Point of View 1997-1998 Literary Editor Art Editor Shelly Gruenwald Brian Fugate Literary Advisor Art Advisor Frank Edmund Smith Paul Andrew E. Smith Literary Judges Art Judges Amy Alderman Jaime Sandoval Don Bussey Kate Varey Stacey Friend Kelly Kane Front Cover Art Back Cover Art Vest The Head Eugenia Makowski Misha Harshavat Professional Services Stefan Adam, Photography John Callahan, Photography Vis-0-Graphic Printing, Inc., Printing Point of View, a publication of literary and visual creative works, is selected, edited and produced by students. Anyone-student, faculty, staff, administration-connected to Harper College may submit their work. Sponsored by Student Activities, William Rainey Harper College in cooperation with the Liberal Arts Division. Special thanks to Stefan Adam, John Callahan, Harley Chapman, Marlene Hunt, Richard Johnson, Cathy Lindstrom, Kurt Neumann, Jeanne Pankanin, Elizabeth Turner, Andrew Wilson, Joan Young. Copyright© 1998 William Rainey Harper College 1200 West Algonquin Road Palatine IL 60067 All rights to creative work belong to their respective creators. Printed on recycled paper 0 Table of Contents A.rt Literature Carol Adams Stacey Friend 32 Untitled 35 Dear Blues Man Denise Beck Alexander Garibashvili 16 Darwin's Orphan Ill 21 Tamponade Tango Robert Ferrera Barbara Howard 20 That for which I Should Have Done, 30 Ashes, Ashes I Did Not Do 31 Unexpectedly Expecting Misha Harshavat Beth Browning Jacobs * BC The Head 3 Breaking the News 38 Shell Christina Khadivar Festus L. Johnson, Jr. 23 My Papa 2 Genesis Steven Lorch 9 Untitled 18 Poetic Justice Jennifer Lesiak 17 The Scourge of Years 37 untitled Amber D. Lucas Marie Lowenthal 10 untitled 22 Untitled 10 untitled Eugenia Makowski *** William B. McGhee IV ** FC Vest 13 The Dreamer 42 Pirouette F. Richard Pelanek William D. Martinez 39 Salt 19 Overlook Across Fox River (East 39 Stand Dundee) Kristie Reiprich Jessica Moody 34 Flaca (skinny girl) 1 Solitude Soni Sangha Patrick A. Munoz 33 Homeless 40 untitled Audrey Schumacher 40 untitled 36 The Police: "Don't Stand 41 untitled So Close to Me" Arusha Noorani 12 Trip Down Indus Tomasz Podejko 28 Obscured 27 Trapped 29 Twisted High Point of View Jaime Sandoval Winner of the Award * 11 Athena's Temple 2050 Winner of the Vivian Steward Award ** 11 Insomnia Winner of the Ray Mills Award *** Jessica Moody �::::::=::=:.:t:::::::::::::::f�I c I .:==::=:::::::::1 t Solitude etching/aqua tint 8x10 1 2 Breaking the News Giving ground just a little, my mother lets me push past her into the kitchen. Though I pretend to ignore Beth Browning Jacobs her-answering is always a mistake-I can hear her behind me as she follows me through the kitchen and on into the I was sixteen when my father first hall. .. "Your father has been beside tried to strangle me. Heaven knows why himself since you called and just he waited that long, with all the things announced that you were coming to talk that were wrong with me. Ah, but that's to us about something-and with his of no consequence now... I'm forty-three heart-and now he's got bronchitis and and successful, independent enough to an ear infection and his gout is acting be in no danger of strangulation from up... " anyone. More independent, after this Finally, I just turn and look at her. week. It is enough; she subsides like a I pull into my parents' drive with whipped puppy. I've been able to do the same sense of time-warp I always that to my mother since I was about have when I come here. The house is twelve, and though I've always hated the still the same- slightly more decrepit way it makes her look, it's really the only because Mom and Dad don't keep it up. option. Half-dead petunias surround the Dad's in the living room, in The porch, on which an old couch sits Chair. Since he cannot work due to his abandoned like an unloved elderly various ailments, he spends sixteen relative. The only sign of life comes hours a day in that chair. Reading. from the back the house where the dogs Always. Up to sixty-two books in a set up a ferocious-sounding commotion month at last count-and believe me, he at my arrival. I ignore them; they won't counts. He's Reading now, and I bite me or, I suspect, anyone else. Like suddenly wish he'd keep on reading. Mom and Dad, they make a noise which Then I wouldn't have to break the news dwindles into mute subjection at a I've come to give him-the news that my challenge. husband and I are divorcing after twenty The back door opens and Mom years of marriage. That I am leaving flies out. "Thank goodness you're here this man whom he's always treated with safely- those terrible highways-I hope more respect than he ever treated me, you didn't stop at any rest and losing the married status that is the areas-Dorothy Stevens told me last only thing that has ever bought me any week that some terrible man waited in respite from my father's harassment. I those rest areas for women and mugged almost hope he'll scream and try to them-and then all the accidents-and strangle me again-it's better than the II I.•• quiescent, moribund helplessness he's "Mom!" taken on in recent years. "Well, at least you're here. But He doesn't acknowledge my why are you here? Something funny is presence-but then, he never did. He going on and... " is, after all, Reading. My mother having "Mom, could I please get into the been temporarily cowed into silence, I house? I'm okay-everything is all right. take the few moments of quiet to study No one has mugged me or run over my father. My attention is drawn first to me." his hands. Like everything else about him they are very large, almost 3 bear-paws, an effect heightened by the and my father screaming or worse about black hairs on their backs. Yet their what was Wrong With Me that I couldn't flabby character and stubby fingers give land a man. In fact, I didn't need them an oddly vulnerable look. The anything at all added to my catalogue of wedding ring on the left hand is sunk sins. So when Bob asked me out, I deeply into the flesh like the foundation went. of an old house settling into the ground. He was, as I know only in They are in their accustomed position, retrospect, not a bit less terrified than 1. curled around a book and hanging onto Since both of us seemingly had to it-his only contact with the outside complete these required courses (The world-like a lifeline. Two fingers are Opposite Sex 101, Going Steady, Prom dark brown from pipe-tobacco stains, 1, and Prom 11 ), it just seemed easier ugly discolorations to some but worn by once we got started to complete them all him as the badge of honor of the together. Along the way we kept two thinking man. sets of parents busy making noises It's hard to imagine, now, that the about our growing up-thus fulfilling our strength they once had around my neck, objective- and became pretty good powered by the impotent rage of an friends too. I don't think there was ever intelligent man self-trapped in an more to it than that, until The Kiss. unintelligent life, was enough to make Whether we decided that we me leave this place forever. would kiss because we thought that was another required social course or I mightn't have left, in spite of the because hormones will out no matter strangling and all the rest of it, if it hadn't what the emotional damage, I still don't been for The Kiss. I hadn't, after all, know. But I remember quite clearly anywhere to go. I learned my emotional knowing that we would Do It (this was ABC's at my father's knee: A is for 1967-it was a bigger deal then), and Absolute Aloneness, B is for Books are wondering when it would happen. The the Answer, ... M is for Mortal Pain if you air became charged with the intensity of dare love ... It was not an alphabet to our anticipation of the great event. inspire a sixteen-year-old with We finally kissed the night of the confidence to take on the world. Junior Prom. We were standing outside But then there was The Kiss. the building in some trees, with cars don't quite know how matters got to that honking and people laughing all around stage, since I had existed in a state of us, but we might as well have been on the most extreme trepidation with regard the moon. We were as alone as it is to the opposite sex since the age of ever possible to be. thirteen. But I had to date boys-if I My memory is of a great, great hadn't, there would have been stillness. The cars quit moving, the something else Wrong With Me. Since people quit talking-for all I know, the I'd already mispronounced the word world quit-as I waited for that kiss. I "equator" (the accent belongs on the don't know how I knew that he would middle syllable-did you know that?), kiss me then, but I did know.