it: Nothing. You laugh, though there's impatience in the sound. You don't really believe that urban legend, do you? C'mon, I'm not a serial killer. I'm just...well, me. Indeed. But why you? You're nothing to me, nor I to you. Has it been hours that I've known you, or years? It doesn't matter. You'll still be just another one to breeze through, to flicker in and out of my life. Even if you stick around a while, I'll still have to watch you come and go. So when you say these things, when you want me to go out there with you, I start screaming no no no! Not so that you can hear it, but screaming all the same because I don't want to go out there any more, into that world of yours. That's impossible. What, you 're never going to leave your room? Come on, that would be like—a living death, you reason dismissively. Trite, I think, but not true. After all, when are we more alive than when we're alone in our heads? I want quiet and stillness and calm. I want to enjoy what I won't when I'm dead. You want details? I have a place, close by, with eggshell walls. In it I have what I need, and whatever I run out of can be bought and brought to me by people I don't see or touch or talk to. I have a job that I can do without leaving this place, processing legal forms for people I'll never meet involving other people I'll never know. It's all there— births and deaths, accidents and lawsuits, employment, unemployment, marriage, divorce— but it all just comes and goes, quick like that, like Maria, like Ruth, like you. None of it has to touch me. But it does anyway. You. You stand there with your hand out ready to pull me with you. Why? Why the pull? It starts when we are yanked into life; then the hand pulling lets us go and we go flying, and whoever saw flying as a bad thing? Except me. The way I see it, we aren't flying at all; we're being flung away. The awful hurtling through empty air. Waiting for the impact. Hands reach out to us as we go, but they can't stop it, they only keep pulling. And yet—we reach back to them. There's your hand, pulling. I want to resist but I can't—and anyway, resisting would only be more pulling. So I get pulled along. Stop, I want to say, can't we stop? Here, with my hand in yours, stop here like two trees whose branches have laced together. But no, we can't, because something is pulling you along as well. It insists, roughly; it doesn't turn around to look at you the way you turn to look at me, and it isn't gentle, not at all, though your touch is, your words are. It won't be gentle as I absorb you, as I wait to be absorbed. It won't be like you are now, wind and flame licking the thick, Letitia L. Moffitt 33
hard, unprotected surface of a redwood. Redwood
- Page 2 and 3: Coe Review Volume 38 Number 2 Sprin
- Page 4 and 5: Coe Review COMMUNICATIONS EDITOR Ka
- Page 6 and 7: Roman Norma of the Manor Ben Brooks
- Page 8 and 9: might know things. In fact the more
- Page 10 and 11: "So how was your day?" he asked. "M
- Page 12 and 13: head upstairs, and eat at his desk
- Page 14 and 15: and looked over the page she was re
- Page 16 and 17: then get up. If you want to go away
- Page 18 and 19: the drawings phase, and his next pr
- Page 20 and 21: fingers brushed a red plastic bow t
- Page 22 and 23: Old Wars Dennis Vannatta My wife us
- Page 24 and 25: all over it until I'm exhausted but
- Page 26 and 27: could be a freshly dug grave, but I
- Page 28 and 29: "The German babe." "Oh, that Marie.
- Page 30 and 31: I'm going to make you pay rent on t
- Page 32 and 33: always the same sound. That sound w
- Page 34 and 35: quantity, the quality. I would alwa
- Page 36 and 37: point, will you, lady? this article
- Page 40 and 41: Slaughtered Cows Julia Rubin You ar
- Page 42 and 43: Your heart starts to pound. "I'm a
- Page 44 and 45: You wake in darkness, curled up on
- Page 46 and 47: Kyle Mangan 41
- Page 48 and 49: Kyle Mangan 43
- Page 50 and 51: Kyle Mangan 45
- Page 52 and 53: Henry Fragmentary Ben Martin Henry
- Page 54 and 55: on weekends, that I had a handle on
- Page 56 and 57: As a matter of fact, I had gathered
- Page 58 and 59: irthday who played Henry's game as
- Page 60 and 61: swer it. I was attracted to her. Sh
- Page 62 and 63: lunged, lips first, for her mouth a
- Page 64 and 65: "It's nice to see you." I break the
- Page 66 and 67: lanket across her torso to keep her
- Page 68 and 69: my whiskey. Suddenly I feel loose a
- Page 70 and 71: cheek. I squeeze her. "It's all rig
- Page 72 and 73: nius." "I like to think so." "So St
- Page 74 and 75: person, and while I'm still in thei
- Page 76 and 77: shampoo commercial. "He graduated f
- Page 78 and 79: them my ID. I haven't played that g
- Page 80 and 81: "Nice meeting you," she says and le
- Page 82 and 83: get you laid?" "Well I go to these
- Page 84 and 85: was some sort of foul religious slu
- Page 86 and 87: While waiting for it to bake, Darla
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I'll be right to bed. Well? Well? C
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screaming children again, Darla tri
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A box of fish sticks, a bag of pota
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Who is this? It's after midnight! F
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telling her hush now, it will be ok
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cannot, for the life of me, account
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I know she goes to Northern Illinoi
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manage to pry it loose then this be
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None of the lines are all that deep
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Gut Bay Elizabeth Eslami There is a
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on to and feel you were holding on
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did Dr. Renard. We didn't tell them
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into the ice, the wind ripping at t
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It was another year before Lloyd ha
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again somehow, and wondered if thei
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Contributor's Notes Alonso Avila is
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the Department's Lon Tinkle Prize f