The Gordian Review Volume 1, 2016 Texas Review Press Huntsville, TX Copyrights of the individual works remain with the authors. The Gordian Review volunteer staff: Editor in Chief: Alec Brewster Poetry Editor: Mike Hilbig Fiction Editor: Julian Kindred Nonfiction Editor: Timothy Bardin Assistant Editor: Keely Disman Cover Design: Alec Brewster All images were found, copyright-free, on the Pixabay website. For those graduate students interesting in having their work published, please submit through The Gordian Review website (gordianreview.org) or via the Texas Review Press website (texasreviewpress.org). Only work by current or recently graduated graduate students (Masters or PhD level) will be considered for publication. If you have any questions, the staff can be contacted by email at [email protected]. This first issue ofThe Gordian Review is dedicated to Dr. Paul Ruffin, who passed away earlier this year. Publication certainly could not have happened without his constant encouragement and relentless desire to make this journal a reality. May he rest in peace. Contents Cornus mas 1 Grace Megnet “The Notebook” 7 Myles Buchanan “Slate” 9 Beth McKinney “A Sonnet for the Sky Over Texas” 10 Marissa Stephens “Why I Don’t Date Engineers” 11 Ronald Dzerigian “The Long Way to Fresno” 13 “Too Many Crows in Clovis, CA” 15 Gena Wey “Pearl” Kopis 17 Janna Moretti “Hazardous Thing” 31 Kirstin Beckerle “He Sang” 32 Marissa Stephens “Jante’s Law” 34 Teri Klauser “Pied Piper” 35 “It’s been three weeks now” 36 Collestipher Dodge Chatto “Murder Caws” 37 “Quills” Unloose 41 Terry Klauser “The Bird Woman” 44 Peter Burzynski “What is Lovely, You, My Dear Grotesque?” 46 Gena Wey “Summer, 2010” 47 Kirstin Beckerle “Cherry Lipgloss” 50 Julie Whitehead “Crazy Days” 51 Nic López “Jefferson Station Hustle” 52 “Of The Splendor In-Between” 54 Acknowledgements 55 Author Biographies Cornus Mas Grace Megnet demand from her pompous boss, and she would tell him to shove it. She would storm out and never go The Notebook back. The engine hums. Going back to school at her age was not easy. On Wikipedia she read that Oscar Wilde and Hemingway “Write a story.” The command of the instructor composed in Moleskine sketchbooks. She saw a buzzes around in her brain like a hornet in a cockpit. whole shelf full of them at the check-out counter of She presses the gas pedal to the floor board. The needle Barnes & Nobles. She could have bought a copybook of the tachometer jumps—or is it speedometer—and at Walmart for a dollar, but she splurged instead on th the engine squeals. She shifts into 4 and lights a an eighteen-dollar Moleskine. Hemingway surely did cigarette. not write in a one-dollar copybook. Hemingway’s, “Write a story,” she rasps between two drags. She however, was black because he had no choice, but should stop smoking, but not now. Now she has to she could choose among wonderful colors: purple, have a good story. Her ponytail dances up and down. turquoise, red. She wanted a yellow one because it What was she thinking? That she wants to be a writer, would be hard to lose, but the yellow ones were too that’s what she was thinking. That she was fed up large. She wanted a small one to put into her pocket, with her nine-to-five job. That she would hack away so she chose red, and all summer long, she scribbled at her keyboard, pouring herself onto paper until in it. the small hours of the morning, her ashtray filled to Her professor said that writing is like bricklaying, overflowing, creating new worlds, brave universes, a craft, a thing to be learned. He must have been galaxies, soaring towards bliss and fulfillment. That’s kidding. She knows she has never built anything what she was thinking. except a Lego garage once with her young nephew. She shifts and stubs out her cigarette. Her life She is a paper pusher, not a bricklayer. Has the th would be better. Peaceful, fulfilled. She shifts into 5 professor ever built anything? What does he know as she reaches the highway. One more unreasonable about bricks? He does not look like a Lego type. She 9 takes another drag as trees and utility poles appear in judgment. All Suzy could do was spit on his like ghosts and then fade back into the darkness. tombstone. If, as they say, everybody has a story, why “Write a story.” Easier to build a sky scraper. All can’t she think of one? What if she wrote about her bricks are the same. How difficult could it possibly boss and called it fiction. Any resemblance to actual be to put one brick atop another? How could he persons—living, preferably dead—is pure vengeance, compare words to bricks? Words are alive—they or at best a Freudian slip. She turns on the radio. talk, they smell, they sing and dance. She wouldn’t Write a story. What a story. Write a story. What? mind getting dirty if that’s what it takes. She’s not No story. So sorry, no story. Fuck the story. So sorry. afraid of work. She helps John turn the compost pile, She hates rap—especially rap with no story—but and who cleans the toilet at home? Even after John her ponytail bobs as she listens. Then she punches the has diarrhea. Dramatic irony, tragic flaws, error of next station where a caffeinated newscaster chatters judgment. The professor certainly piled it on. Her about abysmal unemployment numbers. She turns notebook does not contain dramatic irony. She does off the radio and lights another cigarette. Writing not even understand this erroneous, tragic stuff. could be dangerous: she might write herself right Where in the fog of her brain could she find a out of a job. Then she would have a story—“Pink story? Her high beams search the darkness. She Slip.” Or she could write about the driver in front of cannot think of anything. What if her temporal her—“Moron” —who, in a tragic denouement, texts lobe contains no stories? How will she create out himself straight into a brick wall. Insurmountable of nothing? Was she God or something? She could obstacle. Bam! She gives him the finger, then calls write about her father. He came, he drank, he died. John. What a tragic arc that was! But that would be painful. “Hello, baby.” His voice is soft and as tender like That is a story she does not want to tell. What about it was after their first date. She does not deserve him. the scumbag who tricked her cousin Suzy out of He is a good man, a much better person than she her savings, gambled away her retirement, and died will ever become. After all these years, she wonders before his crime was discovered? A tragedy. An error how he stands her eccentricities, fears, and doubts. 10 Without him she would not have even signed up for She holds her glass and endures his lecture on poetics. the class. After another gulp the error of judgment becomes “I love you,” he says. more palatable. She has always been a hands-on “I’ll be home soon,” she says, then hangs up feeling learner. like the Italian husband—Putta la pasta—throw the “If you need a hero, choose me,” John grins. pasta in the pot; I’m coming. “How about a story ‘The Flaws of a Perfect The fog is thick when her headlights lead the Husband’?” way up the driveway. As the garage door opens, she “Your perfect husband will get you more wine. contemplates the shriveled banana plant. Winter has Maybe you could write about our neighbor turning been brutal. Climate change. She could write about into a mermaid,” John says returning with a new bottle that: melting icebergs as the insurmountable obstacle, and filling her glass. “I saw her swimming yesterday in error of judgment in a gas-crazed world complete with the freezing weather.” an ironic ending where everybody drowns in the Gulf “Perfect. A story for five-year-old girls who sleep of Mexico. Inside, John has soup and wine ready. She in pink pajamas under pink bedspreads and snuggle puts her school bag—a pink one with leopard print pink teddy bears while they read about mermaids trim—on the dresser and sits on the couch, holding swimming in winter. Where is the dramatic arc, the the warm bowl. Slurping hot barley soup brings tragedy, the denouement, the pathos and irony?” comfort. “What about Dr. Gregori’s New Year’s party and “How was class?” John asks, putting another log the specialty food her served: Viagra infused crab cakes on the fire. and chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with Botox?” “O.K. I guess. I felt lost like usual. Do you under- She takes another gulp and winces, stifling John’s stand this Aristotelian business?” enthusiasm. Wrong question. Irony and hamartia, tragic flaw “Be serious,” she says. and catharsis gush forth like Radio Aristotelis with no “Why aren’t you writing this stuff down? What do off button. John should have been a college professor. you scribble in that notebook anyway?” 11 “It’s Moleskine.” Her head feels like a ripe plum, sure he knew about hangovers. She sits at her computer. languorous and plump. The empty screen blinds her. She has a headache, and “Moleskine,” he whispers nuzzling her right ear her mind goes blank. lope. “You could write a love story. I even have the title “Maybe I should buy a typewriter.” Then, remem- for you: One Hundred Shades Are Better than Fifty.” bering her Moleskine, she digs into the underbelly of her “Genius,” she sighs, lost in his embrace.