MEADOW the 2016 TRUCKEE MEADOWS COMMUNITY COLLEGE Reno, Nevada The Meadow is the annual literary arts journal published every spring by Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada. Students interested in the creative writing and small press publishing are encour- aged to participate on the editorial board. Visit www.tmcc.edu/meadow for information and submission guidelines or contact the Editor-in-Chief at [email protected] or through the English department at (775) 673- 7092. The Meadow is not interested in acquiring rights to contributors’ works. All rights revert to the author or artist upon publication, and we expect The Meadow to be acknowledged as original publisher in any future chapbooks or books. The Meadow is indexed in The International Directory of Little Magazines and Small Presses. Our address is Editor-in-Chief, The Meadow, Truckee Meadows Commu- nity College, English Department, Vista B300, 7000 Dandini Blvd., Reno, Nevada 89512. The views expressed in The Meadow are solely reflective of the authors’ perspectives. TMCC takes no responsibility for the creative expression contained herein. Cover art: Thomas Gillaspy Novella Contest Judge: Christian Kiefer www.tmcc.edu/meadow ISSN: 1947-7473 Co-editors Lindsay Wilson Eric Neuenfeldt Poetry Editor Lindsay Wilson Prose Editor Eric Neuenfeldt Associate Poetry Editor Arian Katsimbras Associate Prose Editor Zachary Campbell Editorial Board Erika Bein Morgan Bell Harrison Billian Mikayla Burton Jeff Griffin Angela Lujan Rex McKowan Zach Payne Aidan McLaughlin Henry Sosnowski Angela Spires Peter Zikos Table of Contents Fiction Shane Jones Albany 7 Dinah Cox Oklahoma Drivers Are Very Upset 69 Courtney Cliften Help Wanted 85 The 2016 Novella Prize Mark Brazaitis The Spider 134 Poetry Michael Minassian Postcard Found on the Side of the Road 54 Sean Prentiss Bones in Juarez 55 Winter Birth 56 Amelia Pease Poultry Roup Pills, Price 50c a Box 57 Gala, or: Mercy Killing Pet Chicken as the 58 Children Watch Through Blinds Ruth Holzer Bless the Child 59 Jeffrey Alfier Sonoran Valley Redemption 60 Tobi Alfier Taking the 10am Away from Here 61 Courtney Cliften Migration 62 Ciara Shuttleworth Reflections of Winter 63 Jerry Mathes II Meditation in a Cold Front 64 Matthew Baker My Birth as ƒ(x) 65 Virag Nikolics First Impressions of the High Desert 66 Troy Cavins Earthquakes 68 Christopher Muravez (apostasy shall be law) 80 Merridawn Duckler Hundred Year Floodplain 81 Cody Trapanese Heaven was apparently captured by the 82 Hubble Space Telescope Hannah Waldman Living the Wife 83 Darren Demaree Nude Male With Echo #319 84 Jeff Haynes Lovebirds 92 Elena Gabriel Sunday Lunch 93 Summer 94 Wait 95 Bob Hicok A night out, complete with silver linings 96 Care and feeding 97 Alisha Bingham Beyond the Horizon 98 Hannah Little Another First Date 99 Scott Rose Okay, Maybe a Cemetery Wasn’t the Best 100 Place to do that and Other Reflections upon Losing my Virginity What I Wanted to Say at My Best Friend’s 102 Funeral Lauren McKenzie Play Me 104 Reed Ace Boggess Where I Love You 105 Carrie Tolve Mahum 106 Ha Kiet Chau A Hummingbird Named Havoc 107 Annie Lampman Everything You Are 108 C.C. Russell Song for a Brother in the Silt 109 Joan Presley Barbie Queen 110 Logan Seidl Before Divorce 111 Anette Swindle The Bowling Alley 112 Mikaela Powell The Stain 113 Sara Sheiner Obituary (8) 114 Obituary (31) 115 Notes on the Karmic Philosophy of Cause 116 and Effect Emmalee Windle Daffodils 117 Felicia Sanchez Ashes 118 Tom Sanchez Snap 119 Anirban Dam Silence is an Anagram 120 When the Rain Reeks of History 122 Robert Lee Kendrick Lefort Fractures in the Present Tense 124 Cheyenne Dowd My Mother’s Catheter 125 Matthew Woodman When the Moon Is Ripe 126 Oakley Merideth Uncanny Valley 127 Simon Perchik * 128 Ian Hill We Have to Talk, or, The Boy Who Couldn’t 129 Eat and Never Had to Jacqueline Stephens A Threadbare Tune 130 Devon Miller-Duggan Should You Break a Mirror: 131 Three Approaches Lisa Roullard Until Split 132 Contributors Notes 178 Albany Shane Jones For Melanie and Julian 1. Tank climbed, naturally, as if walking through the field between here and the house, holding blue wildflowers as the ladder tilted over, seemingly balanced at the pinnacle by the other burial ladders similarly structured. He placed the wildflowers at the peak where there was a wooden panel. Climbing down he said that when he died he would like to be buried up there. To carry his dead body up the ladder (he emphasized dead) and place his naked body (he emphasized naked) on the panel. I opened my mouth a little and blinked. I tried not imagining his naked body on my shoulders, but it was impossible not to, so I hopelessly fur- ther imagined struggling to climb the ladder with my father’s naked body draped over mine “fireman carry style,” and in the image his body was more than double the size of my own, resembling a cow on a tiny trem- bling human, or a bug carrying a piece of bread toward his family up an insurmountable hill. My family has always been obsessed with their bodies not touch- ing the ground. Mom disliked her body touching the ground more than anyone else. She ate scrambled eggs in the trees. Thirty feet off the ground she’d sit on a tree limb in her gown and say we were so far be- low we were only heads, which made us stick our arms and legs out and wiggle until we became spiders. You look like spiders, she’d say. You are, without a doubt, spiders now. But are we spiders? we’d say. I have no children anymore, she’d say and sigh, just spiders. Each rung of the burial ladders, carefully cut stretched ovals of knotted wood, was handmade by Tank. When finished the burial ladders would be even greater than our house with each section placed by his hands, and in his vision, his body would one day lie at the peak of his creation, an image of end-days perfection honored by the sun and invis- ible stars. Tank said that when the sun strikes two, which it was now, the sun hit the wildflowers, and sometimes, if it was hot enough, the wild- flowers burned. I didn’t believe him. Sons, no matter what age, don’t be- lieve their fathers. My father once told my brother, Sam, that if he jumped from a specific tree branch he would break his ankle in two places, so Sam jumped and broke his ankle in three places. When we said he was wrong, going hahahahaha, Tank showed us a piece of paper where he had corrected himself, the paper dated that had crossed out “ankle bro- ken in two places,” and beneath it “ankle broken in three places.” the Meadow 7 Tank tested the sun on his forearm and nodded. Me? I don’t see anyone else, he said. Right, I said. It’s just me. I’m going. I didn’t go. I stood trying to understand my surroundings, what I was doing here again, and then I climbed the burial ladder painted red, the “walking path” burial ladder Tank had previously named it, on an- other piece of paper. You shouldn’t be scared of heights because it’s only more air, I told myself while climbing, which was a saying I told myself when I was a child climbing the largest trees with Sam. It didn’t necessar- ily help then, and it didn’t help climbing the structure designed from the imagination of my father, but I kept telling myself the words until it be- came a mantra attempting, and failing, to block my other thoughts about falling. Tank measured missing rungs and hammered future burial lad- ders as I climbed to the wildflowers to see if they would catch fire, think- ing Mom wasn’t scared of heights like I was looking at Tank becoming smaller below. The horse, a pet of my mother’s who was named Horse, watched me from below as well, stomping in place, turning her head, wondering what I was doing on the burial ladder only Tank climbed with much greater ease. A horse was questioning my movements, I thought, even a horse thought I looked out of place in this world. I felt the air warming as I ascended. I was out of place in this world. As a child we had weekly bonfires. At night the bonfire was larger than its reflection on the lake. I have no way to understand this besides my memory has been filled by my imagination, but it’s true, it really did appear that way, so it was that way. Everyone came over from rainbow farm and spoke in what Sam and I referred to as “the adult language,” mother sitting close to the fire, Tank telling her not to burn herself, mother telling him to please tell her what to do with her body, her body was his body. Sam would whisper in my ear, and I’d say to do the adult language, and he’d say she was the stronger one god damn it and for a while he called her the Minister of Magic (M.O.M). We never told her the name because it was our secret and we said it while running through the trees, spoke it to the birds and bugs in the endless woods in the adult language. Two men from rainbow farm had children my age who said the Minister of Magic always looked sad, her eyes were always wet, and they were right, which was maybe why she loved bonfires so much, but I don’t think my mother was always sad, she just had wet eyes.