Metaphor is Weber State University’s undergraduate, interdisciplinary journal in its twenty-eighth year of publication. The journal is staffed entirely by Weber State University students.

Metaphor accepts submissions in visual arts, poetry, fiction, academic literature, and music from students of Weber State University and selected pieces from national submissions to the National Undergraduate Literary Conference.

Publications in Metaphor are chosen through a blind submission process. The author, visual artist, and composer of each piece is unknown until that piece is selected for publication. Guest judges are invited to ensure the objectivity of the decisions.

Metaphor is funded primarily through student fees and is distributed free of charge to students, faculty, guests at Weber State University’s annual National Undergraduate Literary Conference, and the community.

Copyright © 2009 is retained by individual authors, visual artists, and composers.

Printed in the United States of America by Weber State University Printing Services, Ogden, Utah.

Metaphor Weber State University 1404 University Circle Ogden, Utah 84408-1404

Visit us on the web: www.weber.edu/metaphor www.myspace.com/weberstatemetaphor Metaphor 2009 Volume XXVIII Table of Contents A Note About the Type Metaphor Staff Editor’s notes Acknowledgements

Creative Writing

Kisses ...... 2 Charlys Huerta Mrs. Robinson ...... 10 Kirsty Winkler Miss Anna ...... 11 McKella Sawyer Bus in the City ...... 17 Alan Nordgren The Being: A Love Story, Skewed, From His Point of View . . 18 Niki Tadehara Why Mothers Can’t Win ...... 20 Janice Stringham LeFevre

Painting, Drawing and Printmaking

Providence Wilt Thou Be With Me ...... 21 Lynette S. Oberg Azure Realm Series ...... 22 William Merritts Bloom Induction ...... 23 Chaise Payan Bench, Pool Players ...... 24 Catherine Rogers Untitled from “Sommarvals Installation” ...... 25 Amanda Åkebrand Mischief, Vamp, Diva ...... 26 Sarah Zimmer

Book (selected pages) ...... 27 Catherine Rogers African Woman ...... 28 Rachel Griffiths Two, One, Three ...... 28 Angela Van Wagoner

Creative Writing Patrick’s Baby ...... 29 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Selection Adrian Stumpp Satan’s Lobby ...... 41 Amber Allen Bumper ...... 42 Joshua Davidson Meet Death ...... 46 Ryan Bowen

Poetry a lesser known fact ...... 51 Adrian Stumpp Crouching Down ...... 52 Kristin Jackson The Garden ...... 53 Brittanie Stumpp The Wall ...... 54 Lindsey Scharman Glaucoma ...... 55 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Selection Keats Conley I am, again, stripped ...... 56 Bonnie Russell Nelson Council ...... 57 Brittanie Stumpp A Slippery Anchor ...... 58 Alana Faagai dig ...... 59 Rebecca Samford Paradise Discarded ...... 60 Adrian Stumpp

Photography and Graphic Design

C.H. Esperson ...... 61 Jamie A. Kyle Nude Series ...... 62 Angela Van Wagoner Equinox ...... 63 Scott Jensen Broken Ecstasy Series ...... 64 Nancy Rivera Sliced ...... 65 Amy Gillespie Typography 1 ...... 66 Kathryn Lundell Untitled 4 & 5 ...... 67 Ruth Silver Identities ...... 68 Angela Van Wagoner Poetry If We Are Not Evening ...... 69 Jeremy Brodis After the End ...... 70 Eric Pope Once ...... 72 Kristin Jackson The Track ...... 73 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Selection Brittany Barberino L.A. Bowl, January 1977 ...... 74 Josh Sims Letter to a Little Bean ...... 75 Brittanie Stumpp Three Minutes — for: Michael ...... 76 Rebecca Samford The Apple of My Eye ...... 78 Morgan Taylor Finder Small Habits of Inertia ...... 79 Bonnie Russell Nelson The Wedding Vow ...... 80 Quincy Bravo

Meeting Place ...... 82 Jernae Kowallis To My Waiting Room Fellows ...... 83 Jeremy Brodis Sourire 101 (Smiling 101) ...... 84 Tom Hughes My Cardboard Box ...... 85 Brittany Hackett Instinct ...... 86 Brittanie Stumpp Mary Shelley Talking to Her Therapist ...... 87 Brittany Hackett Tell me the color of your deep blue funk ...... 88 Rebecca Samford Composer Meet Your Relapse ...... 90 Rachel Boddy Going Under ...... 91 L.K. Hill Touchdown in Giants Stadium ...... 92 Josh Sims Shopping at the Salvation Army ...... 93 Kristin Jackson The Request of an Artist ...... 94 Tom Hughes I have a tiny Existentialist ...... 95 Jeremy Brodis last time i saw ...... 96 Adrian Stumpp Inner Space ...... 97 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Selection Robert Brown Nothing Left Between Us ...... 98 Bonnie Russell Nelson Aspen ...... 99 Brittany Hackett The Bridge Builder ...... 100 Clint D. Spaeth Sculpture and Ceramics Armor ...... 101 David Powell Raku, Lidded Pots ...... 102 Lindsay Huss Puzzled ...... 103 Melinda Taggart Contemplation ...... 104 Andria Hill Pom ...... 105 Clint D. Spaeth Bubbles, Flamingo Dance ...... 106 Danielle Weigandt Big Bull ...... 107 Kyle Guymon Veneer ...... 108 Leah A. Wadman

Academic Literature

Tennyson’s Lament of Industrialization in “The Lady of Shalott” ...... 109 Lola Duncan Sex and the Destruction of Self ...... 115 Rebecca Samford Does it Take a War to Establish an Identity? ...... 122 McKella Sawyer

Creative Writing Santiago ...... 130 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Selection Bernice Olivas Music Section Editor’s Notes Music CD Selections ...... 140 A Note About the Type

The winning entry of Metaphor’s 2009 Cover Design contest is Jon Kramer’s typographical design, featuring his own written piece on the back cover. The text of this book is set in Bodoni Book. All titles appear in Argos MF. The names of authors and artists are set in Nuptial BT throughout the book and Bodoni Old Face BE for the table of con- tents. This edition was designed using Adobe InDesign CS3. The typeface Bodoni Book was created by Morris Fuller Ben- ton for American Type Founders in 1910. This version of Bodoni is loosely based on the original character sets created by Giambattista Bodoni at the end of the eighteenth century. His designs are known for “high contrast between thick and thin strokes, pure vertical stress, and hairline serifs.”¹

Bodoni Book 12-point Nuptial BT 14-point ABCDEFGHIJKLM ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz nopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 Argos MF 12-point 1234567890 ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 Design and Layout Editor Sarah Zimmer Layout Assistance Rebecca L. Samford Leah A. Wadman

¹ http://store1.adobe.com/cfusion/store/html/index.cfm?store=OLS-US&event=displayFont Package&code=1013 Metaphor Staff

Editor in Chief Assistant Editor in Chief Rebecca L. Samford Matthew Cranford Poetry Editor Poetry Staff Brittany Hackett Colleen Henstra Matthew Cranford Creative Writing Editor Creative Writing Staff Andrew Blodgett Quincy Bravo Danielle Smith Stephanie Presley Jamie L. Ratcliffe

Academic Literature Editor Academic Lit. Staff Alexandria Stucki Jason Sherman Ximen McMillan Visual Arts Editor Visual Arts Staff Leah A. Wadman Sarah Zimmer Jamie A. Kyle Music Editor Music Staff Matt Winters Jamie L. Ratcliffe Matthew Cranford Rebecca L. Samford NULC Selections Coordinator Kristin Jackson Copy Editors Jason Sherman Design and Layout Editor Stephanie Presley Sarah Zimmer Group Historian & Faculty Advisor Web Page Administrator Brad Roghaar Jamie L. Ratcliffe Editor’s Notes

Begin with a bare-bones template — one that is sturdy enough to give birth annually, yet unassuming enough to take on an unfa- miliar frame every year. Using passion and dedication: adhere the contemporary cartilage of credentials, a muscle-tissue of trust and talent, wrapping it all in a layer of imagination and ingenuity, and you will create Metaphor. As editor-in-chief, I have had the opportunity to work closely with so many previously unknown faces here on campus. My staff has been incredibly committed to engaging in the process of creating this book. There are many things that are familiar about this edition, and a few that are not. Our Vignette Contest winners have been included and our cover was chosen in a contest as well. It was important to me that more of the WSU student body be aware of Metaphor, so we hosted these competitions and took advantage of e-advertising sources such as the school marquee and bulletins. Expanding the Visual Arts section has afforded the oppor- tunity to represent every visual art discipline taught here at WSU. It is our intention that by dividing the visual arts and placing sec- tions throughout the book, more readers will be invited to become acquainted with the work as a whole. Within these pages, you will find a much anticipated treat — Metaphor’s first-ever music compilation CD. In previous editions, musical composition has appeared in print side-by-side with poetry and works of fiction. I felt this was inadequate representation of the talented musicians within our school and the education they receive here at WSU. Just as visual arts are meant to be seen — music is meant to be heard. As a first-generation college student, I have come to know that in every discipline, without training, we do not grasp the heights or the depths of the art we love. My hope is that by giving you the opportunity to experience the undergraduates of Weber State Uni- versity, Ogden, Utah as they were meant to be read, seen, and heard, you will hunger for more. Acknowledgements

The thousand “thank you”s I need to write individually would not leave any room for the purpose of this work — allowing the stu- dents of Weber State University to SHINE! Let’s see how many I can squeeze in here — THANK YOU: • To my staff, whose skills, dedication, and cooperation have smoothed the bumps in the road and whose laughter and sense of fun has made the hours needed a pleasure. • To Robin, Kim, and Brittany for knowing who’s who and what’s what when I was clueless and pointing me in the right direction. • To Dr. Wangari wa Nyatetu Waigwa for a French translation at a moment’s notice. • To Mountain Math for sponsoring our Vignette Contest prizes. • To Paul Stout, our professional guest artist, who offered a highly skilled and unbiased eye for the final selections of the Visual Arts pieces published here. • To the Student Senate for allocating the funds needed from student fees so that the tradition of Metaphor can continue unscathed and distributed at no additional cost to students. • To Larry Clarkson and Mark Biddle from the Department of Visual Arts for making our Cover Art Contest an assignment. • To all of the Arts and Humanities Professors and staff who encourage an education worthy of publication. • To Brad Roghaar, our faculty advisor, for his “groooovy” attitude and willingly shared life-experience — helping me to work through every worst-case scenario I could think of. • To the students of WSU who had the courage to hand over their four hundred and ninety-one “babies” into our care. Continue Creat- ing! • And finally, to my family — for all of the hours of listening to dreams and disappointments — for babysitting and dinners — for growing up delightfully while supporting Amme’s efforts to fly. Rebecca L. Samford Kisses Charlys Huerta

Dusty

When I was seven years old, my best friend, Tansy, persuaded me during recess one day to go to the forbidden side of the school building where the older kids played separately from us (for our own protection, I’m sure). I had never even seen the other side of the building, but I would do anything for Tansy. She was smart and pretty and fun. She was in love with a fifth-grader by the name of Dusty and she wanted me to give him a message. Against my bet- ter judgment, I snuck around the corner of the building to where the older kids were playing. They were wild and noisy, yelling and chas- ing each other. I was terrified. I had no idea what Dusty even looked like. A few feet from where I stood trembling, in the corner where the steps met the wall, was a group of giggling girls. Standing on the steps was a boy, evidently the object of their entertainment. I moved in a little closer to the girls and interrupted the conversation. “I’m looking for Dusty. Do you know who he is?” The girls turned and looked down at me, laughing maliciously. The boy, a very handsome boy with wheat-colored hair and cowboy boots, grinned at me. Stepping down from the steps, he said, “Come over here.” So I did. The group surrounded me and I backed into the corner, pressing against the cold, brick wall. “I’m Dusty. What d’ya want, little girl?” “I have a m-m-message from Tansy Smith. You know Tansy?” I stammered. “Yeah…what does she want?” he asked, stepping closer. “She said to tell you that she loves you,” I said, growing very uncomfortable as the crowd closed in around me to hear what mes- sage was so important that I had trespassed onto their territory. “Oh yeah?” he said, bending down to look me right in the face

2 Creative Writing with his cornflower blue eyes. He braced his arms against the wall on either side of my head, and leaned in so close I could feel his breath on my face. “Well, how ‘bout a kiss?” Tears sprung to my eyes and fire rose in my cheeks. “Nooo!” I screamed, plunging through the human barrier. I ran blindly, all the way around the building and back to the safety of my own playground. I slumped down against the trunk of a big cotton- wood, panting. I was angry and excited at the same time—humiliat- ed and flattered. My own confusion frightened me. Out of nowhere, Tansy and her other friend, Carrie, suddenly stood before me. “SO? What did he say?” she demanded impatiently. Then she noticed my distress. “What’s the matter with you anyway? Did you get caught?” “NO,” I blurted out. “I didn’t get caught. But he tried to kiss me!” I complained, sniffling. “And it’s all your fault! I shoulda’ never listened to you!” I glared at her. “He did what?!” Tansy stared down at me for a minute while it sank in. “I can’t believe it! I can’t even trust my own best friend! That’s the last time I trust you to do something for me!” Tansy whirled on her heels and stomped off. Carrie smirked at me triumphantly before hurrying to catch up with her. What just happened here!? I thought as I leaned my throbbing head against the tree. Why is she mad at me? I’m the one who should be mad at her! After all…I’m the one who almost got KISSED!

Tommy

Two years later, my younger sister, Lisa, and I were playing with our friends at a construction site. The boys built a fort out of bricks and 2x4s. We used pallets and crates to make tables and chairs and hung old towels in the “windows” for curtains. We were having a good time, until Tommy planted a big wet kiss on my cheek without warning. “What are you doing?!” I said, wiping my cheek off in disgust. I felt like I had been slapped in the face with a wet fish.

Creative Writing 3 “It was just a kiss.” He grinned proudly as his freckled cheeks turned red. I glared at him. “I’m going home!” The other kids turned to look at us and then at each other in bewilderment. “What happened?” they asked Tommy. I could hear the buzz of conver- Why did he do it sation fading behind me as I marched anyway? And in home. I hurried to my room and threw front of everybody?! myself down on the bed, fuming and It was gross… all embarrassed. I could still feel the wet and slobbery. source of my anguish on my cheek— cold and tingly, like alcohol. A few minutes later Lisa hurried into my room. “Charlie, don’t be mad. He didn’t mean to make you mad. I told him to do it. He’s been wanting to kiss you for a long time, and he knew if he asked you, you would say no.” “So why did he do it anyway? And in front of everybody?! It was gross… all wet and slobbery,” I mumbled into my pillow. “Come on, nobody saw it. Come back and play. He said to tell you he’s sorry. We’re all gonna go ride bikes at the fox holes. Come on. You’ll hurt his feelings.” “What about my feelings?” I cried as I sat up. “I’m not going. They’ll all be talking about it. Just leave me alone.” “Why do you have to make such a big deal out of everything?” she said as she turned to leave the room. The truth was she would have loved to have been Tommy’s girlfriend, but she was such a tomboy that Tommy and all the boys in the neighborhood just consid- ered her a good buddy. The kids had designated Tommy and me as “a couple.” It wasn’t my idea. But he was a nice enough boy so I went along with it. That night as I was doing my homework on the coffee table, Lisa approached me again. I looked up at her suspiciously. “Charlie, Tommy’s been practicing on his hand. He said it won’t be wet and slobbery next time. Give him another chance. Please?” I stared at her in disbelief. “No! Just forget it! I mean it. I don’t

4 Creative Writing wanna talk about it anymore.” I bent down over my notebook, scrib- bling furiously. She stood staring down at me in disgust. “I can’t believe you. It’s just a kiss.” She stomped off. Tommy eventually made his way back into my good graces, but he never again attempted to kiss me. As usual, he insisted on carrying my books home from school, offered me his jacket when it was cold, and protected me from other boys whom he suspected of dishonorable intentions. In return, I let him hold my hand when we watched TV together. But only under a pillow—so no one else could see.

Tim

Even puberty could not soften my self-righteous horror of kissing. When I was thirteen, I developed a crush on Tim, the boy down the street. Why not—he was conveniently located. I baked him cookies, toilet papered his house, and wrote him love notes. He was a year older than me, and we dated off and on all through school. When he was a senior he began to take our relationship more seriously. He would be leaving on a mission for the LDS church right after his graduation and he started talking about The Future. Late one afternoon we went for a drive in his little red Volkswa- gen. He parked the car at the construction site where he worked. It was located in a brand-new ritzy suburb on the hill. Being a Sunday, the place was abandoned. “Well, there it is,” he said, nodding to the two-story mansion in front of us. “We should be done with that by the end of the month. Come on, I’ll give ya a tour.” With that he reached into the back seat and grabbed a grocery bag. “What’s that?” “Oh, I brought us a little picnic,” he smiled, pleased with himself. He took me through the house, room by room, pointing out all the latest features in modern architecture. The rooms were spacious with high-beamed ceilings and walls of glass.

Creative Writing 5 “Pretty nice, huh?” he asked as he led the way up the stairs, through the master bedroom, and into the master bath. He leaned nonchalantly against the doorframe. “How’d ya like to live in a house like this someday?” I looked around and chuckled nervously. “Like this? Well…it’s nice, but who needs a sunken sauna in their bathroom? You realize those things breed bacteria.” I attempted to lighten up what seemed to be turning into a serious subject. Tim looked at me with that expression of arrogant amusement that had come to define our relationship. He was shooting for the stars. He was on the honor roll and excelled in track. In contrast, I was down-to-earth, content to be average and inconspicuous, and enjoyed the simple things in life. “Well,” he sighed, “let’s eat.” He sat down on the pink car- peted bedroom floor. “Here?” I asked, surprised. He raised an eyebrow at my lack of appreciation for his creativ- ity. “Why not? It’s kinda romantic, don’t ya think?” “Oh,” I said as I sat down to face him with the picnic safely spread between us. We munched on cheese and crackers and sipped our grape juice in silence. Conversation was awkward when it was just the two of us. We usually hung out with a mutual crowd of friends. By the time there was nothing but crumbs left, the sun was going down and it was getting dark in the house; no electricity yet. We picked the crumbs out of the carpet and headed back to his car. Tim turned on the engine, the headlights, and the radio, adjusting it to KSEI— “all hits, all the time.” But then he just sat there, trying to make small talk while the engine rumbled and vibrated the little car. He jingled the keys hanging from the ignition. Then, without warning, he awkwardly leaned over the stick shift and slammed his lips against mine, pinning my head to the headrest, and jabbed his whole tongue into my mouth—triggering my gag reflexes. I recoiled in disgust. He withdrew in embarrassment. He tried to continue the conversation like nothing had hap- pened, but I couldn’t look him in the face. “I guess we’d better go,” he said as he turned to look over his shoulder and backed the car out

6 Creative Writing of the driveway. On the way home, the radio was the only thing that broke the silence. I stared out the window, shattered. I realized then that Tim had just become a habit. There was no “chemistry” between us— probably never had been. From the Mission Training Center he wrote me a letter apologizing for that night. I heard he went on to become a doctor and I assume that he got his luxurious dream house. I don’t regret the fact that I’m not sharing his sunken sauna.

Albert

Before Tim had even left the MTC, I met Albert. The high school drill team was putting on a fashion show at the new High Voltage Disco one night and a couple of my friends and I decided to check it out. The crowd was “deep.” There was barely enough stand- ing room, let alone room to dance. In spite of the lighted dance floor and the giant mirror ball, it was still pretty dark. The music thumped in my chest and the electricity in the air was tangible. The crowd swayed to Earth, Wind, and Fire, Sister Sledge, and Kool and the Gang. I didn’t see anyone I knew, but I wasn’t looking for anyone in particular. I resigned myself to the fact that I would probably be standing there all night. Suddenly from behind me, an arm slipped around my waist. Startled, I turned to look into a pair of black almond eyes. Who was this guy?! He breathed into my ear, “Let’s dance.” My heart skipped a beat. I nodded back. Holding me close to his side, he guided me through crowd and onto the dance floor. My friends stared after me in wide-eyed astonishment. I’d always been attracted to foreign guys, but didn’t know any personally. This one sure wasn’t from high school on snob hill. We didn’t have anything like him up there. He looked Asian or Polyne- sian, maybe Hispanic— it was hard to tell. He sure wasn’t a local. You know how you can instinctively tell the nonlocals. No, this guy was from someplace mysterious and exotic. He had a slender, athletic build and at first glance, he seemed all teeth and hair—which was cut in the popular shag style of the

Creative Writing 7 ‘70s. He wore a flowered silk shirt, tight black pants, and platform shoes. As if he didn’t already have enough going for him, the guy could dance. He danced with a big grin spreading from ear to ear. He had moves I’d never seen before. He was in his element. My curi- osity piqued. I was intrigued with this exotic creature. We danced every dance together for the rest of the dance. Then he walked me to my car. It was a cool April night and I hadn’t brought a jacket. Like a gentleman, he offered me his coat. But after I put it on, he moved in, slipping both arms around my waist and suggested we share it. Wow. This guy didn’t waste any time! Defi- nitely not how we do things around here. “No thanks,” I smiled, slipping out of the coat. “Just keep it. I need to get home. My mom’ll be worried if I’m late.” Before I left, we exchanged information. He pointed out his maroon ‘66 Plymouth Satellite Sebring in the parking lot. He told me the name of the street where he had just recently moved in with his older brother, and the names of two of the fanciest restaurants in town where he was working as a busboy. The rest was easy. I spent the next two weeks cruising his street in the hopes of running into him, and staking out those restaurants, leaving notes on his car. Finally we got together, and started dating. Albert soon real- ized that I wasn’t going to be as easy to seduce as all the other girls he had been with. According to him there had been plenty — and I had no reason to doubt it. One night we had heard there was going to be a dance at the university, but when we got there the parking lot was empty. No dance. And it was raining. So there we sat in his car. Nothing to do. Albert seemed restless. After a few long pauses in the conversation, he decided that his best strategy would be reverse psychology. “Uhmm…I’d ask you for a kiss….but you probably wouldn’t want to,” he said as innocently as possible. Then he turned and looked out the window, trying to make me feel sorry for him. For some reason, it worked. “It’s okay,” I murmured, not believing what I had just heard myself say. He turned to face me with a longing in his eyes that I had

8 Creative Writing never seen before. It sent a bolt of electricity through my veins. My heart pounded against my ribs. He gently took my face in his warm hands, and as he leaned toward me, I closed my eyes against what was coming. In the darkness, I held my breath in nervous apprehen- sion. Tenderly, he kissed me. And at that moment the whole starry universe went spinning out of control inside my head. I melted into the seat, and my head fell back limply in his hands. He pulled away. He was surprised to see tears streaming down my cheeks. “Are you okay? What’s the matter?” Turning my head away to wipe my eyes, I said, “I’m fine… everything’s fine.” I was dizzy and disoriented. I could feel him staring at the back of my head. After a long pause he said quietly, “You’re different from the other girls I’ve gone out with — and that’s a lot!” (He liked to remind me.) “I don’t know what it is about you.” He stared out into the empty parking lot and the streetlight illuminated a tear in the corner of his eye. He quickly wiped it away. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.” Neither had I.

Creative Writing 9 Mrs. Robinson Kirsty Winkler Vignette Contest Winner First Place She lounges in a kitchen chair as the party swirls around her. She grips her fifth beer, watching the ease of gaiety, wishing she remembered how. It’s a younger crowd; only three know Max Head- room. The party migrates to the garage to play beer pong. One guy lingers, looking sideways at her. She stares back. She’s not shy, and she’s a sucker for blond hair and blue eyes. “You work with Clint, don’t you?” he asks. She nods. “I’m his cousin, Jerry.” That explains his good looks. “Nice to meet you, Jerry.” He shakes her hand without letting go. “Can I kiss you?” If you have to ask, there’s only one answer. “No.” “I live around the corner from here.” She raises an eyebrow. “If you’re tired, you can crash there.” “You’re too young for me,” she warns. “You can’t be more than 25.” She grins. She’s not going to disagree. “I’m 24. I’m not too young for you,” he says. Everyone else is in the garage. No one would see her leave with him. “Okay.” He smiles and leads her to the door. “It’s just around the cor- ner.” He sure is pretty.

10 Creative Writing Miss Anna McKella Sawyer

The apple was unusually warm in her hand. The morning sun, filtering through the limbs of the tree, had already warmed the apple as if it had been meant for her. She closed her hand around it and tugged it off the branch. The leaves rattled as the branch snapped back into place. Anna examined her prize and smiled, her white teeth sparkling like morning dew. This would be her breakfast. She rubbed the apple on the front of her pink sweater and took a bite. It was crisp, tart, sweet, everything a ripe apple should be. She began her daily walk down the dirt path. Dead leaves crunched under her penny loafers, mimicking the sweet crunch of the apple in her mouth. The morning itself was crisp. Warm enough, but with a definite bite to the air that announced the arrival of autumn. The brisk breeze ruffled her skirt and raised goose bumps on her bare legs. The trees whispered to her, greeting her. Freshly fallen leaves rode the breeze to rest on the ground before her feet. No one could hear these trees the way she did; she was alone, and the solitude suited her. A quarter mile down the path, she met the larger dirt road that led to the town. The rusty mailbox was perched on its post, lid slightly open, like the mouth of a fish. The envelope was inside, as usual. On the front in blue pen, her name was written in the familiar, loopy handwriting. Miss Anna She tucked the envelope in her pocket and paused a moment to look over the brilliant hills, blazing in their shades of autumn or- anges and reds. No clouds at all, the sky was calm. She dropped the apple core into the patch of weeds at the base of the post and turned to walk back down the path. She breathed deeply, absorbing the scent. The wildflowers that surrounded her cottage were beginning to droop; it was the end of their season. Before going inside, she picked

Creative Writing 11 a handful of bluebells. She would press these between book pages, keep them with her through the winter. The cottage was chilly inside. A single room, Anna’s bed was tucked into the far corner from the door, neatly made with the edges of the patchwork quilt hang- The trees whispered to ing evenly over the sides. At her, greeting her. Freshly the foot of the bed was a small fallen leaves rode the hope chest, which contained her breeze to rest on the clothing. The kitchen consisted ground before her feet. of a small two small cupboards and a wash table with a pitcher and basin on top. A small oval mirror hung on the wall behind it. The only other fixtures in the room were a small wood-burning stove and single wooden chair. She started a fire in the wood burning stove, just a small one to the chill from sinking into her skin. Anna sat on the chair and removed the envelope from her pocket. Cautiously, she slid her finger under the flap and tore it open. Inside was a half slip of notebook paper which bore a single word. You Me? Anna thought. Well, all right, I suppose. She stood and crossed the room to the bed and removed a thick leather-bound sketchbook from under the pillow. She returned to the chair and shifted it so that she could see herself in the mirror and flipped to a clean page. She plucked the pencil from the knot in her hair, letting her ruby curls unfold around her shoulders. Motionless, she stud- ied her reflection, noticing the tiniest details and planning how she would lay them on the page. Finally, she laid the tip of the pencil to the paper and with swooping strokes, outlined the roundness of her jaw. She worked quickly, using minimal lines to express her long curls, her full lips, her large, dark eyes. She was careful to keep her mouth closed; she did not want her slightly crooked teeth to be a part of the picture. Within the hour, she found her reflection staring up at her from the page. She was satisfied. Gently, she ripped the paper from the sketchbook and rolled it up, securing both ends with two paper clips she kept in one of the

12 Creative Writing cupboards. She wrote the address on the outside of the roll. Miss Connie Anna heaved herself out of the chair and was surprised by the effort required to stand. She placed the rolled-up drawing on the wash table. A dull ache brewed in her exhausted muscles. Her knees were feeling stiff. She returned to the chair, with the sketchbook on her lap and flipped through the pages, a catalog of memory. She poured through her beautiful sketches of her cottage, the country path, the hills, and the apple tree as well as the not-so-beautiful renderings of long hallways, sour faces and a small, dull room. The pencil lines of each drawing were slightly smudged from the contact of the previous page, as if the images themselves were beginning to fade away. Having caught a second wind, Anna pushed herself up from the chair. The sunshine in the room was fading a little; the color was melting from the room. She did not have much time. With great difficulty, she rose to her feet and retrieved the drawing from the wash table. Her hands trembled; the fingers did not seem to want to move correctly. She was beginning to stoop under the pain in her spine. As she turned for the door, she glanced at the mirror and locked eyes with her reflection. The dark eyes in the mir- ror were wide with shock, framed by a web of faint wrinkles. The red curls were stricken with gray. There I am, she thought. Clutching the drawing to her chest, she hobbled to the door, forcing her sore feet to move one in front of the other. The air on the path was no longer so sweet. The leaves did not crunch under her feet, the trees did not speak to her, and the sun did not warm her skin. As she dragged herself down the way, she could not help but notice the lack of color, the absence of the wind. In- stead, the air was stale and the sky had disappeared. She was under a low ceiling with artificial light and her country road had become a long hallway painted flat gray with the hard floor tiled in white. She strained to hear the leaves rustling on their tree branches, but she could no longer bring herself to hear them. The scream of her

Creative Writing 13 exhausted muscles and tired bones drowned out anything the wind could have tried to tell her. Her world had completely faded away. The mailbox seemed further away than usual. What was usually a simple trip down the woodland path was now a long trek down the barren hallway; each step was a struggle. At the end of the hallway, a slender young nurse in purple scrubs strode around the corner. Anna jerked her head to the side and stared at the wall. “Miss Anna, what are you doing out here?” the nurse asked. She placed a manicured hand on Anna’s shoulder, preparing to lead her back to her room. “You should be napping. Are you hurting? Did you forget to take your medication this morning?” “It doesn’t matter. I’m just leaving this out for Miss Connie when she comes tomorrow.” She tightened her grip on the drawing, hugging it to her. “That’s very sweet of you, but you should be asleep. You need your rest, Miss Anna.” “I’ll rest; I just need to put this in my mailbox for Miss Con- nie.” The nurse reached for the drawing, but Anna jerked it away. “Here, why don’t you leave it with me, I’ll see that she gets it in the morning.” “I want to put it in the mailbox.” “It will be safe with me, don’t worry…” “No! Let me go to my mailbox!” “Miss Anna, I think you’d better take your medication, you’re probably in a lot of pain.” Anna scowled at the nurse. What did she know about pain? Anna had been in pain for years, and it hadn’t killed her yet. She was perfectly capable of walking another twenty feet to her mailbox and back to her room, medication or no medication. But she couldn’t hear the trees anymore. Finally, she shoved the box into the nurse’s hands. “See that Miss Connie gets this tomorrow. I can find my room myself.” Defeated, Anna turned and began her journey down the hall to her room. Her feet tapped tunelessly on the hard floor. The artificial lights hurt her eyes. Each movement of her frail legs sent spasms up

14 Creative Writing her back. A deep, dull ache bloomed in her hips and melted down into her legs; each muscle was in an iron vice. She entered her room and dragged back the covers on the neatly made bed. She eased her way up onto the mattress and pulled the patchwork quilt and sheet over her body. Her head rested on the squishy pillow. The pain throbbed in her bones and muscles, her heart slammed against her fragile ribcage from the exertion of her journey. Her eyes wandered around her room, seeing it as it was for the first time in days. Her space heater hummed. The pitcher and basin were in their places on the wash table. She realized that the trunk at the foot of her bed was still open, but she lacked to energy to get up and close it. The treasured drawings Miss Connie had sent were taped to the wall opposite to the door. Drawings of horses, tree houses, laughing young women wading in a creek. At the end of the row of drawings was the portrait of Miss Connie herself, long curls and wide, dark eyes set in a round, baby doll face. Anna could see her reflection in the mirror over the wash table. The fiery ringlets were now ashen gray. Her face was a map of wrinkles, her mouth hung open slightly, the lips no longer full, but deflated and colorless. The brown eyes had lost their youthful clar- ity. They were flat, tired, like faded cloth. Those eyes were the last things Anna saw before sleep finally found her.

Connie strode down the suburban sidewalks, inhaling the scent of the morning. Falling leaves danced to the ground on the breeze, twirling in a downward spiral. She glanced at her watch. 7:18. That left her plenty of time. Her first class didn’t start until eight o’clock, and the college was only four blocks away. She turned up the path- way to the entrance of AppleTree Assisted Living Community. “Hey, Dana,” she greeted the young nurse at the front desk. Dana looked up and rolled her eyes. “Hey,” she grumbled. “I am so ready to get out of here, I hate graveyards. There’s no way I’ll stay awake in class today.” “Well, only one semester left, then get a better job.” “Can’t wait. I’m sick of dealing with old people. Oh, your grandma was sneaking around again yesterday when she was

Creative Writing 15 supposed to be napping. She wanted me to give this to you.” Dana retrieved the drawing from under the desk and pushed it into Con- nie’s hands. “I think she forgot to take her meds, she was a little out of it.” “I thought she was even more out of it when she’s on the meds. Talking about whispering trees and cottages and stuff.” “True, so okay, she was more lucid than usual, but grumpy. Grr. Anyway, my shift is up. See ya.” An older nurse had just entered the building, obviously Dana’s replacement. Dana hopped up from the desk, punched her timecard, and bolted out of the door. Dana sat on a chair in the corner of the room. “What in the world…” Connie unrolled the drawing on her lap. She gasped; it was like looking into a mirror. A young woman with wild curls and dark eyes gazed up at her. Connie’s mouth hung open wordlessly. It was a game of theirs. They shared a love of drawing, so they would take turns requesting subjects for the other to draw. On the days she could only come early in the morning when the residents were still asleep, Connie had left notes in her grandmother’s mes- sage box. The cottage. The apple tree. The hills. Lately, Connie had been using this game as a way to understand her grandmother, to actually see these hills and this cottage that her grandmother often mentioned. That was when she had her medication. She was happier when she was in her own reality. The previous morning, Connie had left a note asking her grandmother to draw herself, hoping to see the real Miss Anna, the way she really was. This was the real Miss Anna.

16 Creative Writing Bus in the City Alan Nordgren Vignette Contest Winner Second Place The bus stopped. The driver put up his hand to signal to the woman standing outside to wait. He set the automated wheelchair ramp in motion and came back to unsecure the belts and clips at- tached to the heavy motorized wheelchair, which housed a man. There we go. Y’er all set to go, sir. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. Have a good one. Yeah. Thank you. The man put his chair into gear and rolled forward and back, getting his chair loose and into the isle, bumping into things. His wheel nearly ran over my foot. Sorry. Hey, you missed, it’s OK. OK. Sorry. It’s OK. He started forward in small jerks as he maneuvered his chair to the ramp that was now unfolded and ready. The woman, still outside, shifted her weight. Her arms were folded and she tapped her fingers against her tricep. She was chewing gum and her hair was ratted and her clothes were old. She looked up and down the street and leaned forward to watch the progress of the wheelchaired man. He was out. The woman stepped into the bus, and looked at the driver, and whispered, I have no money.

Creative Writing 17 The Being: A Love Story, Skewed, From His Point of View Niki Tadehara

Her eyes don’t see as my eyes see. Her ears sense more than a mere fraction of what my ears sense. Her tongue tastes, but much differently than the tongue held in place by your throat or mine. She feels everything, her fingers working just as intricately as those of a small child or fragile adult. And her nose, while resting delicately in the middle of her earth-shattered face, picks up scents that you and I could only dream to catch. She’s closer to angel than demon. More illusion than reality. Not a friend or foe. Never has she been a shoulder for me to cry on or one on which to let loose my frustrations. But still, she’s mine to think about. And she doesn’t even know my name... * * * A whisper, barely evident throughout the hum of the crowd. She can’t hear me, and yet I speak to her all the same. Thoughts, fast racing in my mind, collide as I trip over things I really could say. I wonder what she’s thinking. It must be important. Surely she’s not got such unimportant trifles as what to wear to the party Friday night, who to go with. She looks this way. What to do? But... oh, no. Not at me. The clock on the wall. It reads ten past two. Her cheeks, the skin so beautifully made, flush as blood rises effortlessly beneath the sur- face. But her eyes, they override the seeming look of slight embar- rassment, reveal a look more of... annoyance. That look that is all too familiar. Not to her friends, those she holds closest. But to me, oh yes. And maybe to all else not in her realm of social scenes. * * * High school is long since over. I leave in a month’s time but will inevitably be back. And still, my name is one that has not graced those satin lips. Those lips, the perfect texture, perfect shade. (The beauty resides within her.) It’s been... weeks since I’ve seen her. I no longer work at the diner and so no longer know if it’s her usual

18 Creative Writing eatery. We have no classes together. Spring semester has been over for quite some time and, well, summer classes and me, we just don’t mix. I wonder how she is. More and more I see her in my dreams, leading me to believe that was her place of creation. It would make sense. How else would I know all the curves of her face, the way her red chocolate hair falls over her eyes and down her back? Her voice is like velvet, and yet it hasn’t fallen upon my ears in much too long. The one thing that comforts me, the only thing, is Daniel. I see him much too often for my liking, but never with her. Not anymore, at least. It brings relief, knowing she’s not with him... he’s not with her. Brings my chances up, at least by one. And then, to take all his friends in consideration, that brings my chances up by maybe a handful or two. It’s not much. But it’s hope. * * * I ran in to her once. She didn’t recognize me, of course. It’s no matter. I didn’t expect she would. We made small talk, the first time since we’d met. Or rather, since we’d had that first class together sophomore year. She asked how I was. It almost sounded like she cared... She was happy. Found her way back to Daniel, apparently. But, no, I’m not married. Just haven’t... found the right woman yet. You will. That’s all she told me: you will. Yeah, maybe. And to think, I could have been her perfect guy. But her cell phone interrupted. She said it was nice, before she said goodbye. Seeing me again, talk- ing. Said we’d do lunch some time. She’d call me. She never even got my number... It’s been a few years since then, and I’m with someone now, calls herself Evangeline. Eve for short. She and Daniel are still together. Least I think. I rarely see either of them, which I prefer. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. And really, it’s better that way. No reason for Eve to know she’s only ever been my number two. A runner-up. Second best. I’m not looking for trouble, after all. And yet, not a day goes by that she doesn’t find a way in to my thoughts. And then I have to remind myself that, well, she’s not mine. She never will be... I should have just said something.

Creative Writing 19 Why Mothers Can’t Win Janice Stringham LeFevre Vignette Contest Winner Third Place In Saturday morning’s honeysuckle light, I marshaled my grumbling troops. “We’ve got to save our veggies from the evil weeds,” I announced as I armed my children with forked dandelion diggers. Soon, we were on our knees uprooting our jagged-leafed foes from the garden. That is, everyone but thirteen-year-old Kannie. Wandering aimlessly, she knighted the tomatoes and peppers with her cleft-tipped sword and rolled the roly-poly potato bugs between her fingers. Exasperated, I marked a six-foot square in the soil and marched her to it. “When you’re done weeding this spot,” I said, “you can quit.” Ten minutes later, Kannie announced, “I’m done, Mom!” Doubtful, I raised an eyebrow. “Really?” “Yep!” She smiled and bolted for the house. I inspected. Perhaps seven weeds were gone. Dozens more, arrayed in golden helmets and with roots firmly planted, smirked up at me. “Kannie!” I yelled just before she disappeared into the house. “Why’d you lie to me? You said you were done weeding!” “I didn’t lie,” she called back. “We just define done differently! I meant I’m sick of weeding, and I’m not gonna do it anymore.”

20 Creative Writing Providence Wilt Thou Be With Me Lynette S. Oberg mixed media

Painting / Drawing 21 Azure Realm Series William Merritts acrylic, polymer

22 Painting / Drawing Bloom Induction Chaise Payan mixed media

Painting / Drawing 23 Bench, Pool Players Catherine Rogers ink, gesso

24 Painting / Drawing Untitled from “Sommarvals Installation” Amanda Åkebrand acrylic, ink, watercolor

Painting / Drawing 25 Mischief, Vamp, Diva Sarah Zimmer woodcut

26 Printmaking Book (Selected Pages) Catherine Rogers silkscreen

Printmaking 27 African Woman Rachel Griffiths silkscreen

Two, One, Three Angela Van Wagoner linocut

28 Printmaking Patrick’s Baby Adrian Stumpp Weber State University Ogden, Utah Angie’s baby was six months old and had never met her father. Cleo was a sweet baby, Angie decided, and was irritated it had taken her six months to reach this conclusion. Angie really didn’t want to be a mother. Still. But her indifference was easier to suffer because the child was not difficult. Cleo required minimal upkeep, and Angie knew that was the reason she’d been able to stick it out this long. She’d lived with her parents throughout the pregnancy and for several weeks after Cleo had been born, before being approved for state housing. The apartment was bigger than she’d expected, and older, with vintage shag carpet and floral wallpaper. The walls sweated cigarette stains when the upstairs neighbors ran their dishwasher, the bathroom sink was chronically backed up, and the tub leaked and couldn’t be fixed. Still, it was outfitted with central air, and Angie got used to the dripping after a while. It bothered her mother more than her anyway. Her mother liked to visit every Wednesday afternoon after Cleo’s nap. The anticipation always made Angie anxious. She paced the living room, biting her fingernails and watching out the blinds for the maroon Oldsmobile. She stopped suddenly and listened to the mute apartment for the telltale signs of life but received only re- sounding peace. She told herself it was fine, Cleo was sleeping, and paced. She peered terrified at the dark rooms down the hall, listened hard, and cursed herself for being a worrywart. She checked the window again, and forced herself to remain composed as she clipped down the hall to Cleo’s room. Angie stood over the crib holding her breath. She wanted to hear if Cleo so much as exhaled. The baby didn’t move. Carefully Angie lowered the guardrail and placed her ear next to Cleo’s mouth. She couldn’t tell, cursed herself again, and pinched the baby’s thigh. She had to pinch twice more, and hard the second time, to get the wail she wanted. Relief washed through her, and she picked Cleo up to comfort them both.

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 29 “Anybody home?” her mother sang from the living room. Angie had given her a key, and for some reason that made her mother think she didn’t have to knock anymore. “Where’s that granddaughter?” she called, and Angie came back up the hall to meet her. Her mother wore a sharp lavender pantsuit and too much perfume. She liked to dress as though she had somewhere important to be, but she never did. She had just come from her hairdresser’s with a new short style. Her fifty years showed only in the broad gray streaks, which she refused to dye. Her mother thought older women who dyed their hair advertised poor self esteem, which she consid- ered to be a very graceless behavior. Angie forced a smile, but saw there was no need; her mother looked only at Cleo. She scooped the baby out of Angie’s arms, twirled, and bounced the baby about the room. She cleaned the for- gotten tears from Cleo’s cheeks, careful to keep her long thumbnail away from Cleo’s eye, and said, “She’s been crying.” “Babies cry.” “Babies cry because they need something. She’s dirty or hun- gry or scared.” “Sometimes they just cry,” Angie huffed, and threw herself down on the antique couch her parents had given her when she’d moved out. She’d hoped, for no deserved reason, her mother wouldn’t be like this today. Her mother looked very concerned, but Angie hardly noticed, concern being her mother’s natural state. Her mother made sure the skin folds under Cleo’s chin were clean, checked her for rash, her mouth for thrush. She asked if Cleo might have colic and then was absolutely certain Cleo’s diaper was too tight. After that was fixed, her mother checked the windowsills, showed Angie the dust she’d found, and wondered aloud if the untidy home she kept might be why Patrick hadn’t asked Angie to marry him yet. “How is Patrick?” “He must be fine or I’d have heard about it by now. He hasn’t been over for a few days, which is fine with me.” “Trouble in paradise?”

30 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Angie yawned, determined to enjoy being baby-free a little while. Patrick had asked, and Angie had said “no,” though she had no intention of sharing this with her mother. Angie’s mother didn’t like Patrick because his job was unreli- able and undignified. He worked graveyards at a grocery warehouse filling orders for stores in the surrounding area. She only wanted him to marry Angie because she thought it indecent for a girl to be unwed with an infant, even if, unlike Angie, the girl had been mar- ried at the time of conception; single with a baby meant you could barely keep a husband long enough to get in trouble. Angie’s mother schemed unsuccessfully for months to get rid of Patrick, decided him a dupe she could con into supporting her daughter and granddaugh- ter, and changed tactics. Lately she’d been finding him not so easy to take advantage of, and Angie loved it. Most of their conversations were really arguments, though her mother refused to call them that. She was obsessed with Angie get- ting married to someone, anyone; to whom seemed to matter less as Cleo grew and stubbornly refused to remain inconsequential. Her mother was convinced Angie couldn’t take care of herself. She harped on the squalor Angie inhabited, the welfare she accepted with no job and no prospects, and wondered what kind of life was Angie fit to provide for herself and her daughter? Angie was forced to acknowledge not much of a life was possible. “You can’t think about yourself anymore,” her mother said. She was furious because her visit was almost over and Angie refused to have the only discussion that interested her. “If you think it’s decent for Cleo to grow up in this filth—well, all I can say is you ought to be ashamed. I raised you better.” Late May in the mountains, Angie thought, was the most glorious of all nature’s miracles. Her apartment was not far from the canyon mouth, and sitting in the grass she had a great view of the mountains. It seemed she hadn’t spent time outside in ages because the apartment was on a state highway and the traffic sounds terrified Cleo. Angie had no car and the hassle of packing Cleo on the bus ex- hausted her so that by the time Angie got anywhere, all she wanted was to go home. She felt like a cave-dweller in the stuffy basement

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 31 apartment, and though she kept the blinds open to let in sunlight, the mountains weren’t visible from the window. “Angie,” her mother asked, “are you listening, or are you star- ing out the window?” “Window,” Angie muttered. It was the same old lecture— Angie was unfit to be a mother, she wasn’t good at anything, if she wanted Patrick to marry her, she’d better make some changes—she could recite it in her sleep. Her mother waited for a proper response but Angie coolly ig- nored her, and her mother, irate, slung Cleo into Angie’s lap and left without closing the front door behind her. Angie knew from the beginning she wasn’t ready for mother- hood, but only now did she understand there was no way she could have been prepared. It was like nothing else she had experienced; like having a third leg or arm—it was literally a second stomach. For weeks all Cleo did was eat and purge, and Angie had been expected to know the new stomach was empty without feeling its hunger. She had expected a new instinct to kick in when it was time, and she would know what to do. She harped on the She’d thought a change squalor Angie inhabited, the would come over her, like welfare she accepted with when her breasts grew or no job and no prospects... her hips widened or her period came, she would just be newly inconvenienced by the nesting instinct, the god-given magic of maternity. But that never happened. Four years ago, when Angie was sixteen, she had been ob- sessed with ghost-hunting. She and her friends would explore the abandoned warehouses downtown for some remnant of loose spirits. Her favorite sites were the brick and mortar carcasses of the last century. They would break into the buildings with the witching hour and walk room to room, drawn like mourners to a corpse. The eerie quiet of the midnight city all around, broken after breathless hours by a police siren or a street fight. They would bring an assortment of equipment—ion detectors and Geiger counters and infrared camer- as—hoping to break the patient deceased.

32 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Angie never saw a ghost, though, until one night walking down the hall past Cleo’s room. And then only from the corner of her eye. He wore a black duster coat, his blonde hair long in his face and stringy as though he’d walked in from a torrent. He had a blonde beard streaked with red. His mouth was pale and thin and set hard, but the lines around his eyes and brow were soft and warm. He stood over the crib whispering something to Cleo, and when Angie walked by, he looked up at her. It was Patrick. His shock of blonde hair had grown half down his back, and the beard was new. The face was lined and leather-hardened, and the hairline had receded. Decades older, but it was him. It was only a second. When she looked again he was gone. Cleo was fast asleep. Cleo’s name had been chosen before she was born. Shortly after Angie watched the pointillist map deciphered by the doctor— the cold jelly lubricating the hump of her beneath the impersonal hardware—the pronouncement had been made it would be a girl. To Angie the image on the screen had been nonsensical and the magic of seeing her unborn daughter had been overshadowed by her in- creasing discomfort with the pregnancy. Her body was intolerably hot all the time and she suffered insomnia. She combated this by watch- ing infomercials long into the night, stark naked. She would spray herself down with a water bottle and lie on top of the covers glisten- ing like an enormous shucked snail. Angie’s mother hated the name, but Angie had researched it and was quick to supply its ancient etymology: from the Greek kleos, meaning glory. Really, Angie named her daughter after her favorite late night fortune-teller. Her mother had always been a generous dispenser of uncher- ished advice. She had told Angie not to breastfeed, it would ruin her breasts and no man would want her after that. Only she didn’t call them breasts, of course, she called them bosoms. Chickens had breasts, tramps had tits, and boobies were exotic fowl. Angie had ignored her as usual; she’d read that babies raised on mother’s milk were less likely to get sick and formed a stronger bond with their mothers, and Angie had a superstitious faith in everything she

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 33 read in the baby magazines. She had not enjoyed breastfeeding. She leaked wet spots on her blouses, her nipples ached like clenched fists, and the pitiful look on Cleo’s face when she gummed the air before finding the nipple provoked in Angie a resentment she was not comfortable with. Angie weaned Cleo onto bottle formula just shy of the one month mark, and re-met Patrick. The two corresponded to the day. Patrick was an old high school friend she’d not seen in years. The fast-paced lifestyle of her late teens had prevented them from crossing paths, and only now, domesticated by a new baby and forced to slow down, had she found time for him again. In those first weeks, she had come to rely heavily on Patrick’s company, as no one she’d known more recently bothered to visit anymore. She couldn’t go to parties and found she didn’t miss them. She was content now with being boring and wanted boring people, like Patrick, to surround her. Cleo was in love with Patrick. The whole time he held her that first day Angie had felt embarrassed, as though she were eavesdrop- ping on a love affair. He held Cleo to him with an intimacy Angie had not assumed with the baby. It was unbearably sweet, and Angie felt relieved when Cleo started to fuss. She thought for sure Patrick would hold Cleo away from him in that awkward way boys have, and hand her back to Angie. But instead he cradled Cleo closer to him, in the hollow below his chest, and rocked her gently to sleep. He came often after that. He would hold Cleo for hours, clean, change, dandle, and play with her. When he got her to sleep he would put her down in the crib and go home. Angie thought it strange but appreciated the break. When she handed Cleo off to Pat- rick, her whole body tingled like a blood-rush through a sleepy limb. Patrick offered to babysit, but Angie found the things she’d enjoyed in her former life to be a greater burden than Cleo, and understood she felt no desire to change back. She preferred to stay in, and one night Patrick lingered after the baby was put down. They quickly ended up in bed, sweaty, and thoroughly spent. At least now, six months after her birth, Cleo was beginning to look more like Angie than Cory. Their basic body structure was the same: lithe arms, stocky necks, long legs, short torsos, high

34 National Undergraduate Literary Conference foreheads. They made similar facial expressions when surprised, panicked, overjoyed. Cory had been disgusted with her decision to have the baby, and part of her refused to fault him for it. She hadn’t seen him since, nor had she tried to see him. She had told herself that Cory had a choice to make just as she did. He had chosen an abortion; Angie had chosen a baby. As far as she was concerned, Cory had no daugh- ter, and Angie didn’t assume the right to ask for child support, or any help whatever, much to her mother’s chagrin. The nurses had put a swaddled prune on Angie’s chest in the delivery room. Cleo had beady ferret eyes and her skin had looked waterlogged for weeks, purple and wrinkled. She had Cory’s floppy ears, miniature porcelain replicas of his feet, the longer second toe and strangely curved pinkie. In fact, all of Cleo’s particular body parts were whispers of Cory, her gray-blue eyes, disproportionately large ears, double-jointed elbows, her skin prone to rash, to over- sweating, the inventory was endless. Angie stopped taking this in- ventory, but months ago she had been obsessed with cataloging every shadow of Cleo’s sperm-donor. When Cleo would wake in the night and need to be fed and comforted back into the darkness, Angie would pace the nursery with the limp body dangling in her arms and scour it for pieces of Cory. She hated him with a cold, composed hatred. Thinking of him made Angie icy to her most unfathomed reach. It had frightened her at first. She had never experienced anything like it. Anger had always been hot in her and boiling; there had been an element of revolt to it. This was an acceptance of defeat, and it didn’t scare her anymore. She frankly found it soothing. It was the same sensation that came over Angie when she started seeing Patrick in Cleo. She’d somehow absorbed his looks. Cleo inherited Patrick’s hunched posture, his swaying gait. Cleo’s favorite toy was a plastic ball covered in variously shaped holes through which corresponding blocks could be inserted. This bright blue puzzle earned her ire more than anything she’d yet encountered. Cleo longed to punch square blocks through oval holes. She had an angry passion for proving Angie’s insistence on the square hole un-

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 35 necessary. The slightest suggestion of the square hole would kindle all her anger, loud and brief as a firecracker. Cleo’s face would twist while formulating new strategies against the insolent ball, eyes half closed, her tongue pasted against the corner of her upper lip, just in such a way. It was the face Patrick made while fiddling with the bathtub leak. Exactly. When Angie held Cleo, sealed deep in the apartment’s humid dark, humming distracted lullabies and peering into the haunted bundle against her breast, this is what she saw: Cory’s pale eyes beneath her own high forehead, and behind them, where all Cleo’s physical attributes came together—the creases and her eyes and the stoic intelligence behind them—the child harbored Patrick’s soul. Whatever lurked behind their four eyes, Angie knew, was made of the same stuff. The night Angie had seen Patrick’s ghost standing over Cleo’s crib, Angie had rushed up and down the hall as if expecting to find him, but she hadn’t. Of course, she hadn’t. But she had told him about the encounter the next time he came over. They had sat na- ked on the disheveled bed watching black and white reruns of Perry Mason on PBS with bowls of macaroni and cheese balanced on their bellies. “It wasn’t me,” Patrick had said without looking. Patrick loved Perry Mason and it was difficult to get him to pay attention to any- thing else once the show had begun. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see it.” Patrick had shrugged. “I’m not dead. How could you see my ghost if I’m still alive?” “It was your ghost.” “I don’t have a beard,” Patrick had pointed out, “or thinning hair. Or a duster coat.” But Angie wouldn’t be persuaded. “I know what I saw. It was you.” Patrick slept all day. The warehouse had been busy, and he didn’t get off work until six Friday morning. According to Angie’s wishes, he kept his own apartment during the week—she refused to live with him—but spent weekends with Angie and Cleo. He finally

36 National Undergraduate Literary Conference woke at six o’clock in the evening and stumbled into the living room. He looked confused. “Where’s my stuff?” he wanted to know. His toiletries and the change of clothes he kept in Angie’s closet were missing. “I had to hide them,” Angie said. “My mom came over, and I didn’t want her to know you kept stuff here.” Patrick stared back at her sleepily and said, “I can’t find my stuff.” A shower and change of clothes put him in his usual high spir- its. Cleo was giddy to see him and burst with erratic laughter as he swung her through the air. He grabbed a handful of Angie’s flabby rump and kissed the top of her head. “What do you want to do tonight?” he asked. Angie shrugged, “Usual, I guess.” “Usual it is,” Patrick said, and showed her the B horror movie he’d rented from the small selection at the little grocery store across the highway. He got a discount for working at the warehouse that serviced it. There were perks to dating a warehouse boy, but Angie’s mom couldn’t see that. ‘The Usual’ meant that Patrick would exhaust Cleo while Angie made dinner. They’d eat in the living room while watching game shows on network TV. Then Patrick would put Cleo to bed—she wouldn’t let anyone else do it if he was around, not even Angie— while Angie made popcorn. Patrick woke the next morning wanting to make love. Angie didn’t love Patrick, but she loved having sex with him. It drained her of anxiety, made her peaceful, somehow full when she closed her eyes, and at home in the world. She spent so much time in an emo- tional and intellectual panic; sex was the only thing that grounded her. It gave her a sense of presence on the earth, made her feel more permanent than she really was. Patrick dozed afterwards. Angie could hear Cleo stirring from her nap across the hall. She sat Cleo on the bed between the adults to play in molehills of rumpled blankets. Angie ran her fingers along Patrick’s back, and wished that she loved him. For months she’d lied by claiming to herself that she did love him, but it was too exhaust-

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 37 ing now. Their affection was genuine and tender but not at all deep. Her connection to Cory was deeper, even if she hated him. Perhaps the reason their relationship had been so brief was precisely because it’d been so volatile. Neither Angie nor Cory had been able to func- tion under the mutual feeding frenzy they’d wrought. When Patrick woke they had a long kissing session, and he proposed again. She declined again. Unfazed, Patrick threw Cleo in the air and caught her by the thighs. She Angie had felt giggled like a motor. She screamed at embarrassed, as him her unquenchable love. They nuzzled though she were one another, cooed into each other’s ears. eavesdropping on Angie went to the kitchen and brought a love affair. back a banana for Cleo’s lunch. She soft- ened it between her fingers and distract- edly let the baby eat out of her palm, and they both were quickly covered in yellow drool thick as paste. “Angie! Hey!” Patrick gasped, and lunged, and he didn’t need to explain; Angie could see Cleo had stopped breathing. She slumped forward like a sack among the blankets. Angie had only looked away a second but already that fact was beyond her compre- hension. She held Cleo beneath the armpits but could not bear to pull the lolled head and blue lips to her body. Angie’s senses drifted softly away from her as if exhaled. She couldn’t move. Patrick grabbed the baby and sat her like a doll across his lap. He thumped Cleo’s back as if keeping time, one, two, three. He put his ear to her mouth and laid her straight down the length of his forearm and thumped her back again. He made a sound like trapped vermin and trembled. He put Cleo on her back and crouched over her and sealed his mouth over her mouth and nose, and sucked. His back went rigid and he sat straight up on his knees, his head and shoulders thrust out as though he were emerging from water. He coughed up the banana he’d inhaled, and Cleo screamed her tiny life that once and for all had fought to stay. Patrick tried to give Cleo to Angie, but Angie would sooner cut her arm off than take that child from him. “Hold her,” she told Patrick, “she wants you.”

38 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Angie had feared what would happen if Patrick were suddenly gone. Would Cleo be destroyed? Had she come to think of Patrick as her father? That fear had passed, though. It was obvious Cleo thought of Patrick as hers, father or otherwise. A new fear descended on Angie: did Cleo know that Angie was her mother, that Angie was connected to her more than Patrick? An- gie didn’t think so, and was devastated. She realized it was for this reason she had developed the habit of pinching Cleo while she slept: Angie was convinced that if Cleo died, she would not feel her baby’s last breath. Angie looked out the window from where she sat on the couch and imagined the mountains she could not see. The hours in the middle of the day while Cleo napped were lonely. The unusual quiet was often cruel to Angie and she invented daydreams to amuse herself in which Cleo despised her and accused Angie of being the reason she had no father. Angie would imagine that in years to come Cleo would denounce her, find her long lost father, and forge a loving relationship. She took a certain masochistic pleasure in these day- dreams, and found in them an escape that is the primary function of fantasy. Angie had made Patrick promise last night not to tell anyone Cleo almost choked to death. She especially didn’t want her parents to know. Angie felt responsible, like she should have known what to do. But instead of acting, she’d just stared like an idiot. Angie wanted to forget about it, and she thought this could happen if no one knew but her and Patrick. She didn’t want to admit Cleo would be dead now if Patrick hadn’t known what to do, and yet the thought stayed with her, thrilled her with its morbid self-indulgence. She thought to get her mind off it she might take a bath, since she hadn’t had one in over twenty-four hours. Last night, after Patrick had put Cleo to bed and gone home, Angie had drawn a bath, but she couldn’t get in. She couldn’t say why. She’d had every intention of bathing until she’d taken off her clothes and sat on the toilet seat watching the steam rise from the clear water. She’d finally checked the water with her fingertips and discovered it had gone cold, and she’d realized she’d been staring at it for hours.

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 39 She looked in on Cleo and stroked her hair and kissed her cheek and whispered to her how very lucky she was, she would be dead right now if her daddy hadn’t saved her. Cleo was dreaming, and her tiny eyelashes fluttered like chick down. Angie started the bathwater running and hung her bathrobe from the doorknob. She undressed and stacked her clothes in a neat pile behind the door and sat on the toilet seat wishing she could get in the water, but she already knew it would be impossible. She wondered what Cleo might be dreaming about. Probably Patrick’s ghost. She hoped Cleo didn’t have nightmares about last night, hoped it had already been lost to her. Angie didn’t want Cleo’s dreams to be anything like her own. While pregnant she’d had supernaturally vivid dreams. Every- thing, in fact, had been saturated with an aching sensuality. Food had tasted better, cold pierced deeper, emotions lasted longer; her whole body had soaked for nine months in a chronic state of physi- cal hallucination. Now, Angie sometimes had bad dreams about the nurses confusing her baby for some other and sending her home with the wrong one. They chased her into wakefulness and as she stirred in the place between her dreams and her life, she was impressed with the feeling that she had never been pregnant with Cory’s child, it had been some other girl, and Angie had only been conned into accepting responsibility.

40 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Satan’s Lobby Amber Allen Vignette Contest Winner Fourth Place What is that smell? My eyes shift left, then right. Is it the creepy 40-year-old pedophile or the 786 pound woman with man hands? I’m going to say the woman. I’ll bet she has purple carpets in her house. Please let me be next. Turning up my iPod, I slouch deeper into my chair. Could fifty-five bucks a week be worth my dis- gust? Of course it is. Ironic that I would rather be taken into a frigid room and siphoned with a needle by what is probably a professional heroin addict than sit sandwiched between Big Bertha and Merve the Perve. What on earth is that wretched smell? My eyes plead with the receptionist. Me next. I’m begging you. “Amber?” Praise the Lord, it’s about time. Standing up, I turn to retrieve my bag off the back of my chair. Bertha grins a farewell. No teeth. Splendid.

Creative Writing 41 Bumper Joshua Davidson

I never did kill that guy in Virginia Beach. I sure wanted to, though; he did, after all, bump into me on the boardwalk and never apologized. That bastard just kept on walking. My memory could be fooling me, as it often does, but I believe he was also talking on a cell phone. Either that or he was listening to one of those damn MP3 players, completely oblivious to the rest of his community including me, especially me. I wonder if God would be so nonchalant and uncaring to his creations crossing his cosmic boardwalk. Of course, I don’t believe in God anymore. Even if I did, I doubt he’d listen to music. Such a pastime seems so selfish for a creature of infinite power. I did eventually find the man who bumped into me about three miles down the pier; at least I was pretty sure it was the same man. Actually, it could have been a woman. Well, whoever he or she was I was most understandably upset concerning the actions of him or her. A lesser man would have killed that parasite where it stood without as much as a question. But I chose to question him or her as to the intentions of the most nefari- ous act of shoulder-bumping, an action worthy of capital punishment if the government had any sort of common sense. Hell, come to think of it I believe the bumper was a man, a man worthy of lethal injection. Or maybe even a good old-fashioned hanging where the townsfolk could picnic and use the occasion as a cautionary tale to their innocent children as to the dangers of bump- ing into innocent strangers. If shoulder-bumping is tolerated by society, what’s next? Public nail biting? Greeting complete strangers in a friendly fashion? Toler- ance towards homosexual behavior? My non-shoulder-bumping moral compass shudders at such blasphemies. Sorry, I tend to ramble on and on. At first, the bumper didn’t want to talk to me so I had to bring

42 Creative Writing him back to my apartment to make sure that justice was carried out. We drove the fourteen miles up the coastline to my apartment com- plex in near total silence. Apparently, he didn’t feel like talking. For whatever reason, he did mumble rather passionately. When we arrived, I took the duct tape off of his mouth and waited A friend of mine... for him to settle down before beginning my line of questioning. The bumper advised me to plead seemed to be a very odd man. Why the insanity, whatever hell was there tape over his mouth and that means. what was he so worked up over? Come to think of it, how did I get from the boardwalk to my car? No matter. The first and most important question that I ask all of my friends was whether or not he believed in God. Seems a decent and common enough thing to ask. But he wouldn’t answer. He just kept blabbering about how he had a family and asked me what I planned to do with him. What a stupid thing to ask. I planned to question him. That was it. That should have been obvious when I asked him if he be- lieved in God. As well, what did his family have to do with anything? I had a family once and it didn’t make me special. I asked him the question again, and then a third time. He just continued his incoherent blubbering. The blubberer was apparently as untidy as he was obstinate, because the next thing I knew there was blood all over the floor near his chair and my hammer was left out of its drawer. I decided to clean up the inconsiderate twerp’s mess later, as his inquisition was what most mattered at the moment. I asked him again and this time he answered. He said he did believe in God. I asked him why. It was because he just knew. Why did he just know? He wasn’t sure. I then asked him why he chose to bump into me on the board- walk. He apparently didn’t even notice he did. How is that even possible? That’s as incomprehensible as a man committing murder without notice.

Creative Writing 43 So I asked him if he believed God would punish him for his sins and transgressions. Of course, he said he did. I asked him if he thought the bump on the boardwalk would qualify as a sin. He said, “Maybe.” I spent the remainder of the hour questioning his various other theological beliefs. Unfortunately, they were all quite boring and not even worth getting into. I don’t remember much after that, I believe the man (or maybe it was a shadow, or perhaps a TV show) called me a freak. Several hours later, I remembered that there were some re- cently filled trash bags that I had to bring down to the ocean. I did, of course; I do consider myself a neat freak. Is that what the voice called me? A neat freak? I don’t think so. I assume I must have brought the bumper back to the board- walk because when I returned to my apartment he was no longer there. Before leaving, the man had made an additional, larger mess of blood in the bathroom. The miscreant even stole some of my knives. Did I tell you that already? Well, I thought it and that’s just as good. So, when the police came to me a couple days later and asked me if I recognized the bumper in a photograph, I said I did. They asked me when I last saw him and to what capacity I knew him. I told them that he bumped into me whilst talking on a phone or pos- sibly listening to music. I also said that he did in fact believe in God and that it was his belief that his sins would be answered for in the next life. They looked puzzled and disturbed. Or at least, they look like I imagine one would look if puzzled or disturbed, having never been either myself. I don’t remember what I said after that. The next several months were a blur, or at least more of a blur than usual. A lot of sitting and listening and more sitting. My apart- ment now had bars on it (no doubt another act of littering by that damned bumper) and I didn’t have to go to work anymore. Instead, I traveled to a room with people wearing suits and carrying brief- cases. They all wanted to talk to me at length about the bumper.

44 Creative Writing Apparently, he did get to meet God. At least it was his belief that he did. I asked the man sitting in the tall chair if the bumper was be- ing punished for his transgressions and if the bumping into me was indeed a transgression. He never did answer. Not that I remember anyway. A friend of mine who also wore a suit (and earned more money than I did) advised me to plead insanity, whatever that means. I said I would if he would tell me whether or not he believes in God (he was, after all my friend.) He wasn’t sure, but he said he’d like to. Good for him. I would like a tuna sandwich. So now here I am several years (or maybe days, hours?) later with nothing to do but sit and take pills. I never did remember hav- ing so many pills in my apartment. And I also recall being able to leave my residence, on occasion. But as I have already alluded, my memory is quite poor. The TV in the corner and the various shadows around the room told me not to take the pills anymore. I don’t think they like it when I do, because they always give me the silent treatment for a while afterwards. Sometimes I wonder about the bumper and how he got home. I assume I must have dropped him off after “Wheel of Fortune” called me a neat freak. I also wonder about how he died. All I know is I never killed him. My best guess as to the culprit is either God or his cell phone. Not that I believe in God. Or cell phones. Who are you again? I apologize; I do tend to ramble on and on.

Creative Writing 45 Meet Death Ryan Bowen

I was hesitant to let Thomas ride the coaster at first. It seemed that so many things could go wrong. I wanted him to have fun, not get scared silly. But I decided as long as I was there to watch him, everything would be okay. He was so happy about it his eyes filled with excitement and remained that way throughout the wait of a very long line. My little boy’s first roller coaster. I was so happy for him. I was ecstatic that I could experience these things with him again. It had been too long. It wasn’t until after we’d cleared the second turn that I sus- pected something could be wrong with the ride. The cars seemed more uncontrolled than I had remembered from my own childhood. I convinced myself it was only my imagination. It had been ages since I had last ridden a roller coaster and I was sure my mind was playing tricks on me. I reminisced about how the butterflies in my belly had been replaced with total delight after I survived the first steep drop of a coaster and I saw the same expression on Tommy’s bouncing face as we plummeted downwards. It was all in my head. But as we cleared a small hill, I almost felt for a split second like our car had jumped off the tracks. ‘Stay calm, Debbie,’ I told myself. I could be such a wuss sometimes. It wasn’t until we reached the peak of another large hill that it hit me like a punch in the face. Our roller coaster was out of control. Normally when a coaster starts up a new incline it slows down a rea- sonable amount, or so I thought. But ours didn’t. When we reached the top we were still going so fast I thought right then and there that the cars would fly off the tracks and we’d all die. I heard Tommy beside me yelling, “Mommy, I’m scared!” through what I’m sure had to have been a sea of tears. Someone in one of the cars behind us yelled, “Oh my god! We’re out of control!” And I stood staring in a state of total panic as we raced down

46 Creative Writing the second steepest incline of the ride with a fury. I couldn’t breathe. The seat restraint was pressed so hard into my stomach that it was becoming unbearably painful. People were shouting and screaming all around me and they were becoming more and more incoherent, the babbled screams of pure terror. I looked at Tommy. I tried to yell comforting words to him but they’d fallen on deaf ears. He was crying his eyes out and the look on his face is one I’ve been unable to forget since. I’ve been afraid before and I have seen people scared senseless, but the look of certain death on a child, especially on my own little boy’s face, was more than I could handle. I burst into tears and squeezed his hand in a feeble attempt at reassurance, but I knew what was coming. The seconds had passed like minutes. The ride felt like it was lasting an eternity but I knew we were only about halfway through it and the turn was coming up. The spine tingling u-turn at the edge of the ride that veers the coaster back towards the loading area to pick up new passengers was legendary to locals. Its purpose had always been to provide one last cheap thrill before the ride came to a close. We wouldn’t make it. We were going way too fast. I could feel the dread in my guts and I could see it coming. My glasses had long since blown away in the wind and I could only make out its blurry outline through my tears. But it was there. I wanted to look at my boy one last time, but I couldn’t. I was so petrified that my eyes locked at the upcoming horror. I didn’t want to move. I didn’t want to do anything. Was this where my life had led me? After all my work? All my sacrifices? I’d given up my husband and my own son. My choices had all led me to this moment in time? What a waste. We hit the turn with a malevolence that tore through part of the track, sending ours and the other cars skyrocketing through the air. Some smashed through the wooden supports of the ride while our car spiraled through the air, narrowly missing splinters and other shrap- nel bombarding us from all angles. And my hand, which had been clutching Tommy’s through it all, slipped away from his. My little boy was gone and the ground was approaching too quickly. We hit the ground.

Creative Writing 47 I awoke to the sounds of sirens. Coughing blood, I tried to move but couldn’t. One of the cars had landed on top of me and pinned me facedown against the cement. What I could only assume were pools of my own blood and the scattered fragments of the cars surrounded me. At a second glance I noticed that they weren’t all car fragments. Some were the bodies of other riders. None of them moved. I started to cry. I was the only one. I couldn’t look around anymore. Not for Tommy. Not for any- thing. Paramedics came rushing, but I almost wished they would be too late and I could just die here with my son and everyone else. It was my place. It was my time. But they wouldn’t let me. They yelled instructions to each other after they’d found me, trying to comfort me with their soothing words and consolations. “It’s all right, it’s all right. We’re going to save you!” said one. “Everything is going to be okay, just stay calm,” deadpanned another. No, nothing was okay. The hypocrisy of it all was choking me. They finally managed to get the car off of me. I heard a ripping sound as it was lifted off. It was several moments before I realized I was screaming hysterically from the pain. I blacked out. When I came to, I was in a hospital. I tried to move to no avail. They had me strapped down. I started screaming for my son and a nurse came rushing in and told me to calm down. “Where is my son!” I yelled frantically. “Please, ma’am, if you’ll just calm down. It’s going to be okay,” came the timid reply of the nurse. “Shut up! My son, goddamnit! Where is my son?!” A doctor rushed in and the nurse explained the situation to him. Something was put into my IV and I was out like a light again. I gradually awoke for longer periods of time every day. My ex- husband John came to see me every now and again. It was him that explained that Tommy was dead, a look of accusation in his eyes. Tommy had been killed instantly by the fall and I had been the only survivor. I’d been out of it for so long that they had already buried my son. My last memory of my son was of that look of horror on his face.

48 Creative Writing It was burned into my retinas. I asked John to leave. I couldn’t stand that look in his eyes. That glint of anger that flashed occasionally as he was talking to me was too much. What did I do? What could I do? Was this my fault? I wanted to die. By this point I had Paramedics came rushing, already been told I was but I almost wished they paralyzed from the waist would be too late and I could down. There were no straps just die here... keeping me from move- ment, only myself. I was a prisoner inside a dying husk of a body. God’s coup de grace. I sunk into a deep depression and my recovery was slow and painful. Eventually I was released from the hospital but was kept on a suicide watch by friends, family or hospital employees. I had made the process of rehabilitation extremely difficult. Fought them at every turn. I hated them for keeping me alive. I hated them for not appreci- ating what they had. I despised them all. But the suicide watch made me realize my mistake. The last thing I wanted was for them to be around me at every turn, watching my every movement. So I began co-operating. I tried to rebuild my life. I accepted the paralyzation and even started working from home again. After having fought them every step of the way, the doctors were surprised by my sudden attitude change and by the drastic improvement that followed. I was taken off of suicide watch and things slowly returned to normal. As normal as things could be without a son, or a career, or the ability to walk. Life was funny in some ways. Things are violently ripped away from us and yet we are still expected to want to live at all costs. But why? Maybe some things would eventually return to the way they were but I never would. I’d changed. For the rest of my life, I would remember Tommy and his final moments of suffering. My legs and my inability to have kids would serve as a constant reminder of this fact. Am I supposed to just forget everything? Create one final injustice for my dead son by forgetting him and happily move on with my life? I didn’t want to live in a world

Creative Writing 49 where I could lose everything and shrug it off a couple months later with no regrets. Maybe somebody else could accomplish these things, but I refuse to. If they know me at all, my friends and family will under- stand. And if they don’t, then to hell with them. I don’t care anymore. The bathtub is big. This is not exactly what I planned on us- ing it for when I had it installed but its practicality now is tragically ironic. I want an end to the pain. I want an end to everything. I am so tired. The water washes over me in an almost soothing fashion. An excitement flows through me and I think of Tommy once again. Do I have that same look in my eyes that he had before things turned so sour? That look of someone who has their entire future ahead of them. The water submerges my head and I day-dream . We’re playing in a meadow at dusk. The sky is beautiful shades of purple and red. I call to Tommy and he comes leaping through the grass and lunges at me. I grab him and we hug. I tell him we need to get going and he begs and pleads for ten more minutes. He just found a really awe- some bug and he wants to find it a girlfriend. I laugh and tell him it’s okay and we hug again and he runs off. I hope I will see my son again and that he’s happy so I can enjoy it with him. I feel like I’ve reached the end of a very long, very bleak winter’s night and with the emergence of a gentle sun, I can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

50 Creative Writing a lesser known fact Adrian Stumpp

there have been certain discoveries made by anthropologists as of late which suggest the serious possibility that before poetry was invented no one died and no one made love because there was no reason to.

Poetry 51 Crouching Down Kristin Jackson

Last night it rained To linger on and everything blooming and fill up crouched down in it. the margins between our solitary My body tangles hands, with the quilt, between root the cotton, more ragged and seed. in the settling light. but in the dust filled Parting from the familiar tug of day, space in the expanse between hips, between between mouths, the fields and breath and the road that leads toward town, I wake, pour the coffee, the wash hangs, and pick handfuls thigh deep of berries in wheat, for your plate waiting for something.

I want to love you the lonely edges wild and unbound of sun-stiff sheet whispering to the wet ground. You in your necktie Me in my sensible, white robe

52 Poetry The Garden Brittanie Stumpp

the garden goes untended cold wind runs through the trees the crimson fruits fall on wilted grass the birds leave their nests

a quiet descends a quiet descends upon the leaves shards of past embers burn bright reminding vines of former morning glories

they grow upon the ash they grow shallow the winds stir more and more the solid oak stately patriarch stands tall unwavering

yet deep inside the worms fester growing fat and flaccid obese conquerors in shadows lie in shadows lie

the sickness spreads the virulent weed

Poetry 53 The Wall Lindsey Scharman

A wall of stone lined the path of packed dirt. The stone was old, faded in color, and missing small bits of itself. Reaching up to test the strength of this barrier, a cool but rough texture met my hand leaving small scratches.

The scratches now lining my palm matched the white lines found in the crumbling foundation below. But below was not where I wanted to go and so I altered the stare of my blank blue eyes to allow a prolonged assessment of the top.

Curious, I lifted myself up on the balls of my feet allowing my inquisitive nose to barely clear the top of the wall. Straining for a glimpse of what might be held on the other side I was gratified to find another world so neatly hidden.

54 Poetry Glaucoma Keats Conley College of Idaho Caldwell, Idaho At first, I thought it was a pretty word. Three syllables like I love you, Graffiti, Good morning. It wasn’t pretty when my father started seeing flickers in the edges of his eyes that weren’t real. Like cameras flashing without the warning of Say cheese! Then the word was ugly like, Leprosy, Treachery, Defeated. It was a coma, the sequel to a car crash; what happens when you can’t wake up. It was a robber for which there was no Robin Hood. I knew it by the scenes it took away: the sea-ridge shade of his iris, his peripheral vision, my trust in the sounds of things.

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 55 I am, again, stripped Bonnie Russell Nelson

Lavender and mint kelp soap washes the day off my skin, running it in slick lines down my body, pooling it around my feet, Lilacs and grays.

The steam, humid and sticky, tangles my hair, clinging it down my back.

Later, thick mango terry cloth wraps my imperfections.

56 Poetry Council Brittanie Stumpp

They sit round table, holding council with hookahs and whiskey discussing the world and all the words in it round a fire copper tone warmth cedar ashes and aspen

They define urban generica endemic gridlock, end of days doggy elysian buffets and the relationship between Beatrice and Dante while smoke saturates their pores…

Dusky skin, charcoal stains and they sit and they manifest words in spring’s deification of green.

Poetry 57 A Slippery Anchor Alana Faagai

Almost, the essence of failed ambitions, of success filled with empty, Consumes all that remains unfinished and unattained. Almost--mysterious and complicated, somehow incomplete in its entirety.

‘I almost had you’ does not satisfy the soul; it evokes agony because almost having something is having nothing, with nothing lost or gained. Almost, the essence of failed ambitions, is success filled with empty.

Straining, struggling, and sparring with tangled words longing to be free, trying to express baffling, fragmented thoughts that are reigned forevermore by almost is complicated and always incomplete in its entirety.

A void in the soul damaged by the burdened idea that inadvertently every almost in life is brought about by disappointing failures, forever pained, revealing almost as the essence of failed ambitions, defining success as empty. ‘I almost’ foretells an unsuccessful juncture; better to refrain silently to nurse unacceptable defeat, and instead, display completeness feigned. Almost provides mysterious complications, incomplete in its entirety.

Almost is an inexplicable loss and yearning for that fleeting grasp on sanity, a slippery anchor to that forgotten dream unclaimed. Almost is the essence of failed ambitions, of success filled with empty. Almost is mysterious and complicated, incomplete in its entirety.

58 Poetry dig Rebecca Samford

the morning sun presses on my neck and shoulders it is early and the task has not begun. balancing tools unknown to my hands i march toe-to-heel measuring, marking the six-foot rectangle.

with decisive force, i strike the ground breaking through the grass-and-soil crust.

Mother Earth, forgive me.

a clump of clay is all that sits on the curved metal this will not be easy and i have forgotten my gloves. muscle and sinew burn and endure where others have no fire and closets of memory open past cobwebs of mind-dust seeing my little lost child.

i wonder what people will do when there is nothing to dig when some great caterpillar of technology reaches instead when coin and paper are exchanged for sweat when tears and anger and remorse stay bound in the chest when the world is cold on a bright summer day when ‘good-bye’ is all that lips can offer and then, silence.

the hole is dug deep i will fill it with sand and laughter will shelter this place

Poetry 59 Paradise Discarded Adrian Stumpp

1. I don’t remember where I was the first time I realized Good doesn’t always prevail over evil All men are not created equal Love doesn’t conquer all though I do know that no one ever whispered these things in my ear no cloak of night no fork tongued serpent no bitter loss 2. Adam to Eve: I have always been charmed by shapely, red-headed women from the wrong side of town who chew with their mouths open

I knew this as surely as I knew I would die the first time I saw you eating forbidden fruit underneath the ash tree 3. Creationists and Evolutionists will argue whether men or women are alone in the universe but they tend to agree that they have only each other alone, on earth

whether cast out of a bang or a garden it does not matter 4. No cloak of night, no fork tongued serpent But for a brief moment perhaps we stared into the eye of God and perhaps God blinked first, no bitter loss

60 Poetry C.H. Esperson Jamie A. Kyle photographic tableau

Photography 61 Nude Series Angela Van Wagoner inkjet print, acrylic

62 Photography Equinox Scott Jensen digital art

Graphic Design 63 Broken Ecstasy Series Nancy Rivera color pigment prints

64 Photography Sliced Amy Gillespie digital art

Graphic Design 65 Typography 1 Kathryn Lundell digital art

66 Graphic Design Untitled 4 & 5 Ruth Silver color pigment print

Photography 67 Identities Angela Van Wagoner inkjet print, acrylic

68 Photography If We Are Not Evening Jeremy Brodis

Maybe we are a series of mornings — sealed coffee cans and appleskins.

Maybe we are the ripping of wrapping paper. Our thinnest parts destroyed, what remains is less disposable.

Maybe we are the open, empty parts in the middle of a morning.

Maybe we are sealed for freshness, the way a morning is sealed from the discovery of evening.

Maybe we are a pale-pink banner, bending at the knee with the coming of a breeze.

Maybe we are timing in motion. Timing and motion.

Poetry 69 After the End Eric Pope

A rifle hangs across his shoulder in a sling. Wet boots and a heavy step. Thick beard and hat hair.

Brown trees stab through layered snow. A steep slope shows evidence of a slide. He wanders through choosing his steps.

He reads blood on the snow. Trickle here drop there and a smudge. The longer it lives, the further he drags.

Survival is his goal, he trudges on unafraid. The trail turns downhill and becomes a skid. Crumpled buck against a tree looks at him.

Frightened eyes, a quiver and a muscle twitch. Prey views predator with terror. His family is hungry. He draws the colt.

It struggles to rise, fear lending strength. He aims, regretful yet resolute. In cold air, gunshots hurt your ears more.

Claps echo each other across the valley. A hillside loosens and cascades into a draw. The deer’s limp body steams red life onto the snow.

Fresh meat, fat, and bowels warm his hands. His knife is as much a part of him as his rifle. He leaves the refuse, and builds a sled of hide.

70 Poetry A frozen hell descends upon him as he works. Sweat steams and freezes as he drags and is dragged across the hill toward the flat.

Fingers lock in place around the rope. Exhaustion clamors for frequent rests. The competition howls at the scent of blood.

He wants to get home before he has to fight to keep his food from the wolves. Before the forgotten toes turn black.

Poetry 71 Once Kristin Jackson

We painted our house against the landscape, the sultry red of August leaves. We dug at the earth with our fingers pushing bright seeds into pulpy ground. We ate. The fur of berries stained our lips. We gave each other vows and children, Hand over hand, coffee, we tugged our lifeline and a warm bed through empty in the morning. cornstalk, through slanted light, through years, filling up with dust and brokenness. I talk to you now in whispers, sending words into the deep expanse between our pillows, between our dust filled fields, and this house, peeling red.

72 Poetry The Track Brittany Barberino Lynn University Boca Raton, Florida The concrete is contagious In its grey, harkening, beckoning Come closer, take this, Eat, ingest

Your good body, swells, The stomach engorged with verbs

Fly faster to this relief, Some sanctuary, find it in me, My sin, my stratosphere, the stretching of your pores Absorb the steam, smog pouring through the limbs

Tell me then, what is not true. The pain of digestion It refuses to leave as easy, without grace,

Gestation, bourgeoning with heat, Lay down this burden, your hand on my hand, Place it on the concrete Put not in what you cannot take out. Do not take out what you cannot put it.

But you, you are hysterical Post partum assessment states you haven’t your cake And you seem to be starving.

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 73 L.A. Bowl, January 1977 Josh Sims

Lonely Les Paul lying stage-right only four-sixths whole. snare still burning, stick stuck in its face

Microphone like a noose around the neck of the bass hanging from the monolithic amp, swaying, still humming.

Empty amphitheater rows save stray cups, empty Zippos, torn stubs and a single, rent ’74 World Tour t-shirt.

No tears, just a safety-pinned leather jacket disguised as a white riot.

74 Poetry Letter to a Little Bean Brittanie Stumpp

I go to the clinic with its cold walls, sterile scents and teenage girls ripe with sex sitting silently, crossing their fingers I walk to the counter with its candy dish condoms jar and say, “I need a Plan B,” as in “Better hurry before it’s too late, not ready for Baby,” Plan B Nurse in powder blue, the color of infant boys hands it over for a minimal fee I hold two blue pills in the palm of my hand, like you and see you who will never be and the lives We could have with you Wonder how many of you there have been already little beans, never to sprout legs and toddle For a moment, I pause then change my mind No, the timing’s not right We have things to do, people to see books to read no place for you—yet So with one cold swallow beneath the harsh beams of fluorescent light I erase your entire history

Poetry 75 Three Minutes ­— for: Michael Rebecca Samford

Three minutes passed since his curly head had broken into sky from water, and 800,000 others had done the same splitting skin and air with voice and blood.

Three minutes passed since his chubby fingers had tugged blue from red. Squealing delight — while dragon-green eyes spoke Patience — shattering shelter with laughter and “Mine!”

Three minutes passed since his tall frame had splintered the door into light, and forever family became just Words fragmenting “I love you”s into anger and shards.

Three minutes passed since his clear voice had rung over miles — towers of sound, and renewal was reborn in dreams posed ‘loud. Tear the shadows from Pan’s toes, growing Man!

76 Poetry Three minutes passed since thin plastic had fitted his mouth, and, clinging, dioxide had hung in his throat. Demanding, Reaper requires he give up the ghost.

Three minutes passed since his curly head has cleaved a space in the soil, and 144,000 others have done the same. Disinherited of his laughter — we, here, remain.

Poetry 77 The Apple of My Eye Morgan Taylor Finder

Stretching towards the heady fragrance of an apple not yet ripened My head in the clouds... my head in the boughs The musky fragrance excites me

The search for the blush in the skin That faint tingling of red that portrays a readiness for my plucking Twirling leaves playfully hide his cheek Spinning stems show a flash of blood... then the innocent green circles round again

It is out of my reach... the stretching of my body awakens the rush Awakens the muscle To reach him by body will tremble with the strain

Stepping stones of knots, crooks, knolls, whorls in the rippled wood... Each step closer to my lover of the sky... pulling and straining the arms The hips swivel, the legs push and propel

Whole bodies awaken by my passing and they wonder... They wonder at my determination to hold and pluck you from your growth

78 Poetry Small Habits of Inertia Bonnie Russell Nelson

The bread sliced, the cups on their shelf. This life built on routine. Linens in the closet, the cat in the window. Once we were spontaneous, Love.

Now, you at the computer, I in the bedroom, the radio fills the chasm of all we do not say.

Water boils in the pot; the chairs face each other — empty. Small habits: coffee, then wine. Inertia holds. Your touch as familiar as my own complacency. We’ve settled into this home. We’ve settled into this routine. Settled.

Poetry 79 The Wedding Vow Quincy Bravo

Love, let me be like the sinner who rests in sorrow To confess my apprehension for tomorrow.

Your ice laden eyes, void of a soul, An effect of the times that my malice Laid you into a lifeless corpse. Until a thousand bodies pile up And then we’ll laugh as we cry, As memories purge our minds Like the earth was purged with Noah. Then we’ll recall a time Before our fall from grace.

When your figure is before me Shining brighter than diamonds, In a gown you’re forced to wear By friendless families For a frivolous fantasy. Your eyes, not yet iced and void, Stand sacred and lonely. My words wisp out in solitude To be returned by yours, As nameless masses shower us In rice and flowers And those whose names are known all too well, Precariously drink all the champagne.

80 Poetry Then we will return to our desolate world, Wishing always that we could close the lid On things we’ve lost. Masking our affliction with a face Half forgotten from cheap whiskey. Admiring the tonic more than gold, And entrusting in it more faith than Holy Water. Praying that a miracle may be found Hidden in the bottom of the bottle, Allowing us to return to that time Filled with gaiety and glee. Else may we least be able to forget The memories of feelings long past.

Against these unfavorable forecasts, How long can we retain our innocence? Above it all, I vow to reach the end with you. For tomorrow logic may fail, And our hearts may endure the test of selves. For each time your words cut me open, And my body lies bloody and broken, I will mend myself, and kiss your head softly, Just to prove how much I adore Every single word that rolls off your tongue. To show you how much you mean to me; All I’m asking for is your life.

Poetry 81 Meeting Place Jernae Kowallis

There’s a place where the floor meets the wall. Carpet to brick. Sometimes there are gaps, scuff marks and dirt.

There’s a place where the walls meet the ceiling. Brick to plaster. Untouched with water marks, spider webs, and holes.

There’s also a place in your life where the past meets present and present meets future.

And in that place where they meet; Don’t forget to see the joys of your life, the ones that led to those marks.

82 Poetry To My Waiting Room Fellows Jeremy Brodis

This wait is not the waiting for a bus or for a turn at the counter. We are in a different wait, measured on a different scale — A scale of long blinks and short hours.

The clock is seven minutes slow. Even when you’re here on time, you’re already too late.

We cradle People and Newsweek by their spines, gazing through them. With our elbows on our knees, we settle into shoulder breathing.

Our coffee has cooled at the rate Newton predicted all bodies will.

In the silence we remember things. How nice it was to share a meal before the hard work. For each loud mistake, we made three soft ones.

We should take a ride and not hurry back. Maybe burn some cheatgrass in a field.

Poetry 83 Sourire 101 Tom Hughes

Vous pouvez sourire aussi Juste soulevez le côté gauche, Alors punaise le Á votre crâne.

Ce n’est pas difficile d’être `heureux Cela prend seulement une petite douleur.

Après que vous pleurez — Élevez le côté droit, Et commencez encore.

Smiling 101 (translation)

You too can smile Just lift the left side, Then thumbtack it To your skull.

It’s not hard to be happy It just takes a little pain.

After you cry — Raise the right side, And start again.

84 Poetry My Cardboard Box Brittany Hackett

I found you behind the liquor store. Stamped “Jack” on each side. Perfectly square, clean and sturdy. I took you home.

I gave you little parts of me, two tickets to the opera, the blue blanket I made, still unfinished, my grandmother’s bronze jewelry box, and several valued treasures. Assured you’d store them securely, I filled you corner to corner.

For a year you held up. Perfectly composed. Shut tight. I took you from place to place, until, one day I found you torn.

I attempted to fix you, tape you. I bought the strongest kind. I’ve tried staples and glue, but, no matter what I do, you just keep falling apart.

Poetry 85 Instinct Brittanie Stumpp

He entered the room and she quivered. She would always remember this

His tall shadow, too long limbs shifty eyes and awkward, nervous gaze the musky scent of lust smoke and pheromones and the sound or her own fingers against beard stubble skin— sand paper and dust.

Far away from the keeping up appearances and the crooked house, compelled to this tiny room littered with manuscript corpses.

Her face in his hands, he lowered his mouth to her forehead and with one deliberate act became like an eagle devouring a cat whose greatest desire is to be eaten.

Kneeling low, driven to a deeper kind of slumber transformed and utterly invaded.

86 Poetry Mary Shelley Talking to Her Therapist Brittany Hackett

Born in a sanguine dress, they say, I lived as my mother had died. I wished to feel her warmth and breast but I clutched air and only cried.

I would not give another loss, although, I had felt monstrously. I would not take my life away; My father raised me graciously.

I fell in love at seventeen. Our union was showered in shame. I finally felt some happiness. I believe he felt the same.

We had five children together. The outcome was severe and gray. One joined us in our family. My curse at birth took four away.

I lived a life of certain loss. I lost my husband to the sea. I felt it was what I deserved: Eternal life of misery.

Poetry 87 Tell me the color of your deep blue funk Rebecca Samford

Is it the back of eyelids at night when the Moon Is silvery white and surrounded by speckles of Stars and you can’t sleep for Dreaming Thinking Wishing life were different somehow, but your pillow smells like sleep?

Could it be the color Of the chlorinated swimming pool Heated Just enough to not shock your skin when You dip inside its gentle curls And the tiles glide under your Toes And you push off the edge into the Depths with your legs together Like a mermaid that doesn’t need to breathe?

Or is it the shade of veins Tucked shallow and deep underneath skin Wrapped tightly around Her little gray head And her lips are blue And all the dreams And all the making And all the best laid plans Are shattered for a moment in a room filled with light But No color, except the blue of her lips?

88 Poetry Tell me, friend What hue is it that holds you so tightly In your own chest Stealing your imagination and your Strength Until Breathing in ashes becomes the Only way to survive?

Poetry 89 Composer Meet Your Relapse Rachel Boddy

I’m lit on fire and casually counting. Counting the columbines, junebugs, the freckles on imaginary skin my beautiful friend. Burning I pick at the grass, the daisies, and mention how bright the sun feels today. I’m lit on fire and wait on not waiting, I call over her manipulative voice and tell her to sing me a song, as I’m pooling in the high grass Next to the Columbines, the buzz of the junebugs, the blur of someone next to me. I exhale autumn leaves and drain to form a new raging flow of imagery, spark, and meaning.

90 Poetry Going Under L.K. Hill

Treasure buried in the sand I ran to beat inane demand My son helped dig with just his hands While I used costly tools of tin.

He found an earthworm on the crawl A shard of glass, a sunburned doll And he was happy with them all But I tunneled toward the win.

The prison rising—dank and new My boy is hidden from my view But I must find some telling clue To diamonds in the din.

The walls—too high—I can’t get out. I climb and slide, I heave and shout But I’ll find treasure there’s no doubt While darkness closes in.

Poetry 91 Touchdown in Giants Stadium Josh Sims

Grounded one-wing fuselage cuts into meticulously groomed turf prepared for cleated quarterbacks, not unshod aircraft-grade titanium. Tackling thirty rows of blue plastic seats, titanium finishes in a concrete dust cloud at row thirty-one. Recorded attendance for the Wednesday-night carnage: 123, hardly a sellout. Inside Boeing’s proboscis, Black Box confesses no foul play, or pilot error, only a midair freak fall. Yet rows 1 through 25 agree it doesn’t matter. Lenny Cockpit logged his last hour. Two thousand four hundred twenty-three hours of “This is your Captain speaking” and “ we have reached cruising altitude” only to be punctuated by “good Lord it’s over!” Outside, the tomato juice, finger-sized vodka, cola and ginger ale cart form Kent’s wet tomb. His securely-buckled belt prevented in-flight escape from undignified death. Albert 1A’s fingers wrap the ankles above his security-ready penny loafers. Overnight bag slid under-seat no longer will ease escape from the bulkhead upon landing. Laura 7C, would hang her head to know People’s fanned pages at her feet of Maybelline and Brangelina provided her last memory of human contact. Nasir 13D, meets his end with a photo of Marji in hand, a now-crimson head wrap unraveled on his shoulder, and a foot pointed in direction of his Kent-assigned duty cruelly-marked “Emergency Exit.” Rory 25F, slumped back against the wall, is oblivious to the iPod and siren duet in his right ear. Rory blinks, wiping his eye of the trickling red. iPod 25F is left to sing alone as Rory is carted from the field.

92 Poetry Shopping at the Salvation Army Kristin Jackson

We kneel with our wet brows waiting for them to light the city. The shelves lay bare save one lone cup. The blue one with the pink flowers that held so much. The shirts hang, waiting to be chosen, to press again against The snow falls down the skin of need. around us all. To feel the winter The weak, on their brass buttons. the resolute, the hopeful. Our bodies, winter trees, hunched with a wild white weight, we grant each other side-long glances on the street. Briefly together, brows knit, we trudge toward that fixed point of humanity, bent with light.

Poetry 93 The Request of an Artist Tom Hughes

When I die, moosh my body Into a fine colored paste, The consistency Of a cerulean blue. Like the color of My favorite moments. But don’t paint me with an artist’s brush, Use your hands And get dirty with it. Feel the fleshy paste between your fingers, And as you smear me across the world, Take in the fragrances of a wandering soul’s life.

94 Poetry I have a tiny Existentialist Jeremy Brodis

He’s in my shirt pocket. Whenever I need him he emerges, lights a tiny cigarette, and tells me things I don’t fully understand.

When I can’t ignore him, I try to make him useful. And that is how it happened, that we started having discussion.

He teaches me important things that I ought to know. And in exchange I give him rides to the library every Thursday.

I can sometimes see him staring at the quiet parts in movies. And I pay him as much indifference as I hope he does to me.

Poetry 95 last time i saw Adrian Stumpp

new york city on a gray day, i arrive the day after the worst snow storm in years. i look up at a great marble sky like the one i was born under in wyoming. streets lined with snowbanks taller than buildings and soggy with filth. on 31st street and 9th avenue, a limousine pulls up and two women, powdered and perfumed and half naked in evening gowns, their long hair piled high as crowns, shiver in the forty degrees and crane their necks at the tower where their johns wait. the buildings, close sky scrapers that teeter against north-atlantic gusts, leer at me like whores and the whores leer at me like nightmares.

vapor night, unconscious as my birth. my, how the wind did blow.

96 Poetry Inner Space Robert Brown Brigham Young University - Idaho Rexburg, Idaho It’s like the line between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, or like two stick figures drawn with no outlines.

the separation between me and us

is like the space between wax; or the difference of intonation that transforms a quarrel

into an argument. It is as large as the intersection in wireless cables where cell phone frequencies

conjoin with baby monitors. or the exact increment of time when jetlag causes disorientation.

We’ve traveled to a place where me

is us, and sometimes when I’m falling asleep, And I can’t feel you against me I wonder where I’m at

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 97 Nothing Left Between Us Bonnie Russell Nelson

Seeing you again was like stepping in water with socks on. You with her.

Your perfect peach palm tracing her shoulders, down the narrow pitch of her back. Until it finally settles, on the curved span of her hip.

You always said the one for you would be a lot like me, the blonde of her hair, the blue of her eyes.

Does she unleash your nasty little urges? Does she bend where I could not fit?

The crook of your arm holds her to you, where I once was before.

98 Poetry Aspen Brittany Hackett

Your ashen skin reflects the cremated limbs of filial trees. Letting them know they did not die alone. Shaking your jazz hands and laughing in the wind, you embrace life. You and your circuit take a stand.

Poetry 99 The Bridge Builder Clint D. Spaeth

The sound of the forest is thick light and shadows show A brilliant contrast in the leafs In the stream a hint of snow The path is as crooked as my walking stick.

I found it, the bridge dark and old. Overgrown, look closer to see Fine workmanship and care taken. Pause and wonder who it could be What time was spent? How long was life on hold?

It spanned the creek with care. The planks were handmade. The rails set with steel. Even the shores were just the right grade. Who was this person? What load did he bear?

Time has gone by without slowing. The wood has grown weak. How many people have crossed here? Never they thought or wonder who to seek To thank for the effort and care that is showing.

100 Poetry Armor David Powell hand-tooled leather

Sculpture 101 Raku, Lidded Pots Lindsay Huss ceramics

102 Ceramics Puzzled Melinda Taggart ceramics

Ceramics 103 Contemplation Andria Hill copper, silica sand, jade

104 Sculpture Pom Clint D. Spaeth bronze, patina

Sculpture 105 Bubbles, Flamingo Dance Danielle Weigandt ceramics

106 Ceramics Big Bull Kyle Guymon ceramics

Ceramics 107 Veneer Leah A. Wadman hog gut mask, video installation

108 Sculpture Tennyson’s Lament of Industrialization in “The Lady of Shalott” Lola Duncan

At the dawn of the Victorian Age, industrialization sank its teeth into the vulnerable flesh of British society. Merciless socio- economic change ravaged the land, tearing from the people their agricultural livelihood. Factory noise shattered the peace of the sleepy country, and smoke clogged the lungs of London. Tennyson laments England’s fate at the hands of industrialization in “The Lady of Shalott.” Tennyson uses the cursed lady as a symbol for England, the flippant Lancelot as an industrial symbol, and the sympathetic Camelot as a mourner for the death of agricultural England. Ten- nyson reveals his abhorrence for the mechanized change grinding across the country in the form of cruel, indifferent industrialization. Tennyson paints Camelot to represent the peacefully seclud- ed England existing before industrialization. The Lady of Shalott’s surroundings resemble the lovely English countryside. She lives in a secluded world on an island, simultaneously representing England’s literal geography and mindset. Isolated and unperturbed, she peace- fully watches as “up and down the people go” without worry or care (6). England peacefully watched the world pass by, content to remain separate. The nation saw the rest of the world through the mirrored perspective of agrarianism, just as the lady sees the “shadows of the world” through her mirror. The lady sees the world nearly as it really is, just as England did: through a layer of protective and indifferent glass. The atmosphere of the story further represents ancient and mystical England. The story is set in Camelot: the root of fanciful English tradition. The lyrical nature of the poem, with its danc- ing rhyme of AAAAC, BBBC, adds to the ethereal ideal created in the first lines. The rhyme weaves its way through the poem to enhance the beauty of Camelot. The little island is enchanted since the “willows whiten, aspens quiver, / [and] little breezes dusk and shiver” with anthropomorphic life (10-11). Clothed in protection and

Academic Literature 109 “willow-veiled,” the sleepy land cares not for outward woes (19). Life drums forward without hurry, leaving Camelot unaware of the impending disaster. The magic and mystery of the great land perme- ate the poem as if to resurrect the leisure of disappearing English tradition. Tennyson adored the fragile, simple beauty of traditional England, showing his love by writing a picturesque description of the Lady of Shalott. She is just as mysterious as ancient England because no one has ever seen her. The speaker questions her enig- matic existence: “But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand?” (24-25). As in fairy tales, the villagers can hear her song before they ever see her. In the early hours, they hear a “song that echoes cheerly/ from the river winding clearly” (30- 31). The farmers pause and whisper, “’tis the fairy/ Lady of Shalott” (35-36). She is merely a noise on the wind, a spirit from the clear babbling brook, and the voice of England’s fragility. Her mysteri- ous nature adds to the feel of ancient England, but it also makes her vulnerable. Without a clearly defined nature, she is in danger of destruction. The curse upon her is likewise mysterious. No one is sure what will happen if the Lady of Shalott looks down to Camelot; even she “knows not what the curse may be” (42). Just as England attempted normalcy amidst social change, the lady continues weav- ing despite distractions below. However, change looms in the poem as the lady grows restless, being “half sick of shadows” that fill her mirror (71). She longs to experience all that she sees, yet she is con- fined to her endless weaving. At the advent of change, England held its breath for the inevitable as the need for cultural revolution grew. The peaceful image of the Lady of Shalott representing Eng- land is juxtaposed by Lancelot’s representation of industrialization. He shocks and energizes the drowsy tone of the poem. His entrance diverts the reader’s attention. The “bowshot from her bower eaves” shakes the reader from the lady’s internal world as the arrow whiz- zes into the poem (73). As Lancelot rides to Camelot, the sun comes “dazzling through the leaves/ and [flames] upon the brazen greaves/ of bold Sir Lancelot” (75-77). The reader squints while reading the description. He is like a flaming star, reflecting the sun in his belt,

110 Academic Literature bridle, helmet, and silver bugle. Tennyson used the shining metal to represent mechanization. Lancelot’s armor alone isn’t reflecting the light from the outside world; his whole person exudes industrial symbolism as his “clear brow in sunlight glowed” (100). In addition to the visual imagery, Tennyson employed auditory images to announce Lancelot. Lancelot’s “bridle bells [ring] merrily,” and he sings out as he enters Camelot (85, 108). He is the loud- est sound and sight in the poem. His presence arrogantly fills the scenery till nature heralds his entrance with flashing meteors. His entrance shatters the quiet of Camelot, revealing that industry came upon England with little propriety or tact. Industry rudely barges in on the peaceful, agrarian way of life, dragging its dire consequences behind it. “She saw the helmet and the plume, / She looked down to Camelot” (112-113). The flashy Lancelot distracts her from the drudgery of her weaving in a single instant and thus brings on her demise. Lancelot’s careless boisterousness seals her fate. The ideal England lies in shatters like the shards of the broken mirror on the tower floor with the advent of industry. Nature again bends to the action of the story as the “stormy east wind [strains]” and “heavily the low sky [rains]” (118, 121). Additionally, the woods are suddenly yellow: the color of disillusionment. Along with the lady, her entire world suffers from sudden chaos. Likewise, no aspect of English soci- ety escaped the assault of industrialization. The suddenly tempestu- ous landscape highlights the effects of the curse. The lady’s death is expected, however. Tennyson litters the poetic floor with foreshadowing, making death a theme throughout the poem. The lady dies with lilies in her hands, an image men- tioned earlier in the poem. The lilies are in bloom, at the peak of their beauty, and close to the state of wilting. England is in its prime at the beginning of the poem, yet the image of summer leads the reader directly into fall. The first images of nature introduce a subtle disturbance in the pristine, secluded world. The “willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver” (10-11). Though these images seem benign, they indicate a sense of fear or foreboding. The trees tremble with fear, turn pale, and worry as the unknown

Academic Literature 111 approaches. “Four gray walls, and four gray towers” imprison Cam- elot with gloom, a detail overlooked until the lady’s death (15). The foreboding tone increases when the focus moves from the surroundings to the people. The reader glimpses the “reapers, reaping early,” a strategic symbol for the grim reaper, the harbinger of death (28). Additionally, they thresh the field early in the day, in- dicating that the lady is in danger of having her life reaped too soon. Trapped in her weaving prison, the lady sees another omen of her own fate as a funeral passes. De- The magic and mystery spite the maidens, shepherds, and of the great land clergy that pass by, the lady vents permeate the poem as her boredom with her solitary life if to resurrect the soon after she sees the funeral, leisure of disappearing as if pulled by the force of death. English tradition. With Lancelot’s flashy entrance, clues indicate the lady’s fate. Ten- nyson builds him out of blazing fire and places him on a war horse. Lancelot does not come meekly but crashes in as the harbinger of the second coming, ready to destroy the old world. As the lady looks down to see the destroying angel, the mirror cracks from side to side. In religious symbolism, the image reminds one of the temple veil ripping from top to bottom as a sign of Christ’s death. As revealed by the foreshadowing, the lady’s innocent life is snatched from her too soon. The lady’s final actions indicate Tennyson’s attitude toward her through symbolism. She can neither delay nor prevent her death, and she goes almost willingly as if death is inevitable. She lies at the bottom of a boat and sets sail as the “broad stream [bears] her far away” (134). Nature is reflected in her languid journey as the river of fate carries her where it may. She personifies nature as her loose robes drift in the wind as gently as the leaves falling around her. She seems to nearly disappear into nature, connecting England to the symbolism of the agrarian lifestyle. Tennyson doesn’t blame her for her mistake; in fact, he mourns her death with his lyricism and imagery, eulogizing her passing. The descriptions of her last moments take on an elongated quality

112 Academic Literature with long, sorrowful o’s. The people hear “a carol, mournful, holy, / Chanted loudly, chanted lowly/ Till her blood was frozen slowly” (145-147). The poem moans, and the reader slows to hear the lady pass. The sight of her death adds as much mourning to the scene as the sound. Majestically and tragically, she lies “robed in snowy white,” symbolizing her purity (136). Even death does not hinder her beauty as her gleaming figure passing by attracts the gaze of the common people (156). England’s simple past lies stretched out in gracious death. By lengthening and beautifying her death, Tennyson mourns and emphasizes England’s death as industry usurps the na- tion of tradition. The common people mourn the loss of the lady, thus complet- ing Tennyson’s lamentation. Though no one saw or knew her, all other action ceases as the ship pilots her to the center of town. “Out upon the wharfs they came, / Knight and burgher, lord and dame” to see the poor lady (159-160). Curiosity turns to lamentation as they realize she is dead. The whole countryside feels the effect of her passing since the news ripples to a nearby castle and halts the festivities. “In the lighted palace near/ die the sound of royal cheer; / and they crossed themselves for fear” (164-166). Their joy dies with the Lady of Shalott because the people sense the import of the lady’s death. Likewise, England is unaware of the malignant forces working to destroy the past, yet the people sense disaster as industry esca- lates. But not everyone is mourning. The lamenting is abruptly con- tradicted by a volta in the tone of the poem. “But” stands out on the new line as Lancelot once again invades the scene (168). While all the other knights, lords, and ladies mourn the loss, “Lancelot [muses] a little space” and says, “She has a lovely face,” nonchalantly wish- ing her soul the best (168-169). He lacks compassion, caring, and understanding. Not only does he miss the gravity in the atmosphere, but he also ignores his responsibility for the disaster. He waltzes into Camelot completely ignorant of the turmoil he causes. After all the pains and care taken to beautify and idealize the Lady of Shalott, Tennyson throws in this flippancy to prove his point: industry doesn’t care. It is merely a machine grinding up the past without regard.

Academic Literature 113 Sadly, Tennyson offers no consolation. The reader is cut short from beauty with these harsh words, revealing that no solution exists. Ten- nyson leaves the reader stricken with grief at the blind march of fate. Industry killed the beauteous English way of life, and Tenny- son wrote “The Lady of Shalott” as a eulogy to the fate of the nation. By way of imagery, rhythm, and foreshadowing, Tennyson idealizes agrarian society over the grinding Industrial Revolution, expressing his belief that England has been doomed. Each tactic in his poem appeals to the reader’s emotions, thus causing the reader to lament England’s industrial change. Fate struck England in its prime and elicited Tennyson’s poetic catharsis for the tragic loss.

Works Cited

Lord Tennyson, Alfred. “The Lady of Shalott.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume E: The Victorian Age. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. 1114-1118.

114 Academic Literature Sex and the Destruction of Self Rebecca Samford

Tennessee Williams believed that sex is destructive — a contradiction to words like holy union, sacred, and beautiful. This idea is not only explored, but also blatantly presented as an all- encompassing truth without boundaries of male or female, married or unmarried, in his play “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The play is steeped in drug use and spousal abuse, adultery and rape, but these manifestations are only symptoms of the destructive nature of sex. This paper will demonstrate the inevitability of sexual destruction of the self through several of the play’s main characters. In the text, most of the scenes seem to swirl around the char- acter of Blanche. Williams himself described her as “a demonic creature” (Norton 1976). In the context of her behavior, readers and theatregoers would agree that this character is experiencing self- destruction. She is a single widow whose promiscuity and alcohol ad- diction has steadily chipped away at her. Her interactions with every other character are so full of falsehoods that it is difficult, at first, to tell fact from fiction. But, even she admits that “a woman’s charm is fifty percent illusion” (1993), leading one to understand that it is not Blanche’s mental state that has been destroyed. Blanche’s sexual escapades are outside of what is widely and traditionally held as “normal.” She is not married, not monogamous, and not keeping her seductions to adults only. Blythe Danner, an actress who played Blanche in 1988, recognized the connection be- tween Williams and his character. In her words, they were “attached to the things that were going to destroy [them]” (1978). Through Blanche, Williams questioned the contradictions found in the essen- tialist philosophy that the ideals or truths about sexual norms span both time and culture and reached forward, just a bit, to modern-day social constructionist philosophies in trying to justify and explain his own deviance. Social constructionists believe that when we look for truths, we seek out those that fit what we want to believe, claiming

Academic Literature 115 that they are “innate” and “universal” (McAnulty 208). Some of these socially constructed norms for sex in the U.S. include: heterosexuality with defined gender roles, that sex is for “adults only,” and is limited in its expression. Social constructionists recognize that “there are… limitless numbers of ways in which we criticize ourselves… for our deviations… from the perceived sexual norms” and that “if we over- or undershoot any of these targets… we are labeled [negatively]” (McAnulty 206). As readers, one expects the sort of conflicts and self-destruction that Blanche is undergoing because we recognize that she is choosing to live outside of As an educated society, our socially constructed sexual it is difficult to believe... ideal. that men are left to Williams was a homo- “think about raw sex” sexual playwright in the 1950’s constantly. when the idea of “coming out” and living openly outside of the culturally and clinically accepted norm would have had grave consequences. Homophobia was “institu- tionalized” by way of military “screening standards.” Rejection from military service for homosexuality could have detrimental effects on employment as employers had the right to review applicants’ draft records (including information regarding dismissal due to homo- sexuality) and military raids of movie theatres and bars were fre- quent (Paller 25-28). Whatever trouble Williams may have had with reconciling his own sexuality at this time, he later entitled himself as “the founding father of the uncloseted gay world” (Paller 11), leading one to believe that although Williams felt sex a destructive act, it was not because of self-loathing. His explorations of the self-destruction brought on by sex within the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” didn’t stop at those living outside of the culturally accepted norms, how- ever, and neither does this paper. In the text, the most prominent male character is Blanche’s brother-in-law. Stanley fits the cultural norm of masculine sexuality. Williams describes him thus: He is of medium height… strong… compact… Since earliest manhood the center of his life has been pleasure with women,

116 Academic Literature the giving and taking of it… with the power and pride of a richly feathered male bird among hens. Branching out from this… satisfying center are all the auxiliary channels of his life… He sizes women up at a glance, with sexual classifica- tions… determining the way he smiles at them (1987). In meeting the social expectations of a heterosexual male (as one whose motives are sexually driven and as an average, working husband), one expects Stanley to always “come out on top.” As the power-struggle between Stanley and Blanche escalates, Stanley real- izes he can’t turn his wife Stella against Blanche. Afraid of losing and frustrated with Blanche’s deceptions, he gains power and domi- nation by raping Blanche. The play is ended with Stanley playing seven-card stud. This game is “the ultimate bluff” and shows that although Stanley appears to be experiencing a triumph, relying on sex to define his relationships has destroyed his humanity. Legend and mythology have often been a reflection of human- ity’s ideals. Although a god, Zeus represented the epitome of man- hood to the Greek culture. He seduced nearly any woman he wanted. When seductions weren’t enough, he resorted to raping Leda, bring- ing about his own destruction by way of the fall of Greece orches- trated by two of the children conceived in this violent act. “A shudder in the loins engenders there / the broken wall, the burning roof and tower / And Agamemnon dead” (Yeats lines 9-11). Rape is a crime and considered, by modern psychologists to be an act about power and not sex. Yet, it falls into the social justification that “men are physically unable to control their sexual impulses” (McAnulty 209). These male examples initially seem to be fulfilling their sense of self in relation to the “tyranny of testosterone.” As an educated society, it is difficult to believe that an adult male’s identity and behaviors are “constrained… by steroid-stoked sexual compulsion” and that men are left to “think about raw sex” constantly (Was- sersug). Both of these texts demonstrate the self-destruction to the male identity in NOT controlling the circumstances of their sexual impulse and in basing their relationships on their sexual prowess. Stanley, who chooses to objectify women by assigning them with the one function of sexual gratification, has truly limited his own identity

Academic Literature 117 — cutting himself off at the knees (Saul). Stanley’s relationship with his “sweetheart! Stella!” is limited to the physical. He prides himself on having “pulled [her] down off them columns” and giving her sexual pleasure (2001, 2026). Stella is a character in the text whose sex acts are completely within the socially constructed norm. She embraces marital fidelity, she will- ingly and “serenely” submits to his advances, and even finds plea- sure in the “colored lights” sex with her husband brings her (2002, 2026). However, accepting her life within her marriage bed has led to Stella’s self-deception, and, therefore, self-destruction. Williams’ observations of the marriage state for women are re- flected in Stella’s name, which seems to be a play-on-words — “sell out” (Crimmel). Stella justifies her choice to stay with Stanley saying, “I couldn’t believe [my sister about the rape] and go on living with Stanley” (2036). Her self-deception has much earlier beginnings, as Stella is a victim of Stanley’s brutality. An outside observer (and friend of Stanley), Mitch says the couple is “crazy about each other” (2002). Both Stanley and Blanche make references to Stella not be- ing the girl she was before she got married (or had sex). The conflict of selling out oneself to keep the marriage com- mitment has been the subject of much literary exploration over the last century. D.H. Lawrence observed in writing that married cou- ples were like “separate strangers” whose “den[ial of] each other in life” is “obscured by heat” and “nakedness” (2257). This inability to foster and accept a separate sense of self while maintaining a united relationship is not the expectation many people have of “becoming one.” The commonly accepted Judeo-Christian belief system re- quires that “twain become one flesh” and this sexual consummation of the marriage contract is supposed to unite and perfect the rela- tionship (Matt. 19:5). But the irony of the association between the words consume — which is to “destroy” or “to waste away” — and consummation, and the fact that in many languages these words are interchangeable; should not be overlooked (Dictionary). This irony is inevitable even at the cellular level when one understands that “sex and reproduction” are not the same thing.

118 Academic Literature “One cell divides to become two — that’s reproduction. Two cells fuse to become one — that’s sex” (Sykes 80). Focusing on the act of sex, not the possible beneficial consequences, one can see that it is destructive. The two cells — now fused — cannot be considered the same as they were before sex occurred. On the human level, two individuals, having joined in this way — whether sanctioned by mar- riage, criminally via rape, or just for the “fun” of sex itself — are no longer the same self as they were before sex. This destruction of the self opens up the possibility of improvement, but may have disastrous consequences. For most of humanity, the expectation is that out of this de- struction a sort of consummation — being perfected or completed — will occur. In studying psychology, many have noted that we are defining our “self” from the time of our birth. We move through stages of autonomy, initiative, and identity (Myers 118) trying to de- fine our own person as separate from those around us. Yet, our need to belong and to achieve intimate closeness with other human beings conflicts with this separate sense of self. When we enter our teens, our desires for intimacy overcome our need for separation and most human beings seek out physical companionship via sex (whether it conforms to social ideals or not.) The loss of self that a person has spent a lifetime building up can cause many problems — the symptoms of which Williams so easily intertwines in his play. This process seems to be especially destructive to teenage girls who must reconcile the loss of virginity with a “bad girl” reputation (Daugh- ters). All who have participated in sexual acts must face the destruc- tion of self. In couples where the individual self is valued above sexual desire, sex eventually becomes almost nonexistent. Classified as “Peer Relationships,” these couples report deep satisfaction on ev- ery level including “parenting, financial and domestic collaboration, friendship, and communication,” but report “problems” in the bed- room (Iasenza). Initially, this “problem” was thought to be a symptom of lesbian dysfunction — stemming from the idea that women are not socially trained to initiate sex. However, research has shown that this lack of sexual desire is common in heterosexual couples

Academic Literature 119 that live as “equal partners” as well. This development within Peer Relationships is “the hardest couples issue to navigate successfully” (Iasenza). This may be due to the fact that these couples are subcon- sciously determined not to upset the balance of their union by harm- ing their partner’s sense of self and that sex is no longer required “to keep a relationship” (Daughters). On the other hand, it is not necessary to completely deny one’s desires for sex to achieve a renewed sense of self. In light of the Self-determination Theory of psychology, one can reinstate a posi- tive identity that takes into account one’s sexual behaviors without resorting to self-loathing, withdrawal, and drug or spousal abuse. The requisites for this transition are “feeling autonomous, competent, and related” (Smith). With the tools of observation and the relative benefit of his sexual orientation being outside the socially constructed norm, Ten- nessee Williams noticed something about sex that further studies in psychology confirm on the human level and microscopic studies in DNA confirm on the cellular level — sex is the act that literally destroys our separate self. The word “destruction” may lead us to be initially repulsed by the idea, but by pondering further, we can see that the inevitable destruction of the naiveté of youth through sex opens the way for a renewed sense of self with endless possibilities of growth, or further destruction, before it.

120 Academic Literature Works Cited

Bay-Cheng, Laina Y. “The Social Construction of Sexuality: Religion, Medicine, Media, Schools, and Families.” Sex and Sexuality: Ed. Richard McAnulty and M.Michele Burnette. Vol. 1. Connecticut: Praeger, 2006. 3 vols. “consume” and “consummate.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 28 Feb. 2008. Crimmel, Hal. “Discussion of characters in William’s play: Contemporary American Lit. 4550.” Weber State University. Ogden, Utah. January 2008. Holy Bible. King James Text. Great Brittain: Cambridge UP, 1979. Iasenza, Suzanne. “Problems in Bed?” In the Family; Vol. 10.3 (Winter 2005): 8-13. GenderWatch. EBSCOhost. Stewart Library, Weber State. 22 Feb 2008. Lawrence, D.H. “Odour of Chrysanthemums.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature; Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: WW Norton, 2006. 2245- 2258. Myers, David G. Exploring Psychology. Holland, Michigan: Worth, 2002. 118. Paller, Michael. Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and Mid-Twentieth Century Broadway Drama. New York: Palgrave, 2005. Saul, Jennifer M. “On Treating Things as People: Objectification, Pornography, and the History of the Vibrator.” Hypatia; Vol. 21.2 (Spring 2006): 45-63. GenderWatch. EBSCOhost. Stewart Library, Weber State. 27 Feb 2008. Smith, C. Veronica. “In Pursuit of ‘good’ sex: Self-determination and the sexual experience.” Journal of Social & Personal Relationships; Vol. 24.1 (Feb 2007):Academic Search Premier. EBSCOhost. Stewart Library, Weber State. 27 Feb 2008 “Stuck in Old Roles.” Daughters; Vol. 8.4 (Jul/Aug 2003): 3. GenderWatch. EB SCOhost. Stewart Library, Weber State. 22 Feb 2008. Sykes, Bryan. Adam’s Curse. New York: W.W.Norton, 2004. Wassersug, Richard. “Beyond Male and Female; On the Border: A Eunich’s Tale.” Voice Male; Amherst, Fall 2005: 18. GenderWatch. EBSCOhost. Stewart Library, Weber State. 22 Feb 2008. Williams, Tennessee. “A Streetcar Named Desire.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature; Ed. Nina Baym. New York: Norton, 2003. 1979- 2041. Yeats, William Butler. “Leda and the Swan.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature; Ed. Stephen Greenblatt. New York: WW Norton, 2006. 2039.

Academic Literature 121 Does it Take a War to Establish an Identity? McKella Sawyer

In the chapter entitled “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” in his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien studies the effects of war on society by examining the effects of war on an individual and touches on the parallels between women’s struggle for indepen- dence from their social roles and society’s fight for independence from the government and traditional ideals. In this particular chapter of the novel, Mark Fossie, a young soldier, has found a way to bring his sweetheart, Mary Anne, to the swamps of Vietnam for a few weeks. The girl’s initial state of inno- cence and beautiful naiveté is very much like the state of a society untouched by trauma. She has no idea what is about to happen to her; she is completely oblivious to the concept of violence and war. Like America, she is young and full of potential, full of dreams. At this time, she is very much in love with Mark Fossie and “her relationship with [him] emblematizes the simple allurements of the American Dream” (Chen). She is curious and strives to learn as much as she can about the environment, the culture, and the equip- ment used by the soldiers. She is seduced by the romance of the country. All the morning, Mary Anne chattered away about how quaint the place was, how she loved the thatched roofs and naked children, the wonderful simplicity of village life. “A strange thing to watch,” Rat said, “like a cheerleader visiting the opposing team’s locker room” (96). Such is the view of a person who casually observes the war from afar. Someone who has been in the middle of the war, such as Rat has been, tends to see past those pretty things and only under- stands the hidden violence under the surface. Also, this statement may point out the differences between the typical male and female perspective. When civilized and conditioned by society, most women tend to take a gentler view on things, while men, who are conditioned

122 Academic Literature to be tough and capable of violence, tend to see things in a more re- alistic, even pessimistic light. The woman chooses to see the simplic- ity and beauty, the man sees the harshness without inhibitions. Mary Anne’s enthrallment with the location may also be also reflecting America’s fascination with the new and exotic and its ignorance to the true condition of a place. However, after the initial awe has faded, the girl’s counte- nance begins to change as she grows closer and closer to the war on an internal level. She develops a fascination with the war itself as well as with the landscape, especially the parts that no one is familiar with. This change parallels the bursts of free thought and new cultural movements that often take place in a society in times of war. New ideas crop up, such as equal rights and opportunity for women; people begin to wander into unknown realms. Mary Anne continually asks her sweetheart to take her to the villages and out into the jungles. Her desire and request for knowledge and expansion is symbolic of the push for change that many protesters placed on the government in this time period. Mary Anne then begins to adopt the habits of the bush, such as neglecting her personal hygiene and choosing not to wear cosmet- ics and cutting off her hair. This change in her habits runs paral- lel to the changes in women’s roles that tend to come with war. She learns to use weapons and dress wounds; she disassembles M-16’s and learns how they work. Like women left behind to fill the male social roles, she rejects her feminine habits and adopts masculine ones by learning to do what is often considered to be “man’s work”. The changes in women’s roles are often drastic during war-time, which often resulted in strong movements in feminism. “There were many women who identified themselves as working class who came to a feminist consciousness through their experience in the male domain of the workplace” (Gilbert). This change doesn’t sit well with Mark Fossie. He urges her to think about going home, but she responds, “Everything I want is right here” (99). When a war ends and men return home, they tend to be uncomfortable with women’s newfound independence and ‘masculine’ edge. As a result, they often urge women to return to their former roles as stay-at-home wives and

Academic Literature 123 mothers. Like many women faced with this type of disapproval, Mary Anne makes it very clear that she is content where she is. The changes in Mary Anne’s relationship with Mark Fossie mirror the changing ideas of family and sexual independence that America was experiencing at this time. There was a new imprecision in the way Mary Anne expressed her thoughts on certain subjects. “Not necessarily three kids,” she’d say, “naturally we’ll still get married…but it doesn’t have to be right away. Maybe travel first. Maybe live together. Just test it out, you know?” (99). The notion of being independent with relationships and sexual- ity was a novel idea that was part of many non-conformist movements in the 1960’s. Cohabitation was one idea of the “sexual revolution” that became popular in this time period. Of course, Mark Fossie was not fond of this idea, just as the idea of sexual independence did not sit well with many more conservative and traditional members of society. This contradiction also contributed to much cultural unrest in the 1960’s. Mary Anne morphs from the bubbly, innocent young girl she had been previously to someone much harder. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling too... her voice seemed to reorganize itself at a lower pitch... she would some times fall into long, elastic silences... Fossie asked about it one evening, Mary Anne looked at him, “... it’s nothing... really. To tell the truth, I’ve never been happier” (99). At this point in time, Americans were beginning to challenge traditional ideals and exercise their freedom of speech and free- dom of thought. Many protests in this time period such as marches, “teach-ins”, riots, and boycotts were dominated by college students at various acclaimed universities, such as Iowa State University, Kent State University, Ball State University and others (Gilbert). This sug- gests that these protesters were educated people. Knowledge has a way of changing perspective, and of stealing innocence. As it did to Mary Anne, thinking, knowledge, and experience had evaporated in- nocence in America and had turned it into something much harder. Mary Anne starts disappearing overnight with the group in the

124 Academic Literature platoon known as the Green Berets, or “Greenies.” She never both- ers to say a thing to or ask permission from Mark Fossie, which is another representation of female independence. While out with the Greenies, she takes part in The girl’s initial state of ambushes and strange mis- innocence and beautiful sions with violent results. Mark naiveté is very much like Fossie is furious and attempts the state of a society to regain control of the situa- untouched by trauma. tion, which is similar to men’s struggle to regain control after women had settled into their new, more independent social roles. Mary Anne complies, to an extent, just as women often did. She starts showering and dressing like a lady again; however, there was still an unresolved tension between them that neither of them was comfortable with. This tension fueled future rebellions of Mary Anne and American women altogether. The tension between these two forces also reflects the tension between American society and the government that was taking place during this time. Society rebelled while government struggled to maintain order and control. As this tension builds, Mary Anne’s fascination with the unknown jungle progresses to a full-blown obsession. “The wilder- ness seemed to draw her in. A haunted look…partly terror, partly rapture. It was as if she had come up on the edge of something, as if she were caught in that no man’s land between Cleveland Heights and deep jungle” (105). It is as if she is questioning her own identity and ideals, challenging them. The deep jungle is a metaphor for the unknown, the new ideas and free thinking that were taking place in America. Also, this inner conflict reflects the contradicting state of the nation. Society is often divided in times of war; some believe in the war, some openly oppose it, and then others attempt to hide from it or run away from it. A divided nation struggles to claim an identity because in this state, it is only divided. Mary Anne then disappears for several weeks with the Greenies. When she returns with them, she is someone completely different — almost a ghost of the person she had been before.

Academic Literature 125 A column of silhouettes appeared as if by magic at the edge of the jungle. At first, he didn’t recognize her — a small, soft shadow among six other shadows. There was no sound. No real substance either. The seven silhouettes seemed too float across the surface of the earth, like spirits, vaporous and unreal (105). Mary Anne had transformed into someone who was unrecog- nizable from the person she was, just as a society often changes so drastically in times of war. Over the course of history, many cultural revolutions have taken place during times of war; time periods are often measured and defined by wars. America had become a com- pletely different society with a different culture and ideal system than it had before the war. The utter distrust and disregard of certain members of society toward government authority that took place in the 60’s is made evi- dent as Mary Anne strolls back into the camp and completely by- passes Mark Fossie and instead goes to the Greenies’ tent. Now that she is comfortable with her newfound independence and is aware of her capabilities, she completely and purposely disregards the main authority figure in her life, just as some members of society disre- garded the word of the government and the press. At this point, the narrator pauses. Previously, the writer had stated that the word of this narrator usually had to be taken with a large grain of salt. Throughout the narrator’s telling of the story, the listener questions the story’s truth. This questioning of truth in general is representative of questioning authority in general, just as much of American society questioned and even outright distrusted the government and the press during the war. Radicals created their own truth and made their own publications broadcasting their own version of the truth. At this point, the reader must also question the value of truth, and whose version of truth can be trusted. The story of Mary Anne resumes as the narrator tells of the drastic change in her countenance upon her arrival. “I saw those eyes of hers; I saw how she wasn’t even the same person no more” (107). She was dangerous and violent, which is often the case when a person or a society is thrust into the midst of war and violence. This development in Mary Anne’s character sheds light on the point that

126 Academic Literature many women were discovering about themselves and their capabili- ties: “Women who never go to war are not innocent so much as they are ignorant to their own capacity for violence” (Smiley). The narrator also points out that women are as capable of violence as men are. “You got these blinders on about women. How gentle and peaceful they are. All that crap about how if we had a pussy for president, there wouldn’t be no more wars. Pure garbage. You got to get rid of that sexist attitude” (107). Mark Fossie eventually confronts Mary Anne in the Greenies’ tent. He is struck by the scent of the place. It is a smell with two layers: first, the overlaying scent of incense, a sweet, exotic smell that is representative of the proper, conservative side of society and the gentle and conforming facets of the individual, but then there is the foul stench lurking below this one, the strong, thick, animalistic odor of blood, burnt hair and excrement. This pungent odor is symbolic of the wilder, more dangerous, rebellious side of the social order. In the metaphorical conflict of the two scents, it is clear that the latter has dominated. Finally, Mary Anne appears, dressed like a lady in her blouse and skirt; however, she is sporting a necklace of human tongues bound together with copper wire. She appears completely at peace with herself, and she justifies her actions to Mark Fossie: “You just don’t know…You hide in this little fortress…and you don’t know what’s it’s all about. Sometimes I want to eat this place. Vietnam. I want to swallow the whole country — the dirt, the death — I just want to eat it and have it there inside me. It’s like... this appetite... but it’s not bad. I feel close to myself... to my own body... like I’m full of electricity and I’m glowing in the dark... but it doesn’t matter, because I know exactly who I am. You can’t feel that anywhere else” (111). Mary Anne claims to have found her identity while fighting in the bush. Her experience and newfound identity is “clearly de- structive as well as empowering. That she, or any other American can only encounter personal potential and visionary truth in the… practice of institutionalized death is the story’s most disturbing implication” (Wesley). A society experiences drastic changes in the

Academic Literature 127 midst of violence, when one of two conflicting sides eventually wins, more or less. In Mary Anne’s case, the animalistic, free-willed side conquered the humane side. When faced with crisis, society often becomes more liberal as its citizens stretch to exercise their rights. Because of the war, this young woman discovered an identity for her- self. Does it take a war for a society to discover an identity as well? When a person or society is changed by a war, there is no go- ing back. The narrator states: What happened to her... was what happened to all of them. You [are] clean, you get dirty and then afterward it’s never the same... she wanted more, she wanted to penetrate deeper into the mystery of herself, and after a time the wanting became ] needing, which turned then to craving (114). Mary Anne continues to go on ambush with the Greenies, but she begins taking chances that amazes even the Greenies; she be- comes so accomplished that she seems to be more of a creature than a human. “She was lost inside herself” (115). Mary Anne’s internal chaos reflects the chaos and confusion taking place in America that was fueled by various protests, riots, and radical cultural movements. Finally, Mary Anne disappears into the wilderness altogether. She simply wanders off into the landscape that had intrigued her and eventually, she becomes a part of it. This event is representa- tive of America’s entire cultural revolution that took place during the Vietnam War. The American society was swallowed by the new ideas of independence and individuality until it finally embodied these notions and became the epitome of independence and individuality; these are the values that America now stands for. War transforms individuals and society simultaneously, with each cause and effect situation affecting the other. “... the Vietnam conflict again elucidated the limits of human endurance and the way in which internal strife…transform the character of the conflict itself including its... human and social consequences” (Kolko). War is the key ingredient of revolution in both individuals and a nation.

128 Academic Literature Works Cited

Chen, Tina. “Unraveling the Deeper Meaning’: Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O’Brien’s The Thing They Carried” Contemporary Literature 39 no. 1, spring 1998, p77-97. Gilbert, Marc Jason. The Vietnam War on Campus. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 2001. Kolko, Gabriel. The Age of War: The United States Confronts the World. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 2006. Smiley, Pamela. “The Role of the Ideal (Female) Reader in Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried: Why Should Real Women Play?” Massachusetts Review 2002 vol. 43 p602, 12p Wesley, Marilyn. Violent Adventure: Contemporary Fiction by American Males. University of Virginia Press, 2003.

Academic Literature 129 Santiago Bernice Olivas Boise State University Boise, Idaho It’s fall again, and I can hear souls on the wind. They drift under the door and caress my cheek. I wake in the night and I can smell Mexico on the cold Idaho air. In the mornings I hear fresh tor- tillas, cactus and bacon crackling on a cold stove. On November first, the first day of the festival of the dead, I visited every flower shop in Boise and in the end all I had to show for it were some washed out sunflowers and a few sad marigolds. I bought them all, and a few early poinsettias. I know they’re not your favorites, my love, but get- ting Texas bluebells this far north seems impossible. I bought fruit, last season’s oranges, a few sad papayas and mangoes. I wanted better for you, but the growing season is so short here, only the finest stores carry imported fruit and some things just can’t be had. The bananas are ripe, though, a buttery yellow. I went to the liquor store, the one where we bought our first bottle of cham- pagne after we closed on the house. Do you remember how it popped, silver froth running over the bottle and shimmering on the floor? Do you remember pulling me into your arms? “We made it,” you whispered. Then you tugged me to the floor and we made love in the spilled champagne. I can still taste it if I try, mingling on my tongue with the taste of your skin. The altar took hours to set up. Do you remember celebrating Noche de Muertos together? Setting up the altar first for my mother, then your grandfather, and then for my sweet Abuela? I miss you all. I envy you. I envy how it must have felt to see them again. You were always so good with your hands, weaving the flow- ers together, and setting up the candles, everything so beautiful. I wanted everything to be just right, but I’m still clumsy. My flowers are lopsided, my fruit jumbled, the oranges keep falling off out of the bowl and rolling away. I miss you so much. I miss the way you smell, the way you taste, I even miss the way you used to sleep. Curled up into yourself like a child. I started cooking late, and this morning

130 National Undergraduate Literary Conference the house is heavy with slow roasted pork and cumin. I am making tamales even though I swore I would never, ever do that again. Do you remember how angry I was the first time you tasted my tamales? You spat them out and said, “Mi Mama will teach you to make proper tamales, and I won’t marry you until you can do it right.” I was six and they were made of dirt and grass. You were seven and you knew everything. “I’ll never make tamales for you again,” I shrieked. And I never did. You were so arrogant, the son of La Bruja, the little prince of our corner of Monterrey. “I don’t want to marry you anyway.” I threw dirt on your new shoes, a pair of Nikes, a gift from your Tio Roberto. You didn’t talk to me for days until you found me hiding in the dark, cool well house, crouched against the stone sobbing. You leaned against the door and scuffled your feet in the dust. “Go away,” I said. “Can’t,” you said. “Why not?” “Cause you’re sad, and it makes me sad.” “Why do you care, you don’t like me!” “You’re my best friend.” “Forever, do you promise?” It was our first kiss, your lips on mine, landing like a butterfly, so quick I wasn’t sure it was ever really there. I never told you about the hours in the kitchen with your moth- er, when I was twelve and you went away with your cousin to work at the big American hotel in Yucatán. You spent the summer learning English and doing dishes and I learned to make tamales. It kept my mind away from missing you. I’m making tortillas, rice, beans, and flan. I’m making tuna casserole, all your favorites. The tuna casserole is the one I learned to make at the Catholic halfway house in Elsa, Texas, the one that harbored people like us. I hated it there, the way they kept us apart even though we’d been married before we left Mexico. Too young, they said. Fourteen and fifteen is too young to be married. It isn’t legal. It isn’t right.

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 131 “She’s my wife,” you said. You drew yourself up as tall as could be. Five foot nine and so skinny. “In my country I am a man and I demand to be treated like one.” The nun tossed us in separate dorms, shaking her head and muttering about savages, barbarians and lice. The next day we left the church before the sun came up, spent the day calling the num- bers Padre Miguel gave us until we found a job and a place to sleep at the migrant camp. Tomorrow I will the light candles. I spent night going through our photos. I’m so glad we bought the fireproof box after the fire in Michigan, the one where Marta lost her babies. I can’t stand the idea of them, blistering in flame, be- ing eaten by fire, curling into ash. My favorite is the wedding photo in Monterrey. We are sitting on the stone fence in front of Abuela’s small adobe house. We are so brown; everything is so brown, the little house, the cat. I can see our mothers in the background, cry- ing. It’s nothing like all the flashing lights and neon of Vegas, where we finally had our American wedding. I found one of my wedding ribbons on the bottom of the box. I was so young, just a child in my wedding dress, so serious with my thick black braids and big eyes. We grew up fast once we crossed the border, didn’t we? It seems like only yesterday we crawled into Roberto’s trunk, hot and terrified. Each bump and tremor shaking through us, each pause and stop making me dig my nails deep into your arm. “I can’t do this,” I whispered when the engine roared to life. “My mother, my sisters, they’re all in Mexico. We can make it here, we can move to the city, get jobs, and find a way. I’m scared.” All I could think of were the horror stories. Cassandra, raped by the border guards, little Dago getting shot at a gas station in Galveston, Benito killing those men on the highway. “I can’t stay,” you whispered. “I can’t just be one more Ortiz, just like my brothers, my cousins, and my uncles. There’s so much more out there.” I was sure we would never make it but you believed enough for both of us. We made it without trouble and I felt strangely disap- pointed when we rolled across the border. I wasn’t even sure we were

132 National Undergraduate Literary Conference in the States. It looked like any other border town in the dark. In that picture of Monterrey your hair is long, hanging almost to your waist. You’ve tucked a rooster feather behind your ear. I’m leaning against your chest, my cheek against your heart. I remember when you cut your hair short. The day you were promoted at the fac- tory. “Please don’t,” I begged. “I’ll get up early, every day, I’ll put it into a tight braid and nobody will care.” “It makes me stand out, looks Mexican.” “You are Mexican. You may have changed your name from Santiago to James, but you were still born in an adobe house with a dirt floor, just like me. You still ran around naked in the summer climbing mango trees and playing fútbol with the other boys.” “Mary.” “My name isn’t Mary! It’s Blanca Marie Flor, Castillo de Or- tiz.” “Blanca, listen to me. I can’t stand out. I need this job. The pa- perwork is almost done. Five years we’ve worked for this. El jefe, he says I need to blend in. He’s our sponsor. We need to listen to him. Mija, in a few months we’ll be Americans, and I’ll let it grow back. I promise.” You never did, though. I saved the hair after you cut it. I sat there in the bathroom crying like a fool. I keep it in my Bible, a single braid marking Ruth 1:16-17. In our family portrait, you look so proud, so ready to face the world. So did I, convinced that together, we could face giants. And we did, didn’t we? I wish I could remember what it felt like to be so young. Sometimes I even miss the fight, the constant tension of making ends meet, of getting by day after day, you and me, stand- ing wrapped in each other’s arms, facing anything the world threw at us. These days I feel like I’m slowly sinking into plush carpets, into down quilts, drowning in the quiet of this big house. I can’t imagine you ever really being old. Even when you were so sick, even after the diabetes took your toes, your heels, then your entire foot, you were so strong. You looked ridiculous dancing with your cane, one good foot moving with the music, hips swinging.

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 133 You never stopped living, I remember when the fences never slowed down, never were meant to keep people took care of yourself and like us out. it killed you. Do you know how I hated you after you left me? How angry I was when they put you in the ground? I was so sure you left me on purpose, that you gave up, because I knew you were too strong for diabetes, too strong for a heart attack. I knew even death couldn’t make you leave me if you didn’t want to. I felt like I was losing my mind. It still amazes me to wake up in this house, this big beautiful house, all fenced in to keep us safe. I remember when the fences were meant to keep people like us out. I remember the tiny little apartment in Garden City, the smelly trailer in Nampa. ¡Ay Dios mío! We’ve come so far. You look so different in the photo of our citizenship ceremony. Your hair is so short; you’re wearing a blue suit and tie. You look nothing like the boy who spent hours nursing baby goats, who used to sing them lullabies in the night. We’ve both changed, I guess. On November second the kids call, first Tomas, my boy, our baby. “Whatcha doin’, Ma?” he asks. I hate it when he calls me Ma. It sounds like one of your goats, bleating and whining. So different from the way I called my own mother Madre. “You’re not moping, are you, Ma? It’s not healthy. Papi would hate for you to be sad. You should get out more, go see some friends.” He prattles on and on about his classes, his teachers, the Day of the Dead presentation he’s putting together for his cultural anthropology class. He wants to take pictures tonight, wants me to talk about you into a recorder. My American dream all grown up and the boy still sounds like a goat. It’s not his fault, I spoiled him. Gave him everything we didn’t have until he was sick and bloated on his American childhood. He’s a good man, though, under it all. Sonya calls next, so soon after her brother I wonder if they’ve planned it. “Mom, how are you?” My smart girl, my firstborn, she was always so serious, so intent.

134 National Undergraduate Literary Conference “I thought I’d bring Sam over tonight. I explained to her that we were having a party for Grandpa tonight. She thinks it’s like Hal- loween and a birthday party all rolled into one. She doesn’t really understand but she’s excited. Sam, come talk to your grandma, come show her your Spanish.” I wait endlessly while she chases down Samantha, who looks just like you, a little brown princess, so arrogant, royalty in her own little corner of the world. “Hola, Abuela,” she says, slowly, carefully. “Te quiero.” “I love you too, hija,” I say back. I remember how we sounded just like her once. Sounding out, A,E,I,O,U and sometimes Y. Sounds that never stay solid, sounds that change, hard, soft, and sometimes silent. “Grandma, you’re supposed to say it in Spanish.” “Te quiero, hija.” “That’s better, here’s Mom. See you tonight.” Sonya talks about her job, about Sam, about the weather but she doesn’t talk about you. I think she blames me for feeding you tortillas, even though I knew they were bad for you, for letting you drink, for not making you go to the gym. She just doesn’t understand why I didn’t make you do all the things the doctors said. I can’t explain it, I don’t know either. She misses you but she won’t talk to me. While I pushed her to go to school, go to college, get married, to succeed, you pulled her close and sang Sana, Sana in her ear. She sings it to Sammy, who sings it to her teddy bear. Sana, sana, Colita de rana Si no sanas hoy Sanaras mañana After dark the kids come, Sonya and Sammy. Tomas brings his girlfriend. She’s all pink and gold and she’s just so fascinated by everything. She’s fascinated by the sugar skulls, with their hollow eyed grins and she’s fascinated by the food, the pictures. She asks so many questions. –Why marigolds? Because they attract the souls of our loved ones.

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 135 –What are they called in Spanish? Flor de Muerto. –That means dead flowers, right? Flowers of the dead. –Why tamales? Because they were his favorite. –Why skeletons? They’re so creepy! Of all the American habits I hate this never-ending barrage of why, why, why, the most. If I’d asked such questions of my own Abuela she’d have taken her wooden spoon and beaten me until I figured out I was being rude. We celebrated, we drank. Sammy squealed with delight when we brought out the skull-shaped Pan de Muerto. I’d painted Texas bluebells in shimmery frosting, painted silver leaves on the pale gold crust. It was almost too beautiful to eat. That didn’t stop Sammy. She eats just like you, eyes closed, working each bite carefully, pulling every ounce of satisfaction until she swallows. I wish you had more time to get to know her. She barely remembers you, three years for a child is forever. She pretends, though, makes up “me and Grandpa” stories; in her dreams you go fishing, horseback riding, and to the moon. Sammy thinks heaven is like Oz or fairyland. Has another year really passed? “My dad,” Tomas said, “was a crazy sombitch, I remember the two of us parking at the edge of a corn field and sneaking over the fence. We picked corn all night. Then we high-tailed it home. I asked him why we didn’t just buy the corn and he said because stolen corn tastes better. He was right.” My boy brought a few ears of corn and laid them near the marigolds. “I stole these from my neighbor’s garden, Papi.” The kids talk as if we’re at your funeral all over again. They can’t quite bring themselves to talk to you so they talk about you. “Daddy was a good man,” Sonya said. “He worked hard. He was one of the first Mexicans to own a home here, one of the first to start his own business. He built the Mexican community center, donated to the school. You know what I remember best, though? I remember the way we used to dance. How he’d pull me up so I was

136 National Undergraduate Literary Conference standing on his shoes and he’d whirl us around the floor.” We ate tamales and Tomas said they were almost as good as his Abuela’s. Then they all went home. For them it was over, the rites had all been observed; the rituals taken part in, you were properly remembered. Before she left, Sonya touched my shoulder. “Mama, come home with us. Please. I don’t like the idea of you sleeping here all alone.” I shook my head. “How would your daddy find me all the way across town?” “Mama, please, you know Daddy isn’t actually coming.” I just smiled. My little Norteamericanos, they don’t believe in Ojo, in Señora de Guadalupe, God or the Devil. They believe in Wall Street, in McDonald’s. “Mama, please.” Sonya holds out her hand. I hug her close. “I’m tired, hija, I’m going to bed.” She nods, and I can see that she’s grateful I won’t be disrupting her routine. They leave and the house is empty. But I wait. I wait for you all night, play your favorite song over and over, and finish off the tequila. I fret over the candles, were they too dim? The music, was it too quiet? Did you go to home to Monter- rey instead? I dance to our wedding song, eyes closed, remembering the gentle weight of your hand on my waist. Finally, when it is dark- est out, just before morning, I slip into bed and you’re waiting for me. With that same little smile you used to have when I checked, then double checked, then triple checked the kids. I pull you close, bury my head in your chest and breathe, breathe, breathe you in. Some mornings I wake up and I can’t quite remember the curve of your cheek, the exact shape of your smile, but I can always remember your smell. Your hair is down to your waist, your big brown eyes like melted brown sugar. You smell like cinnamon and chili powder. You pull me into your arms and in the candlelight the stretch marks on my belly have faded. My skin is clear, and unmarked. My hands are soft and smooth. My hair is so black it looks like ink on the pillow. It was grey this morning. Were we ever really this young? This eager?

National Undergraduate Literary Conference 137 You kiss me and you taste like papaya, you stroke my body and I cry. “Shh,” you whisper. “Let’s just enjoy this.” You have a marigold in your hand and you brush it all over me. Even the bottoms of my feet, which are so ticklish I laugh until I almost pee. You laugh as I sprint to the bathroom, and my joints, my bones don’t hurt. The cold doesn’t slow me. When I come back we make love and it’s sweet and then it’s fierce, we cling to each other and cry out to God. Finally, we lay panting, and I fight to keep my eyes open, to stay awake, but you kiss my eyelids and I sleep. When I wake up you’re gone, the stretch marks and wrinkles are back. I’m tired and sore. The candles have burned out. I can smell the mari- golds and warm candle wax but I can’t smell you. I miss you already. Sonya calls to check on me, tells me she dreamt you, woke up feeling your breath in her ear, hearing your voice singing softly. She giggles like a nervous child. She wants to come over to help clean, but I talk her out of it. I want to hold this feeling in the palm of my hand as long as possible, cuddle it close, like a baby. I wish you could stay. I know you had to go. The wind is empty, soulless this morning. I can feel you, I never stopped feeling you. But you’re so far away. Can you see me? Do you miss us all the other days of the year? What is it like where you are? Is it beautiful? Does it smell like home? Some days I feel like all I want to do is be with you but on others the sun is warm, and Sam is laughing and holding my hand and I know I’m not quite ready yet. Will you wait for me? Are you really watching over us? Somehow I hate that image of you, sitting around doing nothing but watching us live. I don’t believe it. I know wherever you are you’re dancing to a cumbia beat, drinking cold beer on hot days and eating anything you want without getting sick. I can see you closing your eyes and taking every bit of joy and satisfaction out of every moment. Next year I’ll special order some guavas and tamarindos.

138 National Undergraduate Literary Conference Music Section Editor’s Notes

When I was asked to be the Music Section Editor for Metaphor this year, I knew that the end product would be a musical CD. How and why would we focus on accomplishing something that has never been done before? Several reasons. First, music is not music to most people without actually hearing it. Unless you are trained to see the subtle changes and differences in the lines of notes on a composition or guitar tabs, you will have very little idea about what is going on. However, when the chords are played, the notes sung, and the piano or trumpet accompanies a melody, the listener will be confronted with a song that is universally understandable. Secondly, as Music Director at Weber State University’s radio station KWCR, I have become acquainted with the level of talent the undergraduate musi- cians have. The artists on this compilation are some of the best that Weber State University has in their musical community. We were presented submissions representing a plethora of styles from hip-hop to punk rock to singer-songwriter, jazz and funk. As in the other sections of Metaphor, we chose, blindly, from the selections those we judged to be the cream of the crop; however, all of the songs that we received for this project were good and showed some degree of promise. Out of the fifty submissions we received, we have published those that demonstrated excellence in songwriting skill, production skill, and overall listenability.

Music Section Editor Matthew Winters Music Selection Committee Jamie L. Ratcliffe Matthew Cranford Rebecca L. Samford Music CD Selections

1 Current Jeff Jepperson of Fullers Field 2 I Can’t Wait Vaden Thurgood 3 When I Wake Up Margie Chadburn 4 Rachel’s Song Adam Rosenberg 5 Elizabeth Adam Smith 6 The Driver Jebu 7 When That Day Has Come Ascension Tribe 8 This Is All We’ve Got 2-Face 9 Fallen Down Cody Powell 10 Code Green Shaky Trade 11 Donnie, Put the Gun Down Cecil Bullard 12 Two Things That Once Were People Tim Sessions 13 Alfalfa, Machetes, and Shovels Arvis Tatom 14 When Sally Yoo 15 In My Religion There Are No Laws Thys Pendley 16 Happy Rollin Mitchell 17 Overcome Greg Mann

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