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Home , Black Anvil, Crazy Horses, Dead at 21, Delicious Way, Go Away Little Girl, Jay Osmond

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

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

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. My piece.” His first novel was One for Sorrow. will begin teaching in fall 2009. He Currently he lives in Youngstown, is a contributing commentator and Ohio, where he teaches writing at essayist on National Public Radio station Youngstown State University. WKSU, and has been nominated six times for the Pulitzer Prize and was a GIAO BUU GOES BY THE NAME G. BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY VOWELS IN HIS REAL NAME. HE LIVES IN 2008 Writers & Their friends honoree. TREMONT WITH A ROOMMATE, A REFRIGERATOR, SOME REALLY FAT SQUIRRELS, AND A BOX OF HONEY BUNCHES

CEREAL THAT JUST WON’T DIE. HE WORKS AS A HUMOROUS GREETING CARD WRITER/EDITOR AT AMERICAN 02 02 09 GREETINGS, AND HIS BEST FRIEND IS LUCY, A DOG OF AMAZING AMAZINGNESS WHO HE BELIEVES IS A SUPERHE- 09 M RO IN HER OFF-TIME. HE HAS INSANELY WONDERFUL PARENTS AND FAMILY WHO LET HIM QUIT MEDICAL SCHOOL M ** PLEASE NOTE THAT JUDGING WAS BLIND. U TO WRITE, AND BALLER FRIENDS WHO, WELL... BALL, AND WHO INSPIRE EVERYTHING HE WRITES. G. LIKES TO U S S RUN, WRITE, AND WATCH ANY SHOWS INVOLVING ANIMALS BEING AWESOME. HE ALSO LOVES TO EAT (BACON E M E M ESPECIALLY) AND SLEEP (DREAMING OF BACON), AND OTHER ACTIVITIES THAT DIRECTLY HELP HIM TO LIVE. 8 9 “This isn’t yours. It doesn’t say ‘Happy Birthday Your Name’ on it.” “No. New York is for homos.” Mike is so completely Cleveland “So you’re going to come with me on my goodbye tour tomorrow?” answer to family members, friends, co-workers—to anyone who would “I know, because my name is Give-Me-That-Cake.” and one of my best friends, but he’s exactly one of the reasons I’m moving “You’re driving and paying for all the food, right? listen—proselytized it to people who didn’t even ask the question. She’s good. I can’t hold half my laugh behind my disinte- to New York. “You didn’t need to ask for her number because she’s here.” “Yeah.” “I don’t know.” Often, it’s easier to tell the truth to strangers. grating sneer. I lean over the bar, as well, my shirt on something wet. At a table I think she does it to keep me off balance and for no other rea- “Well, maybe it’s here then. Have you looked?” “Wow. I should give it to you just because your parents are hippies against the wall, she’s standing while two guys are sitting. Hands in her son—she leans in, as if to kiss me passionately, stopping inches away from As we drive over the bridge to the Westside Market, the river is and named you that.” I still can’t get a laugh from her, however. “But I won’t.” back pockets, she’s put tortoiseshell glasses on for some reason, and still my mouth and hesitating before leaning to the side and kissing me on the surfaced in oil, reflecting nothing. This city is slowly eating itself to death, They don’t take kindly to anybody holding up the line at won’t laugh even though her friends are cracking up at something. She cheek . Except she slips, and being taller than me, she lands with the full but then death by indulgence is a delicious way to go. Long lost of preten- Sokolowski’s, even for witty bantering. The server’s question of what I eventually does break into a smile, however, a smile that catches her force of both lips (and a little bit of teeth) somewhere half on my ear and sion or desire, Cleveland never runs out of French fries, and you know you wanted as my main course and the throat clearing from the back of the line around the eyes and just one corner of her mouth. Her face is incredibly half on my temple. Her right foot is on my left toes, and she’s holding on always wish there were more fries. are the best that Cleveland sarcasm can muster: loud and none too clever. I Slavic in it’s cherubic features starkly contrasted to the gracefully slim stalk tight to my left elbow, a perfect imprint of saliva on the side of my face pay for my pierogies without ever looking back. Despite the animal paint- of a neck and her thin frame. It’s as if her face is stacked out of bubbles: where lipstick might be if she wore any. ings and wooden benches, we’re still in Tremont, and you have to play it two small, tart apple cheeks and a cherry nose, all made rounder and red- “I’m just drunk,” she says. 4. BEACHLAND BALLROOM & TAVERN cool. I don’t look back, but I can tell you she has flint black hair cut short der against her pale skin when she smiles. She looks like the badass type Like most Clevelanders, she’s going to drive home. She doesn’t have many moments, so it makes those moments all the more. like a boy rebelling against private school—a bit too clumpy and a bit too that fights every single smile, too. And for no reason I can imagine, it It was the song that made her let down her guard. I wanted to go the Grog long in the bangs. I don’t look back, but she has dark blue eyes that reflect makes me smile. Shop to see whatever too-cool-for-their-shoes band was playing there, but almost purple, like they’re a curse or possibly a recessive trait indicating “You owe me a beer.” 3. TOMMY’S she insisted that we go to the Beachland Ballroom instead. More high she’s in line for succession to the throne of past Russia, still evident in the “How does that math work? Carrot cake equals beer?” Like most Clevelanders, she talks in absolutes. Like most Clevelanders, school auditorium than concert hall, the Beachland’s floor is paneled onion spires of old Tremont’s orthodox churches. Her generic, thin blue “I’m not good at math.” I’m really not. she means it. wood worn smooth and orange. Chandeliers offer no light, but are made sweater is worn to the point of turquoise, almost flat over her chest, and she “What do you want, then? Something light? And fruity? I don’t “You’re stupid.” to look good in the light, at least from a distance when you can’t tell what’s doesn’t wear a bra. She doesn’t really need to; no one will notice because think they serve non-alcoholic beer here.” “See? This is why I’m leaving.” fake and chipped and what’s not. Dressed up with no place to go, the Cleveland is a town for big-breasted women instead, both in fashion and in You can only be a smartass for so long before a Wes Anderson “Seriously. You trust people too much. New York is going to Beachland stays home on the weekends and listens to its music, blasting it the preference of its men. I don’t look back, but I can tell you there’s a Star of movie breaks out, so I tell her my name is Charlie. Jo suits her very well— eat you alive.” so that it can forget about everything else. Jo insists on the place because David on a slender chain tight around her long neck, and that her teeth are a short for Josephine, which suits her not at all. Although Josephine does “I’m an optimist. I do trust people. I’m hanging out with you, there’s the better chance of us seeing someone local. What we get is one nice shade of Westside white, which is to say not quite white at all (I caught match her purple eyes, the name of a long, lost Russian czarina if I ever and we just met.” drummer, one bassist, and three thirty-something guitarists playing their the beginnings of a smile when I had peeked over my shoulder). Okay, so I heard one. Coventry is where you meet if you’re on the eastside. It’s the twenties out in ridiculous Journey licks. Open Arms-ageddon re-imagines lied—I absolutely snuck a look back. Sue me. You would, too; she was cute. I’m not a chach, so I didn’t have the nerve to talk to her while she eastside Tremont before Tremont was cool, and Tommy’s is where you Steve Perry as Brian Johnson of AC/DC, and the rest of the band follows Dinner is six potato and cheese pierogies drenched in butter and was with her guy friends. She came up to the bar to get another beer, and meet if you’re in Coventry. With Tommy’s menu, you can be a vegetarian from there. But their interpretation of “Faithfully” is as straight up as it sour cream. I’m going to miss eating fat. In fact, I’m going to miss the peo- poor girl got me instead. My second beer says I don’t need to start any- and meet a burger-lover and fall in love over a shake, still served in frosted gets, soft and soaring, the synthesizer put into piano mode. ple who love fat, because they are unabashed in their love. I was never fat, thing. My third beer says she’s really so cute, though. In four beers, I’ve metal cups straight from the mixer. It’s the most unpretentious of places, She’s dancing, and it’s a moment I never expected. Like I told but I’m going to miss living like I was, giving into taste like it was a one- told her I’m a graphic designer who makes cards for American Greetings, full of people trying very hard against their better instincts and good up- you, Cleveland magic. But it’s not dancing really; she’s pantomiming the night stand. though presently I’ve just become an associate web designer at a recruit- bringing to be pretentious. There are a lot of windows that let in little light lyrics, in possibly the nerdiest and cutest way possible. I’m watching eleven Passing by her table, I don’t look this time at all on my way out. ment advertising firm in Brooklyn. Williamsburg is the new Lower East because Cleveland is gray, three hundred days of the year, for the last year-old Jo, her dad’s cherished records on a vintage turntable she’s not Scouts honor. I simply put the untouched plate of carrot cake down in Side, apparently. And my tight pants and thick black glasses will play bet- twenty years of my life. supposed to touch. What I’m watching was years in the making. front of her. ter there than they ever did in this town. Calling herself a nerd who likes to “I think it might be why I’m going to New York, because I’m an “They say that the road ain’t no place to start a family...” (She’s drink and fight, she says she’s a librarian in the Cleveland Heights Public optimist.” driving an imaginary steering wheel, then shakes her finger in motherly Library’s main branch. She loves books, her dog, Chinese food, cable TV, I really don’t know if it’s why, but I feel I’m always on the defen- scolding before pointing at her left ring finger.) 2. GREAT LAKES BREWERY running in the snow, and perhaps most telling and enlightening of all— sive with her. Straight-faced, she believes she is never wrong because ev- “Right down the line it’s been you and me...” (She draws a line Why did I pick fall to leave? Cleveland fall is the best kind, picture calen- plain old cheese pizza. Oh, and Cleveland. erything is just that easy: right or wrong, black or white, yes or no. from top to bottom in the air and points to no one in particular, and then dar fall blowing by in sunset outside the bar’s wood-paneled windows. It’s “New York, huh?” She pounds the last half of her beer, but very Cleveland or New York. touches her heart.) fall colored in a coloring book by the sweet girl who takes her time and has lady-like without gulping, never raising the glass past a ninety-degree “Everybody thinks New York is ‘real’ and ‘gritty’ and shit like I’m not going to lie—I just about lose the two days of cool I’ve the big box of crayons. Good sweaters are made for northern fall, not angle, never breaking eye contact with me. “You know you can’t spell that. But New York is totally a dream, too. It’s everything Cleveland can’t been trying to perfect with her, and a small part of my small heart wishes southern winters. Also, Great Lakes Brewery releases it’s Christmas Ale in ‘skanky’ without ‘n’ and ‘y,’ right? New York is a hooker. They got a lot of be. You can go to a concert at three in the morning. My brother saw Keifer she had pointed at me. I should wait’ll she’s done, but I can’t help myself. the fall. And the nutmeg and cinnamon mask the nine percent alcohol those, too, by the way. New York is cool, don’t get me wrong. But it’ll do Sutherland hitting on a girl in a bar on his block. Lou Reed lives in New If you saw her right then, you would understand. Pantomiming has never 02 that makes the coming Cleveland winter warmer than you think. anything for you as long as you pay out the ass. It’s expensive as hell.” York, man.” been something I’ve done well myself, but she understands enough what 02 09 09 “Yeah, you didn’t need to ask for that girl’s number,” Mike says, Her thoughts are broken like that. Yet they make some kind of “Lou Reed is an asshole,” she replies, eating the last French I’m asking. Neither of us really leads, and it’s the most formal dancing M M U folded half over the dark oak counter trying to wave down a bartender. Taoist sense, winding in their own music. We end up talking for four fry from a shared plate now surfaced in oil. “What are you looking for I’ve ever done: one hand on her hip, holding our other hands in the air at U S “I know. It’s my last weekend here. I don’t need to be starting hours until it’s past midnight. My friends are gone, and so are hers, having in New York?” shoulder height, leaving room for the Holy Ghost between us like they S

EM EM anything. New York is for starting stuff.” said hello to the one of us they didn’t know and goodbye at the same time. For five years now, I’ve given an immediate and passionate taught me in Catholic school. Though they probably never imagined me

10 11 “This isn’t yours. It doesn’t say ‘Happy Birthday Your Name’ on it.” “No. New York is for homos.” Mike is so completely Cleveland “So you’re going to come with me on my goodbye tour tomorrow?” answer to family members, friends, co-workers—to anyone who would “I know, because my name is Give-Me-That-Cake.” and one of my best friends, but he’s exactly one of the reasons I’m moving “You’re driving and paying for all the food, right? listen—proselytized it to people who didn’t even ask the question. She’s good. I can’t hold half my laugh behind my disinte- to New York. “You didn’t need to ask for her number because she’s here.” “Yeah.” “I don’t know.” Often, it’s easier to tell the truth to strangers. grating sneer. I lean over the bar, as well, my shirt on something wet. At a table I think she does it to keep me off balance and for no other rea- “Well, maybe it’s here then. Have you looked?” “Wow. I should give it to you just because your parents are hippies against the wall, she’s standing while two guys are sitting. Hands in her son—she leans in, as if to kiss me passionately, stopping inches away from As we drive over the bridge to the Westside Market, the river is and named you that.” I still can’t get a laugh from her, however. “But I won’t.” back pockets, she’s put tortoiseshell glasses on for some reason, and still my mouth and hesitating before leaning to the side and kissing me on the surfaced in oil, reflecting nothing. This city is slowly eating itself to death, They don’t take kindly to anybody holding up the line at won’t laugh even though her friends are cracking up at something. She cheek . Except she slips, and being taller than me, she lands with the full but then death by indulgence is a delicious way to go. Long lost of preten- Sokolowski’s, even for witty bantering. The server’s question of what I eventually does break into a smile, however, a smile that catches her force of both lips (and a little bit of teeth) somewhere half on my ear and sion or desire, Cleveland never runs out of French fries, and you know you wanted as my main course and the throat clearing from the back of the line around the eyes and just one corner of her mouth. Her face is incredibly half on my temple. Her right foot is on my left toes, and she’s holding on always wish there were more fries. are the best that Cleveland sarcasm can muster: loud and none too clever. I Slavic in it’s cherubic features starkly contrasted to the gracefully slim stalk tight to my left elbow, a perfect imprint of saliva on the side of my face pay for my pierogies without ever looking back. Despite the animal paint- of a neck and her thin frame. It’s as if her face is stacked out of bubbles: where lipstick might be if she wore any. ings and wooden benches, we’re still in Tremont, and you have to play it two small, tart apple cheeks and a cherry nose, all made rounder and red- “I’m just drunk,” she says. 4. BEACHLAND BALLROOM & TAVERN cool. I don’t look back, but I can tell you she has flint black hair cut short der against her pale skin when she smiles. She looks like the badass type Like most Clevelanders, she’s going to drive home. She doesn’t have many moments, so it makes those moments all the more. like a boy rebelling against private school—a bit too clumpy and a bit too that fights every single smile, too. And for no reason I can imagine, it It was the song that made her let down her guard. I wanted to go the Grog long in the bangs. I don’t look back, but she has dark blue eyes that reflect makes me smile. Shop to see whatever too-cool-for-their-shoes band was playing there, but almost purple, like they’re a curse or possibly a recessive trait indicating “You owe me a beer.” 3. TOMMY’S she insisted that we go to the Beachland Ballroom instead. More high she’s in line for succession to the throne of past Russia, still evident in the “How does that math work? Carrot cake equals beer?” Like most Clevelanders, she talks in absolutes. Like most Clevelanders, school auditorium than concert hall, the Beachland’s floor is paneled onion spires of old Tremont’s orthodox churches. Her generic, thin blue “I’m not good at math.” I’m really not. she means it. wood worn smooth and orange. Chandeliers offer no light, but are made sweater is worn to the point of turquoise, almost flat over her chest, and she “What do you want, then? Something light? And fruity? I don’t “You’re stupid.” to look good in the light, at least from a distance when you can’t tell what’s doesn’t wear a bra. She doesn’t really need to; no one will notice because think they serve non-alcoholic beer here.” “See? This is why I’m leaving.” fake and chipped and what’s not. Dressed up with no place to go, the Cleveland is a town for big-breasted women instead, both in fashion and in You can only be a smartass for so long before a Wes Anderson “Seriously. You trust people too much. New York is going to Beachland stays home on the weekends and listens to its music, blasting it the preference of its men. I don’t look back, but I can tell you there’s a Star of movie breaks out, so I tell her my name is Charlie. Jo suits her very well— eat you alive.” so that it can forget about everything else. Jo insists on the place because David on a slender chain tight around her long neck, and that her teeth are a short for Josephine, which suits her not at all. Although Josephine does “I’m an optimist. I do trust people. I’m hanging out with you, there’s the better chance of us seeing someone local. What we get is one nice shade of Westside white, which is to say not quite white at all (I caught match her purple eyes, the name of a long, lost Russian czarina if I ever and we just met.” drummer, one bassist, and three thirty-something guitarists playing their the beginnings of a smile when I had peeked over my shoulder). Okay, so I heard one. Coventry is where you meet if you’re on the eastside. It’s the twenties out in ridiculous Journey licks. Open Arms-ageddon re-imagines lied—I absolutely snuck a look back. Sue me. You would, too; she was cute. I’m not a chach, so I didn’t have the nerve to talk to her while she eastside Tremont before Tremont was cool, and Tommy’s is where you Steve Perry as Brian Johnson of AC/DC, and the rest of the band follows Dinner is six potato and cheese pierogies drenched in butter and was with her guy friends. She came up to the bar to get another beer, and meet if you’re in Coventry. With Tommy’s menu, you can be a vegetarian from there. But their interpretation of “Faithfully” is as straight up as it sour cream. I’m going to miss eating fat. In fact, I’m going to miss the peo- poor girl got me instead. My second beer says I don’t need to start any- and meet a burger-lover and fall in love over a shake, still served in frosted gets, soft and soaring, the synthesizer put into piano mode. ple who love fat, because they are unabashed in their love. I was never fat, thing. My third beer says she’s really so cute, though. In four beers, I’ve metal cups straight from the mixer. It’s the most unpretentious of places, She’s dancing, and it’s a moment I never expected. Like I told but I’m going to miss living like I was, giving into taste like it was a one- told her I’m a graphic designer who makes cards for American Greetings, full of people trying very hard against their better instincts and good up- you, Cleveland magic. But it’s not dancing really; she’s pantomiming the night stand. though presently I’ve just become an associate web designer at a recruit- bringing to be pretentious. There are a lot of windows that let in little light lyrics, in possibly the nerdiest and cutest way possible. I’m watching eleven Passing by her table, I don’t look this time at all on my way out. ment advertising firm in Brooklyn. Williamsburg is the new Lower East because Cleveland is gray, three hundred days of the year, for the last year-old Jo, her dad’s cherished records on a vintage turntable she’s not Scouts honor. I simply put the untouched plate of carrot cake down in Side, apparently. And my tight pants and thick black glasses will play bet- twenty years of my life. supposed to touch. What I’m watching was years in the making. front of her. ter there than they ever did in this town. Calling herself a nerd who likes to “I think it might be why I’m going to New York, because I’m an “They say that the road ain’t no place to start a family...” (She’s drink and fight, she says she’s a librarian in the Cleveland Heights Public optimist.” driving an imaginary steering wheel, then shakes her finger in motherly Library’s main branch. She loves books, her dog, Chinese food, cable TV, I really don’t know if it’s why, but I feel I’m always on the defen- scolding before pointing at her left ring finger.) 2. GREAT LAKES BREWERY running in the snow, and perhaps most telling and enlightening of all— sive with her. Straight-faced, she believes she is never wrong because ev- “Right down the line it’s been you and me...” (She draws a line Why did I pick fall to leave? Cleveland fall is the best kind, picture calen- plain old cheese pizza. Oh, and Cleveland. erything is just that easy: right or wrong, black or white, yes or no. from top to bottom in the air and points to no one in particular, and then dar fall blowing by in sunset outside the bar’s wood-paneled windows. It’s “New York, huh?” She pounds the last half of her beer, but very Cleveland or New York. touches her heart.) fall colored in a coloring book by the sweet girl who takes her time and has lady-like without gulping, never raising the glass past a ninety-degree “Everybody thinks New York is ‘real’ and ‘gritty’ and shit like I’m not going to lie—I just about lose the two days of cool I’ve the big box of crayons. Good sweaters are made for northern fall, not angle, never breaking eye contact with me. “You know you can’t spell that. But New York is totally a dream, too. It’s everything Cleveland can’t been trying to perfect with her, and a small part of my small heart wishes southern winters. Also, Great Lakes Brewery releases it’s Christmas Ale in ‘skanky’ without ‘n’ and ‘y,’ right? New York is a hooker. They got a lot of be. You can go to a concert at three in the morning. My brother saw Keifer she had pointed at me. I should wait’ll she’s done, but I can’t help myself. the fall. And the nutmeg and cinnamon mask the nine percent alcohol those, too, by the way. New York is cool, don’t get me wrong. But it’ll do Sutherland hitting on a girl in a bar on his block. Lou Reed lives in New If you saw her right then, you would understand. Pantomiming has never 02 that makes the coming Cleveland winter warmer than you think. anything for you as long as you pay out the ass. It’s expensive as hell.” York, man.” been something I’ve done well myself, but she understands enough what 02 09 09 “Yeah, you didn’t need to ask for that girl’s number,” Mike says, Her thoughts are broken like that. Yet they make some kind of “Lou Reed is an asshole,” she replies, eating the last French I’m asking. Neither of us really leads, and it’s the most formal dancing M M U folded half over the dark oak counter trying to wave down a bartender. Taoist sense, winding in their own music. We end up talking for four fry from a shared plate now surfaced in oil. “What are you looking for I’ve ever done: one hand on her hip, holding our other hands in the air at U S “I know. It’s my last weekend here. I don’t need to be starting hours until it’s past midnight. My friends are gone, and so are hers, having in New York?” shoulder height, leaving room for the Holy Ghost between us like they S

10 11 applying it to a Jewish Girl. She’s giving me the prom I never went to, and from a side of ribeye, and they cut it with a band saw). You tip everybody. walk in silence over wet, dead leaves, going over the same old streets under my windshield wiper, tucked in a Ziploc bag . The plastic case is she doesn’t even know it. Her defenses down, she won’t look me in the Well, at least Uncle Pete does for the both of us. between too many vacant buildings and too much exposed steel, and I turning opaque, scratched so that you can tell it was probably a cover she eyes, but I can see that she’s fighting her smile really hard this time. I can This is Cleveland. realize Cleveland is no movie. Instead, it’s repetitive in its reality, and I’ve took from another CD. I’m guessing Neil Young (although if I really think see even in the darkness of the crowd. “Jojo must like you, kid. I think I’ve met one of her boyfriends always been a dreamer—that’s just me. I can’t change and neither can a about it, the best bet would be Guns ‘N’ Roses knowing her). The picture Sometimes in the dark, there’s a song. Sometimes, you’ve lis- once. And she ain’t never asked me to take anybody here before. Lucky for city. For everything this weekend has been, I was already gone; I had left under the plastic is Jo; it looks like it was taken by lamplight beside her bed, tened to the same song for so long, you forget how good it is. you, she’s my favorite.” long ago. her features casting sharp shadows across her tired, inscrutable face. The “I’m not really a boyfriend.” If she comes up, I tell her I can give her a sweat shirt. Luckily for resolution is grainy and the colors faded almost black and white, probably Smiling through stubbled jowls, he doesn’t bat an eye at my me, I had packed my clothes that afternoon, and I remember which trash the product of a cheap computer printer. Written in Sharpie, the title is 5. THE SHVITZ confession. bag has all of my winter attire As I turn around with the faded Cleveland simple: “When You Can’t Sleep.” Inside there is no track listing, just a note. As her going away present, she leaves me (she has to work on Sundays) and “She says you’re moving to New York.” Browns hoodie, she’s already begun to take off her wet sweater, her face I couldn’t sleep. So I’ve been up all night thinking of a way to say hands me over to her Uncle Pete. Peter Dubinsky is connected. The Cleve- “Yeah.” cynical as ever. She has on a bra this time—thin cotton, thin straps, dark goodbye. This is my going away present, dummy. Or wait till you get to NY to land mob has always been a buffet, a mess that somehow comes together “Why?” blue. I’ve always loved the color blue on a girl. The Star of David is not open it, and it can be your hello present. on your plate—Italian, Greek, Russian, Jewish, and Irish factions all at one “I don’t know. It’s like I told Jo: I just can’t find what I’m looking there this time. A dark birthmark shaped like Africa between her small Jo time or another working with one another to work against each other, and for here.” breasts makes me realize how pale her skin really is, and except for the We use the word love too easily. Cleveland? NYC? You love a somehow prospering and crashing all at the same time. Both Russian and “Fair enough.” He throws cold water on heated stones and says birthmark, how profoundly rich even in the poor light. person, not a city. We use the word love too easily. You don’t love in a Jewish, Uncle Pete is everybody’s uncle, big and soft, both in his appear- above the hissing, “I lived in Red Hook for five years when I was young, That’s when I accidentally fart, lost in our moment. Horrified, weekend. You don’t love in a kiss. At least I don’t. Somewhere over the ance and the way he talks, and he knows everyone everywhere. In fact, and everybody there wanted to get out of Brooklyn.” that moment seems to last forever. As well as the smell. She farts and our Pennsylvania border, in the middle of small mountains, in low clouds be- everyone calls him Uncle Pete. In my twenty years in Cleveland, I’ve never Uncle Pete rocks. He proves to me that you can party at a funeral, laughs echo in the emptiness of my apartment. God, I like this girl. With tween tall trees, for the third time I finish her mix CD. There are songs by even heard of the place he’s taking me to. that in the dying of neighborhoods, tradition and customs keep you warm no awkwardness, she takes the offered sweatshirt and slips it on, drying her the Strokes about last night; there are songs by the Beatles about the sun On the way there, Uncle Pete tells me that buying the giant and are as much defiance as they are solace. Filling my plastic cup with hair with her hands in long pulls as she walks out of the room towards the coming even though outside, it’s setting, putting stars in the sky, in my Lexus SUV was one of the hardest and saddest things he’s ever done. And more bad wine that gets you drunk quickly, he teaches me that in an old for- front door. eyes, and in New York City somewhere in front of me. It’s the New York of according to Jo, if family whispers and bedtime stories between cousins gotten building, there are complex men doing simple, wonderful things. “Did you have a good weekend?” she asks before getting in my dreams, a castle of towers above the streets. It’s a Broadway moon on were to be believed, he’s done many hard and sad things to many people in the car. opening night over Manhattan, stars too large and too bright hung on his life. Constant breakdowns forced him to finally give up his beloved “Yeah. I did.” There are many things I love about Cleveland. wires against a royal blue sky, and couples in scarves tied European style Chevy Silverado he tells me as the neighborhoods we drive through keep 2473 W. 11TH ST. But this weekend has shown me that they are things I can look back on, not walking somewhere important in Chelsea. But it’s also the Brooklyn I getting more crowded—more houses closer together, more people hud- Like the rest of Cleveland, Prosperity isn’t really prospering at all. It isn’t things I can look forward to. After all, I’m an optimist. “Thank you.” won’t sleep in until the end of the Beastie Boys, the NYC of no parking and dled outside with seemingly nothing to do. Then we’re on Kinsman, a my favorite bar in the world either, but it’s only a block from my apart- “Since you’re leaving for good. I guess I’ll keep this shirt. So dark alleys. street and neighborhood that’s on the wrong side of a wrong town. ment, and on my last night, I want to stay in Tremont, close to home be- thank you.” Crossing the Manhattan Bridge into Fort Greene, her CD ends “I got nothing against the Japs, you know. I just wanna buy cause I’m not done packing, and I have a lot of goodbyes left to give. She Sometimes the best love songs are the ones that say goodbye. for the seventh time, and there’s no mistaking it—“love” is not said once American. But shit, I’m starting to love this Jap car. It drives real nice.” He shows up after almost everyone has left, even though I asked her to come anywhere over fours states and twenty-one songs. We use the word love gives me a smile that’s Jack and Coke—three parts sweet and one part poi- for dinner. It’s easy to forget that we only met a couple of days ago. My best too easily. So we’ll call it something else instead for now. Sitting sideways son—and adds, “Don’t tell anybody I said that.” friends Mike and Mike are the last to go, winking back drunkenly like they I-80 EAST with her shoes on the seat and her arms hugging her knees, I let her sleep, All the guards at the second gate carry shotguns. I would never have palsies as they head out the door beneath October rain. She’s not there in the morning even though she told me she has Mondays while I drive the last few feet. believe this place existed if I wasn’t seeing it. They are large, old, black men “Your Uncle Pete’s a good guy. Good advice. He was your real off. Not that I expected her to be, but I still look, hoping. People are work- paid to keep other black men in the surrounding neighborhood out of the going away present, wasn’t he? Not the Shvitz.” ing, and I told everybody, even my parents, that it wasn’t a big deal, that private club. Aged and tired like most of the steel mills and factories of the “Uncle Pete wasn’t a present. He’s not gay, you homo. He’s got a Sunday night was the party and the drinking and the crying and the good- city, the building we’re ushered into looks ready to fall, which is how they wife and at least two girlfriends.” Jo is Jo till the end. bying. Not to mention I’d be home in a few weeks for Thanksgiving any- want it, I think. Old white men love their secrets and their clubs and being Her car is actually parked closer to my place than the bar way. So I head to my car with the first load for my trunk and see the CD old white men so much it might seem gay until it goes three-hundred and because there’s only street parking in Tremont. Neither of us has an sixty degrees to the point of ridiculous manliness again. umbrella, yet we still walk back slowly in the rain. Nothing much at all is Inside, you go up to the locker room on the fourth floor and said, the end of my Cleveland long song fading away on unmemorable

change into a towel, surrounded by old men of Eastern European descent notes with no lyrics to remember. Considering the girl beside me and the FICTION JUDGE Chris Barzak with no towels who don’t give a damn about strangers and bare asses. places I’ve been the last two days, I thought there’d be so much more This story was a real joy to read. It’s full of lyricism, like a good pop song, and the dialogue crackles. Its 02 02 We sweat; we drink (you bring your own, and Uncle Pete produces a jug of than this. 09 09 homemade wine); we smoke cigars and play cards with characters who Maybe the leaves will return to green, and fall up, back on the movements from section to section, from place to place, throughout the environs of Cleveland and the city’s M M well-loved landmarks, made the story come alive. It was something of a disappointment to reach New York look more ramshackle than the building we’re in, all stone ledges and bro- trees. Maybe the rain will be drops of paint, coloring the city. Maybe she U U at the end of the story, after having fallen in love with this author’s nostalgic, lovingly-detailed portrait of S S ken facades. We get massages and then steam off ten pounds that we easily will ask me to stay, and the sun and the moon will both shine at the same

Cleveland. EM

EM put back on with the thirty ounce steaks we eat (you pick your thickness of time. Maybe, like in a movie, I will ask her to marry me tonight. But we

12 13 applying it to a Jewish Girl. She’s giving me the prom I never went to, and from a side of ribeye, and they cut it with a band saw). You tip everybody. walk in silence over wet, dead leaves, going over the same old streets under my windshield wiper, tucked in a Ziploc bag . The plastic case is she doesn’t even know it. Her defenses down, she won’t look me in the Well, at least Uncle Pete does for the both of us. between too many vacant buildings and too much exposed steel, and I turning opaque, scratched so that you can tell it was probably a cover she eyes, but I can see that she’s fighting her smile really hard this time. I can This is Cleveland. realize Cleveland is no movie. Instead, it’s repetitive in its reality, and I’ve took from another CD. I’m guessing Neil Young (although if I really think see even in the darkness of the crowd. “Jojo must like you, kid. I think I’ve met one of her boyfriends always been a dreamer—that’s just me. I can’t change and neither can a about it, the best bet would be Guns ‘N’ Roses knowing her). The picture Sometimes in the dark, there’s a song. Sometimes, you’ve lis- once. And she ain’t never asked me to take anybody here before. Lucky for city. For everything this weekend has been, I was already gone; I had left under the plastic is Jo; it looks like it was taken by lamplight beside her bed, tened to the same song for so long, you forget how good it is. you, she’s my favorite.” long ago. her features casting sharp shadows across her tired, inscrutable face. The “I’m not really a boyfriend.” If she comes up, I tell her I can give her a sweat shirt. Luckily for resolution is grainy and the colors faded almost black and white, probably Smiling through stubbled jowls, he doesn’t bat an eye at my me, I had packed my clothes that afternoon, and I remember which trash the product of a cheap computer printer. Written in Sharpie, the title is 5. THE SHVITZ confession. bag has all of my winter attire As I turn around with the faded Cleveland simple: “When You Can’t Sleep.” Inside there is no track listing, just a note. As her going away present, she leaves me (she has to work on Sundays) and “She says you’re moving to New York.” Browns hoodie, she’s already begun to take off her wet sweater, her face I couldn’t sleep. So I’ve been up all night thinking of a way to say hands me over to her Uncle Pete. Peter Dubinsky is connected. The Cleve- “Yeah.” cynical as ever. She has on a bra this time—thin cotton, thin straps, dark goodbye. This is my going away present, dummy. Or wait till you get to NY to land mob has always been a buffet, a mess that somehow comes together “Why?” blue. I’ve always loved the color blue on a girl. The Star of David is not open it, and it can be your hello present. on your plate—Italian, Greek, Russian, Jewish, and Irish factions all at one “I don’t know. It’s like I told Jo: I just can’t find what I’m looking there this time. A dark birthmark shaped like Africa between her small Jo time or another working with one another to work against each other, and for here.” breasts makes me realize how pale her skin really is, and except for the We use the word love too easily. Cleveland? NYC? You love a somehow prospering and crashing all at the same time. Both Russian and “Fair enough.” He throws cold water on heated stones and says birthmark, how profoundly rich even in the poor light. person, not a city. We use the word love too easily. You don’t love in a Jewish, Uncle Pete is everybody’s uncle, big and soft, both in his appear- above the hissing, “I lived in Red Hook for five years when I was young, That’s when I accidentally fart, lost in our moment. Horrified, weekend. You don’t love in a kiss. At least I don’t. Somewhere over the ance and the way he talks, and he knows everyone everywhere. In fact, and everybody there wanted to get out of Brooklyn.” that moment seems to last forever. As well as the smell. She farts and our Pennsylvania border, in the middle of small mountains, in low clouds be- everyone calls him Uncle Pete. In my twenty years in Cleveland, I’ve never Uncle Pete rocks. He proves to me that you can party at a funeral, laughs echo in the emptiness of my apartment. God, I like this girl. With tween tall trees, for the third time I finish her mix CD. There are songs by even heard of the place he’s taking me to. that in the dying of neighborhoods, tradition and customs keep you warm no awkwardness, she takes the offered sweatshirt and slips it on, drying her the Strokes about last night; there are songs by the Beatles about the sun On the way there, Uncle Pete tells me that buying the giant and are as much defiance as they are solace. Filling my plastic cup with hair with her hands in long pulls as she walks out of the room towards the coming even though outside, it’s setting, putting stars in the sky, in my Lexus SUV was one of the hardest and saddest things he’s ever done. And more bad wine that gets you drunk quickly, he teaches me that in an old for- front door. eyes, and in New York City somewhere in front of me. It’s the New York of according to Jo, if family whispers and bedtime stories between cousins gotten building, there are complex men doing simple, wonderful things. “Did you have a good weekend?” she asks before getting in my dreams, a castle of towers above the streets. It’s a Broadway moon on were to be believed, he’s done many hard and sad things to many people in the car. opening night over Manhattan, stars too large and too bright hung on his life. Constant breakdowns forced him to finally give up his beloved “Yeah. I did.” There are many things I love about Cleveland. wires against a royal blue sky, and couples in scarves tied European style Chevy Silverado he tells me as the neighborhoods we drive through keep 2473 W. 11TH ST. But this weekend has shown me that they are things I can look back on, not walking somewhere important in Chelsea. But it’s also the Brooklyn I getting more crowded—more houses closer together, more people hud- Like the rest of Cleveland, Prosperity isn’t really prospering at all. It isn’t things I can look forward to. After all, I’m an optimist. “Thank you.” won’t sleep in until the end of the Beastie Boys, the NYC of no parking and dled outside with seemingly nothing to do. Then we’re on Kinsman, a my favorite bar in the world either, but it’s only a block from my apart- “Since you’re leaving for good. I guess I’ll keep this shirt. So dark alleys. street and neighborhood that’s on the wrong side of a wrong town. ment, and on my last night, I want to stay in Tremont, close to home be- thank you.” Crossing the Manhattan Bridge into Fort Greene, her CD ends “I got nothing against the Japs, you know. I just wanna buy cause I’m not done packing, and I have a lot of goodbyes left to give. She Sometimes the best love songs are the ones that say goodbye. for the seventh time, and there’s no mistaking it—“love” is not said once American. But shit, I’m starting to love this Jap car. It drives real nice.” He shows up after almost everyone has left, even though I asked her to come anywhere over fours states and twenty-one songs. We use the word love gives me a smile that’s Jack and Coke—three parts sweet and one part poi- for dinner. It’s easy to forget that we only met a couple of days ago. My best too easily. So we’ll call it something else instead for now. Sitting sideways son—and adds, “Don’t tell anybody I said that.” friends Mike and Mike are the last to go, winking back drunkenly like they I-80 EAST with her shoes on the seat and her arms hugging her knees, I let her sleep, All the guards at the second gate carry shotguns. I would never have palsies as they head out the door beneath October rain. She’s not there in the morning even though she told me she has Mondays while I drive the last few feet. believe this place existed if I wasn’t seeing it. They are large, old, black men “Your Uncle Pete’s a good guy. Good advice. He was your real off. Not that I expected her to be, but I still look, hoping. People are work- paid to keep other black men in the surrounding neighborhood out of the going away present, wasn’t he? Not the Shvitz.” ing, and I told everybody, even my parents, that it wasn’t a big deal, that private club. Aged and tired like most of the steel mills and factories of the “Uncle Pete wasn’t a present. He’s not gay, you homo. He’s got a Sunday night was the party and the drinking and the crying and the good- city, the building we’re ushered into looks ready to fall, which is how they wife and at least two girlfriends.” Jo is Jo till the end. bying. Not to mention I’d be home in a few weeks for Thanksgiving any- want it, I think. Old white men love their secrets and their clubs and being Her car is actually parked closer to my place than the bar way. So I head to my car with the first load for my trunk and see the CD old white men so much it might seem gay until it goes three-hundred and because there’s only street parking in Tremont. Neither of us has an sixty degrees to the point of ridiculous manliness again. umbrella, yet we still walk back slowly in the rain. Nothing much at all is Inside, you go up to the locker room on the fourth floor and said, the end of my Cleveland long song fading away on unmemorable

Cleveland. EM

EM put back on with the thirty ounce steaks we eat (you pick your thickness of time. Maybe, like in a movie, I will ask her to marry me tonight. But we

12 13 { p o e t r y } FIRST PLACE A Woman Bathes in the Ohio River on Sunday Afternoon

B Y THOMAS DUKES

I put up my hair. The water raises me I lower my colors: above the nonsense of suicide. a white blouse of surrender, I bob, a post-menopausal cork. black pants of mourning. Some boys on the bank snicker at my nipples, My daughter, the eldest, a woman says made this body John, call the cops, it’s indecent. of full breasts, Bury your child, lady, global belly, if you want indecent. thighs that can crush cars. My stretch marks stretch The summer she turned thirteen, from pregnancy I paid my daughter twenty dollars to her funeral last month. to teach me to swim: now you won’t drown, Mom. Now, my husband passes Today, the sun’s rod and staff cars on midnight runs comfort me. Perhaps that will not kill him. I shall take up knitting, My son in Seattle drinks cool or the ponies, or song styling coffee but calls home every day in better lounges. to scare off bad things. My Paris son cried so hard Until then, I am art: his girlfriend offered to marry him. Still Life with Floating Mother. I know how to get to shore. “I WRITE FOR SEVERAL REASONS. YEARS AGO, I CAME ACROSS A STATEMENT BY ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH THAT GOES, ROUGHLY “WRITING IS MORE THAN LIVING . . . . IT IS BEING CONSCIOUS OF LIVING.” MY EDUCATION, READING, AND WRITING ARE THE KEYS TO THAT CONSCIOUSNESS. WRITING ENABLES ME TO SHARE MY PARTICULAR TAKE ON THINGS WITH OTHERS WHO LOVE LANGUAGE AS MUCH AS I DO. I WRITE FOR THE SHEER JOY OF WRITING, FOR THE PLEASURE I GET WHEN A PHRASE, POEM, OR EVEN BOOK COME OUT JUST THE WAY I WANT THEM TO, WHEN I CAN POETRY JUDGE Honor Moore SAY, “I CAN’T MAKE THAT ANY BETTER.” FINALLY, I WRITE AS A FORM OF WORSHIP: WRITING FOR ME IS A WAY HONORING GOD (THAT IS, WHEN MY WRITING IS ANY GOOD). LIKE THE CHILD IN AMAHL AND THE NIGHT VISITORS 02 02 “A Woman Bathes in the Ohio River” by Thomas Dukes WHO OFFERS HIS CANE BECAUSE THAT IS ALL HE HAS, THIS IS ALMOST ALL I HAVE TO OFFER, BUT HERE IT IS. 09 09 M M A combination of wit and depth of feeling, and surprises like “Bury your child, lady, / if you want THOMAS DUKES IS PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF AKRON HE IS THE AUTHOR OF A POETRY U U indecent” give this poem a quality of originality that make its speaker take up residence in a COLLECTION, BAPTIST CONFIDENTIAL, AND A FORTHCOMING MEMOIR, SUGAR BLOOD JESUS: A MEMOIR OF FAITH, S S reader’s imagination. MADNESS, AND CREAM GRAVY. HE LIVES WITH HIS SPOUSE, SIX CATS, AND A POODLE (PRINCESS DIANA) IN A EM

EM TOWNSHIP NEAR AKRON, OHIO. 16 17 { p o e t r y } FIRST PLACE A Woman Bathes in the Ohio River on Sunday Afternoon

B Y THOMAS DUKES

EM TOWNSHIP NEAR AKRON, OHIO. 16 17 sheets, with glittery buttons and hoops and tinsel fringe that shim- I will inherit my mother’s sewing machine and cabinet when she mied right above the knees of her and her friends. dies. At sixty, she began to label and list those objects that will come When we lived overseas, my father hired a Spanish car- to me, those that will go to my brother. I will have two cabinets penter to build for my mother a sewing cabinet of magnificent pro- then, my grandmother’s and my mother’s. I will never use either. portions, like a ring box an emperor might give his betrothed. It What I have not inherited is my mother’s ability to sew. {non-fiction} stood seven feet high and five feet wide when its elaborate doors More than that, I have not come into the patience she once had for FIRST PLACE were closed. When opened, they revealed built-in shelves, storage her craft. I’ve made some attempts. During my first (and failed) nooks, a bobbin rack, a fluorescent light and a counter for the sew- marriage, I sewed simple curtains and skirts with a second-hand Singer Sewing Machine No. 66 ing machine to rest upon. My mother’s triumphant creation at that machine my mother-in-law gave me. But I sewed them on the fly, machine: a flamenco dress for me made without a pattern— end- cheating, it seemed to me, because I would use “stitch witchery,” a (With Attachments, For Family Use) less ruffles of taffeta and cotton, black punctuated with buttercups. hemming tape that sticks to fabric when ironed. I couldn’t sit still The cabinet now hovers, closed, in the smallest bedroom of my long enough to hem by hand. I would avoid button holes or zip- B Y KELLY BANCROFT parents’ house, the room from which they forward to me mass pers or waist bands. I never used a pattern, not because I could emails about the war or salvation. Its shelves overflow with neatly succeed without one, as my mother could, but because I couldn’t folded fabric my mother has purchased over the years and rem- read them. Just as I can’t read maps. Or instructions. Or recipes. nants from outfits she made for me as a girl. One printed swatch My eyes don’t light on the page well or for long enough. I misread shows animals in the impossible shapes of the alphabet—an ele- signs, misconstrue meaning, see the number five as the letter “F.” If My grandmother’s sewing machine rests under a sheet in the up- chine. She was really the only one who cared much for homemak- phant making an “E” with its legs and trunk, a giraffe bending into I had grown up in the days of diagnosing children, I’m sure I would stairs hallway. It is the treadle kind where the band wheel and bob- ing. She kept the cleanest and prettiest house (her youngest sister, an “L”. Neither of my parents seem to notice or mind the unused have been labeled. But it has always seemed like more than that to bin winder and belt guide groan to life only when you pump its Marilyn, threw out dishes if they sat too long in the sink). She was cabinet, though it fills over half of the room. When my father teases me. I somehow have the wrong temperament for home-making, wide, iron pedal. Permanently fixed in its oak cabinet, the machine the best cook (Aunt Betty, the middle child, found even garlic salt my mother that it’s big enough to bury them both in, she says he the wrong hands and heart. Indeed, my grandmother’s machine rises stubbornly from it. It is black, anvil-heavy, always cold, with too exotic). She had the greenest thumb (Edna, the eldest, put out planned it that way all along. lies under a sheet to protect it from my latest decorating project. hand-painted gilt swirls along the arm and throat and face plate, as cigarettes in her withered spider plant). And she attained the high- My mother stopped using her machine around the time I started to paint the upstairs hallway in April but now, in the last if to make delicate a most practical and indelicate machine. I never est domestic goal any girl from Mineral Ridge, Ohio, might dream my grandmother went into the nursing home. I would later rec- week of October, it remains half-done. saw my Grandmother Jones sit at the Singer, but I easily imagine to reach: She landed the best husband (Betty’s was a bigot, Edna’s a ognize this period as when the depression my mother had battled Though I am more content than not, though I laugh more her there, neck bent, slippered feet pumping as she guides a hem drunk, Marilyn’s a philanderer). most of her life began to overwhelm her, as it had my grandmother. than lament, though my faulty transmitters negotiate most of my over the feed dog. Her arms jiggle in the cheap, sleeveless house- As a teenager, my mother learned to sew practical pieces Her neck hurts too much, she said. The close work bothers her eyes. days well enough, I do sometimes dwell in the future. I have no dress she loved so well that she insisted her daughters bury her in it. such as curtains and pillow cases on the treadle machine. She oc- There’s no one to sew for any more since I am all grown-up. Pat- nieces or nephews, no children of my own. My step-sons—one When my grandmother became too ill and too volatile casionally indulged in sewing personal items, mostly plain dresses terns are so expensive, you might as well just buy the damn dress. lives with me and my second husband, mostly cooped-up in his for her daughters to care for, she had to surrender her slim sav- with simple lines. The attachments that came with the machine, for I have inherited my mother’s graceful but poorly con- bedroom, the other lives with his mother—seem far away, unread- ings—along with any proceeds from the sale of her tiny, cluttered plaiting and gathering and ruffling and embroidering, my grand- structed neck. It stiffens easily, sticks like a rain-warped door. I have able. I am at the age now that my mother was when she closed her house and its contents—to Shepherd of the Valley nursing home mother had no use for and my mother found too unwieldy to use inherited, too, my mother’s love of texture and fabric. I collect un- own cabinet. I try to picture what will happen to my grandmother’s so she could become a resident there. My mother nabbed the ma- on the heavy machine. When she got her own electric Singer (and usual vintage prints that catch my eye, like handkerchiefs featuring machine when I die, who will unfold my Lindbergh fabric, what chine before the auctioneer came to peddle the old woman’s things: her own daughter), she made up for lost time. She sewed for us drink recipes or bark-cloth cowboys riding the range of the liv- will become of that second cabinet, beautiful and useless, that will the collection of rooster knick-knacks, her blonde dresser set, my matching mother-daughter Easter outfits of eyelet with fuscia rick- ing room curtain. My favorite find: a few stained yards depicting eventually come to me. grandfather’s spittoon, my uncle’s defunct pistols, the new stove, rack and smocking at the sleeves. She made for herself a lavender Charles Lindbergh’s Trans-Atlantic flight, discovered in the bot- the print of Jesus with his hemorrhaging heart. Of the four Jones evening gown that gathered and slid off the shoulders just-so. For a tom of a five dollar box that I won—the sole bidder—at an auction. girls, my mother, Verna, was the only one who wanted the ma- Christmas party once, she created four snowmen costumes out of

KELLY BANCROFT LIVES IN YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO, WHERE SHE COORDINATES AN ARTS EDUCATION PROGRAM FOR K-12 STUDENTS. SHE HAS TAUGHT STUDENTS OF ALL AGES, INCLUDING BOYS AND GIRLS RESIDING IN THE MAHONING COUNTY JUVENILE JUSTICE DETENTION CENTER, WHERE THEY PRODUCED HANDMADE BOOKS 02 02 NON-FICTION JUDGE David Giffels 09 09 OF WRITING AND IMAGES IN HER CLASSES. SHE HAS RECEIVED AN OHIO ARTS COUNCIL INDIVIDUAL ARTIST AWARD AND TWO WRITING RESIDENCIES AT RAGDALE. HER POETRY, FICTION, AND ESSAYS HAVE APPEARED M M Vivid writing, with easy control over voice and pacing and deft detail. The insight and sentiment IN XCONNECT, CORTLAND REVIEW, LITERAL LATTE, SALT WATER REVIEW, WHISKEY ISLAND, AND JMW, AMONG U U OTHERS. SHE IS CURRENTLY PURSUING HER MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING THROUGH THE NORTHEAST OHIO are apt and understated. The writer’s personality is generous, vulnerable and therefore likeable. S S

MASTERS OF FINE ARTS PROGRAM. SHE SINGS FOR THE FOLK BAND “BRADY’S LEAP” AND IS MARRIED WITH EM

EM TWO STEP-SONS AND TWO CATS. 18 19 sheets, with glittery buttons and hoops and tinsel fringe that shim- I will inherit my mother’s sewing machine and cabinet when she mied right above the knees of her and her friends. dies. At sixty, she began to label and list those objects that will come When we lived overseas, my father hired a Spanish car- to me, those that will go to my brother. I will have two cabinets penter to build for my mother a sewing cabinet of magnificent pro- then, my grandmother’s and my mother’s. I will never use either. portions, like a ring box an emperor might give his betrothed. It What I have not inherited is my mother’s ability to sew. {non-fiction} stood seven feet high and five feet wide when its elaborate doors More than that, I have not come into the patience she once had for FIRST PLACE were closed. When opened, they revealed built-in shelves, storage her craft. I’ve made some attempts. During my first (and failed) nooks, a bobbin rack, a fluorescent light and a counter for the sew- marriage, I sewed simple curtains and skirts with a second-hand Singer Sewing Machine No. 66 ing machine to rest upon. My mother’s triumphant creation at that machine my mother-in-law gave me. But I sewed them on the fly, machine: a flamenco dress for me made without a pattern— end- cheating, it seemed to me, because I would use “stitch witchery,” a (With Attachments, For Family Use) less ruffles of taffeta and cotton, black punctuated with buttercups. hemming tape that sticks to fabric when ironed. I couldn’t sit still The cabinet now hovers, closed, in the smallest bedroom of my long enough to hem by hand. I would avoid button holes or zip- B Y KELLY BANCROFT parents’ house, the room from which they forward to me mass pers or waist bands. I never used a pattern, not because I could emails about the war or salvation. Its shelves overflow with neatly succeed without one, as my mother could, but because I couldn’t folded fabric my mother has purchased over the years and rem- read them. Just as I can’t read maps. Or instructions. Or recipes. nants from outfits she made for me as a girl. One printed swatch My eyes don’t light on the page well or for long enough. I misread shows animals in the impossible shapes of the alphabet—an ele- signs, misconstrue meaning, see the number five as the letter “F.” If My grandmother’s sewing machine rests under a sheet in the up- chine. She was really the only one who cared much for homemak- phant making an “E” with its legs and trunk, a giraffe bending into I had grown up in the days of diagnosing children, I’m sure I would stairs hallway. It is the treadle kind where the band wheel and bob- ing. She kept the cleanest and prettiest house (her youngest sister, an “L”. Neither of my parents seem to notice or mind the unused have been labeled. But it has always seemed like more than that to bin winder and belt guide groan to life only when you pump its Marilyn, threw out dishes if they sat too long in the sink). She was cabinet, though it fills over half of the room. When my father teases me. I somehow have the wrong temperament for home-making, wide, iron pedal. Permanently fixed in its oak cabinet, the machine the best cook (Aunt Betty, the middle child, found even garlic salt my mother that it’s big enough to bury them both in, she says he the wrong hands and heart. Indeed, my grandmother’s machine rises stubbornly from it. It is black, anvil-heavy, always cold, with too exotic). She had the greenest thumb (Edna, the eldest, put out planned it that way all along. lies under a sheet to protect it from my latest decorating project. hand-painted gilt swirls along the arm and throat and face plate, as cigarettes in her withered spider plant). And she attained the high- My mother stopped using her machine around the time I started to paint the upstairs hallway in April but now, in the last if to make delicate a most practical and indelicate machine. I never est domestic goal any girl from Mineral Ridge, Ohio, might dream my grandmother went into the nursing home. I would later rec- week of October, it remains half-done. saw my Grandmother Jones sit at the Singer, but I easily imagine to reach: She landed the best husband (Betty’s was a bigot, Edna’s a ognize this period as when the depression my mother had battled Though I am more content than not, though I laugh more her there, neck bent, slippered feet pumping as she guides a hem drunk, Marilyn’s a philanderer). most of her life began to overwhelm her, as it had my grandmother. than lament, though my faulty transmitters negotiate most of my over the feed dog. Her arms jiggle in the cheap, sleeveless house- As a teenager, my mother learned to sew practical pieces Her neck hurts too much, she said. The close work bothers her eyes. days well enough, I do sometimes dwell in the future. I have no dress she loved so well that she insisted her daughters bury her in it. such as curtains and pillow cases on the treadle machine. She oc- There’s no one to sew for any more since I am all grown-up. Pat- nieces or nephews, no children of my own. My step-sons—one When my grandmother became too ill and too volatile casionally indulged in sewing personal items, mostly plain dresses terns are so expensive, you might as well just buy the damn dress. lives with me and my second husband, mostly cooped-up in his for her daughters to care for, she had to surrender her slim sav- with simple lines. The attachments that came with the machine, for I have inherited my mother’s graceful but poorly con- bedroom, the other lives with his mother—seem far away, unread- ings—along with any proceeds from the sale of her tiny, cluttered plaiting and gathering and ruffling and embroidering, my grand- structed neck. It stiffens easily, sticks like a rain-warped door. I have able. I am at the age now that my mother was when she closed her house and its contents—to Shepherd of the Valley nursing home mother had no use for and my mother found too unwieldy to use inherited, too, my mother’s love of texture and fabric. I collect un- own cabinet. I try to picture what will happen to my grandmother’s so she could become a resident there. My mother nabbed the ma- on the heavy machine. When she got her own electric Singer (and usual vintage prints that catch my eye, like handkerchiefs featuring machine when I die, who will unfold my Lindbergh fabric, what chine before the auctioneer came to peddle the old woman’s things: her own daughter), she made up for lost time. She sewed for us drink recipes or bark-cloth cowboys riding the range of the liv- will become of that second cabinet, beautiful and useless, that will the collection of rooster knick-knacks, her blonde dresser set, my matching mother-daughter Easter outfits of eyelet with fuscia rick- ing room curtain. My favorite find: a few stained yards depicting eventually come to me. grandfather’s spittoon, my uncle’s defunct pistols, the new stove, rack and smocking at the sleeves. She made for herself a lavender Charles Lindbergh’s Trans-Atlantic flight, discovered in the bot- the print of Jesus with his hemorrhaging heart. Of the four Jones evening gown that gathered and slid off the shoulders just-so. For a tom of a five dollar box that I won—the sole bidder—at an auction. girls, my mother, Verna, was the only one who wanted the ma- Christmas party once, she created four snowmen costumes out of

MASTERS OF FINE ARTS PROGRAM. SHE SINGS FOR THE FOLK BAND “BRADY’S LEAP” AND IS MARRIED WITH EM

EM TWO STEP-SONS AND TWO CATS. 18 19

Raz knocked on his door. Yossarian slipped the magazine “That was the last ball, Raz,” Yossarian complained with under his mattress. It was time for dinner. pursed lips. “You’d better help me find it.” Both boys began looking In the kitchen, his mother stood in front of the stove, under the feet of the various old pieces of furniture stacked along spooning the chickpeas onto the wide platter. the walls. { f i c t i o n } “Where have you been all day, young man? Your father Yossarian rustled the drapes along the sliding door as he SECOND PLACE needed your help in the garage.” stared at the reflection of Izzy and Paul in the darkened glass. Izzy Yossarian slipped into his seat at the table and watched was still pulling at Paul. She pulled his right, then left hand, sway- Izzy slide down the stairs. She wore ballet flats and a tiered denim ing him to stand. He stood in one spot as she twirled around him, Yossarian Gives In skirt draping to her ankles. Izzy handed her mother the ends of the swinging her long, flowing skirt about her sides. B Y AMY THACKER black ribbon to tie around her neck. One long tendril of Izzy’s thick “Antic-i-pa-a-tion is making me wait,” she sang. curls dropped from her left temple, the rest slicked into a low, black She raised both his arms again, his white t-shirt sleeves bun. She had tucked one of Mrs. Nayak’s chrysanthemum’s behind slipping to the biggest part of his arm. She stepped back. His long her ear. arms stretched as she pushed forward. His biceps bulged. She gig- “Wooohoo!” Father whistled as he stepped to the head of gled until he was pulling her, then releasing, stretching, bulging, the table. “You look gorgeous! What is the occasion?” pushing, and pulling her back into him. He raised her left hand and It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he denias behind their ears the white petals in their shining black “Paul is coming over for dessert,” their mother answered twirled her. She laughed louder and he pulled her tightly into his fell madly in love with him. He went out the next day and bought manes illuminating the whites of their eyes. Yossarian indulged as she placed the platter on the table. body. His palms clutched her above her hips. He swayed with her. the Tiger Beat with the actor’s face on the cover. “It is for my sister,” himself in the theatre’s flickering lights and slinked lower in his Paul was older than Izzy. He was a varsity guard for the She giggled big, one last time, and slid her face into his chest. They Yossarian explained to the clerk behind the rows and rows of fruity seat, waiting for the glistening, bronzed chaplain to reappear. basketball team and held the long jump record for the district. Yos- swayed together through the end of the record. The two giggled flavored gum. The clerk barely looked up from her sticky magenta His favorite part of the film was when Teresa, a young vil- sarian knew Paul before Izzy had snagged him. Yossarian ran track louder as they embraced and flopped onto the couch. nail polish as she pulled Yossarian’s dollar toward the cash drawer. lage girl, wept over the burning of her home. Romano knelt to the as an eighth grader and had seen Paul jump. Paul had given high “Hey, weirdo,” Izzy called to Yossarian. “Snap a picture. It Yossarian stared at the crispy haired girl, with her curls ground, his white blouse blackened and torn as he had spent hours jump a try, but didn’t have the stomach for it. Yossarian was let lasts longer.” pulled high onto her head by a scrunchy. He wanted to make sure fighting the blaze. Yossarian watched the chaplain’s biceps tighten down when Paul stopped practicing high jump; he thought Paul Yossarian’s stomach ignited. she believed him. through the tear in the fabric as he took her chin in his hands and floated like an angel. His pulling torso, arching back, and follow- “Your brother is strange.” Paul whispered to Izzy. “He just He shoved the magazine into his green canvas tote, slung wiped the streaky soot from under her eyes. The chaplain’s eyes ing shoulders moved like poetry. But Paul didn’t see the beauty in stares all the time.” it on his shoulder and scooted through the mini-mart’s door as the wrinkled as he smiled. His eyes told her he cared, and his smile losing. The fire spread down Yossarian’s extremities. He didn’t bell rang behind him. He ran home, not because it was raining, his promised a better tomorrow. Her tears stopped and she buried her After baklava, the kids wandered down the stairs to the rec speak. He found the ball and returned to the table. He served the Chuck Taylors sloshing over the sidewalk, but because he felt so ex- face into his billowing chest. Last night, Yossarian replayed that room. Raz and Yossarian played table tennis in the dark end as Paul ball to Raz, but couldn’t seem to make a return. Raz thought his posed on the street with the magazine nearly out in the open. scene from under his blue woolen blanket in his little room. He and Izzy listened to records by the sliding-glass door. older brother was letting him win, but he didn’t complain. Raz “Romano Estoban. Romano Estoban. Romano Estoban.” tried to remember exactly how the chaplain’s eyes tightened, and Yossarian was frustrated playing with his little brother. wanted to be the best. Yossarian couldn’t focus. He couldn’t feel his He mouthed the name as he flipped through the pages to how Teresa drifted into the pillow of his chest. The fabric looked Raz was barely old enough to see over the ping pong table, let alone hands. He didn’t want to be in the basement anymore, but he was find the tell-all article and photo spread of the Cuban-born actor. cool against his hot skin. Yossarian felt his sheet between his fin- volley. Yossarian didn’t mind that they didn’t keep score; he just too scared to make a move. He served again. Ping pong was safe. While watching Developing Baja, Yossarian believed that gers, then grazed his face with the edge of his pillow. He didn’t want wanted to work up to some sort of rhythm. If Yossarian could get a When Yossarian entered his room, he fell face first into his pillow. he was the Mexican chaplain that Estoban played in the Saturday to sleep until he got the scene just right. volley going, Raz would inevitably hit a wild shot to ruin the back He inhaled. He pulled out the Tiger Beat and shoved it in his knap- matinee. Estoban had managed to retain his rugged appeal through Today, the raindrops pounded on the window, on the and forth. sack. Tomorrow he would start over. He would toss it in the dump- the black shirt and priest’s collar. The second the lean, glossy haired roof, down the street, over the city and into Yossarian. He sat on Izzy stood to switch songs to her favorite. She tugged at ster behind the corner store on his way to school. He stuffed his seductor stepped into the frame, Yossarian’s mouth gaped. He his bed, in his bubble, alone with Romano Estoban. He found the Paul. “Come on,” she goaded. books on top. He slipped into bed and read his Chemistry book. He felt a burning sensation in his chest, and then his head began to right spot in Tiger Beat. Romano’s smooth chest, the color of Nestlé “Heeeeee yaaaaah!” cried Raz, smashing the ball overhand drifted off somewhere between Hydrogen and Helium. throb. His palms clammed. He looked to his left, at his little brother Quik, poked through the laces of his white, loose blouse. The actor and plinking it off the wood- paneled walls. Raz who had his hand deep into the popcorn, fishing for a kernel was leaning on his right knee, with his boot perched atop a jagged squishy with butter. He glanced to his right; his sister Isabel was in rock, wind tussling his hair. Yossarian stared, waiting for Romano another world, her body in a trance while her mind danced among Estoban to speak. The stoic figure would have seemed too perfect, the Californian villagers. On the screen, peasant beauties wore gar- but Yossarian had seen him alive in the theatre.

FICTION JUDGE Chris Barzak 02 02 09 AMY THACKER IS A NATIVE OHIOAN BUT A CLEVELAND TRANSPLANT. CLEVELAND, AND ITS FRIENDLY NATURE, 09 HAS WON HER OVER. HER FAVORITE HOBBY IS FINDING INTERESTING AND ENDEARING LOCAL ACTIVITIES The prose of “Yossarian Gives In” takes us so tightly into its point of view character’s perspective that it M almost feels as if it’s written in the first person instead of the third. The dialogue is snappy, the emotional M TO SHARE WITH OTHERS TO SPREAD HER LOVE FOR CLEVELAND. WHEN NOT GALLIVANTING AROUND TOWN U tenor true and heartfelt, the details and images evocative of a place and time and family that feels far U S SEEKING HER NEXT ADVENTURE, AMY IS MOST LIKELY TO BE FOUND COOKING AN ELABORATE AND MESSY away and yet somehow very present. This is a skillfully written slice-of-life. S

EM MEAL OR CHATTING ON THE PHONE WITH ONE OF HER THREE SISTERS. AMY HAS PASSION FOR WRITING,

EM PAINTING, SWIMMING, LAUGHING AND EXPERIENCING LIVE MUSIC. 20 21

EM MEAL OR CHATTING ON THE PHONE WITH ONE OF HER THREE SISTERS. AMY HAS PASSION FOR WRITING,

EM PAINTING, SWIMMING, LAUGHING AND EXPERIENCING LIVE MUSIC. 20 21 { p o e t r y } {non-fiction} SECOND PLACE SECOND PLACE Stealing Lumber on a Sunday Afternoon Crazy Horses (for Rick Bragg) B Y KELLY BANCROFT

B Y THOMAS DUKES

Lucas hauls a devil’s load of pine his illegal hooch to a debutante picnic: One night not long ago, I dreamed of Donny Osmond —the The news that night featured shots of Jeffs in handcuffs, a in his daddy’s pick-up it pleasured him to hear the blazer boys grown-up, Technicolor-Dream-Coat Donny, not the Tiger Beat ferret-like, frightened man.1 Women across the country won- that the law loves to hate: scream like girls. idol whose face used to paper my bedroom walls. In the dream, dered who would marry a man like that, let alone be devoted welcome to Alabama. Donny desperately loved me and wanted to take me home to his enough to share him with a few dozen others. The big news shows He contracts for every poor white Azaleas bloom as he passes, sprawling, toothsome clan. I’d impressed him by reciting the that week tried to answer that question with exposés on polyg- whose mama picked hours wild dogwood take a bow. birth order of his nine siblings, as well as their instruments and amy. Their guests included adult women who had been handed of someone else’s cotton and tomatoes He’ll buy his grandpa some Red Chief, favorite colors. Donny and I were motoring to Utah when the off to grown men at the age of 12 or 13. One program gathered a to feed her kids with, whatever his sister coffee and steak, scream of my husband’s rotary saw rudely awakened me. roundtable of polygamous “sisters” touting the benefits of multi- Big Man said she could tote home. yellow roses for their mama’s grave: The sweet Donny dream interrupted a stretch of far less ple marriages; they shared household chores and jointly looked Eastertime’s a-comin,’ pleasant ones. On and off for two weeks, I’d been dreaming of, after their hoards of children. Let Methodists take the high road to Jesus: Lucas sings, for ever’body. . well, feces, poop, crap, grumpies, number two, dropping the kids Discussion of Jeffs’ church crammed the airwaves. He Lucas rocks his axle on clay so rutted at the pool. I’m taking one and I can’t stop. Or the toilet’s plugged had inherited the throne of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus the sheriff can’t follow. up, and I’ve got to unclog it with my bare hands. Or the bathroom Christ of Latter-day Saints after the death of his 98-year-old fa- He’s got 190,000 miles on this life stall where I eternally squat has a glass door that opens onto a ther, Rulon Jeffs, who left behind 65 children by several women, where rehab means the rich mall’s concourse. A quick on-line search of “dreams of feces” as- nearly all of whom the son later took as his own wives. The FLDS are messing in your business again. sures me this is a common dream-theme, and analysts offer sev- had broken away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day eral meanings. Dreams of defecating, I discover, suggest a huge Saints when the LDS denounced polygamy in 1890. “President Once he shot the mayor’s mule dead excess of emotion that needs to be dealt with “before it turns and Prophet,” was Warren Jeffs’ official title. “Seer and Revelator.” on general principles and won toxic.” Gillian Holloway in “Dream Discoveries” says that “the Members of the Latter-day Saints Church vehemently informed fifty dollars from Jubal Slade, body cannot survive in good health without proper elimination us that week that Jeffs was not a Mormon. Mormons do not be- now doing time for statutory rape and evacuation, and the psyche in its own terms requires the re- lieve in polygamy. Mormons believe in family, in clean living. of all the sugar named Georgia he could find. lease of psychic waste as well.” Some cultures claim that feces Think Tabernacle Choir. Think Osmonds. Lucas himself got eighteen months dreams portend great financial success. Freud thought you were Like a million other girls in the seventies, I worshipped for a wrong turn that took fretting over money if you dreamed of playing with your poop. Donny Osmond I watched every “Donny and Marie Show” epi- On the eve of my Donny dream, police hit the lottery sode and knew all the Osmond trivia. I wore head-to-toe purple when they pulled over a red Cadillac Escalade for having no visi- (Donny’s favorite color) and still have a photo of myself wearing a ble registration. Driving the vehicle was Isaac Jeffs. Beside him crushed velvet Donny cap. I knew all of his songs, of course, but 02 02 09 09 sat his trembling brother, Warren Steed Jeffs, the leader of a polyga- M 1 M mist sect who was also on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Warren Jeffs In May and July 2007, Jeffs was charged with multiple counts, including sexual con- U U duct with minors and incest. In September 2007 he was found guilty on two counts had fled Utah in 2005 to avoid prosecution for arranging a mar- S S of rape as an accomplice. He was sentenced to 10 years to life. He is imprisoned at the E M

EM riage between a 16-year-old girl and a middle-aged, married man. Utah State Prison.

22 23 { p o e t r y } {non-fiction} SECOND PLACE SECOND PLACE Stealing Lumber on a Sunday Afternoon Crazy Horses (for Rick Bragg) B Y KELLY BANCROFT

B Y THOMAS DUKES

EM riage between a 16-year-old girl and a middle-aged, married man. Utah State Prison.

22 23 my favorites were those my parents also knew. In a brilliant mar- A cartoonish cough of gray smoke behind them spelled out experienced when I first heard it, when I felt suddenly unsafe, ex- lives. Certainly innocent, androgynous Donny became that symbol keting scheme to hook pre-orgasmic girls on an idol harmless “Crazy Horses” in exhaust-shaped letters. I didn’t get it. Where posed, betrayed. for me when I was a girl on the brink of becoming a teenager. The enough for their parents, Donny crooned remakes of classics my was Donny’s girlish face, his helmet of dark hair, his gleaming It’s no great mystery, then, why Donny appeared in my sound of “Crazy Horses” seemed to signal the shift that would inevi- mother liked to sing around the house—“Go Away Little Girl,” keyboard of teeth on the cover of the “Portrait of Donny” album dream, all grown up and just as sweet as he had seemed as a boy. tably come for me, and soon, a change I both longed for and feared. “Twelfth of Never,” “Too Young.” The Osmonds’ background, of released three months before? Where was the photo I could hold Who wouldn’t want their childhood symbol of innocence to remain The Osmonds had revolutionized themselves with that album. When course, smelled Bazooka-sweet. As Mormons, this clan shunned close and kiss goodnight? The “Crazy Horses” album cover intact despite the inevitable lowered voice and five o’clock shadow and how would I revolutionize myself? pre-marital sex, alcohol, drugs, even caffeine, and my love for frightened me, at least the front of it did. The back side pleased that accompanied his adulthood? That he visited me on the heels of The anxiety I felt in my toilet dreams resembled what I felt Donny was equally chaste, as uncorrupted as the “Puppy Love” me, though its relationship to the front confused me. There the Warren Jeffs’s capture is even less mysterious. Jeffs stands for the as a girl in the midst of violence and change. And it is what I some- he sang only to me. brothers stood in another yard, this one lush and green. Instead of adulterated life, a misconstrued version of what the Osmonds stood times feel these days among the presidential debates and another for- In 1972, young girls needed such innocence. Hanoi a wrench, Jay held a spade, a rainbow patch stitched on his breast for. He symbolizes the best of the Mormon religion gone bad. Jeffs’ eign war, the shadow of Korea’s nuclear arsenal, the stock market burned with Nixon’s bombs. George Wallace’s campaign near my pocket. Donny tilted a watering can. In the background, Alan sat was a criminal abuse of power, especially over young girls. Donny’s crash, gunshots in the neighborhood, college coeds disappearing, home ended with a bullet. And on the other side of the world, a atop a ladder beside a thriving, dense tree. power was to enrapture them and carry them safely to the threshold trapped coal miners, collapsed bridges, quarrels with family, dust girl the same age as me tore naked down a street in South Viet- The sound of the album frightened me as much as their of adolescence. bunnies, piles of laundry, late movie fees—you get the picture. It’s nam, skin on fire from the Napalm payload accidentally dropped newly-formed politically conscious image. Though they’d But what about the poop dreams? Perhaps that is more no wonder I still need Donny. Don’t we all crave the return of in- on her village. Along with my purple get-ups, I wore a clunky recorded earlier songs with guitar riffs and polite nods to their psy- mysterious. Was my psyche so toxic I needed to clear out my innards nocence? Let Donny appear, angelic, while I’m plunging the com- POW/MIA bracelet inscribed with the name of a soldier gone chedelic contemporaries, the title track proved too much for me: on a nightly basis? Maybe I was tapping into an ancient, universal mode. Let him steal me away for a night. He’ll bring me back, no missing in the war. Sunday nights I checked the rows of names in Never stop and they never die symbol of the transition that each of us undergoes throughout our doubt, my pockets filled with souvenirs from the trip. our local paper to see if his showed up among those men who, They just keep on puffin’ how they multiply whole or in pieces, were brought home. I don’t recall the name of Crazy horses, will they never halt? my soldier, just the shadowy weight of it circling my wrist. If they keep on movin’ then it’s all our fault The Osmonds were the antithesis of war, the opposite of So take a good look around agony, though my older brother certainly howled in pain when I See what they’ve done played their music. But in that year of Donny’s “Puppy Love” and What they’ve done “All I Have To Do is Dream,” the Osmonds came out with an They’ve done album that puzzled me even more than would their later album Crazy horses entitled “Osmonds Live” (I read the title as Osmonds live—rhymes with “give”—which made me wonder if I’d somehow missed rumors Right after “horses” came the electrified whinny of a of their death). In an attempt to electrify and harden their sound, horse, created with voice or guitar or bass, I just didn’t know. I the Osmonds wrote and recorded the album, “Crazy Horses”. didn’t like this new sound. I couldn’t make it fit my image of the There’s a message floatin’ in the air honey-toned Osmonds. It felt dangerous and not in the thrilling Come from crazy horses ridin’ everywhere way of ghost stories or roller coasters. I resented the brothers for It’s a warning, it’s in every tongue reasons I couldn’t understand then. I felt like they had defected, Gotta stop them crazy horses on the run grown-up without me. I stashed “Crazy Horses” on my bookshelf What a show, there they go smokin’ up the sky, yeah between “Portrait of Donny” and a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Crazy horses all got riders, and they’re you and I Brass album I liked to dance to alone in my room.

Osmond fans still debate the meaning of the critically ma- NON-FICTION JUDGE David Giffels 02 The “Crazy Horses” album cover pictured the brothers ligned song. Some swear it’s about shooting heroin while others 02 09 09 standing in a cluttered junk yard in strange dress—overalls, engi- think its theme is obvious—it’s about air pollution. In an interview Brightly written opening paragraphs are offbeat, surprising and strong enough to carry the M reader forward. Choosing an unusual, obscure song from a ubiquitous pop group allows most M neer hats, a limo driver’s jodhpurs. The grills and chrome of decades later, Jay Osmond set the record straight and confessed it U readers to feel like insiders, even though most of us don’t know the song. And I was prompted U S trashed cars surrounded them. Jay (the drummer) held up a huge was an anti-smoking song. I have downloaded a clip of it to my lap- to Google it immediately after reading; a good sign. S M EM E wrench like the kind my father used on his VW jalopy. top, and when I listen to it, I still get the sour feeling in my gut I

24 25 my favorites were those my parents also knew. In a brilliant mar- A cartoonish cough of gray smoke behind them spelled out experienced when I first heard it, when I felt suddenly unsafe, ex- lives. Certainly innocent, androgynous Donny became that symbol keting scheme to hook pre-orgasmic girls on an idol harmless “Crazy Horses” in exhaust-shaped letters. I didn’t get it. Where posed, betrayed. for me when I was a girl on the brink of becoming a teenager. The enough for their parents, Donny crooned remakes of classics my was Donny’s girlish face, his helmet of dark hair, his gleaming It’s no great mystery, then, why Donny appeared in my sound of “Crazy Horses” seemed to signal the shift that would inevi- mother liked to sing around the house—“Go Away Little Girl,” keyboard of teeth on the cover of the “Portrait of Donny” album dream, all grown up and just as sweet as he had seemed as a boy. tably come for me, and soon, a change I both longed for and feared. “Twelfth of Never,” “Too Young.” The Osmonds’ background, of released three months before? Where was the photo I could hold Who wouldn’t want their childhood symbol of innocence to remain The Osmonds had revolutionized themselves with that album. When course, smelled Bazooka-sweet. As Mormons, this clan shunned close and kiss goodnight? The “Crazy Horses” album cover intact despite the inevitable lowered voice and five o’clock shadow and how would I revolutionize myself? pre-marital sex, alcohol, drugs, even caffeine, and my love for frightened me, at least the front of it did. The back side pleased that accompanied his adulthood? That he visited me on the heels of The anxiety I felt in my toilet dreams resembled what I felt Donny was equally chaste, as uncorrupted as the “Puppy Love” me, though its relationship to the front confused me. There the Warren Jeffs’s capture is even less mysterious. Jeffs stands for the as a girl in the midst of violence and change. And it is what I some- he sang only to me. brothers stood in another yard, this one lush and green. Instead of adulterated life, a misconstrued version of what the Osmonds stood times feel these days among the presidential debates and another for- In 1972, young girls needed such innocence. Hanoi a wrench, Jay held a spade, a rainbow patch stitched on his breast for. He symbolizes the best of the Mormon religion gone bad. Jeffs’ eign war, the shadow of Korea’s nuclear arsenal, the stock market burned with Nixon’s bombs. George Wallace’s campaign near my pocket. Donny tilted a watering can. In the background, Alan sat was a criminal abuse of power, especially over young girls. Donny’s crash, gunshots in the neighborhood, college coeds disappearing, home ended with a bullet. And on the other side of the world, a atop a ladder beside a thriving, dense tree. power was to enrapture them and carry them safely to the threshold trapped coal miners, collapsed bridges, quarrels with family, dust girl the same age as me tore naked down a street in South Viet- The sound of the album frightened me as much as their of adolescence. bunnies, piles of laundry, late movie fees—you get the picture. It’s nam, skin on fire from the Napalm payload accidentally dropped newly-formed politically conscious image. Though they’d But what about the poop dreams? Perhaps that is more no wonder I still need Donny. Don’t we all crave the return of in- on her village. Along with my purple get-ups, I wore a clunky recorded earlier songs with guitar riffs and polite nods to their psy- mysterious. Was my psyche so toxic I needed to clear out my innards nocence? Let Donny appear, angelic, while I’m plunging the com- POW/MIA bracelet inscribed with the name of a soldier gone chedelic contemporaries, the title track proved too much for me: on a nightly basis? Maybe I was tapping into an ancient, universal mode. Let him steal me away for a night. He’ll bring me back, no missing in the war. Sunday nights I checked the rows of names in Never stop and they never die symbol of the transition that each of us undergoes throughout our doubt, my pockets filled with souvenirs from the trip. our local paper to see if his showed up among those men who, They just keep on puffin’ how they multiply whole or in pieces, were brought home. I don’t recall the name of Crazy horses, will they never halt? my soldier, just the shadowy weight of it circling my wrist. If they keep on movin’ then it’s all our fault The Osmonds were the antithesis of war, the opposite of So take a good look around agony, though my older brother certainly howled in pain when I See what they’ve done played their music. But in that year of Donny’s “Puppy Love” and What they’ve done “All I Have To Do is Dream,” the Osmonds came out with an They’ve done album that puzzled me even more than would their later album Crazy horses entitled “Osmonds Live” (I read the title as Osmonds live—rhymes with “give”—which made me wonder if I’d somehow missed rumors Right after “horses” came the electrified whinny of a of their death). In an attempt to electrify and harden their sound, horse, created with voice or guitar or bass, I just didn’t know. I the Osmonds wrote and recorded the album, “Crazy Horses”. didn’t like this new sound. I couldn’t make it fit my image of the There’s a message floatin’ in the air honey-toned Osmonds. It felt dangerous and not in the thrilling Come from crazy horses ridin’ everywhere way of ghost stories or roller coasters. I resented the brothers for It’s a warning, it’s in every tongue reasons I couldn’t understand then. I felt like they had defected, Gotta stop them crazy horses on the run grown-up without me. I stashed “Crazy Horses” on my bookshelf What a show, there they go smokin’ up the sky, yeah between “Portrait of Donny” and a Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Crazy horses all got riders, and they’re you and I Brass album I liked to dance to alone in my room.

24 25 EXCERPT Lies Will Take You Somewhere lando (about the least philosophical there pretending to be her? Why do that? increasing, as if she’d bought them all in place he can think of). Why do it for so many years? advance, mailed each one from a differ- ~ A Novel by Sheila Schwartz “Dena?” Saul tries again. “Would you It’s a question he hasn’t been ent place. Boston. Chicago. Santa Fe. But mind bringing me a Band-Aid?” able to answer ever since she disap- they don’t sound like they’re from a real “Of course not, Rabbi.” peared. He doesn’t have a mother, hasn’t mother. The tone of these greetings is so He hears a drawer slam and had one since 1956, the day she went to exaggerated they sound almost mock- then she bustles in from the reception Atlantic City and never came back. But ing—My Dearest Darling Son, Most Pre- desk carrying her first-aid kit, the one someone keeps pretending to be her— cious Light of my Life, My Brilliant and from Mogen David Adom which was sent someone intrigued by the mystery Beloved Child. There’s also an array of free because of the synagogue’s yearly maybe, wanting to participate in a cele- postcards from 1970 with historic sites of CHAPTER 3 contribution. It has Band-Aids, aspirin, brated case. “The Boardwalk Murders” Philadelphia, a condolence card from gauze pads for non-denominational first the newspapers called it, though there 1973, when Saul’s father died—So sorry One of those letters arrives today. It’s been aid but also Jewish items—Tums, Alka- was never any clear evidence that anyone for your UNFORTUNATE loss—and years since Saul got the last one, but he gets Seltzer tablets, and antiseptic wipes in had died, not his mother nor the three four letters from 1976, the year he and a feeling when he sees it on the tray of wrappers decorated with Jewish stars. other women who joined her on this ex- Jane got married. In these the tone is bit- morning mail Dena has left him. As he “What is it?” she asks as she cursion, none of whom returned. The ter. The writer speaks of relationships slides his finger under the flap, there’s a nears the desk. “What happened to you?” theory was that they’d been murdered, that have failed her, of the despair of a burning sensation as if it’s been coated with Saul holds up his hand. “Just a wholesale. Another theory had it that bad marriage. acid, not glue. Ridiculous, of course, such cut. A very messy one.” they’d staged their own deaths; each had As with the others, he doesn’t paranoia, such a strong sensation—it’s just a “Oy!” Dena looks at the finger, a problem to escape from—an unwanted really want to open this one. He has a paper cut—but each time he opens one of these her face a pressed flower of concern. pregnancy, a terminal illness, a violent busy schedule today and he knows it will envelopes, his finger bleeds, like an omen. “That’s a lot of blood. Are you taking a husband, a life of turning tricks—the upset him. He gets pointlessly upset, Jane There’s nothing else similar about thinner?” usual tabloid reasons. says, because these letters take him no- them. He’s kept a file over the years and “Not yet, thank God.” Someone else claimed he’d spot- where. They don’t illuminate his past, none of these dispatches is the same. The He allows her to wrap the Band- ted the four of them swimming out to sea, they merely roil it. She complains that he stationary they’re written on varies, from a Aid tightly around the wound, to cluck at to a glamorous white yacht that had been broods, that his despair causes him to be heavy creamy bond to Xerox paper to sheets him, “You need to be careful. You need idling too close to shore all day. They’d cruel to her and the girls. Once, after that from lined yellow legal pads. Nor does the to take better care of yourself, Saul.” climbed aboard and sunbathed the whole awful letter he received after Malkah was handwriting match. There are only a few After he gives her the all-clear afternoon until dusk when the boat gunned born, the one that began: Don’t you that are handwritten, and these are all dif- sign—(he can manage solo from here on its engines, churned a wake towards the know that children will destroy you? she ferent in rather spectacular ways—big in)—she scurries back to the front desk. horizon, and was never seen again. claimed that the letters were destroying loopy letters, tiny scrunched-up letters like Saul sighs as he takes a Clorox wipe from Who knows what really hap- them. And for what? For nothing. She wiggling ants, block print so square and the container next to his pencil jar and pened? It’s a question he shouldn’t be doesn’t believe any of the letters were sent regular it could be wallpaper design. And tries to do damage control on the letters. pondering this late in his life. He doesn’t by his actual mother, whom she’s sure is not all of them are letters. There are post- His desk looks like a crime scene. Oh need a mother anymore. And yet, he’s long dead. Or long gone. “What mother cards too. well. No one will ever see these enve- kept every one of these strange letters would torture her own child this way?” “Dena?” he calls into the other lopes. Though when he tosses them into since the first dated October 12, 1956— she asked. Jane’s view is the letter writer room. His finger is now bleeding onto the 02 02 the trashcan they do look like evidence an unexplained birthday card two is crazy. Crazy and bitchy. 09 09 blotter. There are drops of blood sprinkled he’s getting rid of. months after his mother disappeared, It’s true. There’s no evidence to M M on his other mail, too—the letter from the U U But evidence of what? That his then an identical card each year until he the contrary thus far. As Saul slides the Federation, a packet from JTS, an invitation S S mother still exists? There’s someone out was eleven, only the number of balloons note from the envelope and unfolds it, a

to attend a philosophical conference in Or- EM

26 27 EXCERPT Lies Will Take You Somewhere lando (about the least philosophical there pretending to be her? Why do that? increasing, as if she’d bought them all in place he can think of). Why do it for so many years? advance, mailed each one from a differ- ~ A Novel by Sheila Schwartz “Dena?” Saul tries again. “Would you It’s a question he hasn’t been ent place. Boston. Chicago. Santa Fe. But mind bringing me a Band-Aid?” able to answer ever since she disap- they don’t sound like they’re from a real “Of course not, Rabbi.” peared. He doesn’t have a mother, hasn’t mother. The tone of these greetings is so He hears a drawer slam and had one since 1956, the day she went to exaggerated they sound almost mock- then she bustles in from the reception Atlantic City and never came back. But ing—My Dearest Darling Son, Most Pre- desk carrying her first-aid kit, the one someone keeps pretending to be her— cious Light of my Life, My Brilliant and from Mogen David Adom which was sent someone intrigued by the mystery Beloved Child. There’s also an array of free because of the synagogue’s yearly maybe, wanting to participate in a cele- postcards from 1970 with historic sites of CHAPTER 3 contribution. It has Band-Aids, aspirin, brated case. “The Boardwalk Murders” Philadelphia, a condolence card from gauze pads for non-denominational first the newspapers called it, though there 1973, when Saul’s father died—So sorry One of those letters arrives today. It’s been aid but also Jewish items—Tums, Alka- was never any clear evidence that anyone for your UNFORTUNATE loss—and years since Saul got the last one, but he gets Seltzer tablets, and antiseptic wipes in had died, not his mother nor the three four letters from 1976, the year he and a feeling when he sees it on the tray of wrappers decorated with Jewish stars. other women who joined her on this ex- Jane got married. In these the tone is bit- morning mail Dena has left him. As he “What is it?” she asks as she cursion, none of whom returned. The ter. The writer speaks of relationships slides his finger under the flap, there’s a nears the desk. “What happened to you?” theory was that they’d been murdered, that have failed her, of the despair of a burning sensation as if it’s been coated with Saul holds up his hand. “Just a wholesale. Another theory had it that bad marriage. acid, not glue. Ridiculous, of course, such cut. A very messy one.” they’d staged their own deaths; each had As with the others, he doesn’t paranoia, such a strong sensation—it’s just a “Oy!” Dena looks at the finger, a problem to escape from—an unwanted really want to open this one. He has a paper cut—but each time he opens one of these her face a pressed flower of concern. pregnancy, a terminal illness, a violent busy schedule today and he knows it will envelopes, his finger bleeds, like an omen. “That’s a lot of blood. Are you taking a husband, a life of turning tricks—the upset him. He gets pointlessly upset, Jane There’s nothing else similar about thinner?” usual tabloid reasons. says, because these letters take him no- them. He’s kept a file over the years and “Not yet, thank God.” Someone else claimed he’d spot- where. They don’t illuminate his past, none of these dispatches is the same. The He allows her to wrap the Band- ted the four of them swimming out to sea, they merely roil it. She complains that he stationary they’re written on varies, from a Aid tightly around the wound, to cluck at to a glamorous white yacht that had been broods, that his despair causes him to be heavy creamy bond to Xerox paper to sheets him, “You need to be careful. You need idling too close to shore all day. They’d cruel to her and the girls. Once, after that from lined yellow legal pads. Nor does the to take better care of yourself, Saul.” climbed aboard and sunbathed the whole awful letter he received after Malkah was handwriting match. There are only a few After he gives her the all-clear afternoon until dusk when the boat gunned born, the one that began: Don’t you that are handwritten, and these are all dif- sign—(he can manage solo from here on its engines, churned a wake towards the know that children will destroy you? she ferent in rather spectacular ways—big in)—she scurries back to the front desk. horizon, and was never seen again. claimed that the letters were destroying loopy letters, tiny scrunched-up letters like Saul sighs as he takes a Clorox wipe from Who knows what really hap- them. And for what? For nothing. She wiggling ants, block print so square and the container next to his pencil jar and pened? It’s a question he shouldn’t be doesn’t believe any of the letters were sent regular it could be wallpaper design. And tries to do damage control on the letters. pondering this late in his life. He doesn’t by his actual mother, whom she’s sure is not all of them are letters. There are post- His desk looks like a crime scene. Oh need a mother anymore. And yet, he’s long dead. Or long gone. “What mother cards too. well. No one will ever see these enve- kept every one of these strange letters would torture her own child this way?” “Dena?” he calls into the other lopes. Though when he tosses them into since the first dated October 12, 1956— she asked. Jane’s view is the letter writer room. His finger is now bleeding onto the 02 02 the trashcan they do look like evidence an unexplained birthday card two is crazy. Crazy and bitchy. 09 09 blotter. There are drops of blood sprinkled he’s getting rid of. months after his mother disappeared, It’s true. There’s no evidence to M M on his other mail, too—the letter from the U U But evidence of what? That his then an identical card each year until he the contrary thus far. As Saul slides the Federation, a packet from JTS, an invitation S S mother still exists? There’s someone out was eleven, only the number of balloons note from the envelope and unfolds it, a

to attend a philosophical conference in Or- EM

26 27 bizarre greeting chastises him: You think one another, that if she hadn’t been so hobbies they share, all of which they A Hint you’re pretty smart, don’t you? An odd much younger than he, if her mother answer with utmost sincerity, their faces way to address someone you haven’t con- hadn’t been so thrilled he was a rabbi… composed to suggest they’re considering tacted in at least five years. And so his day begins, the usual each question carefully. A townhouse. Maybe this one isn’t from combination of personal conundrums Bowling. He’s a CPA and she’s a lawyer. Stalker Mom (as Jane calls her) but from a and overwhelming tasks. “Boker tov,” he Saul has never seen such a fortunate Lori Wald Compton congregant. There are many who might says to the prenuptial couple Dena ushers pairing in all his life. of Salt hold a grudge—someone who didn’t get in. “Good morning,” he translates just in His hearty “Mazel tov!” as they Sheila always began her emails to me like this: Hi, Lori. Never — Hey there; an aliyah to the Torah, or a board mem- case, as they seat themselves in plush depart his office implies that he agrees. What’s up; Dear Lori. Never. After twenty or so I finally asked her. What’s the comma for? Crooked smile. Amused look. I could see that even in her ber upset with Saul’s demand that they chairs—a plump young woman and a “Don’t forget to fill out the question- written reply. “You’re not a hi Lori, right?” find ways to downsize, they’re going to very skinny man. She must outweigh him naire,” he reminds them. “Dena will give have to reduce the size of floral sprays on by forty pounds, though this shouldn’t be you each a copy.” From this he’ll compose I keep thinking about the comma. It appears to me in my dreams. It keeps me company while I wait for the dentist. It floats above the barista’s head in the bima. A flower lover. But it’s impossi- a factor in marital bliss. It’s not a wres- a speech for their wedding ceremony. the coffee shop. ble to tell. He can’t read the rest of the let- tling match after all. “Let’s begin our He’ll select several prominent ter , typed in medicine bottle-sized print, counseling with a small prayer,” Saul sug- and unusual facts about each one and I keep thinking about the comma. I miss my teacher. I miss my friend.

so tiny he can’t make it out even with his gests, and they bow their heads so deeply write a little narrative from it. This is an The comma is a separator. Tiny, unassuming. It’s job is to remain unobtru- bifocals. And why bother anyway? Jane’s he can see the man’s ring bald spot, the idea he got from the New York Times’ sive, injecting a little clarity in a sentence that might otherwise be run-on or right about that. It will just ruin his day. snarl of curls in the woman’s hair she’s left “Vows” column, and it really works. melded together in an unseemly way. Maybe it’s time to take a stand. uncombed. “Blessed are those who seek to Everyone goes away feeling as if Saul un- It’s value is inestimable. Remember the story of the daughter (Cordelia?) He tosses it in the wastebasket combine,” he says. “They will find joy derstands them, that he’s been personally who loved her father, not as much as silver or gold, but as salt? Subtle, underrated, but a key ingredient in most of what we cook. Commas are the salt just as Dena rings her little silver bell that here on earth and in the kingdom of involved with their coupledom. He’s been of literature. tells him a congregant is here. She devised heaven.” Can they tell he made this up? intimate and warm. this trick a few years ago as a way not to There is no prayer, actually, for counsel- After they leave, Saul checks his Sheila taught me about the subtle and the underrated. “The creative writing students at Cleveland State are the most talented pool of writers from jar him, to save herself from reprimands ing sessions. He just says it to get everyone list again. There are many, many sched- any university, anywhere,” she’d insist. It would be foolish to underestimate when she accidentally pries him from in the mood. Add a touch of solemnity. uled tasks and then there are the un- a population where students live in tragedy’s neighborhood, losing friends some absorbing thought. She thinks he’s “Amen!” the couple proclaim in scheduled mitzvahs he adds on—not for to acts of murder, growing up where a transvestite prostitute might also do a little babysitting. They were the writers who’d write fearlessly, their imag- a control freak, but a tragic one. She’s unison. the points, but because he likes these bet- inations cultivated by gritty reality, not from a TV cop show, but from their known him since he was a boy—that’s “Knock on wood,” the man adds. ter. They make him feel normal. They own neighborhood. why she tolerates him. She was his “That’s not our superstition,” don’t require prepared speeches. He keeps She taught me about the subtle underpinnings of my own fictional charac- babysitter after his mother died. She the fiancée scolds him. lists of these tasks. ters and showed me how to mine their psyches and their family histories in knows how much Saul wept for her, has “That’s okay,” Saul says. “I’ve —Help Mr. Abramson trim his hedge. order to weave the diaphanous elements of a story together. been watching over him ever since. She knocked on wood a few times myself.” —Bring Jeanette Weissman the blintz Like salt, a common substance that brightens the flavors of food, Sheila en- even told Saul once this was her destiny, Can they tell how bored he is, how dis- cookbook from the yard sale. hanced her students’ writing through praise. She’d learned over the years to protect him from the outside world. tressed that he has to tell them what he no —Loan Harry Fishman my extra blood that by encouraging students to do more of what they did well, they’d pro- duce better work. But using too much salt ruins a dish. While harsh criti- They’re like Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. longer believes? If only marriage counsel- pressure cuff. cism isn’t productive, there needs to be a balance. Sheila taught me that Or maybe it’s his wife Jane who ing could be truthful, if he could simply Today’s list includes even when you make students uncomfortable, it’s a sign that they’re learning is Jane Eyre (that would make more sense, say, “Stay alert. You never know what will details as minute as Remember to smile something. 02 02 wouldn’t it?) though she’s never expressed happen next.” Instead he goes through his more at Dena. _ So, I’m rereading my emails from Sheila and I savor every bit of criticism and 09 09 the degree of eagerness to protect him usual routine: questions about their spiri- praise, and every last comma. And from now on, I’ll begin my own emails M M with a hi and a comma in the hope that someone will ask me — what’s the that Dena has. Every once in a while, in tual connections, their housing accom- U U comma for? S S fact, she’s claimed that they’re ill-suited to modations and sources of income, what

28 29 bizarre greeting chastises him: You think one another, that if she hadn’t been so hobbies they share, all of which they A Hint you’re pretty smart, don’t you? An odd much younger than he, if her mother answer with utmost sincerity, their faces way to address someone you haven’t con- hadn’t been so thrilled he was a rabbi… composed to suggest they’re considering tacted in at least five years. And so his day begins, the usual each question carefully. A townhouse. Maybe this one isn’t from combination of personal conundrums Bowling. He’s a CPA and she’s a lawyer. Stalker Mom (as Jane calls her) but from a and overwhelming tasks. “Boker tov,” he Saul has never seen such a fortunate Lori Wald Compton congregant. There are many who might says to the prenuptial couple Dena ushers pairing in all his life. of Salt hold a grudge—someone who didn’t get in. “Good morning,” he translates just in His hearty “Mazel tov!” as they Sheila always began her emails to me like this: Hi, Lori. Never — Hey there; an aliyah to the Torah, or a board mem- case, as they seat themselves in plush depart his office implies that he agrees. What’s up; Dear Lori. Never. After twenty or so I finally asked her. What’s the comma for? Crooked smile. Amused look. I could see that even in her ber upset with Saul’s demand that they chairs—a plump young woman and a “Don’t forget to fill out the question- written reply. “You’re not a hi Lori, right?” find ways to downsize, they’re going to very skinny man. She must outweigh him naire,” he reminds them. “Dena will give have to reduce the size of floral sprays on by forty pounds, though this shouldn’t be you each a copy.” From this he’ll compose I keep thinking about the comma. It appears to me in my dreams. It keeps me company while I wait for the dentist. It floats above the barista’s head in the bima. A flower lover. But it’s impossi- a factor in marital bliss. It’s not a wres- a speech for their wedding ceremony. the coffee shop. ble to tell. He can’t read the rest of the let- tling match after all. “Let’s begin our He’ll select several prominent ter , typed in medicine bottle-sized print, counseling with a small prayer,” Saul sug- and unusual facts about each one and I keep thinking about the comma. I miss my teacher. I miss my friend.

28 29