table of contents
fiction
Everything Lights Up Red by Samantha Erin Tetangco
The Money
by
Jim Meirose
poetry
Storm Front
Bologna
by
by
Judith Collins McCormick
RJ Woods
Yet Another Nocturne
by
John O’Reilly
Horseshit and Honeysuckle
(Or, Broke Down in Kingman, KS, 8/14/00, 12:46PM, 110 degrees) by
Imprint
by
Emmanuel Japka
In the Hills of San Luis Obispo County I Go Down
March 4th
Jason Ryberg
by
John Williams
John Williams
Loneliness Motel
by
Michael Keshigian
The Corner Musician
A Small Gift
by
by
by
Michael Keshigian
Marilynn Talal
contributors
OK Review Mission Statement
Submission Guidelines
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
Everything Lights Up Red
by
Samantha Erin Tetangco
By the time I’m ready to leave the store, it’s already past midnight. I flip open the
plastic door to the alarm box, careful not to knock it too hard. The thing is only attached
by its top hinge and is ready to fall off. I’d forgotten to fix it again. I want to do so now,
but Lucy leans against the wall with her apron bundled. Her blonde hair is pulled back,
and she pushes a loose strand behind her ear. I’ve made her wait long enough. “You all right?” I ask.
“Just tired,” she says.
I like working with Lucy. Unlike everyone else, she never seems impatient to go home. She knows what needs to be done and doesn’t forget to empty the trashcans in the
parking lot. She uses her biceps when she mops. She also didn’t seem to mind that
I was that manager, the one who took too long to close up the building. I know I’d be
better liked if I were able to get us out of here earlier, but setting an example is important to me and so I’m thorough. I need to be because I’ll hold other managers accountable.
I lock the door. Lucy leans against the empty bicycle rack and asks,
“You ever feel like not going home?”
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
Unsure of whether or not I should say “Every night” or “Not really,” I shrug and
settle on, “Sometimes.”
“I live alone,” she says. “I like it mostly, but sometimes it’s just so quiet.”
“I like the silence,” I say. Lucy nods.
As we walk to the parking lot, I almost ask her if she wants to grab a beer. I want
a pint, something dark and foamy because I haven’t had time to eat dinner and a Guinness or a Murphy’s is as good as a meal at this time of the night, probably better. Plus, I
hate drinking alone. The bartender has recently started to look at me funny. But I don’t
ask because Lucy is staring at the ground and I take it as a sign.
The streets of Berkeley are empty. Shattuck Avenue, a place bustling with pe-
destrians and vehicles by day, is still and solemn. Tonight, the moon makes the sky a
thick cloudy blue. It’ll likely rain, not a downpour, but something gentle, and I’m glad I
thought to put out the trashbuckets, as the closing crew liked to call them. We’ve tried
to repair the roof several times, but somehow the water keeps getting through.
Lucy says goodnight, climbs into her Camry, and drives off as I get into my own
car. I quit smoking three years ago, but it still smells of stale cigarettes. I turn on the
ignition and wait for my windows to defrost, think about what Lucy said, about the silence.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
There was a time when Cherrie would be laying in bed snoring when I returned. It used
to drive me crazy. It’s been ten years since she passed away, but I still feel guilty about
the nights I left her warmth for the silence of the guest bedroom.
Tomorrow is a Tuesday. It’s a sales meeting day and sales meetings are about
buses and who is going to get run over that day. It functions on a throw or be thrown
mentality, and so I get to the store early on Tuesdays to make sure I’m covered. I have
to update the daily sales, check our labor budget, adjust my plans for the month. On
top of these usual things, tomorrow I also have to write up a new cashier for an unbalanced drawer, make sure Jackson starts the new seasonal reset, fix that damn plastic
alarm door.
Already I feel heavy and the day hasn’t even begun. I sigh and grab my planner
from my briefcase. I write it all down, making little empty boxes next to each one so I
can check them off later.
When I set my car into reverse that list is still playing with me, growing longer and
longer. By now it’s a quarter past midnight and I’ll be back in five hours. I might as well
start now. That plastic door won’t take long anyway. I keep an extra shirt and tie in my
office and my pants—brown corduroys—are clean enough. Although I spilt a bit of coffee on them this morning and there’s evidence on my right thigh, I don’t think anyone
will notice if I wear them again.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
I fix the alarm door then make my bed on the break room couch. Bits of crumbs
dig into the back of my neck. The coat rack has been the home for too many abandoned
sweaters for so long that it bulks out like a human silhouette and startles me. “Goddammit,” I mutter and grab the planner from my briefcase to add another item to
the list: “Have Jackson get rid of shit on rack.”
The alarm goes off at 4:30 and I wish I’d gone home so I could sleep for at least
half an hour longer. But Jackson will be in at 4:58 on the nose. I change in the office,
careful to fold my wrinkled clothing and shove it into my briefcase. I put drops in my
red eyes, brush my teeth in the men’s restroom, and make sure I wash all the toothpaste remnants down the drain. I walk the store. I was right about the rain. There’s less than an inch in each trashbucket, but the
rainwater is in the air and while I hate the clean up part of these mornings, I love that
extra bit of something when I breathe. I’ve been here from the beginning, when it was one store instead of thirty. Those
were the good days, when each person made a difference and when Cherrie was still
alive. We used to be owned by a woman everyone called Stumpy. Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
She was a short hardheaded, feisty baby-boomer who’d branched off from Whole Foods
and decided to create her own version of “that corporate machine.” Half the size of a
regular grocery store, our building carried equal parts of organic foods, vitamins, body
care items, and miscellaneous giftables that reminded me of a cross between Brookstone and Cost Plus. Stumpy sold out a few years ago. Her brown hair had turned gray
and over a farewell pint, she told me she was tired. Don’t let yourself get this tired, she
said.
What people don’t know is that I majored in Biology, was on the Medical track
before I took my retail detour and never found the way back. On the day of the MCATS,
Uncle Jimmy called and told me that Gramps had passed. Instead of driving to the testing center, I went to the airport and took the first flight back to Boise. I came home
with the intention of taking the test again and picked up a part time job here, but the
store kept me hooked. First, I stayed for Stumpy, then after she left, I stayed because
they promoted me, then did it again and again and soon four years had passed and I’d
forgotten about the MCATS, forgotten about medical school and all of that, was stuck on
this ladder I was climbing thinking to myself, “Man, Gramps actually did me a favor this
time. This must be fate.”
I don’t believe in fate anymore.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
*
fiction
Right on cue, at 4:58, Jackson Murray is at the door.
“Morning, Jackson,” I say. I’m careful to use statements around Jackson. “Good
morning,” not “How was your morning?” or “How you doing this morning?”
Jackson is one of those people who over explain. Once I asked him how he was
able to work the morning loads so quickly and I was stuck listening to his feelings of
once being an ant. He told me how ants think, research he’d once done on ants. “Personal research,” he said. And I didn’t ask him what that meant. Instead, I told him I
had to go and get the sales reports ready. Now, I nod at him when I think he’s doing a
good job and keep walking.
“I thought I was opening today,” Jackson says.
“You are,” I say.
“Sales meeting?” he asks. I nod and make my way to the back of the store.
When my wife was alive, this life made sense. When you are with someone, work
is what you do. It didn’t matter that she had her own job and made her own money,
what mattered was that I was making money for us. We were saving, thinking of having kids, doing that family thing that scared the hell out of me when I thought about my
own family. But Cherrie got sick and we never did get pregnant. Then she died. This
was about ten years ago. Ten years. They go by fast.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
At about 7:30, Lucy peeks into the office and asks me to get her a cash drawer.
“What are you doing closing and then opening like that?” I ask her. “I’m covering a shift,” she says.
“You need eight hours between shifts. I should send you home.”
“What about you?” she counters.
“I’m salaried,” I say.
“Then salary me so I can work this shift.”
I shake my head, but spin the dial on the safe and pull out a till. She sits at the
table and counts in her cash with the familiar shuffling of bills. I’m working on the daily
sales, checking numbers against a spreadsheet. The shuffling stops and I feel Lucy eyeing my corduroy pants. I cover the coffee stains with my hand.
“Did you sleep well?” she asks me.
I wonder if she knows that I never went home last night. “I kept thinking about
work,” I told her. “You?”
Lucy tilts her head to the side, the side of her mouth curling upward in a half
smile. “It was too silent,” she says and shrugs.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
If we did have a kid, I wanted a boy. I know its cliché for men to want boys, but
I did. I admit, I have all those fantasies: the baseball in the backyard, working on the
Cadillac in the garage, of building things, and teaching him to shoot a twenty-two caliber
rifle the way Gramps did for me.
I told Cherrie about this once and she laughed. “A rifle, Grant? Really?” I still
hear her voice in my head whenever I want something that seems a bit ridiculous. “A
rifle, Grant? Really?”
I laughed and told her it was the only good time I ever had with Gramps. Gramps
grew up shooting .22s and the way Gramps said it, “You gotta be patient when teaching
someone to shoot, else you might get shot yourself.” I was a decent shot, but Gramps
was excellent even when he got old and could barely read a street sign. Even then, he
could nail a target a hundred yards away. He said it was in his blood, in my blood. I
laughed and told him I’d probably shoot as well as he did when my sight went bad. “You, Grant,” he’d said, “you pay too much attention to your eyes. You forget eve-
rything else.”
I wish Gramps were like that all the time, the way he was when we were shoot-
ing, but he wasn’t. He was temperamental. He worked in construction and came home
tired, hungry, cranky. He’d broken his thumb when he was twenty while playing third
base for The University of Idaho. Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
After misreading a particularly hard hit ground ball, he lost the game, the proper use of
that thumb, and his scholarship in the process. At night, he’d come home and first thing
he’d do is go to the freezer, pull out a bag of peas, and wrap it around his hand before
sitting down. Grams would have food on the table, but he always found things wrong
with it. Grams said it was cause he was old, that he needed to retire, then she’d stop
talking and I knew that what she was thinking was that he couldn’t retire as long as I
was still around.
She told me after he died that he was proud of me, that he would brag about me
to his friends: their grandson who was gonna be a doctor. She’d ask, Whatever happened to that anyway? Her hazel eyes would look into me the way Lucy’s did this morning, and I’d just tell her, Grams, I’m done with that. I work in retail. Try and be proud
of that.
She’d tell me she was proud of me, of course she was. Then, she’d shrug and go
into the garage to tinker with two-by-fours and nails. She tended to build things when
she had something to say. A desk, a table. On this occasion, she attempted, of all
things, a coat rack. It came out boxy and sharp and now sits in the store’s break room. Grams still lives over in Idaho. She’s not alone; she has a cat named Brewster
and a live-in maid whose salary I pay for. Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
I wanted to move her to the Bay Area with me, but she said, No. She needed to be
close to Gramps and this was her home. She never asked me to move back. She knew
how much I itched to get out. Plus, Cherrie is buried here in the Bay and she understands.
I visit three times a year. Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Sometimes I
surprise her on her birthday. Other than that, we live our solitary lives with phone calls
every Sunday night at 7pm. Grams is getting old. She now tinkers with bits of clay, a
hobby she found at the Boise senior center. She’s just turned eighty-five.
I met Cherrie at our college graduation. It seems a strange place to meet some-
one. I didn’t have too many friends in college and the ones I did were graduating from
another major. My grandparents were sitting in the crowd of people somewhere and I
was alone. Cherrie was a butterfly, not a social butterfly that flittered from one group of
people to another, but my butterfly. She settled next to me and smiled, her wild red hair
flaring up around her hat.
“Took me six years to get here,” she said. “Fuck it, at least I did it.”
The graduation ceremony went as ceremonies usually do, one speech after anoth-
er, beach balls, blow up dolls, blow horns, and confetti. My armpits were wet beneath
my gown, sweat dripped from underneath the silk of my cap.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
While the show and ceremony went on around us, Cherrie and I talked about how she
put herself through school, how she worked as a server in the dorm cafeterias, scooping mac n’ cheese and potato wedges and Thai noodles, how she worked at the grocery
store selling mac n’ cheese and potato wedges and Thai noodles. She told me she could
live her life without ever having to eat mac n’ cheese potato wedges or Thai noodles
again. I told her she would if she tried Grams’.
On our first date, I cooked her dinner. I had Grams teach me how before she left,
even though Gramps laughed at me from the living room, the sound of some baseball
game in the background. For Gramps, it didn’t matter what game he was watching as
long as it was baseball.
Cherrie never gave me a hard time about the doctor thing. She worked in a den-
tist’s office and told me that she’d had enough doctors. She used to tease me that she
liked my weird hours, that it gave her time to miss me.
When I first started at the store, I was young and ambitious. Those were the days
when I set my mind to something I went at it with my soul. I played soccer back in high
school, and my coach used to yell at us, “Sacrifice your bodies for the ball.” That’s been
my philosophy on life: sacrifice yourself for what you are doing, whatever you are doing. Your body for the Ball.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
I worked twelve-hour days, six days a week. On my days off, I’d drag Cherrie with
me to the store, telling her it would only take a minute and find her fuming in the car an
hour and a half later.
“I won’t be your wife if you keep pulling that shit on me,” she said once after I’d
done it on Thanksgiving morning.
We’d been dating for almost two years and had never talked about marriage even
though I’d thought about it a lot.
“Your wife?” I said. “I mean, my wife?”
Her face turned redder than her hair. I think it was the only time I ever saw her
blush. Cherrie was the kind of woman who wasn’t shy or ashamed about anything. I
tried many times to get her to blush again, but it never worked.
“You want to be my wife?” I asked.
“Do you want me to be?” She replied.
“I do,” I said.
“Good.” She settled herself into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Then
don’t pull that shit on me again.”
Two weeks after Cherrie died, I went back to work. That morning Grams stood in
the doorway, her eyes aflame with worry and anger.
“You need more than two weeks, Grant. You need to mourn.”
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
“Grams,” I said. “I don’t want to, but if I don’t, it’ll take me months to fix it all
back up again.”
I finish up with the daily sales, check it off my list, and print out the weekly re-
ports. We’ve had a bad week, and our comps are low. Last year we pulled in almost as
much as this year and as our corporate world goes, each year needs to be better than
the last by at least 7%. What the hell did we do last year? Was there a big sale? Why
were we so behind? I had, of course, all this information in a binder, years of our business practices sorted and organized in an easy-to-find way, but I like to test myself, to
see if it’s still in my ole brain somehow. Today it isn’t. I pull out the binder, flip to this day last year. My eyes feel heavy. My back is sore. I flip through the binder, but suddenly none of it matters. Not this
year. Not last year. Not next year. I push the binder on the floor, watch the pages slide
free and fan out like a deck of cards. They are so damn organized that all I have to do
is slide them all back together, slip it back in the bindings. Easy fix.
I stand and stare down at the old sales reports, newspaper ads, newsletters, and
my own handwriting from the past several years.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
Two weeks after Cherrie died, I went back to work. That morning Grams stood in
the doorway, her eyes aflame with worry and anger.
“You need more than two weeks, Grant. You need to mourn.”
“Grams,” I said. “I don’t want to, but if I don’t, it’ll take me months to fix it all
back up again.”
“What’ll take you months to fix?” she asked.
“The store, Grams,” I said. “It needs me.”
“The store will function without you.”
“No,” I said, “it won’t.”
Grams was angry. She was never angry. She told me once that she saved that
emotion for Gramps, tried to be his mirror, his echo, his better half or whatever the hell
it is you do when you suppress your own emotions because someone else is dominating
the emotional climate. But she unleashed.
“I hate that job,” she said. She did not yell, but she might as well have, her voice
pushed syllables out in controlled fury.
“It’s a good job.”
“I hate it, I hate that you are stuck there, I hate what it’s done to you. One day it
will kill you.”
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
I glared at her, my gums aching from the clenching in my jaw.
“You have your Grandpa’s stance,” she said. “You might as well be him.”
“How can you even start to compare us?” I asked.
“He never stopped, Grant. Just like you. Sometimes you need to stop.”
I push the stack of papers with the outside of my foot. Then I do it again. I push
it this way and that until it’s underneath the tables, against the server, around the trashcan. I kick them until they are in the air and I glare at them as they float back down. It’s been maybe thirty seconds, but I’m panting hard.
“Shit,” I say.
“Grant?” Lucy is in the doorway. I wonder if she saw the kicking or if her eyes are
just bulging from the sight of its aftermath. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I say and I wish we’d had that beer because maybe if we had, I could have
told her about today, about my wife. My late wife. Why do I still think of her as my
wife when she’s been gone for so long? But all I can say is, “We had bad numbers last
week.”
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
She frowns as I bend and gather the papers, shoving them haphazardly into the
binder. I slide it onto the desk, triangles of papers sticking out like the teeth of a Venus
flytrap. I’m on my way to the meeting when Jackson stops me at the door. I feel Lucy
eyeing me from the cash wrap and I wonder if she told him about what she’d seen.
“How’d we do, boss?” Jackson asks. He’s resetting the seasonal run, the Christ-
mas merchandise emerging before Thanksgiving is even done. Boxes are piled two high
and surround him like a waist-high fort. The seasonal run is at the front of the store,
the first thing customers see when they walk in, and it’s a disaster zone.
“Store opens in half an hour,” I say to him. I eye the packaging peanuts trailing
into the aisles. He’s lucky that everyone in corporate will be at the meeting.
“I know, Boss. It’ll be done.”
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” I say.
“Good luck at the meeting,” he says. “Knock ‘em dead.”
I try not to look at Lucy as I go.
On the day of our wedding, Cherrie held my fingers so tight I thought they’d
bruise. “I was just so dammed nervous,” she said and laughed.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
We were in our hotel room, curled on the bed. Cherrie’s body nestled into mine,
her red curls in my eyelashes.
“If I die,” she said, “make sure you find a way to stay happy.”
“Why would you say something like that on tonight of all nights?” I asked.
“Because I’m so happy.”
I pulled her close to me, wanting all of her body to align with mine, even her
calves onto my shins. I kissed her cheek, felt her warm tears on my lips.
I’m running late for the meeting, but I get through the Bay Bridge tollbooth just
fine. Usually this is where traffic will either back up or flow smoothly. Today, it flows
smoothly and if it keeps, I’ll make it to South City just in time for the ten o’clock meeting.
San Francisco is just visible on my right when everything lights up red. There’s
a few seconds of tires on asphalt, trucks braking, and metal rubbing on metal. I stop
behind a semi truck, and I can’t see a thing except the telephone number for “How’s my
driving?” The van behind me screeches within an inch of my bumper. We sit and wait. I crane my neck to see if there is an accident or a stalled vehicle, but all I see are red
taillights. After five or ten minutes, someone honks their horn. Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
“A lot of good that’ll do,” I say aloud, but lay into my own horn anyway.
Eventually, people get out of their cars. They step onto the bridge gingerly as if
the asphalt will fall out from underneath them. A group congregates a few cars away
and I roll down my window.
“Any idea what’s going on?” I ask.
A man in a business suit shrugs. He has blue hair. “Must be a bitch of an acci-
dent.”
In the distance, we hear sirens. The group looks up at the sky, the gray cables
stretch upward behind them. I feel like I’m in a Japanese monster movie. Any minute
Godzilla will appear in the Bay, chomping on a cargo ship.
I get out of my car. It’s just after 9:45, and the morning air is cold in my lungs. I’ve never stood on the Bay Bridge before. It’s not one of the bridges people are allowed to stand on. I think about the earthquake of ‘88, the stories of the bridge falling
out from beneath the cars, the people getting out and running. We are all standing quietly and the air is amazingly still. Everything is bright, and people look surprisingly calm
considering our predicament, but the feeling that any moment we’ll have to run overwhelms me.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
I walk towards the edge where I don’t have to look at anyone and stare at San Francisco. I can see the rust colored bridge an inch high in the horizon, the small spit of island
between us.
“That’s the Golden Gate,” a young man narrates to his even younger friend. “Alc-
atraz there. That building is the Trans Am building. And that one that looks like a fireman’s hose is Coit Tower.”
The three of us stare at the tower, a white concrete pole at the top of a small hill. The wind blows and goose bumps form on the back of my neck as the bridge sways. How does a metal bridge sway with the wind? I wonder. I think of the traffic flowing on
the lower deck, and wonder if the swaying is a result of those cars or the wind.
Like the sound of a match, the first engine turns on. One by one, the rest of the
cars follow until they are all pushing forward on each other, but I’m not ready to leave
this bridge. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to stand on it again.
“Hey man,” the younger man nudges my elbow, “the cars are moving.”
People are returning to their vehicles. The semi-truck in front of my own car shifts
into gear, his breaks releasing with a gentle hiss.
I look out over the bay, my hands gripping the cold metal of the low wall.
“Sir,” he says, “you better get back to your car.”
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
Someone honks at my abandoned vehicle; it is in the center lane. The first honk
is polite, a brief little “excuse me” of a honk, but it soon blares with fury.
“I’m tired,” I say and he looks at me strangely.
“Sir, you aren’t gonna jump, are you?”
I want to laugh, but the idea of jumping makes me look downward into the shad-
ows below. I feel a twinge of vertigo in my shins as I watch the way the waves rise and
fall against the thick gray beams. A customer told me once about how she tried to kill
herself by jumping off a bridge into the Chesapeake Bay. She told me about waking up
in the water after floating for several hours and thinking that God had given her a second chance. Even though she stood there talking to me, I found it hard to believe that
she’d survived. I wonder if I’d get that second chance, too.
The kid is still staring at me expectantly and I say, “What would be the point in
jumping?”
“You just look kind of funny,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. “I feel kind of funny.”
“Are you gonna get back to your car?” He looks over at his own vehicle—a red
pickup truck with a tailgate that says “YO.” His friend gestures wildly for him to hurry.
“In a minute,” I say, “go on.”
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
He hesitates. He has moppy brown hair and brown eyes. He looks like a high
school dropout, but someone must have cared for him enough that he’d bother to care
about me. He wouldn’t leave me if he thought I’d jump.
“Sir,” he says. There is a cacophony of honking. Cars in other lanes speed by; I
feel the way they displace air, the way their movements cause the bridge to sway. It
resembles nausea.
“Its my anniversary,” I say.
“Then maybe you should go home to your wife,” he says. “Or get a divorce or
something.”
“She died,” I say.
I take one last peek over the side and dart across the lanes to my car without tell-
ing him goodbye. When I turn on the ignition and set the thing into drive, the person
behind me looks relieved. In my rearview mirror, the kid sprints across two lanes towards his friend’s truck. A bus is heading toward him, and suddenly he is gone.
It hit him, I think. My god it’s hit him
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
I slam onto my brakes, the person behind me lays into her horn like it were a
semi-automatic weapon. I squint into the rear view mirror and turn around. The woman behind me is now visibly swearing, letting off another round of peppery honks. She
lifts both arms in the universal “What are you doing?” gesture. I do my best to peer
past her, looking for the flayed body of the kid. Looking for blood.
But the bus hasn’t hit him. There he is, climbing into his friend’s truck.
I let my foot off the brakes and drive, the woman behind me speeding alongside
and as I avoid her angry gesture, I realize that I hadn’t called to tell corporate I was
stuck in traffic. They were probably staring at my empty seat. They might have even
called the store. Jackson and Lucy would be worried. She would have told him about
the papers in the office by now.
I’m fumbling with the contents of my briefcase, looking for my cell, thinking about
what I’ll say, what excuse I can give when I accidentally take the first San Francisco exit. Instead of turning left and scrambling to get back on the freeway, I turn right towards
the Embarcadero. Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
fiction
As I near the east edge of San Francisco, the Bay Bridge looms grayer and more
majestic than it had been only minutes before. From the ground it’s a remarkably dominating human creation. I park my car and walk to the water’s edge. From there, the
sound of the waves and the hum of the cars are almost indecipherable from each other.
People rollerblade by with their dogs, canines as shiny and fit as their masters. Some are jogging with children in strollers supported by tires that look like they were
taken from miniature monster trucks. Tourists meander slowly, snapping photos at the
sailboats in the distance. Everyone—even the ones who seem like they have nowhere to
go—are in motion except for one older man who is sitting on a park bench. He’s probably in his late sixties with brown skin textured like leather and salt and pepper hair. I
sit next to him and he smiles over a copy of today’s paper.
“Beautiful day,” he says. He squints at the reflection of sunlight on the water. I
nod my head and do the same.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
fiction
The Money
by
Jim Meirose
It’s mass.
It’s the second collection.
Now the object of all this is to get the money. Concentrate on this, and this only. Get the money.
He walks down the aisle toward the altar holding the long handled basket; right
down the center, he walks. Once at the first pew, he turns. He thrusts the basket into
the pew under the noses of the parishoners. Everyone generously contributes. Row
by row, slowly he proceeds up the aisle. The basket is filling with money. He reaches
the pew where the woman sits; the woman he always watches, who intrigues him. She
places her envelope into the basket.
But for this, she is forever a stranger. Stony-
faced, he continues. For some reason the sight of her makes him glance back at the
altar. It’s black-veined marble. The crucifix hangs above, the cracks show in the wood. The corpus is bloodstained. Before proceeding to the next pew he glances at the woman’s long slender legs. Feelings rise in him.
But no.
Oh would that he were a statue with no feelings.
A bloodstained wooden statue. Like that Christ.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
fiction
He thinks of that man from the night before; he sees his face. His mind wanders. He moves the basket slowly so they may put in the money easily. Where is the man
now? And somewhere, someplace, the host was being elevated at the very moment it
happened.
Somewhere in this big world, there was mass at that very moment.
He moves along the row of pews. Someone is kneeling in the way with his head
in his hands. The basket won’t go past him. He won’t move. He wishes to be kneeling too. He wishes to pray with his head in his hands. But—the basket’s just half full. Need to fill it fully. He moves more quickly.
He is the collector.
How ashamed his parents will be when he’s found out—
No. He thrusts the basket out. Now is for the money. Now it is mass. Mass is
eternal. Mass is of God. He smiles dimly pushing out the basket. What a laugh; to
care about his parents now, now that it is too late. His hands grip the long handle. His
hands are clean. The effects of last night’s liquor are long gone. He sees the blood,
the cuts, the seeping wounds. He sees the drip of the blood into a puddle. But maybe
it’s not that bad; maybe the man survived; he didn’t hang around long enough to find
out. Truly he was a coward last night—the basket’s too heavy to hold—he’ll drop the basket—
No! Stop it!
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
fiction
Lord, give me strength. Squeeze the handle. He shudders. The basket moves fill-
ing. The organ music swells. Perversely he thinks of a woman he read about once who
was enamoured of a bull. That was unnatural. He feels unnatural. Now is the time to
think perverse thoughts. The dark blood begins to congeal. He steps to the next pew. He thrusts in the basket. What’s it like to be lying on the tracks with a locomotive bearing down? This is how he feels. There’s a locomotive coming. He hears it. He feels it. But this is all fantasy. The money is becoming heavy. His muscles flex. He clenches
his teeth. Drinking wine will do no good. Drinking wine does no good. Drinking wine is
no good. Wine costs money.
Get the money.
Basket in, basket out—much too mindless. But look at all that money. There’s plenty
of money in the basket now. Yes, he must be the devil. Yes, he is worse than the devil. Even the money is evil; the basket’s overflowing now; but no, this is God’s money. Nothing of God’s is evil. Would that he were of God.
He glances over to his family, in the back pew. The thoughts swarm upon him. The money is too heavy. He sees the wife he will lose. He sees the children he will lose. He’s near the end. His glasses are sliding down his nose. He pushes them up. They
slide back down. There’s no use. Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
fiction
He paid nine dollars for liquor last night at three a.m. He glances back to the priest
in his heavy vestments. The innocent holy man. So unlike him. But think of it; think of
it; the money becomes his once it’s slid into the basket.
How easy it is to give up ownership of something.
Of one’s life.
A pale slumped old man in one of the last pews gives an envelope. Every rib is
showing under the old man’s thin shirt. And the skinnier one next to him is bald; they
sit pale bald and bony, like dead men.
But they give money.
In the last pew, he is given money by a scowling man; it is him; it happens to be
exactly the way he feels. He turns and looks out over the church; they could all be his
brothers and sisters. They could all be him. But they are not. Since last night, there is
a chasm between he and them. If only he had not done what he has done.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
fiction
But he is at mass now.
He steps to the back wall of the church and pours the money out into a large bas-
ket on the floor. He holds the empty basket.
The money’s gone now.
They’re pulling up outside; there are sirens.
But no; he is at mass now. Car doors slam outside.
He gives up the basket. He goes to sit by his wife. He is at mass now.
The back door opens.
That back door creaks so badly why don’t they do something about that back
door—after all, they’ve got the money. He knows they’ve got the money. He got it for
them.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
poetry
Storm Front
by
Judith Collins McCormick
My father releases the handlebars of his walker
and drops heavily to the edge of his bed,
the dark of the room he once shared with my mother
relieved only by a muted, flickering Weather Channel.
Jim Cantore checks wind speeds, scans horizons for dust clouds;
my father, with practiced expertise, flicks his oxygen tubing
free from the folds of his night-shirt.
The long trek from the bathroom complete, he sits,
accumulating breath for the next task:
He must scoot up, shift his girth, and lie back,
taking awkward care not to tangle the tubing or sit on it.
It will be difficult, requiring time, deliberation, and air,
the skin behind his ears a raw reminder of the danger.
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
poetry
With a great growl, a heave, and a few mild curses,
he moves. Another day ends. I cover him,
carefully position the breathing mask over the tubing,
place the remote control in his hand, squeeze his big toe.
“Goodnight, Dear Ol’ Dad.”
He turns his head toward the muted flickering.
“Poor old Whatshisface,” he sighs between deep drags of oxygen.
“Never found his tornado.”
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
poetry
Bologna
by
Have you ever looked at the contents
of bologna? The things that go inside?
It’s like they take everything that we
wouldn’t eat by itself, and churn it
until a pink disk is formed.
Sounds like America don’t it?
A white friend of mine likes to
eat his on rye with lettuce, tomato,
and slabs of mayonnaise. My wife
prefers hers lightly cooked with
mustard. My kids will take a nice
cold piece right out the fridge. I like
it burnt around the edges until it
bubbles up and then burnt on both
sides of the bubble. Then I put it on
wheat with two slices of cheese
and dip it in ketchup. While I eat,
I don’t think about the ingredients.
I try not to ruin the mystery
by knowing how it‘s made. RJ Woods
Volume 11 : Issue 2
Fall 2010
poetry
Yet Another Nocturne
by
This sudden midnight wind falls down again.
I’ll wait for it to get up again like a toddler.
Nothing could be younger or more ignorant,
yet it uncovered all of tonight’s sky.
Inside some of those parked cars
along my still street, an anxious day
is already wrapped for tomorrow.
Should the gods fail to care for us,
it’s only because they’ve their own worries. Neighbors left their television on by an open window
so nothing happens all night long, softly, in Spanish.
John O’Reilly
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
Horseshit and Honeysuckle
(Or, Broke Down in Kingman, KS, 8/14/00, 12:46PM, 110 degrees)
by
Jason Ryberg
There was this girl,
all bone and muscle
and bright blue eyes
like windows in a tower that,
should you even manage
that spiralled, staggering climb
to look out from them,
you could probably see through time.
And we’re all
just standing in line
at the auto parts store
in downtown Kingman, KS,
12:46 PM,
one hundred and ten degrees in the shade and birds are droppin’ from the trees and
people are wandering the streets like zombies beggin’ for a kind and loving god to strike
them down right then, right there where they stand.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
But there’s this girl, see,
and she’s holding a solenoid
or water-pump or somethin’, I don’t know, I can’t really see, ‘cause I don’t wanna get
caught checkin’ her out, ya know.
And she has this wildfire mane
of red hair that can only be described
as “lionine” (a rather antique term for sure but the only ones that really nails it).
And her eyes, people,
her eyes are blue halogen headlights
illuminating a lonely room at midnight
and she smells so damn good, man,
it hurts; it fucking hurts.
And she’s standing right there, RIGHT THERE, an earth-bound goddess waiting in line
like everyone else, smelling like flowers and wild blue yonder;
about to burn Kingman, KS
off the ass-end of the earth
like a bad tattoo.
For exactly ten seconds (by the clock)
I couldn’t remember my date of birth,
my own phone number
or any of the horseshit and honeysuckle
I’d ever called poems.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
Imprint
by
Your photograph holds my attention
better than a butterfly
in the air could,
as if only when stilled we can see
the orderliness of everything
and make sense of the whole world.
the old city below, with tall green trees,
the house with imprints on the wall,
the sunlight filtering to the ground,
the flower garden, green usurp,
the air is so clear
and perhaps as fresh to breathe.
Emmanuel Japka
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
In the Hills of San Luis Obispo County I Go Down
by
John Williams
I wake again expecting cleaved power lines
sparking alive like a candle’s last sputters,
themselves struggling for reconnection to a whole,
leaping as salmon upstream without a mate, wasted effort,
but yesterday’s storm has left no shrapnel
and how is the brush-fire-hued valley to know
what it is I want from it?
I go down to the skeletal shadows
wind turbines vertically lash, stretching
hungry for more land and singed brown grass
the older the sun’s arch.
And I ask the riderless horses
who nose and sniff for something green
why summer casts those towering metal spikes
as golden obelisks, engorged on heavenly light,
mincing with each blade’s whoosh
the embers of a dying campfire,
while winter grays them into funereal Roman columns.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
I can’t blame their silence and continued search for sustenance.
The barbed gates I scaled to get here
seem far more intimidating from inside.
Would I not too prefer to live slowly
like how a child learns to speak
than rush through a novel’s breadth before noon
without recalling a single character’s eyes?
I go down further to a skull-studded ranch and people
waiting together for a bus that will not come
and exchange words that abandon my mouth
like rats a sinking ship
while what I meant to say
holds fast like horses amidst a barn’s inferno.
“Least the storm’s settled now” recites from script
a woman I’d not seen approach. We all look overhead
to the high voltage lines inert, seemingly dead,
that increase their threat by enduring intact
and our disquieting anticipation the longer we stare.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
March 4th
by
John Williams
“Every human endeavor, however singular it seems, involves the whole human race.”
-Sartre
I.
I awoke like a plucked flower
and searched the day for my stem.
II.
The moon left streaks
in the shadowed crevice of winter
and I wanted to write
but heard the snow
in my muteness.
III.
I’d like to say the world danced
but in fact it sat
satisfied and full
all around me
and I sat similarly
after its feast.
IV.
I’m a soldier of the grass,
a pacifist in the weeds.
Pregnant on the spoils
of what my eyes capture,
feeling the earth’s pulse
in what my mind leaves untouched.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
V.
I sing this one wave
that bleeds back to sea
the moment I write it
for I can only dream all waves
washing each other
like all mothers
crouched over basins running
washcloths over their children.
VI.
And in my dream they all sing
back at me
with fists dug deep in the soil
and legs rooted to the whole,
portioning the immense pain of being
into palpable bites, in communal teeth
grinding the sorrow to pulp.
VII.
I awoke like a plucked flower
alone and far from the soft
lips of my love
but I walked through the city
to the sea
beneath the snow
and skipped a stone
that will never cease to ripple.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
Loneliness Motel
by
Michael Keshigian
His little hole in the Boston skyline,
one window lined with soot
facing Fenway Park.
In the room overhead,
there was a clarinet
that stalked Stravinsky’s Three Pieces
every evening.
During the day it was mostly quiet,
the crowd on the sidewalks
resembled the spiders in the room,
preying with thick overcoats
to catch the unsuspecting
in a web woven with smog
dimly illuminated with the little light
that penetrated the building alleys,
so dark, he could only shave
with a lamp in his face.
Every morning at 7:30 A.M.,
students clamored on the staircase,
rushing en route to classes
at the universities
and colleges around the corner,
the clarinet player would flush the toilet
then turn on the shower.
Once in a while, a bird
chirped or tweeted, like a bell chime,
so close to his door,
for a moment, he believed
he had a visitor.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
The Corner Musician
by
Michael Keshigian
With massive gasps and fluid fingers
a saxophonist improvises
the sounds of city,
capturing the rhythm of urban diaspora
as it approaches the cadence of life.
His licks and riffs reveal
the tempest of the metropolitan mentality,
his intonation shades its complexities
as he attempts to calm the pulse
of the sprawl with modal motifs
that identify the dissonance
each inhabitant exudes
as they follow a silent song.
He clears the way
with a beam of sound,
opens a passage that is human
and captures passion and sensitivity
in a web of eighth notes
that interview the mystery
between asphalt and the soul.
Volume 12 : Issue 1
Spring 2011
poetry
A Small Gift
by
He started to keep a tight fist on money.
I still didn’t realize it was dementia
when my husband called to me in the kitchen
from his recliner in the next room
to bring him a cold drink. He’d always
gotten his own. At the supermarket
he opened packages, stole cookies, grapes.
The manager complained to me. Who was
this stranger I married fifty years ago?
One day, while I worked at the counter
in the narrow part of the kitchen
where he had to squeeze past on his way
to the refrigerator, he didn’t push by,
but stopped to put his arms around my waist
and lean the warmth of his body
against my back. He kissed my neck and I wept.
Marilynn Talal
contributors
Oritsegbemi Emmanuel Jakpa was born in Warri, Nigeria, and currently lives in Ireland. His poetry has been published widely, including The Diagram, Echoing Years,
Barnwood, and Edison Literary Review. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes three
times, and he received the 2008 Yeat’s Pierce Loughran Award.
Michael Keshigian is the author of five poetry chapbooks. His sixth collection Jazz Face
, was recently released by Big Table Publishing Co. His poetry has appeared in numerous national and international journals as well as many online publications, including
California Quarterly, Barbaric Yawp, Tipton Poetry Journal, Jerry Jazz Musician, Sierra
Nevada College Review, and Ibbetson Street Press. He has been a feature writer for The
Aurorean, Poetree Magazine, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Bellowing Ark, Pegasus Review,
The Illogical Muse, interviewed by Boston Literary Magazine (bostonliterarymagazine.
com/Fall2007 Spotlight)) and Reader’s Choice in the Fairfield Review. He is a multiple
Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net nominee. (www.michaelkeshigian.com)
Jim Meirose’s short work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, South Carolina Review, and Witness. A chapbook of his short stories will be released in October 2010 by Burning River. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Shirley Jackson Award. One of his stories was cited in the O. Henry
awards anthology.
contributors
Judith Collins McCormick is an Associate Professor of English at Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Kentucky. She teaches a 5/4 load and therefore publishes precious little.
John O’Reilly is a writer living in Sonoma, California. His work is forthcoming in Red
River Review.
Jason Ryberg is the author of seven books of poetry, six screenplays, a few short stories, several angry letters to various magazine and newspaper editors, and a box full of
folders, notebooks and scraps of paper that could one day be (loosely) construed as a
novel. He is currently an artist-in-residence at The Prospero Institute of Disquieted Poetics and an aspiring b-movie actor. His latest collection of poems is Down, Down and
Away (co-authored with Josh Rizer and released by Spartan Press). He lives in Kansas
City, Missouri with a rooster named Little Red and a billygoat named Giuseppe.
Feel free to look up his skirt at jasonryberg.blogspot.com
contributors
Marilynn Talal’s poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Southern Poetry
Review, and Louisville Review, among others. She earned a Ph.D from the University of
Houston where she was awarded the Stella Earhhart Memorial Award and has also been
awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship from the NEA. Her poems are forthcoming in
Western Humanities Review and Straylight.
Samantha Tetangco is the current editor of the Blue Mesa Review and a graduate
student finishing her third year at the University of New Mexico. A Northern California
native, Sam is currently living and writing in Albuquerque with her fiancé, the brilliant
artist and writer, Randi Beck, and their dog Tree.
contributors
John Williams has an MA in Writing and resides in Portland, OR, where he frequently
performs his poetry and studies Book Publishing at Portland State University. He is presently compiling manuscripts composed from the last two years of traveling and living
abroad. His previous publications include The Evansville Review, Flint Hills Review, Open
Letters, Cadillac Cicatrix, Juked, The Journal, The Oklahoma Review, Hawaii Review,
Barnwood International Poetry, Concho River Review, Paradigm, Red Wheelbarrow, Aries,
Other Rooms, The Alembic, Phantasmagoria, Clapboard House, River Oak Review, and
Glass.
RJ Woods is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma. He has published in ArtBeat Magazine and New Plains Review.
contributors
Managing Editor_ Dr. John Hodgson
Associate Editors_ David Finney_ Rose Calloway
Layout and Design & Photography_ Son-myong Park
[multimedia Design]
OK Review Mission Statement
The Oklahoma Review is an electronic literary magazine published through the
Department of English at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma. The editorial board consists of English and Professional Writing undergraduates, as well
as faculty advisors from the Departments of English and Foreign Languages &
Journalism.
The goal of our publication is to provide a forum for exceptional fiction, poetry,
and creative non-fiction in a dynamic, appealing, and accessible environment.
The magazine’s only agenda is to promote the pleasures and edification derived
from high-quality literature.
-The Staff
The views expressed in The Oklahoma Review do not necessarily correspond
to those of Cameron University, and the university’s support of this magazine
should not be seen as an endorsement of any philosophy other than faith in
-- and support of -- free expression. The content of this publication may not be
reproduced without the written consent of The Oklahoma Review or the authors.
Submission Guidelines
The Oklahoma Review is an electronic literary magazine published through the Department of English at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma. The editorial board consists
of English and Professional Writing undergraduates, as well as faculty advisors from the
Departments of English and Foreign Languages & Journalism.
The goal of our publication is to provide a forum for exceptional fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction in a dynamic, appealing, and accessible environment. The magazine’s
only agenda is to promote the pleasures and edification derived from high-quality literature.
The Oklahoma Review is a continuous publication, now in its eighth year. We publish two
issues online each year, Spring and Fall. Although we accept submissions at any time,
our general deadlines are as follows:
To have your work considered for the Spring issue: January 15
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All works must be submitted electronically to The Oklahoma Review. Submissions are
welcome from any serious writer working in English. We will neither consider nor return
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