MID RIVERS REVIEW 2016 MID RIVERS REVIEW 2016 St. Charles Community College Cottleville, Missouri VOLUME XVII Virginia Bunn Guneyli Editor Christina Gant Assistant Editor Coffeehouse Organizer Kathleen Sanker Art Editor Ethan Stellar, “Wandering Alone” Cover Photo Erika Brown Tim Wilgus Graphic Designers Lindsay Brand Introduction Reader Mid Rivers Review is published annually by the English Department at St. Charles Community College. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the college or the editor. Copyright 2016 by St. Charles Community College. Rights revert to authors upon publication. We invite submissions of original poetry, short fiction, prose and visual art. Please submit visual or written work by emailing it to
[email protected]. For full submission guidelines visit our website: www.stchas.edu/midriversreview. Address correspondence to Editor, English Dept., HUM 203 St. Charles Community College, 4601 Mid Rivers Mall Dr., Cottleville, MO 63376. Printed in the United States by Formax Printing Solutions. From the Editor It is no small wonder that the events of the year elicited joy, retrospection, and grief. For me, 2016 was the year that the beige tile floors that I have run across many times to reach the open arms of my waiting family members were bloodied at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, when gunmen open- fired in a horrific attack. Then, a bombing cracked the asphalt of the streets outside a military base just down from where my children have played with their cousins on brighter days, days un-marred from this senselessness. On my nine-year-old son’s birthday, March 13th, I protected him by keeping the television turned off so he would not learn that a suicide bomber had killed 37 people in his father’s homeland, a country he considers one of his own.