turbulence tilts into the fantastical as we observe the inspired, absurd, and even horrific moments in the
lives of lost and luckless Midwesterners looking for something to believe in. Through language that’s both striking and unassuming, Sexton creates a dangerous and disturbing world in which everything and everyone teeters precariously on the edge of total chaos; a world that bears a startling resemblance to our own.
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