Yahara Journal 2005

MATC’s Literary and Fine Arts Journal

2005

2005

Staff

Chandra Osterhaus, editor Matthew Greidanus, assistant editor Charles Rupp, writers group coordinator Karin Wrzesinski, arts chairwoman David Johnson, web design

Staff Jenna Borchert Kally Fenske Emily Haack Sherry Hansen Kim Johnson-Bair Gabe Joyner Allison Phillips Sara Wrzesinski

Advisors Bird Cupps Doug Kirchberg

The Yahara Journal is a collection of MATC student art and literature. It is edited and compiled by the journal’s student staff.

For information, visit our website: http://matcmadison.edu/studentlife/yaharajournal The cover of this book was designed by Karin Wrzesinski, and the page design is by Sara Wrzesinski.

Contents

Jake McMiller

Nicole Bunge Bachmann Books Storybook

Matthew Chaney untitled

Justin Bright Everything Must Go

Ryan Dean Blue Summer Nights Train 527

Elisa Derickson

9 10 11 12 14 15

Puerto Rican Dorothy 16 Souvenir 17 Geographic Love

Nate Dunn Me vs. Samsa vs. Vegas

Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle 12 Tacos from Tucson

Matthew Greidanus untitled Propinquious Pork The Argument

Abdirhman Hassan No Nut

Ramsey Kropp Brick

Grace Lorentz Sleepwalking Mayonnaise Jar

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Johnny Come Lately Badland

Chandra Osterhaus

Crystal Fricke 28 29

Sunday in Oklahoma 30 Karma 32 Grandfather

Sarah Schoville

33

In the Lord’s Kitchen 34 Gun Games

Heidi Freymiller Melnikau

Jerry Abitz untitled untitled

Kriss Boeck In My Box After Hours

Casey Bohne untitled

Marifrances A. Cataldi untitled

Elisa Derickson Shirts

Rachel Detra untitled untitled

Jeremy Everson The Prize

38

Farmers’ Market

52

Aaron Gilmore Why Supergirl

53 54

Ayesha Guzali untitled

55

Kerry Harried untitled

56

Brett Hermanson Giraffe

39

57

Kari Keapproth untitled

42 43

shadows

Grace Lorentz 44 45 46

59

David on the Train

Zachary Manners untitled untitled untitled

47

Clelia Morris

48

Stephen O. Siehr

49 50

Sara Wrzesinski

untitled

Missing Mass Father’s Place

Andrei Yakushyk 51

58

Julia Kosivchuk

Pride

60 61 62 63 64

cover, 65 66 67

Editor’s Note

W

henever a group of people get together to work on a long term project there are times of stress, too many deadlines coming up at once and all too much homework on top of it. Luckily for us we found a mascot to cheer us in bad times and good and keep our spirits up. We didn’t know if the artist had a name for him at the time but we gave him one anyway and he became the joy in our stress-filled lives more than once.

The Yahara Journal has a special role to play in the community of MATC. The students of MATC have a unique voice that is full of diversity, imagination, and beauty. In putting together this publication it has been our goal to assemble a representation of this community through art, prose, and poetry. The community of MATC is constantly changing and with that the Yahara Journal is the continuous expression of these changes. We are proud to present these works from this community. In this, the 11th issue of the Yahara Journal, one of our goals for the book was to include more art than we had in the past. In order to better represent the art, we chose to change the size and shape of the book and general format.

The Yahara Journal is much more than just the book we publish in the spring semester. We are also dedicated to helping students find alternative ways of expressing their creativity outside of the classroom.

Thanks in part to the MATC foundation for providing funds so we could hold several faculty readings each semester. These open mic events provided a place for

students to share their poetry, spoken word, short stories or writing they found inspirational. Writing groups have been another part of our agenda this year. We wanted something that anyone could attend, whether it was once a year or once every week. We looked at the most difficult aspects of writing and then tried to find a way to cover as many as we could in a weekly meeting. We prepared writing prompts that helped spur creativity. We allowed time for going over writing that people were having problems with or simply wanted feedback on and had discussions on contemporary prose, poetry and art. Thanks to the Aesthetics Committee, the journal was able to take over the Student Art Show for its third year, which was previously a Student Senate project. The art was showcased in the library throughout April 2005.

Last but not least, I don’t want to forget to say thank you to all the students who submitted art and writing, those teachers and students who had the courage to get up on stage and read at the open mics, all the people who participated in the writing groups, the teachers who volunteered their time to judge for the contests, the Art Club for helping us get the word out, Lord Arlo Winthrop the Hippo and his creator, Marifrances A.Cataldi, for providing us with a little bit of cheer during the hard times.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy the book.

–Chandra Osterhaus, editor

Poetry & Prose

Bachmann Books Nicole Bunge

He’s picking notes like ripe peaches that fall at the foot of his guitar, this angel strummer from the smoking section of heaven.

His grandpa sweater hides the wings he finds too femme to show at his barroom Friday night escapes.

He drinks with hookers who know Jesus saves but don’t have time for commitment yet.

He mutters soft words through cigarette smoke, and when he sings, the cancerous baritone resonates with road grit and gravel, the kind birds swallow to digest their food.

What is his motivator, this lost holy phantom, his sorry ballads of Dantean phantoms, his humid Carolina summers, too many nights drunk-stumbling along the wrong side of the tracks?

His Archers are gone, the emo-college band broken, but he still sings, with crooked fingers he still makes guitars sing.

Moving smoothly between distortion and strings his words are bitter like a tepid glass of tea, and you don’t know if it’s meant to be hot or cold burn or freeze with the singsong refrain.

He’s tear-jerking with these smoggy grey-green pictures conjuring defined detail in Amish refinery, I want to frame every word as audio art not sweep them from the floor like overripe fruit as I watch him fly away.

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Storybook Nicole Bunge

I’m passing off a pipe to the mother of the groom And saying to myself, this can’t be how you pictured it Courtroom nuptials on a Friday afternoon A date the state informed you of a week ago Or so you end up telling everyone afterwards When they complain they couldn’t see the ceremony.

I only find out when your roommate – by best friend – Called me from the courthouse elevator Yeah, I know it’s 3:15, vows at 3:30 But meet us at the bar at 4:30 –k?

So I sit on my stool and stare, You’re 19 – or is it 20?

I know your groom turns 21 in July, But you’re both allowed in bars with his mom, Although, other than me and my best friend, no one’s really old enough to be there But we stay till 5:30 when the bartender shoos us The owner will be in at 6, and he cards everyone.

The pool game ends, I suicide on Area 51, And the reception moves to the house.

Your other friends are home, wide-eyed and confused Friday nights the living room is reserved for roleplaying But certainly not this kind.

They’re happy for you, but put out a bit, It’s hard to play act your way through a real social situation.

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You and your new groom sit side by side on beanbags, sipping wine coolers And you keep reminding everyone that your Wisconsin-bred obstetrician said A few drinks won’t hurt the baby.

In any case, you’re diligently avoiding the bong hits and passing pipes, And for some reason everyone keeps reminding me you’d be getting married anyway, The state just demanded the date before the baby’s due Or you lose your benefits.

So there’s no white dress, No bridesmaids in hideous taffeta No two hour ceremony Fighting over caterers Or guest list slighting No showers, no dancing, no thank you notes, or cousins puking in the punch bowl.

Just a pretty white Walmart sweater, A judge who repeated the same part 3 times, Bean bags, industrial music, contact highs, And a room full of “guests” clutching rulebooks and 20-sided die.

The reception eventually turns back into a Shadowrun game, And I’m so confused I retreat to my best friend’s room.

I surf the web for an hour and then quietly leave Congratulations and pity don’t go well on a wedding day.

untitled Matthew Chaney

Pathetic Fallacy like a sad, lonely terraqueous landscape In my dream I smoked a salmagundi of dagga and Indian Hay, blowing blue grey smoke out of my beezer.

I glanced at my marcescent unsmirched fingers, then stared out the window at the ecumenopolis.

Standing too quickly, my legs felt like I had abasia, my lungs, chalicosis.

I looked at the reflective windowpane, on my lips, a noma, my skin, xanthoma.

Did I get this from my venturous wassail with the quean, the filicidal generatrix?

It will take zetetic yakka to find out.

My recidivous jackassery, pelagic beyond belief, causes me much opprobium.

I’m a knothead and lamister of much hardiment.

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Everything Must Go Justin Bright

Margaret had left about four months ago. Wesley decided it was time to get rid of her things, so he had a garage sale.

The clothes she wore, her dresser, her lamps, her dusty rocking chair, and even her ashtrays were all lined up at a bargain price. He was selling pieces of her.

He had been living with that empty feeling of rejection for too long. One day he came home and all that was left of her was a note on the dinner table.

Then, four weeks later, divorce papers in the mail. He still had them on his desk, unsigned. Wesley didn’t even know where she was now. Fourteen years of marriage. No children, thank God. It wasn’t very complicated. She couldn’t have children. He didn’t think he wanted them anyway, in the beginning.

Anymore he wasn’t so sure, but so much in his life seemed to be missing in the past four months.

Box after box he brought out to the garage. Slowly he pulled her things out, one by one, sticking a little piece of masking tape with a made-up price on each fragment of a memory. Everything must go. He paused for a minute as he looked at a butterfly pin she once wore in her hair. This was our first date, he recalled.

Dancing at the Aqua Lounge. Her hair made up in those golden curls. Her bright red lipstick. Eye shadow the color of the deepest depths of the ocean. The plaid skirt. The knitted stockings covering her legs. Those innocent legs. He pricked the tip of his finger with the pin and suddenly he was back in the garage. Everything must go.

He found a bracelet in a box of her jewelry and gently set it on a shelf in the far corner of the garage. He bought her this bracelet on their one-year

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anniversary when they were dating in college. He remembered the look on her face when he showed it to her for the first time. That smile. The flowery smell of her perfume. They way they made love that night. He felt like such a complete person with her then. They were so happy together. I’ll just keep this one thing of her’s, he thought. After all, this is really as much mine as it is her’s. He looked at it and smiled, gripped it tight, and put it in his pocket.

He filled shelves and tables with her plates, cups, books, ornaments, souvenirs, vases, and keepsakes.

Everything must go. With all items marked and labeled, he sat at a little card table and waited. Waited to let her go.

Soon a formally dressed young man approached his table and cash box and set down a glass figurine of a ballerina. “This is great,” he said while turning the price tag toward Wesley. “My daughter would love this. Five dollars, right?”

The figurine with the tape tag reading $5 scribbled in smeared blue ink stared up at him.

Wesley was startled to feel something tug at his heart.

“My father gave this to me for my 16th birthday.”

Margaret had said. He remembered her holding the figurine after her father’s funeral a dozen or so years ago. “I used to want to be a dancer.” She laughed. “I took lessons but I was terrible at it. So he gave this to me and said, ‘Don’t worry, Honey. You’re as beautiful as this ballerina, even if you can’t dance like her.’”

Tears fell down her cheeks and Wesley hugged her.

“Don’t ever die, Wes,” she said. He remembered the sweet smell of her hair and the salty taste of her tears when he kissed her cheek.

Everything Must Go Justin Bright

Wesley slowly lifted his head and gazed at the young man. “No. That’s a mistake,” he said. “That’s supposed to say $500.”

was a lovely piece of work. He should have paid more attention. He should have told Margaret she could brighten a room with one of her embroideries.

“You’re joking, right?” the man asked. Wesley shook his head. The young man sneered, then turned and began to walk back to his car, shaking his head.

“I’m terribly sorry, ma’am,” he told the graying woman. “This is not for sale, I don’t know why it has a price tag.” He stood up and took the tapestry from her hands. “You’ll have to excuse me.”

Wesley looked around, and when he saw that no one was looking he picked up the ballerina and put it in his pocket with the bracelet.

Some nights this last month he would lay awake in bed at night, thinking of the letter. “It’s time for me to move on,” she wrote. “Let’s face it. Neither of us is as happy as we were years ago. Now, I’ve met a man who makes me feel that way again. I will always love you and I have always loved you, but I need to feel that way again. I’m sorry, Wes. I have to start over.”

Wesley sat at the table, feeling like a blank ghost of himself. He realized a graying elderly woman was hovering above him. He looked at her and smiled shyly.

“This is such a lovely embroidery.” She held it up and squinted her eyes, studying it closely. “It would just look divine in my sitting room. It is definitely worth the price.” She grinned at him warmly and opened up her checkbook.

Margaret enjoyed knitting in the afternoons these last few years. She had gotten pretty good at it. She went on and on about this embroidery after she finished it. Wesley grew tired of hearing her brag about it so he would barely acknowledge it. “That’s nice, dear.” He would say to her. It was just now that he realized the graying woman was right. It really

He placed it against the wall of the garage, next to the door opening to the kitchen. “Excuse me, everyone,” he called out. “I’m sorry, but I must be closing now for the day. Thank you all for coming.”

A large, stout man approached him as the bargain hunters began to file out. “Can I just quickly buy this one thing before you close?” he asked in a deep voice.

In his hand he held a ring that Wesley had mailed to Margaret from Paris while he was on a business trip the first year they were married. Wish you were with me, Wesley had written on the card. I thought you would like this, it reminded me of you. The ring had a small ruby and two butterflies engraved into the gold band. Margaret loves butterflies. Wesley snatched it out of the man’s hand.

“No, I’m sorry. I really must be closing now.”

Wesley nodded at the man. “Thank you.” He gently pushed him toward the driveway.

After everyone was out, he closed the garage door, sighed, and began moving Margaret’s things back into the house. Everything must go.

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Blue Summer Nights Ryan Dean

Inspired by the music of John Coltrane The blue train Conductor, just on for the ride, Gliding through the city on music tracks On blue summer nights You are the cool breeze Wild and uninhibited Cool cats chill outside The wind, a car, two birds, and a stone The air forever changing Life ows like a trumpet Smooth like water A glacier crashes Whale music Ocean Jazz It’s in your soul Wading through the day Opening the window To let in life Searching for the moment Where musical notes come to-get-her And form a sweet love song She is music, she is graceful Twirling under parading stars On blue summer nights

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“Train 527 Los Angeles to Chicago Now Boarding on Track Twelve” Ryan Dean

Observing people Union Station, L.A. A Japanese spy confronted me, Claiming to be an exchange student.

She wanted to interview me, A class assignment putting her new language to the test.

She came to me with steel protruding from her lip, Erotic and exotic like she was born that way Her clothes, ripped out of a magazine with a Fashion photography major as her cover.

A basic level interrogation began And I politely indulged her inquisitiveness.

Ryan, twenty three, from Chicago.

I’ve said too much.

She thanked me and left with a friend Giggling and comparing notes Like Japanese school girl spies tend to do.

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Puerto Rican Dorothy Elisa Derickson

When love for Dad, a scarecrow-thin American sailor, all jug ears and thick black glasses, pulled her hard as a tornado into the Midwest, Mom leapt off Puerto Rico, skipped over Florida, and broke a heel on the St. Louis Arch.

Now there is no yellow brick road home to the Emerald forest, and even if there were from here you’d need a snow plow. But our Dorothy doesn’t click her gold lamé shoes; doesn’t hit her head and wake dreamy-eyed to the voices of coquí frogs and concerned uncles.

No, eyes sparkling big like some cinema queen, she says it was her plan all along. That dog? Yeah, she used him to get her in the door at the Naval Base Dance Club. She knew her scarecrow was blowing around inside. That glittery red lipstick? It sure wasn’t for Toto.

They’re still friends. But she admits “I knew the dog would lead me to the prince.”

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Souvenir Elisa Derickson

Photograph, El Morro, Puerto Rico, 1987 On a pyramid of time-glazed cannonballs we three sit, the white children of a brown mother, our skin cleaned with American blood the way bleach clears away a stain.

As you lift your camera to fix us like this– dark hair blowing in the ocean wind, me with one hand touching a pink hair band, the other twin sticking out her tongue at the moment of the flash– your shadow falls over us, is captured.

As if we need a picture, a souvenir to know what we are; pale monuments to when our ancestors came to fight themselves here and win and lose, to love and unite, joining their histories into the future, in us.

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Geographic Love Elisa Derickson

The problem with love is geographic The two of you can take off for a trip around the world, and what is there to fear? No problema, man.

There’s a cure for cholera, and American dollars will get you a seat on the most sheep-crowded minibus in the Andes.

But start fighting in Santiago and there’s no map to show you how to fall in love again by the time you hit Rio de Janeiro.

The problem with love is that it is unmappable.

When it’s big, it’s as big as the moon. You can feel it inside you, your heart pounding fast as a castanet beat, you can feel it outside you, in your dumb grin, wide as a tourist’s in photos.

You would climb the Andes just to shout your love.

So when the split comes, you’ve gotta take her aside, talk to her, Show her that the path can be found without a guidebook.

With luck, you could race to Lake Titicaca as the moon rose up, hire a boat, and get to Peru by morning.

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Me vs Samsa vs Vegas Nate Dunn

Walking with Gregor, his life spared Streets paved in stone, the gold Hidden amongst new-aged pyramids And cross-Atlantic towers The night starts youngComped at the noodle bar Sashaying drinks wrapped round the cellulite-free Throw themselves into stomachs Disarming lights shatter non-existent time Pawning Grete’s violin, Gregor plays the last chip To the skin bar! He’s still all man inside Dancing on six-legged table tops Upgrading from underside beds to Dwelling champagne rooms Trying his earnest to send her through “med school” It takes three bouncers to launch us Back into the faux-starry night A bottle of spirits each, and with no last call Any destination is around the corner. Another skin bar.

Repenting lost years, Gregor redefines a pole’s purpose Three more stiffs do some roughing, I walk out unharmed Fifteen minutes prior Jigging on streets for nickel slots The conservatory becomes a lost dream Two more bottles of rum, none for me Back to the bars and casinos, I heard They told me he was found harassing patrons Dancing in fountains He’s due for a hot streak.

But they were generous I thought, to drop Gregor off At the hotel. The night dead.

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12 Tacos from Tucson…

Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle

dry heat and cactus hallelujahs from precipitous Mountains North East and West of the city the tanned dusty locals have been pained by the needles of prickly pears they are the immigrated, the tolerated, the scientists and the retired drinking Mexican beer in cowboy boots with daughters striking piñatas we ate 12 tacos from a clay Mexican drive through next to a bridal shop next to more clay businesses we drove the road South a minivan’s horse power moving against the invisible flow of imperialist victims an underground river of Latinos immigrating from Central America most of us were oblivious of those running the towns we just ate in, urinated in, left footprints behind Salsa music in our dust large sunglasses approaching Mexico too quickly new beige Buicks 5 under the limit polluting the desert feels like dropping ice cubes in the ocean South bellies full of Tacos tan alegre’ como’ Suaro Cactus in this dry heat

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untitled Matthew Greidanus

I am eating Veryfastfood But thoughts as always Turn to you Your lips Far softer than torilla chips Would squelch a hunger Known too few

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Propinquious Pork Matthew Greidanus

Seeing double, triple Behind the bar Through the drifting smoke and Filtered light On the backlit shelves in red neon it sat Eying the too often fingered, dirty water Discolored liquid abandon Floating, dirty and alone Like me Waiting for a sucker I nod to the bartender, As a cowboy hat drifts behind me Shouting above the din, “I’ll take it!”

She puts the jar in front of me I swallow my guile Painfully twisting the salt crusted, time sealed lid Dipping my hand into the murky, luke-warm, brackish brine A sickly sweet aroma wafts to my nostrils Mingling with the smoke, sweat and beer Fishing out the chunk of mysterious flesh I look at it and think of cow eyes in biology class This unwanted, scorned gob of swiney strangeness With reluctance Enters my mouth Vinegary Then the faintest, lingering wisp of burnt plastic As I masticate the flaking skin Of pickled ham hock

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The Argument Matthew Greidanus

They had fought furiously that night and he had resigned himself to an uneasy truce. She had cried and blocked the door. He had thrown her across the room in an attempt to escape, having done so he felt remorseful and in his ensuing penance, did not leave as intended, but stayed to console her, only partly because he felt sorry for what he had done.

“I don’t want you to leave,” she said sniffling up the remnants of her tears. “I’m not sure I can stay now, not after that. I don’t want to be that person.” He answered back. There was a long silence during which her tears began to well again. “I won’t leave – I won’t – just please stop crying.” “Come here.” He held her tightly and made her crying stop through sheer will.

He said all the right things and made her feel loved. As she slowly drifted off he thought about what a horrible person he was.

Sensing that she was soundly asleep he whispered, “You awake –?” There was no answer.

Carefully, he peeled her arm from his chest and deftly slid his body out from under her weight. Fumbling for his lighter in the darkness, he could still feel the warmth from where their bodies had touched. “She always was a sound sleeper, thank God for that,” he thought to himself. In the faint glow of a lighter, he nimbly picked out a hefty amount of quarters from her laundry change then found his wallet and keys.

He grabbed a basket of clean unfolded clothes on the way out of the apartment. After locking the door, he removed the key from his ring and slid it underneath.

From the moment she walked into the bar and saw him with another girl, he felt like a bank robber getting a speeding ticket. “Of all the reasons she has to hate me,” he thought, “she would pick the most innocent.” After all, it wasn’t a lie this time, he was just friends with the girl. Yet here he was consoling her as if he really had done something wrong. “Shit I wish I had a drink!” Resentment rose in his stomach.

What right did she have to demand anything of him?

She knew he was a drunk and she willingly accepted it before he had even moved in. These days he was careful to inform any pending loves of his condition so as to avoid this very sort of thing. “It never does work,” he thought. “As soon as someone starts to think they love you, they immediately start making demands.” “I don’t need it!” he screamed in his head. “I don’t need this and I won’t put up with it any more!”

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No Nut Abdirhman Hassan

I’m nut, not a peanut. I’m not allergic to you like peanut. no I’m not those nuts you’re thinking of, ‘cause I don’t cum in pairs. you’d see me retreat back into nutshell. No I’m not a tough nut needless to say I need a license to drive you NUTS

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Brick Ramsey Kropp

Evening, and the words refuse to appear in my mind.

Traffic rushes and roars outside.

The monitor glows a pale blue radiation and hums with a subliminal sixty hertz cycle, the perfect noise to cause headaches and boredom.

Tomorrow there is an assignment due, and it must be written in the style of another poet.

Preferably one of the luminaries in their respective field, I choose Tony Hoagland as his work is biting and political and witty and everything I want mine to be.

But the words won’t work and everything I put on the page seems contrived and juvenile. There is no insight here, no deeper understanding with biting – satire and understanding into the state of the world.

You might say I am defeated and whining, as if it is my choice to be stumped and creatively barren, just a little, not a writer – which might be true, since language has crushed me the way I crush an ant the way hulk hogan crushed rick flair smacking me about the head like I owed it child support.

When you have to write distractions seem divine, like the brain rebels, anxious at the thought of stringing syllables into sentences, – the way that comedians, who finally reach a big stage freeze shocked, stilled by stress, until the audience boos.

Tonight, all over the world, writers at desks will type and scratch and scrawl until they have finished a project that they will be paid or receive a grade for, and I hate them.

Sometimes the words just flow and translate themselves from the chaos in my cranium into the smooth ordered flow of a sentence.

Now it is midnight and in my apartment even the dogs are asleep and dreaming doggy dreams and I have to get up at 6, for calculus and French and a half hour commute, and exams and papers and quizzes – I fucking hate artists, with unbridled creativity: so many assignments, keeping me awake.

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Sleepwalking Grace Lorentz

Early, when it’s dark but the clock says it’s morning, I feel like I’m the only person awake. I stare out the windows at the street, waiting for cars to rush past, but even when they come it feels like there’s no one inside them. Or, if there is a person, the person is empty like a cicada’s shell clutching the wheel of the car. I close my curtains and turn on my lights, but I can always tell what time it is. Even the voices on the TV sound strange like they’re echoing across a ravine.

Once I found a number in the phonebook and spoke to a nurse over the phone. “I’m scared,” I told her. “I’m pacing back and forth in my bedroom. There’s something wrong.” She talked to me like I was her friend. Like she’d been lonely too, sitting at a desk in some hospital, trying to read a magazine but listening to the silence instead. She seemed so genuine I didn’t wonder until afterwards if she was just pretending.

I bought a tiny tape recorder that attaches to the earpiece of my telephone and I record the conversations that I have. I like to listen to the tapes when I can’t sleep. Sometimes I listen enough that I memorize all the words and I can lip-synch to the tape. I can be myself and have the same conversation again and again, or be the other person and talk to myself. After a while the words just sound like noises.

Tonight Isabel called. I was thinking about her today. I’ve been thinking about her a lot. She’s dating a drug addict. I don’t know why. I’ve looked at her arms, and I don’t think she’s doing them, too. All morning I looked through the photo albums. There are gaps in them like missing teeth from the photos that I’ve taken out.

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On the tape Isabel sounds tired. Her voice is like my mother’s.

“Mom. How are things?”

“Isabel, where were you earlier? I tried calling but you didn’t answer.”

“I was out.”

“I worry about you. I don’t like the way that man talks to you.”

“You don’t need to worry.”

“He doesn’t love you.”

“You don’t need to worry, Mom. I was just calling to see how you are.”

“Everything’s the same.”

“OK Mom. I guess I’ll talk to you later then.”

“Yeah.”

“Goodbye.”

“Bye.” Sometimes I don’t know what to say to people to get them to understand. Like her father, my daughter can’t hear what I’m saying. Or maybe they hear but it doesn’t matter.

My daughter’s father killed himself with a rope tied around his neck. I used to kiss his neck, beneath his ear when he was sleeping. It was smooth like my daughter’s skin when she was born, but the rope made it rough. In the coffin they covered his neck with makeup. The bones had stretched the skin into a funny shape.

Mayonnaise Jar Grace Lorentz

It’s a relief to go for a ride in the middle of the night Headlights piercing some foreign landscape Storefronts flashing by like a silent film.

The back seat becomes a bed A leather mattress in a midget’s cell, And the camping blanket smashed against the door Makes ridges outlining the car’s gorged veins Its heart thumped to a start Its breath making you crash like waves in the moonlight.

Beware: To him you may not be much more Than a receptacle, a mayonnaise jar, for what he’s sick of leaving Between the pages of his pornography.

But he doesn’t like to think that you go to the rodeo too That when everything starts to smell familiar You like to dress like a cowboy And be flipped over and rammed in the ass.

So remember to fix your hair like a lady And pretend that you’ve never gone for a ride at night before.

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Johnny Come Lately Jake McMiller

bars and guitars desert weed and the saguaro sunshine snakes can’t wait to get at the scotch twelve hours making cotton candy the devil penned your childhood crack smoking carnies take your money with sticky hands straight to the bar

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Badland Jake McMiller

chasing the moon to the valley of pipestone purple mist sunrise beauty in the morning at dusk the moon shows a day’s age from the bottom of the badlands writing with a stolen pen finally content kamikaze moths in love with coleman sleep peaceful it’s the sage creek lullaby

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Sunday in Oklahoma Chandra Osterhaus

It’s Sunday and Mom is dress in a bright pink frumpy thing that makes her boobs look bigger than they are. Dad’s wearing a stuffy suit with creases in all the right places. Not a wrinkle. He has a disapproving look on his face that shows up every Sunday as my parents prepare to go their separate ways.

just me and Mom and an empty house. It was the day Dad came home early and Mom wasn’t alone. It was the fight we got into when they picked me up from the cop shop, or when I had my lip pierced. It was because neither of them even tried. It was the day I said I hated them both, and I meant it.

We moved to this godforsaken town in the middle of bum fuck Egypt Oklahoma one year ago, and things haven’t really been the same since. Dad started going to mass on both Saturdays and Sundays and Mom became a Baptist. She sings. He reads the paper and wonders how a German woman from Wisconsin becomes a Baptist. They agree on one thing: I need to go to church. So they compromise. I’m going to the small and ominous Catholic Church in the city with Dad and Mom will go to the popular and boisterous church in the center of town. They walk out the front door in a hurry and neither of them even tries to say goodbye.

The bell choir is playing as we prepare to be told how to think this week. I automatically kneel down.

Everybody is quiet and I can’t help but picture Mom with her arms in the air, swaying back and forth, clapping her hands crying, “Amen!” I giggle out loud, which gets me a nudge. He thinks I need to shut up and sit my butt down. Dad has his hat on the seat beside him. He used to save that spot for Mom. Maybe he still is.

Dad sits up straight in the driver’s seat, concentrating on the road. I hate going to church. He knows I don’t like it, so he purses his lips and halfsmiles and says, “Buck up. It’s not all that bad.” That’s what he said when he told me we were moving. “Buck up.” How was I supposed to “Buck up?” Mom didn’t know if she was coming with us and I wasn’t ready to leave the few friends I had made over the years for some crappy place in Oklahoma.

Does he think I don’t know why we moved here?

He said he’s tired of flying commercial. He missed the Air Force. It was a great job opportunity. I won’t be hanging out with those loser druggie friends of mine any more. It was the weeks of being left to ourselves,

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Father Malone is speaking. We stand up. We sit down. We stand up again. We line up for communion.

I watch as Dad closes his eyes passionately, taking the dry communion wafer in his mouth. I picture Mom and Dad closing their eyes and kissing passionately on their wedding day. Dad kisses Mom with his eyes open now, carefully, as if his lips were the long hose on a refueling plane trying to connect to a great big C-5.

“You have to be careful,” he tells his students, “or it’ll all blow!”

Dad’s pulling on my arm to stand up for The Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name,…”

I never really thought about it before, but Mom used to call Dad William. She was the only one.

Everyone else called him Bill. It’s honey these days.

She calls everyone honey. She’s at church right now

Sunday in Oklahoma Chandra Osterhaus

saying, “Honey it’s gonna be fine ‘cause Jesus loves us.

Amen.” I think Jesus can suck my . . . oops, I probably shouldn’t think that here. Not that I care.

The collection plate is being passed around and Dad hands me a dollar. It’s quiet when it hits the bottom of the plate. Meanwhile, Mom is probably screaming in tongues and dancing like a lunatic. Dad is sitting still. I’m fidgeting. Dad sighs a little as he grabs his hat. We’re ready to go home now. Dad says goodbye to Father Malone and we go out into the car.

“That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” Dad says. I give him a look.

“Well, thanks for trying anyways,” he says.

I smile. “You, too.”

He looks at me funny as we drive home. Mom’s already there.

“How was church?” she asks.

Dad says, “Fine.” He means lonely. I say nothing because I know she doesn’t care. She doesn’t even try.

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Karma Chandra Osterhaus

Drinking cheap wine in the basement I met the whore who in her young age was proud of the intensity with which she lived life and did not yet understand karma as a concept but as a dogma so when she was paid it was only the cheap wine she left behind.

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Grandfather Chandra Osterhaus

It began with a small stroke. The first stroke that squeezed his heart, all the ones after became the second and third not as important strokes but slowly killing him; if it had not been for the diminishing streams of serotonin and acetocholine in his brain which is how all the chickens died; flamboyantly wrung by the neck with angry hands which had been misdirected by another mischievous neurotransmitter norepenephrine; as if to squeeze the dopamine from them in jealousy those feet still dancing even in death when his own could not; eventually calling the wheelchair his friend because he had no others he could recall easily; even when the family appeared helpless in the hallway of hospital wing looking on as though he were a caged bird; though I knew there was a reason behind leaving the peacocks alive; beyond the beauty of them; perhaps there was more freedom in their colors. Wife was unfamiliar with her gray hair; even sons were too old to see as his own; daughters too wise in their looks; which made the smile of recognition given to I, granddaughter, that much greater. He gave to all of them but for me his last memory. Come walk with me. We will go fishing and watch the swans. Where we dangled our feet over the bridge and watched not swans (for they had left many years ago) but blue herons who had also come every year to that quiet place on the White River he grew up with no a stream of people in white; forgetting that we are in a home for the old I walk with him; disregarding the nurse that brings him his pills at 7:00. She doesn’t understand the wind anyways. See that island home. I used to live there; empty now save the birds that rest on its edges. It was beautiful once you know, like the swans. It’s empty now. He began to cry and now I understand why. He called me granddaughter and said goodbye. Soon after was the final stroke, the last stroke the one that would have killed him if he hadn’t been gone so long before like the swans and perhaps he’s with them now.

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In the Lord’s Kitchen Sarah Schoville

Doreen was a clipper. She clipped everything: newspaper articles to send to her son away at college, recipes to send to her best friend in Phoenix, comicstrips to send to her father in the nursing home.

Doreen even clipped out the ads for porcelain baby dolls (not that she could afford any of them, it was just that she was in that strange lag period between her grown children and grand-babies, and she couldn’t help it if the dolls were that cute!)

Naturally then, Doreen clipped coupons. Doreen was on the Atkin’s diet so she restricted her carb intake, but graciously clipped cereal coupons for her next door neighbors. She clipped lunch meat coupons for the kids who waited at the bus stop in front of her house. Doreen clipped diaper coupons for the sweet young couple at church (never mind they didn’t have any babies yet, it was high time in Doreen’s mind, and it was never too early to start saving).

As for her own clippings, Doreen classified them in a recipe box. Household products. Clothing products. Service ads. Delivery deals. Food products, which were subdivided into the categories of baking, produce, frozen items and canned. Within each category, Doreen organized the coupons by expiration dates – the soonest to expire in the front.

Doreen had been clipping box-tops off her Betty Crocker pancake/waffle mixes for twenty two years now. When her boys still lived at home, Doreen went through two boxes per month. She prided herself in being a mother who never sent her children off to

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school without their having eaten a nutritional meal.

Even after submitting fifty box tops to the contest, however, Doreen never expected to win the runner-up prize in the Betty Crocker annual raffle drawing.

When Doreen, wearing her favorite pink sweatsuit, opened her mailbox that sunny April morning, she could hardly contain a squeal. She, housewife of twenty six years, mother of three, future grandmother of twelve (she hoped), had won a lifetime’s worth of complimentary pancake/waffle mix! Immediately, Doreen called her sister Sharon to share the news.

Sharon, who had once won a sixty dollar gift certificate to Marshall Fields, understood the excitement. As soon as she was off the phone, Doreen began to plan tomorrow’s breakfast.

Two months later Larry, Doreen’s pot-roast bellied accountant husband, became sick of pancake/ waffle mix. Three months later, Doreen’s sons also lost their appetite for pancake/waffle mix and began distributing the goods to their roommates, who five months later began distributing to their co-workers.

Doreen, who had bypassed her diet and gained eight pounds, had also seen enough of the pancake/waffle mix for awhile.

Not long after, the Reverend Harry Paulson gave a sermon on the generosity of Christ. Christ, because He had the means to multiply fish, did so, and thus fed hundreds. What, the Reverend Harry Paulson asked of his congregation, do you have the means to do? Doreen, in her navy pumps and fake gold angel

In the Lord’s Kitchen Sarah Schoville

pin, pondered this question earnestly. She used to be a parent/teacher volunteer. She did enjoy being in her son’s classrooms, but admittedly never did experience spiritual fulfillment from tacking up bulletin boards and putting smiley face stickers on corrected spelling tests. She kept a good home, Doreen knew that. She made a good tuna casserole, Doreen also knew that.

But what means of Christian servitude could she possibly possess?

And then she knew. Like a lightning bolt straight from the Divinity, Doreen knew that she had something special in her pancake/waffle mix. And she knew exactly who it should go to: the Soup Kitchen at St. Matthews. St. Matthews (called St. Matt’s by the local kids who frequented the accompaining thrift store) hosted a daily breakfast in town for those less fortunate. Doreen had twice before helped out over the holiday season. She had dished up a gray muddy sludge of stew, enduring the dank smell of park-benchsleeping-men and had not once wrinkled up her nose.

St. Matt’s would like the pancake/waffle mix. No, they would love the pancake/waffle mix. Doreen made the sign of the cross and thanked Jesus for that message.

On Monday, Doreen woke early in order to fulfill her newly projected Christian duty. Janice, the bulgy director of the soup kitchen (although they served spaghetti, on average, once a week) was grateful for the donation but also had some concerns. Thank you Doreen, Janice had said, but the reason we do not normally serve pancake/waffle mix is not because of it’s price, but because the price of the syrup and eggs

and oil and milk. We normally cook oatmeal, Janice explained. Oatmeal costs less than pancake/waffle mix and only calls for water. Well, Doreen had said, thinking of Christ’s generous means, I’ll provide the syrup and eggs and oil and milk. Under no circumstance did Doreen want her Christian duty to be halted by monetary shortcomings. Besides, Larry’s retirement was coming up and she knew they would be receiving a fat stipend. And furthermore, how much could syrup and eggs and oil and milk possibly cost?

When Larry received the first bill, he was surprised to read that the soup kitchen had racked up five-hundred dollars at the local Piggly-Wiggly. Larry had never grocery shopped before, instead leaving the chore to the women of his life, first his mother, then directly afterwards, Doreen. He did not know then, what syrup, eggs and oil and milk generally cost and thought better than to ask. Doreen on the other hand, could not have been happier. Jesus had definitely spoken to her and He had said to feed the homeless pancake/waffle mix. Yes, it was surely Divinity that had brought Doreen and Betty Crocker together.

The homeless, however, were beginning to tire of pancake/waffle mix. When Doreen had initially begun the program, they had been very excited at the prospect of five-day-a-week goodness. Now, they dreamt homeless dreams of paychecks and fortyouncers and oatmeal. To Janice, the pancake/waffle mix program was excellent. Or rather, Doreen and Larry’s picking up the bill each month was excellent.

Because the pancake/waffle mix, eggs, oil, milk and

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In the Lord’s Kitchen Sarah Schoville

syrup was provided, the pancake days were cheaper actually than oatmeal days. When numbers began to dwindle though, as the east -side homeless residents began to hike over to Our Lady Queen of the Peace’s soup kitchen for oatmeal and powdered scrambled egg breakfasts, leaving piles of cold, rubbery pancakes left uneaten, Janice knew something needed to be done.

Thus, Janice began to mix things up. Chocolate chips, raspberry sauce, blueberries. The new pancake flavors created a homeless migration, drawing even the Our Lady regulars over to St. Matt’s. The gourmet pancakes were an unprecedented meal in soup kitchen’s history. As word spread of the tasty pancake toppings avaliable each morning in the St. Matthew’s basement, it was rumored that even college kids occasionally snuck in for a free meal. The bills, of course, sky-rocketed. But, with the drastically increased numbers (a surefire sign that God’s will was being done) Larry still consistently paid the bill.

However, like the folks who had feasted on the Lord’s fish and bread supper and then still awoke hungry the next day, like Lazarus, who eventually did die, the pancake/waffle mix soup kitchen miracle could not last forever.

Seven months after the initiation of the pancake/waffle mix mornings, Clarence, one of the soup kitchen’s regulars, a scruffy fifty-something black man with a gimp and guitar, fell into a coma.

That morning, Clarence had eaten five apple-walnut pancakes. When Janice, who had made the 911 call and accompanied Clarence to the hospital in the

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ambulance, heard the doctor say that it looked like a classic case of a food allergy, she quickly called her assistant Kim, back at the church and told her to hide all nut evidence. Janice understood that church finances were notoriously rocky and any bad PR towards the soup kitchen could be its demise. I found him on the street corner, Janice told the EMT. No, I have never seen him before.

Word travels quickly though, and twice as quickly when carried by people who aren’t busy all day at a job.

By two that afternoon, all non-wasted homeless people knew of Clarence’s condition. Doreen had become a familiar face to the kitchen and thus, when she was walking home from her Tuesday bridge club meeting, she was approached three times by do-gooders trying to spread the news. She could not believe what she was hearing: the pancake/waffle mix was responsible for a potential death.

Doreen ran home to wipe her teary racoon eyes and apply a fresh layer of waterproof mascara. She then got in her silver Buick and drove to the hospital.

Janice greeted her in the waiting room. You have never seen this man, have you Doreen? Janice looked deeply into Doreen’s eyes with more words than had just come from her mouth. He never eats at the Soup Kitchen, does he Doreen? Doreen squinched up her eyebrows. What was Janice talking about? Of course she knew Clarence, he came in daily, he even had written a rendition of an old Dolly Parton song for her, substituting Doreen for Jolene.

In the Lord’s Kitchen Sarah Schoville

Through the tiny hospital door window, Doreen could see a sleep-like Clarence.

His eyes were puffy and a tube was forced down his throat. Out of the corner of his mouth drizzled a thin river of drool. Through the heavy door and the thick glass, Doreen could hear the beeping of his shallow heart beat, the fiery mountain-tops being charted on the computer monitor next to the bed.

Doreen turned, and without acknowledging the gaping Janice, walked down the ICU’s long hall, her rubber heeled shoes squeak-squeaking the whole way. On the car ride home, Doreen thought about Clarence. She noticed the birds on the telephone wire.

She thought about the nursery rhyme, four and twenty blackbirds baked inside a pie. She did not, however, think about praying.

Doreen closed her eyes. She could hear Janice’s bird squabble behind her, insisting to the nurse that she had just come upon this man, that he probably is one of those drunks (you know how they are), and how could she live with herself as a Christian had she not called 911?

Doreen tried to recall the Bible verse about sparrows. She liked that one. Something about if the Lord knows about the sparrows, he knows about us. Or was it that the Lord knew the number of hairs on our heads? Perhaps that was a different one. She remembered the verse about logs and splinters in the eye. Who are you to point out a splinter in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? the Lord had said. My goodness, Doreen thought, a log.

Doreen opened her eyes. Nothing around her had changed. The stark whiteness of the hospital’s corridor still bragged of its cleanliness. The streaks of sunlight decorating the waiting room did not retreat because of one tragedy. Doreen smoothed the front of her skirt. She looked at her hands and noticed that her nail polish was chipping. Salsa red. Cheap.

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Gun Games Sarah Schoville

When we were kids, my sister and I, we were not allowed to mingle with guns No cheap pink and orange see through plastic squirt guns, with the yellow-stopper that would always break off No strategically crooked sticks, elbowed twigs doubling as triggers No pointed index fingers, thumb crouched cautiously above like an English setter waiting for the duck to fall I remember, though, sneaking over to the only other kids’ house in a neighborhood stuffed with quietly manicured lawns of retirees.

These peers, arch enemies and best friends, were boys and were wild and were the owners of the largest collection of toy guns in the Midwest They had big purple guns that shot real foam bullets Tiny black ones that looked, to us, like the real thing Super-Soakers, rumored to be filled with bleach And with these forbidden fruits, an underground war ignited every evening after a change into play clothes a snack of toast and honey-butter a PBS episode of Carmen Sandiego We battled through marshes up hunting stands with war paint with walkie-talkies that picked up on neighbor’s phone conversations Until on day, defeated by an enemy who was

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much more versed in the skill of battle much more skilled in acorn mush poison much more able to mercilessly take baby-doll prisoners my sister and I retreated through the grassy paths that connected our house to theirs, sobbing, into the arms of our topless mother, harvesting her asparagus I remember my father, in his fat brimmed hat, getting off his pseudo tractor a green and gold riding mower and trudging back through the deer path to have a conversation with the boys’ father My father then explained the agreement that he and my mother had made, years before the dream of my sister and I materialized into the flesh we are now, that guns, Barbie dolls and Little Deathlies were not to be co-operator in their children’s upbringing Back home, my sister and I compared our war wound grass stained knees Already we knew, that after a round of educational puzzles after a game of pretend library after a change into fairy princess costumes we’d need to get down to the business of strategizing tomorrow’s combat

Melnikau Heidi Freymiller

a picture of pristine sophistication his austere face rarely smiles as if it must conform to the grid set forth by the pinstripes of his suit jacket four marbled buttons at his cuff round and full like Saturn’s moons neat stitches peek out from underneath against a backdrop of brilliant midnight all in a line like rows and rows and rows of Orion’s Belt he speaks to his shadow in a tongue unknown to most his thoughts brought to light by the shadow making them clear as day

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Art

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Jerry Abitz

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Jerry Abitz

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In My Box Kriss Boeck

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After Hours

Kriss Boeck

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Casey Bohne

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Marifrances A. Cataldi

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Shirts

Elisa Derickson

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Rachel Detra

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Rachel Detra

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The Prize

Jeremy Everson

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Farmers’ Market Crystal Fricke

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Why

Aaron Gilmore

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Supergirl

Aaron Gilmore

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Ayesha Guzali

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Kerry Harried

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Girae

Brett Hermanson

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Failure

Kari Keapproth

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Shadows

Julia Kosivchuk

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David on the Train Grace Lorentz

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Zachary Manners

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Zachary Manners

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Zachary Manners

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Clelia Morris

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Missing Mass

Stephen O. Siehr

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Father’s Place

Sara Wrzesinski

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Pride

Andrei Yakushyk

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Scolarships

Yahara Journal Fine Arts Scholarship Last year, the Yahara Journal and the MATC Foundation to established the Yahara Journal ďŹ ne Arts Scholarship.

The hope is that eventually the scholarship will grow large enough to award two $300.00 scholarships each year - one for a student taking creative writing courses and one for a student taking art courses.

To make a gift to the scholarship account, mail a check or money order to: MATC Foundation Attn: Yahara Journal Fine Arts Scholarship 3550 Anderson St. Madison, WI 53704-2599 Make checks payable to the MATC Foundation.

Please indicate on the check that the donation should go toward the Yahara Journal Fine Arts Scholarship.

Provide your name, address, city, state and zip code so we can send you an acknowledgment of this taxdeductible gift for your records.

Mission Statement

The Yahara Journal will support learning and creativity at MATC through the publication of a print journal and the sponsorship of events and activities that facilitate growth in writing and visual arts.

Submit! Join!

How to Submit Your Work All students of Madison Area Technical College are welcome to submit literary or visual artwork for consideration. A team of student editors will evaluate the work and decide which submissions will be published.

Although the Yahara Journal is published in the spring, students are encouraged to submit work throughout the school year.

Work accepted includes short stories, poetry, essays, one-act dramas, photographs, paintings and other illustrations. Written items should not be more than 10 doublespaced typewritten pages.

To submit– E-mail items to yaharajournal@matcmadison.edu or drop off items at MATC Student Life Office, Truax Room 140, Downtown Room D237.

How to Join the Staff The Yahara Journal has a wide variety of student staff positions available. Students are needed to help evaluate and edit items, prepare items for publication, layout and design the publication, maintain the Yahara Journal website and assist with readings and other events.

Staff applications are available at the MATC Student Life Office, Truax Room 140 and Downtown Room D237.

You can also e-mail us at yaharajournal@matcmadison.edu.

Please indicate that you are interested in joining the Yahara Journal staff and include your name, address, phone number, and preferred e-mail address.

For more information, call (608) 246-6576, Truax, or (608) 259-2965, Downtown, or email Doug Kirchberg: dkirchberg@matcmadison.edu

Jerry Abitz Kriss Boeck Casey Bohne Justin Bright Nicole Bunge Marifrances A. Cataldi Matthew Chaney Ryan Dean Elisa Derickson Rachel Detra Nate Dunn Jeremy Everson Heidi Freymiller Crystal Fricke Aaron Gilmore Daniel Ginsberg-Jaeckle Matthew Greidanus Ayesha Guzali Kerry Harried Abdirhman Hassan Brett Hermanson Kari Keapproth Julia Kosivchuk Ramsey Kropp Grace Lorentz Zachary Manners Jake McMiller Clelia Morris Chandra Osterhaus Sarah Schoville Stephen O. Siehr Sara Wrzesinski Andrei Yakushyk