2013: Kiosk Retrospective

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KIOSK RETROSPECTIVE EDITION

Selections from 75 years of the literary and art magazines of Morningside College: Manuscript Perspectives Kiosk

A publication of Morningside College Sioux City, Iowa 2013

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EDITOR’S FOREWORD Disney’s Snow White made her debut on the big screen, Wrong Way Corrigan took off from New York for California and ended up in Ireland, Orson Welle’s broadcast of War of the Worlds caused a panic on the East Coast, Neville Chamberlain proclaimed “Peace for our time,” and Time magazine declared Hitler as “Man of the Year.” The year was 1938. Amid all this, students in Manuscript Club published and distributed the first issue of Morningside’s literary and art magazine. As the Foreword to the first issue noted, “subject to editorial fallibility, the best will be printed.” Now, in 2013, it’s time to celebrate just some of the best poetry, fiction, and non-fiction the Morningside community has offered over the past seventy-five years.

From the first volume, edited by Miriam Hawthorn, students have published a literary magazine, initially called Manuscript, nearly every year. The name has changed, to Perspectives in 1955 and Kiosk in 1971. Advisors over the years have included Donald Stefanson, Carole Van Wyngarden, Janice Eidus, Scott simmer, Robert Conley, Jan Hodge, Jason Murray, and for the past 24 years, Stephne Coyne. English and art departments have sponsored its publication. But it is the student writers and editorial staffs, over one hundred Morningside students, who have sustained the tradition.

Reading through seventy-five years’ worth of stories and poems printed over the years has been a humbling—at times overwhelming—experience. Whittling down those items to the few printed in this anthology was almost impossible without the help of the editorial board. Although artwork has often been a part of the magazine, space limitations and concerns over reproduction quality prevented publication here. My apologies to the hundreds of Morningside writers and artists not found within these pages. All of the past issues, however, are available electronically online. I encourage everyone to go to the English department website and follow the links to past issues. The publications offer a glimpse into the lives and viewpoints of the Morningside community throughout the years.

I have said before that I believe the Kiosk is meant to be a living notebook on whose pages a wide variety of individual voices can be heard and considered. With this publication, I believe that even more so. Attitudes and perceptions have evolved over seventy-five years, but certain themes and subject matter seem always to catch the imaginations of writers. The pieces printed here have been grouped by specific topics which seemed to go together readily. I hope you find the nuances within the topics as interesting as I have found them to be.

Special thanks go to Dr. Marty Knepper and Dr. Stephen Coyne for their full support of bringing this project to print. Special thanks also to all the past editors for their recommendations and encouragement. This publication is dedicated to the writers, artists, advisors, and editors who have contributed to the magazines over the years. It is their dedication to the atmosphere of encouragement and inspiration fostered on campus which has sustained literary and artistic achievement at Morningside College for seventy-five years.■ Marcie Ponder, Editor in Chief

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STAFF Editor in Chief:

Marcie Ponder

Editorial Board:

Karen Johnson Matthew Ponder Chase Shanafelt Kelci Teut

Faculty Advisor:

Dr. Stephen Coyne

Cover Design:

Morningside Alumna Samar Javed (2010)

The views herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Kiosk staff or Morningside College.

The Kiosk is published by and for adults. Some material may not be suitable for children. | 7

CONTENTS PLACE Call It College Life A Hot Dry Wind Memory Visiting Wyoming October in Hinton Sale Iowa Painting with Ghosts

Myna Nickum Karen Wolff Dan Oakland Deb Freese Debra Kehrberg Beth Donohue Cathie Stangl Colin O’Sullivan

11 12 14 15 16 17 18 19

Lorna Williams Rosalee Jacobson Gary Gesaman David Stead Rick Luther Walter Mullin Cliff Thompson

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Judith H. Abbott Malola Atwood Stephen Coyne Rick Rector

35 37 38 40

Edalene Moore Shirley Cox Spiwe Y. Kachidza Charlotte Walker Baker Dave Neitzke Cathee Phillips Ross Wilcox Krystal Shearer Lydia Ford

43 44 45 46 47 49 50 51 53

Eleanor Thorpe Eleanor Ann Mohr Rosalee J. Sprout Rebekah Stone Jan D. Hodge

57 58 59 61 62

FAITH On Sunday The World’s Answer Thief Early Reflections North Country How I Spend My Sunday Lukewarm

GRIEF The Generation of Leaves Fate Missed The Day They Buried Grandpa

FAMILY Erasure Wild Morning Glories Grandma The Thorn Tree Casualties of War Orion Could Teach You Ionne These Silent Watchers, the Stars Maple Butter

GROWTH Bruises Social Security Boy with Boat 1964 Old Folks in Winter

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True Story Confession Heritage is a Conduit

Megan Lindsay Audrey Hantla Charlie Nixon

63 65 66

Helen Travis Al Anderson Marie Deel Robert Birkby Dan Anderson Greg Anderson Lindsay Washburn Matthew Ponder

69 70 71 72 73 74 76 78

Rosalee Jacobson Anita Yeska bill russell Timothy T. Orwig Trish Regnerus

83 84 85 86 87 88

Kris Lischefska J. Chandler Rough Bob Lee Allison Averill Deborah Craft Debbie Sharp Robin Brower Amanda Prince

91 92 93 95 96 97 99 100

Winifred Cheely Mary Cruikshank Darryl McEntaffer George A. Hawks Dave Baldwin Randall J. Gates Greg Berge Jess Horsley

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

LIFE Fish Bowl Mr. Smith Peroxide Virgins The Kite Surf Music Kismet A Blonde Reflection Example of Modern Magical Problem #42

NATURE A Collection of Short Poems and Haiku It’s Spring Again Progress Once I Was a Cow Swift Fates One Way of Looking at a Blackbird

RELATIONSHIPS The Year After the Love Before A Poem The Cabin, Besides in Summer Untitled Preacher’s Wife A Lesson in Love Socks How to Dump a Useless Man

WAR To Three Soldiers A Student’s War-Time Creed Returning Home Wake Up, Mankind Initiation into Manhood Easy Rider Logical Analogy Battlefield Mathematician

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PLACE

“Some places speak distinctly.

Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwrecks.” ―Robert Louis Stevenson

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CALL IT COLLEGE LIFE

Manuscript 1938

by Myna Nickum

W

hen roll is taken, Wednesday Chapel is one thing; when it isn’t, Evans’ is another.

On this particular Wednesday morning roll isn’t being taken and the ice cream parlor is packing ‘em in.

Students fill the booths on one side of the room—six people to a booth and a group standing in front of each. The counter is lined with fellows, possibly talking Hitler, more probably discussing the freshman girls.

Cokes, double-deck cones, and hot fudge sundaes seem to be the order of the day.

A nickel collection is taken and the swing-fans clamor about the nickelodeon taking down the words of “Especially for You” over and over the machine plays the catchy tune.

Suddenly all the members of the group burst forth with the same phrase of the song. A great rush is made to write the long-wanted words down on paper.

Immediately a dilapidated typewriter is dragged out from the back room and set up on the ice cream containers. A typist from the group props herself upon a cardboard box and begins pounding out the words, “Especially for you, That’s all I live for…”

A popcorn moocher thrusts his hand into the stale popcorn drawer and very quickly withdraws it with a mouse trap clamped on two fingers.

Three fellows are spending their pennies on a peanut machine in one corner and a couple of girls are getting weighed.

Just as a little blonde starts trying to teach a burly half-back how to truck, someone calls from the door that chapel is out.■

PLACE

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A HOT DRY WIND

Perspectives 1963

by Karen Wolff

A

hhot dry wind blew ceaselessly across the flats of western South Dakota and raised small whorls of dust as it whipped around the corners of Ike’s truck stop. A person could stand on that bleak crossroad and listen to the zing of the electrical power lines and once in a while a meadowlark. Every minute or so a car would pass by on the highway, and when it was gone the big, desolate emptiness returned and the inside of your mouth felt dry and dusty.

Out back, Addie Pine finished cramming the leavings from the noon meal into the garbage can and slammed on the lid harder than she needed to. She straightened up, wiped the grease and sweat from her face with her grimy apron, and headed for the back door.

She felt cross on account of the heat and the dust, but, mostly, on account of the everpresent wind. “Good thing today’s Saturday,” she thought. “Tomorrow I can stay home.” She waved her fat, white arms to shoo the flies off the screen door and went back inside the cafe.

The kitchen was stifling hot and had the rancid smell of countless orders of French fries and greasy, tasteless gravy. Addie went out into the front part and sat down on a stool. She was running the place alone today because Ike had taken his wife into Rapid City for a shopping trip. There hadn’t been much business today and she hated not having anyone to talk to. Even Ike was better than no one. She liked it best when the place filled up with truckers. They laughed and kidded and called her “Tiny” for all her one hundred and eighty pounds. She laughed, too, even at their stories. It was just two14 | RETROSPECTIVE

thirty by the clock over the counter. Two and a half hours before Ike would relieve her. She knew she ought to get up and clean the place a little. The buzzing flies made her drowsy and her dress stuck to her back, making her feel wet all over, and she just didn’t want to move. Pretty soon it would be time for people to start coming in for something cold to drink or a cup of coffee. Mostly they would be tourists or truckers. Webster, the little town she lived in, was set back from the highway a half mile or so but the two hundred odd souls who lived there weren’t about to go a half mile on a day like this for a cup of Addie Pine’s coffee. Not for anything.

She reached up and pulled down a sticky fly paper from the ceiling. It was covered with upwards of a hundred flies, their glistening bodies now held motionless by that sticky sweetness that was their undoing. She tossed it in the waste basket and poured herself a cup of coffee.

The screen door slammed.

“Hello, boys,” said Addie.

“Hi, Addie. Give us a beer will ya?” They disappeared into the darkness of the adjoining room which was the bar. Addie followed them. They sat down at a small table and waited while she drew two foaming glasses of beer for them.

“Startin’ pretty early for Saturday night, aren’t you?” she asked. She worried a little because Ike wasn’t there. He’d be back at four but she knew that those young bucks would be ready for hell-raising before then.

She went back into the cafe and stared out the window into the dust and heat of the horizon fifteen miles away. The vast empti-

ness began working on her again. It always did by the end of the week. On Monday things didn’t seem so bad, but by the end of the week the loneliness got to her and it seemed harder and harder to face the weekend alone. She wondered what she’d do with her day off, knowing well enough that she’d do exactly as she’d done every Sunday for the last couple of years since her Ma died. Quietly, desperately, she prayed that something would happen to change it, that something would drive that terrible ache away. But nothing would change. For a moment resentment and frustration seethed within her; then she relaxed and her face became placid. Why fight it? She was like a fly caught on the sticky paper.

A carload of tourists came in and ordered iced tea. It was getting noisier in the bar. She kept watching the clock, wishing Ike would come out a little early. It took Ike to manage the place come Saturday night. At last the familiar dusty blue car drove up.

“Hi, Addie. How’s it going?”

“OK, Ike. I’m glad you’re back though.” She gestured toward the bar with her head.

“Well, I’ll go write your check and then you can go,” he said.

She hung up her apron and got her purse, wishing all the time that she wouldn’t do what she was going to do.

“Say, Ike. You’d better deduct the usual from the check.”

He returned presently from his office with the check and a bottle wrapped up in a paper sack. “Take it easy now,” he said. “See you Monday.” The screen door slammed behind her and she got into her car and headed for town and home.

The back door of her house was open and she let herself into the coolness of the big, old kitchen. Ike often asked her why she continued to live in that big house all by herself. She couldn’t tell him why, but she knew she’d never be able to leave it. She set the bottle on

the refrigerator and went into the bathroom to draw her bath. She undressed slowly and sank her huge body into the delicious coolness of the water. With her head back and her eyes shut she let her thoughts wander, and whenever she did that, she ended up knowing the feeling of the aching void within her.

She soaked a while, then climbed out, put on a wrapper and went to the kitchen for something to eat. All the time she fought the emptiness, but when she’d eaten she knew it was hopeless, and the time had come.

Slowly, as if in a trance, she went to the refrigerator and took down the bottle. She unwrapped it, neatly folded the sack, and set the bottle on the table. She went to the cupboard and gave great thought to which glass she would use. At last she selected a large one with red flowers painted on it. She sat down at the table and very deliberately opened the bottle. Her thoughts began to move faster and faster until they were racing through her head in wild disorder. The yen for the stuff came on with blinding intensity. She poured a glass and gulped it down in huge mouthfuls. And the round ball of fire in her gullet burned and seared her delicate insides, and in a moment, the hole, the enormous void, began to close; and whenever it quit burning and hurting, she swallowed more and more and the tortured hours passed quickly. When the dawn came and the red ball of the sun, that parching heat, appeared on the horizon, she gave a low moan and slumped on the table.

When she awoke it was late afternoon. The sky was hazy with dust and the sun burned hot and the rushing of the wind was still there. She got to her feet and her head throbbed and she wanted water. She retched violently a couple of times but then with great relief she knew it was all over for another week. By and by she began to feel better.■

PLACE

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MEMORY

Kiosk 1973

by Dan Oakland

The windmill in the meadow stands lonely as the breezes try to give it life.

The farmhouse—once a home—is now a memory.

Only to be thought of by the wheat field growing in its place.

There was a grove of trees where the children used to play their games, and where they’d sing their songs, and where they’d shed their tears.

Once there stood an orchard which would blossom every spring, and a garden that would grow ‘til fall.

The grove of trees is gone now and with it all the children.

Each spring and fall are sadder with no blossoms to smell and no garden to tend.

All these are but memories, only to be thought of by the wheat field growing there instead.

And all that is left is the lonely windmill standing in the meadow as the breezes vainly try to bring it life again.

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VISITING WYOMING

Kiosk 1981

by Deb Freese

Uncle Donald flicks ashes into his shirt pocket. He knows what is wrong with America.

Aunt Jaree sips coffee and squeezes into herself.

Nebraska after Gordon is like a giant unmade bed, soft and lumpy, mourning sleep. Then, you meet the Big Sky, the antelope, the deer, and miles and miles of nothing.

Donald talks with clenched teeth, cigarette wagging.

“Range cattle,” he says, “Are real wild. Afraid, like God intended. They hide their young from men.”

Cows in Iowa are tame.

Wyoming is a place for cowboys, for men who love and fear the wind, the cold, the snow. for men who fight. The sky is not bigger in Wyoming just closer.

It hides behind no cornfields, only mountains.

Donald climbs the mountains to touch the sky.

He shoots antelope and deer.

Jaree drinks coffee and longs for home and cornfields.

PLACE

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OCTOBER IN HINTON

by Debra Kehrberg

A train passes each night through this Iowa farm town.

The co-op locks tight and the hum of the huge dryers pushes the town to sleep.

Each morning fat wagons rumble past the main street bar standing solitary like a cocklebur in a town of corn.

Dusty tires on wagons and trucks wait around the comer, millions of yellow kernels weighing them down. The flavors of fresh ground feed and coffee crackle the alleyways and mingle in open windows.

The sound of grain shifts down from the wagons, crosses the grates, and tumbles into the bins, then spreads out to coat the rooftops.

Each kernel glimmers and disappears, drenched by the morning dust.

Farmers full of ripe air and fields and soil clamor out of town, drift out of view like chaff savoring the harvest.

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Kiosk 1995

SALE

Kiosk 2001

by Beth Donohue

In the corner of a pasture three miles west of Boyden, Iowa, the farmers stand in little groups— clusters of color— denim and flannel with green John Deere caps.

They lean on pickups or fence posts, weathered and gray in the flat light of late October.

They talk among themselves then browse, brushing calloused fingers stained with engine grease over the dirt and rust on rows of farm equipment, kicking tires, checking welds, estimating prices.

A solitary figure stands apart, arms crossed, eyes squinting thinking of com yields and cattle futures and how much time another plow would save if the bidding doesn’t go too high.

The auctioneer’s repetitive twang drones continuously through the portable speakers as piece by piece a livelihood is sold away.

The buyers understand, they’re farmers as well.

They smile and nod and pay what they can; partners in dust.

PLACE

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IOWA

Kiosk 2005

by Cathie Stangl

It snowed in April— thick, wet, stick-to-everything snow.

Nine inches.

Four days later I sunbathed in 85-degree weather. Worst sunburn in years.

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PAINTING WITH GHOSTS

Kiosk 2007

by Colin O’Sullivan

L

ike most hometowns for most people, Sioux City has a strong hold on me. I am nineteen years old, and I don’t have much to call my own. The city’s air fuels my blood, and its water cools my desire. So I claim it as my home.

The town stretches from the milliondollar homes north of town, along the Missouri’s sandy banks, on south to the abandoned stockyards. The latter is my stomping ground, two stories of rebar and cement. Its pillars, two and a half feet in diameter, support its four feet thick cement floor.

On this cool summer evening, I spend some time drinking beer and transferring my sketches from paper to the worn cement walls of the neglected stockyards. I am a graffiti artist.

I have to scrape off splotches of cow manure with the bottom of the Krylon spraypaint can to make sure the paint will hold.

Ageless manure, grass petrified in chaw and straw. All the same it’s still cow shit, no matter how old. I avoid touching it with my hands.

The remnants of an animal are out of place here as any other living being. Not even the homeless travelers camp here. Not a Single wall touches the ceiling. The outer walls are four to five feet high, while the ceilings are fifteen feet above. Its inside is broken into hundreds of wooden pens, where hay still lies, awaiting an occupant. These pens have seen the last of their usefulness. The stockyards, once the heart and soul of my city, now deserted, stand defiantly against change.

It is my mortar made mascot, smeared with a tainted history It sits adjacent to John Morrell, a beef and pork packing plant. The stockyards were ruined by John Morrell and its competitors. The packing plants reward the feed lots and a mindless work force. They deprive the farmers, the butchers and the auctioneers. Cowboy boots and hats are replaced with pinstriped suits and plain, black ties. Families are traded for corporations. The mob, no longer fed by the unions, headed back to Chicago years ago. Sitting on a bridge at the back of the stock yards, I hear the pigs squeal next door, heading into John Morrell’s kill floor.

The cement bridge is my favorite spot to paint. It faces the south and west, out of Sight of traffic, and jets out the back of the building, roof missing spots and rafters barely hanging on. A great spot to view the city’s colorful sunsets. Railroad tracks lie twentyfive feet below. I imagine endless lines of cattle and hogs boarding the rail cars; maybe headed south to Omaha, or are they taking the route north to Minneapolis? I wish the railroad still used these tracks; I would ride the rail to the next town, drink booze with the fellow jumpers, and tell them about a town called Sioux City.

I sit alone, sipping on a bottle of Budweiser. I listen to ghost stories, as told by the crumbling walls, broken and empty pens, and the rows and rows of cement columns supporting this abandoned building. The air is dusty, without wind or hooves around to disturb the dirty floor, adding to its charm.

I break my daydream with a rattle of a

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spray paint can. I prepare to attack the wall, looking down at my sketch in the notebook. I close my eyes, the image is still there. Every line, swoosh, dot, and arrow looks back at me. I am ready.

I put my name on the wall, making it mine. I chop the wall into a flat white outline.

I mark areas where the colors will alternate. I smell the spray paint, the beer, and the lingering musk of years past. The uneven wall gives the painting texture. A dark blue over baby blue and kelly green, then black and gray spell out my name, SYN. The “one” is incased by a bright one green arrow, the “SYN” flows in and out of the wall, like a waving flag. I surround the SYN with a painted black cloud. It is four feet tall and eight feet wide, and takes me thirty minutes to finish. I savor every moment.

I step back from my finished painting. I have performed heart surgery on the dead and forgotten wall; giving it new life with the brilliant colors. The building, however different, again fulfills a need.

This is not the first wall to be brightened.

Not just by me either. The unknown painters tell me their names. “Da’ Grouse” has painted a Cat in the Hat smoking a joint, and a penis mutilated by piercing. “Sway” writes his name with a west coast wild style, barely legible. “Tina” paints herself staring at a night sky. “De’lash” tries his hand at graffiti, showing his inexperience. Here one has time to perfect the art, so I do. Sitting back, looking at the newly claimed wall, I feel proud of what I have done.■

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FAITH

“You can’t know, you can only believe―or not.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

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ON SUNDAY

Manuscript 1946

by Lorna Williams

On Sunday some folk go to church and sit in the solemn pew and search for the truth of God. But I go out to the open field and find His truth in the rich, bright yield of the simple clod.

FAITH

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THE WORLD’S ANSWER

by Rosalee Jacobson

Just this once I will answer your questions.

Just this once!

Do not ask me again.

The world does not care about your doubts.

Who you are, what you are, why you are.

Regardless of your questions, this planet continues its yearly route, about the sun.

So you are one?

Maybe someone, probably no one.

The world is tired of all your -isms— pessimism, communism, skepticism, materialism, egotism.

You might as well go catch a star before it falls as search for reasons for belonging to it all.

The world is tired of your questions.

The world does not care.

Only humans care.

And maybe, someday, even they, will not care.

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Perspectives 1959

THIEF

Perspectives 1960

by Gary Gesaman

The bones lay white beneath the sod no longer shod in flesh and skin.

The soul alone is raised to God, a pod of goodness doubt and sin.

This is all we carry past our last encounter with our kind.

No veil of white to shield our casts, no mask of culture to hide behind.

How then are we the greater race?

White of face but not of soul.

We who live on self-made grace while neighbors die with the trust we stole.

FAITH

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EARLY REFLECTIONS

by David Stead

The tiny movable parts of the precision made machine are now assembled, and the master-timer begins the co-ordination of the clock.

The hours of toil and the suffering of the designer demand constant care and delicate completion of the precious task.

The emergence from the warmth of the factory into the changing temperature of the owner’s shop is guided by precision-skilled mechanics aware of the importance of each mechanism.

Continual care and maintenance is rewarded by growth of manipulative functions, and the chorus of chimes moves from an erratic disruption, to a harmonic combination of movement and grace.

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Perspectives 1959

NORTH COUNTRY

Kiosk 1975

by Rick Luther

There I was in the skyway in downtown Minneapolis when your average Scandinavian maiden approached me and said, “Do you believe in Jesus?”

But I was in a playful mood and so I pointed to my groin and said, “Do you believe in love?”

Doubts then filled my mind as I watched the gamut of emotions flitting across her Candy-face, but as it turned out we had something in common and it wasn’t Jesus.

FAITH

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HOW I SPEND MY SUNDAY

by Walter Mullin

I go to the cemetery before the morning passes away, it’s quiet then.

I spend a long time there looking at the stones, the leaves, the plastic flowers, the little dime store flags, and moss and lots of names.

It’s really a fine place to think.

Some people say you shouldn’t walk across the rows. “that’s disrespectful”…when you’re dead.

I walk right across they don’t mind.

I talk to myself and cuss and bitch.

Sometimes I pray, out loud. But I never cry.

I laugh a lot and tell myself jokes and think of all the stupid things that happen.

It’s best when it’s foggy.

It disappears and you don’t even notice...till it’s gone.

Gone.

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Kiosk 1978

LUKEWARM

Kiosk 2004

by Cliff Thompson

“I

‘know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth,’ Revelations, chapter three: verses fifteen and sixteen.”

Nick heard the speakers echo his voice from the back of the church. His tone was nasal and tinny—it carried a sincerity that he did not feel. The church was crowded on Saturday night, parishioners cheating the Sabbath so they could sleep in and watch football. The ancient priest’s voice ground on, speaking the gospel of the Lord, his gravelly voice holding the vowel sounds so long that Nick was afraid he’d keel over in midsentence.

There was no choir, no deacons, no army of altar boys, not in this small town Catholic church—just the priest. Nick was the lone helper tonight, doubling as altar boy and reader since none of the scheduled folks showed up on Saturdays during the winter.

Nick’s mother was always happy to volunteer his services to the Lord when the priest called her for help. She didn’t believe in night masses, though, because she was always up for the eight o’clock on Sundays.

Nick figured he’d be too drunk tonight to even sit in a pew tomorrow morning. Tracy and Davie would be waiting for him after mass, ready for a night of whiskey and trouble. Nick knew he shouldn’t be raising so much hell. He knew he was smarter and a higher class of people than Tracy and Davie.

His mom told him all the time. There was just nothing else to do in a small town.

Nick walked out into the faint flurries of snow after mass, looking left and right for Tracy’s pickup. His black Chevrolet was parked impatiently at the curb. Nick waved and ducked his numbed face from the glaring headlights.

“Get in here Nicholas,” Tracy said, offering a bottle of whiskey as Nick opened the door. “You’re in the devil’s hands now.”

“Bout damn time, too, I was losin’ my religion in there,” he said as they squealed away from the church. “Davie gonna make it out?”

“His woman has tightened the leash on him tonight. Might just be you and me and Jimmy Beam.”

“We don’t want a man who’s whipped anyway, that puss.”

They turned onto the main street of the town. Nick saw that both bars were doing a good business tonight. Half the population was downtown shaking off the chill. There would be plenty of drunks driving in the snow tonight. He passed Tracy the bottle, wishing he was twenty-one so he could drink in a nice warm bar.

The truck pulled into his driveway, and Nick got out popping in a piece of gum. He ran toward the house, rehearsing his lines in his head for his mother. The wind slammed the door behind him. He went downstairs to get his duffel bag and gun case out of his room.

“Nick, come in here, please.” His mother’s voice stopped him a few feet short of the door. “Your plans still the same for tonight?”

“Yeah, Morn. I’m going to stay at Tracy’s place and we’re going to hunt his north fields

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in the morning. Fresh snow oughta have a few roosters sitting tight in the tall grass.”

“Well, you be careful with that boy, and say your prayers tonight. Bye, sweetie.”

“I will, Mom. Goodnight.”

Tracy and Nick cruised through town, drinking and discussing their plans. Davie’s new pickup pulled up beside them on Main Street. They slowly cruised side by side.

“Hey fellas, I told my lady she better get some sleep for church,” Davie said. “Pull over and let me in.”

“Surprised to see you Dave,” Tracy said once Davie had climbed into the back seat.

“Wouldn’t the wife give you any action?”

“Naw, that girl is too in touch with the Lord,” Davie said. “She’s got her legs crossed so tight a guy couldn’t get dollar bill between ‘em, forget my peeker.”

“That’s what you get for datin’ a Catholic girl, boy,” Nick said. “That Bible has got them locked up tight until you put a ring on their finger.”

“Damned depressing thing,” Davie said. “I don’t want to think about it. Gimme a drink and let’s get out of town.”

Tracy took the highway south out of town and turned onto a dirt road. Nick remembered all the times they had traced the hard dirt roads between the fields throughout high school. He rolled down his window and took aim at a stop sign. The boom of the shotgun was thunderous in the cab of the truck, and the bee-bees peppered the sign, pinging metallically off into the night.

For some reason it made him smile to break the law, knowing his image in town as such a good, straight kid. Just last week he had been singing with the school choir at the old folk’s home. They all loved to shake his hand. But they disgusted him, drooling onto their bibs, half of them not even hearing the music. He took aim at another stop sign, and smiled again as the red paint flaked into the

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falling snow.

The gravel plunked the floorboards, spit up from Tracy’s tires moving too fast along the country road. The snow intensified, making it hard for them to see even the road signs.

“Boys, we can’t even see our targets anymore,” Nick said, “I don’t know if it’s due to the snow or the liquor, but we need someplace indoors to drink.”

“Ain’t there an old church around here somewhere?” Davie said. “I always wondered what was in that place.”

“Yeah,” Tracy said, “It’s right up around this turn, we’ll pull in there and check it out.”

“I’ve had about enough church for one lifetime,” Nick said, “but in this case I think I can make an exception if there’s no praying, no preacher, and no God.” The tiny church was a bare shadow on the white swirling snow as they pulled off the road. Nick wondered if the worshippers there had doubted God like he did. Probably not, he decided there was even less to distract a person from church back then.

Tracy kicked open the doors to the abandoned church. Nick’s spotlight lit the church’s interior. The sharp winter air swirled the dust on the church floor. Pigeons flapped up the darkened roof. The three walked up the center aisle, stomping the snow from their boots. The old floorboards creaked with every step. Davie turned on a lantern he’d retrieved from Tracy’s toolbox.

“Wooooeeee boys,” Tracy said, “call the apostles, I brought more wine for the last supper. If God was more than a load of bullshit would he let me do this?” Tracy fired a one-handed blast with his twelve gauge, smashing the aged crucifix on the back wall.

He took a long drink out of the Jim Beam bottle.

“Gawdamnit Tracy, you know I gotta con-

fess this shit next Saturday night,” Nick said.

“You want me goin’ to hell?”

“Nicky boy, either we’re all goin’ or none of us are. You gotta forget about that cat-lick mumbo jumbo and open your eyes.”

“I’m not sure you’re gonna remember it anyway, Nicky, but you’re probably right.

We don’t need to shoot this place up. Just need a warm spot to sit and drink,” Davie said, taking a pull out of the bottle.

“Sure beats the hell out of booze cruisin’ and shootin’ signs,” Tracy said. “ Ain’t gonna stop me from sending a few pigeons to meet their maker, though.” The shots were deafening in the tiny church. Davie and Nick joined in, their blasts drowning out the whistling wind of the snowstorm. After the last pigeon was pronounced dead, they sat quiet in a pew and passed the whiskey bottle. Nick wondered why he didn’t feel the cold.

“Well, if pigeons have souls, we’re hellbound for sure fellas, but at least they won’t be crappin’ in this old church anymore, which oughta count something with St. Peter,” Davie said looking around at the dead birds.

“There you go again Davie, warpin’ Nicky’s mind with that religious shit. This place ain’t nothing but a shelter from the storm,” Tracy said, his tone defiant. “Sides that, we don’t mean two shits in the scheme of things. Three farm kids from Nebraska ain’t got a part in God’s alleged plan.”

“Jesus H. Keeerist, Trace, that’s a damned depressing thing to say,” Nick said, shivering. His hand twitched against the shotgun on his lap. He took another drink of Beam and absently watched the snow trickling through the newly broken holes in the ceiling.

“You fellas ever really think that religious stuff through?” Davie said. His thin face was tight under his stocking cap. “Maybe it’s all bull, ya know?” He uncrossed his long legs

and pushed shells into his shotgun. Nick wondered how long Davie had thought about that one.

“Damnit, I’ve been to church every Sunday fer eighteen years and it ain’t hurt me none,” Nick said. “There isn’t anything else to believe in out here but booze and farmin’.”

“Well, I’d put my belief in booze if I were you and ignore the farmin’ and God,” Tracy said. “Crop prices are down and it’s a whole helluva lot easier to read the label on a bottle of whiskey than the Bible.”

Nick smiled and wondered what his mom would do if she heard some of the things Tracy said. Have a conniption of some sort he figured. It definitely wouldn’t be good.

The snow piled up outside the church, and they sat, each staring into space, not feeling the cold, the only movement the swift tipping of the bottle.■

FAITH

| 33

34 | RETROSPECTIVE

GRIEF

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” ―John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

| 35

36 | RETROSPECTIVE

THE GENERATION OF LEAVES

Perspectives 1965

by Judith H. Abbott

S

he closed her eyes again, obliterating the morning light that filtered into the room through the half-drawn Venetian blinds which cast long shadows on the barren gray walls. Soon the stillness of the slumbering hospital would be stirred into the living motions of this day. Sterile nurses in odorless starched white uniforms with “good morning, time to get up” smiles, would be disturbing her and pressing her with “how are you feeling” questions to which they sought nor awaited an answer. If only this morning she might rest in peace, foregoing the process of being lifted from her bed into life. She would once again sit before the window observing those who passed by on their way to work or school. She was experiencing the transformation of autumn into winter as she watched the leaves one by one descending from their height to the earth.

“Good morning, Mrs. Robbinson. Time to get up.”

The nurse crossed her room to the windows and opened the blinds letting the full brightness of the day flood the room. From her bed she could see only the blue sky and the top of the oak tree whose leaves in summer nearly blinded her view of the outside world.

“My, it is a lovely day after the wicked storm we had last night. Did you hear it blow? It certainly won’t be long now before we see the first snow fly, will it, Mrs. Robbinson?”

No, it won’t be long now. She lay watching the rhythmic movement of the nurse as she cranked the bed upward so that she sat almost upright in the bed. Rooftops and barren trees could now be seen from her bed. She searched the branches looking for some sign of life, but there were no leaves. Had every leaf fallen while she lay sleeping? The lifeless barren branches swayed in the wind like fleshless bony hands reaching out for help.

But she lay there helpless. Yesterday there had still remained a few. Perhaps when she was near the window she would be able to spy a leaf that still had not given in to the wind. If there were no leaves to watch, autumn was no longer and there would be no need for her to sit before the window. She could lay in peace here now.

“Morning, Mrs. Robbinson. Your favorite orderly is here to put you into your throne.

How is the old queen feeling today?”

“I don’t want to get up today.”

“Now that’s what you say every day. How would your children feel if they knew you didn’t want to sit in this new wheelchair they bought for you? Come on now, where would you like to sit? In front of the window?”

Sitting by the window, all of her world was again before her. The school children were strolling by now, kicking the dead leaves with their feet. Each day she had watched these leaves as the life went out of them. At first the fading autumn colors had seemed so beautiful, but as each leaf withered and

GRIEF

| 37

turned brown, relinquishing its place upon the tree, all beauty perished with the leaf.

They did not all go at once; some drifted down easily, almost willfully. Others clung to the branches as if it were within their power to live eternally. But were there no leaves left now? She leaned forward in her wheel chair to observe the oak tree beneath her window. Perhaps there were still some leaves that were not apparent to her. They were hiding from her. She pressed her head to the cold window pane, and from here she beheld one leaf that hung nobly upon the tree. How odd and out of place it looked.

Fragile and unprotected, it gave no beauty or life to the tree, nor did the tree give life to it.

Yet this one leaf hung to the tree.

“Here’s your breakfast, Mrs. Robbinson.

Perhaps I should wheel you over here.”

“No, let me be.”

“But Mrs. Robbinson, you have to eat your breakfast before it gets cold.”

Leaning back in her chair, she looked at the young nurse who held her tray.

“Just set my tray on my bed table, and I’ll eat it in a moment. I’m busy now.”

“Busy? I think you had better eat right now, Mrs. Robbinson, and be busy after breakfast.”

“Don’t move this chair. I have to watch now. I’ll eat later.”

“All right, Mrs. Robbinson. If you promise to be only a few minutes. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and then you better have eaten all your breakfast.”

How could she escape from her vigilance?

She had to watch; they would just have to understand. Again she rested her head against the window pane; relaxing now she could see the leaf hanging there. The cold-

38 | RETROSPECTIVE

ness of the window pane had gone, and she remained there watching.

“Mrs. Robbinson, you had better eat now.

You promised you would.”

But there was no response. The leaf was drifting to the ground unobserved.■

FATE

Perspectives 1966

by Malola Atwood

They buried me here last summer, in the warm soft, comforting earth.

They put me here for my last slumber, to wait for my Redemptive Birth.

I can feel the cool, green grass growing, I can hear the cuckoo sing, I can touch the wind blowing, and can feel the breath of spring.

My senses know no bounds, Although encased I lay; I can even hear the hounds, as they hold their prey at bay.

I can hear the squirming, rushing worms, and away I cannot turn.

GRIEF

| 39

MISSED

Kiosk 1990

by Stephen Coyne

I used to scatter bread in the yard and wait on the porch for birds to feed.

Slingshot in hand like a wish, I tried for weeks to kill until a lucky shot put a rock into the temple of a sparrow and sent it reeling sideways across the yard.

It upended by the hedge—disheveled, brown feather duster and I ran to it and kneeled.

The eye beneath the circle of blood was alive, so I recomposed the feathers and lifted the bird, as light, almost, as air. Its heart beat in my hand so fast it seemed to whir until, without warning,

40 | RETROSPECTIVE

it stopped, and the eye glazed, and the body slumped.

I put a finger under the chin and lifted that head again.

I had not been hoping for something to fly irrevocably away.

GRIEF

| 41

THE DAY THEY BURIED GRANDPA

by Rick Rector

The day they buried Grandpa, my brother told my dad, “He looks like you when you’re pissed.”

I thought about his jaw bone turning gray like a chicken bone does.

Grandma called my name from the Alzheimer’s chair she sat in and I hugged her frailness very gently.

Later, at the lake, I skinny dipped with Michele and we made love with the curtains open.

42 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 2003

FAMILY

“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.” ―Alex Haley

| 43

44 | RETROSPECTIVE

ERASAURE

Manuscript 1951

by Edalene Moore

W

ell, he’s gone now, shut up tight where no one need know about him. No one but Jim and me and the doctors. Happens in the best of families, does it? As though that

would comfort me. Nine months for that!

“And how is the baby, Mrs. Thorpe,” they will say. “Oh fine, just fine. Took it down to the Feebleminded Institution for a check up. Oh, he’s a dear baby, such a nice large head, and dull eyes and that sweet way of holding his mouth open. No, Jim didn’t enroll him in Yale. We thought we’d like to have him choose his own college.

“It’s better this way, Janie. The place isn’t bad and he’ll be with others like himself and—”Ya, others like himself. I suppose on parents’ day we all troop down there and try to pick what idiot is ours. “This is my son.” My son.

Forget him. You never had a baby. Just Jim and you, like always.

Don’t look at me, Jim; don’t touch me. No more kids to be shut away. Happens in the best of families.■

FAMILY

| 45

WILD MORNING GLORIES

by Shirley Cox

There is a small vine that my dad used to call a wild mornin’ glory.

These wild mornin’ glories seemed to come from nowhere as most weeds do, but their vines shunned the earth, and instead, sank their roots deep into the sturdy stalks of the corn.

Then they drank the white milky juice that flowed through the network of veins in the corn stalk.

They never killed the corn, they only sapped its strength slightly, during a crucial growth period.

Whenever Dad and I went cockleburring, through the rustling leaves of corn, we chopped out the morning glory vines as well.

It seems like no one goes cockleburring anymore.

46 | RETROSPECTIVE

Perspectives 1956

GRANDMA

Kiosk 1979

by Spiwe Y. Kachidza

In a metal box she lay.

Her shriveled body even smaller.

Her face old and beautiful as ever.

She looked tranquil.

I recalled all her stories about the first white missionaries.

She taught me how to be a tough black woman.

Even taught me to love myself.

The call that knows no time.

The strange call of nature.

She had to go. Go without anyone.

FAMILY

| 47

THE THORN TREE

by Charlotte Walker Baker

Grandfather took us with him when he went to salt the stock, down where a thorn tree grew beside the creek. “Now, there’s a way that you can climb up through,” he said, and then he lent a hand to boost us to the limbs that bent each way to form the steps. Rough bark, a few sharp thorns to plague us. Then we brushed the dew and petals from our faces as we sent our glad shouts ringing till our breath was spent and wonder stopped our throats. No wild “halloo!” could match the magic of that sky-ringed view.

Our hearts shook with strange joy and strange content.

Grandfather smiled and said, “There comes a time when every child should have a tree to climb.”

THE OTHER THORN TREE Grandfather lay abed before he went, too weak and ill to note the grief that grew in all our hearts. “Is there no way that you can help him now?” we asked. The doctor lent us his kind smile and shook his head, then bent above the quiet form. Rough gasps, a few sharp cries broke from us, and we felt the dew of teardrops on our faces as we sent our thoughts back ranging till our grief was spent and wonder stopped our throats. What faint “halloo!” brought back that magic of a sky-ringed view and in our hearts strange joy and strange content?

Grandfather murmuring said, “There comes this time when every man…will find...his tree to climb.”

48 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 1992

CASUALTIES OF WAR

Kiosk 1997

by Dave Neitzke

“They’re coming!” screams Mother, and we prepare ourselves for battle.

Aunt Mabel’s first through the front door, Uncle Bub and faceless cousins march in line behind her.

Grandpa Walt, the mobile division, gets wheeled in by Grandma, a cold lifeless glint in her eyes.

Next come the reserves from Texas, Great Uncle Charlie and wife Faye, and a whole battalion of vicious, barking, Dachshunds and toy poodles locked up in the back of their van.

We face off across the battle field as Mom wheels in the bird, and the fight begins.

Words blast off into the air as Dad ducks behind the turkey for cover.

Mom get a flesh wound as Aunt Mabel asks about the grey in her hair.

Great Uncle Charlie pulls out one of his old childhood anecdotes, and the cousins start dropping like flies, which has to be against the Geneva Convention.

Granma asks Brother Bobby point blank why he hasn’t found a nice girl and settled down yet.

He sinks in his chair as she scores a direct hit.

Lucky his boyfriend couldn’t come today.

Grandpa starts smacking his food and farting, and the psychological torture begins.

FAMILY

| 49

Uncle Bub and Dad get into hand to hand combat, arguing who was the better member of the Magnificent Seven, Eli Wallach or Robert Vaughan?

Cousin Jim provides troop entertainment, explaining why Aunt Kaye is AWOL. He tells about the voices she’s been hearing from her radio talking about her ex-husbands days in the CIA, and why the home decided it might not be a good idea to let her out for the holidays.

And so the battle rages on, wounded lying everywhere, crying for help.

It seems the madness may never stop.

But thank God someone calls a truce for pumpkin pie and football.

50 | RETROSPECTIVE

ORION COULD TEACH YOU

Kiosk 1997

by Cathee Phillips

“You’re Ancient, Mom. Just forget it.”

Ancient! Forty years plus two—well, three— is Ancient? Count to ten. Breathe deeply. So. Perhaps you mean I feel the Prophets’ call to kindle air with living flame and know the joy of earthly fruits by water born?

Perhaps, my child, you have in mind that I, long before man, soared with hawks and drank sweet rain to cool my tongue, refresh my blood, revive my flagging feathers, give me strength to fly through rainbows’ red blue yellow light, brave the thunder, laugh at lightning flash?

I’m sure you only mean to speak, my child, of when I sang to Mars (who would not hear), and swung the Dipper round and round the night—Orion laughed so hard he dropped his club; old Taurus, spellbound, missed his chance to strike, and I breathed stardust till my eyes did shine.

Or do you simply mean to say, dear son, “I love your gentle wisdom, Mom?” He smiles.

FAMILY

| 51

IONNE

Kiosk 2009

by Ross Wilcox

We stand around Aunt lonne, dying Ionne , in her white room in the corner of the nursing home. The day her son Louis carried her here, kicking and screaming, she referred to it as “that dying place.”

Because of her stroke-induced dementia, she forgot where she was the next day.

Now, she lies on her death bed, and I, at eye level with her body, along with my family, stand watching her.

She groans, wincing in pain, her knees bent and protruding in the air, her white gown crawling slowly up her thigh, revealing more and more of her eroded flesh. My tiny grandmother stands at Ionne’s side, holding her hand, trying to comfort her. And her groans go on, the moans of agony, and Ionne’s gown creeps further up her thigh. I scoot a few inches closer to the foot of her bed, wondering what could be behind the white gown, and I inch further, closer, and gaze at the long, black, scraggly hairs at the center of her thighs.

52 | RETROSPECTIVE

THESE SILENT WATCHERS, THE STARS

Kiosk 2010

by Krystal Shearer

The crashing blow of a slammed door shakes the frame of the night, and the stars quiver in place as if to foreshadow danger ahead. A creak; drunken footsteps struggle to imitate the surety and the confidence of sobriety: The door opens, and in filters golden light ‘round my father’s dark shape. I can’t see his face, but I know that it is grotesque with fury misdirected toward me. He stumbles a little as he walks toward my bed. And he tugs until the sheets slither off my body and down to the floor.

He’s smiling now, and I’m afraid.

His rancid beer-breath is hot and thick in my hair and on my face.

The tears don’t fall—there are no tears left to spend. But I’m keening.

I can’t ever stop the keening, this scary wailing sound that my throat emits. It’s my deepest subconscious, conveying some weird language that the most profoundly intense pain creates, forces, bubbling and frothing, to the surface, a language all my own. A language that he, in his drunken state, takes

FAMILY

| 53

for moaning. And when he stumbles out, spent, he’s a little more sober, a little less angry.

Tomorrow he’ll beg forgiveness.

He’ll play sick mind games with me, his sixteen-year-old daughter; his whore.

I can’t even give you my tears anymore, Papa. I am not some prisoner of war; some criminal you can torture with your own pleasure.

I am only me, your daughter; your blood; your bone. These silent stars, they watch. They shake with me, cry with me those tear drop-shaped meteors that crash to the earth in flames.

54 | RETROSPECTIVE

MAPLE BUTTER

Kiosk 2011

by Lydia Ford

A

metal bucket hung from each trunk to collect the sap trickling slowly from the spout. We piled out, people counting us “One…two…three…holy shit, there’s seven of ‘em! And they all have red hairl” I remember my oldest sister carrying me as we walked into the first little wooden shack.

Smoke billowed out of the top and I was almost scared until we stepped inside and saw the old woman smiling gently. I was fascinated by the way the skin around her lips and eyes creased when she smiled, the way she didn’t even have to look as she skillfully skimmed off the foam that accumulated atop the boiling liquid.

I remember the smells. The warm, rich aroma of sap as it bubbled and boiled into maple syrup enveloped us the moment we stepped into the shack. Through the maple scent I could detect a sharp hint of the cedar boards that had been used to build the shack. It must have been old, but how could I know that then? I was only four.

I remember shivering as we walked to the next shack, my nose bitten by the cold wind even when I buried my face in my sister’s heavy coat. Inside it was warm once again, and we gazed in wonder at the rows and rows of glass jars filled with samplings of fresh maple syrup. Light shone through the jars, illuminating the room in amber, goldenrod, mahogany, and honeycolored tones. I wanted to taste them all, but my sister deftly kept my hands away from the breakable glass I remember climbing back into the van, every one of us carrying a prize of some sort. I sat buckled in my seat with a small jar of maple butter tucked between my knees. I guarded it with my hands, careful not to let it fall A year later we moved to South Dakota, a strange and seemingly desolate place where sugar maple trees didn’t dare to grow. We finished the jar of maple butter a long time ago, but I still remember it. I remember the taste.■

FAMILY

| 55

56 | RETROSPECTIVE

GROWTH

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” ―Virginia Woolf

| 57

58 | RETROSPECTIVE

BRUISES

Manuscript 1941

by Eleanor Thorpe

When I had my sixth birthday they said I’d be grown-up, and yet they bought for me a pair of silvered roller-skates, and gave me lessons on the porch.

But when I took my bath that night, I thought and looked the same, except for those discolored spots where porch and I had disagreed.

Now I am nearly twenty, and quite grown-up, they say, and they have given me a pair of silvery dancing shoes, a gown, and flowers for my hair to wear this day when I am wed.

But still I’ll think and love the same, except for those discolored spots where life and I will disagree.

GROWTH

| 59

SOCIAL SECURITY

by Ann Struthers (nĂŠe Eleanor Ann Mohr)

Someday when my hair is all silver and white, oh, I will come home then and knock, and sit by the fire in the kitchen and write benevolent verses and rock.

60 | RETROSPECTIVE

Manuscript 1949

BOY WITH BOAT

Perspectives 1960

by Rosalee J. Sprout

W

arm sand oozed up between Jebbie’s sun-browned toes. Several yards in front of him a large sailboat rose and fell in harmony with the resurging lake waves. The water-soaked string that linked boy and boat was half hidden, half revealed.

It drooped down into the water, floated on the surface for a few inches, and then melted out of sight. Seemingly, the two were not connected at all.

“C’mon Jeb, boy, it’s time to eat.” His grandfather’s shadow swallowed up the child. Without turning round, the boy pursed his small lips and out came a resigned “Oh kay.” But the resignation was vocal only. He made no effort to retrieve the boat.

“How about some help with pullin’ her in?” The old man made a motion towards the string. “I can do it,” and Jeb’s two small hands clenched the string even tighter and began to ease the boat towards the bank. The boat’s bottom scratched against the gravel and then sliced into the wet sand. Wadding the string into a slimy ball, Jeb lifted the boat carefully with both hands and started to march up the bank towards his grandfather’s cabin. He looked like a tiny libation bearer.

From the middle of the lake, the Boji Belle sounded her horn and passengers waved towards the shore. Grandfather waved back.

“The Boji’s a little early today, Jeb. Usually doesn’t come by till one o’clock.”Say, you do all right carrying that big boat.” The old man caught up with his weekend ward, who had

stopped to stuff a rock in his pocket.

“Why do I have to always keep it tied on a string?” The two brown eyes looked up into the grey ones.

“Well, for one thing the boat’s too big for you, and for another, if you let go of that string, why, the boat’ll float clear across the lake and never come back.” Puffing, he clapped his hand on the youngster’s shoulder as if the boy were a walking stick.

Jeb stood back to let his grandfather open the screen door before he climbed up the porch stairs, boat tightly gripped in both hands. “Better put her down there in the corner, so nobody’ll step on it. Then wash your hands.” The boy did as he was told, but not without a quick look to see if they really need undergo a washing or not.

The table was set on the porch which overlooked the east end of the lake. Since Jeb’s grandmother had died, the old man lived here all year around. His busiest months were the summer ones when he managed the small church camp. He saw all kinds of kids come and go, with their blankets tied neatly in rolls when they came and full of sand and cockleburs when they left. He always suspected that they got more sunburn and poison ivy than religion. Most of the sessions lasted only a week, but even so an occasional parent would drive twenty or thirty miles to see if his child missed him.

It was late August now and the season’s final camp group had left the week before.

GROWTH

| 61

Jeb was the last child of summer, a kind of transition for the elderly man from the noisy months of splashing youth to the lonely ones of winter.

The two sat down to eat. It was a picnic lunch with Jeb’s favorite cherry popsicles for dessert. While the boy still lickedhis colored ice, George (Jebbie never called him Grandfather, or Grampa, or Gramps. It was always George) brought in a large box. “Here’s the box the boat came in, Jeb. Think maybe we’d better take it apart and put it back in here.

Then it won’t get broken when your Dad takes you home. Let’s see, it shows here how to take it apart. First you dismantle the sails, then the rudder. No wonder this boat’s so big for you. Says for children ages 12-15!

Your dad should’ve known better. Probably bought it for himself I” “I floated it in the bathtub at home. Without no string. I wanted mom to come ‘n see it, but dad said she couldn’t.” Holding up six cherry-stained fingers, Jeb asked, “How old will I be when I’m this many, George?”

The grandfather looked up from the box.

“Let’s see, you’ll be six, you’re five now, but you’ll be six then.”

“Will I be old enough to let go of the string maybe,” was the child’s next query.

“Look, Jeb, you don’t want to let go of that string. The boat’ll go clear across the lake and never come back again. See?” He pushed his chair away from the table and started for the corner where the boat rested. Jeb continued to lick the empty popsicle stick.

“Why don’t you help me take it apart,” the old man was down on his knees, fingering the sails and checking back with the diagrams on the box. “Your dad can put it back together when you get home.”

62 | RETROSPECTIVE

Jeb squatted down on the porch floor beside his grandfather. “I’m going to show it to mom when I get home’” Without lifting his eyes from the boat, George said quietly, “Jeb, do you know what ‘passed·away’ means?”

“Unh, unh.”

Pursuing the subject no further, the grandfather mumbled something about “I’m not so sure I do either,” and continued to dismantle the toy. The two worked over the boat until it was back in its box.

The hoarse honk of the Boji Belle came blasting from across the lake. George checked his watch; “Two-o’clock, right on time.”

Jebbie wondered what kind of a string kept the Boji Belle from floating across the lake and never returning. And who held the string? ■

1964

Perspectives 1967

by Rebekah Stone

I was beautiful once, but only that one summer when the pain and joy of being forced itself through my body like a butterfly pushing through the shallow walls of its cocoon.

Running down the beach in the rain was as natural then as opening my eyes to wake, or walking barefoot through the park.

People watched and wondered, and never seemed to know; as if they’d never been alive.

I never wondered.

The sky, the sun, the fog, were friends who laughed with me, and ran, and sometimes cried tears just to form an oasis in the sand, or add a part of ourselves to the tide; or just the thrill of being sad.

GROWTH

| 63

OLD FOLKS IN WINTER

by Jan D. Hodge

You see them after storms in all small towns, defying wicked winds and four-foot drifts to pace their measured, solemn ups and downs and mete out greetings as if they were gifts.

Their children and their children’s children stay inside and warm before well-tended fires and while the winds whip, while away their day with games, or huddled by their VCR’s.

What brings these stem survivors out of doors?

Not memories of blizzards lived through long years since, nor any wish to mind the young what hardship is. No, each grim step declares: I’m not yet ready to be shut away.

Don’t even think it. Leave me my today.

64 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 1991

TRUE STORY

Kiosk 1999

by Megan Lindsay

I

t was the summer of diet Coke and cargo pants, love, lust and Kerouac. She and I roamed lonely country roads all night some nights, nothing to carry us but half a tank of gas and the will to drive ourselves sleepless.

I don’t exactly remember the stories we told, or the fights we had, but it was something. It was something atomic. We ourselves were just time-bombs waiting to explode into those black, black nights.

We were driving way out past the middle of nowhere with the windows down and the music turned way up loud. The sticky night breezes blew hot July air over my bare arms and pulled at my attention span. Behind us, the road was as dark as the fields to the sides, and the only light we had was the reflection of the headlights off of the asphalt stretching ahead. With the brights on, it felt like we were driving through a tunnel of day. There was no moon, there were only the stars and us that night. I had no idea where everything else went, but I guess it didn’t really matter.

We were aiming in the direction of the glowing TV tower way out on some old county road. The closer I thought we were getting to it, the further away it appeared. It taunted me as it peaked out over twisted gravel roads that led around farm houses and wound through hills. I sat shotgun, holding her hand, scared and amazed. She drove too fast, she always drove too fast. She drove seventy-five everywhere. Her driving foot was as heavy as the air that night we drove off of the planet and into the stars.

The car jumped over one hill, and another,

and another, each time the headlights stared right into space, faced with a wide emptiness. It felt like I was waiting and waiting and waiting for a movie to start, just staring at this all-encompassing blank screen. Then, the abyss facing us would suddenly vanish when the headlights shone on the road beneath us, and the suspense would momentarily end. It felt like we were going up and over the same hills every time. Iowa farmlands are so bland when everything melts together in pitch blackness. It all looks the same.

I never dared to question her navigation skills. She had gotten us lost before, but never on nights quite this dark. And we had always made it home, eventually.

In the road up ahead was a stop sign that seemed a bit out of place amongst all of the stark hills and dull ditches. It glared at us in the bright blaze of the headlights’ observation. It was accompanied by the obnoxious yellow warning: “Cross traffic does not stop.” A green scar over the ‘not’ marked where the sign had been hit by a paintball gun. I laughed. I don’t know why.

“Which way?” It was the first she had spoken in over an hour. Her voice was not questioning my instinct for an answer, but rather commanding a satisfactory decision.

I shrugged my shoulders and looked down the three roads that were my choices.

“Well, straight would probably lead us closer to home. I don’t really want to go that way yet,” I said.

She said, “Me neither. The road looks kinda small anyway. And I don’t want to go left

GROWTH

| 65

again. I think I went left last time.” Her brand of logic never failed us. “And right leads farther out into nowhere.” She looked past me and out the passenger’s side window as if she had a longing for whatever was out there.

I followed her gaze. “There aren’t even any farms out this way,” I said. “It’s just all road and dirt. I don’t know where we’d end up for sure.”

She passed me a devilish little grin. I nodded in approval. She turned the car quickly right, peeling out with the back tires. We were flung out into the night again.

I smiled at her and said, “Yeah.”

Over a hill came suddenly the TV tower, in all of its red glory. It was so huge and beautiful and bright against the floating backdrop of stars that I forgot to breathe.

She stopped the car quickly on the shoulder of the road. The cloud of dust that the tires had kicked up as we drove along the gravel still lingered in the air after we climbed quickly out of the car. We started spinning circles in the middle of the street under the TV tower’s crimson stare. Looking straight up while I spun, I felt like the world was revolving around me. I grabbed her hands, and we spun each other. We fell down exhausted finally. The little rocks from the road stuck to the palms of my hands. We were so sticky from sweat that it was impossible to sit on the ground without coating our bodies with the gravel dust. So we sat on top of her car, screaming poetry into the night at the top of our lungs, heads still whirling. We held hands, and I felt July and night on her hot damp skin. Everything disappeared in the dusty threads of her faded Levis and the red reflection of the TV tower in her dangerous, dangerous eyes.

The fireflies in the cornfields matched the stars in the sky, and I could not tell where one ended and the other began. A bug bit my

66 | RETROSPECTIVE

left shoulder blade, and she swatted it away with careful fingers.

“If you had three wishes,” she said, “what would they be?”

“If I had three wishes, I’d wish there was something to say. I’d wish there was something to do. I’d wish there was someplace to go. What about you?”

“If I had three wishes, I’d make it tonight forever. I’d have a never-ending half tank of gas, and I think I’d wish for the moon.”

“Yeah,” I said, “just you, me, and a half a tank of gas, and, girl, we can do something extraordinary. We can explode, we can take on the world. We can drive forever.”

“Let’s,” she said. “Let’s drive forever.”

“I wanna go to that star, right by the top there. Ya see it?” I said, pointing up to the blinking tip of the tower. “I wanna climb to the top and be too scared to ever climb back down. I wanna just sit up there and look at that star until the world explodes.”

“The one that looks kinda blue? I think that’s a planet.”

“No, it’s a star,” I said, “and I wanna go there.”

“Will half a tank of gas get us there and back?”

“Who said anything about coming back?” I said, kissing her knuckles which smelled like her cheap nicotine addiction.

“Boys don’t understand these type of nights,” she said. “I’m so glad for tonight.”

I giggled, curled into her more, and said, “Yeah,” because it was summer, and that night we were everything but going home.¨■

CONFESSION

Kiosk 2007

by Audrey Hantla

Dear Mrs. Howard, Remember my model, that won the 3rd grade diorama contest?

Remember the miniature wooden cabin with tiny barrels of oats and rice, and spices, with tiny tightly rolled reams of fabric, and coils of rope, with a little desk, and a little stool and a tiny bear skin pelt hanging on the tiny nail?

My father built it, placing rough boards at angles, drilling edges together with rough hands, the screws in his mouth, murmuring, “Here we go. There.�

GROWTH

| 67

HERITAGE IS A CONDUIT

by Charlie Nixon

Two boys strung two paper cups together with some paperclips, a couple of buttons, and twine.

One boy gingerly climbed the rickety boards up into the tree house.

The other stayed planted below on the ground, with his ear pressed to his paper cup, waiting.

I am that planted boy patiently waiting for some voice to come down the twine from those ancestors of mine who have braved the rickety boards.

So send your great-great grandson a proverb or two down along the conduit we have strung between us.

68 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 2011

LIFE

“Life isn’t about finding yourself.

Life is about creating yourself.” ―George Bernard Shaw

| 69

70 | RETROSPECTIVE

FISH BOWL

Manuscript 1946

by Helen Travis

T

he small space between our house and the next was hardly big enough to wriggle through, let alone to afford privacy. It was a little disconcerting to look out a window late in the afternoon expecting to find a normal low afternoon sun, and instead finding yourself gazing through the watery refractions of a huge green glass fish bowl. It was this fish bowl, sitting on the window sill of the house next door that preserved the only semblance of privacy that the situation offered. It somehow seemed much less discourteous to view your neighbor’s home life when his figure was distorted by glass and water and an occasional wandering goldfish.

Even so, it was entertaining.

One particular Saturday had a distinctly Julyish air for April. The sun beckoned through the vertical crack between the two houses. By leaning as far out the window as possible without leaning in the neighbor’s window, one could get a rather limited but tempting cross section view of cherry trees and inviting green grass.

The doorbell could be heard from next door, and the usual Saturday pantomime, which I seldom missed, was beginning. The sound produced a distant activity, and through the fish bowl I could see the neighbor lady, a woman of average fortyish looks, hurrying to answer its summons. Simultaneously, the back screen door slammed and small feet made a hasty retreat across the lawn. Everything was going off on schedule.

Shortly after this Mrs. Neighbor ushered in the ringer of the doorbell. The guest was familiar: a small, wiry gentleman who bounced into the room with enthusiasm, trying with some difficulty to hang on to a battered felt hat and an equally battered portfolio in one hand. In the other hand he carried a case, the shape of which left no doubt as to its contents. The guest was the violin teacher.

Mrs. Neighbor made gestures that could be interpreted as apologetic. She made faint calling noises, but with no reward. It was very obvious that something was missing in this welcome. In fact, the key personality, the one for whose benefit these weekly rituals were re-enacted, was simply not there.

Mrs. Neighbor went to the back door and bellowed lightly, “William! Will-yum!” Of course, no answer. Mrs. Neighbor appeared highly distressed by the absence of her small son, but not so the violin teacher. One might even think that he didn’t especially care. He still kept his look of exuberance and a little expectation. A happy smile spread over his face as Mrs. Neighbor entered the room again, carrying a tea tray.

It was there that I always left them: Mrs. Neighbor happily wallowing in culture, and the violin teacher helping himself daintily to small tarts and sandwiches, the figures of both a little distorted by the motion of water in the green glass fish bowl. ■

LIFE

| 71

MR. SMITH. . .

by Al Anderson

Mr. Smith, What sends jack on the road?

What brings kerouac back?

Why do they roam from coast to coast looking for a Ghost called truth?

Mr. Smith, The “beat” is just a . . . “phony island of the mind” The “howl” just a . . . growl from the lazy copeless rabble!

Just the babble of the bums and their chums the crumbs!

Mr. Smith, The screeches of those leeches the rushes of those lushes the cries of those guys are just the whimpers of a child gone wild!

Mr. Smith, Why don’t they have FAITH like US? Why don’t they trod THE PATH OF RIGHTEOUSNESS? Why the fuss?

Why not rush to GRAHAM REVIVALS? And . . .

ACCEPT . . .

CONFORM . . .

SWARM . . .

To have SECURITY . . .SURITY . . .PURITY . . .

PEACE OF MIND? Mr. Smith?

72 | RETROSPECTIVE

Perspectives 1959

PEROXIDE VIRGINS

Perspectives 1963

by Marie Deel

Peroxide virgins lift no-color eyes to neon icons high above the street and glance about and practice wanton sighs.

Their faces bloat, and bothered by the heat, but still resigned, they only stand and wait with hips thrust out, and contemplate their feet.

Peroxide virgins meet the face of fate and draw back purple lips to feign a smile and all the while they send out silent hate.

LIFE

| 73

THE KITE

Perspectives 1970

by Robert Birkby

I took a piece of paper and with wood and string I built a fragile kite.

I poured my skill, my heart and my soul through its delicate frame, and with anxious hands I hurled my kite into the swirling sky.

What are the hopes of man but kites in the wind?

Encouraged only by a breeze of hope and love, man casts his deepest desires into a raging sea of sky and cloud.

There they soar— or are dashed upon the earth.

74 | RETROSPECTIVE

SURF MUSIC

Kiosk 1977

by Dan Anderson

Right now I’m just lying here across my bed with the windows wide open and a warm August night breeze coming through. The air is fresh.

The sheets are cool, and the breeze feels nice on my belly.

The Beach Boys are on the stereo, and right now, surf music feels almost as good as sex.

LIFE

| 75

KISMET

Kiosk 2007

by Greg Anderson

The place is not your typical soothsayer’s lair but she’s the only psychic in town. Brown walls with strawberry scented incense. The table where I sit seems very old, perhaps dating back to some Romanian Gypsy.

A marking says Taiwan-1960.

Voodoo dolls thrown haphazardly over Barbie dolls. The skins of rattlesnakes, a pair of red roller-skates.

I sit and wait to have my fortune told. Perhaps she’ll use an egg yolk, or tarots. “I need this” keeps swimming through my brain. Tomorrow I could win the lottery, be a victim of love’s arrow or a casualty of adultery. The clairvoyant pops out the kitchen and tells me just a minute. Her skin looks like melting caramel, big hoop earrings and b-ball jersey.

76 | RETROSPECTIVE

The whole charade starts to unravel like a sweater. I realize that I am like an alchemist, a fool searching for something impossible.

I throw some money on the Taiwanese table and walk out, not knowing which way the snow was blowing or if a hurricane was growing. Perhaps the fires of hell were glowing.

It did not matter.

It will not matter.

LIFE

| 77

A BLONDE REFLECTION

by Lindsay Washburn

On your birthday people pay me fifty bucks to become Marilyn Monroe, a sort of skinny version with smaller breasts and a bad wig. I’ll sing for you, that breathy rendition of her “Happy Birthday to Kennedy,” only it’s happy birthday (insert name here). It’s never for a woman.

The silver-haired doc, surprised by his nurses, their camera phones flashing.

Giggling in tight scrubs. His smile grows wide as I pout my lips and cock my hips. The new guy in the office, cheeks flushed and eyes fixed on the floor as I pose to squeeze my boobs forward with my biceps, the other guys getting a kick, watching him writhe in his chair. The two businessmen in tuxedos pool their money together for a picture with me in the middle.

78 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 2010

I’m in and out in less than fifteen and never get used to the awkward glances and stares of disbelief as I walk down the street to my car, wondering why I do this. The money, of course, but is it really worth it? At least they don’t know who I am.

There is the wig, dress, heels, sluttyred lipstick, and liquid liner to hide behind. I wonder if that’s what she did, but she had no wig to take off, only doors and pills to hide behind.

Sometimes I wonder about the men she slept with, what they did to her, or told people they did to her.

Jack and Bobby take turns, bending her over the Oval Office desk. Joltin’ Joe takes his wide stance and gives her every bit of MVP hall-of-fame fury he has.

Arthur has no kind of love story in mind and completes it, the elegy for a whore.

Did she, after too many pills, wake up, chunks of vomit in the platinum strands strewn across her half-open eyes, clumped with last night’s mascara and tears.

A legacy of sex and abuse that gets me fifty bucks a pop, a hole in my pride, and another reason to study hard.

LIFE

| 79

EXAMPLE OF MODERN MAGICAL PROBLEMS #42

by Matthew Ponder

The tap dancing iguana, who lives in the red shoebox in the clutter under my bed, wears a black felt top hat when I take him out to see his click-clacking art in the privacy of my room with the old yellow filament light bulb.

But he won’t use a cane in his act.

Sometimes at night I hear his shoe’s namesake coming softly from under my bedas I try to sleep, as I try to craft dreamslike if you put thimbles on the ends of your fingers then drum them on thin cardboard.

The music of him practicing keeps me awake.

But if I ask, he will stop.

The witch in the stick hut just off twelfth street next to the new cellphone repair store (which hires someone in a cellphone suit to wave at the busy traffic) conjured up this talented green tap dancing iguana.

80 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 2012

She used an old spell, one bound in human skin, found in an ancient Grimoire.

She was scanning it into her computer.

She was transferring her spells to her iPad for witching on the move.

She gave me the felt top hat, the tiny tap shoes, and the black cane with white ends which he still refuses to use.

You should see how his scaly tail curves up between his legs so he can stand on two of his four legs.

He keeps his black leather tap shoes shiny enough to see yourself.

But he still won’t use the cane when he dances for me in my bedroom on the loneliest of nights.

Google has no answers on how to get your iguana to use his cane during the tap dance.

But there are articles on how to apply makeup to your iguana.

I ask him to use his cane, but he just looks at me with his small shiny black eyes.

His pink tongue licks his white lips like I am asking him to rewire my car.

LIFE

| 81

82 | RETROSPECTIVE

NATURE

“Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’

Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” ―Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

| 83

84 | RETROSPECTIVE

A COLLECTION OF SHORT POEMS AND HAIKU

LINES

NONSENSE

Summer has gone, and the dull brown leaves have fallen.

The barren trees must face cold winter blasts alone.

A fly crawls innocently up an arm.

It’s dead. One. Quick. Easy swat.

It is lucky we are so sure that they are the creatures and we the beings.

Rachel Lieder Kiosk 1976 Mary Ellen Snyder Manuscript 1944

How nice to be young and have no qualms when squishing mud between the toes.

Carole Schmidt Perspectives 1968

IOWA HAIKU Between crop and ditch, full field and wasted water, coons’ eyes shine mischief.

Ivy Nielsen Kiosk 1991

N-KOOM BIRD near are the storm clouds cattails offer their bare backs cold winter burden

I found a sad bird shivering in the mailbox.

It had shat upon a letter from someone important, but I can’t remember who.

I just remember the bird and the sun on the snow.

Robby Mason Kiosk 1998

IN TIME Jean Anderson Perspectives 1969

Brown mother spider plays her web softly, gently, and the wasp dances.

Cathee Phillips Kiosk 1998

NATURE

| 85

IT’S SPRING AGAIN

Manuscript 1944

by Rosalee Jacobson

It’s spring again, and the same sun that warms the frozen ground melts the winter of my heart.

As dead grass gives way to green, so old ideas prejudicing my brain must yield to happier thoughts.

Suddenly, what ought to be seems right.

It’s spring again, and there is no cold snow to numb me.

The same force that pushes flowers’ heads through stubborn ground, drives my thoughts to forgotten heights.

It’s spring again, and my spirit soars up kite-like among the wind swept clouds.

Only rain can drench my dreams; but it does not look like rain, with summer yet to come.

It’s spring again, with all the world a vibrant picture.

I do not mind if nature dons her common colors, and birds chirp last year’s tunes; since I think last year’s thoughts with spring freshness, now that it’s spring again.

I miss spring’s thoughts and dreams in solemn winter, and sometimes I wish I might make it spring always instead of just spring again; but if there were no winter, no cold to melt, there ,would be no spring dreams fostered to be here now, Now that it is spring again.

86 | RETROSPECTIVE

PROGRESS

Perspectives 1966

by Anita Yeska

That hill so bare, you see it there?

Years back it would have felt the plow and known the birth of seed and life.

Scarred and scraped.

But I remember when it rose high and rounded, draped in elm; there…a willow overwhelmed a carpeting of deepest green.

Someone saw it, as I did, but that someone wished to rid it of its life!

There it stands dimly shrouded, barren, waiting.

If you’re near here sometime soon, drive by and see the colored boxes crowded there.

I’m thankful that they killed it quickly.

I’ve seen some hills die inch by inch gasping weakly to the last.

NATURE

| 87

ONCE I WAS A COW

Perspectives 1968

by bill russell

once i was a cow and in a barbwiresurrounded pasture grazed i and chewed my cud and was content anopengate . . . hesitate . . . /abitoffear/ and boldly travel through and then I was

above them and flew a bird

soared

and I and knew a cow I could be nevermore (for I had tasted the sky)

88 | RETROSPECTIVE

SWIFT FATES

Kiosk 1989

by Timothy T. Orwig

High above the boy on the highboy rack, three swifts ride the updrafts, fielding locusts flushed by the tractor and pitching baler that reap the windrows, snapping crepe paper wings.

Bird’s eyes that viewed the spider rake spin withered alfalfa to a strand that spiraled inward across morning’s stubbled cutting.

See harvesters unwind a web of death.

Reckoning a western thunderhead’s crawl while fingering the billed Golden Sun cap.

Father watches the Oliver’s wheels notch the windrows past. On his pedestal seat he turns and yells, ‘’We don’t have much more time.”

With eyes bright from fatigue, his son stacks blocks of twined leaves, stems into houses of hay that will feed his father’ s flocks all winter.

Rack swayed, swift gazing, the boy sees beyond the man’s shoulders to the windrow’s end, where a whirlwind snaps the row to chaff.

NATURE

| 89

ONE WAY OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD (

AFTER

WALLACE STEVENS)

by Trish Regnerus

“It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing.

And it was going to snow.”

Two blackbirds stood in the cedar’s fallen limbs, picking at some poor dead thing.

How strange it is that they stand, side by side, picking, digging, fighting for flesh, meeting at the beak where at times they are in love.

They caw at one another while I stare, as if I had no place in their world of clacking beaks and blinking, red-rimmed eyes, of awkward flight and tree-top nestle, perching where they join again to clack and caw and pity me as I go my way, brown, dull and alone.

Shiny black birds. By nature— do you love?

Or do you fly free each day until once more you join for your vicious company?

It saddens me.

How wrong to be jealous of you—a pair who content yourselves searching and fighting for death.

90 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 1994

RELATIONSHIPS

“Be of love a little more careful than of anything.” ―e. e. cummings

| 91

92 | RETROSPECTIVE

THE YEAR AFTER THE LOVE BEFORE

Perspectives 1970

by Kris Lischefska

Embers glowing brightly in the shadows of my mind.

And fire, gentle of my youth.

Love it like that! It comes and goes, burning brightly.

Then, dying— leaving only embers.

RELATIONSHIPS

| 93

A POEM

Kiosk 1972

by J. Chandler Rough

Sifting through the ruins of a recent party; napkins under glasses filled with wine made watery from melted ice, covering up the rings on the table, filled ashtrays and empty cigarette packages— crumpled and then tossed aside.

The empty punchbowl looking meaningless.

I came across cigarette butts thrown joylessly into old drinks to be extinguished by the ice and wine.

I found one with your lipstick in a ring around the filter.

I tried to relight it.

94 | RETROSPECTIVE

THE CABIN, BESIDES IN SUMMER

Kiosk 1976

by Bob Lee

I’m leaving for Minnesota again in January.

I’ve planned for a few days off right around my birthday and I hope to be there by then to celebrate it with my old friend who can’t make it home for Christmas.

He needs to be cheered up, to be told to stick w/ it ‘cause everybody starts off in small towns in the middle of nowhere w/ no new friends for days.

He and I are planning to be in his folks’ cabin at the falls and to be just plain drunk off our asses when I turn twenty.

And you and the baby on the way he’ll learn of later; ‘cause I can’t hurt him by bragging in the slightest way.

RELATIONSHIPS

| 95

He would jump to conclusions and think that he has lost even me, and the thought of leaving him best-friendless stirs me— like when at night, sleeping against you, the baby will kick inside you and wake me to the reality of love so far away from my best-friend.

96 | RETROSPECTIVE

UNTITLED

Kiosk 1980

by Allison Averill

I loved from period one shorthand to last period math seven different beaus across the aisles, and had as many notebooks each with “his� name etched on the cover.

Then you started carrying my books to class.

So I left my notebooks open feeling awkward and maybe wanting to carry them myself...

Were they this heavy?

RELATIONSHIPS

| 97

PREACHER’S WIFE

by Deborah Craft

Harry told me I must be good— I really should keep up appearances.

In other words, he could whore around as long as he didn’t get caught.

But when I whored around, I got caught.

Harry spit on me and screamed.

How could I break the Fifth Commandment.

(Actually, I think it’s the Sixth.)

Harry chained me to Holy Willie’s Altar— told the Holy Rollers to cast stones because they— of course— were without Sin. Then I went home with Harry, saw his face transformed into paprika-flecked mashed potato. Thanks to Old Betsy.

May the Lord make his face shine upon you, Harry.

Amen.

98 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 1982

A LESSON IN LOVE

Kiosk 1989

by Debbie Sharp

T

he sun beat down angrily on my head and back as I yanked weeds from the garden and flung them over my shoulder. I could hear the patter of dirt as it rained down on the sidewalk behind me making a mess I’d have to sweep up later. I didn’t give a damn. I was as mad as hell and it felt good to pull at the grasses. I imagined grabbing a handful of Cindy’s hair and pulling it. I didn’t really want to hurt her, but I was so angry I had to work hard at something to get rid of the fire that burned against her in my mind.

“How could she be so stupid?” I muttered out loud. The girl I’d married two years ago had brains to spare. I just couldn’t understand how she could have made such a ridiculous mistake. The screen door slammed behind me. So, she’s come out to apologize, I thought and continued to pull the weeds.

Sweat ran down my bare chest, the seconds rolled by, but no one tapped on my shoulder.

I reached the end of a row of tomatoes and, as nonchalantly as I could, peeked over the top.

She was standing at the far end of the yard wrestling a sheet onto the clothes line. The wind whipped it around her body as she stood on her toes trying to get one end of it up and over. I nearly laughed out loud, but caught myself. I was supposed to be mad, and mad people don’t laugh, I sternly reminded myself. I just couldn’t let her think I was sitting here waiting for her to come over and makeup. After a few more minutes of vigorous pulling, I heard the sound of sneakered feet stomping across the yard. From the sound of it, she was either going to slug me or run me down, but I kept on pulling at

those weeds. The screen door slammed.

“0h well, if that’s the way she wants it,” I said and started down the third row of weeds.

“Lettuce is comin’ up nice, Steve.”

I groaned inwardly and squinted up at my next door neighbor Art Forbes. He was the last person I needed to see today. Art had a habit of talking about his wife Lucille.

There’s really nothing wrong with that. It’s just that she’s dead. I generally have a hard time listening to him repeat stories I’ve heard a half a dozen times. Occasionally he talks about something new, and then it’s interesting, but here lately he just droans on and on.

Art squatted in the next row and silently began to pull weeds too. Well, maybe he needs a little quiet companionship, I thought and leaned back to examine my scratched, sore hands.

“Don’t you have a pair of gloves to use?”

“Forgot to put ‘em on.”

“Oh,” he said and turned his back to me.

He crawled down the row backwards, pulling as he went. “Been thinkin’ ‘bout heading out West. You know, me and Lucille have a trailer out in Arizona.”

“Yes, I know about the trailer.”

“We bought it in, say, oh-musta been ‘bout ‘59. Cathrine was just a baby then.”

“Yes, I know.” He straightened up and twisted to look at me. I stared back, not quite sure of what to say next. Art settled back on his heels, rested his hands on his lap, and stared off into space.

“Lucille and I always had such good times together. We were friends, not just man and wife. We’d go to ball games when the kids RELATIONSHIPS

| 99

were home and we just kept going after they grew up. She really loved them ball games.”

He glanced over at me to see if I was still listening.

“I used to get so embarrassed ‘cause she’d scream and jump around just like a kid. We had fun together. After the games we’d go out for pizza and beer-hell, we were just like teen-agers.” He chuckled to himself and shook his head, then stared at the ground. I didn’t know what to say to him.

“Went out to see her yesterday.”

“It rained yesterday.”

“Did it? Hmmm, musta not noticed. Well, I pulled weeds out there too and cleaned off her stone. I brought out some daisies. She always loved daisies. She even had fake ones in the house, you know, those silk ones. These that I brought out to her yesterday weren’t fake though; They were the real thing.”

“She would have enjoyed them.”

“You bet she enjoys them. That’s why I brought ‘em out to her.”

“Art…” “Then I sat down on the ground beside her and talked everything over. We talked about the kids and selling the house…”

“Selling the house?” ‘’Yes, selling the house and moving out West.” ‘’Would you really go out there to live alone?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be alone. Lucille’d go with me, just like she always does. Any time I go anywhere she’s right alongside, keepin’ me company. Her body may be dead, but she still lives in my heart.”

Art turned away, working his mouth furiously over clenched teeth. Art was a member of the generation of men who believed that real men don’t cry-not even when they’ve lost their reason for living. He stooped over, suddenly seeming older than I had ever noticed before, and began pulling weeds again. I just sat there, as I had been since Art started talk100 | RETROSPECTIVE

ing. I had no idea that his pain was this deep, he never let anyone see this part of himself.

Suddenly he was no longer the gruff old man who monopolized my time and attention. He became a real person carrying an exquisite load of hurt,. anger, and loneliness.

“People today talk about not being able to communicate with their spouses. Lucille and I never had any trouble with that. Hell, if she had something to say to me, she just said itand vice versa, you know. Do you have trouble talking to Cindy?”

I licked my lips and started to reply, but Art continued talking.

“Those last few weeks there in the nursing home were as hard on me as they were on her. She couldn’t talk any more. She’d just look at me when 1 tried to talk to her like we used to. All she could do was grunt. Oh, sometimes she’d talk, but it was all garbled. It didn’t make any sense. 1 used to get so damn mad, I’d just want to shake her. I never did though. What good would it do? She couldn’t help the way she was.

“Every night I’d go up to the home and we’d sit and watch TV, just like we’d do at home. We liked to watch the national news, then we’d watch that game show, you know, Spin for a Win. Well, one night she dozed off in her chair and I turned the TV off. She woke up right then and hollered, ‘Turn that damned TV back on, I was watchin’ it.’ She said it just like that. I turned the TV back on.

You know, I’d give anything to hear her say something to me—even if she’d holler at me.

Just to hear the sound of her voice again…”

“Steven, dinner’s ready.”

“Well, guess it’s ‘bout time I went home and fixed my supper. See ya later, Steve.”

“Bye, Art,” I said, as I watched him walk slowly across my yard into his. I stood to stretch the kinks out of my legs and back. On the way into the house, I picked a rose for my love.■

SOCKS

Kiosk 1993

by Robin Brower

It was laundry day again.

She dumped the last colored load in the washer, carefully setting the temperature.

Wouldn’t want to ruin his shirts.

Up the stairs she muscled the clothes basket full of Whites—and not-so-whites.

“Once socks get dirty, you never get ‘em clean.”

She paired his socks, being sure to stack them the way he wanted.

She used to fold them into oblong shapes, but he changed that.

He said it stretched out the top too much.

“Whatever you want,” she replied.

He had always made the rules and she had always played by them.

She glanced at the clock; he was two hours late and hadn’t called.

RELATIONSHIPS

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HOW TO DUMP A USELESS MAN

by Amanda Prince

I would write a poem if it would help, I would sit in that car with you for three days straight as you drove through the entire tri-state area scouring every strip bar and juice bar and gentleman’s club for his car if I thought it would help you get over this and I’m past the days of self-righteous blathering about how you need to just dump him and say fuck it and get it over with, I hope.

Cuz Marsha was right when she said nineteen-year-olds giving other nineteen-year-olds advice about love is completely insane.

Cuz I’d probably do the same for something as stupid as a boy.

And you’ve suffered the same too-high-pitched laughs of fake “I’m okays” from me and as I sit in this car.

What I’m trying to convey with my silence and stories about grade school four-square mishaps is, “I understand.”

We can drive for days till you’re over this honey, we can drive for days.

102 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 2000

WAR

“War is what happens when language fails.” ―Margaret Atwood

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104 | RETROSPECTIVE

TO THREE SOLDIERS

Manuscript 1938

by Winifred Cheely

Perhaps you were a schoolboy in your teens who felt the bugle’s stirring, thrilling call.

And straight and tall you left the country scenes— The Marne—a shot—a scream—and that was all.

And was your life bound in some tiny shop where sweat and heat and toiling filled the day?

Why did you volunteer to cross the top and meet your fate while comrades knelt to pray?

Were you an idler—one who didn’t care?

Who joined up “just to have a little fun?”

Who felt no pride when marching over there?

You, too, were halted ere the race was won.

Our flag is free, and gloriously it waves, while you three sleep—in silent, lonely graves.

WAR

| 105

A STUDENT’S WAR-TIME CREED

Manuscript 1938

by Mary Cruikshank

(This student creed was selected from a group of such war-time creeds submitted to President Roadman.

They are truly indicative of the beliefs of the Morningside student.)

I believe in maintaining a sane and sensible attitude toward the present emergency at all times.

I believe in getting as much education as possible so that I may better serve my country now and in the future.

I believe in doing my part in serving my country without complaint or resentment.

I will treasure those precious rights granted to us by makers of our Constitution, and will give thanks every day that I live in a country in which they may be practiced.

I shall remember at all times that we are not fighting a certain group of people, but that we are fighting the doctrine of totalitarianism.

I shall accept governmental restrictions without a deep sense of injury to my rights, recognizing that the welfare of the group is more important than that of the individual. .

I believe in a greater dependence upon God, which will consist of a more humble and penitent attitude and a more habitual attendance at church.

I believe in the necessity of a few well-chosen recreational facilities to relieve the tenseness precipitated by the emergency.

I believe that while we are planning to serve our country in war we must also plan for peace.

I believe that the ideals of democracy shall continue to triumph over totalitarianism only so long as we are each willing to defend them.â–

106 | RETROSPECTIVE

RETURNING HOME

Manuscript 1945

by Darryl McEntaffer

T

he excitement aboard the plane was almost at fever pitch, for we were coming home. Most of us not to our individual homes but all of us into the United States, and if we never got any closer than that to our respective homes, not a single fellow of the fourteen travel-weary pilots would utter one word of complaint.

The entire group was silent, about an hour’s flight out of Puerto Rico, each absorbed in his own thoughts, anxious, as I was, to see the coast line of Florida loom up in the hazy distance.

The pilot of the huge C-46 Army Transport was the first to sight the blurry far-off land and when he let it be known, there was one mad rush to the little windows that border the side of the plane. Everybody pushing and crowding each other trying to get seated so that his view would be clear and unobstructed. The boys had changed from the tense, travel-weary group into a back-slapping, hand-shaking, almost hysterical bunch of mad men.

The brakes squeaked the huge flying machine to a stop just in front of the beautiful tropically-designed operations office of the 36th Street Airport in Miami, Florida. The cargo doors swung open and without stopping to wait for the ladder, that might possibly have saved us a good many bruises, we piled out as if the four foot drop wasn’t there.

The following scene was one a person might well expect from one of Walt Disney’s cartoons or from the clown brigade of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus, but certainly never in front of the United States Customs Department, 36th Street Airport, Miami, Florida, for some of the fellows lay where they had sprawled after jumping; with cheeks pressed against the warm asphalt ram, arms outstretched as if trying to encircle the entire land.

Others ran for the grassy turf and dived headlong upon it as if it were a fluffy feather tick that their mothers might have made and laid there, uprooting grass and grinning from ear to ear, happy almost beyond belief. I stood and took great gulps of the fresh warm air and let my eyes feast upon things as far as they would reach, for little had I expected to see again such a sight as this.■

WAR

| 107

WAKE UP, MANKIND

by George A. Hawks

Wake up, Mankind, and see the mess you’ve made.

You’ve kicked the covers from a bed of peace.

It’s just a dream you’ve dreamed while sleeping there, but while you dream world wars can never cease.

Wake up and see the havoc you have wrought.

You with your morbid nightmares and your dreams, awake to see the sea of tears they’ve brought, awake to hear a hungry infant’s screams, awake and see the ashes of a form once human, lying charred against the clay, or see the fields once filled with golden corn, watered in blood from bodies where they lay.

Will you not wake? Oh, will you never see the trust that is within your power to keep?

Open your eyes, Mankind, and see yourself, but, no, perhaps ‘tis better just to sleep.

108 | RETROSPECTIVE

Manuscript 1955

INITIATION INTO MANHOOD

Perspectives 1970

by Dave Baldwin

Up before the crow of the cock, to bed before the moon climbs high.

Push-ups, sit-ups, on the hard cruel rock.

Help me God, they’re making me die.

They think they’ve taught me how to kill, the VC’s kin will have to cry M 1’s, chemicals, my new formed skill!

Help me God, they’re making me die.

Escape before they “program” desire.

Canada, Sweden, we can only try.

“Kill a Cong for Christ”—Closer/—Fire!!

Help me God, they’re making me die.

Computer tape attack plans, but who does the deed?

Have we who are forced no right to defy?

Love, Peace, Brotherhood, all meaningless creed?

Help me God, they’re making me die.

WAR

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EASY RIDER

Manuscript 1970

by Randall J. Gates

bloody flag and gasoline firecracker sparks soared into free American air —what so proudly hailed as Blownapart’s last screaming— hit the ground and bit the ground of (phallic-finger salute choked-throat why) the home of the brave.

110 | RETROSPECTIVE

LOGICAL ANALOGY

Kiosk 1991

by Greg Berge

WAR spelled backwards is RAW. RAW is what chapped lips feel like.

Lips are Mick Jagger.

Mick Jagger sings for the Rolling Stones.

Stones roll like little balls.

A little ball is a golf ball.

Golf sounds like GULF. A well-known GULF is the Persian Gulf.

As you can see, War and the Persian Gulf are directly related.

WAR

| 111

BATTLEFIELD MATHEMATICIAN

by Jess Horsley

Add U. N. inspectors, U.S. government support.

Subtract truth, add (pseudo) public support and a parody of patriotism.

Add a deadline.

Minus a deadline.

Add war.

Add the media and me, a U.S. Marine, subtracting months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds left “in country.”

Add stress, U.S. casualties.

Divide rounds fired by enemy KIA; subtract life, youth, innocence.

Add a lonely spouse at home, mail.

Subtract birthdays, Christmas, a first child’s birth.

Multiply by 140,000 troops.

Divide Iraq, add more troops and accidental Iraqi civilian dead. Add a bit of truth and subtract Iraqi support. Add a little more, subtract U.S. public support.

112 | RETROSPECTIVE

Kiosk 2006

Minus Saddam, add more conservative media and imitation patriotism.

Add more troops, body-armor, longer deployments, more U.S. casualties. Multiply grief, pain, tears.

Add dead sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, daughters, sisters, wives, mothers. Multiply grief, pain, tears again.

WAR

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114 | RETROSPECTIVE

| 115

116 | RETROSPECTIVE