"The Traveler" Glendale Community College Literary Magazine, 2002

              Those responsible for this publication believe in artistic freedom of expression,
while simultaneously trying to uphold responsible community standards. It is
important that the readers of the Traveler be aware that this publication is produced
for an adult audience and may contain some content of an adult nature.
Los responsables de esta publicacion creen en la libertad de expresion artfstica, a la
vez que tratan de mantener 105 estfmdars y normas de una comunidad responsable.
Por eso, es importante que 105 lectores del Traveler sepan que es una publicacion
destinada a un pQblico maduro y que pueda contener materiales solo para adultos.
There are always five cigarette butts in the ashtray. They have not
been moved since they were mashed out. They have been there
for weeks now, a stale reminder of the last time he was here. She gets
up from the couch and walks into the bathroom. She reaches for the
bar of soap, but changes her mind and uses the liquid soap. She
doesn't want to ruin the dents-the perfect little random dents left in
the soap from his pinkie ring.
There are other things-the calendar on the wall still shows the
month of May, even though it is early June. His handwriting was on
Monday, the 23rd-"Juliette's birthday," in bold black chicken scrawl.
There is a shriveled green balloon sitting in the corner. It is about the
size of a ripe grapefruit and it looks like a dried up pea, but, to her,
it is a treasure chest filled with breath-his breath. The answering
machine is still blinking-his voice, a vague, deep mumble... "Love ya­bye."
She walks to the apartment window and looks out at the park­ing
lot. If she thinks about it long enough, sometimes she can catch
a glimpse of him honking :md waving at her through the windshield
of his beat up Dodge. When he returns, he will have their daughter
KeejJer of Bees
Luke Bauer
Watercolor
First place, painting
Saying
Goodbye
Niki D'Andrea
Honorable mention, fiction
Juliette on the seat beside him, fresh from kindergarten and ready for
the birthday party. But he never returns.
The "official report" stated that the steering axle of the Dodge
broke while he was on his way to the school, sending him careening
across the median and into oncoming traffic. He slid into a semi­truck,
getting caught beneath the wheels and pushed for a good thir­ty
feet. The doctors say he died at the moment of impact and did not
suffer, but she does not want to think about it. It is not an image she
holds.
She walks over to the shriveled green balloon and picks it up,
holding it to her face. It is soft and soothing against the slope of her
cheek. The oil from his fingers has left two smudges of fingerprint on
the surface of the green latex. Carefully, methodically, she pulls a pin
from her hair :md punctures the balloon, the tip of the pin slowly
sinking into the balloon like a syringe. His breath leaks out, warming
her face, hot now with tears. She closes her eyes and feels the fragile
life hanging in the air, as she inhales the lost breath, mourning the
lost moments.
Tomorrow, she will empty the ashtray.+
1
First place, fiction
C. Lee Loudermelt
v e e
"Miracles can happen, and momma knows
best. You should know that, but ya'll city
folk don't know yer asses from a rabbit
hole. Ya'll city folk act like ya'll got some
kinda control over what happens."
After his heart slowed, he had a ridiculous thought. Guns don't kill people, just
little old men with too much free time. He cracked the door wide enough to holler,
"Dad, it's Jimmy."
"Little Jim? Damnit, boy, how the hell are yai" His father, a pudgy but spry fellow
unchanged in two years since his son had seen him, dropped the weapon and trotted
to the car. His gnarled bare feet pounded on the dirt and dead leaves in the yard.
"I'm good. How the hell are you?" Jim grabbed his bag out of the truck, a black
duffel affair, and placed two feet on the dirt, half-wishing he had kicked off his shoes
beforehand. Despite himself, he had missed his place among the mountains.
continued, page 28
There was always a sense of coming home even as he got off the sixteen-seat turbo
prop 150 miles from his actual destination. The next 148 miles were on a two-lane
paved road, winding through the evergreen covered Blue Ridge Mountains where pink
and white dogwood trees would proclaim the coming of spring and ease the monoto­ny
of the road but not the nausea from car-sickness. Then came the blind turn onto a
hidden dirt road that was partially grown over and barely wide enough for the rental,
a white Chevy Blazer. The truck was a last-minute decision, and from the looks of the
road ahead, it had been a well-made one. It probably had only seen one traveler since
his last visit, aside from a deer or a cougar. His father walked down the mountain once
a month to check the mail.
He decided to stop by the mailbox, just to see if he could save the old man a trip.
It creaked open in complaint but revealed its contents: a magazine-Guns and Ammo,
two advertisements with faces of missing children, and his own short note written on
a postcard that he mailed three weeks ago. Dad, I'm coming home May second. Can't
wait to see you. So much for the warning. He wondered if there would be gunfire if his
father thought he was trespassing. That was just like his father, the hermit, and the guy
who would rather wipe his butt with a Sears and Roebuck than quilted Charmin-his
father, the mountain man.
His dad lived in a house that had been in the family for more than 100 years. His
great grandfather had bought the land cheap before the Depression because it was far
away from everything. The little cabin was built with conveniences modern to the times
100 years outdated, like the wood-burning stove that cast a heavy pine scent when sup­per
was cooking.
"Someday it'll be mine," he thought as he rolled past a blooming tree. He was­n't
sure if it had been a sarcastic thought or a happy one, but hopehilly soon it would­n't
matter. He didn't know how he was going to convince 100 years of heritage that it
was time to give in to the modern world and come down from its mountain. The blar­ing
blast of a shotgun fired into the air didn't help his confidence. Through the grind
of his tires and the caw of scattering birds, he heard his father plainly. "Git off my
land!"
The Mountain Man Miracle
T
Flowers
Edward A. Raymer III
Gelatin silver print
First place, photography
2
Traveler 2002
Ta b I e of Contents
Fiction Poetry (continued) Painting (continued)
Saying Goodbye 22 Loki 1 Tara Launders 13 Rock Roses Sherri McClendon
Honorable mention Niki D'Andrea
The Mountain Man Miracle
23 Ghost Deanne Ryan 17 Bernini's Medusa April Huggins
2
First place C. Lee Loudermelt 25 The Lives We Could Have Led 30 Unfilled
5 Iris iki D'Andrea Honorable mention Marcia Lombardo
Honorable mention Tara Launders 31 MomingRush Deanne Ryan 37 Horse
11 Castle Below the Sky Third place Casey Wade
Third place Rochelle Watts 32 Traveling Behind
Third place Rochelle Watts 39 Bouganvilla & Pomegranates
14 What's Goodfor the Goose Hyo S. Choi 3
Second place Matthew Roy 40 Garden Fancy
36 ABum's Tale Computer Art Honorable mention Kimberly Day
Honorable mention Diayn Day
40 Phorenzic Band CD Cover
First place Donald L. Konopasek
Non-Fiction
Photography
Drawing 2 Flowers
8 "And Lots ofOther Things" First place Edward A. Raymer III
Second place Kelly Huckeby 4 La Pianta di uovo
Second place Carol Smith 6 Muddy
16 The River in Question Honorable mention TaNee Townsend
First place C. Lee Loudermelt 9 Deftones
First place Nick Crouch 15 Untitled3
18 Bandits Sucked!n Honorable mention Dianne Brin
Honorable mention Teresa Cannady 11 Still Life with Lady Statue 20 Heart in Hand
30 Best Friends
Honorable mention Hyo S. Choi
Second place Esteban Ornelas
Third place Cheryl Taul 16 Lif' Andrew
Third place Rebecca Kelmedy 24 Sept. 12,2001; Boston Cemetery
Loralei McNichols
Poetry 19 Ambition Stacy Lowther 25 Untitled [with people}
Honorable mention Joel Hatcher
4 Generic Brand Human 21 Untitled
Second place C. Lee Loudermelt Honorable mention Greg Smith 26 The Kiss after Gustave Klimt
29 Life Goes On
April Huggins
6 How to Hold
First place Rochelle Watts Honorable mention Kathy Runte 27 Erotic Sands
31 Just Plain Delicious Carol Smith
Third place Joseph Martin
7 Confessions ofa Consumer
Jayme Cook 32 The Patio Michael A. Kaminer
13 New Orleans Painting 34 Untitled [bed} Joel Hatcher
Honorable mention Katherine Glaser
15 Clepsydra Katherine Glaser Cover Geranium! 35 One Melissa J. Lutch
Honorable mention Hyo S. Choi
19 Sponge Matthew Roy Keeper ofBees
20 The Guitarist iki D'Andrea First place Luke Bauer Sculpture
10 Rico's Cafe
21 Night Outside My Door Second place Rebecca Kennedy 5 Untitled
Honorable mention David Adams
Honorable mention Gracie Garrett The Window Rebecca Kennedy
4
Second place, poetry
C. Lee Loudermelt
Generic
Brand
Human I am Rose
Perfume,
Delicious food on
Someone else's plate.
Never as fragrant
As a fresh cut bouquet,
Or a delectable dish
Beneath a watering mouth.
I am a generic brand
Human,
liquid sand on
Asun-baked thirsty tongue.
Never crystalline or sparkling,
I am as good
As I can be,
Good enough for me.
I am bittersweet
Chocolate,
Artificially flavored
Lemonade.
Never as sweet
As a Hershey's kiss,
Or hand-squeezed
Juice with real sugar.
T v e e
La Pian/a di IIOUO
Carol Smith
Prismacolor
Second place drawing
''They're worried about you, you
know. They called again today and
wanted to know about you. I told
them that we were running tests
today, and since you came to me
only yesterday, after a day of home
care, we should be able to destroy
the problem at its source."
Iris
Tara Launders
Honorable mention, fiction
"W1at color is the bear, Timothy? Come
on, I know you can tell me."
Timothy reached out, touched the fuzzy
stuffed animal; he could smell the fresh scent of
cleaner on its fllf, could hear the rustle as the
doctor before him shook the toy, but for the life
of him, he could not see the bear.
He had been warned, of course, by class­mates.
if he didn't answer, he would be Sent
Away. There had been whispers from his c1ass-mates;
they had come to his house after school,
after the Accident, tlying to keep him company,
but he had smelled the fear on them. He was dif­ferent
now.
They knew he
was going to be Sent
Away.
He had heard
what happened to
kids that were Sent
Away; parents used
that threat all the
time when a child
would not behave.
But surely no one
had ever been Sent Away, surely it was merely a
jest used to discipline unruly children.
But Timothy had heard his parents speak­ing,
after his Accident. But instead of speaking
about him being Sent Away, possibly, they used
another word: Deportation.
And Flawed.
Timothy knew about the Flawed; everyone
did. The Flawed were not really people, but half­people.
They were
born without eyes or
ears or parts of their
body. They were
blind, deaf, dumb,
mute, or their bodies
were crippled.
Flaws were not
really people. They
deserved
Deportation. They
were not people, not in the sense that a Utopia­born
person was. They might have appeared as a
perfect Utopian person, but their physical form
was deceitful.
continued, page 33
5
Untitled
David Adams
Scripture pages and wood
Honorable mention,
sculpture
How To Hold
Rochelle Watts
First place, poetry
How to catch a girl
ot grab-fast, not snatching as you would catch a fly
But a slow caress
That barely moves
And you barely take a breath
"No breatWng?" asked the boy
"None," said the grandfather
So you don't
6 And you whisper their name
Until they turn.
Then you reach with a trembling hand
to put one finger
preferably the smallest one
on their face
"Why the face?" wondered the little boy
"The eyes are there," nodded grandfather
There you look deeply
To keep their attention
And when you have that, that elusive tWng
You don't look away
How to hold a girl
With one arm around completely
but not tight
No pulling them so close to feel the beat of a heart
because they'll pull back
more than you can hold
"Will they really?" the little boy frowned
"Most of the time," grandfather smiled
But just enough
So they feel protected and cared for
And you don't move
nless they do first
Then you move fast
Faster
Because if you don't
"If you don't?" asked the boy
"You have to start again," said grandfather
T v e e
Muddy
TaNee Townsend
Ink jet print
Honorable mention, photography
Confessions of a Consumer
Jayme Cook
The AMPM gas station is usually packed on account of its cheap gas rates.
Makes me wonder who's currently controlling the Gaza Strip. '!\vice a week
I stop in on my way to work to drop five bucks into the tank of the Cougar
and to buy stamps-buy stamps-BUY STAMPS but end up indulging in an
elaborate shopping spree in the Mecca of convenience stores. I load up my
arms with Frito Lay salted sunflower seeds, Gatorade (who came up with
that name?) Big Red, Beef Jerky, Combos (cheddar filled crackers-no pret­zels,
thanks) and whatever other processed food that strikes my fancy.
Chef Boyardee Ravioli, if I'm feeling extravagant. Then begins the
tenacious trek to the counter, utilizing my fingers, chin, elbows, and armpits
to secure my mother lode on this awkward tightrope while trying not to sing
along with the N'Sync song piping through the intercom. (I hate this song,
how is it that I know the words?) Sighing, I dump my items onto the
countertop, exhausted and proud, like a mother who's just given birth. The
stuff is calculated, taxed, and bagged with superhuman efficiency. "Thank
you. Have a nice day. Next." I leave the soda fountains and too bright
lights-the lotto tickets and spermicidal condoms with a bag full of crap and
smile of distracted ignorance-the Gaza Strip, like the stamps, long
forgotten.
7
"And
Kelly Huckeby
Second place, non-fiction
Lots of Other Things"
his work as something from the past, I dragged
my friends to see Dylan. As soon as we walked
into the auditorium, I was in shock. Half the
audience was my age or a little older. There
were no reformed hippies or aging attendees.
There were individuals who travel the United
States when Dylan is on tour ~md see multiple
shows a year. They all said the same thing,
"Dylan is not a nostalgia act. If you w~mt nos­talgia,
go put on Freewheelin. He's not interest­ed
in doing the sanle thing twice or being the
'voice of a generation.'" They also added, "The
people who were looking for him to be some
link to the past stopped coming a long time ago
when they realized he wasn't going to live in the
past for them."
We took our seats as Dylan and his band
walked onstage, and the lights went down. He
looked something of a cross between Hank
Williams and a 19th centUly minstrel. His
black, double-breasted jacket, tight fitting on
his withering frame, and his hair, while speck­led
with gray, stood on end, electrified like on
the cover of Highway 61 Revisited.
Yes, he looked evelY bit of his sixty years
of age, but there was a weird transference of
energy between the audience and Dylan as he
stood switching back and forth between his
acoustic Gibson and Fender Stratocaster. He
seemed to be saying, "The truest musical expe­rience
is in the moment of performance and
the creation that comes forth." Working his way
through unrecognizably great versions of
"Tangled Up In Blue," "All Along The
Watchtower," and "Like ARolling Stone," it w~~
evident he didn't feel anywhere near sixty. He
still had that rebel snarl and crackled voice that
he had at twenty-three. For a moment, I got a
glimpse of him as if he were standing on stage
at Newport in 1965, plugging in for the first
time, telling everyone that this is the future.
After "Blowin' In the Wind," Dylan gra­ciously
bowed once, turned his back to the
crowd, and was gone, heading for another
town. As I walked out of the auditorium that
night, Jolmny Cash's words from his liner notes
8
Conventional wisdom in this day-and-age
seems to be that by the time we are sixty or
Sixty-five we should be somewhere in Sun City
playing ski-ball or canasta at the local recre­ation
center. We seem to live in a society
obsessed with youth, both its potential and
beauty. Most people would say by the time we
are sixty, the future is a thing of the past, that
our best work is behind us. So, of course, I
found it both ironic and hilarious when I found
out that Bob Dylan was going to play at the
Sundome in Sun City. I had visions of blue­haired
ladies and gray-haired men with canes,
all reformed hippies, chanting along as he
croaked, "The Times They Are AChangin." I
was going to learn, though, that Dylan does not
deal in nostalgia.
When I told my friends that he was com��ing,
they replied with mild indifference,
"So.. .isn't he like, ancient?" Though hurt at
their lack of enthusi~L~m, even I had to admit a
little trepidation. I had never wanted to see him
live because he has always been like an abstract
figure to me, someone from a different genera­tion
who, while I admired him, I didn't com­pletely
get.
The myth of Dylan scared me. Here was a
man who had single-handedly brought a voice
to the seismic folk movement of the '60s and
subsequently brought it plummeting to the
ground in '65 when he went electric. He had a
huge impact on the consciousness of America
at the time. He was seen as a prophet, a revo­lutionary-
the man with all the answers to peo­ple's
deepest questions. People bought his
albums with the hope that Dylan was going to
shed some profound enlightenment upon
them. They didn't realize he was simply a poet,
searching for the same answers. It's something
Dylan has been trying to shake his whole
career. When John Lennon first heard Dylan, he
said he knew that the Beatles were going in the
wrong direction. Most artists were intimidated
by Dylan. He was a twenty-three-year-old kid
who was remaking all the rules of music.
In an attempt not to think of Dylan and
T v e e
to Dylan's 1969 Nashville Skylines album ran
through my head-~md it is still the only way I
know how to describe Dylan:
"...This man can rhyme the tick of time, the
edge of pain, the what of sane and comprehend
the good in men, the bad in men.... I'm proud
to say I know it, herein is a hell of a poet. And
lots of other things."
Bob Dylan has covered the American
musical landscape from roots and country to
gospel and blues. He changed the way writers
write songs by infusing them with ideas,
imagery and personal views, something no
other songwriter had been able to do success­fully
up to that point. He brought the voices of
Rimbaud, Ginsberg, Whitman, Kerouac, and
Blake alive for legions of fans that dared to lis­ten
and woke up rock n' roll from its slumber
by showing that it could be raucous, loud, and
important. He also changed the perception of
how a singer was supposed to sound. Dylan's
voice has never been pretty. It has always been
rough, abrasive, and sometimes off key. Before
Dylan, it was unacceptable to sound anything
other than highly stylized-hence singers like
Bing Crosby or groups like the Kingston Trio.
Dylan proved that the key in the formation of
lyrics and their performance was in the phras­ing
and spontaneity.
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that there are
no second acts in American lives. I only wish he
could have lived to see Bob Dylan. After forty
years, more than five hundred songs and forty­three
albums, he still does approximately 200
shows a year, more than any other touring artist
working today. At an age when most people
retire or are thought of as washed-up stars,
Dylan is still creating, still adding another act,
another page to the musical landscape, never
staying in one place long enough to be defined
or labeled.
He won his first "Album of the Year"
Grammy at the age of 57 for his praised 1997
album, Time Out of Mind, and he just received
an Academy Award for his song, "Things Have
Changed," which he did for the movie Wonder
Boys. His just-released forty-third album, Love
and Theft, debuted at number 5 on the
Billboard charts-the highest ranking a Dylan
album has ever received-and is being consid­ered
some of the best work of his career.
Dylan is not on magazine covers or on
Entertainment Tonight. He doesn't do inter­views
though he gets several hundred requests
a year. In an age where, if you want to see your
favorite celebrity prancing around, all you have
to do is pick up a magazine or turn on your tel­evision
set, Dylan roams the globe, like a min­strel,
a troubadour bringing the music to wher-
~ \:-.1
I r-. ,<
If:r..
I
l~
ever there is an audience. He is intent on mak­ing
sure people are talking about his present
contributions and growing cannon of work, not
the nostalgia of his '60's or '70's work, like a
relic to be placed on a bookshelf.
He once said, "People are mainlining
nostalgia like it's a drug. I don't want to be a
drug dealer." I couldn't help thinking, though,
as I watched the kids dance and sing along with
Dylan at the Sundome that night, that the chil­dren
of the children of the '60's have now been
given his songs, forty years worth, and that his
legacy will continue to endure.+
D(!ftones
Nick Crouch
Graphite on paper
First place, drawing
T
The Window
Rebecca Kennedy
Watercolor
v e e
Rico's Cafe
Rebecca Kennedy
Watercolor
Second place, painting
Still Li/e with Lad)! Statue
Ilyo S. Choi
Prismacolor
Honorable mention, drawing
Castle Below
the Sky
Rochelle Watts
Third ptace, fiction
The castle loomed up, stone fingers reaching for the sky. Behind
the carriage, the iron portcullis slammed down, standing its
guard against the outside. Wendy startled at the sound and looked out
at her new home. It made her head hurt, and she turned back into
the carriage.
Snarren Hall was the home of Duke Sosety, his wife, Sybil Lize
Anne, and his many children and servants. They were the only nobles
for fifty miles arowld and ruled without trouble over the peasants
who worked in the fields below.
Wendy was rescued from her death as an infant from where her
parents had left her in the woods. Evelyone else supposed she'd been
a Gypsy baby; she supposed she just wasn't wanted, whoever her par­ents
had been. ow, with the deaths of the woodsman and his wife
who had taken her in seven years ago, she was going to become a
serving girl to the youngest and prettiest of the Duke's daughters. She
sighed, folded her hands, and started to swing her legs against the
rhythm of the carriage.
It lurched to a stop in front of the Grand Hall, which emerged
like an iron fist, on the highest edge of the mountains that soared
behind the castle. "Perhaps to keep people in more than to protect
"Why don't you ever think about places far from here?
I mean, we read those stories of Arabia, where the
sands stretch for an eternity with great white cities ris­ing
from them like clouds or the jungles of Africa where
native women swing through the trees with rainbow­plumed
birds. Haven't you ever wanted to go there?"
in the mirror.
She turned to Wendy and smiled, "Do
you think I'm beginning to look like my moth­er?
Everyone says so. I wish I could really be
as regal and poised." Emma sat a little
straighter.
Wendy's voice was hushed as she
answered, "Yes, you look a lot like your moth­er.
You have grown very pretty in the last three
years. But you needn't be so majestic yet. I like
you as you are." Emma smiled again and
thanked Wendy for the compliments, but she
turned to the mirror, keeping her back
straight and splendid.
The crowds hurralled as another knight
tumbled from his high saddle. The tourna­ment
was just what everyone needed to feel
free from tile winter's grip. Wendy smiled wist­fully
as the banners proclaiming the noble
houses danced in the breeze. As a young lady
of fourteen, Emma was being courted by many
handsome young men lU1d had already hand­ed
out three ribbons, giving her favor to com­petitors
in the tournament.
Wendy stood behind her at every func­tion,
escorting her from the banquet halls to
home in the fine family carriage. As Emma
slept upon her shoulder, Wendy watched the
countl)'side fly by. She sometimes heard how
she was so lucky that Emma often saved the
best table scraps for her, when servants only
got what their masters left. Emma gave her
dresses out of her own closet, instead of the
usual four person hand-me-downs. Wendy
was tired hearing how lucky she WlL~; she
wanted to join the countl)' with the skies that
changed from winter to spring and back
again.
"Wendy," Emma looked up from the
map that she was studying before her tutor
arrived. "Why do you always spend so much
time looking out the window?"
Wendy reluctantly turned from the win-try
outdoors, "Why don't you ever think about
places far from here? I mean, we read those
stories of Arabia, where the sands stretch for
an eternity with great white cities rising from
them like clouds or the jungles of Africa
where native women swing through the trees
with rainbow-plumed birds. Haven't you ever
wanted to go there?"
Emma laughed, "Don't be silly." Then
her tutor arrived, and
Wendy was sent to buy satin
for Emma's newest set of
dresses.
Emma was going to a
masquerade ball at the
nearest neighbors to cele­brate
the changing of the
seasons, and she would be
gone for a couple nights.
Wendy carefully packed the
blue dress, the one the color of the dawning
sky. She sighed as she smoothed tlle dress
under the rest of her mistress' personal
things.
"How I do wish you could come too, but
they really have enough servants and asked us
not to bring ours." Emma swept in, talking
already. She was the mirror image of her
mother, the poised and social and wealthy
Sybil Lize Anne. Soon she would mart)', per­haps
the man that courted her tonight. She
looked at Wendy with the memol)' of fond­ness.
"Wendy, dreaming of swans again are
we?"
"No, dancing on air." Wendy smiled to
hear the first joke they had ever shared. It had
been a long, long time since Emma could
afford to pause for joking or for her.
"Ah, well," Emma primped in the mir­ror.
"I think I dance on air when Beau dances
with me." Wendy closed the valises going with
Emma and picked up a gem-inlaid brush.
'lIe's going to talk to my father soon..."
Emma prattled on as Wendy combed and
admired Emma's feather soft, while hair, com­paring
it to her own ea11h-smudged strands.
Irene's howls echoed through the nar­row
halls of the upper house like cannon
shots. Wendy quickly retreated to her room.
Without Emma around to soften some of the
insults, Wendy had a harder and harder time
surviving Irene. The evening air was a caress
on Wendy's skin, and she perched next to the
window to look out at the courtyard below.
T 8 v e e
them, " thought Wendy. A stiff serving man
solemnly opened the carriage door and pulled
the reluctant Wendy into the hall.
"Get away from the window. Stop day­dreaming.
You have to get your things
unpacked right away," snapped the head
maid, Irene. She was upset because her
daughter was not picked to be the Duchess
Emma Liete Anne's serving girl. Wendy sighed
as she stared down at the
town and fields where the
dozens of tiny figures toiled,
then up to the clouds that
floated in the sky like
swans' wings. She dragged
herself away from that view
and opened her one sack of
clothing.
Emma Uete was a
sweet child with a heart­shaped
face and quick-to-smile lips. She at
once made a friend with Wendy's attempts at
humor. At night, while Wendy stoked the fire
and laid back the blankets for Emma, she'd
imitate the stiff butlers, gossipy chamber­maids,
and even tough, loud Irene, which
made them both dissolve into little girl giggles.
During the days, they would find mischief and
run through the corridors side by side. \Vhen
they came around a corner and found an
adult, they walked perfect and prim until out
of sight. In the darker nights of winter, they
would wish each other sweet dreams in whis-pel's.
Warmth flowed into the castle with the
spring breezes, but it couldn't quite fit itself
into the stones. Emma and Wendy would dress
warmly and take walks together.
"Look! I found the first robin of spring!"
Emma exclaimed delightedly as she motioned
skyward. Wendy nodded, her eyes invoking
the clouds with wishes of wings. Spring would
have seemed to be the time for freedom from
the constraints of the castle. Wendy sighed as
she shadowed Emma towards the gardens to
look if tllCre were any flower sprouts. She felt
desperately the weight of her last two years at
Snarren Hall heavy on her shoulders.
The iron fist held up the frosty sky. Snow
had muted the surrounding hills and valleys
with a stern white voice. Wendy re-stitched
carefully the seam on an old, ripped red satin
dress that Emma had just given her. Emma sat
combing her own hair and glancing at herself
12
She wasn't sure how long she had been
sitting there, but it got cold enough to see her
breath. She got up and looked through the
small closet to find warmer clothing. She
pulled out the first satin dress Emma had
given her. It was robin's breast red, and
though not as pretty as the other ones, it fit
Wendy like a second Skill. She changed into it
and went back to the window, peering out into
the darkest night of the year.
The lights of the village below faded out;
the stars above dared not to show their bright
faces tonight. Wendy slept lightly, perched in
the window ledge, until she felt a sudden chill.
Dancing in front of her, beyond the castle's
reach, was a small glowing light.
It shivered and drew runes in the air,
but the light didn't look like a firefly. She sup­ported
herself and leaned out to view the
dancing star. It hesitated for a long moment,
then away, as if teasing with its flight. Wendy
was spellbound and did not even realize that
her grasp on the ledge was slipping. The light
gave a last little twirl, a final bow, and vanished
into the dawn that now separated the sky from
the dismal ground. Wendy sighed as she fell
from the ledge, and the sun rose on the next
day, the seasons tuming to spling. "Don't be
silly," murmured the wind.
They say Wendy vanished into the dawn,
like a Gypsy stealing away from town. They say
the red dress was found on her bed, laid out
;lI1d covered in clouds of soft white
feathers. They say that a small robin
landed beside Emma in the gardens of
the masquerade, cocked its head to
one side as if saying hello and good­bye
in the same moment, and flew off
for distant lands. They say a lot of
things in the castle, where the iron
portcullis still stands guard and the
mountains lean off into the eternity of
the skies.+
Rock Roses
Sherri McClendon
Watercolor
New Orleans
Katherine Glaser
Honorable mention, poetry
After the Big Dipper spilJed
its goods over Louisiana,
after a crash between the streetcar tracks
on Saint Charles, a night of lysergic acid,
she is the rain, one-eighth of an inch
of eternity. The drop that unsettles the dust,
that touches my skin, sliding over my sad breasts.
She will fall and rise to fall again.
I don't expect much anymore. I say she is
the rain, but I am only wrapping bad behavior in a metaphor.
The truth is there are millions ambling on,
past the projects and the Project Grocery and the purple buildings
of the Revival Ministries. There is a moratorium on the blues,
and Dick is getting it on with Jane somewhere.
The truth is the rain is just part of the world,
as dumb and unknowing as any of us.
) 0 0 2
13
What's Good for the Goose
Matthew Roy
Second place, fiction
ings down, eating aJumbo Jack with a paper nap­kin
spread protectively across her breast, she
had watched and waited until she had seen more
than enough. After a last long passionate
doorstep kiss, Richard had wiped his mouth, got
into his Jag, and headed back to the office,
unaware that his exit had been observed. Eight
days later, Angela had yet to broach the subject,
had yet to say any of the hundred things she acted
out in her sleepless mind-she was still waiting
and planning, calculating her response.
She did not know for sure who it was she
was looking for at tlle Dew Drop Inn. She had
some notion of what he should look like-tall,
tanned, rough-someone who drank domestic
beer right from the bottle, a man's man who
played nine-ball in a sleeveless white T-shirt
while his heavy blue button-down, the one with
his name embroidered on it, hung carelessly
from the back of his chair.
As the night wore on, a small parade of
hopeful beer-bellied bikel'types had sidled up to
her and eagerly offered to freshen her well­nursed
beverage. She rebuffed them each polite­ly,
explaining with a diamond glittering wave of
her cigarette that she awaited her husband's
arrival. By eleven o'clock she wearily realized
that Mr. Right Now was not going to make an
appearance tonight, at least not at this particular
seedy dive.
Disappointed, she settled her tab and shuf­tled
somberly out to her car to head home. She
pulled out and continued as before, westbound
on South Orange toward the expressway. As she
signaled a left turn into the freeway onramp lane,
she saw hinl.
He walked casually along the shoulder of
the road in the direction of traffic, his long
blonde hair swirling wildly to the middle of his
back. She glanced into the mirror to get a second
14 Frustrated, Angela unlocked the door to her
Lexus, threw her large purse in a jangling
heap onto the back seat, and settled herself stiffly
behind the wheel. She glanced furtively into the
rear-view mirror, only long enough to recheck
her makeup, and then she started the engine and
pulled the sedan into traffic. Another failure, but
still she was not ready to give up on the evening.
This was the third bar she had been to
since she had left the office at four o'clock. She
never went into bars, at least not without
Richard-this was the first time she had done so
by herself during the eighteen years since col­lege.
She had noticed the Dew Drop Inn whenev­er
she gassed up at the Mobil on South Orange a
thousand times before, and she had never once
considered going inside, but now she was gliding
into an oil-stained space near the pay phone.
After a quick reapplication of Cherry Red, she
undid yet another button on her wide-collared,
white silk blouse and strolled unsteadily toward
the padded red door of the rear entrance. Once
inside, she stood peering into the jukebox, pre­tending
to read the titles until her eyes adjusted
to the smoky darkness; once she had her
courage, she perched upon a tall seat at the end
of the bar, lit a Slim, ordered a Mai Tai, and wait­ed.
Only last Thursday had she learned the
horrible truth about Richard. She was furious,
almost more at herself than at him. How could
she have missed all the signs' Had she really
never suspected him, or had she simply been
blinded by denial? How long had this been going
on right in front of her nose? Once she found the
note in his wallet, it was easy enough for her to
cross-reference the phone number to get the
address of the duplex condo on the east side of
town.
Sitting in her Lexus at the curb three build-
T v e e
look at the thick muscles straining beneath the
black T-shirt, at those tight blue jeans, those long
legs. She accelerated to her left and made a Uat
the nearest break in the median; when she dou­bled
back and stopped the car next to him, he got
in without hesitating, as if the whole graceful
maneuver had been planned long in advance.
" ame's Eddy. Got a smoke?" he said. He
took the Slim greedily between his lips and
looked into her eyes as she reached across with
her gold DunhiU to light it for him.
"Sorry, menthol's all I've got," she said.
She felt the red heat rising to her earlobes and
prayed that the overwhelming panic did not show
in her face. She did not notice how young he was
when first she saw him on the road-he could not
be older than twenty. Still, she had committed
herself. Resigned, she started to consider the
myriad and sordid possibilities of her present
course. She looked at him again, this time cOllfi­dently
returning his stare. "I'm Angie."
"These are fine," he said, inhaling deeply
and blOWing the smoke toward the passenger
window as he rolled it partway down. "Where's
the party?"
"Party?" she asked, a little confused. "Oh."
She laughed nervously, startled by the directness
of his approach. "I hadn't really thought about it.
Can we go to your place?"
"Sure," he said, smiling broadly and
reaching across to rest his hand lightly on her
bare knee, raising the hem of her skirt a tiny bit
as if by accident. "My apartment is up off of
Michigan, near the Piggly Wiggly. Do you mind if
we stop to pick up some beer?"
"Fine. I need gas anyway," she said. "We'll
stop up here at the Little General." Driving, she
retuned the radio from kool jazz to something
loud and thumping that she could not recognize,
continued, page 35
Untitled 3
Dianne Brin
Gelatin silver print
Honorable mention, photography
This torrid noon time,
the sun gathers to my chest,
a wayward pariah,
fat and hot. I am a guest
at the Hotel Eden, time dripping away.
Me and the caged bird. Desire is shackled,
the ugly wench in the corner.
If a body fills with water,
it drowns. Humanity is 65 percent water.
It falls from the sky
as rain. The groundskeepers, poor stewards of the land,
work hard, but accomplish nothing.
The evening rolls in, soaped up like fog.
Sometimes, something happens,
and you know your life is grotesque and absurd.
Clepsydra 1
Katherine Glaser
1 Ancient device for measuring time
by noting the amount of water or
mercury that passes through a small
aperture over a particular period.
15
The River In Question C. Lee Loudermelt
First place, non-fiction
Lil' Andrew
Rebecca Kennedy
Graphite on paper
Third place, drawing
T a v e e
I cry at action movies. When the hero gets his second wind and comes back to beat up the bad guy
in the final scene, my eyes are a human simulation of the breaking of Hoover Dam. I cry when I'm
happy, when I'm anxious, when I'm gracious; I also cry when I'm sad, scared, or depressed. My head
is one big leaky faucet, and when tragedy strikes, the pipes open, and even Noah wouldn't hesitate to
bring out the ark once more. Recently, I have been
particularly drippy, so much so that all of my close
friends carry wads of toilet paper in their pockets
if they know they will be spending an extended
period of time in my company. I cry whenever the
topics of terrorists or bombs circulate in conver­sation,
and they seem to do so with an unavoidable
frequency.
At first, I tried to blame my recent excessive
16 flow of eye ocean on my closeness to the events
that startled our sleeping country. The majority of
my close fanilly is located in and around our
nation's capitol: four uncles, four aunts, two
grandparents, and ten cousins. To make matters
worse, my uncles work government or security­related
jobs that often put them in a position to
stand in front of bullets, or, in this case, airplanes,
that would dare to fly near our high-ranking gov­ernment
officials and historic landmarks.
I changed my mind about this being an ade­quate
reason for tear shedding, even for someone
who cries over Jackie Chan, because my uncles
know the risks of their professions and have a pro­found
devotion to their work and their counlly. I
admit that [ don't understand it, and, before
recently, have never felt it personally. So, in further
search of reasoning, I turned to my social-life for
answers.
My closest friend is a United States Marine
stationed overseas. It's tough to love a Marine
because he has "Property of the US Government"
stamped across his forehead, and I know that he
could never be completely mine. He is out of my
reach and too far away for comfort, :md that seems
like something I could cry about.
At further thought, however, I found his
absence and distance from me to blame only for a
minute degree of tears in comparison to the num­ber
that had fallen because he, too, shares the
same devotion that my uncles exhibit. He seems to
be happy doing what he does, and I cannot fault
him for happiness, but knOWing that, I understood
it even less. I asked the pictures of my family and
dear friend how they could be so Willing to lay
down their life and that of their fllinilies for some-thing
as abstract as our American world seems.
continued, page 24
Bernini's Medusa
April Huggins
AClylic
17
Bandits Sucked In
Teresa Cannady
Honorable mention, non-fiction
perfectly conditioned straws.
I do not know when it began, but when I
look back it has always been a part of my life.
It is an uncontrollable urge. I knew it was out
of hand when my truck started to overflow with
straws. I am always velY particular about which
straws I will stockpile. Low-end straws are
those that come from convenience stores, such
as 7-11 or Circle K. McDonald's has a pretty
sturdy straw, although jack-in-the-Box's straws
last longer. Avery high-end straw comes from
Starbucks. They are not only green, but they are
harder to get a hold of. The clerks keep them
behind the counter, making it more difficult to
just run in and grab them as I normally do.
I use straws for all sorts of reasons;
besides, nobody can ever have enough straws.
For example, when pulling into an apartment
complex, I can reach behind my seat, grab two
or three straws, de-sleeve them, saving the
paper for later use, connect the straws and now
my arm is long enough to push the buttons to
get into the gated entrance. This way I don't
worry about scratching my car with those
machines, trying to get close enough to reach
the key pad.
I also have plenty of straws for the pro­tection
they provide. These prophetic straws
can be obtained at the local caffeine addicts'
hangout: Starbucks. When danger is around the
bend or unforeseen forces threaten the cargo,
the green straw rises to alert the driver that
there is a highly unpredictable situation ahead.
For example, three years ago while on a road
trip to Houston, I ended up driving through EI
Paso. It was the first and last time I will ever
18
Rigidly I sit in my darkened truck, scanning
the windows conveniently illuminated by
the bright white halogen lights. With the cops
already gone by, one clerk on duty, I know I
have only one good chance, just enough time to
make one clean sweep. I start to step out of my
truck, looking in, making sure it will be ready
to go.
I have transformed myself into a cat. I see
my prey; the hunt has started. The rush of cool
air placidly hits my face as I open the door to
the convenience store. The clerk glances up
suspiciously; I avoid his eyes. I slowly make my
way to the back of the store. I've located the
machines. Using my peripheral vision, I seek
out movement on my left side. The clerk is
starling to lean against the counter, trying to fol­low
me with his eyes. I sink lower into my
shoes, slowly stepping fonvard while pasting
myself against the glass doors of beverages.
I'm within five feet of my target. I start to
zone in. I can almost feel them in my hands.
I'm now next to the endless supply of carbon­ated
drinks. I cautiously open my jacket half
way. I'm glancing at the clerk as his hand is
slowly reaching under the counter. I do it. I
grab them, stuff them in my jacket and run. A
perplexed look falls across the face of the
clerk. I jump into my truck, slamming it in
gear.
As I slowly ease the truck off the road
with ten miles between the store and me, my
guard starts to lower. With a quick glance into
my jacket and taking count, I surmise that only
one has been severely damaged. These should
last me at least two days, for I got a total of six
T v e e
drive through EI Paso. Frankly, without the
straw going up and giving me warning, I would
not have been alert to the fire on the shoulder.
Secondly, the police car backing up on the
same side of the freeway would have hit me
willie I was going 70 mph. Thirdly, I would have
had a white table, which fell off the truck in
front of me, smash into the windshield all in a
matter of three minutes. eedless to say, I have
yet to drive back through El Paso. Since the
straw had gone up right before these incidents,
when it had yet to have risen the whole trip
prior to this, I have determined that it is my
lucky star.
I'll admit that there is an ulterior motive
with my straws. The one little thing that can be
used with straw wrappers is this. I could start
to tie them into a knot, close my eyes, think of
someone, and pull the wrapper. If there is a
knot in the wrapper, then that person is not
thinking about me; however, if there is not a
knot, then that person is thinking about me. A
warning is in order. No one should use the
longer straws when attempting this, for they are
too long to try. Usually a fast-food-restaurant
straw works best, except for Taco Bell, which
has switched from paper wrappers around the
straws to plastic wrappers.
The Surgeon General has issued a health
advisOly warning: straw obsession is a conta­gious
disease. There is no cure, only mutations.
Be prepared when out late at night and it is
least expected. Do not be alarmed if you run
into the straw bandit sisters. +-
• 19
•
•
•
.".
Your momentum's immeasurable,
Mysterious mollusk!
Once you swept the scuttled floors of silent seas,
Porifera, porous peacenik of the darkest depths.
Not spindly, toothy, deadly,
No perilous poisonous fish.
Never a sharer of the spotlight,
You failed to gain the gaze
Of Jean Michel
As he dove below Calypso.
Yet, wrought forth from the briny deep,
Yours is now to serve, sopping.
Able when whetted,
Absorb you the spills unworthy of tears,
And gingerly dab at those,
Mom knows best, that we scrub not.
Lower marine invertebrate, you suck.
And wrung, again you suck,
Interminable, infinite, insatiable.
Until that inevitable dawn,
Sickening the stale stench,
Your slimy fibrous skeleton
Is unceremoniously tossed away.
•
Matthew Roy
•
Sponge
" .
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• .. .:. . '.....!• •.. :'"
'.....~.. "...•.. .'. ~..... .. ....... •'. •
•
.•.,
.. @)...... '-' O(~~. ". ., . ,... . .... ' ,. ....\~ . <."'&0' ';' ~~·(:~·ri.... '.1'."';/" I
~ ~<, ·:XO:":O'':':~": ,~~~~','~ I ·U ".\~.. .~"" .~
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• 0 'w' 0 . '.~ . .. . 11·
J ...;: 'J"0" ~ ~"(;-:'b;,):
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....... .0 . e. • •• ••..• : ...-. ~ . .". . :\- . •.... 0•. . \\'1\; •• • flO ~• •
r ·
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---~..-----' ./ .... .... . .. .. . '
~~
•• I • i
• J
t/
Amhition
Stacy Lowther
Graphite on paper
20
The Gu ita ri5 t
(a sonnet)
Niki D'Andrea
The swollen flesh knobs plucking nerves of steel;
the melodic murder of some old dream-
Here I dilate and revile and esteem
all-a note to bruise and a note to heal.
The tips rupture and skin begins to peel
at a touch too precise. It would seem
an autonomous act by a shorn team-a
sweet ache no heart alone could reveal.
But there is a song in breaking the nails,
a harmony of wood and bone faslUon.
Betrayal and love between all the scales,
callous and chafed and knuckles turned ashen.
Prodding and picking the tender entrails,
my hands are the martyrs of my passion.
Hearl in Hand
Esteban Ornelas
Gelatin silver print
Second place, photography
T v e e
Night Outside
My Door
Gracie Garrett
Honorable Mention, Poetry
Untitled
Greg Smith
Ink
Honorable mention, drawing
The decorative airplane
glides across the eleven o'clock sky.
The amazing white glow
of the half moon
trickles on to the shrubbery
and sun-baked roof tops.
Tucked away into the elms
are black beetles,
clacking together like crystal marbles.
There,
across the stretch of rolling emerald,
is a row of warm, yellow squares
and rectangles.
Inside them,
shadowy figures, faint movements,
and yawns, oh many yawns,
symbolizing the fall of night.
The wide, navy blue sky
washes out to grape
down along the exhausted horizon.
And for the first time,
when I look up into that vast sky,
I focus in on one lonely
chunk of matter.
And from down here,
down on this heavy Earth,
that rock, that speck of umverse,
is in fact,
twinkling.
21
~o 0 2
Loki 1
Tara Launders
so i sat at my computer last night
with Loki on my shoulder
his snout in my hair
and ear
and wondered what he thought
of all this mammalian stuff
hair and the like
but like all lizards
he doesn't talk much English
and seems content enough
to burrow in my hair
for warmth maybe
not for memory surely
since bearded dragons never nurse
a furry momma, or
perhaps it's something more distant
than mere short red hair-dye
but he perches on my shoulder
like a monkey or a child wanting
to be read to again of
the BFG' or Pooh,
and sniffs my human scent
perhaps wondering about it,
that fire that we seem to thrive inside upon
but no
he's just asleep, yet
a twitch of the eyelid, orange dust
gives off like an aroma like
the dance of dreams.
and i wonder
who his partner is.
T v e
Detail of Bernini's Medusa
April Huggins
e
Ghost
Deanne Ryan
Reaching deep into the cedar chest
of my memory,
I can feel the prick of the needle
endlessly poking my finger tip
at your quilting bee.
Throwing back the lid to the chest,
I hear music, Moonlight Sonata,
the notes drifting through my head,
the music you shared with me.
Eyeing my sticky stained hands,
I can taste the juicy strawberries,
squished to produce the perfect preserves,
we made for tea.
Sipping our afternoon tea,
We relaxed with a Scrabble game,
Tossing words out like bread crumbs,
fed to the birds under your tree.
You were my grandma,
the one who loved the fat girl.
You, who looked beyond
the weight and saw the true me.
You were my savior,
the rescuer of Wednesdays,
Oh, the excitement I felt
bolting for your car door,
running away.
Away from the bossy brother,
the righteous sister.
Ahome void of parents
Ahouse full of dread.
Our times were revered,
So I never asked,
How could you take just me,
with my sister's puzzled face
gazing out through the window?
Although you lived for years,
I witnessed your demise
time and again.
First when the call came-­your
sister had passed.
And then a little more
when you decided
the Schnapps you drank for tea,
not your grandchildren,
was better company.
At last,
as you spat out your hateful words
to your final visitors,
the son you despised, the granddaughter you shunned.
the cancer took its ultimate plunge
into your cesspool brain.
o tears were shed.
I mourned the loss
of my grandma,
But I welcomed
the loss
of the wretched woman
you'd become.
23
2 ~9 0 2
Sept. .12, 2001
Boston Cemetery
Loralei McNichols
Gelatin silver print
The River in Question,
continued from page 16
I suppose it has never been clear to me
what freedom is because I have never been cap­tive
to someone against my will. Abstract, too, is
the concept of 'the melting pot' because I have
never seen another culture, and I suppose I
blindly assume that everyone shares our view,
though I am told this is a very American thing. My
flowing tears seemed obscure and unexplainable
as well, so I simply gave up on my search for an
exact point of origin for the river in question. I
told myself that in crying Iwas only being human,
but no sooner had I stopped my inner-question­ing
when I witnessed something that made clear
the mess of emotion in my head.
On the Friday after the bombing, I went to
a five-minute moment of silence held at the
school. It didn't take long for the teardrops to
start gushing; the collar of my shirt was turning
wet colors even before the speech was over and
the silence began. After I said a brief prayer (It
had been so long since I had prayed, I'm sure I
did it incorrectly.), I was able to open my eyes
and gaze around the circle of people the way a
goldfish gazes out of his bowl.
It seemed as though they swam like gup­pies
through a sea of salt water, but through the
squiggling lines I saw the people around me as I
had never seen them before. Directly across from
me was a woman with her head covered; her eyes
were closed, and I assumed that she, like so
many others, was praying-to God, Allah, whatev­er
the name. At first I felt a distance from her, but
then I noticed a familiar liquid streaming down
her face. Her tears seemed to be falling to the
same rhythm as my own.
I turned away from her on a desperate
search for something else to look at that would­n't
affect me so, and I found a more familiar face
across the crowd. There was a man that I had
met before, standing near the woman with the
covered head. He was tall but looked shorter
because his head was bowed in reverent memo­ry,
and his hands clutched something I could not
see. Subconsciously, I put together what I knew
about the man, and I realized that he followed the
Wiccan faith. I think he was praying, in his own
way, casting a quiet spell of protection and peace
across the crowd. He was crying too.
It seemed as though every face I saw had
those same crystal strings of connection tying
them together. Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Pagan,
and who knows what else, they stood together
crying just like me. The different shades of skin
brought rainbow to the river, and, as Amazing
Grace began to play on the trumpet, I was able to
put a name to the feeling with which I had been
so consumed.
For the first time in my life, I realized what
it meant to be American, and I found myself
thinking that I would have given my life in an
instant for anyone or number of those strangers
in that circle or for that god with so many names.
Words like tolerance, understanding, patience,
forgiveness, and even my abstract freedom made
sense. I had the freedom to be a part of some­thing
so brilliantly colorful and profoundly beau­tiful;
I suddenly understood how my uncles and
my Marine must feel standing guard to such
ideals. With their faces in mind, those of my fam­ily
and my friend, as well as the faces of
strangers, my lips curled into a smile drenched
by tears falling unashamed, and my mouth
opened for a word no longer cloaked in obscuri­ty-
pride.+
T 8 v e e
The Lives We
Could Have Led
Niki D'Andrea
Ulltitled {witb people!
Joel Hatcher
Gelatin silver print
Honorable Mention, Photography
We're just thinking of the lives we could have led
in our rusty car, deblis on the dash.
Dad says, "We could have had a limo instead."
We know these pale pink car seats used to be red.
Mom says, "We're running out of time and gas."
We're just thinking of the lives we could have led.
"1 should have taken another road," Dad says.
We've seen the headlights of chance flying past­we
all know we should have chased them down
instead.
I moan, "God just gave us a tough road to tread."
We race all the lucky and come in last.
We're just thinking of the lives we could have led.
Swerving along a road where dreams have been bled
waiting for the inevitable crash,
we could have been waiting for a plane instead.
We travel on, breaking our backs for daily bread,
but we can only go so far, so fast.
We're just thinking of the lives we could have led.
Yes, we all know we could be living instead.
25
27
Facing page:
77Je Kiss aJier Gustave Kfimt
April Huggins
Gelatin silver print
Erolic Sands
Joseph Martin
Gelatin silver print
Third place, photography
28
The Mountain Man Miracle,
continued from page 2
The old man stomped his foot on the
ground once, to show his obvious delight at his
son's return. The glistening aged brown in his
eyes showed his excitement as well. "I'm jest
fine, boy. Why didn' ya lemme know ya was com­min?"
"I did." Before his dad could look con­fused,
he handed him the stack of mail with his
postcard on top.
Big Jim slapped him on the back a little too
hard after struggling through the words. "I guess
ya did, but hell, kid, kick off yer shoes and stay a
while!"
That had been twice now that his
father had called him boyar kid. He was 26 years
old, had graduated from college, held a high­paying
job, and owned a house in a quiet suburb
of Chicago. All this was not enough to make him
a man in his father's eyes, and he'd be damned if
he were going to pop out some kids for the sake
of manhood. He tried to let the comment slide by,
changing the subject. "Can 1use the John?"
"Help yerself to the housewares, but layoff
the lingerie."
Jim would have laughed as he headed
down the path with his bag to the outhouse if he
hadn't known his father was serious. He learned
about the birds and bees with the aid of a pretty
blond in a pair of red panties on page 305 of the
Sears and Roebuck. She'd been his first love,
aside from his momma. Jim's problem was that
he still loved his mother so much that another
woman just didn't seem to have any place in his
heart. As he left the outhouse, he decided to go
visit his mother before getting on with business.
She was off the beaten path, if this partiClI­lar
path could be called such, buried ten years
ago underneath a vibrant pink dogwood. She had
taught him to read on lazy Sunday mornings and
sent him to the nearest school ten miles away
against his father's wishes. She and Big Jim
argued about that for weeks, and eventually she'd
won out. The trees had been her favorite in life,
and now in death she belonged beneath them.
She had always said that the only thing stronger
than a good man was the woman who had to put
up with him. She was strength and lived like the
tree she was buried under... blossomed, and lost
too quickly in the winter.
One Christmas when he was less than
eight, his mother had told him about Santa Claus.
Unlike most children, the thought of a perfect
stranger violating the no trespassing rule of their
property made him worry, and he protested to
his mother that she shouldn't let Santa come. His
mother had replied that there was nothing she
could do. If Santa Claus wanted to come, he'd do
it with or without her consent. Nevertheless, she
obliged her son by locking all the doors and win­dows
and lighting a fire in the fireplace.
Jim had waited all night for some noise and
stared intently out the window so he could shout
for his father's gun if anyone came near. The next
morning, tired but content that no one had come,
he walked into the kitchen. There on the floor
was a wooden rocker horse with a red bow
around its neck. With sleepy eyes, he wandered
over to his mother's leg, and wrapping both arms
around her, he asked, "How?"
His mother had replied with one word.
"Miracle."
"I need one now, Ma. Help me convince
him. You're the only one who ever could."
At one point the three men had
been inseparable, PawPaw
Jim, Big Jim, and Little Jim.
They went hunting in the
spring and fishing with poles
made out of a stick and string
in the summer...
The breeze ruffled the pine needles and
knocked a flower or two from its place on the
dogwood as if in response to his plea. For a
moment, he felt a soft ray of hope that was quick­ly
stifled from the gruff old voice behind him. "I
don't need no convincin' of anythin'."
Jimmy turned, startled by the sudden intru­sion,
and his heart sank like a rock in maple
syrup. "Dad, listen-"
He was cut off, not unexpectedly. "No sir,
you listen. 1know you commed down here from
that hellhole of a city to try an' make me leave,
but 1 ain't gain' anywheres. I'mma stayin' right
here where 1belong, and iffen you was any kind
of man er had any more sense than a wooden
duck, you'd figure out where you belong an' stay
there."
jimmy's mouth dangled open like icicles
off the roof because he'd been discovered much
earlier than expected. He had planned to work in
his plans of moving his dad into the city slowly.
Silently he cursed himself; he should have known
better than to try and sneak up on a mountain
man. "I've got money; you won't ever need any­thing!
Suppose you got hurt..."
Again his father interrupted. "Ain't no
decent man who don't know a thing or two 'bout
fixin' himself up. 1 ain't never seen no doctor,
and 1ain't about to start payin' 'em visits now."
The snlbbornness on the old wrinkled face
framed by the fluidity of the green scenery behind
him, caused anger to rush over Jim along with an
agonizing sort of pain. It was the same when he'd
moved to the city and found out that his mother's
cancer could have been cured with proper med­ical
care. His father's stubbornness had killed
her and eventually would take his father too.
"Then you can die up here just like Mom; you
didn't care about her anyway. They could have
made her well again, and you didn't give a damn
about anything but folk tales and tradition. 1hope
this God forsaken mountain sinks slowly into hell
and takes you with it."
His father didn't seem shaken by the harsh
words. "God forsaken? God took yer mother
because he wanted her home, and not you, not
me, and definitely not some damn citified witch
doctor has any right to tell God he cain't have her
when he wants her. If God had wanted us to have
her, he woulda sent us one of them miracles yer
momma read to us about in the Bible."
"Miracles? 1knew you were crazy but 1did­n't
know you were stupid! You can't rely on mir­acles!"
He felt a little hypocritical, but his father
couldn't know that.
"Yer momma didn't want no doctor nei­ther.
Miracles can happen, and momma knows
best. You should know that, but ya'll city folk
don't know yer asses from a rabbit hole. Ya'll city
folk act like ya'll got some kinda control over
what happens."
"City folk?" Little Jim stumbled over those
words; he had never expected them to sound so
offensive. The mountain was in his blood just as
it was in his father's and his father's father before
him. "( love it here same as you, Pa."
"You love it, but cha ain't got no respect for
it."
"WelJ, maybe 1 have a little more respect
for life. You can't hide from the world forever in
the trees."
His father took a step toward Jim and
reminded him of good beatings with a switch off
the tree when he'd done something worthy of it.
He found himself cowering inside but stood his
ground. "I ain't hiding; I'm out here livin' in what
life was meant to be. You go on into the city and
stick your head in some mouse hole filJed with
modern malarkey. 1 don't need none of them
conveniences 'cause 1got the gumption to figure
things out for myself."
Little Jim breathed a Sigh of sad surrender.
It was no use arguing with 100 years of tradition.
He looked once more at his mother's grave and
picked up his bag. 'Thanks anyway, Ma.' Then he
looked his father in the eye. "I'IJ leave you to
your life, Pa, and I'IJ go live mine." He half
expected Big Jim to block his path, but instead he
moved to the side and watched his son walk by.
T v e e
There was an odd sense of deja vu as his father
followed him three feet behind to the truck and
watched him climb inside with his unopened duf­fel
bag. Jim was tempted to close the door and
just drive away, but he too was cursed with a lit­tle
bit of family tradition. He looked down at his
father's bare feet as he spoke. "You know if you
ever need anything-" His voice trailed off like a
deer fleeing hunters in the woods into a brief but
uncomfol1able silence filled with manly pride.
"I know." Big Jim said, closed the door for
his son, and headed toward the house.
The drive and the plane ride seemed
longer as Jim headed to the place he claimed as
home. He tried to forget about his father, but in
the comforts of his house, the silence of his life
left open the flood gate for memories to come
rushing into his head. He wondered how for so
long he had managed to keep all those happy
thoughts of home tucked away. They invaded him
like an alien force of strange green little men.
He thought about playing in waist deep
snow as a boy. It had snowed so hard one winter
that they hadn't been able to open the door for
firewood; his mother opened a window, and his
father Lifted him out and dropped him into the
snow. Three hours later his small and shivering
form dug its way through the snow and opened
the front door. His father had patted him on the
back and told him that he was a regular hero,
and his mother had created a homemade version
of hot cocoa for him. They were his only friends
outside of school besides his grandfather before
tile man had passed away.
At one point the three men had been insep­arable,
PawPaw Jim, Big Jim, and Little Jim. They
went hunting in the spring and fishing with poles
made out of a stick and string in the summer; in
the winter they sat by the warm fire with their
mother in the house, making little carvings out of
wood. He thought of that as he passed a wooden
chessboard on his mahogany dresser half cov­ered
in little pieces that they had worked on
before his grandfather's death. It was missing two
pawns, a bishop, and a king.
With frustration he tossed his bag on the
bed; it would never be finished, which was the
story of his life. He had to get on with being the
man he had put so much eff0l1 into becoming.
With a little too much force, he grabbed the zip­per
on his bag and attempted to jerk it open to
unpack. It was being uncooperative and caught
something in the bag. He groaned inwardly. Just
calm down, Jim. Get control.
His self-advice only succeeded in bringing
the words of his fatller back to torment him "Ya'lI
city folk act like ya'lI got some kinda control over
what happens." Damn his father for sticking in
his head Like that. He did have control over his
Life; it had taken years to get that way, years of
hard work and effort that he had done himself]
The smell of greasy hamburgers from a pat1-time
job in school wafted through his nostrils; then on
another breath came the scent of pine and the
fresh fragrance of the dogwood trees. The great
contrast caused him more anger. Again, he tried
to yank the zipper open, momentarily forgetting
that it was still caught. This time the zipper pull
came off, flew through the air, and landed with a
little clang next to the dresser.
What the hell is this damn thing stuck on?
It's more stubborn than my father. He shoved two
fingers into the partially open bag to probe
beneath the broken zipper. Finding nothing at
first, he sat down on the bed and stuffed his
entire hand into the small crack. His index finger
came across something soft and slightly mOist,
Like an old handkerchief after a good cry. He
grabbed hold of the object as best he could and
pulled gently this time; it gave and dropped into
his palm. He pulled the object from the bag not
sure of what he would find, then gasped with sur­prise
when he saw it, a pink dogwood flower
mangled by the malicious zipper and his impa­tient
attempts to open it.
Jim was baffled. His bag had been closed
throughout his entire trip; he was still wearing
the same clothes. There was no way it could have
just opened the bag and crawled in there. An odd
Li/e Goes 011
Kathy Runte
Graphite on paper
Honorable mention, clrawing
feeling emerged from his stomach as he remem­bered
his mother and the Christmas that Santa
Claus came. It made its way through his chest, up
his throat, and eventually out one eye in the form
of a tear. He saw his mother's face again as he
stared at her questioning reality. "Miracle." Jim
chuckled. He was right about the thing in his suit­case.
It was more stubborn than his father.
He would have to put the house up for sale
again; that would annoy the real estate people,
but he didn't care. They were city folk, and they
didn't know their asses from a rabbit hole. He
didn't need any of it except his history, his her­itage,
and most of all his family. Besides, he had
the gumption to figure things out for himself.
He put the flower on the shelf next to the
chess set and dug some boxes out of the closet.
He put the chess set in the box and wondered if
his father knew how to play. That would be a
good way to pass the time as they waited on God
together. As he packed a few things in haste, he
bumped his knee on the edge of the dresser. He
looked down to see a spot of blood forming on
his gray slacks. He grunted in pain, but it wasn't
a problem. After all, a decent man knew a thing
or two about fixing himself up.
For once in his life he felt like a decent
man, a mountain man Like his father. He was man
enough to admit that his father was right.
Miracles can happen, and mother knows best.+
30
Best Friends
Cheryl Taul
Third place, non-fiction
His name is Bosefus. He found me in the spring of 2000 while 1was
waiting at a traffic light on a four-lane highway, getting ready to
turn left. 1 heard a Cly across the street and saw this tiny featherless
baby bird staring straight at me, as he hopped across two lanes of traf­fic,
heading my way. He never took his eyes off me while cars flew by
going in the opposite direction. I sat there in disbelief and unable to
help, or 1would have been hit. My first thought was, "He's going to be
run over!"
He quickly made it to my vehicle without a scratch, and as I
opened the door to retrieve him, my second thought was, "When I step
down next to him, he'll get scared, take off, and go back into the traf­fic."
Instead, he just sat there waiting for me to pick him up. 1 lifted
him gently, climbed into the truck, put him on my lap, dismissed my
busy schedule for the day, and took him home to care for his needs.
continued, page 38
Unfifled
Marcia Lombardo
Oil on Brick
Honorable mention, painting
T v e e
31
Morning Rush
Deanne Ryan
Gliding the gear to neutral
I fidget, waiting for the engine to warm,
daughter to materialize,
backpack hurled in and door slanuned.
Save Ferris sings a salute to Spam,
car rocking while we're bopping along
auto pilot to the school parking lot.
Routine stuck on continuous play.
The turbo kicks in as I fly
past novice hot doggers
stylin' with dad's new wheels.
We laugh like best buds.
Radio cranked, we cram in the final song
just as we coast to the curbside.
"Kiss, Kiss," my daughter jokes,
pouncing from the car.
Overloaded, hair expertly messed,
she heads for friends,
leopard bag and flaming skirt,
bold dress for a brailtiac.
Passing through, I'm pulled
into the action,
couples doing the tongue tango
before terminal separation.
I tum down the tunes
return to adulthood,
heave a drawn out sigh.
Sixteen's soon.
I must reach fast and grab tight
Like kids attacking a busted pinata
Before the treasures from this time
scatter from my fingers.
JlIS! Plaill Deliciolls
Carol Smith
Prismacolor
Traveling Behind
Rochelle Watts
Third place poetry
32
The back roads beckon
Calling in melodies of silence and of pine
Where stumps live in rings of time
And barely there one print marks the last entry
Oh so long ago
But still in the sunlight's dance
It calls to the last place to go
The back roads promise
In boxes of hope and older rags
Lost, known only to strays and old hags
But remains in their whispers an asking
Softly, softly stumble on
Through a labyrinth of back fences
Shadowed even in dawn
The back roads whisper
Barely heard above the clash and crunch of industry
The gates keeping the metal in are sturdy
Though the road leads past this beast
Crouching in heated den
Never the machine the master
Guards the man oftin
The back roads eventually end
Somewhere along the journey as crows fly
Alast point even if nobody has to die
You can't follow back roads forever
Even if you would so wish
It murmurs farewell with echoing sorrow
And leaves without a kiss
The Patio
Michael A. Kaminer
Gelatin silver print
T v e e
Iris, continued from page 5
But Timothy had been a real person, once,
before his Accident. He had been walking home
from school when a street-cleaning vehicle mal­functioned
and ran off the road. The vehicle had
struck Timothy, all two tons of it. But he had his
Protecto-Gear online and had not been physical­ly
harmed. He had flown, yes, but the vehicle
missed running him over.
The vehicle had also struck a lighting pole.
The pole shattered, and its glass fragments had
rained upon Timothy, without the protection of
his Gear, which had gone offline from the stress
of the crash.
Doctors thought that the glass was retriev­able.
They had taken out several shards, accord­ing
to the nurses, who Timothy thought smelled
like lemony soap, and whose touch was gentle,
yet somehow uncaring. They did not think he
would survive.
His vision had been gone for nearly two
days. Talks of Deportation were loud, and
Timothy was afraid. He had been told by nice
doctors that, after a series of tests, it could be
determined if he was to be Sent Away or could
survive in Utopia again.
The bear was one such test.
He threw his lot to the wolves; he guessed,
"Blue?"
The doctor sighed; her breath was pepper­minty.
"No, Timothy. It's a black bear. You can't
see it, can you?"
"I can!" he cried, his voice straining.
"Okay...what color is my hair?"
Timothy searched his mind wildly, trying to
recall a doctor smelling of peppermint. No pic­tures
came to mind, and he could smell the
slightly pleasant aroma of his sweat.
"Brown?" he questioned.
"It's white, Timothy. Can you see at all?"
"I can!" he cried, his voice high-pitched. "I
can! It's just that now...it's a little harder.
Everything's blurry."
The doctor said nothing, merely took the
bear away.
He lunged outward, grabbing the doctor's
hand, and his smooth child's hands felt over her
elderly ones. There was a spiky ring on her index
finger, and he could feel the coolness and
smooth cut of the stone within.
"Please," he pleaded, feeling tears about to
come, had they the power to fall, had he any
working tear ducts. Those were gone as well,
pierced by glass. "Don't tell the others! I'Ll see
again, soon! I will!"
The doctor said nothing, but he heard her
breathing; it was irregular, harsh. She was think­ing.
"Please!" he repeated. "Don't Send me
Away! I promise ['II learn to see again! [ wiU! My
eyes will grow back, somehow! I'm not a Flawed!
I'm not!"
The doctor pulled back from him, and he
felt her cool hands lifting him into a cushy chair.
Sometlling cold and metal was laid across his
chest, not allOWing him to move. The air-coolant
rumbled above him, chilling him, making goose­bumps
rise over his body.
"I'm sorry," said the doctor, her voice
coming from his Side, from his right. "It's only a
small shot, Timothy."
He froze; he hated shots. "A shot? For
what?"
"To see if we can regenerate your eyesight.
If anyone on the Committee finds out that you're
blind now, they'll have you Deported right away,
and then you'll die on Earth."
Timothy shuddered; the Flaws were
DepOt1ed to Earth, a toxic, polluted deathtrap.
10 one of Utopia had gone to Earth and survived;
criminals were Sent there too, and while on the
cesspit, they had become Flawed and died there,
alone, surrounded by mutated Flaws. Videos had
been sent from Earth, via satellite, to Utopia; only
adults were allowed to view them.
Once, Timothy's parents had gone to
Viewing. When they returned home, their faces
were white. His mother had been sobbing, not
for the Flawed, but for what they had once been.
What he was now? She had said she was
terrified of them, of the Flawed. Did he scare her
now?
"Do you want that? To be Deported?" asked
the doctor, her voice gentle, almost like his
mother's.
"No," he whimpered. "I don't want to go to
Earth."
He heard the sound of a door closing, of
one opening, the clink of metal instruments, and
finally tile hissing of the bacteria-removal device.
"Stay very still, Timothy," said the doctor,
her voice close to his head. "This will only take a
minute."
He winced as the needle dug into his upper
arm and heard the squirting noise as the liquid
was depressed into him; warmth spread as the
injected substance flowed. His whimper of pain
was small, and soon the needle was removed.
The sound of it striking the garbage recy­cler
was loud.
"Are you afraid of Deportation, Timothy?"
asked the doctor, close to his head again, and
then silence. He stiffened and then relaxed as she
took his small hand within her two.
"Yes," he whispered. "1 want to stay with
my mom and dad."
"They're worried about you, you know.
They called again today and wanted to know
about you. [ told them that we were running tests
today, and since you came to me only yesterday,
after a day of home care, we should be able to
destroy the problem at its source. You do know
that they love you, yes?"
"Yes," he said softly. "They don't want me
to be Deported."
"No one wants you to be Deported," said
the doctor gently. "No one wants anyone to be
Deported. But you understand that sometimes it
is necessary. No one should ever be Deported,
but you know why we need Deportation."
"For the Flawed."
The doctor's grip tightened on his.
"Yes. They are not really people, but
almost-people. If they have Flaws, then they are
not of the topian race, the perfect race tilat we
lU'e now. But even the perfect have imperfec­tions...
did you know that some perfect couples
have Flawed children?"
Timothy shook his head, for such a thought
had never occurred to him; his head was grow­ing
heavy, and his lower body was cool. "1 never
knew that."
"Oh yes. And the people who produce the
Flawed are sterilized. The Committee does not
enjoy Deporting the Flaws. But we need to."
Timothy nodded. The chill was spreading,
and he whimpered.
"You know that your parents will be steril­izednow."
"What?" he demanded, but the doctor's
voice seemed to be growing softer, fading into the
distance. "But I'm not a Flaw..."
"Oh no, but the Committee will see that you
might have been, and the risk is too great to
allow your parents to remain fertile. Your
Protecto-Guard might not have been charged
entirely, which might have been why the light
shards hurt you so deeply. Perhaps that fault is
yours, or perhaps it lies with your parents, but
they will be sterilized, in the grave case of anoth­er
child from their bloodline haVing the same fate
continued, page 34
33
34
iris, continued from page 33
as you, the same injuries."
"But I wasn't born a Flaw!" muttered
Timothy; his hand was losing feeling, and he felt
as if he were floating, floating out from his body,
holding onto it with fingers of smoke.
" 0, and it is not your parents' fault that
you are in the situation you are in."
Timothy was silent for a moment, feeling
the world dissipate, a sudden coldness invading
his chest, making it hard to breathe.
"Doctor," he gasped, "it's cold..." He could
barely feel her fingers pressing on his wrist.
"Doctor," he whispered softly.
The doctor did not respond but held his
wrist until the pulse slowed further and finally
faded.
She stood, walking away from the body,
and then activated an intercom; the screen above
it filled with the image of the Head Chair of the
Committee.
"Yes?"
"The Deportation of one, Timothy Pockets,
is complete."
The Head Chair's image nodded. "Good
work, doctor. Continue."
The doctor turned off the intercom and
looked at the small, frail, and eyeless body of
Timothy. She stared at it for some time and then
touched her ring, where he had held it mere
moments before.
Then she called the Cleaners to take the
body away.
She looked at the bear; it was indeed a blue
bear, but she had been sure that the guess was
just that: a simple risk, a hopeless, helpless
guess. She had to insure that a Flaw did not pass
her judgment to live, for another doctor would
realize that he had passed by her by mere luck
alone.
And his luck could not have kept up forev­er,
nor could he have randomly guessed every
color or picture held before him.
She set the bear down and then watched
the sun rise, only slightly turning to view the
Cleaners as they gathered the remains of her
grandson into their bags, then turned back to
face the warming sun.+
Ullfifled
Joel Hatcher
Gelatin silver print
T v e e
WHAT'S GOOD FOR THE GOOSE
continued from page 14
guessing that it was something he would appreci­ate,
something that would make her seem more
hip, young, and desirable. When she pulled into
the station and parked by the far pump, she rifled
quickly through her bag, yanked the first card she
found, and turned to face him as she opened the
door. "What kind do you like?"
"Oh...Bud or Mich. Whatever. Can you get
me some Reds, too? In the box." He looked at her
sheepishly, smiling toothily again. She grinned
back at him affirmatively and nodded her head
once before she turned to get out. "I'll pump it
for ya,'" he said.
She went across the two lanes of pumps
toward the mart, conscious that he must be
watching her as she walked away and hoped that
he was pleased with her thin, shapely frame. She
knew she was only too pleased with him and his
tight young buttocks. She turned and looked back
toward the pump to read the number on it before
she went into the store. There he stood, turning
the gas cap with his right hand, looking straight at
her as he leaned against the car, his other hand in
his pocket and one boot lazily crossed over the
other. She turned away and went in.
Standing before the counter, she set the
twelve-pack and the four-dollar bottle of white
wine down and asked the man in the tri-colored
smock for the appropriate pack of Cigarettes. She
waited and smiled to herself, wondering if she
would really have the nerve to go through with
tllis. 11 was turning out to be more exciting than
she had expected-perhaps revenge would satisfy
her in more ways than she could have consid­ered.
She longed to feel his hot hand again upon
her leg, strong and gentle, moving up and then up
some more until he would inevitably discover that
beneath her tweed skirt she wore neither slip nor
panties.
She motioned a tentative finger toward the
shelves behind the counter, toward the men's
magazines and cough syrups and batteries.
"Trojans, please. Yes, the ones in the black box."
She made her request as she read and re-read the
large-lettered sign glued into the counter top. Of
course, the clerk had not asked for her ro. She
paid up and gathered her items awkwardly in her
arms.
As she approached the car, she placed the
two bags down on the concrete behind it before
she went around to her door, intending to pull the
latch beside the driver seat to open the trunk. She
was startled to find the sedan empty. Her passen­ger
was gone-so were her purse and her brief­case
and her cell phone. Frantic, she looked all
around her, up by the phones, down both direc-
One
Melissa J. Lutch
Gelatin silver print
tions of the street. He was gone, long gone.
She left the beer and smokes there on the
ground beside the pumps and sat behind the
wheel with the engine running. For a time she hid
behind the tinted windows with the alien music
blaring; she choked and gasped as her heavy
mascara smeared wide black rivers down both
cheeks. She instinctively reached for her absent
purse to retrieve some tissues.
After a while, she cleared her wet eyes with
a ruffied silk sleeve, pulled tile car out and into
traffic, and headed back toward the expressway,
back toward the red-brick house at the end of the
elm-lined street where Richard, worried and
unknowing, awaited her unusually late return.+
2 ~g, 0 2
36 A Bum's Tale
Diayn Day
Honorable mention, fiction
It was 34 degrees in Los Angeles, small potatoes to an Alaskan sled runner,
nippy for me with the heat on full blast. Aquick wind hustled trash off
streets, across windshields, and punched morning pedestrians deep into
jackets not built for the job.
It was bumper-to-bumper downtown to the ocean, and there I was,
smack in the middle of the worst of it, slamming on the brakes every five sec­onds,
shoving past idiots who blocked my way, yelling at jerks that tried to
get ahead of me. You know the routiJle.
I was in a bad part of town. The street was a hazard zone, aJld I made
sure the doors were locked. Sidewalks vaJlished. Sidelined chunks of bull­dozed
concrete took over and waited like knife-aiming muggers for the next
drunk. Pitted-brick glassless shells, once houses, waited for blasting. Sickly
weeds, clumped together in bare dirt, sucked light from a smog-blealy, jaun­diced
sun and waited to starve.
"Ugly" was an understatement. Time had squeezed the neighborhood
dIy, wrung it out like old laundry until nothing was left but blocks of anony��mous
gray shapes trapped under thick, sour-yellow, winter morning air.
The old bum was as gray as the street, jaundiced as the sun, invisible
like the brick hovels and pale weeds, and no more interesting or inviting.
The best anyone could say was that he didn'l fall over. He wore a sad-sack
jacket, Salvation Army issue, which split its rotten seaJns across his shoul­ders
aJld fell in beer-belly folds around his middle. If you took a house­painter's
brush and slapped ten years of charity dinners onto a threadbare
plaid blaJlket, you'd have a pretty good idea of that jacket. Rags flopped
around his ankles. He didn't have any shoes on.
It snagged the edge of my mind and stuck: the old guy wasn't wearing
any shoes. But if you're a bum used to a tramp's life, walking in sock-rags
on cold concrete might be okay, even if it's 34 degrees. He was so far gone
he probably thought he was wearing spats at tlle Oscars. He was only on his
feet through an accident of momentum. He looked dishonest :l11d pickled,
like he spent his nights in a back-alley dumpster.
If he ever had aJ1Y shoes, they were stolen during a booze stupor under
a park bench. You know those winos that fall across your path, lie there like
stumps aJld make you step over them? The ones who haJlg onto bottle­shaped
brown bags like a kid with a teddy bear? This bum made those bums
look good.
I thought about giving the old derelict a couple of bucks, but I kJlew
what he'd do with it. Anyway, I didn't want to roll down the window, and,
T v e e
norse
Casey Wade
Oil on canvas
Third place, painting
37
besides, he was disgusting. His eyes were dazed,
his features soft as slush. Did he even know his
shoes were gone?
Wind gusts shuffled newspapers off the
streets, across cars, and down to the bulldozed
chunks of sidewalk. An entire section landed in
pieces near the bum like windy-day garbage.
What did he care? Street trash, hungry weeds,
dirty sun. What did I care? I waited for him to
hurry and kick the papers aside and go about his
business so I could turn my attention to some­thing
important-like CraCkiJlg my knuckles, one
by one, nice and slow.
The old bum's sock-foot touched a piece of
newspaper. He looked down-not surprised,
annoyed or curious-focused, like a drunk hom-ing
in on a street-level bottle of vino from a tall
roof. 1 could hear him creak when he leaned
over to pick up the paper. Did he think it was a
big label?
He held the sheet in his hands, shook it,
and folded it. He moved several inches to the
right, zeroed in on another piece, bent over,
picked it up, and gave it a shake. He folded the
second one into the first one and slid both of
them under his arm.
Interesting. He had big plans, this old guy.
Would he wrap the paper around the sock-rags?
Pack it inside the jacket? Use it for a pillow?
Maybe a blanket? That's what I'd do if I didn't
have the price of yesterday's newspaper and also
happened to be a bum.
2 ~ 0 0 2
He moved half-dead, inches at a time,
down to the gutter, back to the sidewalk, into the
street. Pick up, shake, fold. I was gueSSing it was
the most excitement the old bum had since his
last visit to a dumpster.
He collected the last sheet and put it with
the others, folded the papers once, twice, three
times, and nIcked the section under his arm. He
shuffled to tllC end of the sidewalk and stopped,
pulled the newspaper out from under his arm,
sharpened the crease to a kJlife-edge, and
smoothed the top with his hand. Then the old
bum leaned over and carefully placed the folded
newspaper at the bottom of a battered trashcan.
He straightened up, stepped off the curb, and
went on his way.+
38
Best Friends, continued from page 30
There were two things about this bird that
amazed me. Among the five or six vehicles wait­ing
in this turning lane, he chose to come to me
across an impossible obstacle, always keeping
his focus until he reached his goal. Not once did
he turn his head to look at the danger coming
toward him. That is how stubborn and deter­mined
this bird was, as I would soon find out.
I've come to know him well, and I have
learned what every cheep and chirp means. I
know the sound he makes when he's hungry,
when he's scared, or when he wants out of his
cage to have a change of scenery. If I leave the
room for too long, he has a particular cry that
melms, "Where are you?" Sometimes I will put
him on the back of the couch on a towel next to
me, and, without fail, he will carry on this
unbearably long conversation, always watching
me intently.
Each day I'll put him on the living room
windowsiIJ that sits very low to the floor so he can
see what's going on outside and watch the other
birds. Unfol1unately, it wasn't long before trouble
with the outdoor cats soon started. Whenever my
neighbor's cat (and other stray cats) would
sneak up to the window and stare face-to-face at
him through the glass, this bird quickly learned
how to put an end to that situation. He began by
training my dog, Shani, to come to his defense
with a very loud cry that means, "CAT AT THE
WINDOW!" When Shani hears that sound, she
comes running up to the window, barking illld
growling at the cat, illld the cat runs away. Since
then, Shillli and Bosefus have been the best of
friends.
Bosefus is a small grayish bird with a
bright yellow chest and belly, and Shani is half
Border collie, half Dingo, weighing about eighty­two
pounds. This breed of dog is especially
trained in Israel as war dogs for finding drugs
and land mines, although Shani couldn't find a
mine if it blew up in her face. They are extreme­ly
devoted and very protective over those they
love, which is probably why she submits to evety­thing
tlllS bird does to her.
At first, when people in the complex
walked by the living room window, it was per­missible
by my dog's standards, until they made
the mistake of stopping and bending down close
to the window to admire the adorable little bird
sitting there. Out of nowhere, Shani would
charge at the window with a taste for blood that
almost put her through the glass and sent chil­dren
and adults alike screaming and running for
their lives! There is no doubt in my mind that
Shani would fiercely defend this tiny bird with
her life. Anyone who travels down this walkway
knows that if Bosefus is on the windowsill and
they do not stop or even look down at him, they
may get by with just a bark or two.
Animals, no matter what kind they are,
must have their own territOly whether they live in
the wild or in a person's home. Ever since
Bosefus moved in, Shani has been getting the
short end of the stick by having both an intelli­gent
illld stubborn bird move into her space. ow
that Bosefus has figured out how he could use my
dog to dispose of the cats, he has also figured
that she must be good for other things as well,
including Sham's beloved food.
Bosefus will see nothing wrong with jump­ing
down from the windowsill, hopping over to
the dog's bowl of food, jumping into it, and help­ing
himself. Shani tried to stop him by laying her
head down next to the bowl of food, facing this
bird nose-to-nose, and growling. To Shani's sur­prise,
she was pecked on the nose and quickly
put in her place. Now, when I hear Shani whin­ing,
1know that Bosefus has taken control of her
food again. The bird gets put back in his cage,
Shani has her food, and everyone is happy except
Bosefus.
Although I love this bird dearly, there are
times when he frustrates me, and yet I see so
much of myself in IllS personality. Just like him, I
don't want to be alone, and at the same time, I
don't want to be bothered. I aI11 very apt to take
off in a direction that looks good to me witllOut
much planning or counsel and without consider­ing
the consequences. Maybe it's because I, too,
have learned that those around me will be there
for me when 1need help. Or maybe I've learned
that in milllY situations I can figure out my own
way of fixing the problem if I try hard enough.
With all creatures great and small, it's just a mat­ter
of survival.
Animals are very much the same as people
are if put into a domestic situation and given time
to learn their way around. They will come to
understand what is expected of thcm, and they
will do their best to follow the rules. Well, most
illlimais except Bosefus will.
The life Spilll of these birds is around five
years, illld I don't know if Shani's devotion to him
is a devotion of love or responsibility, which will
determine her reaction after Bosefus is gone. In
either case, there wiIJ be a void in her life for a
bird that she seems to be extremely attached to.
I read a survey that was conducted where
people were asked, "If you were stranded on illl
islillld and you had a choice, who would you live
with?" More than fifty percent of the people inter­viewed
chose their pet. I would definitely have to
agree. Pets will love us unconditionally. They will
never lie, say a Im'sh word, or speak an insult
against us. No matter where Shani and 1 go or
what we do, we will always be best friends. From
her-there would be only love.+
T a v e e
Bouganvilla &
Pomegranates
Hyo S. Choi
Watercolor
39
Garden Fancy
Kimberly Day
Watercolor
Honorable mention,
painting
Pborenzic BaJ7d CD Couer
Donald L. Konopasek
First Place Computer Art
T a v e e
Traveler
Credits
2002
Literary Editor
Rochelle Watts
Literary Staff
Stephen Hrebicek and Joyce Schmidt
Literature Judges:
Carmela Arnoldt, Renee Barstack, Larry
Bohlender, Ruth Callahan, Marla DeSoto,
Betty Hufford, Mary Leskovsky, James
Sanders and Nancy Siefer
Literature Readers:
Student Readers:
Stephen Hrebicek, Joyce Schmidt,
Matthew Travis and Rochelle Watts
Community Readers:
Marian Ekholm, Ruben Miranda and
Steve Tally
Faculty Readers:
Casey Furlong, Johnnie May and Joy
Wingersky
Literary Faculty Advisors:
Casey Furlong, Johnnie May and Joy
Wingersky
Visual Arts Jurors:
Community Juror:
David Tooker, West Valley Art Museum
Student Jurors:
Jim Kearns, Faith Furst and Carol
Holloway
Graphic Designer:
Dean K. Terasaki
Photography
Kermit Lee
Photography Assistants:
Marie Quisenberry and Debbie Bell
Digital Production
Craig Wactor and James "Lou" Culpepper
Visual Arts Advisors:
Pam Hall and Dean K. Terasaki
Special thanks to:
Betty Hufford, Dawn Meyer, R. J. Merrill
and Peggie Murillo.