Coraddi [Spring 2010]

              ABOUT
Coraddi represents the Art & Literary community of the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
It is published biannually and distributed
for free throughout the UNCG campus.
Taryn Cowart • EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Zack Franceschi • PRODUCTION MANAGER
Catherine Conley • LITERARY EDITOR
Ashley Weinberger • ART EDITOR
Jay Lee • WEB MANAGER
Terry Kennedy • FACULTY ADVISOR
LIT STAFF • Ryan Boye, Laura Brown, Silas Burke, Kayla Cavenaugh,
Caitlin Conway, Peter DelGobbo, Donovan Dorrance, Katie Fennell,
Dustin Frost, Lauren Gorman, Ashley Johnson, Gabriel King,
Jana Koehler, Kristen McCown, Jesse Morales and Levon Valle
ART STAFF • Stephanie Case, Samuel Dalzell, Alexa Feldman,
T. Lee Gunselman, Matt Northrup and Maxwell Shipley
CORADDI
Box D2 EUC
UNCG Campus
Greensboro, NC 27413
the.coraddi@gmail.com
thecoraddi.com
CORADDI
VOL. 112, ISSUE 2
4 CORADDI
•
5 CONTENTS
•
POETRY
10 	 ROOMS
11 	 THIS WAS JEZBEL
12 	 FIX IT FOR ME
	 ALEX CRAIG
13 	 THE MACHINERY OF NIGHT
14 	 ECOSYSTEM
15 	 A SUICIDE LETTER WRITTEN BY A
	 MAN TURNING INTO A TREE
	 RJ HOOKER
16 	 THIEVING
17 	 WE’RE WOLVES
	 ANDREW HEIDER
18 	 DIVINE MOMENT
19 	 SPAIN IN THREE PARTS
	 CAROLINE MYRICK
20 	 BEHIND THE PICKET FENCES
	 TRAVIS HAUER
21 	 AFTER THE FIGHT
	 MICHAEL BOND
22 	 BLACK LUNG, BLACK TONGUE
	 DALLAS BOHANNON
24 	 ÁNGEL
	 LAWRENCE HOLLIDAY
26 	 IT WAS TRUTH WE SAW
	 HARRISON RINELLI
28 	 ON HOW TO BUILD A GUN
	 HARPER BOKUM-FAUTH
29 	 FOOTSOLDIERS
	 CHRISTOPHER WALSH
30 	 JABAO
	 LEVON VALLE
31 	 NIGHTSHADE
	 JESSICA BEEBE
32 	 THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
	 KAYLA CAVENAUGH
	
33 	 LEGACY
	 LAURA BROWN
34 	 SAME MOON
	 JESSICA FRITZ
36 	 SLEEPTALK
	 JESSE MORALES
37 	 UNTIMED, DIVINE
	 AMANDA MANIS
38 	 YOUR PLASTIC
	 ANTHONY MANENTI
39 	 THE TASTE OF WHISKEY
	 CAITLIN McCANN
ART
41 	 SANDING PERPENDICULAR I-V
	 HEATH MONTGOMERY
46 	 COLLAGED INDEX, INDEXICAL TRACE
47 	 SIFTED
	 ERIC KNISS
48 	 SUNSET
	 KIMBERLY WOOD
CONTENTS
6 CORADDI
•
7 CONTENTS
•
49 	 RAVINE
	 AMANDA KATHERINE NICHOLAS
50 	 GREENSBORO
	 ELIZABETH INGRAM
52 	 UNTITLED
	 JOSH NORMAN
54 	 III
	 GABRIELLE TROTT
55 	 NATIVES
	 JANIE LEDFORD
56 	 TRAILERS
	 STEPHANIE CASE
58 	 SOUP
	 IVAN GILBERT
60 	 FIRE WALK WITH ME
	 BENNIE ROBINSON
62 	 THIS IS NOT ART
	 JARED WATSON
64 	 NARASIMHA
65 	 IRON DOES NOT PENETRATE
	 SAMUEL DALZELL
66 	 OFF LIMITS
	 KELSEY HAMMERSLEY
69 	 SKATEPARK KIDS (ROOFTOP)
	 TOMMY MALEKOFF
70 	 BOUCHERIE PARISIENNE
72 	 DECEMBER
	 AMELIE BLANC
74 	 VIRGENSITA
	 BRENDA VIENRICH
75 	 RED YELLOW BLUE
	 ZACK FRANCESCHI
76 	 UNTITLED
77 	 TERRIBLE FISH
	 JESSICA FRITZ
78 	 LA FILLE
	 STEPHANIE KING
79 	 FIRST DAY ON THE JOB
	 STEISHA PINTADO
80 	 FOLLY BEACH YOUTH
82 	 UNTITLED
	 LAUREN ROCHE
83 	 HOME
84 	 DOLL FACE
85 	 FOTOMAT
	 STEPHANIE CASE
PROSE
86 	 DOGWOOD LANE
87 	 LOUISIANA
88 	 EXCERPTS FROM A SEMESTER
	 ABROAD IN BOTSWANA
	 HELEN MARIE POHLIG
93 	 O
96 	 Q
	 ROSS BRUBECK
102 	 A LIST OF THINGS
	 AMANDA MANIS
104 	 CRACKLE
	 BASIE SETTLE
111 	 EDNA PERIOD MEYERS
	 SARAH SILLS
8 CORADDI
•
9 CONTENTS
•
118 	 SEX AND THE SEPULCHER
	 ANTHONY MANENTI
121 	 TRAIN RIDES AND NIGHT DISTURBANCES
	 GABRIEL MORGAN
123 	 IT’S HARD TO BREATHE
	 JOSH LITTLE
128 	 NO TRAVELER RETURNS
	 ROBERT LITTLEJOHN
130 	 HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND
	 LOVE MY DOPPELGÄNGER
	 ADAM THORN
136-147 WEIRD, OLD
	 SCANS FROM CORADDI’S PAST
148 	 CONTRIBUTOR’S NOTES
POSTER CAMOUFLAGED REST
	 SAM PECK
Coraddi is pleased to offer six equal first-place cash prizes
to select works published in the magazine. Awards are
judged anonymously by members of the UNCG community.
Writing, selected by Dr. David Bruzina of the English
Department at USC Aiken (a former professor at UNCG):
Edna Period Myers by Sarah Sills
Q by Ross Brubeck
Divine Moment by Caroline Myrick
Art Pieces, selected by Leah Sobsey:
Sanding Perpendicular I-V by Heath Montgomery
December by Amélie Blanc
Virgensita by Brenda Vienrich
Anyone may submit to Coraddi, but only non-staff members
are eligible for the contest.
PRIZE WINNERS
10 CORADDI
•
11 POETRY
•
At first, it was warm and cushioned, a
thick, fluid-filled, flesh-walled nursery.
Mom’s first present, a bunched and bundled umbilical scarf,
draped its sinewy tongue around my tender pink throat.
The birth was unremarkable.
I’m told the walls were so sterile and white that they glowed in the fluorescence.
At seven, it was a generous double-windowed rectangle
in an eggshell color way with Disney-themed wallpaper
leftover from someone else’s childhood dream,
which seemed to become mine by default. Fluffy, chocolate-colored
Saxony, meant for informal, high traffic areas, showed more dirt than it hid.
It lay, soft and patient, as I rolled around the floor playing with Legos until I was nine.
Next, I wriggled all twelve years of my pre-pubescent
body between 700 thread count jersey sheets on a twin bed,
set up next to the window, overlooking ominous wooding
behind our house. My closet groaned, bulging with enough fabric
to clothe a small country. I never gave anything away.
I hid from the world as it spun along, I plastered the walls with a colorful magazine collage.
As an adult, it’s a large apartment with vaulted
ceilings, and 3 semi-permanent friends
set up between several oddly-textured
not-quite-thick-enough “walls.” Rich, red brick piles itself
high, sheltering my bed from the outside as two
wonderful, broken-sealed windows usher in
winter and condensation, mold and mildew, light and ground-level glances.
On sunny days you really see how white the walls can be.
I am a woman. My fire is my body, is my tongue, is my mind.
See my hands, my feet, my skull,
lying prostrate, painted in prophesy.
Wet noses of the dogs
mashed against my bones and teeth like tines sank into my flesh.
Hot breath against this painted face. Skin dripped like wax from my body,
as their sticky mouths cradled my damp frame.
My eunuchs heaved me out of the window.
I felt the ground like a hard, dusty palm as it absorbed my body.
The blood of my dignity, my harlotry, my idolatry painted the walls,
the horses, the faces. My black kohl eyes ran down my face as they watched and
watched the horses trample my body.
You walked into my house, the house of my family.
You ate and drank. You killed what you couldn’t make submit.
My blood fills the stomachs and the veins of those beasts that tore me.
My flesh idles between their teeth. I wormed into the ground, I soaked into the air.
I am here. You can taste me when you breathe.
ROOMS
- - -
ALEX CRAIG
THIS WAS JEZEBEL
- - -
ALEX CRAIG
12 CORADDI
•
13 POETRY
•
I was in a house. I mean, it was my
house. But full of water, like a fluorescent, window-front fishbowl,
colonized by my family’s old animals, and
kids who weren’t ever my friends in eighth grade. So I’m swimming around.
But I can’t swim. At least
not in real life.
The thing is, these breathing souls had beautiful
faces. Rich. Meticulously detailed. Painstaking. Too detailed.
I swam into them, grubby-finger grabbing at their
plastic little features. I wound their angel hair with my toes,
slid digits along lips and paws, chins and collar bones,
canine nostrils. Bony, salivating pearls.
Then? Then the water started to get to them.
Plastic melted and chunked together, gumming up their faces.
Algae grew on glass walls, the fishbowls ceramic castle collected
rust, and short, matted hair. The bright light shattered
and the water became a toxic, diaphanous landscape.
Choked for air, ready for death, I clawed at the water, ate
mouthfuls of the stuff as I let it sift through the
cracked wall of my broken teeth and my
imperfect features.
Finally the sun is exhausted,
falls to the horizon
and leaves a bruise of clouds.
Cicadas seethe in the trees.
Bats dart like windswept paper
to rummage through the dusk.
The streetlights burst open
at the end of their stalks
in the oil black distance.
All of the houses, disturbed
by people returning inside,
open their glowing, paned eyes.
The machinery of night
begins to churn, and the moon
rises slowly on a pulled rope.
FIX IT FOR ME
- - -
ALEX CRAIG
THE MACHINERY OF NIGHT
- - -
RJ HOOKER
14 CORADDI
•
15 POETRY
•
A couple argue
naked in the kitchen.
The woman sits
under fluorescent lights
in her veil of lucid skin.
Her newly re-situated thigh
reveals stippling
impressed onto her buttocks
by the pattern on the stool seat,
like fading pink Braille.
The man’s stomach pooches out
above the counter, his penis
is pinned between flesh
and countertop.
They’re in tears.
The microwave hums to itself.
In the corner,
between the broom and trashcan,
a roach’s antennae stand erect
and dust a crumble of popcorn.
Plates float in a grimy sink
like porcelain lily pads.
Each morning I stand in front of the sink
and cough up gobs of sawdust.
My back is crusted with bark.
My scalp grows tufts of pine needles.
My hands are long, slender branches.
My left forearm is nailed at the elbow.
On my shoulder, a heart is carved
around lovers’ initials.
I’ve lost my desire for maple syrup,
books have become nauseating,
and every telephone pole
is a crucifixion.
My wife hates me now. I lust
after cherry trees, the low swaying of willows,
the ripe, yearning peaches
that quiver on a branch.
A fucking poet lingers around my house.
He leaves scrawled poems on the porch
and tells the neighbors it’s my choice,
that I’m just fending off his advances.
Because of it all, I dream of an ax
nuzzling its grinder. I dream of fire-licked,
ashen charcoal. I dream of being hand-fed
into the whirling grin of a circular saw.
ECOSYSTEM
- - -
RJ HOOKER
A SUICIDE LETTER WRITTEN BY A MAN
TURNING INTO A TREE
- - -
RJ HOOKER
16 CORADDI
•
17 POETRY
•
The relics of flowers, held as evidence of our days,
which lined the pages of your novels, or the confessions
amidst my journal, were stolen from our neighbors’ yards.
As I examine the edges of the spine, the
aroma settles into the membrane walls
of my wet snout.
I am so hungry for knowledge as I tear
through the pages, ripping each one from
the innocence of their books.
I devour ink, the words of men far more
intelligent than I, digesting each syllable
and metaphor until their lost meanings
pour down my face. The frightened
librarian shouts at me. She stomps her
feet and pulls out her hair.
She has never seen a man like me before.
I am an animal searching for its existence.
I snarl at anyone who comes near. I pounce
on any female brave enough to test her wits
and graze this blond mane. The librarian is
crying now. She cannot believe the mess I
have made of myself, and of her once orderly
collection of novels. I attempt to explain, as
I tear up the stairs, gunning for the exit.
Tears stream from her eyes as she screams,
What are you? Why would you do such things!
I’m a man! I howl back at her.
A man pretending to be a wolf.
I’m a wolf, I say. A wolf afraid to become a man.
THIEVING
- - -
ANDREW HEIDER
WE’RE WOLVES
- - -
ANDREW HEIDER
18 CORADDI
•
19 POETRY
•
Do you remember where we were when you said it?
By purple orchids shaped like Heaven’s trumpets,
Under clear skies, opened up just for this moment.
You were probably wearing a 1970s button-down,
Chucks and a nervous grin.
When, just like the Red Sea, your lips parted and
You said to me with hands in the air “Okay, okay
I don’t know if there’s a God.”
And the clouds came
And the thunder cracked
And the preacher yelled
And the babies cried
And you and I went straight to Hell
Where we continued pursuing liberal arts degrees.
I.
Hot tears
and cold cervezas symbolize
what the distance does to me.
The ocean laughs
as it rubs sodium and chloride deep
into the trenches of my chest.
My heart is cracking open
from Madrid’s arid heat,
the salty calamari
and the 4000 miles
separating me from el amor de mi vida,
also known as the love of my life.
II.
The women on the sidewalks
are secretly walking catwalks
while the men on the Metro
discretely pose for ads.
None of them are married,
none can recite the prayers of their fathers,
but all believe in a little equality
and a lot of looking good.
III.
And on my last night
I sipped crimson Sangria
under a tangerine sunset
above a plateful of saffron paella.
Richness reminiscent of the
cave dwellers’ dance,
Gypsy feet pounding on the floor
like the fists of angry Catholic gods.
DIVINE MOMENT
- - -
CAROLINE MYRICK
SPAIN IN THREE PARTS
- - -
CAROLINE MYRICK
20 CORADDI
•
21 POETRY
•
A couple in their mid fifties having morning tea with cream,
playing their roles among the understood gestures
that was commonplace at this daily routine.
A quiet contemplation took the two of them,
as they settled into their silence.
The birds never chirped anymore
And just then he almost wanted to
tell her about his dream but his eyes were lost in
the stain on the linen cloth from a day earlier.
A loud crash
suddenly startled her into spilling her tea and from under
the rim of his cup. He muttered, “Damn cat.
Always getting into something.”
Driving away
suits me
too well.
The punch
of passing trees
through the sunlight
in the country,
only tobacco barns
fall apart,
rusted through
with skylights
where vines climb
out of the earth,
where clouds gather
to soften the dirt.
I thought the first
drop pushed down
a key
and started to type
like a typewriter
on the roof.
BEHIND THE PICKET FENCES
- - -
TRAVIS HAUER
AFTER THE FIGHT
- - -
MICHAEL BOND
22 CORADDI
•
23 POETRY
•
My father breathes like a fish out of water
As I replace the IV in his arm, and
Relive the night I went
Ice fishing alone,
The line left on the lake like a
Lonely hammer without a hand.
We had been trying to catch the
Brosme Cusk for days
And I disobeyed my father—
Because I believed I could catch it.
The naked night chilled the
Nape of my neck as I crawled forward,
Slithering on the ice like a snake,
Like an eel,
And for thirty minutes,
I held the pole firmly.
There’s another world entirely,
Beneath the ice—
When the line tugged I
Lost everything.
The cusk reared its black head and
Emerged, dancing from the ice before it
Snapped the line,
Inches from the open water hole.
The glacial surface hissed,
Grilling the fish.
I threw the rod and shattered by elbow
In a crack,
My fingers like screaming needles against
The ice and black scales of the cusk.
I clutched my prize, an angry black lung;
Dug my nails into its slime,
And began to skin it like a
Dead organ.
I behaved madly and did not cry
When the fish’s gills cut me.
I slammed the cusk like a butcher
Against the white winter,
Cursing its shell to slabs of oily mush
And grease in my lap.
When I cleaned it of its filth,
It’s sickness,
I released the pink vessel
Back into the water and
Soaked it in a warm bath.
Can you breathe better now
Daddy?
My father, with his black tongue,
Asks me for a glass of ice water.
BLACK LUNG, BLACK TONGUE
- - -
DALLAS BOHANNON
24 CORADDI
•
25 POETRY
•
Desperté a encontrar un ángel:
Me ha visitado en un sueño;
Esos ojos y aquel pelo largo—
Los colores de canela y miel…
Fue una mujer, joven y guapa
(Aquella aura hermosa la circunda).
Pasó por la ventana, en luz áurea,
Mientras yo descansaba en mi cama.
Sentí las manos de una diosa:
Su toque, femenino y suave,
Me manoseó y en la luz, me lavé
De los pecados de la vida mala.
Antes de salir, me tocó un ala—
Un viento gélido me sopló;
La dureza de realidad me cayó.
Se voló, con garbo, de mi sala,
A medida que dormía en mi cama.
I woke up to meet an angel:
It had visited me in a dream;
Those eyes, and that long hair—
The colors of cinnamon and honey...
It was a woman, young and pretty
(That beautiful aura surrounds her).
She passed through the window, in a golden light,
While I rested in my bed.
I felt the hands of a goddess:
Her touch, feminine and smooth,
Fondled me, and in the light, I washed myself
Of the sins of the wicked life.
Before leaving, a wing touched me—
A frigid wind blew upon me;
The harshness of reality fell upon me.
She flew away, gracefully, from my hall,
As I slept in my bed.
English translation provided courtesy of the author.
ÁNGEL
- - -
LAWRENCE HOLLIDAY
26 CORADDI
•
27 POETRY
•
a cracked-out,
diffused, or simply irregular
black male left my store today
garbed in a large, bubbly black
jacket.
are you hearing me?
and my boss, she
looks over from the register
wearing the blue uniform of food
lion and pops a question
towards the diffused
irregularly dressed
man.
"Just lookin' for the bathroom!"
he laughs in a high-pitch, low
sort of way,
"And a ride back up to
VIRGINIA!"
then, he takes a few paces,
muttering to himself.
"If you could gimme a ride
up to Virginia."
that man must have gotten it.
are you hearing me?
off he goes, outside, when
Suzanne, my boss, garbed
green in the food lion uniform, says
"That man was carrying a ton of
beer in his jacket!"
and everyone around gets in an uproar, saying,
"Yeah yeah, I seen the bottle."
"It was sticking out
of his jacket, that man, he's stolen
a helluva lot of beer."
and my other boss, a larger,
much larger black man,
(looks like he ate another man)
comes up and follows him slowly into the parking lot.
I peek outside, hearing them, those
people who saw everything go down,
chatting about the robbery
they had just witnessed
with their eyes fully open.
and my boss, Dwayne comes back inside and states,
"He didn't have anything."
I guess everybody knew that, too.
IT WAS TRUTH WE SAW
- - -
HARRISON RINELLI
28 CORADDI
•
29 POETRY
•
One six-inch copper pipe, two bullets, one lighter,
and the will to let the unknown in.
That is all it took to bring my brother to that field where I once played
as a child among the grasses of my youth.
It was the empty barrels of his synapses that brought him to build his own
tool for a thirty-year old abortion.
How he came to that desert snowfield, I understand.
It is what he has become, that I do not.
His living body remains with us, marked
by the scarred closed door to his heart.
The rest of him is lost, temporarily, like the blood on that frozen ground
that would later soak through ice and earth on its journey back to the beginning.
ON HOW TO BUILD A GUN
- - -
HARPER BOKUM-FAUTH
i used to bartend for an 85yearold named Tom
who squeezed himself out of tubes of toothpaste
and hemorrhoid medicine each morning
before having his first dry manhattan.
he told me about Bostonian gangsters in the thirties.
i believed him
even when he was lying.
they were good stories.
i poured the whiskey
and gave him an extra cherry.
his wife was still alive,
she had to wear baby diapers
even at home.
Tom spent a lot of afternoons at the bar.
his face was Michelangelo plasterofparis
without the paint,
or god’s finger.
he’d never been to France
or Italy
except during the war.
he remembered bullets
and urine
rather than the buildings.
i’d never been to war
except against my father.
Tom said that didn’t count.
one day i went to work
hungover,
feeling like death,
and one of the regulars told me Tom had passed away.
i put my hands in my pockets
and squeezed them into fists,
but quickly let them ease
as i moved toward the taps
to serve the workingclass hands.
FOOTSOLDIERS
- - -
CHRISTOPHER WALSH
30 CORADDI
•
31 POETRY
•
A long time ago, Damestah, Queen of the Earth, was lonely.
The land had long been shaped by her thoughts
and Man, her final dream, had
long betrayed her.
Her womb was closed, barren and
her dreams long forsaken. But, Mama said
Damestah’s sisters Sun and Moon consoled her, saying,
“She who does not dream
has no peace, no hope
so we will create a dream
for you, a memory, a history.”
They gave her an idol, a child, to
inspire her, rile her emotions.
Damestah cried in joy and yearning until
waters descended from Sun’s eyes and Moon glowed bright, all on this day.
Damestah carved another idol, another child,
deep within her womb and fed him love, rice milk, and honeydew.
She made his hair from the yucca,
plucked stars from the heavens and gave him eyes, his alone,
and she bathed him, smoothed him, cleansed him of afterbirth.
Full of delight and motherly pride,
Damestah showed Man her dream, her gift, and
hoped for peace. Yet, Man sneered.
“What do you think of my child, Jabao?” she asked and
Man spat at Jabao’s hair, jealous. Then Man stole Jabao from her and
scalped his skull bare and covered him in kelp. Mockingly,
beat Jabao’s cassava-like skin until bruises sprouted all over him.
“This creature is an abomination!
H–he will never be like me,” Man said and threw Jabao back to her.
Thus Jabao hid in Damestah’s cave-like bosom.
But she pushed him out, saying, “Man is a hollow fool, certainly,
but you must live among him. For
I made him in the same way and that makes you brothers.
My sisters and I will watch over you, son, so
know your steps are guarded, followed.”
Thus Jabao, exiled and pale, took his first steps on the Long Road called Life.
JABAO
- - -
LEVON VALLE
I cannot remember the last time
it rained so hard that it broke
through the awning she said
and closed the window.
There was a crack in the sill
I had never seen before but I followed
her into the kitchen where she said
she would show me the proper
way to peel a tomato. She asked if I knew
how to make the skin fall off but I could
only shake my head no. You have
to bruise it first she said and then struck
the blush red cheek.
NIGHTSHADE
- - -
JESSICA BEEBE
32 CORADDI
•
33 POETRY
•
The house has been sold.
Let me circle the roots
of the front-yard oak
one more time
Six-and-a-half months
removed from two blue
men and a pacific birthday.
Steam rose above
hoods of parked cars.
Your winter fleece now
dwells in my closet
like the skin of an animal—
woolly and warm,
a zipped-up relic
of someone who lived.
She wished for a more musical name,
something that makes men more inclined
to sing. Leah or Caroline, anything
that would grant the permission of
a history other than her own.
Imagining that a person
amounts to what is left behind,
becomes the broken umbrella
as it rests in the hall,
walled in by the present tense:
Susan, black-eyed—
the month of April.
Anne, Elizabeth to afford royalty.
Even unearthly Mary or Ruth.
There is a ghost
two cities to the east,
waiting to become a part of her world.
When the heart can no longer beat
in the throat,
in the wrist,
it finds a way into bedroom
slippers and forgotten grocery lists.
THE GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
- - -
KAYLA CAVENAUGH
LEGACY
- - -
LAURA BROWN
34 CORADDI
•
35 POETRY
•
I.
There was a thickness in the air
and it huddled and rose and clung to us until we wore it like robes.
Hundreds of little heads like
pebbles or
glass marbles, rolling unconsciously beneath beaming blue light.
And that light scattered and bounced.
Spews of lemon soaked in neon,
thin white slices of the moon, jutting out of the walls and
cutting my pupils in half.
II.
From where I sit
there is assurance greater than any
ever handed to me in small words, left impotent on the floor,
or tiny troubled touches of the spine.
It is soaked in thick cans of paint: blues and
whites and grays and violets.
I let these patterns ribbon themselves into visions of the night
because we still see the very same moon
and I won’t sever this tie between us.
III.
Pale slices of oranges are
placed in my hand like an offering of indifference, or just a justification.
Plump and oozing: sticky soured tar.
Through the creases of knuckles like chairs scraping down coffee shop
floors.
And, yes, hands are always kept far,
picking and peeling, and at a distance we can bear.
There is no shovel for the layers of silence and the
small sting of another’s stare.
They pile up and we gather them, respectively.
IV.
The season moved swiftly so that
daylight was the Summer’s heat and night the Autumn’s calling.
Millions of bare limbs, as if
Earth were testing her modesty, ripping all the color and
throwing it to the ground,
graciously giving us long beds of yellow and
soft sheets of orange: Lying places
for every biting dawn,
looming low and laden in late November.
SAME MOON
- - -
JESSICA FRITZ
36 CORADDI
•
37 POETRY
•
At low dawn we sleep,
she and I,
awash in the oblique notes
that train wheels sing.
The oval legs
of a passing locomotive
spin like lame turntables
whose liquid whir-songs
leach through screens
pinned in the windows. Lying
not awake in bed, we too
make sonic turns, our bones
scraping tunes from the world
like needles from vinyl discs. Our limbs
swim in their sockets
like the globe in space; woman and man,
we move to mark the time.
If I were alone
I would be still and feel
the purls of time
eddying in my navel
the way the train’s
polyphonic yawn pools
now like water
in the cup of her back.
Then I would know, like her,
what it is to keep a shrine
in my twisting abdomen
to time, the one thing
that exists of its own will. But I am young
yet, too young to fly and gyrate in spacetime,
and I don’t like to sleep alone.
On the roof at Ian’s house I am high
up, almost flying, when he names me
divine.
*laughter ringing from the stars you are
he says trembled touch,
fearless face, timeless timeless timeless,
taste—
sang hi from a whisper
and high from which we came,
said hello there, I know you, without reason,
without shame.
SLEEPTALK
- - -
JESSE MORALES
UNTIMED, DIVINE
- - -
AMANDA MANIS
38 CORADDI
•
39 POETRY
•
I have no eyes to match
the glares against our willing faux pas,
from necktie royalty.
Mr. J.P Morgan. – Adieu! Adieu!
I have held that flaccid rag to shine my shoe.
And have done no good for me,
or you.
A drunk, bleary-eyed,
wails cirrhosis
to the lidless moon, knows
only the wending of footsteps.
Or the pins of dreams
that stitch fragile seams
around threadbare nakedness.
The cerebral drain, circle and circle
till all the world is drowned
and purple.
The flashing, blue glow of the television screen
reminded me of the night
after my uncle’s funeral
when we stepped on my deck
in the middle of a violent storm
just so that we could kiss,
because neither of us had been kissed
in the rain before.
You told me my lips
tasted like whiskey.
I told you it was because
my uncle died.
You knew I was being ridiculous.
I hoped the rain would hide my tears,
but when you kissed my closed eyelids
you could taste the salt
and you knew I was crying.
When we went inside
we lit candles and watched the flames
do their shadow dance on the wall.
You gave me gummie worms
and told me you loved me.
I knew you were being ridiculous.
YOUR PLASTIC
- - -
ANTHONY MANENTI
THE TASTE OF WHISKEY
- - -
CAITLIN McCANN
40 CORADDI
•
41 ARTWORK
• HEATH MONTGOMERY
SANDING PERPENDICULAR I-V
42 CORADDI
•
43 ARTWORK
•
44 CORADDI
•
45 ARTWORK
•
46 CORADDI
•
ERIC KNISS
COLLAGED INDEX, INDEXICAL TRACE
and SIFTED
KIMBERLY WOOD
SUNSET
AMANDA KATHERINE NICHOLAS
RAVINE
50 CORADDI
•
51 POETRY
•
ELIZABETH INGRAM
GREENSBORO
52 CORADDI
•
53 ARTWORK
• JOSH NORMAN
UNTITLED
54 CORADDI
•
GABRIELLE TROTT
III
JANIE LEDFORD
NATIVES
56 CORADDI
•
57 ARTWORK
•
STEPHANIE CASE
TRAILERS
IVAN GILBERT
SOUP
(following)
58 CORADDI
•
59 POETRY
•
60 CORADDI
•
61 ARTWORK
•
BENNIE ROBINSON
FIRE WALK WITH ME
62 CORADDI
•
63 POETRY
•
JARED WATSON
THIS IS NOT ART
64 CORADDI
•
65 ARTWORK
•
SAMUEL DALZELL
NARASIMHA and IRON DOES NOT PENETRATE
66 CORADDI
•
67 POETRY
•
68 CORADDI
•
69 POETRY
•
KELSEY HAMMERSLEY
OFF LIMITS
(previous)
TOMMY MALEKOFF
SKATEPARK KIDS (ROOFTOP)
AMELIE BLANC
BOUCHERIE PARISIENNE
and DECEMBER
(following)
70 CORADDI
•
71 POETRY
•
72 CORADDI
•
73 POETRY
•
BRENDA VIENRICH
VIRGENSITA
(left)
ZACK FRANCESCHI
RED YELLOW BLUE
76 CORADDI
•
77 POETRY
•
JESSICA FRITZ
UNTITLED and TERRIBLE FISH
78 CORADDI
•
79 ARTWORK
•
STEPHANIE KING
LA FILLE
(left)
STEISHA PINTADO
FIRST DAY ON THE JOB
LAUREN ROCHE
FOLLY BEACH YOUTH
LAUREN ROCHE
UNTITLED
STEPHANIE CASE
HOME
84 CORADDI
•
85 ARTWORK
•
STEPHANIE CASE
DOLL FACE and FOTOMAT
• •
86 CORADDI
87 PROSE
If I led you into the old, dark room with just a candle for secrecy, outside the stars cool and sharp,
sat you down and in hushed tones told you about the house beneath the trees, the ivy growing up the
tired brick walls, you would listen without speaking, eyes focused and mouth shut, watching me in
the dim light, bound my by tale. You would follow me through the sleepy rooms, the red walls heavy
against the wood, the country tile, rooster wallpaper peeling beneath the kitchen cupboard. See the
intricate rug, the worn wooden floors, the metal spiral staircase sleek in its secret corner of the room.
Do not speak as you gaze upon the pipe organ, hundreds of tiny pipes grown bigger, all hidden
behind the Chinese black and paper screen. A metal pitcher of long peacock feathers, blowing in the
nothing wind, embroidery framed and hanging on the wall, the picture of my mother growing faint
behind its glass, the generator humming in the evening warmth. All is quiet now on Dogwood Lane.
Nothing now belongs, although it did. Follow me as I shut up the house, lock the doors, and tread
silently on the tired floor as I always have. Go before me, and I will find you in the street, beneath the
stars, a solitary figure between the house and the wood, surrounded by eternity. I will yet pass once
more through the hall to the window with the long, heavy drapes, to gaze with all I am out into the
night, one removed street light illuminating its leafy canopy, its overgrown forest path.
DOGWOOD LANE
- - -
HELEN MARIE POHLIG
Do you recall that cold night in December when we went to find the perfect Christmas
tree, the night we all dressed up like children and had to hide in the branches to avoid
curious eyes? Remember, there was a young man who took care of the trees, dressed
in worker’s overalls and a cap, a man with the Deep South in his accent and big,
strong hands? His eyes were gentle and bright, his manner polite and calm, his smile
disarming. He is a lover, that one. Every evening, when he has a moment to himself,
he slips into the shop, ill-lit by a dim fluorescent light flickering over the settled dust,
sits down on an old stool at the solid wooden table, takes out his pocket-knife, and
begins to carve a heart for the woman he has not yet met. He hums to himself as he
dreams of her warmth, already loving her with a soft love, his strong hands on the
curve of her back, content to grow old with her on some sun-filled Louisiana farm
where the corn fields sway back and forth, and the children capture fireflies at dusk.
LOUISIANA
- - -
HELEN MARIE POHLIG
88 CORADDI
• •
89 PROSE
that only the most astute of university students can pick up on. It signals one to open
all the doors of one’s automobile, switch on the radio, and turn the volume knob
as far to the right as possible. It is better to position your vehicle in the reverberant
enclave of the dorms to allow as much sound as possible, flooding the block with
slamming house music or American rap. The self-appointed DJs take their work very
seriously and remain up throughout the night to humbly provide their friends and
peers with entertainment, ensuring a cheery and successful following day of work.
But the best, most peaceful time of day could be described as “the calm
before the storm”—the balmy hour of dusk, when the light has begun to settle and
the shadows start to fall. It is the gathering of the day, the time when all the insects
emerge from under their hiding places and begin to hum a gentle song, when the
stars step meekly forth in the expanse of soft sky and quietly begin to glow. It is a
moment to remember that even in the midst of a busy city and a busy school, we are
still in a land of peace, G-d’s land, a place where the zebras run free and community
thrives. It does not take material wealth to live in an hour like this, and it can bless
even the poorest of men.
3. For the Birds
The campus cafeteria, or refectory, as it is called here, is known to the
student body as the Curry Pot. Every day one can visit the Curry Pot for lunch or
dinner and indulge in a hearty plate of papa (pounded maize), rice, fried chicken,
and gravy. Here, the words “every day” may quite fairly be emphasized. All of the
international students have at some point commented on the repetitiveness of the
meals served at the refectory, some even nervously admitting to nightmares of giant,
headless chickens and overturned plates causing avalanches of papa, with gravy
coating the houses of quiet villages, flooding the streets and obliterating all life within
its reach. And yet, despite the heavy meals and the slight boredom endured, there are
some wonderful things about the Curry Pot. For starters, it is a delightful place to
meet people. Anyone can sit with anyone, and many stimulating conversations have
been born out of mundane mealtimes. The general attitude about the place is that as
long as the person you are interested in talking to is eating his papa, he cannot move
away from you and is thus forced to listen to or engage in conversation, answering
questions about Botswana culture, politics, religion. Sometimes the person is even
obliged to offer a crash course in Setswana, depending on how long he has before
his next class or football match.
A second charming addition to the atmosphere of the campus refectory is
the happy row of little birds that sits at the top of the ledge where the always open
windows let in the air and sunlight. From morning until evening, they can be seen
flying through the cafeteria, picking at crumbs on the floor, or plumped contentedly
in deserted plates of rice, nibbling at forgotten feasts. They are kings, in their own
smart little ways, and there is always enough grub to satisfy the cravings of seventeen
to twenty feathered friends.
1. Domestic Wildlife
Dumela, everybody! Jimmy and I made it to Botswana where the sky is
big, the people are social, traffic is crazy, and the sun works overtime. We are here at
the University of Botswana, in the capital city of Gaborone, about 9 miles from the
South African border, where we will study for a semester.
Yesterday, our third day here, Jim and I rode in combis, which are a bit
like small buses, but really more like 15-seater vans. There are hundreds of combis
on the road at any given time; each is numerically marked according to the route it
drives, and choosing the right combi (that is assuming that you really do care where
you end up) can be something of an art. The combi itself might easily be added to
your generic list of African wildlife; they are aggressive machines, sputtering along
the highways, honking their horns and generally getting ahead of anything and
everything else on the road. And yet, to all appearances, the typical combi should not
run. Either the seats are falling down, the roof is caving in, the floor is ripped apart,
the headlights are smashed in, the windows will not shut, or the wheels are coming
loose. Combis are also known as vicious predators, and humans are advised to stand
far back when one is seen approaching. From this distant position, the curious tourist
or documentary film-maker can see through a telescope or a good pair of binoculars
that the combi can devour up to as many as 17 or even 18 people, on a good day. Of
course the combi will run a bit slower under these circumstances, and the underbelly
will likely sag lower to the ground. Do not dismay, however; the combi will recover
quite quickly, and you will likely be left in the dust, wondering how it has retained its
speed, how it is even running at all.
2. Life on Campus
The block of hostels in which I live is, interestingly enough, called Las
Vegas, and what this Botswana Las Vegas lacks in flashy lights and shiny cars, it makes
up for in the sheer volume of nightlife. Out in the African bush, in a hammock or a
hut, one will drift off to sleep at the sound of village children singing. It is a surreal
feeling matched with the fire of a thousand starry skies, and the cool relief of night
air carries the single beat of a drum to match the rhythm of a human heart. In Las
Vegas, the only rhythm to match a human heart would end in cardiac arrest. As
darkness begins to settle on the land, there is an understood cue, albeit a subtle one,
EXCERPTS FROM A SEMESTER ABROAD
IN BOTSWANA
- - -
HELEN MARIE POHLIG
• •
90 CORADDI
91 PROSE
enough blood to our proportionally bigger bodies.
One crazed little girl wearing a grubby pink skort that read “Spoiled But
Cute” on the rump, complete with two big silver stars, took a liking to Jimmy, and
made him her personal play partner for the afternoon. Apparently Jim met her
standards, since she only marched away in frustration two or three times, swinging
her arms, huffing and puffing, undoubtedly wondering how such a big person could
understand so little of her Setswana chattering. Unthinkable.
Our afternoon with the monkeys was tiring but, as always, too short. We
hope to make it a regular event, especially since it is imperative that all children
receive a lot of attention, particularly in their younger years. There may be no activity
more important than loving on kids, especially ones with no parents who have to
share their few, often exhausted, supervisors with 199 other brothers and sisters.
One thing we noticed while playing was that the big people in our group were the
only big people to be seen. Initially I was greatly impressed at the orphanage workers’
speedy escape, reflecting that years of training must have made them masters in the
art of disappearing, but then I reasoned that they were probably simply relishing an
opportunity to catch a few moments to themselves, gather their thoughts, or maybe
even siesta. In any case, I hope there will be more stories of the children to come,
whether or not the adults make an appearance.
5. Lessons in Romance
Despite the fact that I stand out in a crowd, sunburnt like a man selling
mirrors, do not speak Setswana and thus do not understand about 70% of daily
conversation, there are some great advantages to being white in this African country.
For example, people are always ready to point me in the right direction to the
supermarket, usher me onto the correct combi, answer my cultural questions, and
help me count my change. They are very understanding when I need water, or an
open window, and they love to teach me local vocabulary. I have been told that, as is
probable in many places, Batswana are wary of foreigners and are shy, and perhaps
slightly nervous, around those with white skin. I have noticed signs of this, but I
have also noticed those Batswana whom some would call brave when it comes to
approaching foreigners. I have seen the curiosity of children who come up to touch
my white skin or attempt to pleat my hair (never quite a success). I have taken the
waves of people walking along the road when I pass in a vehicle to be signs of
hospitality. I could give many examples, but I would not be accurately portraying
daily life for me in Botswana if I did not describe to you those very brave Batswana,
the ones in a league of their own, those young men whom some might even deem
outlandish. These are the young men who particularly love to socialize with women,
and who find the nerve to approach foreign ladies in the supermarket, on the street,
at the mall, anywhere and everywhere. They are generally quite friendly, sometimes
overly friendly, and interested in their foreign finds. I know, I know; this sounds like
paradise for the young, single ladies of the foreign world, but for those of us who
HELEN MARIE POHLIG
Earlier today I returned to my room from an afternoon at the pool to find
my own little friend perched at the top of my open window, enjoying a quiet corner
just his size. At present he is dozing, just as I should be, since the hour is now grown
late. I have named him King Alfred, with respect to his position of height near the
top of the wall, but also because sometimes the little ones, the ones we discover we
are fond of, merit the biggest names.
4. Tlokweng
The SOS Children’s Village in Tlokweng is home to around 200 kids of
various ages, ranging from toddler to teenager. On Sunday, Jim and I went with
a group of African friends that we met at the pool to play with the kids. It was
a delightful, sunny afternoon, complete with hula hoops, footballs, basketballs,
volleyballs, toddler-size balls (the ball market is huge), spray bottles, rocks, thorns,
bugs, you name it. A child’s paradise. When we arrived at the Village, there were
groups of children standing in the shade, sucking on baby mangoes, pairs of little
hands gripping their fruit, juice dribbling down their little faces, necks, all the way
to their bare feet. One child had strayed from the group out into the sun and was
crouched down near a football goal, pants sagging, scooping dirt into an old snack
box, a corner of which was ripped. He proceeded to place the ripped corner into
his mouth and blow into the box, attempting to inflate it in order to next stomp on
it in the hopes of causing a catastrophic explosion of dust and sunlight, by which,
incidentally, he would be the only one blasted. (You never quite know whether
children are not considering the consequences or if they just don’t care.) As we
approached the children, we were initially greeted with careless sideways glances and
the unique fervent sucking sounds of people with fewer teeth than yourself. It was
only after the pits and peels of the baby mangoes had been tossed aside that children
came running towards us, sticky little hands clutching at our clothes and hands, rogue
mango strands hanging from our trousers.
Now, the interesting thing about children this side of the equator is that
within half an hour in the sun or so, one begins to notice the effects the heat has
upon them. These little people, recently playful and sweet, begin to change, a slow
glaze creeping over their eyes. Their bodies begin to slow down, taking on stiffer
movements, their dusty little feet patting the ground in longer intervals. One little
girl with a shock of jet black hair began growling at nothing, palms clenched, brow
furled. Naturally, one wonders if one should interject, but soon learns that the phase
is only momentary, and within five minutes or so, everything is back to the way it was.
Far from being outdone, there is a general kind of mass exodus from the football
field (or the killing field, as it is aptly named) through the thick twist of vines, flowers,
and thorns to the old, caged, kid-sized basketball court. It is here that the big people
face humiliation. Despite our advantage of height, the little people far outlast us,
since, as everyone knows, they all are born with a heart as big as it will always be,
giving the little people more bang for their buck, while we desperately try to pump
92 CORADDI
• •
93 PROSE
Late, late afternoon. Early purple evening. Collin Jesse Davis Timothy Alec Richard
Jack was in the middle of a second hug with Tom Brian Daniel Jacob Ronald Max
Stephen’s little sister, Josh Russell Ash Drew Ryan David in the drivers seat looking
across at the two and the second embrace. She’s considered a friend. She’s actually
quite neat, quite great. Greater (secretly) than her brother. Her relationship with the
two (mainly Collin Jesse Davis Timothy Alec Richard) lives as a remainder of Tom
Brian Daniel Jacob Ronald Max leaving for his own reasons, some product to come
forth from the silence of his absence, but none seen yet. None but this thinly familiar
friendship that lasts only on afternoons when they happen to be in Tom Brian
Daniel’s part of town, his sisters phone number only appearing in their minds within
a certain radius of her house, which they never go inside of for fear of her clammy
mother. She’s a breath of fresh air, the way she sees them. They were in high school
together but she was three big planets of three grades behind them, and their worlds
could never really mesh. Now at the end of high school, she’s biggest and brightest,
bigger and brighter than they remembered her before this summer when her brother
for the first time wasn’t around, while they’ve been set adrift going on three years
now, and despite all of their perceived shortcomings they are still worlds bigger and
lovelier than her own, in her eyes, and for this, they love her. In certain moments it
feels like they exist to serve her, to serve and support every notion that she might
concoct and let on to the concoction thereof. Images to be maintained by elliptical
encounters. To give her two older, wiser friends and cultivate an understanding of,
if nothing else, or mainly, or solely, the power of obliqueness, at a time much more
opportune than they themselves found it. In retrospect, she’s much smaller than
how she actually felt. Smaller and frailer, her ribs a half-hearted press away, each half
of her ribcage seeming to fit in each hand, a weak stirring of a heartbeat to be felt
through her back if Richard Jack was to dare to linger, dare not linger, dare not spend
time later than the afternoon. “She’s still a virgin,” Josh Ash says.
“Good for her. Good for that girl, I’m proud of her. Not giving it up back when she
was 14, like every other girl her age. Good for fuckin’ her.”
They ride.
O
- - -
ROSS BRUBECK
do not fall under the single category, it can sometimes prove tricky to disentangle
oneself from uninvited advances and overbearing conversations. The inexperienced
woman may be caught off-guard and depart, frazzled, from her recent acquaintance
with someone arranged as a hot date for Friday evening, or worse, a wedding next
month, complete with bride price and fatted calf. However, all is not lost for those
betrothed: it is really only a matter of learning the right manoeuvers in speech, and
can be easily learned. The key to remember is stubbornness and persistence. For
example, the other week I purchased something from a campus shop, and the young
man at the cash register did not hesitate to inform me of his wish to see me over the
weekend. I told him that all of my friends would love to get together, paid for my
purchase, shook his hand, and walked out. Do you see the efficiency of my response?
I did not have to lie to the young man (although I doubt my friends would be thrilled
at my signing their weekend away), I avoided a scene, I did not wait long enough to
actually arrange an outing, the cashier had no straight-forward reason to be offended,
and I sailed out home free.
Alright, one more example, and then it’s your turn. The other day I was
at the pool, adjusting my goggles at the water’s edge, when one of the lifeguards, a
solid man wearing dark shades and a red shirt, approached me and slyly engaged in
conversation replete with subtle hopes and slippery charm. (Actually, in all honesty,
his hopes were not so subtle as he may have liked to think, and I almost laughed out
loud at what he said.) “Dumela ma,” he began, “howzit?”
“Sharp,” I replied, mentally preparing myself for the worst.
He weakly attempted to be smooth and steer the conversation through
the small talk towards the deeper feelings of his heart, but instead succeeded in
bluntly presenting the question, “What do you do in your free time, especially the
weekends?”
There, he had spit it out, a fast slew of words and the damage was done. I,
an experienced young foreign woman, reminded myself to remain calm and evenly
replied, “In my free time I read, swim, uphold my responsibilities as a student, and go
to Mokolodi with my boyfriend.” Voilà, it worked like a charm. The lifeguard, only
slightly battered, returned to his umbrella, and I to my laps.
So now it’s you, my friend. You are riding on a combi to the nearest shop
in order to purchase the greatly needed ice cream on this particularly hot African
day. There are already fourteen people in the minibus when you stop to let in a
young man with a suspicious look carrying a bag of biltong (dried strips of meat).
He hunkers down next to you on the last available seat, greets you, opens his grubby
plastic bag, offers you some biltong, and asks you for your name. As there is nowhere
else to turn, you are forced to answer him, even if you can wave away the dried meat.
Soon he is asking where you are from, how many siblings you have, if you want many
children of your own, and where he can meet up with you later for a chat. What is
your response? Remember, doing your homework now will prepare you for the pop-quiz.
HELEN MARIE POHLIG
94 CORADDI
•
95 PROSE
•
“Fucking fourteen goddamn years old. My little pony and shit.”
He sits and makes the first motion for his pocket, then says “Christ. Weak-willed
sluts.”
Putting a cigarette into his mouth, and lighting it, he says “Tarts.” Ha ha ha!
“It might be love,” Josh Russell Ryan David Ash Drew says.
“Love! Love!” Collin waves his cigarette at him “It might be predation! Frustrated
high school boys and their starry eyed freshman coeds! It might be love.” He aped.
Ha ha ha. He waves his cigarette at him, and Drew reaches across himself and
flicks the ember onto the dash, where it lands to fade to gray and crumbles into the
wind. Timothy taps what’s left of it back into the box and places it between his legs.
“Frustrating as hell, man. Good girl, that one.”
They ride. “Great fucking girl. Don’t want nobody on her.”
By nighttime, they haven’t found the mind to stop. “I’m feeling like anarchy tonight,”
Collin Davis Timothy Alec Jack says. They’re both three years out of high school and
six-and-a-half years since punk rock, punk rock decades “There’s just too much
unrest. This was a weird day.”
“What do you want?”
“I want some untouched land. Something to take for myself. Nobody else knows
how to get to it. I want it public and permanent”
They ride a while longer and find nothing of inspiration.
“Can’t you imagine her with paint splotches on her fingers and pants wandering
into parties way past the point where everyone’s too drunk to be entertaining, like,
because she spaced on what day it was and she was too involved in her work? And
she finds an open 40 or like, grabs a near-empty handle of whiskey, and can’t find
anyone she feels comfortable with, so she ends up leaving right away? And she goes
back home to go to sleep or something? And she forgot her phone on the floor of
her apartment and it’s been buzzing itself in circles all while she’s been out trying to
make up for lost time, and she gets back and has no energy to return the calls of the
people she spent all night looking for?”
“She doesn’t even paint.” “I’m just dreaming.” Later, Timothy’s found her by
herself by himself by way of calling her and then clawing his way through her open
window. She’s grown much larger than she was this afternoon. She’s bare and undone,
and her skin is beaded and tacky like rubber just about to melt. She did nothing but
breathe, and he felt like she needed nothing else, nothing that could make any other
person love her. She’s more than enough without any of it. He wanted to strip her
completely. He wanted to strip her of her wisps of summer breeze, of all her goose-bumps
and roundness and lankiness and dips and curves, of anything to grab or
cradle, of everything that might sway and anything to cry or gasp, of everything to
range from ice cold to fire hot, of all four dimples and every patch of freckles placed
not by her, but by her mother and father, accenting her effortlessness, of all her
effortlessness, of her neatness and greatness and flexibility, of all the rotten thoughts
she’s had and others have had about her. He wanted to strip away everything that
might grasp and shudder, her lips, nevermore wet nor dry nevermore, each cheek,
pressed never again, each eye, not ever again to be pooled and gazed into, not to
be misunderstood ever. He wanted to work each hand under her ribcage and lift
away everything that would cause confliction or hesitation, to unravel her innards
and brush away her blood. He wanted her down to herself and only herself, and he
wanted to reach her green-hot nuclear core, to feel it with his palms, fingertips, and
fingernails.
ROSS BRUBECK
96 CORADDI
•
97 PROSE
•
Holly is stardust. She is the placeholder. The space between words­—
or letters, even.
She is “Ø”, zero, all of the zeroes in a billion. She is zero, and they are one. She is the
segue from stardust to stardust, alive and the only one on the planet who is conscious
of her origin and destiny. From out of silence back into silence, from inconsistence
to momentary, bright, painful coherence, back into dissolution. She will rot from the
inside out and be carried off by nature, extinguished and returned.
Holly only has one front to share. One working side. She would be multi-sided if she
could be. This is just how she was made. She can only hold one at a time, and if all
of her arms were real, she would hold all she could, all there was. She would have and
hold a kaleidoscope of life, tumbling it over and over, grabbing it towards her again
if any part crawled away. But she was made with only one front and only one back.
She can only receive or refuse, and only one at a time, to or from one at a time. It’s
how she was made, and it has required a life’s worth of patience and creativity. Her
two arms reach forwards, not backwards. Her face points straight ahead, not right
behind. Holly moves on and on and on and on.
Holly goes out again at night time. She has had a lifetime of failure. Her dogs act
like retards. Her spaghetti tastes too strongly of garlic. In middle school, she never
talked enough. In high school, she never talked enough. She never asked her parents
for more siblings, so she doesn’t know how to share or compete. She doesn’t know if
she would if she could. The sun was and is too bright and too far out of reach, and
it wont ever stop moving. She sleeps too little, and can’t make anything of her time
while awake. She goes out alone. She walks too much. Holly noiselessly strolls the
streets. She is a mere liaison. She is only a moment, grown from absence.
She finds crowds to walk through. She finds spots where passersby stick around a
while. Holly walks mutely through crowds, making steady eye contact. She is tired all
the time. She knows she needs to act out if she’s going to get anywhere. The first step
has been hard to find, but lord knows she’s taken the first step to finding the first step
many, many times. She walks mutely into a madhouse of a bar. Walking silently and
sleeplessly, she’s found congregation of life, parts gathered in a shell, connected by
a spirit. It holds its gelatinous form for a few hours, swelling and decaying, purging
continually and splintering nightly to reshape and reform itself daily without external
conscious effort. Through nature, through its nature, through magnetism, through
god or human character.
She places her hand on the arm of the one she finds the rowdiest and most postured,
and most alone, making full, steady eye contact. He asks her name, and she smiles.
Leaning close enough to breathe her in entirely, he asks louder. “What’s your name?”


She smiles and shows her teeth. He shows back and loops his arm around her,
asking how her night’s been and what is she drinking? She eyeballs his friends. Less.
They’re much less. She catches sight of the television a moment. It’s a game show, all
shadows and glitter. Shadows, glitter, and loss, this time. She moves to look at his cup,
and he swirls it enticingly. “Beer?” She takes a moment to notice the skyline out of
the window, and she shape and color of the bottles behind the counter. “How about
this one?” he asks his friends.
“I think she’s a keeper,” they tell him.
“Would you like a beer?” he asks her. She moves one arm across his back and rests
her other hand against his shoulder, sinking into him.
“How about this one?” he asks again. This time to her, “Do you speak English?” A
drink is poured for her and she lifts it to her mouth, drinking three gulps and
watching the shadows on the television. She rests the glass on her bottom lip to give
the turmoil a few moments to settle, then drinks the rest completely. “Like a fish.”
“Maybe she’s a mermaid.”
“Maybe that’s why she doesn’t talk, because she’s a mermaid, and she breathes beer.”
His friends say.
“Well, let’s keep her alive!” he says and orders another drink. She burps silently and
waits with it in her hand, then fixes her gaze on his friends and finishes this second
glass without pause, sets it on the counter without reflection. He squeezes her in his
arms and she smiles at him and hooks an index finger in his collar.
The men continue to talk and gaze around the bar. She follows the conversation with
her eyes. He breaks from the group to ask her questions occasionally: What’s her
name? So, what’s her name? Who did she come in with tonight? Where does she live?
Where did she get this beautiful necklace? Is this a pyramid? How did she manage to
get such green eyes? How did she manage to get such smooth skin? He wrestles her
and she pushes back. He wonders to her how she got to be so strong with such tiny
Q
- - -
ROSS BRUBECK
98 CORADDI
•
99 PROSE
•
arms? Where is she going tonight? His friends are asking for his attention, but he says
again: Where is she going after this. She shrugs and sips his drink.
“Do you want another?” he asks. She nods and walks out of his grip as the
conversation forms again, now heated. The sound of it sinks into the cacophony
as she weaves back through the bar. Occasionally she meets directly a heated glance.
Spite, she greets from the women, scanning her thighs and the length of her skirt,
her breasts and their size and shape, her face and its symmetry, her makeup and its
effectiveness. Interest, she greets from the men. The bathroom is at the back of the
bar, past the pool tables.
In the bathroom she is alone. She steps slowly and audibly towards the mirror, which
she peers at and breathes on. Within a stall, she sits and breaks the silence as she
starts to pee. She wonders what kind of woman drew this penis on the inside of the
door. She sits longer than she needs to and nods off once or twice before standing
up again and rejoining the crowd. As she approaches, the eyes of his friends in turn
meet her and now in turn dart away. One by one she knocks them all down. She takes
up her position again, arm around him, but reaches across his face as he’s talking,
louder and rowdier now, to hold the newly full glass. He catches her wrist.
“Where did you go? I thought I’d been had!” He is speaking very loudly now. “What’s
your name? What’s your name!” She leans in to kiss him, and, after a moment, he
releases her wrist. She presses herself against him, holding the glass aloft.
“Who are you?” He asks. She steps back to drink in a slow, careful rhythm, holding
his gaze, then looks at him with one eye through the bottom of the glass after it’s
emptied.
“You are a bloodletter. You’ve played this game before,” he says as he motions for
another. She takes one long sip of it and places it on the counter, then smiles at
him, and at his friends, now avoiding the scene. “Is this one for me?” She nods in
affirmation, eyes on the television. He pours what was left of his glass in and starts
anew.
Each member of the crowd had come with the purpose of wearing themselves out.
None arrived intending or expecting to stay a productive member of the community
the entire night. The spirit is aloft, and Holly and her new friends take leave of
their duties and entrust the rest of the night at this establishment to whomever.
It doesn’t matter who. There is a pride within them, leaving. Encouraging change.
Acknowledging decay. Expressing publicly their modesty and tact.
Holly’s man is loud and very present, and he stoops to leave through the doorway,
though he doesn’t actually need to. Walking through the night, he lights a cigarette
and lifts her to his back, and she clambers to his shoulders. At a crosswalk, he
stumbles forward and hits the ground with a smack and an orange spark, but Holly
lands on her feet and takes a few steps. They are honked at, in the headlights. She lifts
him up and walks on with him.
His apartment is first, and he pushes her up the stoop into the doorway and closes
her in. His friends swagger up the steps, jeering and goading, talking about other
places to be, and then stop one by one as they briefly catch her eye contact. They
carry on, silently, as Holly is made to lead the way up three flights of stairs and
through his front door, her ears ringing all the way.
She is powerful. Her god-given traits, her self-taught skills and her knowledge of
circumstance, bring her to where she is standing, and she likes where she is standing.
She likes the smell of this place. It looks expensive. She takes off her shoes and
likes the feel of the floor. She closes her eyes and likes the spin of the room, like
lying beneath a wave, forever cresting. She likes the buttons on her shirt and takes
wonderful pleasure in undoing them. Having started from the top down, he joins her
from the bottom up. She begins to race because he’s taking her game, and he begins
to race also because he’s enjoying it. He whips off her shirt and places his hands on
her shoulders, close enough to breathe her all the way in again. One game ruined, she
dodges his descending head and runs to lock herself in the bathroom.
Here she strips completely, leaving her necklace on, and lays face down on the cool
tile. She stretches and flattens out as much as she can manage. Cooled here, she rolls
over, cooling there. She reaches up with a foot and opens the cold water faucet in the
bathtub and listens to it run while the shadows of her eyelids swirl around her. She
presses them and sees glitter. Growing hot, she moves to another part of the floor,
and dips one of her legs into the bathtub. The water is freezing, lapping at the sole
of her foot, which doesn’t touch the bottom.
“Oh, miss mermaid,” She hears from the other side of the door. “Homesick?” She
hears the knob being tried. “Am I going to have to smoke you out?” She hears him
kneel and ask the question again, under the door, next to her ear. She splashes water
in response. All is quiet after. All is quiet, and ringing, and rushing, with traffic, and
spinning. All is quiet but her blood. All is hot but her backside and ankle. All is still,
but she suspects that was the freezer door. She suspects that was ice in a glass, and
another. That was a cabinet, those were footsteps, that was a window opening, those
were footsteps on the fire escape, that is him tapping on the window. Her eyes are
still closed, but she is almost certain that was him tapping on the window. He sets
the two drinks down on the window ledge and pries open the window.
ROSS BRUBECK
100 CORADDI
•
101 PROSE
•
“Marco!”
The traffic is louder. He tips over one glass, then the other trying to shoulder his way
in. The ice slides across the floor and bounces off of Holly’s side. He upsets a potted
plant with his knee and says, “Shit.” He rights the glasses, then kneels to clean up the
mess with his hands. The tub is halfway full, and as he is turned away she crawls up
the side and slips in, beginning to shiver immediately.
“How about this one?” He asks, turning to see what the noise was. He brushes the
dirt and booze mud into a small pile in the corner of the room, then throws the
potshards loudly into a garbage pail, where they break some more. He kneels by the
bathtub and looks at her submerged, goose-bumped body. He trails a finger briefly
through the water. The cold hits him and he withdraws immediately, leaving a small,
dirty cloud.
“How about this one?” He mumbles again. “No tattoos anywhere on you,” he
murmurs. “That’s good. No mold on this cheesecake.” The water is advancing up
Holly’s shoulders. She is whirling in the dark. “Look at your nice legs.” He says as he
reaches in again, up to his wrist before withdrawing from the cold. “Look at your lips,
you’re freezing. Let’s warm you up, keep you from getting sick.” He turns the water
hot and washes the dirt from his hands into the bathtub, rubbing them together
loudly under the faucet. “Keep you from getting sick in the summer,” he says.
Clouds of burning water take a tight hold of Holly’s feet and climb slowly up her legs.
He brushes the hot and dirty water around, and it touches her stomach, then spreads
up her chest. Holly moves her legs back and forth to even out the temperatures as
he trails his hand in greater lengths up and down the bathtub. He takes off his watch
and places it in the soap dish, then reaches both hands in and takes hold of her waist
and begins to lift her up, but she limply opposes. He supports her under her knees
and the small of her back and lifts again, but she slips out of his wet hands and
splashes him with water and silt. “Shit,” he says, and brushes at the wet spots a few
times, wetting them further. He begins to remove his shirt. The water in the bathtub
oscillates fore and aft, revealing her feet, revealing her mouth, and inflecting the pitch
of the flowing water high and low. Naked from the waist up, he scoops beneath her
arms around her back and slides her from the bathtub onto the floor, now freezing.
She glances at the doorknob, out the window at the building next to his as he undoes
his pants. She fixes on his face, but he is looking down towards his zipper. She looks
to see where he looks next, but it is at the dirt and melting ice on the floor, so she
looks away.
He’ll never hear the sudden, startled agelessness of her laugh. He finds his way
home, right to where it matters most. He’ll never get his pants all the way off now,
it’s too late. The golden feet on the bathtub fascinate Holly temporarily, then his
hand, palm flat on the floor, moves in the way. The colors and general appearance
here are just as interesting, as is its motion, and sound. Slipping back and forth, with
an occasional squeak or some sort of groan, blood filled flesh pressed against a pale,
blood-starved fold, supporting weight and motion against the slick grimy tile. Hairy.
She reaches out and rubs it with the tip of her finger. He is still looking at some spot
on the floor to the left of her head. She holds on to her necklace with both hands.
She loses track of time and sees the water begin to overflow from above. Holly just
wanted a bath, but she moves on.
ROSS BRUBECK
102 CORADDI
•
103 PROSE
•
I’d ask for a new doctor, one who might give me candy and tell me to play tennis or
golf, and then sit in silence with me for an hour.
He’d deny my request.
He’d tell me my time was up.
He’d give me a note that read: ‘clean your feet. consider wrist bands. buy a wig.’
I’d stand up and thank him for his time and he’d thank me for mine and he’d put
me in some file while I drove home and by the end of the day he’d forget about me.
I’d tape his list to my fridge.
I’d consider buying a wig but I wouldn’t clean my feet and I wouldn’t bother with the
wrists either. I’ve known since birth there was no hope for them.
A list of things I consider telling my doctor, but don’t:
I’d tell him I am nothing more than fawn bones.  I am no bigger than a pygmy child.
Or
I’d show him how my wrists snap off or how my fingers are smaller than his and I’d
tell him to make a note that reads: ‘her fingers don’t work well’ and one that says: ‘she
tries’ and then I’d tell him to cross it out.
I’d tell him about counting tiles and forgetting to swim.  I’d give him the definition
of apathy.
I’d tell him how I stole silver spoons and then threw them away.
I’d show him fragments of paper from that time I tore apart the maps.  That time I
burned the instruction manuals. and
I’d make him look at my feet. I’d tell him that they’re covered in mud and that they
are the most pure thing I have.
He’d make a note: ‘muddy feet’ and I’d cry. I’d confess.
I did it I did it I did it. I broke the lamp. I broke ties. I broke.
I’d draw him a picture of the time I lit seventy-three candles and they all burnt out.
I’d say I’m twenty-one.  I’d pluck a hair from my head.  I’d say I’m sixteen.  Another
hair. I’m ninety-two. Another.
I’d say I’m a fucking fetus and it’s cold.
I’d tell him I’m bald.
A LIST OF THINGS
- - -
AMANDA MANIS
104 CORADDI
•
105 PROSE
•
Crackle.
“I had sex with two girls at one time once,” said Joe Peralta. “It was
awesome.” I nodded and took a toke of my blunt. It was my personal one that Joe
had rolled for me. Joe’s loaded.
“Wicked.” I said. “Totally bitchin’.”
“Yeah man. So listen, I got a business proposition for you, man.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Joe had always been, well, not so much a business-minded type, so much as
someone with a lot of drive. Rich, but not very smart. He could make things happen,
and that’s really what counts, anyway.
“Lay it on me.” I said, toking again. I was hoping to get high enough to
agree with whatever insane thing he said.
“You’re good with business, numbers and stuff,” he said.
“I don’t know, dude, I guess I can push well enough but—”
“No, I’m serious, you’re a real good dealer. So like, listen. I’m sitting on a
fatass quop right now, and I need someone to push it, but I need a two hundred and
fifty dollar investment.”
Crackle. I looked at the quop sitting on my counter next to my Oxycontin and
my inhaler. The guy in the softcore porn was having a remarkably deep conversation.
I thought it was weird, because I was watching porn, not known for its writing or
acting, although this one had better of both than it did of actual sex. I was enjoying
it. It must have been the drugs.
My Kerrakle went out. I was bummed. I pinched a little bit of weed out
of the quop I had just promised all of my future money and more for half of. I had
no plans to sell it, and I think Joe must have known that I was going to smoke all of
it. I looked at it again. I had an obligation to sell the half I hadn’t “paid” for, since
I planned on maybe borrowing the money from my parents, telling them it was for
food or whatever.
It hit me suddenly that I’d seen this porno before, though I remembered
it distinctly being not softcore. I distinctly remembered seeing these girls’ vaginas. I
guess they edit these things for Skinemax or HBhO or some other sex-based pun
titled movie network. It had been in December last time I watched it, too.
“Now, two-fifty is a lot, Joe,” I said, taking my enormous aviator glasses off.
I let my southern accent through slightly when I spoke to make it sound like I was
Hunter S. Thompson, which is how I always get when I do business. I was lying, too,
which is also how I always get when I do business. Twofifty wasn’t just a lot, it was
way, way too much.
“I always forget that you’re poor,” said Joe. “Two-fifty shouldn’t be too
much for you, man, should it?”
Yes, absolutely, I thought. At no point have I ever had two hundred and
fifty dollars, and I had even less than nothing now. I looked at Joe. I put my huge
Crackle. My nails were dirty. I couldn’t imagine why, either, I hadn’t been
outside in days. Crackle. I hear these things are called “Crackle,” but spelled “Kerekle”
or something, in Indonesia. Cloves, or whatever. I had some soft-core porno on, it
was like two AM and I had just blown my fiftieth milligram of Oxycontin. It had not
been a good few days.
The girl on TV’s fake tits reminded me of Celia, which was odd, because
Celia did not have fake tits. She had real ones, and they were really nice. She wasn’t a
very good actress, which also reminded me of Celia, who I had never seen act, but
she was a very bad liar. Plus, she didn’t really have any right to be a good actress with
her looks and her artistic and musical talent and her everything else.
Crackle. I took two drags—one and held it in, and then another and held it
in on top of it, because this was my last one for the night. Not on purpose, of course,
but I was out of them. Cloves—sorry, Qereq’le—are an expensive habit. A pack of
twelve is like six bucks. I took a drag. Crackle.
I watched a girl masturbate on TV in all of its shadowy, censored, softcore
glory. I couldn’t help but not be excited by it. It wasn’t her fault, bless her, she
was trying. I hadn’t been horny in weeks, not since one night in the hospital that I
probably shouldn’t talk about.
“I feel like you and me are meant to be together,” Crazy Brittney said, sweat
beading on her chocolate skin, a frenzied look in her beautifully crazy eyes. I glanced
at my door, at my clock, and at my bookshelves. I looked at the half-finished painting
of Crazy Brittney on my floor. I looked at Crazy Brittney’s shirt on my floor next to
it.
I said something romantic and weird, and she said “I’ve always believed the
universe does these things for a reason, that you’re strong and handsome and I need
this and you, now, and you were sent to me.” I kissed her, long and hard, so that I
wouldn’t have to think of something to say. I like to think I’m a good kisser, but I
couldn’t make her forget that she wanted to crazy-ramble. I worked at her bra.
“I feel like my son would love you,” she said. I tensed pretty hard, but for
the first time in forever I was horny hornier than I’d been for months before and
really months since. She pulled my shirt off and tossed it somewhere or other. It
pulled at both of my nicotine patches, but those little fuckers hang on like champs.
I thought of Joe Peralta as I took her pants off. The hospital didn’t let us have belts.
CRACKLE
- - -
BASIE SETTLE
106 CORADDI
•
107 PROSE
•
crime of some sort. I wondered if maybe I could pin it on her and say that she took
advantage of me in my demented, atypical antipsychotic-addled state. Say that the
crazy girl had come into my room and raped me. It couldn’t fail.
Those thoughts, as best as I could piece them together through the cloud
of drugs in my brain, were in my head as I came. I pulled out. I rolled over. I laid
there. It was very, very dark in my room, and Crazy Brittney was nearly invisible. I
could see her eyes glinting in the moonlight that flooded my room because I wasn’t
allowed to have curtains, but she disappeared otherwise in the shadows of my small
bed.
“I love you,” she said.
“Oh.” I said.
Celia looked at me in the darkness. She would laugh when I kissed her.
When I asked her what that was about, which I did with more than likely annoying
frequency, she would say “I’m not laughing, I’m smiling audibly.” I didn’t know quite
what that meant, but it sounds good, right? I’m not alone in loving that line, am I?
It got to the point that I would ask why she was laughing just to hear that.
I found myself becoming violently enamored with everything about her. It was a
huge mistake; I know that, you know that, and most importantly she knew that. But
I knew that I hadn’t ever cared less about anything, ever. Which was of course also a
huge mistake.
“Don’t love me,” said Celia, seriously, looking right into my eyes. I smiled
and laughed and looked down, and then I immediately looked away because I had
a massive erection that I didn’t want her to look at. I looked at her. She was smiling
broadly, and her eyes were positively sparkling. Oh my god, she was just so perfect.
“Don’t love you?” I asked, not adding “Fuck you; how could I not?”
“Don’t love me,” she said.
“That’s interesting,” I said, being completely at a loss for words.
She looked at me quizzically, calling me out with her eyes.
“I try to avoid loving people immediately, and don’t worry I don’t love you,”
I lied. “Yet,” I added, for good measure. I kissed her. She smiled. I smiled. She kissed
me.
I loved her. Whoops.
Digging through my stash box I found another Kra’aakl cigarette and lit it
as fast as I could. Crackle. I double-fisted it with my corn-cob pipe full of pot. Real
primo bud, too. The tastes mixed fantastically. It tasted like candy and grapes and
island spice. For one moment as I held the smoke in my mouth and lungs, I smiled
and closed my eyes, and everything was spectacular. “Mmm,” my TV said over my
moment of ecstasy “Oooh yeah.” I hadn’t had sex in four weeks.
At that point, I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to maintain an erection. I had
been snorting so many varied pharmaceuticals that I could feel my system twitching
BASIE SETTLE
aviator glasses on. I took a toke.
“How long would I have to come up with the money?” I asked Joe. I can’t
remember the answer he gave but it wasn’t particularly persuasive. I took another
massive toke.
“How’s Celia?” he asked.
“No, dude, I’m not going to ask her for money.”
“I don’t care man, you don’t need to be too fast, man; it doesn’t matter.
How’s things? You’re my friend, man,” he said.
“She hates me, it doesn’t matter. It’s just not going to work out.”
Celia looked at me from across the table, candlelight glinting off her eyes,
glittering on the tiny sparkly things on her top, way, way beautiful. Way, stupid
awesome beautiful. It was nuts.
“I, uh...” I said. I looked at my scallops. I looked at Celia. She was smiling. It
was the biggest, most sincere smile anyone has ever given me for any reason, ever. “I
was wondering, what, uh, what are you doing Wednesday? I was thinking of walking
to the theatre, to see that play, but uh, I don’t want to... go uh... alone”
She was nodding and saying yes before I finished, which was good, because
I trailed off. She looked like she really wanted to go, too, which was just so weird to
me. The way she ate her tofu thing was adorable.
“Yeah, totally!” she said, “My friend Phil is acting in it, actually. If you
want to go, I can get us good tickets.” I was of course floored. Yes! Awesome!
Totally amazing! I thought, saying “Hey, yeah? That’s sweet—really? Let’s do that.
Cool. Uh...” I grinned nervously and looked at my food again. Thai food is really
some of the ugliest food that I’ still eat regularly. Celia managed to of course be
utterly flawless, beautiful in comparison to her pretty bad looking food. The food
was delicious, by the way. Thai Garden on Tate Street in Greensboro. I recommend
it.
“Yeah! I’ll call him n—well, after dinner, maybe, later tonight sometime.”
She said. She smiled so broadly I caught it and smiled, and I just look so weird when
I smile. I bit my lower lip. I almost giggled. I felt like a girl. I hadn’t been on a date in
a real long time.
I hadn’t been laid in a long time, either, though I didn’t mention that to
Crazy Brittney as she clawed at my back. She was saying stuff. She was blathering on
and on about Christ and love and her son while we were fucking and I have to say, it was
weird enough to keep me distracted. I lasted like thirty minutes. It was pretty cool.
Crazy people have a joking stereotype applied to them that they must be
crazy (HAHA) in bed, too. Unsurprisingly, this is not wrong. Crazy Brittney could
have held that moniker solely from how wild in bed she was. Not just wild, but good.
She was strong and forceful but submissive and accepting, and also really, really hot.
I could not have scored with this girl if she weren’t crazy.
I clamped my hand over her mouth around twenty minutes in when she
started getting loud. I understood that getting busted fucking here was probably a
108 CORADDI
•
109 PROSE
•
“Damn, baby. If you say sooo” she said, pouting. She kissed me, though,
and got out of bed to get dressed. I was grateful. My nipple kept bleeding. I really had
to get a Band-Aid or something from the desk, and hope to hell it didn’t look like I’d
hurt myself.
“I love you! Kissesss!” she said, as she left. Fuck.
The next morning I called Celia from the hospital and blubbered to her
about nothing for a few minutes. I don’t even remember what I said, but it must
have sucked; She wouldn’t say more than one or two words. I cried. A lot. It was
humiliating.
Crazy Brittney hadn’t spoken to me yet, which was nice, and I was pretty
sure she didn’t remember the previous night which was sort of a freebie for me. Not
that I’m a forgettable lover; she really was crazy.
Crazy Brittney as far as I know didn’t have a last name but she did have
massive, skull-fucking schizophrenia, and a kid. Yes. I know. I made a huge mistake.
Fuck you. She glanced once at me and went back to talking to the other crazy girl,
Maria, who I think was retarded. Some kind of super retardation. She punched some
dickhead doctor, though, right in the fucking face, so I don’t have any issue with her.
“Maria,” Doctor Marten had said, “Shut up.” He laughed at her. That’s
sort of weird, I thought. I mean, he’s a fucking doctor, she’s a patient, and we’re all
locked up in this shithole together. I didn’t get him. Maybe he had some issues at
home or something, but as far as I know, Doc Marten­—
yes I know his name is Doc
Marten—was just a fucking asshole.
Anyway, Maria screamed something retarded at him, and he told her to sit
the fuck down and shut up. She decked him in the face and sprinted for the door. It was
awesome. I was doubled over laughing. Terrence, the guard or orderly or something,
shot me a look, one that said, god, I wish I could laugh at this too, before he went to
sedate the ever-loving fuck out of Maria. I never even saw her walk around again.
Crackle. I was about halfway through the Kerekel. I looked at my humongous
bag of ganja, and thought that I must be a really good salesman, or else Joe’s dumb
ass wouldn’t have given it to me for fucking free. I had promised him 250 dollars that I
now had less than thirty hours to deliver on, but whatever. I would worry about that
in twenty five hours.
And then my fucking phone vibrated, shattering my peace, startling me
pretty badly to boot. I was too far gone for phone stuff now. I looked at the screen.
Too bright for me. Plus, it wasn’t Celia, so I didn’t give a shit. “Where r u??” read the
text. I replied with “here” and threw the damned thing into the hall.
When I said I didn’t give a shit because it wasn’t Celia, I should add that she
hadn’t spoken to me in four weeks at that point, and I had made no effort to contact
her. I am either a coward or a gentleman, although I have no idea which.
Celia looked at me sadly. I could feel whatever designer drug it was we had
dropped earlier coursing in my veins, and I could feel dirt crusting on my hands and
arms. I was bummed out. I had had a bad trip. It happens.
BASIE SETTLE
valiantly in protest. I shuddered as I took a bump of Ambien, which I hadn’t done
before and didn’t particularly enjoy. I chased it with a bump of Oxycontin which of
course was nice.
I laid down. My eyes were twitching involuntarily. I felt like my pupils
were very dilated and my eye-whites very red. I thanked Satan that I was alone in
my apartment and without internet. If I had the internet I would definitely have
bought something ridiculous. I already spent fifty bucks I didn’t have on porn and
two hundred and fifty that I didn’t have on weed.
I looked at my bare chest. I didn’t remember taking my shirt off, but I
wasn’t particularly surprised. I wondered why it was so cold in my apartment. My
nipples looked like they’d healed nicely.
Nipples are interesting. People don’t pay a lot of attention to male nipples,
but they’re just as sensitive as female nipples. One thing people don’t really know is
that when a nipple bleeds, it bleeds a lot. And they bruise quickly, too.
Crazy Brittney clamped her teeth down on the nipple she had been up to
that point erotically licking; both were novel sensations to me. I felt the pleasure all
the way in my toes but then suddenly I could feel the pain in my teeth.
“OW, FUCK” I said, calmly and gently slamming the butt of my palm into
her forehead to push her away.
“Sorry!” She said, and seemed like she meant it. Sorry isn’t even a Band-
Aid, though, and god damn it my nipple was bleeding. I felt like I might pass out. I
had no idea something so simple could hurt so bad.
“Damn, baby. I’m sorry,” she said, blackly. She dabbed at the blood with a
tissue, which stung pretty bad, too. I pushed her hand away.
“Ow. Don’t worry about itdontworryaboutitstopstopdontworryaboutit” I
said, totally calm and collected and smooth. The areola around my nipple was black
with bruising.
“Sorryyyyy sorry sorry,” she said.
“It’s really fine, stop apologizing.” I wanted her to leave. I was terrified
already that we were making too much noise. This hadn’t been something I’d wanted
to do in the first place.
“Baaaby, are you okay?” she asked, trying to be cute, acting like a girlfriend,
which just terrified me more. My nipple actually bled faster with my increased heart
rate. I was quietly impressed with my body for reacting so properly to such a subtly
scary thing.
“I think you should go before we get busted, darlin’” I said, calling her
darlin’ because I am a fucking idiot.
“Mmmm... I can’t sleep here?” she said, snuggling close to me. I nearly shit
myself.
“I mean… We’ll get caught. I think this is illegal,” I said, desperately trying
to squirm away from her without seeming like I was trying to desperately squirm
away from her.
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Edna was adding some pickle slices to her plate when the phone rang. She
quickly rinsed the pickle juice from her fingertips before drying them on the white
kitchen towel hanging on the refrigerator door. She lifted the receiver, the towel
draped neatly over her shoulder.
“Hellooo?” Drat. She hated to answer the phone sounding breathless, as
if she had hurried to answer it like some pathetic old lady.
“Oh, Pastor Ridgemont! Oh you did? Well, yes, unfortunately it was my
fibromyalgia flaring up again… Hmm? Moses? You don’t say. I’m sorry to have
missed it…four Sundays in a row, really? I hadn’t even realized!” Edna attempted to
slice her egg salad sandwich while clenching the phone between her ear and shoulder.
The warm toasted bread was cooling. “You are just too sweet to check up on me…
oh yes, I’m sure I’ll be feeling much better by Wednesday night. Mm-hmm…oh
that’s nice…all right; talk to you later.”
Edna turned on her kitchen TV and tuned in to Channel 4. Whenever
she had to mis a service due to health concerns, she always made a point to catch
the broadcast of Glory Cathedral’s service over in Raleigh. Today she had missed
the singing and the scripture reading, but the preacher was only about five minutes
into the sermon, so she could at least watch that. The message on Lazarus really
was interesting, but she couldn’t keep her attention from wandering to the large
sedimentary rock perched on the other end of the kitchen table.
  	     The rock used to stay by her front door as a doorstop, but no more. Last
Tuesday Edna discovered, completely serendipitously, something remarkable about
it. On the smooth flat underside, where she had never bothered to notice, was a
clear and perfect image of the Christ. She had been sweeping her front porch and
kicked the doorstop to move it, causing it to roll over. As it turned, Edna felt goose
bumps on her arms despite the warm weather. Then she looked down and beheld
the miracle sitting on her very own front porch.
A knock on the screen door pulled her thoughts back to the present.
“It’s open!” she called. She turned the volume down on her television.
“Lunch already, Mom? You must have gotten out of church early.” Evelyn
kissed her mother’s cheek, or rather, the air right beside her cheek.
“Actually, I had to stay in this morning. Another flare up.”
Evelyn raised her right eyebrow, a gesture that always irked Edna. “Mom,”
EDNA PERIOD MEYERS
- - -
SARAH SILLS
BASIE SETTLE
“Sleep well. Be safe,” she said. She obviously didn’t mean the last one,
praying probably that I would walk into a wheat thresher or something. Wheat
threshers are scary as hell. I watched her disappear into the distance, standing at the
door for a long while after she had left. I hated to see her go, but damn did I like to
watch her walk away.
I say that. I say stuff like that, but I don’t mean it that way. Celia was - and
is - gorgeous. She just had a nice ass, too. There’s no gentlemanly way to broach that
subject with a girl, I’ve found out, so I never mentioned it to her.
Crackle. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I walked outside, sneezed,
and laid down on the concrete of my porch. I stared at the sky. Crackle. Crackle. My
neighbor Job was out, he waved to me. I sort of flopped my hand limply on my wrist.
Job accepted that. Job’s a nice guy.
Job had been the one to pick me up from the hospital. Crazy Brittney and
I had kept talking and being friends and stuff, but neither of us had mentioned what
happened that first night. I seriously don’t think she remembered.
She gave me a big hug as I left and whispered, “I love you, Buddha.” She
came to call me Buddha during my week’s stay there, but that’s a completely unrelated
story.
I didn’t know what to say. I knew she didn’t have any of my numbers, and
I’m pretty sure at some point she forgot that my name isn’t Buddha. So I said, “I
love you too,” and slung my bag over my shoulder, grinned, lit my first cigarette in a
week, and left. It was pretty smooth.
I told Job I’d fractured something in my leg, and that was why I was in the
hospital and needed a ride home. He didn’t even ask why I was staying in a place
called Holly Hills Mental Health Facility or why there were armed guards at all the
doors, bless him.
I thought about calling Celia. I thought about it as soon as the orderly gave
me my phone back, and I thought about it in Job’s car and for the next four weeks
locked up alone in my apartment. I never did. I was waiting for her, I think, because I
still had her hat, her hairbrush, and two of her books, and she had one of my books
and a DVD, I think. I expected her to try and reach me at some point. She never did,
though.
Crackle. I had the clove perched vertically in my mouth, the ash teetering
perilously. I didn’t really care if it fell on my face, but it didn’t. I was grateful for that.
Who was I grateful to? I had no idea, I realized. I would stop being unduly grateful
to nobody, I pledged, and then immediately forgot. I took a long swig from a day-old
beer someone, more than likely me, had left out.
There’s no message here, really, but who cares anymore? Crackle.
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snapped it shut. “Mom. Seriously? You’ve had this rock for years. You can’t be
serious. What are you gonna do, sell it?” Her smirked dissipated as she realized that
her mother was not laughing at the joke. “Oh God…”
“Actually, that’s exactly what I plan to do. On the ebay.”
Evelyn pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “Oh
boy. I’m sure you’ve already thought about this, but…you have no computer, am I
correct?”
“No, but they’ve got them down at the library, free to use for anybody.”
“Ok. But do you even know how to use one?”
“Jaime at the hospital had me put pharmaceutical orders through the
computer several times at the hospital.”
“She had you do it yourself, or she stood over and told you what to do?”
“Some of both. But it wasn’t hard at all. Look, Evelyn, I heard on the news
about a fellow who found Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich. He sold it for upwards
of twelve thousand dollars on the ebay. If something so impermanent as a sandwich
can fetch such a sum, surely an object of such substance, like this rock here, would
be worth at least double.”
Evelyn had no words. She was looking at Edna the way she usually did right
before she made some kind of comment about Edna needing to take up a hobby of
some sort. “Mom,” she started. Then she shook her head and put her hands up in
the air. “Never mind. We can talk about this later. I’ve got to pick up Marsha from
a friend’s house. I’ll be back on Thursday, ok?”
She let herself out of the front door, and Edna went back to her sandwich.
It had gone completely cold.
When Edna entered the library the next day, the girl behind the counter
waved. “Good morning Miss Edna. Back already? It’s only Monday.”
“I’m not here for another book, Sheila. I got something to do on the
computers.”
Sheila blinked twice. “Oh, I didn’t know you…um, do you need any help?”
Edna shook her head. “I’ll let you know.”
There was a young man sitting at the computer she wanted to use. It was
in the back corner behind the reference section, where people couldn’t easily walk
by and see your business. The boy was wearing headphones, and his head bobbed
rhythmically as he intently followed the colored circles on the screen. Edna watched
from a few feet away. As he would click a group of circles, a “blip!” issued from the
machine and the circles disappeared. After watching him for a few minutes, Edna
determined that he was not doing research or school work.
She cleared her throat, and then realized he probably couldn’t hear her
through his headphones. She shifted several feet to her left so that she was standing
in his peripheral vision. Again she cleared her throat. The young man glanced in her
direction and then returned to his game. After another couple minutes of staring
and ahem-ing, he looked around at the other available computers, rolled his eyes, and
SARAH SILLS
she said, “I really don’t think it’s wise for you to diagnose yourself. At least go see Dr.
Peters.”
“Evie, there is no reason for me to pay that man fifty dollars just to tell
me what I already know. Wilma listed all the symptoms for me, in detail, when her
daughter was diagnosed, and she may as well have been describing me.”
“I’ve never noticed any fibromyalgia symptoms in you. And again, please
don’t call me Evie.”
“Well maybe you’d notice more symptoms if you visited more often.”
“Mom, not this again. I come every Sunday afternoon and most Thursdays
before yoga class. Wilma’s daughter only stops by once a month. I think I come often
enough to have noticed you suffering from a major disease. One that seems to make
a great excuse for getting out of things you don’t want to deal with.”
“Why, Evie! I can’t believe you would accuse your own mother of
deception!”
“Mom. Really? Then why was your most recent ‘flare up’ when you were
due for your annual dental hygiene appointment? And the one before that was the
bridal shower for Lucy’s daughter, whom you detest. And don’t get me started on all
the Sunday morning flare ups…”
“Evelyn Bristol! Are you accusing me, the woman who gave you life, of
intentionally missing worship services through deceit?”
Evelyn turned her head away and rolled her eyes tiredly. “No, Mom. Of
course not. Look, it’s just that—well, after Dad died you stopped going out much,
and then you had to quit volunteering at the hospital because your plantar fasciitis
kept coming back, and - I don’t know. I just don’t like to see you cooped up in the
house all day every day with nothing but soap operas and John Grisham novels. It
just doesn’t seem… healthy.”
Edna stared at Evelyn the way she often had when Evelyn was a teenager.
“You come to me when you’re seventy-two and tell me how much you feel like going
out.”
“I know, Mom, I know. I was just trying to… I don’t know.” She sighed and
sat silent for a few moments while Edna resumed eating her sandwich. Then she
cocked her head slightly and said, “What’s your doorstop doing on the table?”
“Oh, that! Well, go on and pick it up and tell me if you don’t see something
on the underneath. Go on.”
Evelyn raised the eyebrow again and reached for the rock. “There’s nothing
on here.”
“You don’t see it? Look at it a little longer. It’ll just pop out at you. Bam!
Like that.”
Evelyn continued to stare. “Nope.”
“For goodness sake, it’s the Christ. Don’t you see his features? Look, there
are his eyes, and the hair, and his mouth…”
Evelyn’s mouth hung open for a second before she caught herself and
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Edna pursed her lips and leaned back in her chair, as if the idea smelled and
she was trying to politely avoid it.
“Well.” She looked away, out of the window. She had not anticipated this.
“Edna,” said Sheila, “If you want to sell something, why don’t you take it to
the bazaar next month at the Holy Bible Baptist Church? Or you could put an ad in
the newspaper.”
Edna shook her head. No one paid twelve thousand dollars for items sold
at the bazaar or in the newspaper. It had to be eBay. “I’ll come back.” Edna hoisted
herself out of the chair.
“Sorry I wasn’t more help…” Sheila trailed off.
“That’s all right.” Edna raised her purse strap over her shoulder and headed
toward the door.
“Wait, Edna… “
Edna looked over her shoulder but didn’t bother to turn fully around.
“Next week starts another series of our introductory computer classes.
That might be something that could be of use to you. It’s three o’clock every
Wednesday, and it’s free. There are a lot of, um…senior citizens who attend.”
Edna narrowed her eyes at the senior citizen comment but nodded her
head anyway. “Maybe.”
Two Thursdays later when Evelyn visited, Edna met her at the door.
“Mom! I wasn’t expecting to be greeted at the front door.” Evelyn smiled
and kissed the air beside her mother’s cheek.
“Oh, I’ve just got a little more energy today. Come in the house, I’ve been
waiting to tell you all about this class I’m taking at the library.”
“The computer one? How’s that going?”
“Well, first of all, I learned yesterday that there is one very large,
comprehensive encyclopedia and the whole entire thing is on the internet. You can
go to it and just type in whatever you want to look up, and voila! Up pops a screen
with everything you could want to know about it.”
Evelyn looked confused for just a moment, and then grinned. “You mean
Wikipedia?”
Edna sat back. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Sure, Mom. I use it all the time. It’s pretty popular.”
“Oh. Anyways, isn’t it just wonderful?”
“Well. Yeah, I guess it is.”
“Yesterday I typed in ‘Lazarus’ and I got all sorts of information. It was so
much fun.”
“That’s great, Mom. I’m really happy you’re enjoying it.”
“And another thing! I think I have an e-mail address now. We set everything
up yesterday but I don’t know if I did it right. Marcus, that’s the instructor, told us
he’d send all of us a letter by e-mail and then we’ll check it together next week.”
“Wow.” Evelyn actually looked a trifle impressed. “So… I guess I could
SARAH SILLS
got up.
Edna smiled at him as he passed by her, and then slid into his place. The
game had disappeared leaving Edna staring at a desktop full of icons. It looked very
different from the computer that the nurses used at the hospital. She read some of
the words on the screen. Microsoft Excel. My Computer. Recycle Bin. Recycle Bin?
Edna wondered. Internet Explorer. My Documents. Edna read every word on the
screen but did not see anything that said “eBay”. She tried typing in on the keyboard.
She was a very fast typist. She used to type invoices and reports for her husband’s
lawnmower repair business. E-B-A-Y. Nothing happened.
Edna revisited the little blue e with the words “internet explorer”
underneath. Well. EBay was on the internet, was it not? She placed her hand
uncertainly on the mouse and managed to maneuver the arrow over the e. Just like
at the hospital. She clicked. Nothing. She clicked again. Nothing. And again and
again and again and - oh! Finally a screen opened up. There were several pictures
and lots of headlines. Still nothing that said eBay. She tried typing it again. E-B-A-Y.
Still nothing.
Edna pondered her next move, listlessly reading headlines that had no
articles underneath them. Now what was the point of that? With a sigh she rose
from the chair and shuffled to the front desk.
“Sheila. Can you help me with The Internet?”
“Of course, Miss Edna. What are you looking for?” Sheila walked around
the desk and walked with Edna towards the computer.
“The ebay.”
“Okay…” Sheila sat down and quickly typed “ebay.com.” Edna sat in the
chair next to her.
“EBay period C-O-M?” asked Edna. Is that how you get it to come up?
“Yep, you just type it here in the address bar and it takes you right to it.”
“Into the what bar, now?”
“The address bar. See the long white rectangle here at the top of the page?
You just type in whatever website you want to go to and it takes you there.”
Edna nodded, squinting her eyes at the screen. “EBay period C-O-M,” she
repeated softly to herself. “Now what do you click on to sell something?”
Sheila’s fingers froze in their poised position over the keyboard. “You want
to…sell something?”
“Yes I do.”
“Well Edna…you’ve got to have an eBay account to do that. And probably
a PayPal account; I’m not sure.”
“I’ve got to open an account?” Edna’s mind suddenly filled with images of
large corporate bank buildings with “EBAY!” emblazoned on their fronts.
“Yeah, you give them your credit card number and…”
“I’ve got to give them my credit card number?”
“Yes ma’am, that’s how it works.”
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accompany me to supper, or do I have to eat alone?”
“Well.” Edna looked at the e-mail again, then at her lap. “I don’t see why
not.”
Bill smiled. “It’s settled then. You’re going to love their homemade potato
chips.”
Sunday after next when Evelyn came by to visit, she was surprised by an
empty house. The television was off, and the egg salad was put away. There were
fresh roses on the kitchen table. She looked for a note of some sort but found
none.  She looked at her watch. Edna’s church had let out forty-five minutes ago.
Where could her mother be?
Just as she was contemplating whether or not she would seem ridiculous
if she called Sheriff Tate, she spotted Edna meandering down the sidewalk towards
her house. With a man. Evelyn squinted. Yes, it actually was her mother.   She sat
in one of the front porch rockers and attempted to appear nonchalant.
When Edna and Bill reached the bottom of the steps, Edna extracted her
arm from the crook of Bill’s elbow and gestured towards Evelyn. “Bill, my daughter
Evelyn. Evelyn, this is my friend from my computer class.”
“Pleased to meet you, Evelyn. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Likewise,” fibbed Evelyn. “Mom, I didn’t think you’d be… um, out.”
Evelyn’s amused stare bounced from her mother’s flushed face to Bill’s beaming
countenance.
“Oh, we just went for a quick walk after church. Sitting for so long makes
a body stiff. But come on in the house, you two. I’ve got a fresh batch of egg salad
I made this morning. We can sit out here and eat some dinner and enjoy the nice
weather.” Edna opened the screen door as wide as it would go and propped it open
with a large sedimentary rock.
“Mom, I thought you were going to—” Evelyn started and then thought
better of it. She smiled and shrugged and followed her mother and her friend into
the house.
have Marsha e-mail you huh?”
“Sure! And you too! Marcus said lots of his students email all the time with
their long-distance grandkids now. They keep in touch way better than they used to.”
Evelyn nodded. “I have to say, Mom, I think this is going to be really good
for you.”
“I think so too, Evie. Now, come on in the kitchen and try this new salad.
Have you heard of recipe period C-O-M?”
The next week in class everyone was checking their email when Bill leaned
over and whispered in her direction, “Edna, what is your email address?” Bill had
been very helpful to Edna the first couple weeks of class.
“Edna period Meyers nineteen thirty-seven at hotmail period C-O-M.
Why?”
“Just asking.” Bill grinned.
“All right, what’s yours?”
“GrandpaBillytheKid at hotmail dot com.”
“Billy the kid? What on earth is that supposed to mean?”
“I dunno. But ‘GrandpaBill’ was taken, and so was ‘GrandpaBilly’ and so I
had to add something. I thought Billy the Kid sounded kind of neat.”
“Do you even know anything about Billy the Kid?”
“Not really. But I guess I could look it up on Wikipedia, couldn’t I?”
Edna giggled. Then she realized she had giggled and turned back to her
screen seriously. “Why don’t you leave me be, Billy the Kid? I’m trying to work on
my email.” She frowned at him, or at least she meant to. It came out more like a
smile.
When she turned to her screen again she noticed there was a new email.
She could tell because it was bold and it had a little picture of an un-opened envelope
beside it.
“A question for the lady,” she read from the subject line.   “From Grandpa
Billy the…Bill! Did you just send this?”
Bill feigned concentration at this screen but kept grinning. “Stop bothering
me, lady. I’m trying to get some work done!”
Edna double clicked on the email. It still took her a couple times whenever
she tried to double click something.
Dear Edna, she read to herself. What are you doing after class? I am walking to
the deli and getting a sandwich. I sure would like some company. Sincerely, Bill aka Grandpa Billy
the Kid.
She turned to Bill. “What does aka mean?”
“Also known as”
“Oh”
“Is that it?”
“Is what it?”
Bill drummer his fingers on the desk. “Am I gonna have a pretty lady
SARAH SILLS
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ivy strewn across the courtyard shrinks into its own shadow in the dying of the light
like snakes into their holes.
This feeling old as time, though ridden with desire and forbidden in textual
transgression, summoned our eyes to search the map of our intentions, like that of
a cartographer’s lens. The course of our time together steered us. Determination
and   inevitability. Rosaline clasps my hand, her fingers wrap like ties on the back of
a dress, gentle yet secure. We walk through the orchard, it is spring again. Red apples
hang lusciously, dripped with the luster of soft dew clinging to the curves. White rice
is strewn across the path ahead of us. Crows peck tirelessly at the grains and flutter
away, squawking in protest as we pass.
The doors creak as the great seal is opened. An ancient hush passes through
our bodies, smelling of incense, oil and holy disaster. The trickle of water and the
moaning of old wood. The waxen crawling of candles. The fluttering of yellow
pages. Illuminations of stained glass. In Excelsis deo. Oxidized casts of saints, missing
eyes. The cross suspended by wire. Ubi caritas est vera. The Holy Kiss.
Rosaline’s lips touch mine as we cling before a stand of votive candles. The
flames lick and sway with our hips, creating a silhouette in the dark. I cannot help but
feel as Adam, pondering the design of our likeness, our fabricated forms.
She parts as a dancer with extended arms, and kneels slowly. With purpose
in every movement. She grabs a reed and tickles the tip of it in slow burning flame.
The black smoke rises in a slinking graceful plume that flits and wavers carelessly on
the air. A candle is lit, majestic royal blues, passionate orange.
Rosaline turns, her expression, fixed and pointed. Shoots a question, hits a
mark. Cupido with elegant arrow.
“Why do you suppose people pray as they do?”
I’ve never been a particularly faithful person.
“I… I can’t really say.”
“We all want things, need things. We trust in truths and untruths. We speak
to ourselves for consolation, to rationalize. We put our hopes in a basket. We strive,
desire, fall in love, fall out of it. Live and die, like fog. We need to feel that something
is definite, watching and narrowing.”
I shove my hands into my pockets and feel about with my thumbs, unsure
of what to say, what to do. My eyelashes dip like the wet wings of an insect. I muster
up a throaty gurgle, and curl the corners of my lips. I slump over and lay close to her
on the floor, our bodies curled against the richly patterned carpet. Arabesque flowers
in circular reefs. From above I realize that we resemble the symbol of Pisces, two fish
swimming together, chasing and following endlessly. The chancel is empty, the walls
sing of elderly women and rosary beads. Pews reminisce on bowed brows. The sweet
murmur of a baptized infant, pressed to his mother’s breast. La madre padre espiritu
santi.
I caress the nape of her neck. I become tangled in the dream catcher that is
her hair. Her voice is rich in timbre, velvet to the ears. We are sea shells, homes of old
One sat next to another, atop the wall that encircled the old headstones
behind the Catholic Church. Their legs draped like loose silk over the edge. The
two eyed each other for an encroaching consummation. They carried that wish on
their cheeks, rosy and forlorn in the tides of rapture. Her name was Rosaline. With
skin like lilies resting in milk, Siamese eyes, auburn hair that falls to the small of her
slender back when she kneels angelically to pick flowers. Her voice could vibrate my
bones like the reed of a clarinetist puckered softly between pursed lips. The scent of
her kiss lingers about my consciousness like the impressions of fingertips pressed
gingerly against foggy glass.
We read the stones, traces of names, dates, and places that have been etched
away by the fall of acid rain, yellowed with pollen, and sullied with the defecation of
crows. Beyond the beer cans and roach tips there is a playground. The wind rustles
through the pines their bodies whine and wend, lamenting the dead in their resting
places. The green nettles fall to my feet. She speaks softly, and calculates everything
with a heaviness that is uncommon for girls of her age. She wears dresses, they
remind me of Kimonos, the ends flitter in the breeze leaving a trail of ballerina grace
behind her as she walks with a beauty so serene that it is elixir to the senses.
I am a sucker for all things beautiful and real. I drink and sing songs. I like
the sound of my own voice.
Great clangs echo from the bell tower above. We watch with lidless
anticipation as the procession of the pious file from the great wooden doors.
Children dressed in Easter-egg shell pastels, penny loafers, neat bows and pigtails.
Children holding mother’s hand swinging and fluttering like parachute balls in spring.
Fathers with a stern motion and a clearing of the throat. The priests with their papal
hats and yellow robes wait at the bottom of the railings to utter hurried blessings and
affirmations.
“May the holy spirit bless you in all your pursuits.”
“Glory be, glory be…”
The clink of spare change into the collection.
The wheels of minivans kick up gravel as they exit the dwindling lot to
arrive at some family restaurant on the side of the interstate. Plastic placemats and
Formica tables. The dust settles and the sun dips, touching the navel of the earth,
sending great undulations of aerosol strokes against the canvas in the sky. The pagan
SEX AND THE SEPULCHER
- - -
ANTHONY MANENTI
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–My two companions were beginning to stretch out across our compartment, kicking
up the arm rests and laying on the seats. I decided to leave all my luggage with them
in the locked compartment and sleep alone in the next compartment over so that
we could all have more space. We were on a trans-Euro train somewhere in Slovakia.
We had passed Bratislava but couldn’t shake the rain that had been tailing us since
Budapest. I kept my wallet and passport in my pockets along with my cellphone and
some change. The cellphone alarm was set to go off at four so that I could get ready
to switch trains in Katowice and head back to Wroclaw. I was alone in the cabin. I
turned off the lights and stretched out on my side in the dip in the seat. My book
was on the opposing seat, and my shoes on the floor. The day of wandering around
Budapest on my feet had made me rather tired, so I passed out pretty quickly and
dreamed heavily.
–About three o clock the train was shuddering violently, slowing down and roaring
with the effort of restraining itself. The brakes hissed and squealed on the tracks.
Valves spewed steam outside, and the rain slowly spread outwards in rivulets down
the windows. I was well asleep, and my dream was mirroring the tumultuous event
around and beneath me. There was a sense of great motion as a presence moved
near my body, and I felt something being slid from my pocket. I came awake instantly
and sat up. I could immediately tell that I wasn’t alone. There was a backpack on
the seat across from me, and the man who was in the process of picking my pocket
turned and half strode, half ran from the cabin. I was stunned and unable to act
for a moment. My whole visual and perceptual field was moving and shaking. I sort
of rolled from the seat and made my way to my feet. Weird light was pouring into
the room from the windows, bubbling orange through the residue of rain as the
groaning train skidded into the platform. I staggered out into the aisle just in time
to see the thief dart into the last cabin to wait until the train stopped. I patted down
my pockets as I ran around people and luggage in the aisle, running towards that last
cabin where I was mostly sure the thief waited. I arrived at the cabin half dazed, and
stood in the aisle looking in at the man who I presumed to be the thief, staring at
him and thoroughly checking all my pockets. Everything was there, so I was sure I
didn’t have to attack the man to get anything back. Instead I stood there, staring at
him through the glass. He wouldn’t make eye contact. His hat shaded his face so that
TRAIN RIDES AND NIGHT DISTURBANCES
- - -
GABRIEL MORGAN
things now departed. Our passions are of amber, pressed closely and molded into a
shape of our own. We are foolish and perfect. We are lying beneath Jacob’s ladder. A
candle catches and drips, warm, supple. I feel nothing.
In the mornings I often stare in the mirror, a beard carpets my face. The
realization of my temporality outlined by the caricature that now stares back at me.
I see hung-over eyes. My hair is no longer pure and blonde, but long, ragged and
untamed. I wish I could mark the frames, see the broadening of my features pass
by like a flip-book, but I cannot. “How did you get here?” I remember innocence, my
blissful footsteps against the concrete. Happiness that knew no rights of passage.
Yes, I am no longer a child. Though I am not weary, I have not let the weight of
reality tear the seams of my passions. I see that in the mirrors, her eyes those being
no pool of Narcissus. I see what I am. “I see, I see…”
Drips and Drips.
Catches and Catches.
For everything there is a season.
Grows and Grows.
Burns and Burns.
The myriad of moments, our cues and exits. The moments that brought
us here. Desire, the tourbillion against temperance. We stretch and intertwine. Heart
strings that play and glances that collide and shatter into ash that fertilizes, rebirths,
and recreates.
“I smell smoke, I cannot tell, is it incense or the traces of cigarettes on my fingers?”
We curl to each other, like leaves that grow old. Holding each other’s images
like a locket that is clasped and kept close to the chest. Pictures that you look at
when you feel lonely, put them on shelves and hold their meanings to frames without
borders. Purpose undying questions and answer as you rationalize, categorize and
remember fondly. All I can feel is warmth.
“You plucked me out.”
ANTHONY MANENTI
122 CORADDI
•
123 PROSE
•
My friend’s dad had lung cancer back when we were in elementary school.
One day, this kid in my class saw the doodles of dragons that snaked down the sides
of my looseleaf paper. That’s when my friend and I talked for the first time.
Sometimes it’s like I’m still having to get to school really early, like Mom’s
still the tech person.
There I am.
I jerk awake to the blare of the alarm, its demon red six, zero, zero the only
visible thing in the dark. After today I’ll start waking up at 5:59. It’ll help. That sound
is something I hate more than anything at this moment. I hope in vain that it’s just
part of a nightmare.
I peel myself out of bed, I shower. I wish I could just make time stop for
a moment so I could take a bath. Baths are always better. We drive to school, and I
sleep on the way. We get there, and I sleep in my mom’s office until it’s time for class.
The click-tap-tapping of her working on her computer is like the crashing of waves
during a beach nap.
I get to class and sit down at my desk. I nod and smile at the teacher, but I
don’t talk to him. He knows better than to try and spark some fake conversation. I
just take out my notebook and pencils and doodle little winged lizards. Teachers are
always extra nice to you if your mom fixes their computer.
The bell rings, and the other kids filter in over the next ten or so minutes as
I’m waiting for my friend. In my school years, I won’t make many friends. If it hadn’t
been for our teacher’s forced interaction, I wouldn’t have met this guy. I wouldn’t
have thought about him every day.
The bell rings again, the final one. The teacher closes the door like someone
putting the last nail in a coffin. Where is he? He’s been late. Things haven’t been
going well recently.
At this point he’s already told me about his dad. Six months earlier he’s
telling me about the cancer, about the doctor’s updates. I just sit and listen. What am
I supposed to say? I don’t think much of disease or death. Right now, I’m immortal.
And yet he goes on about how things aren’t looking too good. His dad’s coughing
up blood at the dinner table. It’s spraying out of his nose and mouth over his plate
of mashed potatoes. They stare at him and his wife gets teary and wipes his mouth
clean with a tissue.
IT’S HARD TO BREATHE
- - -
JOSH LITTLE
his eyes receded into something of a black mask of eye, stubble, and smoke-stained
skin. His shirt was plaid. The white light of the synthetic overhead created a strange
image, glaring across this dirty specter of impoverished Slovakia.
–I didn’t know what to do. The situation was so absurd and so lifeless in a way. There
was not the pounding beat of an action movie pushing at me. There was nothing
that made me want to do anything to this man whom I was mostly sure had just been
picking my pocket. There was only the strange awkwardness of two humans looking
at each other, one staring, the other standing, pretending, waiting for the train to
stop so he could push away into Slovakia. There was sort of an equilibrium, a mutual
recognition. I could do nothing. He had tried to take my things, but I had caught
him. I had no desire to attack, and I couldn’t notify anyone because I couldn’t speak
the language. I could do nothing to him, but it was enough for me that I had him
cornered in a small glass room, that I was staring at him, and that for him to leave
the train he had to walk right in front of me and suffer my gaze. As he pushed by I
spoke to him. He looked away and said some things in Slovak then held out a pack
of cigarettes. I wish now that I had taken the whole pack.
–When I went back to tell my friends what had happened, I noticed that my pocket
had been slit halfway down with a knife. He had actually been in the process of
cutting my pocket off while I was asleep. The backpack he left in my cabin was
owned by a Jewish man from down the aisle. We managed to find the owner by the
passport that was stuck in the top pocket of the bag.
GABRIEL MORGAN
124 CORADDI
•
125 PROSE
•
me.
He doesn’t call, but he comes over the next day.
He tells me his dad came out of surgery looking like a different person.
All tired and stretched out on that hospital bed, almost asleep, wrapped in bandages,
encased in casts, breathing heavily like he’d been in a war. Taking out most of his
lung had to be hard on his breathing. At least the cancer was gone, and he could have
a normal life now. That’s what mattered.
I tell my friend that his dad will probably lay off the cigarettes, but he says
that his dad’s never smoked, that people can get lung cancer even if they don’t touch
one of those things.
A few days later they take his dad home. His mom used to be a nurse, so
they work this at-home care thing out. It was really easy to do. But the dad is still
in a lot of pain. He must’ve been allergic to the medication he was taking, because
he’s still breathing heavily and still looks tired. I’ve gone over for dinner a few more
times. I do see a different person than when he first made the big announcement, but
it’s someone worse. Anyway, with the focus usually on him, I don’t mind eating with
them so much anymore.
Now I’m sitting here at my desk, and the one beside me, his desk, it’s still
empty. I stare at my winged lizards, their smudged faces indifferent to all of this. My
friend and his family went back to the hospital today to get different medicine for his
dad. I guess they’re celebrating now, doing whatever someone with one lung can do.
The bell rings. Things flash by, and I let my body follow the same school-to-
bus-to-home path.
I call my friend as soon as I get home. No one answers for the first two
calls, and then he picks up, and he’s crying, already on these long sobs before I’ve said
anything. He says he has to go, and then the line’s dead.
I don’t know what to do. My bike’s broken, and Mom isn’t home yet. She
stays after sometimes to get extra work done.
I run to the front door and put my hand on the knob, rest it there for
a moment. Should I wait and call him back? I open the door and run down the
sidewalk. His house is on the other side of the neighborhood. I pump my legs, and
soon I’m wheezing and coughing up phlegm, that hint of blood in my breath. I spit
the globs onto the white sidewalk and wipe my mouth with my palm.
People slow, and I think they ask if I need help, if I want a ride. But I
don’t talk to strangers. I keep looking forward, down the bend of the road that dips
upward again. I stop and crouch and rest until my chest stops aching so much. I spit
some more, and then I stand and run again. The sweat is cool on my forehead and
cheeks and neck.
I turn down the last road. I get to his house and stumble up his stairs. I ring
the door bell and rest on my knees. No one answers. I stand and slowly open the
door. Someone’s asleep on couch in the living room, tissues on the carpet around
her. There’s a faint crying somewhere. I run up the stairs. The sound is coming from
JOSH LITTLE
My face is warm. I just want to go throw rocks at cars with the other
neighborhood kids. Or maybe talk about different kinds dragons.
Five months later and things are looking better. He comes over almost
every day now. He tells me about his dad’s improvements. I don’t mind listening so
much anymore. I haven’t been to his house yet. His dad hasn’t been well enough for
company, but now he invites me to eat with his family.
The dad’s bald, but nice, and the mom’s constantly straightening his collar,
brushing his clothes off. She looks like him, really, like her hair could fall out at any
moment. Their eye sockets are dark, their faces are pale, but they’re smiling, like dead
bodies fixed up for going out. They ask me about my favorite subject, about my
hobbies, what I want to be when I grow up.
I tell them I don’t know.
We all sit down around the table in the kitchen. The aunts and uncles arrive,
a few cousins that are our age too. My friend didn’t tell me they’d be here. The mom
sets the pot roast down and everyone stares and grins and licks their lips, all the mmms
and ooohs. I force a smile. I pass the sides as they come, the green beans, the collard
greens, the mashed potatoes. I take a spoonful of all but those potatoes. I wish I
could just take the food and leave.
I try to keep food in my mouth at all times so no one can ask me anything
else, so I look occupied. I realize I’m not even hungry, but I keep eating.
Eventually the parents have something to say. Everyone gets quiet and
looks at them.
In a few days the dad is going to the hospital for surgery. Now, you can’t
always operate on cancer. You’d think you could just cut it out regardless of how
big it was with all those high-tech lasers, but tumors can become too attached and
intertwine with healthy tissue. The dad’s tumor though, it’s gotten smaller. The
doctors say that it’s going into remission, that all the radiation, and all the chemicals
are bombing his blood cells and hair follicles and digestive tract. The doctors are
going to go in and cut out his left lung
I’m not sure if what I just heard was good news or bad news. But everyone
smiles and claps, so I do the same.
During the start of the next week, my friend seems nervous. I’m actually
happy about this whole thing. We can finally just move on to normal stuff and get
back to shooting aliens and killing monsters that are taking over the cul-de-sac.
We’re sitting there by the T.V., game controllers in our hands. He’s hasn’t
been concentrating, and I’m easily winning because of it. So I pause the game and
say there’s nothing to worry about. They’re doctors; they’ve got to know what they’re
doing. With such a big operation they’ll be extra careful, and within no time his dad
will be back to normal. My friend should just relax.
We get back to the game. I let him win once.
The day of the surgery goes by. He tells me he won’t be at school. I don’t
tell him this, but I don’t go either. I lie in bed faking a cold, the phone sitting beside
126 CORADDI
•
127 PROSE
•
With that horror festering and growing, he might as well have had cancer
himself.
My friend sits there, crying. I’m a kid still in elementary school, and I’ve
already heard the most gruesome tale of my entire life. And it just doesn’t make
sense. I say it can’t be real. Doctors aren’t like kids with Easy-Bake Ovens.
He’s not himself. He’s feeling down for the next few days. He doesn’t want
to play any video games or make-believe games, but really, neither do I. What’s the
point of all these games if you’re just going to be organless in the end?
His family sues the hospital, but the court date’s delayed again and again.
The dad dies soon enough, and a few days later they’re sitting before a judge, winning
a lot of money without the ability to buy back what they really want.
We’ve tried to move on, but his mom’s still in that same house.
There’s a screeching sound, and I wake up. I check my watch. Five, five,
nine. I rest another minute. Then I get up, put on a robe, walk to my porch. My
friend’s sitting on our couch with a controller in his hand, his eyes red, hair messy. I
ask him how long has he been playing. He says he lost track. He hates the game but
it’s th