Northern Lights

Home

2015-05-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

Northern State University would like to present Northern Lights!!! All works presented on this web-site are the original works of Northern State University students and faculty. The English Department (and English Club) have been collecting student pieces since 1947. Since then we have expanded our collection throughout the fine arts.

Technology has been a key factor in the preservation and current publications of Northern Lights. We have moved our current web-site onto a blog format. Any visitors are free to comment upon student/faculty works, respectfully - Northern Lights will monitor all comments.

Northern Lights is currently in the process of republishing old issues of Northern Lights and Shelterbelt, which can only found in the Northern State Library Archives.

If you wish to submit or contact Northern Lights you may e-mail us at northernlights@wolves.northern.edu.

Paintings 2001-2002

2010-10-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

The Goddess and the Warrior

(Acrylic)

A. A. B. Bryant

Lily

(Watercolor)

Sarah Ernhart

Portrait of Benn and Cat

(Chalk pastel)

Nick Fischer

Portrait of Keth and Iguana

(Chalk pastel)

Nick Fischer

Study After Bosch

(Acrylic)

Roberta Goldade

Matt from Artistes Scenes

(Acrylic)

Becky Grismer

Picasso in Picasso 1902

(Acrylic - Front Cover of Shelterbelt Issue 2001-2002)

Anne-Marie Newton

Picasso in Picasso 1910

(Acrylic)

Heather Newton

Study After Degas "Woman at the Opera"

(Acrylic)

Molly Wilson

Untitled

(Acrylic)

Molly Wilson

Sculpture 2001-2002

2010-10-28T15:38:00.000-07:00

Chair

(Found object sculpture)

Matt Bertsch

Darkness From Within

(Terra cotta clay)

Shelly Cartney

Untitled

(Stoneware)

Sarah Ernhart

Ssshhh

(Terra cotta clay)

Roberta Goldade

Impossible

(Raku and stone sculpture)

Sara Hemquist

Sometimes Outside is Inside

(Found object sculpture)

Heather Newton

Untitled II

(Wire, wood, found object sculpture)

Molly Wilson

Photographs 2001-2002

2010-10-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

Living Water

(Digital Color)

Amy Bertsch

Abandoned Building #1

(Back Cover of Shelterbelt Issue 2001-2002)

Tawnya Harding

Abandoned Building #2

Tawnya Harding

Remembering the Accident

Tawnya Harding

Archive 2001-2002

2010-10-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Archive 2001-2002
_________________________________________________________________

2001-1002

2010-08-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2001-2002 Shelterbelt Volume XIV
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paintings
Bryant, A. A. B. – The Goddess and the Warrior (Acrylic)
Ernhart, Sarah – Lily (Watercolor)
Fischer, Nick – Portrait of Ben and Cat (Chalk pastel) – Portrait of Keth and Iguana (Chalk pastel)
Goldade, Roberta – Study After Bosch (Acrylic)
Grismer, Becky – Matt from Artistes Scenes (Acrylic)
Newton, Anne-Marie – Picasso in Picasso 1902 (Front Cover of Shelterbelt Issue 2001-2002)
Newton, Heather – Picasso in Picasso 1910 (Acrylic)
Wilson, Molly – Study After Degas “Woman at the Opera” (Acrylic)
Untitled (Acrylic)

Photographs
Bertsch, Amy – Living Water (Digital color)
Harding, Tawnya – Abandoned Building #1 (Back Cover of Shelterbelt Issue 2001-2002) – Abandoned Building #2 – Remembering the Accident

Poetry
Binder, Christy – And THEY call it spring! – Dear Bitch – Only Four Years Old
Briscoe, Laura L. – her too fragile fingers – his hands – I-love-yous – in a dream – perched above – stay or go
Bryant, A. A. B. – To: Aramina Beth Drakule
Burckhard, Pete – Dakotah Farmer – Prairie Settlers
Davies, Ada Hilton - Dawn on Mount Torrey (1927)
Deckert, Florence – Time
Dodson, Mary A. – Ear Infection

Droppers, Dion – Notes on Women – Sleep – The Sky and All Its Brightness; The Sea and All Its Deepness (on a surrealist painting)

Dohn, Alicia – no surprise (1997)
Fischback, Joy R. – A Country Girl’s Memoir – Why are you like this?
Fledderjohann, Joy Elizabeth – Untimely Morning (2000)
French, Chrissy – Smothered – Spider
Fulker, Rick – Untitled (1972)
Garry, Dana – Good Friend – Untitled
Gilbert, Rachael – An Embodiment of Purity – Molting – Nouvelle Ruse – Tom Thumb
Guhin, Alicia – Spring Promise (1956)
Gunderson, Barb – A Stepfather – Dear Tummy – Extant Persecution
Hampton, B. D. – Still (1996)
Hollick, Frances – Lament of a Blind Man (1970)
Holt, Kathryn Lori – at arms length – back to now and then again – innocent victim
Jens, Heather – Grandpa - On the Step
Johnson, Brian Lee – Father Figure
Jurgens, Sophia – Goodnight – Sixty-Six Hairpins
Lickness, Eric – Mortem Vulgarum (1991)
Little, Randy A. Jr. – Untitled
McCorkle, Mary Converse – Warm Cocoon (1977)
Minch, Becky – Streetlight (1970)
Moore, Anna – Ring around the rosie (1994)
O’Doan, Jennie – Perfect Dance – Weeping Willow
Olson, Tammy – Stepping Stone (A-C.N.A.)
Renz, Ben – One Degree (1927)
Rivola, Flora S. – Another Beauty (1935)
Rogenes, Nichole – Smoothly gliding – Thirsty
Rudd, Chris – The Child (1997)
Ruhnow, Jessica – I Looked Up (2001)
Russell, Esther – Catechism of a Dead Soldier (1934)
Ruste, Rudolf – A Dokota Spring (1927)
Sanders, Clara – Irony of Life (1935)
Taylor, JoAnne – Moonlit Bombs
Tveit, Stephany – The Fall of the Walls
Walworth, Janel – the Last time – The sweeping gesture of lofty grasses – Untitled
Weitala, David – Drip (1972)

Sculptures
Bertsch, Matt – Chair (Found object sculpture)
Cartney, Shelly – Darkness From Within (Terra cotta clay)
Ernhart, Sarah – Untitled (Stoneware)
Goldade, Roberta – Ssshhh (Terra cotta clay)
Hemquist, Sara – Impossible (Raku and stone sculpture)
Newton, Heather – Sometimes Outside is Inside (Found object sculpture)
Wilson, Molly – Untitled II (Wire, wood, found object sculpture)

Short Stories
Beach, Florence – Bobby’s Christmas Gift (1912)
Bryant, A. A. B. – The Draconian Independence Revolution
Christoffersen, Dan – Inspiration vs. Temptation (1994)
Crane, Carol – The Swimmer (1958)
Cutler, Mike - …the cookie crumbles (1990)
Dodson, Mary A. – The Appointment
Droppers, Dion – A Day at the Zoo
Mahoney, Mike – Prelude to Battle (1968)
Raml, Louise – To Have the Time (1970)
Schmitz, Heather M. – Solitude (1999), Solitude II (1999)
Smith, Minnadell – The Depth of a Brother’s Love (1903)

Volume XIV Compilation

Editor: Laura L. Briscoe

Faculty Advisor: A. Thomas Hansen

Faculty Art Advisor: Mark Shekore

Where it can be found: NSU Library Archives

View Archive 2001-2002 for further information.

2009-2010

2010-05-10T00:36:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2009-2010
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paintings
Gunderson, Mary – Bernard in Flight (Intaglio Print) – A Ghost in Repose (drawing) – Life, Part 2637 (oil)
Rubio, Matias I – Artwork 10 ‘My lovely Drawing’ – Korean Drum Dance – Chinese Beauty
Sveeggen, Beth – Untitled (Charcoal wash) - Pathogen (Acrylic)

Photographs
Baek, Su-Hyun – Walking on the Beach – Walking on the Beach 2
Bowman, Lisa – Windmill – Rhythm – Untitled – December Tree – Light – Open Water – October – Forever
Hanson, Valerie L. – Discovering Bubbles

Poetry
Awe, Kaitlin – Morning
Busch, Justin – Maelstrom
Jundt, Rosa – Summer Memory
Kennedy, D. R. – Lay Me Away
Long, Rose – High School Students
Mills, Bryce – Heaven
Nixon, K. K. - cut
Reed, Kaitlin A. - Ghostee

Sculptures
Sveeggen, Beth – Untitled (Steel)
Xu, Lu – Diver - Sunrise – Stretching Canoe – Apple Berry Horn

Short Stories
Gunderson, Mary – The Rain
Jundt, Rosa – Crimson Red Nails
Zappa, Elizabeth – First Impressions

Website Compilation
Editor: Amanda J. Lee
Archive Journalist/Web Designer: Kelli Nixon
Faculty Advisor: Dominique Hoche
Web-site: http://northernlightsnsu.blogspot.com/

Northern Lights wishes to keep updating past issues from the NSU Library's archives. All issues from 2001 to 2008 were rerecorded on 2010 Northern Lights blog. We wish to continue to present both new and old issues to our future readers.

Sculpture 2009-2010

2010-05-09T23:57:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sculpture 2009-2010
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Untitled

Beth Sveeggen

Diver

Lu Xu

Diver

Lu Xu

Sunrise

Lu Xu

Sunrise

Lu Xu

Stretching Canoe

Lu Xu

Apple Berry Horn

Lu Xu

Photographs 2009-2010

2010-05-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photographs 2009-2010
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Walking on the Beach

Su-Hyun Baek

Walking on the Beach 2

Su-Hyun Baek

Windmill

Lisa Bowman

Rhythm

Lisa Bowman

Untitled

Lisa Bowman

December Tree

Lisa Bowman

Light

Lisa Bowman

Open Water

Lisa Bowman

October

Lisa Bowman

Forever

Lisa Bowman

Discovering Bubbles

Valerie L. Hanson

Paintings 2009-2010

2010-05-09T21:56:00.000-07:00

Bernard in Flight

(Intaglio Print)

Mary Gunderson

A Ghost in Repose

(Drawing)

Mary Gunderson

Life, Part 2637

(Oil)

Mary Gunderson

Artwork 10 'My lovely Drawing'

Matias I. Rubio

Korean Drum Dance

Matias I. Rubio

Chinese Beauty

Matias I. Rubio

Untitled

(Charcoal wash)

Beth Sveeggen

Pathogen

(Acrylic)

Beth Sveeggen

Short Stories 2009-2010

2010-05-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

By Mary Gunderson

She stood on the one dry spot underneath the tree, looking out at the rain. It was like the rain that you saw in the movies. It fell slowly, deliberately. It was heavy rain. And for the life of her, she wished that she could cry like that rain.

She hadn’t cried in years. And before the last one, she hadn’t cried for almost a decade. But she wanted to. She really wished she could just let go and empty her body of all the pent up tears she had sloshing around her heart. More importantly, she remembered why she had hated the human race; the disappointments, the earnest moments spent in vain. She currently couldn’t remember why she had given her race another chance, but she had proven herself right once more. Just when she had found someone to give her love to, it had gone sour, just like it always did.

This was why she had decided, a long time ago, that she was destined to be alone. Either she was a cursed individual, or she sub-consciously pushed people away after a certain amount of time. Whichever reason it was, it didn’t matter. She was still better off not getting too invested into the affairs of other humans. No man was an island, but she could still try.

No expectations, no disappointments. That was how it went. Now she remembered. And if you cut out your heart, you didn’t feel compelled to use it. Also gave you a lot more space to put other bits of fluff.

Yes, that was right. Go back to the beginning. Start again. Renaissance. She should have done this months ago. She felt better. She was hollow again. If people wanted to fill her, she could handle it now.

Alone, yet surrounded. Silent, yet outspoken. Here, yet elsewhere. As it should be.

Crimson Red Nails
By Rosa Jundt

Today is going to be the first day of the rest of my life. Ok, that’s being a little dramatic. Let’s say instead that today is the first day of the rest of my life…that is after that whole sham of a marriage anyway. Twenty-two years of marriage is a long time, how am I supposed to recall what single life is like? How in the hell is a 44 year old woman with stretch marks and crow’s feet supposed to enter the dating world? Thanks a lot, Richard.

Almost seven months ago, I had caught Richard with his pants down, literally. Apparently going into the office over lunch hour to surprise your husband with a nice meal of all his favorite foods on his birthday isn’t a good idea when your husband has a new temp with freshly manicured, crimson red nails and perky, albeit fake as shit, double D tits. I found those red nails, not on her keyboard, but grasping Richard’s hairy ass which was furiously pumping away. Granted, I’d never really liked how hairy Richard’s ass was, but damn it, that was my hairy ass.

Of course, Richard came up with the most original saying when he finally noticed me standing at the door, “This isn’t what it looks like, baby.”

Uh…yeah right. Cindy, Sandy, or whatever the hell her name was, had an itch inside her pelvis and you, being the gentleman that you are, decided to help her out and scratch it with your dick. In those few moments after I found them, my faith in marriage, men, and myself flew right out the window, along with the food I carried, the picture from our honeymoon in Tahiti, and I would have tried throwing Cindy, but by then security had been called to escort me from the premises.

Why would they take me away? Was I the person who had strayed from the sacred vows of marriage? Was I the one breaking my best friend, my lover’s heart? It was him that should have been escorted from the building and taken straight to some back alley without even the courtesy of a blindfold and cigarette.

So, after being thrown out and permanently banned from his office, I decided to spend a little time with the two men that will never let a woman down, Ben and Jerry. After I was through with them, I moved on to Jim, Jack, and Jose. I was going through the ever popular men like crazy. Divorce proceedings were held soon after my ice cream/booze binges, leading me to my first disastrous attempt to reenter the dating world. Recalling it as if it was just yesterday, I was standing in front of my full length mirror in my bra and panties wondering how in the hell I was going to get through the blind date my girlfriend, Sheila, had set me up with.

Sheila said that he’s been divorced for five years, relatively attractive (albeit a bit balding), and she’d known him ever since her husband joined AA. Great…a recovering alcoholic who probably wouldn’t be appreciative of the fact that I would need to drink (a lot) to get through the night. I guess I really had no choice, though, I already told her I’d do it, just to get her off my case. To get over the nerves of choosing the right outfit, I decided that I was just going to close my eyes and wear whatever I pulled out of my closet. It just figures that I’d pull out the dress I wore to my Aunt Agnes’s funeral about 15 years ago. With its full length lace sleeves, shoulder pads that should have been outlawed in the eighties, high neck, and ankle length hem, this was not the little black dress that will “knock ‘em dead.” Well, it might‘ve-- it was just that hideous. What the hell? I thought, I’ll wear it anyway.

As soon as the horrendous thing was on, the doorbell rang, startling me out of my musings of how the last time I went on a first date, it was with Richard. Richard, the dick. Dick. I slowly made my way down the hallway, glancing briefly at the family portrait still hanging on the wall. There we were, the perfect family: me sitting on the loveseat in front of the fire in the family room, beside me are my two beautiful children, Molly and Brandon, and Dick behind us with his hand on my shoulder. The only reason why I haven’t taken it down yet is because of Molly and Brandon. I don’t get to see them much now that they are in college and doing their own thing, so it’s nice having all the pictures surround me, even if you can see a stupid Dick in them. I couldn’t help but chuckle at the last picture hanging in the hallway. During one of the nights I had spent with Mr. Cuervo, I seemed to have gotten the bright idea to tape a picture over Dick’s face. Dick is now Johnny Depp until further notice. Yum.

Opening the door revealed the Blind Date and I almost let out an audible gasp and thought to myself that he just may be considered legally blind with the size of the coke-bottle glasses he had on. I think the glasses also could have the reason why didn’t recognize that he didn’t have a toupee on the top of his extremely smooth, shiny head but actually some form of rodent or small dog. A Pekinese maybe. Yep. Pekinese, now that I look back on it. Thank you Sheila, this one was a real looker. Thinking maybe it really couldn’t be all that bad and he had to have some redeeming qualities, I invited him in and asked him if he wanted a drink.

“Uh, no thanks. I’m a recovering alcoholic. Sober now for three years last Tuesday.” he said in a flat voice that had no redeeming inflections of any kind.

“That’s respectable I guess…Well, I’m not and I believe I will have a drink before we go out.”

I reached for the single malt scotch that Dick had always loved and I realized that I have never liked scotch and that this Blind Date guy just wasn’t going to work out. If I was going to go out in the world, I was going to do it on my own terms. I gave some lame excuse and told him to go home, poured out the whole bottle of liquor, and called my daughter, Molly.

Concern filled her voice as she answered the phone, “Mom, aren’t you supposed to be on that date that Sheila set you up with? Is everything going alright? Mom?”

“I need dating tips.”

“You’re on a date now. Can’t this wait.”

“No, and I’m not out with that guy. I want to choose my own.”

“Ok, Mom, here’s what you need to do...”

Our roles had been reversed; usually she called me with all her problems, now I called her to get dating tips. Sad… I did pay attention to her advice though. The very next day, I went on a huge shopping spree….at Sacs with Dick’s alimony money. Molly had told me that first I need to stop dressing like a mom and start dressing like a cougar, wear something that makes you feel sexy and start from the inside out. Alright, I could handle that. Hello! Victoria’s Secret. Hair, it’s all about the hair, mom. Ok, haircut and style at Fenchino’s the ritziest salon in the city. Nails, when was the last time you got your nails done? Spa? Shoes? Everything. Go nuts with dad’s money she said, you deserve it after what he did to you.

I even went one step farther and joined a gym and after a few months I had toned legs, arms, and an ass that would make any 22 year old green with envy.

The next time I looked at my full-length mirror, instead of seeing a frumpy, woman who looked exactly like my mother, I saw a sexy, older version of what I looked like at 17. I felt like I had found myself again and was ready to take on anything. That night, I went out dancing at a club. I didn’t even feel awkward being alone, I just smiled at all the men and surprisingly, they all smiled back. A few even bought me drinks and asked for my number, some of them young enough to be my son!

In this smoky club, I was hot. I was a hot, sexy mama who was way better than any Cindy, Sally, or whatever. A man in his thirties with a full head of hair, a body like Brad Pitt, and the sexiest dimples asked me to dance and oh boy could that boy dance. Just as I was letting him put his hands wherever he wanted, I looked to the bar and saw Richard, sans bimbo temp Cindy staring at me with his jaw agape.

“Buy me a drink.” I whispered in the boy’s ear and we walked over to the bar, where I leaned on the bar right next to Richard while the boy ordered me my drink.

“Sarah, you look so phenomenal,” Richard said.

“You look a little haggard. Actually, you look like shit. Gained a little weight around the middle there, have you? I guess it’s not that noticeable…you’re middle-aged, a paunch is common. Don’t worry about it.” Richard’s hands moved to his waistband and I could definitely tell he was trying to suck it in, “Things not going well with you and Sandra?”

Richard looked back at me with a slightly shocked look on his face. “It’s Sylvie and no we aren’t together. Are you with this guy?”

“No, not really. Just met him tonight, he’s just buying me a drink and then who knows what’ll happen…” I smiled and rested my hand on the boy’s bicep, showing off my freshly manicured, crimson red nails.

First Impressions
By Elizabeth Zappa

Leona crawled across the plush red seats and looked out the window just as the train was pulling into the station. She could hear the shrill whistling of the steam and the screeching of steel-on-steel; could feel the jerking and tugging as the cars settled into place.

It was night outside—December—only a few days before Christmas. There was snow on the ground, in the air, falling silently, softly, as if the flakes were afraid of being heard. It was the snow you knew was there because it was so quiet. The whole world stands still when it snows like this.

Outside the window the world was dark and lonely, populated only by shadows. The buildings of Main Street were a mass of black. Dark, thin shapes protruded from the ground— streetlamps left unlit. The only light was the soft yellow glow coming from within the train station.

“Come along, dear.” --A smooth hand, long fingers bare except for a wedding ring, reached out for Leona. The voice was soft, like the snow, afraid of being heard. Mama was tired from having to hold on to little baby Herman, who was one-year-old and cranky from the long journey.

Leona hesitated. The world outside was cold and gloomy. Empty. Once they left the station that was all there would be; an endless abyss of darkness in the eyes of the six-year-old girl. But Papa was there, in the station waiting for them. She had not seen him in so long and had grown a lot since he had left New York. She hoped he recognized her.

She took her mama’s hand and clutched her small suitcase with the other. Mama carried Herman and her travel bag; the porter would get the rest. They stepped briefly into the bitter cold as they walked across the platform towards the warmth of the station. The arctic air bit at Leona’s cheeks. She wanted to push her wool scarf further up her face but she didn’t want to let go of Mama or her suitcase. They were soon inside, though; all of them tangled up in the tender embrace of Papa, who had lost weight and now had a thick brown beard. He laughed at everything and Leona felt a little better. Mama beamed with joy for the first time since Papa had left. Even sleepy Herman perked up a little when Papa took him into his arms. In that moment, with them all united as a family again, everything felt just right. However, as they headed towards the door to leave she shrunk closer to Papa, who was carrying a lantern to guide them to their new home. That moment of happiness was brought to an abrupt end as the door closed behind them and they were walking back into the night.

Back into the cold and wind; a wind that never seemed to stop. It had come out of nowhere and it blew and blew the whole time they were walking to their new home.

“It’s because there’s nothing out here to stop it,” said Mama, adjusting the blanket covering Herman so that the wind would not get to him.

Leona knew that tone in Mama’s voice. It was the same voice she used back when they were still all together back in the cities, in New York, when Papa wanted to move out west. Mama had insisted that there was nothing out there: no people, no opportunities, nothing. But Papa had been in contact with a friend of his who had told him about an opportunity to buy a dry goods store in a small town in the Dakotas. The town was on the rail line, there was a space above the store for them to live, and the population was (slowly) growing. Papa won the debate, pointing out that this could be the only opportunity they could have to get out of the dirty, smelly, crime-ridden city. Out west the land was unspoiled, the air clean, and the people good. Papa had won, and obedient, genteel Mama had let him head out west first to get things prepared for their arrival.

Leona had been excited when Papa talked about moving out west. There would be new places to explore, new animals to watch, and new friends to make.
But she had been frightened, too.

“The Indians will get you and scalp the golden curls right off your head,” said her cousin, Edmund, tugging on her pigtails.

“You’ll get lost in a blizzard,” said Grand-mama Bertha, “or sucked up in a tornado. The wind will swoop down right outta the sky and whisk you away.”

“Just don’t get trampled by a herd of buffalo,” said Uncle Harvey.
So many scary, bad things that could happen! Did Papa really think it would be safer out there? But Leona had even less choice in the matter than Mama.

Now, looking around the town, Leona wondered about Papa’s choice. Mama was right: there was nothing beyond the town. The road they were on seemed to come from nothing and end in nothing. The buildings on Main Street were so small and short compared to the tall buildings of the city! They were all made of wood, too. There was no brick or concrete in sight. The town was absolutely silent. Back home there was always dogs barking, babies crying, and traffic on the streets with people shouting and wagons clattering, even in the middle of the night! And it was never so dark! It was as if the train station and Papa’s lone lantern were the only lights around from there to the cities. The swinging glow from the lantern barely pierced the darkness, avoiding any dark nook or cranny, not even straying to the porches of the post office, tailor, or bank. It only lit the way immediately in front of them, seeming to cling to Papa just as Leona did.

Finally, they reached their new home. It was a two-story, wood frame structure, with the store on the first floor and their home on the second floor. Papa had kept the stove going so that by the time they got there it was toasty and warm. The top floor was not much larger than their apartment back in the cities, with a kitchen, sitting area, and two bedrooms. It was strange not to hear neighbors through thin walls. The rooms and furniture were simple, but Mama would fix that up soon enough. She had always been able to make any space look pretty. Leona stood at the front window, looking out into the snowy night and down onto the empty street. She thought she saw an Indian creeping around, but Mama told her not to be silly and Papa said there were no Indians nearby. That made Leona feel a little better, but not much, especially when Papa added that it could just be a coyote.

Leona could not sleep that night as she lay in bed in her new home. The silence of the new town was too loud for her ears, and the questions that plagued her mind were no help: What was there going to be in the morning, when the sun finally came up and wiped away the darkness? What about Indians and buffalo and tornadoes? Or coyotes? And could they really be happy being surrounded by nothing after being surrounded by everything?

Only the future held the answers, and the future, with all of its answers, seemed as far away as the empty horizon in the distance.

Poetry 2009-2010

2010-05-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Poetry 2009-2010
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Morning

By Kaitlin Awe

Second star on the right and strait on till morning
When boys were icky
When love meant kissing
When kissing was gross
The time of make believe
_____Wishes...
________Dreams...

When escape was an imagination away
Second star on the right and straight on till morning
When time was submersed in
_____Wishes...
________Dreams...
You can fly! You can fly! You can fly!
to me.

That life has past,
We’ve bid farewell.
But we cling
To the simplicity
Don’t say goodbye, goodbye means leaving...
and leaving means forgetting...

If love is a dream,
Sunday is waking up.
Move along, no time to make believe
We wish for more time...
We dream of time spent, of time to come...

Sunday means leaving
Sunday means saying goodbye
Don’t say goodbye, goodbye means leaving...
a nd leaving means forgetting...

We cling to Never Land
We hold on to each other
Sunday comes, still
We leave
and promise not to forget.

Maelstrom
By Justin Busch

The lights in the express bus dim for lethargic countenance.
but I am wide awake, in my lingering vessel.
The foreign world on the other side of this glass
illuminates its beacons and guides our transport along

an eight-lane boulevard into the depths of the incandescence.
I inhale sharply, abruptly aware of life’s new velocity
and the taillights blurring past us.

As we slip through the threshold into the epicenter
bathing in glimmering brilliance, my eyes slowly
compose themselves. Structures seem crowded as do
faces meandering on the sidewalks, in doorways, and at sale carts.

The first step off the bus and into the ambiance is intoxicating
and overwhelming. Faces speaking a language I have not yet learned,
details of smell overpowering rational thought process.

Behind the lights, darkness
Beyond exoticism, revelations
Behind my eyes,
Secrets will disentangle.

Summer Memory
By Rosa Jundt

Your words caressed just like a lover
that summer. Our friendship turned to heat
it flows in a constant reminder…

June, July, and August we were together.
Holding hands on the beach and in the backseat
your words caressed just like a lover.

Each bright, new day I was eager
to greet the morning sun’s heat
It flows in a constant reminder…

The gentle words you’d whisper
Nothing since could be as sweet…
your words caressed just like a lover.

In a short time, I was changed forever.
And just like my heart, the memory beats…
It flows as a constant reminder.

I can look back at that passionate summer
With no regrets at the memory of you. I’ll keep
Your words caressed just like a lover
as they flow as a constant reminder.

Lay Me Away
By D.R. Kennedy

Curled up tightly in a ball,
Beside an insipid oak tree,
Did my soul fall and then call
For someone to set me free.

Loneliness, Pain, Regret and Remorse
Play with me the livelong day.
They lash out at me in full force,
Willed to make me pay.

No matter where I run at all,
No matter where I go,
I'm still just curled up in a ball
Looking for a place to grow.

Someone somewhere please pick my seed
And take me where you may,
Before I wither up and bleed
Exactly where I lay.

High School Students
By Rose Long

Each Student is different
They lead different lives
Have different opinions
Handle things in different ways
But they are all reaching for the same goal together.

Each Student struggles
Struggles to fit in
Struggles to stand out
Struggles to be independent
Struggles to be accepted
But they are all reaching for the same goal together.

That goal is Graduation and the Future
Each student has termination to reach this goal
Each for their own reasons
Each student is different in how they are approaching this goal
But they are reaching for this goal together as a class.

So cherish the memories along the way
Cherish the time with the people all around you
Family, Friends, Classmates, and Teachers
Soon each one of you will be going in different directions
And the memories will be all that you have.

So enjoy the time together as you are reaching for this goal
Of Graduation and the Future
And remember to have fun
Because soon the time together will be over
And the memories will be all that you have.

Heaven
By Bryce Mills

Heaven is the trick
The troll under the bridge
The goats with a lie to save the day
The day is lost and the troll is gone
Heaven is a card trick
All the cards are the same
Not a single Ace in the deck
Not a single one is your card
Heaven is the prize
A ring in the Cracker Jack box
A ring to bring happiness forever
They don't make rings anymore
Heaven is a joke
A comic on the stage
Speaking the words
To an unlaughing audience
Heaven is the bait
A cat after the nip
The god dangling it above
Just to make you jump up and never reach
Heaven is the Hoax
It's just a lie
A lullaby for the kids
A Santa Claus no one wants to give up believing
There is no one delivering the presents
No reindeer
No jolly old man
There is no heaven
Go to bed and dream it's not a lie
Go to bed and sleep eternal
Sleep away in your heaven

cut

By K. K. Nixon

You've been cut so many times you cannot speak

Only you never knew you've been cut

You've been cut so many times you cannot breath

the air has been sucked out

language fails you

you're on your own

Speechless gestures

uncertainty

stumbling

mumbling

cut

And only just found out

you try

reconnect

people

family

friends

you must redefine

cut off

Only this time

its your fault

You shut Him down

shut Him off

shut Him up

He'd help you

if only you try

if only you listen

Instead you've placed Him on a shelf

where he collects dust

Patiently Waiting

Patiently Watching

Loving you with all your faults

Patiently waiting to bind the wounds

you cut

Ghostee
By Kaitlin Reed

I’m sorry we had to flush you.
You were a cute little fish.

You were white and orange and fat.
Your little eyes were buggy and round.

You always made those weird, little faces
While swimming with your fellow fishies.

You liked to swim around in your little tank
And eat all those little fish flakes for lunch.

You could always be found in your cave
Or playing dead at the bottom of your bowl.

Then one day we realized you weren’t playing
when you stuck to a plant floating near the top.

If only we had disposed of you right away,
We wouldn’t have had to throw the fake plant, too.

Short Stories 2003-2004

2010-04-26T22:34:00.000-07:00

By Nathan Bloom

I was the first.
It was a terrible Massachusetts day when I heard the ImmerTech doctor’s voice booming form the microphone during the enormous press conference. I will never forget the words he said, I remember word for word.
“The experiments on the animals have shown great success and we are unaware of any negative side effects. Saying that, it is my great honor to report that the same experiment will be performed using a homo sapient. After a long, exhausting search we have come up with our man. Please welcome Adam Christianson.”

* * *

The procedures went just how the doctors had planned. All together, the procedure took about three days to complete. The started by injecting stimulators into my nervous system at precise points in the body. The simulators are designed to last forever and as long as they work, so does my nervous system. Next, they put a microchip about the size of a needle’s eye into my brain. This chip acts as a memory device, a storage system of sorts.
After a few more small surgeries the next thing on their agenda was to manipulate my DNA so that my body will be incapable of wearing down. My immune system will remain as strong as ever and my muscle tissue cannot atrophy. I’m as close to superhuman as a mortal can get.
I also had a vasectomy. The doctors feared what might happen if I had offspring. It wasn’t a risk they were willing to take. That was the hardest decision for me, but if that’s what it took to be an immortal mortal, then it was a sacrifice I had to make.
They discovered a way for the brain to stop aging, as well as the ability to stay physically fit forever. They beat aging. Basically, they had discovered the fountain of youth. Juan Ponce de Leon searched for a fountain of youth throughout the Southeastern United States during the 1500’s after hearing stories from different Indian tribes. He never did find a fountain of youth, but he did discover and name Florida. This idea of beating aging is where ImmerTech derived the name of their project, The Ponce de Leon Experiment.
They chose me because I was a healthy, physically mature male at my prime physical state. I was also chosen because I volunteered. I believe it was every man’s dream to have the ability to live forever. I would be an instant celebrity.
I was only twenty-three when they cut me open. I went through many vigorous hours of therapy, both physical and emotional, because immortality would be a heavy burden for anybody. They said I was recovering just fine and that I now had the ability to live forever.
I can still be killed; don’t get me wrong, I just cannot die naturally. My body will never deteriorate, and my brain, with ample nutrition of course, will never stop being active. I have the ability to live forever, but I probably won’t. I can die in a car wreck, or by gunshot or other unnatural methods. I can drown but my lung capacity is amazing and it would take a very long time. I am immune to nearly every disease and since cancer was cured over forty years ago, that is no longer a problem either.
I can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound, can’t run faster than a speeding bullet, and x-ray vision is still in the experimental stage. I’m not Superman; but in my mind, I am superhuman.
The doctors deemed the experiment a huge success. After thirty years I was still in peak physical condition and life was great. I was the only one who went through the experiment because shortly after I went under the knife some interest groups complained to the government that the idea of the whole thing was immoral and dangerous. The whole project was shut down, but ImmerTech still stood financially stable by coming up with age-enhancing drugs, muscle-enhancers, and other nonsense. Most of it was bullshit, but some of the products actually worked. Either way, ImmerTech made plenty of money to support me. That was part of the deal. I wasn’t getting cut open unless they promised to take care of me for life, both financially and medically. And for the most part they have; after all I am still by far their biggest moneymaker ever.

* * *

I am one hundred and fifty-seven years old now. I only know this because a calendar on my wall says ‘March 2197’. Living forever was gonna be great; I could see the world, go everywhere, meet everyone. At least that’s what they told me.
The nightmares never stopped. My brain never quit at night and all of my worst fears and insecurities came out at night. I hated sleeping and I dreaded each night when I would lie in bed. I didn’t dare tell the doctors for fear that they would consider the procedure a failure and take away my financial backing.
I could never live happily with the constant phone calls—reporters, magazines, television producers. I used to hate television anyway. I also had constant checkups and examinations, blood samples, urine tests, DNA tests. My life was a living hell…but it gets worse…

* * *

My new residence is ImmerTech Laboratories, Boston, Massachusetts. ‘Immer’ is the German word meaning ‘forever’; and ImmerTech specializes in beating Father Time. Damn fools.
ImmerTech itself is a monotonous-looking place. It is like a city all its own. Huge glass buildings filled with monkeys, rats, and other experimental creatures. Large labs containing syringes, scalpels, and other surgical tools used to perform God’s work. Cloning rooms used to recreate body parts. Oh, if the government only knew the evils performed behind those glass walls.
I live in the top level of the tallest building. My room is completely white. I have a big bed, a large-screen television, a desk, two reclining chairs, and a quaint little bathroom. It’s my prison.
You see, I’ve been dead now for over sixty years. Not physically dead, but emotionally. I lost my soul one night when I was sleeping in my old bed in my old home. It was the night I was supposed to die naturally in my sleep, but I messed with fate. Fate took my soul, and along with it everything that meant anything to me that is my penalty for the sins that I have committed.
When my emotions left so did my personality—I am a vegetable of sorts, but I know I am. I guess I’m more like a zombie than a vegetable—a real-life zombie. I still have a conscience but there is no bearing between my mental state and my physical state. One does not control the other.
I feel no strong emotions anymore—no pain, no fear, no joy, not one hint of love. Thos all died with my soul. The doctors tried to play God, and I tried to beat God; but He has won. Instead of striking me down for spiting Him, He has done the opposite—eternal suffering. Now I’m stuck here, forever.
After my soul was lost, ImmerTech took me in. They could not let anyone see that their great experiment wasn’t really a success at all.
So here I am in my cell, just breathing.
I watch a lot of television. I like television; fools running around, making a mockery of normal lives by over-exaggerating emotions. Damn fools.
My day is filled with nothingness; waking up at ten o’clock, stopping in my quaint little bathroom preparing myself for my busy days. Breakfast at eleven. Judith brings it to me; usually bacon and oatmeal, glass of milk to wash it down; always health food.
Dinner is at two usually. Judith brings me that, too. She is a young lady, standing about 5’7”, a blonde hair, blue eyes—the total package. She’s a very kind lady, in my old life I should find her to be quite attractive; but now, not here. She speaks very soft but not often, as she has no idea that I can understand what she is saying. She is my only hope of getting free from my incarceration. She is the only person I come into contact with during my day, thus being the only person that can kill me. I don’t have the ability to self-terminate because my subtle mind tells me I have no reason to. Judith is my friend, my only hope: she must betray me.

* * *

After dinner and back to the television, I usually fall asleep during this time. Today is no different.
My large dinner meal makes me tired. Sleep is my escape and I dream a lot. Not odd dreams, just usually flashbacks of my old life. I miss that. My girlfriend, Evelyn, she was always so good to me, even though she was not in favor of the experiment. She wanted to children so badly and I couldn’t give them to her and yet she stuck with me. She understood my ambition and maybe even loved me for it. Damn fool.
Evelyn died when I was ninety-three. She was eighty-nine years old and passed away in a nursing home. I left her long before then for younger women. I couldn’t bear the thought of waking up each morning to such an old woman. How naïve I was. The only true love I ever had and I had fallen victim to my own lust. I miss Evelyn.
I dream about the children I never had. Little angels they are. They seem to grow up each time I dream, little Damian and little Lucy. My little angels.
I wake up now. I usually wake up around five o’clock and this evening was no different. I walk around my room a little bet, maybe play solitaire with a worn out deck of cards the let me bring from my old room in my old home. I have mastered the game of solitaire, and can usually tell if I will win or lose before I even flip through the deck. It doesn’t matter. Solitaire passes the time, but I wish I could play solitaire outside my cell.
I haven’t been outside in decades. I do have a skylight though; and if I don’t feel like playing solitaire, I stare up in the light at a nice summer day for minutes, hours maybe, just waiting. Waiting for the light to reach out to me and pull me up to heaven. It never reaches and I am never pulled. But I keep my faith.

* * *

Six o’clock is nearing and that means hop is on the way. Judith should be heare any minute with my supper. Oh sweet Judith, I know someday you will betray me and I will love you for it!
I hear her coming.
My supper smells delicious. It consists of chicken noodle soup, crackers, and grilled cheese sandwich. A slice of apple pie followed up the meal. Everything tastes all right here, although I wouldn’t probably know the difference if it didn’t. Even still I enjoy eating and look forward to doing so tomorrow because I was not drugged tonight; no poison in the pie, no lethal concoction in my milk, just food. No poison.
And so here I am tonight lying in bed, lights out at eight o’clock, wondering what new adventures my dreams will bring. I will still be here tomorrow, and the day after that. Hope is lost. When all civilization is gone, I will still be here in this room awaiting my next meal.
I will be the last.

Babel
By Mary Dodson

After twenty minutes of trying in vain to pay attention to the lecture, Judy closed her right eye and held of her thumb and forefinger so that it looked like she held the professor’s head between them “I’m crushing your head!” she muttered to herself as she clamped her thumb and finger together. She stifled a giggle at the old joke, then sighed. Most lecturers move from one point to another along a linear path, like a cyclist riding on a flat country road. However, this professor leaped from point to point like a kid trying to get across a fast-running creek by jumping from one jutting rock to the next, leaving no trail of where he had been and no indication of where he was going.
The professor droned on, and Judy’s mind wandered far away. She thought about children with hearing disabilities, ostensibly the subject of this lecture. She could understand why these children sometimes throw fits of frustration at their inability to communicate with others. She could picture herself lying on the floor of the classroom, kicking and flailing and screaming, “Start making sense! For the love of God, start making sense!”
She decided to make a fresh effort at paying attention, so she tried to copy down his notes form the board. Never had she seen handwriting like his. His Fs looked like mutant sevens and his capital Es resembled the symbol for the British pound.
The professor paused for questions, and Judy imagined raising her hand and asking facetiously, “Sir, would you mind repeating that in English?” She chucked silently to herself, but then a terrible thought occurred to her: what if she had sudden lost the ability to understand English? How would she function? Oh sure, she spoke a little French, but that probably wouldn’t do her much good unless she could somehow migrate to a French-speaking area.
Then another horrible thought hit her. What if, without realizing it, she had suffered damage to the language centers of her brain and had contracted aphasia, thereby losing the ability to understand both English and French?
She picked up her pen and wrote, “This pen is blue.” Then, just to be safe, she wrote, “C’est un stylo bleu.” It made sense to her, but then she remembered that one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine when some members of the crew contracted aphasia. When they tried to communicate through writing nobody but themselves could understand what they wrote. If something similar had happened to her, then she would be able to read what she had written, but nobody else would. She racked her brain, but she couldn’t remember how that episode ended.
What could she do? She tried to think of a solution through the whirlwind of panic that had formed in her head. English was out. French was out. She didn’t know sign language; well, just the alphabet but eve that probably wouldn’t do much good, since the same areas of the brain probably control sign language. Perhaps she could go around speaking English with a French accent…No! mentally she slapped herself on the forehead. Desperately searching for a solution, she had temporarily lost sight of the problem. What to do? What to do…
Suddenly one of her classmates dropped a book and startled her out of her reverie with a brief yelp of surprise. She felt the rest of the class looking at her and blushed slightly.
“Are you all right?” the professor asked her.
Any embarrassment Judy felt at her silliness quickly melted away in the relief of having all her linguistic facilities intact. “I’m fine,” she answered, and started copying down the professor’s hieroglyphics from the board.

Fool Hardy and the Table of Plenty
By Mary Dodson

Some of my friends thought I was crazy to buy a house next door to my Grandma Ginny. Other thought it was sweet. To me, it was just the thing to do. I mean, she took care of me when there was no one else to do it, after my parents died. It only made sense that I would do the same for her.
Grandma’s 76 now, still in pretty good health, but I can tell she’s winding down. She guards her independence ferociously, though. She almost bit my head off when I asked if I could help her take care of her finances. “I’ve been looking after my own affair for years now, Jeff. I can take care of myself, thank you very much.” I suppose I should have been tougher, really put my foot down, but…well, hindsight is 20/20.
It was Friday the day she got the letter from the insurance company saying that she’d let her homeowner’s insurance lapse. Have you ever noticed that those sorts of things always happen on the weekend? It’s true, at least for me. Bad things always seem to happen to me on the weekend when I can’t do anything about it because the people who can fix it have the weekend off.
Well, at least firemen don’t take the weekend off and good thing too. Because wouldn’t you know it, that was the very weekend the old wiring in Grandma’s house decided to give out and set the house on fire.
I never used to believe in fate and all that supernatural psychic stuff, but I admit that it was pretty weird that I just happened to wake up to the bathroom soon after the fire started. I’ve never understood why some bathrooms have windows, but for once I was glad ours did. I saw the flames through the gauzy curtains, but I was still kind of groggy and it didn’t register at first. Fireworks…Fire…FIRE! As soon as the information made its way from my eyes to my brain I woke up like I’d been jolted with electricity.
I ran back into the bedroom, screaming for my wife to call 911, then I ran outside and across the lawn to Grandma’s house.
I don’t really remember what happened there. When I look back on it, it’s like a dream. Well, a nightmare, actually. All I really remember is picking Grandma up out of bed, knowing that I had to get her out quickly, but trying to be careful not to trip and fall.
We got out of the house and I hurried back to my lawn just as June, my wife, was coming out of the house. I set Grandma Ginny down in one of our lawn chairs, then I turned around and ran back toward the burning house. Faintly, under the roar of the flames I could hear Grandma and June calling me, shouting at me to come back.
It’s strange the thoughts that go through your mind as you enter a burning house. I remembered when I was a boy and Grandma read to me from the Bible the story of the Holy Spirit descending on the disciples like “tongues of fire,” and how she read me fairytales featuring man-eating monsters that were always “licking their chops.” Those phrases kept running through my head; they hadn’t meant anything to me until now.
It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for, but I was worried the fire had gotten to it first. But my luck had held. The flames had not yet reached Granma’s antique end table. I picked it up; it wasn’t heavy but I was awkward to carry. I managed to get it out of the house and stagger back to my yard. The firefighters had just arrived then, and I was only too happy to get out of the way and let them do their job. When Grandma Ginny saw what I’d gone back into the house to save she yelled, “Jeff Hardy, that was FOOLHARDY!” Suddenly she, June and I realized what she’d just said and started laughing hysterically. We laughed so long that after a while we didn’t know if we were laughing or crying; probably both. We didn’t stop until Grandma started coughing and the paramedics treated her for smoke inhalation.
Apparently the reporters from the newspaper got there in time to catch Grandma Ginny’s remark, because the headline the next morning read, “LOCAL MAN SAVES GRANDMOTHER FROM BURNING HOUSE” and the subtitle read, “Jeff ‘Fool’ Hardy Also Went Back for Table.” I guess they just couldn’t resist the pun. I wonder how long it’s going to take me to live that nickname down. Not that it matters.
I suppose you’re wonder why I saved the table. Well, do you ever watch Antiques Roadshow on PBS? These antiques appraisers travel around the United States and people bring in their heirlooms on their garage sale finds and the appraisers tell them if their items are worth anything. My wife really likes that show. I thought it was pretty dumb at first, but it gradually sucks you in and the next thing you know you’re looking at an old lamp at a flea market and you think, “Hey, nice patina.”
Anyway, about a week or so before the fire I saw an old table kind of like Grandma’s get appraised. They estimated it’d bring at least 100,000 dollars at auction. Wow, I thought. I should take Grandma’s table to be appraised sometime. When the fire started I knew “sometime” was about to run out.
I mean, I’m not stupid. I realize that Grandma’s table probably isn’t going to be worth that much money, but if it’s worth anything that’ll be a big help towards rebuilding. I just needed to do something for Grandma after all that she’s done for me. Believe me; she’s worth running into a burning building. Twice.

Trivial Things
Mary Dodson

Ted Roland and his wife Lola stood side by side at the kitchen sink, silently washing and drying the dishes. The tension hung in the air like a sour-smelling fog. Ted could tell by the way she plunged eadch dish into the soapy water with a splash and a glug that she was still angry with him. In fact, the only dish she did no immerse so vigorously was her mother’s antique glass candy dish.
The evening had started out pleasant enough. Ted reflected on the delightful conversation they had shared over their evening meal. Lola glowingly described the new client she had brought to her accounting firm and proudly speculated that she would soon be up for a promotion. Ted, a sportswriter for the local newspaper for the past ten years, told her about the interview he had conducted with the college basketball coach. They laughed together over the tired old clichés and Yogi Berra-isms he used to illustrate teamwork and victory.
After dinner they retired to the living room, he with a newspaper, and she with her novel. “Did you take the garbage out?” Lola asked casually.
Ted flushed and twitched his newspaper. “I forgot,” he admitted hesitantly. “I’m sorry.”
Lola sighed. “Why can’t you ever do anything I asked you to?”
“I’ll do it right now,” Ted said, hurriedly getting to his feet.
“No, don’t bother!” Lola snapped. “I’ll do it myself.”
As Ted sat back down, the old, neglected Trivial Pursuit box on the wooden bookcase across the room caught his eye. A shiver suddenly shot down his spine as he read the Alexander Pope quote on the lid: “What mighty contests rise for trivial things?”
Like and instant replay set on a continuous loop, Ted’s thoughts lingered over the previous events of the evening as he took his wife’s candy dish out of the water to dry it. The delicate dish slipped from his dripping fingers and seemed to fall to earth in slow motion. He lunged spectacularly to save it, but his muscles felt as though they had been replace with sacks of wet sand. The dish eluded his grasp and shattered on the kitchen floor
Horrified, Ted slowly looked up and met his wife’s gaze. Her nostrils flared slightly and he could see rage smoldering in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, instinctively backing away, his hands n front of him in a gesture both defensive and supplicating.
“You did that on purpose,” Lola said in a low growl.
“No,” Ted pleaded, “it slipped—it was an accident…I swear.”
“How could you?” Lola exploded. “How DARE you? You KNEW that dish was special to me, that it was my mother’s…”
She advanced on him and he backed against the wall. “I’m sorry,” he said again, wholeheartedly sincere, but at the same time he furtively searched for an escape route.
“Shut up!” Lola barked and slapped him brutally across the face. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you!” She shot him a venomous look and stepped back to the broken shards of glass. “You always hated my mother, didn’t you? She knew from the start what a worthless piece of shit you are!” She picked up two of the biggest fragments and held them gingerly in her hands before flinging them at Ted. He raised his arms to protect his face; the shards were deflected by his thick sweater and plummeted harmlessly back to the ground. “Clean the mess up,” she ordered contemptuously.
Ted shuffled to the back porch for the broom and dustpan. After sweeping up the sparkling remains of the dish, he sought refuge at his computer. He tried to concentrate on typing up the interview with the basketball coach, tried to ignore the stinging in his cheek and the tears stinging his eyes.
After about an hour or two he saw Lola’s reflection his computer screen. His muscles became taut as she advanced towards him and he tried not to wince as she put her hands gently on his shoulders.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she murmured into his ear. “I shouldn’t have acted lke that. But you know how I get sometimes.”
Ted let out his breath slowly and fought to keep his voice steady. “Yes, dear,” he answered, “I know.”

At First Sight
By James Ingram

The day I turned 18 years old, my life changed in ways I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams. I was born with bright blue eyes, but around the time of my six birthday they began to slowly turn to steel-gray color. As they changed color and I lost my sense of sight, my senses of hearing and smell took on a whole new depth for me. I could identify people by their smell, or the sound of their footsteps. I was slowly losing my memory of sight, and this had been my lot in life for the past 12 years. I remember that morning; my little sister was in my room waking me up earlier than usual.
“Vorion, Mom said it’s time to get up. Vorion, wake up!”
This was accompanied with her pouncing on my chest, momentarily taking my breath away. I pushed her off and slowly sat up, rubbing my face. I looked in what I thought was her general direction and then asked, “What time is it anyway, Marion?” I was answered by Marion suddenly jumping on my back and screeching, “It’s time to get up!” Having no way to argue with her nine-year-old logic, I got up and slowly shuffled my way downstairs, with her still clinging onto my back.
I could hear mother, Jennifer, bustling around downstairs making breakfast. The house smelled like pancakes and bacon, which must mean that Marion’s dad, Tony, spent the night last night. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, Marion and I are only half-siblings. Shortly after I went blind, my father left my mother, because she had caught him cheating on her. We lived in a car for about a week, and then she met Tony. He took us in and bought us a house, but never made a commitment to my mother, so she never made one to him. He came and went as he pleased, leaving my mom to raise us both of us, and she had various men over pretty much when she wanted to and he didn’t care. Anyway, back to the real story. As Marion and I made it to the kitchen, she yelled out, “Daddy!” and jumped off my back. I heard Tony say, “Hey, there’s my little girl.” And then his chair creaked as Marion threw herself on him. I smiled and gently sad down in my seat, waiting to be acknowledged. Like usual, Tony disappointed me, but Mom didn’t.
“Morning honey, how do you feel this morning?”
“Lousy, like usual. Why did you want me to wake up so goddamned early for? It’s a Saturday.”
At this, Mom slammed down her spatula and yelled, “Vorion! I told you I don’t like you using that kind of language in this house, and especially not around your little sister. Besides, it’s already 9:30.”
“Besides,” Tony said, “it’s your birthday today, no time to sleep in.” I turned in his direction and responded, quite sarcastically, “So what, one more year. Excuse me while I go jump up and down for joy.” Tony chuckled and responded, “Yeah, but you’re getting one hell of a present this year.”
“What is it? Another one of those stupid audio-olfactory movies you like to make me watch? Thanks, but no thanks.”
After this remark, Mom proceeded to jump down my throat again. “Why can’t you be a little more pleasant sometimes? Tony isn’t out to get you! He’s trying to be pleasant.” Tony piped up, “It’s OK, Jennifer, he’s just tired. The guys kept him out really late last night. He didn’t stumble in until 4:30 this morning.” I grinned sheepishly at this and could imagine the kind of look my mother was sending my way.
I quickly tried to change the subject. “So, what did you get me?” Instead of Tony answering, like I expected, Mom responded, “Oh, it’s not from us; it’s from Sam.” Sam is my no good father. I could almost hear the pathetic smile I’m sure she was wearing in her voice. After sitting there silently for a moment, I said, “So that’s the stench I smell. You’re here too, aren’t you jerk?”
The room fell deathly silent for a moment until Mom gave a strained little laugh. “Come on everyone, let’s give these two some privacy.” Mom, Tony, and Marion left the room in a rush, leaving me alone with Sam. “So what do you want anyway, Sam? Finally decided to see if I was still alive after all this time?”
He sat there for about five minutes before he answered, “Don’t be like that. I’ve had important things to do.”
“For almost 12 years I haven’t heard from you. What the hell do you want?!”
“I’ve come bearing a very special gift, Vor. I’ve found a surgeon, one who specializes in vision, who thinks he can help you see again.”
“That’s impossible! If you bothered to check up on me more, you’d know that Mom had asked everywhere, and no one can figure out how to do it! And don’t call me Vor; that’s not my name.” He had called me Vor when I was younger, and after he left, I couldn’t stand the sound of it.
“I know you mother and her multitude of boyfriends haven’t found anything, but they haven’t asked where I have. This surgeon operates in Japan and is not easy man to reach. It’s taken me the better part of two years to do it, and he’s agreed to see you.”
I quietly contemplated this for a moment, and then stated, in a civil voice, “Why?” At first, Sam didn’t respond, and I began to think that I had made him angry. But after a few moments, he retorted, “Why not?” You’re still my son, even if you don’t think of yourself that way. At least see him, he might be able to help.”
I turned around as I heard a footstep in the doorway. Mom whispered, “I think you should see this man, Vorion. If he can really help you see again, you can’t just pass it off as unimportant. “I turned in her direction and said, “If you want me to try Mom, I’ll give it a shot.”
Within days I was on my way to Okinawa on a Trans-Pacific jet. I was nervous because Mom couldn’t come with me. It was just Sam and I. we talked very little on the flight; he seemed content to let me ponder what was happening in silence. When we arrived in Okinawa after a grueling three hour flight, we were met at the airport by my surgeon’s chauffeur, who introduced himself as Pablo.
“Welcome to Japan!” he bubbled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!” I mumbled something vaguely polite; Sam refused to be outdone. “It’s great to be here,” he nearly yelled. “I can’t wait to meet Dr. Kim in person. We headed out to the car, and my senses were assaulted by a myriad of new smells and sounds. I found it quite disorienting. Thankfully, the limousine we were hustled into was soundproof and smelled of meticulous scrubbing.
The drive to the clinic where Dr. Kim worked took about twenty-five minutes. During this time, Sam tried to engage in conversation with me, but I pointedly ignored him. So he went to visiting with Pablo, who was being far more pleasant than I was. I listened to them talk about the weather, the Tokyo Dragons, and the Naginata Samurias.
We finally reached the clinic, and Pablo bustled us into Dr. Kim’s office. He left immediately, asking us to remain in the office. Shortly after that, Dr. Kim joined us in the office and immediately asked Sam to step outside for a moment. After Sam was gone, Kim sat down next to me and turned my chair to face his.
“Why exactly did you come here, Mr. Trac?”
I thought it was definitely an odd way to start a conversation, but I took the bait anyway.
“Well, Mr. Kim, I’m here because my father told me you might be able to make me see again. Can you, or has this trip been a monumental waste of my time?”
“For starters, Mr. Trac, I didn’t go through fourteen years of college to be called ‘mister’ by someone as young as yourself. Second, I can’t make you see. I can just let you see again.”
“Point made, and please call me Vorion. Mr. Trac is my father.”
“Fair enough, Vorion. But yes, I’m confident that I can give you back your sense of sight. Just as good as it used to be. I’ve developed a groundbreaking new procedure that regenerates the main optic nerve from its base out to the eyeballs. I can even replace your eyes themselves if it comes to that.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; it all sounded too good to be true. “So I can see again, just like that?”
“No, not just like that,” Dr. Kim responded. “It is a very long, painful procedure, and I can’t guarantee that it will work. Unfortunately, the one way to be certain is to try. Give it some thought.”
I felt a slight bit of dread start to creep up, but I quickly quenched it. “Well, I can tell you know I don’t have anything to think about. I want to do it. If it doesn’t work, at least it can’t get any worse.”
Before I truly realized what was happening, I was on a cold table with my head restrained. I heard Dr. Kim say, “All right, Vorion, just relax. I’m going to give you a sedative, and when you wake up the surgery will be all over.” I felt a mask being placed on my face, and I slowly slipped into unconsciousness. People are always asking me if I can see things in my dreams, and I usually don’t. But for some reason, my dreams were filled with colors and lights.
When I finally woke up, I couldn’t remember where I was. I tried sitting up, but felt someone restrain me. I started to thrash around, trying to get away, but quickly settled down when I heard Sam’s voice. “Calm down, Vor, everything is fine. You’re in the recovery room of Dr. Kim’s clinic in Okinawa. The surgery went well. Now you just need time to heal.”
“What’s there to heal? The doctor said that he was going to regenerate everything, not injure anything. Why can’t I see?”
“That’s actually quite simple, Vorion,” Dr. Kim said, silently slipping into the room. “It takes time for the nerves to completely regenerate. We implanted a pair of dark lenses over your eyeballs. In a couple of weeks, after the tests show that everything worked, we’ll remove the lenses and you’ll be able to see.”
“Dr. Kim, I really hurt. Are there some pain killers or something that I can get?”
“No problem, Vorion, I’ll get my nurse to bring in some morphine.”
I lay back down on the bed and looked up in the direction of the ceiling. I had already made it over a decade without my eyes. I could do another couple of weeks, no problem. Suddenly coming to a decision, I blurted out, “Hey, Sam.”
“Yes, son?”
“I want Mom and the others here when these lenses come off. I refuse to let them off without Mom here.” Sam started to say something, but Dr. Kim interrupted him. “Ok Vorion, I’ll have your family out here on the first available flight.” Sam started trying to speak again, but I cut him off, “Thank you Dr. Kim. They’re the first people I want to see when I open my eyes.” I heard loud footsteps, and then the door slammed. I looked aroundin confusion until the doctor calmly said, “It was your father. I think he’s angry.” I started laughing and didn’t stop until several minutes later.
Two days later, I heard three familiar sets of footsteps coming down the hall. I sat up and eagerly awaited what I knew was coming. I heard a small, nervous nock on my door, and then the door cracked open. A small voice asked, “Vorion, can I come in?” I felt a smile spread from ear to ear on my face and happily responded, “Of course, you can come in Marion!” the door banged open, and Marion executed a running dive into my waiting arms. She was laughing and crying at the same time. “Oh Vorion, I’ve missed you. No one has played any puzzles with me, or pused me on the swing, or spun me on the merry-go-round, or…”
“Marion, honey, move over and let me hug him,” I heard Mom say. Marion climbed off my bed, and Mom sat down and wrapped her arms around me, burying my head against her breast. “Oh baby, it’s good to see your okay,” she said, stroking my hair. I hugged her back and felt Tony’s hand slap down on my shoulder. “How are you doing, sport?” he asked me. It took a minute to get my head up, and I replied, “I’m doing better now that you’re with me.”
The next several days passed quickly. Marion never left my side, and Mom only did when Tony insisted that they see some of the sights of Okinawa while they were there. Dr. Kim had been nice enough to lend them a car, and Mom had new stories almost every day about things she had seen, things she would take me tosee when I was healed. Sam never came back in the room; at least while I was awake. Mom assured me that he spent almost every night just sitting by my bed, staring off into space. Dr. Kim was also in frequently to run tests, and he always left with a cheerful, “It all looks really good so far, Vorion.” He also had the nurse keep administering morphine because the pain was nonstop.
Finally, the big day rolled around. All the tests came back positive, most of my pain had left, and the doctor said he was ready to remove my lenses if I was. Mom and Marion kissed me good-bye, Tony even hugged me, and the nursed wheeled me back into the operating room. Dr. Kim said, “OK, Vorion, I’m going to put you under again, and when you wake up we’ll see if everything worked out.” I felt the mask on my face again, and I quickly passed out.
When I came to, I felt something over my eyes. I reached up to remove it, and Dr. Kim stopped my hand. “Careful now, Vorion, it’s just gauze. I wanted you to decide what you wanted your first sight in 12 years to be. This is too big a moment to just look at anything.”
“I’ve been thinking about that since I came out of surgery the first time. The only thing I remember the most vividly from my childhood is my mom. I want to see her, and only her.”
“No problem, Vorion. I’ll go get her, and then I’ll leave the room and let her take off the gauze.” He was gone and back before I could even start to get situated. Mom had been waiting outside my room. “Now listen to me, Vorion; when your mom removes the gauze I want you to take your time opening your eyes. They’ll be very sensitive at first.” With this, Dr. Kim slipped out the door, closing it softly behind him.
Mom came and sat down on my bed and took the gauze off with trembling hands. I held my eyes closed and thought nasty thoughts about how bright it was. Then it hit me. It was bright! I could see light coming throughmy eyelids. I almost opened my eyes wide, but then remembered what Dr. Kim had said. I slowly cracked my eyes, and the light hurt so much I almost couldn’t continue. But I had come this far and wasn’t goin to let simple light keep me in the dark. I slowly opened my eyes the rest of the way and saw my mother for the first time in 12 years. I couldn’t believe how beautiful she looked, and my eyes started to tear up, and I barely managed to croak out “Mommy?” before she wrapped her arms around me and I started to sob.
We sat like that for almost 20 minutes before I heard the door open. I looked over and saw Dr. Kim standing there with a small smile on his face. “Do you mind if I let the other two in? I’m afraid they’re going to start beating me away from the door.” I laughed through my tears and agreed. When Marion and Tony came in the room, the tears started all over again. We all sat there holding each other and crying for quite awhile, even though Marion seemed confused over why we were crying.
The next day Dr. Kim told me I could go home, and I gladly left. I was like a six-year-old boy all over again, exploring our house from top to bottom, rediscovering everything. It’s been three years since the operation, and I still look at everything around me with unabashed wonder, taking immense delight in everything from sunsets to garbage dumps. Sam never came to see me before I left, and Mom said she hadn’t seen him since before I had the lenses removed. I wanted to see him, if nothing else then to actually SEE him, and to thank him. I don’t know how I feel about him anymore, but I no longer hate him.

Divine Inspiration
By Malene Little

Michael was at a loss for words, literally. He was about 1000 words short of the required minimum for his creative writing class. I may as well go to the store and get something to eat. Maybe that will get my creative juices flowing.
He went to the Food Center with the best intentions of getting healthful snacks. He purchased chips, pop, and candy. In the next checkout lane, he saw one of his classmates. “Hey, Sarah, have you started your story for tomorrow?”
“No not yet,” Sarah replied with a laugh. College I a procrastinator’s playground, she thought, not for the first time that semester.
“Me neither,” he grinned conspiratorially.
“I’m waiting for divine inspiration.”
“Well, if you find some, send it my way too.” He smiled
And left with his stash of junk food.
Well, well. What do we have here? Standing by his car was a beautiful young woman with honey-colored shoulder-length hair and a flowing white gown. The gown seemed to be more than one piece and blew easily in the light breeze.
“Hi, will you give me a ride?” her melodious voice seemed to float on the wind as freely as her gown blew in it.
“Sure!” Michael replied and threw his groceries in the back seat. He opened the passenger door for her and threw the pile of books into the back with the groceries. “Please sit,” he invited her. As she settled into the seat, brushing aside a few stray crumbs from too many drive-through dinners, he asked her, “So where am I taking you?”
“Your place,” she replied, lying back easily against the headrest. She looked radiant with the glow of parking lot lights playing across her face.
“Um, I may be taken with your beauty, but that doesn’t mean I’m taking you to my place. I thing you assume too much. I don’t even know your name.”
“Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy,” came the unhurried answer with a slight sigh, as if she had uttered it many times before. “I’m your ‘divine inspiration.”
With the echoing of Sarah’s words spoken just moments earlier, he hesitated then asked, “So… what, is some kind of Xanaduish thing or what?”
“I get that a lot, but Gene Kelly’s dead so don’t expect any big dance numbers,” she joked. “But yeah, basically. I’m here to help get that story out of you.”
“You said muse of tragedy, right? Why tragedy?”
“I thing you should write about your love life,” she answered promptly, then laughed at the appalled expression on his face. “Just joking. The other Muses were busy so you got me. So should we go to your place or what? I have other people to inspire tonight too,” she beamed at him.
Michael drove to his apartment, worried about the chaos he had left there. Oh, well. It’s not like I’m going to get lucky or anything. She’s just going to help me with homework. It had actually been quite a few months since a girl had done anything non-scholarly with him; his love life was, to hear him tell it, quite the tragic story.
When he reached his apartment, Michel was in such a hurry to get started on his story (he’d never had the help of a Muse before) that he forgot his groceries in the backseat. “Michael, I know you’re excited, but you might want to grab your bags,” Melopemene lightly reminded him before he had bounded all the way to the front door. He sheepishly went back to get them, then more slowly led the way into his place.
They settled onto the couch and he pulled out his paper and pen. “So what should I write about?”
“What do you love most?”
“I don’t know. I can’t think of anything and I thought that’s where you cam in,” he replied testily.
Her laughter seemed as rich and flowing as a freshly uncorked bottle of champagne. “I know you’re frustrated, but I’m just trying to help you. It’s not my job to write your story, just to help you get going. Writer’s block is really just authors’ fear that what they have to say isn’t important. That’s wrong. If you have something to say, it’s important enough to share it with everyone. People may disagree, but they should write their opinions and the world should be able to review that dialogue. So let’s get started.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear in a sort of “let’s get down to business” movement.
He realized then that she was right. He did have something to say. Michael decided he wanted to write about the difficulty of writing and how sometimes we all need a little divine inspiration to even get started.

Sleeping Trudy
By Chris Sund

“Why of all the curses in the world for the scary old witch lady to put on my beloved Trudy did it have to be that one: honestly, what are the chances of two-ton truck running her down as she tended to her garden?” I frantically asked the uninterested doctor. He simply nodded in the nonchalant doctor sort of way.
“Well, the chances are slim, sir, but I highly doubt she’s in a coma due to the curse,” he replied to me smugly. After that Dr. Kiosk began to speak about my head in that complicated medical lialect. I thought it was English. At that moment I wished I hadn’t slept through hihgt school human anatomy class.
“Will she ever recover doctor?” he looked uneasily calm, not a good sign.
“I’ve spoken to the family; they think it’s best to take her off life support. We decided it’s in everyone’s best interests.” I felt more than just a little bit flustered by the fact that they never thought of asking her husband’s opinion. That’s me by the way! I wanted to beat the mercy of God into this bastard-of-a-doctor and Trudy’s whole family for being so full of themselves; I never really did like my in-laws. Trudy wouldn’t want to die, she lived life. No matter how corny that last statement may have sounded.
“We’re pulling the plug tomorrow at noon.”
Good! Well, minus the death thing. That gave me time to wake her up! I had a lot of work ahead of myself. I quickly formulated a grand plan; I need to make quite a few phone calls.
First off, I got a hold of a local emo band that Trudy absolutely loved and invited them to play a show in her room. The idea seemed good on paper. The band began her favorite song, but there came no reaction from my beloved. Plus, by the second chorus security escorted the band and myself off the premises. Far be it for me to be deterred by a large hairy man named Bubba though.
Plan two…I needed flowers, lots of flowers. People don’t appreciate jus thow much money it takes to buy and ship every flower from a florist. People appreaciat obscene amounts of pollen even less, especially the hospital. Once again, Bubba kindly sent me flying home and took my flower jungle to the incinerator. Beat me once, shame on you; beat me twice, shame on me…or uh, something.
Plan C included a tub full of Jell-O, Trudy always said, “I would love to bathe in a giant tub of strawberry-flavored Jell-O.” It’s very hard to outrun angry Bubba up three flights of stairs with a tub of Jell-O. Eventually though the behemoth overtook me and my precious cargo. I nearly made it into her room too. Yet again Bubba showed me the door, his foot, and the pavement. By now, I had used all of my money. What else could I do? I finally gave up.
Destroyed, I reentered the hospital to await the inevitable with my sweetheart. No sooner had I entered the building then Bubba and his friends greeted me. Panicked, I did the only thing a respectful man could do. I ran like my head spontaneously burst into flames.
With agility that even amazed me, I ran down the halls, dodging the many obstacles. Bubba and the brutes couldn’t keep up with someone my size. Thanks to the ever-widening gap between us, I got a chance to hide. I grabbed for the nearest door, jumped through it, and barred it with a conveniently placed cross. With my newfound chance to breath, I turned around to find I had hidden in a quaint little Catholic chapel. Not being the type of person to miss the opportunity, I ventured near the alter, kneeled, and began to pray. “Please God,” the words were harder to get out than I thought. “Please help Trudy. Help her wake up before she dies,” I whispered while crossing myself in the proper fashion. Silence, nothing stirred me. It almost felt like Hindu or Buddhist meditation. I don’t know for sure why I continued to kneel. Maybe it had something to do with the brute horde outside, or maybe the fact that I hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours was finally catching up with me. Either way, I didn’t budge.
Slowly, only a faint whisper at first, the song “Amazing Grace” filled into God’s apartment. Whoever was performing it did a wonderful job. How often does someone hear a completely instrumental verson of “Amazing Grace” done with bagpipes and punk rock guitars? The song filled every fiber of my body. Just as the third vers was about to commence a strong voice crammed itself so forcefully into my ears that I fell flat on my face. “Wake up you fool! Yes Trudy enjoys all of those things but she doesn’t love them! Only that which Trudy loves can awaken her!”
“Is that you God?” I asked completely puzzled.
“Pay attention!”
“What is it that Trudy loves? Whatever it is, I hope it’s free! I’m kind of broke,” which was the honest truth.
“Just how daft are you, boy? Trudy loves you.”
The news hit me like the smell of turpentine. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “What do I have to do Lord?”
“Run, that’s what you have to do. I’d wager you have about a minute and a half to make it. Go get her, tiger!” No sooner had the Almighty finished that sentence than I was making a mad dash to Trudy. Nothing could stop me. Bubba and his cronies certainly wouldn’t. my feet flew with the sure footing of a mountain goat and the speed of a rabid cheetah.
Upon arrival I thought my life had ended. Trudy’s family and the smug Dr. Kiosk (doctors always have the weirdest names) all stood in the lobby chatting and…laughing. How could they be laughing at a time like this? Did Trudy wake up? That would be great! I ran as quickly as I could to find out. Then I saw it, a body bag. They had killed her early so that her death wouldn’t conflict with their schedules. With THEIR schedules, how thoughtful I remarked to myself. As the attendants slowly rolled my love away, an anger rose within me, an anger I never before experienced. No! I hadn’t come this far just to be denied, not to mention it would be a waste of divine intervention.
“Wait right there…you…you…you poop heads!” So I wasn’t thinking the clearest, at least my heart was in the right place. Before the attendants had fully understood the situation, I snatched the body bag and ran screaming like the banshee Trudy might have heard in her final moments. Bubba did a much better job of keeping up with me this time. I hadn’t ever realized just how much a dead body really does weigh. Still, I managed to make it out of the building, down the street, and out of town. Let’s just say fatigue finally got the best of me. This spot couldn’t be anymore perfect, I decided in between breaths.
Quietly, I unzipped the plastic coffin, hoping that I just made a mistake and ran with a random dead body for five miles. Sadly though, I hadn’t. The lips that at one time were crimson as Christ’s robes now paled to a Virgin-Mother blue, and her skin had become whit as whipped cream. Distraught, I slowly caressed her dead cold face, brushing her hair out of those once vibrant eyes. She always hated it when her hair got in her eyes. She would always threaten to just “chop it all off.” I chuckled at the memory.
I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. I felt like someone had denied me the chance to live. “I hoped that you can feel this in heaven, Trudy,” I softly told her. I bent down and prepared to kiss her frozen lips, but for a split second I reconsidered. Who really wants to kiss a dead person? But love tooke precedence in my head, and I finally gave in. the kiss certainly wasn’t the best one I had ever given, but the meaning behind it made up for that.
No sooner had I kissed her icy lips then the scariest and happiest moment of my life happened. Her lips parted and took in a slow deep breath. At first I wanted to run like a lunatic away from her, but luckily my legs were too tired to carry my weight. When it happened a second and third time a joy that no one could know except god himself came over me.
“What took you so long sweetie?” Trudy squeaked out at me as she gently rubbed my stubbly face.
I couldn’t reply. My body, overcome by fatigue and immense joy, could do nothing other than weep. For the longest time I could do nothing other than hold her tightly and thank God for bringing her back. Trudy had risen from death. Life was good, for the most part.

Church Money
By Lara Thomason

Wet green leaves stuck to the sidewalk that made its path haphazardly along. It had been poured in 1957, and that was quite some time ago. Chunks were missing here and there and large cracks three inches wide were filled with sprouting weeds. It was not a place for bicycles or skateboards.

Two boys, recently released for the Wednesday night church service at Holy Trinity Church on Lee Street, made their way through the deepening dark. Both were dark in hair. The older one tall and skinny, the younger one broad of shoulders- -they were obviously brothers. Their voices rang out in boyish conversation as they made their way along, feet scuffing at the pebbles and absently treading through puddles. Once in a while one rubbed his arms to warm them. The air had a damp feeling about it- -weather that should require more than t-shirt.

“And what did you do next?”

“Well, I just said, why do I need to know how to spell these words if I have a dictionary in my desk?” the older one said casually; it all seemed so simple and clear to him.

“Then what happened?” the younger one chirped. He was a cheery little boy, with an eager smile and happy eyes.

“She sent me to my seat and I didn’t have to spell no more words. Everyone else thought I was right too,” the older boy said confidently.

“Weren’t you afraid you’d get in trouble?” The younger brother was always impressed with his brother’s bravery.

“Na, Mrs. Couch never gets really mad. Besides, why should I learn words that are in the dictionary?” He was quiet for a moment. In class he was known as the tough boy, but he hoped he hadn’t hurt his teacher’s feeling too bad. School just wasn’t fun. The spelling list he’d brought home to study was still in his school bag from the day before. There were more interesting things in life, like finding fishing worms in the backyard after the rain.

They were passing a sagging wooden fence covered with ancient roses smelling inviting in the night air. The oldest paused for a moment and removed a small pocketknife his dad had given him on his tenth birthday saying every man should carry one. Holding his hands low and secretive h cut a large flower from the fence.

“Get me one?” his brother whispered. “Momma can put them on the kitchen table.” Glancing at the old house behind the fence for signs of movement, the older brother looked for a vine with the biggest rose. Soon both were walking away with their treasures cradled close to their chests.

They were passing a house on the opposite side of the street with a statue of the Virgin Mary illuminated by a small light and a pink faded flamingos perched aobut when the older boy spoke.

“Robby, I have something. You gotta see this,” he said in almost a whisper. Handing his rose to his brother, he bent down and removed a soggy shoe without untying it and pulled out something folded in half and wet like the shoe.

“What do you got?” They were both hunched together. From the house light the little brother could see a handful of money. It wasn’t just a couple of dollars, but a lot. “How much is it?” It was more than he’d ever seen his brother have. “Where’d it come from?”

The older boy glanced around as if afraid someone might be watching. “It’s 53 dollars.”

“How’d you get that much money?” It was impossible to fathom that much. In his little boy’s mind it seemed as much as a million dollars.

“Well, you know when they pass those baskets around at church. I’ve always been itching to get some of that money. It just passes by every Wednesday and Sunday over and over. Sometimes people put money in those little blue envelopes, but sometimes they just throw it in, and then you can see it all. All that money,” he said in almost a whisper. “I always think about how much it can get.” He wasn’t thinking about toys or other childish things. He had always been older than his years in many ways. Unlike his younger brother, he was acutely aware of the holes in the knees of his jeans and the times when there wasn’t too much to eat. The cupboards would slowly empty until nothing remained but a few cans of corn and a half a loaf of bread and there would be nothing in the refrigerator but a jug of milk and some eggs. No one ever said anything, but everyone knew that money was running out for food. Mom would fix macaroni for supper instead of chicken and potatoes and she would be so worried and so tired. The money would help mom. He would say he earned it. He knew it wasn’t right, but he felt that he had taken it for a good cause.

“Do you think I shouldn’t of taken it?” He asked his brother, hoping for a little reassurance. The little brother was secretly proud of his brother. He had seen the money at church before and thought about all the candy and extra chocolate milks at lunch it would buy. He’d never had enough never though.

“It sure is a lot of money,” Robby answered. The older brother pushed his shoe back on and shoved the money into his pocket.

“Nobody even saw me. What should we do with it? What should we get Mom?”

There was silence for a while and then the younger boy said “I think she liked that shirt with all the birds on it at the grocery store. Let’s get her that. She could wear it to work.”

“I thinkg we should get her one of these ice cream cakes that we had a long time ago- -maybe a washing machine too.” They both liked this idea.

The houses were older and smaller now. The boys were quiet as each thought of the wonderful treasures the money would buy. The train tracks weren’t far away and they could hear the whistle being blown as it went crossing.

“What about Dad?” The younger one asked.

“I’m not sure,” the older one said and then his face took on a brooding look as his eyebrows drew together. His younger brother was a lot closer to their father for many reasons. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell Dad,” he finally said.

His brother was confused at that. “You mean just buy him some presents?”

“What do you think dad would do with the money? The older brother asked. He felt bad thinking such bad thoughts about his father and didn’t want to prejudice his little brother against him.

“I think he’d take us all to the movies and buy us lots of popcorn and soda pop and candy bars too! And then we’d have ice cream and maybe we’d be able to play those video games at the store!”

“And then it’d be all gone,” the older brother cut in.

Both boys looked extremely sad for a moment.

“Yeah,” the younger one agreed, even though it was a little reluctant. “Let’s not tell dad. Let’s just give it to mom. We can say we worked for it.”

They were silent again. The sidewalk ended all together. They drifted onto the road. It was getting late. Their conversation. Had slowed their walk.

“You don’t think the money’s cursed or something do you?” It was beginning to occur to the older boy he’d stolen God’s money and he had been brought up to believe in such superstitions. The preacher said that everyone owed God’s money and he’d taken it.

The younger boy did not know what to say. He watched his brother carefully. What would God do to them if the money was cursed? He noticed how dark it was and how alone they were and he was a little afraid.

The older brother could picture everything that the money went to buy turning bad and God hating him for eternity, but he also thought it wasn’t fair. The money had been so tempting and it could buy so much.

He was predispositioned to bouts of bitterness and temper at times. “It’s God’s fault I had to take the money!” He shouted, making his brother jump. The boy felt that God had purposely deprived his family of money compared to others. He pictured his mother coming home tired from working late and the donated clothes they always wore. He pictured his mom washing clothes in the bathtub with dish soap when they didn’t have enough money to go to the laundromat, and countless other things that represent poverty. He was angry, because he knew things were better for others. God must hate them for making life so miserable. Now the money would probably make things worse if they used it.

He liked church for the most part. It was all so confusing. Both brothers walked along again debating within themselves whether the money should go back. The younger brother was afraid of the tainted money now, and pictured awful stomachaches coming from the food it bought. The older brother pictured God in the clouds above brooding over him for the rest of his life. Would God ever make things better if he kept the money?

“Are you going to give it back?” the younger brother asked. The small white house with the slanting porch and overgrown hedge was now in sight. Sparks flew out of the stovepipe and lit up the sky like orange fireflies.

The was no response for a minute and then he said “NO.” It was a strong “no” that came from much thinking. “Maybe we can get more too, and we’ll get it to mom somehow.” He struck his hand in his pocket and felt the bills.

“Okay,” his little brother felt that anything his brother did must be right, and his doubts and concerns slipped away gradually.

“Nobody will ever know.”

“Someday we’ll be rich. I know it?” The younger brother said, excited a the prospects of good times.

As they crossed the yard the younger brother gave his older brother his rose and the two figures entered into the house, hungry for the late supper waiting for them.

Rainy Awakening
By Lara Thomason

It was raining steadily, cold and icy. There wasn’t a star in the sky. My headlights seemed to bounce back at me, hitting some invisible wall. I was going home during my last semester at the university. It was along drive, because I’d opted for one far away form home. It had a better computer program than any school in my home state, but it made my mother miss me. Finally I had relented and took spring break off from work to come home- -the first time since Christmas. I was pulling an all-nighter and planned to be home by morning.

The trees were thick on the side of the road. The route I liked to take went through the very back country of the state, but it seemed faster and much less stressful than the interstate. I’d just stopped for coffee at some little town, and was leaving the city limits when I spotted him. He saw a skinny figure standing in the night, not with his thumb out or with a sign, but apparently needing a ride. I think it was the face. Something spoke to me when I saw his face. I’d never picked up a hitchhiker before. There were too many risks nowadays, but this time I slowed my car up, just like I did it all the time and put the window down.

“Need a ride?” I’d asked. He replied something like “Sure do Man,” in his casual way and hopped in. Thinking he must be freezing by the looks of his soaked jacket and bag he laid on my back seat without asking, I turned the heat up for him. I had asked him where he was going he said he wasn’t sure yet. Not wanting to pry, I was silent for a while. By the way he slouched in the seat next to me it was apparent that he was no threat at all. His whole being seemed to radiate relaxation. His hair wasn’t too long, but much longer than my conservative cut. Gold wave were pushed behind both ears. His pants were a little loose on his legs, and his t-shirt stuck out from his lived-in sweatshirt. I tried to guess how old he was by doing a series of sidelong glances, but I really couldn’t tell. He looked young, but old too. I decided he could be anywhere from 16 to 20 something.

I launched into my “I’m John Wilkinson” speech, and because of the silence, kept going, telling him I was headed for Whitehall- -a suburb of Columbus. I think I hold him about my school, and even my job and roommates. He just sat there and listened. Or at least I believe he did.

When I’d finally finished, it was quiet for a bit and then he said, “Chris Laufer, thanks for the ride man, it was getting cold out there.” The words had a poetic sound coming from, and the name fit like a glove. He stuck a hand out to mine and I remove it from the steering wheel to engage in a firm handshake.

Because I was not comfortable with the silence, although he seemed like a nice guy, I turned on the radio thinking sometimes conversation was easier that some way or something. But in these hills reception wasn’t so good. One station crackled out some America song. I was not a huge music fan, never having had time to settle on one genre due to the fact that I had always been such a serious student, but I knew this song wasn’t recent and didn’t want to seem uncool.

Chris seemed to like the song though. I could tell by the way his head kind of moved up and down and his thing lips revealed a little smile. He had a very friendly face, I decided.

“Hey that’s good stuff,” he said and listened intently. When the song was over he was quiet for a little while longer, and then asked me, “Ever been to the mountains, man?”

I replied no, I’d never been anywhere but the east coast. When I had a family I wanted to go places like the Grand Canyon, and I told him about Kathleen, who was my fiancé back home. We’d met at the neighborhood party three years ago and had carried on a long distance relationship since then. She was the ideal image of the perfect wife- -sweet, innocent, supportive, and eager to be “the perfect wife.” She couldn’t wait to start a family and keep house, then move on with her own career once the kids started school. That was exactly what I thought I wanted then. I’d popped the question the August before, and we’d set the date for July 23rd. I think I decided to stop talking after I told Chris about the honeymoon locations Kathleen had e-mailed me. Chris didn’t seem the type of guy interested in matrimony. But just the same, he sat quietly and didn’t look bored.

“That song reminds me of the mountains,” he said, referring back to the song that was long gone after my spiel. “Mountains with crystal snow- -you should see it man.” And then he told me about an orange sunrise in the mountains of Montana, and him sitting on porch steps watching the snow turn from orange to white and shine so bright it hurt his eyes. I could see it with him instead of the slashing rain and windshield wipers.

He told me about early summer in the mountains just after the last of the snow has almost gone and everything is so green. Then moved from the mountains to the ocean and then to the rain-soaked forest with moss growing on every rock whispering streams.

Chris was obviously well traveled. He went on for a long time. Once in a while I would interject something like “I wish I could see that,” but for the most part I just listened and it was nice. I’d always had the urge to visit new places and live carefree for a while. Once in a while, on my way to or from someplace I would be captivated by the beauty of the clouds or a meadow full of green clover, but the rush to get where I was going and the drive for success made these moments fleeting, and I always managed to shove those feeling far down and away.

Gas was getting low, but I was reluctant to stop. I think I was afraid that he’d decided to move on. He seemed like a free spirit. He could decide to take off in some different direction, and I was unwilling to lose his company just yet. Finally I had to stop in some little town. Chris got out and stretched his long arms, but returned to the car despite the offer for coffee or food. When I came back he was fast asleep, his head resting on the passenger side window.

I drove on fro probably two hours or more, him sleeping and me just thinking. I thought a lot that night, probably more than I ever had.

When Chris woke up with a yawn and stretch, he sat back and resumed conversation. “So you’re a computer guy, man?” he asked. I told him I hoped to get a programming job and added they paid quiet a bit of money. He must have mistaken my excited tone when I said this for something else.

“You gotta find something you love to do, man, and stick with it,” he said. “It’ll pay off in the end.” Honestly, I had to admit to myself that I really didn’t like computers, let alone love working with them. It was just a way to achieve the “American Dream” I’d been brought up to desire.

I got the impression from Chris that he had a different idea about this dream and was already living it.

“What do you do?” I asked him. He shrugged and said, “Stuff here and there.” I asked him wasn’t he worried about money, and in response to this he pulled a folded bunch of bills out of his pants pocket.

“I got money, man,” he said with a laugh. I’m sure there couldn’t have been much there though.

It was a pleasant night. Even though we were total strangers, it was easier talking to Chris than with my best friends. Sometime in the night I got the feeling that I wished I could follow him wherever he was going to next. I asked him where he was headed.

“I think south, man. I’d like to try some fresh watermelon from one of those farmer’s stands or something,” he said. Now how could he come up with something like that? Next to Chris I felt very shallow.

When the sun began to rise, we were approaching the suburbs. I was awaiting his word. At any moment I expected him to tell me to drop him here or there, but soon we were in my neighborhood, and soon on my street. My parent’s house came in sight and soon we were in the driveway, free of oil spots, of the two-story home with its carefully tended yard containing shaped little trees. I don’t remember seeming stressed that he was still with me. As I got out, a little stiff from the long drive, and pulled my small suitcase from the backseat, he did the same, putting on his jacket and slinging the strap of his bag over his left shoulder.

“Thanks again for the ride, man,” he said as he looked over the top of my care at me.

“You sure you don’t need a lift anywhere else?” I asked. I was almost tempted to offer him some of my father’s frequent flier miles to help him get where he was going, but I don’t think he would have accepted.

“No way, man. Good luck with those computers,” Chris said, and I saw him glance down the street. It was barely daylight.

“Maybe I’ll see you out west, in the mountains,” I said to him. At this he showed a huge smile.

“You think so, man?” he asked, and told me to look him up. I had the desire to drop everything and forget about school, my parents sleeping nearby, and Kathleen. I wanted, I knew then with all my heard, something else.

“Well, see you around, man,” and with that said, he turned and headed off down the sidewalk of my perfect suburban neighborhood. I called a goodbye and watched until he rounded the curve and went out of sight.

I’m not sure how long I remained in that position by my car. When I finally went inside I felt like another person. I believe a better one.

I’ve seen a lot of crystal snow since Chris and never get tired of it. Sometimes I think about looking him up and asking him how that watermelon tasted.

Poetry 2003-2004

2010-04-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Poetry 2003-2004
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Compromise
After Jim Simmerman’s “the Last Word”
By Amanda Beuchler

You can have the brilliant
Shooting stars,
if I can have
their star dust.

You can have the pot of gold
at the rainbow’s end,
if I can stay to watch
until it disappears.

You can have all the words
in every language,
if I can have the universal expression
of kindness- -a smile.

You can answer the door
each time opportunity knocks,
if I can get a foot in the door
just once.
You can have the singing birds
and crisp morning air,
if I can have the exhilaration
of the rising sun.

You can have the trophies,
The recognition and the honor,
if I can have one
great achievement.

You can have the laughs,
smiles and hugs,
if I can cherish
every moment.

You can have the ups
and downs of life,
if I can have the one moment
it all makes sense.

To Be Five Again
By Ashley Brockasus

At the age of five, I wanted my own pair of jelly shoes.
At the age of six, I wanted to becom a Transformer.
At the age of seven, I wanted a banana seat bike with
pulped streamers.
At the age of eight, I wanted to meet Alf.
At the age of nine, I wanted an American Girl doll.

At the age of ten, I wanted to attend a New Kids on the
Block concert.
At the age of eleven, all I wanted was to go home.
Being the ‘new kid on the block’ was not all it was
cracked out to be.
At the age of twelve, I wanted my own room.
At the age of thirteen, I wanted a reversible Adidas coat.
At the age of fourteen, all I wanted was to be ‘popular.’
At the age of fifteen, I didn’t know what I wanted.
At the age of sixteen, all I wanted, besides a brand new
car, was freedom.
At the age of seventeen, I wanted to hurry up and turn
eighteen.
At the age of eighteen, I wanted to get the hell out of the
house!

At the age of nineteen, I wanted the holidays to come
sooner so I could go back home.
At the age of twenty all I wanted was a boyfriend, a good
job, money and some kind of education.
Now at the age of twenty-one, all I want is to be five
again.

A Vacant Room

By Barb Gunderson

Sink into the moon

Summer stars

Shine warm and bright

Sorrows slip

So far away

Swallowed by

Your arms tonight

Past has lost its

Grasp on me

And future waits

So very still

Two worlds collide

In darkened shadows

A moment sways

The son plays on

Deepened by

The rising tide

Then I awake

A vacant room

With nothing but

A dream of you

Stolen by the light

No Road Can Take Me

By Barb Gunderson

Rain Clouds, carry me away

Wind, serenade me home

I have given all I can

to a cold and empty hole

In this life I will live to see

my childish dreams grow old

No road can take me to the place

my body aches to go

My mind will journey on an endless sea

until I reach my goal

And there beyond this blue gray sky

waits the freedom for my soul

I Didn’t Understand
By Lynn M. Isackson

I stood back and questioned.
I moved to get a better look.
I waited for you to push me away.
I didn’t understand.

I wondered why you didn’t punish me.
Why you weren’t the first to throw the stone,
When you heard what I had done.
I didn’t understand.

I followed you, and washed your feet with my tears,
While others mocked me and shunned me.
You said I had faith greater than the teachers.
I didn’t understand.

You didn’t want my body.
You wanted my soul.
Didn’t shun my feminine mind when I said,
I didn’t understand.

You said your life would be short.
That you would die,
But never see death.
I didn’t understand.

I claimed you to be a prophet,
I followed you,
Safety in your flock, but
I didn’t understand.

The called you criminal.
The same who loved you,
Hunted you down to kill your peaceful being.
I didn’t understand.

They cast lots for your clothes
Hung you to die on a tree.
They killed the man who wanted peasce and wanted love.
I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND.

I watched you die.
The precious blood fell from your body.
I stood in horror.
I didn’t understand.

Three days later, the tomb stood empty.
Hundreds of people you showed yourself to.
A messenger of love, a savior of the damned.
I understand. I understand.

Your sacrifice. Where I should have burned.
Your humiliation, where I should have been stoned.
Your death.
My life.
I understand.

Soul Cages
By Lynn M. Isackson

You’ve given her a place for her soul to dwell,
A cage of flesh and blood.
She paces the layers begging to be let out,
Begging for freedom,
Out of captivity into the unknown.

The sparrow flies out,
Her song sings lonely.
Songbird songbird sing to thee,
Until the cat gets her and she can sing no more to thee.

Close your eyes,
Drift into the abyss,
Confinement forgotten.
She flies away.
The cage melts,
Her song remains,
Sweet and haunting,
Free and beautiful.

She awaits the calm horizon,
Blue, purple, and red,
Like blood shed on the day.
She awaits the pacified sea,
Where the ships will take her,
To the maker of the souls.
Then her confinement ends.
And the cage is no more.

This is us as I Remember.
(an ode to friendship)
By Lynn M. Isackson

One tall and slender,
A poet. A writer.
A lover of music.

One blonde and full of beauty,
A thinker.
Quiet and full of words never spoken.

One with long dark hair,
Wanting romance. Waiting impatiently for love.
A singer. An artist.

Pointing into nowhere,
They looked into the future.
Sisters half by blood, all by love.

Winter crept, trees bare and gnarled
Covered in Romantic white gowns
Freezing wind hitting against their solitude.

With wide eyes they wondered,
Speaking of candle-lit dreams,
Expecting what they couldn’t see,
And seeing what they could never expect.

Dreams of what they might do,
Together.
Apart.
Planning of things that would never be,
When time changes and seasons end,
They separate.

One found solace I solitude.
One found comfort in her sister.
One found peace down an old dirt road.

Huddled together, they still share their dreams.
Worlds apart; a life away.
Change haunts them.

They separate.
They will always be.
Friends, sisters.
Half by blood all by love.

Wake
By Lynn M. Isackson

Out of a Lucid Wake I’ve forced myself to forget
YOU.
I’ve placed you in a part of my mind
FAR IN THE CORNERS
Where memories can’t haunt me
YOU CAN’T MAKE ME CRY.

My dreams steal you
IN THAT FORGOTTEN PLACE
Where my heart wouldn’t mingle
WITH WHAT WASN’T MINE.

I remember that
I LOVED YOU
I see
THE FOGGY IMAGE OF LOVE
Within the empty places where I dream.

I SURVIVE
You haunt me
TAKE AWAY MY SANITY
Enter my dreams
I GO ON HOPEFUL

Until I fall from slumber
AND YOU ARE GONE
I say good bye all over.
IN MY WAKE.

And it’s only Monday
By Malene Little

Assignments for every class
Test next week, but I haven’t studied yet
Behind in innumerable readings
I’m a failed student

Working too many hours to stay sane
Working too few to buy everything we want
There’s always more month than money
I feel I should be able to do better

Laundry and dishes piling up
Vacuuming, dusting, straightening to do
The kid’s room should be condemned
At least I can’t be fired from my housework

Not reading to the kids enough
Not play with them enough
Not spending enough time with them
My parents were never this lazy

Burned out and frustrated
Disappointed in myself
“What do you mean I should get more rest?”
There’s not enough time for all I’m doing now!

From Across the Room
By Randy Little

I see you from across the room
So close and so far away

Your eyes suddenly meet mine
They see me seeing you

I flush and quickly look away
As if you’ve burned me

I try to resist the urge
But I must look

I see your face again
But your eyes see past me now

There I want to tell you

If I came to you and spoke
Would you listen?

And if you listened
What would you say?

I try to hide my fear
And slowly stand up

But before I can move
He is there

He stands where I would have stood
And leans close to you

Then you blush
Your hand covers your burning face

And he speaks the words
That I lacked the courage to say…

“There is booger on your nose”

My Poem
By Randy Little

this is my poem
to keep it simple
i left a few things out

there are no capitals
or proper grammar
or messy punctuation

any elaborate form
or fancy rhyme or reason
was removed

no snakes
or snails
or puppy dog tails

no mention of
the toils of love
or the spoils of war

any happiness
or misery
i left out

no day or night
nor time
nor season
any of these things
would just clutter
my poem

and when Ii removed them
all i was left with
was this…

The Old Man on the Corner
By Randy Little

there’s an old man who sits
in an old chair
outside a small corner store

before him is a table
and on it
sits a chess board

one hand has a shaky grip
on the head of a wooden cane

the other cradles his face
one spidery finger
tapping at his temple

it was by chance I stopped
out for a drive
just passing through

down went my window
in came the heat
stifling and oppressive

I shaded my eyes
and called to him,
“where does this road lead?”

slowly he stood up
clutching his cane
and walked towards me

his watery eyes met mine
as he spoke
his crooked hands gestured

“just down here a ways
you pass a cinder
that was one time a school

the walls blackened by soot
almost a coverin’
the hate spray-paint there

past that is the park
hungry kids a’playin’
on rusty swings and dying trees

there they’s stepping on pointy
shiny things
and rocks that ain’t really rocks

next come the dusty, dry houses
paint a’peeling
cobwebb’d cars on the brown grass

them inside pretendin’ not to hear
as Jehovah’s hounds
is scratchin’ at the door

up a bit there’s the church
a few strained voices
beltin’ out a tuneless prayer

some almost lives there
but I think God
He done moved out long ago

last you finds the bone yard
row after row
of wooden crosses faded names

some of ‘em is old
and some of ‘em
young names without a story to tell”

then he tipped his hat
and he shuffled
back to his old chair

losing himself again
in the game
on the table before him

I saw he was in check
and I wondered
how many moves he had left

rolling up the window
feeling the cool air I
put the car in gear

then with one last look
I turned around
and returned the way I came

Awakened End
By Joy Mckinney

Impatience, itself,
In the flesh
Just waiting to be
Consumed
Beyond this thick
Bark can be found
A woman

Virtues a-plenty,
(or so she’s been told)
Lacking at least one
Despite all of her toils
Admittedly taken,
Taken aback
As a salmon struggling
Upstream
Strong as an oak
Yet feeble
As a twig

Heart, soul, mind…
All accounted for,
Yet somehow
Incomplete

Ever-striving to reach
Calm waters ahead
Where this life can end
And the next
Awake

Significance

By Joy Mckinney

The afternoon sun splits the delicate sky

Staring hills, trickling streams, sympathetic trees…

There is no need for patience here

Caught off-guard by the gleaming snow,

Icy wind nibbling my skin,

I exhale smoky, misty breath

I feel a sense of insignificance was over me

In this grand spectacle of nature

And yet…

Gazing at the troubled drifting snow,

Spiteful brush, dying grass, resistant tree,

I realize I’m a part of everything

We’re all caught up in the ground blizzard of life

Shifting, glancing, hoping

I’m strapped in the readying for the ride

Paint another winged cloud in the sky,

Another fiery ridge on the horizon

And I’m ready

I’m on my way.

A Mathematical Nightmare
By JoAnne Taylor

Count me in, count me out,
count me anything at all…
Just don’t subtract me from the equation,
don’t multiply my equations
by dividing your attention
that won’t equal out.
So let’s figure all our differences
and if you could just tell me y
you fed me all those imaginary numbers?
and I could quit coming up with the wrong answers
to an unsolvable problem.
So for right now I will just fraction out my favorite pi
and x you out of my thoughts
until we get this relationship graded.

Not My Day
By JoAnne Taylor

The sky looks a little crowded
Too many stars already~
Shooting twinkly wishing falling…
So right here I’ll stay.
On the beach, in the sea
The star of the deep~
Laying staying waiting longing…
Two different worlds
Brothers staring for infinity~
Frozen fallen forgotten forever…

On Being Brought from my Comfy Bed to Enlightenment Class

(Dedicated to Dr. Lysbeth Benkert-Rasmussen)
By JoAnne Taylor

Twas my alarm clock brought me from my comfy bead
And my cleared those dreams from my sleepy head.
I learned about satires, and read Moll Flanders too
When once I, Hobbes, and Locke neither sought nor knew.
Some view Enlightenment with scornful eye,
“Read Candide: I’d rather die!”
Remember, students, though you’d rather be hitting the hay
Sleeping through class will not earn you an A.

Sleep
By JoAnne Taylor

On the brink of something…
Hanging over the edge
Knocking pebbles into the canyon
Purple, blue, green mist
Swirling oblivion, far away
…and yet so close…
Peacefulness- - close enough
Just reach out and grab it.
Balance thrown off,
Weightlessness takes over
Crash through the mist
From the brink
Something spectacular.

Paintings 2002-2003

2010-04-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paintings 2002-2003
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Leonardo Da Vinci, “Study for the Head of Leda”
(Pencil)
Shandiin DeWolfe

Day Dreams and Sunshine
(Acrylic)
Nick Fisher

Eyes of the Night
(Oil)
Nicole Huber

Ty
(Pencil)
Katie Kaiser

Rubens, "The Judgement of Paris"
(Acrylic)
Lebel Shannon

Study After Monet, "Aren and Evil, the Bank in Flower"
(Acrylic)
Liebel Shannon

Fire Shine
(Plaster and acrylic)
Leigh Nelson

Study After Renoir, Portrait of the Actress
(Acrylic)
Leigh Nelson

What Do You See?
(Oil pastels)
Julie O'Donnell

What's Wrong with Purple?
(Acrylic)
Julie O'Donnell

Will
(Acrylic)
Matthew Schaefer

Feathers and Column
(Acrylic)
Benjamin Victor

Study After Rubens, Portrait of Susanna Fourment "Le Chapeaude Paille"
(Acrylic)
Sarah Woodworth

Sculpture 2002-2003

2010-04-21T20:27:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sculpture 2002-2003
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Samson
(Plastiline clay)
Benjamin Victor

Photographs 2002-2003

2010-04-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photographs 2002-2003
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Untitled
Lucky Peterson

Untitled
Lucky Peterson

Untitled
Lucky Peterson

Emily
(Digitally enhanced)
Shari Theroux

Emily II
Shari Theroux

Untitled
Shari Theroux

2002-2003

2010-04-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2002-2003
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Music

Burchhard, Pete - Have You Heard the News (1 Thessalonians 4) (Original composition and performance) - Rain (Isaiah 55) (Original composition and performance)

Paintings

DeWolfe, Shandiin - Leonardo Da Vinci, "Study for the Head of Leda" (Pencil)

Fischer, Nick - Day Dreams and Sunshine (Acrylic)

Huber, Nicole - Eyes of the Night (Oils)

Kaiser, Katie - Ty (Pencil)

Liebel, Shannon - Rubens, "The Judgement of Paris" (Acrylic) - Study After Monet, "Aren and Evil, the Bank in Flower" (Acrylic)

Nelson, Leigh - Fire Shine (Plaster and acrylic) - Study After Renior, Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary

O'Donnell, Julie - What Do You See? (Oil pastels) - What's Wrong with Purple? (Acrylic)

Schaefer, Matthew - Will (Acrylic)

Victor, Benjamin - Feathers and Column (Acrylic)

Woodworth, Sarah - Study After Rubens, Portrait of Susanna Fourment "Le Chapeaude Paille" (Acrylic)

Photographs

Peterson, Lucky - Untitled - Untitled - Untitled

Theroux, Shari - Emily (Digitally enhanced) - Emily II - Untitled

Poetry

Gilbert, Rachael - Imprinted - Symmetry - Over and Out
Gunderson, Barb - Window Pain - Tar Baby - Sunlight in Your Eyes
Hallstrom, Peggy - Crimson - Defiance
Holt, Kathryn Lori - moonrock - Westward Storms - bruised
Isackson, Lynn - I Sing - Turbulence is Indigo - Snowflakes
Jurgens-Murphy, Sophia - …Even Without the Veil - Brightly Colored Rubberbands
Reinhardt, Melissa - Hand
Taylor, JoAnne - Reflections

Sculpture
Victor, Benjamin - Samson (Plastiline Clay)

Short Stories
Breen, Sarah - Professor Amnesia -Yesterday’s House
Bryant, A. A. B. - The War of Immortals - Romantic Ending for a Demon - Lylth’s Revenge Droppers, Dion - Rituals - Under the Oak Tree
Duncan, Raphael - Abercrombie Day
Gunderson, Barb - Two Fingers Just Ain’t Enough
Guthrie, Angela - My Grandpa
Kolker, Patrick T. - Damn the Eighties - The Last Slow Song of the Night
Reinhardt, Melissa - Disturbed Beauty
Rice, Evie - My Breasts Turned Black Overnight!
Taylor, JoAnne - Blue - Tourist Attractions in Nashville
Tebben, Leslie - We Called Him the Ninja
Voeltz, Chandra - Five Car Wyoming

CD Compilation
Editor: Kathryn Lori Holt
Technical Cordinator: Shaun O’Connell
Where it can be found: NSU Library CD/DVD LD 4011 .N42 S52 2002/2003

Archive 2002-2003

2010-04-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Archive 2002-2003
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paintings 2003-2004

2010-04-21T14:27:00.000-07:00

Archive 2003-2004

2010-04-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Archive 2003-2004
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2003-2004

2010-04-21T13:38:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2003-2004
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Game

Klundt, Matthew - Quadrian Defense

Music

Bauck, Rodd - Be Still My Soul, arr. Of Finlandia tune by J. Sebelius (Chamber Singers of NSU)
Kollman, Tony - Time to Go (Live at the Red Rooster) - The Calm Before

Paintings
Bosmoe, Jacob - Debate (Watercolor)
Cantwell, Nathan - A Pair of Pears (Acrylic)
Huber, Nicole - Graceful Serenity (Acrylic) - The Storm (Acrylic)
O’Donnell, Julie - Untitled (Acrylic)
Roesch, Linda - Man in Black (Oil)
Schaefer, Matt - Painting Series (Acrylic)
Theroux, Shari - The Dance (Acrylic)

Poetry

Beuchler, Amanda - Compromise (After Jim Simmerman's "the Last Word")
Brockhaus, Ashley - To Be Five Again
Gunderson, Barb - A Vacant Room - No Road Can Take Me
Isackson, Lynn M. - I Didn’t Understand - Soul Cages - This is us as I Remember (an ode to friendship) - Wake
Little, Malene - And it’s only Monday
Little, Randy - From across the Room - My Poem - The Old Man on the Corner
Mckinney, Joy - Awakened End - Significance
Taylor, JoAnne - A Mathematical Nightmare - Not My Day - On Being Brought from my Comfy Bed to Enlightenment Class (Dedicated to Dr. Lysbeth Benkert-Rasmussen) - Sleep

Short Stories
Bloom, Nathan - The Ponce de Leon Experiment
Dodson, Mary - Babel - Fool Hardy and the Table of Plenty - Trivial Things
Ingram, James - At First Sight
Little, Malene - Devine Inspiration
Sund, Chris - Sleeping Trudy
Thomason, Lara - Church Money - Rainy Awakening

CD Compilation
Editor: Lynn Isackson and Lara Thomason
Technical Coordinator: Matt Klundt
Where it can be Found: NSU Library CD/DVD LD 4011 .N42 S53 2003/2004

Movies 2005-2006

2010-04-14T16:02:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Movies 2005-2006
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Faygo

Starring: Bill Feitag, Eliot Lucas, Josh Frock, Rory Behrens

Directing/Camera: Darn near everyone

Editing: Eliot Lucas

Music: Bill Freitag

Movie used courtesy of http:whatever.comicgen.com

Graphics 2005-2006

2010-04-14T15:48:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Graphics 2005-2006
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Collages
(Mixed media)
Katie Kaiser

Twisted Butterfly
(Mixed media)
Katie Kaiser

Wild Berries
(Mixed media)
Katie Kaiser

Paintings 2005-2006

2010-04-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Paintings 2005-2006
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Figure Painging
(Acrylic and gel medium)
Crystal Weller

Still Life/Illusions of Paint
(Acrylic and gel medium)
Crystal Weller

Three Way Master Study - Study after Vermeer, Degas, and Matisse
(Acrylic)
Crystal Weller

Red Onion
(Acrylic on hardboard)
Crystal Weller

Wild Things Mural-Parrot
(Acrylic on hardboard)
Crystal Weller

Vessel II
Nicole Fisher

Vessel IV
Nicole Fisher

Vessel VI
Nicole Fisher

Vessel VII
Nicole Fisher

Photographs 2005-2006

2010-04-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photographs 2005-2006
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Falls 094
Russ Berkeley

Falls 088
Russ Berkeley

Falls 014
Russ Berkeley

Falls 003
Russ Berkeley

Falls 095
Russ Berkeley

Bird
Katie Kaiser

Chicago 011
Yifan Zhao

Chicago 037
Yifan Zhao

Short Stories 2005-2006

2010-04-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Short Stories 2005-2007
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Stranger in the Box
ByAlyson Guthrie

The roses were red as blood, and trembled in her sweaty, shaky hands. Helen walked over to the long, black box, and placed three roses on top of it. Somehow, thirty years had gone by, and the man she thought she knew in the box, was now a stranger. She stepped back, and watched as the people started to leave the cemetery. She wanted to tell people her secret. She wanted them to know how confused and regretful she felt. Tears of melancholy trickled down her cheeks as she turned around to leave the cemetery that bright, spring morning. Helen closed her eyes, and was taken back to the beginning; back to the beginning of the end.

It started in Dr. Robinson’s office, right after Christmas. It was after that cold week in December, when the messy, confused son came home from college with a basket full of dirty laundry, and the happily married daughter came home, instead of visiting the in-laws. Everything was picture perfect, as if it came from a page of GoodHousekeeping, which Helen read and tried to emulate religiously. That unfortunate day after Christmas, Dr. Robinson said the words Helen and Tom had feared for months. “Tom, the cancer has spread. Tom, you have a few months left. Helen, it is best for you and Tom to decide where and how Tom would like to spend his time.” Helen hated the way the doctor used their names in every sentence. “Why do people do that?” Helen thought to herself. “I already know who Tom is. He’s my husband, and he’s going to die.”

The seven minute ride home from the doctor’s office was filled with nothing. No words. No looks. The somber atmosphere suffocated Helen. She looked over at Tom as he lit a cigarette, and rolled the window down. “You son of a bitch,” Helen thought to herself. Tom inhaled the pollution that was taking his life, and by the time he pulled into their driveway, Helen felt guilty for calling Tom such a cruel name. “I should have made him stop,” she thought. Helen opened the door, and looked at her perfect home. The couch, walls, and carpet blended together. There were no rings on the coffee table, no dust on the mantle, and the house smelled of potpourri and detergent. Helen’s perfect home was now contaminated with Tom’s illness, and the pressure to plan the perfect ending for what Helen thought had been a perfect marriage started to sink in.

As the days went by, Tom became more distant. He spent most days in the garage, where he had once built his daughter’s crib, polished his son’s first bike, and hid his daughter’s new car. Helen spent her days on the telephone, planning Tom’s funeral. “I wonder what kind of widow I’ll be,” Helen thought to herself as she planned the menu. “I was always such a good wife.” She thought about all of the widows she knew. There was Elizabeth, who had found a new, younger husband, Kathy, who spent her days volunteering for her church, and Sylvia. Sylvia simply disappeared. She left their little community, and never looked back. “That one won’t be me,” Helen thought. “I’ll be the devoted mother widow. Yeah, the one who’s the best mother and someday Grandmother. Oh, I can’t wait to be a Grandma. I wonder what type of Grandmother I’ll be.” Before Helen could think of all the Grandmothers she knew, her thoughts were interrupted by a loud pounding sound.

Helen looked out of her spotless, kitchen window until she found where the noise was coming from. She walked outside to the garage, and found Tom pounding on a piece of wood. “What on earth are you doing?” Helen shouted over the noise. Tom stopped pounding, and set his hammer down. He looked at his wife, standing in the doorway with her hands on her thick hips. “Who is this woman?” Tom wondered. He thought about the first time he had met Helen. As far back as Tom could remember she was a perfectionist. She always played the perfect role. She was the perfect daughter, the perfect student, and now the perfect wife. In a couple of weeks, she would be the perfect widow. Tom looked down at his piece of wood. “I’m just makin’ you something, Helen.” As he looked back up at her, she was already out the door, and back on the phone, calling the funeral director.

As Tom’s breaths became more rapid and short, he spent more and more time in the garage. The pounding and wheezing never seemed to quit, but Helen didn’t really notice. When he quit going to the garage, Helen knew it was almost time. Then one night, it happened. Helen woke up bright and early that Thursday morning to Tom’s lifeless body. As she looked at his face, she felt nothing. “Why am I so numb?” she thought. “Aren’t I supposed to cry?” She ran her hand along his face, and body. In his hand rested an envelope, with her name written on the front of it.

Helen slowly opened the envelope, and read what it said:

“My dearest Helen,

I knew that tonight would be my last, so I wrote you this letter. Over the past thirty years, we have become Helen and Tom. Our names roll off everyone’s lips so easily, and on the surface we know who we are. I am Tom. I am a father of two, a husband, and run my own carpentry business. You are Helen. You are a wife, mother, PTA member, and you work with the sisters of charity at our church. I am Tom, and you are Helen. That’s it. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t really know you. What’s your favorite book? If you could pick one place to go, where would it be? What inspires you? Helen, what is your favorite color? I don’t know. That is why I have done this. Underneath the bed, you will find a box. Inside the box will be your final instructions.”

Helen looked at the words on the paper in disbelief. Then, the tears started to flow. She rolled off of the bed, and called an ambulance in sobs. Helen hung up the phone, and threw it across the bedroom. “Who have I become?” she screamed. The ambulance workers found Helen on the floor, curled up in a ball. They helped her out of the room, and Helen spent the next few days in a haze. She got through the funeral, but could only think of the letter, and what could be under the bed. When the funeral was over, and everyone had left, Helen walked into the bedroom, got on her hands and knees, and searched for the box.

When Helen found it, she traced her fingers along the smooth, intricate wood work. The box was small, beautiful, and exhibited the talent Tom had once had. On the front of the box, Tom carved a car, a moon, and a heart. Helen slowly opened it, and found a piece of paper and a key. The paper read, “Go to the garage, and use this key to open the bottom cabinet closest to the door.” Helen forced herself to follow the instructions, and inside the cabinet she found two suitcases and another note. Helen had trouble reading the note, as tears slid onto the paper, and smeared the ink. Helen slowly read the words out loud. “This is my suitcase for the trip I always wanted. Inside you will find everything I would have needed. Will you take me there, Helen? Inside the cabinet you will find another suitcase with a map for our trip. Fill your suitcase with whatever your need. Fill it with memories and love, but most of all, fill it with you. Inside my suitcase, you will find the real me. I hope that someday, you will find the real you.”

Helen opened the suitcase, and saw the man she had married for the first time. She saw an old picture of her and Tom sipping a milk shake at the Tasty Freeze, a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, a book Helen didn’t even know Tom had read, a tape filled with Tom’s favorite songs, and a clean pair of underwear. “Okay, Tom,” Helen whispered, “Let’s go on our trip.” One week later, Helen got into her car with the two suitcases. She started the engine, set out the map, and popped Tom’s cassette into the tape player. As Helen rolled across the country, she and Tom saw everything; everything that had been hidden for the past thirty years.

Twisted Fate
By Andrew Ode

Collin’s bitter past followed him as he leaned into the raw wind.

“I’m getting out of here. I’m never coming back. No one will ever hear of Collin Blunt ever again. From now on, I’ll be Collin Stevens, a southern man from Alabama looking to explore the country. Ya… that’ll work”

“But were will I go? Washington? No, out of the contiguous states. Maybe Alaska, Canada, somewhere north of here. Well, I ain’t getting anywhere by just standing. Time to put these legs to use.”

Collin’s uneasy mind wandered and rationalized his reasons for leaving as he walked down the expansion of highway against the cruel wind. The same bitter, harsh wind that was blowing the night he witnessed his father’s brutal murder. Collin’s expression turned somber as he recalled that night.

“You owe us some money Mr. Blunt,” threatened a man with muscles bulging out of every part of his body.

Standing in this man’s shadow, “Y-y-yes, I know,” stammered Collin’s father, “b-but, but surely there must be something that we can do for the moment, seeing as I don’t quite have the money at the moment, but can get it first thing next week.”

“Ya? And that’s what you’ve been saying for the past three weeks Mr. Blunt,” added a second man, whose bulk even overshadowed the first.

“And seeing as this is business and you’ve fallen behind on your payments,” finished the first man, his scar almost flashing in the moonlight, “a price must be paid. Nothing money can help with. You see, Mr. Blunt, Mr. Miotto believes that the only true price that should get paid is pain.”

The mountain of a man interrupted, “But unfortunately for you, Mr. Miotto wants a little more payment from you than just a few broken bones.”

“And-and what-what would that be ex-exactly?” cowered Collin’s father, already knowing the answer.

Sick, twisted grins crossed both men’s faces as the first crooned, “Your life!”

Hiding in the bushes, Collin heard everything. Collin watched, horrified, as the crowbars were raised and glinted in the moonlight. Collin couldn’t move, his feet were nailed to the ground; he couldn’t scream; his voice ran away without his body; he couldn’t look away, only watch as his dad’s life was beaten out of him.

As his dad laid dying, the scarred man grinned, “Don’t worry Mr. Blunt, your son will soon share your same fate. Mr. Miotto believes in the old saying ‘Like Father, Like Son’.”

Before the final blow was dealt, Collin’s father looked up for anything to help him and caught his son’s eye by surprise. In that moment, one thought went through Collin’s mind. He could it hear as clear as if his father were whispering in his ear, “Run!”

Right then, the paralysis that held him frozen in time, broke. Collin heeded his father’s words and ran; he ran like his life depended on it, which it did. He started to hear his father’s scream, but the howling, bitter wind broke it off. He ran. He didn’t know what he was going to do, where he was going to go. But he did know he had to get out of Mr. Miotto’s grasp.

So caught up in the horrifying memory, Collin did not even realize that a semi had pulled up beside him.

“Hey, buddy, you alright?” asked the husky driver, “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Huh? Um, ya. Hey, could you give me a lift?”

“Sure, hop in, been getting lonely, could use a little company. Going anywhere specific?”

“Nope, just away from here.”

“Been there myself my friend,” the truck driver said as he put his big rig into gear. “Heading to Canada, got transferred. There’s a good job up there if you’re in the market?”

“Actually, a job in Canada sounds pretty good to me,” Collin responded, thinking his luck may change and he could come out of this whole ordeal just fine. “What kind of work?”

“Oh, you know, menial labor for this big shot. Grunt stuff, doesn’t really take any skills”

“Sounds perfect. You don’t mind if I just tag along.”

“Nope, sounds good to me.”

“Thanks, you’re a great help.”

“No problem, us little guys gotta look out for one another.” The driver smiled as he extended his big hand toward Collin. “The name’s Tim Bruscher.”

“Collin Bl-, Collin Stevens,”Collin corrected as he took the big man’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Same here, Collin”

The truck headed its long haul to the north with a shipment going to Canada with Collin’s hope for a better life in tow. On the back door of the truck, an emblem blazed in the setting sun, twin dragons entwined around a katana, below it, Miotto’s Shipping.

Bored to Death
By MacKenzie Trask

Jackie stepped one foot out of her car when she heard a hoarse shout.

“Get away from your car! Move, quickly!” The voice shouted urgently.

She had just parked her car in the bottom level of the parking garage when the man started yelling. With a bewildered look on her face, Jackie took a step back towards the car, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly she smelled it. Smoke, a long line of it running straight to her car! She screamed, grabbed for her purse and ran away as fast as she could. Her fast wasn’t fast enough however, when she collided with the arms of the stranger and was hurled into the air and backwards fifteen feet.

The man coughed and rolled over groaning. “Are you all right ma’am?” He asked in a deep raspy voice. There was no response—Jackie had passed out.

Three hours later, Jackie moaned and clutched at her head. Slowly she opened her eyes, her vision swimming unsteadily. Suddenly everything came into focus and she sat bolt upright in bed, not considering the ramifications of her wound and promptly collapsed backwards again biting her lip.

“You might want to lie still for a while, Ms. Flaun. Your head took a nasty hit on the pavement after the explosion. I’m afraid your car is gone as well.” It was the same deep raspy voice that Jackie had heard before her car blew up.

“I remember you, vaguely. I’m so sorry, but you were the man who yelled at me to get away from the car, weren’t you?” She murmured in a whisper-soft voice. When he only nodded, his smoldering brown eyes fixed on hers, Jackie blushed and averted her gaze, but not before enjoying what she had seen. The man, whoever he was, had a body like one of the ancient Roman gods. His hair was a dark silky brown and he appeared as fit as, if not more than, she. A closer look revealed carefully manicured hands and a high fashion sense befitting a man his age.

“My name is Peter, Peter Rankle. The doctor says that you have a mild concussion and some slight singeing from the explosion, but that you’ll be right as rain in a day or two. Until then, I’m just your friendly Superman here to save the day.” His cheeky grin made her laugh outright.

Surprising that I enjoy his presence so much? Jackie mused silently, or just chemistry? Who knew, but until then, this Peter seemed like a nice enough man.

Checking out of the hospital was going to be a pain, literally. Jackie groaned that thought quietly and elicited a laugh from Peter. “I’ll take care of you.”

Those five words held a wealth of meaning that stunned her a week ago, and they still affected her thinking like a powerful aphrodisiac. Their courtship had steadily progressed in that event filled week. The horror of a near-death, losing her car, falling madly in love—wait, love?

Not one to question her good fortune, Jackie took the relationship step by step, and without realizing, three weeks had gone by. She did everything she could to keep their partnership interesting.

Chancing upon Peter at a moment when his guard was down was a surefire way to get a rise out of him, however impossible it seemed to catch him. One morning, Jackie happened to catch him unawares and threw both arms exuberantly around his neck. What happened next was too fast for her to see or comprehend. Peter took one muscle bound arm and deliberately tossed Jackie to the floor.

“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times,” Peter shouted menacingly, “don’t interrupt me while I’m working!”

Jackie nodded contritely, her fear-filled eyes averted carefully onto the floor. Don’t do anything else stupid or you’ll really lose him, she told herself fiercely, valuing even a smile or good thought from him over her own self-esteem.

Before long, the "incident" as she had deemed to refer to the fight in her mind, had faded. Now it was all Jackie could do to keep Peter’s attention. She caught his gaze wandering lustfully, and barely kept track of the females he sought out while in her company. Peter seemed to be performing tests on her will power and endurance to see which would crack first. Then it happened.

“Happy one month anniversary, sweetheart!” Peter had brought her chocolates. Again. “I just wanted to show you how much I appreciate you.” Jackie nodded her assent, golden curls bouncing around slim shoulders.

“Peter, there’s something I need to tell you.” Abruptly her tone was frosty and very serious. “I don’t think I can keep the charade up. I love you and yet you seem bored…” Jackie broke off with a soft cry of fear at the rage filling his once handsome eyes.

“You cow! Don’t even think about ending it, not here, not now, not EVER!” His closed fist had the effect of a club being swung at her head—hard. Jackie crumpled to the floor in utter shock.

“No, Peter, no, I just wanted to tell you that your present is in the garage! Stop it now!” Jackie lay sobbing as she dragged her body over the smooth, cold tiles of the kitchen, desperately searching for any excuse to delay his unabated wrath. He kicked her again and again with a ferocious intensity that was terrifying in itself. Close to her breaking point, the last thing Jackie saw before she passed out was the mad glint in his eyes. “Please….” darkness.

Pain like a thousand knives piercing her skull woke Jackie. Instinctively she whimpered and tried curling herself up into a protective ball. The ropes binding her hands and feet made it impossible. Bounce, bounce, she whacked her protesting head on the floor and realized that she was moving. Jackie shook her head willing the awful darkness not to claim her again and succeeded barely.

The screech of tires on pavement wasn’t lost to her. Perhaps she would be let loose now? What had she done to Peter? They had been falling in love, hadn’t they? Slam! The driver’s door shut fiercely and the back door almost fell off of the hinges at the force of the jerk.

“I really did enjoy you while we lasted, but I guess we all get a little bored now and then, eh, sugar plum?” Peter, his teasing, lilting voice, once thoroughly satisfying, now desperately terrifying, slithered in and out of her ears. Jackie opened her mouth to scream, but her breath was slashed as quick as her throat.

Bemusedly, Peter watched the light brighten then fade from her eyes as if a star had died all the while wiping the machete blade off on her pants. As her life blood poured out onto the ground around him, he took a match, carefully lit it, and threw it into the back of the van soaked clear to the tank with gasoline.

One week later a woman going to her car noticed a man running towards her frantically waving his arms in the air. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air and she noticed something not right. KABOOM! Her car blew sky high in the air and she could only watch in stunned shock before the man yanked her out of the way of the flying debris.

Carefully reviewing the notes in his mind as he approached the shapely brunette Amanda, Peter hoped she’d be more of a challenge than dreary old Jackie.

“Hello, my name is Peter.”

Short Stories 2006-2007

2010-04-14T14:21:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Shorth Stories 2006-2007
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction of the Abysmal V.I.P.S.
By Albie Hewlett

The scene takes place at the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction ceremony and the stage is empty except for a vacant podium.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen. Please welcome to the stage, from the band Thunder Squeak…Dominic Jarvis.

Applause as DOMINIC walks on stage up to the podium.

DOMINIC: Thank you ladies and gentlemen! It’s great to be here for this year’s Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame Induction ceremony! I’m Dominic Jarvis, the bass player and back-up vocalist of Thunder Squeak and it is an honor to be here tonight. The Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame has been a great monument in recognizing the achievements of some of the great contributors to rock n’ roll music. Maybe someday I will be inducted in here.

No response from the audience.

DOMINIC: Okay… anyway, tonight I have been given the privilege of inducting one of the great power trios of rock n’ roll and my favorite band…The Abysmal V.I.P.S.

Applause from the audience. DOMINIC starts clapping in agreement.

DOMINIC: Yeah! Alright! The Abysmal V.I.P.S immediately made their mark on the rock n’ roll map in the early seventies with their abrasive hard sound and their negative, poorly articulated lyrics. After years of success with such classic albums like “Cooler Than You” and “God’s Gift to Rock”, they were destined for superstardom until their guitarist, Podar D’Actionn, electrocuted himself when he hooked up his guitar to a live car battery in an attempt at improving on his revving guitar solos. Luckily Podar’s brother-in-law, Frank could play the guitar, so he joined the trio and helped to continue in the band’s success. Success met with disaster again when during a Mexican tour and an unanticipated piñata accident, the band’s lead singer and bassist Fitch Sawburg died. Fortunately, Fitch had the gift of gab. Many friends and family members donated answering machine tapes of various long messages he had left them. The band continued with a part of Fitch still in the fold. Curiosity and some minor success still followed the band for years until that dreadful day when the last surviving member of the band, drummer Tool R. Bonch was crushed to death after his one hundred and seventy-four piece drum kit fell on him during a tour rehearsal. It looked as if that would be the end of the Abysmal V.I.P.S’s legacy, but thanks to the business savvy of the band’s manager, Colonel John Parsons, a drum machine and computer technology, the Abysmal V.I.P.S continue to put out new music to this day. I mean, have you seen their new video? It’s awesome! So please join me in welcoming the new Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame Inductees…The Abysmal V.I.P.S!

Relations and Relationships
By Elizabeth Weidenbach

It was first period on Monday at Ridgemont High. Everyone had the usual blank expression already planted on their faces, and as usual my boyfriend Evan was late for class. We had been going out for three months now, and in that time he had never once gotten to first period on time. But of course that didn’t matter because Evan was a football star. He was the quarterback to be precise. He could be present and accounted for without being present. It annoyed me, along with other things. I never was one to believe that who you are should determine how you are treated. But I wasn’t about to say anything because Evan was my boyfriend and that would not look good.

As I glanced around the room, I noticed all the different people who attended Ridgemont High. Not everyone was a football star believe it or not. There were the preppy girls with their perfect hair and make up, the geeks with their thick rimmed glasses, the band nerds, and the smart kids. I wondered what group I could put myself into and realized that it was none of those. The only group to which I belonged was the football stars’ girlfriends club. Most girls would be proud of that, but I wasn’t in the least. The more I thought about it the more I wondered why I was even going out with Evan. He was popular, athletic, and good looking, but he wasn’t exactly husband material and deep down I knew he wasn’t what I wanted. Well, to be completely honest it was a boy by the name of Brian who made me realize all of this and made me see how unhappy with Evan I was.

I had met Brian out of mere chance and in the most unlikely of places. As the teacher lectured on what happened two-hundred years ago, I thought back to one week ago.

The place was the mall and the day was Saturday. My friend Renee and I were wandering around discussing where we needed to go and what we needed to get. All I really needed was some new music. It had been a couple of weeks since my last CD purchase and I was going through some serious withdrawal. Music was a huge part of my life and if I didn’t hear something new and fresh I became somewhat cranky and irritable. Evan had never understood that. That was a passion it seemed we did not share.

Renee and I decided to split ways so we could cover more ground. She had some serious shoe shopping to accomplish, so I was left to my CD browsing. I made my way into my favorite store. The familiar scent of new clothes filled the air. I saw that not much had changed since my last visit. Posters and t-shirts lined the walls. CD’s were neatly stacked to the left of the store in alphabetical order. The faint sound of rock music floated through the air. I felt secure in this store. I wasn’t sure why but it didn’t make me feel uptight and pressured. Employees didn’t rush up to you and ask if you needed help. It was a very relaxed environment, like everyone in there had taken a step back from the hustle and bustle to just unwind.

I made my way over to the CDs. I felt like a huge dork as excitement began to build up inside me. I fought hard to suppress the urge to giggle. Yes, I was a dork. A music dork. But I didn’t really care. As I browsed through the CDs, I came to the conclusion that they didn’t have one that I desperately needed. I looked around and all the employees seemed to be busy so I ran through them one more time just to be sure. “They have to have it,” I thought to myself. And just when I was about to give up hope, I saw it. Under the B’s. The brand new Blood Brothers CD. And there was only one copy left. If I was excited before, that excitement was nothing compared to what I was feeling now. I reached out to grab the CD and much to my surprise my hand came to a stop not upon the CD but on another hand. I could feel my face turn red as I looked to see who my competition was. Next to me stood a boy. He wasn’t anything special. His hair was brown, and he was a bit on the short side. I’d say he was one to two inches shorter than I am. He was not scrawny. His muscles appeared to be quite defined under his ripped jeans and worn black t-shirt. In essence he was what girls would classify as “skater.” He had that rebellious look about him but not to the point of being a “bad boy.” His eyes were electric blue, the kind of blue that appears in the sky on a bright clear day. After a moment I was brought back to the situation at hand and wondered if his eyes made the same assessment of me as I had of him. I could still feel my face burning scarlet, and I hoped it didn’t look half as red as it felt. I was so glad when he broke the ice because I couldn’t bring myself to say a word.

“Um hey, sorry. I guess we both had the same CD in mind.”

“I guess we did,” I said half bumbling, half giggling. Why in the world was I giggling at a time like this?

“Well, you go ahead and take it. I can wait for another shipment to come in next week,” said the mystery boy.

“Oh no, I insist ummm. . .”

“Brian. And no, I insist. Ladies first.”

“Thank you, Brian, but really I would not feel right taking it. And besides, your hand was on it first.”

“Oh well while this might be true; your hand seemed much more excited than mine to have that CD,” Brian said as his mouth widened into a crooked smile.

I laughed after he said this realizing how ridiculous I must have looked after seeing that CD. I became embarrassed again.

“Listen, I’m not taking the CD, and if you don’t take it either, who knows who will end up with it. We wouldn’t want the new Blood Brothers to end up in undeserving hands would we?”

I managed to let out another laugh. This Brian kid was quite funny. I could tell he had a sarcastic side and I had a weak spot for sarcasm. “Well, Brian, I am NOT taking the CD believe it or not no matter what you say. So please, just buy the darn thing.”

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll buy the CD if you will listen to it with me. That way it’ll be both of ours in a weird way.”

The idea sat in my mind like a dead weight. There was nothing I’d rather do than listen to it with this boy Brian, this boy I didn’t even know. But still, there would be nothing wrong with that. Then I remembered Evan. What would he think about all of this? I don’t know why I even asked the question because I already knew the answer. He would be upset. I didn’t want Evan to get mad with me. “I’m so sorry but I can’t. I ....”

“Let me guess, you have a boyfriend?”

“Yes, I’m sorry. But you will enjoy it without me I’m sure.” After I said these words, I couldn’t help but wish he wouldn’t enjoy it without me.

“I suppose you are right.”

“Well, I guess I’d better be going then. It was nice to meet you, Brian.” I began to walk away and realized something.

“Wait, wait! I’m sorry but I didn’t catch your name.”

The hurriedness in his voice made me smile to myself. “My name’s Lizz.” And I kept on walking, smiling to myself.

******************************************

“Elizabeth!”

Quickly the image of the mall and of Brian faded away. Embarrassed, I glanced around and saw the whole history class staring at me. I sunk deeper into my desk hoping the moment would just end.

“Elizabeth, do you happen to know the answer or are you planning on telling the class telepathically?”

“I’m sorry sir, could you please repeat the question.”

“Why was Roosevelt’s Progressive Party nicknamed the ‘Bull Moose’ Party?”

“Well, sir, that would be because Roosevelt always said he felt as strong as a bull moose.”

“Very good. It might have taken you awhile, but at least you managed to come up with the right answer.”

With that the bell rang. Thankful, I gathered up my notebooks and grabbed my book bag, and made a mad dash for the door. All the while, one thing remained in the back of my mind.

The rest of the morning passed without any more humiliating occurrences. I was on my way to lunch, and as usual Evan came trotting down the hall shouting my name at the top of his lungs. I really did not want to talk to him, and for the first time, the sight of him actually made me angry. He pushed through the crowds of underclassmen and proceeded to “shine” the top of my head, messing up my hair. It was in that moment I truly realized that Evan was no longer what I was looking for. He didn’t know me. If he did, he would know I didn’t like when people touched my hair. I decided it had to end. I couldn’t take it anymore. “Evan, we need to talk. And I mean, we really need to talk,” I said with the firmest voice I could muster.

“About what, doll face.”

“Evan, you don’t know me. You don’t know what I like. You don’t know my favorite color. You don’t know that I hate being called doll face. You know nothing about me. I need someone who’s more like me, who can relate. It’s time this relationship ended. For good.”

“What do you mean, ‘I don’t know you’?! We’ve been going out for three months, Lizz. I know that you’re adopted, you listen to bad music, and you have three dogs.”

“Ya, Evan, and while you might know that I’m adopted and have three dogs, you haven’t made an effort to connect. Nothing you can say will change my mind. It’s over.” And with all the courage I could find I walked away and didn’t look back.

By three-thirty, the whole school had heard the news. As I walked down the halls, people whispered and pointed. I heard a lot of different versions of the same story, none of which were correct. It somehow turned into a story about Evan “putting me in my place” and watching me run into the girls bathroom sobbing. On a normal day this would bother me. But today, it didn’t.

I gave it a couple days before I did what I had wanted to do since Saturday. One of the punk rock girls at school gave me Brian’s number, and every night I stared at it until the digits burned into my brain. Finally, I had had enough. I was going to call this Brian and tell him that we should hang out sometime. As I reached for the receiver, I noticed my hands were shaking. I took this as a good sign and one-by-one pressed the digits. On the other end it began to ring. Fighting the urge to hang up, I gripped the phone until my knuckles turned white.

“Hello?”

I recognized Brian’s voice at once, on the other side of the line. “Ummm, hi. I don’t know if you remember me, well I hope you do, but I met you at the mall on Saturday. You were looking for the Blood Brothers CD and so was I and then we talked for a while and I’m really sorry to be calling you but this girl at school gave me your number and I thought I’d call and see if you wanted to come over and listen to it if you haven’t already got your own copy because if you have, that’s okay I was just wondering because I know I got the last copy and....”

“Sure. I’d like that, Lizz.”

I couldn’t decide if I was more shocked by the fact that he remembered my name, or the fact that he wanted to come over. Either way, I felt a warmth creeping up inside of me. I wanted to shout and scream and dance all at the same time. But, knowing I was still on the line, resisted. “Wow, okay. That’s awesome. Come over whenever you want and we’ll listen to it. To be honest, I haven’t really had time yet, so it’ll be new for both of us.”

“That sounds good to me. I’m free tomorrow after school. I’ll see you then.”

“Great! I live on...”

“I know where you live.”

“You do?” I said, trying not to sound too surprised.

“Ya, a girl at school told me.”

I laughed and said “Well, after school it is then. See you later.”

“Alright. It’s a date. And Lizz, thanks for calling.”

I hung up the phone feeling happier than I had ever felt. I couldn’t wait till tomorrow.

Fast forward two months. Brian and I were now in a relationship. For a couple of weeks it was the juiciest gossip at school. Word had finally spread that I had been the one to end the relationship, and Evan’s reputation had taken a heavy blow. Then, the news that I essentially left the captain of the football team for the grungy skater really didn’t help his situation much. But nevertheless, I was happy and that’s all that mattered to me. Brian and I had a great time together. We had so much in common, including the same birthday, which I found to be remarkable. We liked the same music, had the same interests, and simply just enjoyed each others company. Tonight I was going to meet Brian’s parents. Of course I was nervous, but I knew it’d be okay. From what I knew of them, his parents seemed to be genuinely nice people who loved their son and seemed interested in meeting his girlfriend. I spent two hours getting ready and, at five-thirty Brian was ringing the door bell. “I’m ready,” I said to him, giving my new dress a little twirl.

“You look lovely, Lizz. You really do. Are you nervous?”

“Not really. I just hope they like me.”

“Why wouldn’t they? You’re perfect. There’s nothing about you they wouldn’t like, trust me. Besides, if I like you that should be good enough for them.”

“Good point,” I said as we got in his car and started down the street. Twenty minutes later we came to a stop in front of a beautiful Victorian home in the suburbs.

“Don’t look so surprised, Lizz. You didn’t think I was poor did you?”

“No, no! I just didn’t think you lived...here,” I muttered, feeling slightly embarrassed.

“It’s okay. Let’s just go inside. It’s a bit cold out.”

I walked inside and immediately was in awe. The ceilings were high and made out of glass. A marble staircase ascended to an immaculate balcony with mahogany railings. Beautiful paintings lined the walls, which were no doubt covered in expensive wall paper, and from the windows hung dainty lace curtains. This house was beyond glamorous. It was breathtaking. My eyes went back to the staircase. A woman was slowly making her way down to greet us, but as I looked at her, a horror struck me. A horror beyond anything I could fathom, worse than the worst nightmare. It struck her, too. She cried out, “Oh my God! It’s her!”

I screamed as Brian’s mother fainted and fell softly down the stairs. A man, assumed to be Brian’s father, came running out of a room nearby and rushed over to his stricken wife. He looked at me, and I looked at him. I screamed some more and ran past Brian. He grabbed me, stared me straight in the eye and in pain and confusion asked, “You’re my sister?”

Home

2010-04-13T18:57:00.001-07:00

testing an idea

Poetry 2005-2006

2010-04-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Poetry 2005-2006
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Forensics
By Nick Elits

The highway stretched out far into the freezing distance
Our travels made us weary and we longed for home
A car sat quite and solemn near a Bridge
Nestled in the security of the snow
It was freshly abandoned and still warm from its occupants
Under each Bridge was a new body which told its own fleshly tale
And each story told only of the deed that had been done
Masking the details in obscurity
The sun was smothered by dark foreboding clouds
They foretold the beginning of the end
The Earthly machine in the dead of winter
Began to cave in upon itself
Once so efficient and bureaucratic
It now struggled to sustain its own existence
Society started to crumble
The wrench in the machine was too hard to find
And it bled to death
The harsh reality of the revelation was frightening
I felt alone in my madness so I reached out for you
You gave me your comfort and I asked for a kiss
Because “the end of the world is surely upon us”
You held my hand and said “fall into it” and I did
I was afraid …I was afraid of the machine
I was afraid of what we’d become
And if the machine wasn’t going to let me be
Then maybe it better I not be
So from that day on I let my body tell the story
The forensic artists will know what I have done
They will see my deeds but like the others I will wear my mask
Keeping the details somewhere deep in the bowels of Oblivion
I will be one more body floating down the River Styx
For it not worth my Soul
To have the latest medical technology
For it not worth my Soul
To have mastered the elements
For it not worth my Soul
To be Sane
So here I float Upon the River Styx
Waiting to be judged…
Because the machine is society and the wrench is Science
Science is the vehicle by which we lose faith
And when the magic is gone we will cease
to live
Our sole concern will be for the product of the machine
Which is the existence of itself.

Ghost Dance
By Nick Eltis

While traveling from Sioux Falls to Spencer
I heard a roaring crash on the highway
Like stumbling onto an unseen disaster
A cluster of bodies around me lay
The whiskey and blood, they run hand in hand
Exhausted by the fuming man-made flames
Our metal beast slain, strewn about the land
God, let the doctors remember our names
There are plenty of reasons to lament
Me and my lady will die where we lay
Good luck to those who survive this event
Tis’ fate hath decided our judgment day
We danced all night, as if danseurs from France
A Tango, a Waltz, a brilliant dance

Letter to a Friend
By Nick Eltis

Within the last few years We’ve grown apart
Our faces have become more like our fathers’
And our minds more like our mentors’
We have moved on
Making new friends to fill in the gaps
That have been left empty by our absences
Losing memories of each other every day
Like lambs to the slaughter
Our innocence has also been carried off
By news broadcasts and x-rated movies
Our knowledge has corrupted us both
Let us sleep again like children
Let our thoughts be pure again like saints
Let our actions again be sincere
For we have lost these virtues over time
These changes are not for the better
They’ve hindered our spirits
From becoming what we were truly meant to be
Caring, loving, honest human beings

The River
By Nick Eltis

My mind is like a river Keep on thinking or I’ll die
Flood the city with racing thoughts
Keep the currents rushing by
Do not dam my precious river
Let my thoughts submerge my brain
Let them trickle down my frontal lobe
And not down my bath tub drain
Let my brainwork form an ocean
So I’ll have a place to swim
I’ll build myself a battleship
And sail the seas within
And if my little river stops
Somewhere inside my head
It will be that day that you can say
The boy is surely dead.

Really Living
By Carol Graf

How about fishing on the banks of the Uncompahgre
releasing your spirit among the Havasupai

yahooing at dawn on the Wapsipinicon
canoeing into the moody woods of the Housatonic

panscoping all the lights around nighttime Lake Pontchartrain
interloping among hang-outs, haunts, and hollows in Piscataquis Parish

harkening to the trains softly clattering through rundown Conshohocken
just marking time amid the sights and smells and sounds of downtown McConnellsburg

invading cluttered bookstalls and lettered halls at Beloit or Fordham
wading into sensuous literary currents at St. Norbert or Putnam

aaahhh .......that would be really living

But how about
catching a ho-hum ride across dead ugly dull stubbly brown flatlands to Marvin, South Dakota

hah hah.......would that be really living

What is it that matters
Which is it that delights

Friends matter

With friends, even a short trip to Marvin is really living
Without friends, even a trip offering new thrills and skills is not

My Wife, My Son, My Family
By James Ingram

The scent of orange fills my nose,
A reminder of my freshly washed hair.
She cuddles up next to my back,
Her arm over me like a comforting blanket.

As I lay there, half asleep,
I can feel her stomach moving.
And it takes me back five years,
Back to when she carried our first son.

She would hold me like this,
The lingering smell of her soap.
Washing over me like a wave of cucumber-melon,
Cocooning me in her cleanliness.

When I would begin to doze,
I would feel our unborn child kicking her.
I could feel his hands and feet thumping,
Ever so lightly into my back.

It felt like the bass from a stereo,
Which rattles your eardrums and shakes your bones.
Only far softer, a gentle reminder of his presence,
Good night kisses for dad, night time beating for mom.

As I snoozed,cushioned in her warmth,
And assaulted by his vigor.
I could gaze out the window,
And watch the soft snow drift down onto the quiet earth.

As they passed before my eyes,
I could see each tiny snowflake.
Dancing like a miniature ballerina,
To the music of my son’s ever increasing tempo.

Then she would roll over to get more comfortable,
And I would follow her, wrapping my body around hers.
The smell of her hair, the scent of strawberries,
Caressing my nostrils with their teasing fragrance.

She would sigh as I enfolded her,
Her body molding to mine like so much putty.
As I closed my eyes and entered the blissful world of sleep,
I could feel him already starting to rat-atat-tat on my hands.<>

Genunie
By Jen Olson

in a city
so large
and full of silence
in a city
so hurt
and full of injured
crying
in a city
so lost
and filled with
empty souls
it is amazing that
people don’t understand
something as simple
as a tear.

Moot Moosings

By Jen Olson

“who do you want to screw,
marilyn manson or rob zombie?”
he says with a psychotic psychologist’s voice.
thechoice is between a greasy eel
and a screaming snail.
and like a calculus problem,
my mind cannot process it.
not a delicious or desirable consideration,
sleeping with either of them.
to cut off an arm or leg,
the question is really this.
the arm, i think,
because i hate heavy objects.
just like i hate heavy subjects.

a collection of moot musings,
these questions of screwing.
we talk about other useless things,
ruling Iceland and becoming syphilis,
choosing celebrity underwear.
like chimps avoiding experiments,
we skirt the truth.
no Navy and lost keys,
no broken engagements or DUIs.
this sugar coated conversation is our raft,
helping us to drift away from solid things.

i wonder if he is serious,
if he could ever really leave this world
to become an astronaut.
or if I would really make a good Buddhist,
silently contemplating without insane emotions
that define my being.
And someday, maybe soon,
the night will not draw to a close
with darkness
signaling the long resisted end to today’s charade.
in a few minutes i will drift back to my dorm room
and he will stroll back to the ship.
but i know this conversation will continue,
at another time, with the same friend, in a different mindset,
even if it involves screwing marilyn manson.

My Future Isn’t Here
By Jen Olson

Whimsically floating,
she glints like a child,
alone in her vision.
“I’m going to New York
to play in traffic.”
A picture of vivaciousness,
stirred with the impulsive.

Grounded in stone and responsibilities.

And like a bird’s flight,
she means now, today.
Face jumping like a bee,
sporadic excitement flowing,
she grabs the lemon raincoat.
“I’m gonna taste a vendor’s hot dog
and look in Madonna’s window.”

I hate hot dogs.

She sings about carriages
and living in the park.
Of disco ball Fridays,
and philosophical book clubs.
“Central Park is the place.
The only place to live.”
And she might be able to do it,
dusting the crowd with dreams.

Silence.

“I need to go.
I am suffocating here.”
She dreams of how her curtains,
her swirly, homemade curtains,
could brush the trees in the park.
And like a cloud,
dust puffs in from the window,
proving her point.

Rain is coming, be practical.

“I must bring the book,”
and in goes Confessions of a Viagra Addict,
her reason for the Calculus grade.
There is always a reason,
she says belligerently.

And I believe it.

Aging underwear tossed in,
surrounded by mismatched earrings.
Her toothbrush forgotten,
shoved under the bed,
comforting an abandoned shoe.
“I need the perfect perfume.”

Desperate for Normalcy.

As the excitement starts to fade,
she drifts away mistily.
Taking the dreams.
The raincoat is folded back,
gingerly placed in a chest.
And when everything is put way,
the magic is gone with the dust.

I can’t go.

“But neither can you stay,”
she says from the back of my mind,
momentarily pacified by oncoming dusk.
As I fight back the excitement,
the crazed impulses,
I know the time is coming.

Endings
By Jen Olson

Trick me, use me, teach me, she screams in my head,
silent except for the grim laugh shining from her eyes.
Excitement courses through my veins,
defining her fear and my direction.
Her naked body glistens with sweat,
a tribute to some god long forgotten
in the journey from that insignificant town
where that sweet-faced boy was found,
hanging from the lone light fixture
in a room desolate and haunted by drooping promises.
Promises that I could stop,
that I would think about something other
than the cheap steel pressed against my throat
as my innocence was ripped away,
just as hers is about to be,
any lingering trace of youth.
Ah, yes it has been a long road to this dingy motel
in a long series of crusty bedspreads and dripping sinks,
of dirty whores and empty sacks, sprinkled with cocaine.
My one remaining textbook, a nod to that small college town,
the town I deserted in blind desperation,
acts as her head rest,
and grainy ropes tie her to tonight’s fate.
And she doesn’t even allow one singular tear to shine for me.
Because we were both dead, long before the light deserted us,
long before the gruesome church bells could save us,
long before this moment of silent comprehension could illuminate the truths of the past.

Simple Silence
By Jen Olson

i watched a solo
brown leaf meander
to the ground
in no hurry
and felt grateful
that something so simple
was the most beautiful thing I had seen
in a long time.

Smiling Alone
By Jen Olson

I saw you
alone in your crimson
colored glory
awake from nostalgias long
left behind in
the rush to
find a new
day a
new life.

I heard you
speak like no
one I had
ever heard
and it occurred
to me
that I understood
your wonder
even if not
your words.

Serenity in Unusual Places
By Jen Olson

Its funny how nothingness
is strangely amusing. As if sitting comatose, perched
lazily on a cushion is sane. Thinking about prancing in
Caribbean waters like a dreary snowplow driver.
As if staring,
with a blank mind and vision,
at the expansive sky is enlightening. The bland expression
and tired mind create a world that is simplistic and conflicting.
Like a wilting flower, drizzled with water,
that floods and dies. A moment of nothing is salvation.
Yet overpowering. I smile
at the Sunday mornings that turn into
afternoons, laying snuggled in fleece and down. Swimming in warmth
and satisfaction. Or
the ten minute flop breaks in between real life spent
face down on a fluffy rug, dreaming
about dreaming. Leaves blowing in the wind.
Laying in the park, watching the dust. A windy twirl with pillow
in the middle of a kitchen. A gift of lightness that is like wings to take my mind away.
Serenity in unusual places.

Pretty Things
By Jen Olson

he crumpled
himself in to the
moist plastic
seat
grasping a
book with
antiqued pages
and a dirt
smothered pink
cover
I
wondered if
he was a
blooming artist
or a collector
of
things to look
old
I wondered
if he
knew about
truth and
beauty or if he
skirted it I
wondered if it was
important
enough
to
wonder.

Never For Feeling
By Jen Olson

If you never touch me again
With pearly white knuckles
Ground soundly and firmly against
A fake brand of designer cream
And if sunlight never softens
Once tan and streaming skin
With clouds forever shining against pavement
And if air forgets
never finds a path of sweet release
To reach my lungs
Then I will stop in this moment
In a haze of chatter
movement color in the background
Sitting in a beige square
Surrounded by ground mahogany and
Paper-cut smiles
Discussing death and the nature of clocks
Buzzing by and ants trouping in the salty
Dirt and I will know
That the small insignificant crystals
Of snow floating by the
Window mean more than this. And yet
Not enough.

More of Nothing
By Jen Olson

i saw a
man
on the train
with deep
eyes
that stared into
mine
without a
smile
or any disconcernable
amount of
emotion
just stared
lost
i looked towards a
more
interesting sight
green with
a
hint of
sunshine and when
i
looked back
he
was gone
and other eyes
were
looking back at
me
and I realized
i
missed
the emptiness
of the
blank communication.

Exhausted Air
By Jen Olson

The chattering hum of the television
drones out my thoughts with the constant chatter
of others living a life.
As if those people know about life.
And the florescent lights glare off my page,
guiding my eyes
to more interesting pictures, showing me
a world that doesn’t include linguistics.

This struggle
parades with zoning eyes
and a sketchy mind.
There is no biology.
Only crazy people searching for something of value.
Homework. Sunshine. Socks.
As if you could really find it.
And what would you do if you did?
Die of boredom. Questing and pretending.
Like a ripping hangover morning,
the night before is doomed to be forgotten.

Homework is listless.
Professors share their life, for what it’s worth.
And I never know what to do with this burden
of expectations.
Precious knowledge. Garbled futures.
Reality is the crusty mac n’ cheese pan,
waiting to be scrubbed.
The mountains of snow blocking escape.
Or the awkward, decaying smell crawls from the vent.
I am alone with myself,
consumed by exhausted air.
And my eyes drift back to the page,
uninviting the cramped typing that thumbs through my brain.
The cheesing grin of a third grader stares back,
demanding empathy and curiosity.
And I begin to read again.

Wasted Foreplay
By Jen Olson

I love it when he calls me beautiful.
As if he loves me and I am the most lovely woman
in the world. As if these moments are real. What a fake.
He sleeps with a fifteen year old. He dreams of money and suits
but wastes life on Morgan and acid. All his dreams are already
dead. Twenty-one years of wasted experiences. There is no love.
And he calls me to know success without
being a part of it. He fears normal. I fear jail.
Our endless banter is wasted foreplay. Like flirting with a plant.
It doesn’t hurt. It surprises me how much it doesn’t hurt.
And when he calls me to tell me about his newest date
with captivity, I snidely make some insipid comment about real life.
When I actually don’t know what that is. As I push away a misty sense of jealousy.
Because he is everything I want to be
when I feel compelled to crash off the road of reality,
slamming my head to Metallica’s “No Remorse.”
I will hand in my homework on time.
He will show up smashed to work on Tuesday.
And I will love it when he calls me beautiful.

Sinking
By Lara Steen

Plummeting, I fall lower and lower.
Nothing seems to matter anymore.
I slowly sink into oblivion.
And time stops.
Trying to look out from the shroud
And discover I can’t see an opening.
I flounder and claw
But to no avail.
Screaming as no sound comes out
I reach out blindly and find you.
Clinging for all I’m worth,
Hoping you will be solace.
For a time everything is better,
But then it continues downhill.
Yet again I am left alone.
Sinking into blackness.
Spiraling
Downward
Fast.

Taste of Steel
By Lara Steen

Nothing feels better
than the quick bite of steel
being drug across delicate white skin
where green veins flow back and forth
with fresh blood ready to be spilled in a long thin line.
It’s like a high
that can’t be replicated.
It’s better than the first time
you took a hit. Better than
the first time you were fucked.
A euphoria
that takes you over and over
every time you taste the blade.
The release comes swift and you
Watch your life trickling down your arm

What Women Want to Hear
By Lara Steen

He said, “You’re beautiful.”
She promptly laughed in his face.

He said, “You smell delicious.”
She glared viciously.

He said, “You makemy day.”
She ignored him entirely.

He said, “You complete me.”
She snorted in disgust.

He said, “My God Woman, What do you want to hear?!”
She rolled her eyes and blew out an enormous sigh.

He said, “I love you.”
She screamed in delight.

Hesaid, “What?”
She jumped into his arms and said –

“Finally, just what I wanted to hear.”

Photographs 2006-2007

2010-04-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photographs 2006-2007
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Chicago 145
Memory Chao

Chicago 164
Memory Chao

Chicago 178
Memory Chao

Chicago 182
Memory Chao

Chicago 192
Memory Chao

Chicago 209
Memory Chao

Essays 2005-2006

2010-04-11T16:06:00.000-07:00

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Essays 2005-2006
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

'Til Death Do Us Part
Andrea Mills

A lot of things died. Marriage is supposed to be the beginning of new life, a life that is excited and enhanced by the unity between a husband and wife. To my surprise, my marriage was the beginning of a new life, all right. My dream marriage became one of my worst nightmares. Eventually, my soul began to die. Staying in a bad marriage is worse than getting a divorce because a bad marriage eventually creates destructive feelings, is bad for the children, gives a bad example of marriage, and results in hiding things and lying to family and friends in order to make things appear ok. In addition, staying builds emotional scars, which result in major problems in both a person’s emotional and physical health.

Feelings of inadequacy, resentment, and bitterness are very common when a person is in a bad marriage and tries to keep everything together and make the marriage work. I felt that I could fix everything when needed. I thought that if I was a good wife and mother, created a beautiful home, and had a great career, then my husband wouldn’t want or need to continue the lifestyle that he had been leading anymore. Boy, was I wrong! Nothing I was doing made a difference. It didn’t matter how hard I tried. I just couldn’t change him. I began to feel very inadequate, as do other people with the same marital situations. Brooklyn Stevens, whom I had a personal interview with, felt some of these very same emotions. Stevens was living with both mental and physical abuse from her husband, and I was living with my husband’s addiction to alcohol and drugs. In another personal interview with Abby Shillingstad, I found that she was also a victim of emotional and physical abuse. Her husband was a very controlling man. From the clothes she wore to the color of her hair, he made the decisions. He told her that she was too fat, which left her feeling inadequate and self-conscious. In addition, for a long time, Stevens’ husband convinced her that she would be nothing without him, and she needed his money to survive (Shillingstad). We were all living a life that we did not want. I would ask God if I had done something to deserve this kind of a marriage. It took a long time for me to wake up and smell the coffee. By that time, I was so bitter at my husband for the things that he was doing to destroy our marriage that I would say things to try to make him feel like a loser, or at least bad enough that he wouldn’t want to continue to abuse alcohol and drugs. He would always promise that it would never happen again. Unfortunately, that was a promise that he never kept. I resented him and his actions deeply.

I always believed that staying together for the children’s sake was the right thing to do. Whatever gave me that idea? In hindsight, that was the worst thing I could have done for them. Shillingstad admitted that she stayed in her bad marriage for her children as well. But something good did come out of her marriage, and that was having all of her children. For that gift, she is thankful. However, she does admit that her oldest daughter has also recently become a victim of her husband’s controlling abuse. This angers Abby (Shillingstad). Stevens thought that having children would have made things better in her marriage. She didn’t end up having children and is very thankful for that now (Stevens). In my situation, allowing my children to see the things that their father was doing and then watch my reactions to them scared them and made them feel like their family and home were no longer secure or stable. But I thought that I was hiding everything well. For example, on many occasions when my husband would go on a binge, he would not come home at night, sometimes for two or three days at a time. I would get up early and set a cereal bowl on the counter, put a little bit of milk in it with a spoon, and open up the newspaper, so when the kids got up it would look like their dad had been home. Then I would tell them that he had already left for work. Sometimes I would tell them that Dad was working out of town, so he had to spend the night somewhere else. I would just keep making up lies as needed to cover up what was really going on. The kids got older and started to really question what was happening. I still continued to cover up everything. They were probably thinking if Dad was just working really long hours, then why was Mom so furious with him and not speaking to him when he got home?

If I had ended the marriage when the kids were younger, it would have been easier for the kids to adjust. I could have explained what the problems were and why things needed to change. Children are much more forgiving when they are younger than when they become teenagers. By doing it when they were young, I could have prevented many lies. Because of all the cover-ups, my kids thought that I was divorcing a saint. I don’t regret never bad-mouthing their dad, but it really gave them a false image of him. Now as teenagers, there are so many more issues for them to deal with, such as being embarrassed to tell their friends, thinking they need to choose sides, threatening to move out of the house if I didn’t let Dad come back, and not trusting me after I told them that I had been covering everything up. They said if I was lying then, how did they know I wasn’t lying now? In different ways and through different eyes, I realized that the divorce was worse now than it would have been when they were toddlers.

When raising my children, I wanted to teach them good examples by living good examples. But in retrospect, I wasn’t setting a very good example of how marriage should be. Some important aspects in a good marriage are love, trust, and unity. The kids weren’t seeing much of this. My husband was a master manipulator. Therefore, trust was something I can honestly say I never had with him. Shillingstad’s husband was also a habitual liar. He could always put on a super show in front of other people to make himself appear to be a great guy. But behind closed doors it was a different story (Shillingstad). As a result of the absence of trust in my marriage, the love began to fade immensely. When there is no trust and the love starts fading, the unity of the marriage begins to split. These are the things that the kids were seeing. I tried very hard to cover these things up. It’s not that I was purposely trying to hurt them by pretending; actually, I thought I was protecting them at the time. As it turned out, I realized all of my theories on doing what was better for the kids were inane. What I thought was a good example was actually setting a very bad example of what a marriage should be like.

My children were not the only people that I concealed events of my bad marriage from. My siblings, parents, friends, and clients all got the same kind of lies and cover-ups about what was really going on. Stevens told me that she also hid everything from family and friends. She even took blame for things in order to make it appear that things were her fault instead of his. In addition, she poured herself into her work so that she did not have to be home. Although our situations were a little different, I also worked very long hours at my salon, did some volunteer work, and spent a lot of time with my siblings and close friends. Stevens stayed away so she didn’t have to be home with her husband (Stevens), whereas I stayed away in order to pass time so that I wasn’t sitting at home waiting to see if he was going to come home or not. Some nights I thought I would literally go crazy waiting for him to come home. I don’t think I even heard half of what the kids said to me on those nights. Maybe my family and friends all knew what was really going on, but I thought that I was hiding it well.

Another, and probably the most serious, consequence of staying in my bad marriage is the emotional toll it took on me. Stevens claims that her marital troubles led to unhealthy emotional problems for her as well. There were times that she actually feared for her life. On one occasion, she told her husband to just go ahead and kill her (Stevens). Shillingstad was tormented by physical abuse as well. On one occasion, she had to call the police for protection (Shillingstad). In contrast, I was not being physically abused and fearing for my life, but even so, there were so many times during my marriage that I wished I were dead. Then I would feel terrible because there was no way that I wanted to leave my children or for them to lose their mother. That’s when I started thinking that we would all be better off if my husband would just get in a car accident and die. These thoughts were so awful that I could not believe they were coming out of my mind. I thought that I was a good person and a good Christian. But how could I be if I was thinking like this? This is how messed up the spouses of the abusers get. Also, my religious belief that divorce was a sin was another key factor in staying as long as I did. I knew that I needed to get out and never look back, but I had this cloud above my head with all kinds of thoughts. What would God think? Would he forgive me? Would I still be a Christian? I got so depressed and plagued with anxiety that I felt like I was sinking farther into the hell-hole of life. These problems led to insomnia and very poor eating habits. Trying to work full time, raise the kids, and keep the salon and home running while my health was failing really were taking its toll on me. The emotional stress was now turning into very serious physical problems as well. It got so bad that I ended up in the doctor’s office almost every other day. My doctors told me that I needed to get rid of the stress in my life before it killed me. I knew that they were right, but I felt that I needed to be tough and suck it up.

Then one day my body and mind both gave up. I was no longer able to carry on the charade anymore. I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone my family, anymore. I was not eating at all and I was only getting about two to three hours of sleeps a night. It took a lot of hospitalization and therapy to get me back to myself.

For many people that have stayed in a bad marriage, destructive feelings have developed, and children have been harmed. They put on a facade of their marriage. They have a lifetime of physical as well as emotional scars that they will carry around. I have given ample evidence of this. No one will ever be able to convince me now that staying in my marriage as long as I did was a good idea.

Work Cited

Stevens, Brooklyn. Personal Interview. 12 August 2005.

Abby, Shillingstad. Personal Interview. 15 August 2005.

In the Dark Woods: Abuse Themes in Common Fairy Tales
Anna Roberts

In modern parlance, the phrase "fairy tale" has come to mean different things; at best, a fairy tale is a story that begins with "once upon a time" and ends with "happily ever after." It evokes images of beautiful heroines, brave heroes, and adventures long ago and far away. At worst, we use the term to mean an untruth, a falsehood so incredible that only a child would believe it. The tales out of the older traditions, however, are more than flights of fancy or pretty lies. "The fairy tale journey...can be seen as a metaphor for the therapeutic journey into the depths of the soul" (Windling, Introduction 15). Stories out of the oral tradition were told "not only to entertain but to teach: to show listeners that they were not alone, to communicate societal attitudes towards topics deemed unspeakable in open society, and to present possible solutions through the metaphor of magic" (Pinlinovsky). In her article "Ashes, Blood and the Slipper of Glass, Terri Windling writes: "[Fairy tales] plunge heroines and heroes into the dark wood, into danger and despair and enchantment and deception, and only then offer them the tools to save themselves." A handful of contemporary writers, including Midori Snyder, Jane Yolen and Terri Windling, restore the fairy tale to the dark wood; they use fairy tale language, imagery and magic to delve into topics we deem too frightening or uncomfortable for open discussion, in particular the theme of child abuse.

Fairy and folk tales are a natural source of material for writers who wish to examine abuse themes. The tales most familiar to contemporary Western readers have been watered down by their recorders (Warner 351) and by Hollywood's renditions, but still include old women who terrorize the young women they look after, fathers who leave their children in the woods to die, and stepmothers who give their husbands' children poisoned apples. The more graphic tales often contain an undercurrent of violence, incest and sexual abuse. "However common such abuse may have been among our European forebears, their frequent use of incest motifs in folktales and their graphic descriptions of the victims' subsequent suffering indicate that the associated fears and anxieties were both widespread and deep" (Ashliman). In her essay "The Hero's Journey," Midori Snyder says that in folk and fairy tales, "abstract ideas are represented by concrete images" (31). Folk tales couch the unspeakable in images of the dark forest, of heroes riding to battle, of young women locked in towers. "Traditional storytellers have used terrifying events to create the emotional experience of grief and abandonment" (Snyder, Journey 32).

Snyder employs these images in her retelling of "The Armless Maiden." The Grimms' version, titled "The Maiden Without Hands," begins with a poor miller who meets a stranger in the woods. The old man says that he'll make the miller rich if he promises " 'to give [the old man] what's behind [the] mill' " (Zipes 119). The miller, thinking that the old man means the apple tree that stands behind the mill, agrees in writing. The miller's wife tells the miller that the old man he met was the devil. " 'He didn't mean the apple tree but our daughter, who was behind the mill sweeping out the yard' " (Zipes 119). The devil, however, has no power over the daughter because of her purity; he tells the miller to take away the maiden's water so that she can't wash herself. But the maiden weeps on her hands, making them clean, and so the devil cannot touch her. The devil orders that the miller chop off the girl's hands. The maiden, seeing her father's dilemma, extends her hands so that her father may chop them off. But she weeps so much on the stumps that they're clean. The devil has to keep his promise to the miller even though he can't touch the girl. But the daughter tells her father that she can't stay with him anymore; she will go away and "depend on the kindness of the people to provide me with whatever I need" (Zipes 120). In her travels she meets a king, who falls in love with her and marries her. While the king is away at war, the girl gives birth to a boy; the devil, still trying to harm the girl, contrives to send news to the king that the girl has given birth to a changeling. When the king sends a reply telling his mother to protect his queen until he returns, the devil substitutes a letter of his own, telling the king's mother that she should kill the girl and her child. The king's mother refuses, and sends the girl away with her child tied to her back. The queen prays to be saved, and finds a cottage occupied by an angel sent to protect the girl and her child. The girl's hands are restored; the king finds the girl and their child after searching for seven years, when he comes across the cottage where they've been living. They celebrate a second wedding and live happily ever after (Zipes 118-123).

Snyder's story "The Armless Maiden" begins: "There once was a husband and wife who lived beside a great forest" (17). Snyder uses the familiar fairy tale beginning to draw her readers in, but the story leaves the impersonal narrative of the Grimms' fairy tale behind. Her version substitutes a brother for the father, and a jealous new wife for the devil. Her characters, unlike the Grimms', have names – the maiden is Marion, Richard is her brother, and Fiona is the new wife. The characters are more fully realized than those in the Grimms' text; in developing the characters, Snyder gives the reader people to identify with. Her plot deviates from the Grimms' version; the jealous wife commits heinous acts – killing Richard's dogs and murdering the son she's given Richard – and tells Richard that Marion is responsible. Richard is all too willing to believe Fiona; he chops Marion's arms off at the shoulders and leaves her in the woods to die (Snyder, Maiden 17-30).

The imagery Snyder employs is decidedly more graphic than that found in the fairy tales most readers are accustomed to: "Marion shook with fear...Richard's anguished cry had released her from Fiona's spell and now there was blood on her sheets, blood on the sleeves of her nightdress, and on her pillow was laid the body of her murdered nephew and a silver blade" (Snyder, Maiden 19). The Grimms' most graphic image is of the girl weeping on the stumps of her hands: "Then she extended both her hands and let [her father] chop them off. The devil came a third time, but she had wept so long and so much on the stumps that they too were all clean" (119-120). The maiden's blood is so pure it leaves no stain.

Snyder's storyline is more ambiguous than that of the more familiar tales. In the Grimms' version of the tale, the heroine is granted a "happily ever after" ending by an angel who comes to earth to save the maiden and her child; nothing is said of the maiden's father, who held the blade that chopped his daughter's hands off, or of the devil who ordered it to begin with (Zipes 123). Snyder's ending, however, is more vengeful and more ambiguous; Fiona, the brother's wife who in Snyder's retelling is the cause of Marion's troubles, is transformed into a thorny rosebush, while Marion saves her brother from being trapped by the thorns. And while the Prince finds Marion and begs her to come home, as he does in the Grimms' version, there is no clear-cut "happily ever after" ending. Marion says to the Prince: "When I first came to you, I was a creature of the woods. You pitied me and gave me shelter. But now I am a woman and you must court me as a woman" (Snyder, Maiden 28).

Snyder first encountered "The Armless Maiden" as told by a South African storyteller, Nongenile Masithatu Zenani (Snyder, Journey 32). In Zenani's telling, a widowed man tries to force his daughter to take his dead wife's place in his home and his bed. When the daughter refuses, he cuts off her arms and leaves her in the woods to die (Snyder, Journey 32). Snyder, fascinated by the story, began to research other versions of the tale. "There were versions told all over Europe and Asia, some less sexual in their tone, but every bit as gruesome" (Snyder, Journey 32). Snyder says that although she believes the "Armless Maiden" stories are about rites of passage, the narratives contain an echo of abuse. "Heroes may be impoverished or robbed of their royal birthrights, but rarely are they so vindictively mutilated before they are turned out into their journeys" (Snyder, Journey 33). The reader or listener is repulsed by the graphic violence of the tales, "not because such events never happen, but because they do" (Snyder, Journey 33).

Of her own retelling, Snyder says that she selected images from various versions of the "Armless Maiden" stories that convey the threat of abuse. However, the story is not about survival as a victim: "...rather it is about [the maiden's] journey as a committed traveller fully aware of her destination" (Snyder, Journey 33). Snyder wrote her version with the intention that the maiden's life would be restored, and that she would forgive her abusive brother. Snyder says that the need for healing that the story conveys is not simply for the abused, but for the abuser as well. "Abusers too are isolated by the shame and brutality of their violent acts" (Snyder, Journey 33). In forgiving her abusive brother, Marion "removes forever the corrupting taint of violence, allowing them both to continue in their new lives, unshackled by the past" (Snyder, Journey 33).

Snyder creates a scene in her retelling that does not appear in any of the traditional "Armless Maiden" narratives. In the earlier versions, the maiden's hands are miraculously restored, but the maiden is passive; in the Grimms' "The Maiden Without Hands," an angel is sent to look after the girl and her child, and the maiden's hands are restored "by the grace of God" (Zipes 122) in reward for her piety. Snyder's Marion, however, has to literally grab her restoration for herself; she bends to drink from a lake, and her baby, who is secured to her back by a cloth, falls into the water. Marion plunges in after him, and, nearly drowning herself, begs the spirit of the lake, in the form of a huge fish, to restore her arms so that she can save her child:

'As spirit of this lake, I would save you if you whish. Or I can save your child. You must choose,' said the fish, its whiskers quivering as it spoke.

'My arms,' Marion cried. "Give me hands and I will save us both!' (Snyder, Maiden 26).

Snyder says that this moment is Marion's first real step in her passage to adulthood, and her first step toward healing. "In one luminous moment, her past is restored, her present made manifest in the power of her hands, and her future assured, as she lifts her child out of the foaming water" (Journey 34). Marion's greatest asset is not piety; it is self-reliance. Unlike the Grimms' maiden, Marion bears her scars and reaches for healing in a way that no stock character can.

While Snyder leaves intact the magical aspects of the fairy tale, other writers purge the supernatural from their stories in order to bring home their themes. Jane Yolen's retelling of "Allerleirauh" is set, like Snyder's "The Armless Maiden" in the mythic past common to most fairy tales, but all other elements of the numinous, shared by traditional versions, are absent in Yolen's story.

The version of "Allerleirauh" told by the Brothers Grimm (called "All-Fur" or "All-Kinds-of Fur" in translation from German) begins with a king whose queen, on her deathbed, demands that he marry no one, unless she is as beautiful as the queen. The king promises; but no woman is found who is the dead queen's equal, except for the king's daughter. The king announces that he intends to marry her, "...for she is the living image of my dead wife" (Zipes 260). The daughter, frightened, tries to stall her father with impossible demands, but he meets each one. She is forced to flee to a neighboring kingdom disguised in a cloak of tattered furs. She works in the king's kitchen, and manages to catch the attention of the king with the enchanted dresses she's brought with her. They marry, and live happily ever after (Zipes 259-263).

The last sentence of the Grimm brothers' "All-Kinds-of-Fur" tells us that this story, like most fairy tales, has a happy ending. But the assurance that "they lived happily until they died," tacked onto a long account of abuse and suffering, is not convincing. The final sentence notwithstanding, this tale is a tragedy, a story that symbolically--but lucidly--portrays the unhappy life of a sexually abused child. (Ashliman)

Yolen's retelling is short and brutal. She explores the idea, in a few brief pages, that abuse is rarely an isolated incident. "As she has said in a discussion of this tale, 'while I wanted this to have a happy ending, the story insisted otherwise'" (qtd. by Pilinovsky). Yolen's story begins, as do the traditional versions, with the death of a queen. The promises the king makes, however, are different. He promises to love the baby that the queen died giving birth to – which he does not do in the traditional versions; it’s a promise he twists to suit himself as his daughter grows up. And in Yolen's retelling, the king's promise to marry no one unless the new wife is as beautiful as the queen is not extracted from him, but volunteered, unasked (Yolen 36-39).

A common motif in tales of threatened incest is the promise extracted from the king by his dying wife. This promise, combined in many tales with subsequent acts of the daughter, further helps to protect the father's reputation by shifting the responsibility for his incestuous advances elsewhere, most often to the deceased queen, since the king can fulfill the promise made at her behest only by marrying his own daughter. (Ashliman)

Helen Pilinovsky, in her article "Donkeyskin, Deerskin, Allerleirauh," writes, that Yolen's retelling "is a very interesting variation, removing, as it does, any onus of guilt from the easily scapegoated female figure" (Pilinovsky). Yolen holds the king, and no one else, accountable for the abuse of his daughter.

As in the traditional versions, the king discovers that his daughter is the only woman as beautiful as his queen. But in Yolen's story, the princess does not make impossible demands of her father, and does not run away to escape. Yolen reminds her audience that certain magics are expected in fairy tales: "Now if this were truly a fairy tale...the princess would go outside to her mother's grave. And there, on her knees, she would learn a magic greater than any craft..." (39). Then Yolen abruptly rips those expectations away from her reader: "But this is not a fairy tale. The princess is married to her father and, always having wanted his love, does not question the manner of it. Except at night, late at night, when he is away from her bed and she is alone in the vastness of it" (39). Yolen's princess dies giving birth to a daughter "as lovely as her mother. The king knows he will not have to wait another thirteen years. It is an old story. Perhaps the oldest" (39).

Yolen's princess cannot expect a happy ending. The adults who might have stepped in are kept quiet out of fear of the king's retaliation. "Silence becomes the conspiracy; silence becomes the conspirators" (Yolen 39). This retelling is "a painfully insightful tale of what it is in society at large, and in the individual human spirit that makes such abuse possible" (Pilinovsky). The princess is representative of every child with a shameful secret, with no one willing to help, and no magic key for her escape.

Another folk tale with an underlying theme of abuse is "Donkey Skin". It is the same type of tale as "Allerleirauh", classified as Aarne-Thompson Type 510B, or Unnatural Love; Donkey Skin is very similar to "Allerleirauh." The version most familiar is Charles Perrault's, though it's been omitted from most fairy tale collections meant for children (Warner 351). Perrault's story begins with the same motif as "Allerleirauh," with a dying queen and a promise from the king to love no one unless she is as beautiful and worthy as the queen herself is. The king, in this case, has a magic donkey that excretes gold instead of dung; the princess' final "impossible demand" of her father is that he slaughter the donkey, the source of the his wealth, and have a cloak made from its skin. He does so, and the princess flees wrapped in the donkey skin cloak (Perrault). "For in this early fairy tale [Perrault] marks the daughter with her father's sin: the sign of the donkey conveys his lust. She becomes a beast, after her father has behaved like one" (Warner 325). In a panel discussion at WisCon 23 in Madison, Wisconsin, Terri Windling likened the cloak that Donkey Skin and Allerleirauh wear to the cloak of shame that covers the children of abuse: while the survivors of abuse spend their lives trying to escape it, it becomes a shield that protects them from being hurt again.

"Donkey Skin" shares the theme of incest with "Allerleirauh", but at the end of Perrault's tale, the king comes to his senses and appears at his daughter's wedding: "But neither the prince nor the many visiting kings appeared in such splendor as the bride's father, who now recognized his daughter and begged her forgiveness" (Perrault). By bringing him out of his madness, Perrault shifts all blame away from the king; he was crazed, and therefore not responsible for his actions.

Windling's prose poem "Donkeyskin" blends the traditional plot of the fairy tale with an account of a modern runaway teenager, shifting back and forth between the magical tale and the modern one. Windling uses the customary dream-like language and imagery of the fairy tale even in the harsh story of the contemporary girl; the poem is surreal but unflinching. Windling's retelling begins after the Maria Alvarez, the runaway, has fled. In Windling's tale, "the daughter is shown to have suffered actual abuse and not, as in the older tales, merely the threat of it" (Pilinovsky). Windling writes that some time after Maria has fled that "the bruise on her face has faded to yellow and she walks without limping" (Windling, Donkeyskin 297). "The explanation for her limp – a beating, a rape – is left to the discretion of the observer" (Pilinovsky). Windling never gives the father the chance to shift the blame away from himself, and her heroine goes on as do most survivors of abuse: trying to put the past behind her. "She pulls the donkeyskin back around her shoulders, taking comfort in the soft, familiar fur. She knows one day she will have to learn to live without it" (Windling, Donkeyskin 299).

In the hands of writers like Snyder, Yolen and Windling, the fairy tale is stripped of bright, sanitized veneer that most contemporary readers associate with the stories. In these writers' hands, stories of the fantastic become much more than escapist literature; they become vehicles for powerful truths about the dark forest we pass through on the road to adulthood, and the dangers that lurk there. "Once upon a time, they say, there was a girl . . . there was a boy . . . there was a person who was in trouble. And this is what she did . . . and what he did . . . and how they learned to survive it" (Windling, Ashes). These stories do not flinch from topics deemed taboo by our society; "they go to the very heart of truth. They've spoken the truth for a thousand years" (Windling, Ashes).

Works Cited

Ashliman, D.L. "Incest in Indo-European Folktales." Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts. Ed. D.L. Ashliman. 1997 http://www.pitt.edu~dash/incest.htm.

Perrault, Charles. "Donkey Skin." Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts. Ed. D.L. Ashliman.

Pilinovsky, Helen. "Donkeyskin, Deerskin, Allerleirauh: The Reality of the Fairy Tale." The Endicott Studio. Ed. Terri Windling. 2001 http://www.endicott-studio.com/fordnky.htm.

Snyder, Midori. "The Armless Maiden."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 17-30.

Snyder, Midori. "The Hero's Journey."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 31-34.

Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.

Windling, Terri. "Ashes, Blood and the Slipper of Glass." The Edicott Studio. Ed. Terri Windling. 1997 http://www.endicott-studio.com/forashs.html.

Windling, Terri. "Donkeyskin."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 295-299.

Windling, Terri. "Introduction."The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 13-16.

Yolen, Jane. "Allerleirauh"The Armless Maiden and Other Tales for Childhood's Survivors. Ed. Terri Windling. New York: Tom Doherty Associates, 1995. 36-39.

Zipes, Jack, ed. The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.