The Wire Harp - 2014

The Wire Harp Spokane Falls Community College – 2014 – Creative Arts Magazine

30th Anniversary Issue

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Wire Harp

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30th Anniversary Issue

Thirty years ago, in 1984, “Owner of a Lonely Heart” filled the American radio airwaves, Ghostbusters played in movie theaters, and friends and family gathered around TV sets the size of kitchen ovens to watch Dynasty and Dallas. Tina Turner’s album What’s Love Got to Do with It? won the Grammy, and William Kennedy’s novel Ironweed won the Pulitzer. No one downloaded those songs, movies, TV shows, and books onto digital devices to enjoy later, nor did friends IM each other or Tweet about these popular cultural icons.

Starting in the year 1984, then, and each year for the next 30 years leading to the anniversary issue you now hold in your hands, the Wire Harp moniker has graced the cover. When the Harp debuted, it was primarily a literary review. Over the course of those early years, other creative programs, such as fine arts, graphic arts, and photography, were flourishing at SFCC, and so fifteen years into its run, the magazine became a showcase for all of our students’ talents. And in that sense, the Wire Harp is one of the finest collaborative efforts we have on our campus.

Something else big happened in 1984, at least to the world we share at Spokane Falls Community College. That was the year the Wire Harp made its debut. Our school’s creative arts magazine was the brainchild of Almut McAuley, SFCC’s much respected and long-time creative writing instructor. Prior to the Harp, SFCC published other literary magazines with a host of names that changed often, including Realms, Nuances, Images, and Campus Carousel.

When Almut came on board as the advisor, three decades ago, she wanted a name that would stick, a name that would be worthy of the publication that celebrates the creative talents of our current students, alumni, staff, and faculty.

Our magazine is a result of the combined work of two student staffs, the literary and the artistic, and of all the students who create art and submit it to the Harp. Every year, we receive many more pieces of art and writing than we can publish, and anybody involved in the process of preparing a creative piece, polishing it, submitting it, and waiting for the results, is a winner in our eyes.

Our staffs greatly enjoy reading and viewing all the work submitted to us for review as we have so many talented writers and artists in our midst. Sorting through all the submissions also serves as training ground as we are an instruction-related student-funded club.

Almut landed on the Wire Harp for a title, a name she found inspiring and worthy for two reasons. One is that a “wire harp” is a stringed instrument, favored by minstrels for its portability, much like a book of art is portable. Secondly, when Almut researched the title, she found a collection of ballads with the same name, published in 1965 by the East German writer Wolf Biermann. The phrase “wire harp” appears in Biermann’s poem “Ballad on the Poet Francois Villon” and refers to the barbed wire on the Berlin wall that becomes like a harp when the wind passes through it, making music. The “wire harp” is a celebratory symbol for the creative voice that cannot, and should not, be repressed, no matter the oppressive context that may surround it.

We hope you’ll enjoy the creative work we’ve selected for this anniversary edition as much as we do. We’re proud of this issue, all the issues that have preceded it, and all the issues still to come. ~The Wire Harp Staff

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Richard Baldasty Awards

2014 Wire Harp Staff Literary Editor

Bella York

Designer

Mickenzie Burns

Graphic Advisor

Doug Crabtree

Literary Advisors

Laura Read Connie Wasem Scott

Social Media Director Mikayla Davis Literary Staff

Mikayla Davis

Sarah Dyer

Lauren Gilmore

Sharon Goff

Hannah Michaelis

Jason Oestreicher

Jeremia Wilks-McGinnis

Special Thanks

Richard Baldasty Bonnie Brunt Shelli Cockle Glen Cosby Heather McKenzie Carl Richardson Kim Taylor Becky Turner

Richard Baldasty taught philosophy and history at SFCC from 1984-2007, and during his tenure, he was regularly published in this journal and contributed significantly to the arts on our campus. Upon his retirement, The Wire Harp honored the spotlight he shone on art by naming our poetry award for him. Each year, The Wire Harp staff selects what we consider the most artistic poem as the recipient of this award. We also honor a work of prose, a photograph, and a work of fine art. Each of these four student artists receives a $100 prize, as a result of a generous gift from Richard. We appreciate Richard for supporting students in their creative arts.

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Contents Poetry

Fiction

The Doe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Jazz on a Wednesday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Ding Dong. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

The Pretty White Dress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

What It Was. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

C-Section. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Brief Look at a Charity Gala. . . . . . . . . . 6

The Coldest Part of the Kitchen . . . . . . 72

Trapped In Her Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Caramel Apples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

A Soldier’s Lament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

The Letter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

September. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Sky Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

The Cube. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Run. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Wind of Change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Time Off . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

My Father’s Father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Before My Dad Left. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Rough Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Reflections on Watching your Best Friend Have a Seizure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Along the Ground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

The Birds and the Bombs. . . . . . . . . . . . 92

Carol Harrington Marc Harvey

Alec Reynolds

Lauren Gilmore

Ruth Henrickson Belen Correa

Rachel Goodner

Danielle Estelle

Clockwork Inside. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Alaric Goodman

One Night at the Holiday Inn. . . . . . . . 33 Scott Brewster

Twelve. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Lyssa Davis

Andreas Andersson Jocelyn Peguero Bella York

Sarah Johnson

Jeremia Wilks-McGinnis Sharon Ann Goff

Jason Oestreicher Tom Versteeg

Doing Rails. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 Derek Annis

Jocelyn Peguero

Andreas Andersson Kristina Carpenter Kevin Fletcher

Connor Buckingham Alec Reynolds

Richard Baldasty Alaric Goodman

NonFiction Wake Up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Abigail Osborne

It Goes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Robin Golke

Sometimes When You’re a Kid. . . . . . . . 42 Ruth Henrickson

Eruption of the Muse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Mikayla Davis

The Unskilled Poems, Number two . . . 48 Blu Andrews

Big Toy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Bella York

The Past Twelve Minutes. . . . . . . . . . . . 54 Lauren Gilmore

Quarter Life Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Sarah Dyer

All Because of That Woman . . . . . . . . . 62 Melodie Aff

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Contents Photography Studious . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Scary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

4O9A3284. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Cupcake Cutie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Coke Oven. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Starry Spokane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Unsure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Untitled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

Out There . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Splash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Grazing Bison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Dew and Web. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Untitled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Beach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Devine Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

A Splash of Color. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Tunnel Bridge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Untitled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Untitled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Enchanted. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Untitled 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Black & White Tree. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

Untitled 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Wakena Falls. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Untitled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Alberta Tracks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Cassie Grauert Lisa Zamora Fay Hulihan

Steven Tinnell Mike Busby

Shaun Schlager Fay Hulihan Mike Busby

Nicholas Grauert James Cronrath Clara Wilson Clara Wilson

Jessica Mumm

Cassie Grauert

Nicholas Grauert Mike Busby

Jessica Mumm

Makenna Haeder Rachel Elmore

Cassie Grauert Unknown

Patrick Ashcroft

Makenna Haeder James Cronrath Alicia Dunavan Fay Hulihan

Phone163. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Shaun Schlager

Immersion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Shaun Schlager

Face #2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Kenia Uribe

Over Grown. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Makenna Haeder

Untitled. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Jessica Mumm

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Contents Fine Art Angelic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Building Blocks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Ovum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Lion’s Paw. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Spinning Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Animate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Impress Forest & Flowing Flower Pods.86

Worth Every Second. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

Broom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Milinda Smith Lyle Wright

Christina St.Pierre R Maier

Travis Floyd

Lavonne West Seng Olsen

Constance Brockett Murray Jennifer Hill

Dakota Ross

The Sea Watcher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Laura Novak

Lenore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Laura Norak

Hugs & Kisses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Emily Flynn

Urban Sunset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Constance Brockett Murray

Depths. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 Ashley Peterson

Higher Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Travis Knickerbocker

Finey Disposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Emily Flynn

Still Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Travis Knickerbocker

Yellow Goddess. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Laura Novak

Under the Sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Jennifer Hill

Katayotta. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Brandt Wurzer

At Ease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Ashley Peterson

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Studious

Cassie Grauert

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The Doe

Carol Harrington

Just yesterday, I waded through the snow to the marble edge of the lake.

Wisps of white texture swirled like frozen feathers, intricate and lacelike.

The sun framed behind bare trees, the archetypal stained glass window.

This morning, the cabin window frames a fighting figure.

Not sure, I grab the binoculars and wince when across the silver surface I see a deer, caught in the icy trap.

Ears fluttering, neck straining, steam rolling from nostrils wide with fright like the eyes.

She lurches forward again and again and I imagine the dull useless thud, front hooves on the shelf of surrounding ice, swimming her ragged breath back and forth from one end of the dark icy pool to the other, the heaving, straining – long slender neck.

In the isolation of this cabin, this wood, I can do nothing.

I am unable to turn away, and watch her grave widen and yawn black.

I think of the deer all day at work.

Did she go into shock after the first numbing, then stiffen in death?

Or did exhaustion let her sink, lungs filling with scalding cold water?

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At dusk, standing in the amber light through the window‌ I hear the howling. The shadows of three coyotes on the ice snarl and fight to tear something from within.

Black hawks dive about the dogs, desperate— crying for us all.

4O9A3284 Lisa Zamora

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Coke Oven Fay Hulihan

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The Pretty White Dress Marc Harvey

I remember the day we bought it, we were at Nordstrom’s at their half yearly sale.

We had just eaten lunch at Chili’s and after a few beers we were almost drunk and we were so in love and when you saw it in the window, you said, “Rose, you’d look great in that.”

I tried it on and you said I was beautiful, and I believed you.

We bought it and went home and made love, then fell asleep on the couch.

So much has happened since that day.

All the pushes and shoves; starts and stops.

All that we’ve said and wished we could take back or maybe forget.

And now all I hear you say, as they take you, “I can’t believe this—I barely hit the bitch.”

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Brief Look at a Charity Gala Alec Reynolds

He was the white powder she inhaled

crouched over a counter

in the dark bathroom.

He was the flowers outside her window

she planted in the spring and by fall

clotted her nostrils with their fleshy aroma.

He was her first boyfriend

a high school sweetheart that gave her a promise ring

and contusions.

He was the graffiti across from her loft

so cool and artistic until you realize

it says “fuck you” in bubble letters.

He was a brand new dress

so recent with the price tags still embroidered

worn to a funeral.

He was the professor she had

who convinced her that art was dead

and caused her to drop out.

He was the hospital band

that cradled her wrist

after her “accident.”

He was the job she got at Wendy’s

after she forgot about art

and just made hamburgers.

He was the residue that remained

in the bathroom after she rejoined the party

to sit with him and smile.

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Unsure

Steven Tinnell

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Out There Mike Busby

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Ding Dong Jocelyn Peguero

Ding ding, ding ding ding, da ding ding. She’s pushing the doorbell repeatedly with delight, chirping every time its bing! echoes through our empty house. She jumps like a small child and kisses my cheek. She’s dancing in place to the music of dings she’s forcing through her fingertips.

Our dogs join her in a happy dance, and I simply stare at the three of them like they’ve gone absolutely bonkers. It makes me smile nonetheless, even with our first neighbors now staring at our unorthodox behavior. She sees them, knows they’re watching her, but does not care. She cannot be pushed off her ninth cloud.

Kicking off her shoes, she glides across the hardwood floors in her tattered socks, still dancing. “Ring it! Ring it again!” she cries. I press the doorbell, making up a playful tune. She spins in circles until she falls to the ground, laughing all the while.

I try to help her up, but she pulls me right down to the ground, to her level. She softly kisses me and whispers in my ear, “We’ll never be homeless again.”

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Caramel Apples for Jenn Joralemon

Baldasty Poetry Award Winner

Lauren Gilmore

Before I got braces a rich man in a Hawaiian t-shirt handed me a refrigerator magnet listing everything I couldn’t eat.

Number seven: caramel apples.

Here, my eleven-year-old pre-orthodontic-ridden-self drew the line. Here I was devastated.

My mother, from her financial wit’s end, had no sympathy. Instead, asked me when I last remembered having a caramel apple anyway.

See, she said to my silence

you can’t miss

what you barely had

to begin with.

The two years would pass with or without the braces caramel-apple-less.

Things would be no different.

After my father’s death, it took three days for the news to pass through our door.

As it did, the house became heavier.

Furniture that hadn’t supported his weight in over a decade suddenly creaked in his absence.

Every ring of our phone pierced the quiet with an absolute certainty it was not him on the other end.

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Every inhale became an act of theft from his lungs to mine.

Each one turned me to a walking picture frame: a frozen smile, with recycled captions

everyone mistook for healing.

Sleep fled swiftly as innocence from a crime scene.

In the darkness, ceiling tiles began to resemble the inside of a coffin.

I tried convincing myself these holes in my chest had always been there.

I had not seen his face in over five months and

you just can’t miss

what you barely had

to begin with, right?

Death is just a mind game.

Mind over matter.

Try harder.

My disbelief has been suspended for far too long.

I have carried grief for the past nine months, feeling it kick and scratch.

I long for its birth into something enlightened.

His best friend planted him a grief garden.

Perhaps I have done the same. With eyes for watering cans. Any day now the sprouts will come up from my fingertips.

Flowers will braid themselves through my hair.

Every smile in my direction will be received as sunlight, warming the soil.

After two years a very rich man in a Hawaiian t-shirt handed me a maintenance retainer.

After nine months fate snatches the progress from my womb and spits it back without a heartbeat—hey

let’s take a look at those teeth, shall we?

Ah, what a beautiful smile.

Four thousand dollars later it’s the only sort of beauty I have left.

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Grazing Bison Shaun Schlager

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Untitled Fay Hulihan

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September

Ruth Henrickson

In September we trimmed my grandmother’s roses and mowed her lawn.

The carpets were stained and ragged, and they gave us chemicals to clean them.

Our knuckles split and turned red; once wasn’t enough so we did it again, and again we bled.

Soon we would receive news that would make us want to clean the carpets again just to focus our heads.

and shut, opened and shut in disbelief.

A mother crying on the phone is sickening and unreal.

That night we watched a machine extract the carcass of a plane from the river.

I strained to see more, wanting to see but also not wanting to. I read to my grandmother, it comforted her but I was not comforted as she cried this isn’t the way it should happen.

An adult’s grief is a strange thing for a child to see, so weighted with understanding and severe, hollow without softness. We listened to the sound, the low-pitched groans of an iron gate heavy and metallic like a machine.

The horrible gaping shape of their mouths frightened us, and we watched as spines folded all around the room while the truth sunk into their bodies like teeth and they couldn’t hold it. They slumped into chairs suddenly years older.

Sweet sleeps on the surface of bitter like oil on water; measuring her breath, like a child learning to float on her back; wavering there, unstable.

Threatening at any moment to sink and leave us altogether bitter.

Grief.

When we drink you, we are stained forever.

As children we could only watch and wait to feel. The dust we swept up in the attic that day burned in our throats, and we wanted so badly to show that we were folding too.

Finally the mud and tears manifested, lapping at our roll-top bread-box eyelids as they opened

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Devine Tree Mike Busby

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Angelic

Milinda Smith

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C-Section

Andreas Andersson

The morning begins pitch black as she rises slowly to turn her alarm clock off, which she placed in the bathroom last night.

She has forty-five minutes to shower, eat, brush her hair and teeth, leave, and arrive at work to open the Rockwood Bakery. She lets her hair dry during the drive and applies her eyeliner when she reaches Grand from 37th. She has an hour to herself to ready the drip coffee, unwrap the pastries, flip chairs, and make the bakery feel like home for others today. When finished, she leans on the counter sipping her Moroccan mint tea with honey and waits for sunrise.

I stumble out of bed cursing for putting my phone’s alarm on vibrate. I trip over jeans used four days in a row, decide to wear them one last day, and sprint to the bathroom I share with my roommate. I wash only my upper body before jumping back into my room, searching for any wrinkled flannel I can find. As I open the apartment’s front door, the crisp morning air reaches under the layer of clothing. Cursing, I fumble for my keys before speeding towards work. I unlock the bakery’s back door and rush to the counter to see Sarah open the front door as a line of regulars enter.

“It’s all done, Scotty. Don’t worry,” she says quietly.

We never have much to say to each other, due to the fact that we are bombarded with thirsty bloodshot-eyed customers mumbling their orders at us. Our work is like that. Hours can go by in what feels like minutes, and before you know it, the others arrive, replacing us for the afternoon shift. Before, though, I try to ask her how she is when we are both working the espresso stand.

“Yeah, it’s good. Thanks. Hand me the Vanilla. What’s the next order?”

I smile before beginning a conversation with a customer while glancing at the clock, sporadically. She gets off at one, while I stay an hour later to help the afternoon shift transition to closing.

That’s all I have to say. Instead, I watch her walk out the backdoor to November’s weather, wearing her black pea coat.

We are twenty-four now. A year ago, we lived in her house and made eggs with toast every morning. I placed my alarm in the bathroom, then. She always rose first and allowed me to sleep for ten extra minutes. Our first visit to Dr. Osallo’s office was promising. He told us what to expect from November to August and the likelihood of a miracle. We tossed around names like Glen, Forest, Serenity, Hope. It was eight months later he told us he needed to operate immediately.

We split a month after that. She wanted to be alone, so I moved in with my high school bandmate, Stephen. But now, I watch her leave. I watch her as she closes the door and imagine all the things she does with her day. Where she may go or who she may see. I think of all the little things she distracts herself with in her life. I think how my life begins at 6:30 a.m. and ends at 1:00 p.m. every Thursday.

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Building Blocks Lyle Wright

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Lion’s Paw

Christina St.Pierre

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Run

Belen Correa

hitting the edge of the table bending hips over the couch breaking fingers with a board falling face first on the floor violating all the kitchen plates with your head bleeding on the dirty bathroom tiles the walls are crying, painted red, I watch as you start ejaculating to a picture of yourself searching for an open window, I scream for help the door is opening the house comes to life yelling run

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Tunnel Bridge Nicholas Grauert

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Untitled

James Cronrath

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My Father’s Father for Grandpa Ken Rachel Goodner

Your pointer finger and thumb grabbed my pinky toe as I sat next to you while you laced up your work boots.

Your thumb nail was half the size of a dead fly, and about the same color too, from smashing it so many times as you built your house, and decades later, mine.

Hands, stained black by something you had tried hard to wash off every night after work, grabbed all my little toes at once and shook my foot around.

I sprung up off the couch, frightened, and ran to my grandmother seeking refuge for my toes.

Hidden in my grandmother’s warm arms as she laughed, I looked over at your face, never noticing until now the subtle redness in your tear-covered grey eyes, the slant of your dark and thinning brows, my favorite crease between them and how it seemed just a little bit deeper, and your quivering smile at me as I hid, and you finished lacing up your boots around your feet and our toes.

You told me I had your toes and you wanted them back. Grabbing the grime covered pliers always kept on the glass coffee table in front of us, you plunged in to take back your toes.

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Reflections on Watching your Best Friend Have a Seizure Danielle Estelle

I see ambulances outside-in this is probably because I have never ridden one what I mean is when she tells me she didn’t wake up until the ambulance I imagine that she opened her eyes to blues and reds like fireworks her eardrums assaulted by sirens encased in IV bags I imagine chaos like a hurricane when she tells me she didn’t wake up until the ambulance what she means is the chaos has been dispelled demons have been exorcised hurricanes have subsided elise forgets to take her medication, sometimes control: verb to exercise restraint or direction over to command to dominate I forget to take my medication, sometimes lose: verb to come to be without to fail to keep to suffer the deprivation of

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we are a coin toss with the same outcome her eyes roll back like they are trying to escape this world and, believe me, there are things out here worth escaping my heart accelerates like a failed prison break trying to escape my skin and, believe me, there are things in here worth escaping lose control: verb to come to be without restraint or direction to fail to command to dominate deprivation by the time I arrived you were almost done seizing but not quite elise, do you know your name?

I asked the way I am always grasping control like trying to chain down a ghost she is unconscious and moving I am conscious and unmoving elise, do you know where you are? they mistake me for the medic mistake my love for expertise but I am not enough divinity to quell a natural disaster

all the coin toss determines is what our hurricanes are named and right now, I do not know your name elise, do you know where you are? the fireworks and sirens are eating me inside out elise, do you know your name?

I forget to take my medication, sometimes lose control: verb outside in inside out she hit the floor, shaking I hit the wall, paralyzed

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Untitled 1 Clara Wilson

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Untitled 2 Clara Wilson

2014

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Animate R Maier

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Trapped In Her Web Kristina Carpenter

All is calm, all is bright…

Shepherds quake at the sight…

The Christmas carol played quietly throughout their shared loft. The vinyl spun while Aretha’s voice echoed. A silent tension filled their distance. The roommates sat at opposite corners of the office, occupied by thoughts of black ink and colorful graphics. The tension, as powerful as the music’s lyrics, competed for the atmosphere’s stage. Three milk crates wedged together and upside down were cluttered with bound notebooks of unfinished brainstorming. Sketches and scribbles of African lions and deserted barns in Oregon lay ejected by improved drawings of anchors and typography. Bordering the perimeter of the dimly lit room hung their personal designs, held by clothespins and string. Underneath the velvet loveseat, housed in a box, was a tattoo gun – a present he anticipated gifting to his roommate in a couple weeks. Hard cider coursed fast though their veins, blurring their senses to feel the brewing of strong winds.

He glared at her, as she traced the final legs of the spider tattoo with a sharpie onto her right shin. The milk crates lay, separated, and tilted against the wall and under the desk. Notebook pages torn across, unbound and crumpled, now occupy the cluttered floor. Strings dangled from different points on the ceiling and one lampshade remains untouched. Light bulbs, aimed for his head, shattered beside the garbage can. He covered his eyes with his hat, unable to further face the tension of her thoughts. She threw his gift from the balcony into the raging river below.

Radiant beams from thy holy face…

Silent night, holy night…

Their argument was one charged current, now unavoidable. Thunderstorms can wake children from peaceful sleeps.

Thunderstorms can break the stillness, despite blue-colored skies, as families meet for lunches in a park. The Greeks believed thunder was a lightning bolt hurled by Zeus. Their booms sound rapidly.

Strong winds and heavy rain often result. He imagined the office scene before the heavy rains and a magnitude that could not silence the booms. His voice boomed louder than her unvoiced opinions.

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Clockwork Inside Alaric Goodman

We sat on the porch in the evening – your hand around mine – as we watched an electrical storm light up the sky.

You turned to me and poked at my torso, asking whether I had clockwork insides.

I long suspected my blood never ran red, opening my chest to see the contents within.

We found gears and wires, stationary and dusty, connected to a clock three minutes from midnight.

Doomsday, we said eyes so wide, trying to turn the hands to a better time.

But we could turn neither gears nor hands, you suggesting I needed power.

I nodded, walked into the grass, holding out my arms to see if the sky could make my clock turn backwards again.

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Worth Every Second Travis Floyd

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The Sea Watcher Laura Novak

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One Night at the Holiday Inn Scott Brewster

Under the lighted dome, a worker acted high when in fact he was on a placebo.

All he did behind the desk was masticate.

Suddenly he released a massive belch.

A guest presented a cutlass and slashed the air.

The disgruntled guest went up to his room.

When he got there he found a hexagon which contained all of his dreams, but with no key to open it he wept.

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The Letter Kevin Fletcher

John was trying to make a statement and he did. What it was exactly, was up for interpretation. Amanda could only guess.

John had mailed her a rambling letter on his last day. She hadn’t noticed it in her ever increasing stack of mail.

It took her another three days before she could bring herself to open it.

It was Saturday night after John’s funeral. Amanda was afraid to read it. She was attempting to focus on Strategic Marketing Management, and for the first time in her life, school just didn’t seem that fucking important. No matter what tragedy had befallen her, small or large, Amanda had always found comfort in hard work. The thought of a better tomorrow and the self-discipline required to achieve it was the only comfort she needed.

But not tonight, tonight she lacked focus and she knew why. She could feel the letter’s presence, calling to her, laughing at her. This letter was his goodbye, and maybe if she never read it, then it wouldn’t have to be real.

On the last night of his life, John got to into his car and called the police. He told them they have a problem; there is a rabid animal on the loose. This thing is diseased and dangerous; it needs to be put down. He told them the make, model and color of his car. He gave them his license plate number. He told them he’s a monster, and if they don’t hurry up they were going to have a tragedy on their hands.

Amanda winced when she picked up the letter, as if she expected it to be hot to the touch. She held her breath and dove in.

Amanda, I know you’re in pain, but this isn’t your fault.

You did all you could, but I’ve drifted too far.

John drove around for a while, until a cop spotted his car and started to follow him. John didn’t make any attempt to evade or stop. He drove the speed limit and lit a cigarette. He figured the guy must be calling for backup. John blew smoke rings as he drove; this was the calmest he’d felt in years.

No more sleepless nights, no more crippling anxiety, and no more Tylenol PM.

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Guys like me are done. I’ve outlived my usefulness. Remember that article about homeless veterans? Don’t worry. You won’t ever have to see me like that.

Eventually John came across a police road block a few miles from downtown. He lit another cigarette and got out of the car.

Pistol in hand.

A villainous smile on his face.

That night we went to that party at your school. A brunette girl, wearing those fashionably thick glasses, was flirting with me. When she asked me what I studied, I told her I was home on R & R from Iraq. She said “oh” and walked away from me. Just like that. That was when I knew I didn’t belong with these people anymore.

A fog descended off the mountains, slowly consuming the town inch by inch. Moisture hung in the air and cooled the sweat on John’s face. It was almost a perfect evening. Almost.

The police were screaming in unison: “Drop the fucking gun!” “Get on the ground, now!” John wasn’t paying attention. He was in his own world, taking in his surroundings.

When the cops took a pause from berating him, John looked over to a couple with two young children that stood captivated by this aberration unfolding before them. He smiled at them and told them as sweetly as possible, “You’re not going to want your girls to see this.”

Then John turned his attention to the cops and spit venom at them. “Are you guys retarded? Why would you stop here of all places?”

That bitch Janet Napalitano put out that report labeling us as a security threat. She said returning veterans could potentially become “right wing terrorists”? How much indignity are we expected to endure? We fight their wars while they rape our country and squander our treasure, and that is the thanks we get it. She thinks we’re monsters; I’m going to show her the monster.

John stood his ground, in defiance of a society he had been ready to die for. It was his turn to speak. He wouldn’t be marginalized any longer. This was going to be his fifteen minutes of fame, and he was determined to make the most of it. The cops were pointing their weapons, but had ceased issuing commands.

John shifted his weight on his left foot, trying to come up with the words. What will make them remember me? Finally he had it. He almost giggled when it came to him.

John stared down the group of men pointing weapons on them and told them, “I can see your fear. You can still save yourselves. Just get back in your cars and leave, call the SWAT team down here. This is a job for men.”

The Boston bomber is on the cover of Rolling Stone and no one knows who the fuck Michael Monsoor is. What a disgrace.

John looked the youngest cop right in the eye and said, “Hey, frat house pussy! You’re going to die first. Nothing personal.

I want to leave as few orphans as possible.”

I read that two dozen veterans commit suicide a day. No one wants to think about it; I’m going to make them think about it.

One of the cops told John that if he put down his weapon they could help him. No one had to die, just tell us what you want.

John couldn’t help but laugh. “You think this is a hostage negotiation? You ARE my hostages. Here is my one and only demand: stop patronizing me before it’s too late.”

I did the math. My disability payments would be roughly 500K over 40 years. I’m going to save you some money. My final gift to our great nation.

John started to count down. Ten…nine…eight. When he got to seven he quickly flicked his cigarette butt at the cops; a second later a bullet ripped through his right eye socket and bone fragments from the back of his skull ricocheted off the windshield.

The sound of the first shot caused every cop to panic and start shooting. John was dead before he hit the ground.

Onlookers screamed and covered their eyes. Some of them fled.

If I had died in Iraq, I’d be a hero. Dying here, I’m just a statistic. A cautionary tale for aspiring patriots.

The cops patted each other on the back for a job well done.

They moved people back and waited for the coroner to arrive and clean up the mess John left. The local news was on the scene in under ten minutes. The police refused to comment on the situation.

Across town Amanda’s phone started to ring. She ignored it. Then it rang again. And again. So she finally answered it: there was a rumor going around and did she have the news on?

The officers involved were placed on paid leave after the shooting, a standard procedure in a situation like this. Someone leaked info to an investigative journalist that John’s gun wasn’t loaded. He was bluffing. Another witness came forward and said that the police lied about John pointing his weapon at them. Some came forward to defend the police; they saw John’s crazy eyes.

Still, a rumor persisted that John was unarmed and the phone call never happened.

He was Saint John. The patron saint of excessive force victims.

The department of Veterans Affairs immediately put out a statement reiterating their commitment to the mental health of veterans. They expressed their regret at such a senseless loss of life.

They refused to comment about any treatment John had received.

They weren’t at liberty to say.

People will look at me with pity, like a heroin addict.

They’ll say -- It’s sad that he’s dead, but it’s his own fault, right?

He volunteered. Another misguided youth.

People raged about war, gun control, police brutality, the incompetence of the VA, Congress, Obama, Bush, the military. Social media activism did what it did best, made people feel like they were doing their part for a noble cause, without actually having to do anything.

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The major media outlets ran with John’s story. Fox News blamed Obama. CNN blamed poor background checks for gun owners. Democrats blamed Republicans for the war. Republicans blamed Democrats for dithering on the VA healthcare backlog.

College kids used to channel their inner hippy and rail against the war. They had cute slogans like “No blood for oil” and “fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.” When Obama took the White House, that movement died, yet the war is still going.

What a bunch of fucking hypocrites.

Then it was over. A couple of weeks and John was all but forgotten.

That July after we graduated high school, we took that trip to Cozumel, and I followed you around the Island in a drunken stupor. We visited that Mayan museum, and the water there was sky blue. I didn’t appreciate any of it, because the drinking age was 18, and I tried to drink every ounce of cheap beer on the Island. We discovered Senor Frogs, and I was bright red from sunburn but too drunk to care. I was wearing that ridiculous blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt and those aviators at night. Everyone thought we were on our honeymoon, so I kept telling you we had to consummate our marriage and you laughed, but I was only half kidding. It was our last hurrah as infallible kids and no matter how embarrassing I was, you could always find a way to forgive me.

That is how I want you to remember me. That is the real me, and he is already dead.

– Dedicated to Jed Zillmer. I didn’t know you that well personally.

But our shared experience being combat veterans is so unique that I knew you all too well. I’m sorry I didn’t see past the forced smile before it was too late. RIP brother.

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Untitled

Jessica Mumm

2014

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Phone163

Shaun Schlager

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Immersion Shaun Schlager

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Lenore

Laura Norak

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Twelve

Lyssa Davis

He slammed her against the wall, paws on her shoulders, teeth gnashing, spittle and hot breath on her face. Instinct screamed Run Run Run Why are you crying, it demanded, icy gaze unforgiving, unfeeling.

You’re scaring me is what she would say. Then her head hit the wall as the beast grasped her in its jaws.

Shaking, the words that bubbled from her lips with tears falling were I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, heart beating a tattoo of Run Run Run She listened, gathered her backpack with Spiderman cavorting on the sides, but she knew, tender as she was like a young shoot: there are no heroes.

Only the crow cawing in time with her pounding feet on the pavement Run Run Run

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Sometimes When You’re a Kid Ruth Henrickson

I broke the bindings of many different worlds but it wasn’t the kind of broken like when you lay books on the living-room floor to play land-crab and you jump from Encyclopedia H to We Interrupt This Broadcast and you hear a dull crack as the threads in the binding separate.

Someone says Stupid and the weight is an anvil on your pride as your crab shell caves and you learn to crawl more quietly. Sometimes you ruin things when you’re a kid.

Like when you spill a cup of soda and heads turn in disapproval. It’s not like you get to drink it all the time and you spilled it.

Unbelievable! You know they’re thinking it.

There’s a crack like lightning. It’s his fist on the wood. Sorry pools in your throat like gravy thick and warm.

You’d punish your elbow if you could. But you know it’s unfair.

Sometimes you ruin things when you’re a kid.

There’s another kind of broken and in this area I’m convinced it’s okay to shatter.

I broke the bindings and tore the pages and ever since words have read me and written me saved me and broken me.

Sometimes you’re broken when you’re a kid.

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Frequently, when I want to forget I remember.

The pages turned me pale and new green and see-through like a leaf held up to the sun, the map of my veins exposed.

I suddenly realize I know nothing and I ask that I always be wrong like the second S in dessert when we meant the climate.

Keep me a little bit wrong like when an object is lighter than it looks and the effort you invest in lifting it is exaggerated and fleeting, like the strength in your morning hands.

It’s good to know that I don’t know and I will never know. It’s a relief to always be wrong.

Keep me always guessing, like when I was a kid.

Hugs & Kisses Emily Flynn

2014

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Urban Sunset

Constance Brockett Murray

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The Cube

Connor Buckingham

Alright. Time to reel in some suckers, I thought to myself while staring down the street looking at the people pass by.

I used to be an accountant. Smart, hardworking, but never appreciated. Finally one day a lamp turned on in my head and I decided enough is enough. And so I quit. That’s when I got the cube. What’s the cube you might ask? The Cube is only everything dear to me. In my cube I keep everything anyone could ever need.

Lottery tickets, spare keys, deodorant. You name it, I’ve got it. All in the cube. It’s a good little trailer. It holds a lot of items, and it’s small enough for me to drag along by its little chain down the sidewalk of downtown for all to see. What mom running late wouldn’t mind paying six bucks for a Lunchables for her kids to eat at school? And what man on his way to a job interview wouldn’t mind paying 8.95 for a pocket comb? You see, it’s not about having the best prices. It’s about catching people when they don’t have time to argue your prices. Try this out and you’ll be able to make a sale off of any basket case to cross your path.

One time a policeman came up to me and asked me to take my cube trailer full of goodies and leave. I guess I was “impeding“ the path of foot traffic. I told the officer I was willing to move, and it seemed to please him. I used this moment to dive into chit-chat with the man. I asked about his family life. He was a younger fella.

No children, just a wife that he had been married to for two years.

Or so he thought. As I talked with him more and more, it dawned on him that their anniversary was coming up. In fact it was tomorrow. I began to congratulate him, but judging by the pale white coloring of his face I could tell something was wrong. I asked him, and he began to explain how he was working a 24-hour shift tonight and there’s no way he’d have a chance to get her anything. How lucky for him I had the cube. I proceeded to pull out a vase full of red roses. I managed to snag 20 bucks off the man.

He seemed relieved to have something for his lover to receive. He shook my hand and went on his way down the street. And there I remained with my cube.

A young boy was running down the street one time. He was going quite fast. Once he saw my cube blocking his path, he slowed down to avoid colliding with it. He saw me manning the trailer and proceeded to throw curses at me like a pitcher at baseball practice. I was patient and stood there respectfully as he tried “tearing me a new one.” Once he reached the point to where he calmed down, he began walking around the cube and carrying on his way. As he was walking away, I beckoned to him. I thought he could use some new shoes. He gave me the strangest look when I offered them to him. After a moment’s hesitation, however, he accepted. I think he was quite surprised when he discovered the shoes I was giving him were quality DC skate shoes. He thanked me, and even apologized for his harsh words. In turn I accepted his apology, and I inquired as to why he was wearing a t-shirt in this cold weather. He explained how he had forgotten his jacket at home which is why he was rushing in the first place. He was trying to reach his car before he froze to death. I told him to wait a minute as I rummaged through my cube. Sure enough. I brought out a jacket that seemed to fit him. It even matched the DCs! I told him he could have the jacket for a mere 40 dollars. He accepted and went on his way with his day. Little did the sap know that the jacket was worth only 25 dollars when purchased off the shelf at Zumies.

My brother is quite nice to me. When I was between jobs, he took me in. He gave me a room to stay in, food to eat, and a ride to multiple job interviews. I told him I was hired by that law firm. He believed me. Dan never was one to question someone’s abilities. I always loved that about him too. His kids are sweet too.

They play with me when I’m awake, but let me be when I’m tired.

Nothing is better than a child who knows when enough is enough.

Rita is great too. Much like Dan, she never questions why I quit my old position. In fact, she usually makes me some great pancakes in the morning before I go off to work at my “law firm.” I do wonder, however, whether or not Dan will miss his shoes and jacket. Or whether Rita would notice the flowers missing from her window pane. Hey, if they hadn’t noticed so far, I’m in the clear, right?

2014

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Eruption of the Muse Mikayla Davis

It starts with a spark tentative branching fingers pulse into the dark a puff of air and it flares bursts forward through blood rips into tendrils of nerves pervades the hard marrow of bone and petrifies logical thought an ache forces the fingers to scorch across the page extracting the flames words cascading as molten ink to form rivers of luminescence in lines and phrases ceasing only when the palm stings blisters break on the knuckles black smudges dry and harden and the glow is hidden only to burst forth when read

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Face #2

Kenia Uribe

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The Unskilled Poems, Number two Blu Andrews

About a month ago in January you asked me I thought you should believe in God I said No was afraid to answer.

And I know that you it’s because you’re atheist really it’s all about all those yelling and shouting they are not ashamed but I am.

Some things are very personal and I won’t apologize for that.

I wanted to tell you was I love you That’s just fear again.

if and because I think an but Christians

So I’m sorry. What that No

I wanted to tell you I love you That’s pedantic.

that No

I wanted to tell you I love you That’s condescending

that No

condescension.

I wanted to tell you I’m condescending

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that because

I wanted to tell you you shouldn’t believe in God because you’re afraid to die I love you I wanna tell you

but so

that I believe in God for bad reasons.

Because I have a feeling in my gut, because I owe something.

I kept believing in God because God is about self-perception selfperfection selfexploration.

It’s about maturing.

I believed in God because the dogs got out when I masturbated in my parent’s tub and because Paul told me some boys beat up a retarded kid with a baseball bat because he let them and they asked him and he died and because when I walked home people honked at me and stranger danger was spawning in every shadow of every branch of every bush and cab of every red pick-up truck on every street of America.

Because dad was in jail and Paul was no different and Mom was

a saint overworked and tired and over-asked and alone terrified needed a rest sweet-water cool-ty of my own bemusement.

who’s been and and she in the

I mean if you really wanted to know about it. ******************************** I’m sorry, this should have been explained: I know you think because you’re an atheist, I’m submissive talk like an atheist leave to Jesus what is Jesus’.

that it’s that and I but

I am multitudes, as the scripture- I think- says and when I contradict myself, so be it.

too dumb speak

If there is God it is nothing at all.

It is blood running down the page of a student’s diary,

to its mind.

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Depths

Ashley Peterson

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Higher Learning Travis Knickerbocker

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Finey Disposition Emily Flynn

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Big Toy Bella York

I hear you tell me: life will get better.

The phrase glides softly through one ear and exits just as quickly as it came.

I can almost feel the echo from your words – I strain, head cocked to the left, right ear facing the sky – trying to remember what hearing those words felt like.

I almost catch it: life will get better when the swing creaks – slow moans amplified by the wind.

I hear myself cry out with the swing.

I think of my hands reaching out to grab the next monkey bar, my body singing momentum to its arm: swing sing straight.

Instead I’m using all my weight to swing to bars in all directions.

Back then my arms were strong enough to lift off and touch the sky.

Now, neither one can find the strength to lift me off the ground.

Face forever pressed against this cold heart of dirt.

We have no one to grip our chains so they won’t fall.

It’s freezing and I’m playing hot or cold and as the days go by I’m getting coldcoldercoldest farther away from memories of light, dark, trying to find my way back to them, cold.

It’s getting cold so I imagine the bark is rippling hot lava and I’m in the 6th grade again, running from the monsters so my feet won’t melt.

This Big Toy was just a big ploy – planting dreams that see no limits when you haven’t seen the years to know there are any.

But it’s only 20 mph in a school zone: at this rate we’ll never get back.

2014

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The Past Twelve Minutes Lauren Gilmore

12.

December.

The midnight chime of a clock tower.

Everything starts and ends with the same sound.

8.

When infinity is tipped on its side, we can be certain nothing lasts forever.

11.

When the blanket of death covers you like topsoil, there will be twelve minutes between the collapse of your prison cell body and the shutting down of your mind.

7.

We want gift-wrapped swans from a Christmas-song lover.

Like phantom pains twitching across a severed limb circuit board panic denial a slow motion dream uncertainty fear.

Like waterfowl, we must maintain surface level elegance while paddling for our lives.

6.

And on that day God created man. sequence

10.

Welcome to the human race.

The only species masochistic enough to keep track of time.

Wire red alarm clock digits carve an unblinking tally into our retinas.

9.

East coast time zone discrepancies a prematurely televised new year the release of confetti doves champagne crystal engagement rings

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5.

Children are born instinctively gripping our thumbs as guidance out of a fog, recognized again by the elderly. From morphine bed sheets their wrinkled palms grasp in vain.

Everything starts and ends with the same sound.

4.

And on that day God created the sun moon and stars.

What would life mean if it could not be measured?

3.

Galileo spent his final years under house arrest holding a fistful of truth his church could not pry open. Even today his severed middle finger preserved and scrutinized from behind display case glass like a souvenir of defiance points at something the tourists are unable to find.

2.

According to the Chinese creation story heaven and earth were once united but gradually drifted apart.

If our hands should ever interlock again

out-of-sight-proximity will be my excuse for so much doubt.

0.

History books credit the Mayans with the first mathematical interpretation of nothingness but often overlook they chose to depict it with the shape of our eyes.

1.

“And yet—it moves.”

Famous last words are always debated and invariably disappointing.

Even the noblest faiths flinch under the hand of mortality.

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Over Grown Makenna Haeder

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Untitled

Jessica Mumm

2014

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Wake Up

Abigail Osborne

Your eyes are itching and you want to rub them but you know that’ll smear your make-up so you don’t. Your feet hurt because your heels are too high and you stand in the corner nervously pulling your dress down because it’s too short. You want to dance but you’re not drunk enough for that. God you want to dance.

It’s so hot and you have a headache from the raw lighting and smell of cigarettes. And there’s this guy who’s talking to you. You can’t understand what he’s saying because the music is too loud but he gets closer and you can feel his warm breath on your ear. He’s grabbing you and you can feel his racing heartbeat pressed against your chest. His lips lean toward yours but you turn your head. You wish he’d stop.

Shit. Where’d your friends go? Where are you? You must be drunker than you thought. You try to retrace the events of the evening but can’t remember how you got here. You had some tequila and a few beers. Did you take anything else?

You can’t remember.

You’re in an empty room now. Stop. You’re going to vomit.

You close your eyes and take your mind to a different place. You create stories to distract yourself. Is this what porn stars do? Do they make their minds go blank, or do they do this so much they reach a point where they don’t care anymore? Just another day on the job, just another Jane Doe.

You don’t recognize the hands searching your body. Your lips brush the nape of his neck but the scent isn’t the same. You run your fingers through his hair but it doesn’t feel the same. The sound of his breathing is unfamiliar. He doesn’t know you. You want to tell him how insecure you are about your body but what’s his name? He never told you his name. He didn’t ask you yours either.

Why are you doing this? Why don’t you tell him to stop?

You’re scared. People do this all the time, why are you scared?

What’s wrong with you? This is natural. This is normal. You keep telling yourself this over and over again.

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You want to do things and not regret them. You want to have an excuse for making bad decisions. But you’re a church kid; nobody will believe you if you say you didn’t know it was wrong. It was a mistake. Everyone knows you don’t make mistakes. You want to be numb but you can’t because you know too much now. You understand guilt and shame.

You know heartbreak feels like every bone in your body is aching and your mind is blurry and you can’t think straight and your hands get clammy and your stomach is churning and you want to destroy something and your hurt turns to anger and you get angry at yourself and no matter how many showers you take, you can’t wash the stains away and when you sleep, you don’t want to wake up and when you do wake up, you’re crying and you can’t stop crying because you know you’ve been used and you hate who you’ve become and you wish this nightmare would stop. Maybe if you try really hard to open your eyes, you’ll wake up. You just have to wake up.

I just have to wake up.

I get dressed and step outside. I can breathe again. I need a smoke but I can’t find my lighter. I’m hungry, too. I wonder if there are any fast food places open. God, I can’t wait to get back home.

Tomorrow is Sunday and I don’t have to work. Maybe I’ll drink some tea then take a nap. Or maybe I’ll read a book then go for a walk through the park. I should call my mom and ask how she’s doing. It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

Still Searching Travis Knickerbocker

Fine Art Award Winner

2014

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Yellow Goddess Laura Novak

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Quarter Life Crisis Sarah Dyer

At fifteen I don’t see thirty on the horizon, a faint glow veiled by the haze of years. Blind, I wander open-mouthed in awe and catch dust in my teeth more often than not.

By twenty-two I begin to harden the nacre walls around my troubles. Rising higher, the dead white sun is caught in the water; I grasp for the reflection and come up empty.

Around twenty-five I drown in questions that rush over me like rip tides. I surge forward and then back. Treading water until the weighted whys pull me below the surface, so far away even the light can’t reach me.

Twenty-nine: I slip my knife between shell and flesh, and wonder, lifting a briny shuck to my lips, if thirty years isn’t a little too long to wait for pearls, each lustrous orb a hardship lodged in the throat of an oyster.

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All Because of That Woman Melodie Aff

The woman was as cold as a freezer. She sounded like a cow when she sneezed.

The restaurant we were in was filled with flies.

When she walked by me I could smell the smoke from her cheap cigarettes and it ruined my appetite for the crispy chicken I was eating.

After I accidentally bit my tongue I screamed, and she laughed.

I felt rage like thunder’s boom.

There were no flies in here.

Everyone in the neighborhood liked to sing and steal money.

I was trapped like the sky.

She was so memorable that I forgot her.

My blanket hugged me as I finished my chicken.

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Under the Sea Jennifer Hill

2014

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Scary

Cassie Grauert

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Jazz on a Wednesday Andreas Andersson

His hands are smooth but tough hide covers the tips.

He makes Jazz with them.

I wonder of New Zealand and the Shire we love.

Will you leave the Sinatra smoke, the snaps, and escape today? His music has a way of lingering, like your cigar’s ash on my tongue. He kisses me and continues to play.

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Cupcake Cutie Nicholas Grauert

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Katayotta Brandt Wurzer

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What It Was Jocelyn Peguero

Our pair of silhouettes dance through the dark late night downtown district only distant headlights lead the way we appear so happy we are so happy we always stay in an upscale five star suite that kind of hotel room with mirrors lining the ceiling and a breathtaking city view we truly can’t afford to stay in we stay but we never stay overnight She takes off her ring for me, this time before I ask the warm air flows from her lips tickling my naked skin along the back of my neck pulling my trigger firing her gun deep within me, I am overwhelmed, I am weak, I crumble to her touch her deep breath in and out it consumes and releases me feeding a tantalizing fire illuminating our sin

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flames flicker and command hints of light along her hips forcing us to see omitting us from the pleasure of hiding from ourselves Passively and deeply I’m falling into her watching the mirrors the ceiling playing my own seductive film with reflections composing our story telling such truth while moaning a lie publicly displaying my nails driving their way down her back like it’s our first kiss she kisses me, and like she’s in love she kisses me, and when she says goodbye she kisses me, then goes home to her wife at least we have The Davenport

Starry Spokane Mike Busby

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Untitled

Jessica Mumm

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Time Off Alec Reynolds

The air tasted fresh and lively, like an altoid, nothing like far down below with all the people and cars moving back and forth polluting it with unnatural flavors and fragrances. At the top it was new and untouched, pure and delicious in all its glory.

When we touched down here everyone had told me I absolutely had to go see the Eiffel Tower, that it’s definitely worth all the standing in line and money spent. I brushed off their advice easily; I had seen the Eiffel tower before and would again, isn’t that enough? So I continued on through my trip, wafting through street after street, consumed with the trinkets and articles of clothing sold by vendors, captivated by the delicious Parisian food and tastes that were so abundant. This was food as it should be, I thought, food as it belonged to be, rich and heavenly, the closest thing to god my mortal palate could ever achieve. I tasted bread that had just been made, plunged my hands into the still steaming loaf and lifted from it the warm and tender intestines that sang in my mouth. Still, it all seemed so hollow.

After the first week I had grown tired of the food, and I had become disillusioned with the (expensive) cuisine that Paris had been famous for. After the second week, I realized there was nothing left that I wanted to buy. I still had $1,300 but I had no desire to purchase anything anymore; the clothes that were once hung in such wonder now clung to a line desperately in the hopes of being sold to some ignorant tourist that could get haggled out of more Euros than needed. At some point in the third week, I resolved to stay in my hotel room for the remainder of my trip, watching American movies dubbed over in French, but a man can only watch Must Love Dogs in French so many times before he wants to drag a razor from his wrist to elbow and call it a night. So today I decided it: I would go see the Eiffel tower and all its “wonder.”

I stepped out from the hotel and was confronted with the dense taste of the Parisian air, clogging my throat and nostrils as I trekked past a friendly vendor trying to sell me an “I <3 Paris” shirt for 5 Euros more than it was worth. The line was long of

course but that wasn’t the issue; the issue was that I was stuck behind a family of seven from Birmingham that didn’t seem to grasp the concept of inside voices. They all spoke as if they were each individually reporters standing in front of a tornado raging through their town, each trying to speak over the other. The children cried out from boredom but the mother would not hear of it. They had come to France to see the stupid French Eiffel Tower and god dammit they were going to see it. Typically I would have just walked away, but on a day like today I was actually okay with the family.

Sure they bothered me and detracted from my tranquility, but they weren’t hurting me specifically and I had already left my hotel room.

After an interaction with some friendly Canadian tourists who had a slight French accent, I finally arrived at the ticket booth. Buying a single ticket, I made my way past the metallic arms of the kiosk and began my journey towards the top, opting for the stairs since A). It was such a nice day out and B). I might as well make this into a whole day kind of experience since there was nothing left for me after it, drag it out as long as possible. As I began my ascension, I realized the air had changed. No longer was it weighed down with the stench of the Paris Street. It was lighter, freer in a way. I had finally made it to the highest possible point a tourist can go.

The city lay in front of me like a vanquished lion in the gladiatorial games, relinquishing itself to me. I’m finally free, I thought, as I stepped out past the railing and into the emptiness of sky outstretched in front of me.

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The Coldest Part of the Kitchen Bella York

Today the NHL played rage against the machine during red wings vs. black hawks It was right after you called to say I’m sorry I called so I didn’t have the chance to tell you that your favorite band was playing during a hockey game on national television before I heard the click Before: you loved me with burning flames and now two years later we are frozen – two ice cubes across from each other in the ice tray One day we’ll get out of the freezer and thaw spilling together once again Or we’ll be plunked into separate glasses Yours a rum&coke mine virgin and we’ll water down these drinks with our tears separate all along

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Splash

Makenna Haeder

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At Ease

Ashley Peterson

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A Soldierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament Sarah Johnson

Heavily calloused hands grab at the quickly emptying bottles and a well-used glass.

With each shot he whisks himself away to a place in his mind where nothing can touch him and nothing can hurt.

Where sun drips down And warms his aching heart.

What will you do when the bottle runs out?

Will you crumble from the weight of your past?

With tired, bloodshot eyes he stares into a void.

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Power

Lavonne West

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Dew and Web Rachel Elmore

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Rough Magic Richard Baldasty

you demi-puppets that / by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make The Tempest

Lucette Quamash, formerly backup singer for Scar Hollow, has formed her own band, the Demi-Puppets. “Alt-country neo-punk,” she describes her genre and sensibility. “Rough Magic,” their first single, will release Monday as a free download.

Lucette takes lyrics direct from Shakespeare, though with her own discordant mix of lines from different plays. To wit: rough magic I here abjure ’tis not so sweet now as it was before which to the tune of flutes kept stroke Lucette considers that making sense no longer appeals, but language keeps a certain je ne sais quoi simply as sound.

I put the question to Will Tellis, editor at the music zine Pop Rocks: “Will that find and hold an audience?”

Will, no gabfest. Two liters Pepsi, four marijuana cookies later, he answers, “Maybe.”

I myself like the Demi-Puppets a lot. Although, admittedly, I’m atypical in some respects. Raised—ghee, tea, meditation, nonsense about nonviolence—in a Tibetan monastery. Recruited at 19 into a spy agency (still not permitted to name which—but wasn’t one of the biggies: not MI6, Mossad, FSB, etc.). Never spent much time in the company of ordinary people. Did a fair amount of necessary killing on the job. Nothing exciting, no Bond stuff, but still, you get the idea. A taste for Shakespeare, of course, anything stormy.

Jacobean darkness, even better.

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After retirement, happened to find myself one evening at a club show, little no-frills place in the East Village, Scar Hollow opening for the Celtic group Dingle. Became a Lucette fan right off, followed her since into this new opportunity with her Demi-Puppets.

If they get big, maybe offer my services free as bodyguard or for crowd control. Haven’t rusticated, not forgotten how to do a completely silent finish on some loud lout. (Digital pressure, intense, sustained; fracture of thyroid cartilage; death within two minutes.)

Even in the middle of a crowd, never noticed.

Rough magic, I don’t abjure.

Ovum

Seng Olsen

2014

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It Goes

Robin Golke

It is three days after what would have been my mother’s 66th birthday. There are certain days on the calendar that gnaw at me internally. March 3 is one of them. I have just woken out of a dead sleep with the thought that I need to find a universal sign for fear, something I can cling to.

We were all too young to believe or understand what was happening to Mom. Alzheimer’s isn’t supposed to happen when you’re not even 50. You’re not supposed to have to watch your father die of lung cancer at the same time you watch your mother become ill with a disease that strikes the old. My two brothers, sick father, and I were all at a loss as to what quicksand my mother’s mind had fallen into over the last six months or so. She seemed angry sometimes, others she was like a lost little child.

I was 23 when my father’s cough turned into something foreign and animal, when he began to cough up glasses full of stuff that smelled like old, forgotten death. They said he had pneumonia, then his toes turned black. When he told my mother and me he had cancer, she looked at me as if I were the parent. I said nothing.

He went into the hospital and never came out. All of this happened in a month, the time it takes me to revise a poem.

My mother was already showing signs that she wasn’t going to fare any better than my father. Both of my parents worked at a factory making outboard motors for over 30 years. Dad had Mercury Marine clocks atop the television, hanging from the wall.

Mom was now going to the bathroom at work, forgetting what she was supposed to do when she got back to her machine, then sitting to read the bible. She wire-brushed her pinkie one day. The wound went down to the bone; she went to the bathroom and wrapped it in toilet paper and kept working. When her foreman found this out, she was put on indefinite leave. She ran a stop sign and crashed my father’s Mustang on the way to visit him in the hospital. Mom was now getting rides to visit my father. She would sit in the corner and read the bible out loud while others spoke; she seemed unaware of anything around her.

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All my father talked about as he died in a hospital bed was taking care of our mother. We needed to sell their second house and possibly his boat. What I wanted was to save them both from the obvious. I felt stripped bare of any power. My younger brother was in prison, my older brother’s girlfriend was pregnant. This is what it is like to be alone. I worked as much as I could, trying not to think. Thought is the enemy in these situations. There are no good thoughts.

When my father died, we had a funeral, because that is what you do. He was 60. The days, months and years after were like a slow bleed. I took a few weeks off of work. I painted mom’s toenails. When I returned to work, I dreaded every phone call. My mother’s mind was dropping further into some invisible rabbit hole. A phone call might mean she got into another car crash, since she had claimed my father’s set of keys and taken to driving the other car. She was giving away my father’s life insurance money to television ministries in large sums. I tried to beat her to the mailbox before another “charity” would send her a letter asking for money.

I hid her checkbook. She used mine instead. She went for walks in the middle of the night; she was gone for hours. I waited up like a nervous parent on prom night.

The police picked her up when she walked onto the highway, and she couldn’t give them her name. She was put in the mental hospital for a few weeks, given Thorazine which made her shuffle constantly for the rest of her life. She was too young for Alzheimer’s; the doctors thought she was crazy. I cooked salmon on the grill, invited friends over to eat. I called my mother, even if she could no longer form a complete sentence. We all said hello to what remained of Rita Golke. My grandmother and aunts didn’t call or visit. People stay away from sickness; it might make them sad. I would have stayed away too, if I could. I promised my father I would take care of her. I was bound by duty, not love.

My younger brother got out of prison. He came to live with my mother and me. He was always her favorite. When he was little, he would hold onto her legs with both his arms and legs

to keep her from going somewhere he couldn’t follow. I was her least favorite, daddy’s girl. My younger brother Marc and I had a bond, and I was no longer alone in caring for my mother. By then I was ready to get out, go somewhere new, and get away from the sadness. The doctors finally diagnosed her with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She was 54. I learned how to bake bread from scratch.

My mom, who never smoked, was stealing my cigarettes. I was afraid she’d set herself on fire.

I left my mother in Marc’s care, feeling helpless and whipped. I’d been in North Carolina about four years when he called to say she could no longer eat. He didn’t put her on a feeding tube, she wouldn’t have wanted that. She was 60. It was almost Christmas. I was at work, a foreman at a landscaping company. He put his cellphone on speaker and I spoke to my mother for the last time, even though she couldn’t speak back. I said that she should go tell my father I say hello, and that I was well. I asked her not to hang on. I got off the phone and grabbed a weed-eater, edged all the beds on the property. I didn’t go to her funeral. Marc sent me a program and an Easter lily.

I raised an adopted son, then went back to college. Most people would say this is good. I don’t know much about what is or isn’t good. Early-onset Alzheimer’s is hereditary. Today I asked my girlfriend of three years if my memory is as good as it was when we met. She told me that it is. Every time I forget something, I worry that my mother’s illness is in my brain too. This is what fear is like. The doctor told me I need to stop smoking. My father’s lung cancer is hereditary. I never worry about coughing. It took ten years for the strength in my mother’s body to give in to a disease that I am just as likely to die from. When I tell the doctor this, he says nothing.

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Beach

Cassie Grauert

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A Splash of Color Amber St. Pierre

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Sky Man

Jeremia Wilks-McGinnis

Where the sun remembers to droze, there is a darkness in your brain where a stolen memory should be.

A man lies on a cold stone floor.

The hole in the wall the size of a bullet allows the sea to feel inelegant The sky man feels a moment of serendipity, spots the city lights and the world outside. The blood red orange dances a cabaret in front of a small bald man, sitting in a field of pink dandelions cutting off his fingers.

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Spinning Wheel

Constance Brockett Murray

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Impress Forest & Flowing Flower Pods Jennifer Hill

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Wind of Change Sharon Ann Goff

Change is a storm that blows in threatening to destroy.

It’s demanding; gale forces blow in without warning.

It’s something we have to fight when it gets too strong.

If we don’t fight, we die.

The dark, swirling clouds of a ravenous tornado unwelcoming at first.

Our lives spin out of control.

It’s dark and unpredictable.

Change screams newness of life, leaving you breathless, in the making.

We shout because we love that we now have a voice in this fight for survival, this newfound self- love.

We leave behind the old silenced voices and not fighting for our own damn lives.

I too can be just as bold.

Come, wind.

I am ready.

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Before My Dad Left Jason Oestreicher

I don’t remember, it could have been any day of the week—my hand, small, nestled in his, the hand of a giant.

The jingle of the bell each time we walked through the door echoes in the canyons of my memories.

I remember the smell: a combination of just-dry ink on pulp, screaming the day’s news and tragic deaths, mixed with the rich nutty tang of unsmoked cigars, lying in their boxes like good children at bedtime.

Our missions to the newsstand were to infiltrate, gather intelligence and take home prisoners: Spiderman, Superman and Doc Savage stood no chance, packages of Topps baseball cards had to surrender.

I tore open the smooth wax package with the same impatient fervor of a Christmas Day unwrapping, breathless, looking for that one card – Reggie Jackson, in mid-swing, smashing the ball into oblivion.

The small pink rectangle of gum crumbles apart, chalky sugar residue dissolves on my tongue and paints that moment sweetly in time.

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Untitled

Patrick Ashcroft

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Enchanted

Makenna Haeder

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Along the Ground Tom Versteeg

Path of delight, they say, runs close along the groundâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all that moist deep grit for just about anything to spread out into or come up out of and the feral perfumes unfurling all around.

True enough, the sky always will be somewhere else than down here, but even so it makes arrangements for its lights to warm things up and help us find our way, and in any case, depending on where we start from the solid ground will raise us up toward heaven maybe many times before it leads us down the last slope to the immense shining of the sea.

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The Birds and the Bombs Alaric Goodman

There is a family of birds—finches, I think—that live in the dead pear tree out back. I like to watch them in the morning, after I’ve changed the filters in my gas mask and when the sky is still a putrid green. Up in the barren branches, the mother tries to teach her little ones to fly. Together, they hop along the branch, pausing, stopping, and chirping all the while. I have no idea how they’ve survived, nor why they’ve chosen this particular tree out of all the tree-corpses poking out of the ground. But I am thankful for whatever inclination or instinct drove them. The birds remind me of what we made not so long ago.

I told her once that she reminded me of a phoenix—a mighty creature of otherness who wore long crimson dresses and danced through the trees and grass. She used to glide through the backyard, tendrils of red fabric flowing behind her. Always she tried to drag me out there, promising some languid afternoon filled in by a picnic, champagne, and whatever else. I grumbled back. I needed to paint. My gallery and agent were at my back, badgering me for more. At the time, I failed to notice the way her face fell, body drooping as if she teetered at the edge of the branch. She said nothing back.

I breathe inward, air filtered by charcoal. Everyone said it would be too dangerous to live above ground after the bombs fell. Down beneath the earth we (some of us) burrowed. It turned out that mostly amateur artists were not part of those plans. But I do not begrudge them and neither would she. The others are gone and my heart still pumps. Better to die in the nest than be plunged within the rock, so dark you can barely see.

The birds chirp. Toxins drift in the air, but do not affect myself or the animals. In my ear, she laughs. I am painting her forever. Paint underneath my fingernails, scraping knife at my belt. Oils, pastels, acrylics through charcoal filters. Her voice might strike violet or turquoise. Does she sing? Arms extended behind her as she runs

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Fiction Award Winner

behind the house and away from me? Or does she croon something softer?

I shake my head. The wine from the basement’s gone to my brain.

Her eyes narrow, then relax. What were you thinking? I don’t know. She is so bright, like the radioactive sky.

It’s been months since I last had a cigarette. If I had one I would tear the gas mask from my face and smoke. You should stop that, she says to me. Her toes cling to the grass, painted fingernails caressing the tree trunk. Why don’t you put that out? We can have some pears and cheese. I keep puffing. We have too many pears, not enough cheese. She vanishes and I question whether she was ever real.

I wish the birds would come inside. I would welcome them. They could perch at the ends of rickety bookshelves and make beds in hole-filled furniture. I could sit and listen to them as I painted. Before bed I could share wine and rations with them, for their souls and mine.

“Why not?” I ask them. But they do not move, tilting their heads up and around.

In her gaze, I saw the explosion. Its inevitability all over the news, but more in her eyes. She touched my hand and my skin reddened.

Back inside, my fingernails bite into my palm. I try to smell her.

She chose where we lived, saying the doorways were wide enough to fly through. I laughed, hands on her shoulders. Back then she wore a silvery necklace I gave her. It jingles in my pocket now.

She stares from every wall. In individual canvases hung by rusty nails. Sometimes it’s just her face, staring from inside a window, arching a slender brow at my questions, twisting in scarcely

concealed anguish. Other times it’s her whole body, entangled with mine, seated alone upon autumn leaves, prancing from one place to another. Over and over again, there she is. Row by row.

My fingers graze over worthless paint. What would she look like bombarded by fear? How would the weight of her head rest on my chest as she sobbed? What if she felt the fire of the bombs? I know all these things and have given them to her.

I am running out of room, my task nearly complete. In the studio, I seat myself at my easel. My back aches, my skin sags around my bones and organs. I wheeze. This time her expression hasn’t been determined. But her eyebrows tilt in such a way, though I can’t decipher what they mean.

“Aren’t the birds pretty?” I ask her.

I feel her breath on my neck. She says: “Yes, they are. Give them some bread later?”

“I don’t think we have any.”

“It’s okay. We can get some.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

I heave a sigh. Behind me, she presses her nose and lips against my head—there and not there.

I pick up my brush, its hairs stabbing into the jar of paint.

She is happy, we are happy; my rouge strokes forming her upturned smile. However, my fingers falter and she wears a scowl instead.

“We are out of the question.” She said to me once.

“No,” I stammer, scraping my knife against the red gash.

“We can fix this,” I plead to her.

I cover my mistake with white paint. Waiting for it to dry once more, I redo her smile. No noise reverberates this far into the house. Yet I imagine her standing out there on the porch, calling my name as if I hadn’t already seen. In my vision, she wears a gown of red feathers.

The fire of the explosion—she can’t be singed. I will rush to her, cover her body with mine and cradle her head in my palms. I can save her, she can save me. She can fly away with her feather dress.

Her smile is done and the paint’s still wet. I know there is space in the living room, over the fireplace mantle and between two other portraits. I lift myself from the stool, unhinging the canvas from the easel. Stumbling, she arrives at my side. I lean on her, wait to go with her into the backyard and eat pears and cheese and wine.

She will dance and sing and I can’t follow. She could leap anywhere and I would follow.

I curse for the bombs and the birds. She does not leave my side. A single spot, there it is, where we used to have a mirror and gather around the fire during winter. I can hear the birds from here.

Chirping, cleaning their feathers, asking their mother to take them away. A bent nail and the canvas slides in.

She is gone from me and I whimper her name.

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The chirping grows louder and quicker, beckoning me to the door where I saw the sky charge with fire. The family of birds is there, to remind me of what remains. I unbuckle the gas mask from my face. Huge gulps of poisoned air, as if I had been underground the whole time. She looks back at me from every direction, while the birds hop along the branch. I wish for another explosion. Let the fires take us all.

Blood drips from my mouth and nose, soiling the dusty floor. I tear off my shirt, red sores cutting a map across my arms and torso.

How long have I been like this? The pain is commonplace, air seizing through my lungs. I ask where she is. Outside picking pears?

We have too many pears, but we can make something from them.

Come outside with me, she murmurs. I smile. She’s been there the whole time. I make it to the porch. The air is fresh and clean. She meanders about in her red dress, while I sit on a blanket and watch her. Finally, we share wine and pears and cheese, feeding each other with our fingers.

Then my back brushes the roots of the tree. Beside them is a ramshackle wooden cross, staked together by the same rusty nails that hold her paintings. I flinch away. She is here; she is kissing me on the mouth. I sob. Above her head, the birds. No cross, no bombs, no fire, no marker. Just the tree, the birds, and her. The wings of the birds are fluttering. I wish them luck, I wish for her. The birds are calling, higher than before. She pulls away from me, her voice joining theirs, asking for me. Are the baby birds flying? I reach for them and her. Are they leaving this place? Away from the cross?

Are they obscured by another bomb, the fires joining us all? I can’t say, but she is kissing me again and her face is all I can see.

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Black & White Tree James Cronrath

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Broom

Dakota Ross

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Wakena Falls Alicia Dunavan

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Doing Rails Derek Annis

The rain is eight days thick.

Raw sewage is coming up into the bathtub. The vodka’s been gone for over an hour, and we have already erased two hundred dollars worth of chalk white lines. I have four crusty old dollar bills in my pocket. I owe the bank eighty seven and change.

We rise from our place on the cigarette specked sofa, head out the door and walk along the tracks into town—forty ounces of Old English in my hand, six inches of cold steel in my coat. You let the rain run down your bare arms.

I let the rain fill my boots.

We pry open a can of black beans, take turns dipping into it with my flame stained spoon.

Conductors pull the cord when they pass, baritone whistle wails.

From here the houses on the hill are hundreds of blinking eyes—city soiled with light. Light holds back stars. Lie down.

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Rest your head on the rail next to mine. Can you feel those vibrations in your skull, the screeching steel, the thousand sparks and steam cutting through black air? It may be miles off, but if you press your ear down like this you can hear it coming.

Alberta Tracks Fay Hulihan

Photography Award Winner

2014

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The Wire Harp is a nonprofit annual publication of Spokane Falls Community College, presenting the creative works of students, alumni, faculty, and staff.

Send manuscripts and inquiries to: sfccwireharp@gmail.com or mail to: The Wire Harp Spokane Falls Community College Communications MS 3050 3410 West Fort George Wright Drive Spokane, WA 99224-5288 The Wire Harp online: http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/ wireharp Š 2014 The Wire Harp Spokane Falls Community College All rights reserved. All rights revert to individual authors and artists. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means; graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval system without written permission of the publishers.