Moulin Review Vol. 3

Volume 3 Fall 2011

Moulin Review, Vol. 32

Moulin Review, Vol. 3 3

SubmissionsMoulin Review is a literary journal staffed by Brookhaven College’s Wind-mill Writers, located in Dallas, TX. Befriend us on Facebook or Twitter to receive updates.We accept fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art via email year-round. Send submissions to [email protected] with the word SUBMISSION in the subject line. LITERATURE: should not exceed 2000 words. Poetry should not exceed ten pages, or six poems. Please either attach your file as .doc or paste your text into the body of the email.ART: CMYK TIFF file type is preferred. If TIFF files are not available, JPEG will work. Please send large files with high resolution. We may change your image to grayscale for printing.Please include your name, the title of your piece, your address, and let us know if you are a Brookhaven student. We publish work by both students and non-students.By submitting, you certify that the work is your own, and is not a product of plagiarism or collusion. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.

“Man

Atla

s”

by R

yan

Ken

t


StaffEditor-in-Chief

Erin Marissa Russell

Faculty AdvisorAaron Clark

Editorial AdvisorsRian Chia

Edwin ChoiLexi Earle

Rhianon HuotGabriel Secundino

Art AdvisorsLexi Earle

Kelly JacobiGabriel Secundino

Layout & DesignOlamilekan Mabayoje

“Flo

ral B

ouqu

et”

by R

hian

on H

uot

Moulin Review is a literary journal staffed by Brookhaven College’s Windmill Writers stu-dent club.

Brookhaven College students interested in helping produce the journal should contact Aaron Clark at [email protected].

Front cover image:The Poems in the Forest by Ali Su

Back cover image:Waiting for a Poem by Ali Su

Information about ordering ad-ditional copies can be found on our website:http://moulinreview.wordpress.com

Moulin Review, Vol. 3 5Ta

ble

of C

onte

nts

Poetry: Hippocampus - J.P. Dancing Bear .........................7Art: Still life - Matthew Pairaudeau

Poetry: I Had a Dream that You Were Hit by a Car - Meg E........8Art: Wires Wires Light Light - Rhianon Huot

Poetry: The Frustration of Being a Shitty Artist - Nicelle Davis ........9Art: Something Still Lives Here - Gale Gibbs

Poetry: Shadow Graffiti - Gregg Sandahl ...........................10Art: Bleeding Samurai - Cheyenne Dreiling

Poetry: Of New Seeds - Ann Privateer .............................11Art: Free - Layla Blackshear

Poetry: Every Pore - Ellen Savage ..................................12Art: Deborah at Hotel Midnight - Nini Lapuz

Poetry: We Keep On - Emmanuel Jakpa ............................13Art: Love is the Answer - Gina Dunn

Poetry: Feng Xuan - Carol Charlat Nace ............................14Art: Moon - Liz James

Fiction: Dream Runner - Luanna Azzarito .....................15-18Art: runrun, Poem Tree - Ali Su Portrait de Grace Kelly - Neal Turner

Art: T is for Trouble - Matthew Watkins ............................19

Poetry: Mud - Chris Crittenden ......................................20Art: Let the Brightness Live Here - Rhianon Huot

Poetry: The Language of Spectral Ships - Jeffrey C. Alfier......21Art: American Dream - Ryan Kent

Poetry: Walking in Shadows - Charlotte DiGregorio .............22Art: Untitled (portrait of a woman) - Zareh

Fiction: The Way They Broke - Joseph Celizic ..................23-25Art: Corner - Layla BlackshearArt: Ghita - David Bridges

Art and Prose: Il Maestro - Matthew Watkins ....................26

Fiction: Edgar Allan Poe - Paul Kavanagh ....................27-28Art: Etude 5, Etude 4, Etude 6 - Oleg Shchegel

Poetry: Fine Line - Ellen Savage ....................................29Art: Red animal shy moon - Ali Su


Hippocampusby J.P. Dancing Bear

for Adrianne Kalfopoulou

the tickle within your ear is a seahorse: anchoring itself: curling around the soft shell of your lobe: an extension of cartilage: lean-ing against your temple: staring at what you gaze upon: you can see its small mouth out of your peripheral vision: its bony plates flex-ing and swaying with the current within you: its skin tickling your crests of waving hair: it extends itself to look around the horizon of your face: on the other ear: another seahorse extends forward: to find the face of her mate: they strain further forward: recognizing the other: knowing the missing: lovers for life

“Stil

l life

” by

Mat

thew

Pai

raud

eau


I Had a Dream that You Were Hit by a Car

“Wire

s W

ires

Ligh

t Lig

ht”

by R

hian

on H

uot

by Meg E.

I had a dream that you were an old man,that you were hit by a car.I had two dreams that you were an old man.I’m not afraid of death but per-haps you are?we don’t talk about it much.

I jump up and down in my seat becauseJesus is still alive and isdropping by, sometime,and you smile because I’msmiling, not because you are.

I don’t know what that means.I know exactly what that meansbut I’m scared to say it.

I had a dream and screamed at you.That I threatened to leave you. You said you were sorry for whatever it wasand laid me on the couch and kissed me likeyou never had before.

It was a dream, so I don’t quite remember.It was a dream, so it’s now a nightmare of the dayand I play back your face and I lay in the darkat 3.00 am, whispering, no —he is not like this. No, we arethe fairy tale. We can’tbe wrong. I am thoroughly and irrevocablyhappy.


“Som

ethi

ng s

till l

ives

her

e”

by G

ale

Gib

bs

I was a fire hazard at twenty. Open jars of linseed oiland paint smeared across forearms. A canvas strappedto my back; I’d scaled buildings by their rusty spines.Escapes groaning at my weight as I climbed stories up

to find windows that opened into others. Two nakedbodies. Two cups of water. I tried to show how she

moved towards each sip — drinking a form of kissing.But my breath, thick as smoke, obstructed the light

rim around her fingers where she gripped the glass.The exact angle of his hips leaning against the table —his arms folded into an act of resolve across his chest.

Slow rituals of gratitude; my forbidden glimpse at faith.

The Frustration of being a Shitty Artist

by Nicelle Davis


I walk awayfrom a congregationto face the nightin the midst of the city.

I am in the makingof you, pullingdown the moon.

Buildings framethe space betweenus as jagged boltsof lightning collideand strike the rooftops.

You advancefrom the fragmentsof a reflective flashas we leap intoa quarry of glass.

Shadow Graffitiby Gregg Sandahl

Uncut, we kickthe dark silencebelow an overpass,and purchase breadfrom a bakery.

Astonished by what isat work within uswe stand stillthen dance slow,but always break breadin a state of reverence.

Fed by the future ageof our enlightenment,we are shadows playingoff of graffiti walls,touched by the rising sun.

“Ble

edin

g S

amur

ai”

by C

heye

nne

Dre

iling


Your children cometo catapult new seeds

into the mix, their slappingfree fall to continuethe sky’s limitlesspossibilities, only

to spiral into repetitionsof you and I, out of

control.

by Ann PrivateerOf New Seeds

“Fre

e”

by L

ayla

Bla

cksh

ear


I confront the mirror,my image seeps weakness from every pore

My hands under the faucetcup cool audacity

splash it over my skinrinsing, rinsing,

put on my brave faceI snake my arms through boldness

wrestle it over my headtug it over my yellow belly

Sensitivitylike a mewling kitten,flailing fishhooks snagas it climbs my sweater

Can’t you quiet that thing?Fruitless, fruitless

I caress it, tiny talons and all

I pick at the scabs left by vulnerabilitythey bleed, make a mess

someone points it outanother stares

ruthless, ruthlessyet another offers salve

Every Poreby Ellen Savage

“Deb

orah

at H

otel

Mid

nigh

t” by

Nin

i Lap

uz


We keep onlike the tides,

blessing our boatas we carry

on our backthe hope

of those that reachfor the shore

We keep onlike rivers

by Emmanuel JakpaWe keep on

“Lov

e is

the

Ans

wer

” by

Gin

a D

unn


I say I want to save the moneyfor my old age.Maybe I’ll buy a studioand do my large nostalgic photographsof beautiful models by old railroad stations.they’re wearing Victorian hats with white plumes.

I am secretly pleading.it is rebuffed.

my feelings churn like rivulets in jade waters.the long night stretches out with my husband snoring,while I toss and turn in my old pajamas with blue flowers.

the moon falls on the desolate bed.

I run my hand through my thin hairas rain falls on the icy ground.

every day my husband dreams of new landto possess. I would cook there too.

I see my money trickling down like fall leaves,one by one,forming a small heedless heap in the woods.

I have no more tears.one day he wanted to live on land in a flood plain in Waxahachie.the next he chose a lot with no trees on Wabash Circlein a shaded neighborhood

he liked a house so far awayMy friends would whisper in the wind.

I said nothing.

a perpetually demanding man -- by Carol Charlat NaceFeng Xuan

what will it be next?Winter in Saratov, Russia.

vast, vast are his dreams,Small, small my inheritance.

such is the fate of woman,anything but endless wandering.

I hold a bronze tiara in my small hands,a gift from my dead mother.my happiness was her happiness.

peace at any price.

I do love that man and his grayKennedy hair, his bonesthat make my heart ache,his soft red lips that pour forth com-mands at bedtime,his deep faiththat transforms himinto an aging Tristan.

“Moo

n”

by L

iz J

ames


by Luanna Azzarito

Dream Runner

Good evening.My name is Blank and I’m a runner.Though you don’t know me, I know you. I’ve been at podiums like

this, in rooms exactly like this one before. Staring at pairs of eyes just like yours staring at me.

So bear with me.Mine is a disconcerting category to fall under. It creates a feel-

ing of homelessness, a lack of self-identity. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been whole. I do know I never felt so and most definitely don’t feel so now.

I have modest expectations. Unlike you, I have no fellow runners to talk to. They do exist, but are, to me, ghosts. Faces I never con-nect to. Voices I never come to recognize. I feel obliged to disclose I am no sex addict. I only gamble with my ambitions, and illegal drugs always seemed an inferior escape to those of my own derailed mind. I do drink, but I did not lose my life to alcohol.

My drug of choice, as absurd as she sounds to some of you, is Change.

I’m not sure when my obsession with change began, but I remem-ber even as a child hearing:

“run

run”

by

Ali

Su


He’ll grow out of it. Or—It’s just a phase.It was always a new trend. A new favorite toy. A new best friend.

It progressed to a new school, new hobby, new club. Running track sounded good. It wasn’t too long and that was old news.

Next.Wrestling. Hated

the uniform. So —Next.Basketball. I was

one of the best until I caught a mean elbow in the eye.

Next.Chess club. Dad said

I couldn’t do it, but it lasted longer than the others. Then —Next.There was Gabby. The curls of her hair made me smile. But —Next.Marly, she taught me how to dance. And —Next.You get the idea. College wasn’t much better. Deciding whether

or not to go was difficult but choosing a major? Impossible. “Just pick something,” Mom said. After changing majors five times, my academic counselor sat me down and informed me that I needed to graduate. “Interdisciplinary studies,” he said, tapping his pen on my transcript. It’s a B.A. I qualified for it already and had more than enough credits. I didn’t walk with the rest of them.

Truth is, I was grateful, just not proud. What do you do with it? You take small pleasure in finishing something. Finishing anything.

Next.It was time to make a living but I didn’t want to go back home.

Been there, done that.So I headed to Carolina. A friend of mine had graduated before

me (they all did). He’d started a small construction business and asked me to lend a hand. Learning the business kept my mind oc-cupied for a while. Hanging out with the guys after six didn’t hurt either. All quieted that voice inside my head.

Until I woke up one Wednesday morning drenched in sweat.The voice had been silent for a while, but I remembered her just

as if I’d heard her the day before. Change. I knew it was a matter of time. I was getting ready to run. See, she comes unannounced, takes you by surprise. At first, there are no demands. Just a request

The voice had been silent for a while, but I remembered her just as if I’d heard her the day before. Change. I knew it was a matter of time. I was getting ready to run.

“ “


to run. Run from routine. The mundane. Commitment. From expe-riences already lived in search of new ones. With time she takes over the mind. Depression. You wake up one day and everything’s gray. You go to sleep one night and everyone’s dull. Then comes matter. Lethargy. Headaches.

I tried to trick her by changing apartments. In the past that would have bought me time, but—

Next.Off to San Francisco. Worked on the docks. The smell of the fish

made me nauseous. I got used to it, though. Too used to it.Next.Memphis took me by surprise. Tended bar on Beale, and I can still

feel the blues crying through me some days.But it was in the Florida Keys I met my Rose. We started with her

pouring me margaritas in a tiki bar in Key Largo and ended with me pouring her wine on my porch. By week’s end I told her, “You shouldn’t get involved with me. I have handicaps.”

She smiled. “Fine. I’m on my way to Montana. Catch you in an-other life?”

Montana was cold. But she wanted to learn to ride horses. Then she missed the water so we went to San Diego. Bumblebee, I called her, light then flight. We had Jordan in a small town in Missouri. Zoe in Arizona. The dog she found on Madison Avenue drinking sewer water.

“Honey, he’s missing an eye. I’m thinking maybe he’ll scare the baby,” I said. “And why’s he limping?”

Eight-hundred dollars later, I grew to like Tyson. He’d follow Zoe everywhere and bark when Jordan messed with her even though she’d poke him in his good eye and curl up giggling.

She was his human.Then Rose wasn’t feeling well. She was pregnant, again. “The

anchor’s getting heavy,” she said. We decided to settle for a while in Phoenix. I took a nine to five. Fluorescent lights, benefits, the whole nine. Motherhood muffled the voice of Change in her head. She didn’t mind roots. Inside my head, rootless.

I struggled to get through the days. The kids kept me busy until seven-thirty, but after bedtime, I was left to the thoughts in my head. The same thoughts that made me tell Rose I was going for a walk when I went to the bus station instead. I threw the ticket away before bed, but I dreamed of St. Augustine that night. The old architecture and the sea water foaming around my feet. I got a new car the next day. I took up bowling. Then golf. Then nothing, except the tube.


“You’re leaving us, aren’t you?”“Don’t say that. You guys are my world.”“No,” she said, “we just live in it.”Hurricane Katrina hit. Rose blamed our demise on my nature and

I blamed it on the weather. “Convenient,” she said, when I men-tioned it’d be a good idea to go to New Orleans with the others to help. They were paying over $18 an hour and needed hands. I told her it’d only be a couple of months and we could use the money.

She didn’t help me pack. Still—Next.I was in New Orleans, in the midst of destruction and sadness,

and I felt at home. Despite carrying with me Rose’s last look, I was feeding the monster. But living amongst the wrecked and injured didn’t hurt as much as the echo of Zoe’s giggling in my head.

I’d been there four months when I heard New York was pay-ing a lot for someone with that kind of experience. Construction workers were always needed up there. But I missed my family. I thought of Rose. Her big belly, full of Zoe, sitting in her chair reading. I thought of Zoe chasing Tyson chas-ing Jordan.

Next.“One way to La Guardia.”I should’ve gone home.

But it was Her.My weakness.My chain.Rose never called.

She knows me. She was me. Last I heard she re-married and I’m here. I have everything. I have nothing. I’m no one.

I’m a ghost.A memory.A runner.Thank you all for listening.Next.

“Por

trait

de G

race

Kel

ly”

by N

eal T

urne

r


“T is for Trouble” by Matthew Watkins


full of muscle and chin,and the corpuscles

of the damned we call stones.tire tracks carve out veins.

starlings jab at the pinkof nerve endings.

every puddle hides a lungthat breathes when boots step.

bedlam reigns silent,and a senile dew,

palimpsest of weak smiles.

a old cane digs holes,pursuing escape.

the resultant eyes look up,eager as gingerbread men

for a nibble.

pain was born here,bottled in the first amoeba.not till countless deaths later

did petals react,breaking this shifting tomb,

to climb.

Mudby Chris Crittenden

“Let

the

Brig

htne

ss L

ive

Her

e” b

y R

hian

on H

uot


The Language of Spectral Ships

by Jeffrey C. Alfier

Seems mariners from my mother’s kinfolkbelieved only the past could enlighten

the present day, some recursive portentrestoring itself in the here and now.

So as boys kicking over beached starfishto find what the stranded arms hid from light,a great-uncle would wrestle through his mindhow a harbor warehouse burned at midnight,

or why a dockworker was crushed by freightas if he should have heard the cable fray

in the wreck some ancient helmsman omenedhimself just by having women aboard.

So I learned to perceive the world at largeas language I would surely understand,

but only through its early renderingin signs first elapsed, then bled together.

“Am

eric

an D

ream

” by

Rya

n K

ent


Phantoms haunt herthrough the dreary day,

gray as a boulder.She wavers in wind

past scattered houses withchimneys puffing wisps of smoke.

She crosses faded parkwayswith tumbling twigs, hollow leaves

and shadows of squirrels.She wanders on slopes

past lifeless figuresand trams reduced to wires,

descending into fogon a narrowing passage.

Walking in Shadowsby Charlotte Digregorio

“Unt

itled

(por

trait

of a

wom

an)”

by

Zar

eh


The Way They Brokeby Joe Celizic

After Mama Jen died but before her funeral, I accidentally knocked over a glass on our concrete porch. The clear shards splayed across the gray and I think I normally would’ve felt bad, but I didn’t. I just stared at their scalpel edges, remembering the way it popped like a balloon. It felt like the last swallow of a cup of water, satisfying and final. I left the glass bits there to reflect miniature rainbows onto the porch wall and ceiling and I spent the rest of the day stepping on dried leaves, splintering dead branches.

Mama Jen wasn’t really our mom, just our aunt. She stayed with Liz and I after school until Mom got home from her second job at the hospital where she poured out bedpans and rewrapped foam mattresses in warm white sheets. The three of us ate fish sticks and watched Cops on our black pleather loveseat, staying up later than we should.

Sometimes while we waited, Mama Jen made us write letters to Mom telling her how great she was and how much we loved her. She tried to make us sweep and dust and vacuum too, but there is only so much you can make a kid do.

Your mother slaves for you, she told us. Don’t you forget.I would nod my head slow like a rocking chair, even though I

didn’t know what she meant, couldn’t picture Mom in shackles. All I saw was Mama Jen folding our laundry, stacking our sandwiches for the next day and calling her husband to tell him she’d be late.

I broke an umbrella. I opened it up in my bedroom and bent back the sticks, ripping the plum nylon. Tried to break the metal rod too, but it wouldn’t go, only bowed until it was a crouched leg belonging to someone who was on their way down to pray.

Liz came in as I was gripping either end of the rod, ramming the middle with the sole of my foot. Her eyes were two moons.“G

hita

” by

Dav

id M

. Brid

ges


You’re in big trouble, she said.

I don’t care, I told her.

She’s three years older but didn’t try to stop me. She just sat on my bed and watched until I was done, pointed at one of the stems hanging on for dear life, saying, You missed one.

Mom was skinny like an antenna and Mama Jen reminded me of a hippo. The

skin around Mom’s eyes looked like two black olives; Mama Jen’s eye-shadow blazed orange and yellow. The one thing they had in common: the smell of violet that tarried in their hair so that when I closed my eyes and just breathed, I couldn’t tell them apart.

I fell in love with the feeling. I pocketed light bulbs from our lamps, shattered them in the street, frosting the curbs and blacktop. I snapped our meter stick, dismantled my mother’s curling iron, cracked three of Liz’s plastic hangers. I even ripped the edges of my own sheets at night, slept with the frayed strands tickling my neck. I couldn’t get enough, like every break loosened a bolt in my bones. I was baffled by the fragility of it all, perplexed by how something could be well and good one moment, ruined the next.

One afternoon, I took our toaster and my Louisville out to Rocket Park where kids shot their bikes down a two-story hill. I clunked the toaster right on the sandy groove where bike tires had smoothed the grass away and I took high axe-like swings at the plastic exterior. I didn’t stop until all the metal pieces glimmered in the day. I left them there, hoping they would be sharp enough to pop tires.

Someone saw me and called our mother. They told her they’d never seen an eight-year old so angry. I told Mom I wasn’t angry, but she took my bat away nonetheless. She moved our appliances to the top shelves and replaced the bulbs I stole with ones from my room, grounding me in my own darkness.

“Cor

ner”

by

Lay

la B

lack

shea

r


Back when Mama Jen sat us, I tried to stay up at night so I could watch her leave. Sometimes, when Mom had an especially long day or Liz and I had given Mama Jen a hard time, they would hug each other. I was fascinated by the juxtaposition between their two bod-ies embraced. They whispered words that sounded only like S’s from behind the plywood bookshelf, my distanced hiding spot. I didn’t ask what they said, couldn’t give away my position. I only stared and contemplated big against small, equated it with strong versus weak. I didn’t know any better.

The sky at the funeral was gray and plain and I was sure that even if I could tear apart the clouds, they would’ve come right back. The headstones in the cemetery jutted out like crooked teeth and all I could think about was breaking one, watching the rock split in two, revealing glitter and crag, but Mom held my hand the entire time.

Her and Liz cried when they got to the glossy cherry casket, so I tried not to. We stood and waited through words and when it ended we took a walk through the cemetery where Mom finally let me go.

I found a softball-size rock by a tree. I palmed its coarse skin and dashed to the nearest headstone, an elderly gray stump engraved for George Paul Bellingham, my victim. I beat and pounded stone on stone with no results except the white chalk scuffs I’d scraped on the slab. Mom and Liz just watched and when I was done I looked up to them pink-faced and panting, my silence begging for an explana-tion. They had none. I decided headstones must already be broken, chiseled down to their lowest denominator.

One night that week, Mom came into my room, woke me up and asked if I was okay, if I missed Mama Jen and if I thought Liz was okay, but I was too tired to answer. She didn’t seem to mind, just eased herself onto the foot of my bed, the pressure tightening the sheets over my legs. She held one hand behind her back.

I’ve got something for you, she said.She pulled out a bag of Popsicle sticks, dropped them in my arms

where they rattled. I stretched open the bag and we each grabbed one, cracking them in unison. We broke stick after stick, some squealing under the strain while others popped cleanly. We piled the corpses in our laps.

Feels good, huh? I asked, bag almost empty. But my mother just kept on breaking.


Il Maestroby Matthew Watkins

Topoletto (little mouse): Watcha doing Maestro?Maestro: I am making an electric pick-up for my violins.Topoletto: Cooool. What’s that do?Maestro: It’s going to use an electromagnetic field to communicate the harmonic disturbance created by the strings to an amplifying device.Topoletto: Huh?Maestro: I am going to make it louder.Topoletto: But Maestro, it’s already loud. Even though you play magnificently of course, it’s already very loud.Maestro: Louder. One violin will play like a million screaming beasts from the Netherworld.Topoletto: Maestro, you scare me.Maestro: I know, Topoletto. I know.

“Il M

aest

ro” b

y M

atth

ew W

atki

ns


Edgar Allan Poeby Paul Kavanagh

I watch as a bead of sweat appears upon your brow. Another ap-pears and is caught in the light from the moon. Magic is so simple, really. If magic was complex then nobody would care. Magic has to be simple. Sadness appeared like lightning against a bruised sky. It was getting late and you said you had to go.

We stand at the base of the mountain and try to picture our way to the top of the mountain. We are unable to fathom the distance. We are unable to comprehend the way.

There is fear. Inchoate thoughts evaporate. You forget about the mountain. You get out of our unmade bed.

You complain about my persistence. Isolation distorts time like the way the Sun creates shadows. I watch you dress. Dressing, you have lost all the grace you once possessed.

When women fall, they wish the ground to reach them before they reach it. Men drift down like snow flakes as we fall. There is a mo-ment, a point, where we are no longer falling. We are suspended, motionless, it is as though gravity has given up.“E

tude

5”

by O

leg

Shc

hege

l


Light fades into darkness and darkness gives way to the light and in between there is conver-gence and divergence. You tell me to stop messing around, you reduce me to silly grimaces. You present him as though he is in the room, concrete, tangible.

Now that we are at the dénoue-ment, me lying there on my un-made bed, I now know that you are an Edgar Allan Poe story.

“Etu

de 4

” by

Ole

g S

hche

gel

“Etu

de 6

” by

Ole

g S

hche

gel


It isn’t so much his beleaguered slopea kind of longstanding surrender –

but the matted hair, skin, clothes all of a colorand gone wild like the lawn of a foreclosure,

ill-fitting boots missing a laceBags in each hand offer balance

like the pole of a tightrope walkerpoised between identity and anonymity

We both arrived through the same portalI walk my highwire and negotiate for balanceIf we move forward, backward or not at allearth still winds clockwise and when we fall,

we exit the same door

by Ellen Savage

fine line

“Red

Ani

mal

Shy

Moo

n”

by A

li S

u

Moulin Review Vol. 3

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Transcript of Moulin Review Vol. 3