Writers Magazine 2009

WRITERS A literary magazine

2009

UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND

WRITERS SENIOR EDITORS: Ashley Hight Bethanie Peterson

EDITORS: Corinne Anderson Dena Cassella Erin Chambers Kelly Damewood Mary Holdener Danielle Jolicoeur Stephanie Landis Katie Mitchell Tyler Moss

ADVISOR: Lars Larson

COVER PHOTO: Emily Sitton

SPRING 2009

Contents EDITORS 4 CHOICE 5

Deanna Kishel Cori Anderson

Eggs

6

Dena Cassella

Mango Boy

POETRY

History is a sine curve

10 Andrea Wujek

Green Tomatoes

12 Bethanie Peterson

Braving The Machinery

14 Scott Jamison

Undecided

16 Danielle Jolicoeur

Che Bella Lingua

18 Ashley Hight

Digits

22 Nicole Hunt

The Parting

24 Ruby Stocking &

Heart Balloon

Olga Mosiychuk 27 Andrew Lyon

Life Is…

31 Robert Russell

Faith

35 Ingrid Hannan

The Second Tenet of Ethics

37 Courtney Carroll

When There’s Nothing Else There’s Cherry Pie

41 Caterina Purves

Childhood

42 Jedidiah Patton

The Evening Party

43 Douglas Orofino

Draped in Dreams Descending…

44 Amelia Gradt

Forest At Twilight

52 Sydney Syverson

A Paradoxical Mystery of Love

54 Mikel Johnson

There is A Reason

55 Michael Bakke

Ghoden’s Sword

57 Annemarie Medrzycki

Changing Seasons

63 John Hegarty

A Common Misconception

64 CJ Graves

Bismarck

70 Jordan Allensworth

Poem for the Night

71 Katherine Carlos

Pasame La Botella (Un Corrido)

76 Daniel Lower

A Sincere Response

77 Pierce Kennedy

You

82 Kristi Castellano

Unframed

PHOTOS 13 Alexis Manning

Venezia

15 Ingrid Hannan

Blink

17 Doug Franz

Ghost Rider

PROSE

23 Erin Chambers

Colombia Park

11 Matt Hughson

Hood River Bridge Looking Over

26 Shayla Behling

Vienna, Austria

28 Brianna Bobiak

Untitled

34 Hillary Ahearn

Punda Milia

40 Mary Miller

Trafalger Square Uprising, London

45 Ashley Hight

Working Class

51 Kevin Hannon

The Pipes

58 Nathan Haskell

Birds on A Wire

62 Alyssa Reget

Florence

65 Hilary Ahearn

Ubatizo

69 Erica Ellingsen

Winter Break

75 Yelena Pavlovich

Duckie

81 Emily Sitton

Portuguese Heroes

19 Andy Matarrese

Don’t Boss and Don’t Cross the Redheaded Stranger

29 Kevin Krohn

Mockdatutsu

38 Tyler Moss

Local Anesthetic

46 Stephanie Landis

The Three Forced Breakfasts

59 Oliver Anderson

Relish

65 Hilary Ahearn

Ubatizo

72 Stephanie Cargill-Greer

Boring Seeking Excitement

78 Matthew Tongue

A Welcome From the University President

A collection of prose, poetry, and photographs

3

Untitled

BY DEANNA KISHEL

4

History is a sine curve, I explain, Caesar Calculus is conquering the world He’s coming from the Abbasids, Englishmen, and Greeks The derivative of his function means it will only take him weeks I met him, I explain, we spoke politely About the way backyard dirt smells like air and sunshine The way a liquid popsicle’s sugar glaciers charm the tongue The way fingers love the vibrating fur of a purring cat The way neon-deadly frogs are cute but humble-bumble toads are not And that because of the way that shoes are tied Life became awkward for everyone But all that will change when walking becomes unnecessary The trigonometric tyrant’s chariot wheels are perfect squares The integrals are integral, I explain Until the elephant in the room steps on my toe Je m’en fiche, says this member of the Catherine collective She’s been seeing “The Messiah” in the drip-drip of the spigot The world is daily conquering Calculus, Dea-chan, Even as his territory expands O. The inclusive monosyllable of the union of Dancing elephants and the numbers e to pi And I press her words into a tiny ball Let the sphere fall, rise, fall, and calculate the curves Just to gauge the tension in her nerves She should be more like that other cat Soft, and round, and fat

Eggs

BY CORI ANDERSON

5

Mango Boy

BY DENA R. CASSELLA

6

He slept until she woke him. She woke him by tugging his hair, or knocking something over in the dark. He’s a light sleeper anyway, she’d say, no harm. In the morning, when their sky was still night, cornflower blue, the color crayon he could never find, she woke him to pick mangos. She armed him with broomstick and garbage bag. If someone coming you stay quiet, she warned, if someone coming no make noise.

Prom knew how to pick mangoes, it wasn’t hard, the fruit was heavy, and its stem weak, one hit with the stick and it’d fall. The mango tree wasn’t theirs. The mango tree grew in the graveyard next to their apartment: Mo’ili’ili cemetery, a tight-square plot for dead pineapple pickers and sugarcane harvesters, used to scare him, but now he understands dead is dead, so early morning he climbs the mango tree and collects fruit for her to sell to neighbors and in markets and on road sides.

She named him Promenade, she calls him Prom. It was the first word she liked when she arrived here. The coffee-skinned marine wanted to walk her down to the promenade, and he was tall and smelt like washed cotton so she went. He had white teeth: local boy, O’ahu grown he’d say, and she’d giggle. He kissed her and she didn’t stop him, and later he left and she never stopped him that time either and now she has Prom; half coffee-skinned boy from Mo’ili’ili with Vietnamese eyes and her straight silk hair, thick, good for tugging on. Prom knew his mother’s past, she couldn’t talk about it and be happy, so he never asked how tall his father was, or how he made her laugh. But she will never thank him for his silence, or for anything. She works at Honolulu Library on weekends; they let her stamp books and restock shelves. She lied, told them she couldn’t read so she wouldn’t have to talk to people, so they make her match numbers on spines of books to rows on shelves.

Mo’ili’ili was a legend, but now is a district of Honolulu. Gods walked upon the lava rock fields, crushing them into blood-dirt pathways, and now Datsun pick-ups rumble over that dirt towards shops and houses and graveyards. Mo’o means lizard. Mo’ili’ili is chopped up lizard—pebbles of dragon. One heated day on O’ahu, the goddess Hi’iaka destroyed the giant lizard that crept out of the ocean and troubled her friends by tugging on their ears. Hi’iaka ripped the tapa cloth from her body, thrashing it through thick humid air, and cut the giant lizard into pieces.

Hi’iaka left the remains, and the black lizard flesh turned hard like rocks, the dark porous skin grew dense and large, making green hills and yellow dunes. Hills that grow mixed-race children and aloe and

other things that heal.

This morning he woke quickly. She smashed one of her grandmother’s tea bowls by accident and he found her crying on the kitchen floor next to him. He only slept in the kitchen during the summer: too hot for sheets, tile made his skin loose.She didn’t look up from her crouched half-moon shape over the green and beige ceramic shards. She stayed rounded and hunched, while Prom picked the fractured pieces up from about her.Weeping softly, she shook her head and pointed to the broomstick. Prom touched the soft-skinned forearm harboring her face and tiptoed around her to the wall with the leaning broomstick, then to the door, then to the graveyard. The graveyard looked different every morning. Today, gravestones grew out of the ground like barren mountains, Prom pictured white goats climbing their rounded stone tops, and the grass looked like this morning’s broken tea bowl, glazed and glistening in dawn’s dull shadow.

The tree is infectious. Mango sap is deadly, cousin to poison ivy, nature’s cruel trick: perfect climbing tree, strong-armed branches holding sweet sunset-painted eggs with tender meat, but sap that can blind, choke, kill. She called it blood, but Prom understood she meant sap. No blood in your eyes, can’t pick mangoes with blood in your eyes, she’d say. Prom climbed carefully, grasping each crag of bark until he reached branches, then he’d move quicker, jumping from limb to limb, slithering on his belly once he sees the fruit.He forgot his garbage bag. She usually hands it to him, but this morning she could not leave the comfort of her half-moon shape and he did not want her to, so his exit was silent and rushed. Hugging the branch with thin boy legs, he removes his brown cotton shirt, tying a knot, closing the bottom hole, makes his own bag. Prom sat proudly for a moment, then lowered his bare chest to the tree’s coarseness and slinked, like a hungry snake, towards the mangos.

The sky shades shift. O’ahu sun forces it’s glow through the early morning, folding blue into green, soaking darkness in gold. His thinboy-arm, a brown knobbed fist clinging to the broomstick, stabs the wet heated air, injuring nothing, but breaking the stemmed barrier between flower and fruit. Prom stabbed, hit, tapped his way through the branches, dropping bright bulbs to the hollow ground below. Only a few feet from the earth, but Prom felt higher and bigger than reality. Unclipped fingernails etched the rising pink bumps clustering on his bare chest.

Prom scratched the pink into red. He turned around on the branch and laid his back down, staring up through the umbrella of long green slivers, watching pieces of cloud whisk by as morning trades grew stronger, and

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he scratched the poison deeper.

He remembered the first time the poison got onto his skin, but it wasn’t the first time he had climbed the tree. Poison takes time. When it happened, although it burned he did not cry. His face grew large and scaly, blistering in the corner folds of skin by his eyes and lips. He felt the bumps and scales with his fingertips, moving them gradual and with persistence, trying to identify his own face. His skin was so tight and heavy; he could not smile and tell his mother he was okay. Couldn’t tell her he didn’t mind, he’d be better tomorrow, and that he would finish his picking in the morning. He was younger, still afraid of the tree, still afraid of her. She wouldn’t take him to a doctor because no one had ever taken her. He’d wait it out, like she had for many years.She had climbed the mango tree too often for its fruit that now even going near it made her react. Though young, Prom remembers her bursting through the doors with garbage bags full, and eyes swollen shut, stumbling and screaming and scratching the poison into bloody stripes across her body. She thought the tree reacted to her. Mad at me, angry I take the fruit, she said, your turn now, now you climb, now you work.

She climbed when she was pregnant. She climbed after he left her, with sadness and anger distracting her from the sickness. She did not like to vomit. She wanted to keep everything she had, even the food inside her swollen belly. She needed money, and respectful neighbors wouldn’t set foot in the graveyard, fearing something would come home with them, attach itself to them.She had forgotten her fears. Loneliness and resentment replaced most feeling in her. She would climb every morning, even when she was too round, and she sold mangos to grocers and neighbors and strangers. Her cousin and her husband lived on the island for a few years and worked hard and were overwhelmed and sometimes ate only rice because she had to afford the pill because they couldn’t afford a child and she didn’t want him to leave. They moved back when Prom was born. Rather take malaria pill and accidentally have babies and eat noodles with pork in Hanoi than to be hungry in America.

Local ladies with their wiry gray hairs wrapped tight in colorful Japanese-bands scold her when she goes to markets and to grocers with her stolen mangos. They give her warnings she does not obey.Warnings she will never tell her boy. Never turn your back to the ocean. Never walk into graveyard with out food. Never leave graveyard with food.

Never pick flowers from the Queen’s garden on Kapahulu. Never walk the beach at night, black Mo’o will slither onto the sand to scratch your ankles, try to drag you into the water with him. Never move rocks — they’re not yours to move, and they’ll move back when no one’s looking.

Never whistle at night, brings bad company. Never step on reef with bare feet, brings illness. Never drive on Pali Highway with pork, car will stall. Never touch or take with out asking.Never stare at a gravestone for too long, you may attract needy spirits. Never doubt legends. Never laugh at ghost story. If islands crept out of the ocean, so did Mo’o, and myths and giant mango trees and blood-red pathways. On islands, after a while, any truth becomes a legend. Not our stories, she’d think, no harm, no matter.

Half coffee-skinned boy from Mo’ili’ili collects mangos from the ground, stuffing as many as he can through the neck of his shirt. He brings it up to her and she sees the red scratches on his chest. You ruin your shirt, she yells and she throws a folded up garbage bag at his reddirt-stained feet. He collected the rest of his harvest in the garbage bag and brings that to her, but she is not there when he returns, already on her way to markets, already behind schedule because he took time to look up through the leaves at the changing sky. He leaves the bag in the kitchen and collects his pillow and bedding from the tiles. Prom scrubs his hands and his chest with dish soap. He is not afraid of the poison, but he wants to go to school today, so he scrubs extra hard until his brown skin looks like it was burned red.

He does not tell his friends at school how early he wakes up or why he has shirts with holes and snags or how well he knows the gripping texture and pungent odor of mango trees. Other boys at school watch him closely, know he does more than they see, and argue over what’s his story. Too tall to be just Vietnamese, and still yet his skin grows dark, they say. Girls his age like that he’s quiet and sometimes tell him things that he keeps secret, but then forgets them after not too long.

During recess he will sit with others but is not aware of them, he will laugh when they laugh and sometimes he will leave them to sit in the shade of the thick rooted banyan tree. The banyan roots cage him quietly, dropping down from high branches like spider legs. Propping his spine against a sturdy root he shuts his eyes and tries to dream. His friends call him back to them. The girls are lying on the hot pavement, with yellow playground lines gridding the black asphalt under their thin prostrated bodies. The boys are shoving each other and spitting on the hot pavement near the girls to make them scream. He saunters over to them, bare feet crushing loose pebbles as he goes, trying not to step on his own shadow. Prom joins them in the sun, thick black hair shining like metal rooftops, the boys watch as he grows darker, and then one begins to tell a story.

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Green Tomatoes

BY ANDREA WUJEK

The son, anxious, burning with an eagerness to create.

A man, though young, dreaming in creative color— smacked with the realness of figures. prices. groceries.

So plan b involves ripening the MCAT & people skills, Explaining to patients they are victims of fate— While hating their malignant lethargy.

Even the late tomatoes in the side yard—picketed in and painted by Tom’s youngest next door— You pluck, hide in the closet, wrap gently with brown paper bags and rest teetering on kitchen sills.

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When knowing they are only germinated, stretched in the cooling air, And meant, with culinary care and artistry, to be dipped in batter, fried brown, eaten with parmesan and milk.

Hood River Bridge, Looking Over to Oregon Side

BY MATT HUGHSON

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braving the machinery

BY BETHANIE PETERSON

ration and logic spin, thread, dart, spike, gush. designed to stimulate, prepare, restrain. felt as ineffective somatic regulation. i worry for your Y. a full glass pushed, watch it pass my open hands, crashing, shards, slices, overflow. looks like my brain on the floor, smeared on cold tile and dripping down walls. could be any brain with a mind towards hypocrisy, allusion, and conceit. any mind with a body ready to get high, to dive. i await progesterone’s timely withdrawal.

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i see you peer through thick warped pane of estrogen— first tap, then knock. you find me and never mind the bloody pieces.

Venizia

BY ALEXIS MANNING

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Undecided

BY SCOTT JAMISON

I. Bereft of intent I turn down Elmwood and stumble upon the patron of the Undecided.

She is the 11th hour centrepiece For a clinical cafĂŠ audience, To her left, 3 servants, To her right, 3 subjects.

I struggle with the glass doors (Which does not go unnoticed,) And sidle to a familiar chair, my point of Vantage.

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This queen of the unresolved shoots pool, Searching for a story.

A road trip to Armagh Is unfruitful, Recollected graft and part-time mishaps Come up short.

Words serve her only to fill a void that intimacy and aficion call home Her audience loses interest.

II. Elliot, with tousled red hair, bombards me with Language (of a sort,) Laughing periodically as is his want.

I respond with timed Pleasantries, a craftsman of the polite, Occasionally, erroneously, Dumbfounding.

III. A forgotten wallet makes iced water, And not Darjeeling, The order of the day.

As this debt settles to the bottom of its glass, I leave.

Blink

BY INGRID HANNAN

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Che Bella Lingua

BY DANIELLE JOLICOEUR

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No sé que es, no siempre recuerdo.

Est-ce que c’est le son, le ton, les mots Sur ma langue ? Ou peut-être Es ist alles, was man spricht— oder nichts. Mon Dieu, Muss ich ein Käfer sein, damit du mich verstehst?

Damit du verstehst, l’enjouement de Goscinny, il filo mordace di Dante.

Que mes joues sont grosses, mes joues sont grosses.

Nun Dime lo que sientas. Wir war das Wetter heute?

Tormentas con truenos y sol aislado.

Levez-vous vite, orage désiré, bruyant mais parfois muet.

Genau, je pense donc je parle. Y All I want to say is, Yo quiero mostrarte die höheren Lagen der Alpen, le bolle nella mia minestra, la paix de mon joli cœur.

Mais—ma—pero—aber—alles, was man braucht è la mia mano aperta

Ghost Rider

BY DOUG FRANZ

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digits

BY ASHLEY HIGHT

18

i was born with 10 fingers and 10 toes, one of which acclimates me, the other shows me where to go. i have often wondered if there were a reversal in which toes became fingers and vice versa. would i be able to hang upside down as a baboon? would travel occur at greater speeds? would i be able to tighten or loosen my handgrip; or eat without regurgitation? you see, i was born with 10 fingers and 10 toes, one set lives the glamorous life as the other lives dually enclosed in socks and shoes, so the true hideousness of it’s beauty could never abuse its holder. it is a reminder in which we choose to banish the ugliness away, only to display their beautiful counterparts, with cashmere woven gloves that demonstrate and contemplate the fragility of fingers; and their little piggy cousins trapped in their socks, scream weeee weeeee weeeee all the way home.

“Don’t Boss and Don’t Cross the Redheaded Stranger”

BY ANDY MATARRESE

If I were to take my whole life, or even in the past couple months, and average out the number of comments I received about my hair, it would probably total to one daily. That is to say, I have received a comment about my hair every day of my life. There really isn’t anything special about the way I wear it: no conditioner, gel, or highlights. Nor is there anything special about the style. My mother called it a “Christopher Robin” haircut to barbers, meaning generic.

Outside of my hair, there isn’t anything especially interesting or physically remarkable about me. I’m not noticeably tall or short, big or skinny, handsome or homely. No prominent scars, birthmarks, tattoos, or deformities.

I just have bright red hair.

I hear a lot about it. Old ladies have no problem making red hair a subject of conversation. They love it, in fact. They go over every warm color in the crayon box, including ones I’ve never heard, describing and fawning over it. Judging by my experience, every old lady on the planet has a child, grandchild, or other family member with red hair. Suffice to say, old ladies love me. I get extra free samples in the supermarket and Carolyn in the Commons gives me extra cake and calls me sweetie.

On more than one occasion, women have asked me about my hair, what shampoo/conditioner do I use, where do I get it done, etc., and it can be quite flattering. Barbers and hairstylists seem to like cutting red hair, too. Maybe it brings variety to their day, or maybe it’s easier to find on the floor and sweep up.

Some people aren’t so complimentary. I have heard every single red hair joke anyone could ever possibly formulate. Others have had the gall to ask me if I dye my hair. I have a bit of a temper about such things, and don’t react very well to gingerphobes in general; I tend to hit them. The thought of rallying my people—there are about 20 million of us on the planet, while there are about 3 million active and reserve personnel in the US military—and raining down bloody justice on all of “you people” has crossed my mind as well.

Once, someone asked me if it was true that redheads had bad tempers.

I told her that is was true, then walked away. I probably don’t make the best case against the temperament stereotype, but Lizzie Borden, Nero, Jesse James, Napoleon Bonaparte, Achilles, Billy the Kid, Henry VIII, and George Armstrong Custer aren’t helping much either.

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We all have something about us that’s different, whether or hindrance or a blessing, and we all deal with it differently. I can’t speak for the rest of my titian brothers and sisters and how they approach the pigmentallychallenged, befreckled life, nor would I try. I suppose we all handle that a little differently too.

Some things are small, like accepting that there are days when I just won’t go outside. I’ve accepted that any sunscreen below SPF 50 is not going to do the trick. Other things have to do with larger world perspectives and attitudes. For me, aside from occasionally punching people, having red hair has meant learning to deal with being in the spotlight, all the time, whether I like it or not, or at least feeling that way. From old ladies and complimenting gingerphiles to the most ardent redheadoppressors to those in between, the first thing folks notice when I enter the room is the hair and it’s the first characteristic my friends use to describe me to others. The legally blind can spot me from across the quad.

I can handle group situations pretty well. I’m a pretty good host.

Speaking in public doesn’t bother me much; I’ve been in two beauty pageants and sang solo to a live audience. Nor does being a leader. I was captain of my cross country team, a mentor to high school freshmen, and the editor of two school newspapers. It wasn’t all because of the mane, but it probably helped.

There’s a flipside to the coiffure as well. I tend to be fairly quiet most of the time. I dress simply, t-shit and jeans, and feel uncomfortable doing otherwise. I have had the same haircut for my entire life. I figure I already stand out enough, so why draw attention to myself with a loud mouth or flashy clothes? And as far as the hair goes, why mess with a good thing?

I concede that the amount of attention I pay toward my crimson locks, and the amount of clever euphemisms I have for them, is probably somewhat effeminate. I’m not one for using hair product, like I said, but my day doesn’t really start unless I get my shower, and few males get as nervous when going under the barber’s scissor as me. When it’s the first thing people notice about you, you try to take care of it.

If there is one trait that the mop has given me, it’s a thick skin. I probably don’t need to say that red head kids get picked on in school more, but the ginger-basing can be a lot more systemic and subtle.

Look at the villains, the Riddlers, Poison Ivys, the school bullies in A Christmas Story, Jack in Lord of the Flies and the O’Doyles in Billy Madison. Look at the sidekicks, or the odd or nerdy ones, like Opie from “Happy Days,” Jimmy Olsen in Superman, Chuckie in Rugrats, or Ron Weasley in Harry Potter.

All these characters have red hair.

When I call “racism,” it’s hard to believe it’s entirely tongue-in-cheek, even for me. Like I was saying, after all the redhead jokes, fights on the playground, or negative portrayals of my people, getting the business from someone for real reasons is easy.

I won’t start quoting Civil Rights Movement activists, but the last thing any people ever needs is another division. Maybe the redhead pinch of vanity is a reaction to playground teasing. Maybe artists, writers, and Hollywood have us pegged. Maybe extra slices of cake in the Commons are the universe’s way of counterbalancing the susceptibility to skin cancer. What I can be sure of, though minus that when we get up and fix our hair, ours is instantly better, we’re all the same at the end of the day. We’re born bald, and we die bald.

Or, I could just call it quits, rally the troops and begin the ginger revolution.

Red power.

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The Parting

BY NICOLE HUNT

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They two walk in silence Touching without feeling Gazing towards the same tomorrow that no longer is.

Smiling the same smile they have always known Slowly drifting, both aware, neither acknowledging Walking past memories Happier times flooding in, like the tears that have waited too long to fall.

Memories from before the chaos Foreign lipstick on crisp white collars Cologne he doesn’t recognize.

Lies and deceit.

One wrong would never validate the other.

“I love you,” he says Routine, Painful Meaningless white noise among the sirens and whispers “I love you too.”

They hold one another in an empty embrace Awkward and clumsy A hug between strangers The bridge of trust has collapsed, leaving only collateral damage.

They know this is best, though neither will say why As they breathe their final goodbyes Their bodies leave the comfortable warmth and they part With empty forgivings…

Columbia Park

BY ERIN CHAMBERS

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Heart Balloon

BY RUBY ROSE AND OLGA MOSIYCHUK

Send me your eyes And let me see your world Let me float in your sky Watch me as upwards I twirl

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I float, it seems, away from you And we see distance as a curse But understand the lovely hue The earth takes on before I burst And showers you with the fire we’ve preserved Hold that flame fast, hold it near And I will watch your missing face as you observe The glow of the blaze we embrace without fear.

Distance lessens, love persists Warm, not burning, nor ceasing to exist.

You ‘d watch me fall down into your waiting arms Turning your entire cold world warm.

The fall as sweet as the ascent was bitter The world sparkles and glitters.

Our love ignites all Catch me as I fall.

I only see you in my dreams When I’m along that stopped stream.

In the songs you write, And your mother’s eyes so bright.

My music’s your solace when we are apart And yours comprises the whole of my heart.

It sings and dances with effortless grace, My, how I wish I could see your face.

Touch your hand, hold you But I’ve already told you That you have my heart Forever, painted in my soul like a work of art.

Beautiful, this music is This jazz you speak of really does exist.

Let us walk into that forest And taste the music upon us.

There we will compose our symphony Where together we’ll walk forward into eternity.

Is my heart at your fingertips Like a new flavor upon your lips?

Is it flying so high you must leap to grasp it?

Or have you let my heart go? Bit by bit?

It may be flying like a bird in the sky Just because you said goodbye.

It’s loaded waiting to explode It’s yours, yours to hold.

Take a risk.

Give me the longing kiss.

Jump high, grab on, be bold And I will ease your fall just as I’ve told.

Upon the stars, On my cloud, There we’ll watch the cars And shout so loud.

For then will we not be apart, Just don’t pop this heart.

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Vienna, Austria

BY SHAYLA BEHLING

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Life is…

BY ANDREW LYON

Life is…A match, one little body of heat, A victim overwhelmed with wind’s passing, A fluctuating fluttering, The air it breathes, Still Stuck, Struck suddenly, growing greater, peaks, Fastened to its end, friction fades, gassing, gasping, Grasping for something more, ‘Tis passion’s technique To seek without seeing, feeling surpassing All else, hasten to freely fasten, amassing a masking For the hurt of heat, some satisfaction sweet, Falling and rising, the flickering flame dancing, Burning, yearning just the same, competes With one wishful wisp within worlds everlasting, Aching, breaking, forsaking foresight, Serving unnerving swerving, one mortal light Tirelessly tarries, restlessly carries, Buried in layer upon layer of shadowed soot, Dust lingers a little longer, a last salute Settles on Ashen past, means to the same end, Same trend, same blend, same story descends Onto Dramatic, Pragmatic stacked static In several dull grades, shades heterochromatic, Silver linings in death’s fallen darkness cracks, Silver flakes sprinkled, Wrinkled in black.

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Untitled

BY BRIANNA BOBIAK

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Mockdatutsu

BY KEVIN KROHN

My dad used to say to me, “Mach die Tür zu,” when, after playing outside, I’d left the front door ajar. Though I couldn’t comprehend the heft of the individual words, I learned that the phrase, taken as a whole, was interchangeable with other favored adages of his—he also used to ask why I was letting in the penguins, and if I had been born in a barn. As he must have known, I was not born in a barn, and even if I had been, how would such an experience logically come to bear on my leaving the door open? Mary gave birth to Jesus in a barn of sorts, and so far as I know, he wasn’t prone to inviting cold air into his abode as I sometimes was. Despite my imperfect understanding of language, I still managed the somewhat divine feat of glimpsing the world from perspective of another. If someone asked me to write out what my dad had said, which I couldn’t have done, I would have spelled mockdatutsu— limited understanding indeed.

Now of course I know about things like writing, sentence structure, separable prefix verbs, informal imperatives, the accusative case, foreign vocabulary, and so on. Instead of one unparsed notion, I can relate the idea in terms of its parts, but like a clock’s gears and springs, the gears and springs of language whir and click into and out of any one fixed position. The irony—sometimes tragically so—is that a fuller knowledge of the process of language begets a starker realization that some amount of slippage will always exist, maybe more so than originally thought.

My favorite novel right now is 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I’m only a hundred or so pages into it, and so far there are four literary critics enthralled with one author (a German), conspicuously absent from the writing scene. He gives no interviews, makes no public appearances, and only a handful of people can speak to having met him. The only information anyone can is: he is tall. With only words and literature as their guide, the critics suffer the qualm of being swallowed up whole by his works. There is no human contact to give body or context to the words in the novels, and as they continue lacking that dimension, their existential bearings become increasingly tenuous.

As a child I had a couple abstract phrases to guide me, just like the critics, but I also had my dad. Then I had my education, and now I have my relations with other people, someday hopefully a career, though I wait now for the economy to cooperate. I hope I will broaden this scope by filling it in with more abstract concepts with reference to other physical

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bodies. As I experience the paradoxical unease of learning about language and literature to learn how much I don’t know, the only thing mitigating the feeling up being swallowed up into a vast, slippery abstraction of language and ideas is being grounded in the real world to some person or persons I can appeal to for clarification, empathy, support.

My dad was present to tell me that he knew there were no penguins outside waiting to come in, and that “Mach die Tür zu” is German for shut the damn door, I’m getting cold, and you’re wasting money and the environment. I know all that now. Yet I continually appreciate how difficult communication can be. I like to think of absolute zero. When the temperature is at negative 273 degrees Celsius and scientists put an electric charge into a coil, the zap can zing around at full strength forever.

But just a tiny bit warmer and efficiency plummets. Inevitably, in the intervening stretch between when the charge is put in and taken out, the vigor of the charge flags. The person who inserts the charge and the one who extracts it both give context to the abstraction between them by affirming the deleterious nature of the unplumbed, salt, estranging sea between them. You can’t have the tragedy of losing a message if there are no people it doesn’t reach.

I took some math class that showed through calculus how to reach absolute zero: all matter has to be absent. Taken without people, I guess language can be perfect — absolutely zero. But then, where is the fun, and where does that leave us? Scientists have come within something like a zillionth of a degree of absolute zero, but they’ll never reach it.

For some reason though, they keep trying.

Faith

BY ROBERT RUSSELL

They say I have no faith.

No belief to ground my morality.

No purpose to guide me through life.

Nothing to steady my hand when I quiver.

Me, I say that I am in the misty midst Of an Existential Crisis, A vague, philosophical process: Doubt yourself; depress yourself.

Doubt society; depress your friends.

Doubt religion; lose God. Doubt doubt; lose yourself.

All the while clawing And grasping for the Ground that won’t be found.

Not because it isn’t near.

It’s within reach.

But lost it will remain.

Their horizon barricades The comfortable boundary Of crumbly ground; Forces eyes upward, Only the mirror image.

No longer.

My doubt chains me to the main mast, Hands and head shackled, Preventing any possibility for that pathetic call, “Land ho!”

For their land is a ho, Whored out to the land-lubbers– Whored out to prodigal sons And moneygrubbers alike.

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I’ve sank my feet into their soil before.

The rock and sod sturdied my feet on many a march.

Until one sure-footed step took me too far. Terra-firma opened up underneath me, Enveloped my foot, my torso, my head, My flailing arms.

Like Gandalf, I plummeted downward.

Endlessly down into the craggy abyss.

But without a Balrog to keep me company, Or to grapple with, or to vanquish, I could not emerge radiant and victorious.

So I tumbled downward Through Nothingness. I fell for so long I fell asleep‌

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Leviathan devoured the continents.

From inside the maw shiny swords Sliced through the earthen crust, Consuming relentlessly, equally, Efficiently, rationally.

Underwhelmed by The less than tragic loss, I Doubted whether the Large mounds of rock and sod Ever existed. And I looked Through the eyes of Leviathan.

Abruptly flattened against my Ship, Awakened in no bed, In no house, on no ground, Only my Vessel.

I traveled.

I heard the fables of charlatans.

I danced to the tune of minstrels.

I listened to the tales of bards.

I went and came.

I sailed and saw.

I never conquered.

Not enough faith to conquer, They say.

Can’t conquer without ground forces, They say.

Pirate, pariah, They say.

Quiet proselytizer of anathema.

But I know better.

I know I know the Truth, However limited.

I have Faith.

Despite the ever-present threat Of the Leviathan, I believe that my Ship exists.

Despite persistent Descartes, I believe that land-lubbers And fellow sailors exist.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I believe that Earth exists.

How much more belief do I need Until I have their faith?

I already have Faith!

I do have faith.

I do have faith.

I do have faith.

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Punda Milia

BY HILARY AHEARN

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The Second Tenet of Ethics

BY INGRID HANNAN

The porch light is on to keep the bad things away.

The curtains are drawn so that we can stay hidden and safe in a box made of wood protected from the glimmering shine of the stars blocked from the sound of the crickets, if you could even hear them above the noise of the cars, (they’re designed to get us there faster and faster to make our schedules fit more and more) watching TV shows about natural disaster, god forbid we get cold, shut the door (to keep out the man searching for cans.)

Run from your shadow, from spiders, from trees separate the clouds and rivers from man, don’t let the weather bring you down to your knees.

Go inside, cook with electric and metal, eat food from someone else’s state and keep healthy with tips from the dental office, use toothpaste approved by the FDA. Wear clothes made of things that you can’t grow, get lost in the screen an inch from your face.

Learn politics so you can say what you know about how we should live, no matter the place; because clearly life is the same for us all, we’re smart animals- we walk, not crawland we’ve learned that the planet is shaped like a ball, it’s not flat- so there’s always someone on top and they get to decide what has worth and what has not, like oil is money and corn’s the best crop, and only humans have feelings, we’re taught, so guard your emotions, behind a locked door be afraid of dependence

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and always want more.

Keep out intruders with a white picket fence, (and practice your laughter!) (and practice the mantra the self help book spoke) and live happily ever after on your island with a sterilized moat.

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When There’s Nothing Else There’s Cherry Pie

BY COURTNEY CARROLL

in the apple box I sat in disbelief and the sun was the only thing that could defrost me I told a waitress on her night shift over coffee and warm cherry pie even though I wasn’t supposed to the wind from the train as I ran beside it revived me, resuscitated me but all it really offered was smoke and scraped knees I went to the farthest cliff I could find and it was cloaked in fog and ferns with head tilted to the sun, I looked up trunk of a redwood and never saw the top I hid in the bathroom, turned on the faucet so they wouldn’t hear me weep my fingertips lightly traced his veins I made the call that sent him away I hate waiting to see if people will die

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Local Anesthetic [Excerpted from the Novel Bridges]

BY TYLER MOSS

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I’m in Providence. The hospital, not the bullshit. Around me I can hear the quiet mull of soft-spoken doctors and the turning of magazine pages.

For once, I’m not here to observe. I can only imagine how disheveled I must look right now. When I approached the counter with vomit on my shirt and dried blood in my hair, the clerk seemed a little surprised.

Now I’m letting myself sink into the slippery abyss of self-pity.

On the wall in front of me is a figurine of Jesus hanging on a cross.

The small model is nailed about three-quarters of the way up the wall, as if saying, “You must be this tall to be seen by Christ.” I have never understood why so many hospitals have a religious affiliation. I guess God must be a real advocate of modern medicine.

I attempt a staring contest with the Crucifix but Jesus and his beady black eyes win. I have always been fascinated by the whole idea of the cross symbol. What if He had died differently? Like decapitation by guillotine or something. Imagine a church’s stained-glass window depicting the head of Jesus bouncing along the sandy landscape as a Roman centurion stands in the background. Or what if he had been hung?

Would old ladies wear necklaces with little golden nooses on them? It’s a good thing that guns hadn’t been invented yet because a Jesus oozing blood from bullet wounds probably would not be very inspirational.

Symbols are weird. But maybe I’m just over thinking things.

I bury my head in my hands. “Happy Birthday to me,” I sing in a subdued whisper, hoping some random person might hear my twisted blues and offer to spend a moment with a damaged young man on his life’s anniversary. After a few minutes of waiting in the darkness of my palms, I realize that everyone in here is too concerned with their own problems to give me a second glance and I give up my crooning.

Apparently a crushed skull is not a very big priority around here because I’ve been waiting almost fifteen minutes and have already been skipped over, the nurses favoring a four-fingered kid who was carrying his thumb in a Ziploc bag.

Then a sound interrupts my concentration: a small sigh. I turn and look. Sitting directly to my right is a little girl no more than five years old, the blue bucket chair almost swallowing her small body. How I hadn’t noticed her there before is beyond me, but then again, I was a little caught up in my own problems. I notice she’s holding a doll that looks like a baby, but it seems to be missing a head. Then I realize the head of the doll is stuffed up her shirt. Her innocent little eyes look up at me and she says, “Hello. Happy Birthday.”

“What?” I respond, surprised.

“I heard you singing.”

“Oh.” I pause a moment trying to figure out exactly what to say. “If you don’t mind, why is the doll’s head in your shirt?”

The girl raises her eyebrows and gives me a look that clearly says, “Are you stupid?”

“I’m nursing.” She says matter-of-factly.

A combination laugh/choke escapes my throat. Finally I mutter, “Alright then.”

“Jonas Wilcox?” I stand up and walk through a pair of swinging double doors. A nurse leads me down a white-washed hall whose walls are more of a dirty yellow than white. I’m then deposited in one of the smaller waiting rooms. The nurse hands me one of those cotton dressing gowns. I look at her quizzically and she grunts: “So you don’t get anymore blood on your clothes.”

My shirt is so stained in blood and vomit that I couldn’t care less at this point, but I play along and take the gown. She leaves and I strip down. Only after I tie the gown around my neck does it really occur to me that it was not necessary to take my clothes off. Oh well. I lie down on the narrow tissue paper strip and begin to doze. After only a few minutes I’m awoken by a pain in my groin, my bladder reminding me of previous evening’s alcohol consumption. Five minutes becomes ten minutes and there is still no sign of a doctor. I have to pee but I’m not going to wander the hospital halls looking for a toilet in this nightgown thing and miss the doctor coming in. There must be priority levels assigned to different emergencies and mine is at the bottom. My eyes wander around the room. The shelves are filled with little glass jars housing cotton balls, popsicle sticks, and all sorts of other medical devices. There are a few tattered gossip magazines with the typical headlines: so and so lost thirty pounds by having a limb amputated, some young starlet had a colonoscopy, five television stars come out of the closet, etc. I’m dying to piss and would be a good minute and a half from wetting my pants if I had bothered to put them back on. Then my eyes rest on the sink. They’ve taken so long already, what the hell not?

I go for it. I hop off of the pad and wander over to the sink. I hoist one leg over so I’m straddling it and release. As the fluid exits my body I’m in ecstasy. And then the door opens.

A stout nurse and a tall, thin doctor stop dead in their tracks and gape at me. The doorway acts as a frame, the doctor’s height and the nurse’s girth filling out the majority of vacuous space in my mental photograph. The brief moment of stunned silence passes, and the nurse’s face turns into an imitation of “The Scream.”

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Trafalgar Square Uprising, London

BY MARY MILLER

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Childhood

BY CATERINA PURVES

fingertips touching smudges on the mirror leaving blue across my face oops i forgot — my hands were covered with paint

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The Evening Party JEDIDIAH PATTON

Twirling gently On a dark dance floor The feet follow as the music leads Only the melody and the Rush Rush Of the lady’s dress is heard as the daylight fades An evening party The pleasant murmurings of content guests Steady rhythm of the trees in the garden dancing Swaying with the music Keeping time with the moving feet

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When the party ends The people gather In twos In threes In fours Only two people, One couple Continue dancing Twirling gently On a dark dance floor

Draped in Dreams, Descending…

BY DOUGLAS OROFINO

With languid breath my sweet pains taste And as I walk the ground undoes my footsteps And in their shallow pauses Fills with desire And as the night decays to stars my soul, with sighs, she fills To flow — o’re abounding dulcetly — dulcetly — dulcetly (and soft) I wait To see The smiles Of morning Grow.

In dew And now does Day softly spread her shimmers in the sea To drift away, and unto shadows fall and unto lapsing whispers I, draped in dreams, descend

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Forest at Twilight

BY AMELIA GRADT

A darkness soft settles.

Between ancient trees Spindly, thick and naked.

The carpet of calico mulch deadens all Bird songs, they are dying.

And stillness reigns.

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What eerie, placid shadows Peer between these limbs As branches silhouetted Lift supplicating limbs And hang against gray skies They are knarled to the likeness Of our very hands.

And lo, such quiet grows Magnified in settling gloom Any stick which breaks reverberates Resounds between these sentries Oh what magic lurks In so tremulous an hour Where daylight shuts her lids Slowly, gradual, this foggy veil descends And those creatures beyond Our fathoming Weave between the aspens Their hour comes While in distant shadows Bay wolves a sunlight’s requiem.

Working Class

BY ASHLEY HIGHT

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The Three Forced Breakfasts

BY STEPHANIE LANDIS

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When you woke to Hindi and then British accented English warning of chicken flu in Bihar (where you just left by the way) and are jolted awake by the train screeching to a halt on the tracks as it arrives at the next stop, it’s important to open your eyes (even though they feel heavy and fuzzy with lack of sleep) and gaze up at the blue train bed above yours and try to remember if you had eaten chicken recently.

You have already been sick (dehydrated that is) that took you to a hospital that was dusty and hovering with mosquitoes, when really you wanted to close your eyes and pretend you were in the arms of your mother or your lover. *** Mmmm. Silver nappa leather. Rhinestone buckle detail gathered at the center. Open toe. 31⁄2 inch covered heel. Made in Italy. Who could say no to Manolos.

“Those are almost the price of our trip to India,” I told Lauren even though I was in love.

“I know. But they are pretty shoes,” she said. I nodded, in a daze.

“Is Trent going to come and see you off at the airport?” Lauren asked and I glanced up from the pumps.

“I don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Want to head over to Pioneer Place?”

“Sure.”

We turned and walked towards the exit of Nordstrom. Lauren opened the glass doors and we were hit with the slight breeze floating around outside, like the noise of the city that filtered slowly into our ears.

“If he wants to come, then he should. He’s not really my boyfriend, I don’t think,” I continued and watched the lady walking her poodle in front of me.

“But he’s not just your friend like Cyril is.”

“Well of course more than that.”

I shrugged and focused on the rhythm of my shoes on the sidewalk.

“He might come if you asked him to,” she almost whispered. The possibility of might was instinctively more stressful than the concreteness of making a promise, when a no seemed to be the worst thing to hear as the answer to something you really wanted.

“I know,” I said, sighing, tucking a stand of hair behind my ear, and then I brightened with a smile. ***

I couldn’t remember what chicken I had eaten, except maybe at our Indian friend’s house where we had tried some kind of meat that had been cooked and was either the chicken or goat that was previously walking around his home. No I did have a chicken dish at the Bhutanese tent, the tent restaurant that had a hunk of raw beef in the small, convenience store-like fridge with bottles of Maaza, Limca and of course Coca Cola.

I saw Lauren shift in her sleep out of the corner of my eye but Cyril hadn’t moved in the bed above mine. He slept as heavy as a rock with no movement; I knew this through camping trips where we had been forced to sleep next to each other in the tent. My eyes stung so I covered my head with the rough brown blanket distributed to each passenger and tried to drown out the rhythmic Hindi prattle of the woman that kept reporting the news and faced away from the light of Delhi coming in through the window.

My peace lasted for all of three minutes because a man thrust open the Velcro privacy curtain of our car and yelled loudly like a crow that it was time for “Brek- Fast!!!” and he tossed two packages at my feet and one at Lauren’s. I shook myself awake and met Lauren’s green disoriented eyes: we were both still laying down in doze mode.

She pursed her lips and told me “I guess we are done with sleeping now. It’s time for breakfast.” I giggled and heard Cyril cackle in a baritone above me. I slowly sat up to retrieve my morning meal (a piece of bread, pat of butter, packet of ketchup, banana and carton of Appy).

Cyril peered over his bed, looking right into my face with his beady brown eyes, like dark colored buttons or stones that changed color in the sun. I silently handed him his package of food and then he climbed down to sit on my former bed. I picked at my food but nibbled on my bread and butter.

“Good news,” Lauren said, pointing to the red dot on her Appy carton, “Appy is veg.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Yes I would think cider is much better without meat in it,” Cyril responded and unpeeled his banana.

“Did you hear about that bird flu in Bihar?” Lauren asked.

“Well we have long departed from there. Leaving the bird flu and communists in Bodgayya, Bihar,” said Cyril.

Heh. Bird flu (gonna get you made it in my stable from the crap you drop on my crop when they pay you). 1and reds (the statue of liberty is shakin’ 2 her fist) in Bihar.

I found pitch black when we slept at our last hotel in Delhi. The

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room would stay that way until about 9:30 a.m. the next morning when I heard the door creak open and leak light from the lobby as the door was being answered after a loud knock. There was the clink of pans, the smell of chapati and a man announcing gratingly and insistently “Time for breakfast!” My eyes barely fumbled open in the dark room, with the only source of diminished light coming from a window that viewed the wall of the building next door, the other walls paneled with mirrors and cushion so we could see each other’s faces at all times, a doorway to toilet we did not know how to flush or not to flush, and complete with the conversation piece T.V. (it didn’t work so we discussed the reasons why it was there); and, therefore felt that I was in some weird sort of phantasmagoria as I heard Cyril say “No. Thank. You,” With great finality and smoothness that his words hung in the silence and dark that was thick throughout our strange room. Polite, yet, clear with a purpose. I turned over in the dusty bed and could finally open my eyes.

“Gemma. That was your mother in the form of an Indian man telling you that you need to eat more,” Lauren said, her mouth rasping from forming that statement in lethargy.

We thought we would try to sleep in late on that day before we went back to the States on our 5 a.m. flight so then we could stay up all night, savoring fried samosas we bought on the street, sucking on subtle flavors of Indian sweets from ladoos, basundi to jelabee, filling me especially with an alleged pizza from a Delhi Pizza Hut: India’s formal dining experience with booths and long lines and a man calling out names of people who were waiting for tables. I say sort of a mock pizza, because the only cheese in India was paneer, which sometimes came out green and cubical if you tried to order fettuccini (much to Lauren’s surprise).

“I can see your clavicle and your sternum,” Lauren mentioned as I posed in my cerulean Punjabi suit embroidered with gold thread and hemmed in pink. Cyril put down his camera and pulled at the neckline of my dress.

“Yep,” he said, acknowledging Lauren’s observation and adjusted the sheet around him, to fix the makeshift toga.

“You should eat more pizza,” Lauren said pushing the box towards me.

Cyril turned down his nose.

“I can’t believe you made me go into a Western restaurant when I was not in America,” he scoffed.

“She needs to gain more weight. She looks like a fucking skeleton,” Lauren said. Cyril picked up his camera again.

“You should put on your shoes. And put your hair up in a bun. Yes …

She looks very Indian now,” he said and started aiming the camera at me against the unlit window.

“She does,” Lauren agreed, munching on sticky burfee, her own toga covering her lap like a layer of snow. Click. Click. Click. Went Cyril’s camera. He paused for a moment and loosened my hair to make it less stiff looking. Click. Click. Click.

“There seems to be a photo shoot going on in my room. Am I just here to watch?” Lauren said.

“Hmm, hmm,” Cyril laughed hollowly. He turned around and snapped a picture quickly at Lauren who threw an empty toilet paper roll at him.

“So ends the adventures of the man, the beauty and their tag along friend,” Cyril said.

Many, many hours later after a veg croissant and waiting in Delhi airport (who didn’t seem to mind Cyril taking a lighter on the airplane), our eyes closed to meet an eighteen hour flight. We heard about the food coming, we heard about the movie showings, but we left our eyes shut and our trays up, Lauren by the window, me in the middle and Cyril in the aisle. But the slam of the passenger trays, the shove of three platters of food at us and the distinguishable voice of a fluent English speaker announcing “Breakfast!” led us to no choice and no rest.

What really was almost three days later without sleep and Lauren getting up to vomit and me eating and drinking everything I could get my hands on after finishing pills that brought back my appetite, Cyril held his nose up at the icky German sandwiches we were served and ridiculed me for eating them; I wanted to sleep and have my American boyfriend hold me and cry and feel better and get back to 109 pounds like I was before.

Cyril and Lauren nodded off, or at least she tried to and I found myself watching the second Bollywood movie of my life, “Jab We Met,” that luckily ran three hours with a rain scene, flowery Punjabi suits, sparkly jewelry and Shahid singing to Kareena about receiving her intoxicating glances that almost killed him. Just as everything was becoming Mauja Hi Mauja, Fun and Fancy Free, Pyar se tere, At the Beloved’s house, Cyril opened his eyes and slipped on his headphones. The movie concluded with glittery sets and Cyril turned to me and said he was quite confused about what was going on since he had woken up to that celebration without knowing what it was for; however, the disillusionment was often a product of viewing these types of films.

In the near future, Cyril sat against the couch in his dim den, strumming his mother of pearl inlaid banjo. I sat to the side, on a beanbag in front of the T.V.

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“He keeps calling me and I don’t know why,” I said. Cyril cradled his banjo and set it on the couch.

“Well, you must talk to him and ask him want he wants in the relationship.

Nothing shall be resolved if you are not willing to risk asking. You don’t really owe him anything though. Perhaps you should just start anew.”

“Yeah….but it’s hard to let go of someone you still love.”

Cyril switched the channel to cartoons. It was yet another episode of Naruto, so Cyril clicked the remote back to the Food Network, where Paula Dean was not handling butter for once, but people were competing in making cakes.

“Yup….Remember in ‘Jab We Met’ when Geet had to tell Anshuman off because he rejected her?”

“Yeah.”

“What helped Geet go through with it?”

“She….I don’t remember.”

“Aditya was right there next to her when she made the phone call.

Maybe you need someone to remind you not to sleep with him again.”

The first thing I always notice when I arrive back in my state is the air that infiltrates my lungs as pure and refreshing as water, that makes you picture a forest of pine trees and remember their scent. And I want to gulp it down as fast as I can, especially after finding out how dirty each city in Hindustan was by the amount of blackness under my fingernails and inside my nose. I hurried across the airport quicker than Lauren and Cyril, my feet padding on the green carpet tessellated with red and purple streaks. But then I stopped and waited until they were at the same pace.

I could no longer close my eyes for tiredness but I buried my head in my boyfriend’s flannel shirt and shut them for a few moments, my hair still full of Delhi, Agra, Bodgayya and Varanasi dust and apologized for the smell, even though I didn’t really care and he didn’t either (“Don’t worry darlin’. You’re beautiful”) but this was home. Apparently. Why was it so clean though? Where was my auto rickshaw? How come I couldn’t bargain for jewelry and food? I looked up into his china blue eyes and he smiled and leaned in. I turned my head so his kiss touched my cheek and thought of dancing in tulle or silk beaded saris or lehenga cholis and saying “Chhuna na dekho mohe aaj sajna” (I’m telling you, don’t touch me my love).3 1 “Bird Flu” by M.I.A. 2 “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” By Toby Keith.

3 “Dhoom Taana” from Om shanti om soundtrack

The Pipes

BY KEVIN HANNON

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A Paradoxical Mystery of Love

BY SYDNEY SYVERSON

How do you teach devotion?

How do you convey compassion?

Is it a rambunctious feeling?

—or is it a submissive action?

And if I were to lay cocooned in your lies, —for one Summer’s time, Would that action create oneness?

Would you always be mine?

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And would the tick tocking of time, —in a syncopated hiccup, Give us the illusion of a life With no get up and— —go. And— Just so you know, Though entwined in your eyes are the lies that covertly show, I’d love you forever and— I’d let you go. Even though, You are the whistle in my wind, The song in my tune, You are the click in my heal, The man in my moon.

And when a tire swing is swung, I wonder if you were the force behind it.

I wonder when a candle flickers, Was it you who thought to light it?

I think you were the breeze, last night Lulling in from my window.

You are the maroon balloon sailing upwards, With ambitious dreams held in—

tow. And— Just so you know, Though the sputtering of your sighs, Seem to me really quite faux, I’d love you forever and— I’d let you go. Although, You are not the strength in my smile, Not the rhyme in my reason, You are not the feeling in my gut, Nor are you the Spring in my season.

And when a tire swing romps wildly, I wonder was it you who forced it.

I wonder when a candle burns violently, Was it you who torched it?

I think you were the storm, last night Flailing up against my window.

You are the red hot air stifling dreams Before they even think to— grow. And— Just so you know, Though life with you would teach me, I reap what I must sow, I’d love you forever and— I’d often and never let you go.

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There is a Reason MIKEL JOHNSON

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You could see her skin crawl When they came around.

Her stomach sunk, her face turned white, And her palms, they sweat.

Color and strength return upon leaving.

Together, we fear the possibilities.

I asked her to pray with me As I knelt On the cold tile floor.

She was standing, Still, and comparatively tall And awkward.

I prayed to the God that hath condemned.

“When did you lose your voice?”

Scribbled, on paper, “When I realized what it was I had to say.”

Ghoden’s Sword MICHAEL BAKKE

For seven years the Norse king forged, A blade to tame The Frost That preyed upon his kingdom, The helpless and the lost.

They called the crownéd Ghoden, Their fair-haired champion.

Though lacking beard or battled look, Still people urged him on.

Foul frozen fiends of north abode Set greedy eyes far south.

With frozen shard and frozen lust, They descended to The Mouth.

The Mouth, whose blue-green waters, Usually ran so free, Now showed its fearing people A frozen vein to sea.

No hope remained for ship to pass Thick sheets o’er icy gorge.

And so the humblest Ghoden Went straight into the forge.

Only slowly did they come, The wraiths of lifeless cast, And thus they permitted Ghoden The time to forge his last.

His populous near broken, The world now turned to ice, Ghoden fin’lly met his task And pricked his finger twice.

With the blood of royal vein, He c’ressed the new sword’s edge.

Fire sang, leapt from king to blade, Now made his flaming sledge.

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Ghoden ascended wearily His place of eternal toil.

He then called forth The Eternal Frost, His ever gruesome foil.

The Frozen King and Mighty Frost, Stepped forth from his ranks.

Now only He and Ghoden stood By icy river banks.

One sword frozen, one ablaze, One heart on fire, the o’er on ice, The two kings met and locked strong eyes And stood without suffice.

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At last The Frost could not wait, He charged the king of men.

But Ghoden stood, stayed his earth, Awaiting moment’s end.

That moment come, Ghoden swung His blade just forged anew.

The Frost misjudged and fell too fast, Sword shattered him in two.

From their view the people cheered But saw they not the ice, That little shard, tiny and sharp, Ghoden took in sacrifice.

Into his heart lodged the spear And melted there away.

And melted, too, the frozen host Led by The Frost astray.

Thus ended Ghoden’s noble deed, The Mouth again ran blue.

To mem’ry now, that King of men, Returns each spring anew.

Winter

BY ANNEMARIE MEDRZYCKI

What do you feel When the tough old winds push the age-ripened sun Down into its frozen earth-bed?

Hibernation is forced upon the weakening orb.

The increasing frigidity of that which once stood as evidence In the scientific appraisal Of the universal pulse Repels the hope-song of the soul.

Do you know remorse as you long for the infinite Honey-comb moments of the withered seasons?

Will the fear of the ice-filled vacuum Paralyze ambition and eliminate possibility?

Can we ever know as the moment bears down?

If we cannot wage war against the apathy, And even fear is gone, Will we recognize our own existence?

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Birds on a Wire

BY NATHAN HASKELL

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Relish

BY OLIVER ANDERSON

Faded blue jeans hung below the giant foam hot dog outfit concealing my torso. It covered almost everything from my knees up. The buns surrounded both sides of me and my head protruded from a hole in the wiener. There was a wavy yellow line that ran the length of the dog which I can only imagine symbolized mustard. I clutched a stack of hot pink Hot Dog Hut flyers in my left hand and handed them to snobby uninterested passers-by with my right. My face must have bore the look of a defeated man as few would come close to meeting my eyes. They just stared at the ground and kept walking, holding their hands at their side to drive the point home that the last thing they wanted was a flyer from a giant hot dog—those were the good ones anyway. Others would stare right at me with sad eyes as if to say, “I’m so sorry”. They were the worst. I know what I have to do and I don’t need their sad eyes to remind me. They always took a flyer too. They would grab it without looking at it and flash me a smile forced from some place deep inside of them as if trying to say, “thank-you so much” but I know what they’re really thinking, “you poor son-of-a-bitch”.

My shame-filled eyes would dart from person to person in the unwilling traffic of people. A few would laugh at me and mutter things under their breath or even full out attack me. One young man—around fifteen I would guess—tried to push me down to the delight of his mindless, chuckling friends. I wanted to push him back, to rip off the ridiculous costume that enslaved me and to beat that kid until blood streamed from his smug, pudgy little face. I wanted to see the look on the faces of his stupid little friends as I beat their leader until his mangled face was no longer recognizable behind his bloodied and broken nose, but I knew I couldn’t. So, I just smiled and let them pass as if nothing had happened. I saw the same boy a day later except with a couple of girls.

Not surprisingly, he decided to ignore my presence.

Another day I was surprised to feel something strike me on the back of my head. I turned around in time to see a car driving away. Searching the ground, I found the culprit—several packets of relish. I was standing next to a garbage bin at the time and at first I thought it may have been an accident. My denial began to give to anger, however, as I mentally calculated the odds of a handful of relish packets missing a garbage can and proceeding to pelt a giant relish-less hot dog. The humor was lost on me, as I could not tear my mind from revenge. ***

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I’ve been thinking about the layout of my costume, and I believe I am an East coast wiener. I have heard somewhere that people on the East coast tend to prefer only mustard on their dogs, while West coasters prefer ketchup, or a combination of the two. Since I have only a stripe of mustard down my dog, I can only assume I am an East coast wiener.

Standing in the hot sun all day in a foam suit gives me the chance to think about stuff like this.

I also have the opportunity to analyze the people who walk past me.

I have become quite adept at judging a person’s character just by looking at them. I can tell if they will take a flyer or not half a block away.

I can tell if they are happy to be where they are or even if they’re a Democrat or Republican. Although I have no way of confirming this, I feel confident in my judgments. At first I was unsure if it was right to silently judge people, but I figured they had to be doing the same to me, so why shouldn’t I? Standing in the middle of a constant flow of people also allows me the unique opportunity to listen in on brief pieces of conversation.

I can hear a small part of someone’s life. I have to say it has not assured my faith in humanity. I overheard one woman arguing with someone that I assumed to be her ex-husband over who had to watch “the kid” tonight. More disturbing was the small girl staring at the ground as her mother dragged her behind.

I hear people talking about the most unholy things without any regard for those around them. I hear drug deals going down, people discussing in great detail the gruesome things they would like to do to their boss, and people planning out their sexual escapades, involving things I cannot imagine are legal in this state. *** Sweat rolled from my head and cascaded down the grooves of the foam suit. The summer sun beat down on the pavement unrelentingly.

I no longer had the energy to even lift my arms and hand out flyers.

Instead, I just stood there and avoided eye contact with anyone who dared walk past me.

Half-way through my shift I was struck in the back of the head with a Big Gulp. I didn’t have the energy to turn and face the culprit, but instead just stood unmoving, letting the soda drip from my hair and run down my back. It was caramel colored and from the little bit that trickled into my mouth I hypothesized that it must have been root beer. The force of the blow knocked the flyers out of my hand and scattered them over the sidewalk. People walked on or over them, spreading them around and leaving me in a sea of hot-pink flyers. An ice-cube slid

down my back, making me shudder. The cold soda brought me relief from the sun’s rays, and I stood there letting root beer flow down my back. I relished in the momentary pleasure it gave me, letting my arms lay limp at my sides and throwing back my head to the heavens.

Looking up at the bright blue summer sky, I felt I must be the last hotdog left.

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Florence

BY ALYSSA REGET

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A Common Misconception JOHN HEGARTY

People look at me and all they see is a basketball player.

A black T-shirt becomes purple, a slogan becomes a name, and a brand becomes a number.

But do they wonder?

What goes on in the brain that a black scally cap perpetually covers?

Why so rarely does he speak to others?

Where is he from?

Where is he going?

But more frequently I hear, “Are you still growing?”

Does he like to read?

What does he really need?

Instead it’s just “For a big guy you have good foot speed.”

Of course I walk around with headphones blaring, hidden beneath a hat or hood I’m wearing.

I’m never asked about my favorite movie, song, or television show.

Usually people just tell me that I’m tall.

Believe me, I already know.

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Bismarck

BY CJ GRAVES

History, lightning recorded, May choose its own forked path.

Working its way through the night sky, From ground to obscuring clouds.

Credit and blame are issued liberally Based upon its path, Though what did those who are lauded, Or blamed, Know before electric forks unfurled?

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And even if they did know, Could they touch it?

Shape it?

Or did they merely guess the path At each breaking point?

What can we say of survivors of history?

Do they have scalded hands or lucky guesses?

What can we see between their clouds?

Or between our own?

Ubatizo

BY HILLARY AHEARN

I watch the reflection of the mascara wand slowly, and hesitantly, sweep up the length of my eyelashes. A single, delicate Red-and-Yellow Barbet sings an introductory song of redemption and revolution. The small bird announces this day from the Acacia tree she’s surely perched in. I am surprised that she’s out on a morning like this, when the skies are sinking down, the burnt earth drawing down the drapes of fog, pulling the clouds closer and closer. This grey morning seems too sleepy, too monochromatic for such a brilliantly colored bird to preach about.

But, it’s Easter and she must be the only believer of her kind.

I curiously seek the vibrant bird’s reflection in the full-length mirror.

The mirror, hanging on the mud-brick wall, seems a paradoxical commodity in this rustic open-air bathroom. My eyes work to focus deep into the mirror, far behind me to the trees and brush, and then strain as they refocus back onto each single lash. This is the first time I have intentionally made my lashes darker and cheeks warmer in months. It feels foreign. I put my beaded Maasai earrings in carefully. They dangle low from my ears, their red and white beads arranged in a circular pattern like a target. A thin silver metal circle spins back and forth erratically below each target when I move my head, catching the light as they spin, like fierce sparks of sunlight skipping off jagged water. I blink once, deeply, to awaken myself from this slow-motion scene. When I open my eyes, I again see the world at its normal centripetal pace.

I hand the mascara back to its owner, smooth out my dress, and laugh quietly to myself as I pull a burr out of my thick, wool sock. I’m wearing a floral, cotton dress and muddy hiking boots. The sand-colored dress has cap-sleeves, a wide collar, and the fabric reaches to my midcalf. We were told that women dress conservatively in small Tanzanian towns, so I had sewn in an extra piece of tan fabric to make the dress longer before leaving the States. It’s not an attractive dress by most standards, but here, in rural East Africa, it’s the fanciest, most glamorous dress at camp.

From our rustic base camp atop a hill in an area known as Kilimamoja, the whole world looks unprocessed, everything still in its organic state.

It’s funny how things change after two months of living in small, canvas tents—people are quite unaccustomed to seeing anything unnatural. After deciding that on Easter we would look unordinary, both Gabby and I had borrowed mascara, blush and eye shadow to paint our faces. No one in our rugged study abroad program has ever seen me in

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makeup, and as I walk out of the bathroom, Bobby blushes and says, “You’re prettier than normal.”

Although Easter is just another day, it produces a sort of celestial and airy aura around people, and as Gabby and I approach the others waiting to walk to Easter mass, they each radiate a soft glow against the slate-colored sky. Michael Butler Brown smiles at us and I feel my face flush. We all call him by his full name because that’s how he first introduced himself. It’s true though, Michael, even Michael Brown, just isn’t sufficient. None of us have ever met anyone like Michael Butler Brown.

As we step out through the rust-red iron gate that introduces the front of camp, I wave and offer a morning greeting, “Mambo. Habari asubuhi?” to Joseph, my favorite askari. The askaris are our guards at camp and they continuously patrol the premises. Joseph carries an old simple bow and arrow, and a smile that reaches ear to ear. As he now leans against the loose stone pillar which holds the gate erect, he also emits a glow and I feel my eyes soften when I smile at him. His face is smooth, dark and on his cheeks he bears the traditional brands of a Maasai man. The Maasai tribe in this area traditionally burns patterns onto the cheeks of its members when they are young. Joseph’s scars are in a neat row of tiny vertical lines that follow the ridge of his cheekbones from his nose back to his temporal bone.

The askaris are of a different kind—able to appear and disappear at will. One moment you see the bright blue fabric they drape over themselves, and you turn back around to find they have diffused somewhere into the thick acacia scrubland. Joseph is the best at disappearing, but now I see him in plain, clear light—devoid of mystery and full of Easter truth. He gently laughs at me, wishes me a happy Easter by saying “Heri ya Pasaka”, and then in carefully crafted English, warns me, “You going to get wet.”

And wet I am. Michael Butler Brown, Gabby and I now follow Anton, a Tanzanian staff member, down the slippery hill outside of camp. I grab half-way down the skirt of my dress with one hand and pull it up to just above my knees. Michael laughs at me because I look so feminine, yet so Indiana Jones, all at once. We have to walk very slowly because the red clay mud is slick and deep. Trying not to not to slip off of the wet rocks, and moist, twisted roots of the African Strangling Fig trees, we strategically proceed down the narrow path.

The trail down is tight and we move to the side to let two barefoot neighbor boys clumsily run up the path past us. As they pass, they yell “Heri ya Pasaka, Mzungu!” and both mischievously, and brilliantly, giggle.

“Mzungu” is the slang word for white person, or Westerner, in Swahili.

One of the giddy boys knows me, so as he frolics passed me, he playfully taps my arm and then squeals on upward toward camp. Michael and Gabby both try to tickle the boy in back, but the child dodges their advances in triumphant agility, laughing after his friend up the mud.

Anton smiles, gently grabs Gabby’s arm and we continue down the hill.

It’s just as we emerge from the turn at the bottom of the hill that I see something new in the distance. I now look forward to see the swiftmoving waters of a mud river tearing a route through the brush and trees, carving out a place for itself in this once parched land. We have walked this route to the primary school many times before, but never have we seen such a dramatic barrier to our journey. In what had always been a dry riverbed, is now a violent rushing of hydrostatic fury.

The rain’s coming down heavier now as I approach the bank of this raging flash-flood. Michael Butler Brown can hardly contain himself next to me. He fumbles urgently with his shoes to get them off, smiles at me, and steps right into the thick, soiled waters. Michael Butler Brown is a wild one—always hanging from a tree limb or a cliff or a building.

He’s crazy, yet somehow you trust him more than most. Now, he stands knee-deep in the rapid waters, with a hand outstretched to me on the bank. I look at him, silently shake my head from side to side, and he grins. He knows how stubborn I am, and that I want to do it on my own.

We are both wild, both waiting for something, or someone, to tame us.

Michael turns away from me and forcefully forges his way through that raging river. I look tentatively at the water; it’s waiting for me, taunting me. I love the adventure of simple things like this, simple things that test your character. I look to Michael who’s already across the water waiting on the other side, watching me and still smiling in amusement. I hike up the skirt of my dress to well above my knees this time. I keep my hiking boots and socks on because there’s really no point of taking them off; my boots are already filled with soft mud, sloshing and oozing in between my toes.

I breathe in deep. I soon lift up my leg and slowly lower it to the surface of the water to test the speed of the flow. I pull it back up quickly, realizing just how powerful it is. Like most things in life, there’s only one way to go about this—and that is to send one foot authoritatively crashing forward into the chaos and cling to solid ground. Any hesitation, light step, or timid attempt, and the shoving water will abduct my leg away, out from under me, leaving the rest of my body to drag behind it downstream.

So, I leave my left foot on the slippery bank, lodged behind a tree root for stability, a lifeline, then take my right leg up and swiftly shove

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it straight down to the earth below the water. At first, my leg is slammed with impact, colliding with the current, like linemen that go sailing into each other but end up in a split-second, motionless draw as the two push with the same force. Eventually, the water gives and, to humor me, agrees to move around my body. I bring my left leg into the now accepting river and lean my upper body to the left, throwing my weight in the opposite direction of the current.

Half-way across the river, I, for some unclear reason, stop and turn to face the current. I stand still, halting time, letting the muddy water infiltrate my life, letting it capture every aspect of my attention. Its streams of milky reddish-brown fill my vision as they continuously precede toward me, keeping time with their rhythm; its roaring voice silences all other noise and hushes all other reverberations; its steady pressure holds tightly onto my legs and its velocity tries to shred them; its temperamental nature presents an ultimatum that I can’t ignore.

I skim a pinky finger into the water, while allowing the river to gently sway me into complete entrancement. The chaos has, for a few seconds, become a calm and I think about where I am. I can’t help but feel undeserving of this baptism. In a land that watches its people die every day of famine, of disease, and of neglect, I can’t help but feel guilty for the chance to be washed clean in these dirty waters. It’s as if the tears of those left helpless in this country flood around me in desperate request. It is in this moment, this defining scene, that my eyes become unclouded and, finally, I see the world in all of its breathtaking rawness.

After an uncertain amount of time, I narrow my eyes to refocus them, hold my breath, cautiously turn to the right and wade slowly forward again towards the bank. As I reach the other side of the river, I stretch out my hand to Michael Butler Brown. He looks at me now, wide-eyed and unsmiling. He does not know why I stopped in the middle—neither do I—but he knows that those brief, motionless moments changed something. Our hands solidly grasp each other, and I allow him to lift me up the bank. With my pride tamed by the floodwaters, I stare, humbled, at him. The mascara runs down my face, the beaded earrings spin only in unpretentious purpose, the flowers on the dress bleed their colors in the downpour. These once glittering things mean nothing to the heavy, cleansing, Easter rain. On this Easter morning, it was humble, ordinary things—a hand, a muddy river, a child, a row of scars, and a tiny, prophetic Red-and Yellow Barbet—that stirred a sudden and inexplicable uprising within me. They stirred a silent revolution.

Where Pedestals Were Further

BY ERICA ELLINGSEN

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Poem for the Night

BY JORDAN ALLENSWORTH

Cigars laid to rest, and spirits imbibed from silver hollowed The menagerie drawn in, guests form a peremptory beast Torrent horde burst o’er the lawn, perfume and voices swallowed By the night air awash, on streets untrodden we flee the feast.

In hush and blackness step, all airs aside and politesse forgone Oh, do not speak, if only to behold from night lamps extended limbs Lucent across the sheen of black drives unsullied whereon I once met your eyes, in which youthful shadows flitted then.

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Pásame la botella (Un Corrido) KATHERINE CARLOS

Pásame la botella...

Mi esposa es una bruja.

Ella durmió con mi mejor amigo y el robó mis zapatos.

Vivo por la revolución pero ella vive para la infidelidad.

Tiene veinte años menos de mi pero me dijo que me amó, ¿sí?

Pásame la botella... para que pueda olvidar de mi marida, la pobreza, las injusticias y la crueldad.

A los campos para trabajar en la tierra fértil de mi país y mientras estoy luchando para mis derechos mi esposa estaba en nuestra cama con Félix.

Iré con Chávez a encontrar una nueva vida en las playas de alegre California.

Quizás encontrare una nueva esposa, hermosa, joven, rubia, y que puede pásame la botella...

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Boring Seeking Excitement

BY STEPHANIE CARGILL-GREER

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I’m boring. It is a proven fact. I told the oldest of my girls, Brigid, that she couldn’t wear these almost-underwear shorts with “Bootylicious” pasted on the rump to Sunday Mass. She stood there like I had just told her that Justin Timberlake did not bring sexy back and spat out, “Don’t blame me ‘cause you and Dad are so boring!” Then her strappy yellow stilts clicked “misunderstood” and “angst teen” all the way to her room.

Right then and there, I realized that I was one of those boring mothers.

My husband was boring. My life was boring.

I bought my first tabloid the next day. It had a very attractive “stud” with his arm snaked around a watermelon-shirted costar on the cover.

Those movies stars that buy new clothes that look like a hobo previously used them as a pillow and singers that invented words like “bootylicious” and grunt out lyrics do really exciting things. That is why people idolize them. They sniff risky drugs through rolled up “benjamins” and have affairs with costars and DJs. Since I don’t allow my kids to stick fingers and jellybeans up their noses, I decided that I couldn’t be a “druggie”.

An affair sounds safer. I love my husband, but he is as boring as I am— perhaps more so. He is an accountant (minus 1). He takes multivitamins (minus 3). He drives his Honda at 55mph on the freeway because “hooligans and hoodlums” go 65 (minus 6). I pondered telling him that he should have an affair too, but he would have had an asthma attack.

I picked up the Spicy Singles section out of the newspaper. The things people say are so scandalous and creative. (Word to the wise, a “Sugar Daddy” has nothing to do with candy.) I took out a piece of kitten stationary to write my advertisement. There I found the problem of my boringness again. I could never write this promiscuous stuff. The “kinkiest” thing I have ever done was asking my husband for a foot massage—his fear of feet caused him to break out in hives. So I looked around at the ads and tried to think “bad”. (Which somehow is also good.

Kooky!)

“Bootylicious Woman Looking 4 Handsome Devil—married woman looking for a scandalous affair that is not boring.” I felt so proud of my crazy and outrageous “kinkiness”. I am so adventurous! So I went on, “Must like Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain.” It sounded a bit familiar, but I figured I read it in a past ad.

I decided that a younger man would be my best bet. I scanned the titles and saw “One Sexy Senior Looking 4 Older Woman.” A college boy may be a wee bit too young, but I decided to contact this “Sexy Senior”

via the email. (Brigid taught me how to use the email when she still thought I had “un-boring” potential.) I sent him a picture of myself at my little girl’s soccer game (I looked “dope” in that purple turtleneck and black slacks) and a message to meet at a Starbucks on Maybury Avenue at noon.

I stumbled into Starbucks ten minutes early. I confiscated Brigid’s yellow stilts and black “Holla” skirt. (She thought that the outfit would look good on her when we visited Grandma yesterday.) I added my own yellow sweater that got me carded once at my sister’s bachelorette party and oversized sunglasses that are supposed to hide your face and make you look like a fly. I sat at a table in the corner and hoped that none of the soccer moms would flock here in their SUVs to get a latte before they fly away. I tugged my skirt down a bit, wishing that it would at least reach the center of my thigh. The Starbucks clones were looking at me from behind their green armor when Sexy Senior walked in.

He looked like a picture that Brigid has of Mr. Brad Pitt. Sexy Senior ran a butterscotch hand through hair the color of wet woodchips. He posed in front of the door with one demi-god hand on his hip. It was almost perfect how as an old man entered the wind caught his hair and shirt.

I blinked a Kodak moment. He swayed his faded jeans into the coffee shop and up to a Starbucks clone, leaning on the counter to place an order. He was not boring.

“Debra?” a grumbly voice said behind me. I spun around to see a gray haired basset hound wearing a tan suit that could have been made out of hay. He smiled a grin as he slowly sat down on the wooden chair as if he thought it would run out from under him. This was the Sexy Senior. The real Sexy Senior.Senior citizen. “I’m Eugene,” the basset hound grumbled. Then he slowly leaned in closer and whispered, “but you can call me Genie, you little vixen.”

I was about to have one of my husband’s asthma attacks. He began talking about something about fish and seas. The basset hound gazed at me with these huge veiny eyes that looked like they were dipped in yellow Vaseline. He had rows of hammocks under his eyes where little age spots rested comfortably. Under his chin (or what I could assume was his chin) was this droopy skin hanging like that weird thing under a turkey’s neck. He took out a piece of orangey-looking gum and popped it in his gaping mouth. He mentioned something about trying to quit smoking. I watched that orange glob rolling around. A cement mixer mixing orange cement.

“Wanna cup of coffee, sweetheart?” barked the basset hound, tilting his head so all his droop hung to the left. Something was on my knee

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that didn’t belong to me.

I shot up right like a stepped-on rake. “I’ll get it,” I squeaked as I grabbed my purse. I teetered on the yellow stilts to the Starbucks clone and waited in line to order two coffees. Mr. Brad-Pitt-Wanna-Be was sitting in a chair by the tray of sugar and cream. He gazed like a wolf wanting to bite off my leg. I self-consciously pulled my daughter’s skirt down.(If she thinks that she is going to wear this…)

“Hey there, hottie. You look so sweet that Slugworth woulda stolen ya.” Mr. Brad Pitt said. He looked like he discovered the cure for cancer while he was at a modeling gig. I awkwardly smiled at his smugness.

(Oh as in Slugworth in Willy Wonka! I didn’t catch that.) I glanced back at the bassethound, and he was removing orange gum splatter from his shirt.

I got to the front of the line and ordered two coffee. Grabbing the money out of my wallet, a photo fell out onto the counter. I picked it up and stare at the faces. It was a family picture at Christmas. Brigid was wearing a tube top with “Ho Ho Ho” advertised across the chest. My youngest girl was itching at the velvet and chiffon dress I spent three days making her. Then my husband—my sweet husband—and I were in Hawaiian shirts and Santa hats. We were so adventurous to have thought of that—summer in Christmas instead of Christmas in July.I snorted out a laugh that made the clones of Starbucks, the basset hound, and Mr. Brad Pitt look. Shoving the photo into my wallet, I waddled over to the basset hound. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. I’m married,” I looked at Mr. Brad Pitt, “and you both are too boring for me.” I tore off the stilts and walk out to my precious minivan to pick up my girls from school, wishing I knew what “bootylicious” actually meant.

Duckie

BY YELENA PAVLOVICH

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A Sincere Response

BY DANIEL LOWER

Sometimes at family gatherings I get asked the question I hate Sometimes my family pries In ways that make me irate Over the good food and warm cheer They ask “Do you have a girlfriend yet?”

I say no and they have to say “By the end of the year you will, I bet”

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Then they ask “are you pursuing anyone?

And does anyone like you?”

I say “no, no, I’m not doing that yet,” And I’ll explain myself, too: I’m not mature enough to be the right guy Or to be a man so chivalrous I’m not old enough to say the right things When a girl gets mad and in a fuss I’m far too young and far too shallow Far too jaded and far too crass I think too much about the way a girl looks Like the color of her hair or the curve of her Figure. Seriously, what did you think I was going to say?

This is the response you’re going to get “I’m too naive, I’m too inexperienced, And that’s why there’s no girlfriend, yet.”

You PIERCE KENNEDY

Curious roots meander through the Muck Searching for Damaged friends While the Trunk slowly Decays.

Mossy armor Accumulates Refusing light, keen on Protection It’s a lovely Shell Right?

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A Welcome From the University President

BY MATTHEW TONGUE

From: Mony, Xavier, CSC Sent: Mon 8/25/2059 08:08 AM To: %allstudents Subject: A Welcome from the University President th

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As we enter our 158 year, I would like to welcome (or welcome back) all students to the University of Portland. There are quite a few announcements students should be aware of this year: First, I regret to inform students that the previous President of the University, Fr. Wilhelm Goodfield, has passed away. Fr. Goodfield served the University for thirty years, and was known nearly a hundred students as a man of great concern and consideration. Fr. Goodfield extended Waldschmidt Hall by three floors to fit new administrative personnel during his presidency, increased enrollment by 400 percent, eliminated the complaint apparatus known as ASUP, and increased security, both on campus and on the University’s servers.

In accordance with Fr. Goodfield’s last wishes, he will be bronzed and installed as a statue in the center of a stairwell on campus. His will read that he wanted to be remembered as a “steady rock in the students’ chaotic stream. ”Given the scope of his contributions, he was more of a boulder than a modest “rock.” The Goodfield family has given a generous grant to the University in his honor.

Onto better news: Dirk Dispot, the Undersecretary of Student Feed Supervision, has informed me that last year’s disturbances regarding overcrowding and food quality in the University Commons have been addressed. The Soylent Corporation—an industry leader in crowd control and culinary excellence—won the bid to counsel the Student Feed Supervision Department. Dirk tells me that the company will provide crowd control vehicles equipped with humane containment apparatus.

Further, they have furnished recipes he is “anxious to try on the student body.” I trust that with these solutions in effect, there will be no need to deploy Public Safety peacekeepers to the University Commons, as was necessary on several occasions last year.

Howie Bheet-Siu, Public Safety Commander, asks me to inform students that Public Safety peacekeepers will be armed this year. He tells me that Public Safety is issuing the new equipment to combat the explosive squirrel population on campus and asks me to forward this message:

Due to the alarming upswing of reported squirrel-related incidents on campus (including three incidents between the months of September and November alone), Public Safety peacekeepers have been issued civiliangrade laspistols. Peacekeepers are instructed only to use these weapons in case of a squirrel emergency. Due to generations of illicit student feeding, squirrels on campus have grown increasingly aggressive, and are slowly moving their rut-nests closer to the Public Safety Command Center, in preparation for what we believe to be full-scale invasion.

Squirrels are insidious tacticians, quick learners, and filthy vectors of lethal diseases. Their preferred tactic is to strike from above, then vanish into the brush with whatever spoils their unprepared victims leave unattended.

Students are now required by the University’s Security Policy to report all squirrel sightings to Public Safety. To reinforce this new policy, Public Safety will be conducting Squirrel Drills, where we project hologs of squirrels on campus, and monitor students to ensure they report the sighting to Public Safety. Students that fail a Squirrel Drill (e.g. fail to report the squirrel to Public Safety) will be subject to judicial action for endangering the University community. Students that cannot provide proof of a squirrel to a peacekeeper responding to a squirrel report will be subject to judicial action for wasting peacekeeper time.

Howie would like to remind students that if stopped by a peacekeeper, they are required to provide valid student ID, student GPS tag, class schedule, proof of birthdate, social security number (or student visa), religious affiliation, sexual orientation, and medical history, and be prepared to submit to an iris scan, voice confirmation, handwriting analysis, dental cross-check, blood type test, urine test, breathalyzer test and DNA test.

In order to increase security on the campus network, the Computer Information Services and Communications Office will provide students with custom-built, University-sanctioned 2-Senz™ vox/viz comp. As the University now provides 2-Senzes™, students will have no need for personal v/v comps, and such personal devices will be prohibited in dormitories, to prevent their signal interfering with the University’s interdimensional network. The University’s v/v comps will be outfitted with the proper anti-viral and content confirmation modules, and will be hard-coded to operate only during University-designated recreational hours.

The Computer Information Services and Communications Office would like to remind students that University-distributed v/v comps do not play pro-University propaganda during sleeping hours. Any student experiencing this or similar symptoms of psychosis should report to the Center for Student Soundness to receive sleep-enhancing medication

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and hypnosis therapy.

Finally, in order to increase the visibility of Campus Ministry, the University will be implementing changes in the dormitories. The Bishop Association of America has released acceptable incense levels in consecrated chapels. Incense concentration must be kept between 100 and 250 parts per million (ppm). Naturally, the University will be enforcing these concentrations in dormitory chapels; but due to its proactive approach to enhancing faith on campus, incense concentration will be enforced in the dormitories at large.

While enforcing this new policy, Campus Ministry has encountered a few problems. The incense concentrations interfere with dormitory smoke detectors. Consequently, the University is in the process of removing the smoke detectors, which will eventually be replaced with sensors designed to ignore concentrations below 300 ppm. In order to conserve incense, these sensors will be tied into each dormitory’s ventilation and fenestration systems. If the sensors determine that incense levels are too low, they will increase vent suction in the dormitory chapel, and close and lock all student-controlled windows. Tampering with this system is grounds for immediate termination of enrollment with the University.

Again, welcome (or welcome back) to the University of Portland. I hope that each of you may grow and prosper as the University has with student contributions.

Xavier Mony, CSC

Portuguese Heroes

BY EMILY SITTON

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Unframed KRISTI CASTELLANO

It’s strange how Time can dissolve a memory from the outside in like developer in reverse evaporating the essence until all that’s left is the cradle of an earlobe the white of an eye the silhouette of a lower lip but the fragments no longer coalesce

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like shards of shell anchored in the sand dispersed by the turbulent rapture of the moon inevitable crumbs of collision tossed into waves of despair and joy emerging only beneath the ebb of chance we attempt to align these shards into icons of bygone possibilities restoring memories from the inside out this time waking only to discover that the grains of sand caking the soles of our feet are daunting evidence of Time’s steadfast plan

“Human life is utterly worth expressing.

The attempt to express the worst and the best that is in us—even the doomed effort—is one of the great spiritual disciplines available to humankind.

The effort alone is worthy of respect.”

—David James Duncan

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Hilary Ahearn: Last spring, Hilary spent the semester studying wildlife management and conservation in East Africa. If she could sit in the sun next to a pasture full of horses, listening to country music, everyday for the rest of her life she would—it would never get old.

Jordan Allensworth: Jordan Allensworth, senior.

Cori Anderson: Pizza maker extraordinaire with an eye for the camera and a heart of gold. Cori is an editor of this publication.

Oliver Anderson: Oliver is a freshman at the University of Portland.

His major is yet undeclared as he is indecisive and has no real aspirations. While not classically handsome he does all right, thank you very much. Oliver can eat two breakfasts.

Michael Bakke: Michael is a senior studying mechanical engineering and planning on a career in military aviation.

Shayla Behling: Shayla is a sophomore nursing student with a passion for photography. While studying abroad in Austria this year, she took this picture of a street performer on the cobblestone streets of Vienna.

Briana Bobiak: Freshman English Pre-Med student from Bainbridge Island, WA. Katherine Carlos: Katherine is a senior civil engineering and Spanish major graduating in August 2009. This corrido (Mexican ballad) was written for a Spanish class and explores the themes of love, infidelity, despair and hope.

Courtney Carroll: Courtney Carroll aspires to lead the peaceful life of a shepherd.

Dena Cassella: Fact: The only guy in ZZTop without a beard has the surname “Beard.” Dena is an editor of this publication.

Kristi Castellano: Her loves in life are traveling and writing. She intends to use her degree in international development nursing and hope to one day lead a non-profit organization devoted to educating those less fortunate with regards to disease prevention and wellness.

Erin Chambers: An Irish girl with a love for dogs and literature. Erin is an editor of this publication.

Doug Franz: Doug Franz is a senior Finance major. He is a Western Washington native who has been involved in photography for 8 years.

Amelia Gradt: Amelia a freshman this year at UP. She is an English and Theatre double major, and loves to draw, write, sing, and act. She love gothic novels and enjoy taking walks in the forest.

CJ Graves: CJ is an English and Psychology major who will graduate next spring.

Ingrid Hannan: Ingrid enjoys friendship, warm conversations, exploring, adventuring, cooking with reckless abandon, being curious, and growing sweetly wild.

Kevin Hannon: Kevin graduated from Moreau Catholic High School in Hayward California. He is a freshmen at UP and is the sixth member of his family to attend the University.

Nathan Haskell: Nathan is a sophomore English Lit./French major, born and raised in the Philippines. Besides photography, he enjoys trying his hand at painting and ceramics, as well as eating lots of cookies John Hegarty: John enjoys writing poetry, plays, short stories and music and majors in English, with the intention of pursuing a master’s degree in creative writing.During his free time he reads, writes, sings and plays guitar and overall is enjoying his first experience on the West Coast.

Ashley Hight: Ashley is a shy wallflower who doubles as a grammar nazi and tries to properly use as many obscure words as possible.

However, she just wishes people were more carefree and included random tidbits of songs into everyday conversation. Ashley is an editor of this publication.

Matt Hughson: Matt is a pretty simple guy—often reflecting the antithesis of spontaneity. He tries to convince himself that he possesses dry and witty characteristics, but as he sits here perusing the 2008 Darwin Awards, he realizes he should probably be content as a closet misanthrope.

Nicole Hunt: Nicole is a senior Finance major from Portland, OR. She is a sucker for good coffee, suspense novels, poetry, and almost every song ever written.

Scott Jamison: Scott is an international exchange student from Northern Ireland, studying business in Portland this semester. This was the first poem he's ever written, and was included in a collection that he used for his English Literature degree in Ireland.

Mikel Johnson: Mikel is a sophomore at UP. She is studying Spanish and English.

Danielle Jolicoeur: Danielle, an expert loose leaf tea brewer, was first published for her simple masterpiece “Witches’ Brew” at age 9. In the summer you can find her fly-fishing on the St. Joe River. Danielle is an editor of this publication.

Pierce Kennedy: His favorite color is orange and he likes cheese, chocolate, and creativity. Have a great day!

Deanna Kishel: Deanna is a French major who enjoys English and Math as well.Yes, enjoys.

Kevin Krohn: Kevin done graduated in the fall. He majored in English and cross country. Kevin is an editor for this publication. Not!

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Stephanie Landis: Stephanie is a senior English major who is usually out having adventures. Stephanie is an editor of this publication.

Daniel Lower: Daniel is a Senior Mathematics and Theology major. He enjoys good company, electronic music, dancing, and exchanging ideas, often about God and at ungodly hours.

Andrew Lyon: Andrew is a sophomore majoring in Spanish and Psychology. He loves playing sports (especially soccer), acting silly (especially melodramatically), dancing (wholeheartedly, like a free spirit), and engaging himself in the truly important things in life…

Alexis Manning: Alexis is a sophomore English major with Communication and German minors. She loves traveling, and during a weekend trip to Venice, she was lucky enough to catch this candid moment of a gondolier standing beside a canal.

Andy Matarrese: Andy is a junior history and English major who hails from Battle Ground, WA. Annemarie Medrzycki: History and German Major class of 2011. She likes being outside and taking long afternoon naps.

Mary Miller: Mary continues to marvel at those who can successfully whistle and snap their fingers. Looking ahead, a long stint in the Air Force, a return to her passion of photography, and somehow conquering these not-so-easy physical abilities are probable.

Olga Mosiychuk: Olga is a stickler for grammar. She enjoys running (when she’s feeling athletic), blasting music and having a good time.

Hopefully, her passion for grammar and life will assist in her professional pursuits. She strives to become the editor of “Cosmopolitan Magazine.”

Tyler Moss: Tyler is a Junior English Major who wants to make Creative Writing a career. His literary heroes include Mark Twain, Raymond Carver, Miniver Cheevy, and the Lorax. Tyler is an editor of this publication.

Douglas Orofino: Douglas is a freshman music education major. He enjoys singing, acting, writing, photography, and half a passionate devotion to music as well as to his friends and family.

Jedidiah Patton: Poetry is something he picked up when thinking about big events or emotions in his life. Other past times involve video games, swimming, tennis and rugby. This poem was written for his grandparents’ 50th anniversary.

Yelena Pavlovich: Yelena is a sophomore biochemistry major and is always trying to take pictures of everything around her because you never know when you will come across the perfect shot. This “Duckie” picture was shot off 23rd St. in downtown last summer.

Bethanie Peterson: Bethanie hopes to one day be a formidable Scrabble player. She also could never have anticipated that she would be writing her senior thesis on WWJD. Bethanie is an editor of this publication.

Caterina Purves: C. Purves was a campus squirrel. Desperate for more submissions, the editors of the UP Writers Magazine captured her and trained her to write poetry in exchange for Junior Mints. She dies two days after the completion of “Childhood,” because squirrels are not supposed to eat candy.

Alyssa Reget: Alyssa is a Junior-type person who is just kind of going where life takes her. Last year, life took her over to Europe where she took lots of cool pictures. Lots. When she isn’t creeping on random strangers in front of Italian museums, she enjoys sipping coffee, listening to good music, reading (the occasional) book, going for midnight bike rides in the rain, and being with friends.

Robert Russell: Robert is a senior Philosophy and Political Science major who enjoys most activities beginning with the letter ‘s’ (soccer, skiing, school, spelunking, and presumably someday skydiving). He has a palate for spontaneous platitudes and a myopic eye for irony but more importantly he wonders, “why the purgatory are we here?”

Emily Sitton: Emily is a Communication Studies and Spanish major who works as the Features Editor for The Beacon. She originally wanted to dive into a career in journalism after graduation, but is now interested in spending a year doing service after graduation. Studying in Salzburg, Austria has cultivated her interests in languages, photography, and experiencing new cultures.

Ruby Stocking: Ruby is a Communications major and arguably the most liberal person at this school. She loves long walks on the beach, film and writes about the men she dates. She have been playing with film ever since she was a kid so expect to see her name in Hollywood someday.

Sydney Syverson: Sydney is a sophomore Social Work major currently studying abroad in Salzburg. She misses her family, friends, and otter pops more than anything! She enjoys writing and believes people write because they have something that they can’t keep to themselves any longer; something that has to be said.

Matthew Tongue: Matthew is a senior Electrical Engineer with minors in English and Mathematics. Unless you’re mad at him, in which case he’s dead.

Andrea Wujek: Andrea is an English major hoping to graduate this spring. She enjoys athletic endeavors, writing poetry on sunny—and rainy—days in her Moleskine, and mango sorbet.

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Special thanks to Bridge Bimrose-DelCarpio and Susan Safve, in the hardworking Marketing and Communications Department, who helped redesign, reformat, and spice up this publication.

To Dr. Lars Larson, the wizard behind the curtain who guided us.

To our diligent editors, who worked tirelessly to convince students to submit their art and collaborated to make a book.

And finally, to all of the students who bravely submitted their art and literature to wow the student body with their vibrancy and artistic insight.

Without you, this would be a sad, bland, and pathetically small magazine. Merci. —Your Senior Editors