volume 2, issue 3, 2012/2013

volume 2, issue 3, 2012/2013 Executive Editor: Chad Foret Fiction Editor: Dusty Cooper Poetry Editor: Ashley Williams Art Editor: Brooke Bajon Film Editor: Nicholas Brilleaux Web Developer: Casey White Graphic Designer: Hillary Lowry Print Production Advisor: Alison Pelegrin Online Production Editor: Joel Fredell Faculty Committee: Jack Bedell, Richard Louth, Bev Marshall

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

Cover image: Hitch, by Dusty Cooper.

© 2012 by Southeastern Louisiana University. Now that our journal has overcome the trials of reinvention, an online upgrade, and reformatting, Manchac Review can begin anew. The Gambit’s transition to Manchac Review was no simple one, but the previous editing staff did an astounding job redesigning our journal for modern audiences. Our publication now has the opportunity and responsibility to reinvent itself as a quality and versatile outlet for our students’ creative minds. Manchac Online, itself a fine platform for student work, has allowed us to increase the excellence of our print edition, providing us with a greater wealth of content to more closely scrutinize submissions, ensuring publication of pieces most deserving of merit. Increasing venues for creative expression resulted in more numerous and varied submissions. I’d like to thank our contributors for their work ethic and aspirations. Without Southeastern’s creative writers, there would be no need for our journal. The wide range of themes, writing styles and locales in these pieces of poetry and short fiction—a Louisiana gas station where a jungle cat is held captive, a small village in India where friendship between classes is forbidden, and the road to a gruesome prison, to name a few—are a testament not only to the talent of our students, but to Southeastern’s function as hub of connectivity and intercultural relationships. Manchac Review is indebted to your endeavors, and we ask that you keep writing, and always strive to improve your work and influence the world. This issue could not have been compiled without the patience and aid of Dr. David Hanson, who gladly oversaw its construction and final proofreading. Dr. Jack Bedell and Ms. Alison Pelegrin, both exceptional teachers and writers of poetry, encouraged their students to submit their course-mandated poems, many of which are represented here. I extend the same thanks to Dr. Richard Louth and Writer-In- Residence Bev Marshall, who urged students to submit novel excerpts and short fiction. Our contributors’ revisions were aided not only by their professors’ tutelage, but also by their classmates’ constructive feedback, so thanks are in order for our creative writing workshops as well. The previous editor, Justin Greer, was always available when I had queries, and for that I owe him my gratitude. The cooperation of the editing staff enabled us to review submissions much more efficiently. Our fiction editor, Dusty Cooper, readily accepted the slushpile of writing I forwarded to him, and he also supplied this issue’s cover image. Our selected poetry pieces were first read and commented on by the poetry editor, Ashley Williams, who did an exceptional job narrowing down selections for the prize edition. The visual art editor, Brooke Bajon, and film editor, Nicholas Brilleaux, allowed us to incorporate a greater breadth of artistry into Manchac Online. The members of the Writing Center, namely our Director, Dr. Jason Landrum, and Public Relations Consultants, Ms. Natalie Rich and Ms. Amber Silvers, provided much-needed assistance. Dr. Landrum dealt with the clumsiness of a new editor and led me through the jungle of red tape on the road to publication, and Ms. Rich and Ms. Silvers enabled us to advertise calls for submissions and any journal-related events. The talent and range of writers represented in this issue are impressive. Many walks of life are explored in each story and poem, beginning with the mysterious, amusing conflict in the opening story between a magician and a literary junkie, and ending with the ominous exchange between a damaged father and his two sons. I am proud to provide these writers the opportunity to showcase their talents, and am especially thankful for readers like you who are willing to give them the opportunity to shine.

Chad Foret Editor Letter from the Editor

Gretchen Hintz Gentlemen’s Duel 1 Krunal Khatri A Puff of Smoke 7 Carey Brooks Prisoners 8 Michael Selser Children’s Rush 14 Teary-Eyed Skyline 15 Marley Stuart Ruth 16 Nick BeJeaux An Ode to the iPhone 19 Shane D. O’Hara Kingdom Come 20 Dominique Ficklin When It Rains 23 Finals Week 24 Priyanka Mehta Sins and Sinners 25 Gretchen Hintz Non-Contact 32 Lunch Duty 33 Zachary Nelson Monster, Manunkind 34

Contributors Submission Guidelines

Gentlemen’s Duel G r e tc h e n H i n t z

No one takes much notice of Hawthorne, Nevada. Located almost dead center between Las Vegas and Reno, it’s less a locale and more a ten-minute detour for tourists. Most of the residents there complain about being shackled to a town with no real future, but strong, eager men planted themselves there after the gold rush bust, and pulling up old roots takes effort. Even the younger generation, with their fists balled up while spitting hatred for their dull hometown, so close to cities of promise and attainable wealth, couldn’t bring themselves to depart for more than a day or two. Only the dry desert sand sometimes struck off on its own, past the city limits and over the surrounding mountains never to return. Their escape from Hawthorne being highly unlikely, the residents once attempted to bring in new revitalizing blood to the town for a short-term or long-term transfusion. Unfortunately, all Hawthorne, and much of the West, is known for are geological findings. The recent decision to garishly paint the outside of the Mineral Country Museum was a failed endeavor to attract the untapped teenage geology-hobbyist crowd. It was immediately repainted in sage within three months, and no one ever spoke of it again. After two years of plans and ordinances to put Hawthorne on the map, it remained the ketchup stain it always had been. The population numbers did not budge 1 in either direction. When one relic thought fit to return to the dirt, one was born to a regretful mother. But, eventually, the perpetually weather-beaten residents were rewarded with a vivacious outsider. Their population increased from 3,714 to 3,715 thanks to a new settler: a Mr. Thaddeus Kelsey. Previous profession: drifter. Current profession: part-time derelict, part-time dawdler. Kelsey happily took up residence there, studied the town and its residents better than even the mayor had, yet he still had never received his polite welcome to Hawthorne. No other tramp had the fortitude to remain as long as he had, most choosing to put on their modest drifter boots once more and depart for greener pastures. They migrated to the south, where people were intoxicated and wallets more likely to fall out of pockets undiscovered. But Kelsey was a diligent man. Day in and day out he stood where 95 intersects with 359, the only major intersection within the city and the only route that one could escape the city from. It was on this corner that a not remotely famed oddity also existed. In the 20s, a traveling snake oil salesman had seen potential in the location and brought out his soapbox on the curb to promote his wares. Preachers and other men with a dire need to be heard emerged and did the same. The town officials, just as desperate as their future relations, installed a permanent “soap box” to encourage speakers and traders, but it was soon forgotten when the Wild West lost its mystique and salesmen stopped coming. The once coveted block of cement only found acknowledgment when some person tripped Manchac Review

over it haphazardly. Kelsey must have felt a kinship. Every day Kelsey stood there, the northeast corner, directly in front of the Bank of America, punctually arriving at 9 a.m., taking a very short lunch break, and then, with vigor, he approached the rest of his workday until 5 p.m. Never taking sick days, he was always there in his ecru tweed jacket and tie, which he kept relatively clean and pressed given his circumstances. His presence, sign in hand, became a staple of daily life in Hawthorne that no one desired. It was impossible to deposit a check without having to cross “that lunatic with his dreadful sign.” No one stood there long enough to discover that he was fluent in three languages and held two doctorates. He felt no need to wave his numerous publications and awards at the residents. It was not Dr. Kelsey’s desire to be revered by the people of Hawthorne. Any town with any type of salt-of-the-earth residents would have sufficed when he chose to uproot and relocate; Hawthorne won the draw simply because Dr. Kelsey held the author of the same name close to his heart. Three years of diligent punctuality on Dr. Kelsey’s part did not aid in Hawthorne’s stagnating population crisis. His cardboard sign was open to everyone, without prejudice, offering a legitimate trade transaction. But none granted him the opportunity to enrich their town with a bit of small business. He and the faux soapbox kept each other company (as well as a duo can when one party is mute), both too unusual to meld seamlessly into Hawthorne’s distinctly unremarkable flush landscape. One morning Dr. Kelsey made his usual commute to work by foot, to find 2 that another usurped his position. Dr. Kelsey pondered many self-indulgent reasons for the loss of his beloved pulpit before deciding to confront the man. Despite recent attempts to overcome his vice of scrutinizing people at a quick glance, he judged the man and was frankly offended by such a replacement. The man was just a little younger than himself, maybe around thirty-five, and looked like the expired lead singer of that one popular grunge band, though the corpse probably looked more presentable. Dr. Kelsey’s eyes rolled up towards the sky as he reflected on how most homeless men coveted plaid shirts and loose jeans as a means to grasp tightly onto the 1990s, as though all of the “good old times” could come back if their clothes remained loyal to that time alone. Such contemplation often grabbed the aging scholar at inopportune times: during lectures, at home, or at the onset of a street scuffle. The children were the first residents of Hawthorne to overhear the argument at its onset. They noticed an uproar erupting over the typically subdued voices in town and took interest and flight. Gradually the mothers noticed the absence of their children and the unsavory direction that their kids had dashed off to. Their feet clacked in unison across the pavement; their minds mulled over the speeches that they would later give their children about “those types” of people. But no one was prepared for the sight that accompanied all of the shouting. Dr. Thaddeus Kelsey’s sign, well-maintained and clearly painted, still read as it always did: “Will invoke the muses for food or story.” The new straggler’s dirt-stained sign meanwhile read: “Will perform magic for your attention.” The new man clearly was offering the better deal according to the onlookers. Gentlemen‘s Duel

The concrete soapbox showed no clear preference towards either opponent. The competition of two hobos over a block of carved concrete on the corner of an intersection in the middle of nowhere was too novel to be ignored. In the span of a week, the crowds grew. People took off of work or flooded in during their lunch breaks to behold the spectacle with their own eyes. On the northwest curb of the Highway 359/95 intersection stood the awkward stranger, whom Dr. Kelsey had fondly named “Holgrave,” performing slight-of-hand illusions and card tricks. Dr. Kelsey stood on the opposite corner, delighted to finally show the people of Hawthorne just what a muse and a bard are. The balding manager of the Hawthorne Bank of America came out a few times raging, his cheeks flushed and shaking his fist to the heavens, but was booed back into his bank at every turn. To the left, a silver bauble turned infinitely, refusing to be defeated by the laws of gravity. Turn right and you’d be greeted with a majestic recollection of a mortal hero fearlessly facing a god on the battlefield. Left, never-ending patches of color pulled from a breast pocket, a unique rainbow with no end. Right, a woman’s prayers for her long-missing husband and king. The community was starting to feel some hometown pride for Kelsey and speculated whether he could indeed be brilliant in addition to being deranged. Despite the novelty of magic being enticing, he had drawn in his share of the crowd. The crowd hadn’t known what he was doing exactly, but those dramatic words he kept spouting were about people who seemed to be important. Every once in a while, Dr. Kelsey would stop reciting and ask to be told a story as compensation, and his crowd would be respectful enough to simply ignore this odd quirk of his. 3 While Dr. Kelsey was drawing in many of the adults, Holgrave enamored the children. Many had watched him perform everyday and were just as marveled by his magic tricks after seeing them for the fifth or sixth time. Dr. Kelsey couldn’t deny that Holgrave did have some talent and a charm that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was different from the charm that his ex-wife often recalled Dr. Kelsey lacked after they were married. Charm was not a quality that he put much stock in anymore. But Holgrave’s charm was unique; not a bit of charisma was present as he concentrated on his tricks, but there was a dedicated focus and ease to how his hands performed flawless illusions just inches away from curious eyes. Never blinking, never looking at the crowd unless they were a part of the trick, the crowd likewise could not look away either. On Sunday, a reporter from Reno approached the two men, putting on her best toothy, wide-eyed reporter face and straining to keep it frozen in that unnatural smile. She wanted to televise a short segment on them for the Monday evening news. They’d both do one last performance; winner takes all all( being a block of concrete, a peculiar detail that would most likely be underplayed in the broadcast). The crowd would choose who was the best entertainer of Hawthorne’s street dwellers. Both men agreed to the terms mostly because of sheer exhaustion after a week of solid performances. Dr. Kelsey in particular was still jovial but worn out nonetheless. He had received financial payment, never stories, for all of his effort. His only payoff was getting to eat a substantial Manchac Review

dinner each night. Holgrave still appeared to be energized, though it was difficult to judge if his spirits were ever up, his face constantly covered in shadow and solemnity. The agreement was made. The next day the fight for the pulpit, the kingdom, nay, their very identities, was at stake. Dr. Kelsey could not help but wonder if this was all just a bit too familiar to a life long ended. Somehow it seemed to him that he was travelling in a circle just as worn as his path to and from the concrete soapbox each day. The early morning sun peaked over the surrounding mountains and the sparse and scattered buildings of Hawthorne. Dr. Kelsey awoke from his back alley literary fortress in good spirits. As the location of their duel came into sight, Dr. Kelsey’s shadow followed behind him ominously like a black cat as each of his footsteps echoed loudly. The buildings created dark shadows that set the atmosphere quite impressively, inspiring Dr. Kelsey to dig into his pockets for a scrap of paper to record the mood of the scene in the framework of grandiose metaphors. Coming out of the low shadows from the opposite direction, a little too perfectly timed, appeared Holgrave. “Good morning, sir. Are you prepared for your demise?” Holgrave smiled for the first time in Dr. Kelsey’s presence. “I was working on some new card tricks last night and something that is so original that it can’t be topped. What have you prepared, professor?” “I rehearsed an excerpt from one of Inferno’s cantos,” beamed Dr. Kelsey, “and a personal favorite from Goethe’s Faust, and I plan to win over the crowd finally with 4 Hamlet’s ‘What piece of work is a man’.” “I think I read Hamlet back in high school. We were halfway into it when Dad pulled me out of school. . . . How does it end?” “Everyone dies, dramatically.” “Well that’s pretty convenient of them. By the way, my name is John, John Richards . . . though I like the sound of Holgrave, wherever you pulled that crazy name from.” “I believe you already overheard my name, but it’s Thaddeus Kelsey. Pleasure to meet you formally on this day of days.” They shook hands. While setting up their performance areas on opposing corners, using the best methods allotted to men with no steady income, they continued to speak freely, comforted by the unseen barrier that separated them from those asleep within their homes. Dr. Kelsey, an expert at listening and deciphering, added little about himself. But he learned much about John. He had a commonplace backstory, though still worthy of inspiring a tear or two if it was recounted on television. His father was a mechanic and attempted on many occasions to get him to appreciate the mechanics of a car: the inner workings of the carburetor, the growl of an eight-cylinder engine. That which is inspirational and the artistry of one’s man life does not always hold true to another. It just would not take with him. Young John was not shaken from his atrophy until he saw his first David Copperfield nighttime special. An eighteen-wheeler Gentlemen‘s Duel completely vanished right before his eyes. That was artistry and power to John, not becoming a god but playing the part to perfection so that it might raise doubts in onlookers. But John’s father pulled him out of school in his senior year to help in the business and soon succumbed to a fatal heart attack. John ran the shop for five years until his mother and sisters found a way to rely on relatives and made their way. John decided his dreams had been put on hold for too long and took for the road, longing for someone, anyone, to see him through years of built up oil and gasoline—to believe in what he did and what he didn’t do. Dr. Kelsey received his first worthwhile story for free, and it rang out as clearly as truth can—with building kinetic energy and a lot of familiar resonance. At 10 a.m., the biggest crowd yet surrounded both men. There were numerous news vans parked in the area, word reaching other stations since the offer from KRNV. John’s initial threat was serious; he performed stunning tricks with the most unusual odds and ends found on the streets, a magical MacGyver with interwoven rubber bands and beer bottles. But Dr. Kelsey orated with a passion he had not felt in years. He absorbed the audience’s energy, sensed the miracles being performed feet away, and the words escaped him: . . . for all the gold that is beneath the moon, / or that ever was, of these weary souls could not / make a single one repose. He remembered his old office at UCLA. The poster from the production of Faust that he alone on staff was given tickets to by the president of the university. The novelty phallic bust of Aristophanes that he received the previous Christmas sat 5 upon his desk on top of the copy of The Divine Comedy that he was supposed to be transcribing. There were endless papers to grade and faculty running in and out with frantic issues needing to be solved. His essays and criticisms consistently achieved worldwide acclaim; scholars quoted him in their research. A queue of students was desperate to get into his classes purely because of his notoriety. The pile of research materials grew and shifted while the literature in his reading pile collected dust. The crowd’s cheers heightened. They grew in number on both curbs. Out of the corner of his eye Dr. Kelsey spotted what appeared to be a levitating dachshund, ears flattened like the wings of an airplane. A woman was screaming out “Wolf! Oh, God, Wolf!” desperately at the dog, but the rest of the bystanders were applauding. He felt his audience leaving him for John’s corner or to bombard the news cameras, desperate to have their face immortalized for a couple of seconds, but Dr. Kelsey was too swept up to care. The words, the stories, they were all that really mattered, but no one seemed to understand. His second recitation flooded out: Poor son of Earth, how couldst thou thus alone / Have led thy life, bereft of me? / I, for a time, at least, have worked thy cure; / Thy fancy’s rickets plague thee not at all: / Had I not been, so hadst thou, sure, / Walked thyself off this earthly ball. His wife walked out the front door, luggage in hand. She made one more comment about how he was a dead man standing in front of her. The cheap brass engagement ring that went missing twice and both times found by him under potted Manchac Review

plants sat alone on the bare dining room table. There was screaming, mention of being “jealous of titles,” the front door slammed, and a framed wedding portrait dropped to the floor. What is this quintessence of dust? / man delights not me; / no, nor woman neither, / though, by your smiling, / you seem to say so. Words, beautiful words, looped within Dr. Kelsey’s head. He was back there in the seminar room. Amidst his duties as department head and with scholarly publications, he had one or two classes at most per semester. His intention was to simply present the class with a believable imitation of the techniques of Ancient Greek tragedy theatre, but then, with each new beautiful phrase he uttered, a heat grew within him. A feeling of real passion, intimate though spoken before dozens of ears, returned to him for the first time in many years. His mind was soaring and his zeal for the elaborate illusion, truer than any reputation, could not be described through any human language. As his eyelids parted, he beheld students with their attentions elsewhere. The interior world reawakened, his place in his castle, built on foundations of knowledge and title, revealed itself to be both moot and mute in relevance—a family curse passed down for generations. The monarch is merely a figurehead covered in glittering ornaments. By his own doing, Dr. Kelsey had gradually become a golden wrapper around a package of sawdust. Dr. Kelsey never returned to the campus since he regained his misplaced passion for life. No one understood it, the realization grabbed him quickly, and he 6 never looked back. All Dr. Kelsey could think to do was to go in headfirst and make up for lost time and disprove his wife’s assessments of his character. There was little doubt who would win the competition for the corner. John had a strong desire to be seen while Dr. Kelsey gradually shrank more and more behind the images he uttered. Somehow John devised grand explosions for his final act. Colorful lights and fire flew from his fingertips like a modern-day Merlin. One little girl in pigtails watched the fireworks without blinking, her mouth agape. Holding her breath, so in awe of these godlike feats, she passed out right before Holgrave finished his final act. Dr. Kelsey gladly accepted his defeat with a simple laugh shared with himself. Not only did John win the sacred pulpit, but a contract to perform magic in Las Vegas. You may know him by his stage name, Holgrave the Magician of a Million Wonders. Dr. Kelsey, by a fortunate circumstance, was returned to his important pulpit where he decided to remain for perhaps another month before setting off on a different journey. He still considers himself the true victor and watches the papers for signs of John’s inevitable aversion to fame. The episode with that little pigtailed girl, Dr. Kelsey was sure, would end up being the peak moment of Holgrave’s career. A Puff of Smoke K r u n a l K h atr i

A puff of smoke

A sip of whiskey

Lonely by my side,

Happy before me, and Sad behind.

I walk the open spaces with Lonely, Happy and Sad.

For Happy is nothing without Sad 7 and Sad is nothing without Lonely. Manchac Review Prisoners C a r e y B ro o ks

Behind a Baton Rouge gas station near Louisiana State University, a young man led a boy to visit a captive. Beastly though this prisoner was, confinement was all it had ever known, freedom a foreign state. The older male escorted the younger across a walkway of cracked concrete. Bare trees stretched out their arms, making the two duck. They were strangers, and this was a professional relationship, a business transaction. They would have to be quick. The sun was getting weary, and the young boy would have to return home soon. The scraping of their feet across fallen leaves made up for the lack of conversation. A crisp breeze blew. It smelled like Halloween. The walk lasted longer than the boy anticipated. “So you really got this thing, huh . . . Sir?” “Call me Brian,” the older male said. “Of course! Why do you think we’re called Tony’s Tiger Station?” Brian looked at the little boy again and scoffed. They approached a bone-white concrete structure. A dimly lit opening leered opposite the gas station. It was lined with lightly rusted vertical bars. “Now see for yourself, buddy. We really got this thing.” The young boy approached the cage and observed the big cat. It was plopped 8 down in the most shadowed corner, breathing slowly. Ribs were visible through the cat’s striated muscle and its thin coat. The creature appeared to be more of a carpet than a beast to the boy, its fur looking like piano keys with orange juice spilled over them. The kid slouched. “What’s wrong with it?” he asked. “What do you mean, what’s wrong with it?” Brian said. “He’s starved! He looks like he couldn’t hurt a fly.” “Nah, man, he’s just a vegetarian, like me.” A moment passed as the child stood silently. The tiger’s tail swayed lazily. “Tell you what,” he said as he went to the opposite end of the cage to fetch something. “You’re right. He could use a little beef. Another twenty bucks and I’ll let you feed him yourself.” The boy hesitated as Brian handed him the bucket of beef jerky. “C’mon, you can never do this at the zoo.” Twenty bucks lighter and a half-pound of beef jerky heavier, the boy walked toward the cage. “Hey, hey! Not too close now, and don’t go one step farther. Tony ain’t safe around nobody but me.” The young boy rolled his eyes, but obeyed. He stood tossing the strips of jerky one by one between the cage bars. It was not until the fourth toss that Tony groggily rose up to dine on his fifth snack of the day. The boy continued until half the bucket was gone. “So you can make him behave?” the boy asked. “How do you mean?” asked Brian. Prisoners

“He won’t bite you? You can make him tamer?” “Well, yeah. Me, and only me, so….” The young boy reached into his pocket. “I’ll give you another twenty if you make him let me pet him.” Tempted, Brian stared at the bill for a moment, trying to pretend as if he found the notion funny. Another moment passed, and he looked back at the tiger biting into the jerky. “Get your own tiger, kid.” “Well, how did you get him anyway?” said the boy, shoving the money back into his front pocket. “What do you mean get,” Brian said, running a hand through his own orange hair. “He’s my brother. Can’t you tell?” The boy stared, unimpressed, and shook his head. “That’s stupid,” he said as he pulled a small camera from his pocket, walking right up to the cage. The tiger looked up from his food, squinting at the boy. The boy blinked and snapped a photograph of the tiger. A bright flash seared into the feline’s vision. Suddenly, Tony swiped his claws through the cage toward the boy. Brian’s arms wrapped around the boy, pulling him back. Tony arched his body in a crouching position and belted out a roar that blew through both of them. “Dear God, are you crazy?” Brian yelled, thumping the child on the back of the head. The young boy scuffled to his feet, tripped, then managed to get up and run away. Brian watched the boy flee, hoping the kid would not call attention to the scene. 9 Trying to catch his breath, Brian sat down against a tree a few feet from the cage. His nerves were still anxious, his heart uneasy. He closed his eyes, stretched, and took a breath to regain his composure. When he looked up, Tony was still aggravated, pacing back and forth in the relatively small cage. Poor bastard, Brian thought as he stared through the metal bars. Better him than me though. At least he isn’t smart enough to understand what everyone on the outside says about him. People’s assumptions often bothered Brian. It was hard to take care of such an awesome creature. Television networks have set a standard of what a healthy tiger looks like, making people think Tony was somehow a mere plush toy. Tony finally calmed down. He grunted. Brian shook his head in frustration. But something else bothered Brian more about the kid, though. No one that came to visit the tiger ever really questioned how Tony was obtained. He feared growing speculation would attract the authorities. Sure, a couple of people would ask where Tony came from sometimes, but would not really persist after being told he was from Asia. How Brian got Tony was something he had not thought about in a long time. It was five years ago that Brian was fired from being an animal feeder at the city zoo. Allegedly, he stole a thousand dollars among various other unrelated charges. The evidence against him was not credible, but Brian was the only employee with a criminal history, so the managers of the State Capitol Zoo had no doubt he was the Manchac Review

culprit—which he was. With all the distress over the missing money, no one noticed another missing item: a set of janitor keys. Soon after Brian was fired, Hurricane Cathy was about to strike, putting the zoo in jeopardy. She was expected to blow through the center of Baton Rouge, and many speculated she would destroy the zoo. All of the animals were being shipped off to North Louisiana in cages. Aware that the zoo’s tiger had just given birth to a litter of cubs, Brian decided to take advantage of the situation. A few nights before the scheduled shipping, video footage that was never watched captured two young men running from the zoo gates; one was holding a baby tiger concealed in a blanket. “Man, you already have all these other charges, so how is stealing this thing going to help again?” asked Brian’s friend, Freddie, as they made their way back to their apartment. “Because, no one’s ever gonna find out. And after a while, I’ll have enough money to pay off the fines, or just live off the royalties in Mexico. I haven’t decided yet.” The baby tiger squirmed in Freddie’s hands and let out a tiny squeal. Friction itched down Freddie’s arms. His nostrils filled with steam, and he sneezed onto Brian. “Jeez, what is this cat doing to me?” Brian laughed, “Probably what every furry creature does to you, man. It’s obvious I’m going to have to take care of this little guy all by myself.” He took the tiger from Freddie. 10 “Well, this scheme is a bit farfetched if you ask me. Until then, the station is the only thing we have to support us. You’re lucky you’re the only friend I got.” And it was true. Freddie’s parents had died five years before in a car crash, leaving what would become Tony’s Tiger Station in Freddie’s inheritance when he turned eighteen. Brian grew up with parents that might as well have been dead. He always hung around and stayed at Freddie’s family’s house anyway, so when the house grew empty, the two boys living together became a permanent arrangement. Not so much living in the house itself, but the condition of the two boys being inseparable. When the house’s bills became too much, they moved into a less expensive apartment together. Every endeavor one boy pursued was encouraged by the other. Without a cage yet constructed, the little tiger had to stay in their apartment for awhile. Freddie insisted on taking the elevator for fear of a mishap down the stairs with the little cub. Brian reluctantly agreed. They entered the elevator; Brian took a breath as the metal doors clanged shut behind him. Brian felt sick in the stiff air. He slowly traced his free hand along the side rail taking a spot in the far corner with the baby tiger tightly in his grasp. Settled in, button pressed, Brian exhaled. He nervously watched the light that flickered off above his head and the floor monitor, unsure if someone might come in and discover them. Their floor seemed like an eternity away. The usually talkative free spirit remained silent while ascending the apartment complex. Freddie ineffectively suppressed a smile. Brian then decided, no matter how many flights of stairs it took, he would rather climb them than be trapped in that box. Prisoners

Today like every day, Tony’s Tiger Station was boring. Oil from the hot dog machine filled the air with its scent as a breeze blew through a crack in the glass door. Fliers for missing dogs, erectile dysfunction pills, and local garage bands flitted under push pins on the cork board. Behind the counter, Freddie swayed back and forth on a metal stool as he habitually slid the cash register open and shut. He listened to the jangling of the machine’s bell and the clanging coins inside. Beneath the register Freddie kept the lottery tickets and a .22 revolver that he never had to use. Luckily, Tony’s Tiger Station was in a particularly safe area of town. Freddie opened the lowest drawer and traced his finger along the edges of a box of bullets. The gun and its bullets had belonged to Freddie’s father when he owned the store. Freddie tossed the box back into the open drawer and watched the world through the window. This is how most of Freddie’s time passed in the store, with or without Brian lurking around with his side business. Freddie stared blankly as the television screen behind him hummed. A football game was on. A feeling in his gut made him worry. He looked around for something in the store that was out of place to keep him busy. Unfortunately, everything was tidy. Freddie was about to start counting the ceiling tiles when he noticed a little boy that had bought some Skittles earlier outside the window. He was running from behind the gas station down the street. His dark hair flew behind him, his movements were frantic. Freddie’s gaze followed the boy to the bus stop until he was out of view. His stomach churned. 11 Eventually Freddie grew distracted again and started watching the game. Physical mashing and smashing lost its context in Freddie’s running imagination and soon the players were merely colors painted across his television set. Flashes of gold, navy, and orange slathered into a meaningless blur. Ding, ding, ding! The bell above the door resonated as someone walked in. It was an abrupt gait. The rubber soles of authority. Freddie turned around to find a man dressed in blue. It was Officer Murphy. “Smells great in here. Good job,” the officer said. “Hey,” said Freddie. “How ya do, Fred?” “Not too bad. Yourself?” “Good, good.” Officer Murphy looked at the television. “Brigham Young versus Auburn, eh? So it’s . . . Mormons versus rednecks.” “Yeah.” Murphy stood straight and sighed. “Plain and simple, Fred—you boys are lucky they let you keep that thing. And I know y’all are doing your best, so I try to ignore most complaints. But there’s not much more I can do when I got little kids running up to my station talking about a starved, bloodthirsty beast almost swattin’ their head off. I promised your aunt I’d do Manchac Review

whatever I could to protect y’all long as I could, but if some less familiar cops come around and aren’t satisfied, you know what’s gonna happen next.” Freddie started attending to store duties as if Officer Murphy wasn’t there, but kept a wary ear. Murphy continued. “They’ll check both of your background information, and you should be fine, but Brian—with his crimes stacked sky high—not so much. And if they put him away, you know it’ll be for a good long time.” Freddie was silent as he swept the already clean floor. The broom handle was shaking a little. “Y’all take care now, Fred.” The bell rang again and the door shut once more. Freddie threw the broom down and paced back and forth. He stomped his foot and threw a potato chip rack to the floor. Freddie was about to punch his fist into the thin wooden wall when he felt his arm being sucked backwards. “What the hell are you doing?” Brian said, still holding on to Freddie’s arm. Freddie relaxed his bicep. “Officer Murphy said they’re coming for you. All because of that damn tiger. You didn’t take care of it well enough! Look at us! I can’t let them take you away. I’ve got to do something!” “Calm down, calm down... No one’s going to take me. They’re too stupid.” “You’re stupid! I’m tired of you thinking you can pull one over on everyone.” Freddie shook as he locked eyes with Brian. 12 “What? We have a permit. It’s completely legal,” Brian said. Freddie threw his hands in the air as breath escaped his body. “But for how long, Brian? For how long? Sooner or later someone’s going to ask where we got it, and they’re going to press hard. When they realize we stole it, your war with the law is going to be over, and I’m going to be taken down with you. I’ve got to do something.” Freddie walked toward the counter. “What are you doing?” Brian asked. “Putting it out of its misery,” Freddie said as he bent down behind the counter. “No!” Brian ran up behind Freddie and tried to pry Freddie’s grip from the gun with both of his hands. Freddie elbowed Brian in the face with his right arm and secured his grasp on the weapon. Brian fell backward, knocking over cigarette boxes, energy pills, and batteries hanging on the wall. As Freddie walked away, Brian got up in a stagger. He lifted his head to see his friend Freddie holding the revolver aimed at his chest. Freddie cocked the gun. The two stood breathless. Almost ten seconds passed before Brian slowly lifted his hands in defeat, and Freddie spoke. “This—is for the best, Brian. You’ll see.” And he left. Brian waited a full minute and then pressed his back against the wall. He slowly slid to the floor, trying to regain his thoughts. He was still hazy from the blow Freddie put on his head. He began to tidy up the mess when he noticed the bottom drawer ajar. He opened it further and saw the box of bullets. Brian lifted the box with Prisoners woeful curiosity; it was completely full. Brian grabbed the bullets and sprinted toward Freddie. In the distance Brian could see Freddie entering the cage. He was a terrible shot, nervous in his resolve. Freddie approached Tony, sprawled out at the end of the cage, opposite from the entrance. Brian could see his friend hesitate, really staring at the sleeping tiger for the last time. And perhaps the first time. Freddie cocked the gun. Short on breath, Brian swallowed back a warning and watched in horror as Freddie tried to fire. The sound that came from the peashooter was hollow like the crack of a whip on a smooth surface. The click still managed to disturb the tiger. Tony recoiled in confusion, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring at the stranger. Freddie froze, staring stupidly at the gun. Brian finally reached the cage, but only to see Tony lunge from a crouching position, pinning Freddie against the bars. His claws were sinking into the sides of Freddie’s chest. Tony’s mouth reared back showing proud white teeth. “No!” Brian screamed while opening the entrance of the cage. Tony hesitated. He recognized the roar of his father, his master. Tony turned away from his prey as the metallic squeaking agitated the evening air. The cage’s door completely yawned, and all the of the prison air deflated. Tony ran toward the entrance to the world. Escaping the metal and concrete, his muscles sank into the grass, wholesome and pure. Tony rushed past Brian, his paws digging into the soft earth. The tiger disappeared across the road and behind a patch of trees. Brian called an ambulance. Then he hoisted his friend Freddie from the cage 13 and propped him against a tree. Freddie spoke between choking noises. “Just—just go. There’s nothing. Take the money, all the earnings, and go.” Freddie’s gaze was weak. Brian shook his head in confusion. “You know what will happen if you stay. You’ve got to go.” Brian sat in silence. Soon the ambulance came. Brian helped the paramedics lift Freddie onto the gurney. One of the paramedics spoke. “Your friend needs you now. Are you coming?” Brian looked into Freddie’s eyes, pleading for one last response as to what he should do. Freddie tried to speak, but all he could do was cough onto Brian’s face. Brian closed his eyes. The sirens squealed in pulses, scorching through Brian’s cluttered thoughts like a choir of angels singing off key. The humid stench of frayed flesh made Brian clench his eyes even tighter. Brian tried to imagine a world empty enough for a bad friend and a tiger to roam about freely, and a world without Freddie. Brian took a deep breath as the heavy doors of the metal cube clicked and swung open. “Son, are you going or not?” the paramedic said to Brian as Freddie was taken from him into the little square room. The vehicle was impatient and humming loudly. Brian wept. He opened his eyes and peered inside. Manchac Review Children’s Rush M i c h a e l S e l s e r

If I had strength to love you more than now You would know it from the cravat I’d wear Around my neck like rings that flare and glow In burning light of effervescent air Bemoaning cries from mind to mind will bring The heart to find a heart within the haze And if the beating fist will fight or sing Then eyes will meet the god that they so praise But while I sit and stare at glories wrought From ground to sky and past the treetop brush I wonder what Prometheus has brought To fan the ardor of the children’s rush Perhaps one day I’ll hear the call come through That tells me life still breathes if I have you

14 Teary-Eyed Skyline M i c h a e l S e l s e r

Tired of fighting birds For their feathers Wearing unshaven faces Eating unpolished apples It always leads back to this Ineffable efficacy That tastes like burnt pans And unclean ovens

I’m tired of the whole stinking mess The same changes from sad to sailing Over ailing widow moaning waves That reach shore after shore Before they fall back and flat-line freely to the sediment This walking just to walk As if the marble stones were cut For my feet to stamp out clouds of dust 15

If that dust were made To mix with gas in the vacuous aftermath Then, blessed be you: the able-bodied For you are the key-keepers Who unlock shocks of gold That flow, sweet-laced, over tangled hair and plains

As I’ve lived twenty-three years in succession I find quite a light in assured paternity The unflinching assurance That I am the trapper of the troubadour The trampler of mountain planes and forest floors And with every breath and breathing thing I tie the tracks together with broken veins and strings Manchac Review Ruth M a r l e y St ua r t

“You’re never going to believe what happened.” Every conversation with Ruth, it seems, begins with these words. It’s always one thing or another. That’s what people say about her, “It’s always one thing or another with that girl.” I’d know more than others, I suppose. I tell myself it’s not helping to keep answering her phone calls, but I can’t resist. Despite our history, her stories always make me smile. “There are mice in my condo,” she tells me in a tone to suggest mice are the worst of the worst. Ruth lives in the apartments by the river – “condos” as they’re marketed – miniature homes all stacked on top of each other. There is a manicured community lawn circling the complex and a high fence that surrounds it all, smack dab in the middle of a once-small town in Southeast Louisiana. Ruth’s mother and some cousins live there too, only a few floors above and below. “These mice got into my food and – ugh! – You know they’re from those nasty people next door. Mice don’t just wander in! That’s exactly what they do, I think. “Lay out some traps,” I say. “What, and then have dead mice in here? There simply is no solution,” and she hangs up. This is another trademark of our conversations, that we never say goodbye. Someone always hangs up. 16 What she does, she tells me later (“you’ll never believe what happened”), is drive her white suburban to the supermarket and buy two or three bottles of wine and a quart of imported olive oil, secure in her resolution to watch cop shows on TV and forget all about the mice. In the white marble lobby of the complex, her hands full of shopping bags, she lifts a leg to kick the elevator call button. It is higher than she expects and she gets it, barely, but drops all the bags. Somehow, the wine bottles bounce at her feet, loud in the empty lobby. The big tin of olive oil splits open and slowly heaves out its sweet-smelling, green contents across the white marble floor. The elevator doors open and out steps her mother, dressed to the nine’s, who stops at the scene and lifts a hand to her mouth. “Oh.” Ruth is bent over the slowly spreading green puddle, using the crinkled plastic bags to wipe the oil from the wine bottles. “There are mice now,” is all she manages, as she walks past her mother and into the elevator. “Someone will clean this up,” motioning at the ever growing puddle of oil. Her mother grins and steps around the puddle with exaggerated high-heeled steps as the elevator doors close. In the kitchen of her apartment, Ruth places the slick bottles in the sink, turns on the faucet, and looks for a rag with which to wipe off the oil. On the counter is a loaf of olive bread, which she had hoped to eat toasted and drizzled with the oil. There are crumbs and shreds of plastic on the counter and the floor. Mice have gotten into the bread bag. Ruth

Her eyes cloud and she throws the bread away, hard into the trashcan, even though only a corner has been chewed. She surveys the dark apartment. The mice now seem an unavoidable problem. She spends the rest of the night cleaning, determined to lift any crumb or piece of dust that would attract a mouse. She sweeps, mops, and, finally, compulsively dusts the baseboards with a long-handled dust mop. Almost through the wine, she’s beginning to calm down. Anyway, she hasn’t seen any mice and she’s almost finished cleaning when the cloth head of the dust mop slides through a pile of mouse poop, fresh on the mopped kitchen linoleum. A noise like a scream escapes her, then, and in anger she uses the mop like a hockey stick to knock the small pile across the kitchen floor. Her face twists into a scowl, she whirls around, holding the mop over her head like a javelin, and runs barefoot out the open French doors to the balcony. She heaves off the dirty dust mop into the stark orange blare of a Louisiana sunset, and it lands, quivering, straight up in the manicured community lawn, nine floors below. Her ferocious scowl breaks to a snarl, then a wide-eyed stupor, and she sits hard on the concrete balcony and takes deep breaths until she can go back inside.

“You’ll never believe what happened. A Ginger moved in next door.” “You mean the Watsons moved out?” This would be good news; the Watsons are the gross people who are responsible for the mice. 17 “Ugh! They’re still here. No, on the other side, where those people with the cats used to live, a Ginger moved in. He’s tall, with that pale skin, you know, and freckles? He knocked on my door and asked how to get the window open.” “What?” “Yeah, like he didn’t know how, and I might. The guy is kind of a faerie, I guess. Get that, a gay Ginger!” “Well, did you help him out?” “Yeah, I couldn’t pass that up. I went over and worked the window open. It was just jammed, but, oh –” she laughs now, having to get control of herself before she continues “– I saw that fucking mop was still stuck up in the ground and one of those Mexican workers was weed-eating around the thing, like it was supposed to be there! So I tell the Ginger faerie how I threw it out last night, and he just died. I left out the part about the mice and the poop, though. That’s gross.” I feel like my head is spinning. “Wait, so why would you throw it out the window, if it wasn’t covered in mouse poop?” “I just told him I’d had enough. And he asked me out. And I told him I wanted nothing to do with him sexually. And he said, ‘Okay.’ We’re going out to eat at the new bistro across town. Ritzy!” and she hangs up. I put the phone down, which is hot from my face. I can see it all now, their night together, and all that will come after. I’ve been through it all before with her. At dinner she will discover he is an atheist, which “will just not fly,” and, after, on the ride Manchac Review

home, she will find a can of Skoal in his car and she will yell at him for chewing tobacco. But he will quit, and she will fall for him, despite his atheism and freckles. And although he’s effeminate, he will be hers. One night she will pull him naked and unconscious from the community hot tub with the help of a one-armed man from two floors down. His usually pale body will be lobster red and steaming from the lawn while Ruth calls an ambulance. This will far overshadow the olive oil incident, and the Ruth will only like him more for it. They will sneak down one night to the lawn and decorate the dirty dust mop, which will still be there, and by the golden light of dawn they will toast the first Christmas tree of the season. Her mother will not like him and she will like him more. They will go on like that for a while, careless and happy, until she starts to feel trapped by living so close to this new boyfriend, as if they moved in together too soon. She will refer to him as “my neighbor,” when she calls me on the phone. She will tell him she’s sick one night, when she’s not, and she will sneak out into the hall to go see some friends, and he will catch her on accident, getting ice at the machine. She will lose it and then scream that she’s had enough, and she doesn’t want to see him anymore. “We weren’t even really together, remember?” she will say. “Remember what?” he will plead, only being able to recall the good times they had. But she will turn away and, the night’s plans ruined, she will walk back into her room, out the doors and onto the balcony. The dirty dust mop will still be there 18 in the yard, garland like dried vines and tinsel wilted in the fading light of day, hope’s ghost. “Yeah,” she will say and sit and stare at the thing in the yard. “Remember what?” An Ode to the iPhone N i c k B e J e au x

I prithee, shut up. Most compelling of goddesses, shut up!

So commanding is your shrill voice That, had you been born a Siren, Ulysses would have splintered his mast To answer your call.

So ergonomic is your form, friendly To the grasp of the hand the Caresses and gestures of fingers; How addictive you are!

So vast is your repertoire of music, Yet you sing with the voices of others: Adele, Beyonce, Two Chains, etc. Where is your own voice, parrot? 19

I pray you never find it.

For all your perniciousness, You cannot remain ignored. My fellow cultists would Crucify me for my refusal of communion.

I will abide you, Goddess. Even as you shriek and buzz In my pocket. All the while, I prithee, shut up. Manchac Review Kingdom Come S h a n e D. O’H a r a

One thing I know, been knowin about since I went away all them years ago, is what regret is. Lotta folks think its feelin bad bout trangressions and sins past but it aint. Nope. Things you done thru the years, they aint the ones stay with you. Torment you every minute of the day then find you sleepin so they can haunt your dreams too. Its the things you aint done. Those what cause regret pure and true and unbearable. Regret so bad it breaks men, leaves them where they cant never be unbroke. Worst regret I had while in hell them five years, and there was a slew of em, was losin you. I still aint sure why I remember the weather so well, what with all that was runnin through my head on that bus. Bout the longest damn ride anyone could imagine. Hard to believe that dirt road leadin up to them gates is twenty miles long. And it aint nothin but wide open land—the prettiest I ever saw. Kept makin me think its how Gods country would look. They was the greenest grass, all lookin like it was fresh cut and fields of cotton and wheat and okra and squash and corn as far as I could see all swaying as one with the breeze so peaceful like. So nice lookin. I sat with chains around my waist and ankles watchin it all out my window— 20 had a smudge of grey paint looked like a thumb print on the bottom and a lil crack up on the left—all of that land and them crops. All of that beauty. Who’d ever figure that the road to perdition would be so goddamn pretty? That last stretch couldnt of taken us no more than an hour to travel, but it seemed like an eternity. I musta had more thoughts racin through my head that last stretch than during all the years I spent captive there. I was so scared and still hadnt really come to terms with bein found guilty of somethin so terrible. I reckon I still hadnt even reconciled bein said to have done it at all. I kept thinking bout what prison was really gone be like and whether I was gone ever be home again and whether I was gone be killed or raped and what I should do to stop someone wantin to do either. Them thoughts was scarin me more than anything. But then you showed up middle of all that crazy thinkin and replaced them fearful thoughts with your calmin voice and wise words. I could still hear your voice then and it was the most comfortin thing in the world. Your hand on the back a my neck and your eyes—the bluest things I ever seen, even more perfect a blue than the sky. I used to say them eyes was the color God intended on makin the sky, but he rekoned once people looked at it they wasnt gone be able to look away on account of it bein too pretty so he saved that particular shade just for you. I was thinkin bout them eyes when I noticed a ways off the green fields looked to be black like someone had gone an set fire to them. Then I seen movement from that sea of darkness and after lookin a bit longer an harder I known it was people I was

This work the first chapter of the unfinished novel, Kingdom Come. Kingdom Come seein. Convicts workin the fields in black and white stripes. Niggers and whites was out there workin side by side, but there was a lot more niggers than whites. Bus stopped aside them field hands at what was called a “checkpoint” but really wasnt no more than a lil wooden shed with damn near most of it rotted out. While the driver shot the bull I watched all them workin out of my window. Seen this nigger turn an look over when we’s stopped. Had hair white as a cloud. One eye. Where the other one shoulda been was a scar goin from that snowy afro down his eyesocket round his cheek and to the corner of his mouth. The blank socket was lookin on me just as good as the other, if not better. He propped an elbow atop his hoe and took a blue bandanna from a breast pocket and dabbed the sweat from his brow and good eye with it. Before he put the bandana away another inmate but this one a white fella on horseback wearin a straw hat with a wide brim had come up from behind and hit the ole man back a his head with the butt a his rifle. Bus started movin again. I craned my neck and watched the cyclops go to his knees, a splotch of dark red soakin through that white white hair. Whole lot of it was damn near red when he fell to the ground. White fella climbed off his horse and went to hitting him with the butt a that rifle over and over and over again. Side of that nigger’s face with the good eye was in the dirt but the milky white was still showin. Thought I seen it lookin on me, unblinking and empty even as blood seemed to be fillin its socket. Fella in the hat was still hittin on that old nigger when they faded from sight. When the bus stopped next we was just outside the main prison. All was real quiet and still for a while. Dust from the gravel road swirled and looped all about 21 before settling back down to the earth from which it came. Then it began. Men in all black with fully automatic rifles circled the baby blue bus then boarded screaming and hollering to get off get off hurry up move it niggers get the fuck off my bus. When we got out they had us strip bare-ass naked and line up one behind the other nut-to-butt then marched us through the biggest, tallest gate I had ever saw. Big ole arch ran clear across, had these words from one side all the way to the other. They was in a language I ain’t never seen before. It read: Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. I hadnt a notion what it meant. But I’d learn soon enough. They marched us through the archway into a fenced-in sallyport hollerin all the while bout stayin paired up and bout keepin our motherfuckin hands at our sides and off of our cocks to the ones kept tryin cover themselves. While we was bein herded in there was inmates against the fence on both sides of us hollerin and catcallin and sayin all kinds of stuff. With the guards screamin and cussin in my ear and the inmates yellin and cussin at the same time on top of my humiliation at bein stark naked and all, it was all too much for me to take in. I was tryin to keep my eyes ahead and my face from showin any stuff I was feeling, but it wasnt no use. At first it was just a few of em I heard yellin towards me sayin what they was gone do to me once I got on the other side of that fence and how I was gone start payin Manchac Review

rent that night and how good my ass looked and the sort. I knew they was aimin them at me cause I was wearin my glasses and they was callin to four-eyes and blind-boy and the like. Then the whistlin started. The kind of whistlin a fella might do for his girl when she gets all dudded up and looks specially pretty and smells all nice and fresh too like soap and shampoo. The guards started laughin and carrin on too and I could feel my face gettin hot and goin redder than a radish. It was horrible just standin there ass naked and bein spoke to so bad and not bein able to say nothin back or do nothin bout it. It makes me angry some kind of fierce now thinkin back on it, but it didnt make me feel nothin but scared at the time. Scared and alone. I remembered you and what you told me to do if it got real bad or scary in here, which we both knew it was gone be sometimes whether we much liked it or not, so I started thinkin on the 23rd Psalm of David. We memorized it and I was tryin to say it in my head from the beginning but kept messin up and forgettin where I was. Kept bein interrupted by the hollerin and all. Thought it may be better if I did it aloud cause that’s how we did it together. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. I want her in A camp, Sarge! Put the bitch in A! He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yo! Yo, over here sugar! Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Yo bitch! Look! Over here! I will fear no evil: You goin to A ho! Blood on my shank or shit on my dick bitch! Up to you. For thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort Oh yeah I can smell that shit pussy way over here! Smells like love. 22 Couldnt remember no more after that and it wasnt from lack a tryin. I stood naked and sacred waitin for the Lord to help me remember, for his voice to drown out those round me speakin all that evil. I stood waitin patiently, like you said it teaches in the Good Book. Waitin, tremblin, prayin. For nothin. When It Rains D om i n i q u e F i c k l i n

My rut is safe for me to live, so now I’m afraid to leave.

I know every corner, every cranny, and any byways one might take to get there.

My shame is written on these mud walls. The reason I’m here haunts me at every turn of my head.

Waiting so long, knowing you’d never return. I was the leader, the one they looked up to, the one who made the right decisions. 23

I still find comfort in these shameful things because I know them, and they’re all I know. To climb out Would be an admission of shame.

I fear that God would laugh at me, an “I told you so” ringing clearer in my head than ever before.

Instead, I found, when forced to climb out, I cried

And He cried, too. Manchac Review Finals Week D om i n i q u e F i c k l i n

trudging through letters that don’t look like words anymore my body is beginning to look like a tilde like in the word Mañana

there’s always hope in the morrow.

or maybe like araña and the only reason I remember that one is because it looked like “arachnophobia” which reminded me of a movie and I stopped studying 24 and started thinking of large spiders and the web created by Penelope as she weaved while waiting for the return of Ulysses.

that’s when the words began

floating

on the covers of hardback rectangles brown, black and green,

on the fourth floor behind that metal door. Sins and Sinners

Sins and Sinners Pr i ya n k a M e h ta

Here it goes again. The rhythm of its wheels on the track is soothing to me. Mohan thinks it’s irritating, but listening to the sound of the train passing feels like home. The horn is louder than a rooster’s call at four in the morning, though.

I suppose it’s time I woke up. Ma won’t be able to handle Gopi by herself. She seems weary these days. I don’t know how to help her. It’s the milking that’s making her tired. I cross the veranda to the shed next to our home where Ma has already milked Krishna and Ram. She sets a new bucket down and starts milking Gopi. “Ma, you need to rest. Here, I’ll do that. You go back to bed. I’ll make sure to milk enough for everyone.” “Rest? Don’t you tell me to rest! I haven’t rested since that no-good father of yours left us to rot in this village,” she says while milk falls in the bucket in a steady rhythm. Here it goes again. She’s been telling me the same story every few days. I pay attention sometimes. I’ve heard the story so many times in the past that I’ve 25 memorized the words. Sometimes I mouth the words when she’s not looking at me. Each time there’s something new in the story. And today it’s . . . “. . . should have never married an Untouchable.” It’s said in a low voice, more to herself than to me. I wonder if she knows what she’s said. “Father was an Untouchable?” I ask because I must have heard her wrong. “What?” “You said Father was an Untouchable.” The color drains from her face. She stops milking Gopi for a few beats and looks around as if making sure no one had heard me say that. “Of course he wasn’t, Chottu. Don’t let anyone hear you say that. Do you understand me? I don’t ever want you to mention that word to anyone. Do you hear me? Never!” she says while shaking her finger at me. “Yes, Ma. I won’t mention it again.” She sighs, then says, “People in this village are cruel, Chottu. They put on a good mask, but behind closed doors they tear people apart. You were so young when your father left us. Back then, the good women of this village used to stop me on the streets and ask me what I’d done that had made him leave us. I could do nothing but put my head down and walk away because our livelihood depends on these people buying our milk. If I hadn’t walked away, we’d be no better than beggars. Manchac Review

Be a man of action, Chottu, never a man of words. Those are cowards.” By the time Ma finishes milking Gopi, tears well up in her eyes, and I feel bad for being like my brother Murli. The only other time I’ve seen my mother cry was when Murli left home two years ago. I assume my brother had wanted to get out of Gangapur to look for work in Baroda. He is educated, and the city was a better choice for him. The only thing holding him in this dreary place was us. Ma had cried when she’d woken up that morning and saw the letter waving with the wind under the red brick by the door near his cot. He left by the train that’s always on time. Always at four in the morning. “I won’t leave you like Murli,” I say. Her only response is to nod and say, “Go on now. Don’t forget to go by Mrs. Pundit’s house. They’ve stopped using the bottled milk. She complained that the sellers were mixed up with the wrong Caste. Don’t forget to take the money from Mrs. Sharda.” I hang the milk buckets on each side of my bicycle and two on the handles. As I peddle slowly on the well-worn, uneven roads, I think about what Ma said about my father. What if I am an Untouchable? What if someone finds out? Will they see me differently? Will the good people of Gangapur treat us like they treat Mohan and his family? The questions roll around in my mind while I knock on Mr. Yadav’s door. I wonder if he knows he’s buying milk from a possible Untouchable. He doesn’t treat 26 Mohan differently than the other students in the classroom, but I wonder if he would buy milk from Mohan. Mohan has been my friend for two years now, since we were eleven. I’d seen him collecting the wood chips near the carpenter’s shop one day. Some chips were falling out of his hands, so I began to pick them up with him. When I came near Mohan, the carpenter told me to get away from the likes of him. Mohan dropped all the chips on the ground and ran away. I told Ma what had happened and she’d told me to stay away from him. “But why, Ma? He runs away from me in school, too. I just wanted to help him. He always eats lunch by himself, and no one plays with him. It’s his first year in school. I just want him to eat with me.” “He’s not like us. He’s an Untouchable. Having any kind of relationship with an Untouchable is a sin. You can’t be friends with him, do you understand me? No one will want to be your friend. His family is an outcast. They sweep the roads. Do you want to be friends with someone like that?” I’d stayed away from him for a few days. One day, he’d been sick on the playground. The teachers had seen him, but no one had moved to help him. When I brought some water to him, Mrs. Pundit had yelled at me to get away from him. “He’s sick. He needs help. Do something,” I’d yelled. But no one moved from their position. “He’s an Untouchable. We can’t do anything for him,” Mrs. Pundit had Sins and Sinners said and turned away from us. When the teachers had left Mohan on the playground, I made him drink the water. No one was there to see us, or to tell me to get away from him. Mohan was sick, so he couldn’t run away either. Ma had made me bathe with scorching hot water when I told her. I still don’t know why. She wasn’t angry, but Ma told me to never let people see the two of us together. After that day, Mohan stopped running away when I talked to him. “Why did you help?” he asked with a guarded look in his eyes. He stood with his feet apart, ready to bolt any second. “You were sick,” I said as I looked around to see if anyone could see us behind the school building. We would be safe from the eyes here. Mrs. Pundit wouldn’t yell at me for talking to Mohan here. “I’m an Untouchable.” “So? That’s all I’ve been hearing for the past few days. Still don’t see what the big deal is.” I said as I rolled my eyes. I was getting tired of people saying one thing over and over again. “We can be friends as long as we’re not seen. I think we’re safe behind this building and on the train tracks. No one comes out that far.” Mohan seemed puzzled by my answer, but he smiled after a few moments and said, “Thanks.”

The chiming from Mr. Yadav’s clock brings me back to the present. It’s five 27 o’clock. The roosters are crowing, and the birds are singing melodious tunes. This is my favorite time of the day because everything is as it should be. The sky has turned slightly pink, but the sun won’t appear from behind the clouds for at least another hour. I knock on Mrs. Pundit’s door and wait. I’d never liked her much before she refused to help Mohan, but I’ve hated her even more since. The feeling seems mutual, because she treats me even worse after that day by pretending I’ve done part of the homework wrong and making me do it over and over again. She stares at me as if she’s figuring out how to make me confess everything. I slowly measure the milk and pour it in the container she holds out. She wrinkles her nose as if she smells something bad when she sees me. It may be the manure I made sure to step in after I parked my bicycle by the mango tree. She looks almost sick by the time I finish measuring out the milk. It would be a good day. I can’t wait to tell Mohan. He’d think it was childish, but I hate Mrs. Pundit’s guts for making everyone feel as if they’re lower than a snake’s belly. By the time I deliver milk to everyone and turn back to go home, the sun has come up from behind the clouds. I get ready to go to school. I hurry so I can meet Mohan in our usual meeting spot behind the school building. In two years no one has caught us. It feels great to hide from the teachers, especially Mrs. Pundit, because she pretends to know everything about everyone. Manchac Review

When I reach our meeting spot, Mohan is already waiting for me. I tell him about Mrs. Pundit and the manure and he shakes his head at me. Mohan’s like that. His responses are always muted. I’d asked him once why he never laughed. He’d never answered, but tears had filled his eyes. I’d pretended not to see them and never asked again. To this day I haven’t heard him laugh, or make any kind of sound above normal hearing level. “I should be the one to hate her. Just be careful around her, Chottu. She’s more evil than the others,” he says as he bends to take the stones out of his slippers. The school and the roads are littered with rocks of every shape and size. It’s annoying to have to dig them out of the slippers. “I’m always careful. Don’t worry about me. Let’s go back before anyone sees us,” I say as I turn to see if anyone is watching. As we round the corner of the main building, Mrs. Pundit screams at me to get away from Mohan. Her screams bring the few people who are playing on the playground to see what’s going on along with the parents who were chatting outside of the school gate. They’d made a circle around us. No way to escape. Nowhere to run. “I have told you over and over, Chottu, to stay away from him. He is a filthy Untouchable. You were not to go near him. How dare you consort with the likes of him and then touch our food with your filthy hands?” With each word, her voice turns louder and louder until it seems the entire village of Gangapur can hear 28 her. I want to tell her to shut up, but Mohan speaks up before I can and says, “It is not like that. Please.” “Shut up, you filthy boy. How dare you speak to me? I’m a Brahmin. You’ve been nothing but a nuisance since we were forced to admit you to this school. If it were up to me instead of the government, you and your filthy parents would have been dead by now instead of polluting this school.” Her face turns an unnatural color of red by the time she finishes talking to Mohan. “Don’t talk to him like that. It isn’t his fault,” I say as I turn toward Mohan. The look of hurt, anger, and pure hatred on his oval face almost make me turn away from him. I’ve never seen Mohan angry, but at the moment it seems like hatred is pouring out of him and at Mrs. Pundit. He stares a hole into her, and then he picks up a big rock lying at his feet and throws it at her. Mrs. Pundit’s gasp of surprise is followed by her painful screams. Blood is pouring out of the gash on her forehead. The students and their parents who were standing by silently are now screaming at Mohan. I try to pull him away from everyone because they all look murderous that he dared to hurt a Brahmin. Before I touch him, though, Mr. Yadav pulls me away from the crowd. I try to get away from him, but his grip on my shoulders is strong and I can’t move. I yell, but the screaming from the parents and the other students is loud, and my voice is drowned in the face of their anger. Sins and Sinners

Then the rain of stones starts. It’s directed towards the middle of the circle, where Mohan stands staring at the ground. I yell for him to run, and for Mr. Yadav to let me go, but neither hear me. I hear voices yelling “filth” and “should be dead.” I hear Mohan’s screams and the horrible sound of the stones hitting Mohan’s flesh. It’s like listening to a helpless animal’s whining. I shut my ears and close my eyes tightly. Mohan’s painful cries for mercy are ignored from everyone in town, including Mr. Yadav. When the yelling stops after what seems like hours, I see Mohan lying on the ground, covered in blood and lying still. It’s so quiet. I shake him, not caring who sees me touch him, but he doesn’t move. I want to take him to my mother. She would know how to help him, but I won’t be able to carry him alone. I look toward Mr. Yadav and beg him to help me carry him, but he doesn’t so much as take a step toward me. I look toward the villagers for help, forgetting for a moment that they hurt my friend. No one moves. It’s so quiet. At length one of them says, “Good riddance. He was nothing but filth anyway.” I don’t know who said that, but I am disgusted by them. All of them. I am disgusted with myself for not being strong enough to protect my only friend in this godless village. I shake Mohan again to wake him up, but he has gone someplace where I can’t reach him. I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around to see my mother kneel next to me. “They murdered him, Ma. All of them. He’s gone, Ma. He won’t wake up. Do something. Please, do something,” I cry as I hold on to her tightly. 29 Tears are streaming down her face, and I’d sworn I wouldn’t be like Murli. “Shh, no one can help him. Shh,” she keeps saying while she rocks me back and forth in her arms. “She’s filthy, too. She let her son befriend an Untouchable and we’ve been drinking milk delivered by them. She should die with him,” someone cries from the audience. I hear the shouts of assent and the rain of rocks starts again. My mother shields me with her body, but I cannot let what happened to Mohan happen to her. My mother will not die because of me. The anger gives me strength to pull away from my mother. When I turn to protect my mother, a rock hits me in the head. The pain is sharp and I hear ringing in my ears. I think I hear someone say “sinner.” I hear the villagers’ cry for my mother’s life, and my mother’s cries for them to stop, before I feel dizzy. I think someone is pulling me away, but I’m on the edge of consciousness. I wonder if someone had rung the school bell. It must be eight o’clock now. All the sounds stop.

Here it goes again. The rhythm of its wheels on the track is soothing to me. It must be four o’clock in the morning. Mohan thinks . . . No, he’s gone. The good people of this village killed him. The painful memory of rocks hitting flesh comes back to me in a rush. First it’s Mohan’s flesh, Manchac Review

then my mother’s. Ma. I sit up in the bed in an unfamiliar room. It smells like the sick room. I realize I’m in Dr. Yadav’s son’s clinic, though saying it’s a clinic is an exaggeration. It’s a big room with cots positioned in every way they could fit with enough walking room. Mrs. Sharda is sleeping at the desk near the door. I move to get off the bed. I need to see my mother. She must be worried about me. When my feet touch the ground, I realize my feet, hands and head are covered in white gauze. Thinking about Mohan and Ma had made me forget about physical pain. It feels like someone, probably one of the villagers, is sticking sharp pins in my head that have gone through the skull and into my brain. The painful gasp from my mouth does not wake the others, nor does it reach Mrs. Sharda. I make my way through the maze of cots to reach the door when Mr. Yadav’s voice stops me. “You need to rest. Your head injuries aren’t healed,” he says as he looks from his position by the door. He’s silhouetted against the light from a solitary bulb, so I can’t see his face clearly. “I need to help Ma. She can’t handle Gopi by herself.” I move to go around him, but he stops me with a hand on my shoulder. “Son…” he begins, but I shake him off. “No! Never call me that,” I say as I move away from him. He follows me out of the door. I try to walk faster, but the pain in my feet 30 stops me. “Your mother. She died,” he says in a low voice. “She’s waiting for me at home. Mohan died. She’s waiting for me at home,” I say as I walk faster, ignoring the pain. Mr. Yadav follows behind me, but doesn’t say a word for the rest of the way. When I reach home, her body is lying on the ground, and wrapped in a white cloth. White is a dreadful color. I hate it. It makes death real. Her face looks younger. She’s beautiful. I drop to my knees next to her. I don’t want to shake her. She looks like she’s at peace. Water falls on the ground. Maybe the roof is leaking again. So why is my face wet? I feel myself detach from reality. One moment I’m looking at my mother, the next I’m looking at nothingness. No pain, no anger, no helplessness. It’s…peaceful. I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn to look at a woman who looks like Mohan’s mother. She sits with me for what seems like hours. Mr. Yadav and Mohan’s father have prepared the funeral pyre for my mother. I carry her to the fire and lay her down. More logs are placed on her body. There is another pyre at some distance from her. It is not burning. “As her son, you will light the pyre,” Mohan’s father says as he hands me the burning wood. I move to light the pyre. In a few moments, the burning wood casts an orange glow around us. The fire moves upwards in waves until it becomes smoke. I stand there staring at the pyre until the sun comes up and the wood has burned to Sins and Sinners a mound of gray ash. I have another funeral to attend. Mohan’s funeral pyre has yet to turn from orange to that same mound of gray. A sense of death echoes in the silence of the morning. I follow Mohan’s parents to their home without speaking a word. His body is covered in white cloth, too. White is a dreadful color. I hate it. It makes death real. The body looks like Mohan. His face is marred by the scars. Mohan’s parents shed tears silently. I’m surprised to see Mr. Yadav move to help Mohan’s father. “No, not you. You don’t have the right to touch him,” I say as I move to help carry Mohan’s body. Mr. Yadav nods and follows us without making a move to help with the last rites. I say a silent farewell to the only friend I had in this godforsaken village as I wait for Mohan’s father to light the pyre. “You were his brother. You should be the one to free him from this world. A father shouldn’t have to send his son off this way,” he says as he moves back to stand next to his wife. I nod and move to light the pyre. The fire is a less scary thing in the light of the day. In the dark, the orange glow is overwhelming even if it’s a beautiful sight. Ma and Mohan are finally free from the hatred of the villagers. After the funeral, I go home and feed the cows. I make arrangements with Mohan’s parents to take the cows with them when they leave the village. They want to get away from the memories of their son and the villagers’ cruelty towards their child. As I direct the cows toward Mohan’s house, I see Mrs. Pundit talking 31 to a few women under the shade of the mango tree. The conversation stops when I come near the group. I’m glad to see that the long gash Mohan’s rock has made across her forehead will be there for a long time. It’s ugly, just like her. It’s the only signature he left on this world. When the cows are safely delivered, I return home to pack my belongings. The train will be at the station at four in the morning. It’s always on time. Once I’d tried to run with the train to see how far it went, but the track was endless. It dropped off the earth at some distance and I couldn’t see it anymore. Maybe it passes the city. I could see Murli again. Maybe it crosses the big river some kilometers out of the village. Maybe the river will be deep enough to drown my sorrows. Maybe I’ll learn to swim. Manchac Review Non-Contact G r e tc h e n H i n t z

If Prufrock measured life in Spoons,

Perhaps we count each breath with Bytes,

Or Torrents, Texts, and Tweets.

Those antique spoons stirred

and tasted of Metal.

32 Lunch Duty G r e tc h e n h i n t z

Occupied space remains weightless. The siren calls an end to containment, as pheromones and adrenaline punch noonday sun.

The concealed menagerie presents itself to itself with harsh hollers over curtsies.

Pack animals run identical by shade and tuft, knocking over garbage, barking empty ballyhoo.

Show ponies mince apart out of cavalcade, else pretty hooves bludgeon over bits of sugar. 33 In their dark corners, keen rodents share their bits of twine and treasure.

The elephant stands behind all watching.

He is mistaken for the mouse, his fixed silence resembling weakness.

With heavy feet, he does not perform and gets taunted with rocks by keepers and apes,

This creature choosing not yet to break his shackles,

though they are aged and rusting. Manchac Review Monster, Manunkind z ac h a ry n e l s o n

It was a bumping sound that waked me up and it was coming from in the living room and I thought someone was knocking on the door. But it was too late for someone to be knocking on the door, so I thought no one would be out there knocking, but maybe it was a stranger. A stranger was out there, or it was a monster. And I was real scared. Daddy gets mad at me when I’m scared but I got scared anyway. It bumped again and I heard daddy’s voice. I thought it was daddy’s voice but it sounded quiet like when he’s mad, like when he whispers mad at me or Jack or Shannon to behave, so I went in the front to the living room to see who he’s mad at. Shannon was on the floor by the couch on his hands and he didn’t look right. And daddy was bent over by mommy and holding her hair over the coffee table like he’s telling her to see it real close and he was whispering loud in her ear and she was bent weird like it hurts and I said daddy, and mommy looked at me and she was bleeding in her mouth and there was something wrong with her nose and she looked real scary. And maybe daddy was mad because she looked scary. When I called him again he looked at me like he wasn’t him and it was scary like mommy’s nose but even more scarier. Mommy was saying that it’s okay, for 34 me to go back to bed, baby, everything is fine, to just go back to my room, but daddy said no, for her to tell me where she’s been at, where she’s been whoring around, but I don’t know what that means. I thought he meant like those horror movies that me and Shannon snuck and watched, and maybe that’s what he meant cause mommy looked like that chainsaw man from that movie who chased those people and hurt them, and his face was crooked, Shannon said, because it wasn’t even his face, it was another person’s face he wore like a mask. And maybe daddy was mad because mommy was wearing a scary face and being scary. And he said she’s been fucking around like when he tells me or Jack or Shannon to stop fucking around when we roughhouse too loud or say too loud at the store. Mommy was crying for him to stop and saying something else but I couldn’t understand cause she said it too wet, and daddy hit her face down on the coffee table and Shannon ran and grabbed daddy saying he’s hurting her but daddy pushed him off and he fell and hit his head on the table. Mommy was grabbing daddy’s hand holding her hair and saying for daddy to please stop, Randy, please. Then daddy was crying and he said he didn’t know what to do, that he didn’t mean to, and what had he done, and he looked at his hands, and mommy went to get Shannon and he was crying too, and I didn’t mean to but I was peeing and I ran away before daddy saw me peeing and he was mad at me. Jack was standing in his crib and he was crying and reaching at me through the bars but I took off my underwear and got down and got under the bed and hid them and I was too scared to go back out.

This work is the first chapter of the unfinished novel, Monster, Manunkind. Monster, Manunkind

Daddy screamed out something in the living room but he sounded like someone else, like he was mean, like a stranger. Then he screamed again and something glass broke real loud like when daddy punched the mirror in the bathroom like he was punching himself cause he was mad at the mirror or at himself in the mirror.

The bad dream scared him awake again and sitting up on the bottom bunk of the bed he shared with his younger brother, he knew that Jackson wasn’t lying beside him before he even looked. He knew it the way he knew he had pissed himself. Because the dream always made him piss in the bed. His underwear and the foam mattress beneath him were warm and wet and already beginning to cool and he burned with shame and rage at himself and at the prospect of being made to wear diapers to bed again when his little brother didn’t even have to anymore. He was holding his breath and trying to calm himself, holding impotent little fistfuls of the pissy sheet and straining mightily against himself, eyes straining shut. He felt the blood in his head pulsing and he was beginning to see little flashes like lightningbugs flitting about the periphery of the darkness. Stupid, like a little baby. The calm came only gradually and of its own volition, he having no power to evoke it. And as it did the breath he’d been holding burst out and he fell back on the bed and the bugs burned out one by one while he lay panting. He would not cry. His name was Randall Lee and other than his name he shared with his father that nameless rage which he did much fear in his father, but what he feared most was that selfsame rage in him, passed into him like eye color, like the shape he would one day make in the world. By chance or fate perhaps, but most definitely by blood, it was in him. And sometimes it was all of him. 35 But he would not cry. Like a little baby. After a while he sat up and scanned the room in the dim. Jack? he said. When he felt where Jackson had lain, the bedspread was barely warm. A slice of gray from the hallway lay on the dark wall paneling where the door stood ajar. He fought free of the tangling sheets and quilts and rose and began removing the bedspread. Then he changed his underwear and balled the underwear in the piss-stained sheet. At the end of the hall of the trailer, past the washer and dryer and past the bathroom and Shannon’s room, he could see Jackson pale against the door to their father’s room. Naked save for white briefs, he all but glowed in the dark like foxfire in the deepest cave. He held his arms and stood silent in the weak light from the transom over the back door. His breath smoked thinly in the cold. Jack, he hissed. What are you doing? Jackson looked back, his face blank save for wide eyes that seemed too large in his outsized head, small as he was for his age. A moan from within the room turned Jackson’s head back to the door. He placed a hand at the door’s center, small fingers spread, then put an ear to it as if listening for a heartbeat. Randy Lee buried the sheet under dirty clothes in the basket by the washing machine and approached shuddering and stood behind Jackson. Their father moaned again, cried words, but no real words, a muddled language nearly comprehensible. He squinted at the sounds muffled through the door, at snatches of words that he knew, words without reference like residual images from a half-remembered dream or nightmare. He thought he heard the name Charlie. Was it Victor Charlie? Or was it victory? It didn’t sound like his father was dreaming Manchac Review

of anything like victory as he imagined it to be. He knew his father had gone to a place called Vietnam back when he was a marine. But that was before he’d been born even and his father had never, not once, spoken of it. Jackson put his hand on the brass doorknob and paused at the muted metallic jangling it made. Randy Lee reached past him and placed his hand over Jackson’s on the knob. The smaller boy blinked up at him. Some silent communication in the space of a few blinks then they turned the knob slowly and opened the door inward and breached that feared space. They peered in together, Randy Lee’s chin on his brother’s head. Blankets that had been kicked away skirted the foot of the bed. He lay naked, a dark contortional figure on the white bedspread grasping at the dark void above him like a lifelong blind man suddenly gifted with sight only to lose it again in the same instant. Desperation and fear and yearning in equal and terrible measure in the guttural noises he made, in the clenching of his fists and the wrenching of his head. He could have been trying to take hold of something or fend off something. He wasn’t sure which, wasn’t sure he wanted to know which. His father was nothing if not stoic, affected approval with a nod, showed affection with a wink, scolded with a stare. He had very nearly never heard his father raise his voice in anger or acclamation. He was a silent stone foundation lying on that bed and somehow fracturing before his very eyes. At length his father groaned low and heavy-lunged like a steer in a slaughter chute. Why does he do that? Jackson said. Shh—Randy Lee’s hand shot up over his brother’s mouth. Their father sat up in the dark with a cry that sounded like the word no, but it wasn’t 36 a word. Something primitive. He panted, chest heaving, swinging about as though he couldn’t figure where he was and fumbling, the worn mattress springs creaking and all but screaming. He snatched a revolver from under a pillow and trained it at shadows as if some unseen assailant was afoot, inimical yet aloof. By the time he swung at the door with the revolver the boys were gone, crept away. They burrowed together for common warmth under the quilts and sheets in the bottom bunk. He was having a nightmare, said Jackson, shivering. His words chattered. Randy Lee didn’t answer. Where’s the sheet at? Shut up, Randy Lee said. You didn’t do it again? I said shut up. It’s wet right here. I don’t want to sleep on this side. So? So I don’t want to sleep on it, it’s wet, Jackson said. Why do you always have to pee and then you make me sleep there? I did not. You probably just sweated too much. Sweated? Jackson said. It’s freezing cold. Plus, I was sleeping over there. You were the one right here. Just go and get a towel and you can fold it over. It’s just in that spot right there. It stinks. Monster, Manunkind

Just go. When Jackson came back, he took the towel from him and folded it over the cold urine darkening the foam. There, he said. Now lay down and go to sleep. He rolled over and pulled the quilt up to his chin. Why does he always have nightmares like that? Jackson said. I don’t know. A minute passed. Jackson said, I hate nightmares. Randy Lee lay staring at the underside of the top bunk. The cheap fabric poorly stapled to pine and coming loose at one corner. Jackson lay with his head at the opposite end of the bed and, curling into a fetal position, faced out into the room. Who’s Charlie? he said. Randy Lee thought about that. I don’t know, he said. Maybe a badguy. What are gooks? Gooks? Yeah, he said that. Before you woke up. Randy Lee raised up to look at him but he was facing away. He said, You could understand him? A little. Must be monsters, he said, I don’t know. Just go back to sleep. He rolled to face the window. There was no sound for a long time. He could feel the bed tremble with his brother’s shaking. Monsters, Jackson whispered after a while. 37 Be still. Go to sleep. Randy Lee stared out, listened for his father to come from his room, the popping of his knees and ankles, the wet hacking cough. After a while Jackson stopped shaking and later still Randy Lee said his name. What? What is it? He didn’t answer. Lee? Nothing, he said. Then after a few seconds he said for Jackson to go to sleep and gazed at the window glass, the visible cold of it. The wind was heavy against the trailer. He hadn’t noticed before now. It was otherwise silent. He propped himself on an elbow, blinking for a moment, thinking, then reached out and put a single finger to the dull winter glass and slowly traced out a crooked cross there. It stood imperfectly formed, the axis of it out of true, and the dark of the outer night and of all the world was in its shape on the otherwise opaque of the windowpane. It stood imperfect perhaps because he authored it from this awkward angle, stretching his thin arm as far as he could reach. Or perhaps it was his notion of the shape, of the meaning of crosses that was ill formed. They seemed to him a conduit to something. Something other than the unremitting dark he saw in this unaccountable shape he’d made on cold glass. He considered it for some time and checked that Jackson wasn’t looking before sitting up cross-legged and wiping away the frost to the outside of his reach above the cross and facing the night without. No stars out there, just the sightless cyclopean eye of the moon and the skeletal branches of a black willow Manchac Review

raking its surface, the sky gray-black and the wind halfheartedly tugging at the ragged window screen. The cold seeping in around the aluminum frame and onto his face. He pulled a quilt up onto his head, cowling and wrapping himself like the tiniest outcast monk, silent, staring at that niggard moon with its false light like a broken promise from god himself. He prayed; as best a prayer as he could conceive, not knowing exactly what he might ask of a god. Or how he might ask it. Never once having set foot in a church. He vaguely remembered his mother reading to him from the Bible once, a singsong quality to her voice, lulling. A Psalm perhaps, no way to be sure. He had been so young, tottering headlong into her arms, against her bloated belly, then lifted weightless and lay to bed between her and his father, that space like a great chasm between them that had eroded by the day until neither could reach the other and they simply stopped reaching. Her soft voice had rolled into that valley like summer wind to soothe him to sleep. But even that could not reach the man. He’d only lay and stare up at things long lost to him, wholly unaware of all he might still lose. Then her voice had faltered and the wind of her words had died. She’d gone away not two weeks after Jackson’s premature, emergency birth, four Thanksgivings and four Christmases and four birthdays ago, leaving Shannon holding his father’s hand while Randy Lee reached for her from where he sat on his father’s hip. The while, Jackson lay beyond the big window pane, solitary in that enormous room, encapsulated within a clear plastic hospital bin, all tubes and beeping machines, and breathing with such a delicate rapidity. His bloated little belly rising and falling like he couldn’t catch his breath. As if he’d been frightened into being and could not calm and catch his breath. And then she 38 was completely beyond the doors that swung in and out and Randy Lee watched them and reached for them until they stopped swinging. When he’d struggled to get down his father shushed him and said it would be okay and tried to kiss the boy on the head but he hated the way the man’s beard felt and he pushed the rough face away and wailed. His father kept saying that it was okay, it was going to be alright, but it was not okay because she was gone. And she’d taken her Psalms with her. It was the one memory of the sight of her that he could evoke and possibly his first memory, that reading. Her infinite brown hair spread over the pillow. Her alabaster skin, the blue veins of her arm like streams on an otherwise white map of some fantastical place which did exist if only in her. And of which the strange sore in the crook of the elbow was the only imperfection. Save for increasingly infrequent phone calls during which broken promises were renewed in a voice made smaller and more distant by a nameless diversion—as if she was always just wakened from some yearlong sleep to which she longed only to return, to escape— it was all he had of her, an image, a moment. Her orbit of them receding with each call. St. Francisville to Baker. Baton Rouge. Port Allen. And most recently a distance she would not even name. Her voice farther for that. He knew, sitting there, that Jackson had not even the image, had only the sleepy voice, the lies. The only mother he’d known, had actually seen and touched was a stepmother. But she was gone too. Because of that night, the fearful night of which he too often dreamed. He felt the bed shift and turned. Jackson was watching him. He quickly swiped the cross to ruin and lay down. He thought crosses were a conduit to god. For people prayed to crosses and he Monster, Manunkind answered them. And people held crosses in order to touch him. But all he felt was the cold on the tips of his fingers and in the palm of his hand and deeper still. The sting in the corners of his eyes came not from the cold and he bit against it and held his breath until it passed and lay dead still, waiting for Jackson to speak. But he did not speak. After a minute or five minutes or ten he reached out to place a hand on Jackson through the layers of bedding. That bundle rose and fell with the soft meter of sleep. He snored lightly and all but inaudible for the shifting and jostling of things in the wind but he listened intently for the metronomic calm of it. He lay listening for a long time but his brother’s peace was no contagious thing and he could not sleep. For all the many blankets and the warmth of the brother beside him he was cold and for all the light of the moon the dark did not abate. When he came up the hall into the living room, his father was standing naked in the light from above the kitchen sink and tossing back pills from a bottle he held in a fist. He stood chewing and looked at either his reflection in the window over the sink or something outside. His ruddy browned skin and thick beard looked darker and ephemeral in the window glass. Like he was looking at a ghost of himself. Daddy? His father turned to see him cowled in a sheet, standing in the livingroom. What is it, Bub? he said. I can’t sleep. Yeah? his father said, setting down the pill bottle and pulling forward a tarnished steel percolator on the counter. Bad dreams? The boy hesitated, said, No. I don’t know. 39 Then, what is it? He was filling the percolator under the tap. I don’t know, I just can’t sleep. I know, the man said. He coughed wetly. Me neither, Bub. Me neither. Could we turn the heater on? Just for a minute? The boy was studying the floor now. His father turned at that, watched his son. We . . . Sure, we can do that, I suppose. For a while, he said. He finished measuring out coffee into the percolator and set it on the stove to heat, then went to the thermostat and dialed it up until the heat moaned beneath them and up through steel vents in the floor. Lee sat over the vent in front of the couch next to the coffee table with the sheet billowing about him. Better? his father said. He nodded, gave a timid smile. His father went back to his room and returned wearing a ratty pink bathrobe. It had been hers once. He sat in the worn leather recliner. They said nothing for a while, his father lighting a cigarette. He noticed his son studying him in the indirect light from the kitchen. What is it? his father said. Daddy? Mmm? Can I ask you something? You writing a book? Wh—what? No. Manchac Review

I’m just pulling your leg. What is it? Do you have bad dreams? What? Why you ask that? I have nightmares, Randy Lee said, They . . . they’re real scary. Sometimes. I thought you said it wasn’t bad dreams. Lee didn’t answer. Well, yeah, they are scary. But? What is it you’re trying to tell me, son? His father waited. But sometimes you have nightmares. He seemed unable to figure out how to proceed. The man watched him through the ribbon of smoke that drifted between them. Uh huh? he said. The boy was staring at the threadbare rug on which the coffee table stood in the center of the floor and holding together the corners of the sheet under his chin to keep in the warmth from the vent. He said, And that’s even scarier than when I have nightmares, cause you’re real strong, and I’m not real strong, and if you’re scared and you’re stronger than me, then if monsters get you— Hold up, son, slow down. He gave his son a solemn look. There ain’t no such a thing as monsters. Randy Lee didn’t answer. He looked unconvinced. 40 Okay, his father said, well, there are sort of monsters out there. People, I mean. They can be like monsters. Sometimes, I mean. But in this house, you’re okay. He stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray and rose. They can’t get you, he said. Especially in dreams, cause dreams ain’t real anyways. Lee thought about that while his father walked into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. When he returned, he sat again and set the cup on the flimsy aluminum TV tray that served as a lampstand. He loosed another cigarette from the pack and stacked the USMC Zippo back on the pack after lighting up. He breathed smoke across his reflection in the black pool of the cup, took a sip. It’s people in your dreams? Randy Lee said. What’s that? You said it’s people that are monsters. His father sat back thinking and holding the cup in both hands, rolling his popping ankles about. He stared at the dead screen of the TV, the dull reflection of them both sitting there. I know I wake y’all boys up sometimes, all my hollering. But it ain’t for you to worry at. He looked at his son for a moment. In the war, he paused, looked back at the TV and set the coffee cup on the lampstand, some things happen that, well, maybe I’ll tell you about some day, I don’t know. Probably I won’t. It—it ain’t for a kid’s ears. Pretty bad things. The boy looked disappointed, looked away. Don’t go to bawling. I ain’t. Monster, Manunkind

Look at me. He looked at his father. I got the headaches and I got the bad dreams and what all, but I got something else. I got to come back. And I by god got you three, and I think about all those boys who never come back— He paused, the boy waiting, watching him pull long and thoughtfully on the cigarette and expel a thick cloud before him, squinting. I think I’m pretty lucky, his father said. He rubbed at his beard and eyes roughly with his free hand and sighed, said, Pretty lucky. Okay, Randy Lee said. They were quiet for a time, each to his own thoughts. The man got from beneath his chair a pint bottle of whiskey and poured a generous measure into his coffee and swirled the cup a bit. He replaced the bottle under the seat. Then the boy said, Who is Victor Charlie? What? The man looked up. Where’d you hear that? Me and Jack heard you saying: Charlie, Charlie. Like, Victor Charlie, like it was a badguy. Is he a badguy? The man studied his son and took a long sip from the crazed porcelain cup in his hands and did not take his eyes from his son’s earnest questioning gaze. He sat back and traced his lip with a thumb. Yeah, he said, you could say it like that. Badguy. But only it was more like the badguy. In Nam we called them that. The enemy I mean. The badguys. I’m sorry y’all had to hear all that. But why are they called Victor Charlie? It’s not like a person’s name? 41 It’s this alphabetical code they use in the service. The people, they’re called Viet Cong. But we called them Victor Charlie. Well, just Charlie, mostly. You see what I’m saying? I don’t know, the boy said. Yeah. So they are the bad people you meant? Mmm? You said people are like monsters. Yes. They can be. So they are the ones who do bad things? The Charlies? The man drained the cup and got the bottle again and poured more whiskey and left the bottle to stand next to the ashtray. Well, the man said. He drank. They—they’re just people too, like you and me. They just want different things. And they’ll hurt us to get what they want. We’d do the same to them. It’s a vicious thing, really. The vent went off. The wind blew outside, the trees creaking as if pained by their movement in the wind. Randy Lee said, So, to them you’re a badguy. He wasn’t even looking at his father. He was looking at the TV screen where his father sat darkly in silhouette. No face nor feature to him. The boy wrapped himself tighter in the blanket as if a new cold found him, one against which the blanket was ill suited. The man was still. He said, Yeah, son. I guess I never thought of it quite that way. To them, that’s what I am. Was, at least. Why not just call them what they are? The Viet Congs? This from Manchac Review

Shannon who had been standing in the dark of the hallway. They turned to see him emerge from the hall. He was wrapped similarly to Randy Lee in a quilt save that he wore mismatched knee-length socks, one of which was bunched about his ankle. He sat above his brother on the couch. Then he said, I heard some kids at school talking about Vietnam at recess at school. They were talking about Billy’s dad and picking on him cause they said his daddy was a baby killer, that he killed a gook baby when he was in the army— What? the man said. Who the hell is Billy? —and they were pushing his brother around and when Billy ran up to push one of them they slapped him and then one of them hit him in the face and then he started crying. I saw it too, Randy Lee said. And they were saying Billy’s daddy kills baaabies over and over like a song. Then one of them said Babykiller Billy and they were laughing at him. I wanted to stop them, Randy Lee said. But they were sixth graders and one of them was John Fletcher and he’s real mean. This one time he brought his pellet gun to school and he was shooting at the peacocks in the yard across the fence from the baseball field— Who’s this Billy? the man said. You weren’t gonna do anything, Shannon said. Yes-huh. 42 I went to go say they were mean and you grabbed my shirt. You were just scared. Nuh-uh. Boys, the man said. Yeah-huh. Alright, the man said. You’re always scared. You’re always stupid. The man slammed his fist onto the lampstand, rattling the ashtray and scattering the butts and ashes onto the floor and spilling the open whiskey bottle onto the carpet. He was afoot before the boys were silent and looming over them. That’s enough, he said. It wasn’t loud, but he stood quaking for some time. The boys sat sullen and scowling not at the man nor at each other. After a while the man sat again and picked up the near empty bottle and sat studying it. Who is this Billy? he said. Just this kid, Randy Lee said. Nobody likes him. He’s weird. He always smells like pee, Shannon said. And he picks his boogers. Plus, his clothes are always dirty cause he wears the same clothes every day. The man was still staring at the bottle and may not have even heard the boys. He may have been reading the label for all they knew, dark as it was. He didn’t speak for a while. Then he stood the bottle aside and looked at them in turn and said, Billy who? Grimes, said Shannon. Billy Grimes. The man nodded once. As if this name meant something to him. The only one he talks to is his little brother, Randy Lee said. But he’s weird, Monster, Manunkind too. They’re always putting food in their pockets at lunch. He doesn’t know it but I saw him. He was putting a roll in his jacket. He smells like pee, too. Yeah, well y’all shouldn’t ought to be talking about them that a way. You don’t know what things might be like for other people, what they might be going through. And as for this Fletcher kid . . . He paused to light a fresh cigarette and empty the whiskey bottle into the cup, thinking how to proceed. He rubbed absently at his lip and considered the glowing end of his cigarette. Then he sipped from the cup and held it in both hands before him as though drawing warmth from it and spoke. . . . You know, I wasn’t all that different a kid from him, really. Bullying people around cause I could. Me and this old buddy of mine, name of Kyle. Kyle Crowley. He lifted the cup to his lips and, staring into whatever past he’d conjured before him, sat frozen with the cup upheld and there was an impoverishment of spirit in him that was always there if only well concealed, but something, either drink or thought or his own words, had brought it forth here and now. Randy Lee didn’t like the look of it in his father’s face, in his eyes, even in poor light. He looked like a beggar in rags there, holding all the wealth he had in the world in the cup he bore. We were always like brothers, me and Kyle, the man said, as if to himself. He lowered the cup absently as he spoke. And always together so people thought we was brothers. It wasn’t never a question for us though. People’d ask and we’d just nod. I think it maybe had to do with neither of us ever having a father. Y’all know my daddy, he went to Korea back when, and they sent him back in a box with that Purple Heart 43 I got; it was his. I didn’t earn it my own self, that’s for damn sure. Never got a scratch over there. Somehow. But, Kyle, though, his daddy didn’t go to Korea. Why did Grampaw go to Korea? Randy Lee said. Cause, Shannon said, it was a war like that Vietnam place was. Well then how come Kyle’s daddy didn’t go too. Because, the man said, Kyle’s daddy went and decided to go to a liquor store just over the river from Baton Rouge one night with a thirty-eight, and ended up on the floor with a gut full of buckshot. Oh, Randy Lee said. Dead before the law even got there. Must’ve been fifty-four, fifty-five. Well, when was the Vietnam one? It was after that, stupid. I’m trying to tell y’all something about something here, if you’d just quit your damn hollering. Okay. Sorry, daddy. Anyway, me and Kyle, we used to stand in his mama’s bedroom in front of the mirror, and we’d take turns wearing that medal, saluting each other. Making plans. Seeing what we might be someday. But there was something about the way he’d look at hisself when he was wearing that thing, something in the way he wouldn’t take it off and give it back to me. Like—like it wasn’t what he was trying to see, but what he was Manchac Review

trying not to see. His daddy. That meanness. Hell, his mama too for that matter. That woman was a study in ugliness. Meanest woman I ever saw; she caught us at it with that medal this one time and come across the room and laid into him, tore him up pretty good, telling him: You gonna run off from me and get yourself killed like your daddy? Made him promise he wouldn’t. Of course, by the time we got to high school, we were both just a couple of punk-ass bullies. Just flunking along till we could drop out and join up. And if you heard Kyle Crowley and Randy Davison was coming your way, well, you’d have done damn good to run like hell the other way . . . Randy Lee leaned into the story like a hard wind. He was quite rapt and his eyes widened at the mention of this long lost brother of whom his father spoke, and they widened the more with each advent. He tested each word for underlying meaning and catalogued each phrase for later reflection, for his father was not a self-revelatory man. When he sobered, he would likely pretend he’d never spoken of any brother figure, if he remembered speaking at all. And what the boy held foremost in his mind was that this might be as close as he’d ever get to talking about the war. There was new light and vigor in the man’s face as he spoke that might have been happiness and it occurred to him that he’d not often seen his father smile. He deliberated as he spoke as if to prolong what tenuous joy he felt in the remembering and in the telling, and perhaps it was so that each recollection was like to be less fully formed than the last so that he took great care to remember it just so. He was gesturing expansively and paused often and 44 . . . They was drafting a lot of boys by then, but we wasn’t gonna wait for that. Didn’t want to get stuck in some chickenshit outfit with a bunch of draftees, so we joined up. With the United States Marine Corps. He looked down at the insignia tattooed on his forearm with a certain kind of pitiful guilty pride, almost grinning. Recon as it turned out. The front of the front line. Just the place for a couple mean as hell coonasses looking for trouble. But . . . The man grew silent as if a great woe had beset him instantly and entirely. And for that instant he seemed at once childlike and ancient. Shrunken, vulnerable. The boy thought he saw his father’s hand trembling, but the man looked down at his hand and made a fist and opened it slowly as if he’d hoped to find it held some fraternal relic, some token of this better time. His cigarette had burned down to nothing there between his fingers but otherwise his hand was empty. When he spoke again his voice was much diminished and he might have forgotten the boys were even in the room. . . . that was one mean country. Took just about all the fight out of me. Took about all of me for that matter. Hell. It kicked the shit out of me if I’m honest. Kyle, though, he loved it, soldiering. Was damn good at it too. Had wrote on his helmet: Kill em all. And that’s pretty much what he done. Like a duck to water. Used to say: Kill em all, and let god shit em out. We got a kick out of that. Whole platoon did. By the time I left out of there, though, I—I wasn’t laughing no more. There wasn’t nothing funny. As in nothing. The black willows thrashed and something snapped like thunder and slammed the aluminum siding outside and the trailer shuddered with the impact but no one moved. Randy Lee felt cold in a way he’d never known. His father sat breathing but was Monster, Manunkind otherwise still as stone. When at length he looked them each in turn in the eye, it all but shattered the boy. A hardness he knew all too well and of which he lived day and night in reverent fear. The point, the man said, is that some meanness is learned and some is just in you from the get go. And some of us have more from day one than others and others learn it just by living. There ain’t no fair accounting for how much meanness one person gets in hisself and there ain’t no fair or unfair at all when it comes to how much meanness you got to take from other people. You just get a handle on it as best you can either way or else it gets a handle on you. But, Randy Lee said, hating how puny he sounded. But, what about John Fletcher? You said: As for the Fletcher kid. Yeah. Well, as for that boy, fuck him. You steer clear of him, you hear? Yes sir, Shannon said. But what if he— But if he ever fucks with you, or if he ever fucks with your brother or says any of that shit about baby killers to y’all, you knock his dick in the dirt. You hear? I don’t want to hear you ever started shit with him, but if he starts it up with you, you better finish it. But there’s always four of them and they’re bigger than me— Then you just get ahold of him and whip his ass and make sure that that one son of a bitch don’t forget it—that he don’t ever forget the name Randall Lee Davison. You hear? Kid’s like that, they got it coming one day. Sooner or later they all get it. I 45 know, I’ve been him. And if he’s gonna ask you for it then you’re just gonna have to oblige and give it to him. You hear me? Yes, sir. I can’t hear you. Yes, sir. The man looked up at the red digital numerals where they hung disembodied in the darkness above the door. 3:13 A.M. Y’all go on now, get back to bed, he said. Yes, sir, Shannon said. Randy Lee paused in the hallway until Shannon had disappeared into his room and then turned back. He stood demurely there until his father asked him what else, and he asked his father if they could maybe go to church some time. His father thought about that while pouring into his coffee cup some whiskey from a fresh bottle he’d kept under the recliner. After taking a sip, he said that he would take him and his brothers to church if they wanted to go, but he would not go. When the boy asked why, he only said that when he was big enough to start questioning his decisions he’d be the first one to let the boy know. But something in the boy’s face made him relent and he said that he and God had agreed to go their separate ways a long time ago and that they’d never really had much use for each other anyways. The boy thought to ask more about that but the look his father gave him did not invite further inquiry and he turned to go. Lee, his father said. Sir? Nothing. It’s nothing. Goodnight, son.

Nick BeJeaux a senior majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. He expects to graduate in Fall 2013.

Carey Brooks is a junior Mass Communications student specializing in Journalism with a Creative Writing minor. He plans to graduate in Spring 2014.

Dominique Ficklin is an alumnus of Southeastern and is currently pursuing a career in childcare in Florida.

Gretchen Hintz is a graduate student in English who will earn her degree in Fall 2013.

Krunal Khatri is a senior at Southeastern.

Priyanka Mehta is pursuing a graduate degree in Creative Writing and plans to graduate in December 2013.

Zachary Nelson is an alumnus of Southeastern and makes teeth in Baton Rouge.

Shane D. O’Hara is an English graduate student studying Creative Writing.

Michael Selser is an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing. He will be graduating in Spring 2013.

Marley Stuart is a senior studying Creative Writing and will graduate in December 2013. He plans to pursue fiction writing in graduate school. About Manchac Review Manchac Review is Southeastern Louisiana University’s creative journal, published continually each semester as Manchac Review Online and every spring semester in traditional print format. Manchac Review Online is an interactive experience including fiction, poetry, drama, art, music/lyrics, and video shorts. Submissions are accepted year round. If an edition is already at press, accepted submissions will be held until the next edition’s publication. All submissions accepted online are considered for publication in the prize print format at the end of each spring semester. Upon submission, all works are subject to peer review, with individual editors or instructors representing each genre, for quality, content, originality, and creativity. Students whose written works are conditionally accepted may be required to meet with an editor to discuss necessary revisions prior to publication. General Submission Guidelines: • Students may submit as many works as they wish but not all may be accepted for publication. • Multiple authors or artists working on an individual piece must each fill out sepa- rate forms. (See the video submission form for further details regarding authorship of video submissions.) • Submissions may include, but are not limited to, short stories, novel excerpts, vignettes, flash fiction, poetry, plays, screenplays, monologues, musical composi- tions, lyrics, films and videos, photography (including photos of ceramics and sculptures), line art, and prints. Novels, novellas, and reviews will not be accepted. Please see the appropriate submission form for more detailed submission guidelines pertaining to the chosen artistic medium (art; drama, fiction, and poetry; music; and video). • No work that has been previously published, distributed, or accepted for publication or distribution elsewhere shall be eligible for publication in Man- chac Review or Manchac Review Online. • All submission information and release authorization sections must be completed in their entirety. • Work shall be submitted in the form of one hard copy and one electronic copy on a CD, DVD, or e-mail attachment, sent to the proper party (see the appropriate submis- sion form for the specific address). • Printed word materials should adhere to a 12-point, readable font and be double-spaced (unless artistic or structural needs dictate otherwise). • A copy of the code is available in the Writing Center and online at: http://www. selu.edu/admin/stu_affairs/ handbook/2007/2007_files/2007_74_127.pdf.

Please email any questions to [email protected].

Nick BeJeaux Priyanka Mehta Carey Brooks Zachary Nelson Dominique Ficklin Shane D. O’Hara Gretchen Hintz Michael Selser Krunal Khatri Marley Stuart