TUFTS OBSERVER TUFTS’ STUDENT MAGAZINE
APRIL 27, 2009
T H E L I T E R A R Y
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I S S U E
Featured Articles
PROSE | Limbs Spread Wide, a story by Natalie Selzer. Photo by Rachel Rhodes
PROSE | Superpowers, a story by Gideon Jacobs. Photo by Caroline Woodruff
POETRY | Vacant, a poem by Emma Shakarshy. Photo by Daniel Rosen
The Observer has been Tufts’ weekly publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to in-depth reporting, journalistic innovation, and honest dialogue has remained intact for over a century. Today, we offer insightful news analysis, cogent and diverse opinion pieces, and lively reviews of current arts, entertainment, and sports. Through poignant writing and artistic elegance, we aim to entertain, inform, and above all challenge the Tufts community to affect positive change.
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Contents
Editors tors andd Leadership
April 27, 2009 Volume CXVIII, Issue 8 The Observer, Since 1895 www.TuftsObserver.org
EDITOR R-IN-CHIEF
Mike Snyder yder
MANAGING GING ING EDITORS
Marysaa Lin Daniell Rosen NEWS EDITORS
Julia Ivanova vanova anova Caitlin n Schwartz chwartz
The Literary Issue
OPINIONS ONS EDITORS TORS
Crystall Bui Alexandra Siegel
3 The Odyssey, by Kathleen Boland
ARTS EDITORS
Lauren Mazel Will Ramsdell
4 Superpowers, by Gideon Jacobs Photo by Michael Goetzman
EXCURSIONS EDITOR
Katie Christiansen
6 Laverne Cox and the Drug Box Dancers, by Emma Shakarshy
CAMPUS EDITOR AND ART DIRECTOR
Ryan Stolp
7 Vacant, by Emma Shakarshy
POETRY AND PROSE EDITORS
Photo by Michael Goetzman
Michael Goetzman Micah Hauser
8 Three Odes, by Aaron Victorin-Vangeurd
PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
Photo by Ian MacLellan
Campbell Kliefoth
10 The Muskrat Speaks, by Alex Gomez
WEBMASTER
Photos by Will Ramsdell
Ryan Orendorff
17 Imagine This, by Alex Blum
CHIEF COPY EDITOR
Kristen Barone
Photo by Michael Goetzman
ASSISTANT COPY EDITORS
21 Orchard, by Suzi Grossman
Kelsea Ertsgard Hannah Freeman Kasey Mitchell
22 Limbs Spread Wide, by Natalie Selzer Illustration by Alyce Currier
LAYOUT DIRECTORS
Karen Andres Joshua Aschheim COVER DESIGN BY MICHAEL GOETZMAN AND MICAH HAUSER ASSISTANT LAYOUT EDITORS
Heather Blonsky Avery Matera BUSINESS MANAGERS
Nathaniel Jonnes Marcelo Norsworthy EDITOR EMERITUS
Patrick Roath
Contributors Elliot B. Alex Blum Alex Gomez Suzi Grossman
Staff Kathleen Boland Chelsea Brown Stephanie Chin Madeline Christensen Alyce Currier Zachary Foulk
Melissa Lee Jan McCreary Brian McLoone Cara Paley Dana Piombino Suzanne Schlossberg
Lorraine Shen Ariana Siegel Juliana Slocum Kristen Surya Seth Stein Jordan Teicher
Gideon Jacobs Shaheen Lavi-Rouse Rachel Rhodes Natalie Selzer
Emma Shakarshy Aaron Victorin-Vangeurd Caroline Woodruff
Since
1895
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Reader, As print takes its place in history alongside cave-paintings, stone tablets, and cuneiform, there has emerged a new literary age where writers no longer need to feel burdened by the late nights, painstaking thought processes, or paper cuts traditionally associated with the writing trade. Scions of the internet era, we can much more easily make our tweets sparkle with lack of forethought and Facebook statuses glimmer gaudily with self-importance than take the time to carefully craft a sentence or two. With the second installment of the Observer’s literary issue, we have attempted to resist our place in this nascent postprint age—offering a little food-for-thought to balance our heavy diet of info-on-demand. As we well know, with the deluge of celebrity tabloid culture, the popularity of the crisis “memoir,” and dependence on trusty internet search engines, anything worth knowing about anyone or anything can be uncovered in a matter of milliseconds. While there must have been a time when it took some digging to unearth secrets— perhaps in the heyday of Freud and Jung—now, we can’t get ourselves to put a cork in it. Our privacy, it seems, is too much to bear in secret when it could be shared on screen with the multitudes. And so, in this age of information, we’ve made privacy just that—information. But, as one of our favorite authors once said, “the masters of information have forgotten about poetry, where words may have a meaning quite different from what the lexicon says, where the metaphoric spark is always one jump ahead of the decoding function, where another, unforeseen reading is always possible.” Whether it be through poetry or prose, we hope this issue allows you to explore your own unforeseen readings, and those of your peers. Enjoy. Much love, Micah Hauser Michael Goetzman Co-Editors, Poetry & Prose
SHAHEEN LAVI-ROUSE 2
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April 27, 2009
THE
ODYSSEY
BY KATHLEEN BOLAND This is a story of the journey between four letters, when I slid into a sanctuary of sin, when life found this body running from me and towards it. A story that begins with one book and two languages, begins with untying the spondees and dipthongs of heroic battles between sparring ancients, begins while deciphering the classics, when I found those words slurred between the lines, crackling beneath the surface, that ominous, roaring pair of syllables – de! ad! From! To! To realize such a distance instantly, brilliantly, to nd that divided, torn word during then – of all times! – dead! I scratched my revelation into every page of every book, every wall and chair, and proclaimed it with the customary pause, hanging between hand and heart – de ad – I would stop and linger in that space, oat there, reach hopelessly for that ultimate and denite bridge between them – de! ad! oh! Who knew? Who would have thought that in the words of hundreds of hundreds of generations, of togas and olives, of sails and sacrice, I would nd a humming omen beneath those scanned sentences – quis scio? Nemo! Oh Homer, oh home, did you look up when I fell down, did you see me ightless and ailing between them, I left from but never reached to, I found a forgotten universe in that fatal pause, I found men and re, bottles and tile oors, locked doors, a hollow, deafening pause – de… The weeks rolled over the hours that smothered the days and silenced minutes and there was nothing alive, nothing breathing, nothing wanting, when I stumbled into that oracle, kicking its spine, cracking its pages, and looked to nd that passage, highlighted, scrawled and exclaimed, I saw it lurch from those lines and tear at my temples, a resurrected prophet of words and wonders – de! ad! – and through the debris of deviants and letters of lust, I ed, I ew, furious and frightened, through the backdoor, scorched and bleeding, seized by the clawed ngers of nostalgia, pierced and stumbling, I tripped, terried, towards that last, nal space – de… Awake, blurred, gasping, the sun and the stars and the haze, today I opened my eyes and found it lounging at my feet, nally, gazing with the look of the unconcerned, the patient and smiling – ad! A laugh, a sigh, and with a simple string of hope I lassoed it, carried it, returned it to that now sacred text, those lines, my notes, and tied the world back together, grasping the from and cradling the to – dead. April 27, 2009
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3
SUPERPOWERS BY
I
t happened during an early August evening while Steven Patrick was trying to throw pennies into the neighbor’s chimney. He’d estimated that he’d made about a thousand straight unsuccessful attempts so far that summer. Everyday he waited until his mother went upstairs to shower with her boyfriend and then he’d grab a handful of pennies from the monstrous change jar in the study. Once he heard the water running, he would take his spot behind the thick green bush in the backyard. He’d launch the tiny copper cylinders over the trees that separated the two houses and toward the red brick chimney that sat in the middle of his neighbor’s roof. After the throw, he’d retreat behind the bush and sit silently for thirty seconds, just in case anyone was looking. Most of the time he would come up short, the pennies would trickle down the side of the house and come to a rest in the gutters. Others he would throw too low, and they would smack into the branches of the trees and fall to the ground before even reaching the yard. The ones that ended up on lawn went mostly unnoticed because the grass hadn’t been once cut in all eight years of Steven’s life. This evening his mother and her boyfriend’s shower lasted over twenty minutes. Steven chucked a penny and then listened to make sure the water was still running inside the house. After about fty throws, the water shut off. The pipes hidden beneath the walls of the thirty-year-old house clanked and shook with the sudden closing of the upstairs tap. His mother and her boyfriend would change and be back downstairs to check on him in a matter of minutes. Steven started throwing the pennies faster, harder and more wildly. But with time running out, Steven 4
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April 27, 2009
decided that this throw would be his last of the day. He stopped and took a couple deep breaths to collect himself. He was focusing with all his might on the rim of the chimney when a y landed on his hand. He blew on it, but the y stayed put. He shook his hand slightly, and it just sat there. He shook his hand harder, and the y didn’t budged. He tried icking it, but the y stood rm despite having one of its wings nearly popped off by Steven’s ngernail. He could hear his mother giggling as she walked down the stairs with her boyfriend. Steven looked at the y on the back of his hand and then at the penny in his palm. He squeezed it tight so that the ridges left an impression on his skin. He stared at the chimney, rocked back on his heels and launched the penny through the air. It soared over the trees that separated the yards and hit the climax of its ight about halfway over the neighbor’s uncut lawn. It started its freefall just as it crossed the lip of the neighbor’s roof, and gravity pulled it down toward the four-by-four gap that rested on top of the red brick chimney. Its entry was smooth and clean, as it fell twenty feet into the replace below that the neighbors hadn’t used once since they’d moved in. MICHAEL GOETZMAN
GIDEON JACOBS
Steven knew immediately what had happened, why that throw was so effortlessly perfect. He turned over his hand to see that the y had disappeared but left a small bite behind, just below the knuckle of his middle nger. That particular throw had felt different. He felt different. He felt stronger, faster, and smarter. His senses felt heightened, and his mind felt sharper. Steven had to be sure if what he thought was true. So, he turned on the spot and ran around the outside of the house. The world around him passed by at speeds he didn’t recognize, and he realized he was running faster than he had ever run before.
He sto red he ap tre
ba ier law ten ha sup no tha yo eig He fer
his mi pla un fel tea to his
afr
ad rtto ta kle ow elt ses r. he pot se. ds was re.
He then threw a rock at the mailbox, which stood twenty feet away, and hit the little red ag that the mailman icks up when he makes a delivery. Next, Steven grabbed a piece of rewood and swung it against a tree. It didn’t just break; it shattered. Steven again checked the bite on the back of his hand, which had become puffier and redder. He sat down on the front lawn and took in the facts: the y had bitten him, and he had developed superpowers. He now had abilities that were far beyond those of an eight-year-old boy. The y had chosen him. He was now different. His life was now different. He sat in the yard, resting his chin on his knee, feeling his brain move a million miles a second. How was he going to explain this to his mother? How would she understand? He stared at the chimney and felt a lump forcing itself up his throat and tears forming. It took him several minutes to ght them off and feel ready to go face his mother. He carefully walked into the house, afraid that he might accidentally pull the
backdoor straight off its hinges. He could hear the quiet hum of Marvin Gaye coming from the living room and the sizzle of something getting thrown into a hot pan coming from the kitchen. He took long, deliberate strides around the dining room table and through the main hallway. He saw his mom and her boyfriend clinking wine glasses to nish off a toast they had just made. They turned when they saw Steven.
whether you want meatballs or just pasta tonight?” “Mom, I don’t think you understand. It’s different now. I’m different than I was before and different from you guys. I can’t sit here and eat meatballs with you two. I can’t go back to school next week.” “Oh, c’mon, Steven. Is this about school? August is hard for a lot of kids.” “Mom, this is a big deal. Please understand. I know what happened and I know how I feel. I’m no longer a normal human being. I’m just not. I cannot live with you and him anymore.” “Steven. What? Stop talking like this right now. I am your mother. You are my only son, and you aren’t going anywhere.” “Mom, I’m sorry, but I have to leave here. I’m going whether you like it or not. This is really hard for me too.” He avoided her eyes, knowing that if he looked at his mother, he would cry, and it would all be over. His mother raised her voice more out of fear than anger. “You’re not going anywhere, Steven. You’re really, really scaring me, though.” “But I have to. There will be a moment when you aren’t looking, and then I’ll be gone forever.” She reached her hand out toward Steven. He looked at it, took a step backwards and continued talking. “If you fall asleep, cook dinner, or take a shower, it will be the last time you see me. If you go to work, send me to school, or go out with friends, I’ll go away. If you try to lock me inside the house, I’ll nd a way out eventually. If you try to watch me all day and night, you’ll turn around to change the channel or look down at your watch to check the time, and that will be it. Don’t try to stop me. I love you a lot because you’re my mom, but this is something I have to do. This isn’t a choice.” She ran her hands through her hair and opened her mouth to speak, only to close it without a saying a word. She turned to her boyfriend, who met her gaze but offered only a shrug of his shoulders. When she looked back to Steven, he had already turned around and was walking toward his room. She quickly dumped her glass into the sink and set off down the hallway after her son. She reached him before he reached his room. O
“There will be a moment when you aren’t looking, and then I’ll be gone forever.” Steven tried to start the conversation but suddenly felt a twinge of embarrassment that he hadn’t anticipated. He smiled nervously as he avoided his mother’s eyes. His mother was caught off guard by his presence. She swallowed a gulp of wine that was uncomfortably big. “Stevey, what’s up?” He wanted to choose his words carefully. He also wanted to stop smiling. “Mom, something happened in the yard. A y landed on me and bit me, and now I have powers.” “Honey, what happened in the yard?” “A y landed on the back of my hand and refused to get off,” he said in a slow but rm voice. “I blew at it, shook it, and icked it, but it wouldn’t move, and it stayed there for longer than any normal y would. But that’s because it wasn’t a normal y. It bit me. And now some of its DNA is running through my bloodstream. I have powers now that I didn’t have before.” She and her boyfriend turned to each other and had a quick conversation using head tilts and eye rolls that ended with his mother’s letting out a snort. “Well, that’s great Stevey! But does this affect
April 27, 2009
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5
The Linguist had heard of them in myth, these genderless, genderful beings with girleyes and manhands.
LAVERNE COX AND THE DRAG-BOX DANCERS
They kept him up, sometimes, with a highball and leather notebook and heavy pen tap-tapping. He picked his brainshelves for a pronoun that t snug, a suitable substitution, but the antecedent objected, writhing. Jacketed, bow tied he walked, a gentleman, to cure his lack of sleep, his excess of dream. He sat, braced with pen and ink in a soft crimson chair and ordered “The Naughty O’Pear” The room was raw with silky enigmas. These dark widows spun webs of erotic white, crouching in their handmade traps and dining on sea-salt sailors and businessboys with three-piece suits and two-piece hearts. The creatures’ eyes spoke syllables too naughty to say aloud: wife, child, home. Muscles barked male and strappy shoulders spelled man, with careful dips and low dives. Their maritime cheekbones cut cold. Their crimson lips screamed woman. Girlish feet, clad in red leather, slurred delicate lovelace. They moved with a slinky sadness. Every motion was an invitation, every smitten stare a clumsy RSVP.
CC
BY
EMMA SHAKARSHY
Their bodies swam, trickled, even still. As their hips danced to the humping bass, they formed ocular metronomes. Eyes swished back and forth, struggling to escort the melody home. They were hes posing as shes treated like its. They were courtesans in a palace of smudged secrets, beauties of the bruise-black night. The Linguist slurped smooth rum and lifted his short glass to the rose-red nymphs in misty surrender, for once, wordless.
6
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April 27, 2009
T N A VAC MA BY EM
SHY
SHAKAR
MICHAEL GOETZMAN
Buildings, like amazons, stand tall, untouched, searching, for love in all the wrong places. They look down their sills on prospects, jeering at white-washed couples with lofty ideas and a tenderness which quickly crumbles. They close their curtains on bearded artists in paint-parched jeans and babies that smell like powder and pink cotton. They peek through wood-laced windows, closing their heavy doors on potential paramours and clutching their lonely heartwoods. Meanwhile, the trees warp. They lean towards the cement giantesses and dream of a love concrete, a love untouched.
April 27, 2009
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7
Three Odes BY
AARON VICTORIN-VANGERUD
1.
Gravity Hold me
“I love my ass,” she says, as casually as she would “Big Mac and a small Coke,” “make sure to really accentuate it.” “Got it,” was the only response I could muster. What else do you say to a request like that? —Garrett Cook
“So, a pastor is visiting one of his parishioners, this old old lady in the hospital. He goes into her room, and sees her sitting in her bed, and on the side of the bed there’s her false teeth in a glass of water, some magazines, and a bowl of peanuts. He sits down in a chair next to her and starts telling her all about what’s new in the church, how people are doing, and everything else...” —Wayne Schilling
2. Old guys. What is it! Perhaps the way they vibrate when they walk, A redolent whip pushing the ultimatum up the ladder That rings in their smiles. To beat them, you’d have to Push your shoulders back, Bend on one leg, And even then you wouldn’t be the big-hearted birds of prey they are. Those are generally the ones that eat mashed potatoes and pie on paper plates, anyway. You know you’re on the right track when you’re a poet But really more of a round Romanian dude in your sixties Or one from the nation of Oh Man! in a cotton galabiyya. Hhhwaaaaaaaaaooh! They’re superstars!
IAN MACLELLAN 8
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April 27, 2009
of
t x-
i-
3.
At Night She stood up and walked across the room. Maybe if she had been my high school physics teacher then I would have grasped that centers of mass of curious objects often lie in curious places. Maybe I would have then stepped to the side before it hit me like a giant hunk of tapioca from a humongous straw. In each case I was again here in her living room. “You don’t have to feel bad about the peanuts,” she said. “I hate peanuts. I just suck the chocolate off them.” I stepped from her porch steps, (a snowman alit with bound abandon within an eternal slam-dunk) returning the thrust of the moon —doing its thing like a baby Elvis— in heat, (****, yes, it was moving through the air and solving like lime, owing like a sea pitched in gongs in through the solar plexus; that’s life in Java) and my rst thought was to run—like usual— in fear so it would stay perfect. Bees are buzzing in the owering trees, The minarets are glowing green, A squall blows in across the waves, As evidence of things unseen. Though, as I walk on In bright-lit windows I see brassy mufns (food for kids, but I have sent off all my children, secret miracles more vulnerable) Breaking open with dark blueberries (as wads of heart or wads of ass; A soft razor denes it.) “It’s like how with art you can never make it perfect, but you still have to keep on creating it,” she would say. Yes! (already I had left no gap for us to live in) And when Melanie does visit him, I furthered, All of us on the guys’ end will put on our best clothes, gather with palms wide and raw, serve them a nice dinner with what we have and stand there—or somewhere else, but together—to bear witness, to bear witness, perhaps even try to return the prevenience. Before being becomes as bureaucratic as people imply, I have to punch out a wall of that geometry, Project a searing point of need and redemption. Instead, I keep bumping up against the buffed knobs That frequent the doors into her house; there all I can do Is be eld dressed (which offers as much wonder as it allows). I walk up your porch steps, And hunger returns. I realize that my dream now, As it was in the beginning, Is mention in your book
AN
April 27, 2009
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9
BY WILL RAMSDELL
A
couple of weeks ago, he heard that Jeremy had died. Of a broken heart, said some. A shattered ego, said others. “Whatever,” he said and wiped the tears off his cheeks. “Forget me,” Jeremy once told him. “A true nihilist would be glad to know that you’d forgotten him.” After making statements like that, Jeremy raised his beer can one inch and pointed a cautionary nger at whoever had heard. Then his head dropped lazily onto his chest again, too heavy with thought. Jeremy had died alone. Francis knew it. An artist dies alone, he thought. What a poet the rat had been, though. They met in college, and Francis spent his rst week at NYU listening to Jeremy weave his life story like Mark Twain. But with a sharper edge. That sharpness had sliced through an idyllic childhood in Royal Oaks, Minnesota, where he was the king of the forest. Of course, Jeremy left after high school, too brilliant for everyone there, afraid of losing his edge. At least, that was how he explained it. “You see, Francis,” he could hear Jeremy professing to him during their rst October in New York City, “basically the great-
est work to be written by man – ever, of all time – is Hamlet. Period.” He raised the beer can, and Jeremy retreated back into his mind again, the fat thing buzzing like a bearded hive. Francis loved him. They all did. By the rst week of winter, Jeremy’s steady output of punk poetry one-liners had drawn him a crowd of hipster groupies. “Shhh!” they would say, “the muskrat speaks.” “You need either to fuck her or get back that toy lightsaber,” he’d overheard Jeremy
ars. Not interdisciplinary, but interplanetary. Jeremy oated them in lush reveries on an intellectual vessel, his imagination, exploring Earth’s riddles and ambiguities. He gave his theories on Jodie Foster, the moon landing, and the perfect harmony of a Jackand-Coke. Francis watched and listened, and, during that rst year in New York, he often closed his eyes when his best friend spoke. Concise and reserved with his wisdom, Jeremy coined proverbs at parties like Confucius. As he got pudgier, the lumpy Jeremy seemed to Francis like a rebel Buddha. He saw him in the corners of rooms – otherworldly, ascetic and disengaged. Instead of a skull cupped in his hand, Jeremy contemplated his ngertips, dyed red with Cheetos. Not women, not drugs, not arcade games, but Will Shakespeare bound the two friends together. Anyway, Jeremy dropped out after that year, the year he heard George Harrison was hospitalized for multiple stab wounds. “The real genius behind Abbey Road,” Jeremy whined to a crowd, “was almost killed by a Jesus freak! How can I pretend I give a fuck about Sherman’s March? This is the real Gilded Age, man.”
The Muskrat Speaks
10
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April 27, 2009
BY
ALEX GOMEZ telling a freshman at a party. No idea what it meant, but he knew what the kid under Jeremy’s arm was thinking: it’s good advice because this guy has the scraggly beginnings of a philosopher’s beard. The kid nodded and walked over to join the ranks of Jeremy’s followers. They were stick gures tted in tight jeans, with ratty scarves. The history majors at NYU existed on a different level from other college schol-
CONTINUED ON PAGE
15...
PHOTOS BY ELLIOT B.
CAMPBELL KLIEFOTH
RACHEL RHODES
ELLIOT B.
PHOTOS BY CAMPBELL KLIEFOTH
...CONTINUED FROM PAGE 10 Francis stayed in school, but studying American History was not the same without Jeremy crammed into the desk next to him. When he showed up at poetry slams and the after parties, Jeremy was already there, into his third beer and anked by a few eager intellectuals. Francis recalled that he would always shove himself between the other “friends” and Jeremy and quickly try to pick up any conversation the two had never nished but remained unsolved in his mind. He was still bitter about those days and nights, even after Jeremy nally fell off that mortal coil. Francis gured he caught the bitterness from Jeremy. That’s how close they were, Francis thought. Got each other sick, gave each other viruses. Only it seemed like Jeremy had immunity from everything Francis carried in him. So shared space in their post-college apartment was just that: space. Turned out that beneath his thick skin, the muskrat was a self-pitying hermit with an atrophied will to live. His exterior, though, was a hard shell of fully-formed fakery. “I am Guy Fedora, Santa Ana, and Hiawatha!” an older, fatter, sadder Jeremy once roared into the toilet. Ten years after college, Francis still followed him around, when all but the seediest groupies had lost interest. Instead of looking up to see who was still there, who still cared, Jeremy found consolation in medication. At least, that’s how he explained it. Popping pills kept that big head swollen, still heavy enough with big ideas to wear out his abby neck. And the muskrat kept speaking and spitting and spewing up his last meal. No room down there next to all the junk he swallowed. So Francis bought a washcloth, soaked it in cold water, wiped down his friend’s face, and kept him alive. During those nights, straddling Jeremy as he vomited, he felt the weight of the dreams in that big head. He had to be there, if at least to hear them between heaves and splashes. “When I’m Mister Fedora, I’m the Dick Tracy of this dark city’s wicked underbelly,” Jeremy choked that night. “An anti-hero like me? You better believe he’s the essence of high contrast: black ‘n’ white, fucking keeps to the shadows, don’t see him, then you’re dead.” He knew, at least, that Jeremy was the essence of pale, without blood in his face. It
“
pooled in his brain. “And, muchacho,” Jeremy spat so that Francis had to move the wet cloth from forehead to mouth, where syrupy spittle descended like slugs, “when Santa Ana swoops in on a broomstick or a cloud, she brings her winds with her. Shit gets bizarre, and strange things are afoot in the Hollywood hills.” Neither had ever been to California, but they closed their eyes and listened to the
throughout that decade after college? Jeremy wasn’t the postmodern prophet they thought he was, but just a boastful waste of space. But, Francis remembered, he was indeed an inspiration for a writer. Of course there wasn’t much work in New York City for young historians. It’s all stockbrokers and fashionistas out there. As Jeremy drowned himself in toilet water and cynicism, Francis tried to write it into beauty. He made enough for rent working in a publishing company, submitting short stories about Jeremy, or someone just like him, to contests in the city. He thought of the nights when he bent down and peered into the dark mailbox, and there’d be a check, his prize money, waiting for him. Other times it was the electric bill. He never made Jeremy pay that; he gured he owed his friend a lot more than one-fty a month. He was the dark anti-muse of Francis’ creativity. Diego Rivera paid his models, didn’t he? Whatever bacon Francis brought home, it was just as much won by the artistry of Jeremy’s woe. Ten years of that, though. And never much recognition, and a lot more work than it was worth. He got to hear those dreams, the reckless thoughts of the muskrat. Francis played audience to the harrowing elegance of Jeremy’s sinking ship, and how else was the world to experience such touching sadness? Too human. But not human enough for Francis, who eventually realized he was to implode as soon as Jeremy blipped himself out of his sorry existence. Night after night of drug nausea, depression rotting Jeremy slowly on the inside, and Francis began to feel it in the air, another nasty contagion he was bound to catch. And once his abby muse was gone, Francis would be alone in the loneliest city on the planet. That was when he secretly applied to graduate school at the University of Washington. He decided he knew a better life than this; Francis left the fever dreams and nightmares of their own shelled-in existence, left his friend who thought he was Hamlet, and ew to Seattle. Renewal in the rain there. “I thought we could exploit each other,” wrote Jeremy in a letter to Francis’s new residence on Occidental Street, his handwriting a shaky script written with cold ngers, “in a tight-rope walk over the abyss. I guess not, you motherfuck.” There was a chocolate smear of Hostess cake across the front of the postcard, an old Welcome to the
You need either to fuck her or get back that toy lightsaber. truth. “Ever see the suicide rate during Santa Ana conditions?” Nutso big ideas. Heavy fear. All that mixed with too much beer and Ritalin, and Jeremy’s chin plopped hard on his chest. Just in time for another tide of nausea, his best friend cupped his sweaty forehead and gently lifted it, so the bile hit the water. During those nights, the droplets that splashed onto Jeremy’s beard looked to Francis like golden beads. The shattered halo of a sickly prophet. “I’m ahead of my time, dammit,” insisted Jeremy, preaching to the choir, “I’m Hiawatha. I have –” The coughing faded “... vision.” Of course he did. Since the fourth grade, Francis heard Jeremy brag, he’d been playing everyone around him. That stout independence and his paper-cut wit kept him alone. Zoom to his thirty-rst birthday, a pink candle poking out of a Twinkie, then sixteen months of despondent, druginduced illness, all mopped up by Francis, and never a word of thanks. Never an apology. The muskrat never let down his guard. When he was the sickest Francis had seen him, with his clammy jowls quivering with fever, Francis told him how they were going to move to Seattle, how it would all be okay then, remember? He told him about how they’d take nature walks, how they’d manage to work their way up to ten miles a day. And then they’d really be far away from this putrid civilization. But Jeremy didn’t like walks. “Wake me up in ten years,” he moaned. Why did he even bother with Jeremy
”
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Place card, the dead expressions of salmon faces on one side, a simple Nietzsche quote on the other: “…And remember that if you gaze for long into an abyss,” it read, “the abyss gazes also into you.” Frightened of whatever it was he’d been left alone with, Jeremy began to call. Francis grimaced at the memory, when his ears were assaulted with Jeremy’s description of his runny shits and the depths of the low he’d reached. Francis learned to hang up on his friend. Once he came home to the determined blinking of his answering machine, one lonely message awaiting his return from the UW campus. Humming hopefully in the grey box, the tape warmed Francis’s ngertip when he pressed the PLAY button. The voice sounded as fuzzy as the rat who spoke it. “Aren’t we all artists of our own lives?” Jeremy uttered from the machine. “Didn’t someone say that? Anyway, they should have.” He felt a twang of longing for his fading friend. “I just thought of that. I can engineer my life just so, y’know, so that I am the art. Breaks down one more unnecessary barrier between the muck and the muckraker. Fuckin’ full of pills right now, keep that idea for me. In you– ” Whatever! Francis thought then and pressed STOP. Frowning, he’d left the unnished message to rot as the red light whined to be heard. He had never been a muskrat fanboy. But after Jeremy died, he wondered if he’d ever been the muskrat’s friend. Francis remembered spending wet Saturdays at his computer, trying to write about sh marts and stoic woodsmen, when he would type in his password – letmein – to turn it on. Letmein, to open up a whiteglowing page for a new story, letmein, and he always started to write about Jeremy. Angry, bitter pieces about kids spurned by fathers. Brothers who knew so well how to hurt each other. Heart-like tomatoes thrown at brick walls. He could do better than that, couldn’t he? The messages Jeremy was leaving had been piling up. A woman in the UW writing program had a story in Harper’s and two others were publishing their rst ction collections. Somehow, Francis reasoned, this was all his fault. I’ll show him. On Easter morning, he started the novel. He called it Confucius, My Ass. Named the main character Jeremy Lyons, and before he’d gotten to Chapter Two, he was in love with this new, brighter version of his muse. No more sad beauty, gritty anti-hero, martyred 16
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visionary. This Jeremy was a cool and brilliant highschooler who got up early every morning, did fty crunches, and brought an apple to his homeroom teacher. Before he’d gotten to Chapter Seventeen, Francis was daydreaming about rock climbing with Jeremy, playing football, and taking drives. But Jeremy started messing with drugs. Francis remembered how that had caught him off guard, how the real muskrat crept into Jeremy Lyons. No more barrier between the muck and the muckraker. The novel became a story about his transformation, from the shining son to a black hole that would prey on the emotions of the reader, the writer, Francis. Brave spirit all withered, Jeremy Lyons stopped showing up in his dreams. A cowardly friend who never admitted his addiction to anyone, Jeremy skipped his sister’s eleventh birthday party. Jeremy grew a ratty beard and forgot to shower. Still acted tough, but he was scared of his own shadow. Francis knew it had to end. The novel became a story about teen suicide. “My pain’s the heaviest for sure,” Jeremy Lyons said to himself in his bedroom, “and it’s all downhill from sixteen anyway. Fuck it, I’m goin’ under.” Francis shivered with loss as his character up-ended the pill bottle down his dark throat. “Maybe they’ll wake me up in ten years,” ears,” mumbled the teenager, and his heavy eyelids yelids closed out the world. Earth’s riddles and nd ambiguities. By then it was August, he remembered, and nd the winds came and shit got bizarre. He had ad stopped paying attention to the ashing answering nswering machine, barely glanced at it all summer. ummer. But after killing off Jeremy, the book ook was nished, and Francis wondered iff he’d been freed. Checked the machine one ne day and saw that the burning red number, er, a tally of Jeremy’s S.O.S’s, hadn’t risen sen for a three weeks. Free? No more shit stories and hallucinations? He realized it was a good thing, that he’d e’d grown out of Jeremy. He serenelyy packed up his manuscript and spent the he fresh, grey
days looking for a publisher. Francis was curious, he remembered, when he came back to nd a new message waiting for him. The blinking seemed innocent enough, so he let it play. The voice sounded like God. “Mr. Bell, this is George Schulz at Saint Anne’s Inrmary. It appears the body of Mr. Jeremy Swanson was found today in the apartment you two shared. Sorry to be the rst to tell you this, as I assume you were close to the deceased. He had no living will or next of kin, so the Saint Anne’s administration is requesting that you– ” Francis clicked the STOP button. He remembered always what he was thinking of right then. How one time he ordered take-out and got Jeremy Thai Peanut Chicken, and how it was itching his friend’s throat going down, and how he spent the night in the bathroom as Jeremy spat up every single peanut. It was anguish that Francis had ordered accidentally. Francis dropped his shaky hand onto the grey box, and the voice that sounded like God in the machine started again, telling him that the muskrat had been dead for twenty days when they found him. That they had found an acid sludge of Xanax pills in his stomach. Francis looked up at the calendar, each month with an illustration from a Shakespearean tragedy, and counted back twenty days in August. Slowly, Francis recalled, he’d traced his eyes across the weeks until the they landed on the Friday when he nished th the novel. There was a little Buddha sticker he’d put up to mark the end of Confucius. And from the stunned emptiness of o his mind in those ve frozen seconds seconds, he heard a little bleep-boop-bleep ring rin and echo. It grew until Francis checked front reality and saw it was the phone in fron of him. Harpy “Francis?” his friend at Harp Books chirped. “Francis, they’re lovin loving your manuscript over here!” He’d killed the real genius behind his writing. How could he pretend to give a fuck about paperback ction? O
IMAGINE BY
ALEX BLUM
Dungston, Oregon lay 44 miles out of downtown Portland. There, the destitute lived resigned to poverty amidst the ora and thick overgrowth. Few formal laws were maintained. People scraped up what they could and kept a blind eye to others. In his bedroom within the anemic, gray trailer home, Hayden imagined playing hacky sack with a fresh goldsh. He kicked it over his shoulder and then again with his heel so that it softly landed and balanced on the nape of his neck as he leaned forward. The goldsh opened and closed its lips in rhythm to the uttering of his gills. Hayden peacefully grasped the goldsh, Ernie, and placed him in a classic sh bowl with fuschia rocks and a small treasure chest. “Ernie, what makes your world go round?” Hayden said. “Food,” Ernie said. “Hayden, get down here you piece of shit or I’ll throw your mail out.” “Don’t go, I’m hungry,” Ernie said. “Sorry,” Hayden said. Hayden opened his eyes, sat up on his brown bed and rushed downstairs, stubbing his toe along the way. “Who’s Kelsey?” Hayden’s dad, Leo, said.
This
Afraid he might answer improperly and receive a smack, Hayden said nothing. Smack, Leo slapped him across the face. “You fucking answer me when I ask you something,” Leo said, ecks of spit hitting Hayden’s face. Leo’s drinking had put him in a rage. He squeezed Hayden by the forearm and dragged him from the kitchen to the living room. Leo pushed Hayden down on the tattered and faded green sofa. Dust ew and sparkled from a shot of light coming through the one true window, cracked years ago from an errant shoe throw. Hayden almost suggested they were fairies but stopped himself. Smack. “Don’t make me ask you again.” “I’m not sure, sir, I don’t really know any Kelseys.” “Liar!” Leo said while slapping him across the face again. A red stripe formed where the ring on his hand had met Hayden’s face. “I have right here an invitation from her for a birthday party, and it smells like perfume.” Leo said. He waved the baby blue and white card mockingly, like a Chinese fan. Hayden could make out the white border on top of the blue matting and saw an “M.” He suspected the party was mermaid-themed. Before he could be certain, Leo folded the card in half and stuffed it into the left front pocket of his blue plumber’s uniform. The
MICHAEL GOETZMAN
name Leonard Sakic was sewed in near the left side of his cavernous chest. “The only Kelsey I know is in a science class with me, but we have never talked, sir.” “So, you do know a Kelsey. I don’t want any of the sluts from your school sending mail here again. You got that?” “Yes, sir.” “Your fucking shoes are disgusting. I’ll cut your goddamn feet off if you don’t get that mud off and keep them that way. You’re vomit.” “Yes, sir.” “Good, get back in your room. I didn’t get a paycheck today,” Leo said, nearly stumbling on a plastic, green chair.“You’re gonna have to nd food somewhere. Maybe you should start pulling your weight around here.” Pretending he had x-ray vision, Hayden could see the now crumpled card resting in his dad’s pocket. He walked back to his room. The yellowed carpet had holes that exposed the metal sheeting beneath. Stains of decay emanated in schizophrenic circles on the white roof and grew each time it rained. Two books were hidden between his rotting mattress and the oor to ensure they didn’t get wet from the Oregon rain – The Perks of Being A Wallower and Stargirl. He read these in the musty room on nights when his dad drank so much he didn’t snore. April 27, 2009
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17
Closing his eyes, Hayden lied on his bed and tried to conjure Ernie but couldn’t just then. He lay there with his lanky arms wrapped around his chest and his knees bent to his lightly freckled torso until he fell asleep. +++ The next day, Hayden arrived at school saggy wet in a green rain jacket shell and handme-down-jeans. The dilapidated school smelt like wet pencil shavings. He wandered through the day anticipating seeing Kelsey in seventh period physics. He closed his eyes and imagined walking up to Kelsey and without saying a word, kissing her. Their noses would rub softly, and the rest of the world would disappear. He would rub her smooth skin and slowly kiss his way down to her round breasts. She would shiver with excitement. They would run away from school. They would move to Los Angeles and start a writing company called Lovers Ink. Kelsey would laugh at his jokes and make him crunchy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches like his mom used to. During lunch, Hayden sat in a hallway at the opposite end of the school from the cafeteria near the bathroom where he couldn’t hear the carousing children. His eyes were closed when he felt a hard slap on his back. “Someone’s got a girlfriend,” Tyler Urgenson said. He had a crew cut of dyed black hair and recorded songs on his electric guitar. He posted them on Youtube biweekly, but they were rarely viewed. When Tyler was 15, his drunken father plowed into a streetlight, killing himself and his wife upon impact. Tyler secretly lived alone for fear of becoming a ward of the state. He answered to no one. Rumors abounded. To Hayden’s discomfort, he was often reminded that they were the two tallest boys in the eleventh grade. “Kelsey won’t stop blabbing about you,” Tyler said. “She got you a gift. I wonder if it’s a 14-inch dildo or anal beads.” Hayden stood up, tensed his shoulders, walked into the bathroom, and locked himself in the only stall with a functioning lock. The clogged toilet made Hayden wince. Tyler followed him but felt satised just haranguing Hayden while sitting on a sink. “You’re not going to smell good for Kelsey.” Hayden imagined Tyler with a guitar shoved up his ass. It came out of his stomach as he sprayed blood through his purple intestines on the ground. The spray spelled “Die” on a white wall. “I think she probably just feels bad for you because you have no friends,” Tyler said. 18
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His father was in a tank of whiskey drowning. He screamed for help but no one could hear him through the thick glass walls. Terror came to his face as he spasmed in pain. Hayden watched indifferently. Hayden lost Tyler. He didn’t hear him leave after the fourth period bell rang. He arrived very late to class, beginning to resent Kelsey’s invidious attention. +++ Seventh period always began with Mr. Takamoro’s eclectic music. He collected all types for his impressive collection and exposed his students to a new selection each day. Today was Polka. As the students led in, most didn’t take time to notice. They had become so ha-
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bituated to Mr. Takamoro’s tradition and their unfamiliarity made each day’s unique offering sound so similar, that it stopped interesting them now that they were in the third month of the school year. Mr. Takamoro scurried around the room like a mouse, preparing that day’s experiment with a furtive smile. His long, black braid swayed with his movement. Hayden knew nothing about Polka and sat there blankly listening, nervously tapping his right hand to the beat. “Today we will be learning about one of the most exciting ideas in physics: Newton’s rst law of motion. Newton stated, ‘An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.’ Can anybody explain this?” Mr. Takamoro said. Hayden found this incredibly boring and
could not focus near Kelsey. She watched Mr. Takamoro with feigned attentiveness just feet away from Hayden. She pushed a small box wrapped in blue paper from side to side to make it glide between her hands. Tyler sat in the back of the class and watched with schadenfreude glee. Hayden closed his eyes and imagined a ne black pen and Italian stationary. Kelsey would walk up to him after class and look him in the eye while saying nothing. After it grew so painfully exciting, they couldn’t stand it, she would say, “For you, to write me on the road.” Casually, Hayden would accept the box and walk mysteriously out of the room leaving her in suspense until the next day and the next box. “…like a aming Ferris wheel on the moon,” Mr. Takamoro said, confusing Hayden. Jenny Watson handed Hayden a crumpled -up note. His heart started pounding. Quickly, he unfolded it while the table watched. “You’re a bitch,” it read. Not needing to look for the author, Hayden crumpled up the note and placed it in his pocket. Kelsey didn’t see what it said and pretended not to notice. As the clock inched towards 2:45, Hayden’s head felt like it was swelling with each tick. He thought of electric eels swimming in his stomach. The bell rang and student’s rushed out of class. Slowly, Hayden packed his belongings, sharpened a pencil, rewrote the homework assignment in his planner, noticed Tyler lingering, and decided to talk to Mr. Takamoro. “When does the science club meet next?” he said. “Well, that depends on what you think the science club is,” Mr. Takamoro explained. “In some ways it convenes whenever you want. Why don’t you talk to the president, Ms. Frush, for a more concrete answer? I believe she is standing outside, just past where we can see,” Mr. Takamoro said, smiling at some joke. “Oh, ok,” Hayden said. “You may actually be a big enough loser to be in the science club,” Tyler said. The three of them were the only people left in the classroom. “Mr. Urgenson, come here please,” said Mr. Takamoro. “I saw a great video of you playing guitar. You would be great with a band. Maybe you could talk to the science club about sound waves and recruit some members. I know Ms. Danvers plays the French horn. Detention should give you time to think of a lecture. Have a good day, Mr. Sakic. Mr.
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Urgenson, come to my desk.” Hayden grabbed his backpack and, with trepidation, walked out of the room. Waiting around the corner, was Kelsey sitting next to the blue box. He stopped walking and looked at her hands. She was painting her nails with white-out. The fumes made him dizzy. She looked up. She sneezed. “Hi,” she said. Hayden’s right shoulder twitched. A dab of white-out caked some of Kelsey’s stringy brown hair. The sound of her scratching her arm broke the silence. Flecks of her pale skin fell to the deep maroon carpet. Her wide and droopy eyes imparted an aspect of wise wonder. “Did you get my birthday invitation?” Kelsey said. “Yeah.” Hayden said. “It’s going to be in Atlantis, and I’m going to be the queen of the ocean,” she said. “I got you this gift.” Offering him the box, Kelsey spilt the white-out on Hayden’s left shoe where mud had been the day before. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” she said. Hayden panicked. He closed his eyes and saw his dad cutting off his feet with a rusty saw. He started running to the bathroom. “Sorry, I’ll mail you the present. Happy birthday, ours are the same!” Kelsey said. Hayden turned back and brought his face inches from Kelsey’s. She could feel his hot breath. “Don’t send me anything,” Hayden screamed at her, “slut.” +++ Hayden thought the rain sounded like staccato gun re as it collided with the cars in the school parking lot. His chest heaved up and down as he sprinted with no destination. The white stain hardened. A row of eight stores known as downtown appeared. Hayden went inside TJ Maxx and caught his breath. Two employees trolled absent mindedly through the sprawling expanse of discount clothes. An electronic beep came from the third employee scanning a faded green and blue Seahawks jersey for an obese woman with a walker. Hayden snuck to the back corner near the dressing rooms and sat against the wall beside a rack of wrinkled dresses. He scanned the store for cameras, saw none, and then closed his eyes. He envisioned himself grabbing a shoebox near the front and sprinting out of the store. In a few days, he would return with the money and a written apology. His body shook with sobs and shivers as he hugged himself and heard the splat of
his hands against his jacket, sopping from the rain. He would never get to Los Angeles. He would never write. He had two books and no money. He would age and drink like his father and die. All he could do was shiver and weep. “What’s the matter? You miss Kurt Cobain? That was nine years ago. He’s gone and you have to accept that,” a middle-aged woman with a blue uniform on said sarcastically. Her voice was raspy from a lifetime of smoking. She wore a button that read, “Not on my watch,” in white font atop a picture of a black clock. Hayden could only laugh, appreciating this woman for even noticing him. He wiped his eyes. “I feel so lost without him,” Hayden said. “Well, you’re getting my oor all wet.” “Sorry,” Hayden said. “You’re going to have to nd new inuences for your band. Maybe you can call yourselves ‘The Tear-Stained Jacket,’” she said. “I should probably learn an instrument rst,” Hayden said. “I better be going.” “Feel better sweetheart. I know how you feel.” He walked out of the store with closed eyes and an idea. +++ Three percussive raps shook the rickety yellow door of the one room apartment and made stucco fall off the walls. An amalgam of cigarettes and body odor coming from within wafted up to Hayden’s nose. He inhaled calmly, lling his square chest and sturdy shoulders, feeling fortied by the acrid smell. A rumbling came from within and the door opened a sliver. A shot of black hair appeared above one blood shot eye. “What do you want?” Tyler said. “To talk,” Hayden said. “I’m busy in here.” “I don’t have parents either Tyler. I can imagine that you really aren’t that busy. I never am.” Tyler opened the door, and Hayden walked in. Inside, countless bottles of beers and empty cartons of cigarettes lay strewn about the oor amidst food wrappers and clothes. Hayden removed three records from a seat on the faded and green sofa in front of the TV. “You want to watch TV?” Tyler said. Hayden noticed that the electric cord running from the TV rested on the oor near the only outlet in the room. “You don’t watch much TV, do you?” Hayden said.
“Never,” Tyler said uncomfortably. “Me neither.” Hayden closed his eyes and imagined Tyler alone in the dark of the terrible room feeling complete bliss playing his guitar, transported far away from Dungston. He imagined Tyler on stage in a gigantic arena with thousands of screaming fans. Girls threw their bras on stage and screamed with excitement as he strummed his guitar with heroic whirls of his arm. “You want a beer,” Tyler said. “No thanks,” Hayden said. “Sorry.” “You’re ne.” Hayden stood and walked to Tyler. Hayden noticed they stood at exactly the same height and both had freckles. “Listen, you’re parents died from drinking and my mom and brother ran away from drinking. I understand. You’ve been a real asshole though. So stop it.” Tyler tensed up and stared Hayden in the eye. “Sorry,” Tyler said. “It’s alright. You can make it up to me. I need a pair of clean shoes or my dad will kill me.” The boys traded shoes. “So, you want to be a rock star?” Hayden said. “No, not really. I’m not sure what I want to do. Something to get out of here.” “Yeah, me too. I’ve got to get home though. See you at school?” “I’m leaving tonight for Portland but I’ll be back in a few days. Come back some time, loser. I’ll teach you harmonica,” Tyler said. “Sure, but only if we can clean this shit hole.” Hayden started running home with his clean shoes. +++ “Where the fuck have you been?” Leo said, grasping a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his hand. Hayden closed his eyes. Smack. He fell onto the carpet. “Answer me,” Leo said. His father had a long scab on his dry lower lip. Burst capillaries hid between scattered whiskers jutting from his face. He cocked his arm again. “Stop!” Hayden said while lifting himself up. “You’re a fucking alcoholic dickhead. If you ever hit me again, I will kill you.” “Fuck you, this is my house, and I’ll do what I want.” “I don’t need your goddamn house. April 27, 2009
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You’re worthless. You don’t feed me. You don’t do anything for me. You hurt me.” “What, are you going to run away like your whore of a mother and your brother?” “They didn’t run away, you abandoned us.” “Where are you going to go?” Leo said with a quiver in his voice. “Not here,” Hayden said.
breakfast, and they ate looking out a window to the clear, green day. Hayden was surprised at how ordinary the house looked. Only the enormous CD rack hinted at Mr. Takamoro’s eccentricity. Mr. Takamoro’s straight, black hair came to his lower back. While Hayden ate a fresh blueberry mufn, Mr. Takamoro redid his single braid, placing a black rubber band at the
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He walked into the rain with no clear destination, and the cool water soothed his angry body. As the night grew cold, Hayden, with crossed arms and an elbow in each palm realized that he might freeze in the snow that was now falling this December night if he didn’t nd a place to stay. He tried breaking into Tyler’s apartment but couldn’t. Three strange men pulled up directly in front of him and started passing around a pipe. “Hey, kid, come over here,” one with a tattoo covering the right side of his face said. Hayden noticed how his thin mustache danced as he spoke but still decided against it and left. Out of desperation, knowing it broke school policy, Hayden nally knocked on the door of Mr. Takamoro. Seeing his pale face and snow colored hair, Mr. Takamoro let Hayden in and, without saying a word, set out a sleeping bag and two pillows and went back to bed. Hayden settled in and closed his eyes. He saw Kelsey alone at home with the blue box sitting on a wooden mantel. Maybe her parents were gone too. Flecks of her nail polish covered her sheets like the snow that fell off Hayden onto his sleeping bag. A wave of remorse passed through him and he winced. Exhausted, he fell asleep while hugging a pillow. The next day, Mr. Takamoro made them 20
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end to hold it. The silence felt placid. After eating, Mr. Takamoro led Hayden to the garage. “So, it was your birthday?” he said. “Yep.”
he entered. The blue box did not rest in front of Kelsey today. At the end of class she made an announcement. “Science club will be meeting after school on Tuesday instead of Wednesday next week if anyone cares to come. We will discuss Einstein and relativity, and then our very own Tyler Urgenson will be lecturing about sounds waves and playing guitar,” she said. A few guffaws came from students, a few considered attending, but mostly they kept listening. “I’ll also be making ice cream with liquid nitrogen.” Hayden watched her talk and felt an awful longing. The bell rang and students rushed out of the class. Kelsey packed quickly and walked out. Hayden, panicked, rushed out and saw her walk down the hall. “Kelsey,” he shouted. She stopped and turned around. Hayden jogged to her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re a jerk,” she said. “Can jerks still come to the science club?” “Jerks that can apologize are always welcome.” She opened her bag and took out the blue box. Hayden took it from her and looked at her with playful, squinting eyes. He opened it carefully. Inside, he found a piece of notebook paper that read, “One Friendship Coupon.” “Thanks,” Hayden said. “I was hoping
“...close your eyes and imagine you’re on a train going the speed of light, and you see lightning strike out the window.” “I have a gift for you then.” Mr. Takamoro presented Hayden with an old, blue bicycle next to the same model in red. The handlebar tape frayed at the edges. “Thanks! It’s amazing, but you really don’t need to.” Hayden said, disoriented by such kindness. “I’ve had it sitting around for a while doing nothing. You should have it. With this bike you can go just about anywhere you want.” Together, they rode their bikes to school. Hayden followed behind watching Mr. Takamoro’s braid wave in the wind. Seventh period came quickly. Hayden had nervously shufed from class to class all day. Mr. Takamoro greeted him with a nod as
for a Starbucks gift certicate, but I’ll take it.” “You’re welcome.” “May I cash this with you?” Hayden said. “Yes, you may.” They hugged and started walking out of the school. “So, relativity?” Hayden said. “Yep.” “Why do you like science so much? Relativity seems pretty boring.” “Well, for example, close your eyes and imagine you’re on a train going the speed of light, and you see lightning strike out the window,” Kelsey said. Hayden didn’t need to. He kept his eyes open and smiled. O
ORCHARD My childhood is painted in apples. We lived in orchards and lily ponds, dreamed frog nets, gold sh, a star of seeds.
We raced through apple trees as antelopes, lost in tall grass threads, woven into ourselves. Once we stopped short, before
BY SUZI GROSSMAN
the neighbor’s red peach barn. Unable to remember crossing the thin road (that barrier), our toes had grown wings and skimmed the dust. My father spoke their names, lost names – This is a Braeburn – I heard only sweet crunch. My mother painted cinnamon on their heads, cool from cellar bags, the baking oven scent in her aching head. I added nutmeg. But what are apples? A fearful swelling chemical cloud and a duck’s swollen knees cut down so many trunks. So I tell apples and eat apples, the thin teeth skins, whisper: This white esh, (there is no orchard), sweet memory of branches.
April 27, 2009
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LIMBS SPREAD WIDE
for ha on the it m
ou
res BY NATALIE SELZER
T
hey sat cross-legged at the end of the pier, looking through the wood-barred railing to the ocean below. A ock of gulls passed overhead, the muted apping of wings and quiet screeches trailing behind. Nearby, a man cast his shing line out into the waves and the reel whirred faintly as it fell. She held the railing with both hands, humming softly and looking out across the monotonous swellings and fallings of the waves. The line between the sky and the water looked only a smudge of misplaced color, daubed carelessly across the seascape. With her left eye shut tightly, she traced the smear of horizon with one thumb, dragging it along until the line slipped into the distance. Beside her, he thrummed his ngers absently against the
wood in time with her ambling hum, watching her movements. “You should watch out for splinters,” he said, glancing at her hands resting upon the railing. “I will. Don’t worry.” She leaned back at against the pier, arms spread wide on either side of her. With one outstretched hand she brushed his ngers, and his curled around hers absentmindedly, his face maintaining a soft ambivalence. “I could stay here forever, you know that? It’s kind of perfect, in its own way.” He nodded, looked up to the sky. “It’s a good place,” he agreed. “I like it.” As they sat, the mufed roar of waves breaking against the slick pillars of the pier hung between them, their own silence plain in weight and depth. When she nally sat up, she leaned
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forward and ran her ngers through the hair that fell across his forehead. It was only brown, but there was something about the color, the way the light hit it. She loved it more than a lot of things she knew. “Isn’t it weird the way things work out?” he asked. Her hands dropped back to her lap, resting lightly. “How do you mean? “Well, a year ago I didn’t know you. We were both wrapped up in something else, on another path. But then you’re sitting here across from me now. Just strange
“
ing, where you want to leap and see what happens next? Do something terrifying.” He looked up at her, standing in underwear speckled with delicate blue owers and edged in a small band of lace. They t snugly around the curves of her body, the curves that he wanted to reach up and grab, pull close to him if only to pull her from that edge. He thought she looked fragile there by the railing, breakable and uncertain behind the bold triumphancy of her words; they echoed in his ears with a kind of falseness, tinny and brittle. “Some-
routes, came closer to reuniting, he sensed an aching distance stretched out between them, hollow. He imagined if he had jumped, limbs spread wide and vulnerable, waiting to hit the water as air rushed past him, through him. He had wanted that. He waited for her at the top of the beach, facing out towards the ocean. She walked up through the sand, hair dripping and clinging to pale shoulders, bare skin fresh and raw from the cold salt water. Even from a distance he could see her legs tremble faintly, from cold or from something else entirely. He could not tell. “You didn’t jump,” she said with plainness when she nally stood before him. He shook his head, looking at the sand. “No, I didn’t.” “Do you think you ever would? Jump with me, I mean.” He wanted to reach out to her, fold her clinging coldness up into his arms and keep her there. But his arms simply dangled uselessly by his sides. “Probably not,” he choked. She looked closely at him, the curves of his face. In hers, he only saw a pointed resignation as she breathed in deeply, collecting the air of that day into her lungs, into herself. “All right, then.” And she walked past him, up the beach and across the sloping dunes. He watched for a long while as she grew smaller and smaller in her blue-owered underwear until she disappeared entirely, swallowed up behind the arch of a sandbank. He noticed a quiet determination, a purpose, in the movements of her damp, bare body. O
”
‘I’m going to dive in,’ she said, her voice steady with purpose, ‘and I want you to jump after me.’
is all, the way things can change. Gain meaning.” She thought for a moment. “I wonder how long it takes to really change a life. You know, have the kind of impact where it can never be quite the same once it’s all faded and gone.” He shrugged. “An instant. A lifetime. Who knows.” For a few moments she watched the sherman down the pier as he cast out his bait again, the line trailing out over the railing until it nally hit the water down below. Then she stood suddenly, small sandaled feet arching to tiptoe as she leaned over the railing, looking at the spitting saltwater below. “What if we just jumped? You and me. Off the pier, I mean.” He laughed lightly, reached his hand up toward her. “Come back down here.” “No, but I mean it. Let’s jump in. It’ll be great.” “I don’t know. We’d jump, and then what? The water’s freezing, and there’s no way to know whether we could even make it back to shore. We could get thrown against the pilings down there.” She turned towards him, ngers still holding the railing loosely. “But we’ll do it together. We’ll stay by each other in the water, and I know it’ll be all right.” Softly, she added, “Please?” He hesitated. “C’mon quit it. We’re not really going to jump. Just come back down here, it’s nice sitting on the edge, looking down at the water. Why do we need to jump if we can just see it all from here?” She stepped a few feet down the railing from where he sat. Unzipping her pants, she shimmied out of the jeans and left them lying on the planks. A soft layer of goose bumps rose up across her skin, bare and bright against the greyness of the afternoon. “Because I don’t want to sit on the edge of this and just look; I want to jump and feel the air, and the water. I want to feel it against my skin and in my nose and hair. Don’t you ever just get that feel-
times,” he replied quietly, “but not now. Not right now.” She clambered up the railing, stopping at the second bar to the top and spreading her arms wide for balance. The lean muscles of her legs were poised to jump, beautifully so. Or perhaps, he couldn’t help but think, braced for a fall. “I’m going to dive in,” she said, her voice steady with purpose, “and I want you to jump after me. It’ll be ne, people do it all the time.” And then as he moved to stand, to hold her back, to clutch the delicate blue owers and the lace and the pale curves of her body, she dove, arcing out over the grey swellings of the ocean. She formed a perfect crescent, a eeting moon suspended impossibly in the cool of the afternoon, amongst the gulls and pilings and his uncertainty that caught him in the chest. “But I don’t think I can!” he called out as her arc faded, straightening into a clean dive that propelled her into the water below. Words weak, they dissipated into the breeze that eddied overhead. She surfaced after a few moments, and though small and distant, he could feel her gaze upon him as she paused, waited. But swiftly she turned, began her steady and persistent swim back to shore. He walked along the pier railing beside her as she went, watching with diligence for the faintest sign of failure, of swells threatening to crush her into the pilings, of hypothermia. But nothing happened, aside from a gradual slowing of pace as she moved nearer and nearer to shore. As they approached ALYCE CURRIER the beach from their separate
April 27, 2009
THE OBSERVER
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Just completed a creative writing class? Have an external hard drive full of poetic musings? Recently turned in an extremely non-traditional political science essay?
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THE OBSERVER
April 27, 2009
PARTING SHOT
Alyce Currier
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