vol xii
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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oracle
fine arts review
2014
Cover Art
concept: Joseph Kees
photography and graphics: Austin Sims
model: Michaela Spence
illustrations: diane gibbs pp.19, 81, 115, 137
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Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
University of South Alabama
Volume XII
Spring 2014
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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board of trustees
special Thanks
Governor Robert Bentley, President, Board of Trustees
Dr. Tommy R. Bice, State Superintendent of Education
Poet and writer Bobby Holmes was student editor of the journal Negative
Capability as a USA student. Donated by his parents and friends in his memory,
the Bobby Holmes Scholarship provides a yearly award for the Editor-inChief of Oracle. Dr. Larry Holmes, Bobby’s father, was a history professor at USA.
Trustees
Dr. Scott A. Charlton, Coffee and Crenshaw
Mr. E. Thomas Corcoran, Baldwin and Escambia
Dr. Steven P. Furr, Choctaw, Clark and Washington
Mr. J. Cecil Gardner, Mobile
The Honorable Samuel L. Jones, Mobile
Ms. Bettye R. Maye, Marengo and Sumter
Ms. Christie D. Miree, Monro and Wilcox
Ms. Arlene Mitchell, Mobile
The Honorable Bryant Mixon, Dale and Geneva
Mr. John M. Peek, Butler, Conecuh and Covington
Mr. James H. Shumock, State at Large
The Honorable Kenneth O. Simon, State at Large
Dr. Steven H. Stokes, Henry and Houston
Appointment Pending, Dallas and Lowndes
Mr. James A. Yance, State at Large
Administration
Dr. Tony G. Waldrop, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. President
Keith Ayers, B.A., Director of Public Relations
Joseph F. Busta, B.S., M.S., PhD., Vice President for Development of Alumni Relations
Lynne U. Chronister, B.A., M.P.A., Vice President for Research and Economic Development
Ronald D. Franks, M.D., Vice President for Health Sciences
Charles L. Guest Jr., B.S. M.S., PhD., Interim Associate Vice President for Institutional Research,
Planning, Assessment and Regional Campuses
Stanley K. Hammack, B.S., M.P.A., Vice President for Health Systems
Keith Harrison, B.S., M.S., PhD., Associate Vice President
for Academic Affairs, Dean of the Graduate School
David Johnson, B.A., M.S., PhD., Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Christopher A. Lynch, B.S., M.A., Interim Director for Enrollment Services
Michael Mitchell, B.A., M.Ed., PhD., Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs/Dean of Students
Kelly M. Osterbind, B.S., M.P.A., University Registrar
Stephen H. Simmons, B.S., C.P.A., Senior Associate Vice President
for Financial Affairs
John W. Smith, B.S., M.Ed., Ed.D.Vice President for Student Affairs
Jean W. Tucker, B.S.N., M.P.H., J.D., University Attorney
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Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
USA Student Government Association (SGA)
USA College of Arts and Sciences
Andrzej Wierzbicki, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
Steven Trout, Chair, English Department
Jason Guynes, Chair,Visual Arts Department
Ellen Harrington, Faculty Advisor, English Department
diane gibbs, Faculty Advisor, Art Department
Sue Walker, Stokes Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing
Carolyn Haines, Creative Writing Faculty, English Department
The staff would like to thank Ellen Harrington and diane gibbs for all of
the invaluable guidance provided this past year. We would also like to thank our
creative writing professors: Sue Walker, Carolyn Haines, Jesmyn Ward, Linda
Busby Parker. We would like to thank last year’s editor-in-chief, Rachael
Fowler, for her continued support.
literature boards
Nonfiction: Justine Burbank, Jaclyn LeBatard, Daniel Moran
Fiction: Daniel Commander, Ashaunte Gaillard, Stephanie Feather,
Megan Guinn, Bailey Hammond, Bo Vaughn, Karie Fugett
Poetry: Stephanie Feather, Taylor Kingrea, Nicholas Leblanc, Roger Kees
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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oracle 2014 staff
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
WEB DESIGN/WEBMASTER
Joseph Kees hails from Louisiana. He is a senior, studying English with a concentration
in creative writing at the University of South Alabama. He has published fiction
and poetry in Slipstream, Paris Atlantic, Bathtub Gin, and Thieves Jargon, among others.
He is currently working on a science fiction novel, which he plans to complete
as a thesis in graduate school. When he isn’t obsessing over words, he makes music with
Dimestore Troubadours.
Tina Phanthapannha is a USA alumni. She completed a B. F. A. in graphic design with
a minor concentration in Interdisciplinary Studies and a B. A. in Advertising at the
University of South Alabama. She is a multifaceted and unconventional artist that tries
not to take herself too seriously. She loves to create unique and clean designs that have
functionality and visual impact. Her main interests are in web design, packaging design, and
typography.
ART DIRECTOR
FICTION EDITOR
Austin Sims is a senior at the University of South Alabama. He is pursuing a B.F. A. in
graphic design. He is also an active photographer who enjoys all forms of photography
from the darkroom to Photoshop. A native to Mobile, Austin enjoys spending his free
time fishing, kayaking, and exploring the outdoors along the Gulf Coast. After graduation,
Austin plans to pursue a creative career in photography and graphic design.
Katie Pope hails from North Carolina. She has a B.A. in English and a B.A. in
communication from the University of Hawaii in Hilo. She loves cooking, photography,
art, and all forms of stories (books, TV, Film). Katie is working on an M.A. in creative
writing here at South and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition after
graduation.
ART CURATOR
NONFICTION EDITOR
Justin McCardle is a junior at the University of South Alabama, earning his B.F.A. in
graphic design with a concentration in printmaking. He’s interested in architecture,
illustration, and printmaking. After graduation, Justin hopes to find work as a concept artist.
Eventually, he wants to be an art director for movies, games, publishing, or a design firm.
Mary Beth Lursen is a senior majoring in print journalism and minoring in English. She
was the 2011–2012 recipient of the Steve and Angelia Stokes scholarship for fiction in the
undergraduate category. Her short story, The Teller, was published in the 2013 edition of
Oracle Fine Arts Review. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Due South, Media Liaison for
The Prowl, and an active member of Mortar Board Azalea Chapter. In the future, she hopes
to attend graduate school for English or print journalism, and then make a career out of
telling stories.
ASSISTANT TO ART CURATOR
Christine Rogalin is a transfer student from Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois and
a Coast Guard wife. She is pursuing a B.F.A. in graphic design and interdisciplinary studies
and plans to graduate May of 2015. As graphic designer, she will focus on freelancing,
building her own brand. In her free time, Christine enjoys making hand made items for
her Etsy shop and LoDa Art Walk, bringing creativity into her kitchen, never repeating a
recipe twice, and spending time with loved ones.
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POETRY EDITOR
Karie Fugett is a double major in English and Sociology at the University of South
Alabama and an intern at Negative Capability Press. In 2014, she was awarded the Steve and
Angelia Stokes Undergraduate Scholarships for nonfiction and poetry. Her poem “War
Widow” was included in the Spring 2014 issue of Birmingham Arts Journal. After graduation,
she plans to earn an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in literature.
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
A girl with wild hair screams into the void. She’s enveloped in
exaggerated purples, pinks, and reds. She’s saturated with the colors
of spring.“Is anyone out there?” she says. If winter brings loss, then
spring offers celebration and new life.TomWaits once said that you
can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but it always comes roaring
back again.
This issue is thematically inspired by the Holi festival
celebrated in India and Nepal. Holi represents a triumph of good
over evil, celebrating with love the arrival of spring. It recognizes
the end of winter. It’s a time where people meet, douse each
other in vibrant colors, laugh, frolic, forgive, and mend broken
relationships.
Everyone at Oracle had a great time sifting through
submissions and working hard to put together an exceptional
issue. My intention as editor-in-chief was to uphold the quality
and excellence of the Oracle tradition. Oracle Fine Arts Review is a
celebration of life through art. Poems, stories, paintings, sculptures,
photographs, and many other disciplines, played an equal part in
representing the human spirit with all its pain, vigor, and beauty.
With great pleasure, we give you the 2014 edition of Oracle Fine
Arts Review. We hope you love it.
Finally, Oracle suffered a loss last winter. China Barber, our
dear friend and colleague, passed away. She was Oracle’s original
poetry editor and intensely loved by many people.The community
at South was devastated, and we dedicate this issue in memory
of her.With that dedication in mind, Oracle developed a section
that recognizes China’s talent as a writer and features a number of
pieces written specifically for and about China.
Cheers,
Joseph Kees
Editor-in-Chief
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poems dedicated to china barber
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A Dream with Sappho
China Barber
16
A Note For China
Taylor Kingrea
14
Ode to China Barber
Sue Walker
17
Never
Peggy Delmas
15
Where Flowers Once Were
Karie Fugett
FICTION
21
The Bronze Age
Creighton Durrant
48
The Live Oak
Candice Morley
24
Spot in the Road
Morgan Coomes
52
Kenneth’s Jungle Pile
Greg Gulbranson
26
Wings So Foreign
Frank Ard
67
Gloria
Shawn Leonard
33
Happy?
J. D. Liebhart
41
The Uncanny Valley
Creighton Durrant
Territory and Contiguous 70
States
Creighton Durrant
fine art
83
Untitled
Dain Peterson
87
Downloadable Content
Micah Mermilliod
84
Close Exposures of the Third Kind
Micah Mermilliod
88
Crawdad
Keith Wall
85
Toxicity
Kerry Parks
89
Imaginary Friends
Amy Wilkins
86
Splinter Foot Girl
Jennifer Grainger
90
Untitled
Micah Mermilliod
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fine art
poetry
(cont. )
10
91
Fairhope Home
Miranda Everett
103
Isabel Sgraffito
I.C. Kessler
117
Nothing
Corey Harvard
125
Turnover
Richard Hillyer
92
Sleeper
Micah Mermilliod
104
Beauty in the Wild
Victoria Daniels
118
I am From
Deborah Ferguson
127
L-awful American
Rachel McMullen
93
Cheetah
Hannah Kibby
105
Bjorkean Theory
Benjamin Marsh
120
Canine Metaphysics
Richard Hillyer
128
Blue
Matthew Dulaney
94
Untold Story
De’Anaira Preyear
106
My Baby’s Feet
Safa Masoudnaseri
121
Discovery of Figs
Peggy Delmas
129
March 25, 2013
Peggy Delmas
95
Daymaker
Justin McCardle
107
Untitled
Kelly Estle
122
Dance Hall Soliloquy
Kerri R. Waits
130
Thanksgiving Feast
Deborah Ferguson
96
Cameo
Kaitlyn McKinney
108
Serious Fruit
Victoria Daniels
123
Skylight
Rachel McMullen
131
Anne
Matthew Poirier
97
Tribal Fish
Tammy Reese
109
Lydia Irene
фотография
124
The Words
Megan Guinn
136
Grave Digger
Danielle Dozar
98
Charlotte Tree
Charlotte Gregg
110
Untitled
Carol Edmondson
non-FICTION
99
Busy Bee
Keith Wall
111
LD-50
Kerry Parks
139
Chechen Sniper
Matthew Stephens
100
Glass Cocoon
Dain Peterson
112
The Little Prince
Clair Yoste
Interview of Dr. Leon Van Dyke
Mary Beth Lursen
101
Sea Turtle
Tammy Reese
113
Woman in Chair
Micah Mermilliod
143
145
102
If a Fish Could Love a Bird
Keith Wall
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
Parking Lot Proposal
Karie Fugett
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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A DREAM WITH SAPPHO
CHINA BARBER
This issue of Oracle is dedicated to the loving memory of
I conversed with you in a dream.
You told me to stop crying,
to let go of the hurt I’ve felt in my heart
for far too long.
China Barber
You said that everything was going to be okay
because life is mingled with all kinds of colors
and I just haven’t found mine yet
but that I would, and soon.
April 4, 1993—December 10, 2013
On December 10, 2013, Oracle Fine Arts Review lost a friend and
colleague. China Barber, the poetry editor, passed away and left
a hole in our hearts. During her time at USA, she flourished in
creative writing. She was the 2012—2013 recipient of Steve and
Angelina Stokes Scholarship for undergraduate poetry and an intern
at Negative Capability Press. She was an artist, and poetry was her
medium. The poems in this section were written in her memory.
We talked about deep purples,
sea greens and turquoise,
periwinkle and scarlet,
and amber like your eyes
but none of those were mine.
You reminded me that I’ve been here before
even in another time,
reincarnated thousands of times
into a beautiful child who is like golden flowers,
and then you said
“Before you die again, you will remember.
You always do. ”
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ODE TO CHINA BARBER
where flowers once were
SUE WALKER
karie fugett
You have given us your words, China,
that baryonic dark matter
beyond understanding,
this universe on the edge of forever,
where the lives of stars—
Athena, Capella, Polaris, Sirius,
transport us into the heart
of the cosmos
where Toru Takemistsu
sounds the spheres,
a requiem,
homage to you,
as darkness
is a mystery of light.
I see you, China
with a pad of paper,
a pen in your hand
as you write poetry
and read the words you have written.
Your classmates know you have
an immortal gift,
that you won scholarships and awards,
that you are delicate, and lovely
like finest Limoges.
You are alive China,
daughter of our hearts,
in the celestial matter of stars.
I can’t help but wonder
what I could possibly say
about someone
who had so much to say
and was silenced.
Yet, here I sit
attempting to piece together the words
through anger and sadness
through disappointment
and guilt
trying to find even one single word
to give justice
to the loss of this young and hopeful life.
But I can’t.
No word can explain
or give sufficient comfort
let alone justice
to what happened here.
Young, beautiful China is gone.
And no justice can be had.
So, I’ll keep this short:
A magnolia flower plucked too soon
Perfect petals, precious layers
Deprived the chance to bloom
Profound words halted before their rightful end
A stunning voice. Silenced.
Selfishly silenced.
I stare at branches where flowers once were
And grasp at her heart-breaking words
Her unfinished words.
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A note for china
never
taylor kingrea
peggy delmas
Let’s forget the way we think language should be—
the way g’s dangle from their lines,
the mass importance of crossing t’s,
dotting i’s.
Let’s forget that.
Let’s forget the way we want words
to turn our silence into light,
become our second skin,
a new epic of ourselves, a ticklish muse:
now twice erased
now twice transposed
now sewn between blue hems, print.
What does it mean?
As if your voice could be confined
to what you’ve said, to what you’ve written.
What of runes breaking from their shells?
The wild dance of language itself.
Let the lead casings fall off.
Let unzipped aphorisms take to the night.
A new invisible dialect breathes and writhes.
Let’s forget the way we think language should be—
The book has no beginning and no ending. There you are.
Let the casings fall off, your poetry
painting itself like graffiti on every alley wall,
appears. On the spine of every coffeeshop novel,
a love letter, a penciled note,
a silent moment to write and breathe in,
beyond this moment, this pen,
“China Barber was here.”
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On an ordinary Tuesday I would see you
moving trancelike through the day,
dark circles under your red eyes
too much weariness on the face of a girl.
Your smile was genuine, endearing and rare.
You did not know what you wanted
how could you
when you’d never seen such a thing before.
We shared the language of poetry
spoke of chapbooks and authors
talked about my travels.
“I’ve never been anywhere,” you said,
and looked down at your hands.
From the land you were named for,
I brought back a barrette for your long black hair.
Later, when you cut it, I made a fuss
because you were unsure.
“Yes, yes, it suits you, oh, yes.”
I did not know the depth of your despairs.
How could I
when I’d never seen such things before?
You wondered how one person could be so unlucky
I said, “Nonsense.”
But now I’m not so sure
as I accept contributions for your funeral.
What I never knew before,
what I know now,
is how it feels to have your heart broken.
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fiction
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the bronze age
creighton durrant
The air surrounding Fort Jackson was stilled with moisture,
the scent of a service station and exhaust fumes. Petrochemicals
clung to the exposed skin of her face and neck and nape. She felt
flammable. In a corrugated steel hangar that’d once housed aircraft,
she stood among a flock of earthbound birds in varying states of
vitality. The girl felt an affinity with them—both she and they
smothered by the water and vapors and chemical dispersants of
Barataria Bay.
In rubber hazmat gloves, she held what hardly resembled a
bird—iridescent in places, its downfeather coat a shifting patina
of colors like something not of this world—and half submerged it
in the industrial-steel wash basin. The woman standing beside her
began scrubbing the oil from its wings. The feathers, matted and
clinging to one another in tendrils, appeared to her a miniature
tiller of soil, a tool that could scour uniform lines in the surface of
things. It was a bird but didn’t seem avian. More skeletal than vital,
near dead, it left her wondering whether the decision to volunteer
and help with the wildlife recovery campaign, finally become
someone who could lay claim to state citizenship, might have been
pointless.
She’d thought the campaign might finally confer on her the
status of a local, someone living in Louisiana. Her ex-boyfriend
wanted to move and had always suggested Louisiana, saying the
state was basically a banana republic somehow attached to the
rest of the country. He’d said this on four occasions—once, north
of St. Louis during the long drive in from Portland—each time
sounding to her more abstruse than the last. They moved down
together then promptly fell apart. She’d helped him get to where
he wanted, though—and wasn’t that nice of her?—packed their
belongings in cardboard boxes, paid for the gas it took to get to
New Orleans. She felt not unlike a pelican, diving into water from
a height, emerging without air, disoriented and alone, smothered in
a foreign substance and seemingly cast in a copper alloy. She’d lost
qualities and characteristics, had been reduced to an object like the
bronze bust of Mozart in a window-front near her old apartment.
The substance had spread towards the coasts, a Rorschach
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carried on jet streams from mantle to shore, finding itself in the
wings of the birdlike form she held against the bottom of the wash
basin. She submerged it in translucent water that quick-turned
to opaque umber, and still she couldn’t tell you what type of
bird it was—a sandwich tern or a laughing gull, maybe, a roseate
spoonbill—one of the species she’d learned when taking a course
on veterinary science back when it seemed like a viable career
and before she thought it a bright idea to travel across the country
with the only person she could ever imagine loving forever and
realizing it was as stupid an idea as everyone told her.
When she asked the fellow volunteer
It was an amorphous about the bird, the woman said: Do I look like
ornithologist? The girl didn’t know. She
creature, but she an
imagined bird enthusiasts probably resembled
and the woman the subject of their enthusiasm.
The bird wasn’t a pelican. She knew that
were beginning to
much. She could pick a pelican out of an avian
cull from it a shape lineup. Also, a nearby trio of professionals was
resembling an actual busy washing the interior of a pelican’s throat
bird, wringing the pouch, distending the membranous skin with
hands as photographers watched through
unprocessed oil from their
their viewfinders. She could see the contour of
its wings and breast.
fingers pressing through the skin of its pouch,
and the tension reminded her of pulling a swim
cap overhead, of the condoms she used when
they’d still bothered to use condoms.
What she held was about a third the size of the birds she’d
seen wading in ditches and canals around her home. It wasn’t
an egret. It was an amorphous creature, but she and the woman
were beginning to cull from it a shape resembling an actual bird,
wringing the unprocessed oil from its wings and breast. The down
coat and wing feathers began to fill out and regain their natural
coloring. You aren’t from here, are you? the woman said. But actually,
yes, she was. She’d driven down from Metairie to the extreme
southernmost point of the state thinking she could help, maybe get
some mileage out of that veterinary science course.
The woman beside her used plain old, consumer-grade dish
soap to scrub from its beak the iridescent film slowly smothering
the bird; a bird, now, resignedly docile to the surrounding recovery
effort. It was motionless, but the girl wanted to think it had a grasp
of what was happening.
She’d seen a bird like this before, recognized it as a simple,
“
commonplace species. She wanted to say a mallard. She wanted the
mallard to stir, regain movement and struggle to free itself from her
grip. She’d let the mallard escape if it were capable.
The mallard’s waterlogged weight was exactly as it had been
when alive. He was right, she thought, the state might as well, in
fact, be a banana republic, a place ruled by powers not of citizens’
choosing, of obscure mysticism and lifeforms untouched by
scientific study.
She and the woman next to her both agreed they’d done
all they could, had turned and rotated the bird to unnatural
positions, examined it finally for any trace of foreign contaminants.
They handed the mallard to a wildlife and fisheries coordinator
who carried it to an area the girl didn’t want to think about but
nonetheless did: mounds of carcasses divided by species, flecked
in sawdust and rice hulls, baking in the high afternoon sun and
primed for incineration.
When the coordinator returned clutching yet another
indistinguishable bird, the girl stood for a moment resting her
gloved hands on the lip of the wash basin, saying nothing to the
woman beside her. Then the girl began again.
”
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Creighton Durrant lives in New Orleans where the public library is in jeopardy and to-go
cups are at risk. He was once a near-olympic swimmer who can now dog paddle across the
Mississippi River with little effort. He has an MFA.
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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spot in the road
morgan coomes
Ginny urinated for the third time that morning. She hated
her job at Wendy’s in the Love’s gas station, but what choice did
she have? She needed to give a home for little no name. She
quickly zipped up her pants and flushed the toilet with her foot.
The thing Ginny missed most from before her pregnancy was
smoking—that one uplifting cigarette that calmed her nerves.
She exited the stall to wash her hands in one of the faulty
sinks with Dial soap bottles filled with a generic, green-colored
brand. As she turned on the water and waited for it to get warm, a
woman walked in with her short hair soaking wet.
“How are you?” she asked, turning on the hand dryer and
sticking her head under the stream of hot air.
Ginny stared for a moment, then washed her hands and face.
The woman didn’t take long to dry her hair. She took off her shirt
and threw it into the sink, leaving her in only a sports bra. She
clogged up the drain and turned on the faucet, letting her shirt get
soaked before adding some generic soap to the mix.
Ginny watched in fascination as the woman scrubbed her
shirt.
“Cheaper than the laundromat.” She smiled as she wrung out
her shirt. “Plus, this is the only shirt I have.”
“I understand that problem,” Ginny said, affectionately
rubbing her stomach. It was a bitch finding a shirt that both fit and
concealed her growing indiscretion.
The woman reached out and stroked Ginny’s stomach
without hesitation. She lacked that cautious anxiety that governed
polite society. Asking permission never occurred to her. “That’s
amazing.”
“Just the result of a broken condom,” Ginny said with a tone
of resentment aimed at the bulge in her stomach. “Nothing too
amazing about that.”
“Oh no,” the woman said, rubbing Ginny’s stomach in
fascination. “This is a little miracle. A complete accident. Just
imagine starting out life that way. As an accident.”
The woman took her shirt and held it under the dryer. Ginny
wanted to talk to her. She wanted to ask her what she was doing
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and where she was going. But she had to get back to work, before
the manager started looking for her.
“I’m only working here another three months,” Ginny said,
letting her minute stretch a little longer. “Chris and I are planning
to get married. Chris got a job offer in Houston. We got an
apartment there waiting for us.”
“That’s nice,” she said and politely nodded, putting on her
damp shirt. She grabbed her backpack and took
out a toothbrush and some toothpaste. “Hope you
enjoy your domestic lifestyle.”
“So do I,” Ginny replied, heading to the
The stranger in the
door. Before she touched the handle, she turned
bathroom became an
back to the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Shane,” she said, the sound of her voice
anecdote she told at
muffled by her hygiene process.
parties.
“Where you headed to, Shane?”
“North now. I’ve been to Houston, and it’s
not my style. Too hot, too dry.” Shane spat and
gurgled with sink water. Ginny could tell the fresh
sensation in her mouth was a welcomed change.
Ginny wished Shane the best of luck in her travels and left
her behind. Shane was a peculiar moment of excitement that
interrupted a life sure to remain forever mundane. The stranger in
the bathroom became an anecdote she told at parties. An answer
for her son when he asked how she came up with the name Shane.
The odd person that loved him before Ginny did. And vanished
like a light. The same way his father disappeared once he was born.
“
”
Morgan Coomes is currently studying creative writing at the University of South Alabama.
Born and raised in the south, she finds inspiration in old Antebellum homes and her family roots. She is interested in history and has a growing collection of unique antiques. Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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Wings so foreign
frank ard
The corner faucet fills a sink in the diner where you work on
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.You hear the spigot err, copper
pipes behind drywall quiver and whine, water gulp into the basin.
Outside, diesel engines rumble, buses passing through Tuckerville
on their way to Reno. Car horns, small but piercing. People shout
beyond the empty dining room, outside on the street. Engines race
to knocking vibration. The sounds murmur off the long, tall walls
of the dining area as they funnel into the kitchen. It’s just you and
the cacophony. It’s you in the empty restaurant, alone with the
echoes.
It’s morning, nine a.m. The front door is open, but the
restaurant is closed. The closed sign was hanging when you arrived,
the door swinging free on its hinges.You propped the door open
with a stool because the remnants of salted vegetables from last
night’s dinner rush had cured, leaving the place smelling an acrid
mash of Italian staples: red onions, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant,
spinach. Angelo doesn’t clean at night before closing up because
it’s midnight by the time the locals are finished dining, and dishwashing is your job anyway.
On your work days you let yourself in the back door where
the lock is always easily pried open, because Angelo doesn’t want
you coming in the front. On Tuesdays and Thursdays another kid
from the streets, the kid you’ve seen roaming near your alleyway
haunts and avoiding eye contact, takes your place. That boy is your
mirror opposite: emaciated, lanky, Indian tan, short black hair,
nervous smile. Angelo doesn’t pay either of you, not in money.You
are fourteen. That would be illegal.You eat well three days a week
for your work. That’s three days you don’t have to eat from the
dumpster on 7th Avenue where Angelo dumps the trash twice a
week. Tuesdays and Thursdays, lucky for you.
The sink is full, so you turn the water off. The room goes
dark and still.You hear nothing but whispers in that brief flash. The
whispers are then overshadowed by yells, whistles, and sirens.You
reach for the light switch, flip it up and down, but nothing happens
so you get back to work, submerging your hands in the steaming
water, feeling for plates and watching for knives. The Nevada heat
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is intolerable. The steam makes you sweat.You are alone and it’s
hot and dark and the diner should be open but it’s closed and rush
hour traffic is lasting a long time today and it’s just you.
No customers have come for breakfast, unlike usual, even
though the tide of people down Main Street has been constant all
morning. Angelo hasn’t shown up. Angelo has never not shown
up. Angelo’s has been his for twenty years. His car wasn’t parked
out front at the broken, freebie parking meter this morning. He
didn’t leave a chore list for you. Washing dishes is all you have to
do. So you scrub amid the screams and the police and ambulances
pushing through lines of cars. With gasoline fumes sneaking
through the door. With the water scalding your hands and nothing
to think about except that it’s just you.
You turn the radio knob and it doesn’t
Mom’s tiny image, curled
power on.You find two D cell batteries in
in the car seat in her wool
the everything drawer beside the sink and
coat, drops out of view as
fumble them into the back sockets with wet,
soaped hands. The jabberwocky named Bill
we round the bend.
Evans of Brash Bill for Your Morning Fill will
keep you company. No tunes, just talk.
The single speaker is going batty. It crackles, spurts and you
barely hear it over the splash of the dishwater Then it gets louder
than it should be, and Bill Evans doesn’t sound like Bill Evans. He
sounds distant, manic. “In the sky! In the sky! Something in the
sky!” He’s talking in diphthongs. “A foible. A human foible. Foible,
foible, foible. The Pentagon is telling you it’ll be fine. They lie.
This is the hand of God, telling you to look behind.” Bill Evans
sometimes jokes about religion, but this isn’t his normal wacky self.
The speaker cracks, and Bill Evans fades in and out while you
dip an aluminum skillet up and down then rinse it. “The thing
has broken through—broken through the sky!” He sounds like he
has marbles in his mouth and his voice distorts in his microphone.
“Don’t lure. Don’t leer. Get the hell out of here! Listen to what
I’m telling you. Don’t look to the sky. Run and hide!”
You finish the dishes and step out into the people buzzing
past the humming cars and think about how Angelo is probably
halfway to Vegas with a suitcase strapped to his yellow Nova.
“
”
We’re at the municipal park. It’s nine p.m. and I’m eleven years
old. The wind carries ice. Compared with the heat earlier, it’s
hard to believe the temperature could plummet so fast. I have on
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a windbreaker. Dad told me I would need something thicker. I
didn’t think we’d be out for long, so I didn’t listen. We’re in the
park and it’s really late and there’s no one around. Some of the
park lights are blown, so the path is hard to see in places. I walk
carefully because I know there could be big sandstone rocks in the
pathway. The suburb kids sometimes place them, just for spite, in
lines across the gravel so that adults will trip when they walk with
their loves after dusk.
Mom’s in the car. She told Dad to hurry, and she wouldn’t
come because it was too cold and it was something we should do
ourselves. We walk away, Dad’s hands in his khaki pockets, mine
in my blue jeans. Mom’s tiny image, curled in the car seat in her
wool coat, drops out of view as we round the bend. The seesaws
have toppled over as if an immense weight has broken through the
clouds and fallen on top of them.
“Here is as good a place as any, boy,” Dad says. He pulls his
hat bill down until it shadows his eyes. He puts his hands on my
shoulders and bends down to my level. “Your mother isn’t happy.
I think you know that. It’s my job to make her happy and to do
what is best for this family.”
I swing my arms, getting bored with Dad’s talk. The park is
all mine. I want Dad to let go so I can run around and get lost on
the playground.
“You’re a smart boy, Daniel.” Dad zips my windbreaker all the
way up to my chin. “So you will understand when I say that your
mother and I need a break. Some time to breathe. It’s up to you.
You’ll find your way.”
I look up at Dad but I can’t say anything. I don’t understand
what is going on.
“Don’t follow me.” Dad hands me a note written on lined
notebook paper with frayed ends that hang helpless. I read it after
he stands up and walks away.
good bye daniel. we will miss you alot. things will be brighter some
day. find your wings.
When I make it home the next morning all of the furniture
has been moved out. The house is empty and it echoes. I sleep
there for two nights before I move on.
The sky burns and you can’t see anyone’s face clearly.You see their
form, their features averages of one another, a sifting array of faces,
one then another onward. The clouds are cardinal. People run past,
and you move opposite them.You look ahead at Melbourne Hill.
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Beyond it, the light glows, hallows, with pressure.Your shoes touch
the pavement one step out of sync with everyone else. When you
glance at their eyes they reflect the sky like water-colored globes.
You walk through them but do not touch them.
The frenzied people are loud. Their voices collide as one
sound that hushes when the sky flashes and clouds are torn. Their
sound, the sound of human lungs heaving as they run, echoes with
your subconscious, intertwined whispers. The whispers are the faroff voices of your mother and father. They are your wings. They
have kept you moving though you are tired and hurting and it is
just you.
People are here, but it’s just you. Just you and your breath
moving through.
The air smells like chemicals and car
exhaust and burning paper and plastic. Where
The whole world feels
the pavement crumples away, overtaken by sand
radiated, and you sweat
at the base of the hill, five college-age kids have
beads. You don’t walk
parked their car with the doors open. One of
them, a guy in a sweat-stained t-shirt, pours
Main Street often.
gasoline into the tank from a rusty can with a
cigarette balanced in his mouth. The four girls
lie in the sand with their arms stretched wide, making sand angels.
The tallest girl looks up with sky-blue eyes as you stand overhead.
She’s wearing a terracotta-colored top. She isn’t wearing shoes and
she has pretty feet but a wicked smile. The four roll to their feet,
run, and hop in the air, flapping their arms like wild birds. The
angels they create have elongated, magisterial heads.
The town’s commotion occludes you. The shifting sirens, the
moving bodies, the glinting, fuming cars. The whole world feels
radiated, and you sweat beads.You don’t walk Main Street often.
Alleys are your home; they are shaded by the brick building sides,
and no one wants to see you out in open view anyway. But today
you walk Main Street in full view in your dirty, torn jeans and
tennis shoes that are faded and too small.You walk with matted
hair, frayed and oiled with sweat.You walk with a bruised face and
dirty palms toward the waiting light.
“
”
“Abortion.”
“Abortion?” I ask. “What is that?”
Dad looks down at me. He’s leaning against Mom’s BMW
5-series. We are in the garage. The washing machine pipe burst the
day before. The slab floor is still damp and cold to my bare feet,
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and it smells like soured laundry. I’m ten years old, and I feel like
such a kid for asking Dad what the word means. Even after he
explains, I don’t really get how it works.
“Well, boy, it’s when you have a child you can’t keep. When
a woman, like your mother, is pregnant and the parents can’t deal
with the burden. The costs. The lack of private time. Whatever.
They can’t feed the child. Something like that.”
I bob up and down because the floor pin-needles my feet.
My soles are wet and sticky. “Is Mom having a baby?”
“No, son.” Dad moves to the wood shelving and pulls down a
green bag of dog food and slaps it on the floor. The setting sunlight
peaking over the treetops slips through the open garage door and
shadows him. His long, unworldly shadow casts over me. He whips
Mom’s keys in the air, catches them with his right hand, and opens
the driver’s side door. “No, nothing like that, thank God. What
I’m saying is: could you deal with that? You know, abortion. What
would that be like for you?”
The neighborhood kids all went inside to eat dinner, and no
one is out playing. The light is turning faint, the sun dropping low.
The turbocharged engine burns heavy fumes as Dad gets in the car
and revs it up. I stand just beyond the reach of the car door. Dad is
my height, sitting in the car seat, but he looks very different from
me.
I don’t know what to say, so I say, “Do you abortion by giving
the baby away?Like getting rid of stuff at a yard sale?”
“Something like that, yes,” Dad says. “Normally doctors break
the baby’s neck. But we aren’t talking about normal abortion, really.
More like giving back. Aborting what’s been given to us.”
“I guess it’s okay to give it back. But, Mom isn’t having a
baby.”
“We have one already,” Dad says, nodding his finger at my
chest. “And I really want to know how you’d deal with it, the
giving back. If your mother and I decided to abort, well, you
know.”Dad shuts the door and puts the car in reverse and inches
it backward. He talks to me as he’s rolling out. “Tell you what.You
stay here and we’ll do an experiment for both of us. We’ll see what
you are, what you’re made of.Your mother and me and you. We
need to know if you can find your wings. What will this abortion
be like for you?” Dad’s voice sounds low and distant as the car exits
the garage. “Pretend you’re in a lost place. On a different world.”
Dad shuts the garage. It’s just me. It gets pitch-black in there
and cold after dark. The door to the house is locked from the other
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side and I pry on the knob for a while, but it doesn’t open. I find
a piece of rug and roll up in it for the night. I need to know how
long I can last.
The answer is five days.
The town behind you dies away. It’s just you on the hillside.
Vibrations tremble the sand.You hear very few sounds: the last
chattering of people, the last car engines reeling out of earshot.
You stare up at the disk. The metal burns hot coming through the
atmosphere. Steel-gray smoke and umber clouds curl away like
wings.
“
Hello, Mom and Dad.
I’m thirteen, and it’s just me. I walk past the
I’ve missed you a lot.
schoolyard and feel very foreign. The kids play
It is very bright. I’ve
behind black metal bars with orbs on the tips.
I run my fingers along the fence rods. They are
found my wings.
there and I am here and I am not part of them. It’s
misty and overcast and the bars are slick with pellets of rainwater.
The kids, their shapes blurred by the vapor, look different today
more than any other day. They have always looked different from
me.
The girls dress in green and blue plaid skirts with white tops
that turn orange from the playground dirt. The boys wear khakis
like Dad wore and orange-tinted shirts like the girls. They play
games on the playground like kickball and jump rope. They swing
on the monkey bars and bounce high in the air on the seesaws.
I don’t try to go inside. The kids will throw gravel at me. One
time, on my way to Angelo’s, they threw rocks from the open gates
and I picked up a stick and slung it at them. It hit a girl in the head
and gashed the skin over her eye. Blood soaked her face vermilion,
her freckled forehead swollen and bistered. She cried and a boy
threw a really big rock and bruised my jaw.
I didn’t mean to bloody anyone. I am not them and they are
not me.
I walk past and the kids run out and crowd around me, hit
me with rocks until I cry. The bell rings. They run away. I am
bleeding, feeling like an alien in my own skin.
”
Kneeling on the peak of Melboune Hill, you write with your
finger in the sand:
Hello, Mom and Dad. I’ve missed you a lot. It is very bright. I’ve
found my wings.
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The disk looms out of reach but so close that you feel it redden
your skin.You are motionless as it hovers in the air, whirling the
sand in small tornadoes. The sun beats down, reflecting halos of
light from its exterior.You hear nothing from the ghost town
behind you, no cars, no people, no sirens, no fires snapping, no feet
clicking on pavement. There is no one left.
It’s just you and the disk. It emits an electric shrill that carries
across the landscape, echoing in your mind. The disk is so close,
and it is your visible world. Smoke clouds rise and separate into
the heat-distorted desert air like the wings of a red-feathered swan.
You stretch your arms, a bird, glowing and alive.
Frank Ard is a graduate of Clarion West Writers Workshop and a current student in the
Stonecoast M.F.A. program at the University of Southern Maine. His work has been featured in Suspense Magazine, Ideomancer, Kaleidotrope, and The Future Fire, among other
journals. He manages the University of South Alabama Writing Center by day and writes
by night.
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happy?
j.d.liebhart
The airport is beige. Terrance McCabe stands out like a red
chili in oatmeal. He walks stiffly toward the security barrier, as if his
skin is crackling and breaking off. His whole body is sore but most
intensely his rectum. He cringes, as though everyone can tellby just
looking at him what has happened. That something has happened is
apparent. Arms and face burnt a deep crimson. Brown scabby trails
all over as if someone scratched him with a sharpened fork. Even his
hair looks traumatized, each red strand brittle and dry.
He recognizes the familiar outline of his wife and son in the
crowd before they come into complete focus. He didn’t call before
leaving Santa Fe. The events of his weekend too personal to toss
into the bottomless mouthpiece of a phone. He was duped. Taken
on an expensive pony ride care of the new age express. He was
supposed to come back transformed. Enlightened. But all he got
was a bad sunburn and a tender ass.
Terrance stops in front of his wife. She places a hand on his
head and smiles, the same gently pained smile she uses when their
son covers himself in paint while making a picture for her. “Oh,
Terrance,” she says. She seems different, both the woman who saw
him off 3 days ago and someone entirely new. She gently presses her
lips to his.
There is a sweetness to her. He called her something like that
once, “sweet-lips” or “sugar-kisses,” long ago, when it felt as if he’d
never get his fill of her. Her long black hair tickles his face. He pulls
her close, inhales her aroma, and laughs.
“What?” she asks softly.
He shakes his head. He isn’t sure. The richness of everything—
colors, tastes, smells—as if he had just now woken up, as if this was
their first kiss and he wanted it never to end.
William half-hugs, half-climbs up into his father’s arms.
Terrance grits his teeth as his son’s fingers grasp his tender skin but
once the boy is settled, he pulls him close.
“Where’d you go, Papa?” the boy asks.
“I went looking for something.”
“Did you find it?” William eagerly checks behind his father as
if Terrance might have brought that something back with him.
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If someone else had asked him that just a moment ago,
Terrance would have said, No. He would have told them he’d
been scammed. But now …? He feels so different. Alive. It was one
thing to be told that life is a gift, to write it on a little pad while
sipping gourmet coffee and looking out at a Hawaiian beach. But
now he feels it in every part of his body.
“Papa, did you find it?” William asks again.
“I’m not sure,” he says and tries to set William down. But the
boy locks his hands behind his father’s neck and refuses to let go.
Lost? Find yourself in the beautiful canyons and deserts of Santa Fe, New
Mexico. Sought-after, spiritual guide Sparrow Heart will lead you on your
own personal journey. Uncover the mysteries deep in your soul!
Based on ancient Native American teachings passed from generation
to generation, your quest will give you new hope and direction and open
your mind to the wonder and magic of life. Change yourself with a
weekend at Sparrow Heart’s mysticalspirit lodge.
Email for prices and more information.
Sparrow Heart didn’t look anything like his webpage picture.
Holding a ratty cardboard sign that read “Terrance McCabe,” he
looked more like an ancient California hippie with a sprayedon tan than a “sought-after” spiritual guide.
He was supposed to Terrance wasn’t even sure he was actually Native
come back transformed. American.
“You Terry?” the hippie asked.
Enlightened. But all he
“Yes. Well, actually no. I prefer Terrance.”
“Okay. Terrance. Let’s go.” Sparrow Heart
got was a bad sundurn
picked up the smaller of Terrance’s bags and
and a tender ass.
headed for the exit.
The “spirit lodge” was really a small adobestyle house surrounded by a fence of intertwined branches, not
posts but actual tree branches, sun-bleached and white, scattered
like bones. The “guest suite” was a small bedroom off the kitchen
stacked from floor to ceiling with books.
Terrance set his bags by the bed. Sparrow Heart stuck his
head through the doorway. “We’ll start in the morning. Don’t eat
nothing.” Terrance nodded. Sparrow Heart popped open a can of
beer and walked away.
When Terrance woke up, the house was empty. The brick
floor felt cool against his bare soles as he wandered around looking
for the gray-haired man who’d picked him up at the airport. He
“
”
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Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
showered, his stomach rumbling the whole time.
None of the other retreats or courses he’d tried had included
fasting but none of them had really had any effect either. He always
felt great while he was there—exhilarated while walking over hot
coals, entranced in the chanting circle—but when he got home, all
he had was a notebook filled with hackneyed self-help slogans.
“This will be different,” he said out loud. It had to be. His
whole life was beginning to feel like one big zero. Nothing
significant had happened to him in years. He didn’t know if he was
depressed or bored or unhappy or some combination of all three of
those. He didn’t know how to tell anymore.
Suddenly, the front door swung open. Sparrow Heart, dressed
in what looked like a squaw costume from a 50s western, stood in
the doorway. His hair braided and decorated with feathers. Flaps of
brown flesh hanging off his long, thin legs like loose chicken skin.
Terrance was so startled he wasn’t sure how to react.
“You ready?” Sparrow Heart asked.
Terrance looked behind him, as if the question might have
been directed at someone else. “Yes?” he finally said.
The scenery out the window of Sparrow Heart’s Civic
looked like another planet compared to the lush greenery of
Terrance’s native Virginia. A fine, dry, silt-like dirt billowed in dusty
red clouds around the car. The narrow unpaved road twisted and
turned down the desert canyon.
Sparrow Heart pointed to a bush. “That’s Apache Plume.”
Terrance repeated, “Apache Plume,” as if it were somehow
vital to the experience. They passed three small, boxed-shaped
houses that blended into the barren landscape like camouflaged
lizards. Terrance wondered what kind of people would live in a
place like this, a wasteland.
Sparrow Heart could be from another planet as well. Face
dotted with red and white paint. A jowl of dark leathery skin.
Terrance stared at the feathers in the old man’s hair, resisting the
urge to grab one just to see how his “spiritual guide” would react.
Sparrow Heart stopped the car at the bottom of the canyon
and got out. Terrance got out too and looked around. The area
was desolate. A Martian landscape. Sparrow Heart handed him two
plastic bottles. “This one you drink first and wait. This is powerful
spirit drink introduced to my ancestors by the gods.You drink and
you see,” he said.
“What about this one?” Terrance asked.
“Water.You drink, if you thirsty.”
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Sparrow Heart began dancing and singing, hopping out a
small circle in the dust. It looked like a performance the kids at his
son’s preschool might do at Thanksgiving. Terrance stifled a laugh.
Sparrow Heart stopped. He mumbled some unintelligible words,
painted red lines on Terrance’s cheeks, and got in his car.
When Sparrow Heart started to drive away, Terrance realized
that this was it. This was his “quest.” Peyote, water, and a dusty
canyon just outside of Santa Fe. He pounded on the door. Sparrow
Heart rolled down the window a quarter of the way.
“You’re just going to leave me here?” Terrance asked.
“No fear.You drink.You will see. Fear is your old self fighting
to stay in control.You chase him out, kill him, leave him here in
the desert. This is how you will become a new man.”
In all its ridiculousness, it made sense to Terrance. Extreme
measures for extreme times. A jolt to bring him back to life. He
stepped back and looked at his reflection in the car window. He
nodded.
“When will you come back?” he shouted as the car pulled
away.
“I come back tonight.”
I am a bear.
Terrance McCabe galloped down the empty stream bed on
all fours and buried his head in water only he could see. Pawing at
fish, he growled, lay down and rolled in an imaginary stream. His
usually pale arms, already a pinkish-red from hours in the New
Mexico sun, opened up and bled as they scrape the rocks. He
howled.
I am a bird.
He ran along the stream bed again.
Fear is your old self Squawking. Arms flapping. He tripped,
fighting to stay in control. smacking to the ground face first. He rolled
blinked his eyes a few times, and then
You chase him out, kill over,
passed out. When he came to, his body was
him, leave him here in stiff and his head pounded so hard he felt as
the desert. This is how if he might vomit. He stood up. Mouth dry.
Teeth covered in grit and dust. Brain spinning
you will become a man.
inside his skull.
He looked for the water Sparrow Heart had left but couldn’t
find it. He surveyed the landscape. He had no idea where he was.
Sparrow Heart said he’d pick him up where he’d dropped him off,
but Terrance realized that he’d wandered far from the place he’d
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”
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been left that morning.
As he walked up the stream bed, the events of the day played
in his mind like two films superimposed on each other. Real and
unreal. He could see himself the man thrashing foolishly on the
rocks of a dry stream bed and himself the bear rolling in a gushing
current.
He finally came to a dirt road but nothing looked familiar.
The sun dropped behind the hills. A coyote yipped deep in the
canyon. Terrance sped up. Around the next bend was Sparrow
Heart, leaning against the hood of his car, smoking a cigarette.
“Whoa, I thought I lost you, man.” He crushed the cigarette under
his boot. “Good trip?”
After a light supper—the only thing Terrance could stomach was
dry toast—he and Sparrow Heart sat at either end of a beaten up
couch and watched television.
What am I doing here? Terrance thought as his host popped
open a soda and offered it to him. Terrance shook his head.
Sparrow Heart plopped back down on the couch and gulped the
drink himself.
“I love this show,” Sparrow Heart announced as the intro to
Cops came on.
Terrance glanced around the sparsely furnished room. Most
of the other seminars he’d gone to had been held in fancy hotels
with lavish buffets, handbooks, and video presentations. He’d
especially liked the one in Maui where they’d walked on hot coals
at night on the beach. But Terrance reminded himself that even
that experience, as astonishing as it’d seemed at the time, hadn’t
really changed anything. As soon as he was back at home, he felt
the same. Empty. As if everyone else knew what life was about
except him.
I am here to learn, Terrance reassured himself. But what had he
learned today? That his pale skin burned in unrelenting sun? That
it was a good idea to keep track of your water in the desert?
The TV show opened with a high-speed car chase winding
through the streets of Los Angeles. The driver sped through an
intersection, grazed another car, and then turned to keep going.
“They always run!” Sparrow Heart said, slapping his knee.
Terrance nodded but he didn’t enjoy chases. He never
understood why people ran. It seemed so pointless. Their cars
usually crashed or ran out of gas and it all ended the same way.
No one ever got away. All they seemed to do was to make things
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harder.
“I’m going to go to sleep,” Terrance said, getting up from the
couch.
“But the show isn’t over.”
“I know but I am pretty tired.”
Sparrow Heart looked disappointed but quickly turned back
to the television. Lying in bed, trying not to aggravate his sunburn
by moving, Terrance vowed to spend the next day meditating
instead of bounding around like a lunatic.
I am the sky.
Terrance McCabe wandered along the narrow canyon
tearing at his clothes, as if it were second nature to be walking and
stripping. His movements coordinated. Step. Button. Step. Zip. His
pants slipped easily off his ankles, as if it were meant to be.
I am the air.
He took a breath.
I am … inside myself.
He stopped mid-stride, stark naked, right
foot
out
in front like a statue of a marching
He climbed as high as soldier. His
arms and face were burnt from the
the tree wanted and then day before but his newly bared chest was still
waited, waited because winter white.
I am inside myself.
the tree wanted him to
When he realized that the thought was
wait, waited because he also inside himself, he laughed. His voice
rumbling back at him from all sides of the
and the tree were one.
canyon. Everything was clear. Illuminated.
I see. I see.
Terrance continued down the canyon. The same clarity
taking over his mind and body. “I understand,” he mumbled. Then
shouted, “I understand! I understand!”
He stopped by a tree. Its branches swayed, green leaves
blending with blue sky until they were one. Terrance nodded. I
understand. The tree sent a wordless message. It wanted him close.
Terrance embraced the trunk and climbed. He climbed as high as
the tree wanted and then waited, waited because the tree wanted
him to wait, waited because he and the tree were one.
I am the tree.
When Terrance opened his eyes again, it seemed as if the sky
had magically turned black. He was shivering. He remembered
climbing the tree but nothing else. The time that had clearly passed
“
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was lost. Black space in an otherwise vivid memory.
His face and stomach were flat against a branch, his arms
hanging down. Terrance tried to move but a sudden sharp pain in
his rectum stopped him. He reached back. A large stick protruded
from his ass. He felt around, worried that he’d impaled himself and
wasn’t feeling it because of the peyote. But there were no branches
piercing his body, just one coming out of his backside.
He grabbed it and pulled. It tugged at the soft lining of
his insides as if it were glued there before finally coming loose.
Terrance rested for a moment before he let himself think about
how it got there. Obviously, he’d put the stick in his ass while
up a tree, high on peyote, trying to find himself. I am the tree, he
remembered.
I am a moron.
Terrance climbed down, his exposed penis and scrotum
being poked by every branch. He looked around. He could see the
outline of the hills and landscape around him in the moonlight
but nothing looked familiar. He was certainly lost this time. He
had no idea where his clothes were or where Sparrow Heart had
dropped him off. “Skeletal remains of man found in New Mexico
desert. Film at 11,” he said in a mock-newscaster voice, but then he
realized it was too close to possible to be funny.
It’d been hours. He could be miles from the houses along
the narrow dirt road they’d driven down. He might be bleeding
internally. He might step on a scorpion or a rattler. He wasn’t sure
that New Mexico had scorpions but he was pretty sure it had
rattlers. Didn’t rattlers attack when surprised? And he was barefoot.
More than barefoot, naked! Barefoot and naked in the god damn
desert. Moron!
Terrance started up the canyon, feeling around with his
big toe before each step as if the rest of him might be able to
retreat from any danger that lone toe encountered. A faint light
appeared in the distance. He headed towards it. He wanted to run
but he continued his cautious progress, watching the brightness
slowly grow as he approached. Finally, he was standing in the dirt
driveway of one of the little box houses. The blue light of a TV
flickered in the window.
The canyon behind him was still. The darkness, thick and
heavy with silence. He looked back and, though it seemed strange,
he felt for a moment that he should turn around, go back out into
the night. Disappear. Be absorbed.
He took a deep breath. The dusty smell of the desert filled
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his nostrils. There was nothing but dirt. Dirt and darkness. Dirt and
the abundant desert shrub he’d forgotten the name of. He broke
off a branch and held it in front of his genitals, then walked up to
the house and knocked on the door.
J.D. Liebhart’s short stories have appeared in The Wascana Review, The Baltimore Review,
and The Griffin. She is working on a novel, which at the current rate, will likely be finished
shortly before she dies. 40
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
the uncanny valley
creighton durrant
His dad had created both Benchman and the automaton
standing in front of him. Dad was an engineer, yes, but Benchman
had never before in his life seen any evidence or product to
prove it. The automaton—the mechanical simulation of a dead
governor moving without grace or fluidity, gesticulating in a series
of awkward stops and starts and spasms—was proof of his father’s
ingenuity. It endeared Benchman to his dad in ways he couldn’t
really identify. The life-sized, animatronic Huey P. Long stood
on a small pedestal in one of the Old Louisiana State Capitol
exhibit spaces. Its coat of matte, spray-painted bronze recalled
for Benchman an ambiguous era of steam power and wind-up
mechanics, a simpler monochromatic history he’d never seen or
experienced.
“I don’t think it’ll be too difficult,” Benchman said.
“Still, I’m gonna need your help,” his dad said.
While they spoke, the animatronic Huey P. Long maundered
on and on about the local college football team. Its mouth didn’t
move. Technically, it wasn’t speaking—or technically speaking,
the automaton was speaking technically. Prerecorded audio tracks
issued from speakers somewhere in the ceiling or walls, but not
from the device itself.
Benchman and his dad were the sole patrons of the exhibit,
the only people listening as the animatronic Huey P. Long played
through its inventory of sound bite talking points. Following the
instructions printed on a small wall-mounted placard, the two
men refrained from touching the device or crossing the velvet
rope in front of them. His dad admired his own creation—the
burnished suit coat creasing at the elbows and shoulders, its
movement human, but not exactly—while scratching his beard and
nodding occasionally in approval. The automaton was humanlike,
Benchman thought. That’s exactly what it was. It was like a human,
similar, but not exactly.
“I have to say, Dad, its movement is a bit—how to put it,”
Benchman said. “Rigid or something.” As Benchman gave his
assessment, the spotlight dimmed away from the machine. It
concluded its soliloquy with the final chorus of the college fight
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
41
song. “Wasn’t he known for being a pretty animated guy?”
“Well, yes, but more for roads, roadways,” his father said.
“Listen.” He clapped twice, and the sound awakened the
animatronic Huey P. Long. It began again and spoke on the
network of highways splayed across the state of Louisiana. “A
thing of beauty, considering,” Dad said. “I refurbished the robotics
from that kids’ restaurant on Plank Road after it closed. Used to
be some kind of animal that played the banjo. A gorilla, I think it
was.”
“A gorilla?”
“Or a bear,” he said. “I can’t remember.”
Actually, Benchman was pretty sure it was a gorilla. He had
a vague memory of his parents taking him
He had a vague memory to the restaurant when he was a kid and
a band of anthropomorphic animals
of his parents taking him seeing
perform Dixieland jazz.
to the restaurant when
“How long’s it been here?”
he was a kid and seeing a Benchman asked.
be about fifteen years, now,”
band of anthropomorphic his dad“Must
said. “Installed it right before your
animals perform mom passed.”
“Can’t believe I’ve never seen it
Dixieland jazz.
before. Mom ever see it?” “Once,” he said,
“but I don’t think she was all that impressed.”
“I really wish you’d take a look at the project I’m working
on,” Benchman said. “I think it’ll make for an interesting
exhibit. It’s supposed to have voice recognition and multi-touch
functionality.”
“Don’t care. I told you, Son, once that thing comes in here, I
swear to never set foot in this museum again.” His dad then shifted
in his seat and set his forearms on his knees. “I don’t mean to
disparage your work, or anything, though.”
“But look, it says don’t touch, right there,” he said, pointing at
the placard. “You can’t interface with it. People want to interface.”
“I’ve been very much intimate with the workings of
Governor Long.” As he said this, the machine deactivated with a
final spasm, light again receding into the ceiling. “So you gonna
help me get this thing out of here tomorrow, or what?”
“Sure,” he said. “What time?”
“Just stop by when you get off work.”
“All right,” he said, and the two men rose from their stools
and started towards the exhibit’s exit.
“
”
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“There’s something else I wanted to tell you,” his dad said.
As they left, the sound disturbed the automaton. It responded
to their absence with a set of directions leading to the exact
location of Huey P. Long’s assassination, to the death-place of the
original for which both Benchman and his father had created a
replica.
Benchman and his dad left the Old State Capital Museum and
headed toward where they’d parked. The streets were still wet with
the previous day’s rain, the world and its light sources inverted in
pools of lustered concrete.
“No, I’m not really sure whether it’ll be bronzed. That’s a
Department of Verisimility issue,” Benchman said to his dad.
Oil refineries across the river shrouded the city with a toxic
cloud-cover that obscured the night sky. Atop distant smokestacks,
mounted to steel girders and scaffolds, the refinery caution
lights were the city’s semblance of stars. The lights were star-like,
Benchman thought. The real ones were out and beyond the reach
of the city’s airborne chemical emissions.
They walked together along the sidewalk and paused before
a building that’d been gutted and prepared for renovation. The
façade and most of the roofing had been removed, but the interior
structure, the framework and the building’s second floor, was left
intact. Benchman tried to determine where his cubicle would be
had he worked there.
“So where’d you meet her?” Benchman said.
“Installing an exhibit at the Rural Life Museum. She
volunteers there on the weekends.” Water from the previous night’s
storm fell from secret reservoirs between the derelict building’s
flooring and ceiling panels. Benchman watched the water gather
in pools and threaten to submerge the demolition equipment left
within. He and his dad stood for a moment and listened to the
sound of rain echo within the building.
“She gonna move in with you?”
“Maybe. Eventually. I don’t know.”
“I can’t even begin to picture what that’d look like—
someone else walking around where Mom used to.”
“Well, you don’t have to,” he said. “You don’t live there
anymore.” His dad kicked at some debris lying on the sidewalk
and wiped the sweat from his brow. The careless gesture seemed
to Benchman childlike. With it, he felt their difference in years
contract.
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When they arrived at the parking lot, Benchman let the
discussion lapse. He got in his car and left the downtown area in a
direction opposite his father.
Benchman spent the following workday adjusting minor cosmetic
details and making minute alterations to the computer generated
model of Huey P. Long, removing the ochre and bronze filters he’d
applied the day before. Department of Verisimility first decided
the model should be bronzed, then recanted, and—once again—
thought maybe, in fact, it should be bronzed, but ultimately the
people over in Verisimility decided that it shouldn’t be bronzed.
The model should be an accurate rendering of the late governor
and not based on the obsolete representation currently installed
in the exhibit space. There was some serious interdepartmental
waffling on the issue. Benchman agreed with the final decision,
though, and told the department supervisor that he’d be finished
with the project by the end of the afternoon. In a few hours,
nobody will know that his father’s animatronic Huey P. Long ever
existed.
He thought about the robotic skeletal
He released them and structure his father had assembled, its metal
caught what he realized carpals and metacarpals, the actuators
gripping the banjo on stage and forming
was a critical oversight: the a barred major chord, children more
hand poised with fingers terrified by the machine’s performance
entertained, parents miserable and
curled into a chord position than
drinking cheap beer in endurance of
displayed no tendons or their surroundings, the incessant requests
sinews reaching from the for brass tokens. Maybe the governor’s
model wasn’t any
wrist into the cuffs of the computer-generated
better than the banjo playing gorilla.
governor’s suit jacket.
He was unsure whether he’d improved
on anything. The components of his
father’s device should’ve been left alone if, despite his efforts and
technologic improvements, the computer-aided model of the
governor no more closely resembled the original than did his
father’s automaton. Huey P. Long was dead, and maybe everyone
should’ve just left him that way.
Later that afternoon, the department supervisor stood
over Benchman’s shoulder and told him he’d done a really great
job with the creases and folds in the model’s skin. Really, great
attention to detail, the supervisor said. The contours and texture
“
”
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are very lifelike. Benchman disagreed, though, looking at the
workstation computer screen and the model’s left hand lying
open, pleading. He thought,Yeah, you’re right. It looks lifelike.
Using the mouse, he pulled the pads of the fingers to the palm
of the hand. He released them and caught what he realized was
a critical oversight: the hand poised with fingers curled into a
chord position displayed no tendons or sinews reaching from the
wrist into the cuffs of the governor’s suit jacket. There was no
evidence of subcutaneous life, of musculature or skeletal system, of
depth or unseen movement of any kind. But he made no further
alterations. He considered the project complete enough, and
when the department manager again approached Benchman at his
workstation and asked if the model was finished, he told him, yes,
it was. He’d send it over in a few minutes.
After work, Benchman drove downtown to meet his dad at the
Old State Capital Museum. It was dusk when he arrived, but a
diffuse light filled the air above the refineries across the river. The
flame atop a banded smokestack purged the refinery’s waste and
emitted an incandescent glow into the surrounding sky. When he
arrived at the museum, his dad’s truck was parked in front of the
museum with its hazard lights blinking.
His dad carried the animatronic Huey P. Long towards the
truck. “It’s heavier than I remember,” he said. Benchman and
his dad worked to set the figure in the passenger seat, bent the
animatronic Huey P. Long at the knees and hip in a position that’d
be comfortable for a human being. It pressed the spent cigarette
boxes and styrofoam cups into the floorboards of his dad’s truck.
Benchman sat beside the automaton, and wanted it to stir or
somehow turn and acknowledge him, to suffer a brief paroxysm
like it usually did, but it remained inert. He entered through the
driver’s side door, sat beside the machine, reached across it and
placed its arm on the armrest. His dad sat next to him and took
the steering wheel. The engine turned over and his dad inserted
into the stereo a cassette single of Every Man a King. And again,
Benchman half expected the machine to move, figured it would
respond to the song it’d help write.
Benchman, his dad, and the animatronic Huey P. Long
riding shotgun—the three of them—left the parking lot of The
Old State Capital Museum and drove down River Road past the
half demolished office building they’d seen the previous day. The
lifeless, blank unstaring machine pressed against his right arm and
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thigh. He couldn’t remember when—if ever—he’d been in such
proximity to his dad, and in that closeness, Benchman felt a marked
contrast of temperature, opposing poles of warmth and frigidity
between life and lifelike.
They drove through downtown Baton
Rouge
and arrived at the steps of the Louisiana
Well, I’m sure yours
State Capitol. Dad parked the truck, pulling
is better too,” his dad the hand brake. Facing the building stood a
said. “But I told you, I’m monument to the governor, a sculpture of Huey
Long standing on a pedestal with his hand
never setting foot in that P.lying
open in supplication—to what, Benchman
museum again.
didn’t know. He wanted to imagine the posture
an invitation, an offering to approach and
come closer. “I always wanted to show him this,” his dad said. The
powerless device sitting beside Benchman failed to look on the
governor’s monument. Its eyes just stared through the windshield
taking note of nothing in particular. Of the three of them, none
were impressed with the monument to Huey P. Long.
“I think yours is better,” Benchman said.
“Well, I’m sure yours is better too,” his dad said. “But I told
you, I’m never setting foot in that museum again.”
They left the downtown area and merged onto I-10 heading
south, joined the commuters leaving the city who either thought
the bronzed man sitting shotgun real enough to warrant no
attention or were just indifferent to its presence altogether.
“
”
The incumbent and still very much alive governor inaugurated
the new exhibit and posed for a steady stream of disinterested
journalists. The governor shook hands with various public relations
professionals, CEOs and the supervisors of Benchman’s production
studio. In place of his father’s automaton hung a vertical four-bysix foot, touch responsive, high-definition video screen. A vinyl
banner above the screen read The Kingfish Lives Again! with various
corporate logos and sponsorship credits spanning the banner’s
length. On screen, a windswept computer generated Huey P. Long
stood at the steps of The State Capital Building, hands pocketed,
awaiting instruction or acknowledgment from the crowd. It stood
ready to purvey knowledge and respond to voice or touch. The
patrons continued to shake hands, balance hors d’œvres and plastic
champagne flutes, seemingly more concerned with the banner
than the exhibit. Benchman stood leaning against the entrance
to the Mysteries of the Murder of Huey P. Long exhibit waiting, like
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the computer generated model he’d created, for some form of
acknowledgement.
He took what must’ve been four or five trips to the makeshift
bar. When he returned to his post after the sixth, Benchman saw
her. He knew immediately she was the woman his dad had been
seeing. His dad entered the exhibit space following after with his
hand on the small of her back. The woman and his mother shared
similarities, and Benchman wondered if his dad was aware of them.
Her eyes held the same slight skepticism; her walk, the same gelid
charm as his mother’s. As they entered, his dad and the woman
scanned the room. They maneuvered through the small assemblage
of people and made their way to where the animatronic Huey P.
Long once stood.
His dad examined the computer-generated model awaiting silently
on screen. He peered at it then took a step back and examined it
from where he stood. His father then approached the screen, raised
his hand and pressed it against the glass. When he removed his
hand, Benchman’s computer generated Huey P. Long awoke and
addressed the couple. It began speaking to them about the network
of roads and roadways splayed across Louisiana, the governor
rendering the surface of the state traversable, connecting places and
towns near one another yet held apart.
Creighton Durrant lives in New Orleans where the public library is in jeopardy and to-go
cups are at risk. He was once a near-olympic swimmer who can now dog paddle across the
Mississippi River with little effort. He has an MFA.
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The Live Oak
Candice marley conner
You’ve been collecting secrets since your memory began.
They float up to you like leaves float down. To protect these
secrets, you write them in the tree where they melt into the bark,
creating lines that run from earth to sky so that your tree resembles
lived-in skin. The people with the wrinkled skin who walk around
your tree and find shade and cool breezes in its low, massive
branches are particular favorites.You like their secrets because their
past and present jumble together, and their future doesn’t go too
far, so their secrets will be safe within the tree forever.
Sometimes an owl perches on the branch next to you as you
write them down, asking: “Who?” as it inclines its head quizzically,
but you remain tight-lipped. Secrets lose their power if they’re told
and anyways, they’re not your secrets to tell.
The tree is much older than you are.You’ve heard whispering
among the leaves that the tree was a sapling when this world was
discovered. As you sit on the branches and the wind rustles by, you
see the past, present, and future reflected off the glossy oak leaves.
Sometimes you see steamboats on the nearby river, and you hear
that cotton is king as buggies crawl back and forth like busy ants
to the train, whose shrieks rattle the smaller branches and scare the
squirrels into their hiding places.
The next day, they’re gone, and there’s a structure in the
middle of a field that had pines on it two days ago. The curling
black wrought-iron scrolls hold up a white roof topped with a
black eagle frozen mid-flight.You eye it nervously until you notice
that the squirrels and wrens ignore it.
There are darker days around the tree sometimes, and you
test your boundaries then, but you can’t leave. By Friday, the anger
and darkness are gone, and you realize you never want to leave.You
have too many secrets to write down. Who would keep them if
you were to leave?
People are fascinating to you; you think you might’ve been one
of them. There are four in particular who come daily to your tree.
They shine, so you sit on the closest branch. Their secrets float up
to you.
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They say each other’s names on occasion, but as you see
their past, present, and future reflecting off their faces like twisting
leaves, you call them by what shines the brightest: the Dancer, the
Writer, the Marine Biologist, and the Professor. Right now they are
saplings, but you can see the oaks they will become.
The Dancer and the Marine Biologist are the Storytellers.
The Writer and the Professor are the Listeners. Some evenings the
Writer and the Professor come back alone.You hear whispered
secrets of love, but you know it’s not real and wonder if they know,
deep in their roots, that it’s not real either.
Some moonlit nights, all four come back and remind you of
the dark days.You don’t understand why, but it seems like a game to
them.
Tonight the moon hangs in the sky, illuminating the tree in
ghostly white shrouds of reflected light. Even bending your own
body certain ways catches the milky light, shimmering off what
used to be more than a dream.You feel homesick for some reason.
You hear the boom-boom of the Dancer’s car as it approaches,
so you slip down to the lower branches. All four of them come to
your tree tonight. The Dancer tells a story as
they walk up, she and the Marine Biologist
Sometimes you see
followed by the Writer and the Professor
steamboats
on the nearby
who stroll, hands linked, their bodies
touching.
river, and you hear that
The Dancer tells a story from the dark
cotton is king as buggies
days when your tree was a lynching tree.You
crawl back and forth like
hate that secret, afraid the spilt blood might
taint the earth, but the tree is too massive to
busy ants to the train,
be bothered by it, its taproot pushing past
whose shrieks rattle the
the darkness deep into the ground.
The game is simple in theory; run
smaller branches and scare
around the tree twenty-five times, and you’ll
the squirrels into their
see a man hanging from a noose. Their
hiding places.
excitement and adrenaline flows up like sap,
and you can’t help but watch, even though
you disapprove.
They run and insist the Professor lead, since he’s on the track
team. But they underestimate the size of the ancient oak, making it
around the heavy branches five times before losing their breath. The
Dancer complains of shin splints.
But five times is enough.
You hear it before they do, so you slip closer to the heartwood.
“
”
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49
“Hush!” the Writer says, for she’s the best Listener and the
other three hold their breaths and laughter.
The soft creak-creak of the hangman’s noose is audible over
the cricket’s night noise as it swings on the branch.
You watch them huddle together, shivering in spite of the
humidity. The Marine Biologist is the most fearless of the group,
for she will swim with sharks in her future. She suggests running
around the tree again. The others follow, but you think it’s mainly
because no one wants to be left alone.
The Dancer sees him first. She stops short, and the Writer
smacks into her, and they go down in a heap to the grass. But you
can see the Dancer lock eyes with him. Hers wide in disbelief
to his sad ones, and you see then in her reflection that he will
follow her when she goes to Auburn next fall.You’ll be glad of his
absence but feel sorry for her. And wonder idly how he can leave,
but you cannot.
Their shrieks turn into laughter as they run back towards the
car.You see a lost shoe left behind, but you can only point to it as
they search in the grass. Not daring to return to the dark side of
the moonlit tree, they never find it.You see its future and know a
soft brown field mouse will raise six pups inside it.
You watch as they give up their search and return to the car
with only seven shoes. The dark, sad man follows and places his
hand on the back window as a salute, or a goodbye-for-now.You
wonder if any of them will look back and see the handprint he has
left.
The acorns fall like rain when the season changes.You watch the
squirrels gather them, then you write down the locations of their
winter stashes. These secrets will be valuable come winter when
the squirrels have forgotten.
You’re surprised when the Professor comes to your tree
without the others. He’s not alone though, another with pale,
bony legs that reminds you of a disjointed grasshopper is with him
instead. The Grasshopper does not shine like the other four; even
the Professor seems duller today.You are curious, so you scoot to
the lower branches as their secrets waft up like vapor from the
nearby river on a cold day.
When their secrets turn to the Writer’s secrets, you feel
like it’s a betrayal.You flush as the Professor sidles closer to the
Grasshopper, his knee grazing hers, and your normally translucent
limb turns opaque and solid enough to dislodge a piece of bark
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that falls onto the Professor’s shoulder.You hide in shock, but they
blame the squirrels.
This has never happened before, so you examine your foot,
but it has resumed its usual transparency.You realize the piece of
bark that fell was the piece that had the original secret inscribed
on it. It had died, its secret told, the energy leaving the tree and
diluting into the world.
The air gets colder then spring arrives, and the tree awakens in all
its green glory. You miss the ones that shine as they come less and
less. The four still come together occasionally under the branches,
but the Writer and the Professor never
come together. They don’t share secrets
For the first time, you write
anymore, so you have none to write into
your own secret into the bare
the tree. The tree’s massive limbs sink
place the bark fell last fall, to
lower to the ground until you cannot tell
the grass from the new leaves.
hold their secrets safe.
One May morning, with the sun
warming the bark, you notice the four at the eagle’s gazebo in the
pine-less field, lined up among others dressed in black robes like
grounded crows. As they throw their black squares into the air, you
know they will be leaving your tree, going out into the world to
become a Dancer, a Writer, a Marine Biologist, and a Professor.
For the first time, you write your own secret into the bare
place the bark fell last fall, to hold their secrets safe.
“
”
Candice Marley Conner graduated from USA in 2005 with honors and a concentration
in creative writing. She had poetry published in the ‘04 and ‘05 Oracle. Currently, she’s
a mom of a two year old and a two month old, except during nap time when she’s also
a writer. She is actively searching representation for her YA manuscripts.
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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Kenneth’s Jungle Pile
Greg Gulbranson
1.
He’s sitting by the back window, drunk, smoking a cigarette.
It’s better here, by the window in the unfinished room. The
cool air glides in from the rain soaked night, bringing with it a curl
of smoke from the smoldering tip of his cigarette. The rest of the
house is brutally hot, and worse, humid. Opening the window to
the rain is probably not helping, but dammit, Kenneth needs some
relief. He’s looking out into the backyard, which has suddenly
taken on a decidedly Vietnam-War-movie-set look, like those
nighttime scenes in Forrest Gump, with the overgrown leaves
providing the backdrop for Forrest and Bubba to make desperate
promises while huddled back to back in the shit.
He used to smoke on the front porch.
It is beautiful, really. The yard. Its beauty is perhaps even
aided by the large pile of construction debris in the center, a pile
of wood, rusty wire, broken drywall, asbestos tile, all grown over
with weeds and vines, like a collapsed Dickensian mansion. The
sight is purely a product of his irresponsibility, his lack of action let
nature take over, and nature decided it wanted to be a Vietnamese
jungle. Well, maybe this nature isn’t exactly natural, because the
backyard-jungle’s existence probably has a lot to owe to the three
straight weeks of unbroken precipitation that has been deluging
the Northeast. The news people are calling it climate change, or
depending on the outlet, “Global Storming.” But what they fail to
say is that a change in climate changes your yard, and if you don’t
aggressively mow and trim, you get a goddamn jungle behind your
house. The front yard isn’t exactly well-manicured either. He’d told
Mae he’d mow. He should be mowing.
He should be doing a lot of things. Like sweeping. And
finding a job. And taking showers. And giving a shit. And becoming
sexually aroused when Mae comes in wearing that little sheer
nightgown, unbuttoned up to where he can see the bottoms of her
breasts a little.
But depressed people don’t do those things, do they?
Yes, he likes the state of himself now. Man, sitting in fold
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out chair, in the dark, staring out opened window, in unfinished
room (bare floors, no drywall), rain coming down, smoke swirling
in a curl from smoldering tip of cigarette, dressed in vestigial gym
shorts and old paint splattered t-shirt (from when he actually
painted), scattering of butts and empty beer cans around his
feet, head in hands, beard patchy, hair greasy, looking totally and
completely disheveled. He needs old pizza boxes everywhere. He has
the beer cans but not the pizza boxes.
Note to self: start ordering pizzas. Eat only half.
Note to self: with what money?
Mae is going to leave soon. She said she
Note to self: depressed
would. She gave him an ultimatum. In the
people don’t make notes
face of this, he, naturally, grew a beard and
didn’t wear shirts so much anymore. He wears
to themselves. Stop
his shoes inside the house. He flauntingly
making notes to yourself.
disregards her circled want-ads strategically
placed in high-Kenneth-traffic areas around
It’s too organized.
the domicile, on top of the beer in the fridge,
amongst the half-empty cartons of unopened
cigarettes littering his drawing desk.
“If you aren’t going to work, then you at least have to work,”
she’d said.
It’s amazing that she hasn’t left already. The house is incredibly
hot. In addition to that, it was kind of d—erous (trigger word)
around here and there is certainly a lot of cr—e (huge trigger
word!) to account for. Their car was broken into several times.
Only one door handle still works. Why do they always break the
door handles?
Note to self: find out “why do they break the door handles?”
Note to self: depressed people don’t make notes to themselves. Stop
making notes to yourself. It’s too organized. Like you’re planning to do
anything.You aren’t.You’ll never do these things.You are a failure.
He jumps up out of his folding chair and bounds to the
kitchen in almost a, shit, gleeful manner. He wrests the refrigerator
door open and it releases with a satisfying (!) flop sound.
Satisfying? Really, Kenneth? You’re satisfied by the sound of a
refrigerator opening?
He is a little disappointed that he just moved with such
pep and energy, and that he found something satisfying. That was
not very depressed of him. A depressed person would, ideally, be
moving very slowly and leaking nasally moans with every step,
definitely hating the sound of the refrigerator opening, also hating
“
”
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any sound, thing, idea, etc.
He opens another beer and closes the door with as much
lethargy and apathy as he can muster. It kind of half-closes. Perfect.
He saunters down the hallway, consciously taking slower steps,
counting his breaths. He loses count when he reaches the
four-panels.
The four-panels hang prominently in the hall—due to
the fact that they’re the only things hanging in the hall—and
Mae’s face looks at him with a neutral expression free of any real
judgment, which is a refreshing change. There are three of them,
actually, not four. He always asks visitors, “Wanna see the fourpanels?” They expect four panels. Not three panels divided
into fours.
The three four-panels are large photos of Mae’s face, each
divided into four rectangles, with each rectangle covered with a
certain different, colorful, microscopic animal painted into each
nook, crevice, and imperfection of her kindly visage. In one one
of them her nose is a cluster of a thousand tiny lions, furs in warm
yellows and oranges, roaring and grooming, paws lifted to mouths,
tails frozen in mid-whip, etc. In another quadrant, hundreds of
green crocodiles swim in military tight formations, forming her
right eye, her eyelashes sunning themselves on rocks, preening
in orgiastic lordosis, what have you. He looks at the four-panels
now and can only remember making them in third-person. He
can picture the process but he can’t place himself in the process
anymore. To actually make things is not something he does, not to
mention things that he actually kind of liked.
He could never sell them. He had gotten offers. Fortythousand dollars each. Christie’s said they could do better. He and
Mae could’ve gotten a place in Brooklyn, not the fake Suburbs
of Suburbs That Kind of Look like Brooklyn if You Squint Your
Eyes a Lot. Not a Brownstone but a place. But this area is up and
coming, it’s just up the river, for Gods-sake. His realtor assured them
that, yes, this street does seem kind of sketchy now, but in no time
it’d be loaded with artists and other assorted young people.
Then comes a knock knock knocking, at the door. In
the night?
Not good.
He bolts around the corner, heart pounding a path straight
out of his chest. He is still amazed at what was awoken in him
last summer, that ability to be straight-up, kid-level scared at just
about anything. A sound from the yard? Freak out! Clatter in the
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hall? Get low! His hands are shaking. This is pissing-himself dread.
Incredible. Kenneth is aware that adults are not supposed to feel
this way.
“
KNOCKKNOCKKNOCKKNOCK, angry
battering. Arteries going nuts now. Blood
He can picture the process
flying around his body, bumping into cell
but he can’t place himself
walls like drunk kids scattering from the
in the process anymore. To
police at a forcefully cancelled house party.
His teeth start going, jaw jackhammering,
actually make things is not
enough bodily vibration and he might
something
he does, not
merge his molecules with the air, rendering
to mention things that he
himself into nothingness, the only true form
of absolute safety.
actually kind of liked.
“Kenneth, will you open the fucking
door? I’m soaked!” he hears, from outside.
It’s Mae. It’s only Mae.
Kenneth pokes his head out from their bedroom. It’s her. He
can barely walk with the leftover adrenaline strangling each nerve
in his legs. He makes his way to the door and undoes the (1) chain,
(2) top deadbolt, (3) weird pin thing with the rod that goes in the
other thing, (4) second chain-lock, (5) bottom deadbolt, and opens
the thickened, reinforced door.
“Hey,” he tries to say without his teeth clacking together.
“You look like shit,” she says as she throws off her raindrenched jacket and marmy canvas bag full of books, probably
ruined. “When is the last time you showered?”
“I don’t know. Sometime before now, after awhile ago. I don’t
know. This week, I really think so. What are you doing here?”
“I live here, Kenneth.” She looks at him like what are you
doing here, in this plane of existence, here with me, working person, and
asks, “When did you wake up?” She gives him that squinty look
that never fails to make him feel legitimately depressed, like he’s
become this thing of contempt, this pile of human garbage.
“A few hours ago,” Kenneth says walking off, propelled by
something. Practically running now. Rage and bile filling his legs,
lungs, launching them, him, around the corner, to the four-panels.
His fear mixing with something, hate maybe. He begins carefully
removing the four-panels from the wall, one by one.
“You really should be calling those classifieds.You could
be working, doing graphic design.You can at least handle that, I
think,” Mae calls from the bedroom where she is peeling off her
”
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55
socks, mustering a note of kindness in her voice. “What are you
doing out there?”
He has them all now, under his arm. He run-walks to
the back door. Fucking thing is LOCKED. He undoes the
arrangement of six locks (similar to the array on the front door)
and throws the door open. It bangs against the outer wall. He
jumps into his jungle, and in one jerky, full-body motion, throws
the beautiful, intricately crafted, only remaining pieces of evidence
for his once mildly-raved-about talent into the pile. Fuck these
things.
Kenneth stands in the rain staring at the make-shift burial
mound. His art now detritus, garbage, counted among the dead,
just like him. The thousand antelopes of her chin can’t run from
what’s erasing them now, their legs and hooves being wiped away
by the ceaseless rain.
Kenneth wants to throw himself into the pile but he’s afraid
of getting splinters.
2.
The ticket comes two weeks later. Well, the almost-ticket. It’s a
warning.
“Failure to cut tall weeds and grass in front yard will result in
four hundred eighty-eight dollar fine.”
Failure.
Thanks.
Kenneth can’t remember the last time he had four hundred
and eighty-eight dollars.
So, he unfolds the old lawnmower, drags it out of the
unfinished room, down the incredibly long hall, out the front
door, and into the tall criss-crossing weeds. It’s still raining. The
two additional weeks of unbroken precipitation is having its effect.
Minor mudslides. Seasonal Affective Disorder. People are buying
lamps with strangely colored bulbs. Down in the city, designer
rain-coat start ups are popping up by the dozens, with once
cheerfully named storefronts like “chocolate / espresso / flowers,”
replaced with waterproof-everything boutiques, “UnderSea World,”
stocked with waterproof socks, watches, shoes, pants, underwear,
cellphone cases.
His father once told him something about working through
hangovers.
“Just pretend you don’t have one. Just push through it.”
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His father worked hard for a living. His father still works hard
for a living. He knows what he’s talking about.
Kenneth pushes and pulls and restarts the mower until it’s
finally kind of chugging along, although the tall weeds and grass
require twenty-seven restarts and a cleaning out of the blade with
each, ever shortening interval. When he reaches the back-yard, two
and a half hours later, that camouflage jungly stark square jutting
out from behind his house like a regrettable hairstyle, the machine
is of no use.
Kenneth pauses and looks upon his
He jumps into his jungle,
personal forest. The bugs are getting huge.
and
in one jerky, full-body
He abandons the mower at the demarcation
motion, throws the
line, where the major growth begins, and
enters.
beautiful, intricately
The saplings have become small trees.
crafted, only remaining
The canopy of his jungle reaches three feet.
pieces of evidence for his
All expected growth, plants are implacable.
The pile, however, has seemed to join them
once mildly-raved-about
in their natural trajectory, ever upward and
talent into the pile. Fuck
onward.
Someone else had dumped their art in
these things.
his pile.
There are three four-foot tall sculptures in the pile now, all
broken into pieces, damaged, all women in flowing clothes and
high-heeled sandals. How many ex-girlfriends could be tossed
out in effigy? Or, current girlfriends who become ex-girlfriends
when you wreck your only valuable possessions in another
drunk, fearful, stupid, bile-driven rage? Or women who are the
unwilling participants in some kind of unrequited artistic obsession?
Apparently: at least two, Mae and this other.
One of the statuettes’ heads has broken off clean, at the neck.
An elegantly extended hand, as if offered for a kiss to her rings, rests
at Kenneth’s feet. Someone had added these pieces in such sadness,
broken feet arranged in the shape of a lotus. Kenneth stands there
in the rain, a shower that will never make him clean, the water,
though, a message, so warm and soothing as if to say, “Please, at least
try to forget, let me apply my infinite balm. This is your mother,
your planet, trying to drown away the memory, that stupid memory.
Kenneth, listen to me now. Look into yourself.You can avoid it. Let
the rain envelope you. Kneel down into my bosom. Bury yourself
in the pile. Lie down under the covers,these things I’ve provided for
you, this wood, these beautiful vines, and forget.”
Why the fuck won’t it stop raining?
“
”
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3.
One year ago, in the summer, at night, a little buzzed, Kenneth was
standing on the front porch of his house, smoking a cigarette.
Hello.
Here a click and then the man came back running, now
wearing a ski-mask, from around the tree in the yard. He was
holding a small little something, like they do in the movies, arms
locked and—
Kenneth hit the deck.
Then the man was looming over him. He was blocking out
the light, right next to the porch,—(Biggest trigger word!) held
high, yelling something.
“Give me everything!”
He saw that the man was pointing an almost comically tiny—
(Never say this around Kenneth! Kenneth will actually lose his
shit!) directly into his face. Kenneth closed his eyes and waited to
be erased.
“Give me everything!” the man said again, opening
Kenneth’s eyes, barrel of tiny—approximately four miles wide,
sucking Kenneth’s strange pleading gaze into the black-hole of its
gravitational—
“I don’t have anything!” Kenneth said, although his wallet
and keys were in his pants pockets. Kenneth lied in the face
of death. This was death or debit card. “I don’t have anything,”
Kenneth repeated, iPhone in hand betraying his claim.
“Give me that phone!”
Kenneth gave him the phone and the man ran off. The whole
process, from man returning as mugger to leaving with phone,
took approximately thirty-eight seconds. Efficiency.
Kenneth ran inside. Kenneth was drunk. Kenneth woke
up Mae. They called the police together, Mae trying to translate
Kenneth’s staccato exclamations to the disinterested voice on the
other side of the line. Kenneth was shaking.
The idea that being r—ed at—point was not something that
happened only to some other abstract person but to himself, and
could result in his own personal, permanent death, kept Kenneth
on the porch. He was looking for clues that this was a dream. No,
yes, his phone was still gone.
His continued existence—which Kenneth knew was
henceforth altered—was, just minutes prior, solely in the hands of
someone whose reasons for pointing a tiny peashooter in his face,
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dominating him so wholly, forcefully, had absolutely nothing to do
with the content of Kenneth’s character, who he’d ever been or
could be, but only to do with what he might have in his pockets,
“everything,” a wallet or keys to the Kia in the driveway. Anything.
Everything. Had Kenneth actually given him everything, despite
his best efforts?
The four police officers arrived, one
They left and Kenneth
after the other, with their faces like, what are
could finally start the
you doing in this part of town, man, don’t you
know you’re white? Don’t you know you’re
process of unraveling his
kind of a wispy artsy type and you probably
life, strand by strand.
didn’t even climb trees as a kid? Don’t you
know what you’re doing to yourself?
Then the detective showed and he was professionally fat, but
at least he had a notebook. He paced and took notes as Kenneth
spoke. Kenneth’s keen artistic eye may have been numbed by the
whiskey, but he had a good enough instinct for detail to give them
this gem of a description: black, six-two, hair like mini Coolio curls
circa 1999, tiny—, baggy sweatpants, apparently walks around with
a ski-mask in his pocket, does not like it when you tell him not to
stand in your neighbor’s yard, will mug (meaning ambiguous, must
allow for coffee reasons) you as form of revenge.
They left and Kenneth could finally start the process of
unraveling his life, strand by strand.
“
”
4.
At some point during the rains, something shifted. Call it a
soaking of minds, a shivering of convictions. Perhaps it came
with the change in temperature. Where once creativity was
freeing and pure—bringing the young, bright-eyed prodigies of
experimentation of craft from the middle parts of the country
to the endlessly unbound city—it has turned sour and infected.
A sepsis setting in the blood, a gangrene settling in their bright,
woven socks.
Kenneth can see the effects quite plainly during the biggest
of the “pile parties” yet to assemble on his property. Somehow the
pile-invader with the broken sculptures has gotten the word out.
“Hey everybody, we’re building a giant pile of art. Come on
down!” The Facebook event page called it “A Public Repentance
For All Things Aesthetic.” Saturday,Three P.M.
The line stretches far around the corner and down the street.
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Kenneth doesn’t mind. The safety in numbers theory is in effect.
It may be easy to r-b one physically unimposing wimp, but a
hundred?
The bulging pile is now well over ten feet tall, a mish-mash
of colors and displaced passions. They are unloading their dreams
onto Kenneth’s jungle lawn. Like so many horrid ghosts, the
moribund artists all stand in a line with upturned, wild haircuts,
clutching their paintings, manuscripts, murals, notebooks, and hard
drives close to the disgusting breast flaps of their over-wet coats,
patiently awaiting their turns. Those who have already thrown their
art into the pile stand around, chatting in a stage-whisper, puffing
on joints and staring at trees, draining beers and collecting their
cans faithfully into plastic bags. The scene is truly befitting of the
Vietnam intensity of the surrounding foliage: a soaking, stinking
war-camp of retro losers.
Kenneth can see through his back window how each person,
having added to the pile, releases something much too large to be
released. Is it possible to dislodge one’s own entrails by the motion
of overturning a wheelbarrow filled with handmade jewelry?
They stumble away, somewhat wandering and spellbound, now
freshly without easily nameable identities, like becoming invisible
by plucking the eyes out of all possible lookers-on. There, this girl,
this blonde maybe once-cheerleader, moments earlier she would
have said, “I’m a weaver,” but now what would she say? Having
just tossed a life-sized tapestry rendition of the Taliban planning
the next season of “Great-Satan Idol” (who exactly is this meant to
shock?) onto the North side of Art Mountain, is she even a person
anymore, or just a soaking animal, looking for shelter? Looking for
a mate?
Kenneth goes outside, inciting a great murmur from the
group. The artists know who he is. The murmur quiets, they wait
for him to speak. They need for him to organize this desperate
reaction to the emergency of life into a meaningful exercise, an
experience that can be left behind, a nightmare to be woken up
from. Only gaining the knowledge of what it was they were doing
all along could make this possible. Kenneth could tell them, oh
great progenitor!
Instead, Kenneth walks up to the weaver, takes the beer out
of her hand, and chugs its rain-diluted contents. She seems a little
shocked, as her hand is still holding onto an invisible bottle of
PBR.
“Do you want to come inside? I think I owe you a beer.”
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As Kenneth was the first of what she is, the first pile builder,
the first reformed artist, the first of the title-less, meaningless
people, of course she follows. He is the pastor of her church. He
brushes away the vines and opens the back door, leaving it open
for the selected member of his flock. She closes the door behind
them and takes a look around.
“Wow, it is extremely, extremely shitty in here,” she says,
noticing the peeling walls and the phlegmy layer of mud-dust
covering the ceilings, linens, and floors—what happens when
weeks of one-hundred percent humidity mixes with construction
debris, apparently.
“Wait until you see the bugs.”
He gives her a beer, and opens one for himself.
“Well, it’s good to get out of that rain. I thought I was going
crazy out there,” she says as she peels off her
deteriorating jacket, which falls in a sodden,
Is it possible to dislodge
soggy heap on the floor. This action reveals
one’s
own entrails by the
the truth of her body, and the hard truth of
the age difference between Kenneth and
motion of overturning a
the girl’s blemish free midriff. Perhaps her
wheelbarrow filled with
cheerleading days weren’t so far behind after
handmade jewelry?
all. Any sagging in his form, any paunchy
aberrations will not be mirrored on hers. She
is all tightness and youth, and her hip clothes beg probing by his
bony, knobby hands.
She stands there, rocking her weight between her two legs,
smirking at him, lip-bitten, like your move, buddy. This is when he
should be showing her the four-panels. This is when he should
be unloading his identity onto this, yes it’s safe to say, sexy girl
standing before him. He has no clue how to proceed.
“
”
In a few minutes, Kenneth and the girl are clutching at each other.
Kenneth has forgotten how seduction has a way of glossing over
particulars, a way of rending the details unimportant. Bring a
girl into your house, inevitability takes over. This is the ritual and
the ritual will be completed. They tangle and trip their way into
Kenneth and Mae’s once-shared bedroom, and she is unbuttoning
her way through his shirt towards a full view of his alcoholic’s
torso, soft and pale, hairy in all the worst ways.
He reaches up her blouse and then the myriad minute
differences between her and Mae’s body convocate over them
like a stinking, wretched sheet. This muralist’s skin is far too tight,
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too rubbery with intense clinging to her hard inner scaffolding. Is
that an ab? She kisses him and the foreignness of another’s breath
crosses his gaping teeth, every taste and smell is wrong, like kissing
a hamster. Her touch, the hay-like blonde hair clinging to his
sweaty face constitutes a betrayal—of what? A betrayal of the flesh?
A betrayal of Mae’s soft hands and peach fuzzed philtrum? She
pushes him onto the bed and pins him down with the sheer force
of young lust and meaningless attraction, an evolutionary mistake
thrusting a young, vital woman at a paper-thin Kenneth like a
sharpened pencil, a penetration by poisonous lead.
As she grinds into him, anticipating what should be next,
and perhaps mistaking his hip for an erection that will not be soon
forthcoming, Kenneth is overcome with the overwhelming need
to end this. Immediately. He thinks it’s best to ruin her night, and
maybe her week (how often does a knockout like this get tossed
out of bed?), rather than face uncomfortable sex with a stranger.
“Hey,” He says softly.
“Heyyy,” She purrs into his milky neck, lightly brushing her
lips down his nape and shrinking collar.
“I kind of have a girlfriend.”
5.
Two depressed people on the same train to the city. Kenneth and
another. The other is better at this, he wears a long coat, stares off
into the distance through tasteless wireframe glasses, gloved hands
hanging dead at his sides. He’s either depressed or high on heroin.
He’s either depressed or he’s going to be. People dare not sit next
to him—out of respect.
Kenneth is jammed between a Russian eating a sandwich
and a black woman on the phone, talking shit about her husband,
who is in the seat right next to her, his sighs like a sleeping dog,
constant, rising and falling with the rhythm of her reproach, the
woman he once loved, and maybe still does. Out of Kenneth’s
ear-shot he imagines a woman on the other end saying repeatedly:
divorce him, divorce him, divorce him.
At Herald Square they both depart, out of different cars, but
Kenneth follows his kindred soul up the maze of stairs, hoping
he will know a not-so-shitty exit, hopefully not behind Madison
Square Garden, where people are mean. On Seventh people don’t
even see you. On Eighth, they call you “shit head” if you fuck up
(walking on a sidewalk can be confusing!). On Ninth, they scratch
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an elbow and beg for cigarettes. On Tenth, they masturbate in cabs,
looking into your eyes as you pass, through a cracked taxi door.
Things get weirder with increasing proximity to the river.
At least they don’t try to shoot you.
Midtown Manhattan, where capitalism was named God then
pronounced dead in the span of only thirty years, a break-neck run
for a shitty deity. But the religion still has its followers, and they are
who brought Kenneth out here, and probably this depressed other,
and all the others, readying their high-classed umbrellas before
walking up the stairs, to the street.
Kenneth emerges at 36th and the rain, which in Ossining
seems sleepy and quaint, here only adds to the hustle-bustle feel of
the place, the constant clatter of flurried droplets on cabs intensifies
the chaos, giving the sonorous sounding of the horns that extra
reverby stain. Kenneth hurries to the building, but is sure to keep
an eye on his depressed other, who
walks without emotion across the street,
They have discovered a way
quickly, machine like, arms still hanging
of turning fields into giant
dead like they were in the subway car,
torso leaned forward as if to cross a finish
earthy televisions.
line, getting absolutely soaked. Their
paths are so similar, Kenneth can’t shake that feeling of dread that
accompanies any coincidence, like anything out of the ordinary
would result in another r—bery, almost assuredly.
Kenneth enters the art-deco building where his meeting with
MEGASIGNS® is set to begin soon. He had gotten the call from
Georgie, the small Idahoan who had taken his type-a personality
and scheduling skills from organizing band time slots in a Brooklyn
practice space to the office of MEGASIGNS®, where he produced
martini lunches and Starbucks runs. His boss was very interested in
the pile. Georgie had the in.
In the lobby Georgie greets Kenneth, looking up at him,
saying “Follow me,” and tugging Kenneth into a gilded elevator.
“Thirty-fourth,” he says as he reaches for the button. “You
fucking owe me for this.”
At the thirty-fourth floor, Georgie leads him through the
main design wing of MEGASIGNS®. In the center of the space is
a scale model of a park lawned with fields of fiber optic grass. The
grass constitutes the latest advancement in public space utilization
and leveraging open sight-lines. They have discovered a way of turning
fields into giant earthy televisions. The model park flashes a series
of morphing advertisements and logos, each blade of grass a pixel
“
”
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“
in a planned video billboard-park. The land displays a handsome
man drinking Coca-Cola on a boat, visible only from above,
at night. A sales-rep speaks of synergy and brand enhancement
to a group of arms-folded Japanese business people. Apparently
drinking Coca-Cola on a boat is an experience worthy of being
beamed to space. Any message, anywhere, anytime, to anyone, for
any stupid fucking reason imaginable, like selling sugar water to children.
At the door to the corner office, Georgie says, “Mr. Merlin
will want to see you immediately. Please sit here.” He knocks twice
and walks through the door without hesitating. Kenneth sits down.
Georgie emerges immediately. “Mr. Merlin will see you now,
right this way.” Kenneth gets up and enters the office.
The office is large, and towers over Times Square, wallto-wall windows providing a view to the Mecca of billboard
advertising. Mr. Merlin arches over his desk, arm extended. “It’s
a pleasure to meet you, Kenneth. Sit down, sit down, sit down,
sit down.” They shake hands and sit. “Thank you, Georgie,” Mr
Merlin gestures for Georgie to leave. And so he does.
“So, you own the pile I’ve been hearing so much about.”
“Yeah, it’s on my property, anyway.”
“Forty-seven feet high, ivied like
Isn’t the point of the pile a goddamn college campus, made of
that nothing can be discarded art, artists leaving behind
experimental phases, phases
said and communication unproductive
where they only painted with ketchup
is ultimately futile and packets, what have you. Old demo CDs by
the thousands, failed bands. Neon cassettes
ineffective?
from Princeton rap groups. Wonderful. The
high-rise graveyard of self-expression. I think it’s great. It’s great, it’s
great, it’s great. And you know what else? It’s hot. Hot hot. It’s on
the news Kenneth, and it’s sitting in your backyard.”
“And you want to put a sign on it.”
“A sign, yes. Not on it, though, no. In it. In it. A sign, yes.”
“You want to put a message on the pile, subtly, like it’s part
of it, part of it’s natural growth, except this sign, though crooked,
is a bit more visible than the rest of the art. It occupies prime real
estate. It peeks mostly through the ivy. It leverages open sight-lines.”
“That’s right.Yes. It leverages … hey, you know you’re pretty
good at this.You’re good. Have you ever thought about going into
signs?”
“I used to work in signifiers,” Kenneth says without any
intended meaning.
”
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“So what do you think?” Mr. Merlin says as he slides a paper
across the desk to Kenneth. On it is written a number, a figure
so obscenely wonderful and destructive, a number with commas.
“That’s per week.”
“Won’t putting a sign on the pile destroy the inherent value
of the pile? Isn’t the point of the pile that we have nothing to say
so we might as well throw all our messages out? Isn’t the point of
the pile that nothing can be said and communication is ultimately
futile and ineffective?” Kenneth finds himself speaking these words
and yes it’s problematic. “I think as soon as the sign is discovered,
the pile will cease to be cool, and people will stop looking at it.
Then the removal requests will start coming in, and you’ll pull out
of your contract, then I’ll be left with the bill to remove it, which I
won’t do, because I don’t do … things.”
“I understand your concerns. I know what you’re thinking.
‘Men like me are the kind of people who tore down Penn Station.’
People were also worried about The Times. If we turn the whole
thing into an advertisement, won’t people stop reading it? If we
turn Twitter into an unending stream of sponsored posts and
bullshit ads from Dupont, won’t people stop using it? No sixteen
year-old girls give a shit about engineered plastics! Isn’t that right,
Kenneth? Kenneth, do they?”
Oh, he is actually asking this question. “No,” Kenneth says.
“Not yet,” Mr. Merlin says. “No one can stop it. The Times
is still The Times and the Twitter is still the Twitter. But you have
this thing, this incredible pile. If you never extract value from it,
if you don’t monetize, it will never be worth anything, because
you’ll never actually get money from it. Don’t you see? The pile
is essentially worthless without the sign. It’s just a pile of garbage.
We have to strike now. Companies want this real estate. Our target
audience, we’ve done the numbers on this, our target audience is
the single most desired demographic there is. Twenty to twentyeight-year-old males with emotional issues.You’ve got their
eyeballs on your pile. Right now. We can sign a contract. One year.
No pulling out for a year. An angry mob comes, angry about the
vintage Nike sign, whatever, you still get paid. Do we have a deal?”
Mr. Merlin is suddenly arching over his desk again, hand extended.
One year.
6.
Kenneth emerges from the nearest Chase, deposit slip in
hand.
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65
Thanks, MEGASIGNS®, you will now buy us a drink.
But here is his depressed other, the man from the train,
standing under the overhang. He flicks a lit cigarette butt on the
ground, though he didn’t seem to be smoking.
“Hey. Can I help you with something?” Kenneth asks.
“Did I, or did I not, just witness you go into the
MEGASIGNS® building, that fucking, horrific, H&M pushing,
shit-hole of a place, and come out with a check in your stupid,
idiotic hand? And did I, or did I not, just witness you go into this
bank, right here, unfold said check carefully out of your pocket,
and deposit said check into your bank account, and come out here,
right here, and fucking smile at me?”
“I uh, yeah.Yeah, that’s what happened.” Kenneth said. But
wait, he smiled?
“You were on the train this morning. I saw you. I thought
you were depressed.You were my depressed other. But you’re not.
You’re just a fucking sad person. Or, were,” says the man. Kenneth
had never been scolded by someone who didn’t move his arms
when he spoke.
“No! I am depressed! You were my other! This is crazy!”
Kenneth wants this man to be his friend.
“No, you’re clearly not depressed. What are you, a graphic
designer or something? You sell a sign to the devil?”
“No. I got robbed at gunpoint. I am depressed.” The words
still sting, still sink his stomach, still quicken his breath. This is no
time to dance around trigger words, however. “I am! You should
see my house, it’s crazy!”
Kenneth’s ex-other is walking away now, though,
disappearing into the rain and the crowds. It’s too late.
“I lost my girlfriend! I have pizza money! Wait!”
Greg Gulbranson is a 25 year old writer of fiction, humor, songs, and screenplay, living in
Mobile, Alabama. He plans to graduate from the University of South Alabama this summer
as an English major with a concentration in creative writing.
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gloria
shawn leonard
The room was always there. Most of the time it just lingered
like background noise, filling whatever emptiness might inhabit
Gloria’s consciousness. She tried not to even walk by the room.
Merely going up the stairs to the second floor where it was located
had become a feat that she only attempted every third week. She
would remove the towels that were jammed under the door and
replace them with freshly bleach-soaked ones, then return quickly
downstairs. It had been five months since the day of the accident.
She had slammed the door behind her when she left the room and
knew instantly that she would not go back in. She hadn’t. So the
room drifted away and clung to the outskirts of Gloria’s concern.
Today was different. While she stared at the man standing in
her doorway, the room was all she could think about. For the most
part, it blotted out the words that were coming from the man. She
clung to the few that managed to make it to her ears. Car trouble.
Phone.
“Would that be ok ma’am?” The man waited patiently for
Gloria’s response but one never came. “My brother only lives a few
miles from here. He could get here in no time to pick me up.”
Gloria looked the man over. He seemed nice enough but his
appearance did nothing to change how much she wanted him to
leave.
“I don’t have a phone,” she said.
The man was not surprised. He had assumed when he walked
up to the house that it might be the case. He reached up and ran
his fingers through his shaggy brown hair.
“I noticed the barn on the way in. If you have some tools
out there I might be able to fix it myself. I’m pretty sure it’s the
carburetor,” he said.
Gloria thought hard about the request. There were lots
of tools in the barn. After the war, her father had spent his life
working as a mechanic. When she first moved here to take care of
him, she would spend hours in the barn looking at all of his things.
After the accident she had abandoned the barn too.
“Ok,” she said. “It’s locked up though. Let me go get the key.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” the man said. “I really appreciate it.”
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67
“
“It’s no trouble,” Gloria said, turning to walk to her bedroom.
“Ma’am,” the man said. “Do you think I could have a glass of
water? It’s a heck of a walk down here from the road.”
A slight tremor went through Gloria at the man’s request.
“Fine,” she said. “The kitchen is this way.”
The man followed Gloria through the living room and into
the kitchen. He tried to take in as much of the house as possible
on the short trip. He was surprised by the bareness. No pictures, no
furniture, nothing. Gloria poured two glasses of water and handed
the man one.
“What did you say your name was?” she asked.
“I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t think I did. Justin. Justin Monroe.”
“Well Justin,” Gloria said. “You wait here for a minute and I’ll
go get the key.”
“Thank you again ma’am”
Gloria moved quickly to her bedroom. She was
uncomfortable leaving Justin alone. In her absence, Justin quickly
surveyed the kitchen. He quietly opened and closed all of the
drawers and cabinets. To his dismay, there
He knew that he would was nothing of any value. The same cheap
only have a little time silverware he had seen in dozens of other
homes around the county. He hoped that
before Gloria became the rest of the house would prove more
fruitful.
suspicious.
When Gloria returned, she
motioned for Justin to follow her.
“Ma’am,” Justin said. “Do you think I could use your
bathroom? This water is going right through me.”
Gloria clenched her jaw to help control her voice.
“Right back there,” she said, pointing toward the doorway
past the stairs.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Justin said.
Gloria nodded and tried her best to force a smile onto her
face. She walked back into the kitchen and started rinsing the two
cups.
Once he was away from her Justin quietly made his way up
the stairs. He knew that he would only have a little time before
Gloria became suspicious. She already seemed irritated. At the
top of the stairs Justin paused to listen. The running water in
the kitchen comforted him. He knew Gloria couldn’t physically
overpower him, but if he could get by without a confrontation, he
would prefer it. He popped his head into the rooms looking for
anything that he could easily pocket. Nothing. The upstairs rooms
were just as empty as the living room.
Upon reaching the last room, Justin paused. It was the first
door in the house that was closed. The smell of bleach rose up to
his nose from the towels that clogged the opening beneath the
door. Justin reached out and slowly opened the door. The smell of
bleach was instantly replaced with the odor of rotting meat. Justin
stuck his arms out to brace himself against the doorframe while his
legs fought to support him. The body lying in the middle of the
floor was contorted in an unnatural twist. The bluish green skin on
the torso bubbled upwards with flies. Justin swallowed hard to fight
back the vomit rising in his throat. He spun around sharply to exit
the room.
Gloria thought that it sounded wrong when her rolling pin
collided with Justin’s forehead. The moist thud wasn’t what she
had expected. The following blows had the same hollow resonance.
When she could no longer lift her arms Gloria dropped the rolling
pin and left the room, slamming the door behind her. She stopped
to kick the towels back under the door before descending the stairs
and returning to the kitchen. She finished drying the cups and
placed them back on the shelf. She thought it was odd that people
kept having accidents in her house.
”
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This is Shawn Leonard’s second publication in the Oracle. As an avid reader, he enjoys a
wide variety of literature, and has had fun growing a collection of his own fiction. Choosing
to major in print journalism with a minor in English, he hopes to continue to be involved
in the world of printed works.
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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territory and contiguous states
creighton durrant
In the Louisiana Purchase Cyclorama, visitors will experience
the territory’s vast expanse in a full 360 degrees and visit a time
otherwise forgotten constructed of good old-fashioned, analog
paint and mortar. This, Leland remembers, was a key talking point
in his initial pitch to the Tourism Council. Standing, now, in the
exact radial center of the cyclorama, he doubts those initial claims
while searching the painted landscape for hidden and obscure
reasons for the cyclorama’s unpopularity. He finds only what
Leland’s always thought was an excessively regal depiction of
Thomas Jefferson. The angle to which the former president raises
his chin makes him look like a man no one would want to hang
out with, but Leland knows the problem isn’t chin-related. It’s
something else, something more obvious.
As proof of concept, Leland once described to the Council
members the Gettysburg Cyclorama—its implementation of
artificial smoke and sulphur scent piped through the ventilation
system, wax replicas of Union troops standing within and creating
an uncanny depth of field, the casualty-strewn battlefield artistically
and painstakingly painted. The council originally liked the idea of
a Louisiana Purchase Cyclorama, but it’s since fallen into jeopardy
of closure. It’s this simple, a council member said earlier that
morning: Without visitors, the cyclorama will have to be closed
to the public. Leland guessed they were right. He hadn’t expected
a queue of visitors waiting outside when he arrived, but come
on, people. Today, the exhibit’s only visitors were a single elderly
couple.
The couple circumnavigates the room in slow, measured
steps, stopping to examine the detail and minutia of the scenes.
But the cyclorama wasn’t designed to be experienced this way.
You stood in the center, like this, as Leland did, locus to the
surrounding painting. From the cyclorama’s center, he watches
the woman point out a cargo ship entering the port of New
Orleans along the bank of the Mississippi River, her companion’s
silent acknowledgement and semaphore of concurrent thought.
The couple appears to Leland the logical, coterminous end of an
expedition—like Lewis and Clark, there, depicted in miniature on
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the western arc of the exhibit. He feels he shouldn’t impede on
their experience or, he’d like to think, enjoyment of the exhibit,
but his motives are professional and on behalf of the Tourism
Council. So he approaches them, walking with a care they inspire,
his footfalls dopplering away in the vacancy of the room.
“Hello,” he says, leaving his name badge to introductions.
“You enjoying the exhibit?” “I’d say so,” the woman says, turning
to the man beside her. “Wouldn’t you agree, Terry?” Terry lowers
the lids of his eyes before nodding. “But, you know, we can’t
help feeling something’s not quite right with it, that it’s lacking a
certain we-don’t-know-what.”
Leland’s always thought so too but never expressed his
concern to the Council. “I think you might be somehow right,”
he says. “It needs combat or pyrotechnics or something.”
“No, it’s right nice,” she says, “and an important subject
people should know and have mostly forgotten, but …” She
pauses and Leland hopes for her to impart the wisdom for which
the elderly are well known. “I think what it is—and I know there’s
only so much room in here—is that, even
still, it’s too large. It’s hard to focus on
From the sidewalk, they
anything.”
photograph
the neighboring
“You might be right,” he says.
“Where you folks from, can I ask?”
houses, capturing and
“Well, right around there,” she
estranging them from the
says, pointing over Leland’s shoulder to
source.
Nebraska.
He leaves them to their slow
circumnavigation of the exhibit, and returns to its center. Maybe
the woman is right about the cyclorama’s deficiency.He’d included
everything he and the Council Oversight Team could think
of, everything relevant between The Port of New Orleans and
Rupert’s Land, the Western bank of the Mississippi and chinookswept foothills. The negotiation with Napoleon and Barbé
Marbois was particularly ingenious—Jefferson, too, despite the
arrogant chin elevation.
Before he married, Leland questioned how people managed
the voyeurism of living in a house with floor-to-ceiling windows.
He once vowed never to live in such a place, ever, but now does—
complete with defensive perimeter of sitting-rooms Meagan’s filled
with chaise lounges and empty armoires. The domestic picture he’s
always feared is complete, and the payments on his renovated 19th
century shotgun home still persist.
“
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The porch is a small consolation, though, and Leland spends most
evenings sitting on it, surveying the neighborhood, warding off
insects, and, in tonight’s case, poring over the comment cards he’s
brought home from the cyclorama lobby. And, man, they are not
favorable. What is this thing supposed to do? Does it even move or
do anything at all?, one read, written in palsied scrawl Leland has
difficulty deciphering. In response to the field: How would you rate
your experience in the Louisiana Purchase Cyclorama?, an anonymous
person drew a line through the question, and in the margins
wrote: What experience? The experience of a peaceful, bucolic
environment, that’s what, Leland said aloud to himself. He thought
the cyclorama would be a sanctuary where—in lieu of an actual
woodland foot-path or pasture—one could escape the city and
instead enter into a garden of Leland’s personal tending. But he’d
been, apparently, misguided in his conceit.
Beyond his yard, a tour group stops along the sidewalk
to examine his home. A man among them takes a photograph
and shows the camera’s screen to the woman beside him, and
they remind him of the couple he spoke to earlier in the day.
The photographer shows the woman an image of his house,
his home or a feature of it—the Doric columns supporting the
second story gallery he and Meagan screened in when his son
was born, the wrought-iron balustrade, the filigreed accents at the
eaves and lintels of the house.Yes, how lovely, but what exactly
they see perplexes him. From the sidewalk, they photograph
the neighboring houses, capturing and estranging them from
the source. Always, Leland senses he and the neighborhood are
relegated into the past, ferried away with the images these tour
groups take.
He wonders what they know that he
When he first saw their doesn’t. What of the quotidian do the tour
experienced as novel? To Leland,
newborn child, Leland groups
it’s just a house, but to tourists the house is
thought it resembled a sort something else altogether. In the years he’s
of gnarled root, a thing lived here, the tourists and the regularity
which he sees them blur, flatten into
found in the produce section with
the familiar streetscape. Over time he pays
near the sweet potatoes.
them less and less attention until they fade
from the forefront of thought, pass from
neighborhood and mind, rote as avian migration.
After reading each comment card and decidedly agreeing
with what was written—that basically the cyclorama was a
“
”
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failure—he walks inside thinking, What was I thinking? And the
assumed public failure feeds into his private anxieties about his
wife and child.
When he first saw their newborn child, Leland thought it
resembled a sort of gnarled root, a thing found in the produce
section near the sweet potatoes. It looked simultaneously
subterranean and cosmological. He was as terrified as he
expected—just as his father told him he’d be—and instantly
feared the nurse or Meagan or he would drop Taylor, and Leland
would never get to hear that little sweet-potato-looking-thing
wail like that again. But so far, Taylor is still alive. He’s sitting at the
kitchen table gluing wedges of felt inside a shoebox. “What up,
Homunculus,” Leland says.
“Dad, stop calling me that.”
“What’re you working on, there?”
“I told you already,” he says, maneuvering a wire tree behind
a miniature platoon of soldiers. “Have to make a diorama for Social
Studies.”
“It’s looking pretty good.”
“No, it’s stupid and I hate it.”
“Well, what’s your concept?”
“I don’t know. Throw some stuff in there, I guess.”
Leland sets his chin on his son’s shoulder and peers inside.
“You’ve got some sort of idea working, it looks like.” Before Taylor
shrugs him off, Leland sees a unit of riflemen aiming from atop a
hill at a fallen unit below. “Battle of … what?”
“Gettysburg.”
“You’re breaking my heart, Taylor.”
“But it looks like crap,” he says, carefully brushing red
fingernail polish onto the bodies of fallen soldiers.
“Your mom know you’re using that?”
“No.”
“Well,” Leland says, beginning towards the bedroom, “just put
it back when you’re done.”
“Aye, aye, Dad,” Taylor says without looking up from his
delicate work in the diorama. “Hey, you’ll be there tomorrow,
right? Career Orientation?”
“I’ll be there,” he says. “Your mom will remind me again.”
He has an idea of what he’ll be up against at Career Orientation.
The firefighter will ignite and heroically snuff out a staged fire
somewhere in the school. The astronaut will park his lunar lander
in an impossibly small and conspicuously available parking space
Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
73
with inches to spare. And Leland will … outline a grant proposal
and stage a brainstorming session with the students? No, he’ll just
tell them like it is and dash a poor, deranged kid’s hope of ever
working for the state. Leland will describe his profession to Taylor’s
fifth grade class with the knowledge he’s basically no good at it.
“You know where your mother is, by the way?” But no, Taylor
does not.
His wife steps from the shower with zero self-consciousness
and makes her way to the full-sized mirror in the bedroom, takes
nightclothes from a drawer and pulls them over her legs. What
was it that first piqued him? He feels he loves her but can’t recall
the original impulse. He thinks back, struggles to plumb an image
from memory, and returns with nothing but dust and dross and
receipts for purchases he can’t recall.
“Take a look at these, Meg,” he says, handing her the stack of
comment cards he’s been holding. She flips through them, smiling
after each, comes to one and begins laughing. “Listen to this,” she
says. “I resent this exhibit—as a native French citizen—on grounds
it celebrates a territory we, as a country, should never have given
you. Because look what you’ve done with it.”
“That’s about right,” Leland says. “But, I mean, I didn’t sign
the treaty.”
“Get with the times,” she says, reading from another. “This
exhibit is the stimulative equivalent of spending an afternoon in an
assisted living home.”
“That person has no idea how correct he or she is. The only
visitors today were two old people from Nebraska.”
“So what’s the status, then,” she says. “Are they closing it?”
“If I don’t come up with some reason for people to visit,” he
says, “then, yes, they’re going to close it.You have any ideas?”
“It’s in perfect working order,” Meagan says. “As far as I can
tell.”
But it wasn’t. Or she was right, and that was the problem.
Was there even a problem? He lay in bed staring at the ceiling
wondering one way and then in another. “Meg, what do you think
of this?”
“Of …”
“Of putting our home up for tourists to see.”
“Stupid idea because it’s already happening,” she says. “What’s
that have to do with the cyclorama?”
“I mean, to let them inside. Let them look around at the
interior, too.”
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“Leland, seriously?” she says.
“I guess you’re right,” he says. “Stupid idea.”
In alternating segments, the alphabet and presidential portraiture
line the wall where it meets the ceiling. The blackboard still shows
mitosis or meiosis, one of them, left from a previous presenter.
Leland envies the children’s position. Tabula rasa and all that
folderol.
The students sit at their desks, and Leland can’t believe he’d
ever been young enough to fit in one. He wants to try again,
though, to see if it’s still possible to occupy a seat he knows could
scarcely support a single ass-cheek. He wants to genuflect and
look them in the eyes, tell them that being an adult is hopeless
and that they’ll all fall short of their aspirations. He’s paid to
preserve the past, Leland wants to tell them, to package nostalgia
and commodify it. People visit the city and return home granted
a new perspective on the present, ideally, seeing where they live
anew. But they’re not to feel this way while visiting. Inspire a sense
of locality in the most distant traveler is a maxim Leland thinks worth
remembering. Convince a visitor that what we do here has been
done since time immemorial by the most inveterate local citizens,
generation after generation. Nothing changes, here, traveler. Take
solace in our entrenched cultural values. And Leland doesn’t see
how anyone could possibly believe this—especially a fifth grader—
that given time and distance and their relativity, he’s to maintain
the image of a city untouched by all three.
“Hello, future leaders of America,”
It evokes a vague image
he says to the class. “It’s always good to see
of his son as an adult,
the next generation of young people ready
cynical and regretful of the
to take on the responsibility of adulthood,
and at such an early age.” He catches sight
decisions he’s made.
of Taylor near the back of the classroom,
already looking confused and doubtful about what his dad’s saying.
It evokes a vague image of his son as an adult, cynical and regretful
of the decisions he’s made. He does not want this image to become
reality. “I work in the tourism industry, and what I do is I’m a
failure artist for the Tourism Council. Can anyone tell me what
tourism is?” The question elicits empty, bovine stares from around
the room, nervous shuffling from the teacher, a few looks of what
Leland wants to imagine are contemplation but probably aren’t.
“It’s when people go places and see things,” someone says.
And it’s Taylor answering, smiling from his desk. The girl sitting
“
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75
next to him scoffs, turns away, looks into her brow. It’s a learned
gesture Leland’s seen Meg use many times, and the girl has likely
adapted it from someone similar.
“That’s correct,” says Leland. “What a bright kid. Gold star.
And can anyone tell me the purpose of tourism?”
“Nope,” Taylor says.
“It’s so people can escape themselves for a while, forget they
exist in the context of daily life and the people in it. Does that
make sense to anyone? I hope it doesn’t, because it isn’t something
you need to worry about just yet. And, really, if you understand
what I’m getting at there’s no hope for you. Mrs. Sizood, here, will
see to it that you meet with the guidance counsellor or psychiatrist
or someone. The thing is, it doesn’t matter what I do, and it matters
less what you think you’ll be doing twenty years from now. Does
that make sense? Again, I need to reiterate my hope that it doesn’t.
Anyway, career orientation. Let’s orient some careers, here.”
Mrs. Sizood joins the children in their confusion or distress,
and Leland continues with his presentation, speaking as though
his son were the only student present. The others, visibly bored
from the outset, chew and draw and scratch on things while
fading from Leland’s vision. He speaks and hopes his son can hear,
feeling Taylor constrained to a psychic aperture. There are worse
things, Leland thinks, than surrendering his life to someone yet
to experience his own. This is a worthwhile endeavor, he thinks.
Leland hasn’t lived long, but this is the noblest work of his life, as
Robert Livingston might say. Cyclorama be damned.
After his career orientation presentation, Leland returns home
wanting company but finds none. Taylor hasn’t returned from
school, and Meagan is still busy with her consulting gig, measuring
shelves by the inch, quoting prices of books by the foot. With a
turkey sandwich and a beer, he sits on his front porch awaiting this
evening’s tourists.
A half-hour later they arrive, rounding the corner of
Marimbaud and 6th in the direction of his home. Satisfied with his
performance at the elementary school, he welcomes the oncoming
tour group as habitual friends, eager to see them in a place he
knew he would.
Waiting for the group to finish a round of photos, Leland
walks to the front gate and calls to them. They pause and wave,
suspicious of him, and continue down the sidewalk a little quicker
than they’d come. “Wait, no, come here,” he says.
They turn toward Leland, and a tentative man among them
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leaves the group to meet him, clutching the camera hung from a
lanyard around his neck.
“What’s the problem?” the man says.
“No problem. Just wanted to ask if you’d like to take a gander
at the inside of one of the homes you’re admiring?”
The man considers the proposition for a split second but
seems to have a prepared response. “Well, shit. I know I’d like to.
Let me see what the others have to say.”
After a short deliberation with the group, the man returns
with the group following after. “Looks like
we’ll take you up,” he says. “Thanks for the
We live here, he thinks.
offer.” They enter the yard and make their
It’s that simple.
way up the steps to the front porch, the man
leading. “Name’s Greg, and thanks again.”
“Leland, and no problem,” he says, shaking Greg’s hand. “Keep in
mind flash photography is strictly verboten.”
Leland returns to his seat on the front porch, listening
to the din of their commentary, unable to discern what’s said.
“Kidding about the flash, of course,” he says from the porch. What
they might see mystifies Leland, but he tries to imagine what
significance they could glean from the interior decor Meagan has
arranged, the layout and structure of his home. What particulars
will the tour group find in what he’d generalized into obscurity?
When they finish their private tour, Leland expects to hear
just that. Greg is the first to exit, and he meets Leland on the
porch. “It’s a nice place,” the man says. “Have to admit, though, I
expected it would look more like the outside, that the rooms and
things would be period appropriate, or less contemporary. Probably
a dumb thing to think because you live in it, right?”
“Right.”
“And with a family, too, it looks like.”
“Ten year old son.”
“Right. So you couldn’t expect him to—I don’t know—
study by candlelight or fix a grilled cheese on an old wood
burning stove.”
“The microwave’s difficult enough.”
“What is it you do, Leland?” he says as the rest of Greg’s tour
group meets him on the porch and starts toward the street.
“I’m an artist, actually, and my medium is failure.”
“Well, it looks like you’ve done well for yourself,” he says,
joining the tour group at the gate. “And for the family, too. Just
keep it up, young man.”
“
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“I’m trying, Greg,” Leland says, rubbing the palm of his hand
against his forehead. “You enjoy the rest of your tour.”
Greg latches the gate, salutes, and the rest of the group
follows suit. They wave and continue down the sidewalk,
stopping occasionally to photograph neighboring homes on
the block. It’s all the confirmation he needs: someone’s outside
acknowledgement of the source, the motive for what it is he’s done
but has slowly over time forgotten. We live here, he thinks. It’s that
simple.
Meagan leads Taylor through the front yard and up to the house.
“We live here,” Leland says.
“Yeah, Dad,” Taylor says. “I’m not an idiot.”
It’s difficult for Leland to appreciate the exhibit for what it
is, but he begins on a lap of the cyclorama, despite the number
of times he’s seen it, looking for a critical aspect to remedy. On
his second lap, an inkling of what he’s failed to include emerges.
During the third, his suspicions strengthen and take shape.
Nowhere in the imagery is there a depiction of the region before
the treaty. He’s failed to consider the expanse of land before its
annexation, territory always there but claimed through declaration
and name.
The Council decided to close the cyclorama within the
week, but what will replace it wasn’t yet decided. Someone
suggested they partition and cut it into pieces, auction or sell it
to whomever was interested. Leland did not want to hear this.
It could not be dismantled. For the time being, it remains in the
Warehouse District, identified by its cylindrical shape and the
galvanized metal placard he unveiled at the inception. He has a
concept and knows what to do with it.
In all, the supplies cost $83.56—three buckets matte gray, two
paint rollers (hand held and eight foot telescopic)—but it won’t
be enough. He can’t allow the cyclorama to be dismantled and so
spends the following workday trying to prevent it from falling to
pieces. He has a concept, and it calls for the unique shape and form
of this cyclorama. Whatever a fragment may fetch at auction, the
piece would be rendered worthless without its contiguity to the
others. It functions as a whole, and Leland will make certain it stays
that way.
He begins with the Northern arc wall, a section he estimates
spans 15 degrees of space, and begins applying paint with the paint
roller. He moves confidently, using quick vertical motions that
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blot out more of the scene with each successive pass. He works
through the early evening, painting while compiling a catalogue of
images he’ll render when finished with the primer. Once the paint
dries and covers the surface entirely, he’ll begin—a gradient fade,
a palimpsest of old and older territory. He pans through mental
images of Meagan and Taylor: the delivery room in which his son
was born; the return home Taylor couldn’t possibly remember,
Leland’s walking him to the neighborhood elementary school
and lingering before the front gates a little longer
than necessary; Meagan sitting at the back steps
He isn’t all too
of a mutual friend’s apartment complex, guests
artistically
inclined,
holding plastic cups seen through the door behind
her, Meagan’s face raised for whomever would
this is true, but he’ll
approach. He isn’t all too artistically inclined, this is
try to the best of his
true, but he’ll try to the best of his limited abilities.
This, too, will be necessarily incomplete, missing
limited abilities.
something. There’ll be omissions, remainders,
scenes he hasn’t yet experienced and maybe
never would, but his personal cyclorama will foremost feature the
particulars.
When Leland returns home that evening, his clothing
daubed with paint, face and forearms streaked with gray primer,
he walks through the foyer and into the dining room where he
finds Meagan and Taylor waiting. They look on his blanched skin
and slacks and dress shirt, Meagan asks him what in the great, wide
world he’s been doing. Looking down at his whitewashed body the
same color and consistency as the walls of his cyclorama, Leland
says to her:You’ll see.
“
”
Creighton Durrant lives in New Orleans where the public library is in jeopardy and to-go
cups are at risk. He was once a near-olympic swimmer who can now dog paddle across the
Mississippi River with little effort. He has an MFA.
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Fine Art
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Dain Peterson is a senior majoring
in painting with a minor in glass and
biology. His imagery incorporates enigmatic
symbolism, surrealism and abstract ideas
and themes.
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untitled
dain peterson
illustration
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Kerry Parks hails from Canyon Country,
California. She is currently studying glass
blowing, kiln-formed glass, sculpture, and
printmaking at the University of South
Alabama in Mobile. She plans to graduate
in May of 2014 with a B.F.A. in glass. Parks
currently works as an assistant glass blower
for The Hot Shop at the Coastal Arts Center in
Orange Beach, Alabama.
close exposures of the third kind
micah mermilliod
printmaking
serigraphy
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toxicity
kerry parks
printmaking
drypoint sugar lift print
Micah Mermilliod is a fine arts major with a
primary concentration in photography and a
secondary in printmaking. His work is largely
influenced by technology and the future
and often has a dreamlike quality. When
Micah isn’t working on art, he enjoys riding
his bike, perusing thrift stores, listening to
music, and reading science fiction.
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splinter foot girl
jennifer grainger
photography
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Jennifer Grainger, an aspiring visual
anthropologist, studies art at the University of
South Alabama. She’s a Louisiana transplant
with a passion for photography that dates
back to childhood. After graduation, she wants
to create photojournalistic bodies of work,
depicting Southern culture, including her own
Acadian roots.
Micah Mermilliod is a fine arts major with a
primary concentration in photography and a
secondary in printmaking. His work is largely
influenced by technology and the future
and often has a dreamlike quality. When
Micah isn’t working on art, he enjoys riding
his bike, perusing thrift stores, listening to
music, and reading science fiction.
downloadable content
micah mermilliod
photography
silver gelatin print
2013
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imaginary friends
amy wilkins
illustration
crawdad
keith wall
printmaking
woodcut relief print
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Keith Wall is a senior majoring in graphic
design. He’s also studied printmaking,
photography, and painting. His work is
aimed at presenting social and personal
issues in a beautiful, thought-provoking
manner. His work incorporates geometric
shapes along with organic figures.
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untitled
micah mermilliod
drawing
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Micah Mermilliod is a fine arts major with a
primary concentration in photography and a
secondary in printmaking. His work is largely
influenced by technology and the future
and often has a dreamlike quality. When
Micah isn’t working on art, he enjoys riding
his bike, perusing thrift stores, listening to
music, and reading science fiction.
Miranda Everett is a native of southern Alabama
and finds inspiration in the life and setting
around her. She earned a B.A. in 2013.
fairhope home
miranda everette
drawing
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sleeper
micah mermilliod
drawing
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Micah Mermilliod is a fine arts major with a
primary concentration in photography and a
secondary in printmaking. His work is largely
influenced by technology and the future
and often has a dreamlike quality. When
Micah isn’t working on art, he enjoys riding
his bike, perusing thrift stores, listening to
music, and reading science fiction.
Hannah Kibby is a freshman IT major
at the University of South Alabama. Her
favorite mediums are photography, pencil
and paper, watercolor, and digital art. She
has been featured in the Mobile Museum
of Art’s Young at Art Exhibit, and was a
participant in the District 1 and State Visual
Art Achievement programs. She has also won
awards in the AISA District Art Show.
cheetah
hannah kibby
printmaking
scratch art
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untold story
de’anaira preyear
photography
Justin McCardle is a Junior at the University
of South Alabama, earning his B.F.A. in
graphic design with a concentration in
printmaking. He’s interested in architecture,
illustration, and printmaking. After
graduation, Justin hopes to find work as a
concept artist. Eventually, he wants to be an
art director for movies, games, publishing, or
a design firm.
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daymaker
justin mccardle
printmaking
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cameo
kaitlyn mckinney
ceramics
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Kaitlin McKinney was born and raised on
the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay. She will
graduate this December with a B.A. in Studio
Art and a minor in Gender Studies. McKinney
enjoys printmaking, glass blowing, and
ceramics.
Tammy Reese is pursuing a B.F.A. in studio art
with a concentration in glass at South. Glass
really speaks to who she wants to be, and she
has always loved working with her hands. She
plans to pursue a master’s degree.
Tribal Fish
Tammy Reese
Ceramics
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charlotte tree
charlotte gregg
sculpture
copper, stainless steal,
and base wire acrylic
gel on canvas
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Charlotte Gregg is a junior from
Birmingham, Alabama, majoring in biology
with a minor in studio arts. After graduation,
she hopes to study veterinary medicine
at Auburn, using her art to keep sane in
between all the science. Keith Wall is a senior majoring in Graphic
design. He’s also studied printmaking,
photography, and painting. His work is
aimed at presenting social and personal
issues in a beautiful, thought-provoking
manner. His work incorporates geometric
shapes along with organic figures.
busy bee
keith wall
mixed media
acrylic, magazine
clippings, and acrylic
gel on canvas
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Tammy Reese is pursuing a B.F.A. in studio art
with a concentration in glass at South. Glass
really speaks to who she wants to be, and she
has always loved working with her hands. She
plans to pursue a master’s degree.
glass cocoon
dain peterson
blown glass
glass and copper wire
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sea turtle
tammy reese
blown glass
Dain Peterson is a senior majoring
in painting with a minor in glass and
biology. His imagery incorporates enigmatic
symbolism, surrealism and abstract ideas
and themes. Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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if a fish could love a bird
keith wall
painting
acrylic on canvas
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Keith Wall is a senior majoring in Graphic
design. He’s also studied printmaking,
photography, and painting. His work is
aimed at presenting social and personal
issues in a beautiful, thought-provoking
manner. His work incorporates geometric
shapes along with organic figures.
I. C. Kessler is a paramedic pursuing a degree
in biomedical science with a minor in studio
art. She draws inspiration from the world
around her. From the atomic to the cosmic,
Earth is amazing, intricate, sublime, and
dramatic. Art refines her powers of observation
and expression, and she couldn’t ask for a
better complement to medicine, or life.
isabel sgraffito
i. c. kessler
glass
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beauty in the wild
victoria daniels
illustration
pen & ink and oil pastels
on newspaper
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Victoria Daniels was born and raised in
Mobile, AL. She’s a studio art major at the
University of South Alabama. She loves
creating art and inspiring people. Most of
her artwork is photo-realistic. She loves
being able to portray an object, or a person,
and recreate it to look as realistic as possible
on paper or canvas.
Benjamin Marsh hails from Ocean Springs,
MS. He’s been drawing and painting ever
since he can remember. After school, he
intends to travel and paint, eventually
becoming a professor of painting.
bjorkean theory
benjamin marsh
painting
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my baby’s feet
safa masoudnaseri
PAINTING
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Safa Masoudnaseri studies graphic design at
USA. She is an Iranian-American artist who
started painting at the age of four and loves
it to this day. She’s had art exhibited in Iran
and in the USA library gallery. She is skilled
in many types of painting and has created a
technique of painting called “Barjesteh” and
taught it in Iran. Kelly Estle is an Alabama native, who loves
the natural beauty of the river delta and the
Gulf of Mexico. She received a B.A. from the
University of South Alabama, and a master of
social work from the University of Southern
Mississippi. Kelly has been a Social Worker in
Mobile, Alabama since 1994. She’s exhibited
artwork at Barnes & Nobles, local libraries,
and the Mobile Juried Art Exhibit.
untitled
kelly estle
painting
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serious fruit
victoria daniels
illustration
chalk pastel
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Victoria Daniels was born and raised in
Mobile, AL. She’s a studio art major at the
University of South Alabama. She loves
creating art and inspiring people. Most of
her artwork is photo-realistic. She loves
being able to portray an object, or a person,
and recreate it to look as realistic as possible
on paper or canvas.
Lydia Irene is junior at South Alabama,
double majoring in foreign language
(Russian) and fine art. She has a love for
printmaking and painting.
фотография
lydia irene
painting
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untitled
CAROL EDMONDSON
PAINTING
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Carol Edmondson studies painting and
printmaking at the University of South
Alabama. She is more perceptual than
conceptual, painting landscapes, still
lives, animals, and portraits. Her choice of
medium is oil paint. She thinks subjects are
beautiful as they are: a noble horse, a ship
at sea, a bouquet of flowers, or a still life
of sentimental objects placed on a table.
She enjoys painting with big strokes and
splashes of color. But no matter how hard
she tries, she usually reverts to realism.
Kerry Parks hails from Canyon Country,
California. She is currently studying glass
blowing, kiln-formed glass, sculpture, and
printmaking at the University of South
Alabama in Mobile. She plans to graduate
in May of 2014 with a B.F.A. in glass. Parks
currently works as an assistant glass blower
for The Hot Shop at the Coastal Arts Center in
Orange Beach, Alabama.
ld-50
kerry parks
printmaking
photo polymer print
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the little prince
claire yoste
mixed media
tissue paper, duralar,
paper, colored pencil,
and pen
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Claire Yoste hails from Gulfport, MS. She is a
senior at USA, pursuing a B.F.A. in painting.
Art is her passion, and her current work deals
largely with feminine concepts represented
by figurative work.
Micah Mermilliod is a fine arts major with a
primary concentration in photography and a
secondary in printmaking. His work is largely
influenced by technology and the future
and often has a dreamlike quality. When
Micah isn’t working on art, he enjoys riding
his bike, perusing thrift stores, listening to
music, and reading science fiction.
woman in chair
micah mermilliod
drawing
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poetry
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Nothing
Corey Harvard
Fifty degrees and the door is open wide:
welcome cockroach, criminal, or worse.
What will they say of the one who never tried?
This cabernet is a lovely place to hide;
a storm is rambling, but the air is terse
at fifty degrees. The door is open. Why’d
a college boy with the Muses on his side
cower in fear and put away his verse?
And what will they say of him who never tried?
A candle is my gambit to misguide
some wandering villanelle and break the curse.
It’s fifty degrees and the door is open wide.
Seven years have gone; I have lied
for long enough. And what will reimburse
that fool of a man who could but never tried?
Remove the poetry, and what am I?
Merely a body doubling as a hearse.
Fifty degrees and the door is open wide—
What will they say of the one who never tried?
Corey Harvard is a writer from Grand Bay, AL. His latest work can be found in publications including Poetry Life & Times, The Hypertexts, and Alabama’s prestigious Literary
Mobile. He has previously served as associate editor of Sonnetto Poesia and editor-inchief of Oracle Fine Arts Review.
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I Am From…
Please Mr. Postman look and see, if there’s a letter,
Deborah Ferguson
a letter for me …”
Screaming at the Regal Theatre while Smokey Robinson and the
Miracles croon
I am from Hair Rep, hot combs, and nappy kitchens,
greens, grits, and cornbread;
cold cement buried under drifts of snow,
“My mama told me you better shop around …”,
all the while dancing in the street with Martha and the Vandellas.
I … am from Living history
wild, whipping winds
blowing off Lake Michigan
freezing tears from my eyes.
I am from stern grandmothers, preoccupied mothers,
absent fathers; compassionate and loving
grandfathers and uncles: friendly, happy drunks
who play classical violin and paint sunsets and family portraits.
I am from Vaseline smoothed over skinny, ashy knees and elbows,
and patent leather shoes topped with bows and buckles,
white lace trimmed socks and blouses tailored with Peter Pan collars.
I am from the days of Camelot before Jackie O,
Emmett Till, Malcolm X, Martin King and the Black Panthers,
from the days of waiting for friends who die in Viet Nam
while my girlfriends and me sing with the Marvellettes
“Wait a minute Mr. Postman, please, please, please Mr. Postman.
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Deborah Adero Ferguson, also known as the Dancing Story Lady, is an actress/storyteller,
poet, screenwriter, and a retired African dancer. She is also an adjunct faculty member in
the English department of the University of South Alabama and the Executive Director
of the John McClure Snook Youth Club of Foley (SYC), a center for fine arts and academic
Excellence. A native of Chicago she has adapted to life in the south and now lives in Foley,
Alabama with her husband Joseph and college-bound grandson, Malik.
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Canine Metaphysics
Discovery of Figs
Richard Hillyer
Peggy Delmas
When barked at by dogs
while walking the neighborhood,
we know we exist.
I come to figs
late in life for a Southern girl,
finding great pleasure in picking
them from the tree
in my in-law’s back yard.
I have learned to pinch
them free of the limb,
accustomed now to the sticky milkiness
that seeps from the wound.
I search underneath a canopy of leaves
for the plump fruit,
green-skinned, purple-veined prizes,
leaving those oozing their sweet juice
for the wasps and flies,
pushing past the rotten fruit,
shriveled and hanging
like the unmentionables of an old man.
Any dog when asked
the nature of existence
will set you straight: “Ruff. ”
Not knowing what to do
with the bounty of the laden tree
I search cookbooks for enticing recipes,
but their complexities and intricacies leave me cold.
Instead I have my fill of figs
at the kitchen sink
pulling down the skin, exploratory,
savoring the pink flesh
and my joy in discovery at mid-life.
Born in London, England, Richard Hillyer now teaches literature (mainly of the Renaissance) at the University of South Alabama. He recently published his third book of literary
criticism, Divided between Careless and Care: A Cultural History. He has now begun a
new study tentatively entitled Poetry and Science: From the Seventeenth Century to the
Twenty-First.
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Peggy Delmas is an assistant professor of leadership and teacher education at the University of South Alabama. She has been writing poetry since elementary school. Peggy enjoys
observing and participating in Southern culture, traveling and reading. She lives with her
family in Grand Bay, Alabama.
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Dance Hall Soliloquy
Skylight
Kerri R. Waits
Rachel McMullen
I want
to slow dance
to Coltrane,
closed eyes stinging in the dim;
stale cigarettes
cheap whiskey
the familiar warmth of a stranger pressed close.
I want
the seams of my stockings
slightly crooked
on uneven heels.
The roof leaked,
but you weren’t there to fix it
so I used a bucket to carry the water that dripped into our home.
The boys off the ship are home for a night.
Being men.
I tipped my head back to our new skylight,
trying to enjoy the view despite the rain,
but seeing the world through the hole you left me with
isn’t easy to take in alone.
I want
to roll
out the door like smoke,
search-lighted by stars,
groping alley walls and stumbling
til morning’s cab drives me home.
Kerri R. Waits is a belly-dancing, kick-boxing poet with dreams of becoming an occupational therapist. Upon graduating from the University of South Alabama she hopes to
explore the therapeutic use of writing in the treatment of Alzheimer’s patients.
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You stayed away so long
that the moisture in the drywall mildewed and then rotted,
and the ceiling of our home caved in around me.
The insulation made my back itch
and I could have used your hand to scratch it,
but your hand wasn’t there and neither were you.
Rachel McMullen received her undergraduate degree in sociology and creative writing
and is currently working on her master’s degree in secondary education while specializing
in the study of English and language arts. Rachel enjoys a simple life with her husband,
Jonathon, and their two rambunctious cats. She loves nature, literature, and a good cup of
coffee at any time of the day. This is her debut publication. Oracle Fine Arts Review 2014
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The Words
Turnover
Megan Guinn
Richard Hillyer
The words were
crispy—
dry, dead leaves
hunkering before the footfall.
And I swallowed them
and wept
‘cause they hurt,
they cut
going down,
going down.
I
Canny enough to play the brother card,
my sister’s suitor brought her flowers, me
LPs, to keep throughout a candidacy
hurt by his hippo face and hair like chard;
long obsolete he was before I grokked
my tape of Tony Williams’ Lifetime’s Turn
It Over, made on the slim chance I’d learn
to savor tuneless singing, concord mocked.
Unlistenable, and near unplayable:
flat-mates of his by accident had set
that platter where it must then warp (above
a radiator, window seat); and yet
those wine dark waves so tempest-tossed proved droll,
for witches’ brews of dissonance a glove.
Megan Guinn recently graduated from South Alabama with a M.Ed. in secondary
education in English language arts. She received her B.A. in English literature from the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She lives in Mobile with her husband, Jesse.
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II
“Play something heavy,” urged my college friend,
reversing roles: from campus-wide he drew
LPs and ears to grow and share his endless,
envy-making tape collection; who
was I to play his DJ in a room
not packed with fawning listeners (such as me),
to fracture or restore his sanity
with my best shot at sounds of doom or gloom?
Difficult music, not hard rock, I had,
my holdings lately purged of stuff deemed light;
“Vuelta Abajo” seemed a cert, though, Turn
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It Over’s chthonic anthem, super bad.
Cigar, but no, not close, it failed to earn
approval for its weight that starless night.
III
After a dozen years turntable-free,
with three moves times four boxes’ worth of mute
LPs, I bow to the reality
they’ll stay that way until they’re made to suit
my lo-fi life, by means I can afford,
as vinyl discs distilled to compact for
a pigmy system, to at last reward
my stubbornness with records rich in lore.
Among the many albums I now burn
is one I bought to upgrade from a wornout
tape (as half a budget double), Turn
It Over: take-no-prisoners riffs, forlorn
vocals, mesmeric grooves, cyclonic drumming,
and tunes I formerly was always humming.
Born in London, England, Richard Hillyer now teaches literature (mainly of the Renaissance) at the University of South Alabama. He recently published his third book of literary
criticism, Divided between Careless and Care: A Cultural History. He has now begun a
new study tentatively entitled Poetry and Science: From the Seventeenth Century to the
Twenty-First.
L-awful America
Rachel McMullen
I am threaded
through tickered time
and some-what spirited fabric,
needled away like a peda-(l)-ntic
fashion work to be run
on lanes of commercial
boredom.
So extended are my arms,
I exceed the purposes
of the so-called
long arm jurisdiction,
con-tort-ed into a crooked
railway march with a long
and suffering salute.
Maybe if I knew something
of the Constitution,
or if I heard the powdered wigs
breathe-in their enter-(con)-tain-ments,
I could stop the legal production.
I could meet immediate satisfaction
and yoke its stale-mate bread
to the emptiness
of the bought and sold.
It all looks like a show,
a worked-up sediment
wasting margins and minds
without the eagerness
to sew anything together.
All of these partial in-flu-ences,
pieces of unexecuted medication
that never heal anyone’s soul.
How can we expect to live
in the half-light?
Rachel McMullen received her undergraduate degree in sociology and creative writing
and is currently working on her master’s degree in secondary education while specializing
in the study of English and language arts.
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Blue
March 25, 2013
Matthew Dulaney
Peggy Delmas
George, you colonial boy, you long-standing
member of the House of Burgesses, you
who were so fond of whiskeytobaccocherries,
who scoured the frontier hunting Iroquois,
who owned Igbo, who were rich, who defied
the king and bested the king’s men, you
39 floors up, overlooking Mississippi river,
barges and Steamboat Natchez
calliope music rings clear
full moon rises
police sirens paralyze
were a man’s man and more, but I am not
here for you. I am passing through (although
it was your birthday, incidentally) bound
for Turner’s Gap, beyond your monument.
Having read Foote quoting Hill quoting
the Hebrew poet, I just have to have a look
2 hours later
WGNO confirms
15-year-old shot dead
in the 7th ward
at what they were looking at. Slightly winded
and slightly more over the hill, I also keep
an eye out for Catton’s two sensible soldiers,
intended enemies waiting it out together, sharing
tobacco, not killing each other. I feel at my heart,
pondering how much time I have left. God,
I pray it is not a little. Mist enshrouds skeletal
trees fading gray as a crow caws (this really
happened/I’m not making this up) and flies, riding
an inland wind somewhere unknown. Whirling
and cracking, there was fire here. But I cannot
see Gen. McClellon’s grand and glorious blue
columns snaking tailless cross Catoctin, nor
apprize what despair they aroused. I see gray
(the guy on the radio did say we could expect
some weather, with two systems converging)
for I am in a cloud. I am alone in a cloud. I am
alone in a cloud and it is rather peaceful here.
Recent work by Matthew Dulany can be found in RipRap, Poydras Review, and Hiram Poetry
Review. He lives in Maryland.
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Peggy Delmas is an assistant professor of leadership and teacher education at the University of South Alabama. She has been writing poetry since elementary school. Peggy enjoys
observing and participating in Southern culture, traveling and reading. She lives with her
family in Grand Bay, Alabama.
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Thanksgiving Feast
Anne
Deborah Ferguson
Matthew Poirier
Violence is the entrée of the day,
eaten with side dishes of opulence
The shaft sprung loose from staff and string
singing with ven’mous tone;
Whilst sailing true it struck its mark,
as shaft-end pierced the bone.
and apathy spread upon the feeding tables.
The dough of war is kneaded into loaves
of hate, baked a golden honey brown
and drizzled with the butter of terror.
We chew and swallow the crusts while
guzzling merlot of murder and mayhem,
and with a bloodlust, bang our cups on the table
and cry “Please, Sir, more, please, Sir, more. ”
The target chosen soon collapsed
with shaft embedded deep,
A desperate cry of “Darling Anne!”
then Target entered sleep.
‘Twas not until the clash of steel
and bloodshed reached an end,
that I, with staff and string in tow,
did reach the anti-friend.
Eternal rest he had not met,
his lips had yet still breath,
“You tell my Anne,” gasped he the words,
then Target welcomed death.
‘Twas not so much a dying wish,
but dying order, rather.
Beheld, did I, the forceful tone;
for him, this truly mattered.
No choice had I, but search for “Anne,”
though where? how? I knew not.
The thing I did know—was his plea
would not soon be forgot.
Deborah Adero Ferguson, also known as the Dancing Story Lady, is an actress/storyteller,
poet, screenwriter, and a retired African dancer. She is also an adjunct faculty member in
the English department of the University of South Alabama and the Executive Director
of the John McClure Snook Youth Club of Foley (SYC), a center for fine arts and academic
Excellence. A native of Chicago she has adapted to life in the south and now lives in Foley,
Alabama with her husband Joseph and college-bound grandson, Malik.
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With vigor, fastened I to horse—
belongings, staff and string;
then on my steed I searched for “Anne,”
for news had I to bring.
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132
So here and there I asked for Anne,
Describing Target’s face;
though news of Anne received I none,
of Target … Yes, a trace.
“Her beauty must be greater than
a thousand maidens fair;
With gems for eyes, a silv’ry voice,
and golden strands of hair.”
“Silas Whitcomb” was his name—
stouthearted, brave and true,
and when I pressed for more, they said
“He was the kindest, too.”
And all of this I thought aloud
whilst riding on my steed,
when suddenly, a voice said, “Yes,
she is quite fair indeed.”
But when I asked “And what of Anne?”
not one soul seemed to know.
Another word I could not get,
so I was forced to go.
“Who spoke?” said I, with staff and string
and arrow firmly notched.
It was apparent to me then
that I was being watched.
There were some towns in which the men
asked me—how Silas died;
That story I wished not to tell,
so to the men, I lied.
“Reveal thyself!” spoke I aghast,
with arrow then pulled tight;
To every side I swerved with haste,
though no one was in sight.
I fabricated countless tales
of how a beast was fought—
by Silas Whitcomb and the sword
his very hands had wrought.
“Relax, good man,” it spoke again,
“No need to wield your bow;
‘Tis I, the one your weapon claimed
not several days ago.”
In version 1, the beast owned wings,
in version 4, 12 heads;
but each tale came to the same end—
with Silas Whitcomb dead.
“Silas?” managed I to say,
“Are you here for the kill?”
“Kill?” he laughed, “Nay, but I have
a message, so be still.”
“The bravest of them all!” they said,
“A hero ‘till the end!”
and many chanted these same words:
“I’m glad he was my friend.”
“My darling Anne, she is indeed
the greatest girl on earth.
Anne has blessed the ground she’s walked on
since her day of birth.”
I pondered on the road, what kind
of woman “Anne” could be;
Deserving one like Silas, begs
for much, I guarantee.
“She is just what you say she is—
gold hair, and gems for eyes;
The gods above, they praise my Anne,
rejoicing in the skies.”
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I listened to the spirit’s speech,
and, interrupting him,
said, “I have searched both near and far
for Anne, but hope grows dim.”
But for something in the corner,
empty was the place.
That something in the corner was—
a cradle, and … a face.
“Do not despair!” said Silas then,
“There is no need to fret!
Your journey here is nearly done,
for Anne draws nearer yet.”
To a child that face belonged,
and hardly 2 years old.
Her eyes that shone so bright were gems;
her strands of hair were gold.
His voice, it coaxed me on, until
a distant town I reached,
in which lived Anne, the very girl
about whom Silas preached.
Etched were letters on her cradle,
painted beatif ’lly;
one A, and then 2 letter Ns,
and lastly, letter E.
At each and every door I knocked
‘til only one remained.
“Please let this be the one,” I prayed,
for I was highly drained.
Shuff ’ling footsteps could be heard
behind the wooden door,
then the door was opened by a hand
owned by a women poor.
Not golden was her hair, but grey;
her eyes could barely see.
Her form, as crooked as her voice;
“Anne?” … She could not be.
“Heavens, no,” the old hag chuckled,
“Anne is in the back.
Take care to not awaken her;
sleep as of late she’s lacked.”
The woman led me to a room
located deep inside;
within the lock she pressed a key,
then door was opened wide.
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Matthew Poirier grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana with five siblings. He’s an English major/communication minor who will be graduating from USA in Spring 2014. He loves all
things fantasy and is hugely inspired by the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and J.R.R. Tolkien.
In February 2014, he completed the first book of a fantasy series he’s been working on
since 2010 and hopes to continue the series following graduation. When he’s not writing,
he loves composing music on keyboard that reflects the mood of his fiction and poetry.
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Grave Digger
Danielle Dozar
She dug a grave for herself today.
So long she stayed hunched over
laboring in a muscled-tightened stoop,
that to stand tall would be too great a burden.
Tiny shoulders were not meant
to bare such an awful weight.
Her shovel broke a time or two,
until all that was left was a metal spade
and her bare, calloused hands.
Darkness conquered light, but she continued.
White dress stained brown,
her face angelic, as she engraves
her story into the earth.
Death—opportune fiend-friend,
yawning and open-mouthed,
swallowed her up,
for she was far more precious than they knew.
Her favorite stars her only witness,
blinking soundless SOS signals in the dark forest.
Danielle Dozar has B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from USA. She
lives in Louisiana, where she plans to teach high school English and pursue a career as
an author. In her spare time, Danielle suffers from a severe case of wanderlust and avoids
reality with her writing. She credits her creative writing teachers at South for the inspiration to follow her heart and her pen.
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Nonfiction
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chechen sniper
matthew stephen
Throughout history, all military engagements have been
governed by what is known as Rules of Engagement (R.O.E).
Simply put, R.O.Es are rules or directives to military forces
(including individuals) that define the circumstances, conditions,
degree, and manner in which force, or actions, may be applied. As
the world has become more modern, and more “civilized,” these
governing principles have generally become more restrictive. While
many see this as a way for direct action to have less of a negative
impact on the lives of the civilians caught up in a war zone, many,
including myself, have seen how R.O.Es can become so restrictive
as to further endanger the lives of military personnel attempting to
accomplish their mission, which is usually to reestablish peace.
By the time my unit was assigned to the Ramadi peninsula
in 2006, the situation in the streets had become so dangerous
that any operation outside of the relative safety provided by our
small operating base was anything but routine. Earlier that month,
I stood by in awe listening to radio communications about a
Humvee that had just struck an Improvised Explosive Device
or “I.E.D.” while watching a dark plume of smoke rising slowly
from the site where five lost their lives before the doors could be
opened on their vehicle to attempt a rescue. Unfortunately for
these five and countless others, no change in our R.O.Es could
have changed their fate. Such was the infamous Fog of War, that
enduring term used to describe the ever-present uncertainty of
your enemies’ capabilities, and your efforts to overcome them.
While our Marine contingent was operating out of Uday
Hussein’s former riverside palace, a little sliver of property referred
to as Camp Blue Diamond, we were not directly responsible
for the security of the base. This seemingly simple task was
apportioned to a National Guard unit from Montana of all useless
places. While the Marines were governed by R.O.Es established by
commander of all the American forces in the area of operations,
on Blue Diamond it was Montana’s call about everything that
happened inside the base. At the request of the National Guard
unit, a provision of Marines were assigned to help them fulfill
the duties of protecting the base and offer much needed tactical
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assistance to each manned security post within. The rules were
explained to us in a very simple manner, “Do not open fire on
anything unless first fired upon.” While at the time this seemed to
me like a reasonable request, not much time had passed before I
held great contempt for the National Guard leadership, a feeling
shared by the National Guard soldiers I was helping at one of the
two gates into Blue Diamond.
Each day at a security post, watching the world outside the
base continue to turn, can feel like its own eternity. While our one
rule, “Do not open fire on anything unless first fired upon,” was
enough to guide our actions, we still had a list of activities to be
on the lookout for, referred to as B.O.L.Os. BOLOs came in many
forms; descriptions of men, vehicles, and expected operations, were
reviewed at the start of all personnel shifts. Our list of cars usually
ran about twenty or so, several of these were so similar to each
other that distinguishing a bad blue sedan from a good blue sedan
was a hopeless task. We watched day in and day out for any activity
that looked suspicious, used our radio to call in such events, and
waited for the robotic response of “Roger, we will log that into the
book.” Stories of attacks and explosions filtered through to us in
the word of mouth way they always did, and life went on almost
peacefully.
All urban combat environments have snipers, always have,
and always will. When news of a particularly good sniper reached
our ear, our only thoughts were about how predictable this was,
and how we hoped no one we knew would be targeted. When a
bulletin of Richard Caseltine, my protégé, who was shot in center
of his helmet, reached me, I became more concerned. Caseltine
survived only by the miracle of modern technology. The helmet
deflected the bullet between the roof of the liner and the top of his
head, splitting a picture of he and his wife right down the middle
and landing in the back of his neck. Days later a description of
the assassin (I use the term with full effect) made its way to the
National Guard BOLO list. White male, five foot six inches tall,
160—170lbs, wearing a traditional Arab white sheet dress, driving
a white Mercedes van with the passenger tail light knocked out.
Further intelligence revealed him to be a Chechen insurgent,
highly skilled, with several confirmed kills linked to him. Caseltine
was the only target that escaped his accuracy.
Days passed like a slow reading novel as we reviewed every
car that passed the road outside the gate, hoping for a chance to
see the white van, Chechen inside. Even though we had enough
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firepower on our two man post to stop Pickett’s charge, we were
reminded constantly of the ROEs of the base: “Do not open fire
on anything unless first fired upon.” Eventually we decided that
we would never get an opportunity to help stop the professional
marksman. Time passed without sight of the vehicle while reports
of new victims came across the wire as testaments to his ruthless
efficiency, and eventually life on post returned to normal.
Arriving on post one afternoon, I was greeted by Lcpl
Lucas, a twenty two year old who looked not a day over fourteen.
Lucas was not liked by many because of his constant determined
motivation to be a good Marine. Such
qualities were looked down on as being
When news of a
naïve, green behind the ears, and downright
particularly good sniper
annoying. His report of a mortar attack
that morning went in one ear, lingered
reached our ear, our only
long enough for me to decide that he was
thoughts were about how
exaggerating, then floated out the other like
predictable
this was, and
the smoke from my cigarette. The only item
he said that resonated with me was that we
how we hoped no one we
needed to close the road in front of the gate
knew would be targeted.
in a few hours to allow a convoy to enter the
base. As the time neared, my National Guard
cohort (Specialist Trotsche) and I prepared to rush out and set
barriers to allow the resupply cavalcade entrance to Blue Diamond,
constantly aware of the list of BOLOs and what not to do if we
saw something suspicious. Returning to our post, having stopped
the flow of traffic, we began to scan the area while awaiting the
convoy. It was at this point I noticed a white Mercedes van, driven
by a white man of average build, wearing a traditional Arab white
sheet dress. I also noticed that the tail light on the passenger side
was broken out.
Immediately, Trotsche got on the radio with a resolute
fervor I had not seen from him before. I sighted in our .50 caliber
machine gun on the Mercedes and prepared to open fire. Few
seconds passed, waiting the reply for our request to open fire,
tension building, sniper unaware that we had him dead to rights.
The reply was unexpected for some reason, “Do not open fire on
anything unless first fired upon.” Trotsche’s French Canadian accent
became enraged, speaking only in French, he (I assume) repeated
the situation with the hope that something would change, and
we would be allowed to do something to prevent the sniper from
slipping away. Anything would work. Allow us to keep the road
“
”
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closed and send out a squad to question and detail the mercenary.
Allow us to destroy the vehicle and protect the lives of our
comrades in arms. Just allow us any measure to prevent the man
from escaping! The reply came across again, “Do not open fire on
anything unless first fired upon.” That was the rule, and breaking
it would mean severe punitive action for both me and the French
Canadian National Guardsman, tears welling in his eyes at the
realization that we could do nothing to prevent the safe passage
of the killer. Even though the National Guard had jurisdiction
over the security posts, I switched radio frequencies to our Marine
Corps channel in an attempt to get a different ruling from my
leadership. The response this time was exactly what I thought it
would be, and my heart sank. “I’m sorry, Stephens.You should
have shot first and asked questions later. Now it’s in the National
Guard’s hands.”
By calling in the snipers vehicle to the National Guard,
powers at be, we were now bound by their Rules of Engagement.
We could not shoot. They had no procedure in place to capture a
suspected terrorist driving by our post, we were merely to call in
the suspected activity so that it could be submitted to intelligence
and added to their overall strategic plan for the city. Gates were
lifted once the convoy gained safe passage. We watched with
thousand yard stares as the Chechen sniper drove along his merry
way, heading to downtown, his playpen.
The next few hours were spent reviewing how we failed,
not by the ROE’s, but by our own common sense. If only we had
opened fire, killed the sniper, then thought of a good story to
satisfy our chain of command, maybe lives would be spared. The
what if ’s continued to be a sore spot for myself and Trotsche for
the following days. Any action would have been better than no
action we thought, but then again “Do not open fire on anything
unless first fired upon.” We did the right thing, right?
LCPL Kevin Adam Lucas was cut down by a well-placed
sniper’s bullet on May 26, 2006. As my squad was patrolling down
a street, Lucas, who was the first man in the patrol, was hit directly
between the eyes and fell at twenty-one years of age. A Jordanian
interpreter known as “Boss” received the highest award we could
think of for rushing back into the line of fire to retrieve Lucas’s
body and return it to safety behind a stone wall. Later, we learned
that the Chechen claimed responsibility for the attack.
Matt Stephen: served in the United States Marine Corps from 2004—2008. He was based
out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and spent two deployments in Iraq. He currently lives
in Birmingham, Alabama where he is working toward his undergraduate degree in History
at the University of Montevallo.
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interview of dr. Leon van dyke
mary beth lursen
Dr. Leon Van Dyke has spent the last eleven years serving as
the chair of the department of dramatic arts. During his reign,
he’s directed fifteen plays. This April, he directs for the last time,
choosing to go out with William Shakespeare’s last play “The
Tempest.” Oracle Fine Arts Review talked with Van Dyke about his
experiences at USA and what he has learned in his time here.
MBL: How long were you at the University of South Alabama and
what all did you teach and do while here?
LVD: I’ve washed bottles, swept up, been department chair of
drama, and taught everything from intro to theatre to acting for
the camera and directing for the past 11 years.
MBL: What has been your biggest accomplishment while at USA?
LVD: Watched growth in numbers of drama students and quality
of work flourish. Staged some spectacular productions myself, and
produced (or backed up) my fellow drama faculty in a very worthy
repertoire. We produce at least 4 main stage productions each year,
so each year can be measured in its own way.
MBL: What will you miss most about USA?
LVD: The joy and passion of individual students working their way
towards their lives.
MBL: What was the most interesting thing to happen while you
were in the drama department at USA?
LVD: I would have to say that we have found a way to make art.
For example, the lighting board crashed and died. I found a patron
to fund and replace it in time for the departmental production of
HAIR. We wanted to float a series of platforms into the audience
for a raft on the Mississippi in Mark Twain’s BIG RIVER, so we
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pulled out some audience seats, and built them. We wanted to
project some of Bob Rauchenberg’s art for the play based upon
his life and work, so we imagined and crafted a way to do that, and
were lucky enough to have Tony and Rachael Wright from the
art department help us. I loved working on the imaginative Sarah
Ruhl’s DEAD MAN’S CELL PHONE; and would do JULIUS
CAESAR again in the radio world of 1937, if given a chance. But
my answer is only momentary as is my art form. As such these
productions are now a part of my memory, and the collective
memory of our cast members, crews, and audiences for these years.
MBL: What was your favorite production while at USA?
LVD: My answer always has to be, “the one I’m working on now. ”
I’m doing THE TEMPEST in the spring of the year.
MBL: What is a piece of advice you wish you could give all USA
students?
LVD: Find a way to play as well as work. Find a way to play while
you work, find a work that seems like play. The joy of effort in
something you love should be the real quest of your time at USA.
Mary Beth Lursen: is a senior majoring in print journalism and minoring in English. She
was the 2011—2012 recipient of the Steve and Angelia Stokes scholarship for fiction in the
undergraduate category. Her short story, The Teller, was published in the 2013 edition of
Oracle Fine Arts Review. She hopes to attend graduate school for English or print journalism and make a career out of telling stories.
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parking lot proposal
karie fugett
As I sat in my white 2001 Dodge Intrepid listening to “It’s
a Great Day to Be Alive” in an attempt to stop feeling bad for
myself, I heard a tap on the door opposite of me. Through the
eerie glow of the car’s clock light, I saw a man in military uniform
hunched into the window. The blinding street lamps in the
distance turned him into a shadow making it difficult to identify
the details of his face, but his fudge brown eyes squinting into the
glass were familiar. It was Cleve. I unlocked the door to let him in.
He swung it open and plopped his body into the passenger’s seat,
the smell of sweat and grass and oil flooding the car. He turned to
look at me, the song playing on repeat in the background.
“Hey, there. How was work?” I said, leaning over for a kiss.
“I still can’t find a place for you to stay.” He kissed me then
turned to face me, leaning his back against his door and tucking
his left boot under his right camouflaged thigh.
“I think I’ve figured out what we could do, though,” he
said with a thick Alabama accent, staring at me, reading my face. I
expected him to look less eager and a little more defeated than he
did but his eyes were wide and determined.
“Hmm. Well, if it’s going to Alaska, I was starting to think
that might be the only option, too. It just sucks. I don’t wanna
leave you and I really don’t wanna live in the tundra.” My parents
lived in Alaska and, though I had been homeless for over a month,
I had ruled out the option of moving up there until this point.
I was determined to stay in the lower 48, but my options were
running thin. I wanted to cry. Cleve and I had only been dating for
three months, but given our past, things had progressed quickly. I
was very much in love with him.
“Hell no you’re not going to Alaska! No.” He paused to
think about what he wanted to say. “I was thinking—what would
you think about, uh—I was just thinking the past few days that—
that maybe we could get married or something.” My face went
blank. I was in love with him, yes, but I knew marrying him was
probably a terrible idea. It was too soon to be considering such a
thing. The only problem was that I had no other options.
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Cleve and I met in our 8th grade English class at Foley high
school in 1998 when we were only thirteen years old. He was an
abnormally large for his age and a popular football player who
had lived in that small town his entire life. I was the awkward
new kid, fresh from Florida, who had a painful lack of style, and a
glaringly obvious lack of country accent, hence, a lack of friends.
We had English class together, and before we ever even spoke a
word to each other, his outgoing personality and abundance of
friends caught my eye. Every day before class he stood in a circle of
kids I viewed as beautiful and unattainable; his 6’2” frame swayed
confidently from foot to foot as he told jokes, everyone hanging
onto his every word. I wanted to know him, to be near him. I
thought if I could just get his attention, somehow, then maybe I
would have a chance.
Cleve sat one row in front of me,
I finally gave him a note diagonally to the left. For months, I sat in
with my phone number and that English class finding it hard to learn
as the back of his head tempted
the words ‘Will you go out amything
concentration. Eventually, after many
with me—Circle: Y or N?’
nights of going over the scenario in my
mind and giving myself mirror pep talks,
I decided I would leave him a note introducing myself. What could
it harm? I convinced myself. I’ll get up right when the bell rings, drop it
on his desk, and leave as quickly I can.
The day after completing my mission, I sat nervously at
my desk, wet palms tucked under my thighs, waiting to see if he
would reply. As he passed through the doorway into the classroom,
I made every effort to avoid any and all eye contact. My cheeks
burned with embarrassment as he sat down at his desk, seemingly
not noticing me. He reached into his gray backpack, got back up,
turned toward me, and tossed a folded piece of yellow college
ruled notebook paper onto my desk complete with a melt-mefrom-the-inside-out smile. “Hi. I’m Cleve. Are you new?” It was
simple and perfect.
Many notes were passed, usually scribbled with mindless
comments on schoolwork or TV. After a couple of weeks, things
were getting serious, and I finally gave him a note with my phone
number and the words “Will you go out with me—Circle:Y
or N?” I wanted to use the same drop-and-run tactic I used for
the first note but decided I couldn’t bear waiting an entire 24
hours for an answer. I watched intently at his broad left hand as it
manipulated the blue ink Bic pen to draw a perfect circle around
“
”
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the letter “Y.” It was official.
We “went out” for a life-altering two weeks then broke
up because I thought he had a crush on one of our school’s
cheerleaders. Despite the small mishap, Cleve and I remained
fairly close friends through high school. We eventually went our
separate ways after graduation, losing touch with each other. Then,
three years later, we reconnected through Myspace, hitting it off
immediately.
I was a flight attendant based in Charlotte, North Carolina,
and Cleve was a Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville,
North Carolina, only a thirty-minute flight east. Our close
proximity made it easy for me to visit him, so I did. I did so
often that I ultimately lost my job for missing work over it. Being
reckless like this wasn’t new to me. Only two years before, I quit
high school and ran away to live on my own in defiance of my
parents sudden move from Foley to Tampa. I had never been an
extremely responsible person, and I had never done well with
authority. As a teen, I was always able to squeeze through life
despite those facts but, as a newly 20-something, that was no
longer the case.
After running out of couches to crash on in Charlotte, I
drove to Jacksonville, parked my car at the local K-Mart, and stayed
there for nearly two weeks. Cleve did everything he could during
that time to find me a place to stay, but he lived in the barracks on
base and so did most of his friends. His friend Matt and Matt’s wife
Shannon were the only people he knew who lived off base, but
Shannon didn’t know me and was rightfully hesitant to take me, a
strange homeless person, in.
On January 11, 2006, Cleve and I eloped at the Jacksonville
county courthouse. It was just me, him, and his two best friends,
Matt and Tony, as witnesses. I wore boot cut blue jeans, a slouchy
tan sweater, and my hair in a ponytail, and he wore his desert
camis. There was no ring and there were no pictures. After our
unexceptional ceremony, since I was Cleve’s wife and all, Shannon
decided to meet me. We hit it off over a bottle of cabernet and
became instant friends. I moved in the next day.
Two months later, on March 10th, Cleve’s unit, 3/8,
deployed to Ramadi, Iraq. On April 1st around 8 p.m., I received a
Myspace message from Cleve’s brother:
From: Matt Kinsey
Title: Cleve’s been hurt
Message: I don’t know if you know already, but Cleve got
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hurt. Call if you need to talk.
I, very dramatically, threw the computer chair to the side of
the room and screamed, flailing my arms for Shannon, who was
napping in her room across the hallway. She stormed out, dirty
blonde hair in a crooked knot on the top of her head, hazel eyes
disoriented from sleep.
“What’s going on?!”
“Cleve! Cleve was hurt! I don’t—”
“Wait, what!? How do you know?”
“His brother sent me a message on Myspace! He didn’t give
me any details.”
“Okay, slow down. Have you called them?”
“No. I’m about to.”
When I called, Cleve’s brother told me that his parents had
received a call hours before from the Marine Corps saying that his
Humvee had been hit by an IED, severely injuring his left leg. The
Marine Corps couldn’t find me because I had to use my parents
Alaska address on our marriage paperwork since I had no home at
the time. I also had a new phone with a new local number, and I
hadn’t thought to let them know. Cleve’s parents didn’t know we
had gotten married until the Marines told them they were looking
for me. They weren’t happy with receiving the news from me, a
complete stranger, and opted out of trying to get ahold of me.
That’s when his brother messaged me.
That night, Shannon and I sat on the steps of her back porch
smoking Marlboro Lights and telling our favorite stories about
Cleve. We didn’t bother with sleep. The Marine Corps finally
got ahold of me the next morning. They apologized for the mix
up and told me Cleve was on a flight to Germany where he
would switch to another flight to Bethesda Naval Hospital near
Washington, D.C. Shannon wanted to go with me to see him so
we decided to drive the ten hours. We packed her white Sport
Trac with a week’s worth of clothes, loaded her 6-month-old son
Connor into the car, and were out the door by afternoon.
We arrived at the hospital just before midnight. A liaison
officer kindly stayed behind to take me to my husband. The
hospital was large and dim and quiet—every footstep echoed as
we walked through the winding halls. We reached the fifth floor
where the lights were out except the nurse’s station, which glowed
fluorescent down the hall. Shannon and I followed SSgt. Brown
toward the light, Connor in tow. We passed room after room,
most of them black with night, some of them with closed doors,
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until finally he stopped. He told us children weren’t allowed in so
Shannon had to take Connor to the waiting room further down
the hall. SSgt Brown and I had to put on yellow paper robes and
rubber gloves before entering the room to prevent catching any
undetected foreign diseases Cleve may have contracted while
overseas. I wanted to see him alive so badly that I could hardly
breathe, and the robe and gloves were hot. We walked in to a dimly
lit room with a single hospital bed and Cleve lying in it. Thinking
he was asleep, I walked up to him and placed my rubber hand on
his. He was warm and curled into a contorted ball. I wanted to see
his leg but it was hiding under a thin
That night, Shannon and I
white blanket that I dared not move.
“I love you,” I whispered. To
sat on the steps of her back
my surprise he began to turn toward
porch smoking Marlboro
me. His pupils were massive from the
Delaudid, hardly leaving any brown left,
Lights and telling our
but his beautiful smile broke through the
favorite
stories about Cleve.
shadows of the room confirming that it
was him and that he was alive. As he turned his body toward me,
the blanket moved from his wounded leg. It was wrapped in what
looked to be cellophane and colored the deepest blood red I had
ever seen.
“Hey… I missed you. I love you, too.”
Cleve was initially in the hospital for a solid three months
before we got to go back home to Camp Lejeune. For the next
four years we lived in and out of hospitals as he recovered. He
eventually had to have his leg amputated, forcing us to move to
Washington D.C. and two years after that, on April 20, 2010, at
the age of 25, he died from an accidental overdose of his pain
medications.
It is amazing to me how much one person—one decision—
can completely alter a life. I’ve often considered what my life
would have been like if I hadn’t married Cleve and, instead, moved
to Alaska or worse—tried to make it on my own. Today I am far
from the irresponsible homeless girl I was eight years ago. Perhaps
being a widow isn’t ideal, but life has never claimed to be such. I’m
a student, a traveler, a writer, a volunteer, a military widow, and so
much more. I am happier and more fulfilled than I have ever been
and all because of a foolhardy and unregretted “yes.”
“
”
Karie Fugett is a double major in English and Sociology at the University of South Alabama
and an intern at Negative Capability Press. In 2014, she was awarded the Steve and Angelia Stokes Undergraduate Scholarships for nonfiction and poetry. Her poem “War Widow”
was included in the Spring 2014 issue of Birmingham Arts Journal. After graduation, she
plans to earn an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in literature.
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