The Broken Plate 2013 Sampler

TheBrokenPlate

BP 2013 Interior_Neely.indd 1 2/18/13 4:22 PM

ISSN Number 1946-6269

The Broken Plate is a literary magazine produced by undergraduate students at Ball State University. The magazine publishes work from writers and artists around the world while continuing to devote pages to the writing and artwork of Ball State students. We accept submissions in September and October. Submission guidelines can be found at http://thebrokenplate.org. Please e-mail us with questions and comments at [email protected].

Cover and interior design by Tyler Fields, Daniel Na, Lacey Lord and Kelli Bennett

Copyright © 2013 by Ball State University. All rights revert to author after publication. The views expressed by authors in The Broken Plate do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or of any portion of Ball State University.

We would like to extend an enormous thank you to Marj and Homer Hiner for their continued patronage.

We would also like to thank Megan McNames and Brad King for their assis-tance with our logo and website.


Staff

Editor Mark Neely

Managing Editor Kelli Bennett

Lead Poetry Editor Jeremy Flick

Poetry Editors Eryn Collins Rianne Hall Makayla Sickbert

Lead Prose Editor Todd Bastin

Prose Editors Chaylee Brock Jessie Fudge Meredith Sims Veronica Sipe

Lead Design Editor Tyler Fields

Design Editors Daniel Na Lacey Lord

Assistant Editor Aubrie Cox


Table of Contents

Requiem for an Immortal Kelly Zientek-Baker

CashSux & CarryGuns Heather J. Macpherson

The Clown Scott Daughtridge

Guided by Voices Sarah Snook

Weaning the Brink Dylan Smith

Resurrection Gary Blankenburg

The Outsider Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb

Spring Speaks Sweet Lesley Johnson

Harvesters Eugene Cross

Last Will and Testament Nancy Carol Moody

One Thousand Thirty-Eight Alisha Layman

1

3

5

7

8

13

15

17

18

23

24

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction


25

29

31

33

35

36

37

49

50

52

53

55

56

57

Fiction

Poetry

Poetry

Poetry

Nonfiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Art

Art

Art

Wayland the Smith Bobby-Jack Chapman

The CEO of Happiness Speaks Marcus Wicker

Interrupting Aubade Ending in Epiphany Marcus Wicker

I’m a Sad, Sad Man. So Sad Marcus Wicker

King of the One-Word Answer Nicole L. V. Mullis

I Know What It Is to Be Icarus Robbie Maakestad

The Bone Yard Alyssa Cooper

The Market Kristina Blaine

Smart TV George Morgan Scott

Weaned Noel Sloboda

Firefly Eve Powers

Doves Catherine Batka

One Block of Litter: Muncie, IN Noah Schenk

The After Rebecca Jackson


58

59

60

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

72

73

Art

Art

Art

Art

Art

Art

Art

Art

Art

Art

Fiction

Poetry

Nonfiction

Somewhere, Some Time Ago David Deng

Dyptic Myles McCoy

Shooting Rose Daniel Brount

Late Night Matt Ryan

Six Queens Sarah R. Grubb

Psychosomatic Kristina Smith

Faerie Tree Kathryn Major

Skeletons of Autumn Cooper Cox

Toilet in an Abandoned House David McDermand

No One Answered Rochelle Martin

Star Crossed Kevin Brown

If You Want to Understand the MuskyFragrance of the Apples this Autumn Charles Cessna

He Knows Me as the Blind Man Knows the Cuckoo Elena Passarello


80

82

84

85

86

88

89

95

97

100

101

102

103

Poetry

Fiction

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry

Nonfiction

Boom, Boom Dennis Hinrichsen

The Only Thing Infinite Adam Cheshire

Conflagration Adam Cheshire

17th Century Lineups (1618-1648) Steve Castro

Damaged Goods Richard Bray

heretic Sara Uribe (translated by Toshiya Kamei)

Mason Jars Sarah Hollowell

Another Yesterday Andrea Janov

The Black Suit Anton Barnett

The Algorithm of Desire Adrian S. Potter

Spider Ann Goethe

Fair Skin Michael Knoll

Whiskey and Milk Abby Grindle


105

109

112

116

119

121

Poetry

Interview

Interview

Interview

Review

Review

Razzlenats James K. Zimmerman

Interview with Eugene Cross Chaylee Brock

Interview with Elena Passarello Veronica Sipe

Interview with Marcus Wicker Makayla Sickbert

A Review of 44 Horrible Dates by Eddie Campbell Makayla Sickbert

A Review of Cataclysm Baby by Matt Bell Eryn Collins


The Broken Plate | 13

Gary Blankenburg

Resurrection

I was walking Larry out my back door to his old Buick

and there — in my drive — was a speckled woodpecker

laying on its side, to all appearances, dead.

Larry bent closer, but then jumped back and said,

Its eye is moving. I have to go. I’m too tender hearted.

I was thinking about the task ahead — the disposal of the body.

Then I nudged it slightly with the tip of my cane — nothing.

I nudged it a second time and it righted itself.

One final nudge roused it into full flight into a neighbor’s tree.


14 | The Broken Plate

Resurrection

Larry looked at me and my cane and said, Heal me.

I jabbed him playfully with my cane, and we laughed.

But if I were a wizard and my cane were a magic staff,

I would make it my mission to walk the earth

touching this one and that one like a New Age Moses.

Such joy there would be to see them one by one fly up and away from the earth.



Eve Powers

Firefly

Air conditioning. Impossible to breathe in a closed car. Andrea glanced at Mr. Howell. Even with the A.C., his spidery hands left damp patches on the steering wheel. Shepard had gone up yesterday morning, and Mr. Howell couldn’t stop talking about The First American in Space. A lot he knew. She cracked her window an eighth of an inch. That way if she had to get out, she could make herself flat, like one of Saturn’s rings, and slip out into the hot Georgia night before anyone noticed and tried to pull her back in. Andrea was sitting up front with Mr. Howell because if she rode in the back, especially all squished together with soft, pink Janie and greasy-haired Frank, she would puke. She hadn’t said “puke” to Mr. Howell. She had said that if she rode in the back seat, she would become nauseated. That was the ladylike way to say it. They were all going to Mr. Howell’s house, to look through his new telescope. Big deal. Andrea didn’t need to look through his stupid telescope —she had been out in space before, lots of times. No one else in the junior class had been out in space. A voice began to titter inside her. She cleared her throat, hrrrum, to drown it out. Her palms stuck to the plastic seat. She crossed her feet in their huaraches. That was how ladies sat. They’d had a film on it in home ec. “Well, here we are, kids,” said Mr. Howell. “What a surprise,” Andrea thought, “I thought we were somewhere else.” It was ten o’clock on a muggy May night. She was being allowed to stay out late because it was for school. They followed Mr. Howell to the backyard single file, like a line of ducklings. Fireflies winked in the grass, and the air was sweet with honeysuckle. She suddenly wanted to take off all her clothes, run over the grass, and dance with the fireflies, trailing a cape of firefly-light behind her, as the crickets sang, “Andrea, Andrea....” “Are you with us, Andrea?” Mr. Howell said in that tone. She went over to the telescope, where he was explaining which knob did what. They were all clustered together, and Mr. Howell had his hand on Frank’s hand, showing him how to focus the ‘scope. “That’s the Andromeda galaxy,” Mr. Howell said. “Now you try, Andrea.”



Firefly

Everyone was sweating. She bent over the ‘scope, dialed the knob, and the galaxy hit her in the eye. She was entranced, lost her heart to the gal-axy, became long and thin and was sucked through the ‘scope and fired like a rocket toward Andromeda. Wow! Up close, the galaxy was all sparkly, shining with crisp, piercing light that made her body glow like alabaster; light poured out of her eyes. She dove into the unbearable light of the galactic center, sighed, exploded. “My turn,” said Jamie, pushing her aside with a nudge of her plump elbow. Andrea walked a few yards from the telescope, lay down on the moist grass, and let the fireflies drink her light. “Even if you could go at the speed of light,” Mr. Howell said to Frank, “It would still take two and a half...” He looked around. “Andrea?” His words were a rubber band light-years long that culled her from Andromeda’s core and flung her back to Earth. Mr. Howell’s brown polyester pant legs stood over her. “Andrea, if you’re not going to pay attention, you might as well go and sit in the car.” She tried to say, “Sure, Mr. Howell, I was paying attention,” but only small, silent clouds of proto-suns came out of her mouth, like a trick with cigarette smoke. Mr. Howell squatted down beside her, put his hand on her bare shoulder, shook her. “Are you okay?” His hand was anti-matter. She jerked her shoulder away from him and stood up. “Day-dreaming again?” said Frank. “Guess it’ll be just Jamie and I going to the State Science Fair this year.” Jamie smirked and twirled a lock of blond hair around her index finger. Shit. Andrea started to say something unladylike to them, then thought, what’s the point? They’ll never leave Earth, not even once. “It’s late kids, I’ve got to get you home,” said Mr. Howell. On the way back, Andrea rode in the front of the car again. The air was finally cool, and they all had their windows down. The sound of crickets filled the southern night. Andrea leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and fell asleep. Space travel is so exhausting.



Kevin Brown

Star Crossed

I’m writing a movie about you and me, it starts…

INT. HOLLYWOOD BAR – EVENING

1942. EMILY HEART, 21, walks in, sits down, a brown-eyed actress with cabernet cheeks, a small town girl with a face like Loretta Young and curves like Mae West.

JACK DONNELLY, 22, charming, witty, and dashing, the kind of writer this town will never appreciate. He’s had too many whiskey sours to make a decent impression and seen too many movies to let that hold him back.

JACK

What are you drinkin, doll?

EMILY

Nothing a writer could afford.

She turns her nose up like some alley-cat queen, feline bourgeoisie with a palette for soft hearts and hard liquor.

EMILY

Jameson… on the rocks.

And Jack falls in love. They share drinks and…

LATER

… a bed, two tinsel-town moths chasing flickering embers in search of a star.

Stop, is this too sappy? Damn, nevermind. It’s…

INT. HOUSE PARTY – SATURDAY NIGHT



Star Crossed

Indiana, Fall of ‘09. Jack, 18, naïve and insecure, leans into some CATH-OLIC SCHOOLGIRL. Emily stumbles out of the bathroom with her BOYFRIEND, adjusting her skirt. With smeared make-up and a Keystone stench, she catches Jack’s eye and sees that he’s hammered, horny and hoping for a hummer from her best friend.

That’s probably a little closer to how it first went down, but it’s not in Jack’s character to turn Emily away, so scratch that and…

FADE TO:

INT. SALOON – DAY

Tombstone, Arizona. 1889. Jack drinks away the gold rush with whatever spare change he can find.

Emily, 23, serves bourbon to the Deadwood gunslinger with a handful of her ass. She shoots Jack a look with her quick-draw eyes and he’s down and out, smitten by the smoking gun. He challenges the gunslinger to a duel and…

No, on second thought, Emily wouldn’t go for that.

CUT TO:

INT. MANHATTAN APARTMENT – EVENING

A party at her place. 1963. Emily dances with the heaviest wallet she can find. Her hands hug his pockets with that free-love carte blanche.

Jack shares a cigarette with her cat as they wonder if they love her, hate her, or just live to see her laugh, and I wonder if any of these snapshot scenes can possibly capture…

INT. BEDROOM – MORNING

… where we woke in tangled silk, after screwing to sleep to Damien Rice, still on loop. It’s delicate…

because Emily isn’t you, and she never can be, in all your artistic hypocrisies. You’d marry a Marxist for money and fuck any Buddhist into S&M. You talk like Disney royalty and write like Sharon Olds with an optimistic faith in



Kevin Brown

God that drives you to the bottle. Actually, Booze might work, let’s try…

EXT. BOARDWALK – SOMETIME AROUND MIDNIGHT

Atlantic City. 1925. Jack’s a bootlegger on the docks. Emily’s a showgirl on the run. She’s got a one-way ticket to Paris, her husband in the trunk, and a potato peeler in his gut. Jack catches Emily in the act and she cracks a smirk.

EMILY

I warned the bastard I was a lousy cook.

Sharing twisted wit and a decadent flair, they dump the body and hop on a plane to the…

EXT. ROOFTOPS OF PARIS – DUSK

Two young libertines. 1901. Jack’s hands caress a typewriter, his eyes ski Emily’s fair-skinned slopes, his concept novel has plenty of sex and a happy ending.

Emily dangles her chin and pendulum limbs from the shingles of their low-end chateau, gazing at the Moulin Rouge through an opium haze. A somber coquette with dreams of…

INT. SOMEWHERE – AT NIGHT

Where she’s fucking her fucking camera guy, who lets her play the artist and covers the check, while back in an…

INT. APARTMENT – WHO GIVES A FUCK WHEN

It’s dark, musty, and a mess. I sit at my desk, cluttered with bubblegum scripts and lattes with brogues. My slug line knows it’s inside and probably at night, and the white space that falls between must be where you are. Behind me…

ON THE COUCH

DAMIEN RICE strums his guitar, asking why you sang with me at all.

I’m whiskeyed and pissed, and typing this...

INT. HOLLYWOOD HOME – MORNING



Star Crossed

Jack has a glass case of Academy Awards and a call girl mother to call his binge drinking art. Every screenplay in town goes through him now. He shoots most of them down in a limo on the way to the…

EXT. COURTYARD – DAY

Where Emily’s wedding bells toll. Jack wears cocaine on the tip of his nose and a playboy bunny on each arm. No, this happens on the…

EXT. ENGLISH MORES – SAME TIME

But around 1845, with that Victorian flair that gets girls like Emily wet. New friends with old money congratulate the bride, as Jack undresses the groom’s sister with his eyes, wipes the coke from his nose, and wonders why not buy this shit hole just to watch it burn, to spare Emily the…

INT. LONDON TOWNHOUSE – EVENING

In 1923, where she’s old, miserable and unsatisfied, desperate to replicate the parties she threw 40 years from now when she was 40 years younger.

EXT. HYDE PARK – SAME TIME

Jack takes a walk in the rain, no, the snow, with a bent cigarette and won-ders, was it love or just civilization? Does it end here, or in an…

INT. SPACESHIP BRIDGE – WHO KNOWS WHEN

In the distant future. A deep space voyage hits a deep space iceberg and is drifting into somebody else’s sun. All systems crashed, and the last of the crew escaped on Earth-bound pods.

But Captain Jack Donnelly, 61, remains on board, with one last whiskey sour to go down with his ship. He toasts the devil and God, but before he drinks…

EMILY HEART, 60, walks in, sits down, a brown-eyed widow with cabernet cheeks.

JACK

What are you drinkin, doll?



Kevin Brown

EMILY

Nothing a writer could afford.

We share the rest of the bottle and…

LATER

… a star.

FADE OUT.



Andrea Janov

Another Yesterday

Denny’s: 2:37 am:

A cop sits at the counter nursing a cup of coffee, flirting with the young waitresses.

Two girls walk to the bathroom hair disheveled and makeup sweat-smeared, after a night at the only dance club in town.

The booths in the back are joined together. Kids with green, pink, orange hair, mohawks and liberty spikes wear hoodies and leather jackets covered in patches and pins, sit shoulder to shoulder around the tables. Shout over one another, laughing.

In the corner, a couple is making out. Her black wavy hair covers both their faces. A punk throws a mozzarella stick, Get a room. The girl whips her head to the side, Fuck off.

I laugh, my back against a window, dirty Converse sticking out



Another Yesterday

into the aisle. I remember when that was you and your friends, the waitress throws her head in the punks’ direction. I nod as she refills my coffee.



Michael Knoll

Fair Skin

Preheat age to 15 Gently beat in a tattoo, Let simmer in a skeeball booth for two years then Add prejudice and mistrust,

Whisk in a scar earned when the coaster track slipped its mount. Melt two or three more tattoos over the neck and arms Slowly sift calluses and a missing finger into the hands. Let sit in a balloon dart booth for ten years.

Remove from booth and examine pot belly. The mixture should smell of cigarettes and elephant ears. Check that the color is equivalent to that of a corndog Add mustache as desired.



Abby Grindle

Whiskey and Milk

My father taught me the blues. Not how to play them but why they are played — the honest soul, the broken voice, the steady decline. He knew the history of each musician, the story behind every song. As a child, I knew there was something special about that ragged music; I just couldn’t compre-hend what it was. Most weekends, my dad would pack my sister Joy and me into our big red Suzuki and drive to the Wooden Nickel Record Store. At the time, I hated that place more than eating bananas or the smoking sections in restaurants. There wasn’t a shade of white in the entire store; everything was a mix of pee yellow and tan. Dust perched on every record and cassette. Some-times my white Keds left prints on the floor. I knew that when we entered, we wouldn’t be leaving for at least an hour, and when you’re seven years old that feels like days. The only redeeming quality of the store was a small glass case that contained a collection of Elvis Presley tapes. I had never seen as much beauty in one place as there was in that assortment of album artwork; he was the first dark haired man to steal my heart. One particular trip to the record store stands out in my mind. It was a cold day, so Joy and I were wearing puffy coats and hats. Joy’s cheeks burned red from the transition of cold to warm as we stepped inside. My dad made his way to the back of the store, and Joy and I followed. We sat Indian style under one of the displays, settling in for what we knew would be a long wait. I took my coat off, instructing Joy to do the same. We used the weath-erproof material as a tent, hiding from our dad, wondering if he’d ever find us — under the tent, under the table, under those hundreds of records that could hold his attention for hours. I peaked out at my father’s feet, tapping to the beat of the music from a spinning record at the listening station. He searched through the blues albums, his eyes hungry but his movements controlled. For him, this wasn’t a process that could be rushed. He looked at my upside-down face, rustled my bangs, then quickly returned to his search. I took each one of my fingers and pressed them into the dust on the floor, leaving behind their small oval markings. Just in case I was ever kidnapped, they’d have my prints to help find me. When the longest thirty minutes of our lives had passed, my dad made his purchases, and we climbed back up into the car. It was time to go home.



Whiskey and Milk

Once we were in the house, I didn’t mind the hour-long trip we had just taken. I forgot how bored and angry I was at my dad, because this was the time of day I loved — the moments after he bought a new record. My father carefully slid the black disc from its paper cradle, placing it on the turntable. The player’s thin arm swung over, resting atop the record’s grooves. With a rustling click the record began to spin, raw notes and harmonies spilling from the speakers. This was our cue: Joy and I shook our arms and wiggled our hips in violent motions, dancing in ways only children can do. Even though we hated the process of acquiring these records, we loved the end results. Well I been sittin’ here drinkin’, I’m just as lonesome as a man can be. Well I been sittin’ here drinkin’, I’m just as lonesome as a man can be.

Lead Belly. Muddy Waters. Blind Lemon Jefferson. I knew them all, the soul-ful pluck of each guitar note, the gravelly tone to their voices. Every so often we jumped too hard and the record player would skip. We froze, worried. My father gave us a quick, quiet reprimand, but then smiled and watched us start our dancing again, our thin hips swinging, swaying to the beat. Sometimes we’d sing along, crooning about women and the devil and devil women. Little white babies dancing to the beats of tired black men. Four years ago, our basement flooded a few days before Christmas. The water creeped up the walls, into bookshelves and cabinets. We threw away old toys and stuffed animals, made fat with dirty water. But the worst of the damage was reserved for my father’s record collection. The melted snow and groundwater ruined the covers of hundreds of records, leaving them mushy and dripping. My father silently carried box after box of his destroyed collection up the stairs and to the trash. While he was at work, my mom and I tried to dry them, standing amidst a sea of album artwork, wad-ing and weaving around each waterlogged square, armed with hairdryers and good intentions. They dried but were rippled and distorted, poor crumpled versions of what they used to be. As I tried to save each flimsy cover, I finally saw their significance. These men sang songs of racial discrimination, of weak women and strong drinks— nothing my father could relate to. But he saw this music as something that could save someone from drowning, something that made pain tangible, even beautiful. His catharsis was not in the making, but the listening. I stepped back as the corner of a blond, smiling woman’s head tore off in my hands. The lead guitar solo began and we danced, harder and harder, laugh-ing amidst our flinging hair and wiggling hands. You have taken all my money, you have taken my baby too. My dad was laying on his side, head propped in one hand, eyes closed, soaking in the waves that bounced from the speakers. Odysseus, standing on the shoreline, ankle-deep in the water that carried him home.



James K. Zimmerman

Razzlenats

I am sickly tired of post-moderny self- conscious and -important poems like this one that make a statement like this and then veer off into the razzlenats of idiosyncratic and solipsistic supposed self- reflection in a self-reflective post-moderny neologistic sort of way

and use line breaks that make no sense and

stanzas of meta-reflective mud — some with emphases in (parentheses with unintended rhymes in) italics leading into labyrinthine constructs of apparent post-moderny solipsistic repetitions of sickly tired lines or phrases

from earlier in the poem carrying no real significance but questioning sternly in a prosy sort of way: what really is a razzlenat?

and then having no answer

except to some low-impact and -residency MFA students who can analyze it and say oh



Razzlenats

I see what he was trying to get at in a post-moderny and (solipsistic and sickly) self-referential genre and isn’t that well-crafted in a razzlenatty sort of way

and razzlenats will be the next emoticon or twitter or Prius or idiosyncratically post-moderny sort of thingy that everybody

will understand and then having no answer will be in a sickly tired and prosy way

the answer


In Print Festivalof First Books

Featuring:

Eugene Cross Elena Passarello Marcus Wicker & Sarah M. Wells


Ball State University’s annual In Print Festival of First Books includes read-ings, discussions, and classroom visits with authors who have recently pub-lished their first books. The two-day event features three emerging authors and an editor or publisher.

In Print also marks the release of The Broken Plate. This year, we asked our visiting authors to contribute work and each was interviewed by one of our staff. We are grateful to Eugene Cross, Elena Passarello, and Marcus Wicker for the opportunity to share their work and words on method and craft with our readers. We hope you enjoy.



Eugene Cross

Eugene Cross is the author of Fires of Our Choosing, published by Dzanc books in 2012. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of “20 Best New Writers”), American Short Fiction, Story

Quarterly, and TriQuarterly, among other publications. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the

Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.



Elena Passarello

Elena Passarello is the author of Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande 2012). Her writing on music, performance, pop culture, and the natural world has appeared in Slate, Creative Nonfiction, the Normal School, Ninth Letter, the Iowa Review, and the 2012 music writing anthology Pop When the World

Falls Apart. For a decade, Elena worked as an actor and voice-over performer throughout the East Coast and in the Midwest. She is an Assistant Professor

at Oregon State University.



Marcus Wicker

Marcus Wicker’s first book Maybe the Saddest Thing was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by Harper Perennial in 2012. He has received fellowships from The Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Indiana University. Wicker’s work has appeared in Poetry, Beloit, Third Coast, and Ninth Letter, among other journals. He is

assistant professor of English at University of Southern Indiana and poetry editor of Southern Indiana Review.



Contributors’ Notes

Anton Barnett would be lying if he said he popped out of the womb quoting Shakespeare, but he does know that writing has always been a great passion of his ever since he could write, except back then he had Crayola crayons instead of pencils. He’s heading into his final semester at Ball State University, soon to be sent off to the real world. As an avid movie viewer and reader, he enjoys writing screenplays and short fiction with occasional dabbles in poetry.

Catherine Batka is a senior Animation student at Ball State University who enjoys experimenting with watermedia (especially coffee, the life-giver).

Kristina Blaine is a 2007 graduate of The Ohio State University. She is currently earning her M.F.A. in poetry at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Kristina is the lead researcher and writer for The Center for Neuropolicy and the Computation and Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Emory University. Her poetry may also be found in the July 2012 issue of Burningword Quarterly Literary Magazine, Fjords Review Spring 2013, and the July 2013 Fjords Monthly Verse.

Gary Blankenburg is a retired English teacher, poet, and scholar living in Sparks, Maryland. His doctoral dissertation at Carnegie Mellon University treated the “confessional” poets: Berryman, Lowell, Snodgrass, Plath, and Sexton. He is the author of eight books of poetry and short fiction.

Richard Bray was born and raised in Westfield, IN. He is currently an undergraduate student at Ball State University where he studies Creative Writing, Professional Writing and Military Science. As a writer, Richard enjoys finding the poetry in day-to-day situations and capturing the human condition in its most honest form.

Daniel Brount is a freshman Creative Writing major. Writing stories and poetry consumes much of his time, and art takes that space when inspiration hits him. His main passions are creative writing, digital art, journalism, and people.




Kevin Brown hails from the Lilac Village just outside the city of Chicago. He later moved to Indianapolis to study at Nativity Catholic School, where he learned everything from proper penmanship to the evils of premarital sex. At the age of 18, Kevin Brown met the devil at a crossroads. She installed Celtx on his MacBook and taught him how to love. The rest is history.

Steve Castro’s most recent publications include his poem “The City of Palms,” published in BRICKrhetoric (Chicago, Illinois) and his comparative essay “Elevators & Stairs,” published in apt (Boston, Massachusetts). His complete publication history, among other things, can be found by visiting his website: www.thepoetryengineer.com.

Charles Cessna lives in North Carolina with his wife and Cocker Spaniels. His poetry most recently appeared in the North American Review as a final-ist for the James Hearst Poetry Prize.

Bobby-Jack Chapman is a Ball State senior who has always had a passion for reading and writing. His influences include H. P. Lovecraft, Rich-ard Matheson, and Sean McMullen. Though many of his stories have an old-school sci-fi twist to them, Chapman maintains an appreciation for the Norse myths and legends of old. He is currently staying in Anderson, Indiana and upon graduation will be moving in with his college sweetheart of four years.

Adam Cheshire is a writer living in Hillsborough, NC. He is a graduate of University of North Carolina Wilmington’s English M.A. program. His work is concerned with the breakdown of interiority when faced with social intimacy, and the self-destruction and violence that occur as a result of the failure to reconcile the two. He cites among his influences Lydia Davis, Kaf-ka, Borges, David Foster Wallace, and J. Robert Lennon. His most recent work appears in Boundoff.

Alyssa Cooper was born in Belleville, Ontario, and has lived in Canada for her entire life. After spending two years studying fine arts at York University, she left Toronto to pursue an education in Graphic Design. Writing and art have been her greatest passions since she was a child, and she has dedicated her life to perfecting her skills and pushing the limits of her craft. She is cur-rently attending college in Oshawa, where she lives with her typewriter and her personal library.

Cooper Cox is a freshman at Ball State University majoring in Creative Writing with a minor in Film and Theatre. He is originally from a small town in Indiana called Centerville. Because he grew up in a town with one




stop light, he fell in love with the idea of photographing specific moments and capturing the essence of his surroundings.

Eugene Cross is the author of Fires of Our Choosing, published by Dzanc books in 2012. His stories have appeared in Narrative Magazine (which named him one of “20 Best New Writers”), American Short Fiction, Story Quarterly, and TriQuarterly, among other publications. He is the recipient of scholarships from the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He currently lives in Chicago where he teaches in the Fiction Department at Columbia College Chicago.

Scott Daughtridge is an emerging writer from Atlanta. Most recently, his work has been featured in Curbside Splendor, Loose Change, Storychord, and Burn Away’s Le Bulletin De Historique Fictif D’Atlanta collection. He is the creator of the Lostintheletters reading series in Atlanta and is a contributor for Vouched Books.

David Deng was born in Guangzhou, China, and moved to the United States when he was 10 years old. He is a senior at Ball State University, studying Photography. Due to his cultural and ethnic background, most of his current art work deals with his move to the United States and what effects the distance had on him and his family.

Ann Goethe is the founder of the Blacksburg New School, which is celebrat-ing its 42nd year. Her novel, Midnight Lemonade has been translated into four languages and was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discovery Prize. She is a playwright and her poems, essays and short stories have been published in The New Orleans Review, Clare, Bark, and Rockhurst Review. She lives in Virginia on a small peninsula in the ancient New River.

Abby Grindle lives in Chicago, IL with a cat, a husband, and a Sheltie. She graduated from Ball State University with a B.A. in Telecommunications. She likes to read anything by Lorrie Moore, smell rising dough, and dance around like she’s being electrocuted. Her most recent work has been pub-lished in Anatomy, Prime Mincer, and ChamberFour.

Sarah R. Grubb graduated from Ball State University in December 2012 with a Master’s in Creative Writing. Her main writing and reading interests lie in memoir/essay and fiction, where she finds inspiration for some of her cut-and-paste collages. She will be starting an MFA in the fall of 2013.

Dennis Hinrichsen’s most recent books are Rip-tooth (winner of the 2010 Tampa Poetry Prize) and Kurosawa’s Dog (2008 FIELD Poetry Prize). He has new poems in Hunger Mountain, Interrupture, Linebreak, and The Journal.




Sarah Hollowell is an undergraduate Creative Writing major at Ball State University. Her interests include experimental writing, magical realism, uni-corns, and time travel. She would get a lot more writing done if she ever left Tumblr. She really wants to move off campus so that she can get a kitten and give it a nerdy name.

Rebecca Jackson is a mathematics and Creative Writing double-major at Ball State University. She enjoys photography, swing dancing, and studying Japanese. She often has deep considerations of dyeing her hair entirely blue, but due to paleontological reasons, has yet to do so.

Andrea Janov is a recent transplant to Pittsburgh. She was raised by Rock n’ Roll parents who knew the importance of concerts and going past the “no trespassing” signs. She spent her adolescence in a small town punk rock scene where she moshed, fell in love, and produced a few cut and paste fan-zines. She holds Creative Writing degrees from SUNY Purchase and Wilkes University. www.andreajanov.com

Lesley Johnson studied Public Communication at Ball State University. She has a huge love for writing, particularly poetry, and coffee. This is her first publication. She would like to thank her friends and professors for their help and encouragement.

Toshiya Kamei holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas. His translations include Liliana Blum’s The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (2008), Naoko Awa’s The Fox’s Window and Other Stories (2010), Espi-do Freire’s Irlanda (2011), and Selfa Chew’s Silent Herons (2012).

Michael Knoll is a writer of short fiction, poetry, and screenplays. He cur-rently resides in Muncie, IN.

Alisha Layman is a senior English Studies major at Ball State University. She writes mostly flash fiction and, lately, creative non-fiction. She aspires to one day own her own restaurant. She enjoys movies, cats, and Greece.

Robbie Maakestad is currently pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing at Ball State University. He has previously been published in Home Schooling Today and Parnassus, as well as on thisisantler.com. His flash fiction piece, “Seasick,” won Honorable Mention in Marco Polo Arts Magazine’s 100 x 100 Contest. Robbie is interested in the interplay of faith and writing and desires to teach at the undergraduate level someday.




Heather J. Macpherson writes from her home in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in Spillway, Pearl, Nerve Cowboy, The Mas Tequila Review, The Worcester Review, OVS, and other fine publications. She also has poems forthcoming in Weave, Blueline, and CLARE Literary Magazine.

Kathryn Major was born and grew up in rural and small town communities in southern Indiana. Primarily a photographer, much of her recent work is influenced by her childhood and teenage years. She attended Ball State University and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography in December 2012.

Rochelle Martin is an artist with a passion for words. When a camera or paint cannot satisfy her need for expression, words become her medium.

Myles McCoy is a Visual Communications student at Ball State University. Among other things, he has a keen interest in sequential and digital art. He has a generally inappropriate comic at www.excitementabounding.com.

David McDermand grew up in Central Indiana in a town where kids drove their tractors to school and where couples came to retire. After graduating, he moved to Muncie, Indiana and became a film student at the great Ball State University. In his photos, he’s been experimenting with modification and destruction to create grungy, dreamlike images. He also goofs around and makes movies and loud noises.

Nancy Carol Moody’s work has appeared in Salamander, The New York Quarterly, The MacGuffin, Fjords, and The Los Angeles Review. She is the author of Photograph With Girls (Traprock Books) and has just completed a new manuscript titled Negative Space. Nancy lives in Eugene, Oregon, and can be found online at www.nancycarolmoody.com.

Nicole L. V. Mullis is a Sunday columnist for the Battle Creek Enquirer and a contributing editor for the Stage of Life website. Her work has appeared in several publications, including Mount Hope Magazine and Epiphany Maga-zine. Michigan State University produced her three-act play, Sea Glass, as its ASMSU winner. TLC Productions produced her ten-minute play, Security Blanket.

Elena Passarello is the author of Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande 2012). Her writing on music, performance, pop culture, and the natural world has appeared in Slate, Creative Nonfiction, the Normal School, Ninth Letter, the Iowa Review, and the 2012 music writing anthology Pop When the World




Falls Apart. For a decade, Elena worked as an actor and voice-over performer throughout the East Coast and in the Midwest. She is an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University.

Adrian S. Potter writes poetry and short fiction. He is the author of the fiction chapbook Survival Notes and winner of the 2010 Southern Illinois Writers Guild Poetry Contest. Previous publication credits include Interro-bang?!, Clare, Reed, and burntdistrict. Additional propaganda can be found at adrianspotter.squarespace.com.

Eve Powers was awarded first prize in the National League of American Pen Women’s Soul-Making Literary Competition. Her fiction has been anthol-ogized in Writing Our Way Out of the Dark, Scent of Cedars, and A Cup of Comfort for Sisters. Her poetry will soon appear in Sufi Journal, Third Wednes-day Journal, Flowers and Vortexes, and Hawaii Pacific Journal. She is listed in the Poets & Writers Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers.

Matt Ryan is an amateur photographer and Creative Writing major at Ball State University.

Noah Schenk was born in Arizona and raised in Ohio. He received a BFA in Glass from Kent State University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Visual Studies from Ball State University. Upon completing his undergraduate de-gree he was awarded the prestigious Windgate Fellowship. Noah was recently selected as a representative of the United States for the 5th Beijing Interna-tional Art Biennale at the National Art Museum of China. His current work deals with discarded objects such as litter.

Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb’s work has appeared in Epiphany Magazine, Spectrum, Dark Matter: A Journal of Speculative Writing, The Poydras Review, Jelly Bucket, Red River Review, Entelechy: Mind & Culture, Shangri-La Shack Literary Arts Journal, Concho River Review, and many other journals. She holds an interdisciplinary MA from Prescott College and is co-founder of Native West Press.

George Morgan Scott grew up in South Texas and attended graduate school at the University of California, San Diego, where he received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology. He now teaches this subject at California State University, Long Beach and lives in nearby Lakewood with his wife. George values Tim O’Brien’s “story-truth” over “happening-truth.” He has written mystery, suspense, sci-fi, and now literary fiction. His work has appeared in Lullwater Review, RiverSedge, and G.W. Review.




Noel Sloboda is the author of the poetry collection Shell Games as well as several chapbooks. He has also published a book about Edith Wharton and Gertrude Stein. Sloboda teaches at Penn State York.

Dylan Smith is just another, struggling writer lost in the scourge of lan-guage’s beauty.

Kristina Smith is studying Cartooning at the School of Visual Arts. She enjoys making silly comics and drawing strange creatures. More of her work can be found at crimm-art.tumblr.com

Sarah Snook graduated from Minnesota State University, Mankato with her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and has her M.A. in English from the University of Indianapolis. She currently resides in Massachusetts with her family, where she enjoys writing poetry and fiction, crafting, and listening to Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Sara Uribe was born in Querétaro in 1978 and since 1996 has lived in Tam-aulipas. She is the author of Lo que no imaginas (2004), Palabras más palabras menos (2006), and Nunca quise detener el tiempo (2007). English translations of her poems have appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Harpur Palate, and So to Speak, among others.

Marcus Wicker’s first book, Maybe the Saddest Thing, was selected for the National Poetry Series and published by Harper Perennial in 2012. He has received fellowships from The Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, the Fine Arts Work Center, and Indiana University. Wicker’s work has appeared in Poetry, Beloit, Third Coast, and Ninth Letter, among other journals. He is an assistant professor of English at University of Southern Indiana and poetry editor of Southern Indiana Review.

Kelly Zientek-Baker once worked as a newspaper reporter in Alaska and did freelance work for the St. Anthony Messenger magazine. She left the jour-nalist behind, along with her New York roots, and now writes fiction from Berkeley, California.

James K. Zimmerman is the winner of the Daniel Varoujan Award from the New England Poetry Society, the Hart Crane Memorial Poetry Award, and the Cloudbank Poetry Prize. His work appears or is forthcoming in anderbo.com, The Bellingham Review, Rosebud, Inkwell, Nimrod, Passager, and Vallum, among others.


The Broken Plate 2013 Sampler

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Transcript of The Broken Plate 2013 Sampler