Mirage 2012

L I T E R A R Y & A R T SM A G A Z I N E

Cochise CollegeCochise & Santa Cruz Counties, Arizona

EditorsAngel BustamanteJesse Bustamante

Cappy Love HansonJulia Jones

Jeremy Webb

College AdvisorsShirley NeeseJeff SturgesJay Treiber

Rick Whipple

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Front and Back Cover Art

Art: “Contemplation” by Cassius Matthews Jr.Design: Rick Whipple

About Mirage

Mirage Literary and Arts Magazine is designed and produced by stu-dents of Cochise College with help from faculty advisors and vol-unteers from the community. Those interested in participating inthe production of Mirage should contact Cochise College at 520-515-0500. Visit us at http://skywalker.cochise.edu:8080/mirage/.Hard copies of Mirage can be obtained at both the Douglas andSierra Vista campus libraries.

Acknowledgements

The Mirage staff would like to thank the following people for theirhelp in producing the magazine: the staff of the Copper Queen Li-brary, Bisbee; and Elizabeth Lopez, Diane Nadeau, Tracey Neese,George Self and Curt Smith, proofreaders.

Creative Writing Celebration Winners

Mirage publishes the first-place winners of the previous year’s Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration competitions in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, if available. The Celebration takes place in late March/early April and is produced by Cochise College,the University of Arizona South, and the City of Sierra Vista. Thefollowing are the winners of the 2011 competitions:

Poetry – Carol Sanger, “View from the Café Next Door”Fiction – Lacy Mayberry, “A Thousand Distant Cousins”Nonfiction – Cappy Love Hanson, Love Life, with Parrots, Chapter 1

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Mirage Mission Statement

Mirage Literary and Arts Magazine has a three-part mission:

1. It serves Cochise and Santa Cruz counties by showcasing high-quality art and literature produced by community members.

2. It serves Cochise College by establishing the College as the locus of a creative learning community.

3. It serves Cochise College students by providing them an opportunity to earn college credit and gain academic and professional experience through their participation in all aspects of the production of the literary and arts magazine.

Font

This year’s Mirage is printed in Minion, an Adobe original typefacedesigned by Robert Slimbach. Minion is inspired by classical, old-style typefaces of the late Renaissance, a period of elegant, beautiful,and highly readable type designs.

Copyright Notice

All rights herein are retained by the individual author or artist. Nopart of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without writ-ten permission of the author or artist, except for limited scholarlyor reference purposes, to include citation of date, page, and sourcewith full acknowledgement of title, author, and edition. Printed inthe United States of America.

© Cochise College 2012

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TABLE OFCONTENTS

Literature View from the Café

Next Door . . . . . . . . . . . . .1Carol Sanger

A Morning Song . . . . . . . . . . .2Kate Drew-Wilkinson

Telepathy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3Clint Isaak

ArtContemplation . . . . . . . . . . . .4

Cassius Matthews Jr.Front Porch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5

Wayne E. Crane Evening Cranes . . . . . . . . . . . .6

Robert J. Luce Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

David Altamirano Star Gazer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8

Lindsay Janet Roberts Ravens Rising . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

Robert J. Luce Mixture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10

Cassius Matthews Jr. Sedona Sunset . . . . . . . . . . . .11

Robert J. Luce Datura and the Crabapple . .12

Lisa Galloway Sprietsma Zebras Conflicted . . . . . . . . .13

Robert J. Luce Bisbee House . . . . . . . . . . . . .14

Maizie Kay McMillan Fixation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

Andrea Sanchez Katy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16

Yolanda van der Lelij

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24 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17Archie William Sutton

The Totemizer . . . . . . . . . . . .18Ken Boe

Yellow Bench . . . . . . . . . . . . .19Valla L. Miller

Literature A Thousand Distant

Cousins . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20Lacy Mayberry

ArtUntitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28

Casney Tadeo Patriotic Plymouth . . . . . . . .29

Richard Byrd Windmill and Sunset . . . . . .30

Mark Hanna Desert Angels #4 . . . . . . . . . .31

Liz Hampton-Derivan Elinor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32

Robin Redding Agave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33

Jack Miller Cracked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34

David Day Cross Black and White . . . . .35

Sarah Rochford Feed Me–Curve-Billed

Thrashers . . . . . . . . . . . . .36Brian G. Prescott

Temby Avenue Bisbee, Arizona . . . . . . . .37Cathy Murphy

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Pair of Traps . . . . . . . . . . . . .38Archie William Sutton

The Attic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39Jack Miller

Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40Becky Heckman

Victorian Yard . . . . . . . . . . . .41Richard Byrd

Giggles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42Lindsay Janet Roberts

Untitled . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43Kassandra Willhelm

Literature Writing on Bones . . . . . . . . .44

Carol SangerWalking Home

in Hindustan . . . . . . . . . .45Nadine Lockhart

Haiku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46Lavendra Copen

New Marvels of the Texas Tea Machine . . . . .47Ken Boe

Majnun Fainted at the Sight of Layla’s Foot, Glimpsed . . . .through the tent Door . .49Carmen Megeath

Arrow in the Soft Shield . . . .50Carol Sanger

Unpunctuated . . . . . . . . . . . .51Lavendra Copen

ArtLonging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52

Cassius Matthews Jr.

Blue Medusa . . . . . . . . . . . . .53Niccole Pierre

Cat House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54David Day

The Old Stone Church . . . . .55Linda Nichols

Wind Farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56Diane Ricks

La Puerta Roja . . . . . . . . . . . .57Jack Miller

The Pot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58Valla L. Miller

At Lu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59Lily Schmidt

Bridge over Quiet Water . . . .60Dakota Zimpleman

Snow in Ramsey Canyon . . .61Valla L. Miller

Chama Train Station . . . . . . .62Mark Hanna

Brown Canyon Ranch . . . . . .63Mark Hanna

Literature Love Life, With Parrots,Chapter 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64

Cappy Love HansonGrowing Old in the Desert . .72

Carmen Megeath

Biographical Information . . . . . . . . . . . . .73

Submission Guidelines . . . .80

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VIEW FROM THECAFÉ NEXT DOOR

Carol Sanger

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First Place, Poetry Competition, Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration, 2011

The door did not close gently. Three quick strides and he was driving awaywith no back glance at the woman in a helmethunched over the moped, strugglingto tie three small packages to the back.So she did not hear her friend stepfrom the tree shadows. She did not expectthe hand on her shoulder. Startled,she turned, and the boxes fell.

I watched as they tied and untiedwhat I imagined to be a relationshipleft dangling, knotting some secretback to whole. Fingers circled buttons,tucked hair back and away, as the storycame out—jagged at first, whisperedthrough lips so close they might have been kissing.It quaked them both, and the boxes fell—again—as one pitched forwardand the other reached roundand they stood locked and rocking,chest against chest, earth against clouds,pouring each other back and forth, cup to cup, parting pain into pieces until they stepped back: full and empty, empty and full.

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A MORNING SONG Kate Drew-Wilkinson

Early dawn awaits the day.My Siamese, my Pearl,Steps delicately across my coverlet,Insinuates herself into the curveOf my arm, my breast.Purring, she stretches a confiding paw,Flexing affectionate claws—Chin down, feigning sleep.

Watching the colors turnOutside my window,Listening to autumn leavesRustling on the garden path,The gentle breathing Of my dog, my Daisy,I stir.In a flurry of animal joyWe tumble out,Ten bare feet touching,Dancing, on cool tile—Another beginning.

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TELEPATHY Clint Isaak

Voiceless but voicing thoughts in my self—conscious of the mean-ing you say without saying, saying without say what you mean.Letters on a page speak but don’t; though I understand them I

don’t. Short-circuited telepathizing wonder of language that trans-lates letters not always meaning, meaning always I don’t translatetelepathy how you mean. What say the black words on white is notalways black and white, lost in telepathy, translate the spaces blackand white and read all over the voiceless mind, the voice of the

mindless black and white page.

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CONTEMPLATIONsculpture


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FRONT PORCHphotograph

Wayne E. Crane

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EVENING CRANESphotograph

Robert J. Luce

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UNTITLEDoil

David Altamirano

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STAR GAZERmetalwork

Lindsay Janet Roberts

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RAVENS RISINGphotograph

Robert J. Luce

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MIXTUREmixed media


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SEDONA SUNSETphotograph

Robert J. Luce

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DATURA AND THECRABAPPLEoil

Lisa Galloway Sprietsma

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ZEBRAS CONFLICTEDphotograph

Robert J. Luce

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BISBEE HOUSEphotograph

Maizie Kay McMillan

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FIXATIONphotograph

Andrea Sanchez

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KATYoil

Yolanda van der Lelij

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Archie William Sutton

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THE TOTEMIZERoil with found objects

Ken Boe

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YELLOW BENCHphotograph

Valla L. Miller

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A THOUSAND DISTANT COUSINS

Lacy Mayberry

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First Place, Fiction Competition, Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration, 2011

As a girl in high school, Geraldine combed the St. Johns’ book-mobile for books about her famous relative, Herbert Hoover, firstcousin to her great-grandmother on her mother’s side. She pored overhis biographies like magazine horoscopes, looking for clues to herown destiny, which turned out to be a decade of goat farming withNolan Struggs.

Driving her daughters into town for school one morning, Geral-dine saw the bookmobile—an Airstream bus streaked in a chippedmaroon—parked in front of the new library, advertising a book sale.She stopped on her way back.

Geraldine ran her hands over the covered book spines. She hadn’tbeen inside the sweltering vehicle in years. They lived thirteen milesout of town—too far to drive just to catch the bookmobile during itsservice hours.

“Everything’s going for a dime,” the librarian told her.She spent twenty-five dollars and rode home with a truckload of

books. Nolan refused to help her carry in the boxes. He scoffed at thewaste but couldn’t rebuke her—she’d used the money her brother hadsent her for her thirtieth birthday.

She’d come away with four Hoover books in total: twobiographies, a history of the construction of Hoover Dam, and asmall, pamphlet-like book by a Mrs. Ursula G. Jones from WestBranch, Iowa—a collection of vignettes titled Musings on the Boy,“Bert” Hoover. These she set on her night table between bronze book-ends the shape of apples—a wedding gift from her mother. Shecarefully ripped out a photograph of Herbert Hoover—his first presi-dential portrait—from the front pages of one of the biographies andhung it in a frame over the desk. Her shrine, Nolan called it.

The rest of the books she stacked against the walls in theirbedroom until she could come into a suitable bookshelf.

“These things better not get in the way of what’s got to get donearound here,” Nolan told her. He was leaving for a goat auction in

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Phoenix that same afternoon and would be gone through the week-end. Geraldine and her daughters had gone with him last year—bothMia and Tanya’s first time in a hotel. The girls had begged to go withhim again, but Nolan—still reeling from the death of his two bestnannies that spring, lost to impossibly posterior births—said no. “It’snot a vacation,” he told them harshly, and took Thom, the hired man,instead.

That evening, Geraldine ladled out the stew she’d made thatmorning and pulled a loaf of bread from the fridge. The girls pouredketchup into their bowls and spread their bread with mayonnaise,tastes they’d learned from their father.

“I have a surprise,” Geraldine announced. The girls looked up from blowing steam off their spoons. “We’re going to Hoover Dam.”Tanya gasped, choking for a moment on inhaled broth. Nolan claimed that Geraldine’s Hoover talk was just a foolish way

of putting on airs. But Geraldine’s mother took pride in the connec-tion. “Not everyone can say they’re related to a president,” she’d tellher granddaughters solemnly as they sat together in the front pew onSundays. “You’re part of a special bloodline.” And then, last spring,Geraldine’s mother unexpectedly developed pneumonia, expelling agreat deal of that very blood in her final coughing fit.

“When?” Tanya asked.“I thought we’d leave tomorrow morning. We’ll ask Thom’s son to

take care of the goats.” “Does Dad know?” Mia asked.Geraldine thought before answering. Nolan would say they

couldn’t afford it. And they couldn’t. She’d probably have to take Miaand Tanya over to rummage through the closet of their neighbor,Nora Findlay, for hand-me-downs before school started in a fewweeks. “No,” she told her daughter. “He doesn’t.”

The girls smiled at each other and kicked their legs under the tablein excited rebellion. They bowed their heads to their bowls and ate,scalding their mouths with piping-hot potatoes in their haste.

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Geraldine packed a change of clothes and her stack of Hooverbooks in her mother’s old hard-case grip. She looked at some of theHoover Dam construction photographs and then leafed through thecollection of vignettes. Mrs. Ursula G. Jones had written a preface:Some stories from those of us who knew “Bert” before he was neitherorphan, engineer, millionaire, President, or otherwise.

It was a six-hour drive from St. Johns to Hoover Dam. Geraldinekept the front windows down on the freeway to keep from suffocatingin the August heat; the air conditioning had gone out three summersago. In her rearview mirror, the girls’ hair whipped furiously.

More than seeing the dam, the girls were looking forward toswimming in the motel pool in Henderson, where Geraldine hadreserved a room.

“Is it an outdoor pool, Mom, or an indoor pool?” Mia wanted toknow.

Neither of them could swim. St. Johns had filled in its communitypool when Geraldine was a girl, after two children drowned in a singlesummer. At the hotel pool in Phoenix during the goat auction lastyear, Mia and Tanya had bounced on their tiptoes in the shallow end,staying in the water until they were purple and pruned.

They stopped at a gas station to eat an early lunch of cheese sand-wiches and goat’s milk under the shade of a nearby ramada. Geraldineread to them from the Hoover Dam history book.

“Have you ever seen it?” Mia asked when her mother finished. Geraldine shook her head. When she was growing up, her family

never owned a car that would have made it that far. “But we’re a partof it,” she told them, thinking of her mother.

Traffic crawled on the winding highway approaching the dam,and they nearly missed the last tour of the day. They peered over therailing at the stories of concrete and the calm water, awed by the dam’senormity, by their ability to stand on it without feeling any closer thanthey had miles away, catching glimpses of the giant white wall fromthe car windows.

They rode the elevator below to see the cogs of the dam. The tourguide boasted about the power it made—how the generators funneled

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electricity to five states. Geraldine marveled at his pride. Besidespulling a government salary, what did he have to do with any of it?Geraldine and her girls, on the other hand, could cite their heritageevery time a million people flipped a light switch.

“I’m hungry,” Tanya said to her mother over the whirringturbines.

When the tour ended, Geraldine thanked the guide. “This is won-derful to see,” she told him.

The man wore a pith helmet, even indoors. “Where are you folksfrom?”

Geraldine told him.He nodded. “Not too far, then. Had two groups from Japan today

and a German couple this morning. We get all kinds here.”“We’re actually related to Herbert Hoover,” Geraldine told him. “Is that so?” “He was a cousin. On my mother’s side.”The man stroked his face. A few wiry nose hairs settled on top of

his hand as he rested it over his mouth for a moment. “I’ve got anaunt who’s really into genealogy. Traced us all the way back toNapoleon Bonaparte! I guess we’re all related to someone like that ifyou go back far enough.”

Traffic heading west toward Vegas had worsened to a standstill.The girls ate candy bars Geraldine bought from a vending machineoutside the visitor center restrooms. Without a breeze comingthrough the windows, their t-shirts clung to their backs with sweat,even after the sun went down.

They arrived at the motel late. “Is the pool still open?” Geraldineasked as the clerk handed her the room key.

It wasn’t. The pool, he informed them coolly, had been drainedearlier that week due to a “fecal incident.”

The girls, tired and hot, looked as though they might cry.“But the hot tub is open till eleven,” the clerk suggested.They went to their room and hurriedly changed into their suits.

Geraldine stopped to look through the glass doors leading out to the

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pool area. There was a couple already in the hot tub and a handful ofpeople standing around a smoking grill in the corner. A boy aboutMia’s age sat with his feet dangling into the empty pool, hunched overa portable video game.

“Do you still want to go in?”The girls nodded. They’d both grown considerably since last sum-

mer, and their suits pulled at their crotches and necklines. The people outside watched them approach. Geraldine could hear

the beeping of the boy’s game above the roar of Jacuzzi bubbles. Hergirls hung back, uncertain and embarrassed now. Geraldine loweredherself into the foamy water. Mia and Tanya quickly followed.

A few dying palm trees and a low chain-link fence were the onlythings separating the pool area from the neighborhood of shake-panelduplexes surrounding the motel.

The couple across from them sat close together. The man’s chesthair was dark and long, carried up in the sway of the water. Thewoman had a large and overly tanned cleavage, lapped by gray bub-bles. In one corner, Geraldine noticed a pizza crust caught in the swirlof a jet stream.

A woman at the grill cackled. “Keep it down!” the tanned woman yelled out to them. “This is a

hotel. Some people are trying to sleep!”Mia and Tanya scooted into their mother.A man, laughing, threw a handful of bright orange tortilla chips at

the woman. All but one fell short of the water. It joined the whirlingpizza crust.

The woman laughed, too. Her teeth were straight but stained.“Never mind them,” she said, winking at Geraldine. “Just a bunch ofhotel crashers.” She motioned toward the duplexes behind them. “Weall live over yonder. My friend Angel’s boyfriend manages this place—lets us use it for a neighborhood pool.”

“Oh.” Geraldine tried to check her look of shock. “This your first time to Vegas?”Geraldine nodded. They were going to love it, she told them. “You can get prime rib

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most anywhere for less than you pay for hotcakes!” She leanedforward. “And I know a place here in Henderson that will let kids sit atthe slots.” She nodded to the boy playing his video game. “My Turleyover there won twenty-two dollars yesterday!”

Mia’s eyes widened. Her father paid her five dollars a month forhelping to feed the goats after school.

The tortilla chip had jumped the whirlpool and was making itsway toward them. Geraldine wanted to get out. “Are you girls toohot?”

They shook their heads. “Shame about the pool, right?” The woman lowered her voice and

pointed at the group behind her through her hand. “Angel’s boy did it.He’s almost five and still not totally potty trained.” She widened hereyes knowingly. “I don’t know about your girls, but my Turley wasusing the toilet at two! Which is young for a boy.”

“We shouldn’t stay too long,” Geraldine said to Mia.“Big day tomorrow,” the woman said, nodding. “What are you

going to see first?”“We’re heading back in the morning,” Geraldine told her. She

wanted to be home before nightfall to catch up around the farm andshore up against Nolan’s certain fury.

“Aren’t you at least going to drive through Vegas?”Geraldine didn’t think so. “We came mainly to see Hoover Dam.”The woman nodded slowly, puzzled. “Do they take you underwa-

ter?”“Sort of. They have an electricity plant that’s partway under water.

But you can’t see out or anything.” “Oh.” The woman sat back, disappointed. The girls had reacted

the same—expecting aquarium glass. Now the tortilla chip floated in front of Tanya. Geraldine wanted

to grab for it and fling it out but thought it would seem rude. Shewished they’d stayed home. That she’d shown her daughters picturesin her book, rather than thrusting the scale of the actual dam uponthem. How could any one person compare to such a thing? EvenHoover himself hadn’t been equal to the dam. The guide told them

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how his name had been stripped from the structure for a period ofyears after his presidency, such was the disappointment—the anger—of the people over their hardships. Geraldine double-checked it in herHoover Dam book, back in the car.

She imagined Hoover reading about the change in the newspaper,sinking a little into his leather armchair, deflated. She felt silly now tohave made so much of the connection. Any great man might have athousand distant cousins.

“We’re related to Herbert Hoover,” Mia told the woman.“No kidding!” She perked up. “Wasn’t he the president or some-

thing?” The man beside her smirked. “The thirty-first president,” Mia told her. “He’s our cousin. That’s

why we went to see his dam.”The woman gasped, awed. “Your cousin? No kidding!” She hit the

man’s chest. “We’re in a hot tub with the president’s cousins!”Geraldine watched the woman’s face slowly form the same baffled

question she’d often asked herself: What was she—Hoover’sposterity—doing here? Not just here in this motel, sandwichedbetween a strip mall and the sort of neighborhood that sent its boysover the fence to mess in the pool. Here. How had she come to stay soinsignificant?

“He wasn’t a very popular president,” Geraldine told the womanby way of explanation. She could feel her daughters’ eyes on her.

“Yeah?” “People blamed him for the Great Depression. For not doing

enough to help them.”“Huh.” The woman relaxed back into her seat, back on equal foot-

ing. “Meat’s done!” a man called out from the grill. The boy, Turley,

scrambled up from his seat by the pool.“You hungry?” The woman asked.Geraldine shook her head.As the woman climbed out, Geraldine noticed her swimwear: a

faded pink bra and thin panties. The man, his boxers dripping,followed her out.

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Up in their room, Geraldine ran the bath. The girls peeled off theirsuits and got into the tub together, something they hadn’t done in years.

Geraldine sat on the toilet next to the tub, wrapped in a towel,watching them wring out washcloths over each other’s head.

“Mom,” Mia asked, “was Herbert Hoover a bad president?”“Some people thought he was.”Mia lathered her sister’s hair with shampoo. “But was he?”Geraldine thought of a story she’d seen as she’d flipped through

the Musings on the Boy, “Bert” Hoover book. She found it in her suit-case and read out to the girls the story told by Esker Thornock, afarmhand who boarded with the Hoovers after Herbert’s father diedof heart failure when Herbert was six. Esker remembered the boyfinding a wounded possum under the porch one spring, a victim ofthe dog.

“He brung it to me because he knowed I had a way with animals.He seen me raise Mrs. Perkins horse from near death a few weeksbefore. But a sour stomach in a horse is a sight different from a half-eaten possum with the mange. Bert wrapped the thing up in a blanket.Asked to keep it in my room so his mother wouldn’t find it. He justprayed and prayed over that animal. Even when it died after supper,he kept on praying.”

Geraldine paused.“Oh,” Mia said, relieved. Geraldine’s mother had taught her

granddaughters that faith was a powerful virtue. A saving belief thatcovered many sins. Mia rinsed Tanya’s hair with a cupful of water. Thesuds collected around the girl’s thin waist.

Geraldine read on silently the rest of Esker’s story—about Bertburying the possum in a corner of the garden with a handful ofrhubarb seeds. That summer, when the plant shot up—dark purpleand green—Herbert brought the stalks to his mother to make a pie.But Esker “didn’t fancy tasting rotten possum in my pie.”

He couldn’t have known Hoover’s mother would contract typhoidfever and die the following year, but he took pity on the boy, so insis-tent that Esker try a slice. “I was glad I did,” he told Mrs. Ursula G.Jones, who took his story down longhand, “for it was the sweetestthing I ever et.”

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UNTITLEDacrylic and gold leaf

Casney Tadeo

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PATRIOTIC PLYMOUTHphotograph

Richard Byrd

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WINDMILL ANDSUNSETphotograph

Mark Hanna

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DESERT ANGELS #4encaustic and mixed media

Liz Hampton-Derivan

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ELINORphotograph

Robin Redding

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AGAVEoil

Jack Miller

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CRACKEDphotograph

David Day

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Sarah Rochford CROSS BLACK ANDWHITEphotograph

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FEED ME — CURVE-BILLED THRASHERS photograph

Brian G. Prescott

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TEMBY AVENUE BISBEE, ARIZONAphotograph

Cathy Murphy

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PAIR OF TRAPSmetalwork

Archie William Sutton

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THE ATTICoil

Jack Miller

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UTAHphotograph

Becky Heckman

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VICTORIAN YARDphotograph

Richard Byrd

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GIGGLESmetalwork

Lindsay Janet Roberts

UNTITLED photograph

Kassandra Willhelm

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WRITING ON BONES Carol Sanger

1.Deer bones ripen in the buffelgrass as muscle and organs are sawed away. Sutures fusing cranial plates leave sepia scrawl on what’s left of her skull. Ribs separate from ribs. Jaw bones move apart.

2. What do the living edges of scapula say about drought, the birth of twins? How does inspiration arc from sacrum to sternum to the bones in my hand? What glyphs does motherhood leave behind?

3.My bones ask if they can stay together. They would like to lie on a hillside L1 next to L2 for eternity, to be heaved in the next round of plate movements.My pelvis still has things to say.

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Chugging auto-rick engines, motorcycles beep shrill, Teeth-tongue click-clicking for attention, Hello, hello—a man pulls a carriage, Hello, hello—A beggar child won’t quit, Jaayo, jaayo—A rupee won’t save her dark cliché, rags and bare feet, Part invisible brood who live in traffic.

Locals stay on the shoulder, not sidewalks—Hopping vent covers, testing others, falling means Broken bones in raw sewage, better than a vehicle hit, Better be heebee-jeebee by the grasses Growing in clumps—cobras, black-hooded and phallic,Two in a basket, a snake-charmer’s catch,

Groove on the gourd; later, his snakes stuffed in a satchel, Moving among us, orange-turbaned. Heaps of Ganesh, statues bigger than Lord, happy, and pink. Roadway wall stinks. Pisswalas—of Shanti Path. The men, their backs—thick rows of men, thick rows of spit, Piss, and click-click.

Slate sky darkens above the water tower. Umbrellas open. Monsoonis the glory of rain. Mud, paper wrappings, smashed glass cuts into flip-flop Soft soles on the wet road to Raja Park. A camel or monkeys could appear; today only dogs. And momos—hot cabbage in a sticky bun.

At home: Pour water, soap feet still in sandals, Offer sweets to Ganesha, god of travel.

WALKING HOME INHINDUSTAN

Nadine Lockhart

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Fingerling fish, darknestlings in brine; suddenly,a can opener.

Pen, a dagger, drawsblood. Paper proffers everypossibility.

In shade of tree leanboy on bark, girl on grass—twotigers to a hill.

Canoe cuts shinywakes across slumbering lake—silver water bug.

Lurking in park grasswith spear, a great hunter stabsa candy wrapper.

Storm howls in birch, shrieksthrough pines—chorus of crazyold women cackling.

HAIKU Lavendra Copen

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NEW MARVELS OFTHE TEXAS TEA MACHINE

Ken Boe

We sit around the colorful table with spinning dials and variables of chance,not understanding the gamble appropriately, appropriating all the dead-wrong tokenswhich, when we make the fool’s guess, pumps the Gulf of Mexico full of Texas tea.

Now all your chips have been replaced with rust-colored bird bones, and the enforcer is breathing down your neck. So you’re not allowed to leave the table. You must play the game indefinitely, even as your winnings sour and cave inward, resembling a sink hole in gingerbread land.

The drones close in, bombing your village in Pakistan you didn’t know was your village, but now you own its bloody bones, too. The Russian roulette continues into Afghanistan, shoving more borrowed dollars onto the table, into the barrels of its gun.Spin the dial: It’s a dream machine!

Today the ground is flecked with evanescent song birds pecking at this thing or that, no idea what, but if they come here next year and it’s all gone, then they will leave and not keep pecking.

It’s raining, and water travels through cracks. Cracks become creeks which become valleys. Soldiers are like water, as are the villages which dam the water, which soldiers blow up,the surge to become the insurgent demiurge.

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The surest way out of the casino is to lose everything, but they won’t let you. Between winter and spring, the roads are hydraulic; the asphalt cracks, fills with water, then freezes again, which allows the inner self to open up more readily, and where the rubber doesn’t meet the road, flowers will bloom.

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MAJNUN FAINTED AT THE SIGHT OF LAYLA’SFOOT, GLIMPSED THROUGH THE TENT DOOR

Carmen Megeath

As the wind caught the tent doorlifted it asidesacred that luminous footin the dustlifted in the windas if in danceand the vine twined the pole in asarabande . . .

so I sawthe wide swath and a black crowthe landscapewithout music, ohit opened upthe far cliffs of the northlandsthe gray skirts of the virgassweeping eastwardbrushing the distant tops of great purple mesas

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A glass in the night shatters, breaking his chest into pieces

until breathing stops and starts and becomes agony.He lunges

into the stenching shadows,dressed for battle—his eyes seeing and not seeing,

but I see him plain as he hacks his way

through Persians at Thermopylae, trudges over Alps behind elephants, loads and reloads

for three holy days at Gettysburg, seven days at the Marne,then endures months of tanks, guns, and bombsto save Stalingrad.

I hold him as he starts marching again, as he rips me

from this world and drags me to his. He sweeps through my village, his spear hard and pointed as he thrusts and thrusts, splitting my country, and kills and kills until he is spent, and I turn on the light, and he sees me—both of us horrified

and panting, one of us bloody—wounded by the arrow in his soft shield.

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ARROW IN THE SOFTSHIELD

Carol Sanger

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UNPUNCTUATED Lavendra Copen

for Bethany Perry and Jeff Sturges

she plucks the punctuationfrom her poem as thougheach mark were a tickhating the way they suckout the essential rhythmwhen in her mind the phonemesleap and splash like meltwateranswering only to gravityand their own exuberancethe lines breathing in and outlike fish inhaling oxygenright out of waterthe stanzas swellingtumbling upand spilling their bountyon the sand at her feet

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LONGINGsculpture


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BLUE MEDUSAsculpture and photograph

Niccole Pierre

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CAT HOUSEphotograph

David Day

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THE OLD STONECHURCHphotograph

Linda Nichols

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WIND FARMphotograph

Diane Ricks

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LA PUERTA ROJAoil

Jack Miller

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THE POTphotograph

Valla L. Miller

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AT LUphotograph

Lily Schmidt

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BRIDGE OVER QUIETWATERphotograph

Dakota Zimpleman

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SNOW IN RAMSEYCANYONphotograph

Valla L. Miller

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CHAMA TRAIN STATIONphotograph

Mark Hanna

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BROWN CANYONRANCHphotograph

Mark Hanna

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LOVE LIFE, WITH PARROTS,CHAPTER 1

Cappy Love Hanson

First Place, Nonfiction Competition, Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration, 2011

As I approached his cage, the little parrot turned his orange-and-turquoise head toward the wall and his iridescent back to me.His pointed tail brushed the bars. Then he stood motionless on hiswooden dowel perch, looking more like a painter’s brush stroke inlight and dark greens than the living being I hoped to share my lifewith for many years.

Peaches had been giving me this cold shoulder ever since I’dbrought him home four days before. The way he hunchedreminded me of a cartoon vulture. To him, this was life and death,so I couldn’t allow myself to laugh.

Besides, I was worried. I’d made an appointment for the follow-ing day to have Dr. Kathleen Ramsay look at the black, tarrysubstance in Peaches’ droppings. I’d never seen anything like it onthe bottom of a parrot’s cage.

Aside from that, nothing about Peaches surprised me, includinghis initial reactions. When I brought him home, I had to transferhim from a screened cardboard box to his cage on top of my two-drawer filing cabinet. I’d reached into the box and caught him in atowel. His eyes widened, his heart pistoned, and he stabbed throughthe fabric with his black beak, bloodying my thumb and forefinger.

By now, though, Peaches should have shown some interest inhis new surroundings. He was still responding to me as Ms. Clearand Present Danger. I’d deluded myself only briefly into believingthat turning his back was a sign of trust. He was trying to avoid eyecontact with yet another human captor as he confronted unknown,unpredictable dangers without his wild flock to alert and protecthim. Freezing, he hoped to make himself invisible until Ms. Clearand Present went away. He couldn’t know that I had the weekbetween Christmas and New Year’s off from my dental receptionistjob and was dedicating it to settling him in.

Peaches must have felt like the ultimate alien in my 1940s effi-ciency apartment in Los Alamos, New Mexico, seven thousand feet

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up on the piñón- and juniper-studded Pajarito Plateau and a conti-nent away from the deciduous South American forest where he’dhatched. I had hoped that my crocheted afghans, hand-ruffled cur-tains, and art posters would appeal to his color vision and that mymini-jungle of tropical houseplants would help him feel at home.But Peaches knew he was in a strange land and was snubbing allstrangers.

Predictable as his mistrust was, it stung. I thought I’d done theright thing, bringing him home from the pet store in Albuquerque.My intuition was that I had paid for the privilege of rescuing him.

Sighing, I sat down in my desk chair so as not to loom overPeaches. Nothing challenged my self-image like an animal who did-n’t recognize me for the friend I intended to be. Back when I wasmarried and living in a Southern California tract house, myhusband Thor (yes, Thor) claimed that every stray dog in a five-mile radius found me. I kept looking for the canine equivalent ofthe hobo code painted on our house’s stucco exterior: nice people,good food.

Our rescues hadn’t been limited to dogs and the pregnant, oil-covered cat we’d found living under a car. We had saved a red-tailedhawk tangled in a fence and a black-necked stilt (a long-leggedshorebird) after a neighbor’s cat attacked it. The stilt died of hiswounds. Wildlife rehabilitators treated the hawk, and local news-paper photographers showed up to commemorate her release in thewild coastal hills of El Toro Marine Base.

Peaches ignored me as I got up and paced. Not that there was alot of space in the twelve-by-fifteen-foot portion of my apartmentthat served as living room, dining room, bedroom, and office. Thorand I had divorced nine years earlier, and I’d been living in smallapartments and rented bedrooms in the company of a charminglittle gray-cheeked parrot named Feathers. We had moved to LosAlamos three years ago.

A year and a half later, I’d buried Feathers in the Jemez Moun-tains, on a slope I could see through my second-story window. Ipaused there now, gazing west, noting the approximate spot among

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snow-covered volcanic boulders, pine, spruce, and aspen—remem-bering my now-broken vow never to bring home anotherwild-caught creature.

My apartment had felt chill and empty after Feathers’ death,despite the view of spectacular sunsets and all I’d done to give theplace a homey warmth. Alone, I couldn’t fill even that small space. Iknew it was time for another winged companion when I went to apet shop, looked at the birds, and didn’t cry all the way home. Theholiday generosity of my parents in California and Terry, the man Iwas dating, had made Peaches possible.

Next to Peaches, Terry was most on my mind that day. He had areddish beard and hair, lively green eyes, and a smile that sent aflush from my neck to my hairline when a mutual friendintroduced us. Chemistry was at work, and not just because he wasa chemical engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, acrossOmega Bridge from town.

Optimist that I was, I believed that Terry and I could get ourrelationship together despite our differences. I was ready for a lifepartner. Terry had recently ended a long marriage and was givingthe traditional slow-down message: “I need time and space to sortout my life.”

I understood his need from my own divorce, but it still painedme. At a recent reading, I’d heard New Mexico writer Judyth Hillrecite her poem about wanting to be the woman her lover neededspace from. I burst out laughing, along with a lot of other women.It was the kind of laughter that kept us from crying. The intimacyand the everyday give-and-take that I longed for in a human rela-tionship seemed beyond my reach.

This was how it could be with Terry: He often told me howtouched he was by simple intimacies like long embraces, foot mas-sages, and my waking at night and laying a hand on him. I met hisacknowledgements with tears of gratitude and the thought thatmaybe there was some good in me after all. The “after all” had to dowith lifelong feelings of inadequacy I was nowhere near resolving.

And this was how it could be: One day, Terry accepted my din-

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ner invitation, so I came home from work and prepared the fixingsfor stir-fry—cooked and cooled the rice, washed the peapods, dicedthe baby bok choy, carrots, and tofu, grated the ginger. I set thetable—something I never did for myself alone—lit the candles, andturned on some relaxing music.

Terry didn’t show up. He didn’t call. I began to worry andphoned his home, where I got his answering machine. I nibbledanxiously at the carrots.

At ten o’clock, I was scooping the food into storage dishes whenthe phone rang. Terry was at his ex-wife’s house. They and theirthree teenage children had had a nice dinner together. Had he for-gotten our date? No, he’d just decided to do this instead. Did hethink to call me? Well, uh, no.

Even if we got past problems like this and moved into thedeeper commitment I longed for, I would still need Peaches the wayTerry needed his chow-coyote cross, Mista. I’d known since child-hood—living my first five years in the Berkeley Hills ofCalifornia—that human contacts were never enough. Our slopingyard was full of Steller’s jays and squirrels who ate peanuts andhousehold leftovers from pie pans my father nailed up on the baytrees. The jays made daily forays to the window above the built-inbuffet, where they hammered at the glass in a determined but futileeffort to reach Spike and Tyke, the baby turtles, who lived in a plas-tic pond with an island and a palm tree.

Then there were the dachshunds, a black-and-tan dog namedChris and a red bitch named Trudy. They accepted me—a mostlyhairless mammal who crawled around on the hardwood floors andcurled up to nap with them in the green overstuffed chair—as oneof their own. Together we made up the Clan of the Underdogs, con-trolled by those much larger, upright-walking beings whose motiveswere mysterious and whose commands were unquestionable.

Having loved and lost Feathers, I knew I couldn’t go long with-out a parrot. Not that it looked as if I were going to develop a shredof closeness with Peaches. His resistance struck a note of recogni-tion, though. I could dig in my heels as tenaciously as any other

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Taurus and appreciated that large stubbornness in such a smallfeathered package.

I sat down again in front of Peaches’ cage, cocked my headavian style, and murmured, “Hi, Peaches parrot. Beautiful greenPeaches parrot.” Cocked the other way. “How ya doin’, Peaches? It’sall right.”

His silence and posture said it all: Yeah, right, lady. Everything’sjust dandy.

Maybe he doesn’t like the name, I thought. “Peaches” seemed acheap-shot moniker to pin on a peach-fronted conure. I was justusing it as a placeholder until his real name suggested itself—per-haps something classical (Apollo?), exotic (Teotihuacan?), or hippy(Starflower?).

“Peaches” was at least unpretentious and had the advantage ofapplying to either gender. Male and female conures look alike. Isupposed that calling the bird a he was some kind of sexist default.At least it gave me a fifty-fifty chance, better than Wall Street or LasVegas odds.

By whatever name, this little parrot had no reason to trust meor any other human. Magazine articles and television nature showshelped me piece together a rough scenario of his capture, probablyin Brazil. If he was caught as a baby, his captors either hacked intohis nest cavity several feet up in a termite mound or chopped downhis tree. Half his siblings might have died in the raid. If he’d alreadyfledged—left the nest—he would have been caught in a net or on aglue-smeared branch. He might have struggled for hours or days,vulnerable to predators, starvation, and dehydration.

Peaches and any other birds who survived the rape-and-pillageapproach to parrot catching would have been thrust into dirtycages, transferred overland and by boat, and flown to the UnitedStates in a cold cargo hold. Their food would have been the cheap-est available and anything but fresh, their water contaminated withthe local parasites, bacteria, and viruses, and with the birds’ drop-pings. Fewer than half the captured birds would have survived toenter quarantine in Chicago.

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Quarantine was the opposite of the isolation that the wordimplied. Parrots from all over the world, in various states of health,were crammed together. Their immune systems were stressed, andmany were unable to fight off illness. An Asian parrot might haveno natural resistance to an African disease. Workers had hundredsof birds and other animals to process every month and could givePeaches and his comrades only minimal attention.

Peaches survived his thirty-day quarantine and was shipped to apet store in Albuquerque. That was where he was, squawking at alarger mitred conure in a nearby cage, when Terry and I arrived onour parrot quest.

My parrot clearly wasn’t as thrilled by Terry’s and my parents’generosity as I was. Nothing about Peaches’ forty-three-year-oldhuman companion or her compact home impressed him. Heturned ever so slowly when I moved, keeping his back to me andwatching in the most covert way.

I got up and paced again, passing the dining table where Icaught sight of the pet bird magazine I’d left lying open to one ofthe cover articles. Glancing at the headline, I realized I might have atrump card for one of my concerns. I sat down and read. The publi-cation suggested that mimicking a bird’s vocalizations—parrotingthe parrot—could speed up bonding. Even though my psittacinediction was imperfect, my syntax suspect, and my vocabulary mea-ger, I thought I might make the concept work.

There was only one problem: Peaches was filling his MDSR(Minimum Daily Screech Requirement) and then some but wasn’tmaking the softer noises I remembered from my years with Feath-ers—the coos, chirps, chuckles, whistles, ri-i-i-cks, and raw-w-wcks,or the contented beak grinding as he fell asleep. I hadn’t heard anyof the species-specific sounds with which I hoped to woo Peaches.

I looked up from the article and wondered if a badly spokensqueak or squawk could create misunderstandings, even a years-long feud. On the other hand, what choice did I have? I was forcedto count on Peaches’ ability to listen past the lingo—and read, frommy tone, my body language, and the fact that I fed him, my goodintentions.

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Given his experience with people, I couldn’t think why Peachesshould attribute benevolent intent to me or anyone else. Neverthe-less, I sat down near him, cleared my throat, and tried the limitedvocabulary my vocal mechanism was capable of producing—kisses, whistles, squeaks, ticks, and chucks. I really got into it, imag-ining his flock calling to keep in touch as they winged among thetrees, murmuring as they groomed each other.

All to no avail. Peaches stood stone still, head down, green-and-blue wings folded across his back like a shield.

I sighed and turned away. Then a flash of inspiration lit up mybrain: If vocal communication wasn’t eroding Peaches’ resistance,what about mirroring his body language?

I swiveled around with my back to him. There I stayed, armscrossed. I remained as silent and motionless as Peaches while thered numbers on the digital clock crept through five minutes, six,seven.

My mind wandered to Terry. It wasn’t dining with his familythat bothered me; I’d encouraged him to keep up relationships withhis ex and kids. What hurt was being stood up, feeling unimportantto him, being disrespected, not good enough to warrant a phonecall before I made all those preparations. How could I make himunderstand that I—

Peaches’ tail feathers brushed the cage bars. Disadvantaged by apredator’s forward-looking eyes, I chanced a slow glimpse over myshoulder. Peaches was standing on his top perch, not only facing mebut leaning forward, staring right at me, eyes wide as if to say, Youcan’t do that. That’s my tactic.

Thrilled and humbled, I let the breath I’d been holding collapseout of my chest. Here was this wild-caught parrot, with no appar-ent reason to acknowledge another in a long line of humans,condescending to communicate with me. Or maybe he wasn’t con-descending, exactly. He was a flock animal, and I was the only flocksubstitute around. I wanted to believe that he saw something specialin me. More likely, he was adapting to his new situation.

Whatever it was, I couldn’t keep from laughing with delight.

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Peaches blinked and turned his head aside but watched me withone eye as I chatted in English and my best Parrotese. He evenoffered a couple of low, gravelly whistles in grudging response.

I knew that even small conures like Peaches were a lot moreintelligent than the term “birdbrain” suggested. The trick was to besmarter than the parrot. If that required failing at a well-thought-out approach and stumbling onto one that worked, so be it. Parrotsoften learned in a single lesson. I hoped that we would never haveto repeat this one.

I couldn’t kid myself, though; there would be more bitten fin-gers to come. I could never justify the cost of Peaches’ capture buthoped I could make up for his traumas by giving him a happy andsatisfying life.

Then I thought of what Dr. Ramsay might have to say the nextday and gritted my teeth.

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GROWING OLD INTHE DESERT

Carmen Megeath

Out here it’s always 100 miles orat least 50—the sere earth,mountain islands, blue, rising upout of a mesquite-green desert sea—everything spined, spiked, tangled, thorned,and a horsetail sky streamingover this road which, straight as an arrow, fliestoward the crossroads.The dun hills at the turnoff are hungry—their bonesshow through—their ridges, outcrops.How gracefully they lift themselves up, though,like a woman in a taffeta skirtrising from a chair. And dryyellow grasses crowding the road—nature’s hand readyto cover it all over. The yucca all butstepsout onto the highway

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

David Altamirano was born in Douglas and works as an associatefaculty art instructor at Cochise College. He is dedicated to bring-ing art and cultural empowerment to the people of the Douglasarea. He hopes to inspire other local artists to show their work. Hecherishes art and never limits himself to a particular genre or sub-ject matter.

Ken Boe is a poet, painter, and playwright who lives in Bisbee. Hebelieves that poetry is a sublime medium that requires a certainamount of experiential learning to appreciate, but that all tasteshinge on various learning, much of it random and personal.

Richard Byrd began taking pictures in Memphis, Tennessee, at ageeight, when his mother gave him a Kodak Brownie. He is known forhis photographs of musicians, some of which will be displayed inthe Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His current project is bits of Bis-bee—doors, gates, and graffiti. Photography has been a catalyst,capturing decisive moments, whether in events or changing light. Ithas changed his life.

Lavendra Copen farms in the Huachuca Mountain foothills withher two granddaughters and sells produce at local farmers’ markets.During a stay in New York a couple of decades ago, she learned totranscribe legal and medical dictation, which she now does for aliving. Poems are her way of dealing with some of the difficult situ-ations she encounters in her work.

Wayne E. Crane’s interest in photography began with black andwhite film and darkroom work in the mid-1980s. Digital photo-graphy has enabled him to become more creative. Although manyof his best images are of buildings and still life subjects, he enjoysthe challenge of photographing people, especially in candid shots.He believes that in photography “light is all there is” and strives tomaster (and manipulate) lighting techniques.

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David Day has lived in and photographed Bisbee for twenty years.He is amused and astounded by the town’s ever-changing andquirky nature. For the past several months, David has been photo-graphing in Cochise County with the iPhone camera using theHipstamatic application. He intends to create a book from theseimages. He loves to share his photographs on Facebook and Flickrand has shown his work in several galleries in Bisbee.

Kate Drew-Wilkinson began making glass beads at age fifty. Shesays she was born an artist, writing poetry and drawing from anearly age. Her first career was in acting, primarily Shakespeare. Hol-lywood and then New York changed everything for this Englishwoman, who now lives in Bisbee. Kate travels each summer to teachbead making in a sixteenth-century glass factory in England,followed by work with French glass workers in Normandy.

Liz Hampton-Derivan found her passion for photography in 1979,when she got her first 35mm camera and began studying photo-graphy. Now she works digitally, creating soft, romantic, dreamlikeimages. She added a new dimension to her work in 2009, when shebegan working in encaustic (beeswax with resin and pigment col-ors) and mixed media. Liz received a BA in art history beforedeveloping her own personal interest in creating art.

Mark Hanna was born in Pennsylvania. His family moved toTucson in the early fifties. He worked at Kitt Peak National Obser-vatory as a lab manager and retired from there after fortymemorable years. Shortly after retiring, he moved to Sierra Vista.He enjoys digital photography because it gives the photographerthe chance to adjust or control his or her own images.

Cappy Love Hanson ditched a lot of college classes in the 1960s towrite. Her work has appeared in Writer’s Digest, ByLine, The SantaFe New Mexican, Blue Mesa Review, New Millennium Writings, Pas-sager, CutThroat, Voices on the Wind e-journal, and other

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publications. She has been on the Mirage staff for several years andis currently working on a memoir about her life with parrots.

Becky Heckman lives in the Dragoon area and is a weekendexplorer of nearby mountains with her 4x4 enthusiast husband. Sheis a willing student of photography and art, hoping to capture thebeauty of the surrounding area.

Clint Isaak recently graduated from the University of ArizonaSouth with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. He lives in SierraVista with his wife and three children.

Nadine Lockhart received her MA and MFA from ASU; she is cur-rently a PhD candidate in English Literature. Last yer, she studiedHindi in Jaipur, India, on a Department of Education Scholarship.Her most recent artistic passion is theater, and she performed at theKennedy Center Annual College Theater Festival in February.Nadine lives with Badger the cat, and they travel together through-out the Southwest in search of plays, poetry, and painting.

Robert J. Luce was a wildlife biologist in Wyoming before retiringto Arizona. He lives along the San Pedro River and photographs theriver in all seasons. He has traveled extensively in Mexico, LatinAmerica, East Africa, Brazil, and the U.S. Virgin Islands for bird-watching and photography. He has authored technical wildlifepublications and magazine articles about wildlife, and providedphotos for books, outdoor magazines, and wildlife field guides.

Cassius Matthews Jr. lives in Sierra Vista. He earned an AA in fineart from Cochise College. His strong passion for drawing, painting,and sculpture has been with him from an early age. He draws hiscreativity from his family, friends, and his community.

Lacy Mayberry lives in Sierra Vista with her husband and twodaughters. She is currently a low-residency MFA fiction student atLesley University in Cambridge, MA.

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Maizie Kay McMillan is new to photography. She recently gradu-ated from Cochise College with a degree in journalism and media.She lives in Benson with her family. Her favorite subjects for photosare animals and landscapes, but recently she diverged into portraitswith a fellow photographer. She showed her work in a studentgallery in Douglas this past December and plans to continue work-ing in the field of photography.

Carmen Megeath was born and raised in Wyoming and educatedin Salt Lake City. She has spent many decades living in the beautifulold mining town of Bisbee, a European-like village plunked downin the middle of the Mule Mountains. She is happy, even grateful, tolive on the edge of the empire, along the borderlands of Sonora,Mexico, and loves, as other writers on the West have, the solace ofopen spaces.

Jack Miller is retired from the packaging materials field. Hereceived his Bachelor of Fine Arts and masters degree at the Univer-sity of Arizona. He is a soft-edge painter and colorist influenced bythe expressionists, impressionists, post-impressionists, and othersof the modern art movement.

Valla L. Miller likes photography, and the digital camera and com-puter have become her means of artistic expression. Withoutformal training but influenced and encouraged by her husband, shehas developed a discerning eye for beauty and broadened herchoice of subject matter. Since moving to Sierra Vista, she has wonseveral awards for her work.

Cathy Murphy is a professional photographer who lives in Old Bis-bee, Arizona, with her doggies Peaches and Rosie. She teachesdigital photography classes, also known as Digital Media Arts DMA140 and DMA 266, at Cochise College. Her photos may be found inBisbee at Pan Terra; in Phoenix at ALAC (Arizona Latino Arts &Cultural Center), and occasionally at Bisbee’s Farmer’s Market. Sheis represented online by Getty Images.

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Linda Nichols was born in Phoenix, Arizona. She graduated fromNorthern Arizona University and now resides in Sierra Vista withher husband. She has had a career in Human Resources for thirtyyears and has always had an interest in photography and a passionfor travel and food. She completed the master gardener course atthe University of Arizona South and plants a summer vegetable gar-den each year.

Niccole Pierre is a Cochise College graduate studying graphic artsand sculpture. She has an AA in fine arts and a certificate in digitalimaging. She has worked freelance as a graphic designer andpresently designs t-shirt logos. Her individualized sculptures areinspired by personal experiences.

Brian G. Prescott developed an interest in photography, travel, andnature as a young man. He concentrated mostly on birds, thenexpanded his photography to many subjects as well as nature. Hehas visited Iceland, Spain, Antarctica, Australia, Papua New Guinea,Thailand, South Africa, Venezuela, and much of Central America.His photos have appeared in various publications, including aSierra Club book, American Birds, and several newspapers, includ-ing The Sierra Vista Herald.

Robin Redding has been a student at Cochise College for threeyears. She has studied pottery, photography, and watercolor paint-ing. She also enjoys designing and making jewelry. Her previousstudies were in the business area, and she earned a BBA in market-ing and an MBA from Florida Atlantic University. She and herhusband live in Hereford with their fabulous dog, Lexy.

Diane Ricks moved to Sierra Vista from Illinois. When she was ten,her parents purchased the Brownie camera that started her passionfor photography. After purchasing her first 35mm camera and set-ting up a darkroom, she entered prints in local contests and countyand state fairs, often using her children as models. She and her

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husband have traveled to Germany and Hawaii and have RVed tothe east coast, giving her many photographic subjects.

Lindsay Janet Roberts has a BFA from Columbus College of Artand Design, 1980, and a MEd from University of Arizona, 2009.With the latter degree, she specialized in secondary education inorder to teach art to middle and high school children. She lives,teaches, and breathes art. She also has a huge passion for recyclinggoods, and therefore much of her work is made from recycledmaterials.

Sarah Rochford moved to Arizona in the summer of 2011. She haslived among the most breathtaking sceneries in the country, includ-ing Alaska and northern Idaho. Though photography is not herusual medium, she enrolled in the digital photography class atCochise College and set out to find the beauty around her newhome.

Andrea Sanchez is a sophomore at Cochise College. She will begraduating in May of 2012 and then will pursue a bachelor's degreein photography.

Carol Sanger has been writing poetry for seventeen years, but it hastaken her a long time to admit she is serious about it. It wasn’t untila particularly rough poetry workshop in 2005 that she finally real-ized that poetry was her home, poets her flock. When the GreatSorting Machine separates us into our true colors, she will bethere—with them—with the large, wild tribe that is poets.

Lily Schmidt, a recent Cochise College graduate, has pursued andenjoyed photography her whole life. She hopes to inspire the audi-ence by placing familiar subjects or objects in unfamiliar back-grounds. Arizona offers great lighting at all times of the day, andLily is inspired by all these photo opportunities. She encourages theexploration of new thoughts, ideas, and emotions through her photography.

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Lisa Galloway Sprietsma lives on a farm in Pomerene with herhusband, two children, and a plethora of animals, large and small.She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Ari-zona in painting and sculpture.

Archie William Sutton is drawn to doors and metal in an art form,to the allegory that doors are created to open to an inside placewith a pure substance. Enjoying the look and feel of copper in theraw, he applies an unruly patina covering. He adds liquid plastic,vinyl and/or mixed media to the fashioned-hanging.

Casney Tadeo was born and raised in southern Arizona. She is afine art major at Cochise College. Her current obsessions are paint-ing Day of the Dead muertos and architecture, and giving life backto broken-down furniture. Casney’s recent works of art are exhib-ited through the CALACA Cultural Center in Tempe and in the 55Main Gallery in Bisbee.

Yolanda van der Lelij moved from the Netherlands with her hus-band and kids to farm in Willcox eighteen years ago. She startedpainting when the kids left for college and has finished her fourthsemester at Cochise College with Karina Stanger as her teacher. Thepainting in this year’s Mirage was inspired by a photograph herdaughter took in Aravaipa Canyon. The painting is done in oil.

Kassandra Wilhelm is an aspiring fashion photography artist. Sheis currently taking a digital photography class at the Sierra Vistacampus of Cochise College and hopes to break into the fashionworld with her pictures.

Dakota Zimpelman found her love, photography, after she enrolledfor her first black-andwhite film photography class at CochiseCollege. She never imagined, after picking up her first 35mm cam-era, that she would become hooked and would want to pursue acareer in photography. Her goal is to capture the world and memo-ries in her photographs.

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

General Information

Submissions are accepted from Cochise College students and residents of Cochise and Santa Cruz Counties in Arizona. All entries must be the original work of the person or persons submitting them.

Each person may submit up to five pieces of writing and five works of art.

Writers and artists who wish to have their works considered for publication must submit their works for the year in which they are solicited. The Mirage staff will evaluate only works submit-ted specifically for the upcoming issue of the magazine.

Writers and artists are welcome to resubmit material that was not previously accepted for publication. However, they should also consider submitting fresh works that represent their most recent and accomplished artistic achievements.

Works are selected for publication via an anonymous process: Each submission is judged without disclosure of the writer’s or artist’s name.

The staff of Mirage reserves the right to revise language, correct grammar and punctuation, revise formatting, and abridge content of any literary work, including the biographies of writ-ers and artists. In matters of mechanics and style, the Miragestaff defers to A Writer’s Reference by Diana Hacker.

The staff also reserves the right to crop, re-size, and modify works of visual art in any way deemed necessary to ready them for inclusion in the magazine.

Submissions will not be returned.

Requirements for All Submissions:

A single cover sheet must accompany submissions, listing the titles of all works and giving the submitter’s name, address, phone number, and email or fax. The cover sheet should also include a brief autobiographical statement of seventy-five words or less, written in the third person.

To preserve anonymity during the selection process, no name should appear on the entry itself.

Submissions may be attached to emails or sent by mail on compact disc or flash drive.

Requirements for Prose:

Prose must be submitted as Microsoft Word document files, using Times New Roman font, size 12. Prose must be double spaced. Unless unique formatting is integral to the piece, liter-ary works should be aligned on the left margin and not printed in all upper-case letters. There is a 2,000-word limit for prose entries.

Requirements for Poetry:

Poetry must be submitted as Microsoft Word document files, using Times New Roman font, size 12. Single spacing is permissible for poetry. Unless unique formatting is integral to the piece, poems should be aligned on the left margin and not printed in all upper-case letters. There is a 2,000-word limit for poetry entries.

Requirements for Visual Arts:

Artwork and photographs must have titles or must be identifiedas “Untitled.” If necessary, artists should indicate correct orien-tation.

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When taking photographs of artwork for submission, pay attention to lighting and orientation in order to prevent shad-owing, glare, skewing, or unintentional cropping.

Artwork and photographs must be sent as digital files.

Compression: Please do not compress photos when emailing them. Compressed photos lose information that cannot be restored. It is not like zipping or stuffing files; photos cannot be “unzipped” or “unstuffed.” Many programs will automatically downsize photos for emailing and viewing on a computer screen, but there is usually an option for sending the photo without reducing its size. Please choose that option.

Resolution: Printing on a press requires high resolution. What looks good on a computer screen or from a laser printer will not necessarily look good when printed on a press. An image copied from a webpage will not have the proper resolution. Filesof artwork need to be at a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch (DPI) and at 100% of their original size. Photos should be at least 6 x 9 inches. A minimum resolution of 2700 x 1800pixels in JPEG format is best. Any attempt to resize or resample may cause problems because print resolution will depend on how we ultimately size the photo for the magazine. The mini-mum size is important. If, for example, a photo is only 640 x 480 pixels, it is too small for the magazine.

Important: Unless digital photographs of art are submitted fol-lowing the guidelines above, the magazine cannot use them.

Where to send submissions:

Email: [email protected]

Mail: Cochise CollegeATTN: Mirage4190 West Highway 80Douglas, AZ 85607

Mirage 2012

Documents

Transcript of Mirage 2012