2014 soundings2014 staff

senior editor Jenny Dahl literary staff Lane Robles - Copy Editor Cody Kapocsi - Copywriter Mindy Borth - Administrative Assistant pr director Shelly Welch marketing staff Jonathan Scheppegrell - Associate Events Coordinator Garrett Andrews - Social Media and Advertising Analyst Shae Lee - Social Media and Advertising Analyst design director Kallista Kidd design staff Stephanie Wolf – Design Assistant faculty sponsor Rebecca Briley, PhD freshman intern Paige Brown

Sigma Tau Delta’s Mission

Sigma Tau Delta’s central purpose is to confer distinction upon students of English language and literature in undergraduate, graduate and professional studies. Sigma Tau Delta also recognizes the accomplishments of professional writers who have contributed to the fields of language and literature.

Soundings is published in conjunction with: Sigma Tau Delta Rho Mu Chapter letter from the editor

When writing about creative projects that begin as an idea and grow over a period of nine months, it is difficult not to lapse into metaphors about pregnancy and birth and squalling, goop-covered infants. So it is a good thing that the journal you hold in your hands is instead an innovative and highly imaginative toddler, armed with several buckets of paint and boundless energy. For that energy, I firstly owe thanks to the 2014 staff. They’ve patiently put up with dozens of emails and requests and trudged willingly around campus with posters and sticky-tac. With the help of my fellow directors, Shelly Welch and Kallista Kidd, we pulled together a Soundings constitution to provide a foundation for future editors and staff. I am proud of our work and extremely thankful for their dedication. Amid all those late nights and long days glued to an email client or a 200-page Google document, I came across one of the greater joys of editing Soundings. While I felt voyeuristic reading through the pages, I was always struck by the trust and courage these writers and artists possess to submit their work and allow us the privilege (and difficulty) of selecting what we feel represents the exceptional talents of Oklahoma Christian. It is their energy and willingness to edit and revise and edit again that has formulated a journal of distinct talent and achievement. The following pages are a sample of the great work and dedication intrinsic to our university. Brought to you by a coalition of creative and administrative minds, this journal is (and will continue to be) illustrative of the talent, of the dedication, and particularly of the courage among us. As I hand the journal over to the next editor – who will undoubtedly make it his or her own creation – I believe it will come into its own as a university journal.

All my best, Jenny Dahl table of contents

11 Old Time Religion 13 A Liturgy 14 Flow and Ebb 15 Dreamy-Eyed Waltz 16 Noise 17 Purple Umbrella 18 A Shattered Peace 24 Lookalike 25 Eleven Ways of Looking at Eyelids 27 #3 28 I met myself 28 I met You 29 The sepia nightmare/the man in the water 29 The sepia nightmare/the girl behind the glass 31 a life without content 32 You who are Hungry 37 After the Meal 38 A Haibun 39 Where we go from here 40 Excerpt from “The Bull Woman” 44 A Lady’s Response 45 attached to you 46 Muted 47 Drowning in Sky 48 White Lands 49 Down from the Mountain 54 No Escape 55 Notes from a trip to Honduras 58 My Familiar Hallways 59 Worm 60 UPPER & lower 63 Save the Pangolin 64 Remains 64 Spring’s Arrival 65 Dalliance 65 Alyssa table of contents cont.

66 Ballad: Thomas and the Wind 68 Cataclysm 73 Hidden 74 Untitled (Clock Tower) 75 Fitzsimmons 76 refund 77 (In)vulnerability 78 The Grip of Reality 79 Cure 81 Bobèches 82 I Need a Black Hole 83 Mary Poppins 84 My Brother’s Keeper 88 Muttin Bustin 89 Jester 90 The Sammy Situation 96 A Pantoum 97 Swimming with the Fishes 98 Oregon 99 One for the Road 100 Big World 101 You and I 102 Crayons 103 Inquisitive 104 Hebrews 3:13 105 Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing 107 The Leviathan 108 Caerdroia 109 Search for the Planet of the Pancake People 112 Character Development in “How to Take Down Your New Democracy” 118 Transcending Language in Gilman’s Herland 124 Lines we love 125 Acknowledgments our judges

Judge of Prose and Critical Essays: Naomi Benaron

An avid runner and former scientist, Naomi Benaron initially seems an unlikely candidate for a successful fiction writer. She began her career as a seismologist and geophysicist, holding degrees from MIT and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. After a good career in these fields, she transitioned to becoming a full-time author. She obtained an MFA in fiction from Antioch University Los Angeles, and her first work, the short-story collection Love Letters from a Fat Man, won the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction. Benaron’s second work, Running the Rift, incorporates her love for running and geology into a story of the Rwandan Genocide; this novel won the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Fiction in 2010. Founded by prestigious author Barbara Kingsolver, this prize is awarded every other year to a work of fiction that addresses issues of social justice. Benaron currently mentors and teaches writers through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and the Afghan Women’s Writing Project.

Judge of Visual Arts: Emily Vino

A young and upcoming local artist, Emily Vino was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She studied art at Black Hills State University and Minnesota State University at Mankato before graduating from Minnesota State University at Moorhead with a BFA in graphic design in December 2012. Her cover design for the book Haints by Clint McCown won a Graphic Design USA In-House Award. Her work is influenced by her travels, poetry, and music. She enjoys “interpreting” music or poetry with an image, saying that: “My goal would be that by looking at the piece of work, one could almost hear the song or feel the poem.” Her current residence is in Fargo, North Dakota, where she works as a freelance graphic designer. Judge of Poetry: Nathan Brown

Nathan Brown is the Poet Laureate of Oklahoma for the 2013-2014 term. He has authored nine books, the most recent of which is Less Is More, More or Less, which came out in 2013. Another of his works, Two Tables Over, was the winner of the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry, which is awarded annually by the Oklahoma Center for the Book. In ad- dition to his poetry, Brown also publishes photography and both writes music and performs it in places as familiar as Oklahoma City, and as far away as Israel and Russia. His most recent album is “Gypsy Moon,” which debuted in 2011. In addition to his duties as the Poet Laureate, Brown spends a great deal of time traveling the country facilitating po- etry workshops for budding poets of all skill levels. He holds an interdis- ciplinary Ph.D. in Creative and Professional Writing from the University of Oklahoma. award winners

Visual Art

1st Place: #3 – Holly Hodge 2nd Place: The Grip of Reality – Leah Jorgensen 3rd Place: attached to you – Hayley Fisher Honorable Mention: Lookalike – Laura Hernandez Honorable Mention: refund – Hayley Fisher Honorable Mention: White Lands – Marissa Madison

Prose

1st Place: Search for the Planet of the Pancake People – Cody Kaposci 2nd Place: Character Development in “How to Take Down Your New Democracy” – Julie Drohan 3rd Place: Cataclysm – Kristine Pike Honorable Mention: Notes from a trip to Honduras – Stanton Yeakley

Poetry

1st Place: I met myself, I met You – Jason Brunner 2nd Place: A Pantoum – Lane Robles 3rd Place: Alyssa – Sarah Redding Honorable Mention: Cure – Paige Brown Honorable Mention: A Haibun – Lane Robles Honorable Mention: Dreamy-Eyed Waltz – Zachary Shaffer

Critical

1st Place: Transcending Language in Gilman’s Herland – Kallista Kidd

Editor’s Choice Awards

UPPER and lower - Jason Brunner Mary Poppins – Emily Parrott Old Time Religion Jess Tucker

When I was a kid, Mama was always knitting in her rocking chair. It didn’t matter what time of day or year; whenever she could spare a second she would sit and rock in that chair, weavin’ together another masterpiece of durability to keep one of us kids warm in the winter. Sometimes, when Roy was bein’ particularly boyish and refused to play with me, I would sit and watch her. The rhythm of the needles and the chair worked together to create a beautiful harmony, like the ones we heard Hank sing on the radio. I’ve always been more chaotic, like one of those tests at the head doctor. But Mama always made the cleanest rows of yarn – straighter than Daddy’s wheat fields, even. Mama once said that it was the only time she felt truly at peace, sitting there, silently workin’ the yarn and talkin’ to God. It was the only church she went to, but she never stopped stitchin’. 11 Back then, we were dirt poor and always on the verge of starvation. I didn’t know it at the time, but Daddy always said it was knocking at the front door and if the dust didn’t stop, it would come right on in. I never understood much about that time, but I did know that the dust hadn’t always been there, and Daddy kept praying it would go back to where it came from. Ain’t it funny, all the stuff I can’t ‘member a cent of, but I ‘member the way he yelled at that dust. He would stand out in the middle of the fields with his hands in the pockets of his overalls and just look up at the sun. Sometimes, Roy and I could hear him getting on to someone in a bad way. I guess it ain’t too hard to be angry at God when he don’t provide.

I’ve never been a really spiritual person. Life was hard when we were young, and Mama and Daddy never asked us if we wanted to know Jesus. Roy, sometime back, he met Jesus and now he’s a preacher man in the next town over. He always wears a shirt so white it hurts to look at, and a navy coat. No matter if it’s hotter than the devil outside, he still wears that coat. Maybe it says that somewhere in the Good Book, that preacher men have to wear coats like that.

I tried to find religion. One time I thought I found it in a man named Waylon. He had a long scraggly beard and always told me to pray. Pray for forgiveness. Pray for mercy. Sometime back I realized I was prayin’ to Waylon that whole time, and I knew he wasn’t gonna save me from nothin’ – especially if he kept beatin’ the tar outta me. So I left Waylon and haven’t thought much else about it, except that I reckon God’s probably a woman.

12 A Liturgy Hannah Ketring Psalm #10 the pristine rain reflects your name We all feel mad at god today in sunday mass divine the flame but Monday steals Our light away

We rage our fear at god today, feed eucharist to greedy beast as Monday ferries light away and We forget the least of these

eats eucharist, the rancid beast in sunday mass perverse the flame fend for yourself the least of these the acid rain beats out My name 13 Psalm #31 as one who speaks, they’ll judge me twice when fallen monuments collapse convictions creep to lust’s caprice and doubts like vines bring back the past

as fallen ruins lay collapsed but painted polished new veneer, the seeds of doubt disloyal pass each fellow soul that worships here

a lie of polished new veneer, convictions muddled to caprice, the fellow souls that worship here should speak my condemnation twice Flow and Ebb David Sellers

14

Photograph Dreamy-Eyed Waltz Hm Zachary Shaffer

One, two, three. One, two, three. Dancing ‘round memories hung in the air. Unwritten melodies sung with the care of Fate’s sweet fidelity. Twirling, swirling, leaves on the water, a graceful, playful, breeze in your hair. One, two, three. One, two, three. Waves that crash into me. 15 A carousel, a mademoiselle, and scents of the sun. One, two, three. One, two, three. Words, in their entropy, leave me with colors, visions, and love. One, two, three. One, two, three. A cloud ‘loft o’er the sea: soul’s kind wandering. Fond familiarity. My dance with time halts for this, my dreamy-eyed waltz. Noise Kristine Pike

Times like these, my thoughts get so tangled and pound at me so relent- lessly, trying to pin them up and write them down would be futile. So instead, I drown them out.

I take two handfuls of piano keys, feel them crumble beneath my fingers, and pull out melody and harmony. Force them if I have to. The thoughts interject – my fingers are too slow. Fueled by frustration, I beat the piece into submission – ignoring stray notes, racing at breakneck speed to keep from slipping.

When I reach the end at last, I linger over the chord and breathe. Silence dances in the arms of music here in this private space between this pow- erful instrument and me; myself the power that coaxes from its depths thunder and silver bells alike.

16 As I rise to leave, my arms are happily exhausted; my spirit spent, poured out, and swelling to fullness. The thoughts have given up trying to shout above my noise and have ordered themselves in a nice line.

Now, one at a time, please. Purple Umbrella Amy Bernard

17

Photograph A Shattered Peace Rebecca Luttrell Briley

a chapter from It’s Not All Greek: Or How I Learned to Stop Hating the Muslims and Love the Turks

for Banu

Even if Lawrence Durrell hadn’t put it on the map in his Bitter Lemons, I would have been drawn to Bellapais on my own as a desired place to visit in Cyprus. Carved into the side of the mountain near its apex, the little village is one of the more picturesque in a country of picturesque villages. Under the Tree of Idleness—or forgetfulness or peace, depending on the translation—Durrell wrote his memoirs, and the tree, along with its little namesake inn and a handful of quaint cottages and remarkable restaurants, still attracts tourists and locals alike with its charm. The crown jewel of Bellapais is the gothic-styled Abbey which stands in 18 rather a well-preserved state of ruin, a testament to the Greek Orthodox religion that once ruled the entire island of Cyprus, exiled now to the southern region occupied primarily by the Greeks since the last war.

When I want to relax, Bellapais Abbey is my first choice, and aptly so, as the name itself means “Abbey of Peace” from the French Abbaye de la Paix. The irony of the name, of course, is not lost on any who realize the defunct Greek Orthodox church is occupied today by Muslim Turkish Cypriots, responsible for destroying much of the site during their Northern takeover. The original structure, initiated in the 13th century by Augustinian monks, was expanded particularly during the reign of the Lusignan kings who ruled Cyprus following Richard the Lionheart’s conquest of the island during the period of the Crusades. A number of untouched gothic arches remain defiant over the ruin in the fierce sun among the taller cypress trees of the garden close, where several intact rooms provide adequate protection for a remarkable display of authentic icons. A spiral staircase, climbing up to poles on which both the red Turkish and white North Cyprus flags flap undaunted in the breeze, affords a spectacular view of Kyrenia (in Greek) or the Turkish Girne and its harbor, while the Pentadaktylos Range, or Five-Fingered Mountains, rise stalwartly behind.

Burcin, from Turkey, and Dilek, a Turkish Cypriot, were two of my favorite students at Girne American University where I was teaching that fall; they had joined me this particular afternoon for the captivating view from one of Bellapais’ popular cafes. We chose a table that overlooked the citrus and dusty olive groves covering the rain-deprived hillside. A few large houses with tempting swimming pools broke up the natural setting, as we attempted to cool off in the rising heat with cold drinks and ice cream. Dilek was surprised at the warm feelings I had for the Abbey, considering its history. I asked her to explain.

“You are feminist, yes?” she began in the sweet, high-pitched voice that complimented the pure beauty of her face.

“You think because it was a haven for men—for male priests—I would be put off? I don’t have a problem with that. Women of the Church had their havens, too.”

“No. I mean, yes, they did, I think, but no, that is not the reason.” She 19 struggled to make herself clear in my language. Dilek’s English was actually very good. In fact, she had been one of only eight Turkish Cypriots chosen along with their eight Greek counterparts for a Fulbright-sponsored academic “experiment” in the States the previous year, an attempt to re-educate the youth of the island for more amicable relations between the two sides. She had told me about the summer program held at the University of Berkeley, where she had furthered her study of English and gotten to know her “fellow countrymen” better. The Greek and Turkish students had gotten along very well, it seemed; however, when they returned to Cyprus, each group went its familiar way, with little changed.

Dilek had shared how much she had enjoyed California; it was her dream to return someday. Her beauty alone would be enough to attract some Hollywood producer, I told her. She had laughed at what sounded impossible, but I had assured her stranger things have happened.

“There is legend,” she began again, trying hard to remember exactly how the tale went. “I don’t know if it is true, but I have heard of it. There are women buried under what was the chapel in the Abbey.”

“You mean recently? Like a serial killer or something?” My imagination was fueled by too many detective novels and crime shows on television.

“No, no—“ Burcin interrupted. “Not recently. I have heard something about this, too.”

“Then you tell it,” Dilek laughed shyly, anxious not to be put on the spot.

“No, that’s all I’ve heard: there are some women buried here. Really, it’s all I know,” Burcin admitted.

“Was it during the war? Are they Turkish women or Greek?” I didn’t mean to be impolite, but my curiosity was piqued.

“No. This was long time ago. Back when the Abbey was, I don’t know what to call it, alive?” Dilek tried to explain. 20 “Oh, you mean when it was a thriving Greek Orthodox church?”

Dilek nodded. “Yes. Some women were caught and were put to death for being, you know, bad women.” She blushed, embarrassed to mention such matters.

“It was the priests, was it not?” Burcin interjected.

“Oh! I see!” I jumped immediately to a preset conclusion. “The priests were having sex with these women and then put them to death to keep them quiet?” I was ignited. I didn’t teach Women’s Studies for nothing.

“No, it wasn’t the priests who slept with them—at least I don’t think so. Do you know, Dilek?”

“Right. No, they were caught being, you know, like women of the evening—“ “Oh, prostitutes? Whores?” I could call a spade a spade.

“Yes. Prostitutes. So the priests stoned them to death for their sins and buried them under the Abbey.” Dilek finished, relieved the story was over.

“Ah! The old ‘catch a woman in adultery and put her to death,’ while the man gets off Scot-free.” I licked the last of my ice cream and swallowed some water from the bottle Burcin had bought me.

“It is the same today, in some Muslim countries,” Burcin said gravely. “Where Shari’a law is enforced,” she qualified.

“Yes, I know. The woman is whipped for showing her wrists and ‘making the man have lustful thoughts.’ I don’t know how you can accept that.” All my students were Muslim, including Burcin and Dilek. We had gotten along because we had, here to now, ignored that elephant in the room.

“Turkish culture is not the same as Arab culture,” Burcin corrected. 21 “In Turkey, religion does not rule government. Not since Ataturk,” she added proudly. “Women are not required to wear the burqa, for example.” She gestured obviously to her casual jeans and t-shirt from where that blue-eyed modern savior’s handsome visage, proclaiming how happy he was to say he was a Turk, just so happened to emanate.

“And in Cyprus, it is even more relaxed, I think,” Dilek offered. Although she dressed modestly, Dilek was up-to-date on western fashion, as were most of the young people I had seen throughout Cyprus. And even though the prayers rang out exotically to my western ears five times a day from the minarets throughout the city, I couldn’t recall seeing anyone on their knees on a prayer rug since arriving in Cyprus, though it had not been an uncommon sight upon my visit to Istanbul.

“No, but Islam is Islam, isn’t it? A father can kill his daughter for refusing to marry? And what about a girl who is raped and then whipped to death for committing fornication—while the man is not even sought out?” I knew I should be more careful or my disgust for such barbarism might offend my friends, but I couldn’t hide my distaste.

“That is not Turkish Islam—“

“Or Cypriot Islam, either,” both girls hastened to assure me.

“Extremism is extremism, wherever you find it, but it is not the rule of Turks. Those are fanatics, fundamentalists, who follow Shari’a rule. Like in Iran or Afghanistan. Besides—“ Burcin hesitated before she brought up something we had both heard on the news earlier that day. “What about this man in Austria who sexually abused his daughter and kept her in a cellar for years? He was not Muslim. He was Christian, I believe?”

“Well, we don’t know that he was a Christian—I mean, he couldn’t be a real Christian and behave like that,” I faltered. “He was just Austrian—“

“Well, alright, then. Western. So you see…” She let her voice trail off, but 22 her steady look into my eyes did not waver.

She was right.

I was glad she was right. I was glad to acknowledge she was right. We were friends. That’s what mattered here, even though I had read such horrifying histories of misogynist behavior in Muslim countries. Whether it was A Thousand Splendid Suns or Reading Lolita in Tehran, in a way, it was the same story. But when I thought about it, so was just plain American Lolita—Nabokov’s Lolita—if I wanted to be fair.

I swallowed my discomfort. “Ok. So back to the legend. There were these women—how many? Two? Twelve?”

“I think three,” Dilek said thoughtfully, glad to avoid an argument. She was our peace-maker, our “dove,” while Burcin and I tended to be more hawkish.

“Ok, three women who were caught having sex with some men and were put to death and buried here. Wow. I never knew that.” I wasn’t sure I liked my Abbey’s secrets being dug up and examined in the light of day. After all, this had been an Orthodox Abbey; these were Orthodox murders—Christian murders. I couldn’t help but recall what Jesus had said about the woman caught in adultery, about casting the first stone. After a minute, I admitted as much to my friends, who nodded sympathetically.

The Turkish and Cypriot flags rode the breeze like magic carpets, content in their authority above the once proud stone structures of their common foe. I let the stillness settle around me, gazing out over the arid rocks of the mountainside, as Dilek got up to pay for the ice cream before I realized what she was doing, and Burcin found a toilet.

Maybe it was the heat, but by the time the girls had rejoined me at the table, I could not remember much of anything we had just talked about: my mind was a tabula rasa. We all three stood staring out at the splendid view without speaking.

As we left the cafe, passing the remains of the Abbey on our way to the 23 car park, my spirit still rose a bit when the pointed arches came in sight. I took one last look at the skeletal monuments to a time past, then glanced over at Durrell’s Tree of Idleness across the street. Forgetfulness. Peace. Whatever. Idleness could lead to forgetfulness, forgetfulness evolve into peace. Lookalike Hm Laura Hernandez

24

Photograph Eleven Ways of Looking at Eyelids Shelly Welch

This morning when I woke up, part of me stayed asleep inside myself where no alarm could stir it. My waking mind poked me – then a hard shove – but I remained unmoving. After checking to make sure I was still breathing, the waker rolled its eyes and left the sleeping dog to lie.

With songs of daylight Waking sun breaks through darkness But not through eyelids

Sometimes I hear the waker come and go. The sounds penetrate into my dreams, but I don’t stir. Often it finds me asleep on an open book, or with my laptop open to a random page. I know it must wonder what I do all day. Finally, fed up, it drags me from the bed and shakes me awake. I 25 squirm and whine like a child, my eyes still closed. It lets me go and I drop to the floor, instantly asleep where I land.

Earth’s pull draws sinking heads A broken promise of rest Weighs heavy on eyelids

Today I woke up and wondered how long I’d been asleep. What is the hour? What is the day? I check my phone and see that March has already come and gone. I try to reach out to my waking mind, to remember what I have done in all this time, but the waker is tired and bitter. It rolls over and pretends to sleep. I can see its open eyes, but they face the wall, ignoring me. I get out of bed and immediately notice the mess. Jeans and sweatshirts are wadded on the floor while papers lie in roughly- organized piles (by date? by subject? Who can say?). I pick up a paper I don’t remember writing and grimace: these are my words, but not my voice. Dry leaves scrape on wood The breeze a restless motion Of blinking eyelids

I shower in silence, removing a month of grime from places I never went to. I brush out tangled hair – a painful process – and watch the steam retreat from the mirror. When the glass clears I stare at it blankly, like a child too young to know its own reflection. Then I remember that the face is my own – or should be my own. But I don’t recognize those eyes, the lines of this face, a mouth not quite the right shape. I tell myself this is the waker’s face and not my own. But the waker is still lying on the bed while I stand here. I hurriedly grab my jacket and head for the door. I freeze on the threshold. I change my mind and go back to bed. Disgusted, the waker snatches up my jacket, slamming the door on its way out.

26 Silence breathes in darkness A single yellow rose dips Petals close their eyelids

I can’t go back to sleep. I curl into a ball under my covers and cry. I lie here all day until the waker returns. It stares at me and says nothing for a long time. Then it climbs under the covers and cries too.

Shadows cast by stars Seem to dimly resonate Behind red eyelids

Someday we will both wake up together, and I will see what my life has become. But today is not that day. Today I must sleep. 1st #3 Holly Hodge

27

Photograph I met myself 1st Jason Brunner

I met myself yesterday. Last night. I was disappointed. I met You Jason Brunner

I met you again. In the morning peek. I broke again. I drew the curtains. I met myself and remembered you. God, what’s wrong with me. I said that. 28 You draw my curtains sometimes. In peeks of light. But I draw back. I met you again. I stared at the sun. The burn was cigarette-short. I forget. I jumped into myself today. You must have cried. But I can no longer look at you. I met you again. God, take me away from me. God, give me me back. I say, unsure and shaking. People say God. As if they don’t care. I whisper out God. As if I do. The sepia nightmare/ the man in the water Laura Shodall

Do not leave me in this current where I cannot find you. I am drowning. I am drowning in the wrong place. I want to be drowning in you. Like wine through water, consume everything that I am. The sweet curls of the waves are becoming hammers. Send ships, raise sails! Move mountains, step forward Laura, Laura, Laura. Are you the sea, or of it? If your fingers grace its film, 29 will you melt? For both forces are rendering me breathless without words, without speech, without fight. I raise my fist out of the sea, agonizing defiance as nails dig into flesh. You can move the Earth from beneath my feet, so consume me now. I do not know you, but I need your hand. Send ships, raise sails. The sepia nightmare/ the girl behind the glass Laura Shodall

I am walking across a shore; my feet warm in the sand, my heart in warm places. A honey sun spills upon an amber earth, and the sea is jealous, calling for my attention. I glance towards the throw of the waves, soft curls running across my face like water slips through fingers. I see a man, and he is screaming my name with ferocity, but with tenderness, as if he’s uttered it in love, lust, wanting, defeat, anger, and silence our whole lives. The man in the water. I run towards the tide. I can hear the crashing of the waves in my ear, 30 in my mind, and I feel them coursing through my blood, crashing against the inside of my skin. I jab my arm into oblivion, but my hand hits a wall: it is glass. I push will all my might, but I cannot break the barrier. I wish, I want, I scream at God for the barrier to be brick so that I cannot see his fist break the film of the currents in a last attempt to reach me. Tears sting my face. I feel my hands bruise from throwing my soul and my being at the wall. I reach, weakly pressing my hand against glass as I see his fist uncurl and roll back into the ocean, defeated. I scream until my throat is hoarse. The ocean is jealous for attention, and roars above my cries. I cannot understand why I could not reach the only person who wanted to reach me. a life without content Hayley Fisher

31

Photograph You Who Are Hungry Stanton Yeakley

A man walked in the classroom. The light was all white. It was all white coming out of the ceiling bulbs and it was white bouncing off the walls which were painted white with laminated maps of the Middle East and charts of Biblical history. The light was white and the carpet was brown. It had been brown for years. The lights where white and the walls were white and the carpet was brown and the posters were laminated and shimmering. And there were cupcakes. “Do you want a cupcake?” He didn’t understand the question. As he made his way from the door to the only available seat in the square of tables he didn’t hear the offer. She rephrased it: “We got cupcakes over there if you want some. They’re real good.” He looked up at her, finally grasping her meaning. “No. I’m good.” He made a sweeping gesture in the air with his right hand as if to physically discard her offer. She didn’t respond but smiled politely. Voices murmured in the background, 32 “Did he want a cupcake? There are cupcakes.” “No, he said he didn’t want one.” “Oh.” “That’s how us skinny guys stay skinny.” A young man at the front of the square of tables chimed in cheerily. He laughed at his own joke and then leaned back in his chair. He flexed his arms. Indicating he was not skinny, but toned with muscle. If anyone in the room cared. “Do we have any more prayer requests?” Kermit now addressed the group, picking up where he had left off before the entrance of the late college student had interrupted him. “We need to pray for the Pittmans. Angie is going through, what was it, stage four?” “Stage five.” “That’s right. Angie Pittman is going through stage five cancer. So that family definitely needs to be in all of our prayers.” “Who’s Angie? She go here?” “No. She and her husband attended here a few years ago. They moved to Abilene. Dick was the one who always led singing.” “Half-moon glasses.” “Oh. Ok. If they were here a few years ago then I wouldn’t have seen ‘em.” Kermit continued. “Okay. Other than them and what we’ve already got, any others?” Cupcake Girl raised her hand. She was blonde and fat and had on a grey t-shirt and cheap glasses. “Pray for Chance. He was supposed to quit work at Best Buy today. Key word in there being supposed to. Well, as you can see, I started working in January. He hasn’t quit yet, but he was supposed to today.” “Okay, we’ll pray for Chance. Any other requests?” “I’ve got one.” Body Builder raised his hand slightly before launching into his story. “There is a student at school who is just giving me problems lately. I have him in two classes and he has just been disrespectful to me and to the other teachers. Uh, I don’t know what his deal is but I am really worried about him. He is having to attending, to attend, my classes because he got kicked out of athletics and man, this is the type of kid who I’m afraid would bring a gun to school.” “Really?” 33 “Yeah. He is that bad. Like today, I had to send him to the principal’s office because in class we were taking notes and he just refused. He’s like, ‘I don’t have to write this c-r-a-p. I don’t believe the same things you do. I’m tired of you.’ Honestly, I am really worried about this kid.” “And what is his name.” Kermit had a pen and paper, writing all the requests down. “Elijah. Kind of ironic.” “Yeah. I was gonna say, that is really ironic that his name is Elijah.” “We’ll have to pray for Elijah too then. If that is all then we can go ahead and pray. I know the bell is about to ring, but that’s fine.” He paused and licked his lips. “Let’s go to our Lord in prayer.” They all bowed their heads. Kermit led the prayer. He sounded like Kermit the Frog when he talked because he had throat cancer a few years ago and they removed half his tongue. His real name was Larry. They must have done something to his chin too because the skin was pulled tightly along his jaw line in a wrinkled retreat to get to his neck. He had on glasses and he smiled a lot. Next to him was Body Builder. Body Builder was in his early twenties and had grown up in the Ukraine. He came to America when he was twelve and was now an intern at this small-town Texas church. He liked it. He agreed with the things they taught. Next to him, on his right, was Jeff with downs syndrome. Jeff wore a mesh blue Texas Rangers jersey and always raised his hand to talk. Jeff was worried about eternity. Jeff wanted to know about salvation. He was going to tell his roommate about Jesus someday. Next to Jeff was Jessica. She was a farm girl from outside the city who was going on thirty and still attending the “young adults” class. She was the only member of her family who was still single and she often dealt with this fact by telling herself that God had someone special in mind. Her arms were hairy. Next to her was the man who had came in late. He didn’t particularly like cupcakes and this was the first time he had been to a church class in a number of years. He remembered why. The room looked like The Island of Misfit Toys and smelled stale. Unwashed. To his right was BJ. There is much to be said about a man who weighs over four hundred pounds and does not bathe, but exactly what that is can be hard to decipher. Along with the unfortunate naming, his had been a troubled life filled with sexual abuse and mental disorders. He could 34 barely speak English. He could barely write. His skin was pale like the moon. His weight crushed the air in his lungs when he spoke. He ran out of breath after a sentence. Next to BJ was Jenny, who looked to be at least forty, still wearing low cut pink Hollister shirts, and Cupcake Girl, who was in her early twenties and a clear product of small town schooling; possibly trailer parks. Another silent man sat at the end of the tables but he was lost in his own slightness and forgotten. “Amen.” “So, today, I had a lesson planned out, but it looks like we aren’t going to have time to go over. What I am going to talk to you about instead is Church Membership. What are some of the benefits of being a member of the Church? If you all could just list off a few for me.” “Fellowship.” “Yes, fellowship. That’s right. You always have a church family to lean on.” “You get to know the truth. Like, the truth of God’s word.” “Yes.” Kermit nodded his head and wrote, or pretended to write. “We are blessed with the truth that others sometimes aren’t exposed to.” Jeff raised his hand. He squinted. He smiled. “Jeff, go ahead.” Kermit mimicked Jeff’s smile. “Baptism.” He paused. “Baptism. Baptism can. Baptism can save you right?” Jeff was worried about salvation. About eternity. Kermit hesitated a moment. He was not used to Jeff and he took a second to process. “Of course. Yeah, baptism saves you.” He wrote it down. Body Builder assumed a theatrically quizzical look. He patted Jeff on the arm, wanting to say something. “That is a really good point, Jeff. I have never thought of it that way. That baptism can be a path to salvation, but also a benefit. I’ve never thought of getting baptized as a perk of kinds. That’s good.” What else. “You have Jesus.” “Jesus is definitely a benefit.” He wrote. “Any more?” “Well, you have the community of other Christians. They, you know, help you when you are down and keep you faithful when you’re struggling.” 35 “That is very much like community. Yeah. And as a part of that Christian community, one aspect of our duty is to share our faith with the world. So it is our job to talk about our faith and to promote it, but also to strengthen it here in the community, to build up those who are our brothers and sisters, to encourage and expulse. We don’t talk about it very much but it is our duty as well to expulse those from the body who do not act in accordance with our principals.” “What was that word you said?” Jenny shouted from across the table. “We are called to do it lovingly but also to be enactors of . . .” “What was that word he said?” “Expulse.” “Larry, what does expulse mean?” Kermit stopped. He looked at her lovingly and replied that it meant to rebuke or remove from the group. She nodded as if she knew all along. Outside the door an old-timey bell rang, signaling that class was over. They had barely got through five minutes of the lesson. The group started talking amongst themselves. Kermit asked Body Builder to lead a prayer to close. They bowed.

Where would they go once they left? Maybe they only existed in this white plastic room. Because this was the only place He saw them. Did they really have lives outside of the confines of laminated Bible charts and high-pitched class lessons? Probably not. This may be the only place they truly existed, for outside, what were they? A morbidly obese man who was without a job, without skills, without love. Someone who walked down the street in a side-to-side sway that slowly degenerated into shuffling. Once someone weighs enough, don’t they stop being people? They become only a sad sigh or an averted glance. A hateful stare or a vomiting noise. They are no longer a name or a personality. They devolve into a walking, talking disfigurement. A handicap that has grown a brain. (Does he cry?) And it is the same for the others. Outside of this room, they are merely people. An over-the-hill whore who realizes that her looks no longer gain her attention or position. She used to think a man would come along and sweep her off her feet (they had in a sense), but now she is slowly realizing that her face and breasts are fading and they don’t garner her as much attention as they used to. And that’s a black mark 36 in the eyes of everybody but Jesus. Hell, Cupcake girl works at a Dollar General. She didn’t want to work at a Dollar General. But when you’re from Electra, Texas and you get pregnant at fifteen, where else can you work. Jessica was little more than a name outside of this room. Here she was the normal one, looking after a flock of lost sheep. But outside she was the prude farm girl who was too average to notice and too Godly to care. No. This was where they were real. This was where they came to be lepers together. They were whole in their inability to fit. They found somewhere that was not the margins. Somewhere where people did not talk down to them as if they were children or hate them because they never stopped being children. They weren’t judged for their looks or their intelligence or their kids or their clothes or their weight. This may be love. This may be family. Maybe this is what Jesus wanted. Who knows? But Jesus loved them. They had read it. Or heard someone say it. They were there, (little ones to him belong) and they were safe (we are weak but he is strong). “Amen.” After the Meal Laura Hernandez

37

Photograph A Haibun Hm Lane Robles

Light streams through the window, thousands of brilliantly colored dust motes drifting on sunbeams like a boat adrift at sea. We see faces; bodies pass by with clear smiles and silent laughter, left to wonder the punch line of some forgotten joke. On our side of the glass, color and noises and life seem vibrant. The dusty window contains us, and through its scratched surface we see the world duller – slightly off-color and devoid of sound.

The stained glass Jesus bears one clear, cracked pane … he looks lonely with one eye.

38 Where we go from here Sumner Brock

39

Pen and Adobe Illustrator Excerpt from “The Bull Woman” Katy Fabrie

Enis scanned the hay field as he drove. Plump bales dotted the earth as lazy cows stood languidly, every now and again reaching their thick necks out to munch on the orbs of hay. Calves stood faithfully next to their mothers, leaning under to suck on their mama’s milk-filled udders, then soon losing interest and flopping down on the grass. The heather sky, mixed with pink and orange streaks, was downright outlandish against the white green pasture. Enis felt pride for his land and livestock well up inside him. As soon as it came Enis willfully snuffed it out, remembering his mother’s words like a mantra. Pride goeth before the fall, Enis Daniel. In a flash Enis saw his mother’s Cherokee face, deeply lined and stern. Her shaky southern Baptist voice still retained the foreboding tone of his childhood – even ten years after her death, her gospel truth was palpable. He continued driving, and as he approached the southernmost point of Five Mile he noticed an unfamiliar blur in the 40 dying light. He drove closer and felt his heart sink low as he recognized the muddy El Camino pulled over on the side of the road.

Gravel popped as he slowed the truck, pulling over to the shoulder directly behind the El Camino. The right side of the car sagged, causing it to appear lopsided and sad. Enis saw the massive silhouette of Viola in the passenger’s seat, her weight pushing the car into the earth. The driver’s side of the car was unrecognizable in the dying light, but Enis was certain Casey was there. He took a deep breath and stepped out of his truck. As he approached the driver’s window, he finally saw Casey sitting bolt upright in the seat. Casey’s ears were hot red, yet his face and neck were pale white. His jaw was locked shut and a small blue vein in his forehead pulsed. A bit of spit laced the side of his tightly shut mouth and his eyes bugged out, staring intently at nothing in front of him. His usual twitching limbs were paused, frozen in what appeared to be terror. Viola merely peered at Casey, then lazily let her black eyes drift to Enis.

Silence. “How’s you folks doin’ t’night? Havin’ car trouble I see?” Enis tried to make his voice sound light despite the uneasy feeling in his belly.

“We’re jus’ fine thank you, Enis.” Viola’s voice was low. “Casey here is learnin’ how to drive for the very first time. Can you imagine what sorta’ mamma doesn’ teach her grown boy how to drive?” As she spoke Viola eyed Casey, each word clearly meant for him. Casey continued to stare out the dusty windshield. Beads of sweat ran from his hairline, sinking into his hollow temples then down his bony cheeks.

“Casey doesn’ know how n’ the hell to even switch gears of this Camino, so I said we’ll sit here all night ‘til he learns.” Viola smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Instead, the black holes bored into her husband.

Enis tried to respond, but couldn’t find the words. Instead he let his hands hang heavy beside him, watching the scene in the car unfold. Casey hiccupped, but other than that, only stillness. 41

“Such a stupid man.”

It happened quickly. Right when she spoke stupid, Viola’s hand whirled around behind Casey’s head, hitting him hard, causing his whole upper body to jerk forward. His forehead missed the steering wheel by less than an inch. Enis instinctively took a step back. He had never seen a woman hit a man – not like this at least. Rose used to playfully slap Enis’ hand away when he would steal fried squash out of the skillet before dinner or get too handsy in public, but Viola’s hit was different. It was ugly and messy. Viola eyed Enis, daring him to respond. Her beetle eyes glittered as seconds passed. Enis looked at Casey, who was now hunched even lower in the passenger’s seat. He looked like he was about to vomit, but his hands remained on the wheel, knuckles like little pearls against the worn black fabric. It was at that moment, overcome by Casey’s pitiful weakness, Enis realized he was up against some sort of evil he’d never before known. As a child Enis had always played cats-in-the-cradle or hangman in church when the preacher spoke of damnation and fire in the depths of hell, and even today when Brother David went into detail about brimstone and gnashing of teeth, Enis let his mind wander to something else – cattle or even Rose in her Sunday dress. In this moment though, his checkered memory of church lessons didn’t matter. He could have never been saved by the Blood of the Lamb, and he would still know Viola was straight from hell. She was sent from the devil himself – for what though, Enis didn’t know. A shiver shot up his spine as he stared at the monster sitting just out of his reach. Instinctually he knew he couldn’t show Voila his fear, let her see that opening in him, or else the devil might be closer than he ever thought possible.

Instead of running, Enis spoke.

“Casey.” The sound of his name made the small man jump. He looked up at Enis for the first time since he had approached the car. His eyes were large and opaque: oh how they begged. Pale brown bags of loose skin were evident beneath them.

42 “What’s say you and I have ourselves a little drivin’ lesson tonight. Thattaway Viola here can get on home and not hav’ta bother ‘ney more.” Enis was careful with each word. He eyed Viola, who wore an unreadable expression.

“Now I don’t want ta trouble you …” Casey croaked, but Enis cut him off.

“Nonsense, no trouble ‘tall – and after we’re finished, how ‘bout you help me feed them Bremmer bulls and then we’ll call it even.” Enis watched as Viola calculated each word; her eyes flickered and her nostrils flared for a beat. Casey waited for his wife to speak. He swallowed hard. Viola’s eyes finally cleared and met Enis’ with an eerie coolness that was deliberate.

“G’wan now then Casey,” Viola’s voice was low. “Our little lesson ‘sover for now.” Casey took a shaky breath then got out of the El Camino, softly closing the door behind him. Like a wounded animal, he walked over to the driver’s side of Enis’ truck and waited. The man was bone thin, and Enis wondered if Viola had been starving him. He made a mental note to have Rose fix a big supper.

“Well, ‘night Viola.” Enis bowed his head lightly, eager to leave.

“G’night Enis Daniel.” She drawled slowly as the orange-red sun sunk behind her. The shadows cast only deepened her features, making her face ghoulish and grotesque. “Don’t keep ‘im too long.” Unblinkingly, she delivered the order. Enis tipped his head once more, and then turned and walked to his pickup. By the time he reached the passenger’s side, the sun had completely disappeared and with it, the El Camino carrying the devil woman evaporated over the hill in a dusty mess.

43 A Lady’s Response Shelly Welch

“Lady, i will touch you with my mind…and you will become with infi- nite care the poem which I do not write.” e.e. Cummings

As your mind touches mine i touch back. ink-blue eyes smile internally, not sudden

(Touch me now and i will wrap myself in mantles of thought)

the magnetism lingers, though from afar

The poem which I do write lies in a pool 44 of its own sacrificial blood; flat-lined, despondent

until I feel a pulse: yours. 3rd attached to you Hayley Fisher

45

Photograph Muted Jenny Dahl

I, old Earth: body dry of age, dry of want;

see me languish back upon myself a dissatisfied lover, you trace my crumbling along tiny fault lines.

rock to boulder to lacebark elm and rest bare feet at the old roots – a moment blinking – then you flee, pounding through my leafless dark searching again: searching for green, damp sleeping on your eyelids.

splashes arrest you. Cresting dark water. Wild in my basin, roiling up the wide red bank

to crash against dusty olive pillars. 46 old Cotton shivers around what I and the wind always wanted and released, flutters to dry red sand

striding pillars resolute eyes up, treading through star waves heavens rippling over skin and hair and sibilant body

Ears beneath the surface and fingers detached from sharp blinking screens, trickle limpid through the black wet, lightless and unencumbered

I try to hold you gliding under mute stars too limitless for us sky-sheet water-bed sinking and I pull our plug. Drowning in Sky Sarah Redding

I’m oddly captivated by death. Not because I want to die, but because I like to imagine the lovely ways in which to die; to create beauty in the thought of tragedy. The best dream-death is of falling, but not down. In this dream I fall into the sky, which is black like a midnight lake. I go on forever, up and up until I can’t tell if I’m falling or flying. I sink higher and higher into the soft, blackened clouds. The sky candles dance as my body tears ripples into that blasted esoteric time which is caged in the atmosphere. I wish time were that tangible. I wish it could bend, I wish I could move it like sound waves 47 and mold it like the notes I sing and play. But time is fixed. I cannot change it with my every whim. And that is good. White Lands Hm Marissa Madison

48

Photograph Down from the Mountain Tom Plum

The old man stopped at the entry to the dark room. He groped for the chain that dangled from the naked bulb whose light kept him from banging his shin on the concrete step. Its click sent a harsh glow crashing against a door with two bolts and a sign warning of toxins and chemicals inside. He fumbled for keys. He turned one lock then the other, and with a grey hand pushed through into the dark of another room. He groped again until he found the switch to the fluorescents. Another, more invading light relieved the bulb of its duties, revealing tile, a porcelain sink, bottles, chemicals, hoses, and a long basin surmounted by a shrouded bundle. From its edges peeked locks of matted brown hair. The man circumvented the shroud to a closet on the far wall, throwing his hand before him for balance. He wore a suit too big for him, his neck like a hook from which the rest of his body dangled and draped the floor. The skin on his cheekbones had melted down the sides of his face and weighed down the corners of his lips. His eyes struggled to support the weight. His breathing was light. His steps were deliberate, though weak, and his hand fell on items to leave his body, to leave the room where several he knew had been. 49 He pushed his arms through the sleeves of a lab coat and pulled over his face a Plexiglas shield. He shuffled to the cabinet over the sink. On his way he passed a hand over the nozzles of a few tubes to start a machine and its sustained hiss and pitch. He pulled down sponges, cotton balls, and a box of surgical gloves. After stretching the latter material over his long knuckles, he turned to the shroud behind him. Earlier that evening, at the hugging hour for fathers returning home from work, the thunderheads continued their charge eastward after peeling the skin of the earth from edge to edge of their little town. A great sky explosion had scattered life splintered, only to be reeled together again by isolated screams of the undead digging out onto the nub of amputated geography. Wild hands reached and pulled and trembled. He arrived among the flashing lights and the first crowds. A police officer yelled to keep back unless one had an official ID. To assemble at designated rally points. To not get in the way of emergency vehicles. A woman shouted she was her baby, she was her baby, in a voice that burst forth from a gut torn, mended, and torn again. The old man saw the source of the screams shaking in another man’s arms. The man’s eyes followed something immediately behind the old man, something in haunted and final dimension. The woman’s cries to the divine escaped from a hidden organ, the one that wakes up inside us when we’re caged, when we become more afraid of life than of death. Workers pulled the little girl from beneath a beam, from a puddle of water in which she would have jumped and felt nothing more than ghost kisses on her bare knees. Her pale arm dangled from the fireman’s, with fingers twisted and dirty and gripping wet earth. They quickly covered her. When he received her, the old man looked again to see the eyes watching through him, and felt the little girl’s weight move to her rump and drop between his arms. He pulled her into him. He walked with her past the eyes. His young assistant held his elbow and waved to part the crowds. She jogged ahead of him to open the rear door. She said she would help where she could and for the old man to call her cell when needed. The old man said nothing. He latched the door and walked away from the eyes and the police officer and the white noise of tragedy. He had been born into this, his father’s business. Over the years he had come to the side of the old, of the sick and the stupid, to see them off with a clean set of clothes and a little plaster. It was common for him now to forget to wash before supper. He had prepared his father and parted from him as one does from a mannequin in a department store window. He decided then he would never marry. Now for the little bundle at the center of the room. For the little lumpy cloth and cold flesh that was that morning expecting to sleep later 50 and wake and sleep and wake again until she was old enough to marry after a million years of sleeping and waking. Beneath the cloth were eyes staring back into themselves, into the shell of lungs that once lifted and released the squeal of one who didn’t know what this was, but thought that at the apex of life one became young again. Thought the seesaw of time tipped to the seat of parents and lifted their children into the sun. He would pull away this cloth. He would clean her. He would find the macaroni in her neck, the artery, and he would drain her and make for her parents a little doll. He would give them an icon for worship, and he would put her in the ground in a slow rot. The old hand patted the young. “There are never good answers for this, darling” he whispered, and the old man began to work. First at her wake was a young preacher. He’d arrived early, he said, to greet the family. The assistant told him it was best he give the family their time, but the young man said they were family to him, the family of God. “God is needed in times like this.” The assistant took the pastor by the arm and motioned toward the door. She said God could wait for just a few hours. When the pastor pulled from her, she pushed a finger in his nose and said he wouldn’t be the first preacher whose ass she’d kicked and gave him a warning jab at the center of his chest. The preacher reached behind him and fell out the parlor into the parking lot. She watched at the door until his car made a right turn and disappeared behind the building. “The worst thing the churches did was give those guys the final word,” the assistant snorted. The old man said nothing. They put the little girl in the ground on a day unusually sunny for March. And for the occasion. The necks of the machines in the streets where the neighborhood once stood bowed and remained silent. Heads lifted when laughter intruded from children at play. A stray dog passed. The young preacher said amen and the people peeled away from the holy box. The old man normally stayed until only the grounds crew started their work, but the eyes would not leave. The man, who at the scene of death held the screaming woman, remained. The eyes looked into something, but at what the old man wasn’t sure. He told the assistant to take the day off and enjoy her family. The assistant thanked him and departed. The old man made his way to the van in which they had received the girl and when he reached for the door, he felt a hand fall on his shoulder. It was the minister. “Mister Maples, I wanted to apologize for what happened the other day.” The old man tried a hand past him for the door. “Please,” the smooth face appeared between the old man’s and the white chassis. “I also wanted to tell you, I feel God has called me.” He exhaled deeply. “And I don’t think he would mind my saying that, he doesn’t like it when man interferes with his work.” The word “man” 51 seemed filthy in his mouth. “Just let God in next time, okay? Just give him a try, Mr. Maples. That’s all I ask.” The young minister slipped to the old man’s right and started in the direction of his SUV, to the far end of the lot. The old man watched him for a second, reached again for his door. Paused. He turned to the pastor. “You heard God call you, you say?” The young pastor halted and turned. “I think so, yes.” The old man said nothing. The young man’s lips twisted. “Yes, I think he’s called me.” “I pulled mud from her throat, you know.” “Pardon me?” “I pulled mud from her throat.” He demonstrated with heavy motions. “I held open her little mouth and swabbed the mud out the back of her throat. Had to do it before I sewed her gums together.” The young man said nothing. With a nod the old man left the minister frozen. He returned to the door to his van. After pulling himself into the driver’s seat, he nodded again, turned the ignition, and puttered into the street toward the parlor. Back at his loft, he dropped his keys onto a bookcase near the door, working his way through the living room, around the coffee table with saltine crumbs and orange peels, past the television (used) he had been given for his services to the family who owned the appliance store on 3rd and Douglas. Walls were blank from the living room to the hallway. In his room was a certificate and a rosary hanging from a nail where there was once a large frame, its outline delineated by contrasting shades of white. He sat on the foot of the bed. Its naked frame bent and moaned beneath his weight. There he kicked off his shoes left and right, pulled off his socks left and right, and waited to hear the voice of God: The refrigerator hummed and beckoned. Not in the fridge was God. The air unit kicked on and roared. Not in the air was God. The Zippo inside his chest failed to light and failed again. Not in his heart was God. He recalled the cold walls that watched over his shoulder as his father worked the head wound of a customer. He remembered the demons of the chemicals lifting from the containers and inhabiting him and anyplace in which they could crawl and nestle and never leave. Now come here and feel the noodle in his neck, boy. You feel it? Stick it there. He remembered the kids who waited for him at the other side of the street. He thought there was something the matter with him, to not also fear his home. What’s it like, they’d say. They asked if he’d ever seen 52 one, you know, raise up? He wondered how one is received if born out of death, whether pulled back into their family or to see them blench and run. “I’m not sure,” he said still in his room, surprised to have spoken as if to answer a question. A whimper reached in from beyond the wall. He stepped back into the living room. He heard it again on the other side of the door. He followed it. On the other side of the screen were the eyes and their owner, the man. He had melted on the steps leading to the loft. The old man stepped out. The younger man’s chest heaved. “Where did you send her?” The old man said nothing. “Please, where did you send her?” The old man watched the eyes. “You son of a bitch, why won’t you answer me?” The young man didn’t need to speak – his eyes told everything. They were eyes the old man had seen a thousand times not in the living. They were hatches from which the primal energies of the universe left to fill a star until it burst into interstellar clouds of color to no applause. The laws of the physical could no longer hold them and had nothing more to give. The old man felt them biting at his soul. The eyes fought the space between the two, became red with reports of warring emotion, and then fell apart. The young man pulled his head and limbs into his core and sobbed. “My little girl. God, my little girl. My girl, my girl.” The old man stepped down and sat on the top step. He placed a hand on the man’s back and felt him breathe the toxic air of life after loss. The lungs stretched and squeezed against their will. He recalled again the little girl: the drips of rainwater from the hem of her dress, the little happy monsters on her shoes, and the eyes. Obvious now they were her father’s, or perhaps they were her very own. For now the old man saw them beyond the shroud, the box, the grave, and wondered how much more beautiful they were in life. Twice now he had seen them dead. He remembered how they had all watched the man collapse onto the carpet before the casket. Behind him sat everyone in the world who for now gave a damn about this little angel girl. Beyond them were people eating, drinking, and screwing somewhere, and the injustice of it all screamed no farther than a few feet between where the world turned and where it crashed. It’s in that space that one discovers to be lonely like God: at one end alone in the crowd of one’s own making and at the other loving what is but is not. Yes, to be something like God, you have to see everything and still nothing change. You have to land on your head at the bottom of life’s empty well to say you climbed the holy mountain and touched the ceiling of the divine. The infinite and the negative. The everything and the nothing. This must be the cosmic union, the old man decided. Ends collapse to 53 give us theophany. The kingdom come. And for the first time in his long life, the old man wept for them. No Escape Leah Jorgensen

54

Acrylic on canvas Notes from a trip to Honduras Stanton Yeakley Hm

He swayed and staggered along the road toward the village. Morning rose above the surrounding hills and quietly lit his dark skin. Hunger woke him early today and the glue that sat stagnantly in his empty coke bottle had been cheaper than food. A sun was clambering up the sky and he was gone, eyes reaching far beyond the hills and valley then dilating and sucking in within themselves. He inhaled at the opening of the bottle and felt a syrupy numbness crawl through him, striking away the pain and bearing down on the hunger. His eyes grew wide. Thick white spaces around dark orbs. He stumbled and stepped until he was just a pair of dark eyes and ink skin and the morning faces of passersby surrounded him in quaint village air and carried him away.

The bus had come to a stop on the outskirts of a village that sat on the broadside of the hill. You had to turn off the main road and take a winding dirt path to get there. They made a U-Turn about a half-mile back and wound up the mountain until they reached a concave dip inward and Las Penas appeared. A small fruit market served as a gate to the village and countless motocicletas buzzed in and out, passing 55 the fenced school to the left and the barred house with the parrot in the window to the right. On the far side of the gravel road was a steep grassy decline that dipped and became a valley. Cradled within this valley was a city. At night, if you stood on that hillside, the lights dripped up to the eye as if a million stars had been flung from a blanket of sky and landed softly on the concrete below. But for now, all that the teens on the bus could see were the rows upon rows of dimly colored neighborhoods and soaring hotels and malls. Their bus had stopped because they were waiting on directions to their build sight. They had traveled two thousand miles to Central America so that they could serve. So that they could give to those so much less fortunate than themselves. And build them wooden houses. So they waited. They had no real Spanish speakers on the bus and it was getting hot. The driver refused to waste gas on AC, but wouldn’t roll the windows down because he thought it might be dangerous for his passengers. So, they sat stewing in their own liquids, quietly bemoaning the philanthropic notion of whatever it was they were there for. They waited for a phone call from their contact, who would then contact the future homeowner, who would then bike down to let them follow him to the build site. They waited for movement and sat like roasting chickens in an oven. Taking in the sounds and smells that wafted up from the adjacent market and the Sodom city below. The people of the village milled about them and yapped in a foreign tongue, shouting and cursing, staring and laughing. They passed by the bus constantly on business that wasn’t probably wasn’t real. The bus did not move and the teens did not get out. They waited in sweat. Most of them pulled out their phones and tapped away at the screens or bobbed their heads to music. They looked down. Outside a world moved. Some of them slept. Hazy summer heat crept in through the cracked windows. It hung heavy in the air like thick snow. More slept as the time passed.

They woke up when they saw a pair of eyes gawking at them from a black face. The face appeared out of nowhere and cocked its head sideways, bobbing up and down as if slowly avoiding blows. It stood stark against the green cityscape below and wondered silently at the bus full of strange faces. It stared. It leered at those inside the bus. Gazing at them. Not saying a word. Just gazing. Don Alberto, the bus driver, acted as if this were a normal occurrence. And if it weren’t normal, at least it wasn’t alarming. He turned to the crowd of white faces behind him and gave a toothy smile. His tan skin and grey mustache assured them everything was “cheque.” Meanwhile, the face continued to peer. It peered inside the rectangular windows that held the suns glimmer. It twisted and turned and patrolled up and down the side of the bus. Looking at a void and the people who were squeezed inside. 56 The girls reacted first. They scooted uneasily closer to their neighbors, holding their bare legs with smooth hands and painted nails. The face and its black hands touched the windows now. Stroked the windows. The girls in their florescent shorts and tennis shoes glowed with anxiety and color. The boys looked about uncomfortably but didn’t speak. They looked to the missionary, but he didn’t say anything. The driver saw that his customers were getting uncomfortable. These timid Americans were squirming in their seats, scrambling for loud conversation to cut the tension in the air. They laughed. Two people started to lead a song. On Christ alone they would take their stand, bought by the precious blood of . . . its black hand reached into its shirt and pulled out a Coke bottle. The bottle was plastic and empty save a white thick substance at the bottom. The face inhaled deeply with the bottle top close to its nose. Its eyes widened and their bleach white corneas shown empty against the soft morning light. The glue that rested in the bottle wafted sweetly into the air. The youth minster in the bus asked if things were alright. Things were fine. There was never anything to be afraid of. But the youth minister was thinking back to the night before. He had been worried then too. Twenty American kids in an empty marketplace handing out beans and rice at nine o’clock. The air heavy with weed and shouts in flowing Spanish. With kids younger than these teens ambling around drunkenly or with eyes glassy and gone. Taking the food these strangers offered and sitting down on the curb, nowhere else to go. Stinking and shouting and dancing. But that was controlled. They had planned to go there. And then leave. They had brought this same white bus into the center of the market and they had pulled the same bus out. Though kids laughingly clung to the back, they had kept driving. This, however, was not planned. This stop. No, they were supposed to be building by now. Putting up that sixteen by sixteen house, saying their prayer with the family, and then leaving. They had to go to dinner that night. But here they were waiting in the light morning heat on some dirt road above the city. So far above the city. And the face continued to look at the . . . “Chico! Chico! Puta. Vaya. Vaya!” Don Alberto shouted at the face that continued to stare and walk aimlessly around the bus. A girl in the back of the bus started to cry. She did it softly, but her attempt to conceal it made her sobs all the more obvious. She was afraid of the face. But it wouldn’t come on the bus. The doors were shut and the windows were locked and it was in a drugged stupor. Voices moved and laughed around it as the market bustled to life this early morning. You could hear cars in the valley below and the sky was brilliantly blue. A brilliant blue up on this mountain filled to the brim with green grass and gravel roads. But we did not get out of the bus and the face like a monster’s held us hostage. Staring at these strangers he’d rarely seen. With eyes blurred. Blurred and cream white. Some of the boys had grown restless and began to put their fingers on the glass. They started to tap with blunt thumping noises. The face came 57 over leeringly, but like an obedient child. It put its blank eyes up to the glass and ran its fingers across where the sound had been. The boys laughed and tapped again. The face moved back inquisitively. Peering unblinkingly. Unwavering in its intrigue. The youth minister told the boys to cut it out. Laughing, they put their hands to their sides again. The bus was silent. Thump thump. Trent, stop now. Trent sto . . . A phone rang. Our contact was on the way. Five minutes later the bus pulled out from between the school and the house. Away from the fruit market and the view of the city in the cupped valley of the mountain. As we drove away the whole bus gave a heave of nervous laughter and watched the face amble down the road, not stopping at the fruit market or at the pulperia beside it. Simply walking and stumbling. Walking and watching and grasping at its Coke bottle in the sweetness of some summer morning. My Familiar Hallways Hayley Fisher

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Photograph Worm Kristine Pike

Just a phrase, thoughtlessly loosed – a string of words meant only to tread lightly on the edge of my consciousness and be forgotten – but you didn’t see the worm that clung to its underside and made its home in my head with those words for its nest. 59 Parasite on my attention, the worm turns itself over again, wondering how to read between the lines of your careless tongue. Somehow, it might have been better had your words carried a dagger instead, because if this insatiable curiosity has a poisonous bite, it’s already too late for me. UPPER and lower tell a story Jason Brunner

WHAT IS THIS it seems to be a book, upper. WHAT DOES IT DO why, it just holds things. HOLDS THINGS yes. LIKE WATER AND DUCKS AND MANGOS no, upper, it holds words for those things. THAT’S BORING not at all, upper; it can hold entire worlds. HA THAT’S DUMB LET’S GO RIDE OUR BIKES not now, upper. remember, i said we could do that later. YEAH BUT NOW IS BETTER BYE my sincerest apologies. 60 upper! come sit on the chair again! remember what i said about the fun we would have? well, this is going to be it, upper! I CAN’T HEAR YOU, MY SUPERBIKE IS TOO AWESOME THE CROWD IS CHANTING MY NAME upper, you’re making me reconsider the ice cream parlor plans! ICE CREAM IS HAPPENING NOW? no. ICE CREAM? no, not now; but it may never ever happen if you don’t come sit down. there we go, sit down! all the way! thank you. I DON’T LIKE YOU shush now, i think we’re ready to begin. BEGIN WHAT, I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS IS it’s a book, remember – YES, I REMEMBER, DUH – excuse me, i was talking! it’s a book, and books can hold lots of things – BUT YOU SAID THEY HAD WORDS AND THAT IS SUPER BORING – shush, upper! books hold words, but words make stories. WHO CARES stories are the best things in the universe, upper. NO THEY’RE NOT. HAVE YOU EVEN RIDDEN A BIKE yes, i have, and yes, they are. NUH-UH, BECAUSE ICE CREAM. ICE CREAM IS THE BEST IN THE UNIVERSE not even ice cream is as good as stories. HAVE YOU EVER EATEN ICE CREAM THOUGH yes, it is delicious. but stories are better. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR THEN okay, we don’t have much more time, we need to tell the story. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE shush now, upper. we can talk about this later. FLAVOR okay, i’m going to go ahead and begin. FAVORITE FLAVOR OF ICE CREAM. WHAT IS IT. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE it’s mint chocolate, but i’m going to start. “in the land of –” MINT CHOCOLATE? THAT’S A TERRIBLE FAVORITE shush! as i was saying – YOU HAD EVERY SINGLE FLAVOR TO CHOOSE FROM AND YOU 61 CHOSE MINT CHOCOLATE ahem. as i was saying, “in the land of – ” YOU PROBABLY NEED TO GET YOUR BRAIN SCANNED, LOWER stop interrupting! we have to tell this story. I’M JUST SAYING, YOUR BRAIN IS PROBABLY CRACKED brains can’t be cracked, upper. LIKE A BIKE HELMET that’s not how it works. I’M GOING TO GO RIDE MY BIKE AGAIN no, we need to tell the story now. you can ride it later. NO, I CAN’T TRUST YOU RIGHT NOW, LOWER sit back down, please. ONCE I FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET TO THE ICE CREAM PARLOR I’M LEAVING FOR GOOD okay, upper, now that just hurt my feelings. it’s not nice to say that. I’M SORRY, LOWER it’s okay, upper, i know you didn’t mean it. WELL, I DID MEAN IT, I LIKE ICE CREAM WAY MORE THAN I LIKE YOU PLUS I WOULD HAVE MY BIKE okay, that’s enough. we’re going to have to do this later, i’m sorry. WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO can we reschedule for, say, next week? BUT REALLY, WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO

fin.

62 Save the Pangolin Leah Jorgensen

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Adobe Illustrator CC Remains Sarah Redding

Laughter has embers; a leaf’s orange glow beneath a crisp, dying brown.

Spring’s Arrival Lauren Bygland

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Photograph Dalliance Paige Brown

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Photograph

Alyssa 3rd Sarah Redding

Her yellow heart laughs; she’s shards of broken sun which still have strength to shine. Ballad: Thomas and the Wind Lane Robles

My friend the Wind goes through the earth and many people meets. She knows their stories, young and old, and often I pay heed.

So early summer Thomas met my friend the Wind one night. They hit it off, and Thomas, true, did always do what’s right.

She’d whisper secrets in his ear from others spoke with care, and Thomas, helpful, tried to fix their problems just and fair. 66 Of Thomas, not a word was said that carried hate or spite. His legend grew as one steadfast, suburbia’s whitest knight.

So early summer Thomas met my friend the Wind one night. She admired him, and Thomas, true, did always do what’s right.

The Wind one night did nudge him soft to see the view on high. So out his window, up he climbed and heard from her a sigh.

“I’m lonely Thomas,” cried the Wind. “I have no other friend as fast and free as wind can be, for you are just a man.”

So early summer, Thomas met my friend the Wind one night up on the roof, and Thomas, true, did always do what’s right.

He thought and thought and thought some more on how to help his friend, but could not think of how to be like wind, nor speed extend.

She had in mind a way to help, and tugged her Thomas near. “Your spirit flies with me,” she crooned. “So why not fly from here?”

67 So early summer Thomas met my friend the Wind one night. Her beauty drew, and Thomas, true, did always do what’s right.

So now I’m here with Thomas and my friend the Wind tonight atop my roof – and Thomas, true, did always do what’s right. Cataclysm 3rd Kristine Pike

Jake and Ben were cousins, two years apart, but raised so closely they might as well have been brothers, and all either one had left in the world. Their story read like a desperate attempt to solicit the sympathy of tender hearts everywhere: orphans, exiles, aimless and jobless for most of their still relatively young lives, they had nevertheless faced it all together and weathered every dramatic twist of fate the world had thrown at them. But heartbreaking childhoods and wandering young adulthoods included, no point of the plot in which they had lived was more difficult to swallow than the one that gripped them now: every day Jake was forced to watch Ben die over and over again. The first time had been an accident. They were hiking together in the mountains when Ben slipped on loose rock and Jake reacted too late, only able to watch in horror as Ben was falling, falling, eyes wide and arms flailing in vain for something to hold on to. The drop was sheer 68 and long, and when Ben crashed onto the rocks at the bottom he did not move, though Jake called his name over and over. Jake panicked, and in his haste to get to Ben he also lost his footing and plunged through space. There was no impact. Instead, everything was swallowed by a stiff, clean, white backdrop, as though the entire world had been erased around him. Ben was lying a few feet away, and when Jake ran to him, expecting the worst, Ben raised his head – dazed and bewildered but seemingly unharmed. He had no broken bones, not a scrape or a scratch or even a bruise on his body. “But … I died,” he said to Jake. “Didn’t I?” Before Jake could answer that they both had, the solid whiteness turned to shapeless, timeless black. When Jake came to himself, it was like waking from a vivid but fleeting dream; he had the itching sensation that he had forgotten some fantastic experience, but all he could remember was a vague impression of the earth giving way beneath him. Ben, being the younger cousin, had always been Jake’s responsibility; however, more often than not it was Ben who looked after Jake – whether by listening to his concerns and offering sound advice beyond his years, picking up after Jake’s scattered thoughts, or stepping in front to protect Jake from the man who threatened them with a gun. They had no money to give him, but the thief was desperate and intoxicated and called them liars. “You’ve got three seconds to fork it over or I’ll kill you,” he growled with his gun in Jake’s face. Ben stuck out his arm and pushed Jake back out of the way, but a second man appeared behind them to cut off any hope of escape. The thief grabbed Ben’s collar and pressed the gun to his temple. “You got the money, then? No? You want me to kill you instead?” Ben swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay.” Jake lunged forward to stop him, but the thief’s accomplice held him back while the thief himself dragged Ben a few feet away. Jake had no idea what he was saying, only that he was pleading for Ben’s life 69 when the gunshot sounded. Ben’s head jerked back and then fell forward as he crumpled. “No! Ben!” Tearing free of the hands that restrained him, Jake was just in time to catch Ben’s body before it hit the ground. He looked straight up into the barrel of the gun as it all went white, and only then did he remember – this had happened before.

That was how it always happened: he would watch helplessly as Ben was torn from him, and then look his own death in the eye while the world was blotted out and regenerated to start the cycle all over again in a different scenario – sometimes delving into the ridiculous. Once, Ben was trapped in a glass room with Jake on the other side searching frantically for a way to get him out and as though someone had turned an enormous tap, a rush of water surged into the room and swept Ben away, his eyes locked on Jake’s as he disappeared from sight. Another time they were blocked inside a burning building, where a wooden beam pinned Ben to the floor. Jake worked frantically to lift it, but Ben’s lungs filled with smoke and the flames were greedy for flesh, and Jake slipped into an ethereal state of sluggish movement and even more sluggish thought.

Only in the white space between deaths did he remember the previous encounters, and then he would run to Ben and hold him tight, terrified that this time might actually be the last, and Ben would eallyr stay dead forever. He prayed that it was all an extended nightmare, but he never seemed to wake up, except to enter another stage of the same. Then something changed. He heard it in the whiteness: a rustling of paper and a strange, rhythmic scratching. It whispered familiarity, but there was also something sharp and new – a crackling that seemed to pull at the edges of reality itself. But the oddest thing was the man they met in the white space – a stranger they had never encountered in any scene yet faced. His fingers were stained with ink, and his eyes were deep. The whiteness below their feet reacted to his steps, leaving clearly defined imprints where he walked. He inquired after Ben’s health in a tone that sounded like he 70 knew what Ben had just been through, and addressed both by name without having been introduced. “You know us?” Jake asked. “I have watched your struggles,” the man said, an angry spark in his otherwise gentle eyes. “Listen to my words – they are important. When it begins again you will not remember this meeting, but I will be beside you both. Heed my instructions then, and you may be spared.” Before Jake could ask how they would know to follow his instructions if they didn’t remember meeting him, the blackness descended.

The day was bleak with a restless breeze that wailed around them. Weather reports had been abnormally troubled all week, with today being the darkest, most anxious yet. Still, a threatening forecast had not deterred the cousins from their monthly visit to the graves of their parents. There, in a lonely, open field, they watched the funnel cloud form and drop to the ground right before their eyes. “Run!” Ben shouted. He pushed Jake in the direction of an abandoned farmhouse they could only hope would afford them entrance. “No!” The shout came from a man who had been standing quietly by another headstone until the storm descended. “You’ll never make it that far! Drop to the ground, now!” Jake hesitated. They stood at present beneath a gnarled and twisted tree that looked as though it might be uprooted by even a small gust of wind. “Stay in the tree’s shadow and you will be spared!” the stranger shouted again, and Ben dropped, pulling Jake down beside him. “There isn’t time,” he said. Now that they had done as he asked, the stranger seemed far less concerned about the danger, and started to walk straight at it. When he was too close to keep walking against the wind, he stopped and held out his arms – as though inviting the storm to take him. “What is he, crazy?” Ben breathed, and Jake had to grab hold of him to keep him from jumping up and trying to save the man. What happened next was nothing short of unbelievable. The tornado seemed to pause in its advance, and then open up every last 71 ounce of its ferocity to descend on the stranger like a swarm of carrion. He flew up into the heart of the funnel and disappeared from sight, and the wind roared louder than ever, painting the sky black. Jake hid his face, waiting to be swept away himself, but Ben gave a cry of astonishment and pointed above their heads. The sky was still black, but the corners of the horizon were peeling back in streaks of white, and the colors of the landscape were running together and washing away under a steady downpour, leaving lines that looked like rows and rows of handwritten words. Jake struggled to his feet, every moment of repeatedly losing and finding Ben flashing through his memory. The man who had approached them in the whiteness was the same man who had just thrown himself into a tornado while they watched, but foremost in Jake’s mind was the greater realization that crashed over him in that instant. Their lives and deaths were the narrative substance of a book that was constantly being written and rewritten with no imminent end to the process – and that book had just swallowed its own author. The tornado raged on, spinning ever more wildly in triumph to devour trees and buildings and giant boulders and anything else it could suck up into its devilish vortex. The words that had shaped the world fractured and flew out of line in great black waves, while entire pages tore free or ripped in half and were shredded to fall as confetti around the storm. But just when it seemed the tornado would plow right through the binding, its progress was checked by a single phrase built into the age-old wood of the very tree beneath whose shadow the two cousins still huddled. That phrase – two small words packed with a power far stronger than the wind that battered at them – stood taut and firm against the storm, and drove it back with a shout that rattled the book all the way to its spine. The tornado came to a full stop and spun again in reverse, regurgitating all it had swallowed in a burst of light and thunder. The words raced to fill in the empty spaces that had been blown into chaos, each row spelling out a new story – one of life instead of constant recurring death. As the debris cleared, two loving hands set the world 72 back in order, leaving only those two storm-stopping words at the bottom of the page. Hidden Zachary Shaffer

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Pen and ink on stained paper Untitled (Clock Tower) Kallista Kidd

As I pass under the clock tower– that structure, grave, reaching upward, culminating like an aged tree– I see a trail of damp shoeprints on the sidewalk before me.

Feet, small like mine. A life, short like mine. A life passed under the clock tower, not long ago.

I walk on an Autumn evening, the wind chilling my spine. Did it chill yours?

I walk in the pale lamplight, my heart ripe with anticipation. 74 What did your heart feel?

I approach a point in the sidewalk– the sidewalk, wide, grey, sprawling– where the shoeprints disappear.

Winter will come soon– that violent season with its quiet, quiet, nights– and everything that lives will die.

In Spring, I will pass under the clock tower; while people all around me are celebrating fecundity, I will celebrate the disappearance of shoeprints. Fitzsimmons Jenny Dahl

No, it was a song, then. A song that reminded me. We were driving. Golden hour on the uptown. Good morning. You were singing to me, again for the first time. Broken window rolled down all the way andyou will find love. Went uptown craving autumn, looking for a pumpkin pie and in the 5 o’clock everything felt pure: pure fall, freshly pressed. Quiet of December in the twang of a mandolin, and seeing out west a prick of sunshine running back to trace the arc of your irises. Warm and brown and steady, holding. I caught our image in the truck’s slick side and saw love holding on to a long-haired self, fleeting as it shimmered in the bending of the semi’s metal body, matching rhythm with a smooth-wrist strumming.

It was his song that made me think of it. William. William Fitzsimmons made me call you and I think I’m sorry, but don’t you remember?

There was frozen pizza sticking to a pan we forgot to oil, cheese dripping off 75 the sides; we watched it gurgle on the oven floor until the smoke came out, black and wounded. You opened the old brown door and let autumn in and it caught you up in a surge of leaves. I think it overcame you and you kissed me in the kitchen then, soaked in smoke and shaking towels at our mistakes.

Caught up in a whorl of falling. Up or down, it didn’t matter, because each direction ended in a cup of coffee and a two-sided “I’m sorry,” except for when it didn’t.

I think I’m sorry this time. I wish there was a cup of coffee waiting, too, but you’re busy I remember and autumn was a while ago. It was a song, then.

The birds of spring returning. Your ghost I burn. refund Hm Hayley Fisher

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Photograph (In)vulnerability Kristine Pike

I write my heart on my sleeve.

Slowly, keeping a steady hand, I paint careful, even strokes in unassuming colors and do not let them run together.

If I’m feeling brave, I may allow the occasional vibrant hue or liberated swirl to spill off the brush; if I’m feeling especially brave, I might even allow it to stay there.

My hand aches from precision, and these nice, safe lines start to suffocate – but ink doesn’t exactly erase well, so I leave them as they are and hope they won’t draw too much attention. 77

(My laugh comes too easily.)

I write my heart on my sleeve: tattoo it – except if you cut the flesh, you reveal the blood.

Unsanitary. The Grip of Reality 2nd Leah Jorgensen

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Mixed media Cure Hm Paige Brown

Initial - Stage 1.

My breasts were the best part of me: perky, vivacious, and firm Until they were the worst of me, removed from my chest, left scarred, flat, useless

My hair was the best part of me: styled, curled, and flawless Until it made less of me, falling from my head smooth, bald, masculine

The features that made me so entirely woman- 79 left me questioning everything I was ever given.

“When will your hair grow back?” puzzled my five-year-old son “Soon,” I replied, but that was only Stage 1.

Immediate - Stage 4.

My strength was the best part of me: cooking, cleaning, nurturing Until it was the least of me leaving me exhausted, motionless, miniscule

My family was the best part of me: helpful, steadfast, hopeful Until they made less of me stripping me of my role, constructing my very thoughts: depression, pain, anxiety

The qualities that made me so entirely a mother-- left me wondering where I went wrong.

“When will you get better?” my family fractured at its core. “Soon,” I replied, but that was only Stage 4.

Accelerated - Stage 0.

My devil was the worst of me. Cancer could spread to 80 my liver, kidneys, and spine, crippling who I was faithless, doubting, overwhelmed

My God was the best part of me, restoring my hope, strength, and faith, until I was renewed, refreshed, refined

The persona that made me so entirely forgiven broke past cancer’s brutality, exhaling an elegant finesse.

“God is my strength!” but through pain I forgot. When he breathed, “Healed,” my wholeness he bought. Bobèches David Sellers

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Photograph I Need a Black Hole Sarah Redding

My purpose is to be a necessity like a mother who must protect her child, like droplets of water which enrich trees and exist in them and as them, like a small fire which warms a dying man recreating him alive.

No matter what propensities and logical thoughts I have about love and dependency, all I need, fundamentally, is someone who would rather sit in my arms, homeless, poor and wholesome than live a systematic and predictable life without these pale blue eyes and all their sympathy.

82 Even if the person is a black hole that absorbs enormous amounts of light and yet is absent of it, even into them I wish to shine; an instantaneous glimmer in the biggest of darkness. Mary Poppins Emily Parrott

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Photoshop CS5 painting My Brother’s Keeper Joel Dean As long as I can remember, Sundays consisted of church in the morning, family dinner at lunchtime, and then serenity; sleep, snacking, and once everyone woke up, TV. It was a purely family time, whether it was a day of rest or play we were all together. Then, one Sunday afternoon at the end of the summer we moved. We left the building I grew up in, left the large gravel parking lot driveway where I learned how to ride a bike, left the weedy fields where I first stared at the stars, left the friends that taught me words and actions that my parents didn’t approve. I lived out my childhood in that neighborhood. This new one was huge with paved streets, and as far as I knew on my first day, no kids my age. After our first Sunday lunch in this new “home” my older brother handed me two large plastic Tupperware boxes. I thought he needed me to store something in my room because there was no more room in his. One held all his Legos, thousands of tiny little colorful bricks 84 carefully formed into masterpiece creations, spaceships, castles, pirate ships, and cars; even the rare pieces — which I could never use when we were playing. The other held all of his Hotwheels; miniature versions of the best cars: Shelby Cobras, Dodge Vipers, even the ones he never took out of the case. He told me it was because next week high school started and he wouldn’t have time to play. I suddenly felt completely hollow; there was no one I spent more time with than my older brother, Nathan. Sunday, after church ended, the family usually decided it was naptime. Then Nathan and I entered the worlds we created. Lego empires and book fort garages spawned world wars that lasted for years. Battles transgressed mere bits of plastic and metal and became embodied in our personas. The room was divided on carpeted country lines, bedspread mountains, and wooden floor oceans. Empires rose and fell, but no matter the means the ends were always the same. Flying toys preceded flying fists by mere seconds, which in turn preceded parental yelling and resulted in chuckle filled cleaning. All those days came to an abrupt end. So I, of course, went to my younger brother and attempted to recreate the battles through him. The only problem was Isaac doesn’t play with Legos; he doesn’t build civilizations in his mind or with his hands. Isaac only plays games with defined rules; imagination is not his forte, and so he has always gravitated towards sports. The room we shared remained slightly unpacked, half opened boxes were still stacked in the corner, but Isaac had already suctioned the small plastic basketball hoop to the door. Entering the room— opening it with my knee—I threw off his shot. Stunned, he jumped back to unloading his clothes thinking mom was entering the room. I told him it was okay, Mom was asleep, and asked if he wanted to play with Nathan’s Legos. His young eyes lit up, to touch those toys had always been forbidden, and the sweet taste of rebellion drove him to agree wholeheartedly. But after twenty minutes of building, the novelty wore off. I was halfway through combining Nathan’s castle with my military fort — making a futuristic stronghold that could never be defeated — when out 85 of the corner of my eye, I discovered Isaac trying to juggle a few Lego people. His wall fort and giant boat were in a state of ruin while he was haphazardly throwing his miniature warriors to impossible heights. I was furious. He wasn’t even trying! None of the now flying figures were wearing jet packs, they had no flying abilities or constructs. He was breaking all the rules. When I asked him what he was doing, he responded, “I don’t know. This is boring.” Furious, I said, “Fine, what do you wanna do?” “Let’s play basketball!” I turned around, silently indignant, and went back to my creating. After a few seconds of silence I mumbled, “Do what you want, I’m finishing this.” He climbed up on the top bunk and took a shot, missing wide to the left. When I ignored the red plastic sphere rolling across my Legos, he jumped down to my bed and began to run around the room-playing ball by himself. While attempting a rather impossible fade away from the back corner of the room, he tripped and beamed my tower directly above the central arch. The carefully constructed castle cracked in half, but it was still easily repaired. He then ran up and tried to put it back together, causing more damage to the infrastructure. In outrage, I pushed him back against the wall and threw his ball underneath the bunk bed. Irate, he tore my castle apart and the war began. I hit him and he hit back. Somehow he eventually ended up on the top bunk brandishing a plastic hanger. Attempting to reach him at first resulted in stinging hands and face, but I waited for the perfect moment. When I was finally fast enough, I caught the hanger with a twisted smile and yanked it forward. He came flying towards me. I stepped out of the way and let him fall. Time slowed as his hands extended too slow to brace for the impact. His head hit the floor with a force that shook one of the few hung frames from the wall. His eyes closed and opened rapidly, but he didn’t say a word. The silent ringing filled the air so hauntingly loud that I was sure my siblings or parents would be there in seconds, but no one came. For a moment I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think. Then Isaac’s sharp inhale brought me back. 86 He was alive! Tears were in his eyes, but no sounds other than breathing came from his mouth. Tears filled my eyes and the next several hours blurred behind large drops of water repeatedly forming as if by magic in the space between eyes and glasses. When mom finally returned from the hospital at 10:30, I was still awake because sleep was unnecessary. Reverberating off of unfamiliarly new walls I heard hushed whispers amidst quiet sobs. “Mild concussion but, … The EEG revealed that he’s been having Petit mal seizures, thousands a day. This explains his motor skills, speaking ability, ADHD, processing disorder. We have to get medica……” The voice trailed off amidst the now familiar pressure rising inside my head, tears ran down my face as I fell asleep. Sundays changed from then on. Legos and Hotwheels became a solitary pursuit, if they were played with at all. Dust gathered along with guilt. I learned to love playing baseball and soccer. Sports became the only battles. I realized I could still create, still imagine, if I did it in the confines of his games, his enjoyment. It took me several years to realize the concussion that I gave my younger brother is what it took to discover his seizures. That injury didn’t break him, but I didn’t understand that. I thought I had ruined my kid brother, the one I was supposed to protect. I thought I had taken away his talent to create, thought I had given him his learning disability. Then one Sunday afternoon, in our separate worlds — me placing the final touches on my castle battlements while Isaac taped lines down in preparation for our upcoming game — I realized the sadder truth. The world he was born into — the one he lives in with his limited understanding — is the only world he will, and has ever, known. He announced the completed masking tape court, as my eye tried to form a tear. I slid the castle under the bed, rubbed my face dry, picked up the little plastic ball, and let him win, but not by much.

87 Muttin Bustin Lauren Bygland

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Photograph Jester Aubrey Henke

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India ink, colored pencil, sharpie, white paint, conte crayon, and pen The Sammy Situation Brandon Norris

It was just before dawn when the sound made my eyes snap open. WHUMP whump whump WHUMP! “Did you hear that?” Lori whispered to me in the dark. “Of course I did. Ignore it. It sounds like he’s just moving some furniture.” Slam! Something big – really big – hit a wall. "It's six in the morning! What is he doing out there?" Lori moaned, rolling toward me. In a couple of hours she had to go to school and I had to go to work, but first we had to figure out what our temporary housemate, Matt, was doing. It sounded like he was hosting a pro wrestling match. I swung my feet to the floor. He was my friend, after all, and my responsibility. From the hall, I heard Matt scream. "Don't move. I'll check it out." “Matt! What’s going on?” I hissed, closing my bedroom door tightly. “Are you okay?” 90 In the lit hallway, the wide, mustachioed face of Matt’s friend Dan instantly filled my field of vision. He was pale and covered in sweat, and his eyes were wild. “Everything’s alright, man,” Dan said breathily. “Everything’s alright. Don’t go in there, man. Don’t go in there.” “Don’t go in where? What was that scream?” “Scream? Nobody screamed.” “Dan, I heard a scream. You have to be quiet! It’s not even dawn! Where’s Matt?” I heard rustling in the bathroom, saw shadows shift under the door. “Don’t go in there!” “Matt?” I rapped lightly on the door. I heard more rustling, but no answer. “I wouldn’t go in there yet.” “Alright, Matt, I’m opening the door.” “Seriously, don’t go in!” Inside the brightly lit bathroom, I stopped short. The mirror was streaked with dried blood, the walls covered in dark red five-fingered handprints. The faucet was running, swirling pink water down in the drain. Matt whirled around to me, his face and hair the color of rust, his ten spread fingers resting on the top of his head. He looked amused to see me. I looked down at my hand. It was wet with blood from the knob. “Matt, are you ok? What happened?” His iridescent hazel eyes were dancing off the walls but his lips were frozen. Behind me Dan emitted a bizarre moan and pushed into Matt’s bedroom across the hall. He left a bloody hand streak on the door. I turned back. Matt’s lips had curled into a wide, curious smile. I’d known Matt for a year when I offered him the spare room down the hall. We worked together as waiters at a very expensive restaurant downtown. Every morning as we polished wine glasses together, he told me about how he’d aimlessly dropped out of college and had been trying to save enough money to start up again. He was odd but endearing, and passionate about politics. I was 24, in graduate school, and idealistic. We both avidly followed the contentious primaries to the 2008 Presidential election, which was still two years away. Matt was the kind of political activist I had often told myself I should be: he marched in protests, attended rallies and speeches, and raised money for left-wing candidates he was passionate about. We never ran out of conversation, and we quickly became friends. Matt’s parents were both 91 psychologists, he told me, which is why he was so neurotic. Their high expectations terrified him, so he drifted from place to place. This had been the longest job he’d held yet. One morning he came into work with a hangdog expression: his roommate had moved out, and he couldn’t afford the rent for his month-to-month apartment. Of the dozens of things I could have said, I somehow felt my heart going out to this lanky oddball. “Come stay with us for a while, just until you find someplace else.” His eyes widened and he smiled broadly. “Yes! Thank you! This is going to be so much fun!”

“How do you drink that government crap?” he asked us a few weeks later. Matt had moved into the spare bedroom by carrying in black trash bags, one in each arm and one kicked down the hall after midnight. He drifted in and out, never sleeping at the house more than four nights a week. He loved to argue for the sport of arguing. He made a conspicuous habit of reading Derrida and Sophocles. He casually asked me about my day and then goaded long evening debates out of me in the kitchen, sitting on the countertop and playing devil’s advocate. “Drinking what now?” I asked. We were eating dinner at the dining room table when he came in from the front porch. “The tap water. The tap water! It’s impure! Have you learned nothing from me?” Matt threw back a gallon jug of Brook Springs. “You’re just polluting your body with that garbage. You’re crazy.” “Polluting our bodies? Matt,” I enunciated slowly, trying to make an important distinction. “You smoke a pack a day. My front porch is covered in butts.” His eyes widened as if to ask what that had to do with anything, and he gave a quick shake of his shaggy red hair and an exaggerated two-arm shrug. He strode off. Lori looked at me, conveying pages with a glance. “I know. I know.”

Back in our bedroom, Lori was stirring to life. “What in the world is he doing out there?” “Don’t come out. I’ll handle it. I don’t know.” She gave me a quizzical look. I dressed quickly and slipped back out into hall as she headed to the shower. I knew I had about 15 minutes to solve this 92 situation so that my wife did not summarily boot all of us out of her house. “Alright!” I hissed at Dan, who was now loudly rummaging in Matt’s closet, clearly looking for something. “You either need to tell me what’s going on or get out of here right now!” “We got into a fight last night,” he mumbled. “With who? Where?” “That freakin’ Sammy. At Flips.” I knew who he meant, but Sammy was not the fighting type. “Is this his blood? Did you hurt him?” Dan turned to me and giggled, then looked up at the ceiling and closed his eyes. He fell backward onto Matt’s bed. 250 pounds of dead weight crashed down on the squeaky mattress like a giant sack of potatoes. “Dan!” I hovered over him. He slowly opened his eyes and giggled again. His guilty grin made him look like an elephantine toddler. He was still grinning as he closed his eyes. I heard Matt moving up and down the hallway. “Matt, you have to get out of here right now,” I said, following him down the hall. “Lori is awake! We’re going to seal the bathroom shut and you’re going to disappear until after she leaves.” Matt was carrying a soaking handful of pink paper towels from the bathroom down the hall to the kitchen, where he threw them into the trashcan with a heavy thump. He moved with a focused determination. His eyes were still wild and he gave no indication that he heard me. “Matt!” I grabbed his arm and he whipped around. Through his wet hair I saw a long gash along where his part would be. Fresh blood dripped down his face onto his collar. His hands dripped pink water onto the carpet. “Whoa.” “We got into a fight. With Sammy. In the parking lot of the 7/11.” “Dan said it was at Flips. You need a doctor, man.” “Flips?” he scrunched his whole face. “We weren’t at Flips last night. Were we?” “Well, whatever, you—.” “Flips? I gotta talk to him.” “Don’t bother. He’s passed out cold.” “Dan!” he shouted into the room. “I’ll be right back.” “What about this mess?” I demanded. He shut the bedroom door to the sound of me saying, “And you need stitches!” 93

I played through my options. I feared Sammy might be hurt, and I contemplated calling the police. Inside the bathroom, I turned off the faucet. Matt had somehow knocked three picture frames and a ceramic cross off the wall. He had piled dozens of paper towels and a fully unspooled roll of toilet paper on the floor to soak up the water. I closed the bathroom door and turned off the lights. The spare bedroom was now completely silent. I sat down to think on the fireplace bricks. Before I could come up with my next move, Lori appeared in the dark living room. “So,” she said, putting on her jacket. “What was all that?” “Don’t worry about it and don’t ask. I’ll take care of it. I think you should just go.” “Ok…” “Trust me. You’ll be happiest if you just go.” I walked with her to the garage door past the kitchen trashcan, which was still full of pink paper towels. She gave me another one of those looks. Volumes passed between us. “I know. I know.”

“I seriously don’t know what’s going on,” Dan said, his head in his hands. He sat on the bench on my front porch next to Matt, who was still bleeding. When I opened the bedroom door, I found them both laying still, their vacant eyes wide open. Matt hung half off the bed and Dan was shirtless. I grabbed Matt by the wrist and dragged him on his back down the hall and onto the front porch. Dan was much heavier. With my every lurching step, his bare back rubbed against the carpet. He screeched in pain but made no effort to stand. Halfway down the hall I gave up. I wadded a handful of the wet paper towels from the bathroom floor, now ice cold, and dropped them on his chest. “Ahh-h-h-h!” he sputtered, rolling over and crawling toward the front porch. He inched up onto the bench, which creaked under his weight. He leaned forward and began breathing noisily. “Alright, you two apes! Fun’s over.” I stood over them doing my best impression of a guy in charge. “Neither one of you can drive, so you’re going to have to sleep this off. Then, so help you God, you will 94 clean this house before my wife gets home. I have to go to work, but before I do, I want you to tell me exactly why you’re bleeding.” “I don’t remember anything,” Matt said from under his hands. “I had a dream about Sammy.” “Sammy hit you at Flips,” Dan said, still leaning forward. “I think.” “Will you bring me my cigarettes from my car? It’s not locked.” I thought a smoke might help him focus. I followed the dark trail of blood down the driveway. Curiously, instead of leading to his car, the blood trail followed the sidewalk off to the west, toward the university. Matt’s little Honda was sloppily parked, but otherwise fine. I opened the driver door. There was no blood on the cloth seat. “Guys, can you stand up?” I called to the porch. “Come down here. Let’s see where this blood trail leads us.”

An hour later, I clocked into work at the restaurant. The first person to say hello was Sammy, looking perfectly composed. “Sammy, did you happen to see Matt and Dan last night?” “Yeah, they were at Flips. Yesterday was Dan’s birthday. They got pretty drunk and belligerent.” “I’ve seen them drunk before. This was different. They said you got into a fight with them.” Sammy chuckled. “Yeah, they tried. They were yelling at everyone. But nah, we didn’t fight. It was really late. Closing time. When we left, they were shoving each other in the parking lot.” “Well, they somehow made it back to my house, but then they took a walk over to the university. Then… well, I don’t know what happened then, but I found a parking lot curb that was covered in blood from Matt’s head. They wandered back to my house and all hell broke loose. I told Matt to go to a hospital.” “He won’t. I know that for a fact.” “Why not?” “Because before they left Flips they each downed a handful of psychedelic mushrooms. Craig the bartender sold them to Matt for Dan’s birthday.” “You’re kidding.” “Wish I was. Craig said not to eat them ‘til they left, but they got drunk and forgot their manners. He’s pretty ticked about it.” 95 Matt walked into work forty minutes late. The rest of the staff and Wade, the owner, were deep into the pre-shift meeting when Matt appeared in the lobby. He had pressed his shirt and scrubbed his skin, but a Redskins baseball hat covered his head. He eyed the room wildly and his glassy gaze fixed on Sammy. He still wore that big rubbery grin across his long face. “Matt?” Wade said. “We won’t need you. You’re cut today.” Still smiling, Matt lifted the hat high above his head revealing his blood-soaked hair. There was a low collective gasp. He swept the hat down to his knees and gave the room a deep bow, stood back up, turned on his heels, and walked out the way he came. No one said a word. A Pantoum. 2nd Lane Robles

The endless blue does call my name. Salt freckles lips, my nose, my throat. Spray dances light, my heart aflame as sea-borne kisses tease their note.

Salt-freckled lips, my nose, my throat, now thirst for more beneath the foam, when sea-borne kisses teased their note. She calls me long, no more to roam.

My thirst for more beneath the foam ensnared my light – my heart, a flame. She’ll call me long, no more to roam. The endless blue will call me home. 96 Swimming with the Fishes Hannah Bingham

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Photograph Oregon Alexis Krut

There is cloud; and there is sun Though very little of that. There is rain; and there is snow Though little of that as well. There is wet; and there is dry Though that hardly occurs. There is grey; and there is blue Though that is odd at best.

There is warm and there is cold; The latter is much more common. There is dirt and there is mud; The latter is hardly rare. The road is clear and the road is flooded; 98 The latter is not so strange. The grass is brown and the grass is green; The latter is all I can see.

Though some may feel ‘tis not for them –they do not want my home− Most oft I find a peace of mind in rainy Oregon. One for the Road Rebecca Luttrell Briley

The birds are excited about their trip. Re-leafing baring branches with their feathered form, their incessant chatter travels down telephone wires lined with their itchy feet. Streamlined frequent flyers, they know how to travel light: an innate GPS and a summer song they’ll revive with traces of the southern accent they can’t help but pick up from their winter stay. Bird-brained myself, songs for the road my only repertoire, I strain to stretch my wings; to be gone even a little while is worth the weathering of any storm.

99 Big World David Sellers

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Photograph You and I Leah Jorgensen

101 Adobe Photoshop CC Crayons Preston Coleman

A cold day, the breeze overwhelms. Deep inside, my heart starts to chill, when I see, forlorn in a corner, a prism, holding all of the world— every color of the imagination contained in a single box, filled to the brim it appears it may explode. Inspiration overwhelms, relief fills my heart, warmth abounds in my soul. I grab the portal of creativity: one crisp sheet of paper, open the box 102 And begin to create. Inquisitive Beatrice Cochran

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Photograph Hebrews 3:13 Jason Brunner

and so we didn’t understand our milk and our honey, walking through aisle six and seven. then we fell asleep behind the wheel. woe, how foreign; and death too! pouring our own ashes past the tip of our memory when instead we ought to swallow like Aaron’s idol. learn a lesson, do we? nay, not particularly. jump a cliff, dare we? only in theory. every day, then, is an inch; nevertheless it becomes a cliff. up and out, my friend, every day like the Hebrews were reminded.

104 Behold, I Am Doing a New Thing Kristine Pike

I stand amidst the shards of youthful dreams and count their colors fair, but cold. Their passion-songs, once bursting from the seams, now whisper stories never told of memories now growing old; and I, content to gaze upon their beams, find in them hope.

The sunlight shattering upon this day wrought desolation by its voice, and wisdom’s strongholds cast in disarray while I, amidst the trembling noise, approach the Moment of the choice of which to carry, which to throw away, and trust to hope. 105

Now from this catastrophic, bursting sky that sings as lightning rends its face, a gentle whisper lilts and spirals nigh to knees that buckle, lost in space – my heart is quickened by its grace – and, staring doubt and wonder in the eye, I name it Hope.

It slices ribbons out of solid storm and sends them tumbling to my feet, there to behold their lovely, crashing forms; the vacancies between the sheets of tempest-bowers, tall and fleet, are calling every song to be reborn – this is my hope. The pieces strewn about this heaving ground, though faded, glitter at each edge, and cast their safe and pleasant lights around, entreating me to leave this ledge and flee my foolish, reckless pledge before my soul is buried in the mound of groundless hope.

But I, who craved the stationary calm, now flourish on the thrill of wings; and if I held the thunder in my palm I could not more completely fling myself into the void, and sing: for here I find my anchor and my psalm is only hope.

106 The Leviathan Micah Fryslie

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Ink drawing Caerdroia Emily Parrott

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Photoshop CS5 painting Search for the Planet of the 1st Pancake People Cody Kapocsi

It all started one night in February when I was standing in the bathroom of my dorm, brushing my teeth. The guy who lived next door came in and struck up a conversation, as part of the ritual we had invented. I would rarely reply verbally, having a toothbrush in my mouth, but would gesture and make sympathetic noises. He usually spoke of homework, or videogames, or something else that filled the life of a college student. But that night was different. Instead of heading to the stall, he stepped forward to the sink next to me. "Did you know that there are an infinite number of pancake planets?" No, I didn't know that. I didn't realize that was knowable. My eyebrows furrowed and brushing ceased, though I failed to take the toothbrush out. My shock had frozen me. 109 He moved quickly to defend his position. "If the universe is infinite in size, and there is infinite matter in the universe, then there must be pancake planets. I have a textbook that proves it!" For the first time, I had a reason to be thankful I wasn't a computer science major. I never found what else was in that textbook, but if it was anything like what I had just heard, I figured I was better off without it. After a long moment of silence, I removed the toothbrush and prepared my counter-argument. "Man, that can only be true if there are natural processes that create pancakes out of the raw elements of the universe." His eyes widened momentarily as a smile grew across his face. "Nope," he replied. "But-" I tried. He ignored me as he headed out the door. I just couldn't believe it; it was too bizarre. The list of ingredients rose to the forefront of my mind: flour, sugar, milk, eggs, and butter – things that don't show up in a mix in the wild, especially over an open flame that slowly roasts them to a golden-brown, at the cosmic scale, in the cold depths of open space. It just couldn't be. Could never be. But what if it was? I had spent far too many nights in recent months outside in the cold staring up at the stars. There were a few fields on campus just dark enough to appreciate maybe a hundred stars, no more. It wasn't particularly majestic, merely neat at best. Each pinpoint of light was one of the brightest stars in the sky; they had to be to punch through the light pollution of nearby streetlights: Orion's belt, The Big Dipper. Not much else was visible. It seemed to be enough, however. Within my field of vision, most likely hidden to the naked eye, there was a star – a blue star– that was orbited far too closely by a planet that baked and roiled. And yet, the parts that weren't molten were covered in a hardy plant that resembled wheat, which in turn was eaten by animals that laid eggs like chickens, and hid from the sun. Maybe there were other animals that also grazed the hearty wheat, dripping sugary milk from swollen udders as they walked. Maybe one day an egg cracked, milk dribbled onto it, and wheat was ground into the mixture. As a planetary day began, the heat baked one side of the unnatural 110 mixture, blending the ingredients, forming sugary veins and cooking one side to a wonderful brownish-gold. Then, some seismic event – an earthquake, surely – flipped it over, roasting the other side in the unrelenting blue light. Thus, the first pancake was born. It didn't do much, mostly just sat there and thought. It didn't think about much; there wasn't much to think about, nothing that us humans would care about, at least. There was little to be considered but the ground, and the heat, and the passage of time. The long passage of time. Until … hunger; definite hunger: overwhelming, then consuming hunger. What does a pancake eat? Believe it or not, this question was even more important to the first pancake than it could ever be to us. As fascinating as we find this question, it pales in comparison to the importance it serves to the pancake, who has to figure it out or starve. Life is cruel that way, but the pancake is industrious, and detected some of the wheat-like plants near it. The precise nature of the sense that discovered the wheat is too foreign to explain to humans, but for the sake of this story, let it be called a taste-smell. The first pancake taste-smelled the wheat-like plant, and desired it. It was then that the pancake discovered how to move: a wobbly, inch-worm like locomotion that had neither elegance nor charm, but allowed the pancake to approach the wheat and satisfy its hunger. Life was good. After this the pancake was unstoppable, quickly discovering agriculture, yet finding it boring. It gave up its herbivorous ways and learned the art of animal husbandry, raising chicken-like creatures for food and drinking the milk of cow-like creatures; but that wasn't enough. Soon cities emerged – at first only populated with one and two-story buildings, but soon giving way to multi-story condos and towering skyscrapers that glistened in the light of the blue sun. The pancakes adapted to city life, giving up their desire for farm-fresh chicken-like meat and settling for frozen, processed chicken-like meat, and cow-like milk with added growth hormones. One day, a student-pancake wandered out into a field to look at the stars. He couldn't see that many in the suburbs where he grew up, but here, he could see almost a hundred. He wanted more, and built a telescope to peer into the heavens. By night he gazed into the depths of space, and by day he wrote equations to describe what he saw, being a math major. One day, the numbers didn't come out right. He ran over them again, then again, and then took them to his professors. Panic crept 111 over all who saw the math. The papers said it best the next day: “Planet to crash into the sun in 52 years, 7 months.” Their top scientists got together, but there was nothing they could do. They designed rockets, but none could be made large enough to save the race from destruction. One scientist, however, stole the plans and built a small one for his infant son. As the planet reached the last few years of its life, he and his wife lovingly placed their son into the rocket and launched it into space, hoping it would find a habitable planet. The chances were small, but it eventually found its way to a blue-green planet orbiting a yellow sun. The ship landed outside a farmer's house. When the farmer opened the ship, which to human eyes resembled a cardboard box, the yellow light of the sun filled the pancake with strength. He knew he could do great things here. The farmer, being the hungry type, removed the recovering pancake and placed him in the microwave, wondering who had been kind enough to send him a free meal. He never found out.

Character Development in "How to Take Down Your New Democracy" A Graphic Novel in Progress 2nd Julie Drohan

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Photoshop Digital Painting Josh Fox exploded through the window of the jewelry store into the open street, pieces of glass flying everywhere. He paused to take a quick look at the pocket watch he had just heisted and muttered, “Brilliant.” His moment of glory was short-lived, however, as his loud, unnecessary window-crashing noise alerted nearby police to his location. Josh’s tail bristled as a police siren and flashing lights appeared out of nowhere. Glancing backwards, he quickly fled the scene. As the blue and red lights reflected off his fiery orange fur, gaining closer every second, Josh dashed into alleyway, again thinking himself ever so clever. However, he emerged from the other side and stopped dead as a helicopter spotlighted him. Josh turned his head, viewing the line of cops and cars surrounding the alleyway’s exit as if they had been waiting for him the whole night. “Brilliant,” he restated, realizing his plan probably wasn’t as great as he thought it to be.

It was spring 2011 when I was assigned a project in my Elements of Visual Thinking class at Oklahoma Christian. Our job was to illustrate a comic page; the page could either be part of a larger story or present a whole story in and of itself. I decided to try to make a page that could both stand on its own and also be part of a bigger story. I wanted to invent a new character rather than recycle an old one, so I invented a fox because I thought they were cool. Foxes also seemed sly and clever, so the animal fit my story perfectly (well, perfectly ironically) – Josh was a fox who failed hard at being sly and clever.

In the comic page I presented Josh as some form of punk, but he wasn’t truly a bad person. It was also implied that he wasn’t the smartest of folks when he exited by crashing through a window he apparently didn’t have crash through to enter the store in the first place. It also implied that Josh got an awful lot of attention from law enforcement for stealing 113 such a small object. The helicopters and large amount of cops on patrol were added for exaggeration; there’s no way that amount of force was required to catch this clumsy criminal. “Comic effect” is a good enough reason, but Josh’s sense of importance was stored in the back of my mind.

After completing my assignment, Josh Fox stuck with me. His character design and personality were quite fun and I was eager to explore his world. Like all of my anthropomorphic animal characters, he stood on two legs. He was colored orange and white and wore a brown jacket and olive green cargo pants. I also gave him a fedora and sunglasses.

Josh always took on cool action poses in my sketchbook. He constantly tried to present himself as smooth but he knew he was actually incompetent. I really didn’t know what to do with him. By himself, he kind of just flopped about trying to show off. “Come off it, Josh, I know you’re hiding something. What do you actually want?” I’d ask. “Well I’m awesome; give me something to do or I’ll just screw around being cool,” he said back. Eventually I decided that Josh was a wandering homeless person who tried to ignore reality by acting like everything was fine and doing whatever he wanted. “Oh … that’s why he was trying to steal that pocket watch,” I concluded. In order to teach Josh that he wasn’t a cool punk who could do as he pleased, I confiscated his fedora and sunglasses. These seemed to mask a deeper personality, and I wanted to see what he would do without them. Alas, not much happened (though he looked a bit more respectable). The establishment of Josh’s being a homeless gangsta-wannabe really didn’t lead him anywhere. What was he supposed to do, floundering around clumsily and failing all of the time? I thought that I’d eventually get bored with this 2D character that refused to make anything of himself. Thankfully, I was wrong.

Alfadecorus “Alfa” Dauntn’aryu stood there and stared into space. She thought and stared and thought and stared. Then she blinked. She kept standing there, thinking: then she scratched her pointy, elven ear. She stood there and thought some more. Her complex thoughts occupied her entire being 114 as she stood still, unmoving, and used her brain to analyze data and predict where she could use it in real life.

If it isn’t obvious at this point, Alfa’s creation wasn’t nearly as cool or star-studded as Josh’s – although the process was much more complex, as Alfa evolved from the reactions of those around her.

One day while working at the greenhouse (my summer job), I was incredibly bored and there hadn’t been any customers for a really long time, so I got out a piece of paper and tried to draw some kind of elf character (I had been reading Eragon lately). It only took two drawings before I was satisfied with a design. Alfa was six feet, three inches tall and had a long blonde braid. She always hid under a wide- brimmed hat, and beneath her heavy trench coat she wore a green dress that matched her eyes. She also wore jeans underneath the dress and converse-style shoes to convey a slight sense of modernity.

I took the drawing home and wondered what to do with the character. Immediately I tried putting her into Josh’s universe. The result was amazing. Alone, Alfa didn’t do anything except stand there seriously and stare into space in a womanly, dignified manner, thinking. When placed together, both Alfa and Josh seemed to gain an instant sense of purpose. They immediately began reacting to each other. At first they just got into action poses together (Josh’s favorite activity), and while doing this, they looked like they meant serious business. I didn’t know exactly which business, but I became really curious and continued exploring them. Josh was also the only one who could draw emotion out of Alfa. However, eventually he started bringing out an intense and crazy (almost uncharacteristically so) side I didn’t know existed.

Josh and Alfa crept into the room marked “Currency Storage.” Josh groped the wall for the light switch as Alfa shut the door quietly behind them. After the room was lit, the two meandered between the rows of fresh bills. Taking note of their surroundings, they made their way to the center of the room – which contained the largest stack of money. After dousing it with half a container of gasoline they had brought, they made their way back to the entrance, leaving a 115 trail of gasoline as they went.

After the two stood outside of the door, Alfa lit a match. She tossed it into the room, which subsequently roared like a deep inferno. The two looked at each other after the door was shut. Alfa, smiling smugly, shot Josh a quick question: “Remember the route?” Josh, smiling menacingly, nodded and the two parted ways. Echoes of victorious laughter came from the hallways as the two fled the scene.

Though Josh brought Alfa out of her comfort zone, I think it got out of hand when they started burning stuff with matches, gasoline, and eventually flamethrowers, bearing grins found only on the mentally insane.

Sometime after I gained a balance between Alfa’s calmness and insanity, I went on to explore other character options. Looking to the media, I realized that most elves seemed to have blonde or light-colored hair, which I thought was silly. This thought prompted me to sketch up a dark-haired elf man. It was intended to be an antagonist for Alfa. I gave him pitch-black hair and he had a very nasty, naughty, disturbing look to him. This drawing was so creepy that I instantly gave up on the design. Later on, however, I was in the middle of finishing an illustration that required a brutish and rude character, so I dug my elf man up out of the graveyard of my mind. I decided to give him a second chance and created a more appealing design. Somehow I knew he had a deep connection to Alfa, but the two hadn’t known each other long. I thought about making them siblings who never met until later, but that idea had been used a dozen times before, so I dropped their connection as a mystery to solve later. Soon, this male elf character became known as Acerferus Shadowfax.

Acer is pretty nasty, but in a dignified manner (if that’s even possible). He wears gloves and dark, long-sleeved leathery top with matching leathery pants. He’s the same height as Alfa, but marginally stronger. Acer has slightly darker skin than Alfa and best of all, he’s not blonde! His personality is poisonous, causing those around him grief (or vice 116 versa – happy characters give him a headache).

At this point I had established Alfa and Acer as two different characters that were part of the same race of elves. I then wanted to define characteristics of this elven race if I ever wanted to invent some other elf characters and make it consistent. Looking at some other literature and references, it seemed to me that elves were generally portrayed as prissy, prancing, nature-loving sissies who looked too beautiful to be considered threatening. Sure, they’re great at archery and acting graceful, but Alfa and Acer didn’t want to be that way. They were more muscle-driven in accomplishing their tasks, and proud of their strength rather than an ability to dance like a nimble ballerina. Therefore I decided that my elven race was strong, tall, philosophical, and dignified. They also consider their personal integrity vital to maintain.

After discovering all of my characters’ personalities, motivations, hopes, and dreams, I feel a responsibility to share them. They have led me down their deep, complex, and oftentimes dark path and now want me to share their story with the world. I’ve spent so much time with these guys that they’ve become a constant presence in life.

Unfortunately, since they’re such a deep part of me, they react to my bad moods. Sometimes when I get too depressed or confused they hide in a closet and don’t come out until it’s safe. I feel almost guilty when they do this, but I don’t blame them; I don’t want them to get depressed or confused too. When I am joyful, however, they come bursting forth onto paper. Hopefully I’ll maintain a stable, consistent life and then be able to interact with them often, and therefore translate their story accurately.

In retrospect, sometimes I stop and wonder if I have let my characters develop too much. I haven’t even started actually drawing the graphic novel, and their personalities have already evolved because of my placing them in the situations I know they will face in the future. “Have I explored too much?”

On the flipside, having written so much of the story (or at least, 117 discovered it), it is good to know I have a beginning, middle, and end. I won’t have to worry about writing myself into a corner. I know my characters will develop. The downside and my fear, however, is that the story will lose its spontaneity and end up stale. Knowing everything isn’t fun. I’m almost thankful that I do have a few holes in the story that I will have to creatively fill in as I go. I may even decide later on that the story needs to take on a different direction. Being open-minded and letting the characters lead me, I think the story will hand me enough surprises to keep it exciting and enjoyable as I go. I shouldn’t have to, and refuse to, squeeze them into a pre-set story.

Transcending Language in 1st Gilman’s Herland Kallista Kidd

Language permeates the theme and delivery of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, serving as both a system that contains and a tool that empowers the writer/reader. Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of structural linguistics, proposes that language is made up of the “signified” (the concept) and the “signifier” (the “sound-image”) and asserts that the relationship between the two is arbitrary (Saussure 67). In response to structuralism, deconstructionist Jacques Derrida exposes that “structure – or rather the structurality of structure – although it has always been at work, has always been neutralized or reduced, and this by a process of giving it a center or of referring it to a point of presence, a fixed origin” (“Structure, Sign, and Play” 278). In Of Grammatology, Derrida refers to this center as “logos” and responds 118 to the logocentrism of Western structures – particularly language systems (Of Grammatology 10). Gilman demonstrates that which Derrida articulates – that language and culture are inseparable, one being indicative of the qualities of the other. The signified that transcends a particular language system and serves as the point of reference – the ultimate ‘truth’, the logos – for all other signifieds reveals the ‘truth’ on which the corresponding culture centers. By centering on the logos, the language system reinforces the values of its corresponding culture as its users take what is spoken for granted. While Gilman reveals logocentric language systems as oppressive, she demonstrates that these same languages may also liberate the reader. Gilman does not have to use a different language to liberate the reader from the language system; she uses English throughout the text. The shift of the language’s center¬ – the logos – offers the reader an alternative perspective on the contemporary local English and language systems as a whole. By juxtaposing the male characters’ language system and culture with that of the Herlanders, the text exposes the early 20th-century U.S. English language as androcentric and colonialist. Although Gilman does not invent a new language for Herland, the text implies a conversely gynocentric and egalitarian language and culture centered on the ideal of Motherhood. In replacing patriarchy and colonialism with Motherhood and egalitarianism, Herland inverts the logos upon which the language of Gilman’s “now” centers in order to invite the reader to transcend her language system and culture. The language of the three male characters illustrates early 20th-century U.S. culture and reveals it as androcentric and colonialist. In a logocentric language system, these two values reveal the favoring of one binary opposition over the other: masculinity/femininity and civilized/savage. Although the American reader initially identifies with the males’ culture and language, she may feel increasingly distant from the male characters as Gilman exposes the culture and language system as oppressive. For example, when Zava inquires about the meaning of the term “virgin,” Jeff replies that the term applies to “the female who has not mated” (47). Jeff and the male characters’ oversight of the fact that “virgin” may also refer to a male reveals the U.S. culture as one that does not consider male virginity important but focuses primarily on female virginity (47). The male characters find female virginity desirable 119 because the culture values ‘discovering’ anything that is ‘undiscovered.’ Because U.S. culture also privileges ‘doing’ or ‘active’ in a doing/being or active/passive binary, the male is thus privileged as a discoverer over the female as a discoverable being. The virginity or lack thereof in males is inconsequential because the males are the active beings – the colonizers, the controllers of female virginity – while the females in the androcentric culture are passive, like a section of land. Male virginity has no effect on the male’s ability to colonize, but female virginity determines female ability to be colonized; therefore, the early 20th-century U.S. culture values a female according to the status of her virginity. Because of the U.S. ideal of the masculine pioneer spirit, it is essential to the act of ‘discovering’ that society perceive the female as undiscovered just as it perceived the ‘western frontier’ as undiscovered. The suggestion of the undiscovered in the word “virgin” associates the word with a passive being, which is why the culture of the male characters does not assign this word to males. In reinforcing the culture’s perception of male as active and female as passive, the 20th-century U.S. language system’s use of the word “virgin” as exclusively female oppresses the subordinate part of the binary – female – by establishing male as the ideal in the language user’s mind. Similar to the parallel of active/passive with masculinity/ femininity in the 20th-century U.S. English language system and culture, Gilman exposes a parallel of active/passive and civilized/ savage. This does not necessarily suggest that the culture expects the ‘savages’ to act passively; rather, it views a ‘savage’ people as one that is naturally to be subdued by a ‘civilized’ people. Gilman reveals that the male characters’ culture takes pride in exploring and colonizing ‘virgin’ lands and cultures: “[Terry’s] great aim was exploration. He used to make all kinds of a row because there was nothing left to explore now, only patchwork and filling in, he said” (3). Once the males learn of Herland, Terry insists, “This is our find” (7). However, it is not only Terry who possesses the colonial spirit; the narrator, Van, portrays it as a common masculine value: “There was something attractive to a bunch of unattached young men in finding an undiscovered country of a strictly Amazonian nature” (7). Indeed, Van’s use of language –such as the term ‘savages’ for members of cultures that he and the males 120 determine ‘uncivilized’ according to their standards – reflects his deep roots in a colonial culture. Corresponding with the active role assigned to males in androcentric culture, the male characters assign the active role to ‘civilized’ cultures. After discovering the skillfully woven cloth, one of the male characters declares that “[t]here couldn’t be such a place – and not known about,” expressing the belief that the ‘savage’ people’s knowledge of Herland is irrelevant (7). Just as androcentric terms establish the male as the ideal in the user’s mind, colonialist terms like ‘savage’ – with its suggestion of a culture that should be subdued by ‘civilized’ culture and thus rendered passive – reinforces the subordination of all peoples that the language users view as not conforming to the ideal of ‘civilized’. Because Herland culture and language center on the transcendental Motherhood, Herlander is gynocentric – an inversion of U.S. English. Sixty years before “Laugh of the Medusa”, Gilman fulfills Hélène Cixous’ exhortation to all female writers that “woman must write woman” (Cixous 877). The capitalization of the word “Mother” and “Motherhood” suggests an inverse of the Christian God as ‘Father’ that prevails in the culture of the male characters and the 20th-century U.S. reader. Van observes that the Herlanders “were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity…but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People” (69). The use of the term ‘fecundity’ supports the androcentric association of the female body with land. In contrast to the passivity assigned to females and female sexuality in the androcentric culture, the gynocentric Herlander language system assigns an active role to mothers – evident in the use of the words “Conscious Makers” (69). Furthermore, the use of capitalization in the latter part of the quote that compares motherhoods reflects a view of the mothers as partners in the deified “Human Motherhood” (67). Thus, the Herlander language system and culture values femininity as the ideal. In his ignorance of the possibility of femininity as ideal, Terry assumes that upon entering Herland he will “get [him]self elected King [of Herland] in no time” (10). Because of his indoctrination with an androcentric language system and culture, he perceives the male as naturally superior in the male/female binary. As a result, he expects that, even in the absence of males, masculinity will remain as an ideal in a culture of only females. 121 The reader may assume that the reason a male/female binary does not exist in Herland is a lack of an idea of ‘male’ to which ‘female’ may be subordinate. However, the Herlanders are aware of the historical existence of males in their society and still choose not to regard this memory of male as ideal. His assumptions are an example of the overwhelming influence of the language system on the beliefs of the individual, an illustration that allows the text to assert the existence and subjectivity of the logos. Just as Herlanders demonstrate the inverse of U.S. androcentrism, they also demonstrate the inverse of colonialism in their language and culture. As Zava explains Herlander history and comes to “a time when they were confronted with the problem of ‘the pressure of population,’” she makes a point to explain that the Herlanders did not “start off on predatory excursions to get more land from somebody else, or to get more food from somebody else, to maintain their struggling mass” (69). Although Gilman filters this passage through the narrator, Van, the ideas reflect Zava’s account of Herlander history. Zava’s comparison of the colonialist spirit with predatory instinct suggests that Herlander culture views colonialism as destructive to the colonized people group rather than an improvement on that people group. Their language as portrayed in the text lacks colonialist language, which would subordinate one or more groups of people by assigning terms like ‘savage’. Conversely to the U.S. Americans, Herlanders are eager to learn from outside cultures and initially assume that any “bi-sexual” culture is superior because of the cultural richness that Herlanders assume this quality will provide (56). The Herlander history illustrates a culture whose values are directly opposite the males’ U.S. culture. This does not suggest a logos of savage/civilized because the very terms ‘savage’ and ‘civilized’ indicate a colonialist point of view. Instead, the Herlanders demonstrate a passive/active binary with ‘passive’ as privileged regarding the interrelations of cultures. Gilman’s suggestion that the Herlanders are puzzled by U.S. androcentricm and colonialism demonstrates that the Herlander language system, being thus inverted in relation to the male characters’ language system, simultaneously reflects and shapes Herlanders’ cultural values. Despite its critique of 20th-century American logos, the text 122 does not escape logocentrism. Rather, it inverts the center of English, providing the reader an opportunity to reconsider her understanding of language and, ultimately, reality. Toward the end of the novel, Van explicitly recognizes the inversion in the language systems. He reflects on the opposite connotations that the words male and female assume between the two cultures that center on opposite logoi: When we say men, man, manly, manhood, and all the other masculine derivatives, we have in the background of our minds a huge vague crowded picture of the world and all its activities… And when we say Women, we think Female – the sex. (135) Van contrasts this androcentric language system with that of the Herlanders, claiming that, to them, “the word woman called up all that big background…and the word man meant to them only male – the sex” (135). The text’s language remains the same – English, and the signifiers are the same – “woman” and “man”. The difference [Derrida’s différance] is in meaning and connotation. Thus, the attentive reader discovers that such seemingly static definitions ofmasculinity and femininity depend on culture and vary according to each culture’s central logos. The reader may then apply this principle to all signifiers and consequently understand that language is an arbitrary system of signs. Therefore, the text dislodges the attentive reader from her comfortable perception that language and truth are absolute and static and rather than dynamic and culturally shaped systems. The result is a reader whose thoughts now transcend her language system, even though she may remain monolingual (or whatever she was before). She must now question her preconceptions because of her awareness of the logos that affects her idea of Truth at the most basic level. Her transcendence has equipped her to weave her thoughts in and out of language systems and cultures, searching, analyzing, and questioning the existence of Truth.

Works Cited Cixous, Hélène, Keith Cohen, and Paula Cohen. "The Laugh of the Medusa." Signs 1.4 (1976): 875-93. JSTOR. Web. 3 Oct. 2013. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. 123 Print. ---. “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978. 278- 94. Print. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Herland." The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings. Ed. Denise D. Knight. New York: Penguin, 2009. 1-143. Print. Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. Print. lines we love

Finally, bursting through the old, A glimpse of white, a glance of gold. Alexis Krut

I’m not sure why they exist, but worms are more interesting than the nothing so I pick one up and roll it between my fin- gers. It’s comforting: the presence of movement and texture on my skin. Sarah Redding

Sweaters are like friends that hug you when you’re down. And, if your sweater is oversized, it also cups your bum. 124 So, maybe sweaters are more like friends with bennies. Molly Durrill

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A joust! Crash! i lose I ache The ground tastes cold David Sellers acknowledgments

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