Volume 13 issue 2 Spring 2010
VOLume 13 Issue 2
Touchstones Volume 13, Number 2 Spring 2010
Touchstones Department of English/Literature LA 153 Utah Valley University 800 West University Parkway Orem, UT 84058
Touchstones is published twice a year during Fall and Spring semesters. UVU students may submit work under the following categories: poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, visual art, and drama. Turn submissions into the English Department office (LA 114) and include the application form found at research.uvsc.edu/touchstones or the department office. All rights revert to artists upon publication.
Staff Editor-in-Chief Managing Editors Technical Editor Editor-at-large Poetry Editor Prose Editor Art Editor Webmaster Technical Assistants Prose Staff Art Staff Readers Cover and title pages Faculty Advisor
Emma Hunt Meghan Wiemer Meggie Woodfield Jennie Nicholls-Smith Matthew Sievers Devon Herrmann Chris Green Audrey Moore Ben Norell Jared Magill Brock Jones Annie Doxey Cindy Mackert Hillary Dastrup Nicholas Moore Luke Lewis Aubrey Pontious Madelyn Tucker Jesse Tucker Candice Keller Rob Steffen Matthew Jonaissaint Daniel Edwards Brian Thredgold Shersta Gatica Jason Gibbons Jared Magill Stephen Gibson
Advisor’s foreward
“S
uppose you want to get an experience into words so that it is permanently there, as it would be in a painting—so that every time you read what you wrote, you reexperience it. Suppose you want to say something so that it is right and beautiful—even though you may not understand exactly why. Or suppose words excite you—the way stone excites sculptors—and inspire you to use them in a new way. And that for these or other reasons you like writing because of the way it makes you think or because of what it helps you to understand. These are some of the reasons poets write poetry.” —Kenneth Koch Then, suppose you want to share. Not everybody does, of course. Some stories and poems are too personal or dishonest or just bad for sharing. Perhaps privacy is your greatest bliss. But you may want to know if you’ve made something out of language or color that will at least hold the attention of someone else, of others. They don’t have to be fascinated or fall in love with it. There is no absolute need that they become, to quote Paul de Man, “as rigorous a reader as [you did] in order to write the sentence in the first place.” They just have to be suckered in long enough to smile or cry or concentrate for a moment. In order to share, to test what you’ve made against the attention span of people around you, you’ll need something like Touchstones. And, obviously, you’ll need to submit to it. In order for something like Touchstones to exist, there have to be students who are willing to give up time (sometimes lots of it), attention (sometimes from significant others), and almost certainly sleep. They actually did the work of making what you hold in your hands. They read and reread, and argued and decided, and stared at screens and pages, and dealt with printers, and they do it on their own, with utter autonomy. In return, they get experience, become marketable, gain skills they can trade for legal tender. But most of all they let you and others share. Say thanks, if you have a chance. Join them, if you’d like. Finally, Touchstones is one of the best ways to learn to better hold the
attention of others. As you read the poems and prose, as you examine the images in this issue, what keeps you on the page, in the story, attentive to the language, the images? Can you identify specific techniques? Can you use similar techniques in your work? Read like a writer, watch like an artist. It’s how you’ll become one. And you can start by turning the page. Stephen D. Gibson Faculty Advisor Spring 2010
editor’s note
“H
umorous?” “Not very much of it. Hardly any, really.” “Existential?” “Isn’t everything anymore? ‘Existential’ isn’t saying much.” “What about melancholy?” “Too much of it is playful.” “Well, what about playful?” “Too much of it is melancholy.” “Then you tell me.” “Hell if I know.” This was my internal dialogue on a recent afternoon as I made clumsy stabs at summing up the feel, the je ne sais quoi, the thread of meaning that defines this issue of Touchstones. But the words kept running dry, as any attempt at the impossible eventually must. And I realized, in a moment of editorial discernment that was half futility/sour grapes and half genuine clarity, that it’s not always necessary to play Connect the Dots. Not with these dots, anyway. Some of these dots are funny, others melancholy. They are macabre, nostalgic, unsettling, anxious, joyful. And that’s the way it’s always been with this journal. Even the most casual perusal of past issues reveals a consistent diversity that defies exact categorization but never lacks cohesion. Jack London said of collaborative work that “there must be, of necessity, a certain ‘knack’ for working in collaboration…The temptation of each author to saunter down shaded by-paths of personal fancy, to linger in some Valley of Delight of his choosing, to mount heights and spy out his own particular Promised Land, is ever present. How much greater, then, the achievement, when a score or more writers, with no straying from the main road, arrive successfully at the Finis?” And while each writer and artist in Touchstones does (and always will) linger in Promised Lands where lovers kiss beneath capsized canoes, spines are given as gifts, and monochromatic profusions of figures riot, this issue represents a Finis where these visions collide and then coalesce. All of which is really just the long way of saying that it would take
more words than I have space or wherewithal to make a go at describing the best creative output of the semester by UVU’s talented students. In fact, by the current count it would take ninety-nine pages’ worth of other peoples’ words and pictures to do so. So I’ll be quiet and let those pages do the talking. Emma L. Hunt Editor-in-Chief Spring 2010
Acknowledgements We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all those who offer their assistance and support to Touchstones. Their enthusiasm for the journal endures, undiminished by years or the inevitable change of staff members, writers, artists, and their synthesized results. This list includes Lucille Stoddard, for the original administrative foresight and generosity that has by now made Touchstones a UVU institution; David Yells, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences; Robert Cousins and Christa Albrecht-Crane, Chair and Assistant Chair of the English department; Laura Hamblin, Scott Hatch, Lee Mortensen, Julie Nichols, Robert Carney, and Karin Anderson, Creative Writing faculty at UVU; Dawn Chase, English Department Advisor; Dorice Gailbraith, Samuel Banford, and Meredith Bennie, Administrative Support for the English department; Steve Bule, Chair of the Department of Art and Visual Communications; Deb Thornton of the Engligh faculty for her invaluable editing and technical wisdom; AIGA for their participation in the cover deisgn; UVU Printing Services Staff for their openness to questions and their precise treatment of our product; UVU Bookstore for making the journal more widely available and the UVU Review staff for their continued interest in Touchstones. Special thanks to the judges, Daniel Westover, Christopher Kimball Bigelow, and Gary Barton for offering their expertise. Even with the length of this list, we apologize for forgetting anyone. Certainly there are still more.
Table of contents PROSE Well Begun is Half Done 17 Whitney Mower A Year in the Wilderness 22 Andy Sherwin Adolescence 27 Pamela Sundell Here Lies 28 Loran Cook True Colors or How I Found Out My Brother Was a Hitman 36 Alicia VanNoy Call
Hope 45 Joseph Byington
Poetry You Don’t Remember Your Dreams 55 Eric Paul Lyman An Old House in Michigan, Born Again 56 Susannah Woodbury Deianeira 58 Whitney Mower chopped apples 59 Tamara Stanton
Pressure 60 Anthony Christensen
It Started with the Cheeks 61 Diego Iba単ez Workboots at a Bar 62 David Self Newlin
O. 64 Tamara Stanton
A Friday with Zeus 65 David Iba Lambkill 66 Eric Paul Lyman On Celebration 67 Whitney Mower
ART
Lovely 71 Kirsten Nielson
Bridges 72 Rich Poulson Pigs of Men 73 Kirsten Nielson
Junior 74 Alexis Mackay
Winter Over Summer 75 Peter Gibb
Nike 76 Joan McGinnis
This is Radio Clash 77 Charles “Kit” Nordfelt Poverty 78 Kirsten Nielson
Habits 79 Rich Poulson
The Complexities of Youth 80 Patric Bates Wishing Star 82 Trevor Williams The Park 83 Patric Bates Growing 84 MaryBeth Longmore
Robby 85 Bill Andrus
PROSE
prose
well begun is half done
whitney mower Third Place Prose
o
n the forty-fifth day after they had married for eternity, a man and wife wake up together in a brown apartment with brown carpet. One southwestern style couch. A few pieces of mismatched dishware. An old synthesizer, a fake tree, a cat named Bandit. The wife goes into the bathroom to dress alone. The man dresses in the walk-in closet. She dims the bathroom light with the round revolving knob, her favorite feature of the house. He turns the lights on in the next room and sits down at a card table, temporarily used for dining, in the kitchen. At his feet the cat drinks water from a dish. The apartment is mostly empty—empty still because the wedding announcements had said “donations only” in bold. She thought this request very rude, especially in bold print. But think about it, he had said, a down payment on a car is far more sensible than a bunch of pricey blenders we’ll never use. And anyway, things like that are crutches for women who can’t cook. You shouldn’t worry, he said, you can really cook. Thank you, she said. Okay, she said. He put both his hands on her shoulders and asked if the plans for the invitation were perfectly alright. She said yes. She said, I agree sweetheart, we will like picking things out on our own. She loved his common sense. She loved that he hated being any car’s passenger. So with the wedding money they bought a brown Honda. And most of the time he drives and she is pleased with a man who isn’t afraid of heavy traffic, can do things right for her, make his voice just stern enough when a cashier gives the wrong change or a waiter brings the wrong dish. It is the best thing she has ever done, marrying him. She likes to touch his hair as they ride and wait for his hand to move off the gear lever to her leg. She feels relief in his willfulness to deal with businesslike things. She feels relief in that he does not expect her to help. Of course helping, if she wanted to, wouldn’t cause a stir, but certain things she takes care of as does 17
well begun is half done
he and they don’t waste time speaking about what is obvious. I suppose the wedding felt a bit empty, she admits on this morning, standing in front of the bathroom mirror. Did it? The rented dress, a cake, ten sets of three-flowered bouquets for each table. No, not really. It wasn’t like she had a lot of friends to impress with a ring, though showing the gold band to her five younger sisters, she admits, was fun. Yes, maybe she had looked forward to filling a honeymoon limousine with showy gifts or the large white train of a dress. On the actual wedding night, however, there were not many bows or metallic papers or complicated buttons on a dress to undo, nothing to ease the suspense of what was supposed to happen: that sacred act they’d heard people talk about in church and school. And she was somewhat frightened at first and he too, but they pressed forward and took from it the amount of pleasure they could understand which was enough and together they felt brave. I’ve grown up, she thought, lying there on his arm afterwards. We will learn, he said. Then they talked about family they’d seen at the wedding and those they would not see for a long time. She thought about names for babies and as he slept, she stayed up a while planning in her mind everything she could think to plan. She thought about a photograph of her father. He stands at a holiday dinner party, showing off his ground-down teeth with a grin. By chance, an oddly-cast shadow behind his bald, freckled head forms a sort of black halo. Halfway through the night, the groom woke up. He drank a cup of ice water and put on some clothes. We haven’t eaten, he said quietly, I’ll go get us something. He moved fast to the door. I’ll miss you, he said. So on this day, the forty-fifth day, she puts on cheap gold earrings and he a thin tie and blue jacket. He stands next to her at the stove as she cooks eggs with pepper and Tabasco sauce. He talks about a friend from college. She takes a bite of the eggs when they are ready. She tells him how much she likes Tabasco sauce. Spicy food is the best, they agree, and plan to go to her favorite restaurant tonight, Ricardo’s, if he isn’t too tired after work. Or later in the week if he is. Remember when we, in Mexico, she asks. Yes, he says and kisses her wetly and she laughs under his mustache. I’ll miss you, he says. ____
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Later, single, the man cooks eggs in the same way she made them here on this day. He puts the same amount of sauce next to the eggs and mixes the two together hurriedly on his plate at almost the same speed, but slightly faster. Before leaving the empty brown apartment, he opens the refrigerator to put away the sauce. As he closes the fridge door he studies a whale made of paper hanging by a magnet. A brass tack joins a fin and body so the whale can move like it is swimming. His eldest daughter gave it to him. He touches the paper and some blue colored pencil rubs onto his finger. Sometimes a woman comes over named Valerie or Suzanne and for her he’ll move the whale across the fridge. He loves his children, see? When the whale gets to the end of the fridge door, he whirls around and grabs the woman, tickling or kissing her. He can still be as wild as any young man, too. See? Later, alone, the wife falls asleep watching TV in a dirty cotton nightdress, no underwear beneath, and dreams that her body is inside a very small box on a high closet shelf. A few minutes later she wakes up to the TV still on and begins to watch again. Her toenails are long and jagged. She shifts around the bed, experimenting with different ways to lie down that might lessen the pain in her spine. Between product advertisements and music and bright digital colors, glints of a dead sorrow pass through her. She thinks of her children and other things she has lost and the sickness her family cannot understand because the word for it is hard to say. They are not sure the sickness exists. She thinks about her faith. She knows she will not go to heaven unless another man could want to touch her again. And no man will, because no man wants a woman who can’t wake up for church, who can’t dress the children or dress herself. But these moments are brief and usually there are not pauses enough between all the screen’s colors and sounds in which the sorrow can fester for long. The lines and symbols on the buttons of the remote control have rubbed off, bits of food between each crack. She comes across the opening credits of a movie she’s watched every week for many weeks. God is showing me what Hell is like so that I will learn, she thinks. I haven’t learned because I am selfish. She falls asleep again, though not for long. Later, one night, the husband dreams he visits the parents of his former wife. As he stands in the kitchen, the mother prepares the father a tuna fish sandwich. She spreads the mayonnaise, dabs on the fish, then inserts, between the two pieces of bread, a thin watery slice of lettuce that morphs
19
well begun is half done
into a green-colored tongue. Alive, it falls from the sandwich and slithers across the floor into some dark place that no one sees. ____ He takes his jacket off before getting into the car because Arizona is a hot place. The seatbelt is hot and stings his hand as he buckles himself in. He is twenty-two. He has earned a degree in Accounting. His wife is tall and tan and she wears her hair big. As he drives toward an office, maybe he thinks about her athletic body and her bright clothing, her leotards that hold together with metal snaps between her legs. Maybe he thinks of his crazy brother who rides a bicycle around the city looking for gold in the desert’s red hills. He puts the radio on AM and hears a voice. At work he talks on the phone and for lunch he eats a small package of donuts from a machine in the break room. He talks to people about money. Donut in hand, he moves his chair from right to left and tells someone how much money they owe, hangs up, brushes white powder from the donut off his slacks. On the phone he works well. He names figures. He signs forms. He tells jokes to people at other desks and his sense of humor is somewhat irreverent but they laugh and he is liked. At the apartment she sits straight-backed, aware of every noise. She folds dish towels or underclothes for a few seconds, and then listens, folds, stops, listens. Four hours until he gets home. She looks at the clock, sometimes twice a minute, clears her throat. Not all days are like this. Often she will play the piano or dance to a video. Some days she dislikes the bareness of the apartment. Other days she is hopeful that the two of them will feel new and plain in the open space, like they can avoid that post-honeymoon onset of restlessness by discussing which color of towels the other prefers for the downstairs guest bathroom, like a little getting-to-know-you game. She often makes lists. She estimates each interval of time between bread, milk, and toilet paper purchases. How much do we eat, she calculates, and what can we cut down on in order to save? She wants to be an efficient wife. She plans to learn about money like her husband. Money is his career. They will never be poor because of this. Their children will be fed and clothed. Surely when he gets home tonight, she thinks, I will ask him to help me understand money and I can help with things other than the choosing of colors. I will ask him during dinner at the restaurant and he will say yes because it will be like Mexico when things weren’t so hurried—when he didn’t tap his fingers against my back as he held me. 20
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On the forty-fifth day after the marriage ceremony, she sits at a table a few minutes before five o’clock to fold. She waits for her husband. Restlessness is not an idea she can believe in today. She does not believe in it for many years. The future looks bright if they will live in the Lord’s hands. She’s already chosen the names of her children, knows they will play instruments like her and have humor like him. She knows she will say goodbye to them sweetly each morning as they run to school. But soon perhaps, far back in an unconscious recess of her mind, a string of questions will begin to form and with it a seed of uncertainty. Perhaps for years she will mute the string and the seed with prayers and lists of good choices and good deeds, of all the reasons why their lives ought to have turned out better. But for now she folds and waits, a cat at her feet, a new engine coming up the drive, its sound clean and hopeful. Like a hymn to the eternal marriage just begun.
21
A year in the Wilderness
Andy Sherwin Second Place Prose
1.
We’re on my roof. It’s July and we can see kids lighting illegal fireworks in the nearby park. You sneak a taste of my beer and spit it out, blowing your cover. After the spectacle ends, we fall asleep up there to the CCR that my neighbors are playing. 2. My office has a party at Utah Lake and I beg you to be my plus-one so I can win the short-distance boat race (and the associated $500 bet I was suckered into accepting). We’re sabotaged by Scott, who tips our canoe over. It invalidates the terms of the bet of course, and you kiss me underwater. I get second degree burns on my face from using expired sunscreen. All in all, I chalk it up to a win. 3. We end up going to New York over Labor Day weekend. I finally try my hand at sewing and come up with a deformed, 3x5 American flag, but you pin it to your collar with pride. At the Statue of Liberty a tourist from Iowa named Nancy offers you fifty bucks for it. “My husband is on his third tour in Iraq right now,” she says. “It reminds me of him.” Recognizing a good deal when you see it, you accept the offer and use the money to take us on a ferry ride over the river. You take pictures of which everyone at home gets insanely jealous. Somehow, the Brooklyn Bridge doesn’t seem so impressive anymore. 4. We’ve whisked away to Baker City, Oregon for the weekend, but the weather report left out the sheets of rain that are waiting for us there. We get to the Bridge Street Inn and sprint from the car to the lobby. You go check in. The lilies I had hidden in the trunk for your impending Welcome To Baker City arrival gift get crushed by the downpour, so I throw them in the trash can, disappointed in Mother Nature’s apparent inconsiderations toward attempted romantic gestures.
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“What’s wrong?” you ask, but I quickly change the subject to the contents of continental breakfasts. After a nice room service dinner, we fall asleep to the rhythm of the rain. You wake up late; it’s still raining, and I’ve left a note and a mint on my pillow for you. “Buying supplies. Something for you right outside the door. -AS” You glide into a hotel-issued bathrobe and open the room’s door. You’re greeted by fresh, uncrushed lilies, protected from nature by a yellow umbrella. You put on a pot of coffee and watch syndicated Mad About You reruns until I get back twenty minutes later with cinnamon rolls and lattes. We decide to stay an extra day. And night. 5. One holiday weekend, you come down for homemade pesto over rotini and lemon chicken. You get here with about ten minutes left to go on the chicken’s oven time. I’m too happy to see you to not start kissing you, and you push me to the kitchen floor—you know, to be close to the action. We’re both a little too gifted at such things to be able to stop ourselves after the ten minutes is up. The smoke alarm goes off and our dinner looks like it was found in a coal mine’s refuse bin. I don’t have ingredients to make anything else; I’m deeply embarrassed and you’re getting Hunger Grumpy. I throw together a salad to tide you over, but it’s not substantial enough to make much of a dent. You even skipped lunch to be extra prepared for this meal, which is now of better use to Santa to give to naughty children. So I try to defrost some chicken, but the microwave isn’t doing anything but spinning it in a circle. I give up, order pizza, and curse the domestic gods that kept dismantling my every attempt at your culinary satisfaction. The pizza arrives much more quickly than we expect, and we eat and eat and eat until we have babysized tummies. We fall asleep on the kitchen floor for two hours before staggering half-asleep into bed. You’re very pleased with my new mattress pad and we both smell like garlic sauce and cinnamon sticks, but we kiss goodnight all the same. Our shared water bottle goes empty within minutes. We’re big on hydration, you and me. 6. We find a medium-sized two-bedroom apartment just down the street from campus and snatch it away from the morons who didn’t appreciate it. The landlord says that the only way she’ll give us the lease is if we take in one of the dogs she’s a foster parent for. It’s a one-year-old black lab/German shepherd mix named Lancelot. We change his name to 23
a year in the wilderness
Spaceman. But, as many hounds Spaceman’s age do, he has some problems with bladder control. Neither of us are very good disciplinarians—and your claims to be hardhearted in the face of leaky puppies are melted by his eyes that are, oddly enough, the exact color of yours—so Spaceman goes undertrained and overloved. We’re supposed to go to a Purim dinner. You’re on campus all day, so I take the day off of work to do the laundry and iron the shirt you want me to wear. Immediately upon my return from the laundromat, Spaceman decides he wants to play. I throw the shirt onto the couch, and Spaceman, sensing an object of importance, decides to relieve himself upon it. The shirt is stained, and none of the other ones that would be acceptable substitutes are clean. There’s not a quarter in the house to be found, so I try washing it in the bathtub, to no avail. That yellow ain’t coming out. You’ve got the car (we sold one of ours to fund a two-week trip to London), so I sprint the mile and a half to the mall, find the most similar shirt in the entire commercial compound, and sprint back through the front door just as you’re putting a 5 p.m. pot of coffee on. I try to make up a story to cover my tracks and excuse the sweat patches on my back, but I’m not a very good liar and it’s obvious that my afternoon was lived out in the Marx Brothers Dimension. I take a quick shower—we’re already a bit late leaving—and unpack the shirt from its cardboard, shocked at how many little needles a shirt somehow needs to be considered sellable. I’m flustered and stressed, and you’re patient about it. We finally get going—it takes me half an hour to clean up all of Spaceman’s territorial marking—and drive the hour drive north to the dinner. Turns out we were off by a day and it’s not until tomorrow. I’m feeling incredibly fatigued by the whole thing. We stop to get gas on the way back. You’re wearing my jacket—it’s cold and you didn’t bring your own—and find that the pockets are full of quarters I had forgotten about during my search. I mean, really…who would look in their jacket pocket for change? You buy us two cups of crappy/awesome/revitalizing gas station coffee, the only kind I actually like, and we decide to stay in a hotel in the city until tomorrow. Because driving is rarely the best way to spend a night. 7. After hearing Nic and I discuss the virtues and glories of them for what begins to feel like days on end, you decide it’s time to watch a zombie movie. We start with a funny one, just to ease you into it. But after the third decapitation (and fourth graphic disemboweling), you learn that you’re a bit 24
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more squeamish than you thought. However, you sit through it anyway because you think I might be disappointed with your newly-discovered distaste. “I really liked it,” you say when it’s over. When I ask you your favorite part, you gag and dry heave a little bit. I feel awful. We nurse you back to emotional stability with the first half of Baby Mama before you decide that you’d rather watch Ratatouille, a movie I’ve heard good things about, purchased, and still don’t know how to spell. You finally smile at the combination of its opening credits and the chocolate peanut butter ice cream I got for you. When we finally fall asleep, you don’t stir once. I’m relieved. 8. Your phone rings. “Be ready in ten minutes,” I say, before you can even say hello. “We’re going to tonight’s Jazz game. They’re playing Cleveland. Shaq in the HOOOOOOOOOOOOOUSE.” Click. I hang up before you can counter the invitation—nay, demand—with the three hours of reading you have to do. However, your priorities are straight and you’re ready and waiting. We get there, buy two hot dogs, two Cokes, and a massive container of cotton candy that may or may not be old enough to vote. My repressed (and bizarrely existent) knowledge of the intricacies of basketball rears its head and I’m relieved that I know about one thing (besides scotch) that’s actually sort of, you know…manly. We’re sitting next to two obnoxious Cavaliers fans that keep yelling vulgar things loud enough for Jerry Sloan to hear courtside. I ask them—politely—to keep it down, and they decide to focus their taunting on me. At the end of the third quarter, the Jazz are down fifteen points and it looks like all is lost. Our obnoxious neighbors are hooting and hollering, trying to emasculate me. Cleveland slowly loses their lead, and the Jazz chip away to a pair of foul shots that can call it a win, lose, or draw. Clouds of f-words muddled by drunken Duchesne accents waft over our ears. “The Jazz are so gay,” one of them says. “And I bet that skinny fella there paid that pretty girl to come with him to this. He’s all fancy. Probably a queer.” Boozer takes his final shot, which goes in with a swoosh. Jazz win, crowd goes wild. “Screw the Jazz,” they say. “And screw that stupid asshole,” the other says, pointing at me. “Both of them suck.” I go from looking right at them to grabbing you and pulling you in for a kiss intense enough to make most basketball fans uncomfortable. When finished, we pull away and you’ve got a smile on your face that would be outlawed in some states. I look back at them and, your head on my chest as 25
a year in the wilderness
you recatch the breath stolen by my spontaneity, point to the chandelier of big screens hovering above the court. “Check the scoreboard,” I tell them. “Then we’ll talk about who sucks.” 9. We’re driving to Seattle. Through the Oregon mountain pass, we get caught in a snowstorm. It’s too scary to drive any more. We pull over and plug the electric blanket into the cigarette lighter with the adapter I brought. We watch three episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and I get confused about the characters’ names. We traverse the storm and find a mini mart where we buy a frozen pizza, which we cook on the engine block (yes, it really does work). It’s cold in the car, but we manage to keep warm. We’re resourceful like that. 10. I want to make you dinner. I flip through my mental recipe book and decide on jambalaya—something unique, flavorful, and deceptively simple to make. I buy everything I need: rice, oil, shrimp, red peppers, carrots, an onion, etc. While I’m preparing it in the kitchen, doing my damndest to make an impressive meal that’ll make me all the more irresistible, you’re in the living room, organizing the random papers on my desk into something resembling a sensible pile, belting “Does Your Mother Know?” at the top of your beautiful lungs. Fittingly, I decide to take what I can only think to call a chicka-chance chance and throw some ground chipotle pepper into the pot for spice. But I throw in too much. You keep trying to eat it but it’s too intense. I add soy sauce, sugar, lime juice—nothing’s making it palatable. You’re trying so hard to enjoy it, and you’re being so sweet about how much you don’t like it, so we finally find you a new bowl and drown two cups of Cinnamon Life in 1 percent milk. You eat heartily. We sit comfortably on a couch I didn’t know I needed until you materialized. We talk about everything all night long, draw lines, hypothesize about the future. And then I crawl into your arms and feel your Egyptian cotton skin on my face and it all comes tumbling down.
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adolescence
pamela sundell
M
om stopped in front of the training bras and delicately lifted the hanger, putting a pink one up to my chest. She sized me up right there in the middle of the aisle. I stood stock still, hoping that by doing so fewer people would notice me. I would have clawed my way through the carpet and all the way to China, if not for getting my new jeans. As Mom browsed through the colors, my six-year-old brother, who was sprawled out on the metal bars underneath the basket on the cart next to the milk, scrunched his face up and then smirked at me. My littlest sister who was in the cart yelled for candy. No, screamed for candy. Mom ignored us all and threw her four selections, three white and one pink on top of the Oreos and pushed on. And just like that, on the third day of summer vacation, without a word escaping my lips, I slipped into adolescence. Had I known what lay ahead, I might have clawed my way to China.
27
Here lies
Loran cook
S
nigger. “It was driving to Salt Lake from Orem when I first saw the billboard asking for help locating Anibel Packer or her abductor that had me giggling on and off for the rest of the day. “When people asked what was so funny, I lied. It’s always the truth that gets you in trouble. It’s the actual killing that might get you in more—hah hah hah, if there’s a body. Alas, in Anibel Packer’s case, there is not the remotest trace of such a thing. Don’t get me wrong, heh, I had nothing to do with it—maybe one of the others did chhhheh hah hah hah hah. At least three of them are capable. All I know is that I was possibly one of the last people, he he he, to see Anibel alive.” Lila. “So, when do you remember this happening for the first time?” “When we were six-years-old.” “Can you tell me what happened?” “Of course we can, although, if it was up to ‘her,’ we’d be a quivering mess. That’s why ‘we’ are here.” “And for the record, you are?” “Lila.” “So, Lila, what happened?” “She fractured. Think of us as a mirror. The teenage boy next door took her to the woods nearby and—actually, there are several different terms for what he did to her. Horrific things.” “You’re smiling as you say this. Do you find it funny?” “Of course not. Who do you think we are?” “That’s the point of these sessions.” “The ‘point’ is, she suffered things that no six-year-old should have to
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suffer. Hence, fracture. Not once, but twice. Two fractures in that first day. A coping mechanism. After the ordeal, he informed her that if she told anyone about the attack there would be serious consequences. Her parents’ and brothers’ heads would be cut off and tied to each of her appendages. Mmmmmm. Then she would be his forever. The attack and threat caused Shadow and Claudia. You’re shocked, aren’t you?” “It’s a lot to take, when told with such callous humor.” “If she could hear this now.” “Did you hear me?” “We’re sure it would cause her to have another episode.” “Lila, listen to me.” “That’s why we are here. We can tell it like it is.” “How do you mean?” “If Shadow is the keeper of tears, we are the keeper of pain.” “Tell me more.” “You’re a one, aren’t you?” “I don’t understand.” “Exactly. ‘A one.’ You can never truly understand, but to help you out just this once, we’ll explain. We facilitate the other’s ability to function by taking their pain. The same way that Shadow does the tears and sorrow.” “Tell me about the others.” “That’s not our place.” “Whose place is it?” “You want Rick or Fox. Possibly Cassidy, but she’s young and insufferable most of the time.” “Why?” “She’s such a good little girl, what you might call chipper. How I’d like to show her a thing or…ah, we see what you just did. We’re not speaking anymore.” Fox. “You know it’s not always that two parties in a conflict take the roles of truth teller and liar. It could be that both are telling the truth, that both parties are seeing the same event or situation from their own perspective. Differing perspectives, but not lies. Either that, or both parties are flat-out lying. “Our favorite situation is when we are the liars. We come off as the neutral party. We tell them that all they say is confidential and at any mo29
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ment they feel uncomfortable, or that this process is not working for them, they can withdraw. They never do. That’s what the drugs are for. Heh heh. Then we can hand them over to Dagon. That’s when it gets interesting.” Butterfly. “There ‘as to be right and wrong, right? See, right there we ‘ave a right or wrong, unless you’re one of those philosophical types who believe there is no wrong. I ‘ate those types. Of course there is wrong. Murder, theft, rape, racism, murder. ‘Ism’s of all kinds, child abuse, advertisin’, murder, misinterpretation of women in media, apathy, child pornography, terrorism, murder, VH1 reality shows, oppression, ‘omosexuality, murder, bullyin’, murder…Shadow, where are ya? Murder. Come out please, come out. Iss all wrong, murder, come out. Please.” Sharmane. “Sharmane, it’s good to see you.” “Oh doctor, we feel it’s been so long. After we missed you last session, terrible things have happened.” “I’m sorry to hear that. Take a seat.” “Thank you. We have a confession.” “Okay, let’s get comfortable and then you can tell me about it.” “I stopped taking my medication.” “I see, tell me…” “It was Cassidy. She told me the drugs are bad. She said good drugs don’t inhibit our senses and that the bad drugs are chaining her down. She would like pot, but that is illegal and Claudia won’t allow any of us to use recreational drugs.” “What does Claudia say about your medication?” “She says lesser of two evils. She says two wrongs don’t make a right. She says I need to start making the right choices or she will for us all.” “She sounds like she has all of your best interests at heart.” “She can’t, though. Snigger, Lila, and Cassidy would not allow it.” “Why not?” “They think Claudia is too dominant already. Cassidy says Claudia is a Communist and will bring us all down.” “Tell me more.” “The two of them hate each other. Almost as much as they hated James, my old boyfriend, who left us. Claudia likes wearing James’ clothes, 30
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especially his white shirts. Cassidy prefers flowery dresses. Claudia would retaliate by wearing James’ or any mens’ boxer shorts, and then Cassidy would hide all our bras. We don’t think James could cope with us all. He left without saying a word. He left without saying goodbye and he left most of his things. It wasn’t a good week. Shadow had us in the bath for hours on end.” “Tell me about James.” “What’s there to say? He left us. We thought we were happy. We thought he was the one. We thought he would love us till the end of time. Oh no. What did we do?” “Sharmane, it’s okay. It’s okay to cry.” “NO IT’S NOT. THAT’S NOT MY JOB—THAT’S SHADOW’S.” “Take a deep breath, remember? Count to ten and let’s start again. Would you like a glass of water?” “We don’t want a glass of water, you insipid little woman. Where are we? What is the time?” “Sharmane?” “Dammit, if only I could kill that Cassidy. I would do it without a second thought.” “What is wrong?” “If you really want to know, I’m not wearing a bra. Do you know what it’s like to suddenly realize you are not wearing anything to support an above-average sized chest? From the looks of you, you don’t. Where’s the exit? We’re leaving.” Rick. “I know. I know about the Packer girl. He let me have a peek. Right in the middle, I was there and then he shut me away. I saw her. Anibel Packer. Now I know what Snigger was laughing about. I guess he got a peek too. Packer can’t be the first, for Snigger to act that way. “You see, when one of us alters has control, the others don’t always cease to exist. Some of us lurk around the peripheral mind, some of us in the unconscious and subconscious. Some of us never go away all the time. We might be co-hosting the primary or we might just be passengers, seeing all that the main in-control identity does, whatever they do. “None of us likes co-hosting; when one of us hates something and another loves it, say, strawberry ice cream, it causes us to come off as weird in front of others. Butterfly loves the stuff, but Fox will spit it out. There’s a constant struggle, even for everyday activities and situations. It’s never 31
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a good time when three or four of us are in control. Chaos ensues and then we end up handing over to Shadow for a while. Except when he takes control. Then we know it’s a bad time. That’s what happened this time. I remember being in co-control with Fox, and Lila talking to this sweet girl Anibel at the renaissance fair, and then…we were bumped out. Then he showed me Anibel. Oh, the sounds she was making. “It was horrible. Her body was on fire and he was consuming the ashes and floating lumps of her charring body. I could taste her. My mouth hot, uncomfortable, like eating a lump of meat straight from the frying pan. He was licking our fingers, trying not to let a single bit of her go to waste. “If I tell or go to the police, I’ll be locked away. Shadow would be right at home. Right in her element. I guess when you’re the keeper of tears, that’s the best environment for our survival. If she ever went away, that would be the end of us all. Without her we’d all die. “Sometimes we feel that might be the best for us. We’re so weary of waking up sore and soiled in dirty motel rooms with naked strangers, after Lila’s little trips. We hate the taste of burnt flesh. We can’t tell a soul. Cos it would just be us alone in whatever cell we end up in.” Cassidy. “See, this is like where me and the ice cow actually agreed on somethin’. James. What a loser. Man he was like the biggest douche bag ever to come into our lives. He would come in all like, ‘Yo Shar, you ready ta roll, baby? I gots you like some awesome gifts and crap.’ Whatta wad. Claudia and I hated him calling us ‘Shar.’ See? Agreed on something. “Man we hated him. So this time, Snigger was in control and we were like, half in an out, both me and Claudia, and Snigger started laughin’ his ass off when James starts loadin’ the dishwasher. We know what James wanted when he started doin’ the chores for us. He wanted alone time, if you know what I mean. Snigger was wonderin’ what it was like, but he’s a total homophobe. He usually clears right out. That’s when Fox gets control and Lila arrives. Man, she’s another we both hate. She’s into a lot of bad stuff. I’ve woken up in dirty rooms I’ve never been to before with a mutha of a headache and my crotch feels like…I don’t even wanna think about what she put us through. “Anyways, Fox is in control and James starts snugglin’ and playin’ with our hair. He knew we liked that. So Fox says, ‘James, wanna drink?’ James goes, ‘I want something.’ We get up and go to the bedroom where Fox 32
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opens this small box in our closet that neither me or Claudia ever knew about. It’s like purple velvet inside and he pulls out this little baggy of powder. Claudia is goin’ ape as she really hates recreational drugs. I just think she needs one good power snort of the white stuff myself, but this baggie doesn’t look like the usual fix. Fox empties the contents into a bottle of Miller Light, which James is always drinkin’ and takes it out to him, who’s already down to his Ys. Fox chuckles and James takes it for the come-on. ‘Come ‘ere, baby, I gots something for ya.’ I did say total douche, didn’t I? He hands James the bottle and James downs like the whole thing. Some stupid pre-sex ritual of some sort. I wonder how many of these instances Fox has seen. Fox burps and we get heartburn real quick. I hate it when that happens. Feels like I wanna throw up from some acid reflex or something. Guess it must be James’ doin’. I really don’t wanna see him naked again. Then Fox says something weird. ‘Girls, I’m afraid we all gotta make way for the boss.’ Neither me nor Claudia knows what the hell he’s talking about and then…” Dagon. “Sharmane, it’s good to see you.” “Thank you, and thank you for seeing me so late. I hope your bosses don’t mind you being here so late.” “Don’t worry. I am the boss here. My employees went home already.” “I’m sorry.” “Oh, it really is okay. I stay late all the time.” “I’m sorry for bothering you. I know I can’t be helped.” “Why do you say that?” “The whole point of these sessions is to be honest with myself and get to know these alters. As you said yourself, honesty breeds recovery. All I can do is identify the alters and learn why each of them came. Why each of them exist.” “So what changed?” “Some of them lie.” “Tell me why you believe this.” “I found a box I thought I had lost a long time ago.” “What’s in the box?” “Small sealed envelopes. Each one has a catharsis effect. If I want to get something off my chest, if I feel I can’t cope, I would write it on a piece of paper, put it in a small envelope, seal it, write my name on it, and post it 33
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into the slot in the top of the box. I forgot about the box, but yesterday I found it. It was full.” “You must have done a lot of writing.” “You don’t understand. My name is only on about twenty of them. I took them all out and counted them. There are thirty-seven different names. I only know nine of the names.” “Thirty-seven names?” “Yes, I opened some of them. Names of people, times, events, situations I have no recollection of. Some of these alters hate my family. Some of them resent them for letting bad things happen to me. A lot of these alters refer to two dominant ones: Lila and Dagon.” “I think I met Lila last time you were here.” “Lila?” “Yes.” “I only found out about her today. She…she’s a whore, an abomination. I’ve had two abortions that I never knew about. I’ve been in bad situations because of her. I could have AIDS. I could be someone’s sex slave somewhere. She wrote detailed accounts of her escapades and posted them in the box. She likes violent twisted sexual encounters. Oh mommy, she… she likes…” “Sharmane?” “She likes sex with other women…” “Listen to me, Sharmane…” “Auto-erotic asphyxiation, and being hit by men. She’s a monster.” “Please calm down, try…” “She wants to get pregnant…and, and, give the baby to a pedophile she knows…” “SHARMANE!” “SHE’S A MONSTER!” “STOP THIS! Sharmane, Are you okay? Answer me.” “Oh. Are you a head doctor?” “Excuse me?” “A doctor concerned with the inner workings of the mind.” “Yes, I’m a psychologist.” “A female at that. In my time they called you witches.” “Who are you?” “Dagon. You want to hear something funny?” “Let me talk to Sharmane.” 34
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“The last thing Sharmane needs is a head witch. I hear you’ve been told some secrets. Important secrets.” “Sharmane, answer me.” “Anibel Packer. She’s one of those D&D types. You know, wears braided pigtails whatever her age, and never wears make-up unless it involves Klingon foreheads or Vulcan ears. Wears medieval dresses and fanny packs, and affects faux-ye-olde British accents. I know I’ve found the right one when she introduces herself as Arwen. You know, there’s an unbelievably large amount of these women running around North America, and despite the access I have to any woman I want, these Arwens are my favorite. A kind of throwback reminder of that day and age when I was born.” “Why are you telling me this?” “I consumed her. Just as I consumed James and a whole string of others, including many of the down-and-outs Fox and Lila prepare for me. I can’t let you interfere.” “What are you talking about?” “Here it comes. I feel a little heartburn.” “Stay back.” “Or what? You’ll call the police? You won’t reach a phone.” “Sharmane, stop this.” “As I said, Sharmane is gone for now, but here lies the future ashes of…What was your name again? Sorry, I’ve a terrible memory.”
35
True colors or how i found out my brother was a hitman
I
alicia vannoy call
watched the numbers count backwards as the elevator descended from the top floor. I held my breath. When a little ding! signaled the opening of the double doors, I saw it was empty and stepped aboard with an exhalation of relief. I watched my reflection in the burnished metal of the doors and grimaced a little. It was strange to feel so differently about the elevator now. I used to look forward to who might be behind those doors; now I seriously considered the stairs to get from my tenth floor apartment down to the lobby. When the doors opened again, I wished that I had taken the stairs, because there he was, waiting to enter the elevator just as I stepped off. “Hi,” I said, with as bright a smile as I could manage. Simon didn’t reply. He walked silently past me as he studied something obviously fascinating on his cell phone, his motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm. I turned back toward him as the doors slid shut between us, feeling the familiar acceleration of my heart. He never even looked up. My phone rang in the cab. “Hey, Gorgeous,” my kid brother Royce greeted me after I’d dug my phone out of the Prada bag he had given me for my one year anniversary in New York. Royce and I had always been close. With no other siblings to compete and a father who always seemed to lose his battle with the bottle, we were best friends through the formative years and all the years beyond. After high school he had left me behind in Arizona to move to the East Coast. I attended art school while he pursued a series of undisclosed odd jobs in New York. He lived there for several years before I finally fell to his incessant pleas that I come and try it for myself. “NYU.’s got a great art program. You could work on your MFA,” he had gushed to lure me. So I packed my summer clothes (I didn’t even own an umbrella), stacks of canvasses, hundreds of books and traveled two thousand miles to the Big Apple. In spite of all the horror stories I’d heard about
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neurotic New Yorkers and record crime rates, I’d begun to love life here. “Hey,” I sighed. “What’s up?” “Just makin’ sure we’re still on for lunch tomorrow.” “Yep,” I answered. “Okay,” said Royce. “I’ll meet you at your place around ten. “Sure,” I told him. He paused. “Anything wrong?” “Not really,” I said. “Uh huh,” he grunted, unconvinced. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” “It’s like he doesn’t even see me!” I turned away from the floor-toceiling windows that made up an entire outer wall of my apartment. I loved this apartment, which Royce had arranged for when he heard I really was coming to New York. He lounged in my favorite armchair, a streamlined piece of art deco in vibrant orange. I was still surprised by his appearance every time I saw him, frozen as he was in my mind’s eye wearing the Star Wars T-shirts and Old Navy jeans that were the uniform of his teenage years. He was dressed to kill—a phrase that now has a distinctly different connotation—in one of his tailored Armani suits, a white peony in the lapel. His curly black hair, kept long and shaggy back in the desert, was sheared and slicked back and it glistened as he turned his head to watch me. He was paying close attention to every word I said. Royce leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. I stopped to look at him once I realized that I had worn a track in the shag carpet. “How long has he been acting this way?” he wanted to know, his voice slightly inflected with the New York accent that had started to rub off on him. “A few weeks,” I said, “maybe longer.” I didn’t admit that I knew precisely how long it had been: three weeks and four days. Royce rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “And he doesn’t say anything to you, even in passing? He doesn’t even look at you?” I shook my head. “And how long were you dating before he started acting this way?” “Eight months.” “Was it serious?” “I hoped it would be,” I answered honestly, somewhat abashed. I had never said it out loud. I wanted to ask Royce if he really felt it necessary to put forward these kinds of questions. I mean, my relationship with this guy 37
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hadn’t been a secret. It was just kind of embarrassing to admit that I had wanted more than I had gotten, and that I had been totally burned in such a thorough way. Oh well, that’s what I get for dating a native New Yorker. “And this was totally out of the blue…” “Yes,” I said. “I just don’t understand it at all. I mean, if he met someone else, or felt uncomfortable expanding our relationship further, or just needed space, why didn’t he just say something? I don’t get it.” “So,” Royce said finally, “would you say this guy hurt you?” I nodded and shrugged after giving it a moment’s thought. Royce pushed out his lips, exhaled, and stood up. He put his head to one side, as if a little crick in his neck needed to be popped. He buttoned his suit coat and lifted his eyebrows. “Let’s go for a walk, pay him a visit. Maybe get a cup of coffee or something.” I raised my eyebrows in return and said, “Okay.” Maybe I should have asked for a little more specificity then. What kind of visit? I could have asked. A we’re-all-adults-here-clear-the-air kind of visit? Or something a little more thought-provoking? I could have said, but didn’t. Honestly, I really had no idea the visit would be more like a series of hockey fouls than a quiet acquisition of emotional closure over a smooth double latte. We went into the hall and caught the elevator to the top floor. I led the way to the right door and Royce rang the bell. When the door opened, we all stood there for a moment in silence. Simon looked at Royce and then at me in undisguised surprise. “Hi,” I said. “Um… Hi?” he replied in a questioning voice as his eyes flicked back to Royce. “How ya doin’?” said Royce. He put one large hand out and brushed past Simon. “Do you mind if we come in?” Simon and I exchanged a look as I trailed after Royce into Simon’s penthouse. We stood in the entryway and Royce looked around curiously, evidently waiting for Simon to answer, but with an expression that said he couldn’t care less what the answer would be. “I guess not.” Simon shut the door and put his hands in his pockets. “So,” Royce took a few steps along the built-in bookcases that lined the thirty-foot wall near which we stood. He examined the pieces in Simon’s collection, his back to us. “What’s your problem?” he said at last. Simon wrinkled his forehead momentarily. “Excuse me?” 38
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Royce turned toward us. He held up one hand in a small gesture for Simon to come closer. Simon humored him by taking two minuscule steps in his direction. I watched with detached interest, wondering what Royce would say. He leaned his head down slightly, and looked at Simon from under his brow and said quietly, “Why are you disrespecting my sister?” Simon didn’t answer as Royce stepped toward him, but to his credit he didn’t step back either. Royce spoke deliberately as he moved in a semicircle around Simon so that he finally stood between Simon and the door. “You take my sister to dinner. This is alright. You take her to movies, shows on the Broadway, gallery openings. This is alright. You have her over to your place, you treat her nice. This is alright. You have a relationship with my sister. She falls in love with you. This is alright.” At this point, Royce stepped forward, so close that Simon was obliged to step back. He continued. “You suddenly stop talking to my sister, stop calling. You don’t answer messages. You pretend like you can’t see her when you pass her in the hall. You offer no explanation. This is not alright.” He stared at Simon. “So, I’ll ask you again: Why are you disrespecting my sister?” Simon glanced in my direction and I shrugged minutely as if to say don’t look at me…. “Oh sure,” Royce’s eyes glinted. “Look at her now. All those weeks, you had time. Time to look up, to offer apologies, to make amends—time to tell her that it’s not her, it’s you—time to make some sort of explanation as to why you would let her get away. But no, you didn’t manage your time well. You disappeared, ignored her, decided she wasn’t worth your time.” Royce shook his head. “That’s just bad form, Simon.” He clicked his tongue, pressed his lips into a thin line, and sighed. “Time’s up.” At which point he proceeded to bury his right fist in Simon’s face. Simon fell to the floor, a look of complete astonishment in his eyes. The look of astonishment seemed to glaze over a bit, however, as Royce grabbed him firmly by the shirt with his left hand and continued to punch him vigorously in the face with his right. This lasted what seemed a good thirty seconds. It could have been as little as ten, but to Simon I’m sure it felt a tad longer. I watched with raised eyebrows, thinking something along the lines of he probably deserves this. 39
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Finally Royce released him. He stood and pulled a monogrammed handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his hands. He didn’t show any outward signs of physical exertion. Simon, on the other hand, was a little worse for wear. He was now sporting a broken nose, eyes that were quickly swelling shut and looked to be absent several teeth. Royce put the handkerchief back in his pocket, straightened his coat and tugged at the cuffs of his shirt deliberately, one at a time. He walked again along the book shelves, not looking back at Simon sprawled on the floor. He considered the myriad of books, trinkets, and objects before him. He finally decided on a solid glass photo block, a gift from one of the galleries that displayed Simon’s work. Royce turned back as he palmed and hefted it. “This is nice,” he said, indicating the block. “So…” He walked back to stand over Simon. “What do you have to say for yourself ?” The best Simon could do was to gurgle faintly, at which he made an admirable attempt. To Royce though, it appeared to be less than admirable, for he said, “That’s not good enough,” and efficiently bludgeoned Simon with a single blow. It sounded like a dead-on face shot in a snowball fight crossed with a watermelon splattering on hot concrete. We both looked down at the body. “Well,” said Royce. “I guess that’s that.” He pulled out his handkerchief again and wiped his hands. “Um,” I held up one finger and cocked my head to one side. “Don’t you think that people are going to find out about this?” For some reason, I didn’t say, Dude, you just killed my boyfriend. I’m still not sure why. I’ll tell you when I work it out. Royce frowned dismissively. “Nah, I don’t think it’ll be a problem. Did you want to have lunch at Christie’s?” I folded my arms and looked at him. “Alright,” he said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll take care of it now.” Based on the number of questions I had withheld up to this point, I’m sure you might wonder why I didn’t say, What do you mean,“take care of it”? But really, I figured that I would find out soon enough, and I didn’t want to be redundant by asking questions that would only be answered in a matter of time. Besides, he was the one with the plan, “taking care of it” and all. I was just an innocent bystander…standing innocently by…in a murderenabling sort of way. 40
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He pulled the body into the main room and rolled it up in the expensive Oriental rug. He lifted the bundle onto his shoulder and said, “Let’s go for a walk.” After the way our last walk had finished, I was a little curious as to where this one would end up. We went into the hall and onto the elevator. Unlike every other time I’d neared the elevator in the last month, I didn’t feel the familiar butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation. I consider this a good thing. “You might want to get your purse,” Royce told me as we stood in the elevator. We got off briefly so that I could run into my apartment and grab my bag. Back on the elevator, two other tenants joined us. Royce flashed his brilliant smile and asked after their Yorkshire Terriers. The little dogs, dressed in their best autumn jackets, sat docilely on their leads, waiting to take their walk around the block. The tenants wondered why we didn’t have the superintendent come in to haul out an old rug. Royce told them we were going to have the colors matched for some redecorating. They nodded knowingly and offered advice on hanging drapes. They soon laughed riotously at his story about the drunken interior designer who attempted to seduce him over swatches of brocade. Royce was well-known in my building. He visited often and shared his natural charisma with whichever lucky tenant happened to cross our path. It’s not that he ingratiated himself; he just seemed to relate to everyone. He seemed to be knowledgeable in any topic of conversation any human being could ever think of to discuss. I never asked him how he acquired all of this knowledge. I figured he was just observant and clever. I never asked him about his money either, and he never volunteered any information. He never talked about his work. When home for the holidays he would tell our parents, “My investments are doing well,” or, “My man did some great portfolio planning this quarter.” I suppose the idea that he might break kneecaps for the Italian mob, work as a hitter for the Russian mafia, or cook the books for the local boss of some extremely organized crime syndicate didn’t occur to us. As we stepped off of the elevator, smiling our goodbyes to the dog owners, Royce hoisted the rug a little higher on his shoulder. The doorman saw us coming and had the valet bring Royce’s car around. He balanced the rolled-up rug on one shoulder and threw open the back hatch of his hybrid SUV with the other hand. He tossed the body inside, tipped the valet, and turned to me. “C’mon, let’s go for a ride.” 41
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I settled into the passenger seat. “Where are we going?” “Ottawa,” he said, carefully checking the traffic over his shoulder before pulling away from the curb. Driving in New York can be a killer. I’d always loved road trips with Royce. Of course, this was the first road trip with a corpse stashed in the back, but we didn’t let that put a damper on our day. We listened to music, ate junk food, and talked nostalgically about our childhood in good ol’ Tempe, Arizona. We were delayed only momentarily at the US/Canadian border before Royce’s cavalier reply of “floor coverings” to their question of “What’s in the back?” and a quick donation of five thousand dollars had us on our way again. We stopped outside Ottawa, in a remote portion of rather dense forest. He backed up to a clearing that was accessible only by a dirt road. He pulled out the body, still wrapped in the lovely rug, now surely ruined by the stains of set-in blood and assorted gore. I wondered briefly about professional carpet restoration as I watched Royce work, and then abandoned the idea. I supposed that it would be hard to explain the sudden addition of Simon’s expensive rug to my home furnishings with the man himself nowhere to be found. Oh no, Officer, I haven’t seen him. Oh yes, Officer, this is his rug. He gave it to me just after breaking my heart and just before vanishing under extremely mysterious circumstances. Royce dropped the body to the ground and returned to the vehicle for a gas can. He doused the body, rug and all (shameful, really) with the contents and lit a match, standing well back to start the blaze. He then asked me to turn around and proceeded to strip off all of his clothes, adding them to the fire. He had another set of clothes—exactly the same as the ones now burning along with the deceased—that he changed into before I was allowed to turn back around to look at him. We regarded the fire for a couple of minutes, Royce with a vaguely disconnected expression. He cleared his throat, and I thought he might say something to mark Simon’s passing. It seemed only fitting, considering the formal ambiance brought on by a makeshift funeral pyre. “Let’s get some dinner,” he said brightly. We drove into town and dined at the best restaurant we could find. It was remarkable how familiar he seemed to be with the city. I ate lobster bisque heartily and laughed when he flirted audaciously with our server, a cute girl who asked how long we had been married. After dessert, as I pondered on my strangely present appetite, he checked his watch. 42
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“We’d better get a hotel,” he said. We stayed at the Brookstreet, one of the nicer places in Ottawa, and spent the night in exploration of the indoor pool, perusal of the gift shop, rental of 80s movies, and development of our rusty fort-building skills. We ordered room service late in the morning: fresh fruit, Belgian waffles, crepes, poached eggs, and piles of bacon, all served on silver platters and enjoyed under a fort ceiling of bed sheets. I asked him once about loose ends. “What about his apartment?” I bit into a strawberry. He wiped his mouth after a swallow of orange juice. “Don’t worry about it. My guys will handle everything.” “What kinds of guys are these?” He waved one hand dismissively. “The kinds of guys who have my back, no matter what.” He chewed on bacon. “Stop worrying, Sis. These guys are solid. We’ve done lots of jobs together.” I didn’t ask what kind of jobs he meant; it seemed kind of a ridiculous question at this point. “We’d better get back,” Royce suggested finally. We took our souvenirs and complimentary terrycloth robes and drove back out to where we’d left Simon to smolder the night before. There wasn’t much left—parts of a charred skeleton, nothing really of Royce’s clothes, or even the rug. We contemplated the remains for a few minutes. At length, Royce brushed his hands together and said with a tone of finality, “Well, that oughta do it.” I stared at him incredulously, “Don’t you think they’ll be able to identify him by the dental records?” He chuckled. “Sis, no one is ever going to find him here.” Once again I folded my arms. Maybe it was silly of me to question the expert, but I had watched CSI: NY. “Alright, alright…” Pulling a new handkerchief out of his pocket, he reached down to rip away Simon’s jaw from the rest of the skull. He put the bone, along with what was left of the teeth, into his pocket. “Shall we?” I shrugged. “Sure.” I didn’t say, Looks like you’ve done this sort of thing before. Once again, I felt it would be kind of redundant to point out the obvious. We got back to the Upper East Side on a Sunday evening. Royce retrieved his briefcase from my apartment, forgotten in the excitement of 43
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disposing of the stiff. I rode back down with him to the lobby, and he laughingly recalled the last conversation we’d conducted in this elevator with a couple of unknowing tenants and a dead body. While we waited for a valet to bring his car around, Royce hugged me, “I had a really great time with you this weekend. We should do it again soon.” I wondered if he meant the road trip or the murder. He jumped off the curb, caught the keys from the valet, passed him a tip, and looked back at me before getting behind the wheel. “Call me Wednesday.” He held his thumb and little finger out in the shape of a phone on the side of his head. “We’ll do lunch!”
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hope
joseph byington First Place Prose
I
hate Jack Frost. Every day he steals my sleep. Today is no different. He’s either a malicious bastard or an angry, drunk bastard. Either way. His biting touch pierced the nice dream I was having of kicking John Gosselin in the shin. I don’t know why it was the shin. In real life it would have been the face. My nose hairs have been braided by glacial pixies, friends of Jack. Thousands of needles attack my uncovered feet. Maybe it’s not needles. Maybe it’s icicles. Either way. The drool covering the left side of my face and most of my pillow is frosted. I don’t usually drool. I hope it wasn’t the Gosselin dream. I can hear my brother Michael coughing next to me, but I can’t feel it. We must have gotten a new bed in the middle of the night, one of those Tempurpedic ones from the TV. Or my body is completely numb again. But my feet are still being attacked by whatever is attacking them, so I can’t be numb. Either way. Jack hates my little brother even more than he does me. Strange. Most people love him and avoid me. The snow-intensified light glides through our once-fashionable wood window. I think it used to be a sign of achievement, a gaudy adornment that furthered one’s social standing. That’s what my sister says anyway. She’s in college. To me, it’s just an old and creaky window that never fully closes. Either way. I turn over and look at my brother. The light accentuates his small frame. His head rests on the pillow in a way that covers both of his ears and emancipates him from the noise of the world. He often sleeps so. The yellow flannel pillowcase is a continuation of his sallow, anemic skin. There is no restfulness in Michael’s sleep; his lips quiver imploringly like he’s pleading with the monsters of his subconscious for mercy, thick tears spill down his cheeks than freeze over in a continuous cycle, violent coughing fits rack 45
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his body, his breathing is in constant battle with the mucus that relentlessly seeks his demise. I know it’s all natural. I know cystic fibrosis is a physiological monster and not some evil being from the other side. I know that, but I don’t believe it. And there is no room for interpretation. No question. How could something purely biological be so cruel? Michael’s illness is the result of something hateful, something resentful. They say it’s cystic fibrosis. But there’s something more. I swear there is something more. And no, my mind isn’t just getting carried away again. I may have a tendency to lose myself in daydreams, but I’m not completely out of touch with reality. Not where my brother is concerned, anyway. My father says I need to be more pragmatic. He’s a plumber. He likes to use big words he doesn’t really understand. It makes him feel important. I guess that’s his way of escaping reality. Maybe he should be more pragmatic. My mother is dead. She died three years ago on my twelfth birthday. I miss her. Today’s our first day back to school after Thanksgiving break. I hate school. It’s one big act—everyone putting on a show, trying to be who they think they’re supposed to be; the daily, life-changing heartbreaks that shatter the souls of adolescent Juliets and elevate the reputations of libertine Casanovas. Worst of all, I have to go back to hiding. I’m a virtuoso at this. I have to be. Football players, prom kings, even band geeks find their masculine identity using me as their springboard. I’m good for a laugh or a push, sometimes a punch to the nose. It’s nice to be needed, right? I shut my alarm clock off before it has a chance to sing. That just isn’t right. I had twenty minutes left. Damn you, Jack Frost. Padding down the hall to the bathroom, my balance is threatened by my ever-numbing feet. The cold wood floor creaks its high-pitched cackle. I think it’s laughing at me. Et tu, floor? I thought we had an understanding. Either way. Our bathroom looks how I feel: random tiles missing, yellow soap scum spray painted across the shower’s wall, a ring of pee obscuring the white porcelain of the toilet bowl. Even the bar of soap is grimy and unkempt, a camouflage of black and white. There’s no window. The light bulb dangling from the bathroom’s ceiling does more to blur my vision than clear it. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and then head downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal that is so stale all the sugar in the world wouldn’t make it edible. My father isn’t too good about shopping. Ramen noodles, macaroni 46
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and cheese, and canned ravioli are the staples of our diet. Every now and then when he has time, he takes Michael and me for pizza. Most teenagers wouldn’t be caught dead out in public with their father and little brother. But I’m not most teenagers. My father was a prizefighter before my brother and I were born. He had an overhand right that made people forget who their mother was, but never quite made it to the top. When I was born my mother made him stop. She never told him to, he just knew. He went from pugilist to plumber without protest. Maybe he is pragmatic. Either way. He lets his guard down, pun definitely intended, on our excursions to Pizza Land, telling us all about his life as a fighter, a life that occurred before I was even a thought. It’s weird to think that your parents existed before you ever came along. That they experienced things that you didn’t share with them, they loved and hurt and dreamed and schemed all without a concept of their future progeny, that they lived without you in their world. Sometimes it fascinates me, sometimes it makes me jealous. Either way. When my father tells his tales, I realize where I got my love of stories from. My heart smiles—I’m not being poetic here either, it literally smiles, taking a break from the perpetual frown that usually plasters it—I get butterflies in my stomach and I sweat, yes sweat, with excitement. It’s not just stories about his fighting career. It’s whatever’s on his mind at the time. Sometimes he tells us the story of how he met my mother. She was a medical student when they met. One night after a particularly bloody fight, she stitched up his eye. “I don’t know why you guys do this to yourselves,” she said. “I don’t know why the other guys do it,” he responded, “but I figure if I keep getting my face mauled, sooner or later I’ll impress some unsuspecting doctor such as yourself. So, what do you think? You impressed?” She was. My mother always loved to laugh. She had a great laugh. Thinking of my mother brings me back to reality. Our house is quiet now without her song. Michael’s cough has replaced it. Or maybe we just never heard it over her laughter. Either way. I wake Michael up for school, get dressed, pick up Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and head to school. It is anything but good to be back at Franklin High School. I walk down the locker-lined corridors on my way to homeroom. The familiar cacophony of shouts, insults, jokes, and jeers accompanies my journey. “Oh look, hey, Aric, nice parachute you’re wearin’ there, my man. 47
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That’s smart. Never know when you’re gonna take a dive!” Do I really need to tell you that this debasement of my jacket is completed with a push that sends me sprawling onto the floor? I jump up, burning inside, looking for my assailant. You’d think I would be used to this by now. I’m not. It doesn’t surprise me anymore, but I’ve yet to accept it. It enrages me every time. My body shakes and my hands beg to be my father’s. I could end their shrieking glee if I had his hands. Their laughter profanes the beauty I found in my mother’s. I don’t know if it was because I thought about her this morning, or if I’m still pissed off at Jack for stealing my sleep, but today it’s just too much. I launch myself at Lance, Mr. All-American, Mr. Homecoming King, Mr. The-World-Is-Mine-Regardless-If-I-Deserve-It-Or-Not. As I crash into his stomach and wrap my arms around him, I feel liberated. I’ve never been in a fight before. I have no idea what I’m doing, and I don’t care. I want to hurt Lance. I want to punish him for the years of abuse, for the collective that he represents. He’ll probably annihilate me, but maybe I’ll get a few good shots in, give him something to think about next time. Either way. I hear him grunt in surprise and we crash to the floor. Somehow I land on top of him. His shocked look frenzies me; I’m a shark smelling blood in the water. Fist flying. Screaming. Enraged Achilles, he is my Hector. He won’t laugh at me anymore, they won’t laugh at me anymore. All this flashes through my mind as I charge Lance. What really happens is that I run straight into a fist. I fall. Hear laughter. Then all is dark. I wake up in the nurse’s office on my back with an ice pack on my face. An ice pack: compliments of your good friend Mr. Frost. Thanks Jack. Ha ha ha. The office is what you would expect it to be. A green linoleum floor with that artificial shine seen only in schools and hospitals; it has a bizarre pattern of diamonds, squares, and snowflakes. I don’t know if the designer was partaking of some of the treats in the medicine cabinet when arranging this configuration, or if it’s another cruel joke of Jack’s. Either way. The walls are, surprise, green and shiny. There are no designs or decorations on them other than a few autographs of past patients the staff has yet to scrub away. I think about rolling over and adding mine but figure I’m already in enough trouble. I close my eyes and think about how the beautiful young nurse will feel bad for me; she’ll tell me how brave I was and that guys like Lance lose all appeal to women after high school. The nurse is not the romantic nymph I imagined her to be. She is an overweight, middle-aged woman with thick glasses and hair shorter than 48
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mine. A thin mustache attempts to hide an unnaturally large mole on the left of her lip. It fails. She smells of Bengay and moves in a way that warrants its use. If she wore her personality, it would be the fall collection of I Enjoy Scaring Children. “Well, keep that icepack on your nose and you’ll be fine,” she growls. “And don’t go picking any more fights with varsity linebackers.” “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll try and remember your sage advice the next time I’m out looking for a rumble.” “Don’t be a smartass. Go over to the principal’s office and keep the ice on.” I stand up and head out the door. I leave the icepack. The principal’s receptionist is from the same school of manners as Oscar the Nurse. “Have a seat, son. Mr. Upton will be with you soon.” She hands me a box of Kleenexes. “Here, try not to bleed on anything.” I sit down and imagine who would win in a death match between my matronly benefactors. The nurse would know more about anatomy and poisons, but Receptionist Friendly would have stronger fingers and hands from hours of typing—the better to choke you with. “You don’t look so hot.” Startled out of my musings, I look up to find an awkward-looking girl smiling at me. She sits down, staring at me with a perplexed yet amused look. “So, what happened? You fall down the stairs or something?” “He picked a fight with our all-state linebacker,” chimes the receptionist, helpful as ever. “Oh, doesn’t look like that worked out so well,” she says. I can’t tell if she’s trying to be funny or if she genuinely thinks the results of my beating could have gone any other way. Either way. I don’t know her. Must be a new student here for registration. She has black hair and light skin—I’d say Snow White-ish if it wasn’t so cliché. Dark eyes are amplified behind thick yet trendy glasses. She wears a mismatched arrangement of colorful and gaudy clothing: purple sweater with a unicorn frolicking in a field, yellow capris with black tights underneath on account of the weather, and a giant red scarf more like a shawl wraps around her slender neck and dangles down to her navel. She wears a Kermit the Frog wristwatch. For a moment I wonder if she is special—it would explain why she is speaking to me in the first place. But then I see she’s holding a copy of Barthelme’s The Dead Father. Who reads postmodernists in high school— besides me, that is? 49
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“You like Barthelme?” I ask. “He’s alright,” she says. “I’m more into Kathy Acker. You?” I pull The Crying of Lot 49 out of my backpack and show it to her. “Pynchon,” I say. “He had it right: The more we know, the more confusing things are.” “I don’t know,” she responds. “Most times when I read, that’s when things make most sense. I don’t think Pynchon or any writer was aiming for confusion, I just think that’s how they processed the world, how they related to it.” This is too surreal: A) I’m having a conversation with someone I’m not related to, B) that someone is a girl, and C) we’re having an intelligent conversation. I look more closely at this girl to make sure she really isn’t handicapped. I think she’s pretty. “What’s your name,” I blurt. My conversation skills are a little unpracticed (unused), and I’m definitely not used to talking to girls (out loud), so I’m a little awkward at this point. “Hope.” “Hope?” “My name. It’s Hope. You asked, remember?” I am a moron! “Yeah, no, I remember. Sorry,” I say, pointing to my swollen face, “I’m having a little bit of a hard time thinking clearly right now.” She giggles. It’s a nice sound. I’m not quite sure how to react to it. I giggle too. Look at us, a couple of giggling school girls. Dammit. “So what’s your name?” she asks. “Aric. Aric with an A.” She seems to muse over that, and there is a silence that is both delicate and pleasant at the same time. I’m desperate for her to respond, but at the same time I’m savoring the moment. I’m afraid that any second now she’s going to discover what a mutant I am and have nothing more to do with me. “Do you know what your name means?” she asks. “It’s Norse. It means ‘forever alone.’ I’m sorry for your name, Aric.” I do know what it means. We did a project in class a few months back to discover the root and meaning of our names. My classmates had a fun time with that one. I was named after my grandfather, so I guess I blame him. “It’s okay,” I say. “I like my name. It fits me. So are you a new student here, Hope?” “Yeah, my family just moved here from Baltimore. Never lived out in the country before. All this space is kind of intimidating, to be honest with you.” 50
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“It’s not so bad,” I offer. “It gives you a nice view of your surroundings.” Nice view of your surroundings? What the hell is wrong with me? That doesn’t even make sense. I sound like a senile old man. “Maybe. It’s all just so different, though. Not just the change in scenery. The people here are different too. Before you came in, I was talking to a guy named Lance. He seemed like a cartoon character or something: the archetypal small-town jock. ‘Oh, I’ve got a restored 57 Corvette, I hold the single game sack record. You should let me show you around. I know everybody; you hang out with me and you’ll be popular in no time at all.’ Are you serious? Do people even talk like that? And who wears a letterman’s jacket anymore?” I think I just fell in love with this girl. She’s beautiful, she loves books, she’s different—she’s not impressed by Lance and his ilk. Oh hell, that probably doesn’t even matter. I’m still me. She probably just thinks… “You seem pretty normal though. A little introverted, but we can work on that. You’ve just got to stop getting your ass kicked, you know? Why are guys always fighting, anyway?” I smile. “I don’t know about the other guys, but I figure if I keep getting my face mauled, sooner or later I’ll impress some unsuspecting new girl such as yourself. So, what do you think? You impressed?” She laughs, and it is a good laugh. Warm.
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POETRY
poetry
You Don’t Remember Your Dreams
Eric Paul Lyman First Place Poetry
“Because I sleep well,” you’d say before these nights of pacing the bedroom to soothe the crawling and itching deep in your calves, so I gave you my dreams for your poems before poetry left you dissatisfied. Two years ago January you wrote, Our daughter in safe, noon-lit fields of wheat. Wild sunflowers, the good china—and you until I am restless. The four a.m. freight blares down the icy tracks, rattling aluminum blinds, waking me, and I long for those fields, the susurrus of wheat. I touch your rounding belly, an old T-shirt of mine stretched over it, damp with night sweats, and listen to you breathe through parted lips, waiting for her to kick. Your leg jerks. And I remember I dreamed of limping with you, our bare feet icebound and frostbitten black, until you found a home for us where ice and blackness steamed, then fled like startled crows, and our feet were whole and warm. And you are like that, finding homes. Headlight glare slides along the wall, over bookshelves and Van Gogh prints— crows over wheat, wild sunflowers —and you, restless.
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poetry
An Old House in Michigan, Born Again
Susannah Woodbury
Air breathing Air humming Air as white noise The curtain drawn over the night The full moon suspended in the black Strings hold up the moon My theory that I can’t prove A reflection of points knobbly things A kind saying, remembered A distant memory A picture-perfect reincarnation of an old house framed Nostalgia for an old house in Michigan That strange blue painting That odd, lovely, bitter smell That old smell Utter perfection in a time gone by. Smooth skin and uncertain caresses The first time is always kinky I enjoyed it, did you? The paint peels from the molded window frame in the bathroom Too inspiring to bother cleaning I’ve never looked out this window
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poetry
never pushed aside the covering I like it that way The blinds are always pulled down straight sturdy-like They’re dirty, too Just too inspiring of a house to clean Would ruin the wonder the magic Leave it untouched it goes with the molding.
57
poetry
Deianeira
See how the skyline works hard in its division. Flightless as I am, you came to me after your labors. After Satan’s guardians stopped their howls, thawed into that dark water you came to the surface, said my collarbones reminded of smooth shards of light which the slaves made in your world. Light is tougher than quartz, you said, even for a god to bend, put my fingers in your mouth. Mouth of hurricanes, cattle, stars. Tongue swift as the Nile. Your father paid his men with mortal women. I long for you here while you are there and so I go to the river where the blue horse gives me poison and the promise of love. See how the gods undermine my laughter— torn skin, wounded by my foolishness you leave me with my children, you leave me as the sun leaves my timely skin for her, eyes of Allelujah. 58
Whitney Mower
poetry
chopped apples
Tamara Stanton
i lost you on the corner of 79th and lexington. misplaced you among the yearning to breathe free. i whistled for you where my ears were floating, and saw the petals flutter red from a second-floor geranium. behind the bananas at banni’s i heard you mention post toasties. you skipped to the tomatoes and tippled a tower of lemons, one almost reaching the door. the scent of wafered cinnamon scooted to my tongue where the carribean meets worth and church, but i glimpsed a cookie wrapper crushed at the gutter grate, and knew there wasn’t enough. i looked for your burnished pennies at penn station, in the gathered applause of the banjo man. there was only echoed graffiti knocking on the hollow tiles. still I took my umbrella as a preface to solidarity, when the sun was spanking the sidewalk. and clothes-pinned my littered-with-salt jeans, on the tilting ladder of the fire escape, waiting for a stiff wind. 59
poetry
Pressure
Anthony Christensen
A break in concrete is a wave through mountains, like feathers of silt carried on past the station. Layered granite presses the soil, its weight chokes like smoke flooding the subway. Say the ground aches, say my thoughts bake to the afternoon’s rhythm our wheels are not the measure, and slick-dressed businessmen press behind me. Here, like so much corner noise, I stand watching the smiling scars and sunshine. They smolder as they speak. They are not a river, far from a cooling wave.
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Third place poetry
poetry
It Started With the Cheeks
Diego Ibañez
Once we were separated, as a serious joke, I snuck into your room and stole your eyes. They were mine and they like me better anyways. The next day you stole my cheeks. It all started with the cheeks—you went too far, woman. You crossed the line! So while you were taking a shower I stole your thighs and just to teach you a lesson, I stole your feet as well. So now I sit in my lair and count your toes over and over and over again. Sometimes I use them for PowerPoint presentations. And as for your thighs? Well, let’s just say that I won’t ever go hungry again. I woke up the next day and my hair was gone. You left a ransom note telling me you would trade my hair for your eyes. But your eyes fit perfectly and they go nicely with your thighs. “No deal!” I screamed into the wind. You must have heard it because that next week was violent. You bribed my touch and you left a picture on my doorstep of you and my stare having an affair at Universal Studios. I stole your laugh and your smile; you tried to do the same, but my braces finally came in handy. I lost the creativity and intelligence I didn’t even know I had. You sent me an angry e-mail with a short story about stealing my personality and my elbows. Then you did just that. I should have seen it coming. I called your wisdom and told it that it had won a three-day vacation to North Carolina. Your wisdom was skeptical, but after I included a lifetime supply of egg sandwiches, it was a piece of cake…so I ate it. You didn’t need to steal my eyebrows—they left on their own. Later they told me that they had always liked the way you plucked them. When I got word that my sense of humor was leaving, I couldn’t take it anymore. I took a long, thoughtful walk around the lake to plan my next move. All night I spoke to my reflection. All night we laughed, all night we cried. That night, with me as you and you as me, I fell in love again.
61
poetry
Workboots At a Bar
“Something is perspectivally suspect.” I’m a little drunkt, Jus’ a bit over the edge, but as a matter of fact, I do know what you mean though—the loss of gravity is—how’d you say— sympt’matic. I’mma say it strait—halfa Russia died in the plague and fuck-a-duck if anyone here could manage a decent reaction to that kinda thing. People scream about things bein’ jus fine these days. The s’blime’s a reason for anger and not art anymore. Or whatever— I don’t fuckin’ know. Look, look, look, look, here’s whatta mean; S’pose you didn’t have an axe anna drink to put yourself into? What would you use? What would you use as a container?
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David Self Newlin
poetry
Something is perspektivlee suspect— Lookin’ at things all wrong and all… Not a plane. A frame. The sorta thing at’ll make you think you’re dyin but on your way to health when you’re dyin’ and on your way to a bone cabinet.
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poetry
O.
Tamara Stanton Second place poetry
I want more than Beloved, Friend to All Try Mindful of slivers, adequate daughter
Moonlight eye-rubber, savior of small insects
Then there’s
She made the best mistakes
only swore once, pouted frequently
motioned the dust bunnies
swallowed sea water, often swirled
came up laughing, held the number
dried the distance, cut cucumbers with salt split the corner, marveled at darts
turned out the gate, sprinkled the soil
Died doing what she loved most—
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Anticipating.
poetry
A Friday With Zeus
David Iba
I could walk the rooftops of lakes and mountains all day. I’d reach up and squeeze the Sun and drink its orange juice for breakfast. I’d take a nap and make a cloud my pillow; grab a lightening bolt and shave my beard. I’d toss it over to Zeus and tell Him to do the same. Don’t upset Him though. Do that and you’ll have a twister coming your way. Even so, I bet He’s a pleasant man. We’d watch the Sun drip onto the sands of the Sahara Watch the rivers and streams feed their older brothers and sisters, the mountains. At night we’d listen to Mother Earth sing her children a lullaby of crickets. Then She’d tuck them in with a blanket of stars. Ever seen a shooting star? Zeus does it best. We’d skip stones across the Universe all night. When we took a break, we’d have some Moon cheese and crackers and wash it down with a carton of Milky Way Galaxy. He’d reach down and pick up two icebergs. Scrape them together to make a fire, then lean over and light the Sun. After that, we’d drink its orange juice for breakfast, and butter our toast with its rays. 65
poetry
Lambkill
Eric Paul Lyman
Horizon howling and night arcing westward and mountain and bone aching with your every Please, let. Me distant, you hollow. Since I have eaten lambkill. Bind my breasts to still the milk. Iridescent blackbirds have left off nestbuilding in junipers, so I describe wings, weaving them with your hands, and tell you the blackbirds wear the colors of our daughter’s name, reminding myself how, when your skin was luminous, I was two wings in your fluttering dress. Then the stars. The Great Rift cutting through the belly of the Swan. Take me inside— put me near the window so I can watch the wolves.
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poetry
On Celebration
Whitney Mower
For the anniversary my husband gave me his spine in an envelope. Inside, a medallion read, “This Spine is Genuine. This Spine is Doctor-Certified.” I held the little excavated item in my hand, the color of my stepfather’s hymn-singing voice. Clean today, I must have said, and old with anonymity. Love, remember Las Cruces? I want back that stretch of road, my hand in your shirt, dark car and red rock. Then the spine said something, too, but I did not hear. Was it: Another hundred cows gather in the width of the road. My husband blueing, needle in arm, for love. I don’t ask about the pain. But here we are. His body shapeless as my voice. And the spine in the envelope, a letter I try to read like conscience.
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art
art
Lovely
Kirsten Nielson
71
art
Bridges
Rich Poulson First Place Art
72
art
Pigs of Men
Kirsten Nielson
73
art
Junior
74
Alexis Mackay
art
Winter Over Summer
Peter Gibb Second Place Art
75
art
Nike
76
Joan McGinnis
art
This is Radio Clash
Charles “Kit” Nordfelt
77
art
Poverty
Kirsten Nielson Third Place Art
78
art
Habits
Rich Poulson
79
art
80
art
The Complexities of Youth
Patric Bates
81
art
Wishing Star
82
Trevor Williams
art
The Park
Patric Bates
83
art
Growing
84
MaryBeth Longmore
art
Robby
Bill Andrus
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prose awards
Christopher Kimball Bigelow, Judge First place: “Hope” by Joseph Byington Written with an engaging voice and distinctive imagery and details, “Hope” is a sophisticated treatment of what could be a simplistic, maudlin theme. Freezing, dirty house, long-deceased mother, brother with cystic fibrosis, struggling single father, trouble at high school—the teen narrator’s problems and disadvantages pile up, but in a realistic, organic way. When warmth—and, yes, hope—begins to shine through, it feels natural, plausible, earned. “Hope” demonstrates an author in control of his material, his language, and his story. Second place: “A Year in the Wilderness” by Andy Sherwin In numbered scenes, the author of “A Year in the Wilderness” takes us on a kaleidoscopic tour of what we assume to be a young couple’s first year together, bouncing from scene to scene with them in Utah, New York, and Oregon. With the urgency of present tense and in sentences packed with telling detail, the author shows us the couple’s deep romantic attachment, so compelling that at one point they make love on the kitchen floor while a meal burns in the oven. Living moment to moment with this couple, we vicariously feel their growing bond. Third place: “Well Begun Is Half Done” by Whitney Mower From the start, “Well Begun Is Half Done” intrigues us with offkilter details that signal we’re not reading about a conventional newly married Mormon couple. And it turns out the story itself is not conventionally structured, either. After effectively engaging our interest in this couple, the author takes us into the future, when some kind of mental illness has entered the picture. Then we return to a chronological point early in the marriage, and we feel both curious and worried about what lies ahead for this couple. Judge Biography Zarahemla Books founder Christopher Kimball Bigelow is the author, coauthor, or editor of several books on Mormonism, including The Timeline History of Mormonism, Mormonism For Dummies, the humor book
The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer, the novel Kindred Spirits, and Conversations with Mormon Authors. A graduate of Emerson College and Brigham Young University, he worked as an editor of the LDS Church’s Ensign magazine and cofounded the Mormon literary journal Irreantum and the satirical Mormon news source The Sugar Beet. He is an adjunct English instructor at UVU, and he blogs at ckbigelow.blogspot.com. He lives with his wife and five children in Provo, Utah.
poetry awards Daniel Westover, Judge
First Place: “You Don’t Remember Your Dreams” by Eric Lyman Keats believed that a poem should seem like a memory, like a verbal rendering of the reader’s own thoughts and experiences. I feel this way when I read Eric Lyman’s “You Don’t Remember Your Dreams.” I feel like I’ve been in this room with my beloved, in the waking hours, with headlights sliding on the wall and trains rattling the blinds. I feel like I’m reaching back into my past, fusing memory and imagination as I search for the right way to express how I feel. Lyman understands a strange artistic paradox: in order to be anything close to universal, art must be specific, composed of those authentic details that make an experience—and in this case a relationship—believable and accessible. He knows that intangible, ungrounded words like “You make me feel at home” or “You complete me” are meaningless when compared to the beauty of “you found a home for us/where ice and blackness steamed, then fled/like startled crows, and our feet were/whole and warm.” Lyman also demonstrates a surprisingly mature sense of how sentence rhythm can counterpoint with lineation. As he modulates between enjambment and end-stopped lines, he reflects the poem’s movement between dream and reality, between stability and restlessness. I buy into this couple’s relationship in part because it is not static; I find myself worrying about this speaker, his beloved, and the unborn “her” that might well become the embodiment of her mother’s poetry, her father’s dreams. Keats also argued that beauty is truth. When I read, “And you are like that,/ finding homes,” I feel the beauty and truth of the words, and I somehow know that they sustain the speaker in the exigency of an unsettled moment. And so they sustain me as well. I can’t think of a bigger compliment. Eric Lyman has created the rarest of things: a true love poem. Second Place: “O” by Tamara Stanton Poetry, perhaps especially lyric poetry, is often a means of attempting to know ourselves, of discovering what Ted Hughes describes as “words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are.” And yet self-knowledge can never be precise, not really, because we are constantly in flux; even our attempts to define
ourselves change us. Tamara Stanton reflects this fluidity in “O,” a poem full of “what makes us…the way we are,” namely that unique sensory experience by which we navigate, build memory, and shape our concept of self. We are all made of seawater and moonlight, dust bunnies and insects. We are all laughter and salt-cut cucumbers. I’m not sure whether “O” is the way the speaker herself would like to be remembered or a eulogy for someone who has died, but in a sense it doesn’t matter. In remembering the dead, we inevitably memorialize ourselves. On the surface of “O” is the I want, as in, “I want to be remembered as more than a cliché.” But running beneath this, the accompanying shadow of the poem’s yearning, is the speaker’s sense of self, her I am. The latter reads like a statement, but it is really a question, reflected in the poem’s early line breaks and indentations: “I want more than…” “Try…” “Then there’s…” The poem is searching for the right image, the right glimpse of experience, the synecdochic piece of life that can stand in for the whole. Part epitaph, part manifesto and part self-examination, Stanton’s short lyric reveals why so many of us write poetry in the first place: we love to anticipate, to anxiously follow our words and our fluid selves towards what they, and we, might become. Third Place: “Pressure” by Anthony Christensen Anthony Christensen’s “Pressure” is a nice marriage of form and content. Each stanza consists of four lines, and each stanza is enclosed, not running into the previous or the next. This visual form reflects both the poem’s urban setting and its geologic allusions. And yet, within each symmetrical stanza, there is tension and movement between lines, as in “Layered granite presses/the soil,/its weight chokes like smoke/flooding the subway.” As a result, each stanza is a kind of pressure cooker, gaining gravity from the movement within its fixed frame. By the time we get to the third stanza, we feel that pressure in an almost physical way, so that when, in that same stanza, the first person speaker is introduced, with an accompanying rhetorical turn, we transfer the emotion to him/her: “Say the ground aches,/say my thoughts bake to the afternoon’s rhythm…” Eliot famously wrote that the only way to express emotion in art is to find an “objective correlative”—a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events that stand in for, indeed create, a particular emotion. “Pressure” is a poem about emotional stress, heaviness, unease, and apartness, and these are
rendered via objective correlatives. The speaker stands on a city corner, presumably near a subway entrance, and feels the push of corporate bodies, the noise, the heavy grating of wheels, concrete and steel pressing into (and under) the ground. These create a seismic wave that does not refresh like the tide, but oppresses and burns. Christensen does an admirable job of conveying these sensations, of transferring them from the page to the reader by means of a carefully-wrought prosody. Judge Biography Daniel Westover is the author of Toward Omega (21st Editions, 2005). His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in North American Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, Measure, Asheville Poetry Review, Tar River Poetry, and elsewhere. The recipient of research awards from the British government and the University of Wales, he has also won several awards for his creative work, including the Robert Olen Butler Prize. He has a Ph.D. in British literature from the University of Wales, and an MFA in creative writing from McNeese State University. His book on Nobel Prize-nominee R. S. Thomas, The Prosodies of R. S. Thomas, is forthcoming from University of Wales Press and will be available domestically from University of Chicago Press. He is currently helping to edit a special volume of Literature and Belief, dedicated to the work of Welsh poet Leslie Norris. Daniel recently accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Modern British Literature at East Tennessee State University.
Art awards Gary Barton, Judge
It is often a tricky task to jury artwork—there are so many varied factors to consider. When looking through all of the artwork submitted for consideration in this competition, I initially relied on my direct aesthetic response, and then I carefully considered each work, trying to see beyond the immediate to other layers of form and content. First Place: “Bridges” by Rich Poulson I was immediately struck by this painting. The response was very intuitive. I wasn’t thinking about content or drawing or objects or place. I was responding to color, shapes, and the fluid application of paint. Second Place: “Winter Over Summer” by Peter Gibb Initially, this piece didn’t speak very loudly to me, but as I spent more time with it, I was engaged by the subtlety of its line, texture, and shape, and by its visual and contextual references and relationships. It has a nice organic connection. Third Place: “Poverty” by Kirsten Nielson Sometimes the content of this kind of subject feels too obvious, and I too quickly dismiss it. I wondered about that with this photograph. I am not a photographer, and so I can’t claim that this is an excellent photograph technically (though it may be), but as I carefully looked at this work, it really did cause me to consider the condition of the place and the situation that it portrays. Judge Biography Gary Barton has been involved in art-making most of his life. He graduated with a BFA degree in painting and printmaking from Brigham Young University and was the recipient of a University Fellowship at Ohio State University where he earned an MFA degree in 1994. Gary is a Professor of Visual Arts at Brigham Young University where he has been teaching for sixteen years. As an artist, he works predominately in twodimensional media including painting, printmaking, and mixed media. He has shown his work extensively in national and international exhibitions and has received numerous grants and awards of distinction for his work.
contributor biographies Bill Andrus is pursing his BFA in Graphic Design at UVU. He hopes to graduate in 2013. Patric Bates does not like cheesecake but loves art. Joseph Byington won first place in the sixteenth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration essay contest and has been published in Warp and Weave. He hopes one day to be a successful fiction writer. Alicia VanNoy Call has two last names and likes to use both. She is an Illustration student and has been published in both Touchstones and Warp and Weave. She likes to play Rock Band with her husband when she is not drawing, painting, or writing. She is currently working on a novel. Block the sun, block the sky, scripted letters in my eye. Falling deep I try to swim, shaking letters from my skin. Starving for air; purely gasping. If you can, please leave the lamp on. Anthony Christenson lives in Provo, UT, and dreams of green skies. Peter Gibb has been a student at UVU since 2007. He will be receiving his BFA in Graphic Design in April. David Iba is a senior English major and is earning a B.A. in Creative Writing. He is the former Photo Editor of the UVU Review and currently the Editor-at-Large. After graduating from UVU he plans to attend law school. Diego Iba単ez is a student filmmaker who likes poker, reading, and writing. Oh, and he likes food. MaryBeth Longmore has been a student at UVU since 2006 and will be graduating in December 2010 with her BFA in photography. She is a fine art photographer and has had pieces exhibited in galleries around the valley, including the Woodbury Museum.
Eric Paul Lyman’s work has regularly appeared in Touchstones. He is on the staff of Warp and Weave this semester. Joan McGinnis is currently a student at UVU majoring in Illustration and is working on her BFA show. Alexis Mackay has had her work published as a postcard for the Davis Art Center. She is currently working on a BFA in Graphic Design at UVU. Her favorite mediums are photography, printmaking, acrylic, and anything having to do with graphic design. Whitney Mower will receive her bachelor’s in English this April, after which she will pursue an MFA in Fiction. David Self Newlin is a student of Philosophy. He writes poetry and edits the UVU Review. He lives in Provo and sometimes plays music. Kirsten Nielsen is an Art and Visual Communications student at UVU majoring in Graphic Design. She loves all types of art and is new to photography, graphic design, and oil painting. Charles “Kit” Nordfelt has an associate’s degree from BYU-Idaho in Graphic Design and is currently pursuing his bachelor’s at UVU. His work is heavily influenced by music and seeks to explore various means of creative expression. Painting, printmaking, photography, sculpture, carpentry, graffiti, and writing have all found their way into his work. “I am fascinated with color and the use of it in unexpected ways. I am also intrigued by trying to push the boundaries of what is taught in art school,” he says. Rich Poulsen has had his work displayed at the Covey Center for the Arts, Springville Art Museum, and UVU’s Woodbury Museum. He is an Art and Visual Communications major at UVU with an emphasis in Graphic Design. Andy Sherwin hates lettuce and loves road trips. You should go with him on one sometime. Seriously. It’s awesome. He also thinks you should read more James Ellroy. He (Andy, not James Ellroy) regularly writes new stuff at getoutfromunderit.blogspot.com. He appreciates your time.
Tamara Stanton has previously been published in Touchstones. She will graduate in April 2010 with a bachelor’s degree in English and History. Pamela Sundell is currently earning her bachelor’s degree in English and has been previously published in The Sigurd Journal. Trevor Williams is a graphic designer who works in print and in traditional mediums when nobody’s looking. Susannah Woodbury has been brought to you today by the letter “D” and the number “5.”
a moment with author scott hatch
Interview by Matthew Sievers
In this issue of Touchstones, we are interviewing author, poet, and UVU Assistant Professor of English Scott Hatch about aspects of writing and publishing that might be useful and relevant, especially to aspiring writers who are new to the publishing world. I sat down with him to talk about his experiences in publishing and ask him what emerging writers might want to know when looking to get their work out there.
What would be the first step for an aspiring writer who hopes to get published? Check out the intro of Sherman Alexie’s Tonto And The Lone Ranger Fistfight In Heaven. Also, Max Perkins: Editor Of Genius is a good resource. The best first step is to start getting published as much as possible in journals and magazines. It’s easier to get shorter works published, and that will get your name out there. Also, look for contests. Where would someone go to find an agent? You can directly look for agents, and find one who best would represent you. Also, if you’re published in journals, you have a better chance of getting an agent’s attention, and being picked up. Are agents necessary? They aren’t technically necessary, but very important. They are there to take care of the business aspects, and have inside connections. They’ll handle manuscript bidding, publisher contacting, that sort. Even if you do read up on the points of business, its better to have someone else do that for you, so you can focus on writing. What about finding a publisher? Agents should find the publisher for you, so you don’t need to worry about it. Also, some publishers will not look at work that doesn’t have an agent, so it’s better to go through an agent for that reason too.
There are a lot of authors catering to trends and what’s hot at any particular time; should an author (especially one who has been turned down), still produce work that’s not “in demand”? Like now, urban fantasy, particularly werewolf/vampire novels are big (The work of authors like Kelley Armstrong, and to a lesser extent, Laurell K. Hamilton, and to the least extent, Stephanie Meyer), so should an author who’s writing about, say, family drama wait until publishers feel the current trend reaches a saturation point, or see out a publisher who would be focused on that genre? Write what you can write, and don’t try to write for something you’re not good at, unless it’s what you do. The best writers aren’t the ones who can just push out a horror novel because the agent says that’s selling, so turn one out, and then write a mystery the next month, when that’s the new trend. Chase your dreams and not the market. There’s something satisfying to creating art, rather than artifacts to be acquired. If you write what you’re passionate about, the marketing falls into place. Say an author wants to publish novels, but is unpublished, should she go straight to an agent and hope for publication or try to get articles or short stories published first? How willing is a publisher to take a risk on someone completely unpublished? It’s pretty much luck. Try to get as many short stories and poems in circulation as possible. Not so much to make money as to get your name out there and to get recognition. You might barely be able to pay the bills with the money from short stories and poetry, if at all, but these will give you credibility, practice, and make agents more likely to want to take you on as a client. Relatedly, how should someone go about getting short stories published in commercial magazines or journals? Is an agent necessary? Writer’s Chronicle is a good source. Also, look for contests and journals. You don’t need an agent, which makes it a good first step. Also, stay away from vanity presses since it’s almost impossible to sell these books, which not just isn’t good business, but also isn’t going to help you get noticed. Should an author wait until completing a large collection of short stories, novellas and novels before contacting an agent, or is it enough to just have one manuscript? Definitely. It’s much better to have as much as you can before you start submitting. Keep track of which stories you’re sending to whom, and when you get a rejection (which you will—everyone does), send it to somewhere else. Many short stories are better than few larger pieces too,
since journals don’t publish novel length, and rarely publish parts of a novel. Basically, short stories and poetry will be the best way to get a foot in. How feasible is it to be a full-time author and write professionally? How long does it take from the first accepted story until someone can quit their day job? Or is that just too variable to even guess? It’s possible, but very unlikely to strike it rich. Though, is very possible to live an author lifestyle, using writing to enhance your life. You can use writing as a way to help you in jobs like teaching or editing. Though, the great satisfaction is in writing artistically. Finally, any other advice or words of wisdom (or to be less cliché, pronouncements of prudence) do you have for aspiring authors? Don’t get discouraged. Everyone gets missed. Keep at it, and improve. Keep trying. Let the rejections make you better, and encourage you to keep trying. It’s not a straightforward correlation. Grad school & MFA programs are helpful. Use writing groups. And finally, don’t take anything for granted. Use all the contacts and resources you can get.
Scott Hatch is an Assistant Professor at UVU, where he teaches creative and technical writing. He is also Chair of the Technical Writing committee, Capitol Reef Field Station Associate Director, member of the Environmental Studies curriculum development and enrollment committee, and English and Literature Department Internship Coordinator. His work has been published numerous times, including in Western Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, and Inscape. His poetry collection, Mapping the Bones of the World, won first place in the Utah Arts Council for short poetry collection, second place from the Utah Arts Council for book-length poetry collection, and the Mayhew Hinckley poetry prize is available.