volume 1, issue 3, 2011/2012

volume 1, issue 3, 2011/2012 Editor: Justin Greer Fiction Editors: Lorraine Maynard, Dusty Cooper Poetry Editors: Anna Cooper, Ashley Williams Art Editor: Jennifer Rodriguez Web Developer: Casey White Graphic Designer: Hillary Lowry Production Assistant: Austin Payne Print Production Advisor: Alison Pelegrin Online Production Editor: Joel Fredell Faculty Committee: Richard Louth, Ziba Rashidian, Leigh Rourks

Manchac Review is Southeastern Louisiana University’s creative journal, updated continuously online as Manchac Review Online and published annually in print format. Manchac Review Online is an interactive experience including fiction, poetry, drama, art, music/lyrics, and video. Submissions are accepted all year. Submissions accepted when an edition is in press will be held for the next edition. All submissions published online are considered for publication in the selective print format at the end of each spring semester. The responsibility for the selection and editing of all content, including grammatical and mechanical emendations, is assumed by the editors. All editors are students of Southeastern Louisiana University. Editorial advice, financial management, and assistance are provided by the Southeastern Louisiana University Department of English; Department Head, Dr. David C. Hanson; and the Southeastern Writing Center. Views and opinions expressed in Manchac Review are those of the individual authors and are not intended to represent the official views of Southeastern Louisiana University’s administration, faculty, staff, or students; the faculty committee; or the Southeastern Writing Center. All depictions of events and characters in published works are fictional, and any resemblance to real events or persons is coincidental. Some pieces contain explicit language and content depicting adult themes and situations.

Cover image: Oil Spill, by Shalon Depriest.

© 2012 by Southeastern Louisiana University. It’s been an exciting year for Manchac Review. From a renaming to a redesign of the website and journal, our publication has undergone drastic change. Since we’ve transitioned to a focus on online publishing, many the works in this print edition will be familiar. We wanted to increase the value of our print journal by submitting the already fantastic works of poetry and prose to another round of judging. This time, however, we handed the reins over to the faculty at Southeastern Louisiana University. Richard Louth, Ziba Rashidian, Leigh Comacho Rourks and our Print Production Advisor, Alison Pelegrin, were all gracious enough to lend their eyes as readers. From the online submissions, they chose what they think are the best representations of the writing taking place at our University over the past two semesters. We supplemented their selections with a few selections that they did not vet. I would like to acknowledge the hard work of the people who have made this journal possible. First and foremost, I thank our contributors. Without their hard work and creativity, we wouldn’t have anything to publish. Southeastern’s Creative Writing program is extraordinarily nurturing and has produced many fine writers of both prose and poetry over the years. For that, I would like to thank the many teachers who diligently work day and night to help their students become spectacular writers. Specifically, I would like to thank Jack Bedell, Richard Louth, Beverly Marshall, Alison Pelegrin, and Jayetta Slawson, all of whom have encouraged their students over the past academic year to submit to our journal. I would also like to thank the hard work of the Southeastern Writing Center, through which Manchac Review is produced. The staff’s help with public relations and the use of facilities have been indispensable. Dr. Jason Landrum, the Coordinator of the Writing Center, has been more than helpful in temrs of consultanting about the journal and planning events such as our open-mic nights. Along the same lines, Dr. David Hanson, the English Department Head, has been extremely instrumental in finding Production Advisors, and we are grateful for his constant encouragement. Dr. Fredell and Ms. Pelegrin have been exemplary advisors. When asked to guide the publication, they truly stepped up to the call. Without their dedication, the journal would not be what it is today. For that matter, I couldn’t have done anything without my editorial team. The two Fiction Editors, Lorraine Maynard and Dusty Cooper, read through many, many submissions. The same can be said for our Poetry Editors, Ashley Williams and Anna Cooper. Since our publication is comprised mainly of prose and poetry, their work is more than important. Our Art Editor Jennifer Rodriguez, who has been with the journal the longest, remains a vital part of our team, and her connection with the Art Department is essential. Two people, in particular, have helped in the move From Gambit to Manchac Review immensely. The Web and Graphic Design team of Hillary Lowry and Casey White has, apart from creating a beautifully constructed website, designed our new logo and helped us to create a new label for the journal. There are many instrumental people in the production of this student-run publication. They are all volunteers and have taken on the task with gusto and a happy disposition. Much of this year has been devoted to learning and creating new ways for running the journal. They’ve all had patience with the transition and with me. For that, I am ever thankful. I leave Southeastern at the end of the Spring semester 2012 with confidence in the journal. The new identity of Manchac Review is strong and well founded. We draw from more than forty years worth of experience and tradition. I also leave hopeful for the future of both this print edition and the online edition, and hopeful for the community of writers they represent. Manchac Review can be instrumental in the further development of this community, a pat, I hope, we have already started down. I pass the pen to the next editor with a book of notes, and ideas, and guidance in the creation of the journal. I know it will be in good hands. So, thank you, reader, for picking up our journal and for taking a moment to help me recognize the extraordinary people who’ve made this all possible.

Justin Greer Editor Letter from the Editor

Zachary Nelson Paint It, Black 1 Sarah Drago The Truth of the Matter 7 Sean Keogh Ode to Emily Dickinson 8 Chad Foret War Spirits 9 Ann St. Micheal Humpback Whales Represent Order 16 Protection 17 Terri Ilgen The Dawn of Hope 18 Dusty Cooper Chapped Lips 22 Beneath You 23 Chad Corken Crossroads 24 Marley Stuart Ekphrastic 32 Aaron Duplantier (Alumnus) A Real Schmuck 34 Ashley Williams Evolve, Nigger 39 Chad Foret Tenement Bard 40 Before You Crush the Spiders 42 Lesley Sekulich Ephemeral 43 Michael Gautreaux We Say Our Souls, Not Ourselves 44

Contributors

Submission Guidelines Paint It, Black Z ac h a ry N e l s o n

I crossed the river road with the hot, cracked pavement burning the soles of my bare feet, the .22 hanging loosely in one hand. Jackson followed behind at some distance, crying quietly, quite reluctant, the skinny puppy held to his chest. He was murmuring to it, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. “Come on, Jack,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.” I didn’t look back when he didn’t answer, but I could hear the patter of his small feet on the road behind me. The yellow-green grass I entered came to my mid- thigh and I crossed the shallow ditch to the barbed-wire fence and turned and waited. The grass came to Jackson’s waist. He ignored me, still talking to the mutt. I put a foot carefully on the middle wire of the fence and held up the top wire with my free hand, and he went over and waited while I stepped gingerly through. I had the legs of my overalls rolled above the ankle, but a barb snagged, and I lost my balance, falling to one knee and dropping the .22. I got up, sweeping the grass, and brought up the rifle, noticing where the filthy lower leg of my overalls had yet another tear. I led the way up the levee, glancing back often. Jackson had to use one hand to half crawl on the steep grade, holding the puppy with great care to his chest. He refused any help. At the top, we looked on a forest of black willow and cypress. A live 1 oak or two. Dense marsh undergrowth. The branches seemed to sag with the wisdom they bore. It always smelled of honeysuckle and trees on this side of the levee, and usually I loved it. I looked at Jackson, the tears on his pale face, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Let’s go,” I said. We descended into the familiar woods where we’d played a hundred days past, camped out, run wild through the trees with makeshift rifles, shooting imaginary gooks as though they were no more than hordes of storybook creatures that haunted Daddy’s sleep. A place where I now sought to teach Jackson a thing or two about growing up. Being a big boy. No, a man. I was ten years old when we found that dog in the dumpster that changed us both, when we grew up too fast and parted on the bank of the Mississippi, our paths headlong, like the antlers of the buck Daddy shot that very day, stuck hard and sharp into something like adulthood.

I lifted my head from my forearm where it lay across the wooden step to the front door of our trailer and looked about. “Ready or not, here I come,” I shouted, my hands cupped around my mouth. I stood from the steps and walked out to the gravel road that ran through Black Willow Terrace. Trailers and pickup trucks, the obvious first place to seek was under these. Nothing. Daddy’s friend we called Uncle Lip was Manchac Review

underneath his new ’88 Ford pickup, an array of tools at his side, but I wasn’t looking for him and he wasn’t looking for me. From the open door of the truck, Mick Jagger sang: No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue. I could not foresee this thing happening to you, the saddest sitar twanging. I walked on, the warm gravel loosely crunching under my feet, the music fading with my progress. Silver Bullets, RVs, doublewides; some were new, and some were battered and turned half-green, and had been here longer than I’d been alive. Home to welders and pipefitters and plant workers, homebody housewives and bored kids, and at least one Vietnam Vet who’d come here perhaps to hide from things he’d never elude. I neared the dumpster at the back of the neighborhood where the gravel drive curved around back toward the river road. I had thought to head into the little red, wooden mailbox-housing. Someone always hid in there. Passing the dumpster, I heard a faint yowl from inside of it. I stopped and listened. Something was moving in there. The huge plastic flaps that served to cover it were folded back and I saw, out the corner of my eye, one of the neighborhood kids running from the mailboxes and disappearing behind a trailer, but I went around to the front of the dumpster. Something was definitely in there. It shifted, and again the muted cry. I hauled myself up, stepping onto the steel side-aperture. Jackson was in there, sitting on a busted TV, tearing at a garbage bag. It smelled awful, our communal refuse, stale beer and rotted food and I don’t even know what. 2 “What are you doing?” I said. “You know Daddy’s gonna whup you, he finds out—” “It’s a puppy,” he said. “What?” He didn’t answer. He sat among the piled waste, his small hands tearing at the white plastic bag. Egg shells and coffee grounds spilled. Crushed beer cans. A vacuum cleaner bag spewed dust and knots of hair. And sure enough, a puppy. Its matted fur was the gray of ash and it was little more than a tiny cage with hide draped over it, no bigger than a bird. Its eyes bore a light haze and didn’t focus on anything as it yammered. He removed it with great care. “Hell,” I said. “It’s a dog.” We were silent for a time while he held it in his lap and stroked its matted fur very softly. Its outsized head cast about, palsied and wobbling, taking our scent. “Where do you think it came from?” he said. I shook my head. “Come on. We better get outta here or Daddy’s gonna tan both our hides.” “Okay,” he said. “Here, give it to me.” He did. It weighed nothing in my hand, the discrete ribs, the warmth of it. I climbed down. When he got to the ground, he held out his hands and I passed it back to him. We walked back to our trailer. Paint it Black

“Whatever possessed you to climb up in there, anyways?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said, “You never found me there before.” An hour later, all other boys had gone in for the evening, and we were at the far end of the trailer by the willow with the tire swing when Daddy’s truck pulled up and backed in. He got out, flicking a cigarette-butt into the yard, and turned and removed from the seat a case of Dixie and his .30-06. The door creaked when he booted it shut, and he went up the steps into the trailer with not a glance our way. “Do you think he’ll let us keep it?” Jackson said. I sighed. “I got no idea, Jack.” I turned and went to go inside. “Lee?” he said. “What?” He was sitting cross-legged by the tree with the dog in his lap, looking up at me. “What is it?” I said. He didn’t answer. The waning day was warm, very humid, and mosquitoes were beginning to swarm. I swatted absently. I could smell the trees and the refuse on the air, and looked back at the door to the trailer. “Alright,” I said, sighing again. “I’ll ask him.” As I approached the door, Daddy emerged and came down and opened the tailgate of his pickup, folding back a black tarpaulin that had covered something. A buck lay there, dead eyes and tongue lolling. A great rack of antlers. I approached and was fingering the point of an antler when Daddy came with a rope, saying “Watch 3 out, son.” When I stepped back, he got a slipknot around the throat of the buck and pitched the slack of the rope over a branch of the willow he’d parked under. He had towed it out and hauled it up, and was working at tying the rope around the trunk, when neighborhood men began to turn out by ones and twos, gathering around with beer and cigarettes, bearing lawn chairs and ice chests. An air of festival or ritual or both about these rough men. An old lard bucket was placed beneath the buck. A knife flashed with care. And from a slit, groin to sternum, the buck’s innards poured out with all the gravity of time from a fractured hourglass. Jackson and I watched in silence for hours while with deft coordination the buck was reduced to meat, and passed around with slick red hands over a darkly stained wooden workbench. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed. Crushed beer cans bearing bloody fingerprints formed an ever growing mound in the grass as night descended. And the glaring light from a bare bulb hung from an extension cord next to the buck’s severed head where it watched with black eyes its own parts being wrapped in paper and catalogued as if for inventory, and then divvied up, and the congregation dispersing without further ceremony. Tired men going home to feed wife and child. Daddy sat on the steps, smoking in the dark with the dim red glow passing slowly to his bearded face and back to rest, his arm loosely hanging over his bent knee. I sat on a lower step. If he noticed my presence at all, he made no sign of it. He was Manchac Review

staring up at the buck’s head. Or, maybe, somewhere beyond it. Even in the dark I could see where his hands were blood-stained. They could have been black with motor oil or something blacker still. He swallowed from a can and set it by and smoked some more. “Daddy?” I said. “Mmm.” “Can I ask you somethin’?” “You can ask.”

“No,” he said, “We can’t afford to feed no dog noways. Especially with me laid off like I been.” And when he called with a slur for Jackson to bring forth the mutt, he inspected it by the harsh light of the bulb that had hung from the tree, and told us it would die anyway. That it had to be put down. Then he turned off the light, as though the very sight had hurt his eyes. “But—” I said. “I said no. Besides, it’s sufferin’. You don’t want that, do you?” “We could take care of it,” Jackson said. “We could make it get better.” “I ain’t tellin’ you twice.” I could tell Jackson had started to cry quietly. I said, “Can we at least wait till tomorrow?” Daddy didn’t answer for a while. I thought he had lost all patience, but then 4 he said, “You ain’t bringin’ that thing in the house.” After a while he rose to go inside, stopped half in the door and turned, “Don’t you be namin’ that thing, you hear?” I nodded. Then he went in, leaving me and Jackson and the dog. We improvised a tent in the front yard that was little more than worn Visqueen draped over the clothesline, dryrotted window screens propped at each end against the mosquitoes. We spent the night in lamplight, sweating in the humidity, and ate bologna sandwiches. Jackson tried to feed the dog some meat from his own sandwich, but it wouldn’t eat, and that too made him cry. “How does he know it’s gonna die?” he said. “You just have to trust him, I guess.” He lay on the G.I. Joe sleeping bag with the puppy curled under his arm, and spoke to it long into the night while I faced away, listening. When I knew he was sleeping, I sat up and watched him. The dog under his arm blinking its milky eyes at me. “Don’t look at me,” I said to it, then turned out the lamp and lay back beside Jackson with my arms folded behind my head, and stared out at the buck’s head in silhouette against the night. Sixteen points I counted. That skull soon to join the nine arrayed behind the lattice-skirting of the trailer.

We stood on the bank of the Mississippi watching as the mighty flow passed Paint it Black on as always, without cease, wide and dark. That murky, deep undertow to take life down and away. We had argued in our trek through the woods as to who would shoot the dog, but in the end he gave it to me and I held it in one hand and the .22 in the other, looking at them in turn and then at Jackson. He was still crying, but I could see him fighting it, and he spoke without tremor in his young voice when he said, “We could pray at least. Can we pray? And God can take it and watch out for it?” The dog squirmed weakly in my fist, and I bent and let it stand on the bank among the willow grass where it searched with its whited eyes, sniffing, and just lay down as if it knew why we’d come to this place. Smelling perhaps the fear and uncertainty and the gun-oil, and surmising my intent. “Well,” I said, gazing across the river where lay woods foreign to me, the dark and continuous shoreline, ever-present columns of smoke from some unseen chemical plant just beyond. “I asked Daddy,” I said. “You have to ask Him.” After a moment, he nodded. When he spoke, it was an evocation such as only children can construct. A direct and solemn address that, to this day, I can’t quite remember. Though the last thing he asked was, “Would you please look out for my Daddy too?” When he grew silent, I chambered a round in the .22 and thumbed off the safety, putting the end of the barrel to the small thing on the ground between us. The barrel not an inch from the space below the skull, as Daddy had once shown me. “Lee, wait!” he cried. But the flat pop of the rifle rang out as I squeezed the 5 trigger. Such a weak sound that was lost immediately in the openness. And then only the sound of the river’s passage, as though nothing had occurred at all. His eyes swam anew and he turned and ran back to the trees where he disappeared, leaving me standing by the river with the gun hanging limply, and the puppy silent and still as the earth on which it lay. I called, “You named it, didn’t you? Jack?” But he was gone. I stayed for a long time with the sun disappearing gradually behind the shad- owed forest on the far bank. I sat, setting the rifle by my side, and studied the dog. It might have been asleep. But, no, it was no sleeper. Just before dark, I lifted it and scooted forward, my feet disappearing into the darkling brown river. Committing the body to the flow, I watched it float away among drifts of wood and trash until I could no longer make out its form among the detritus, and it was gone. Like the last moment of boyhood. Never to be called back. A formless black garbage bag, tattered, empty, drifted from somewhere upcountry. Anywhere but here. The current was tugging at my legs and I pulled my feet out of the river, watching the bag pass in a slow clockwise turn. Soon, it too was gone. When I stood, I noticed a smear of the dog’s blood on the palm of my hand where I had held it. It was slick on my fingers, and I quickly wiped it on the leg of my overalls and picked up the rifle. Manchac Review

I trudged through the woods in the dark, somehow getting lost, tripping over cypress knees. The muck sucked at my feet. It was warm in the August night and the humidity cloyed. All the trees hung over me, the moss like the beards of wise men cut away like scalps and hung here as a caution to those who would seek such wisdom. I began to cry when I fell to hands and knees and dropped the .22 in the marsh and could not find it. Feeling around the opaque swamp water that seemed to deepen from elbow to shoulder as I crawled. I prodded unnamed things, dead leaves floating about me. Something scuttled across my hand, sent me sprawling back on my ass, splashing frantically, bawling. Jackson stepped from behind a tree then, as if he had been searching for me and knew exactly where I’d be. He didn’t say anything, seeing me cry for the first time, so calm and pale in the dark. Squatting before me, he extended his hand. It was black with mud where he must have fallen as I had, and I thought of the blood on Daddy’s hands the night previous. Black and indelible as the USMC insignia tattooed on his forearm. Like the blood of those marines he’d call out to in wracked sleep, and no less like the blood of the very gooks he’d warn against, all blood gone black with time. Looking up to him, I stopped crying and took his hand and he pulled me up. Turning away he said, “It’s this way.” Then I followed him home.

6 The Truth of the Matter Sa r a h D r ag o

Beneath the bows of enveloping silence and the stillness That veiled the soil between the folds of your hands, I breathed in with my lungs, tasting the trills Of light that dripped from the boughs and the branches and the winter That entombed us within a provenance much thinner than That which we remembered—as the sunlight seeped And splintered— And my fingers felt your contours within the sightless, soft December Yes, as the sunlight seeped and splintered in the flightless folly of December, And I knew that the season had plagiarized such splendor As I lost you between the boughs and branches of the winter.

7 Ode to Emily Dickinson S e a n K e o g h

This object—natural— lodged in my throat: a substance of sadness, later I wrote.

This oxygen—your voice— makes my head swim: my eyes are cups; tears over the brim.

This day—this time!— we spent together: minute yet infinite; nothing but forever.

8 War Spirits C h a d F o r e t

Most wars that Greg had heard of took the lives and futures of human beings. This one just took a Saturday. He and Jessie hold hands and eat hot dogs without condiments and watch the grays and blues have at it. Some men crawl off the field and grab a hot dog and a Styrofoam cup of coffee and watch the rest of the fight with the spectators. Jessie calls them deserters. A soldier in blue who is supposed to be dead pulls a cigarette from his pocket and sets it in his mouth on the wet of his lower lip. He lights it and waves to a little boy to their right who has been covering his ears ever since the first cannon shot sounded the alarms of every car in the parking lot. After a few moments, the fighting quiets a bit and the boy shakes the ringing out of his head and ducks under the caution tape to yell at his father. “You died good, Dad!” His dad gives a thumbs-up, takes a drag of his cigarette and puts his head back on the ground. “You died real good!” The boy leans into the tape and stretches it against his nose like a yard of blond mustache. Some kids watch quietly either out of respect for the history they have been taught to respect or the more prevalent respect for their father’s belt should they act out of line. 9 Greg glances around at what he considers a zoo. There’s more substance to the napkins that people are using to wipe the mustard from their lips than most of the outfits in the audience. Male and female chests hardly covered by cloth and sleeves are about as common amongst the group as a glass of champagne. The smoking soldier’s widow wears a necklace that resembles the placement of stones around a departed pet’s fresh burial mound. Strung-together paperweights. It is June and Greg is wearing his only pair of shorts for the first time this year. He fished them out of the bottom drawer of his dresser after Jessie joked about want- ing to see him show off his self-described glow stick legs to the world. Greg has always thought that without his humor Jessie wouldn’t waste her time on him. Not that she was a bad person. Quite the opposite, he thinks. He knew he didn’t measure up to most guys his age. He wasn’t very strong, having never been an athlete or “one of the guys” or that kid who comes home with scraped knees. He watches her dark hair lift from a quick breeze as she stands facing the cannon smoke and laughter. A man drops a crushed can to his feet and Greg watched the little bit of swill left inside drip onto the ground. Disgusting, he thinks. People that drank always acted that way. Both were disgusting. They were made for each other, man and can. Jessie has only come to the reenactment at the request of her grandfather, who’s a veteran. Apparently the old man saw some combat in the Vietnam War, but that’s what the Vietnam War is most famous for so Greg doesn’t really care. What’s done is done, he thinks. Greg is merely Jessie’s tagalong. He came to ride along with Jessie since Manchac Review

she got her license and the reenactment was just a place to drive to. He’s amazed there’s even something this big going on in Arcola. The old man snoozes to their right in his chair near where the grass meets the dirt road. His snoring occasionally outmatches even the cannon fire. Greg had always found Jessie’s grandpa intimidating and he made it a point to avoid any sort of conflict he couldn’t win with words. Not that Greg could easily heckle him either way. He wasn’t enough of an ornery old Southern man. He didn’t drool. He wasn’t racist. He rarely ate and he ate neatly when he did, so he never had food gather at the wrinkly corners of his mouth. Greg called her grandfather “him” until Jessie haggled him up to “that old guy” and then “sir.” He smelled strange, but Greg couldn’t really get on his case about having lived seven decades. They had only spoken to one another once before. Jessie mentioned that he was a decorated veteran and Greg told him, though not genuinely, that he appreciated her grandfather’s efforts and that he bet it was tough. The old man told Greg that a person fights or doesn’t and that young people need to shut their mouths and learn to die right. With age come wisdom and a strange scent. The trio’s backs are to the dirt road and an ROTC group marches behind them the entire day and does its duty by helping people park their SUVs so as not to get mud on their tires. Some are friends, the ones that trip the heels of the boots ahead of them, and some with wandering eyes would rather be alone and in the shade. Very few stare straight ahead. 10 Greg is thirsty again and Jessie for the first time, so they head to the concessions and glance to make sure the sleeper is still sleeping and he sure as shit is. “Lemonade or soda?” Greg says. “That’s apparently all they had to drink back then.” “Wow, life sure was hard.” They can’t decide what to drink, so they go with one of each and decide to mix them. “Tastes like defeat,” Jessie says. “Tastes like defeat took a piss in my mouth.” Neither takes a second sip. Judging from the cannon fire and laughter, there is still war going on. They walk back to check on Jessie’s grandpa and the state of the Confederacy. Jessie laughs at her own jokes before finishing them as if to assure Greg they are worth the wait. One of his favorite things is her pre-humor humor. The war remains but the old man does not. Jessie spins and hands the drink to Greg and says, “I’ll go this way,” pointing to the museum, “and you go that way,” pointing toward the makeshift village. Two points, she’s gone and Greg is left with a beverage no one plans to or should drink. Senile old coot, he thinks. Greg makes his way through a labyrinth of tents recently set and the occasional relics, bases of buildings nearly unidentifiable from what weather and years can do to a structure. The day’s troops have made the ruins of this town their RV park, and Greg War Spirits watches men enter and exit tents the color of dying grass and strange greens whose doors fall in tapioca folds. The men who have shed their gray or blue flesh appear in their long johns, almost a reality again. There is booze and faux guns and people stretching and napping on sawhorses after a long day’s play. They can almost draw you in with it, the horseplay, he thinks. Greg comes to the gate of a cemetery. He has been inside funeral homes but never a cemetery. He elected to stay home anytime his parents would visit their parents’ graves. They died when he was young and he had never gotten to know them. The gate is a rusted gray, as if mercury and blood had been mixed, and bars twist and twirl amongst themselves in a cyclone of steel from the ground in an arch and then back into the ground several feet away. A hearty walk away, there is a wheelchair with the faint semblance of a man filling it. Greg moves along the rows, the aisles, of named stones and there is a greater silence here than he has ever known. The old man sits next to a plaque that Greg doesn’t read in-depth. There are names and dates. Written words, in themselves void of sound, only heighten the stillness. He acknowledges his own discomfort. “Cemetery, eh?” Greg says, taking solace in his wit that almost seems beyond reach in this moment. “Jumping the gun there, aintcha?” The old man sits with his eyes closed, the wrinkles of his lids like collapsed blinds. “Um,” Greg says, unsure of how to approach the old man. “Jess is worried… She’s out looking for you. What are you doing out here?” 11 “Watching the battle,” the old man says. Greg’s spine is struck by a touch of winter, and the sudden sound of Jessie’s voice is the little bit of warmth he needs. “Heyyyy. Guyyyys,” she says, minding her volume as she walks into the cemetery. “Have you been here the whole time?” she says. “What are you doing just leaving without saying anything, Pawpaw?” “I needed to get away from those kids and their sandbox war.” Greg watches the old man whose eyes have opened for his granddaughter. “Hey, can we, like, leave? I’m…pretty exhausted,” Greg says. “Are you okay?” Jessie says. “Yeah, just all this…running around, I guess.” She complies and Greg moves from the cemetery grounds more quickly than he had entered. They pass the men at camp and cross into the gravel parking lot. As they near the car, Greg hears the sound of rough, shifting rocks crunching beneath pressure. Jessie says it sounds like some asshole peeling out of the lot. What may have been a vehicle peeling out of the parking lot is actually two kids, one in a ROTC uniform, one in overalls. They mix grunts and blows on the ground and on their feet and may have been for several minutes. “Stay back, Jessie,” the old man says before Greg can think of speaking. He watches Jessie move closer to her grandpa. Greg’s heart sinks for a moment. Manchac Review

To each boy, there is nothing else but the other as they push away and run back in again for more. He has never witnessed a fight outside of cinema and he turns to Jessie and she is motionless, her focus on the young animals. His eyes are more on her than the noise and knuckles. He hears less and notices that Overalls has Uniform on the ground and even though they’re kids, there is still hate behind those hairless faces. Overalls has a fist clenching camouflage and pressing down while the other holds resistant arms or palms Uniform’s face as he grinds the rear of his head into gravel. The birds make noise like high-pitched machinery. Whir and clamor. There is new blood in Greg just from watching. It runs through warmer than normal and wonders if Jessie feels it or something similar. Without thought, with his lower half, Greg moves and then Jessie is watching Greg grab Overalls to let Uniform get a chance to breathe. And then Greg is truly educated. Once in his eye and once in his nose. Greg is on the ground and in moments Jessie moves to him. From the grassy area near the battlefield comes a swarm of camouflage. Five or so ROTC kids bear down on Overalls and he already saw them and is scrambling over a fence. Three move after him but it’s for fun now, a chance to do something besides direct traffic; a chase is what it is. Others stay with their friend and some throw rocks at the fence trying to get a little bit of Overalls before he goes away for good. “Thank ya’ll,” Uniform says. “Kid didn’t pay to get in. When I came up to him, he just....” Uniform sits with his head resting down between his knees, spent. Greg just wants to lie in silence. He doesn’t want to hear about why or what 12 or whose fault or be where he is at all. He just wants to be in a moment away from this one. He doesn’t look at Jessie, but she is trying to lift his spirits and have a better look at his eye and doesn’t even see his battered nose which he hides like a bad tattoo. Even with all the pain, he doesn’t want to be a bruised thing to Jessie. His words are usually quick, strong. At this moment even he has nothing to say. Through one eye he sees Jessie’s grandpa and he’s smiling. Fucking smiling, Greg thinks. “Let’s go, Jess,” Greg says. “Yeah, but we need to take care of your face first.” “Let’s just get some ice and go.” He can hear a woman on the loudspeaker say, “Thank you, thank you, folks, for coming out to support our efforts,” as he lies and watches the sky dance a bit. “Don’t forget to visit the museum. And we’d like to thank Martha’s group for the lemon cake and anyone who put in for the punch. God bless Ameri-” The woman fumbles with the loudspeaker; there is feedback and then nothing. The sky is red. So much so that it seems the sun is nearer than ever, yet it has almost left them. Greg is lying in the backseat of Jessie’s car and he does not speak. He watches the trees and sky outside the window unfold like a story in a flip book. Jessie does not speak either and joins Greg in the instinctual silence that follows a good hurt. Though he doesn’t speak, Greg flinches when the old man breaks the quiet as if being struck another time. “That’s what happens when privilege meets a wall.” The old man’s speech is verbal sloth but his words are heavy. War Spirits

Jessie turns her head toward the passenger seat. “Okay, Pawpaw.” “There’s…only contact. And maybe someone learns something. Maybe.” “Please. That’s enough. Be nice to Greg.” To Greg, their destination seems forever away. They pull up to the old man’s house where he left his car and Jessie parks in the garage. “He don’t need nice. He’s had plenty nice,” the old man says as he rocks his way out of the passenger seat. Jessie wheels the chair around for him to slide into. “Enough,” she says. The old man moves toward the door leading in and Jessie helps Greg inside and her hands on his shoulders give him warmth again, like that first spray of a hot shower. She sits him on the couch between the old man in his chair and a tall cabinet. He lies down. Jessie brings a cold glass of water for him, but Greg just presses it against his head. She looks but cannot find medicine. “Pawpaw, you don’t have what I need. I’m gonna run to the store and grab something.” “You don’t need to,” Greg says. She really sorta does, he thinks. The door slams without her humoring his stubbornness and Greg and the old man are alone. Greg tries to divert his eyes from the geezer and sees a photograph of a young soldier, maybe in his mid-twenties, standing with another man and surrounded by bottles, some filled with blurry, twisted masses. The photograph is signed in neat script: Harold, South of the DMZ. “Are you Harold?” Greg says. 13 “I bet you’ve never even made a fist before,” the old man says, ignoring Greg’s question. Greg lifts his left hand and squeezes. There’s nothing familiar about it. Greg rolls from his back to his side and faces the old man, but doesn’t look at his face. “Does rock, paper, scissors count?” Greg is surprised at his own reflex of joking and quickly forgets it to place his hand over the location of the thumping in his eye. But there is laughter, and the old man doesn’t laugh like an old man, but like Jessie laughs. The old man places his hands on his wheels and turns toward the cabinet. “I’m Harold, but kids call me sir.” Harold moves toward the cabinet whose height, Greg thinks, is only limited by the ceiling above it. It must have scraped the door frame coming in. It seems to take him his last decade to get to the cabinet. Harold’s arms lift and he throws the doors of the cabinet open. Beautiful cabinet, Greg thinks. This is the first time he has admired furniture, or realized he was admiring it. It has a light, milky tone, like wooden chocolate, and rings emanate out from a knotted eye in the center of its side, its own solar system. Oak, he thinks. “Larch,” Harold says. He taps the side of the cabinet, his head still in its innards. “Normally, they’ll build boats out of it.” He opens the cabinet and he lifts off his chair with one hand and searches with the other. Greg leans in to peek inside Manchac Review

around the old man and it isn’t hard since the man doesn’t weigh much, his loosely hanging linen shirt still comes nowhere near to revealing his torso. Greg sees a collec- tion of liquor. “Just as good for keeping liquid inside as outside.” Dozens of bottles are lined up like crayons in a box. “Labels,” Harold says, “are where the class is. The darker the label, the brighter the mood you’ll be in.” Greg is shocked the man is talking so much and Harold catches himself before he gets too excited, obviously interested in more than merely drinking alcohol. “Your nose looks better. Compared to your eye, at least. It’s going to be more dull, but you’ll live it for a few days. How’s it feel?” “Um…fine,” Greg says, blinking his left eye an extra time for every thump in his head. “This is called a ‘bruiser,’ Harold says. He mixes the black and blue labels of his favorite whiskey, something he tells Greg should never be done, and pours the mix- ture into two eight ounce glasses. “A bit of the bruise is fine every once and again.” He wishes Jessie was around to see the old man chattering, or did he always talk to her like this? Harold sets his glasses down next to the bottles which share similar logos of a man sitting at a bar. Drinking, of course. The man looks back and smiles like an idiot but in a way that makes Greg think there’s something to it, idiocy. He places the bottles back onto the shelf and shuts the glass doors that close with a click as if clocking out for the day. He returns with two glasses held tightly together in the palm of his hand. 14 He spills nothing, and Greg finds the sight of an old man planning to down two glasses of liquor on his own amusing. “Why do you drink?” Greg says. He had tried a beer once and didn’t care for it. Most people that did it seemed to be careless. “Different reasons,” Harold says. “Most selfish one, I guess, is you kinda feel nothing. Sometimes, though, you feel the world. It’s nice even imagining you’re in tune with it. Or that it’s simple enough to understand for a while.” That doesn’t sound all that selfish to Greg, whose idea of selfishness is drinking for the joy of losing yourself. “What’s that picture of?” Greg says, pointing at Harold, South of the DMZ. “Me and a Southerner from Vietnam. He made snake wine. The first sip of alcohol I ever tasted had a cobra in it.” Greg’s eyes widen not so much from disgust as fascination. “They soaked venomous snakes in grain alcohol. It burned like a disease going down, kid.” Greg slowly raises his hand towards his throat. “It could blind you. Kill you. So can most other things. And that Vietnamese, boy, he made that drink. He was the only person in the village that spoke to us, just because he was the only one who spoke English and our translator defected shortly after we arrived.” “What’s he doing now?” War Spirits

Harold has a bit of the bruise. “He’s dead. People’s army went to claim his bottles. You didn’t have much else but smoke and drink worth keeping conscious for. He sat in the mud with his rifle to defend the wine his father taught him to make and he died in the same spot. Heard when we got back from recon they took all but one little container he had on him. Dickless north skunking up the south.” They sat for some seconds in silence. “It hurt,” Greg says. “Being hit.” “That it?” “And…it was embarrassing. I felt naked.” Harold has another sip of his bruise. “Wasn’t really your fight. But fights like that,” Harold says, “are what I miss the most. Black eyes are great. Just a temporary color. War is only…blackness. When you’re toe-to-toe on a real battlefield, there are no blows…no cigarette breaks. There’s only one lifetime against another. Be happy with this. It’s better to feel naked than nothing at all.” There was less and less pain in Greg’s eye. It seemed to be shrinking. “Say, Greg, what do you think about stepping on the battlefield with an old man?” He slides the second glass of liquor toward Greg, meant for him from the start. “No, no, I’d rather no—” “God dammit, Greg, you’re either drinking this,” Harold says, tilting his bruiser towards Greg, “or this.” Harold pulls out a glass bottle with a cobra emblazoned across its front. It is small, able to rest in the bowl of his upturned palm. “It’s snake’s 15 blood wine. My pal’s last bottle. You want to be one of the only kids of your generation who’ll ever get a taste of Vietnam?” “Sir, Mr. Harold, I don’t want eithe—” “It’s no wonder Jessie was so caught up watching those boys tussle,” Harold says, turned away from Greg, hiding a smile. “She never gets to see a man her age. That’s probably what she needs a bit more of.” Harold hears a near vomit and when he turns sees a literal one and an empty glass. Greg is keeled over and Harold is laughing as Jessie opens the door and drops her bags. “Greg! Pawpaw, what happened?” Jessie says, frantic on the living room floor, knee to knee with the boy. “What did you do?” she says. “He’s had a long day,” Harold says. Jessie runs to grab a cloth and Greg’s eyes begin to tear as he coughs and looks at Harold. Harold squeezes the bottle in his left hand. “Ah, he’ll be fine. He’s overdue for one,” he says, glancing at his photo, its four corners tightly hugging history. Humpback Whales Represent Order A nn St. M i c h e a l

Humpback whales sit in traffic perpendicular to me. I’m on my way to a smokers’ conference and I’ve decided to walk. The causeway is long and curved— the water is uncharacteristically colored like the Caribbean. Even though I want to, I worry about the dangers of hitchhiking, but then I get kidnapped anyway.

This van smells like the old blue one my parents used to drive with the silver handles and carpeted ceiling complete with Coke stains from that time a can exploded on a hot day in July. The hot Coke stains smell 16 like rum. Though silent, my fellow passengers gesture and mouth excitedly. I am deaf and almost blind in this dream— except when I look at the lake.

I see the road curving to the north ahead and feel my body being pulled towards the south then west. I lean toward the seats and out the van. I must have flown or bounced, suddenly my calloused feet are slapping hot pavement, but careful to miss any shards of green beer bottle glass, still smoking orange filters, and those copper bits of shredded tires.

The skyline is floating on swaths of forest. I am almost there. Protection A nn St. M i c h e a l

We drew swastikas on the concrete of our car-port. They had come, and we were scared.

So we drew swastikas because we knew people got scared of that whirlybird… drew it with pink chalk.

We couldn’t spell, “Stay away bad guys.” Then they would have known we were kids.

17 The Dawn of Hope Te r r i I lg e n

Ilsa’s scream was smothered by the sounds of the arriving train. She hadn’t uttered a sound up until that point and even then I was the only one to hear. I couldn’t have done it; I don’t know how she did. Her silence was the second amazing thing I witnessed her do. The first was hiding her pregnancy from the soldiers and kapo who secured our prison, which they called Auschwitz. I wiped the sweat from her brow with the hem of my tattered dress as I thought back to that day ten months before when she first passed under the gates of death.

I first saw Ilsa as I was returning from my day of labor at the nearby Krupp factory when I heard her scream. Turning, I saw a petite, dark-haired young woman fall to her knees. Her hands clasped her ears and blood flowed between her fingers. The SS circling her was laughing as he held his trophy high. I saw the sun glint off the gold and emerald in his hand as he turned and landed a swift kick to her back causing her to lie face down in the dirt at his feet. The sight was nothing new to me, and I was hungry after spending all day making ammunition for the Germans to kill my people with, so I followed the group toward the kitchens, hoping to receive whatever scraps they deemed 18 to give us, if any. By the time I arrived back at my sleeping area in Block 24, without dinner again, she was lying on the mattress next to mine, the one that just yesterday was Olga’s. She was dressed as we all were, in one of the faded gray dresses issued to us and around her left arm was the band that signified her Jewish heritage. Someone had attempted to bandage her ears but the blood had soaked through the stained scraps of cloth and was drying on her neck. The flies were already investigating what they thought to be a new food source and I couldn’t help but wonder how she could ignore their buzzing and crawling. She must have heard my shuffling since she opened her eyes and stared defiantly into my own. “Co czy potrzeba?” she asked. Recognizing the words as Polish, I used my limited knowledge to let her know that I did not speak her language. With a look of frustration she switched to German. “What do you want?” “Food,” I replied, “but since I’m not going to get that I’ll settle for some sleep.” Shooing the flies away she sat up, eased her legs off the shelf, looked around the area and began to take off her shoes. She then reached inside and pulled out a prune and some nuts, handing them to me. “Here, they missed this and you look like you need it more than I do. My name is Ilsa.” The Dawn of Hope

“Kat.” The sound of my name coming from between her parched lips brought me back to the present. “Shhhh,” I said to her. “You need to save your strength.” Ilsa pushed herself into a sitting position, her head and shoulders pressed against the wall, and said, “Kat, I’m not going to make it through this and ...” “Stop talking that way. You are going to be just fine and that baby is going to smile up at you tomorrow,” I said as I looked around to make sure no one heard my words. “No, you must listen to me, there is something wrong.” The fear in her eyes was like ice water to my denials. If anyone would know there was a problem Ilsa would. “Get Sasha, she will help even if she doesn’t approve of me.” “But that filthy gypsy will tell the kapo and you know what will happen,” I said. “What I know is that she is the only one with the knowledge to help me that I trust. It’s either her or Dr. M. and you know he will never let my child live. Besides, she owes me. Now go before neither of us makes it through this,” Ilsa said as she lowered herself back onto the straw mattress. I gently pushed her once beautiful hair from her face before leaving to find Sasha. This is not good. The gypsy will only run to that fat old German that shares her bed and tell him, and then Ilsa will die. But I can’t not get her. I don’t know what I could do to help Ilsa and she needs help. I hope she is right and if she isn’t, Sasha will not live to see the sunrise. My mind settled on the matter as I finally spotted Sasha 19 leaving the corner of the cell that we all use as a toilet when we can’t hold it until our “allotted” time. She is a striking girl with raven hair that has somehow managed to not fall out despite the poor diet here. She is cleaner than most of us since her German wouldn’t touch her otherwise, and her dress is a less faded gray for the same reason. Hurrying up to her I whispered, “Ilsa needs you.” Expecting her to sneer, instead I noticed that her olive complexion lost all color. “What’s wrong?” she asked anxiously. “Is the baby early?” Surprised that she was aware of Ilsa’s condition I stuttered, “Y-y-yes and there is a problem.” “Go back to her, I must collect some things but will be there shortly. Make sure she gets some water and keep her comfortable. I shouldn’t be long,” she said as she turned to leave the room. Grabbing her shoulder to stop her I warned in as stern a voice as I could muster while whispering, “You better not betray her.” Jerking her shoulder from my grasp and turning to leave I heard her mutter, “As if I could betray my own blood.” Shaking my head and wondering what that was all about, I went back to Ilsa’s side. “Did you find …” “Yes I found her. She said she had to get a few things then would be here. Are Manchac Review

you sure she won’t betray you?” I asked as I settled beside her and once again wiped the sweat from her brow. “I am sure,” she said just as another contraction wracked her body. Holding her shoulders, I encouraged her to breathe as I looked around the room. It was only then that I noticed a young woman jump from her shelf and dart out the door. Through the window I saw her intercept one of the kapo and lead him away. What’s going on? Why did she do that? How could she know? Who else knows? As the latest contraction passed I felt a presence to my right. Turning, I found that someone had left a battered cup of water at the corner of our area. Looking around I noticed an old grandmother shuffling back to the doorway on the far right of the room. Do they all know? Picking up the cup I put it to Ilsa’s lips and encouraged her to drink. “You need your strength.” Taking the tiniest of sips Ilsa complied and then settled back into the thin mattress. Hearing a noise at the door, I looked up to see that Sasha had returned. She hurried over and laid the items she had concealed in her skirt on my mattress. There was a bottle of what appeared to be spirits although most of it was gone, a towel that was brilliantly white in the dinginess of our surroundings and a knife. She climbed onto our shelf and crouched on her knees beside Ilsa. “I’m here, little sister. Tell me what is wrong.” As Ilsa opened her eyes I couldn’t help but notice that where once there was only fear in her eyes, now it was mixed with hope. “The child is not ready. I can feel her 20 foot kicking at the door. You must redirect her.” Sucking in a deep breath Sasha replied, “That is dangerous. Are you sure you want me to do so?” Reaching up, Ilsa grabbed the front of Sasha’s dress twisted. “You have to.” “All right,” she said as she disentangled herself from Ilsa’s grasp. “This is going to hurt; probably more than any of the contractions you have had yet. You must be still.” “I can do that.” “Katerina,” Sasha said to me, “you have to hold her down. This will hurt her and she must not move. Her life is not only in my hands but yours as well, so now you will do well to heed my words.” I nodded my understanding, afraid that if I spoke I would say something to drive her from helping. Who does she think she is? As if I would do anything that would harm Ilsa! Taking the spirits, Sasha opened the bottle and poured a small amount onto her hands and arms before doing the same with the knife. Is she crazy? What is she going to do with that? Nodding her head at me, she indicated that I should get into place. I eased myself behind Ilsa, making my chest her pillow and my body her support. “Okay, I am ready.” Sasha moved to check the progress of the baby. The dim light coming in from the window that peeked into our shelf was not much help. Looking up she asked Ilsa, The Dawn of Hope

“Are you ready?” “Yes, just get it over wi...” Another contraction wracked her body. Sasha did nothing until it passed. “Katerina. Now.” I braced Ilsa’s shoulder as Sasha delved under her dress. I could see Ilsa’s stomach writing and as I looked into her face I noticed that her teeth had bitten into her lip. Blood began to drain down from the corner of her mouth. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the old grandmother run over to a shelf and grab a rolled up rag. She hurried over and told Ilsa to open, then placed it in her mouth. I kept my attention focused on Sasha, hoping she was not harming my dearest friend. Time seemed to stand still as I held on and comforted Ilsa, saying over and over, “Relax. Breathe.” I don’t know how long it took, maybe minutes, maybe hours, but when Sasha came out from under the dress her right arm was coated in blood. “Push Ilsa. Push now if you want to see this child,” she ordered. Push Ilsa did. To the sound of the departing train Ilsa once again screamed and this time the whole block heard it. Fear gripped my heart. Please God. I prayed. Please don’t let the kapo know. Please keep these women silent. Please let them both live. The insistent cry of a baby brought me out of my prayers. I looked down at Sasha once again as she used the knife to cut the cord, which connected the prize we had been seeking, to its mother. She laid the child in the hollow created by her legs and washed the blood from her hands in a bucket of water that seemed to appear out of nowhere. I sat transfixed as she cleaned the tiny squalling baby, a girl, and then wrapped her in the 21 pristine towel. Through it all she attempted to soothe her. “You were right. The little one is a girl,” she said as she leaned forward and handed her to Ilsa. “Now she needs a name.” From around the block came whispered suggestions. Looking up at me Ilsa smiled and said, “You are my dearest friend, the one I choose as my daughter’s godmother. Choose one of her names for me.” With tears in my eyes I said, “Nadia. In Russia it means hope.” “Nadia Adaya,” whispered Ilsa as she held the baby close. “Hope, the precious charm of God.” Chapped Lips D u s t y C o o pe r

Now, a cigarette between my lips, I thought of you, I pulled it away, Skin came with it, I tasted copper, The flavor of grief,

That day I said goodbye, I hid behind the bar, We cried as You drove, But I served vodka to strangers,

Then, later, 22 We saw each other, and it was okay, There was a moment of being strangers, But we knew better, and I said hello,

You should know, I never think of you, Now. Beneath You D u s t y C o o pe r

23 Crossroads C h a d C o r k e n

From The Florida Parish Tales—In the Deep South, past the mountains of Appalachia and the red hills of Georgia, there exists a land that few know and those that do have forgotten. Located north of Lake Pontchartrain and between the Mississippi and Pearl rivers, it has been a hotly contested land, fought over, killed over, and died over. It is a land of modern myth and mystery. Darker than the deep forests of Maine and more eerie than the lake of the same name. A place where Voodoo priestesses congregate with Protestant preachers. A melting pot, where people can trace their ancestry to the old countries. A place where secrets are kept, because to expose them would be ruin. These are the Florida Parishes and the tales thereof. Tread Lightly All Ye Who Enter Here.

5:32 a.m., 4 November 2006 The boy awoke to a deep gruff voice. “Up boy, got to be in the stand before daybreak,” said the old man. The boy rolled out of the bed quickly and quietly. He was excited beyond 24 belief. This was his first hunting trip with his grandfather and he wanted to impress the old man. He called the man grandfather, though in truth he was not quite sure how old the man was. His mother had said that he was not the boy’s real grandfather. Only that he was an old man and an ancestor of the family. This had struck the boy as peculiar, though when he asked his mother more she had hushed him, told him to do as he was instructed. That had not stopped the affection the boy felt for the grandfather. When the boy had come to stay for the summer the two had been inseparable no matter what. The boy shadowed him everywhere, causing the grandfather not inconsiderable irritation. The boy followed him like a young puppy followed an old dog. Every now and then the puppy gets nipped a bit, but also picks up a great deal of knowledge from the old dog. Many years before, the boy’s father had passed away, leaving him without the male role model that every child needs and should have. His mother had decided that on the boy’s twelfth birthday he should go stay with grandfather Coz for the summer to, in her words, man him up. The boy loved his mother. She was typical of the Florida Parishes. Hardworking, aged beyond her years, and tough, because that is how people are raised in that area. His mother was especially so. After the death of his father his mother had no job, even less money and only the skills grandfather Coz had taught her, namely, how to survive and how to shoot. She had parlayed these skills into a place on the sheriff’s office SWAT team. Kicking in meth lab doors, stuff like that. Yes, she was a hard woman; though that did not lessen the boy’s Crossroads love. After jumping out of bed the boy began to dress. He threw on underclothes, followed by a thin sweater and a pair of jeans, and then a camouflage pair of overalls. Grandfather had explained to him that the layering of clothes was the only way to stay warm. He further explained that in the Florida Parishes cold was different than it was in the north, where it was admittedly biting cold, but in the Parishes, however, it was humid at all times, even during the winter. This humidity would cut a person to the bone unless they were extremely careful and wary. He was amazed how cold the floor of the old house got. His mother’s home had central heating and the floor rarely got below a comfortable temperature. In his Grandfather’s home the floor was ice. He had asked the old man once why this was. The old man had responded in a flurry of curse words that the boy should never have heard. Once the old man had calmed he explained that the reason the floor got cold was because he had built this house himself. The fact was that the Grandfather was a great carpenter but when it came to doing insulation he just did not know what the hell he was doing. The house was small: one bedroom, one bathroom, a small kitchen, and an even smaller living room. The focus point of the house was the front porch. Like many places in the South, the front porch was where most things were done. It was constructed in such a way that there always seemed to be a breeze on the front porch. It was as if Aeolus himself had provided the house with the gift of wind. Wind that would cut like blades on cold nights and give needed relief in the heat. Most evenings the boy and his 25 Grandfather spent the last few minutes of daylight on the porch. The old man would tell the boy stories of wars long past. Normandy, Inchon, Tet, Cold Harbor. Stories about his experiences in those wars. The boy had finally gotten dressed head to toe in his camouflage apparel. He checked to make sure he had everything he would need. Underclothes, overclothes, overalls, extra ammo in his right front pocket, a pocket knife and his buck knives. He could hear his Grandfather now talking about how all real men should carry pocket knives and all hunters a buck knife. The buck knife he had chosen at the store was a classic Bowie, with a bone handle. It had not been cheap but his Grandfather had gotten it for him anyway. He realized at this point that he had forgotten—despite the cold—to put on his socks and boots. Bending over and grabbing the articles of clothing he slipped them on in a hurry so as not to anger, his Grandfather. Finally prepared, he turned and walked through the sparse living room, stepping out onto the front porch with the double thump that boots make on hollow wood floors. “You ready son?” asked the old man. “Yes Grandfather,” replied the boy. “You sure?” repeated the Grandfather. “Yes, Grandfather, I got all my clothes on, my pocket knife, my buck knife on my belt, socks, boots, warm hat. What else do I need?” Manchac Review

“The gun, son,” he replied, smiling. The boy would have slapped his head if he did not think his grandfather would have thought that a little weird. How could he have forgotten the gun? He turned quickly back to the bedroom. He opened the door to the wooden gun cabinet with care, due to its age. Inside the cabinet were a dozen or more guns but he was only after one. A Remington 700 30-06, with a Leupold scope. Grandfather had said that back when he could see, he could have hit a woodpecker’s beak from a hundred yards with that thing. The boy grabbed it gingerly. He would be killed if he damaged this gun in anyway. It was wood, red oak Grandfather had said, beautiful beyond belief. It was a weapon of the one-shot-one-kill sniper variety that was made for reliability, and accuracy at a distance. The boy pulled the leather strap over his shoulder. With his height, the gun nearly touched the ground. He walked through the house much slower than before. He stepped back onto the porch with the same thump-thump as earlier. “Give me the gun son,” said the Grandfather. The boy sluggishly handed the gun over, scared to harm it and also unwilling to let it go. The gun fell into the grandfather’s hand like the rump of an old lover. He opened the bolt in the bolt-action rifle, checking to make sure it was unloaded upon receiving it. He might be an old cuss, but he did practice safety. Too many good people had died when they had not respected the gun. “Give me five bullets son,” said the old man. 26 The boy reached deep into his pockets, pulling out four and then reaching back in for a fifth. He put them all in his left hand and pushed them over to the Grandfather’s outreaching right hand. The old man took the bullets and arranged them in his hand as if he had done this a thousand times, which he probably had, slipping the bullets down in the gun below the bolt one at a time. The boy looked on in awe. Every time he had tried to load the old gun he had fumbled it, not able to push the bullet down into the receiver. Grandfather had told him he looked like a monkey screwing a football, though the boy still had no idea what that meant. The Grandfather finished loading and closed the bolt. This meant that the gun was loaded but there was not one in the chamber and the boy would have to jack the bolt once to get a bullet into the chamber. “We’re ready son, and just in time, there goes the sun over the horizon.” The old man’s weather worn face made him look almost as ancient as he felt. He handed the gun back to the boy who took it and slid the sling over his shoulder. The Grandfather stood slowly. To the boy it sounded as if popcorn was cooking somewhere in the distance, that was how badly the old man’s joints creaked and popped. The old man finally got fully standing and reached to the corner of the porch and picked up his cane. He used it both as a third limb and as a way to reach out in front of him and feel where he was going. He had been blind since the Tet offensive. A grenade to the face had cured him of his affinity for shooting. Crossroads

The boy knew what he was supposed to do for they had walked in the woods many times. He stepped in front of his Grandfather, who put his right hand on the boy’s left shoulder, the gun being on the right side of the boy. The Grandfather used the cane to wave around in front of him to the boy’s left. They eased their way down the steps. The Grandfather used the boy as his eyes, and the boy used the knowledge of the Grandfather to move around in the woods. Over the month or longer that the boy had been staying with the Grandfather they had become a great team. They hardly made a sound stepping down onto the grass. They moved as one walking into the thick Louisiana woods. Louisiana woods are not like other woods. In other places one sees trees and below them is a separation. In Louisiana, there is only a thick covering of green. Green trees, green grass, green vines, weeds, and more. There were places in the Louisiana wilderness that a rabbit could not even get through due to the thickness. In most places of Louisiana this was dealt with as being the price of living in the place. In the Florida Parishes it took on a much more sinister quality. The woods could swallow a person. When someone walks into the forest in the Parishes the foliage closes in around that person like a noose. The closeness of the trees cutting off the flow of air like a coarse rope. The boy trusted the Grandfather to lead them in and out of the forest without harm. He had done it most of his life. He had done it while being hunted in similar jungles across the world. The old man knew his way around and the boy was learning fast. The old man had grown up in these woods. He had only been lost one time, when he was seven. After he’d spent nearly three days wandering his father had found him, 27 starving and alone. His father had torn some hide off of his boy, and then spent the next week teaching him how to survive in the wilderness that was the Florida Parishes. The boy’s clothes matched the deep green woods. His Grandfather had said that when hunting deer, a person had to look like his surroundings. Deer had great vision and an even better sense of smell. One had to always remember to be upwind of the prey. These days people had gotten into the habit of building deer stands and waiting. Waiting was part of the game. Grandfather had taught the boy to move about in the woods, to find the upwind area, to see where the deer would be and to be in the right place when the time came. That right place was usually different. Grandfather did not believe in wasting a shot. He had taught the boy that when he took a shot it had better be a shot to kill. To that end, the Grandfather was guiding the boy with his hand on his shoulder. The boy still did not quite understand how the blind man could do that, but without fail, the grandfather had always led the boy to the exact spot where they could find a deer. No matter the day, no matter the time. The boy only hoped he could be that good in the woods one day. They were walking down a dark trail and the air was crisp. The chill was getting to the boy and he zipped his jacket. The day was perfect. One of those rare days in the fall in Louisiana where the heat had died away and the humid chill was not quite there yet. The air was clearer than usual. It could be said that if one looked hard enough, Manchac Review

everlasting green of the forest could be seen. Grandfather had said that this time of year was the calm before the storm. The calm before the bad time that came when winter set in. This was the time of year where righteousness could be done without threat from the evils of the world. They moved slowly, but by the time the sun had made its appearance they had reached their destination. They were on a small hill, overlooking one of the thousands of thin creeks and sloughs and bayous that crisscrossed the area. “Cover us,” said the Grandfather. The boy did as he was trained. He started by grabbing any brush that had already fallen. His Grandfather had told him that a broken branch in the woods was as much of a giveaway as a footprint or standing out in the open. The boy moved slowly, grabbing leaves, branches, anything that could cover up their outline, hide them from potential prey. The boy’s Grandfather had told him that there were no straight lines, or perfect curves in nature. The object of camouflage was to break up these natural lines on a human being. The extra clothes and the color of them helped out. The grandfather told him that this was never enough, especially when being hunted by “Gooks”, whatever that was. The hide that the boy created would have made Carlos Hathcock proud, as well as any marine sniper. Using the available foliage and the white oak tree they were under, the boy encircled them with cover. Leaving only a couple of holes where they could push the gun through and take the shot. He hung moss on the low hanging branches, spread leaves 28 so as to cover their feet. In the middle of the hide he had piled all the green and brown foliage he could find in the early dawn light. A person could walk right by and never see the boy or his Grandfather. “That’s good enough, son. Charlie himself couldn’t find us,” said the Grandfather who was crouched down behind the hide next to the tree. The boy smiled at the rare comment of approval from his Grandfather. He moved close to the Grandfather, crouching down in a similar manner, as if sitting on their ankles. The 30-06 was resting across the boy’s knees, pointed in a safe direction. The last time they had done this was not long before deer season had started. They had seen an entire heard of deer that day. Over eight doe and two bucks, the bucks locking horns to see who would get to mate. The boy had enjoyed that day; it was one of the most peaceful in his life, which had been riotous of late. “Now son, lean close and listen.” The boy did as told, he moved only slightly though it was enough that no one would ever hear what was said. The Grandfather talked low during normal circumstances, and in the woods that voice became a whisper. In hide, like the one they were in now, a person pretty much had to read the Grandfather’s mind. “When the prey comes, move slowly, carefully. One wrong sound and the prey are gone. Faster than you can blink the damn thing will be in the next parish. Got it?” spoke the wizened old man. “Yes Grandfather,” answered the boy. Crossroads

“He will walk up to the edge of the slough to get water. When he does, he will have to lean over. When he does that you put the scope sights just below the shoulder. Take a deep breath and readjust your sights. Aim just below the shoulder so the bullet will enter the heart. Remember to squeeze the trigger slowly, hold it tight to your shoulder, but not too tight. Hold it like you will a woman in a few years. When the gun goes off, do not flinch, it will throw your aim off. Let the gun do what it will do,” Grandfather instructed in a low voice. He was squatting, smiling softly, like a great prophet teaching something to the wayward. The boy soaked in all the knowledge he had just gained. Though this was not the first time he had heard all these things. In the time he had spent with his Grandfather he had learned a lot of things. The words he had just heard was not new to him, but this would be his first kill and he would need that calm voice in his head, reminding him of what needed to happen. “Now we wait,” said the Grandfather. The old man had taught the boy how to sit still, how to wait. The first thing one did was to get into a comfortable position. For the boy, this also had to be a position where he could take his shot. The boy could not squat for that long so he took the cross-legged position. From this position he could put his elbow on his knee, supporting the gun and helping the accuracy of the shot. Over the next hour and a half that was exactly what the boy did. He did not move. His joints were in a bind and any movement now would cause a pop that the prey might hear. The hardest part was keeping the mind occupied. His Grandfather had 29 a great deal more experience at waiting. The boy was getting better at it. The trick was to make a game out of staying vigilant. Checking and rechecking the same area of the woods over and over was boring to anyone. This was especially true of a twelve-year-old boy. He had learned though. Counting the leaves around him, making sure they were always in the same spot, and if they were not, he would figure out why. He would listen as hard as he could, sometimes even closing his eyes to concentrate on his hearing. Any sound he detected he would try to localize where and what it had come from. This kept him distracted until he heard the noise. It was a soft noise, a twig breaking in the distance. Twigs did not just break randomly in the forest, unless they were acted upon by an animal. The animal in question was very careless in the woods. The animal thought of itself as king of those woods. As such, the animal did not care if it broke a twig or not. To the vigilant boy though, this broken twig set him on edge. The time was fast approaching where he could take the shot. The boy started to panic. What if he could not make the shot? What if he disappointed his Grandfather? What if the animal got away? The panic was rising and the boy began to shake. Calm, Son. The key to making a good shot is serenity. The boy heard his Grandfather’s voice clearly in his head. It was as clear as if they were sitting on the porch back at home. It was louder than the old man had Manchac Review

spoken to the boy earlier. The boy moved quickly, a little too quickly for proper noise discipline, and looked at the Grandfather. The old man’s eyes were closed. It looked almost as if he was asleep. The boy realized what was happening. He was on his own to make the shot. Just remember what you have learned, boy. You will make the shot. Remain calm. The boy smiled and relaxed slightly. He now knew he could do this. The prey appeared just then. Walking slowly, almost as if he knew this was the end of his life. The prey sniffed softly, almost as if he were checking for prey himself. The fact was that this prey did not know he was soon to be preyed upon. The boy tensed, raising the gun slowly. No son, not yet. The boy slowly moved the gun back to its seated position. Wait for the perfect shot. The boy waited. The prey moved achingly slow, easing its way down to the water. The boy continued. The shot had to be perfect. The prey finally came to the edge of the slough. Looking around behind it, checking for danger, the prey leaned down and began to drink from the water. This is it, the boy thought. The gun came to his shoulder in a single, silent motion. He aimed through the scope, putting the crosshairs right behind the shoulder as he had been taught. He took a deep breath to ensure that the shot was stable. The boy placed his 30 finger gently on the trigger. He held the gun as he would a woman in a few years. The boy began to tighten his finger, squeezing, not pulling. The gun went off in his hand, kicking his shoulder. The boy let the gun do what it was going to do. Looking through the scope the boy could see the animal fall; his face slipping into the dark water. The boy was elated. He had made a great shot. He turned to look at the Grandfather who mysteriously had managed to stand up behind the boy without the boy noticing. No matter how well the boy got, he knew he would never be as quiet as his grandfather. “You have to finish it, boy,” said the grandfather, pointing at the buck knife on the boy’s side. The boy stood, handing the Grandfather the gun. He walked out of the hide, down a slight slope. The boy stepped into the chill water of the slough. The animal was only a few feet away. Blood was pooling around the body, slipping into the water. He looked back at the Grandfather. “I……..” “What did I tell you about letting beasts suffer?” asked the grandfather, standing up, his hands on his hips. The boy was scared. The animal was still alive. He had not quite made a perfect shot to the heart. He would have to finish it. He would not disappoint his grandfather. The boy eased his way across the slough. He was standing over the animal’s body. Pulling his buck, the blade sharpened to the ability to shave. Kneeling down, he Crossroads brought the knife to the animal’s neck. The animal reached up with his left hand. “Please kid, don’t kill me,” said the dark-haired man. The boy looked down at the man. He seemed so much like a regular guy; black hair, dark eyes, a square chin with a cleft in it, slight lines that had developed over time. He had to be in his late thirties or early forties. He looked like he had lived hard, seasoned skin that proved he spent a lot of time outdoors. “I’m sorry mister. Grandfather said that all beasts have to die,” said the boy, as the red bled from the man’s neck.

31 Ekphrastic M a r l e y St ua r t

Who are these people, Where do they come from And where do they go? They swirl past my table of petit fours, Promising to come back when they are drunk.

I just can’t keep my eyes off the band, A five piece—sax, trumpet, bass drum, snare, and trombone— That is suitably titled “big fun.” They reel, and sway, and play Like they were testing the very limits of their instruments. Their lines richochet away from each other like Marbles thrown on a trampoline, Out to every corner of this room They improvise all at once, careening into the chorus, Where they all come together with the flash of the hand of the trumpet player— 32 Now all is piano but I sense a sforzando As he sings deep, surprising Lows about New Orleans and his woman there, Laid so fresh and pale and bare, And they nod their sailor caps—for all Are donning these and white uniforms—and erupt Into their wildly different trills and melodies.

The Italian man rushes by With bus tubs of some delicious smelling seafood In, arms full, And out again For another load. His daughter has shucked her expensive dress And stomps around in flip flops and pink shorts, asking If she can take more petit fours for her empty fridge at home.

The cooks come by, mysterious, Whispy hair poking from underneath caps, with cut-off shorts, And an impregnable air of cool bubbling their Ekphrastic

White or black jackets. I’ve seen the gauged-out, shaved, Nike-wearing cooks before, but nothing of this sort here. The band swells up yet again and takes away our conversation.

The dresses and suits swirl by again, this time Ready for the cakes. I tell them to take As many as they want. They bite with tentative teeth and are embarrassed to come back for more, Until they are more drunk, and I wonder, Who are these people, where do they come from, And where do they go?

33 A Real Schmuck A a ro n D u pl a n t i e r

Houston’s KKRW 93.7, The Arrow, was playing some Foreigner. Jeremy fooled with the complex instruments on his new Volvo’s dashboard, trying to switch to something less, well, appropriate. He gave up and turned the damn thing off. When he drove, he didn’t watch the road anymore, just the white and yellow lines. The road meant nothing; it was asphalt and utility, about as interesting as C-Span. Those lines, though, they had a hypnotic quality—they sped into the hood of his financed 2011 model V50 station wagon never to be seen again. And the rearview contained a cosmic video transmission of an identical world to ours, located in a different solar system, where white and yellow lines are lost forever, a place just as shitty as this one. Or just as practical. Practical, fuck, Jeremy couldn’t imagine a word more soul-crushing. And to hear it come out Diana’s mouth at the Volvo dealership—it was like his dick wanted to off itself then rise like a phoenix from its fleshy remains only to off itself yet again. That was the most disappointed he’d been in a long time. It made him nostalgic. He gripped the wheel, filled his lungs with that new car smell. Goddamn, he thought. Now, Daytona, 1988, there was nothing practical about that trip. Jeremy and 34 Diana had sixteen dollars between them, made it to the beach with their VW Beetle puttering on fumes. They spent all their cash on a dime bag of supposedly “primo” weed, and smoked the stuff out of a Budweiser can Jeremy’d fished out Oasis Tiki’s dumpster. They had cerebral, dope-fueled conversations while listening to the crashing waves. They fucked in the tall beach grass, and slept. And slept some more. Then woke up to smoke some more. And fucked. And slept. And so on. When their revelry had passed, they begged for quarters at the beachside, slept in the Beetle, survived off stale pastries from the baker who was hip with the scene. The guy wore tie-dye shirts and a bandana everyday like some painful stereotype. After half a week or so, Jeremy and Diana had scared up enough gas money to get themselves home. They weren’t sweating it, though. They didn’t sweat a damn thing. Not then. Jeremy’s cell phone rang. It was Diana. “Hey, hun. What’s up?” “You won’t believe what your son did today.” “Which one?” “Tom.” “Oh, that one. So what’d he do now?” “Peed on another boy in the bathroom.” “God. Did he say why?” “They were competing to see who could pee furthest away from the urinal. Tom lost. So he turned to the left. Soaked this other boy, Josh something. I saw him in the office, by the way. He reeked of piss.” “Any ideas about punishment?” “Hey, mister, that’s your job. I’ve had to pick him up from school, do all the initial yelling and screaming.” “Fine, fine.” “And don’t forget our appointment with Dr. Meyer tomorrow.” “I dunno why we have to see her, anyway. We’re doing fine. This is just a funk. It’ll pass.” “You keep saying that. Except the funk never seems to go away.” “Babe, it’ll go away. Seeing Dr. Meyer makes it worse—she just throws salt on our wounds.” “Maybe they need salt.” “You have no faith in us. We’ve made it together this long. Doesn’t that count for anything?” “I guess so.” There was a pause. They could hear each other breathe. It was a familiar sound. “Okay, hun, I’m forty-five minutes away. I’ll talk to Tom when I get in.” “Seeya then.” Jeremy stared at his cell phone like it was the one doing the talking, then tossed it aside. He was cruising in the right lane when a dirty green Sentra with a dented front bumper buzzed up beside him. A skinny, young brunette chick was texting and driv- ing. The glow of her iPhone gave her face an appealing synthetic sheen—she reminded 35 Jeremy of all those flickering nude girls he used to catch in the discolored static on 3 am Cable TV, back when he was making early morning diaper runs and soothing his crying babies. Jeremy looked at the dimly lit chaos of her car. Dirty clothes heaped on the back seat, empty cups hanging out all over the place, greasy finger prints up and down her windows. There was a time in his life when he wouldn’t even have noticed that shit. She’d just be another sweet chick to make eyes at. A Sam’s Club truck in front of Jeremy began to slow down, prepping for the next exit. Jeremy passed, then noticed the trucker was taking that exit, that mythologized zone on his commute home, that place Jeremy’d imagined countless times: Mike’s Adult Video. There were billboards on the interstate taunting drivers to the store from either direction; they appeared with scantily clad nameless faceless chicks and bold red font, and when passing Mike’s, the slanted roof beamed its name with electric letters into the hearts and minds of anyone paying attention, and probably anyone who wasn’t. Jeremy continued on. He thought about Tom. He’d be sitting on the bottom bunk when Jeremy got home, with flush cheeks and that measureless frown. He’d have been waiting in his room since early afternoon, stewing on his bad behavior, lying haphazardly across his G.I. Joe bedspread and picking at the paneling on the bottom of his brother’s bunk. He’d listen to Jeremy chew him out for the umpteenth time, and neither would feel any better, or worse, for it—they’d just be more bad words to top off Manchac Review

an altogether bad day, then Tom and Jeremy would sleep on those words, see each other in the morning on those words. Another billboard for Mike’s, which let second-guessers know what they’re missing, appeared in the distance—fishnet stockings quickly flooded Jeremy’s line of sight. A colossal woman towered above the Volvo and dominated his imagination. He turned around at the next exit. The parking lot at Mike’s was empty save two Japanese compacts and that 18-wheeler from the interstate, parked off to the left of the building. Jeremy hesitated to leave the Volvo. He couldn’t really picture himself inside a porn store with all those pervs. Would he seem out of place with his starched pants and tie? He smirked at himself in the rearview, then hopped out the driver’s seat. He pulled at the door to Mike’s, but it was locked. Then he heard someone talking through an intercom: “You have to be buzzed in, man.” “What?” Jeremy was startled. “Wait for the ring, then pull.” “You mean the door?” “Yeah, dude, the door.” A high-pitched bell clanged above the door, and Jeremy let himself inside. The cashier called out to him from the other side of the store. The place was lit like a hospital, smelled of disinfectant, too. It was not what Jeremy imagined. He walked through the neatly organized rows of DVDs, catalogued by proclivity, over to the 36 cashier. The guy was tall and lanky, stubbled and studded with lip and nose piercings, wearing an Empire Strikes Back baseball tee and a nasty pair of carpenter jeans. “You got some ID?” “Yeah.” Jeremy went for his wallet, took out his license, and showed it to the cashier. “Well, looks like you’re on the up-and-up.” He gave Jeremy a crooked smile, which Jeremy took as sort of weird, but not weird enough to push him out the door, so he started perusing the selection. Lesbian. Anal. Trannie. Group. Bi Group. Fetish. Just about all the sex he’d ever heard of, and some he hadn’t, all ready to be swooped up by any old schmuck. Except now Jeremy was the schmuck, which wasn’t an idea he hated—at least it was unfamiliar. Then he heard someone come up behind him. “Need help finding anything?” It was the cashier again. “Oh, uh, no, I’m fine. Thanks.” “Yeah, as you might’ve noticed, we don’t get much business these days, what with all that free internet porn.” “My wife’s the computer person, not me.” “Oh, well, God, you’re missing out, man.” The cashier chuckled maybe a little too loudly. On the far side of the store, a big guy wearing sweats waddled out of a viewing booth, closing the door behind him. There was a gaping wet spot on his crotch. He walked to the cash register; the cashier followed, and the big guy paid for his time. Jeremy watched him not so inconspicuously from behind a DVD case. The big guy swiveled around after finishing his transaction and gave Jeremy a snort before going out to his car. Jeremy strayed over to the booths—he could hear the muffled sounds of athletic fucking from behind those locked doors. The cashier popped up behind him again. “Most guys who come here use the booths. They don’t actually buy any porn— I mean, bring this shit home, around their families? I can understand why they don’t want to, sure.” “Sure, yeah.” “It’s a buck-fifty per minute, if you’re interested.” The cashier smiled that same crooked smile. Jeremy was undeterred. “What do you get to watch?” “Um, well, whatever I’ve got playing in the DVD player. Let me double-check. I put it on this morning.” He ran behind the counter, pulled out a DVD case, and read the title: “Teenage Anal Olympics 3.” Sounded fine to Jeremy. He popped into an empty booth and sat down in the little plastic chair—the smell of Clorox was intense. There was a 13-inch RCA and a box of Kleenex on the desk in front of him. The cashier spoke to him outside the booth. “Leave any used Kleenexes in the garbage can under the table, okay?” “Okay.” Jeremy sat there for a minute with his hands on his knees, kind of perplexed 37 by his circumstance. He could hear the booth to the left of him, all that exaggerated moaning and grunting, and wondered if that was the trucker he saw on the interstate in there. This would be his redeeming jack off before a long night of thankless, isolated driving, Jeremy thought. He shifted in his seat, shrugged, then leaned over and switched on the TV. In the porno, there was this white leather couch and a dumb-looking dude with a dimpled butt holding up a skinny girl’s leg while he gave her the treatment. They were real sweaty, which made Jeremy worried about the couch, but he tried to focus on the matter at hand. The dude flipped her over and carefully guided himself into her ass like a fighter pilot, something Diana would never let Jeremy do. Actually, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure he even wanted to do something like that in the first place— which was more exciting than he’d expected. Jeremy could feel himself getting hard. He looked to his left and right, as if someone were in the booth with him, then felt himself through his pants. He kept watching as the dude pinched this chick’s ass cheeks as he plugged her up. Then Jeremy undid his pants and grabbed his shaft, jerking himself a little. It wasn’t long till the money shot. After she had the dude’s spunk sprayed on her, the chick sat up on the couch, then stood. It was the first time Jeremy was able to get a full view of her body. He looked intently at the screen. Something was wrong with her. There was no cesarean scar, no stretch marks, no trace of a lived life. And Jeremy Manchac Review

felt strange getting hard with no screaming children in the background, not feeling that latent anxiety to please—how could his own pleasure be all that mattered? His dick went limp in his hand. He continued to watch for a few more minutes, but it was National Geographic Channel as far as he was concerned. He paid the cashier, who made some snide but forgettable comment, then moped to the Volvo. In the parking lot, Jeremy sat at the wheel. An old guy with a bristly, white mustache strolled out of Mike’s. He was making his way to that Sam’s Club truck. Jeremy saw him take prideful strides as he lit his cigarillo, then the trucker glared at him through the windshield like he was some fucking narc, raining down adult responsibility on a universe that didn’t need, or want, any of it. Jeremy turned the ignition and drove home. He pulled into his driveway and saw the blue glow of the TV through the living room window. When he got inside, Diana was sitting in his lazyboy in front of The Daily Show, reclined and sipping a glass of Riesling. She was wearing those godawful pajamas covered in geranium print, the ones she’d had for years—they were practically unraveling at the seams. “Tom’s in his room.” “Okay.” Jeremy stood there for a second. “About Dr. Meyer tomorrow...” “Yeah?” Diana turned from the TV to face Jeremy. He almost didn’t recognize her. “What about it?” “Nevermind.” And he walked down the hallway. 38 Tom was half asleep when Jeremy came in. His brother was already snoring. Jeremy knelt beside the bottom bunk. “You know what you did today was wrong, right?” Tom grumbled a response: “Yeah.” “So why’d you do it?” “I dunno.” More grumbling. “Don’t do it again, okay buddy?” A heavy sigh: “Okay.” Jeremy rubbed Tom’s hair. He sprawled himself out on the nylon carpet next to the bunk bed. He watched the ceiling fan turn for a minute, then closed his eyes. Evolve, Nigger A s h l e y Wi l l i a m s

I am a master of pretension a hybrid of dissension caught in the blackwhite conventions of my time. Pulled for both sides – or rather pushed aside.

An anomaly, possibly. Probably. Befitting of either, or neither.

You talk white, Black says.

Excuse my intelligence. My mind's light is not relevant in this black sea of faces 39 who prefer night counting their own race as Ignorant.

Stay in place, belligerent to betterment.

Development.

Those damned monkeys don't evolve, White knows. But I know more than they and say less than each.

Evolve, nigger. Evolve.

They tell me to be better. To develop.

But why you talk so white? Tenement Bard C h a d F o r e t

Bard’s walking with a cane at twenty-eight and singing love, its different sorts. Love’s in TV, he sings. Magazines. Used to be in radio. It lives in the brain now.

The train barrels by for a duet, leans into the mic, takes requests, carries some thunder away. Bard steals it back with a bull’s-eye lyric.

Someone somewhere takes a bullet so you can take a class.

It bleeds. 40 People listen but they don’t care: No one here’s going anywhere.

They want him singing rainbows. He knows an honest song lacks color. He’s singing poems, how the dead live as ghosts in the blood. Many things birth one thing births many things. The moon comes alive. Street shadows stretch into black diamond wolves near his feet as change rattles cold in a tin cup. He can tell which coins by listening.

Life is all getting used to it is the line that sends the audience back to their concrete wombs. No one ever bothered to cut the cord, lift them out of it.

The streets are the only patient ones nowadays. Them and the walls that catch and throw his voice Tenement Bard through stained sheet curtains and bungee cord clotheslines. Bard drums the ears of bean-bellied children as he oils the sad machine.

The momma brands the daddy with the palm of her hand. The daddy beats the momma like the drums in a band,he sings. The momma brands the daddy with the palm of her hand. The daddy beats the momma like the drums in a band.

The Bard stands in the street, the vein of this smoggy corner. In the cold, his breath is smoke, thin as a moment.

41 Before You Crush the Spiders C h a d F o r e t

Before you crush the spiders that pitter down the hall, watch them shuffle side to side. Watch their eyes and all.

They slip beneath the doorway, they squeeze inside the cracks, and unlike you and I, my friend, they can’t afford new slacks.

They cannot use the internet. They cannot buy a steak. They cannot smoke a cigarette or even catch a break.

They cannot play a saxophone. 42 They cannot write a book. They cannot work a telephone or give a funny look.

They cannot paint a masterpiece. They cannot soar like birds. They cannot build a Model T or read these very words.

The closest friend I had, I swear we never spoke a word, but it and I saw eye to eye, and neither went unheard.

The vagabonds, the criminals, the bishops and the brides, we each crawl on all eights to find some place to hide. Ephemeral L e s l e y s e k u l i c h

My choker strings fly in his direction in the wings. I miss his eyes saying things I don’t want to know.

My eyes have a message for you, artist with pencil and scored sketch, immortalize me with your twirling hand.

Everything in motion, shapes fleeting this dance, my costume, my youth, time and money. Every plié freeing me, will you please keep me where I am meant to live. I live for seven minutes everyday on the stage away from his hands. I dance and my fingers are to myself.

Make your brush dance like me, 43 maybe your piece can be just as free forever even if it never makes it big and this is all it will ever be. We Say Our Souls, Not Ourselves M i c h a e l Gau tr e au x

Wasps were humming “Mr. Tambourine Man” The day this heart burst open with unnatural joy. Since Time has been relative, we’ve all felt More similar to God. We learn from our mistakes, Thus no ominous day can ever wholly oppress Mankind. Untouched by the heavens? Perhaps. But naturalists are equally blessed regardless Of how many times they recount the tiles On any shower wall. I spent the winter Solstice sorting lilacs from toadstools On a clean and mostly broken pew. Across from the desire path, The Philosopher Remained unimpressed and was passive In his remarkable need for daisies. No contempt for sincerity, but 44 I may loathe most inclinations. Oh,

And that resulting wreath, With not a stamen disturbed, and every pistil Preserved in pristine reverence Toward tree limbs and evening sand Inspired someone important. The name Was unremarkable and Puget Sound Still tastes damp to the lungs, but her eyes were tired.

Dusty Cooper is currently working towards his Masters Degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing.

Chad Corken has recently graduated with a double major in IT and History and a minor in English.

Sarah Drago is a freshman, double majoring in English Literacy and Language and Psychology.

Aaron Duplantier is an English PhD candidate at LSU and an alumnus of Southeastern.

Chad Foret is a recent graduate and is currently working on his Masters Degree. He is studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing.

Michael Gautreaux is a senior at Southeastern.

Terri Ilgen is a graduate student in English, studying Creative Writing.

Sean Keogh is a recent graduate with a degree in English.

Ann St. Michael is currently working on her Masters Degree in English, con- centrating on Language and Literacy.

Zachary Nelson is currently a senior studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing.

Lesley Sekulich is currently a senior at Southeastern.

Marley Stuart is currently a senior at Southeastern.

Ashley Williams is a junior in the English department.

About Manchac Review Manchac Review is Southeastern Louisiana University’s creative journal, published continually each semester as Manchac Review Online and every spring semester in traditional print format. Manchac Review Online is an interactive experience including fiction, poetry, drama, art, music/lyrics, and video shorts. Submissions are accepted year round. If an edition is already at press, accepted submissions will be held until the next edition’s publication. All submissions accepted online are considered for publication in the prize print format at the end of each spring semester. Upon submission, all works are subject to peer review, with individual editors or instructors representing each genre, for quality, content, originality, and creativity. Stu- dents whose written works are conditionally accepted may be required to meet with an editor to discuss necessary revisions prior to publication. General Submission Guidelines: -- Students may submit as many works as they wish but not all may be accepted for publication. -- Multiple authors or artists working on an individual piece must each fill out separate forms. (See the video submission form for further details regarding authorship of video submissions.) -- Submissions may include, but are not limited to, short stories, novel excerpts, vignettes, flash fiction, poetry, plays, screenplays, monologues, musical compositions, lyrics, films and videos, photography (including photos of ceramics and sculptures), line art, and prints. Novels, novellas, and reviews will not be accepted. Please see the appropriate submission form for more detailed submission guidelines pertaining to the chosen artistic medium (Art; Drama, Fiction, and Poetry; Music; and Video). -- No work that has been previously published, distributed, or accepted for publication or distribution elsewhere shall be eligible for publication in Manchac Review or Man- chac Review Online. -- All submission information and release authorization sections must be completed in their entirety. -- Work shall be submitted in the form of one hard copy and one electronic copy on a CD, DVD, or e-mail attachment, sent to the proper party (see the appropriate submis- sion form for the specific address). -- Printed word materials should adhere to a 12-point, readable font and be double- spaced (unless artistic or structural needs call for otherwise). -- A copy of the code is available in the Writing Center and online at: http://www.selu. edu/admin/stu_affairs/ handbook/2007/2007_files/2007_74_127.pdf.

Please email any questions to [email protected]. Dusty Cooper Sean Keogh Chad Corken Ann St. Michael Sarah Drago Zachary Nelson Aaron Duplantier Lesley Sekulich Chad Foret Marley Stuart Michael Gautreaux Ashley Williams Terri Ilgen