NorlhriJge Review Spring 2009 Northridge Review Ackno�ledgements The Northridge Review gratefully acknowledges the Associated Students of CSUN and the English Department faculty and staff (Karin Castillo, Marjie Seagoe, Jennifer Lu, Kavi Bowerman, Karen Perez, Anita Likhliyan, Maeve Curran, and Jessica Benitez) for all their help. Thanks also to Bob Meyer and Color Trend for their continued assistance and support. Awards The Northridge Review Fiction Award, given annually, recognizes excellent fiction by a CSUN student published in the Northridge Review. The Northridge Review will announce the winner of this award in the Fall of 2009. The Rachel Sherwood Award, given annually in the memory of Rachel Sherwood, recognizes excellent poetry by a CSUN student publishedin the Northridge Review. The recipient of this award will be published in the Fall of 2009. The Northridge Review is also honored to publishthe winner of the Academy of American Poets Award. The recipient of thisaward will be acknowledged in the Fall of 2009. Submissions The Northridge Review accepts submissions throughout the year. Manuscripts should be accompanied by a cover page that includes the writer's name, address, email, and telephone number as well as the titles of the works submitted. The writer's name should not appear on the manuscript itself. Manuscripts and allother correspondence should be delivered to: Northridge Review Department of English California State University, Northridge 18111 Nordhoff St. Northridge, CA 91330-8248 *Manuscripts will be recycled Staff Faculty Advisor Layout and Design Editor Mona Houghton TyUng Managing Editor Layout and Design Board Jennifer Lu Jennifer Lu Jennifer Calonia Poetry Editor Jacquelyn Hampton Clint Campbell Desktop Publish ing Editor Poetry Board TyUng Melissa Rivas I TyUng Desktop Publishing Board Jennifer Lu Darryl White Jacquelyn Hampton Melissa Rivas Jennifer Calonia • Fiction Ed itor Jacquelyn Hampton· Darryl White Art Design (crane icon) Fiction Board TyUng TyUng John William Young Co er Design Scott Brumer Darty�White Clin.tCampbell Business Manager JenniferLu John William Young Ty T:J.qg ------------------- � ------------------- Editor's Note I n the beginning, there was desire. A desire to create and nourish something, and to share it with the world. A desire that could not be fulfilled by one person, or two, or three. So ten people got together to transform this collective desire into a tangible entity. Yet they realized that their individual theoretical and aes­ thetic resources were not enough; without a hybrid gene pool, the bubble of concepts and abstractions would not and could not develop past the embryonic stage. The determined and hopeful group then solicited substance from a body of eclectic, anonymous sources. Hours then weeks of obsessive prodding later, the guardians-to-be glimpsed the strongest genes emerging, ultimately bonding into a single cell of multiplicity. Naturally, mood swings, frustration, and fatigue were felt along the way. Deep inside, though, the group knew the journey would be rewarding in the long run. At times, they just wanted to put the damn thing to rest, but, by then, its presence was too persistent and insistent-like when you're in an airplane, the tall person behind you has his legs pushed up against your back so that your ribs feel the pressure, too. After sixteen weeks of labor and then some, please welcome the Spring 2009 edition of the Northridge Review to the world. Size: 8 '12 x 5 '12 inches Weight: (hint: multiply ingestion by pleasure) Hold the product delicately but firmly in your hands. Do not be alarmed by the pure life it exudes. Rock it to and fro. Swaddle its skin with your skin to keep it from falling. Jennifer Lu Breanne Trammell OMG/WTFI 5 Featuring Poetry Nancy Carroll I Between Shifts I 9 Melissa Morehouse I The Eels I 10 Juliette Diggs I London Sweeper I 11 Patricia Escobar I La Nueva Mestiza I 27 Nancy Carroll I Chaco Canyon I 28 Carleen Tibbetts I Unattachedness I 37 E.P. Tuazon I The Searchers at Noon I 38 Nancy Carroll I Ariadne I 41 Rebecca Dochterman Roney I Bullets in a Paris Wall I 42 Joseph Mattson I A Soldier Swallows His Uniform I 57 Michelle Medaris I Flashing Life I 65 Melissa Morehouse I Toxin I 78 Kris Huelgas I Haunt I 79 Sophia Petkovic I The Draught I SO Wendy Grosskopf I uprooted I 91 Carleen Tibbetts I Said the Pre-Raphaelite Girl I 92 Patricia Escobar I A Plagiarized Compilation of Queer I 104 Tobi Cogswell I In Storage I 120 Mark Norberg I Welcome to Angry Young Man Theater I 134 Kris Huelgas I Guitar Bar of the Living-Dead Poets <I snuck in through the grate in the kitchen> I 135 Theresa Shreffler I Smaller Places I 136 Carleen Tibbetts I Lapsed Catholic Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral I 141 Melissa Morehouse I encounters I 154 Nancy Carroll I Lekythos, Flask Containing Perfumed Oil I 155 Ashlyn Morse I A Bedtime Story I 156 Cover Art Shannon White I Contemplation ==�================================�� 6 I Northridge Review Featuring Fiction/Drama Jose Morales / Hazard Park / 13 Sascha Conrad / Basement Conversations / 29 Kwang Ho Kim / The Ballad of the Blind Man / 45 Joseph Lewis / Bad Apples / 59 AniKachbalian / In the Cotton Fields / 67 Loretta McCormick / Independence Day / 83 Rich Anderson / Rocket-man / 93 Eugene Yi / Perhaps / 107 Kia Calvin Abbasi / Room 303 Ramblings (excerpt) [Misshapen Chaos of Wellseeming Forms] / 123 Junior Lee Klegseth/ Revised Standard Version / 137 James Bezerra / Napalm Yogurt/ 143 Mike Edwards / First Pull Up Then Pull Down / 157 Art Ty Ung / Plant / splashpage Breanne Trammell/ OMG/WTF /5 Jeff Barnett-Winsby /Arrival by Moonlight (Cabin #3) / 12 Ty Ung / Flamenco in Red / 26 Jaime Montiel / Fate / 36 Elizabeth Caffey / Heartless / 40 Jeff Barnett-Winsby/ Untitled/ 44 Jaime Montiel / Always/ 58 Peter Segerstrom / Celebrity Nickel / 64 Breanne Trammell / Horses and Stuff / 66 KiraTucker/ Conflictof Interests I/ 82 Neil Graf/ Eternal Flame/ 106 Jaime Montiel / Live Better / 119 Elizabeth Caffey / The Hierophant / 122 Ty Ung I Hutch I 142 ::: Northridge Review I 7 Nancy Carroll Between Shifts /luto/11111, Edw:�rd Hopr>er, 1927 She is folded laundry. Fluorescent New Yotk greens hold her tight, clothespins for a geomettic pathology fiUed with fingerprints, lip lines, sugar cubes. 111e night, bamboo quiet, is lost landscape and only the coffee cup is waterfall. Northridge Re11iewr. Melissa Morehouse The Eels Before the house the impatient bath tub waits, expectant boards on top ready to reveal their secret. Ink black water moves slightly in sunlight's touch. He reaches inside unworried, ripples expanding outward from his arm. After feeling slimy scaleless skin slip through fingers he grabs one. It violently struggles in the air, like a broken bird plummeting to its death and wraps its tail around his wrist. He pushes a hook through, behind the gills, and hangs it on the fence. With blade in hand, one fluid movement slices open the liquid sable dermis of the belly. Nerve endings frantic, trying to escape, not realizing death. Sinews tighten, body curling to the form of a snail shell; yet another representation of Fibonacci's sequence in nature. From fading warmth he pulls unnecessary innards out, throwing them to the congregation of begging cats. He returns his instrument to the patient chair and plunges into icy depths to find the other. This one will probably only take four seconds to gut. I wonder when dinner will be ready. 10 I Northridge Review Juliette Diggs London Sweeper A London sweeper sweeps with his broom, and the dust and the dregs rise to surround his bent body in a cloud. The sound of the subway muffles against his ears, creating a white noise around his headphones. The sweeper steps on the genius of others with their city planning and their engineering and their massive architecture on all sides. He leans his broom against a mural, removes his earphones, and listens to the street musician for a time. Then goes back to sweep, sweep, sweeping, dedicated to the dirt and faithful to the f.tlth.All of that which society brushes off or throws out. Our escapes are his escaping. Northridge Review lu 12 :Jeff Barnett-Winsby Arrival by Moonlight (Cabin #3) Jose Morales Hazard Park 1. Bitchin' Camaro T ucan's dad used to drive a black 1978 Camaro, a vehicle which used to impress his best friend Gordo. This was partly because Gordo's own family could never afford a car, let alone something as awesome as a Camaro. If Tucan's dad was in a good enough mood, and if they asked him right, he'd sometimes take the both of them to the park in that Camaro. Gordo would sit in the backseat, staring at the wheel and the dashboard and the little wooden crucifix that Tucan's dad kept dangled in the rearview mirror. Tucan was never all that impressed with the car. It was old, and noisy, and dented, and it didn't have air conditioning. But when Gordo noticed the Camaro, he saw a fast machine, dark and gleaming, like something a badass superhero would drive. He used to like picturing himself behind the wheel, the adventures he could have with a car like that! Tucan's dad must've had the same thought because one day, during the fall that they both turned seventeen, he drove off in his Camaro and he never came back. Tucan always maintained that he didn't give a shit about it. Gordo, on the other hand, wished =- Northridge Review 1 13 Tucan's dad had left the Camaro behind, at least as a consolation prize for Tucan. But Gordo knew that things didn't always work that way.