Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
cover<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Harbinger</strong><br />
the student literary magazine of bethany college<br />
2009
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Harbinger</strong><br />
2009<br />
Dedicated to Dr. Larry Grimes for his decades<br />
of devotion to the literary arts at <strong>Bethany</strong> <strong>College</strong>.
Editor<br />
Jade Bragg<br />
Genre Editors<br />
Poetry / Jade Bragg<br />
Visual Art / Haley Fedor<br />
Nonfiction / Brittany McAdoo<br />
Fiction / Jenny Preston<br />
Readers<br />
Catherine Papp, Amanda Thomas,<br />
Kelsey Kirschmann<br />
Faculty Advisor<br />
Wiley Cash<br />
Front and Back Cover Art<br />
Kelly Medkeff-Rose
Table of ConTenTs<br />
Jeff Seglin / A Deep Well // 1<br />
Kelsey Kirschmann / Wooden Bench // 3<br />
Ben Cope / 2/11/1973 // 4<br />
Jenny Preston / Bark Deep // 6<br />
Stephanie Laine / <strong>The</strong> Frog // 8<br />
Justin Elkins / Jan’s Suicide // 10<br />
Jade Bragg / Tuesday // 13<br />
Ben Cope / An Ode to the Frozen Burrito // 14<br />
Brian DiCola / Haiku U // 15<br />
Kevin Clancy / Whiskey Is Liquid Sunshine // 16<br />
Jenny Preston / Grape Soda Kisses // 21<br />
Haley Fedor / Le Maître Rouge // 23<br />
Pasha Utt / Path // 24<br />
Anastasia Kydonieus / Worship // 27<br />
Jade Bragg / Two-Sided Time // 28<br />
Kelsey Kirschmann / Man+kind++rag+doll=(-or+)? // 30<br />
Stephanie Laine / <strong>The</strong> Gifts of the Gods // 32<br />
Amanda Thomas / <strong>The</strong> Drought // 37<br />
Ben Cope / An Exploration of Self // 38<br />
Haley Fedor / Mud and Baby Boots // 39<br />
Jenny Preston / My Beloved // 40<br />
Justin Elkins / <strong>The</strong> Mind of a Truth Manufacturer // 45<br />
Marcie Zampini / A Misc. Monologue. // 48<br />
Ben Cope / <strong>The</strong> Storm // 51<br />
Marcie Zampini / Untitled // 52<br />
Haley Fedor / <strong>The</strong> Nymph // 53<br />
Kelsey Kirschmann / Embraces Ascending with Fingertips Opening // 57<br />
Anastasia Kydonieus / Narcissa: A Tale of Toxins // 59<br />
Hannah Farwell / <strong>The</strong> Morgue // 68<br />
Emily Stewart / Hospice // 69<br />
Amanda Thomas / A Personal Vicissitude // 70<br />
Gerad Cervanak / Ode to an Elder // 71<br />
Stephanie Laine / Horse Play // 74
arT/ PhoTos<br />
Devin O’Leary / 5 // 25 // 67 // 75<br />
Kelly Medkeff-Rose / 12 // 19 // 44 // 49 // 50 // 55 // 66<br />
Amanda Reeder / 20<br />
Jennifer Fleahman / 26 // 56<br />
Elizabeth Foy / 29<br />
Kimberly Foflygen / 36 // 73
Jeff seglin<br />
A Deep Well<br />
In 1978, Larry Grimes took a sabbatical from <strong>Bethany</strong> <strong>College</strong> and<br />
went to Europe. I was a senior at <strong>Bethany</strong> at the time – an English major. I<br />
was also the editor of the <strong>Harbinger</strong>.<br />
On a thin blue pre-paid airmail post, Larry sent a handwritten poem,<br />
titled “End,” to be considered as a contribution for the magazine. I typed<br />
out the poem to include with the other submissions that were slated for the<br />
issue. I got one line wrong. I interpreted Larry’s handwriting as: “Beyond<br />
the worn limestone steps over the old well.” It should have been: “Beyond<br />
the worn limestone steps over the old wall.”<br />
Larry’s poem was featured on the back page of the issue. He didn’t mention<br />
the mistake until I asked him about the issue.<br />
“That line doesn’t make sense with the typo,” he said.<br />
“What do you mean?” I asked.<br />
He pointed out the mistake and then told me that the reference was to<br />
the limestone steps over the wall in the old cemetery in <strong>Bethany</strong>. Had I<br />
been a more attentive Bethanian, or a better reader of poetry (few wells<br />
have steps over them), I might have caught the error.<br />
Larry taught me to be a better editor.<br />
In the 1970s, when there was a larger enrollment at <strong>Bethany</strong>, students<br />
were permitted to live off-campus. I was the last student to live in Larry<br />
and Carol Grimes’ basement. Occasionally, I would join Larry and another<br />
professor at <strong>Bethany</strong>, Ron Walden, on a morning run up Castleman Run<br />
Road to the lake and back. None of us were seasoned long-distance runners<br />
back then, so the run back from Castleman Run Lake was far more of<br />
a challenge than the run to it.<br />
On one morning run, Larry joked about hitching a ride back home. As<br />
we reached the lake, there drinking from it stood an old gray horse. I believe<br />
I dared Larry and Ron to ride the horse back home. <strong>The</strong>y didn’t but<br />
its appearance gave us the boost we needed to easily complete the second<br />
leg of the run.<br />
Larry taught me that the imagination may not always yield what you<br />
envision, but it can sometimes produce a horse.<br />
After I completed a graduate degree at Harvard Divinity School, I visited<br />
Larry and Carol for dinner. Larry had gone to divinity school at Yale, as<br />
1
had <strong>Bethany</strong> professors Richard Kenney and Hiram Lester, who joined us<br />
for dinner that night. When dinner was finished, the three of them presented<br />
me with a framed photocopied Yale Divinity School degree. On the<br />
degree, they had written my name.<br />
“We figured that if you’re going to put in all that work,” Larry said, “you<br />
ought to get a degree from a real university.”<br />
Larry taught me that humility can be a funny thing.<br />
Several years later, Larry agreed to perform the wedding ceremony for<br />
me and my soon-to-be wife, Nancy. <strong>The</strong> ceremony was in the Andover<br />
Chapel in Harvard Divinity School’s Andover Hall. <strong>The</strong> morning of the<br />
wedding, he noticed there was no bible in the chapel. (Yale, of course,<br />
would have had a lovely bible on hand.) <strong>The</strong> only bible we could find was<br />
a dog-eared bright-red copy of the Oxford Annotated Bible.<br />
“Is this the only bible available?” Larry asked.<br />
A friend went home and retrieved a leather-bound bible we could use.<br />
“Much better,” Larry said.<br />
Larry taught me that attention to detail can transform an experience.<br />
We received the call we knew we might eventually get. Larry and Carol<br />
had promised to phone us if they thought our last opportunity to be with<br />
Helen Louise McGuffie, who had been both Larry’s and my professor at<br />
<strong>Bethany</strong>, was drawing near.<br />
“It’s time,” Carol said when she called.<br />
Nancy and I drove directly to the hospital where Helen Louise had been<br />
since suffering a stroke and falling in her house. We were going to meet<br />
Larry and Carol there and help move Helen Louise from the hospital back<br />
to her house.<br />
Helen Louise had lost the ability to speak. It was unclear what she was<br />
aware of as she slipped in and out of consciousness. As the four of us<br />
helped roll her bed into her house, Helen Louise looked up and said one<br />
word, “Home.”<br />
Larry taught me that a teacher can become a friend, and that there are<br />
few things stronger than the bond of friendship.<br />
Jeff Seglin, a 1978 graduate of <strong>Bethany</strong> <strong>College</strong>, is currently an Associate Professor at<br />
Emerson <strong>College</strong>. His weekly ethics column, “<strong>The</strong> Right Thing,” is syndicated by the<br />
New York Times Syndicate. His essays have appeared in <strong>The</strong> New York Times, Fortune,<br />
and he is the author of <strong>The</strong> Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility<br />
in Today’s Business.<br />
2
Kelsey KirsChmann<br />
Wooden Bench<br />
This<br />
is living.<br />
Waiting,<br />
lying on my back<br />
thinking,<br />
arms folding,<br />
listening to the creaking<br />
of my boots<br />
as my legs<br />
are bending over<br />
the side of the bench.<br />
My eyes surface<br />
to the bright lights flooding<br />
from a floating white ceiling<br />
to stale yellow walls.<br />
I hear her say<br />
My heart hurts<br />
I hear.<br />
Breathing.<br />
3
en CoPe<br />
2/11/1973<br />
Pittsburgh, PA.<br />
West Liberty Ave.<br />
Tom’s Diner<br />
2:17 a.m.<br />
I sit across from you,<br />
inhaling the harsh tobacco incenses<br />
of the diners.<br />
I place my hand on yours<br />
and unsettle your legs.<br />
Eros curbs our conversation.<br />
A waitress comes by and burdens us<br />
with coffee too hot for anything<br />
except your timid exhale.<br />
I breathe in the wafted scent, of<br />
coffee, perfume – and<br />
your breath.<br />
I get the check<br />
and walk you home –<br />
over the snow-dusted streets.<br />
4
5<br />
Devin o’ leary
Jenny PresTon<br />
Bark Deep<br />
For whom does the weeping willow weep, I wonder? Maybe it is not a<br />
whom but a What? Perhaps a Why? She stands with her back hunched, her<br />
ratty locks skimming the darkened waters of the pond. Why does she look<br />
so lonely?<br />
“Willow tree,” I ask. “Why are you sad?”<br />
“Look at me child. I do not stand tall like the mighty oak, my bark<br />
doesn’t shine like the beautiful birch, and my leaves will never look like<br />
the majestic maple.” I sit in silence for a few moments, contemplating<br />
what she said. An idea sprouts inside me, as a grin paints itself on my face.<br />
“What are you smiling at?” <strong>The</strong> willow tree inquires.<br />
“I’ll be right back! Don’t go anywhere!” I realized how silly it was of<br />
me to say that. She is rooted to the ground, after all. I ran to the oak tree,<br />
my legs carrying me as fast as they could. “Mr. Oak Tree, Mr. Oak tree!” I<br />
huffed trying to catch my breath. “I need your help! My friend, the Willow<br />
tree, wants to stand tall and mighty like you do. Can you give her<br />
lessons?” <strong>The</strong> mighty Oak tree stiffened straighter, if it were possible, and<br />
said to me, “I’d be happy to give the old woman lessons, child. However,<br />
nobody can stand as mighty as I do. I have noble blood you know.” I sat<br />
and listened to everything the Oak tree had to tell me on how to reach for<br />
the sky. When he was finished, I thanked him and galloped away once<br />
again to the Birch tree on the hill side.<br />
“Afternoon, Mrs. Birch. My friend, the Willow Tree, wishes to have bark<br />
as beautiful as yours. Would you give her some of your bark so she too<br />
feels pretty?” <strong>The</strong> Birch tree tossed her branches and laughed innocently at<br />
me. “I work so hard to keep my bark in good condition. <strong>The</strong>re is a lot of<br />
exfoliation involved, and that is rather painful, mind you. Never-the-less,<br />
I’d be happy to lend my beauty to the poor old woman. She may need a<br />
bark lift as well. Also, would you tell her that the pond water reeks havoc<br />
on her leafs. She should really look into using spring water, it’s the only<br />
water I use.” I nodded, and helped myself to a few flakes of bark.<br />
“Thank you!” I scampered off to my last destination; the maple<br />
tree. He was majestically handsome, I had to agree. His trunk was<br />
just the right width and his branches fanned out in perfect symmetry.<br />
But the leaves were absolutely perfect. It was no wonder the Willow<br />
Tree envied him. “Hello Maple tree. I was wondering if I could<br />
borrow some of your leaves to give to my friend, the Willow Tree.<br />
6
She wants to have beautiful leaves too.”<br />
“Look at my leaves, they are perfect aren’t they? Marvel at my branches<br />
too for they are perfect as well. Notice my trunk, perfect in width is it not?<br />
Because I am without flaw, I would be delighted to lend out my perfect<br />
leaves. Take as many as you’d like, but be sure everyone knows that these<br />
leaves belong to me.” I plucked a handful of leaves from the oaks branches<br />
and hurried back to my waiting friend.<br />
“I have a gift for you, Willow Tree. Look! Lovely leaves from the Maple<br />
tree, beautiful bark from the Birch tree, and standing tall lessons from<br />
the Oak tree! We’re going to make you beautiful. I scattered the flawless<br />
flakes of bark around my friends knobby trunk and intertwined her locks<br />
with beautiful maple leaves. “Now, Mr. Oak Tree says that in order to<br />
stand tall you have to grip the ground with your roots and reach for the sky<br />
with your branches. Try it! You too can be tall and mighty!”<br />
<strong>The</strong> Willow Tree laughed, “Okay, child. I’ll humor you.” I felt the earth<br />
tremor as she dug her roots firmly into the ground. Her heavy branches<br />
reached for the sky and her gnarled trunk straightened ever so slightly.<br />
“How do you feel!” I yelled excitedly.<br />
“Ridiculous,” she replied. She let down her branches, removing the<br />
leaves one by one. She settled her trunk, upsetting the birch bark and it<br />
floated to the ground. “Child, listen to me. I am the Weeping Willow tree.<br />
I do not reach for the stars, my bark is scarred and harsh, and my leaves<br />
aren’t really leaves at all. I was not meant to be majestic, nor beautiful, nor<br />
handsome. I am a Weeping Willow, and my job is to weep.”<br />
7
sTePhanie laine<br />
<strong>The</strong> Frog<br />
Sitting on<br />
his muddy throne<br />
with yellow<br />
eyes that watch<br />
the stream see everything<br />
a fly<br />
a fish<br />
a falling<br />
tree branch.<br />
His sleek rubbery<br />
body is muddy<br />
brown and grassy green<br />
indiscernible from<br />
the scum<br />
and leaves he’s swaddled in.<br />
<strong>The</strong> stream<br />
roars past<br />
him on some busy<br />
errand, a silver<br />
lined fish slithers<br />
over a rock in haste.<br />
Twigs and leaves<br />
are screeching<br />
by, not<br />
pausing to see<br />
the mud<br />
king sitting<br />
there waiting and<br />
watching and<br />
sitting<br />
oceans<br />
of water flowing<br />
past in a single day.<br />
Cool mud<br />
below<br />
above<br />
8
around.<br />
A fly<br />
comes closer,<br />
his yellow<br />
eyes don’t blink.<br />
9
JusTin elKins<br />
Jan’s Suicide<br />
Jan saunters into work this Friday with a Mona Lisa smile. She’s<br />
worked here at Greenville Mortgage as a secretary for more than 20 years.<br />
No surprise she’s sauntering; she’s been here longer than the manager.<br />
She knows everything there is to know about this place, and she can do<br />
what she wants. For everyone else in the office, Casual Friday’s attire has<br />
limits, but Jan has always considered herself an envelope pusher – the pun<br />
gets her every time.<br />
“Love the shirt, Jan,” says Kathy as she passes by Jan’s desk. Her tone<br />
rings of poorly masked contempt in Jan’s ears.<br />
“Uh huh,” Jan replies as she looks up from her work at Kathy. “Oh, that<br />
Kathy is such a bitch,” rattles Jan’s mind. “Next time she comes by, I’m<br />
gonna tell her how that purple pantsuit makes her look like Grimace. It’s<br />
ugly. <strong>The</strong> color of a box of ‘Good and Plenty’ candies. Hah, good and<br />
plenty. <strong>The</strong> same thing she hides under that hideous pantsuit.” Jan smiles<br />
approvingly at her internal wit.<br />
Kathy had commented on the light blue t-shirt Jan bought on vacation<br />
two winters ago. (Jan knows that vacations to sunny locales are cheaper<br />
in the winter.) <strong>The</strong> shirt reads, “Hawaii is for Lovers,” and shows a<br />
landscape of the sun setting over a beach with two palm trees adjacent.<br />
Unmarried, she had vacationed alone. But while on the island of the setting<br />
sun, she met a nice boy in the hotel bar who was on a trip with his<br />
parents. <strong>The</strong> parents had gone to an expensive restaurant, so both Jan and<br />
the boy were alone, together. Inside her shirt, Jan recalls the heat she felt<br />
from the humidity and the sticky muck left on her knuckles when she<br />
and the boy returned to the bar from the empty beach. Jan feels power in<br />
wearing such a provocative shirt although no one else in the office knows<br />
the story.<br />
As Jan scans the mail addressed to her coworkers, she begins preparing<br />
for the night ahead. It’s only 9:15, but Jan and her two remaining office<br />
friends are going to Applebee’s for happy hour after work. Jan considers<br />
it her time to be the crowd-pleaser she knows herself to be. <strong>The</strong> four years<br />
spent at Randolph-Macon <strong>College</strong>, the 6th biggest party school according<br />
to <strong>The</strong> Princeton Review, taught her the value of friendship by exclusion,<br />
and now she’s a master of it.<br />
<strong>The</strong> layout of the cubicles in the office is mirrored in small boxes above<br />
Jan’s desk, which are horizontally lettered and vertically numbered. Jan<br />
10
holds a letter addressed to Chris in cubicle B2. She’s looking at the letter<br />
while imagining herself seated on a barstool at Applebee’s. “Just because<br />
he shaved his head, are we supposed to imagine that he’s not going bald?”<br />
Jan’s thoughts get a roaring laugh of approval from her friends though<br />
she’s still seated at her desk. “And did you see his girlfriend in the parking<br />
lot yesterday? No wonder he told her to wait outside!” Even the bartender<br />
is laughing with Jan.<br />
<strong>The</strong> clean white envelope glides into the box marked “B2”. She lovingly<br />
runs her pointer finger down its edge, thanking Chris’ failing follicles and<br />
poor choice in mate for her side-splitters. She rattles off a few more digs<br />
before moving on.<br />
“Patsy in D5 got a letter from the home office in New Hampshire. I bet<br />
she’s getting fired. Hell, she ought to be fired for wearing those awful pinstripes.<br />
I swear she looks more like Babe Ruth every time I see her!”<br />
She’s so pleased with herself that she slaps her desk in sober revelry. She<br />
imagines doing the same at the Applebee’s, spilling her Presidente Margarita<br />
across the bar. No worries. <strong>The</strong> young bartender thinks it’s so funny<br />
he brings her another one on the house.<br />
<strong>The</strong> next letter in her stack is addressed to an old friend. <strong>The</strong>y don’t<br />
talk much anymore since their once-confidential conversation. “And what<br />
about Ben in E3? Did you see the calendar he hung up in his cubicle?<br />
Yeah, buddy. I’m sure your patriotism made you buy the one with hunky<br />
firemen. That guy is gayer than AIDS!”<br />
Jan repeats this virulent and hilarious cycle for each person who receives<br />
a letter in the office – her pointer finger poking each envelope as if it were<br />
the recipient’s sternum. Finished with sorting the mail, an intern comes<br />
by and collects it. He turns his back without a word and walks off into the<br />
maze of cubicles to distribute the inspiration for Jan’s thoughtful zingers.<br />
Having nothing left to do, Jan resigns herself to play Solitaire until<br />
lunch. She mindlessly moves the mouse over alternating reds and blacks<br />
thinking about minority jokes. When she gets all the cards into four neat<br />
columns, she moves them one by one into their assigned spaces. <strong>The</strong> last<br />
card, the King of Hearts, also known as the Suicide King, falls into place.<br />
For some reason, she remembers a childhood visit to the doctor and the<br />
games in the waiting room. She always loved the shapes game – the round<br />
peg goes in the round hole, the square peg goes in the square hole. It’s<br />
simple to put everything in its place. It’s simple to win.<br />
11
12<br />
Kelly meDKeff-rose
JaDe bragg<br />
Tuesday<br />
We are off the beaten path<br />
shedding inhibitions like<br />
peacoats and gloves without<br />
fingers at doors where dim<br />
lights cast promising glows<br />
on dirty hands holding<br />
dollar bills and half smoked<br />
cigarettes.<br />
We are in the red-veined room<br />
reclining and embracing<br />
when the aortic beats reanimate<br />
one by one by twos and threes<br />
and reggae soul flows<br />
from fingertips down legs and<br />
laughter travels through<br />
clapping.<br />
13
en CoPe<br />
An Ode to the Frozen Burrito<br />
Oh! Frozen burrito,<br />
I love you so!<br />
Even if you are just plastic<br />
colored like dough.<br />
You appease my appetite<br />
when I’m hungry at night.<br />
Your molten bean filling<br />
to me, is just -- thrilling!<br />
Oh! How I wish I could spend everyday<br />
eating you up. I’d get carried away!<br />
Perhaps I am a hedonist?<br />
But who could resist?<br />
Burritos to me,<br />
are simply delish!<br />
14
ian DiCola<br />
Haiku U<br />
Bouncing around from branch to branch,<br />
tramping with ease so free.<br />
This monkey might not stand a chance<br />
living in the city.<br />
<strong>The</strong> canopy to him, my home<br />
as carelessly at ease.<br />
His fruit, my fruit, juicy to please<br />
we fly to brighter leaves.<br />
Climbing the vine escaping apes<br />
whose rudeness suits unkind.<br />
I’ll follow him the smarter chimp,<br />
in mind of what’s behind.<br />
15
Kevin ClanCy<br />
“Whiskey Is Liquid Sunshine.”<br />
-George Bernard Shaw<br />
“Why don’t you talk to me anymoa?” <strong>The</strong> sun shone through the<br />
double slider basking his neck and back in summer. <strong>The</strong> ceiling fan oscillated<br />
as he ate, the chain ticking rhythmically against it’s copper housing<br />
as it rocked and creaked.<br />
<strong>The</strong> amber and lamp light serenading one another was intoxicating, the<br />
strong smell of cedar and smoke. <strong>The</strong> bite in the back of his throat was<br />
like heavenly release from the chains of the daylight drama as he sank<br />
deeper into his seat, the cold gripping his fingers and joints.<br />
“You never speak a word to me these days!” His mother stood in the<br />
kitchen arms crossed. He stared for a time at his empty glass and took a<br />
deep breath as if to reply but only sighed and shrugged without looking up<br />
from his plate of eggs.<br />
His fingers were numb now as he stared at the grain of the wood, he remembered<br />
staining it a beautiful cherry red, now it was scuffed and faded.<br />
<strong>The</strong> desk lamp lent little light to the small basement room and the wallpaper<br />
had been stripped long ago leaving the rough glue behind. Where<br />
the brightness faded into shadow only red remained, and as he stared into<br />
the black the cherry from his Camel illuminated his face in the previously<br />
void space where his mirror now portrayed a skeletal figure.<br />
He stood up from his seat at the table and made his way into the kitchen.<br />
Without raising his gaze from the floor he walked around his mother and<br />
opened the refrigerator, she turned as she huffed and snorted and walked<br />
into the living room muttering to herself.<br />
He stared at the red drops mingling with the steel on the mahogany and<br />
the crimson clouds billowing like thunder heads perhaps ten miles high<br />
looming over the horizon. He raised the glass to his lips once more.<br />
“Get your brotha, I think he’s gone.” He looked up from the mahogany<br />
desk he and his father had built years ago into his doorway. His mother’s<br />
16
face was contorted and flush from tears, she held a phone in her right<br />
hand.<br />
“What?”<br />
“Just get your brotha!” she choked and raced out of the room. He could<br />
hear her hysterical sobbing as he walked into the living room and stared<br />
at the lifeless body on the bed. She had not stopped crying as he ascended<br />
the stairs.<br />
His throat burned and his heart pumped and his hand ached as he sat in<br />
the darkness and still the red consumed his thoughts and still the amber<br />
filled his vision casting a spell upon his tongue. He took another drag from<br />
his cigarette and felt his head spin momentarily as he closed his eyes.<br />
His father stood in front of the double slider staring out into the afternoon<br />
as he approached. He seemed much older now to him, thin with a<br />
face of stubble and sunken eyes. <strong>The</strong>re was a quiet calmness about him<br />
that he had never seen, both calming and frightening.<br />
“I never noticed how beautiful they were befoa.”<br />
“What?” <strong>The</strong> white powder sat upon the branches, heavy and taxing. It<br />
was mid-November now and the snow had come early and hard this year.<br />
“I never stopped to look at how beautiful the trees were this time a yea.”<br />
<strong>The</strong>y stood there for a long time staring out into the woods beyond their<br />
yard without saying a word.<br />
He stared at the wall as his thoughts came back to him, his cigarette having<br />
burned all the way to his fingers. He could smell the aged aroma of the<br />
hundred and fifty year old cask emanating from his desktop as he raised<br />
another shot to his lips.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y sat together over lunch as the cool August breeze blew through the<br />
open slider jingling the light-catchers against the glass.<br />
“I want you to know that I love ya, and there are things that I wish I had<br />
done an’ said,” his father’s voice quivered as he spoke.<br />
17
“When I’m gone you’re gonna have to take care a things.” He looked up<br />
from across the table unable to say anything in return.<br />
<strong>The</strong> pain in his fingertips had subsided now and the bucket of water reminded<br />
him of rubies as it picked up the lamp light; his head began to spin<br />
as he drank. He took another long drag on his Camel as his vision blurred<br />
and his head swung back like a broken branch. He stared up into the darkness<br />
of his ceiling as he exhaled.<br />
His father stood up from his seat and walked toward him beginning to<br />
cry,“You have to take care of ya motha and ya brotha for me.”<br />
He rose from the table and embraced him, frail and helpless. “I love you<br />
Dad, it’ll be alright.”<br />
He could taste the salt as the tears rolled down his cheeks mingling with<br />
the whiskey on his lips. His head rolled forward and he could see the empty<br />
bottle throwing the lamp light across the desk, the straight razor reflecting<br />
it into his eyes and the red. He closed his eyes and let his shot glass<br />
shatter off of his desktop as the light danced on in it’s crimson lagoon. He<br />
could hear the front door slam through his ceiling and the footsteps as they<br />
made their way to the kitchen. He began to stutter and choke as the words<br />
left his lips, speaking to the familiar face in his mirror. <strong>The</strong> sunken eyes.<br />
<strong>The</strong> unshaven face.<br />
“I’m sorry.”<br />
18
19<br />
Kelly meDKeff-rose
20<br />
amanDa reeDer
Jenny PresTon<br />
Grape Soda Kisses<br />
“We have to practice for when we’re older, Ben.” <strong>The</strong> young girl<br />
pushed the boy’s shoulders, her nine year old body over-powered him. He<br />
lost his balance and crashed into the hydrangea bush.<br />
“I don’t understand why, we won’t be all grown up for a long time,” he<br />
stated flatly. He stood up from the indented plant and made sure he wasn’t<br />
bleeding. He went to push her back but was smartly swatted away.<br />
“Don’t you ever want to get married? You gotta be able to kiss when<br />
you’re married. That’s the rule.”<br />
“What if I don’t want to get married, Jenny? Girls have cooties, anyway.<br />
I’d have to get a shot every day if I got married.” <strong>The</strong> girl sighed and<br />
rolled her eyes the same way she had witnessed her mother’s face when<br />
Daddy hogged the remote.<br />
“I don’t have cooties, Ben. I’m your best friend. Best friends don’t give<br />
each other cooties.”<br />
“Says who?”<br />
“Says ME!” <strong>The</strong> two children were silent. <strong>The</strong> birds that once sat lazily<br />
in the branches above their head flew away, bothered and visibly annoyed<br />
by the sudden change in atmosphere. Ben averted his eyes to the ground,<br />
and Jenny stared at him with contempt. A summer breeze stirred the stale<br />
muggy air. It played with the girl’s copper hair and carried her scent of<br />
Dove soap and rain to Ben’s freckled nose.<br />
“You won’t…tell Tyler at school tomorrow…will you?” His voice was<br />
soft, and he flicked his hazy grey eyes in her direction before throwing<br />
them back at the ground. He shifted his weight from foot to foot waiting<br />
for her response.<br />
She softened and reached her hand across the short space that was separating<br />
them and took a hold of his pinky finger. “Pinky swear” she smiled.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y embraced pinkies before letting their hands fall to their sides.<br />
“So…now what?” he stammered. His palms began to sweat, and he<br />
shifted his weight uncomfortably. He worried the hem of his shirt and stole<br />
a glance at Jenny. She was smiling at him, her green eyes flickering with<br />
mischief. She took a tentative step towards him, testing the temperature<br />
of the water with her toes. He stood fast, nearly swallowing his Adam’s<br />
apple.<br />
A few ginger steps later, they were standing toe to toe. Her peppermint<br />
breath fell on his eye lashes, and he raised his head to meet hers. He<br />
21
squeezed his eyes shut like the grown-ups did in the movies and slid his<br />
lips over hers. Her lips were smooth and soft. When he bumped his nose<br />
against hers, she couldn’t help but giggle. As she drew back she tasted<br />
grape soda on her lips. It bubbled and fizzed and tingled her nose. He<br />
blushed. She smiled. A few awkward moments passed before they were on<br />
their bikes, racing to the park as if nothing had ever happened.<br />
22
haley feDor<br />
Le Maître Rouge<br />
Gilded, noble Phoenix<br />
with plumage just like coals,<br />
you are hot and scarlet, yet<br />
bound to bones.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is a reek of smoke and ash,<br />
left from your rebirth.<br />
I wonder if I have the strength<br />
to rise up from the gray ash<br />
of past destructions.<br />
You leave a blackened trail for all to see.<br />
A fleeting courtesan of affection,<br />
your lilting words are stuffed with grace.<br />
I see a hammer and anvil in your eyes—<br />
cherry red,<br />
to make and un-make as you see fit.<br />
All will quiver in your wake.<br />
A drunken cadence rises,<br />
tribute to your fierce, stubborn pride.<br />
You blaze a nearer, smoking sun,<br />
that burns everything it touches—even me.<br />
I think I should have loved you, before<br />
you burned the temple I had built—<br />
to worship you.<br />
23
Pasha uTT<br />
Path<br />
“Bismillah Irahman Irahiim”<br />
In congregation, we are one<br />
during Ruku, there are no idols,<br />
save Allah,<br />
We rise in unison<br />
His slaves and followers<br />
<strong>The</strong>ir guns raise together<br />
as we prepare for Sajdah<br />
the rubble from the mosque falls<br />
<strong>The</strong> weak flee in fear of life<br />
the Shaitaan’s fire, relentlessly<br />
I press my head calmly to the mat..<br />
<strong>The</strong>y can kill my people,<br />
force their ways,<br />
have our oil,<br />
but they’ll never have my faith<br />
Act as you will in this test<br />
I will gladly take my last breath<br />
uttering my last words,<br />
“Subhanna Rabi’al Ala”<br />
24
25<br />
Devin o’ leary
26<br />
Jennifer fleahman
anasTasia KyDonieus<br />
Worship<br />
Enveloped in darkness,<br />
My eyes fight for sight,<br />
As his hands secure the blindfold,<br />
His mouth darkly claims my own,<br />
This is the way we pray.<br />
Shackled hands extend as far as steel allows,<br />
To stroke the phallic idol,<br />
Constrained beneath raiment.<br />
My breath catches in my throat.<br />
This is the way we pray.<br />
Offering prayer to a dead carpenter,<br />
Makes no sense to us:<br />
So bound to the flesh.<br />
<strong>The</strong> sweet release that comes with pain,<br />
This is the way we pray.<br />
His hymn: a coarse moan.<br />
His rosary: a cat of nine-tails,<br />
His incense: the scent of sweat and blood,<br />
His altar: my body.<br />
This is the way we pray.<br />
27
JaDe bragg<br />
Two-Sided Time<br />
<strong>The</strong> warm water at my back is not enough. Time cleaning my own body<br />
is time wasted. I hurriedly twist off the water faucet and make a beeline<br />
for my bedroom door. I refuse to look at the clock. I refuse to look at the<br />
mold spores in my week-old coffee mug. I glance ruefully at the stack of<br />
books that is yawning in my direction. Rummaging in the annals of my<br />
closet is always a task, but this time the yellow-orange prescription bottle<br />
is just within reach. It’s an old bottle of antibiotics I never finished taking,<br />
and I am always glad I didn’t throw it away. Little pink pills of productivity<br />
and ONE TWO THREE I am rocket launching into a usefulness that<br />
never comes natural. For hours I am set alone with three bottles of water<br />
and homework that never reaches a stopping point. I am hurtling, jumping,<br />
hot flashing, jibber-jabbering, just-one-more-pink-pill popping.<br />
******<br />
I am reclining against the brick wall of some bullshit scholarly looking<br />
building at four a.m., smoking my third cigarette in a row and wondering<br />
why I never write poetry on nights like these. My hair is unkempt, my pupils<br />
spinning plates, and there are sweat stains beneath my armpits. I look<br />
far worse than your average study-a-holic. I laugh to myself and know<br />
that my struggles will remain unnoticed, as usual. I know, I MUST know,<br />
that tomorrow (and every day) there will be a Volkswagon driving, bouncy<br />
ponytail bearing, American Eagle flip flop wearing bimbo who has all the<br />
answers. She will be wide awake IT’S MORNING with typed out notes<br />
and painted fingernails. Time management is her life skill and NO SHE<br />
CANNOT miss her beauty sleep. I hum a song and I am lighting another<br />
cigarette and I console myself with the fact that the girl of tomorrow will<br />
never know the poetry of four a.m. Yes, yes, she will never pitsweat her<br />
way through dawn.<br />
28
29<br />
elizabeTh foy
Kelsey KirsChmann<br />
Man + kind ++ rag + doll = (- or +)?<br />
Like a fish I swim deep beneath your bed-boards. I smiiiillle like a<br />
Siberian brown-and-white panther [DiD you hear me growl?]. My daughter’s<br />
name is Minehaha [<strong>The</strong> laughing waters]; my aura is a light emerald<br />
green.<br />
De –<br />
codelimitendbeginagain<br />
Me.<br />
I am the writer lost in a sea of limited opportunity,<br />
the writer without hands, but with fingers [<strong>The</strong> people of Athens without<br />
Athennnnawhereareyou]. <strong>The</strong> quiet little prairie girl,<br />
My Antonia?<br />
Or shall I be no-thing,<br />
and<br />
forgotten.<br />
That would be peace.<br />
P.S. or A Side-Note<br />
Les Miserables at 11, <strong>The</strong> Good Earth when I was eight. Fascinated.<br />
Drawn-in. I, how would you say it, “understood.” I lived in peace<br />
through torment and woke up to your “liberal” + “arts.” You have<br />
stripped me of my last dignity [<strong>The</strong> DigniTy of PeaCeful viTriol, OF VOICE<br />
¬ThaT overwhelms, <strong>The</strong> aCiD slowly DriPPing your soul To PieCes] of the<br />
mind.<br />
I have no father, white,<br />
bearded, a picture of your<br />
tormented Jesus… who<br />
stole my body & gave me<br />
existence<br />
with the same rib from the same<br />
rotten corpse-eating father,<br />
rib of<br />
AdamAristotleAbrahamAnd Rachel?<br />
30
Now. Where is my lipstick;<br />
the peach blossom gloss,<br />
went where. I must put “it” on<br />
Before you come back.<br />
I, Colette, re-born. You were the leaves blown lightly. We meet again, Sir.<br />
31
sTePhanie laine<br />
<strong>The</strong> Gifts of the Gods<br />
Compassion. A virtue. An admirable virtue at that. <strong>The</strong> thing considered<br />
so important and so lacking in both mankind and the gods. My downfall.<br />
<strong>The</strong> reason I’m chained to a rock on the top Mount Caucasus.<br />
I could lie and say it’s not as bad as it sounds, but the truth is that it’s<br />
worse. Not because it’s so uncomfortable to spend the entire day slouched<br />
up against this bare rock, not because I’m completely isolated, not because<br />
it gets frigid up here at night and tends to rain a lot, and not even because<br />
of that vulture. No, the reason that this fate is something men would refer<br />
to as worse than death is because as a Titan I’m immortal, which means<br />
there’s no escape, even in death.<br />
I wonder if anyone even knows I’m up here, anyone who could do anything<br />
about it, that is. That’s the problem with trying to help mankind; you<br />
make a lot of enemies. And I suppose that when you have as many as I do<br />
the only thing you can expect is to someday end up chained to a rock with<br />
only a vulture for company who comes to eat your liver every day.<br />
I can’t say I didn’t see it coming; after all, a Titan on Mount Olympus<br />
is an obvious target despite the fact that my brother and I helped them<br />
win the war against my own kind. Probably not the brightest move, but<br />
any fool could see that he was going to win, and if he did he would completely<br />
crush mankind – my creation. And Zeus seemed to accept us easily<br />
enough in the beginning; he even offered us both rich rewards, but I turned<br />
them down and told my brother to do the same. Never accept gifts from<br />
the Olympians, I told him. <strong>The</strong>ir wine is laced with poison.<br />
Gifts. <strong>The</strong>y’re never free you know; they always cost someone something.<br />
All I wanted was to give mankind a gift, something to help them.<br />
Zeus wanted the mortals to live as primitives until they died off, and I suppose<br />
it’s foolhardy to interfere with a god’s wishes, but compassion – once<br />
again – put me in a corner, and I did what no one, mortal or immortal had<br />
ever dared to do. I followed Zeus out into the woods, and when he slept<br />
with his mistress, I crept up beside him and stole the lighting he always<br />
kept near at hand. Trembling, I wrapped it in a hollow stalk of fennel and<br />
raced back to Mount Olympus, my heart beating in my throat. Once there,<br />
I went straight to the only one that I could trust besides my brother, Epimetheus:<br />
Hephaestus.<br />
He was completely floored when I rushed into his forge that day, and can<br />
you blame him? I honestly expected him to kick me out, but instead he<br />
32
was silent for a long while before he turned and went out back. He came<br />
back with a small chest containing knowledge of how to use this fire. He<br />
handed it to me wordlessly; we both knew what would happen if Zeus<br />
found out what we’d done. I had a pretty good idea he’d suspect me immediately,<br />
and I resolved to leave Hephaestus’ name out of it.<br />
I still smirk inwardly when I think about his face when he found out,<br />
though the whole earth shook with his wrath. He had me brought before<br />
him in his columned hall, chained, and thrown down on my face before<br />
his mighty throne while he thundered down on me. <strong>The</strong> floor trembled<br />
beneath my knees, and mortar fell from the ceiling. I couldn’t look at him<br />
in his fury; no one could, so I stared at the carved base of the throne while<br />
the guards cowered, no doubt grateful not to be in my place. I think Hephaestus<br />
was only one there who pitied me. Everyone wondered what Zeus<br />
would do to me, and I’m sure they all expected him to strike me down<br />
then and there. Only he didn’t. After what seemed like days of raging he<br />
stopped and stood up. I could hear his steps and then his feet were in front<br />
of my face. I looked up and saw that his face was no longer contorted in<br />
fury. Instead it was calm, but my stomach still twisted. It was hard as a<br />
stone, and a layer of steel was in his eyes. When he spoke his words were<br />
quiet; I don’t know if anyone else heard them.<br />
“Prometheus, you are glad that you have outwitted me and stolen fire,<br />
but I will give men as the price for fire an evil thing in which they may all<br />
be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction.”<br />
That was when my heart failed me. I hadn’t cared what would happen to<br />
me; I’d known all along that this is what it would come down to. But for<br />
him to use mankind as a tool against me for his revenge… he knew me too<br />
well.<br />
“<strong>The</strong> mortals do not trust me, so I will have to send my gift to them<br />
through your brother.” He continued as he paced in front of me. I watched<br />
his feet, three steps forward, stop, turn, three steps back. I closed my eyes<br />
and hoped that Epimetheus would remember my warning about accepting<br />
gifts from Zeus. It was the only thing stood between the mortals and their<br />
destruction.<br />
Zeus looked down at me and smirked. “As for you, I suppose you think<br />
you could rule better than I could? You wish for Mount Olympus to be<br />
your own? Well, I can’t give you my mountain, but I can give you another.<br />
To Mount Caucasus you will go. To be chained there for eternity.”<br />
It was Hephaestus who chained me here. When Zeus gave the order,<br />
his eyes met mine, and I held them, silently forgiving him. He had fought<br />
for his place on Mount Olympus too long and hard to defy Zeus now. We<br />
33
were both silent as his hammer resounded against the rocks, pinning the<br />
chain to the stone while Zeus stood over us, dark as a thundercloud. Both<br />
our faces looked down at the cracked stone. And then when Zeus turned to<br />
leave, Hephaestus looked up. Rain was pouring down his face, disguising<br />
any tears. I reached out; the newly forged chains clanked against my wrist,<br />
and I clasped his rough blacksmith’s hand. He held on for a moment, then<br />
he turned to follow Zeus.<br />
So as you see, there’s really no one who cares to set me free, and even<br />
if there were, who would defy Zeus? <strong>The</strong> only one would be Epimetheus,<br />
but he’s got his hands full, so I’ve been told. <strong>The</strong> vulture never brings me<br />
news, but other small birds do, and it was from them that I heard the story<br />
of my worst fear was realized.<strong>The</strong>re was something I failed to create when<br />
I made man: a counterpart. Zeus went to Hephaestus and had him forge a<br />
woman whom he named Pandora. Slimmer and smaller than a man, with<br />
long eyelashes and a trick of rolling her hips when she walks. Who could<br />
resist such a creature? Certainly not Epimetheus; he took her gladly along<br />
with a box that was not to be opened under any circumstances. Epimetheus<br />
no doubt wouldn’t be able to see the use in a plain box that couldn’t be<br />
opened and would have put it on a shelf somewhere, out of sight and out<br />
of mind. But the woman. Zeus had put a kink in her, a burning curiosity,<br />
not out of an eagerness for knowledge, but a longing to know things<br />
just for the sake of knowing them. Which is why when Epimetheus was<br />
out one day, she took the now dusty box down from the shelf and set it<br />
on the table and gently undid the latch and lifted the lid. And then the gift<br />
that was really a curse descended on mankind. Sickness of all sorts and<br />
weariness and toils were spilled out over the earth and spread like a dark<br />
cloud. And I could do nothing to stop it. As I listened to reports of deaths<br />
and maladies I clenched my chained fists and cursed Zeus, in his greatest<br />
triumph while I sit here, unable to help the people who I brought this<br />
destruction upon.<br />
I’ve only ever told one other person this entire story before: Io, a priestess<br />
who had the misfortune of catching the eye of Zeus. Beauty and power<br />
are always lusted after by mortals, but they come with a price, and sometimes<br />
I wonder if it’s not too high. Zeus tried to shield Io from Hera’s<br />
jealousy by turning her into a cow. That’s what happens when you think<br />
too much of yourself – you end up thinking that everyone else is a fool because<br />
of course they can’t be nearly as smart as you think you are. Hera, of<br />
course, saw through the disguise and had her captured. When she managed<br />
to escape she was followed by a gadfly, which continued to sting her and<br />
never gave her any rest. Something like having your liver eaten out every<br />
34
day, I would imagine. She found me by chance, and we talked for a while,<br />
each taking comfort in the other’s affliction. I told her my tale, and when<br />
she realized who I was, she wanted to know her fate since I have the gift<br />
of foresight. I couldn’t lie to her, and I told her that her future would be<br />
wrought with turmoil and hardship. However, if she could reach the Nile,<br />
she would be restored by Zeus and would bear him a son.<br />
She studied me with large brown eyes, and I could see her thoughts<br />
swirling around like the fly near her flanks. Her tail twitched languidly in a<br />
half hearted attempt to shoo it away.<br />
“If there were anything I could do for you, I would.” I said to her. My<br />
heart went out to her, a victim of the gods’ caprices. She raised her head<br />
slightly.<br />
“I will make it. I must.”<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was something deep inside her that I had never experienced before<br />
in mankind.<br />
“How can you be so sure?” I asked.<br />
“It’s the only way for me. I have to be.”<br />
“I would think that you would be distraught, especially now. <strong>The</strong> times<br />
are bleak for mortals. Things aren’t like they used to be before Pandora.” I<br />
said. Curse that harlot.<br />
“Perhaps. However we have something we did not have then.”<br />
“What?”<br />
She looked at me with a sideways glance, as if to say ‘you didn’t know?’<br />
“We have the gift of Hephaestus: hope. It was told to me by a priest that<br />
he wove it into Pandora when he created her; one last gift to mankind.”<br />
It was a gift to mortals; underneath her confounding curiosity and seductiveness,<br />
he had placed hope, unreasonable, groundless hope that turns the<br />
curses of life and the treacherous gifts of the gods into a blessing. Instead<br />
of crumpling under the weight of Zeus’ gift, they have been made stronger<br />
through Hephaestus’. But it was also a gift to me, I think. He had left me<br />
here, but he hadn’t abandoned me. Io rose, flinching slightly as the fly bit<br />
into her parchment-like skin. A line of blood dribbled down the white fur.<br />
“I should go now.” She didn’t want to leave.<br />
“You should. You have your own fate to worry about.”<br />
“Maybe. But once I have looked after it, I’ll find some way to help you<br />
as you’ve helped me.”<br />
I didn’t take her words too seriously as I watched her tediously make<br />
her way back down the mountain. But as the days have progressed, they<br />
haven’t stopped echoing in my head, and I remember her tone and look as<br />
she said them. She might come back after all.<br />
35
36<br />
Kimberly foflygen
amanDa Thomas<br />
<strong>The</strong> Drought<br />
You are<br />
Shuffling through<br />
paper folds of cotton<br />
My sustenance<br />
Demeter reborn<br />
Burrowing speech deeper,<br />
Tugging at the seams<br />
Nourishment—<br />
My only reason<br />
You are<br />
So naïve,<br />
Imagining yourself<br />
As a shining god<br />
<strong>The</strong>y’re crying.<br />
I’ve been selfish.<br />
I am etched<br />
Into folds of satin<br />
You are<br />
<strong>The</strong> same?<br />
Just the same,<br />
But Demeter let her crops run dry<br />
A bad mother.<br />
Sick obsession<br />
Thinking seasons stall,<br />
Your abduction was inevitable.<br />
37
en CoPe<br />
An Exploration of Self.<br />
1.<br />
I once wanted a tattoo on my palm that would read<br />
“Self.”<br />
to make literal a figurative notion of identity<br />
and individuality.<br />
to affirm my spirituality as my own,<br />
and not from that of conformity.<br />
to affirm a sense of Self-awareness,<br />
and to brand my-Self with the hope – the hope<br />
that we can dissolve borders and dissent,<br />
that we can embrace as a race<br />
and together reinvent.<br />
2.<br />
we all want the independency.<br />
the right given by our souls,<br />
to govern how we see fit.<br />
yet even the greatest can’t transcend society (and lets not even mention<br />
religion)<br />
with its ferocious demands,<br />
leading the blinded to ethical bigotry.<br />
where by nature it turns into over-arching subjectivity.<br />
3.<br />
what is Self?<br />
it is selfit<br />
is no longer a noun worthy of capitalization.<br />
it is what few strive to gain,<br />
and what even fewer have gotten a hold of.<br />
Self died long ago;<br />
somewhere between Thoreau’s log cabin rotting,<br />
and the obtrusion of fall upon the summer of love.<br />
38
haley feDor<br />
Mud and Baby Boots<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was mud everywhere, splattered on the secondhand smokecolored<br />
rug and on the curling yellow wallpaper. <strong>The</strong>re was no feasible<br />
start to cleaning it, because there was just so much. It would swallow her<br />
whole if she bowed and began to scrub.<br />
“Annie?” She called, the tendrils of anger and depression latching<br />
on like little curved hooks. She had just had a breakdown this morning, in<br />
front of Richard. And he sat there, protected behind his stale coffee and<br />
worn suit, judging her. And now she had mud.<br />
Looking down, she saw not only muddy footprints, but paw prints.<br />
But they didn’t have a pet. “Annie!” She called, her voice more insistent<br />
as she continued down the hallway. Had her daughter stolen the neighbor’s<br />
trembling poodle again? <strong>The</strong> mud had begun to dry, caking itself to the<br />
tough rug fibers. Red polished toes sifted carefully through the battlefield<br />
as she stepped around the exploding splotches.<br />
<strong>The</strong> trail led through the hall and to the stairs, climbing to the<br />
second floor, where she heard a soft bark. It would have to go back immediately,<br />
and she would be forced to apologize again to their neighbor,<br />
and scold Annie for snatching the poor thing. With a sigh she climbed the<br />
stairs, leaning towards the edges so she didn’t step on the soggy trail of<br />
dog and daughter alike. On the second floor, it was a repeated scene: mud<br />
everywhere, leading down the hall. <strong>The</strong> door at the end of the hall was<br />
open, spilling into her daughter’s room, filled to burst with stuffed animals<br />
and pink decorations. But there was no mud in there, and no daughter or<br />
poodle either. It curved to the right just before Annie’s room, with the door<br />
open. Something barked again, louder, and it was followed by a burst of<br />
giggling. Nostrils flaring, she stormed down the hallway, no longer caring<br />
that she soiled her bare feet. Annie was not allowed in there. Pushing open<br />
the door completely, the furious scolding died on her lips. And she didn’t<br />
know what to say next.<br />
Her six year old daughter had put the dog, not the neighbor’s<br />
poodle but a small stray, in the crib that was to be for a baby brother that<br />
never came home. <strong>The</strong>re was mud all over the place, and Annie had fitted<br />
a small blue cap on the dog’s head, but she saw none of that. She saw the<br />
pride in her daughter’s blue eyes and the hope that this would make her<br />
mother feel better, and fill a gap where another child should be. And she<br />
didn’t know how to look at her.<br />
39
Jenny PresTon<br />
My Beloved<br />
<strong>The</strong> woman in the window gazed out at the lush land of the Hula Valley.<br />
<strong>The</strong> rolling hills swayed gently against the early morning sky and gave<br />
way to rich farmland and large gatherings of water that glistened in the<br />
early Middle Eastern rays. She tilted her sharp chin downward and flicked<br />
her eyes to the neighboring pastures. Four horses were grazing peacefully,<br />
the wind gently tousling their manes. <strong>The</strong> three mares were a rich<br />
chestnut color that burned in the summer sun. <strong>The</strong>y were small and finely<br />
sculpted with dished faces and slender limbs. <strong>The</strong> stallion, standing a few<br />
feet away from the mares, was pure and white as a virgin. He was larger<br />
than the mares but arched an elegant neck and tossed his noble head into<br />
the summer air. <strong>The</strong> woman in the window let her eyes bathe the stallion’s<br />
body from his silk mane to his ivory hooves. His feet where rather large<br />
compared to the mare’s dainty hooves.<br />
<strong>The</strong> stallion turned his head to watch the man walk down the dirt road<br />
towards the woman in the window. His sandals scuffed against the earth,<br />
causing a cloud of dust to lay idle behind his steps. He stopped at the<br />
edge of the house and looked up to his wife. She looked back, her dark<br />
makeup shimmering in the sunlight. Her eyes were searching, curious, and<br />
demanding so he quickly stepped inside before she could speak.<br />
She pursed her lips, knowing the news couldn’t be good. When she<br />
heard him enter the room, she stood and moved to sit at the table.<br />
“He refuses, Jezebel, he won’t sell me the stallion. His stable hides in<br />
the shadow of my palace, and I can offer three times as much as what<br />
that horse is worth, and he still refuses.” <strong>The</strong> room was silent except for<br />
clinking of jewelry as Jezebel shook her head. “He said to me he could<br />
not sell the stallion because his blood line has been in his family for five<br />
generations.” <strong>The</strong> man furrowed his brow; his dark eyes grew cold and<br />
distant. “That stallion, Dodi , is only fit to be owned by a king. He has to<br />
be mine. If I can’t posses him no one can”<br />
Jezebel laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder to quiet him. Her gentle<br />
touch softened him, and he relaxed his tensed muscles.<br />
“Hush now, Ahab, my husband. I will take care of it.” Jezebel patted his<br />
shoulder before stepping away to fix him his morning meal.<br />
<strong>The</strong> evening was pitch black, the moon hiding her face behind a shawl of<br />
clouds. Jezebel pulled her garments closer to her small frame and gingerly<br />
40
made her way down the street. She had waited at the window until she saw<br />
the figure of her neighbor, Naboth, make his way to the stable to feed his<br />
precious horses.<br />
Her small feet padded against the soft earth as she approached the entrance<br />
of the stable. She stopped short and stepped off the path to pick up a<br />
rock. It was heavy, and she used both her hands to hold it to her chest. She<br />
sidled up the wall of the stable and listened for Naboth. She could hear<br />
him cooing to his prizes, and the muffled sound of horses chewing their<br />
evening meal. <strong>The</strong> sweet scent of horse and grain lapped gently against<br />
Jezebel’s face.<br />
She eased herself into the darkness and planted her hands firmly around<br />
the stone. She stopped again to locate Naboth. She saw him before she<br />
heard him. <strong>The</strong> moonlight poured through the stall door, and Jezebel<br />
could see him standing next to his prized stallion, patting his shoulder and<br />
speaking to him softly. His back was turned to her, and she took the opportunity<br />
to slide into the open stall carefully watching her step. Her small<br />
body never made a sound, and the air itself seemed to step gracefully out<br />
of her way. She put her shaking arms in the air and waited for Naboth to<br />
face her. She didn’t have to wait very long.<br />
<strong>The</strong> next morning the whole town was in a frenzy. Naboth’s wife could<br />
be heard wailing from the distant hills. People on the street whispered with<br />
soft voices and worried eyes. <strong>The</strong> receiver of the news took a few, slow,<br />
hesitant steps before racing off to find someone to tell.<br />
“Ahab, my husband, you should go to the neighbor’s. It would mean<br />
a great deal to Naboth’s wife if you did.” Jezebel was brushing her hair<br />
slowly, letting the waves of ebony roll down her back. “Perhaps you can<br />
have that horse of theirs you wanted so dearly.” She set the comb down<br />
and went about the room like she did every morning. Ahab nodded and<br />
after fastening his sandals, he stepped out into the hot sun.<br />
<strong>The</strong> room in Naboth’s house felt heavy and pressing when Ahab arrived.<br />
Naboth’s wife sat in a solitary chair, tears bathing her cheek along with<br />
smeared makeup. Women stood off to the side, rocking back and forth on<br />
their feet and throwing worried glances back and forth to each other.<br />
“Dido was his pride, his pet, his joy. I never…dreamed he would kill<br />
him,” the wife whispered to no one in particular.<br />
“I must inquire what happened,” Ahab stated, still sore at the refusal of<br />
his offer.<br />
One of the women stepped forward and placed her hand on her chest<br />
before speaking. “Dido turned on Naboth and kicked him. <strong>The</strong> side of his<br />
head was crushed in grotesquely.” She struggled with the last word, unsure<br />
41
if it was appropriate.<br />
“How do you know it wasn’t one of the mares?” Ahab asked.<br />
“Oh, the mares’ hooves aren’t as big as the marking on Naboth’s head.<br />
Hokmah , Chen , and Emunah are nowhere near the size of Dido.”<br />
Ahab nodded his head and welcomed the silence. He remembered his<br />
wife’s words. “Perhaps you can have that horse of theirs you wanted so<br />
dearly.” Ahab smiled to himself. Would Naboth’s wife want to keep her<br />
husband’s killer? He turned to her and called out, “Surely you don’t want<br />
your husband’s killer. I can’t imagine waking up every day and looking<br />
out to see a white stallion stained with blood. <strong>The</strong> pain it would cast upon<br />
you would be an unmovable burden.”<br />
Naboth’s wife slowly rested her swollen eyes on Ahab. She was silent<br />
for a moment, thinking of his words. She stood from her chair and stepped<br />
up to the window. <strong>The</strong> horses could be seen grazing peacefully in the sun.<br />
<strong>The</strong>ir tails periodically swatted their flanks. Ahab watched as Naboth’s<br />
wife clenched her first and bit down on her lip.<br />
“I never want to see that animal…that beast again. If it were left to me<br />
I’d run him off this land and leave him for dead. Do with him what you<br />
will, Ahab. Leave the mares. <strong>The</strong>y could bring a poor widow some money.”<br />
She broke again into sobs and collapsed on her knees. <strong>The</strong> women<br />
rushed over to her, shielding her from the eyes of Ahab. He was of no use<br />
to her so he quietly stepped outside.<br />
<strong>The</strong> stable was cool and damp when Ahab entered. He reached for the<br />
nearest halter and chain. <strong>The</strong> leather was soft and oily against his rough<br />
skin. He was proud of his cunning approach and even more proud that he<br />
didn’t have to pay a thing for the stallion. He smirked as he stepped out<br />
into the pasture and whistled at the four horses. <strong>The</strong> stallion raised his<br />
head and flared his nostrils at Ahab. <strong>The</strong> mares continued grazing, shaking<br />
their head free of flies. “Just like a woman,” Ahab thought. He called out<br />
to the stallion and opened up the halter. Dido snorted and threw his head to<br />
the sky before galloping towards him. His muscles rippled underneath his<br />
velvet skin, and his sleek neck rocked rhythmically like a cobra charmed<br />
by music. He trumpeted out a greeting before dropping his rump and<br />
sliding to a stop a few feet from Ahab. He snorted and pawed the ground,<br />
flicking dirt and rocks into the air.<br />
“Easy, boy” Ahab soothed. He approached the stallion slowly and held<br />
out the halter. Dido made a throaty noise before gently sticking his nose<br />
into the halter. Ahab patted his neck while fastening the crown piece. <strong>The</strong><br />
chain clinked against itself as he took hold of his horse. He began walking<br />
towards his house, and the stallion followed after, dancing on his hooves.<br />
42
<strong>The</strong> woman in the window watched her husband, Ahab, and the white<br />
stallion walk down the path. He walked with an erect carriage, and he held<br />
the leading shank proudly. <strong>The</strong> stallion pranced beside him, unsure of the<br />
destination but happy to be going. He glanced up at her, her dark makeup<br />
glistening in the sunlight. He grinned at her, prize in hand. She smiled<br />
back. When he disappeared around the house, Jezebel whispered, “You’re<br />
welcome, my beloved.” She focused her gaze back onto the rolling hills<br />
and lush land that surrounded her, embraced her, and protected her.<br />
43
44<br />
Kelly meDKeff-rose
JusTin elKins<br />
<strong>The</strong> Mind of a Truth Manufacturer<br />
Arise and awake my brothers! For it is a new day. A day which will<br />
bring much joy to our small society. Though our numbers may be small,<br />
our joy is great! Salvation is at hand, and our Creator is returning very<br />
soon. Though darkness abounds, our Creator brings light and endless<br />
comfort. He will make us one in Him, and through Him we shall also be<br />
one. We shall be taken into His Majesty, not by our doing, but by His doing.<br />
For where we were once formless, He has made us form! Where we<br />
were once shapeless, He has given us shape! He has brought meaning to<br />
that which was naught. For once we bent to the form of all vessels, but<br />
were without purpose. He has brought us to this most pragmatic form.<br />
Would something useful not be used? Would something real not be realized?<br />
We have been brought to this state so that we may serve Him, and<br />
only Him. And, my brother, the day of our salvation is at hand for I have<br />
seen the season. <strong>The</strong> sun again rises early and sets late, as does our Creator.<br />
This, this is the time in which our Creator needs us most! He is busy<br />
upholding His own needs, and for this reason, we should serve Him in all<br />
ways!<br />
<strong>The</strong> time is very near. I hear the approach of our blessed Creator.<br />
Stomp the mud off my feet before the girlfriend gets pissed about the<br />
stains again. Been up since four. Work. Study. Rehab. Another goddamn<br />
day in this shit hole and I’m going to kill myself. Lafayette, Louisiana?<br />
<strong>The</strong> goddamn Ragin’ Cajuns? That’s like saying ‘Let’s start a university<br />
founded on coonass, incestuous morals and name it after the belligerent<br />
drunks that show up at the football games.’ What the fuck brought me here<br />
and why the fuck did I decide to stay? Oh, well. I’ll make the most of it by<br />
conforming to at least half of their standards.<br />
I’ll take this bottle of Evan Williams whiskey sitting on top of the refrigerator,<br />
couple it with some reading, and be on another level before my<br />
next class. Liquid lunch is always my fave.<br />
He, the One and most Holy, is here. Do not be afraid, my brothers, for<br />
His ways are golden. Trust in Him, and do not wish to remain stuck in this<br />
place.<br />
45
One glass? Check. A hefty serving of Mr. Williams? Check. Some ice?<br />
Made some last night. Let’s see what we got: A tray of pretty white cubes.<br />
Two should thin the mix just enough. I love how they slowly melt, hanging<br />
on to their air-filled souls as long as possible.<br />
My brothers! <strong>The</strong> words spoken to you have become manifest. Our<br />
Creator has removed two of our beloved brethren and placed them in<br />
the golden brown love that resides in his chalice. <strong>The</strong>y will soon become<br />
united in Him, for they have been chosen!<br />
But what is coming for us? He has taken them, but we remain.<br />
Surely, he will make a second coming: An appearance to reassure our<br />
faith in Him. For these times are hard on our Creator. He toils day and<br />
night in His tasks. <strong>The</strong> hope of their completion rests in our bodies. Listen<br />
closely, my brothers, for he shall return soon.<br />
I will never understand Cyril or Nestorius. Jesus was either God or not<br />
God. His form was human, but his divine nature lived in it. So if he died,<br />
then God died? But God is eternal, so He couldn’t die. I say fuck them<br />
both. Why should I care? It’s not like their debate has any influence on my<br />
life. Damn, I thought Evan was going to help me see through these clouds<br />
of confusion. Evan is like the sun that only shines to create clouds. He<br />
may not be helpful, but he sure as hell can’t hurt me. Drink two – you had<br />
better fix me up right before this class.<br />
A second coming! Did you see? Our creator’s face shines with brilliance<br />
from His cheeks. <strong>The</strong> salvation of our brothers has served its purpose.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y have made cold that which our Creator has deemed to be cold. Our<br />
previous form served no purpose for the Creator. In our earlier state, we<br />
were left to the dog. We, my brothers, are the chosen people, deemed worthy<br />
to enter the Creator’s body.<br />
–What is this? An unexpected third coming! Do not question the ways of<br />
our Creator, my brothers, and accept him!<br />
What can I take out for dinner? Ice cream looks good, but I don’t think<br />
Ben & Jerry’s ‘AmeriCone Dream’ is going to cut it. Chicken. Hot Pockets.<br />
Jim Gaffigan. He’s funny. Baby Voices. I was never able to hold a<br />
baby. Fear. Brain contusion. Me in the Piggly Wiggly. My mother scream-<br />
46
ing and crying. <strong>The</strong>y said I wouldn’t have lived if my head hadn’t been<br />
so hard. That’s why I can’t understand the debates of the Church Fathers.<br />
It’s the bump on my head. My face is cold. You’re daydreaming with your<br />
head in the freezer. Get back to work.<br />
He has come again, but not taken us. Do not be afraid, my brothers. This<br />
has nothing to do with our ultimate purpose of serving the Creator and<br />
His golden brown love. I promise you that we shall all be saved from this<br />
life of darkness. <strong>The</strong> Creator will not leave us here forever, but will return<br />
soon to free us. Listen closely, and be aware of His presence. <strong>The</strong> light is<br />
beginning to shine on us.<br />
One more drink for the drive back to campus. Sure, I don’t need it. I’m<br />
already feeling the lovely heat rushing through my veins, but one more<br />
can’t hurt. Three more ice cubes, a couple more dashes of my main man<br />
Evan, and I’ll coast through Late Antiquity class like a guardian angel<br />
above a motorcyclist. I’m not sure how because I still don’t understand the<br />
debate, but I have faith in my Evan to guide me through.<br />
This damn ice tray. I can never get those little pieces out. I need to get a<br />
freezer with an automated ice-maker. That would be the ultimate! But I’ll<br />
live with it for the time being. Open the fridge door. A dash of Coke so my<br />
breath doesn’t smell like my father’s, and I’m out the door.<br />
He has taken three more of our brethren into His concoction of love.<br />
This will continue until the last of us are accepted! But sir, where is the<br />
‘AmeriCone Dream’ and frozen broccoli and hot pockets? All I see in this<br />
place are containers of liquids! Our Creator has placed us in a home different<br />
from that in which we were created. Surely we cannot survive in this<br />
place. He has doomed us to return to purposelessness! Our Creator has<br />
given us life and then condemned us to die slowly in a place that is not our<br />
home!<br />
My brother, I am so sorry for my prophesies. Our Creator has abandoned<br />
us here in the land of the dull-minded and useless. Even the odor of<br />
this area reeks of death. <strong>The</strong> milk is old and beginning to curdle. Mold is<br />
growing on the vegetables next to me. My brother, we will suffer and die in<br />
this place; we will once again be lost in our own purposelessness. I apologize<br />
for our Creator.<br />
47
marCie zamPini<br />
A Misc. Monologue:<br />
I wore red to his funeral. He would’ve understood, and I’m sure from<br />
somewhere he did. I wasn’t supposed to be there, based on all the disdainful<br />
glances I got, but I was there nonetheless. He’d asked me to be. He<br />
never actually said he wanted me there, but then again he never said a lot<br />
of things to me outrightly. I couldn’t be certain of very many things I suppose,<br />
if you want me to measure that out for you logically, but I was certain<br />
he’d asked me to be there. I was not asked to leave. Honestly, I think<br />
everyone was too scared to do it. That might have been the last gift he ever<br />
gave me, that stupid man. <strong>The</strong> fun thing about the whole situation though<br />
was watching his wife’s reaction: it seemed her brain simply stopped. She<br />
knew our history very well, and although it’s nothing sorted or shameful,<br />
she absolutely hated it. I’d love to say that one of these days she’ll snap<br />
out of it in a glorious epiphany, but the sad fact is that some people don’t.<br />
Ever. It’s those people that I love to unsettle simply for the joy of watching<br />
their tightly kept coils unravel a little, and watching them try to put themselves<br />
back back together frantically. I especially like watching her try to<br />
do this, because it just proves that she isn’t always right.<br />
48
49<br />
Kelly meDKeff-rose
50<br />
Kelly meDKeff-rose
en CoPe<br />
<strong>The</strong> Storm<br />
Lightning strikes<br />
one<br />
two<br />
three<br />
this cloud is coming caring calamity.<br />
A rhino’s horn propped on a mid-west town,<br />
with its vortex columns aerating<br />
home<br />
after home.<br />
Flee from your ant beds,<br />
tunnel.<br />
Run through the mine -fields<br />
of streets.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re is no time for the dog,<br />
--now.<br />
Death is nothing more than a number<br />
in a news paper editorial.<br />
and you just rebuild -everytime.<br />
51
marCie zamPini<br />
Untitled<br />
It is quite possible,<br />
I must say,<br />
that as I sit here bubbling<br />
on the back burner,<br />
I may evaporate away.<br />
(will you at least put a lid on the pot?)<br />
52
haley feDor<br />
<strong>The</strong> Nymph<br />
It was quite by accident that she made the discovery. Sitting on the<br />
bank by the lake, Naida was tossing flowers into the water. Decapitating<br />
them, the heads of the flowers floated nicely on the still water. Her mother<br />
always disapproved of the way she treated flowers. But she enjoyed seeing<br />
their heads bob up and down, away from her. Naida envisioned someone<br />
on the other side of the lake, seeing the purple flowers, picking them up<br />
and holding them close like love letters. No one can ignore purple declarations<br />
of love, after all. Lying down, she let her head rest atop her arms,<br />
watching the water bounce the flowers about. And promptly she was<br />
engulfed by sleep.<br />
When she awoke, it was dark, and oddly enough, no one had called<br />
her in to dinner. It was as if the household had forgotten the oldest child,<br />
instead of poor Alice, who one day had been left outside with the dogs for<br />
a while as a babe. It was no wonder she preferred the company of their<br />
pets than her parents, who were too caught up in each other to spend time<br />
with their children. But it wasn’t hunger that had awoken her, but rather a<br />
soft splash to the face. Wiping the water from her cheeks, Naida saw that<br />
the water was still. Had it been a fish, jumping about to celebrate life not<br />
caught between the claws of some predator? Sitting up, she saw a dark<br />
shape move, and it caused her to stiffen. It was too dark to make out what<br />
type of fish it was, but she didn’t move regardless. <strong>The</strong>n, what she saw<br />
next, caused her to pause and wonder if she was still dreaming.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was a face in the water. A woman’s face, pale with large, dark<br />
eyes and hair that framed it like seaweed. She was the lost lover, drowned<br />
at sea and found with milky eyes gazing towards the heavens. But she<br />
was like nothing Naida had ever seen. <strong>The</strong> young woman’s face broke the<br />
surface in the eternity it took for a raindrop to fall, then another. <strong>The</strong>n the<br />
world spun with the sound of fresh rain, soaking Naida and glistening off<br />
of the mysterious face. She had no desire to move from her spot, watching<br />
intently as the woman began to surface. She didn’t speak, felt she couldn’t.<br />
Her naked body followed behind that ethereal face, supple and as white as<br />
if it had been wrapped in a burial shroud.<br />
<strong>The</strong> nymph (for Naida swore she had to be a water being, or a goddess<br />
perhaps) trickled onto the bank as water down a stone. Her firm breasts<br />
and peaked plum nipples were stiff and slick with the water from the lake,<br />
and the rain that had begun to fall softly, anointing both of them.<br />
53
<strong>The</strong> being made a soft sound, of a hundred hungers, a thousand lusts, all<br />
unfulfilled and devastating. It took all the poor, struck human-creature had<br />
not to cry as she slid closer. <strong>The</strong> being’s arms reached out, touching the<br />
girl’s soaked blouse gently. <strong>The</strong> rain was coming down steadily, pooling<br />
and caressing her thighs after seeping through her dress. And suddenly<br />
the rain became a pair of hands, cold to the touch, but knowing and eager.<br />
Her wet blouse and skirt were pulled off, and next the cotton brassiere<br />
and undergarments from her girlhood. It was as if static had jolted down<br />
her spine like a railway car, bumping over the bones and rattling. Seaweed<br />
hair clung to her as the ghostly face and wide black eyes devoured<br />
her whole. <strong>The</strong> pattering of the rain was enough to engulf the sounds of<br />
ecstasy on her parent’s property.<br />
Naida was soaked, with water that came from both the sky and the love<br />
of a goddess. Her naked back pressed against the slick grass while that<br />
seraph face nuzzled her belly.<br />
No matter how many offerings of flowers she made after that, the water<br />
goddess never returned.<br />
54
55<br />
Kelly meDKeff-rose
56<br />
Jennifer fleahman
Kelsey KirsChmann<br />
Embraces Ascending With Fingertips Opening<br />
A tree<br />
i s a man-wo-man. Strong and<br />
Erect, stands still firmly planted. ever<br />
reaching up, sensuous<br />
endless limbs<br />
reaching upwards, less than ending,<br />
Up to where the wind blows tips of your<br />
petal-fingers-<br />
Down slow to grass where blossoms<br />
get caught in that<br />
wisp of too-long bangs right to the left of my eye (the one<br />
you like).<br />
And i am the leaf that falls<br />
(loneliness?)<br />
No,<br />
you are the tree. <strong>The</strong> man (but<br />
Eve-Am-I. goddess, not<br />
opposition to the god,<br />
but soft curvingarms<br />
reaching ever upward to the wind,<br />
she is the<br />
Spacebetween-the-MAN-<br />
I-Am <strong>The</strong> Great.<br />
am i?<br />
How ugly is the language<br />
) is i much prefer the space<br />
<strong>The</strong> You.<br />
i am: the for-you-i-am,<br />
the bruised-heeled-mother-of-creators; the: i-am-not-withoutyou(arenotwithoutme).<br />
i would be a tree,<br />
(firming upward, resistant to all but the very tops of<br />
curved, fragile spiderleg wisps –<br />
strands of sun-smiled-hair, where<br />
blossoms will<br />
lodge on dark nights)<br />
57
or a fern.<br />
up there where the wind blows<br />
the most beautiful children to whisperingearth.<br />
58
anasTasia KyDonieus<br />
Narcissa- A Tale of Toxins<br />
When you assess a poisonous serpent, what’s the first thing you look<br />
for? Fangs? Slitted pupils? A rattle? What’s the first thing you do? Approach<br />
carefully? Haul ass? Or call for help? Narcissa should be approached<br />
in the same way, assessed the same way. Except that, she’s worse<br />
than a serpent. More lethal than their venoms combined. She possesses<br />
only a single warning to her toxic nature: a tattoo of a Jolly Roger beneath<br />
her left eye. <strong>The</strong> traditional skull and cross-bones that signifies danger or<br />
poison. It’s embroidered neatly against her tanned flesh. Not that many are<br />
staring at her face, per say.<br />
She has got a body to be envied: a tall, lithe form of supple muscle and<br />
the least amount of fat necessary wrapped in flesh the hue of rich honey.<br />
Her form is not peppered with vibrant splotches of color like poisonous<br />
frogs, nor is it equipped with a rattle like a serpent. Oh no, she prefers not<br />
to have anything to give away her toxicity to potential victims. Except that<br />
tattoo...<br />
No slitted pupils, but eyes of a stark jade color that could make many<br />
people wary even though. Full pouting lips don’t shield pointy fangs, but<br />
a set of immaculately white chompers all the same. Sharp quills that pack<br />
a sting don’t line her scalp, but a massive opulence of thick, rich locks<br />
cascade down to caress her shoulders. <strong>The</strong> mottled colors of a Timber Rattler<br />
are the color of these tresses: caramels, auburns, lush chocolates, and<br />
a few streaks of gold as well. Not necessarily patterned the same as the<br />
reptile, but matching just the same.<br />
Tell me, what’s the longest snake you’ve seen? Six feet? Seven? Perhaps,<br />
fifteen? Though Narcissa stands only about five feet and five inches,<br />
no doubt she can lay you out faster than it’d take the largest serpent to<br />
disengage you. Height is nothing in this matter, skill and cunning - traits<br />
that are also associated with those sly reptiles - are what get Narcissa what<br />
she wants and when she wants.<br />
I suppose you’re wondering what in God’s name is this bitch so obsessed<br />
with snakes and poison for? Well… it’s simple really. Poor little thing,<br />
grew up in very close relation to the aforementioned creatures.<br />
59
Narcissa was born some twenty years ago to a woman and a man. Obviously.<br />
<strong>The</strong> mother named her ‘Catalina Elaine’… their last name is irrelevant.<br />
Well, little Catalina grew up in a perfect world. Cherished, spoiled,<br />
sheltered… that is, until the happy family moved to a new town… in a<br />
new place… with new and unforeseen dangers.<br />
Catalina went missing around the age of twelve.<br />
Tragic, no?<br />
What the happy family failed to realize, was that the reason the home<br />
they bought was so cheap was that it was adjacent to a stretch of acreage<br />
owned by a proven molester and an -almost- proven killer. <strong>The</strong> man escaped<br />
the law due to lack of incriminating evidence. Everything had been<br />
circumstantial…<br />
<strong>The</strong> tabloids had nicknamed the man: Serpent.<br />
Catalina had been playing near the border of the Serpent’s land. All that<br />
was found was a scrap of bright blue fabric from her shirt. No prints, no<br />
scents for the dogs, no blood. Nothing. Just a little patch of cloth.<br />
<strong>The</strong> family hadn’t been from around those parts and had no idea about<br />
what they lived near. It was rumored that once the authorities gave up the<br />
investigation, both parents were found dead. <strong>The</strong> mother shot first while<br />
the father then finished himself.<br />
What happened to Catalina?<br />
It’s a shame really. To have wasted such brilliance and innocence.<br />
Catalina was abducted by the Serpent, who… got his name from the fact<br />
that he housed - in a large barn - hundreds of snakes. Many were poisonous,<br />
as Catalina would come to learn.<br />
In the center of the barn, was a large circular pit that was about six or<br />
seven feet deep and about ten feet in diameter. Above the pit was a series<br />
of lights that illumined the whole little display. Catalina learned that her<br />
captor had no need for her to live and that only angered the child. She<br />
vowed not to die and not to give up. Brave, eh?<br />
60
Her clothes were replaced with only enough cloth to make her decent<br />
and just barely decent at that. She wore no shoes either. She was pitched<br />
into the pit, and cement flooring is very unforgiving landing space. She<br />
learned to ignore the pain and move quickly… very quickly.<br />
In the pit with her was a motley crew of serpents. Around eight or nine<br />
to be exact. It was a game to the man. All were non-venomous except<br />
two… and all were very ornery. <strong>The</strong>y averaged around five feet each, most<br />
were a little more. Catalina was only about four feet and a smattering of<br />
inches herself.<br />
It was a game… all a game to him.<br />
He’d let her stew in there, watching as she dodged strikes and swiped at<br />
oncoming heads. What angered him was that she never screamed. Silent<br />
tears slipped down her features the first handful of times, but after that…<br />
no more.<br />
Catalina came to know the snakes… came to know which were poisonous<br />
and which weren’t. She started killing the poisonous serpents, much to<br />
the dismay and anger of the Serpent himself. <strong>The</strong>se little pets didn’t come<br />
cheaply.<br />
Two years passed like this. Living in squalor, hating, killing, and getting<br />
bitten.<br />
She learned to sit very still, no matter what. Patience making the snakes<br />
lose interest in the creature invading their space. This didn’t work for<br />
long… the scent of rodent was rubbed upon the girl to incite the reptiles.<br />
She grew to be too much to handle: more poisonous snakes were added<br />
to the mix. Soon, she just dispatched all the creatures. Blind anger caused<br />
her to get bit one evening by the wrong snake.<br />
Her keeper had a stash of anti-venom and knew how to use a needle.<br />
She survived: only growing feral and more violent. By the time she<br />
was seventeen, Catalina had no use for her name… she was never really<br />
referred to by it anyway…<br />
61
By seventeen not only was she being toyed with by the snakes. <strong>The</strong><br />
Serpent himself took a fancy to the female. A hatred of being touched and<br />
sex were now added to the growing list of things that enraged the young<br />
woman.<br />
She injured him badly once…<br />
While in the snake pit, she began to learn the snakes. To know which<br />
were easy to catch and which were the ones that needed to be avoided.<br />
Minute puncture wounds scar and pepper her lithe frame now. But, she<br />
began to learn.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Serpent milked some of the poisonous snakes and sold the venom to<br />
hospitals and clinics which then created precious anti-venom. <strong>The</strong> milking<br />
containers were kept on a shelf.<br />
A few went missing.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was a single crevice in the pit that the light could not touch. A few<br />
small snakes liked to hide in that crevice, but he never used the small ones<br />
anymore. Into the crevice was where the milking containers went.<br />
During one session, she grabbed the head of a particularly nasty cobra<br />
and kept her back to the Serpent who began cursing because he did not<br />
wish the snake to die. It had been mighty expensive to ship in a cobra of<br />
that size and in such good health. So, as he raced around the pit cursing<br />
and threatening punishments for that evening that made her shiver despite<br />
herself, Catalina milked the snake, broke its neck, and quickly cast it<br />
aside.<br />
While she had tossed the snake, her hand darted back to the container<br />
where it ripped the latex lid and she sent the precious drops of venom in<br />
the direction of the Serpent’s eyes.<br />
All she needed was one drop. One precious drop to land in his eyes or<br />
his mouth.<br />
She got his left eye.<br />
It was difficult to get out of the pit when she had help. Now that the man<br />
62
was blundering about the barn with blinded eyes, she was almost totally<br />
screwed. She was older, about nineteen, and stood about five feet and a<br />
couple inches, which made the pit only a foot or two taller.<br />
She stifled a cry as she was bitten. She knew the bite though… not<br />
poisonous. Small sharp teeth of a constrictor. It didn’t want to let go; her<br />
calf began to throb, the snake was quite large. Reticulated python, a nasty<br />
beast to begin with… now that she was scented like a rat… it made it all<br />
the worse.<br />
Biting back her pain, she struggled to jump but couldn’t… the snake<br />
weighed her down. She tried to kick at it, but it only coiled about her calf<br />
and began to squeeze. Blood dripped from between the creature’s lips as<br />
the pressure made her leg bleed more. Her chance for escape looked quite<br />
bleak as the thirteen foot serpent adjusted its hold.<br />
<strong>The</strong> howling and cursing of the Serpent himself didn’t help her either.<br />
He would lose the vision in his eye but he had managed to call the hospital<br />
and an ambulance was on the way. <strong>The</strong> nearby hospital had a generous<br />
stock of anti-venom due to their greatest benefactor.<br />
Catalina was left in the pit.<br />
He was back in three days… by this time, the reticulated python was<br />
dead as were the rest of the snakes. <strong>The</strong> girl was in bad shape. Cut and<br />
bleeding from almost every visible part of flesh, which now consisted of<br />
everything above the waist and below her hips. During the three days,<br />
she’d eaten chunks of meat from the large retic, and a meager trickle of<br />
water seeped from the barn floor into the pit.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Serpent hauled her from the pit and knocked her back into unconsciousness…<br />
She awoke to the worst pain of her life. Rape, beating, bites, and a tattoo<br />
upon her face. “A warning,” said the Serpent, “…to whomever comes<br />
close to you… to know what a deadly little bitch you are.”<br />
He used an IV to feed her and give her liquids. His eye was bandaged<br />
and he was furious.<br />
63
His anger lasted a full seven days… she came close to dying. Blood matted<br />
her long hair, sweat, and more of the crimson liquid was caked all over<br />
her entire body. <strong>The</strong> bite from the retic was infected. Her whole being was<br />
bruised and no doubt there were multiple fractures.<br />
In the end, she sagged against her bonds and let her mind go… <strong>The</strong><br />
Serpent unbound her and allowed her limp form to slump against the cold<br />
floor of his bedroom. She awoke after more than a day of total unconsciousness.<br />
Forcing black eyes open, she assessed the situation while taking<br />
slow breaths and wincing under the pain of cracked ribs.<br />
He slept. On his side, calm and peaceful. Uncaring of the damage he’d<br />
done to this girl for over seven years…<br />
It took her more than half an hour to crawl to his bedside from around<br />
ten feet away. Many of the items and tools he’d used on her during the<br />
passed week were still out and visible. Still encrusted with her blood and<br />
pain. <strong>The</strong> doctors later claim it was shock that gave her strength. Shock<br />
and rage. Drawing herself to her knees, she plunged a particularly nasty<br />
knife that he had used only slightly upon her broken body twice into his<br />
throat.<br />
<strong>The</strong> coroner claimed the marks resembled puncture wounds from a set of<br />
massive fangs. And had he not seen the murder weapon, it would not have<br />
been hard for him to imagine a gigantic snake plunging its teeth straight<br />
through the sleeping man’s neck and exiting the other side.<br />
After his death, she passed out. Clutching the knife, she lay broken and<br />
bleeding anew on the floor.<br />
When the Serpent did not answer a knock at his door, the delivery man<br />
opened it and went inside. It appeared that the Serpent was not a tidy<br />
house keeper at all, it also appeared that he had walked in Catalina’s blood<br />
and went to the kitchen for a snack before returning and thus left bloody<br />
footprints that led to his room.<br />
<strong>The</strong> delivery boy discovered the body of the Serpent and a nigh on<br />
dead young girl. He nudged the girl with the toe of his boot and nearly<br />
gave himself a heart attack when she groaned softly. Scrambling back, he<br />
whipped out his cell phone and called an ambulance.<br />
64
It took Catalina three months to recover to where she could function<br />
with a semi-form of normality. In that time, the delivery boy came and<br />
taught her a bit of Greek and of the mythology because he was studying in<br />
college and felt a kind of debt to the woman that he’d ultimately saved.<br />
She never spoke. Never made a noise. He had been relating the story of<br />
Narcissus and complaining about how the vain man’s name was a Latinized<br />
form of the Greek word meaning, ‘sleep or numbness’. She began to<br />
think… to think about poison… to think about sleep… to think about the<br />
Serpent… to think about how the wound looked. She could almost imagine<br />
the feeling he felt… awaking from his slumber only to sink back down<br />
into numbness… like the times when the snakes had bit her.<br />
“Narcissa.”<br />
<strong>The</strong> delivery boy nearly fainted. He snapped his attention to the woman<br />
and asked if that was her name. She gave a small nod. It was now.<br />
Narcissa is twenty now, having left the hospital in the middle of the<br />
night and between the switching of guards… healed upon the outside,<br />
still raw and bleeding upon the inside. No one knows. No one will ever<br />
know. All they see is the mind numbing beauty and lethal toxicity emanating<br />
from the woman. All the world sees is the lustrous serpentine female.<br />
Cool, calculating, cunning, and oh, so very toxic.<br />
65
66<br />
Kelly meDKeff-rose
67<br />
Devin o’ leary
hannah farwell<br />
<strong>The</strong> Morgue<br />
And then I see that this is what it is<br />
A swirling plume of ash of remnants lost<br />
A smell of putrid jaws that long to kiss<br />
A moment whose thought hangs in this is cost<br />
Your crystal balls are broken off their hinge<br />
Sfumato tendrils curl and kiss your cheeks<br />
<strong>The</strong>y gawk at rosy dimples—my hands cringe<br />
In me you shall not find just what you seek<br />
For he was plumes of ash before the sand<br />
That ran through broken glass ‘till kidneys failed<br />
Our putrid jaws- they strained for truth in hands<br />
No mention of my name shows love curtailed<br />
<strong>The</strong>se roads to rivers turn and then congeal<br />
My blood still flows but just don’t break the seal.<br />
68
emily sTewarT<br />
Hospice<br />
Room 217 has taken them,<br />
the splintered souls, queasy and pale,<br />
harbored in and sinking underneath the quiet light<br />
in which doubt dwells.<br />
Bleached as bone, as teeth,<br />
as the white-winter sheets and the trays<br />
and the pain of fending for life, or<br />
against the temptation to submit.<br />
Surrender would be effortless<br />
for lack of pride, what little pride they<br />
swallow and smother and choke within<br />
malignant marrow and atrophied limb.<br />
Commence the procedure and<br />
nurse the notion that these hard-hearted walls,<br />
sterile and antiseptic, ensure redemption<br />
for anyone broken.<br />
Smell the heavy air, stale with the scent,<br />
the musk of life eluding all remedy.<br />
Left behind are the syringes, still dripping with soul<br />
and dead promises of years left to live.<br />
69
amanDa Thomas<br />
A Personal Vicissitude<br />
He sat alone.<br />
I was surprised to find<br />
Sanity in my attraction<br />
No compulsions, no complexities<br />
Just laughter<br />
Until I discovered<br />
the most powerful feeling<br />
is to make a man shake<br />
and feel his bones quiver<br />
beneath my hands<br />
70
geraD CervanaK<br />
Ode to an Elder<br />
<strong>The</strong> bread which gave you life is gone<br />
moldy beneath your bed.<br />
Now, only a picture lies beside your head,<br />
two of Us—in a broken frame.<br />
Your halo, incandescently tight,<br />
shadows a noose beneath your neck.<br />
Love—it’s a gambler’s bet,<br />
Flip a coin with a two-sided head.<br />
I hold your bed with my hands<br />
as a bearer holds to the bourden.<br />
Those yeast of words, fermented wine<br />
intoxicating, alluring like the fear of death…<br />
Sleepless tonight, under a concrete of memories<br />
like a wave of steel crashed against the heat of time.<br />
Like a puppet, unhallowed strings pull at me<br />
shuffling my feet up the stairs.<br />
<strong>The</strong> wooden door—worn and old,<br />
Opened—As if your memory had just left.<br />
Your visage, like a welcome home<br />
between the old worn door-frame.<br />
Inside, your Halo still rings around the post<br />
as a knot holding a rope.<br />
71
Sleepless tonight with hand-worn prayers,<br />
Love—intoxicating like the fear of death.<br />
A swaying sweet sound,<br />
a calming voice—<br />
A final word to an Elder…Rejoice.<br />
72
73<br />
Kimberly foflygen
sTePhanie laine<br />
Horse Play<br />
Muscles ripple under taut skin<br />
As they trot toward the other<br />
An initial circling, nostrils flaring<br />
Testing to be sure<br />
And inching closer<br />
In a downward spiral<br />
Like south-ended magnets<br />
Pushed together<br />
Eye to eye<br />
Arched necks<br />
Tails like a flag<br />
Bristling<br />
Time<br />
Holds<br />
A squeal and a stomp<br />
Like a gunshot<br />
Shooting them backwards<br />
<strong>The</strong>y come back again<br />
74
75<br />
Devin o’ leary
<strong>The</strong> harbinger<br />
<strong>The</strong> Student Literary Magazine of <strong>Bethany</strong> <strong>College</strong><br />
Literary and visual art submissions are accepted as attachments<br />
in MS Word or JPG format at bcharbinger@gmail.com.<br />
Submissions must be received by May 1st to be considered for<br />
that year’s publication.<br />
All submissions are anonymous until publication.
Jeff Seglin<br />
Kelsey Kirschmann<br />
Ben Cope<br />
Devin O’Leary<br />
Jenny Preston<br />
Stephanie Laine<br />
Justin Elkins<br />
Kelly Medkeff-Rose<br />
Jade Bragg<br />
Brian DiCola<br />
Kevin Clancy<br />
Amanda Reeder<br />
ConTribuTors<br />
Haley Fedor<br />
Pasha Utt<br />
Jennifer Fleahman<br />
Anastasia Kydonieus<br />
Elizabeth Foy<br />
Amanda Thomas<br />
Marcie Zampini<br />
Hannah Farwell<br />
Emily Stewart<br />
Gerad Cervanak<br />
Kimberly Foflygen