The Kudzu Review
S pring 2 012
The Kudzu Review
The Kudzu SPRING Review 2012
Copyright Š 2012 by The Kudzu Review
The views and ideas expressed in the contained works do not reflect those of Kudzu staff or the Department of English. All rights revert back to their original owners upon publication. The Kudzu Review is recognized by the Student Government Association as a registered organization at Florida State University. We thank them for providing the funds to publish this issue.
masthead EDITORS
Ricky Di Williams Laura Bradley
MANAGING EDITOR
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Sara Melendez
Kevin Blanco
FICTION EDITOR
POETRY EDITOR
Rashanda Williams
Ashley Romano
ADVERTISING & DESIGN
EA SUPERVISORS
Alexa Adair Tyler Avery Alexandra Del Rey Chelsea Martin
Alexander Diaz Ondrej Pazdirek
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS
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FACULTY ADVISOR
James Kimbrell
SPECIAL THANKS
Brandy Haddock, Sean Hawkeswood, Michael Shea, Justin Campbell, Chris Sapp, Corey Sapp, Club Downunder, FSU Union Productions, FSU Student Government Association, FSU English Department Faculty and Graduate Instructors, The Southeast Review, Friedlieb Runge, Johannes Gutenberg, Bill Gates, and Viewers Like You
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contents J O H N D AV I D E L L I S J R. L I S A P L AY
3 Pan Song
C A M E RO N D AV I S
12
This Mustang, Who Speaks for Her
VA R I O U S A RT I S TS ( I )
10
Lying In Pioneer’s Park in December
W I L L I A M “J A R E D” PA R M E R
9, 25, 49
Supermarketing: A Trilogy of Reviews
C H A R L E S N U T T E R PE C K
8
The Same Blue
MICHAEL UCHIMURA
6
Rebirth
V L A D CO R N E L I U D A N D U
4
No End
J E S S E H. L A I E R
1
How Murder Creek Got Its Name, 1788
21
Timothy Kelly, Jessica Ciani, Vlad Corneliu Dandu,
Teresa Flour Lamb DANTIEL WYNN
26
Two Year’s Difference at a Roadside Stand BARRETT WHITE Hypothetical Motivations for Burning Down
28
an Abortion Clinic C A R LO PI A N T I N I
C. C L A R E B ROW N
38
Application
A L I C I A D E E R
35
book titles (or love as we knew it in our letters)
O L I V I A P U LV E R
29
Salt Water
drenched dog dressed red (for the year 2011)
40
T Y L E R T E M P L E TO N A Dirty Old Spaniard
42
VA R I O U S A RT I S TS ( I I )
43
Victoria Drexel, Elise Schuchman, Paige Scott, Lena Natero-Weissbrot,
Valentina Salamanca, Faith Anna McDevitt
CARLA DE JESUS JEREZ
50
Song for Ixtab, Mayan Goddess of Suicide
JESSICA JELKS
52
Granddaddy
W I L L S TO N E
54
Asleep in America, Dreaming in Dog Years 56
A R I E L L E H E B E RT
233 Darden Road 58
S T EV E R I C H M O N D
The Internet 60
K AT I E G R A B OW S K I Keeping the Line Even CO N T R I B U TO R S’ N OT E S
COV E R D E S I G N B Y N I C H O L A S T U M A UntouchableDesign.deviantart.com C OV E R A RT B A S E D O N “P R I D E” B Y J E S S I C A C I A N I
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JOHN DAVID ELLIS JR.
How Murder Creek Got Its Name, 1788 I. Innocent tributaries point in ways fingers cannot, the thorns of a windrose that spill aged blood like brown leaves in piles. A boy pulls on his britches, or maybe he says, “breeches,” as the father and his servants blanket the horses, clouds of hot air escaping open nostrils. Above, a single black bird flies circular, Their host yawns, waving them away from his porch, the trail ahead narrowing into a knife blade. “What are the names of the trees?” the boy asks of his father. “What are the names of the creeks?” The father has no answer. He is just passing through this land that cannot be claimed as his own. Still, he calls it home. II. Catt can’t travel alone because he gets lonely like an animal chased up a tree, so he brings his squaw wife, he brings the servant, Bob, he brings the Hillabee whose name is Manslayer. Catt knows trails better than any Indian, but Manslayer says he can hear the words they speak. Up ahead, a man with golden pockets and a funny tongue. The trails never lie.
John David Ellis Jr. 1
With one hand, Catt covers his squaw wife’s eyes and with the other, he shakes with the stranger. They share the sofke. It is soured except for the little taste of honey. The man and his boy ride on. Catt spits in the dirt. Bob’s one ear can hear the coins jingling midst the horse tack. They count the steps and decide they are not so many, doubling back with the cloak of night and the hood of silence. A twig snapping disrobes them. The boy starts for the trees, but Manslayer is faster. He says, “Watch this knife whisper cross your daddy’s throat.” III. Friends and brothers: I do not wish to tell it, the story that begs to be told, to you, the respectable men that make their homestead here in Newport. Appointed by the Honorable Alexander McGillivray, I have been asked to track down the murderous party responsible for the death of Joseph Kirkland and his son, the bodies of whom were found by the creek which the natives call, the “Alootchahatcha.” There, I found the deceased stripped not only of their valuables, but of their dignity, for in the ambush perpetrated by the man known as Catt, the victims were given bare time to open their eyes before the curs opened their naked throats. For three days, they eluded the Scenthounds, but I come to proclaim that the ample arms of Justice have embraced the one known as Catt, as I, in my prodigious facilities, have captured him and returned him to the creekside where he was hanged by the neck. Below the very tree that Joseph Kirkland slept under before he was quelched! I shall have you know that Catt was not shown the same mercy he showed his victims. Nay, I showed him more! Before the final airs escaped with his wretched soul, I shot him through with a pistol ball, having grown tired with the clamor of gasping. I should say that his boots hung from his body like twin stones of unpardonable shame.
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LISA PLAY
Pan Song I was born a soft iron sun, dimpled and unseasoned, waiting for you, You found me at the store, hanging around, brought me home and for twenty years, scraped down my peaks and filled my pits with stainless steel edges of spatulas that you flipped your steaks with or pushed her eggs around. You smoothed my ridges uninvited and replaced them with swirls like your thumbprints left on the counter, fragrant with bacon grease. Fridays were always fried days for fish in reverence of your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, while you cursed against rebellious oil crisping, blistering your arrogantly naked shoulders and belly pregnant with sisters sloth and cirrhosis. Put me on the rack, raise the heat 400 degrees bake the grease right in, fan away lungfulls of fatty smoke with a paper plate, leave me to cool until sunrise when you’ll bring me out to use me again.
Lisa Play 3
CAMERON DAVIS
No End I stopped on the side of the road by an old cemetery. Green-stained stone and fully matured trees. Union and Confederate soldiers, Blacks to the east, Whites to the west, Marked by their eroded headstones. I saw the nest of a mockingbird, Woven into the fork of a tree branch just above the road. The branch swayed like tumbling beach wood In ocean swells, Scraping the tops of box trucks. It must have searched the forest and the parks, Too full to take its place among the fauna. It scoured the neighborhoods and buildings With no nook. I watched it cock its head, standing on the rim of its nest, Swooping down to pick at grubs In the soil of the cemetery. When I turned back to the nest a chick stood on the edge, Calculating its distance from the earth, Making its first attempt at flight. Its legs bent and bobbed with the movement of the branch. It fluttered its wing and shuffled its feet off the edge of the nest, Falling into the street below. It died instantly and I watched its last breath escape its body, Making the tiny bird even smaller. 4
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I walked into the street at a red light, picked the chick up, And placed it in the depth of my beanie. The wings were bent at sharp angles and bleeding On to the billowy white fabric. The mother hovered around my head, Pecking and scratching while I dug a hole in the old city cemetery, Making the assumption that I was the one Who had killed the newborn. After I placed the chick and covered It with dirt, the mother bird scraped At the upturned soil, Still smelling the scent of its young.
Cameron Davis 5
JESSE H. LAIER
Rebirth O’, the moan in the silent room, tongue and teeth gripped onto ear lobe. She speaks and the voice is a barely audible frequency, like a far off tire squeak, but her head is thrashing back and forth and those eyes of blue topaz inspire the hip undulations which become a rip current. She’s caught and swirling and ripping her nails out of their cuticles on the skin of my back, because I am a caiman, cold-blooded, jaw-open, ready to snap, snap, snap bones like — Jesse My name. My vicious snout recedes because my mother called me by that name with the same pleasant drift on the final “se” like the ocean surf carrying a body toward the horizon line. I am warm-blooded, a breast sucker, drinking fur enriched milk. I want my mother to be here to hold me and tell me I sing 6
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like whales and dance like gorillas in rain, to encourage the way I’m making love. The blood begins to rush away from my penis and back to my feet. I can’t stop imagining my father filling my mother with cum and it covering the mattress and they rolling around and lapping it off their fingers like cats with cream. My father, I forgot, but his scales shine in the incandescent ceiling light, his jaw opening and closing because he’s a product of evolution and meant to chew, to grind up the tendons and tissue of deer who wade too far in the river. O’, the moans of a lover screaming as a victim, “Jes-se, Jes-se, Jes-se” fill the room with much needed salt and bleach to burn the names into the walls like they are relics of churches temporarily resurrected as the mother is the daughter is the father is the son. Jesse H. Laier 7
VLAD CORNELIU DANDU
The Same Blue There’s an underwater haven beneath, where the water rests like a translucent fog and clown fish flock the reefs like pigeons do when fed, their bodies cutting trough the matter that holds them like the mind holds a thought; They do not ask where I’m from what brings me from above. A fish so small, mango orange, tiger stripes, has not felt the sun’s heat on its fins like dolphins do, for in leaving the reef, a current might move him ten yards into another realm. It has not crossed the strait Gibraltar into the warm of the Mediterranean, ripples forming with each guitar, each clap from rumba off the coast of Barcelona. They turn a blind eye to the cycles of the moon and sunlight is a distant stranger that clears the blue of silence every so often. Having never tasted fresh water their ocean is just as sweet.
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MICHAEL UCHIMURA
Supermarketing: Baby Carrots In the 1980s, California carrot cultivar Mike Yurosek managed to eliminate wasted crops of daucus carota by slicing the unwanted knobbly rejects into beautiful bite-sized babes. Thus, the baby carrot was born, bathed in the moistness of its own tears. Which begs the question, if these so-called “baby carrots” are molded from the hunchback forms of their fully adult counterparts, are they even babies at all? The golf-ball shaped “Thumbelina” varieties of carrots would scream a resounding “no!” For these truly young and foolish carrots are not cut from the guts of their parents, but are actually grown to full toddlerdom and are swiftly plucked from their dirty cribs to be put on display at Whole Foods® Supermarkets. Have we been living a culinary lie our entire lives? I have. Baby carrots first stepped their footies into grocery stores nationwide in 1989. Maybe what we should do is simply give our baby carrots a name more apropos such as “fully-adult-sliced-cut-peeled-sweetened-carrots.” Unfortunately, I feel a bit uneasy about pitching a name change to the 400 million dollar carrot farming industry. So what I propose is simply turning one or two blind eyes to the issue. We live in contradiction all the time: drive on the parkway, park in the driveway. Besides, the baby carrots I speak of rack up 80 percent of total retail carrot sales. Can we really afford to bestow on these healthy Cheetos™ a more truthful title? I think not. What we can do is enjoy the genetically engineered sweetness, the palette-cleansing taste obliteration, and the signature crunchiness of fresh “baby carrots.”
Michael Uchimura 9
CHARLES NUTTER PECK
Lying In Pioneer’s Park in December If you had asked, I would’ve reached up and plucked the moon from the sky so we could have eaten apples and peaches off of it. If you were still hungry, I would have scooped my palm into the night, brought you a handful of stars before they slipped through my fingers like sand. I could’ve covered your brown eyes in the stars, inhaled the Milky Way from your lips, shown you how these two hands weren’t made for me. I think I’ve borrowed them. They always seem to do better things for other people than they do for me. So while I still have 10 The Kudzu Review
these hands, I’ll use them for you. I’ll write you poems. Poems that sound like morning, like churches. I’ll play you the piano, every chord that much closer to your heart. I’ll let you drink the ink out of my pens. At night as you sleep I will crawl into your belly and write my love for you onto your ribcage. When you die, the mortician will read my affection written on your bones, go home, and tell his wife that I must have invented love. I know I won’t be your first lover. I won’t be your last. But while I still have these borrowed hands, I want to move the oceans for you. Charles Nutter Peck 11
WILLIAM “JARED” PARMER
This Mustang, Who Speaks for Her In 1968 they made a Mustang and called it a 1969 Fastback. It had none of the special options packaged with it; it was not a Boss, not a Mach I. It was meant to go to a man of humble means — someone who knew how to have fun but didn’t need the whole town noticing. This Mustang had a 302 engine that hummed with a two-barrel carb and was colored understated Lime Gold. By the end of the year it was tearing down country roads in south Alabama, gravel banging up its rock deflector and blasting away little chips of paint so that the car looked still-photographed, forever sparkling in the hot humid sun. Donnie wasn’t more than nineteen when he bought it. He still lived with his parents and had been saving money in tight rolls of 100s in a spittoon under his bed. He had been working at Gilman’s Lumber since he was fourteen. Sometimes the driver of the Mustang was Donnie’s plastered, totally shit-faced, dog-eyed, drunk father trying to break his son’s downhill speed record of 109 miles per hour on the only paved road in town while Donnie sat in the passenger’s seat screaming and spraying whiskey-soaked spittle all over his cheeks and onto the headrest; sometimes the driver was the son himself taking turns too quickly in the dark night with only the dims on while his girl yanked at his belt and he burned down a joint and his eyes turned to fire and his nerves crackled with electricity. Donnie was struggling in the confined space of the back of the car to pull his pants up, his head against the rear windshield and his ass between the front seats. The Mustang was parked alongside a barn on her parents’ property. They had cut the ignition off at the road and then 12 The Kudzu Review
they had turned in and coasted into place some forty yards away from the trailer where her parents slept. His girl was sitting longwise on the rear bench, sliding her panties up beneath her skirt. She began to laugh at the sight of him, a long loping laugh made so by the alcohol buzz she felt behind her eyes. My parents will see your white ass, even from way out here. Set down. Goddammit, hold your horses. He got his britches in place and, nudging her feet aside, sat down. He put his feet up on the center console and she put her legs across his. The air was musky, hot. Smelt of flesh and fluid. She ran her hand down her nose, wiping the oil away. She twisted the latch and pushed open the back window, a small triangle of glass rotating at the middle. The outside air streamed in cool across her cheeks like from some other corner of the world. The honeysuckle was coming in. When are you gonna move in with me? She flinched, coming to, out of her reverie. She looked over at him. He was staring at her legs, his hand cupping the inside of her knee. He looked at her. You’ve been eighteen for a while now. It’s what we talked about, ain’t it? Yeah, we did. You mean you don’t wanna? That ain’t what I mean. It isn’t. No. Well then, what? Her skin grew accustomed to the outside air and it no longer felt cool breezing across her face. She stuck her fingers through the window and waved them at the blackjack on the hill beside her house. You live at home, she said. Why would I trade my parents for some other set? Cause I’m gonna inherit that tract. It’ll be ours. We can just get another trailer and put it on the lot for the time being. Won’t even be like we live with him. William “Jared” Parmer 13
It’s still just living with your dad. Well what’s wrong with that? Nothing for you, I don’t reckon. You act like there’s something supposed to be wrong with it. Donnie’s girl just shook her head and looked away. You worried he’ll interfere? I guaran-fuckin-tee you my diddy won’t interfere with nothing but what gets between him and his six-pack. Donnie began to laugh, nudging her with his elbow. I’m worried that nobody wants a drunk for a paw-paw. You thought about that? Ain’t nothing to think about, cause that isn’t anything yet. You’ve been late before. You ever think about anything except what’s right in front of your face? Staring you in the eye. It won’t look away just because you do. She looked at him. When it’s time enough to know, we’ll need to of made a decision. If we have a kid it’s not going to grow up in this place. Donnie sat up straighter. What’s wrong with this place? A baby can’t grow up here. We ain’t been nothing but poor. Poor? Baby, look what you’re setting in. My family’s been here generations. All that work, all that time. Just a trailer and a useless barn. His shoulders slouched and his gaze became less certain, softer, wavering. You do know that, don’t you? Donnie, you know a baby can’t grow up here. A pause. Don’t you think I know that? You ain’t acting like you know that. Donnie clicked his tongue, looked away and pulled his hand off her leg. Well I gotta shit, he said at length. Donnie pushed the driver’s seat forward and started to climb out. You’re not going inside. Donnie laughed humorlessly and got out. 14 The Kudzu Review
You’re not going inside, she repeated. Where else am I going to shit, Baby? Anywhere but inside. They’ll hear you. The footsteps carry. Then I’ll be quiet. Donnie, don’t. Donnie scoffed and threw up his hands. Just for once let it be, he said. Just let it be. He closed the door and set off across the grass. Donnie’s girl climbed into the driver’s seat, her eyes on her parents’ bedroom window. She waited, moved the shifter into neutral and jiggled it back and forth. She tried to make herself stop, but couldn’t. Tried to stop the fiddling, tried to stop the crying. Neither worked. She looked up at the broadside of the trailer. Sheet metal walls painted blue. She pulled the headlight knob all the way out, then opened the door and dropped Donnie’s shoes onto the grass. She twisted the key in the ignition and the car opened up and the headlights came on, a bright pair of white eyes staring into her home and filling her parents’ bedroom. Her dad rose up out of bed, his wifebeater glowing, his every disheveled hair delineated. He turned to look at her but immediately closed his eyes again as if trying to stare an angel in the face with all its terrible beauty. She saw her parents run from the room and the hall light come on as she slammed into reverse. The traction-locked tires caught in the clay drive and sent her out into the country road. Then her father was out in the front yard looking at the ruts in the drive and the alluvial spray of sediment marking her exodus. Her mother came running out a moment later grabbing at her ponytail, which was falling loose around her shoulders. She re-did the band. She’s not in her room, Ernest. That car belongs to the Hale boy. I’d recognize it anywhere. Donnie stumbled out the door a second later trying to pull up his pants and buckle his belt at the same time. Her parents looked at him. Hmm. I did not know she could drive a stick, said Ernest. Her mother said dear, dear and her father said that if the circumstances were different he’d have been madder than hell at Donnie for William “Jared” Parmer 15
fooling around with his daughter. Her father then went back inside to call the sheriff and her mother followed. Donnie leaned up against the doorframe with his jeans around his thighs. The aluminum post chilled him through his boxers. On the day before Donnie’s girl used the Mustang to run away, Donnie and his father went through the genealogy box. These are your grandaddy Boo’s teeth. Claudie Grover, Donnie’s father had said. He put a small pouch in Donnie’s hands and told him to feel the teeth. Donnie had moved to dump them into his palm but his father said no, that the oils of his hand would deteriorate them, cause them to turn to powder in the bottom of the tiny parchment sack. Donnie felt them through the pouch, felt the knots in their contours, their roots. He felt the shape they made through the fabric. Like one world subducting another, leaving bone meal traces. His father was shifting papers around in the genealogy box, gingerly picking stacks up by the bladed edges. He moved a postcard and Donnie saw a few strands of dark hair tied together with a bit of lace. What’s that? he asked. His father picked up the lace and rolled it in his fingers, the hair tickling his knuckles. He said he did not remember who it belonged to. The box’s seams were beginning to fall apart. A bracket on one of the bottom corners had busted into two chevrons of oxidized metal, the ends curling away into rust debris. The wood of the box was fractured into ribbon-shaped slats barely held together. The metal of the latch felt grainy to the touch, like a sanding stone nearing dissolution. Within there were title deeds, letters, a swatch of sky-blue linen cloth, photographs, a violin bow. A fedora, the lining eaten away, the felt hardened like mache. A grandfather played the fiddle. A great-great-grandfather wore a red-striped kepi. Their names were memorized by a dutiful son at his father’s insistence. This is your blood, your kin, his father had said. You’ve got to remember that. 16 The Kudzu Review
I know, Diddy. I won’t be around forever to remember for you. A dead man don’t remember nothing. Donnie forced a laugh, but his father had not joined in. The leather of the seat was still cold beneath her thighs and it smelled of earth. The pads in the floor were brown from the clay and sand pressed into them by the young people who never kicked the running boards to clean their shoes before jumping in. She bounced her knee while the heater warmed up. She had taken the car because she knew this way she’d get Donnie to meet her somewhere far away, maybe Montgomery or Albany; she didn’t know which way she wanted to go yet. She upshifted, hit the highway, and drafted behind a semi drifting between the lines of its lane, its driver probably fighting to stay awake until he hit Dothan where a truck stop waited with quarter-fed showers and an all-night Whataburger. The tips of the Gilman logs on his trailer, hanging out over the ever-running asphalt, bounced and swayed with every bump in the road and every tired drift of the driver. The logs were pine, distaff soft wood, narrow tips facing her down in a phalanx. Donnie liked to think of his girl as helpless, wheelless without him. She had never wished to disappoint him with the truth. In the morning she would call his home and yell a hello at his dad, who’d be drunk on the sofa. Alcohol made his father forget how to use the telephone, so whenever he was three sheets to the wind he shouted into the mouthpiece. Eventually he’d give her to Donnie, and she would tell Donnie where to meet her and at what time and which friend to hitch a ride from. She did not trust Jimmy Hutto because he was a brownnoser and would tattle at the first chance, but Rory was always loyal to Donnie’s girl: he loved her sandy hair and the way it played spiders on his neck when she sat in the middle between him and Donnie in the front seat of this Mustang. Rory liked to love her and now that was what she needed from him. It was a cruel thing, she said to herself, and then punched it and swung the car out into the other lane and began to overtake the drifting semi and the tired old man who captained it. William “Jared” Parmer 17
Donnie’s girl slid into the booth at the Whataburger with a paper cup of burnt coffee in one hand and, with the other, she drove her fingernails into her palm. The vinyl cushion against her back exhaled when she leaned into it and the bends of her knees stuck to the plastic seat. She had slept in the backseat of the car and now felt like she had a dent in her skull from the edge of the interior quarter panel. She massaged the side of her head, felt the oil in her hair. You want I could get you some more coffee, said a voice. She looked up. The cashier, a tall gangly boy with a thick knot in his throat that bobbed whenever she met his eyes, stood at the side of her table. I got all the burnt coffee I need right here, thank you, she said and lifted her cup a bit. The cashier blinked his large blue eyes. He adjusted his paper hat and it made a faint crackling sound beneath his fingers. At least it’s hot, he offered. Donnie’s girl sort of said mm-hmm and the cashier walked away with his shoulders hung and went and stood behind the register. When they pulled into the lot, Donnie made a beeline for his Mustang and stuck his head in the open passenger window. Rory saw Donnie’s girl sitting facing them and he gave a little wave. Baby, what are you doing? Donnie asked. Sitting drinking, she said. You took my car. Do you even know how to drive it? I got here, didn’t I? Donnie sat down across from her. He blinked fast many times. Where did you stay? Same place I drove. Wait, don’t you realize how — how dangerous that is, Baby? What if someone was to of come up on you in the night or was to of stole my car, or worse? Wouldn’t that be a crying shame? Donnie clicked his tongue. Baby, you know what I mean. Why are 18 The Kudzu Review
you doing this? She bit her lip and her eyes moved away past him. Rory was leaning against the Mustang, moving the toes of his shoes across the ground in front of him. You think if we live long enough, we’ll get tired of fighting? she asked. We’re not fighting. Why can’t you just let this go? Come home. Because I’m not sure what’s happened. I’m not sure what this is. What what is? Baby, I’m sorry, this is stupid. I mean, what in the hell. Rory’s out yonder. Let’s just go. I don’t even know why you’re worrying; it’s too soon to know. It’s not time to worry yet. There was a metallic tinkling sound and they both looked up. A man with a bristled day-old beard walked in the side entrance. He let the door close to on its own and the bell overhead stilled. Donnie’s girl watched him approach the registers and she caught the cashier looking at her. She blinked at him. He tried to ask a question with his eyes, with the distant concern of a stranger. She wanted to tell him she was okay but did not know how to say such a thing. When is it time to worry, Donnie? Not now. Not now. No. That’s not good enough. I need to know when. Tell me when. Donnie held his face in his hand. When did you stop loving me? Donnie. What. Don’t say that. I need to know that. Tell me that. I love you, Donnie. If you don’t love my diddy you don’t love me. It ain’t that simple. Yes it is, Baby. Then why would I try and take you with me? In 1973 Donnie had a baby and the clutch on the Mustang gave out. William “Jared” Parmer 19
He and his girl had to move in with her aunt and uncle in Birmingham because they were well-to-do and would help take care of the new baby. Donnie dropped the Mustang at a junkyard for 100 dollars and boarded a bus that same hour. It was five o’clock. Donnie’s father, by this time, was in such a state he would not remember these hours’ passings in the coming morning but for the ache they left. He would shuffle through the house, his toes scrunching into the shag carpet, squint at the kitchen where the morning light shone in the yellow linoleum and off the fridge’s door, and look for his son. I could tell you her name, but they do not remember it. Not in their stories or their genealogies. There is no Ziploc bag containing three strands of her sandy hair or a cutting of her linen blouse. If I told you her name, something would be changed in the memories of this Mustang and in the way the blood-stories cut into its steel and get sunk in. Somewhere, perhaps between the carpet and the kick panels, there is a lie like a knot in the fabric. And if you teased it open, pulled it out and looked at it, you might unravel the whole thing. Their story became about a boy setting out and starting a family in some new place, a wife and a child in tow, pulling up roots. They will tell the blood of their blood that he was brave. That he did what needed to be done. That leaving is hard.
20 The Kudzu Review
Bonnaroo 2012
TIMOTHY KELLY
Timothy Kelly 21
JESSICA CIANI
Wild
22 The Kudzu Review
La Patria Russa
VLAD CORNELIU DANDU
Vlad Corneliu Dandu 23
TERESA FLOUR LAMB
From a Mountain Top
24 The Kudzu Review
MICHAEL UCHIMURA
Supermarketing: SPAMTM Brand Mints With an earth-shattering thud, my boss slapped a can of these savory breath-fresheners on my desk Monday morning. I mentioned the week prior that I enjoyed SPAM™ when I felt like increasing my cholesterol. Now I have the magical ability, to bless my lardfilled arteries with lard-flavored mints, after a SPAMburger™ of course. The drawback here is that there are few people who enjoy SPAM™ as genuinely as I. In fact, SPAM™, being the most mysterious of mystery meats, is soaked in fear and sodium nitrate – which keeps it pink and not its actual gray color – before it is vacuum-sealed and sent to mostly Asian-Pacific islands for consumption. The other drawback is that these SPAM™ brand mints are cinnamon flavored, which is not the flavor you would expect inside this pop-top leftover pork shoulder case. For the vintage-style package design leaves no clues as to the flavor content of these puzzling pills. Have we been duped, or is it that we enjoy the thrill of possibly tasting an approximation of porky human flesh? The answer is “we do.” Just the idea that someone could concoct a mint that has the audacity to resemble slabs of congealed pork preserve, complete with red specks on a PEZ™-form, is enough to put a look of morbid curiosity on anyone’s face. SPAM™ brand gives those who have tasted it, or who even enjoy it, the power to laugh at those morbidly curious faces and watch as they nearly up-chuck from the thought of something that, in all reality, is just chalky sugar substitute. After all, there are over 200 SPAM™ gifts available online, all of which draw their power from the same well. Thus, this small tin of enigmatic treats aptly parallels the mystique of its more protein-infused counterpart and allows its disciples the pleasure of the surrounding looks of confusion, intrigue, and, most importantly, disgust. Michael Uchimura 25
DANTIEL WYNN
Two Years’ Difference at a Roadside Stand The girls lounge at the side of the road with a wooden stand piled high with Valencias. No one has stopped all morning and it is getting close to two. Laura is lying in the grass watching the slow-moving clouds and Grace-Ann is watching Laura. “I’m tired of oranges,” Laura sighs. Grace-Ann remains silent and rearranges the oranges into rows, then columns, on the stand. Every summer the two cousins visit their grandparents’ orange grove in Indian River County, and everything is always orange. They always drink orange tea with delicate, white blooms still floating on top and eat warm slices of sourdough bread spread with thick orange marmalade. At night they sneak small, succulent honeybells to bed to eat by lamplight, giggling under crisp white sheets and tossing the rinds to the floor. Every year they sell oranges at the roadside. But this year Laura-Beth insists on being called only Laura. She refuses to hold their grandmother’s hand when crossing the street and will no longer allow Grace-Ann to bathe with her. At the market, she bypasses racks of dolls and magic tricks and stares at the insolent-faced bag boy, Tate Tucker, who has just turned sixteen and has become intensely interesting to her. Grace-Ann sees the swell of her cousin’s new breasts pushing against her thin summer shirts and knows this is why. Laura is fourteen this summer, and Grace-Ann has just turned twelve. She has seen the secret of her cousin’s new body, seen her strip down through the crack of the bathroom door, the dark blonde fuzz unfurling beneath her underwear and the amazing newly rounded breasts. Laura caught her peeking and opened the door with a smile. Put your hand here, she said, and Grace-Ann wondered at the soft heaviness of Laura’s 26 The Kudzu Review
left breast, how it felt both liquid and solid. When Laura closed and locked the door, Grace-Ann stood alone in the hall, her hands at her own chest, still hard and flat. The sound of an engine makes both girls turn, and Laura leaps up when she sees Tate Tucker’s GMC pickup. She combs her fingers through her sun-bleached hair, and leans against the stand. Grace-Ann sees a blade of grass stuck in the honeyed tendrils, and reaches for it, but Laura knocks her hand away. Tate saunters over and plants himself firmly in front of the girls. Another truck pulls up behind Tate’s, but nobody sees except Grace-Ann. Tate’s staring too hard at Laura’s shirt and she is looking at his dark, fly-away hair and the gleaming button on his jeans. He asks for fresh oranges and Grace-Ann motions to the pile waiting, obvious on the counter. “Fresher,” he says. Laura takes his hand, the nails bitten-down and dirty, and tells him she can show him fresher oranges. He can pick his own. They move away and leave Grace-Ann at the roadside, feeling small. The watching man approaches and the skin on Grace-Ann’s neck prickles in a way she is unsure whether she finds unpleasant. She thinks of Laura and Tate out in the grove, with only the thinness of their shirts between them. She thinks of Tate plucking that bright, perfect blade of grass from her cousin’s hair and how she would let him. “Where is your grandfather?” the man asks, and she tells him he’s not home. The man says he wants to expand his own business, and pulls a bright, pock-skinned orange from the bag at his waist. She notes that his nails are clean. He places the orange in her hand, and the hot, heavy dryness of his palm lingers. He tells her it’s a special orange and to make sure she shows her grandfather. He leaves the orange with a card, and by the time her cousin and Tate return, disheveled and grinning, the man is gone. She doesn’t tell them he came. He is her own secret. Later, their grandmother makes juice with the leftover oranges. Grace asks to squeeze them, and when she takes her special orange to the juicer, the pulp explodes, wet and crimson, like blood. Dantiel Wynn 27
BARRETT WHITE
Hypothetical Motivations for Burning Down an Abortion Clinic The homicidal gestation periods of adult male mice; the selective, sagging purple maw of the pride leader which gathers the cubs, snapping their necks to keep an even score on the chaparrals. Bitches who bury their weakest pups in backyards; Mama Gilt savaging her piglet, bones and all, a dew-teared appetite. Currette; Coat Hanger; the Lollini, making puzzles out of future minds; Cranioclast; Tarnier’s Basiotribe; Morning after pills, planets of atomic chalk. Incendiary gifts for Jesus on his Birthday; bullets for the motherfuckers who commit manslaughter. Month-old magazines; the Cinnamon & Pear air freshener choking up the waiting room; the clinic’s charred skeleton murmuring ember in the gulping night.
28 The Kudzu Review
CARLO PIANTINI
Salt Water The waves... I can always hear them here. In this room they’re inescapable, their ebbing a happy little reminder pouring in from the shore. “Now just watch me,” they say didactically, “I’ll show you how to breathe again.” In and out. Slow and steady. I sit and watch them, her necklace laced in my hands. The pendant is a little purple stone. I roll it in between my fingers, an involuntary reflex, like a nervous laugh. Four minutes left. The ocean is supposed to have a calming effect, but I’ve never understood it. It’s too vast, too endless. It’s engulfing. You know you’re screwed if you’re ever shipwrecked or caught adrift on the ocean. Miles upon miles of endless sea, consumed by emptiness and irony. Insanity, that’s what the ocean leaves you with: insanity and a punch line. Did you know that if you drink salt water, the resulting dehydration leads to progressively intensifying hallucinations? Every drop, an acid hit of desperation. You know the salt in the water is going to kill you, a parasite draining the life out of you. But you drink anyway. You drink because every cell in your body is screaming and begging and pleading with you to just take one sip. They just can’t be without water anymore. “Put us out of our fucking misery!” they cry out. And you drink. You drink because you can’t live without it. You can’t live without it and it’s slowly killing you. That’s the punch line: you’re fucked. Two minutes left. I find myself compelled to clean. Hotel rooms have three ways to pass time alone. Eat, sleep, and watch television. And nothing good is ever on hotel television. This is intentional. Why watch new movie releases and porn for ten bucks a flick when The Colbert Report or Scrubs is Carlo Piantini 29
on? Well I’m running a bit low on cash and my insomnia pretty much screwed over the sleeping idea. That pretty much just leaves eating, and after four days, these four walls resemble a food court hurricane disaster more so than a bedroom. But that’s not important. I need to stay busy. I need to not think right now. If I’m cleaning, I’m not thinking. One minute left. ...This isn’t working. Cleaning doesn’t help, especially since it’s a hotel room. Hard to find the purpose in cleaning the floor when you know what’s probably on the bedspread. Fucking black lights... maybe I should sit. Time’s up. ‘Knock, knock.’ We’re a race of observation, not of action. My head turns thoughtlessly — an involuntary reflex, like a nervous smile. “You there? It’s me,” she says through the door. It’s her. Of course she’s on time. I get up and walk to the door, counting seconds in my head. I hit ‘ten,’ then pry it open. It’s her. It’s her, and she’s on time, and she’s standing in the doorway of my hotel room. Why is she always on time? “Can I come in?” she asks. “Yeah,” I reply, and she strides in, glancing at me as she crosses. Just one sip, right? She strolls around the room, investigating, inspecting the rogue Taco Bell wrapper — a defiant traitor, divulging the truths of my surroundings. “How did you find me?” I ask her. “Michael told me where you were,” she says, looking back at me. She doesn’t break the stare, but instead she flashes “the grin.” If you’ve seen one like it, you know what I’m talking about. History changes and the world rotates in reverse because of that grin. Another little sip. Regally, she removes her coat, and drops it on one of those dark green felt couches you always see in hotel rooms. She scans the room again, another search for evidence of my plight. She comes across the movie stub on the dresser. 30 The Kudzu Review
“You saw Black Swan?” “Yeah, this Thursday,” I respond. “I saw it, too. It was pretty good. I really liked the story. It was kind of sad, though.” “It’s about a ballerina that goes insane. You couldn’t tell it was going to be sad?” I say it coarse and harsh. And there’s the catalyst. Her expression hardens and she continues to search the room. She says stupid things. She’s not as smart as she thinks. She’s not perfect. I have to destroy her somehow, prove to her that she’s not perfect. I have to convince her so she can convince me. She grabs the television remote and plops down on the bed. The TV flickers to life — the adult movie menu. “So this is how you’ve been spending your time?” she asks. “Couldn’t really help it. Black Swan kind of got me in the mood.” “A suicidal ballerina got you hard?” “Well, not the suicide part, no, but the whole ‘Natalie Portman lesbian’ thing. You know I have a crush on her. I like skinny women.” She pierces me again with her stare. I’m lying; I hate extremely skinny woman. Their bodies, pale and waxen, almost skeletal, remind me of that fact that we’re all slowly dying. Some faster than others. I’m lying, but I have to convince her. She’s flawed, she’s average, she’s mundane. I have to convince her so she’ll convince me. She flips through the options: Busty Bitches 5, Natural Busties 10, All Anal 3. The critics say that apparently the cinematography in All Anal 3 is vastly superior to the shoddy work in its lesser prequel. The dialogue is also said to have been much improved. “Truly a pinnacle of the cinema,” they say. Shakespeare was wrong. This is not a play. It’s a masquerade. Sex masquerading as art, sluts parading as artists in the last legal form of prostitution. Humans pretending to be something greater than what we really are: animals. ...She finds one she likes, and the impeccable directing skills of “John Fingerbang” flash onto the screen. Then she just sits there. Sits and watches, listening to “Tara Star” beg “Mitch Hardcock” to “spank her harder.” Minutes pass, and she just sits and watches as their hollering fills Carlo Piantini 31
the air. Not only silences can be awkward. “You know they’re going to charge me for that, right?” She is inconsiderate. Another point to drive home. She glances again with those eyes and takes a few steps towards me. “How are you?” she questions, possibly with genuine concern. My eyes narrow in — a hunter’s gaze as my prey emerges, my opportunity finally presenting itself. This is my chance to destroy her. “What are you doing here, Ashley?” I ask, my expression deadpan and cold. Her gaze finally breaks as her eyes drop to the floor, to the nasty halfshag carpets of the hotel room. More seconds pass with the tension so thick I can feel myself gag on it. Finally, she speaks. “Matt, this isn’t what I wanted. I never wanted to hurt you.” Another quick chug. Oh fuck you. Fuck you, and your quasi-compassionate cliché. I know that’s not what you wanted because I was never part of the equation. When someone says those words, it’s not because they were ever thinking about you. They were thinking about themselves: what they needed, what they wanted. What was easier for them. Cowards. “I know that.” “...I’m sorry.” Down another cup. And there it is. The apology. She walks closer to me, inches away now. Her eyes are burning through me, unbreakable and unyielding. Everything in the room is electrified. My heart beats so hard I feel it my stomach and it makes me want to puke. My legs quake so hard I’m half-convinced they’ll act on their and take me away from here. But I can’t. I’m bound in the vice, already trapped in those eyes, in that smile, that grin. And she knows it. “I don’t care,” I say to her. Liar. She steps forward, one last step across the threshold. She laces her fingers in my hair, presses her body up against mine. Her breathing is calm, slow, drawing me in. Mine’s a fucking jackhammer. I feel her on me — her breasts pushing against my chest, her breath on my lips, her thighs rubbing against mine. Her smell. Her fucking smell, everywhere. Choking me, confusing me, pulling me back, pulling me until finally 32 The Kudzu Review
we’re together. I’m engulfed in her — her lips on mine, her hands lightly caressing my hair, her smell of jasmine and laundry detergent. For a nanosecond I wonder if his sheets smell the same. But then it doesn’t matter. Throw yourself into that big, gaping sea and drink away. Kids on Halloween are the paragon of human nature. Ravenous gluttons, they horde and devour their poison until it infects them. They gorge and ravish and consume until it hurts and aches. In their misery they swear that it wasn’t worth it, that this will be the last time. Then next Halloween rolls around... My face is locked with hers. Her shirt comes off. My pants come down. In moments her bra is gone and my hands are on her. Everything is the same. But everything is different. Corrupted. Corroded. Still, I kiss her. I kiss her because that’s the punch-line: you’re fucked. We’re a race of observation, not of action. At any given time, we can glance at a thousand different relationships and pinpoint every flaw. We can see where the levies bend, straining to hold back the raging floods. We can see it. We see it, and we lecture, we rant, and beg them to face the reality — that they are a time bomb, counting down to implosion. We know this, and we know that their lives would be better, healthier, without each other. But when the mirror turns upon our own reflection and we see the toxicity levels rising, we can’t act. Every alarm in your head is blazing with the truth, but you’re paralyzed to it. Logic and rationality and sanity are no longer relevant. They’re gone because you’ve been drinking that salt water too damn long. You’re insane, you’re broken, and the only thing left to do is keep drinking... She pulls away and gazes at me again. Those fucking eyes... “I still love you, you know that right?” she asks. “Yes”. “Do you still love me?” “Yes.” And then she cries. It’s not the weeping kind; she doesn’t bawl. It’s the Carlo Piantini 33
kind where the floodgates crack just an inch, where the eyes water up and tears cascade. But isn’t that worse? Watching cancer erode someone away is harder than witnessing a car crash. “What can I do? Please,” she asks. I have to say something. It’s a reflex. When someone cries, you can’t possibly sit in silence. I have to say something. But the only thing that’s left is the truth. “We’re going to fuck until I can’t move anymore. Then we’re going to fall asleep. We’re not going to speak. And in the morning, when you wake up, I’m not going to be here.” Everything stops then, in that moment, and we stare at each other. The time-continuum enters fission, and that second spans an eternity. And then she kisses me. She gives in to me. Not because of desire, or obedience, or because dominance makes her wet. It’s because she owes me. She owes because after the love, the caring, the devotion, after all of that, she tore my heart out and ripped it into thousands of pieces. And no matter how hard or long you try to reassemble the pieces, all you’re left with is a mosaic. A fragmented, broken image of a picture that was once beautiful. She owes me, but everything in her that was once gorgeous and pure and human is now gone. This is all that she can give me. This is what she left. And I take it, because I’m the same. Broken, fractured, twisted. The wires are connected wrong. Everything inside hurts, and the only consolation is to tear down what’s left of one another. And she does it, because she loves me. Because this is all she can do to anesthetize me, to let me break her. Her last act of compassion. So she kisses me, and I kiss her back. And we fuck until neither of us can move, until we’ve destroyed each other. Then we sleep. And in the morning, there I am. Next to her. Because I’m lost, adrift in the vastness. Caught in the abyss. Because I’m so thirsty, and I need to drink, and all I have left is salt water.
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C. CLARE BROWN
book titles (or love as we knew it in our letters) our binds were pale skin— the ‘tuck me beneath the coffee can of yesterday afternoon’ our spines may as well have been softly bound in salmon colored curtains— wrapped in fisheyes always looking back— always looking through a window the color would later evolve into a shade ‘too familiar’— like the mapping out of a place that did not yet exist— not then, not now you gave to me in titles— the plot ‘run-downs’ could be found on the covers but never in them that was secret we never met again after that first time though we corresponded going on evening strolls— if only in our writing in one letter— an enclosed photograph read itself aloud like this— ‘your boat was made of brick red like copper rusting in the waves’ it said this all beneath a paperclip C. Clare Brown 35
your pen was transformed into a trowel sealing cement over the corridors of a ship we slaved over to watch it sink— like a little girl falling in the water wearing her winter wool coat it was the color of dehydration; dark yellow piss, so better off without your eyes, now hollow— watching the water give rise to suffocation through a telescope up and down though, your last act was endearing— licking at cellulose pulp, until its breath caught wind and was carried on for forty four cents chattering in a letterbox somewhere else your last note was lost to hardware approved by the UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE now do as i say and unfold the corners to dote on who folded them there in the first place with binoculars we saw the outside: we only saw a hair on the head of a hare; inside: we could only see a ‘stroke me ‘til i feel sincere’ a kiss where the eyelashes touch imagining the tin-can taste of chapped lips 36 The Kudzu Review
like burning candle-wax to a cool break the seal to reveal a telescope drawn in black ink— between two bright blue lines all of this we saw through salmon colored curtains not with fisheyes, but kept with polaroids— left between pages for strangers to thumb across
C. Clare Brown
37
OLIVIA PULVER
Application What’s your name? Now, where did I put your resume? Would you like to take your jacket off? Do you want a jellybean? What flavor? Stacy, will you tell the next applicant to wait in the hall? And would you mind getting me some more coffee? Would you like some, too? Stacy, can you bring an extra mug for…what’s your name again? So, why do you want to work for our company? What makes us so appealing? Was it our net profit? Our awards? Did you see our ad in Time? Did you know one of our interns designed that ad? Can you believe how talented she is? Isn’t she unique? Speaking of unique, what makes you unique? What I mean is, why should we choose you over the thousand applicants competing for the same position? What makes your degree so different from everyone else’s? Have you always wanted to work in this field? Did your father work in this field? Did you watch him walk into the kitchen every morning wearing the same navy blue suit and red tie and kiss your mother goodbye before leaving for work in his red Sedan? I’m not being sexist, am I? Do I sound like my age? Isn’t it funny how you can change your face, but you can never change your thoughts? What about school? Were you at the top of your class? Did you ever get a bad report card? How bad was it? Where did you hide it? Under the bed? In your sock drawer? Were you brave enough to shred it? Did your teachers like you? Were you always the first kid they called on? Did they always mispronounce your last name? It’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? Is it Polish? Did you ever plagiarize an essay, but never get caught? When was the first time you realized that the answers were in the back of the book? You left it out of the Works Cited page, didn’t you? 38 The Kudzu Review
What about extracurricular activities? Any sports or honor societies? Did you run for class president every year and always end up as the treasurer? Did you even get that position? Did you ever get bullied or teased? Who bullied you, and why? When did you hit back, or did you even hit back at all? What names did they call you? How many bruises did you blame on tripping? Did any of them become scars? Or is it all internal? Is that why you twitched when you heard Stacy smack her gum? Disgusting habit, isn’t it? Is she back with the coffee already? Thank you, my dear, but would you please knock before you enter? And can you please take that gum out of your mouth? You know I can fire you for that, right? How’s the coffee? Too hot? There’s nothing like a good cup of joe, is there? Do they call it “joe” anymore? I’m showing my age again, aren’t I? Are you sure you’re up for this job? You do realize you won’t have a life after this, right? Will you mind racing against deadlines and staring at spreadsheets for the rest of your life? You think you’re going to get promoted? Are you high? Do you know how long it took me to get out of the position you’re in? Do you know how unsatisfying it is to know you’ve worked at a company for twenty years, and you still can’t get your secretary to stop smacking her gum or knock on the door? Do you know how many kids like you I see the next day working at McDonald’s or Burger King? How many of those kids do you think have degrees like yours? Did you think a degree was going to make up for all the sadness in your life, all the absent fathers and bullies and disappointment you’ve told your therapist about? Do you even know what sadness is? You’re not listening to me, are you? You’re still staring at my legs under the table; did you think I didn’t notice? Stacy? Can you send the next one in?
Olivia Pulver 39
ALICIA DEER
drenched dog dressed red (for the year 2011) 1. red ink doesn’t always indicate an error or color a warning sign or paint a blood stain sometimes it fills-in a hydrant or assists a sunset or is the only ink from any pen I could find to tell you 2. there must be some sort of mistake my bed is dressed and walls are plain adorned by numbers that litter the calendar near the doorway there must be some sort of error a misprint from the manufacturer it doesn’t correlate to the present date or what comes after
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3. My dog drank all my whiskey when I wasn’t home it smelled rich of black licorice and tasted like a bone My dog drank all my whiskey now he is asleep and rightly so he did go for being such a thief 4. I am so full of love today I think I will drench you all in this love until you have become satiated and sickened; forced to drip some on to a neighbor.
Alicia Deer 41
TYLER TEMPLETON
A Dirty Old Spaniard When an old man taunts a little bird inside a cage with his crusty, bloody finger is he saying: Here, taste the garlic I ate to help my circulation, smell the blood I stole from those sardines this morning and don’t miss the flavor from that old lady who’s not my wife. And is he telling this to the bird or his friends sitting behind him? The ones laughing, rolling on the bench trying to decide if the old lady was one of their wives, whether or not his good circulation was caught up in one of their daughters and hoping they hadn’t already eaten those sardines.
42 The Kudzu Review
Camino Sheep
VICTORIA DREXEL
Victoria Drexel 43
ELISE SCHUCHMAN
Smoke 44 The Kudzu Review
Shakespeare’s Ladies
PAIGE SCOTT
Paige Scott 45
LENA NATERO-WEISSBROT
Slits 46 The Kudzu Review
Casco Viejo
VALENTINA SALAMANCA
Valentina Salamanca 47
FAITH ANNA MCDEVITT
Five O’Clock, Spring 48 The Kudzu Review
MICHAEL UCHIMURA
Supermarketing: Milk Ah, milk. What a pallid 10,000-year journey you have taken from Holstein mammaries into human stomachs worldwide — from the mouths of Pharaohs to the cavity-ridden pie holes of the modern day youth. In purity and splendor, you are second only to water. I hope this doesn’t bother you; there are so many great things about you. You have more health benefits than the majority of CEOs. You can prevent childhood obesity, gout, and even protect human breasts from cancer. You’re a good source of protein. You help our hearts, our thyroids and give us dietary calcium for our bones. So why is it that you are still sitting in the dairy aisle weeping gently on the outside of your recyclable plastic carton? Isn’t it enough that we enjoy over 62 million pounds of you a year? You are the most popular bovine utterance around, although some would say butter is better. I just cannot understand why you are so wound up under your vacuumsealed color-coded cap. What’s that? You are being abused? Oreos, you say? Devil’s food himself and his minions, the Keebler elves, have teamed up with you for too long? They are tainting your image as nutritious Elmer’s glue? Milk, you are starting to sound like a prom queen that complains when she has too many dates to choose from. You are a romancer. You have the enchanting ability to trick hungry humans into believing that we can eat whatever we want as long as it is with you. You mustn’t see this “abuse” as something to be ashamed of. It is your superpower. And, while you might just be the excuse I use to justify my cake-eating habit, do not let that make you insecure.
Michael Uchimura 49
CARLA DE JESUS JEREZ
Song for Ixtab, Mayan Goddess of Suicide In the supermarket a girl and a woman are selecting apples. The girl goes shopping hungry, only remembers her mouth when her stomach growls, has plastic in a fist that never sees cash. She is young and apples are accessories to the buds beneath her cheeks. The girl picks her fruit fast like she eats it, or like it rots when she’s out filling on the wheat god’s milk, waiting for the prince of bar peanuts to come by and give her some busy work, to turn her into an orchard for an hour. The girl is far too fast for the old woman who is bent over carefully, looking for her children in the faces of apples. She’s been years deep in apples, years deep in the crisp water nectar that some days turns warm and brown. She now swims through her days chin up, forgetting the fear of drowning, hoping to forget the sound 50 The Kudzu Review
of babies turned lullabies. Her evenings are spent in silence, are spent in crosswords and long skin, skin so long it crawls into thin telephone lines and suffocates, grays, searching for little-toed souls that lose her name until Christmas day, where it’s found, caught in the folds of parcel ribbon. She knows what the young girl will learn, that in new times there are new sacrifices for heaven, new ways to turn a god’s love golden; fruit in withered hand she sings a slow, tired tune even death can’t sing.
Carla de Jesus Jerez 51
JESSICA JELKS
Granddaddy He told me in his warm southern drawl that a troll lived underneath his kitchen table. We would eat cherries and cheese crackers while Grandmamma would nibble pimento sandwiches, which made my nose crinkle to look much like his own. He would stomp his loafers on the floor to signal that the troll was coming to steal away my snacks. I peeked under the table and was dumbfounded when I surfaced only to find pits and stems. When the three of us retired to their backyard, he would weed his ruby-red tomato garden while Grandmamma pruned her hydrangeas, purple, green, and blue from the orange Georgia soil. We named each winged thing that would rest on his bird-feeder. He threatened the squirrels with his unloaded shotgun.
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I’d pick a book from their immense library, usually the one about the Owl and the Pussycat. I loved that a pig with a ring in his nose wed the two animals, and I believed that my grandparents once had such a ceremony. Grandmamma would read to me until I fell asleep to Granddaddy and my father’s constructive profanities yelled at the ball-players on television. When my father sold their home in Decatur after we buried them both, I ran my fingers through the grass in their front yard. Dad turns seventy this month, and I still catch him sobbing on Grandmamma’s green couch when the Braves win a game. Embarrassed, I ask why he cries, knowing perfectly that he misses them. He always looks at me the same way that I looked at Granddaddy when I caught him chewing with a cherry stem poking out of the corner of his mouth.
Jessica Jelks 53
WILL STONE
Asleep In America, Dreaming In Dog Years I was born to wear a leather jacket but the skin graft wouldn’t take; so I borrowed someone else’s clothes and let my nails grow wild and cruel, scratching my name into softer shoulder blades. I was a teen-age guitar solo trying to ignore the years in front of me, paying rent with marbles I found under my bed. I was a hanging chad that spent my nights breathing paint out of plastic bags until the light took me to the check out line. My organs were tangled around the lowered expectations I kept in case of emergency, the knots of barbed wire that kept my smile shaking through the day. Only now do my branches grow tired of supporting carbonated televangelism and unread history books. Some day soon my braches will break and be taken up by the neighborhood rats, who will use them to paint bruises on their faces, pretending to fight for freedom. I am being written into the margins in gasoline, same as blood on linoleum. I am citizen shareholder, snorting a quick picket line whenever I occupy a public bathroom. I am yelling crack is witchcraft and death to false profits at street signs, but written law doesn’t understand the virtue of sloganeering. Besides, that money has already been spent ten times over by hands 54 The Kudzu Review
that only shake to the beat of their own self-interests. If given the chance, I would sell your bones for my own salvation and use my grace to build a monument to thieves, a literary cannon aimed at vast towers carved from glass and steel. So claim what can be called your own and let dead men have their history. Now is where I will wait for the rest of my life.
Will Stone 55
ARIELLE HEBERT
233 Darden Road Nearly the last house of a dead end, of what one wouldn’t call a street, at least, it was not paved, but the oaks grew from either side in a canopy, and though there were no lights at night, the tunnel was navigable by the glowing pairs of animals’ eyes in the brush all around. In the early hours, my brother and I walked to the county road listening to the herons, the horses, and in the distance the hum of turbines harvesting the sugar cane fields. That sweet smell was with me all day at school, the scent of nectar through math and reading and P.E. where I beat all the boys at track, honey at recess when I played tetherball by myself and the bus ride home on two connecting routes from the city proper. We would launch off the bus and run or throw rocks at each other, dragging our back packs and jackets, only stopping at the break in the trees near Old Aaron’s place to straddle the barbs on the wire fence and break off a stalk of the sweetest after-school treat. Momma strictly forbade us taking what was not ours without permission but we bit off whatever we could chew before our driveway, throwing the fibrous gnash in the ditch once all the flavor had been sucked out. Once, I bit into a sinewy stalk and a tooth fell out. The reddened fruit said that pieces of me were being lost, and in fear of my own blood I ran in the direction of home, not thinking about the thin branch I would have to choose when Momma found out we had snuck some cane, surely we would both get thwacked with the switch, but thankfully 56 The Kudzu Review
I tripped headlong crossing the cattle guard and dropped my tooth, the only evidence, into endlessness rock and dust, another fossil. I remember searching for a minute among the gravel and draught-cracked earth to no avail, but long enough for me to collect composure. I rinsed the blood from my mouth with water from the hose, my brother a silent accomplice, and we did not get caught, that day. I whistled through the new gap and we washed our hands for dinner.
Arielle Hebert 57
STEVE RICHMOND
The Internet The supermarket masquerade ball Where everything happens without a beginning Brings us your meek, your racist, your lustful, your angry, your shameful, your divas, your hope. We can see #you without opening our eyes— routine gives sight to the blind who in turn lead the mute. The royal we rules in the land fueled by individuals where kings are electric smoke signals and queens are emotional democracy Man and machine forget their places in a sea of tagged faces that wash against a shore of the insatiable (more) Yes, we will continue like a dyslexic octopus like a Swiss Army knife like a revolving cocoon like a homesick prospector 58 The Kudzu Review
We sew elaborate costumes that may or may not be accurate as we follow treasure maps that lead to glass eye balls. Narcissus buys real estate in digital purgatory, adds items to his cart in a store with no cashiers and will eventually return to that shore of the insatiable (more) I can has meaning?
Steve Richmond 59
KATIE GRABOWSKI
Keeping the Line Even My brother shuffles forward, then backwards, and never gets anywhere. He’s got problems, so Mom and I tug him along the grocery store, familiar with the slow scraping sound of his thick-soled shoes. Sometimes I think he’s just faking it, because when he throws a fit in the Publix and paws at his short-sleeved button-ups and his throat cracks and leaps, he almost seems embarrassed. He’ll throw a fit and my mother will snap her head down either end of the aisle like maybe she’ll ask a stranger what to do. Jim will shake on the dirty floor, his cheeks red and full, and I’m the one who knows what he wants. “He wants to go home”, I say, because I do, but really all he wants is what’s in front of him. Maybe it’s rainbow colored cereal, or his already-chewed gum stuck on the side of the grocery cart, or to touch people’s zippers because none of his clothes ever have the rough metal like mechanical teeth. My mother bends toward him, her frayed hair covering the sides of her face. “Don’t,” I say. “He’ll just cry worse.” She lifts her shoulders, hands still drawn to him. “He’s usually better when you’re home,” She says, the two lines between her eyebrows stuck. They’re always like that, and I used to press my thumb to the space, as if to smooth the stress from her face. Jim always throws fits whenever I’m about to leave. I’ve been cutting my visits home short recently, and I always blame it on school. My parents build homes for the wealthy, and they want me to do drawings for them, work I’ve been doing since high school, rather than get a degree. I imagine when they picture me in class, they see us cross-legged on the floor, a frizzy-haired teacher with big necklaces brainwashing me 60 The Kudzu Review
into liberalism and book-worshiping. Jim’s full-out wailing now. He howls, high-pitched and gurgling, nowhere near actual language, until he’s out of air. His face freezes, his wet lips open and his bloodshot eyes bulging. He chokes and then inhales too long. I imagine myself post-graduation, interning at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo, being called “blondie” at Setsubun and watching old men throw roasted soybeans at red-masked men dressed as evil spirits. I’ll eat a plate of the beans, twenty-three in all, for each year of my life, plus one for good measure. Mom doesn’t listen, and now she’s waving things in front of Jim’s face like he’s a two year old. She grabs a box of animal crackers, shaking them in front of his red face, and asks “Is this what you want honey?” She alternates between the crackers and Oreo cookies, asking again “Is this what you want?” He’s stopped wailing, he just whines between hiccups that he gave himself, and nods his head “no”. His face is so red it doesn’t seem real, and where he’s scratched at his chest the skin is rising and turning purple. He turns his face toward me, his body twisted on the tile floor, and he reaches his thick arm at me, his thumb and fore-finger tap-tapping like he does because his nails need to be clipped when we get home. I give an airy anxious laugh, because I should be throwing soybeans at his flat face, but instead I’m moving toward him. I imagine working at the office my parents never cleaned out, expecting me to work with them. I’m laying out full homes on thick graph paper, my left hand pushing the plastic triangle while my right works the pencil at a forty-five degree angle, the pencil twirling in my fingers as I pull it backwards, keeping the line even, it coming so naturally I can’t imagine doing anything else. I reach my arm toward Jim and he grabs my wrist. His hand is sweaty and hot, and he keeps pulling. The pull is too strong, and he brings me to the ground hard. I knock my knees first, fall onto his chest, and he puts his long arms around my waist, saying “Leah”, my name, again and again. Katie Grabowski 61
CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES
C. Clare Brown wants to become a beekeeper, so she’ll have an endless supply of honey. Her reason: “It’d be nice to have something sweet assured.” Jessica Ciani loves to draw. She loves to paint. Her art is always changing with her tastes, and she is fascinated with the way our realities can be translated onto paper. Our experiences with people and nature always lend to new ideas. Her grandfather has always been her strongest source of inspiration. Vlad Corneliu Dandu was born in Romania and at a young age expatriated to Spain with his mother. The Garcia Lorca subway murals of Madrid led him to the appreciation of literature. He then moved to Jacksonville, FL for no good reason. Whenever he’s not in Mexico, he is at FSU pursuing International Affairs and Creative Writing degrees. Cameron Davis is a student at FSU who is feverishly working to replicate Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. Alicia Deer. 22. TPA all day. She’s bringing tube socks back. You can tell poetry is good when you feel it in your pants. Victoria Drexel. A traveler, a classic movie lover, a tattoo collector, a hat enthusiast, a protector of vinyl records, and many other things including, a Creative Writing and International Affairs major, who has decided to live a life worth remembering. John David Ellis Jr got out while the getting was good. For this reason, he is now living at home with his mother doing research for a scholarly article exploring the possibility of classifying familial bonding as a form of parental abuse. When he is not acting as his mother’s chauffeur, he works as a beekeeper’s apprentice. In his spare time, he dreams of writing.
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Katie Grabowski is a senior Creative Writing major. She associates herself with the element vanadium. And, with a nuclear spin of 7/2, who can blame her? Arielle Hebert is a senior Creative Writing student. Her work has also been featured in The Yeti. When she is not writing she is playing outside or traveling. After graduation she hopes to win the lottery and to go abroad to teach English. Jessica Jelks will borrow a cup of sugar and give you a unicorn in return. Beware. She will buy a bag of crickets and turn them into jellybeans. Just ask her about crime instead. Carla de Jesus Jerez is a Creative Writing and Humanities major; she resides at the Student Life Cinema with her pet Nicolas Cage. Timothy Kelly is a photographer. He is also a student at FSU. Is he more things as well? Maybe. Jesse H. Laier is from North Miami Beach, Florida and went to the same high school as Trayvon Martin. He’s been writing since he first heard Blink-182’s Dude Ranch in the third grade. He’s the Union Productions Production Manager. The Kudzu editors met him. He’s nice. You should be his friend. Teresa Flour Lamb is a senior in Graphic Design and President of the Art Students League. In her work she plays with texture and scale comparing organic and man-made structures. She does crossword puzzles in pen, occasionally fixes bicycles, and her pound cake could bring a grown man to tears. Faith Anna McDevitt is an artist, and an FSU student. Also, she has three names.
William “Jared” Parmer is a senior Philosophy major. He prefers to associate himself with the periodic element of Unununium, because it resembles the sound of an engine thrumming. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, Charles Nutter Peck blazes into Florida State University with his pen. Is he the next Buddy Wakefield? Probably not, but let’s give him credit for trying. Carlo Piantini was born in New York and raised pretty much his entire life in Miami, Florida. After spending his first two semesters as a Computer Science major, he realized that he wanted to write something other than code. So, he decided to become a Creative Writing major. Lisa Play is a graduating Creative Writing major with a minor in Film Studies. She is a runner-up in The Kudzu Review’s 2011 Fall Contest for her nonfiction piece “Long Ride Home.” Lisa enjoys cooking, playing with cats, eating poutine at Dairy Belle, and taking long road trips. Olivia Pulver is a Creative Writing major at FSU who is graduating next fall. She is a native Tallahassee Lassie who spends her time contemplating a universe where dinosaurs survived the K-T event, answering your questions with the word “potato,” and picking the pepperonis off her pizza before eating them. Steve Richmond once found a dead possum in his backyard. It was full of maggots. He dumped it down a hill at the end of his street. Valentina Salamanca is a junior in Editing, Writing, and Media. Given her choice of evil superpowers, she’d go with Bird Shooting. Angry Bird Shooting. Elise Schuchman is a Biology major who has always liked the element Neon. Although, it might be too stable to properly describe her. Paige Scott is a senior Creative Writing major at FSU. “Isn’t she one of the featured photographers?” Yes, she is. People can have more than one talent. Okay? The Kudzu Review
Will Stone is a senior majoring in Creative Writing and Art History. His evil superpower of choice would be time travel. Evil time travel. Whether that means he would travel to evil times or time travel evilly will be left for you to decide. Tyler Templeton graduated from FSU last fall with a BA in Literature. He will attend San Francisco State University starting fall 2012, pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing. He would like to thank The Kudzu Review for recognizing and publishing his work and his peers’. And he especially thanks his professors Doc, Michael Cooper, BJ and Ignacio. Also, he’s sorry this wasn’t a funny little non sequitur. He really wanted it to be. Michael Uchimura was born and raised in the greater Tampa Bay Area. He says, “The most potent fuel for our mental-machines is creativity. My work is based on cramming everyday things into my cranium and letting them slowly eek out of my ears onto the pages.” Lena Natero-Weissbrot’s work is about portraying sex in an aberrant and often horrific way in order to subvert the often overwhelming primal sexual urges. She hopes to render everybody flaccid! Barrett White is a poet and performance artist living in Tallahassee, FL and studying the Cremation of Care at Florida State University. He hosts a weekly gathering of artists every Friday in the Williams Building and has been known to cover himself in paint and yell through megaphones. Dantiel (Dawn. Teal) Wynn, graduating with a B.A in Creative Writing, prefers to write fiction over poetry, but can’t help but notice that her fiction is often poetic. She hopes to end the feud between the two in the upcoming years. She will be pursuing a full-time career in writing when she figures out how to balance her aspirations with paying the bills and hopes to avoid the starving route.
The Kudzu Review Spring 2012 C. Clare Brown Jessica Ciani Vlad Corneliu Dandu Cameron Davis Alicia Deer Victoria Drexel John David Ellis Jr. Katie Grabowski Arielle Hebert Jessica Jelks Carla de Jesus Jerez Timothy Kelly Jesse H. Laier Teresa Flour Lamb Faith Anna McDevitt William “Jared� Parmer Charles Nutter Peck Carlo Piantini Lisa Play Olivia Pulver Steve Richmond Valentina Salamanca Elise Schuchman Paige Scott Will Stone Tyler Templeton Michael Uchimura Lena Natero-Weissbrot Barrett White Dantiel Wynn
Florida State University, Department of English
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english3.fsu.edu/kudzu