Metaphor Journal XXX

.
Metaphor, Weber State University’s undergraduate
interdisciplinary journal, is in its thirtieth year of publication.
The journal is staffed entirely by Weber State University
students.
Metaphor accepts submissions in visual arts, poetry, fiction,
nonfiction, and music from students of Weber State
University as well as selected pieces from the National
Undergraduate Literature Conference.
Publications in Metaphor are chosen through a blind
submission process. The author, visual artist, or composer
of each piece is unknown until that piece is selected for
publication. Guest judges are invited to ensure the objectivity
of art selections.
Metaphor is funded primarily through student fees and is
distributed free of charge to students, faculty, guests at Weber
State University’s annual National Undergraduate Literature
Conference, and the community.
Copyright © 2011 is retained by individual authors, visual
artists, and composers.
Printed in the United States of America by Weber State
University Printing Services, Ogden, Utah.
Metaphor
Weber State University
1404 University Circle
Ogden, Utah 84408-1404
Visit us on the web:
weber.edu/metaphor
Cover design by Danielle Weigandt
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ix
Metaphor Staff
xAcknowledgments
xi
Editor’s Notes
MUSIC
13
Josaleigh Rain Pollett
Salt
13 David Thomas Owen IV
Ships; Youth
14
Fox Van Cleef
Somethin’ ’bout the Way; Dizzy; Red
15
Clint Stanger
It’s OK to Die; Destiny; Red Rain
16
Brady Adair
Midnight Sky
16
Owl Hoots
Sun Come Callin’
17
Jacob Smith
’64 Skylark
18
Tom Hughes
Lorena; Your Song; Wrapped Up In Yer Blues
18
Rawson Butts
The Owl and the Pussycat
POETRY
21
“A Book to Its Author” (as inspired by Anne Bradstreet)
Kory Wood
23
Pink Galoshes (For My Daughter)
Jennifer Widdison
24
Shattered Vase
Dwight S. Adams
26Tomes
Joshua Brothers
27
A Moment Between Two Artists
Laura Funk
iii
28
Story Man (From: “Lives of the Artists” by Dennis Vannatta)
Jason VanDaam
29
It Seems I Have Heart Trouble
Jason VanDaam
30
Plato’s Pawn Shop
Lee Nguyen
31
The Last Cantaloupe
Cynthiann Heckelsmiller
32
Grocery Shopping
Dixie Hartvigsen
33
Of Vincent
Lee Nguyen
34Dot
Murielle Parkinson
35
Where They Go
Laura Funk
36
The Things I Can’t Afford
Amy Mayo Townsley
38
Sunday Chess in the Park
Melanie Walker
39
The Inevitable Love Poem
Kaili Watson
40Owning
Briana Zike
42
After My Father’s Death
Sean Peek
43Spent
Clint Stanger
44
The River, Merlot
Lee Nguyen
45Eldritch
Karleigh Weeks
46Waiting
Jennifer Widdison
47
iv
The Night at the Circus
Shannon Beverley
ART
49
Pensive Women, Little Houses
Camela Corcoran
50
Muy Caliente
Alex Pommier
51
Who Shall Comfort the Comforter?
Megan Wilson
52Constellations
Erica Stearns
53
Color Theory
Tom Hughes
54
Fabric of Time
Danielle Weigandt
55
Spiral Jetty
Ruth Silver
56
The Journey
Megan Wilson
57Morg
Darren Curtis
58
Ain’t it Funny How Time Slips Away
Carey Francis
59
Under an Umbrella
Sharon Salmond
60
Twin Fiddles
Tyler Dilworth
61Roost
Jennifer Ronayne
62
Green Women, Little Houses
Camela Corcoran
63
A Memory
Anna Kristensen
64
My Inner Demons
Melinda Taggart
65Awoken
Danielle Weigandt
v
NONFICTION
67
Caught an Edge
John D. Linford
71
Of Indians and Baseball: An Analysis of Sherman Alexie’s
“The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor”
Amy Mayo Townsley
78
American Exceptionalism as Justification for U.S. Foreign Policy
Alexandria Waltz
83
Seventy-nine Cents, Plus Tax
Amy Mayo Townsley
85
Dickens, Willis and Bogart
Kory Wood
93
Fleeting Memories
Logan Cox
FICTION
95Chocolate
Alicia Glascock
103Deadlines
David Glen (Harrison)
107Roma
Shelly Sphar
109
The Ladybug
Trevor Wheelwright
110
The Day that Mrs. Butterworth Died
Cynthia Balzomo
118Pesos
Julianne Hiatt Caldwell
120
First Ink
Dustin Follett
NULC
131
Salt Water Kills
Margaret Reynolds: Tulane University, LA
132
Pulling Out of a Walmart Parking Lot
Brock Michael Jones: Utah Valley University
133
Marc Chagall’s The Birthday
Engram Wilkinson: Tulane University, LA
vi
135
Buried Alive
Gary Smith: Pikeville College, KY
141
Daddy Long Legs
Keats Conley: College of Idaho
RETROSPECTIVE
144
I Meant Exactly What I Said
Stephanie Pringle
145Council
Brittanie Stumpp
146
Earth Drunk
Kristin March
147
Travis Park, Wyoming
Rykki Olson
148
Excerpt from “Desert Geisha”
Halbert Pete
149
Excerpt from “The Surrogate”
Adrian Stumpp
150
Evening Song
Mario Douglas Chard
151
Excerpt from “To A Mouse: Lessons In Compassion”
Marilyn Diamond
152
Excerpt from “Why Robert Frost No Longer Comes To Tea”
Kate S. Tanner
153
Cold Fingers and David
Vanessa Hancey
154
Excerpt from “The Beauties”
Scott Woodham
155
Brad’s Bakery
Bettie Turman
156
Adam’s Apple
Jen Henderson
157
Excerpt from “Dyadica”
Krista Beus
158
Excerpt from “The Taste”
Katherine Herring-Furlong
159Flying
Patrick Murphy
vii
160Seedbed
Linda Larsen
161
Excerpt from “Another Washday”
Sundy Watanabe
162
Excerpt from “Old and Wise”
Anne L. Robbins
163
Excerpt from “Bu Dop 1969”
John Beal
164
Ice Cream Man
Jennifer J. Elkington
165
Verdant End
Briana Beckstrand
166
The Great Put On
Jennifer McGrew
167
The Embrace
Michael Cheney
168
Michelangelo’s Forgotten Slave
Karrin Peterson
169Hunting
Carl Porter
170
We’ll Be Dinosaurs
Caril Jennings
170Thorn
Lee Walser
171
Excerpt from “Suffer the Little Children”
Amy Allred
172
Excerpt from “Midnight Thoughts”
LaVon B. Carroll
viii
Metaphor Staff
Faculty Advisor
Jan Hamer
Editor-in-Chief
Andrea K. McFarland
Assistant Editor
Quincy Bravo
Layout Designer
Aaron Conder
NULC Selections
Coordinator
Andrew Choffel
Music Editor
Clint Stanger
Art Editor
Danielle Weigandt
Poetry Editor
Jason VanDaam
Fiction Editor
Briana Zike
Non-Fiction Editor
Alexandria Waltz
Weekly Poem
Project Coordinator
Jason VanDaam
Copy Editors
Jan Hamer
Stephanie Presley
Andrea K. McFarland
Website Manager
Michelle Paul
Publicity Specialist
Andrew Choffel
Reviewers
Aloha Morris
Jacob Ericksen
Amy Higgs
Jennifer Sanda
Amy Mayo Townsley
Kayla Jones
Bailey Dolan
Maggie Greer
Carey Francis
Melanie Byington
Cynthiann Heckelsmiller
Melanie Walker
Devon Hoxer
Michelle Paul
Dixie Hartvigsen
Stephanie Presley
David Glen (Harrison)
Tamara Sisler
Heidi Vance
ix
Acknowledgements
This, and every other, edition of Metaphor would not be possible
without its staff. Thank you all for your time and service to this
publication. Thank you for your commitment, for working with
tight deadlines, for handling difficulties with grace, for being
friendly to one another, and in general, just being awesome. You
are Metaphor, and I see y’all on every page.
We would also like to thank the following individuals:
• Jason Francis, Cindy Stokes, and the Printing Services staff
for answering our questions, making the book happen, and
walking with us (literally) every step of the way.
• Aubree Gleed, Robin Scott, and Kim Webb for “having
our backs” and helping us with everything from advertising
to transferring twenty-nine years of printed work into an
electronic format.
• The professors of Weber State University for encouraging
their students to submit their work.
• Drs. Kathy Herndon and Vicki Rameriz for their
continued support.
• Dean Madonne Miner for listening to our idea about having
a retrospective section and funding it.
• Glen Weise and Brad Roghaar, our Emeritus Faculty
Advisors, for going through the old issues and selecting
pieces. You have given of yourselves to the students you have
served, and we will never forget you for that.
• Jan Hamer, our Faculty Advisor, for her willingness to
cannonball into Metaphor full force. You have the singular
gift of being able to take student ideas, no matter how
far-fetched, and figure out ways to make them happen.
We love you for your generous heart and your red pen.
• The spouses, family members, and significant others of the
staff for their patience and support. We could not do what
we do without you behind us.
x
Editor’s Notes
Metaphor has changed over the course of the last thirty years
from a publication involving a small staff, to a publication that
utilizes the talents of about thirty students from all areas of the
arts. It has matured because of the dedication of hundreds of
student staff members, three faculty advisors, and thousands of
students who have generously offered their work for its creation.
We are grateful for these efforts, and recognize how much they
underwrite our work this year. We give you the thirtieth edition
of Metaphor as an extension of this collective memory and as a
showcase of the talents of Weber State University students, past
and present.
As part of this showcase, the thirtieth edition has a few special
features. The music and retrospective sections have online components that can be accessed at weber.edu/metaphor. Adding
these online components to our journal has given us a greater
capacity to represent the work of musicians, both as reviews in
the journal and as actual performances online. It has also given
us the ability to showcase the work of past contributors whose
stories or poems were a little long for us to publish full-text. We
hope that you will take advantage of these features, and that in
the future they will allow Metaphor to expand its outreach in the
performing arts.
I only have one other thing to say. It is that there is something
very communal about publication. It has the power to preserve
moments in time and to help us see ourselves clearly. We hope
that as you read, listen to, and view the works of artists from this
year, and past years, you will find things that echo through your
own life. Good reading.
Andie K. McFarland
Editor-in-Chief
xi
MUSIC
Everywhere we go music surrounds us. Whether it’s coming from a blaring alarm clock too early in the morning, a
live performance on a late night weekend, or from someone’s
screaming ear-buds heard above the harmonious sounds of
bustling hallways between classes, we simply cannot escape
its mesmerizing hook. Much like the literature and art found
within this journal, music is used as an escape from the people
and world around us, if for only a few moments. It sparks our
imaginations, gives us identity, and keeps our minds from
sinking into silence.
For this gift of music we thank the gods of harmony, melody,
and rhythm. The Metaphor staff would also like to thank the
students of Weber State University: both the artists below
along with their listeners and fans. For without the body as
a whole, without each cog in this great machine, we would
surely find our world a decidedly secluded and silent place.
Of course, the music section of Metaphor wouldn’t be complete without, well, music. The artists have submitted recordings of the pieces below and have allowed us to put their
music online; we ask that you please follow up reading these
summaries by visiting weber.edu/metaphor for free downloads. Thank you!
Editor
Clint Stanger
12
Staff
Bailey Dolan
Quincy Bravo
Jacob Ericksen
Andrew Choffel
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Josaleigh Rain Pollett
Salt (folk/acoustic): This song is about the places we live
and the experiences we have inspired by those places. It
was written about the love I have for Salt Lake and the
people I have met there.
Josaleigh Rain Pollett is an Ogden native who has been
writing songs her entire life. She is a junior majoring in
anthropology and trying to find out what her calling is.
Music is her hobby, de-stressor, and emotional outlet.
Without it, she says she would explode with all of today’s
worries and craziness. She writes, records, and produces
her music with the help of her wonderful family and
friends. ( Josh Seppich and Dustin Bessire added vocals
and noises in the recording.)
David Thomas Owen IV
Ships (independent arena-rock): This song is a peek into
a great journey across a vast desert, perhaps near Egypt.
A type of souljourn in which the character is searching
inside and outside of himself for answers regarding faith
and religion. The chorus represents a sort of spiritual
purification he must undergo in order to embrace higher
enlightenment.
Youth (independent arena-rock): This song is sung from
the viewpoint of someone in a dream state. Everything is
a bit fuzzy, dreamy, and unclear. In each verse, the mental
lens hovers around strange happenings. The chorus speaks
of a mystical “in between” world that lovers are called to
and are eternally bound together dancing in ethereal darkness. A sort of metaphor for blind, eternal love...
David Thomas Owen IV originally hails from northeast
Ohio. Music has always been at the forefront of David’s
endeavors. In 2003 he signed on to play guitar for a
MUSIC
13
band called Lovedrug who eventually signed and released
a record with Columbia Records. After thousands of
miles and hundreds of shows in countless cities across the
U.S.A., David decided to leave Lovedrug. During this
much needed break, David wrote and recorded his first
solo effort, “Solace My King,” which was released nationally in the summer of ’09 by Esperanza Plantation. After
amassing a large stockpile of demos for the anticipated
follow-up release, David decided to put the project on
hold and focus on higher education. He now attends
Weber State University and lives a quiet life near the
Wasatch Mountains.
Fox Van Cleef
Somethin’ ’bout the Way (independent rock): Here’s
the Fox’s hybrid of soul and funk that sounds something
’bout the way it would back in the day. But watch out for
the frenzy of theremins and modern EFX that places its
sound into a timeless world where anything can be said,
and indeed heard. As far as breaking up with that other
person, well as long as it has to be, ya might as well dance.
Dizzy (independent rock): The volume of truths that are
presented in this song makes it one of the most personal
for the Cleef. From the strange story of our anti-hero
Dizzy to the tangible tension of the horns and guitars, one
is drawn into an increasingly complex and yet steadily silly
web of words and bells. Dip down into the ocean for a
spell, relax and let the waves take you away.
Red (independent rock): This is a modern Greek tragedy,
set in a post-Roman West. Reflecting both on the loss of
our collective souls to the machine as well as our despairing choice to continue on despite the hive being dry, this
song is a bittersweet ballad to the Modern Age. Strange
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notes, odd rhythms and the blues, though a very unusual
and dark blues all permeate through to form a backdrop of
the strange world we live in. Still, it’s advisable to boogie
whenever the mood hits you.
The Cleef formed under unusual circumstances culminating in a strange brew of ideas, stories and of course groovy
tunes. As early as 2006 there were murmurs and tall tales
of a new sound being forged out in the distant mountains
of Ogden, but many dismissed this as mere hype. After several years of hard work (but much more play), the
family that is Fox Van Cleef is spilling its love and music
out for everyone to enjoy. The songs presented here are a
sample from the band’s last EP, Pleasure Junkies. Fox Van
Cleef is Chase Baur, Dustin Bessire, Jesse Hodshire, Anna
Hodshire, Matt Froling, Spencer Reed, and Erich Newey.
Clint Stanger
It’s OK to Die (folk/acoustic): Written in Dr. Ramirez’s
lyric writing class, this song draws strong parallels to the
Biblical character Jesus Christ and one of his good timin’
pals, Judas. Meant to be reassuring during those times in
life when one would just as soon give up, the song also
points out that there are worse things than death.
Destiny (folk/acoustic): The singer of “Destiny” vows to
take with him those things that the material world finds
useless, but in the end we all understand to be the most
important things in life.
Red Rain (indie synth-pop): A call to those who just can’t
get their minds to see over and past the steering wheel to
see the good things in life. It also makes a statement about
the paranoia of exposing your true being to the world.
MUSIC
15
Clint Stanger has been a prolific musician in the Weber
County area for the past ten years. Along with doing solo
performances, he also plays with a number of groups in
the area and teaches music at a local shop in Ogden. He
has also been a member of the WSU Jazz Band, WSU
Jazz Combo, and WSU Classical Guitar program for the
past four years and is looking forward to graduating soon.
Brady Adair
Midnight Sky (alternative/acoustic): “Midnight Sky” is
about a relationship that was broken apart by jealousy.
It digs into the regret, and the wishful thinking that the
relationship could somehow be mended. The song goes
through how the relationship was torn apart, and the reasoning why they should return to one another.
Brady Adair is a solo musician that was introduced into
songwriting at the beginning of his sophomore year in
high school. Since then he has fallen deeper and deeper
in love with music, and takes every opportunity he can
to mess around with it. Towards the end of his senior year
of high school he was introduced to recording music, and
through the help of a couple friends recorded “Midnight
Sky.”
Owl Hoots
Sun Come Callin’ (folk/acoustic): A song about the passage
of time between a couple. Profession will most likely take
me away from home a lot and I already feel that longing to
be with my wife and daughter. This work is just the expression of those feelings. In short, it’s an “I miss you” song.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
Owl Hoots (Colby Peterson) is a songwriter born and
raised in the greater Ogden area. The oldest of three
children, Owl began writing songs at the age of ninteen.
Though a busy guy, (he is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in
Middle Eastern studies and Arabic), he loves to sit down,
write, and share his music with the community. Of his
influences, he says, “The biggest has to be Josh Ritter. If I
could find a way to write music as happy as his with that
level of thought in the lyrics, I will have achieved my goal
as a songwriter.”
Jacob Smith
’64 Skylark (rap): This song is what happens when two
musical cousins get together when the wives are out of
town. It started with Jacob’s cousin, Chris B. Cream, who
is a deep rapping freestylist, wanting to just spit something and the words you hear first, “He learns so quick”,
were his amazement that Jacob found a sick beat so swiftly. The rest of the song was built up around that first verse.
Jacob added his (penned) rapping section and the chorus,
which references “The Three Little Pigs” and Ogden’s very
own Cosmos’ Burger and their famous “gems.”
Jacob Smith has been playing guitar and piano for around
fourteen years, writing and singing his own songs pretty
much from day one. Like many little kids, he was forced
to play piano and attend formal piano lessons from a very
young age. He didn’t always like or appreciate this when
he was younger, but just like Mom said he would be, he is
more than thankful that she made him stick with it. His
mom played guitar, which sparked his interest, and he
soon began walking around the house clumsily strumming
an E-minor chord. But hey, you gotta start somewhere.
MUSIC
17
Tom Hughes
Lorena (folk/acoustic): Lorena is a woman that represents
the hopes and dreams of everybody. She has lived the life
of a sixty-year-old, but she is only in her twenties. Life
has beaten her many times, but she still holds onto her
dreams—she is always dancing.
Your Song (folk/acoustic): This was a collaboration of
writing with a friend. I wanted to try to capture the intensity of her words and combine them with song to encapsulate the emotion.
Wrapped Up In Yer Blues (folk/acoustic): This is a song
that isn’t geared towards anybody in particular. It is more
about the feeling of despair that sometimes goes hand in
hand with love.
Tom Hughes: “I am currently a senior studying English
with an emphasis in creative writing. I enjoy all forms of
art and find myself constantly challenging my ideas in every medium. I have many stories that need to be told and
each story has its own characteristics that sometimes take
the shape of poem, song, or painting. Art has many faces
wearing a variety of masks that distinguish all aspects of
life; and I am just the mask-maker.”
Rawson Butts
The Owl and the Pussycat (children’s music): This song
is one of my favorite children’s picture books. The illustrations are vividly colored and very clever. As I set text
(a poem by Edward Lear) to music, I sought to capture
its fun and carefree nature with a simple melody and
“colorful” harmonies. The song was written as a gift to my
favorite youngest sister, Rachel. It is my first published
work, and it certainly won’t be my last.
Rawson Butts is the second of eight children raised by
loving, supportive, and artistic parents. His childhood was
full of colorful imagination and creativity. As a kid, he
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often enjoyed listening to his mother read aloud from all
kinds of books: picture books, novels, and the scriptures.
The children would frequently incorporate these stories
in their play. His love of music began primarily at church,
singing children’s songs. There, he learned the power of
music in storytelling and sharing the deepest feelings of
the heart. He is now a choral music education major with
plans to continue being a kid, start a family of his own,
remain active in church, graduate from WSU and earn
master’s and doctorate degrees, continue composing and
arranging, author a book, and eventually direct a university
choral program. These are no easy goals, but with a lot of
hard work and the grace of God, he believes he can accomplish anything.
MUSIC
19
POETRY
Understanding a poem is a personal experience. As you read
these worthy words strung together, various pearl necklaces
offered for you to wear, give yourself the opportunity to let
the poems become yours. It is your right as the reader. As all
poems, even all my poems, are no longer or wherever mine.
As to possess a poem as a writer is to chain a racehorse in a
suburban backyard denying it a chance to run. Poetry is more
about listening than writing. Most good ideas are simple.
Here are some good ideas in the format of poems.
As a Weber State poetry staff, our purple hearts were full and
ripe with pride at the amount of submissions received this
year. The process of choosing is never easy; in fact, it squeezed
and aged us causing a pleasure similar to the making of wine.
We are now word drunk and we thank you for your kindness
for giving us your poems. Such bravery shown at visiting our
humble vineyard called Metaphor will not be forgotten as the
experience changed us. Joining this staff has made us better
writers as I am sure if you submitted, regardless of whether
your piece was selected or not, you are now a better writer. It
is all in the trying that great things are accomplished.
My deepest gratitude and admiration to all involved and it
pleases us to share these selections.
Editor
Jason VanDaam
20
Staff
Melanie Walker
Devon Hoxer
Cynthiann Heckelsmiller
Carey Francis
Jennifer Sanda
Kayla “K.C.” Jones
Metaphor Vol. XXX
“A Book to Its Author” (as inspired by Anne Bradstreet)
Kory Wood
Here I stand, propped up
twixt the new Palin and a Vampire saga,
on the Hot, New rack of books.
A kidney stone in the pipe of literature.
You worked on me all through college.
Based characters on interesting people around you,
Plead the cases of common men,
Scattered in Christian allegories
and allusions to Jonah and Beowulf and Luke Skywalker,
Made people think
like apartheid and religious zeal and pork barrel
legislation and second marriages.
At least, those were your intentions.
But it didn’t work.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
My intention is not to sound ungrateful.
I saw how much you put into me.
I appreciated the effort.
But now that I’m out here,
I can’t help but miss the snoozey womb
of your jump drive.
My protagonist makes road work seem compelling.
When he isn’t sitting alone, in a London café, whining
about injustices,
he’s sitting with other lame heroes
of other failed novels,
comparing pretentious facial hair and
talking about as-yet-un-revolted revolutions.
POETRY
21
Do you remember the scene in the zoo?
The one where you walk through the bird exhibit?
Why did you let them cut it out?
I know you liked it,
not because it meant much,
or contributed to your overall Greek allegorical scheme,
but because it added a splash of color.
It got lopped off by editors
and thrown in the trash
along with the tops of Christmas trees
that wouldn’t fit in living rooms.
That first chapter was great,
then the next couple dozen dropped off a bit.
But don’t give up!
I saw what else you were hiding in your Word files
behind the mediocre poetry and
that re-working of The Odyssey.
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Pink Galoshes (For My Daughter)
Jennifer Widdison
Rain hits the ground
Pops and springs upward
Before it settles into
Slickery earth.
I sit under heavy clouds while
My newspaper shelter disintegrates
Wet and wretched, I wait
For streaks of color to appear as
The day’s only redemption
Until,
She steps out in her pink galoshes
Runs and stomps in the water that
Collects in the cracks and cavities of a
Dilapidated world and suddenly
I no longer see the drizzling,
Misery of rain.
POETRY
23
Shattered Vase
Dwight S. Adams
It lay shattered
on a brown table top,
a gaping hole in its side.
It was once beautiful;
it had, for a minute,
been beauty. It had
sat on a white table,
flanked by dozens of
price-tag pots, bulging,
pregnant with intended
meaning, ready to burst
beyond its designed curves.
It had sat beneath a
lamppost, perfect.
Perhaps it asked to be broken.
The fractal patterns of
many, maybe hundreds,
of tiny hand-crafted pebbles, side
by side, scarred its face
with such broken precision,
such insistence, that
maybe the fatality
of the piece was
in its creation.
I don’t know. Does art
flee so easily?
Now its jagged shards,
dagger flakes of
hardened clay, once in
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
a union of private
happiness have abandoned
one another.
And the sculptor?
Why shouldn’t he weep?
Why not clench his fists
as disaster clenched his vase?
It was once beautiful;
it was once happiness,
if not intent alone.
Now it is anger.
Now it is defeat.
Now it is ugliness;
wretched, twisted,
shattered vase–
aborted–
filled with
unintended meaning.
POETRY
25
Tomes
Joshua Brothers
Like a sunbeam caught askew,
Passing in and out of view,
A phantom’s swirling round and round,
Without age and without sound.
And somewhere in the breaking spray
You almost hear the vision say
That, “as you search theses scattered tomes,
Only one can take you home.”
A single tome contains the key
To garner love or misery.
Silent pages becoming bound
With words wrapped in a misty shroud.
It comes unraveled through our desire
As memories are caught on fire,
And a crucible grows white with heat
Issued from a Holy Seat.
And in the dark, a strong embrace
Ignites a spark with saving grace
And like a sunbeam caught askew
The phantom swirls within our view
And somewhere in the breaking spray
You almost hear the vision say
That, “as you search these scattered tomes,
Only one can take you home.”
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A Moment Between Two Artists
Laura Funk
He steps through an invisible wall
Into his music
And weaves disjointed tunes
Accenting chatter
Five feet away on a worn red couch
She’s confined in her own
Groping words
Fragmented symbols, unformed mosaics
His fingers along the keys
He names them all
“I call this one, Beautiful Girl is Writing”
Blushed lips, timid
She thinks the tone is fitting
Somber and serene
A weeping willow swaying through a storm
He knows her very well
“Your turn,” he grins
“What is that you’re writing?”
She whispers
“Handsome Man, Keep Playing.”
POETRY
27
Story Man
(From: “Lives of the Artists” by Dennis Vannatta)
Jason VanDaam
He was an ancient television
Warm tube throated, off set, knob of nose
Rabbit eared, screen faced
Cro-magnumed entertainment
Speaking for sustenance
Basic tribal vitality in
Dance, drink, and song
Life changing moments until
Life becomes forfeit to
Goat dung stuffed in mouth
Like some putrid textured cotton
Bringing back the
Unbearable silence
From which we came before
Angry spear-armed men.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
It Seems I Have Heart Trouble
Jason VanDaam
She twists her coffee cup with elegant nervousness
I tell her the only people us matters to
Are sitting right here
When I bite my lip it makes her giggle
School girl tribute’s to my face
This pen gets twitter pated and sighs knowing that
There is work to do while she exists here
For us, or do we exist for her?
She sings soulful sunrise breakfast blues between bites
I tell her this makes me sad and in her
Soft sultry river bottom voice she replies
“Why sad?” so, I confess
My ears are unworthy to hear you,
My hands unworthy to touch you,
My eyes unworthy to see you,
My…she interrupts like we are already married
“I don’t mind so much your unworthy lips!”
She likes it when I stack the plates for the waitress
I tell her sun-setting runny eggs reflect in her eyes
She tells me “You have no sense of personal space do you?”
(As I do not it should be noted she fits in my pants nicely and I
have nice fits when I’m in hers)
I drink her in this warm Chianti girl as a
Certain slow sensual wobble occurs
What a lovely sober drunkenness she provides
Tipsy on life’s beautiful creatures
What sense can be found in being a poet if not to enjoy
Ringing telephone laughter of epic earthbound angel’s
Calling to apply for the vacant position of muse.
POETRY
29
Plato’s Pawn Shop
Lee Nguyen
A cup of hemlock for your wisdom,
for crimes, committed,
peace and solace like
a pint of absinthe, for a palette,
for a vision.
An obsidian idol, for a prayer,
an open palm, sitting lotus,
wooden carving, for clarity.
Here, there’s no need for coin and crown,
or static medium upon walls,
no interest in grails or spears,
or a stone
to be sworn upon.
Here, you can find
yourself awake under a Bodhi tree,
venture down Marlowe’s river,
meet The Raven at the door,
or Gyatso’s crows, above.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
The Last Cantaloupe
Cynthiann Heckelsmiller
The knife sliced through easily
The skin thin and less than firm
The flesh is softer than I’d hoped
The juice drizzles, thinner, cloudy water
It is difficult to grasp and swallow.
The sun still cuts through the clouds
The branches less than full
The leaves left sooner than I’d hoped
The air is damp, hazed, growing colder
It still clings to the thought of warmth.
Three weeks ago, we opened a watermelon
It had turned to sour brown sugar
Wasn’t worth noting but for the smell,
Clotted earth in our garbage can.
Since then I’ve won and lost
Victory-ed and bombed tests
Owned and sold auditions
Since then I’ve danced
To another’s tune and to my own.
Cradled in my spoon is orange water
It swirls with nostalgia
Smells sweet but tastes bitter
Sprinklers not rain
Bikinis not coats
Novels not speeches
Flowers not frost
I tip the spoon
And summer’s gone.
POETRY
31
Grocery Shopping
Dixie Hartvigsen
Grab a can of traffic
To mix with the Snooze Seasoning
And your cart already contains a fabulous
mix for a late dinner.
In the frozen section they have hearts on sale,
But only the generic-take-years-to-thaw brand.
Your last conversation called for a chunk of spiral ham
But the one before that needed thigh of chicken.
Because we can’t decide if laughter or running is healthier,
I recommend putting both off and using 75% lean mean
serious.
A bottle of hugs and kisses
Fizzle out if open too long,
So I suggest a jug of consequences to take to the adult party.
A bag of frivolity would be nice—buy one,
get second half-off.
Make sure you still have a box of excuses
To get you through the rest of the week.
Two-liters of lite-tears mix well with any slice of depression,
And I would also recommend a-half-a-pound of sliced
Deli happiness.
(Any more and it starts to taste fake.)
Speaking of—weren’t you planning a salad?
Grab a head of time and a bag of shredded hopes.
Toss in some education loans and voilà!
I’ll wait for you at home.
I already went through the express lane with
A loaf of dreams and a carton of bad habits.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
Of Vincent
Lee Nguyen
Here amongst the Midwest grain,
vibrant yellows meet blue-gray,
Perhaps this is such a day
found on Vincent’s palette.
Over a field, a murder of crows,
Like Auvers-sur-Oise some time ago,
a wind-swept field and beaten road,
sowed on Vincent’s palette.
In the distance, a petaled sol,
perhaps worthy of an Arles home,
though not yet vased, it may have grown,
out from Vincent’s palette.
On a Midwest river the moon has shone,
just like stars upon the Rhône,
deserving of an eternal stroke,
Alight on Vincent’s palette.
POETRY
33
Dot
Murielle Parkinson
A degenerate curve,
Circle of radius zero,
Origin,
No dimensions.
A pencil point,
Shading technique,
Space filler,
Ink Spot.
An iris,
Freckles,
Finger tips,
Navel.
A third of an ellipse,
Half a colon,
A jot,
Full Stop.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
Where They Go
Laura Funk
Kleptomania was not my intention.
I only collect the luggage and the socks
that airlines and dryers misplace.
You thought it was goblins or trolls
wreaking havoc just to make you late
for school or work or your important date.
But it was me, taunting your sanity.
Stealing t-shirts, shampoo, underwear,
and extra shoes thickens the blood
My own socks aren’t enough, I have to
mismatch them with yours for my
feet to feel free to wander from
Texas to Chicago with connections
in Paris and Tokyo. I only wear your
socks, never your trousers or the
stolen hotel bathrobe, because socks
can be hidden inside shoes and beneath
long jeans so no one knows they
once belonged to someone else.
The suitcases are homes for the sock
people made from the too small or
too large cotton sheaves; they need
someplace to hide. Everything else
goes to the people on the streets;
those you forget to look at
as you hurry to catch your flight.
So when you see a bum wearing your
Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, or
Armani, think of me…
I’m wearing your socks.
POETRY
35
The Things I Can’t Afford
Amy Mayo Townsley
Every poor person knows
what it is like
to put back things at the grocery store
when one’s appetite has exceed one’s bank account
balance.
First I put back my pride.
I can always pick some up later,
and besides,
I have swallowed it before
and it is bitter.
Next I forgo my vanity.
No Palmolive for these dish-pan hands,
as the generic brand is half the price.
Never mind, L’Oreal, I’m not worth it—
I’ll just grab some Suave instead.
Time is money,
so I can’t afford that either.
Besides,
I’ve already sold it for seven twenty-three an hour,
minus tax,
and social security,
and FICA,
no benefits.
Money can’t buy you love,
but I found something that looks a lot like it
over on aisle four.
I’d like to try it out,
but it don’t come cheap,
so back it goes.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
But I don’t want to put back these dreams.
I know the brand I selected is far too pricey
for someone of my means,
but I just can’t do without,
so I put them in my pocket
when no one is looking
and smuggle them out of the store.
POETRY
37
Sunday Chess in the Park
Melanie Walker
The two old men meet,
Cane and metal walker set to the side of the picnic table.
Expressions mirror each other like pieces of the moon.
Hats shade their eyes; shaking hands move the pieces.
Each considers the other.
The wars they have been in lie in wooden drawers,
Purple hearts for their grandchildren to run their hands over.
The sound of airplanes and gunfire replaced
By the sound of Red-breasted birds and Bluejays chirping
in the trees.
Each makes his move, carefully considering the chipped pieces.
Checkmate.
They salute and return each Sunday.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
The Inevitable Love Poem
Kaili Watson
A check engine light
Glaring from the dashboard,
Neglected service;
Lottery ticket:
Cherry
Cherry
Lemon
All that remains is a
Four-frame photo strip souvenir
From a convenience store rendezvous
And a red plastic cup
Urging you to
Pick your poison.
POETRY
39
Owning
Briana Zike
He’s seen pieces of paradise.
Narrow canyons
The pressure of God’s hands. Folded the valley
Like a child crumples paper
Just to feel powerful.
Green hills
Cover giants, long since
Curled up for the final sleep;
Backs blanketed
With gentle grass.
Always he wondered,
How best to keep these.
Trinkets rust, lose their charm,
And grand memories lose luster.
So he took them;
For himself claimed
Paradise.
Stones from the coast of South Africa,
Sharp, clear air of Greenland,
Leaves snatched from Japan,
Soil of Ireland.
Labeled each on his shelf.
What good is a broken toy, thirty years from now?
But these miniature boxes will someday tell
How he single-handedly took possession
Of numerous treasured countries,
All tamed in his study.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
A lifetime of journeying
Taught:
A box full of dirt
Can contain the world.
POETRY
41
After My Father’s Death
Sean Peek
I lay his head down onto
the pillow, the
pillow his head slept on
for numerous years.
The pillow which carries all
his sweats and smells.
The pillow which carries all
his dreams and nightmares.
Later, when I am alone,
I take the pillow, my
father’s pillow and place it
under my head. I close my
eyes and open them again,
this time in the next place
where I see all his nightmares
and all of his dreams.
But out in the dark
I see a dream which isn’t his, which
actually is pretty new. I look closer
and I see my child
existing in the place before
this place,
smiling in the dark,
waiting
to dream this dream
of fathers and of sons.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
Spent
Clint Stanger
I woke up this morning face down on the floor
Tried to open my eyes and move for the door
The very last thing that I could recall
Was a handful of bennies and an empty high-ball
I set out for a while and tried to lay low
Then I tightened my nerves until they let go
I lifted my head again ’til it hurt
Forgot all the best and remembered the worst
It all came back like a calm winter’s snow
The whiskey, the pills, and of course all the blow
There’s just one thing I couldn’t run through
How to forget myself and get over you
Well I finally set up and wiped off my face
Tried to put you behind me forever to stay
I would never think of or see you again
Until I crashed into that bottle of gin
It all came back like a slow moving tide
The whiskey and pills didn’t help to subside
The feeling I get that you may just come back
Will push me on forward until I’m out black
Then I wake up so cold, face down on the floor
Your memory I’ve tried to shut out once more
Another day spent just trying to get high
Another day spent just trying to get by
POETRY
43
The River, Merlot
Lee Nguyen
The moon burned eyes,
on the wet slate bank of a river
the color of merlot,
Flightless things spoke from the trees,
from under wilting ferns,
The merlot river stained
feet pale,
Moonlight dragged and
ripped on the canopy,
Remnants of frightless things that
will not come,
or refuse speak,
A silver line baited with song.
The air breathed me in,
just as the river breathes fish,
and slate,
Smells of flightless things, and torn thread,
A soupçon of madness upon its palate.
Echos trapped in the folds of slate,
44
Moonlight shattered like stained glass each
Monday morning.
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Eldritch
Karleigh Weeks
A fellow daily sits
on a bench center of town
where he watches the pavement
guide human steps
Here he sees them holler
stumbling over cement
slabs whilst on course for a new
chat or drink or love or path
Loose coins and other wares fall
from the pockets as
coats squirm from shoulders
expose lurid skin
Not long, the body has
shriveled to the ground with change
marking the former footprints. This
fellow bends down and gathers
the remains, counts, and adds them
to the safe of his palms. His
thumbs twiddle as a new set
of passers step on earth
POETRY
45
Waiting
Jennifer Widdison
A house
Sits on a street
Built out
Of worn brick and
Cheap dishware
It’s now missing
Teacups and saucers
Desire and aspiration
It tries its hardest
To resist collapsing
Sagging on one side
Where monogamy has
Picked it apart
Keeping what it liked
And discarding the rest
Half-heartedly deserted—
Property lines blurred by the
Droning song of elusive crickets
It rests in the sunlight
Undeservedly, it waits
Letting the leaves
Fall over like a mantle
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
The Night at the Circus
Shannon Beverley
The striped tent towers in the distance
The smell of cotton candy and fried food blows through the air
I am everywhere but invisible
This place is seen as magical
Rubber mallets and pop guns
Balloon swords and little fortune telling huts
One week a year we are seen as equal
Normal
The bleachers full of animals claiming to be human
Gawking, mocking
Pointing with sneers
As it darkens my time to shine comes forth
Popcorn litters the floor
Ice cream melted to the bleachers
Doing my best even the freaks gawk and mock
Some day we will belong
POETRY
47
ART
“Through art we comprehend the interconnectedness of disparate
ideas, images, and objects. Art helps us step outside habits of seeing
and thinking, so that through our imaginations we may make the
world anew.”
-Nils Folke Anderson Feb. 2011
Thanks to everyone who submitted this year; you didn’t make it
easy on us. It wasn’t easy going from one hundred and seventy
two submissions down to thirty-two. It is even more difficult
having to go from thirty-two submissions down to the final
sixteen, so I want to give a HUGE thank you to Nils Folke
Anderson for doing such a wonderful job as our guest juror
and choosing the art you will soon be viewing. Murphy was
quick on my heels through the making of the art selections
this year, but he soon found he could not keep up with my
quick thinking and the awesome staff I had with me this year.
And now, your 2011 Metaphor art selections.
Editor
Danielle Weigandt
48
Staff
Maggie Greer
Heidi Vance
Aloha Morris
Cynthiann Heckelsmiller
Carey Francis
Andrew Choffel
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Pensive Women, Little Houses
Camela Corcoran
ART
49
Muy Caliente
Alex Pommier
50
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Who Shall Comfort the Comforter?
Megan Wilson
“Through visual narratives, I seek to communicate thoughts
and feelings that cannot always be verbally expressed
because they are overwhelming or intimidating.”
ART
51
Constellations
Erica Stearns
52
“This work deals with conflict and balance inherent in relationships
and interactions of forces in life.”
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Color Theory
Tom Hughes
ART
53
Fabric of Time
Danielle Weigandt
54
“This piece of ‘fabric’ from Time cannot be manipulated or
moved very easily, but we are well aware that it is there as
we pass by.”
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Spiral Jetty
Ruth Silver
ART
55
The Journey
Megan Wilson
56
“Journey is a process of trial and error, all the while
creating the layered narrative of life itself.”
Metaphor Vol. XXX
“Travel and love.”
ART
Morg
Darren Curtis
57
Ain’t it Funny How Time Slips Away
Carey Francis
58
“The reason for the name of this piece is that
it demonstrates life.”
Metaphor Vol. XXX
“Isn’t it so sweet, to go walking down the street,
under an umbrella, with Grandma Ella?”
ART
Under An Umbrella
Sharon Salmond
59
Twin Fiddles
Tyler Dilworth
60
“I don’t set out to produce art; I am more for producing
a feeling, whether I catch that feeling or not.”
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Roost
Jennifer Ronayne
ART
61
Green Women, Little Houses
Camela Corcoran
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“This was inspired by the different stages of a loss
and connecting with that person.”
ART
A Memory
Anna Kristensen
63
My Inner Demons
Melinda Taggart
64
“I have been researching different techniques used
in art therapy. This is my own self-portrait.”
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Awoken
Danielle Weigandt
65
NONFICTION
This edition of Metaphor has received the largest number of
nonfiction submissions the journal has ever seen. For this
reason, the Nonfiction staff had a difficult job choosing between the high-quality work that was submitted. However,
after individually rating the pieces according to a numeric scale
and ranking our top selections, we feel confident that we have
chosen the best work to represent Weber State. This section
includes both academic papers (ranging from literature reviews
to historical essays) and creative nonfiction stories. We truly
appreciate the fine submissions we received this year and are
proud to highlight the talented writers of our university.
Editor
Alexandria Waltz
66
Staff
Dixie Hartvigsen
Amy Higgs
Melanie Byington
Devon Hoxer
Amy Mayo Townsley
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Caught An Edge
John D. Linford
I was bleary-eyed, gazing into the bathroom mirror at my
fat cheeks and disappearing hairline. I yawned and let warm
water run over my stiff fingers. Looking into the mirror, I
imagined myself, not as I was that morning, but as I might
have been twenty years down the road. I imagined my pained
movements, tenuous health, short and heavy breath. I imagined myself falling with a bone-shattering crunch, slipping on
a concrete floor. I saw that I was on my way to becoming terribly obese. Alcoholics call it hitting bottom. In that imagined
fall, I felt myself hit bottom and break.
My heart banged away in my chest. The color drained
from my face. With my sore fingers still beneath the running
water, I looked in the mirror and realized that I had to do
something radical. I had to change my life.
What was the most radical thing I could do? Answering out loud, I said, “Snowboarding. You should learn to
snowboard.” “Hmphf,” I half laughed, half snorted considering the idea. I was midway to ninety years old. I had never
been athletic or active. I had always been clumsy, had no sense
of balance, had never been skiing or skateboarding, had never
done anything like snowboarding. This would definitely be a
radical change. “Okay, I’ll learn to snowboard,” I said, determined but only half believing, to the blue eyes in the mirror.
A few days later, after huffing and puffing through
pulling on snowboard boots and adjusting gear in the rental
shop, I grabbed coffee and clomped out into the dazzling
white morning. I tried to act blasé, like I do this sort of thing
all the time, coffee in hand, helmet cocked “gaper” style up on
my head, goggles askance, snowboard hanging heavily, awkwardly out of balance in my hand.
I watched a circle of sharply uniformed instructors,
chatting about gear, exploits, people they knew, and casting
an occasional sideways glance at their prospective students,
including me. Eventually, a very fit-looking, confident, mounNONFICTION
67
tain version of a blonde California surfer walked over to me
smiling. “This looks like my kind of snowboard lesson,” he
said, nodding at my coffee, “Very chill.”
“I may look chill,” I said quietly, “but I’m terrified.”
After a chuckle and a reassuring quip, Skylar introduced himself and told me that we had a couple more guys
coming. “We’ll wait a few minutes for them and then, Dude,
we will get you acquainted with the greatest thing man ever
did with snow.” His bright gaze promised he wasn’t overstating this thing called snowboarding.
Skylar quickly dispensed with preliminaries like which
end of the snowboard is the front, how to strap into the bindings, and safety on the slopes, “It’s your job not to run into
anybody. If you manage that today, you’ll be okay.”
Two very athletic looking guys from South America
made up the rest of the class, and we were on our way to the
slopes. Terror and my abject lack of coordination or balance made my attempts at the board a pitiful sight. It certainly wasn’t funny or fun from my point of view. Neither
was it funny to my classmates who were progressing rapidly
and wanting to move to a more advanced slope. I had given
snowboarding my all for about an hour. I was exhausted, and
I couldn’t even stay up on the thing, couldn’t turn it, couldn’t
slide a short distance on the slightest slope. I was incredibly
frustrated, but I was more determined than ever.
Skylar knew I wasn’t ready for the chair lift, but it was
obvious that the other guys were. I had just struggled to my
feet and was trying to catch my breath when Skylar rode over
to me and said, “Dude, what d’ya think? Wanna try the chair
lift?” All I could do was nod. I was determined to learn to ride
that snowboard.
I fell getting off the chair lift. I crawled awkwardly
out of the way and sat in the snow breathing heavily. Then I
chuckled in a poor-spirited way at myself. What did I think
I was trying to prove? Did I have any idea how ridiculous
I looked? What was I thinking? These and other mocking
thoughts rattled around inside my head until I remembered
the blue eyes in the mirror and knew why I was there.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
I ratcheted my bindings tight, struggled to my knees,
and pointed my board down the hill. Slow sliding accelerated
quickly, and I tried to keep Skylar’s words in mind: “Relax,
bend your knees, look down the hill over your shoulder.”
I was starting to get it! I was just cracking a big ol’ smile
when I learned exactly what Skylar had meant when he said,
“Whatever you do, you don’t want to catch an edge.”
Catching an edge means turning your body into a
sledgehammer and slamming it into the mountain with blinding speed. Your body becomes the hammer’s long handle giving
speed and power to its collision with planet Earth. Your head
becomes the weighted mass delivering a blow, and the full
force of the object in motion (your head) colliding with that
unmoving object (planet Earth) shudders through your body
and changes your understanding forever. All this happens in
an instant when one side of the board digs into the snow like a
shovel.
For me, the blackness began at the edge of my vision
and closed in until I was looking at a dot of blue sky through a
long, dark tunnel.
“John, hey John, dude, you okay?” Skylar’s voice echoed
down the pipe to what remained of my consciousness.
I couldn’t respond. After a few minutes, I took a deep
breath and tried to sit up. A touch of concern in Skylar’s voice,
“Hey, just relax a minute. Don’t try to get up yet.”
“God! What happened?”
“Dude, you caught an edge, big time.”
After about ten minutes, I could move my head around,
and the feeling started returning to my arms. I pulled my helmet off and said, “I think I’d better be done.”
A few weeks and three lessons later, a frustrated Skylar
asked other instructors for ideas on how to help me progress
beyond the most elemental basics of sliding the board on the
bunny slope. I finished the year without complete control on
even that hill, but I was no less determined.
The following summer’s weight-shedding exercise and
the next season’s snowboarding lessons brought victory over the
bunny slope and even more of the mountain. I sought Skylar
NONFICTION
69
for a lesson late in the season. “I want to firm up the good
stuff, throw out the bad stuff, and practice for a few days before the season’s over,” I explained.
My growing ability made this a very different twohour lesson. Skylar had always closed his lessons with a little
speech, but this one surprised me. “Dude, you should think
about being an instructor.”
I half-laughed and shook my head in disbelief.
“No dude, really. You’re no great boarder, probably
never will be. But you’re no gaper either. I’ve watched you
learn every detail the hard way. You’ve got a mental understanding most of us will never have, because boarding came
easy to us. You’d be a good instructor. Think about it, dude.
We’ll see ya next season.” I stood dumbfounded and watched
him walk away.
The 2010-11 season will be my fourth year teaching
snowboarding at Snowbasin. I’m still no great boarder, and
know I never will be. But with the snowboard driving me, I’ve
been able to get down to a healthy weight. I’ve taken up martial arts and skateboarding. Perhaps the craziest part of my
new life is that I’ve gone back to college. With temperatures
cooling and the days shortening, I’m excited to get back on
the mountain.
Now, when I imagine my future, I see a man seventy,
eighty, ninety years old, with a whoop and a shout, dropping
into deep powder at the top of some mountain with four or
five of his grandkids, maybe great-grandkids, and tearing it all
up, beating them all to the bottom, and bounding up to do it
all again.
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
Of
Indians and Baseball: An Analysis of Sherman Alexie’s
“The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor”
Amy Mayo Townsley
Sherman Alexie’s short story, “The Approximate Size of My
Favorite Tumor,” features a protagonist, Jimmy Many Horses,
who employs his characteristic sense of humor to cope with
his terminal illness. Jimmy is suffering from a cancer that has
resulted in a number of tumors, one of which is “just about
the size of a baseball, and shaped like one, too” (Alexie 167).
In this paper, I will argue that Alexie’s “The Approximate Size
of My Favorite Tumor” demonstrates the erosion of the modern Native Americans’ cultural identity by Anglo-Americans’
continued imperialism, as symbolized by the destruction of
Jimmy Many Horses’ body by the baseball-like tumor.
Early in the story, Alexie makes the reader aware of
the poverty of Jimmy’s life on the reservation. His “HUD
house” (Alexie 165) and “dinner of macaroni and commodity cheese” (Alexie 166) are the meager offerings of AngloAmericans, half-heartedly apologizing for sins of the past.
Jimmy’s friend, Simon, drives a broken-down pickup truck
that can only go in reverse, echoing the paradox of the Native
Americans’ attempts to forge a future for their people while
holding on to their heritage and traditions rooted in the past.
Jimmy calls Simon’s truck his “horse” (Alexie 166), a trade of
traditional Native American possessions for Anglo-American
paraphernalia. When Simon jokingly refers to Jimmy as
“Jimmy One-Horse,” (Alexie 166) then later angrily calls him
“Jimmy Zero-Horses,” (Alexie 167) the nickname not only
notes Jimmy’s poverty, but also the loss of his potential; if not
for colonization, he might actually own many horses. However, the white occupation of the American lands consumed
the resources that once belonged to the natives, leaving scant
leftovers for the native people.
Jimmy’s poverty almost surely exacerbated his condition. Low-income individuals of all ethnicities suffer from
poor access to quality health care, but “Native Americans have
NONFICTION
71
the poorest cancer survival rates among any racial group in
the United States [. . .] factors contributing to this include
genetic risk factors; late detection of cancer; [. . .] and lack of
timely access to diagnostic and/or treatment methods” (U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights 18). The result is almost akin
to a slow genocide, as a bit of heritage is lost when an older
Native American passes. Jimmy’s wife, Norma, notes, “Every
one of our elders who dies takes a piece of our past away [.
. .] And that hurts more because I don’t know how much of
a future we have” (Alexie 172). For Jimmy, as for the Native
American heritage, poverty is not just merely uncomfortable
or inconvenient; it is fatal.
The “approximate size” and shape of Jimmy’s “favorite
tumor” is symbolic of the dominant Anglo-American hegemony which oppresses Native American cultural identity.
Jimmy lives on the reservation but participates in AngloAmerican culture, as evidenced by his consumption of Diet
Pepsi and his love of baseball. Alexie raises the question of
whether true hybridity can exist, or if the dominant culture will ultimately extinguish the oppressed culture. Daniel
Grassian notes, “Alexie appears to be no proponent of ethnic
assimilation, for to Alexie, there can be no assimilation, only
the subsuming of identity, in white-dominated America”
(Grassian Hybrid Fictions 115). Baseball “symbolize(s) what
is quintessentially American [. . .] (therefore) Jimmy becomes,
in part, a living symbol of a dying people, and his cancer
exemplifies and highlights the physical and psychological assault upon Indian cultures by Euro-American society” (Coulombe 101). Jimmy’s baseball-like tumor is a metaphor for the
“cancer” of Anglo-American influence that is spreading inside
modern Native American society, threatening to kill the culture of their heritage.
The use of stereotypical “Indian” characters as mascots
and logos by Anglo-Americans is another form of hybridity.
Jimmy’s joke that he will go “to Cooperstown and sit right
down in the lobby of the Hall of Fame [. . .] (and become) a
new exhibit” (Alexie 167) alludes to the white use of characterizations of Native Americans, especially in baseball, such
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as the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, and Cincinnati
Reds. Alexie refers to other “reductive stereotypes of Indians
as cultural curiosities and historical souvenirs for the entertainment of white America” (Coulombe 100), such as when
Jimmy notes his wife’s resemblance to “television Indians [. .
.] (like) ‘Tonto’” (Alexie 165). However, unlike the assimilation of white ideology into Native American culture, the use
of bits of “Indian” culture by white America is more a form of
consumption or exploitation than appreciation or assimilation.
Particularly offensive uses of “Indian” mascots include
those that advertize alcoholic beverages. In one successful
lawsuit against Stroh Brewery, a Native American group complained about the “commercial exploitation for financial gain
in association with a product that has proved so deadly to Indian people” (LaDuke 111). Alexie himself makes use of the
stereotypical alcoholic Indian in the character Raymond, who
mistakenly delivers a eulogy at Jimmy’s wedding, an image
so ridiculous it forces the reader to address the reality behind
the stereotype. Alexie’s inclusion of Raymond in this story is
more than a bit of comic relief: alcoholism is a very real problem for Native Americans, as the “alcohol-related mortality
rate is 5.3 times greater than that of the general population”
(U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 13). Early colonization
and modern insensitive governmental policy have led to the
depression that Native Americans experience in disproportionate numbers, and ineffective mental health care has led to
many Native Americans turning to alcohol to self-medicate
(U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 12-13). Though at times
comical, Alexie’s inclusion of alcoholism in this story is an
indictment of the Anglo-American colonization and modern
business practices that have contributed to this additional
burden on the Native American people.
The fact that Jimmy does not drink alcohol marks him
as a “good Indian,” one who plays by the rules of white society. Modern depictions of Native Americans seem to appreciate those who are most assimilated, those who only engage in
their heritage on occasion, the way someone of Dutch heritage might collect—but not use—wooden shoes and windNONFICTION
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mills. Jimmy’s abstinence from alcohol separates him from
negative stereotype, and he further assimilates into AngloAmerican society by consuming an iconic American beverage,
Diet Pepsi. The fact that it is diet, rather than regular, Pepsi
is significant in that diet soda is a non-nutritive beverage,
just as the commodity foods, such as white bread, Spam, and
processed cheese, provided to Native Americans through
government food programs, are generally poor in nutritive
value compared to their traditional foods. In addition, caloriefree sweeteners have been accused (rightly or not) of causing
cancer; in this sense, Jimmy’s body becomes symbolic of the
larger Native American culture. Jimmy lets in a bit of white
culture, in the form of Diet Pepsi, into his body, and it becomes a cancer that grows until it is inevitable that the cancer
will kill him.
Though the subject matter is very serious, the story
is full of dark and twisted humor. The title itself presents the
reader with a startling paradox: the juxtaposition of “favorite” and “tumor” alerts the reader right away that the story to
follow is unconventional, as does the very long title, which
has become something of Alexie’s trademark. Alexie’s humor
“unsettles conventional ways of thinking and compels reevaluation [. . .] and forces non-Indian readers to reconsider
simplistic generalizations” (Coulombe 95). While a realistic
examination of the plight of the modern Native American
might garner some sympathies, it does little to encourage
readers to look at the problem with a fresh perspective. Alexie’s brand of humor deconstructs traditional assumptions and
engages the reader with constructing a new reality.
Jimmy’s use of humor to cope with his situation
“shows both the transformative and destructive possibilities of
humor” (Grassian Understanding Sherman Alexie 76). On the
surface, the ability to joke at his own devastating illness seems
to help him cope. However, his humor also reveals a lack of
sensitivity about the effect his condition has on his loved ones.
This threatens his marriage, as “it denied real intimacy. Humor in this situation erected a barricade between him and his
wife” (Coulombe 101). Even his comment about her “Tonto
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face” (Alexie 165) betrays this lack of sensitivity, as Tonto is
a sidekick. By failing to engage her in an honest conversation
about his illness, he fails to treat her like a partner. She says,
“quit calling me your wife. It makes me sound like a fucking
bowling ball or something” (Alexie 167). Although humor is
a method of dealing with problems that has served him well
in the past, he cannot drop it when it threatens his relationships and prevents him from dealing with the serious nature
of his illness.
Alexie’s humor invites in readers of diverse backgrounds through the common language of laughter, which
“is a great unifier, and has the power to lift us—if only temporarily—beyond many racial tensions and cultural conflicts”
(Coulombe 110). White Americans are often resistant to
facing the problems of modern Native Americans, especially
“the illegal and immoral machinations of the present” (Coulombe 105), as it is easier to believe that white sin against the
red man is an artifact of the past, not an ongoing offense. The
scene where the police officer extorts money from Jimmy and
Norma might be uncomfortable to most white Americans if
presented realistically; however, Alexie’s humorous portrayal
is like seeing the event through a funhouse mirror. The police
officer is so racist and abusive that he seems ridiculous, and
the scene, instead of making the reader sad or angry or uncomfortable, as a realistic depiction might, makes the reader
laugh. However, after laughing at the image in the funhouse
mirror, the reader is forced to realize that the image does
reflect something that exists in reality. That police officer takes
ninety-nine out of the one hundred dollars that the couple
has, alluding to the amount of land and resources the whites
have taken from the Native Americans. Humor makes the
uncomfortable reality more palatable, and “fosters a sense
of community that can be shared by all people regardless of
background” (Coulombe 109). Laughter unifies the reader
with the author and the characters, putting aside defenses and
allowing the reader to empathize with the Native American
people the characters represent. However, Alexie’s humor
causes the audience to confront harsh realities.
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Most Anglo-American readers will be unaware of
some of the jokes that Alexie writes for Native American
audiences exclusively. Though Alexie does not reveal these
jokes, perhaps one is Norma’s reference to the “Flathead
cousin” she stays with when she leaves Jimmy. “Cousin as in
cousin?” asks Jimmy, “Or cousin as in I-was-fucking-him-butI-don’t-want-to-tell-you-because-you’re-dying?” (Alexie 173).
Few white readers might know that “cousin” is an affectionate
term one Native American might use for any other Native
American, especially one from the same tribe. Like Jimmy
and Norma’s private joke at the Powwow Tavern, Alexie and
his Native American readers “recognize the bond that occurs over a shared joke, especially a private joke” (Coulombe
106). Alexie calls these “Indian trapdoors, because an Indian
will walk over them and fall in, but a non-Indian will keep on
walking” (West), and they serve to give the Native American
readers a sense of identity separate from the white audience.
“The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor” allows readers to examine the challenges facing modern Native
Americans through the experience of Jimmy Many Horses, a
man with a great sense of humor and terminal cancer. Jimmy’s
misfortune echoes that of the Native American people, whose
culture is dying under a proliferation of Anglo-American
influences. Alexie employs a dark humor to draw in audiences
from all backgrounds to examine uncomfortable truths.
This story touches on a number of problems confronting the
modern Native American world, all of which are largely due
to the colonization of America and the continued domination
of the Anglo-American hegemony, as symbolized by baseball.
“The Approximate Size of My Favorite Tumor” suggests that
continued assimilation of Anglo-American customs will erode
Native American culture from within.
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Works Cited
Alexie, Sherman. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.
New York: Grove, 2005. Print.
Coulombe, Joseph L. “The Approximate Size of His Favorite Humor:
Sherman Alexie’s Comic Connections and Disconnections in
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.” American
Indian Quarterly Winter 26.1 (2002): 94-115. Project Muse. Web. 19 Nov. 2008.
Grassian, Daniel. Hybrid Fictions : American Literature and Generation X. Boston: McFarland & Company, Incorporated, 2003. Print.
Grassian, Daniel. Understanding Sherman Alexie. New York: University of South Carolina, 2005. Print.
LaDuke, Winona. “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.” Cultural Representation in Native America. Ed. Andrew Jolivette. New York: AltaMira, 2006. Print.
United States of America. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Office of the General Counsel. Broken Promises: Evaluating the Native American Health Care System. 2004. Web. 21 Nov. 2008.
West, Dennis, and Joan M. West. “Sending Cinematic Smoke Signals: An Interview with Sherman Alexie.” Cineaste 28. Fall (1998): 28-33. EBSCO Host. Web. 2 Dec. 2008.
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American Exceptionalism as Justification for U.S.
Foreign Policy
Alexandria Waltz
The history of American foreign policy has often been defined as
either solely positive or negative interactions with other nations
and cultures. These interactions have resulted in equally black
or white consequences that are either praised or condemned by
historians. These polarized views of American foreign relations,
however, are debunked in Anders Stephanson’s Manifest Destiny,
a novel that looks at the underlying reasons for American expansion and studies the myths that Americans have constructed
around landmark historical events. These motivations behind
American expansion, as Stephanson claims, possess roots in
moral and spiritual convictions that the United States has a right
to push its physical borders and intellectual ideas to the outside
world, whether that world desires them or not.
Although Stephanson argues that this sense of predestination was a direct cause of expansion, baser economic and political motivations indicate that these convictions were actually a
means of justifying actions that otherwise might be construed as
imperialism, a focus that would be deemed unacceptable in a nation based on an aversion to tyranny and European empires. This
justification has developed through the emergence of American
exceptionalism, the idea that America is somehow different from
other civilizations and therefore has an inherent duty to spread its
influence. Ultimately, American international relations have been
externally directed by this belief of the United States as separate
from its European predecessors, chosen by divine powers for
its privileged status and charged with a mission of spreading its
political and social doctrine to the rest of the global community.
However, this exceptionalist “tradition that created a sense of national place and direction” in U.S. foreign relations actually served
as a way to legitimize questionable American actions internationally, a method that publically coincided American foreign policy
decisions with a higher moral plane of divine values.1
1 Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1995), xii.
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In Manifest Destiny, Stephanson claims that the beginnings of America’s belief in itself as a unique nation, independent
of Old World values, emerged in the years leading up to the
American Revolution. The Puritans in New England carried a
large burden of this creation of an American identity, revealed in
their views of the New World as a place for the rebirth of a more
purified society. Away from the corrupting influences of England,
Stephanson argues that the Puritans believed that it was no “accident…that God had unveiled this New World…hidden for so
many ages” as a bastion for religious reformers.2 The geographical land of America, then, was different from Europe due to its
very “newness” and ability to be molded into whatever shape its
founders saw for it.
The idea of a “New Canaan” fed the conviction that the
New World was a land where social and political structures would
automatically coincide with Christian values, a vision that appealed to discontent immigrants arriving from the perceived
decrepit nature of Europe.3 This Puritan thought filtered into
the ideology of the American Revolution, an event that literally
separated America from its European founder. However, even
though Americans used inherent differences between its nation
and Britain as justification for rebellion, the underlying motivations were much more complex, finding basis in economic (inability to expand west of the Proclamation of 1763 line) and political
(inability to determine policy in Parliament) slights. In reality, it
was not until much later in the revolutionary process that Americans ultimately decided to declare independence from Great
Britain, a drastic move that was met with great controversy in the
colonies. Although Stephanson claims that there was “no need for
intercourse with the old and tainted world,” Americans not only
borrowed institutional ideas from Europe but continued to rely
on trade with Britain and France for decades after the revolution.4
This relationship with the “tainted world” nevertheless was justified by America’s avowal of difference between its nation and others, allowing it to remain an ideological haven for democracy and
2 Ibid., 9.
3 Ibid., 6.
4 Ibid., 21.
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freedom in contrast to Europe’s perceived betrayal of these values.
The conception of America as possessing a nature inherently different from previous countries evolved into a fervent
belief that the American cause was chosen and therefore always
right. The emergence of “manifest destiny” as a term was used to
“understand and legitimate…aggressive annexation of territory.”5
Stephanson’s identification merits the point that American
expansionist tendencies were motivated by a baser, less idyllic
factor that Americans did not feel comfortable indulging. The
idea that Americans needed a divine cause for their simple desire
for Western land directly indicates the importance of the United
States as a chosen nation in expansionist ideology. The blatant
racism and aggressive westward movement encouraged during the Jacksonian Era ironically became the beginnings of this
destinarian movement, which focused on American expansion
as “the highest stage of history, God’s plan incarnate.”6 This plan
dealt with history being “divinely engineered” and predestined for
America to gain land extending to the Pacific Ocean.7 Similarly,
the destruction of native peoples and the forcible annexation of
Mexican territory fit under the exceptionalist framework for acquiring land from cultures that were spiritually unfit for administering to North America properly. However, Stephanson neglects
the importance of Native Americans and Mexicans remaining
physically in the way of America’s westward expansion. Americans did not wish to remove foreign nations simply for their
inability to match American liberal values, but focused much
more intensively on acquiring land for increased settlement by
the United States. On surface appearances, the concept of manifest destiny covered the much less acceptable American want for
more land, a desire that could only be negatively construed as
greed. Stephanson mentions the failure of expansionist idealism
to stand up in the face of the Mexican-American War, but fails to
delve completely into the later attempts at justifying the imperialist tendencies of the war. The offering of money for the already
acquired Mexican territories reflects an example of American
5 Ibid., 32.
6 Ibid., 40.
7 Ibid., 43.
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efforts at legitimizing their aggressive expansion. Namely, Americans used later payments to substantiate their claims that the war
had been fought legitimately and in accordance with non-imperialistic values. By offering payment after the fact, Americans attempted to show how divine providence had allowed the acquired
land to essentially fall into their laps, a falsehood that ignored
the actual political and economic implications of the war’s cause.
Ultimately, the use of America’s inherent rightness attempted to
legitimize actions that otherwise were at odds with a way of life
that disproved of imperialism, a contradiction that was remedied
by claims that America had a divinely guided destiny.
In the twentieth century, American exceptionalism added
a new component that included spreading social and political doctrine to the rest of the global community. The idea that
America had a calling to “Christianize and civilize the world” was
contrasted with the fear that they would “face divine retribution.”8
This fear that the United States was required to use its blessings
of liberty to free other enslaved nations largely was reflected by
American justifications of policy during and after the Cold War.
The belief that it was necessary for “the civilizer to rescue [other
nations] even though this might involve conquest” reflected the
political zeal with which Americans approached the rest of the
world.9 Distinctions between free and enslaved nations were made
clear during the Cold War, causing Americans to take it upon
themselves to liberate people captivated by tyrannical governments. Specifically, as Stephanson identifies, the Soviet Union
was construed as the ultimate evil, an entity set on destroying the
values and institutions propagated by the United States. However,
Manifest Destiny does not entirely explore how this fear motivated American international relations by causing it to center on
containing the Soviet threat. The deep-rooted fear of communism
in the American psyche caused policy decisions that were based on
protecting American interests abroad, not so emphatically on liberating threatened nations. The scare over Cuba during the Cold
War reveals the nervousness with which Americans viewed the
communist threat so close to their homeland, causing government
8 Ibid., 80.
9 Ibid., 88.
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officials to use the idea of liberating the conquered Cubans as a
pretext for seditious acts against Fidel Castro’s power.
Interestingly, the use of America as a chosen liberator for other
nations has become confused in the modern era, causing policy
makers to remain somewhat unsure in responding to the new
threat of terrorism. Instead of having a “single, terrifying antagonist” to fight against, the United States is left with dispersed
organizations that are not formally affiliated with any single
country.10 The attack on Afghanistan and Iraq symbolized the
attempts of the United States to locate an enemy when one was
not easily found. The traditional justification of American intervention, which coincides with America’s role as a liberator, has
failed to stand up after the U.S. invasion of countries that cannot be fully blamed as aggressors. The duty of the United States
in the face of terrorism is yet to be fully identified, allowing it to
remain a fluctuating definition in an international community
that no longer has easily spotted adversaries. However, the concept of America as a missionary force for justifying international
intervention has provided the framework for American foreign
relations throughout the majority of the twentieth century.
The idea of America as a unique nation with a divine
mission has remained a large influence on American foreign
policy throughout the nation’s history. However, the notion
of America as separate from the Old World order, chosen for
geographical expansion and imbued with a duty of spreading its
belief system to the world has largely served as a justification system for more deeply rooted American motivations. Although the
desire for land and international influence in reality helped spur
United States foreign policy, American ideology relied on a moral
basis for expansion rather than these less saintly motivations.
Stephanson’s argument in Manifest Destiny remains powerful
when considering the ways that this exceptionalist ideology motivated thinking during times of American expansion. Ultimately,
however, destinarian thought served as an effective way of justifying United States actions in an international community often at
odds with American expansionist policy.
10Ibid., 125.
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Seventy-nine Cents, Plus Tax
Amy Mayo Townsley
Like most moms, my life is ruled by the clock. And, like most
moms, I’m usually running a little late.
School for my youngest begins at 8:20, which means
I need to drop her off by 8:10 if she is going to get in any
good playground time before the line-up bell rings. However,
if drop her off before 8:00 there is no adult supervision, so I
have a ten-minute window Monday through Friday mornings.
If I time this right and luck is on my side, I will arrive at the
university where I go to school in time to get a decent parking
spot. This particular morning, luck is not on my side; I have a
good hike between my car and my first class.
As I pass by the campus pond, a gang of geese approach. The tallest one has a bump on one side of his bill—my
left, his right; he is the spokesman. “Uh-nck,” he says confidently.
“Uh-nck,” a few of his followers murmur in agreement.
“I have nothing for you,” I apologize. “I’ll come back
later. I promise. I’m good for it.” As I walk away, I notice that
some of the rank and file take a few uncertain steps forward,
but none pass the spokesman, who stands stoic, meeting my
eyes with his.
I run carpool later that day. After dropping off the last
kid, I notice that there is about a half hour before my oldest is
due at her babysitting gig.
I decide to make good on my earlier promise. I pull
into a convenience store, buy a soda for myself and a snack for
the kids, then hunt for food appropriate for water fowl. I pass
on the white bread, affixed with a sticker unashamedly declaring that yes, they would charge three dollars and forty-nine
cents were anyone to be so stupid to actually buy bread from
a convenience store. I pass on crackers and chips for the same
reason before grabbing a bag of pretzels.
I have no idea if geese like pretzels, but, for seventynine cents, they are gonna try.
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I don’t tell my bewildered kids what we are doing as
we drive onto campus. They assault me with unanswered questions as they follow me out of the car.
I see the spokesgoose—I know him by his size and the
bump on his bill (my left, his right). As I approach, he pokes
up his head. “Uh-nck?” he asks.
“I told you I’d be back.” I wave the bag of pretzels
seductively.
“Who are you talking to?” my oldest asks.
“My friends.” I hold out the open bag. “Want to feed
them?”
As my daughters and I begin to mete out the pretzels,
we are swarmed. Ducks, seagulls, and pigeons materialize,
forming a greedy ring of feathers and sharp beaks. By far the
most aggressive are the geese—when my youngest accidently
steps on a pretzel, spokesgoose looks as if he is fully prepared
to go through her foot to get it. I move her as I admonish
him for his bad manners. He looks at me and says, “Uh-nck,”
which roughly translates to Hey, nothing personal, but a pretzel’s a pretzel, you know.
We quickly run out of pretzels, so I upend the bag,
spilling crumbs on the ground. This distracts a few, for a moment. “Run for your lives!” I tell my girls.
We run for the car, laughing. As we reach the van, my
youngest yells out, “This is the best time of my life!” which my
cynical teenager remarks is highly unlikely, as we have done
many things far more grand than feeding geese.
Maybe, I say, but now is now, so now wins.
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Dickens, Willis and Bogart
Kory Wood
Though lacking in flair and panache, Sally’s beau spent the bulk of his cash To offer her flowers. Sadly, their floral powers Served only to give her a rash. “So, like, yesterday, I’m at work, right?” gabbed the skinny,
big-haired blonde across the whirring treadmills of the college
gym.
Her friend, a brunette in pink booty shorts, inspected
her fingernails while parking on an exercise bike. “Uh huh.
Right.”
“And I’m just sitting there at my desk, taking calls,
and then this HUGE bouquet of flowers gets delivered. I
mean, at least a hundred roses, right?” Loud smacks of gumchewing popped out of Big Hair’s mouth as she moseyed
down the
electric belt.
Booty Shorts leaned back and held her arms together
to make sure her tan was evenly distributed. “Right. Geez,
that’s huge. So?”
“So, I look at the card, and it says ‘To Ashley: Happy
Valentine’s Day.’ And I’m all, ‘Yeah, right!’ Jerk. I mean, he
didn’t even bother to write anything special on the card at all,
and there were so many flowers, I couldn’t even carry them
out to my car.”
“Ugh! What a creep.” Booty Shorts stood and fiddled
with some controls on a treadmill before starting a slow pace.
“And,” Big Hair said with pointed emphasis, “I had
to get one of my bosses to help me take the flowers out, and
ohmygosh, it was so embarrassing, and I was so ticked off at
him. I just left the flowers there. Guys are such jerks.” Booty Shorts rolled her eyes. “I know! Like, my husband comes home with a big box of chocolates and a necklace,
and two tickets to see Carrie Underwood, and he thinks he’s
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so amazing and impressive, but I know all he wanted was for
me to make out with him.”
“Typical male horn dog,” said Big Hair. “What did you
say?”
“So I was just, like, ‘Thanks, hon.’ And then I just went
back to doing my homework.” Booty Shorts leaned her head
back and laughed. “When are guys going to start being original? Chocolates and jewelry? I mean, what is this, the 1950s?
I swear, sometimes, I’m married to a caveman. How primitive
can you get?” I sat fifteen feet away on an exercise bike, my mouth
open like a trout’s, and my legs robotically and slowly pumped
the pedals as I listened to the two girls on the treadmills behind me.
I didn’t know how to react. Sweat poured down my
brow, and it wasn’t coming from the workout.
Did all women think like this? Surely, there were
women out there less hard to please. If not, what was a single
college kid like me supposed to do?
Was I doomed to blunder aimlessly through a Sahara
of indifferent women? Would I be forever a clueless buoy
bobbing in a sea of nerds, arms and legs paddling frantically,
gasping for breath?
And what would happen when I did come to be attached to one of these women? Would I be stuck forever, rolling the stone of offerings up the hill of the unsatisfied and the
disappointed? Big Hair and Booty Shorts walked off, texting and
watching themselves in the wall mirrors. After they left, I sat
and contemplated the ineptitudes of my gender.
Sure, we men start wars, pillage villages, and corrupt
governments, but I am reasonably sure that never, not once,
in the history of our modern civilization, has a man asked
a woman to drive across town to get him a strawberry-kiwi
frozen yogurt from, “you know, that one green convenience
store, by the church-thing, but take it back and get me a new
one because this one is too melty and it was from the wrong
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place anyway. It’s by the church-thing, darnit! And there’s a
stoplight by one of the corners. Just go get it!”
“Hey, are you okay? You were breathing really hard.”
I blinked the sweat out of my eyes and noticed a large
guy in a muscle T-shirt a few feet away from me, staring suspiciously.
“And you were talking out loud about frozen yogurt,”
he said, with one eyebrow raised. I noticed him casually heft
a barbell in one hand, as if he were worried he might need to
use it to defend himself.
My calves burned from the effort of mindless pedaling.
I ran a hand across my forehead.
“I’m okay, sorry,” I said. “And I was just wheezing.
It’s…” I stopped as I looked at his biceps, which were so big
someone could build resort hotels on them. “It’s a form of
breathing. For nerds. Not something you would know about.”
He nodded in dismissive comprehension, then set the
weight down and moved away to another station.
I thought about rotating to the treadmill, but my
wheezing was increasing, so I headed home to get ready for
my date. I had a date that night with Sarah Stonewall. I’m still
not sure how it happened. I’d known her for years, since high
school, even. Extremely pretty girl, with a smile that would
unite the Middle East. And friendly, too. One time, she’d
dropped her pencil in the hallway, and at least seven of us had
thrown ourselves to the floor after it, our heads resonating like
the clacks of wooden wind chimes as they collided. She graciously thanked all of us as we fought to hand it back to her.
We’d all had crushes on her growing up, but we’d also
always felt our chances with her were about as likely as the
chance of her walking into our after-school chess club and
asking to watch us play a rousing match.
She and I were relatively close acquaintances. More
like English literature buddies, actually. She sat in front of me
in AP English, and we’d bonded over the fact that neither of
us had read Great Expectations, but we’d seen the movie and
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done just fine on the test. That was pretty much it. Our only
connection, but I’d milked it as far as it would go.
“Hey, Sarah, how about that Charles Dickens?” I
would casually shout as I passed her in the hallway. “Pretty
great, eh? Ha ha ha ha. Because neither of us read it, remember?”
She would always smile politely. “Yeah. That’s right,
you. See you in class!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha,” I would laugh, wishing the
school carpet would open up and suck me into the fiery bowels of the earth. “Yeah. Charles Dickens. See you!”
That was pretty much the extent of my relationship
with Sarah through high school, and even into college. But
I’d never thought of trying anything more courageous than a
Dickens allusion. Besides, she’d had the same boyfriend for
years. Donny Millsap.
Blech. Donny Millsap.
Donny was that guy with the puka shells and expertly
shaggy hair who sat with his acoustic guitar in the hallway,
or on the hood of his car, singing wimpy, introspective, sappy
positive songs in a lyrical tenor voice. Girls ate that kind of
thing up, but we hated him and his stupid perfect hair and his
flip flops and his effortless flirtations. Donny and Sarah had
always been Donny and Sarah, and to our knowledge, that
could never change.
But I found myself at a party one night and, miraculously, she was there, too. The miracle of her presence was only
trumped by the miracle of her single presence. Donny wasn’t
there.
Sarah looked pretty unhappy. Her eyelids were
splotchy and she kept her arms folded tightly around herself,
looking supremely uncomfortable.
And suddenly, I sensed a change in the air.
Now, before you judge what I did next, let me explain
some laws of nature to you. First off, in the wild, pack hunters don’t usually go for the strongest animal. They poke at the
herd’s fringes until they can successfully expose the weak, sick
animal. There were dozens of hyenas nipping at the heels of
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this wounded gazelle, and one of us was going to bring her
down. Why not me?
I rehearsed my lines for several minutes, carefully editing my delivery as I watched the other hyenas nibble, then
walk away. Feeling sufficiently prepared, I walked up to her
and delivered my brilliant greeting.
“Sarah! How about that Charles Dickens?”
Damn it.
She forced a smile. “Hey, you.” She turned back to
the crowd, wrapping her arms back around herself, and I felt
the icy grip of rejection wrapping its bony fingers around my
ambitions. No! Wait! Give me another chance!
“So, how’s Donny doing?”
Sarah looked back at me, hugging herself even tighter.
“You haven’t heard?” she asked, her eyes beginning to
tear up. “We…we…” Her lip was quivering now, like a flag in
the wind. “We broke up.”
My brain grinned wide, but I managed to keep it off
my face.
What happened next was a long series of consoling,
shoulder patting, intense, sympathetic looks, and apologizing
for the grievous wrongs a member of my gender had inflicted
upon her.
Needless to say, I walked out of that party with a
phone number and a date. I normally spent too much time preparing for dates.
Dating, for me, always felt like trying to sell an old car. Sure,
the tires are bald, and when the engine accelerates it sounds
like a rhinoceros giving birth, but if you give it a lot of room
to get going, it runs just fine.
My first problem lay in fashion. Clothes were not a
thing in which I was well versed. Most of what I wore was
purchased with the intent of hiding me behind the skinnier, more athletic guys like Donny: guys with abs (I’ve been
told that all people have these “abs,” but I think they’ve been
genetically bred out of my family), guys with tans (sometimes,
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dents), and guys who used every excuse (I mean every excuse,
including going out to grab the mail) to walk around in public
without their shirts on.
Other big guys know what I’m talking about. Large
males like me only get two fashion choices: the dark-colorsmerging-with-the-rest-of-humanity-vertical-stripes look, or
the Hawaiian-shirt-party-guy-self-deprecation-watch-meeat-a-whole-pizza look. That’s it. You either get to blend in or
stand out.
But beware, because once you pick the Hawaiian shirt,
you can never go back. Look what happened to John Belushi.
To prepare for a date, I would stand in front of the
mirror and hold each clothing item up to effectively analyze
its wooing quotient.
Rugby shirt? The high white collar made my head look
a snow cone. No go.
Slacks and dress shirt, no tie? Eh. I looked like a realtor.
Hawaiian shirt? Sweet Angel of Mercy, no. Not yet.
I ended up going with the ultra-safe, if possibly bland
and sterile polo-and-jeans combo. Couldn’t go wrong there. I
laid them down on the bed and showered.
While in the shower, I tried to construct the Supreme
Date, a date where Sarah would fall instantly in love with me.
A date where we would end the night snuggling on her front
porch while watching a statue of Donny Millsap being burned
in effigy.
I decided on the traditional dinner-and-a-movie format. Again, safe, but with plenty of opportunities to talk (and
a few opportunities for some incidental elbow-touching).
But as I scoured my body with Irish Spring, the conversation of the two girls in the gym rang through my head.
What if Sarah thought I was unoriginal? I didn’t think she
was that fickle, but was I really confident enough to gamble
my chances?
I thought about which movie to see. Every option
led me to a horrible ending where Sarah would give me the
same look she gave me in the hallway every time I mentioned
Dickens. Billy the Fish Saves Christmas? Too kiddy. Camp
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Slaughterhouse IV? Too gory. A Summer of Reflection? Too intellectual.
I went with the latest romantic comedy. The reviews
said it was harmless and happy. I bought the tickets online.
By then, it was 3:30. I wasn’t supposed to pick her up for four
more hours. I worried, fretted, fussed, re-ironed, daydreamed,
sweated, combed my hair, uncombed it, stuffed myself silly, regretted it, shot free throws, ironed my shirt again, and noticed
that only two hours had passed. Wonderful. I showered again,
scrubbing the Irish Spring into my pores so hard that I lost
my calluses.
I then changed into my pristine, carefully selected
outfit, and lay down, width-wise, across my bed, my head
brushing up against the wall and the soles of my feet flat on
the ground. I lay there in silence with my arms folded limply
across my stomach, and I stared at patterns in the ceiling for
the full last hour, glancing at the clock every five minutes.
Eventually, my daydreams overcame me.
I woke up twenty minutes later when the phone rang.
I answered. “Hey….Yeah!” It was Sarah! “Yeah, I’m way excited!
Have you seen that new Jennifer Aniston movie yet?...Good,
good….Well, I’m great, uh, how are…. Yeah… You………….
Oh!… You and Donny…No! Well, that’s…that’s so good for
you two…………Oh, uh huh… That’s awesome, he’s such a
lucky guy. I hope he realizes what…….You’re going to that
movie tonight with him?…No, no, that’s fine. You two just go.
I don’t want to intrude……. Yeah, yeah, I like talking to you,
too….Sure, any time you need someone to listen, just give me
a….. Oh, is that him on the other line?…No, no, you’re fine.
Have fun at the movie! I’ll, uh, I’ll see you, uh, around campus…Monday…No, it’s okay! Really! I’ll talk to you later…
Okay, bye… Bye...” I sat there on the edge of my bed, hunched over, staring at the left toe of my shoe for what seemed like days, the
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phone held limply in my upturned right hand, draped over
the side of the mattress.
I spent another hour in reflection, silently going over
my good old mental checklist of personal character flaws and
odd-looking physical features. I spent extra time checking
“lack of abs” and “spontaneous wit deficiency” and “Dickens
obsession,” just to make the process of recognizing my own
gross ineptness more painful. I spent the next two hours watching a showing of Die
Hard on TV while spackling the holes in my emotional sheetrock with plaster of chocolate ice cream. As I watched Bruce
Willis turn German terrorists into human wall art, I thought,
‘Wouldn’t it be great to be as direct as Bruce?’
I became more occupied with my ice cream, and
subsequently didn’t notice when Die Hard ended and turned
into Casablanca. Where there once was Bruce Willis, walking
across glass with his bare feet, there was now Humphrey Bogart, walking into the Moroccan desert. I had a quick conversation with myself.
“You can change it, if you want,” I said.
“Oh, you know, whatever. This is fine, if you want to
watch it,” I replied.
“Well, either way is fine. It’s up to you.”
“Okay, I guess we can just keep watching it. No big
deal.”
And I did.
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Fleeting Memories
Logan Cox
Withered posters litter the walls, but they still cling to
life. Albums that inspired are blanketed with dust. The radio
that blared is useless on the desk. The guitar idles in the corner.
The red and white snowboard tilts against the colorless wall.
Even the light bulb is dim. The light departs from this earth to
wherever wasted energy goes.
The boy collapses on the exposed mattress and ignores
it all. Items bought for happiness that fled. Materials abandoned because the future is too hard to see. He looks at the
ceiling fan and watches as blades slice air. The dim bulb muddies the clarity of the mirror. He shuffles to the light switch
and turns it off. He doesn’t want his family to see. He latches
himself to the ceiling fan. He’s too heavy. His weight rips the
ceiling fan off. Failure.
Darkness softens failure. He stands up and checks out
the door. He doesn’t want his friends to see. Spencer stalls
for another chance and stumbles around his room. Blindness
causes him to topple his guitar from its stand. He tears posters from his wall and crumples them in the corner. He crashes
into his nightstand sending the radio smashing into his snowboard, scarring them both. He looks into the mirror and sees
who he is. Darkness demands distorted thoughts, so Spencer
sees his distortion. He looks at the corner nook of the sliding
mirror and decides. It’s time. He hooks himself up and takes
one last glance. The radio is wrecked. The snowboard is scarred.
No way to buff that out. The posters will never straighten, and
the guitar will never play. The dust on the albums will reappear.
He tightens the rope. Memories flee the room with
gravity and a tight noose.
I open the door and switch on the light. I see the swaying body. A pallid face and swollen tongue stick out to mock
me. Eyes that see nothing look at me while I plead to ears
that can’t hear. I turn the light off. Hello, darkness. Goodbye,
brother.
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FICTION
Writing great fiction and also getting the recognition it deserves is harder than it has ever been. In today’s world, it is so
easy to find a million different stories on the Internet that are
published by anyone with a mind to do it. How can a great
story get noticed when there are a million good stories to obscure it? That is why Metaphor has always striven to provide
this amazing opportunity for undergraduate students with
true talent to be published, and never have I seen a fiction
story in Metaphor that did not measure up to high standards.
Not wanting to break the tradition of this book, my staff and
I carefully considered the pieces that we chose to be published
in this section. This was difficult, because Weber State has an
astounding collection of gifted writers, and we could never
have put in all our favorites or this book would be entirely fiction! However, I think that with the large staff on fiction this
year, we were able to choose a variety of literature that reflects
the variety of the university. Our hope is that there is a story
in here for everyone, and that Metaphor has many more successful years to come. Enjoy!
Editor
Briana Zike
94
Staff
Quincy Bravo
David Harrison
Michelle Paul
Aloha Morris
Amy Mayo Townsley
Amy Higgs
Tamara Sisler
Jacob Ericksen
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Chocolate
Alicia Glascock
Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the loss of social and mental
functioning. It starts with simple lapses of memory, like where the
plastic baggies are in the kitchen. These first signs of the disease are
similar to the effects of old age, so they oftentimes get overlooked.
The door rings. It is one o’clock. Tuesday, I think. My granddaughter is coming to get me for our weekly trip to Baskin
Robbins. I have Alzheimer’s, so Beth thinks I need structure.
Sometimes it gets annoying, but I don’t mind today. I love
seeing Alicia. We are perfectly fine just being with each other.
She doesn’t expect me to talk. I don’t expect her to. I like that.
I lose words lately. I hate that. People come up to
me, and I forget what I am supposed to say. Hello? Yellow?
Running? I know Beth doesn’t know what to do when that
happens too. So she just talks for me. I used to try to talk for
myself. Now I just let her.
“Hi Granddad! Are you ready?”
“Oh boy!”
That’s all that comes out now. It works for just about
everything. If I say it enough they think I know what is going
on. It makes them feel more comfortable with this.
We get into her car. I bought it for her when she graduated high school. I’m glad I did. She looks good in it. We
look good in it. I wish she would let me drive though. I miss
driving. I miss my manhood. They don’t understand how hard
it is to sit in the passenger seat. Every day. I know exactly how
to get there. I may get lost going to a friend’s house, but I sure
as hell know how to get to Baskin Robbins.
“It’s pretty hot today,” she says.
“Yep.”
She parks. I’m glad. Her driving worries me. But I
can’t tell her that. I wish they would let me drive.
She lets me open the door for her. Most people open
the door for me. I know they mean well. But, it sure makes
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me feel like I can’t do anything. I have Alzheimer’s disease, it’s
not like I’m in a wheelchair and can’t walk.
My favorite girl is working today. She reminds me of
Beth when we met. I saw her at Jim’s Soda Shop and knew I
had to talk to her, but she was with all her girlfriends. I stayed
a little later than I should have, Father needed the car. But I
just had to talk to her. She was so beautiful. Her laughter, oh,
her laughter.
“Granddad, what kind do you want?”
“Chocolate.”
Always chocolate. I hate chocolate. I don’t know why
I get it.
I should have got it in a cup. This cone is so hard to
eat. I know I look like a damn baby with all this ice cream
melting all over my hands. She gets a napkin and helps me
clean up. I should be helping her, whoever she is.
People with Alzheimer’s tend to repeat things. Repeat things.
Repeat things. Their life is a constant struggle. Things become
lost, and they must find them immediately. This sometimes can
lead them to strange places—like the neighbor’s deck at two in the
morning looking for their belt, not once, but four times, in one
week. The caregivers learn to adapt to the constant changes by having an alarm sound when the outside doors open.
I walk into Grammy and Granddad’s house. I hear
someone in the kitchen, so I head over to see who it is.
“Hi, Granddad. Are you ready to go?”
“Oh, boy.”
Today must be a bad day. He is struggling with an
empty glass in his hand and all the cabinet doors are open. I
close them before Grammy comes in. She just hates when he
leaves them open like that.
“Do you want some water?”
I turn on the faucet and hope he walks over here with
the glass and doesn’t put it down. He would do something
like that. He walks slowly. I wait for him to get his water, and
go find Grammy and tell her we are leaving. Before I leave the
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kitchen, she comes in with his wallet. We have to put it in a
basket, on his dresser, in his room, as soon as he gets home—
every time. Otherwise he loses it, even if it is in his pocket. So
to avoid the daily wallet search, we just put it in the basket.
“Here you go, Bill,” Grammy says, holding out the
wallet.
He looks at it, and doesn’t grab it.
She waves it a little. “Here’s your wallet.”
I think he just had to figure out what it was. With
that, he walks over, forgetting the glass he barely filled with
water, and puts it in his pocket.
“Let’s go get our ice cream; I’ve been waiting all day,”
I say. This is a lie. I kind of dread our Tuesday trips. I never
know how he will be, and what we will do. I’m scared that
something will happen while I’m alone with him, and I won’t
be able to help. What if he falls, or worse, needs to go to the
bathroom? I can’t help him.
I help him down the stairs and into my car. As we drive
to Baskin Robbins, I try to think of something to talk about.
Our conversations are pretty much one-sided, but I like to
make sure he can at least say something back. It’s less awkward
that way. I go on about school. He likes hearing about that,
and always tells me how he wishes he would have graduated.
He only went to college for a year before he joined the Air
Force and fought in WWII. He made such a name for himself,
yet he still wishes he had that degree. It’s conversations like
this that make me want to graduate—even if they are onesided. It is important to him, so it is important for me.
He guides me to the store. I know how to get there,
but I let him help. He needs help with almost everything,
so when he can do something I let him. Even, if it is a little
pointless.
We pull into the handicap stall up front, and I help
him unbuckle his seat belt, before he gets a chance to do it
himself. I find it easier if I unbuckle him, because otherwise
he gets frustrated when he can’t do it. Then he stays frustrated
for the rest of our trip, and I don’t know what to do to make
him feel better. We go inside and I order rainbow sherbet. I
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ask what he wants, knowing that it will be chocolate. He used
to like other flavors as well, but the last couple months it’s
always been chocolate.
I grab more napkins than I normally would. I can be
messy as it is, but Granddad is even worse. Together, we leave
a big sticky mess. I purposely try to be a bit on the messy side,
so he doesn’t feel so bad for needing me to help him clean up.
Lapses of memory increase over time, becoming more noticeable.
They may start to forget to close doors, or not put on shoes when
going outside in the snow. Speech becomes simple. Physical activities—labored. Eventually, the disease may make them forget how
to eat. Or breathe.
Alicia should be here soon to take Bill. I should get
his wallet ready, before he realizes he doesn’t have it. I go to
his dresser, and pick his wallet out of the basket. I make sure
there is a twenty in it. I can’t let him have any credit cards
because they always get lost. He really doesn’t need his wallet
all the time, nor the money in it. But, it makes him nervous if
he doesn’t, and so he gets it every day.
He walks in, holding a flashlight.
“What are you doing, Bill?”
“Oh, boy….boy…oy.”
“You don’t need that flashlight to go get ice cream. I’ll
take it.”
He struggles giving it over.
“Bill, give me the flashlight.”
He still holds onto it. He can be so adamant at times. I
don’t know why he wants this flashlight so badly. I bribe him
with his wallet. He finally relents, and leaves the room—wallet in hand. Now, I am left holding a flashlight I don’t know
where he got, and am going to have to figure out where to put
up. Getting my husband ready to leave the house takes hours
now, because of moments like this. I wish he would just not
get into things. I’m tired of closing all the doors, and fighting
to take things away from him.
I hear my granddaughter opening the front door. It’s
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about time, I don’t know how much more I can take this morning.
He is sitting on the couch, searching for something.
What has he lost now?
“What can I help you find?”
He looks down at his pocket, and pats it. He lost his
wallet.
He just had it, how can he possibly lose it that fast?
Alicia walks in, holding his wallet.
“This was on the floor, by the door.”
I’m so relieved. I did not feel like searching the whole
house again.
“There you go, Bill. You are going to go with Alicia and
get some ice cream.”
She takes him by the arm as he shuffles to the door. I sit
down, only to see all the cabinet doors open.
Sometimes, no matter how many times they are shown where their
belt is, they will forget, and try to find it. This sometimes can lead
them to strange places. Like the neighbor’s deck at two in the morning looking for their belt, not once, but four times, in one week.
That girl is here again. I know I know her. She gives me
a hug and calls me Granddad. I wait for Beth to say her name.
Alicia. That’s right, ice cream girl. I wish I could drive her
somewhere. She walks me over to the passenger seat and puts
on my seat belt.
I point to the next road. I’m not allowed to drive there.
At least I can tell her how to get there. She turns. She lets me
help her. I’m important. I sure as hell can get to Baskin Robbins.
“Did you see that dog, Granddad? It kind of reminds
me of Lucy. I miss her. She was a good dog”
I wish I knew who Lucy was. “Yup.”
She keeps talking about Lucy. I think she was my dog,
I’m not sure.
What’s a dog?
“Oh, boy.”
I can’t get this. Stupid. Seat belt off. Why do they make
things so challenging for me? Girl helps me, and smiles. I take
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my time getting inside. Trying to think of the ice cream I like.
There are so many ice creams. It’s scary. Confronted
with choices. When you have no choice at all.
“Granddad, should we get you a chocolate one?”
Chocolate. It’s always chocolate. I don’t know if I like
chocolate. I guess so.
She can’t find her cash. I pay. We looked all morning
for my wallet. I’m glad. We found it so I could pay for us. I’m
not completely. Useless.
We sit and eat our ice cream. I don’t want to make a
mess. I just let the cone melt on my hand. Wrong thing to do.
Girl has to help me clean this. I look like a damn baby.
Speech becomes simple. Physical activities—labored.
Bill fell last week. The hospital wants to send him to a
rehabilitation center. I don’t know if that will be good for him.
It will be too new and different. He has a hard enough time
surviving here, where he knew where everything belonged at
one time.
I think leaving this house would kill him. He practically built this thing. It took him the full summer before Billy
was born to make the deck I always wanted, just so we could
sit outside with our baby and see the sunset. He was always
doing things like that for me. And he still loves that sunset.
We spend our nights sitting at the coffee table just looking at
the beautiful colors outside our window. I can’t take that away
from him, away from us.
He has been sleeping an awful lot since the fall, and he
hardly eats. In fact, he doesn’t eat at all. Since the fall, he forgot how to hold a spoon or fork. He hasn’t been using a knife
for quite a while now. I give him a spoonful of something
and he just keeps his mouth shut and moves his head. Breaks
my heart. I can get him to drink some water, but even that is
small and labored, since he has forgotten how to swallow for
the most part.
I sit in the chair next to the bed reading, listening
to his breathing and waiting for my granddaughter to come
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back. Her family is staying with us now to help me. Instead of
going out to get ice cream, she brings it here. Hopefully he’ll
eat it and get something in his system. He always seems to eat
chocolate.
Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by the loss of social and mental
functioning.
There was a line at Baskin Robbins. You would think
they would know what I want by now. I’ve only been going
there every Tuesday for months, and the past month has been
simple—just a pint of chocolate to go. No cones to deal with.
No special add-ins. Just chocolate. Plain and simple.
Things aren’t looking good. I feel so uncomfortable
here. I don’t know what to say to anyone. I know what not to
say—how are you? Because, good is a lie, and I don’t really
want to hear how they really are. I can see it. Granddad has
been in bed for the past week straight. The nurses put a catheter in, so he doesn’t even have to get up to go to the bathroom. Or rather, we don’t need to walk him to the bathroom,
since he can’t walk on his own anymore.
I sit down in the chair next to the bed. His lips are
chapped, and I can see his ribs through his shirt and blanket.
He looks like a breathing skeleton. I reach out and hold his
hand. He only moves his eyes to see me, and I smile.
“Hi, Granddad,” I whisper.
He slightly squeezes my hand tighter. If I wasn’t
looking for some sort of response, I might have missed it.
He opens his mouth, but no audible word comes out. Just
mumbled sounds. He has completely forgotten how to talk. I
still think he knows what we are saying, but he just can’t say
anything back that we can understand.
I grab the ice cream tub from the floor and show him.
He just looks at me. So I grab the spoon and scoop some on
it. I slowly put it to his lips, but he doesn’t open them. After a
little coaxing, his lips open slightly. I put what ice cream I can
get in the small gap of his mouth. But he starts coughing, and
making a gurgling noise.
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I panic and try to sit him upright. Even though he has
lost a lot of weight, I still struggle moving him. He is basically
dead weight. He continues to cough. It gets worse, and he
starts gagging. I call someone in to help me. My parents and
I have been staying here since the fall so someone was there
at all times in case something happened. Well, this was that
something. And it’s all my fault.
Everyone comes rushing in to his side. I slowly get out
of their way. I watch as they try to calm him down by giving
him Ativan. I can’t take any more of his panicked coughing
and chaos, and I walk out of the room. Looking back, the
chocolate melts on the floor.
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Deadlines
David Glen (Harrison)
So I sit here, waiting for nothing as usual. There’s the blackedout hum of electronic devices all around, and I take a moment
to think about cancer. There’s a better word for it, at least for
me. It’s called hope. There’s a slow, agonizing death waiting
out there somewhere if only I can get my hands on it. There’s
a girl sitting at the table next to me pouting into her coffee
and I want to break out into shrieking laughter every time
she sniffs at her little tragedy. Her blue eyes almost melt into
aqueous webs every time she leans over to blow in her cup.
There’s apparently something about living a life of overstimulation that dulls the senses into ridiculous, passionless plays
made of someone’s perceived expectation of human reaction.
Every decision made in public has turned into a rose ceremony without the sincerity. If I could vote someone off the
island, it would be me.
I’m waiting for a man to come in and sit next to me.
He’s supposed to abide by my wishes and remain silent, but
he never does. Invariably he wants to know how I’m doing
these days, but he’s never satisfied with an honest answer. If
the response isn’t “tired” or “hanging in there” or “been better”
or “bad,” he asks me if I’m okay until he’s satisfied that I’m
not. The truth is that I’ve never felt better; but I don’t plan on
telling him that. If I’m not recovering from something he gets
worried. He’d ask me if I was drinking again, or if I’ve started
using drugs to hide the pain of my existence. I’ll give him
what he wants. When he sits down, I’ll tell him that I’ve been
nursing a hangover by the age-old “hair of the dog” technique.
I’ll tell him that some girl, maybe the one sitting at the next
table with the snot lines on her sleeve, has broken my heart
and that I’m thinking about killing myself again. I tried telling him that my dad died a couple of weeks ago, but he didn’t
get the joke. It’s such a burden these days to not have a million things going wrong at once.
I used to come in here a lot. I almost married one of
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the waitresses. I think it was around that time that I developed
a short attention span for faux distress. Shortly after that, she
was living with some guy, inflicting bruises and cutting herself,
then using her wounds to attract new victims; it’s classic predatory behavior. Despite the ridiculous nature of such a pursuit,
she knew her audience. If a man doesn’t walk up to a girl like
that, tell her that she deserves better from whoever they assume did this to her and leave his name and phone number on
a napkin, she’s not interested. I give her full marks for creativity, even if she is a parasite. I couldn’t feel too superior to these
guys, her suitors; I used to be one of them. I suppose the bright
side is that she never accused me of anything; something about
having “always treated [her] well.” The problem was that she
was special to me. She was, sadly, so used to the contrary that
she was impossible to please without going against my nature.
I don’t have it in me to treat a woman with disrespect. I’m just
not wired that way. Sorry. It would have been one hell of a wedding though. I almost went through with it just to have Car
Bomb and Frank Zappa played at the reception. Oh well. C’est
la vie. I suppose that I would rather be miserable alone than be
miserable with her. But today is a good day.
The fake walnut/pine/oak/Formica/whatever table was
suffering from disorientation, likely caused by repeated use as
a last bastion of support to the downtrodden. It’s a fad; the
lifestyle of “feel sorry for me so I can feel better.” Simple economics: If people are happy, they don’t need to be distracted.
If people don’t need to be distracted, business suffers and the
terrorists win.
I steel myself for what I am about to do, as I know a
priori that it is a mistake. I sit next to the hunched over mass of
34-C’s and eyeliner. “I couldn’t help but notice that something
is bothering you.” Do understand it’s not only a female show of
melancholic plumage. It’s equal opportunity call and response
assimilation. Depression and maladjustment are the crux of any
functional social system. The trick is to get this woman to spit
out her fleeting drama and get her to smile. Once she smiles,
she will naturally continue to smile. The important thing is to
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ing pulled over the cliff they’re trying to draw attention to.
“I’m just lonely,” she tells me, still leaking all sorts of
fluid all over herself and the tablecloth. She barely notices me;
apparently she had been expecting something like this. I guess
some people plan their breakdowns. Where’s the fulfillment in
falling apart where no one can see it?
I put a presumptuous hand on hers and she doesn’t
flinch or look at me. “Why’s that?”
“Everyone I know is either dead or lying,” she says,
finally looking at me. I know the feeling. “I must be quite a
sight. I’m sorry. What is your name?”
I make something up.
“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Tiffany.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Tiffany.”
“I heard you. I meant I’m sorry that you were given a
name which guarantees you will never be taken seriously.”
She laughed. The trick to helping people is maintaining boundaries. This is where I have the problem. She’s crying,
and she’s beautiful. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. If I get
sucked in, I might have to love this girl. I have an addiction
to fixing people, well, doing whatever I can to help them fix
themselves. It’s got a stronger pull than alcohol ever did. It’s
a curse. I’m not attracted to this woman because she’s crying.
I’m attracted to her because she doesn’t see what I see. This is
my little tragedy, karmic relapse. Despite a firmly set foundation of misanthropy, I can’t help but let people on their little
secret. “You are beautiful,” I say finally. “What use does loneliness serve?”
“It gives me something to do. I guess you could say
that it’s a hobby of mine. I like to push people away until
they’re about to leave, then I do whatever I can to bring them
back.” It sounds pretty sadistic the way she says it.
“That sounds pretty sadistic.”
She sits up straight, her eyes half evaporated. “I’m
sorry, I don’t know you. We shouldn’t be having this conversation. My friends are almost here. If they see me with someone
else, they might be worried.”
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“Don’t you ever get tired of that?” I ask, sufficiently
astonished at how often thoughts become realities. Maybe I
should start thinking of something more useful.
“Every day until I don’t,” she says, removing her dampened pullover, revealing a shirt from Crystal City. “I get tired of
it until it’s not there anymore. It’s Addiction 101.”
“I see,” I say, gathering my cup and standing. “If you
ever decide that you’d like to not be lonely, I come in here a lot.
Since we both drink coffee, I think we may be able to justify
drinking it near each other.” I would hate myself if it wasn’t so
redundant.
“I think I’d like that.”
I nod some sort of approval and walk out of the shop. I
really don’t want to see my dad anymore. I’ll just call him and
tell him that I got called in to work. Even though I’m unemployed, he still seems to buy the excuse. He must think I’m off
somewhere smoking crack or injecting heroin into the vein
under my... That should tide him over.
On my way home, I stop in at the liquor store. That
woman with the ridiculous name is there buying tequila. I would
bother to question how this woman had gotten there before
I did, but she had been stalking me long enough to know my
routine. Today was the first time we had talked since the breakup. Generally, she would just follow me home and then go on
her way. I have a feeling that tonight was going to be different. I
hope this doesn’t mean that we’re getting back together...
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Roma
Shelly Sphar
It was late in the day when I found the old newspaper abandoned by the road. It was clearly discarded without any
thought just as I was. The paper would help start a fire which
would hopefully keep us warm for a night. As I was separating the crumpled pieces a black and white picture of a boy
caught my attention. I recognized those dark sorrowful eyes.
It wasn’t anyone that I had ever met but he was part of the
Roma family, a family of wanderers. I quickly skimmed over
the article, anger and resentment filled me as I read about our
predicament through a stranger’s eyes. The president of France
called Roma camps “a source of crime and prostitution.” A
source of crime! Is it a crime to live? Is it a crime to eat? The
article went on explaining how over 1,000 Roma had been
expelled. I was one of them.
In a rage I wadded up the article; the boy’s crumpled
face stared up at me as I threw it in the pile. I couldn’t look
away from the boy’s eyes as he quickly turned to ash. Is that
what is to become of us? Thoughts of the burning picture,
as well as our hopeless future kept me awake that night. My
growling stomach fueled the rage searing through my body.
That is when I decided that I was done waiting for my turn to
burn. I wasn’t going to take it anymore and with that thought,
exhaustion finally robbed me of all consciousness.
The next day I quietly slipped away and headed toward
the nearest town. I had walked great distances before but this
short road seemed to be the longest I had ever taken. When
I entered the town I continued to wander looking for food;
there was none to be had. Eventually I found a place to sleep
on a dark street.
The next night a Frenchman saw me and offered
me money for my services. I told him that I had no experience and he merely laughed and said that he had more than
enough for the both of us. Fear and disgust gripped me and I
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ding my head before I realized what I was doing. That night I
went through hell and the tall Frenchman was my guide.
The next morning I awoke weak, hurting and oddly
warm. I turned to see the pile of money lying next to my
soiled clothing. The Frenchman was nowhere to be seen. I
looked again at the small pile of money and my insides turned
to mush. Regret and anger filled me as I dressed. I hesitated a
moment before I tucked the money away. I practically ran to
get away from what I had done.
I spent the next couple of days searching for food,
ignoring the money in my pocket. I grew so delirious with
hunger that I didn’t even notice the fever that had overtaken
me. That is how the boy with dark sorrowful eyes found me. I
could feel the fire growing and I knew that I would soon turn
to ash as the boy from the black and white picture watched.
My time was short and I knew it. There was but one thing left
to do. I put my hand in my pocket and removed the small pile
of money. Without a word I placed the money in the boy’s
hand just before I let the fire consume me.
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The Ladybug
Trevor Wheelwright
“Look Mama, an alien!”
In the soft canyons of his hands, a ladybug moseyed
around, making sure to explore every crevice as he offered it to
me. I could see his small tongue poking out from where one
of his baby teeth fell out—he was stoked. I gave him my seal
of approval by playing along.
“What do you think? Is it here to eat our brains?”
“Probably!” he shouted and put the bug in my hand,
then ran off waving his arms and screaming. I used to hate
these things when I was his age; they freaked me out, but now
nothing fazes me. I’ve learned as a mother, I’m a disposal for
all things new to my child, who requires approval for his discoveries, but I’ll take this harmless little insect over sticky toys
or boogers any day.
He found another boy to play with, maybe a year older
than him; they started playing with the sand around them. He
had gone from space aliens to being king of ancient castles.
By the time we got home, it was likely we’d be forest rangers or cowboys. He was that perfect curious but naïve age. I
was watching him try to knight the other boy when I heard
a voice, small but deep, say, “Greetings.” I looked around,
but didn’t see anyone. I heard it again: “Excuse me, but…” I
looked down in the palm of my hand, astonished to see the
ladybug speaking proper English.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” the ladybug said, “but you
do realize that if we only ate human brains, it’s likely we’d
starve.”
My jaw dropped and I stared blankly. I couldn’t say a
word.
It coughed as though the silence was awkward and
said, “I’m kidding.”
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The Day that Mrs. Butterworth Died
Cynthia Balzomo
Opening the wooden cabinet door just a crack, I peered inside
its depths. The minimal amount of light that managed to filter
in highlighted her dark smiling face and hands clasped together in an almost nervous giggle. She appeared innocent enough,
but it was misleading and at the right moment, she would try
to make her escape. Slowly opening the door a little wider
in an attempt to retrieve the breakfast cereal, my suspicions
proved true. As soon as it opened, it spurred her into action
as the packed shelf she rested on tipped forward just enough
to fling Mrs. Butterworth off her perch. My superior reflexes
helped catch her in the downward flight. With a sigh of relief, I
put her on the counter and rummaged for the box of cereal on
the top shelf. It was the box with the athlete on it, a muscular,
yet feminine figure. Athletic and muscular, something I have
never been nor ever will be, but the cereal was supposed to be
good for me.
Opening the box and pouring its flaky contents into a
bowl that sat waiting on my small table, I poured the milk. The
pitter-patter on the outside of the small kitchen window let
me know that it was raining heavily. So much for the idea that
it never rained in southern California. Noticing that it was the
top of the hour, I turned the small radio on that Mrs. Butterworth now guarded with a smile.
A happy male voice came in sounding a bit too chipper. “In the news today, millionaire Dustan Franks said in an
attempt to have a little fun and help people, he will be leaving
a large sum of money somewhere in town. Anyone who finds it
gets to keep it. Well I guess people with a lot of money can do
anything they want. Hey Dustan, you can always leave it in my
mailbox. Anyway, the weatherman says there is a forty percent
chance of rain. So you may or may not want to bring those
umbrellas.”
In disgust I flipped it back off and sat down. “This just
proves that they don’t live in the same state.”
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My eyes scanned the small kitchen. It was just a small
one-bedroom apartment. The living room had just enough
room for a couch and a TV, and the kitchen had only three
small cabinets, besides the usual tan refrigerator and stove. It
was modest, but it was mine. This little sparse place proved
that there would be no more college roommates in a dorm, or
living at home with a nagging mother.
After finishing the cereal and putting the bowl in the
sink, I grabbed Mrs. Butterworth and put her back on the
shelf before quickly closing the door. “Better luck next time
old gal.”
My low heels clicked on the wet cement while hurrying to the bus stop. The rain had not let up and it ran off the
umbrella, which in reality proved little protection from the
semi-horizontal rain. At least the bus stop was enclosed and if
it proved to be a lucky day, some handsome man would be kind
enough to give me his spot. Well on second thought, forget
that; he would move over so I could sit next to him and flirt.
The traffic of the city whizzed by, splashing the dirty
water off the streets, and I found that the only protection
from them was to stay near the buildings. The sky was a
patchwork of grays and blacks, but it echoed the dirty city in
the distance with its tall threatening buildings.
Turning the corner, the sight of three people in business suits standing outside of the bus shelter interrupted my
thoughts. A lump of different dirty-colored rags sat on the
bench, obviously left from the night before. Other than that
it appeared to be empty. The men’s odd posture and nervous
tempting glances towards the bench tipped me off that something wasn’t right. On my approach, a pungent smell equivalent to a hundred dead rodents assaulted my nose and then a
low groan reached my ears. Of all things—a bum had taken
over my bench.
Andrew, the man next to me, shook his head. “Forget
it Sara. The stink will get into your clothes. It’s not worth it.”
As he finished the sentence my sometimes friend
Niesha, with her red umbrella that matched her skirt,
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approached the enclosure. Her nose wrinkled as she got
closer, but her smug smile told me that she was oblivious to
the world with the exception that she thought she had beaten
me and apparently everyone else to the bus bench. As soon as
she entered she stopped short, her high heels sliding a bit.
The lump of rags came alive as he propped himself up on
his elbow and glared at her. His dirty gray hair hung off his
head and his beard, just as dirty and tangled, helped enhance
his murderous look. “Get off my plane.” He moaned.
“Wha…” Niesha gasped and took a posture that one
gets when they come across a dead animal next to the curb
they are about to step off of.
“I said, get off my airplane!” His scream revealed the
absence of any teeth. He stood up with the dexterity I had
used that very morning in catching Mrs. Butterworth. His
clothes were nothing more than the rags that covered him.
At one time, they had probably been dark khaki pants, some
color of a T-shirt with an old army jacket. His movements
were too quick and the name on the jacket was too dirty to
make out.
Niesha hustled back out in the rain where Jimmy came
between her and the ragged remains of the man. It proved unnecessary, as the bum made no attempt to step any closer.
“Someone should do something,” I mumbled. “They
shouldn’t let people like him out on the street.”
The wild man looked around at us with fierce eyes that
seemed to speak in an unrecognized jumble before he went
back to his bench and sat down. He leaned forward with his
head in his hands and began to rock and groan some more.
“Don’t leave me, Stella.” He called out suddenly as Jack pulled
out his cell phone.
“Yeah, we need police to respond to…”
Just then, the bus pulled up and we all stepped back to
avoid the tidal wave of water. By the time we loaded into the
bus and sat down, I looked out the window to see the bum lying back down. Apparently, he had passed out with his mouth
gaping open.
“Poor guy.” A Hispanic man in a business suit that sat
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behind me shook his head.
“Maybe you should just put your syrup on a different
shelf,” Roberta told me as I sat in my cubicle. She was the
kind of woman who always had on just the right amount of
makeup.
“Then she would win.”
“Win? It’s a plastic container filled with pancake
syrup.” She eyed me. “You do know you’re having a battle of
wits with an inanimate object?”
“Of course.” I leaned back in my leather chair. “If I
move her to a different shelf it’ll throw my system off.”
“System, what system? Girl, I helped you unpack that
place.”
“Snacks and cereal belong on the top shelf, boxed food
on the second and seasonings on the bottom. There’s no other
place to put her since the bottom shelf isn’t tall enough and
the top shelf is too packed.”
“But the second shelf is too full. That’s why she keeps
falling out. Why not just put her on the counter or the table?”
I faked a shocked look at her mere suggestion. “Then
she will be exposed when she changes aprons. We both know
she doesn’t wear anything underneath.”
Roberta laughed. “You are an odd one.”
“Yeah well, it’s because of this spacious place with
a grand view of the beach.” I waved around my drab gray
cubicle before pointing at the calendar someone had forced
upon me.
“Are you going to see Robert tonight?” She changed
the subject.
“Oh… maybe?” Thinking of the relatively handsome
man from the third floor made me want to yawn.
“He’s a catch, Sara. What’re you thinking?” She waved
her hand at my boredom. “Nothing is good enough for you.”
“Beg your pardon. There are plenty of things that are
good enough for me.”
“Name one?”
My brain twisted, making me wonder why it had to
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work so hard. The lack of sleep obviously. “My computer.” I
turned my chair towards it and circled my arms around the
flat screen, speaking to it the way women always do to men in
the romance books. “You love me don’t you, Acer?”
Roberta chuckled before straightening out her dark
dress slacks and jacket. “You’re too much, girl.”
After work, I got off the bus and glanced over at the
bus stop. The vagrant was still there with two ash-colored
duffle bags streaked with black dirt. He had one open, but I
didn’t bother to try to see inside it. He couldn’t possibly have
anything of interest.
“Stella, come back,” he yelled.
Making it a point to walk faster, my thoughts drifted
to other things. Lucky for me it had stopped raining, though
the sky still hung low with clouds of assorted degrees of gray.
The only nice thing about the rain in California was that it
cut back on the smog. Sometimes the nasty haze would come
in as thick as rain clouds. Maybe it would continue to rain
and the sky will stay at least a little bit clean. Though I hate
getting wet, the thought delighted me until I remembered the
bum that had taken over the bus shelter. Well maybe he’ll be
gone by tomorrow.
Upon my arrival home, I checked the phone for messages and found one from Robert. It remained a mystery to
me why he insisted on calling my house phone when he had
my cell phone number.
That day he had almost caught me before entering the
elevator. He had worn that horrible salmon-pink shirt and
the tie of the same color. The one that looked like a bunch of
cut up salmon grouped together with one on top struggling to
come back alive whenever he moved. A group of people heading in the same direction had blocked his view, allowing my
escape.
“Hey, this is Robert…” Pressing the delete button
enabled me to bypass listening to his pleadings to ask me out.
There were better things to do, like making myself feel better
by watching the news.
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Day eight of the epic struggle with Mrs. Butterworth.
During the last week, she had gotten sneaky. For a couple of
days in a row she had sat patiently, seeming to behave. Then
yesterday, with the help of a box of macaroni and cheese, she
sprang at me, forcing me to catch her just a few inches from
the ground.
Today would not be her day either as I reached in to
pull her out, not even giving her a chance to win. This would
be the last day of the challenge however. I was going to finish
the box of cereal and had decided last night that she would
have a new home on the top shelf. In truth, enough was
enough of not only the game but also looking at those unseeing eyes and grin while catching her. Looking at the kitchen
clock, it dawned on me that it had stopped on three a.m.
“Damn it, I’ll miss the bus.” Just my luck; it left me
only enough time to throw everything back in the cupboards.
The bus driver saw me coming and held up the bus for
a moment for me to get on. Grateful, I sat down in the first
seat available and tried to catch my breath.
“Harold’s gone?”
“Huh?”
“Harold,” a man in clean overalls and dark hair that I
vaguely recalled from my stop repeated. “That was the name
of that homeless guy living in our bus shelter. He wasn’t there
yesterday or today. He’s not at the corner like before either.”
“On my corner? Hmmm, to tell you the truth I hadn’t
noticed.” Since the rain had stopped, who needed a bus shelter.
Besides, the smell had gotten so terrible in that shelter that it
probably wasn’t fit for man or beast. “Maybe he found a home,”
I tried to finish the conversation, but the man ignored me.
Turning my own eyes from the busy streets, I looked
out towards the city and saw the smog clinging to the buildings like a three-year-old had scribbled on a picture with a
gray crayon. It would be a good day to buy new shoes.
The feeling of melancholy made me skip out of work
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ert. He wouldn’t get another date out of me, but it remained
unforeseen just how to break it to him. He would be heartbroken after all. From the shopping center, I rode the bus
home and took note that the late afternoon news would be on
in just seconds. Finding the remote hidden in the recess of my
cranky, tired couch, I turned the TV on about the same time
the phone rang, causing me to pick it up without thinking.
“Sara?” Robert’s cool voice asked on the other end.
“Robert, I was just about to call you.”
“Yeah, well, no matter how many messages I leave you
never call me back, and you’re avoiding me at work.”
“No, we just keep missing each other.”
He sighed. “Look, there is no good way to put this,
and you won’t see me, so… here it goes. Maybe we should see
other people?”
“Are you breaking up with me?” My thoughts raced, no
guy had ever broken up with me before.
“Yeah, that is usually what it means.”
“Who is she?” I spit into the phone.
“What?”
“You heard me, who is she? Let me guess, Roberta
right? That dirty tramp always did have her eyes on you.” Of
course, it was Roberta; the wedding invitations would read,
Robert and Roberta, the names would be perfect together.
“Who?”
“Don’t you play games with me, fella,’ and just so you’ll
know, I never want to see you again. You can take your fish
shirts and stuff them up your…agh!” At that moment, slamming the receiver down seemed like the right thing to do,
just as they do in the movies, but it was a cordless phone. Not
sure what to do in its stead, I frantically smacked the phone
against the wall. His puzzled voice still came from the receiver, so I smacked it again and then with some satisfaction,
pushed the button to end his connection to me forever.
How dare he. Tears began to well up in my eyes. Cupcakes, cupcakes would make it all better. Quickly I went to
the kitchen while wiping my eyes and flung open the cabinet.
In a surreal moment, the unseeing eyes, odd smile
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and nervous clasping hands came at me. She seemed to stay
suspended in midair for a moment like those cartoons you
see on TV and then she fell with a sickening sound of plastic
hitting the ground coinciding with an odd splat sound as the
corner of her bottom ripped open. In shock, I couldn’t turn
away from her eyes staring at me. Her triumphant smile never
wavered, even while the color drained out of her face as her
insides came out in a gooey rich thickness. Worst of all, it had
splattered on my new shoes.
In the other room came the crisp content voice of a
male newscaster. “And to continue the story from last night,
the homeless man that found the thirty thousand dollars left
by millionaire Dustan Franks has been identified as sixtyseven-year-old Harold Johnson, a Vietnam vet who had
received numerous awards including the Silver Star. He had
apparently found it under a bus bench in….”
“Damn,” I said with a heavy sigh.
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Pesos
Julianne Hiatt Caldwell
I held my credit card in my hand, looking into the deep
brown eyes of the small woman in front of me. I could see it
in there. She knew I was racist, and for the first time, I realized it, too.
A moment ago I had been standing in the breezy,
open-air shop by the pier. My cruise ship sat out in the bay,
crystal clear water lapping at her freshly painted hull. I was
in paradise. A mariachi band played in the town square, the
men in matching suits and sequined sombreros never missing
a chord as they turned to admire and whistle at bikini-clad
touristas walking past them, hardly looking at the musicians
as they tossed a buck into the open guitar case.
I took my purchase to the counter and noticed happily
that they took my card. She ran it through, making small talk
in her sweetly accented English. “Two hundred pesos, please,”
she said as she ripped the receipt off the machine, handing it
to me to sign.
I froze. “I thought it was twenty dollars American,” I
said uncertainly.
She nodded. “This will show up in American on your
credit card statement, but we charge in pesos.”
“Can we cancel the charge? I think I have a twenty.”
I looked up as I took my card back, but the hurt in her eyes
was unmistakable. She knew I was thinking she would rip me
off. I didn’t trust the Mexican. With her impeccable suit and
professional mannerisms, I still found something to mistrust.
She smiled and wished me a good day as I left, but I didn’t
even deserve that.
Clutching the small plastic bag in my hand, I headed
for the top of the ship where I could see it. I leaned against
the railing, smelling the sweet, salty air as a calypso band
played on the deck for the revelers who were washing their
scorpion tequila down with a Corona or two. I could see for
miles, nothing but lush green trees camouflaging crumbling
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cement boxes with blankets for doors holding multiple generations of the same family, rusty bikes, open air buses with
people standing, crammed inside and sweating in the sweltering heat. They still smiled and waved as Americans rode past,
chauffeured in our luxury buses with extra-cushioned seats
and the AC set at sixty-nine.
I hated myself. Why had I not trusted her?
The ship’s horn blasted; we were due to leave in a few
minutes. The last few tenders were pulling alongside the ship,
bobbing like corks as parcel-laden cruisers in sandals with
socks and ridiculous straw hats struggled to climb aboard. The
horn blasted again.
Again.
Again.
I looked down at my watch. We should have left fifteen minutes ago, I thought as we finally pulled up anchor.
“Stop! That’s my ship!”
Two very drunk men stumbled down the distant pier,
screaming and pointing as the ship turned to head back out
to sea. They jumped security and ran before being stopped by
diminutive policemen holding very large machine guns. One
man ripped his shirt off and threw it to the ground, stomping
and spewing epithets in frustration. After a few moments, our
ship stopped long enough for a Mexican police bay cruiser to
pull up beside us so the men could board.
Alone at the bar later, I couldn’t help but smile at what
I heard.
“The police charged them $250 each to get to the ship!
It’s piracy!” the outraged woman next to me was telling her
friend.
Take your $500, Mexico. You’ve earned it.
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First Ink
Dustin Follett
Folks always ask ’bout my first tat when they see it, like if after
I ’xplain it to ’em it’ll make sense to ’em. But it won’t help ’em
understand. Ya see, most folks haven’t been where I been, seen
what I seen. Most folks should be glad life played out like that
too, else they’d have this damn thing inked on their chest, and
I’d be the one buggin’ ’em ’bout what it means and why they
have it. But, there’s no sense in wishin’ life was different than
the way it is.
I got lots of ink, so I don’t suppose there’s any reason
why folks should take notice of that particular piece, but they
do, and everyone wants to know what it means and why I gots
it. That’s the part that kills me. Why does everyone think all
my ink has some reason for bein’ there? Sure, I have a piece
here and there that means somethin’ to me, but sometimes all
the tat means is I had a few spare bucks in my pocket burnin’ a
hole and couldn’t find nothin’ else to spend it on.
Well, this piece is one that just so happens to mean
somthin’ but the other part of that is I don’t always feel up to
tellin’ people what it means and why I gots it. But since you’re
here and I’m already talkin’ ’bout it, I guess you deserve to
know as much as the rest of them that asked.
This here ink in the center of my chest was my first
and my second. Now before you go arguin’ with me lemme
finish ’splainin’ it to ya. I got the first part, a blood-red circle,
when I was only seventeen; just barely knee-high to a grasshopper is all I was then. The second part of it is a jagged black
X through the middle of the circle. I got that part a year later,
and they both hurt like high hell, felt it all the way up in my
teeth. It’s an ungodly feelin’, havin’ pressure on your chest and
bein’ able to taste it in your mouth, don’t quite know no other
way to ’xplain it to ya, but that’s how it felt all right.
Before I can tell ya why I gots it, I gotta tell you ’bout
her.
When I walked into my new school in La Grange,
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Texas halfway through my junior year, the last thing I ever
guessed would happen to me would be to fall in love. Oh
shut up, I don’t mean that mushy stuff ladies get all tearyeyed over at the movies, I’m talkin’ ’bout the real thing. Now
I was only sixteen at the time, but I’m older now, and I can
justifiably say it was the real, cotton-pickin’ deal. So there I
was, standin’ in my first class tryin’ to keep my head down so I
didn’t call any more attention to myself than already was the
case, bein’ that I was the new kid and all, and then the sweetest voice I ever did hear ’bout knocked me over. And when I
seen the person attached to that voice, well I as good as forgot
how to speak a lick, and had to wipe my mouth ’bout four
or five times just to soak up all the droolin’ I was doin’. They
didn’t have girls like her back home.
Her name was Naomi, and I was hers, ’though I didn’t
know it at the time. She probably had to repeat herself three
or four times before whatever cat had run off with my tongue
had the good graces to give it back to me. ’Til then all I could
do was blush and duck my head.
“You speak English, right?”
There was two things runnin’ through my mind at this
point. The first was me tryin’ to figure out how two people
had taken every good thing in this world and the next and
mixed ’em all together to make this beautiful creature in front
of me, and the second was what hole I could crawl into and
die ’cause she probably thought I was some kind of idiot sittin’
there just starin’ at her.
“Yeah,” was ’bout the only response I could muster,
and to be honest it’s a wonder I managed to get that much
out with my jaw sittin’ on the floor as it was.
“He speaks!”
“Yeah.”
“You know any other words besides just that one, new
kid?”
“Yes.” I’m pretty sure I turned seven shades of red
when she started laughin’ after I said this. I’m pert-near sure
I could’ve spent all day just listenin’ to her laugh, though.
Didn’t matter she was laughin’ right in my face, so I just sat
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there grinnin’ like the cat that caught the mouse.
“Well aren’t you just the master of the English language? You got a name to go along with that astounding
repertoire of words?”
“Yeah. I mean, course I do. I mean, oh hell, my name’s
Ash.”
If it was at all possible for me to get even redder, I’m
sure I did right then and there, and she just kept on laughin’ at
me.
“Well, Ash, I’m Naomi. This class is pretty close to
full, but the seat behind me is empty if you want to sit there.”
“Uh, yeah, well, if you don’t mind none, I suppose it’s
as good as any other seat.”
“It’s better.”
“’Scuse me?”
“I said it’s better. You said it’s as good as any other
seat, but it’s better because it’s next to me.”
I wanted to say somethin’ funny back to her, somethin’ that would get her gigglin’ ’bout somethin’ other than me
gawkin’ at her like an idiot. I wanted to tell her she was the
prettiest thing I’d ever did see, prettier than all the girls back
home, or on TV, or in the world for all I knew. I wanted to
say anythin’ to her, but nothin’ sounded right to me, so I just
nodded and took the seat behind her. That was the last thing
she said to me for the whole class, ’cause the teacher walked in
just as I sat down, and before I was even settled I was up at the
front of the class gettin’ my new English book. I don’t remember a damn thing from the rest of that first day, on account of I
spent the whole time daydreamin’ ’bout Naomi as boys tend to
do at that age.
We couldn’t’ve talked for longer than a minute or two,
but I could tell you every little detail of what she looked like.
She had curly brown hair, the natural kind of curly. The kind
girls with straight hair wish they could’ve, which is why they
spend so much time in the bathroom curlin’ their hair, I suppose. Her eyes was so blue I’m sure fresh-picked blueberries
would’ve been jealous of ’em. Her eyes smiled at me from behind her glasses when she laughed too, I liked that. As for the
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rest of her, well, you get the picture; she was pretty enough to
keep me blushin’ the whole time I knew her.
When the bell rang, and it was time to head to the
next class, I wanted her to ask me if I knew where my next
class was just so I could hear her voice again. I wanted to
ask her if she could show me where it was, maybe walk me
there, not that I didn’t know where it was, I’d passed it on my
way to this class, but it would’ve been nice to talk to her for
any reason, just the same. But, I couldn’t get up the gumption to squawk out anythin’, so I just nodded at her again as
she glanced back at me. She’d been out of the room for a full
minute before I stopped starin’ at the doorway she’d just left.
Well, as you can probably guess, by the grace of God,
that pretty girl found some redeemin’ quality in me, and we
started goin’ together. It only took me the better part of the
rest of the year to muster up what courage I could find to ask
her, and I’ll tell you what, there’s never been a happier man on
this Earth than I was when she said she’d go with me, just in
time for prom too. Now I’m not one for dancin’ myself, but
Naomi was, so I swallowed my pride and asked my momma
to teach me a step or two so I didn’t look like an idiot again.
We spent almost every day together when we could.
But Daddy’d moved us out here to La Grange to work on
a ranch so I had lots to do between schoolin’ and workin’. I
made time to see her though, even if it meant I stayed up well
past midnight to get my homework done. We started spendin’
so much time together that I hardly had time to make any
other friends of my own, so it’d be either just the two of us, or
we’d hang out with her friends. It didn’t matter what we did,
or who we was with, just as long as I could hear her laugh.
Everythin’ was goin’ real fine between me and Naomi
’xcept for one, small thing. Her daddy absolutely hated my guts.
Normally folks don’t mind me none, and more than not tend
to think kindly of me, but try as I might, I just couldn’t get her
daddy to see me as nothin’ more than poor, white trash takin’ his
daughter away from him. And ’cause her daddy was just spittin’ mean to me, she spent so much time at our house she was
practically part of the building, and I didn’t mind one bit.
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School finally let out for the summer, and I can’t say
as I was sad ’bout havin’ a break from it, but Naomi seemed a
bit upset ’bout not bein’ able to go to school. I just figured it
was ’cause she liked learnin’ and readin’ and those things, so I
never really got to askin’ her why she hated summertime. She
must’ve been the only teenager in America who wanted to go
to school durin’ summer break.
Well, we had more free time to spend together now
that we didn’t have to worry ’bout gettin’ our schoolwork done,
and you wasn’t gonna hear me complain ’bout that neither, and
Naomi got a summer job waitin’ tables at the local diner. I’d
never been a big fan of Joanne’s Diner, but I sure as shootin’
ate lunch there whenever I could. I swilled down the greasiest burgers and fries you ever did see as quick as I could so I
could get to talkin’ to Naomi just to hear her laugh. Now, I
didn’t have my own car like she did, but Daddy’d let me drive
the work truck into town so I could see her. I think he knew it
would’ve killed me to go that long each day without a chance
to talk to her.
I ’member when I finally got up the nerve to tell her
I loved her. I couldn’t even say it, I had to write it in the dirt
with a stick, and I was so nervous ’bout doin’ it, that it came
out lookin’ like nothin’ more than some chicken scratches. But
she knew what it said. She cried, flung her arms ’round my
neck and liked to’ve squeezed the life right out of me, but I
didn’t mind none. I just hugged her back, and cried along with
her.
Now don’t go rollin’ your eyes at me, I was young and in
love and this was all new to me, but I was happier than a pig
in mud. That’s when we decided to go get ink together. We
wanted to have somethin’ that meant we was gonna be in love,
forever. We was just a couple a dumb kids in love, we didn’t
know no better. She was so nervous her daddy’d find out that
we went two towns over to get ’em. A friend of hers told her
’bout this place that didn’t check to see how old you was so we
could go get tatted even though we was both underage.
The fella behind the counter sized us up when we first
walked in.
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“Can I help y’all kids?” he drawled.
Naomi stepped up to the fella and put her money on
the counter.
“I want a tattoo.”
The fella picked up her money and counted it out.
“Fifty bucks ain’t gonna getcha much, darlin’. What all
you want done,somethin’ on your lower back?”
“No, on my hip.” She lifted her shirt up a little bit
and tapped her hip bone, just above her jeans. I have never
been as heated as I got when that fella’s eyes mozied their way
down her body to where she was pointin’. It was like he was
a starvin’ man starin’ at a cheeseburger, and I didn’t like it one
bit.
“I think we can do that, whacha gonna get there, darlin’?”
The way he said “darlin’’’kinda oozed outta his mouth
like molasses, and I didn’t like how hungry his eyes looked
while he was talkin’ to her. I was ready to walk out the door,
tattoo or not, but I didn’t want to look like a sissy in front of
Naomi so I stayed put.
“We’re both going to get something,” she said, pointin’
over her shoulder to me. “We’re going to get red rings.”
“Red rings? That kid gettin’ his on his hip too?” the
fella laughed.
“Yeah, rings, like a circle. You know, those round
things that aren’t squares? You’ll have to ask Ash where he’s
getting his, though.”
The fella laughed at that and nodded. “Yeah, I might’a
seen one or two in my day.” He seemed to think for a bit,
then added, “It’ll be a hundred and fifty bucks for the both of
ya.”
Now, I don’t rightly know why I paid that fella to put
the hurt on me like that, but I guess it had somethin’ to do
with Naomi thinkin’ we needed these tats. And like I said, I
could feel the pressure on my chest, and taste it in my teeth,
but it tasted sweet with her there holdin’ my hand like I held
hers while she got inked.
Well the red rings meant a bunch of things to me and
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Naomi back then. I wanted to get our names in a heart like
folks carve into trees and tables at the park and whatnot. But
Naomi kept insistin’ we get somethin’ else, somethin’ only the
two of us would understand. So we got rings, red ones, cause
red was the color of love or some mush.The rings mostly
meant forever, which was how long we said we was gonna be
in love. We just knew that nothin’ was gonna tear us apart.
They was like promise rings or some such, meanin’ we was
meant for each other.
So that’s how I ended up with my first ink. But see,
this part of the story never satisfies folks, ’cause they wanna
know why I have the X and what it means. But since I’ve already told ya ’bout the first part I might as well chew your ear
’bout the second part.
Well things was goin’ just as right as rain for spell, but
that’s when the universe likes to reach out and remind ya how
you’re nothin’ special. Our ink had just barely healed up when
her daddy informed us just as casual as if he was talkin’ ’bout
the weather that they was gonna be up and movin’ four hours
away to Austin.And well, Naomi was ’bout fit to be tied, and I
don’t ’member much more that happened that day, what with
all the gloom I was feelin’ inside. Alls I knew was I hated her
daddy for takin’ her away from me like that, might as well took
my air away for how I felt ’bout it.
He didn’t even give us two weeks to get used to the
idea before he had her packed up in a movin’ truck and headed off down the road. Now, if I’d’a had any notion of what
was gonna happen to her out in Austin, I never would’a let
her leave my sight. But, as it was, I couldn’t rightly tell her
daddy what to do, so I just kept my mouth shut, like I do and
watched her leave.
I’d promised her I’d come visit every other weekend.
Daddy was gonna let me borrow the work truck to make the
trip down there, and her momma said I could sleep in one of
the guest rooms at their new house so long as I behaved myself
while I was there. Well, like clockwork, every other Saturday
I would get up early and jump in the work truck to head into
Austin to see her, and we’d have the time of our lives, me and
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her, just enjoyin’ each other’s company. She’d talk and laugh,
and I’d smile and stare. And when it was finally time for me
to leave late Sunday nights, she’d cry and try to squeeze the
life right out of me, and I’d wipe my eyes a two or three times
and remind her I’d be back again in two weeks.
But sometimes life has a way of gettin’ in the way of
what you’d like. Naomi’s daddy moved her up there so she
could go to a better school and get into a good college, so
her free time on the weekends started gettin’ scarce the more
the school year drug on, and I was busier than a one-legged
man in a butt-kickin’ contest ’tween schoolin’ and ranchin’.
So when I couldn’t make it up there to visit, I made sure to
let her know and we’d just talk on the phone. Her tellin’ me
’bout her new life in the big city and her new friends and all
the learnin’ she was gettin’ with her private tutor and how she
missed me, but not La Grange, and how she wished I could
meet some of her new friends and how she was gonna come
home to visit sometime, but she don’t know when. And I’d
just listen to her quiet, like I do, and miss her somethin’ fierce,
and smile every time she laughed.
The last Saturday that April I decided I was gonna
sneak up there and surprise her with a visit. I hadn’t seen her
in two months on account of her bein’ so busy with schoolin’,
and I was done with waitin’ for her to have some free time.
So I packed up an overnight bag and Daddy called a hotel to
get me a room in case her momma didn’t take too kindly to
me showin’ up all unannounced as I was, and I headed up to
Austin. I didn’t even take the time to stop by and get settled
in my room, I just headed right to her house and knocked on
her door.
Her house was as close to a mansion as I’d ever seen, so
I guess it’s okay to call it such. So I waited for a few minutes
before knockin’ again, since no one answered the first time,
and I figured it wouldn’t be too hard for a fella to get lost in a
place that size. My head sank a bit when no one came to the
door after my fifth time knockin’ and ringin’ the bell. I was
fixin’ to turn ’round and head back home when I ’membered
she liked to go swimmin’ in the pool behind her house. So
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I made my way ’round to the back where the pool was, and
heard her splashin’ and her laughin’ and her havin’ a great time.
It was all I could do to keep quiet and sneak ’round the house,
as I wanted to jump out and scare her while she was swimmin’.
So I ducked down behind some bushes, sneaked my way closer
to the fence around the pool and popped up to shout out her
name. But, before I could squawk anythin’ outta my throat,
that damn cat came back and snatched the tongue right outta
my mouth again, and it’s a good thing too, ’cause what I saw
right in front of me wasn’t anythin’ I’d have liked to commented on. I just stood there, my face all red and my jaw on the
floor, just like the first time I’d seen her, only this time there
was a hole in the pit of my guts the size of Texas. I must’ve
wiped my eyes four or five times for all the tearin’ I was doin’.
I don’t rightly recall ’xactly what happened next, but
Naomi finally noticed me standin’ there after God only knows
how long of watchin’, and she screamed. That scream set me
in motion. I don’t ’member runnin’ back to the truck, or turnin’
it ’round and tearin’ off down the road in no particular direction ’xcept for as away from what I had just seen as I could get.
I ’member hearin’ her shout for me to stop, to wait, to let her
’splain, sayin’ it weren’t what it looked like. Now I might never
done things like that at the time, but I sure as shootin’ knew it
was ’xactly what it looked like, and she was enjoyin’ the hell out
of it.
Somehow I managed to make my way back home, don’t
remember a lick of the drive as my mind was stuck on what
I just seen. It’s a wonder I made it anywhere through all the
tears I was cryin’. I’m sure I was quite the sight when I walked
in the door, ’cause my momma just hugged me so tight she
liked to have squeezed the life right out of me. Daddy didn’t
say nothin’ neither, he just went to the kitchen and came back
with a bottle of sour mash whiskey and two glasses with ice.
We just sat and sipped our drinks, me not sayin’ a word, and
him knowin’ everythin’ I was thinkin’.
That was the last I saw Naomi. She called my house
a few times over the next few weeks, but I just never seemed
to be home when she called, and somehow the messages she
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left just never made it to me. That next Saturday, I got up,
got dressed, and hopped back in the work truck. I headed my
way two towns over and went to the ’xact same tattoo shop
as I had been almost a year before. That same fella was standin’ behind the counter. When he finally looked up at me,
he glanced ’round the rest of the room like he was lookin’ for
somethin’.
“I remember you. Red rings, right? Where’s that
pretty young thing you had with you last time?”
“Not here” was ’bout all the reply I could muster, and
it’s a wonder I could get that much out as choked up as I was.
I wiped my eyes and continued, “I wanna ’nother one.”
So I paid that same fella one last time to put the hurt
on me again, and I tasted it in my teeth, just as before, but
this time it didn’t taste near as sweet. I got that big, black
X inked over top of the red ring, and sent a photo of it in
the mail to Naomi. I didn’t write nothin’ on the back, didn’t
include a letter or a return address or nothin’, just sent the
photo is all. She stopped callin’ my house shortly after that,
and I can’t say as I was sad to hear the phone stopped ringin’
so much.
You still can’t understand what this here ink means,
’cause you never known Naomi, but I can see you’re a little
more satisfied knowin’ what little you do know. Now if you
can ’scuse me, I guess I got somethin’ in my eye I need to take
care of. Seems to happen to me pert-near every time folks ask
me ’bout my first ink.
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NULC
The National Undergraduate Literature Conference is held
once a year at Weber State University and is the only literature conference specifically for undergraduates in the nation.
2011 marks the twenty-sixth year of the conference, and I am
proud to present the NULC selections accepted for publication in Weber State’s Metaphor. Literature is not dead; it has
just evolved. Each piece selected epitomizes that evolution
and demonstrates the true talent this nation possesses. The
human heart thumps within us all, and I can only hope you
feel the same beat as I do when reading these works.
NULC Selections Coordinator
Andrew Choffel
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Salt Water Kills
Margaret Reynolds: Tulane University, LA
Lilac walls enveloped in mud
crush the cast‐iron stove.
Our delicate china warped debris,
our azaleas lifeless.
A porcelain doll stares out at me, body mangled, face intact, as
I stoop against oak flooring.
The car smells of mud, gas, and sweat.
(Post Katrina, August 2005)
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Pulling Out of a Walmart Parking Lot
Brock Michael Jones: Utah Valley University
The seven on the license plate of the car in front of me makes
me think about how many close calls I had during three tours
in Iraq, how many times I almost ended up with the bullet
in my neck, almost in the twist and mangle of a blown-up
humvee. I couldn’t settle on a number and the uneasy relief
that came with not knowing led to this: What about that
young man in Tal Afar? How many close calls had he survived
before I tore off the corner of the brick wall he was hiding
behind with a bullet, opening his chest to the empty sky? Did
he really think he was hidden? Then, as unanswerable questions eventually do, these thoughts congealed into a story: In
the very moment the .50 caliber bullet was parting the skin
of his right rib cage, he was thinking about the smell of his
wife’s cheek, and how he’d cried last week when she had told
him of a dream in which their first child would be named for
the prophet. He’d hoped to find her a fistful of sunflowers;
instead, this black rose blooming through his shirt.
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Marc Chagall’s The Birthday
Engram Wilkinson: Tulane University, LA
The night your sister died I was
on the couch solving a Rubik’s cube.
I remember reading somewhere
the order of turns: before arranging the
bottom corners you’ve got to make
a cross. There are more steps but
I do not remember them, just the rain
and driving with you. You rolled
the window down and drank
from the air, feeding the gasping carp
that filled your lungs. When your mother phoned
we were moving, you were getting sick so
I took control, said into the phone he’s all right
we are coming. Our ordinary bodies were
possessed by moonlight, possessed
by all the strange feelings that usually
promise a sexy ending. We too quickly forget
nights like that, how we moved so fast
but never collided. Our bodies divided and
began the slow unstoppable process of
dividing more bodies so now I’m seeing you
everywhere, in the same lunar streetlamps
that have come to resemble willow trees,
in the curtained window above the writing desk.
A book about grief suggested we skip the funeral
and travel to China, so we skipped the funeral and
drove to Oregon—it was the furthest we could
go without driving into the ocean. You marveled
from the cliff at a rock having slowly
eroded into a giant circle. You mimicked
its hollowness, made binoculars with your hands
and stared down through its center.
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It was a scene, something from a magazine
cover, the wary explorer peering miles into
the depths. You wanted to know how
those kinds of things stay afloat but I don’t know.
Everything is sinking and the audience knows it,
they can read us in sequence or from left to right
and it’s the same story: we’re sinking, revealing
too much. I think that’s too obvious, I think
you already get it. All the new thinking is about
loss because we haven’t yet conceived
a new geometry: that’s how you solve problems,
with new things, rare animals like the lynx
or those lilies that grow on water. You couldn’t
walk across the lake surface—you could only
approach the garden with scissors and your litany
of prayers, one thousand different sentences
each beginning with I am learning again.
After dinner when I’ve gone across the room
to take off my shoes, to sit at the desk and
re-imagine the village, you follow me with what
you’ve learned. When you rise I know what must
happen and why it cannot: I please kiss me, kiss
me quick. We separate. Outside some squirrels
who know nothing of stealing contemplate the tree
and its acorns.
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Buried Alive
Gary Smith: Pikeville College, KY
Ryan leaned against the stone wall and held a cigarette while
he knocked his heel against a rock jutting from the pavement.
The wall behind him curved around the hillside and the earth
spilled onto the narrow road. When he closed his eyes, he saw
the dull glow of his headlights on the empty road and the
yellow line in broken intervals. When he opened them again,
he saw Jeffrey walking up the road, swinging his arms as he
climbed.
“It’s about time you answered my messages,” said Jeffrey, breathing heavily. “How is everything?”
“Tired is all,” Ryan said. “Hasn’t really hit me yet.”
“Damn,” Jeffrey said. He ran his hand through his hair.
“I didn’t know your dad was sick.”
Ryan turned his focus to his car parked in the wide
spot near the bottom of the hill. “The thing is, he wasn’t sick. I
guess that’s why it hasn’t sunk in yet.”
Jeffrey shook his head and turned to look at the city. “I
missed ya and I’m glad to see ya, but I hate the occasion.”
“I’ve been meaning to come home, but I was busy with
work.” Ryan looked at his friend. “It was unexpected.”
Jeffrey crossed his thin arms and looked at Ryan. “Jess
coming down with the baby?”
“You mean Jennifer,” Ryan said. “She’ll be here tonight, after she gets the baby from her parents.”
“How long have you guys been married?”
“Three years,” Ryan said. He noticed an orange and
purple reflection on the hood of his car; it swirled and flickered as the sun rose, light breaking through the tree limbs on
the side of the mountain.
“It’s been a while, ain’t it?”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Ryan said. He walked to the edge
of the road and sat on the curb. He looked over the hillside
and down at the boulevard to the city.
The city was tucked between the hillside where he
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sat and the mountain ridge across the valley. The trees were
fading into gold and orange, melting into one another and
flecked with green that gave shape to the curve in the mountain. Rocks extended from the hillside. They were big compared to the trees that stirred in the wind.
“Remember that?” Ryan said as he raised his hand to
the sand-colored stones that blended with the shades of the
dying trees.
“Mostly,” Jeffrey said. He looked up from rolling a thin
joint. His eyes squinted and his nose wrinkled. “Haven’t been
there since we were kids. They put a gate at the bottom of
that road.” He licked the paper and patted around the creases.
“Have to have a key code to get up there, now.”
Ryan remembered the first time he went with his
friends to the rocks. He and Jeff sat in the back of the truck
and watched the tall houses fading in front of them as they
passed, climbing the mountain. The top of the mountain was
leveled off and cleared for a housing development.
Once they passed the construction sites, the road
sloped downward again and was lined with trees. Dust rolled
from the cab of the truck and from under the bed. Gravel
popped beneath the tires and shook the truck’s small frame.
A little grassy hill led down onto a dirt trail. The trail became
more narrow the farther downhill they walked.
The trees thickened and the trail behind, as well as all
sight of the truck, was gone. It felt to Ryan like they were being funneled down from the top of the mountain to whatever
was below; he remembered Jeffrey tripping over rocks, trying
to keep up and yelling for them to wait.
The trail stopped abruptly and was split by a crevice.
At the bottom of the drop-off was a stream lined with mosscovered rocks that made the air smell like rain. Jeffrey rushed
past Ryan and jumped the crevice. Plumes of dust rose from
his feet.
“Don’t look so surprised, Ryan. It’s no big deal.”
“Looked pretty crazy to me,” Ryan said.
He considered the jump for a few minutes, watching
his friends run to the edge and jump to the other side. When
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he threw himself across the divide, he realized the other ledge
was shorter, and the jump was more of a rush than a risk.
“Can’t always be so cautious,” Jeffrey said. He wrapped
his arm around Ryan’s shoulder and led him up the hill. The
tree line stopped and the sky opened as they walked out on
the rock.
The hills were dark green and the air was humid.
Strands of white cloud streaked across the sky, covering the
valley and blocking part of the sun. The rock was the size of
a house and the stone had names painted on it. There was an
indentation further out; they climbed down the indentation
and sat.
The town filled the valley and curved around the
mountain. The courthouse sat in the middle of town, its
roof green like faded copper. It sat across the street from the
furniture store and the new bank, whose bricks were still a
bright red. The pond on the backside of town was deep green,
reflecting the mountainside. Across the valley from the rock
was the cemetery. It was dotted with blues, reds, whites, and
yellows that accented the stones that were settled into the
soft, trimmed hillside. The cemetery was cradled by the road
that led from the boulevard, up the hill.
“Over there, Ryan.” Jeffrey pointed. “That’s where I
was talking about.” Jeffrey laughed and held his arms out to
his side.
“Why did they bury her if she was still alive?” Ryan
asked. Jeffrey made clawing motions in the air.
“They didn’t know she was alive. Legend goes her
statue looks out over the city that turned its back on her; that
way they’ll never forget.” Jeffrey pointed to the cemetery, but
Ryan couldn’t see the statue, just the road that led up and
around the hillside.
This was the road he stood on now, talking to Jeffrey.
They talked more about the rock, graduation, Ryan’s family.
Jeffrey talked about working at the diner, the grocery store, at
a garage his family owned, but Ryan kept looking over Jeffrey’s shoulder, across the valley to the hillside he remembered
as green.
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“I got this one at the old bar down by the bowling alley,” Jeffrey said, pointing at the scar on his forearm. His arm
looked like a bone, save for the dark hairs that were scattered
along the other side and the purple bruises near the sleeve of
his shirt.
“How long have you been using?”
Jeffrey hesitated. “I don’t remember when I started,” he
said. He looked over Ryan’s head at the hill and rubbed the
creases in his arms. “It’s not as bad as it used to be.”
Ryan looked away from Jeffrey’s bruises. “Want to
head on up?”
“We’re not here for ghost stories.”
Jeffrey’s laugh turned to a cough. His body shook and
he bent over, holding his fist to his mouth. Ryan patted Jeffrey’s back. He could feel his spine. There was no longer any
trace of the muscles they built together in weight-lifting class,
just bone under a loose T-shirt.
“You all right, man?”
“Yeah, just got tickled. Let’s stop and see how ol’ Bernadine’s doin’.”
Ryan smiled. “Let’s go, I waited on you long enough.”
“Glad to see you, too, pal.”
Ryan laughed again as they walked toward the fence.
“The fence is still pulled apart where we broke it,” he said as
he crawled under.
“Hold it for me,” Jeffrey said.
The grass was tall but brittle from the morning cold.
“Didn’t you say you had relatives up here?”
“Dad told me we have family up here, but I can’t remember their names.”
Jeffrey’s feet crunched with each step as he walked
between the headstones and their barren vases. “I guess they
figured the cold would kill this grass.”
“Seems that way,” said Ryan.
The older headstones and monuments were at the top
of the incline, closest to the tree-line. Behind the cemetery
were pine trees. A layer of pine needles kept the grass from
growing. Bernadine’s statue stood near the timberline. It was
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Metaphor Vol. XXX
always the first to be shaded by evening.
Ryan looked at the hillside and the old statue. Her
frame was petite. She stood straight and tall, cutting into the
gray sky and fog clearing from the mountains as the sun rose.
“Wonder what she really looked like?” Ryan asked.
“She doesn’t look so great now.”
The statue of the woman was weathered. Her nose was
missing, the stone breaking apart, and her arms were cracking.
She was not the statue from Ryan’s memory.
“Remember coming here on Halloween?”
Jeffrey turned and looked at the statue. “I don’t remember her looking so big. I guess I’m remembering it
wrong.”
Ryan watched Jeffrey as he looked at the statue. He
remembered when they first came to the cemetery. Jeffrey cut
through the fence with a set of wire cutters he took from his
dad’s tool box and led them between the headstones to the
trees. They sat in the pine needles and looked up at the statue
that cut into the purple sky and hid the stars. Jeffrey told the
story and Ryan watched as Jeffrey traced her figure with his
eyes.
“She came down with a fever and they couldn’t help
her. The people in town didn’t know what to do,” Jeffrey said,
“so when they thought she was dead they buried her. They
wanted to bury her before she spread her sickness.”
Ryan remembered Jeffrey’s voice being deeper. They
were younger when Jeffrey first told the story, but the statue
had since begun to fall apart, her arms thinner than Ryan
remembered.
“Hey, Jeff,” Ryan said, “how did her story go again?”
“They buried her alive.”
“I remember that,” said Ryan, “but why?”
“They thought she was dead, but then the same thing
started happening to other people in town. They say when
they dug her up, they found claw marks inside of the casket.”
“You think that story is true?” asked Ryan.
“I don’t know,” Jeffrey said. “Maybe.” He turned his
head and stared out over the barren ground. “They said she
NULC
139
tore at the inside of that casket until her hands were bloody.”
Jeffrey looked to the ground and scratched his side.
“Why did you call me?” he asked.
Ryan waited before he answered.
“I just wanted to see how you’d been. I didn’t know
who else to call.” He stood by the empty plot and turned his
eyes toward the city. The once pale roof of the courthouse was
now shingled and the bricks of the bank were faded. Most of
the department stores were closed, their windows boarded up.
“My ride will be here, soon.” Jeffrey rubbed his nose
and crossed his arms. “I’m glad I got to see you.”
Ryan let out a deep breath and looked down the hill.
“You’re right,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”
He turned and looked across the valley, the sun no
longer broken through the trees, then headed down the road
to his car.
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Daddy Long Legs
Keats Conley: College of Idaho
After three years of chemotherapy treatments, my grandmother had to draw on her eyebrows with a wax pencil. They
hung there on the rutted, Vaseline-shined skin below her
forehead like two detached spider legs. Daddy long-legs is
not a spider. In fact, it is further removed from a spider than
from a scorpion. More technically, it is known as a harvestman. They harvest the grassland floor for fungi, aphids, mites,
snails, slugs, worms. After each meal, a harvestman will draw
each leg to its mouth and floss its jaws. Two of its legs double
as antennae because their eyes cannot form images. Their legs
are ears and nose and tongue, heaving with nerves and sense
organs by the thousands. Every ten days, the harvestman will
split its body case and spend twenty minutes dragging its legs
from the old casings. They move with the grace of forgetme-nots, on the frame between insect and seed, tripping the
light with an octagon of toes. They samba sidewalks, fearful of
birds, breathing through tracheae. In crisis, their legs can detach from their thorax. Daddy long-legs survived almost unchanged from the Devonian, fossils preserved in fine grained
volcanic ash. The ground has been bristled by their broom feet
for 400 million years. Something in the way they move is a
sermon. I find them in the garden and stare, searching for a
lesson I can pocket and recite through the day like a pop song.
They move like a quarter note turning to a semibreve on a
page of music. They keep their nerves in the ground and hold
their thorax in air, splay their legs in the fishhook of foxtail
seeds, ready to be pitched toes-first into the wind, ready to
detach their legs and keep moving.
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RETROSPECTIVE
Thirty years. Many of you reading this were not born thirty
years ago when Metaphor made its debut, a new publication
with ninety-two pages of poetry and short fiction, written and
edited by students at Weber State College.
Now we are Weber State University, and students are still sharing poetry and short fiction, plus visual art and music, in the
pages of Metaphor. To celebrate our thirtieth year, we bring you
a look at work from all the past editions side by side with the
work of today’s creative artists. Many thanks to Glen Wiese
and Brad Roghaar, my predecessors as Faculty Advisor, for their
help in selecting the pieces. And special thanks to Madonne
Miner, the dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, for her
generous support of this special anniversary edition.
As Metaphor celebrates its thirtieth year, I mark my first year as
its advisor. So before I yield this space to my worthy predecessors, I must take a moment to praise our editor, Andie McFarland, and her amazing staff. I stand in awe of their energy and
imagination, their easy camaraderie, and the hard work they
have willingly shared to bring this beautiful book into being.
The time I have spent in the company of these students has
brought me joy, renewed energy, and a secure knowledge that
the future of the arts is in good hands.
This retrospective section is funded entirely by the College
of Arts and Humanities and by a special grant from Weber
State’s Student Fee Committee. Since we have only thirty-two
pages in which to present twenty-nine years of student work,
some longer poems and all the short fiction are printed here in
excerpts. To read the complete works, please go to weber.edu/
metaphor and follow the links.
Jan Hamer, Faculty Advisor
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Metaphor is more than a publication or an organization—it is
an experience: always new, always exciting, and always renewing. Students always have been and always will be intelligent,
resourceful, resilient, creative, and generous. They care about
the things that intrigue and interest them—and those things
are little different from the things that intrigue and interest all of us. This kind of universality seems like literature to
me—and this is what the student writers and editors have
shared and continue to share. Metaphor instills confidence in
the importance and, ultimately, the effectiveness of what the
university means to do—and can do. Metaphor allows all of us
to share in the great gift of potential and its accomplishment,
captured as it is in each unique volume. For this gift I am
grateful, and I am proud to have been a part of it for fourteen
wonderful years—just happy to have been there. Thank you,
students and writers.
Brad L. Roghaar, Emeritus
Ezra Pound defined “great”literature as “news that stays
news.” This idea of the immortality of the arts is a main theme
in literature. Whether the immortality refers to a person,
object, idea, feeling, or mood, the experience shared is what
lives in those receiving it anew. During my years as Faculty
Advisor, Metaphor was a literary magazine; today it is an “arts”
magazine sharing the imaginative experiences that students
from various arts’ fields are creating and bringing to life
for readers, viewers, or listeners. The students are picturing
“things as they are,” touching reality in many places, communicating artistic experiences in ideas, feelings, moods. Those
shared experiences are the immortality of the arts.
Glen J. Wiese, Emeritus
RETROSPECTIVE
143
I Meant Exactly What I Said
Stephanie Pringle
There’s coldness in the air,
the bush is encased in ice,
they say the bush represents my heart
after Caleb left last May,
but I meant exactly what I said:
the air is cold
and the ice does cover the bushes.
There’s a warmth in the breeze,
the sun shines brightly,
they say the sun represents my happiness
upon my wedding day,
but I meant exactly what I said:
the breeze is warm
and the sun does shine brightly.
There’s a storm cloud on the horizon,
the thunder rumbles by,
they say the storm cloud represents my expression
when I saw my house on fire,
but I meant exactly what I said:
a storm cloud is on the horizon
and the thunder does rumble.
Metaphor 2010
Editor
Rebecca L. Samford
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Council
Brittanie Stumpp
They sit
round table, holding council
with hookahs and whiskey
discussing the world
and all the words in it
round a fire
copper tone warmth
cedar ashes and aspen
They define urban generica
endemic gridlock, end of days
doggy elysian buffets
and the relationship
between Beatrice and Dante
while smoke saturates
their pores...
Dusky skin, charcoal stains
and they sit
and they manifest
words
in spring’s deification
of green.
Metaphor 2009
Editor
Rebecca L. Samford
RETROSPECTIVE
145
Earth Drunk
Kristin March
Drink wine,
sleep with your belly
to the stars.
River water
fills your mouth,
bramble tangles
in your brow.
Somewhere,
the earth lounges.
Naked and rosy,
with hair that so wildly
covers her eyes
at dusk.
Let her crickets
sing you songs,
let her sunset fall
around you.
Be breathless
under her fragrant
weight.
Metaphor 2008
Editor
Cynthia Loveland
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Travis Park, Wyoming
Rykki Olson
the sun sets
on the crust of snow
where grass
lies yellow, dead
and frost coats limbs
of barren trees
that stretch passive
over a fence chilled
with fragile
crystal patterns
darkness turns
the white to
grey-drenched blue
at edge of town
where few would pass
at end of day—
empty swings
and a long-forgotten
baseball field
and lamplight at the corner
reveals a wooden sign
this is Travis Park
in some small town,
now a refuge
for the pronghorn
Metaphor 2007
Editor
Kyle N. Charlesworth
RETROSPECTIVE
147
Excerpt from “Desert Geisha”
Halbert Pete
Grace flows out amongst the sage.
A sweeping Kimono.
Bright in elegance brushes the stems.
A bright white face silhouetted
Against the blue sky.
Dark hair that outlines the surrounding mesa’s.
The winds blow and the show begins.
She bends her knees and tilts her head,
From out the sleeve a fan (flutters open.
She covers half her face, with her eyes revealed.
Her face is concealed only for a moment
And she moves, suddenly, swiftly across Indian
Country, face now unconcealed, glowing...
Suddenly, she stops while in motion.
Frozen in time, as the dust settles.
Then she begins to move, but ever so slowly.
Her knees bend and her arms spread, accepting.
She kneels to the elements.
The surroundings are foreign and dry,
She stands and closes her eyes.
From across the vast ocean she came,
Dancing atop ocean waves and resting on clouds.
A Geisha, sacred and ancient
Belongs ever so. in mythical lands.
A Geisha, in Indian Country,
The Geisha, dancing in the desert.
This Geisha, came in my name.
Metaphor 2006
Editor
Tyler K. Telford
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Excerpt from “The Surrogate”
Adrian Stumpp
...Wolfe knocked up his girl, Felicite, in high school. Everyone knew it was coming. It wasn’t unusual in Taos. She was a
sarcastic little shit with dark, intelligent eyes, a full figure, and
a pretty face. Her son, Jorge, was three now with a simple face
and complicated eyes, oaky round discs full of questions Donnie could not answer. Three feet tall and his uncle cowered
over him. Felt ashamed to draw breath in an innocent child’s
presence. Broke into cold sweat and smiled at him. twitching.
As a senior with plans for a GED, Donald Coker
glared at Taos High from the bleachers, a joint in one corner
of his mouth. He shuffled a deck of cards. Pulled the ace of
spades from the bottom. A tiny doe, Stephie, crossed the field
to where he leered at her. He appraised her bangs, make-up,
white lace, and sweet perfume. Button nose wrinkling at his
scent: straw, weed, sweat, and testosterone.
“Ready to go?” he asked tenderly, as though his breath
might break her.
“Mhm.”
He exhaled green smoke, threw the stub in the grass,
and shuffled the cards. Pulled the ace of spades from the bottom. Put on his shirt.
Three hours later in Albuquerque he ate filet mignon
and she, chicken Caesar salad. They went to the movies where
he sat with his arm around her, sinking low in his seat, and
kissed her soft on the temple. Checked into a Motel 6 and
hunted her through starched sheets where she asked, “Do you
like it when I scratch your back like this?” “Do you want me
on top or bottom,” then “Okay, stop, that hurts.”...
Metaphor 2005
Editor
Stephanie Ridge
RETROSPECTIVE
149
Evening Song
Mario Douglas Chard
And even if I knew
the way,
I still would linger
by the door
Dust-hushed
like the stones
That touched your
little feet
Before.
I would learn the
eminence
Of those who
wait
And do not stir,
like evening
Flowers soundlessly
becoming
Lavender.
Metaphor 2004
Editor
Schaun Wheeler
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Excerpt from “To A Mouse: Lessons In Compassion”
Marilyn Diamond
My father was a man of the soil. He could coax the most
precious commodities from the ground. But it was his respect
for all God’s creatures that taught me some of life’s greatest
lessons.
Springtime is a season of wonderment, more so when
growing up on a farm. It was always a busy time of year for
my father, but he was never too busy to teach my brother and
me principles of hard work, compassion, and more importantly, sheer joy. I remember one spring morning almost fifty years
ago; I can close my eyes and smell the freshly turned earth;
I can see my father striding across my grandfather’s field, his
hat pulled down just enough to shade his eyes from the morning sun. He whistled, swinging his arms in his usual confident way. I ran to meet him from where I had been playing
beneath the snowball bushes, their branches drooping under
the weight of blossoming clusters of white laced with delicate
green beans. I asked why he had stopped the tractor in the
middle of the field. He rumpled my hair and replied, “Breakdown.” He rounded the corner of the house and entered the
garage where his tool bench stood solidly attached to the
north wall. It was a large, wooden bench carefully handcrafted
by my father and fitted with numerous little drawers and
shelves. These held a multiplicity of nails, screws, wires, nuts,
bolts, and tools the combination of which could repair a tractor, car, washing machine, or a baby doll. When I was six years
of age, it seemed to me that my father could repair anything
when standing at that wooden altar....
Metaphor 2003
Editors
Melissa Paul
Elisalyn Gardner
RETROSPECTIVE
151
Excerpt from “Why Robert Frost No Longer Comes To Tea”
Kate S. Tanner
...There’s a small part of me that is very anti-dead people. It’s
something I have to deal with all the time, considering Anne’s
daily presence in my life. Sometimes I think it would be easier
to just divvy her up into small sections, like they do on television and all throughout inconsequential towns, and feed her
to the high hills along the Rocky Mountain Range. Bite my
tongue, really. I could never do it. but it’s just.. .sometimes.
Anne can be a little annoying, to be honest. She gave herself
so stupidly to so many stupid people, it gets really frustrating for me. And now that she’s dead, you can’t really even get
mad at her for it. What is she supposed to do about it now?
That’s another reason I took Anne: she places herself and her
thoughts in very unreasonable situations and then unsurprisingly gets her ass kicked and then writes something really
biting and clever in response. I seem to live that way. My best
writing comes in retort to my own self-ignited, often silly, but
mostly awful circumstances and how I managed to get out of
them or at least file them away.
I asked permission of my professor to better acquaint
myself with Anne. She later told me how offended she was
that I had to ask a professor of English, of all people, if I
could take her home. She’s always been her own person. I
suppose. Anyway, granted permission. I took the tall, slender,
very pretty Anne home with me....
Metaphor 2002
Editor
Keith D. Stephenson
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Cold Fingers and David
Vanessa Hancey
“ You know that feeling
between sleep and awake?”
Wind chime memories
Of night and stars and stars
And the mattress in
The bed of an old green Chevy.
I wasn’t aware of the movie,
Or the kids playing hacky sack
Two rows over.
Just the familiar smell of soap
And the narrow lips
In front of a quiet voice.
“ You know that feeling
Between sleep and awake?
You feel like that to me. “
Metaphor 2001
Editor
Kate S. Tanner
RETROSPECTIVE
153
Excerpt from “The Beauties”
Scott Woodham
Yesterday, the Beauties came to me.
They were all there.
There was Western Beauty, Eastern Beauty, Woman Beauty,
Man Beauty, Morning Beauty, and The Beauty of Night;
The Beauty of Ugliness stood in the shadows.
They knocked on my door seeking refuge.
“Someone is trying to kill us,” they said.
I let them in and swung the bolt.
The Beauties were thirsty, but all I had
was red whiskey or water.
The Beauties chose whiskey.
They were shy at first, but once they loosened up they
upended my coffee table, and started
to eat my food. They arm-wrestled
on my kitchen floor, and placed bets on
each other.
The Beauty of Peace sucker-punched
the Beauty of War, and won the pot
against all odds...
Since that night, the Beauties have moved in.
They don’t pay rent, they don’t do their dishes,
and they leave the lights on.
I told them they could stay as long as they need to.
Metaphor 2000
Editor
Ryan Decaria
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Brad’s Bakery
Bettie Turman
The homeless society have gathered again,
arriving from both sides of concrete pillars
under the shadow of a highway’s edge.
The baker opens the back door at ten,
dispensing orange rolls and doughnuts—
the offering of his living.
He respects their right
to live the dumpster life,
to wear spilled beer and urine.
They respect his gifts
of uneaten leftovers,
absorbing with both hands.
Does it matter, losing everything?
For those who have a mind left for living
will always fill open palms with sticky buns.
Metaphor 1999
Editor
Jennifer Henderson
RETROSPECTIVE
155
Adam’s Apple
Jen Henderson
We wear our legends
so naturally.
Those last few moments of paradise
evident in every man’s profile,
That piece of
birth
a lump in our throats.
Imagine
To travel as the snake
coiling and recoiling
around our mother’s leg
like a child
Tempting her to bear us again.
I would be that apple.
I would know
God
through his fruit.
To be consumed and
fall
down the body of our forefathers
Through the mouth
of our myth.
Metaphor 1998
Editor
Lisa M. Jensen
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Excerpt from “Dyadica”
Krista Beus
She is thinking of his face
From the Labor Day weekend photograph,
And he is wondering if the wind is blowing
In Utah today.
She has found the antidote to bliss
In his departure and he has
Filled himself with
“Other business,”
Except when sea birds and table salt
Remind him of home.
Summers there are dust and haze
And hot gravel,
Or moistened evenings after storm,
A land of opposition.
There is desert and delta,
Marsh and mesa, sun ray and snowflake,
And she was two visions:
The large eyed, shivering
Girl in wool,
November as a woman;
And too, the Phoenix
In the dust, the rusty
Sand flailing hair like
Fire against her face.
These women two are his to keep
Come lull in “other business,”...
Metaphor 1997
Editor
Adam Cheney
RETROSPECTIVE
157
Excerpt from “The Taste”
Katherine Herring-Furlong
Step onto the back porch.
Into bird song, sunlight, the under-roar of cars.
Cut open the mango.
Knife glints silver
Juice of pure gold drips out.
Four drops, five.
Run down my wrist.
Are caught by my tongue.
The taste-mmm-of a memory.
Cut through the fibrous flesh
To the seed, bone-hard.
Eat a wedge off the knife point.
I am a young woman, sun-bleached and strong
Step onto a granite boulder aside an alpine lake
Brimming with melted snow.
The water so clear.
Is it water?
Or shadows and mirage
Created by altitude and heady beauty.
The lake is stadium-wide but never deeper than five feet.
A crystal puddle.
I am nude and completely alone,
Except for rainbow trout
Darting from shadow to shadow
Living proof in that shelf,
That pause in a landscape’s plunging and soaring,
That tender stony hollow in the neck of crest
proof of the presence of water....
Metaphor 1996
Editor
Collin Turner
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Flying
Patrick Murphy
The wind screams.
My ears about to shatter.
The air around me becomes an obscure frenzy,
Wrapping and pinning my breath
Into collapsed lungs.
And I remember the rush.
Tangled in space,
I recoil,
And lunge.
Never hesitant in the blind fever
Of flight.
And in the last moment,
I find I was mistaken.
A red flash of pleasure,
Silence.
And the ground rushes up to greet me.
Metaphor 1995
Editor
Patrick McGonegal
RETROSPECTIVE
159
Seedbed
Linda Larsen
Tucked in dimmest attic light
Cobweb-covered relics.
Childhood toys, scars, and dreams.
The skin-horse’s fractured rocker.
Black frayed leather belt
Lying buckleless, crimson tinted.
Velvet black embraces
Lusty nights blanketed by innocence —
Such is the dark earth-womb
of the inner soul
Fertile medium for poet seed.
As from Gaea’s wrong, Aphrodite’s sprung
So past’s pain
Enriches, nurtures, cultivates.
No spring green.
shining rain-kissed bloom
Without the birth-groan
Wrenched from the gape of darkling’s yaw.
Metaphor 1994
Editor
Linda Larsen
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Excerpt from “Another Washday”
Sundy Watanabe
April.
Momma cries
into the blueing.
Her roughened
work hands
snag the hair
she brushes back from
cheeks and ears.
She slides those hands
into silver harshness:
rinse water so cold
it makes her gasp.
Seven kids and counting.
She plunges
shirts, socks, and overalls
to the rinse tub’s
drowning depth.
Sucks them up again and
feeds them
to the wringer’s pressure.
Draws them
out the other side.
Drops them into
stainless steel buckets.
Shoves the buckets
toward me....
Metaphor 1993
Editor
Dwight Thompson
RETROSPECTIVE
161
Excerpt from “Old and Wise”
Anne L. Robbins
Mark Twain’s life was built upon, influenced, and motivated
by his love for the river. However, Twain was to discover that
learning to “read” the water required that he sacrifice and forever abandon the romance of the river. He reflected, “In truth,
the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but
all manner of pretty pictures in it, painted by the sun and
shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were
not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of
reading matter.”
As we introspectively examine the kaleidoscope of our
own lives, we may discover a pattern similar to Twain’s. Fragile fragments and perfect pieces of time slowly and precisely
create the images of our dreams, memories, and perceptions.
Breathless, we carefully view the delicate design, marvelling at
its existence, believing that something so perfect, so vibrant,
will last forever. Yet the imperceptible effects of time and experience gradually change our perception of the pattern, shifting the shards of the images, until our illusions, like Twain’s,
can never be reclaimed.
“I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless
rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything
like this at home.”—Twain
She trotted along the damp, packed sand, silver bucket
clanking comfortably against sturdy legs just four years old.
As she ran, her short-cropped auburn hair bounced above
wide gray-green eyes. They reflected a world that was also gray
and green at this early ethereal hour....
Metaphor 1992
Editor
Jennifer Elkington
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Excerpt from “Bu Dop 1969”
John Beal
II
A Bus
Vietnamese bus wants to pass the sweep team.
In a hurry to get to market.
You know the kind, small bus painted red, yellow and
blue,
packed with vegetables, chickens, people— and the
kids riding on top.
A tense sweep team is alert, but it’s a fatigued tense, a
strained alert—
the hollow-eyed kind of alert.
Alert to combat situations,
fatigued to human situations.
Young sergeant in charge decides
if the bus is in such a hurry to pass
“fuck’t.”
If it wants to be a mine sweeper, let it pass.
A hundred meters ahead of the sweep team
road and bus flash in an eruption of spewing fire and
dirt.
As if the universe has just ripped open—
then it’s almost over.
A black smoke billows skyward,
even before the ever present red dust can start to
settle
there is a strange second of silence....
Metaphor 1991
Editor
Marion Pust
RETROSPECTIVE
163
Ice Cream Man
Jennifer J. Elkington
The first time
I heard the tinkling of the Ice
Cream Man trickle up the
street, I raced indoors to hunt
for money. The neighborhood kids
flocked to the sound, thronging
the truck like nuts on a
Choco-Peanut Cluster Bar. When he
left, we plunked down on the
July-hot curb, bolting the
cool, slipperyslick bars until nothing
was left but sticks and
cream moustaches.
I heard the ice cream man again today.
I bit my lip, counted to ten...
but the chimes overcame me,
and I dashed outside with
a fistful of change.
Metaphor 1990
Editor
Marion Pust
164
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Verdant End
Briana Beckstrand
Sunlight pierced a ragged leaf and
gashed out memories fraught with grief.
Within the lacey filigree of a single
leaf on a maple tree, molten gold
saddened into blue and etched
out poignant scenes of you.
Your faded name carved in the walk,
the nights we wore away with talk.
The dark-tressed child you brought
to be who gave you sweet serenity.
And laughter, which so filled your soul
like wine brimming from a silver bowl.
In the realm you left I witness truth,
your son unfolds into a youth.
The winter surrenders, again, to spring.
The maple evolves, as ever, green.
Each leaf an emblem of life until
the ice of autumn marks its will.
Dear sister, you were yet unripe
when you wearied quickly of the strife.
You cried for peace of heart and mind
to another place that was far more kind
a leaf that
fell
before
its
time.
Metaphor 1989
Editor
Lisa Dayton
RETROSPECTIVE
165
The Great Put On
Jennifer McGrew
Ah, the contrived affairs of those great fashion hippies!
We grow oh-so-weary as they dress for themselves
The cookie-cutters giggle, those cute yippie-skippies
Off to the ward they parade dressed like elves
And beatniks in dreadlocks are maddening, myopic
An irie existence, talking only of Jah
Punks with orange hairdos on brains microscopic
Anarchy, their big personality flaw
Protectors for pencils adhered to the pockets
Of engineer-junkies, absentminded and static
Bright sportsgear on jocks who have muscles like rockets
They flaunt and they swagger for the goo-goo-eyed manic
My g-string ... Your Birkenstocks. Together we scoff
At them all, for we wear what we plan to take off
Metaphor 1988
Editor
Linda R. Nimori
166
Metaphor Vol. XXX
The Embrace
Michael Cheney
Your lips,
Ever like those ancient days.
Round like curled velvet Sharpening the roughness of
The pearls behind them
As they ever did.
And your silky tongue
flows behind them all
and tastes like a new day
like it always did.
But I never tasted
Tomorrow before.
It was there,
But I was not.
I was always here
Before I spilled over into us
Like tears.
My hands touch your back
Running up and down;
Tasting you in their own way,
Up and down on
The sinewing ease behind.
I stood a bit aside
As our mouths met
But soon came to you,
Pulling and pressing you to me;
Mostly pulling — needing.
I’ve felt this way
Since ever at the first.
Metaphor 1987
Editor
Kami M. Tilby
RETROSPECTIVE
167
Michelangelo’s Forgotten Slave
Karrin Peterson
In the basement of the Louvre
Dust settled on a half finished
Half forgotten Michelangelo.
Chill White winter-stone
Smooth as old snow’s icy crust,
Rises from a chunk of
Grainy frost crystals, alive . . .
He stretches nude;
One arm flung back behind,
One reaching, reaching upward
His freedom’s in the air. ..
Adonis bold, bold beautiful
Muscles ripple, ripple shifting
Alive, in agony of dreams.
Brow furrowed,
Lips thrust down and open.
An ancient shout stirs up the dust
Upon the window casement.
No sinking — weeping —
Into the rough marble oblivion
Of his unshaped feet.
He freezes cold.
Shaking the foundations of the Louvre
Over, over, over — forever —
With a slave’s dream-cry.
Metaphor 1986
Editor
David C. Wright
168
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Hunting
Carl Porter
“Have another can of suds
unless you are duds”
He taunted in the cold October air
While loading his gun without much care.
He looked left, right and screamed “shoot the son of a bitch”
and a trigger was squeezed by a drunken finger with an itch.
A carelessly aimed shot rang out.
Then all heard a muffled shout.
And when the bushes were pulled clear,
they saw a body not much like a deer.
“He was a friend, but he got in the way”
and they were all there to bury him the next day
They stood looking sad,
and said they felt bad;
then spoke of how accidents will happen.
Metaphor 1985
Editor
Stephanie E. Chamberlain
RETROSPECTIVE
169
We’ll Be Dinosaurs
Caril Jennings
We’ll be dinosaurs
While the Earth is still circling
And even the Earth and Sun
Will be ashes.
And what have I learned?
Phenomenon is not necessarily all there is.
Reason is not necessarily basis for judgment.
Truths are not necessarily necessary.
All things are quite silent in time.
This roaring inside no one hears.
The abuse outside no one sees.
The cry of living things
doesn’t disturb the clouds.
Thorn
Lee Walser
I burned thirteen years of memories today.
I watched the sputtering fire melt
the cheap plastics of Christmases past
releasing the memories hidden in worn out toys
of young, innocent, happy boys,
the black smoke taking wing from chimney
dispersing recollections of fleeting joys.
how all that remains is dark
ash and a charred nail which
refuses to be destroyed
Metaphor 1984
Editor
Charlene Niederhauser
170
Metaphor Vol. XXX
Excerpt from “Suffer the Little Children”
Amy Allred
She heard the telephone ringing inside the house. Its shrill
cry carried ominously through the screened window jerking
her back to reality. The sound wrought a nervousness inside
her—she sensed it was the call. Tensely curled up in the tire
swing, gripping its black, rubber sides, she waited.
She couldn’t hear what was being said from this distance
even by straining her ears. A lawn mower growled softly in the
yard next door, and the muted sounds of boys playing army in
the fields just below her house rose up on the hot air waves.
Shaking herself a little, Jamie unfolded her thin,
knobby legs and let them dangle for a moment before pushing
herself out of the swing. The grass felt dry beneath her feet as
she walked toward the house. She entered silently, leaving the
door open, and halted beside her older brother Todd who was
talking to someone on the other end of the line.
“Are you sure?” he asked, running a worried hand
through his thick dark hair. “Well, what should I do?” His face
and features were tightening up. Little lines pinched his skin
at the corners of his eyes and near his mouth as they often did
when he was in pain.
“I mean, do you want us to come over or what?” Desperately he looked over at Jamie, his little sister. He took a
deep breath, blinked rapidly, and turned abruptly away from
the skinny statue-like figure.
“Okay, Mom,” he said, gulping past a lump in his
throat. “I’ll get the kids ready and we’ll wait for Dad.” Slowly
he placed the receiver back in its cradle, pausing for a moment
as if he wanted to say something more, then deciding against
it, let it fall the last quarter inch....
Metaphor 1983
Editor
Joan Wilcox
RETROSPECTIVE
171
Excerpt from “Midnight Thoughts”
LaVon B. Carroll
I
Lord Leaf
The world has grown large
and windy and loose things
fly and whirl about.
I have clung to a gray branch
as long as I can.
After all, what harm can come
to a dead leaf
in a winter storm?
II
To a Ghost
If you awake at night
as I.
oppressed by some bleak thought
that will not take its rightful shape.
stays shivering in a shadow
on the wall,
how will you know that you
do not seek me, but her,
as once in her you sought for me?
You may discover then, as I have
now,
that all loves, dead or lost.
become their own tenacious ghost.
Metaphor 1982
Editor
Ann Baker Marcusen
172
Metaphor Vol. XXX
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A Note On The Design
The text of this book is set in Adobe Caslon which is a variant designed by Carol Twombly and based on the Caslon’s
own specimen pages printed between 1734 and 1770. It is
characterized by short ascenders and descenders, bracketed
serifs, moderately-high contrast, robust texture, and moderate
modulation of stroke. Adobe Caslon incorporates the previous
expert letters, adds ordinals, arbitrary fractions, and extends
the language coverage to include central European languages.
The titles and headers are set in variations of the typeface
Helvetica including Helvetica Neue. Helvetica was developed
in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the
Haas type foundry of Münchenstein, Switzerland. The aim of
its design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a
wide variety of signage.Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk,
in 1960, the typeface’s name was changed by Haas’ German
parent company Stempel to Helvetica (derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland) in order to
make it more marketable internationally.
The choice of Adobe Caslon and Helvetica typefaces was
made to have a serif and san serif font that both contrasted
and complimented each other. Caslon is a versatile typeface
with a friendly and altogether pleasing aspect to it. Helvetica
is more neutral and widely recognized. To create a relationship between the book’s cover and content, the typeface used
on the cover design, Helvetica Neue, was used for the book’s
section headers.
This volume of Metaphor was designed on an iMac 7, using
InDesign and Photoshop CS5.
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Aaron Conder
Layout Assistance
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