Issue 42 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

II
When Augustus came out on the porch the blue
pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big
one. It had probably just been crawling around
looking for shade when it ran in to the pigs. They
were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its
rattling days were over. The sow had it by the
neck, and the shoat had the tail.
II
- LARRY MCMURTRY
from Lonesome Dove
\
by Marsha
Recknagle
so m e f e a 5 t
When You Walk
from This Room
he students crowded around a conference table made
of the same particle-board brown as the Ouija board
I'd touched lightly, but often, as a child. When first I
walked into the classroom, I was irritated that there
were no windows, no space for me to pace around in
my cowboy boots, swirl my gauzy skirts.
My teaching techniques - swirl, pace, match the momentum of my
thoughts with hands flying as if I were in a game of charades ­
would be restricted this semester by setting.
I looked up at the blank faces: John with the curly hair and
sneaky eyes, Megan, skin luminous, Brenna, her teeth and the
whites of her eyes startling in contrast to her olive skin. Shiny sleek
seals, I thought, and imagined tossing a beach ball into the air, saw
it in my mind's eye - round and rolling and colorful, creating a
stir, like my words that I hoped would bounce from student to student,
forming balloons of ideas above their heads.
I touched the table with my fingertips, saw the traces of my
prints on the cheap surface, thought of making a mark in the
room. Tried, by tapping my fingers on the tabletop, not only to
predict the future but form it. Rock/Paper/Scissors. The class is
destined to hatch like a brood during the gestation period we call
a semester. Brazen or beat-down, all in the future, up to me, up to
us, how we nurture, what we need.