contents - Hollins University

Cargoes
2009

Cargoes
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rail, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
John Masefield

Special thanks to
Lisa Radcliff
Brenda LaPrade
Tony D‘Souza
Claudia Emerson
Richard Dillard
TJ Anderson
The Nancy Penn Holsenbeck Fund
& the outstanding Hollins community that
contributed to the creation of the 2009 issue of Cargoes.
Front Cover
Bum on Park Bench
Catherine Stillerman
Black and white photography
Inside Covers
Untitled
Tiffany Robinette
Oil, spraypaint, and collage on plexiglass

Cargoes 2009
Editors
Jeanette Jo Price
Kathy Transue
Readers
Debbie Chow
Amanda Gaye Smith
Meaghan Quinn
Kat Connor
Jessica Franck
Lilly Gray
Taylor Hodge
Hollins University
Roanoke, Virginia

Jessica Franck
Meaghan Quinn
Erin McKee
Aaron Greenberg
Debbie Chow
Luke Johnson
Kathy Transue
Allison Hitt
Amanda Mitchell
Tallula Ho
Amanda Gaye Smith
Amy Dixon
Anya Work
Callie Bonatz
Brittany Jamison
Taylor Hodge
Debbie Chow
Renee Branum
Kathy Transue
Emily Campbell
Erin McKee
Amy Dixon
Helen McKinney
Jeanette Jo Price
CONTENTS
Poetry & Fiction
A Scarlet House
Letters, 1921
Without Shoes On
French French Burger
a proper response to an old, white man who
claims i shall know my place and write things
asian-american
THE HEART, LIKE A BOCCE BALL
the debonair locals
Cusco, Perú
Route 7, Box 363
Pattaya
―Gentlemen‖ a found poem
Saint Michael Lights a Candle
The Reluctant Monk Ponders the Loss of His
Hair By The Sea
Experience
1967
Origin
Stream of Mock Love\(Consciousness)
Queenswalk, November
Word Problem: Post-Colonial Theories
Ladybug
Avon Girls (excerpted from a longer work)
Seven half diminished seven
Praise For a Sick Woman
Homme nu, homme noir
6
8
9
11
16
18
19
20
21
22
24
25
26
27
29
30
32
35
36
37
39
40
42
48

Catherine Stillerman
Leigh Werrell
Elizabeth Lawrence
Catherine Stillerman
Shazy Maldonado
Kathy Transue
Jeanette Jo Price
Tess Waugh
Kelly Hollins
Leigh Werrell
Tiffany Robinette
Tess Waugh
Tess Waugh
Kyra Orr
Artwork
Caroline
That one‘s actually a man
being comfortable with my feet
Docks
La Primogenita
Okay, so this is how the universe works
Le Coucher du Soleil sur le Sahara
Mail Pouch
Untitled
Gesture
Untitled
Pure Gold
When the fat lady sings...
Untitled
7
10
17
23
28
31
34
38
41
47
49
50
61
62
Fifth Annual National Undergraduate
Poetry & Fiction Competition
Liam Green
Jessica Franck
A Break From the Neighborhood
From An Old Maid To Another
52
60
Nancy Thorp High School Poetry Contest
Allison Swagler
Emily Swanagin
Emily Swanagin
Robin E. Burns
Alexandra F. Brown
Kelsey Greenwood
Emma Roberts
Eventually, it becomes too much
Coordination
Shema Yisrael
―sensation‖
Foiled
Untitled
What You‘re Not Telling Him
64
65
66
68
70
71
72

A Scarlet House
In a stark room
I looked at projections
of a scarlet house with
four chambers and two chimneys
It was precious
the size of my fist
velvet with warmth
but I began to wonder
how this delicate nature
could keep going and
How hadn‘t I noticed
this exertion, that
it was going to tire
it was going to stop
my life.
A hand grasped my chest
groping frantically against
ribs bucking wildly
breaching my body
and nerves like hot wire
squirming for an escape.
When my fingertips
heard a whisper
of a chimneys‘
rhythmic breath.
Hushed, inside
a scarlet house
allaying my body
by chambers rocking.
Though,
every so often
a trembling hand
slides off my collarbone
and listens.
Jessica Franck
6

Caroline
Catherine Stillerman
Black and white photography

Letters, 1921
I kept yr letters. the ones posted from Israel. in a hatbox on the mantle.
You wrote on onion paper in black ink and quoted
almanacs, the bible, Hitler, the stars.
sometimes when I cannot sleep
I read them out loud and wonder if
sometimes, when you lie awake, you
unfold my letters, envelopes balled in the coat pocket of yr frock
slung over the back of a rocker. yr face bagged skin so plain in the den where
you pick yr eyebrows and drink straight whiskey, hack, cough vanilla tar sucked
out of a pipe. whiskey unwinding. stereo turned on low. cassette tape winding
listening intently. soft copy of Anna Karenina read twice over on an arm chair.
why.
unblindfold yrself, glass owl eyes
follow my umbrella out to the balcony. crow, a willet, straddles telephone wire.
caw.
have you shaven yr beard do the peonies still grow crooked against the white
and black garage have you fixed the broken stove light Is there meaning in a
word, in two bodies making love
I‘ve been sleeping with yr letters, suckling the paper with my mouth
open, palm open awaiting Eucharist, emptiness. yr translation of
Catullus has bleached itself upon my tongue. why.
an owl has been living in a tree near my house, you again. cuckoo.
hammock halfmoon halfmoving in the wind, a cradle nesting in the owl‘s tree.
museums, yr reflection hidden, blurred, color and water like a painting.
the smell of paint contains me. You are pollution.
plastic, crows, candles, genitals, clocks. why.
Winter.
we took the tram to Munich, yr eyes looked black from the moon. It started to
snow.
We spoke of the frost, art, the opera, yr wife. why.
Meaghan Quinn
8

Without Shoes On
I.
We're not in business to give away shoes, ma'am. But Ma'am is a revision--
Mama's. The clerk-woman has on butterflied spectacles. Still works there, still
wears them. And if I'd of had a peep hole, I'd of seen us reflected: Mama, rough
pleats over her swelled-up belly, and Clinton there barefoot and folded in her
skirts. But I can't see out. Naked and slick as a rabbit, stuck in a widow's gut. I
can't see out, but they tell me about it—later.
II.
I'm telling you. I laid up for three months grieving that sonofabitch but I waited
til Jim got born. Drank soda water and quit my insulin. No money. Let my feet
fat up like grape-rot. Went on in the kitchen, and honey, the deeper that knife
went the better I felt. See the scar, there— looks like rope burn but it ain't. Clinton—
he's the one that ran for the ambulance. The oldest. Very smart. Course
he's in a home now out in Garner. Owned by the same company as this one, can
you believe it. Got him medicated so good he don't sit up straight. Let me tell
you about that boy: He wasn't but six years old, walked down to the barber shop
over yonder from the house and got him a haircut. Barber says that'll be two
dollars. And what did that boy say He said just charge it to my account.
Walked his little bare feet on out the door.
III.
Well, they got this dirty scab out back where the grass don't grow and they call it
a courtyard. I said to someone this ain't much for a garden and they said what
do you expect. Well. They call this place Martin House like the birds. Gourdliving
birds, shit the ground white as April snow. Mama had a rack of them
Martin gourds out back like to have drove us crazy. Maybe did. Noisy birds.
And the smell. But the smell fits this place, now don't it. Got a younger brother
comes twice a week and like to pass out. Works in an office in Raleigh, and
does alright. You wouldn't know it, but Jim was born crooked, and without
shoes on.
Erin McKee
9

That one’s actually a man
Leigh Werrell
Pen and ink

French French Burger
William‘s voice makes a kind of high buzzing chirp. The sound your
voice makes when you talk through an electric fan. He has not yet figured out
how to clear his throat without tonsils. He comes out of the shower playing
drums on his wet belly with plump little palms. He sings, ―Don‘t you wish your
girlfriend was hot – like – meeee Don‘t you …Don‘t you‖ and then, ―I‘m
gonna buy you a draaank, yeah eeyeah, ‗cause I got money in the baaank!‖
William does not know what the words mean. He is seven. A little Italian
Stallion. Slick hair, olive skin, macho swagger. Big brown heartbreakers
framed in long lashes. The gold chain hung around his neck is sized to fit a
grown man loosely. Saint Anthony rests just above his belly button.
William has a clean, white scar that neatly bisects his scalp from ear to
ear. He has an aide. A one-on-one. This skinny blonde high-schooler covered
in freckles. She wears her hair in shoulder-length twin braids, like the girl on
the Swiss Miss box. Her job is to stay with William all the time he is awake.
William‘s first day at camp, I took the aide aside. I asked about the scar.
―His skull was too small when he was born,‖ she told me. ―The doctors
had to open it up and let it out a few inches so his brain would fit. At least, you
know, for now.‖
The way she said it made me think of a tailor altering a crotch. Because
of his brain‘s short breath of fresh air, the aide explained, William is a little off.
His thoughts jam up sometimes. He gets angry. The aide‘s job is mostly to deal
with the freakouts and get him places on time.
William goes over to the long green bench where his aide has left his
backpack. He shoves his fist inside it and yanks out his pair of blue goggles like
gutting a chicken. He brings them to the old sagging couch where I have been
sitting, waiting for him to get out of the shower. The couch got left outside during
the off season. We dragged it back into the pool house at the beginning of
the summer. It smells like rotten pumpkins. I smooth William‘s hair and sling
the band of his goggles over his head. He slaps the lenses into his eye sockets.
He holds his hand up for me. I take it, and walk him poolside.
William is my first lesson today. I hand him a bottle of sunscreen and
he glops himself with white. The sun streams the dew off the soccer field beyond
the pool house fence, and the woman I am in love with comes striding
through the wet grass. Olena Anatolyevna Mokrenko: soft mass of rippled redbrown
curls, like something you would drizzle on a cheesecake. Long, tanned
legs crowned with two perfect muscular nerf balls of ass. Flashing warrior‘s
eyes. Sly predator‘s smile. She calls me ―Malisch.‖ In her language it means,
―little boy.‖ From her height, that is how I look. As she passes, on her way to
her ropes course in the woods, I put my hand over my heart. I call out to her,
―Ti oten kressiva ya!‖ In her language it means, ―You are beautiful!‖ I do this
every morning. It is a ritual of ours. It is a win-win situation. I get to vent this
boiling joy reaction that happens in my stomach when I see her. She gets to
have the first sounds she hears each day be the birds singing, and children
laughing, and someone telling her she is beautiful. We would have to stop, of
course, if any of the campers knew Russian. Or maybe we would not. After all,
11

what I say is not lewd, or in poor taste, or of a corrupting nature to the mind of a
child. It is just a very loud, from-the-diaphragm statement of fact.
I am teaching William to dive. I climb up onto the diving board and
show him. Palms together. Arms out straight. Hug your ears with your elbows.
Push off with your feet. Legs straight. Feet together. I dive. The world is gone
for a few seconds. Everything is cool and blue and silent. I weigh nothing. I am
everywhere embraced. The water loves me.
I break the surface. Swim to the side. William claps. We start him on
the side of the pool, not the diving board. He starts kneeling instead of standing
so it is not such a long way down. So he is not so afraid. I watch him from the
water. His first try, he skids off the surface like a panicked alligator. He swallows
some water and coughs.
―You okay, William‖ I know he is okay. If you‘re coughing, you‘re
breathing. But I ask anyway.
―Yeah,‖ he says, ―did I dive‖
―No,‖ I say, ―but close.‖ I tell him what he needs to do. He needs to
push off more, and think about going more down than out. He needs to pick a
spot in the water, keep his eye on it, and push off with his feet until he is there.
He swims to the side, and beaches himself on the wet concrete. He stands up
and squeezes the water from the pockets of his trunks. He shakes his butt and
sings, ―My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard!‖ His voice is like a cricket
from Brooklyn. He kneels down and tries his dive again. He gets a little closer
this time. Tries again. He needs to keep his legs together. Point his toes. This
would be a lot easier if I could do what my father did. If I could put one hand
around his waist, the other around his ankles, and guide him into the water.
But this is America, and it is better not to touch if you can help it.
―Did I dive‖
―Not yet, William. Closer though. Let‘s try it standing up this time.‖
He shrugs his shoulders. He claps his hands and rubs them together.
He plants his feet, bends his knees, and springs up, arcs beautifully, brings his
legs too far forward and flips over as he enters the water. He makes a long
splash with his feet. It spatters the opposite side of the pool. It kills a bumblebee
on the wing. I hear it slap the pavement. I hear its last feeble buzzes. William
twists himself around and comes up for air.
―Did I dive‖
―Almost, William. Your splash killed a bee though.‖
―Yes!‖
―William, that‘s not nice.‖
―Oh.‖
―We should go over and say we‘re sorry.‖
William nods solemnly, and we swim across to the other side of the
pool. The bumblebee is still there, twitching a little in the puddle from William‘s
splash. We climb out and squat down. William pokes the bee in the furry
hind end with his pinky finger. The bee shudders. William grabs my shoulder
and shakes me.
―He ain‘t dead!‖
―Don‘t touch it, William. I don‘t want you to get stung.‖
The binder with the chlorine test log leans up against the fence. I slip a
12

lank log report out, and slide the paper underneath the bee. Lift it off to a dry
spot on the deck.
―He gonna get better‖
―Yeah, I think he just needs to sit out in the sun until his wings dry off.‖
―Oh. Should we blow on him‖
―No. I don‘t think we should. Let‘s just give him some time.‖
We get back into the water and keep on with William‘s diving. He gets
steadily better. His only problem now is not letting himself flip over. For this I
say he needs to point his toes and get a good strong push that will propel him
straight into the water. It is getting to feel like we have been in the pool for
awhile. I cannot be sure, though. I have lost my watch. I am sad about this. It
was a great watch, a waterproof Timex with a brown faux-leather band. It had
hands and fancy-written numbers. It lit up green when you pressed the little
silver stud on the side. I felt elegant wearing it. Thirty dollars I paid. At Wal-
Mart. A deal. And it is gone now. Disappeared like so many things in my life.
When I was little I can remember thinking to myself, ―You will be a great magician
someday. Everything you touch disappears.‖ I look around for someone
with a watch. The only people at the pool are me, William, and his aide. William
is not wearing a watch.
―William‖
William has been trying to fit his head into the pool filter. He does not
stop when I say his name. He says, ―Yeah‖
―William, what‘s your lady‘s name‖
―My what‖
―Your aide. The lady who comes to camp with you.‖
―Who‖
I tap William on the shoulder and point over the side of the pool to
where the aide sits, reading her paperback.
―That lady, William. Can you tell me what her name is‖
―Ummm…‖ his voice makes this keening buzz. The largest mosquito
you have ever heard. He says ―um‖ for a very long time. Then he says, ―I
dunno.‖
―William,‖ I say, ―that lady is with you every second of the day. Are you
sure you don‘t know what her name is‖
―Umm… Jessica‖
I hoist myself up onto the side of the pool and say ―Jessica‖ to the aide.
The aide plays with her hair. She takes the end of one braid between
her thumb and index fingers. She slips it into the corner of her mouth and begins
to chew it and suck on it with great enthusiasm. She seems totally absorbed
in this and in the paperback she reads. She does not answer when I call,
so I call again.
―Jessica.‖
She wiggles her feet out of her sandals. The sandals are made of translucent
pink plastic. She crosses her legs at the ankles and begins to swing them
gently back and forth. She keeps swinging her legs and chewing her braid, and
she does not answer when I call, so I call again.
―Jessica!‖
She opens her mouth and lets the braid drop out. The part she has been
13

chewing has darkened from blonde to orange-brown with her spit. It falls heavy
and sopping against her inner shoulder. She stops swinging her legs. She looks
behind her, and then to the side, as though I might be calling some other Jessica.
She touches her index finger to the bone between her little ice cream sundae
tips of breasts. She looks at me and says, ―Are you talking to me‖
―Yeah,‖ I say, ―your name‘s Jessica right‖
―My name‘s Chelsea,‖ she says.
―Oh,‖ I say, and look at William. He smiles and shrugs his little nutbrown
knobs of shoulders. I ask Chelsea if she knows what time it is. She takes
a pink cell phone from the pocket of her shorts and says, ―8:47.‖
―Thanks. Sorry for getting your name wrong.‖
She says, ―It‘s cool,‖ and goes back to her paperback, and starts sucking
her braid again with great gusto. She is in for a trichinobezoar at this rate. William‘s
mistake with Chelsea‘s name makes me wonder.
―William, I‘ve been working with you for a couple weeks now,‖ I say,
―Do you know what my name is‖
William is treading water. He says, ―Umm,‖ and scratches his head. He
forgets to keep treading water, drops below the surface, and begins to drown. I
slip back into the water, grab him by the shoulder, tug him back up. He says,
―Umm… I dunno.‖ I bring him to the side of the pool, grip him under the arms,
and lift him out of the water. I climb out by the ladder and sit down beside him.
I say, ―Okay, William. How about I give you three guesses‖
―Okay.‖
―Okay. Guess Number One. What‘s my name‖
William scratches his head. He slaps his wet bathing trunks with his
wet palms. He says ―um‖ for a long time. He puts both hands in the air, as
though he is on a rollercoaster. He says, ―The Rock‖ My name is not The Rock.
―No, William,‖ I say, ―my name is not The Rock.‖
William says, ―Oh.‖ He picks his nose, and draws out a big, soggy, yellow
booger. He wipes it on my arm. He does not do this out of malice. He does
it because he has a booger. And my arm is there. I cup my hand, take some water
from the pool, and splash it off. ―William,‖ I say, ―that‘s gross. Don‘t do that
again.‖
―Okay.‖
―Guess Number Two.‖
―What‖
―What‘s my name, William Guess Number Two.‖
William lies back. He puts his hands behind his head for a pillow. It
looks like an excellent idea. I do the same. The sun is fully up now. It dries my
suit and skin very quickly. I begin to feel a tight, pinched feeling at my temples
and the crooks of my elbows. This means I am shrink-wrapped in an invisible
sheath of dead chlorine. All the time I have been feeling these things, William
has been saying, ―Umm.‖ Now he is done thinking. He turns his head to the
side, to look at me.
He says, ―French French Burger‖
My name is not French French Burger.
―French, French Burger‖ I say.
―French French Burger,‖ William says.
―William, what does that even mean‖
14

William shrugs his shoulders. ―I dunno.‖
―French French Burger‖
―Yup.‖
―Really‖
―Uh-huh.‖
―Wow.‖
―That isn‘t your name‖
―No, William,‖ I say, ―my name is not French French Burger. But I
would be honored if you would call me that forever.‖
William laughs. He slaps his belly. He kicks his feet in the water and
churns up foam.
―Okay, French French Burger!‖
―Okay William, last guess.‖
―Last guess for what‖
―For my name.‖
―You said to call you French French Burger.‖
―I said call me that, I didn‘t say it was my name.‖
―Oh.‖
―So, last guess, William. What‘s my name‖
William stops laughing. He does not say ―um.‖ He sits up very straight.
I sit up with him. He looks at me very clearly and alertly, and he says, ―Mark‖
My name is not Mark. Mark is the name of the counselor whose job it is
to look after the day campers. William is one of these. He sees a lot of Mark, so
it is perfectly understandable that he should make this mistake.
―No, William,‖ I say, ―my name is not Mark.‖ And then I tell him my
name, and William claps his hands. He throws his arms around my neck and
says, ―French French Burger!‖ I pat him on the back and muss his hair. After
the hug has gone on long enough, I take his hands from around my neck and put
them by his sides. We sit for a moment and look across the pool. A breeze picks
up. The blank log report flutters off the ground and over the fence. The bumblebee
was the only thing holding it down. It has flown away.
Aaron Greenberg
15

a proper response to an old, white man who claims I shall know my place
and write things asian-american
my face is not all i am at all.
so how dare you tell me to limit
myself to writing asian-american
things a lying jungle of railways
occupy my mind as much as anyone
else's, having gone to a lot of places,
not just going down one path
because nobody's life works that way.
if my eyes were a few shades lighter
and two sizes bigger, asian-american
would suddenly have meant nothing,
or wouldn't be expected in my pieces.
why does my text necessarily
have to reflect people's common
beliefs about my face really,
it's the trick of rumors people
have spread of my face—and of others'.
no expectation must be added
to those rumors or writers with eyes
appearing close to mine to write
about asian-american identity
questions/answers. is it because poets
like me are oppressed to do so why
shall i not get to write about beaches
and letters like the girl with the ivory
skin and turquoise eyes why does she
never write about the color of her skin
because she already knows that people
perceive her as being too good that she
doesn't need to inform them of the positivity
of her whiteness so, she can write
about the sun and moon. without sprinkling
white-american adjectives to her work.
i'm not subjugated by what my eyes receive
from hateful people like you, sir.
i, too, shall have a right to create my poetry
as she does with hers.
Debbie Chow
16

eing comfortable with my feet
Elizabeth Lawrence
Digital photography

THE HEART, LIKE A BOCCE BALL
The jack sits low in the grass. We‘re dead drunk,
cannonballing across the lawn, gouging
handful divots, each of us still nursing
a tumbler of scotch brought home from the wake.
We sons and brothers and cousins. I spin
my ice and let that black-tie loosening
buzz swarm. The others choose the sky, looping
pop-flies that swirl with backspin, an earthen
thud answering grunts while the soft dirt caves.
I bowl instead, slow-ride hidden ridges—
the swells buried beneath the grass—carving
a curve, a line from start to stop, finish.
The heart, like a bocce ball, is fist-sized
and firm; ours clunk together, then divide.
Luke Johnson
18

the debonair locals
they sit, Cezanne's card players, one slumped over a quarter-written story
about two sunflowers that grew twisted in their own leaves. he gives dialogue
to what was left after the wildfire, ashes blowing down blazers and dresses
like a whisper. the other smokes pipe dreams and his tobacco eyelids
deal out the next hand of sleep, sampling blood from his own bit lip;
he chiseled his look after lions.
in the south of france they drank absinthe, the emeralds rolling back time, curled
like a moon into the top lip crescent. between whiskey slosh and wind chimes,
autumn
unfurled into black bare trees and alligator mud snapping back coattails, killing
the gypsy moth in its decadent sleep. the cafe breeds leathered old men that
foster youth in their gut.
Kathy Transue
19

Cusco, Perú
Su rostro es sucio, pequeño,
ojos negros como carbón me mira,
la cabeza inclina en una manera
que alinea su mandíbula con los grandes
montañas verdes que rodea el pueblo.
Ella lleva un chullo lleno de color—
rojos, amarillos, anaranjados mezclan
para coronarla, para realzar
las mejillas redondas y rosicleres.
Me agacho, ojos morenos conocen negros,
su sonrisa la luz de su cara.
La ofrezco una moneda y ella la agarra,
dedos llenitos la envuelve. Sus pies cortos
la cargan lejos de mi,
delante de puestos de bolsas,
de Inca Kolas y de tarjetas,
a una mujer baja, su vientre hinchado
y otro niño en sus brazos fuertes.
La niña me mira, la mira a su moneda,
sus ojos negros como carbón.
Allison Hitt
20

Route 7, Box 363
Halter tops and frayed short-shorts,
eighty degrees and climbing.
Radio. Three girls laying stomach up.
Pass the joint and take a hit.
―I hate my mama.‖
Bronzed thighs bond to a worn, wooden porch.
Hair hangs from the porch stairs, crisping with sun,
sticky rivulets drip and dry;
lemon juice sweetens the darkest strands.
The prettiest one wears aviators.
―Blew a guy once and spat his load in his Coke bottle.‖
Her eyebrows arch over her shades,
―It‘s the real thing.‖
Now dusk, bare feet in the grass,
chasing fireflies, cupping light in their palms,
as the mountains bruise to night.
Amanda Mitchell
21

Pattaya
My wife Greta is still in bed, the lazy bitch, when I slam the front door and sling
my brown leather trunk into the back of the taxi. It is appropriately sunny: I am
glad to leave my frigid wife, at least for this week-long business trip in Thailand.
I can‘t remember the name of the place; I know it sounds like an exotic fruit—
juicy.
The interior of the hotel lobby is silhouetted against the fierce noon sunlight;
the receptionist‘s smile burns my wretched plane-dried eyes. As I hand her my
passport, a well-groomed blonde comes up to the counter on my right. She
flashes a clean white smile at the other receptionist, whose dark, slanted eyes
register nothing. ―Welcome back, Ms O_____,‖ her plum-coloured lips say. The
blonde and I get into the same lift. She hums a tuneless song, keeps her steel
blue eyes on the rising numbers. We shudder to a stop at 13, and I watch her
hips‘ restrained sway across the carpeted landing. I call a polite farewell after
her, but she doesn‘t turn and smile.
I‘ve had enough mai tais to last me till the morning—been getting up every half
hour to piss in the tub. The floating numbers on my bedside table read three in
the morning. I think of Greta, out for brunch with her biddy friends. Her perfect
curls and red socialite grin swarm my drowsy mind, and I groan as nausea engulfs
me. I lunge through woolly darkness to the bathroom. I meet my own red
eyes as I raise my head from the toilet bowl. I‘ll need more alcohol before I can
stomach returning to Greta tomorrow morning. Fucking Greta. I throw on
khakis, a crisp white polo shirt, beach-worn sandals, and snap the door shut
behind me.
The lift makes no other stops. No blondes, only rowdy delight leaked in from
outside crowds. I push myself out of the revolving doors and the heat of a spent
day‘s air weighs like a whale on my bare forearms. Four blocks down is the Pink
Feather Club, sign lit with bulbs flashing a disorientating green. I stumble in,
miraculously locate the bar, and sprawl across the counter asking for three shots
of clear tequila. The bartender bangs them onto the bar. I throw back three and
spill the last one. I toss a bunch of sweat-smeared notes onto the counter and
launch myself out of the booming club.
Torches line the sand-peppered sidewalk, a tunnel of fairies. I follow them to the
neon-puddled street where sex steams from the sewers. My throbbing eyes
couldn‘t have missed them, those Thai girls rocking their proud hips down their
pavement-catwalk—the locals don‘t turn a hair. I am entranced: black waterfalls
down to derrieres, yellow urine bobs, paper thin necks arms legs smooth and
brown teardrop tits cheap skirts small enough to fit around my wrist, giraffe
22

eyelashes turned oil slick butterfly wings. One of them, twittering on a bench,
catches my feasting eyes and swings her thighs open, flashes me her boy bits.
Greta, safe at home in her cashmere cardigans, pearls and glowing angel hair,
would have sucked in her scentless breath, clicked her teeth at the sight. Seeing
my eyes lose focus, the ladyboy turns back to her friends, legs crossed, and my
arousal subsides. A little temptation was what I came for—starving, I make my
way back to the hotel.
I revel in the cool of my spinning room, bare thighs and zebra stripe panties still
swimming in my mind. Greta my ugly fucking wife, Greta with her shrill sugar
voice cuts through my hazy reverie: she will start in with her screaming as soon
as my taxi pulls into the drive—Did you fuck anyone Albert did you smear your
cum all over her face was she young were her tits bigger than mine was her
pussy tight Answer me, Albert!—and I will pay the tomato-faced taxi driver
calmly, walk up to her, trunk in hand, and slap her.
Tallula Ho
Docks
Catherine Stillerman
Black and white photography

―Gentlemen‖ a found poem
the prophet
Was not sent to the eastern Man on October mornings
with dizzying terms
his discussions were In relation to benefit:
This woman is not Evil, or Ugly
like money.
Amanda Gaye Smith
24

Saint Michael Lights a Candle
Amy Dixon
25

The Reluctant Monk Ponders the Loss of his Hair by the Sea
At the edge of the sea the wind is angry,
its fists punch up the water to create foam
sloshing like a drunkard who wanders
away from his home.
The land, too, is uneasy, dips and curves,
forms now forbidden to my kind--
I touch the rocks, cup my hands
around them, but they are harder than I‘d like.
Miles away my future brothers are chanting,
their voices thump against my ears,
a reminder of what is to come--
Once I leave this landscape,
the monastery will be waiting
to slide a glinting razor across me,
lopping off my locks.
Anya Work
26

Experience
Updating the Record Book: 2008
I‘m meticulous about going to my computer, opening the document titled
―Numbers,‖ and adding the new name--if I remember it. Every boy is sorted
into either the sex and/or fellatio category or simply added as miscellaneous.
This is not a sex life; it‘s a job title.
Previous Experience:
I worked as a lifeguard one summer at a pool thirty feet away from the
Delaware River. After days of rain, the river flooded and the thick, black mud
filled the pool and covered the grass. As I steered full wheelbarrows back to the
river, I wondered where it all came from. Clear water. Silver fish. Yellow flippers.
Gray rocks. Tan sand. Green weeds. Brown dirt. They were all so beautiful
on their own, but once too many of them were added together, the black took
over.
Working Overtime: 2007
Benny was an aspiring musician. He sang one of his songs for me before
we started the movie. After twenty minutes on the burgundy couch in his
darkened apartment, I told him I had other places to go that night. He smoked
a cigarette after I finished.
On my way home, I got a text message from Mike. I knew him from
elementary school. We met in a supermarket parking lot, and I got him off
while he watched for the flashing red and blue of a cop car. It was a waste of his
time though, the lights never came.
By that point, it was too late to go home, so I met my friend at a party in
Nazareth. I shared a bottle of rum with my gay friend Drew, but once he passed
out, I found someone else to talk to. He helped me stumble to his car. My
friends told me later I blacked out while he was on top of me.
Scheduling Appointments: 2006
I worked with Erik at the YMCA on Tuesdays. We hid between the yellow
school busses in the parking lot and hoped security wasn‘t watching the
cameras. He assured me the grainy gray pictures would camouflage us even if
they were.
In the spring, Chris and I met after school and after his girlfriend drove
away. I appreciated his car; it protected us from the rain the sky threatened to
spill. Our scheduled meetings lasted longer than their relationship.
Scanning the Want Ads: 2005
Pat and I usually got along but not when we were at a party with hot
girls. At one party, he ran into some girl he cheated on me with. Not wanting to
disrupt their happy reunion, I went outside by myself. Eventually, Billy came
out and started talking to me. We talked for three hours before he even asked
for a kiss, but it didn‘t take long for a kiss to turn into more. He politely asked
for my number. It reminded me of the way I used to ask my mom if she needed
help with the dishes as she dried the last cup.
27

The Real World: 2002
It was almost my 12 th birthday when I was allowed to go on vacation to
California to visit my aunt and two cousins by myself. The first night, I slept in
my cousin‘s room. He slept on the floor. I was still awake when he stood up and
felt him walking toward me in the darkness. It must have felt like kissing his
own hand, because I tightened my lips as hard as I could. His hand moved up
my pajama top; I wished I was old enough to wear a bra. I squinted to watch the
door, and I prayed to see footsteps breaking up the white strip of light underneath
it. The wind carried an early birthday gift in through the open window. I
heard familiar songs from a nearby Eminem concert. I listened. He finally finished.
A thin, blue sheet was the only protection I never knew I would need.
Freeloader: 2001
My first crush: Michael James. He was older than I was, but he lived in
my neighborhood, so I saw him a lot. We hung out in a fort we made in the
snow surrounded by evergreens. I had always appreciated the way the white
acted like a giant eraser: covering up all the imperfections on the ground.
I knew we would kiss for the first time that night. We walked back to
his house and watched a movie. I tried to freeze the picture in my memory. Our
ankles crossed, our hands interlaced, our heads overlapped. I wished it would
never end. I had nowhere else to go that night.
Callie Bonatz
La Primogenita
Shazy Maldonado
Black and white photography

1967
Like a cyaneous Sagittarius sunburst
Remembered ingeniously as doxologies in silence
Deliberately chokes behemoth on Beatles albums
Diarchy eschatology; isoprene, I dream of Jeannie
Reeling gridelin seriatim
Retrophilia unctuous.
Ostentatious comeuppances feeling around dour percussion
Lilaceous karrozzins, electric Kool-aid, and the mired crumbs of Mariolatry
Xenolith and cymbals; solipsism suckles color television,
Vietnamese girls have phytosophy in their pinkie toes
Hippies chew nubiform brains
Cannot stop the windy rain because circularly we are in the Combine
Oviform hegemonic monikers: LBJ, JFK, and cuckold KKK.
A summer of love vulviformed into lyrate constellations,
Waltzed tristiloquy with sicilienne imaginary colors of a
Year‘s eponym.
Brittany Jamison
29

Origin
In the back of your `89 Charger, you breathe a filament of smoke into my navel.
Djarums are all you ever touch, the velveteen wraps treated like jewels, like me.
"My mercury's in retrograde," techno salve for punk-sore bones.
Galvanized, electric: this is me. Drunk inside your burgundy thermos.
Once, a woman asked if you were of Cherokee descent. She said,
"It's those cheekbones. But your nose... your nose, now that's from Israel."
You smiled and said, "Ma'am, I'm Italian." and took her order
with your middle finger poised behind the notepad.
It still makes me laugh. I touch those cheekbones now, that nose, that mouth
the color of an Easter egg, this tongue flavored with papayas, with pot.
I don't know where you came from either. It was not Italy. It was not Israel.
You are neither romantic nor holy enough.
We're arcane and this is all I care to know. I plan to sleep tonight.
Slip me something stronger than hymns born from your throat.
Retrograde. When I am older, and I have left you,
I will sculpt those cheekbones in phantasma; I will be your Creator
And I will carve you to life. A clay statue of your face will conduct my sleep.
When I awake, the air will smell like tobacco, like cloves.
I will breathe so greedily.
Taylor Hodge
30

Okay, so this is how the universe works
Kathy Transue
Black and white photography

Stream of Mock Love\(Consciousness)
walls flooded by pink paint, cups of sugar done up into solid goods, caramel performers
showed off fancy curlicues, now stuck on linens and sheets, little fairies
wore jeweled blonde buns on their heads, who are woven in cloth inside and out,
canned peaches dunked in clear melted sugary syrup lost all sense of sourness,
soft pillowy white softness on the kitchen curtains with light blushing pink haze
spread out—
i saw her white hand with those really long fingers,
merely bones covered lightly in thin wraps of clear skin,
which stuck out from underneath a red cotton blanket.
gold polish on her fingernails. lots of tiny glitters on those half
ovals.
i couldn't focus. her bedroom was so pretty. skinny vases,
fat vases, every one formed into female curves. yes, lined
up against the wall around the whole room on a beige carpet.
words on the walls given birth by a black permanent marker;
a total slave of the poet in bed. deep purple ink blotted
and squirted across the black sky outside her window---
one half of the window's face was covered meekly
by a burgundy curtain---probably many glasses of wine
has spilled itself on it repeatedly. her eyes were green marbles;
wavy flowing lines of tan saturated into them.
her eyes were on the ceiling. she blinked. her black hairs were vines,
laying dazed on her three pillows. white lace sewn around her pillows'
faces.
so lovely. she was beautiful. her cheekbones looked cold. i sort of
wanted
my palms to radiate her cheeks, but i left her still figure alone.
she was far too pretty at the hour of nine-sixteen.
i started to see blood dripping.
dripping from the top of her head onto her left cheek.
i blinked rapidly---no, no---i was wrong. no blood.
her breath suddenly stretched. she closed her eyes. her breathing
relaxed.
i tried to concentrate on the form of her flesh. i thought i heard a pair
of heels tap on stairs. i loved her so much.
yes, i loved her. her crystal earrings sparkled
on hooks hanging on the inside of her closet door,
each pair held hands, made shine together. i smelled
eight candles: melon, papaya, apple pie; three kinds
of candles got along to make one fragrance.
32

"what makes you wonder"---
notebooks in her drawers muffled their giggles with their hands.
there were stripes, plaid patches, and criss-crosses of yellows
experiencing first encounters with greens. so many clothes in piles
on chairs, stools, and under her bed. no violent yelling.
no scream that pierced any holes on my skin.
i noticed those objects everyday. when i went outside
to take walks, i watched families and groups of friends.
lots of smiling, patient listening. leisure in their feet.
their voices were rivers without running into obstacles.
trees and rocks in calm postures. so much sunlight.
the beautiful poet in bed---and i---
her cheeks were permanently injured
by the smacks of my hands. driven by her angry
long slender fingernails, i had red-brown crusted
creeks hang along my arms, chest, and face.
she had an old woman's eyes.
they were like overworked mangled hands.
yet, she was a stunning human goddess.
no, no---i couldn't think.
closing my eyes,
i left her bedroom. i crept downstairs. i truly did love her.
i had to drive away for a while. i looked at neon lights
down main street. in my car, driving, i heard loud music
in bars, in lounges. blood cracked on my hands.
kept driving. parked my car in a parking garage.
i stepped into a restaurant, passed by tables.
everyone was like one wall of colors mixing
into one another. laughter became louder.
lots of voices all had a good time. each had a hand
to hold or an arm around their shoulder. i felt sick;
my pulse prompted me to the men's room. i stared dumbly at the violet
puffiness under my eyes. i rinsed off the blood on my arms.
i loved her. she couldn't keep quiet. i shut her mouth
with my hands. i hated how all the colors in her bedroom
drove me crazy, singing and dancing into each other.
she was so beautiful. i tried to grin.
i saw a blade appear. it attacked her.
it was on my side. it helped me quiet her down.
she was so beautiful.
potted plants stretched their green arms out to reach and touch
me. they wanted to ask me if my day was alright. lavender, red, orange, yellow,
purple tulips looked up at me to greet me as they sat on spots of soil living in the
33

ushes', and potted plants' faces. their heads were so low, i couldn't see their
joyful yellow faces. yes, more sadness. more dark hands. i felt no mercy from
the clouds ready to drop rain.
Debbie Chow
Le Coucher du Soleil sur le Sahara
Jeanette Jo Price
Digital photography
34

Queenswalk, November
We are never on our knees.
boat touching boat, crowing defiant.
The gull blazes down,
molten gold leaking from its mouth,
no olive branch to rub frost from railing
or touch the river's rough tongue.
The water lifts itself
shoulders straining
(the river never freezes anymore –
it is too thick)
When did these chains snap and speak
with teeth like bells to clamour over the walls
where the tide rushes up the stairs
Domes still sucking sunlight on the north bank,
moss and copper, shuttered against all nocturnes,
whose eyes are wide enough to swallow the streetlights,
the streets, the hands holding and feet
that knock the cobbles.
Rush and flood
the bruised elbows and tender backs of bridges
Hammer where the rusted shore crumbles
and beachcombers straddle the rocks,
hunting, with torches, for Roman tiles,
a mosaic ceiling fallen in,
now stiffening the river bed with bites of colour.
We were ancient once now we are forgotten.
Renee Branum
35

Word Problem: Post-Colonial Theories
Two people are talking on the phone, stretching East
Coast into West Coast. Compare the ratio of moon-pulled
tides to sand-blasted honey ginseng waves.
A compass
points southeast, ships harbor
on secondhand piers. All holy, all the time.
Prayers circle the mouthpiece, where all breaths
renounce and repent. He hears the singular
whisper, the exaltation that
conducts gravity.
They celebrated Easter once with champagne
at six forty-seven in the morning. The chimney
threw out ashes, the kitchen floor
scattered ripped fabric. The ocean slumped
over outside.
Garlands fall where words should, thorned bouquets
decorate the conversation like punctuation. A pause,
a white rose.
She saw the stretch of highway
median, wildflowers blurred the atlas.
Summer drove her into hiding. He
cleaned the house the day she left.
Through the static, he reprises hallelujah.
Kathy Transue
36

Ladybug
The woman woke in the bruised morning to find a ladybug in her bed—a flaky
red jewel spotted with earth. Perhaps he was attracted to the woman‘s stemmed
legs, the spiced mound they held up like an offering. A hand wrinkled blue
sheets as a face peered close at rust-red wings, noticing the fracture between
and wondering if anything could be planted there, if something might grow out
of broken red earth… perhaps she was more than a sliced open wound, perhaps
he was more than a display of misshapen stains.
Emily Campbell
37

Mail Pouch
Tess Waugh
Digital photography

Avon Girls (excerpted from a longer work)
It was raining and everyone was going inside. Arlene said C‘mon baby,
we‘ll do you up. She had her hair fixed, smelled like White Musk perfume and
tissue paper. Her Avon friends smoked Capris on the porch. Marietta Sensenbrenner
had a cigarette lighter shaped like a lipstick, said Get on out the mud
and come get gorgeous, rang the doorchimes and disappeared. But Dorcas was
looking at a squirrel.
It was an ugly squirrel with a patch of missing fur on its hind-end that
could have been a dog-bite – could have been mange. A front-yard squirrel,
fearless and stupid as mud, under the damned old oak tree. An old one because
it was fat around and had to be, and damned because it stuck the gutters full of
leaves and the garden with squirrels. The squirrel was flapping around in the
grass and smelling at the air. Dorcas took a sniff. Moss-cool, husky with smoldering
leaves. When a raindrop hit on him, he flipped his tail, chirped, went
back to smelling and scuffling over the roots.
Dorcas scooted on her bottom towards the scabby thing. It had a little
fringe of red around its eyes and its bald patch was speckled with little pink
pores. She held out her hand and clucked, rocking on the balls of bare feet. The
squirrel blinked. Its eyes looked wetter than rain. Dorcas snapped her fingers
to watch the lids flash up and down, lashless and quick. Wet-eyed squirrel.
Damned old oak. The rain diddled through the leaves and onto her back in cold
plops. Leaves rolled up, silver-bellied. The screen door snapped in its frame.
The first thunder was far-sounding as trucks down the highway. Dogbite
squirrel, Dorcas figured. Quentin-bit. It scrambled up into the damned old
oak as fast as if it were falling the other way, and Dorcas wondered how it was
that they never seemed to fall, the squirrels, not from the power lines, the birdfeeders,
the chain-link fence around Wee Wisdom Daycare. She worked at a
starburst of dandelion and clover until the roots undid, threw them at the
damned tree‘s trunk, left dirted prints on the screen door headed in.
Quentin stumbled from behind the Maytag, beat his tail against the plywood
floor. A dryer sheet hung from his fleecy jaw. He lapped the clay beneath
her nails and fell beside her, flinching in his sack of skin as the roof-slap settled
in the cove. Arlene and her Avon friends rattled in the kitchen.
When the damned old oak fell through the kitchen next season, this is
what Dorcas would think of: Quentin‘s warm skull, Apricot blusher, the halfeaten
squirrel in his nest.
Erin McKee
39

Seven half diminished seven
Danny likes to fuck retarded girls
he explains, nicotine lipped,
ash stacked pinky thick,
they complain less.
Coarse handed, he takes my lipstick stained
coffee mug, abounding his.
Grey tongued he licks the rim
savoring the taste of skin cells and wax.
Look, he says,
ash teetering.
Amy Dixon
40

Untitled
Kelly Hollins
Digital photography

Praise For A Sick Woman
Her head
wrapped, doo wrapped: another patient, another day, waiting in chairs at the
Urgent Care.
Head held
sideways, temple propped by two fingers, supported at the elbow sleeping on
the armrest. Her legs crossed, right over left, foot taps in random flutters of
three.
Tap-Tap-Tap
like the crutch of the high school cheerleader three rows back.
Strains
of sick moans waft out from behind closed doors. The cough a man makes down
the hall, the scratches I itch on my scalp: noise is noise is noise.
A woman
in purple jeans, purple socks, purple Keds, paces the carpet with a mason jar of
black coffee.
All of this
in a room where the clock on the wall is a whore, a slut: men and women eye the
arms, hands, legs of the clock incessantly as tongues slide across lips, and waiting—
Waiting
for their name to be called. The clock moans, Tick Tock Tick. Everyone has had
a look, has had a feel for the time. All come at different times and all await their
turn.
―Alexis Papadopolous—the doctor will see you now.”
With her
head wrapped, doo wrapped she enters behind closed doors. Like the rest of us,
patients, with or without patience.
Except
Papadopolous being the only black patient among us.
Indiscreetly
a nurse shortly enters. I watch her carry on menial chit-chat, with a patient,
about Days of Our Lives from the day before. She pops a rubber glove, ―Oooooo,
evil Stefano.‖
42

Pops
the other one, now shielding both hands. ―…God love its little haw-rt…”
(Recognizably Southwest Virginia, an Appalachian waiting room.)
The nurse
masks her nose and mouth and carries a spray bottle of bleach. Another nurse
enters, also masked, holds a white bed sheet in her gloved hands. I saw the eyes
of masked nurses, saw the hands spray the chair, and neighboring seats, where
poor Papadopolous waited.
Threw
out the magazines her infected fingers breezed through and spread the sheet
across the row of chairs like a dead body.
The crack
of the white sheet in the air catch the eyes of the patients. The waft and gentle
breeze of spring mountain detergent catch mine.
The hungry
bellies of gossip awaken. Whispers swell up, fester like an unkempt wound.
What lives in a room takes on the spirit of the room. In this case, disease and
infection of panic.
―Yeah…well, it was that Nigger.”
“…It must have been AIDS.”
“…Didn’t you see the masks It couldn’t have been AIDS, it was
something airborne.”
“…You sure she was a Nigger Maybe she was one of
them Arabs.”
“…Terrorist…”
“Yeah! A terrorist!”
“A TERRORIST”
“I HAVE KIDS TO LOOK AFTER.”
“She could be a Leper…”
Papadopolous
has legs, has feet, has hands, fingers; no stubs of joints with finger bones poking
through still infected with active Leprosy: growing and eating her flesh
before our very eyes. She carries herself without secrets, without shame.
Dead skin
Flurries from my hand like dust, salt, snow. I should say something, truly something
must be said. Leave the woman alone. I say nothing.
I see
impatient women and their gravy satisfaction with hair hung golden or black, to
the shoulders or pinned back, velvet.
43

A booger
smeared into the chair, in a sticky situation I sit silent, useless: mucus. Speak!
Say, leave her alone. Mutter, mumble, stutter. Anything. Say something, damnit.
They gnash
against her with their teeth. They cry out with a loud voice. The woman in purple
socks stops their ears and opens their mouths. They run on Papadopolous
with one accord. They cast her out of the Urgent Care and stone her.
The lady
in purple socks stands up to shout at the nurse:
“You know I have Lupus and the Lord Jesus Christ has my back. I
could right now drop dead in the floor and I would be happier than all ya’ll in
this room. I have lupus and we have a right to know what that girl brought
into this clinic. We have a right to know!”
Everyone
together now,
―Yeah! Yeah! We have a right to know! We do!”
The nurse
closes her eyes and holds both palms in the air as if she has nothing to
hide. She says:
―Okay, okay, everyone needs to settle down. That is confidential information
and I am not at liberty to discuss this with ya’ll. I assure you
that everyone is alright.”
“Oh yeah,”
demands the woman in the purple socks,
―what about the masks and the spray, the white sheet over the whole
row. I saw you confiscate some woman’s jacket that was sitting on the row
with that Nigger.”
“Mam, you will not use such language in this office or you will be
asked to leave.”
“I am six weeks away from my due date! Tell us,”
shouts a bleach blonde pregnant woman,
―we have a right to know!”
All
together now,
―Tell us! Yeah! We have a right to know!”
Before me,
a nightmare: where every breath is aimed at Alex Papadopolous. And I say nothing.
Silent. Left in loneliness I want something I am not strong enough to have.
44

The eyes to calm and stare to break the panic.
In my silence
I begin to sound like them, imitate them. Even though I did not verbally condone
this behavior, my silence speaks. My silence said enough.
The woman in purple
socks stands up with one hand in the air. She says,
―Lord Jesus Christ I’m hungry for Heaven!”
She sits
back down and crosses her legs, left over right. She whispers to the woman on
her right,
“I’m afraid of this big ole’ world, I tell ya. I have Lupus by the way…”
As the whispers
die down Papadopolous comes back. Silence fills the room like stagnant lingering
flatulence. I held my breath.
“That’s her…she ain’t no terrorist. It’s probably AIDS.”
The lady
in purple socks stands up, nodding at her followers for reassurance. She says,
―Jesus Christ be with me!”
Slowly
she approaches Papadopolous like one might approach a groundhog eating the
produce from their garden. Stalks her like a pest, like a rodent.
Torrential
pulses beat from the lips of the woman in purple socks. My eyes open, startled,
and ringed with salt of humiliating tears bleaching away the flesh around them,
commiserating. How gracefully still she exited, with chin high and knuckles
white.
To hear
the disgust sift quietly away and sighs of relief fill the room like a fever. And all
the while the woman in the purple socks follows her out with hand sanitizer and
Kleenex, wiping clean everything her hand touches.
Praise for a sick woman.
Praise for sinew within the flesh.
The woman in purple socks
comes back in, wiping her hands as if she has, in fact, truly rid the office of that
pesky ground hog, like a thank you is in order. Like a dog bringing home a dead
baby bunny and leaving it on your woolen slippers. Woof Woof Woof to the lady
in the purple socks.
45

I see
Papadopolous through the blinds. She picks up a piece of trash and puts it in her
purse. Another piece and another, without a trash can in sight. A car stops to
pick her up. I see her holding her baby from the backseat (she puts on a doctor‘s
mask to do so).
Tap-Tap-Tap
my finger to the glass in hopes of breaking my silence. Hail.
Praise for a sick woman. Praise her.
Praise for sinew within the flesh.
Helen McKinney
46

Gesture
Leigh Werrell
Monotype

Homme nu, homme noir
I.
Homme nu, homme noir
Tes mains bénites qui prient,
genoux saints qui plient pour
ta croissance, pour ta Dieu.
Héro modeste, simple.
Cœur blanc, corps noir
la couleur de la vie,
de tout qui est bien. Ta
voix semble le vent d‘Est.
Ton sang pur, la première race.
Tes ancêtres ont bercé le monde.
Homme nu, homme noir
Sais-tu que tu es aimé
Tes gouttes de sueur, étoiles
sur la nuit de ta peau.
Ta bouche m‘enveloppe,
me nourri avec le vin
noir de tes mots.
II.
Homme nu, homme noir
Promised land. I dare
discover you. Where
after baptism and shahadah,
we find communion in each
other. Allahu Akbar
We lift wine to our lips;
the taste holy, as mercy.
It cleanses like prayer.
Homme nu, homme noir
Our communion drips
from our hands. We tore
into it like ripe fruits without pits.
Jeanette Jo Price
48

Untitled
Tiffany Robinette
Digital photography

Pure Gold
Tess Waugh
Digital photography

Fifth Annual
National Undergraduate
Poetry & Fiction Competition
This year, the Cargoes staff sent fliers to universities across the nation.
We received many entries in both poetry and fiction, and generated
an engaging and competitive pool of submissions.
With the help of our fiction judge, Tony D‘Souza, we selected the
work ―A Break From The Neighborhood.‖
"In a field crowded with careful character studies, ‗A Break From The
Neighborhood‘ stands out for the way the protagonists Tristan and
Omar come to life as they wander through the Boston neighborhoods
they haunt, always on the edge of trouble. The author displays a maturing
craft in his decision to let Tristan and Omar live and breathe
without heavy authorial manipulation, dressing them up neither as
better nor worse than they are, letting them 'drive' the story as he
takes a distant, and wisely chosen, artistic backseat. Boston itself
becomes a leading player in the work, and the author's attention to
dialect and language is noteworthy."
-Tony D‘Souza
With the help of our poetry judge, Claudia Emerson (Pulitzer Prize
Winner, 2006), we selected the work ―From an Old Maid to Another.‖
―‗From an Old Maid to Another‘ was chosen for its exploration of the
nature of isolation and imagination, and also for its formal poise despite
the disorientation of the woman and the skillful confusion of
her house and yard.‖
- Claudia Emerson
51

A Break From The Neighborhood
―Stay awake to the ways of the world cause shit is deep.‖
-Wu-Tang Clan, ―C.R.E.A.M.‖
―I‘m walking to my coffin
Drinking poison from my chalice.
Pride begins to fade,
And you‘ll all feel my malice.‖
-Dr. John, ―I Walk on Gilded Splinters‖
Tristan and Omar had one big thing in common aside from being halfblack,
half-Dominican and not knowing shit about the Dominican half (except a
Spanish curse word or two): both their fathers had been stick-up boys, legends
on the street, afraid of nobody. They would rob the wiseguys from the North
End, the last of the Mafia in New England. They would rob the white trash that
sold meth and crank from behind their bars in Dorchester and Southie. They
would take on the Vietnamese, their psycho reputation be damned, fresh off the
boat and into Savin Hill and Fields Corner with raw knockout dope straight
from the poppy plants of their homeland. And when it came to people from their
own neighborhood, Omar‘s father, Antonio Wright, had this pearl of wisdom to
say: ―Fuck them niggas. Hate to say it, but local boys is the easiest motherfuckers
in the world to take off.‖ He‘d been dead six years now, since Omar was ten
and Tristan eleven; caught with a pistol and then shanked in central booking
before he even made it to trial.
Tristan Clark, senior, went down on the corner of Northamton and
Reed, a block away from their building in the Roxbury Corners housing project,
after a crew of Irish guys came down to the neighborhood and shot him a dozen
times. At least, that‘s how the story was always told. Tristan didn‘t know how
true it was and didn‘t really care. He wasn‘t proud of the way his father died, but
it made for a great story. On more than one occasion, blunted off his ass, he‘d
tell it like some ancient myth. ―The Legend of Big T,‖ he would call it, always
trying not to laugh. One time, it loosened the legs of this one girl, Shantelle or
something like that; he didn‘t really remember her name. Even though it was his
first time, there was no reason to remember her. All that stuff about how the
first time was supposed to be so damn good wasn‘t true. It was like most everything
else in his life- it was just something that happened, not worth forgetting
or remembering, another moment in a seventeen-year series of moments. Roxbury
was like that. It wasn‘t some Boyz N the Hood bullshit with people getting
shot every five minutes. His mother once described it like this: ―Be like waitin
for the Orange Line…people stuck in one spot, just waitin around for something
to happen, gettin frustrated, cause ain‘t nothing ever gonna change. That train
always late.‖
When Big T got dropped, Tristan knew people would always remember
it. He knew that whatever he did in his own life would probably pale in comparison
to the infamy his father gained by simply being who he was and getting shot
52

down for it. No matter what, Tristan, junior, would always be Little T.
One Saturday afternoon, after riding the T to Chinatown, Tristan and
Omar got off and walked down Washington Street through Downtown Crossing.
They had almost a dozen G-packs of dope and coke vials left from what their
fathers had stolen and saved. From summers of clocking it on the corner and in
the courtyard of their building, taking bullshit from fiends and other dealers,
they had just enough money to indulge their few vices and not attract too much
attention. Omar lived to collect shoes and Tristan lived to collect music, but
other than that they didn‘t throw their cash away.
At one point they were in Hip Zepi, a store Tristan hated but tolerated,
the same way Omar tolerated it when he would spend more than an hour trying
to decide what CD to buy. He looked around at all the flashy, baggy clothes for
sale, the Sean John and Ecko bullshit, the throwback jerseys, all of it pandering
to the way clothing designers assumed black people his age liked to dress. It
pissed Tristan off that their assumptions were usually right. It didn‘t matter that
baggy jeans were about the worst thing to wear on the street. He remembered
one time when Omar had to run from a roll-up squad of Narco cops, he tripped
over his pant leg and they fell right the fuck down. The cops, the corner boys,
people driving by, everyone who saw it was laughing so hard.
Taking any elements of flash out of your appearance kept you relatively
under the cops‘ radar, if you knew what the fuck you were doing. The flashiest
part of Tristan‘s wardrobe was a black-and-white fitted Red Sox cap. Wearing
with it a hoodie over a white tee and faded Levis, he looked no different from
any other black or Hispanic guy on the street. Not like some mack-daddy
motherfucker in a powder-white tracksuit, practically wearing a sign that read,
arrest my black ass.
Omar was looking at a pair of sneakers that were black and red, with a
crossed pair of semiautomatics on each side. ―What kind of guns you think those
are Glocks‖
―How the fuck should I know‖ Tristan said.
―Ain‘t you ever seen a gun, nigga I remember my pops had a .50, a
fuckin Desert Eagle. He got it from some Mafia dude…must‘ve been the only I-
talian he never ripped off or some shit.‖
―Only guns I ever seen up close was revolvers. That‘s all my old man
would carry. He‘d always say, a .38 don‘t jam, Magnum don‘t jam, but you get
yourself a semiauto, like a .45 or a Glock nine, it‘s either gon‘ jam up or it‘ll go
off in your damn drawers on account of it ain‘t got no safety.‖ As Tristan said
this, he literally assumed the voice of his father. The slow roll of the words off
the tongue sounding like some old-time R&B shit his mom would put on when
she‘d have guys over, that was Big T right there. Tristan had a talent for picking
up the voices of anyone he heard talking and incorporating them into his own.
―Whatever, man. I‘ma go pay for these, then I gotta go see that nigga
Errol and pick up for tonight. You go spend the next three hours lookin for a got
-damn Big Daddy Kane CD,‖ Omar said, laughing.
Tristan flipped him off in response, a wise-assed grin on his face. ―I will,
motherfucker, and I‘m gonna enjoy it, too.‖
53

―Hurry up with that shit, nigga,‖ Omar said. ―It‘s gettin cold out here.‖
―I‘ll be done with it when I‘m done with it. Be patient,‖ Tristan said. It
was around eight, four hours after they‘d split up so Omar could get weed and
Tristan could go back and forth between FYE, Borders, and Newbury Comics,
perusing the music selections in each store. Now they were sitting on the docks
in the Public Gardens. Tristan dangled his feet over the water as he doublerolled
more than half a gram of weed using one-and-a-quarter EZ Widers. Omar
sat Indian-style, patiently waiting, not wanting to get his fresh new shoes anywhere
near the water. After about four minutes or so of delicate work, he
dragged his tongue along the glued edge of the paper, sealed it up, and handed it
to Omar. ―Now look at that. If I ain‘t rolled that shit good enough to make your
dick hard, I don‘t know what will.‖
―Dag, Little T. You got a fucked up sense of what‘s funny, yo.‖
―Whatever, man, go ahead and light that shit, quit wavin it around.‖
The joint was a little hard to hit, but worth it. Omar coughed hard and
blew out smoke in bizarre-looking, asymmetrically shaped clouds. ―Shit…oh,
shit! That‘s some fuckin…I don‘t even know what. Hit this. Please, nigga.‖ He
passed it back to Tristan, practically shoving it in his face.
―This is that shit from down south, right‖
―Oh you know it,‖ Omar said. He picked up his weed from an old dude
who ran a bar on Blue Hill Avenue; called himself Blind Errol even though he
could see just fine, sold sixty-dollar eighths of what he called ―Big Easy Weezy.‖
Tristan and Omar both thought that was a stupid fucking name, like most weed
names, but it was great, heady bud so it didn‘t matter.
Tristan hit the joint hard until it started canoeing. He thought he could
feel the brain cells cooking in his head whenever he smoked up with Omar. He
visualized sliced chunks of brain in a skillet and the image made him laugh. He
passed back the joint and let out a series of harsh, hacking coughs. He had to
stand up and hawk a chunk of spit and phlegm into the water. ―Oh, fuck. That
shit hurt.‖
―Dag,‖ Omar said, taking the roach from Tristan. ―You just got your ass
whooped by that motherfucker. What‘s the deal with that cough, Little T, you
still smokin them Newports‖
―Nah, my mom caught me, said if she saw me with a cigarette again
she‘d take a belt to my ass. And I ain‘t ever smoked Newports anyway, I smoked
Camels. I fuckin hate menthols. You must be hangin out with some other nigga
that looks like me.‖
Omar laughed. ―I don‘t know, man, I thought you did. Why don‘t you‖
―Cause every other nigga smoke Newports, man, just like every nigga
supposed to like fried chicken, shit like that, you know, what‘s that word…
Stereotypes. That‘s what I‘m talkin about.‖
―Stereotypes‖ Omar took one last hit and tossed the roach into the water.
―Yeah. Fuck all that shit. I‘m not gonna do nothing just cause some
motherfucker think he funny by sayin I‘m supposed to, you know‖
―But you gettin your head up right now,‖ Omar said. ―Ain‘t all niggas
supposed to get high, too‖ He was laughing, knowing what Tristan was getting
at but not really understanding.
54

―Man, everybody get high. Not like everybody everybody, man, but you
know what the fuck I mean.‖
―True, true. Now shut the fuck up…hit that shit again.‖
―I can‘t, yo, you threw it out!‖ Tristan shouted.
―I did Oh, shit! My fault, my fault…aw, shit.‖ Omar said. ―Just roll another
one, man.‖
―Yeah, yeah, whatever, nigga,‖ Tristan said, taking out the EZ Widers
again.
―So yo. What CDs you end up buyin‖ Omar asked, this after he and
Tristan had smoked three more fat joints and burned through almost half of the
weed, almost thirty dollars down the drain in an hour and a half, Tristan cursing
himself for not dropping five bucks on a couple of blunt wraps. The Big Easy
Weezy shit was wasted on joints and even in honey dutches, but it wasn‘t like
either he or Omar was going to go to some head shop that smelled like Nag
Champa and catered to white college kids who had their parents‘ money to
spend on blown-glass bowls or bubblers or bongs, who needed to look pretty
while they got high.
Tristan pulled a Newbury Comics bag out from the front pocket of his
hoodie and showed Omar the CDs. ―Some old-school stuff…O.D.B.‘s solo al-
bum‖-
―Which one‖
―Only one that mattered. Return to the 36 Chambers.‖
―A‘ight, I actually ain‘t heard that one, ‗cept for that one song, ―Shimmy
Shimmy Ya,‖ that‘s some good shit right there.‖
―Wait till you hear the rest of it, yo. That dude Spook, you know Spook,‖
Omar nodding in agreement as Tristan went on, ―he had it and played it for me
all the way through this one time. Shit was tight. I wish I had my fuckin CD
player, I‘d be noddin out to that shit right now.‖ He quoted one of the lyrics to
himself, ―Shimmy shimmy ya shimmy yam shimmy yay, gimme the mic so I can
take her away,‖ using his talent for imitation to sound just like Ol‘ Dirty.
―What else‖
―Yeah. I got Illmatic, and also this one Roots album, Phrenology. That‘s
it.‖
―You don‘t already have Illmatic Even I got that album, and I don‘t
have half the shit you do. But the Roots, yo...fuck the Roots. Motherfuckin hiphop
hippie bullshit.‖
―Nigga you don‘t know what you talkin‘ about. The Roots got Questlove,
that dude make better beats on the real drums than most of them fake-ass DJs
and producers and shit. All of them frontin like they got something when they
ain‘t got shit, like Swizz Beatz, or that Scott Storch nigga, fuckin maricon…‖
―Scott Storch is white, yo. Least I think he is.‖
―Well he definitely wish he was a nigga then. Thievin‘ motherfuckers
take everything, don‘t they.‖
―Aw, man, why you always gotta get serious and shit Its just music.‖
―Just music‖ Tristan did his best to look and sound like he was actually
offended. ―Dag. I gotta school you on a lot of things, don‘t I.‖
―School me, nigga School me in rolling. Maybe then I‘ll be able to get
55

high without draggin yo‘ sorry ass along,‖ Omar said. Tristan made a move as if
to backhand Omar, Omar laughing and yelling, ―Ho shit! You won‘t like this
nigga Little T when he angry!‖ Tristan couldn‘t help but laugh with the goofy
motherfucker.
They spent two more hours at the docks, talking and shooting the shit
but smoking only one more joint, bringing their tally for the evening to five, retarded-stoned
off their asses now, everything in slow motion like there was a
live television-style sound delay on everything they said. As they sat there, various
groups of kids from the theatre district-area colleges, Suffolk and Emerson
most likely, maybe Fisher, came down to the docks, sitting in circles and passing
bowls around, some bringing beer in backpacks, tossing the empties under the
dock or into the just-refilled pond. The kids talked about what classes they were
taking next semester, what kinds of stupid shit they did or said the last time
they got high, what movies they would watch when they got back to the safety of
their dorms. Shit that Tristan didn‘t understand or give a fuck about.
The group that was out here now, two girls and three guys in the eighteen-to-twenty
age range, were sitting around a portable iPod dock, listening to
that M.I.A. track from last summer, ―Paper Planes,‖ something like that. Tristan
thought about fucking with them, acting like he and Omar were going to jack
their shit. He decided not to, remembering when Spook ran the same sort of
game on this younger couple by the Esplanade and getting the shit kicked out of
him for it, the guy being the sort of muscle-bound asshole that would probably
end up a cop. A racist, too, according to the story, telling Spook, ―Some fucking
project nigger trying to fuck up my night with my girl Not fucking likely.‖ It
also didn‘t work to Spook‘s advantage that he was skinny, lighter-skinned, and
didn‘t look threatening at all, but Tristan didn‘t want to take any chances here
now with these people, the two guys looking like frat boys in striped polos and
distressed baseball caps. He might be tougher than them, and he might not, but
he didn‘t need to prove it to anybody.
Omar was passed out, his back up against one of the beams holding the
roof up over the docks. ―Ey yo, Omar,‖ Tristan said. No response.
Tristan grabbed Omar‘s shoulder and shook him awake. ―Yo, Omar!‖
―…the fuck‖ Omar muttered, disoriented, feeling like his head was
ready to pop off his neck and go flying into the air.
―Let‘s get the fuck outta here, man,‖ Tristan said. ―It‘s almost midnight.
I don‘t wanna miss the last train back home.‖
―Shit, do we gotta go now I am fucked up.‖
―You want to try getting a goddamn cab, nigga Cause I don‘t. Right
now the cabs only be pickin up drunk white bitches, chargin ‗em extra on the
fare. ‖
―A‘ight, man, damn. Chill.‖ Omar managed to get up, rubbing his buzzcut
head then putting on his hood. He followed Tristan off the docks, eyefucking
the two white jock-looking dudes as they passed, giving them stares that
said, do something, white boy. Do something, motherfucker. One of the girls, a
pretty blonde in a Dave Matthews Band sweatshirt, smiled at Tristan and he
winked back. Once he and Omar were far enough away from the docks for the
guys to think they were out of earshot, one of them said, ―What the fuck was that
56

look about, Lauren‖ Tristan heard this and chuckled to himself.
Tristan and Omar crossed over Charles Street and into the Common.
They were passing the bleachers next to the deserted baseball diamond when
Omar said, ―I gotta piss, yo.‖
―Well go, I ain‘t stoppin you.‖
Omar hawked and spat. ―I didn‘t actually; I just needed to get you to
stop walkin.‖
―What kinda backward-ass thinking is that You really are one of those
at-risk children, ain‘t you‖
―Fuck you, nigga. I got an idea.‖
―Alright, speak on it.‖
―You know how you was sayin, ‗Those thievin motherfuckers steal everything,‘
some shit like that Feel like stealin something back‖ Omar asked.
Omar had the gun. Tristan hadn‘t managed to notice it in the waistband
of Omar‘s jeans, near the small of his back, obscured by his extra-large T-shirt, a
black Hanes with a shitty iron-on of Biggie‘s face that Omar had bought with his
new shoes. It was a cheap nine-millimeter, probably straw-bought out in some
middle-of-nowhere area of the state, the serial numbers shaved off directly afterwards,
then brought back to a dude in the neighborhood named Skinny Mack
who sold guns to all the Roxbury crews. The ease with which Omar got ahold of
it was mind-blowing to Tristan.
―We just gon‘ scare ‗em,‖ Omar said of whatever couple he would pick to
hold up. ―I mean, I ain‘t wanna hurt nobody. Worst thing that happens, maybe I
pistol-whip the motherfucker, just once, he goes down, his bitch screamin or
whatever, we get their shit and bam. We gone. Just like that.‖
They were standing in the gazebo now, it being the best place to survey
this half of the Common. Omar was looking out for any couples, preferably
white ones, but it didn‘t really matter, that just made it a little easier.
―Just don‘t pick anybody that‘s drunk,‖ Tristan said. ―Someone like that
might just be fucked up enough to take on a stoned-ass nigga with a gun. You
don‘t want that.‖
―Fuck no, I don‘t want that.‖
It took Omar about fifteen minutes of looking before he made his
choice. Tristan was able to tell the boy was itching to hold that whistle, itching
to squeeze its hair trigger. His not really wanting to hurt anybody was incidental,
not out of him caring for any potential victim but out of wanting to avoid a
murder one charge.
The couple was olive-skinned Italian, in their late thirties, early forties.
The man was overweight, losing his hair and gaining sizable jowls; the woman
was too made-up and tacky, her face looking plastic under the glow of the lamps
that lined the Common‘s pathways. They would never see it coming, too busy
bitching about the movie they‘d just seen at the Loews and the restaurant they‘d
just been to. Tristan and Omar stepped down from the gazebo, Omar with his
hood up, Tristan with the flat brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes, just
barely able to see. The couple was walking on the path near the graveyard, before
it ran adjacent to the tennis courts, and the two boys moved to intercept
57

them.
―I just don‘t get it,‖ the man was saying. ―What was the point of all that
Who the fuck wants to see a guy get a chunk of his head blown out by some air
tank cattle-gun thing‖
―And the ending. Christ!‖ his wife went on. ―Just him talking about
some dream he had Who gives a shit Why wasn‘t he chasing the freak with the
haircut‖
Tristan had no clue what movie they were talking about, and he didn‘t
care. He just wanted this to be over with, for Omar to be content after playing
out his fantasy of being hard and maybe getting them some more weed money.
The school year was ending pretty soon; they were going to be seniors next fall,
their time to slack off. A celebration was in order, and that would cost.
―Ey yo,‖ Tristan said, low, not at anyone in particular but hoping to
catch the couple‘s attention. He failed.
―Hey now,‖ Omar called out, now audible. This got the couple looking in
his direction. His hand flew to the small of his back, and he drew.
The sound of the gun caught Tristan off guard. It was just a quick pop,
not an overloud bang, not like in an action movie, not echoing, gone as soon as
it was heard. The bullet went into the back of the man‘s head and came out the
front; he went down after a spurt or two from his exit wound. His wife screamed
a few times, the keening screech of some wounded animal, and ran off, dropping
her purse in the process.
It took a while for Tristan to process what actually happened.
As Omar was going for the nine and just about to say, ―Money and jewelry,
right fuckin now,‖ or some other shit that sounded badass, a man in a
skullcap and a leather jacket had strolled over to the couple, the image of nonchalance,
and said, ―Hey, Paulie! Sean Crouse says hello, you fuckin prick.‖ This
guy‘s gun was out, firing, and back inside his jacket before Paulie, his wife, or
Omar could get a word in edgewise. Then he was gone, Omar giving a delayedreaction
yell, ―Oh, shit!‖
They‘d booked it the fuck out of there, running all the way through the
entire Common to Beacon Street and then over the footbridge across Storrow
until they were sitting down on one of the benches on the Esplanade. Tristan
knew they couldn‘t stay there for long, even if he managed to persuade Omar
into throwing his gun into the damn river or at least a storm drain somewhere.
Young, black, stoned- to the cops they were the first people to look at for a
seemingly random shooting on city property. At least Omar hadn‘t taken the
bitch‘s purse when she left it behind; Tristan could be grateful for that much.
―Shit, yo,‖ Omar said.
―Man, just don‘t say nothin right now,‖ Tristan said, almost whispering.
―I mean it was just like…dude just walked up to that I-talian motherfucker,
said somethin quick, and it‘s a wrap. Dag.‖
―Shut up, Omar.‖ Tristan felt half-dead. All that running was murder on
his lungs after five joints, and yet for some reason what he currently wanted
more than anything was a cigarette. Just one.
―Shit was just like, blaow!‖
―Shut the fuck up, nigga! Goddamn!‖
58

―What Tristan, the fuck you mad for‖
―You gonna quit runnin your motherfuckin mouth or what‖
―A‘ight…alright man. Damn. Don‘t gotta scream in my fuckin face like
that…‖
From the Esplanade, Tristan could hear the sirens, becoming less and
less far off as the police converged on the Boylston and Tremont corner. He
imagined the officers practically leaping out of their cars, guns drawn, all chestout
and shit as a show of force, of how well Boston dealt with its crime.
What fucked with Tristan‘s head the most was how unremarkable the
shooting had been. Everything that guy ever was or ever would be was gone.
Erased in a pop and a muzzle flash. He imagined his father had probably gone
out the same way, dead before he realized what was happening, that look of perpetual
surprise like he‘d been caught in mid-flight forever etched on his face
until his unclaimed body went to the anatomy board for use by medical students,
his mother so hurt by the murder that she refused to take responsibility
for any kind of proper funeral. She caught a lot of grief from other women in
their building for that.
Omar cracked his knuckles, every last one of them, and began reciting
the lines of ―Shimmy Shimmy Ya‖ to himself, only the first verse- that was all he
knew. Tristan, still jonesing for a cigarette, tried not to think about his craving
or what had just happened. He tried to concentrate on how they would manage
to get back home.
Liam Green
Emerson College
59

From An Old Maid To Another
I would watch you
lying in your yard
overtaken by
honeysuckle
which all the other
neighbors burned.
Your hair was like ivy
twisting around your
body and they made
jokes about you being
untouched for so long
like a condemned house.
I couldn‘t bear to talk
with that broken ring
finger and smile which
was no longer yours.
But now that you‘re gone
I wish you would have known
empty beds don‘t have
to be such angry things.
Jessica Franck
Hollins University
60

When the fat lady sings…
Tess Waugh
Digital photography
61

Nancy Thorp High School Poetry Contest
The Nancy Thorp Poetry Contest was created by Dr. and Mrs.
Francis Q. Thorp in 1963 in memory of their daughter, a young
poet who died in an automobile accident at the age of 24. From
1956 to 1958 Nancy was a student at Hollins where she served on
the staff of Cargoes and was a member of Louis D. Rubin Jr.‘s
creative writing class.
The contest has grown significantly since 1963. It is open to female
high school sophomores and juniors, and hundreds of entries
are received each year from across the country.
Untitled
Kyra Orr
35mm Black and white photography
62

Eventually, it becomes too much
My boy has little lizards living in his heart
and swimming through his blood. He says
he feels them flick their tongues out
to lick his veins. When he opens his mouth
I can hear them. Their nails scratch the insides
of his arteries and capillaries and he cries out.
He asks me, do those scratches scar
If I hold my head to his heart, I can hear
their screams echo through the valves there.
Their venom gives him heartburn.
When they fight amongst themselves,
he can‘t breathe. When he scrapes his knees,
they float out with his blood and he cries.
He shifts his body slowly and with purpose,
because he fears sudden movements would hurt
them. His figure has stretched so that they‘ll fit.
I feel scales under his skin when I
press my fingers to his wrists or jugular.
I go to wake him up one day and find him
dead. The lizards trail out of his open mouth
like a funeral procession. I gather them all up,
take them outside, and set them free.
Allison Swagler
Winner
Alabama School of Fine Arts
63

Coordination
The weight of a breast and a sun is equivalent.
You and I are the exact same. The problem with
longing is that no one is ever satisfied, not even
when we are so close that the air is still and warm
and I cannot tell whose hands are whose. Recurring
dreams eat our nights so we feel like we have not slept.
A dream of Cairo winds tearing your eyes, a dream of
a matador nursing a wound in the soft hollow of his
stomach, a dream of where stories end. But the worst
is the dream where everything has fallen apart, the sun
spilled on the ground like an egg, and you are nowhere
to be found. When we wake up, all we can see are things
that are damaged – like two serrated walnut halves, or
the broken thorax of a black ant.
Emily Swanagin
Runner up
Alabama School of Fine Arts
64

Shema Yisrael
And you shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, your soul, and
your mind.
And these words that I command you
today shall be in your heart.
And you shall teach them diligently to
your children, and you shall speak of
them when you sit at home.
And you shall bind them as a sign on
your hand, and they shall be for frontlets
between your eyes.
Because your heart is not big enough to
love God, you decide to love people
instead – even the woman you stand
next to in line at the grocery store. She
buys whole milk, halved cashews,
measuring cups. Strange, you think,
that everything she buys is so precise,
and in the same way love works. Two
cups for your mother, a teaspoon for a
stranger – it all adds up in the end.
There are words you‘ve wished to always
remember, truths you want to
etch on the cockles of your heart that
you will forever act upon. The problem
is that words are confusing, can have
one, two, five meanings. For example,
the word ―love‖: attraction based on
sexual desire; warm devotion; a score
of zero.
If you had children, you would nourish
them with your love until it was dried
up. ―Know,‖ you‘d say, ―know that I
don‘t love you any less.‖ Your children
could get lucky: maybe their hearts are
large enough for God, their atriums
and ventricles wide enough for that
pressure. Maybe their hearts can only
take small measurements, milligrams
of devotion, a score of zero.
Why the hand and not the arm, the leg,
the stomach – and what are you to
write A word or maybe an action: a
rescued lover, a saved child. Write
something like that on your hand.
Draw your love in the middle of your
eyes, his black-ink arms tickling your
brows.
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And you shall write them on the doorposts
of your house and your gates.
You don‘t own a house, but you write
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu
Adonai Echad (Hear, O Israel! The
Lord is our God – The Lord Alone) on
the upper-right hand corner of all the
doorframes in your shoebox apartment.
Maybe He will still try and protect
you. He tries to get into your small
heart – it takes as much as it can, becomes
supersaturated, and explodes.
Emily Swanagin
Runner up
Alabama School of Fine Arts

―sensation‖
I. i love you in the winter.
when the sky gets lazy
and your eyes do your laughing for you,
and the color seeps from your hair in the shower.
you would rather drink tea in a cold house,
swept up in one of my scarves
than dye your hair again,
so you sigh to me it‘s fading
and your roots are coming in dark.
it‘s your own fault anyway, but i love you when you complain.
II. you blame me for your hands,
because they fascinate me when they dry out.
little alien riverbeds, pink and white,
flow red when you play the piano for too long in January.
the keys get darkish in between them
and stick together.
when you can‘t play moonlight sonata,
you tell me it‘s my fault you‘ve been bleeding on the ivories again.
i wrap you in a blanket and refuse to let go.
you pretend to struggle, and play your hands on my waist like an aria.
III. and riding in the car with you and your friends
(while ice kisses the tires,
i‘m pretty sure we‘re going to die)
it isn‘t the skidding that turns my insides out
but your smiles spills over the rearview mirror.
i reach for your hands and they‘re freezing
you laugh cause we‘re the only ones in on the joke.
IV. and yes, you are so achingly pretty in spring
when white petals whisper across your face,
your dress brushes my leg as you breeze by
(i catch you in my arms like you weren‘t expecting it);
and your skin does glow fireflies in june;
and it‘s true that your long sleeves make your face too warm in autumn,
so your long fingers touch pale mine to your cheek to bring them color,
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plus your legs sing copper in the evening sun;
but you make my heart brim in december
when you chew your red lips in thought
Because i love you in the winter.
Robin E. Burns
Runner-Up
Charlottesville High School

Foiled
Try as he might,
He could not reach the cookie jar.
So, he turned to steroids.
Alexandra F. Brown
Runner-Up
Cincinnati Country Day School
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Untitled
I wrote your name in French fries
last night, at the catfish restaurant.
After I read it, I couldn‘t decide,
Would it be more reverent to eat them
or let the waitress throw them away
So I leaned on the deck railing,
ripped each fry into pieces
and fed you, gently, to the fish.
Kelsey Greenwood
Runner-Up
Alabama School of Fine Arts
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What You‘re Not Telling Him
You are falling falling falling for the man who lives
in the Amtrak tunnels, under the Amtrak tunnels,
near the Amtrak tunnels. His hut is silver and gold
but it‘s really only wood, you‘ve fallen asleep in it
more than once, twice, a dozen times. You feel like
you‘ve met him a dozen times because he has a
dozen different faces. He has his crack face and his
pot face, his mother face and his dog face. (4) They
all include two eyes and a nose and a naturally
down-turned mouth. He‘s singed his eyebrows off
more than once, and it seems like everything here is
repetitive in this cycle of dark and night and filtered
daylight. And like anyone else he has his happy face
and his sad face, his I‘ll-love-you-forever face, but
he uses his I-don‘t-trust-you face the most. (8) He
was using his I-don‘t-trust-you face when you met
him. You crawled into his hut after a night of
hypothermia and rejection. He kicked you out but
picked you back up in the morning, fed you like he
feeds his dogs. You are diving in for the long haul,
sleeping with him nights and cooking for him days.
You‘ve piled all of your money in the jar by the
sink, and he puts his there too. You each take a few
dollars out and promise to be back soon, but neither
of you are home by sunset or sunrise, but you‘re
back in time to cook lunch the next day, and he
comes home soon after. You leave him a copper
plated watch on his pillow and he has a new rose for
you each morning. You think it‘s kind of romantic.
One day he‘s high and remembering his family.
You don‘t try to stop him; you think it will be good
for him. His mother was nice and his father was
nice and his sister was nice but that‘s all you get
before he‘s gone again, ten more hits, five, three,
one, he‘s gone again. You crawl underneath him
and hope he‘s fat enough to suffocate you but he‘s
skin and bones so you crawl back out and go cook
eggs for dinner. He wraps his finger around yours
and gets down on one knee to propose but you fall
on the floor laughing and screaming Yes, Yes,
Okay, Maybe, Yes, Yes. He falls down beside you
and you think about climbing on the bed but forget
about it and take off your clothes right then and
there. When he‘s done he pulls you close and says
Don‘t Go To Work Tomorrow And I Won‘t Go
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And This Will Be Our Honeymoon. You smile back
and say What A Nice Idea but go to work anyways,
because it‘s your job. Your job is something nice on
the twelfth floor of a high-rise. You‘re far from the
top of the ladder and close to the bottom. You
sometimes look down and pretend you see him
gathering his wares around the legs of the ladder,
and you throw him a chocolate covered mint. You
feel like you‘re living a double life, but you‘re not
really, it‘s just that your life has two parts. In the
morning you wake up and cook breakfast and make
your way to the apartment on fifth street where
you‘ve never taken him. You‘ve bought the
apartment out of your savings, but it‘s not good
enough for him. You‘re ashamed to admit it, but
you started out thinking that he wasn‘t good enough
for it. But you‘ve realized your mistake. You reach
into the closet and pull out one of your nice outfits.
The rest of the apartment is empty, but you can
envision the ghost of his bed in the corner of the
bedroom, his clinking refrigerator in the kitchen.
You slide the mirror-closet-door shut and you watch
yourself as you get undressed. Your elbows look
like they‘re threatening to detach themselves every
time you move them, and as you twist your body to
fit into the black pencil skirt that is set aside for
Wednesdays, you feel your bones scraping against
each other. You imagine that they make a sound not
unlike the one when you slide your nails down a
chalkboard. The thought sends chills down your
spine. You ride the subway to work­­ -- your father
sends you train money every year. You realize
that‘s another thing you haven‘t and can‘t tell him
about, your family. You‘re not sure that you would
want to anyways.
Emma Roberts
Runner-Up
Alabama School of Fine Arts
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CONTRIBUTOR‘S NOTES
Callie Bonatz is a sophomore.
Renee Branum is a shimmering glowing star in the Hollins firmament.
Emily Campbell finds writing to be the only therapy that works, a venue where she can
find herself without thinking too hard about exactly what that means.
Debbie Chow was born and raised in Boston, MA. When she goes to the dining hall,
she‘ll only eat from yellow plates. She loves pink things, hopes to become a professional
nomad, and she loves to study the human being, for she feels that it‘s the only education
that people really need.
Amy Dixon collects pictures of former President Nixon and items the size of postage
stamps (that are not actually postage stamps.)
Jessica Franck is competitive in many things, including: athletics, walks on the beach,
games like Rock, Paper, Scissors and Itty Bitty Otten Totten, and potlucks.
Aaron Greenberg was bitten by the radioactive last survivor of the doomed planet
Krypton, covered in mutagenic bio-slime and instructed in the ways of the ninja by a
talking sewer rat. Deal with it.
Allison Hitt is a West Virginia woman, born and reared. She loves Spanish, poetry, and
the crooked mountains of her home state.
Tallula Ho is a junior.
Taylor Hodge is a first-year at Hollins. In addition to writing, she fools around with
the piano, drums, cars, etc. She does not use protection and apologizes to her mother.
Kelly Hollins is a junior at Hollins majoring in Environmental Science and minoring in
Photography. First she would like to say that she loves Jeanette Jo Price and second she
hopes you enjoy her piece just as much as she does!
Brittany Jamison is a sophomore, and her poem 1967 is about, well, 1967.
Luke Johnson is learning to play the banjo.
Elizabeth Lawrence likes to listen to Otis Redding in the winter and sleeping 17 hours
a day
Shazy Maldonado is a Guatemalteca and an Americana. majoring in Spanish and
thankfully graduating in the spring. She wishes to pursue a doctorate in Latin American
literature.
Erin McKee, born with a hammer in her hand, is best known for inspiring the popular
American folk ballad "John Henry."
If Helen McKinney can't write about the shit she‘s seen or tumultuous lessons
learned, then what's the point in living After all, knowledge is stronger than memory; so
hell, why should she trust the weaker
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Amanda Mitchell, age 18. Appalachian native. Student assistant in Swannanoa, waitress
in Catawba, keeper of exotic birds. Interests: l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poetry, depression
glass, finding God.
Kyra Orr is an Interdisciplinary Major in Publications, with a special place in her heart
for photography. She is a lovable Sagittarius and a proud Virginia native.
When Jeanette Jo Price was a child she went to a friend‘s birthday party . She stole a
decorative plastic figurine off of the birthday cake. Everyone looked for it. The birthday
girl was upset. Jeanette still has it.
Meaghan Quinn. Family is everything.
Tiffany Robinette: Vice President Joe Biden's middle name is Robinette. She is interested
in portals, comparative measuring, the American Dream, and plexiglass.
Amanda Gaye Smith loves weed.
Catherine Stillerman, 18, believes sometimes black and white makes a prettier image
than color. Through a lens the world makes sense. Enjoy.
Kathy Transue is exactly what your mother told you she would be.
Tess Waugh is a circus.
Leigh Werrell paints happy trees.
Anya Work is a junior English and Art History major from New Orleans, Louisiana.
She likes the color red.
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