cedarville REVIEW
2008
CONTENTS POETRY.......................................3 PROSE........................................23 ARTWORK..............................43 INTERVIEWS......................... 53
POETRY
RENEE CUENIN Fear See the troop-taken trail. Revolt on a cold day, Filled with cruel shrapnel. Earth is a slab; happiness, a myth. Try to think of days. Duels, cops, barbed wire. The acts oflife often lend to Such claims being shook, Pecked apart, Slammed like that van into the partition. It's no longer artful. Its nest is pulled away by an owl. Every day is the same metal can. Urine dribbles down sore thighs. You are the Ishmael of the family And the team has already darkened every lamp on deck. 5
6 CHRISTINA MILES Catamaran 452 We used to eat fried chicken, salty and wet, on the black trampoline ofmy dad's catamaran, number 452. Food appeared when wind hid, and the boat fidgeted rhythmically. I perched on one hull and splashed my sister on the other. Our brother sat behind, hooked to a halyard-too little to balance. Dad watched the sails for a hint of a gust, and Mom eyed the paddles, a birthday gift, tied near the rudders. Hours later, after we'd lost at least one pair of sunglasses and, perhaps, a pager, Dad steered the boat to shore, and we each hopped off to guide it on the trailer. I pulled sand dollars and seashells from the ocean's grainy floor, while others tied ropes, dismantled sails, and dragged the boat from the water. From the back seat, I watched our Saturday, lashed to the back of the family van, bump down the highway. Then it sat in the yard, white like chicken meat, the skin peeled off.
JOHANNAH LEIGHTENHEIMER 1hree kings Bleeding perfumes & Alleluias you feel like Sudden death to me Wrap yourselves in Oriental rugs wondering From what distant land this Faint incense has floated Bathe your bodies in the Royal fountain & Take a different road Yes, take a different road 7
8 MARY YANTIS Do You Remember? The lonely pitter-patter Of raindrops on glass Is all that can be heard Here in the dark. Do you remember? You played in the rain, Dancing under grey clouds, Lifting your hands to the sky With laughter and delight. It was raining that night. Curled on the window seat, We watched liquid diamonds Drip down the glass panes, Matching the raindrops on your fingers. Do you remember? I hold your wrinkled hand, Listen to your whispering breaths Through the plastic tubes, And watch the rain. It's raining tonight.
RENEE CUENIN Eat here) drink Offer more than a cup of lace. Add the musical aroma of air. Age birthed idea, Gin ate five years. Numerous arms felt for them. Below ages, the ivy casts desire. Here dreams come, Reality has its own ship, Men die within days. Help them. 9
10 SHANNON MCKEEHEN Elder i missed her heart attack when she realized that each squirrel was a security camera and each lotto ticket a pyramid scheme. i missed the red scare, the red faces shining bright in everyone's minds and how those faces are still there when she creeps into her cold bed. (their features are different, she claims, but all enemies are the same enemy.) i missedMLK in the spring time on a balcony she never saw. the shot milked the fright out ofher, out ofme, out of sight, out ofmind. i missed the rotting fruit in the White House who resigned before she said he was better than JFK, a sissy who couldn't keep his eyes from wandering i missed her heart attack when she realized everyone was only in it for themselves, but she cradled me, a small mind, and i rested my head on her thick shoulder and continued to sleep in comfort.
JOEL COGGINS 1998 The boys in leather coats come– chompin' on yellow jackets-sting ray, mongoose, dynosaur ... Splay your skin on flakeboard, sacrifice blood to idols ofplay. Rise up you park bench infidels! you peanut butter choke artists and basement tattoo mistresses! Heed the warning ofyour demise come Hell or the pastor's daughter. Take offyour socks and baptize your toes individually. Mince meat. 11
12 CHRISTINA MILES I Am not a Doctor I am not a doctor; I am a writer. I don't think I would switch. Why? Because, I call My sister, and we talk. She says, while driving home from medical school, "I smell like a cadaver." We talk more. I ask why. "Because we started dissecting today. We're working on the neck, and moving down from there." "Oh, of course." What else could I say? I call her two weeks later. "We are playing with the arms, practicing shots. I got Fred in the deltoid." She named her cadaver Fred. "How fun:' I say. At the end of the semester, Fred's torso has been pulled apart and pieced back together. "I think we'll need new bodies in January. Fred looks rather mangled." she says. But me? I tell her about my writing class: the stories I've written and ones I'm reading. "They say Ezra Pound spent ten hours a day editing poems." I edit mine, injecting iambs and analyzing meter. When it's done, every sentence has been changed. "I'm glad we're starting a new genre next semester:' I say. "I feel rather mangled, and I think I reek of syntax."
JOEL COGGINS Tm notAfraid ofGlobal U/arming Today in the office I stood over the water tank like a Father over his daughter's conscience. The numbers hammered into the bottom of the jug dialed me down into the cycles of3:28:200-3. The Culligan Man dollied the barrel here last week, with twins. I can see the warehouse ofwater monuments erected to the sky as far as the human mind can see, polar water from the farthest reaches of this gravity-cursed orb, this blue water balloon in the hand of a ten-year-old boy waiting for his neighbor to turn the corner on a riding lawnmower. A balloon warming in his hand as the sun burns a whole of atoms that condensate on the faultless edges to complete the delicate cycle it takes to raze the cities inside to the bottom like melting, to raise the tiny human lives to the tops. Bubbles rise in the tank as my cup fills with retroactive aqua. I realize I am not afraid ofglobal warming. I'm afraid of all the plastic jugs. 13
14 JANEL GOMAZ Memorias de Mama I can remember the Samba, the Mambo, and the Cumbiathe swish-swish ofmama's tan and orange skirt. Of trying to match the movement of her calves while resting my head lightly against her calloused knees; Dancing Samba with mama's knees, dancing Mambo and smelling the breath of dirty feet, dancing Cumbia with mama and her eternity.
NOAH CHRISTIE Those Starlings Right now I'm angry at a starling. The ugly dirty, and undoubtedly evil, Bird is prancing about my lawn. Well, it is not exactly my lawn. It is actually my father's. No, I guess it really must be the government's. But, then again, I suppose it is probably the world's lawn, Which may belong to God Or some other big realtor. Still, the starling is on the lawn and I am angry. Though, I think the starlings are rather pretty With their shiny spotted feathers And they do seem to groom themselves quite often, But I have heard that they are parasitic folk Who leave their eggs in the nests of other hardworking birds, Thus robbing from the rightful youth, Whoever they may be. I guess I have not seen them do that, either And I don't know so much about these other birds. Perhaps ... the starling just left, But I am still angry And now I think I see A pigeon over there. 15
NOAH CHRISTIE Vocabulary ofTwo Loquie [lo-qwi] means to smile without a reason. Gashib [ga-sheebJ means to talk nonsensically. Alkip [all-kip] means to caress a chin with your second and third finger. Moofti [Muf-tee] means to kiss a pinky finger with a pinky finger. Imbo [im-boJ Zefah Barble means to dance with your hands misplaced. [sa-fa] means to point at a cloud with your foot. [bar-blee] means to roar crudely. Poukuse [po-ku-se] means to embrace with only the backs ofyour ears. Foreareao [for-a-ra-oJ means to love, so it is, of course, nonsense. 17
18 DANNIELLE ALBERT BumblebeePhysics Sipping root beer On a bench by the fountain Of a bronze woman drawing water with a scallop shell My attention turned to a bumblebee Preening rose petal wings Brick body sputtering Determined to take flight I took a stick and helped it off its back It would not give up What does a bumblebee know of aerodynamics? Then I noticed its crumpled wing Threadbare as the statue's dinging wet dress
MICHAEL SHIRZADIAN May24 did i matter any more than i do now? was i more or less important, , squirming in the darkness ofmy mother's womb: one of a thousand midnight moths congregating round the rusting city lamp? was i more kinetic, pushing, screaming, clawing, crying from one cold darkness to the next? why did i search so frantically for a place to dig my fragile feet? propelled by existence? oh to tell that struggling babe of his external ambiance! to whisper in his forming ear; to persuade him not to cry, not to 1nove, not to come, to remain in his lesser darkness. condemned, i sit here in another darkness striking at an old keyboard. you read my notes. you exist with them. do i equate to any more than these? we both exist. we both form. like my mother rounding, we were made. 19
from dust we came the mirrors say we cannot change, guiltily, i wish them all a happy birthday. 20
JESSICA MOSES The Penny l/Valker Every year on this same day a fine old-hand comes to town, Onto West Main Street, his tattered boots rapping out the contagious sound. Before the sun, before all else, before the dawn is whole, Old-hand boldly blaring an alarm clock with his soles. Sweet rhythm, sweet day for the people be, Mr. Old Hand in his penny shoes from Fine Paradise, Tennessee. Circus-boy face and strong-man smile-battering the street, The children crowd and dance to best reinforce his beat. And on his shoes, I look real close, "those ain't no tappin' kicks! Old Hand's big-band melody-copper pennies stuck to chewed gum sticks!" Lincolns there coming down, scratching up the road, Old Hand still tappin' wildly in a smile fixin' to explode. Finally, frail tapper fails to finish tap four million forty-fiveSTOP ! And in his hands two socks overstocked with pennies inside. Old Hand waits .... Smiles and waits ... Waits .... Until slowly his big-band smile bursts from everybody's face. In a bare-foot dance Old Hand ruptures, both sock ties now undone, Flat-copper-circles spinning golden caramel in the sun. Rust and grit and sweat and dirt twinlde just to fade, Pennies altogether thunder-SMACK the street, down, down from their cascade. And Old Hand laughs and looks to me, standing back in shy retreat From wild children laughing, tossing pennies in summer heat, "Eighty-Eight you'd think I'd learn not to make my wishing well the street, I ain't rich but I've learned that they're useless on your feet." 21
PROSE
CLAIRE KAEMMERLING On Elevators We were at the AMC Theatre in downtown Fort Worth, and since I never go downtown the same way twice I could not tell you how we got there. I can find my way to Sundance Square every time but I can not tell you street names or which way to turn; I just follow my instinct. I came home for a visit, and my mom talked me into tak– ing her to a movie. 1he girl who took our ticket was short, and it was her first day ofwork-so she told us-and my mother kept saying that over and over: to the woman who answered our call from the elevator, to the policeman who came to let us out. "It was her first day, she didn't tell us how to use the elevator." Anything to shift blame, anything to forget that she, my mother, was the one who decided to "try out" the elevator and if it didn't work correctly to ask for help. We got on the elevator at the street level, and you could either go one story up or one story down. Oddly enough, there was an escalator, but only to go up. We were going down. 1he elevator moved about three feet and then it stopped, and I don't know when or how we decided we were stuck, but when the inner doors opened to show that the outer doors would not, my mother's face went ashen and she began to pace though she had nowhere to go. The first hydraulic elevator was installed in 1878. I imagine that the elevator we were stuck in was hydraulically powered, because the encyclopedia tells me most elevators in buildings under five stories are. My mental image of the mechanics of a hydraulic elevator is still a little fuzzy, but the passenger (or freight) car sits on top of a plunger, which rests in a cylinder buried in the ground. Pressurized water fills the cylinder when the elevator needs to go up, and is released from the cylinder when it needs to go down. Where they keep the water, I don't know. Another cylinder, side-by-side? More wasted space? I once walked through the home of a woman named Kathy, an octogenarian and survivor of Hurricane Katrina. She took me through 24
each room ofher apartment (which is on the tenth Boor, overlook– ing the Garden District) and showed me what survived the storm and what was "new"-gifts from nephews and friends, maybe even a stranger. A table survived, one with wrought iron legs and a marble top, given to her when she taught there. How she got it back to the states, I don't know. Every other piece of furniture was made ofwood and disintegrated from sitting in eight feet ofwater for so many days. A few pictures survived that her husband (an amateur photographer) had taken-the streets ofGermany, Jackson Square in the rain, and a streetcar on St. Charles Avenue covered with snow. It was a long time ago-1962 maybe-that New Orleans actually experienced a white Christmas. It is easier for me to picture New Orleans covered with sev– eral feet ofwater than it is for me to picture the city covered in inches of snow. Hanging on the wall in Kathy's apartment are 12 plates from Boehm Porcelain studio-a well-known collection with different types of birds. The birds are nothing extraordinary to me, but Boehm was famous and talented, and I suppose that is what matters to Kathy. She and her husband bought the plates one at a time on their wed– ding anniversary, starting with the first. It was either right after the first one was bought, or right before the last-I can't remember-that the designer died and the plates significantly increased in value. The water spilled into New Orleans and filled Kathy's Lakeside home gradually, slowly enough to lift the plates off the walls and cushion them with mud. The water left as slowly as it came in and after the mold was washed off, the paint wasn't even scratched. The same can be said for Kathy's porcelain dolls-they came from Germany or France, somewhere far away, and they wore green dresses with red aprons and kerchiefs tied around their heads. Eight feet ofwater and only the most expensive items in her home survived. I wonder if it matters to her, if there was enough sentimental attachment to these items that were so outwardly valuable, or if she would trade them for her hand-made quilt or postcards or maybe a family Bible. Kathy went to church but her husband did not, though he photographed all of the weddings. 25
Being stuck in an elevator is one of those experiences that you don't really recognize until it has already been happening for some time. One minute you are getting off ofyour cell phone, stepping onto an elevator, pushing the button; the next minute you feel warm, like there isn't enough air to breathe; and you are trying to keep your mother from passing out; and at the same time you are wondering, "Are we really stuck in an elevator?" In the movies these moments are always life changing. You get off the elevator and you break up with your significant other, or you propose, or you finally buy that house you've been wanting or you cut your hair and decide that it's okay to be single-and then, of course, Mr. Right waltzes in the very next day. But in the end, it was an elevator, it was ten minutes; Mom paced back and forth and I quoted William Carlos Williams to take her mind off the situation. I talked about plums and chickens and afterwards I walked out and saw the Anthony Hopkins film I came for. I re-tell the story with gusto, with a little exaggeration, with hand motions, just for laughs. I checked out a book from the library, one full of graphs and blueprints and equations. It talks about the structure and mechanics and other nonsensical things that I will never understand. On the first page it says that safety, reliability, and efficiency should be characteris– tic of all elevators. According to some government source, the number of elevator-related deaths for passengers from 1997-2003 is only 39. A 76-year-old woman was once stuck in an elevator for six days. She even welcomed in the new year-1988-from that passenger car. The article says nothing about her health, but it also says nothing about her death. I do not know how she managed to live six days without food and water, and I wonder if she was able to sleep, if she thought she would never make it out, if she did something after getting out that she never would have done before. Everything I have read about elevators is written in a language I don't understand-a language of science and technology, with words like pneumatic lifts, sprockets, and worm dia– meter. Information on worm diameters and worm gear drives is found on page 162 ofLifts, Elevators, Escalators and Moving Walkways/ 26
Travelators, but that page is missing from the copy I have. The first commercial elevator was built in 1850 but used only for freight because the ropes snapped so easily. In 1853 Elisha Graves Otis introduced a safety mechanism demonstrated at the Crystal Palace Exposition in New York. When tension was released from the hoist rope, a clamping mechanism would grip the guide rails. It was this safety device that allowed for the first commercial passenger eleva– tor to be installed in the Haughwout Department store in New York City in 1857. By 1903 elevators were being installed in private homes, and in 1949 the first elevator to be powered completely by electricity ran in tall, busy buildings. Modern elevators have a counterweight that balances each car along with 40 percent of its capacity. The cylinders ofhydraulic elevators must be as deep as the building that the eleva– tor services is tall-how long does it take them to dig a 60-foot hole, and how wide is it? I can't imagine pouring gallons upon gallons of water, a natural element, into the earth in a concrete compartment to run a man-made machine. How much nature has been destroyed to accommodate the sky-rises that we can now easily access, thanks to modern invention? Mom and I took the escalator back up to the street level after the film. I don't remember the next time she got on another elevator, but it was only a matter of days and sometimes I wonder if she has forgotten about the incident. Places with a high population of orthodox Jews have "Sabbath" elevators, which stop automatically at each floor, allowingJews to get on and offwithout doing "any useful work" -i.e., pushing a button. Some high traffic buildings have double-decker elevators, allowing passengers to get off and on two different floors simultaneously. Some double-decker elevators use one car for freight and the other for passengers, eliminating the need for a separate freight shaft. One variety of elevators operates from a central dispatch area and contains no buttons on the inside of the car. I cannot imagine being stuck in an elevator with no buttons-it's one thing to push buttons, the first floor, the third floor, the door-open button, to push them knowing you aren't going anywhere, but to still be able to push them. It's a 27
completely different thing to stare at the steel panel knowing you can't even put on the appearance of doing something. Early elevators, and by early I mean pre-1950, required an operator. They were controlled by a cake-pan-sized motor with a pro– jecting handle. These elevators had no automatic landing mechanism, requiring good timing on the part of the operator. In New Orleans I used to ride the "oldest" elevator in the city once a week-who knows if it really was the oldest, but it did require an operator and some were better than others at stopping it in the right location. Sometimes you had to step up a few inches, sometimes down six, and these huge gaps were always accompanied by apologetic grins and red faces. The eleva– tor serviced the building on the corner ofMagazine and Common Streets in the business district; a homeless shelter that was put out of commission by Katrina and lack of need. I went to the Brantley Center once a week at 5:30 in the morning-it was dark when I got there but bright when I left a couple ofhours later, and I always felt like my time there existed in another reality that did not touch the world I lived in the rest of the day. I do not know how much water that building got-maybe none-and I do not know what business has replaced the Brantley or where Murphy, the front deskman, evacuated to, and I do not know if that elevator is still working. Hydraulic elevators use pressurized water that fills the cylinder at a rate fast enough to move the car 200 feet per minute. Now they don't even use water, but oil– smooth, black, thick, hard to clean. I haven't been back to the AMC theatre in Fort Worth since that experience, but after the film Mom and I rode the escalator back up to the ground floor and she didn't even want to look at the elevator doors. 1he policeman who "rescued" us was wearing a helmet and biker shorts, and he commented that the elevator gets stuck all the time. I wonder who else had the same experience Mom and I did, how long they were stuck, if it was just the week before or the day before, or if it happened again on the same employee's first day ofwork. I doubt the next person quoted William Carlos Williams and I doubt they could guess how the elevator was powered. 28
JESSICA WHITEHAIR Meniscus Some injuries people should lie about. Spinning some tale saving paralyzed orphans from a fiery death trap elevator is an accept– able alternative to the actual truth about certain embarrassing acci– dents. He should have lied about his knee. Before the surgery, he habitually sprawled. His legs never bent quite enough to fit in constrained spaces. When their group of friends watched a movie of shameless product placement, he took up an entire couch among the cheap furniture on concrete floors scarcely padded by short carpet. Her head rested against the tightly woven, lawn furniture fabric of the couch. She sat on the floor by his lmee, the appendage whose injury would end their relationship as well as his athletic pur– suits. Later, her friends would tell her that he looked like he wanted to touch the hair layered back on the couch. She'd wish that he had. Three years later, the lmee had healed, the torn meniscus had been repaired, but nothing else. He's not so shy anymore, his hand curled in another woman's hair. This time she could see the look that her friends had seen years before as she watched him, separated by a more expensive couch, coffee table, and settee. She looks at her fingers tightening slightly around a mug of cooling tea. Her expression lightens quickly. He could have fabricated a lie about tripping while going up the staircase and the ridiculous misstep that necessitated an outpatient knee surgery. She had forgiven him for much more. 29
MICHAEL SHIRZADIAN en passant "I am the old artillerist. I tell ofmy fort's bombardment. I am there again ..." Walt Whitman, Song ofMyself Mary ~een of Scots hid a dog under her dress on the morn– ing of February 8, 1S87. After paying the executioner for precision, Mary climbed the steps of the scaffold and laid her head upon the wooden block. It took three blows. Moments after her eyes stopped seeing, the small dog sprinted out from under her dress and was lost in the city. The people cheered. While covering the Second World War, my 11th-grade history teacher showed the class a particularly brutal scene from a particularly brutal war movie. I had seen the clip before, so, instead of the film, I watched the class. They chuckled at the dying soldiers. Laughed when one man caught fire. Mocked a maimed man as he searched hopelessly for his missing arm. Why, I wondered, did we find such brutality so humorous? Perhaps because the battle is so distant. Perhaps because the scene is overdone. The most persuasive explanation, I concluded, stems from a desire to control. The scene put brutality on a DVD, subjecting it to theatrical criticism. I may not have experience in battle, but I have experience at the movie theatre. And if I choose to make these environ– ments the same, then they are the same. That's why I started playing chess. Control. I was six when I watched, one Thanksgiving morning, as my father and uncle did com– bat on a chessboard. They moved marble pieces as they slapped an old wooden clock, exchanging time and soldiers. Bishop to A2. ~een to H7. Knight to CS. Pawn captures CS. I attended my first tournament at age 16. I remember sitting before a checkered battleground, fiddling with the clock and waiting 30
for my opponent. Twenty-nine minutes apiece, I thought, pulling the old clock to my face to check for precision. One of us would prove superior in under an hour. Mr. Rose, my coach, assured me that I could beat him, but I wasn't listening. I couldn't listen. I could only watch the games unfolding around me. I listened as the mass of chess players pounded their boards, their pieces, their clocks. The black kid runs double fianchetto. Watch for rook snag from G2. ~eenside castle would be the best defense, but break the pawn structure to avoid an unexpected checkmate. Do these kids play en passant? Mate in three. In two. My opponent had arrived. Charles walked among the hackberry trees before his execu– tion. Two hours past noon, English guards escorted the iconoclast from St. James Park to London's city square. Hundreds ofEnglishmen waited eagerly. After muttering a short prayer, a masked executioner placed the fallen king's head on the wooden block, raised his axe, and let fall the metal upon a frail neck. It took one blow. Spectators paid to dip their handkerchiefs in Charles' blood. A handkerchief stained with the blood of a Icing, after all, would cure the most potent disease. Every game starts the same: White pawn to E4. Black pawn to ES. Kingside lmight to C3. ~eenside bishop to E4. Some say it's a game of strategy, and, of course, it certainly is. But it's far more than strategy. It's a game ofwar. Of brutality. A game of domination. Of su– periority. The true chess player does everything in her power to defeat her enemy, no matter the brutality. Chess is dictated by greed, selfish– ness, lust. It's a game of control. We play to dip our handkerchiefs in another's blood. It is, more than anything else, a game of life. The clocked ticked. My opponent sat across the battleground, smiling, waiting. I scanned the board, searching for some lost combi– nation ofmoves to save my queen. Ifl pressure his king, perhaps I can work the board into a more advantageous position. Seven moves, at least. The dock kept ticking. He won't take the bait. He'll see it. He's far too good. Would he accept a draw? Is it okay to draw? Why should I play chess ifI'm just going to offer a draw? The clock ticked. 31
My uncle beat the clock more fervently that Thanksgiving morning. He and my father were slapping every few seconds. Move. Slap. Move. Slap. Their pulse kept time. Father smiled as he advanced a pawn. Uncle smiled back, moving his black-squared bishop out from the periphery and slapping the old clock yet again. Father hesitated, smiled slightly, and threw his rook back to row eight. He lmew it didn't matter. Uncle promoted the pawn, a pawn protected by his black– squared bishop, and slapped back. The pulsing stopped a moment later. "Shah Mar:' said my uncle in Farsi, his native tongue. The king is dead. Checkmate. "Would you teach me?" I asked. He smiled and reset the board. Chatrang is the Persian word for chess. Literally translated, the word means Army of four divisions. Historically, chess has always been linked with violence. In CE 1061, Saint Peter Damian denounced the bishop of Florence for playing chess. It was an evil game, he said, and a clergyman had no business playing it. In CE 1254, Louis IX of France banned the game on account of its barbarity. And of course the game gained popularity. I couldn't outplay my opponent. He was thinking at least eight moves ahead. He killed the queen and went to work on my pawn struc– ture. He enjoyed ripping it apart. Marie Antoinette married Louis XVI, the king of France, at age 1S. History tells how she lived dassily, ruled oppressively, and mocked the starving third class. The Jacobins tried Marie for sending money to Austria, plotting to kill the Due d'Orleans, arranging the massacre of the Swiss Guards in 1792, orchestrating orgies at Versailles, and, most egregious of all, masturbating her son, Louis Charles. The Jacobins forced young Louis Charles to testify against his mother. Found guilty of all chargers, Frenchmen escorted their queen to the guillotine and placed her head under the sharpened blade. She was lost. Most of chess is show. Who cares if you beat your opponent when no one watches it happen? This kid knew it, too. Check. Check. Check. He chased my king around the chessboard. He'd beat me any 32
second, but he was passing up perfect opportunities to end the game. If I noticed them, he surely did. "I like to play with my food before I eat it." He smiled. Pope Formosus died paralyzed. I wonder, though, if in his paralysis Formosus imagined Pope Stephen VI, his successor, ordering that his lifeless body be removed from its slumber and brought to the papal court for judgment. I pitied my king as he jumped around the squares where his comrades once stood. "Will you just end the game?" I demanded. "Coach won't let me forfeit." 'Tm still playing;' he said laconically. Sweetly. He smiled. Did Formosus imagine that Pope Stephen would cut off his stiff benediction fingers, bury him in a graveyard for foreigners, and then re-exhume his body only to tie weights to his feet and cast him into the Tiber? ~een to D2. King to ES. Rook to F8. Knight to A2. Bishop captures A2. 1he game stopped. I stared at the board. He stared at me, waiting for my move. I didn't move. I couldn't. My king stood alone, safe within his square but could move to no other. 1he clocked ticked. "I think that's stalemate;' I said. "We tie." His eyes darted to the board. I extended my hand, but he didn't shake it. A look ofhorror spread across his face as he examined the board, then his notation sheet, then the board again. "Next time;' I said, holding back a smile, "just eat your food." Rumor circulated that Formosus's body, after washing up upon the shores of the Tiber, had begun performing miracles. Upon hearing the rumors, a superstitious populace removed Pope Stephen from the papacy and threw him in prison. Sleeping within the walls ofhis prison cell, an inmate strangled the ex-Pope to death. And again the people cheered. 33
NICK ERBER Seinfeld My younger brother likes to watch Seinfeld. Last summer, when I would come home from work, he'd be laying on one of our green couches or sitting in the giant brown velvet armchair that my Dad bought himself A plaid-dad George Costanza would be on our rigorously indulgent 42-inch Phillips plasma screen television yelling at Jerry, his glasses brightly flashing directly into the camera, catching my attention and certainly blinding the cameraman. My brother would sit there, transfixed and tired from his day of running up and down the football field, face unsmiling and eyes dimmed. Often he'd have a box ofTriscuits at his side and a Gatorade in hand, alternately gulping and crunching, leaving large chunks of fibrous cracker in the bottle. When the laugh track would blare out, loudly commending the comedians on the screen, he would stare blankly at the giant faces. Occasionally, I would agree with the audience's evaluation of a certain joke or situation. I would laugh. He rarely did, and when he would, they would be brief, thoughtless laughs, like the ones we would some– times give out of obligation at a bad joke told by someone in authority over us. Immediately he would go back to staring at the screen, basking in the simultaneous cold-warm hysterics of recorded laughter. Dim eyes, cold laughter, commercial. Then. Dim eyes, cold laughter, commercial. Rinse. Repeat. This was art apart from art, narra– tive apart from thought. For me, Seinfeld is hit or miss with its humor. This holds true for most sitcoms that I watch. Most of the time I'll be at least 0 Kwith what the show is about. There's consistent writing and a little charac– ter development. But at other moments, I just think that it's boring, a complete waste of time. There's a draw about the show. It's exciting in a difficult-to-pin-down way. The show is about nothing, but it's so obviously popular. (1) I think that this fascination with nothing comes from a subtle but integral self-involvement that the show exudes. 34
The laugh track is the key to the show's draw, but it's also the reason that I'm so disgusted with the show sometimes. Jerry makes a joke and the little club he's playing doesn't just chuckle; it roars with laughter, even if the joke is stupid or obvious. The laugh track makes Seinfeld easy to watch. It takes you out of actually interacting with the show and puts you in a place of comfortable numbness where you get cues to laugh. It creates an experience like that scene in Fahrenheit 451 where Montag's wife is interacting with her video-wallscreen thing, becoming a part of the story all the while avoiding real creativity or social interaction. It makes for a "TV family." The viewer is alone, but you receive some shadow of that feeling of camaraderie one gets from watching a really funny movie with friends or standing underneath an awning in high school exchanging dead baby jokes. This self-involvement seems to work pretty well for Seinfeld and other sitcoms of its ilk. The creators ofArrested Development have built an entire show around self reference, though it also thrives on the absence of a laugh track and a beautiful subtlety. Everybody Loves Raymond and According to Jim, conversely, rely on this numbness. In the absence of cleverness or creativity the producers of the show find a weak point in American culture (i.e., laziness, feebleness of family structure, intense isolation) and help the audience pretend that some– where, somehow, the perfect form still exists. It's mindless, it's numbing, and it relies too heavily on easy jokes and thoughtless scenarios. I try to avoid spending too much time in front of the television. For the most part, I feel that I'm conscious of and therefore immune to the snare of numbness. I try hard to think. My girlfriend's roommate always laughs at Full House and I simply can't comprehend this. We're watching television at their apart– ment (I feel like I'm treading on thin ice. I should not write about col– lege life. Or relationships.), and I'm waiting for K. to finish some ofher homework. We're going out afterwards, probably to some coffee place. I shoot A., the roommate, a weird look and snort when she laughs as fohn Stamos picks up one of the Olsen twins and delivers a cheesy line. 35
Stamos is extremely unfunny to me. 11ie writers of Full House deserve to have their fingers cut off. K., who is taking a ridiculous amount of time at her homework, turns to me. (2) "Why do you have to be such a snob, Nick?" my girlfriend of two years asks me. I lie back on the bed and close my eyes, choosing to ignore the question. I mentally, en1otionally place myself above A., the girl who lives in a dream world, the girl who chooses to look at the pretty people on the flashing box with their easy-to-mend problems. I think about the ridiculousness of a family so tightly lrnit yet so smooth with one another, and about the ignorance of the people who accept such a real– ity as viable. I think about how serious I am and how flighty A. and my girlfriend K. are. I think about how they are wasting their liberal arts education and how I am doing my best to expand my experience beyond the white bread, Full House experience. My girlfriend breaks up with me a few months later and I can– not get a straight answer as to why she's leaving me. And that's that. I try to put into dear, concise terms the things that make humor so compelling for the human race. Why it's such a huge part of conversation. Why we quote passages from Seinfeld or reference that one episode ofThe Office (3) whenever something even remotely innuendo-like is n1entioned. I spend my time looking through medical journals, reading articles on a "theory of humor." I search "brain" and "laughter" in Google and get answers that muddle things for me even more. (Apparently, instead of being isolated to the frontal lobe like most emotional responses, laughter takes a kind of circuit that involves the entire brain. It's interesting, but it doesn't help me parse a thing.) I find something E.B. White once wrote-"Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." This is thoroughly disheartening. I navel-gaze for hours. I watch TV like a man with nothing bet– ter to do and I try to find some sort of transcendence in it. I list what I like about comedy, decide it's pretentious and scrap it, write another 36
list, and then ask my brother what he's into. Words continue to fail me. I listen to other people's jokes in conversation and try to decide if they're good or not. I say things that make other people laugh and I wonder why. They say that comedy's in timing and I find myself counting the seconds between David Cross' setup and his punch lines. I watch, study, meditate on George Carlin and Woody Allen and Rich– ard Pryor. I even suffer through a mindless Dane Cook act. YouTube is my homepage. When I finally give up in front ofmy computer at midnight, I determine video is really the only thing that does most comedians justice. It, as does Seinfeld or any other sitcom, makes the viewer feel like she's having a conversation with the person, that he's living with him for a couple ofminutes. Satire works on the page and so does some other cleverness, but the real experience of being made to laugh only really works between two human beings, whether in a one-sided, simu– lated relationship or in the flesh. For the performer in this specific kind of relationship, timing seems to be pretty important, but playing to the instincts of the audi– ence is integral. Whether that's in the wry, dry humor ofAllen or in the spastic idiocy of Cook, connecting with something learned and deeply rooted can make or break an act. The courtroom scene from Bananas isn't funny for me. It doesn't have the oomph of existential loneliness of the beginning ofAnnie Hall. In the same way, weird, irreverent sitcom humor is a turnoff for me. Most cartoons have the same childish, thoughtless feel to me. It's not the laugh track; it's just that I've cut myself off from that kind of thought. I have killed these parts ofme or at least stifled them from development. I've put away childish things and my own snobbery has flourished in their absence. What a person finds funny in a comedian has very little to do with the comedian's own verifiably authentic personality. 1he good comedian brings out thoughts we've already been thinking, words that we've been meaning to say but haven't had a chance to, and, in the case ofAndy Kaufman or, more recently, Miranda July, do things that we would never have done. 37
They connect with our identities themselves. They make us feel like there's someone in the world that understands the complexities of living like us, and they come without the pathetic, grimacing baggage that all of our real friends come with. They know us well because they are us, but we know them in generalities of speedballs (4) and through the occasional revealed vice. We know that they will not tell us we're getting fat. They will make a joke about it. We know that they will not like some of the same things we don't like. They will make a joke about it. We know that they will keep looking goofy, keep deprecating themselves, and keep slip– ping on that ubiquitous banana peel. They will make a joke. They are the least offensive people we've ever come in contact with. They are the complete and utter form of the sell-out. They are our lovers, the por– nographers of our darkest and most insecure thoughts. They will make a joke. They won't break it off before the anniversary because they are our mirror images. They make jokes. Notes 1. This point is provable not only by ratings, but also by common experience. Example: Dinner in a college cafeteria, anywhere. Student A comes to the tab.le with soup. Comments are made from Students B, C about the poor quality of the soup. In a misguided attempt at humor and an awkward attempt at defending his choice of entree, A yells, "No soup for you." Everyone "gets" it. Cold-warm hysterics ensue. 2. She is distracted by her cell phone, which produces a shrill "ca-ring" every time she gets a text message from one of her friends, none of whom I know. 3. "That's what she said!" season 2, episode 2. 4. Jim Belushi and Chris Farley died after overdosing on this mixture of heroine and cocaine. 38
MELISSA GUTIERREZ Close We were close in age, you and I. I was March nineteenth and you were April third, and we thought it was strange you were younger because you were always taller. Third grade we met when we both got stuck with Ms. Avincula, who wasn't fat but looked like it because her old skin rolled over her knuckles when she had them down at her sides, or on your hands trying to get you to make the cursive "S" right. You were a lefty, that's why it was hard, and you always had to use the red scissors instead of the blue ones, I remember. You lived close by. I could run around the block in one– hundred-and-four steps and I always thought your house was a castle because you had stairs going up the porch and stairs going up inside and then you had an attic, where we found your dad's trombone and your mom's lingerie that we both tried on, and once we found a bird's nest by one of those little holes. It had six white eggs and when we listened carefully from your room we could hear them peeping when they hatched. Remember how you thought it was cool when we found the dead baby bird, all naked and plucky like when I get goosebumps, Rat stuck to the concrete under the eave in the spring? I was sad and you wouldn't bury it so that day I ran home early. 101 Dalmatians came out, the real live version with Glenn Close. Your mom took us to see it after your dad left. She was crying but not because of the movie, you were crying but not because of the movie, but I was crying because I was so scared ofher black-and-white hair and how she killed tigers to wear. And your mom hugged you close and I didn't know why because it was the ending where every– thing was turning out happy, but I guess not for you. That night I told my mom, "Don't close the door!" that's how scared ofgetting turned into a cape by Cruella De Ville I was and that's how scared ofmy dad leaving I was. She told me Cruella didn't live around here and dad wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I could 39
have the door open anyways. "I love you;' she said, and kissed me on the forehead, and tucked me in tight like a burrito but instead of cheese and came, sheets and Shelly. We spent a lot of time down by the creek that summer, catch– ing frogs and you skipping rocks and me trying. You were really good at skipping, your record was seventeen plus all those fast little skips near the end that we couldn't ever count, "Sixteen, Seventeen, EightnNinetnTwenTwentyontwentwotwenthreefourfive" and then laughlaughlaugh because my tongue turned to knots when I couldn't count that fast and you were so good at skipping rocks. My record was two, one time I came close to three. I was okay just watching, watching the water ripple when your pebbles hit it, watching tadpoles swim away so they wouldn't get hit by those huge bombs, watching that funny look on your face, one eye squinty and one tongue sticking out the side, when you swung your arm back to fling. Some odd years later both of us just turned sixteen and you only heard from your dad two times since the Dalmatian Day. Once he visited while I was there and I had to go home because he wanted to play baseball with you. An hour and a half later you showed up at my doorstep laughing because you were so much better at throwing than he was and crying because he'd gone back away without even trying to get close to you. The other time was your sixteenth birthday when he called and said "Happy birthday, Alex, check your mailbox today." We camped out in the attic until we heard the mailman come and then I followed you running down all three sets of stairs across the lawn to the mail truck and he gave you a letter with your name all scrawly. You tore it open sideways across the short part and there were three things. A check for one thousand dollars that you were close to ripping, sixteen one-dollar bills, and a note that you wouldn't let me read. So I told you happy birthday again and left again but first I gave you my lucky rock so you could get your driver's license the first try. My dad let you borrow his Buick so you didn't have to drive your mom's pick-up, and you did pass. He let you keep borrowing the 40
Buick every time we went somewhere because he said the pick-up was so old it was close to exploding soon and he was probably very right, I thought so even more the day your mom drove home and there was smoke coming out of it. We drove that Buick all over town and usually you felt like driving but if I wanted to we flipped a coin, a wheat penny that we kept in the ashtray. One day, though, when I was driving, the brakes gave out and we were going down the hill behind the Albertson's shopping center and I had to swerve hard left to not crash the Buick head-on on a light pole. It hit the back seat hard, passenger side, glass everywhere and dent like a steely cavern, and I lmew I was dead the second dad found out, but we were alive. "That was dose;' you said, your heart pounding just as loud as mine was, I could hear it. My dad was mad but yes we were alive. Pure grace he gave us when he said the Buick he could pay a lot ofmoney to get back in shape but no amount ofmoney would have gotten us back from death. When he left that night, the second we heard the door dose, you and me, we were in this for good. You were still taller and it made my back hurt a little bit having to stand on my tiptoes but it was worth it and it was only a few min– utes before we weren't standing up anymore. It was your lips and my lips and your body and mine and we didn't do it but we came dose. I knew I wasn't like you, I lmew my dad would come back, so I made you leave. 41
PHOTOGRAPHY & ARTWORK
LAURALEE Pool Chairs ART 45
46 ART KINLEY ZOOK A Child's Prayer
GERHARD MULLICAN long tripalone ART 47
48 ART BENJAMIN COLLINS Untitled
ABBY TRANTINA Mercy ofWind ART 49
50 ART KATIE KLIMEK Rustic Penchants ( ll lUlfl &t ttUlll \ l11 ii 'P""'"'" ,. re\!,1,tn1t11 " ' .,,.i111111 ,1,,11. ri1 ,·,1;. gcl\ll'tHll11til• "" l'' 11,1111/.,11• . / / ,. , ' 1
JACOB ELDRIDGE Silent Expressions ofthe Workingman ART 51
JANET BAURENSCHMITT Dancer 52 ART
INTERVIEWS
54
INTERVIEWWITHBENPERCY Hailed as one ofAmerica's most brilliant young writers} Benjamin Percy has pub– lishedprolifically in bothfiction and nonfic– tion and has written two books, Refresh, Refresh: Stories (Graywolj 2007) and The Language ofElk (Carnegie Mellon} 2006). His work has garnered such prizes as the Pushcart Prize and the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize} and has beenfeatured in collections such as the Best American Short Stories. Percy teaches creative writing} composition} and literature at the University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. CR: How do you write stories that resonate with an increasingly diverse culture/audience? BP: I don't think about that. Ifyou consider your audience too carefully, ifyou worry about the faces hovering around your computer screen, you'll either freeze up or try to be too accommodating. I just write the stories that come boiling out ofme. Luckily, they strike a nerve in many. CR: What element must a story have to succeed aesthetic– ally? Is there any such element in the first place? BP: It begins, in most cases, with an image. Ifyou think about writing as a subject, most of us are trained-from grammar school through college-to write thoughts. That, after all, is the essence of the essay; "here is what I'm thinking." Cerebral writing has a cerebral effect. And I don't want my audience to sit and ponder their navels. I want them to feel. I want to drag them down the rabbit hole. I want them to be alive twice: once in their world, once in the world of the ART 55
page. How do I try to accomplish this? Through imagism. Every moment in my stories I can imagine happening as if a film reel is turn– ing slowly in my skull. My job is to replicate that with ink and paper. Which "ain't easy." But you can take a stab at it by constantly orienting your audience, reminding them of that overturned vase here or that breeze coming in the window there. And, even more importantly, if I want to convey some idea (despair, joy, etc.) I try to make it visual rather than talking about it. And if I think about the writers I admire most, I suppose that's the essence ofwhat they're doing. CR: What is your primary emotion as you begin to craft a new piece? BP: An electric kind of excitement. CR: What is your primary emotion as you finish a piece? BP: Fear; that it isn't good enough. CR: Describe your relationship to your readers. Do you have obligations or responsibilities? At what point does your fiction stop belonging to you? BP: You are obligated to change [your readers] so that they emerge from the page with their vision slightly shifted. And, heck, it doesn't hurt to entertain them while you're at it. Your work ceases to belong to you the moment it's published. I've discovered that what I intended and what an audience takes away from my work are often two entirely different things. 56 CR: A number of the stories in The Language ofElk and Refresh, Refresh seem to deal with "masculinity" as a theme. Is there an intentional effort on your part to flesh out this theme, or would you say that it's a byprod– uct stemming from the characters that you happen to find yourself interested in? That is to say, do your stories typically begin with a thematic idea that you'd like to explore, or rather with individual characters?
BP: They grow out of images witnessed, characters encountered, places visited. All of this comes together like a bird's nest with button and a ribbon and spoon woven into the branches and grass of imagination. I never begin with a theme in mind. 1heme grows organically out of character and plot. To approach fiction any other way is to craft an unnatural message-driven story that will probably come across like an after-school special. As many idea of"place" seems to an important element in your fiction. In do you see "place" or at ing? BP: They're symbiotic. Perhaps this grows out ofmy own experience as an outsider. Or perhaps it's a human affliction, something everyone knows. Place, as I see it, is central to story. Maybe this comes out ofmy experience with theater. Set the stage. TI1en move your char– acters around on it. IV"'-.. "'""'-"'""'- enjoyment as ....,.... ,,,,L..AJlJl.-i;;. BP: For my classes: Denis Johnson's book of short storiesjesu/ Son, for its spare lyricism and its unreliability. Richard Yates-any of his stories-for their careful carpentry and bleak resonance. Ron Carlson for his humor and his economy. Flannery O'Connor for her plotting and her willingness to take risks. For me: Cormac McCarthy. One of the greatest writers of this time, of any time. 57
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