Telolith 2015

Telolith

Contemporary Art & Literature

Spring 2015 Vol. 42

Seward County Community College / Area Technical School Liberal, Kansas

Telolith

Contemporary Art & Literature

Spring 2015, Vol. 42 Seward County Community College / Area Technical School Liberal, Kansas

The Writers and Artists here represented have made careful choices—whether of word or line, phrase or stroke—the hardest and most important being to make public the products of their private, personal imaginations. From these choices the Telolith is generated every spring, and for the contributors and the entire campus community of SCCC/ATS, it is published annually.

Table of Contents Poetry

Non-Fiction

8 9 13 20 21 23 23 26 31 34 44 45 46 47 48 58 59 59 60 61

10 16 24 32 39 40 49 54 62 64

Rachel Coleman - Three Mothers Rachel Coleman - Wind Turbine Mary Francis - The Hands Deena Mortimer - The Struggle Deena Mortimer - Somehow Magda Silva - I Stop Singing Edward Kentner - Mariners of Ancient Teresa Wehmeier - The Gathering Mary Francis - Six, Eleven, Fourteen Rachel Coleman - Time Stitch Rachel Coleman - Triumph Rachel Coleman - First Car Mary Francis - There She Stood Teresa Wehmeier - Why The Cicada Sings Rachel Coleman - For Frank Magda Silva - The Moon so Soft and Beautiful Magda Silva - Mountain and Moon Teresa Wehmeier - Summer Industry Edward Kentner - Bob Edward Kentner - Port Wine

Sharan Ray - Stanley James Guida - Back Into The Valley Teresa Wehmeier - Slowing Down Time Edward Kentner - A Piece of Me Shanya Small - Walls Mary Francis - Behind the Scenes of Field Biology Giovanna Rey - Sticks and Stones Rachel Coleman - Second Sight James E. Guida - Who I Am Teresa Wehmeier - A Stubborn Problem

Fiction 6 68

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Teresa Wehmeier - The Makeover Mary Francis - Tap, Tap, Tap

Photography

Two- Dimensional Art

5 7 9 10 12 12 20 21 25 26 36 41 43 43 44 45 46 48 53 57 58 59 60 61 63 69

13 14 14 15 15 22 27 27 28 29 29 30 30 31 33 34 35 38 40 47 50 50 51 51 52 53 56 64 66 71 71

Mary Francis - Value Lynn Wilson Strachan - Perfect Petals Lynn Wilson Strachan - Memory of Pioneer Davies Cindy Velasquez - Pillars Lois Magner - Factory Row Lois Magner - Contemplation Mary Francis - Fall Has Come Cindy Velasquez - Bible Daiane Souza - Goodbye Tisha Nulik - Country Wear Daiane Souza - Panoramas Alma Gonzalez - Squirrel Alma Gonzalez - Quoth the Raven Tisha Nulik - Beauties of a Tree Lois Magner - Policeman Cindy Velasquez - Sneakers Alma Gonzalez - Spanish Heritage Daiane Souza - Super Hero Lois Magner - Flora Daiane Souza - Suspended Alma Gonzalez - The Moon Daiane Souza - Trapped Tisha Nulik - Level Field Tisha Nulik - Running Water Daiane Souza - Arabesque Mary Francis - Through a Looking Glass

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Vivianne Salcedo - Hand Vivianne Salcedo - Music Industry Isabel Padilla - Mermaid and Leaves Jenae Wright - Skulls of Life Jenae Wright - Nothing But Wolves Diana Chavira - Mermaid Lewis Armstrong - Red Roof Barn Lewis Armstrong - Cloudy Sky Luis Martinez - Super Robot Luis Martinez - Tiananmen Square Luis Martinez - Teacher Isabel Padilla - Flower Collection Isabel Padilla - Collection Vivianne Salcedo - The Beat Lewis Armstrong - High Plains Gold Diana Chavira - Road G Lewis Armstrong - Winter Light Luis Martinez - Stranger Among Strangers Maria Lara - Seaweed Yoselynn Rodriguez - Composition #5 Hector Saenz - Still Life Vivianne Salcedo - Curtains Maria Lara - Pitcher Perfect Jenae Wright - Mysterious Hunter Yoselynn Rodriguez - Crown Royal Vivianne Salcedo - Ian Isabel Padilla - Rose Lewis Armstrong - Token of the Past Yoselynn Rodriguez - Studies in Composition Yoselynn Rodriguez - What Is Known Yoselynn Rodriguez - Space

Submitting Work for Publication Any full- or part-time Seward County Community College / Area Technical School student enrolled during the year prior to publication may submit original, previously unpublished works created in the previous year for consideration for inclusion in Telolith.

A signed and dated data sheet is required at the time of submission. Selection of work for publication is based upon originality, quality of thought, and craft, with the objective of including works from as broad and diverse a range of the SCCC/ATS student population as space and time constraints will allow.

Writing and art for the 2016 issue should be submitted to a faculty adviser during March, 2016.

The SCCC/ATS English Department offers a creative writing course during the fall semester. We encourage those interested in developing their writing skills to enroll in this workshop-style course. The English Department also sponsors a poetry reading and coffeehouse each spring.

The SCCC/ATS Visual Arts Department offers a wide range of courses in drawing, painting, photography, graphic design, ceramics, glass blowing and jewelry. Students enrolled in Visual Arts Department graphic design courses are responsible for the page layout and overall design concept for Telolith. The Visual Arts Department sponsors an exhibit of student work at the end of the fall and spring semesters.

The works published are written and or/created by SCCC/ATS students and do not necessarily reflect the views of the college.

Copyright Š by SCCC/ATS, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission of the writer or artist.

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Mary Francis, Value, photography

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The

Makeover Teresa Wehmeier

“C

ome on!” squealed Ashley, “It’ll be fun! You can get your hair done, a manicure, pedicure, and brighten up your face with some makeup.”

I looked at her with skepticism—a makeover? I had to buy a new bottle of foundation every time the need arose— which was funerals and weddings. My mother bemoaned me ever becoming a lady—the little girl who cried with her first bra, first nylons and first purse.

I would have ditched the purse at age eleven, but had to have something to hide the humongous bricks they called—in a hushed voice—sanitary napkins. Did Ashley know she was talking to a woman who, when I was little, battled my mother every day I was made to wear a dress? That this was the same girl who lived only for blue-jean Fridays at school? Now this twentysomething princess, who probably wouldn’t be caught dead without makeup, was calling a makeover “fun.”

But then, maybe I should take advantage of the opportunity. My skin was pale and only brightened up by the occasional sunburn. My fingernails were never painted and were clipped short to eliminate interference with the keyboard. My heels were so rough they could be used as twenty-grit sandpaper, and if I pulled one more gray hair from my head, I might be mistaken for my grandpa.

I sighed, returning to the present to see Ashley smiling with her radiant, perfect mouth, colored with red lipstick that enhanced the whiteness of her teeth. “Okay, I’ll do it,” I said.

“Great!” said Ashley. “Here is the information – just come by at 4 o’clock Thursday, and we will treat you like a queen.” With another excited squeal she darted from the room, leaving me wondering if I really wanted to be a queen.

my head was lowered into the sink and thoroughly doused with water so hot I forgot the pain on my lip. Cursing under my breath, I silently accused them of being my mother’s accomplices.

Two hours later, Ashley swung the chair around to face the mirror.I looked at the stranger reflected back. Red lipstick framed hair-free lips. My eyebrows had been removed and then penciled in with a color four shades darker than my now auburn hair. And my hair! Where a widow’s peak normally resided was Did Ashley know she was a smashed spot that looked like it was bald—or like I had slept with my talking to a woman who, going forehead pressed against the headboard when I was little, battled all night. Teased to add volume and then frozen in place with a can of hair my mother every day I spray, the hairdo I would never be seen was made to wear a dress? with in public sat perched on my head.

It looked like they were going for the Jackie Kennedy coiffure—circa 1960— At the appointed time, I arrived but I just couldn’t get excited about a at the torture chamber salon, where hairstyle my mother wore before I was Ashley and a gaggle of like-minded girls born. descended upon their newest victim.

Foundation split as I puffed up My shoes were stripped off, and my feet my cheeks, and the makeup around my soaked in warm soapy water, while girls eyes looked like Uncle Fester after an took up posts at each hand, whittling all-night jam session. Green eyeshadow on my fingernails as though they were swooped up to meet my illustrated attached to a tree stump. Warm wax was eyebrows, and dark eyeliner slashed smeared across the mustache I fought under my eyes, reminding me of a on my upper lip and then promptly linebacker’s cheekbones. My nails were removed with a resounding “ripppp” painted Pepto-pink, and every finger felt that caused pools of regret in my eyes. leaden from the conspicuous enamel.

Before I could beat them off and escape, My toes, sporting the same pink nail

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polish, peeked from beneath the cape arranged to protect my clothes.

“What do you think?” asked Ashley, beaming at the miracle they had accomplished in such a short time. Trying to smile without breaking my face, I spoke carefully around the lipstick, which promptly smeared a red gash across my front tooth.

“Oh, wow?” I said, not really knowing what else to say. I couldn’t help but notice the grooves framing my eyes—I used to call them laugh lines, but now they reminded me of craggy furrows plowed in preparation for planting. Crap! Now all I could think about were scarecrows.

“I can’t thank you enough for all the hard work,” I said, choking on the last. The girls giggled, sweeping the floor of the remaining toenail clippings, gray locks, and heel pulp. I tipped them generously, thanked them profusely, and made a quick exit.

Looking at myself in the rearview mirror as I reversed out of the driveway, I wondered if this was really the look people went for, or if the young girls were laughing at the tip they received for making me look like the Susie Makeup doll my sister played with when we were little. Arriving at my apartment, I slipped in the door and headed straight to the bathroom, grabbing a washcloth as I entered.

When steam filled the room, I slipped under the shower nozzle and exhaled with relief.

A quick hair wash removed the hair spray, and judging by the condition of the wash cloth, I had removed most of the makeup from my face. The pink nails glistening through the soap suds were another matter. I didn’t have any remover, but it could wait until I could run by the store. Climbing out of the shower, I toweled my hair and then stared at myself in the foggy mirror. I

let out a sigh as I took in the waterproof mascara still spiky and thick, the eyeliner now smeared beneath my eyes.

And my eyebrows had disappeared completely—what did they do, shave them off ? “Note to self—pick up some eyebrow pencil until it grows back,” I muttered.

Auburn hair wasn’t too bad, I thought later, having run to the store to get some remover and eyebrow pencil.

I sat in front of the T.V., baggy t-shirt hanging down just below my underwear, bra now comfortably draped over the laundry basket, my right foot resting on the coffee table—scrubbing the pink nail polish off with a cotton ball. Now that the Venus flytrap effect created from the

hair spray had been scrubbed away and dried, the color looked pretty good— and covered my silver streaks. The cut was attractive, framing my round face and accentuating my cheekbones. My heels felt better too—and should save me a fortune in nylons now that I didn’t have to replace a pair every time I pulled them off my feet.

Maybe this makeover thing isn’t such a bad idea after all, I thought, sitting back to tackle the gaudy pink polish on my fingers. I reached up to rub my mascara-caked eyelashes—and cursed, running to the bathroom to rinse the nail polish remover from my eye. Then again, maybe I still wasn’t ready to be a lady.

Lynn Wilson Strachan, Perfect Petals, photography

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Three Mothers Mother Ginger Wears a plain brown skirt, vast, flat, woven for backstage work. It’s not herself we see, hot soap, small stitches, iron heavy in the hand, the glare of craved perfection: bounteous glory spills out when she swings the hoop, her offspring shiny like beads freed from a necklace. Audiences love her! So clever and prolific, however does she manage? She spawns tiny Chinese wonders, scarlet pirouettes to embroider lackluster days, a plain stage, shorn hair, chapped lips. None of it matters when they burst into flight, arabesques, tri-rhythmic darklings against white-sugar sparkle. Mother, how can you hold it all beneath you, quiet until the conductor says “now.”

Mother Mercy listens more than anything, hands wet with laundry soap, in her white-box house folded full of lore, details pinned like pegs to clothesline, sheets whipped by wind, sun-pure, fresh once again when she brings them in. No stain withstands her hands, worn wise by lye and bleach. You think your words indelible? She’s heard worse, child.

A baby born and left in backwoods, claimed, named, placed with kin.

A man bold to take women not his, thrown into hog pen, consumed.

A twin left single by a snitch’s betrayal slipped a knife in her purse to collect on death. A grandson tagged in tit-for-tat, steak-knifed in the parking lot. You say your story is ruint already. Mama begs to differ. Just look at those dresses, bright-hung in the yard where next year’s greens have started to grow.

Mother of the Bride for Claudia Once toasts are complete, you decide: that all-day girdle’s coming off. Pick a barefoot path to the backlot shed, find saplings for cover: peel free, a small toad the only witness. Across the lawn, it all goes on, 100-degree champagne blur from then to now while this toad dips deeper in pump-puddle cool. You showed your girl such wonders, sprinkler splash, nature songs, gleam of cloud and moon so she could find this day while you release the long held breath.

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— Rachel Coleman

Wind Turbine This caravan begins with a boast: WIDE LOAD letters burned black on vinyl, banner strapped flat on the truck front, pennants blown straight by highway wind, red for glory, red for blood, red to say make way because progress is our destiny.

The blades they bring would dwarf a bison but we won’t be seeing that, plains scythed bare to jackrabbit stew, prairie dog ghost towns poison-hollow, meadowlark song derrick-drummed, tallgrass cornrowed tight by sprinkler chains to lock a lesser horizon.

It’s nothing new. Comanche counted coup till veins ran dry, conquistadors chased a gold-edged compass, settlers sucked the Cimarron’s sparkle clean away. Now that bed’s empty but the highway has room for prospectors come to scavenge the sky.

What it will come to vanishes with the ask, coyote whisk of a question, history looping till we can’t tell who dealt more death, first people or next, reapers of flesh and fur, land-grabbers, number-crunching screen gazers, tumbling hard and dumb over earth’s curve.

— Rachel Coleman

Lynn Wilson Strachan, Memory of Pioneer Davies, photography

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M

y son met me at the door when I returned home from school on December 23, 2014.

He put his arms around me and said, “Stanley died this morning.” December 23, 2014, is a date I will never forget.

On that date, my best friend, Stanley J, permanently left my life, with no chance of a reconciliation. He will live in my memory. A friendship such as ours cannot die, not even with physical death; it simply changes.

Stanley and I met ten months ago. Each of us was divorced, with no intention of an intimate relationship.

I was two years out of a physically and emotionally abusive marriage; he had ended an emotionally abusive relationship. We were each disillusioned with the concept of love. A mutual friend introduced us under the assumption that Stanley and I each needed a friend. She was correct in her assumption. She gave Stanley my phone number and then called me to give me his phone number.

Stanley was shy, so she felt I should call him. I did, and he came to my home to meet me on the day I was moving in.

He assisted with the moving process.

Unsure of whether he preferred to be called “Stan,” or “Stanley,” I asked him.

He said he liked to be called “Stanley J.” We were “Stanley J and Sharan Ray.”

Cindy Velasquez, Pillars, photography

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Stanley J Sharan Ray Stanley and I developed a friendship overflowing with keen interest in each other’s physical, intellectual, and emotional wellbeing.

We had profound conversations about a variety of subjects: books, math, art, English, spelling, word definitions, religion, astronomy, mortality, morality, relationships…the list goes on and on.

We easily conversed about a wide range of topics.

feelings had been meaningless. When speaking of our relationship, Stanley referred to himself as a “Lucky Duck” and I was a “Lucky Duckette”; we then progressed to “Duke and Duchess.” We were fortunate; neither thoughts nor feelings were trite.

Not only was Stanley attentive to my thoughts and feelings, he was full of encouragement and inspiration. He inspired me to be the best Sharan Ray I could be, regardless of my physical or Stanley and I developed mental limitations. One of my favorite a friendship overflowing of Stanley’s statements was, “You go fly, girl.” This statement was derived from with keen interest in our reading of Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The first time he said each other’s physical, that to me, I asked, “Are you telling me intellectual, and to go away?”

He replied, “I never want you to emotional well-being. go away; I want you to feel free to fly In addition to our meaningful and be Sharan Ray.” I envisioned flying conversations, we were able to act silly high, wingtip-to-wingtip, with him. and juvenile with each other. This is how Another of Stanley’s sayings, also I felt with Stanley. On one occasion, derived from Bach, was, “He who flies Stanley traced my hand onto a sheet of highest, sees furthest.” Stanley flew paper; he then traced his hand atop the high, all the while perceiving all that drawing of my hand. What fun we had! was around him. He was then able to We found joy in doing simple activities translate what he saw to paper, drawing such as this. or painting what he had seen.

Many times, we drove to the lake, Stanley was an artist. On one simply to walk around and explore what occasion, I told him of a visualization needed exploration. All the while, we I perform in an attempt to get my were sharing our thoughts and feelings. brain neurons on the right path. The He was truly interested in what I was visualization is of a superhighway in thinking and feeling, and he conveyed my brain, with one neuron merging into his interest to me through his actions the flow of traffic and continuing along and words. We frequently asked each the highway to its proper destination. other, “How do you feel about that?” The next day, he presented me with This was something I was not familiar an abstract painting he had painted with; in my marriage, my thoughts and approximately forty years earlier. The

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painting depicted my visualization. I will keep and cherish that painting.

Forever.

Our friendship flourished. We liked each other and the companionship our relationship provided. We each had trepidation with the word love; however, we often spoke of how much we liked each other.

On December 22, the word love was spoken for the first and only time in our relationship. On that date, Stanley told me he was in love with me. Later that night, we spoke on the telephone for approximately an hour. The next morning, at approximately 7:30 a.m., unknown to me, he drove himself to the hospital. At 8:07 a.m., on December 23, he was pronounced dead. He had suffered a massive heart attack. I truly regret not articulating to him the love I felt for him. My actions had spoken love, but my words had not.

There is a void in my life that was once filled by a wonderful person named Stanley J. I miss him deeply. Even though our time together was short, we each derived immense pleasure from it. Ours was a relationship based, first and foremost, on friendship. There is a mural on the wall at school; it depicts a blue sky and the words “You Can Fly.” I hear Stanley saying “You go fly, girl” each time I pass the mural. Stanley J continues to inspire me; his spirit lives on in my memory. The death of his physical being did not erase from my heart our friendship, companionship, and love. However, on December 23, 2014, everything changed.

Lois Magner, Factory Row, photography

Lois Magner, Contemplation, photography

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The Hands Those hands: rough, cracked, stained by oil. Scratching against my soft skin, wishing they were softer, “How about this lotion?” I would suggest.

Popcorn: Three rows ahead, the scent wafted back. I saw those hands, popping it into a young man’s mouth.

Stomach growling, I sat beside him, and the hands offered the popcorn to me.

Elope: I heard the word before, never assumed it would apply to me.

The hands gripped mine tightly, pulling me into a kiss, sealing the deal for life.

Money: Always an issue, always a fight. Days of hunger, darning socks, pinching pennies. The poor hands reached into empty pockets, full of lint.

We didn’t have much, but we were enough.

War: the shaking hands buttoned a soldier’s uniform. Leaving me to wonder what the hands were doing, spreading love or taking life? Sadly, those gentle hands were forced to do both, but the battered hands returned home.

Tuna sandwiches: such a commonplace thing. That’s what the silly hands thought they made. I was taking care of the neighbor’s cat. I got home from work, “Where’s the cat food?”

Green faces.

Golf: clubs can hurt.

Show me how, but I stood too close. Woke up in a hospital bed, couldn’t see, mouth sewn shut.

Rough hands held mine, I forgot about lotion; he forgot golf.

Cancer: trembling hands gripping mine. Began in the lungs, spreading its death through his body. Months, maybe years left. I thought we had forever in life. Now I wait for Heaven in death.

Cold: the last time I held those hands, as death crept in and took hold of them.

Intricate coffins, flowers, and eulogies can’t describe who he was, what those hands did. I wish I could hold them again, those hands: so rough, cracked, stained by oil.

— Mary Francis

Children: nurturing hands cradling babies, playing cowboys and Indians with a young boy, ruffling the hair of a little girl, wiping their tears, clapping at graduations, sending a son to war, giving a daughter away to another soldier, forcing another son to grow up.

Vivianne Salcedo, Hand, ink

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Vivianne Salcedo, Music Industry, mixed media

Isabel Padilla, Mermaid and Leaves, ink

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Jenae Wright, Skulls of Life, mixed media

Jenae Wright, Nothing But Wolves, ink

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Back Into the Valley James Guida

A

s the hour draws near, I am getting nervous. I know how lucky we have been so far. I just ask God to keep protecting us and please keep putting his guardian angels around us all again. I used to say, “God, keep us safe, keep the enemy away.” I would repeat that when I got scared or nervous. That would be my prayer.

We are all lined up, and the birds are coming in. We see the Apaches, and then here come the Chinooks. The first one lands, then the second. We rush to them, and as I get to mine, I again count people on. Once the pilots get the go-ahead, we are off. We fly for another twenty minutes or so before we start the descent.

During the flight I have a quick daydream of the times I have spent with loved ones. I think of the times I have spent hunting with the Riddle brothers, Chris and Nick. We would drive to Dorris, California, and when we got there, we would go and sit on the far ponds or go to Porterfield’s pond and wait for the geese to fly over. I pull up memories of deer hunting with my Dad. I remember the big hunts we had

and think about how much fun they were. I think of Christmas morning with my family as a kid and how fun it was to have the grandparents there as we opened our presents. I think of my kids, and I think of how I just met my baby girl, whom I’ve only known for 15 days. I think of what I need to do to make it home to my kids.

I use it to show my men that I’m not afraid as I stand when I should be ducking for cover.

One last thing for sure that I think is hoping I made my mother proud. I treated her like hell when I was young, and I just wish she knew how truly sorry I am for being a bad son to her. A lot goes through my mind before we land, but I have to shake it off. I think for sure I am going to die on this one because I have been so lucky so far, but I have a feeling of peace knowing that my family loves me, and they know I love them. I pull up memories too to use as my fuel.

I get fired up thinking that I will never do any of these things again or see any of these loved ones again, so I

use it to kill and not be scared. I use it to show my men that I’m not afraid as I stand when I should be ducking for cover. I have seen many men like me do the same. I ask them what their fuel is for being brave in a firefight, and most of them answer “Family”. Only some say they do it for the fun of killing.

We touch down in a clearing of tall grass. I run off the bird and the men on my bird follow me to our preplanned spot. When I get to a spot that looks good, I stop and give everyone the signal to take a knee. The earth is damp, and I am starting to get wet. I look around as everyone else runs for a clock position, and I see people falling down because of the moist and muddy ground. It is hard to get any traction, and we sink about six inches into the mud with every step. All that weight just makes it hard to run. I put myself right into a water-soaked area. Being in wet boots all day is no fun, but that is what is going to happen for most of us.

I’m hearing on the radio everyone trying to find everyone. It’s funny how you get lost just running off a bird. You practice it, but it still amazes me that

excerpted from the book-length manuscript Our Lives Are Measured in Inches

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someone will go the wrong direction once the birds land. Once the madness of getting a head count is over, we start the dreadful walk again. We come to a very small bridge, and we have to be very careful not to slip in and fall the three feet into the ditch. The ditch is about four feet deep, and we could cross it, but no one wants to get completely wet. Everyone takes baby steps across the bridge, and it takes forever.

We then come to a river. As I am about to cross, I can see the soldier in front of me running and picking his feet up real high, trying not to get his boots wet. Only about six inches of water, but he tries and fails. He slips on the rocks and falls in. Another soldier and I run up to him and try to help him up because he literally is drowning in six inches of water. I can see him trying to push himself up to get his face out of the water, but he can’t because of the ruck on his back. It holds his head under.

When I get to him, I flip him over, and then we help him up. He might have drowned if he had been the last man and no one was around to flip him over.

We make fun of him because now he is completely wet and pissed. There is a little chill in the air, so now he is cold, too.

There is just enough light to see when we get near our objective and our release point. We have been walking for two hours now; only going to be an hour is what we were told. When we hit our release point, 2nd platoon breaks off and heads to go set into their support by fire. We see the house that we want to search. It is on the edge of the village surrounded by a massive outer wall. The green zone (valley floor) in this area is very thick, and I think that there could be someone hiding anywhere, even right next to me, and I wouldn’t even be able to see them. Once we get near the house, we break off and set up our

own little cordon. We are about twenty meters from the house, ready to run in and help the Afghan National Police contingent if they start to get shot at.

The leader of the ANP walks up to the door and knocks on it. He knocks again, and still no one answers. He then gives up and says, “No one is home.”

My captain tells him to break the door down, but instead he beats on the door louder and starts to yell. Now the whole valley knows we are there. This dumb ass is yelling something like, “Hello, are you home?” and “Open the door!” It works, because a woman comes and opens the door. The two talk, and then the leader of the ANP tells my captain that the lady of the house says that the men are not home. And that is it; he doesn’t want to search the house. He is going to just take the word of the woman. Well, my captain tells him something, so he takes his men inside and searches for literally five minutes and comes back saying that there are no men in the house. Since we aren’t allowed to search, we have to take his word for it. We tell him to go back in and search for weapons or bombs, and he does for another five minutes and comes back out saying that there are no men or bombs in the house. We take his word, and then we move on.

Then I get that rush of adrenaline, the fight or flight feeling, which for me is a feeling of extreme anger, and it allows me to stand up and look for the bad guy and act brave.

We have some intel soldiers with us who have a piece of equipment that allows them to listen in on conversations the Taliban are having. They are in the

process of setting it up. I swear it isn’t two minutes after the soldiers get their equipment ready that they are listening to Taliban saying to get ready to attack.

I am getting ready to pass it over the radio when it happens.

We start to get hit and hit hard.

It is coming from four different positions, but it feels like it is coming from everywhere. From my position, to my direct front, there are two enemy fighting positions shooting at us, but I can only see one. I can hear the soldiers around me call out more. One position I see has a man with an automatic weapon (PKM). The other fighting position I soon find out has Taliban with AKs and another PKM. They are within 400 to 600 meters from us, and they have us dialed in from their first shot. They shoot the hell out of my men and me.

I see bullets hit all around me, and I can’t shoot back at first. I duck like a coward because the rounds are hitting the wall in front of me. I am telling myself to get up and fire. Then I get that rush of adrenaline, the fight or flight feeling, which for me is a feeling of extreme anger, and it allows me to stand up and look for the bad guy and act brave. I look to where I saw the dust being kicked up and try to find the bad guy. All I can see at the moment is dust. I then see him and try to get my distance as I fire at him.

I’m getting mad as hell at myself because I am not killing this person and he is getting real close to killing us. The first or second RPG of the day then flies over my head and the men on the roof, and it lands in an orchard. It is followed by another, and that one misses as well.

The hiss of the RPG is close, and I’m sure if the bad guy had aimed just a foot lower he would have hit the men on the roof.

I take a moment to look up on the roof and am about to ask if anyone saw Continued on next page.

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Back Into the Valley continued from previous page.

where the RPG came from when I see bullets hit all around Cantrell, and I mean right next to him. The bad guy has all the men on that side dialed in and is coming close to all of them. I can’t see Rob and Ladines at the moment because the enemy bullets make a dust cloud and obscure my vision. Now I really want this guy on the hill dead.

I turn back around and try to find the guy again. I have an ANP PKM gunner next to me, and I give him a hand sign to fire, and then I fire at the same time again. I fire off the rest of the rounds in my magazine, and I see the Taliban go behind a rock as I do.

As I’m reloading, I turn to see what the men on the roof are doing, and all I see are bullets hitting the roof area. But no one is hit yet. I see bullets hitting right below them as they come over my head.

They don’t even know how close those bullets are to killing them, except for Cantrell. He is getting pelted in the face with rocks from the bullets hitting the wall all around him.

In my head as I watch this I’m yelling to God to please not let them die. I don’t want to see a dead friend right now, and I think I am about to.

I yell, “Get the hell off the roof ! Get off, get off now!” They don’t hesitate.

They are off in a heartbeat, and I wish I wasn’t the only one who had seen this because I get choked up every time I think about it. From left to right were the intel soldiers we had attached and their interpreter, then Sgt. Garcia, then Cantrell. As they all file off the roof one after the other, the bullets follow them, and when Cantrell finally steps into the door of the staircase, a burst of PKM hits just where he is.

The Taliban with the PKM has finally found his range, and had my men hesitated to get off the roof, he would have hit his target. I swear to God they all should have been wounded or

dead. I don’t know who was shooting at them, but I do know it wasn’t the guy I was shooting at, so now I try to find another enemy fighting position. Rob and Ladines stay where they are.

Bullets keep coming at us from all directions. They are still hitting the roof and right below it. I hope that we soon kill the bad guys so we won’t die. I aim in and try to find the one I shot at earlier. Once I do find him, I see that he is next to a different rock. He pops out from behind a rock, shoots, then ducks behind it again. I fire at him and his position and call it out to Rob on the roof, thinking I need to kill this man on the hill before he kills one of my men.

I clearly see that he is pointing right at our position, and I won’t lie — I am scared. I have a scared, peaceful feeling, and I love it. I am going up against a PKM with my little M-4, and I want him dead so badly. Every time he pulls the trigger, I can tell because of the dust he kicks up from the gun. And right after, I hear the rounds crack over my head or see them hit in front of me.

The bad guys on the hill keep moving on us, and I can’t put a fix on them. I just continue to fire at the dust from wherever I see it being kicked up.

Another big burst of PKM hits the wall in front of me, and this time it kicks up dirt and hits me and the ANP gunner in the face. I wish more of my soldiers were with me. We both duck, and then we jump up at the same time and start to look around again. The look on the gunner’s face is priceless too. His eyes are squinted shut, (because he is high, and I know he is because he and others smoked before we left), but when that burst hits in front of us, his eyes open up wide as hell, and I can see the red glossed-over whites.

I finally see a target and start to shoot at him, and the ANP guy joins me. He aims in and sprays the area,

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and I take some well-aimed shots at the guy too. It looks like the ANP man hits him because of his reaction, but I’ll never know. I don’t see that guy on the ridge anymore after that, but we are still being fired at from somewhere, and I’m thinking it’s a house. The ANP guy then points to me, I’m guessing to get my attention, and then he points somewhere to his left when another burst of PKM comes in at us and again kicks up dirt.

This is priceless, too, because I see him duck, and then he holds his PKM out with both hands as far as he can while it’s supported by the wall, and he aims from as low as he can and starts to fire.

I’m guessing he sees someone. The gun jumps around and looks like it is going to fall off the wall, and if that happens, it will be pointing right at me. I grab the barrel and steady it as he fires. I’m looking up on the hill where his bullets are landing, and I don’t see anyone. I tell him to stop and tell him to take a knee because I don’t want him firing for the moment. I then hear Rob say that he just shot someone that was in a door on a roof. He says he thinks that there is another man in the house to the left of the one where he just killed the bad guy. As I’m about to tell Rob where the ANP just saw someone, more PKM fire comes at us, and this time I see two bad guys on a different ridge.

By this time in the firefight, stuff is really confusing. There is so much going on. I now see two different bad guys that I haven’t seen before, and I fire at them and try to yell to the only other soldiers around me, Rob and Ladines, at the same time. Rob and Ladines are too busy firing at their own bad guys, so I am on my own. The two bad guys will do the same thing the last one did.

They shoot off a couple of good bursts of PKM, then displace and hit us from somewhere else. There might be more men than I can actually see. So far no

one has seen these two but me. I shoot back at them some more and have the ANP guy join me. He only has about 200 rounds left, and I am about to have him fire all of them. I see his bullets fly up toward the bad guys, but don’t see the two men drop. I’m trying to take accurate shots, and I can see my bullets skip off the rocks below them. I also see my tracer rounds fly toward them, not hitting them. I’m aiming in on the one I see with what looks like RPG launcher in his hands, and I’m wishing him dead.

I’m so freaking excited that I’m about to kill two bad guys that I’m not aiming right. Everything inside me tells me to keep calm, and just like that I get a peace over me like I was just out of church. I keep shooting until I get the distance down. I remember saying to myself, “Thank you God for keeping my hands steady and letting me kill these bad men.” I don’t know if I am supposed to be thanking God for something like that, but these two are good shots and we need them dead. Or it is my men that will be dead.

I aim in real good at about 500 meters and try to lead the one I am shooting at because they are moving and about to disappear behind the hill.

I squeeze off one good shot, and I see him double over as I hit him. He starts to crawl after that, and I try to put more in him, but he disappears behind a rock.

I then try to shoot at the other bad guy, but he jumps to the ground, and now they are both behind rocks. I yell at Ladines and to anyone listening to fire at where my bullets are landing, but I am on my own still. Rob is still busy shooting, from what I see to the left. He is engaging two different houses with only an M-14. Ladines is busy watching our six where he says there is another PKM position and another man near a house with an AK. From what I gather and from what I hear on the radio, it

seems that we have placed ourselves right in the middle of a bees’ nest. The Taliban have the high ground on us, and all around us.

We are still being fired upon. If I want to get shot, all I have to do is stick my hand or leg around the corner.

The same corner I have to peek around to see if Elms is OK. I ask Rob if he sees anyone, and he says no. I get on the radio with 2nd platoon and give them all the information I have of where we are being shot at from. The bad guys in the houses are close to us at about 400 meters, but from where 2nd platoon is, they are probably 300 meters. I don’t know if they can see what we see, but the LT just responded with, “Roger.”

They are still guarding the bridge and making sure no one crosses it that doesn’t need to.

But for sure, we are all trying not to die.

It has been about thirty minutes of fighting. The first ten minutes were the craziest stuff we have seen thus far.

It was constant, and it seemed like there was never a chance to even reload. The bad guys set up on us perfectly and almost messed us up. It took us a while to identify and shoot back, but once we did, we got their heads down and sort of had the upper hand.

I go back to where I was next to Ladines and continue to wait to get shot at again. I’m looking hard through my scope, and I don’t see anyone. There is no one walking around at all on either side of us. I’m not seeing anything or hearing any animals at all. It is quiet, besides a soldier or two yelling out that they are OK and that they have plenty of ammo.

Men are being repositioned, ammo is being run back and forth to those who need it, and we are desperately trying

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to find targets. But for sure, we are all trying not to die.

We touch down at COP Dashe Towp and all file off the bird. We again go to the bunker area and clear our weapons. It’s about 0300 in the morning, and we are all alive and well. We drop our gear and head to the chow hall and eat the food the cook has prepared for us. He has a meal waiting for us, an easy meal of chicken wings, hot dogs, sandwiches, cereal, and fruits of various kinds. It isn’t much, but it is food, and we love it and him for making it.

The chow hall is buzzing with laughter and excitement. Stories are being flung around everywhere.

Congratulations are being handed out along with high fives, handshakes, and hugs. You can smell a mixture of gunpowder residue, burnt clothes, and sweat. It overpowers the smell of food, and it is awesome. There is also a sense of pride filling the atmosphere. The soldiers who didn’t go out are now up and talking to us and listening to our stories. We tell each other about our individual experiences and about how each one of us saw something different.

Thank God we all lived again.

After I eat a sandwich, I go to my bunk and get online. I look at pictures of my son and daughter and start to cry.

I don’t want to do this anymore. I never want to get shot at again. But I still have five months left of combat.

I will be a man and do my time.

But this is the last time. For sure.

The Struggle Infertility is a soul-crushing hardship…

You try it all…taxing your insurance membership…

It strains each and every relationship…

I won’t pray, and I refuse to go to worship…

Desperation at not knowing how to deal…

You begin to wonder how this all could be real…

Why does nature have to give… just to steal…

I feel like I might never truly heal…

Fertility is a soul-enriching gift given…

How amazing it would be…a whole new reason for living…

To nurture, love, and adore…I’m naturally driven…

Why not bless us all…are we not forgiven…?

Happiness at being blessed with the chance…

A precious baby…to teach how to live, laugh, love, and dance…

To find your love, marry, and have a family…born from true romance…

Why not bless us all…or are we unworthy, perchance…?

— Deena Mortimer

Mary Francis, Fall Has Come, photography

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Somehow I don’t know how to cope with feeling like there is no hope I’ve always been the positive one, but now I feel like that’s all done I try now, every single day, to do things that will take this pain away We lost the miracle we had always wanted, I feel emotionally stunted My faith in a God that lets this occur is now irrevocably deterred I knew before, I had Him to turn to, but now I’m so lost, I just try to make do My husband does his best to be there, but as I rant and rave, he gets more scared I know his heart is hurting as well, this baby was everything, until the death bell I feel like I’ll never find myself again, this girl has been dealt too much pain The only thing that is clear right now is that together, we will make it somehow

— Deena Mortimer

Cindy Velasquez, Bible, photography

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Diana Chavira, Mermaid, oil painting

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I Stop Singing Babes coo with toothless grins Gurgled sighs from mothers’ airs Making noise from joys within When did I stop singing

Mariners of Ancient

Children learn their ABCs Repeating their favorite tune Making up fun melodies When did I stop singing

The mariners of ancient told of driving ships in search of gold, spellbound stories ne’er grew old, They the heroes, so brave, so bold.

Joyously in church they sing As I quietly listen in Warble voices praise the King When did I stop singing

Of driving ships in search of gold shanghaied sailors were never told, months at sea, alone and cold

She asks me to sing for her Clasping hands, sitting in prayer I can’t remember all the words Oh why did I stop singing

Spellbound stories ne’er grew old, restless men join pirate fold, drunken wenches theirs to hold.

They the heroes, so brave, so bold, forgotten treasure in seas of old, ancient spirits seek pools of gold.

Time has passed and voice is tired Thoughtlessly I belt out loud Miss my love, my one desire When did I stop singing

— Edward Kentner

End of journey, one regret Stifled passion, my descant Make one hopeful last attempt When did I stop singing

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— Magda Silva

Slo w i ng D o wn T i me Teresa Wehmeier

As

a young girl, I always believed people over twenty-five were literally “over the hill.” You see, when I was a child, everything happened in slow motion— my next birthday, my next loose tooth, Christmas, becoming a teen, and moving away from home, all came at an agonizingly slow pace, like pedaling a bike uphill. I thought when my mom was twenty-five she had reached her pinnacle—the top of the hill. As she slipped over the precipice, time sped up.

Children grew up and old, Christmas came too soon. Even I was growing up too fast, she would say, though it never felt like it to me.

At twenty-five Mom was careening downhill with increasing momentum as each year passed.

When I was four, I wanted a bike.

“All my friends have a bike,” I told Mom. “Jimmy has a bike, Tony has a bike, and Jamie has a bike.” But Mom couldn’t afford a bike. One day I found one by a trash can. The paint still visible was green. It had rusty chrome handlebars with missing rubber hand grips. One pedal was a bolt, the rear fender was gone, and most importantly, it had lost its chain. I pushed it home. Now I had a bike.

Mom disagreed. I couldn’t pedal it to make it go, and it had no brake to make it stop, so it wasn’t a bike. Responding to my obvious disappointment, Mom made me a promise. “If you can learn to ride that bike,” she said, “I will get you a real one.”

The hill in front of our apartment building wasn’t really a hill so much

as a slope. It was enough to gather momentum on a bike, though, so I pushed it to the top, slid onto the seat that pivoted under me, gripped the handlebars as I had seen my friends do, raised my feet off the ground, and rolled down the hill. When I felt myself losing my balance, I pointed the handlebars toward the grass along the sidewalk, where I dismounted by falling off. And then I repeated the process, again and again, until my knees were greener than the bike.

“If you can learn to ride that bike,” she said, “I will get you a real one.”

At the end of the day, I showed my mom that I could ride the bike. I placed my feet on the pedals and pumped furiously as I rolled to the bottom of the hill. When I reached the bottom and could go no further, I put my feet down and skidded to a skillful stop.

I got a new bike.

As a young woman I didn’t realize my lifelong philosophy on age had been disputed the day my four-year-old self learned to ride a bike. The first time I sat on top of that hill and picked up my feet— time slowed down. My confidence grew with each descent, and each time I tried to put one foot, then two on the pedals, time slowed down. I could eventually pedal the bike like my friends, and as my elation with my accomplishments grew, time slowed down. And for my mother, who watched her four-year-old from the kitchen window in our little

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apartment, heart skipping a beat when I took my first fall—time slowed down.

She laughed and cheered as I pedaled for no reason. And even as she realized she would have to find the cash for a bike, she was there with me in spirit as I rode down the hill, capturing the memory like a mental photo, and for her, time slowed down.

Dad’s job took us overseas when I was nine. Our house was located at the bottom of a big hill. The first agonizingly-slow-to-arrive Christmas we lived there, I got a new bike, adorned with a banana seat, sissy bars, and rainbow colored vinyl tape streaming from the hand grips. I pedaled it up the hill, slowly, but with increasing speed as my strength and determination grew. And then I turned around and looked down that long, sloping hill— blood surging through my veins from the exertion of getting to the top. And something more—exhilaration at the prospect of the journey down. Raising my feet to the pedals, I slowly rolled down the hill, gaining momentum with each tire rotation. And time slowed down. Repeatedly I rushed to the top of the hill, only to turn and descend again, trying something new each time, standing on the seat, riding sidesaddle—anything I could do to make time slow down.

Mom got sick in 2010, and when I learned it was cancer, I was suddenly at that precipice—looking down into a cavernous abyss, traveling so fast I couldn’t see important things. My sister and I looked for ways to heal her, though she couldn’t be healed. And time flew

Daiane Souza, Goodbye, photography

by. Within two years Mom made her decision – let the cancer have her, it was too painful to continue with the treatment. And, oh, how time slipped away. Within six months we went from bad news to planning a funeral, and nothing my sister and I did could make time slow down.

My sister and I spent the last week of Mom’s life with her, laughing together over childhood stories, like the one about learning to ride a bike.

She told me how she recalled watching with satisfaction her daughter’s independence, of the pride she felt as I rolled down the hill, determined to accomplish this small milestone alone, when most children would have had a parent running behind. She said it had been hard to tell me no, when all she wanted was to give me everything. That one small moment in time, so long ago, but still she treasured its memory.

As our time grew shorter, we found little ways to slow down time. The old

wooden box where all the pictures were stored was dragged out with reverence, and we searched through it, looking at memories as if for the first time. The old man with steel blue eyes—obvious even in the black and white photo— stared at me with a familiar look. Mom reminded me it was my grandpa’s grandpa. She shuffled through the

Within six months we went from bad news to planning a funeral, and nothing my sister and I did could make time slow down. box and found the folded memorial card from his funeral in 1949. It had been in the box ever since, separated from its owner’s image by vacation pictures and school day photos of his descendants. We planned a journey to see his grave and perhaps take a picture with the photo and memorial card next

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to his stone. All the while, her papery hands caressed the picture box, her smiling eyes scanning the box for more memories. We laughed at the picture of the park bench my sister and I bought her one Christmas. We packed it in a big box and told her it was a man—best Christmas ever, though we barely had enough to buy the turkey. Three voices, so much alike, spoke together one last time. And time stood still.

I turned fifty last year, and since Mom’s death I have reconsidered my naive concept of age. It isn’t about the number; it’s about slowing down time.

Things worth waiting for come slowly so they can be savored and enjoyed, so that we crave the experiences, again and again. The next birthday, a loose tooth, Christmas, turning thirteen, moving away, the exhilaration of learning to ride a bike down a hill, or spending precious days with a dying parent—it’s all about the ride.

The Gathering A silent sun paints eastern skies as sage crushed under Firestones perfumes the air. Trailered panels rattle, cattle bawl for their babes. Meadowlarks sing from a lone tree, dogs whine in anticipation, balmy breezes drift through open windows. Tranquil calm.

And then they come. Four-wheeling cowboys whistle, motors gunning. “Get around ‘em - head ‘em off !”

Hooves clatter against pebble and brush, driven into makeshift pens. Gates slap trailing rumps while rusty latches squeal. Time to sort.

“Bring ‘em again!” A fence-leaping calf hits the ground—400 pounds of steer lands with a thump, missing the warden, who skips clear, abandoning all exits to a stampeding herd bolting through sweeping gates. We gather again.

— Teresa Wehmeier

Tisha Nulik, Country Wear, photography

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Lewis Armstrong, Red Roof Barn, watercolor

Lewis Armstrong, Cloudy Sky, watercolor

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Luis Martinez, Super Robot, graphite

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Luis Martinez, Tiananmen Square, graphite

Luis Martinez, Teacher, graphite

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Isabel Padilla, Flower Collection, ink

Isabel Padilla, Collection, pencil

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Six, Eleven, Fourteen “A bushel and a peck” Six…Grandmother receives it, folded nylon of red, white, blue, extending her shaking arms, I stand in amazement, asking “What’s cancer, Dad?” “And a hug around the neck” Eleven…No more rocking chair embraces set by the open window, as her memory fades.

Alzheimer’s, they call it, but I stand a slave to ignorance, and decide to hold her memories, glorified, on the shores of my mind.

“And a barrel and a heap” Fourteen…Preacher says “his heart could take no more of his body-shaking laughter,” it burst that evening. Inconsiderate Heart, stopping this outrageous man from experiencing more life.

Vivianne Salcedo, The Beat, mixed media

“And I talk in my sleep,” forced to appreciate that life is short, at six, eleven, fourteen.

“About you.”

— Mary Francis

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A Piece of Me Edward Kentner A piece of me Phil Brewer, A piece of me Oneita Riggs, A piece of me my father, That piece is mighty big.

O

neita taught me that green was my favorite color. When she asked, I had no definite answer to her question. I may have answered blue or red. The question seemed so insignificant. I was in my late twenties, and she was in her early eighties. I was just beginning my career. She had over fifty years of success. When questioned back, she quickly shared her favorite color.

“Green!” she squealed. “Green is the color of money. Green things are living and grow. Green plants provide oxygen. Green, Green, Green, that’s my favorite color.”

Green is my favorite color.

Phil and Sandy’s son and daughter were teenagers when their parents announced a forthcoming surprise. At forty years old Phil was about to be a father again. After a business failure, he was struggling to put his financial life together. The pregnancy could not have come at a worse time. His family lived in a cramped older home that had once been his rental property. With minimal funds and choices, he converted the front porch to a baby’s room. During the next seven months, he made sure everyone knew he still had “it.” Sandy was carrying his child. During that time, I witnessed a man move from depression to what he described as “awesome.“ Phil’s attitude became awesome.

My attitude became awesome too.

Throughout our lives, we share small things that contribute to our overall being. Blaine taught me the rinse is as important as the wash. Mike’s piece remains entrenched in my personality.

When money is concerned, do not to trust anyone—especially Mike.

Former brother-in-laws have left their mark. Marriage turns stale if you allow it. I won’t allow it.

My marriage is a top priority.

His intentions were to make sure I understood he possessed superior intellect and education.

I love education. Learning stimulates. Dick challenged me to expand my vocabulary, forcing me to understand what he was saying. By knowingly using words I was unfamiliar with, he challenged me. He taught me the difference between immigrant and emigrant. His intentions were to make sure I understood he possessed superior intellect and education. Words and the proper use of vocabulary equal power and influence. I did not care for him, but I was fascinated with his words.

I became his factotum.

The biggest piece of our being usually stems from family influences.

My father taught me how to work, that I must work, and the dire consequences for those who won’t work. I have never

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known a harder working man, his blue smoke filling the cab of a cold truck. My dad worked best alone or leading a small group. He had his way, and if anyone disagreed, Dad had two methods of dealing with conflict. He would cuss everyone involved and then walk away, or he would cuss everyone involved, compelling them to walk away. No bridge was left unburned.

Bridge burning and cigarette smoking, I have avoided.

My mother’s distrust of the motives of others is a quality I attribute to the Hall side of my family tree. My mother infused into my personality this warning—letting people get close to you usually leads to sorrow.

I don’t let people get close.

Alcohol blended with limited ambition is a solid way to insure your dependence on others. Grandpa Bob had a keen sense of humor, allowing him to laugh in the bleakest of situations.

Everyone loved Grandpa Bob. His accomplishments were minimal. I tended his needs as the cancer ate away what the alcohol hadn’t.

Alcohol does not lure me. Humor has served me well.

We are what we are due to the pieces of others we assimilate into our being. We each have a favorite color, preferred vocabulary, and work ethic.

Who is taking a piece of you?

Lewis Armstrong, High Plains Gold, watercolor

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Diana Chavira, Road G, oil painting

Time Stitch The tree on the left and the tree on the right hem my extra steps the clock doesn’t count how long it takes to trace a path beneath live lacework birdseye gleam like beads woven through needle and leaf and the sun unfurls its length of red-gold light

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— Rachel Coleman

Lewis Armstrong, Winter Light, watercolor

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Daiane Souza, Panoramas, Seward County Community College, photography

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Luis Martinez, Stranger Among Strangers, graphite

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Walls

Shanya Small

“H

ey, Twitchy, did your face get shut in a locker, or did someone hit you in the face with a sledgehammer?” When you are introverted, overweight, and have a lazy eye, like me, you are an easy target for bullies. And when you move around a lot as a kid, you come to realize that each new school you enter has its own crop of mean kids. The result of all this harassment for me was that I disappeared inside myself, hiding behind a wall I built myself. I have started to take down that wall, brick by painful brick, but the process hasn’t been easy.

When I was eight years old, we moved from Kansas to Colorado. I wasn’t happy. In my school in Kansas, the kids had singled me out with a series of names: “Four Eyes” (I’ve worn glasses since pre-school), “Fatty” (eating was my way of coping with stress), and “Twitchy” (I have a lazy eye that moves when I move my mouth.) In spite of this, I didn’t want to leave. The devil you know is always preferable to the one you don’t know.

School in Colorado was much the same for me as school in Kansas, and I came to accept being the object of torment as part of my lot in life.

The taunting became a kind of normal.

Then, at the end of my sixth grade year, we decided to move back to Kansas.

This decision, I thought, was the worst decision my parents ever made. I felt lost inside. I shut myself up. I lost my

trust in everyone, even my own parents.

They wanted me to talk about the way I felt, but I couldn’t. They were moving me again back to a place where I had lost my self-worth in the first place.

to make acquaintances. She was loud and friendly; she was the opposite of me, yet we had a lot in common. She wasn’t physically perfect, but her selfassurance helped me to understand what self-esteem was.

Freshman year came, and I was a They were moving me lot more confident than I had been. I was again back to a place actually talking to people; the bullying where I had lost my self- abated. Except for the occasional jerk worth in the first place. who would comment on my weight, most people left me alone. My life When I started the seventh felt like it was finally turning around. grade back in Kansas, everything that In October of that year, I fell in love I thought would happen, did. Some of with a boy in my small, close-knit circle the boys who had teased me back when of friends. We were and are an odd I was eight started calling me “Twitchy” couple in the eyes of many people: The again. I’m sure to some people they backwards white girl and the Mexican were just “joking,” but it brought back kid with deaf parents. None of that a lot of childhood trauma for me. Most mattered. It made me feel good to have of the year, I was alone. I wanted to be. someone always there. In many ways, he Staying quiet and not saying much in completed me, pushing me to a deeper class, I even found myself not making understanding of who I am. eye contact with anyone at lunch. I even The remainder of my high school spent my time at home alone. My mom years involved me doing something still tried to talk to me, but I pushed her that my old self often fought against, away. She, like the other adults in my growing. As a senior in high school life, couldn’t be trusted. and the president of my class, I’ve Eighth grade rolled around, and come full circle. There is a part of me I started communicating a little more, that is still very guarded, and I still get but I still wasn’t very open. I promised depressed and cry from time to time, myself that I would try to make a but I am learning that everyone else friend that year, knowing that if I got has vulnerabilities, too. That little piece backstabbed and hurt, then it would of hidden knowledge has turned a girl be my fault because I had let my guard once called “Twitchy” into a woman down. Luckily, there was a new girl with the courage to tell her story. in class, and I took the opportunity

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Behind the Scenes of Field Biology Mary Francis

Maria Lara, Seaweed, oil painting

“Ahhhhh,”

I sighed as I finally gained the relief I desired. Trust me, it’s not what you think. I was in the woods… Yeah, that doesn’t really make it sound any better. Let me start from the beginning.

Camping.

That was the word I heard from my friend, Kaitlin, and my face showed the skepticism I felt at hearing such a terrifying word. She told me that our mutual friend, Tempest, had taken a class called Field Biology at the college the previous year and would be taking it again, and it involved camping and hiking. Tempest had influenced Kaitlin to join. By “influenced” I mean tied her to a chair and dangled her from a rooftop until she said she would go, too.

Kaitlin wasn’t really the camping type— or the hiking type. Or the outdoors type or the exercise type, for that matter. I

figured if Kaitlin could do it, then so could I. I told her I would join them on their escapade as long as there would be some sort of toilet I would be able to use on the trips. Kaitlin promised that there would be.

With a hand raised, someone asked the fateful question that hung on the tip of each of our tongues: “Will there be bathrooms to use while we are there?”

If this were a novel, I would probably title the second chapter “Friends Lie.” Apparently, college instructors do, as well. When the word “camping” came to my mind, I thought Cool, we’ll drive our cars to a campsite, put our tents up a couple feet away from

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the cars, and have the convenience of an electric hook-up to use to power our electronic devices. A nifty port-a-potty or some sort of restroom will be located nearby to use. Boy, can I be naive.

We went to our first class so we could learn some of the basics about the course and what we would be doing on our camping trips. On our first trip, we were going to go to Palo Duro Canyon in Texas. It would be sweltering. Our second trip was to Carson National Forest in New Mexico. It was absolutely frigid at night. I had been to Palo Duro before, but not to camp, so that sounded like fun. Since I live in Kansas, the “Lone Tree State,” as my father calls it, it had been a long time since I had seen trees.

I was excited to go to Carson National Forest. Everything was sounding like it would be a ton of fun.

true.

Some things are too good to be

With a hand raised, someone asked the fateful question that hung on the tip of all of our tongues: “Will there be bathrooms to use while we are there?” With a devilish grin, one of our instructors said that there would definitely be a place for us to use the restroom. The classroom full of female students breathed a sigh of relief. I felt uneasy about that devilish grin and the conspiratorial look on Tempest’s face, but I let it go for the time being.

Homework. The word that seeds dread into the heart of every college student. A couple weeks after our initial class, we were given a homework assignment that led to the truth of the matter. The homework had different topics listed that we had to research online, such as what type of clothing a hiker should wear, what kind of shoes are the best for different types of terrain, how to use the bathroom outdoors, what equipment hikers need—WAIT! “How to use the bathroom outdoors!”

What’s that supposed to mean? Well, it meant that friends are liars, and at that moment I decided I would live the rest of my life alone. I could never trust anyone ever again.

Tempest swore she thought Kaitlin had told me. Kaitlin sat in her chair of lies at the next class, with a mischievous grin planted on her face. Oh, I am going on those trips. I will survive them, and come back home, but Kaitlin may just fall into a ravine… never to be heard from again.

The assignment was to find out how to use the bathroom outdoors, so I found out. Some of the illustrations I found online were comical. I would have laughed at them, but I still felt the sting of betrayal. Apparently, there’s this thing called a “poop burrito” that people have to make to carry out their excrement when they camp in certain

areas because they aren’t allowed to use the restroom there. Yep, I was reading about a “poop burrito.” What had my life become? Luckily, where we were going we would be able to leave our excrement there. I was relieved to learn this, but I was still wary of what I did have to research: positions.

There are actually quite a few different ways a female can use the restroom outdoors. Including buying a funnel type object to use like a male would use the restroom. I contemplated buying one, quite honestly, but scratched that off my possibilities when I realized I would have to carry it around. I decided I would just have to employ whatever position would fit the situation I was in. Another huge concern was the fact that I am very much a female, and as a female, I have other issues that could come up, and I would have to contend with those. When we got to our next

Alma Gonzalez, Squirrel, photography

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class, our male instructors decided they would show us examples of what positions to take, and that turned out to be quite comical.

Years before this occurrence, an old friend of mine once told me that my bladder was the size of the end of my pinky finger. So, you can imagine my loathing of my friends who vowed they could hold it throughout the threeday trip. I knew, even if I didn’t drink anything, I would still somehow have a full bladder multiple times throughout the trips. Apparently, Tempest had successfully lasted through both weekend trips without going once. I knew Kaitlin would be able to do it also.

Did I mention how much I loathed my friends?

Well, Kaitlin got her comeuppance. On our trip to Palo Duro Canyon, she fell into a muddy river Continued on next page.

Behind the Scenes of Field Biology continued from previous page.

and rolled down a hill into a cactus.

I laughed so hard when she returned, covered in mud, and told us her plight.

I got my come-uppance for laughing, because I fell into an icy river at Carson National Forest. Have you ever tried to dry out your clothing on top of a tent as it kept getting blown off by the wind?

Not fun.

The fateful Friday came. It may as well have been Friday the 13th, with my luck. We packed our hiking backpacks with food,camping equipment,clothing, and everything else we could possibly need (like toilet paper). Somehow, as if I wasn’t being punished enough by them, my friends made me carry a majority of the food and the heaviest piece of equipment: the tent. When we got to Palo Duro Canyon, it was sweltering. I felt like the Wicked Witch of the West melting under my layers of clothing. I drank three water bottles full of water on our hike to our campsite.

The terrain was covered in cacti.

We would climb up steep hills and find ourselves reaching out for something to hold on to for balance. Oftentimes, that was a cactus. Pushing Kaitlin off the side of the canyon was sounding more and more pleasant after I grabbed my third cactus. I will remind you that I was drinking a lot of water. As the amber sun set around us in the canyon, I realized I could not hold it any longer.

As I was suffering through this painful ordeal, I remembered with much embarrassment the suggestion one of my instructors had given me. He knew that my friends had refused to go outdoors and I was very nervous about it. Unlike his cohort, he wasn’t trying to make fun of me with his suggestion, which only made it worse. Apparently, you can buy your own version of a port-a-potty to take on camping trips: a blow-up toilet bowl. The thought of

having to use, and clean, this device grossed me out, and I turned down the idea instantly.

A few of the other girls had gone to a hill a little ways off from our campsite.

There were some rocks and a big bush they hid behind to do their business.

I figured I would hike over there also, and do my own business. Kaitlin said she would come with me because it was getting dark. Well, I forced her to come with me because she was the one who got me into this mess in the first place.

Everyone knew what I was over there doing. As they sat around the campfire, they thought it would be funny to keep taunting me, saying things like “We see you!” to embarrass me. It worked quite well, but I found a better place to hide. Besides actually doing the deed, I was also fearful of being bitten by a poisonous snake while my pants were around my ankles. With a sigh of extreme relief, I got my business finished. Kaitlin and I looked down the hill we had climbed, and it looked a lot steeper to go down than it felt going up. I am not a big fan of falling off of hills, so I had the bright idea of scooting down the hill on our butts. Do you know what that brought me? Shame.

Shame and prickly, evil pieces of nature stabbing into my behind and my legs.

By the time our trip to Carson National Forest rolled around, I had become a pro at dropping my pants and doing my business, regardless of where I was. I did make sure I didn’t see anyone nearby, but I went a lot by trails where anyone could have passed by to see me in all of my glory. True to their word, Tempest and Kaitlin never went outdoors. Curse them! Everyone else did, though. I was lucky because Verenice and Monica would ask me whenever they would need to go, whether I needed to also, and we took

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turns while the others waited. It was nice not to go alone, especially with the carnivorous wildlife roaming around.

The last night of our trip there, all five of us shared a tent to keep warm. We stayed up past anyone else, chatting and playing a game of Twenty Questions.

All of us would mutter “I have to pee” every once in a while. Finally, knowing I couldn’t hold it any longer, I sat up and said I was going to go pee. Verenice and Monica sat up and said they would too. We were too lazy and freezing to hike the 200 yards to the nearest patch of trees, so we decided we would just pee ten feet or so behind the tent. We all promised to keep our lights off until everyone else was finished, and we all went. I don’t think I have ever felt closer to two people I barely knew.

Most people would be concerned about the thought of spending their nights in the wild. “Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!” I found myself praying a couple times, hoping I wouldn’t get eaten by a saber-tooth tiger or wake up with a tarantula on my face, but my highest concern was the fear that I would have to conquer. It hung in my mind until I could do the deed. I was lucky enough to not be cursed with the trauma we women call our “time of the month,” so I only had to deal with peeing in the woods. Speaking as someone who would “hold it” for a hundred miles before daring to pee outside, it took a lot of strength. On our way out for the last time, I thought about pushing Kaitlin off the mountain, but instead I prayed that she would get a yeast infection from “holding it” so long.

And I sang Disney movie songs happily the entire trek back down.

Alma Gonzalez, Quoth the Raven, photography

Tisha Nulik, Beauties of a Tree, photography

43

Triumph My first real job, they said to jog the paper every time. Offer heavy stock for stationery, push high-class cards embossed and glossed, and not to cross my sevens ‘cause honest Americans don’t count that way.

The day I slept late, I pressed a borrowed car down Lake Shore Drive, squeezing a missed deadline dry.

No Grateful Dead days off, boss said and I complied for rent, for food, an honest day’s work pride.

Three decades on, that job is gone ink rubbed so deep it works out in words in reams, in project flow. Today, so far ahead, I hum, forget to jog the paper.

I watch the printer gulp a skid twenty pages deep, then grind still in silence. It’s not hard this time to open the hatch, take stock, pull strays, then click the cartridge snug.

The dead can sing, or not. Once more we’re back in business.

— Rachel Coleman

Lois Magner, Policeman, photography

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First Car The green old Ford, parked on the brick-paved Peoria street, is merely a prop in the blackand-white photo. I know the bulky car is green, and I know my great-uncle Alex paid $1,000 for it in September, 1947, because that’s what Great-Aunt Emmie scribbled on the back in her spiky-swoopy handwriting. The car is a prop for Alex, ever suave, and Auntie, tiny even in her high heels; all they can do is pose next to the automobile, which neither of them knows how to drive. The salesman dropped it off, Auntie noted. For now, they appear pleased to own a car, to dress like the Americans they aspire to become, far from India where they began married life on the lowest end of the family ranking system. Here, they can climb. Alex looks dapper in his sharply creased pants and sport coat, his white dress shirt open at the collar. Auntie’s scarf and boxy jacket give her a sophisticated air; she’s a working woman wearing slacks. They will save, scrimp, eat Spam and shift from a rooming house to an apartment, then a modest-sized house of their own. Relatives will come to stay in the basement seven years later. By then, Alex and Emmeline Sarkies will have it down: the driving, the documents, the delicate dance a dark-skinned newcomer must master in order to do well. No wonder Uncle looks to the side, rather than at the camera lens. He’s gauging the distance to success.

— Rachel Coleman

Cindy Velazquez, Sneakers, photography

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There She Stood I could tell you about the heat, how it blistered the skin of those in battle.

How they stood in formation, with their weapons aimed toward the enemy, ready to fire.

A chest full of bombs, guns hidden behind backs, this was war, and there would be no survivors.

Screams of agony and fear would be heard children and adults would cower.

There she came, menacingly happy smile on her face, aiming her weapon at the unsuspecting onlookers.

The only thing any of us would remember, this woman, with her evil smile.

This battle was unlike any other, the bombs were made of latex and filled with water.

The guns: plastic, for it was only a graduation party.

In fact, it was my graduation party, and that woman is my mother.

There will be many memories I will forget, but this will not be one of them.

Alma Gonzalez, Spanish Heritage, photography

I will always be reminded of how she squealed, “Don’t get me wet!” as she fired away with abandon.

How that childlike smile lit her face even after raising four children to adulthood.

This woman cradled me in her arms, taught me life’s most important lessons, the fights will be forgotten, but this memory will remain.

There she stood, and then she aimed.

— Mary Francis

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Why the Cicada Sings Genus Magicicada lies within his earthen burrow, lamenting his lonely plight.

Sequestered in his shell, he soliloquizes his goal to secure elusive mates. Oh

the Cicada yearns to sing.

Relentless, he rises to join fellow protagonists on a journey of no return.

His geometry seeks a vertical plane, genes define his doctrine. Yet

the Cicada aches to sing.

Erupting in slow motion, he casts off his rusty hull, as cobwebbed wings unfurl gently down solid midnight spine— a mantle to endure his race. Now

the Cicada finally sings.

A rustler sent to steal the dreams of adversaries—conjured by the devil, claim his foes.

A lullaby cry champions—sunset choruses serenading till dawn. Still

the Cicada joyous sings.

— Teresa Wehmeier

Yoselynn Rodriguez, Composition #5, graphite

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For Frank Snake Creek’s the place for the baptisms, boots off, jeans stiff, red dirt splashing clean. We don’t need a fancy tub, just God’s clean air and a little sun.

We make do that way.

Beans and cornbread, enough for today like Daddy said: he never seen children of the righteous beg for bread.

— Rachel Coleman

Daiane Souza, Super Hero, photography

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STICKS

&

STONES G iova nn a R ey What do you call a Mexican

boy on a bike?

Thief.

A

lthough there are those who may think such jokes are humorous, they are actually dangerous in that they legitimize the erroneous idea that the color of our skin defines who we are. Nevertheless, some people describe others with jokes and racial epithets, claiming such behavior is harmless fun. It is not harmless. From these “jokes” and racial slurs come stereotypes. Stereotypes breed bias, which in turn, creates discrimination.

Discrimination eats at the fiber of our society, destroying potential and creating an environment of anger and resentment.

This was certainly the case in Ferguson, hometown of Michael Brown, whose name will now forever be remembered alongside the names of other black men whose lives ended too soon: Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and many others. The protests and violence that followed their deaths are easy to dismiss as acts of senseless self-destruction, but to do so is to ignore the prejudice that turned the community’s simmering anger to a full boil following Brown’s death. In the case of Ferguson’s criminal justice system, this prejudice was so entrenched

that it had become a part of the culture of the city’s police department. Just one of several emails circulated on the department’s server included this joke: An African-American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, “Crime Stoppers.”

It would be comforting to think that these attitudes aren’t commonplace, but I know that’s not the case. As an eighth grader in a small southwest Kansas town, other Hispanic girls in my class and I had a teacher who pointed us out and said that we wouldn’t achieve anything in life besides becoming “baby factories” if we didn’t buckle down and work harder. She also mentioned that a Hispanic boy in our class could do more with his life than “being a drug dealer.” Not only did she think what she said was true, she also thought it was motivational. Comments like those can destroy confidence and, in turn, prevent the success of those they are directed against, creating the very kind of social conditions that cause unrest.

One thing we need to ask ourselves is whether the problems that come from stereotypes are a laughing matter at all. Sticks and stones do break bones, but bones can mend; the psychological harm words cause can stay with people forever, ruining them

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emotionally. That’s why it is important to measure our words. People must change themselves before they can change society, and that change begins with watching the words that come out of our mouths. Each person wants to be recognized as a unique individual, not a representation of his or her ethnicity.

To give each other that much respect is a basic human right. To fail to do so is to destroy individuals, communities, and nations.

One thing we need to ask ourselves is whether the problems that come from stereotypes are a laughing matter at all.

Hector Saenz, Still Life, charcoal

Vivianne Salcedo, Curtains, charcoal

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Maria Lara, Pitcher Perfect, oil painting

Jenae Wright, Mysterious Hunter, mixed media

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Yoselynn Rodriguez, Crown Royal, graphite

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Vivianne Salcedo, Ian, graphite

Lois Magner, Flora, photography

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Second Sight Rachel Coleman As

we stroll through the highceilinged galleries, my eyes travel from one frame of color to the next, until they light on something familiar, and I hazard a guess: “That’s a Monet, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” my father replies. I contemplate the blurry-looking image of a Japanese bridge surrounded by misty flowers and turn my eyes to a vibrant portrait of a young woman and a child holding a bouquet.

“Is that a Monet, too?”

“That’s a Renoir,” Dad says. “He was an Impressionist like Monet, but he painted people more than landscapes.”

This visit to the galleries of the Art Institute of Chicago is comfortably exciting, simultaneously new and familiar. Every time our family travels to a large city, my parents take us to a museum. Art is important to my dad in a personal way, I understand, because he majored in art for two years at Bradley University. That was before God called him to the ministry.

When Dad tells me and my brother, Roger, about this time in his life, he almost always mentions the verse John 15:16: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

Our dad heard a sermon on this text, he says, and couldn’t get it out of his mind. It seemed that maybe his ambition to be an art historian or curator was not the highest goal.

Perhaps God had other plans?

I like the part of the story where my Dad tells his mother that he plans to transfer to a conservative Bible college in Omaha, Neb., and go into some kind of Christian ministry. She cries—but not from disappointment:

The world of art looked exotic and fascinating to me — far more colorful than the dusty landscape of Southwestern Kansas.

“I’ve been praying that one of my children would serve the Lord,” she says, “but I never told you because I didn’t want you to feel pressured.”

That’s how my father, the youngest in his family, a tenacious student who’s fought higher math and low expectations to get into college, leaves the state university and enrolls at a Mennonite Bible institute that makes its students memorize 500 verses of scripture in order to graduate. …

As a child, I sometimes wondered if my dad made the right choice.

Bringing forth fruit was fine, but wouldn’t it be wonderful to find a place among the ranks of the great artists in history? How come my dad hadn’t asked God to give him a chance to paint?

The world of art looked exotic and fascinating to me—far more colorful than the dusty landscape of Southwestern Kansas. We lived in a small town where my father pastored a small church comprised mostly

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of farmers. Simple folk, they didn’t exhibit much interest in the expertise my dad had earned in the original Greek and Hebrew of the Bible during his five years at one of the nation’s toughest seminaries. They did, however, appreciate his servant heart, his humble nature, his friendliness and his compassion. During what would turn out to be thirty-four years in Minneola, Kansas, his annual “vote of confidence” by the congregation was usually unanimous.

Though I admired my father’s ability to stand up and preach a thoughtful sermon every Sunday, I felt a life with a father who caught a city bus to his job at a museum would have been much more fitting. After all, we were the kind of family that subscribed to National Geographic magazine! My parents read us Dickens and Tolkein and Ben Hur before bed. And when we took a family vacation, we always spent time in the local art museum. No matter what type of art was on display, my father knew something about it, and he offered short tutorials as we made our way through the galleries. As Roger and I grew older, we got in the habit of playing a sort of game—“Guess the artist.” If you got one right, the prize was the small flush of pride you felt at the pleased expression on Dad’s face.

Sometimes I complained about the lack of art resources in our farm community. My parents didn’t waste much time explaining why we’d settled in a town of 800 rather than New York or Chicago, or even Kansas City. Like my father’s original choice to change his field of study, it was something

spiritual they saw as clearly better than personal preferences. Still, my father set up miniature studio stations for Roger and me in the basement where he sometimes painted. He showed us basics about color mixing and perspective.

He also taught us how to see, in his trademark, quiet way. We should take our time looking at things we wanted to draw, he said, and we should be patient about getting the picture right.

“Don’t make up your mind about how it looks until you’re finished,” he would say when I fretted about an ugly shade of green or a clown that looked evil instead of cute. “Don’t worry when you mess up. A lot of art is learning what to do with the mistakes.”

Along with practical advice about how to appreciate and create art, he also passed along policies about what not to see. Don’t waste time with ugly, pointless modernism, he’d say, and avoid degenerates like Gustav Klimt and Paul Gauguin.

Occasionally, he’d toss in another tantalizing anecdote about his mother, who’d died when I was just a toddler.

“Whenever we went to Puri for summer holidays at the sea, we had to go past the temples at Jagannath,” he’d recall. “Mom always put her hands right over our eyes and told us not to look at the Hindu carvings.”

Some things, we understood he was saying, were so wicked, they were not worth even a momentary glance. …

As the years pass, I pick up other wise gems from my artist-turnedminister father: “People will let you down,” he says firmly. “Even I will let you down sometimes. The only one who will never let you down is Jesus.” The first part of this I believe, having latched onto a preadolescent’s certainty about the flaws in the world. We should never have moved to Kansas, and my father would be a

much more interesting and intelligent person if he were an artist instead of a pastor! As for the second part of his declaration, I’m not so sure. Jesus, I can’t see. And at this point in life, I can think of plenty ways he’s let me down.

Drinking his afternoon tea, my dad appears unshaken by my reproachful spirit. He reads the mail, then moves on to one of the books he’s constantly perusing.

“Tea should be dark as ditchwater and just as strong,” he likes to say. The tea should always be Lipton, he adds.

“That herbal stuff is no good.” My father is a man who likes routine and careful planning.

No matter what type of art was on display, my father knew something about it, and he offered short tutorials as we made our way through the galleries.

It’s important to have a purpose in life, he tells me: “Don’t float through life like a piece of bark in the river.” But the notion of drifting far, far from my little town—which seems to me full of deficiencies—sounds alluring. What would it be like to have an entirely different life? To take a look at what’s out there? To see the whole world?

When I venture out, though, I flounder. I look in all directions and lose my focus. I wander away from Jesus and embark on a life neither parent would ever have chosen for me.

In Lincoln, Nebraska, I choose the public library as a refuge from my boyfriend’s disreputable, dysfunctional family. The library has clean bathrooms and air-conditioning, and the employees relate to the patrons with refreshing civility. I page through glossy, oversized

55

art books and wonder if I will ever see Europe, after all. Back in Kansas and hastily married, my boyfriend-nowhusband and I set up housekeeping in a flimsy trailer. I decorate by tacking calendar prints of Impressionist paintings to the cheap paneling. I might not ever get to a museum again, but I will still look at good art.

Amid all this self-made chaos, my father still sees me as his valuable daughter, worth loving, worth praying for, even worth driving hours to visit.

When everything falls apart and I return home, a divorced mother at eighteen, he walks out of the judge’s chambers with me, his arm on my tired shoulders.

“I’m proud of you,” he says.

Evidently, he sees more than the mess on the surface. …

It’s been more than twenty years since that exchange outside a dusty law office in Dodge City, Kansas. My brother, grown and married to a gifted artist, is raising a family in our father’s native country. During their travels through countries in Asia and Europe, Roger carries on the museum tradition with his three children. That’s not the main focus of his exotic life in faraway lands, though. Like our father, he and Hiroko have chosen to go and bring forth fruit for Jesus.

I, too, have followed the better part of Dad’s life-changing decision; I realized I wasn’t meant to be a spiritual vagabond, separated from God, any more than I was meant to be an artist. I also learned to see good in the part of the world my parents chose. Kansas is home to me, a safe place to raise children with a new husband, one who sees me the way my father always did—someone worth loving. None of that could have happened, of course, if I hadn’t learned to do what Dad advised all along: look to Jesus instead of the mess.

Continued on next page.

Second Sight continued from previous page.

That lesson has been illustrated most clearly over the last two years, as I watch the great artist, scholar, teacher and writer who is my dad slowly lose his sight to glaucoma. At 70, he can see well enough to read with good lighting and a magnifying glass close at hand.

But he’s turned the driving duties over to my mom; on bad days, his vision blurs more than usual. The eye doctors continue to tweak his treatments and hope for the best. They are prompted by the admiration and affection nearly everyone who’s ever met him eventually develops.

History tells me that great men have a tendency to go blind: John Milton lost his vision at forty-three; he soldiered on in the composition of Paradise Lost, dictating to his daughters.

By the time J.S. Bach, perhaps the most Christian of the great composers, died at age sixty-five, he was totally blind.

And ten years after George Friedrich Handel completed his masterpiece “Messiah,” he learned the “relaxation of sight in my left eye” was an early sign of the blindness to come. It was, historians say, the lowest moment in his life.

The famous person who reminds me most of my father, though, is the artist Claude Monet.

The famous person who reminds me most of my father, though, is the artist Claude Monet. When, five years before his death in 1926, Monet wrote a letter to the journalist Marcel Pays, he admitted his vision was failing. Art historians and curators (of a type I secretly think much inferior to the expert my father might have been) speculate that his revolutionary Impressionist style was merely the byproduct of poor eyesight. Monet would probably have thought as much of that theory as my dad does of weak tea. He was too busy painting to focus on his lack of focus.

This is what he wrote to Pays: “I see less and less .... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors.

Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up .... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”

I see a modern version of this spirit in my father, as he pens his memoirs in leather-bound journals, his literary voice as decisive, his boarding-school handwriting as crisp and distinctive— if not quite as straight—as ever.

Retired from the pastorate for several years, he continues to minister and disciple those around him. When a new convert to Christianity voiced a desire to “read through the whole Bible so that I can study and understand it,” my father immediately offered to be his guide. Their journey through the Bible took more than a year, but they reached Revelation with enthusiasm to spare.

The Sunday School class he teaches has drawn stray members back to crowd the tables, eager to fellowship and to find out what lesson Bob has prepared this week.

Dad retains the ability to see past a person’s jagged edges, blunders and weak spots. My children treasure the encouraging notes their Grandpa pens in his characteristic, reassuring style. He sees the good in them even when my motherly patience has run out. He sees the good in me, too.

Perhaps that is because, like Monet, he knows that clarity is not always the most valuable thing—nor are physical abilities and worldly accomplishments.

The 500 verses he learned at Grace Bible Institute were just the start of fifty years Dad has spent poring over the Bible. His eyesight has blurred, but when it comes to what will outlast this body and this life, his vision is perfect.

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Isabel Padilla, Rose, ink

Daiane Souza, Suspended, photography

57

The Moon So Soft and Beautiful The moon, so soft and beautiful, I am drawn to her like a moth. I treasure every phase she has and miss her when she’s in her new. She dictates all my ocean waves and makes me completely full. We cannot exist apart, or we’ll spiral out of control.

Even though all planets in our system fit between us, we are closer than light and flame. I have learned through her pale light how beautiful I am. But where I stand, I can only watch her move around my spin.

She is still there watching me, when she is out of view.

We will never be out of our pull, for we are drawn to each other. But she belongs in this universe on her own mass, and I in mine. We must be balanced on our own axis for us to revolve around. But it’s with this whirl that I have seen her stages and she has seen my evolution.

— Magda Silva

Alma Gonzalez, The Moon, photography

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Mountain and Moon

Summer Industry

From the distance, the mountain lifts the moon in the sky as the peak kisses her luminous face. But as time changes, the moon commands the mountain placate her fickleness and their connection is ruined.

The moon, playing with the shimmery stars against the velvety night, moves away, as it scoffs the solitary mountain. Laughter breaks

An industrious dove glides between windstrewn bedding and soon-to-be nest.

Soft coos emit from her smooth breast, keeping rhythm with the beat of her wings.

Drifting so close I might reach out to touch her stormy grey feathers. Mindless of my company, undaunted by potential harm, she toils on.

the silence. The mountain digests the taste the moon has left with its rugged cave mouth of jagged rocks. Putrid blisters burn like a wild fire blackening the mountain, welted pain leaving deep scars that collect cooling water as it trickles down the side, growing lost blooms. Steady, stable, stoic, old as earth offering direction and solace, watching the moon with its radiant splendor. Yet

— Teresa Wehmeier

remembering it’s only a reflection on her face from the stars. Mountain wanting so badly to loathe her but only being able to forgive.

For the mountain knows time changes and deep inside the heart will shoot again as the blossoms bud from within the snow.

— Magda Silva

Daiane Souza, Trapped, photography

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Bob “You are a Captain,” he said to me, a weary smile crossed his face, years of hardships and friendships showed a simple life of cattle, not lace.

How nature has left him weak unable to do as years gone by, plowing and seeding his rocky fields, yet day after day he will try.

If only we could learn from him this smiling man of many years, of life—simple pleasures simple thoughts, simple work, simple fears.

— Edward Kentner

Tisha Nulik, Level Field, photography

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Port Wine No one wants to share the pool with the kid with large red spots, difficult to look away from an arm and shoulder clad in magenta.

Prepare for questions and horrifed looks.

No adult will ask, just glad you are not theirs.

Three percent are lucky to get one— faces, arms, torsos draped in burgundy. — Edward Kentner

Tisha Nulik, Running Water, photography

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James Guida

I

have had a great life so far. I have had a wonderful childhood and couldn’t have asked for a better family, friends, and other loved ones. I will cherish all the memories I have made, whether good or bad. I love them all, and they are mine, and they shaped me. I for sure will remember the most recent part of my life. It has been a life of discipline, accountability, leadership, love, and hate. I have spent my adult life so far in the military. I only recently got out after fifteen long years. Here are some of the things I have learned about myself and life.

I was only eighteen when I joined the Marines, three months after I graduated high school. It was something I wanted to do ever since I talked to the first Marine I ever saw. He was bigger than life to me, and when he told me I could do it too, I believed him.

I enlisted as Infantry, and I had no clue what I was in for. I was instantly introduced to pain. A new pain in life that I have never felt before. I was a very physical youth who had worked hard my whole life, but this new environment was something that most are not ready for, including myself. It was a physical pain, mental pain, and it made some people who call themselves men quit.

I never did though. I was always the shortest guy in any unit I was in, and I out-performed men who were taller, stronger, and smarter. I had a no-quit attitude, and I had to keep it throughout my enlistment. I was also being introduced to a new way of thinking in life. I’m a calm guy by nature, who

loves all for what they are and who they are, but the Marines wanted me be an aggressive, hard-charging person. After all, I was training for war and training to kill.

We used to yell, “KILL” and other things that were related to killing the enemy. We did this on a daily basis as we ran and trained. Everything was “KILL” or something that related to it.

We were trained to think that we could run up on tanks and take them out, all while we were being fired upon and outnumbered. I used to love it. I also had it in the back of my head that if we did this kind of thing in real life there would be a bunch of my dead friends all around me. But we never trained to die.

We always trained to have every last man run through our objective, and when we killed every last enemy in sight, we were wanting to get some more.

I have two kids, and I had had to say goodbye to them as I went to war.

There is no way to describe the mentality of the Marine infantryman.

We are trained better than any other nation’s military. We are told that we are the best all the time, and we can’t wait for a chance to prove just how badass we are in combat. It actually made us want to go to war and kill. I had never thought about killing another thing in life besides a deer or goose, but now I was being convinced that I could kill a human and eat his guts and not even

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think about it. Totally opposite from who I really am. And once I did fight and kill, I didn’t like it at all.

I went to combat three times.

Twice to Afghanistan, and once to Iraq.

I have a total of three years of combat time, and that is actual combat time. I have seen the best and worst of combat.

I have been in hundreds of firefights.

They never got easier the more I got into. The firefights took a toll on me, even though being highly trained.

I was always thinking of my children while deployed, and that too took a toll on me. I have two kids, and I had had to say goodbye to them as I went to war. It was way harder saying goodbye to them than it was my siblings and parents. It was never easy, even after the third time. It made me want to never be apart from them in life again. I didn’t have a choice. I had to go to war and be a man, or I could have said no and been kicked out of the military.

What I have survived in combat is stuff only heard of in movies, stuff I thought that no one could have lived through. I have seen men outnumbered and outgunned, only to find something in themselves and act heroically to turn the tide on the enemy. I have been shoulder to shoulder with my friends, pinned down and unable to move, more times than I care to remember. Each time I have seen men get the nerve to stand up and react, me being one of them. We had bullets ripping up the earth near us and cracking inches away from our faces. We didn’t duck, we just

Daiane Souza, Arabesque, photography

keep standing, looking for people to kill.

We did what we were trained to do, and it seemed to work.

I have found that I do well in situations like these. I’m not a coward, and I have been recognized for my bravery. If you ask me, I would say that I’m a lucky man and that God loves me. I don’t know how I have never been shot with the amount of times I have been shot at. I don’t know how I haven’t had a scratch on me when bombs have literally blown up feet from me. I do know that I put my trust in God, and that helped a lot.

I was really starting to hate war.

Each deployment was worse than the other, dead bad guys and dead friends. I couldn’t seem to have an easy deployment. It made me a bitter man.

The one thing I hated most about war was having to take another man’s life. I know it was what I was there for, and something that we trained to do, but when I did, I felt sick and hated it.

In the heat of the moment it was OK, but after, it was not. I was not ready for the real feeling of taking another man’s life. And after having to do this a few times, I was completely done with it.

I love life and everyone in it. I have no enemies in life, or at least I try not

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to. I want to be a peaceful person. For the remainder of my life, I just want to be peaceful, kind, loving, caring, and all the other nice words to describe a nice person. I will watch my children grow, and I anticipate seeing them get married and meeting my grandkids. I look forward to all the things I thought I might never be able to do again. I will keep God in my life, and may He bless the fallen.

As conversation in the station had turned to gossip, he had left, still wondering how he would get through the next year.

H

enry looped the harness over a post as he stomped up to the house, climbing the four cement steps that led to the kitchen door. He jerked it open, fighting to hold on as a south wind tried to snatch it from his hands.

“Anna” he hollered, irritation causing his baritone voice to reverberate in the little kitchen.

Standing at the sink washing breakfast dishes, she jumped at the sound of Henry’s voice. She had been lost in thoughts of a list of chores to do once he left.

“You done already?” she asked.

“That was quick.”

“I need your help catching that damn mule,” he said, turning to stomp back down the stairs.

While he waited for Anna, Henry leaned against the gate to the corrals, sighing with exasperation as he tried to quell his temper. He didn’t want to take

his frustration out on Anna, but the past few weeks of worry and warring pride had left him feeling cranky and depressed. The fact that the reason for his concern was filling his lungs and nostrils with a dusty film wasn’t helping.

And now he had just spent the last half hour following that damned mule around the corral.

“I shall never forget the fields of wheat so blasted by heat that they cannot be harvested. I shall never forget field after field of corn stunted, earless and stripped of leaves, for what the sun left the grasshoppers took. I saw brown pastures which would not keep a cow on fifty acres.”

— President Franklin. D. Roosevelt’s fireside chat, September 6, 1936 It had only been a couple of weeks ago he had sat in the gas station in town debating options with some of his neighbors after listening to Roosevelt

Lewis Armstrong, Token of the Past, watercolor

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discuss the drought occurring in Henry’s part of the country. Roosevelt’s solution was to extend the W.P.A. jobs program, initially designated only for those receiving relief checks, to the devastated farmers and ranchers impacted by the ongoing Depression that had yet to ease in the drought-stricken Oklahoma Panhandle Henry called home. He, like most of his neighbors, figured Texas County would be the last to see any jobs from the government, and no local jobs could be found. As conversation in the station had turned to gossip, he had left, still wondering how he would get through the next year.

The President had it right—he could not feed a single cow on fifty acres, but more importantly, it would soon be impossible to feed his wife and son, and that had his pride smarting. The prospects of a good wheat crop come next June diminished as the unusual October winds sifted the fine silt across the seed rows he had planted on his small parcel of farm ground. He didn’t have the money to replant, and since it hadn’t rained in months, there was no need anyway. The broom corn crops around the area had failed too, which meant the meager wage he earned in past years stacking broom corn would not be available as a supplement to his income this year. It might have been back-breaking work, but at least it would have insured he didn’t have to take a government handout just to get by.

He heard Anna shuffle up behind him, and turned to see little Henry holding his momma’s hand as he walked alongside. She had wrapped him in a thin blanket—more to keep the dirt off the little toddler than to protect him from the mid-October chill. Henry’s

A Stubborn Problem Teresa Wehmeier

mind eased slightly as he gazed on the sleepy face of his son, knowing what he was doing was right—for the first time since he had made his difficult decision.

“What do you need me to do?”

Anna asked.

Henry took the harness off the post and handed it to her, at the same time cautioning little Henry in a stern voice to sit by the chicken coop and wait for his momma to come get him. Little Henry nodded, and Henry opened the gate and gestured Anna to enter, pulling it shut and throwing the latch as he followed her into the corral.

“You take the harness and walk up behind the mule. If you can catch him, great, but if not, you drive him on around the barn and herd him back to me.” Henry instructed.

Nodding, Anna did as she was told and herded the stubborn mule, which refused to come near the offending harness, to the back of the barn. As she shooed him around the last corner and back to where Henry waited, she heard Henry shout, “Whoa you son-ofa-bitch!” and saw the mule drop to the ground in front of her.

“You killed him!” she cried, as she rounded the barn to see Henry standing over the mule, a five-foot fence post in his hands, his breath coming in gasps.

He had hit the mule right between the eyes with the post, sending him to the ground unconscious. “He’s dead for sure,” Anna cried, as little Henry started to fuss in the yard.

“He ain’t dead—yet,” said Henry angrily, tossing down the post. His heart still raced from the adrenalinefueled rage he felt towards the mule.

He leaned against the barn wall, barely visible in the feeble light emanating from inside, and lit a cigarette. Slowly

he puffed on it, staring at the mule lying quietly on the ground, while Anna, shaking her head at the stubbornness of men and mules, retrieved Little Henry and returned to the house.

a week.

The money was good, and normally Henry would not have hesitated, but three things gave him pause. First, it was a good twelve miles down to where he would be working, and he would “No cracked earth, no blistering sun, have to ride the horse down, towing a no burning wind, no grasshoppers, are fractious mule behind. Second, because a permanent match for the indomitable it was so far—round trip on horseback American farmers and stockmen and their would cost him nearly a day’s ride for wives and children who have carried on eight hours of work—he would have through desperate days, and inspire us with to bunk down on the job site all week, their self-reliance, their tenacity and their which meant he would have to leave courage. It was their fathers’ task to make Anna and little Henry alone. Third, it homes; it is their task to keep those homes; was a government job, which meant it it is our task to help them with their fight.” was only one step up from being on the dole.

Henry had managed to stay off the Henry really wasn’t one to worry dole since the Depression had begun, about what others might think of him, mostly out of pure stubborn pride. but it still hurt his pride that he was not He took any job that came his way able to do for his own family without and was known across the county as a asking for help. The fact help came hardworking man. But with a growing from the government instead of friends family to care for, and continued drought and family just seemed to increase his worries, it looked like his hand would shame. soon be well and truly extended to the But need won out, so here Henry government for help. Then Henry heard stood in his corral before sunup on a fall about the job. morning, watching his mule begin to He had been in to the post office, twitch as he slowly came to his senses. and by chance a government man had Henry tossed the now spent cigarette been there gathering names of eligible and walked over as the mule slowly got men in the county for a W.P.A. job to his feet, and stood on trembling legs. building roads. The man told Henry a Catching sight of Henry standing close road was to built clear across Oklahoma, by, the mule took a single step forward. and people like Henry had first chance “Whoa!” said Henry quietly. The at jobs in their home county. “Damned mule froze, trembling with fear, and if the President didn’t come through,” allowed Henry to harness and lead him Henry thought to himself. toward the horse, saddled and grazing The terms were simple—Henry at the feed bunk. would show up by Hardesty, Oklahoma, on the appointed day. He could only work eight hours a day—no more. He would have to bring a mule to use for heavy pulling and carrying. For his efforts he would receive a little over $23

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Yoselynn Rodriguez, Studies in Composition, graphite drawings

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Tap

Mary Francis

A

tap, tap, tap brought me out of my reverie. Sitting in Macroeconomics class could get pretty boring at times. I looked toward the window and saw something blur as it rushed by. I couldn’t quite figure out what it was, so I left the classroom to find out. I followed the incessant tap, tap, tap out to the yard outside of the classroom where I had first heard it. The only thing that popped into my head was “rough, cracked, stained by oil” before I was grabbed from behind and thrown into a portal.

I’m not sure if it was a rabbit hole, a black hole, or my tumble into insanity, but after my fall, everything went black.

It turns out I had passed out. I woke up to lights, and was blinded for a few seconds. When I finally got my bearings, I noticed a few different things all at once: tiny light bulbs in rows, posters, and discarded popcorn bags littering the ground. A movie theater? I had never heard of “Let’s Go to the Movies” or “The Devil’s Sleep.” I noticed a movie ticket stub on the ground reading “May 20, 1949.” I laughed a tad bit hysterically at the thought. Someone must have been playing a trick on me.

“Very funny!” I yelled into the night.

There was no reply.

I walked over to the ticket counter and asked what year it was. The ticket master didn’t look at me. I kept asking until I began screaming for an answer.

Finally, he looked up, and then someone else walked right through me. Disbelief buzzing in my head, I decided to walk into the theater and see what was going on. Walking past the concession stand,

I saw the blur again. Running after it, I wound up in the middle of being shown a movie.

The scent of popcorn wafted in my direction.The scent caught my attention, and I looked toward the source. Sitting a few rows behind where I had walked in was a young man with a familiar face, but I couldn’t place him. A movement suddenly caught my attention from a few rows behind him. Some young woman was walking towards him, skittishly. She took a seat next to him and asked for some popcorn. All the wheels that had been turning in my head suddenly came to a grinding halt.

I knew that face! I knew both of those faces! “Grandma! Grandpa!” I shouted, and then everything was black again.

When I regained my bearings I stood in two places at once: a battlefield and another apartment.

Hushed voices woke me from the darkness. What is going on with me? I thought to myself as I stood and brushed myself off. There I was, standing in front of a big wooden sign that read “The Hitching Post” when I saw that same young couple kiss before walking into the little building behind the sign. My dad mentioned this before, …. Is this… No! It can’t be! But… My inner ramblings led me to the door and inside to a row of chairs. An older couple stood toward the back of the building, beaming as the two young people in front of me voiced emotions I was just

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beginning to understand myself. I was witnessing the act that would lead to my own birth. Suddenly, I was gripped again and thrown into darkness by a mysterious Entity which must have known that I knew the rest of the story, and it figured I didn’t need to watch any more. I was more than elated to find out that I wouldn’t see something that would scar me for life. The last words to pop into my head before blackness were “We were enough.”

When I woke again, it was to the abrasive sound of a baby wailing.

I was lying on a couch that had seen better years. Stains of various colors and size covered it, along with tears from someone trying too hard to squeeze the couch through the tiny apartment that I was in. The walls were dirty, with spots of white that looked as if someone spent hours scrubbing away the darkness that enveloped the dingy little apartment.

After studying my surroundings, I walked over to the crib where the awful wailing was coming from. There he was, chubby faced bag of flour with a patch of red on top: my father. I cooed at him to help him settle down. For the first time, someone heard me. He drifted back into slumber, and I investigated some more.

I found Grandma lying on a mattress on the floor. Darned socks lay on the floor half-finished near where she lay, snoring faintly. She looked so tiny, I worried that she wasn’t getting enough to eat. When she shivered, I covered her with an old quilt. Then he walked in, haggard-looking from a tough day of labor. He went to the

Tap cupboard to look for food after noticing both members of his little family were sleeping soundly. What he found was a can of peas, cobwebs, and tears of defeat.

Darkness.

“You know, you could at least show yourself ! I would really appreciate that!

I am getting tired of this,” I mumbled in anger at the Entity that had not revealed itself to me. No response. Of course. When I regained my bearings I stood in two places at once: a battlefield and another apartment. The apartment was better than the last one. Dad was a rambunctious toddler chasing a dog outside. Grandma laughed at him and went to check the mail. She opened the mailbox slowly, terrified that she would find the letter that would seal her fears.

She never got that letter. Grandpa wasn’t safe, but he was alive, fighting a war overseas that would stay with him for the rest of his life.

The next few scenes consisted of births, bike rides, birthday parties, Christmases, graduations and weddings.

Not enough words could explain those moments. The most notable one was probably the tuna sandwiches Grandpa made Dad eat that were actually made of cat food. I’d heard that story a lot, but I guess the Entity wanted me to actually witness it for once. Something told me that the Entity’s focus wasn’t on the memories of the children, though it was important for me to see some of them.

When I woke up to the next scene, I grimaced. I knew what was coming next, and I begged the Entity not to make me watch. Grandma told me this story so many times. It defined their

Tap

relationship in ways that one wouldn’t think of. A golf course may sound pretty boring, but what was about to happen certainly wasn’t. My feet were firmly planted on the ground a few yards away from the two of them. Grandpa was advising Grandma on how to swing the golf club. When he finally went for the swing, her face collided with his club. Screams and sirens were all I heard for the next few moments. I sat in the ambulance with the two of them, Grandpa crying and Grandma passed out from the pain. When she finally came to a few weeks later, she couldn’t see or speak. Her eyes were swollen shut, and her mouth was stitched to help the healing process. Grandpa kept whispering that he would never play golf again as he gripped her hands,

just as I was gripped from behind and thrown into another portal, once again.

This was getting tiresome, but what I saw next tore me away from my selfpity. There they were again, except they were surrounded by white. The room they were in was sterile. Grandpa sat on a hospital bed this time, with Grandma sitting next to him, holding his hand.

They looked closer to the grandparents I remembered. The doctor pointed to a dark spot on the x-ray, and Grandma started crying. “Months, maybe years”… Grandpa’s eyes had clouded over. When the doctor left, Grandma got up and squeezed him. She didn’t let go for a long time, knowing that there would be a time not too far away when she wouldn’t have the chance anymore.

Mary Francis, Through a Looking Glass, photography

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Continued on next page.

Tap Tap Tap continued from previous page.

I knew what the next thing I would see would be, but that didn’t make it any easier. Dad was standing next to Grandma, holding her as she sobbed in his arms. Flatline. Death. Grandpa was gone. Suddenly, I saw the Entity that had brought me through all of this.

It was a pair of hands-- wrinkled and calloused from years of work.

The hands were trying to hold her hands once more. I knew whose hands those were. The hands came back toward me, gripped my hands, and walked me through the portal. This time, it wasn’t black. Everything I had witnessed was coming toward me in a long tunnel. Snapshots of a lifetime covered and moved around me like water. I reached out to touch them and felt the emotions of each of them. This was their lives together, flashing by me like fish swimming in an ocean. At the end of the tunnel, the hands gripped mine once more, and I heard his voice whisper, “Write it down. Give it to her.

Give them all my love.” Darkness.

Shuffling of chairs and bodies woke me from the darkness. It was as if I had never left the mundane classroom setting where I began the day in. Grabbing my things, I darted out the door and drove home to write what I had seen. I nearly knocked the teacher over in my hurry to leave. My friend yelled my name to me as I rushed out, concern written on her face, but I didn’t have time to respond. I was on a mission, and it was one that I couldn’t save for the last minute.

The task was more daunting than I thought it would be. Trying to write snapshots of someone’s life was much harder than one would think. So many details wanted to be written. They flew around my head like birds chirping to be heard. It had to be written, but where does a person begin a story like this one? It finally came to me. It was

Grandpa’s hands that took me through the journey, and it was his hands that played such an important role in the story. I remembered those words I first thought before my trip to the past, and I wrote “Those hands: rough, cracked, stained by oil.” And that’s where it all began.

Suddenly, I saw the Entity that had brought me through all of this.

It was a pair of hands— wrinkled and calloused from years of work.

There were so many things I wanted to say, but as time wore on, I couldn’t figure out the right words to use to pen them. I used nine paragraphs to try to explain someone’s entire existence.

It was really a disservice to the hands.

This wasn’t what the hands wanted me to give. I had lost hope, but then I remembered my Creative Writing classmates, and I began to wonder if they would help turn this meager story into a work of art instead of a work in progress.

With trepidation I waited for them to critique my work. When it was finally my turn, they were honest with me. It needed to be re-worked. It skipped through too many details that they believed it needed. What happened in his military career? Why didn’t I keep the little paragraph headings? Why did it jump around so much? How in the world could someone be dumb enough to actually get hit by a golf club? The last question made me laugh because it was one of the most detailed scenes I remembered from my trip “down memory lane,” so to speak. Then a previously silent classmate spoke: “Lose the prose, make it a poem.” The thought

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of a poem terrified me, but I realized it was the right path to take.

Sitting in front of the computer, I wrote down all of the memories that hit me the hardest, and I decided to make a stanza for each. Just like the tunnel, I felt words sliding past me in the water that fit perfectly: popcorn, elope, money, war, children, tuna, pain, God, cancer, cold…. Each word that I grasped and pulled toward me brought the memories flooding back. Everything about writing it felt right. When I wrote the last two stanzas, I was wracked with sobs. It was the most brutal part to write, but it had to be written. As the last words fell onto the page, I felt a hand touch my cheek and wipe away the tear that had been there moments before. One of the hands squeezed my shoulder, and the last words I would ever hear from him were “I am proud of you.” The hands were gone.

At the next Creative Writing meeting, I brought the poem, hoping this was what my classmates thought it should be. Of course, there were logistical issues. I accidentally wrote “tuna” instead of “cat food,” and the poem got too “prose-y” at times. They said I should fix some of the form of the stanzas and get rid of some of the extra words that were unnecessary. Overall, good suggestions, but I was pleased with what I had created. It would never be perfect, but its beauty for me was that it was just like my grandparents’ lives: a little messy at times, and a little perfect at other times. I fixed the “tuna” accident, though. If one of the students hadn’t suggested the poem, and if the others hadn’t egged it on, it would have never been created. I thank them for that, as do the hands.

Yoselynn Rodriguez, What Is Known; What Is Shown , mixed media

Yoselynn Rodriguez, Space, mixed media

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Telolith

Contemporary Art & Literature Colophon

Graphic Designers

This publication is designed annually

by Seward County Community College/Area Technical School students enrolled in Graphic Design courses. The dominant typeface used for the body copy is Adobe Caslon, an updated version based on William Caslon’s original design dating to 1722. Individual designers have chosen specific typefaces and graphic elements to complement the design concept. Telolith was produced using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign on Apple iMac computers. The four-color process cover is printed on cover stock with a gloss varnish, and the text is printed on Kelly 70 lb. Endurance Silk paper

by Mennonite Press in Newton, Kansas.

Faculty Advisers Susan Copas, Art William McGlothing, Writing

Seward County Community College / Area Technical School 1801 N. Kansas Avenue — Liberal, Kansas 67905 www.sccc.edu 800.373.9951 620.624.1951 bill.mcglothing@sccc.edu susan.copas@sccc.edu

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Hector Saenz Janae Snodgrass Jenae Wright Isabel Padilla

Seward County Community College / Area Technical School 1801 N. Kansas Liberal, Kansas 67905 800.373.9951 / 620.624.1951