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MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT WORDS+IMAGES { FIRST ANNUAL MUSE L I T E R A R Y CO MPETITION } ISSUE02.09 VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 0 2 0 9 2contents UNREQUITED RELIGION GRANT BAILIE 6 GRANDPA RUDY ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON MARK KUHAR 7 PODIS JOHN PANZA 11 INFINITE LOSS ROB JACKSON 15 EIGHT TO FIVE, AGAINST (EXCERPT) MARY DORIA RUSSELL 18 BOXERS DON’T FLOSS AFTER EVERY BOUT JOHN DONOGHUE 20 BLUE GIRL MARK KUHAR 21 DANCING WITH SOMETHING SHIVA SAID 33rd cleveland international film festival CLAIRE MCMAHON BACKGROUND it’s starting march 19-29, 2009 tower city cinemas clevelandfilm.org LITTLE GIRL BLUE BILLY DELPS PLAYGROUND, NYC, 2003 JASON OASIS 26 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY AMY BRACKEN SPARKS VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 0 2 0 9 2contents UNREQUITED RELIGION GRANT BAILIE 6 GRANDPA RUDY ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON MARK KUHAR 7 PODIS JOHN PANZA 11 INFINITE LOSS ROB JACKSON 15 EIGHT TO FIVE, AGAINST (EXCERPT) MARY DORIA RUSSELL 18 BOXERS DON’T FLOSS AFTER EVERY BOUT JOHN DONOGHUE 20 BLUE GIRL MARK KUHAR 21 DANCING WITH SOMETHING SHIVA SAID 33rd cleveland international film festival CLAIRE MCMAHON BACKGROUND it’s starting march 19-29, 2009 tower city cinemas clevelandfilm.org LITTLE GIRL BLUE BILLY DELPS PLAYGROUND, NYC, 2003 JASON OASIS 26 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY AMY BRACKEN SPARKS Words + Images is our tag line, and for this issue, we focus on MUSE IS THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL PUBLISHED BY THE LIT Words as we publish the winners of the first annual MUSE VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 Literary Competition. When the judges submitted their final JUDITH MANSOUR Editor choices, I curled up with a mug of coffee (and just a little [email protected] Bailey’s to sweeten the pot), and read for the better part of TIM LACHINA Design Director an afternoon. The prose and poetry that won this year’s first [email protected] and second place categories exemplify everything that we RAY MCNIECE Poetry Editor want MUSE to represent: excellence in craftsmanship, origi- [email protected] nality, and an edginess of voice sharp as a skewer. ALENKA BANCO Art Editor [email protected] Thomas Dukes’ poetry is at once emotional and lyrical, while KELLY K. BIRD Advertising Account Manager packing a punch. Kelly Bancroft’s prose plucks heartstrings [email protected] without ever bordering sentiment. Giao Buu’s fiction makes me want a personally guided tour of real Cleveland landmarks write now. SUBMISSIONS that he captures with laser focus. And, Amy Thacker’s fiction (content evident) may be sent electronically to [email protected], [email protected]. reminds us that the insecurities and foibles of adolescent We prefer electronic submissions. MUSE publishes all genres of creative writing — including but not crushes never really escape us. I applaud each of these limited to poetry, fiction, essay, memoir, humor, writers and am proud to publish their work. lyrics, and drama; stories about the writing life; profiles; book reviews; news of importance to writers, publishers, and agents; and other things which might stimulate public interest in reading Also in this issue, we have printed an excerpt of Sheila and writing. Preference is given Ohio-based authors. Schwartz’s novel, Lies Will Take You Somewhere, along with a beautiful tribute by Lori Wald Compton who captures Sheila’s The 5th Annual essence as teacher, mentor, friend. Sheila Schwartz passed away this past November, leaving in her wake scores of people who loved her, and whom now, through this novel, have the High School Writers’ Festival Founded in 1987 as Ohio Writer, Muse is the quarterly journal published by The Lit, a nonprofit literary arts opportunity to savor her company for just a little longer. Lies, organization. No part of this journal may be reproduced April 23rd – 25th $50 fee. Scholarships available. without written consent of the publisher. which is slated for release this February by Etruscan Press, is contemporary ethnic fiction at its very finest. Cleveland-area high school students are invited to work with THELIT CLEVELAND’S LITERARY CENTER professional writers in small workshops focusing on poetry, fiction and Find yourself something hot and soothing to drink, grab a creative non-fiction. For an application or more information, visit hb.edu. ARTCRAFT BUILDING blanket, and escape the cold, Cleveland winter through the 2570 SUPERIOR AVENUE SUITE 203 CLEVELAND, OHIO 44114 eyes of the writers in this issue. 02 216 694.0000 WWW.THE-LIT.ORG 09 Shaker heightS, ohio • girlS k – 12 / co-ed early childhood • 216.932.4214 x 7252 • hb Judith M .edu U S EM 5 {short fiction} FIRST PLACE Cleveland Love Song FIRSTAN B Y G I A O B U U 1. SOKOLOWSKI’S INN Sokolowski’s is cafeteria style, and the desserts are on display NUALMUSE I believe in t-shirts because I love New York. If Brooklyn is the bottom, first because you may not pick up any once you see how much you get for and the top is the Bronx, Manhattan is the middle, fitted perfectly in my your entrée and sides. So it’s too many choices, too much food, and too heart. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Maybe it’s the sound of high heels many people in line trying to hurry through and get a table before you tapping out a beat on the concrete, or hot dogs on the street in the morn- miss out on one in the piano room–with the piano player who looks like LITERARYCO ing at three. But it’s me—NYC. It’s my kind of dreams, my style, the rain he could also be an enforcer for the mob, his face scratched out of Lake in the air, the gum on my feet. Erie driftwood, his talent that much more amazing because it’s a sur- But at the moment I’m singing my Cleveland love song, my prise. Everyday magic—Cleveland magic—is low expectations, and goodbye tour if you will. For the past seven years, I’ve been saying good- then getting more than you expect. Someone bumps my tray right before MPETITION bye, slowly falling out of love with my hometown as I fall for New York the meatloaf station, and my piece of carrot cake falls over. I hate cake ** (we just got an apartment together). But now that I’m finally moving, laying down (it’s just a thing from childhood; I’ve always liked things to POETRY JUDGE FICTION JUDGE NON-FICTION JUDGE and kissing Cleveland goodbye, the break up is a little harder than I look good in their presentation). Arching an angry, thick eyebrow and Honor Moore is the author of three Christopher Barzak’s new novel The David Giffels’ most recent book, All thought. Knowing for some time now that I was leaving, I’ve also known biting my bottom lip, I give my best impression of a Hell’s Angel as I collections of poems: Memoir, Darling, Love We Share Without Knowing the Way Home: Building a Family in and Red Shoes. The Bishop’s Daughter, (“Exquisitely perceptive and deeply that I would never come back. look over. a Falling-down House, has received her memoir published in May 2008 affecting”—Publisher’s Weekly) was widespread acclaim, from The will be published in paperback this released by Bantam in November I am singing my love song to Cleveland, and what better place Her impression is better. It helps that she’s a little taller so she New York Times, which described spring, along with a new paperback, 2008. Barzak grew up in rural Ohio, it as “sweet and funny,” to the Los to start than Sokolowski’s Inn, a big blue collar fuck you to urban gentri- can look down on me. Arching two thin eyebrows to my one, her tongue Of The White Blackbird, her biography went to university in a decaying post- Angeles Times, which called it “a of Margarett Sargent, the painter who industrial city in Ohio, has lived in a fication? As a neighborhood—as my neighborhood—Tremont is a bur- is sticking out one side of her mouth just a little bit, twisted like red lico- truly wonderful book,” to Oprah’s O was her grandmother. In April 2009 Southern California beach town, the at Home magazine, where it topped The Library of America will publish capital of Michigan, and in the suburbs geoning crossroads of bohemian cool and bourgeois slumming in a town rice just a little bit. She narrows her eyes slowly to the rhythm of finger- the “Fantastic Summer Reads” list. Poems from the Women’s Movement, of Tokyo where he taught English. His Giffels, a longtime Akron Beacon that could never define either cool or bourgeois. And Sokolowski’s nails tapping against the plastic of her tray. an anthology of poems from the stories have appeared in Nerve.com, Journal columnist and former writer 1970s, which she edited. Her website is The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, stands as a great wall against those hipster and middle management “You knocked my cake over.” My look of anger is a joke. for the hit MTV series Beavis and www.honormoore.com. Strange Horizons, Salon Fantastique, Butt-Head, has recently been named Interfictions, Realms of Fantasy, and invaders. Too bad they just went around it. I should know; I’m one “I knocked my cake over.” Hers is not. “You took the last piece. to the creative writing faculty at Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. the University of Akron, where he of them.