Coraddi [Fall 2011]

              Coraddi
Fall 2011
Volume 114, Issue 1
Coraddi represents the art and literary community of
the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and
has been published, in various forms, since 1897.
Coraddi Prize Winners
Executive Editor
Janie Ledford
Art Editor
Alexa Feldman
Literary Editor
Jamison Hackelman
Promotions Manager
Reed Benjamin
Events Coordinator
Joseph Santaloci
Thank You to:
The best volunteer staff the world has
ever seen, Terry Kennedy, Funda Mills,
Elaine Ayers, the University Media Board,
WUAG, The Carolinian, our Champion
Soccer Team, Sarah Martin, Max Shipley,
our fantastic judges, Paul Howe for mak-ing
us great magazine racks, Nitz Graphic
Services, Inc., and Dafne Sanchez for the
cover illustration.
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 has been co-judged by Jonathan Williams and Shawn Delgado.
Jonathan Williams has attended Appalachian State University and UNC Chapel Hill. He is currently
a student in the UNC Greensboro MFA program.
Shawn Delgado grew up in Marietta, Georgia and earned a B.S. in Science, Technology, and Culture
fromvthe Georgia Institute of Technology. He is currently in his final year of poetry studies in the
MFA Greensboro Creative Writing program. He is author of the chapbook A Sky Half-Dismantled,
and has overseen the Write on Greensboro community outreach project since Fall 2010.
Kayla Cavenaugh - Cape Cod Evening
Emily Calder - Dichotomy
Daniel Pruitt - Labor Day
Honorable Mentions
Kayla Cavenaugh - Year of the Lion
Alexandra Ledford - Wake
Christopher Stella - Platonic Madrigal
•••
Art judged by Lee Walton. Walton holds a MFA in visual arts from the California College of the
Arts. His drawings are represented by Kraushaar Gallery in NY and his conceptual work is
represented by “cwp” (Christopher West Presents). Walton is an Assistant Professor of Art at the
University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
James Clemmons - 5/7
Paul Howe - By The Bus Stop on Tate Street Near the Weatherspoon Art Museum
Tommy Mallekoff - Untitled (Kiss)
Honorable Mention
Jessica Berkowitz - Alice
•••
Any UNCG student or alumni may submit to Coraddi, but only non-staff submissions
are eligible for prizes.
Literary Staff
•••
Alexandra Hillen
Stella Marie
Camia Rhodes
Chelsea Hughes
Muriel Irvin
Ali Moore
Amanda Shoaf
Alannah Gray
Kristen Thomas
Corey Cantaluppi
Jon Davies (Daisies)
Lauren Thomas
Kara Weinacht
Matthew Landon
Tristan Brooks Munchel
Luke Heavner
David Englebretson
Dustin Frost
Michael Hoarty
David Riley
Jordan Harris
Holly Mason
Hilari Bowman
Erkia Kandler
Art Staff
•••
Brandon Harris
Cyrus Banikazemi
Dafne Sanchez
Danni Brower
Ioan Opris
Jolie Daye
Kayla Cavenaugh
Kevin Kane
Matt Hayes
Paul Marino
Rebecca Bennett
Scott Brownlow
Will Brown
Audra Stang
Cary Quillian
Anthony McPherson
Fall 2011
Writing
Carr Street................................................................................................................................................10
Abby Owens
The Syllogism of Anti-theft Packaging: a State of American Relationships.................................................11
David Englebretson
Mhomas, Mom of Thomas.......................................................................................................................12
Tristan Brooks
Grown......................................................................................................................................................13
Hannah Bodenhamer
Cuddle.....................................................................................................................................................14
Thaddeus Manby
Wake.......................................................................................................................................................15
Coney Island Baby...................................................................................................................................16
Joyride......................................................................................................................................................17
Alex Ledford
The Dowry...............................................................................................................................................18
Winter Hands..........................................................................................................................................19
Holly Mason
Silence......................................................................................................................................................20
Ali Moore
We Should Play Extreme Croquet.............................................................................................................21
Cape Cod Evening...................................................................................................................................22
Year of the Lion........................................................................................................................................23
Kayla Cavenaugh
On Being Multiracial...............................................................................................................................24
Levon Valle
I hear........................................................................................................................................................26
Carey Griffin
Aging Gracefully Senryu ...........................................................................................................................27
Suspended Thoughts...............................................................................................................................28
Bradley Biggerstaff
Spell For…................................................................................................................................................30
Lany Shaw
Trials........................................................................................................................................................31
Poem 60...................................................................................................................................................32
John Friedrich
Jinx Removing.........................................................................................................................................33
Jon “Daisies” Davies
Peace........................................................................................................................................................34
Jamison Hackelman
Graffiti......................................................................................................................................................35
Paul Richard Scuderi
Natty Greene’s Statue, Or: You Don’t Know the Half of It..........................................................................36
Summersong 1..........................................................................................................................................37
Jessica Vantrease
Dichotomy...............................................................................................................................................38
Emily Calder
Platonic Madrigal.....................................................................................................................................40
Christopher Stella
The Grave Robbers and the Deer King.......................................................................................................43
The Devil and Eve....................................................................................................................................44
James Ci
Haruspex..................................................................................................................................................45
First Fourth...............................................................................................................................................46
Insecticide................................................................................................................................................48
Dustin Frost
Goddamn Winter.....................................................................................................................................49
Fall Apart..................................................................................................................................................50
Five Stages of Grief:.................................................................................................................................51
Morganne Radziewicz
Moving.....................................................................................................................................................52
Back-Cast.................................................................................................................................................53
David Wall
Contents
La Rose Neigeux .....................................................................................................................................54
Cala Estes
Orchid.....................................................................................................................................................55
Carla Guzman
Labor Day ...............................................................................................................................................56
Daniel Pruitt
Course Outline for 1st Offenders Program: Theft and Larceny..............................................................64
Jamison Hackelman
Artwork
Piazza ......................................................................................................................................................76
Paul Vincent
Untitled...................................................................................................................................................77
Rebecca Boger
Ethnic Roots............................................................................................................................................78
Sharon Romang
The Spaces Inbetween.............................................................................................................................79
David Koppang
Pregnant Woman....................................................................................................................................81
Dafne Sanchez
Morning Poo...........................................................................................................................................82
Alexa Feldman
Toothpaste Angel....................................................................................................................................83
Dafne Sanchez
Alice........................................................................................................................................................84
Jessica Berkowitz
Untitled...................................................................................................................................................85
Cynthia Cukiernik
Untitled...................................................................................................................................................86
Untitled (Kiss)..........................................................................................................................................87
Tommy Malekoff
Contents
Three Months Together..........................................................................................................................88
The Laziest Beanie in all of Greensboro..................................................................................................89
Jolie Day
Pohn Dollop............................................................................................................................................90
Harriet Hoover
By The Bus Stop on Tate Street Near the Weatherspoon Art Museum...................................................92
Paul Howe
Cavities....................................................................................................................................................93
Kevin Kane
Ideal Loves Company..............................................................................................................................94
Will Brown
Iron..........................................................................................................................................................96
Truck.......................................................................................................................................................97
Cary Quillian
5/7............................................................................................................................................................98
James Clemmons
Gonzalo Cao............................................................................................................................................99
Christian Durango
Mean Mom 1.........................................................................................................................................100
Mean Mom, Too...................................................................................................................................101
2 g e t h a 4 evr...................................................................................................................................103
Janie Ledford
Brian......................................................................................................................................................104
Self.........................................................................................................................................................105
Hipsters.................................................................................................................................................106
Ariel Stater
Ripple Effect..........................................................................................................................................107
Audra Stang
Contributors..........................................................................................................................................109
Colophon/Contact.................................................................................................................................114
Literature
10•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 11
Carr Street
soldiers of summer, we
retreated indoors to where
the heat couldn’t reach us and
we couldn’t be touched.
we chose twilight hours to emerge from our fortress
taking breaks from the times we spent
building birdhouses in your attic and
drinking until our lips were stained
to stumble down roads spilling with soft light,
a product of the street lamps that were
beckoning us to join them in the haze of july.
cicada symphonies drowned out our musings
so we chose to walk in silence,
broken only by the occasional cigarette or smile
and I thought,
“we are such feral children.”
Abby Owens
The Syllogism of Anti-theft
Packaging: a State of American
Relationships
Clamor at the clamps
Fumble at the strings
Tear at the dotted lines
Your fat limp hands stumble at the pressed plastic seem
Fingers snip at the bent hinge
Nails scuff at the raised hem
You’re almost in
A simple twist, to come clean
A clean torque, apply to release
A quick break from plastic reams
Past the rubber coated twisty ties
Past the wad of sticky foil rise
You, are almost at your prize
You can taste it, rest assured
With anticipated glee you will never forget this allure
David Englebretson
12•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 13
Mhomas, Mom of Thomas
Tristan Brooks
Martha, I’ll come through one Friday evening
when the boys are at the drive-in and your
Mike’s due at the dentist bright’n’early,
and we’ll drive up to the reservoir,
crack Natty Bohs and roll our pantslegs up.
We’ll look across the desert water in the dark,
and shout our names against
black flatness into black.
We’ll scream at snakes,
run with eyes our closed,
hurling rocks at anti-duck food signs,
balancing cans empty on our chins,
calling brashly brassy showtune hooks.
“Kid, you know you shoulda been my son,” you’ll say,
us sprawled on picnic tables,
drunk to feel the boards, but not our backs.
“Don’t let the boy hear you say that.”
I’ll wait a second, ask to smoke,
you’ll eye me hairy, but root out two,
(of course they’re Smooths)
and we can watch the silk spill upwards
towards the glitter stars like nailpolish shine
and squish the goose shit ‘tween our toes.
Martha, finally we’re young.
Martha’s chosen better with an irritating lover
than a long-awaited one--
she’s got to maximize her time now
since she chose to let the boys go,
chose to let the mortgage thaw
and her chihuahuas maul her slippers.
Martha’s picked the most available decaf,
slathered cream cheese on her bagel thin,
and stands in slippers,
watching chicks twitch as the morning glory
hangs.
Martha rifles out her menthols from a box of
Tetley tea,
takes them to her basement throne, sits on the
shag pink toilet seat
and reads her future in the potpourri.
She ashes in a solo cup of butt-end nightmare
sauce.
She runs her fingers down the stall-frame
door,
letting dull smoke press against her eyes,
stands up,
comes upstairs,
puts the pack back in the drawer
and plops her down, her arm around her
goitered love
(the sofa grey and fully fluffed)
to watch a TV special on the Bronze Age
as the doggies lick her hand.
i arch back into a body i don’t remember
my fears are laced with a childhood
that slipped through
my paint stained fingers
while my mind roamed and i missed the time zones
that all the other kids were going through
and the stars i hung my dreams on
crashed to earth and burned to cinders
and the gas filled lungs
and the heart’s tiny chambers
and the wrinkles in my mind
finally got to know each other, and
my moon-filled eyes shimmered brightly
until they were looking upon another world,
entirely.
Hannah Bodenhamer
Grown
14•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 15
I met with a mangled possum
forty miles north of here
at the crux of this road and that road
where leaves in their bile-yellow warpaint
litter and thicken and blur
the lines on the Martian asphalt.
There was a steep drop
from the highway with a long
cavalcade of ants
like tiny autos platooning
up its mountainous edge
and the possum’s entrails, being
attacked by miniscule button-blue
flies and their simpering maggots,
gleamed and writhed in their sanguine
bath of muscle and bone.
I bent down to sniff it,
that greasy sulfurous stench
of aorta and intestine,
innards and tire tracks and blood-soaked
clumps of tangled hair.
There was a distinct sound,
also, of decay—
buzzards with their peaked caps
chirruping, or the last rattle
belching past her razor
rows of possum teeth.
Her eyes stared with a glassy
martyrdom, verdigris
catching a tumult of wind;
so, having no coins to spare,
I plucked them from the corpse
and put them in my pocket.
Alex Ledford
Wake
Lying on my back
in this bed under
hot sheets smothering
with a forehead on my chest
I didn’t choose,
trying not to breathe
not to bother it,
I’m glad to notice the glowing cold
that comes from the window.
Tonight’s not so bad.
The only real getter is
the pictures on the walls,
photos of her boyfriend
taped up & framed;
it’s dark but I can just make out
his smile, her kissing him on the cheek,
him smiling right at me
with dark, ingenious eyes,
quietly overjoyed, like he doesn’t
even notice her because
he’s internalized her happiness
to his own, no questioning--
I realize I’m smiling with him,
and I stop.
Sniffing, her forehead
rubs against my shoulder.
Over on her desk is a pile
of unopened envelopes, stacked up &
stamped.
I can see him tonight through
400 miles of blowing midnight
to a single lamp
at a desk in Baltimore,
scribbling furiously, his smile gone,
trying to understand why his world has been
cut out from him
and draped around my neck,
balling up paper,
scrambling for the right words to bring it
back--
Well, she said he used to hit her.
That’s worth something.
Thaddeus Manby (A Pseudonym, no
doubt)
I reach for the window
one-armed,
struggle for a few seconds,
manage to crack it a little,
and the freezing air flows in,
over the blankets,
sweeps through my mouth, my chest,
clearing everything
but she groans, she starts to turn
and I push it shut again,
fast.
Cooking again in these god damn sheets,
staring at the ceiling,
encircled by snapshots.
Eyes close.
I see white trash families
going to Wal-Mart and buying groceries:
going home, getting hungry, and
going back,
standing in line, groping at plastic packaging,
going home,
getting hungry again
and going back,
scraping wire carts against the floor,
getting home,
getting hungry,
going back,
until eventually they stop leaving,
just wandering the aisles,
looking around,
moving, feeling,
Eyes open.
I wouldn’t wish this for anybody else;
give me a pen and a love not to requite, if
the future together is as bright as tonight.
Cuddle
16•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 17
Last stop on the F.
Cassie stumbles childlike
(for she is) down the platform
under what used to be tile,
a dingy mosaic still of
children and octopi in an orgy of bad
art near a southpaw tramp
clutching a Forty,
the sun a huge grapefruit pink and yellow
careens hazy through salt and sulfur
inflaming the morning.
The ice cream vendors
are unconscious this hour—
no Starched Strawberry for Cass,
no Atomic Pistachio. Try explaining
that there is nothing to be had
to someone with a small
mind and lungs.
It’s a shame
because the beer hawkers
aren’t awake either
I could use a drink;
this necktie chokes my throat.
Alex Ledford
Coney Island Baby
The Wonder Wheel groans like
a race horse being put down,
a round of buckshot
plied into each quartered shin-bone,
they’ll have dog meat and a rug
on their hands.
I’ve nodded away again
Cass is playing in the dirty water
with a one-eyed albatross
chasing after rapid garish groupings
of silver fish.
Honey, you’ll catch cold…
I have to be careful not
to furrow my brow too much
around her.
I want her to worry less than I do
for I love her
and she deserves
a home on this planet.
Jimmy told me
to put the car in third and gun it
when this guy who could have been
a cop was tailing us, so I did
and the shitbox with a rusty stick sped
not too fast mind you down the road.
Some rocknroller was blaring on the AM
I didn’t know who it was
or care really and the peepers windows I mean
cranked down midnight fog
encroaching yellow feline
and Jimmy turned the transistor music that was all garbled
down to the lowest clickycatch
and asked me what I thought about queers—
I said I didn’t know any
so I wasn’t sure and he said
fags they’re always trying to hit you up
for money that is after they put
their mitts down your pants,
they always want something
he smiled and turned the radio back up
it was a nice evening
if a little muggy
and the cop was gone
but unfortunately
we hit a guardrail
tipped over
got out fairly unscathed
dusted ourselves off and were able
to walk,
but that was the end.
Joyride
Alex Ledford
18•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 19
For the Schoolteacher,
Her father would offer no more
Than a copy of the Quran,
An insult at the least.
But the Educator would have Her just the same—
Her passion like mid-day sun,
Her devotion
Stronger
Than knees that press
The mat again and again
again and again
And, dutifully, again,
And Her full-moon eyes— all
His Prize.
The Dowry
Holly Mason
Even in the months of beach trips
And firework nights,
We put on our winter hands.
They stay in pockets,
Keeping to themselves,
Aching for warmth,
But finding none,
Only lint and sand,
Bare skin slinks away.
When cold hands advance;
Flesh isn’t ready for such change.
Winter Hands
Holly Mason
20•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 21
His face was calm as he spoke.
As if he was speaking casually across a dimly lit table
with a fresh glass of daisies commanding the conversation.
The cold streets, soaking up the newly fallen rain,
daintily painted with the city lights.
I notice the people, the sea of lost people.
A young married couple, who I assumed were newlyweds by the look he gave her,
were running across traffic.
They ran as if they could run around the raindrops.
Two men were arguing underneath their dripping hats,
pushing each other aside to claim the taxi.
Red faced and exhausted they stood, while their wives waited behind them
resisting the urge to laugh or cry.
I can still smell the bakery behind us, butter and sugar with a hint of cinnamon.
This moment repeats itself daily:
the cluttered streets, the mixture of words and cigarette smoke in the air,
the black empty sky over the city.
Yet the detail that mocks me is the look the man gave me
when his sentence came to an end. His face drifted from remembrance,
to pity and then into interest. He turned his head slightly to the right.
We shared eye contact for only a second and
then he stared at the ground until he could speak again.
“I’m truly sorry, but your son is in a better place”.
The words fell stagnant as they hit my ears, falling to the ground,
disappearing into a stream of puddles.
I was occupied listening to the men,
the red faced angry men,
listening for who would win the taxi.
Silence
Ali Moore
I didn’t even hear the screen door slam.
You must have learned to charm that snake, a faint
Hydraulic hiss heard just by pre-dawn mists
Which rubbed against our windowpanes
Like ghostly giant cats. I didn’t want
To drink the single Coke you left behind.
It’s tucked in the refrigerator, right
Beside the cherry pie you baked for Jean.
I might should stick your Smiths tapes in there, too
Abreast of Coke and pie, and even Jean,
And all the ones you used to love. We’ll be
There, chillin’, waiting. Airport gates can’t
touch this fridge, for we’re the grounded ones.
By now you’re somewhere north of Oslo,
Astray in fjords for sure. Beware of arctic fauna,
Bears and such, and dinner parties lacking Coke.
We Should Play Extreme Croquet
Kayla Cavenaugh
22•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 23
They escaped their city days, burned
The mildewing sofa, shattered her grandmother’s
Good china, and bought a collie dog.
They remember their first Cape Cod:
That velvety tumble of wheels in sand,
Whitewashed house a single standing silver fish at dusk.
He removed the key from the ignition. They heard
Muffled ocean music, got out to stretch,
Lit cigarettes, smoked in silence.
On evenings such as this they watch together
The collie dog awash in waves of leonine grass,
As he squints into the blue pine darkness.
Cape Cod Evening
Kayla Cavenaugh
Our Chinese neighbor is turning into a lion.
We spied him on the Ides of March, nonchalantly
Perusing the paper at his living room window,
Brushing stray mane from his eyes. Then
We caught him traipsing to his mailbox, tail
Swishing, replete with regality, whiskers and all.
Yesterday, after you fulfilled our mutual craving
For sweet tea, we sat beneath the weighty wisteria,
Lazing on a June afternoon. Those purple curtains
Did little to disguise that we indeed were on
The African savanna, and we watched our neighbor prowl
His lawn on hands and knees, whilst silently sipping tea,
And choked when he unleashed his savage untamed roar.
Year of the Lion
Kayla Cavenaugh
24•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 25
On Being Multiracial
Levon Valle
1. What does it mean to be multiracial?
That is the question.
They’re awful quick, even eager to praise
the diverse, pandering and patronizing me like the
latest fad commodity.
Their words are laced with opium, rather than
honey, making me yearn for the inconsequential,
thrive for it, even die for it.
2. “Multiracial.” “Mull-tie-race-shall.”
If I pronounce it thick enough, they’ll think
I’m a foreigner. If I’m light on the lisp, they’ll
think I’m snobbish.
Really, I think it’s a word anyone
can say, yet few will accept.
What does it mean to be multiracial?
That, is the question.
3. Does it mean that I’m supposed to laugh and
“Pull myself up by my bootstraps” when I hear some
derogatory joke about Africans aimed in my direction,
ignoring the heritage I share with my ancestors?
Am I supposed to tell the gringos that I’m not simply an uneducated groncho,
pero un Boricua y un hispanohablante orgulloso tambien?
Maybe I should tell the next snide English instructor that I probably
speak- or enunciate, rather – better than they can
so they don’t mistake me for a fallaciously
loquacious acolyte traversing the languid
land of lay and lyric for the Holy Grail of Acumen.
Now that’s bailiwick, is it not? The question, that is.
4. What does it mean to be multiracial?
It’s like, there’s this party and there’s this obnoxious
guy, and everyone has to love him, but everyone hates him.
That’s you. Plus, when he gets there, there’s just something
you can’t quite finger –or molest, for the ribald and tasteless –
about him that riles you up, and he makes you want to
curse and vomit inside your mouth like a stopped-up toilet
filled with hangover booze and sallow, frothy piss.
That’s what you do, I do.
But you’re not racist, right? You just want people to
“be a man about it,” is that not it?
You want a Native that cries, or one that disappears.
You want a Caucasian that reeks of fear, or
a really “flaccid” personality.
You want an all-American spic or a yellow-jacket.
Or you could simply want a token Negro:
rare, well-done, or extra crispy?
That, is the question.
5. Being multiracial must be strange then, like seeing
aranitas tostones with steak, maple syrup, and olive oil vinaigrette.
Or maybe an oatmeal-tomato-raspberry-chicken-and-spinach
sandwich, smothered with a hot cup of grape koolaid applesauce.
Nothing, despite the potential for matching parts, seems to fit into our
“melting-pot” society.
Then again, what kind of meat do you like, preferably?
Dark, light?
That is the question.
Is it the breast, chest, or thighs that suits your eyes, rather
tastes?
How about that premium unprocessed beef?
Do you think it is ever a peculiar habit to change “dieting” routines?
Or do you simply “stick to what you know,” so to speak?
Why?
Why not?
That’s the real question.
6. Do I even care anymore?
Do you even care?
About being multiracial, that is.
26•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 27
These old men in line
have faces they do not hide.
Faces like raisins.
Aging Gracefully Senryu
Bradley Biggerstaff
a flutter of midnight ravens
and eyelids;
rain spits on the window
and moves on;
the end of the hallway
falls into darkness
with a dull thud;
the kitchen faucet leaks
above a tin sink;
a showerhead drop
drips onto tile;
in an unseen room
the floor creaks
beneath the weight
of an empty home.
I hear
Carey Griffin
28•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 29
I
a lonely day for a space cadet, watching birds watch him
in a limp wristed state of meta-cognition
“water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. I guess I’ll drink a beer.” – Fatback McSwain
and just don’t think
stepped out of a hookah bar to smoke a cigarette
it’s nice to know that someone is thinking of you. in fact, i can’t think of anything nicer.
you always did love the feel of colors in a little white.
II
I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror
with a twenty mile cigarette
and a cat named sideways
when a mentally retarded man tried to grab me in a suplex
so driver read the Gospel of Matthew aloud in Hebrew
“I’d like to apologize for being so lonely lately. It was selfish of me” – a poor bastard
because willows play the accordion all too well
Suspended Thoughts
Bradley Biggerstaff
III
Ladybug’s still running from pimp daddy longlegs.
I’ve seen it; the hungry whips
“and over here is a super genius” – anonymous
some wino with sweaty hands
sorting M&Ms numerically
the scent of a flower bloomed too soon
that’s him, or maybe you.
30•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 31
“Please spell…”
I don’t understand why-
Spelling bees are pointless
“Definition, please.”
She’s stalling, I can hear it in her voice
Maybe, she’s doing it for show.
“Will you use it in a sentence?”
That won’t help, the context of the word-
It can’t save you from the perils of each individual letter
Just spell.
“S-a-c-r-e-l-i-g-o-u-s, sacrilegious.”
No, you’re wrong, step away from the mic-
And she does.
Spell For…
Lany Shaw
the last time I showered
I did not feel clean
and so the habit suffered
Routines followed
and executed
with all the fanfare
of janitors
who sing while they wipe down
an empty stadium
Silly games of pretense
waiting for a live studio audience
someone to notice
a dutiful shave
Charades with or without
words spoken to yourself
as pants are folded
and ashtrays emptied
to the applause
of nothing
or more to the point
no one.
John Friedrich
Trials
32•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 33
A lack of agony
is the goal
of most things,
perhaps all
yet when divorced
from the usual
pain
tastes do change
food is chewed longer
and purpose retreats
to legs and sunsets
and pan fried
chicken
Poem 60
John Friedrich
I sat in your kitchen
We listened to the South’s oldest rivalry
The way we did
Every year.
Your wheelchair creaked,
You hollered just the same as you would have,
Twenty years ago,
Before all of this.
We all were there, crowded around that miniscule radio yelling at Carolina
for what was such a cathartic win that we had waited on for so long
I’m glad that the last time you heard the game played,
We won.
But now,
A dress code composed of a wooden coat
For a reunion with grandfather and brother and even mother
In a place where radio can’t reach
Where you are Carolina wins every year
Down here, it looks like an easy victory for Virginia this year
Maybe even next.
Jon “Daisies” Davies
Jinx Removing
34•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 35
And glory,
was wrote down in black bound book
Made broken string guitar.
Wavering voice echoed off stained glass,
not their church,
Someone’s church.
Bikers and Baptists sat waiting for Pastor.
Not their pastor, not her pastor
Someone’s pastor.
Sign the registry,
We’d like to know who was here,
Hands folded under legs on seats of
Mahogany, rich and everlasting.
The pews would be the last to fall,
If the House could make it that long.
Sign outside says: Devil bad.
God Good.
Old couple trembles in the dining room,
A plot for their daughter,
she had been doing so much better.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you for the beer and the company.
Ochre, organ piped
gorgon, beating like a drum
on peach pitted petroglyphs
echo the shrieks of the Diné.
Perched on sandstone promontories
scoping cattle skulled rat snakes
on the Canyon floor,
who flicking their bifurcated tongues
chop down the orchards, of a mirage.
Their ghosts, gaze modern auxiliary goons
war painting over the hieroglyphs
of the new Aborigine, Minoan, and Celtic,
discarded like shards of clay jars
in the slum-gullion gulches.
Tonight you can see the mauve
muzzle flashes of their aerosol cans,
illuminating crumbling, concrete canvases
with a fresh coat of, boiled prismatic brilliance.
Peace
Jamison Hackelman
“Would you play it for him, just this once?”
Simple shrug, doesn’t want it to hurt,
Oh lord, please let it.
The words came out,
Stood still, held them there,
melody mirrored in mourning.
And that’s when they told him,
“Play it then, in the morning,
For the service.”
Thank you for coming, I mean it,
All of you, thank you.
They gathered up to watch,
And he sang the song, not his song,
Someone’s song.
And later he tried to cry for mother.
Not his mother.
Someone’s mother.
First funerals are the hardest,
They said.
Graffiti
Paul Richard Scuderi
36•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 37
Nathanael Greene’s forgotten
all the hissing sparks of the revolution. Copper-alloy-for-brains,
so can you blame him?
The sole defender of a pansy bed,
he loiters in the traffic circle, getting high on car breath
and drunk on rain, and stalks the theater.
No other revolutionaries ever show up to curtail his watch,
so he misses all the shows. But he does entertain the occasional
hipster acolyte with a camera.
It’s a boring job, and he hates being upstaged by his
namesake bar on Elm Street. But the prospects for statues suck,
so for now, he takes what he can get.
As the festivities waned with the moon,
my friend pointed out
trees hovering on the fringe:
Crowd-shy oaks and maples,
uncountable fireflies in the branches –
maybe the city’s entire population of
fireflies.
Zipping and humming and flashing,
unbroken on-off glow of
phosphorescent glitter in
the chilly green darkness.
Our hearts like paper lanterns
rose, and floated.
Natty Greene’s Statue, Or: You Don’t
Know the Half of It
Jessica Vantrease
Summersong 1
Jessica Vantrease
38•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 39
I. Salutatio
To my lover
or rather my friend
To my professor
or rather my student
To my keeper
or rather my colleague
— Your caretaker
— Your peerless peer
— Your Heloise
II. Argumentatio
We – You, I – do not
fumble our language
Ergo you knew what you said
More than what you did
Shaped my body
My body
rearranged
at the
atom
So that I would be bodily in your bed
— In your rib-crushing cold house
— Where we first laid bare our particular lonelinesses
— Exposing us each to the silent hope
So that you could possess – yes,
possess, that word you so loathe –
My body
As you had already engulfed my mind.
Yet you, a true rhetor –
Not the Ciceronian good man
speaking well
Well it’s no wonder your best tools
Are your hands
And your tongue.
(Hand to body,
Tongue to mind:
Can you really make love with both?)
Dichotomy
Emily Calder
III. Refutatio
Don’t flatter yourself.
You are just a man,
like any other.
No fucking, faméd Abelard:
I no Heloise, no child with
child to prove the damage.
And because you are a man,
like any number of men,
I let it go.
40•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 41
Platonic Madrigal
Christopher Stella
I like to think back on patchy times, sitting
on the old Greek tailor’s stoop, smoking.
West 23rd wasn’t clean, as it is these days;
there were no trees or flowers, before
Giuliani’s goons stormed the porn arcades.
Studs and leather, a Voidoids back patch,
covered my Gingham dress on weekends.
At our first meeting we exchanged glances taking
“drunk-train” home to West Islip. Your laughing heart
beat in time with rattling, roaring tracks. We sat, staring
for a fundamentalist minute, until your stop came up. Your way
out, you handed me a condom wrapper with a number.
I thought of nothing but your chilled-glass eyes and grimace.
One week interceding, I’d found a small paper
magazine that had your “Piss-and-Shit-Of-A-Rabid-
Horse” in it. There was great sensitivity
towards women and homosexuals. I got it, drinking
levels us all. I wanted your mind, your free words;
they seemingly fell out of your fingertips towards
the page. I love the raw, uncensored emotion.
I was
so drunk,
I pissed
my pants.
&
There was
this girl,
a real slut.
&
Her hair
was short,
total dyke.
&
Platinum
purity ring
gifted from her
judge dad,
seeing you at The Chelsea Hotel, between indelible
walls shaded like cyanide-mint-Grasshoppers,
I shared my time with you. The lobby, I quickly
dressed the wound on your head. I kissed your
neck—hot and sweet with bitter salt-peanut
undertones—quickly you grasped split-ends.
I thought nothing of your lips against mine,
Our shed of a sixth floor room, where some quasi-artist
had lived for forty years, reeked of library
ink and must, the scent of purple mold.
Rumor was that he’d failed suicide, catching his
shoe laces on the railing, breaking his thumb.
He went on to teach at a small, sea-side tech school.
A dream deferred in Monday morning city heat.
You read me Bomb, trying to wriggle your
stubby-slick finger into my size-eighteen jeans.
I’ve never been a fan of defaming character
or forcing anyone to question bodily means,
but I feel that I’d have been a silkscreened purse
dotted with tiny, red bulbs, another plot-device for
a “b-poem.” And there we were, two idiots made
worse by songs of experience, floating in sexless sea.
You sat there, telling nothing, seeing and hearing nothing,
my great unrecognized, voiceless potential poet, love, you
were never more than shattered glass silence. Hammered, pulsing
air swallowed the fluorescent room, negative, angelic. Calling
your bluff, I took your ego to town. Judging by your screams
I’d have never known you weren’t a Klansman or Pound, ranting .
&
Ten pints
later
She whip’t
it out.
&
Today
she booked
a hotel
room, right?
&
I’ll show
her good.
&
I’m a prize
steed, lady.
42•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 43
That was it. You stormed out, a drunken fool, cursing
your own hand. I folded. Skipping your rock, foundation,
into a puddle of gasoline, not even sparking a bit of well-deserved
passion. Sitting alone, the room spun over
again. Time passes, thirty years down by the tracks and you’re
still, unsurprisingly, no junkie Shakespeare. I thought
of you today, as I sat in the bathtub waiting for staph grime
to dissipate all heat from the waters, going hypothermic.
&
She found
prince peace
taking a leak
next to Thomas‘
	
	
	
favorite bar.
Platonic Madrigal Christopher Stella
It was late Autumn, or early Winter, I’m not sure which. I’ve never been a keeper of time.
It was dark in the day, of that I know. The sky gray and soft rain fell steady.
It was the three of us, my brother, our friend, and I. Three, alone, together with “It”.
“It”, being the dead. The what’s-left of a ten-pointer abandoned on a rock in the water.
It had been left over, the pickings of scavengers. Bone and spare flesh in the creek.
It had been waiting for us, but patience isn’t tested by rising water. We came with a saw.
It was held by its crown as my brother cut and I watched. Like being murdered after dying.
It was like the look of shame, a creature part removed. Perhaps a pride is part of the soul.
It was stripped of its glory that was dropped in the water by haste. I went in to save it, selfless.
It sits now in the workshed, forgotten for some years. A ten point crown forlorn.
The Grave Robbers and the Deer King
James Ci
44•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 45
What if the Devil loved Eve,
who was like any woman promised,
	 to a man who would never know her,
and the Devil showed his face,
and she did not cringe away from him,
	 oh- how he would want her all the more,
and the Devil gave a gift,
but God deemed his affection tainted,
	 and Eve to turn away forever?
What if I were the Devil?
Would you know now why I am?
The Devil and Eve
James Ci
“Black cat” in the days of my youth
Was an onomatopoeia –
The sound of a stinging hand.
Shattered plastic, the transparent dome
Of a quarter’s purchase,
My substitute for a blast shield.
And so I learned the words that hurt
But only so much
I took tape to insect, lit the fuse,
Tossed grasshopper bomb under a bucket,
And examined the pattern.
Ichor and chitin, sulfur stains and char –
Such meaninglessness revolted me.
Thank god for illiteracy.
Haruspex
Dustin Frost
46•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 47
They sat us outside in the summer air.
Mom said, “You can’t come in. Play with your friends.”
I didn’t know these kids,
But that didn’t mean she was wrong.
“Fine. Can I have a cherry coke? With the cherry?
How about some chips?”
I waited entire minutes in vain,
Excluded from what was mine by right,
On any other day, even if it was almost dusk.
I showed them the old dryer behind the saloon.
A rusty drum inside a sun-worn husk,
Its hinged face long since torn away,
It could do nothing but spin freely.
Unlike the smaller, plastic one Ms. Hart had,
This device tolerated no water,
Promised no smoothness.
It sifted sand and tumbled stones –
Nondescript rocks that would always be rough
No matter how many days I returned to revolve it,
No matter how often I replaced the ejecta.
And so we made a game of it –
Spin and spin and throw and cower.
Washed up, abandoned, and washed out,
It loudly resisted the worst our small hands could inflict.
Chasing dust devils choked with tumbleweeds,
We threaded between the sage to the tracks.
We examined the remains of half of a cat,
Worked the spikes from old planks,
And matured ourselves on the immature ramblings
Graffitied on the underside of the overpass.
We felt the hot breath of the desert replaced,
Cool alfalfa air coming in like an evening tide.
First Fourth
Dustin Frost
We returned to play tag in the graveled grimace of the parking lot,
Ignoring the faded marquis in its center.
Its promises of two dollar Buds and a happy 4th were not for us –
Not for anyone, once the setting sun left it illegible to all.
We licked the salt and dust from the backs of our hands,
Sucked it through the collars of our shirts.
I remembered a forgotten cup,
Shared the melted ice and hint of soda.
We only saw the first light as reflection,
Jumped and squealed at the bang.
The bumper and three handholds up the back of the van
Led us to our lookout post, front row seats.
Gouts of red and green rose over the cottonwoods,
Pinning our hearts to the metal sheet of the roof,
Drawing oohs, ahs, and applause –
Faintly from two blocks and a minor highway away,
Faintly from the birds up in the crow’s nest,
Faintly from the doorway of the Branding Iron.
48•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 49
An inconsiderate moth-like creature
Immolates itself upon halogen.
It leaves an acrid and noxious feature
To drift about and find me in my den.
I fill my lungs with the smoke of his death
Taking the sacrifice for what it’s worth.
It does not leave entire with outward breath,
But in my cells finds a kind of rebirth.
On wings he fluttered in and died for me,
Reminding my mothy heart it can love
I think of that which still is yet to be,
My pain’s meaninglessness seen from above
So should I kill myself upon your door,
It is a gift intended, nothing more.
Insecticide
Dustin Frost
Bones cracking and
wooden doorframes
adjusting.
Winter and I have a relationship
akin to a marriage going on fifty years
of bickering, bitching and threatening to break my black toes from my blue foot.
I am finding it hard to breathe
beneath twenty layers and
I am having trouble holding
onto my body temperature.
I wish you would leave me.
Didn’t anyone ever tell you snow is just really cold rain?
Goddamn Winter
Morganne Radziewicz
50•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 51
It is important to remember the way in which things
fall apart: the arms from the torso, the cornhusk from
the hair, the eyelids from the sun.
When we were children we believed
in heavenly places but all things must
fall apart, even God. The Sodom from
the Gomorrah, the Sistine Chapel from
the fresco. Here we are, self destruction on the loose.
Here we are, reminding ourselves not to forget about the
birdbaths and how they never seem to attract anything but
pregnant mosquitos.
one. Kissing your knees. You have eyes on your palms
crying, you are saying ‘No,’ firmly but nothing changes.
Telling your children ‘let go’ means nothing.
two. Begins after you haven’t laughed in a year.
It has been three years, four months and five days.
three. Shooting yourself in the foot. Shooting yourself in the foot
makes the pain dissipate from everywhere else. Hammer to the
hand, head and neck.
four. Jerusalem, I love you, Jerusalem, you are mumbling
on your knees and weary. The wooden pew is making you look
thin and boney. Thin and boney, like a chicken ready for sacrifice.
five. Stage five is living in a house with no lights, television
flickering infomercials at night rocking you to sleep.
Fall Apart
Morganne Radziewicz
Five Stages of Grief:
Morganne Radziewicz
52•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 53
But family will always be there
Between fallowed corn fields and
Drying Townsend tributaries.
I skirt past Richmond now,
With a half-tank, suitcase bags
Swaying in a muddled backseat—
Under street-lamped strobes
I miss phone calls and wait
Hours behind streaking glass.
Frantic shakes and I scream
To stay awake against dawn,
Until tires vibrate and burn.
—
And then you were gone. I
Folded my hands over flattened
Hair and watched mirrors shimmer,
Breaking light into tiny crystal while
My hands found my blazing cheeks wet.
You have a vague idea
Of how to cast and
Reel in quick words.
You need to work
On the release.
And when to leave.
Break from creek
Water and find
Your footing
Across mossed stone,
Freckled sandbanks
Into afternoon.
Moving
David Wall
Back-Cast
David Wall
54•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 55
I will stand on the clifftop bare
where the wind blows cold
and the water churns like steel below.
The sky will be empty as virgin snow,
and I will gaze upon it with reverence.
A hint of rose will linger
drifting from the green places where fairies sleep.
There will be no Sun of gold; no breeze of silver,
just the brittle air,
laced with frost.
In the forgotten land
where brilliant tongues of flame lap across the dark sky,
there will be castles of shimmering blue ice
and thousands of diamonds to light upon my face.
And I will be fading.
When the endless nights come,
So I will sink to the white granite and close my eyes.
But in the April twilight,
when the cold rains fall,
I will welcome them with open arms.
For this is where the whispers hide
among the pale light and winter trees.
It is my cause to listen to them
and dance with them
and chisel them into the rock.
Vanda Miss.
You are so positive
to me
a flower I become
once the poisonous
weeds are off
me
like a garden tool
held tenderly in an older
man’s rough hands
you manage to
clear the way
The sunlight hits me
	 on the stem
	 dew forms
in early morning
My shoulders bare
	 all 	 	 year
	 	 it blooms.
La Rose Neigeux
Cala Estes
Orchid
Carla Guzman
56•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 57
Down Williamsburg road, about a half mile past the fire department, a little cabin was planted on
the left, right up against the trees. The lawn was unkempt, but a little, lush garden, full of firm tomatoes,
ripened squash, and hot peppers, flourished next to the driveway. Deep violets and electric indigo pansies
ran on each side of a crumbling walkway, with bunches of rue sprinkled around inconsistently. The front
porch extended the entire length of the house, and all along the red cedar railing, morning glories had
grown untamed through the summer. Honeybees glided amid a sky of heavenly blues, dodging the flying
saucers hovering here and there. One lonely Scarlett O’Hara crowned the pinnacle of the middle strut.
Everything was lively and green, except the ivy in the hanging pot near the door. It had seen better days.
A little brown and black puppy, maybe half German shepherd half Labrador, barked at a squir-rel
stealing food from his bowl. After investigating the scene of the crime, he walked off the porch and
circled a spot at the bottom of the steps before collapsing comfortably.
His tan boots were caked with clay, legs splayed as he rested his belly on the concrete, gnawing on
a premature pinecone he had left there earlier. His ears perked in anticipation.
“Wylie!”
Sophia’s voice drifted out the open screen door, sweet as dew dripping from a downturned hon-eysuckle,
past its prime, but not yet wilted. Wylie darted toward the porch, took the steps in one hop, and
pranced to the door. The petite brunette with the sun in her eyes reached down and grabbed the pine-cone,
challenging the mongrel to tug-of-war. He ended the battle in a second. She grabbed it again.
“Wylie. Drop it!
“Drop it.”
She pried his jaws, snatched his toy and tossed it over the railing.
Her baby blue eyes surveyed her neighborhood and settled on the small house across the road.
It had only two rooms with a hallway and a bathroom between them. The hallway was furnished with a
fridge, a sink, and an oven, so some might’ve called it a kitchen. It certainly didn’t function like one and it
wasn’t cozy or cute, just a hallway. This house was almost exactly like Sophia’s except it stayed in the shade
most of the day, didn’t have a porch, and three, thriving Granny Smith trees were growing out front. So-phia
wasn’t jealous of Ms. Thompson’s lower power bill and the shapely apples that attracted the attention
of the landlord’s roaming pony in the afternoons. She was perfectly happy with her home because, behind
it, just down a hill, a tangled thicket of weeds enviously reached for oaks, sweet gums, and maples who
kissed the untouched sky and cast endless shadows on a secret pond, lounging between home and horizon.
It was a serene living portrait to study while smoking on the back porch. Sometimes she framed a frontier
masterpiece, standing inside the screen door, usually because of a strange noise in the woods, or one of
the nasty neighborhood dogs creeping around nearby.
The Granny Smith house had about eight trees and a picket fence bordering its backyard, and
past them, a small trailer park lurked. A silver SUV with blacked out windows was parked behind one of
the singlewides.
“Who is this girl?”
“She’s a— she’s a nobody. But she’s trying to be a somebody. For the past month, she’s been
Labor Day
Daniel Pruitt doing business with the one of biggest players in this shithole county. So she’s our in.” He lit a cigarette
and cracked the windows, his eyes always wandering.
“I’m going to be direct. The boss thinks you’re wrong about this and he doesn’t want to waste
any assets.”
“I’m telling you, we get her, we get him, we get paid.”
“Prove it. That’s why I’m here.”
“Be patient. People will start showing up soon, and you can see firsthand how much business
she’s doing.”
“Like I said, that’s why I’m here— so convince me. But if this goes down and you’re wrong, and
we don’t get a return on investment, the boss will shit a thunderstorm of bricks all over your sad, little
livelihood.”
“Don’t threaten me.”
“I’m just the messenger, but my time isn’t cheap, so he’s already taking a chance on you. A man
would have to be pretty stupid to waste my time.” She took a cigarette from his pack, lit it with a match
and a smooth drag, and closed her eyes. “Don’t waste,” wisps of smoke rode on her words, “my time.”
She turned to see if her point had landed.
“Sometimes you have to be stupid to do the right thing, but lady, I ain’t wasting your time.”
Sophia snapped out of the trance as Trevor’s car pulled in the driveway. She noticed Eric, with
his immutable, casual grin, in the passenger seat. Stepping back inside the house, she walked to the liv-ing
room and picked up her favorite pipe, started to pack it, but stopped. She sat the galaxy blue glass
elephant back on the corner table, alongside the other ornate glass pieces and turned on her small ste-reo.
Sophia flipped to track two, and turned the knob all the way to the right, opening the door to a new
day. “10 Am Automatic” flowed from the speakers, echoing through the tiny house, as she walked back
outside, right past the guys and straight to Wylie. The guys carried two stuffed paper grocery bags into the
house.
What about the night
makes you change
From sweet to deranged?
Wylie found his favorite ball and dropped it at Sophia’s feet; he snatched it away as she reached
for it, romped off and looked back to drop the ball again. She got it on the second try and tossed it across
the yard. The barking bullet shot after it, but the ball was lost in a pile of brush and stopped moving,
causing Wylie to lose sight of it. After a few minutes of hoping he would be smart enough to sniff it out,
Sophia shuffled over to the edge of the woods and leaned down, but couldn’t quite reach the ball.
“I’m going to get some more bags,” Trevor yelled as he swaggered to his Prelude.
Sophia gave him a half-glance and turned back, got down on her hands and knees, and stretched for the
ball. She jerked her arm back, and began scratching her leg savagely. At first, it appeared as if a contact
rash, about the size of a handprint, had broken out on her thigh, just above the knee. On closer inspec-tion,
it was hundreds, maybe thousands, of newborn ticks, each one no larger than a pinpoint, crawling as
one in all directions.
58•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 59
Sophia sprinted bowlegged, smack-scratching her thigh the entire time, all the way to the porch
steps, where she stumbled over Wylie, and fell facedown. Trevor drove away.
After rising to her feet, she screamed for Eric to come help her as she walked inside to the bath-room,
ripped off her clothes, and bent down to get a good view as she picked at the parasites. He stepped
in the door and turned his head away as his cheeks flushed.
“Are you crazy? Trevor is going to be right back,” he teased through a crooked mouth.
“Just get over here and help look for ticks.”
She climbed onto the edge of the bathtub, holding the curtain rod for balance, and placed her
foot against the wall to let him get a better view of the backside of her leg. He cautiously approached as
she frantically swatted monsters away.
“Will you please help me? And take that fucking grin off your face before you touch me.”
He brushed her leg with artistic tenderness. His hand paused with fingertips resting in the velvet
depression hidden behind her knee. He didn’t even notice when she stopped looking for ticks until she
stepped down and startled him, her eyes two inches from his as she stood on her toes, supporting herself
on his shoulders. A strand of her mahogany satin hair fell from her ponytail and swung down, tracing the
shadow of her collarbone.
They both heard Trevor’s car outside. Sophia smiled as Eric hurried to the living room, and
probably thought of dead kittens, old naked nuns, boring-ass baseball, anything to replace her, naked, wait-ing,
poised on the tub. Sophia casually slid her shorts up her silken stems, pulled on a cotton T-shirt, and
flushed all the bloodsuckers down the toilet before walking outside.
Trevor climbed out of the car, carrying more bags, and strolled past Sophia, but she grabbed him
by the arm.
He sat his bag down.
“Oh, you want a cigarette?” he asked.
“No, I quit.”
“Just like you quit eating fast food?”
Sophia ignored his provocation.
“Do you know if I can make some money today? I’m pretty broke since we paid the rent—”
“—and you need money to throw in tonight. Besides selling what we just got,” he looked toward
the road, “the only thing I know to tell you is we can go get up sweet potatoes for my granddad.”
“I don’t know. Seems like a buzzkill. And today is my only vacation day for a while.”
“Ten dollars an hour.”
“Sold.”
“We should go as soon as we can; he’s probably out there working by himself.”
“Cool. Just let me change and go check on the babies.”
She stepped inside, not noticing the emerald Miata pulling in the driveway. Trevor waved to the
driver and went inside for a few minutes. He was carrying one of the paper grocery bags when he walked
back outside. He opened the passenger door of the Miata and leaned inside, sitting the bag in the floor-board.
Sophia emerged from the bedroom wearing faded jeans, fuchsia plaid rain boots, and a ridiculous
straw hat, a present from Trevor’s granddad.
“What the fuck is she doing here?” she growled, glancing out the hallway window. Eric hopped
up and grabbed her before she could get out the door.
“Calm down, sug’,” Eric said, hugging her hungrily.
Labor Day Daniel Pruitt
“Let me go, asshole. I just want to talk to her. I need to ask her something.”
“Now, you know you can’t get too close to her.”
Sophia’s memories with Michelle don’t even seem real anymore, as if the entire summer after
senior year went by during an out-of-body experience. Sometimes she still drifts away, back to nights filled
with murky rooms, bouquets of blooming lights, and daisy chains, accessorized with only edible necklaces.
But the movie always ends with Michelle fucking Trevor, on top of a passed out Sophia.
“They make five or six sells like that every day. And every few days Alex Simpson stops by after
midnight and hangs out for a little while. Every time, someone walks out to Simpson’s car and puts a
couple bags in the trunk—”
“I thought you said Simpson was the supplier.”
“He is. It’s a trade. My best guess is these kids are growing some pretty good shit, and trading it
for Mexican bricks.”
“Why?”
“Well, probably, Simpson’s giving them a good deal because he likes to smoke what they grow,
and it’s easier for them to make money selling dirt weed at that community college they all go to.”
“No. I mean, why just a guess? I am frightened by how much you’ve been following this girl
without accomplishing anything.” She shook her head in disgust.
“Just doing my job.” He pulled a digital camera from underneath his seat and tossed it in her lap.
She turned it on and flipped through the photos.
“In all the time you have been stalking these college students, you haven’t come up with a solid
number to tell us what we stand to make. How much can we get from these kids if we can’t get Simp-son?”
She pointed to the camera screen, “This is him, right? He looks loaded.”
“That’s him, but we’re not just analyzing possible profit. We’re here because it’s the right thing to
do. It’s not about the money.”
“We pay you to do what we say, and we say it’s about the money.”
***
Eric suggested a walk to Sophia, so she invited him along. They headed down a barely discern-ible
trail behind the house, going all the way to the bottom of the hill, to Sophia’s garden. Six plants, stag-gered,
not rowed. Two of them looked like frosty, burnt orange Christmas trees; two were purple tinged,
but just as festive and less than four feet tall. One bush was pure proliferation. Stakes surrounded it and
twine supported its hefty weight.
“That’s my baby,” Sophia said with love as she walked over, took a moment to inhale the aroma
and leaned in to examine the best buds, “I’ve always thought it was kind of cool, how a regular seed can
become a plant this incredible.”
“Why? Because you have to kill the males?”
“No. I mean that’s fun, but it’s about more, about— independence. There’s this strong woman
and the world doesn’t give her a man, or a family, but she doesn’t really know if she wants it all anyway.
But she keeps blossoming, developing to be more beautiful, always focusing on being better, efflorescence
for her own sake. Without knowing it, she becomes ten times more powerful than any male, at least five
times as potent as any impregnated plant and all because of self-development combined with a minimal
60•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 61
amount of outside cultivation. She may not have a family, but she’s going to make a lot of people very
happy.”
“What’s wrong with this one?” he pointed to the last, and tallest, of the plants.
“Can’t figure it out. It grew great in the summer, but when August came, it never started bud-ding,
just kept on growing wild.”
“You try topping it?”
“Three times. I think it just doesn’t want to bud.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Look at this,” he crouched down and looked at a tiny shoot coming out
between a secondary branch and the stalk. It was small, but had definite white tendrils. Eric squeezed it
between his thumb and forefinger and it popped, squirting one little black seed into his hand.
“Hmm, that’s weird,” he said as he held it up for her to examine.
Sophia stared in disbelief.
“That’s impossible. I killed every male months ago.”
“It could have gotten pollinated really early, before you killed them.”
“Impossible. Well, maybe a bee or bird could have brought some pollen, but it is impossible
because this plant wasn’t budding. Plants without buds don’t get pollinated.”
“Nature can do anything.”
“We can do anything too,” she whispered as she uprooted the plant and carried it over to the
pond, forced it underwater and held it there until it no longer wanted to float.
Eric handed her the seed. She stared for a second.
“Who needs this?” she said as she flicked it into the murky water.
They walked back to the house in silence and Trevor was waiting in the backyard.
“I thought we were leaving as soon as possible.”
“I told you I had to check on the plants,” she responded without looking at him.
He rolled his eyes and walked to his car. Eric went inside. Sophia sauntered to the Prelude with
Wylie, who suddenly wanted to go for a ride. Trevor sped up the narrow road and veered onto Highway
87. She knew he was pissed but wasn’t sure why. She told him the story of the ticks, thinking it would
make him laugh. He didn’t find it funny, didn’t sympathize.
When they arrived at the field, Trevor stepped out of the car and noticed his granddad wasn’t
around, but there were three rows already plowed up, and the sweet potatoes cooked in the sun.
“I’m so hungry,” she moaned.
“He must’ve thought I would be here sooner. He probably went to find something else to do.”
Trevor tossed a fresh pair of gloves to Sophia. “Be careful what you reach for. Some of these potatoes
are probably pretty rotten, happens when it rains too heavy. S’why we’re harvesting so early this year.”
Sophia trudged over and crouched down, carefully picked up the tubers, brushed them off, and
stacked them neatly to the side of the row.
“Gotta go faster than that,” Trevor gibed as he passed her. She watched him snatch the bulbous
yams, wipe them clean, and toss them to the edge of the fresh trench all in one swift repeated motion.
Sophia picked up one particular sweet potato, rose in a deliberately dramatic fashion, and held it
up to the sky.
“As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.” Trevor gave a sympathetic smirk and Sophia
started to mime a bite; just as she brought it to her mouth, a smidgen of soil breezed into her nose and
she sneezed. Instinctively, her hands came closer to her face and her teeth tore into the tender flesh of a
rotten spot. Trevor sat down laughing, started to get up, and stumbled back down, still chuckling.
Labor Day Daniel Pruitt
She retched until dry heaves, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
She bit her lip, succumbed to tears and knelt down weeping, motionless, a ripe jack-o’-lantern
breaking down in the morning sun.
“This is why we can’t make it work. You never know when to do the right thing. You’re such an
asshole. Stop laughing.”
“Actually, we can’t make it work because I want to get married and you don’t.” He rose, brushed
dust from his jeans and clapped his hands together.
“Not the time. I swear if you try to get mushy with me now I will punch you right in the fucking
face,” she sputtered, as she stood up, spitting chunks of putrid pulp between words.
“You act like being a mushy chick is a disease.”
“It is a disease.”
“Why can’t you ever talk about this without getting pissed?”
“Why don’t you understand I can’t trust you again? And how could you trust me again?”
“We are human, we can leave the past behind and move on. When you want to spend your life
with someone, you are willing to work, no matter how fucked up the situation is.”
“And what if I don’t want to spend my life with anyone?” Her eyes wandered, as she wondered
if she really meant it.
“What do you want? You want to stay here for the rest of your life, getting high all day and drift-ing
through your classes? Summer is over Sophia, and it’s time to grow the fuck up. I—”
His voice trailed off into a splash of blood as her fist met the side of his face. It connected full
force, a sucker punch, and blasted a filling from his canine. He stumbled back as she turned to walk away.
Wylie had been entertaining himself digging up clods and chewing on them, but he came running
when he sensed violence. He placed himself directly between the two when Sophia turned back around
and approached Trevor, who clenched his fists so hard Sophia could hear his pulse amplified and reverber-ating
through them.
“Go ahead, hit me,” she snickered, “you don’t have the huevos.”
Trevor relaxed his hands.
“I will never marry you,” she whispered, leaning forward.
“Fuck off.”
With that, she spit the last bit of rottenness at his face and walked away. She used her spare key
to take his car, and left him to do all the work alone. Wylie went with her because dogs are loyal like that.
He curled up in the passenger seat the same way he did the day she found him, bounding across someone’s
front yard. She had turned around and gone back; he waited in the middle of the road. She eased over to
him as he struggled to wag his tail, but walked straight to her, and collapsed in her shadow, safe from the
heat of July. Serendipitous. She picked him up, drove home, and loved him before she even thought of a
name. Wylie Times.
She drove home, Wylie at her side once again, and cleaned the blood from her knuckles. She
ignored Eric’s questions, only gave him the car key and he raced away. Sophia began to move Trevor out
of her life. She neatly folded his clothes before she stuffed them in garbage bags and tossed them outside.
The photos in his sock drawer were more hers than his, so she slipped them away under the mattress.
***
62•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 63
“If she is kicking him out, we have to do this shit tonight. You have to approve the operation
right now.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because Trevor is the one who is valuable. If he goes, we lose our chance to trap Simpson.
The plan was to put the heaviest charges on Sophia because it’s her house, and guilt Trevor into rolling
over and playing nice. If we want that to work, it has to be now.”
“What exactly do you need?”
“One entry team and the chopper.”
“The chopper? Really? Renting the K-9 squad is a few thousand dollars cheaper.”
“Too much shit out here growing. Who knows where they’ve got the plants hidden? Dogs
might not find them. The chopper’s IR camera can do it in under an hour.”
“Can you guarantee a seizure of at least twenty grand?”
“No, but I know it don’t cost that much for us to rent what we need.”
“You’re right. It’s the warrant that’s going to cost us, because you’ve done a sorry ass job finding
evidence.”
“You saw the size of the bags they’re moving. They’re not nickel and diming, these kids are mov-ing
pounds.”
“And if they’re moving pounds, Simpson must be rolling in cash.”
“Ok. That’s Trevor coming home. We don’t have much time. Do the right thing, lady.”
“I’ll make the call.” She picked up her phone, speed dialed one and said, “This is Dietrich, it’s a
go.”
Sophia sat in her room, scratching Wylie underneath his chin, and watched as Trevor loaded his
things into his car.
“You’ll never leave me, right, boy?” she asked, as Wylie wagged his tail.
Her stomach began to sink into the silence of the hallway. All noises stopped. The living room.
Her bedroom. Muted. Wylie’s ears perked.
Her heartbeat went from a steady Fwoomph-fwoomp, Fwoomph-fwoomp to a battle drum,
Fwoomph Fwoomph Fwoomph Fwoomph Fwoomph. And they came through the door. They came
trough the living room. Down the hallway. Her bedroom. And they were all laid face down outside, even
after protesting the officers over the dog shit scattering the yard. Some of the cops went into the woods,
directed by the helicopter, while others spent a few moments rifling through the entirety of the miniscule
cabin.
***
“Shepherd, get over here,” demanded the candy-coated, lust red lips of the alluring Agent Diet-rich.
“Yes ma’am. They’re telling me the chopper found something. I told you these kids were grow-ing.”
He grinned.
“I know. They found five plants. Add that with the eighth of an ounce I found inside, and we’ve
confiscated at least a thousand bucks of pot.”
“Only an eighth? Impossible. What was in all those grocery bags?”
“Sweet potatoes and hot house tomatoes.”
Labor Day
“So, you’re telling me, they’re selling fresh produce? What about Simpson?”
“Apparently, he loves candied yams, so he buys them from some friends he met at college. And
you have nothing on him.”
“But we can use the plants as leverage to get these kids to snitch.”
“Five plants aren’t worth the bad press. I’m not losing my cushy advisor position because of
your fuckup. Cut ‘em loose.”
Shepherd stomped over to the prisoners and snipped the plastic cable ties off their wrists. He
looked down, saw the innocent eyes of Wylie Times and snatched the puppy up by his nape.
“You punks are free to go back to wasting your lives now, but I’m confiscating this dog. He as-saulted
me during the raid.”
“When?” cried Sophia, “How can you— just take him?”
Trevor barked, “I bet he didn’t even growl at you, you piece of shit.”
“He bit me, and in this county, any dog even attempting to bite a police officer can be confis-cated
and destroyed. Phillips! Phillips, get over here and take this mutt.”
A young officer walked over, carefully grabbed Wylie, and carried him away. He looked to Sophia
and he whimpered.
Agent Dietrich approached Officer Phillips, “Give me the dog. You know he didn’t do anything.
I can take him for the night and bring him back to the girl when this blows over.”
“I don’t think Shepherd would like me doing that.”
“Shepherd isn’t going to have a job tomorrow. Do you want to carpool to the unemployment
office?” With that, he handed Wylie over and scurried away.
After all the cops cleared out, Eric was circling the Prelude anxiously, waiting to go home. Trev-or
walked over to Sophia, who sat on the steps with her eyes floating in her palms. She looked up with the
same grotesque expression from the field.
“Calm down. They can’t get away with killing Wylie. We can go pick him up in the morning, I
know it.”
“Do you want me to help you carry your stuff back inside?” she asked.
“No thanks. I think I’m going to crash with Eric for a while.”
“But—”
“Don’t. See you in the morning.” He walked away from the porch, out of the fluorescent light.
Sophia hobbled away, reaching for the moment to stay in it, only to find the conversation had be-come
a bloody stump, and she was trying to tourniquet the slow bleed before her entire essence evanesced.
And she remembered she hadn’t eaten all day. Her stomach overtook her; she was dizzy.
***
A little brown and black puppy, maybe half German shepherd half Labrador, sat curled up in
the passenger seat, looking at her, tail wagging, as Agent Dietrich drove home to her family, her eight-year-old
daughter, Rose. And when she got home Rose fell in love before she thought of a name.
Daniel Pruitt
64•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 65
Course Outline for 1st Offenders Program:
Theft and Larceny
Jamison Hackelman
I. Cognitive Behavioral Interventions: Why are you Here?
It was back in March, it was, Officer. First noticed them just wandering about the aisles of the
store. Kind of far off, but could identify them nonetheless. Did in fact wait for some kinda visual con-firmation,
and pursued. Ascertained they were up to nothing of any good, Officer. In my line of work
you tend to hear a lot of different things a lot of times. People do this, do that, for one reason or other.
Remember this boy just south of Benfield County here set his mom’s house on fire while she was sup-posed
to be out for groceries. Tipped a candle over, he did. Of course, that kind of made sense to me.
Something’s got to go, why not under flames? Didn’t ever understand why these boys did the things they
did. Burning houses. Stealing clothes. Like they had no sense of awareness. No sense of consequence. Boy
from that Benfield Burning spending a nice big sentence in prison all the way down in Tallahassee. Spend
time with his brother. Heard he’d been waiting to take the house down. Said it was a long time coming for
his old mom to move out and move on. Problem was, she hadn’t left yet. Been in the bathroom sick and
all. She died in that house, and now he’s in federal down in Florida. Goes to show how taut the lines of
family drawn by tragedy. Wondered how close these boys were.
First noticed them in the men’s clothes, Officer. Saw first blonde young man trying on flannel
shirts. Later I determined this young man to be one, Johnny Casterman. Saw brown haired young man
walk around in circles, looked confused, pulled out cell phone, made eye contact with me, and continued
pacing back and forth. This young man was Dave Sizemore. Lost sight of the Casterman boy before he
emerged with what looked to be a shirt just removed from the rack. No tags, though. Couldn’t be sure if
he wasn’t already wearing the shirt. It was all buttoned up, so it made sense. Honestly, couldn’t tell though.
You see, Officer, Loss Prevention sees a good bit of clothing every damn day. Things change only every
once in a while. More like climate than weather. Things tend to play tricks on you. Sizemore boy was still
on the phone for a while. Not really talking though. Couldn’t hear him say anything. He might have been
on the phone, but then there might not have been anyone to hear him either. Could have been an empty
conversation, could have just been checking his voicemail.
Followed them to the electronics department. Kept up with them the best that I could. Didn’t
see what they were doing. Couldn’t see what they were doing, but then I saw the Casterman kid picked
up a few DVD’s and began to walk away. Followed from afar, still. Began to browse through the bin of
discounted DVD’s. Tried to see what movies he’d taken. He hadn’t tried to conceal them yet, figured he
would at some point, Officer. You gotta infer most of the time you’re on the floor. Lost track of the Size-more
kid, so I scanned each aisle from the end. Power tools. Athletic equipment. Kids toys. Then I heard
the noise. Heard the crackling of plastic being ripped off. Must have been the blonde haired kid with the
movies. Now, let me be clear: I never actually saw anything. When you’re working for Loss Prevention,
clear and direct visual confirmation is seldom necessary. You hear a noise, you follow closely enough and
they come off as suspicious, well, you’ve already made your case. Probable cause applies to real criminals,
not shoplifters.
Sometimes you hear people talk about a “no chase policy”. I generally laugh. My partner, Ken
Browning, big man, big burly man, he laughs harder and louder. It’s total bullshit. I mean, for Ken, the
no-chase policy is almost legit simply because he can’t keep up. For me though, I’m always hunting. Some-times
kids will get a little overzealous and they’ll see me and then run just out the front door and think that
they’re safe. They’re the foolish ones. Always been of the mind that if you’re going to be a criminal, run-ning
should just be instinctual. Moreover, there should always be some general sense of humility in escape.
Kids start bragging and dancing, that’s when you get to smash them in. You get to see a kid broken and
crying, maybe bloodied up a little bit. Night before I’d chased two black kids out trying to steal a micro-wave.
Ignorant little brothers didn’t know shit. They made it out the door and started walking through the
parking lot. Walking, of all things, got their heads busted in. Thought for sure, of all people, these boys
would know best. Kicked their legs out from under them, showed em what’s good for. Bruised my ass in
the fall. Had my walkie talkie in the back pocket. Hurt like hell.
These kids knew what was what though, well, it came off that way. They’d done it before. Made
me proud to catch them. I kept following the blonde haired kid around, Officer. Followed the noise of the
wrapping. And in the trail I found the magnetic strips. The security measures. Probably didn’t know that
was actually a felony. I lost track of them for a while, and then I looked to the cash register. There they
were. They’d crossed the threshold. It was now my job to catch them. That’s the difference between shop-lifting
and larceny. Semantics. Location, location, location. Once you pass point b with item X, it’s larceny.
If I catch you in the store, it’s just shoplifting.
Waited for them, but I kept following. Kept a little distance, followed all the same. Watched as
they walked right past the security sensors, and then I had the obligation to run. Grabbed the Sizemore
boy by the arm, and the DVD’s slid out and clanked to the ground.
“Holy shit,” he said. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“I’d apologize, but I don’t give a shit,” I says to him. “Now, we can do this the hard way where
you try to run away and one or both of you ends up getting hurt, or we can do this the easy way where you
guys just follow me quietly to the office without making too much of a scene.”
“Fuck you,” Casterman said, and he ran off. I didn’t see Sizemore do anything or make any
moves. When I came back to him he was just sitting on the bench. Could have made off, could have
ran—that probably would have helped their chances of not getting caught. Now, I love Ken Browning to
death, make no mistake about that. He’s a good man. He’s a family man, I think. Maybe his wife did leave,
can’t know that for sure. I try to be accountable for me, but I generally try to keep up with a hurting man.
But as much as I love Ken, I knew there was no way that I could have left Casterman with him and gone
and chased after Sizemore. Even after I pushed Casterman down, I had to go at least see if I could get
Sizemore. Wasn’t worth the effort if I couldn’t get the kid who I knew actually stole. Lucky for me, he was
sitting right there on the bench by the door where I had initially apprehended them.
I took him to the office and Casterman’s face was all bloodied, and he was throwing a fit.
“You got caught too?” he asked.
I told him he didn’t run.
“Why the fuck didn’t you run? You could have gotten away? They didn’t have shit on me! Now
they have both of us!”
“Dude, I’m sorry, but look at this guy. He’s fucking huge!” Now, I’m not that big. I’m a little over
six foot, maybe two-twenty in the gut. Not that big, but I’m not at all fat. Casterman was right though. It
would have been difficult to charge him alone with anything, but since Sizemore didn’t run off, we had
them. I pulled out the magnetic strips from my pocket and dumped them on the table in front of Size-more.
“You know what these are?” I asked.
“Refrigerator magnets,” Casterman said. Told him to shut up.
66•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 67
“Felonies, Mr. Sizemore. These are what we call felonies. Now, why shouldn’t I turn these into the
police? You guys could get really fucked over.” Neither of them answered. So I threw them out, Officer.
There was no need to do this to kids. I made a judgment call. I mean, they weren’t kids, really. They were
what—20? No need to get them down like that. I mention that Benfield boy, and for good reason. Boy had
made up his mind. I mean, he didn’t know his momma was throwing up from the cancer, but he knew he
was gonna wipe it all away. And I guess the same could have been said for these boys, but I want to believe
in our kids. At least these, I mean, them black boys last night were already in a make or break position by
virtue of color. But these boys deserve a little screwup every once in a while, I guess.
And you came in right about here when I was giving them the statements, Officer.
“Now, on this piece of paper I’m giving you, I want you to write down a statement of your trans-gression,
and I want you to provide an explanation for why.”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?” Casterman asked.
“Why you were stealing from Wal-mart. Why you did it. I want you to give us a reason for why
you did it, what it is you stood to gain from it. It’s not a difficult question guys- you know, it’s not even that
important. It’s just something to go on the record.” They took the paper and began writing their stories
out. I left them with Browning for a minute, and went out to wait for you boys.
Now, and you may know this too, Officer, but generally, when there’s some sort of partnership
between two different violators, you get a pretty distorted view of them. One’s trying to take all of the
blame, while the other is too, or maybe they blame each other, or maybe they blame the government or
some snide bullshit like that. But here, Casterman was trying to take all of the blame, but Sizemore, well,
he did well to cover his ass. Now, Casterman takin all the blame, that wasn’t entirely difficult to believe
at all. The kid ran. Puzzling thing was Sizemore on the other hand played it completely neutral. Used the
word “we” quite a bit. Only time he didn’t was when “he” sat down. He just let it all slide down onto Cast-erman.
But the damndest thing, the damndest thing about that was looking in the movies they took. See,
I had the magnetic strips. Scooped them in the trashcan myself. But the movies I picked off of them still
had the strips in them. Now, they could have gotten charged with felonies, Officer. Why the hell would he
not say something? What the hell was going through this boy’s head to let Casterman soak up all the pun-ishment
like that? And to just sit there and let it happen! Let all the blame shift onto the man who would
take it gladly. And I think to myself how when I was young that boy gets beat until we can no longer
recognize the smile that fucked us over. Nowadays he gets recognized for looking out for number one. It’s
a dog-eat-dog world, they say. Never saw any dogs eat one another, Officer. Only take bites.
II. Risky Business: Consequences of Your Actions as Shoplifters
The cold held tightly into sweaters layered with flannel, tucked tightly under pea coats and hand
knit gloves.
Dave leaned against the back door of the old Stanza, hunched over, retching and dry heaving
from the last bit of his cigarette. Johnny Casterman sat in the passenger seat, rubbing his arms, his legs
bouncing and sliding the floor mat underneath the seat.
“Fuck me,” Dave said. He wiped his chin of the last bit of spittle and scraped the butt of his
cigarette with his shoe. He couldn’t keep the smoke down. Couldn’t inhale and exhale without gagging, the
way the muscles in his abdomen seized up and tightened when he ran, or didn’t. Reminded him of the way
Casterman listened to Leona Lewis when they couldn’t find pot and how he thought it was funny. Self-induced
bulimia and guilty pleasure songs.
Course Outline for 1st Offenders Program: Theft and Larceny
“Exactly. Fuck you,” Casterman said. “Let’s go.” He sat in the passenger seat fiddling with the
knobs of the stereo system, the fans of car whirring on full power. Waiting for heat. Dave got back into
the Stanza and they drove off towards the Taft-Mulaney Commerce Plaza to meet with the lawyers, drop
off the checks, and then head to the First Offender’s class.
“Excellent Saturday morning,” Casterman said. He began to unwrap a granola bar. Discarded the
wrapper onto the floor.
“You going to pick that up?” Dave asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Awesome.”
Johnny Casterman continued to fiddle with the knobs of the stereo and Dave jumped at the sound of
grinding gears.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dave asked.
“Sorry, my elbow must have hit the stick.”
“Keep your hands off. Just, just put them in your lap.”
“Yes, sir.” The car was still freezing, the way it often did with the bitter winter of the December
morning lingering into every fiber of the car’s leather interior. Dave didn’t mind the cold. Casterman did,
but had little say without his own means of transportation to justify the bitching. Johnny couldn’t fix his
car because he couldn’t pay. He couldn’t pay because he didn’t have a job. Didn’t have a job because he had
a larceny charge on his record.
It was the VHS tapes first. Easy enough, they fit perfectly concealed under inner arms of jackets
and under shirts hanging over the tapes tucked into the backs of jeans. VHS tapes turned into DVD’s,
carefully unwrapped, similarly concealed. Then to bottles of wine where they discovered their pea coats
could fit them perfectly into their inside pockets, weather permitting they be worn at all. They had told
each other they would stop before it got out of hand, before they were apprehended and shut down com-pletely.
Dave slowed the car to a stop at the plaza in front of the law offices of Fenwick and Shubert.
Fenwick’s first client had been a man who’d stolen a toothbrush back in 1976. He moved on to put various
amounts of criminals in prison and took Shubert on for the lesser cases of petty theft and larceny, traffic
tickets, anything Fenwick didn’t want or couldn’t find the time for; all of that shifted onto Shubert’s desk.
“Boys, you’re late,” Fenwick said the moment they walked in the door.
“Yeah, traffic,” Johnny said.
“Yes, of course, I’m sure.”
“Sizemore, you first. Casterman, you entertain yourself in the lobby.”
“Ah, Mr. Fenwick, I thought we would just go in together,” Dave said. “I mean, we’re going
through the same hoops legally, so I just assumed-
“And normally, Mr. Sizemore, you would assume correctly, except, you’re not going through the
same hoops, are you, Mr. Casterman?” Johnny said nothing, sat straight back, head bouncing against the
wall, arms tucked under pits.
“I don’t understand,” Dave said.
“Then you must be forgetting the small list of transgressions that already exist on Mr. Caster-man’s
already once expunged record.” Underage drinking. Public intoxication. Indecent exposure. Resisting
arrest. Circa summer of Casterman’s 20th birthday. “Now, Mr. Sizemore, please go on ahead.”
Dave walked to the office, did not look back to Johnny bouncing his head on the wall, feet tap-ping
away on the office rug, arms tucked into pits.
The office was large, despite the size of the building. Looked like they shared it. Maybe, Shubert
Jamison Hackelman
68•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 69
was just borrowing it.
“Good morning, Mr. Sizemore,” Shubert said. Couldn’t stand they called him mister. Seemed
condescending considering. Dave sank into the small wooden chair built much lower to the ground than
the desk; lower than the almost standing Shubert in the deep leather chair behind the desk, on a swivel.
“Morning.”
“So, your case is pretty easy and straightforward from this point on. Normally, this whole process
will run you $750, which is what I’ve asked you to bring today, but for my services it’s going to cost you
roughly, $600. That’ll take care of my representation, the First Offender’s Program fee, the community
service fee, and getting this case expunged from your record. Of course, you will actually need to get the
community service done, and actually go to that class today before I can actually give you the discount.”
Jumped right into it, didn’t waste time, didn’t give the time for pleasantries or wonder how Dave was doing.
He was doing fine. Couldn’t hold down cigarettes, couldn’t stand Casterman at the moment, but was fine
all the same.
“You are going to make it to that class this afternoon, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” Dave said.
“Good.”
“Wait, so why won’t you just cut down the price now and let me keep the one-fifty?”
“Consider it a deposit of integrity. Realistically, the price should be much, much more, but, con-sidering
you’re a working full-time college student, it makes little sense to charge you something that would
be much more difficult for you to put together than would prove necessary. I’m not here to make trouble
for you. I’m here to help you, Mr. Sizemore. I’m giving you the opportunity to prove something, and
maybe that’s to yourself, maybe it’s just to me, but I need to believe that you aren’t going to throw your life
away on something stupid like this ever again.” Dave sat running his fingers under the arms of the short
chair. “Why would I expunge at a discount something I don’t believe you’ll take care of ? I’m giving you the
chance to take care of all of this in a timely manner, but if you don’t, well…it’ll cost you. Does that make
sense?” Dave agreed. The cost of trust ran deep into the folds of his wallet, and his stomach seized up as
he emptied money into an envelope on Shubert’s desk.
“What about Johnny?” he asked.
“Well, I’m not at liberty to discuss Mr. Casterman’s case.”
“You don’t think he’ll tell me anyways?”
“That’s a question I think you should answer.” Dave knew.
III. Understanding Impulse Control Disorders: Break the Habit!
The house shook under the weight of the bass. The thumping, pulsing woofer swallowed the
room whole, held it there in a stupor, miasmic and unyielding. The dissonance of thumping bass and elec-tro
static swayed the white shuffling bodies, undulating offbeat on down beats, never far off, never quite
there. The room smelled of sweat, stark bodies dripping away the July night. Burning and burnt tobacco
saturated the front lawn and back porch as fertilizer and varnish. Cans collected on shelves and floors as
people cheered in the dining room, red plastic ups filled with dirty water. Like children they clung to hip
flasks, and tallboys crowded the edges of the table. Throw the ball, arch it, arch it! Watch your elbows. Aim
small, miss close, if at all. In the upstairs rooms belonging to Dave’s roommates, people smoked bowls in
Casterman’s honor, baked out for his 20th birthday, and wasted away the night in scorched lungs and resin.
Casterman stumbled around the house, a dance of shuffling, tripping onetwothreefourfivesix
Course Outline for 1st Offenders Program: Theft and Larceny
footsteps and stubbed toes to furniture and fixtures. He was followed closely by a girl with large framed
glasses, gangly and gratuitous; an outpour of incessant giggling, slight gap tooth-one-dimple smile, whose
striking feature was marked solely by the large mole that resided in the center of her chin. No one knew
her. Introduced herself over and over. Diana Belmar. Diana Belmar, come with Ricky Pinkton. You know
Ricky? Everyone knows Ricky. So nice to meet you. Heard stories. She operated in metonymy; a mouth-piece
of the supposed indie and lesser known. Their delicate sensibilities of the undiscovered, bouncing
about the seedy bars before the metropolis. Children caught in the undertow of the nineties and thrust
forward into a millennium driven by fear and glass blown bowls. Fatherless sons of second hand lions.
A lost generation of hippies who climbed out of the mountain homes of their fathers and sold out to
the second hand smoke of urban sprawl settling for the noxious crawl space between the swag and the
gentrified. Eccentrically thrift. Eclectically erotic in their own shallow languor. A crowded mess of the
unhygienic flaunting their acrid scent. Unwashed, earthy, sweat stained and belatedly beat-nick. Believed it
better to smell of sweat and dirt than nothing at all, the skinheads who couldn’t fight. Rebels with no sense
of causality. Traded in their punk rock albums for something calming and acoustic. Traded in the electro
static of the rock and roll, and bought second hand the thumping bass, funk fused with something mellow,
their own orchestrated, questionably pitched arrangements of strings and heavy beats, organs and screams.
Mixed and matched with mixed-matched prescription drugs. Abusers of Adderall and amphetamine salts.
They were burdened, put upon children. The stranded kids of divorces. Broken homes.
“Get him the beer bong!” someone yelled, pointed to Casterman. Casterman jumped to atten-tion.
“Yes! Yes! Give me the beer bong!” He raced into the kitchen, and they pushed him into a small
wooden chair. Grabbed the PBR, pour it, pour it.
“You want the beer, Johnny? Do you want the beer!”
“Do it! Do it! Let’s go!” He twitched about in the chair, waiting anxiously for the beer.
And they poured it. Casterman downed it, coughed a bit, gave out his aching triumphant, heaving
laugh.
“I’m finished!” he yelled. He bowed out of the kitchen and was off.
He ran out of the house and began running the neighborhood streets. Diana Belmar followed, beer bottle
in hand. Dave stood by the beer pong table, and did not follow. Watched Casterman as the other team sim-ply
bounced the ball into the last cup on the table and the game was over and lost.
“Birthday boy, bitches!” Johnny yelled. “Almost legal, feelin kinda lethal, like a mahfuckin Bea-gle!”
Diana cackled, threw the bottle to the curb. “Shit, it’s hot!” he yelled, and began to remove his shirt.
He swung it triumphantly over his head, small circles, whooping and hollering, drunk and stumbling. He
began a slow stumble towards the end of the street, reaching for the brown grass of the neighbor’s yard.
He fell to his knees and began crawling towards the ditch. He felt sick, but did not throw up.
Dave came out into the night just to find Johnny, just to be sure. He saw the crawling boy, heard
the howling and the slurred rhymes sputtered out into slip-drip spittle.
“What’s Casterman doing?” Dave asked, stepping to the yard.
“I think he’s freestyle rapping,” Ricky Pinkton said. He sat perched on the stoop of the front
porch. He cocked his head to the side and threw up. “Goddamnit,” he said.
“Fuck, man! Get him inside!” Dave began to walk down the steps around the hunched frame of
Ricky.
Lights flashed at the corner of the street. Johnny stood there too, peeing on the street sign.
“Cops!” Dave shouted. He made no move to Johnny. He only turned back up the steps and
Jamison Hackelman
70•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 71
grabbed Ricky by the collar of his shirt. He made a run into the house, cut the music, ordered everyone in.
Hide the pot. Hide the pieces. Underage kids, drop the beer, get out.
“Holy hell! Ay boys!” Johnny yelled.
“Sir, can you put your hands up?” they asked.
“I’m going to need to see some identification, boys,” Johnny said.
“Sir, I’m not going to ask you again. I will bring you to the ground,” they said.
“Boys, I’m serious. License and registration.”
And they took him down.
The cops waved Diana down who walked away from them as quickly as she could without run-ning.
They followed until she broke into a run, and they chased her down a couple houses from Dave’s
house. She was running back to the party. Left Casterman to the police. Casterman didn’t like it.
“You’re no. Fucking. Cop!” he yelled. He tried to run. Didn’t get far. They cuffed him. They
searched him. Found his pipe. Found his bag. And Dave only watched from the darkened window of his
living room. Johnny looked to the front porch, for help, for something. Dave was gone though.
“Yo, everyone come inside!” Dave yelled. He his way to the back porch. He watched and waited
as some just stood in their glassy eyed stupor on his back porch. Some made moves to the door, and when
the others didn’t he yelled once more. “Yo! The cops are out front. Get in the fucking house, now!” They
all moved in, and the back porch grew quiet until all noises fell faint and disappeared altogether.
The cops drove away with Dave and Diana in the back seat. Resisting arrest, public intoxication,
possession of paraphernalia and marijuana. No one was there to watch them leave, to wave goodbye and
goodnight to the birthday boy.
Dave led them all to the basement. They turned music on softly, turned out living room lights,
and moved the ping pong table as well. From the street, no one was home, a welcome mat withdrawn,
invitation revoked. They crowded together, and no one had asked about Johnny Casterman or Diana Bel-mar,
and no one saw Dave go back to the back porch and throw up as he smoked a cigarette, the last, he
assured himself, no more, while Casterman slept uncomfortably in a holding cell until morning.
IV. Empathy Training: The Ripple Effect of Shoplifting
“A house burns down killing three small children. The neighbors, seeing the fire, and hearing the
children inside one of the bedrooms on the ground floor, try desperately to break into the house. The
family had recently fallen victim to several burglaries in the past few months, so the single mother had
taken extra precautions to prevent burglars. She had installed a dead bolt security code-controlled front
door, with burglar bars on all of the first floor windows. The neighbors, unable to break into the house,
listened as the children burned to death before the fire department could reach them. The mother was not
home, which was normal, but the problem was she had often left them home alone. Who is at fault? Who
is to blame for the deaths of those children? The mom? The neighbors? The fool-proof security system?
Or the burglars?”
“Excellent job, Mr. Sizemore,” she said as Dave finished reading the exercise from the course
booklet aloud. The First Offender’s Course Instructor walked around the room, not through the aisles of
chairs, just around them, smiling. A serious smile, though, and the room was colder for it. “You see, when
you steal, and it doesn’t matter from who… it could be Wal-Mart, Dillard’s, Macy’s, Belk, Rack Room- hell,
it could be anything you just stuff in your pockets at the grocery store. But no matter where you steal
from, there is always a victim,” she said. There is always a price to pay for the slighted.
Dave looked to Johnny, but he looked only straight ahead. Maybe at the instructor. Maybe not
Course Outline for 1st Offenders Program: Theft and Larceny
anywhere in particular. Just not back at Dave.
“Even if it seems completely meaningless, you’re thinking, ‘I’m stealing from a big corporation!
I’m not hurting anyone!’ someone is in some way victimized by your crime. Either way, your stealing has
negatively impacted someone in the grand scheme of things.” She scanned the room. Some were dozing
off, she was losing a few. Some were scratching their legs or arms, stretching, yawning, minds elsewhere,
searching, musing, drifting away slowly.
“You,” she said. Pointed to black kid wrapped in layers of Fubu and secondhand Gucci.
“What’s good, lady?” he asked. She smiled at him.
“Say you have a drug charge on your record. Maybe it’s just paraphernalia, maybe it is possession.
You probably don’t want that on your record. Then say you pick up a larceny charge a year after you got
the drug charge. You can now only expunge one of them because they happened in two different years. In
In the eyes of an employer, which one do you think you should get expunged?”
“Drugs?” he replied weakly.
“Does that sound right to everyone else?” Some of the class nodded in agreement, some still sat
with vacant expressions, tired and bored.
“I said, does that sound right to everyone else?” she almost yells, and the class woke up if only
for the moment. Yes, they mostly replied.
“Wrong,” she says. “You see, your potential employer can do a simple drug test to see if you’ve
changed or learned from your drug charge. They can ask you if you smoke pot still, and you can say no
and they can in turn measure that scientifically. But how do you test for trust? You can see- you can ob-jectively
and substantively measure drugs in your body. Can you perform the same test for trust?” No one
answered though the obvious answer loomed before each them, throttling their cold limbs, drumming on
the bottoms of chairs, reading from clipboards, saying nothing, running away, taking it in, it didn’t matter.
How do you measure trust?
Dave didn’t know and the class was soon over and he waited for Johnny to catch a ride with him.
But Johnny waved him on. He didn’t follow Dave to his car, didn’t ask him questions, didn’t mock the
dumb bitch in the classroom I mean, that shit was bullshit, right?
Dave didn’t explain why he sat down in Wal-Mart, why he gave up on Johnny, why his stomach
lurched in guilt. Would have told him he was scared. Would have told him he was doing his best, doing it
the only way he knew how. Self-preservation calls for sitting down and waiting it out. Weathering, even.
Dave lit a cigarette and watched as Johnny climbed into the passenger seat of beat up Volvo. A
large framed glasses girl sat at the wheel. It was Diana Belmar’s car. Watched him throw his arm around the
neck of her seat, reach over and kiss her on the cheek. Dave started the car and watched them drive away
as the cigarette smoke clung tightly to the dryness of his throat.
V. Review and Recommendations: Stop While You’re Ahead, Be Accountable
The cold had thawed away into months of rain, evaporated in turn by the stifling heat of June.
And when summer had started, all things slowed to the crawl of humidity and surrendered their comfort
to the shedding of clothes, t-shirts and cutoff shorts. July came and much remained the same. The thrift
and hip crowded the bars, parties raged into the dry heave of daylight, and Johnny and Dave grew apart
like weeds stemming from the same root, but crawling towards different parts of the yard, waiting to be
picked or cut down.
It was Casterman’s birthday night and Dave sat at home wondering and waiting to be called.
Jamison Hackelman
72•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 73
They’d all be at the bar, and they’d all drink too much now that Johnny could legally get unruly. They’d
gather around the patio of the bar and smoke cigarettes and get out of hand to the sing-alongs of Tom
Waits or something snappy and catchy. Pop punk or bluegrass, something they knew or just something they
could dance to. Something they could move around in shapeless, shifting lethargy, tobacco staining their
fingertips, alcohol giving way to the quick passing minutes. And after the last call Dave would walk Johnny
back to his place and let him pass out on his couch after they smoked the annual birthday bowl, in memoria
of the years passed, for solidarity’s sake. And in the quiet of 3AM, Dave would give Johnny his birthday
present. Maybe it would be a Tom Jones record they’d croon to through the stifling haze of the July morn-ing.
Maybe it would be a poster of something lewd they could laugh about, something to talk about, re-member
even. Maybe it would be some manner of drink and Dave would wake in the morning before him
to find him clutching it tightly to his chest as he slept, legs sprawled out and over the back of the couch,
because that’s just how much that gift meant to Johnny. That’s just how much Dave meant to Johnny. Trust
measured in the quality of gift to rectify fault, validate friendship.
But Dave had not been invited. He’d been told not to come a week before at the courthouse.
“I took him in,” Diana had said, her eyes not quite as big as her thick rimmed glasses let on, but
close in oogling, bug-eyed comparison. She had stopped him right before walking into the courtroom, right
before he’d determined whether or not to allow Johnny to sit next to him, and he wondered where he had
been all of this time. Diana stopped him at the door, smiled, hooked her arm beneath his and led him away.
“I saw potential in Casterman that no one else saw,” Diana said.
“What are you talking about? I know him,” Dave said.
“I saw him after you fucked him over last year. I saw him after he took the fall for you at the
store. I saw how you treated that kid and I took him in, introduced him to a really cool crowd, a legit scene,
and I definitely think he’s better because of it.” Legitimate scene. Something about her phrasing was off
and Dave figured maybe it had to do with the glasses, maybe it was just the word legitimate next to the
word scene that didn’t quite fit, as if she could legitimize the faux or the pastiche. Maybe she was just full
of shit.
He hadn’t talked to Johnny since he’d given him a ride to the lawyers and then the class after-wards.
They didn’t speak at all during the class, and after that Johnny was gone, lost in the crowd of like
dressed hip and condescending, hating everything beneath them as if they were setting a trend in being
disagreeable. But what really did they know that they’d all not heard before? Dave had it understood. Knew
the bare minimum, knew it at least at face value as an originality aching to be claimed, and by collectively
identifying it as their own, not a single person knew. He was happy without it. Didn’t need it. Maybe didn’t
understand the appeal, had a general idea, at least, but didn’t need to know it.
can do the same for you,” she said. She smiled, invitingly; a cool stream of water pouring down
his shoulders followed by the clicking of ice cubes. It was off putting and he knew that she would drown
him if she could, extending her hand to him, leading him to the brink of an icy death.
“You can do what?” Dave asked.
“Make you seem likable.”
“Seem likable? Is that what you did for Johnny? He wasn’t likable enough until people knew that
he was with you?” She said nothing. “Grow the fuck up.” And Diana walked off.
Dave didn’t see Johnny but in passing after that day in court where Johnny sat a few rows over,
Diana Belmar draped over him. They called the docket “David Sizemore”, and he noticed the twitch run
the line of Johnny’s jaw. He sat and watched as Johnny went before the judge, flannel shirt tucked into a
pair of ripped jeans. He wore no belt. The black and bearded judge gave no look of interest, no faint in-vestment
in consequence. Dave looked around for Mr. Shubert somewhere near the bench, but he was not
Course Outline for 1st Offenders Program: Theft and Larceny
there. He was running late, maybe.
“Now, Mr. Casterman, you had your record expunged recently, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And this was your first larceny charge?”
“Correct.”
“So, did you complete your First Offender’s Program?”
“Yes, your honor.” He stood, hands half in pockets, thumbs hanging out, wagging in small circles.
Maybe a nervous tic.
“But not your community service?” Johnny said nothing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Casterman, I didn’t
quite hear that. Did you complete your assigned community service?”
“No, sir. I did not.”
“And why is that?” Again, Johnny said nothing. Maybe a nervous tic. Maybe scared.
“Generally in a court of law, Mr. Casterman, my questions aren’t rhetorical. They require answers,
otherwise there’d be no point in asking.”
“I couldn’t afford it, your honor,” he said. Johhny couldn’t pay because Johnny had no job, and
Johnny had no job because Johnny couldn’t be trusted.
“Did you discuss this with your lawyer?”
“He’s no longer representing me.” A deposit of integrity. Shubert walked into the cou rtroom
and made a direct line to Dave.
“Morning, David. How are you?”
“I’m alright,” Dave said.
“Good, good. Now, I’m going to go talk to the DA, but everything looks fine here. I wasn’t sure
if you would need to show up this morning, and it looks like you can go ahead and leave. You had all of
your information faxed over to my office, correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, good. I just need you to sign this form, and then you can go ahead and get out of here.”
He handed Dave the clipboard with the attached form. I (defendant) have successfully completed all nec-essary
requirements and hereby allow this record to be expunged. “As you can see David, failing to abide
will cost you. I’m proud of you for taking care of what was needed to, especially considering the…the
connection.”
“Connection?” Shubert nodded to the podium in front of the bench.
“Mr. Casterman, you had six months to take care of this. Actually, let’s go over this timeline. Oc-tober
you get caught stealing. December you met with your lawyer who’s no longer representing you—by
the way, why is that?”
“Because I didn’t finish my community service on time.”
“And you made an agreement to do so?”
“Yes, sir.” Diana Belmar twitched uncomfortably. Smirked.
“And you broke that agreement because you couldn’t pay for the community service? Do you work, Mr.
Casterman?” He didn’t answer. “Maybe my questions are rhetorical.” Jonny fidgeted with the shallow
pockets of his jeans. “You don’t look employed, Mr. Casterman, and you’re lack of response answers that
quite nicely. I don’t see any point in continuing this discussion, Mr. Casterman. You were given an oppor-tunity
and you squandered it. You didn’t seek any kind of continuance with your lawyer, so he dropped
you. You could have told him that you wouldn’t have been able to afford it and he could have tried to work
something out. But you didn’t, Mr. Casterman. And what did you think was going to happen? Didn’t you
think that there would be consequences to your actions?”
Jamison Hackelman
74•The Coraddi
Casterman was convicted. No second chances. No repeat. Just more fines, more community
service. More clamping down and tightening on his already empty wallet.
Dave’s case was dismissed, and they parted ways. Trust is measured in hours of community ser-vice,
hundreds of dollars in court costs and lawyer fees, suspicious friends, strained relationships, bar tabs
and shrinking paychecks
Dave was not there at the bar for Casterman’s birthday. Wasn’t there for the countdown to mid-night,
the final dying sounds of underage drinking ticking away, the allure of alcoholism dissipating into
the night air. Trust is measured in minutes sitting down and watching, feeling pain, offering condolences,
lying, hanging people out to dry and watching them take the fall, wishing they too had run. Measured
in fractured friendships, staggering to keep balance, keep connectivity. Measured in the fidgeting hands
under security cameras in grocery stores. Searching pockets to make sure nothing patted down had been
instinctively pilfered. Measured in cigarette butts and gag reflexes, nicotine gum and broken promises and
self-assurances to quit; guilt forcing its way from the charred esophageal passage to drips of spittle trailing
down his chin.
Dave was not there for Johnny. Did not step in, own up, take blame, or offer a hand. For Johnny’s
birthday, Dave celebrated at home and alone. Instead of at the bar he sat watching television sit-coms in
mocumentary style, and Dave wondered why in their one-on-one monologues no one looked directly at
the camera. They looked to the side, or slightly above. Could not connect right to their audience, couldn’t
look them in the face, so Dave knew there was little truth, even as he acknowledged fiction, he felt lied to.
He checked his phone over and over, only to be reassured by its silence that no one was calling, and that
no one would be calling. He tried to imagine Johnny the same way. Waiting for Dave to call or text him.
Waiting for him to show that he cared, that he wanted them to get back to how it was in the days before
they weren’t trusted or scolded for passionless crimes of petty theft. Trust is measured in retired artisans
of theft, stifled beggars, pickpocketing and snaking along, looking to pick up the scraps someone left
behind, looking for someone to take you in, take a chance, give me the job, looking for the benefit of the
doubt, reminding yourself, I’m not a criminal. I’m not a criminal. I’m not a criminal. And Dave fell asleep
alone, his phone on the floor, silent. He dreamed of soccer games on the bench, and snakes from ropes
into long weeds hiding in the grass as the night passed on without him in it.
Course Outline for 1st Offenders Program: Theft and Larceny
Artwork
76•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 77
Piazza
Paul Vincent
Serigraph Print
Untitled
Rebecca Boger
Graphite
78•The Coraddi
80•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 81
Ethnic Roots
Sharon Romang
Watercolor and Digital
(previous, left)
The Spaces Inbetween
David Koppang
Bristol board, Ink
(previous, right)
Pregnant Lady
Dafne Sanchez
Ink, Watercolor Crayon on Fabric
(right)
Fall 2011• 83
Morning Poo
Alexa Feldman
Digital Photograph
(left)
Toothpaste Angel
Dafne Sanchez
Toothpaste, Pigment
84•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 85
Alice
Jessica Berkowitz
Scan, Fuji Film
Untitled
Cynthia Cukiernik
Digital Photography
Fall 2011• 87
Untitled and Untitled(Kiss)
Tommy Malekoff
Film Photographs
88•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 89
Three Months Together and
The Laziest Beanie in all of Greensboro
Jolie Day
Tangerines, Thread//Fabric, Yarn, Thread
90•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 91
Pohn Dollop
Harriet Hoover
Paper Collage
(left)
By The Bus Stop on Tate Street Near the
Weatherspoon Art Museum
Paul Howe
Broken sidewalk, Lack of permission, Steel
(following, left)
Cavities
Kevin Kane
Polyester Plate Print and Acrylic
(following, right)
Fall 2011• 95
Ideal Loves
Company
Will Brown
Pen, Pencil, Coffee
96•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 97
Iron
Cary Quillian
Mixed Media
Truck
Cary Quillian
Mixed Media
98•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 99
5/7
James Clemmons
Etching and Aquatint
Gonzalo Cao
Christian Durango
Linocut Print
100•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 101
102•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 103
Mean Mom 1 and Mean Mom, Too
Janie Ledford
Oil Paint Monotypes on Paper
(previous, left and right)
2 g e t h a 4 evr
Janie Ledford
Gouache on Paper
(left)
106•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 107
Ripple Effect
Audra Stang
Watercolor, Pen Marker
Hipsters
Ariel Stater
Etching
Brian and Self
Ariel Stater
Mixed Media
(previous, left and right)
Fall 2011• 109
Contributors’ Notes
Jessica Berkowitz is an MFA graduate student. She likes string cheese and watching hulu,
especially at the same time.
Bradley Scott Biggerstaff is a _______ poet that writes _______ literature and makes
_______ music with _______ instruments. Nothing that Brad does in the name of
_______ makes any sense at all. Bradley Scott Biggerstaff should be ______ & _______.
He is the _______ that the poetry community _______. Mr. Biggerstaff asks that you
please fill in the blanks.
Hannah Bodenhamer is an enjoyer of tea, paint, and quietness.
Rebecca Boger is most easily identified by her laugh.
Will Brown tries to make art that is interesting to himself, and if it interestes other people
that is good too.
Emily Calder is having an affair with language. It started as a simple thing, really: the
occasional glance, the lingering gaze. But, as these things go, the sounds turned to words
and the words to sentences. She is concerned about language’s other lovers, but not
enough to give up the ghost.
Kayla Cavenaugh is an Art History and German double major. She’s got a cute way of
talking. She’ll make you feel like dancing.
(For clarification: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rju9b_Uk8Sw)
James Ci is a third year sculpture major with a minor in english, specifically focusing on
poetry. Most of his work favors more antiquitous and lyrical form, with subject matters
concerning the Human Experience. Aside from various sculpture and painting projects,
he is currently writing his second book of poetry, an epic poem, and a mythology.
James Clemmons: butt-naked wonda, big brotha thunda, and the masta blasta
Cynthia Cukiernik is a Junior at UNCG. She is studying anthropology and biology. Cynthia
enjoys talking to strangers and starting elaborate cooking projects late at night.
Jon Davies is a Sophomore at UNCG studying History. His cat, Poke, turned 16 this
110•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 111
October. Poke once had diabetes, though no longer does. Jon has a pacemaker. Medical
anomalies are frequent in his life.
Jolie Day is a junior studying sculpture. Her bright green flesh speckled with tiny black
seeds adds a dramatic tropical flair to any fruit salad. Guess what fruit she is!
Christian Durango is a young man who attends UNCG. He lives in a house nearby. He is
the third child of an immigrant and a North Carolina woman. He is content.
Cala Estes is an English major who plans to continue on to a Master of Fine Arts after
completing her undergraduate degree. Since she first discovered poetry at the age of
twelve, she has been writing non-stop. She hopes to bring her love of writing and poetry
with her to a teaching career after college.
Alexa Feldman ¯\_(¬_¬)_/¯
John Friedrich is heading into his final semester of grad school at UNCG, and is a
nervous wreck because of this. With any luck by next May he’ll be on a plane back to
Eastern Europe holding a one way ticket. With any more luck, John’s first novel will
actually have been published by then.
Dustin Frost is originally from the small town of Fernley, Nevada. He was raised in the
glorious tradition of cowboy poetry, but despite herding sheep and cattle and bucking
bales of hay in his youth, he generally loathes country music, cowboy hats and boots,
large belt buckles, and the smell of cows. Consequently, he claims no cowboy lineage
and only recently acknowledged that he is, in fact, a poet. He prefers to be called Jack
and asks you to recognize his coining of the phrase, “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
Carey Griffin is a senior majoring in Spanish (K-12), having learned Spanish while
serving a mission in Spain for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
Originally from Savannah, GA, he came to Greensboro in order to be closer to family.
He started to love poetry while still in elementary school by learning to recite it at home
to his mother in exchange for candy, a practice that he hopes to continue with his own
family in the future.
Carla Guzman is a junior majoring in Sociology at UNCG. She loves her job as News
Director at your University Radio Station WUAG 103.1 FM. She also works at the
Speaking Center as a consultant. She runs long distances in her free time and is an
advocate for immigrant rights. She believes everyone should stay informed http://
wuagnews.tumblr.com/. After graduation she hopes to go to El Salvador and interview
her family that witnessed the civil war that occurred there in the eighties.
Jamison Hackelman is the Literary Editor of this publication. He spends several hours a
week on writing. He would like to thank Bill Simmons for Grantland.com. He no longer
recognizes correct rules of grammar and punctuation, and seldom are his verbs used in
the active voice. He has mad love for his brothers Gray, Drew, and Christian; his sisters
Spencer and Alejandra; and his niece Gabi. He thinks Jack Donaghy and Ron Swanson
would like each other just fine, thank you. Jamison would vote Knoppe ’12. He isn’t
quite tired of Aaron Sorkin...yet, but imagines he will be soon.
Harriet Hoover is a first year student in the MFA Studio Art program at UNCG. She enjoys
learning about early American history, stitching, karaoke, and hopes to own a motorcyle one
day.
Paul Howe will fix your shit for free. Ask him about it. Or paulhowe.info.
Kevin Kane is maths. His interests follow thereof.
David Koppang is a latter-day Minoan currently residing with the spirit of Anaïs Nin in a
suitably awkward living setup whilst slowly making his way back to Atlantis via the Stream of
Consciousness.
Alex Ledford is a Scorpio who enjoys bubble baths, long walks on the beach, and
hanging out with her three kids, Robert James Ledford, Jayce Christian Ledford, and
Holly Morgan Amineh Ledford. Check her out on Facebook.
Janie Ledford is a Capricorn and doesn’t have any children.
Tommy Malekoff: fuck this industry, bitch I’m in these streets
Holly Mason is graduating this December. She feels blessed to have spent four and a half
years at UNCG learning from many wonderful professors and peers. She would like to thank
the members of “summer poetry workshop” for their encouragement, honest feedback,
consistent commitment to craft and the art of poetry, and, ultimately, for inspiring her with
their remarkable and ambitious writing. And finally, she would like to give a shout out to
everyone on Coraddi staff and thank them for making Monday
evenings VERY fun and interesting!
Thadeus Manby [Who, driven perhaps by the compulsion of the flamboyant name given
him by the sardonic embittered woodenlegged indomitable father who perhaps still
112•The Coraddi Fall 2011• 113
believed with his heart that what he wanted to be was a classicist schoolteacher, rode up
the Natchez Trace one day in 1811 with a pair of fine pistols and one meagre saddlebag
on a small lightwaisted but stronghocked mare which could do the first two furlongs in
definitely under the halfminute and the next two in not appreciably more, though that was
all. But it was enough: who reached the Chickasaw Agency at Okatoba (which in 1860
was still called Old Jefferson) and went no further], writes poems, too.
Alixandria Moore: “I thrive for the smell of used books, the calming magic of a
cappuccino candle, the feel of freshly cut grass between my toes, and the sway of a pen in
my hand. I’m enduring my second year of college, sifting through the critics to make my
love of writing a career. My family and friends are my sanity. I can’t thank them enough
for their constant support and love. In the end, you’ll probably find me in a coffee shop
somewhere in Italy filling up journals of words no one will ever read, but that would be
enough for me.”
Tristan Brooks Munchel is not a singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist. He is a
musician.
Abby Owens is a CARS student with a retail management job, a tendency to never sleep,
and a serious shoe addiction.
Daniel Pruitt is not going to waste your time with some ham-fisted attempt at humor. He
only wishes to dedicate his story to the Hamburglar, whose insatiable appetite for life is
inspiration to us all.
Cary Quillian is a senior at UNCG. She was born on the 14th green of the Augusta National
in Georgia and is the daughter of two college sweethearts. She enjoys writing letters, swim-ing
in raging oceans and spending time with her darling pup, Dooley.
Morganne Radziewicz is a BFA/Painting student. She is an amateur jack-of-all-trades
who aspires to teach art at a community college. She likes four letter words, red lipstick
and dirty fingernails. She has no interest is science fiction or the after life -- this world is
all too interesting.
Sharon Romang is a transfer student from Argentina. She is a design major, who wants to
be a professional illustrator. She enjoys drawing, indie rock music, coffee and customizing
sneakers. You will noticed her because of her crazy hair, and obviously because of her ac-cent.
She truly believes that creativity can be applied to any element in this world. She just
needs a marker.
Dafne Sanchez is a freshman at UNCG studying German and maybe Spanish.Renowned art
critic Alexa Feldman has described her work as, “is this what you guys mean by ‘hipster art’?”
Paul Richard Scuderi, Is a Media Studies and English Major. Only advice to give is that
when exploring the warm, damp recesses, use love as your guide. Future Plans are to
develop sunscreen and a line of fashion for amphibians. He expresses his gratitude to the
Coraddi staff, and Prof. Terry Kennedy.
Lany Shaw is a first year transfer student at UNCG. She tran