Issue 27 - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

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I heard the car door slam and could see Heidi moving toward
the front steps, Mrs. Stevenson hanging on to the passenger door
as if she were about to fall down. Heidi stopped when she saw
that our ghosts had been ripped from the ground and piled at the
head of the driveway near the trash. The carved-out pumpkin lay
next to the ghosts. Two men sat in an olive green military sedan,
having yet to drive away from the scene.
"David!" She screamed my name, angry and afraid. "David!"
I stood up in the living room, buried there, it seemed, and the
front door was just opening. I started for the doorway, am still
rushing there years later, though our mother always arrives first,
looming above the front steps. If I could alter that moment when
Heidi looked up at her drained, white face, blue eyeliner running
down both cheeks, then I still believe we could have the lives we
dreamed of on those long beaches, our hands, half the size they
are now, sifting through the sand for shells. My mother's two
white hands stood in the air, reaching out, and strands of hair
stuck to a chin that moved up and down as if she were speaking.
But no one was speaking for miles around. There was nothing
that could be said.
CONTRIBUTORS' NOTES
NIN ANDREWS wrote The Book of Orgasms (Asylum, 1995). Her work has
appeared in The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and The Michigan Quarterly.
ALISON BECHDEL has been creating Dykes to Watch Out For since 1983
and has published six collections from Firebrand Books. Her work is
syndicated in fifty publications, including The Boston Phoenix and The
Funny Times.
LINDA BIERDS is the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of
which is The Ghost Trio. She has been awarded fellowships from the
Ingram Merrill foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts.
She lives in Seattle.
JASON BROWN is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner fellowship. His
fiction has appeared in The Mississippi Review and is forthcoming in Best
American Short Stories.
SCOTT CAIRNS was born in Tacoma, Washington. His collections of
poetry include The Translations of Babel and The Theology of Doubt.
ELIZABETH GRAVER'S short story collection, Have You Seen Me? (Ecco,
1993), was awarded the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her stories
have been anthologized in Prize Stories:The O. Henry Awards and in Best
American Short Stories. She teaches creative writing at Boston College.
BETH GYLYS teaches at the University of Cincinatti where she is a doctoral
candidate. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in The
New Republic, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Poetry East and others.
MARIE HOWE'S first book of poetry, The GoodTliief was awarded the 1987
Open Competition of the National Poetry Series. Her poems in this
issue are from her forthcoming book, What the Living Do.
SHEILA KOHLER is the author of two novels, The Perfect Place and The
House on R. Street, and a collection of stories, Memories in America. Her
work has appeared in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards.
NATALIE KUSZ is the author of a memoir, Road Song, and the recipient of
a Whiting Writer's Award, a Pushcart Prize, and others. She teaches at
Harvard University.