Thoroughfare Spring 2012 by Thoroughfare Magazine

THOROUGHFARE art imitates life imitates art

FEATURED ARTIST: HON-WAI WONG 26 FEATURED SECTIONS: WALK INTO THE GARDEN 118

SPRING 2012

THOROUGHFARE Thoroughfare is a multimedia literary arts magazine catering to the diverse creative pursuits at Johns Hopkins University. Published once a semester on CDs and online, Thoroughfare showcases the best of student fiction and poetry, as well as visual art, photography, music, film, and more. For more information about Thoroughfare and how you can get involved, check out our website at: http://web1.johnshopkins.edu/thoroughfare or contact us at: thoroughfare.mag@gmail.com (Please submit all visual arts in the highest possible resolution under 5MB. Feel free to include additional comments and/or information about your submission.)

EXECUTIVE BOARD President:

Alexis von Kunes Newton

Vice President:

Lay Kodama

Secretary:

Hannah Moulden

Treasurer:

Gabrielle Barr

Publicity Chairs:

Alessandra Bautze Georgina Edionseri

Webmaster:

Rachel Louie

Poetry:

Isaac Brooks Gabrielle Barr

Prose:

Jerusha Barton Vicky Plestis

Visual Arts:

Georgina Edionseri Ava Yap

Film/Music:

Curry Chern

Layout:

Lay Kodama

Interested in joining the Thoroughfare staff? Just send an email to Thoroughfare Magazine at thoroughfare.mag@gmail.com and request an application. No experience is necessary.

STAFF EDITORS Editors-in-Chief:

Alexis von Kunes Newton Lay Kodama

Poetry:

Isaac Brooks (coeditor) Gabrielle Barr (coeditor) Laura Ewen Rachel Ewen Christina Luk Hannah Moulden

Prose:

Jerusha Barton (coeditor) Vicky Plestis (coeditor) Alessandra Bautze Hillary Jackson Amanda Miller Florence Noorinejad Kate Orgera Katherine Quinn Isabelle Schein Katherine Seger Sharon Sun Abby Sussman Ellen Waddell Jane Wang

Visual Arts: Film/Music:

Georgina Edionseri (coeditor) Ava Yap (coeditor) Ryan Bender Julia Bradshaw Andrew Vargas Delman Julia DiMauro Amanda Miller Jose Nino Luna Samawi

Web:

Rachel Louie (head editor) Curry Chern Lucy Gao Jane Wang

Layout:

Lay Kodama (head editor) Jessica Grischkan Hillary Jackson Katherine Quinn Carolyn Tsai

Curry Chern (head editor) Kunal Ajmera Eva Gurfein Andrea Massaro Michael Nakan Jose Nino

TABLE OF CONTENTS 08

Mountainous Reflections by Lay Kodama

Nails by Andy Vargas-Delman

Art Imitates Life Imitates Art

Industrial Melanism by Bridget Harkness

by Lucy Miao

The Sugar by Carla Ruas

Bliss by Megan Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor

List Of Demands by Alexa Kwiatkoski

Rain Over Oil by Eleanor Bennett

The Perfect Shade by Eric Luitweiler

United States of Television by Cyrus Beh

Driven by Eleanor Bennett

Burning Sand by Megan Hennessy

Every Me And Every You

Japanese Cranes by Thanapoom Boonipat

by Colleen McDermott

Hawk, Zhangjiajie by Thanapoom Boonipat

Penn Station by Allie Hernandez

Adriana by Alp Yurter

Dawn by Nicolette Hatzidimitriou

Catcall by Eric Luitweiler

Pigtails by Allie Hernandez

FEATURED ARTIST: Hon-Wai Wong

My Best Friend Lily by Rebecca Stringham

Blank Stare by Hon-Wai Wong

Reuben On Dope by Stefanie Busgang

Dainty by Hon-Wai Wong

Still Life Of Fruit by Scarlett Hao

Come Hither by Hon-Wai Wong

The Battle by Coral J. Fung Shek

Pac-Man B.C. by Hon-Wai Wong

Funeral Chorus by Isaac Brooks

Midnight Musing by Lay Kodama

The Strawberry Tiger by Trang Diem Vu

10 by Sara Son

Winding by Trang Diem Vu

Clasped by Allie Hernandez

Light Steps by Brittany Leung

The Beast Arousing The Rebel Angels

Burano, Venezia by Brittany Leung

by Isaac Brooks

Seven Wonders by Scarlett Hao

Future Clarity by Julia Bradshaw

MSG 4 Big Boss by Alp Yurter

Standby by Quinn McGrory

Backroads To Hell by Hon-Wai Wong

Junctions by Julia DiMauro

Warm by Shelby Stewart

Serene, Sleepy Seagull

110 Captured by Lay Kodama

by Brittany Leung

113 Monsoon Reverie by Hon-Wai Wong

Braving the Tempest

114

Colorblind by Katherine Quinn

by Megan Hennessy

115

Dropping By Swan Lake by Samuel Cook

Wild Yard Ornaments

116 Two Lumps Of Flesh by Shelby Stewart

by Nathan McDonald

118 WALK INTO THE GARDEN

A Good Day by Megan O’Connor

118 El Jardín by Eleni Padden

Spring by Trang Diem Vu

120 I Just Really Hope That You Think Of Me

A Pigeon’s “Red Carpet”

by Brittany Leung

121 I Don’t Want To Fall To Pieces

Birdsong by Scarlett Hao

Morris Is Red by Eleanor Bennett

123 Central Park Sonata by Julia Bradshaw

The Woes Of Billy Miles

125 Garden by Eleni Padden

by Eleni Padden

126 Just A Story by Shelby Stewart

More Than A Dust by Eric Luitweiler

127 Solitude by Ryan Thompson

Family Portrait by Allie Hernandez

128 Winter Bloom by Katherine Quinn

Coming Back To Amelia

129 No Romeo by Hon Wai Wong

by Alessandra Bautze

130 A Vase Of Dandelions by Alexa Mechanic

by Georgina Edionseri by Georgina Edionseri

102 Organic Wavefunctions by Samuel Cook

131 Nostalgia by Coral J. Fung Shek

104 Under White Gables by Eleni Padden

133

Malusdomesticaphobia

105 Untitled by Nisha Donthi

by Nicolette Hatzidimitriou

106 Ode To The Color Red

134

Eden by Coral J. Fung Shek

135

Before by Serona Sengupta

by Bridget Harkness

108 The Art Of Walking by Megan Hennessy

MOUNTAINOUS REFLECTIONS Lay Kodama

ART IMITATES LIFE IMITATES ART Lucy Miao A well-known politician is running for president. He makes a staunch comment about a woman’s right to choose—namely, that she can’t. He doesn’t get elected president. It is an incumbent year, and the current president is popular. The challenger never had much of a chance. Suppose a well-known politician is running for president. He makes a staunch comment about a woman’s right to choose—namely, that she can’t. He turns up the next morning with his nuts kicked up into the vicinity of his ribcage, lying in a pool of his own blood, a ski mask strapped onto his slack face. Murder—of course. There are no leads. Privately, most people think the douchebag deserved it. A well-known politician is running for president. He makes a staunch comment about a woman’s right to choose—namely, that she can’t. There’s a bit of fuss in broadcast news and a couple of angry editorials in the New York Times, some late-night rants on the radio. Nothing really happens, though, because this is rich white male America, and because no one really gives a fuck.

BLISS

Suddenly I realized That if I stepped out of my body I would break Into blossom Into bliss Into a state of peacefulness Previously obscured by intimacy’s bitterness. We kiss, And I must ignore the hiss Panic from my mistrustfulness. Fears that I can’t dismiss. There is no loneliness Like this, Petrified of closeness, And terrified of nakedness.

He clasps my necklace, A heart-shaped compass. Its arrow spins, directionless. Merciless, He dismantles my fortress, My guard, my weakness.

Megan O’Connor His devotion seems endless. We were in love from the first kiss, And in the weeks since, he has been faultless, Filled with unwavering honesty and kindness. Yet he is not the first to tread this precipice, And I am scarred by what’s come before. Under streams of sunbeams his fairness Effervesces, flawless. Uncontaminated by darkness, Stainless. But I am not so pure. I feel a familiar dirtiness Creep into my consciousness And I am unsure he’s the cure. For I am a sullied canvas; A subject to madness, With bouts of sadness, And against my memories, powerless.

RAIN OVER OIL Eleanor Bennett

UNITED STATES OF TELEVISION Cyrus Beh

THE BURNING SAND Burning sand blankets and warms my toes, while the stony bluffs blockade to one side. The other neighbor, Rolling Reeds, is prickly, but tolerable. The gull cries an overplayed tune. It is gratingly annoying, like my great aunt‘s laugh. I listen instead, to the trickle in the tide pool, to the scuttle of the saltwater crabs, running like gossip through smoothed stones and seaweed. Somewhere, a little girl shrieks happily, the summer sun and sand a once a year delight.

Megan Hennessy I don‘t turn, not needing to see to be able to picture her blistered skin and toothy grin. She doesn‘t realize yet, that she is like the grains of sand, along this long and trodden beach. She doesn‘t know what I‘ve realized, as the sun moves across the empty sky: The sand will keep warming your feet, until one day it burns. The seagull‘s tune will run its course, and the crabs are only comforting until they bite.

BODY OF THE PAST Lay Kodama

JAPANESE CRANES Thanapoom Boonipat Additional Information: Chinese painting on rice paper

HAWK, ZHANGJIAJIE Thanapoom Boonipat

ADRIANA Alp Yurter

CATCALL

Eric Luitweiler

Atop a thousand feet of steel, Brian was balancing along an I-Beam, pulling two headers together and screwing the bolts tight. He could not help but take a glance over to the immaculate New York skyline that laid out in front of him. He knew that if he were ever to fall on the job, or injure himself in some other way, God forbid, he could blame it as much on the city’s beauty as on himself. He thought of it like he was a businessman forced to write a financial report at a strip club; for every typo, he would blame it on Amber. Brian was a South Boston boy, grew up there, lived there, and never planned on leaving. Out of high school, he landed a job on a construction site. But after seven years, a marriage, and a baby, he jumped through hoops, pulled

strings, networked, went through interviews, screenings, background checks, all to land this job atop 1WTC, One World Trade Center. And after his first month atop the rising tower, he was still climbing a steep learning curve. Through his seven years of experience in Boston, he had never had to put as much meticulous care into his work, nor such arduous hours. He did put up a couple of residence towers back home, but at the 1WTC, with one floor going up every week, time is always running. “That’s right Bry-Bry, just like that,” his boss, Johnny, said, overlooking Brian’s work. He was very considerate of the rookie’s anxiety. “Is that the last one?” “Yeah, now we’re gonna head over to the other side where the boys are putting in trusses. You’ll watch them for a bit, then one of them should walk you through the procedure. It’s not much compared to this though. You don’t have to work on thin air.” Brian’s stiff back relaxed at the thought of working on a flat surface. He followed Johnny in a balancing act down the I-Beam he was standing on, hanging on to the guide-cable and thinking only of his wife and his little girl as he watched his feet with each step. “Okay men, how’s it going? Are we on time?”

Johnny asked in a loud, authoritative tone. There were nearly twenty sweaty faces working around the central crane. Brian recognized nearly half of them, but had never been introduced. “Yeah, we’re doing good on time. Better than most days,” said a scruffy man with thickest of thick New York accents. “Then I hope it’s okay if an understudy joins in on the fun. This is Brian. He’s been here a month and came in with the June expansion. He’s been connecting beams mostly, but I want to get him in on putting up trusses, in case you guys need him down the line. Sound good?” “Yeah that works. Let us finish up on this one truss first.” the man said. Brian felt disconnected from the community of workers here. On the job in Boston, he and the other men had a strong bond. Everybody knew everybody, usually before they even joined the construction team. They were all either neighbors, or their fathers had known each other from past construction projects. They all went to Mass together. They all went to Fenway together. They were brothers, and Brian missed them all to death. If it weren’t for them, he wouldn’t have found Shannon. He was at a Irish Pub up in Cambridge with three of his best buds watching a Celtics game over Guiness. “Hey, ain’t she your type,” Donny said, nudging him. He was the most forward of Brian’s friends, but that didn’t mean he was always wrong with his advice on women. He wasn’t a year older than Brian, but he knew how to work things. And Brian, with his reserved shyness, clammy hands, and loss for words, needed that boost. Brian looked over at her, and there she was, his future wife. She was holding onto her martini with one hand, sitting on top of the bar stool, talking with her friend. From Brian’s angle, he could see all of her, from heels, up her long legs, her business skirt, her hands, her fingers tapping the glass, and up through her waves of blonde hair. She must have been in col-

lege. He had a thing for smart girls. He never went to college, and saw a beautiful, bright woman as another opportunity to learn and explore what he could have had. And the girl at the bar was all he wanted, but when in Cambridge, a guy has to watch which college girl he chases. If he picks a Harvard girl, he’ll be hearing an embarrassing rejection echoing through the snide jokes of his buds for weeks. “What do you say we grab one more round. I probably need to kick back a few—you know, before—” “No,” said Donny. “you don’t get a five minute break. Girl after girl, you never know what you want. If she’s what you want, go. Now.” Brian looked over the faces of his friends. “You guys are always trying to pull this shit. You probably think she’s Harvard Law or something. You think I’m gonna trip up, and you’ll give me shit for it all week.” “That wouldn’t be half-bad neither,” his buddy Steve said. Donny tried to give him some confidence. “Look, she’s probably a college girl, and college girls don’t come to bars like these for no reason. They want us. They’re fed up with the dweebs at their school, and they’re dying to have some real men. You can’t trip up. She’s just gonna want you too bad.” “Alright, I’m going,” Brian said. He stood up and straightened out his hair. “But if this turns into a shit-show, you owe me. Tonight will be on your tab.” Lucky for Brian, he hit it off. He sweated out a greeting, bought her a drink. She was, in fact, at Boston University, studying psychology. He learned how much she loved cities and jumping from coffee shop to coffee shop. He learned how she loves dogs, and snakes. He learned how she is a professional photographer. His friends left him at the pub with Shannon. He walked her back, for a long walk along the Charles, and went inside with her to look at her prints. That was around four years before his move to New York. He mar-

ried Shannon after two. They had a baby, Lilly, a year into their marriage. And now his family was with him as support through a new job and a new world. Brian watched the men placing the trusses in, and couldn’t help but be reminded of how distant every worker on the site can be. In seven years of work, he never truly dreaded the hours because he had his amigos at his side. Here, he was counting the minutes. “Okay newbie. You’re up,” said the scruffy New Yorker. “My name is Damien. I want you to stand at this end here,” Damien walked Brian across the platform to next spot for a truss, “And now I want you to guide it into these rivets here. The crane will do the rest.” Brian felt comfortable with it. The crane lowered the truss to him, a 20 foot long bar of steel triangles. He aligned the truss into the rivets by his side, while another man did the same at the other end. Damien stood over him through the whole thing, trying to make small talk. “Have you settled into the City?” “Yeah, I’ve been here for a few months with my family. We live on the West side in Hell’s Kitchen.” After a pause, Damien asked the second most important question, the one on which Brian’s future relationship with these guys seemed to hinge on, “Are you a Sox fan?” “No, I’m not big on baseball. I’m a diehard Celtics fan. Greatest team in history between Bill Russell and Larry Bird.” “I’m just looking out for you. No matter what, be careful around here with what you say about the Yanks.” Brian laughed. Damien laughed, but he was serious. The truss slid right into place. Brian grabbed his wrench and bolts. “I’ve definitely seen you around before, Brian. All of you June babies look so nervous. You guys need to lighten up a bit. How do you like working under Johnny?” “He’s great. He seems to run a tight ship.”

“Well I will tell you, he is a great man. He’s been here, for the building, from the very start. He was one of the men who was sent in to take down all the rubble after 9/11, you know, to salvage all the steel. He says it looked like a mess of modern art, with all of these beams poking up through concrete, and all around it was paper. Just crumpled and shredded pieces of paper, and pens, and staplers. Probably looked like a tornado ripped through a Staples.” “Did he come across any bodies?” Brian asked. “No, I think the police force cleared out the area way before that. His job was just to salvage steel. It was the only thing left to save. Probably tens of millions worth, too. I’ve been working with that steel for the past ten years on nearly every project. A lot of it is what we are working with right now, melted down and re-casted. All that metal keeping us up right now was from the twin towers.” Brian started bolting the truss to the main frame. He looked at the steel as if he was searching for someone’s carved initials. “Johnny was good buds with some of the Firefighters that were lost. He says that’s the reason he cares so much about 1WTC. Then again, everybody knew somebody. We all have a story of what this building means to us.” “Did you know anyone?” Brian asked. “Yeah, just a friend of a friend though.” Damien paused and looked up towards the sun, then his watch. “It’s about noon now. Go ahead and bolt this last one in, then we’ll be heading down to ground for lunch. Wanna join?” Brian hadn’t been eating lunch with any co-workers yet. He usually spent his lunches over New York’s sky scrapers, looking down at the crawling cars below, and thinking about the magnitude of where he stood at that moment. He would sit with the wind, and when no one was around to see, he would toss out a penny, knowing fool well that it wouldn’t hurt anyone. He’d make a wish with each one.

He said yes to Damien’s offer, and went along. They filed into the elevator shafts, and the platform creaked underneath them through the darkness of the unfinished concrete floors. It was still just one huge, 60 story parking garage. At ground floor, he was met by Johnny who pulled him aside. “So Brian, It looks like you’ve been clocking in too many hours. Regulations limit the new workers to 40 hours a week. It’s Friday at noon, and you’re already at 42. You need to take the rest of the day. I’m sorry I wasn’t as aware of this issue. Just go home, and have a nice weekend, alright.” Brian was so relieved to hear those words. Even though it was exciting to get out working with Damien’s crew for a change, he would take a half-day any chance he got. “Yes, sir. I hadn’t heard about that. I’ll be in bright and early Monday.” He couldn’t help but notice that he saw Johnny differently now. He went straight to the locker room, which was normally packed with sweat and hairy chests. Instead, it was just empty benches. He pulled off his tool-belt and placed it in his locker. Then his construction hat. He tossed his work shirt in the laundry basket, so it could be washed for another man’s day’s work. Outside the locker room, he punched out. He walked out through the fences and down the street, contemplating what to do with his day now. Usually he took his commute straight back to see his daughter and Shannon. He knew his wife would be busy in the mid-afternoon, bogged down by business calls. She was working longer days then he was as a market analyst at home. Lilly was usually asleep with an afternoon nap. He decided he would grab lunch somewhere along the way. He was walking down West Street, running adjacent to the con-

struction of the 9/11 memorial, when he started her yelling from inside. He figured it was a foreman on the memorial fountain, yelling at his workers. But he realized that just a ways in front of him there were two workers on the inside, peaking through a hole in the grey mesh mat of the fence and screaming for the attention of the women passing by. Brian and his friends ogled from time to time when on lunch break back in Boston, especially Donny. But they were always careful to pick and choose who they ogled, and for how long. It was never an actual past time. Brian’s crew was close enough that they could entertain themselves. They didn’t need a novelty like cat-calling to keep them amused. But that doesn’t mean that Donny didn’t get his fair share of whistles in. He knew to avoid the Middle-Aged Yuppies, because they wouldn’t be afraid to bring it up with management or pull out the pepper spray. He also knew to avoid girls right on the cusp of eighteen. When Brian and Donny and the crew did cat-call, it was usually taken as a friendly gesture, because it was almost always directed at someone they had seen before. Many of the women they had done it to they actually knew by name. As Brian saw it, it was always a harmless compliment. A few yards ahead of him was this women in high heels, long legs, and beautiful brown wavy hair. He heard them hollering and whistling, only catching the words “tits” and “dick.” He saw one stick a tongue through the hole, and the woman walked right by it. When Brian reached the hole, he took a split second to peak in, only to meet eyes with Damien. He stopped right where he stood. Damien’s face suddenly drew stiff. He stared back at him. Brian noticed he was holding a sandwich, like some sexually precocious third graders ready to gawk at the new hot substitute teacher.

He stood a second. This new friend he made was just a horny animal inside a cage, and Brian hated the fact that the cage was where he worked. He hated that that cage, with these two horny apes gawking through the curtains, happened to be what this country had been working towards for a decade. Brian saw Damien gulp. “Don’t say a word, Brian. You hear me? Don’t say a word, and I will help you with anything you need in this job.” Brian looked down at the concrete sidewalk. He then turned and kept walking. He heard Damien keep yelling, “Don’t tell Johnny, kid. You better not tell Johnny!” Brian didn’t say a word back. He thought about Shannon, sitting at her desk, how it would make her feel. He remembered how she had brought up her experience with construction workers one night after sex. “Brian, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said. “Today I was walking down the street near Commons, down by where they’re putting up those new offices, and there were these construction workers, just like you, and they stared at me. They didn’t say a word, but just stared. I didn’t mind. But, and be honest with me, do you guys do stuff like that?” “Honey, we’re guys. That’s what guys do. We hit on girls at bars, we hit on girls on the T, and we hit on girls at work. But Shannon, you know I love you. You know that you are the only girl I want on my mind. Sure, some girl walking by might catch my eye, but that’s it.” “I’m not accusing you. I was just curious.” “Too bad I couldn’t have been one of the guys you ran into today. What were you wearing?” Shannon smiled and kissed him. She grabbed his arm and put it

around her. “Men are idiots.” Brian went straight home. His wife was in the middle of an interview with a business executive, but he walked in and kissed her on the cheek anyway. She didn’t lose pace for one second, but he managed to get a smile out of her. He went over to Lilly’s crib and gave her a kiss on the forehead. She was fast asleep. He realized that one day, Lilly would face the absurd and disgusting things men say to women. He stood over her, and watched her, and couldn’t help but feel haunted by the image of the kind of guys she would run into.

featured artist:

HON-WAI WONG Hon-Wai Wong is from Malaysia and is currently a freshman majoring in Writing Seminars and Sociology. Having learnt to use color pencils, oil pastels and watercolor in casual art classes from pre-school to his early teens, he rediscovered his passion for art last summer. He took Studio Drawing I in Fall 2011 and is currently taking Life Drawing,

both under the instruction of Professor Craig Hankin. Pencil is his preferred medium, but he plans to take up painting again soon. His is influenced by the works of Edgar Degas, John Singer Sargent and Antonio L贸pez Garc铆a. He is currently experimenting with graphic design and sequential art and aspires to be a professional writer and artist.

BLANK STARE

DAINTY

COME HITHER

PAC-MAN B.C.

Want to be featured? Include a short biography along with your submission(s), and you may be selected to be the featured artist for the next Thoroughfare issue.

MIDNIGHT MUSINGS

Lay Kodama

Sara Son

There are a lot of things that I don’t know. Where the light escapes to when the refrigerator door shuts, why laundry smells so good on Mondays, or why I am stuck inside this man’s shirt. I am trying not to laugh but he is tickling my side, jamming his thick fingers against my young hips. I hear my own laugh reverberating against his chest and the inside of his shirt. The sound is muffled – as if it knows that it does not belong. What am I doing in here? I finally claw my way out, unknotting myself from cotton and skin, until my hands reach the musty damp sheets of the mattress. I remember when I first walked into the room I asked where his bed was. He pointed to a defeated mattress in the corner, placed purposefully underneath the window – hiding from the glaring summer heat that penetrated the room. Someone once said that if you want to avoid something entirely you should keep it close. My father would cry at the state of this room – Styrofoam cups, faux leather coach, dust on black and all. I grope my surroundings, feeling for cold surfaces. Impossible. Everything feels sticky. Hair sticks to my temples. The room comes into full view. My head is lazy but my body warm. My hands feel clammy and I want desperately to go back home and run them under cool water. My mother sits on the floor, peeling away at her garlic cloves, shouting in Korean at the newsman on channel 9. I start to crawl towards her but the man pulls me back – his damp touch on my wrists once again. Don’t go near mom or you’ll cry. How much of that statement is attributed to the garlic, and how much to my mother? I will add this to the list of things I do not know. I want to yell. You are not my father take your disgusting damp dewy fingers off of me. His hands are oil on skin, the kind you can’t just rub off with water. Instead I screech and run towards my mother, grab onto her arm. Her touch is cold; her skin is dew. This was the only thing she ever had in common with my father. Mom. How did you end up in this room? What are you doing here?

Allie Hernandez

CLASPED

THE BEAST AROUSING THE REBEL ANGELS Isaac Brooks But you have knees and fingers like a man, and you have blonde and curly hair, and all the anatomic features that men have. So tell me, please, from whence proceeds your spite? Blake caught it in his watercolor, long before you ever took the serpent's form; he caught you bare, a nude and man-like being bereft of scales, horns, or flaming wings. The anthropomorphic rebel angels lie beside your feet and grovel at your fearful human symmetry as you cry out: "My mind will make a heaven out of hell!" You hold no knives or claws within your hand, and any fire burning in your eyes burns only in some distant skies, so tell From whence your spite; I do not understand. What horrid hammer and what anvil warped the sinews of your beastly beating heart so that you face the spears of heaven's stars and scream you'd rather reign in hell than serve? The rebel angels seem to be confused themselves: they feel hell's heat but not your hate. They seem to ask: from whence your spite for man? We're shaped like him and cannot understand.

FUTURE CLARITY Julia Bradshaw

STANDBY

Quinn McGrory

As an accountant, it was his job to deliver bad news. He had learned that almost immediately after he began working at the City Treasurer’s Office of Wilmington, and once he had settled into the notion that just about everyone else in the government was going to hate him, things ran fairly smoothly. Every budget proposal he scrapped brought dirty looks his way, and every financial statement he revised earned him some new four-letter words, but after a few years in the trade, he learned to stop pouting over it. Better that the carelessness of other Delaware agencies end up dead on his desk than as a part of the workings of the city. Once he accepted that he was set up for frustration and really didn’t have much power to change it, settling in for the long haul didn’t seem like such a big deal. Take it day by day, and worry about tomorrow when he got there. That was how he would do it. Today was almost over, anyway. The small digital clock on his desk informed him that in five minutes he would be off of work and on his way home. He glanced down at the unfinished budget report resting on his desk and began to flip idly through its pages. Something about providing additional funding for traffic law enforcement in the city – more cameras at red lights, additional funding for police programs, nothing really exciting. Not something he needed to worry about today. For now, he would just relax and wait out the time. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure his boss, Jay Stone, was safely occupied elsewhere. All clear. Four minutes left now. He turned back to his desk and quickly stuffed the budget report into his briefcase, forcing it down into the mess of numbers and signatures inside. His own signature briefly caught his eye as one of the sheets disappeared into the case, a meaningless series of squiggles and dashes that didn’t even attempt to resemble a name. He shut the case and sank back into his chair with a sigh. Still four minutes left. He turned to look out at the city from his office window. He was lucky to have one, but there wasn’t much to see today. An overcast sky hovering

over a sullen city. It was probably going to rain later tonight. His mind wandered back to a news report he had seen that morning. Another murder on the west side of Wilmington had just broken the city’s record of twenty-six homicides in a year. An illegally-purchased assault rifle got mixed up with a personal grudge on a dimly-lit street, and that was about as far as the story went. Eyewitness accounts of the whole thing, the suspect in custody. No one able to react. Only able to watch as the second shot buried itself in bone. Maybe ask themselves afterward if there was really anything they could have done about it. Watch the sirens dissolve the darkness and move on. Three minutes left. “Hard at work, eh?” He turned sharply in his chair to face the familiar voice. Mr. Stone was standing there smirking down at him, had been for a while now, he was sure. For the city treasurer, he was still fairly young – mid-thirties at most – although he didn’t look it. Pale, gaunt face. A bit sickly. Not a bad guy, but he took some getting used to. “You’re still on the clock, you know,” Mr. Stone continued. “I know it’s almost the end of the day, but we’re still paying you for this time.” “Sorry, Mr. Stone. I just got a bit distracted. I’ll try not to let it happen again.” “I feel like I’ve heard that line a few too many times to buy it. Everything all right?” “Yeah, fine. Just thinking about the news this morning. You hear about the killing?” “Number twenty-seven?” Mr. Stone asked. “Yeah, I did. Pretty scary stuff for a city this size. The community’s in an uproar about it. There’s already talk about instituting new programs to increase police cooperation with the community, so you’ll have something else to keep you busy soon.” “Sounds fun. More proposals to throw out, I guess.”

“Hey, what can you do? People are sloppy with their work and get defensive when you tell them they’re wrong. That’s not anything new.” “You have to deal with it too, huh?” “Afraid so. Managing state revenue means pissing a lot of people off when you don’t send money where they want it. There’s never enough money for everyone, though, so it’s impossible to find a solution. The best I can do is keep on the right side of the people who have the most power.” “I feel like that’s the way a lot of things are,” he replied. “You ever feel like you’re on autopilot? You know, just watching it all happen?” “Sometimes, I guess,” Mr. Stone said. “But that’s just part of life. We don’t always get to decide how we live it, and the sooner we come to terms with that, the happier we’ll be.” “Maybe that’s true,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I still think it’s kind of strange, but I guess as long as I’ve still got a job, I really don’t have much to complain about.” “That’s the spirit,” Mr. Stone said, looking down at his watch. “Speaking of which, there’s still a minute and a half left before the day is over, so get back to work or I’ll fire you.” ‘Yes, Mr. Stone,” he said.

By the time he finished with work, the city had already begun to settle into the night. The street lamps had turned on, and the city was slowly starting to fill with the murmur of the crowds. A chilly little breeze tugged at his jacket as he made his way along the sidewalk. One more day down. Now just bills to pay and television to watch. Rinse and repeat tomorrow, with some grocery shopping thrown in for flavor. One day at a time.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and he picked up his pace. It probably wouldn’t start to rain for a while yet, but no sense in taking chances. Move with the crowd, past all of the real-estate firms and hobby shops and back alleys and tiny little restaurants crammed in between. Smell smoke and citrus mingling on that cold little breeze as he passed. Very strange little city. Largest in Delaware, for whatever that was worth. Population about 70,000, maybe just over. One less as of yesterday. Twenty-seven homicides in twelve months – that came out to about one every two weeks. Strange to think that every two weeks, you had a chance of being murdered. One in 70,000. No chance to react. The smell of smoke and blood left behind. You couldn’t stop to think like that, though, not with everything else going on. Bills to pay, groceries to buy, work to go to. React and survive. That was how he would do it, one day at a time. Intersection up ahead. Traffic stopped, clear to cross. Watch the sirens dissolve the darkness. Keep walking. Light, blinding, flowing around him. A wall of dark metal and glass flying at him as he stepped into the intersection. No chance to react. A firm hand around his collar yanked him back onto the sidewalk, and he watched a black station wagon fly past him, engine roaring, into a van already passing through the intersection. The crowds froze at the sickening crunch of the impact, and then quickly gathered to survey the scene. He stood there dumbly, regaining his balance, not quite sure of what had just happened. He felt a pair of hands reach out to help steady him, and a strange voice spoke from behind him. “You really ought to be more careful, my good sir! Are you all right?” “Yeah, I’m fine, I think. Thanks.” He felt a bit steadier now, and he turned to look at the wreck in the intersection. A mess of seared

rubber and splintered metal. It looked like hell, but he imagined he wouldn’t be much prettier if he were the one unwound across the pavement like that. The scene slowly fell apart as the crowds began to swallow it, everyone standing close, waiting, hoping to catch a glimpse of the action. As he watched it disappear, the voice spoke again from behind him. “Are you really sure you’re okay? You don’t sound very well.” “I’m fine, yeah. Thanks – I guess I owe you my life, huh? That could have been me out there.” He tried to turn to face the man who had saved him, but the hands steadying him resisted. “Think nothing of it, my good sir. Now, if you don’t mind, I don’t much like crowds, so I really must be on my way. I’m glad I could be of help.” He felt the hands fall away, and he wheeled around to look after the man who had saved him. The hell was that all about? Was he all right, or what? He saw a figure a short distance away, quickly weaving its way between the businessmen and women making their way along the sidewalk. A chain of strange looks and surprised exclamations marked his trail. He picked up his briefcase and followed the figure, slowly gaining on it as it moved down the block. It finally slipped off of the main street, trying to escape down a narrow side road. He was quick, however, and by the time it broke from the masses of people moving down the street, he was only a short ways behind. “Hey! Wait up a minute!” he called out, following the figure around the corner. He stopped as he was confronted with what seemed to be an empty street. Lamplight stirring up the darkness, but not another soul around. Then, however, he noticed something peering out at him from an alley a short way down the block. Just visible at the edge of the shadows. It was a cardboard box tilted at a curious angle, staring at him with dark little eyeholes cut in the front.

“You followed me, my good sir?” it asked. “Uh…yeah, I did,” he replied, suddenly very unsure of what was going on. “Are you…okay?” “Is that what you were worried about?” it asked. “Yes, I’m quite all right, but it’s most kind of you to be concerned!” He watched as the box shyly drifted out from around the corner, and for the first time, his savior came into full view. He was dressed like some sort of hobo, wearing a frayed white undershirt and baggy, mud-hued pants. His body belonged to a reasonably young man, but with the daylight gone and that box covering his face, it was hard to guess exactly how old he was. “My name, sir,” the hobo said, “is Albert. It’s a pleasure to meet you!” “Uh…you too, Albert,” he replied, stifling the urge to run away as fast as he could. This was the man who had saved his life just a moment before. He looked a little strange, yes, but didn’t they always tell you not to judge someone by their appearance? “You must forgive me if I came off as a bit rude before, running off like that,” Albert continued. “For some reason, people seem to get a bit nervous when I’m around, so I do my utmost to avoid crowds. You’re the first person in this city who’s actually stopped to talk to me.” “Can’t imagine why that is,” he said, wondering just what sort of prescriptions his new acquaintance had been taking. “But anyway-” “Oh, how careless of me!” Albert suddenly exclaimed. “I’ve forgotten to introduce my companion. He reached back into the alley and retrieved a leash. With a firm tug, he dragged a small, white goat out from the shadows. The goat was wearing a dark eye patch, and was quite dead. Its head lolled off to one side as Albert pulled it out onto the sidewalk. “This,” Albert declared proudly, “is Shakunk, my steadfast companion! Say hello, Shakunk!”

Shakunk was silent. “You must forgive him,” Albert said after a moment. “He’s not always very sociable.” “For some reason, that doesn’t surprise me,” he replied, staring down at the goat, slightly repulsed. Time to go. “So anyway,” he continued, “I just felt like I should say thanks again for saving me back there. So, I won’t waste any more of your time now, and I’ll just be on my way.” He began to turn around, ready to make a quick exit. “Oh, it’s really no trouble at all!” Albert said. “When I saw you about to walk into that intersection, I just couldn’t stop myself, crowd or not. I couldn’t stand to see another person get hurt.” “Another person?” he asked, stopping short. “Yes,” Albert replied. “Shakunk and I saw someone else get hurt so very badly just last night. It was truly a sad thing.” “The shooting on the west side?” he asked, turning back to face Albert. “Yes, that sounds right. I don’t much like to think about it.” “I saw a news report on that this morning,” he said, glancing down at the ground. “Twenty-seventh this year. That’s our wonderful little city for you.” “Twenty-seventh what?” “Twenty-seventh murder.” “Murder? Surely he didn’t-” “Die? Of course he did. Shot twice in the head. It’s not the sort of thing you usually live through.” “Oh. But… isn’t there a chance that he might have been lucky?” Albert’s dark little eyeholes almost seemed to be pleading with him as he spoke.

He was silent for a moment, staring at this very strange man and his dead goat. Finally, he gathered himself up and asked, “What was it like?” “Like I said, I don’t much like to think about it, but…it made me feel very fragile.” “Like you were helpless, maybe?” he offered. “Mm…no, I didn’t think of it quite that way,” Albert said. “More like I was very alert. It made me feel like everything we did afterward mattered a little bit more, and it made me wish we had done something to stop that poor man from getting hurt.” “That’s interesting,” he said. “I’d probably just freeze up and pray that I wasn’t next.”“That’s all?” “Well, there’s not much else for me to do, the way I see it. I’m certainly not going to try to get into the way, and I doubt I could make much of a difference if I did.” “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. But now that I know what it’s like to just watch, I don’t think I’d ever be able to bear having to do it again.” He began playing with Shakunk’s head, rolling it back and forth in his hands. “That’s why I saved you. I didn’t want to just watch while it happened.” He felt like he should have something to say to that, but no words came. They fell silent for a while, and he watched Albert continue to play with Shakunk. Tap his hooves aimlessly on the sidewalk, bob his head up and down. He felt a little bad for the stupid thing. Being dragged along on a leash all day, day after day, no doubt taking a beating from being in the city. Not that Shakunk cared much either way, but all the same. “We’re on a mission,” Albert said suddenly. “Shakunk and I. We’re going to see the ocean.”

“The Atlantic?” “That’s right. We’ve been traveling a long time, but we’re finally getting close.” “You’re aiming for Rehoboth then, right? That’s still quite a walk.” “It’s true,” Albert said, standing back up, “but I’ll make sure we get there. It doesn’t really matter when.” “Well, I guess all I can do is wish you the best of luck, then,” he replied. “Be careful, all right?” “Of course,” Albert said. “You too. Look both ways before you cross the intersections.” “I’ll try that next time.” Albert turned to leave, pulling Shakunk along behind. Before he left, though, he turned to look back over his shoulder. “I can’t help but feel that you’re a rather strange person,” he said. “But I do hope we get to see you again when we pass back through.” And with that, he and Shakunk disappeared into the evening. After Albert was gone from sight, he paused for a moment under the street lamp, letting the city settle back into itself. The poor little fool didn’t seem to have any idea of how the real world worked, but he told an awful good story about how he seemed to think it did. Just like a little kid. Whether that story would carry him to the ocean – well, who really knew? He decided that he was going to call in sick to work tomorrow. He would take it easy, recover from tonight, and use the day tomorrow to get his grocery shopping done, maybe finish paying his bills. Clean up around his apartment a little. And after that, he’d have to decide.

JUNCTIONS Julia DiMauro

NAILS Andy Vargas-Delman

SECOND CHOICE

Nicolette Hatzidimitriou

Sometimes, The thoughts seep into my mind And slowly coil themselves around my brain. Did you say the same words to her? Did you touch her like you touched me? Did you compare her lips to mine? The possibilities twist themselves around my insides, Constricting my stomach, Splintering my ribs. I writhe in my own skin Trying desperately to escape the images Of you And her And you With her And around her And in her But I’m bound so tightly I can hardly breathe. I claw at my skin And listen to the sound of my flesh tear As I rip at the seams that hold me together, Hoping that the thoughts And the feelings I can’t acknowledge Will bleed out And I won’t have to feel anything anymore.

INDUSTRIAL MELANISM Bridget Harkness

The history of England’s peppered moth is curious. Over the last two centuries the species underwent a widespread darkening brought on by the industrial revolution. As man’s handicraft yielded to mechanical production, factory soot filled the air and killed off the light colored lichens that the white peppered moths camouflaged against during the day to avoid being eaten by various birds like tiny wonder bread sandwiches. Indignantly, Mama Nature exercised her powers of selection. It was as if she had traveled the forest, barefooted, one night, drawing back her pointer finger into the middle crease of her thumb and releasing – flicking away each pair of moon reflecting wings until only the darkest, blackest-colored moths remained. Perhaps they had been able to hide by flattening their frail torsos into the naked wood until she mistook them for shadows. The people of England didn’t really notice. Except, of course, the scientists, and the moth enthusiast, and certain people who liked to observe lichen grow because they didn’t own radios. (TVs and computers hadn’t been invented yet). The scientists published articles that only moth enthusiast and people without radios read. The moth enthusiasts held protests, sitting cross-legged in the forest until their knees went numb. The lichen watchers were too busy watching lichen and complaining about not having radios to raise much awareness about the disappearing moths or to participate in protests. Mostly, the population of England went on with their lives and radio programs, blissfully unaware of the coloration of the moths. There were, of course, other simultaneously occurring strange events. For instance, England’s population of songbirds hit such unheard of numbers

in the spring of 1820 that the entire country became insomniacs, as they were unable to sleep through all the singing. This caused an incredible increase in the demand for psychiatrists. Consequently, when sleeping pills were invented in the 1900s, all the pharmacists became so rich that they retired and moved to countries with lower income tax rates. Soon England hit a shortage of sleeping pills and people were forced to toss and turn and dream once again. (In 1927 the first TV was invented and people gave up sleep by choice.) In time the songbirds overtook the carrying capacity provided by the moths. The resulting famine created even more hazards for the people of England. Blackbirds and robins fell without warning from telephone poles and tree branches. Delicate feathered corpses filled the gutters and alleys of London. This was cited as the inspiration for the hit Beatles song, ‘Blackbird’. The stray cats that ate the dying birds became bizarrely huge and were more akin to lions or tigers than to their domesticated counterparts. A curfew was imposed to safeguard children against the ferocious felines. Parents bought large hounds with droopy faces and sharp teeth and eventually most people became too afraid to visit their neighbors, preferring instead to stay safe inside. (By this time the computer had been invented, so there was little motivation to go outside anyways.) Of course, there still existed the occasional moth enthusiast or science sampling team that went into the forest to observe the progress of the moths. It was noted that the moths remained surprisingly unaffected by the alteration to their color and that they continued to live much in the same way that they had prior to the industrial revolution.

THE SUGAR Carla Ruas

I know you’re not Romeo And I’m not Juliet; I know there were no fireworks On the day when we first met.

LIST OF DEMANDS

But honey if you want me It’s simply not enough To tell me that I’m pretty And all that boring stuff.

Tell me what you’ll do for me And we’ll see how far it goes, ’Cause if you write a love song— No promises—but… who knows?

I’ve got imagination And my standards soar real high: I’d like to see my name in lights Or drawn across the sky. I’m not looking for easy, Convenient, or just for fun, I want poetry, swordfights, To know that I’m the one.

Alexa Kwiatkoski

Will you jump through flaming hoops? Will you get down on your knees? Will you say I’m your goddess? Will you beg me, “please, please, PLEASE”? You’ll wonder if I’m worth it, What’s the point in this whole scheme? But I won’t fret about it, I would rather sit and dream.

THE PERFECT SHADE Eric Luitweiler

DRIVEN Eleanor Bennett

EVERY ME EVERY YOU Colleen McDermott

The sea of hushed whispers abruptly fell into silence as the grand pipe organ began to fill the room with the opening chords of a song that traditionally would never have been played in a cathedral. Michael drew in his breath and turned to face what he knew was about to enter through the antique wooden doors. The cantor began to sing a beautifully-haunting rendition of what had once been one of her favorite songs, as the pall bearers began to guide the casket down the aisle. Michael’s eyes blurred and he felt his throat burn. “And it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and a major lift…” His dad had told him that grown men never cry in public, but how could he help it when the one who always been there to lift his spirits was gone? Rob gripped the back of the pew in front of him. He wouldn’t look up, he couldn’t. He wanted to

jump up out of this pew, out of this suit he didn’t want to be wearing, hell, he felt like he could jump out of his own skin at this point. “… She broke your throne and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew a hallelujah...” Rob clasped his hand on the pew in front of him and threw his head back to keep the hot tears from falling. As he blinked through the blurry haze at the angels on the cathedral’s ceiling he wondered what he was supposed to do now that his angel was gone. The angel who was the one who had taken someone like him who was supposed to be “nothing but trouble” and made him remember how to be a decent person again. Who was he supposed to be now? After the service, the guests gathered in the multipurpose room in the basement of the cathedral. Michael hardly noticed how the tacky gray linoleum was

the exact shade as the carpeted wall divider was, or how the extra folding chairs were still stacked awkwardly in the corner. He stood frozen in front of the serving table, transfixed at the bowl of applesauce. “Hey, you ok man?” Micheal shook himself out of the haze and turned to face his friend Alex. He’d actually known Lena longer than Michael had, but the time they’d both had with her had been far from the same. “Yeah, sorry just not thinking straight,” Michael said, wondering how things were ever going to go back to normal when something as simple as a bowl of applesauce brought so many memories back to him. “So what’s the damage?” Lena asked as Michael picked up his blue book from their Physics TA. He gingerly pulled back a corner of the front page and groaned. “Aw come on it can’t be that bad,” she teased.

“Ugh yes it is! I got a 33. I hate this class.” “Me too. Don’t worry maybe we can add my 46 to your 33 and together we can have a collective 79… so with the curve we can have like an A++. Think the professor will go for it?” Michael rolled his eyes and looked back at the blue book. “I hope so. I swear physics is going to be the death of me… I’m so mad I could...” “You could what?” “I could make applesauce out of little kittens!” He said in exasperation. A smile broke across Lena’s face giving a honey-like glow to her soft brown eyes. “Now that,” she laughed, “Has to be the oddest threat I’ve ever heard. What would that be… kittensauce?” Michael couldn’t help but laugh with her as he crumpled the exam and tossed it into his bag. “But hey, we may be on to something. There isn’t a market for kittensauce yet… think about it. We could make millions,” She proposed. “Mhmmm. Sounds a tad unethical if you ask me, but you’re right. We could start our world domination today and then we’d never need physics again.” “Obviously we wouldn’t use people’s pets, Michael, just strays,” “Cuz that makes it better? But alright, I get to be the CEO of our new kittensaucemaking escapade.” “Ok fine well if you get to be CEO, I’m going to be Queen of the company.” Lena grinned. “You can’t do that!” Michael said, trying as hard as he could to feign indignation.

“Sure I can. I’m the queen, and the queen can do anything.” Michael realized he was smiling at this reverie and immediately looked around to see how many people thought he must be a lunatic to be smiling now. He’d never had a friend as spontaneous as Lena, and certainly had never expected she’d actually draw a logo for their new “business” and tape it to his door, or that they’d eventually expand their hypothetical company to include a range of odd items only they could appreciate.

went to college with Lena and I,” Rob’s friend Nadia asked him. “Nice to meet you man. I’ve heard a lot about you,” Michael said grasping Rob’s hand. “Same here… Lena told me that, um, you were me before I was me, if that makes sense?” Rob said nervously. Michael nodded. “Yeah she said something like that to me too…about how she found a med school substitute for me…” Rob had always known about Michael, even before he and Lena were close. When they were only acquaintances he’d always Rob looked down at his wrist absently watch her face light up as she made everyone after he’d finished pretending to eat the food laugh as she told them about some advenat the reception. When they first told him ture she and her friend Michael had had. She about the accident, he’d refused to believe always called the littlest outings adventures. it was Lena. She couldn’t actually be the one Rob, who’d grown bored with everyday life by who had been in the car. He’d looked at the the time he was a sophomore in high school accident scenes that had made their way didn’t quite understand this. He wasn’t sure through ever major news network as if it were what his idea of a good time was, or even someone else, anyone else. At the viewing, it what his idea of an ok time was. But he used finally hit him when he saw the delicate letters to spend most weekends in a haze going inked on her left wrist. Iatros. It meant “healer” through the motions of being social, and that in Greek, and he’d gone with her to get the was good enough. He never thought one tattoo after their first year of med school. He’d person and something so simple could start to always liked the sentiment of the tattoo, and change that… part of him wanted to get one just like it, sort “Jesus this wind is ridiculous,” Rob grumof as a memorial. He wondered what Lena bled when another gust swept down the would think of that, and shuddered when the street as he and Lena walked back after lab. reality he’d been trying to ignore came back to “I may actually not make it across the him. Although one incident certainly couldn’t street at this rate,” Lena said laughing, “I guess erase their closeness, he decided he still didn’t March is skipping the “lamb” part all together want to imagine what she’d thought of him this year.” before she died, or what she would think now “The lamb part?” if she were still alive. “Oh my, haven’t you ever heard of that? “Hey, Rob, have you met Michael? He Like in preschool when they made you cut out

lions and lambs to put on the door cuz March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb?” “No, um we just like made kites for March,” Rob said, a little embarrassed he hadn’t caught the reference. Lena was quiet for a minute, looking up at the sky as she walked. “What are you doing the rest of the afternoon? You don’t have class do you?” She asked suddenly. “No, and probably nothing but starting the lab report, why?” “Let’s be honest, you aren’t starting that until at least ten tonight, Robert,” she teased, “Let’s go!” Before Rob could ask her where she was taking him, she marched off to her car. They pulled up to the drugstore and Lena made a beeline for the toy aisle, telling him they were getting “kites, of course”. After struggling for a good twenty minutes at the park they finally managed to get them afloat. “Wow, I like how these are intended for “Ages 4 and up” and we could barely get them to work…” Rob said dryly. “Are we not over four years old?” Lena said in mock seriousness. “Some of us might not be…. I mean… ” Rob said grinning at her. “Oh shut up! Now, give me your kite,” Rob watched in amusement as Lena tied the string of his kite to hers and let out the entire length. She was perfectly content watching the speck the kite had now become grow smaller and smaller. Rob looked from her, to the sky, and back again, and realized for once, he was happy too.

The icy wind hit Michael the second he stepped outside. Angry clouds suffocated the valley, but Michael was glad they were there. He remembered reading Julius Caesar during the one semester of English Lit. he’d suffered through to fulfill a graduation requirement. When Caesar was stabbed, Calpurnia looked at the turmoil around the city and said something to the effect of “When great people die, nature mourns.” If that was the case, Michael wished the sky would open up right then and there like it’d been threatening to all day. As they reached his car, Michael’s dad turned to his son, unsure of what he could possibly say that wouldn’t sound either forced or callous. “I’m fine, dad. I’ll see you at home.” Michael finally said, breaking the silence. “It’s a long drive, Mike. I don’t want you driving if you aren’t thinking straight.” “It’s only like 45 minutes, don’t worry about it. And I’m not really thinking about anything...” It was easier for him to just embrace the numbness at this point. He’d spent the last five days trying to make sense of things and all it’d given him was a headache. His dad nodded. “Whatever’s easiest I guess. It sure is a shame though... I kind of always thought you might marry her.” “Too late for that now. I’ll see you at home dad.” Michael didn’t bother arguing with his dad. He’d never understood how Michael could be so close with Lena without seeing her as anything but his best friend. It wasn’t that he never found her attractive; there were days he couldn’t help but be mesmerized just seeing her walk into a room. But he also saw her with the boyfriends she’d had over the

years, and knew he could never be that guy. He was the one Lena always came to when things went south. They’d once drawn an elaborate picture of “Douche and a Half-land” complete with intricate renditions of every guy Lena decided deserved to live there. It wasn’t the potential to inhabit Doucheand-a-half Land that Michael was afraid of when he thought about being with Lena. She’d even jokingly put him in the picture when he’d gotten his ex-girlfriend Ferrero Rocher candy she was allergic to. That was harmless enough. The last guy she’d been with before she died was actually the one who made him realize he never wanted to be in that place. “Michael, explain your gender to me please.” Lena said over the phone. “My gender? Am I the designated representative or something?” “If you can explain why you guys suck so much, sure,” “Uh oh, should I inform the landlord of douche-and-a-half land there’s a new tenant?” Lena laughed, “I don’t know I feel like this one’s almost too douchey. Like he’ll mostlikely scare all the other ones away that’s how bad he is.” “What happened? Was this the guy that you went to the dinner thing with?” “Ughhhh yes. And like that night was fine, it was amazing actually. I just, ah, I’m so stupid. Like I really trusted him and I know him so well. I didn’t think he’d be like this and it sucks cuz now I wish that whole thing hadn’t happened.” “I’m sorry. I’ll put him in the picture any-

way.” “Thanks. Don’t put a mouth on him. Or ears. It’s absurd that someone can be within a mile of you and you absolutely can’t get him to speak to you. I just get to see his stupid little facebook statuses that prove he’s ignoring me. And you know what sucks- it’s not like I did anything to him. Nothing!” Michael could hear her voice break with that last word, and he could picture her blinking too fast to try to keep the tears away. Michael didn’t know what it was about that last guy, but he’d never seen her upset enough to cry over something a guy she was dating had done. He reasoned that she may have just been overly-sensitive that day, but he knew that wasn’t true. This one had actually hurt her. That was how Michael knew he could never be that guy. He could never hurt Lena. Rob joined several friends from school out on the back patio by the firepit. It had been a week since the funeral but he’d lost his grasp of the passing of time lately. He stared at the flickering flames and tried to focus on the crackling logs and embers that floated into the air like fireflies before disappearing. “Hey Mike!” He heard Nadia yell as he walked through the sliding glass door. “Hey. Good to see you again, man,” He said to Rob as he sat down with them. “Definitely,” Rob mused. “You seriously should hang out with us more, you’re really not that far away ,” Nadia pointed out. “I know I’m not sure why I haven’t. I

wish I’d made the drive more often last year though… I don’t know why 45 minutes of traffic felt like such a huge deal,” “I know what you mean. I can’t stop thinking about all these things I should have done… or shouldn’t have done,” Rob said. “Yeah exactly, like I know I can’t change anything now, but I still wish I could,” “I’d have done everything different,” Rob said in a way that was more meaningful to him than anyone else. He didn’t know why he’d even said that much. Lena had often joked that he was about as expressive as her cat, and said that considering Rob could speak and still managed to be so cryptic, the cat was winning. If only she had known how much more open with her he was than with anyone else in his life. For some reason talking to Michael was easy too. Maybe it was because he was someone else who really could understand where he was coming from, or because now that the one person he was open with was gone, he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Rob hardly moved his gaze from the yellow flames, and Michael sat similarly preoccupied with the fireplace. They talked about Lena a lot and about life a little too. Neither one of them even seemed to notice everyone else had left the firepit.

ner thinking how glad he was to have such a shitty year behind him. It was only 10:30 but Michael was already over the party scene. He stood by the window alternating between people watching and snow-watching through the glass. He’d been hanging out with Rob a lot lately, and it felt like it had to have been a lot longer than a month ago that they were introduced. Michael finally understood the old cliché about misery loving its company. He looked across to where Rob was talking to one of his friends from med school. He started to go over, but it sounded like they were in the middle of a conversation he didn’t really want to butt into. “So why didn’t you just answer her?” Rob’s friend Dan asked. “I, ah I don’t know, like I tried to so many times, something just kept stopping me,” Rob said raking his hand through his hair in frustration. “She was pissed at you dude. I’m sorry I’m not trying to be a jerk right now, I’m just saying.” “No believe me, I deserve it. It makes me sick to my stomach to think I could hurt someone like Lena like that. I honestly never meant to, I just freaked out and screwed everything up,” Michael listened closer after hearing her name. He had a terrible suspicion as to what A few weeks later Michael and Rob were Rob was talking about but he wanted to be at Nadia’s New Year’s Eve party. Michael almost sure. didn’t want to let go of 2011, Lena had been “So when was the last time you actually alive for most of it. He had to start 2012 on his talked to her then?” Dan asked. own. It was a year she would never be a part Rob sighed, “Honestly, it was when I said of. Rob looked at the “Happy New Year” bangoodbye to her when she left my room the

morning after we went to the dinner together…” “Wait so you guys actually…” “Yeah. And after, like an idiot, I didn’t answer any of her texts. Then five days later I find out she’s gone.” Rob shook his head in his own disbelief, but the next thing he knew a sharp pain shot through his jaw and he stepped back, stunned. Michael didn’t think he’d ever actually taken a swing at someone outside of a hockey game, but if anyone ever deserved it, Rob sure did. He didn’t know how he hadn’t put it together before this. Why Lena wouldn’t give him a name, how she went on and on about how much she trusted the guy, and how she couldn’t believe she’d risked what they’d had for nothing, it all made so much sense now. Rob seemed to pull himself out of a haze after a few seconds and turned to face Michael. They both stood, speechless for a moment. “That was for Lena” Michael said simply, and turned to walk away. A while later it was finally time for the countdown to the New Year. Michael watched the clock as the second hand ticked away the last of his last year with Lena and joined in the chorus of “Happy New Years”. After the commotion died down he heard someone come up behind him. Immediately on the defensive, he turned to face Rob, whom he knew would be the one standing there. “Thank you,” Rob said in all seriousness. “For what?”

“I know I deserved that. You know I deserved that or you wouldn’t have done it.” “No I’m sorry, like I really don’t know where that came from,” Michael said. “You said you did it for Lena. That’s where it came from.” “Yeah I know… I still feel bad though. I’m not going to lie you probably did deserve it, but you don’t deserve to beat yourself up about it for the rest of your life. “You already took care of that…” Rob said dryly. “Exactly,” Michael said. “You meant a lot to her, you know. She wouldn’t have stayed mad at you,” “Like I’m sure she wouldn’t have been mad at you for socking me in the jaw?” “Maybe for a little bit, but then she would’ve gone back to normal I think,” “Exactly,” Rob said. Although he was still stunned Michael had had the nerve to do that, he couldn’t say he was angry. He could never stay mad at Lena, and in the same way, it was hard to be angry with the only other person who’d understood how special she was. And either way, he knew she wouldn’t have wanted that. Michael had been him before he was him, but now he figured they had no choice but to move forward. Whoever they were now.

PENN STATION Allie Hernandez

DAWN

Nicolette Hatzidimitriou

The city lights tint the sky orange In the hours just before dawn When we sit in October cold And pretend to be interested in the stars. Filling our lungs with smoke And sky, We inhale fire And exhale impulsive words Stained with alcohol. Here is the moment when nothing exists. So then weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll breathe in each other And pretend that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s real.

PIGTAILS

Allie Hernandez

MY BEST FRIEND LILY My best friend’s name is Lily. She is nine years old and has long brown hair like me. Sometimes she likes to braid my hair for me. The bows are blue because that’s her favorite color, but I like pink better. I don’t mind though, because it makes her smile. Lily doesn’t smile a lot and I don’t know what her laugh sounds like. When I first met her, I remember wondering why she looked so sad. But I know why now. Every day she has another bruise on her. Sometimes I ask her what happened, but she doesn’t tell me anything. She says she wants to play dress-up and takes out my box that holds all the things that she likes to make me wear. We don’t talk because if we make any noise, her mom will start screaming at us. I don’t like her mom. She’s the one who hurts Lily all the time. Lily asks for lunch money whenever there isn’t any food left. Her mom yells at her for being “selfish and ungrateful” for everything she tries to do for them. It’s not Lily’s fault because she doesn’t know where the grocery store is. But her mom blames her for a lot of things. When this man comes to the door asking for rent or she’s late for work after dropping us off at school, her mom screams at the top of her lungs that

Rebecca Stringham

she wishes Lily had never been born. She grabs a bottle from the kitchen and starts to drink it. Then she says he would have never left her and that she would have had a better life without a stupid kid. I don’t know who “he” is, but I know that when her mom starts saying things like that, Lily sits against the wall holding her knees, waiting for what comes next. Her mom storms over and yanks Lily on her feet so she can start hitting her. Then she drags Lily into her room and locks us in by shoving a chair against the door so Lily can’t open it. At school Lily has to tell the teacher why there is a black-and-blue mark on her cheek. She says she fell off her bike, but I know she doesn’t have one. During recess, Lily will sit under the slides with me and braid my hair while the other kids play. I ask the other kids if they can help Lily, but they just call me ugly. I tried to ask the teacher once, but she just told me that I looked adorable with the bows in my hair. Lily tells me I’m lucky because I don’t have any parents. But I know she wants a dad. I used to wish that her dad would come to the door one day. He would be so happy to see her. Then he would take her away from

her mom so she would never be hurt again. But when her mom gets really angry, I wish for anyone to take Lily away. She won’t even play dress-up with me anymore. Every night, Lily climbs into her bed where I’ve been waiting on her pillow. I say that I still love her and she cries herself to sleep, squeezing me tight. Tonight Lily and I are sitting on the stairs right outside her window. Lily says they’re for a fire, but I don’t know how stairs would make a fire. She holds my hand while rubbing the bruise on her shoulder. All of a sudden, a bright light shoots across the sky. A tiny smile appears on Lily’s face and she softly whispers something that I can’t hear. I was about to ask her what it was when her mom’s voice came through the window. I never heard her mom sound so angry. Lily didn’t rush back into her room. She started pulling me up the stairs, moving so fast that I wanted to tell her to be careful. Then Lily’s foot slipped on one of the steps and I tried to grab her. But we both went over the railing, falling to the ground below. The world was spinning for a few seconds and then I was looking at Lily’s face. Her blue eyes were staring back at me, but they looked different. I couldn’t see the light that used to shine from them. I asked her if she was okay, but she didn’t answer me. Lily never answered me when I asked if she was okay.

“My daughter has one just like that,” murmured Mike to his partner, Gabe, as the sirens blared from the 60

ambulance speeding towards the apartment building. “Like what?” asked Gabe, as he waved the ambulance towards them while asking the gaping crowd to stand back from the scene. He held up his badge to show them that he meant it. “Like that doll she’s holding, with all those braids with the bows on the ends,” Mike said as he looked at the pool of blood that surrounded the little girl’s head and noticed the ugly bruise on her thin shoulder. “Oh,” remarked Gabe. “Well, the mother is over on the front steps with the guys who arrived here first. They said she was shaking and crying, and saying that she doesn’t know what happened, but they’ve gotten some calls to this place before. It was just her and her daughter living on the third floor, but from the looks of it, I say she fell from way higher than that.” “Yeah, they should definitely question her mother about that,” Mike muttered distractedly. He tilted his head and stared at the delicate hand that was clutching the doll. “Look at how tight she’s holding on to it. It’s as if she thought it was going to save her.”

stock image courtesy of Anne Sewell at sxc.hu

REUBEN ON DOPE Stefanie Busgang

STILL LIFE OF FRUIT Scarlett Hao

THE BATTLE Coral J. Fung Shek

FUNERAL CHORUS Isaac Brooks

- I’m sorry - Poor kids - It’s so sad - Tragedy - May she rest in peace - It’s always hardest on the husband - She was a wonderful mother - I’m sorry - I remember her as a little girl; she was so smart - Mommy, I’m hungry - Gee, it’s chilly out here - A tragedy, there’s nothing else you can say - I don’t care if this is a funeral. You can’t stop avoiding me Tracy - we need to talk - She’s with G-d now - Strawberry was her favorite ice cream flavor - The lord giveth and the lord taketh away - I’m so sorry - Geez, how long can that guy talk - She always looked forward, never backward - I’m sorry for your loss

- She was special - It’s freezing - He was the love of her life - Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return - Soon honey, just be quiet a little longer - I just can’t believe she’s gone - Phil called, he’s stuck in traffic - A treasure has gone from the earth - Tragedy - I don’t know why I’m even here, I barely knew her - Her childhood dream was to be a cellist - He can’t take care of the kids by himself - I can’t stop crying - I’m don’t know what to say, it’s just heartbreaking - Not now, we’ll talk later - It’s tragic, really - So young - How’re you holding up - Just keep it together - Okay honey, we can go now. It’s over.

stock image courtesy of Dimitri Castrique at sxc.hu

THE STRAWBERRY TIGER Trang Diem Vu

At first glance through the exhibit window, He appears to be an ordinary tiger, Lying in the shade of the trident maple tree. But then the wind blows, and the branches Shower him with twirling, rattling seeds. He rises and steps into the sun, Shaking his enormous heavy head. He is a strawberry tiger: A golden mutant born only in captivity, Recipient of an elusive recessive wide band gene, Descendant of Bhim the white tiger. His body, a thick column of muscle Coated in patches of white and ginger. The glow of his fur, his limber feline form Make me think of the fiery tigers in starry Zodiac wheels on Chinese restaurant tables (“Passionate, confident, happiest in marriage to horse”); The red Lunar New Year banners depicting Gods of prosperity on snarling tiger steeds; The golden beasts that terrorize jungle villages In my mother’s bedtime stories.

But the longer I watch him, the more certain I become That instead of surveying his eight square kilometers Like a celestial beast, he is circling like a slavering dog. He wanders between the artificial waterfall and the glass wall, Through sumac and loquat, watching a pigeon fly overhead. I know then that the strawberry-blonde king Of the artificial bamboo grove is inbred, diseased, alone But for the echoes of children shrieking Over spilled snow cones, the distant whoops Of the yellow-cheeked gibbons, the khaki phantoms Who pass through his pen. He swats half-heartedly At a catbird scolding him from the maple tree, Snarls gruffly, and slumps to the ground again.

WINDING Trang Diem Vu

LIGHT STEPS Brittany Leung

BURANO, VENEZIA Brittany Leung

SEVEN WONDERS Scarlett Hao

Violet cloths drape the fallen comrade, doomed to endless time. But look, the purple skies shall meld with night’s embrace in time. Indigo quilts shroud the feeble elder. Her daughters hope And pray that the gods shall grant their mother her end of time. Blue sunny skies are rare upon this dead, wasted desert. Unhappy wives tug at their aging skin, sneering at time. Green leaves embolden the rosy blooms; a bride dances forth. The high sun smiles upon this couple enjoined by time. Yellow zigzags falter as the daughter breaks for breakfast. Wishing that this wedding qali* delays her coming time. Orange scarves decorate the happy morning children. Lost in daydreams, their minds and the world’s walk in different time. Red shafts of light shimmer as the baby’s cries split the air. Clouds of scarlet hue: the beginning of another time.

*A traditional Arabian carpet

MSG 4 BIG BOSS Alp Yurter

Hon-Wai Wong

BACKROADS TO

HELL

The room just got hotter. Pippa made a goddess-like entrance, shrouded by the thin vapour of the laundry room. Her pink hair screamed under the glare of the fluorescent lights. A cigarette rested limply on her pink lips. “Eleven P.M., Heartbreaker,” she said in her throaty murmur while removing the shades that hid dark brown eyes and lush eyelashes. Theo reached out to catch the kiss she blew at him. She turned and walked away as breathtakingly as she had entered. His eyes fell briefly on the back of her denim mini-skirt, then slowly down her fishnets and finally followed her clicking black high heels until they disappeared from the doorway. He breathed in traces of intoxicating perfume lingering in the musty air. With trembling hands from the adrenaline pumping through his system, he emptied his basket of t-shirts into the machine and put quarters into the slot. Theo knew he was courting danger, which titillated and frightened him just as much. The steel fire-escape reverberated from the beating of frantic footsteps. A hideous woman, cradling a crying baby, was screaming at a fat man in the dingy hallway. Theo trudged back to the second room on the left of the sixth floor. The lady of the room above, standing as usual at the top of the stairs, winked him yet another offer. He would pass this time. Kicking a Chinese take-out box on the floor, he let the door slam behind him. He stepped over a pizza slice and slumped into the worn-out red arm-chair. It was cluttered with dirty magazines and stamped with food stains. He turned on the TV set with a remote while reaching for a hot dog on a paper plate at his feet. The sounds of an unseen orchestra hummed from the speakers. The mother on the flickering screen hugged her son. Theo groped for the mustard sauce bottle under the cushion. So this was what we call family? He clenched the bottle with the anger from all his twenty-six years. The phone rang. He picked it up as thick, yellow goo oozed down the TV screen. “Stay away.” Click. ***

The red sun stood out from its orange backdrop, burning the shimmering skyline. The sounds of clanging pots and hissing steam from the kitchen below were drowned by threatening wails of a siren. A truck roared down the street. Theo sat staring at the clock on the wall, cringing every time the second hand passed the number eleven. He could only hear the soulless, rhythmic ticking of the second hand. The dusty air outside reeked of petrol and excrement as the sun slowly descended from its ethereal throne. Its waning rays hit a shiny piece of metal on the table. Theo blinked as the rays bouncing off the knife shot towards his eyes. He had watched a similar knife pierce the chest of a stranger. The ten years since had been a messed-up haze but that very night played out vividly before his eyes over and over again. He still saw the knife gleaming in the dim street-light. The stench of the back alley still stung his nose. He still felt the warmth of blood gushing against his hand as he held it against the stranger’s punctured chest. He recalled the helplessness that enveloped him as he stood petrified with his head turned to the black skies, bathed in another man’s blood. The court had ruled that he had acted in self-defence but the downtown juvenile centre had scarred him. He remembered going home to find his childhood stuffed in black trash-bags. Theo looked around the room. The broken photo frame. Binny the teddy bear. Nothing else remained of his previous existence. Nothing else but the horrifying scream that preceded the chilling silence. The haunting image of a cold body paralyzed for eternity. No amount of sleeping pills could mask the terrors that plagued him in the darkness of night. Theo searched the deepest recesses of the labyrinth in his mind. What started it all? “Why are you always alone during recess?” she asked. “I… but…” “May I sit with you? We’ll share the sandwiches my mummy made,” she said. “Erm… Okay.”

REINCARNATION Nisha Donthi

“I’m Binny. What’s your name?” she asked. “Theodore.” “That’s a nice name. Do you know what it means?” she asked. “God’s gift.”

Nine-thirty P.M. The teddy sat silently by the pillow. The incessant violent creaking of a steel bed in the room above echoed through the floor boards. The phone rang. Theo closed his eyes as he lay on his bed. He felt the hot wind blowing through the window against his face. Subdued noises from surrounding buildings droned mechanically through the thick, corrupted air. The night was still. As he zipped on his leather jacket, he watched a thug on the pavement below dragging his woman into the shadows. A hairy man slept blanketed by newspapers next to the trash. The phone rang again as Theo pulled his key from the keyhole and headed downstairs. Buddy Holly’s True Love Ways crackled from the vagrant’s radio in the nearby alleyway. Theo stood in the shadows, leaning against a brick wall with the huge, gaudy graffiti that read Heartbreaker. Ghost-green and gas-blue neon lights blinked on the sign above a back-door. Rats the size of babies ravaged the contents of black trash-bags in the corner. A horn blared from the docks two blocks away. The wrinkles on his forehead were highlighted by the soft glow of his cigarette. What was the smell of clean air? Theo imagined his brother, fat and contented after dinner, sitting in an imported floral print arm-chair, his little wife knitting little pairs of bootees in a little arm-chair and their two kids, a boy and a girl (twins maybe) tucked into their beds with toy trains and dolls. Theo pictured himself in a doctor’s garb, a clipboard in one hand and around his neck the tube-like doctor’s instrument that he could not name. He spit his cigarette butt to the damp ground and crushed it with the sole of his left sneaker. He brushed off two lewd women who came towards him. Dogs barked in the distance. Theo lit another cigarette. “Light?” a throaty voice stirred him.

Her pink hair screamed under the glow of the neon lights. The tip of her tongue searched the outline of her pink lips. She rolled a cigarette between her index finger and thumb. An orange flame appeared as the lighter snapped. “The Boss knows,” Theo whispered. “This affair has to end.” She blew her smoke in his face. Theo could see his distorted reflection in her nose ring. The peace symbol medallion on her chest rose and fell with her breaths. He felt the warmth as he ran his fingers up her bare arms.

As Theo’s lips touched hers, he spied a man watching them. The man was beside a mysterious car with dark-tinted windows. His face was hidden

in the shadows. The man stood erect with an arm stretched forward. The unmistakable muzzle of a gun glinted. Theo grabbed Pippa by the shoulders and dived. A shot exploded through the still night. The dogs in the distance went wild. Sulphur overpowered the smell of stale food. As the ghost of the first shot echoed, Theo darted towards the man. He jumped at the man’s legs and pulled him to the ground. He pinned down the hand with the gun and swung a well-weighted punch at the man’s jaw, but his fist was met by the man’s crunching grip. The trash-cans exploded as Theo smashed into them, wild thoughts sailing through his mind. Bracing himself for the inevitable, he saw the man aim a naked hand at him. Theo spied the gun in a drenched cardboard box a few feet away. Theo reached for a trash-can and hurled it at the man. Throwing himself into the air and sliding towards the box, he snatched the gun and turned it towards the man. As he pulled the trigger, a forgotten conversation shot through his ear. “Don’t you care about me? About us?” Binny begged. “I don’t want to sit frightened in a hole my entire life!” “God, you burnt down a house! With a bunch of punks!” she shouted. “Hey, Ron and the guys are cool.” “Listen to yourself, Theo. Just listen! What have you got to prove?” she asked “That I’m better than my damned brother! Better than what the old folks think I could ever be!” “No! Please… There are other roads to take,” she wept. “This is my road!” He mistimed. The horrifying scream. The chilling silence. The haunting image. Pippa lay silently, breathless, in a pool of blood. Theo knelt beside her. The man was nowhere to be seen. Theo could hear his shot ringing into the bellies of the city. He lit his last cigarette and stared at her lifeless body through a maze of swirling smoke. The rats that had been frightened away were slowly creeping back. Theo felt that he was watched by eyes that glowed with an otherworldly red. He looked into her glazed, soulless eyes. The corner of her pink lips was blood red. As sirens grew louder, Theo put the gun to the roof of his mouth. He could end his wretched existence there and then or continue his path down the backroads to hell. Knuckles turning white, his hand shook violently. Theo stroked her pink hair. The sirens grew louder.

Shelby Stewart

WARM

SERENE, SLEEPY SEAGULL Brittany Leung

Today, welcoming waves lap white across the shore. Their call is a gentle chuckle, and a murmur, too low to hear.

For now, I allow it, the seduction of the sea. It laps across my toes, a caress on sandy skin, promising romance, and adventure, and everything. But I have never allowed more than the gentle pat of the waves against my feet. I have never waded Into the depths, Into the dark, Into the sea.

BRAVING THE TEMPESTS

I look across the Ocean, where dazzling waves wink to me, with playful intention. I turn away, knowing, as I do, how deep the ocean runs; Today, a chuckle and wink. Tomorrow, a frightening roar, and an ugly squall.

Yet still, I imagine that other shore, across the endless expanse of blue. I imagine golden sand, soft as a babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s chin, slipping between my toes, as we walk in the shadow of the moon. . Will I try to reach it, even knowing the tempests that await? Will I brave the roaring waves, the pitch and bow of my only vessel, as it rises and falls, across the sea? Have I faith enough, in the rigging of my ship, to carry me across, and through, and to a better place? And if, beyond the tempest, there lies another shore, will I find it rocky, and cold, and forlorn?

Megan Hennessy

WILD YARD ORNAMENTS Nathan McDonald

A GOOD DAY Megan O’Connor

I pried apart the two sections of the capsule as gently as possible, then emptied the contents of the plastic container onto the back of the large, classic I-pod Lacey was holding out for me. I grabbed my blood donor card out of my clutch, winked at my friends, and separated the Molly into four fat lines. In the back of the tinted Volvo, Eliza had already rolled up a twenty. President Jackson gazed at me inquisitively as I positioned him properly. I took the first snuff and let them kill the rest. We walked a few blocks to Central Park, swallowing one purple star each along the way. I couldn’t help shivering in the warm summer night. Eliza and I talked each other’s ears off about a myriad of inexpressibly happy feelings for what seemed like hours, although I don’t really know if we meant it all. I did notice how astonishingly bright the moon was, though. By the time we walked back, a layer of sweat glossed every expanse of my skin, but there was this beautiful, beautiful breeze. We all agreed, it wasn’t just the drugs, that breeze was one in a million. That breeze was what breezes should all aspire to be. The Ancient Greeks had this concept of virtue…essentially that something could be the very epitome of what it was supposed to be, for example, a glistening, mahogany, perfectly stained table of just the right proportions would be the most virtuous table. That breeze had a lot of virtue. I can’t remember how we got there, but then we were entering a fancy apartment building on 90th Street. It reminded me a whole lot of this one, or maybe two, places I had been back when I was an escort, before I fell in love and couldn’t do it anymore. Real love though, not that faux-love I

thought I had. But now we were in an elevator, a very strange elevator; all the walls were lined with this slimy gray covering, and I just couldn’t figure out why. Even more outrageous than the breeze though, even more bizarre than the elevator, was this utterly astounding dragon standing in this boy’s living room under the guise of a dog. You may think you’ve seen a big dog before, but you have not seen a big dog until you’ve encountered an Irish Wolfhound. On ecstasy. It was massive, it was incredible, it could have eaten small children had it wanted to, in just a few bites. Its face was even bigger than mine. A great big furry gray Beelzebub. I reflected upon what a great day it had been as I took a few pulls of the joint that was passed my way. Lacey, Eliza and I had stolen about five hundred dollars worth of clothing each from H&M, using techniques I had perfected over the course of two years and about six intense shoplifting sessions. And I had the most delicious salad, with iceberg lettuce, walnuts, cranberries, and some tuna. Low-fat balsamic dressing too. We drank and smoked some more, and ended up in a diner that morning prior to driving home. But all the girls and I ordered was tea, our money spent on drugs and our daily caloric intake spent on alcohol. I don’t know how on earth Lacey drove us home at 9 that morning, after roughly a solid 12 hours of drug usage, but she did. And I went inside, said good morning to my mom and put the kettle on, asking her if she wanted a cup. She was running late but still gave me a kiss and told me to have a great day. I knew it was going to be a terrible one though – all my serotonin was gone and my boyfriend was disappointed in me. But that was my last night.

SPRING Trang Diem Vu

A PIGEON’S “RED CARPET” Brittany Leung

BIRDSONG Scarlett Hao

I hear the woodnote, Three warblers awake at dawn: Natural melody. I hear the chatter, Pigeon pairs natter at noon: Mad cacophony. I hear the nocturne, One whippoorwill at twilight: Soothing eulogy.

MORRIS IS RED Eleanor Bennett

THE WOES OF

BILLY MILES

Eleni Padden

In the back of this van, there is only so much space. Four seats and maybe a foot of aisle room, if I’m being generous with the description. Every time, without fail, I end up on the sandy floor, wedged between banjos, Christmas lights, and dusty tie-dyed tapestries. Speed bumps are my personal version of hell. I’ve figured out a rotation of sitting cross-legged and then on my knees, changing position roughly every twenty minutes, that effectively promotes blood circulation to my legs. So that’s something, I guess. However, I can do nothing to battle the unfortunate laws of physics that dominate me when we go around sharp turns. I had always wanted to be free, throw reason to the wind, travel with a band across the country and do nothing but play music, eat copious amounts of Mexican food, and smoke weed. According to these ideals, I’m currently living my dream. Not so much, my friend. Not so much. It was never my intention to actually want to be a flake, to leave the people I’d have done anything for at one point in my life. But now, amongst the chaos that is the back of this van, the only thing I want to do is quit this goddamn band. People here are tattered and worn and don’t deserve any euphemisms. I’ll call them veritably crazy. George still confidently wears a cutoff teeshirt he’s had since junior year of high school and recently shaved only the middle portion of his head. Megan plays the satyr, which is noble enough, but about two thirds of the time she pretends to be blind. She tried to bring a guide dog on the van last summer,

and was only really stopped because we simply didn’t have the space. Mark plays the fiddle, and would be normal except for the fact that he is openly addicted to porn. I would almost not care about this but for the fact that we spend a significant portion of our time in the overly close quarters of the van, and his interest has become a little too central in all of our lives. I need a re-do, badly. I want a normal life, some college, maybe even a girlfriend who’s not tripping on acid and trying to eat her bellbottoms three-quarters of the time. I’m slowly denaturing here, coming apart bit-by-bit, just like the decrepit guitar currently poking me in the spine. I should get a bus ticket home to Syracuse, and use the lawn-mowing money I have stashed in that old pickle jar to do something of use with my life. That’s what I should do. The van and I lurch to a halt. I am tangled in the Christmas lights and flailing helplessly as the rest of the band groggily gets out to eat, lunch maybe? What time is it? Also: where are we? The Christmas lights are threatening strangulation, but I best them in the end and flop out the door, hoping for food, better known as My Sole Comfort in Life. Picnic tables covered in flaking red paint stand under a clump of browning trees at the rest area. The motley crew moves like molasses through the parking lot, looking more like washed out people nearing their thirties than promising musical youths. They lumber towards the tables, occasionally speaking to one another in broken sentences as they open up our once-bountiful food coolers. Don pulls out a few items, but I can’t see what, as he’s currently turned towards them and is obscuring my view with his girth. He used to be fairly spry, for what it’s worth. Played soccer in high school. But Don gets the munchies. My personal favorite creation of his are banana pancakes with pepperoni and ample amounts of Tabasco sauce, although they’re only conceptually my favorite, as I’d never actually bring myself to eat them. It’s a strange thing to see people you know change. You think you know them, and this leads you to believe that you can talk to them and reason with them and make them see what’s

happening. They slip away like water trickling through your fingers, and you must watch as the droplets hit the ground and evaporate into nothingness. I watched Don hit the ground. Reggie, too. Melinda, Pete, Harry. Megan, Mark, George. The most tragic part of their stories is that they don’t even know they’ve fallen. I sound like the sullen type in saying this. I’m really not. I’m just a guy who is the last of his friends to hold on, with whitening knuckles, to the rope tying us to real life. I haven’t got a plan to save everyone, I haven’t plotted out a grand intervention. I don’t have inspirational words to stir them back into their own minds. This is impossibility. Instead of being the laughing jock that I used to light my farts on fire with, Don’s now a man whose only use for fire is lighting blunts. He’s turned boring and stagnant and pointless. They all have. This is harsh, but it has turned, grotesquely, into reality. I saunter over to the tables, rubbing my aching extremities back to life, and try to get a better view of what we’ll actually be eating. “Hey Don, whatcha got for lunch today?” I ask, praying for tacos. “Peanut butter,” he responds bluntly, holding out the jar and the spoon he’d just thoroughly licked, still shiny with his saliva. I stare down at these objects. They are the embodiment of the last straw, the final compromise I am willing to make, the single drop of sanity left in my body. I know now that we’ve spent all our food money on weed. I know now that there will be no more spontaneous 3AM barbecues or make-your-own burrito nights. It seems like an incredibly random thing to tether me to reality, but somehow food had become my last remaining friend. After all, rye bread and roast beef couldn’t go mildly insane. These people used to care about decent food, if

absolutely nothing else. Don even managed to get creative when blazed into oblivion. Now they care about nothing. I’d like to hear them formulate an argument about how they care about music. It would be a pitiful thing to behold. My eyes have glazed over while staring at the peanut butter and the violated spoon, and I have a moment. It’s that moment when you realize you’ve reached a place where you have to make a decision, right away, or else. I snap back. “I’m going to go,” I say. I hadn’t planned for the words to leave my mouth— I didn’t know they’d been in my mouth to begin with. It was the doing of my brain, some survival instinct surfacing from the depths of my subconscious. I hadn’t realized that natural selection also applied to getting oneself out of the perpetually futile life of a traveling harmonica player in order to continue existing and possibly procreate, but apparently this is the case. I don’t know what I’ve just done, but I do know, deeply and for certain, that it is right. Don looks confused. But then, Don generally looks confused nowadays. Reggie gazes at me over the brim of his own jar of peanut butter. “Go where?” he says, almost laughing. I open my mouth to speak, then close it and think for a moment, looking strikingly like a fish gasping for air. I hadn’t thought this out. Where the actual fuck am I going to go? The only thing I currently care about is food, so I quickly take that route, but not genuinely caring whether or not it’s a sufficient explanation. “I’m going to find a decent Italian restaurant. I’m going to use the

last of my money to buy myself the biggest portion of spaghetti that they can goddamn legally serve me, and at least a gallon of chocolate milk. I’m going to eat all of this. And then I’m going to somehow go the hell home.” Don looks utterly perplexed, but says nothing. The rest of the people surrounding me are equally as interested in my announcement as they are in their peanut butter—it is a fiftyfifty showing of faces that actually look up at me as I say this. I am not surprised. I begin to back away from Don, who is still looking at me, rather emptily. I wonder for a moment if there’s still part of him that’s grounded enough to realize that his life is going nowhere, fast. Our eyes are still locked, and for a few seconds I slow my rapid backpedaling. Memories flash through my mind. Don and I as kids, blowing up plastic coke bottles with pop rocks and then frantically darting from the scene of the crime. The explosions used to seem earth shattering. Don speaks again. “Why?” I stop walking backwards towards the van. We stand there staring at each other. The people around us are picking at their food, eyes heavily lidded, muttering eccentricities to one another and once in a while glancing up to see whether or not I was actually leaving. No one attempted to stop me. “Don, because if I stay here I’m going to hate myself more and more every single day. I will feel like a frivolous failure of a human being and I will wonder with every fiber of my being what in the hell I’m missing out on in the actual world,” I respond flatly. From across the

picnic tables, I see Mark pick up his fiddle. He plays a few notes of pure noise. Whatever it is, it isn’t music. Don looks at me for a few more moments. “Okay. Alright. I’ll see you around, Billy,” he says quietly. I gaze at him for a second longer, and then I turn around. You cannot change people, and you cannot spend your life repeatedly trying to help people that have the capacity to help themselves but will not. I don’t feel guilty. I only feel free. I wonder where the nearest Italian restaurant even is, and if it will be awkward for a grown man to order such large quantities of chocolate milk. I walk back towards the bus. My steps are heavy with uncertainty, but my heart is light with a proper freedom I haven’t known in years. I gather up my rucksack. I go back out into the picnic area and wave slowly at the table of my fallen comrades. Two people wave back. I take a very deep breath, and begin my walk down the road. It’s been a while since I’ve hitchhiked, but I’m not afraid. Dusk begins to settle upon the horizon as I pad along. It isn’t the ideal time of day for attempting to get a ride in a stranger’s car, but then, life has never really been ideal. Purple-orange sky and creamy clouds float above. The faint scent of jasmine is in the evening air. I take another breath, stick out my thumb, and smile.

MORE THAN A DUST Eric Luitweiler

FAMILY PORTRAIT Allie Hernandez

COMING BACK TO

AMELIA

Alessandra Bautze

When my old high school buddy Danny told me that Amelia had divorced that son-of-a-bitch Buck and that he’d moved back to El Paso, I didn’t know what to say. I had long known he was a piece of scum— ever since he first laid a hand on that young son of his back in 1999. But—in the beginning of their marriage at least—Amelia refused to believe that Buck was anything less than a Heaven-sent gift to her and her boy. She believed he could do no wrong. Sometimes you just can’t convince people otherwise, no matter how much you say or how hard you try. After Amelia married Buck at the First Baptist Church of Faulkner County, I turned away from the steps of the church and retreated back to my efficiency apartment above Sam’s Superette, which was about to be bought out by some large corporation and was well on its way to becoming a Piggly Wiggly. I was renting the place from Sam, but since he was selling it I couldn’t stay there much longer, he told me. So, just like that, ten days after Amelia Kristine Hill married William “Buck” Jasper Thomas in 1990, I got into my Toyota pick-up and drove to Little Rock. I left Vilonia. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I never looked back. Because I did. Twice. And going back there nearly did me in. *** Boy oh boy, that woman really looked like something the day of her wedding. The wedding dress—now, mind you, I don’t really know much about wedding dresses—but the dress was just like out of a picture. The material draped so nicely over her broad shoulders, and the train trailed just far enough out behind her that her gown looked like something out of a fairy tale. You don’t often see fancy stuff like

that out here in our area, and so it was clear to everyone that Buck really thought that woman was something else—someone special, someone charming, and someone he wanted to devote his life to. And the thing that kills me is, with his boyish grin, shaggy hair, and serious eyes, we believed every word he said. Buck wasn’t from around here. After many years in El Paso, he came to Fayetteville. Then, looking for small town charm, he settled down in Vilonia, in our neck of the woods. In short, he was a stranger. But he had a good job as a foreman at a meatpacking plant and could give Amelia everything she wanted—at least financially, whereas I was struggling as a shoe salesman and I lived above the local corner store. When he came around, he pulled the wool over everybody’s eyes so good that we fell for him—all of us. Now I can’t do anything except watch the fallout from the chaos he wreaked on that woman we all thought so tough and that boy we all thought too reserved. *** 146 was different. Quiet. Sad-looking, almost. But, except for a bit of chipping paint on the porch stairs, Amelia’s place wasn’t run-down. Don’t ask me why I thought it’d be run-down, but I did. And I was wrong. I’ll admit it. Men never like to admit when they’re wrong, but I always try to ‘fess up to my mistakes, and I’ll readily acknowedge most of ‘em. Most. The first thing I noticed was that there was some sort of gun dog sunbathing on the porch. The second thing I noticed was a sign posted out front that read, “BEWARE OF DOG.” Retrievers are loyal, but I don’t know whether or not they were bred to be guard dogs. From the looks

of this boy, I’d reckon not. I scuffed my brown Frye boots against the driveway. Little puffs of dirt rose up and then disappeared. I looked around. It looked like not much had changed in seven years, but I knew better. The March sky was still clear, the weather was still humid and sticky, and Amelia’s house was still the last one on the block, squatting right behind the mailbox. The house was light green—I had double-checked the number on the door just to make sure it was the right house because it hadn’t been green before. It had been light gray—just a few shades darker than the other white or off-white houses on the block. But now it reminded me of an Easter egg and I allowed a smile to creep across my chapped lips. It was a nice, regular two-story house, probably built in the ‘50s. Nothin’ fancy, but I knew it was a comfortable place to raise a family. It was a little house on a quiet little street in a town with a population of—I’m guessing now—about 3,000 people. Everybody has always known everybody else’s business—but even still sometimes they miss what’s right in front of their eyes. Either that or they don’t want to see nothing. Just like that dog, they laze around and occasionally poke their noses into other people’s yards but then they miss what’s really going on around them. They’re all dogs. Every one of ‘em. ‘Cept for Amelia. She’s different. And now that she’s got rid of Buck, who knows how much she’ll sparkle when she comes to the door? I pictured her striding confidently up to the door and welcoming me in. We’d drink rum and Coke “our way”—out of large jars meant for

strawberry preserves. I’d stroke her hair and she’d flick me lightly away with her left hand that didn’t have a ring on it. (My thoughts flashed back to the night that I drove into Vilonia to meet up with her when she knew that Buck wouldn’t be home. We lay in the back of my truck and talked for hours.) Then, eventually, we’d make love and everything would be all right again. But we all know that life’s no dream, and so when I tromped as gracefully as possible up the little rickety wooden steps to her house, I wasn’t sure what to expect when she came to the door. What would she look like? Would her son be by her side? Would she let me come inside or tell me she was busy and to come back later? She wouldn’t turn me away outright, would she? I didn’t know, so I just took a deep breath and rang the doorbell, hoping for the best. There was no answer. The retriever on the porch stood up and barked, though it sounded more like a yelp. Then I heard her voice: “Joey! Settle down, boy!” It sounded much different than it did when she was still married to Buck; it was much harsher, but also more confident. When she whispered in my ear the night before Buck went into the hospital, I still heard fear in her voice. I heard no fear in her voice this time, and I ran my fingers through my thinning hair and took another deep breath. The dog barked once more. Amelia flung open the door with more force than I ever thought would come from her. In her hand was a jar of what looked like Coke. She was wearing paint-splattered denim overalls and a plain gray T-shirt that nonetheless accentuated her

broad shoulders. Her feet were bare. When she saw me standing on her doorstep like a nervous little boy, she tossed her curly blonde hair out of her eyes and narrowed them. I simply said, “Can I come in?” *** Amelia and I found ourselves alone, sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. “So, how’s Damien?” I asked, wanting to know about her boy. “He’s working. He’s getting along real well, makin’ a good life for himself. He should be back late tonight. He’s been picking up double shifts, God bless him.” She shifted in her seat and took one more swig of vodka and Coke (I know it’s strange, but that—not rum and Coke—had become her drink of choice). Setting the jar forcefully back on the table with a resounding thud, she looked me in the eye. “What are you doing here, Kipling?” Her voice was sharp, and I recoiled. “I mean, for Christ’s sake, Kip,” she continued, “We ain’t seen each other in six years.” “Seven,” I corrected her. “Since 2004, remember?” She closed her eyes, shook her head, and leaned her chiseled chin on one of her large, strangely beautiful hands. She shook her head and sighed. I pushed my Coke away from my place and stood up to leave. Just then she opened her eyes. “No. Stay.” Her voice had lost its coarseness. Instead it just sounded weary, like the wheezing breath of an aging dog. I dropped back down into the wicker kitchen chair across from her. I tapped the toe of one of my boots on the linoleum floor, waiting to see what she’d say next. “‘Course I remember that night back in ’04. There’s a hell of a lot

that’s changed since then. For one, Buck—” She paused for a minute and then she looked up at me with her big, beautiful, dark eyes that narrowed in suspicion. “Kipling, look, I don’t know why—“ “Stop,” I interrupted as calmly as I could, though I wanted to bark at her. I felt this crazy need to explain myself, something I never had to do back when we were in a relationship. “I came here to see you.” I sat across from her, with her pathetic wooden kitchen table lying like a gulf between us, and I wanted nothing more than to be close to her. She licked her lips and stretched out one of her soft, though now well-worn, hands to me. I nestled my palm in hers. As we clasped our hands together, I asked the question I had wanted to ask for a long time, but that I had always been afraid to ask. “Amelia, why’d you choose Buck? Don’t you remember what we had?” She paused, let my hand go, and then, with her hands in her lap, she began to speak softly. “Life’s no fairy tale. We don’t live in any dream world, you know what I’m sayin’?” I wanted to nod, but instead I said nothing to her. Let me set the record straight: what we had was out of a fairy tale, but it was no dream of anybody’s. It was something real—something that Buck stole from me, just like he stole Amelia’s bright eyes and Amelia’s crooked, gap-toothed smile and Amelia’s willingness to trust. He stole all of that not just from her, but also from us. I was going to propose to her in ’88, three years after we’d started dating seriously. She was 29 and I was a few years younger. But everything changed when she met Buck and left me out in the cold.Then their marriage turned ugly. But now, I reckon nothing matters anymore, since Buck’s in El Paso and Amelia’s here in Arkansas like she always has been. Amelia broke the silence again. “Kip, you were the boy next door.

Literally. I grew up with you ‘round here—you were always underfoot, it seemed to me!” She chuckled heartily, and for a moment I saw the Amelia that I had fallen in love with, who I’d dated seriously. I saw the Amelia I knew before she went off and married Buck. In that split second, I saw the real Amelia. In that moment, I honestly felt like I could just reach out and forgive her for that hot and humid August night that she knocked on the door of my tiny apartment. *** We had sat across from each other at my little kitchen table for two that was made out of cheap plastic. She had told me that she thought we should take a break for a spell. “What d’ya mean?” I’d asked. She told me that she needed time to think about how her future was going to pan out. “We’ve got a future together,” I stuttered. She said she was sorry, but that she just needed time. And space. “Time and space?” That sounded like a big request to me, like a whole universe of desires that I would never be able to fulfill and satisfy. Still, I shook my head in disbelief before I stared down at my hands, hands that I had thought were big and strong. Then, I watched her get up and push in her plastic kitchen chair. With tears in her eyes, she walked out and quietly closed the door behind her, restrained as ever. I had swallowed hard, forcing down the lump rising in my throat. When I knew she was out of earshot, “Git,” I’d shouted to the door, like I was yelling at a dog. I felt like I didn’t know who the real Amelia was anymore. ***

Sitting across from her at her kitchen table, with the sun streaming in through the windows, I longed to see one more part of the real Amelia, and so I asked her if we could look at her wedding dress once more. “What?” Her voice suddenly became quiet and serious. I paused, unsure of what to say. I wasn’t even exactly sure why I wanted to see it, but something was pulling me. She seemed shocked, and I wasn’t going to push her—I was afraid I had lost her as it was. She got up from the kitchen table. As she made her way to the kitchen window, I cursed myself for having asked her a thing like that. She turned back from the window, and said, “Do you really want to see it?” I hesitated, but then I just nodded. “C’mon,” she replied softly. “I’ll show you.” *** The upstairs bedroom, with its simple, dark-stained wooden double bed, was dim and lonely. Amelia laid the wedding gown out on the rose-printed comforter. It wasn’t how I remembered it at all. I held back a gasp. The gown was bloodstained and mutilated. The train was ripped, the sleeves had been torn, and—worst of all—the upper part had been slashed. There were little flecks of blood all over it. I didn’t want to look at it anymore but I forced myself to, just for her. I knew that it was time for me to listen. Amelia’s worn face was stained with tears as she told me what had happened to the dress. This had all happened the day before I came over and we slept in my truck because Buck was away. She took out the dress one day, and Buck caught her and pulled it from her hands, saying that fantasy was in the past and that reality was right now, and that all that about faithfulness was a one-way street, since she broke her vow he owed her nothing, and right now she

needed to obey him and shut her fuckin’ trap—or there would be hell to pay. She told me all this with a voice that was cracking until she fell silent. “You didn’t break any vow,” I said quietly. “This…incident…happened a week after he caught me talking on the phone with you, that night in July. That’s when…” She paused and didn’t continue. She pushed the dress aside and collapsed onto the bed. She shut her eyes. I remembered. About three years after she married Buck, things turned very violent. They had had fights before, but just little scuffles or just them two hollering and carrying on. When things turned ugly, she started calling me once in a while, but she never told me that things were bad at her end. We just talked, as old friends. I remembered that July phone call, because instead of her calling me, I had called her. That night, she had hung up the phone without saying goodbye. It was abrupt, but I had thought nothing of it. “What happened after you got off the phone with me that night?” She sat down on the bed next to the gown. She didn’t offer me a seat next to her, so I simply stood in the bedroom and listened. After a long pause, she finally said, “That night—the night before you came to town—that’s when he tried to strangle me with the telephone cord. I told you that he did that to me, but I didn’t tell you that it was ‘cause—“ ‘Cause of me, I thought with a sinking feeling. We both fell silent. I had no idea how to respond to this revelation, and so I just came up beside her and stroked her hair. She didn’t whine or whimper like a

puppy or anything like that; she just was there. I wanted so desperately to comfort her. So I kissed her gently on the cheek. She sat up and shook her head. “Kipling,” she whispered. I loved her for her loving heart, her strong spirit, and her sense of independence. I wanted the gentle way she said my name to mean that she still loved me. But she just stood up and left the room, leaving the violated wedding gown stretched out on the bed. I couldn’t do anything except follow her back downstairs. When we were back in the kitchen, neither of us sat back down at the table. Instead we stood in the kitchen. I thought of how I had come to town when Buck was out, and how Amelia and I had slept in the back of my ’01 Tundra and talked for hours, and then I thought about what happened when I brought Amelia back to the house and found Buck there. I broke the heavy silence that lay between us: “Amelia, I want you to know one thing: I tried to protect you.” Amelia shook her head and backed away from me until she was all the way across the room. “You tried to protect me? You beat my husband half to death! And as cruel—yeah, I’m strong enough to finally admit that he was a monster—as cruel as he was to me, what happened after he got injured was the worst abuse. Do you understand what happened to me afterwards? I had to take care of him, I was at his beck and call, I was his slave! An’ just because he couldn’t hit me as hard as he used to doesn’t mean anythin’! Emotionally, he destroyed me! Get that through your thick skull! Not to mention, what do you think this did to Damien? He was just a kid! After years of holing himself up in his room, and after years of me struggling to keep him safe, he had to face this. And to think that the whole time

you were in California.” There were tears in her eyes and something like a laugh rose from within her. Now I see that it was more like she was scoffing at me. A rage rose within me; heat crept up my throat ‘til I could barely speak. For the first time since she married Buck, I felt hatred toward her—only that time, I’d felt nothing but hate, and this time my hate was mixed with something else. Like Coke and vodka, I didn’t know what to think of the mixture. I simply swallowed it. She made her way over to the telephone table in the corner of the kitchen. As she did, I remembered what she’d told me that night that she fled from Buck’s grasp. As we lay together in the back of my truck, she said softly, He tried to strangle me with the telephone cord. Did you know that? Amelia fiddled with the receiver, pulling on the beige corkscrew cord. I was afraid she would threaten to call the police, but she didn’t. She didn’t say anything, but I knew that she was gone from me forever. She’d moved on, while I felt stuck in the past—like a hog stuck wallowing in his own filth. I let out a long breath. I headed for the door. I stopped in the doorframe, turned back to Amelia, and simply said to her, “So long.” She pressed her lips together before speaking to me. I was surprised that she would say anything, but she spoke up. “If you understand nothing else, understand this: I don’t need you. I’m not some battered pup anymore, like you thought I was. I got a life here. I’m getting by, just like I been doin’ for the past seven years—without you. And you know what, Kipling? I have no idea why you came back here. Because, after what you done, I can never love you again.” ***

I’m hitting him. I’m not just hitting him, but I’m smashing my fist against his face until my right hand and his entire face are both covered in blood. For a minute he forces me into a headlock but somehow I manage to stay one step ahead of the bastard. I wrench myself free from his unyielding grasp and then I slam him into the side of my pick-up, knocking his head hard against the metal siding. Then, I don’t know, I’m…I’m kicking him. I’ve never kicked anything in my life except maybe a stray dog here and there, and all of a sudden I’m kicking this man, Buck—no, William Thomas—until his cries of pain and agony become quieter and quieter and then he whimpers until he’s down on the ground, in a bloodied heap in the dirt driveway. I wipe my bloody hands on my jeans before I wrench open the door of the truck and back out of the driveway. I don’t even care whether or not I run Buck over. I have already left him for dead. I just want to get out of this nightmare and leave. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a woman on the porch: Amelia. She’s seen the whole thing, and yet the expression on her face is blank. She feels nothing. But now, I realize, she was not unaffected. All of these memories of my fight with Buck came back to me as I pulled out of the driveway of Amelia’s house. Tears clouded my vision, and I wiped them away with the sleeve of my shirt. I looked back at the front porch of 146. That retriever was still out there, but Amelia Kristine Hill was nowhere in sight. I didn’t blame her, and yet I couldn’t seem to shake her words out of my head: After what you done, I can never love you again. On account of me, she had slipped from my grasp forever. I haven’t been back to Vilonia since. There’s nothing there for me anymore.

ORGANIC WAVEFUNCTIONS Samuel Cook

102 A look Is all it takes To be completely captivated. The oceanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s waves ran up the edge of the shore And left in their wake nothing more than simple hydration. Simplistic, to me at least, but maybe not to her: The woman commanding my affections That ordinary, amazing day. The solar rays, Accenting The lightly salted air, Radiated Her body, cooked Her to perfection. My chest cavity Was filled with mechanic beats, rushing blood through The specific chambers, electric potentials working In scientifically proven patterns, all for her. She and me were not we, yet My young body could not Differentiate between The two states. Tattered top twisting Over patterned bra on Her toned tan anatomy Almost made me want to put down my inanimate Organic chemistry book. Almost. Alas, my cravings For deeper understandings Drowned out carnal notions Of hedonistic passion and left nothing. Nothing except sorrowful blood rushing back in waves from reproductive Organs little used when transcripts remained unfinished For the academic year. Spring had sprung, Like I. But not even changing Seasons, nor the crashing Of waves, Nor the percolating of her Genetically blessed bosoms right in front Of my own pair of eyes could make me stray from the tasks At hand that wondrous day. She was lovely, as Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll readily Admit, but she would have to wait for me to begin Waiting for her. Because even at this moment I wait only to turn the page.

stock image courtesy of Billy Alexander at sxc.hu 103

If you asked me why I made the decision to go into church that Sunday, I wouldn’t be able to give you a clear answer. Mainly I remember I was feeling a little godless, although I couldn’t tell you why. On a general Sundays I slept until twelve thirty, woke up, made three greasy eggs and a cup of coffee with Bailey’s in it, and read the comics. Maybe a grown man shouldn’t still read the comics. I just do what I’ve always done. But that Sunday, I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep no matter how much I focused on the blackness behind my eyelids. And so, somehow, I ended up at church. It was the church I would go to for special holiday masses, down on Mill road. It was modest, built of red brick, and had a great white cross protruding from one of its gables. I wondered, as I walked up the path towards the thick oak doors, how they cleaned the cross. How they kept it so white. People crowded at the doors, waiting in a socializing mass to enter. I knew no one, but smiled at everyone. A few minutes passed as we all filed into the church in a slow shuffle of special Sunday dresses, brown polished shoes, cuff linked sleeves. I sat in a pew towards the back. I was the only one in my row when the pastor greeted us all, regal and somehow incredibly intimidating in his long creamy robes. I flipped my bible to our opening hymn. The altar boys all looked tired. As we began to sing, a woman, fifteen minutes late, entered. Our voices drowned out the sounds of her flustered entrance and her quick steps as she scuffled into my solitary

UNDER WHITE GABLES Eleni Padden

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row. I immediately felt irrationally uncomfortable. I didn’t look over at her. If we looked at each other, we would be acknowledging each other’s existence. She would become part of my back-pew microcosm, judging my crackling singing voice, the awkwardness with which I would lower myself down to pray, the way my sweating fingers fumbled around with the ultrathin pages of the bible. I had gone far enough with coming to church. I had not planned on having to live up to anyone’s expectations. She coughed as the song ended. We all sat down, more or less in unison, and the woman picked up her bible. “What page for the prayer?” she asked me. I thought of many other things I would have rather done on a Sunday morning instead of responding to this woman, such as taking a bath in sulfuric acid or itching my leg with a cheese grater. But she had asked me directly, audibly. I couldn’t pretend like it was a question for anyone around us, couldn’t act like I didn’t hear. “324.” “Thanks. Oh, wow, I like your tie. That’s a swell tie,” she said, and opened her bible as I suddenly began to realize the extent of my antisocial tendencies and wondered how I came to be this way. I wondered if it was reversible, or if for the rest of my life I would become simultaneously more afraid and resentful of other human beings. It was, I decided as the pastor adjusted his microphone and officially began

the sermon, all because I had become too contented with the stagnant but comfortingly dependable solitude of my life. I listened to the first half of the sermon in a quiet, detached haze of confusion and self-pity. The pastor paused and whisperings filled the room as a guest speaker came towards the podium and lowered the microphone. The woman next to me offered me a stick of gum. I looked at her in the face. Beads of sweat popped up on the back of my neck. I looked at her for too long before I took the piece of gum. When I had it in my hand and she was sorting through the bible pages again, I stared at it, at its blue wrapper, crinkled on the left side. I unwrapped it and put it in my mouth, which was dry and unfriendly towards the foreign object. I kept chewing and looked up at the speaker on the podium. It was a young black man, probably in his early twenties, wearing a brown corduroy suit with a green sweater on underneath. He looked happy to be alive as he opened his lips to speak. “Brother and sisters, what a fine day we have ourselves! I wanted to talk quick about our new choir,” he gestured over to a group of five or six men and women sitting in the front pew. They smiled big smiles, and waved. “As most of you know, we’re trying to get us some official robes to wear at services, and we’d be most appreciative of any donations you could make towards this noble cause. Ruthie there has the money box,” he said, and Ruthie stood up, holding the box and showing it to the congregation.

“That being said, without further ado, let us sing!” he ended, and got into position on the stage with the rest of the choir. They started out with Amazing Grace, and that was the only song I knew the name of. The woman next to me sang along. I watched them with complete fascination. They were so free of reservation, their booming voices coursing out of their lungs and throats and mouths just like it was nothing, just like it was air. They swayed back and forth, they clapped. Ruthie had a solo and she sounded like a goddess. They were entirely unafraid of it all—in fact, they were the opposite: they loved it. They loved being seen and they loved being heard and in one strange instant I realized how much I had left to learn from people. I had been so far into myself that I thought I was out of myself. This is one of the gravest misconceptions a human being can have, for it makes him utterly blind. I chewed the gum more vigorously. As the sermon came to an end and we got up from the pews, I thanked the woman for the piece. She nodded as she walked away from me and out through the oaken exit. I went slowly over to the area where the choir was collecting donations and I reached into my wallet, smiling at the young African who had given the speech. I handed Ruthie a twenty. “Say, thanks man! You’re a good ole churchgoer,” the man said, clapping me on the back. I kept on smiling. “Yes, yeah, I am,” I said as I padded away, into the sunlight of the Sunday morning.

UNTITLED Nisha Donthi

ODE TO THE COLOR RED Bridget Harkness

You are my fat toes right out a hot shower. They swell and sweat, like two teenagers trying to become one. Intimately

You are tight, tight skirts. You are high, high heels. Chanel lipstick, my freshman roommate’s hair, asleep in a bunked bed, tall enough that I have to stand on tip-toe to see her. Pulse beating, you are the heart going in and out like an ancient bellows to embers, still hot. I touched you every time I opened my front door, my fingers coated like over curious magnets, too young to know their own

you gave Eve indigestion. Your smell I remember not by roses, but by sand in the creases of my dad’s Jeep Cherokee seats. You were damp with beach trip butt prints, chlorinated by summer

strength. You were always there through the worst -- my cheeks when I couldn’t conjugate Spanish verbs. Every time I broke, you came out. Even my cracked chin, birthdays parties. Johnny Appleseed, made you do somersaults scattered you along Washington highways down the folds of my mother’s skirt. and I watched you blur with velocity as if the world were the consistency of charcoal. You stained. You are the freckled face of my neighbor on dense January mornings when he shovels snow between the cracks of cold and into the rough concrete gutter. Behind him, the mountains silhouette against yawning dawn like tonsils – sailors warning.

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On every failed test you spoke to me in thin lines. Dressing mistakes like a thorny crown. You hugged ridges of my eyelids while I cried. Once, I even tried to replace you, but all that was left was yellow, blue, and green and it wasn’t enough.

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THE ART OF

WALKING Megan Hennessy

At twelve years old, I had never thought about how I walked. Walking is walking, right? You pick up your leg and put it down, and then do it again with the other—simple, mechanical, easy. It’s the first thing we learn to do as humans, the very first step of human conditioning. So I was surprised at twelve years old to learn that I had been doing it wrong my entire life. “You walk like a man,” my mother informed me. Naturally, I was perplexed. How exactly does one walk like a man? We all walk the same, one leg at a time. “Don’t swing your arms so much. Shorten you stride. Put your feet one in front of the other. And don’t throw your shoulders back like that, it’s unseemly.” These were my mother’s instructions that July day. My very first instructions in what would become a decade long training session in the art of seemliness. I attempted to do as she said. I put my right foot in front of the left, imaging I was walking on a tightrope. It was difficult—my body was not accustomed to swinging my legs so much inward. I stumbled a few times, and I looked (as I think back on it) quite ridiculous. I kept my arms tucked against my

stomach, not only shortening their swinging but eliminating it all together. Finally I dropped my shoulders, bringing my head down with them, and forcing my chin towards my chest. As I walked in what I assumed must be the female way, I thought that walking like a man might be a small price to pay to not have to look at cement all day. In the coming years I not only smoothed out the “female walk,” but I learned all the nuisances of how to properly “be a lady” (my father’s words this time). These nuisances include, but are not limited to: how to keep my hair pretty and kempt, how to smile in a way that’s flirtatious, how to smile in a way that’s just friendly, how to hold a handbag and how to wear a bracelet, how to never have ugly angles on my face, how to eat and how to stand, how to sit (ankles always crossed), how to buff the surface of my nails until they’re shiny, how to apply polish to those shiny nails, how to say I’m sorry even when I’m not, how to swing my hips when I walk, how to keep my hands folded in my lap when I sit, how to hold my hands behind my back when I stand; how to apply lipstick, and lipgloss, and lipliner, how to wear mascara and eyeliner and eyeshadow and foundation and blush; how to pick an

outfit, how to pick a pair of shoes, how to match my colors and make them pop, how to catch a guy’s eye, how to not speak up, how to moisturize my skin, how to keep the calluses off my feet, how to be polite and not have an opinion, how to wear six inch heels and boots with no arch, how to be pure and modest (I was never clear on how this last one was to be done). *** At age twenty, when I found myself drunk and alone and crying on the side of the road because my heel had snapped in a crack and had brought me down with it, I thought again about how I walk. I thought about my swinging hips and my tucked arms, and the broken four inch heels still gripping my feet. I thought about all the thoughts I never think because I’m busy worrying about where to put my hands. I thought about seemliness and being lady-like and how much time I spend doing things that I don’t even know why I do. I thought I’d rather walk like a man. I pulled off my heels and stumbled home barefoot, shoulders thrown back as they would.

stock image courtesy of Leandro Gomes Moreira at sxc.hu

CAPTURED Lay Kodama

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112 stock image courtesy of Nossirom at sxc.hu

MONSOON REVERIE Hon-Wai Wong

Willowy grass blades, bent against the monsoon, cast smudges on the mud. The mid-day glimmer defiantly pressed its path against the drops pouring from the pregnant clouds. Mossy fragrance from the distant mangroves alternated with the petrichor. Her plastic flip-flops crashed against the streams that had sprung forth. The rhythmic drops bouncing off the zinc roofs thundered through the whispery orchestration of coconut palm leaves. We stood panting under an umbrella of rustling leaves. She pushed back her long sleeves. I murmured a curse at the weather, yet wishing it would last. She smiled at me. I smiled. Her delicate frame clung to her faded dress. The pounding on my neck behind the ear harmonized with the drums of the rain god. A chicken puffed its feathers amongst the stilts that held the wooden house a stoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s throw away. She wrung her long, black hair. Stray strands framed the features on her face, moist and illuminated. Raining answers the prayer for a good harvest, she began. She wrinkled her nose. A dimple appeared and disappeared at the spot just above the tiny birthmark on her left cheek. The possible repercussions of this vividness congealed upon my throat. She paused. The pinkness paled when she bit her lips. I swallowed hard. The bamboo flute quality of her voice flavored the surrounding, monotonic hissing. The damp brownness caking my sneakers slowly washed away chalk drawings of a forgotten hopscotch game. I fumbled with the cold laces. Here I was, an outsider in the midst. She balanced on one foot. My pulses were reaping a hole on my wrist. Focus, I told myself. I pictured a fine grain of rice, dissected to its structural components. She rubbed her left foot against her right thigh. My mind shifted to a paddy field of immense vastness. I closed my eyes. She was standing in the knee-deep waters of the field, eyes shaded by her scarf wrapped around a rattan hat. I shivered. The wind brushed the hairs on the back of my neck. The light of a kerosene lamp within the wooden house flickered. Aluminum cans strung to the verandah clanged incessantly. Pieces of rags held desperately to the rusted wire clothesline. The carved trinkets on her bracelet swayed. An unfamiliar heaviness weighed down the insides of my left chest. I could hear myself breathing. I dragged my eyes away from her direction. The sin of this sacred feeling tugged hard at my consciousness. I wiped the face of my watch with my wet t-shirt. The coconut palms, menacing yet serene, towered into the mist. I looked up. Sacredness of the highest form was frowning upon this feeling of mine. Our difference was the only needed reason. Pulling her into the abyss was injustice. A million imagined ants bit at my hands. I stuffed my hands deep in my jeans pocket. To defy was damnation. Her fingers played with a fallen bougainvillea blossom. I pawed and scratched at the seams of my pockets. My glasses began to fog. Her arm hung freely. She did not jump this time. She stood there, silently. Knowingly. The distant train, beyond walls of rubber trees, hummed past the valley. My neck burnt behind the ear. The cold, moistened skin of her hand felt smooth against mine.

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COLORBLIND Katherine Quinn

If hues of blood do shade the beating hearts, may blue be blood and red be laughing lips. If color not be whole but sum of parts, then white is black amidst the great eclipse. If you are black and I am white, who are we? Are we together? I cannot remember. If neither love, nor forever shall we be then who remembers burning crimson ember of passioned red and heartfelt yearning love? Oh why, oh why is life not colorblind? If love is blind and mourning cries the dove, then we shall never be, our love confined. But if, the choice were mine, then I would fight, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;til days turned black and nights saw light.

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DROPPING BY SWAN LAKE Samuel Cook

When I was a little girl, I would laugh at my mother when she hid her graying hair under blond highlights. “What’s so bad about gray hair?” I would ask her. “It means I’m getting old.” “So?” I would ask, not comprehending that one more year also meant one less. “I’d rather not think about it,” my mom would reply, while I would roll my eyes and scoff at her stupidity. “Gray hair makes you wise.” “Shelb, life makes you wise. Gray hair makes you old.” “I can’t wait to be old.” “Just you wait then.” “I’m not going to hide my gray hair, either.” “Well, that’s good, Shelb.” But as a little girl, I firmly believed the quote my grandmother had taped to her fridge was the key to immortality. “Age is just a state of mind,” and young as I was, I thought I could conquer anything with the power of my mind; whenever I was sick, I would refuse to cough, believing that this was the cure to my cold--rejecting the reality with my mind. And if I could cure my colds, I could reject old age--sure I would look old, but I wouldn’t feel old, and this made me feel invincible. I wondered why other adults had not discovered this secret. I tried to make my parents realize this was all it took to conquer the ailments of old age, but they didn’t seem to believe me. My dad still complained about his back and knee, and my mom still told me that she needed more sleep now than when she was young, because she was “older.” But what did older even mean, and why did every adult use it as an excuse for their jaded pessimism? In retrospect, my family dynamic was very modern and not extremely unusual, and though I never thought it strange, others did. My friends often commented that it was weird for

my dad to take me to school, pick me up, take me to swim practice, and do the grocery shopping. “Your dad shops for food? Not your mom?” “Yeah, so?” “I guess--well... why doesn’t your mom do that? Mine does.” “She’s at work.” And when I remember my childhood, I remember sharing my mom’s work with her, because I don’t remember her at home much, like my dad. My dad was always home it seemed, while my mom was at work, and it was here that we bonded. Instead time off in the summer, my mom would bring my sister and me to the hospital with her, and as a result, Hilary and I learned how to converse with adults at an early age. Maybe that’s why old age appeared neither daunting nor related to death. Because the people I saw dying when I got lost in the hospital looked nothing like these older people my mom worked with. Instead, those people in the hospital beds looked small and shrunken and smelled unpleasant, like urine and rotting flowers. The only time I can picture my mom at home vividly was when I was sick as a little girl. I couldn’t seem to conquer the flu with my mind, like I could with colds, and this frustration always seemed to exacerbate my condition. My mom would make me soup, lay cold towels over my head, and I would lie my head on her chest--comforted by the two lumps of flesh underneath that signified the kindness of a woman, a mother. It was here that I found solace. Or maybe I just had a fascination with breasts and the definition of feminity. I wanted to understand these protrusions that seemed to signify and define a woman. When I was even younger, I would go into my parents’ bedroom when no one was home. It was white and cool, and I would settle myself under the covers and pull out a catalog from my mom’s nightstand. I

liked to look at the women in their bras. They seemed to be a completely different species, and because of this, I didn’t believe I was ever capable of becoming one. This belief was further cemented one day, when I sat on my dad’s side of the bed and looked in his nightstand. He had magazines of women, too, only they didn’t have bras on. Most of them were lying down on beds with legs spread, revealing folds of pink flesh. I looked through the entire thing, then went to the bathroom and wrapped it in toilet paper, went to the backyard and threw the thing away. I didn’t believe that I would ever become one of those women. That my body had the potential to look like that, that it already might. As a little girl, those women were separate from me, and I found I had nothing in common with them. I even thought that my mom was completely separate from those women as well. My mom wasn’t a woman. She was a mom. And that was a completely different thing. And as I got older and turned into a woman myself, I still struggled with the idea of femininity. I couldn’t think of myself as sexy, the very thought made me uncomfortable, like somehow I was losing part of my identity. And those women were still separate. They were objects, and I was a person. Living, breathing flesh. But despite this, I still felt a strange pride in my breasts. Like my body had a least some capability of producing estrogen. Maybe I thought they would make boys forget about my broad shoulders and my strong arms. So I drew strength from them, and what they represented. Like the little train that could, I could be a woman! So when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, I felt very afraid. But not just for her life, but for her breasts. And mine as well. During her surgery, I wondered what it was like for her, with her changed body. Her flat chest--those precious lumps of flesh, gone. Those givers of life, of comfort, of pleasure, of

identity. I looked down at my own breasts and wondered what it would be like if they were no longer there, what it would feel like to regress ten years and be twelve again without the weight of them. How going down stairs would feel different. How I wouldn’t have the same power when I hunched my shoulders in a low cut top. But breasts weren’t the real problem. Anyone could always get them back; sure, they would be hard, fake, alien, but what they represented would remain. Instead, I realized that I wasn’t strong enough to live without my mom. I could live without my dad, because he always seemed to be there, and as a result, he had taught me to be strong without him. But I had always had less time with my mom and had never learned to live without her. Time with her was precious and confronted with her immortality, I felt like the little girl who would lay her head on her mother’s chest when she was sick.

Shelby Stewart

TWO LUMPS OF FLESH

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EL JARDÍN Eleni Padden

WALK INTO THE GARDEN

I JUST REALLY HOPE THAT YOU THINK OF ME Georgina Edionseri 120

I DON’T WANT TO FALL TO PIECES Georgina Edionseri 121

CENTRAL PARK SONATA Julia Bradshaw

stock image courtesy of Kym McLeod at sxc.hu

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NGORONGORO CRATER AT MIDDAY Samuel Cook

GARDEN

Eleni Padden

This garden is a miniscule universe Leaves, waxy and emerald, talk silently A purple twilight drapes itself, cape-like, over the yard. Darkness passes, over bricks soft with the persistent layering of lichen, Over the jasmine, smelling like sad love, sagging in great clusters from the fence that it has mercilessly overrun. Down in the Koi pond, fish pick lazily at the sodden remnants of stale bread, Their lips making muted splashes as they surface, And then, almost instantly, almost as if it never happened, they are submerged again. This unassuming darkness tastes of slowly closing eyes, closing them to the rhythm of rain as it trickles, pounds, ratatats on the roof. An obese pear tree stands still and quiet, exhausted from its long day of doing absolutely nothing. The rapidly fading light dredges energy from this little microcosm, puts it to sleep. Puts it to sleep like our nanny from forever ago, our nanny from June of 1983. The tree isn’t obese. The tree is a tree is a tree. Hurricane lashed through last year, and the fence fell backwards, folded in on itself and screamed, and it crashed and splintered and slumped and shivered. Every Podunk pan-rattling poor boy heard the fall of that fence. They cried for the waste of good lumber. They couldn’t hear their own thoughts, they couldn’t hear themselves thinking. They cried out so loudly for wasted lumber.

How am I supposed to pretend that I never wanna see you again? The glittery misconceptions of everyday life flavored my mind just right for your taste buds. You, who are you? Who are we? There isn’t an answer I can provide. Our underlying meanings became as obvious as spies the longer we looked at each other’s faces, hair, eyes. And I found out in the garden, by means of the pear tree, that if I jump, I can fly. Babushka ain’t feelin too hot, She is walking first and then running, and she will never stop Attempting to figure out what she’s meant to be doing With her life full of mixed signals and over-analyses. Here’s an idea: read a book. If you can’t make sense of yourself, It could do you well to see how other people Make sense of themselves and their senses. We’ll call it Learning by Example. Step one: stop writing existential poems about gardens. Life surprises with its weighty feathers, but they’re still attached to wings. Soon is yet too far to be the right thing. Kalamu ni uwezo zaidi kuliko upanga. And I don’t care if you don’t agree. Because while backpacks groan on backs of people who hope they’re good enough for someone else, I’m sitting in this garden, watching the last rays of light bleed out of the rapidly darkening vast expanse of universe above me, and I know we can’t always know.

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JUST A STORY Shelby Stewart

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She said, “Let me tell you a story.” “Is it a sad story? All your stories are sad.” She nodded. “Life is sad. Absurd, even. I just put what I see on paper.” “And then those words float into the sad, sad world?” “Exactly. Eternal. Everlasting,” she said. Then, “Do you want to hear the story or not?” “Tell me.” “Listen close. This is the story of a girl. And like all girls, this girl had a mother. But this mother was different—this mother was dying. One day the mother brought home a wig, but the next day the wig was gone. The dog had chewed it up. The end.” “That’s it?” “That’s all there is,” the author answered. “Should there be more?”

SOLITUDE Ryan Thompson

WINTER BLOOM Katherine Quinn

NO ROMEO

Hon-Wai Wong

I’m paying for this dinner in the stars Yet you are nothing like a Juliet. Here’s caviar but you want chocolate bars, Whoever dines in shorts at Marriott? I’ve hoped tonight would be a special thing But you as always get me on my nerves! That old coot’s gaping at your navel ring While you display your inappropriate curves. Sit down, dear! Do you really have to yell? The waiter’s giving you a dirty look. (I’d love to call this off but) what the hell! There’s no refund for honeymoons I’ve booked. So what if you’re a pain? I’m on my knee, Don’t ask for carats; oh, just marry me!

stock image courtesy of Raven3k at sxc.hu

A VASE OF DANDELIONS

Alexa Mechanic

Deep green with white trim, the playhouse sits in the left-hand corner of Bethany’s backyard. It was an early birthday present from her parents, and Bethany had immediately scribbled “Bethany’s house” across the door in thick chalk. Every evening when the sun reaches its molten fingers through the softening summer sky, Bethany’s neighbor Billy comes over to play. Tonight they burst through the playhouse’s door, suck in the scent of moist wood, touch their foreheads to the thin panes of window glass. Billy scurries outside and rips a handful of dandelions out of the lawn, then reenters and places the drooping weeds into a plastic cup of water. Bethany pretends to cook an elaborate dinner. She lines paper plates with Oreo cookies and potato chips: steak and potatoes. On the bottom bunk, Billy lies on his back and breathes in, his sultry skin sticking to the sheets. They don’t notice the outline of the moon soaking through the lavender sky until their parents’ voices – muffled by the playhouse’s walls – call them in. They skip toward their adjacent homes, the last light of the day kissing their golden backs goodnight. Now Bethany sweats over a real stove cooking dinner for John and the kids. The screen door filters the sweetness of freshly cut grass as it streams into the kitchen with the August breeze. Bethany’s head is in the cloud of smoke that hangs over the charred chicken cutlets she left on the stove too long. And in this haze she closes her eyes, finding herself in a field of dandelions, until she must go home.

stock image courtesy of Renate Kalloch at sxc.hu

NOSTALGIA Coral J. Fung Shek

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MALUSDOMESTICAPHOBIA* Nicolette Hatzidimitriou

There are things worse than death. The echoing cackle that shatters my dreams, Reverberating through my restless mind, Or the frigid trickle of ice Down my spine When I see That thing Gleaming harmlessly in the sunlight, Or hear its crunch As an anxious mouth Savors its candy insides; Beads of juice dribbling down the chin. I shudder at its bloody skin. Undying reminder of her decaying flesh, Her distorted smile. I was so naive then. Who knows what lies beneath the surface, Or what crawls below the skin? Paranoia slithers through my veins, But they canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see it. They donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know There are things worse than death.

* The fear of apples.

stock image courtesy of Jorge Uzcategui at sxc.hu

EDEN Coral J. Fung Shek

BEFORE Serona Sengupta

The sunburst hair; sea kale shampoo; “I love you” cartoon and yellow-gray eyes; fireflies caught one-handed; tree climbing as a sport; your short, thick arms and three-play chess wins; the Minnesota Twins and North Face gear; the almost-year; The hick grandparents; your mother’s stuffed loon; thirteenth of June and “somites moments;” the fence you broke with the sled; Nike basketball shoes; your dad’s BMW-5; sleet-filled roads; red-light kisses on my nose; Your hands astray in Rosenwald Tower; the curtained, quiet hours and morning nuzzle; Dali puzzle unfinished; the long-distance calls; falling out; third parties; a year of silence then ten lines: but by now the words have lost their time.

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