2008 - Glendale Community College

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He lets her lead him past the bedroom and down the hall, past the ragged Christmas tree, its blinking lights blurring the eyes of the lumpy old people slouched on the lumpy old couch. Lecia’s steps are steady; Dad’s are a tentative shuffle. At the table she puts him tight against the front of a chair. Backing him up until he can feel the firm seat at the crook of his knees, she encourages him to sit. But she sees him tense with fear. So she places her hand on his chest and gently pushes. His knees buckle, his skinny haunches land on the cushion. He spits, “Who are you?” Her chest fills, “I’m Lecia, your daughter.” She eases into the chair that wears her coat, scoots it close. Stretching across to tuck Dad’s head to her shoulder, she smoothes him, soothes him. He leans into her comfort. Forgets. Reaching for the paper bag, Lecia snags Dad’s attention by pulling out a cinnamon dusted snicker-doodle. She hands it to him. He bites. She pops the top from the Starbucks cup, reaches into the paper bag for packets of sugar and a stirring stick, adds two sugars, just as he likes it, stirs. Placing the coffee in his shaky hand, she directs the cup to his pursed lips. She makes sure he doesn’t spill the hot on himself. He looks at her over the Styrofoam rim. “Who are you?” “I’m Lecia, Daddy.” Her arm curves around his shoulders, holding him in. He sips and chews. She says she baked the cookies just for him. She points out the bell with his name on it. She shows him the latest photos of the boys. “Remember?” Lecia needs reminders, too. Reminders of when Dad’s hand was sure and he could brush swathes of oily color across a linen canvas. Reminders of Dad and Jeremy giggling like little kids over one of their silly practical jokes. Reminders of how when she was a child, Daddy would comfort her by rocking with her in the double rocker. Her nerves flatten as Sinatra begins repeating himself, so loud. Suddenly a quavering voice in the other room begins to wail. It screams at the loud music. The anguish of emptiness voiced full. Daddy looks at her with blank canvas eyes, “Who are you?” Lecia folds away from his unfamiliar gaze into the strong hold of the chair. Her throat wastes, the grief convulses. 20 * * * The moon rose round and white, shining across the milky-blue of snow banks and above the cobalt of bare tree branches. Its touch followed her through the open porch door, rushed forward like a beacon to guide a path across the floor, brightened the collection of broken chairs sitting there. Lecia leaned against the Queen Anne and pulled the boots off her feet. Suddenly she became aware of soft music. And the flicker of firelight. From the den! She listened for her family, wondered for a brief crazy second if she was in the wrong house. But there was only music, the beautiful voices of a choir: “O come thou dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by Thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice, rejoice . . .” Her eyes sparking with hope, Lecia stepped into Christmas. Red-gold flames crackled in the fireplace, and by the built-in bookcases a fir tree shimmered in glory. Heart skipping across her face, eyes wide and focused on the tree, she took off her coat and cap, laid them on Jeremy’s chair. She stepped close to the tree, reveled in the white light garlands sparkling on fragile glass ornaments from her childhood; the sea-green mercury glass beaded sprays, the white and gold bells topped with pine cones and berries, and her favorites--Dad’s exquisite handpainted globes, each commemorating a different family Christmas. Her throat clenched, her eyes misted. And then she laughed. Interspersed among the vintage ornaments were palmsized macaroni wreaths, paper cupcakeliner angels, and glitter stars from the boys’ grade school years, and cheap multicolored Shiny Brites--now scratched and peeling--that they had picked out at K-Mart when they were toddlers. And then deep in the boughs the expensive stainedglass hearts that Jeremy bought for her of E-Bay last year. She turned her head to look for him. There, in the shadows. Waiting. He sat on a bent, white oak, double rocking chair, the caning torn and ragged. Her heart leaped in greeting. The carol echoed, “Rejoice, rejoice . . .” Lecia sat down beside him. He wrapped her close in his arms. The ache of death died. Life newborn rocked back and forth, back and forth. Traveler
Death by Marianne Ferrari, Poetry 3rd Place One One A tumor... small, the doctor said, and that he’d watch it. It was 1959, when Cancer was a lump In everybody’s throat, And people didn’t talk, but whispered, “She has Cancer.” Sitting on the padded table’s edge, Pale, pudgy, and mustachioed, Rose wore her good dress – Navy with white polka dots, so crisp and comical, In contradiction to the long shin hairs that made a crazy, Crosshatched layer under panty hose. It takes some time for hair on legs to grow so long. It took the Cancer eighteen months, Till blood came, and the surgeon said, “Inoperable.” On such news, inexplicably, one heart will crash, Another will compound its strength, and rally. Rose did not want to die. But rallying, for Rose, Meant merely to endure, supine, A two-year vigil on her own decay. Elisa, aged 14, rushed home from school to feed, to soothe, To face the aftermath of vomiting and diarrhea. Elisa’s memories of Rose are not her pancake recipe, Her perfume, and the way she combed her hair, But pasty flesh, foul breath, And all the catalog of smells associated with a dying patient. Of death, I’d always wondered when, not how, or why, Till Rose got Cancer. Every Girls’ Dream by Matt Meyer 3D Computer Art Glendale Community College 21
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Page 15 and 16: things out, that is, until you saw
Page 17 and 18: Glendale Community College Freedom
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Page 21: steel of an angular painting knife,
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Page 29 and 30: The Housewife B LUES T by Rachel Ri
Page 31 and 32: Daydreaming by Veronica Aguilar Cha
Page 33 and 34: the opposite zabuton cushion from h
Page 35 and 36: “You and Mana-chan were my reason
Page 37 and 38: A Tale Of Love and Light Claudia Ma
Page 39 and 40: Untitled Ceramic by Robert McBride
Page 41 and 42: Untitiled by Bryan Schnebelt Cerami
Page 43 and 44: a hard plastic, numbered token, to
Page 45 and 46: The Migratory Patterns I of Tropica
Page 47 and 48: or later. Someday that might be me:
Page 49 and 50: indiscriminately swooping the light
Page 51 and 52: of cat urine from a prior tenant wh
Page 53 and 54: “Well, gee. Fired. That’s it, h
Page 55 and 56: we applied wheels and a little bit
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Page 59 and 60: Ocito en Flor by Claudia Martinez A

2008 - Glendale Community College

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