North Texas Review i

North Texas Review 2011

The North Texas Review serves as an outlet for the literary and artistic creativity of the students at the University of North Texas. We hope you will enjoy exploring their work as much as we enjoyed curating it. ii North Texas Review

Staff: Steven Kilpatrick • Editor in Chief Emily Allen • Poetry Editor Michael Winston • Fiction Editor Aaron Case • Non-Fiction Editor Bevin Butler • Art Editor Kayla West • Associate Editor Amy Layton/Joe Hinson • Design and Layout Jessica Ellis • Promotions Daisy Gillam • Webmaster Readers: Gwen Christy, Kara Dorris, James Eidson, Hope Christine Hutson, Rebekah Kilpatrick, Emily Moore, Alyssa Quintanilla, Bess Whitby Special Thanks: We would like to thank our faculty advisor, Dr. Jean Roelke, for her guidance and support. We would also like to thank the Student Service Fee Committee, UNT Willis Library, and UNT Printing and Distribution Solutions for making this publication possible. We would especially like to thank all students who submitted this year. Your work is an inspiring record of the excellence and creativity housed in the University of North Texas. Information: The North Texas Review is an annual publication of the Department of English at the University of North Texas. It is produced by UNT students and exclusively features work by UNT students. Correspondence should be addressed to: North Texas Review University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311307 Denton, TX 76203-5017

For an electronic copy of this publication, visit ntr.unt.edu.

Body copy is set in Hoefler Text; headlines are Helvetica Extra Compressed.

Cover by Josh West

This publication is funded by the students of the University of North Texas. North Texas Review iii

Contents:

Fiction: 17 Daniel Lalley • Funeral 59 Josh Wood • South to Laredo Non-Fiction: 6 Lauren Kuykendall • Looks Like We Made It 37 Colton Royle • Consexualized Poetry: 3 Morgan Hancock • The Remains 5 Justin Bigos • Gabriella from Hot Springs 13 Lauren Coe • Torso 29 Carol Walker • Mary Lou and Charlie: Day Before He Left For War (1943) 33 Carol Walker • A Dead Nature 35 Charles Alexander Themar • Microwave Oven 47 Dalton Kane • Menopause 49 Patrick Font • Mint-Chocolate on a Pillow 50 Lauren Coe • If This Were a Paper Boat 53 Sam Coronado • To the Girl from Ipanema 57 Chris Beard • “Three” Art: 1 Sara Betterton • Shelter 2 Kenneth Chaney • Untitled 4 Trey Egan • Familiar Place 16 Josh West • Untitled 28 Trey Egan • Are You to Keep Your Own Prize 30 Josh West • Wasteland 32 Dalton Kane • Pixelated Elder 36 Shayne Murphy • Apply 46 Steve Garfield • Untitled 48 Trey Egan • Build and Sustain 52 Shayne Murphy • Stabilize 56 Shayne Murphy • Slice Through 58 Sara Betterton • Frame 66 Josh West • Arrested Motion iv North Texas Review North Texas Review 1

Sara Betterton - Shelter 2 North Texas Review

Kenneth Chaney - Untitled North Texas Review 3

The Remains Morgan Hancock

This is the wrong dirt path. It ends in this barren valley. The lights go out at the end of the road.

Sun fades, but darkness refuses to take its place. No more October lazy mornings, warm under the covers twenty toes intertwined. Faces slip from sight.

Let the heart beat slower until it stops ticking, let the chest, fallen out of breath, rest. The throat does not need what it cannot feel, Stagnant air hovers over a frame no longer filled. The body sinks into the earth- ready to go away.

No stars to surround us, no fiery lakes. The soul suffocates in thought- Will the mind survive the body? An ache in the nonexistent heart. Quiet now- Nothing in the air remains. 4 North Texas Review

Trey Egan - Familiar Place North Texas Review 5

Gabriella from Hot Springs Justin Bigos

In any restaurant in New York City with a waiting list you’ll find a hostess in a slit black skirt that looks like a slip and a strappy pair of shoes she can barely afford. She’s going to NYU, she’s going to CCNY, she’s going out with a bartender on the Lower East Side and then she’s going out with you. Her name is Briana or Clavia or Alexandria but usually Sara. Sara with the legs of a Modern Dancer. She’s auditioning for a tour, she’s calling out sick, she’s Sara from Rio and you’re paying her August rent. She drinks rum without ice and can kiss for hours. Her bedroom is small, small at 3AM in the dark. Now she’s thinking of Physics, of Art History, she’s thinking of taking a semester off, the Peace Corps, she’s not sure. She’s going to visit her parents, she’s going to call you from Florida, she’s going to think things through—and now she’s coming back, she’s tan as hell, she’s going to interview at that new place in Chelsea, she’s going to call you later, she’s gone. She is originally from Sandusky or France. Her name is Rebecca, Caitlyn, Kate, Katie, but never Ingrid. You’ve watched her a hundred times from the bar as you polish rocks glasses and snifters between shifts. She’ll last four months, maybe five. On her first day she’s standing at the podium, her face serious in the light of a tea candle. She’s answering the phone, tucking that unruly ribbon of hair behind her ear, she’s sliding her finger down the list of names, adding another, crossing some out. 6 North Texas Review

Looks Like We Made It Lauren Kuykendall

Image after image flashed brightly across the giant LCD screen, from his first 1975 appearance on American Bandstand to his own portrayal of Tony Star in the 1985 CBS adaptations of Copacabana. Music roared and the rising anticipation was felt everywhere. We had come to Vegas for one reason only and that was to see Mr. Barry Manilow. I was eighteen and, after scanning the audience, felt that surely I was the youngest person in the entire room. I turned to my Grammy who was so caught up in the excitement that she didn’t realize I was looking at her. She beamed, her smile so wide it seemed unnatural. Surely it had been forever since I had seen her this happy. My mother had been gone two years then, and yet in many ways we were still recuperating from her three-year battle with cervical cancer. Grammy and I had bonded and built our relationship on a striking new connection, the fact that I had lost my mother and she had lost her child all in the same moment. I couldn’t help but reminisce, in the mania of Manilow fervor, my freshman year of high school and the first time that my mother had duped me into finding Barry Manilow. When Mom was sick I was struck with a yearning that wouldn’t cease. When I began to acknowledge the very real possibility that the first person I ever loved was leaving me, I resented her for it. She would never see me graduate high school; she would never help me change the first diapers of her grandchild. I grew depressed and angry and I held her solely responsible. This feeling, as well as some threatening language on my part, eventually landed me in a children’s hospital psychiatric ward. After a number of group therapies and daily goals, when I had obeyed all the rules and my doctor finally concluded that maybe I wasn’t going to get creative and hang myself with my shoelaces, I was given back some privileges like wearing my own clothing. Not only could I wear my own clothing again, but at night I was given the cord to a small stereo so I could listen to music before lights out. The next time my parents came to visit me, Mom brought my CD case, as instructed. I retreated to my room that night just gushing with excitement. I turned on the stereo and unzipped the case, flipping through the CDs anxiously until one that certainly wasn’t mine stopped me. Barry Manilow? What the hell? I knew my mom loved Barry Manilow, but the fact that she had slyly slipped it in with my CDs both confused and enraged me. I put on Fiona Apple and waited for my roommate to fall sleep. It was when I heard her North Texas Review 7 breathing become long and heavy that I slipped in the Barry Manilow CD, promising myself it was only for shits and giggles. I barely slept that night. I lied there and listened to that stupid Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits CD for hours. “Bandstand Boogie” made me want to dance, “Weekend in New England” made me ache, “Daybreak” made me smile, and I was damn glad no one was there to witness it. When I turned the stereo off I felt exhausted and the silence seemed awkward, the energy of it all still slowly buzzing around me. I took the CD out and crawled into bed strangely satisfied, a feeling I was beginning to worry I would never experience again. I wracked the crevices of my brain for any thought to take me out of that embarrassing euphoria, but my heart was too charged and optimistic. As I closed my eyes I had to reassure myself that somehow everything would turn out all right.

The music grew louder and louder, lights of all colors moving across the stage. I was no longer the desperate, drama-driven adolescent, but a newer, wiser breed that owned her own car and could buy her own cigarettes. The aftermath of mother’s passing was a white canvas, and trapped in the emptiness I felt a giant burden of worry vanished, and in many ways I felt invincible in the face of so much death. I broke up with my high school boyfriend, Nick, and I got a cooler, college-aged boyfriend. One who refused to smoke schwag and would play Fergie at top volume through his car system if I asked him to. Community college was easy, I was falling in love, and I was in Las Vegas in the presence of Barry Manilow. The spotlight appeared on him and everyone cheered as he strutted across the stage, his arms open as wide as his smile. His hair was pushed upwards with gel and colored and highlighted in shades of blonde in a messy, “hip” way and I couldn’t help but notice that he looked younger, his skin spread tight across his face, even younger than the last time I had seen him perform at the American Airlines Center in Dallas the previous winter. I turned to my Grammy, who turned to me this time and let out a shriek, revealing the most excited, silly face I’d ever seen her make. I made the face back.

That summer that I graduated high school. The same summer that Grammy and I departed for Las Vegas for the first time, my new college boyfriend arrived at my apartment and quickly pulled out a small cellophane wrapper containing 100 rectangular, scored tablets, each containing two milligrams of Alprazolam, commonly known under the brand name, Xanax. I had taken a milligram and lied in bed, quietly assessing my mental capacity. I 8 North Texas Review

felt absolutely fine, so I took another half a bar and put onGone With the Wind. When Rhett abandons Scarlett and decides he will enlist, I still felt nothing, and I was about ready to denounce Xanax as entirely lame when I took another bar. It was around nine o’clock. I woke up in an utter state of confusion, the lights coming through my blinds and burning straight into the back of my skull. I quickly recalled that I had no recollection of going to bed, even though I had changed my clothes and seemingly washed my face. When I placed my feet upon the carpet and lifted myself out of bed, my equilibrium wavered, and I attempted to leave my bedroom as if I had just downed a bottle of Jose Cuervo and was desperately seeking the closest restroom to vomit. As I tried to recall the evening, I noticed I had even changed the movie, and the menu of Wizard of Oz shone brightly across my television screen. Surely I was in the land of Oz. I nearly tripped as I made my way into the living room, picking up the culprit object and allowing my heart to fall into my stomach. It was a pink Vitamin Water, and I knew it hadn’t come from the apartment. Where the fuck did I get this Vitamin Water? Later on that evening I was jogging on the treadmill in my apartment gym and catching a glance in the vending machine, lined with a rainbow of Vitamin Waters. I had the strange sensation that I had been there the night before. Some of it struck me as funny; however, the absolute most disturbing thing that both awed and frightened me entirely—as I had never before experienced blacking out—was the fact that somewhere between Scarlett making her way to Tara and waking up that morning, I had taken another bar. I fell in love twice that summer.

Manilow was still at the Hilton hotel right off of the east side of the strip and he toted a loud, sequin-infested costumed as climbed a scaffolding that extended into the audience. His dancers followed, each trailing a dozen bright- colored boas. As the Latin rhythm played and Barry sang the last, warning line of “Copacabana”, an explosion sounded and small pieces of multicolored confetti surrounded me and my Grammy. Every time we came to one of his shows, I could bet that he would play “It’s a Miracle” first and always “Copacabana” last. However, I’m not sure that I actually remember the trip we made that fall or whether it was simply constructed out of all the other times we had similarly made the trek. I had seen Barry Manilow perform “Copacabana” four times in person and at least two dozen times in as many different settings on my Grammy’s TV. I didn’t mind, probably because most of them I couldn’t even remember. North Texas Review 9

Grammy and I had grown quiet, and the wall wedged so hard between us had me wondering whether we would ever truly be close again. Grammy had had knee replacement surgery months beforehand and still found walking a painful, embarrassing chore, especially considering that she needed to have the knee done as soon as possible. Doped up on hydrocodone that she took every four, sometime three hours, she would nod off if not engaged for more than a few moments. I, too, was prone to the same nodding off. Grammy had moved from an Oklahoma town to the big city of Fort Worth, Texas when she was eight years old and has lived there since. Although she was brought up by highly conservative parents and still quite conservative herself, she was always accepting and even supportive of the questionable decisions I made. Like piercing my tongue at the age of fourteen, or dying my hair jet black for two years. However, I had a new secret I couldn’t imagine sharing, despite how much I had shared throughout the years. Before we left for Vegas that fall I sold my professional clarinet I had played throughout high school for Xanax money; I was buying a bill’s worth every four days, six hundred dollars a month. It was when Grammy likely needed my company most that I was instead constantly and endlessly plagued by an inner dialogue that had me constantly considering milligrams and dollar amounts, carefully planning out when I would take what and how much, and most importantly, how in the hell I would go about buying more. In my functioning hours I would only take enough to take the edge off, a quarter or a half a bar here or there to loosen my limbs and give me that light, floaty feeling, but when I returned home for the day I undoubtedly would take an entire bar, enough to have me stumbling or actively falling asleep in mid-sentence or mid-meal. The problem was that it was never enough. Even entirely dysfunctional I would take another half a bar, often carrying me into a blackout state of embarrassment, ushering me into a morning where I never remembered the previous day after dusk. The curtains dropped and Grammy and I sat back down, waiting for people to file out so she could leave more slowly. “He’s so wonderful,” Grammy noted. “He didn’t play nearly as long, though. I wonder if he’s feeling well.” I grunted, and Grammy and I moved into the lobby. She hobbled slowly, her knees bent inward at fifteen-degree angles and she stared intently at the ground, anticipating every next step. One step ahead of her, I paid attention only to my balance, my shoulders slouching miserably as I occasionally took a step that left me slightly swaying. We were a miserable sight to behold. 10 North Texas Review

My cool, college-aged boyfriend was the only one close enough to know about my habit, so he used the knowledge to blackmail me into getting whatever he wanted, especially when I screamed that I would finally leave. I had to drop my habit. After a vicious fight, I flushed my remaining nine bars and kicked his sorry ass out. It was three days before Christmas, and I went to work that evening terribly sober. At 8:30 I stepped out for a cigarette. Ten minutes passed, and then twenty. My co-workers would find my car with my windshield wipers on full-blast, my possessions strewn everywhere, my glasses in the back seat, and me nowhere in sight. They called the police. But I don’t remember any of that. I remember being inside my store and the next moment I was lying on top of the covers, alone in my own apartment. My first recollection that morning was how much my mouth hurt, as my tongue was shredded, followed by the overwhelming sensation that something had gone terribly wrong the night before. I had been aware that one of the withdrawal symptoms of Xanax is seizure, but I had thought myself immune. Story goes that I entered a local Kroger through their back room and began demanding Iced-Venti cups and the schedule until the manager had to walk me back over to my store, where the police and my store manager were looking for me. I have no memory of any of that. That rock-bottom morning, more than I was concerned about my own health, I worried about my job and whether I still had one. Nick had been home from Iraq merely weeks, and I hadn’t seen him in nearly three years, but I texted him anyways. I didn’t have to tell him why, he just came over. When I answered the door I thought that he hadn’t changed at all, and it made me feel self-conscious considering I had lost over thirty pounds since the last time he had seen me. He was still so lanky and thin and apparently had held onto all of those awful band t-shirts I hated. His hair was still short from army standards, and I briefly remembered all the times I had begged him to grow it out. We made breakfast that morning; sometimes we sat in silence, and other times he sat silently as I desperately fretted over my employment status. Although I had brutally ashamed myself in front a dozen people I cared about deeply, somehow I got to keep my job. Nick continued to visit. His hair began to grow longer.

Grammy and I sat in the DFW airport far too early in the morning. Certainly we were heading for Vegas; however, this time we were not alone. Lined up at the gate, sitting on the connected, plastic chairs were my three best girl friends, my brother and his girlfriend, and Nick and my soon to be mother-in-law. Everyone had been telling me how much brighter my eyes North Texas Review 11 looked. Breaking up with Xanax had made me suddenly and fully responsible for my actions, and thankfully, since I had nowhere to go but up, I was up for the challenge. I had gained fifteen pounds since the following winter, I was clear-headed and motivated, and I was getting married the next morning at the Paris hotel, the same hotel that Barry Manilow was playing at that summer. The morning of my wedding I woke up and immediately ordered four mimosas from room service, preparing myself for a long day in which I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I didn’t until my brother rose his glass inside a small café in the Paris lobby. “I know you’ve heard a thousand times that Mom would be proud of you, which is surprisingly less than the number of times that Grammy and you have come to see Barry Manilow, but I know she’s here today, and she’s proud.” Finally, I choked; however, what appalled my friends and family about my wedding, what astounded them more than my lack of water works or how rad my hundred-forty-dollar-hair looked, was my plans for the evening. I would choose not to spend my wedding night with my new husband, but instead enjoy it in the presence of Grammy. Grammy and, who else but Barry Manilow?

Manilow floated on stage dramatically on a stallion of a white baby grand, and as he began the first few notes of that famous ballad he said something about it being the place we all met. My heart turned over in a warm, nostalgic way as I glanced down at the ring on my left hand and then over to Grammy, who was intently staring forward, a content smile on her cheeks and her knees bent comfortably at ninety degree angles. We wouldn’t do this forever. I sighed heavily, and wrapped my arm around hers, interlocking our fingers as I rested my head on her shoulder. Grammy smiled, reaching her other arm around to touch my cheek with her long, slender fingers. She kissed my forehead. Somehow we had turned out all right. 12 North Texas Review North Texas Review 13

Torso Lauren Coe

My grandmother, the sculptor, molds bricks of clay that hold the weight of a mountain’s nose chipped off, and they are made soft in her palms.

As a child, I hooked my eyes over her pedestal where young women stretched their arms from the mass and emerged silken grey as if from a patch of ocean.

In art class she created the nude body of a man, the clay still earthen in its feral mountain form till she placed her hands on him. A chest broadened, shoulders swelled, his arms wrapped behind and clasped at the small of his back.

When she touched the man, a small wick of faith in me sparked- and I suddenly knew we were all drawn up from some lump of mud at our feet.

Peering at this headless man she pushed silvery hair from her face, smearing the clay warlike on her cheeks.

The day came to sculpt his maleness, that virility which gives shape to the David. The art class model kept himself covered, the delicate flesh concealed from the women. So my long widowed grandmother frowned at her emasculated statue, sterile as a doll. She stared, her eyes two sapphires pitched in the snow, and simply said, I don’t know if I remember what it looks like. 14 North Texas Review

In time he did emerge, that man from the kiln, hardened from the blaze and bearing the colors of deep pine. I ogled this unfamiliar form of full masculinity, a stranger risen on a base of dark granite, muscles glazed with sun.

Today, my grandmother calls the man fond memories, but should she have company he is turned to the wall. His bareness thrust to an empty corner with only his solid, sweeping back and calm hands on which to gaze. North Texas Review 15 16 North Texas Review

Josh West - Untitled North Texas Review 17

Funeral Daniel Lalley

They sat in the cabin, just the two of them, waiting on nightfall while the winds started blowing in from the west, cooling and shifting the surrounding air of the small rotting refuge, which harbored them. Alden sat by the opened window looking intently out on the lowlands as the sun went down, taking a sip from the amber bottle he kept resting on his knee, in between sighs and yawns, or puffs from the wooden pipe he was holding in his left hand. His face wore a worried expression, though if asked about it he would deny to the highest degree that he was worried at all. Colt noticed this sitting across from him up against the south wall of the cabin, because he was looking for it, or rather he was looking for the opposite. He wanted to know that everything was going to be okay, and he knew that if Alden’s manner suggested tranquility then he could, as well, feel safe in the perception that all was right with the world, and would be able to, at last, sleep soundly, if only for that night. “Here boy, take a couple swigs,” Alden said, handing the bottle to Colt. At that Colt took the bottle and put it to his lips, letting the bourbon into his mouth and down his throat, warming him from the inside out. “That’s good,” Colt said somberly, wiping away the drops of whiskey from the bottom of his dark mustache. “For two dollars it’d better be good enough for sippin’ on I suppose,” replied Alden. “It’s store bought?” “Well, I was savin’ it for an occasion that might call for such a spirit, but I guess this is as good as any. Most folks usually wait for a wedding or a birthday to drink their finer whiskeys and table wines, but I figured hell, when you need it the most ain’t in a happy or a joyful time; it’s times like these.” Colt took another long drink from the bottle and swallowed with great vigor, before letting out a long sigh. “Well, I do thank you for sharin’, Al. It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything that wouldn’t turn my insides raw by a couple drinks.” He held the bottle out in front of him to get a better look at what was inside. The bronze liquid had a certain glow from the sunlight that was coming in from the window, and Colt noted to himself how it reminded him of the caramel candies his mother used to buy him when he would accompany her to the general store on the weekends when they had money. “You go ahead and keep the rest. You’ll need something to keep you warm tonight,” Alden replied, “I can get more later.” Colt nodded his head gratefully 18 North Texas Review

at Alden and took a cigarette he had rolled earlier out of his coat pocket, and lit it. “Are you goin’ back to town tonight,” he asked. “I’ll be back ‘fore sun’s up. Were gonna need more than a spade and God’s earth to cover what you done here this morning,” replied Alden, “If them hounds come prying through here any time soon, they’ll hit on a dead man sure as shootin’, and that’s you and me with our necks in the noose.” Colt took a long drag from his cigarette and stared at the floor anxiously. “You think they’re gonna make an outlaw outta’ me, Al?” “I suppose ‘fore long they’ll be wantin’ to know what happened to that Micus fella, and after while no doubt they’ll come lookin’, but whether or not they find him, I believe, depends on you and me.” “I sure feel like an outlaw, Al. I feel like one right now,” Colt said before taking another drink from the bottle slowly. “You just keep your head and stay put tonight and we’ll make it out of this just fine. Ain’t nobody gonna’ come lookin’ for him ‘fore tomorrow and we’ll have it all taken care of by then. Now I gotta’ get on. I still got a far piece to go and it ain’t gonna do me any good to have a sit down with Augustine on account of I been out here till near past ten o’ clock.” Alden got up from his chair and headed slowly towards the door, but felt something holding him back from making his exit. He knew it was distrust that was barring him from departing. He stood in the doorway for a few seconds surveying the room and looked closely at the man, or rather the boy he had recently come to know as an assassin. It wasn’t exactly the boy who he distrusted; in fact, he had come to love him as his own son ever since he lost his father so many years ago in a shoot out over some stolen horses. It was the situation and the weight of it all that he was uncomfortable with. Getting away with murder wasn’t something he ever studied on accomplishing in his modest lifetime, but now he was faced with it and there wasn’t much he could see to do about it. He was afraid to leave the cottage because he didn’t trust the universe to let one bad endeavor go unanswered. He grew up with the principle that if a man does wrong it will catch up to him and justice will be served and served righteously. “Everything alright, Al?” asked Colt. “I suppose everything’s alright,” Alden replied. “You take it easy on that bottle now. We got work to do first thing in the morning and you ain’t gonna be fit for nothin in the way of labor if you stay up till late getting soused on that whiskey.” North Texas Review 19

“I’ll be alright, Al. You just get on back here as fast as you can come morning so we can get this taken care of and put it behind us like nothing ever happened.” “I’ll be back ‘fore sun’s up,” Alden said before turning and walking out the door. u u u It got quite a bit darker before Alden mounted his horse for the ride home. He had neglected to water her upon arriving at the cabin earlier, so he walked her over to a creek that ran just a few yards from where she was hitched so she could drink. Watching her, he remembered fishing and swimming at the creek with his older brother Michael and sister Kathryn when he was younger. His father used to own the small cabin and surrounding fifty acres before the reconstruction. He originally built the cabin, which sat about forty acres away from their estate, as a utility shed and a hunting shelter. After the war ended, he was forced to sell off all of his land, including the estate and cabin to a man named Benedict Micus because without the aid of slavery, the majority of the crops he planted there could not be harvested. Alden and his family eventually moved to a small ranch across town where his father broke horses for other farmers and ranchers, and raised a few head of cattle. Looking back on it all was always hard for him to do, as it had been for the other men in his family. He had wanted to forget and move on ever since he was ten years old but he felt he was always being dragged back by something or someone. “This will be the last time,” he said to himself kicking his horse. “Come on girl, let’s go.” With that Alden drove his horse out of the plains and lowlands of the past and onto the four-mile dirt road that would lead him to his house on the south side of town. When the sunlight had almost completely dissolved into darkness, leaving just enough light to ride by, the air outside took on a sharp chill. Alden pushed his horse harder so he would make it home before there was no light at all. He concentrated on the wind that blew heavy on his face, chapping his lips and rustling his hair. He tried not to think about the cabin as he rode, but there was still an ever presence of melancholy all around him. It was a feeling he had come to know time and time again; the feeling of trying to flee from a past, which he could not escape. After Alden reached his house and stabled his horse, it was completely dark outside except for a fragment of pale light reflecting off of the half moon. It seemed very peaceful for a while and he took a bit of time to appreciate it. He had bought the house just before his father passed away. It was modest, just two bedrooms with a nicely furnished sitting room and a kitchen. His wife 20 North Texas Review

Augustine kept the place up well enough, and for him it was the only place in which he ever felt really at home. From the front he could see the lamps still burning in the kitchen, which probably meant she was waiting on him with dinner ready. When he entered the house he found his wife at the kitchen table setting his plate down just across from hers. “You’re just about late for dinner,” she said, “everything alright?” “Everything’s fine, just had a busy day is all.” Alden looked away from her casually trying not to make too much eye contact because he knew that if he did she would know something was wrong. In all the years he was married to her, she could always tell. “Where were you?” she asked. “I was over at the ranch, helping to get some of the livestock ready for market. Judy asked me to come by last week.” “That was kind of you, Al. I feel right horrible for her being at that ranch all the time without a man there to help out. If your brother could see you now, I know he’d be proud as anything to know you’re over there taking care of his wife and property.” Alden sat down at the table and looked solemnly at his plate. He remembered being hungry earlier that day but now he didn’t seem to have an appetite whatsoever. He also knew that if he didn’t eat soon his wife would inquire as to why he was not hungry and that was a question he could not answer honestly. His marriage seemed almost like a trap to him sometimes, his wife was so in tuned to his every habit that he felt he could hide nothing and thus keeping secrets from her was nearly impossible and made him feel anxious just to think about it. “To what extent do you think a man is obliged to his family,” he asked suddenly looking up from his plate. “I’m sorry,” his wife replied. “I’m askin’ how far you think a man ought to go to keep and protect his kin, his blood. To what length do you think it’s appropriate to do so? Is it far enough when a man dies for his family, or kills?” “Al,” his wife said looking up from the table disturbed. “Should there be a funeral every Sunday, because revenge is in the minds of man now more so than mercy? Because livin’ don’t matter unless it’s backed by pride and pride don’t matter unless it’s backed by fear and fear is absent unless it’s backed by blood? Sometimes I feel family is a curse word, Augustine, and I feel like my kin’s been cursed a thousand times over.” Alden put his face in his hands and sighed. There was no point in even trying to eat his dinner now. His words had already given him away more than North Texas Review 21 any body language could, so he figured as long as he was in the open, his loss of appetite would be insignificant. u u u It was late now and Colt was sitting just outside of the cabin in front of a small fire he built out of some kindling he collected around a cluster of oak trees. He was resting up against the south wall of the cabin with his head pointed up into the stillness of a dark September sky. The whiskey bottle, which was almost empty now, rested between his thighs, and in his right hand he held a twig, which he would periodically used as a probe for the fire. Sleep would not be coming easily at all that night, and he had accepted that. The whiskey was steadily coursing through his veins and was carrying his thoughts in many different directions. He wished there were something in the darkness of that night to occupy his mind and take it off of what was hidden on the other side of the cabin. He thought about how incredibly quiet it was and how much easier it would be to nod off if only there were something to fix the stillness and stagnation that was the low lands of Mississippi on a cold autumn night. He decided to take a few more sips from the bottle and lit a cigarette, hoping that maybe it would take his mind somewhere more peaceful, and with every sip the regret for what he did would fade further and further into the back of his mind. An hour later he was completely drunk. His thoughts, which earlier had been consumed by remorse and fear, were now completely clouded out by anger. Whether it was the lack of sleep or the alcohol that brought this on, he didn’t know. He threw the bottle with full force into the dark of the night and stood up. The fire was now almost completely gone so he decided to go out and get a few more sticks and branches to keep it lit until he fell asleep. The moon provided little illumination over the plains but he had been outside since dusk and his eyes had somewhat adjusted. After a minute or so he reached the area that harbored the rotten twigs and fallen leaves of the early autumn. He gathered an armful of the brush and branches that had once rightfully belonged to his grandfather, but now legally belonged to the family he had been raised to hate ever since he could remember, the family that took his father from him when he was only a boy and left his mother a widow, the family that turned his grandfather into a bitter alcoholic for the rest of his days on earth, and the family who’s last remaining heir, and carrier of their name, lay dead just a few yards away by Colt’s hand. As he walked back to where the fire had died out, his anger was accompanied by a sense of pride. In his stupor, he felt compelled to walk to the other side of the cabin. He hadn’t been there since noon that day, right after he arrived back from the ranch with his uncle Alden. He’d spent all day 22 North Texas Review

and night trying to forget what was hidden there, but now seeing the lifeless mass wrapped in an old quilt, that used to belong to his aunt Augustine, brought him back as if he’d never left. He tried to hold on to the anger and justification he felt just seconds earlier, but seeing the body again carried the fear back to his consciousness with full force. “I never asked for this,” he yelled, looking at the body, “and I know you didn’t either, but we were born into families with pasts neither you nor me can change, and my family had a debt to collect with yours! I had to collect on it! I ain’t proud of what I done but I had to!” He kicked the body up against the back of the house and fell to his knees sobbing until at last he drifted off to sleep. u u u When Alden woke up the next morning it was still dark outside. He didn’t get much sleep the night before, but the anxiety he felt upon opening his eyes absolved any feelings of fatigue. He dressed quickly and silently, making sure not to wake his wife who was still asleep. He could feel that he had set her on edge the night before and he knew she would not be in a good mood if woken up that early in the morning. After he was dressed, he heated up a small pot of water over their woodstove for coffee and took one of the biscuits his wife made for dinner the night before for his breakfast. When he finished his second cup of coffee he decided to get on the road. It was a cool morning and a thick layer of dew had just settled on the grass beneath him. By the time he mounted his horse there was a hint of sunlight peaking out from the east, illuminating the ground, and making all the droplets of water sparkle like an ever-expanding glacier. Although it was nicer than most mornings, he took no time at all to notice it. He just gave his horse a swift kick to the ribs and they were off. It was about thirty minutes later when he reached the north side of town where his father’s ranch was situated. He had ridden this same early morning route many times in his life. He used to go out to the ranch at least twice a week before his father died then almost every day after that, when his old brother Michael took ownership. After Michael was killed some years back, he could hardly find it in him to make it there at all. He and his sister in-law, Judy, sold off what was left of the Arabian horses his father and brother trained, and just tended to a few head of cattle each year to get by. For the most part, Judy and her son Colt handled the chores. Only when a heifer was getting ready to calf or was really sick was Alden called out to help. Alden let himself in through the perimeter fencing that enveloped the small ranch and rode strait for the tool shed behind the house. He knew that in the shed there were shovels, pick axes, and a few bags of lime left over North Texas Review 23 from a couple years ago when a quarter of the livestock contracted foot and mouth disease and had to be put down and buried about a mile north of the ranch. After hitching up his horse and feeding her an apple he had brought with him that morning, he entered the shed. It was still the same as his father and brother would have kept it; everything was put away neatly and stored in its proper place. He took down two of the shovels that hung from nails over the doorway and got the pick axe that hung on the adjacent wall. In a wooden cabinet his father made years ago were three large bags of lime. He decided that one would do so he took his supplies and mounted them to his horse. He was locking the shed up and about to ride off when he heard a voice behind him. “Alden is that you” He jumped with panic and turned around quickly to discover it was Judy. She was holding a glass of coffee and her hair was all pinned back into her nightcap as if she had just woken up and not yet gotten ready for the day. “I’m sorry, did I scare you,” she said. “I saw your horse hitched up from the window and I figured I’d come see what you were up to this early. Is everything alright?” “Everything’s fine,” Alden replied, “I was just gettin’ a few tools. A coyote was wandering around the house last night and I had to put ‘em it down.” “How strange, I thought they knew better than to be comin’ around town like that.” “I guess not.” “Well, would you like to come in for a cup of coffee? I just fixed a pot not longer than ten minutes ago.” “I better not,” Alden replied, “I wanna’ get that thing buried ‘fore Augustine wakes up and finds it.” “Well, I’ll guess I’ll get out of your way then,” Judy said turning back towards the house, “have a nice day Al.” “Have a nice day Judy.” Alden was ready to mount his horse when Judy turned back around. “Al, did you see Colt yesterday? He didn’t come home last night.” “I saw him up near town come to think of it. I’m sure he’s all right. He probably just got held up with some of his friends. Young men tend to find things to do in the night time that folks like you and I have long since forgotten.” “I suppose your right,” Judy said giving Alden a half smile. u u u Alden took the longer way back to the cabin. It was a path that would lead him past the house his family used to own, the house in which he spent 24 North Texas Review

the better part of his youth. For some reason on that day he felt a sudden urge to see the place or at least what was left of it. It had nearly burned down many years ago when the man who bought it, Benedict Micus, was in a drunken tear and decided to set fire to the house and everything in it for the insurance pay out. Alden’s grandfather had built the house when he bought the land many years ago, and when it burned down it nearly killed his father to hear about it. Alden’s father had always hated Micus and it wasn’t just because he had to surrender everything he owned to the man; it was because Micus had a sheer lack of respect for the property and bought it solely to make a profit. He wasn’t a born farmer like Alden’s father; he was a businessman. He came to town with a lot of money and a handful of indentured servants, which he worked day and night. He eventually worked the land so severely and irresponsibly that it hardened up and would no longer produce. When this happened he decided to burn what was left and move into another estate across town. When Alden looked at the remains of the house he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He wished he could feel nothing and get over it, but he couldn’t. It was more than just the house; it was the two decades long feud with the family who took everything from him that he could not forgive. u u u Colt woke up with the morning sun burning bright in his face. His head was pounding and he felt sick to his stomach. Upon turning around he saw his adversary lying beside him, still and solid as a plank. He was the brother of the man who had killed his father. The odor of death loomed over him and when Colt smelled it he immediately started to vomit. When he found the strength to get up off his knees he went to the creek to wash his face and dip his head. Up until the day before, the only dead body he had ever seen was that of his father, and even then he wasn’t allowed to come within fifty yards or so of where he laid. He could remember that day more than any other in his entire life. He remembered his mother holding on to him while he kicked and fought her to run to the aid of his father, who was lying motionless and still across the pasture of their family’s ranch. He remembered the confusion he felt when he heard the gun shots ringing, then looked out of his window to find his father falling over and a strange man in a black cloak riding off to the north and getting smaller and smaller as he got further and further away. Colt was awakened night after night with nightmares about the man in the black cloak; he wondered constantly who the man could be and it wasn’t until just a few years ago that his uncle Al finally alleviated his curiosity. He told Colt the man who killed his father was named Vincent Micus and he was the son of a man who, at one time, had taken over his grandfather’s estate and North Texas Review 25 set fire to it in the night. He told Colt about how that man was dead now by his own hand and about how he left behind two sons one named Vincent and one named Virgil. He also said that when the old man Micus had killed him self, because of a few bad investments that left him penniless, his sons took to stealing horses and that’s why the older boy, Vincent, was on his fathers ranch that night. Alden said no one had seen Vincent after that, and it wasn’t until just a few years later that the town heard he was hanged for the same thing in a small city outside of Mobile, Alabama. He also said that in the following months after the shooting, Vincent’s brother Virgil had become somewhat of an outcast in town and spent most of his time in a small cabin he used to play in as a child. It was the same cabin Colt now stood just a few yards from—the same cabin Colt arrived at the day before with his father’s pistol and revenge weighing heavy on his mind. u u u When Alden arrived at the cabin, Colt was sitting in the doorway with his head between his knees. “Wake up boy,” he shouted as he dismounted his horse. Colt looked terrible. His hair was a mess, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was about three or four shades paler than Alden remembered him being the day before. “You alright son,” he asked. “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Colt replied. “Good,” Alden took the two shovels from his horse and threw one at Colt. “Let’s get to work. Were burnin’ day light.” Alden decided to dig the hole on the other side of the creek, further uphill, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about a flood flushing out the land and carrying away the body. They worked at the ground for what seemed like forever; it hadn’t rained in a few weeks so the clay was hard and difficult to pull from the earth. They finally finished around one in the afternoon. The sun was high overhead, and they were both covered in dirt and sweat. “I reckon this’ll do,” Alden said wiping his brow with his shirt, “Let’s go get the body.” When they finally put the man in the ground, Colt felt like he was going to be sick. He had tried to tie his shirt around his mouth and nose to block out the smell but it hadn’t worked. “What’s the matter with you,” Alden asked as he took a knee and looked over the body, which now sat at the bottom of a six-foot deep hole. “It’s just that I ain’t ever smelled nothin’ like that before in my life,” Colt replied, “I don’t intend to smell it ever again neither.” 26 North Texas Review

u u u They got the body completely buried just before the sun started to set and now they were back in the cabin. Colt was sitting on the floor, soaking wet; he had taken a bath in the creek just after they put the last shovelful of dirt over the grave and now he felt cool and a bit anxious. Alden sat in front of the open window as he had done the day before and many times in his youth. He was watching the sunset on what used to be his father’s land and the land that now apparently belonged to no one. “Al,” Colt said solemnly, looking down at the baseboards of the rotten cabin, “You think God’ll ever forgive me for what I done?” “I don’t know,” Alden replied, “I know if you’re a prayin’ man you could start tonight, and if you’re a church goin’ man you can go every Sunday from now ‘til the day you die, but in the end maybe you should ask yourself if you’d even belong in heaven if God was to forgive you. Sometimes I think there are folks that would be better off goin’ somewhere else when they die; I know I would. I think the best thing you can do for yourself is to forget what happened here, cause we didn’t just bury a dead man today, we buried a past—a past that don’t need to be dug up ever again, be it from the earth or from your memories. You put this day in the back of your mind and keep it there and maybe in time you wont know who killed that man anymore than the man on the street.” North Texas Review 27 28 North Texas Review

Trey Egan - Are You Your Own Prize North Texas Review 29

Mary Lou and Charlie: Day Before He Left For War (1943) Carol Walker

This face, sunlit and gay, like distant ripening corn fields– young and communal–will be overcast.

Wet-colored eyes go purple tonight, and foggy, ice under a deep hot faucet. Once the sun is eaten by a night of pressing fire ants, He’ll go. Brother, man given a hard hat, will thumb his way through a train station, relentless mass of unfamiliar hollers that float him over a still and plastic ocean to dead islands he creates––the place where men foul themselves in fear. She scuffs her shoes each time he resists, and finally, a hesitation–slip!–breaks their mother’s back. Misfires withhold cures. He sees red feather out from open flesh and form wings, taking soul to flight heaving into that thick emptiness. She learns of such wings as his chair remains pushed to the table, a broken branch waiting to petrify. Do the same teeth that eat away at light rave on moments? The wind grew weary of her answers. She wishes for before, where in heat- lathered fronds she was silent, her arm pressed to his, and her face said–

ignorant to the dusk–like time, he’ll wither just as another, layer by layer 30 North Texas Review

Josh West - Wasteland North Texas Review 31 32 North Texas Review

Dalton Kane - Pixelated Elder North Texas Review 33

A Dead Nature Carol Walker

I’ve caught the odor of liming rain as its aroma treats the bitter air and puts its poison on jagged cobblestones, and I’ve watched the little air pockets in a sachet of tea caught beneath swollen sprigs and aged linden leaves, inhale the wet potpourri of bleeding blossoms–– Or how pallid grass is marbled through a silent field,

And wondered if a dead nature is just nature loved by a ravenous sun? Because these clippings are you and I, love, killing each other, seed by seed, And I’ve traveled back to where we cut ourselves into the acacia the afternoon that lasted for three, but in the place where raw life bled through the bark, fungus now spills into its crevices. 34 North Texas Review North Texas Review 35

Microwave Oven Charles Alexander Themar

I walked up and said hello, and we smiled, and I noticed that it was different It made me feel uncomfortable, and when I gave you a hug, you gave me a pat on the back. I thought of nothing else for a week, and when I heard about the accident I remembered our long drive east to see your family, and when we stopped at Applebees And how the noodles were undercooked. I remembered playing scrabble with the tiles face up And the look on your little brother’s face as he tried to stick dinosaurs in my pockets. 36 North Texas Review

Shayne Murphy - Apply North Texas Review 37

Consexualized Colton Royle

I am trying to get back to that time as a child where I pedaled a little girl down the middle of the street coming home from school on a maroon mountain bike. She would sit quite elementary on top of my handlebars, and the bike would tilt and sway heavily in ambiguous directions. She had short blonde hair, perfectly straight, and strategically boring. I guided the bike down the street to avoid the awkward bumps on the sidewalks. It must’ve been adorable for onlookers to see a young boy pushing harder and harder to keep the bike afloat on the asphalt sea, with his stalwart leader merely sitting captain-like on the helm, head raised above 180 degrees. I want to go back and be that child. The one that could carry people. Unselfish, kind, maybe timid. Call it discovery, but false love perpetuated those pedals. I was too young to feel guilty.

In middle school, I sat uninterested in a desk in the campus’ round building. I had to get out, I had to escape. I signed out, checking the time. As I walked into the bathroom, I found it deserted. Toilet seats were lightly dashed with piss, and bricks had writing like, “Brittany likes it this way.” Maybe I was bored, but after I had urinated and looked down, I had the smallest notion that singing soprano in the school choir had left me emasculated. I had football practices where my last name was taped on my helmet with my named misspelled “Royale”. The tape was to be removed after the season and it felt like such a robbery. Left powerless, I fought back by masturbating in the stall. It was a thrilling event as I chuckled that pants were supposed to be down in this private location. I wanted to prove that I was a good man, that there was nothing wrong with me. I ejaculated on—“Your mom is stupid”—and did my best to calm my heavy breathing. The millisecond where I prayed to feel something was so fleeting it turned into an all-encompassing guilt that seemed required for such un-Christian manners. I trudged from the bathroom across the center common ground back toward the classroom. I prepared for a string of insults, and points, but none came. I was almost begging to be noticed. What was that sexual power that gripped young men like me? If I wanted an answer, I could’ve checked out The Stork is Dead from our church library. If I really wanted to know the answer, I later would have asked Brittany Brown.

Brittany Brown: the alliterated starlet. In middle school, boys had no idea what breasts looked like when tried on by those of the same age, and Brittany 38 North Texas Review

was first. Faking maturity, sporting a delicate mole, and unknowingly powerful, she strutted through her domain with a new confidence. Students moved out of her way. Teachers moved into her way. We yelled at Tyler in the dark for dating her. We laughed at Chris in the day for being her stepbrother. For National Honor Society inductions in the boys’ gym, chairs were placed in the middle for the students, and parents stargazed in the stands. Brittany stood up in her maroon top, that deep color of passionate red. The moment she rose, it became an opening kick-off—pictures and binoculars. Then each man looked around, particularly at their wives, rearranging their jackets, prepared to scuttle their pride into the water to save the life they had. On the way home, my father mentioned her, as if I didn’t know. He said, “She was really cute. Do you talk to her?” I was incapable of communicating with a woman of that stature. One time she tried to talk to me, and by the time I realized that I did not melt like Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was too late. We loved her. We loved her so hard we didn’t know her. I thought such fantastical notions would deviate when I became a man, but no one had told me about Marilyn Monroe.

Marilyn Monroe: the alliterated starlet. I saw her primarily in college. Sometimes she was flinging herself to a crowd. Once there was a picture of her reading Ulysses on a sunny summer bench in some distant park. And soon I saw her on faces of other women, or on the legs they show in summer. She was always there, some spirit that emboldened even the meekest of women to buy lollipops, or ask, “What are you doing during the game?” I loved Marilyn, and I never knew her. She never aged, never questioned my judgment. She was always vivacious and never feared the future. In the university bookstore much later than Brittany Brown, I would see Marilyn strapped down to a book on the bottom row. Her head was slightly raised and her mouth was half in smile, half in seduction. Her shoulders were exposed in some spaghetti-strapped outfit, her curls barely touched her shoulders, and her eyes seemed sensually permanent. She was yearning for me, pleading with me. I reached out and grabbed the book. I looked at the top right corner and read it was in the bargain bin for four dollars. Strapped down in a heap of trash books, bad cooking recipes, awkward self helps. She was stifled, slowly losing her worth. I bought the book for four dollars and saved her, or rather I tried to save myself. I walked away from the college campus that day, and she peered up with those constant eyes, never blinking, knowing somewhere in the world she created, she still remained infinite. All those years behind me of turmoil lashed out guilt and somehow I had to love Marilyn once more. Not as a way North Texas Review 39 of getting something I wanted, but to hold her heart and say that people had cared for her. Cared for her, yet did not know her.

The rest of Brittany Brown’s career fell into shambles. Junior year of high school, she non-verbally came out with Loren Zuber. I don’t know if some of us cried. Rumors circulated that they kissed in public, and we fantasized where to see such a spectacle. I listened intently, leaning far over cafeteria tables and squishing my lunch, and discussed who Brittany was. Because in all the underage pulls for attraction, this only made her more interesting. All I had ever heard was that she had father issues. Brittany still walks in my mind, with her camouflage skirt and wide white shoes she could fling off her feet they were so loose. She holds hands with Loren Zuber, her softball shoulders, her short black hair cut. I feel brackish; I wish I could apologize. I’m sorry Laura that I wrote a love letter that was riddled with idealistic lines like “pearl white teeth.” I’m sorry Erin that I imagined cornering you in a lonely room. And I’m sorry Brittany that we took every part of your body and tore it in half. And no, I don’t consider homosexuality equivalent to Monroe’s overdose, but I still wish I could warn you about how dangerous and alone we are.

It was being alone that sent me searching for sex on my own. I left through the garage toward the mailbox. I opened the mailbox and dragged out the parcels, and on the bottom, wrapping the rest of the envoys in a beautiful spoon was a Victoria Secret magazine. Caught in summer heat, I took it and cautiously hid it in the small of my back in between my jeans. I was pretending to be calm. Dropping the rest of the mail on the dining room table in a rush, I hurried upstairs. I hid the magazine in between a wall and my bed. I hid it in such a way that my mother would not find it while making the bed, as far down the side as possible without falling through to the floor. I formed relationships with women I never knew. They threw themselves at me, and I threw myself back. The girls in Florida beach shots, and open- mouthed stares, never blinking. The taut stomachs, the curved-backward prone shots. Imagination took over as women with little clothes overruled women with no clothes. My favorite picture was a young woman who laid down perpendicular to the viewer. She was topless, but laid on her elbows in just such a way as you could not see her completely. Her bottom half was only covered with some sort of underwear. Did people ask her what sort of movies she liked? My mother found my magazine in a matter of a month and mentioned it to my father. I assume she watched him come in from work, and I assume 40 North Texas Review

that my father went up to her and she just held up the magazine and said, “Your son is not gay.” And my father must have breathed out heavily and said, “Thank the Lord.” She knew I would go wrong eventually, and she smelled for it as she counted the minutes I stayed in the shower. “Why are you in the shower for so long?” she would ask, knowing the answer. “I need the time to myself,” I would reply. “I just need to be alone.” I was furious because I had known that she had gone looking for trouble, scanned the room, made the bed, found my sins. She probably dug with her hands, like an old man carrying a metal detector on the beach. She felt the sex, and dug; dug so hard and pounded out the sand to the sides. And then she would see it, bright eyed. She would say, “I could’ve told you that.” I had no real privacy. My father came home from work that day and looked at me through the narrow kitchen. “We need to talk,” my father said. At first I thought he was angry. His dark mustache, hiding behind it, and his hefty stature. The harshness of reality spurred him on, the discontent in his outdated way he wore his socks. But it was always his hands. When I was younger he had such large, hard hands. Mowing, cutting, working, I would watch his hands. I would grab for them. I could swing from his hands, and hope to grasp what I saw when he talked to other church members, when people listened to him while we installed the church playground. I went upstairs to my room, hearing the hard creaking with his body weight smattering the too old stairway as he followed behind. Then I listened to my father while I played with the shaggy hazel carpet, wishing I could hide. “Sex is something to share only with someone after marriage,” he said. “Mmhmm,” I said. I often would not listen and instead of telling him so, I nodded and threw in confirmation sounds. Both hard shells, we never leaned on each other, and if we had we would’ve bounced off. He recommended lathering with the Bible, rinsing with prayer, and repeating. “I don’t know why I feel this way,” I said. “This is a battle you’ll fight the rest of your life,” my father said. How would I know if I had won? There was nowhere for my sex feelings to run to. No way to defend myself. On a hard enough scale, we’re all bad men. I worshipped women, but never wanted the opportunity to tell my father. I loved getting my haircut. Loved going in and when the lady asked me how I would like it, I would give her scarce directions and let her filter her hands through my hair. The middle-aged women cut quick and brutal and clean, like a midlife crisis. The younger women were far more delicate, but took forever counting and recounting their steps. I’d do anything for them, stay quiet if North Texas Review 41 quiet, and mingled if they were lonely. I’d talk about their after work wrist pains and if they actually liked Paul Mitchell products, and if they despised the repeating music playlists and wondered why they couldn’t play their music. No man’s haircut looks that good on the day of the cut, but I never told them that. Men grew into their haircuts.

On the last performance of My Fair Lady in high school, my final musical, I learned that Heather Limmer was going to have a lonely summer. She was lonely then, with gray dust in her hair to age her to be Mrs. Higgins, sitting in backstage blue light almost ready to read her own eulogy. She made little conversation with others, out of nerves. So did I, I thought, and Kristen played matchmaker and I dated Heather: a known quantity. Heather was defined by her independent investment in theater, and was heroically flawed for being constantly overlooked. At night we’d sit on my roof and she would conclude that this school held little to her but contempt. She went early and worked late, and was left with 1950s male discontent. And if she was the discontent man, I was the housewife. I was patiently waiting in an apron and heels, waiting for her to stop working. But there was nothing but exhaustion; she might as well have worn a gray flannel suit. She had brilliant eyes, but a mushy chin, and had faint whiskers from the top of her mouth I found hard to ignore. She never wore skirts, and her hair was dull and often pulled back. We barely talked and instead watched reruns of television shows. Although she had Lutheran in her and I had Jewish in me, I tried not to resort to such labels. She worked for a photography couple who were fat, cheery, and liberal. Their building sat next to the bridge on the main drive that separated the old hometown from the new. One summer evening when I longed to be with her, I worked with her cheery, fat, and liberal couple on a beach shoot in Galveston. Brown water, brown beach, trash on the fringes: it was all we knew. The family had their white shirts on in the evening sun that peeked over the tall hotel building that slowly had lights flicker on. The wind was strong, and it whipped Heather’s hair around and for a minute she was entirely endearing. How was I supposed to know? Sexualized women in magazines looked like Florida beaches compared to our Galveston brown, but I treated them both the same. Later that night, we played Catch Phrase with the wild couple and I kept observing their young-but-older intern who must have felt odd seeing me watch her every move. I told myself that I watched because it wasn’t Heather, and it was true. They started drinking, and invited us to join. We retreated, said I had work the next morning. We were both secretly judgmental nuns. We went 42 North Texas Review

back down to the shore. Heather, all powerful and all meek, walked with me late at night on the beach and we kissed in the waves. They awkwardly pulled us in and out and balance was difficult and embarrassing. The tide forced us to relocate lest we topple like a badly constructed cake. When we left it was three in the morning, and the twenty-minute drive was counted by periodic highway lights scanning the dark interior. I looked at her face as she was lying against the windshield, watching the lights. Was this it? I stopped in front of her house. Heather was waiting for me, and within a few silent minutes we were passionately kissing. I reached my body over, like a fulcrum I swung under her, picking her up on top of me. Her denim hurt my penis, I wanted her pants off. There wasn’t much room to maneuver, it was a small truck. My friends called it a “lesbian truck.” I hadn’t even gotten her shirt off anyway, and I was trying by working my hands across her back, feeling her love handles. I knew this was what I was trained to do since birth. I was pushing every physical ideal toward her. Just when the windows were fogged and I knew no one could find us, and this was when my life would begin, she told me, “We can’t do this.” “Oh,” I said, “I’m sorry.” I knew that when I moved back to the driver’s side and felt the awkward wall of cloth my erection pushed against I had both succeeded and failed. Succeeded in preserving some kind of honesty, of being a good man. But I had ruined it. Ruined discovering sex. I thought I ruined it forever. Of course in hindsight I would defend it with, “Who wanted to lose that in a lesbian truck?” As I dropped her off and told her I would see her after work, I had a bitter taste in my mouth. Heather went to a separate college. She left me a letter saying she would always love me. All I wondered was whether I should have had sex with her. I couldn’t talk to my friends. I couldn’t read a textbook. Neither knew what it really meant, and neither did I. The Virgin Islands never seemed so aptly named, or so alienating.

In college I went to a work party that seemed to regurgitate all this. I mingled my way to a table that was playing a drinking game that I joined midway. I was told to put five fingers up and did so, placing my elbow on the table in the kitchen. I took a beer and a seat with my campus catering coworkers. Mario said he’d been to Europe. I put my thumb in. Marlee said she had been to New York. I put a finger down. Eric said he had been fishing before. I kept a finger up for all those fishing excursions with my father. Nicole said she celebrated Chanukah once. I kept a finger up for my Jewish North Texas Review 43 excursions with my mother. I said I never had sex before. Everyone put a finger down. The looks I got. Beyond unimaginable breathing and stares, and eyes like watching fourth of July fireworks, Eric had begun to wonder if I was homosexual and was dramatically in the closet with dirty sheets on top. Nicole said less to me, either out of some embarrassment, or fear I was a sex boogeyman. Marlee seemed to laugh at more of my jokes, and called me much more often for after work trips to the bar. Mario was too drunk to care. What separated me from the sexed was apparently all at once baffling and mundane. Eric explained that I was missing nothing and the result was underwhelming. “I lost my virginity young,” Eric said, “don’t kid yourself. The first time isn’t magic.” Marlee reasoned that true commitment was what I wanted, and respected that I was willing to wait. Nicole remained heated and Mario remained drunk. Whatever the case, an introspective search was formed in the next minutes that kept the game unfocused. I still wonder how those who surprised had lost their virginity. Was it at the end of a late night party in a locked room? Was it holding their high school sweethearts’ legs in some pulled over vehicle? I was chivalrous only in their eyes. I don’t know if Marilyn would have laughed or cried or slapped me or shredded my face with her nails if only to understand why an even supposedly straight-laced man like me could crave Brittany Brown when I barely understood algebra. One college evening I was sitting on a porch when my father called. I talked about the usual class struggles and he got on his soapbox about God’s plan and to trust him, and I would agree because in truth I wanted any kind of plan; anything to hold accountable this sexual power that rendered me asexually stoic because nobody said anything to convince me of what to do with it. Even though I kept up with my father on the phone, I found out everything about him through my mother. “I got around in high school, honey,” she said. “I think your father may have had sex with one person.” My mind wandered: was it Ms. Sargent, his high school sweetheart? Doesn’t she work at the high school? “We both knew we had made mistakes,” she said. It didn’t matter who he was with, why they even knew each other. My father was either scared or very guilt ridden, and I wasn’t supposed to see it. Wrapped in an adult skin, waiting for me to see him naked, fetal. Am I like my father? Am I myself? “You are just like your father,” my mother said. That day in the cold, on the porch swing, with my shoes scraping the old pale blue skydiver paint, I told my father through the phone that I was still single, and yes, it had been three years. My father through the phone sounded 44 North Texas Review

tired. His back was arching, going back to caveman. I could see the top of his head then. I see why he hated a particular photo of the Royle family. He was wearing a dark polo shirt, and he looked like a void, a black hole. The rest of us, even his older brother, looked strong and tightly woven. It was difficult to see whether the suburbs had done good for him, or ill. “Do you think God is planning for you to be celibate?” he asked. I hung up on him. North Texas Review 45 46 North Texas Review North Texas Review 47

Menopause Dalton Kane

My nice shoes click as I enter. Your mother there in gleaming kitchen, I try to say happy birthday, but instead we make only quiet eyes.

Not a word, just cracking all the eggs in the fridge into a large bowl on the counter. Cracking every shell until all the eggs are emptied.

Then she dips her hands in the silence, she hides them underneath and tells me: they are gone.

Steve Garfield- Untitled Photo 48 North Texas Review

Trey Egan - Build and Sustain North Texas Review 49

MINT-CHOCOLATE ON A PILLOW Patrick Font

Again he punched through the drywall: Mom hastily hung a Van Gough print to disguise their chaos, their brawl.

Arguments in Spanish jumbled our brains and, for the first time, my brothers and I wanted to learn the language of their pain.

Weekend divorce amenities:

No rules, room service, on-demand Friday nights, weekend cannon balls in Marriott lap pools, occasional three a.m. phone call fights. 50 North Texas Review

If This Were A Paper Boat Lauren Coe

Face half consumed by pillow I watch the world through my hair. Blue wax pooled on my dresser, the charred center of a dead flame, and one bowl of pears.

La poire, you said to me on a Tuesday. I held it in my palm, a fat green buddha, long before my tongue could taste its grainy heart.

You touched the freckle on my stomach and said now you would know mine among all others. On those mornings, I thought my back would meld into your bare chest like two wax figures in the sun.

Suddenly, everyone is French, and I am without language tearing my nails over the freckle until I’m free of it. But like some starfish arm it grows back.

I’ve slept through it all, the rain thumping like dead piano keys snipped of their strings. I spread myself out on the bottom of each day, a silver drain.

I wish I had the faith of those who glimpse the face of the Virgin Mary in their pancakes, falling to their knees at the kitchen table while she smiles under a maple halo.

You made me pure as a glass of milk, but I am another antique now shaking the crust from my skin. North Texas Review 51

We were children once, our fingers were new. They moved along each colored country, on our tiny earth scaled down, so round. How quick were those spongy tips grazing the mountains, then deserts and the places where our hands were immigrants.

Weren’t we always just a ship and crew short of conquering the world?

If my body knew the secrets of hands, I could glimpse your face by midnight if I traveled solid seas, but my unholy feet would surely sink.

Our time was measured in cubes of sugar and bone china. We dove in fountains to strike it rich from other’s wishes.

Like a sieve I’ve preserved what is left, though I am so empty you could peer into me and read my core like tea leaves. 52 North Texas Review

Shayne Murphy - Stabilize North Texas Review 53

To the Girl From Ipanema Sam Coronado

And when she passes, each one she passes goes--ah -From “The Girl from Ipanema”

Astrud Gilberto sang each note like an accident: her uncertain words never tumbling over each other, but hanging gracefully in every song like a Christmas tree designed merely to host its ornaments, merely to reveal how each part can make the whole glimmer.

This flow, this nonchalance filled my headphones as I lingered on standby for seven hours, waiting for some flight to DC.

Was there even a chance? An attendant asked: Did you not hear anything I just said?

Returning to my seat, defeated by the cold and fatigue and time-- by all those things that just happen, “Trains and Boats and Planes” came on shuffle.

So much death in that song, so many missed connections, yet when a trip to Paris is dressed in indifference, and a prayer that never crosses the sea is adorned with Spanish strings and Brazilian beats, the agony of Astrud is transformed into the anguish of all, like when my parents, huddled on the couch, their tears made balmy signatures of red and green by the Christmas tree hovering over the TV, watch Bogart stoically insist a beautiful friendship has sprung from his misfortune.

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But Astrud, I have no voice like yours. These moments of rage and defeat, I can’t turn into beauty.

I think of the way you command the chaos of occurrence, turning every happening in an eternal “ah” that vanquishes the threat of the unexpected:

how your whole career flourished from a moment like any other: a visit to New York effortlessly transformed into the recording session that changed your life.

You say you can’t soar, but it’s your voice that carries, resolved, yet tumultuous, like a plane ascending, shimmying its way in an upward slope, grasping for that final spot, that perfect height before the dip that makes each passengers’ stomach cart-wheel in disbelief.

It’s your songs that blossom from speakers the world over, imprinting themselves in the memory of the boy opening his train set on Christmas morning, ramming the engine forward,

proclaiming choo-choo! as if he could move this toy so freely and forcefully that no trip, not even the one for the plane he fails to catch thirteen years later, could be made without it.

But what about the days spent on standby? What about the absent meetings, the premature deaths, the kisses that never were because I was ten minutes too late?

What happens to us with missed flights and voices that gently plunge into silence? North Texas Review 55 56 North Texas Review

Shayne Murphy - Slice Through North Texas Review 57

“Three” Chris Beard

Unknown

In nightfall, first, there’s no window. One sees no space at all, misplaced black sky, something without a through, a plane too painted, missed immeasurable shape—one sees nothing, the hole not imagined or forgotten. But eyes begin to draw the border, dark by parallel dark (a type of zero). Between, glass collects a sea of fractures.

Known

We make this place for stillness, right angles, and brick, sheetrock and skill. But even socks arranged in drawers won’t quiet the chaos faith. Floors slant and sleep uneasy, sand beneath our careful measure—life let sift below us fractions of one another, part of.

***

Dawn through the window like a rock. Unlit until we found both shatter and shard drawn across us: lines divide the room with light. The dust neglected dumbly here appears golden, uneven infinite hour glass, manifest of time, notional lengths we lived—unconscious collections we know cannot be touched. We measure anyway— to un-blur the morning, re-imagine the beautiful, to see for the first time. 58 North Texas Review

Sara Betterton - Frame North Texas Review 59

South to Laredo Josh Wood

I have to piss before we’re halfway there, and there’s nothing but open road around us, so I hold it longer than I should. So we’re just outside of Fredericksburg when I finally can’t take it anymore. The farms in these parts have seen better days. In the moonlight, a dust devil spins through a forgotten field, and I pull the car off to the side. The Buick groans against my sharp turn on the wheel, and Aimee looks at me, braces herself against the dash. “I have to pee,” I tell her. She nods. I barely get the car into park before I jump out. I run through the dust cloud I made with the stop. The passenger door squeals behind me as I keep going. The only thing separating the dirt farm from the road is a low, faded white fence, so I hop it, go far enough out that Aimee can’t see me. There’s a tree, and that’s close enough to a urinal for me. When I start back to the car, Aimee’s got the map spread out across the hood of the car. She’s using her cell phone as a flashlight. With the reception out here, that’s about all it’s good for. “What do you see?” I stretch out my arm. I don’t think I really realize how tired the ride has made me so far. “Well,” she says. “We can probably make it there in a few hours.” She straightens up. For a second, I catch a glimpse of her in the light of her phone: the blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, the deep brown eyes, and the cheekbones with the last bits of makeup still holding on. Then the light disappears, and my eyes have to adjust. “We should probably hit the road then,” I say. “Yeah.” I can see her sit on the hood. “Thing is, I’m dog tired. I could do with some sleep.” “You slept pretty well in the car,” I say. “You’ve been snoring off and on.” I tuck my hands in my pockets. Spring nights are cold hereabouts. “I mean real sleep.” I can hear that whine in her voice she gets when she’s upset, whenever she gets impatient. “Not that kinda sleep. Let’s find a hotel.” “Right,” I say, and I think of what my parents will say when they see my account statements. They still come in their names after all. “You’ve got the money, right?” There’s that tinge of impatience. Her voice is higher than usual. “It’s not a problem. Anything on the map?” “I dunno,” she says, and she starts folding the map. “I think they’re mostly down 16. At least, everything we can afford.” 60 North Texas Review

I don’t say anything. I move around the car and get in. The engine refuses to turn over at first, but it roars after a few turns of the key, a few taps of the gas, a few choice words. When I turn on the headlights, something runs off the street into the brush on the side of the street. # This all started in the backseat of my car. Aimee’s hair was a mess, and my pants were still half off. “I don’t want this night to end,” I said. I pulled her closer. “Maybe it shouldn’t,” she said, and she snuggled closer. “What’s that mean?” “I mean, my parents aren’t gonna notice if I’m gone. And you’re in a dorm. What if I went over to your place?” I snorted, but really, the idea of going home and not being out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, that sounded really good to me. “Why should it end there? Why don’t we just take a trip?” She sat up, all of a sudden, and had this huge smile on her face. “Oh my god, that sounds great.” “What?” “I think you’re right. I think we should definitely go on a road trip.” “What?” I said. Her hands were crushing my ribs. “I think we should go south,” she says. She puts her bra back on. “Just for the weekend, y’know?” “You thinking anyplace in particular?” I asked. “How about Laredo?” “Laredo?” I asked. “Why Laredo?” She shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any.” And I took her to her house to change. I didn’t even bother going home. Instead, I started driving south and wound up in a hotel room that could be best described as shitty. # There’s a pack of cigarettes in Aimee’s purse. I’ve seen her pull them out before, when we’re out with her friends, the friends I’ve adopted. She’ll take one, light it, take one drag and hold it until it burns out. It’s dark. I look at the clock, and the red numbers bleed out of it and burn my eyes. It’s three in the morning, and I can’t sleep, and all I want to do is get out of that bed and breathe. So I ease back the covers, and Aimee stirs beside me, mumbles something and turns over. Her purse is on the floor, its contents spilling out. The cigarettes and her lighter are right there, peeking out. I slip a cigarette out without taking North Texas Review 61 the pack from her purse. I light the cigarette there in the room, and take it outside. Then the coughing starts. I walk over to the edge of the balcony, still caught in a coughing fit. I want to smoke, so I keep taking drags. But it just makes me cough more. So I toss the cigarette overboard and hold onto the rail and watch the little orange dot as it falls to the ground and the embers bounce away. I keep shifting my weight. The heat of the day is still radiating out of the concrete. It’s odd to be cold in my head and hot in the feet. The freeway is so close, I can feel the rumble of every car that passes. They’re like ghosts. The freeway doesn’t die down at night, it gets busier. There are no streetlights on the freeway. The only thing the cars have are their own headlights. Up in the sky, there are stars, and they trace out patterns. I can only name a few, but I trace the ones I do know. And I think of sailors finding new worlds by those stars. I can feel her before I see her. The heat of her body is different from the night. Aimee comes up behind me, wraps her arms around my waist and leans her head against my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” “It’s fine,” she says. “What’re you thinking?” I look up into Orion’s tiny waist. I can feel Aimee’s sharp ribs biting into my back. I swallow hard. “Nothing,” I say. “Liar,” she says. “I was just thinking,” I say. “Look at the stars. I went to camp once. They taught us we could find our way by the stars when we got lost.” “Did you get lost?” she says, and her arms tighten. I laugh. “No,” I say. “I never did. But I sure as hell know the north star now.” She snorts. “At least you’ll know how to get home.” “Yeah,” I say. “Listen. Why Laredo?” I can feel her pulling away. She comes around to stand beside me and leans against the railing. She’s wearing my dress shirt. “Why not?” “It’s random,” I say. “You said you wanted to go south.” She starts to look out across the parking lot below. I start to worry she’s going to see the cigarette I wasted. She shrugs. “We can go to Austin instead if you really want.” “No. No, I don’t care now.” I start to peel black paint off the railing, drop it and watch it drift through the air. “My family’s from Laredo,” she says. “It just seems right.” The last words, she says through a yawn. So she stretches. “I gotta get some sleep.” 62 North Texas Review

“I should too,” I say. But I stay where I am. # Somewhere, after we’ve been driving for about an hour and the day has just starting to heat up, the car makes this godawful pop and starts hissing. Steam pours out from under the hood the more I drive. Aimee sits up in the passenger seat and I start cussing under my breath, and I check the gauges. “What’s going on,” she asks. “Shit,” I say, and I pull over to the side of the road, kicking up more dust. I pop the hood and jump out, praying it’s not what I think it is. I open it up and get a blast of hot steam in my face. I back up, coughing. Aimee comes up beside me. All of a sudden, I’m sweating. I wipe my forehead with my sleeve. “Radiator,” I say. I run my hands through my hair. “It’s blown. We have a blown radiator. We’re in Laredo and we have a blown radiator. Jesus Christ.” “That’s bad,” Aimee says. She looks at me and frowns. “I don’t know much about cars, but I know that’s bad.” “That’s bad,” I say. And I go over to the driver’s side, the car still hissing behind me. And I slide down and sit on the ground. Aimee comes over and sits beside me. At least she’s in jeans. I look at her in jeans and a t-shirt and I look at me and I think of us sitting here by the side of the road. I want to cry right then and there. “I should never have let you talk me into this,” I say. A car rushes by and there’s this rush of cool air. “You wanted to come too,” she says. “This was your idea. “It was a joke,” I say. I look at her through the corner of my eye and she looks back at me. There’s nothing to say to that, really. She looks down the road. “So how long do we sit here,” she asks. “How long until you can fix this?” “I don’t even know how to fix this,” I say. “I don’t think my dad ever planned on me taking the car this far.” I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. When I flip it open, I find that I’ve got a bar, a second one flickering in and out. It might be enough to make a call. And I might have to. “It’s not the end of the world,” she says. “We could still make it.” “Why?” I ask. “Why should I even want to make it anymore? What is so important in Laredo for you, anyway?” She looks away, to the other side of the road. But there are no cars or anything. Only the sound of birds in the sky and dirt farms with a few rare trees and weeds. North Texas Review 63

“We’re not going anywhere for a while,” I say. “Let’s have storytime.” She settles onto the ground, sits cross-legged. She doesn’t speak. For a while, I don’t think she’s going to. Then she says: “Back when we were all living here, my mom and my dad and me, my dad worked at this factory. And...well, one day, there was an accident.” I look at her, but she doesn’t look back. Her eyes are on her hands, and she’s twiddling her thumbs as she talks. “My dad,” she says. “He made the money. So...well, my mom couldn’t handle it after the accident. So we sued. We won, eventually. There was a settlement, and they agreed to help pay for his...what did they call it? Long term care? My stepdad, he was a paralegal with the firm that we worked with. “Eventually, it just got too much, and we left. We went north, because my stepdad thought there’d be work up there.” She looks at me. And her eyes are as wide and as bright and as wet as I’ve ever seen them. “That’s me,” she says. “But why are you here?” “What do you mean,” I ask. “I’m here cause you’re here.” “No,” she says. “I mean, you could’ve said no. Why’d you wanna leave Abilene?” I look out at those dirt farms across the way. There’s no wind, and the trees are perfectly still. “I dunno,” I say. “I guess I was bored.” And I think of spending another weekend alone, at the dorm or at the house, my parents gone to some seminar or conference or something. I think of the fact that my phone hasn’t rung the past two days. I look at it now, think about calling my dad to tell me how to do it. How to fix a busted radiator on the side of the road in south Texas. As if that’s something he’d know how to do. “I needed a break,” I say. “There was nothing going on for me up there.” I look over at her, and she’s still staring at me. Her eyes are wide. “Thank you,” she says. I nod. And I sigh. “I just wish it meant something. We’re still stranded on the side of the road.” “Yeah,” she says. “There is that.” And I run a hand over my mouth. The day is already getting hotter, and I’m getting thirsty, my lips are dry. I wish I had water. Something pops in my head. There’s water in the radiator. The problem is it’s getting out. How do we stop the leak? 64 North Texas Review

And I think of my own father, I think of the times, back when we were driving crappy cars and I was young, back before my parents got successful, that I got scared out of my mind because we had to pull over and deal with some problem or another. There’s more than one way to handle it. We have to plug the hole. “You smoke,” I say. “What?” “You smoke.” “Yes,” she says, but her voice has that lift that makes it sound like a question. “Do your parents let you smoke?” “What’s that gotta do with it?” “I’m thinking of something,” I say, and I push myself up off the ground. It’s hot outside, and there’s no cars going by to make any kind of breeze. “They don’t let me smoke,” she says, and she stands up next to me. “Why?” “Gum,” I say. “Do you have gum?” “In my purse,” she says, and she lets the thought trail off. After a few seconds, I stop waiting, and I rush over to the other side of the car. There’s dust everywhere, and it burns my nose and my throat. I open the passenger door and grab her purse off the floorboard. “What are you doing?” I open her purse and start going through it. “Hey!” There’s a package of gum half-buried beneath tampons and makeup and an oversized wallet. I pull out the gum and toss the purse back into the car. I take it over, hold it out for her. “Start chewing,” I say. It takes all of five minutes for us to chew enough gum to plug the hole. I take four pieces, two from each of us, and stick it to the spot on the radiator that’s causing the trouble. The keys are still in the ignition, so I start the car. After it runs a few minutes, Aimee closes the hood and comes to sit in the passenger seat. “We have a decision to make,” she says. “Well, you do.” “I do?” I ask. And after the silence outside, the sound of the car idling is a blessing. “What’s that?” “Well,” she says. “You don’t really want to go to Laredo. I mean, I guess I understand, especially after this, if you wanna go home.” North Texas Review 65

I look at the road. We’re still facing the way south. I think of the gum on the radiator, wonder just how long it’ll hold. I think of her father, and of my own dad. I put the car into gear. It fishtails a little when I pull off because the tires can’t get good traction on the dirt. “We’re almost there,” I say. “I think we’re still headed south.” 66 North Texas Review

Josh West - Arrested Motion North Texas Review 67 68 North Texas Review