The Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Witness Mountain Institute Spring 2020 Witness: The Modern Writer as Witness Alex Berge CRAFT Literary Andrew Bertaina Andrew Collard Western Michigan University Miranda Dennis University of Massachusetts Amherst Andrea Eberly See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/witness Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Berge, Alex; Bertaina, Andrew; Collard, Andrew; Dennis, Miranda; Eberly, Andrea; Greenberg, Emily; Heisinger-Nixon, Day; Helen, Sarah; Johnson, L.A.; Kellor, Anne Liu; Kuryla, Mary; Newman, Emmy; Palmqvist, Lara; Potter, Mary Lane; Schwartz, David Lerner; Sharpe, Michelle; Sudhakar, Nina; Ten, Kristina; Tran, Eric; and Yenser, Pamela, "Witness: The Modern Writer as Witness" (2020). Witness. 2. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/witness/2 This Book is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Scholarship@UNLV with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Book in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This Book has been accepted for inclusion in Witness by an authorized administrator of Digital Scholarship@UNLV. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Authors Alex Berge, Andrew Bertaina, Andrew Collard, Miranda Dennis, Andrea Eberly, Emily Greenberg, Day Heisinger-Nixon, Sarah Helen, L.A. Johnson, Anne Liu Kellor, Mary Kuryla, Emmy Newman, Lara Palmqvist, Mary Lane Potter, David Lerner Schwartz, Michelle Sharpe, Nina Sudhakar, Kristina Ten, Eric Tran, and Pamela Yenser This book is available at Digital Scholarship@UNLV: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/witness/2 volume 33 number 1 | spring 2020 witnessmag.org WITNESS | VOLUME 33 NUMBER 1 | SPRING 2020 Contents 5 Editor’s Note POETRY 6 Eric Tran Lectio Divina: Vision, The Vision #1 14 Pamela Yenser Snow Angels 49 L.A. Johnson Hidden River 77 Day Heisinger-Nixon Sestina Re-Sequenced, Serotonin Returned NONFICTION 7 Mary Lane Potter In Praise of the Disappearing Body 59 Lara Palmqvist Old Tjikko 79 Miranda Dennis Seasonal Weather Patterns FICTION 16 Alex Berge The Intruder 24 Nina Sudhakar Empires Have Been Destroyed 36 Andrea Eberly It Probably Started With a Cigarette 51 Mary Kuryla Repair 68 Sarah Helen When King Midas Was Born, He Was Adorned in Gold 73 Andrew Bertaina The Arrival of the Sea 87 David Lerner Schwartz The Worst Kind of Faith Witness Literary Awards POETRY selected by Heather Lang-Cassera 97 Andrew Collard Future Ruins First Place 100 Emmy Newman You Will See It Coming & You Won’t Run Runner-up FICTION selected by Kristen Arnett 103 Emily Greenberg Delivery First Place 117 Kristina Ten The Dramatic Haircut Runner-up NONFICTION selected by José Roach-Orduña 123 Michele Sharpe When a Child Offends First Place 130 Anne Liu Kellor Ani-la and Anne-la: Runner-up On Everything I Knew and Didn’t Know 147 Notes on Contributors Editor in Chief Jarret Keene Managing Editor Tamar Peterson Community Editor Lindsay Olson Poetry Editor Samuel Gilpin Fiction Editor Wendy Wimmer Assistant Fiction Editor Robert Ren Nonfiction Editor Cody Gambino Design and Contributing Editor Erin Piasecki Contributing Editors Dylan Fisher Veronica Klash MaryCourtney Ning Flavia Stefani Resende Bronwyn Scott-McCharen Ariana Turiansky Readers Christina Berke, Soni Brown, Alyse Burnside, Carieann Cahall, Anthony Farris, Jeremy Freeman, Sanjana Gothi, Nicholas Gruber, Ruth Larmore, Katie McKenzie, Chantelle Mitchell, Jo O’Lone-Hahn, Chelsi Sayti, Amanda Skenadore, Jordon Smith, Sarah Spaulding, Jordan Sutlive, Tonya Todd, Erin Turner Publisher Joshua Wolf Shenk, Executive Director Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute Founding Editor Peter Stine (1987-2006) Witness is published by the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The magazine is indexed by and available electronically from EBSCO, Humanities International Complete, and Gale. Subscriptions are $12 for one year and $18 for two. Sample copies and back issues, when available, are $10. Orders can be made at our website. Correspondence should be addressed to Witness, Black Mountain Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Box 455085, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-5085 or [email protected]. We invite submissions of fiction, poetry, memoir, and literary essays. Work should be submitted online at witness.blackmountaininstitute.org. We do not accept submissions by post or email. Set in Freight, a typeface designed by Joshua Darden. Printed by UNLV Intergrated Graphics Services. Distributed by Ingram Periodicals, Ubiquity Distributors, and Armadillo Trading, Inc. All material copyright © 2020 by Witness. Editor’s Note AGIC CAN MEAN MANY DIFFERENT things, especially for writers. Magic can be an illusion, a sleight of hand designed to trick onlookers into believing the M impossible. Or magic can be a supernatural force in a world of harsh reality, a set of beliefs that sits just outside the realms of organized religion and advanced technology. Wizards and demons, Las Vegas entertainers and houngans—they all practice a kind of sorcery. For poets and prose writers, though, magic affords an opportunity for us to stretch the limitations of the physical world in search of new themes, settings, and characters. Magic is a door we eagerly walk through to reach new lands. We at Witness have thoroughly enjoyed the process of selecting the themed works we have collected here, mainly because the idea of enchantment is inspiring. There is the possibility of positive charms; there is a chance for dark witchery. And sometimes the spell cast by a character is nebulous, difficult to categorize. It’s arguable that we cherish these incantations the most, since they leave us in a state of wonderment bordering on disorientation. Yes, magic can also leave us bewildered and thankful for the bewilderment. The stories, essays, and verse gathered in our Magic issue will transport you to unusual, unforgettable territories that will linger in your imagination the way a flashbulb leaves a ghostly mark when you close your eyes. We doubt you will be able to shake off the image of Dionysus appearing during the unnamed protagonist’s lovemaking session with her boyfriend in Sarah Helen’s “When King Midas Was Born, He Was Adorned in Gold.” When the Greek god, for unknown reasons, grants her a wish, she demands: “Make me stronger,” and receives the golden touch of Midas. As you can imagine, it’s both a blessing and a curse, and the simple power of transmutation intriguingly unravels her life, but mainly her relationship with her boyfriend. Then there is the weird, beautifully atmospheric tale, Nina Sudhakar’s “Empires Have Been Destroyed,” set in Bandra, a coastal suburb in India, in the 1950s, sometime after the prohibition of alcohol. A mother-daughter duo embarks on a feni-manufacturing operation that gets them tagged as witches, draws the attention of law enforcement, and results in the women’s ghostly legend. Alex Berge’s “The Intruder” will ice your blood with the struggle of a heartbroken office drudge to become social again while living in a dull apartment. A man in a black ski mask mysteriously visits now and then to drink coffee, but why? And how is it that these eerie appearances galvanize the drudge to let go of his past? Kristina Ten’s “The Dramatic Haircut,” plunks the story’s main character into a salon chair surrounded by crepuscular birds with bladed wings. Those are just a few of the incredible fictions, but there are essays and verse, too! Inspired by Augustine’s Confessions, Mary Lane Potter’s nonfiction contribution, “In Praise of the Disappearing Body,” uses the heightened language of lyric-philosophy to explore the chasm between the vulnerable body and an unknowable, cosmically distant God. Don’t skip the poems, especially Andrew Collard’s “Future Ruins,” a report from a ruined landscape in Michigan—but is the poet describing a post-apocalyptic landscape or an economically devastated Middle America? Every line of this poem pierces the heart. We are so excited to share these magical works with our subscribers and supporters. If you haven’t done it yet, please sign up for more issues via our Submittable page, and send us your own work when you’re ready. Magic has no shelf life, and neither do the best expressions of the human imagination. Indeed, we are building a new world, a land of creative enchantment, and we would love for you to join us! —J.K. WITNESS 5 ERIC TRAN Lectio Divina: Vision, The Vision #1 To his wife, who is also a synthezoid: ‘The pursuit of an unobtainable purpose by absurd means is the way of freedom; this is my vision of the future. Of our future. Do you see?’ ... A bowl is defined by what it is not, my love, hollowed by its calling. What hell to be so full. Let us be whole again; let us empty it out. ... I eased the needle into your creation, filled quarts with his liver waste until his delirious smile flattened. We stared at each other, confused and sheepish and soft, like two bedmates waking up sober. ... A thunderclap announcing itself, bellowing itself tantrum-tired: gorgeous ripping, internal wrestling and then relief. 6 POETRY MARY LANE POTTER In Praise of the Disappearing Body After Augustine’s Confessions 1 CAN ANY PRAISE BE WORTHY of the body? How magnificent this strength! How sphinxlike this wisdom! We are made of you, body, and our instinct is to praise you.