Café Shapiro February 22, 2011 – North Quad March 10, 2011 – Shapiro Library

14th Annual Café Shapiro February 22, 2011 – North Quad March 10, 2011 – Shapiro Library Anthology of Selected Poems and Short Stories © 2011 The authors retain all copyright interests in their respective works. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without permission of the authors. Please contact [email protected] for permission information. Cover photo: © Jim Geitgey. Used by permission. Printed on the University of Michigan University Library’s Espresso Book Machine. Café Shapiro Welcome to Café Shapiro! Café Shapiro began in February 1998 as part of the University’s “Year of the Humanities and Arts” (YoHA). Originally conceived as a student coffee break, Café Shapiro takes place in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library during winter evenings in February. It features undergraduate student writers nominated by their professors, many of whom have also been nominated for various writing prizes within the University and beyond. Students are invited to perform a live reading for a peer audience. For many student writers, Café Shapiro is a first opportunity to read publicly from their work. For others, it provides a fresh audience, and the ability to experience the work of students they may not encounter in writing classes. Through its fourteen years of existence, Café Shapiro has evolved to become a night (or several) of sharing among some of our best undergraduate writers, their friends, families, and the wider community. Café Shapiro has been popular, and in many years we’ve created an anthology to provide access to these students’ works after the live performance. We are delighted that this year’s anthology could be printed, once again, on the Espresso Book Machine (EBM). The University of Michigan acquired the EBM in order to help our users connect with content in the ways most useful to them, thereby supporting the research and learning needs of students, scholars and faculty. For more information about the EBM, visit http://www.lib.umich.edu/espresso-book-machine. It’s exciting to see our mission being realized in this year’s printing of the Café Shapiro Anthology. We hope you enjoy reading the work of these talented writers. Shapiro Undergraduate Library Reference Department Ann Arbor, Michigan April 2011 Table of Contents Nicole Aber Mine Are the Sweetest ..................................................... 3 Chana Ambuter You! .............................................................................. 21 Rose-Colored Glasses ..................................................... 23 Kynori: Live Chess Match (Excerpt)................................ 24 Josh Bayer Modern Karma ............................................................. 31 Dead or Alive ................................................................ 33 Little Sip Drinker .......................................................... 36 Alex Dimeff Pack of Two .................................................................. 39 Savannah Hagen Miss Piggy Realizes She is Better Off Without Him ....... 47 A Heavy Monday Morning Pick-Up ............................. 47 The Busy Mother .......................................................... 48 Elizabeth Hand Wife .............................................................................. 53 Lana .............................................................................. 54 Kolkata ......................................................................... 55 Re: Middlesex ............................................................... 56 Keesha Hargrow Daddy’s Girl ................................................................. 59 New Activities ............................................................... 63 Maura Harris Snow Place like Home ................................................... 69 Chrisi Hornback Chapter 1: Of Yellow Bicycles and Basketball ................ 93 Caitlin Michelle Kiesel Hemingway’s Androgyne ............................................ 103 Sideshow Brothers ........................................................ 104 Seven Bonsai ................................................................ 106 In July .......................................................................... 107 On Receiving Your Letter from a Monsoon Venice ...... 108 Soul Search .................................................................. 109 Nadia Langworthy Loving Rain ................................................................ 113 Anna Paone The End of Last Year.................................................... 125 Revenge........................................................................ 126 The Word of the Spirit, The Spirit of the Word ........... 128 There is a Man in Prison .............................................. 129 Sublimer Things ........................................................... 131 Jacqui Sahagian The Merits of Giving Up (Excerpt) ............................... 135 Nathaniel “Zeke” Tell The View From Above ................................................. 145 Sophia Usow 8th Night (a work in progress) ....................................... 155 Cassie Vernier The Day I Grew a Pair ................................................. 177 Café Shapiro Anthology 2011 Nicole Aber 1 Café Shapiro Anthology 2011 Nicole Aber I'm a junior from Westchester, New York and am majoring in English with a minor in Chinese language. My current favorite book is Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. After graduation, I'd like to go to China to continue my Chinese language studies and possibly teach English. 2 Café Shapiro Anthology 2011 Mine Are the Sweetest I bumped into Andy, who was sitting next to me on the bus and holding a lit cigarette out of the window. It was the final leg of our journey to Hainan’s Dongjiao Yelin or Coconut Grove. Sheila sat a row ahead of us, next to a middle-aged Chinese man with his white sleeveless shirt pulled up over his beer belly. Not surprisingly, we were the only foreigners on the bus, which felt alien itself, cruising in between rice fields and thick canopies of plush green trees. Within seconds of stepping off the bus and inhaling a hot breeze smelling of salt and fish, we encountered three old Chinese women, who came up to us holding coconuts and machetes. “What do they want?” I asked Sheila, the best Mandarin speaker of the three of us. “They’re selling coconuts,” Andy said, answering for her. “You can’t understand?” “Ooh, I love coconut milk,” I said, ignoring his comment. “But I’d love some food even more.” “Agreed,” Sheila said. “They do have a pretty thick accent. Don’t worry about it, Julia.” “I know, I wasn’t,” I said. For the past month, we had been studying Mandarin in the provincial capital of Haikou for our intensive summer language program. Unfortunately, my language skills were still subpar. The women pleaded that we buy their coconuts, each woman claiming theirs were better than the others. Never mind that they all most likely came from the same three-mile radius. “Wo tian tian de,” one woman said, stressing the coconuts’ sweetness. 3 Café Shapiro Anthology 2011 “Lai le, lai le,” said another woman, telling us to come to her. The third woman squatted in the middle of the road and began hacking away at a young green coconut. She carved an incision at the top and stuck a straw in the hole. She held the coconut up to us after the drink was complete, her wrinkled, tan face beaming with a metallic, toothy smile. Sheila paid the three kuai for her coconut, Andy and I following suit, not wanting to buy from one woman and not the other two. After answering the usual questions of where we were from and what we were doing in China, we asked the women if they knew a place where we could get lunch. They sputtered back at us in bubbling Mandarin, almost completely indecipherable to me. We began walking down the road, past souvenir shops filled with straw hats, bright-colored plastic sandals and pearly-pink shells. Sheila, who towered over the women, talked to them in her advanced Mandarin, while Andy and I walked behind. I gave Andy a joking smile as he sucked on a cigarette. He looked at me with his hazel green eyes that looked almost mean. He never understood when I got giddy like this. But back then I melted at even the slightest look from him indicating his attention was on me. His backpack was hanging on his petite frame, and he was wearing the blue shorts and racer-back black tank he’d gotten when we went to the outdoor markets in Haikou last week. I pulled out my camera. It was the new Canon PowerShot SX10 my parents had gotten me for my twentieth birthday back in May, before I left. I captured it all: the towering coconut trees, the little Chinese women with their coconuts and machetes, stray dogs sleeping outside street-side tourist shops, groups of men gathered on street corners sitting in bright pink plastic lawn chairs playing chess. And Andy. Even though I would never smoke and didn’t support his 4 Café Shapiro Anthology 2011 smoking, he looked pretty sexy with a lit cigarette and made a great subject. We arrived at a restaurant that was deserted except for two teenage girls watching China’s version of American Idol on an old TV in the atrium leading into the dining room. After being assured by the old Chinese women that the restaurant was in fact open for lunch, we were handed off to a twenty-something guy who beckoned us to follow him. “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked Sheila. “Not exactly sure,” she said. “He said something

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