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WORDS AND IMAGES A LITERARY JOURNAL Staff Publishing Director Ryan Gato Assistant Publishing Director Grace Mueller Managing Editor Benjamin Rybeck Editors Danica Koenig Leeann Lucero Sarah Skelding [i] UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN MAINE m Words and Images is a publication of the University of Southern Maine, We welcome submissions of art, poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Please address correspondences to: Words and Images, University ofSouthern Maine, P.O. Box 9300, Portland, ME 04104. Copyright 2008 by Words ami Images. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission by the publisher. - Table of Contents "Clear Smoke" by Bill Rasmovicz The fo llowing individuals and organizations made the production of this publication 7 possible by offering financial support and/or by donating resources to our organization. We would like to recognize them fo r supporting this publication and the creative com­ "Underneath Us" by Dan Domench munities of Maine and those across the nation. The views expressed by the work in this 9 publication are not necessarily those of the fo llowing organizations and individuals. "The Goldberg Variations" by Louie Skipper 13 "An Interview with Richard Russo" by Benjamin Rybeck Special Thanks To Contributors 17 Dianne Benedict The 36th Student Senate "To Play a Grass Reed" by Steve Gibbon Student Body President A.J. Chalifour Bruce Day 29 Barbara Kelley Liz Marcoux "An Interview with Todd Field" by Benj amin Rybeck Chris O'Connor 31 Judie O'Malley Rosanna McCoy "The Black Pill of Childhood" by Bill Rasmovicz Sherry Phillips 37 Doug Bruce Pratt "Rain Shine" by Steve Gibbon Willard Rusch 39 Betsy Sholl Wo rds and Images 2008 was pub­ Laurel Snyder lished through the generosity of the "An Interview with Matt Berninger, of the National" by Benj amin Rybeck Nigel Stevens 36th Student Senate and the Office 45 Justin Tussing of the President at the University of Shelton Waldrep Southern Maine. "We Were the Manifestation of a Splayed Rainbow" by Bill Rasmovicz 49 Cover Design: "Winter Drifters" by Chris Nielsen "Contributor Biographies" 51 Clear Smoke Bill Rasmovicz 1 believe in the conquest of the ants, the metal-tearing claw-end of a hammer, anything discerned with your teeth; a pear, a screw, that afterwards the angel eats its trumpet, that in the artifice of the body we are small, so small, 1 believe in painting the fire escape the color ofwater, that the center of a crow is a single rusty nail, afternoons clear smoke, in the exhaustion of pastured cows to cement this whole scene down, the confusion of cop cars around the missing appendage washed ashore, that if you ask a quivering leaf its address it will reply with a more amplifiedquiver, the river will not forget your name; it never knew it, we are conceived in the fo rest softly as ferns. 7 Underneath Us Dan Domench You on the back porch, move away from the steps, stand where I can see you. I'm coming up. I guess you think it's okay to be on someone's back porch, you don't know the owner. Even if the roof is falling in and the windows broken, you gotta know it's private property. You don't have permission. I'm just wondering how you think. You look like one of those Appalachian Trail guys. Don't have a job. Go hiking in nature. Got your backpack and your camera. You want nature, there's nature in the house. I saw a milk snake in there fo ur fe et long going down the hallway, looked like a timber rattler, same diamond markings. Got my attention. Deer mice run out of the walls across your fe et. Orange and white with pink ears, like a prize you'd win at the fair. Couple nights ago, a fat raccoon was looking out the front window watching me drive by. I thought she might wave, invite me in fo r pie. You're not a nature hiker. Hiker wouldn't drive a rusted truck. Tool boxes on the back fenders. They drive little cars and trucks. I fo rget how nice the view is from up here. The gap in the hills. Sun trying to burn through the rain. You get a good sunrise back here. You can hardly see the quarry. They leave enough trees to block it. That's their beauty strip, that line of trees, that's what they call it. A beauty strip. You couldn't sleep in your truck so you came up here and stretched out on the porch. I can understand that. The rain pounding on the metal roof of your truck. They put on a new metal roof where I work. I'm an engineer at Coast Rope. I told them not to use metal, but they did anyway. You were there now, you couldn't hear yourself think. Rain sounds like machine guns. 1 should let the County bulldoze the house. Get it over with. My wife inherited it fr om her mother. My wife was killed. That's how I got it. Used to be fields back there but the quarry took them. They love quarries round here. People like to dig up their land. Sell the gravel off. lt took ten million years to get six inches of top soil on this grit. You walk straight back and there's a fo rty fo ot drop. All the houses around the quarry arc like that. They take the gravel to your property line. They took the land behind the Traskcr graveyard, left six fe et between the hole and the coffins. Sooner or later, after a rain like this, coffin s are gonna stick out. They won't be able to fixit. You probably think l 'm a loser for letting a good house go to hell. I'm doing it on purpose. I grew up around here, but I went off to school in New York. I wanted to come back and do something, maybe start a business. They were watching me, waiting fo r me to screw up and I did. You know what I did? 1 stood up at a town meeting and said the town should 9 pay fo r an asphalt sidewalk down Rudolph Road. So kids could get to the lake without year. Things got bad between us. walking in the road, get hit by a gravel truck. She was in a truck with a guy coming back from the lake late at night. He hit a Park Street and Pine Street have sidewalks to the lake, but there's ditches on husband deer. Your is out of town for work, you don't go riding in another man's truck both sides of Rudolph Road. People didn't like my idea. Their fe eling is, dubs live on around the lake late at night. Everyone knows what that means. Rudolph Road. People on welfare. Farm workers who came fo r a season and never left . The guy got hurt pretty bad, but he lived. I heard he wanted to go to the funeral, Foreigners. Drunks living in trailer houses. But kids Jive down there and have to walk in ut someone stopped him. The way b he walks now, he has trouble setting his fe et, like the the road to get to the lake. ound is moving under him. gr You can tell by looking at him he'll never be right again. asked for a tar path and people got mad. There's a hatred round here that's 1 When my brother called me in Boston and told me Joyce was dead, I got a cab practical, keeps certain people running things and other people protecting them. They the airport. The same streets, to the same cutting in and out of the morning traffic, but say the same thing over and over. They want to see you agree. Yeah, those people are wasn Joyce 't sitting next to me. That ride took longer than ten minutes. lazy. Yeah, those people drive around at night stealing things, drinking coffe e brandy and I got on the plane somehow, but when it landed I couldn't get out of my seat. taking government money. They make sex jokes about them and wait to see if you laugh. My muscles wouldn't work. Lucky fo r me, my brother was at the airport to meet me. The young boys laugh. Why not? What else have they heard? Nothing else. They let him come on the plane and he pulled me out of the seat, walked me to his car. I'm telling you this because you're not fr om here. l don't talk to anyone, really. He drove me to his house and he made me stay there, watching me.