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plainsong

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plainsong

Volume 29

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© 2015, plainsong, Vol. 29

Department of English, University of Jamestown, Jamestown, North Dakota;

copyright reverts to authors, artists, and photographers on publication, and

any reprinting or reproduction may be exercised only with their permission.

Plainsong, a non-profit journal funded by the University of Jamestown and published by the

University Department of English, includes the work of students, faculy, staff, and alumni of the

University of Jamestown, besides occasional interviews with professional writers.

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Editorial Board Department of English

David Godfrey, Ph.D, Chair

Mark Brown, Ph.D.

Sean Flory, Ph.D.

Dorothy Holley

Larry Woiwode, Writer in Residence,

Plainsong Editor

Student Assistant Briana VinZant

Layout & Interior Design Donna Schmitz

Cover Photo God’s Brush Strokes,

Levi Brown,

Plainsong Prizewinning Photo Award

Printing & Binding

Two Rivers Press, Jamestown

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Table of Contents

Advice, Matthew Nies, Honorable Mention, Poetry………………………………….….6

A Love Past, Briana VinZant, Thomas McGrath Poetry Prize…………………….… 7

Songs of Societies Past, Briana VinZant………………………………………………………….…8

Pink Petals, Rachel Nyhus………………………………………………………………………………13

Maddy, Briana VinZant………………………………………………………………………………….14

Infinite Riches, Mark Brown……………………………………………………………………………15

An Unexpected Gesture, Shai Mason………………………………………………………………..16

Autumnal, Linda Hess…………………………………………………………………………………….17

A Farewell Gift, Levi Brown………………………………………………………………………..…. 18

Mid-Fall Song, Larry Woiwode……………………………………………………………………..…19

The Ballad of Lavina Fisher, Craig Anderson……………………………………………..….…20

Fortress Mist, Ashley Lynn LeBrun………………………………………………………………….21

My Fort, Briana VinZant…………………………………………………………………………………22

The Three in Concert, Andrew Tjader……………………………………………………………….23

Bridge, Megan Baker………………………………………………………………………………….…..24

Labor of Love, Karson Pederson……………………………………………………………….……..25

Forty, Larry Woiwode…………………………………………………………………………………….27

Artists, Destiny Winkler, Louise Erdrich Nonfiction Prize…………………………..28

I Thank God, Matthew Nies……………………………………………………………………………..30

Wilson Memorial, Megan Baker……………………………………………………………………… 32

The Death of an Author, Emma Preble, Honorable Mention, Fiction…………..…33

Declaration, Bradley Brooks…………………………………………………………………………….35

Like Mr. Gray, Briana VinZant…………………………………………………………………………36

Companionship, Rachel Nyhus…………………………………………………………………………40

Obsession with Fascination, Larissa Patch, Honorable Mention, Nonfiction….41

Tick Tock Tick, Katie Brandt…………………………………………………………………………….43

Cascade Gable, Ashley Lynn LeBrun…………………………………………………………………47

Tanka Triad, Craig Anderson, and Seasons of Haiku, Anthony Buzzell, Caleb Gwerder,

Lauren Cannon, Sarah Holen, Holly Wilson, Eweyomola Akintunde, Elyssia Skillicorn.48-49

More than Sunset Dreams, Matthew Nies………………………………………………………….50

Love Repairs, Briana VinZant……………………………………………………………………………51

Carpe Diem, Matthew Nies……………………………………………………………………………….52

Royal Antiques, Laura Sieling, Larry Woiwode Fiction Prize…………………………53

High-Way, Rachel Nyhus…………………………………………………………………………………58

Interview with Charles Johnson…………………………………………………………………59

Wash Day Done, Matthew Nies………………………………………………………………………… 63

Focus, Brooke Lietzke……………………………………………………………………………………….64

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ADVICE

“Poetry should be free—verse unfettered and beautiful,” she said.

“Poetry,” he said, “should be profane.”

“Poetry,” he said, “is dead and died with Robert Frost.”

“Isn’t there anything magical left?” I asked.

“Poetic expectations want more than mundane

Entrees. Poetry, I believe, isn’t lost,

It only needs to be re-found,

Dug up from its intellectual grave.

Poetry,” I said, “never died but sleeps.”

“Poetry is rap and rhyme and street hoods bowed, praying, crying,” he said.

“Poetry,” she said, “is found in The Atlantic or The New Yorker.”

“Poetry,” she said, “is motion and humanity.”

I continued scratching in my chicken-scratch way.

My grandma-cursive blended into the pages

As black blends with white. It felt appropriate,

As if I were creating poetic mess, believable,

Pure, something out of a book. I wrote,

Not typed—change from a new normal way.

Poetry is a young man’s game, or an old man’s game, I thought.

Poetry, I thought, isn’t my thing—I’m no T.S. Eliot.

Poetry, I thought, slips through my fingers and fades away.

What’s my advice to a writer like me—

Young, without publication? “Savor sentences

That snap like bullwhips; marvel in minted

Words more costly than hundred dollar bills.

Others do well-enough writing history.”

Yes, but I must write, and will not heed.

—Matthew Nies

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A LOVE PAST

It’s always something small, a word, a smell,

and I remember. Pain begins to slip

through walls I’ve cracked. You built my prison cell

and I’m angry. Fury provokes my tongue

to trip with phrases I regret and yet,

I don’t. Because you act as though I chose

to hurt you, but that’s bullshit. You forget

the depth of love I felt. Not all love goes

on for life. Some fades. I wish you’d pause—recall

the time we shared so you might see that I

would never choose to hurt you. Please, please haul

your pride away. Let go and say good-bye.

Our love will never die. Its time has passed.

We must part ways to find a love that lasts.

--Briana VinZant

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SONGS OF SOCIETIES PAST

Pride is arguably the most powerful of the seven deadly sins. It leads to envy, jealousy, anger,

vengeance, even lust. The Greeks felt that pride or hubris was the worst trait a hero could exhibit

since it led to unforgivable actions like patricide. Unfortunately, pride is closely related to one of the

most important traits necessary to a hero: honor. Honor in Homeric society and medieval Europe

was attained by military warfare; the best warrior received the highest honor and was the most

important component in the war cause. Both societies esteemed personal honor, and that

encouraged an excess of pride. Homer’s The Iliad and Turvoldus’ The Song of Roland feature

characters whose pursuit of personal honor result in the breakdown of community and of the war

effort itself. Homer and Turvoldus employ the stories of Achilles and Roland to assert the

importance of a centralized government with a strong leader and sense of community.

The Iliad portrays a society with a weak leader and a militaristic structure that discourages

personal unity. According to Mark E. Edwards, author of Homer: Poet of the Iliad, “the kings do not

consistently make political, judicial or even military decisions on behalf of their people” (**165).

Agamemnon is the leader in The Iliad but his political authority is self-assumed; his soldiers are

fighting for personal honor more than a cause. Agamemnon has a closer relationship to the cause,

and brought the most troops, so he assumes leadership (**Edwards 164). He is not the most

qualified, nor was he divinely appointed (**Edwards 237). The other soldiers fight to gain personal

honor. Homer composed The Iliad to criticize and reform Greek society because he believed that a

focus on community was essential to stability and prosperity. He also recognized the consequences

that disunity paid out in death tolls.

The Song of Roland was composed during a period that experienced a lack of unity similar

to The Iliad. According to Peter Haidu, the era of The Song of Roland was marked by “the

disappearance of centralized authority” (**49). Turvoldus wrote The Song of Roland in a different

time period than the poem is set to contrast the feudalistic society he lived in against the strength of

the society in Charlemagne’s rein. This contrast explains the anachronistic feudal structure

Turvoldus superimposed on Charlemagne’s army. The feudal system encouraged an obsession with

personal honor, much as the Greek society in The Iliad (Sayers 30). In The Song of Roland, the

feudal structure is based on mutual need. A lord has land and needs someone to work the land and

aid in his battles, so he gives a vassal a section of land in exchange for loyalty. The vassal then gets a

percentage of the wealth the land produces and receives protection from the lord (**Sayers 31).

Unfortunately, this system meant that a vassal’s status or honor directly related to the amount of

freedom the vassal had, so individual honor was prized in feudalistic societies. Turvoldus advocates

for a centralized ruler like Charlemagne, while criticizing the feudal system. Charlemagne is

idealized because Turvoldus felt society in his day should strive to conquer and unify under the rule

of one leader, as Charlemagne did.

Homer uses Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s internal battle to demonstrate the way the structure

of a society encouraged political disunity. Part of the problem the Greeks face in The Iliad is the lack

of an appointed leader with the authority to make final decisions. The other part is the emphasis

society places on personal honor, or arête, and its physical manifestation, timé. This obsession is

fueled by the competitiveness present in Greek society, as seen in Patroclus’ funeral games

(Edwards 19). Edwards quotes Hesiod in his essay on Greece, “potter struggles against potter,

craftsman with craftsman; beggar is jealous of beggar,” to demonstrate the everyday presence of

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competition in all levels of Greek society (19). Achilles’ pride and competitive nature keep him from

reconciling with Agamemnon, and Agamemnon’s competitiveness with Achilles causes the initial

conflict. Agamemnon’s timé, and therefore, arête decrease when he returns Chryseis to her father.

Agamemnon is insecure about his honor, since he knows he is not the most qualified leader or the

strongest warrior, so he takes Achilles’ timé. The result of their conflict is the death of Patroclus and

countless other heroes. Agamemnon might have persuaded Achilles to fight sooner but he sends

messengers to negotiate instead of appearing in person to admit that he’s wrong (259). Homer uses

the nature of their conflict to highlight the failings of Greek society and encourage a more unified

structure.

Likewise, Turvoldus uses Ganelon and Roland to emphasize problems within the feudal

system. Roland dishonors Ganelon when he volunteers Ganelon to be messenger to Marsilion,

ensuring by his action Ganelon’s death. Roland worsens the blow by laughing at Ganelon in public.

Like Achilles, Ganelon’s desire to seek vengeance against Roland isn’t amiss; his reaction would

align with typical medieval behavior. According to George Fenwick Jones, “Hate and anger must be

virtues in the value code of SR, since they are constantly attributed to the most exemplary

character” (Jones 45). Ganelon is also like Achilles because each shares an excessive desire for

revenge—Achilles is vengeful toward both Agamemnon and Hector.

According to Haidu, Ganelon and Achilles both have “an irascible touchiness when the point

of honor is disturbed” (Haidu 84). Ganelon is quickly angered and employs an entire army to kill

and dishonor Roland; Achilles sacrifices Patroclus in an attempt to avenge his honor, and then

drags Hector’s dead body around for days to avenge Patroclus’ death. Ganelon’s initial response is

justified because he receives a trial, as opposed to an immediate death sentence. Ganelon was not

capable of dishonoring Roland on his own. Roland is a better warrior than Ganelon; in a fair fight,

Roland would easily win. Ganelon cannot simply tolerate Roland’s actions; that, in and of itself,

would be dishonorable. Ganelon is essentially backed into employing the Muslim army to kill

Roland. Turvoldus recognized the reality of these situations in the feudal system. He knew they

caused instability in society and discouraged unity, and he illustrates that through Ganelon.

Roland exhibits a similar obsession with honor and it results in the deaths of twenty

thousand men, including Roland himself. Although the title seems to suggest that Roland is the

protagonist, he is not. Roland portrays many of the behaviors Turvoldus criticizes. Haidu says

“Roland and Ganelon share the same fundamental character trait” (49). This trait is an obsession

with personal honor. Roland clearly submits to this obsession when he refuses troops from

Charlemagne, and then refuses to sound the Oliphant, the horn, to request aid from Charlemagne

and the rest of the French army. Both decisions indicate a desire for personal honor instead of

commitment to the general good of the community. When Charlemagne offers Roland extra troops,

Roland says, “May God strike me / if I discredit the line of my history” (Turvoldus 790-91). The key

word is “my.” Roland’s concern is for himself, not the safety of his troops. And when Oliver tells

Roland to sound the Oliphant and alert Charlemagne of the impending attack, Roland responds,

“May it never please God / that any man alive should come to say / that pagans—pagans!—once

made me sound this horn” (1073-74). Again, Roland is focused on himself and what people will say

about him, rather than the lives of his troops. Turvoldus underscores the individualist thinking that

feudalism encouraged. Roland’s decisions result in the slaughter of the army Charlemagne left him

with. If he had been fighting to rid the world of pagans and to protect his community, he could have

saved many lives. That being said, Roland was reared in the belief that personal honor was

esteemed above everything and everyone else. His loyalty to Charlemagne was based on a contract,

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as opposed to a relationship, so Roland’s logic wouldn’t necessarily have been shamed during

Turvoldus’ time.

Achilles, Ganelon, and Roland are alike in that their initial choices aren’t completely

unjustified in respect to the attitudes of their societies; the poets demonstrate their disapproval of

the heroes’ actions in order to criticize the societies they live in. W. F. Jackson Knight agrees with

Achilles’ initial anger in his book, Many Minded-Homer but says, “His real fault was what he

allowed himself to be…He lost balance, restraint and thought for others” (Knight 157). Homer

agrees with the logic of Achilles’ anger but disapproves of his selfish actions, a disapproval he

reveals through Phoenix, when he says to Achilles, “you have to master your proud spirit / it’s not

right for you to have a pitiless heart / Even the Gods can bend” (Homer IX.509-11). Phoenix is

saying Achilles is guilty of hubris because he has more pride than the Gods. Homer draws attention

to Achilles’ hubris via Phoenix because he wants to expose the negative effects of the selfish

introspection that personal honor encourages.

Later, Achilles says, “Then let me die now…/ He died far from home, and he needed me to

protect him” (XVIII. 102-05)--“him” referring to Patroclus. Achilles recognizes the consequences of

his pride. He is distraught with grief. Homer invites readers to feel the depth of Achilles’ grief, so

they understand the consequences of continuing a society in that fashion. Homer also illustrates the

consequences on a national scale; the Greeks are fated to beat the Trojans, but when Agamemnon

clashes with Achilles, the odds turn in the Trojan’s favor. Odysseus says to Achilles, “We fear the

worse. It is doubtful/ That we can save the ships without your strength” (IX 233-34). Homer’s

disdain for Achilles’ actions is evident in the wise men surrounding Achilles, supporting Homer’s

advocacy for strong leadership and sense of community. If both were a reality, Achilles would fight

for the community in spite of his anger, or risk the legal consequences Agamemnon would be

authorized to administer.

Turvoldus demonstrates his disapproval of Ganelon and Roland’s perspectives on personal

honor through Oliver and Charlemagne—the two strongest, most idealized characters in the poem.

As stated, Charlemagne is the true protagonist in The Song of Roland; Turvoldus idealizes him

because he feels Charlemagne is the epitome of a good, strong leader. In Dorothy L. Sayers’

introduction to The Song of Roland, she says Turvoldus portrays Charlemagne as a “just, prudent,

magnanimous, and devout” (**14) ruler. In contrast, Roland—Charlemagne’s right hand man—is

not prudent, can be called unjust and, though he may be generous, is not forgiving. Sayers says, “He

has the naïve egotism of an Achilles” (16). Turvoldus shows a stronger contrast between Oliver and

Roland. In Laisse 87, the text reads, “Oliver is wise” (Turvoldus 1093). The text does not expressly

state that Roland is unwise, but as with Greek titles, if Roland were particularly wise, wisdom would

accompany his name. Turvoldus says that Oliver is wise because his decisions are for the good of the

community. Sayers says, “Oliver is a sounder soldier than Roland—more concerned with military

necessity than with his own prestige” (17).

Sayers points out that Oliver is concerned that not sounding the Oliphant will result in the

slaughter of twenty thousand soldiers, including Charlemagne’s two best men, himself and Roland.

That death toll would not be beneficial to the war effort. The text says that Roland is a good vassal,

and he is. He fulfilled the duties of a vassal; he is loyal to Charlemagne, but not to his nation. The

nature of the feudal structure creates this disparity between leader and kingdom. Turvoldus uses

Roland’s success as a vassal to illustrate the problems inherent in the feudal structure.

Similarly, Homer contrasts Achilles and Hector to emphasize the importance of fighting for

a community. Hector has a loving wife and child. He is the pride of his city. When he returns to the

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city walls, he acts as a leader, ensuring that the women of the town are making the proper sacrifices,

informing his family but not getting distracted by them, and spurring Paris to action. He

consolidates the necessary arrangements for his city to give it the best chance for victory. When

Hector speaks to his wife, to reassure her, he says:

“--the pain I will feel for the Trojan’s then,

For Hecuba herself and for Priam king,

For my many fine brothers who will have by then

Fallen in the dust behind enemy lines”

(VI. 473-76)

Hector’s concern is for his city and his comrades. He is fighting for more than himself and his

family. Achilles only ever shows this much concern for Patroclus after Patroclus is dead. Hector

fights for his city because he knows it is his duty. Achilles fights for revenge. Grecians would have

been familiar with Achilles’ story and Hector’s fate; Homer emphasizes this scene to evoke

sympathy in his readers because Homer felt Hector was more honorable than Achilles. When

Achilles prepares to go to battle, he is crying to his mother, Thetis, about how he caused Patroclus

death and seeks revenge on Hector. The scene can be likened to a toddler throwing a tantrum and so

mommy comes to the rescue; it evokes little or no sympathy.

Athena, the goddess of war, favors Achilles because she has hated the Trojans from the time

Paris offended her. This is expressly pointed out in book XXIV when Homer narrates, “the Grey-

eyed one / who were steady in their hatred / For sacred Ilion and Priam’s people” (29-31); that is

never disputed; Zeus favors Hector because Hector has done much to please the Gods—he is

exemplary of every virtue cherished by the gods—and Zeus even argues to alter Hector’s fate and

save him from death. The contrast between Hector and Achilles exemplifies the traits Homer felt

should be held in esteem in Greek society. Hector was a leader, which is why the Gods favored him,

and why they worked on his behalf to see he had a proper burial. This sentiment suggests that

Homer felt leadership such as Hector’s should be honored in society.

Homer’s clearest argument for the necessity and importance of a society built around

community with a strong leader is conveyed by the imagery on Achilles’ shield, forged by

Hephaestus. One of the images illustrates two parties, one who claims injury by the other, and the

conflict being settled in a court of sorts. Edwards interprets Homer’s images as “civic

adjudication…taking place, a better solution to disagreement than vendetta” (Edwards 281).

Edwards suggests that Homer is pointing directly to Achilles and Agamemnon’s fight and offering a

different solution. It can be argued that Nestor and Odysseus tried to reason with them, which is

true. The difference between the two situations lies in the structure; the scene on the shield implies

a strong government. Achilles’ and Agamemnon’s situation was not blessed with that order. In

contrast to the bulk of The Iliad, the shield depicts peaceful, pastoral life prominently.

At lines 582-615 in book XVIII, Homer depicts a scene in which all levels of society work

together and a good king sits watching, satisfied by the community he has built. This scene is meant

to refer back to Hector’s return to the city. Though Hector is not in place at the time, he acts like a

ruler. The scene is also meant as a contrast to the Greek army, which spends much of the poem

discussing tactics to reconcile their own armies, rather than discussing war tactics. The imagery of

the shield appears between Achilles’ decision to fight and his actual battle with Hector, because

Homer wants to draw a contrast between the two warriors and their communities. Achilles defeats

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Hector, but the conversation between Zeus and Athena suggests that Achilles did not deserve to

win; he won because Hector was fated to die. The outcome of the battle is consistent with the

presumption that Homer uses The Iliad to argue the importance and benefits of a society built on

community.

Homer and Turvoldus came from societies plagued by incessant warfare, where men were

only as good as their performance on the battlefield and where boys died young. Achilles’ and

Roland’s stories are probably not based in truth, but the poets depicting them likely witnessed

similar internal conflicts that resulted in wasted lives and unjustified deaths. The poets express their

belief in the necessity for political unity by contrasting their protagonists with adversaries and

comrades, as well as through the use of imagery and empathy. That the two poems end on a note of

mourning may suggest that both poets suspected that neither of their nations would last, due to

their structural instability. The fears of mortality and legacy that drive the characters in both epics

are fears that any reader can sympathize with, and are present in every era. It is easy to understand

how such fears can drive people to make decisions like Achilles, Agamemnon, Ganelon, and Roland

enter into. However, the poets clearly illustrate that while such fears and insecurities are

understandable, they should be managed for the good of the community, because political unity is

essential to prosperity and longevity.

--Briana VinZant

Works Cited

Edwards, Mark E. Homer: Poet of the Iliad. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP. 1990. Print.

Haidu, Peter. The Subject of Violence. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1993. Print.

Homer. The Iliad. The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Volume A. Ed. Martin Puchner.

Trans. Stanley Lombardo. 3th ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. 230-331. Print.

Jones, George Fenwick. THE ETHOS OF THE Song of Roland. Baltimore: John Hopkins University

Press. 1963. Print.

Knight, W. F. Jackson, Many-Minded Homer. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc. 1968. Print.

Sayers, Dorothy L. “Introduction to The Song of Roland a new translation.” Baltimore: Penguin

Books, Inc. 1957. 7-44. Print.

Turvoldus. The Song of Roland. The Norton Anthology of World Literature: Volume B. Ed. Martin

Puchner. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. 3th ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. 222-284. Print.

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Pink Petals, Rachel Nyhus

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MADDY

At times the lack of right in life stifles

the whimsical beliefs that fill my heart;

Unwanted skepticisms nest inside

and arm themselves against my hopes and dreams.

A battle wages. Darkness wields the sword

of doubt. It cuts through faith without delay.

I feel alone in my pursuit of rules.

A guide does not exist to allocate

the breaks and falls and turns and gifts of life.

Some dreams do not come true. But when they do

It’s like a ray of sun that finds a break

in clouds of doubt and pain, reminding us

that someone, somewhere, cares and watches out

to shed a glint of hope when needed most.

--Briana VinZant

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INFINITE RICHES1

Such beauty in such abundance cheapens beauty; clarity dearer, more telling and terse, compact, spare, economical. --Mark Brown

1 See Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, I.i.37.

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AN UNEXPECTED GESTURE

On the very first page of No One Writes to Colonel the colonel is making a cup of coffee. When

he realizes there is barely enough for one cup he makes an important decision. He brews the cup for

his wife and not himself. It is an unexpected gesture that communicates his love for his wife.

Impressively, the Colonel doesn’t tell his wife he hasn’t had a cup himself. This is rare: to perform an

act of kindness without an expectation of anything in return.

Is chivalry dead? The small gesture of the Colonel means a great deal nowadays. Politeness has

become so scarce that it is mistaken for flirtation or persuasion. Perhaps this is due to the lack of

communication in today’s society. With the latest technology comes distractions and escapes from

reality. Books are replaced by Kindles, conversations are replaced with texting, and people may be

connected but they seldom interact.

America has taught its citizens to be selfish and individualistic; people are taught to be

sufficient unto themselves. What is not mentioned is that people need meaningful relationships with

others to remain stable. Independence is a good thing but there is a thin line between that and

reclusion. Love is often unheard of because of new ways of socializing. Friendships have become

vague and distant and a majority of teenagers would rather stay at home than go out.

The decline of social skills has led to a disconnection rather than a connection between people.

Most are afraid to show kindness, anger, pain, and other emotions that can be seen as leaving a

person vulnerable. Is this why the Colonel lies to his wife about having a cup of coffee? I don’t think

so. I believe they adore each other so much that it doesn’t matter to him if he didn’t get a cup of coffee,

and if he had told her the truth she would have graciously given him the cup.

To see love so easily and unselfishly in action seems mythical. It’s beautiful to be exposed to

warm-heartedness even if it is in a novel. The Colonel’s action allows the reader to understand what

kind of a man he is. He is a gentleman who isn’t looking for special recognition. It’s ironic that this is

part of what he is: a Colonel. Not expecting anything in return is the most amazing aspect of his

simple act. The Colonel has been through the pain of losing a son, and his wife has asthma attacks,

but instead of frustration and anger he shows fondness.

Marriage is highly valued and seen as a commitment that isn’t the same as pre-marriage love--

not necessarily less love or less affection but maybe a love hidden in small gestures such as the

Colonel’s. The “little things” are what matter in marriages and mature relationships. This includes not

only romantic relationships but friendships and relationships between family members. These smaller

gestures occur in real life and are appealing to a mature audience.

Realism is what makes No One Writes to Colonel a great story. Real emotions and real people

who struggle in everyday life I find attractive. A reader can connect to the characters because nothing

is overdone or overly dramatized. The Colonel lives in poverty and struggles with that but there is no

doubt that he would give all he has to his loved ones. Readers can relate to the realism of attachment

even in a generation where technology has taken over.

There is further meaning in the coffee offering; it overshadows the poverty of the Colonel and

his wife because the breadwinner, their son, is dead. Even though they don’t have much they have

each other. A rare and valuable quality is present that is worth more than money: love.

--Shai Mason

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AUTUMNAL At summer’s leaving the absence was in color not in beauty in shyer tones the leaves remaining arguing their time, forestalling first snows, the river carrying its fill-- and because I was not Eve naming the landscape the wind granted me two days’ leave before I had to trust it. --Linda Hess

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A Farewell Gift, Levi Brown

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MID-FALL SONG

In mid-fall, when thoughts swing wide And the years I’ve served my fate In roles as a storyteller’s aide-- Closing rhyme’s banging gate-- Revive in me the need to run To the high road in a high wind And listen as stories intimates told Build like grain in a bin; The first and worst are of death of course, The next and dearest sweetest Are of love and loss of love, For nature never treats us As we wish and shame and wanderlust Invite the story’s end As death revives the urge to live, To turn about the trend; Outside my pickup window, trees bend At the waist, shed cells of red As climbing buntings, clipped by a wind, Skid sideways like flung dread; And I am a singer in the night, A dying note not yet dead, A channel of chattel blowing free, My microphone my head. --Larry Woiwode

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THE BALLAD OF LAVINA FISHER

Down at Six-Mile Wayfarer House

Lived sweet Miss Lavina,

A regular wife in a common blouse

At the Charleston coastal marina.

She rented out rooms with her husband

To sea-weary travelers;

Some shared secrets with Miss Lavina

But the biggest was hers.

One day a renter, John Peeples,

Came across the Inn

Under the tall southern steeples

Shadowing hidden sin.

He did not take Miss Lavina’s tea

And felt unsettled that night--

To all her inquiries felt uncertainty

And an undeniable fright.

His bed fell through the bedroom floor

Right before his eyes;

He ran as fast as a cat out the door

In panic and surprise.

No man who met Lavina’s fate

Heard her gallows plea

“If ya’ll got something to tell Satan,

Give the message to me.”

--Craig Anderson

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Fortress Mist, Ashley Lynn LeBrun

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MY FORT

He broke my trust at six. He came

into my fort and asked

if he could touch, and I said yes.

Alone. Wearing a mask.

Each night he came again for me.

Confused, the truth unknown,

it weighed me down to feel unclean,

to feel the seed he’d sown.

This secret lay inside my heart

for six years, locked away.

I felt unlike my friends. What if

friends knew? What would they say?

At twelve, I made him stop. He tried

to hold me down and tear

my clothes. This time I fought. I can’t

forget his eyes, his stare.

The scars remain—a constant cloud

that blocks my light—shadows

I can’t escape. I still wonder,

should I let others know?

My heart still pounds when I recall

his touch as he unzipped

my jeans and slid inside of me.

After, my soul was ripped.

Why me? Was I a freak? How could

anyone forgive the truth

about my past? I hid. No one

could know about my youth.

Today, some know, but not my mom

or dad. I place the blame

on me. He asked. I gave consent,

and so I live in shame.

--Briana VinZant

23

THE THREE IN CONCERT

She sits at a table with a hand on her stomach. With the other she wipes away tears. Her

husband, sitting beside her, lifts away the brown hair stuck to her face and puts a hand on her shoulder.

She shakes her head.

She looks at the trees, laden with green leaves, and weeps. Her husband walks up and says, “It’s

O.K., darling. We’ll get through this.” But she shakes her head.

He rubs his forehead, frustrated, and walks away.

Her husband sits beside her and adjusts his glasses. He has started to grow a beard. She

continues to stare at the trees, one hand on her stomach. “What’s wrong with me?” she asks.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Then why?” she asks.

Her husband doesn’t know what to say.

The yellow and brown leaves blow past the window. Outside, the woman can see a child playing,

and smiles. Her husband puts his hand on her shoulder, sees the child, and starts to weep.

“Do you still love me?” she asks.

“Of course,” the husband says, and sips his coffee.

The woman touches her husband’s gray beard and says, “After what I’ve done?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he says, and kisses her hand.

The woman stares at the bare branches outside. Her husband sits beside her and sets his cane

on the table.

“How are you today, sweetheart?”

The woman doesn’t answer and holds tight to her stomach. He nods and looks outside.

The husband walks up behind his wife and touches her wrinkled face. Her white hair is in a bun,

and she smiles at him.

“I understand now, dear,” she says.

“Do you?” he asks.

“It wasn’t because of me,” she says, and smiles. He wipes a single tear streaking the powder on

her cheek, and kisses her.

“Do you still love me?” she asks.

“Of course.”

“Even after everything I did to us?”

“Always.”

--Andrew Tjader

24

Bridge, Megan Baker

25

LABOR OF LOVE

I’m driving into the vast, empty area that is Banks Township, commonly known as the Bakken,

with the sun reflecting off the snow in a beautiful sheen. The landscape sparkles, and I can’t help feeling

an overwhelming sense of home. I’ve driven down this country road hundreds of times, and its beauty

always amazes me, no matter the season. Lately, though, every drive to my grandmother’s house has

been a bit different. Along with the increasing number of oil wells popping up along the landscape,

semis outnumbering the cars, and new houses being built, my family has been experiencing change.

In a second, sadness saturates my body. It finally hits me that this visit will be unlike any before.

This will be the first time that I’ll be making lefse minus a member of my family. It is early March, and

the counting begins in my head as I pass the cemetery near my grandmother’s house. It has been four

weeks and three days since my Great Grandpa Art died, leaving those who loved him and his presence

adrift. I try to dab the tears from my face, attempting to hide the evidence of my grief, to force the tears

back, to pretend nothing has happened. His death came a few days before my seventeenth birthday,

and that added to my sense of loss.

I pull up into the driveway of the old homestead and try to remove the mascara stains from

under my eyes, knowing they’ll give me away to my family in a heartbeat if the removal isn’t complete. I

walk through the front door in anticipation, dread, anxiousness, sadness, all replaced with content, once

inside, where I’m able to relax my shoulders that have been in a tensed position all morning. I see my

Great Grandma Mary tending to the dough at the kitchen table, making sure it’s the correct temperature

to achieve the best rolling, just as I had imagined her this morning when I woke. Her small hands are

stronger than mine as they move through the dough as if it’s water.

My Grandma Ardis is running around, checking on everyone, ready to pounce at any

opportunity to feed, to clean, to hug. My entire family is here. The men are sitting on the couch,

questioning each other about what they know, the answer always “Not too much.” The women are busy

making sure everything is in its proper place, including the men.

I walk into the kitchen, embraced by a family member who’s replaced by another, and then

another until there is only one left, the one I’ve been looking forward to all morning. My Grandma

Mary’s hugs are unique. Her petite four-eleven frame is worn from years of hard farm work, raising

three children, tending to her garden, tending to people and my grandpa, all in the space of ninety

years. Her embrace enwraps me with the love only a Grandma can give. I put my head on her shoulder,

her squeaky hearing aid allowing me to release the stress of the day.

I think that some things never change, and I’m comforted by the thought as I flash through years

of memories: eating peas straight from her garden, pocketing cream cheese mints from the freezer,

playing among her vast variety of plants and flowers near the stream in the backyard, and all the years

of lefse-making at her side, so it’s time to get down to why I’m here.

In the beginning of the day, Grandma is the designated roller. Then she gives up her position to

one of the young ones to learn the art when she needs to rest. I take my spot next to her and see the

empty chair in front of the lefse grill across from me--a warm smile, a mischievous glint in his eyes, a

pair of suspenders that are absent--Grandpa Art. He was the cooker, usually eating more pieces once

they were done than placing them on the lefse cloths. My uncle Gene now occupies the spot, a reminder

26

that Grandpa will never stick out his tongue at me again after our playful talk. Gene has some of his

same characteristics, including the appetite, which gives a partly comforting feeling.

My focus remains the same, on Grandma. She continues rolling, stretching the dough on all

sides till it’s perfectly round and paper thin. Her arms work like a machine, programed to do this since

birth. They move with power and precision, gracefully and gently, and I think of how I will never be able

to emulate her technique, even after years of practice.

But she begins to tire after a few hours. Standing at the counter that’s slightly taller than she is

makes for an uncomfortable reach and her arms start to give. Now it’s my turn. She sits next to me and

gives advice on achieving the perfect lefse, meanwhile yelling at the men who continue to burn what

she’s rolled out, due to their distracted talking. Lefse is precious to her. Hours of dedication and hard

work, the prefect recipe and cooking time--this was not merely a piece of potato bread. It allowed her

family to gather and become one around the table. In her small kitchen, the smell of smoke and butter

fills my lungs.

The next batch is complete. The rambling of family members is a sign of what’s to come through

the kitchen door, with arguments of white versus brown sugar echoing in the hallway. And yet it’s a

relaxing atmosphere. That’s why they are here: to see each other, to catch up, to fill each other with

affectionate family joy, and to eat that delicious Norwegian staple.

The last ball of dough is transformed into another flat piece of perfection and the whole family

lines in a file for the feast to begin. Grandma Mary dishes herself up, slower than usual after a long day’s

work. Couches, chairs, tables, even the floor is not exempt from serving as a place to sit. Grandma finds

her spot, the old rocking chair in the corner. She sits there peacefully, eating, observing, and not adding

much to the conversation. I sit on the couch observing her. She looks around the room, pausing at each

individual for a few seconds before moving to the next. She has created this family, as she created the

lefse. She breathes life into each of us, the fruits of her womb evident all around. Each of us carries a

part of her, and that’s the source of her contented peace. She is aware that wherever goes, she will

remain with us in some form.

She knows she has done well.

--Karson Pederson

27

FORTY

These cold conditions

That swell and come

To seem the worst

Of age keep me from

That false hag fame

I was hot to mount

When I was young.

--Larry Woiwode

28

ARTISTS

Artists are observers of people and of the world. I have been thinking that artists are

foreigners in their own land, and as I closed the pages of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

by James Joyce, I was convinced of that. Artists live in a different world, and since their world is

different they do not integrate well into regular society on an intellectual level.

Earlier in the year I read a fictional recreation of the life of the young Ernest Hemingway. I

was entranced at trying to understand the complexity of artists, and how difficult it is for the

outside world to understand them. When I began my journey through A Portrait of the Artist as a

Young Man, I was curious if I would encounter the same depth of character in the artist Stephen

Dedalus. For a while, in the beginning, Stephen appears to be like any other outcast young fellow,

yet his uniqueness of character manifests itself as he bec0mes older.

Stephen is different from others even when he starts school. At the private school he is sent

to, Clongowes, Stephen thinks that, “all the boys seemed to him very strange” (Joyce 5). Even as a

child, Steven seems to find other boys exceptionally childish, and he shows wisdom beyond theirs

by pondering his status as a member of the universe (8). At this young stage of development,

Stephen is already showing how artists view the world differently.

I consider myself an artist. To me, the natural world is vibrant and pulsating. I am often

mesmerized walking from my dorm to my classes. I can tell this is not a common experience among

my fellow students, and I find it odd how they can stare at the sidewalk without giving a glance to

the splendor thriving around them. I believe artists live in a more vivid world of experience which

they observe and attempt to communicate to others.

Stephen Dedalus lives in a vivid world, which Joyce highlights by his use of stream of

consciousness. When Stephen wrestles with his sin, Joyce emphasizes the urgency of Stephen’s

thoughts by providing them in a continuous stream (81-83). Stephen’s sin is painted as a deep,

inescapable black haze, from which he cannot escape. The fantastic description of the sea-bird

woman also shows an eloquent understanding of the connection between emotions and visions

(123). The lucidity of his emotions distinguishes Stephen as an artist.

Artists are observant people, and their detachment from everyday society allows them to

observe the human condition with greater discernment. When Stephen is talking to Lynch about

the aesthetics of art, Stephen gives his observations with acute detachment, while Lynch ripostes

with average and simplistic answers. Stephen distinguishes between the physical world and the

mental world of understanding, and illustrates how there is a higher understanding between

matters that are mentally and visually stimulating (150). When Stephen uses the example of a

woman to explain the appreciation of beauty, Lynch rather crudely says, “Let us take her,” missing

entirely Stephen’s heightened viewpoint (151).

29

Artists have a multifaceted manner of understanding, and it is their goal to persuade the

general public to adopt their viewpoint. Stephen Dedalus also has a view of the goal of artists. He

says when he talks to Lynch, “Beauty expressed by the artist… awakens, or ought to awaken an

esthetic stasis” (150). Later he elaborates, “Though the same object may not seem beautiful to all

people, all people who admire a beautiful object find in it certain relations which satisfy and

coincide with the stages of themselves of all esthetic apprehension” (152). Stephen makes it clear

that his mission is to find true beauty, whatever that might mean.

I believe this quest for beauty, which Stephen links correctly to the pursuit of truth, is what

can cause artists to be some of the most troubled people (151). Their hunt for what is good and true,

whether of the human experience or in nature, can cause them to be either detached or difficult to

understand. At the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen admits that he is

moving from Dublin because he no longer feels he belongs in Ireland. He also decides that he can

no longer hold his closet friendship, due to his new path in life (179-180). Stephen, in his quest for

truth, feels the need to isolate himself from a place where he does not belong. Occasionally, the

troubled soul of an artist will get lost in its own world. The artist can become lost in the world of

“silence, exile, and cunning” (181). Not that this happens to all artists, but I think this idea helps

explain some of Emily Dickinson’s strange habits.

Artists are their own creation, separate from the world their bodies reside in. They see the

world through their own lens, which makes it difficult for them to agree with the mainstream view

of the world. They search for a means to show the world what they are seeing, and are driven by a

passion to explain this. Stephen, as he grew into the artist he is to become, exhibits the separation

an artist feels and must establish. He also exhibits a maturity of thought that arrives from the quiet

observation of a person who views the world in many different ways. Finally, Stephen Dedalus

illustrates the complexity of artists.

One does not become an artist; artistry is an ever-present state of being. Art is not limited

to simply sculpting or painting, but it is a creativity and vitality of the soul. Stephen, through his

journey from childhood to adulthood, is a representative of the way artistry is born into a person,

for better or for worse.

--Destiny Winkler

--Destiny Winkler

Work Cited

Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Toronto: Dover Thrift Editions, 1994. Print.

30

I THANK GOD

God is the God who said to me, “Feel My breath and breathe;”

And I breathed. And I breathed

The breath of life—new—hearing The coo of unbridled, wild possibilities.

God is the God who gave to me

The chance to hear and feel The life I breathe. The life I breathe,

Rough or smooth, is a blessing Some never know long. God, why me?

God is the God whose calculated might

Separated darkness from light Which I see by sight.

That I see by sight Is miraculous, a one-of-a-kind delight,

To see dim shadows and shudder at sun’s bite.

God is the God who smiles at bright Colors that blitz and jock and fight

And cross my line of sight. They cross my line of sight

And are marvelous—and so to see night And day oppose, just like black and white.

God is the God who formed so much.

My responsive knees erectly rush When they are touched.

When I am touched I respond, and hot cheeks say a blush

Is real—a physical salutation, or as is such.

God is the God whose specific fuss Ensures so many organs per bust.

Heat speaks by touch; Cold speaks through touch.

And I awe that God has desire without lust, Passion to create my iron which does not rust.

God is the God who imagined place And time, and took time to create

A simple thing like taste. A simple thing like taste

Distinguishes between acidic and base. How do you dream a tongue to differentiate?

31

God is the God whose mercy and grace Abound to bar entrance to Hades’ gates;

Death had a bitter taste. Now Death’s bitter taste

Can be sweet through the fate Christ gives to all who will take.

God is the only God who can turn a knell

Into a joyous victory bell— Hope you can smell.

And I can smell Miracles before un-smelled,

Like mint, jasmine, fresh-picked apples.

God is the God who conquered Hell And shook Sheol pell-mell.

There’s a smell, A clean smell

When unworthy souls are made well And joy and peace enliven once-dead shells.

God is the God who eagerly opines

To actual peoples’ “whys” Bled from their minds.

Questions begin in the mind. He answers “Seek and ye shall find,”

And implores the curious to ask of the Divine.

God is the God who is the greatest Kind Of consciousness, and gave me mine—

My mind. My mind

Is beyond words to define, Its excellence costlier than diamonds unmined.

I am overwhelmed, my senses not enough

To realize all I’ve received: so much, That blessings overflow my cup.

I channel my overflowing cup To God—a pithy offering compared to what

He paints—words the canvas, the paint, the brush.

My song will end no matter how well I sing, Though I decide if my notes are a blessing.

My soul is distinct, My soul is the only me;

Fashioned by God: priceless, unique. I thank God that He is, and I thank God for me.

—Matthew Nies

32

Wilson Memorial, Megan Baker

33

THE DEATH OF AN AUTHOR

I blame books for inflating my ego. I used to imagine myself to be better than I am--bigger,

stronger, smarter. All I’ve ever wanted to be was more, more than the nothing in life I was destined to

become, better than the mundane hand that was dealt to me. In my growing years, I felt an increasing

sense of claustrophobia. Then and now I realize my life has been contained in a box. From the box of a

school room, to a box of office life, and the inevitable box of a final resting place. All that changes is the

size of the box I occupy. It decreases year by year. A long time ago, I didn’t feel the boxes would define

me. I allowed “once upon a time” to give me freedom from the box, but my ability to look beyond four

walls drowned in the seas of time.

Years and years ago—when I still held to the idea of more—I could lie on a hardwood floor and

imagine myself far away. The cold, solid, dead wood that I lay on would transmute into soft, living

grass. The ceiling would light up into a star-filled night sky. As soon as I turned the first page, the words

would rain down on me and sink into my pores, restoring the weary bones that were my support. In

those moments, as my still-bright eyes traveled over the pages, whispers of a thousand authors were

telling me I could be more. These served as encouragement to an ordinary boy with extraordinary

dreams. To grip the sides of the weathered pages was to hold hands with a familiar friend. The thoughts

of long dead poets were my guiding light as I grew. They directed my path and held me upright against

bleak reality.

Now I have grown and I no longer find solace in the remnants of a dead man’s passing thoughts.

Occasionally I’ll pick a dust-covered novel from the shelf and hold it in my hands for too long, wishing

that its weight would somehow reawaken an optimism that’s gone dark in my maturity. I once believed

that I moved against the current, that I would become what no one else had ever been. Walls of ink were

my fortress, pages my shield, and their texts pushed me onward to a destiny. I would someday change

the world and, in the future, my name would grace the pages of a book not so different from the

volumes that lined my walls. A piece of my soul would be deposited over a thousand pages, and it would

be my words that inspired the ordinary to become extraordinary. When I was spoken of after my bones

were long buried, what I said in life would be uttered with reverence and esteem. My beliefs would mold

the world.

These aspirations were nothing more than folly, a fool’s mission, a small boy’s strategy to hide

from the truth. Books are misleading in that way. They make us think that every ordinary nobody has

the ability to change the world with words--that anyone can forge a new path and paint a future brighter

than the past. That any man can be a hero. The truth of it all is that only the powerful can change the

world with words. There are no new paths to forge and the future is painted with a golden brush by men

of higher standing than I. As for heroes, I scoff at the very idea that they exist. The only traces left of

heroic men are their disputed motivations in history books and their bones in the ground.

34

I used to think that what I read held some mystical power, but the magic of the pages faded with

my hope. As the clock turned, the words began to fade farther and farther from my memory. One day—I

can’t say when—I closed a book and the world of every other book slammed its doors on me. I would

never again gain strength or hope from worn pages or receive guidance from echoes of the past. I could

open a thousand books, but I had lost my will to believe what they said. So tonight is the night I will put

down the dust-covered dreams and set them to rest forever. I lay my head down to rest and close tired

eyes to receive blackness, forgetting the colors that once filled my sleep. I rest with an ease born of

despair that my name will be preserved only by the cold stone on which it’s chiseled; forgotten as soon

as time wears down the letters and moss covers their indentations.

I blame books for instilling the hope that would inevitably be ripped from my feeble hands. I

blame dead pages and dry ink and the faceless authors who are responsible for writing fallacies, because

I know the truth. I look in a mirror and see the difference between myself and the rest. Those whose

names will be uttered until the final sunset, whose wisdom will be etched onto monuments, whose

musings will become the musings of a generation, create a look of fear in my eyes that is absent in

theirs. I blame books because they were right and I didn’t dare be honest with myself, to be dead wrong.

--Emma Preble

35

DECLARATION

In the movie Smoke Signals I experienced moments I can relate to. One that stays with me

is when Victor and Thomas go into a hospital after an accident on the road and are confronted by a

police officer. The officer is already looking down on the boys because they are Indian, they’ve been

in an accident, and right away Victor says he does not drink. The cop doesn’t believe him because

of the schemas he has learned; for him the stereotype for Indians is they drink.

I can relate to this. Yes, I am black and, No, I do not gang bang. I also speak fairly well (not

in Ebonics) and do not frequently associate with other black people with whom I do not relate

because that is not my ideal group. Because I am an outlier, other black people see me as not black

and the same with white people who see me as not white. I do not feel the need to fall into

stereotypes and schemas of the world, because I was raised to be what I want to be. I am full black

and I know that the contents of my mind and my actions do not govern my ethnicity.

I know who I am and if the world can’t accept that, so be it.

--Bradley Brooks

36

LIKE MR. GRAY

“Around here we don’t say ‘like clockwork’ we say ‘like Mr. Gray,’ and that’s how we want things

run,” Linda said.

She led Anna along the employee side of the breakfast bar at Kate’s Diner. Linda had worked at

Kate’s Diner since 1965. She was the oldest employee and had been with the diner through many

owners. Anna was practically a baby in comparison, though she knew more about the Diner than she let

on. She had been there many times with her dad when she was younger. Her dad got Saturdays with

Anna after the split between him and her mom, and Kate’s diner is where they had lunch. Anna wanted

to let Linda teach her, though. Linda grew up at Kate’s Diner—running the place and teaching naïve

waitresses was her life—and Anna didn’t want to take that away.

“What does ‘like Mr. Gray’ mean?” Anna asked. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a low pony

tail and a few unruly hairs that had wriggled free framed her fair-skinned face.

“Richard Gray comes in here every day at the same time, orders the same meal, and coffee with

two sugars, and every day he bitches and moans about something.”

“But he always comes back,” Anna said.

“Sure does. We should call him Dick Gray.” Linda said, but in a tone that suggested she didn’t

mind Old Mr. Gray that much, as if, in some way, he was part of her routine.

Anna didn’t need to be introduced to Mr. Gray. He had a presence about him. When people saw

him, they grew tense—laughter turned to hushed whispers.

“Hello, Mr. Gray,” Anna said when she waited on him.

“I don’t need a menu,” he said. “Just get me bacon and eggs, over-medium on the eggs. I don’t

want’em too runny y’hear? And don’t make the bacon too crispy, but don’t undercook it neither. Don’t

like raw bacon.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Gray,” Anna said, smiling.

“Don’t call me sir, I ain’t your father.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Gray,” Anna said.

Linda came by, filling people’s half emptied coffees, whether they protested or not. “Oh shut-up

you old fart,” Linda said to Mr. Gray. “She’s just tryin’ be nice,”

“God-damn it! Don’t talk to me like that. I’m a paying customer.”

“And she’s a workin’ waitress. Now that we understand each other…”

“I oughtta get you fired you—you—”

“You say that every damn day,” Linda said, cutting him off, “and you ain’t so much as made a

dent in my reputation. So again, quit your whining and eat your food.”

“I haven’t got my food.”

“Well, whatever!” Linda smiled at Anna, in spite of the argument, and walked back toward the

bar, laughing. Anna followed, having nothing else to do.

“Why is he so grumpy?” Anna asked, behind the bar.

37

“Some people just ain’t got the same soul as the rest of us. It’s like they just don’t know how to

feel other people’s pain. It don’t make no difference, as long as he keeps comin’ back. I couldn’t care

less.”

Anna wasn’t sure she agreed with Linda about Mr. Gray. He had to have a reason for being so

bitter.

The phrase ‘like Mr. Gray’ was certainly accurate. Richard Grey arrived at Kate’s Diner every day

at exactly at one o’clock. Sometimes Anna would hang outside to see if he waited in his car or maybe

came from Brook’s Books next door, and so always arrived on time. But he didn’t. He pulled up to the

Diner in a rusted, powder-blue Ford pickup at exactly 12:59 PM and walked through the door at 1 PM.

Anna didn’t always have to wait on Mr. Gray. But when she did, she was cordial and genuine.

Some days it was hard.

“Can’t you do anything right?” he would ask her.

Anna’s eyes flickered with hurt at his scolding, but she would relax and remind herself there was

a reason he was so grumpy, and maybe it was bad enough that he acted as he did.

“Sure can,” she would say with a smile.

“Sure doesn’t seem like it.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to make it better, Mr. Gray?”

“Yeah, you can get me some hot coffee!”

“You know, I have a fresh pot brewing as we speak, I’ll bring some over for you.”

And then Mr. Gray would have nothing to say, and Anna would walk away, pleased at the small

accomplishment.

“Why are you so nice to him?” Linda asked this one slow Saturday when Mr. Gray was in a

particularly awful mood.

“Because I don’t know him,” Anna said.

“So that should make you angrier, because he don’t know you either and he’s still such an

asshole.”

“Yeah, but if he shuts me out and I shut him out, I’ll never get to know him.”

“And why exactly would you want to get to know him?”

“Doesn’t he look lonely to you?”

“Yeah, but maybe there’s a reason,” Linda said and wrung out a rag. She didn’t look back as she

went to clear tables.

“Do you have any grandchildren, Mr. Gray?” Anna asked, when she noticed him watching a

toddler make a mess across the room.

“Nope. Don’t like kids.”

“Any brothers or sisters?”

“Nope.”

Anna thought better of asking about his parents. The wrinkles in his face told her that if he’d

been close to his parents, those parents were long gone.

38

All the other waitresses stopped taking Mr. Gray’s table. They knew Anna wanted it and were

glad to give it up. Mr. Gray didn’t take a liking to Anna. He didn’t open up to her. But maybe he was less

grumpy. He still griped about some detail of his meal, but Anna was always able to appease him.

On July 4th, it rained and the diner was packed. Mr. Gray wasn’t able to sit in his usual booth

because several families had taken cover in the diner after the parade. Kids were screaming. The diner

was short-handed because it was a holiday and everyone wanted to celebrate with their families.

“I need more coffee!” Mr. Gray said to Anna as she rushed by, her arms full of dirty dishes.

“Of course, Mr. Gray,” Anna said, her face flushed. “I’ll be right there.” A family of seven asked

for extra napkins, and an elderly couple demanded to know where their food was. Anna balanced the

couple’s plates of food on one arm, shoved napkins into her apron, and grabbed the pot of coffee with

her other hand. She dropped off the napkins first.

“Coffee?” Mr. Gray asked again.

“Coming,” Anna said. She headed toward Mr. Gray’s table, looking toward the elderly couple to

tell them one minute, and the moment she opened her mouth she stepped in a puddle of tracked-in

rainwater and tripped, dumping the plates on Mr. Gray and smashing the coffee pot on the floor.

“Shit,” Anna said. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Gray.”

“How could you be so clumsy?”

Anna felt the hurt again, but this time she let go and began to cry. She stood up, ignoring the

mess and her customers, and walked out.

Anna didn’t refer to the accident on her next shift. She was polite. Mr. Gray still complained

about his food, but not to Anna. He grabbed another waitress, unfortunate enough to walk by. They got

along this way until late August, when the leaves began to change.

On the first day of September, Kate’s Diner didn’t run ‘like Mr. Gray’ because Mr. Gray didn’t

run like ‘Mr. Gray.’ At 1:00 PM, the jingle of the bell on the front door did not signal Anna, or Linda, or

anyone else that Mr. Gray was present. Its silence signaled that he was not.

“Linda,” Anna said, “Do you think Mr. Gray could be sick?”

“I don’t know. He’s had the sniffles a few times over the years, but he’s always been here.”

“Maybe he’s just late,” Anna said.

Even though Linda didn’t like Mr. Gray, she liked routine, so she didn’t like this.

The next day, both Linda and Anna listened for the bell at 1:00 PM, but it made no sound. Nor

did it ring the next day.

“Anna, you better come take a look at this,” Linda said a few days later. She was reading the

newspaper.

Deceased: Richard Nathaniel Gray

Born: September 17, 1934

Died: August 31, 1997

Richard Nathaniel Gray was brought into this world by James Richard Gray and

Louise Elena Gray. A religious man, baptized as a Catholic, he was married in the church to

Mary Lynn Jacobs in 1953. They had eleven wonderful years together before the Lord took her

to his kingdom. He joins her now. A funeral mass will be said for him by Fr. Mitchell in a small

ceremony at St. John’s Cathedral on 49th and Main.

39

“Will you go with me, Linda?” Anna asked, and put the paper down, tears in her eyes.

“Go where?” Linda asked.

“To the funeral.”

“Why would I want to do that? He was an ass.”

Anna was shocked. Whatever made sense to her about going to Mr. Gray’s funeral didn’t make

sense to Linda.

“That’s probably because he lost his wife! Wouldn’t that make you grumpy?”

“Well, I didn’t kill her.”

“That’s not the point!”

“What is the point?”

“The point is,” Anna said, not looking her in the eye, “we were his family. He spent every day for

the last twenty years with you. Look, he has nobody else but us. No one else is going to the funeral. We

have to!”

“Why does this matter so much to you?”

“Because everyone deserves to be remembered.”

Anna was right; no one else went to Richard Gray’s funeral, no one other than her, Linda, and

Father Mitchell. Father Mitchell had married Mr. Gray and his wife, they learned, and found out from

him that Mr. Gray had always been grumpy. His wife was the only person he was nice to and she was

the only one who could see past Mr. Gray’s grumpiness.

“Told ya he was an asshole,” Linda said when Father Mitchell revealed this to them. “Shit, sorry,

Father. Shit— I mean. Sorry.” To their surprise, Father Mitchell laughed a little.

“It doesn’t matter,” Anna said, “his place was with us. Kate’s Diner will always run like ‘Mr.

Gray.’”

--Briana VinZant

40

Companionship, Rachel Nyhus

41

OBSESSION WITH FASCINATION

Most people would be willing to admit that they care, or have cared, about what others think of

them. Although they may not be doing it intentionally, they can become obsessed with how other

people view them. In Charles Johnson’s novel Middle Passage, some of the characters face a similar

dilemma: “Yes, this above all else did Captain Falcon and his species of world conquerors thrive upon:

the desire to be fascinating objects in the eyes of others” (33). As social media websites have become

more and more popular, this obsession has grown.

Social media websites are appealing for a variety of reasons. Users are able to connect with old

friends and even make new ones. I believe one main reason why social media is appealing is because

people are able to portray themselves in whatever manner they want. Some people even create fake

profiles in an attempt to be attractive to other users. Although most people do not go to great lengths

to create fake profiles, most still portray their lives in an inaccurate way so that others will become

fascinated with them.

In contrast to real life, social media sites offer the ability to edit, remove, or change any aspect

the user might not like. On Facebook, for example, if a person “tags” you in an unattractive photo, you

are able to un-tag the photo so it will not appear on your profile. When creating profiles, users have the

opportunity to post only the most eye-catching, attractive photos, so people will be impressed with

them. Users are also able to filter out what other people say about them. If a friend wrote something

mean about me on my profile, I would simply delete the post so it would never be seen again, leaving

my reputation unharmed. People are able to portray themselves in the best light by sharing only the

best photos, the best life experiences, and the best comments about themselves.

The obsession with how other people view us has gotten worse with the development of new

social media sites. One recent social media application, called Instagram, allows people to use filters

and editing tools to enhance their pictures. This application is popular because users are able to receive

“likes” for their pictures, which further affirms that someone is interested in them. I think it is

completely normal for people to want attention and be noticed by others. However, I believe that with

all of the social media sites, such as: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, people may be

receiving too much attention.

I am passionate about this because of a recent encounter I had with friends I had not seen since

high school. We were in Florida over spring break and decided to meet up. After going to a restaurant

for a half hour and taking in excess of twenty pictures, we decided it was time to get back to the hotel. I

was excited because I thought we would finally be able to catch up on one another, since we were at the

42

restaurant for only a short time. Unfortunately, at the hotel, my friends spent the greater part of an

hour editing the pictures they took. One used two different applications to enhance her photo before

finally posting it on Instagram.

The group even debated whether to post the photos that night or in the morning in order to get

more “likes.” By the time they posted the pictures, the people represented were much brighter,

skinnier, and prettier versions of the users who posted them. The girls put in all of this work so that

other people would be impressed with them, not realizing that I, their friend standing next to them,

was nothing but unenthusiastic and unimpressed.

It is natural for us to be concerned about how others view us. However, the concern often leads

to obsession, especially with all of the new forms of social media we can use to boast about ourselves.

At the end of Middle Passage, Rutherford Calhoun experiences a transformation that, I believe, would

be beneficial for most people living in this day and age. He turned into a selfless man by thinking of

others instead of himself. Rather than focusing on ourselves, on our physical appearances, and how

other people view us, we can turn our attention to other people and their needs. Maybe this change will

lead others to believe that we are, indeed, fascinating.

--Larissa Patch

Work Cited

Johnson, Charles. Middle Passage. New York: Scribner, 1990. Print.

43

TICK TOCK TICK There they sit Maybe an hour, a minute, or just a bit The clock travels round, going tick tock tick It’s easy for her to speak about life What path we have to follow to survive But her high heels and pleated skirt Show hidden wrinkles and matted dirt His mother dressed him; her mother dressed her To keep them looking spiffy as they walked out the door The bus came then, and Hand in hand, they walked in They ride the bus to and fro For many days, leaves, rain, snow Years pass and they grow The clock still moving sometimes quick, sometimes slow He is dressed in green Face turned hard and mean His dog tags clink and metal hat shines Many others like him aligned To fight for three colors Travel across seas, away from others A life that would be great If not a piece of cake But a dream that can come true A boy’s dream of serving red, white, and blue She is onstage Hearing the audience in a rage The lights shining bright Her voice singing with all its might Everyone knows her Paparazzi adore her She is queen of fame Spotlights spell her name This life seems far away But she knows she’ll find her way She wears pigtails and bows right now But later fans will scream out “Wow!” There they sit Maybe an hour, a minute, or just a bit The clock travels round, going tick tock tick

44

Take this pill, this small white capsule Swallow this syrup, this plastic capful Then go back to your room We’ll check on you soon Please try to stay calm Don’t wander the halls The man hears this each day As his hair turns gray He is sad, he is happy Then angry when his food comes crappy A day can take a year Why isn’t my family here? Confused as he can be He continues to wake, then sleep With an absent mind and memory There he sits Maybe an hour, a minute, or just a bit The clock travels round, going tick tock tick It’s moved to your lungs, pancreas, and breast But don’t worry, because we’ll do our best We have to start treatment Your visits will be frequent The chemo and radiation Are an unwanted vacation Take this for the pain Even though it won’t go away Stay strong, hold on You’ll fight this battle But don’t stop, there’s more Get ready to lose the war What should she do with this mess Not the pills, but the fashion crisis Her long locks Fall off Her tan skin Turns pale, sinks in She is cold and weak Strangers think freak The questions start to rise Why me? Will I survive? Does anything even matter? She has become a stranger to laughter There she sits Maybe an hour, a minute, or just a bit The clock travels round, going tick tock tick

45

What happens to our dreams when they are out of reach Do they die unaccomplished Or simply sink down a wish list Perhaps what would be best Is if they secured a quest For the person who created them A crazy map of mayhem He meets his son for the first time This son to see him for the hundredth time People sing around him in loping Sound, with cake and presents to open He isn’t sure why But sees the strange, new young man cry He opens the blue box Breaks free the ribbon that’s in a knot What’s inside Almost causes him to cry A soldier’s cap For a minute it comes back What he wanted to be Since the age of three Was robbed from him Because of failed memory Today she won’t get up At this point she has had enough Her beauty is gone The world looks crazy wrong But with one last ounce of strength She leans forward, pulls the covers apart Her daughter has a concert Piano recital of Mozart She finds herself in a gym Listening to her baby playing a musical hymn But her eyes drift to the microphone Her eyes fill, she has no tone The lights shine brightly in this room And she wishes it would be over soon Because she wants to be there On that stage, having an affair With the lights, clothes, music, fans Dancing in circles, waving her hands But her daughter takes her place As she fixes her wig and touches her face There they sit Maybe an hour, a minute, or just a bit The clock travels round going tick tock tick

46

You can’t explain an accident As difficult as inventing a new scent But a man is rushed to the hospital Said to have wandered, to have become too mental His family rushes to see him More like strangers in his eyes than kin He died They cried They were given a flag at the funeral Because he had been a Colonel What he thought was never done Really did happen under Vietnam sun The black cells beat the white Nothing went right She died Her daughter cried The service was short Nothing less, nothing more But before the casket closed Her daughter took out the Golden Globe And gave it to her mother The one who deserved it over every other Two kids at school Young and cool Dreaming of lives That one day will flash by Two stones in the ground Flowers spread around A life complete Not always tidy or neat There they sit Maybe an hour, a minute, or just a bit The clock travels round, going tick tock tick, Tick tock tick, tick tock tick

--Katie Brandt

47

Cascade Gable, Ashley Lynn LeBrun

48

TANKA TRIAD

The silent water

Moves as I look into me--

A quiet reflection.

Color caught my eye,

A rose on the river bank

Seen! Not to be plucked.

A vision right here

As its petals drooped toward the

Water… Unknowing.

--Craig Anderson

SEASONS OF HAIKU

THOSE EYES

Eyes full of wonder

Her dating profile still blank

eHarmony sucks

--Anthony Buzzell

THOSE LEAVES

Leaves fall only to

regrow in the same manner--

the end is delayed

--Caleb Gwerder

THIS WINTER NIGHT

The moonlight catches

A snowflake’s cascading glow

I race to the door

--Lauren Cannon

49

THAT COMING

Great mountains will bow

Seas will dance and Earth will sing

His coming is known

--Sarah Holen

THIS PASSAGE

Flips across the floor

Looking like a tumbling weed

On the desert ground

--Holly Wilson

THAT SONG Whiskey lullaby

He sang to her in whispers

And captured her heart

--Eweyomola Akintunde

THAT HAIR

Hair smells like jungle

Golden vines hang down her back

She’s wild like that

--Elyssia Skillicorn

50

MORE THAN SUNSET DREAMS

Silent strokes of darkness rolled in to replace what had been a cool, blue sky. The first

flecks turned the blue into a vibrant orange, powerful but elusive. Orange changed to a pink and

pink to a purple. Stars joined the rising and falling melody. Crickets and frogs sounded brass.

Dew slipped its fingers over cooling grass and coalesced into stillwater drops. Rolls of

heat dissipated. Mystery and night whispered a convective symphony. A dying landscape

sweated its rations into meager crops and sparse hay fields that stretched long and quiet.

No wind graced this perfect transition—a quiet and captive audience, a rarity on the

plains. There was patience but no plunge, and twilight shivered in anticipation. Breath was a

fresh commodity growing in supply. There was no demand.

A pickup truck creaked as it bounced through a pasture, trailblazing a path through

peace and serenity. There was no hesitation in the constant wheels. Its headlights bobbed

skyward, then to the ground, then skyward again. A dirty exhaust fouled the air in many ways,

breaking reverence at unexpected beauty.

The pickup barreled through long stalks. A few seeds stuck in the small spaces of its

grille. Exposed parts of the engine burned some of the chaff, creating a hot smell. The pickup

rattled for a few more feet and slowed and stopped. The driver’s-side door clicked. It creaked

and creaked and slammed.

An old fence wrapped around thick wood posts that framed a wire gate. The gate stood

opposite to where the pickup stopped. The rest of the fence ran in a straight line perpendicular

to the vehicle. Its thin wires disappeared in both directions—one in a slough, one over a crest—

only to be seen again farther along. Rusty T-posts jutted like a bony spine separating tall,

languishing grass from brown alfalfa stalks cut low.

A figure in dusty leather boots, jeans, and a light jacket walked to the gate. He lifted a

tight wire from around the neck of a dry post with deep veins—the gate post. An open gate is

easy to drive through. The pickup stopped opposite of where it had been. He picked up the post

and returned the trailing wires to their position and re-affixed noose around neck. The gate

stayed taut. A final click and creak and creak and slam and he drove away. The pickup jostled

randomly but predictably over uneven terrain.

Evening returned to its placidity. A light burst of wind kicked up and agitated the green

leaves of distant trees in a clump. It trickled through more abundant, browner stalks of grass.

Then all was quiet as whispers died away and a timid moon watched the noiseless scene.

—Matthew Nies

51

LOVE REPAIRS

My secret’s out and still I can’t be mad

And suggest that you two ever were bad

Parents—many years of hiding truths

That could eradicate my soul. My youth

Kidnapped, and now—here goes. The guilt you felt

At their mistakes consumed your time. I dealt

Alone, my darkness hidden. Shadows do not

Abate with time; they grow instead and won’t

Relent until one’s black with rot. You felt

Black, too. I knew, I saw; first him, then her,

And how could I be one more fault in your

Record? You needed a win, so I endured.

And yet, I hid in vain. You know and still

You feel you failed your kids. But I would kill

To show you all you gave—acceptance, love.

You raised a fucked up bunch and saw, above

The mess, potential good. You looked beyond

Our faults and loved us all. You forged a bond

We can’t escape. So now I want to be

Allowed to speak without this fear of me

destroying your worth as Mom and Dad.

Be strong for me. Let me collapse, be mad

At you. And know that I’ll forgive this error

As you did mine. Love me, for love repairs.

--Briana VinZant

52

CARPE DIEM

All the day I’m seized

By this something more than me—

A vise-gripped passion welded

To a forge deep within my meld—

A flayed thought of pillared bronze

That, when sounded, absconds.

I shirk passive moods for an active mood

While this something boils into a brood—

Pensive: Doom and Hope both trace

Origins in what’s done or not done today.

Blueprints craft success’s mien:

Cogitas carpe diem.

Thought spurs action—

Trigger for Newton’s maxim

To throw embodied thoughts into other

Bodies, and ripple waves together,

Defining, “Breath affecting breath;”

Life without action is death.

This something must translate to deeds

For steady hands to harder grip gladiis

And gird thoraces—battle

The ultimate test of metal.

Because it flees and cannot stay,

I will seize the day.

—Matthew Nies

53

ROYAL ANTIQUES

Haze Yosemite, CA 7 June 1950

As soon as the black ’44 Ford Coupe pulled over, Hazel Graham, bride, threw the door open,

tossed white flats on the pavement, and glided red-lacquered toes into her shoes before running to the

edge of the lookout point. The groom, Jack Graham, alighted with slow grace, ducking his head to

preserve the coif that curved above his high forehead. He set Ray Ban sunglasses on his nose and went

to Hazel. His wife.

“It’s so beautiful!” she yelled into the canyon. She drew in deep breath and stepped down the

rocks. The sun lit the canyon in a picturesque, overwhelming way, immense and pressing.

Hazel had on light blue capris and a floral-patterned, sleeveless top with a rounded collar. She

positioned a sprawling straw hat far enough back so her hairline of coffee-colored, cropped hair was

visible along its edge. She slipped her fingers into her pocket and removed a trifold pamphlet from the

Silver Tip Lodge. She unfolded it to examine a sketched map that indicated trails, roads, and lookout

points. A furry brown bear sporting a Ranger hat and blue jeans stood in the bottom corner and

reminded Hazel that only she could prevent forest fires.

“Haze!”

She spun around and saw Jack waving a Brownie camera that hung around his neck. A sudden

gust blew from his direction and snapped the brim of her sunhat back. Hazel clamped it down, but she

turned away from her husband to avoid adorning a tree with the hat if the breeze revived. Jack framed

her against a pine tree and the rock she was standing on, letting the rest of the landscape drop away

against the sky.

Hazel kept her hand on her sunhat as he snapped the picture.

12 December 1959

A bristling wreath dressed with a curled crimson ribbon hung from the Graham’s front door,

hinting that Hazel had spent the day decorating. Jack reached the door but paused before turning the

knob. Instead of the wreath, his eyes focused on a memory of his brother Marty standing in the corner

of last year’s Christmas Eve party. Marty leaned against the wall and sipped hot apple cider, watching

the kids play beneath the tree. Six days later, he died in a car accident. Jack, it’s going to be fine. With a

deep breath, Jack turned the knob and swung the door open.

Hazel had classic taste, and decorated modestly. Fresh mistletoe hung over the kitchen doorway,

a Santa hat had been tossed on the middle of the coffee table, a crèche was arranged on a red velvet

runner on top of the upright piano, and a five-foot-tall tree stood in front of a tall bookshelf.

And what a tree! Through misty eyes, Jack set his leather briefcase down and pulled off his L.L.

Bean boots, dazzled by the fir’s sparkling tinsel. He walked gently toward the Christmas tree, his socks

leaving impressions in the carpet. Even the sharp crunch he heard after treading on a stray bow didn’t

break his revelry. “When a poor man came in sight, gath’ring winter fuel,” Bing Crosby crooned from a

stereo in the corner. “Yonder peasant, who is he? Where and what his dwelling?” The soft music

contributed to the growing lump that restricted his breathing.

54

Hazel hurried up the basement stairs, worried that she had left her last cookie sheet of ginger

snaps in the oven too long. She spotted Jack’s boots near the door, peeked into the living room, and

found him trailing his fingers through the tree’s silver tinsel.

“Jack! I didn’t hear you come in!”

He turned to her in tears, with a weak, strained smile. Grief and understanding were suspended

in Hazel’s eyes as she, in stocking feet, stepped to Jack. She wrapped her arms around his waist, he

rested his head on hers, and they swayed to “Away In A Manger” lulled by the glowing colored lights

strung around the tree.

The start of the next track broke them apart, smiling and drying tears at the abrupt transition

between “Away in a Manger” and “Deck the Halls.”

“Mart--” Jack stared at a framed black-and-white photograph propped on the piano. In it,

Marty’s shoulder rested on the edge of their parents’ brick house, hands in his pockets. He was smiling

directly into the camera. Jack, standing about as far from the picture as he had from his brother when

he snapped the photo, set his jaw and slid his hands into pockets.

“I know,” Hazel said.

Jack turned from his brother’s frozen gaze and reached for the camera that lay next to the frame.

He composed a picture of the decorated room with Marty looking on through his frame. As he took the

picture, Bing’s Merry Christmas album ended and the stereo needle scraped the end of the vinyl platter.

Without the music, Lindsay and Peter’s voices carried upstairs from the basement. They were

squabbling.

“Dinnertime?” Hazel asked Jack with bleary eyes.

“Yeah.” Jack drew another deep breath and brushed the tears that had slipped toward his chin.

“Kids! Supper!”

Pattering feet.

Haze

4 November 1992

Hazel groaned as she lowered herself into a sagging beach chair. “Oh, this weather is nice.” She

reached for her glass of sun tea. The ice clinked. She took a long sip and replaced the glass in the

crushed ring of grass where it had been sitting. She closed her eyes and inhaled and stretched until the

tips of her fingers elongated. It was so warm! And it was November!

Jack walked through the screen door to join her. He was wearing salmon cutoffs, a white polo

shirt, and creased leather loafers. His saunter had taken a jolty quality in recent years but he could still

achieve a graceful swoop, as when he sat back in the chair beside his wife. Ray Charles’ voice reached

them from inside; both tapped their feet to “Lonely Avenue.”

“I just took a picture of you,” Jack said, smiling slyly and keeping his eyes shut.

Hazel turned and stared at him through one eye. “You and your camera! Didn’t you get enough

pictures of me when I was worth looking at?”

“Oh, not nearly,” Jack said, playfully brushing her fingers with his. Hazel, now wide-awake,

scrutinized the trees in their backyard, swinging in a chilly breeze.

“Remember when Lindsay lost her tooth in the grass?”

“Ha! Yes, I have a picture of that. When was that?”

“I don’t remember. Fifty-five? Fifty-eight? Still didn’t rid her of her taste for Seven-Up.”

55

“I remember her sipping one and watching me mow the lawn.” Jack thought of his years in

medical school, and the weekends he cherished, when he could return home to spend time with his wife

and children.

“Hm.” Hazel reached over and gripped her husband’s wrinkled hand. “Peter vomited in that

flowerbed the day of Marty’s funeral. Did I ever tell you that?”

Jack pulled his hand away from hers to rest his elbows on his knees. He ran his fingers through

his thick, graying hair. Finally he stood and returned to the kitchen to get a cold can of Coca-Cola and

flip the Ray Charles LP. Hazel exhaled and allowed to sun to warm her age-stained arms and hands

while she stared at the swaying grass.

Lisa Anderson’s schedule rarely allowed her time to comb through antique shops and thrift

stores. But she had such a small stack of papers to grade this weekend she couldn’t resist the possibility

of discovering a first edition of Steinbeck or a lone Fiestaware bowl. It had been three months since she

had visited an antique store, and just last Monday her favorite juice glass had slipped out of the

dishwater and smashed on the kitchen floor. It gave her the perfect excuse to spend a few hours

searching for a promising storefront with her golden retriever, Digby. It was more than half past 3:00

when Lisa entered Royal Antiques.

She pulled the shop’s door open and was blasted by cool air generated by a whirring air

conditioner. A jingle bell attached to the door roused an old woman from her nap at the front desk. Lisa

waved politely, but the woman had already shut her eyes and missed the gesture.

Lisa settled into her habit of scoping out where to begin in a new antique store. I’ve got plenty of

jewelry right now--just bought Mom’s birthday gift--that vendor looks overpriced. Ten dollars for a

LIFE magazine? Nope.

She stepped between cases stuffed with antiques, observing Pyrex cookware, costume jewelry,

and rows of yellow Nancy Drew books. Never check out a vendor who overprices Nancy Drew books,

she reminded herself for the hundredth time. You always find one you don’t have, and either can’t

resist it and spend too much or walk out disappointed you didn’t buy it.

She reached the back of the shop, stopped by a staircase invisible from the entrance. No

“Employees Only” sign was posted, so she stepped on the first stair and peered upward through sunlight

swirling with dust. The stair groaned. Promising, she thought. But feeling the elderly cashier could hear

her thoughts as easily as her footsteps, she cleared her mind and ascended the steps, holding onto a

flaking green-painted handrail.

She cringed at the thick dust that clung to her finger as she trailed it along a nearby display case.

As she balled the dust into a clump and flicked it toward the floorboards, a child’s coat on the end of a

clothing rack caught her eye. She began to inspect it, checking the powder-blue wool moth holes and

sliding her fingers along the inner silk lining. This would be perfect for Saide, Lisa mused, thinking of

her brother Rob’s four-year-old daughter. Not that perfect, she corrected herself, spotting “$120.00”

scribbled in black ink. She began to regret walking in; she was always disappointed to find an antique

shop with great items and high prices.

Further on she noticed a large basket of disordered postcards on top of a glass case. She had

been an avid philatelist since age thirteen, but a casual flip through the pile revealed that the stamps

were duplicates of ones she already owned. The vendor’s stock of miscellaneous billiard balls, nested

Jadeite bowls, and a drawer oozing off-white crocheted doilies proved of no interest until Lisa’s eyes

landed on a large olive-green box on a cherry-wood Pembroke table.

56

She stepped over a worthless Singer sewing machine and opened the lid, which squealed from a

rust patch and swung back with a snap. Piles of photographs rested inside.

Lisa admired antiques, but nothing captivated her more than old photographs. Their possible

stories would begin to unfold in her mind and would torture her until she scrambled for pictures from

her own life that she could ascribe true backgrounds to.

It was unclear if these were miscellaneous photos that had been dumped into the box or if they

had the same provenance. To answer this question at least, Lisa grabbed a thick handful, hoping to tie

together faces or handwriting. Most were family shots but they were not in order--some from the ‘30s

were on top of others that looked like they had been taken only twenty or thirty years ago.

She began flipping over the pictures in her hand, observing for the most part the same

handwriting. Distinct, boxy lettering clarified faces, events, places, and, in short, somebody’s life. She

had never seen such a comprehensive collection. It was overwhelming, and Lisa reached for a chair--an

evening chair with a yellow-gray velvet seat, roped off with a “Please do not sit, thank you” sign across

its arms. She sat on the rope to shuffle through the pile in her hands. She began to recognize recurring

faces, and stopped to examine dates on some of the prints.

She paused for a moment, staring at the large box. What is this? She began to look for names in

the handwriting: first or last names, something to orient her in the world of these mysterious figures.

Many were simply labeled “Us” or “Me.”

Finally! She had been squinting at the labels for a good five minutes before a capitalized letter

jumped out at her. It was an “H.” Hazel G. Omdahl, she whispered, squinting through her glasses at the

name that rose in mind. It was a formal picture, mounted in a marbled cardboard folder that might

have once sat on a desk or dresser. The girl’s name was embossed along the bottom in gold lettering.

“Store closes at five o’clock.”

Lisa was startled by the coarse voice that came from the front desk. That woman must have

smoked a good part of her life away to sound like that, Lisa thought. But it is almost 5:00. I should get

going. She replaced the stack of photos in the box and picked it up to search for a price sticker. She had

seen vintage photographs priced at upward of twelve dollars apiece, and though she knew she couldn’t

leave without the box, she wanted at least some idea of what a blow it would be to her wallet. There was

no visible tag. She tucked the tin box under her arm, comforted by a huge sale reminder hanging over

the downstairs desk: “Saturday, March 25th 30% off store except select vendors.”

At the desk Lisa drew her mouth into a charming smile. She knew from years of visiting

secondhand shops that a smile and chitchat were often enough to earn a good price on unmarked items.

She read the woman’s name tag and said, “Hello, Ms. Singleman.” The short, thinning-haired cashier

greeted her with a half-eyed stare.

“Whaddo you want, Honey?” The woman’s voice was so low and raspy that it choked her,

causing a hack so violent Lisa saw spittle droplets mingle with the dust in the air. She looked away from

the airborne chaos and back into the woman’s now-watering eyes.

“This doesn’t have a price on it. I was wondering if you could tell me how much it is?”

“What vendah?” Lisa was able to place a Brooklyn accent.

“V-1428.”

“Awl right.” Lisa slid the box onto the counter while Ms. Singleman shuffled toward the other

side of the desk where a pile of record books was stacked. Come on, don’t keep me waiting. A hundred

and twenty for the box? A hundred and fifty? Ms. Singleman flipped pages with her arthritic fingers;

one, then another, then another. She licked a finger and turned a few more. Oh my God, are you gonna

pull my teeth out, too?

57

Lisa sighed and gazed though the glass doors to her blue pickup.

“Fidteen dallahs.”

“Excuse me?”

“Fifdeen dollahs, Sweethawt, anything else?”

“I’m sorry, fifteen or fifty?”

“Fifdeen. One, five. Now it’s fowah fifty-three in the ayftahnoon. Will ya take the box or ahr you

going to leave it?” Cough, cough. This time she over-pronounced the numbers.

A little of Lisa’s congeniality slipped from her tone when she said, “Yes. I’ll buy it.” She started

fumbling for her wallet.

“Yeh total is fowah-fifty with the discount. Cesh, credit, ah check?” Ms. Singleman rolled her

eyes to Lisa, staring through half-open lids.

“Just a moment. Cash.” Lisa located a five-dollar bill and handed it Ms. Singleman. “Here. Keep

the fifty cents.”

The woman pulled the bill from Lisa’s fingers and said, “Thank you for shop--cough!--ing at

Royal Antiques, where the prices ahr awlways good and the soivice is stellah.”

Lisa stared into the woman’s blank eyes, amused by the final phrase.

Ms. Singleman let out a single wet cough, keeping her eyes on Lisa.

“Well. Have a nice evening,” Lisa said, her farewell lost in a groan as Ms. Singleman reseated

herself in the chair as saturated with cigarette smoke as the woman it supported. Lisa again heard the

jingle bell and felt cool breeze on her bare face and legs.

The pickup door groaned almost as loudly as Ms. Singleman and Lisa hopped into her rusty ’76

Ford, greeted by Digby, who had been waiting.

“Forever, huh, Digs? I know, I’m so sorry!”

His butt danced back and forth along with his tail.

“Sit.” He seated himself in the passenger’s seat, gazing and panting. “I love you so much, and I

missed you more than my Milkbone,” she said, giving voice to Digby’s deepest thoughts. “I know. You’re

so brave,” she said to his adoring black eyes. She scratched his head, thinking of the box she had placed

on the seat between the two of them.

The price shocked Lisa for two reasons: first, because there were at least eight photographs that

would have cost twenty dollars or more apiece at most antique stores. The second reason was harder to

put into words. Her eyes were again drawn to the tin box. She reached toward it and coaxed the lid over

the stubborn rusted spot until it snapped back to reveal the stacks of photographs. Blinking to clear her

eyes of tears, Lisa selected three photographs she had not yet seen, and read their labels,

“Haze Yosemite, CA 7 June 1950

12 December 1959

Haze

4 November 1992”

These were the stories Lisa would consider when she arrived home this evening. --Laura Sieling

--Laura Sieling

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High-Way, Rachel Nyhus

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This issue of Plainsong introduces the first of a series of interviews with professional writers and their

views on the writing process. We are honored to have as our first interviewee one of the preeminent

writers in America today, Dr. Charles Johnson. Dr. Johnson writes novels, short stories, screenplays,

and scholarly essays. His novel Middle Passage received the National Book Award in 1990, marking him

as only the second black American male to receive the prize, and his acceptance speech was a tribute to

the first, Ralph Ellison. Dr. Johnson has been the recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and

Guggenheim Fellowships, and in 1998 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, or “Genius Award.”

Dr. Johnson, or “Chuck” as he’s known to friends for his unassuming accessibility and openness, has

responded to a series of questions submitted by Dr. David Godfrey, chair of the English Department, and

Larry Woiwode, editor of Plainsong. In Johnson’s usual generosity of spirit, he wrote, when he delivered

his replies, “I hope my answers aren't too long. I just wanted to be thorough.” He turned his answers to

Plainsong around in one day, the email containing them time-stamped 4:44 AM. He is known to work at

night but his alacrity and thoroughness stand as a sterling example to all young writers on the route

toward professionalism, and as a goad and incentive to those who believe they’re already there.

Plainsong: As a young man you were a cartoonist, and obviously a very good one. Did you discover

connections to that earlier time when you started illustrating the Emery Jones books you and your

daughter are doing?

Charles Johnson: From 1965 (when I was 17-years-old) until 1972, I worked intensely as a

professional cartoonist and illustrator, all through my undergraduate years as a journalism major,

publishing thousands of drawings (editorial cartoons, panel cartoons, comic strips, illustrations for texts

and advertisements) in Illinois newspapers like The Chicago Tribune and The Southern Illinoisan and

the black press such as Negro Digest, Jet and Players magazine; two collections of comic art (Black

Humor in 1970, and Half-Past Nation-Time in 1972); and creating, co-producing and hosting one of the

early drawing shows, “Charlie’s Pad” (1970) on PBS, which was broadcast nationwide. But in the early

70s I shifted my professional activities to writing fiction and working on my Ph.D. in philosophy, though

I still drew for fun whenever I could for various publications in the 1990s and early 2000s (Quarterly

Black Review of Books, Literal Latte, a free paper in New York City, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and

drawings to accompany my article on Martin Luther King Jr., for example, in The Seattle Times in 2004,

and other publications).

Drawing is something I’ve done since childhood. I can never leave it behind. My imagination is

visual. My heroes have always been the great comic artists and illustrators---from Daumier to Thomas

Rolandson and Cruikshank, from Thomas Nast to legions of syndicated cartoonists, and those working

in comic books or what we now call graphic novels. Think about it. As the superb artist Stan Shaw said to

me last month at a tribute for Morrie Turner, the first syndicated black cartoonist, we encounter

drawings and illustrations everywhere during the course of our day. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Even people who can’t read can understand a drawing. So when our illustrator for “Bending Time,” the

first book in The Adventures of Emery Jones, Boy Science Wonder series bailed out on us because she

was suddenly faced with a divorce, I took on the chore of doing the ten illustrations myself in all of

eighteen days and nights, then twenty for the second book, “The Hard Problem,” and to supplement that

work I did, at my daughter’s suggestion, a weekly, science-based “Emery’s World” cartoon, fifty-two in

all from November 2013 to November 2014.

For me, this work has been heaven. It’s a return to my imaginative and creative roots. Every stroke of

the pen has to be controlled and carefully done. (I always prefer bold, strong lines.) And I love the weekly

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challenge of working out a composition, researching and deciding on the details for costuming and

props, refining the terseness for the gag-line (if the cartoon has one), and just discovering, week after

week, what I can draw, imagining this in my head, then projecting that image onto the page--a black

hole, say, for one of the “Emery’s World” panels, or what an invisible man might look like, or in “The

Hard Problem” (my twenty-first published book in fifty years of publishing stories and novels) the image

for a disembodied being of pure energy. And for an artist-father there is a special joy in co-writing a

series of stories (for children and adults) with his artist-daughter who graduated from Cornish College of

the Arts and presently works in Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture. To be frank, this circling back to my

first career is a sort of fulfillment I never dreamed I’d have as a writer, and part of that pleasure derives

from the truth that children’s literature, at its best, is primal storytelling and leaves a lasting imprint on

the consciousness of young readers, as I attempted to explain in the special issue of The American Book

Review that I guest-edited, “The Color of Children’s Literature” (Fall, 2014).

Plainsong: You are well known for your novels, especially Middle Passage, Oxherding Tale, and

Dreamer. But a genre of yours I appreciate (besides your essays) is your short-stories. Are more on the

way and would you want to comment on your view of the short-story form?

Johnson: For me, a good short story should be as tight as a logical proof or an equation. Unlike the

novel, the short story has no room for what the French call remplissage, or literary “padding.” It must

have a plot (something many writers dread the thought of coming up with), which John Gardner once

called “the writer’s equivalent to the philosopher’s argument.” In a novel, you can fill up pages with

lovely, poetic, lyrical description (or picture painting), which for that moment brings the forward

movement of plot or organic story flow (and suspense) to a halt; you can hide in a novel the fact that not

much is happening by dazzling the reader with the beauty of literary language (Think of Djuna Barnes’s

Nightwood), which is, of course, essential for literary art. But in its structure the modern short story

demands economy, control, and must be efficient---like a good drawing. No waste! Nothing that isn’t

essential.

The great 20th century novelists I admire most have at least one story collection. And I’ve always

delighted in the particular rigor demanded by short fiction. Each year now since 1998 I’ve composed a

new short story for a yearly fund-raiser I “fathered” in Seattle called “Bedtime Stories,” an event

sponsored by Humanities Washington. Their board members give three or four writers a theme or

prompt in early spring, one related to bedtime--over the years themes have been “insomnia,” “night

watch,” “a midnight snack”--then in October we read, like medieval troubadours, the new tale the

prompt inspired us to write. Half the stories in my third collection, Dr. King’s Refrigerator and Other

Bedtime Stories were composed for this event. All six of the stories in the book published last November,

Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories, and Reflections on Politics, Race, Culture, and Spiritual Practice were

also composed for this evening of sharing new work. What I love most about “Bedtime Stories” is that

every year it forces me to conjure a story I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing on my own. The story I’m

working on now--that several of us are working on--is prompted by the Beatle’s song, “A Hard Day’s

Night.” So, yes, more short fiction is on the way.

Plainsong: You've been called a "metaphysical antirealist," grateful for the writings of Ralph Waldo

Emerson, which, I suppose, includes you in "the American Procession," to use Whitman's term. My

students frequently complain about the amount of time we spend on Emerson, especially

"Nature." Could you comment on the importance of Emerson's thought for you?

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Johnson: I’ve had the pleasure of writing the article on Ralph Waldo Emerson for the Study Unit on the

Transcendentalists in the 1,378-page high school textbook (presently in use in our nation’s classrooms)

from Prentice Hall, titled Literature: The American Experience, and also the introduction for Selected

Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Signet Classic, 2003). The aforementioned high school textbook

captures some of my life-long enthusiasm for Emerson when it says, “According to Emerson, the human

mind is so powerful it can unlock any mystery, from the intricacies of nature to the wonder of God. To

Emerson, ‘the individual is the world.’ This was a radical thought in an age that gave authority to the

organized institutions of government, religion, and education.”

In my view, Emerson was one of the greatest and most spiritually expansive minds in America in the

19th century. On the political front, he was a spirited nonconformist who championed the right of women

to vote; who passionately spoke out against slavery in such addresses as “Emancipation in the British

West Indies,” against the evils of the Fugitive Slave Act, against the “wicked Indian policy,” and in his

journal entry titled The Sad Side of the Negro question, he criticized his white kinsman when he

observed, “With our Saxon education and habit of thought we all require to be first…We are born with

lotus in our mouths, & are very deceivable as to our merits, easily believing we are the best…” (This could

be a statement we find in Critical Race Theory and Whiteness Studies today.) And against this

Eurocentrism and a white-centered culture, he imagined an America that could be an “--asylum of all

nations, the energy of Irish, Germans, Swedes, Poles, & Cossacks, & all the European Tribes,--of the

Africans, & of the Polynesians, (who) will construct a new race, a new religion, a new State, a new

literature, which will be as vigorous as the new Europe which came out of the smelting pot of the Dark

Ages, or that which earlier emerged from the Pelagic & Etruscan barbarism.”

He challenged the received ideas in his time, and emphasized the importance--indeed, the primacy--

of the individual, and self-reliance (Frederick Douglass gave an address on this that echoes Emerson’s

ideals). For six generations of readers he defined what I see as the essential elements of the “American

character” as we conceived it in the 19th and 20th centuries. I have always been inspired by the beauty of

his “Scholar’s Creed”; by his catholicism and belief in “the republic of Man,” which was the foundation

for the liberal humanism that I learned from my teachers in the 1960s (As Americans, I think we were at

our best when we were liberal humanists, like Martin Luther King Jr., JFK, Robert Kennedy, Ralph

Ellison, and Hubert Humphrey); by his famous address “The American Scholar”; by his belief that “It is

our duty to be discontented, with the measure we have of knowledge & virtue, to forget the things behind

& press toward those before”; and lastly, by his desire to “unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred,

none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.” He was, in short, a

superbly civilized and wise American. And his writings are the perfect humanist antidote for the

provincial race, class and gender tribalism, and ideological (and lazy) conformist thought that has so

badly damaged critical thinking in the humanities at our universities during the last thirty or forty years.

Plainsong: Could you briefly explain the relationship between your character Martin Luther King and

the double (Chaym Smith) you create for him in Dreamer?

Johnson: In Dreamer, Chaym Smith is physically the perfect double to stand in for ML King when he is

in dangerous situations. Physically they are “equal.” But in all other ways--psycho-logically, spiritually,

in terms of their individual histories--they are different. Smith is Cain to King’s Abel. He brings eastern

philosophy into the novel (Buddhism) as a contrast to King’s Christianity. He also brings existentialism

and gives the novel an opportunity to express ideas and beliefs held by black Americans in the 50s and

60s that differed from King’s vision. Yet, as Chaym (his name means Cain) is trained to stand in for King,

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he and the reader are given a portrait of King’s life and philosophy with much granularity of detail. He

and King are both father figures that the narrator, Matthew Bishop, learns from. Chaym allows the novel

to become a meditation on the question of equality. On the relationship between Self and Other. On the

question, “How do we end evil without engendering new evil?” And on the startling fact that in Genesis,

we are shown the first two brothers whose relationship is marred by jealousy (on Cain’s side) and leads

to the world’s first murder. I strongly recommend that readers of Dreamer also read Dr. Ricardo J.

Quinones’s magnificent work of scholarship The Changes of Cain, which traces 2,000 years of Cain’s

cultural transformations, and provided the theological and philosophical sub-structure for this novel.

Plainsong: You've been cited as saying that the subjects that interest you as a writer require

"philosophical archeology." Could you elaborate on that?

Johnson: It’s hard to be brief about this subject, which concerns perception and epistemology. When I

use the term “archeology,” I use it in the strictly phenomenological sense of deepening what we think we

already know about something. In other words, when writing I want to plunge beneath the often calcified

and clichéd meanings of a phenomenon and reveal its yet undisclosed or buried profiles (or meanings).

My hope is always that through this process we as readers can arrive at what I’ve called the liberation of

perception--at a fresh seeing or experience of the subject being examined. I always try to make the

familiar unfamiliar.

Plainsong: Around twenty years ago, in an interview with Bill Moyers, Louise Erdrich and Michael

Dorris, her late husband, talk about how they'd take, say, a Sears, Roebuck or Montgomery Ward

catalogue and invent biographies for the models or, more frequently, apparently, use the catalogues to

"outfit" their literary characters. Do you engage in any such practices to get your imagination going?

Johnson: I’ve never done that particular exercise, though for a wonderful book published in 1994 by

The Art Institute of Chicago and Bulfinch Press I developed a story based on a famous painting that has

stimulated my imagination since my teens. The book is Transforming Vision: Writers on Art. And the

Buddhist-flavored story I composed, “The Work of the World,” is my response to Peter Blume’s The Rock

(1943). I focused on the one black figure in that painting, making him the first-person narrator who

presents Blume’s composition as a post-apocalyptic setting in which all the figures are attempting to

rebuild the world after some unnamed catastrophe. It is a meditation on impermanence. The story can

be read in I Call Myself an Artist: Writings By and About Charles Johnson, edited by Rudolph P. Byrd

(Indiana University Press, 1999).

Plainsong: What is the most exciting present-day project you look forward to?

Johnson: Well, between last November and February, I published three books that total 1,045 pages:

Taming the Ox: Buddhist Stories, and Reflections on Politics, Race, Culture and Spiritual Practice; The

Words and Wisdom of Charles Johnson; and The Adventures of Emery Jones, Boy Science Wonder:

The Hard Problem. So I’m taking a break right now--studying Sanskrit, learning a new Kung-Fu

weapons set (Butterfly Knives)--until my 67th birthday on April 23rd. But I’m not idle. (I’m never idle.)

I’m doing science reading and research for the third Emery Jones adventure, and kicking around plot

ideas with my daughter.

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WASH DAY DONE

White cotton hung

From a crossed T-pole to dry:

Wash day done.

A lazy breeze wafted apple pie

Smells over a fresh-cut lawn.

—Matthew Nies

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Focus, Brooke Lietzke

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Submissions for Plainsong are accepted from the beginning of the fall semester,

2015, until February 1, 2016; past issues of Plainsong can be viewed digitally at

www.uj.edu/plainsong

Funded by the University of Jamestown Published by the Department of English, University of Jamestown

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plainsong, no. 29: spring, 2015

contributors: Eweyomola Akintunde

Craig Anderson

Megan Baker

Katie Brandt

Bradley Brooks

Levi Brown

Mark Brown

Anthony Buzzell

Lauren Cannon

David Godfrey

Caleb Gwerder

Linda Hess

Sarah Holen

Charles Johnson

Ashley Lynn LeBrun

Brooke Lietzke

Shai Mason

Matthew Nies

Rachel Nyhus

Larissa Patch

Karson Pederson

Emma Preble

Laura Sieling

Elyssia Skillicorn

Andrew Tjader

Briana VinZant

Holly Wilson

Destiny Winkler

Larry Woiwode